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diff --git a/3374-0.txt b/3374-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3c6158c --- /dev/null +++ b/3374-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,40916 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The March Family Trilogy, Complete +by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The March Family Trilogy, Complete + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Last Updated: February 25, 2009 +Release Date: September 1, 2006 [EBook #3374] +Last Updated: February 25, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARCH FAMILY TRILOGY, COMPLETE *** + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +THE ENTIRE MARCH FAMILY TRILOGY + +By William Dean Howells + + + +Contents: + +Their Wedding Journey + The Outset + A Midsummer-day's Dream + The Night Boat + A Day's Railroading + The Enchanted City, and Beyond + Niagara + Down the St. Lawrence + The Sentiment of Montreal + Homeward and Home + Niagara Revisited Twelve Years after Their Wedding + +A Hazard of New Fortunes + Part 1 + Part 2 + Part 3 + Part 4 + Part 5 + +Their Silver Wedding Journey + Volume 1 + Volume 2 + Volume 3 + + + + +THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY + +By William Dean Howells + +1871 + + + + +I. THE OUTSET + +They first met in Boston, but the match was made in Europe, where they +afterwards saw each other; whither, indeed, he followed her; and there +the match was also broken off. Why it was broken off, and why it was +renewed after a lapse of years, is part of quite a long love-story, +which I do not think myself qualified to rehearse, distrusting my +fitness for a sustained or involved narration; though I am persuaded +that a skillful romancer could turn the courtship of Basil and Isabel +March to excellent account. Fortunately for me, however, in attempting +to tell the reader of the wedding-journey of a newly married couple, +no longer very young, to be sure, but still fresh in the light of their +love, I shall have nothing to do but to talk of some ordinary traits of +American life as these appeared to them, to speak a little of well-known +and easily accessible places, to present now a bit of landscape and now +a sketch of character. + +They had agreed to make their wedding-journey in the simplest and +quietest way, and as it did not take place at once after their marriage, +but some weeks later, it had all the desired charm of privacy from the +outset. + +“How much better,” said Isabel, “to go now, when nobody cares +whether you go or stay, than to have started off upon a wretched +wedding-breakfast, all tears and trousseau, and had people wanting +to see you aboard the cars. Now there will not be a suspicion of +honey-moonshine about us; we shall go just like anybody else,--with +a difference, dear, with a difference!” and she took Basil's cheeks +between her hands. In order to do this, she had to ran round the table; +for they were at dinner, and Isabel's aunt, with whom they had begun +married life, sat substantial between them. It was rather a girlish +thing for Isabel, and she added, with a conscious blush, “We are past +our first youth, you know; and we shall not strike the public as bridal, +shall we? My one horror in life is an evident bride.” + +Basil looked at her fondly, as if he did not think her at all too old to +be taken for a bride; and for my part I do not object to a woman's being +of Isabel's age, if she is of a good heart and temper. Life must have +been very unkind to her if at that age she have not won more than she +has lost. It seemed to Basil that his wife was quite as fair as when +they met first, eight years before; but he could not help recurring +with an inextinguishable regret to the long interval of their broken +engagement, which but for that fatality they might have spent together, +he imagined, in just such rapture as this. The regret always haunted +him, more or less; it was part of his love; the loss accounted +irreparable really enriched the final gain. + +“I don't know,” he said presently, with as much gravity as a man can +whose cheeks are clasped between a lady's hands, “you don't begin very +well for a bride who wishes to keep her secret. If you behave in this +way, they will put us into the 'bridal chambers' at all the hotels. And +the cars--they're beginning to have them on the palace-cars.” + +Just then a shadow fell into the room. + +“Wasn't that thunder, Isabel?” asked her aunt, who had been contentedly +surveying the tender spectacle before her. “O dear! you'll never be able +to go by the boat to-night, if it storms. It's actually raining now!” + +In fact, it was the beginning of that terrible storm of June, 1870. All +in a moment, out of the hot sunshine of the day it burst upon us before +we quite knew that it threatened, even before we had fairly noticed the +clouds, and it went on from passion to passion with an inexhaustible +violence. In the square upon which our friends looked out of their +dining-room windows the trees whitened in the gusts, and darkened in +the driving floods of the rainfall, and in some paroxysms of the tempest +bent themselves in desperate submission, and then with a great shudder +rent away whole branches and flung them far off upon the ground. Hail +mingled with the rain, and now the few umbrellas that had braved the +storm vanished, and the hurtling ice crackled upon the pavement, where +the lightning played like flames burning from the earth, while the +thunder roared overhead without ceasing. There was something splendidly +theatrical about it all; and when a street-car, laden to the last inch +of its capacity, came by, with horses that pranced and leaped under +the stinging blows of the hailstones, our friends felt as if it were +an effective and very naturalistic bit of pantomime contrived for their +admiration. Yet as to themselves they were very sensible of a potent +reality in the affair, and at intervals during the storm they debated +about going at all that day, and decided to go and not to go, according +to the changing complexion of the elements. Basil had said that as this +was their first journey together in America, he wished to give it at the +beginning as pungent a national character as possible, and that as he +could imagine nothing more peculiarly American than a voyage to New York +by a Fall River boat, they ought to take that route thither. So much +upholstery, so much music, such variety of company, he understood, could +not be got in any other way, and it might be that they would even catch +a glimpse of the inventor of the combination, who represented the +very excess and extremity of a certain kind of Americanism. Isabel had +eagerly consented; but these aesthetic motives were paralyzed for her by +the thought of passing Point Judith in a storm, and she descended from +her high intents first to the Inside Boats, without the magnificence and +the orchestra, and then to the idea of going by land in a sleeping-car. +Having comfortably accomplished this feat, she treated Basil's consent +as a matter of course, not because she did not regard him, but because +as a woman she could not conceive of the steps to her conclusion as +unknown to him, and always treated her own decisions as the product +of their common reasoning. But her husband held out for the boat, and +insisted that if the storm fell before seven o'clock, they could reach +it at Newport by the last express; and it was this obstinacy that, in +proof of Isabel's wisdom, obliged them to wait two hours in the station +before going by the land route. The storm abated at five o'clock, and +though the rain continued, it seemed well by a quarter of seven to set +out for the Old Colony Depot, in sight of which a sudden and vivid flash +of lightning caused Isabel to seize her husband's arm, and to implore +him, “O don't go by the boat!” On this, Basil had the incredible +weakness to yield; and bade the driver take them to the Worcester Depot. +It was the first swerving from the ideal in their wedding journey, but +it was by no means the last; though it must be confessed that it was +early to begin. + +They both felt more tranquil when they were irretrievably committed by +the purchase of their tickets, and when they sat down in the +waiting-room of the station, with all the time between seven and nine +o'clock before them. Basil would have eked out the business of checking +the trunks into an affair of some length, but the baggage-master did his +duty with pitiless celerity; and so Basil, in the mere excess of his +disoccupation, bought an accident-insurance ticket. This employed him +half a minute, and then he gave up the unequal contest, and went and +took his place beside Isabel, who sat prettily wrapped in her shawl, +perfectly content. + +“Isn't it charming,” she said gayly, “having to wait so long? It puts +me in mind of some of those other journeys we took together. But I can't +think of those times with any patience, when we might really have had +each other, and didn't! Do you remember how long we had to wait at +Chambery? and the numbers of military gentlemen that waited too, with +their little waists, and their kisses when they met? and that poor +married military gentleman, with the plain wife and the two children, +and a tarnished uniform? He seemed to be somehow in misfortune, and +his mustache hung down in such a spiritless way, while all the other +military mustaches about curled and bristled with so much boldness. I +think 'salles d'attente' everywhere are delightful, and there is such a +community of interest in them all, that when I come here only to go out +to Brookline, I feel myself a traveller once more,--a blessed stranger +in a strange land. O dear, Basil, those were happy times after all, when +we might have had each other and didn't! And now we're the more precious +for having been so long lost.” + +She drew closer and closer to him, and looked at him in a way that +threatened betrayal of her bridal character. + +“Isabel, you will be having your head on my shoulder, next,” said he. + +“Never!” she answered fiercely, recovering her distance with a start. +“But, dearest, if you do see me going to--act absurdly, you know, do +stop me.” + +“I'm very sorry, but I've got myself to stop. Besides, I didn't +undertake to preserve the incognito of this bridal party.” + +If any accident of the sort dreaded had really happened, it would not +have mattered so much, for as yet they were the sole occupants of the +waiting room. To be sure, the ticket-seller was there, and the lady who +checked packages left in her charge, but these must have seen so many +endearments pass between passengers,--that a fleeting caress or so would +scarcely have drawn their notice to our pair. Yet Isabel did not so much +even as put her hand into her husband's; and as Basil afterwards said, +it was very good practice. + +Our temporary state, whatever it is, is often mirrored in all that come +near us, and our friends were fated to meet frequent parodies of their +happiness from first to last on this journey. The travesty began with +the very first people who entered the waiting-room after themselves, and +who were a very young couple starting like themselves upon a pleasure +tour, which also was evidently one of the first tours of any kind that +they had made. It was of modest extent, and comprised going to New York +and back; but they talked of it with a fluttered and joyful expectation +as if it were a voyage to Europe. Presently there appeared a burlesque +of their happiness (but with a touch of tragedy) in that kind of young +man who is called by the females of his class a fellow, and two young +women of that kind known to him as girls. He took a place between these, +and presently began a robust flirtation with one of them. He possessed +himself, after a brief struggle, of her parasol, and twirled it about, +as he uttered, with a sort of tender rudeness inconceivable vapidities, +such as you would expect from none but a man of the highest fashion. The +girl thus courted became selfishly unconscious of everything but her own +joy, and made no attempt to bring the other girl within its warmth, but +left her to languish forgotten on the other side. The latter sometimes +leaned forward, and tried to divert a little of the flirtation to +herself, but the flirters snubbed her with short answers, and presently +she gave up and sat still in the sad patience of uncourted women. In +this attitude she became a burden to Isabel, who was glad when the three +took themselves away, and were succeeded by a very stylish couple--from +New York, she knew as well as if they had given her their address on +West 999th Street. The lady was not pretty, and she was not, Isabel +thought, dressed in the perfect taste of Boston; but she owned frankly +to herself that the New-Yorkeress was stylish, undeniably effective. The +gentleman bought a ticket for New York, and remained at the window of +the office talking quite easily with the seller. + +“You couldn't do that, my poor Basil,” said Isabel, “you'd be afraid.” + +“O dear, yes; I'm only too glad to get off without browbeating; though +I must say that this officer looks affable enough. Really,” he added, as +an acquaintance of the ticket-seller came in and nodded to him and said +“Hot, to-day!” “this is very strange. I always felt as if these men had +no private life, no friendships like the rest of us. On duty they seem +so like sovereigns, set apart from mankind, and above us all, that it's +quite incredible they should have the common personal relations.” + +At intervals of their talk and silence there came vivid flashes of +lightning and quite heavy shocks of thunder, very consoling to our +friends, who took them as so many compliments to their prudence in not +going by the boat, and who had secret doubts of their wisdom whenever +these acknowledgments were withheld. Isabel went so far as to say +that she hoped nothing would happen to the boat, but I think she would +cheerfully have learnt that the vessel had been obliged to put back to +Newport, on account of the storm, or even that it had been driven ashore +at a perfectly safe place. + +People constantly came and went in the waiting-room, which was sometimes +quite full, and again empty of all but themselves. In the course of +their observations they formed many cordial friendships and bitter +enmities upon the ground of personal appearance, or particulars of +dress, with people whom they saw for half a minute upon an average; and +they took such a keen interest in every one, that it would be hard to +say whether they were more concerned in an old gentleman with vigorously +upright iron-gray hair, who sat fronting them, and reading all the +evening papers, or a young man who hurled himself through the door, +bought a ticket with terrific precipitation, burst out again, and then +ran down a departing train before it got out of the station: they loved +the old gentleman for a certain stubborn benevolence of expression, and +if they had been friends of the young man and his family for generations +and felt bound if any harm befell him to go and break the news gently +to his parents, their nerves could not have been more intimately wrought +upon by his hazardous behavior. Still, as they had their tickets for +New York, and he was going out on a merely local train,--to Brookline, +I believe, they could not, even in their anxiety, repress a feeling of +contempt for his unambitious destination. + +They were already as completely cut off from local associations and +sympathies as if they were a thousand miles and many months away from +Boston. They enjoyed the lonely flaring of the gas-jets as a gust of +wind drew through the station; they shared the gloom and isolation of +a man who took a seat in the darkest corner of the room, and sat there +with folded arms, the genius of absence. In the patronizing spirit of +travellers in a foreign country they noted and approved the vases of +cut-flowers in the booth of the lady who checked packages, and the pots +of ivy in her windows. “These poor Bostonians,” they said; “have some +love of the beautiful in their rugged natures.” + +But after all was said and thought, it was only eight o'clock, and they +still had an hour to wait. + +Basil grew restless, and Isabel said, with a subtile interpretation of +his uneasiness, “I don't want anything to eat, Basil, but I think I know +the weaknesses of men; and you had better go and pass the next half-hour +over a plate of something indigestible.” + +This was said 'con stizza', the least little suggestion of it; but Basil +rose with shameful alacrity. “Darling, if it's your wish--” + +“It's my fate, Basil,” said Isabel. + +“I'll go,” he exclaimed, “because it isn't bridal, and will help us to +pass for old married people.” + +“No, no, Basil, be honest; fibbing isn't your forte: I wonder you went +into the insurance business; you ought to have been a lawyer. Go because +you like eating, and are hungry, perhaps, or think you may be so before +we get to New York. + +“I shall amuse myself well enough here!” + +I suppose it is always a little shocking and grievous to a wife when she +recognizes a rival in butchers'-meat and the vegetables of the season. +With her slender relishes for pastry and confectionery and her dainty +habits of lunching, she cannot reconcile with the idea (of) her +husband's capacity for breakfasting, dining, supping, and hot meals at +all hours of the day and night--as they write it on the sign-boards of +barbaric eating-houses. But Isabel would have only herself to blame +if she had not perceived this trait of Basil's before marriage. She +recurred now, as his figure disappeared down the station, to memorable +instances of his appetite in their European travels during their first +engagement. “Yes, he ate terribly at Susa, when I was too full of +the notion of getting into Italy to care for bouillon and cold roast +chicken. At Rome I thought I must break with him on account of the +wild-boar; and at Heidelberg, the sausage and the ham!--how could he, +in my presence? But I took him with all his faults,--and was glad to get +him,” she added, ending her meditation with a little burst of candor; +and she did not even think of Basil's appetite when he reappeared. + +With the thronging of many sorts of people, in parties and singly, into +the waiting room, they became once again mere observers of their kind, +more or less critical in temper, until the crowd grew so that individual +traits were merged in the character of multitude. Even then, they could +catch glimpses of faces so sweet or fine that they made themselves felt +like moments of repose in the tumult, and here and there was something +so grotesque in dress of manner that it showed distinct from the rest. +The ticket-seller's stamp clicked incessantly as he sold tickets to all +points South and West: to New York, Philadelphia, Charleston; to New +Orleans, Chicago, Omaha; to St. Paul, Duluth, St. Louis; and it would +not have been hard to find in that anxious bustle, that unsmiling +eagerness, an image of the whole busy affair of life. It was not a +particularly sane spectacle, that impatience to be off to some place +that lay not only in the distance, but also in the future--to which no +line of road carries you with absolute certainty across an interval of +time full of every imaginable chance and influence. It is easy enough to +buy a ticket to Cincinnati, but it is somewhat harder to arrive there. +Say that all goes well, is it exactly you who arrive? + +In the midst of the disquiet there entered at last an old woman, so very +infirm that she had to be upheld on either hand by her husband and the +hackman who had brought them, while a young girl went before with shawls +and pillows which she arranged upon the seat. There the invalid lay +down, and turned towards the crowd a white, suffering face, which was +yet so heavenly meek and peaceful that it comforted whoever looked at +it. + +In spirit our happy friends bowed themselves before it and owned that +there was something better than happiness in it. + +“What is it like, Isabel?” + +“O, I don't know, darling,” she said; but she thought, “Perhaps it is +like some blessed sorrow that takes us out of this prison of a world, +and sets us free of our every-day hates and desires, our aims, our +fears, ourselves. Maybe a long and mortal sickness might come to wear +such a face in one of us two, and the other could see it, and not regret +the poor mask of youth and pretty looks that had fallen away.” + +She rose and went over to the sick woman, on whose face beamed a tender +smile, as Isabel spoke to her. A chord thrilled in two lives hitherto +unknown to each other; but what was said Basil would not ask when the +invalid had taken Isabel's hand between her own, as for adieu, and she +came back to his side with swimming eyes. Perhaps his wife could have +given no good reason for her emotion, if he had asked it. But it made +her very sweet and dear to him; and I suppose that when a tolerably +unselfish man is once secure of a woman's love, he is ordinarily more +affected by her compassion and tenderness for other objects than by her +feelings towards himself. He likes well enough to think, “She loves me,” + but still better, “How kind and good she is!” + +They lost sight of the invalid in the hurry of getting places on the +cars, and they never saw her again. The man at the wicket-gate leading +to the train had thrown it up, and the people were pressing furiously +through as if their lives hung upon the chance of instant passage. Basil +had secured his ticket for the sleeping-car, and so he and Isabel +stood aside and watched the tumult. When the rash was over they passed +through, and as they walked up and down the platform beside the train, +“I was thinking,” said Isabel, “after I spoke to that poor old lady, +of what Clara Williams says: that she wonders the happiest women in the +world can look each other in the face without bursting into tears, their +happiness is so unreasonable, and so built upon and hedged about with +misery. She declares that there's nothing so sad to her as a bride, +unless it's a young mother, or a little girl growing up in the innocent +gayety of her heart. She wonders they can live through it.” + +“Clara is very much of a reformer, and would make an end of all of us +men, I suppose,--except her father, who supports her in the leisure +that enables her to do her deep thinking. She little knows what we poor +fellows have to suffer, and how often we break down in business hours, +and sob upon one another's necks. Did that old lady talk to you in the +same strain?” + +“O no! she spoke very calmly of her sickness, and said she had lived a +blessed life. Perhaps it was that made me shed those few small tears. +She seemed a very religious person.” + +“Yes,” said Basil, “it is almost a pity that religion is going out. But +then you are to have the franchise.” + +“All aboard!” + +This warning cry saved him from whatever heresy he might have been +about to utter; and presently the train carried them out into the +gas-sprinkled darkness, with an ever-growing speed that soon left +the city lamps far behind. It is a phenomenon whose commonness +alone prevents it from being most impressive, that departure of the +night-express. The two hundred miles it is to travel stretch before it, +traced by those slender clews, to lose which is ruin, and about which +hang so many dangers. The draw bridges that gape upon the way, the +trains that stand smoking and steaming on the track, the rail that has +borne the wear so long that it must soon snap under it, the deep cut +where the overhanging mass of rock trembles to its fall, the obstruction +that a pitiless malice may have placed in your path,--you think of these +after the journey is done, but they seldom haunt your fancy while it +lasts. The knowledge of your helplessness in any circumstances is so +perfect that it begets a sense of irresponsibility, almost of security; +and as you drowse upon the pallet of the sleeping car, and feel yourself +hurled forward through the obscurity, you are almost thankful that you +can do nothing, for it is upon this condition only that you can endure +it; and some such condition as this, I suppose, accounts for many heroic +facts in the world. To the fantastic mood which possesses you equally, +sleeping or waking, the stoppages of the train have a weird character; +and Worcester, Springfield, New Haven, and Stamford are rather points in +dream-land than well-known towns of New England. As the train stops you +drowse if you have been waking, and wake if you have been in a doze; but +in any case you are aware of the locomotive hissing and coughing beyond +the station, of flaring gas-jets, of clattering feet of passengers +getting on and off; then of some one, conductor or station-master, +walking the whole length of the train; and then you are aware of an +insane satisfaction in renewed flight through the darkness. You think +hazily of the folk in their beds in the town left behind, who stir +uneasily at the sound of your train's departing whistle; and so all is a +blank vigil or a blank slumber. + +By daylight Basil and Isabel found themselves at opposite ends of the +car, struggling severally with the problem of the morning's toilet. +When the combat was ended, they were surprised at the decency of their +appearance, and Isabel said, “I think I'm presentable to an early +Broadway public, and I've a fancy for not going to a hotel. Lucy will be +expecting us out there before noon; and we can pass the time pleasantly +enough for a few hours just wandering about.” + +She was a woman who loved any cheap defiance of custom, and she had an +agreeable sense of adventure in what she proposed. Besides, she felt +that nothing could be more in the unconventional spirit in which they +meant to make their whole journey than a stroll about New York at +half-past six in the morning. + +“Delightful!” answered Basil, who was always charmed with these small +originalities. “You look well enough for an evening party; and besides, +you won't meet one of your own critical class on Broadway at this hour. +We will breakfast at one of those gilded metropolitan restaurants, +and then go round to Leonard's, who will be able to give us just three +unhurried seconds. After that we'll push on out to his place.” + +At that early hour there were not many people astir on the wide avenue +down which our friends strolled when they left the station; but in the +aspect of those they saw there was something that told of a greater +heat than they had yet known in Boston, and they were sensible of having +reached a more southern latitude. The air, though freshened by the +over-night's storm, still wanted the briskness and sparkle and pungency +of the Boston air, which is as delicious in summer as it is terrible +in winter; and the faces that showed themselves were sodden from the +yesterday's heat and perspiration. A corner-grocer, seated in a sort of +fierce despondency upon a keg near his shop door, had lightly equipped +himself for the struggle of the day in the battered armor of the day +before, and in a pair of roomy pantaloons, and a baggy shirt of neutral +tint--perhaps he had made a vow not to change it whilst the siege of the +hot weather lasted,--now confronted the advancing sunlight, before which +the long shadows of the buildings were slowly retiring. A marketing +mother of a family paused at a provision-store, and looking weakly in at +the white-aproned butcher among his meats and flies, passes without an +effort to purchase. Hurried and wearied shop-girls tripped by in the +draperies that betrayed their sad necessity to be both fine and shabby; +from a boarding-house door issued briskly one of those cool young New +Yorkers whom no circumstances can oppress: breezy-coated, white-livened, +clean, with a good cigar in the mouth, a light cane caught upon the +elbow of one of the arms holding up the paper from which the morning's +news is snatched, whilst the person sways lightly with the walk; in the +street-cars that slowly tinkled up and down were rows of people with +baskets between their legs and papers before their faces; and all showed +by some peculiarity of air or dress the excess of heat which they had +already borne, and to which they seemed to look forward, and gave by the +scantiness of their number a vivid impression of the uncounted thousands +within doors prolonging, before the day's terror began, the oblivion of +sleep. + +As they turned into one of the numerical streets to cross to Broadway, +and found themselves in a yet deeper seclusion, Basil-began to utter in +a musing tone: + + “A city against the world's gray Prime, + Lost in some desert, far from Time, + Where noiseless Ages gliding through, + Have only sifted sands and dew, + Yet still a marble head of man + Lying on all the haunted plan; + The passions of the human heart + Beating the marble breast of Art, + Were not more lone to one who first + Upon its giant silence burst, + Than this strange quiet, where the tide + Of life, upheaved on either aide, + Hangs trembling, ready soon to beat + With human waves the Morning Street.” + +“How lovely!” said Isabel, swiftly catching at her skirt, and +deftly escaping contact with one of a long row of ash-barrels posted +sentinel-like on the edge of the pavement. “Whose is it, Basil?” + +“Ah! a poet's,” answered her husband, “a man of whom we shall one day +any of us be glad to say that we liked him before he was famous. What a +nebulous sweetness the first lines have, and what a clear, cool light of +day-break in the last!” + +“You could have been as good a poet as that, Basil,” said the +ever-personal and concretely-speaking Isabel, who could not look at a +mountain without thinking what Basil might have done in that way, if he +had tried. + +“O no, I couldn't, dear. It's very difficult being any poet at all, +though it's easy to be like one. But I've done with it; I broke with +the Muse the day you accepted me. She came into my office, looking so +shabby,--not unlike one of those poor shop-girls; and as I was very +well dressed from having just been to see you, why, you know, I felt +the difference. 'Well, my dear?' said I, not quite liking the look of +reproach she was giving me. 'You are going to leave me,' she answered +sadly. 'Well, yes; I suppose I must. You see the insurance business is +very absorbing; and besides, it has a bad appearance, your coming about +so in office hours, and in those clothes.' 'O,' she moaned out, 'you +used to welcome me at all times, out in the country, and thought me +prettily dressed.' 'Yes, yes; but this is Boston; and Boston makes a +great difference in one's ideas; and I'm going to be married, too. +Come, I don't want to seem ungrateful; we have had many pleasant times +together, I own it; and I've no objections to your being present at +Christmas and Thanksgiving and birthdays, but really I must draw the +line there.' She gave me a look that made my heart ache, and went +straight to my desk and took out of a pigeon hole a lot of papers,--odes +upon your cruelty, Isabel; songs to you; sonnets,--the sonnet, a mighty +poor one, I'd made the day before,--and threw them all into the grate. +Then she turned to me again, signed adieu with mute lips, and passed +out. I could hear the bottom wire of the poor thing's hoop-skirt +clicking against each step of the stairway, as she went slowly and +heavily down to the street.” “O don't--don't, Basil,” said his wife, “it +seems like something wrong. I think you ought to have been ashamed.” + +“Ashamed! I was heart broken. But it had to come to that. As I got +hopeful about you, the Muse became a sad bore; and more than once I +found myself smiling at her when her back was turned. The Muse doesn't +like being laughed at any more than another woman would, and she would +have left me shortly. No, I couldn't be a poet like our Morning-Street +friend. But see! the human wave is beginning to sprinkle the pavement +with cooks and second-girls.” + +They were frowzy serving-maids and silent; each swept down her own door +steps and the pavement in front of her own house, and then knocked her +broom on the curbstone and vanished into the house, on which the hand of +change had already fallen. It was no longer a street solely devoted to +the domestic gods, but had been invaded at more than one point by the +bustling deities of business in such streets the irregular, inspired +doctors and doctresses come first with inordinate door-plates, then +a milliner filling the parlor window with new bonnets; here even a +publisher had hung his sign beside a door, through which the feet of +young ladies used to trip, and the feet of little children to patter. +Here and there stood groups of dwellings unmolested as yet outwardly; +but even these had a certain careworn and guilty air, as if they knew +themselves to be cheapish boarding-houses or furnished lodgings for +gentlemen, and were trying to hide it. To these belonged the frowzy +serving-women; to these the rows of ash-barrels, in which the decrepit +children and mothers of the streets were clawing for bits of coal. + +By the time Basil and Isabel reached Broadway there were already some +omnibuses beginning their long day's travel up and down the handsome, +tiresome length of that avenue; but for the most part it was empty. +There was, of course, a hurry of foot-passengers upon the sidewalks, but +these were sparse and uncharacteristic, for New York proper was still +fast asleep. The waiter at the restaurant into which our friends stepped +was so well aware of this, and so perfectly assured they were not of the +city, that he could not forbear a little patronage of them, which +they did not resent. He brought Basil what he had ordered in barbaric +abundance, and charged for it with barbaric splendor. It is all but +impossible not to wish to stand well with your waiter: I have myself +been often treated with conspicuous rudeness by the tribe, yet I have +never been able to withhold the 'douceur' that marked me for a gentleman +in their eyes, and entitled me to their dishonorable esteem. Basil was +not superior to this folly, and left the waiter with the conviction +that, if he was not a New Yorker, he was a high-bred man of the world at +any rate. + +Vexed by a sense of his own pitifulness, this man of the world continued +his pilgrimage down Broadway, which even in that desert state was full +of a certain interest. Troops of laborers straggled along the pavements, +each with his dinner-pail in hand; and in many places the eternal +building up and pulling down was already going on; carts were struggling +up the slopes of vast cellars, with loads of distracting rubbish; +here stood the half-demolished walls of a house, with a sad variety of +wall-paper showing in the different rooms; there clinked the trowel upon +the brick, yonder the hammer on the stone; overhead swung and threatened +the marble block that the derrick was lifting to its place. As yet these +forces of demolition and construction had the business of the street +almost to themselves. + +“Why, how shabby the street is!” said Isabel, at last. “When I landed, +after being abroad, I remember that Broadway impressed me with its +splendor.” + +“Ah! but you were merely coming from Europe then; and now you arrive +from Burton, and are contrasting this poor Broadway with Washington +Street. Don't be hard upon it, Isabel; every street can't be a Boston +street, you know,” said Basil. Isabel, herself a Bostonian of great +intensity both by birth and conviction, believed her husband the only +man able to have thoroughly baffled the malignity of the stars in +causing him to be born out of Boston; yet he sometimes trifled with his +hardly achieved triumph, and even showed an indifference to it, with an +insincerity of which there can be no doubt whatever. + +“O stuff!” she retorted, “as if I had any of that silly local pride! +Though you know well enough that Boston is the best place in the world. +But Basil! I suppose Broadway strikes us as so fine, on coming ashore +from Europe, because we hardly expect anything of America then.” + +“Well, I don't know. Perhaps the street has some positive grandeur of +its own, though it needs a multitude of people in it to bring out its +best effects. I'll allow its disheartening shabbiness and meanness in +many ways; but to stand in front of Grace Church, on a clear day,--a day +of late September, say,--and look down the swarming length of Broadway, +on the movement and the numbers, while the Niagara roar swelled and +swelled from those human rapids, was always like strong new wine to me. +I don't think the world affords such another sight; and for one moment, +at such times, I'd have been willing to be an Irish councilman, that I +might have some right to the pride I felt in the capital of the Irish +Republic. What a fine thing it must be for each victim of six centuries +of oppression to reflect that he owns at least a dozen Americans, and +that, with his fellows, he rules a hundred helpless millionaires!” + +Like all daughters of a free country, Isabel knew nothing about +politics, and she felt that she was getting into deep water; she +answered buoyantly, but she was glad to make her weariness the occasion +of hailing a stage, and changing the conversation. The farther down town +they went the busier the street grew; and about the Astor House, where +they alighted, there was already a bustle that nothing but a fire could +have created at the same hour in Boston. A little farther on the steeple +of Trinity rose high into the scorching sunlight, while below, in the +shadow that was darker than it was cool, slumbered the old graves among +their flowers. + +“How still they lie!” mused the happy wife, peering through the iron +fence in passing. + +“Yes, their wedding-journeys are ended, poor things!” said Basil; and +through both their minds flashed the wonder if they should ever come to +something like that; but it appeared so impossible that they both smiled +at the absurdity. + +“It's too early yet for Leonard,” continued Basil; “what a pity the +church-yard is locked up. We could spend the time so delightfully in +it. But, never mind; let us go down to the Battery,--it's not a +very pleasant place, but it's near, and it's historical, and it's +open,--where these drowsy friends of ours used to take the air when +they were in the fashion, and had some occasion for the element in its +freshness. You can imagine--it's cheap--how they used to see Mr. Burr +and Mr. Hamilton down there.” + +All places that fashion has once loved and abandoned are very +melancholy; but of all such places, I think the Battery is the most +forlorn. Are there some sickly locust-trees there that cast a tremulous +and decrepit shade upon the mangy grass-plots? I believe so, but I do +not make sure; I am certain only of the mangy grass-plots, or rather the +spaces between the paths, thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and +opprobrious weed, a stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the +New York Battery. At that hour of the summer morning when our friends, +with the aimlessness of strangers who are waiting to do something else, +saw the ancient promenade, a few scant and hungry-eyed little boys and +girls were wandering over this weedy growth, not playing, but moving +listlessly to and fro, fantastic in the wild inaptness of their +costumes. One of these little creatures wore, with an odd involuntary +jauntiness, the cast-off best drew of some happier child, a gay little +garment cut low in the neck and short in the sleeves, which gave her the +grotesque effect of having been at a party the night before. Presently +came two jaded women, a mother and a grandmother, that appeared, when +they had crawled out of their beds, to have put on only so much clothing +as the law compelled. They abandoned themselves upon the green stuff, +whatever it was, and, with their lean hands clasped outside their knees, +sat and stared, silent and hopeless, at the eastern sky, at the heart of +the terrible furnace, into which in those days the world seemed cast to +be burnt up, while the child which the younger woman had brought with +her feebly wailed unheeded at her side. On one side of these women +were the shameless houses out of which they might have crept, and which +somehow suggested riotous maritime dissipation; on the other side were +those houses in which had once dwelt rich and famous folk, but which +were now dropping down the boarding-house scale through various +un-homelike occupations to final dishonor and despair. Down nearer the +water, and not far from the castle that was once a playhouse and is now +the depot of emigration, stood certain express-wagons, and about these +lounged a few hard-looking men. Beyond laughed and danced the fresh blue +water of the bay, dotted with sails and smokestacks. + +“Well,” said Basil, “I think if I could choose, I should like to be a +friendless German boy, setting foot for the first time on this happy +continent. Fancy his rapture on beholding this lovely spot, and these +charming American faces! What a smiling aspect life in the New World +must wear to his young eyes, and how his heart must leap within him!” + +“Yes, Basil; it's all very pleasing, and thank you for bringing me. But +if you don't think of any other New York delights to show me, do let us +go and sit in Leonard's office till he comes, and then get out into the +country as soon as possible.” + +Basil defended himself against the imputation that he had been trying +to show New York to his wife, or that he had any thought but of whiling +away the long morning hours, until it should be time to go to Leonard. +He protested that a knowledge of Europe made New York the most +uninteresting town in America, and that it was the last place in the +world where he should think of amusing himself or any one else; and then +they both upbraided the city's bigness and dullness with an enjoyment +that none but Bostonians can know. They particularly derided the notion +of New York's being loved by any one. It was immense, it was grand in +some ways, parts of it were exceedingly handsome; but it was too vast, +too coarse, too restless. They could imagine its being liked by a +successful young man of business, or by a rich young girl, ignorant of +life and with not too nice a taste in her pleasures; but that it should +be dear to any poet or scholar, or any woman of wisdom and refinement, +that they could not imagine. They could not think of any one's loving +New York as Dante loved Florence, or as Madame de Stael loved Paris, or +as Johnson loved black, homely, home-like London. And as they twittered +their little dispraises, the giant Mother of Commerce was growing +more and more conscious of herself, waking from her night's sleep and +becoming aware of her fleets and trains, and the myriad hands and wheels +that throughout the whole sea and land move for her, and do her will +even while she sleeps. All about the wedding-journeyers swelled the +deep tide of life back from its night-long ebb. Broadway had filled her +length with people; not yet the most characteristic New York crowd, but +the not less interesting multitude of strangers arrived by the early +boats and trams, and that easily distinguishable class of lately +New-Yorkized people from other places, about whom in the metropolis +still hung the provincial traditions of early rising; and over all, from +moment to moment, the eager, audacious, well-dressed, proper life of the +mighty city was beginning to prevail,--though this was not so notable +where Basil and Isabel had paused at a certain window. It was the office +of one of the English steamers, and he was saying, “It was by this line +I sailed, you know,”--and she was interrupting him with, “When who could +have dreamed that you would ever be telling me of it here?” So the old +marvel was wondered over anew, till it filled the world in which there +was room for nothing but the strangeness that they should have loved +each other so long and not made it known, that they should ever have +uttered it, and that, being uttered, it should be so much more and +better than ever could have been dreamed. The broken engagement was a +fable of disaster that only made their present fortune more prosperous. +The city ceased about them, and they walked on up the street, the first +man and first woman in the garden of the new-made earth. As they were +both very conscious people, they recognized in themselves some sense +of this, and presently drolled it away, in the opulence of a time +when every moment brought some beautiful dream, and the soul could be +prodigal of its bliss. + +“I think if I had the naming of the animals over again, this morning, +I shouldn't call snakes 'snakes'; should you, Eve?” laughed Basil in +intricate acknowledgment of his happiness. + +“O no, Adam; we'd look out all the most graceful euphemisms in the +newspapers, and we wouldn't hurt the feelings of a spider.” + + + + +II. MIDSUMMER-DAY'S DREAM. + +They had waited to see Leonard, in order that they might learn better +how to find his house in the country; and now, when they came in upon +him at nine o'clock, he welcomed them with all his friendly heart. He +rose from the pile of morning's letters to which he had but just sat +down; he placed them the easiest chairs; he made a feint of its not +being a busy hour with him, and would have had them look upon his +office, which was still damp and odorous from the porter's broom, as a +kind of down-town parlor; but after they had briefly accounted to his +amazement for their appearance then and there, and Isabel had boasted of +the original fashion in which they had that morning seen New York, they +took pity on him, and bade him adieu till evening. + +They crossed from Broadway to the noisome street by the ferry, and in +a little while had taken their places in the train on the other side of +the water. + +“Don't tell me, Basil,” said Isabel, “that Leonard travels fifty miles +every day by rail going to and from his work!” + +“I must, dearest, if I would be truthful.” + +“Then, darling, there are worse things in this world than living up at +the South End, aren't there?” And in agreement upon Boston as a place of +the greatest natural advantages, as well as all acquirable merits, with +after talk that need not be recorded, they arrived in the best humor at +the little country station near which the Leonards dwelt. + +I must inevitably follow Mrs. Isabel thither, though I do it at the cost +of the reader, who suspects the excitements which a long description of +the movement would delay. The ladies were very old friends, and they had +not met since Isabel's return from Europe and renewal of her engagement. +Upon the news of this, Mrs. Leonard had swallowed with surprising ease +all that she had said in blame of Basil's conduct during the rupture, +and exacted a promise from her friend that she should pay her the first +visit after their marriage. And now that they had come together, their +only talk was of husbands, whom they viewed in every light to which +husbands could be turned, and still found an inexhaustible novelty in +the theme. Mrs. Leonard beheld in her friend's joy the sweet reflection +of her own honeymoon, and Isabel was pleased to look upon the prosperous +marriage of the former as the image of her future. Thus, with immense +profit and comfort, they reassured one another by every question and +answer, and in their weak content lapsed far behind the representative +women of our age, when husbands are at best a necessary evil, and the +relation of wives to them is known to be one of pitiable subjection. +When these two pretty, fogies put their heads of false hair together, +they were as silly and benighted as their great-grandmothers could have +been in the same circumstances, and, as I say, shamefully encouraged +each other, in their absurdity. The absurdity appeared too good and +blessed to be true. “Do you really suppose, Basil,” Isabel would say to +her oppressor, after having given him some elegant extract from the last +conversation upon husbands, “that we shall get on as smoothly as the +Leonards when we have been married ten years? Lucy says that things +go more hitchily the first year than ever they do afterwards, and that +people love each other better and better just because they've got used +to it. Well, our bliss does seem a little crude and garish compared with +their happiness; and yet”--she put up both her palms against his, and +gave a vehement little push--“there is something agreeable about it, +even at this stage of the proceedings.” + +“Isabel,” said her husband, with severity, “this is bridal!” + +“No matter! I only want to seem an old married woman to the general +public. But the application of it is that you must be careful not to +contradict me, or cross me in anything, so that we can be like the +Leonards very much sooner than they became so. The great object is not +to have any hitchiness; and you know you ARE provoking--at times.” + +They both educated themselves for continued and tranquil happiness by +the example and precept of their friends; and the time passed swiftly +in the pleasant learning, and in the novelty of the life led by the +Leonards. This indeed merits a closer study than can be given here, for +it is the life led by vast numbers of prosperous New Yorkers who love +both the excitement of the city and the repose of the country, and who +aspire to unite the enjoyment of both in their daily existence. +The suburbs of the metropolis stretch landward fifty miles in every +direction; and everywhere are handsome villas like Leonard's, inhabited +by men like himself, whom strict study of the time-table enables to +spend all their working hours in the city and all their smoking and +sleeping hours in the country. + +The home and the neighborhood of the Leonards put on their best looks +for our bridal pair, and they were charmed. They all enjoyed the visit, +said guests and hosts, they were all sorry to have it come to an end; +yet they all resigned themselves to this conclusion. Practically, it had +no other result than to detain the travellers into the very heart of +the hot weather. In that weather it was easy to do anything that did +not require an active effort, and resignation was so natural with the +mercury at ninety, that I am not sure but there was something sinful in +it. + +They had given up their cherished purpose of going to Albany by the day +boat, which was represented to them in every impossible phase. It +would be dreadfully crowded, and whenever it stopped the heat would be +insupportable. Besides it would bring them to Albany at an hour when +they must either spend the night there, or push on to Niagara by the +night train. “You had better go by the evening boat. It will be light +almost till you reach West Point, and you'll see all the best scenery. +Then you can get a good night's rest, and start fresh in the morning.” + So they were counseled, and they assented, as they would have done if +they had been advised: “You had better go by the morning boat. It's +deliciously cool, travelling; you see the whole of the river, you reach +Albany for supper, and you push through to Niagara that night and are +done with it.” + +They took leave of Leonard at breakfast and of his wife at noon, and +fifteen minutes later they were rushing from the heat of the country +into the heat of the city, where some affairs and pleasures were to +employ them till the evening boat should start. + +Their spirits were low, for the terrible spell of the great heat brooded +upon them. All abroad burned the fierce white light of the sun, in +which not only the earth seemed to parch and thirst, but the very air +withered, and was faint and thin to the troubled respiration. Their +train was full of people who had come long journeys from broiling cities +of the West, and who were dusty and ashen and reeking in the slumbers +at which some of them still vainly caught. On every one lay an awful +languor. Here and there stirred a fan, like the broken wing of a dying +bird; now and then a sweltering young mother shifted her hot baby from +one arm to another; after every station the desperate conductor swung +through the long aisle and punched the ticket, which each passenger +seemed to yield him with a tacit malediction; a suffering child hung +about the empty tank, which could only gasp out a cindery drop or two of +ice-water. The wind buffeted faintly at the windows; when the door was +opened, the clatter of the rails struck through and through the car like +a demoniac yell. + +Yet when they arrived at the station by the ferry-side, they seemed to +have entered its stifling darkness from fresh and vigorous atmosphere, +so close and dead and mined with the carbonic breath of the locomotives +was the air of the place. The thin old wooden walls that shut out the +glare of the sun transmitted an intensified warmth; the roof seemed +to hover lower and lower, and in its coal-smoked, raftery hollow to +generate a heat deadlier than that poured upon it from the skies. + +In a convenient place in the station hung a thermometer, before which +every passenger, on going aboard the ferry-boat, paused as at a shrine, +and mutely paid his devotions. At the altar of this fetich our friends +also paused, and saw that the mercury was above ninety, and exulting +with the pride that savages take in the cruel might of their idols, +bowed their souls to the great god Heat. + +On the boat they found a place where the breath of the sea struck cool +across their faces, and made them forget the thermometer for the +brief time of the transit. But presently they drew near that strange, +irregular row of wooden buildings and jutting piers which skirts the +river on the New York aide, and before the boat's motion ceased the air +grew thick and warm again, and tainted with the foulness of the street +on which the buildings front. Upon this the boat's passengers issued, +passing up through a gangway, on one side of which a throng of +return-passengers was pent by a gate of iron barn, like a herd of wild +animals. They were streaming with perspiration, and, according to their +different temperaments, had faces of deep crimson or deadly pallor. + +“Now the question is, my dear,” said Basil when, free of the press, they +lingered for a moment in the shade outside, “whether we had better walk +up to Broadway, at an immediate sacrifice of fibre, and get a stage +there, or take one of these cars here, and be landed a little nearer, +with half the exertion. By this route we shall have sights end smells +which the other can't offer us, but whichever we take we shall be +sorry.” + +“Then I say take this,” decided Isabel. “I want to be sorry upon the +easiest possible terms, this weather.” + +They hailed the first car that passed, and got into it. Well for them +both if she could have exercised this philosophy with regard to the +whole day's business, or if she could have given up her plans for it, +with the same resignation she had practiced in regard to the day boat! +It seems to me a proof of the small advance our race has made in true +wisdom, that we find it so hard to give up doing anything we have meant +to do. It matters very little whether the affair is one of enjoyment or +of business, we feel the same bitter need of pursuing it to the end. The +mere fact of intention gives it a flavor of duty, and dutiolatry, as one +may call the devotion, has passed so deeply into our life that we have +scarcely a sense any more of the sweetness of even a neglected pleasure. +We will not taste the fine, guilty rapture of a deliberate dereliction; +the gentle sin of omission is all but blotted from the calendar of +our crimes. If I had been Columbus, I should have thought twice before +setting sail, when I was quite ready to do so; and as for Plymouth Rock, +I should have sternly resisted the blandishments of those twin sirens, +Starvation and Cold, who beckoned the Puritans shoreward, and as soon as +ever I came in sight of their granite perch should have turned back to +England. But it is now too late to repair these errors, and so, on one +of the hottest days of last year, behold my obdurate bridal pair, in a +Tenth or Twentieth Avenue horse-car, setting forth upon the fulfillment +of a series of intentions, any of which had wiselier been left +unaccomplished. Isabel had said they would call upon certain people in +Fiftieth Street, and then shop slowly down, ice-creaming and staging +and variously cooling and calming by the way, until they reached +the ticket-office on Broadway, whence they could indefinitely betake +themselves to the steamboat an hour or two before her departure. She +felt that they had yielded sufficiently to circumstances and conditions +already on this journey, and she was resolved that the present half-day +in New York should be the half-day of her original design. + +It was not the most advisable thing, as I have allowed, but it was +inevitable, and it afforded them a spectacle which is by no means +wanting in sublimity, and which is certainly unique,--the spectacle of +that great city on a hot day, defiant of the elements, and prospering +on with every form of labor, and at a terrible cost of life. The man +carrying the hod to the top of the walls that rankly grow and grow as +from his life's blood, will only lay down his load when he feels the +mortal glare of the sun blaze in upon heart and brain; the plethoric +millionaire for whom he toils will plot and plan in his office till he +swoons at the desk; the trembling beast must stagger forward while the +flame-faced tormentor on the box has strength to lash him on; in all +those vast palaces of commerce there are ceaseless sale and purchase, +packing and unpacking, lifting up and laying down, arriving and +departing loads; in thousands of shops is the unspared and unsparing +weariness of selling; in the street, filled by the hurry and suffering +of tens of thousands, is the weariness of buying. + +Their afternoon's experience was something that Basil and Isabel could, +when it was past, look upon only as a kind of vision, magnificent at +times, and at other times full of indignity and pain. They seemed to +have dreamed of a long horse-car pilgrimage through that squalid street +by the river-side, where presently they came to a market, opening upon +the view hideous vistas of carnage, and then into a wide avenue, with +processions of cars like their own coming and going up and down the +centre of a foolish and useless breadth, which made even the tall +buildings (rising gauntly up among the older houses of one or two +stories) on either hand look low, and let in the sun to bake the dust +that the hot breaths of wind caught up and sent swirling into the shabby +shops. Here they dreamed of the eternal demolition and construction +of the city, and farther on of vacant lots full of granite boulders, +clambered over by goats. In their dream they had fellow-passengers, +whose sufferings made them odious and whom they were glad to leave +behind when they alighted from the car, and running out of the blaze +of the avenue, quenched themselves in the shade of the cross-street. +A little strip of shadow lay along the row of brown-stone fronts, but +there were intervals where the vacant lots cast no shadow. With great +bestowal of thought they studied hopelessly how to avoid these spaces +as if they had been difficult torrents or vast expanses of desert sand; +they crept slowly along till they came to such a place, and dashed +swiftly across it, and then, fainter than before, moved on. They seemed +now and then to stand at doors, and to be told that people were out and +again that they were in; and they had a sense of cool dark parlors, +and the airy rustling of light-muslined ladies, of chat and of fans and +ice-water, and then they came forth again; and evermore + + “The day increased from heat to heat.” + +At last they were aware of an end of their visits, and of a purpose to +go down town again, and of seeking the nearest car by endless blocks +of brown-stone fronts, which with their eternal brownstone flights of +steps, and their handsome, intolerable uniformity, oppressed them like a +procession of houses trying to pass a given point and never getting by. +Upon these streets there was, seldom a soul to be seen, so that when +their ringing at a door had evoked answer, it had startled them with a +vague, sad surprise. In the distance on either hand they could see cars +and carts and wagons toiling up and down the avenues, and on the next +intersecting pavement sometimes a laborer with his jacket slung across +his shoulder, or a dog that had plainly made up his mind to go mad. Up +to the time of their getting into one of those phantasmal cars for the +return down-townwards they had kept up a show of talk in their wretched +dream; they had spoken of other hot days that they had known elsewhere; +and they had wondered that the tragical character of heat had been so +little recognized. They said that the daily New York murder might even +at that moment be somewhere taking place; and that no murder of the +whole homicidal year could have such proper circumstance; they +morbidly wondered what that day's murder would be, and in what swarming +tenement-house, or den of the assassin streets by the river-sides,--if +indeed it did not befall in some such high, close-shuttered, handsome +dwelling as those they passed, in whose twilight it would be so easy to +strike down the master and leave him undiscovered and unmourned by +the family ignorantly absent at the mountains or the seaside. They +conjectured of the horror of midsummer battles, and pictured the anguish +of shipwrecked men upon a tropical coast, and the grimy misery of +stevedores unloading shiny cargoes of anthracite coal at city docks. But +now at last, as they took seats opposite one another in the crowded car, +they seemed to have drifted infinite distances and long epochs +asunder. They looked hopelessly across the intervening gulf, and mutely +questioned when it was and from what far city they or some remote +ancestors of theirs had set forth upon a wedding journey. They bade each +other a tacit farewell, and with patient, pathetic faces awaited the end +of the world. + +When they alighted, they took their way up through one of the streets of +the great wholesale businesses, to Broadway. On this street was a throng +of trucks and wagons lading and unlading; bales and boxes rose and sank +by pulleys overhead; the footway was a labyrinth of packages of every +shape and size: there was no flagging of the pitiless energy that +moved all forward, no sign of how heavy a weight lay on it, save in +the reeking faces of its helpless instruments. But when the +wedding-journeyers emerged upon Broadway, the other passages and +incidents of their dream faded before the superior fantasticality of the +spectacle. It was four o'clock, the deadliest hour of the deadly summer +day. The spiritless air seemed to have a quality of blackness in it, as +if filled with the gloom of low-hovering wings. One half the street lay +in shadow, and one half in sun; but the sunshine itself was dim, as if +a heat greater than its own had smitten it with languor. Little gusts +of sick, warm wind blew across the great avenue at the corners of the +intersecting streets. In the upward distance, at which the journeyers +looked, the loftier roofs and steeples lifted themselves dim out of the +livid atmosphere, and far up and down the length of the street swept +a stream of tormented life. All sorts of wheeled things thronged it, +conspicuous among which rolled and jarred the gaudily painted Stages, +with quivering horses driven each by a man who sat in the shade of +a branching white umbrella, and suffered with a moody truculence of +aspect, and as if he harbored the bitterness of death in his heart for +the crowding passengers within, when one of them pulled the strap about +his legs, and summoned him to halt. Most of the foot-passengers kept to +the shady side, and to the unaccustomed eyes of the strangers they were +not less in number than at any other time, though there were fewer women +among them. Indomitably resolute of soul, they held their course with +the swift pace of custom, and only here and there they showed the effect +of the heat. One man, collarless, with waistcoat unbuttoned, and hat set +far back from his forehead, waved a fan before his death-white flabby +face, and set down one foot after the other with the heaviness of a +somnambulist. Another, as they passed him, was saying huskily to the +friend at his side, “I can't stand this much longer. My hands tingle as +if they had gone to sleep; my heart--” But still the multitude hurried +on, passing, repassing, encountering, evading, vanishing into shop-doors +and emerging from them, dispersing down the side streets, and swarming +out of them. It was a scene that possessed the beholder with singular +fascination, and in its effect of universal lunacy, it might well have +seemed the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed. They who +were in it but not of it, as they fancied, though there was no reason +for this,--looked on it amazed, and at last their own errands being +accomplished, and themselves so far cured of the madness of purpose, +they cried with one voice, that it was a hideous sight, and strove +to take refuge from it in the nearest place where the soda-fountain +sparkled. + +It was a vain desire. At the front door of the apothecary's hung a +thermometer, and as they entered they heard the next comer cry out with +a maniacal pride in the affliction laid upon mankind, “Ninety-seven +degrees!” Behind them at the door there poured in a ceaseless stream +of people, each pausing at the shrine of heat; before he tossed off +the hissing draught that two pale, close-clipped boys served them from +either side of the fountain. Then in the order of their coming +they issued through another door upon the side street, each, as he +disappeared, turning his face half round, and casting a casual glance +upon a little group near another counter. The group was of a very +patient, half-frightened, half-puzzled looking gentleman who sat +perfectly still on a stool, and of a lady who stood beside him, rubbing +all over his head a handkerchief full of pounded ice, and easing one +hand with the other when the first became tired. Basil drank his soda +and paused to look upon this group, which he felt would commend itself +to realistic sculpture as eminently characteristic of the local life, +and as “The Sunstroke” would sell enormously in the hot season. “Better +take a little more of that,” the apothecary said, looking up from +his prescription, and, as the organized sympathy of the seemingly +indifferent crowd, smiling very kindly at his patient, who thereupon +tasted something in the glass he held. “Do you still feel like +fainting?” asked the humane authority. “Slightly, now and then,” + answered the other, “but I'm hanging on hard to the bottom curve of that +icicled S on your soda-fountain, and I feel that I'm all right as long +as I can see that. The people get rather hazy, occasionally, and have +no features to speak of. But I don't know that I look very impressive +myself,” he added in the jesting mood which seems the natural condition +of Americans in the face of all embarrassments. + +“O, you'll do!” the apothecary answered, with a laugh; but he said, in +answer to an anxious question from the lady, “He mustn't be moved for an +hour yet,” and gayly pestled away at a prescription, while she resumed +her office of grinding the pounded ice round and round upon her +husband's skull. Isabel offered her the commiseration of friendly words, +and of looks kinder yet, and then seeing that they could do nothing, she +and Basil fell into the endless procession, and passed out of the side +door. “What a shocking thing!” she whispered. “Did you see how all the +people looked, one after another, so indifferently at that couple, and +evidently forgot them the next instant? It was dreadful. I shouldn't +like to have you sun-struck in New York.” + +“That's very considerate of you; but place for place, if any accident +must happen to me among strangers, I think I should prefer to have it +in New York. The biggest place is always the kindest as well as the +cruelest place. Amongst the thousands of spectators the good Samaritan +as well as the Levite would be sure to be. As for a sun-stroke, it +requires peculiar gifts. But if you compel me to a choice in the matter, +then I say, give me the busiest part of Broadway for a sun-stroke. There +is such experience of calamity there that you could hardly fall +the first victim to any misfortune. Probably the gentleman at the +apothecary's was merely exhausted by the heat, and ran in there for +revival. The apothecary has a case of the kind on his hands every +blazing afternoon, and knows just what to do. The crowd may be a little +'ennuye' of sun-strokes, and to that degree indifferent, but they most +likely know that they can only do harm by an expression of sympathy, and +so they delegate their pity as they have delegated their helpfulness to +the proper authority, and go about their business. If a man was overcome +in the middle of a village street, the blundering country druggist +wouldn't know what to do, and the tender-hearted people would crowd +about so that no breath of air could reach the victim.” + +“May be so, dear,” said the wife, pensively; “but if anything did happen +to you in New York, I should like to have the spectators look as if they +saw a human being in trouble. Perhaps I'm a little exacting.” + +“I think you are. Nothing is so hard as to understand that there are +human beings in this world besides one's self and one's set. But let us +be selfishly thankful that it isn't you and I there in the apothecary's +shop, as it might very well be; and let us get to the boat as soon as +we can, and end this horrible midsummer-day's dream. We must have a +carriage,” he added with tardy wisdom, hailing an empty hack, “as we +ought to have had all day; though I'm not sorry, now the worst's over, +to have seen the worst.” + + + + +III. THE NIGHT BOAT. + +There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure: a headache +darkens the universe while it lasts, a cup of tea really lightens the +spirit bereft of all reasonable consolations. Therefore I do not think +it trivial or untrue to say that there is for the moment nothing more +satisfactory in life than to have bought your ticket on the night boat +up the Hudson and secured your state-room key an hour or two before +departure, and some time even before the pressure at the clerk's office +has begun. In the transaction with this castellated baron, you have of +course been treated with haughtiness, but not with ferocity, and your +self-respect swells with a sense of having escaped positive insult; your +key clicks cheerfully in your pocket against its gutta-percha number, +and you walk up and down the gorgeously carpeted, single-columned, +two-story cabin, amid a multitude of plush sofas and chairs, a glitter +of glass, and a tinkle of prismatic chandeliers overhead, unawed even by +the aristocratic gloom of the yellow waiters. Your own stateroom as +you enter it from time to time is an ever-new surprise of splendors, a +magnificent effect of amplitude, of mahogany bedstead, of lace curtains, +and of marble topped wash-stand. In the mere wantonness of an unalloyed +prosperity you say to the saffron nobleman nearest your door, “Bring +me a pitcher of ice-water, quick, please!” and you do not find the +half-hour that he is gone very long. + +If the ordinary wayfarer experiences so much pleasure from these things, +then imagine the infinite comfort of our wedding-journeyers, transported +from Broadway on that pitiless afternoon to the shelter and the quiet +of that absurdly palatial steamboat. It was not yet crowded, and by the +river-side there was almost a freshness in the air. They disposed of +their troubling bags and packages; they complimented the ridiculous +princeliness of their stateroom, and then they betook themselves to +the sheltered space aft of the saloon, where they sat down for the +tranquiller observance of the wharf and whatever should come to be seen +by them. Like all people who have just escaped with their lives from +some menacing calamity, they were very philosophical in spirit; and +having got aboard of their own motion, and being neither of them +apparently the worse for the ordeal they had passed through, were of a +light, conversational temper. + +“What an amusingly superb affair!” Basil cried as they glanced through +an open window down the long vista of the saloon. “Good heavens! Isabel, +does it take all this to get us plain republicans to Albany in comfort +and safety, or are we really a nation of princes in disguise? Well, I +shall never be satisfied with less hereafter,” he added. “I am spoilt +for ordinary paint and upholstery from this hour; I am a ruinous +spendthrift, and a humble three-story swell-front up at the South End is +no longer the place for me. Dearest, + + 'Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,' + +never to leave this Aladdin's-palace-like steamboat, but spend our lives +in perpetual trips up and down the Hudson.” + +To which not very costly banter Isabel responded in kind, and rapidly +sketched the life they could lead aboard. Since they could not help +it, they mocked the public provision which, leaving no interval between +disgraceful squalor and ludicrous splendor, accommodates our democratic +'menage' to the taste of the richest and most extravagant plebeian +amongst us. He, unhappily, minds danger and oppression as little as he +minds money, so long as he has a spectacle and a sensation, and it is +this ruthless imbecile who will have lace curtains to the steamboat +berth into which he gets with his pantaloons on, and out of which he may +be blown by an exploding boiler at any moment; it is he who will have +for supper that overgrown and shapeless dinner in the lower saloon, and +will not let any one else buy tea or toast for a less sum than he pays +for his surfeit; it is he who perpetuates the insolence of the clerk and +the reluctance of the waiters; it is he, in fact, who now comes out of +the saloon, with his womenkind, and takes chairs under the awning where +Basil and Isabel sit. Personally, he is not so bad; he is good-looking, +like all of us; he is better dressed than most of us; he behaves himself +quietly, if not easily; and no lord so loathes a scene. Next year he is +going to Europe, where he will not show to so much advantage as here; +but for the present it would be hard to say in what way he is vulgar, +and perhaps vulgarity is not so common a thing after all. + +It was something besides the river that made the air so much more +sufferable than it had been. Over the city, since our friends had come +aboard the boat, a black cloud had gathered and now hung low upon +it, while the wind from the face of the water took the dust in the +neighboring streets, and frolicked it about the house-tops, and in the +faces of the arriving passengers, who, as the moment of departure drew +near, appeared in constantly increasing numbers and in greater variety, +with not only the trepidation of going upon them, but also with the +electrical excitement people feel before a tempest. + +The breast of the black cloud was now zigzagged from moment to moment +by lightning, and claps of deafening thunder broke from it. At last the +long endurance of the day was spent, and out of its convulsion burst +floods of rain, again and again sweeping the promenade-deck where the +people sat, and driving them disconsolate into the saloon. The air was +darkened as by night, and with many regrets for the vanishing prospect, +mingled with a sense of relief from the heat, our friends felt the boat +tremble away from her moorings and set forth upon her trip. + +“Ah! if we had only taken the day boat!” moaned Isabel. “Now, we shall +see nothing of the river landscape, and we shall never be able to put +ourselves down when we long for Europe, by declaring that the scenery of +the Hudson is much finer than that of the Rhine.” + +Yet they resolved, this indomitably good-natured couple, that they would +be just even to the elements, which had by no means been generous to +them; and they owned that if so noble a storm had celebrated their +departure upon some storied river from some more romantic port than New +York, they would have thought it an admirable thing. Even whilst they +contented themselves, the storm passed, and left a veiled and humid sky +overhead, that gave a charming softness to the scene on which their eyes +fell when they came out of the saloon again, and took their places with +a largely increased companionship on the deck. + +They had already reached that part of the river where the uplands begin, +and their course was between stately walls of rocky steepness, or wooded +slopes, or grassy hollows, the scene forever losing and taking grand +and lovely shape. Wreaths of mist hung about the tops of the loftier +headlands, and long shadows draped their sides. As the night grew, +lights twinkled from a lonely house here and there in the valleys; a +swarm of lamps showed a town where it lay upon the lap or at the foot of +the hills. Behind them stretched the great gray river, haunted with many +sails; now a group of canal-boats grappled together, and having an air +of coziness in their adventure upon this strange current out of their +own sluggish waters, drifted out of sight; and now a smaller and +slower steamer, making a laborious show of keeping up was passed, and +reluctantly fell behind; along the water's edge rattled and hooted the +frequent trains. They could not tell at any time what part of the river +they were on, and they could not, if they would, have made its beauty a +matter of conscientious observation; but all the more, therefore, they +deeply enjoyed it without reference to time or place. They felt some +natural pain when they thought that they might unwittingly pass the +scenes that Irving has made part of the common dream-land, and they +would fair have seen the lighted windows of the house out of which +a cheerful ray has penetrated to so many hearts; but being sure of +nothing, as they were, they had the comfort of finding the Tappan Zee +in every expanse of the river, and of discovering Sunny-Side on every +pleasant slope. By virtue of this helplessness, the Hudson, without +ceasing to be the Hudson, became from moment to moment all fair and +stately streams upon which they had voyaged or read of voyaging, from +the Nile to the Mississippi. There is no other travel like river travel; +it is the perfection of movement, and one might well desire never to +arrive at one's destination. The abundance of room, the free, pure air, +the constant delight of the eyes in the changing landscape, the soft +tremor of the boat, so steady upon her keel, the variety of the little +world on board,--all form a charm which no good heart in a sound body +can resist. So, whilst the twilight held, well content, in contiguous +chairs, they purred in flattery of their kindly fate, imagining +different pleasures, certainly, but none greater, and tasting to its +subtlest flavor the happiness conscious of itself. + +Their own satisfaction, indeed, was so interesting to them in +this objective light, that they had little desire to turn from its +contemplation to the people around them; and when at last they did so, +it was still with lingering glances of self-recognition and enjoyment. +They divined rightly that one of the main conditions of their present +felicity was the fact that they had seen so much of time and of the +world, that they had no longer any desire to take beholding eyes, or +to make any sort of impressive figure, and they understood that their +prosperous love accounted as much as years and travel for this result. +If they had had a loftier opinion of themselves, their indifference to +others might have made them offensive; but with their modest estimate +of their own value in the world, they could have all the comfort of +self-sufficiency, without its vulgarity. + +“O yes!” said Basil, in answer to some apostrophe to their bliss from +Isabel, “it's the greatest imaginable satisfaction to have lived +past certain things. I always knew that I was not a very handsome or +otherwise captivating person, but I can remember years--now blessedly +remote--when I never could see a young girl without hoping she would +mistake me for something of that sort. I couldn't help desiring that +some fascination of mine, which had escaped my own analysis, would have +an effect upon her. I dare say all young men are so. I used to live +for the possible interest I might inspire in your sex, Isabel. They +controlled my movements, my attitudes; they forbade me repose; and yet +I believe I was no ass, but a tolerably sensible fellow. Blessed be +marriage, I am free at last! All the loveliness that exists outside of +you, dearest,--and it's mighty little,--is mere pageant to me; and I +thank Heaven that I can meet the most stylish girl now upon the +broad level of our common humanity. Besides, it seems to me that our +experience of life has quieted us in many other ways. What a luxury it +is to sit here, and reflect that we do not want any of these people to +suppose us rich, or distinguished, or beautiful, or well dressed, and do +not care to show off in any sort of way before them!” + +This content was heightened, no doubt, by a just sense of their contrast +to the group of people nearest there,--a young man of the second or +third quality--and two young girls. The eldest of these was carrying +on a vivacious flirtation with the young man, who was apparently an +acquaintance of brief standing; the other was scarcely more than a +child, and sat somewhat abashed at the sparkle of the colloquy. They +were conjecturally sisters going home from some visit, and not skilled +in the world, but of a certain repute in their country neighborhood for +beauty and wit. The young man presently gave himself out as one who, in +pursuit of trade for the dry-goods house he represented, had travelled +many thousands of miles in all parts of the country. The encounter was +visibly that kind of adventure which both would treasure up for future +celebration to their different friends; and it had a brilliancy and +interest which they could not even now consent to keep to themselves. +They talked to each other and at all the company within hearing, +and exchanged curt speeches which had for them all the sensation of +repartee. + +Young Man. They say that beauty unadorned is adorned the most. + +Young Woman (bridling, and twitching her head from side to side, in the +high excitement of the dialogue). Flattery is out of place. + +Young Man. Well, never mind. If you don't believe me, you ask your +mother when you get home. + +(Titter from the younger sister.) + +Young Woman (scornfully). Umph! my mother has no control over me! + +Young Man. Nobody else has, either, I should say. (Admiringly.) + +Young Woman. Yes, you've told the truth for once, for a wonder. I'm +able to take care of myself,--perfectly. (Almost hoarse with a sense of +sarcastic performance.) + +Young Man. “Whole team and big dog under the wagon,” as they say out +West. + +Young Woman. Better a big dog than a puppy, any day. + +Giggles and horror from the younger sister, sensation in the young man, +and so much rapture in the young woman that she drops the key of her +state-room from her hand. They both stoop, and a jocose scuffle for it +ensues, after which the talk takes an autobiographical turn on the part +of the young man, and drops into an unintelligible murmur. “Ah! poor +Real Life, which I love, can I make others share the delight I find in +thy foolish and insipid face?” + +Not far from this group sat two Hebrews, one young and the other old, +talking of some business out of which the latter had retired. The +younger had been asked his opinion upon some point, and he was expanding +with a flattered consciousness of the elder's perception of his +importance, and toadying to him with the pleasure which all young men +feel in winning the favor of seniors in their vocation. “Well, as I was +a-say'n', Isaac don't seem to haf no natcheral pent for the glothing +business. Man gomes in and wands a goat,”--he seemed to be speaking of a +garment and not a domestic animal,--“Isaac'll zell him the goat he wands +him to puy, and he'll make him believe it 'a the goat he was a lookin' +for. Well, now, that's well enough as far as it goes; but you know and +I know, Mr. Rosenthal, that that 's no way to do business. A man gan't +zugzeed that goes upon that brincible. Id's wrong. Id's easy enough to +make a man puy the goat you want him to, if he wands a goat, but the +thing is to make him puy the goat that you wand to zell when he don't +wand no goat at all. You've asked me what I thought and I've dold you. +Isaac'll never zugzeed in the redail glothing-business in the world!” + +“Well,” sighed the elder, who filled his armchair quite full, and +quivered with a comfortable jelly-like tremor in it, at every pulsation +of the engine, “I was afraid of something of the kind. As you say, +Benjamin, he don't seem to have no pent for it. And yet I proughd him up +to the business; I drained him to it, myself.” + +Besides these talkers, there were scattered singly, or grouped about in +twos and threes and fours, the various people one encounters on a Hudson +River boat, who are on the whole different from the passengers on other +rivers, though they all have features in common. There was that man of +the sudden gains, who has already been typified; and there was also the +smoother rich man of inherited wealth, from whom you can somehow know +the former so readily. They were each attended by their several retinues +of womankind, the daughters all much alike, but the mothers somewhat +different. They were going to Saratoga, where perhaps the exigencies +of fashion would bring them acquainted, and where the blue blood of a +quarter of a century would be kind to the yesterday's fluid of warmer +hue. There was something pleasanter in the face of the hereditary +aristocrat, but not so strong, nor, altogether, so admirable; +particularly if you reflected that he really represented nothing in the +world, no great culture, no political influence, no civic aspiration, +not even a pecuniary force, nothing but a social set, an alien +club-life, a tradition of dining. We live in a true fairy land after +all, where the hoarded treasure turns to a heap of dry leaves. The +almighty dollar defeats itself, and finally buys nothing that a man +cares to have. The very highest pleasure that such an American's money +can purchase is exile, and to this rich man doubtless Europe is a +twice-told tale. Let us clap our empty pockets, dearest reader, and be +glad. + +We can be as glad, apparently, and with the same reason as the poorly +dressed young man standing near beside the guard, whose face Basil and +Isabel chose to fancy that of a poet, and concerning whom, they romanced +that he was going home, wherever his home was, with the manuscript of +a rejected book in his pocket. They imagined him no great things of a +poet, to be sure, but his pensive face claimed delicate feeling for him, +and a graceful, sombre fancy, and they conjectured unconsciously caught +flavors of Tennyson and Browning in his verse, with a moderner tint from +Morris: for was it not a story out of mythology, with gods and heroes of +the nineteenth century, that he was now carrying back from New York +with him? Basil sketched from the colors of his own long-accepted +disappointments a moving little picture of this poor imagined poet's +adventures; with what kindness and unkindness he had been put to shame +by publishers, and how, descending from his high, hopes of a book, he +had tried to sell to the magazines some of the shorter pieces out of the +“And other Poems” which were to have filled up the volume. “He's going +back rather stunned and bewildered; but it's something to have tasted +the city, and its bitter may turn to sweet on his palate, at last, till +he finds himself longing for the tumult that he abhors now. Poor fellow! +one compassionate cut-throat of a publisher even asked him to lunch, +being struck, as we are, with something fine in his face. I hope he's +got somebody who believes in him, at home. Otherwise he'd be more +comfortable, for the present, if he went over the railing there.” + +So the play of which they were both actors and spectators went on about +them. Like all passages of life, it seemed now a grotesque mystery, +with a bluntly enforced moral, now a farce of the broadest, now a latent +tragedy folded in the disguises of comedy. All the elements, indeed, +of either were at work there, and this was but one brief scene of +the immense complex drama which was to proceed so variously in such +different times and places, and to have its denouement only in eternity. +The contrasts were sharp: each group had its travesty in some other; the +talk of one seemed the rude burlesque, the bitter satire of the next; +but of all these parodies none was so terribly effective as the two +women, who sat in the midst of the company, yet were somehow distinct +from the rest. One wore the deepest black of widowhood, the other was +dressed in bridal white, and they were both alike awful in their mockery +of guiltless sorrow and guiltless joy. They were not old, but the soul +of youth was dead in their pretty, lamentable faces, and ruin ancient as +sin looked from their eyes; their talk and laughter seemed the echo of +an innumerable multitude of the lost haunting the world in every land +and time, each solitary forever, yet all bound together in the unity of +an imperishable slavery and shame. + +What a stale effect! What hackneyed characters! Let us be glad the night +drops her curtain upon the cheap spectacle, and shuts these with the +other actors from our view. + +Within the cabin, through which Basil and Isabel now slowly moved, there +were numbers of people lounging about on the sofas, in various attitudes +of talk or vacancy; and at the tables there were others reading +“Lothair,” a new book in the remote epoch of which I write, and a very +fashionable book indeed. There was in the air that odor of paint and +carpet which prevails on steamboats; the glass drops of the chandeliers +ticked softly against each other, as the vessel shook with her +respiration, like a comfortable sleeper, and imparted a delicious +feeling of coziness and security to our travellers. + +A few hours later they struggled awake at the sharp sound of the pilot's +bell signaling the engineer to slow the boat. There was a moment of +perfect silence; then all the drops of the chandeliers in the saloon +clashed musically together; then fell another silence; and at last came +wild cries for help, strongly qualified with blasphemies and curses. +“Send out a boat!” “There was a woman aboard that steamboat!” “Lower +your boats!” “Run a craft right down, with your big boat!” “Send out a +boat and pick up the crew!” The cries rose and sank, and finally ceased; +through the lattice of the state-room window some lights shone faintly +on the water at a distance. + +“Wait here, Isabel!” said her husband. “We've run down a boat. We don't +seem hurt; but I'll go see. I'll be back in a minute.” + +Isabel had emerged into a world of dishabille, a world wildly unbuttoned +and unlaced, where it was the fashion for ladies to wear their hair down +their backs, and to walk about in their stockings, and to speak to +each other without introduction. The place with which she had felt so +familiar a little while before was now utterly estranged. There was no +motion of the boat, and in the momentary suspense a quiet prevailed, +in which those grotesque shapes of disarray crept noiselessly round +whispering panic-stricken conjectures. There was no rushing to and +fro, nor tumult of any kind, and there was not a man to be seen, for +apparently they had all gone like Basil to learn the extent of the +calamity. A mist of sleep involved the whole, and it was such a +topsy-turvy world that it would have seemed only another dream-land, +but that it was marked for reality by one signal fact. With the rest +appeared the woman in bridal white and the woman in widow's black, and +there, amidst the fright that made all others friends, and for aught +that most knew, in the presence of death itself, these two moved +together shunned and friendless. + +Somehow, even before Basil returned, it had become known to Isabel and +the rest that their own steamer had suffered no harm, but that she had +struck and sunk another convoying a flotilla of canal boats, from which +those alarming cries and curses had come. The steamer was now lying by +for the small boats she had sent out to pick up the crew of the sunken +vessel. + +“Why, I only heard a little tinkling of the chandeliers,” said one of +the ladies. “Is it such a very alight matter to run down another boat +and sink it?” + +She appealed indirectly to Basil, who answered lightly, “I don't think +you ladies ought to have been disturbed at all. In running over a common +tow-boat on a perfectly clear night like this there should have been no +noise and no perceptible jar. They manage better on the Mississippi, and +both boats often go down without waking the lightest sleeper on board.” + +The ladies, perhaps from a deficient sense of humor, listened with +undisguised displeasure to this speech. It dispersed them, in fact; some +turned away to bivouac for the rest of the night upon the arm-chairs +and sofas, while others returned to their rooms. With the latter went +Isabel. “Lock me in, Basil,” she said, with a bold meekness, “and if +anything more happens don't wake me till the last moment.” It was hard +to part from him, but she felt that his vigil would somehow be useful +to the boat, and she confidingly fell into a sleep that lasted till +daylight. + +Meantime, her husband, on whom she had tacitly devolved so great a +responsibility, went forward to the promenade in front of the saloon, in +hopes of learning something more of the catastrophe from the people whom +he had already found gathered there. + +A large part of the passengers were still there, seated or standing +about in earnest colloquy. They were in that mood which follows great +excitement, and in which the feeblest-minded are sure to lead the talk. +At such times one feels that a sensible frame of mind is unsympathetic, +and if expressed, unpopular, or perhaps not quite safe; and Basil, +warned by his fate with the ladies, listened gravely to the voice of the +common imbecility and incoherence. + +The principal speaker was a tall person, wearing a silk travelling-cap. +He had a face of stupid benignity and a self-satisfied smirk; and he was +formally trying to put at his ease, and hopelessly confusing the loutish +youth before him. “You say you saw the whole accident, and you're +probably the only passenger that did see it. You'll be the most +important witness at the trial,” he added, as if there would ever be any +trial about it. “Now, how did the tow-boat hit us?” + +“Well, she came bows on.” + +“Ah! bows on,” repeated the other, with great satisfaction; and a little +murmur of “Bows on!” ran round the listening circle. + +“That is,” added the witness, “it seemed as if we struck her amidships, +and cut her in two, and sunk her.” + +“Just so,” continued the examiner, accepting the explanation, “bows on. +Now I want to ask if you saw our captain or any of the crew about?” + +“Not a soul,” said the witness, with the solemnity of a man already on +oath. + +“That'll do,” exclaimed the other. “This gentleman's experience +coincides exactly with my own. I didn't see the collision, but I did see +the cloud of steam from the sinking boat, and I saw her go down. There +wasn't an officer to be found anywhere on board our boat. I looked about +for the captain and the mate myself, and couldn't find either of them +high or low.” + +“The officers ought all to have been sitting here on the promenade +deck,” suggested one ironical spirit in the crowd, but no one noticed +him. + +The gentleman in the silk travelling-cap now took a chair, and a number +of sympathetic listeners drew their chairs about him, and then began an +interchange of experience, in which each related to the last particular +all that he felt, thought, and said, and, if married, what his wife +felt, thought, and said, at the moment of the calamity. They turned the +disaster over and over in their talk, and rolled it under their tongues. +Then they reverted to former accidents in which they had been concerned; +and the silk-capped gentleman told, to the common admiration, of a +fearful escape of his, on the Erie Road, from being thrown down a steep +embankment fifty feet high by a piece of rock that had fallen on the +track. “Now just see, gentlemen, what a little thing, humanly speaking, +life depends upon. If that old woman had been able to sleep, and hadn't +sent that boy down to warn the train, we should have run into the rock +and been dashed to pieces. The passengers made up a purse for the boy, +and I wrote a full account of it to the papers.” + +“Well,” said one of the group, a man in a hard hat, “I never lie down +on a steamboat or a railroad train. I want to be ready for whatever +happens.” + +The others looked at this speaker with interest, as one who had invented +a safe method of travel. + +“I happened to be up to-night, but I almost always undress and go to +bed, just as if I were in my own house,” said the gentleman of the silk +cap. + +“I don't say your way isn't the best, but that's my way.” + +The champions of the rival systems debated their merits with suavity and +mutual respect, but they met with scornful silence a compromising spirit +who held that it was better to throw off your coat and boots, but keep +your pantaloons on. Meanwhile, the steamer was hanging idle upon the +current, against which it now and then stirred a careless wheel, still +waiting for the return of the small boats. Thin gray clouds, through +rifts of which a star sparkled keenly here and there, veiled the +heavens; shadowy bluffs loomed up on either hand; in a hollow on the +left twinkled a drowsy little town; a beautiful stillness lay on all. + +After an hour's interval a shout was heard from far down the river; then +later the plash of oars; then a cry hailing the approaching boats, and +the answer, “All safe!” Presently the boats had come alongside, and the +passengers crowded down to the guard to learn the details of the search. +Basil heard a hollow, moaning, gurgling sound, regular as that of the +machinery, for some note of which he mistook it. “Clear the gangway +there!” shouted a gruff voice; “man scalded here!” And a burden was +carried by from which fluttered, with its terrible regularity, that +utterance of mortal anguish. + +Basil went again to the forward promenade, and sat down to see the +morning come. + +The boat swiftly ascended the current, and presently the steeper shores +were left behind and the banks fell away in long upward sloping fields, +with farm-houses and with stacks of harvest dimly visible in the +generous expanses. By and by they passed a fisherman drawing his nets, +and bending from his boat, there near Albany, N. Y., in the picturesque +immortal attitudes of Raphael's Galilean fisherman; and now a flush +mounted the pale face of the east, and through the dewy coolness of the +dawn there came, more to the sight than any other sense, a vague menace +of heat. But as yet the air was deliciously fresh and sweet, and Basil +bathed his weariness in it, thinking with a certain luxurious compassion +of the scalded man, and how he was to fare that day. This poor wretch +seemed of another order of beings, as the calamitous always seem to the +happy, and Basil's pity was quite an abstraction; which, again, amused +and shocked him, and he asked his heart of bliss to consider of sorrow a +little more earnestly as the lot of all men, and not merely of an alien +creature here and there. He dutifully tried to imagine another issue to +the disaster of the night, and to realize himself suddenly bereft of her +who so filled his life. He bade his soul remember that, in the security +of sleep, Death had passed them both so close that his presence might +well have chilled their dreams, as the iceberg that grazes the ship in +the night freezes all the air about it. But it was quite idle: where +love was, life only was; and sense and spirit alike put aside the burden +that he would have laid upon them; his revery reflected with delicious +caprice the looks, the tones, the movements that he loved, and bore him +far away from the sad images that he had invited to mirror themselves in +it. + + + + +IV. A DAY'S RAILROADING + +Happiness has commonly a good appetite; and the thought of the +fortunately ended adventures of the night, the fresh morning air, and +the content of their own hearts, gifted our friends, by the time the +boat reached Albany, with a wholesome hunger, so that they debated with +spirit the question of breakfast and the best place of breakfasting in +a city which neither of them knew, save in the most fugitive and sketchy +way. + +They decided at last, in view of the early departure of the train, and +the probability that they would be more hurried at a hotel, to breakfast +at the station, and thither they went and took places at one of the +many tables within, where they seemed to have been expected only by +the flies. The waitress plainly had not looked for them, and for a time +found their presence so incredible that she would not acknowledge the +rattling that Basil was obliged to make on his glass. Then it appeared +that the cook would not believe in them, and he did not send them, till +they were quite faint, the peppery and muddy draught which impudently +affected to be coffee, the oily slices of fugacious potatoes slipping +about in their shallow dish and skillfully evading pursuit, the pieces +of beef that simulated steak, the hot, greasy biscuit, steaming +evilly up into the face when opened, and then soddening into masses of +condensed dyspepsia. + +The wedding-journeyers looked at each other with eyes of sad amaze. +They bowed themselves for a moment to the viands, and then by an equal +impulse refrained. They were sufficiently young, they were happy, they +were hungry; nature is great and strong, but art is greater, and before +these triumphs of the cook at the Albany depot appetite succumbed. By +a terrible tour de force they swallowed the fierce and turbid liquor +in their cups, and then speculated fantastically upon the character and +history of the materials of that breakfast. + +Presently Isabel paused, played a little with her knife, and, after a +moment looked up at her husband with an arch regard and said: “I was +just thinking of a small station somewhere in the South of France where +our train once stopped for breakfast. I remember the freshness and +brightness of everything on the little tables,--the plates, the napkins, +the gleaming half-bottles of wine. They seemed to have been preparing +that breakfast for us from the beginning of time, and we were hardly +seated before they served us with great cups of 'cafe-au-lait', and the +sweetest rolls and butter; then a delicate cutlet, with an unspeakable +gravy, and potatoes,--such potatoes! Dear me, how little I ate of it! I +wish, for once, I'd had your appetite, Basil; I do indeed.” + +She ended with a heartless laugh, in which, despite the tragical +contrast her words had suggested, Basil finally joined. So much +amazement had probably never been got before out of the misery inflicted +in that place; but their lightness did not at all commend them. The +waitress had not liked it from the first, and had served them with +reluctance; and the proprietor did not like it, and kept his eye upon +them as if he believed them about to escape without payment. Here, then, +they had enforced a great fact of travelling,--that people who serve the +public are kindly and pleasant in proportion as they serve it well. The +unjust and the inefficient have always that consciousness of evil which +will not let a man forgive his victim, or like him to be cheerful. + +Our friends, however, did not heat themselves over the fact. There was +already such heat from without, even at eight o'clock in the morning, +that they chose to be as cool as possible in mind, and they placidly +took their places in the train, which had been made up for departure. +They had deliberately rejected the notion of a drawing-room car as +affording a less varied prospect of humanity, and as being less in +the spirit of ordinary American travel. Now, in reward, they found +themselves quite comfortable in the common passenger-car, and disposed +to view the scenery, into which they struck an hour after leaving the +city, with much complacency. There was sufficient draught through the +open window to make the heat tolerable, and the great brooding warmth +gave to the landscape the charm which it alone can impart. It is +a landscape that I greatly love for its mild beauty and tranquil +picturesqueness, and it is in honor of our friends that I say they +enjoyed it. There are nowhere any considerable hills, but everywhere +generous slopes and pleasant hollows and the wide meadows of a grazing +country, with the pretty brown Mohawk River rippling down through all, +and at frequent intervals the life of the canal, now near, now far away, +with the lazy boats that seem not to stir, and the horses that the train +passes with a whirl, and, leaves slowly stepping forward and swiftly +slipping backward. There are farms that had once, or still have, the +romance to them of being Dutch farms,--if there is any romance in +that,--and one conjectures a Dutch thrift in their waving grass and +grain. Spaces of woodland here and there dapple the slopes, and the cozy +red farm-houses repose by the side of their capacious red barns. Truly, +there is no ground on which to defend the idleness, and yet as the train +strives furiously onward amid these scenes of fertility and abundance, +I like in fancy to loiter behind it, and to saunter at will up and down +the landscape. I stop at the farm-yard gates, and sit upon the porches +or thresholds, and am served with cups of buttermilk by old Dutch ladies +who have done their morning's work and have leisure to be knitting or +sewing; or if there are no old ladies, with decent caps upon their +gray hair, then I do not complain if the drink is brought me by some +red-cheeked, comely young girl, out of Washington Irving's pages, with +no cap on her golden braids, who mirrors my diffidence, and takes +an attitude of pretty awkwardness while she waits till I have done +drinking. In the same easily contented spirit as I lounge through the +barn-yard, if I find the old hens gone about their family affairs, I do +not mind a meadow-lark's singing in the top of the elm-tree beside the +pump. In these excursions the watch-dogs know me for a harmless person, +and will not open their eyes as they lie coiled up in the sun before the +gate. At all the places, I have the people keep bees, and, in the +garden full of worthy pot-herbs, such idlers in the vegetable world as +hollyhocks and larkspurs and four-o'clocks, near a great bed in which +the asparagus has gone to sleep for the season with a dream of delicate +spray hanging over it. I walk unmolested through the farmer's tall +grass, and ride with him upon the perilous seat of his voluble +mowing-machine, and learn to my heart's content that his name begins +with Van, and that his family has owned that farm ever since the days +of the Patroon; which I dare say is not true. Then I fall asleep in a +corner of the hayfield, and wake up on the tow-path of the canal beside +that wonderfully lean horse, whose bones you cannot count only, because +they are so many. He never wakes up, but, with a faltering under-lip +and half-shut eyes, hobbles stiffly on, unconscious of his anatomical +interest. The captain hospitably asks me on board, with a twist of the +rudder swinging the stern of the boat up to the path, so that I can step +on. She is laden with flour from the valley of the Genesee, and may +have started on her voyage shortly after the canal was made. She +is succinctly manned by the captain, the driver, and the cook, a +fiery-haired lady of imperfect temper; and the cabin, which I explore, +is plainly furnished with a cook-stove and a flask of whiskey. Nothing +but profane language is allowed on board; and so, in a life of wicked +jollity and ease, we glide imperceptibly down the canal, unvexed by the +far-off future of arrival. + +Such, I say, are my own unambitious mental pastimes, but I am aware that +less superficial spirits could not be satisfied with them, and I can not +pretend that my wedding-journeyers were so. + +They cast an absurd poetry over the landscape; they invited themselves +to be reminded of passages of European travel by it; and they placed +villas and castles and palaces upon all the eligible building-sites. +Ashamed of these devices, presently, Basil patriotically tried to +reconstruct the Dutch and Indian past of the Mohawk Valley, but here he +was foiled by the immense ignorance of his wife, who, as a true American +woman, knew nothing of the history of her own country, and less than +nothing of the barbarous regions beyond the borders of her native +province. She proved a bewildering labyrinth of error concerning the +events which Basil mentioned; and she had never even heard of the +massacres by the French and Indians at Schenectady, which he in his +boyhood had known so vividly that he was scalped every night in his +dreams, and woke up in the morning expecting to see marks of the +tomahawk on the head-board. So, failing at last to extract any sentiment +from the scenes without, they turned their faces from the window, and +looked about them for amusement within the car. + +It was in all respects an ordinary carful of human beings, and it was +perhaps the more worthy to be studied on that account. As in literature +the true artist will shun the use even of real events if they are of an +improbable character, so the sincere observer of man will not desire +to look upon the heroic or occasional phases, but will seek him in his +habitual moods of vacancy and tiresomeness. To me, at any rate, he is at +such times very precious; and I never perceive him to be so much a +man and a brother as when I feel the pressure of his vast, natural, +unaffected dullness. Then I am able to enter confidently into his life +and inhabit there, to think his shallow and feeble thoughts, to be +moved by his dumb, stupid desires, to be dimly illumined by his stinted +inspirations, to share his foolish prejudices, to practice his obtuse +selfishness. Yes, it is a very amusing world, if you do not refuse to +be amused; and our friends were very willing to be entertained. They +delighted in the precise, thick-fingered old ladies who bought sweet +apples of the boys come aboard with baskets, and who were so long in +finding the right change, that our travellers, leaping in thought with +the boys from the moving train, felt that they did so at the peril of +their lives. Then they were interested in people who went out and found +their friends waiting for them, or else did not find them, and wandered +disconsolately up and down before the country stations, carpet-bag in +hand; in women who came aboard, and were awkwardly shaken hands with or +sheepishly kissed by those who hastily got seats for them, and placed +their bags or their babies in their laps, and turned for a nod at the +door; in young ladies who were seen to places by young men the latter +seemed not to care if the train did go off with them, and then threw +up their windows and talked with girl-friends, on the platform without, +till the train began to move, and at last turned with gleaming eyes and +moist red lips, and panted hard in the excitement of thinking about it, +and could not calm themselves to the dull level of the travel around +them; in the conductor, coldly and inaccessibly vigilant, as he went his +rounds, reaching blindly for the tickets with one hand while he bent his +head from time, to time, and listened with a faint, sarcastic smile to +the questions of passengers who supposed they were going to get some +information out of him; in the trainboy, who passed through on his many +errands with prize candies, gum-drops, pop-corn, papers and magazines, +and distributed books and the police journals with a blind impartiality, +or a prodigious ignorance, or a supernatural perception of character in +those who received them. + +A through train from East to West presents some peculiar features as +well as the traits common to all railway travel; and our friends decided +that this was not a very well-dressed company, and would contrast with +the people on an express-train between Boston and New York to no better +advantage than these would show beside the average passengers between +London and Paris. And it seems true that on a westering' line, the +blacking fades gradually from the boots, the hat softens and sinks, +the coat loses its rigor of cut, and the whole person lounges into +increasing informality of costume. I speak of the undressful sex alone: +woman, wherever she is, appears in the last attainable effects of +fashion, which are now all but telegraphic and universal. But most of +the passengers here were men, and they mere plainly of the free-and-easy +West rather than the dapper East. They wore faces thoughtful with the +problem of buying cheap and selling dear, and they could be known by +their silence from the loquacious, acquaintance-making way-travellers. +In these, the mere coming aboard seemed to beget an aggressively +confidential mood. Perhaps they clutched recklessly at any means of +relieving their ennui; or they felt that they might here indulge safely +in the pleasures of autobiography, so dear to all of us; or else, in +view of the many possible catastrophes, they desired to leave some +little memory of themselves behind. At any rate, whenever the train +stopped, the wedding-journeyers caught fragments of the personal +histories of their fellow-passengers which had been rehearsing to those +that sat next the narrators. It was no more than fair that these should +somewhat magnify themselves, and put the best complexion on their +actions and the worst upon their sufferings; that they should all appear +the luckiest or the unluckiest, the healthiest or the sickest, people +that ever were, and should all have made or lost the most money. There +was a prevailing desire among them to make out that they came from or +were going to same very large place; and our friends fancied an actual +mortification in the face of a modest gentleman who got out at Penelope +(or some other insignificant classical station, in the ancient Greek and +Roman part of New York State), after having listened to the life of a +somewhat rustic-looking person who had described himself as belonging +near New York City. + +Basil also found diversion in the tender couples, who publicly comported +themselves as if in a sylvan solitude, and, as it had been on the bank +of some umbrageous stream, far from the ken of envious or unsympathetic +eyes, reclined upon each other's shoulders and slept; but Isabel +declared that this behavior was perfectly indecent. She granted, of +course, that they were foolish, innocent people, who meant no offense, +and did not feel guilty of an impropriety, but she said that this sort +of thing was a national reproach. If it were merely rustic lovers, she +should not care so much; but you saw people who ought to know better, +well-dressed, stylish people, flaunting their devotion in the face +of the world, and going to sleep on each other's shoulders on every +railroad train. It was outrageous, it was scandalous, it was really +infamous. Before she would allow herself to do such a thing she +would--well, she hardly knew what she would not do; she would have a +divorce, at any rate. She wondered that Basil could laugh at it; and he +would make her hate him if he kept on. + +From the seat behind their own they were now made listeners to the +history of a ten weeks' typhoid fever, from the moment when the narrator +noticed that he had not felt very well for a day or two back, and all +at once a kind of shiver took him, till he lay fourteen days perfectly +insensible, and could eat nothing but a little pounded ice--and his +wife--a small woman, too--used to lift him back and forth between the +bed and sofa like a feather, and the neighbors did not know half the +time whether he was dead or alive. This history, from which not the +smallest particular or the least significant symptom of the case was +omitted, occupied an hour in recital, and was told, as it seemed, for +the entertainment of one who had been five minutes before it began a +stranger to the historian. + +At last the train came to a stand, and Isabel wailed forth in accents of +desperation the words, “O, disgusting!” The monotony of the narrative in +the seat behind, fatally combining with the heat of the day, had lulled +her into slumbers from which she awoke at the stopping of the train, to +find her head resting tenderly upon her husband's shoulder. + +She confronted his merriment with eyes of mournful rebuke; but as she +could not find him, or the harshest construction, in the least to blame, +she was silent. + +“Never mind, dear, never mind,” he coaxed, “you were really not +responsible. It was fatigue, destiny, the spite of fortune,--whatever +you like. In the case of the others, whom you despise so justly, I dare +say it is sheer, disgraceful affection. But see that ravishing placard, +swinging from the roof: 'This train stops twenty minutes for dinner +at Utica.' In a few minutes more we shall be at Utica. If they have +anything edible there, it shall never contract my powers. I could dine +at the Albany station, even.” + +In a little while they found themselves in an airy, comfortable +dining-room, eating a dinner, which it seemed to them France in the +flush of her prosperity need not have blushed to serve; for if it wanted +a little in the last graces of art, it redeemed itself in abundance, +variety, and wholesomeness. At the elbow of every famishing passenger +stood a beneficent coal-black glossy fairy, in a white linen apron and +jacket, serving him with that alacrity and kindliness and grace which +make the negro waiter the master, not the slave of his calling, which +disenthrall it of servility, and constitute him your eager host, not +your menial, for the moment. From table to table passed a calming +influence in the person of the proprietor, who, as he took his richly +earned money, checked the rising fears of the guests by repeated +proclamations that there was plenty of time, and that he would give them +due warning before the train started. Those who had flocked out of the +cars, to prey with beak and claw, as the vulture-like fashion is, upon +everything in reach, remained to eat like Christians; and even a poor, +scantily-Englished Frenchman, who wasted half his time in trying to +ask how long the cars stopped and in looking at his watch, made a good +dinner in spite of himself. + +“O Basil, Basil!” cried Isabel, when the train was again in motion, +“have we really dined once more? It seems too good to be true. +Cleanliness, plenty, wholesomeness, civility! Yes, as you say, they +cannot be civil where they are not just; honesty and courtesy go +together; and wherever they give you outrageous things to eat, they add +indigestible insults. Basil, dear, don't be jealous; I shall never meet +him again; but I'm in love with that black waiter at our table. I never +saw such perfect manners, such a winning and affectionate politeness. He +made me feel that every mouthful I ate was a personal favor to him. What +a complete gentleman. There ought never to be a white waiter. None but +negroes are able to render their service a pleasure and distinction to +you.” + +So they prattled on, doing, in their eagerness to be satisfied, a homage +perhaps beyond its desert to the good dinner and the decent service of +it. But here they erred in the right direction, and I find nothing more +admirable in their behavior throughout a wedding journey which certainly +had its trials, than their willingness to make the very heat of whatever +would suffer itself to be made anything at all of. They celebrated its +pleasures with magnanimous excess, they passed over its griefs with a +wise forbearance. That which they found the most difficult of management +was the want of incident for the most part of the time; and I who write +their history might also sink under it, but that I am supported by the +fact that it is so typical, in this respect. I even imagine that ideal +reader for whom one writes as yawning over these barren details with the +life-like weariness of an actual travelling companion of theirs. Their +own silence often sufficed my wedded lovers, or then, when there was +absolutely nothing to engage them, they fell back upon the story of +their love, which they were never tired of hearing as they severally +knew it. Let it not be a reproach to human nature or to me if I say +that there was something in the comfort of having well dined which now +touched the springs of sentiment with magical effect, and that they had +never so rejoiced in these tender reminiscences. + +They had planned to stop over at Rochester till the morrow, that they +might arrive at Niagara by daylight, and at Utica they had suddenly +resolved to make the rest of the day's journey in a drawing-room car. +The change gave them an added reason for content; and they realized how +much they had previously sacrificed to the idea of travelling in the +most American manner, without achieving it after all, for this seemed +a touch of Americanism beyond the old-fashioned car. They reclined in +luxury upon the easy-cushioned, revolving chairs; they surveyed with +infinite satisfaction the elegance of the flying-parlor in which they +sat, or turned their contented regard through the broad plate-glass +windows upon the landscape without. They said that none but Americans or +enchanted princes in the “Arabian Nights” ever travelled in such state; +and when the stewards of the car came round successively with tropical +fruits, ice-creams, and claret-punches, they felt a heightened assurance +that they were either enchanted princes--or Americans. There were more +ladies and more fashion than in the other cars; and prettily dressed +children played about on the carpet; but the general appearance of the +passengers hardly suggested greater wealth than elsewhere; and they were +plainly in that car because they were of the American race, which finds +nothing too good for it that its money can buy. + + + + +V. THE ENCHANTED CITY, AND BEYOND. + +They knew none of the hotels in Rochester, and they had chosen a certain +one in reliance upon their handbook. When they named it, there stepped +forth a porter of an incredibly cordial and pleasant countenance, who +took their travelling-bags, and led them to the omnibus. As they were +his only passengers, the porter got inside with them, and seeing their +interest in the streets through which they rode, he descanted in a +strain of cheerful pride upon the city's prosperity and character, and +gave the names of the people who lived in the finer houses, just as if +it had been an Old-World town, and he some eager historian expecting +reward for his comment upon it. He cast quite a glamour over Rochester, +so that in passing a body of water, bordered by houses, and overlooked +by odd balconies and galleries, and crossed in the distance by a bridge +upon which other houses were built, they boldly declared, being at +their wit's end for a comparison, and taken with the unhoped-for +picturesqueness, that it put them in mind of Verona. Thus they reached +their hotel in almost a spirit of foreign travel, and very willing to +verify the pleasant porter's assurance that they would like it, for +everybody liked it; and it was with a sudden sinking of the heart that +Basil beheld presiding over the register the conventional American +hotel clerk. He was young, he had a neat mustache and well-brushed hair; +jeweled studs sparkled in his shirt-front, and rings on his white hands; +a gentle disdain of the travelling public breathed from his person in +the mystical odors of Ihlang ihlang. He did not lift his haughty head to +look at the wayfarer who meekly wrote his name in the register; he did +not answer him when he begged for a cool room; he turned to the board on +which the keys hung, and, plucking one from it, slid it towards Basil +on the marble counter, touched a bell for a call-boy, whistled a bar of +Offenbach, and as he wrote the number of the room against Basil's name, +said to a friend lounging near him, as if resuming a conversation, +“Well, she's a mighty pooty gul, any way, Chawley!” + +When I reflect that this was a type of the hotel clerk throughout the +United States, that behind unnumbered registers at this moment he is +snubbing travellers into the dust, and that they are suffering and +perpetuating him, I am lost in wonder at the national meekness. Not that +I am one to refuse the humble pie his jeweled fingers offer me. Abjectly +I take my key, and creep off up stairs after the call-boy, and try to +give myself the genteel air of one who has not been stepped upon. But I +think homicidal things all the same, and I rejoice that in the safety of +print I can cry out against the despot, whom I have not the presence to +defy. “You vulgar and cruel little soul,” I say, and I imagine myself +breathing the words to his teeth, “why do you treat a weary stranger +with this ignominy? I am to pay well for what I get, and I shall not +complain of that. But look at me, and own my humanity; confess by some +civil action, by some decent phrase, that I have rights and that they +shall be respected. Answer my proper questions; respond to my fair +demands. Do not slide my key at me; do not deny me the poor politeness +of a nod as you give it in my hand. I am not your equal; few men are; +but I shall not presume upon your clemency. Come, I also am human!” + +Basil found that, for his sin in asking for a cool room, the clerk +had given them a chamber into which the sun had been shining the whole +afternoon; but when his luggage had been put in it seemed useless to +protest, and like a true American, like you, like me, he shrank from +asserting himself. When the sun went down it would be cool enough; and +they turned their thoughts to supper, not venturing to hope that, as it +proved, the handsome clerk was the sole blemish of the house. + +Isabel viewed with innocent surprise the evidences of luxury afforded +by all the appointments of a hotel so far west of Boston, and they both +began to feel that natural ease and superiority which an inn always +inspires in its guests, and which our great hotels, far from impairing, +enhance in flattering degree; in fact, the clerk once forgotten, I +protest, for my own part, I am never more conscious of my merits and +riches in any other place. One has there the romance of being a stranger +and a mystery to every one else, and lives in the alluring possibility +of not being found out a most ordinary person. + +They were so late in coming to the supper-room, that they found +themselves alone in it. At the door they had a bow from the head-waiter, +who ran before them and drew out chairs for them at a table, and +signaled waiters to serve them, first laying before them with a gracious +flourish the bill of fare. + +A force of servants flocked about them, as if to contest the honor +of ordering their supper; one set upon the table a heaping vase +of strawberries, another flanked it with flagons of cream, a third +accompanied it with plates of varied flavor and device; a fourth +obsequiously smoothed the table-cloth; a fifth, the youngest of the +five, with folded arms stood by and admired the satisfaction the rest +were giving. When these had been dispatched for steak, for broiled +white-fish of the lakes,--noblest and delicatest of the fish that +swim,--for broiled chicken, for fried potatoes, for mums, for whatever +the lawless fancy, and ravening appetites of the wayfarers could +suggest, this fifth waiter remained to tempt them to further excess, and +vainly proposed some kind of eggs,--fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled +eggs, boiled eggs, or omelette. + +“O, you're sure, dearest, that this isn't a vision of fairy-land, which +will vanish presently, and leave us empty and forlorn?” plaintively +murmured Isabel, as the menial train reappeared, bearing the supper they +had ordered and set it smoking down. + +Suddenly a look of apprehension dawned upon her face, and she let fall +her knife and fork. “You don't think, Basil,” she faltered, “that they +could have found out we're a bridal party, and that they're serving us +so magnificently because--because--O, I shall be miserable every moment +we're here!” she concluded desperately. + +She looked, indeed, extremely wretched for a woman with so much broiled +white-fish on her plate, and such a banquet array about her; and her +husband made haste to reassure her. “You're still demoralized, Isabel, +by our sufferings at the Albany depot, and you exaggerate the blessings +we enjoy, though I should be sorry to undervalue them. I suspect it's +the custom to use people well at this hotel; or if we are singled +out for uncommon favor, I think I can explain the cause. It has been +discovered by the register that we are from Boston, and we are merely +meeting the reverence, affection, and homage which the name everywhere +commands! + +“It's our fortune to represent for the time being the intellectual and +moral virtue of Boston. This supper is not a tribute to you as a bride, +but as a Bostonian.” + +It was a cheap kind of raillery, to be sure, but it served. It kindled +the local pride of Isabel to self-defense, and in the distraction of the +effort she forgot her fears; she returned with renewed appetite to the +supper, and in its excellence they both let fall their dispute,--which +ended, of course, in Basil's abject confession that Boston was the +best place in the world, and nothing but banishment could make him live +elsewhere,--and gave themselves up, as usual, to the delight of being +just what and where they were. At last, the natural course brought +them to the strawberries, and when the fifth waiter approached from the +corner of the table at which he stood, to place the vase near them, he +did not retire at once, but presently asked if they were from the West. + +Isabel smiled, and Basil answered that they were from the East. + +He faltered at this, as if doubtful of the result if he went further, +but took heart, then, and asked, “Don't you think this is a pretty nice +hotel”--hastily adding as a concession of the probable existence of much +finer things at the East--“for a small hotel?” + +They imagined this waiter as new to his station in life, as perhaps +just risen to it from some country tavern, and unable to repress his +exultation in what seemed their sympathetic presence. They were charmed +to have invited his guileless confidence, to have evoked possibly all +the simple poetry of his soul; it was what might have happened in Italy, +only there so much naivete would have meant money; they looked at each +other with rapture and Basil answered warmly while the waiter flushed +as at a personal compliment: “Yes, it's a nice hotel; one of the best I +ever saw, East or West, in Europe or America.” + +They rose and left the room, and were bowed out by the head-waiter. + +“How perfectly idyllic!” cried Isabel. “Is this Rochester, New York, or +is it some vale of Arcady? Let's go out and see.” + +They walked out into the moonlit city, up and down streets that seemed +very stately and fine, amidst a glitter of shop-window lights; and then, +less of their own motion than of mere error, they quitted the +business quarter, and found themselves in a quiet avenue of handsome +residences,--the Beacon Street of Rochester, whatever it was called. +They said it was a night and a place for lovers, for none but lovers, +for lovers newly plighted, and they made believe to bemoan themselves +that, hold each other dear as they would, the exaltation, the thrill, +the glory of their younger love was gone. Some of the houses had +gardened spaces about them, from which stole, like breaths of sweetest +and saddest regret, the perfume of midsummer flowers,--the despair of +the rose for the bud. As they passed a certain house, a song fluttered +out of the open window and ceased, the piano warbled at the final rush +of fingers over its chords, and they saw her with her fingers resting +lightly on the keys, and her graceful head lifted to look into his; they +saw him with his arm yet stretched across to the leaves of music he had +been turning, and his face lowered to meet her gaze. + +“Ah, Basil, I wish it was we, there!” + +“And if they knew that we, on our wedding journey, stood outside, would +not they wish it was they, here?” + +“I suppose so, dearest, and yet, once-upon-a-time was sweet. Pass on; +and let us see what charm we shall find next in this enchanted city.” + +“Yes, it is an enchanted city to us,” mused Basil, aloud, as they +wandered on, “and all strange cities are enchanted. What is Rochester +to the Rochesterese? A place of a hundred thousand people, as we read +in our guide, an immense flour interest, a great railroad entrepot, an +unrivaled nursery trade, a university, two commercial colleges, three +collegiate institutes, eight or ten newspapers, and a free library. I +dare say any respectable resident would laugh at us sentimentalizing +over his city. But Rochester is for us, who don't know it at all, a +city of any time or country, moonlit, filled with lovers hovering over +piano-fortes, of a palatial hotel with pastoral waiters and porter,--a +city of handsome streets wrapt in beautiful quiet and dreaming of the +golden age. The only definite association with it in our minds is the +tragically romantic thought that here Sam Patch met his fate.” + +“And who in the world was Sam Patch? + +“Isabel, your ignorance of all that an American woman should be proud +of distresses me. Have you really, then, never heard of the man who +invented the saying, 'Some things can be done as well as others,' +and proved it by jumping over Niagara Falls twice? Spurred on by this +belief, he attempted the leap of the Genesee Falls. The leap was easy +enough, but the coming up again was another matter. He failed in that. +It was the one thing that could not be done as well as others.” + +“Dreadful!” said Isabel, with the cheerfullest satisfaction. “But what +has all that to do with Rochester?” + +“Now, my dear, you don't mean to say you didn't know that the Genesee +Falls were at Rochester? Upon my word, I'm ashamed. Why, we're within +ten minutes' walk of them now.” + +“Then walk to them at once!” cried Isabel, wholly unabashed, and in fact +unable to see what he had to be ashamed of. “Actually, I believe you +would have allowed me to leave Rochester without telling me the falls +were here, if you hadn't happened to think of Sam Patch.” + +Saying this, she persuaded herself that a chief object of their journey +had been to visit the scene of Sam Patch's fatal exploit, and she drew +Basil with a nervous swiftness in the direction of the railroad station, +beyond which he said were the falls. Presently, after threading their +way among a multitude of locomotives, with and without trains attached, +that backed and advanced, or stood still, hissing impatiently on every +side, they passed through the station to a broad planking above +the river on the other side, and thence, after encounter of more +locomotives, they found, by dint of much asking, a street winding up +the hill-side to the left, and leading to the German Bierhaus that gives +access to the best view of the cataract. + +The Americans have characteristically bordered the river with +manufactures, making every drop work its passage to the brink; while the +Germans have as characteristically made use of the beauty left over, and +have built a Bierhaus where they may regale both soul and sense in the +presence of the cataract. Our travellers might, in another mood and +place, have thought it droll to arrive at that sublime spectacle through +a Bierhaus, but in this enchanted city it seemed to have a peculiar +fitness. + +A narrow corridor gave into a wide festival space occupied by many +tables, each of which was surrounded by a group of clamorous Germans of +either sex and every age, with tall beakers of beaded lager before +them, and slim flasks of Rhenish; overhead flamed the gas in globes of +varicolored glass; the walls were painted like those of such haunts in +the fatherland; and the wedding-journeyers were fair to linger on +their way, to dwell upon that scene of honest enjoyment, to inhale the +mingling odors of beer and of pipes, and of the pungent cheeses in which +the children of the fatherland delight. Amidst the inspiriting clash of +plates and glasses, the rattle of knives and forks, and the hoarse rush +of gutturals, they could catch the words Franzosen, Kaiser, Konig, and +Schlacht, and they knew that festive company to be exulting in the first +German triumphs of the war, which were then the day's news; they saw +fists shaken at noses in fierce exchange of joy, arms tossed abroad in +wild congratulation, and health-pouring goblets of beer lifted in air. +Then they stepped into the moonlight again, and heard only the solemn +organ stops of the cataract. Through garden-ground they were led by the +little maid, their guide, to a small pavilion that stood on the edge +of the precipitous shore, and commanded a perfect view of the falls. As +they entered this pavilion, a youth and maiden, clearly lovers, passed +out, and they were left alone with that sublime presence. Something of +definiteness was to be desired in the spectacle, but there was ample +compensation in the mystery with which the broad effulgence and the +dense unluminous shadows of the moonshine invested it. The light touched +all the tops of the rapids, that seemed to writhe sway from the brink of +the cataract, and then desperately breaking and perishing to fall, the +white disembodied ghosts of rapids, down to the bottom of the vast and +deep ravine through which the river rushed away. Now the waters seemed +to mass themselves a hundred feet high in a wall of snowy compactness, +now to disperse into their multitudinous particles and hang like some +vaporous cloud from the cliff. Every moment renewed the vision of beauty +in some rare and fantastic shape; and its loveliness isolated it, in +spite of the great town on the other shore, the station with its bridge +and its trains, the mills that supplied their feeble little needs from +the cataract's strength. + +At last Basil pointed out the table-rock in the middle of the fall, from +which Sam Patch had made his fatal leap; but Isabel refused to admit +that tragical figure to the honors of her emotions. “I don't care +for him!” she said fiercely. “Patch! What a name to be linked in our +thoughts with this superb cataract.” + +“Well, Isabel, I think you are very unjust. It's as good a name as +Leander, to my thinking, and it was immortalized in support of a great +idea, the feasibility of all things; while Leander's has come down to us +as that of the weak victim of a passion. We shall never have a poetry of +our own till we get over this absurd reluctance from facts, till we +make the ideal embrace and include the real, till we consent to face the +music in our simple common names, and put Smith into a lyric and Jones +into a tragedy. The Germans are braver than we, and in them you find +facts and dreams continually blended and confronted. Here is a fortunate +illustration. The people we met coming out of this pavilion were lovers, +and they had been here sentimentalizing on this superb cataract, as you +call it, with which my heroic Patch is not worthy to be named. No doubt +they had been quoting Uhland or some other of their romantic poets, +perhaps singing some of their tender German love-songs,--the tenderest, +unearthliest love-songs in the world. At the same time they did not +disdain the matter-of-fact corporeity in which their sentiment was +enshrined; they fed it heartily and abundantly with the banquet whose +relics we see here.” + +On a table before them stood a pair of beer-glasses, in the bottoms +of which lurked scarce the foam of the generous liquor lately brimming +them; some shreds of sausage, some rinds of Swiss cheese, bits of cold +ham, crusts of bread, and the ashes of a pipe. + +Isabel shuddered at the spectacle, but made no comment, and Basil went +on: “Do you suppose they scorned the idea of Sam Patch as they gazed +upon the falls? On the contrary, I've no doubt that he recalled to her +the ballad which a poet of their language made about him. It used to go +the rounds of the German newspapers, and I translated it, a long while +ago, when I thought that I too was in 'Arkadien geboren'. + + 'In the Bierhauagarten I linger + By the Falls of the Geneses: + From the Table-Rock in the middle + Leaps a figure bold and free. + + Aloof in the air it rises + O'er the rush, the plunge, the death; + On the thronging banks of the river + There is neither pulse nor breath. + + Forever it hovers and poises + Aloof in the moonlit air; + As light as mist from the rapids, + As heavy as nightmare. + + In anguish I cry to the people, + The long-since vanished hosts; + I see them stretch forth in answer, + The helpless hands of ghosts.'” + +“I once met the poet who wrote this. He drank too much beer.” + +“I don't see that he got in the name of Sam Patch, after all,” said +Isabel. + +“O yes; he did; but I had to yield to our taste, and where he said, I +'Springt der Sam Patsch kuhn and frei',' I made it 'Leaps a figure bold +and free.'” + +As they passed through the house on their way out, they saw the youth +and maiden they had met at the pavilion door. They were seated at a +table; two glasses of beer towered before them; on their plates were +odorous crumbs of Limburger cheese. They both wore a pensive air. + +The next morning the illusion that had wrapt the whole earth was gone +with the moonlight. By nine o'clock, when the wedding-journeyers resumed +their way toward Niagara, the heat had already set in with the effect of +ordinary midsummer's heat at high noon. The car into which they got +had come the past night from Albany, and had an air of almost conscious +shabbiness, griminess, and over-use. The seats were covered with +cinders, which also crackled under foot. Dust was on everything, +especially the persons of the crumpled and weary passengers of +overnight. Those who came aboard at Rochester failed to lighten +the spiritual gloom, and presently they sank into the common bodily +wretchedness. The train was somewhat belated, and as it drew nearer +Buffalo they knew the conductor to have abandoned himself to that +blackest of the arts, making time. The long irregular jolt of the +ordinary progress was reduced to an incessant shudder and a quick +lateral motion. The air within the cars was deadly; if a window was +raised, a storm of dust and cinders blew in and quick gusts caught away +the breath. So they sat with closed windows, sweltering and stifling, +and all the faces on which a lively horror was not painted were dull and +damp with apathetic misery. + +The incidents were in harmony with the abject physical tone of the +company. There was a quarrel between a thin, shrill-voiced, highly +dressed, much-bedizened Jewess, on the one side, and a fat, greedy old +woman, half asleep, and a boy with large pink transparent ears that +stood out from his head like the handles of a jar, on the other side, +about a seat which the Hebrew wanted, and which the others had kept +filled with packages on the pretense that it was engaged. It was a loud +and fierce quarrel enough, but it won no sort of favor; and when the +Jewess had given a final opinion that the greedy old woman was no +lady, and the boy, who disputed in an ironical temper, replied, “Highly +complimentary, I must say,” there was no sign of relief or other +acknowledgment in any of the spectators, that there had been a quarrel. + +There was a little more interest taken in the misfortune of an old +purblind German and his son, who were found by the conductor to be a few +hundred miles out of the direct course to their destination, and were +with some trouble and the aid of an Americanized fellow-countryman made +aware of the fact. The old man then fell back in the prevailing apathy, +and the child naturally cared nothing. By and by came the unsparing +train-boy on his rounds, bestrewing the passengers successively with +papers, magazines, fine-cut tobacco, and packages of candy. He gave the +old man a package of candy, and passed on. The German took it as the +bounty of the American people, oddly manifested in a situation where he +could otherwise have had little proof of their care. He opened it +and was sharing it with his son when the train-boy came back, and +metallically, like a part of the machinery, demanded, “Ten cents!” The +German stared helplessly, and the boy repeated, “Ten cents! ten cents!” + with tiresome patience, while the other passengers smiled. When it had +passed through the alien's head that he was to pay for this national +gift and he took with his tremulous fingers from the recesses of his +pocket-book a ten-cent note and handed it to his tormentor, some of +the people laughed. Among the rest, Basil and Isabel laughed, and then +looked at each other with eyes of mutual reproach. + +“Well, upon my word, my dear,” he said, “I think we've fallen pretty +low. I've never felt such a poor, shabby ruffian before. Good heavens! +To think of our immortal souls being moved to mirth by such a thing +as this,--so stupid, so barren of all reason of laughter. And then the +cruelty of it! What ferocious imbeciles we are! Whom have I married? A +woman with neither heart nor brain!” + +“O Basil, dear, pay him back the money--do.” + +“I can't. That's the worst of it. He's money enough, and might justly +take offense. What breaks my heart is that we could have the depravity +to smile at the mistake of a friendless stranger, who supposed he had at +last met with an act of pure kindness. It's a thing to weep over. Look +at these grinning wretches! What a fiendish effect their smiles have, +through their cinders and sweat! O, it's the terrible weather; the +despotism of the dust and heat; the wickedness of the infernal air. What +a squalid and loathsome company!” + +At Buffalo, where they arrived late, they found themselves with several +hours' time on their hands before the train started for Niagara, and in +the first moments of tedium, Isabel forgot herself into saying, “Don't +you think we'd have done better to go directly from Rochester to the +Falls, instead of coming this way?” + +“Why certainly. I didn't propose coming this way.” + +“I know it, dear. I was only asking,” said Isabel, meekly. “But I should +think you'd have generosity enough to take a little of the blame, when I +wanted to come out of a romantic feeling for you.” + +This romantic feeling referred to the fact that, many years before, when +Basil made his first visit to Niagara, he had approached from the west +by way of Buffalo; and Isabel, who tenderly begrudged his having existed +before she knew him, and longed to ally herself retrospectively with his +past, was resolved to draw near the great cataract by no other route. + +She fetched a little sigh which might mean the weather or his +hard-heartedness. The sigh touched him, and he suggested a carriage-ride +through the city; she assented with eagerness, for it was what she had +been thinking of. She had never seen a lakeside city before, and she +was taken by surprise. “If ever we leave Boston,” she said, “we will not +live at Rochester, as I thought last night; we'll come to Buffalo.” She +found that the place had all the picturesqueness of a sea-port, without +the ugliness that attends the rising and falling tides. A delicious +freshness breathed from the lake, which lying so smooth, faded into +the sky at last, with no line between sharper than that which divides +drowsing from dreaming. But the color was the most charming thing, +that delicate blue of the lake, without the depth of the sea-blue, but +infinitely softer and lovelier. The nearer expanses rippled with dainty +waves, silver and lucent; the further levels made, with the sun-dimmed +summer sky, a vague horizon of turquoise and amethyst, lit by the white +sails of ships, and stained by the smoke of steamers. + +“Take me away now,” said Isabel, when her eyes had feasted upon all +this, “and don't let me see another thing till I get to Niagara. Nothing +less sublime is worthy the eyes that have beheld such beauty.” + +However, on the way to Niagara she consented to glimpses of the river +which carries the waters of the lake for their mighty plunge, and +which shows itself very nobly from time to time as you draw toward the +cataract, with wooded or cultivated islands, and rich farms along its +low shores, and at last flashes upon the eye the shining white of the +rapids,--a hint, no more, of the splendor and awfulness to be revealed. + + + + +VI. NIAGARA. + +As the train stopped, Isabel's heart beat with a child-like exultation, +as I believe every one's heart must who is worthy to arrive at Niagara. +She had been trying to fancy, from time to time, that she heard the roar +of the cataract, and now, when she alighted from the car, she was sure +she should have heard it but for the vulgar little noises that attend +the arrival of trains at Niagara as well as everywhere else. “Never +mind, dearest; you shall be stunned with it before you leave,” promised +her husband; and, not wholly disconsolate, she rode through the +quaint streets of the village, where it remains a question whether the +lowliness of the shops and private houses makes the hotels look so vast, +or the bigness of the hotels dwarfs all the other buildings. The immense +caravansaries swelling up from among the little bazaars (where they +sell feather fans, and miniature bark canoes, and jars and vases and +bracelets and brooches carved out of the local rocks), made our +friends with their trunks very conscious of their disproportion to the +accommodations of the smallest. They were the sole occupants of the +omnibus, and they were embarrassed to be received at their hotel with +a burst of minstrelsy from a whole band of music. Isabel felt that a +single stringed instrument of some timid note would have been enough; +and Basil was going to express his own modest preference for a +jew's-harp, when the music ceased with a sudden clash of the cymbals. +But the next moment it burst out with fresh sweetness, and in alighting +they perceived that another omnibus had turned the corner and was +drawing up to the pillared portico of the hotel. A small family +dismounted, and the feet of the last had hardly touched the pavement +when the music again ended as abruptly as those flourishes of trumpets +that usher player-kings upon the stage. Isabel could not help laughing +at this melodious parsimony. “I hope they don't let on the cataract and +shut it off in this frugal style; do they, Basil?” she asked, and passed +jesting through a pomp of unoccupied porters and tallboys. Apparently +there were not many people stopping at this hotel, or else they were +all out looking at the Falls or confined to their rooms. However, our +travellers took in the almost weird emptiness of the place with their +usual gratitude to fortune for all queerness in life, and followed to +the pleasant quarters assigned them. There was time before supper for a +glance at the cataract, and after a brief toilet they sallied out again +upon the holiday street, with its parade of gay little shops, and thence +passed into the grove beside the Falls, enjoying at every instant their +feeling of arrival at a sublime destination. + +In this sense Niagara deserves almost to rank with Rome, the metropolis +of history and religion; with Venice, the chief city of sentiment and +fantasy. In either you are at once made at home by a perception of its +greatness, in which there is no quality of aggression, as there always +seems to be in minor places as well as in minor men, and you gratefully +accept its sublimity as a fact in no way contrasting with your own +insignificance. + +Our friends were beset of course by many carriage-drivers, whom they +repelled with the kindly firmness of experienced travel. Isabel even +felt a compassion for these poor fellows who had seen Niagara so much as +to have forgotten that the first time one must see it alone or only with +the next of friendship. She was voluble in her pity of Basil that it +was not as new to him as to her, till between the trees they saw a white +cloud of spray, shot through and through with sunset, rising, rising, +and she felt her voice softly and steadily beaten down by the diapason +of the cataract. + +I am not sure but the first emotion on viewing Niagara is that of +familiarity. Ever after, its strangeness increases; but in that earliest +moment when you stand by the side of the American fall, and take in so +much of the whole as your glance can compass, an impression of having +seen it often before is certainly very vivid. This may be an effect of +that grandeur which puts you at your ease in its presence; but it +also undoubtedly results in part from lifelong acquaintance with every +variety of futile picture of the scene. You have its outward form +clearly in your memory; the shores, the rapids, the islands, the curve +of the Falls, and the stout rainbow with one end resting on their top +and the other lost in the mists that rise from the gulf beneath. On +the whole I do not account this sort of familiarity a misfortune. The +surprise is none the less a surprise because it is kept till the last, +and the marvel, making itself finally felt in every nerve, and not at +once through a single sense, all the more fully possesses you. It is as +if Niagara reserved her magnificence, and preferred to win your heart +with her beauty; and so Isabel, who was instinctively prepared for the +reverse, suffered a vague disappointment, for a little instant, as she +looked along the verge from the water that caressed the shore at her +feet before it flung itself down, to the wooded point that divides the +American from the Canadian Fall, beyond which showed dimly through +its veil of golden and silver mists the emerald wall of the great +Horse-Shoe. “How still it is!” she said, amidst the roar that shook the +ground under their feet and made the leaves tremble overhead, and “How +lonesome!” amidst the people lounging and sauntering about in every +direction among the trees. In fact that prodigious presence does make +a solitude and silence round every spirit worthy to perceive it, and +it gives a kind of dignity to all its belongings, so that the rocks and +pebbles in the water's edge, and the weeds and grasses that nod above +it, have a value far beyond that of such common things elsewhere. In all +the aspects of Niagara there seems a grave simplicity, which is perhaps +a reflection of the spectator's soul for once utterly dismantled of +affectation and convention. In the vulgar reaction from this, you are of +course as trivial, if you like, at Niagara, as anywhere. + +Slowly Isabel became aware that the sacred grove beside the fall was +profaned by some very common presences indeed, that tossed bits of stone +and sticks into the consecrated waters, and struggled for handkerchiefs +and fans, and here and there put their arms about each other's waists, +and made a show of laughing and joking. They were a picnic party of +rude, silly folks of the neighborhood, and she stood pondering them in +sad wonder if anything could be worse, when she heard a voice saying to +Basil, “Take you next, Sir? Plenty of light yet, and the wind's down +the river, so the spray won't interfere. Make a capital picture of you; +falls in the background.” It was the local photographer urging them to +succeed the young couple he had just posed at the brink: the gentleman +was sitting down, with his legs crossed and his hands elegantly +disposed; the lady was standing at his side, with one arm thrown lightly +across his shoulder, while with the other hand she thrust his cane into +the ground; you could see it was going to be a splendid photograph. + +Basil thanked the artist, and Isabel said, trusting as usual to his +sympathy for perception of her train of thought, “Well, I'll never try +to be high-strung again. But shouldn't you have thought, dearest, that I +might expect to be high-strung with success at Niagara if anywhere?” She +passively followed him into the long, queer, downward-sloping edifice on +the border of the grove, unflinchingly mounted the car that stood ready, +and descended the incline. Emerging into the light again, she found +herself at the foot of the fall by whose top she had just stood. At +first she was glad there were other people down there, as if she and +Basil were not enough to bear it alone, and she could almost have spoken +to the two hopelessly pretty brides, with parasols and impertinent +little boots, whom their attendant husbands were helping over the sharp +and slippery rocks, so bare beyond the spray, so green and mossy within +the fall of mist. But in another breath she forgot them; as she looked +on that dizzied sea, hurling itself from the high summit in huge white +knots, and breaks and masses, and plunging into the gulf beside her, +while it sent continually up a strong voice of lamentation, and crawled +away in vast eddies, with somehow a look of human terror, bewilderment, +and pain. It was bathed in snowy vapor to its crest, but now and then +heavy currents of air drew this aside, and they saw the outline of the +Falls almost as far as the Canada side. They remembered afterwards how +they were able to make use of but one sense at a time, and how when they +strove to take in the forms of the descending flood, they ceased to hear +it; but as soon as they released their eyes from this service, every +fibre in them vibrated to the sound, and the spectacle dissolved away in +it. They were aware, too, of a strange capriciousness in their senses, +and of a tendency of each to palter with the things perceived. The +eye could no longer take truthful note of quality, and now beheld the +tumbling deluge as a Gothic wall of careen marble, white, motionless, +and now as a fall of lightest snow, with movement in all its atoms, +and scarce so much cohesion as would hold them together; and again +they could not discern if this course were from above or from beneath, +whether the water rose from the abyss or dropped from the height. The +ear could give the brain no assurance of the sound that felled it, +and whether it were great or little; the prevailing softness of the +cataract's tone seemed so much opposed to ideas of prodigious force or +of prodigious volume. It was only when the sight, so idle in its own +behalf, came to the aid of the other sense, and showed them the mute +movement of each other's lips, that they dimly appreciated the depth of +sound that involved them. + +“I think you might have been high-strung there, for a second or two,” + said Basil, when, ascending the incline; he could make himself heard. +“We will try the bridge next.” + +Over the river, so still with its oily eddies and delicate wreaths of +foam, just below the Falls they have in late years woven a web of wire +high in air, and hung a bridge from precipice to precipice. Of all the +bridges made with hands it seems the lightest, most ethereal; it is +ideally graceful, and droops from its slight towers like a garland. It +is worthy to command, as it does, the whole grandeur of Niagara, and +to show the traveller the vast spectacle, from the beginning of the +American Fall to the farthest limit of the Horse-Shoe, with all the +awful pomp of the rapids, the solemn darkness of the wooded islands, the +mystery of the vaporous gulf, the indomitable wildness of the shores, as +far as the eye can reach up or down the fatal stream. + +To this bridge our friends now repaired, by a path that led through +another of those groves which keep the village back from the shores +of the river on the American side, and greatly help the sight-seer's +pleasure in the place. The exquisite structure, which sways so +tremulously from its towers, and seems to lay so slight a hold on earth +where its cables sink into the ground, is to other bridges what the +blood horse is to the common breed of roadsters; and now they felt its +sensitive nerves quiver under them and sympathetically through them +as they advanced farther and farther toward the centre. Perhaps their +sympathy with the bridge's trepidation was too great for unalloyed +delight, and yet the thrill was a glorious one, to be known only there; +and afterwards, at least, they would not have had their airy path seem +more secure. + +The last hues of sunset lingered in the mists that sprung from the base +of the Falls with a mournful, tremulous grace, and a movement weird +as the play of the northern lights. They were touched with the most +delicate purples and crimsons, that darkened to deep red, and then faded +from them at a second look, and they flew upward, swiftly upward, like +troops of pale, transparent ghosts; while a perfectly clear radiance, +better than any other for local color, dwelt upon the scene. Far under +the bridge the river smoothly swam, the undercurrents forever unfolding +themselves upon the surface with a vast rose-like evolution, edged all +round with faint lines of white, where the air that filled the water +freed itself in foam. What had been clear green on the face of the +cataract was here more like rich verd-antique, and had a look of +firmness almost like that of the stone itself. So it showed beneath +the bridge, and down the river till the curving shores hid it. These, +springing abruptly from the water's brink, and shagged with pine and +cedar, displayed the tender verdure of grass and bushes intermingled +with the dark evergreens that comb from ledge to ledge, till they point +their speary tops above the crest of bluffs. In front, where tumbled +rocks and expanses of caked clay varied the gloomier and gayer green, +sprung those spectral mists; and through them loomed out, in its +manifold majesty, Niagara, with the seemingly immovable white Gothic +screen of the American Fall, and the green massive curve of the +Horseshoe, solid and simple and calm as an Egyptian wall; while behind +this, with their white and black expanses broken by dark foliaged little +isles, the steep Canadian rapids billowed down between their heavily +wooded shores. + +The wedding-journeyers hung, they knew not how long, in rapture on the +sight; and then, looking back from the shore to the spot where they had +stood, they felt relieved that unreality should possess itself of all, +and that the bridge should swing there in mid-air like a filmy web, +scarce more passable than the rainbow that flings its arch above the +mists. + +On the portico of the hotel they found half a score of gentlemen +smoking, and creating together that collective silence which passes for +sociality on our continent. Some carriages stood before the door, and +within, around the base of a pillar, sat a circle of idle call-boys. +There were a few trunks heaped together in one place, with a porter +standing guard over them; a solitary guest was buying a cigar at the +newspaper stand in one corner; another friendless creature was writing a +letter in the reading-room; the clerk, in a seersucker coat and a lavish +shirt-bosom, tried to give the whole an effect of watering-place gayety +and bustle, as he provided a newly arrived guest with a room. + +Our pair took in these traits of solitude and repose with indifference. +If the hotel had been thronged with brilliant company, they would have +been no more and no less pleased; and when, after supper, they came into +the grand parlor, and found nothing there but a marble-topped centre-table, +with a silver-plated ice-pitcher and a small company of goblets, +they sat down perfectly content in a secluded window-seat. They were +not seen by the three people who entered soon after, and halted in the +centre of the room. + +“Why, Kitty!” said one of the two ladies who must be in any +travelling-party of three, “this is more inappropriate to your gorgeous +array than the supper-room, even.” + +She who was called Kitty was armed, as for social conquest, in some kind +of airy evening-dress, and was looking round with bewilderment upon that +forlorn waste of carpeting and upholstery. She owned, with a smile, that +she had not seen so much of the world yet as she had been promised; but +she liked Niagara very much, and perhaps they should find the world at +breakfast. + +“No,” said the other lady, who was as unquiet as Kitty was calm, and who +seemed resolved to make the most of the worst, “it isn't probable that +the hotel will fill up overnight; and I feel personally responsible for +this state of things. Who would ever have supposed that Niagara would be +so empty? I thought the place was thronged the whole summer long. How do +you account for it, Richard?” + +The gentleman looked fatigued, as from a long-continued discussion +elsewhere of the matter in hand, and he said that he had not been trying +to account for it. + +“Then you don't care for Kitty's pleasure at all, and you don't want her +to enjoy herself. Why don't you take some interest in the matter?” + +“Why, if I accounted for the emptiness of Niagara in the most +satisfactory way, it wouldn't add a soul to the floating population. +Under the circumstances I prefer to leave it unexplained.” + +“Do you think it's because it's such a hot summer? Do you suppose +it's not exactly the season? Didn't you expect there'd be more people? +Perhaps Niagara isn't as fashionable as it used to be.” + +“It looks something like that.” + +“Well, what under the sun do you think is the reason?” + +“I don't know.” + +“Perhaps,” interposed Kitty, placidly, “most of the visitors go to the +other hotel, now.” + +“It's altogether likely,” said the other lady, eagerly. “There are just +such caprices.” + +“Well,” said Richard, “I wanted you to go there.” + +“But you said that you always heard this was the a most fashionable.” + +“I know it. I didn't want to come here for that reason. But fortune +favors the brave.” + +“Well, it's too bad! Here we've asked Kitty to come to Niagara with us, +just to give her a little peep into the world, and you've brought us to +a hotel where we're--” + +“Monarchs of all we survey,” suggested Kitty. + +“Yes, and start at the sound of our own,” added the other lady, +helplessly. + +“Come now, Fanny,” said the gentleman, who was but too clearly the +husband of the last speaker. “You know you insisted, against all I could +say or do, upon coming to this house; I implored you to go to the other, +and now you blame me for bringing you here.” + +“So I do. If you'd let me have my own way without opposition about +coming here, I dare say I should have gone to the other place. But never +mind. Kitty knows whom to blame, I hope. She 's your cousin.” + +Kitty was sitting with her hands quiescently folded in her lap. She now +rose and said that she did not know anything about the other hotel, and +perhaps it was just as empty as this. + +“It can't be. There can't be two hotels so empty,” said Fanny. “It don't +stand to reason.” + +“If you wish Kitty to see the world so much,” said the gentleman, “why +don't you take her on to Quebec, with us?” + +Kitty had left her seat beside Fanny, and was moving with a listless +content about the parlor. + +“I wonder you ask, Richard, when you know she's only come for the night, +and has nothing with her but a few cuffs and collars! I certainly never +heard of anything so absurd before!” + +The absurdity of the idea then seemed to cast its charm upon her, for, +after a silence, “I could lend her some things,” she said musingly. “But +don't speak of it to-night, please. It's too ridiculous. Kitty!” she +called out, and, as the young lady drew near, she continued, “How would +you like to go to Quebec, with us?” + +“O Fanny!” cried Kitty, with rapture; and then, with dismay, “How can +I?” + +“Why, very well, I think. You've got this dress, and your +travelling-suit; and I can lend you whatever you want. Come!” she added +joyously, “let's go up to your room, and talk it over!” + +The two ladies vanished upon this impulse, and the gentleman followed. +To their own relief the guiltless eaves-droppers, who found no moment +favorable for revealing themselves after the comedy began, issued from +their retiracy. + +“What a remarkable little lady!” said Basil, eagerly turning to Isabel +for sympathy in his enjoyment of her inconsequence. + +“Yes, poor thing!” returned his wife; “it's no light matter to invite +a young lady to take a journey with you, and promise her all sorts of +gayety, and perhaps beaux and flirtations, and then find her on your +hands in a desolation like this. It's dreadful, I think.” + +Basil stared. “O, certainly,” he said. “But what an amusingly illogical +little body!” + +“I don't understand what you mean, Basil. It was the only thing that +she could do, to invite the young lady to go on with them. I wonder her +husband had the sense to think of it first. Of course she'll have to +lend her things.” + +“And you didn't observe anything peculiar in her way of reaching her +conclusions?” + +“Peculiar? What do you mean?” + +“Why, her blaming her husband for letting her have her own way about +the hotel; and her telling him not to mention his proposal to Kitty, +and then doing it herself, just--after she'd pronounced it absurd and +impossible.” He spoke with heat at being forced to make what he thought +a needless explanation. + +“O!” said Isabel, after a moment's reflection. “That! Did you think it +so very odd?” + +Her husband looked at her with the gravity a man must feel when he +begins to perceive that he has married the whole mystifying world of +womankind in the woman of his choice, and made no answer. But to his own +soul he said: “I supposed I had the pleasure of my wife's acquaintance. +It seems I have been flattering myself.” + +The next morning they went out as they had planned, for an exploration +of Goat Island, after an early breakfast. As they sauntered through +the village's contrasts of pigmy and colossal in architecture, they +praisefully took in the unalloyed holiday character of the place, +enjoying equally the lounging tourists at the hotel doors, the drivers +and their carriages to let, and the little shops, with nothing but +mementos of Niagara, and Indian beadwork, and other trumpery, to sell. +Shops so useless, they agreed, could not be found outside the Palms +Royale, or the Square of St. Mark, or anywhere else in the world +but here. They felt themselves once more a part of the tide of mere +sight-seeing pleasure-travel, on which they had drifted in other days, +and in an eddy of which their love itself had opened its white blossom, +and lily-like dreamed upon the wave. + +They were now also part of the great circle of newly wedded bliss, +which, involving the whole land during the season of bridal-tours, may +be said to show richest and fairest at Niagara, like the costly jewel +of a precious ring. The place is, in fact, almost abandoned to bridal +couples, and any one out of his honey-moon is in some degree an alien +there, and must discern a certain immodesty in him intrusion. Is it for +his profane eyes to look upon all that blushing and trembling joy? A man +of any sensibility must desire to veil his face, and, bowing his excuses +to the collective rapture, take the first train for the wicked outside +world to which he belongs. Everywhere, he sees brides and brides. Three +or four with the benediction still on them, come down in the same car +with him; he hands her travelling-shawl after one as she springs from +the omnibus into her husband's arms; there are two or three walking back +and forth with their new lords upon the porch of the hotel; at supper +they are on every side of him, and he feels himself suffused, as it +were, by a roseate atmosphere of youth and love and hope. At breakfast +it is the same, and then, in his wanderings about the place he +constantly meets them. They are of all manners of beauty, fair and dark, +slender and plump, tall and short; but they are all beautiful with the +radiance of loving and being loved. Now, if ever in their lives, they +are charmingly dressed, and ravishing toilets take the willing eye from +the objects of interest. How high the heels of the pretty boots, how +small the tender-tinted gloves, how electrical the flutter of the snowy +skirts! What is Niagara to these things? + +Isabel was not willing to own her bridal sisterhood to these blessed +souls; but she secretly rejoiced in it, even while she joined Basil in +noting their number and smiling at their innocent abandon. She dropped +his arm at encounter of the first couple, and walked carelessly at his +side; she made a solemn vow never to take hold of his watch-chain in +speaking to him; she trusted that she might be preserved from putting +her face very close to his at dinner in studying the bill of fare; +getting out of carriages, she forbade him ever to take her by the waist. +All ascetic resolutions are modified by experiment; but if Isabel did +not rigorously keep these, she is not the less to be praised for having +formed them. + +Just before they reached the bridge to Goat Island, they passed a +little group of the Indians still lingering about Niagara, who make the +barbaric wares in which the shops abound, and, like the woods and the +wild faces of the cliffs and precipices, help to keep the cataract +remote, and to invest it with the charm of primeval loneliness. This +group were women, and they sat motionless on the ground, smiling +sphinx-like over their laps full of bead-work, and turning their dark +liquid eyes of invitation upon the passers. They wore bright kirtles, +and red shawls fell from their heads over their plump brown cheeks and +down their comfortable persons. A little girl with them was attired in +like gayety of color. “What is her name?” asked Isabel, paying for a +bead pincushion. “Daisy Smith,” said her mother, in distressingly good +English. “But her Indian name?” “She has none,” answered the woman, who +told Basil that her village numbered five hundred people, and that they +were Protestants. While they talked they were joined by an Indian, whom +the women saluted musically in their native tongue. This was somewhat +consoling; but he wore trousers and a waistcoat, and it could have been +wished that he had not a silk hat on. + +“Still,” said Isabel, as they turned away, “I'm glad he hasn't +Lisle-thread gloves, like that chieftain we saw putting his forest +queen on board the train at Oneida. But how shocking that they should be +Christians, and Protestants! It would have been bad enough to have them +Catholics. And that woman said that they were increasing. They ought to +be fading away.” + +On the bridge, they paused and looked up and down the rapids rushing +down the slope in all their wild variety, with the white crests of +breaking surf, the dark massiveness of heavy-climbing waves, the fleet, +smooth sweep of currents over broad shelves of sunken rock, the dizzy +swirl and suck of whirlpools. + +Spell-bound, the journeyers pored upon the deathful course beneath +their feet, gave a shudder to the horror of being cast upon it, and then +hurried over the bridge to the island, in the shadow of whose wildness +they sought refuge from the sight and sound. + +There had been rain in the night; the air war full of forest fragrance, +and the low, sweet voice of twittering birds. Presently they came to a +bench set in a corner of the path, and commanding a pleasant vista of +sunlit foliage, with a mere gleam of the foaming river beyond. As they +sat down here loverwise, Basil, as in the early days of their courtship, +began to recite a poem. It was one which had been haunting him since his +first sight of the rapids, one of many that he used to learn by heart +in his youth--the rhyme of some poor newspaper poet, whom the third or +fourth editor copying his verses consigned to oblivion by carelessly +clipping his name from the bottom. It had always lingered in Basil's +memory, rather from the interest of the awful fact it recorded, than +from any merit of its own; and now he recalled it with a distinctness +that surprised him. + + AVERY. + + I. + All night long they heard in the houses beside the shore, Heard, or + seemed to hear, through the multitudinous roar, Out of the hell of the + rapids as 'twere a lost soul's cries Heard and could not believe; and + the morning mocked their eyes, Showing where wildest and fiercest the + waters leaped up and ran Raving round him and past, the visage of a man + Clinging, or seeming to cling, to the trunk of a tree that, caught Fast + in the rocks below, scarce out of the surges raught. Was it a life, + could it be, to yon slender hope that clung Shrill, above all the tumult + the answering terror rang. + + II. + Under the weltering rapids a boat from the bridge is drowned, Over the + rocks the lines of another are tangled and wound, And the long, fateful + hours of the morning have wasted soon, As it had been in some blessed + trance, and now it is noon. Hurry, now with the raft! But O, build it + strong and stanch, And to the lines and the treacherous rocks look well + as you launch Over the foamy tops of the waves, and their foam-sprent + sides, Over the hidden reefs, and through the embattled tides, Onward + rushes the raft, with many a lurch and leap,--Lord! if it strike him + loose from the hold he scarce can keep! No! through all peril unharmed, + it reaches him harmless at least, And to its proven strength he lashes + his weakness fast. Now, for the shore! But steady, steady, my men, and + slow; Taut, now, the quivering lines; now slack; and so, let her go! + Thronging the shores around stands the pitying multitude; Wan as his + own are their looks, and a nightmare seems to brood Heavy upon them, + and heavy the silence hangs on all, Save for the rapids' plunge, and the + thunder of the fall. But on a sudden thrills from the people still + and pale, Chorussing his unheard despair, a desperate wail Caught on a + lurking point of rock it sways and swings, Sport of the pitiless waters, + the raft to which he clings. + + III. + All the long afternoon it idly swings and sways; And on the shore the + crowd lifts up its hands and prays: Lifts to heaven and wrings the hands + so helpless to save, Prays for the mercy of God on him whom the rock and + the ways Battle for, fettered betwixt them, and who amidst their strife + Straggles to help his helpers, and fights so hard for his life, Tugging + at rope and at reef, while men weep and women swoon. Priceless second by + second, so wastes the afternoon. And it is sunset now; and another boat + and the last Down to him from the bridge through the rapids has safely + passed. + + IV. + Wild through the crowd comes flying a man that nothing can stay + Maddening against the gate that is locked athwart his way. “No! we keep + the bridge for them that can help him. You, Tell us, who are you?” “His + brother!” “God help you both! Pass through.” Wild, with wide arms of + imploring he calls aloud to him, Unto the face of his brother, scarce + seen in the distance dim; But in the roar of the rapids his fluttering + words are lost As in a wind of autumn the leaves of autumn are tossed. + And from the bridge he sees his brother sever the rope Holding him + to the raft, and rise secure in his hope; Sees all as in a dream the + terrible pageantry, Populous shores, the woods, the sky, the birds + flying free; Sees, then, the form--that, spent with effort and fasting + and fear, Flings itself feebly and fails of the boat that is lying so + near, Caught in the long-baffled clutch of the rapids, and rolled and + hurled Headlong on to the cataract's brink, and out of the world. + + +“O Basil!” said Isabel, with a long sigh breaking the hush that best +praised the unknown poet's skill, “it isn't true, is it?” + +“Every word, almost, even to the brother's coming at the last moment. +It's a very well-known incident,” he added, and I am sure the reader +whose memory runs back twenty years cannot have forgotten it. + +Niagara, indeed, is an awful homicide; nearly every point of interest +about the place has killed its man, and there might well be a deeper +stain of crimson than it ever wears in that pretty bow overarching the +falls. Its beauty is relieved against an historical background as gloomy +as the lightest-hearted tourist could desire. The abominable savages, +revering the cataract as a kind of august devil, and leading a life of +demoniacal misery and wickedness, whom the first Jesuits found here two +hundred years ago; the ferocious Iroquois bloodily driving out these +squalid devil-worshippers; the French planting the fort that yet guards +the mouth of the river, and therewith the seeds of war that fruited +afterwards in murderous strifes throughout the whole Niagara country; +the struggle for the military posts on the river, during the wars of +France and England; the awful scene in the conspiracy of Pontiac, +where a detachment of English troops was driven by the Indians over the +precipice near the great Whirlpool; the sorrow and havoc visited upon +the American settlements in the Revolution by the savages who prepared +their attacks in the shadow of Fort Niagara; the battles of Chippewa and +of Lundy's Lane, that mixed the roar of their cannon with that of +the fall; the savage forays with tomahawk and scalping-knife, and the +blazing villages on either shore in the War of 1812,--these are the +memories of the place, the links in a chain of tragical interest +scarcely broken before our time since the white man first beheld the +mist-veiled face of Niagara. The facts lost nothing of their due effect +as Basil, in the ramble across Goat Island, touched them with the +reflected light of Mr. Parkman's histories,--those precious books that +make our meagre past wear something of the rich romance of old European +days, and illumine its savage solitudes with the splendor of mediaeval +chivalry, and the glory of mediaeval martyrdom,--and then, lacking this +light, turned upon them the feeble glimmer of the guide-books. He and +Isabel enjoyed the lurid picture with all the zest of sentimentalists +dwelling upon the troubles of other times from the shelter of the safe +and peaceful present. They were both poets in their quality of bridal +couple, and so long as their own nerves were unshaken they could +transmute all facts to entertaining fables. They pleasantly exercised +their sympathies upon those who every year perish at Niagara in the +tradition of its awful power; only they refused their cheap and selfish +compassion to the Hermit of Goat Island, who dwelt so many years in its +conspicuous seclusion, and was finally carried over the cataract. This +public character they suspected of design in his death as in his life, +and they would not be moved by his memory; though they gave a sigh to +that dream, half pathetic, half ludicrous, yet not ignoble, of Mordecai +Noah, who thought to assemble all the Jews of the world, and all the +Indians, as remnants of the lost tribes, upon Grand Island, there to +rebuild Jerusalem, and who actually laid the corner-stone of the new +temple there. + +Goat Island is marvelously wild for a place visited by so many thousands +every year. The shrubbery and undergrowth remain unravaged, and form a +deceitful privacy, in which, even at that early hour of the day, they +met many other pairs. It seemed incredible that the village and the +hotels should be so full, and that the wilderness should also abound in +them; yet on every embowered seat, and going to and from all points of +interest and danger, were these new-wedded lovers with their interlacing +arms and their fond attitudes, in which each seemed to support and lean +upon the other. Such a pair stood prominent before them when Basil and +Isabel emerged at last from the cover of the woods at the head of the +island, and glanced up the broad swift stream to the point where it ran +smooth before breaking into the rapids; and as a soft pastoral feature +in the foreground of that magnificent landscape, they found them far +from unpleasing. Some such pair is in the foreground of every famous +American landscape; and when I think of the amount of public love-making +in the season of pleasure-travel, from Mount Desert to the Yosemite, +and from the parks of Colorado to the Keys of Florida, I feel that our +continent is but a larger Arcady, that the middle of the nineteenth +century is the golden age, and that we want very little of being a +nation of shepherds and shepherdesses. + +Our friends returned by the shore of the Canadian rapids, having +traversed the island by a path through the heart of the woods, and now +drew slowly near the Falls again. All parts of the prodigious pageant +have an eternal novelty, and they beheld the ever-varying effect of that +constant sublimity with the sense of discoverers, or rather of people +whose great fortune it is to see the marvel in its beginning, and new +from the creating hand. The morning hour lent its sunny charm to this +illusion, while in the cavernous precipices of the shores, dark with +evergreens, a mystery as of primeval night seemed to linger. There was +a wild fluttering of their nerves, a rapture with an under-consciousness +of pain, the exaltation of peril and escape, when they came to the three +little isles that extend from Goat Island, one beyond another far out +into the furious channel. Three pretty suspension-bridges connect them +now with the larger island, and under each of these flounders a huge +rapid, and hurls itself away to mingle with the ruin of the fall. The +Three Sisters are mere fragments of wilderness, clumps of vine-tangled +woods, planted upon masses of rock; but they are part of the fascination +of Niagara which no one resists; nor could Isabel have been persuaded +from exploring them. It wants no courage to do this, but merely +submission to the local sorcery, and the adventurer has no other reward +than the consciousness of having been where but a few years before no +human being had perhaps set foot. She crossed from bridge to bridge +with a quaking heart, and at last stood upon the outermost isle, whence, +through the screen of vines and boughs, she gave fearful glances at +the heaving and tossing flood beyond, from every wave of which at every +instant she rescued herself with a desperate struggle. The exertion told +heavily upon her strength unawares, and she suddenly made Basil another +revelation of character. Without the slightest warning she sank down +at the root of a tree, and said, with serious composure, that she could +never go back on those bridges; they were not safe. He stared at her +cowering form in blank amaze, and put his hands in his pockets. Then +it occurred to his dull masculine sense that it must be a joke; and he +said, “Well, I'll have you taken off in a boat.” + +“O do, Basil, do, have me taken off in a boat!” implored Isabel. “You +see yourself the bridges are not safe. Do get a boat.” + +“Or a balloon,” he suggested, humoring the pleasantry. + +Isabel burst into tears; and now he went on his knees at her side, and +took her hands in his. “Isabel! Isabel! Are you crazy?” he cried, as if +he meant to go mad himself. She moaned and shuddered in reply; he said, +to mend matters, that it was a jest, about the boat; and he was driven +to despair when Isabel repeated, “I never can go back by the bridges, +never.” + +“But what do you propose to do?” + +“I don't know, I don't know!” + +He would try sarcasm. “Do you intend to set up a hermitage here, and +have your meals sent out from the hotel? It's a charming spot, and +visited pretty constantly; but it's small, even for a hermitage.” + +Isabel moaned again with her hands still on her eyes, and wondered that +he was not ashamed to make fun of her. + +He would try kindness. “Perhaps, darling, you'll let me carry you +ashore.” + +“No, that will bring double the weight on the bridge at once.” + +“Couldn't you shut your eyes, and let me lead you?” + +“Why, it isn't the sight of the rapids,” she said, looking up fiercely. +“The bridges are not safe. I'm not a child, Basil. O, what shall we do?” + +“I don't know,” said Basil, gloomily. “It's an exigency for which I +wasn't prepared.” Then he silently gave himself to the Evil One, for +having probably overwrought Isabel's nerves by repeating that poem about +Avery, and by the ensuing talk about Niagara, which she had seemed to +enjoy so much. He asked her if that was it; and she answered, “O no, +it's nothing but the bridges.” He proved to her that the bridges, upon +all known principles, were perfectly safe, and that they could not give +way. She shook her head, but made no answer, and he lost his patience. + +“Isabel,” he cried, “I'm ashamed of you!” + +“Don't say anything you'll be sorry for afterwards, Basil,” she replied, +with the forbearance of those who have reason and justice on their side. + +The rapids beat and shouted round their little prison-isle, each billow +leaping as if possessed by a separate demon. The absurd horror of the +situation overwhelmed him. He dared not attempt to carry her ashore, for +she might spring from his grasp into the flood. He could not leave her +to call for help; and what if nobody came till she lost her mind +from terror? Or, what if somebody should come and find them in that +ridiculous affliction? + +Somebody was coming! + +“Isabel!” he shouted in her ear, “here come those people we saw in the +parlor last night.” + +Isabel dashed her veil over her face, clutched Basil's with her icy +hand, rose, drew her arm convulsively through his, and walked ashore +without a word. + +In a sheltered nook they sat down, and she quickly “repaired her +drooping head and tricked her beams” again. He could see her tearfully +smiling through her veil. “My dear,” he said, “I don't ask an +explanation of your fright, for I don't suppose you could give it. But +should you mind telling me why those people were so sovereign against +it?” + +“Why, dearest! Don't you understand? That Mrs. Richard--whoever she +is--is so much like me.” + +She looked at him as if she had made the most satisfying statement, and +he thought he had better not ask further then, but wait in hope that the +meaning would come to him. They walked on in silence till they came to +the Biddle Stairs, at the head of which is a notice that persons have +been killed by pieces of rock from the precipice overhanging the shore +below, and warning people that they descend at their peril. Isabel +declined to visit the Cave of the Winds, to which these stairs lead, but +was willing to risk the ascent of Terrapin Tower. “Thanks; no,” said her +husband. “You might find it unsafe to come back the way you went up. +We can't count certainly upon the appearance of the lady who is so much +like you; and I've no fancy for spending my life on Terrapin Tower.” So +he found her a seat, and went alone to the top of the audacious little +structure standing on the verge of the cataract, between the smooth +curve of the Horse-Shoe and the sculptured front of the Central Fall, +with the stormy sea of the Rapids behind, and the river, dim seen +through the mists, crawling away between its lofty bluffs before. He +knew again the awful delight with which so long ago he had watched +the changes in the beauty of the Canadian Fall as it hung a mass of +translucent green from the brink, and a pearly white seemed to crawl up +from the abyss, and penetrate all its substance to the very crest, and +then suddenly vanished from it, and perpetually renewed the same effect. +The mystery of the rising vapors veiled the gulf into which the cataract +swooped; the sun shone, and a rainbow dreamed upon them. + +Near the foot of the tower, some loose rocks extend quite to the verge, +and here Basil saw an elderly gentleman skipping from one slippery stone +to another, and looking down from time to time into the abyss, who, when +he had amused himself long enough in this way, clambered up on the plank +bridge. Basil, who had descended by this time, made bold to say that +he thought the diversion an odd one and rather dangerous. The gentleman +took this in good part, and owned it might seem so, but added that a +distinguished phrenologist had examined his head, and told him he had +equilibrium so large that he could go anywhere. + +“On your bridal tour, I presume,” he continued, as they approached the +bench where Basil had left Isabel. She had now the company of a plain, +middle-aged woman, whose attire hesitatingly expressed some inward +festivity, and had a certain reluctant fashionableness. “Well, this is +my third bridal tour to Niagara, and my wife's been here once before on +the same business. We see a good many changes. I used to stand on Table +Rock with the others. Now that's all gone. Well, old lady, shall we move +on?” he asked; and this bridal pair passed up the path, attended, haply, +by the guardian spirits of those who gave the place so many sad yet +pleasing associations. + +At dinner, Mr. Richard's party sat at the table next Basil's, and they +were all now talking cheerfully over the emptiness of the spacious +dining-hall. + +“Well, Kitty,” the married lady was saying, “you can tell the girls what +you please about the gayeties of Niagara, when you get home. They'll +believe anything sooner than the truth.” + +“O yes, indeed,” said Kitty, “I've got a good deal of it made up +already. I'll describe a grand hop at the hotel, with fashionable people +from all parts of the country, and the gentlemen I danced with the most. +I'm going to have had quite a flirtation with the gentleman of the long +blond mustache, whom we met on the bridge this morning and he's got to +do duty in accounting for my missing glove. It'll never do to tell the +girls I dropped it from the top of Terrapin Tower. Then you know, Fanny, +I really can say something about dining with aristocratic Southerners, +waited upon by their black servants.” + +This referred to the sad-faced patrician whom Basil and Isabel had noted +in the cars from Buffalo as a Southerner probably coming North for the +first time since the war. He had an air at once fierce and sad, and a +half-barbaric, homicidal gentility of manner fascinating enough in its +way. He sat with his wife at a table farther down the room, and their +child was served in part by a little tan-colored nurse-maid. The fact +did not quite answer to the young lady's description of it, and get +it certainly afforded her a ground-work. Basil fancied a sort of +bewilderment in the Southerner, and explained it upon the theory that he +used to come every year to Niagara before the war, and was now puzzled +to find it so changed. + +“Yes,” he said, “I can't account for him except as the ghost of Southern +travel, and I can't help feeling a little sorry for him. I suppose that +almost any evil commends itself by its ruin; the wrecks of slavery are +fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment, and they may yet outflourish +the remains of the feudal system in the kind of poetry they produce. The +impoverished slave-holder is a pathetic figure, in spite of all justice +and reason, the beaten rebel does move us to compassion, and it is of +no use to think of Andersonville in his presence. This gentleman, and +others like him, used to be the lords of our summer resorts. They spent +the money they did not earn like princes; they held their heads high; +they trampled upon the Abolitionist in his lair; they received the +homage of the doughface in his home. They came up here from their +rice-swamps and cotton-fields, and bullied the whole busy civilization +of the North. Everybody who had merchandise or principles to sell +truckled to them, and travel amongst us was a triumphal progress. Now +they're moneyless and subjugated (as they call it), there's none so poor +to do them reverence, and it's left for me, an Abolitionist from the +cradle, to sigh over their fate. After all, they had noble traits, and +it was no great wonder they got, to despise us, seeing what most of +us were. It seems to me I should like to know our friend. I can't help +feeling towards him as towards a fallen prince, heaven help my craven +spirit! I wonder how our colored waiter feels towards him. I dare say he +admires him immensely.” + +There were not above a dozen other people in the room, and Basil +contrasted the scene with that which the same place formerly presented. +“In the old time,” he said, “every table was full, and we dined to the +music of a brass band. I can't say I liked the band, but I miss it. +I wonder if our Southern friend misses it? They gave us a very small +allowance of brass band when we arrived, Isabel. Upon my word, I wonder +what's come over the place,” he said, as the Southern party, rising from +the table, walked out of the dining-room, attended by many treacherous +echoes in spite of an ostentatious clatter of dishes that the waiters +made. + +After dinner they drove on the Canada shore up past the Clifton House, +towards the Burning Spring, which is not the least wonder of Niagara. +As each bubble breaks upon the troubled surface, and yields its flash +of infernal flame and its whiff of sulphurous stench, it seems hardly +strange that the Neutral Nation should have revered the cataract as +a demon; and another subtle spell (not to be broken even by the +business-like composure of the man who shows off the hell-broth) is +added to those successive sorceries by which Niagara gradually changes +from a thing of beauty to a thing of terror. By all odds, too, the +most tremendous view of the Falls is afforded by the point on the drive +whence you look down upon the Horse-Shoe, and behold its three massive +walls of sea rounding and sweeping into the gulf together, the color +gone, and the smooth brink showing black and ridgy. + +Would they not go to the battle-field of Lundy's Lane? asked the +driver at a certain point on their return; but Isabel did not care for +battle-fields, and Basil preferred to keep intact the reminiscence of +his former visit. “They have a sort of tower of observation built on the +battle-ground,” he said, as they drove on down by the river, “and it was +in charge of an old Canadian militia-man, who had helped his countrymen +to be beaten in the fight. This hero gave me a simple and unintelligible +account of the battle, asking me first if I had ever heard of General +Scott, and adding without flinching that here he got his earliest +laurels. He seemed to go just so long to every listener, and nothing +could stop him short, so I fell into a revery until he came to an end. +It was hard to remember, that sweet summer morning, when the sun shone, +and the birds sang, and the music of a piano and a girl's voice rose +from a bowery cottage near, that all the pure air had once been tainted +with battle-smoke, that the peaceful fields had been planted with +cannon, instead of potatoes and corn, and that where the cows came +down the farmer's lane, with tinkling bells, the shock of armed men had +befallen. The blue and tranquil Ontario gleamed far away, and far away +rolled the beautiful land, with farm-houses, fields, and woods, and at +the foot of the tower lay the pretty village. The battle of the past +seemed only a vagary of mine; yet how could I doubt the warrior at my +elbow?--grieved though I was to find that a habit of strong drink +had the better of his utterance that morning. My driver explained +afterwards, that persons visiting the field were commonly so much +pleased with the captain's eloquence, that they kept the noble old +soldier in a brandy-and-water rapture throughout the season, thereby +greatly refreshing his memory, and making the battle bloodier and +bloodier as the season advanced and the number of visitors increased. +There my dear,” he suddenly broke off, as they came in sight of a +slender stream of water that escaped from the brow of a cliff on the +American side below the Falls, and spun itself into a gauze of silvery +mist, “that's the Bridal Veil; and I suppose you think the stream, which +is making such a fine display, yonder, is some idle brooklet, ending a +long course of error and worthlessness by that spectacular plunge. +It's nothing of the kind; it's an honest hydraulic canal, of the most +straightforward character, a poor but respectable mill-race which has +devoted itself strictly to business, and has turned mill-wheels instead +of fooling round water-lilies. It can afford that ultimate finery. What +you behold in the Bridal Veil, my love, is the apotheosis of industry.” + +“What I can't help thinking of,” said Isabel, who had not paid the +smallest attention to the Bridal Veil, or anything about it, “is the +awfulness of stepping off these places in the night-time.” She referred +to the road which, next the precipice, is unguarded by any sort of +parapet. In Europe a strong wall would secure it, but we manage things +differently on our continent, and carriages go running over the brink +from time to time. + +“If your thoughts have that direction,” answered her husband, “we had +better go back to the hotel, and leave the Whirlpool for to-morrow +morning. It's late for it to-day, at any rate.” He had treated Isabel +since the adventure on the Three Sisters with a superiority which he +felt himself to be very odious, but which he could not disuse. + +“I'm not afraid,” she sighed, “but in the words of the retreating +soldier, I--I'm awfully demoralized;” and added, “You know we must +reserve some of the vital forces for shopping this evening.” + +Part of their business also was to buy the tickets for their return to +Boston by way of Montreal and Quebec, and it was part of their pleasure +to get these of the heartiest imaginable ticket-agent. He was a colonel +or at least a major, and he made a polite feint of calling Basil by some +military title. He commended the trip they were about to make as the +most magnificent and beautiful on the whole continent, and he commended +them for intending to make it. He said that was Mrs. General Bowdur of +Philadelphia who just went out; did they know her? Somehow, the titles +affected Basil as of older date than the late war, and as belonging to +the militia period; and he imagined for the agent the romance of a +life spent at a watering-place, in contact with rich money-spending, +pleasure-taking people, who formed his whole jovial world. The Colonel, +who included them in this world, and thereby brevetted them rich and +fashionable, could not secure a state-room for them on the boat,--a +perfectly splendid Lake steamer, which would take them down the rapids +of the St. Lawrence, and on to Montreal without change,--but he would +give them a letter to the captain, who was a very particular friend of +his, and would be happy to show them as his friends every attention; and +so he wrote a note ascribing peculiar merits to Basil, and in spite of +all reason making him feel for the moment that he was privileged by a +document which was no doubt part of every such transaction. He spoke in +a loud cheerful voice; he laughed jollily at no apparent joke; he bowed +very low and said, “GOOD-evening!” at parting, and they went away as if +he had blessed them. + +The rest of the evening they spent in wandering through the village, +charmed with its bizarre mixture of quaintness and commonplaceness; in +hanging about the shop-windows with their monotonous variety of feather +fans,--each with a violently red or yellow bird painfully sacrificed in +its centre,--moccasins, bead-wrought work-bags, tobacco-pouches, bows +and arrows, and whatever else the savage art of the neighboring squaws +can invent; in sauntering through these gay booths, pricing many things, +and in hanging long and undecidedly over cases full of feldspar crosses, +quartz bracelets and necklaces, and every manner of vase, inoperative +pitcher, and other vessel that can be fashioned out of the geological +formations at Niagara, tormented meantime by the heat of the gas-lights +and the persistence of the mosquitoes. There were very few people +besides themselves in the shops, and Isabel's purchases were not lavish. +Her husband had made up his mind to get her some little keepsake; and +when he had taken her to the hotel he ran back to one of the shops, and +hastily bought her a feather fan,--a magnificent thing of deep magenta +dye shading into blue, with a whole yellow-bird transfixed in the +centre. When he triumphantly displayed it in their room, “Who's that +for, Basil?” demanded his wife; “the cook?” But seeing his ghastly +look at this, she fell upon his neck, crying, “O you poor old tasteless +darling! You've got it for me!” and seemed about to die of laughter. + +“Didn't you start and throw up your hands,” he stammered, “when you came +to that case of fans?” + +“Yes,--in horror! Did you think I liked the cruel things, with +their dead birds and their hideous colors? O Basil, dearest! You are +incorrigible. Can't you learn that magenta is the vilest of all the hues +that the perverseness of man has invented in defiance of nature? Now, my +love, just promise me one thing,” she said pathetically. “We're going +to do a little shopping in Montreal, you know; and perhaps you'll be +wanting to surprise me with something there. Don't do it. Or if you +must, do tell me all about it beforehand, and what the color of it's to +be; and I can say whether to get it or not, and then there'll be some +taste about it, and I shall be truly surprised and pleased.” + +She turned to put the fan into her trunk, and he murmured something +about exchanging it. “No,” she said, “we'll keep it as a--a--monument.” + And she deposed him, with another peal of laughter, from the proud +height to which he had climbed in pity of her nervous fears of the day. +So completely were their places changed, that he doubted if it were not +he who had made that scene on the Third Sister; and when Isabel said, +“O, why won't men use their reasoning faculties?” he could not for +himself have claimed any, and he could not urge the truth: that he had +bought the fan more for its barbaric brightness than for its beauty. +She would not let him get angry, and he could say nothing against the +half-ironical petting with which she soothed his mortification. + +But all troubles passed with the night, and the next morning they +spent a charming hour about Prospect Point, and in sauntering over Goat +Island, somewhat daintily tasting the flavors of the place on whose +wonders they had so hungrily and indiscriminately feasted at first. They +had already the feeling of veteran visitors, and they loftily marveled +at the greed with which newer-comers plunged at the sensations. They +could not conceive why people should want to descend the inclined +railway to the foot of the American Fall; they smiled at the idea of +going up Terrapin Tower; they derided the vulgar daring of those who +went out upon the Three Weird Sisters; for some whom they saw about to +go down the Biddle Stairs to the Cave of the Winds, they had no words to +express their contempt. + +Then they made their excursion to the Whirlpool, mistakenly going down +on the American side, for it is much better seen from the other, though +seen from any point it is the most impressive feature of the whole +prodigious spectacle of Niagara. + +Here within the compass of a mile, those inland seas of the North, +Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and the multitude of smaller lakes, +all pour their floods, where they swirl in dreadful vortices, with +resistless under-currents boiling beneath the surface of that mighty +eddy. Abruptly from this scene of secret power, so different from the +thunderous splendors of the cataract itself, rise lofty cliffs on every +side, to a height of two hundred feet, clothed from the water's edge +almost to their create with dark cedars. Noiselessly, so far as your +senses perceive, the lakes steal out of the whirlpool, then, drunk +and wild, with brawling rapids roar away to Ontario through the narrow +channel of the river. Awful as the scene is, you stand so far above it +that you do not know the half of its terribleness; for those waters that +look so smooth are great ridges and rings, forced, by the impulse of the +currents, twelve feet higher in the centre than at the margin. Nothing +can live there, and with what is caught in its hold, the maelstrom plays +for days, and whirls and tosses round and round in its toils, with a +sad, maniacal patience. The guides tell ghastly stories, which even +their telling does not wholly rob of ghastliness, about the bodies of +drowned men carried into the whirlpool and made to enact upon its dizzy +surges a travesty of life, apparently floating there at their pleasure, +diving and frolicking amid the waves, or frantically struggling to +escape from the death that has long since befallen them. + +On the American side, not far below the railway suspension bridge, is an +elevator more than a hundred and eighty feet high, which is meant to +let people down to the shore below, and to give a view of the rapids +on their own level. From the cliff opposite, it looks a terribly frail +structure of pine sticks, but is doubtless stronger than it looks; and +at any rate, as it has never yet fallen to pieces, it may be pronounced +perfectly safe. + +In the waiting-room at the top, Basil and Isabel found Mr. Richard and +his ladies again, who got into the movable chamber with them, and they +all silently descended together. It was not a time for talk of any kind, +either when they were slowly and not quite smoothly dropping through the +lugubrious upper part of the structure, where it was darkened by a rough +weatherboarding, or lower down, where the unobstructed light showed the +grim tearful face of the cliff, bedrabbled with oozy springs, and the +audacious slightness of the elevator. + +An abiding distrust of the machinery overhead mingled in Isabel's heart +with a doubt of the value of the scene below, and she could not look +forward to escape from her present perils by the conveyance which had +brought her into them, with any satisfaction. She wanly smiled, and +shrank closer to Basil; while the other matron made nothing of seizing +her husband violently by the arm and imploring him to stop it whenever +they experienced a rougher jolt than usual. + +At the bottom of the cliff they were helped out of their prison by a +humid young Englishman, with much clay on him, whose face was red and +bathed in perspiration, for it was very hot down there in his little +inclosure of baking pine boards, and it was not much cooler out on the +rocks upon which the party issued, descending and descending by repeated +and desultory flights of steps, till at last they stood upon a huge +fragment of stone right abreast of the rapids. Yet it was a magnificent +sight, and for a moment none of them were sorry to have come. The surges +did not look like the gigantic ripples on a river's course as they were, +but like a procession of ocean billows; they arose far aloft in vast +bulks of clear green, and broke heavily into foam at the crest. Great +blocks and shapeless fragments of rock strewed the margin of the awful +torrent; gloomy walls of dark stone rose naked from these, bearded +here and there with cedar, and everywhere frowning with shaggy brows of +evergreen. The place is inexpressibly lonely and dreadful, and one feels +like an alien presence there, or as if he had intruded upon some mood +or haunt of Nature in which she had a right to be forever alone. The +slight, impudent structure of the elevator rises through the solitude, +like a thing that merits ruin, yet it is better than something more +elaborate, for it looks temporary, and since there must be an elevator, +it is well to have it of the most transitory aspect. Some such quality +of rude impermanence consoles you for the presence of most improvements +by which you enjoy Niagara; the suspension bridges for their part being +saved from offensiveness by their beauty and unreality. + +Ascending, none of the party spoke; Isabel and the other matron blanched +in each other's faces; their husbands maintained a stolid resignation. +When they stepped out of their trap into the waiting room at the top, +“What I like about these little adventures,” said Mr. Richard to Basil, +abruptly, “is getting safely out of them. Good-morning, sir.” He bowed +slightly to Isabel, who returned his politeness, and exchanged faint +nods, or glances, with the ladies. They got into their separate +carriages, and at that safe distance made each other more decided +obeisances. + +“Well,” observed Basil, “I suppose we're introduced now. We shall be +meeting them from time to time throughout our journey. You know how the +same faces and the same trunks used to keep turning up in our travels on +the other side. Once meet people in travelling, and you can't get rid of +them.” + +“Yes,” said Isabel, as if continuing his train of thought, “I'm glad +we're going to-day.” + +“O dearest!” + +“Truly. When we first arrived I felt only the loveliness of the place. +It seemed more familiar, too, then; but ever since, it's been growing +stranger and dreadfuller. Somehow it's begun to pervade me and possess +me in a very uncomfortable way; I'm tossed upon rapids, and flung from +cataract brinks, and dizzied in whirlpools; I'm no longer yours, Basil; +I'm most unhappily married to Niagara. Fly with me, save me from my +awful lord!” + +She lightly burlesqued the woes of a prima donna, with clasped hands and +uplifted eyes. + +“That'll do very well,” Basil commented, “and it implies a reality that +can't be quite definitely spoken. We come to Niagara in the patronizing +spirit in which we approach everything nowadays, and for a few hours we +have it our own way, and pay our little tributes of admiration with +as much complacency as we feel in acknowledging the existence of the +Supreme Being. But after a while we are aware of some potent influence +undermining our self-satisfaction; we begin to conjecture that the great +cataract does not exist by virtue of our approval, and to feel that +it will not cease when we go away. The second day makes us its abject +slaves, and on the third we want to fly from it in terror. I believe +some people stay for weeks, however, and hordes of them have written +odes to Niagara.” + +“I can't understand it, at all,” said Isabel. “I don't wonder now that +the town should be so empty this season, but that it should ever be +full. I wish we'd gone after our first look at the Falls from the +suspension bridge. How beautiful that was! I rejoice in everything that +I haven't done. I'm so glad I haven't been in the Cave of the Winds; I'm +so happy that Table Rock fell twenty years ago! Basil, I couldn't stand +another rainbow today. I'm sorry we went out on the Three Weird Sisters. +O, I shall dream about it! and the rush, and the whirl, and the dampness +in one's face, and the everlasting chirr-r-r-r of everything!” + +She dipped suddenly upon his shoulder for a moment's oblivion, and then +rose radiant with a question: “Why in the world, if Niagara is really +what it seems to us now, do so many bridal parties come here?” + +“Perhaps they're the only people who've the strength to bear up against +it, and are not easily dispersed and subjected by it.” + +“But we're dispersed and subjected.” + +“Ah, my dear, we married a little late. Who knows how it would be if you +were nineteen instead of twenty-seven, and I twenty-five and not turned +of thirty?” + +“Basil, you're very cruel.” + +“No, no. But don't you see how it is? We've known too much of life to +desire any gloomy background for our happiness. We're quite contented +to have things gay and bright about us. Once we couldn't have made +the circle dark enough. Well, my dear, that's the effect of age. We're +superannuated.” + +“I used to think I was before we were married,” answered Isabel simply; +“but now,” she added triumphantly, “I'm rescued from all that. I shall +never be old again, dearest; never, as long as you love me!” + +They were about to enter the village, and he could not make any open +acknowledgment of her tenderness; but her silken mantle (or whatever) +slipped from her shoulder, and he embracingly replaced it, flattering +himself that he had delicately seized this chance of an unavowed +caress and not allowing (O such is the blindness of our sex!) that the +opportunity had been yet more subtly afforded him, with the art which +women never disuse in this world, and which I hope they will not forget +in the next. + +They had an early dinner, and looked their last upon the nuptial gayety +of the otherwise forlorn hotel. Three brides sat down with them in +travelling-dress; two occupied the parlor as they passed out; half a +dozen happy pairs arrived (to the music of the band) in the omnibus +that was to carry our friends back to the station; they caught sight of +several about the shop windows, as that drove through the streets. Thus +the place perpetually renews itself in the glow of love as long as the +summer lasts. The moon which is elsewhere so often of wormwood, or of +the ordinary green cheese at the best, is of lucent honey there from +the first of June to the last of October; and this is a great charm in +Niagara. I think with tenderness of all the lives that have opened so +fairly there; the hopes that have reigned in the glad young hearts; +the measureless tide of joy that ebbs and flows with the arriving and +departing trains. Elsewhere there are carking cares of business and of +fashion, there are age, and sorrow, and heartbreak: but here only youth, +faith, rapture. I kiss my hand to Niagara for that reason, and would I +were a poet for a quarter of an hour. + +Isabel departed in almost a forgiving mood towards the weak sisterhood +of evident brides, and both our friends felt a lurking fondness for +Niagara at the last moment. I do not know how much of their content +was due to the fact that they had suffered no sort of wrong there, from +those who are apt to prey upon travellers. In the hotel a placard warned +them to have nothing to do with the miscreant hackmen on the streets, +but always to order their carriage at the office; on the street the +hackmen whispered to them not to trust the exorbitant drivers in league +with the landlords; yet their actual experience was great reasonableness +and facile contentment with the sum agreed upon. + +This may have been because the hackmen so far outnumbered the visitors, +that the latter could dictate terms; but they chose to believe it a +triumph of civilization; and I will never be the cynic to sneer at their +faith. Only at the station was the virtue of the Niagarans put in doubt, +by the hotel porter who professed to find Basil's trunk enfeebled by +travel, and advised a strap for it, which a friend of his would sell +for a dollar and a half. Yet even he may have been a benevolent nature +unjustly suspected. + + + + +VII. DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE. + +They were to take the Canadian steamer at Charlotte, the port of +Rochester, and they rattled uneventfully down from Niagara by rail. At +the broad, low-banked river-mouth the steamer lay beside the railroad +station; and while Isabel disposed of herself on board, Basil looked to +the transfer of the baggage, novelly comforted in the business by the +respectfulness of the young Canadian who took charge of the trunks for +the boat. He was slow, and his system was not good,--he did not +give checks for the pieces, but marked them with the name of their +destination; and there was that indefinable something in his manner +which hinted his hope that you would remember the porter; but he was +so civil that he did not snub the meekest and most vexatious of the +passengers, and Basil mutely blessed his servile soul. Few white +Americans, he said to himself, would behave so decently in his place; +and he could not conceive of the American steamboat clerk who would use +the politeness towards a waiting crowd that the Canadian purser showed +when they all wedged themselves in about his window to receive their +stateroom keys. He was somewhat awkward, like the porter, but he was +patient, and he did not lose his temper even when some of the crowd, +finding he would not bully them, made bold to bully him. He was three +times as long in serving them as an American would have been, but their +time was of no value there, and he served them well. Basil made a point +of speaking him fair, when his turn came, and the purser did not trample +on him for a base truckler, as an American jack-in-office would have +done. + +Our tourists felt at home directly on this steamer, which was very +comfortable, and in every way sufficient for its purpose, with a visible +captain, who answered two or three questions very pleasantly, and bore +himself towards his passengers in some sort like a host. + +In the saloon Isabel had found among the passengers her +semi-acquaintances of the hotel parlor and the Rapids-elevator, and had +glanced tentatively towards them. Whereupon the matron of the party +had made advances that ended in their all sitting down together and +wondering when the boat would start, and what time they would get to +Montreal next evening, with other matters that strangers going upon +the same journey may properly marvel over in company. The introduction +having thus accomplished itself, they exchanged addresses, and it +appeared that Richard was Colonel Ellison, of Milwaukee, and that Fanny +was his wife. Miss Kitty Ellison was of Western New York, not far from +Erie. There was a diversion presently towards the different state-rooms; +but the new acquaintances sat vis-a-vis at the table, and after supper +the ladies drew their chairs together on the promenade deck, and enjoyed +the fresh evening breeze. The sun set magnificent upon the low western +shore which they had now left an hour away, and a broad stripe of color +stretched behind the steamer. A few thin, luminous clouds darkened +momently along the horizon, and then mixed with the land. The stars came +out in a clear sky, and a light wind softly buffeted the cheeks, and +breathed life into nerves that the day's heat had wasted. It scarcely +wrinkled the tranquil expanse of the lake, on which loomed, far or near, +a full-sailed schooner, and presently melted into the twilight, and left +the steamer solitary upon the waters. The company was small, and not +remarkable enough in any way to take the thoughts of any one off his own +comfort. A deep sense of the coziness of the situation possessed them +all which was if possible intensified by the spectacle of the captain, +seated on the upper deck, and smoking a cigar that flashed and fainted +like a stationary fire-fly in the gathering dusk. How very distant, +in this mood, were the most recent events! Niagara seemed a fable of +antiquity; the ride from Rochester a myth of the Middle Ages. In this +cool, happy world of quiet lake, of starry skies, of air that the soul +itself seemed to breathe, there was such consciousness of repose as if +one were steeped in rest and soaked through and through with calm. + +The points of likeness between Isabel and Mrs. Ellison shortly made them +mutually uninteresting, and, leaving her husband to the others, Isabel +frankly sought the companionship of Miss Kitty, in whom she found a +charm of manner which puzzled at first, but which she presently fancied +must be perfect trust of others mingling with a peculiar self-reliance. + +“Can't you see, Basil, what a very flattering way it is?” she asked of +her husband, when, after parting with their friends for the night, she +tried to explain the character to him. “Of course no art could equal +such a natural gift; for that kind of belief in your good-nature and +sympathy makes you feel worthy of it, don't you know; and so you can't +help being good-natured and sympathetic. This Miss Ellison, why, I can +tell you, I shouldn't be ashamed of her anywhere.” By anywhere Isabel +meant Boston, and she went on to praise the young lady's intelligence +and refinement, with those expressions of surprise at the existence of +civilization in a westerner which westerners find it so hard to receive +graciously. Happily, Miss Ellison had not to hear them. “The reason she +happened to come with only two dresses is, she lives so near Niagara +that she could come for one day, and go back the next. The colonel's her +cousin, and he and his wife go East every year, and they asked her +this time to see Niagara with them. She told me all over again what +we eavesdropped so shamefully in the hotel parlor;--and I don't know +whether she was better pleased with the prospect of what's before her, +or with the notion of making the journey in this original way. She +didn't force her confidence upon me, any more than she tried to withhold +it. We got to talking in the most natural manner; and she seemed to tell +these things about herself because they amused her and she liked me. I +had been saying how my trunk got left behind once on the French side of +Mont Cenis, and I had to wear aunt's things at Turin till it could be +sent for.” + +“Well, I don't see but Miss Ellison could describe you to her friends +very much as you've described her to me,” said Basil. “How did these +mutual confidences begin? Whose trustfulness first flattered the +other's? What else did you tell about yourself?” + +“I said we were on our wedding journey,” guiltily admitted Isabel. + +“O, you did!” + +“Why, dearest! I wanted to know, for once, you see, whether we seemed +honeymoon-struck.” + +“And do we?” + +“No,” came the answer, somewhat ruefully. “Perhaps, Basil,” she added, +“we've been a little too successful in disguising our bridal character. +Do you know,” she continued, looking him anxiously in the face, “this +Miss Ellison took me at first for--your sister!” + +Basil broke forth in outrageous laughter. “One more such victory,” he +said, “and we are undone;” and he laughed again, immoderately. “How sad +is the fruition of human wishes! There's nothing, after all, like a +good thorough failure for making people happy.” + +Isabel did not listen to him. Safe in a dim corner of the deserted +saloon, she seized him in a vindictive embrace; then, as if it had been +he who suggested the idea of such a loathsome relation, hissed out the +hated words, “Your sister!” and released him with a disdainful repulse. + +A little after daybreak the steamer stopped at the Canadian city of +Kingston, a handsome place, substantial to the water's edge, and giving +a sense of English solidity by the stone of which it is largely built. +There was an accession of many passengers here, and they and the people +on the wharf were as little like Americans as possible. They were +English or Irish or Scotch, with the healthful bloom of the Old World +still upon their faces, or if Canadians they looked not less hearty; +so that one must wonder if the line between the Dominion and the United +States did not also sharply separate good digestion and dyspepsia. These +provincials had not our regularity of features, nor the best of them our +careworn sensibility of expression; but neither had they our complexions +of adobe; and even Isabel was forced to allow that the men were, on the +whole, better dressed than the same number of average Americans would +have been in a city of that size and remoteness. The stevedores who were +putting the freight aboard were men of leisure; they joked in a kindly +way with the orange-women and the old women picking up chips on the +pier; and our land of hurry seemed beyond the ocean rather than beyond +the lake. + +Kingston has romantic memories of being Fort Frontenac two hundred years +ago; of Count Frontenac's splendid advent among the Indians; of the +brave La Salle, who turned its wooden walls to stone; of wars with the +savages and then with the New York colonists, whom the French and their +allies harried from this point; of the destruction of La Salle's fort +in the Old French War; and of final surrender a few years later to the +English. It is as picturesque as it is historical. All about the +city, the shores are beautifully wooded, and there are many lovely +islands,--the first indeed of those Thousand Islands with which the head +of the St. Lawrence is filled, and among which the steamer was presently +threading her way. They are still as charming and still almost as wild +as when, in 1673, Frontenac's flotilla of canoes passed through their +labyrinth and issued upon the lake. Save for a light-house upon one +of them, there is almost nothing to show that the foot of man has ever +pressed the thin grass clinging to their rocky surfaces, and keeping +its green in the eternal shadow of their pines and cedars. In the warm +morning light they gathered or dispersed before the advancing vessel, +which some of them almost touched with the plumage of their evergreens; +and where none of them were large, some were so small that it would +not have been too bold to figure them as a vaster race of water-birds +assembling and separating in her course. It is curiously affecting to +find them so unclaimed yet from the solitude of the vanished wilderness, +and scarcely touched even by tradition. But for the interest left them +by the French, these tiny islands have scarcely any associations, and +must be enjoyed for their beauty alone. There is indeed about them a +faint light of legend concerning the Canadian rebellion of 1837, for +several patriots are said to have taken refuge amidst their lovely +multitude; but this episode of modern history is difficult for the +imagination to manage, and somehow one does not take sentimentally even +to that daughter of a lurking patriot, who long baffled her father's +pursuers by rowing him from one island to another, and supplying him +with food by night. + +Either the reluctance is from the natural desire that so recent a +heroine should be founded on fact, or it is mere perverseness. Perhaps +I ought to say; in justice to her, that it was one of her own sex who +refused to be interested in her, and forbade Basil to care for her. When +he had read of her exploit from the guide-book, Isabel asked him if he +had noticed that handsome girl in the blue and white striped Garibaldi +and Swiss hat, who had come aboard at Kingston. She pointed her out, +and courageously made him admire her beauty, which was of the most +bewitching Canadian type. The young girl was redeemed by her New World +birth from the English heaviness; a more delicate bloom lighted her +cheeks; a softer grace dwelt in her movement; yet she was round and +full, and she was in the perfect flower of youth. She was not so +ethereal in her loveliness as an American girl, but she was not so +nervous and had none of the painful fragility of the latter. Her +expression was just a little vacant, it must be owned; but so far as she +went she was faultless. She looked like the most tractable of daughters, +and as if she would be the most obedient of wives. She had a blameless +taste in dress, Isabel declared; her costume of blue and white striped +Garibaldi and Swiss hat (set upon heavy masses of dark brown hair) being +completed by a black silk skirt. “And you can see,” she added, “that +it's an old skirt made over, and that she's dressed as cheaply as she +is prettily.” This surprised Basil, who had imputed the young lady's +personal sumptuousness to her dress, and had thought it enormously +rich. When she got off with her chaperone at one of the poorest-looking +country landings, she left them in hopeless conjecture about her. Was +she visiting there, or was the interior of Canada full of such stylish +and exquisite creatures? Where did she get her taste, her fashions, her +manners? As she passed from sight towards the shadow of the woods, they +felt the poorer for her going; yet they were glad to have seen her, and +on second thoughts they felt that they could not justly ask more of +her than to have merely existed for a few hours in their presence. They +perceived that beauty was not only its own excuse for being, but that it +flattered and favored and profited the world by consenting to be. + +At Prescott, the boat on which they had come from Charlotte, and on +which they had been promised a passage without change to Montreal, +stopped, and they were transferred to a smaller steamer with the +uncomfortable name of Banshee. She was very old, and very infirm and +dirty, and in every way bore out the character of a squalid Irish +goblin. Besides, she was already heavily laden with passengers, and, +with the addition of the other steamer's people had now double her +complement; and our friends doubted if they were not to pass the Rapids +in as much danger as discomfort. Their fellow-passengers were in great +variety, however, and thus partly atoned for their numbers. Among them +of course there was a full force of brides from Niagara and elsewhere, +and some curious forms of the prevailing infatuation appeared. It is +well enough, if she likes, and it may even be very noble for a passably +good-looking young lady to marry a gentleman of venerable age; but to +intensify the idea of self-devotion by furtively caressing his wrinkled +front seems too reproachful of the general public; while, on the other +hand, if the bride is very young and pretty, it enlists in behalf of the +white-haired husband the unwilling sympathies of the spectator to see +her the centre of a group of young people, and him only acknowledged +from time to time by a Parthian snub. Nothing, however, could have been +more satisfactory than the sisterly surrounding of this latter bride. +They were of a better class of Irish people; and if it had been any +sacrifice for her to marry so old a man, they were doing their best to +give the affair at least the liveliness of a wake. There were five +or six of those great handsome girls, with their generous curves and +wholesome colors, and they were every one attended by a good-looking +colonial lover, with whom they joked in slightly brogued voices, +and laughed with careless Celtic laughter. One of the young fellows +presently lost his hat overboard, and had to wear the handkerchief of +his lady about his head; and this appeared to be really one of the best +things in the world, and led to endless banter. They were well dressed, +and it could be imagined that the ancient bridegroom had come in for +the support of the whole good-looking, healthy, light-hearted family. +In some degree he looked it, and wore but a rueful countenance for a +bridegroom; so that a very young newly married couple, who sat next the +jolly sister-and-loverhood could not keep their pitying eyes off his +downcast face. “What if he, too, were young at heart!” the kind little +wife's regard seemed to say. + +For the sake of the slight air that was stirring, and to have the best +view of the Rapids, the Banshee's whole company was gathered upon +the forward promenade, and the throng was almost as dense as in a +six-o'clock horse-car out from Boston. The standing and sitting groups +were closely packed together, and the expanded parasols and umbrellas +formed a nearly unbroken roof. Under this Isabel chatted at intervals +with the Ellisons, who sat near; but it was not an atmosphere that +provoked social feeling, and she was secretly glad when after a while +they shifted their position. + +It was deadly hot, and most of the people saddened and silenced in +the heat. From time to time the clouds idling about overhead met and +sprinkled down a cruel little shower of rain that seemed to make the air +less breathable than before. The lonely shores were yellow with drought; +the islands grew wilder and barrener; the course of the river was for +miles at a stretch through country which gave no signs of human life. +The St. Lawrence has none of the bold picturesqueness of the Hudson, and +is far more like its far-off cousin the Mississippi. Its banks are low +like the Mississippi's, its current, swift, its way through solitary +lands. The same sentiment of early adventure hangs about each: both are +haunted by visions of the Jesuit in his priestly robe, and the soldier +in his mediaeval steel; the same gay, devout, and dauntless race has +touched them both with immortal romance. If the water were of a dusky +golden color, instead of translucent green, and the shores and islands +were covered with cottonwoods and willows instead of dark cedars, one +could with no great effort believe one's self on the Mississippi between +Cairo and St. Louis, so much do the great rivers strike one as kindred +in the chief features of their landscape. Only, in tracing this +resemblance you do not know just what to do with the purple mountains of +Vermont, seen vague against the horizon from the St. Lawrence, or with +the quaint little French villages that begin to show themselves as you +penetrate farther down into Lower Canada. These look so peaceful, with +their dormer-windowed cottages clustering about their church-spires, +that it seems impossible they could once have been the homes of the +savages and the cruel peasants who, with fire-brand and scalping-knife +and tomahawk, harassed the borders of New England for a hundred years. +But just after you descend the Long Sault you pass the hamlet of St. +Regis, in which was kindled the torch that wrapt Deerfield in flames, +waking her people from their sleep to meet instant death or taste the +bitterness of a captivity. The bell which was sent out from France for +the Indian converts of the Jesuits, and was captured by an English ship +and carried into Salem, and thence sold to Deerfield, where it called +the Puritans to prayer, till at last it also summoned the priest-led +Indians and 'habitans' across hundreds of miles of winter and of +wilderness to reclaim it from that desecration,--this fateful bell still +hangs in the church-tower of St. Regis, and has invited to matins and +vespers for nearly two centuries the children of those who fought so +pitilessly and dared and endured so much for it. Our friends would fair +have heard it as they passed, hoping for some mournful note of history +in its sound; but it hung silent over the silent hamlet, which, as it +lay in the hot afternoon sun by the river's side, seemed as lifeless as +the Deerfield burnt long ago. + +They turned from it to look at a gentleman who had just appeared in a +mustard-colored linen duster, and Basil asked, “Shouldn't you like to +know the origin, personal history, and secret feelings of a gentleman +who goes about in a duster of that particular tint? Or, that gentleman +yonder with his eye tied up in a wet handkerchief, do you suppose he's +travelling for pleasure? Look at those young people from Omaha: they +haven't ceased flirting or cackling since we left Kingston. Do you +think everybody has such spirits out at Omaha? But behold a yet more +surprising figure than any we have yet seen among this boat-load of +nondescripts.” + +This was a tall, handsome young man, with a face of somewhat foreign +cast, and well dressed, with a certain impressive difference from the +rest in the cut of his clothes. But what most drew the eye to him was +a large cross, set with brilliants, and surmounted by a heavy +double-headed eagle in gold. This ornament dazzled from a conspicuous +place on the left lappet of his coat; on his hand shone a magnificent +diamond ring, and he bore a stately opera-glass, with which, from time +to time, he imperiously, as one may say, surveyed the landscape. As +the imposing apparition grew upon Isabel, “O here,” she thought, “is +something truly distinguished. Of course, dear,” she added aloud to +Basil, “he's some foreign nobleman travelling here”; and she ran over in +her mind the newspaper announcements of patrician visitors from abroad +and tried to identify him with some one of them. The cross must be the +decoration of a foreign order, and Basil suggested that he was perhaps +a member of some legation at Washington, who had ran up there for his +summer vacation. The cross puzzled him, but the double-headed eagle, he +said, meant either Austria or Russia; probably Austria, for the wearer +looked a trifle too civilized for a Russian. + +“Yes, indeed! What an air he has. Never tell me. Basil, that there's +nothing in blood!” cried Isabel, who was a bitter aristocrat at heart, +like all her sex, though in principle she was democratic enough. As +she spoke, the object of her regard looked about him on the different +groups, not with pride, not with hauteur, but with a glance of +unconscious, unmistakable superiority. “O, that stare!” she added; +“nothing but high birth and long descent can give it! Dearest, he's +becoming a great affliction to me. I want to know who he is. Couldn't +you invent some pretext for speaking to him?” + +“No, I couldn't do it decently; and no doubt he'd snub me as I deserved +if I intruded upon him. Let's wait for fortune to reveal him.” + +“Well, I suppose I must, but it's dreadful; it's really dreadful. You +can easily see that's distinction,” she continued, as her hero moved +about the promenade and gently but loftily made a way for himself among +the other passengers and favored the scenery through his opera-glass +from one point and another. He spoke to no one, and she reasonably +supposed that he did not know English. + +In the mean time it was drawing near the hour of dinner, but no dinner +appeared. Twelve, one, two came and went, and then at last came the +dinner, which had been delayed, it seemed, till the cook could recruit +his energies sufficiently to meet the wants of double the number he had +expected to provide for. It was observable of the officers and crew +of the Banshee, that while they did not hold themselves aloof from the +passengers in the disdainful American manner, they were of feeble mind, +and not only did everything very slowly (in the usual Canadian fashion), +but with an inefficiency that among us would have justified them in +being insolent. The people sat down at several successive tables to the +worst dinner that ever was cooked; the ladies first, and the gentlemen +afterwards, as they made conquest of places. At the second table, to +Basil's great satisfaction, he found a seat, and on his right hand the +distinguished foreigner. + +“Naturally, I was somewhat abashed,” he said in the account he was +presently called to give Isabel of the interview, “but I remembered that +I was an American citizen, and tried to maintain a decent composure. +For several minutes we sat silent behind a dish of flabby cucumbers, +expecting the dinner, and I was wondering whether I should address him +in French or German,--for I knew you'd never forgive me if I let slip +such a chance,--when he turned and spoke himself.” + +“O what did he say, dearest?” + +He said, “Pretty tejious waitin,' ain't it? in she best New York State +accent.” + +“You don't mean it!” gasped Isabel. + +“But I do. After that I took courage to ask what his cross and +double-headed eagle meant. He showed the condescension of a true +nobleman. 'O,' says he, 'I'm glad you like it, and it's not the least +offense to ask,' and he told me. Can you imagine what it is? It's the +emblem of the fifty-fourth degree in the secret society he belongs to!” + +“I don't believe it!” + +“Well, ask him yourself, then,” returned Basil; “he's a very good +fellow. 'O, that stare! nothing but high birth and long descent could +give it!'” he repeated, abominably implying that he had himself had no +share in their common error. + +What retort Isabel might have made cannot now be known, for she was +arrested at this moment by a rumor amongst the passengers that they were +coming to the Long Sault Rapids. Looking forward she saw the tossing and +flashing of surges that, to the eye, are certainly as threatening as the +rapids above Niagara. The steamer had already passed the Deplau and +the Galopes, and they had thus had a foretaste of whatever pleasure or +terror there is in the descent of these nine miles of stormy sea. It is +purely a matter of taste, about shooting the rapids of the St. Lawrence. +The passengers like it better than the captain and the pilot, to guesses +by their looks, and the women and children like it better than the men. +It is no doubt very thrilling and picturesque and wildly beautiful: the +children crow and laugh, the women shout forth their delight, as the +boat enters the seething current; great foaming waves strike her bows, +and brawl away to the stern, while she dips, and rolls, and shoots +onward, light as a bird blown by the wind; the wild shores and islands +whirl out of sight; you feel in every fibre the career of the vessel. +But the captain sits in front of the pilothouse smoking with a grave +face, the pilots tug hard at the wheel; the hoarse roar of the waters +fills the air; beneath the smoother sweeps of the current you can see +the brown rocks; as you sink from ledge to ledge in the writhing and +twisting steamer, you have a vague sense that all this is perhaps an +achievement rather than an enjoyment. When, descending the Long Sault, +you look back up hill, and behold those billows leaping down the +steep slope after you, “No doubt,” you confide to your soul, “it is +magnificent; but it is not pleasure.” You greet with silent satisfaction +the level river, stretching between the Long Sault and the Coteau, +and you admire the delightful tranquillity of that beautiful Lake St. +Francis into which it expands. Then the boat shudders into the Coteau +Rapids, and down through the Cedars and Cascades. On the rocks of the +last lies the skeleton of a steamer wrecked upon them, and gnawed at +still by the white-tusked wolfish rapids. No one, they say, was lost +from her. “But how,” Basil thought, “would it fare with all these people +packed here upon her bow, if the Banshee should swing round upon +a ledge?” As to Isabel, she looked upon the wrecked steamer with +indifference, as did all the women; but then they could not swim, and +would not have to save themselves. “The La Chine's to come yet,” they +exulted, “and that's the awfullest of all!” + +They passed the Lake St. Louis; the La Chin; rapids flashed into sight. +The captain rose up from his seat, took his pipe from his mouth, and +waved a silence with it. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “it's very +important in passing these rapids to keep the boat perfectly trim. +Please to remain just as you are.” + +It was twilight, for the boat was late. From the Indian village on the +shore they signaled to know if he wanted the local pilot; the captain +refused; and then the steamer plunged into the leaping waves. From +rock to rock she swerved and sank; on the last ledge she scraped with a +deadly touch that went to the heart. + +Then the danger was passed, and the noble city of Montreal was in full +sight, lying at the foot of her dark green mountain, and lifting her +many spires into the rosy twilight air: massive and grand showed the +sister towers of the French cathedral. + +Basil had hoped to approach this famous city with just associations. He +had meant to conjure up for Isabel's sake some reflex, however faint, of +that beautiful picture Mr. Parkman has painted of Maisonneuve founding +and consecrating Montreal. He flushed with the recollection of the +historian's phrase; but in that moment there came forth from the cabin +a pretty young person who gave every token of being a pretty young +actress, even to the duenna-like, elderly female companion, to be +detected in the remote background of every young actress. She had +flirted audaciously during the day with some young Englishmen and +Canadians of her acquaintance, and after passing the La Chine Rapids she +had taken the hearts of all the men by springing suddenly to her feet, +apostrophizing the tumult with a charming attitude, and warbling a +delicious bit of song. Now as they drew near the city the Victoria +Bridge stretched its long tube athwart the river, and looked so low +because of its great length that it seemed to bar the steamer's passage. + +“I wonder,” said one of the actress's adorers, a Canadian, whose face +was exactly that of the beaver on the escutcheon of his native province, +and whose heavy gallantries she had constantly received with a gay, +impertinent nonchalance,--“I wonder if we can be going right under that +bridge?” + +“No, sir!” answered the pretty young actress with shocking promptness, +“we're going right over it!” + + “'Three groans and a guggle, + And an awful struggle, + And over we go!'” + +At this witless, sweet impudence the Canadian looked very sheepish--for +a beaver; and all the other people laughed; but the noble historical +shades of Basil's thought vanished in wounded dignity beyond recall, and +left him feeling rather ashamed,--for he had laughed too. + + + + +VIII. THE SENTIMENT OF MONTREAL. + +The feeling of foreign travel for which our tourists had striven +throughout their journey, and which they had known in some degree at +Kingston and all the way down the river, was intensified from the first +moment in Montreal; and it was so welcome that they were almost glad to +lose money on their greenbacks, which the conductor of the omnibus would +take only at a discount of twenty cents. At breakfast next morning they +could hardly tell on what country they had fallen. The waiters had but a +thin varnish of English speech upon their native French, and they spoke +their own tongue with each other; but most of the meats were cooked to +the English taste, and the whole was a poor imitation of an American +hotel. During their stay the same commingling of usages and races +bewildered them; the shops were English and the clerks were commonly +French; the carriage-drivers were often Irish, and up and down +the streets with their pious old-fashioned names, tinkled American +horse-cars. Everywhere were churches and convents that recalled the +ecclesiastical and feudal origin of the city; the great tubular bridge, +the superb water-front with its long array of docks only surpassed +by those of Liverpool, the solid blocks of business houses, and the +substantial mansions on the quieter streets, proclaimed the succession +of Protestant thrift and energy. + +Our friends cared far less for the modern splendor of Montreal than for +the remnants of its past, and for the features that identified it with +another faith and another people than their own. Isabel would almost +have confessed to any one of the black-robed priests upon the street; +Basil could easily have gone down upon his knees to the white-hooded, +pale-faced nuns gliding among the crowd. It was rapture to take a +carriage, and drive, not to the cemetery, not to the public library, +not to the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association, or the grain +elevators, or the new park just tricked out with rockwork and sprigs of +evergreen,--not to any of the charming resorts of our own cities, but as +in Europe to the churches, the churches of a pitiless superstition, +the churches with their atrocious pictures and statues, their lingering +smell of the morning's incense, their confessionals, their fee-taking +sacristans, their worshippers dropped here and there upon their knees +about the aisles and saying their prayers with shut or wandering eyes +according as they were old women or young! I do not defend the feeble +sentimentality,--call it wickedness if you like,--but I understand it, +and I forgive it from my soul. + +They went first, of course, to the French cathedral, pausing on their +way to alight and walk through the Bonsecours Market, where the habitans +have all come in their carts, with their various stores of poultry, +fruit, and vegetables, and where every cart is a study. Here is a +simple-faced young peasant-couple with butter and eggs and chickens +ravishingly displayed; here is a smooth-checked, blackeyed, black-haired +young girl, looking as if an infusion of Indian blood had darkened the +red of her cheeks, presiding over a stock of onions, potatoes, beets, +and turnips; there an old woman with a face carven like a walnut, +behind a flattering array of cherries and pears; yonder a whole family +trafficking in loaves of brown-bread and maple-sugar in many shapes of +pious and grotesque device. There are gay shows of bright scarfs and +kerchiefs and vari-colored yarns, and sad shows of old clothes and +second-hand merchandise of other sorts; but above all prevails the +abundance of orchard and garden, while within the fine edifice are the +stalls of the butchers, and in the basement below a world of household +utensils, glass-ware, hard-ware, and wooden-ware. As in other Latin +countries, each peasant has given a personal interest to his wares, but +the bargains are not clamored over as in Latin lands abroad. Whatever +protest and concession and invocation of the saints attend the +transacting of business at Bonsecours Market are in a subdued tone. The +fat huckster-women drowsing beside their wares, scarce send their voices +beyond the borders of their broad-brimmed straw hats, as they softly +haggle with purchasers, or tranquilly gossip together. + +At the cathedral there are, perhaps, the worst paintings in the world, +and the massive pine-board pillars are unscrupulously smoked to look +like marble; but our tourists enjoyed it as if it had been St. Peter's; +in fact it has something of the barnlike immensity and impressiveness of +St. Peter's. They did not ask it to be beautiful or grand; they desired +it only to recall the beloved ugliness, the fondly cherished hideousness +and incongruity of the average Catholic churches of their remembrance, +and it did this and more: it added an effect of its own; it offered +the spectacle of a swarthy old Indian kneeling before the high altar, +telling his beads, and saying with many sighs and tears the prayers +which it cost so much martyrdom and heroism to teach his race. “O, it is +only a savage man,” said the little French boy who was showing them +the place, impatient of their interest in a thing so unworthy as this +groaning barbarian. He ran swiftly about from object to object, rapidly +lecturing their inattention. “It is now time to go up into the tower,” + said he, and they gladly made that toilsome ascent, though it is +doubtful if the ascent of towers is not too much like the ascent +of mountains ever to be compensatory. From the top of Notre Dame is +certainly to be had a prospect upon which, but for his fluttered nerves +and trembling muscles and troubled respiration, the traveller might well +look with delight, and as it is must behold with wonder. So far as the +eye reaches it dwells only upon what is magnificent. All the features +of that landscape are grand. Below you spreads the city, which has less +that is merely mean in it than any other city of our continent, and +which is everywhere ennobled by stately civic edifices, adorned by +tasteful churches, and skirted by full foliaged avenues of mansions and +villas. Behind it rises the beautiful mountain, green with woods and +gardens to its crest, and flanked on the east by an endless fertile +plain, and on the west by another expanse, through which the Ottawa +rushes, turbid and dark, to its confluence with the St. Lawrence. Then +these two mighty streams commingled flow past the city, lighting up +the vast Champaign country to the south, while upon the utmost southern +verge, as on the northern, rise the cloudy summits of far-off mountains. + +As our travellers gazed upon all this grandeur, their hearts were +humbled to the tacit admission that the colonial metropolis was not only +worthy of its seat, but had traits of a solid prosperity not excelled +by any of the abounding and boastful cities of the Republic. Long before +they quitted Montreal they had rallied from this weakness, but they +delighted still to honor her superb beauty. + +The tower is naturally bescribbled to its top with the names of those +who have climbed it, and most of these are Americans, who flock in great +numbers to Canada in summer. They modify its hotel life, and the objects +of interest thrive upon their bounty. Our friends met them at every +turn, and knew them at a glance from the native populations, who are +also easily distinguishable from each other. The French Canadians are +nearly always of a peasant-like commonness, or where they rise above +this have a bourgeois commonness of face and manner, and the English +Canadians are to be known from the many English sojourners by the effort +to look much more English than the latter. The social heart of the +colony clings fast to the mother-country, that is plain, whatever the +political tendency may be; and the public monuments and inscriptions +celebrate this affectionate union. + +At the English cathedral the effect is deepened by the epitaphs of those +whose lives were passed in the joint service of England and her loyal +child; and our travellers, whatever their want of sympathy with the +sentiment, had to own to a certain beauty in that attitude of proud +reverence. Here, at least, was a people not cut off from its past, but +holding, unbroken in life and death, the ties which exist for us only in +history. It gave a glamour of olden time to the new land; it touched +the prosaic democratic present with the waning poetic light of the +aristocratic and monarchical tradition. There was here and there a title +on the tablets, and there was everywhere the formal language of loyalty +and of veneration for things we have tumbled into the dust. It is a +beautiful church, of admirable English Gothic; if you are so happy, you +are rather curtly told you may enter by a burly English figure in some +kind of sombre ecclesiastical drapery, and within its quiet precincts +you may feel yourself in England if you like,--which, for my part, I +do not. Neither did our friends enjoy it so much as the Church of the +Jesuits, with its more than tolerable painting, its coldly frescoed +ceiling, its architectural taste of subdued Renaissance, and its +black-eyed peasant-girl telling her beads before a side altar, just as +in the enviably deplorable countries we all love; nor so much even as +the Irish cathedral which they next visited. That is a very gorgeous +cathedral indeed, painted and gilded 'a merveille', and everywhere stuck +about with big and little saints and crucifixes, and pictures incredibly +bad--but for those in the French cathedral. There is, of course, a +series representing Christ's progress to Calvary; and there was a very +tattered old man,--an old man whose voice had been long ago drowned +in whiskey, and who now spoke in a ghostly whisper,--who, when he saw +Basil's eye fall upon the series, made him go the round of them, and +tediously explained them. + +“Why did you let that old wretch bore you, and then pay him for it?” + Isabel asked. + +“O, it reminded me so sweetly of the swindles of other lands and days, +that I couldn't help it,” he answered; and straightway in the eyes of +both that poor, whiskeyfied, Irish tatterdemalion stood transfigured to +the glorious likeness of an Italian beggar. + +They were always doing something of this kind, those absurdly +sentimental people, whom yet I cannot find it in my heart to blame for +their folly, though I could name ever so many reasons for rebuking it. +Why, in fact, should we wish to find America like Europe? Are the ruins +and impostures and miseries and superstitions which beset the traveller +abroad so precious, that he should desire to imagine them at every step +in his own hemisphere? Or have we then of our own no effective shapes of +ignorance and want and incredibility, that we must forever seek an alien +contrast to our native intelligence and comfort? Some such questions +this guilty couple put to each other, and then drove off to visit the +convent of the Gray Nuns with a joyful expectation which I suppose the +prospect of the finest public-school exhibition in Boston could never +have inspired. But, indeed, since there must be Gray Nuns, is it not +well that there are sentimentalists to take a mournful pleasure in their +sad, pallid existence? + +The convent is at a good distance from the Irish cathedral, and in going +to it the tourists made their driver carry them through one of the +few old French streets which still remain in Montreal. Fires and +improvements had made havoc among the quaint houses since Basil's +first visit; but at last they came upon a narrow, ancient Rue Saint +Antoine,--or whatever other saint it was called after,--in which +there was no English face or house to be seen. The doors of the little +one-story dwellings opened from the pavement, and within you saw fat +madame the mother moving about her domestic affairs, and spare monsieur +the elderly husband smoking beside the open window; French babies +crawled about the tidy floors; French martyrs (let us believe Lalement +or Brebeuf, who gave up their heroic lives for the conversion of Canada) +sifted their eyes in high-colored lithographs on the wall; among the +flower-pots in the dormer-window looking from every tin roof sat and +sewed a smooth haired young girl, I hope,--the romance of each little +mansion. The antique and foreign character of the place was accented by +the inscription upon a wall of “Sirop adoucissant de Madame Winslow.” + +Ever since 1692 the Gray Nuns have made refuge within the ample borders +of their convent for infirm old people and for foundling children, and +it is now in the regular course of sight-seeing for the traveller to +visit their hospital at noonday, when he beholds the Sisters at their +devotions in the chapel. It is a bare, white-walled, cold-looking +chapel, with the usual paraphernalia of pictures and crucifixes. Seated +upon low benches on either side of the aisle were the curious or the +devout; the former in greater number and chiefly Americans, who were now +and then whispered silent by an old pauper zealous for the sanctity +of the place. At the stroke of twelve the Sisters entered two by two, +followed by the lady-superior with a prayerbook in her hand. She clapped +the leaves of this together in signal for them to kneel, to rise, to +kneel again and rise, while they repeated in rather harsh voices their +prayers, and then clattered out of the chapel as they had clattered in, +with resounding shoes. The two young girls at the head were very pretty, +and all the pale faces had a corpse-like peace. As Basil looked at their +pensive sameness, it seemed to him that those prettiest girls might +very well be the twain that he had seen here so many years ago, stricken +forever young in their joyless beauty. The ungraceful gowns of coarse +gray, the blue checked aprons, the black crape caps, were the same; they +came and went with the same quick tread, touching their brows with holy +water and kneeling and rising now as then with the same constrained and +ordered movements. Would it be too cruel if they were really the same +persons? or would it be yet more cruel if every year two girls so young +and fair were self-doomed to renew the likeness of that youthful death? + +The visitors went about the hospital, and saw the old men and the little +children to whom these good pure lives were given, and they could only +blame the system, not the instruments or their work. Perhaps they did +not judge wisely of the amount of self-sacrifice involved, for they +judged from hearts to which love was the whole of earth and heaven; but +nevertheless they pitied the Gray Nuns amidst the unhomelike comfort +of their convent, the unnatural care of those alien little ones. Poor +'Soeurs Grises' in their narrow cells; at the bedside of sickness and +age and sorrow; kneeling with clasped hands and yearning eyes before the +bloody spectacle of the cross!--the power of your Church is shown far +more subtly and mightily in such as you, than in her grandest fanes or +the sight of her most august ceremonies, with praying priests, swinging +censers, tapers and pictures and images, under a gloomy heaven +of cathedral arches. There, indeed, the faithful have given their +substance; but here the nun has given up the most precious part of her +woman's nature, and all the tenderness that clings about the thought of +wife and mother. + +“There are some things that always greatly afflict me in the idea of a +new country,” said Basil, as they loitered slowly through the grounds of +the convent toward the gate. “Of course, it's absurd to think of men as +other than men, as having changed their natures with their skies; but a +new land always does seem at first thoughts like a new chance afforded +the race for goodness and happiness, for health and life. So I grieve +for the earliest dead at Plymouth more than for the multitude that +the plague swept away in London; I shudder over the crime of the first +guilty man, the sin of the first wicked woman in a new country; +the trouble of the first youth or maiden crossed in love there is +intolerable. All should be hope and freedom and prosperous life upon +that virgin soil. It never was so since Eden; but none the less I +feel it ought to be; and I am oppressed by the thought that among the +earliest walls which rose upon this broad meadow of Montreal were those +built to immure the innocence of such young girls as these and shut them +from the life we find so fair. Wouldn't you like to know who was the +first that took the veil in this wild new country? Who was she, poor +soul, and what was her deep sorrow or lofty rapture? You can fancy her +some Indian maiden lured to the renunciation by the splendor of symbols +and promises seen vaguely through the lingering mists of her native +superstitions; or some weary soul, sick from the vanities and vices, +the bloodshed and the tears of the Old World, and eager for a silence +profounder than that of the wilderness into which she had fled. Well, +the Church knows and God. She was dust long ago.” + +From time to time there had fallen little fitful showers during the +morning. Now as the wedding-journeyers passed out of the convent gate +the rain dropped soft and thin, and the gray clouds that floated through +the sky so swiftly were as far-seen Gray Sisters in flight for heaven. + +“We shall have time for the drive round the mountain before dinner,” + said Basil, as they got into their carriage again; and he was giving the +order to the driver, when Isabel asked how far it was. + +“Nine miles.” + +“O, then we can't think of going with one horse. You know,” she +added, “that we always intended to have two horses for going round the +mountain.” + +“No,” said Basil, not yet used to having his decisions reached without +his knowledge. “And I don't see why we should. Everybody goes with one. +You don't suppose we're too heavy, do you?” + +“I had a party from the States, ma'am, yesterday,” interposed the +driver; “two ladies, real heavy apes, two gentlemen, weighin' two +hundred apiece, and a stout young man on the box with me. You'd 'a' +thought the horse was drawin' an empty carriage, the way she darted +along.” + +“Then his horse must be perfectly worn out to-day,” said Isabel, +refusing to admit the pool fellow directly even to the honors of a +defeat. He had proved too much, and was put out of court with no hope of +repairing his error. + +“Why, it seems a pity,” whispered Basil, dispassionately, “to turn this +man adrift, when he had a reasonable hope of being with us all day, and +has been so civil and obliging.” + +“O yes, Basil, sentimentalize him, do! Why don't you sentimentalize his +helpless, overworked horse?--all in a reek of perspiration.” + +“Perspiration! Why, my dear, it's the rain!” + +“Well, rain or shine, darling, I don't want to go round the mountain +with one horse; and it's very unkind of you to insist now, when you've +tacitly promised me all along to take two.” + +“Now, this is a little too much, Isabel. You know we never mentioned the +matter till this moment.” + +“It's the same as a promise, your not saying you wouldn't. But I don't +ask you to keep your word. I don't want to go round the mountain. I'd +much rather go to the hotel. I'm tired.” + +“Very well, then, Isabel, I'll leave you at the hotel.” + +In a moment it had come, the first serious dispute of their wedded life. +It had come as all such calamities come, from nothing, and it was on +them in full disaster ere they knew. Such a very little while ago, there +in the convent garden, their lives had been drawn closer in sympathy +than ever before; and now that blessed time seemed ages since, and +they were further asunder than those who have never been friends. “I +thought,” bitterly mused Isabel, “that he would have done anything +for me.” “Who could have dreamed that a woman of her sense would be +so unreasonable,” he wondered. Both had tempers, as I know my dearest +reader has (if a lady), and neither would yield; and so, presently, they +could hardly tell how, for they were aghast at it all, Isabel was +alone in her room amidst the ruins of her life, and Basil alone in +the one-horse carriage, trying to drive away from the wreck of his +happiness. All was over; the dream was past; the charm was broken. The +sweetness of their love was turned to gall; whatever had pleased them in +their loving moods was loathsome now, and the things they had praised a +moment before were hateful. In that baleful light, which seemed to dwell +upon all they ever said or did in mutual enjoyment, how poor and stupid +and empty looked their wedding-journey! Basil spent five minutes in +arraigning his wife and convicting her of every folly and fault. His +soul was in a whirl, + + “For to be wroth with one we love + Doth work like madness in the brain.” + +In the midst of his bitter and furious upbraidings he found himself +suddenly become her ardent advocate, and ready to denounce her judge as +a heartless monster. “On our wedding journey, too! Good heavens, what an +incredible brute I am!” Then he said, “What an ass I am!” And the pathos +of the case having yielded to its absurdity, he was helpless. In five +minutes more he was at Isabel's side, the one-horse carriage driver +dismissed with a handsome pour-boire, and a pair of lusty bays with a +glittering barouche waiting at the door below. He swiftly accounted for +his presence, which she seemed to find the most natural thing that could +be, and she met his surrender with the openness of a heart that forgives +but does not forget, if indeed the most gracious art is the only one +unknown to the sex. + +She rose with a smile from the ruins of her life, amidst which she +had heart-brokenly sat down with all her things on. “I knew you'd come +back,” she said. + +“So did I,” he answered. “I am much too good and noble to sacrifice my +preference to my duty.” + +“I didn't care particularly for the two horses, Basil,” she said, as +they descended to the barouche. “It was your refusing them that hurt +me.” + +“And I didn't want the one-horse carriage. It was your insisting so that +provoked me.” + +“Do you think people ever quarreled before on a wedding journey?” asked +Isabel as they drove gayly out of the city. + +“Never! I can't conceive of it. I suppose if this were written down, +nobody would believe it.” + +“No, nobody could,” said Isabel, musingly, and she added after a pause, +“I wish you would tell me just what you thought of me, dearest. Did you +feel as you did when our little affair was broken off, long ago? Did you +hate me?” + +“I did, most cordially; but not half so much as I despised myself the +next moment. As to its being like a lover's quarrel, it wasn't. It was +more bitter, so much more love than lovers ever give had to be taken +back. Besides, it had no dignity, and a lover's quarrel always has. A +lover's quarrel always springs from a more serious cause, and has an air +of romantic tragedy. This had no grace of the kind. It was a poor shabby +little squabble.” + +“O, don't call it so, Basil! I should like you to respect even a quarrel +of ours more than that. It was tragical enough with me, for I didn't +see how it could ever be made up. I knew I couldn't make the advances. I +don't think it is quite feminine to be the first to forgive, is it?” + +“I'm sure I can't say. Perhaps it would be rather unladylike.” + +“Well, you see, dearest, what I am trying to get at is this: whether we +shall love each other the more or the less for it. I think we shall get +on all the better for a while, on account of it. But I should have said +it was totally out of character it's something you might have expected +of a very young bridal couple; but after what we've been through, it +seems too improbable.” + +“Very well,” said Basil, who, having made all the concessions, could +not enjoy the quarrel as she did, simply because it was theirs; “let's +behave as if it had never been.” + +“O no, we can't. To me, it's as if we had just won each other.” + +In fact it gave a wonderful zest and freshness to that ride round the +mountain, and shed a beneficent glow upon the rest of their journey. The +sun came out through the thin clouds, and lighted up the vast plain that +swept away north and east, with the purple heights against the eastern +sky. The royal mountain lifted its graceful mass beside them, and hid +the city wholly from sight. Peasant-villages, in the shade of beautiful +elms, dotted the plain in every direction, and at intervals crept up +to the side of the road along which they drove. But these had been +corrupted by a more ambitious architecture since Basil saw them last, +and were no longer purely French in appearance. Then, nearly every house +was a tannery in a modest way, and poetically published the fact by +the display of a sheep's tail over the front door, like a bush at +a wine-shop. Now, if the tanneries still existed, the poetry of the +sheeps' tails had vanished from the portals. But our friends were +consoled by meeting numbers of the peasants jolting home from market in +the painted carts, which are doubtless of the pattern of the carts first +built there two hundred years ago. They were grateful for the immortal +old wooden, crooked and brown with the labor of the fields, who abounded +in these vehicles; when a huge girl jumped from the tail of her cart, +and showed the thick, clumsy ankles of a true peasant-maid, they could +only sigh out their unspeakable satisfaction. + +Gardens embowered and perfumed the low cottages, through the open doors +of which they could see the exquisite neatness of the life within. One +of the doors opened into a school-house, where they beheld with rapture +the school-mistress, book in hand, and with a quaint cap on her gray +head, and encircled by her flock of little boys and girls. + +By and by it began to rain again; and now while their driver stopped to +put up the top of the barouche, they entered a country church which had +taken their fancy, and walked up the aisle with the steps that blend +with silence rather than break it, while they heard only the soft +whisper of the shower without. There was no one there but themselves. +The urn of holy water seemed not to have been troubled that day, and +no penitent knelt at the shrine, before which twinkled so faintly one +lighted lamp. The white roof swelled into dim arches over their heads; +the pale day like a visible hush stole through the painted windows; they +heard themselves breathe as they crept from picture to picture. + +A narrow door opened at the side of the high altar, and a slender young +priest appeared in a long black robe, and with shaven head. He, too as +he moved with noiseless feet, seemed a part of the silence; and when +he approached with dreamy black eyes fixed upon them, and bowed +courteously, it seemed impossible he should speak. But he spoke, the +pale young priest, the dark-robed tradition, the tonsured vision of an +age and a church that are passing. + +“Do you understand French, monsieur?” + +“A very little, monsieur.” + +“A very little is more than my English,” he said, yet he politely went +the round of the pictures with them, and gave them the names of the +painters between his crossings at the different altars. At the high +altar there was a very fair Crucifixion; before this the priest bent one +knee. “Fine picture, fine altar, fine church,” he said in English. At +last they stopped next the poor-box. As their coins clinked against +those within, he smiled serenely upon the good heretics. Then he bowed, +and, as if he had relapsed into the past, he vanished through the narrow +door by which he had entered. + +Basil and Isabel stood speechless a moment on the church steps. Then she +cried, + +“O, why didn't something happen?” + +“Ah, my dear! what could have been half so good as the nothing that +did happen? Suppose we knew him to have taken orders because of a +disappointment in love: how common it would have made him; everybody has +been crossed in love once or twice.” He bade the driver take them back +to the hotel. “This is the very bouquet of adventure why should we care +for the grosser body? I dare say if we knew all about yonder pale young +priest, we should not think him half so interesting as we do now.” + +At dinner they spent the intervals of the courses in guessing the +nationality of the different persons, and in wondering if the Canadians +did not make it a matter of conscientious loyalty to out-English the +English even in the matter of pale-ale and sherry, and in rotundity of +person and freshness of face, just as they emulated them in the cut of +their clothes and whiskers. Must they found even their health upon the +health of the mother-country? + +Our friends began to detect something servile in it all, and but +that they were such amiable persons, the loyally perfect digestion of +Montreal would have gone far to impair their own. + +The loyalty, which had already appeared to them in the cathedral, +suggested itself in many ways upon the street, when they went out after +dinner to do that little shopping which Isabel had planned to do in +Montreal. The booksellers' windows were full of Canadian editions of +our authors, and English copies of English works, instead of our pirated +editions; the dry-goods stores were gay with fabrics in the London taste +and garments of the London shape; here was the sign of a photographer to +the Queen, there of a hatter to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales; a barber +was “under the patronage of H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, H. E. the Duke +of Cambridge, and the gentry of Montreal.” 'Ich dien' was the motto of +a restaurateur; a hosier had gallantly labeled his stock in trade with +'Honi soit qui mal y pense'. Again they noted the English solidity +of the civic edifices, and already they had observed in the foreign +population a difference from that at home. They saw no German faces on +the streets, and the Irish faces had not that truculence which they +wear sometimes with us. They had not lost their native simpleness and +kindliness; the Irishmen who drove the public carriages were as civil as +our own Boston hackmen, and behaved as respectfully under the shadow of +England here, as they would have done under it in Ireland. The problem +which vexes us seems to have been solved pleasantly enough in Canada. +Is it because the Celt cannot brook equality; and where he has not an +established and recognized caste above him, longs to trample on those +about him; and if he cannot be lowest, will at least be highest? + +However, our friends did not suffer this or any other advantage of +the colonial relation to divert them from the opinion to which their +observation was gradually bringing them,--that its overweening loyalty +placed a great country like Canada in a very silly attitude, the +attitude of an overgrown, unmanly boy, clinging to the maternal skirts, +and though spoilt and willful, without any character of his own. The +constant reference of local hopes to that remote centre beyond seas, +the test of success by the criterions of a necessarily different +civilization, the social and intellectual dependence implied by traits +that meet the most hurried glance in the Dominion, give an effect of +meanness to the whole fabric. Doubtless it is a life of comfort, of +peace, of irresponsibility they live there, but it lacks the grandeur +which no sum of material prosperity can give; it is ignoble, like all +voluntarily subordinate things. Somehow, one feels that it has no basis +in the New World, and that till it is shaken loose from England it +cannot have. + +It would be a pity, however, if it should be parted from the parent +country merely to be joined to an unsympathetic half-brother like +ourselves and nothing, fortunately, seems to be further from the +Canadian mind. There are some experiments no longer possible to us which +could still be tried there to the advantage of civilization, and we +were better two great nations side by side than a union of discordant +traditions and ideas. But none the less does the American traveller, +swelling with forgetfulness of the shabby despots who govern New York, +and the swindling railroad kings whose word is law to the whole land, +feel like saying to the hulling young giant beyond St. Lawrence and the +Lakes, “Sever the apron-strings of allegiance, and try to be yourself +whatever you are.” + +Something of this sort Basil said, though of course not in apostrophic +phrase, nor with Isabel's entire concurrence, when he explained to her +that it was to the colonial dependence of Canada she owed the ability to +buy things so cheaply there. + +The fact is that the ladies' parlor at the hotel had been after dinner +no better than a den of smugglers, in which the fair contrabandists had +debated the best means of evading the laws of their country. At heart +every man is a smuggler, and how much more every woman! She would have +no scruple in ruining the silk and woolen interest throughout the United +States. She is a free-trader by intuitive perception of right, and is +limited in practice by nothing but fear of the statute. What could be +taken into the States without detection, was the subject before that +wicked conclave; and next, what it would pay to buy in Canada. It seemed +that silk umbrellas were most eligible wares; and in the display of +such purchases the parlor was given the appearance of a violent +thunder-storm. Gloves it was not advisable to get; they were better +at home, as were many kinds of fine woolen goods. But laces, which you +could carry about you, were excellent; and so was any kind of silk. +Could it be carried if simply cut, and not made up? There was a +difference about this: the friend of one lady had taken home half a +trunkful of cut silks; the friend of another had “run up the breadths” + of one lone little silk skirt, and then lost it by the rapacity of the +customs officers. It was pretty much luck, and whether the officers +happened to be in good-humor or not. You must not try to take in +anything out of season, however. One had heard of a Boston lady going +home in July, who “had the furs taken off her back,” in that inclement +month. Best get everything seasonable, and put it on at once. “And then, +you know, if they ask you, you can say it's been worn.” To this black +wisdom came the combined knowledge of those miscreants. Basil could not +repress a shudder at the innate depravity of the female heart. Here were +virgins nurtured in the most spotless purity of life, here were virtuous +mothers of families, here were venerable matrons, patterns in society +and the church,--smugglers to a woman, and eager for any guilty +subterfuge! He glanced at Isabel to see what effect the evil +conversation had upon her. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks glowed; all the +woman was on fire for smuggling. He sighed heavily and went out with her +to do the little shopping. + +Shall I follow them upon their excursion? Shopping in Montreal is very +much what it is in Boston or New York, I imagine, except that the clerks +have a more honeyed sweetness of manners towards the ladies of our +nation, and are surprisingly generous constructionists of our revenue +laws. Isabel had profited by every word that she had heard in the +ladies' parlor, and she would not venture upon unsafe ground; but her +tender eyes looked her unutterable longing to believe in the charming +possibilities that the clerks suggested. She bemoaned herself before the +corded silks, which there was no time to have made up; the piece-velvets +and the linens smote her to the heart. But they also stimulated her +invention, and she bought and bought of the made-up wares in real or +fancied needs, till Basil represented that neither their purses nor +their trunks could stand any more. “O, don't be troubled about the +trunks, dearest,” she cried, with that gayety which nothing but shopping +can kindle in a woman's heart; while he faltered on from counter to +counter, wondering at which he should finally swoon from fatigue. At +last, after she had declared repeatedly, “There, now, I am done,” she +briskly led the way back to the hotel to pack up her purchases. + +Basil parted with her at the door. He was a man of high principle +himself, and that scene in the smugglers' den, and his wife's +preparation for transgression, were revelations for which nothing +could have consoled him but a paragon umbrella for five dollars, and an +excellent business suit of Scotch goods for twenty. + +When some hours later he sat with Isabel on the forward promenade of the +steamboat for Quebec, and summed up the profits of their shopping, they +were both in the kindliest mood towards the poor Canadians, who had +built the admirable city before them. + +For miles the water front of Montreal is superbly faced with quays and +locks of solid stone masonry, and thus she is clean and beautiful to +the very feet. Stately piles of architecture, instead of the foul old +tumble-down warehouses that dishonor the waterside in most cities, rise +from the broad wharves; behind these spring the twin towers of Notre +Dame, and the steeples of the other churches above the city roofs. + +“It's noble, yes, it's noble, after the best that Europe can show,” + said Isabel, with enthusiasm; “and what a pleasant day we've had here! +Doesn't even our quarrel show 'couleur de rose' in this light?” + +“One side of it,” answered Basil, dreamily, “but all the rest is black.” + +“What do you mean, my dear?” + +“Why, the Nelson Monument, with the sunset on it at the head of the +street there.” + +The affect was so fine that Isabel could not be angry with him for +failing to heed what she had said, and she mused a moment with him. + +“It seems rather far-fetched,” she said presently, “to erect a monument +to Nelson in Montreal, doesn't it? But then, it's a very absurd monument +when you're near it,” she added, thoughtfully. + +Basil did not answer at once, for gazing on this Nelson column in +Jacques Cartier Square, his thoughts wandered away, not to the hero of +the Nile, but to the doughty old Breton navigator, the first white man +who ever set foot upon that shore, and who more than three hundred years +ago explored the St. Lawrence as far as Montreal, and in the splendid +autumn weather climbed to the top of her green height and named it. +The scene that Jacques Cartier then beheld, like a mirage of the fast +projected upon the present, floated before him, and he saw at the +mountain's foot the Indian city of Hochelaga, with its vast and populous +lodges of bark, its encircling palisades, and its wide outlying fields +of yellow maize. He heard with Jacques Cartier's sense the blare of his +followers' trumpets down in the open square of the barbarous city, where +the soldiers of many an Old-World fight, “with mustached lip and bearded +chin, with arquebuse and glittering halberd, helmet, and cuirass,” moved +among the plumed and painted savages; then he lifted Jacques Cartier's +eyes, and looked out upon the magnificent landscape. “East, west, and +north, the mantling forest was over all, and the broad blue ribbon of +the great river glistened amid a realm of verdure. Beyond, to the bounds +of Mexico, stretched a leafy desert, and the vast hive of industry, +the mighty battle-ground of late; centuries, lay sunk in savage torpor, +wrapped in illimitable woods.” + +A vaguer picture of Champlain, who, seeking a westward route to China +and the East, some three quarters of a century later, had fixed the +first trading-post at Montreal, and camped upon the spot where the +convent of the Gray Nuns now stands, appeared before him, and vanished +with all its fleets of fur-traders' boats and hunters' birch canoes, +and the watch-fires of both; and then in the sweet light of the spring +morning, he saw Maisonneuve leaping ashore upon the green meadows, that +spread all gay with early flowers where Hochelaga once stood, and with +the black-robed Jesuits, the high-born, delicately nurtured, and devoted +nuns, and the steel-clad soldiers of his train, kneeling about the altar +raised there in the wilderness, and silent amidst the silence of nature +at the lifted Host. + +He painted a semblance of all this for Isabel, using the colors of the +historian who has made these scenes the beautiful inheritance of all +dream era, and sketched the battles, the miracles, the sufferings, and +the penances through which the pious colony was preserved and prospered, +till they both grew impatient of modern Montreal, and would fain have +had the ancient Villemarie back in its place. + +“Think of Maisonneuve, dearest, climbing in midwinter to the top of the +mountain there, under a heavy cross set with the bones of saints, +and planting it on the summit, in fulfillment of a vow to do so if +Villemarie were saved from the freshet; and then of Madame de la Peltrie +romantically receiving the sacrament there, while all Villemarie fell +down adoring! Ah, that was a picturesque people! When did ever a Boston +governor climb to the top of Beacon hill in fulfillment of a vow? To be +sure, we may yet see a New York governor doing something of the kind--if +he can find a hill. But this ridiculous column to Nelson, who never had +anything to do with Montreal,” he continued; “it really seems to me the +perfect expression of snobbish colonial dependence and sentimentality, +seeking always to identify itself with the mother-country, and ignoring +the local past and its heroic figures. A column to Nelson in Jacques +Cartier Square, on the ground that was trodden by Champlain, and won for +its present masters by the death of Wolfe.” + +The boat departed on her trip to Quebec. During supper they were +served by French waiters, who, without apparent English of their own, +miraculously understood that of the passengers, except in the case +of the furious gentleman who wanted English breakfast tea; to so much +English as that their inspiration did not reach, and they forced him to +compromise on coffee. It was a French boat, owned by a French company, +and seemed to be officered by Frenchmen throughout; certainly, as our +tourists in the joy of their good appetites affirmed, the cook was of +that culinarily delightful nation. + +The boat was almost as large as those of the Hudson, but it was not so +lavishly splendid, though it had everything that could minister to the +comfort and self-respect of the passengers. These were of all nations, +but chiefly Americans, with some French Canadians. The former gathered +on the forward promenade, enjoying what little of the landscape the +growing night left visible, and the latter made society after their +manner in the saloon. They were plain-looking men and women, mostly, +and provincial, it was evident, to their inmost hearts; provincial in +origin, provincial by inheritance, by all their circumstances, social +and political. Their relation with France was not a proud one, but it +was not like submersion by the slip-slop of English colonial loyalty; +yet they seem to be troubled by no memories of their hundred years' +dominion of the land that they rescued from, the wilderness, and that +was wrested from them by war. It is a strange fate for any people thus +to have been cut off from the parent-country, and abandoned to whatever +destiny their conquerors chose to reserve for them; and if each of the +race wore the sadness and strangeness of that fate in his countenance it +would not be wonderful. Perhaps it is wonderful that none of them +shows anything of the kind. In their desertion they have multiplied and +prospered; they may have a national grief, but they hide it well; and +probably they have none. + +Later, one of them appeared to Isabel in the person of the pale, slender +young ecclesiastic who had shown her and Basil the pictures in the +country church. She was confessing to the priest, and she was not at all +surprised to find that he was Basil in a suit of medieval armor. He had +an immense cross on his shoulder. + +“To get this cross to the top of the mountain,” thought Isabel, “we must +have two horses. Basil,” she added, aloud, “we must have two horses!” + +“Ten, if you like, my dear,” answered his voice, cheerfully, “though I +think we'd better ride up in the omnibus.” + +She opened her eyes, and saw him smiling. + +“We're in sight of Quebec,” he said. “Come out as soon as you can,--come +out into the seventeenth century.” + + + + +IX. QUEBEC. + +Isabel hurried out upon the forward promenade, where all the other +passengers seemed to be assembled, and beheld a vast bulk of gray and +purple rock, swelling two hundred feet up from the mists of the river, +and taking the early morning light warm upon its face and crown. +Black-hulked, red-illumined Liverpool steamers, gay river-craft and +ships of every sail and flag, filled the stream athwart which the +ferries sped their swift traffic-laden shuttles; a lower town hung to +the foot of the rock, and crept, populous and picturesque, up its sides; +from the massive citadel on its crest flew the red banner of Saint +George, and along its brow swept the gray wall of the famous, heroic, +beautiful city, overtopped by many a gleaming spire and antique roof. + +Slowly out of our work-day, business-suited, modern world the vessel +steamed up to this city of an olden time and another ideal,--to her who +was a lady from the first, devout and proud and strong, and who still, +after two hundred and fifty years, keeps perfect the image and memory of +the feudal past from which she sprung. Upon her height she sits unique; +and when you say Quebec, having once beheld her, you invoke a sense of +medieval strangeness and of beauty which the name of no other city could +intensify. + +As they drew near the steamboat wharf they saw, swarming over a broad +square, a market beside which the Bonsecours Market would have shown as +common as the Quincy, and up the odd wooden-sidewalked street stretched +an aisle of carriages and those high swung calashes, which are to Quebec +what the gondolas are to Venice. But the hand of destiny was upon our +tourists, and they rode up town in an omnibus. They were going to +the dear old Hotel Musty in Street, wanting which Quebec is not to be +thought of without a pang. It is now closed, and Prescott Gate, through +which they drove into the Upper Town, has been demolished since the +summer of last year. Swiftly whirled along the steep winding road, by +those Quebec horses which expect to gallop up hill whatever they do +going down, they turned a corner of the towering weed-grown rock, and +shot in under the low arch of the gate, pierced with smaller doorways +for the foot-passengers. The gloomy masonry dripped with damp, the doors +were thickly studded with heavy iron spikes; old cannon, thrust endwise +into the ground at the sides of the gate, protected it against +passing wheels. Why did not some semi-forbidding commissary of police, +struggling hard to overcome his native politeness, appear and demand +their passports? The illusion was otherwise perfect, and it needed but +this touch. How often in the adored Old World, which we so love and +disapprove, had they driven in through such gates at that morning +hour! On what perverse pretext, then, was it not some ancient town of +Normandy? + +“Put a few enterprising Americans in here, and they'd soon rattle this +old wall down and let in a little fresh air!” said a patriotic voice at +Isabel's elbow, and continued to find fault with the narrow irregular +streets, the huddling gables, the quaint roofs, through which and under +which they drove on to the hotel. + +As they dashed into a broad open square, “Here is the French Cathedral; +there is the Upper Town Market; yonder are the Jesuit Barracks!” cried +Basil; and they had a passing glimpse of gray stone towers at one side +of the square, and a low, massive yellow building at the other, and, +between the two, long ranks of carts, and fruit and vegetable stands, +protected by canvas awnings and broad umbrellas. Then they dashed round +the corner of a street, and drew up before the hotel door. The +low ceilings, the thick walls, the clumsy wood-work, the wandering +corridors, gave the hotel all the desired character of age, and its +slovenly state bestowed an additional charm. In another place they might +have demanded neatness, but in Quebec they would almost have resented +it. By a chance they had the best room in the house, but they held it +only till certain people who had engaged it by telegraph should arrive +in the hourly expected steamer from Liverpool; and, moreover, the best +room at Hotel Musty was consolingly bad. The house was very full, and +the Ellisons (who had come on with them from Montreal) were bestowed in +less state only on like conditions. + +The travellers all met at breakfast, which was admirably cooked, and +well served, with the attendance of those swarms of flies which infest +Quebec, and especially infested the old Musty House, in summer. It had, +of course, the attraction of broiled salmon, upon which the traveller +breakfasts every day as long as he remains in Lower Canada; and it +represented the abundance of wild berries in the Quebec market; and it +was otherwise a breakfast worthy of the appetites that honored it. + +There were not many other Americans besides themselves at this hotel, +which seemed, indeed, to be kept open to oblige such travellers as had +been there before, and could not persuade themselves to try the new +Hotel St. Louis, whither the vastly greater number resorted. Most of the +faces our tourists saw were English or English-Canadian, and the young +people from Omaha; who had got here by some chance, were scarcely in +harmony with the place. They appeared to be a bridal party, but which of +the two sisters, in buff linen 'clad from head to foot' was the bride, +never became known. Both were equally free with the husband, and he was +impartially fond of both: it was quite a family affair. + +For a moment Isabel harbored the desire to see the city in company +with Miss Ellison; but it was only a passing weakness. She remembered +directly the coolness between friends which she had seen caused by +objects of interest in Europe, and she wisely deferred a more intimate +acquaintance till it could have a purely social basis. After all, +nothing is so tiresome as continual exchange of sympathy or so apt to +end in mutual dislike,--except gratitude. So the ladies parted friends +till dinner, and drove off in separate carriages. + +As in other show cities, there is a routine at Quebec for travellers who +come on Saturday and go on Monday, and few depart from it. Our friends +necessarily, therefore, drove first to the citadel. It was raining one +of those cold rains by which the scarce-banished winter reminds the +Canadian fields of his nearness even in midsummer, though between the +bitter showers the air was sultry and close; and it was just the light +in which to see the grim strength of the fortress next strongest to +Gibraltar in the world. They passed a heavy iron gateway, and up through +a winding lane of masonry to the gate of the citadel, where they were +delivered into the care of Private Joseph Drakes, who was to show them +such parts of the place as are open to curiosity. But, a citadel which +has never stood a siege, or been threatened by any danger more serious +than Fenianism, soon becomes, however strong, but a dull piece of +masonry to the civilian; and our tourists more rejoiced in the crumbling +fragment of the old French wall which the English destroyed than in all +they had built; and they valued the latter work chiefly for the glorious +prospects of the St. Lawrence and its mighty valleys which it commanded. +Advanced into the centre of an amphitheatre inconceivably vast, that +enormous beak of rock overlooks the narrow angle of the river, and then, +in every direction, immeasurable stretches of gardened vale, and wooded +upland, till all melts into the purple of the encircling mountains. Far +and near are lovely white villages nestling under elms, in the heart of +fields and meadows; and everywhere the long, narrow, accurately divided +farms stretch downward to the river-shores. The best roads on the +continent make this beauty and richness accessible; each little village +boasts some natural wonder in stream, or lake, or cataract: and this +landscape, magnificent beyond any in eastern America, is historical and +interesting beyond all others. Hither came Jacques Cartier three hundred +and fifty years ago, and wintered on the low point there by the St. +Charles; here, nearly a century after, but still fourteen years before +the landing at Plymouth, Champlain founded the missionary city of +Quebec; round this rocky beak came sailing the half-piratical armament +of the Calvinist Kirks in 1629, and seized Quebec in the interest of the +English, holding it three years; in the Lower Town, yonder, first landed +the coldly welcomed Jesuits, who came with the returning French and made +Quebec forever eloquent of their zeal, their guile, their heroism; at +the foot of this rock lay the fleet of Sir William Phipps, governor of +Massachusetts, and vainly assailed it in 1698; in 1759 came Wolfe and +embattled all the region, on river and land, till at last the bravely +defended city fell into his dying hand on the Plains of Abraham; here +Montgomery laid down his life at the head of the boldest and most +hopeless effort of our War of Independence. + +Private Joseph Drakes, with the generosity of an enemy expecting +drink-money, pointed out the sign, board on the face of the crag +commemorating 'Montgomery's death'; and then showed them the officers' +quarters and those of the common soldiers, not far from which was a +line of hang-dog fellows drawn up to receive sentence for divers small +misdemeanors, from an officer whose blond whiskers drooped Dundrearily +from his fresh English cheeks. There was that immense difference between +him and the men in physical grandeur and beauty, which is so notable +in the aristocratically ordered military services of Europe, and which +makes the rank seem of another race from the file. Private Drakes +saluted his superior, and visibly deteriorated in his presence, though +his breast was covered with medals, and he had fought England's battles +in every part of the world. It was a gross injustice, the triumph of a +thousand years of wrong; and it was touching to have Private Drakes say +that he expected in three months to begin life for himself, after twenty +years' service of the Queen; and did they think he could get anything +to do in the States? He scarcely knew what he was fit for, but he +thought--to so little in him came the victories he had helped to win +in the Crimea, in China, and in India--that he could take care of a +gentleman's horse and work about his place. He looked inquiringly at +Basil, as if he might be a gentleman with a horse to be taken care of +and a place to be worked about, and made him regret that he was not a +man of substance enough to provide for Private Drakes and Mrs. Drakes +and the brood of Ducklings, who had been shown to him stowed away in one +of those cavernous rooms in the earthworks where the married soldiers +have their quarters. His regret enriched the reward of Private Drakes' +service,--which perhaps answered one of Private Drakes' purposes, if +not his chief aim. He promised to come to the States upon the pressing +advice of Isabel, who, speaking from her own large experience, declared +that everybody got on there,--and he bade our friends an affectionate +farewell as they drove away to the Plains of Abraham. + +The fashionable suburban cottages and places of Quebec are on the St. +Louis Road leading northward to the old battle-ground and beyond it; +but, these face chiefly towards the rivers St. Lawrence and St. Charles, +and lofty hedges and shrubbery hide them in an English seclusion from +the highway; so that the visitor may uninterruptedly meditate whatever +emotion he will for the scene of Wolfe's death as he rides along. His +loftiest emotion will want the noble height of that heroic soul, who +must always stand forth in history a figure of beautiful and singular +distinction, admirable alike for the sensibility and daring, the poetic +pensiveness, and the martial ardor that mingled in him and taxed his +feeble frame with tasks greater than it could bear. The whole story of +the capture of Quebec is full of romantic splendor and pathos. Her fall +was a triumph for all the English-speaking race, and to us Americans, +long scourged by the cruel Indian wars plotted within her walls or +sustained by her strength, such a blessing as was hailed with ringing +bells and blazing bonfires throughout the Colonies; yet now we cannot +think without pity of the hopes extinguished and the labors brought to +naught in her overthrow. That strange colony of priests and soldiers, of +martyrs and heroes, of which she was the capital, willing to perish for +an allegiance to which the mother-country was indifferent, and fighting +against the armies with which England was prepared to outnumber the +whole Canadian population, is a magnificent spectacle; and Montcalm +laying down his life to lose Quebec is not less affecting than Wolfe +dying to win her. The heart opens towards the soldier who recited, on +the eve of his costly victory, the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” + which he would “rather have written than beat the French to-morrow;” but +it aches for the defeated general, who, hurt to death, answered, when +told how brief his time was, “So much the better; then I shall not live +to see the surrender of Quebec.” + +In the city for which they perished their fame has never been divided. +The English have shown themselves very generous victors; perhaps nothing +could be alleged against them, but that they were victors. A shaft +common to Wolfe and Montcalm celebrates them both in the Governor's +Garden; and in the Chapel of the Ursuline Convent a tablet is placed, +where Montcalm died, by the same conquerors who raised to Wolfe's memory +the column on the battle-field. + +A dismal prison covers the ground where the hero fell, and the monument +stands on the spot where Wolfe breathed his last, on ground lower than +the rest of the field; the friendly hollow that sheltered him from the +fire of the French dwarfs his monument; yet it is sufficient, and the +simple inscription, “Here died Wolfe victorious,” gives it a dignity +which many cubits of added stature could not bestow. Another of those +bitter showers, which had interspersed the morning's sunshine, +drove suddenly across the open plain, and our tourists comfortably +sentimentalized the scene behind the close-drawn curtains of their +carriage. Here a whole empire had been lost and won, Basil reminded +Isabel; and she said, “Only think of it!” and looked to a wandering fold +of her skirt, upon which the rain beat through a rent of the curtain. + +Do I pitch the pipe too low? We poor honest men are at a sad +disadvantage; and now and then I am minded to give a loose to fancy, and +attribute something really grand and fine to my people, in order to make +them worthier the reader's respected acquaintance. But again, I forbid +myself in a higher interest; and I am afraid that even if I were less +virtuous, I could not exalt their mood upon a battle-field; for of all +things of the past a battle is the least conceivable. I have heard men +who fought in many battles say that the recollection was like a dream to +them; and what can the merely civilian imagination do on the Plains +of Abraham, with the fact that there, more than a century ago, certain +thousands of Frenchmen marched out, on a bright September morning, to +kill and maim as many Englishmen? This ground, so green and oft with +grass beneath the feet, was it once torn with shot and soaked with the +blood of men? Did they lie here in ranks and heaps, the miserable slain, +for whom tender hearts away yonder over the sea were to ache and break? +Did the wretches that fell wounded stretch themselves here, and writhe +beneath the feet of friend and foe, or crawl array for shelter into +little hollows, and behind gushes and fallen trees! Did he, whose soul +was so full of noble and sublime impulses, die here, shot through like +some ravening beast? The loathsome carnage, the shrieks, the hellish din +of arms, the cries of victory,--I vainly strive to conjure up some image +of it all now; and God be thanked, horrible spectre! that, fill the +world with sorrow as thou wilt, thou still remainest incredible in +its moments of sanity and peace. Least credible art thou on the old +battle-fields, where the mother of the race denies thee with breeze +and sun and leaf and bird, and every blade of grass! The red stain in +Basil's thought yielded to the rain sweeping across the pasture-land +from which it had long since faded, and the words on the monument, “Here +died Wolfe victorious,” did not proclaim his bloody triumph over the +French, but his self-conquest, his victory over fear and pain and love +of life. Alas! when shall the poor, blind, stupid world honor those who +renounce self in the joy of their kind, equally with those who devote +themselves through the anguish and loss of thousands? So old a world and +groping still! + +The tourists were better fitted for the next occasion of sentiment, +which was at the Hotel Dieu whither they went after returning from the +battlefield. It took all the mal-address of which travellers are masters +to secure admittance, and it was not till they had rung various wrong +bells, and misunderstood many soft nun-voices speaking French through +grated doors, and set divers sympathetic spectators doing ineffectual +services, that they at last found the proper entrance, and were answered +in English that the porter would ask if they might see the chapel. They +hoped to find there the skull of Brebeuf, one of those Jesuit martyrs +who perished long ago for the conversion of a race that has perished, +and whose relics they had come, fresh from their reading of Parkman, +with some vague and patronizing intention to revere. An elderly sister +with a pale, kind face led them through a ward of the hospital into the +chapel, which they found in the expected taste, and exquisitely neat and +cool, but lacking the martyr's skull. They asked if it were not to be +seen. “Ah, yes, poor Pere Brebeuf!” sighed the gentle sister, with the +tone and manner of having lost him yesterday; “we had it down only last +week, showing it to some Jesuit fathers; but it's in the convent now, +and isn't to be seen.” And there mingled apparently in her regret for +Pere Brebeuf a confusing sense of his actual state as a portable piece +of furniture. She would not let them praise the chapel. It was very +clean, yes, but there was nothing to see in it. She deprecated their +compliments with many shrugs, but she was pleased; for when we renounce +the pomps and vanities of this world, we are pretty sure to find them in +some other,--if we are women. She, good and pure soul, whose whole life +was given to self-denying toil, had yet something angelically coquettish +in her manner, a spiritual-worldliness which was the clarified likeness +of this-worldliness. O, had they seen the Hotel Dieu at Montreal? Then +(with a vivacious wave of the hands) they would not care to look at +this, which by comparison was nothing. Yet she invited them to go +through the wards if they would, and was clearly proud to have them see +the wonderful cleanness and comfort of the place. There were not many +patients, but here and there a wan or fevered face looked at them +from its pillow, or a weak form drooped beside a bed, or a group of +convalescents softly talked together. They came presently to the last +hall, at the end of which sat another nun, beside a window that gave a +view of the busy port, and beyond it the landscape of village-lit plain +and forest-darkened height. On a table at her elbow stood a rose-tree, +on which hung two only pale tea-roses, so fair, so perfect, that Isabel +cried out in wonder and praise. Ere she could prevent it, the nun, +to whom there had been some sort of presentation, gathered one of the +roses, and with a shy grace offered it to Isabel, who shrank back a +little as from too costly a gift. “Take it,” said the first nun, with +her pretty French accent; while the other, who spoke no English at all, +beamed a placid smile; and Isabel took it. The flower, lying light in +her palm, exhaled a delicate odor, and a thrill of exquisite compassion +for it trembled through her heart, as if it had been the white, +cloistered life of the silent nun: with its pallid loveliness, it was +as a flower that had taken the veil. It could never have uttered the +burning passion of a lover for his mistress; the nightingale could have +found no thorn on it to press his aching poet's heart against; but +sick and weary eyes had dwelt gratefully upon it; at most it might have +expressed, like a prayer, the nun's stainless love of some favorite +saint in paradise. Cold, and pale, and sweet,--was it indeed only a +flower, this cloistered rose of the Hotel Dieu? + +“Breathe it,” said the gentle Gray Sister; “sometimes the air of +the hospital offends. Not us, no; we are used; but you come from the +outside.” And she gave her rose for this humble use as lovingly as she +devoted herself to her lowly taxes. + +“It is very little to see,” she said at the end; “but if you are +pleased, I am very glad. Goodby, good-by!” She stood with her arms +folded, and watched them out of sight with her kind, coquettish little +smile, and then the mute, blank life of the nun resumed her. + +From Hotel Dieu to Hotel Musty it was but a step; both were in the +same street; but our friends fancied themselves to have come an immense +distance when they sat down at an early dinner, amidst the clash of +crockery and cutlery, and looked round upon all the profane travelling +world assembled. Their regard presently fixed upon one company which +monopolized a whole table, and were defined from the other diners by +peculiarities as marked as those of the Soeurs Grises themselves. There +were only two men among some eight or ten women; one of the former had a +bad amiable face, with eyes full of a merry deviltry; the other, clean +shaven, and dark, was demure and silent as a priest. The ladies were +of various types, but of one effect, with large rolling eyes, and faces +that somehow regarded the beholder as from a distance, and with an +impartial feeling for him as for an element of publicity. One of them, +who caressed a lapdog with one hand while she served herself with the +other, was, as she seemed to believe, a blonde; she had pale blue +eyes, and her hair was cut in front so as to cover her forehead with a +straggling sandy-colored fringe. She had an English look, and three or +four others, with dark complexion and black, unsteady eyes, and various +abandon of back-hair, looked like Cockney houris of Jewish blood; while +two of the lovely company were clearly of our own nation, as was the +young man with the reckless laughing face. The ladies were dressed and +jeweled with a kind of broad effectiveness, which was to the ordinary +style of society what scene-painting is to painting, and might have +borne close inspection no better. They seemed the best-humored people +in the world, and on the kindliest terms with each other. The waiters +shared their pleasant mood, and served them affectionately, and were +now and then invited to join in the gay talk which babbled on over +dislocated aspirates, and filled the air with a sentiment of vagabond +enjoyment, of the romantic freedom of violated convention, of something +Gil Blas-like, almost picaresque. + +If they had needed explanation it would have been given by the +announcement in the office of the hotel that a troupe of British blondes +was then appearing in Quebec for one week only. + +After dinner they took possession of the parlor, and while one strummed +fitfully upon the ailing hotel piano, the rest talked, and talked shop, +of course, as all of us do when several of a trade are got together. + +“W'at,” said the eldest of the dark-faced, black haired British blondes +of Jewish race,--“w'at are we going to give at Montrehal?” + +“We're going to give 'Pygmalion,' at Montrehal,” answered the British +blonde of American birth, good-humoredly burlesquing the erring h of her +sister. + +“But we cahn't, you know,” said the lady with the fringed forehead; +“Hagnes is gone on to New York, and there's nobody to do Wenus.” + +“Yes, you know,” demanded the first speaker, “oo's to do Wenus? + +“Bella's to do Wenus,” said a third. + +There was an outcry at this, and “'Ow ever would she get herself up for +'Venus?” and “W'at a guy she'll look!” and “Nonsense! Bella's too +'eavy for Venus!” came from different lively critics; and the debate +threatened to become too intimate for the public ear, when one of their +gentlemen came in and said, “Charley don't seem so well this afternoon.” + On this the chorus changed its note, and at the proposal, “Poor Charley, +let's go and cheer 'im hop a bit,” the whole good-tempered company +trooped out of the parlor together. + +Our tourists meant to give the rest of the afternoon to that sort of +aimless wandering to and fro about the streets which seizes a foreign +city unawares, and best develops its charm of strangeness. So they +went out and took their fill of Quebec with appetites keen through long +fasting from the quaint and old, and only sharpened by Montreal, and +impartially rejoiced in the crooked up-and-down hill streets; the +thoroughly French domestic architecture of a place that thus denied +having been English for a hundred years; the porte-cocheres beside every +house; the French names upon the doors, and the oddity of the bellpulls; +the rough-paved, rattling streets; the shining roofs of tin, and the +universal dormer-windows; the littleness of the private houses, and the +greatness of the high-walled and garden-girdled convents; the breadths +of weather-stained city wall, and the shaggy cliff beneath; the +batteries, with their guns peacefully staring through loop-holes of +masonry, and the red-coated sergeants flirting with nursery-maids upon +the carriages, while the children tumbled about over the pyramids of +shot and shell; the sloping market-place before the cathedral, where yet +some remnant of the morning's traffic lingered under canvas canopies, +and where Isabel bought a bouquet of marigolds and asters of an old +woman peasant enough to have sold it in any market-place of Europe; the +small, dark shops beyond the quarter invaded by English retail trade; +the movement of all the strange figures of cleric and lay and military +life; the sound of a foreign speech prevailing over the English; the +encounter of other tourists, the passage back and forth through the +different city gates; the public wooden stairways, dropping flight after +flight from the Upper to the Lower Town; the bustle of the port, with +its commerce and shipping and seafaring life huddled close in under the +hill; the many desolate streets of the Lower Town, as black and ruinous +as the last great fire left them; and the marshy meadows beyond, +memorable of Recollets and Jesuits, of Cartier and Montcalm. + +They went to the chapel of the Seminary at Laval University, and admired +the Le Brun, and the other paintings of less merit, but equal interest +through their suggestion of a whole dim religious world of paintings; +and then they spent half an hour in the cathedral, not so much in +looking at the Crucifixion by Vandyck which is there, as in reveling +amid the familiar rococo splendors of the temple. Every swaggering +statue of a saint, every rope-dancing angel, every cherub of those that +on the carven and gilded clouds above the high altar float-- + + “Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,”-- + +was precious to them; the sacristan dusting the sacred properties with a +feather brush, and giving each shrine a business-like nod as he passed, +was as a long-lost brother; they had hearts of aggressive tenderness for +the young girls and old women who stepped in for a half-hour's devotion, +and for the men with bourgeois or peasant faces, who stole a moment from +affairs and crops, and gave it to the saints. There was nothing in the +place that need remind them of America, and its taste was exactly that +of a thousand other churches of the eighteenth century. They could +easily have believed themselves in the farthest Catholic South, but for +the two great porcelain stoves that stood on either side of the nave +near the entrance, and that too vividly reminded them of the possibility +of cold. + +In fact, Quebec is a little painful in this and other confusions of the +South and North, and one never quite reconciles himself to them. The +Frenchmen, who expected to find there the climate of their native land, +and ripen her wines in as kindly a sun, have perpetuated the image of +home in so many things, that it goes to the heart with a painful emotion +to find the sad, oblique light of the North upon them. As you ponder +some characteristic aspect of Quebec,--a bit of street with heavy stone +houses opening upon a stretch of the city wall, with a Lombardy poplar +rising slim against it,--you say, to your satisfied soul, “Yes, it +is the real thing!” and then all at once a sense of that Northern sky +strikes in upon you, and makes the reality a mere picture. The sky is +blue, the sun is often fiercely hot; you could not perhaps prove that +the pathetic radiance is not an efflux of your own consciousness that +summer is but hanging over the land, briefly poising on wings which flit +at the first dash of rain, and will soon vanish in long retreat before +the snow. But somehow, from without or from within, that light of the +North is there. + +It lay saddest, our travellers thought, upon the little circular +garden near Durham Terrace, where every brightness of fall flowers +abounded,--marigold, coxcomb, snap-dragon, dahlia, hollyhock, and +sunflower. It was a substantial and hardy efflorescence, and they +fancied that fainter-hearted plants would have pined away in that +garden, where the little fountain, leaping up into the joyless light, +fell back again with a musical shiver. The consciousness of this latent +cold, of winter only held in abeyance by the bright sun, was not deeper +even in the once magnificent, now neglected Governor's Garden, where +there was actually a rawness in the late afternoon air, and whither they +were strolling for the view from its height, and to pay their duty to +the obelisk raised there to the common fame of Wolfe and Montcalm. The +sounding Latin inscription celebrates the royal governor-general who +erected it almost as much as the heroes to whom it was raised; but these +spectators did not begrudge the space given to his praise, for so fine a +thought merited praise. It enforced again the idea of a kind posthumous +friendship between Wolfe and Montcalm, which gives their memory its rare +distinction, and unites them, who fell in fight against each other, as +closely as if they had both died for the same cause. + +Some lasting dignity seems to linger about the city that has once been a +capital; and this odor of fallen nobility belongs to Quebec, which was +a capital in the European sense, with all the advantages of a small +vice-regal court, and its social and political intrigues, in the French +times. Under the English, for a hundred years it was the centre +of Colonial civilization and refinement, with a governor-general's +residence and a brilliant, easy, and delightful society, to which the +large garrison of former days gave gayety and romance. The honors of +a capital, first shared with Montreal and Toronto, now rest with +half-savage Ottawa; and the garrison has dwindled to a regiment +of rifles, whose presence would hardly be known, but for the natty +sergeants lounging, stick in hand, about the streets and courting +the nurse-maids. But in the days of old there were scenes of carnival +pleasure in the Governor's Garden, and there the garrison band still +plays once a week, when it is filled by the fashion and beauty of +Quebec, and some semblance of the past is recalled. It is otherwise a +lonesome, indifferently tended place, and on this afternoon there was +no one there but a few loafing young fellows of low degree, French and +English, and children that played screaming from seat to seat and path +to path and over the too-heavily shaded grass. In spite of a conspicuous +warning that any dog entering the garden would be destroyed, the place +was thronged with dogs unmolested and apparently in no danger of the +threatened doom. The seal of a disagreeable desolation was given in +the legend rudely carved upon one of the benches, “Success to the Irish +Republic!” + +The morning of the next day our tourists gave to hearing mass at the +French cathedral, which was not different, to their heretical senses, +from any other mass, except that the ceremony was performed with a +very full clerical force, and was attended by an uncommonly devout +congregation. With Europe constantly in their minds, they were +bewildered to find the worshippers not chiefly old and young women, but +men also of all ages and of every degree, from the neat peasant in +his Sabbath-day best to the modish young Quebecker, who spread his +handkerchief on the floor to save his pantaloons during supplication. +There was fashion and education in large degree among the men, and there +was in all a pious attention to the function in poetical keeping with +the origin and history of a city which the zeal of the Church had +founded. + +A magnificent beadle, clothed in a gold-laced coat aid bearing a silver +staff, bowed to them when they entered, and, leading them to a pew, +punched up a kneeling peasant, who mutely resumed his prayers in the +aisle outside, while they took his place. It appeared to Isabel very +unjust that their curiosity should displace his religion; but she +consoled herself by making Basil give a shilling to the man who, +preceded by the shining beadle, came round to take up a collection. +The peasant could have given nothing but copper, and she felt that this +restored the lost balance of righteousness in their favor. There was +a sermon, very sweetly and gracefully delivered by a young priest of +singular beauty, even among clergy whose good looks are so notable as +those of Quebec; and then they followed the orderly crowd of worshippers +out, and left the cathedral to the sacristan and the odor of incense. + +They thought the type of French-Canadian better here than at Montreal, +and they particularly noticed the greater number of pretty young girls. +All classes were well dressed; for though the best dressed could not be +called stylish according to the American standard, as Isabel decided, +and had only a provincial gentility, the poorest wore garments that were +clean and whole. Everybody, too, was going to have a hot Sunday dinner, +if there was any truth in the odors that steamed out of every door and +window; and this dinner was to be abundantly garnished with onions, for +the dullest nose could not err concerning that savor. + +Numbers of tourists, of a nationality that showed itself superior to +every distinction of race, were strolling vaguely and not always +quite happily about; but they made no impression on the proper local +character, and the air throughout the morning was full of the sentiment +of Sunday in a Catholic city. There was the apparently meaningless +jangling of bells, with profound hushes between, and then more jubilant +jangling, and then deeper silence; there was the devout trooping of +the crowds to the churches; and there was the beginning of the long +afternoon's lounging and amusement with which the people of that faith +reward their morning's devotion. Little stands for the sale of knotty +apples and choke-cherries and cakes and cider sprang magically into +existence after service, and people were already eating and drinking at +them. The carriage-drivers resumed their chase of the tourists, and the +unvoiceful stir of the new week had begun again. Quebec, in fact, is but +a pantomimic reproduction of France; it is as if two centuries in a new +land, amidst the primeval silences of nature and the long hush of the +Northern winters, had stilled the tongues of the lively folk and made +them taciturn as we of a graver race. They have kept the ancestral +vivacity of manner; the elegance of the shrug is intact; the talking +hands take part in dialogue; the agitated person will have its share of +expression. But the loud and eager tone is wanting, and their dumb show +mystifies the beholder almost as much as the Southern architecture under +the slanting Northern sun. It is not America; if it is not France, what +is it? + +Of the many beautiful things to see in the neighborhood of Quebec, our +wedding-journeyers were in doubt on which to bestow their one precious +afternoon. Should it be Lorette, with its cataract and its remnant of +bleached and fading Hurons, or the Isle of Orleans with its fertile +farms and its primitive peasant life, or Montmorenci, with the unrivaled +fall and the long drive through the beautiful village of Beauport? +Isabel chose the last, because Basil had been there before, and it had +to it the poetry of the wasted years in which she did not know him. She +had possessed herself of the journal of his early travels, among the +other portions and parcels recoverable from the dreadful past, and from +time to time on this journey she had read him passages out of it, with +mingled sentiment and irony, and, whether she was mocking or admiring, +equally to his confusion. Now, as they smoothly bowled away from the +city, she made him listen to what he had written of the same excursion +long ago. + +It was, to be sure, a sad farrago of sentiment about the village and the +rural sights, and especially a girl tossing hay in the field. Yet it +had touches of nature and reality, and Basil could not utterly despise +himself for having written it. “Yes,” he said, “life was then a thing +to be put into pretty periods; now it's something that has risks and +averages, and may be insured.” + +There was regret, fancied or expressed, in his tone, that made her +sigh, “Ah! if I'd only had a little more money, you might have devoted +yourself to literature;” for she was a true Bostonian in her honor of +our poor craft. + +“O, you're not greatly to blame,” answered her husband, “and I forgive +you the little wrong you've done me. I was quits with the Muse, at any +rate, you know, before we were married; and I'm very well satisfied to +be going back to my applications and policies to-morrow.” + +To-morrow? The word struck cold upon her. Then their wedding journey +would begin to end tomorrow! So it would, she owned with another sigh; +and yet it seemed impossible. + +“There, ma'am,” said the driver, rising from his seat and facing round, +while he pointed with his whip towards Quebec, “that's what we call the +Silver City.” + +They looked back with him at the city, whose thousands of tinned roofs, +rising one above the other from the water's edge to the citadel, were +all a splendor of argent light in the afternoon sun. It was indeed as if +some magic had clothed that huge rock, base and steepy flank and crest, +with a silver city. They gazed upon the marvel with cries of joy that +satisfied the driver's utmost pride in it, and Isabel said, “To live +there, there in that Silver City, in perpetual sojourn! To be always +going to go on a morrow that never came! To be forever within one day of +the end of a wedding journey that never ended!” + +From far down the river by which they rode came the sound of a cannon, +breaking the Sabbath repose of the air. “That's the gun of the Liverpool +steamer, just coming in,” said the driver. + +“O,” cried Isabel, “I'm thankful we're only to stay one night more, +for now we shall be turned out of our nice room by those people who +telegraphed for it!” + +There is a continuous village along the St. Lawrence from Quebec, almost +to Montmorenci; and they met crowds of villagers coming from the church +as they passed through Beauport. But Basil was dismayed at the change +that had befallen them. They had their Sunday's best on, and the women, +instead of wearing the peasant costume in which he had first seen them, +were now dressed as if out of “Harper's Bazar” of the year before. He +anxiously asked the driver if the broad straw hats and the bright sacks +and kirtles were no more. “O, you'd see them on weekdays, sir,” was +the answer, “but they're not so plenty any time as they used to be.” He +opened his store of facts about the habitans, whom he praised for every +virtue,--for thrift, for sobriety, for neatness, for amiability; and his +words ought to have had the greater weight, because he was of the Irish +race, between which and the Canadians there is no kindness lost. But the +looks of the passers-by corroborated him, and as for the little houses, +open-doored beside the way, with the pleasant faces at window and +portal, they were miracles of picturesqueness and cleanliness. From each +the owner's slim domain, narrowing at every successive division among +the abundant generations, runs back to hill or river in well-defined +lines, and beside the cottage is a garden of pot-herbs, bordered with a +flame of bright autumn flowers; somewhere in decent seclusion grunts +the fattening pig, which is to enrich all those peas and onions for the +winter's broth; there is a cheerfulness of poultry about the barns; I +dare be sworn there is always a small girl driving a flock of decorous +ducks down the middle of the street; and of the priest with a book under +his arm, passing a way-side shrine, what possible doubt? The houses, +which are of one model, are built by the peasants themselves with the +stone which their land yields more abundantly than any other crop, and +are furnished with galleries and balconies to catch every ray of the +fleeting summer, and perhaps to remember the long-lost ancestral summers +of Normandy. At every moment, in passing through this ideally neat and +pretty village, our tourists must think of the lovely poem of which all +French Canada seems but a reminiscence and illustration. It was Grand +Pre, not Beauport; and they paid an eager homage to the beautiful genius +which has touched those simple village aspects with an undying charm, +and which, whatever the land's political allegiance, is there perpetual +Seigneur. + +The village, stretching along the broad interval of the St. Lawrence, +grows sparser as you draw near the Falls of Montmorenci, and presently +you drive past the grove shutting from the road the country-house in +which the Duke of Kent spent some merry days of his jovial youth, and +come in sight of two lofty towers of stone,--monuments and witnesses of +the tragedy of Montmorenci. + +Once a suspension-bridge, built sorely against the will of the +neighboring habitans, hung from these towers high over the long plunge +of the cataract. But one morning of the fatal spring after the first +winter's frost had tried the hold of the cable on the rocks, an old +peasant and his wife with their little grandson set out in their cart +to pass the bridge. As they drew near the middle the anchoring wires +suddenly lost their grip upon the shore, and whirled into the air; the +bridge crashed under the hapless passengers and they were launched from +its height, upon the verge of the fall and thence plunged, two hundred +and fifty feet, into the ruin of the abyss. + +The habitans rebuilt their bridge of wood upon low stone piers, so far +up the river from the cataract that whoever fell from it would yet have +many a chance for life; and it would have been perilous to offer +to replace the fallen structure, which, in the belief of faithful +Christians, clearly belonged to the numerous bridges built by the Devil, +in times when the Devil did not call himself a civil engineer. + +The driver, with just unction, recounted the sad tale as he halted his +horses on the bridge; and as his passengers looked down the rock-fretted +brown torrent towards the fall, Isabel seized the occasion to shudder +that ever she had set foot on that suspension-bridge below Niagara, and +to prove to Basil's confusion that her doubt of the bridges between +the Three Sisters was not a case of nerves but an instinctive wisdom +concerning the unsafety of all bridges of that design. + +From the gate opening into the grounds about the fall two or three +little French boys, whom they had not the heart to forbid, ran noisily +before them with cries in their sole English, “This way, sir” and led +toward a weather-beaten summer-house that tottered upon a projecting +rock above the verge of the cataract. But our tourists shook their +heads, and turned away for a more distant and less dizzy enjoyment of +the spectacle, though any commanding point was sufficiently chasmal and +precipitous. The lofty bluff was scooped inward from the St. Lawrence in +a vast irregular semicircle, with cavernous hollows, one within another, +sinking far into its sides, and naked from foot to crest, or meagrely +wooded here and there with evergreen. From the central brink of these +gloomy purple chasms the foamy cataract launched itself, and like a +cloud, + + “Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.” + +I say a cloud, because I find it already said to my hand, as it were, in +a pretty verse, and because I must needs liken Montmorenci to something +that is soft and light. Yet a cloud does not represent the glinting +of the water in its downward swoop; it is like some broad slope of +sun-smitten snow; but snow is coldly white and opaque, and this has a +creamy warmth in its luminous mass; and so, there hangs the cataract +unsaid as before. It is a mystery that anything so grand should be so +lovely, that anything so tenderly fair in whatever aspect should yet be +so large that one glance fails to comprehend it all. The rugged wildness +of the cliffs and hollows about it is softened by its gracious beauty, +which half redeems the vulgarity of the timber-merchant's uses in +setting the river at work in his saw-mills and choking its outlet into +the St. Lawrence with rafts of lumber and rubbish of slabs and shingles. +Nay, rather, it is alone amidst these things, and the eye takes note of +them by a separate effort. + +Our tourists sank down upon the turf that crept with its white clover +to the edge of the precipice, and gazed dreamily upon the fall, filling +their vision with its exquisite color and form. Being wiser than I, they +did not try to utter its loveliness; they were content to feel it, +and the perfection of the afternoon, whose low sun slanting over the +landscape gave, under that pale, greenish-blue sky, a pensive sentiment +of autumn to the world. The crickets cried amongst the grass; the +hesitating chirp of birds came from the tree overhead; a shaggy colt +left off grazing in the field and stalked up to stare at them; their +little guides, having found that these people had no pleasure in +the sight of small boys scuffling on the verge of a precipice, threw +themselves also down upon the grass and crooned a long, long ballad in a +mournful minor key about some maiden whose name was La Belle Adeline. It +was a moment of unmixed enjoyment for every sense, and through all their +being they were glad; which considering, they ceased to be so, with a +deep sigh, as one reasoning that he dreams must presently awake. They +never could have an emotion without desiring to analyze it; but perhaps +their rapture would have ceased as swiftly, even if they had not tried +to make it a fact of consciousness. + +“If there were not dinner after such experiences as these,” said Isabel, +as they sat at table that evening, “I don't know what would become of +one. But dinner unites the idea of pleasure and duty, and brings you +gently back to earth. You must eat, don't you see, and there's nothing +disgraceful about what you're obliged to do; and so--it's all right.” + +“Isabel, Isabel,” cried her husband, “you have a wonderful mind, and +its workings always amaze me. But be careful, my dear; be careful. Don't +work it too hard. The human brain, you know: delicate organ.” + +“Well, you understand what I mean; and I think it's one of the great +charms of a husband, that you're not forced to express yourself to him. +A husband,” continued Isabel, sententiously, poising a bit of meringue +between her thumb and finger,--for they had reached that point in the +repast, “a husband is almost as good as another woman!” + +In the parlor they found the Ellisons, and exchanged the history of the +day with them. + +“Certainly,” said Mrs. Ellison, at the end, “it's been a pleasant day +enough, but what of the night? You've been turned out, too, by those +people who came on the steamer, and who might as well have stayed on +board to-night; have you got another room?” + +“Not precisely,” said Isabel; “we have a coop in the fifth story, right +under the roof.” + +Mrs. Ellison turned energetically upon her husband and cried in tones of +reproach, “Richard, Mrs. March has a room!” + +“A coop, she said,” retorted that amiable Colonel, “and we're too good +for that. The clerk is keeping us in suspense about a room, because +he means to surprise us with something palatial at the end. It's his +joking way.” + +“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Ellison. “Have you seen him since dinner?” + +“I have made life a burden to him for the last half-hour,” returned the +Colonel, with the kindliest smile. + +“O Richard,” cried his wife, in despair of his amendment, “you wouldn't +make life a burden to a mouse!” And having nothing else for it, she +laughed, half in sorrow, half in fondness. + +“Well, Fanny,” the Colonel irrelevantly answered, “put on your hat and +things, and let's all go up to Durham Terrace for a promenade. I know +our friends want to go. It's something worth seeing; and by the time we +get back, the clerk will have us a perfectly sumptuous apartment.” + +Nothing, I think, more enforces the illusion of Southern Europe in +Quebec than the Sunday-night promenading on Durham Terrace. This is the +ample space on the brow of the cliff to the left of the citadel, the +noblest and most commanding position in the whole city, which was +formerly occupied by the old castle of Saint Louis, where dwelt the +brave Count Frontenac and his splendid successors of the French regime. +The castle went the way of Quebec by fire some forty years ago, and Lord +Durham leveled the site and made it a public promenade. A stately arcade +of solid masonry supports it on the brink of the rock, and an iron +parapet incloses it; there are a few seats to lounge upon, and some idle +old guns for the children to clamber over and play with. A soft twilight +had followed the day, and there was just enough obscurity to hide from a +willing eye the Northern and New World facts of the scene, and to bring +into more romantic relief the citadel dark against the mellow evening, +and the people gossiping from window to window across the narrow streets +of the Lower Town. The Terrace itself was densely thronged, and there +was a constant coming and going of the promenaders, who each formally +paced back and forth upon the planking for a certain time, and then went +quietly home, giving place to the new arrivals. They were nearly all +French, and they were not generally, it seemed, of the first fashion, +but rather of middling condition in life; the English being represented +only by a few young fellows and now and then a redfaced old gentleman +with an Indian scarf trailing from his hat. There were some fair +American costumes and faces in the crowd, but it was essentially +Quebecian. The young girls walking in pairs, or with their lovers, +had the true touch of provincial unstylishness, the young men the +ineffectual excess of the second-rate Latin dandy, their elders the rich +inelegance of a bourgeoisie in their best. A few, better-figured avocats +or notaires (their profession was as unmistakable as if they had carried +their well-polished brass doorplates upon their breasts) walked and +gravely talked with each other. The non-American character of the +scene was not less vividly marked in the fact that each person dressed +according to his own taste and frankly indulged private preferences +in shapes and colors. One of the promenaders was in white, even to +his canvas shoes; another, with yet bolder individuality, appeared in +perfect purple. It had a strange, almost portentous effect when these +two startling figures met as friends and joined each other in the +promenade with linked arms; but the evening was already beginning to +darken round them, and presently the purple comrade was merely a sombre +shadow beside the glimmering white. + +The valleys and the heights now vanished; but the river defined itself +by the varicolored lights of the ships and steamers that lay, dark, +motionless bulks, upon its broad breast; the lights of Point Lewis +swarmed upon the other shore; the Lower Town, two hundred feet below +them, stretched an alluring mystery of clustering roofs and lamplit +windows and dark and shining streets around the mighty rock, +mural-crowned. Suddenly a spectacle peculiarly Northern and +characteristic of Quebec revealed itself; a long arch brightened over +the northern horizon; the tremulous flames of the aurora, pallid violet +or faintly tinged with crimson, shot upward from it, and played with +a weird apparition and evanescence to the zenith. While the strangers +looked, a gun boomed from the citadel, and the wild sweet notes of the +bugle sprang out upon the silence. + +Then they all said, “How perfectly in keeping everything has been!” and +sauntered back to the hotel. + +The Colonel went into the office to give the clerk another turn on the +rack, and make him confess to a hidden apartment somewhere, while Isabel +left her husband to Mrs. Ellison in the parlor, and invited Miss Kitty +to look at her coop in the fifth story. As they approached, light and +music and laughter stole out of an open door next hers, and Isabel, +distinguishing the voices of the theatrical party, divined that this +was the sick-chamber, and that they were again cheering up the afflicted +member of the troupe. Some one was heard to say, “Well, 'ow do you feel +now, Charley?” and a sound of subdued swearing responded, followed by +more laughter, and the twanging of a guitar, and a snatch of song, and a +stir of feet and dresses as for departure. + +The two listeners shrank together; as women they could not enjoy these +proofs of the jolly camaraderie existing among the people of the +troupe. They trembled as before the merriment of as many light-hearted, +careless, good-natured young men: it was no harm, but it was dismaying; +and, “Dear!” cried Isabel, “what shall we do?” + +“Go back,” said Miss Ellison, boldly, and back they ran to the parlor, +where they found Basil and the Colonel and his wife in earnest conclave. +The Colonel, like a shrewd strategist, was making show of a desperation +more violent than his wife's, who was thus naturally forced into the +attitude of moderating his fury. + +“Well, Fanny, that's all he can do for us; and I do think it's the most +outrageous thing in the world! It's real mean!” + +Fanny perceived a bold parody of her own denunciatory manner, but just +then she was obliged to answer Isabel's eager inquiry whether they had +got a room yet. “Yes, a room,” she said, “with two beds. But what are we +to do with one room? That clerk--I don't know what to call him”--(“Call +him a hotel-clerk, my dear; you can't say anything worse,” interrupted +her husband)--“seems to think the matter perfectly settled.” + +“You see, Mrs. March,” added the Colonel, “he's able to bully us in this +way because he has the architecture on his side. There isn't another +room in the house.” + +“Let me think a moment,” said Isabel not thinking an instant. She had +taken a fancy to at least two of these people from the first, and in the +last hour they had all become very well acquainted now she said, “I'll +tell you: there are two beds in our room also; we ladies will take one +room, and you gentlemen the other!” + +“Mrs. March, I bow to the superiority of the Boston mind,” said the +Colonel, while his females civilly protested and consented; “and I might +almost hail you as our preserver. If ever you come to Milwaukee,--which +is the centre of the world, as Boston is,--we--I--shall be happy to +have you call at my place of business.--I didn't commit myself, did I, +Fanny?--I am sometimes hospitable to excess, Mrs. March,” he said, to +explain his aside. “And now, let us reconnoitre. Lead on, madam, and the +gratitude of the houseless stranger will follow you.” + +The whole party explored both rooms, and the ladies decided to keep +Isabel's. The Colonel was dispatched to see that the wraps and traps of +his party were sent to this number, and Basil went with him. The things +came long before the gentlemen returned, but the ladies happily employed +the interval in talking over the excitements of the day, and in saying +from time to time, “So very kind of you, Mrs. March,” and “I don't know +what we should have done,” and “Don't speak of it, please,” and “I'm +sure it's a great pleasure to me.” + +In the room adjoining theirs, where the invalid actor lay, and where +lately there had been minstrelsy and apparently dancing for his solace, +there was now comparative silence. Two women's voices talked together, +and now and then a guitar was touched by a wandering hand. Isabel +had just put up her handkerchief to conceal her first yawn, when the +gentlemen, odorous of cigars, returned to say good-night. + +“It's the second door from this, isn't it, Isabel?” asked her husband. + +“Yes, the second door. Good-night. Good-night.” + +The two men walked off together; but in a minute afterwards they had +returned and were knocking tremulously at the closed door. + +“O, what has happened?” chorused the ladies in woeful tune, seeing a +certain wildness in the face that confronted them. + +“We don't know!” answered the others in as fearful a key, and related +how they had found the door of their room ajar, and a bright light +streaming into the corridor. They did not stop to ponder this fact, but, +with the heedlessness of their sex, pushed the door wide open, when they +saw seated before the mirror a bewildering figure, with disheveled locks +wandering down the back, and in dishabille expressive of being quite +at home there, which turned upon them a pair of pale blue eyes, under a +forehead remarkable for the straggling fringe of hair that covered it. +They professed to have remained transfixed at the sight, and to have +noted a like dismay on the visage before the glass, ere they summoned +strength to fly. These facts Colonel Ellison gave at the command of his +wife, with many protests and insincere delays amidst which the curiosity +of his hearers alone prevented them from rending him in pieces. + +“And what do you suppose it was?” demanded his wife, with forced +calmness, when he had at last made an end of the story and his +abominable hypoocisies. + +“Well, I think it was a mermaid.” + +“A mermaid!” said his wife, scornfully. “How do you know?” + +“It had a comb in its hand, for one thing; and besides, my dear, I hope +I know a mermaid when I see it.” + +“Well,” said Mrs. Ellison, “it was no mermaid, it was a mistake; and I'm +going to see about it. Will you go with me, Richard?” + +“No money could induce me! If it's a mistake, it isn't proper for me to +go; if it's a mermaid, it's dangerous.” + +“O you coward!” said the intrepid little woman to a hero of all the +fights on Sherman's march to the sea; and presently they heard her +attack the mysterious enemy with a lady-like courage, claiming the +invaded chamber. The foe replied with like civility, saying the clerk +had given her that room with the understanding that another lady was to +be put there with her, and she had left the door unlocked to admit her. +The watchers with the sick man next door appeared and confirmed this +speech, a feeble voice from the bedclothes swore to it. + +“Of course,” added the invader, “if I'd known 'ow it really was, I never +would lave listened to such a thing, never. And there isn't another 'ole +in the louse to lay me 'ead,” she concluded. + +“Then it's the clerk's fault,” said Mrs. Ellison, glad to retreat +unharmed; and she made her husband ring for the guilty wretch, a +pale, quiet young Frenchman, whom the united party, sallying into +the corridor, began to upbraid in one breath, the lady in dishabille +vanishing as often as she remembered it, and reappearing whenever some +strong point of argument or denunciation occurred to her. + +The clerk, who was the Benjamin of his wicked tribe, threw himself upon +their mercy and confessed everything: the house was so crowded, and +he had been so crazed by the demands upon him, that he had understood +Colonel Ellison's application to be for a bed for the young lady in his +party, and he had done the very best he could. If the lady there--she +vanished again--would give up the room to the two gentlemen, he would +find her a place with the housekeeper. To this the lady consented +without difficulty, and the rest dispersing, she kissed one of the sick +man's watchers with “Isn't it a shame, Bella?” and flitted down the +darkness of the corridor. The rooms upon it seemed all, save the two +assigned our travellers, to be occupied by ladies of the troupe; their +doors successively opened, and she was heard explaining to each as she +passed. The momentary displeasure which she had shown at her banishment +was over. She detailed the facts with perfect good-nature, and though +the others appeared no more than herself to find any humorous cast in +the affair, they received her narration with the same amiability. They +uttered their sympathy seriously, and each parted from her with some +friendly word. Then all was still. + +“Richard,” said Mrs. Ellison, when in Isabel's room the travellers had +briefly celebrated these events, “I should think you'd hate to leave us +alone up here.” + +“I do; but you can't think how I hate to go off alone. I wish you'd come +part of the way with us, Ladies; I do indeed. Leave your door unlocked, +at any rate.” + +This prayer, uttered at parting outside the room, was answered from +within by a sound of turning keys and sliding bolts, and a low thunder +as of bureaus and washstands rolled against the door. “The ladies are +fortifying their position,” said the Colonel to Basil, and the two +returned to their own chamber. “I don't wish any intrusions,” he said, +instantly shutting himself in; “my nerves are too much shaken now. What +an awfully mysterious old place this Quebec is, Mr. March! I'll tell you +what: it's my opinion that this is an enchanted castle, and if my ribs +are not walked over by a muleteer in the course of the night, it's all I +ask.” + +In this and other discourse recalling the famous adventure of Don +Quixote, the Colonel beguiled the labor of disrobing, and had got as far +as his boots, when there came a startling knock at the door. With one +boot in his hand and the other on his foot, the Colonel limped forward. +“I suppose it's that clerk has sent to say he's made some other +mistake,” and he flung wide the door, and then stood motionless before +it, dumbly staring at a figure on the threshold,--a figure with the +fringed forehead and pale blue eyes of her whom they had so lately +turned out of that room. + +Shrinking behind the side of the doorway, “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she +said, with a dignity that recalled their scattered senses, “but will +you 'ave the goodness to look if my beads are on your table--O thanks, +thanks, thanks!” she continued, showing her face and one hand, as Basil +blushingly advanced with a string of heavy black beads, piously adorned +with a large cross. “I'm sure, I'm greatly obliged to you, gentlemen, +and I hask a thousand pardons for troublin' you,” she concluded in a +somewhat severe tone, that left them abashed and culpable; and vanished +as mysteriously as she had appeared. + +“Now, see here,” said the Colonel, with a huge sigh as he closed the +door again, and this time locked it, “I should like to know how long +this sort of thing is to be kept up? Because, if it's to be regularly +repeated during the night, I'm going to dress again.” Nevertheless, he +finished undressing and got into bed, where he remained for some time +silent. Basil put out the light. “O, I'm sorry you did that, my dear +fellow,” said the Colonel; “but never mind, it was an idle curiosity, no +doubt. It's my belief that in the landlord's extremity of bedlinen, I've +been put to sleep between a pair of tablecloths; and I thought I'd like +to look. It seems to me that I make out a checkered pattern on top and +a flowered or arabesque pattern underneath. I wish they had given me +mates. It's pretty hard having to sleep between odd tablecloths. I +shall complain to the landlord of this in the morning. I've never had to +sleep between odd table-cloths at any hotel before.” + +The Colonel's voice seemed scarcely to have died away upon Basil's +drowsy ear, when suddenly the sounds of music and laughter from the +invalid's room startled him wide awake. The sick man's watchers were +coquetting with some one who stood in the little court-yard five stories +below. A certain breadth of repartee was naturally allowable at that +distance; the lover avowed his passion in ardent terms, and the ladies +mocked him with the same freedom, now and then totally neglecting him +while they sang a snatch of song to the twanging of the guitar, +or talked professional gossip, and then returning to him with some +tormenting expression of tenderness. + +All this, abstractly speaking, was nothing to Basil; yet he could +recollect few things intended for his pleasure that had given him more +satisfaction. He thought, as he glanced out into the moonlight on the +high-gabled silvery roofs around and on the gardens of the convents +and the towers of the quaint city, that the scene wanted nothing of the +proper charm of Spanish humor and romance, and he was as grateful to +those poor souls as if they had meant him a favor. To us of the hither +side of the foot-lights, there is always something fascinating in the +life of the strange beings who dwell beyond them, and who are never so +unreal as in their own characters. In their shabby bestowal in those +mean upper rooms, their tawdry poverty, their merry submission to the +errors and caprices of destiny, their mutual kindliness and careless +friendship, these unprofitable devotees of the twinkling-footed +burlesque seemed to be playing rather than living the life of strolling +players; and their love-making was the last touch of a comedy that Basil +could hardly accept as reality, it was so much more like something seen +upon the stage. He would not have detracted anything from the commonness +and cheapness of the 'mise en scene', for that, he reflected drowsily +and confusedly, helped to give it an air of fact and make it like an +episode of fiction. But above all, he was pleased with the natural +eventlessness of the whole adventure, which was in perfect agreement +with his taste; and just as his reveries began to lose shape in dreams, +he was aware of an absurd pride in the fact that all this could have +happened to him in our commonplace time and hemisphere. “Why,” he +thought, “if I were a student in Alcala, what better could I have +asked?” And as at last his soul swung out from its moorings and lapsed +down the broad slowly circling tides out in the sea of sleep, he was +conscious of one subtle touch of compassion for those poor strollers,--a +pity so delicate and fine and tender that it hardly seemed his own but +rather a sense of the compassion that pities the whole world. + + + + +X. HOMEWARD AND HOME. + +The travellers all met at breakfast and duly discussed the adventures of +the night; and for the rest, the forenoon passed rapidly and slowly with +Basil and Isabel, as regret to leave Quebec, or the natural impatience +of travellers to be off, overcame them. Isabel spent part of it in +shopping, for she had found some small sums of money and certain odd +corners in her trunks still unappropriated, and the handsome stores on +the Rue Fabrique were very tempting. She said she would just go in and +look; and the wise reader imagines the result. As she knelt over her +boxes, trying so to distribute her purchases as to make them look as if +they were old,--old things of hers, which she had brought all the way +round from Boston with her,--a fleeting touch of conscience stayed her +hand. + +“Basil,” she said, “perhaps we'd better declare some of these things. +What's the duty on those?” she asked, pointing to certain articles. + +“I don't know. About a hundred per cent. ad valorem.” + +“C'est a dire--?” + +“As much as they cost.” + +“O then, dearest,” responded Isabel indignantly, “it can't be wrong to +smuggle! I won't declare a thread!” + +“That's very well for you, whom they won't ask. But what if they ask me +whether there's anything to declare?” + +Isabel looked at her husband and hesitated. Then she replied in terms +that I am proud to record in honor of American womanhood: “You mustn't +fib about--it, Basil” (heroically); “I couldn't respect you if you did,” + (tenderly); “but” (with decision) “you must slip out of it some way!” + +The ladies of the Ellison party, to whom she put the case in the parlor, +agreed with her perfectly. They also had done a little shopping in +Quebec, and they meant to do more at Montreal before they returned to +the States. Mrs. Ellison was disposed to look upon Isabel's compunctions +as a kind of treason to the sex, to be forgiven only because so quickly +repented. + +The Ellisons were going up the Saguenay before coming on to Boston, and +urged our friends hard to go with them. “No, that must be for another +time,” said Isabel. “Mr. March has to be home by a certain day; and we +shall just get back in season.” Then she made them promise to spend +a day with her in Boston, and the Colonel coming to say that he had a +carriage at the door for their excursion to Lorette, the two parties +bade good-by with affection and many explicit hopes of meeting soon +again. + +“What do you think of them, dearest?” demanded Isabel, as she sallied +out with Basil for a final look at Quebec. + +“The young lady is the nicest; and the other is well enough, too. She is +a good deal like you, but with the sense of humor left out. You've only +enough to save you.” + +“Well, her husband is jolly enough for both of them. He's funnier +than you, Basil, and he hasn't any of your little languid airs and +affectations. I don't know but I'm a bit disappointed in my choice, +darling; but I dare say I shall work out of it. In fact, I don't know +but the Colonel is a little too jolly. This drolling everything is +rather fatiguing.” And having begun, they did not stop till they +had taken their friends to pieces. Dismayed, then, they hastily +reconstructed them, and said that they were among the pleasantest people +they ever knew, and they were really very sorry to part with them, and +they should do everything to make them have a good time in Boston. + +They were sauntering towards Durham Terrace where they leaned long upon +the iron parapet and blest themselves with the beauty of the prospect. A +tender haze hung upon the landscape and subdued it till the scene was +as a dream before them. As in a dream the river lay, and dream-like the +shipping moved or rested on its deep, broad bosom. Far off stretched +the happy fields with their dim white villages; farther still the mellow +heights melted into the low hovering heaven. The tinned roofs of the +Lower Town twinkled in the morning sun; around them on every hand, on +that Monday forenoon when the States were stirring from ocean to ocean +in feverish industry, drowsed the gray city within her walls; from the +flag-staff of the citadel hung the red banner of Saint George in sleep. + +Their hearts were strangely and deeply moved. It seemed to them that +they looked upon the last stronghold of the Past, and that afar off +to the southward they could hear the marching hosts of the invading +Present; and as no young and loving soul can relinquish old things +without a pang, they sighed a long mute farewell to Quebec. + +Next summer they would come again, yes; but, ah me' every one knows what +next summer is! + + + + +Part of the burlesque troupe rode down in the omnibus to the Grand Trunk + +Ferry with them, and were good-natured to the last, having shaken hands +all round with the waiters, chambermaids, and porters of the hotel. The +young fellow with the bad amiable face came in a calash, and refused to +overpay the driver with a gay decision that made him Basil's envy till +he saw his tribulation in getting the troupe's luggage checked. There +were forty pieces, and it always remained a mystery, considering the +small amount of clothing necessary to those people on the stage, what +could have filled their trunks. The young man and the two English +blondes of American birth found places in the same car with our +tourists, and enlivened the journey with their frolics. When the young +man pretended to fall asleep, they wrapped his golden curly head in +a shawl, and vexed him with many thumps and thrusts, till he bought a +brief truce with a handful of almonds; and the ladies having no other +way to eat them, one of them saucily snatched off her shoe, and cracked +them hammerwise with the heel. It was all so pleasant that it ought to +have been all right; and in their merry world of outlawry perhaps things +are not so bad as we like to think them. + +The country into which the train plunges as soon as Quebec is out of +sight is very stupidly savage, and our friends had little else to do +but to watch the gambols of the players, till they came to the river St. +Francis, whose wandering loveliness the road follows through an infinite +series of soft and beautiful landscapes, and finds everywhere glassing +in its smooth current the elms and willows of its gentle shores. At +one place, where its calm broke into foamy rapids, there was a huge saw +mill, covering the stream with logs and refuse, and the banks with whole +cities of lumber; which also they accepted as no mean elements of the +picturesque. They clung the most tenderly to traces of the peasant +life they were leaving. When some French boys came aboard with wild +raspberries to sell in little birch-bark canoes, they thrilled with +pleasure, and bought them, but sighed then, and said, “What thing +characteristic of the local life will they sell us in Maine when we +get there? A section of pie poetically wrapt in a broad leaf of the +squash-vine, or pop-corn in its native tissue-paper, and advertising the +new Dollar Store in Portland?” They saw the quaintness vanish from the +farm-houses; first the dormer-windows, then the curve of the steep +roof, then the steep roof itself. By and by they came to a store with a +Grecian portico and four square pine pillars. They shuddered and looked +no more. + +The guiltily dreaded examination of baggage at Island Pond took place +at nine o'clock, without costing them a cent of duty or a pang +of conscience. At that charming station the trunks are piled +higgledy-piggledy into a room beside the track, where a few inspectors +with stifling lamps of smoky kerosene await the passengers. There are no +porters to arrange the baggage, and each lady and gentleman digs out his +box, and opens it before the lordly inspector, who stirs up its contents +with an unpleasant hand and passes it. He makes you feel that you are +once more in the land of official insolence, and that, whatever you +are collectively, you are nothing personally. Isabel, who had sent her +husband upon this business with quaking meekness of heart, experienced +the bold indignation of virtue at his account of the way people were +made their own baggage-smashers, and would not be amused when he painted +the vile terrors of each husband as he tremblingly unlocked his wife's +store of contraband. + +The morning light showed them the broad elmy meadows of western-looking +Maine; and the Grand Trunk brought them, of course, an hour behind time +into Portland. All breakfastless they hurried aboard the Boston train +on the Eastern Road, and all along that line (which is built to show +how uninteresting the earth can be when she is 'ennuyee' of both sea +and land), Basil's life became a struggle to construct a meal from +the fragmentary opportunities of twenty different stations where they +stopped five minutes for refreshments. At one place he achieved two cups +of shameless chickory, at another three sardines, at a third a dessert +of elderly bananas. + + “Home again, home again, from a foreign shore!” + +they softly sang as the successive courses of this feast were disposed +of. + +The drouth and heat, which they had briefly escaped during their sojourn +in Canada, brooded sovereign upon the tiresome landscape. The red +granite rocks were as if red-hot; the banks of the deep cuts were like +ash heaps; over the fields danced the sultry atmosphere; they fancied +that they almost heard the grasshoppers sing above the rattle of the +train. When they reached Boston at last, they were dustier than most of +us would like to be a hundred years hence. The whole city was equally +dusty; and they found the trees in the square before their own door gray +with dust. The bit of Virginia-creeper planted under the window hung +shriveled upon its trellis. + +But Isabel's aunt met them with a refreshing shower of tears and kisses +in the hall, throwing a solid arm about each of them. “O you dears!” + the good soul cried, “you don't know how anxious I've been about you; +so many accidents happening all the time. I've never read the 'Evening +Transcript' till the next morning, for fear I should find your names +among the killed and wounded.” + +“O aunty, you're too good, always!” whimpered Isabel; and neither of the +women took note of Basil, who said, “Yes, it's probably the only thing +that preserved our lives.” + +The little tinge of discontent, which had colored their sentiment of +return faded now in the kindly light of home. Their holiday was over, to +be sure, but their bliss had but began; they had entered upon that long +life of holidays which is happy marriage. By the time dinner was ended +they were both enthusiastic at having got back, and taking their aunt +between them walked up and down the parlor with their arms round her +massive waist, and talked out the gladness of their souls. + +Then Basil said he really must run down to the office that afternoon, +and he issued all aglow upon the street. He was so full of having been +long away and of having just returned, that he unconsciously tried to +impart his mood to Boston, and the dusty composure of the street and +houses, as he strode along, bewildered him. He longed for some familiar +face to welcome him, and in the horse-car into which he stepped he was +charmed to see an acquaintance. This was a man for whom ordinarily he +cared nothing, and whom he would perhaps rather have gone out upon the +platform to avoid than have spoken to; but now he plunged at him with +effusion, and wrung his hand, smiling from ear to ear. + +The other remained coldly unaffected, after a first start of surprise +at his cordiality, and then reviled the dust and heat. “But I'm going to +take a little run down to Newport, to-morrow, for a week,” he said. “By +the way, you look as if you needed a little change. Aren't you going +anywhere this summer?” + +“So you see, my dear,” observed Basil, when he had recounted the fact to +Isabel at tea, “our travels are incommunicably our own. We had best +say nothing about our little jaunt to other people, and they won't know +we've been gone. Even if we tried, we couldn't make our wedding-journey +theirs.” + +She gave him a great kiss of recompense and consolation. “Who wants it,” + she demanded, “to be Their Wedding Journey?” + + + + +XI. NIAGARA REVISITED, TWELVE YEARS AFTER THEIR WEDDING JOURNEY. + +Life had not used them ill in this time, and the fairish treatment they +had received was not wholly unmerited. The twelve years past had made +them older, as the years must in passing. Basil was now forty-two, and +his moustache was well sprinkled with gray. Isabel was thirty-nine, and +the parting of her hair had thinned and retreated; but she managed to +give it an effect of youthful abundance by combing it low down upon her +forehead, and roughing it there with a wet brush. By gaslight she was +still very pretty; she believed that she looked more interesting, and +she thought Basil's gray moustache distinguished. He had grown stouter; +he filled his double-breasted frock coat compactly, and from time to +time he had the buttons set forward; his hands were rounded up on the +backs, and he no longer wore his old number of gloves by two sizes; no +amount of powder or manipulation from the young lady in the shop would +induce them to go on. But this did not matter much now, for he seldom +wore gloves at all. He was glad that the fashion suffered him to spare +in that direction, for he was obliged to look somewhat carefully after +the out-goes. The insurance business was not what it had been, and +though Basil had comfortably established himself in it, he had not made +money. He sometimes thought that he might have done quite as well if he +had gone into literature; but it was now too late. They had not a very +large family: they had a boy of eleven, who took after his father, and a +girl of nine, who took after the boy; but with the American feeling +that their children must have the best of everything, they made it an +expensive family, and they spent nearly all Basil earned. + +The narrowness of their means, as well as their household cares, had +kept them from taking many long journeys. They passed their winters in +Boston, and their summers on the South Shore, cheaper than the North +Shore, and near enough for Basil to go up and down every day for +business; but they promised themselves that some day they would revisit +certain points on their wedding journey, and perhaps somewhere find +their lost second-youth on the track. It was not that they cared to be +young, but they wished the children to see them as they used to be when +they thought themselves very old; and one lovely afternoon in June they +started for Niagara. + +It had been very hot for several days, but that morning the east wind +came in, and crisped the air till it seemed to rustle like tinsel, and +the sky was as sincerely and solidly blue as if it had been chromoed. +They felt that they were really looking up into the roof of the world, +when they glanced at it; but when an old gentleman hastily kissed a +young woman, and commended her to the conductor as being one who was +going all the way to San Francisco alone, and then risked his life by +stepping off the moving train, the vastness of the great American fact +began to affect Isabel disagreeably. “Isn't it too big, Basil?” she +pleaded, peering timidly out of the little municipal consciousness in +which she had been so long housed.--In that seclusion she had suffered +certain original tendencies to increase upon her; her nerves were more +sensitive and electrical; her apprehensions had multiplied quite beyond +the ratio of the dangers that beset her; and Basil had counted upon a +tonic effect of the change the journey would make in their daily lives. +She looked ruefully out of the window at the familiar suburbs whisking +out of sight, and the continental immensity that advanced devouringly +upon her. But they had the best section in the very centre of the +sleeping-car,--she drew what consolation she could from the fact,--and +the children's premature demand for lunch helped her to forget her +anxieties; they began to be hungry as soon as the train started. She +found that she had not put up sandwiches enough; and when she told Basil +that he would have to get out somewhere and buy some cold chicken, he +asked her what in the world had become of that whole ham she had had +boiled. It seemed to him, he said, that there was enough of it to +subsist them to Niagara and back; and he went on as some men do, while +Somerville vanished, and even Tufts College, which assails the Bostonian +vision from every point of the compass, was shut out by the curve at the +foot of the Belmont hills. + +They had chosen the Hoosac Tunnel route to Niagara, because, as Basil +said, their experience of travel had never yet included a very long +tunnel, and it would be a signal fact by which the children would always +remember the journey, if nothing else remarkable happened to impress it +upon them. Indeed, they were so much concerned in it that they began to +ask when they should come to this tunnel, even before they began to ask +for lunch; and the long time before they reached it was not perceptibly +shortened by Tom's quarter-hourly consultations of his father's watch. + +It scarcely seemed to Basil and Isabel that their fellow-passengers were +so interesting as their fellow passengers used to be in their former +days of travel. They were soberly dressed, and were all of a middle-aged +sobriety of deportment, from which nothing salient offered itself for +conjecture or speculation; and there was little within the car to take +their minds from the brilliant young world that flashed and sang by them +outside. The belated spring had ripened, with its frequent rains, into +the perfection of early summer; the grass was thicker and the foliage +denser than they had ever seen it before; and when they had run out +into the hills beyond Fitchburg, they saw the laurel in bloom. It was +everywhere in the woods, lurking like drifts among the underbrush, and +overflowing the tops, and stealing down the hollows, of the railroad +embankments; a snow of blossom flushed with a mist of pink. Its shy, +wild beauty ceased whenever the train stopped, but the orioles made +up for its absence with their singing in the village trees about the +stations; and though Fitchburg and Ayer's Junction and Athol are not +names that invoke historical or romantic associations, the hearts of +Basil and Isabel began to stir with the joy of travel before they had +passed these points. At the first Basil got out to buy the cold chicken +which had been commanded, and he recognized in the keeper of the +railroad restaurant their former conductor, who had been warned by the +spirits never to travel without a flower of some sort carried between +his lips, and who had preserved his own life and the lives of his +passengers for many years by this simple device. His presence lent the +sponge cake and rhubarb pie and baked beans a supernatural interest, +and reconciled Basil to the toughness of the athletic bird which the +mystical ex-partner of fate had sold him; he justly reflected that if +he had heard the story of the restaurateur's superstition in a foreign +land, or another time, he would have found in it a certain poetry. It +was this willingness to find poetry in things around them that kept his +life and Isabel's fresh, and they taught their children the secret of +their elixir. To be sure, it was only a genre poetry, but it was such +as has always inspired English art and song; and now the whole family +enjoyed, as if it had been a passage from Goldsmith or Wordsworth, the +flying sentiment of the railroad side. There was a simple interior at +one place,--a small shanty, showing through the open door a cook stove +surmounted by the evening coffee-pot, with a lazy cat outstretched upon +the floor in the middle distance, and an old woman standing just outside +the threshold to see the train go by,--which had an unrivaled value till +they came to a superannuated car on a siding in the woods, in which the +railroad workmen boarded--some were lounging on the platform and at the +open windows, while others were “washing up” for supper, and the whole +scene was full of holiday ease and sylvan comradery that went to the +hearts of the sympathetic spectators. Basil had lately been reading +aloud the delightful history of Rudder Grange, and the children, who had +made their secret vows never to live in anything but an old canal-boat +when they grew up, owned that there were fascinating possibilities in a +worn-out railroad car. + +The lovely Deerfield Valley began to open on either hand, with smooth +stretches of the quiet river, and breadths of grassy intervale and +tableland; the elms grouped themselves like the trees of a park; here +and there the nearer hills broke away, and revealed long, deep, chasmed +hollows, full of golden light and delicious shadow. There were +people rowing on the water; and every pretty town had some touch of +picturesqueness or pastoral charm to offer: at Greenfield, there were +children playing in the new-mown hay along the railroad embankment; at +Shelburne Falls, there was a game of cricket going on (among the English +operatives of the cutlery works, as Basil boldly asserted). They looked +down from their car-window on a young lady swinging in a hammock, in her +door-yard, and on an old gentleman hoeing his potatoes; a group of girls +waved their handkerchiefs to the passing train, and a boy paused in +weeding a garden-bed,--and probably denied that he had paused, later. +In the mean time the golden haze along the mountain side changed to +a clear, pearly lustre, and the quiet evening possessed the quiet +landscape. They confessed to each other that it was all as sweet and +beautiful as it used to be; and in fact they had seen palaces, in other +days, which did not give them the pleasure they found in a woodcutter's +shanty, losing itself among the shadows in a solitude of the hills. The +tunnel, after this, was a gross and material sensation; but they joined +the children in trying to hold and keep it, and Basil let the boy time +it by his watch. “Now,” said Tom, when five minutes were gone, “we are +under the very centre of the mountain.” But the tunnel was like all +accomplished facts, all hopes fulfilled, valueless to the soul, and +scarcely appreciable to the sense; and the children emerged at North +Adams with but a mean opinion of that great feat of engineering. Basil +drew a pretty moral from their experience. “If you rode upon a comet you +would be disappointed. Take my advice, and never ride upon a comet. +I shouldn't object to your riding on a little meteor,--you wouldn't +expect much of that; but I warn you against comets; they are as bad as +tunnels.” + +The children thought this moral was a joke at their expense, and as they +were a little sleepy they permitted themselves the luxury of feeling +trifled with. But they woke, refreshed and encouraged, from slumbers +that had evidently been unbroken, though they both protested that they +had not slept a wink the whole night, and gave themselves up to wonder +at the interminable levels of Western New York over which the train was +running. The longing to come to an edge, somewhere, that the New England +traveler experiences on this plain, was inarticulate with the children; +but it breathed in the sigh with which Isabel welcomed even the +architectural inequalities of a city into which they drew in the early +morning. This city showed to their weary eyes a noble stretch of river, +from the waters of which lofty piles of buildings rose abruptly; and +Isabel, being left to guess where they were, could think of no other +place so picturesque as Rochester. + +“Yes,” said her husband; “it is our own Enchanted City. I wonder if that +unstinted hospitality is still dispensed by the good head waiter at the +hotel where we stopped, to bridal parties who have passed the ordeal of +the haughty hotel clerk. I wonder what has become of that hotel clerk. +Has he fallen, through pride, to some lower level, or has he bowed his +arrogant spirit to the demands of advancing civilization, and realized +that he is the servant, and not the master, of the public? I think I've +noticed, since his time, a growing kindness in hotel clerks; or perhaps +I have become of a more impressive presence; they certainly unbend to +me a little more. I should like to go up to our hotel, and try myself on +our old enemy, if he is still there. I can fancy how his shirt front has +expanded in these twelve years past; he has grown a little bald, after +the fashion of middle-aged hotel clerks, but he parts his hair very much +on one side, and brushes it squarely across his forehead to hide his +loss; the forefinger that he touches that little snapbell with, when he +doesn't look at you, must be very pudgy now. Come, let us get out and +breakfast at Rochester; they will give us broiled whitefish; and we can +show the children where Sam Patch jumped over Genesee Falls, and--” + +“No, no, Basil,” cried his wife. “It would be sacrilege! All that is +sacred to those dear young days of ours; and I wouldn't think of trying +to repeat it. Our own ghosts would rise up in that dining-room to +reproach us for our intrusion! Oh, perhaps we have done a wicked thing +in coming this journey! We ought to have left the past alone; we shall +only mar our memories of all these beautiful places. Do you suppose +Buffalo can be as poetical as it was then? Buffalo! The name doesn't +invite the Muse very much. Perhaps it never was very poetical! Oh, +Basil, dear, I'm afraid we have only come to find out that we were +mistaken about everything! Let's leave Rochester alone, at any rate!” + +“I'm not troubled! We won't disturb our dream of Rochester; but I don't +despair of Buffalo. I'm sure that Buffalo will be all that our fancy +ever painted it. I believe in Buffalo.” + +“Well, well,” murmured Isabel, “I hope you're right;” and she put some +things together for leaving their car at Buffalo, while they were still +two hours away. + +When they reached a place where the land mated its level with the level +of the lake, they ran into a wilderness of railroad cars, in a world +where life seemed to be operated solely by locomotives and their +helpless minions. The bellowing and bleating trains were arriving in +every direction, not only along the ground floor of the plain, but +stately stretches of trestle-work, which curved and extended across the +plain, carried them to and fro overhead. The travelers owned that this +railroad suburb had its own impressiveness, and they said that the +trestle-work was as noble in effect as the lines of aqueduct that stalk +across the Roman Campagna. Perhaps this was because they had not seen +the Campagna or its aqueducts for a great while; but they were so glad +to find themselves in the spirit of their former journey again that they +were amiable to everything. When the children first caught sight of the +lake's delicious blue, and cried out that it was lovelier than the sea, +they felt quite a local pride in their preference. It was what Isabel +had said twelve years before, on first beholding the lake. + +But they did not really see the lake till they had taken the train for +Niagara Falls, after breakfasting in the depot, where the children, used +to the severe native or the patronizing Irish ministrations of Boston +restaurants and hotels, reveled for the first time in the affectionate +devotion of a black waiter. There was already a ridiculous abundance +and variety on the table; but this waiter brought them strawberries +and again strawberries, and repeated plates of griddle cakes with maple +syrup; and he hung over the back of first one chair and then another +with an unselfish joy in the appetites of the breakfasters which gave +Basil renewed hopes of his race. “Such rapture in serving argues a +largeness of nature which will be recognized hereafter,” he said, +feeling about in his waistcoat pocket for a quarter. It seemed a pity +to render the waiter's zeal retroactively interested, but in view of the +fact that he possibly expected the quarter, there was nothing else to +do; and by a mysterious stroke of gratitude the waiter delivered them +into the hands of a friend, who took another quarter from them for +carrying their bags and wraps to the train. This second retainer +approved their admiration of the aesthetic forms and colors of the depot +colonnade; and being asked if that were the depot whose roof had fallen +in some years before, proudly replied that it was. + +“There were a great many killed, weren't there?” asked Basil, with +sympathetic satisfaction in the disaster. The porter seemed humiliated; +he confessed the mortifying truth that the loss of life was small, but +he recovered a just self-respect in adding, “If the roof had fallen in +five minutes sooner, it would have killed about three hundred people.” + +Basil had promised the children a sight of the Rapids before they +reached the Falls, and they held him rigidly accountable from the moment +they entered the train, and began to run out of the city between the +river and the canal. He attempted a diversion with the canal boats, and +tried to bring forward the subject of Rudder Grange in that connection. +They said that the canal boats were splendid, but they were looking for +the Rapids now; and they declined to be interested in a window in one +of the boats, which Basil said was just like the window that the Rudder +Granger and the boarder had popped Pomona out of when they took her for +a burglar. + +“You spoil those children, Basil,” said his wife, as they clambered over +him, and clamored for the Rapids. + +“At present I'm giving them an object-lesson in patience and +self-denial; they are experiencing the fact that they can't have the +Rapids till they get to them, and probably they'll be disappointed in +them when they arrive.” + +In fact, they valued the Rapids very little more than the Hoosac Tunnel, +when they came in sight of them, at last; and Basil had some question in +his own mind whether the Rapids had not dwindled since his former visit. +He did not breathe this doubt to Isabel, however, and she arrived at the +Falls with unabated expectations. They were going to spend only half a +day there; and they turned into the station, away from the phalanx +of omnibuses, when they dismounted from their train. They seemed, as +before, to be the only passengers who had arrived, and they found an +abundant choice of carriages waiting in the street, outside the station. +The Niagara hackman may once have been a predatory and very rampant +animal, but public opinion, long expressed through the public prints, +has reduced him to silence and meekness. Apparently, he may not so much +as beckon with his whip to the arriving wayfarer; it is certain that he +cannot cross the pavement to the station door; and Basil, inviting one +of them to negotiation, was himself required by the attendant policeman +to step out to the curbstone, and complete his transaction there. It was +an impressive illustration of the power of a free press, but upon the +whole Basil found the effect melancholy; it had the saddening quality +which inheres in every sort of perfection. The hackman, reduced to +entire order, appealed to his compassion, and he had not the heart to +beat him down from his moderate first demand, as perhaps he ought to +have done. They drove directly to the cataract, and found themselves in +the pretty grove beside the American Fall, and in the air whose dampness +was as familiar as if they had breathed it all their childhood. It was +full now of the fragrance of some sort of wild blossom; and again they +had that old, entrancing sense of the mingled awfulness and loveliness +of the great spectacle. This sylvan perfume, the gayety of the sunshine, +the mildness of the breeze that stirred the leaves overhead, and the +bird-singing that made itself heard amid the roar of the rapids and the +solemn incessant plunge of the cataract, moved their hearts, and made +them children with the boy and girl, who stood rapt for a moment and +then broke into joyful wonder. They could sympathize with the ardor with +which Tom longed to tempt fate at the brink of the river, and over +the tops of the parapets which have been built along the edge of the +precipice, and they equally entered into the terror with which Bella +screamed at his suicidal zeal. They joined her in restraining him; they +reduced him to a beggarly account of half a dozen stones, flung into the +Rapids at not less than ten paces from the brink; and they would not +let him toss the smallest pebble over the parapet, though he laughed to +scorn the notion that anybody should be hurt by them below. + +It seemed to them that the triviality of man in the surroundings of the +Falls had increased with the lapse of time. There were more booths and +bazaars, and more colored feather fans with whole birds spitted in the +centres; and there was an offensive array of blue and green and yellow +glasses on the shore, through which you were expected to look at the +Falls gratis. They missed the simple dignity of the blanching Indian +maids, who used to squat about on the grass, with their laps full of +moccasins and pin-cushions. But, as of old, the photographer came out +of his saloon, and invited them to pose for a family group; representing +that the light and the spray were singularly propitious, and that +everything in nature invited them to be taken. Basil put him off gently, +for the sake of the time when he had refused to be photographed in a +bridal group, and took refuge from him in the long low building from +which you descend to the foot of the cataract. + +The grove beside the American Fall has been inclosed, and named Prospect +Park, by a company which exacts half a dollar for admittance, and then +makes you free of all its wonders and conveniences, for which you once +had to pay severally. This is well enough; but formerly you could refuse +to go down the inclined tramway, and now you cannot, without feeling +that you have failed to get your money's worth. It was in this illogical +spirit of economy that Basil invited his family to the descent; but +Isabel shook her head. “No, you go with the children,” she said, “and +I will stay, here, till you get back;” her agonized countenance added, +“and pray for you;” and Basil took his children on either side of him, +and rumbled down the terrible descent with much of the excitement that +attends travel in an open horse-car. When he stepped out of the car +he felt that increase of courage which comes to every man after +safely passing through danger. He resolved to brave the mists and +slippery-stones at the foot of the Fall; and he would have plunged at +once into this fresh peril, if he had not been prevented by the Prospect +Park Company. This ingenious association has built a large tunnel-like +shed quite to the water's edge, so that you cannot view the cataract +as you once could, at a reasonable remoteness, but must emerge from the +building into a storm of spray. The roof of the tunnel is painted with +a lively effect in party-colored stripes, and is lettered “The Shadow +of the Rock,” so that you take it at first to be an appeal to your +aesthetic sense; but the real object of the company is not apparent till +you put your head out into the tempest, when you agree with the nearest +guide--and one is always very near--that you had better have an oil-skin +dress, as Basil did. He told the guide that he did not wish to go under +the Fall, and the guide confidentially admitted that there was no fun in +that, any way; and in the mean time he equipped him and his children for +their foray into the mist. When they issued forth, under their friend's +leadership, Basil felt that, with his children clinging to each hand, he +looked like some sort of animal with its young, and, though not unsocial +by nature, he was glad to be among strangers for the time. They climbed +hither and thither over the rocks, and lifted their streaming faces for +the views which the guide pointed out; and in a rift of the spray they +really caught one glorious glimpse of the whole sweep of the Fall. The +next instant the spray swirled back, and they were glad to turn for +a sight of the rainbow, lying in a circle on the rocks as quietly and +naturally as if that had been the habit of rainbows ever since the +flood. This was all there was to be done, and they streamed back into +the tunnel, where they disrobed in the face of a menacing placard, which +announced that the hire of a guide and a dress for going under the Fall +was one dollar. + +“Will they make you pay a dollar for each of us, papa?” asked Tom, +fearfully. + +“Oh, pooh, no!” returned Basil; “we haven't been under the Fall.” But +he sought out the proprietor with a trembling heart. The proprietor was +a man of severely logical mind; he said that the charge would be three +dollars, for they had had the use of the dresses and the guide just the +same as if they had gone under the Fall; and he refused to recognize +anything misleading in the dressing-room placard. In fine, he left Basil +without a leg to stand upon. It was not so much the three dollars as the +sense of having been swindled that vexed him; and he instantly resolved +not to share his annoyance with Isabel. Why, indeed, should he put +that burden upon her? If she were none the wiser, she would be none the +poorer; and he ought to be willing to deny himself her sympathy for the +sake of sparing her needless pain. + +He met her at the top of the inclined tramway with a face of exemplary +unconsciousness, and he listened with her to the tale their coachman +told, as they sat in a pretty arbor looking out on the Rapids, of a +Frenchman and his wife. This Frenchman had returned, one morning, from a +stroll on Goat Island, and reported with much apparent concern that his +wife had fallen into the water, and been carried over the Fall. It +was so natural for a man to grieve for the loss of his wife, under the +peculiar circumstances, that every one condoled with the widower; but +when a few days later, her body was found, and the distracted husband +refused to come back from New York to her funeral, there was a general +regret that he had not been arrested. A flash of conviction illumed the +whole fact to Basil's guilty consciousness: this unhappy Frenchman had +paid a dollar for the use of an oil-skin suit at the foot of the Fall, +and had been ashamed to confess the swindle to his wife, till, in a +moment of remorse and madness, he shouted the fact into her ear, and +then Basil looked at the mother of his children, and registered a vow +that if he got away from Niagara without being forced to a similar +excess he would confess his guilt to Isabel at the very first act of +spendthrift profusion she committed. The guide pointed out the rock in +the Rapids to which Avery had clung for twenty-four hours before he was +carried over the Falls, and to the morbid fancy of the deceitful husband +Isabel's bonnet ribbons seemed to flutter from the pointed reef. He +could endure the pretty arbor no longer. “Come, children!” he cried, +with a wild, unnatural gayety; “let us go to Goat Island, and see the +Bridge to the Three Sisters, that your mother was afraid to walk back on +after she had crossed it.” + +“For shame, Basil!” retorted Isabel. “You know it was you who were +afraid of that bridge.” + +The children, who knew the story by heart, laughed with their father at +the monstrous pretension; and his simulated hilarity only increased upon +paying a toll of two dollars at the Goat Island bridge. + +“What extortion!” cried Isabel, with an indignation that secretly +unnerved him. He trembled upon the verge of confession; but he had +finally the moral force to resist. He suffered her to compute the cost +of their stay at Niagara without allowing those three dollars to +enter into her calculation; he even began to think what justificative +extravagance he could tempt her to. He suggested the purchase of +local bric-a-brac; he asked her if she would not like to dine at the +International, for old times' sake. But she answered, with disheartening +virtue, that they must not think of such a thing, after what they had +spent already. Nothing, perhaps, marked the confirmed husband in Basil +more than these hidden fears and reluctances. + +In the mean time Isabel ignorantly abandoned herself to the charm of the +place, which she found unimpaired, in spite of the reported ravages of +improvement about Niagara. Goat Island was still the sylvan solitude of +twelve years ago, haunted by even fewer nymphs and dryads than of old. +The air was full of the perfume that scented it at Prospect Park; the +leaves showered them with shade and sun, as they drove along. “If it +were not for the children here,” she said, “I should think that our +first drive on Goat Island had never ended.” + +She sighed a little, and Basil leaned forward and took her hand in his. +“It never has ended; it's the same drive; only we are younger now, and +enjoy it more.” It always touched him when Isabel was sentimental about +the past, for the years had tended to make her rather more seriously +maternal towards him than towards the other children; and he recognized +that these fond reminiscences were the expression of the girlhood still +lurking deep within her heart. + +She shook her head. “No, but I'm willing the children should be young in +our place. It's only fair they should have their turn.” + +She remained in the carriage, while Basil visited the various points +of view on Luna Island with the boy and girl. A boy is probably of +considerable interest to himself, and a man looks back at his own +boyhood with some pathos. But in his actuality a boy has very little to +commend him to the toleration of other human beings. Tom was very well, +as boys go; but now his contribution to the common enjoyment was to +venture as near as possible to all perilous edges; to throw stones into +the water, and to make as if to throw them over precipices on the people +below; to pepper his father with questions, and to collect cumbrous +mementos of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. He kept the carriage +waiting a good five minutes, while he could cut his initials on a +band-rail. “You can come back and see 'em on your bridal tower,” said +the driver. Isabel gave a little start, as if she had almost thought of +something she was trying to think of. + +They occasionally met ladies driving, and sometimes they encountered +a couple making a tour of the island on foot. But none of these people +were young, and Basil reported that the Three Sisters were inhabited +only by persons of like maturity; even a group of people who were eating +lunch to the music of the shouting Rapids, on the outer edge of the last +Sister, were no younger, apparently. + +Isabel did not get out of the carriage to verify his report; she +preferred to refute his story of her former panic on those islands by +remaining serenely seated while he visited them. She thus lost a superb +novelty which nature has lately added to the wonders of this Fall, in +that place at the edge of the great Horse Shoe where the rock has fallen +and left a peculiarly shaped chasm: through this the spray leaps up from +below, and flashes a hundred feet into the air, in rocket-like jets and +points, and then breaks and dissolves away in the pyrotechnic curves +of a perpetual Fourth of July. Basil said something like this in +celebrating the display, with the purpose of rendering her loss more +poignant; but she replied, with tranquil piety, that she would rather +keep her Niagara unchanged; and she declared that, as she understood +him, there must be something rather cheap and conscious in the new +feature. She approved, however, of the change that had removed that +foolish little Terrapin Tower from the brink on which it stood, and she +confessed that she could have enjoyed a little variety in the stories +the driver told them of the Indian burial-ground on the island: they +were exactly the stories she and Basil had heard twelve years before, +and the ill-starred goats, from which the island took its name, perished +once more in his narrative. + +Under the influence of his romances our travelers began to find the +whole scene hackneyed; and they were glad to part from him a little +sooner than they had bargained to do. They strolled about the anomalous +village on foot, and once more marveled at the paucity of travel and the +enormity of the local preparation. Surely the hotels are nowhere else +in the world so large! Could there ever have been visitors enough at +Niagara to fill them? They were built so big for some good reason, +no doubt; but it is no more apparent than why all these magnificent +equipages are waiting about the empty streets for the people who never +come to hire them. + +“It seems to me that I don't see so many strangers here as I used,” + Basil had suggested to their driver. + +“Oh, they haven't commenced coming yet,” he replied, with hardy +cheerfulness, and pretended that they were plenty enough in July and +August. + +They went to dine at the modest restaurant of a colored man, who +advertised a table d'hote dinner on a board at his door; and they put +their misgivings to him, which seemed to grieve him, and he contended +that Niagara was as prosperous and as much resorted to as ever. In fact, +they observed that their regret for the supposed decline of the Falls as +a summer resort was nowhere popular in the village, and they desisted in +their offers of sympathy, after their rebuff from the restaurateur. + +Basil got his family away to the station after dinner, and left them +there, while he walked down the village street, for a closer inspection +of the hotels. At the door of the largest a pair of children sported in +the solitude, as fearlessly as the birds on Selkirk's island; looking +into the hotel, he saw a few porters and call-boys seated in statuesque +repose against the wall, while the clerk pined in dreamless inactivity +behind the register; some deserted ladies flitted through the door of +the parlor at the side. He recalled the evening of his former visit, +when he and Isabel had met the Ellisons in that parlor, and it seemed, +in the retrospect, a scene of the wildest gayety. He turned for +consolation into the barber's shop, where he found himself the only +customer, and no busy sound of “Next” greeted his ear. But the barber, +like all the rest, said that Niagara was not unusually empty; and he +came out feeling bewildered and defrauded. Surely the agent of the boats +which descend the Rapids of the St. Lawrence must be frank, if Basil +went to him and pretended that he was going to buy a ticket. But a +glance at the agent's sign showed Basil that the agent, with his brave +jollity of manner and his impressive “Good-morning,” had passed away +from the deceits of travel, and that he was now inherited by his widow, +who in turn was absent, and temporarily represented by their son. +The boy, in supplying Basil with an advertisement of the line, made +a specious show of haste, as if there were a long queue of tourists +waiting behind him to be served with tickets. Perhaps there was, indeed, +a spectral line there, but Basil was the only tourist present in the +flesh, and he shivered in his isolation, and fled with the advertisement +in his hand. Isabel met him at the door of the station with a frightened +face. + +“Basil,” she cried, “I have found out what the trouble is! Where are the +brides?” + +He took her outstretched hands in his, and passing one of them through +his arm walked with her apart from the children, who were examining at +the news-man's booth the moccasins and the birchbark bric-a-brac of the +Irish aborigines, and the cups and vases of Niagara spar imported from +Devonshire. + +“My dear,” he said, “there are no brides; everybody was married twelve +years ago, and the brides are middle-aged mothers of families now, and +don't come to Niagara if they are wise.” + +“Yes,” she desolately asserted, “that is so! Something has been hanging +over me ever since we came, and suddenly I realized that it was the +absence of the brides. But--but--down at the hotels--Didn't you see +anything bridal there? When the omnibuses arrived, was there no burst of +minstrelsy? Was there--” + +She could not go on, but sank nervelessly into the nearest seat. + +“Perhaps,” said Basil, dreamily regarding the contest of Tom and Bella +for a newly-purchased paper of sour cherries, and helplessly forecasting +in his remoter mind the probable consequences, “there were both brides +and minstrelsy at the hotel, if I had only had the eyes to see and the +ears to hear. In this world, my dear, we are always of our own time, +and we live amid contemporary things. I daresay there were middle-aged +people at Niagara when we were here before, but we did not meet them, +nor they us. I daresay that the place is now swarming with bridal +couples, and it is because they are invisible and inaudible to us +that it seems such a howling wilderness. But the hotel clerks and the +restaurateurs and the hackmen know them, and that is the reason why +they receive with surprise and even offense our sympathy for their +loneliness. Do you suppose, Isabel, that if you were to lay your head +on my shoulder, in a bridal manner, it would do anything to bring us en +rapport with that lost bridal world again?” + +Isabel caught away her hand. “Basil,” she cried, “it would be +disgusting! I wouldn't do it for the world--not even for that world. I +saw one middle-aged couple on Goat Island, while you were down at the +Cave of the Winds, or somewhere, with the children. They were sitting on +some steps, he a step below her, and he seemed to want to put his head +on her knee; but I gazed at him sternly, and he didn't dare. We should +look like them, if we yielded to any outburst of affection. Don't you +think we should look like them?” + +“I don't know,” said Basil. “You are certainly a little wrinkled, my +dear.” + +“And you are very fat, Basil.” + +They glanced at each other with a flash of resentment, and then they +both laughed. “We couldn't look young if we quarreled a week,” he said. +“We had better content ourselves with feeling young, as I hope we shall +do if we live to be ninety. It will be the loss of others if they don't +see our bloom upon us. Shall I get you a paper of cherries, Isabel? The +children seem to be enjoying them.” + +Isabel sprang upon her offspring with a cry of despair. “Oh, what shall +I do? Now we shall not have a wink of sleep with them to-night. Where +is that nux?” She hunted for the medicine in her bag, and the children +submitted; for they had eaten all the cherries, and they took their +medicine without a murmur. “I wonder at your letting them eat the sour +things, Basil,” said their mother, when the children had run off to the +newsstand again. + +“I wonder that you left me to see what they were doing,” promptly +retorted their father. + +“It was your nonsense about the brides,” said Isabel; “and I think +this has been a lesson to us. Don't let them get anything else to eat, +dearest.” + +“They are safe; they have no more money. They are frugally confining +themselves to the admiration of the Japanese bows and arrows yonder. Why +have our Indians taken to making Japanese bows and arrows?” + +Isabel despised the small pleasantry. “Then you saw nobody at the +hotel?” she asked. + +“Not even the Ellisons,” said Basil. + +“Ah, yes,” said Isabel; “that was where we met them. How long ago it +seems! And poor little Kitty! I wonder what has become of them? But I'm +glad they're not here. That's what makes you realize your age: meeting +the same people in the same place a great while after, and seeing how +old--they've grown. I don't think I could bear to see Kitty Ellison +again. I'm glad she didn't come to visit us in Boston, though, after +what happened, she couldn't, poor thing! I wonder if she's ever +regretted her breaking with him in the way she did. It's a very painful +thing to think of,--such an inconclusive conclusion; it always seemed as +if they ought to meet again, somewhere.” + +“I don't believe she ever wished it.” + +“A man can't tell what a woman wishes.” + +“Well, neither can a woman,” returned Basil, lightly. + +His wife remained serious. “It was a very fine point,--a very little +thing to reject a man for. I felt that when I first read her letter +about it.” + +Basil yawned. “I don't believe I ever knew just what the point was.” + +“Oh yes, you did; but you forget everything. You know that they met two +Boston ladies just after they were engaged, and she believed that he did +n't introduce her because he was ashamed of her countrified appearance +before them.” + +“It was a pretty fine point,” said Basil, and he laughed provokingly. + +“He might not have meant to ignore her,” answered Isabel thoughtfully; +“he might have chosen not to introduce her because he felt too proud of +her to subject her to any possible misappreciation from them. You might +have looked at it in that way.” + +“Why didn't you look at it in that way? You advised her against giving +him another chance. Why did you?” + +“Why?” repeated Isabel, absently. “Oh, a woman doesn't judge a man by +what he does, but by what he is! I knew that if she dismissed him it +was because she never really had trusted or could trust his love; and I +thought she had better not make another trial.” + +“Well, very possibly you were right. At any rate, you have the +consolation of knowing that it's too late to help it now.” + +“Yes, it's too late,” said Isabel; and her thoughts went back to her +meeting with the young girl whom she had liked so much, and whose after +history had interested her so painfully. It seemed to her a hard world +that could come to nothing better than that for the girl whom she had +seen in her first glimpse of it that night. Where was she now? What +had become of her? If she had married that man, would she have been any +happier? Marriage was not the poetic dream of perfect union that a girl +imagines it; she herself had found that out. It was a state of trial, of +probation; it was an ordeal, not an ecstasy. If she and Basil had broken +each other's hearts and parted, would not the fragments of their lives +have been on a much finer, much higher plane? Had not the commonplace, +every-day experiences of marriage vulgarized them both? To be sure, +there were the children; but if they had never had the children, she +would never have missed them; and if Basil had, for example, died just +before they were married--She started from this wicked reverie, and ran +towards her husband, whose broad, honest back, with no visible neck or +shirt-collar, was turned towards her, as he stood, with his head thrown +up, studying a time-table on the wall; she passed her arm convulsively +through his, and pulled him away. + +“It's time to be getting our bags out to the train, Basil! Come, Bella! +Tom, we're going!” + +The children reluctantly turned from the newsman's trumpery, and they +all went out to the track, and took seats on the benches under the +colonnade. While they waited; the train for Buffalo drew in, and they +remained watching it till it started. In the last car that passed them, +when it was fairly under way, a face looked full at Isabel from one +of the windows. In that moment of astonishment she forgot to observe +whether it was sad or glad; she only saw, or believed she saw, the light +of recognition dawn into its eyes, and then it was gone. + +“Basil!” she cried, “stop the train! That was Kitty Ellison!” + +“Oh no, it wasn't,” said Basil, easily. “It looked like her; but it +looked at least ten years older.” + +“Why, of course it was! We're all ten years older,” returned his wife in +such indignation at his stupidity that she neglected to insist upon his +stopping the train, which was rapidly diminishing in the perspective. + +He declared it was only a fancied resemblance; she contended that this +was in the neighborhood of Eriecreek, and it must be Kitty; and thus one +of their most inveterate disagreements began. + +Their own train drew into the depot, and they disputed upon the fact in +question till they entered on the passage of the Suspension Bridge. Then +Basil rose and called the children to his side. On the left hand, far +up the river, the great Fall shows, with its mists at its foot and its +rainbow on its brow, as silent and still as if it were vastly painted +there; and below the bridge on the right, leap the Rapids in the narrow +gorge, like seas on a rocky shore. “Look on both sides, now,” he said to +the children. “Isabel you must see this!” + +Isabel had been preparing for the passage of this bridge ever since she +left Boston. “Never!” she exclaimed. She instantly closed her eyes, and +hid her face in her handkerchief. Thanks to this precaution of hers, the +train crossed the bridge in perfect safety. + + +PG EDITORS BOOKMARKS: + + All luckiest or the unluckiest, the healthiest or the sickest + All the loveliness that exists outside of you, dearest is little + Amusing world, if you do not refuse to be amused + At heart every man is a smuggler + Beautiful with the radiance of loving and being loved + Bewildering labyrinth of error + Biggest place is always the kindest as well as the cruelest + Brown-stone fronts + Civilly protested and consented + Coldly and inaccessibly vigilant + Collective silence which passes for sociality + Deadly summer day + Dinner unites the idea of pleasure and duty + Dog that had plainly made up his mind to go mad + Evil which will not let a man forgive his victim + Feeblest-minded are sure to lead the talk + Feeling of contempt for his unambitious destination + Feeling rather ashamed,--for he had laughed too + Glad; which considering, they ceased to be + Guilty rapture of a deliberate dereliction + Happiness built upon and hedged about with misery + Happiness is so unreasonable + Headache darkens the universe while it lasts + Heart that forgives but does not forget + Helplessness accounts for many heroic facts in the world + Helplessness begets a sense of irresponsibility + I supposed I had the pleasure of my wife's acquaintance + I want to be sorry upon the easiest possible terms + I'm not afraid--I'm awfully demoralized + Indulge safely in the pleasures of autobiography + It's the same as a promise, your not saying you wouldn't + It had come as all such calamities come, from nothing + Jesting mood in the face of all embarrassments + Long life of holidays which is happy marriage + Married the whole mystifying world of womankind + Muddy draught which impudently affected to be coffee + Never could have an emotion without desiring to analyze it + Nothing so apt to end in mutual dislike,--except gratitude + Nothing so sad to her as a bride, unless it's a young mother + Oblivion of sleep + Only so much clothing as the law compelled + Parkman + Patronizing spirit of travellers in a foreign country + Rejoice in everything that I haven't done + Seemed the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed + Self-sufficiency, without its vulgarity + So hard to give up doing anything we have meant to do + So old a world and groping still + The knowledge of your helplessness in any circumstances + There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure + They can only do harm by an expression of sympathy + Tragical character of heat + Used to having his decisions reached without his knowledge + Vexed by a sense of his own pitifulness + Voice of the common imbecility and incoherence + Weariness of buying + Willingness to find poetry in things around them + + +***** + + + + +A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES + +By William Dean Howells + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL + +The following story was the first fruit of my New York life when I began +to live it after my quarter of a century in Cambridge and Boston, ending +in 1889; and I used my own transition to the commercial metropolis +in framing the experience which was wholly that of my supposititious +literary adventurer. He was a character whom, with his wife, I have +employed in some six or eight other stories, and whom I made as much the +hero and heroine of 'Their Wedding Journey' as the slight fable would +bear. In venturing out of my adoptive New England, where I had found +myself at home with many imaginary friends, I found it natural to ask +the company of these familiar acquaintances, but their company was not +to be had at once for the asking. When I began speaking of them as Basil +and Isabel, in the fashion of 'Their Wedding Journey,' they would not +respond with the effect of early middle age which I desired in them. +They remained wilfully, not to say woodenly, the young bridal pair of +that romance, without the promise of novel functioning. It was not till +I tried addressing them as March and Mrs. March that they stirred under +my hand with fresh impulse, and set about the work assigned them as +people in something more than their second youth. + +The scene into which I had invited them to figure filled the largest +canvas I had yet allowed myself; and, though 'A Hazard of New Fortunes' +was not the first story I had written with the printer at my heels, it +was the first which took its own time to prescribe its own dimensions. I +had the general design well in mind when I began to write it, but as +it advanced it compelled into its course incidents, interests, +individualities, which I had not known lay near, and it specialized +and amplified at points which I had not always meant to touch, though I +should not like to intimate anything mystical in the fact. It became, +to my thinking, the most vital of my fictions, through my quickened +interest in the life about me, at a moment of great psychological +import. We had passed through a period of strong emotioning in the +direction of the humaner economics, if I may phrase it so; the rich +seemed not so much to despise the poor, the poor did not so hopelessly +repine. The solution of the riddle of the painful earth through the +dreams of Henry George, through the dreams of Edward Bellamy, through +the dreams of all the generous visionaries of the past, seemed not +impossibly far off. That shedding of blood which is for the remission of +sins had been symbolized by the bombs and scaffolds of Chicago, and +the hearts of those who felt the wrongs bound up with our rights, the +slavery implicated in our liberty, were thrilling with griefs and hopes +hitherto strange to the average American breast. Opportunely for me +there was a great street-car strike in New York, and the story began to +find its way to issues nobler and larger than those of the love-affairs +common to fiction. I was in my fifty-second year when I took it up, and +in the prime, such as it was, of my powers. The scene which I had chosen +appealed prodigiously to me, and the action passed as nearly without my +conscious agency as I ever allow myself to think such things happen. + +The opening chapters were written in a fine, old fashioned apartment +house which had once been a family house, and in an uppermost room of +which I could look from my work across the trees of the little park in +Stuyvesant Square to the towers of St. George's Church. Then later in +the spring of 1889 the unfinished novel was carried to a country house +on the Belmont border of Cambridge. There I must have written very +rapidly to have pressed it to conclusion before the summer ended. It +came, indeed, so easily from the pen that I had the misgiving which I +always have of things which do not cost me great trouble. + +There is nothing in the book with which I amused myself more than the +house-hunting of the Marches when they were placing themselves in New +York; and if the contemporary reader should turn for instruction to the +pages in which their experience is detailed I assure him that he may +trust their fidelity and accuracy in the article of New York housing as +it was early in the last decade of the last century: I mean, the housing +of people of such moderate means as the Marches. In my zeal for truth +I did not distinguish between reality and actuality in this or other +matters--that is, one was as precious to me as the other. But the types +here portrayed are as true as ever they were, though the world in +which they were finding their habitat is wonderfully, almost incredibly +different. Yet it is not wholly different, for a young literary pair +now adventuring in New York might easily parallel the experience of the +Marches with their own, if not for so little money; many phases of +New York housing are better, but all are dearer. Other aspects of the +material city have undergone a transformation much more wonderful. I +find that in my book its population is once modestly spoken of as two +millions, but now in twenty years it is twice as great, and the grandeur +as well as grandiosity of its forms is doubly apparent. The transitional +public that then moped about in mildly tinkling horse-cars is now +hurried back and forth in clanging trolleys, in honking and whirring +motors; the Elevated road which was the last word of speed is undermined +by the Subway, shooting its swift shuttles through the subterranean woof +of the city's haste. From these feet let the witness infer our whole +massive Hercules, a bulk that sprawls and stretches beyond the rivers +through the tunnels piercing their beds and that towers into the skies +with innumerable tops--a Hercules blent of Briareus and Cerberus, but +not so bad a monster as it seemed then to threaten becoming. + +Certain hopes of truer and better conditions on which my heart was fixed +twenty years ago are not less dear, and they are by no means touched +with despair, though they have not yet found the fulfilment which I +would then have prophesied for them. Events have not wholly played them +false; events have not halted, though they have marched with a slowness +that might affect a younger observer as marking time. They who were then +mindful of the poor have not forgotten them, and what is better the poor +have not often forgotten themselves in violences such as offered me the +material of tragedy and pathos in my story. In my quality of artist I +could not regret these, and I gratefully realize that they offered +me the opportunity of a more strenuous action, a more impressive +catastrophe than I could have achieved without them. They tended to give +the whole fable dignity and doubtless made for its success as a book. +As a serial it had crept a sluggish course before a public apparently so +unmindful of it that no rumor of its acceptance or rejection reached the +writer during the half year of its publication; but it rose in book form +from that failure and stood upon its feet and went its way to greater +favor than any book of his had yet enjoyed. I hope that my recognition +of the fact will not seem like boasting, but that the reader will +regard it as a special confidence from the author and will let it go no +farther. + +KITTERY POINT, MAINE, July, 1909. + + + + +PART FIRST + + + + +I. + +“Now, you think this thing over, March, and let me know the last of +next week,” said Fulkerson. He got up from the chair which he had been +sitting astride, with his face to its back, and tilting toward March on +its hind-legs, and came and rapped upon his table with his thin bamboo +stick. “What you want to do is to get out of the insurance business, +anyway. You acknowledge that yourself. You never liked it, and now it +makes you sick; in other words, it's killing you. You ain't an insurance +man by nature. You're a natural-born literary man, and you've been going +against the grain. Now, I offer you a chance to go with the grain. I +don't say you're going to make your everlasting fortune, but I'll give +you a living salary, and if the thing succeeds you'll share in its +success. We'll all share in its success. That's the beauty of it. I +tell you, March, this is the greatest idea that has been struck +since”--Fulkerson stopped and searched his mind for a fit image--“since +the creation of man.” + +He put his leg up over the corner of March's table and gave himself a +sharp cut on the thigh, and leaned forward to get the full effect of his +words upon his listener. + +March had his hands clasped together behind his head, and he took one +of them down long enough to put his inkstand and mucilage-bottle out +of Fulkerson's way. After many years' experiment of a mustache and +whiskers, he now wore his grizzled beard full, but cropped close; it +gave him a certain grimness, corrected by the gentleness of his eyes. + +“Some people don't think much of the creation of man nowadays. Why stop +at that? Why not say since the morning stars sang together?” + +“No, sir; no, sir! I don't want to claim too much, and I draw the line +at the creation of man. I'm satisfied with that. But if you want to +ring the morning stars into the prospectus all right; I won't go back on +you.” + +“But I don't understand why you've set your mind on me,” March said. +“I haven't had, any magazine experience, you know that; and I haven't +seriously attempted to do anything in literature since I was married. I +gave up smoking and the Muse together. I suppose I could still manage a +cigar, but I don't believe I could--” + +“Muse worth a cent.” Fulkerson took the thought out of his mouth and put +it into his own words. “I know. Well, I don't want you to. I don't +care if you never write a line for the thing, though you needn't reject +anything of yours, if it happens to be good, on that account. And I +don't want much experience in my editor; rather not have it. You told +me, didn't you, that you used to do some newspaper work before you +settled down?” + +“Yes; I thought my lines were permanently cast in those places once. It +was more an accident than anything else that I got into the insurance +business. I suppose I secretly hoped that if I made my living by +something utterly different, I could come more freshly to literature +proper in my leisure.” + +“I see; and you found the insurance business too many, for you. Well, +anyway, you've always had a hankering for the inkpots; and the fact that +you first gave me the idea of this thing shows that you've done more or +less thinking about magazines.” + +“Yes--less.” + +“Well, all right. Now don't you be troubled. I know what I want, +generally, speaking, and in this particular instance I want you. I might +get a man of more experience, but I should probably get a man of more +prejudice and self-conceit along with him, and a man with a following of +the literary hangers-on that are sure to get round an editor sooner +or later. I want to start fair, and I've found out in the syndicate +business all the men that are worth having. But they know me, and they +don't know you, and that's where we shall have the pull on them. +They won't be able to work the thing. Don't you be anxious about the +experience. I've got experience enough of my own to run a dozen +editors. What I want is an editor who has taste, and you've got it; and +conscience, and you've got it; and horse sense, and you've got that. And +I like you because you're a Western man, and I'm another. I do cotton +to a Western man when I find him off East here, holding his own with the +best of 'em, and showing 'em that he's just as much civilized as they +are. We both know what it is to have our bright home in the setting sun; +heigh?” + +“I think we Western men who've come East are apt to take ourselves a +little too objectively and to feel ourselves rather more representative +than we need,” March remarked. + +Fulkerson was delighted. “You've hit it! We do! We are!” + +“And as for holding my own, I'm not very proud of what I've done in that +way; it's been very little to hold. But I know what you mean, Fulkerson, +and I've felt the same thing myself; it warmed me toward you when we +first met. I can't help suffusing a little to any man when I hear that +he was born on the other side of the Alleghanies. It's perfectly stupid. +I despise the same thing when I see it in Boston people.” + +Fulkerson pulled first one of his blond whiskers and then the other, and +twisted the end of each into a point, which he left to untwine itself. +He fixed March with his little eyes, which had a curious innocence in +their cunning, and tapped the desk immediately in front of him. “What I +like about you is that you're broad in your sympathies. The first time I +saw you, that night on the Quebec boat, I said to myself: 'There's a man +I want to know. There's a human being.' I was a little afraid of +Mrs. March and the children, but I felt at home with you--thoroughly +domesticated--before I passed a word with you; and when you spoke +first, and opened up with a joke over that fellow's tableful of +light literature and Indian moccasins and birch-bark toy canoes and +stereoscopic views, I knew that we were brothers--spiritual twins. I +recognized the Western style of fun, and I thought, when you said you +were from Boston, that it was some of the same. But I see now that its +being a cold fact, as far as the last fifteen or twenty years count, is +just so much gain. You know both sections, and you can make this thing +go, from ocean to ocean.” + +“We might ring that into the prospectus, too,” March suggested, with a +smile. “You might call the thing 'From Sea to Sea.' By-the-way, what are +you going to call it?” + +“I haven't decided yet; that's one of the things I wanted to talk with +you about. I had thought of 'The Syndicate'; but it sounds kind of dry, +and doesn't seem to cover the ground exactly. I should like something +that would express the co-operative character of the thing, but I don't +know as I can get it.” + +“Might call it 'The Mutual'.” + +“They'd think it was an insurance paper. No, that won't do. But Mutual +comes pretty near the idea. If we could get something like that, it +would pique curiosity; and then if we could get paragraphs afloat +explaining that the contributors were to be paid according to the sales, +it would be a first-rate ad.” + +He bent a wide, anxious, inquiring smile upon March, who suggested, +lazily: “You might call it 'The Round-Robin'. That would express the +central idea of irresponsibility. As I understand, everybody is to share +the profits and be exempt from the losses. Or, if I'm wrong, and the +reverse is true, you might call it 'The Army of Martyrs'. Come, that +sounds attractive, Fulkerson! Or what do you think of 'The Fifth Wheel'? +That would forestall the criticism that there are too many literary +periodicals already. Or, if you want to put forward the idea of complete +independence, you could call it 'The Free Lance'; or--” + +“Or 'The Hog on Ice'--either stand up or fall down, you know,” Fulkerson +broke in coarsely. “But we'll leave the name of the magazine till we get +the editor. I see the poison's beginning to work in you, March; and if +I had time I'd leave the result to time. But I haven't. I've got to know +inside of the next week. To come down to business with you, March, I +sha'n't start this thing unless I can get you to take hold of it.” + +He seemed to expect some acknowledgment, and March said, “Well, that's +very nice of you, Fulkerson.” + +“No, sir; no, sir! I've always liked you and wanted you ever since we +met that first night. I had this thing inchoately in my mind then, when +I was telling you about the newspaper syndicate business--beautiful +vision of a lot of literary fellows breaking loose from the bondage of +publishers and playing it alone--” + +“You might call it 'The Lone Hand'; that would be attractive,” March +interrupted. “The whole West would know what you meant.” + +Fulkerson was talking seriously, and March was listening seriously; but +they both broke off and laughed. Fulkerson got down off the table and +made some turns about the room. It was growing late; the October sun had +left the top of the tall windows; it was still clear day, but it would +soon be twilight; they had been talking a long time. Fulkerson came and +stood with his little feet wide apart, and bent his little lean, square +face on March. “See here! How much do you get out of this thing here, +anyway?” + +“The insurance business?” March hesitated a moment and then said, with a +certain effort of reserve, “At present about three thousand.” He looked +up at Fulkerson with a glance, as if he had a mind to enlarge upon the +fact, and then dropped his eyes without saying more. + +Whether Fulkerson had not thought it so much or not, he said: “Well, +I'll give you thirty-five hundred. Come! And your chances in the +success.” + +“We won't count the chances in the success. And I don't believe +thirty-five hundred would go any further in New York than three thousand +in Boston.” + +“But you don't live on three thousand here?” + +“No; my wife has a little property.” + +“Well, she won't lose the income if you go to New York. I suppose you +pay ten or twelve hundred a year for your house here. You can get plenty +of flats in New York for the same money; and I understand you can get +all sorts of provisions for less than you pay now--three or four cents +on the pound. Come!” + +This was by no means the first talk they had had about the matter; every +three or four months during the past two years the syndicate man had +dropped in upon March to air the scheme and to get his impressions of +it. This had happened so often that it had come to be a sort of joke +between them. But now Fulkerson clearly meant business, and March had a +struggle to maintain himself in a firm poise of refusal. + +“I dare say it wouldn't--or it needn't--cost so very much more, but I +don't want to go to New York; or my wife doesn't. It's the same thing.” + +“A good deal samer,” Fulkerson admitted. + +March did not quite like his candor, and he went on with dignity. +“It's very natural she shouldn't. She has always lived in Boston; she's +attached to the place. Now, if you were going to start 'The Fifth Wheel' +in Boston--” + +Fulkerson slowly and sadly shook his head, but decidedly. “Wouldn't do. +You might as well say St. Louis or Cincinnati. There's only one city +that belongs to the whole country, and that's New York.” + +“Yes, I know,” sighed March; “and Boston belongs to the Bostonians, but +they like you to make yourself at home while you're visiting.” + +“If you'll agree to make phrases like that, right along, and get them +into 'The Round-Robin' somehow, I'll say four thousand,” said Fulkerson. +“You think it over now, March. You talk it over with Mrs. March; I know +you will, anyway; and I might as well make a virtue of advising you to +do it. Tell her I advised you to do it, and you let me know before next +Saturday what you've decided.” + +March shut down the rolling top of his desk in the corner of the room, +and walked Fulkerson out before him. It was so late that the last of +the chore-women who washed down the marble halls and stairs of the great +building had wrung out her floor-cloth and departed, leaving spotless +stone and a clean, damp smell in the darkening corridors behind her. + +“Couldn't offer you such swell quarters in New York, March,” Fulkerson +said, as he went tack-tacking down the steps with his small boot-heels. +“But I've got my eye on a little house round in West Eleventh Street +that I'm going to fit up for my bachelor's hall in the third story, and +adapt for 'The Lone Hand' in the first and second, if this thing goes +through; and I guess we'll be pretty comfortable. It's right on the Sand +Strip--no malaria of any kind.” + +“I don't know that I'm going to share its salubrity with you yet,” March +sighed, in an obvious travail which gave Fulkerson hopes. + +“Oh yes, you are,” he coaxed. “Now, you talk it over with your wife. You +give her a fair, unprejudiced chance at the thing on its merits, and I'm +very much mistaken in Mrs. March if she doesn't tell you to go in and +win. We're bound to win!” + +They stood on the outside steps of the vast edifice beetling like +a granite crag above them, with the stone groups of an allegory of +life-insurance foreshortened in the bas-relief overhead. March absently +lifted his eyes to it. It was suddenly strange after so many years' +familiarity, and so was the well-known street in its Saturday-evening +solitude. He asked himself, with prophetic homesickness, if it were an +omen of what was to be. But he only said, musingly: “A fortnightly. You +know that didn't work in England. The fortnightly is published once a +month now.” + +“It works in France,” Fulkerson retorted. “The 'Revue des Deux Mondes' +is still published twice a month. I guess we can make it work in +America--with illustrations.” + +“Going to have illustrations?” + +“My dear boy! What are you giving me? Do I look like the sort of lunatic +who would start a thing in the twilight of the nineteenth century +without illustrations? Come off!” + +“Ah, that complicates it! I don't know anything about art.” March's look +of discouragement confessed the hold the scheme had taken upon him. + +“I don't want you to!” Fulkerson retorted. “Don't you suppose I shall +have an art man?” + +“And will they--the artists--work at a reduced rate, too, like the +writers, with the hopes of a share in the success?” + +“Of course they will! And if I want any particular man, for a card, I'll +pay him big money besides. But I can get plenty of first-rate sketches +on my own terms. You'll see! They'll pour in!” + +“Look here, Fulkerson,” said March, “you'd better call this fortnightly +of yours 'The Madness o f the Half-Moon'; or 'Bedlam Broke Loose' +wouldn't be bad! Why do you throw away all your hard earnings on such a +crazy venture? Don't do it!” The kindness which March had always felt, +in spite of his wife's first misgivings and reservations, for the merry, +hopeful, slangy, energetic little creature trembled in his voice. They +had both formed a friendship for Fulkerson during the week they were +together in Quebec. When he was not working the newspapers there, he +went about with them over the familiar ground they were showing their +children, and was simply grateful for the chance, as well as very +entertaining about it all. The children liked him, too; when they got +the clew to his intention, and found that he was not quite serious in +many of the things he said, they thought he was great fun. They were +always glad when their father brought him home on the occasion of +Fulkerson's visits to Boston; and Mrs. March, though of a charier +hospitality, welcomed Fulkerson with a grateful sense of his admiration +for her husband. He had a way of treating March with deference, as an +older and abler man, and of qualifying the freedom he used toward every +one with an implication that March tolerated it voluntarily, which she +thought very sweet and even refined. + +“Ah, now you're talking like a man and a brother,” said Fulkerson. “Why, +March, old man, do you suppose I'd come on here and try to talk you into +this thing if I wasn't morally, if I wasn't perfectly, sure of success? +There isn't any if or and about it. I know my ground, every inch; and +I don't stand alone on it,” he added, with a significance which did not +escape March. “When you've made up your mind I can give you the proof; +but I'm not at liberty now to say anything more. I tell you it's going +to be a triumphal march from the word go, with coffee and lemonade for +the procession along the whole line. All you've got to do is to fall +in.” He stretched out his hand to March. “You let me know as soon as you +can.” + +March deferred taking his hand till he could ask, “Where are you going?” + +“Parker House. Take the eleven for New York to-night.” + +“I thought I might walk your way.” March looked at his watch. “But I +shouldn't have time. Goodbye!” + +He now let Fulkerson have his hand, and they exchanged a cordial +pressure. Fulkerson started away at a quick, light pace. Half a block +off he stopped, turned round, and, seeing March still standing where he +had left him, he called back, joyously, “I've got the name!” + +“What?” + +“Every Other Week.” + +“It isn't bad.” + +“Ta-ta!” + + + + +II. + +All the way up to the South End March mentally prolonged his talk with +Fulkerson, and at his door in Nankeen Square he closed the parley with +a plump refusal to go to New York on any terms. His daughter Bella was +lying in wait for him in the hall, and she threw her arms round his +neck with the exuberance of her fourteen years and with something of the +histrionic intention of her sex. He pressed on, with her clinging about +him, to the library, and, in the glow of his decision against Fulkerson, +kissed his wife, where she sat by the study lamp reading the Transcript +through her first pair of eye-glasses: it was agreed in the family that +she looked distinguished in them, or, at any rate, cultivated. She took +them off to give him a glance of question, and their son Tom looked up +from his book for a moment; he was in his last year at the high school, +and was preparing for Harvard. + +“I didn't get away from the office till half-past five,” March explained +to his wife's glance, “and then I walked. I suppose dinner's waiting. +I'm sorry, but I won't do it any more.” + +At table he tried to be gay with Bella, who babbled at him with a +voluble pertness which her brother had often advised her parents to +check in her, unless they wanted her to be universally despised. + +“Papa!” she shouted at last, “you're not listening!” As soon as possible +his wife told the children they might be excused. Then she asked, “What +is it, Basil?” + +“What is what?” he retorted, with a specious brightness that did not +avail. + +“What is on your mind?” + +“How do you know there's anything?” + +“Your kissing me so when you came in, for one thing.” + +“Don't I always kiss you when I come in?” + +“Not now. I suppose it isn't necessary any more. 'Cela va sans baiser.'” + +“Yes, I guess it's so; we get along without the symbolism now.” He +stopped, but she knew that he had not finished. + +“Is it about your business? Have they done anything more?” + +“No; I'm still in the dark. I don't know whether they mean to supplant +me, or whether they ever did. But I wasn't thinking about that. +Fulkerson has been to see me again.” + +“Fulkerson?” She brightened at the name, and March smiled, too. “Why +didn't you bring him to dinner?” + +“I wanted to talk with you. Then you do like him?” + +“What has that got to do with it, Basil?” + +“Nothing! nothing! That is, he was boring away about that scheme of his +again. He's got it into definite shape at last.” + +“What shape?” + +March outlined it for her, and his wife seized its main features with +the intuitive sense of affairs which makes women such good business-men +when they will let it. + +“It sounds perfectly crazy,” she said, finally. “But it mayn't be. The +only thing I didn't like about Mr. Fulkerson was his always wanting to +chance things. But what have you got to do with it?” + +“What have I got to do with it?” March toyed with the delay the question +gave him; then he said, with a sort of deprecatory laugh: “It seems +that Fulkerson has had his eye on me ever since we met that night on the +Quebec boat. I opened up pretty freely to him, as you do to a man you +never expect to see again, and when I found he was in that newspaper +syndicate business I told him about my early literary ambitions--” + +“You can't say that I ever discouraged them, Basil,” his wife put in. “I +should have been willing, any time, to give up everything for them.” + +“Well, he says that I first suggested this brilliant idea to him. +Perhaps I did; I don't remember. When he told me about his supplying +literature to newspapers for simultaneous publication, he says I asked: +'Why not apply the principle of co-operation to a magazine, and run it +in the interest of the contributors?' and that set him to thinking, and +he thought out his plan of a periodical which should pay authors and +artists a low price outright for their work and give them a chance of +the profits in the way of a percentage. After all, it isn't so very +different from the chances an author takes when he publishes a book. +And Fulkerson thinks that the novelty of the thing would pique public +curiosity, if it didn't arouse public sympathy. And the long and short +of it is, Isabel, that he wants me to help edit it.” + +“To edit it?” His wife caught her breath, and she took a little time to +realize the fact, while she stared hard at her husband to make sure he +was not joking. + +“Yes. He says he owes it all to me; that I invented the idea--the +germ--the microbe.” + +His wife had now realized the fact, at least in a degree that excluded +trifling with it. “That is very honorable of Mr. Fulkerson; and if he +owes it to you, it was the least he could do.” Having recognized her +husband's claim to the honor done him, she began to kindle with a sense +of the honor itself and the value of the opportunity. “It's a very high +compliment to you, Basil--a very high compliment. And you could give up +this wretched insurance business that you've always hated so, and that's +making you so unhappy now that you think they're going to take it +from you. Give it up and take Mr. Fulkerson's offer! It's a perfect +interposition, coming just at this time! Why, do it! Mercy!” she +suddenly arrested herself, “he wouldn't expect you to get along on the +possible profits?” Her face expressed the awfulness of the notion. + +March smiled reassuringly, and waited to give himself the pleasure of +the sensation he meant to give her. “If I'll make striking phrases for +it and edit it, too, he'll give me four thousand dollars.” + +He leaned back in his chair, and stuck his hands deep into his pockets, +and watched his wife's face, luminous with the emotions that flashed +through her mind-doubt, joy, anxiety. + +“Basil! You don't mean it! Why, take it! Take it instantly! Oh, what +a thing to happen! Oh, what luck! But you deserve it, if you first +suggested it. What an escape, what a triumph over all those hateful +insurance people! Oh, Basil, I'm afraid he'll change his mind! You ought +to have accepted on the spot. You might have known I would approve, and +you could so easily have taken it back if I didn't. Telegraph him now! +Run right out with the despatch--Or we can send Tom!” + +In these imperatives of Mrs. March's there was always much of the +conditional. She meant that he should do what she said, if it were +entirely right; and she never meant to be considered as having urged +him. + +“And suppose his enterprise went wrong?” her husband suggested. + +“It won't go wrong. Hasn't he made a success of his syndicate?” + +“He says so--yes.” + +“Very well, then, it stands to reason that he'll succeed in this, too. +He wouldn't undertake it if he didn't know it would succeed; he must +have capital.” + +“It will take a great deal to get such a thing going; and even if he's +got an Angel behind him--” + +She caught at the word--“An Angel?” + +“It's what the theatrical people call a financial backer. He dropped a +hint of something of that kind.” + +“Of course, he's got an Angel,” said his wife, promptly adopting the +word. “And even if he hadn't, still, Basil, I should be willing to have +you risk it. The risk isn't so great, is it? We shouldn't be ruined +if it failed altogether. With our stocks we have two thousand a year, +anyway, and we could pinch through on that till you got into some other +business afterward, especially if we'd saved something out of your +salary while it lasted. Basil, I want you to try it! I know it will give +you a new lease of life to have a congenial occupation.” March laughed, +but his wife persisted. “I'm all for your trying it, Basil; indeed I am. +If it's an experiment, you can give it up.” + +“It can give me up, too.” + +“Oh, nonsense! I guess there's not much fear of that. Now, I want you to +telegraph Mr. Fulkerson, so that he'll find the despatch waiting for him +when he gets to New York. I'll take the whole responsibility, Basil, and +I'll risk all the consequences.” + + + + +III. + +March's face had sobered more and more as she followed one hopeful burst +with another, and now it expressed a positive pain. But he forced a +smile and said: “There's a little condition attached. Where did you +suppose it was to be published?” + +“Why, in Boston, of course. Where else should it be published?” + +She looked at him for the intention of his question so searchingly that +he quite gave up the attempt to be gay about it. “No,” he said, gravely, +“it's to be published in New York.” + +She fell back in her chair. “In New York?” She leaned forward over the +table toward him, as if to make sure that she heard aright, and said, +with all the keen reproach that he could have expected: “In New York, +Basil! Oh, how could you have let me go on?” + +He had a sufficiently rueful face in owning: “I oughtn't to have done +it, but I got started wrong. I couldn't help putting the best foot, +forward at first--or as long as the whole thing was in the air. I didn't +know that you would take so much to the general enterprise, or else I +should have mentioned the New York condition at once; but, of course, +that puts an end to it.” + +“Oh, of course,” she assented, sadly. “We COULDN'T go to New York.” + +“No, I know that,” he said; and with this a perverse desire to tempt her +to the impossibility awoke in him, though he was really quite cold about +the affair himself now. “Fulkerson thought we could get a nice flat +in New York for about what the interest and taxes came to here, and +provisions are cheaper. But I should rather not experiment at my time of +life. If I could have been caught younger, I might have been inured to +New York, but I don't believe I could stand it now.” + +“How I hate to have you talk that way, Basil! You are young enough to +try anything--anywhere; but you know I don't like New York. I don't +approve of it. It's so big, and so hideous! Of course I shouldn't mind +that; but I've always lived in Boston, and the children were born and +have all their friendships and associations here.” She added, with the +helplessness that discredited her good sense and did her injustice, “I +have just got them both into the Friday afternoon class at Papanti's, +and you know how difficult that is.” + +March could not fail to take advantage of an occasion like this. “Well, +that alone ought to settle it. Under the circumstances, it would be +flying in the face of Providence to leave Boston. The mere fact of a +brilliant opening like that offered me on 'The Microbe,' and the halcyon +future which Fulkerson promises if we'll come to New York, is as dust in +the balance against the advantages of the Friday afternoon class.” + +“Basil,” she appealed, solemnly, “have I ever interfered with your +career?” + +“I never had any for you to interfere with, my dear.” + +“Basil! Haven't I always had faith in you? And don't you suppose that if +I thought it would really be for your advancement I would go to New York +or anywhere with you?” + +“No, my dear, I don't,” he teased. “If it would be for my salvation, +yes, perhaps; but not short of that; and I should have to prove by a +cloud of witnesses that it would. I don't blame you. I wasn't born in +Boston, but I understand how you feel. And really, my dear,” he added, +without irony, “I never seriously thought of asking you to go to New +York. I was dazzled by Fulkerson's offer, I'll own that; but his choice +of me as editor sapped my confidence in him.” + +“I don't like to hear you say that, Basil,” she entreated. + +“Well, of course there were mitigating circumstances. I could see that +Fulkerson meant to keep the whip-hand himself, and that was reassuring. +And, besides, if the Reciprocity Life should happen not to want my +services any longer, it wouldn't be quite like giving up a certainty; +though, as a matter of business, I let Fulkerson get that impression; +I felt rather sneaking to do it. But if the worst comes to the worst, I +can look about for something to do in Boston; and, anyhow, people don't +starve on two thousand a year, though it's convenient to have five. The +fact is, I'm too old to change so radically. If you don't like my saying +that, then you are, Isabel, and so are the children. I've no right to +take them from the home we've made, and to change the whole course of +their lives, unless I can assure them of something, and I can't assure +them of anything. Boston is big enough for us, and it's certainly +prettier than New York. I always feel a little proud of hailing from +Boston; my pleasure in the place mounts the farther I get away from it. +But I do appreciate it, my dear; I've no more desire to leave it than +you have. You may be sure that if you don't want to take the children +out of the Friday afternoon class, I don't want to leave my library +here, and all the ways I've got set in. We'll keep on. Very likely the +company won't supplant me, and if it does, and Watkins gets the place, +he'll give me a subordinate position of some sort. Cheer up, Isabel! I +have put Satan and his angel, Fulkerson, behind me, and it's all right. +Let's go in to the children.” + +He came round the table to Isabel, where she sat in a growing +distraction, and lifted her by the waist from her chair. + +She sighed deeply. “Shall we tell the children about it?” + +“No. What's the use, now?” + +“There wouldn't be any,” she assented. When they entered the family +room, where the boy and girl sat on either side of the lamp working out +the lessons for Monday which they had left over from the day before, she +asked, “Children, how would you like to live in New York?” + +Bella made haste to get in her word first. “And give up the Friday +afternoon class?” she wailed. + +Tom growled from his book, without lifting his eyes: “I shouldn't want +to go to Columbia. They haven't got any dormitories, and you have to +board round anywhere. Are you going to New York?” He now deigned to look +up at his father. + +“No, Tom. You and Bella have decided me against it. Your perspective +shows the affair in its true proportions. I had an offer to go to New +York, but I've refused it.” + + + + +IV + +March's irony fell harmless from the children's preoccupation with their +own affairs, but he knew that his wife felt it, and this added to the +bitterness which prompted it. He blamed her for letting her provincial +narrowness prevent his accepting Fulkerson's offer quite as much as +if he had otherwise entirely wished to accept it. His world, like most +worlds, had been superficially a disappointment. He was no richer than +at the beginning, though in marrying he had given up some tastes, some +preferences, some aspirations, in the hope of indulging them later, with +larger means and larger leisure. His wife had not urged him to do it; +in fact, her pride, as she said, was in his fitness for the life he +had renounced; but she had acquiesced, and they had been very happy +together. That is to say, they made up their quarrels or ignored them. + +They often accused each other of being selfish and indifferent, but she +knew that he would always sacrifice himself for her and the children; +and he, on his part, with many gibes and mockeries, wholly trusted in +her. They had grown practically tolerant of each other's disagreeable +traits; and the danger that really threatened them was that they should +grow too well satisfied with themselves, if not with each other. They +were not sentimental, they were rather matter-of-fact in their motives; +but they had both a sort of humorous fondness for sentimentality. They +liked to play with the romantic, from the safe vantage-ground of their +real practicality, and to divine the poetry of the commonplace. Their +peculiar point of view separated them from most other people, with whom +their means of self-comparison were not so good since their marriage as +before. Then they had travelled and seen much of the world, and they +had formed tastes which they had not always been able to indulge, but +of which they felt that the possession reflected distinction on them. It +enabled them to look down upon those who were without such tastes; but +they were not ill-natured, and so they did not look down so much with +contempt as with amusement. In their unfashionable neighborhood they had +the fame of being not exclusive precisely, but very much wrapped up in +themselves and their children. + +Mrs. March was reputed to be very cultivated, and Mr. March even more +so, among the simpler folk around them. Their house had some good +pictures, which her aunt had brought home from Europe in more affluent +days, and it abounded in books on which he spent more than he ought. +They had beautified it in every way, and had unconsciously taken credit +to them selves for it. They felt, with a glow almost of virtue, how +perfectly it fitted their lives and their children's, and they believed +that somehow it expressed their characters--that it was like them. They +went out very little; she remained shut up in its refinement, working +the good of her own; and he went to his business, and hurried back +to forget it, and dream his dream of intellectual achievement in the +flattering atmosphere of her sympathy. He could not conceal from himself +that his divided life was somewhat like Charles Lamb's, and there were +times when, as he had expressed to Fulkerson, he believed that its +division was favorable to the freshness of his interest in literature. +It certainly kept it a high privilege, a sacred refuge. Now and then he +wrote something, and got it printed after long delays, and when they +met on the St. Lawrence Fulkerson had some of March's verses in his +pocket-book, which he had cut out of astray newspaper and carried +about for years, because they pleased his fancy so much; they formed an +immediate bond of union between the men when their authorship was +traced and owned, and this gave a pretty color of romance to their +acquaintance. But, for the most part, March was satisfied to read. He +was proud of reading critically, and he kept in the current of literary +interests and controversies. It all seemed to him, and to his wife at +second-hand, very meritorious; he could not help contrasting his life +and its inner elegance with that of other men who had no such resources. +He thought that he was not arrogant about it, because he did full +justice to the good qualities of those other people; he congratulated +himself upon the democratic instincts which enabled him to do this; and +neither he nor his wife supposed that they were selfish persons. On the +contrary, they were very sympathetic; there was no good cause that +they did not wish well; they had a generous scorn of all kinds of +narrow-heartedness; if it had ever come into their way to sacrifice +themselves for others, they thought they would have done so, but they +never asked why it had not come in their way. They were very gentle and +kind, even when most elusive; and they taught their children to loathe +all manner of social cruelty. March was of so watchful a conscience in +some respects that he denied himself the pensive pleasure of lapsing +into the melancholy of unfulfilled aspirations; but he did not see that, +if he had abandoned them, it had been for what he held dearer; generally +he felt as if he had turned from them with a high, altruistic aim. The +practical expression of his life was that it was enough to provide well +for his family; to have cultivated tastes, and to gratify them to +the extent of his means; to be rather distinguished, even in the +simplification of his desires. He believed, and his wife believed, that +if the time ever came when he really wished to make a sacrifice to the +fulfilment of the aspirations so long postponed, she would be ready to +join with heart and hand. + +When he went to her room from his library, where she left him the whole +evening with the children, he found her before the glass thoughtfully +removing the first dismantling pin from her back hair. + +“I can't help feeling,” she grieved into the mirror, “that it's I who +keep you from accepting that offer. I know it is! I could go West with +you, or into a new country--anywhere; but New York terrifies me. I don't +like New York, I never did; it disheartens and distracts me; I can't +find myself in it; I shouldn't know how to shop. I know I'm foolish and +narrow and provincial,” she went on, “but I could never have any inner +quiet in New York; I couldn't live in the spirit there. I suppose people +do. It can't be that all these millions--' + +“Oh, not so bad as that!” March interposed, laughing. “There aren't +quite two.” + +“I thought there were four or five. Well, no matter. You see what I am, +Basil. I'm terribly limited. I couldn't make my sympathies go round two +million people; I should be wretched. I suppose I'm standing in the way +of your highest interest, but I can't help it. We took each other for +better or worse, and you must try to bear with me--” She broke off and +began to cry. + +“Stop it!” shouted March. “I tell you I never cared anything for +Fulkerson's scheme or entertained it seriously, and I shouldn't if he'd +proposed to carry it out in Boston.” This was not quite true, but in +the retrospect it seemed sufficiently so for the purposes of argument. +“Don't say another word about it. The thing's over now, and I don't want +to think of it any more. We couldn't change its nature if we talked all +night. But I want you to understand that it isn't your limitations that +are in the way. It's mine. I shouldn't have the courage to take such a +place; I don't think I'm fit for it, and that's the long and short of +it.” + +“Oh, you don't know how it hurts me to have you say that, Basil.” + +The next morning, as they sat together at breakfast, without the +children, whom they let lie late on Sunday, Mrs. March said to her +husband, silent over his fish-balls and baked beans: “We will go to New +York. I've decided it.” + +“Well, it takes two to decide that,” March retorted. “We are not going +to New York.” + +“Yes, we are. I've thought it out. Now, listen.” + +“Oh, I'm willing to listen,” he consented, airily. + +“You've always wanted to get out of the insurance business, and now with +that fear of being turned out which you have you mustn't neglect this +offer. I suppose it has its risks, but it's a risk keeping on as we are; +and perhaps you will make a great success of it. I do want you to try, +Basil. If I could once feel that you had fairly seen what you could do +in literature, I should die happy.” + +“Not immediately after, I hope,” he suggested, taking the second cup of +coffee she had been pouring out for him. “And Boston?” + +“We needn't make a complete break. We can keep this place for the +present, anyway; we could let it for the winter, and come back in the +summer next year. It would be change enough from New York.” + +“Fulkerson and I hadn't got as far as to talk of a vacation.” + +“No matter. The children and I could come. And if you didn't like New +York, or the enterprise failed, you could get into something in Boston +again; and we have enough to live on till you did. Yes, Basil, I'm +going.” + +“I can see by the way your chin trembles that nothing could stop you. +You may go to New York if you wish, Isabel, but I shall stay here.” + +“Be serious, Basil. I'm in earnest.” + +“Serious? If I were any more serious I should shed tears. Come, my dear, +I know what you mean, and if I had my heart set on this thing--Fulkerson +always calls it 'this thing' I would cheerfully accept any sacrifice you +could make to it. But I'd rather not offer you up on a shrine I don't +feel any particular faith in. I'm very comfortable where I am; that is, +I know just where the pinch comes, and if it comes harder, why, I've got +used to bearing that kind of pinch. I'm too old to change pinches.” + +“Now, that does decide me.” + +“It decides me, too.” + +“I will take all the responsibility, Basil,” she pleaded. + +“Oh yes; but you'll hand it back to me as soon as you've carried +your point with it. There's nothing mean about you, Isabel, where +responsibility is concerned. No; if I do this thing--Fulkerson again? I +can't get away from 'this thing'; it's ominous--I must do it because I +want to do it, and not because you wish that you wanted me to do it. I +understand your position, Isabel, and that you're really acting from a +generous impulse, but there's nothing so precarious at our time of life +as a generous impulse. When we were younger we could stand it; we could +give way to it and take the consequences. But now we can't bear it. We +must act from cold reason even in the ardor of self-sacrifice.” + +“Oh, as if you did that!” his wife retorted. + +“Is that any cause why you shouldn't?” She could not say that it was, +and he went on triumphantly: + +“No, I won't take you away from the only safe place on the planet +and plunge you into the most perilous, and then have you say in your +revulsion of feeling that you were all against it from the first, and +you gave way because you saw I had my heart set on it.” He supposed he +was treating the matter humorously, but in this sort of banter between +husband and wife there is always much more than the joking. March had +seen some pretty feminine inconsistencies and trepidations which once +charmed him in his wife hardening into traits of middle-age which were +very like those of less interesting older women. The sight moved him +with a kind of pathos, but he felt the result hindering and vexatious. + +She now retorted that if he did not choose to take her at her word be +need not, but that whatever he did she should have nothing to reproach +herself with; and, at least, he could not say that she had trapped him +into anything. + +“What do you mean by trapping?” he demanded. + +“I don't know what you call it,” she answered; “but when you get me to +commit myself to a thing by leaving out the most essential point, I call +it trapping.” + +“I wonder you stop at trapping, if you think I got you to favor +Fulkerson's scheme and then sprung New York on you. I don't suppose you +do, though. But I guess we won't talk about it any more.” + +He went out for a long walk, and she went to her room. They lunched +silently together in the presence of their children, who knew that +they had been quarrelling, but were easily indifferent to the fact, as +children get to be in such cases; nature defends their youth, and the +unhappiness which they behold does not infect them. In the evening, +after the boy and girl had gone to bed, the father and mother resumed +their talk. He would have liked to take it up at the point from which it +wandered into hostilities, for he felt it lamentable that a matter which +so seriously concerned them should be confused in the fumes of senseless +anger; and he was willing to make a tacit acknowledgment of his own +error by recurring to the question, but she would not be content with +this, and he had to concede explicitly to her weakness that she really +meant it when she had asked him to accept Fulkerson's offer. He said +he knew that; and he began soberly to talk over their prospects in the +event of their going to New York. + +“Oh, I see you are going!” she twitted. + +“I'm going to stay,” he answered, “and let them turn me out of my agency +here,” and in this bitterness their talk ended. + + + + +V. + +His wife made no attempt to renew their talk before March went to +his business in the morning, and they parted in dry offence. Their +experience was that these things always came right of themselves at +last, and they usually let them. He knew that she had really tried to +consent to a thing that was repugnant to her, and in his heart he gave +her more credit for the effort than he had allowed her openly. She knew +that she had made it with the reservation he accused her of, and that he +had a right to feel sore at what she could not help. But he left her +to brood over his ingratitude, and she suffered him to go heavy and +unfriended to meet the chances of the day. He said to himself that if +she had assented cordially to the conditions of Fulkerson's offer, he +would have had the courage to take all the other risks himself, and +would have had the satisfaction of resigning his place. As it was, he +must wait till he was removed; and he figured with bitter pleasure the +pain she would feel when he came home some day and told her he had been +supplanted, after it was too late to close with Fulkerson. + +He found a letter on his desk from the secretary, “Dictated,” in +typewriting, which briefly informed him that Mr. Hubbell, the Inspector +of Agencies, would be in Boston on Wednesday, and would call at his +office during the forenoon. The letter was not different in tone from +many that he had formerly received; but the visit announced was out of +the usual order, and March believed he read his fate in it. During the +eighteen years of his connection with it--first as a subordinate in the +Boston office, and finally as its general agent there--he had seen +a good many changes in the Reciprocity; presidents, vice-presidents, +actuaries, and general agents had come and gone, but there had always +seemed to be a recognition of his efficiency, or at least sufficiency, +and there had never been any manner of trouble, no question of accounts, +no apparent dissatisfaction with his management, until latterly, when +there had begun to come from headquarters some suggestions of enterprise +in certain ways, which gave him his first suspicions of his clerk +Watkins's willingness to succeed him; they embodied some of Watkins's +ideas. The things proposed seemed to March undignified, and even vulgar; +he had never thought himself wanting in energy, though probably he had +left the business to take its own course in the old lines more than +he realized. Things had always gone so smoothly that he had sometimes +fancied a peculiar regard for him in the management, which he had the +weakness to attribute to an appreciation of what he occasionally did +in literature, though in saner moments he felt how impossible this was. +Beyond a reference from Mr. Hubbell to some piece of March's which had +happened to meet his eye, no one in the management ever gave a sign of +consciousness that their service was adorned by an obscure literary man; +and Mr. Hubbell himself had the effect of regarding the excursions of +March's pen as a sort of joke, and of winking at them; as he might have +winked if once in a way he had found him a little the gayer for dining. + +March wore through the day gloomily, but he had it on his conscience not +to show any resentment toward Watkins, whom he suspected of wishing to +supplant him, and even of working to do so. Through this self-denial he +reached a better mind concerning his wife. He determined not to make +her suffer needlessly, if the worst came to the worst; she would suffer +enough, at the best, and till the worst came he would spare her, and not +say anything about the letter he had got. + +But when they met, her first glance divined that something had happened, +and her first question frustrated his generous intention. He had to tell +her about the letter. She would not allow that it had any significance, +but she wished him to make an end of his anxieties and forestall +whatever it might portend by resigning his place at once. She said she +was quite ready to go to New York; she had been thinking it all over, +and now she really wanted to go. He answered, soberly, that he had +thought it over, too; and he did not wish to leave Boston, where he had +lived so long, or try a new way of life if he could help it. He insisted +that he was quite selfish in this; in their concessions their quarrel +vanished; they agreed that whatever happened would be for the best; and +the next day he went to his office fortified for any event. + +His destiny, if tragical, presented itself with an aspect which he might +have found comic if it had been another's destiny. Mr. Hubbell brought +March's removal, softened in the guise of a promotion. The management at +New York, it appeared, had acted upon a suggestion of Mr. Hubbell's, and +now authorized him to offer March the editorship of the monthly paper +published in the interest of the company; his office would include the +authorship of circulars and leaflets in behalf of life-insurance, and +would give play to the literary talent which Mr. Hubbell had brought to +the attention of the management; his salary would be nearly as much as +at present, but the work would not take his whole time, and in a place +like New York he could get a great deal of outside writing, which they +would not object to his doing. + +Mr. Hubbell seemed so sure of his acceptance of a place in every way +congenial to a man of literary tastes that March was afterward sorry he +dismissed the proposition with obvious irony, and had needlessly hurt +Hubbell's feelings; but Mrs. March had no such regrets. She was only +afraid that he had not made his rejection contemptuous enough. “And +now,” she said, “telegraph Mr. Fulkerson, and we will go at once.” + +“I suppose I could still get Watkins's former place,” March suggested. + +“Never!” she retorted. “Telegraph instantly!” + +They were only afraid now that Fulkerson might have changed his mind, +and they had a wretched day in which they heard nothing from him. It +ended with his answering March's telegram in person. They were so glad +of his coming, and so touched by his satisfaction with his bargain, that +they laid all the facts of the case before him. He entered fully into +March's sense of the joke latent in Mr. Hubbell's proposition, and he +tried to make Mrs. March believe that he shared her resentment of the +indignity offered her husband. + +March made a show of willingness to release him in view of the changed +situation, saying that he held him to nothing. Fulkerson laughed, and +asked him how soon he thought he could come on to New York. He refused +to reopen the question of March's fitness with him; he said they, had +gone into that thoroughly, but he recurred to it with Mrs. March, and +confirmed her belief in his good sense on all points. She had been from +the first moment defiantly confident of her husband's ability, but till +she had talked the matter over with Fulkerson she was secretly not +sure of it; or, at least, she was not sure that March was not right in +distrusting himself. When she clearly understood, now, what Fulkerson +intended, she had no longer a doubt. He explained how the enterprise +differed from others, and how he needed for its direction a man who +combined general business experience and business ideas with a love for +the thing and a natural aptness for it. He did not want a young man, and +yet he wanted youth--its freshness, its zest--such as March would feel +in a thing he could put his whole heart into. He would not run in ruts, +like an old fellow who had got hackneyed; he would not have any hobbies; +he would not have any friends or any enemies. Besides, he would have +to meet people, and March was a man that people took to; she knew that +herself; he had a kind of charm. The editorial management was going +to be kept in the background, as far as the public was concerned; the +public was to suppose that the thing ran itself. Fulkerson did not care +for a great literary reputation in his editor--he implied that March +had a very pretty little one. At the same time the relations between +the contributors and the management were to be much more, intimate than +usual. Fulkerson felt his personal disqualification for working the +thing socially, and he counted upon Mr. March for that; that was to say, +he counted upon Mrs. March. + +She protested he must not count upon her; but it by no means disabled +Fulkerson's judgment in her view that March really seemed more than +anything else a fancy of his. He had been a fancy of hers; and the sort +of affectionate respect with which Fulkerson spoke of him laid forever +some doubt she had of the fineness of Fulkerson's manners and reconciled +her to the graphic slanginess of his speech. + +The affair was now irretrievable, but she gave her approval to it as +superbly as if it were submitted in its inception. Only, Mr. Fulkerson +must not suppose she should ever like New York. She would not deceive +him on that point. She never should like it. She did not conceal, +either, that she did not like taking the children out of the Friday +afternoon class; and she did not believe that Tom would ever be +reconciled to going to Columbia. She took courage from Fulkerson's +suggestion that it was possible for Tom to come to Harvard even from New +York; and she heaped him with questions concerning the domiciliation of +the family in that city. He tried to know something about the matter, +and he succeeded in seeming interested in points necessarily indifferent +to him. + + + + +VI. + +In the uprooting and transplanting of their home that followed, Mrs. +March often trembled before distant problems and possible contingencies, +but she was never troubled by present difficulties. She kept up with +tireless energy; and in the moments of dejection and misgiving which +harassed her husband she remained dauntless, and put heart into him when +he had lost it altogether. + +She arranged to leave the children in the house with the servants, while +she went on with March to look up a dwelling of some sort in New York. +It made him sick to think of it; and, when it came to the point, he +would rather have given up the whole enterprise. She had to nerve him to +it, to represent more than once that now they had no choice but to make +this experiment. Every detail of parting was anguish to him. He got +consolation out of the notion of letting the house furnished for the +winter; that implied their return to it, but it cost him pangs of the +keenest misery to advertise it; and, when a tenant was actually found, +it was all he could do to give him the lease. He tried his wife's love +and patience as a man must to whom the future is easy in the mass +but terrible as it translates itself piecemeal into the present. He +experienced remorse in the presence of inanimate things he was going +to leave as if they had sensibly reproached him, and an anticipative +homesickness that seemed to stop his heart. Again and again his wife had +to make him reflect that his depression was not prophetic. She convinced +him of what he already knew, and persuaded him against his knowledge +that he could be keeping an eye out for something to take hold of in +Boston if they could not stand New York. She ended by telling him that +it was too bad to make her comfort him in a trial that was really so +much more a trial to her. She had to support him in a last access of +despair on their way to the Albany depot the morning they started to +New York; but when the final details had been dealt with, the tickets +bought, the trunks checked, and the handbags hung up in their car, and +the future had massed itself again at a safe distance and was seven +hours and two hundred miles away, his spirits began to rise and hers to +sink. He would have been willing to celebrate the taste, the domestic +refinement, of the ladies' waiting-room in the depot, where they had +spent a quarter of an hour before the train started. He said he did +not believe there was another station in the world where mahogany +rocking-chairs were provided; that the dull-red warmth of the walls +was as cozy as an evening lamp, and that he always hoped to see a fire +kindled on that vast hearth and under that aesthetic mantel, but he +supposed now he never should. He said it was all very different from +that tunnel, the old Albany depot, where they had waited the morning +they went to New York when they were starting on their wedding journey. + +“The morning, Basil!” cried his wife. “We went at night; and we were +going to take the boat, but it stormed so!” She gave him a glance of +such reproach that he could not answer anything, and now she asked him +whether he supposed their cook and second girl would be contented with +one of those dark holes where they put girls to sleep in New York flats, +and what she should do if Margaret, especially, left her. He ventured +to suggest that Margaret would probably like the city; but, if she left, +there were plenty of other girls to be had in New York. She replied that +there were none she could trust, and that she knew Margaret would not +stay. He asked her why she took her, then--why she did not give her up +at once; and she answered that it would be inhuman to give her up just +in the edge of the winter. She had promised to keep her; and Margaret +was pleased with the notion of going to New York, where she had a +cousin. + +“Then perhaps she'll be pleased with the notion of staying,” he said. + +“Oh, much you know about it!” she retorted; and, in view of the +hypothetical difficulty and his want of sympathy, she fell into a gloom, +from which she roused herself at last by declaring that, if there was +nothing else in the flat they took, there should be a light kitchen and +a bright, sunny bedroom for Margaret. He expressed the belief that +they could easily find such a flat as that, and she denounced his fatal +optimism, which buoyed him up in the absence of an undertaking and let +him drop into the depths of despair in its presence. + +He owned this defect of temperament, but he said that it compensated the +opposite in her character. “I suppose that's one of the chief uses of +marriage; people supplement one another, and form a pretty fair sort of +human being together. The only drawback to the theory is that unmarried +people seem each as complete and whole as a married pair.” + +She refused to be amused; she turned her face to the window and put her +handkerchief up under her veil. + +It was not till the dining-car was attached to their train that they +were both able to escape for an hour into the care-free mood of their +earlier travels, when they were so easily taken out of themselves. +The time had been when they could have found enough in the conjectural +fortunes and characters of their fellow-passengers to occupy them. This +phase of their youth had lasted long, and the world was still full of +novelty and interest for them; but it required all the charm of the +dining-car now to lay the anxieties that beset them. It was so potent +for the moment, however, that they could take an objective view at their +sitting cozily down there together, as if they had only themselves in +the world. They wondered what the children were doing, the children +who possessed them so intensely when present, and now, by a fantastic +operation of absence, seemed almost non-existents. They tried to +be homesick for them, but failed; they recognized with comfortable +self-abhorrence that this was terrible, but owned a fascination in being +alone; at the same time, they could not imagine how people felt who +never had any children. They contrasted the luxury of dining that way, +with every advantage except a band of music, and the old way of rushing +out to snatch a fearful joy at the lunch-counters of the Worcesier and +Springfield and New Haven stations. They had not gone often to New York +since their wedding journey, but they had gone often enough to have +noted the change from the lunch-counter to the lunch-basket brought in +the train, from which you could subsist with more ease and dignity, but +seemed destined to a superabundance of pickles, whatever you ordered. + +They thought well of themselves now that they could be both critical and +tolerant of flavors not very sharply distinguished from one another in +their dinner, and they lingered over their coffee and watched the autumn +landscape through the windows. + +“Not quite so loud a pattern of calico this year,” he said, with +patronizing forbearance toward the painted woodlands whirling by. +“Do you see how the foreground next the train rushes from us and +the background keeps ahead of us, while the middle distance seems +stationary? I don't think I ever noticed that effect before. There ought +to be something literary in it: retreating past and advancing future and +deceitfully permanent present--something like that?” + +His wife brushed some crumbs from her lap before rising. “Yes. You +mustn't waste any of these ideas now.” + +“Oh no; it would be money out of Fulkerson's pocket.” + + + + +VII. + +They went to a quiet hotel far down-town, and took a small apartment +which they thought they could easily afford for the day or two they need +spend in looking up a furnished flat. They were used to staying at this +hotel when they came on for a little outing in New York, after some +rigid winter in Boston, at the time of the spring exhibitions. They were +remembered there from year to year; the colored call-boys, who never +seemed to get any older, smiled upon them, and the clerk called March +by name even before he registered. He asked if Mrs. March were with him, +and said then he supposed they would want their usual quarters; and in a +moment they were domesticated in a far interior that seemed to have been +waiting for them in a clean, quiet, patient disoccupation ever since +they left it two years before. The little parlor, with its gilt paper +and ebonized furniture, was the lightest of the rooms, but it was not +very light at noonday without the gas, which the bell-boy now flared up +for them. The uproar of the city came to it in a soothing murmur, and +they took possession of its peace and comfort with open celebration. +After all, they agreed, there was no place in the world so delightful as +a hotel apartment like that; the boasted charms of home were nothing +to it; and then the magic of its being always there, ready for any +one, every one, just as if it were for some one alone: it was like the +experience of an Arabian Nights hero come true for all the race. + +“Oh, why can't we always stay here, just we two!” Mrs. March sighed to +her husband, as he came out of his room rubbing his face red with the +towel, while she studied a new arrangement of her bonnet and handbag on +the mantel. + +“And ignore the past? I'm willing. I've no doubt that the children could +get on perfectly well without us, and could find some lot in the scheme +of Providence that would really be just as well for them.” + +“Yes; or could contrive somehow never to have existed. I should insist +upon that. If they are, don't you see that we couldn't wish them not to +be?” + +“Oh yes; I see your point; it's simply incontrovertible.” + +She laughed and said: “Well, at any rate, if we can't find a flat to +suit us we can all crowd into these three rooms somehow, for the winter, +and then browse about for meals. By the week we could get them much +cheaper; and we could save on the eating, as they do in Europe. Or on +something else.” + +“Something else, probably,” said March. “But we won't take this +apartment till the ideal furnished flat winks out altogether. We shall +not have any trouble. We can easily find some one who is going South for +the winter and will be glad to give up their flat 'to the right party' +at a nominal rent. That's my notion. That's what the Evanses did one +winter when they came on here in February. All but the nominality of the +rent.” + +“Yes, and we could pay a very good rent and still save something on +letting our house. You can settle yourselves in a hundred different +ways in New York, that is one merit of the place. But if everything else +fails, we can come back to this. I want you to take the refusal of it, +Basil. And we'll commence looking this very evening as soon as we've +had dinner. I cut a lot of things out of the Herald as we came on. See +here!” + +She took a long strip of paper out of her hand-bag with minute +advertisements pinned transversely upon it, and forming the effect of +some glittering nondescript vertebrate. + +“Looks something like the sea-serpent,” said March, drying his hands on +the towel, while he glanced up and down the list. “But we sha'n't have +any trouble. I've no doubt there are half a dozen things there that will +do. You haven't gone up-town? Because we must be near the 'Every Other +Week' office.” + +“No; but I wish Mr. Fulkerson hadn't called it that! It always makes +one think of 'jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam to-day,' in +'Through the Looking-Glass.' They're all in this region.” + +They were still at their table, beside a low window, where some sort of +never-blooming shrub symmetrically balanced itself in a large pot, with +a leaf to the right and a leaf to the left and a spear up the middle, +when Fulkerson came stepping square-footedly over the thick dining-room +carpet. He wagged in the air a gay hand of salutation at sight of them, +and of repression when they offered to rise to meet him; then, with +an apparent simultaneity of action he gave a hand to each, pulled up a +chair from the next table, put his hat and stick on the floor beside it, +and seated himself. + +“Well, you've burned your ships behind you, sure enough,” he said, +beaming his satisfaction upon them from eyes and teeth. + +“The ships are burned,” said March, “though I'm not sure we alone did +it. But here we are, looking for shelter, and a little anxious about the +disposition of the natives.” + +“Oh, they're an awful peaceable lot,” said Fulkerson. “I've been round +among the caciques a little, and I think I've got two or three places +that will just suit you, Mrs. March. How did you leave the children?” + +“Oh, how kind of you! Very well, and very proud to be left in charge of +the smoking wrecks.” + +Fulkerson naturally paid no attention to what she said, being but +secondarily interested in the children at the best. “Here are some +things right in this neighborhood, within gunshot of the office, and if +you want you can go and look at them to-night; the agents gave me houses +where the people would be in.” + +“We will go and look at them instantly,” said Mrs. March. “Or, as soon +as you've had coffee with us.” + +“Never do,” Fulkerson replied. He gathered up his hat and stick. “Just +rushed in to say Hello, and got to run right away again. I tell you, +March, things are humming. I'm after those fellows with a sharp stick +all the while to keep them from loafing on my house, and at the same +time I'm just bubbling over with ideas about 'The Lone Hand--wish we +could call it that!--that I want to talk up with you.” + +“Well, come to breakfast,” said Mrs. March, cordially. + +“No; the ideas will keep till you've secured your lodge in this vast +wilderness. Good-bye.” + +“You're as nice as you can be, Mr. Fulkerson,” she said, “to keep us in +mind when you have so much to occupy you.” + +“I wouldn't have anything to occupy me if I hadn't kept you in mind, +Mrs. March,” said Fulkerson, going off upon as good a speech as he could +apparently hope to make. + +“Why, Basil,” said Mrs. March, when he was gone, “he's charming! But +now we mustn't lose an instant. Let's see where the places are.” She +ran over the half-dozen agents' permits. “Capital-first-rate-the very +thing-every one. Well, I consider ourselves settled! We can go back to +the children to-morrow if we like, though I rather think I should like +to stay over another day and get a little rested for the final pulling +up that's got to come. But this simplifies everything enormously, and +Mr. Fulkerson is as thoughtful and as sweet as he can be. I know you +will get on well with him. He has such a good heart. And his attitude +toward you, Basil, is beautiful always--so respectful; or not that so +much as appreciative. Yes, appreciative--that's the word; I must always +keep that in mind.” + +“It's quite important to do so,” said March. + +“Yes,” she assented, seriously, “and we must not forget just what kind +of flat we are going to look for. The 'sine qua nons' are an elevator +and steam heat, not above the third floor, to begin with. Then we +must each have a room, and you must have your study and I must have my +parlor; and the two girls must each have a room. With the kitchen and +dining room, how many does that make?” + +“Ten.” + +“I thought eight. Well, no matter. You can work in the parlor, and run +into your bedroom when anybody comes; and I can sit in mine, and the +girls must put up with one, if it's large and sunny, though I've always +given them two at home. And the kitchen must be sunny, so they can sit +in it. And the rooms must all have outside light. And the rent must not +be over eight hundred for the winter. We only get a thousand for our +whole house, and we must save something out of that, so as to cover the +expenses of moving. Now, do you think you can remember all that?” + +“Not the half of it,” said March. “But you can; or if you forget a third +of it, I can come in with my partial half and more than make it up.” + +She had brought her bonnet and sacque down-stairs with her, and was +transferring them from the hatrack to her person while she talked. +The friendly door-boy let them into the street, and the clear October +evening air brightened her so that as she tucked her hand under +her husband's arm and began to pull him along she said, “If we find +something right away--and we're just as likely to get the right flat +soon as late; it's all a lottery--well go to the theatre somewhere.” + +She had a moment's panic about having left the agents' permits on the +table, and after remembering that she had put them into her little +shopping-bag, where she kept her money (each note crushed into a round +wad), and had heft it on the hat-rack, where it would certainly be +stolen, she found it on her wrist. She did not think that very funny; +but after a first impulse to inculpate her husband, she let him laugh, +while they stopped under a lamp and she held the permits half a yard +away to read the numbers on them. + +“Where are your glasses, Isabel?” + +“On the mantel in our room, of course.” + +“Then you ought to have brought a pair of tongs.” + +“I wouldn't get off second-hand jokes, Basil,” she said; and “Why, +here!” she cried, whirling round to the door before which they had +halted, “this is the very number. Well, I do believe it's a sign!” + +One of those colored men who soften the trade of janitor in many of the +smaller apartment-houses in New York by the sweetness of their race +let the Marches in, or, rather, welcomed them to the possession of the +premises by the bow with which he acknowledged their permit. It was a +large, old mansion cut up into five or six dwellings, but it had +kept some traits of its former dignity, which pleased people of their +sympathetic tastes. The dark-mahogany trim, of sufficiently ugly design, +gave a rich gloom to the hallway, which was wide and paved with marble; +the carpeted stairs curved aloft through a generous space. + +“There is no elevator?” Mrs. March asked of the janitor. + +He answered, “No, ma'am; only two flights up,” so winningly that she +said, + +“Oh!” in courteous apology, and whispered to her husband, as she +followed lightly up, “We'll take it, Basil, if it's like the rest.” + +“If it's like him, you mean.” + +“I don't wonder they wanted to own them,” she hurriedly philosophized. +“If I had such a creature, nothing but death should part us, and I +should no more think of giving him his freedom!” + +“No; we couldn't afford it,” returned her husband. + +The apartment which the janitor unlocked for them, and lit up from those +chandeliers and brackets of gilt brass in the form of vine bunches, +leaves, and tendrils in which the early gas-fitter realized most of his +conceptions of beauty, had rather more of the ugliness than the dignity +of the hall. But the rooms were large, and they grouped themselves in a +reminiscence of the time when they were part of a dwelling that had +its charm, its pathos, its impressiveness. Where they were cut up into +smaller spaces, it had been done with the frankness with which a +proud old family of fallen fortunes practises its economies. The rough +pine-floors showed a black border of tack-heads where carpets had been +lifted and put down for generations; the white paint was yellow with +age; the apartment had light at the front and at the back, and two or +three rooms had glimpses of the day through small windows let into their +corners; another one seemed lifting an appealing eye to heaven through a +glass circle in its ceiling; the rest must darkle in perpetual twilight. +Yet something pleased in it all, and Mrs. March had gone far to adapt +the different rooms to the members of her family, when she suddenly +thought (and for her to think was to say), “Why, but there's no steam +heat!” + +“No, ma'am,” the janitor admitted; “but dere's grates in most o' de +rooms, and dere's furnace heat in de halls.” + +“That's true,” she admitted, and, having placed her family in the +apartments, it was hard to get them out again. “Could we manage?” she +referred to her husband. + +“Why, I shouldn't care for the steam heat if--What is the rent?” he +broke off to ask the janitor. + +“Nine hundred, sir.” + +March concluded to his wife, “If it were furnished.” + +“Why, of course! What could I have been thinking of? We're looking for a +furnished flat,” she explained to the janitor, “and this was so pleasant +and homelike that I never thought whether it was furnished or not.” + +She smiled upon the janitor, and he entered into the joke and chuckled +so amiably at her flattering oversight on the way down-stairs that she +said, as she pinched her husband's arm, “Now, if you don't give him a +quarter I'll never speak to you again, Basil!” + +“I would have given half a dollar willingly to get you beyond his +glamour,” said March, when they were safely on the pavement outside. +“If it hadn't been for my strength of character, you'd have taken an +unfurnished flat without heat and with no elevator, at nine hundred a +year, when you had just sworn me to steam heat, an elevator, furniture, +and eight hundred.” + +“Yes! How could I have lost my head so completely?” she said, with a +lenient amusement in her aberration which she was not always able to +feel in her husband's. + +“The next time a colored janitor opens the door to us, I'll tell him +the apartment doesn't suit at the threshold. It's the only way to manage +you, Isabel.” + +“It's true. I am in love with the whole race. I never saw one of them +that didn't have perfectly angelic manners. I think we shall all be +black in heaven--that is, black-souled.” + +“That isn't the usual theory,” said March. + +“Well, perhaps not,” she assented. “Where are we going now? Oh yes, to +the Xenophon!” + +She pulled him gayly along again, and after they had walked a block +down and half a block over they stood before the apartment-house of +that name, which was cut on the gas-lamps on either side of the heavily +spiked, aesthetic-hinged black door. The titter of an electric-bell +brought a large, fat Buttons, with a stage effect of being dressed to +look small, who said he would call the janitor, and they waited in the +dimly splendid, copper-colored interior, admiring the whorls and waves +into which the wallpaint was combed, till the janitor came in his +gold-banded cap, like a Continental porker. When they said they would +like to see Mrs. Grosvenor Green's apartment, he owned his inability to +cope with the affair, and said he must send for the superintendent; he +was either in the Herodotus or the Thucydides, and would be there in +a minute. The Buttons brought him--a Yankee of browbeating presence +in plain clothes--almost before they had time to exchange a frightened +whisper in recognition of the fact that there could be no doubt of the +steam heat and elevator in this case. Half stifled in the one, they +mounted in the other eight stories, while they tried to keep their +self-respect under the gaze of the superintendent, which they felt was +classing and assessing them with unfriendly accuracy. They could not, +and they faltered abashed at the threshold of Mrs. Grosvenor Green's +apartment, while the superintendent lit the gas in the gangway that he +called a private hall, and in the drawing-room and the succession of +chambers stretching rearward to the kitchen. Everything had, been done +by the architect to save space, and everything, to waste it by Mrs. +Grosvenor Green. She had conformed to a law for the necessity of turning +round in each room, and had folding-beds in the chambers, but there her +subordination had ended, and wherever you might have turned round she +had put a gimcrack so that you would knock it over if you did turn. The +place was rather pretty and even imposing at first glance, and it took +several joint ballots for March and his wife to make sure that with the +kitchen there were only six rooms. At every door hung a portiere from +large rings on a brass rod; every shelf and dressing-case and mantel +was littered with gimcracks, and the corners of the tiny rooms were +curtained off, and behind these portieres swarmed more gimcracks. +The front of the upright piano had what March called a short-skirted +portiere on it, and the top was covered with vases, with dragon +candlesticks and with Jap fans, which also expanded themselves bat wise +on the walls between the etchings and the water colors. The floors were +covered with filling, and then rugs and then skins; the easy-chairs all +had tidies, Armenian and Turkish and Persian; the lounges and sofas had +embroidered cushions hidden under tidies. + +The radiator was concealed by a Jap screen, and over the top of this +some Arab scarfs were flung. There was a superabundance of clocks. China +pugs guarded the hearth; a brass sunflower smiled from the top of either +andiron, and a brass peacock spread its tail before them inside a high +filigree fender; on one side was a coalhod in 'repousse' brass, and on +the other a wrought iron wood-basket. Some red Japanese bird-kites were +stuck about in the necks of spelter vases, a crimson Jap umbrella hung +opened beneath the chandelier, and each globe had a shade of yellow +silk. + +March, when he had recovered his self-command a little in the presence +of the agglomeration, comforted himself by calling the bric-a-brac +Jamescracks, as if this was their full name. + +The disrespect he was able to show the whole apartment by means of this +joke strengthened him to say boldly to the superintendent that it was +altogether too small; then he asked carelessly what the rent was. + +“Two hundred and fifty.” + +The Marches gave a start, and looked at each other. + +“Don't you think we could make it do?” she asked him, and he could +see that she had mentally saved five hundred dollars as the difference +between the rent of their house and that of this flat. “It has some very +pretty features, and we could manage to squeeze in, couldn't we?” + +“You won't find another furnished flat like it for no two-fifty a month +in the whole city,” the superintendent put in. + +They exchanged glances again, and March said, carelessly, “It's too +small.” + +“There's a vacant flat in the Herodotus for eighteen hundred a year, +and one in the Thucydides for fifteen,” the superintendent suggested, +clicking his keys together as they sank down in the elevator; “seven +rooms and bath.” + +“Thank you,” said March; “we're looking for a furnished flat.” + +They felt that the superintendent parted from them with repressed +sarcasm. + +“Oh, Basil, do you think we really made him think it was the smallness +and not the dearness?” + +“No, but we saved our self-respect in the attempt; and that's a great +deal.” + +“Of course, I wouldn't have taken it, anyway, with only six rooms, and +so high up. But what prices! Now, we must be very circumspect about the +next place.” + +It was a janitress, large, fat, with her arms wound up in her apron, +who received them there. Mrs. March gave her a succinct but perfect +statement of their needs. She failed to grasp the nature of them, or +feigned to do so. She shook her head, and said that her son would show +them the flat. There was a radiator visible in the narrow hall, and +Isabel tacitly compromised on steam heat without an elevator, as the +flat was only one flight up. When the son appeared from below with a +small kerosene hand-lamp, it appeared that the flat was unfurnished, but +there was no stopping him till he had shown it in all its impossibility. +When they got safely away from it and into the street March said: “Well, +have you had enough for to-night, Isabel? Shall we go to the theatre +now?” + +“Not on any account. I want to see the whole list of flats that Mr. +Fulkerson thought would be the very thing for us.” She laughed, but with +a certain bitterness. + +“You'll be calling him my Mr. Fulkerson next, Isabel.” + +“Oh no!” + +The fourth address was a furnished flat without a kitchen, in a house +with a general restaurant. The fifth was a furnished house. At the sixth +a pathetic widow and her pretty daughter wanted to take a family to +board, and would give them a private table at a rate which the Marches +would have thought low in Boston. + +Mrs. March came away tingling with compassion for their evident anxiety, +and this pity naturally soured into a sense of injury. “Well, I must say +I have completely lost confidence in Mr. Fulkerson's judgment. Anything +more utterly different from what I told him we wanted I couldn't +imagine. If he doesn't manage any better about his business than he has +done about this, it will be a perfect failure.” + +“Well, well, let's hope he'll be more circumspect about that,” her +husband returned, with ironical propitiation. “But I don't think it's +Fulkerson's fault altogether. Perhaps it's the house-agents'. They're +a very illusory generation. There seems to be something in the human +habitation that corrupts the natures of those who deal in it, to buy or +sell it, to hire or let it. You go to an agent and tell him what kind +of a house you want. He has no such house, and he sends you to look at +something altogether different, upon the well-ascertained principle that +if you can't get what you want you will take what you can get. You don't +suppose the 'party' that took our house in Boston was looking for any +such house? He was looking for a totally different kind of house in +another part of the town.” + +“I don't believe that!” his wife broke in. + +“Well, no matter. But see what a scandalous rent you asked for it.” + +“We didn't get much more than half; and, besides, the agent told me to +ask fourteen hundred.” + +“Oh, I'm not blaming you, Isabel. I'm only analyzing the house-agent and +exonerating Fulkerson.” + +“Well, I don't believe he told them just what we wanted; and, at +any rate, I'm done with agents. Tomorrow I'm going entirely by +advertisements.” + + + + +VIII. + +Mrs. March took the vertebrate with her to the Vienna Coffee-House, +where they went to breakfast next morning. She made March buy her the +Herald and the World, and she added to its spiny convolutions from +them. She read the new advertisements aloud with ardor and with faith to +believe that the apartments described in them were every one truthfully +represented, and that any one of them was richly responsive to their +needs. “Elegant, light, large, single and outside flats” were offered +with “all improvements--bath, ice-box, etc.”--for twenty-five to thirty +dollars a month. The cheapness was amazing. The Wagram, the Esmeralda, +the Jacinth, advertised them for forty dollars and sixty dollars, “with +steam heat and elevator,” rent free till November. Others, attractive +from their air of conscientious scruple, announced “first-class flats; +good order; reasonable rents.” The Helena asked the reader if she had +seen the “cabinet finish, hard-wood floors, and frescoed ceilings” of +its fifty-dollar flats; the Asteroid affirmed that such apartments, +with “six light rooms and bath, porcelain wash-tubs, electric bells, and +hall-boy,” as it offered for seventy-five dollars were unapproached +by competition. There was a sameness in the jargon which tended to +confusion. Mrs. March got several flats on her list which promised +neither steam heat nor elevators; she forgot herself so far as to +include two or three as remote from the down-town region of her choice +as Harlem. But after she had rejected these the nondescript vertebrate +was still voluminous enough to sustain her buoyant hopes. + +The waiter, who remembered them from year to year, had put them at a +window giving a pretty good section of Broadway, and before they set +out on their search they had a moment of reminiscence. They recalled the +Broadway of five, of ten, of twenty years ago, swelling and roaring with +a tide of gayly painted omnibuses and of picturesque traffic that the +horsecars have now banished from it. The grind of their wheels and +the clash of their harsh bells imperfectly fill the silence that the +omnibuses have left, and the eye misses the tumultuous perspective of +former times. + +They went out and stood for a moment before Grace Church, and looked +down the stately thoroughfare, and found it no longer impressive, no +longer characteristic. It is still Broadway in name, but now it is like +any other street. You do not now take your life in your hand when you +attempt to cross it; the Broadway policeman who supported the elbow of +timorous beauty in the hollow of his cotton-gloved palm and guided its +little fearful boots over the crossing, while he arrested the billowy +omnibuses on either side with an imperious glance, is gone, and all that +certain processional, barbaric gayety of the place is gone. + +“Palmyra, Baalbec, Timour of the Desert,” said March, voicing their +common feeling of the change. + +They turned and went into the beautiful church, and found themselves in +time for the matin service. Rapt far from New York, if not from earth, +in the dim richness of the painted light, the hallowed music took them +with solemn ecstasy; the aerial, aspiring Gothic forms seemed to lift +them heavenward. They came out, reluctant, into the dazzle and bustle +of the street, with a feeling that they were too good for it, which they +confessed to each other with whimsical consciousness. + +“But no matter how consecrated we feel now,” he said, “we mustn't forget +that we went into the church for precisely the same reason that we went +to the Vienna Cafe for breakfast--to gratify an aesthetic sense, to +renew the faded pleasure of travel for a moment, to get back into the +Europe of our youth. It was a purely Pagan impulse, Isabel, and we'd +better own it.” + +“I don't know,” she returned. “I think we reduce ourselves to the bare +bones too much. I wish we didn't always recognize the facts as we do. +Sometimes I should like to blink them. I should like to think I was +devouter than I am, and younger and prettier.” + +“Better not; you couldn't keep it up. Honesty is the best policy even in +such things.” + +“No; I don't like it, Basil. I should rather wait till the last day for +some of my motives to come to the top. I know they're always mixed, but +do let me give them the benefit of a doubt sometimes.” + +“Well, well, have it your own way, my dear. But I prefer not to lay up +so many disagreeable surprises for myself at that time.” + +She would not consent. “I know I am a good deal younger than I was. I +feel quite in the mood of that morning when we walked down Broadway on +our wedding journey. Don't you?” + +“Oh yes. But I know I'm not younger; I'm only prettier.” + +She laughed for pleasure in his joke, and also for unconscious joy in +the gay New York weather, in which there was no 'arriere pensee' of +the east wind. They had crossed Broadway, and were walking over to +Washington Square, in the region of which they now hoped to place +themselves. The 'primo tenore' statue of Garibaldi had already taken +possession of the place in the name of Latin progress, and they met +Italian faces, French faces, Spanish faces, as they strolled over +the asphalt walks, under the thinning shadows of the autumn-stricken +sycamores. They met the familiar picturesque raggedness of Southern +Europe with the old kindly illusion that somehow it existed for their +appreciation, and that it found adequate compensation for poverty in +this. March thought he sufficiently expressed his tacit sympathy in +sitting down on one of the iron benches with his wife and letting a +little Neapolitan put a superfluous shine on his boots, while their +desultory comment wandered with equal esteem to the old-fashioned +American respectability which keeps the north side of the square in +vast mansions of red brick, and the international shabbiness which +has invaded the southern border, and broken it up into lodging-houses, +shops, beer-gardens, and studios. + +They noticed the sign of an apartment to let on the north side, and as +soon as the little bootblack could be bought off they went over to look +at it. The janitor met them at the door and examined them. Then he said, +as if still in doubt, “It has ten rooms, and the rent is twenty-eight +hundred dollars.” + +“It wouldn't do, then,” March replied, and left him to divide the +responsibility between the paucity of the rooms and the enormity of the +rent as he best might. But their self-love had received a wound, and +they questioned each other what it was in their appearance made him +doubt their ability to pay so much. + +“Of course, we don't look like New-Yorkers,” sighed Mrs. March, “and +we've walked through the Square. That might be as if we had walked along +the Park Street mall in the Common before we came out on Beacon. Do you +suppose he could have seen you getting your boots blacked in that way?” + +“It's useless to ask,” said March. “But I never can recover from this +blow.” + +“Oh, pshaw! You know you hate such things as badly as I do. It was very +impertinent of him.” + +“Let us go back and 'ecraser l'infame' by paying him a year's rent in +advance and taking immediate possession. Nothing else can soothe my +wounded feelings. You were not having your boots blacked: why shouldn't +he have supposed you were a New-Yorker, and I a country cousin?” + +“They always know. Don't you remember Mrs. Williams's going to a Fifth +Avenue milliner in a Worth dress, and the woman's asking her instantly +what hotel she should send her hat to?” + +“Yes; these things drive one to despair. I don't wonder the bodies of so +many genteel strangers are found in the waters around New York. Shall we +try the south side, my dear? or had we better go back to our rooms and +rest awhile?” + +Mrs. March had out the vertebrate, and was consulting one of its +glittering ribs and glancing up from it at a house before which they +stood. “Yes, it's the number; but do they call this being ready October +first?” The little area in front of the basement was heaped with a +mixture of mortar, bricks, laths, and shavings from the interior; the +brownstone steps to the front door were similarly bestrewn; the doorway +showed the half-open, rough pine carpenter's sketch of an unfinished +house; the sashless windows of every story showed the activity of +workmen within; the clatter of hammers and the hiss of saws came out to +them from every opening. + +“They may call it October first,” said March, “because it's too late +to contradict them. But they'd better not call it December first in my +presence; I'll let them say January first, at a pinch.” + +“We will go in and look at it, anyway,” said his wife; and he admired +how, when she was once within, she began provisionally to settle the +family in each of the several floors with the female instinct for +domiciliation which never failed her. She had the help of the landlord, +who was present to urge forward the workmen apparently; he lent a +hopeful fancy to the solution of all her questions. To get her from +under his influence March had to represent that the place was damp from +undried plastering, and that if she stayed she would probably be down +with that New York pneumonia which visiting Bostonians are always dying +of. Once safely on the pavement outside, she realized that the apartment +was not only unfinished, but unfurnished, and had neither steam heat +nor elevator. “But I thought we had better look at everything,” she +explained. + +“Yes, but not take everything. If I hadn't pulled you away from there by +main force you'd have not only died of New York pneumonia on the spot, +but you'd have had us all settled there before we knew what we were +about.” + +“Well, that's what I can't help, Basil. It's the only way I can realize +whether it will do for us. I have to dramatize the whole thing.” + +She got a deal of pleasure as well as excitement out of this, and he had +to own that the process of setting up housekeeping in so many different +places was not only entertaining, but tended, through association with +their first beginnings in housekeeping, to restore the image of their +early married days and to make them young again. + +It went on all day, and continued far into the night, until it was too +late to go to the theatre, too late to do anything but tumble into +bed and simultaneously fall asleep. They groaned over their reiterated +disappointments, but they could not deny that the interest was +unfailing, and that they got a great deal of fun out of it all. Nothing +could abate Mrs. March's faith in her advertisements. One of them sent +her to a flat of ten rooms which promised to be the solution of all +their difficulties; it proved to be over a livery-stable, a liquor +store, and a milliner's shop, none of the first fashion. Another led +them far into old Greenwich Village to an apartment-house, which she +refused to enter behind a small girl with a loaf of bread under one arm +and a quart can of milk under the other. + +In their search they were obliged, as March complained, to the +acquisition of useless information in a degree unequalled in their +experience. They came to excel in the sad knowledge of the line at +which respectability distinguishes itself from shabbiness. Flattering +advertisements took them to numbers of huge apartment-houses chiefly +distinguishable from tenement-houses by the absence of fire-escapes on +their facades, till Mrs. March refused to stop at any door where there +were more than six bell-ratchets and speaking-tubes on either hand. +Before the middle of the afternoon she decided against ratchets +altogether, and confined herself to knobs, neatly set in the door-trim. +Her husband was still sunk in the superstition that you can live +anywhere you like in New York, and he would have paused at some +places where her quicker eye caught the fatal sign of “Modes” in the +ground-floor windows. She found that there was an east and west +line beyond which they could not go if they wished to keep their +self-respect, and that within the region to which they had restricted +themselves there was a choice of streets. At first all the New York +streets looked to them ill-paved, dirty, and repulsive; the general +infamy imparted itself in their casual impression to streets in no wise +guilty. But they began to notice that some streets were quiet and clean, +and, though never so quiet and clean as Boston streets, that they wore +an air of encouraging reform, and suggested a future of greater and +greater domesticity. Whole blocks of these downtown cross-streets seemed +to have been redeemed from decay, and even in the midst of squalor a +dwelling here and there had been seized, painted a dull red as to its +brick-work, and a glossy black as to its wood-work, and with a bright +brass bell-pull and door-knob and a large brass plate for its key-hole +escutcheon, had been endowed with an effect of purity and pride which +removed its shabby neighborhood far from it. Some of these houses were +quite small, and imaginably within their means; but, as March said, some +body seemed always to be living there himself, and the fact that none +of them was to rent kept Mrs. March true to her ideal of a fiat. Nothing +prevented its realization so much as its difference from the New York +ideal of a flat, which was inflexibly seven rooms and a bath. One or +two rooms might be at the front, the rest crooked and cornered backward +through in creasing and then decreasing darkness till they reached a +light bedroom or kitchen at the rear. It might be the one or the other, +but it was always the seventh room with the bath; or if, as sometimes +happened, it was the eighth, it was so after having counted the bath as +one; in this case the janitor said you always counted the bath as one. +If the flats were advertised as having “all light rooms,” he explained +that any room with a window giving into the open air of a court or shaft +was counted a light room. + +The Marches tried to make out why it was that these flats were go much +more repulsive than the apartments which everyone lived in abroad; but +they could only do so upon the supposition that in their European +days they were too young, too happy, too full of the future, to notice +whether rooms were inside or outside, light or dark, big or little, high +or low. “Now we're imprisoned in the present,” he said, “and we have to +make the worst of it.” + +In their despair he had an inspiration, which she declared worthy of +him: it was to take two small flats, of four or five rooms and a bath, +and live in both. They tried this in a great many places, but they never +could get two flats of the kind on the same floor where there was steam +heat and an elevator. At one place they almost did it. They had resigned +themselves to the humility of the neighborhood, to the prevalence of +modistes and livery-stablemen (they seem to consort much in New York), +to the garbage in the gutters and the litter of paper in the streets, to +the faltering slats in the surrounding window-shutters and the +crumbled brownstone steps and sills, when it turned out that one of the +apartments had been taken between two visits they made. Then the only +combination left open to them was of a ground-floor flat to the right +and a third-floor flat to the left. + +Still they kept this inspiration in reserve for use at the first +opportunity. In the mean time there were several flats which they +thought they could almost make do: notably one where they could get +an extra servant's room in the basement four flights down, and another +where they could get it in the roof five flights up. At the first the +janitor was respectful and enthusiastic; at the second he had an effect +of ironical pessimism. When they trembled on the verge of taking his +apartment, he pointed out a spot in the kalsomining of the parlor +ceiling, and gratuitously said, Now such a thing as that he should +not agree to put in shape unless they took the apartment for a term of +years. The apartment was unfurnished, and they recurred to the fact that +they wanted a furnished apartment, and made their escape. This saved +them in several other extremities; but short of extremity they could +not keep their different requirements in mind, and were always about to +decide without regard to some one of them. + +They went to several places twice without intending: once to that +old-fashioned house with the pleasant colored janitor, and wandered all +over the apartment again with a haunting sense of familiarity, and then +recognized the janitor and laughed; and to that house with the pathetic +widow and the pretty daughter who wished to take them to board. They +stayed to excuse their blunder, and easily came by the fact that the +mother had taken the house that the girl might have a home while she +was in New York studying art, and they hoped to pay their way by taking +boarders. Her daughter was at her class now, the mother concluded; and +they encouraged her to believe that it could only be a few days till the +rest of her scheme was realized. + +“I dare say we could be perfectly comfortable there,” March suggested +when they had got away. “Now if we were truly humane we would modify our +desires to meet their needs and end this sickening search, wouldn't we?” + +“Yes, but we're not truly humane,” his wife answered, “or at least not +in that sense. You know you hate boarding; and if we went there I should +have them on my sympathies the whole time.” + +“I see. And then you would take it out of me.” + +“Then I should take it out of you. And if you are going to be so weak, +Basil, and let every little thing work upon you in that way, you'd +better not come to New York. You'll see enough misery here.” + +“Well, don't take that superior tone with me, as if I were a child that +had its mind set on an undesirable toy, Isabel.” + +“Ah, don't you suppose it's because you are such a child in some +respects that I like you, dear?” she demanded, without relenting. + +“But I don't find so much misery in New York. I don't suppose there's +any more suffering here to the population than there is in the country. +And they're so gay about it all. I think the outward aspect of the place +and the hilarity of the sky and air must get into the people's blood. +The weather is simply unapproachable; and I don't care if it is the +ugliest place in the world, as you say. I suppose it is. It shrieks and +yells with ugliness here and there but it never loses its spirits. That +widow is from the country. When she's been a year in New York she'll be +as gay--as gay as an L road.” He celebrated a satisfaction they both had +in the L roads. “They kill the streets and avenues, but at least they +partially hide them, and that is some comfort; and they do triumph over +their prostrate forms with a savage exultation that is intoxicating. +Those bends in the L that you get in the corner of Washington Square, or +just below the Cooper Institute--they're the gayest things in the world. +Perfectly atrocious, of course, but incomparably picturesque! And the +whole city is so,” said March, “or else the L would never have got built +here. New York may be splendidly gay or squalidly gay; but, prince or +pauper, it's gay always.” + +“Yes, gay is the word,” she admitted, with a sigh. “But frantic. I +can't get used to it. They forget death, Basil; they forget death in New +York.” + +“Well, I don't know that I've ever found much advantage in remembering +it.” + +“Don't say such a thing, dearest.” + +He could see that she had got to the end of her nervous strength for the +present, and he proposed that they should take the Elevated road as far +as it would carry them into the country, and shake off their nightmare +of flat-hunting for an hour or two; but her conscience would not let +her. She convicted him of levity equal to that of the New-Yorkers in +proposing such a thing; and they dragged through the day. She was too +tired to care for dinner, and in the night she had a dream from which +she woke herself with a cry that roused him, too. It was something about +the children at first, whom they had talked of wistfully before falling +asleep, and then it was of a hideous thing with two square eyes and a +series of sections growing darker and then lighter, till the tail of +the monstrous articulate was quite luminous again. She shuddered at the +vague description she was able to give; but he asked, “Did it offer to +bite you?” + +“No. That was the most frightful thing about it; it had no mouth.” + +March laughed. “Why, my dear, it was nothing but a harmless New York +flat--seven rooms and a bath.” + +“I really believe it was,” she consented, recognizing an architectural +resemblance, and she fell asleep again, and woke renewed for the work +before them. + + + + +IX. + +Their house-hunting no longer had novelty, but it still had +interest; and they varied their day by taking a coupe, by renouncing +advertisements, and by reverting to agents. Some of these induced +them to consider the idea of furnished houses; and Mrs. March learned +tolerance for Fulkerson by accepting permits to visit flats and houses +which had none of the qualifications she desired in either, and were +as far beyond her means as they were out of the region to which she had +geographically restricted herself. They looked at three-thousand and +four-thousand dollar apartments, and rejected them for one reason or +another which had nothing to do with the rent; the higher the rent +was, the more critical they were of the slippery inlaid floors and the +arrangement of the richly decorated rooms. They never knew whether they +had deceived the janitor or not; as they came in a coupe, they hoped +they had. + +They drove accidentally through one street that seemed gayer in the +perspective than an L road. The fire-escapes, with their light iron +balconies and ladders of iron, decorated the lofty house fronts; the +roadway and sidewalks and door-steps swarmed with children; women's +heads seemed to show at every window. In the basements, over which +flights of high stone steps led to the tenements, were green-grocers' +shops abounding in cabbages, and provision stores running chiefly to +bacon and sausages, and cobblers' and tinners' shops, and the like, in +proportion to the small needs of a poor neighborhood. Ash barrels lined +the sidewalks, and garbage heaps filled the gutters; teams of all trades +stood idly about; a peddler of cheap fruit urged his cart through the +street, and mixed his cry with the joyous screams and shouts of the +children and the scolding and gossiping voices of the women; the burly +blue bulk of a policeman defined itself at the corner; a drunkard +zigzagged down the sidewalk toward him. It was not the abode of the +extremest poverty, but of a poverty as hopeless as any in the world, +transmitting itself from generation to generation, and establishing +conditions of permanency to which human life adjusts itself as it does +to those of some incurable disease, like leprosy. + +The time had been when the Marches would have taken a purely +aesthetic view of the facts as they glimpsed them in this street of +tenement-houses; when they would have contented themselves with saying +that it was as picturesque as a street in Naples or Florence, and with +wondering why nobody came to paint it; they would have thought they were +sufficiently serious about it in blaming the artists for their failure +to appreciate it, and going abroad for the picturesque when they had it +here under their noses. It was to the nose that the street made one of +its strongest appeals, and Mrs. March pulled up her window of the coupe. +“Why does he take us through such a disgusting street?” she demanded, +with an exasperation of which her husband divined the origin. + +“This driver may be a philanthropist in disguise,” he answered, with +dreamy irony, “and may want us to think about the people who are not +merely carried through this street in a coupe, but have to spend their +whole lives in it, winter and summer, with no hopes of driving out of +it, except in a hearse. I must say they don't seem to mind it. I haven't +seen a jollier crowd anywhere in New York. They seem to have forgotten +death a little more completely than any of their fellow-citizens, +Isabel. And I wonder what they think of us, making this gorgeous +progress through their midst. I suppose they think we're rich, and hate +us--if they hate rich people; they don't look as if they hated anybody. +Should we be as patient as they are with their discomfort? I don't +believe there's steam heat or an elevator in the whole block. Seven +rooms and a bath would be more than the largest and genteelest family +would know what to do with. They wouldn't know what to do with the bath, +anyway.” + +His monologue seemed to interest his wife apart from the satirical point +it had for themselves. “You ought to get Mr. Fulkerson to let you work +some of these New York sights up for Every Other Week, Basil; you could +do them very nicely.” + +“Yes; I've thought of that. But don't let's leave the personal ground. +Doesn't it make you feel rather small and otherwise unworthy when you +see the kind of street these fellow-beings of yours live in, and then +think how particular you are about locality and the number of bellpulls? +I don't see even ratchets and speaking-tubes at these doors.” He craned +his neck out of the window for a better look, and the children of +discomfort cheered him, out of sheer good feeling and high spirits. “I +didn't know I was so popular. Perhaps it's a recognition of my humane +sentiments.” + +“Oh, it's very easy to have humane sentiments, and to satirize ourselves +for wanting eight rooms and a bath in a good neighborhood, when we see +how these wretched creatures live,” said his wife. “But if we shared all +we have with them, and then settled down among them, what good would it +do?” + +“Not the least in the world. It might help us for the moment, but it +wouldn't keep the wolf from their doors for a week; and then they would +go on just as before, only they wouldn't be on such good terms with the +wolf. The only way for them is to keep up an unbroken intimacy with the +wolf; then they can manage him somehow. I don't know how, and I'm afraid +I don't want to. Wouldn't you like to have this fellow drive us round +among the halls of pride somewhere for a little while? Fifth Avenue or +Madison, up-town?” + +“No; we've no time to waste. I've got a place near Third Avenue, on a +nice cross street, and I want him to take us there.” It proved that she +had several addresses near together, and it seemed best to dismiss their +coupe and do the rest of their afternoon's work on foot. It came to +nothing; she was not humbled in the least by what she had seen in the +tenement-house street; she yielded no point in her ideal of a flat, and +the flats persistently refused to lend themselves to it. She lost all +patience with them. + +“Oh, I don't say the flats are in the right of it,” said her husband, +when she denounced their stupid inadequacy to the purposes of a +Christian home. “But I'm not so sure that we are, either. I've been +thinking about that home business ever since my sensibilities were +dragged--in a coupe--through that tenement-house street. Of course, +no child born and brought up in such a place as that could have any +conception of home. But that's because those poor people can't give +character to their habitations. They have to take what they can get. But +people like us--that is, of our means--do give character to the average +flat. It's made to meet their tastes, or their supposed tastes; and so +it's made for social show, not for family life at all. Think of a baby +in a flat! It's a contradiction in terms; the flat is the negation of +motherhood. The flat means society life; that is, the pretence of social +life. It's made to give artificial people a society basis on a little +money--too much money, of course, for what they get. So the cost of the +building is put into marble halls and idiotic decoration of all kinds. +I don't object to the conveniences, but none of these flats has a +living-room. They have drawing-rooms to foster social pretence, and they +have dining-rooms and bedrooms; but they have no room where the family +can all come together and feel the sweetness of being a family. The +bedrooms are black-holes mostly, with a sinful waste of space in each. +If it were not for the marble halls, and the decorations, and the +foolishly expensive finish, the houses could be built round a court, and +the flats could be shaped something like a Pompeiian house, with small +sleeping-closets--only lit from the outside--and the rest of the floor +thrown into two or three large cheerful halls, where all the family life +could go on, and society could be transacted unpretentiously. Why, +those tenements are better and humaner than those flats! There the whole +family lives in the kitchen, and has its consciousness of being; but +the flat abolishes the family consciousness. It's confinement without +coziness; it's cluttered without being snug. You couldn't keep a +self-respecting cat in a flat; you couldn't go down cellar to get cider. +No! the Anglo-Saxon home, as we know it in the Anglo-Saxon house, is +simply impossible in the Franco-American flat, not because it's humble, +but because it's false.” + +“Well, then,” said Mrs. March, “let's look at houses.” + +He had been denouncing the flat in the abstract, and he had not expected +this concrete result. But he said, “We will look at houses, then.” + + + + +X. + +Nothing mystifies a man more than a woman's aberrations from some point +at which he, supposes her fixed as a star. In these unfurnished houses, +without steam or elevator, March followed his wife about with patient +wonder. She rather liked the worst of them best: but she made him go +down into the cellars and look at the furnaces; she exacted from him a +rigid inquest of the plumbing. She followed him into one of the cellars +by the fitful glare of successively lighted matches, and they enjoyed a +moment in which the anomaly of their presence there on that errand, +so remote from all the facts of their long-established life in Boston, +realized itself for them. + +“Think how easily we might have been murdered and nobody been any the +wiser!” she said when they were comfortably outdoors again. + +“Yes, or made way with ourselves in an access of emotional insanity, +supposed to have been induced by unavailing flat-hunting,” he suggested. +She fell in with the notion. “I'm beginning to feel crazy. But I +don't want you to lose your head, Basil. And I don't want you to +sentimentalize any of the things you see in New York. I think you were +disposed to do it in that street we drove through. I don't believe +there's any real suffering--not real suffering--among those people; that +is, it would be suffering from our point of view, but they've been used +to it all their lives, and they don't feel their' discomfort so much.” + +“Of course, I understand that, and I don't propose to sentimentalize +them. I think when people get used to a bad state of things they had +better stick to it; in fact, they don't usually like a better state so +well, and I shall keep that firmly in mind.” + +She laughed with him, and they walked along the L bestridden avenue, +exhilarated by their escape from murder and suicide in that cellar, +toward the nearest cross town track, which they meant to take home to +their hotel. “Now to-night we will go to the theatre,” she said, “and +get this whole house business out of our minds, and be perfectly fresh +for a new start in the morning.” Suddenly she clutched his arm. “Why, +did you see that man?” and she signed with her head toward a decently +dressed person who walked beside them, next the gutter, stooping over as +if to examine it, and half halting at times. + +“No. What?” + +“Why, I saw him pick up a dirty bit of cracker from the pavement and +cram it into his mouth and eat it down as if he were famished. And look! +he's actually hunting for more in those garbage heaps!” + +This was what the decent-looking man with the hard hands and broken +nails of a workman was doing-like a hungry dog. They kept up with him, +in the fascination of the sight, to the next corner, where he turned +down the side street still searching the gutter. + +They walked on a few paces. Then March said, “I must go after him,” and +left his wife standing. + +“Are you in want--hungry?” he asked the man. + +The man said he could not speak English, Monsieur. + +March asked his question in French. + +The man shrugged a pitiful, desperate shrug, “Mais, Monsieur--” + +March put a coin in his hand, and then suddenly the man's face twisted +up; he caught the hand of this alms-giver in both of his and clung to +it. “Monsieur! Monsieur!” he gasped, and the tears rained down his face. + +His benefactor pulled himself away, shocked and ashamed, as one is by +such a chance, and got back to his wife, and the man lapsed back into +the mystery of misery out of which he had emerged. + +March felt it laid upon him to console his wife for what had happened. +“Of course, we might live here for years and not see another case like +that; and, of course, there are twenty places where he could have gone +for help if he had known where to find them.” + +“Ah, but it's the possibility of his needing the help so badly as that,” + she answered. “That's what I can't bear, and I shall not come to a +place where such things are possible, and we may as well stop our +house-hunting here at once.” + +“Yes? And what part of Christendom will you live in? Such things are +possible everywhere in our conditions.” + +“Then we must change the conditions--” + +“Oh no; we must go to the theatre and forget them. We can stop at +Brentano's for our tickets as we pass through Union Square.” + +“I am not going to the theatre, Basil. I am going home to Boston +to-night. You can stay and find a flat.” + +He convinced her of the absurdity of her position, and even of its +selfishness; but she said that her mind was quite made up irrespective +of what had happened, that she had been away from the children long +enough; that she ought to be at home to finish up the work of leaving +it. The word brought a sigh. “Ah, I don't know why we should see nothing +but sad and ugly things now. When we were young--” + +“Younger,” he put in. “We're still young.” + +“That's what we pretend, but we know better. But I was thinking how +pretty and pleasant things used to be turning up all the time on our +travels in the old days. Why, when we were in New York here on our +wedding journey the place didn't seem half so dirty as it does now, and +none of these dismal things happened.” + +“It was a good deal dirtier,” he answered; “and I fancy worse in every +way-hungrier, raggeder, more wretchedly housed. But that wasn't the +period of life for us to notice it. Don't you remember, when we +started to Niagara the last time, how everybody seemed middle-aged and +commonplace; and when we got there there were no evident brides; nothing +but elderly married people?” + +“At least they weren't starving,” she rebelled. + +“No, you don't starve in parlor-cars and first-class hotels; but if you +step out of them you run your chance of seeing those who do, if you're +getting on pretty well in the forties. If it's the unhappy who see +unhappiness, think what misery must be revealed to people who pass +their lives in the really squalid tenement-house streets--I don't mean +picturesque avenues like that we passed through.” + +“But we are not unhappy,” she protested, bringing the talk back to the +personal base again, as women must to get any good out of talk. “We're +really no unhappier than we were when we were young.” + +“We're more serious.” + +“Well, I hate it; and I wish you wouldn't be so serious, if that's what +it brings us to.” + +“I will be trivial from this on,” said March. “Shall we go to the Hole +in the Ground to-night?” + +“I am going to Boston.” + +“It's much the same thing. How do you like that for triviality? It's a +little blasphemous, I'll allow.” + +“It's very silly,” she said. + +At the hotel they found a letter from the agent who had sent them the +permit to see Mrs. Grosvenor Green's apartment. He wrote that she had +heard they were pleased with her apartment, and that she thought she +could make the terms to suit. She had taken her passage for Europe, and +was very anxious to let the flat before she sailed. She would call that +evening at seven. + +“Mrs. Grosvenor Green!” said Mrs. March. “Which of the ten thousand +flats is it, Basil?” + +“The gimcrackery,” he answered. “In the Xenophon, you know.” + +“Well, she may save herself the trouble. I shall not see her. Or yes--I +must. I couldn't go away without seeing what sort of creature could have +planned that fly-away flat. She must be a perfect--” + +“Parachute,” March suggested. + +“No! anybody so light as that couldn't come down.” + +“Well, toy balloon.” + +“Toy balloon will do for the present,” Mrs. March admitted. “But I feel +that naught but herself can be her parallel for volatility.” + +When Mrs. Grosvenor-Green's card came up they both descended to the +hotel parlor, which March said looked like the saloon of a Moorish +day-boat; not that he knew of any such craft, but the decorations were +so Saracenic and the architecture so Hudson Riverish. They found +there on the grand central divan a large lady whose vast smoothness, +placidity, and plumpness set at defiance all their preconceptions of +Mrs. Grosvenor Green, so that Mrs. March distinctly paused with her card +in her hand before venturing even tentatively to address her. Then she +was astonished at the low, calm voice in which Mrs. Green acknowledged +herself, and slowly proceeded to apologize for calling. It was not quite +true that she had taken her passage for Europe, but she hoped soon to do +so, and she confessed that in the mean time she was anxious to let her +flat. She was a little worn out with the care of housekeeping--Mrs. +March breathed, “Oh yes!” in the sigh with which ladies recognize one +another's martyrdom--and Mrs. Green had business abroad, and she was +going to pursue her art studies in Paris; she drew in Mr. Ilcomb's +class now, but the instruction was so much better in Paris; and as the +superintendent seemed to think the price was the only objection, she had +ventured to call. + +“Then we didn't deceive him in the least,” thought Mrs. March, while she +answered, sweetly: “No; we were only afraid that it would be too small +for our family. We require a good many rooms.” She could not forego the +opportunity of saying, “My husband is coming to New York to take charge +of a literary periodical, and he will have to have a room to write in,” + which made Mrs. Green bow to March, and made March look sheepish. “But +we did think the apartment very charming”, (It was architecturally +charming, she protested to her conscience), “and we should have been so +glad if we could have got into it.” She followed this with some account +of their house-hunting, amid soft murmurs of sympathy from Mrs. Green, +who said that she had been through all that, and that if she could have +shown her apartment to them she felt sure that she could have explained +it so that they would have seen its capabilities better, Mrs. March +assented to this, and Mrs. Green added that if they found nothing +exactly suitable she would be glad to have them look at it again; and +then Mrs. March said that she was going back to Boston herself, but she +was leaving Mr. March to continue the search; and she had no doubt he +would be only too glad to see the apartment by daylight. “But if you +take it, Basil,” she warned him, when they were alone, “I shall simply +renounce you. I wouldn't live in that junk-shop if you gave it to me. +But who would have thought she was that kind of looking person? Though +of course I might have known if I had stopped to think once. It's +because the place doesn't express her at all that it's so unlike her. It +couldn't be like anybody, or anything that flies in the air, or creeps +upon the earth, or swims in the waters under the earth. I wonder where +in the world she's from; she's no New-Yorker; even we can see that; and +she's not quite a country person, either; she seems like a person from +some large town, where she's been an aesthetic authority. And she can't +find good enough art instruction in New York, and has to go to Paris for +it! Well, it's pathetic, after all, Basil. I can't help feeling sorry +for a person who mistakes herself to that extent.” + +“I can't help feeling sorry for the husband of a person who mistakes +herself to that extent. What is Mr. Grosvenor Green going to do in Paris +while she's working her way into the Salon?” + +“Well, you keep away from her apartment, Basil; that's all I've got to +say to you. And yet I do like some things about her.” + +“I like everything about her but her apartment,” said March. + +“I like her going to be out of the country,” said his wife. “We +shouldn't be overlooked. And the place was prettily shaped, you can't +deny it. And there was an elevator and steam heat. And the location is +very convenient. And there was a hall-boy to bring up cards. The halls +and stairs were kept very clean and nice. But it wouldn't do. I could +put you a folding bed in the room where you wrote, and we could even +have one in the parlor.” + +“Behind a portiere? I couldn't stand any more portieres!” + +“And we could squeeze the two girls into one room, or perhaps only +bring Margaret, and put out the whole of the wash. Basil!” she almost +shrieked, “it isn't to be thought of!” + +He retorted, “I'm not thinking of it, my dear.” + +Fulkerson came in just before they started for Mrs. March's train, to +find out what had become of them, he said, and to see whether they had +got anything to live in yet. + +“Not a thing,” she said. “And I'm just going back to Boston, and +leaving Mr. March here to do anything he pleases about it. He has 'carte +blanche.'” + +“But freedom brings responsibility, you know, Fulkerson, and it's the +same as if I'd no choice. I'm staying behind because I'm left, not +because I expect to do anything.” + +“Is that so?” asked Fulkerson. “Well, we must see what can be done. I +supposed you would be all settled by this time, or I should have humped +myself to find you something. None of those places I gave you amounts to +anything?” + +“As much as forty thousand others we've looked at,” said Mrs. March. +“Yes, one of them does amount to something. It comes so near being what +we want that I've given Mr. March particular instructions not to go near +it.” + +She told him about Mrs. Grosvenor Green and her flats, and at the end he +said: + +“Well, well, we must look out for that. I'll keep an eye on him, Mrs. +March, and see that he doesn't do anything rash, and I won't leave him +till he's found just the right thing. It exists, of course; it must in a +city of eighteen hundred thousand people, and the only question is where +to find it. You leave him to me, Mrs. March; I'll watch out for him.” + +Fulkerson showed some signs of going to the station when he found they +were not driving, but she bade him a peremptory good-bye at the hotel +door. + +“He's very nice, Basil, and his way with you is perfectly charming. It's +very sweet to see how really fond of you he is. But I didn't want him +stringing along with us up to Forty-second Street and spoiling our last +moments together.” + +At Third Avenue they took the Elevated for which she confessed an +infatuation. She declared it the most ideal way of getting about in the +world, and was not ashamed when he reminded her of how she used to say +that nothing under the sun could induce her to travel on it. She now +said that the night transit was even more interesting than the day, and +that the fleeing intimacy you formed with people in second and third +floor interiors, while all the usual street life went on underneath, +had a domestic intensity mixed with a perfect repose that was the last +effect of good society with all its security and exclusiveness. He said +it was better than the theatre, of which it reminded him, to see those +people through their windows: a family party of work-folk at a late +tea, some of the men in their shirt-sleeves; a woman sewing by a lamp; a +mother laying her child in its cradle; a man with his head fallen on his +hands upon a table; a girl and her lover leaning over the window-sill +together. What suggestion! what drama? what infinite interest! At the +Forty-second Street station they stopped a minute on the bridge that +crosses the track to the branch road for the Central Depot, and looked +up and down the long stretch of the Elevated to north and south. The +track that found and lost itself a thousand times in the flare and +tremor of the innumerable lights; the moony sheen of the electrics +mixing with the reddish points and blots of gas far and near; the +architectural shapes of houses and churches and towers, rescued by the +obscurity from all that was ignoble in them, and the coming and going +of the trains marking the stations with vivider or fainter plumes of +flame-shot steam-formed an incomparable perspective. They often talked +afterward of the superb spectacle, which in a city full of painters +nightly works its unrecorded miracles; and they were just to the Arachne +roof spun in iron over the cross street on which they ran to the depot; +but for the present they were mostly inarticulate before it. They had +another moment of rich silence when they paused in the gallery that +leads from the Elevated station to the waiting-rooms in the Central +Depot and looked down upon the great night trains lying on the tracks +dim under the rain of gas-lights that starred without dispersing the +vast darkness of the place. What forces, what fates, slept in these +bulks which would soon be hurling themselves north and south and west +through the night! Now they waited there like fabled monsters of +Arab story ready for the magician's touch, tractable, reckless, +will-less--organized lifelessness full of a strange semblance of life. + +The Marches admired the impressive sight with a thrill of patriotic +pride in the fact that the whole world perhaps could not afford just +the like. Then they hurried down to the ticket-offices, and he got her +a lower berth in the Boston sleeper, and went with her to the car. They +made the most of the fact that her berth was in the very middle of the +car; and she promised to write as soon as she reached home. She promised +also that, having seen the limitations of New York in respect to flats, +she would not be hard on him if he took something not quite ideal. Only +he must remember that it was not to be above Twentieth Street nor below +Washington Square; it must not be higher than the third floor; it must +have an elevator, steam heat, hail-boys, and a pleasant janitor. These +were essentials; if he could not get them, then they must do without. +But he must get them. + + + + +XI. + +Mrs. March was one of those wives who exact a more rigid adherence to +their ideals from their husbands than from themselves. Early in their +married life she had taken charge of him in all matters which she +considered practical. She did not include the business of bread-winning +in these; that was an affair that might safely be left to his +absent-minded, dreamy inefficiency, and she did not interfere with +him there. But in such things as rehanging the pictures, deciding on +a summer boarding-place, taking a seaside cottage, repapering rooms, +choosing seats at the theatre, seeing what the children ate when she was +not at table, shutting the cat out at night, keeping run of calls and +invitations, and seeing if the furnace was dampered, he had failed her +so often that she felt she could not leave him the slightest discretion +in regard to a flat. Her total distrust of his judgment in the matters +cited and others like them consisted with the greatest admiration of his +mind and respect for his character. She often said that if he would only +bring these to bear in such exigencies he would be simply perfect; but +she had long given up his ever doing so. She subjected him, therefore, +to an iron code, but after proclaiming it she was apt to abandon him +to the native lawlessness of his temperament. She expected him in +this event to do as he pleased, and she resigned herself to it with +considerable comfort in holding him accountable. He learned to expect +this, and after suffering keenly from her disappointment with whatever +he did he waited patiently till she forgot her grievance and began to +extract what consolation lurks in the irreparable. She would almost +admit at moments that what he had done was a very good thing, but she +reserved the right to return in full force to her original condemnation +of it; and she accumulated each act of independent volition in witness +and warning against him. Their mass oppressed but never deterred him. He +expected to do the wrong thing when left to his own devices, and he did +it without any apparent recollection of his former misdeeds and their +consequences. There was a good deal of comedy in it all, and some +tragedy. + +He now experienced a certain expansion, such as husbands of his kind +will imagine, on going back to his hotel alone. It was, perhaps, a +revulsion from the pain of parting; and he toyed with the idea of Mrs. +Grosvenor Green's apartment, which, in its preposterous unsuitability, +had a strange attraction. He felt that he could take it with less risk +than anything else they had seen, but he said he would look at all the +other places in town first. He really spent the greater part of the next +day in hunting up the owner of an apartment that had neither steam heat +nor an elevator, but was otherwise perfect, and trying to get him to +take less than the agent asked. By a curious psychical operation he was +able, in the transaction, to work himself into quite a passionate desire +for the apartment, while he held the Grosvenor Green apartment in +the background of his mind as something that he could return to as +altogether more suitable. He conducted some simultaneous negotiation +for a furnished house, which enhanced still more the desirability of the +Grosvenor Green apartment. Toward evening he went off at a tangent far +up-town, so as to be able to tell his wife how utterly preposterous +the best there would be as compared even with this ridiculous +Grosvenor Green gimcrackery. It is hard to report the processes of his +sophistication; perhaps this, again, may best be left to the marital +imagination. + +He rang at the last of these up-town apartments as it was falling dusk, +and it was long before the janitor appeared. Then the man was very +surly, and said if he looked at the flat now he would say it was too +dark, like all the rest. His reluctance irritated March in proportion +to his insincerity in proposing to look at it at all. He knew he did not +mean to take it under any circumstances; that he was going to use his +inspection of it in dishonest justification of his disobedience to his +wife; but he put on an air of offended dignity. “If you don't wish to +show the apartment,” he said, “I don't care to see it.” + +The man groaned, for he was heavy, and no doubt dreaded the stairs. He +scratched a match on his thigh, and led the way up. March was sorry for +him, and he put his fingers on a quarter in his waistcoat-pocket to give +him at parting. At the same time, he had to trump up an objection to the +flat. This was easy, for it was advertised as containing ten rooms, and +he found the number eked out with the bath-room and two large closets. +“It's light enough,” said March, “but I don't see how you make out ten +rooms.” + +“There's ten rooms,” said the man, deigning no proof. + +March took his fingers off the quarter, and went down-stairs and out +of the door without another word. It would be wrong, it would be +impossible, to give the man anything after such insolence. He reflected, +with shame, that it was also cheaper to punish than forgive him. + +He returned to his hotel prepared for any desperate measure, and +convinced now that the Grosvenor Green apartment was not merely the only +thing left for him, but was, on its own merits, the best thing in New +York. + +Fulkerson was waiting for him in the reading-room, and it gave March +the curious thrill with which a man closes with temptation when he said: +“Look here! Why don't you take that woman's flat in the Xenophon? +She's been at the agents again, and they've been at me. She likes your +look--or Mrs. March's--and I guess you can have it at a pretty heavy +discount from the original price. I'm authorized to say you can have it +for one seventy-five a month, and I don't believe it would be safe for +you to offer one fifty.” + +March shook his head, and dropped a mask of virtuous rejection over his +corrupt acquiescence. “It's too small for us--we couldn't squeeze into +it.” + +“Why, look here!” Fulkerson persisted. “How many rooms do you people +want?” + +“I've got to have a place to work--” + +“Of course! And you've got to have it at the Fifth Wheel office.” + +“I hadn't thought of that,” March began. “I suppose I could do my work +at the office, as there's not much writing--” + +“Why, of course you can't do your work at home. You just come round with +me now, and look at that again.” + +“No; I can't do it.” + +“Why?” + +“I--I've got to dine.” + +“All right,” said Fulkerson. “Dine with me. I want to take you round to +a little Italian place that I know.” + +One may trace the successive steps of March's descent in this simple +matter with the same edification that would attend the study of the +self-delusions and obfuscations of a man tempted to crime. The process +is probably not at all different, and to the philosophical mind the kind +of result is unimportant; the process is everything. + +Fulkerson led him down one block and half across another to the steps of +a small dwelling-house, transformed, like many others, into a restaurant +of the Latin ideal, with little or no structural change from the +pattern of the lower middle-class New York home. There were the corroded +brownstone steps, the mean little front door, and the cramped entry with +its narrow stairs by which ladies could go up to a dining-room appointed +for them on the second floor; the parlors on the first were set about +with tables, where men smoked cigarettes between the courses, and +a single waiter ran swiftly to and fro with plates and dishes, and, +exchanged unintelligible outcries with a cook beyond a slide in the +back parlor. He rushed at the new-comers, brushed the soiled table-cloth +before them with a towel on his arm, covered its worst stains with a +napkin, and brought them, in their order, the vermicelli soup, the fried +fish, the cheese-strewn spaghetti, the veal cutlets, the tepid roast +fowl and salad, and the wizened pear and coffee which form the dinner at +such places. + +“Ah, this is nice!” said Fulkerson, after the laying of the charitable +napkin, and he began to recognize acquaintances, some of whom he +described to March as young literary men and artists with whom they +should probably have to do; others were simply frequenters of the +place, and were of all nationalities and religions apparently--at least, +several were Hebrews and Cubans. “You get a pretty good slice of New +York here,” he said, “all except the frosting on top. That you won't +find much at Maroni's, though you will occasionally. I don't mean +the ladies ever, of course.” The ladies present seemed harmless and +reputable-looking people enough, but certainly they were not of the +first fashion, and, except in a few instances, not Americans. “It's like +cutting straight down through a fruitcake,” Fulkerson went on, “or a +mince-pie, when you don't know who made the pie; you get a little of +everything.” He ordered a small flask of Chianti with the dinner, and +it came in its pretty wicker jacket. March smiled upon it with tender +reminiscence, and Fulkerson laughed. “Lights you up a little. I brought +old Dryfoos here one day, and he thought it was sweet-oil; that's the +kind of bottle they used to have it in at the country drug-stores.” + +“Yes, I remember now; but I'd totally forgotten it,” said March. “How +far back that goes! Who's Dryfoos?” + +“Dryfoos?” Fulkerson, still smiling, tore off a piece of the half-yard +of French loaf which had been supplied them, with two pale, thin disks +of butter, and fed it into himself. “Old Dryfoos? Well, of course! I +call him old, but he ain't so very. About fifty, or along there.” + +“No,” said March, “that isn't very old--or not so old as it used to be.” + +“Well, I suppose you've got to know about him, anyway,” said Fulkerson, +thoughtfully. “And I've been wondering just how I should tell you. Can't +always make out exactly how much of a Bostonian you really are! Ever +been out in the natural-gas country?” + +“No,” said March. “I've had a good deal of curiosity about it, but +I've never been able to get away except in summer, and then we always +preferred to go over the old ground, out to Niagara and back through +Canada, the route we took on our wedding journey. The children like it +as much as we do.” + +“Yes, yes,” said Fulkerson. “Well, the natural-gas country is worth +seeing. I don't mean the Pittsburg gas-fields, but out in Northern Ohio +and Indiana around Moffitt--that's the place in the heart of the gas +region that they've been booming so. Yes, you ought to see that country. +If you haven't been West for a good many years, you haven't got any idea +how old the country looks. You remember how the fields used to be all +full of stumps?” + +“I should think so.” + +“Well, you won't see any stumps now. All that country out around Moffitt +is just as smooth as a checker-board, and looks as old as England. You +know how we used to burn the stumps out; and then somebody invented a +stump-extractor, and we pulled them out with a yoke of oxen. Now they +just touch 'em off with a little dynamite, and they've got a cellar dug +and filled up with kindling ready for housekeeping whenever you want it. +Only they haven't got any use for kindling in that country--all gas. I +rode along on the cars through those level black fields at corn-planting +time, and every once in a while I'd come to a place with a piece of +ragged old stove-pipe stickin' up out of the ground, and blazing away +like forty, and a fellow ploughing all round it and not minding it any +more than if it was spring violets. Horses didn't notice it, either. +Well, they've always known about the gas out there; they say there are +places in the woods where it's been burning ever since the country was +settled. + +“But when you come in sight of Moffitt--my, oh, my! Well, you come in +smell of it about as soon. That gas out there ain't odorless, like +the Pittsburg gas, and so it's perfectly safe; but the smell isn't +bad--about as bad as the finest kind of benzine. Well, the first thing +that strikes you when you come to Moffitt is the notion that there has +been a good warm, growing rain, and the town's come up overnight. That's +in the suburbs, the annexes, and additions. But it ain't shabby--no +shanty-farm business; nice brick and frame houses, some of 'em Queen +Anne style, and all of 'em looking as if they had come to stay. And when +you drive up from the depot you think everybody's moving. Everything +seems to be piled into the street; old houses made over, and new ones +going up everywhere. You know the kind of street Main Street always +used to be in our section--half plank-road and turnpike, and the rest +mud-hole, and a lot of stores and doggeries strung along with false +fronts a story higher than the back, and here and there a decent +building with the gable end to the public; and a court-house and jail +and two taverns and three or four churches. Well, they're all there in +Moffitt yet, but architecture has struck it hard, and they've got a lot +of new buildings that needn't be ashamed of themselves anywhere; the new +court-house is as big as St. Peter's, and the Grand Opera-house is in +the highest style of the art. You can't buy a lot on that street for +much less than you can buy a lot in New York--or you couldn't when the +boom was on; I saw the place just when the boom was in its prime. I went +out there to work the newspapers in the syndicate business, and I got +one of their men to write me a real bright, snappy account of the gas; +and they just took me in their arms and showed me everything. Well, +it was wonderful, and it was beautiful, too! To see a whole community +stirred up like that was--just like a big boy, all hope and high +spirits, and no discount on the remotest future; nothing but perpetual +boom to the end of time--I tell you it warmed your blood. Why, there +were some things about it that made you think what a nice kind of world +this would be if people ever took hold together, instead of each fellow +fighting it out on his own hook, and devil take the hindmost. They made +up their minds at Moffitt that if they wanted their town to grow +they'd got to keep their gas public property. So they extended their +corporation line so as to take in pretty much the whole gas region round +there; and then the city took possession of every well that was put +down, and held it for the common good. Anybody that's a mind to come to +Moffitt and start any kind of manufacture can have all the gas he wants +free; and for fifteen dollars a year you can have all the gas you want +to heat and light your private house. The people hold on to it for +themselves, and, as I say, it's a grand sight to see a whole community +hanging together and working for the good of all, instead of splitting +up into as many different cut-throats as there are able-bodied citizens. +See that fellow?” Fulkerson broke off, and indicated with a twirl of his +head a short, dark, foreign-looking man going out of the door. “They say +that fellow's a Socialist. I think it's a shame they're allowed to come +here. If they don't like the way we manage our affairs let 'em stay at +home,” Fulkerson continued. “They do a lot of mischief, shooting off +their mouths round here. I believe in free speech and all that; but I'd +like to see these fellows shut up in jail and left to jaw one another to +death. We don't want any of their poison.” + +March did not notice the vanishing Socialist. He was watching, with a +teasing sense of familiarity, a tall, shabbily dressed, elderly man, who +had just come in. He had the aquiline profile uncommon among Germans, +and yet March recognized him at once as German. His long, soft beard and +mustache had once been fair, and they kept some tone of their yellow in +the gray to which they had turned. His eyes were full, and his lips and +chin shaped the beard to the noble outline which shows in the beards the +Italian masters liked to paint for their Last Suppers. His carriage was +erect and soldierly, and March presently saw that he had lost his left +hand. He took his place at a table where the overworked waiter found +time to cut up his meat and put everything in easy reach of his right +hand. + +“Well,” Fulkerson resumed, “they took me round everywhere in Moffitt, +and showed me their big wells--lit 'em up for a private view, and let me +hear them purr with the soft accents of a mass-meeting of locomotives. +Why, when they let one of these wells loose in a meadow that they'd +piped it into temporarily, it drove the flame away forty feet from the +mouth of the pipe and blew it over half an acre of ground. They say when +they let one of their big wells burn away all winter before they had +learned how to control it, that well kept up a little summer all around +it; the grass stayed green, and the flowers bloomed all through the +winter. I don't know whether it's so or not. But I can believe anything +of natural gas. My! but it was beautiful when they turned on the full +force of that well and shot a roman candle into the gas--that's the +way they light it--and a plume of fire about twenty feet wide and +seventy-five feet high, all red and yellow and violet, jumped into the +sky, and that big roar shook the ground under your feet! You felt like +saying: + +“'Don't trouble yourself; I'm perfectly convinced. I believe in +Moffitt.' We-e-e-ll!” drawled Fulkerson, with a long breath, “that's +where I met old Dryfoos.” + +“Oh yes!--Dryfoos,” said March. He observed that the waiter had brought +the old one-handed German a towering glass of beer. + +“Yes,” Fulkerson laughed. “We've got round to Dryfoos again. I thought +I could cut a long story short, but I seem to be cutting a short story +long. If you're not in a hurry, though--” + +“Not in the least. Go on as long as you like.” + +“I met him there in the office of a real-estate man--speculator, +of course; everybody was, in Moffitt; but a first-rate fellow, and +public-spirited as all get-out; and when Dryfoos left he told me about +him. Dryfoos was an old Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, about three or four +miles out of Moffitt, and he'd lived there pretty much all his life; +father was one of the first settlers. Everybody knew he had the right +stuff in him, but he was slower than molasses in January, like those +Pennsylvania Dutch. He'd got together the largest and handsomest farm +anywhere around there; and he was making money on it, just like he was +in some business somewhere; he was a very intelligent man; he took the +papers and kept himself posted; but he was awfully old-fashioned in his +ideas. He hung on to the doctrines as well as the dollars of the dads; +it was a real thing with him. Well, when the boom began to come he hated +it awfully, and he fought it. He used to write communications to the +weekly newspaper in Moffitt--they've got three dailies there now--and +throw cold water on the boom. He couldn't catch on no way. It made him +sick to hear the clack that went on about the gas the whole while, and +that stirred up the neighborhood and got into his family. Whenever he'd +hear of a man that had been offered a big price for his land and was +going to sell out and move into town, he'd go and labor with him and +try to talk him out of it, and tell him how long his fifteen or twenty +thousand would last him to live on, and shake the Standard Oil Company +before him, and try to make him believe it wouldn't be five years before +the Standard owned the whole region. + +“Of course, he couldn't do anything with them. When a man's offered a +big price for his farm, he don't care whether it's by a secret emissary +from the Standard Oil or not; he's going to sell and get the better of +the other fellow if he can. Dryfoos couldn't keep the boom out of has +own family even. His wife was with him. She thought whatever he said and +did was just as right as if it had been thundered down from Sinai. But +the young folks were sceptical, especially the girls that had been away +to school. The boy that had been kept at home because he couldn't be +spared from helping his father manage the farm was more like him, but +they contrived to stir the boy up--with the hot end of the boom, too. So +when a fellow came along one day and offered old Dryfoos a cool hundred +thousand for his farm, it was all up with Dryfoos. He'd 'a' liked to 'a' +kept the offer to himself and not done anything about it, but his vanity +wouldn't let him do that; and when he let it out in his family the girls +outvoted him. They just made him sell. + +“He wouldn't sell all. He kept about eighty acres that was off in some +piece by itself, but the three hundred that had the old brick house +on it, and the big barn--that went, and Dryfoos bought him a place in +Moffitt and moved into town to live on the interest of his money. Just +What he had scolded and ridiculed everybody else for doing. Well, they +say that at first he seemed like he would go crazy. He hadn't anything +to do. He took a fancy to that land-agent, and he used to go and set in +his office and ask him what he should do. 'I hain't got any horses, I +hain't got any cows, I hain't got any pigs, I hain't got any chickens. I +hain't got anything to do from sun-up to sun-down.' The fellow said the +tears used to run down the old fellow's cheeks, and if he hadn't been +so busy himself he believed he should 'a' cried, too. But most o' people +thought old Dryfoos was down in the mouth because he hadn't asked more +for his farm, when he wanted to buy it back and found they held it at a +hundred and fifty thousand. People couldn't believe he was just homesick +and heartsick for the old place. Well, perhaps he was sorry he hadn't +asked more; that's human nature, too. + +“After a while something happened. That land-agent used to tell Dryfoos +to get out to Europe with his money and see life a little, or go and +live in Washington, where he could be somebody; but Dryfoos wouldn't, +and he kept listening to the talk there, and all of a sudden he caught +on. He came into that fellow's one day with a plan for cutting up the +eighty acres he'd kept into town lots; and he'd got it all plotted out +so-well, and had so many practical ideas about it, that the fellow was +astonished. He went right in with him, as far as Dryfoos would let him, +and glad of the chance; and they were working the thing for all it was +worth when I struck Moffitt. Old Dryfoos wanted me to go out and see the +Dryfoos & Hendry Addition--guess he thought maybe I'd write it up; and +he drove me out there himself. Well, it was funny to see a town made: +streets driven through; two rows of shadetrees, hard and soft, planted; +cellars dug and houses put up-regular Queen Anne style, too, with +stained glass-all at once. Dryfoos apologized for the streets because +they were hand-made; said they expected their street-making machine +Tuesday, and then they intended to push things.” + +Fulkerson enjoyed the effect of his picture on March for a moment, and +then went on: “He was mighty intelligent, too, and he questioned me up +about my business as sharp as I ever was questioned; seemed to kind of +strike his fancy; I guess he wanted to find out if there was any money +in it. He was making money, hand over hand, then; and he never stopped +speculating and improving till he'd scraped together three or four +hundred thousand dollars, they said a million, but they like round +numbers at Moffitt, and I guess half a million would lay over it +comfortably and leave a few thousands to spare, probably. Then he came +on to New York.” + +Fulkerson struck a match against the ribbed side of the porcelain cup +that held the matches in the centre of the table, and lit a cigarette, +which he began to smoke, throwing his head back with a leisurely effect, +as if he had got to the end of at least as much of his story as he meant +to tell without prompting. + +March asked him the desired question. “What in the world for?” + +Fulkerson took out his cigarette and said, with a smile: “To spend his +money, and get his daughters into the old Knickerbocker society. Maybe +he thought they were all the same kind of Dutch.” + +“And has he succeeded?” + +“Well, they're not social leaders yet. But it's only a question of +time--generation or two--especially if time's money, and if 'Every Other +Week' is the success it's bound to be.” + +“You don't mean to say, Fulkerson,” said March, with a half-doubting, +half-daunted laugh, “that he's your Angel?” + +“That's what I mean to say,” returned Fulkerson. “I ran onto him in +Broadway one day last summer. If you ever saw anybody in your life; +you're sure to meet him in Broadway again, sooner or later. That's +the philosophy of the bunco business; country people from the same +neighborhood are sure to run up against each other the first time they +come to New York. I put out my hand, and I said, 'Isn't this Mr. Dryfoos +from Moffitt?' He didn't seem to have any use for my hand; he let me +keep it, and he squared those old lips of his till his imperial stuck +straight out. Ever see Bernhardt in 'L'Etrangere'? Well, the American +husband is old Dryfoos all over; no mustache; and hay-colored +chin-whiskers cut slanting froze the corners of his mouth. He cocked +his little gray eyes at me, and says he: 'Yes, young man; my name +is Dryfoos, and I'm from Moffitt. But I don't want no present of +Longfellow's Works, illustrated; and I don't want to taste no fine teas; +but I know a policeman that does; and if you're the son of my old friend +Squire Strohfeldt, you'd better get out.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'how +would you like to go into the newspaper syndicate business?' He gave +another look at me, and then he burst out laughing, and he grabbed my +hand, and he just froze to it. I never saw anybody so glad. + +“Well, the long and the short of it was that I asked him round here to +Maroni's to dinner; and before we broke up for the night we had settled +the financial side of the plan that's brought you to New York.” + +“I can see,” said Fulkerson, who had kept his eyes fast on March's face, +“that you don't more than half like the idea of Dryfoos. It ought to +give you more confidence in the thing than you ever had. You needn't be +afraid,” he added, with some feeling, “that I talked Dryfoos into the +thing for my own advantage.” + +“Oh, my dear Fulkerson!” March protested, all the more fervently because +he was really a little guilty. + +“Well, of course not! I didn't mean you were. But I just happened to +tell him what I wanted to go into when I could see my way to it, and he +caught on of his own accord. The fact is,” said Fulkerson, “I guess I'd +better make a clean breast of it, now I'm at it, Dryfoos wanted to get +something for that boy of his to do. He's in railroads himself, and he's +in mines and other things, and he keeps busy, and he can't bear to have +his boy hanging round the house doing nothing, like as if he was a girl. +I told him that the great object of a rich man was to get his son into +just that fix, but he couldn't seem to see it, and the boy hated it +himself. He's got a good head, and he wanted to study for the ministry +when they were all living together out on the farm; but his father had +the old-fashioned ideas about that. You know they used to think that any +sort of stuff was good enough to make a preacher out of; but they wanted +the good timber for business; and so the old man wouldn't let him. +You'll see the fellow; you'll like him; he's no fool, I can tell you; +and he's going to be our publisher, nominally at first and actually when +I've taught him the ropes a little.” + + + + +XII. + +Fulkerson stopped and looked at March, whom he saw lapsing into a +serious silence. Doubtless he divined his uneasiness with the facts that +had been given him to digest. He pulled out his watch and glanced at it. +“See here, how would you like to go up to Forty-sixth street with me, +and drop in on old Dryfoos? Now's your chance. He's going West tomorrow, +and won't be back for a month or so. They'll all be glad to see you, and +you'll understand things better when you've seen him and his family. I +can't explain.” + +March reflected a moment. Then he said, with a wisdom that surprised +him, for he would have liked to yield to the impulse of his curiosity: +“Perhaps we'd better wait till Mrs. March comes down, and let things +take the usual course. The Dryfoos ladies will want to call on her as +the last-comer, and if I treated myself 'en garcon' now, and paid the +first visit, it might complicate matters.” + +“Well, perhaps you're right,” said Fulkerson. “I don't know much about +these things, and I don't believe Ma Dryfoos does, either.” He was on +his legs lighting another cigarette. “I suppose the girls are getting +themselves up in etiquette, though. Well, then, let's have a look at the +'Every Other Week' building, and then, if you like your quarters there, +you can go round and close for Mrs. Green's flat.” + +March's dormant allegiance to his wife's wishes had been roused by his +decision in favor of good social usage. “I don't think I shall take the +flat,” he said. + +“Well, don't reject it without giving it another look, anyway. Come on!” + +He helped March on with his light overcoat, and the little stir they +made for their departure caught the notice of the old German; he looked +up from his beer at them. March was more than ever impressed with +something familiar in his face. In compensation for his prudence in +regard to the Dryfooses he now indulged an impulse. He stepped across to +where the old man sat, with his bald head shining like ivory under +the gas-jet, and his fine patriarchal length of bearded mask taking +picturesque lights and shadows, and put out his hand to him. + +“Lindau! Isn't this Mr. Lindau?” + +The old man lifted himself slowly to his feet with mechanical +politeness, and cautiously took March's hand. “Yes, my name is Lindau,” + he said, slowly, while he scanned March's face. Then he broke into +a long cry. “Ah-h-h-h-h, my dear poy! my gong friendt! my-my--Idt is +Passil Marge, not zo? Ah, ha, ha, ha! How gladt I am to zee you! Why, I +am gladt! And you rememberdt me? You remember Schiller, and Goethe, and +Uhland? And Indianapolis? You still lif in Indianapolis? It sheers my +hardt to zee you. But you are lidtle oldt, too? Tventy-five years makes +a difference. Ah, I am gladt! Dell me, idt is Passil Marge, not zo?” + +He looked anxiously into March's face, with a gentle smile of mixed hope +and doubt, and March said: “As sure as it's Berthold Lindau, and I guess +it's you. And you remember the old times? You were as much of a boy as I +was, Lindau. Are you living in New York? Do you recollect how you tried +to teach me to fence? I don't know how to this day, Lindau. How good +you were, and how patient! Do you remember how we used to sit up in the +little parlor back of your printing-office, and read Die Rauber and Die +Theilung der Erde and Die Glocke? And Mrs. Lindau? Is she with--” + +“Deadt--deadt long ago. Right after I got home from the war--tventy +years ago. But tell me, you are married? Children? Yes! Goodt! And how +oldt are you now?” + +“It makes me seventeen to see you, Lindau, but I've got a son nearly as +old.” + +“Ah, ha, ha! Goodt! And where do you lif?” + +“Well, I'm just coming to live in New York,” March said, looking over +at Fulkerson, who had been watching his interview with the perfunctory +smile of sympathy that people put on at the meeting of old friends. “I +want to introduce you to my friend Mr. Fulkerson. He and I are going +into a literary enterprise here.” + +“Ah! zo?” said the old man, with polite interest. He took Fulkerson's +proffered hand, and they all stood talking a few moments together. + +Then Fulkerson said, with another look at his watch, “Well, March, we're +keeping Mr. Lindau from his dinner.” + +“Dinner!” cried the old man. “Idt's better than breadt and meadt to see +Mr. Marge!” + +“I must be going, anyway,” said March. “But I must see you again soon, +Lindau. Where do you live? I want a long talk.” + +“And I. You will find me here at dinner-time.” said the old man. “It +is the best place”; and March fancied him reluctant to give another +address. + +To cover his consciousness he answered, gayly: “Then, it's 'auf +wiedersehen' with us. Well!” + +“Also!” The old man took his hand, and made a mechanical movement with +his mutilated arm, as if he would have taken it in a double clasp. He +laughed at himself. “I wanted to gif you the other handt, too, but I +gafe it to your gountry a goodt while ago.” + +“To my country?” asked March, with a sense of pain, and yet lightly, as +if it were a joke of the old man's. “Your country, too, Lindau?” + +The old man turned very grave, and said, almost coldly, “What gountry +hass a poor man got, Mr. Marge?” + +“Well, you ought to have a share in the one you helped to save for us +rich men, Lindau,” March returned, still humoring the joke. + +The old man smiled sadly, but made no answer as he sat down again. + +“Seems to be a little soured,” said Fulkerson, as they went down the +steps. He was one of those Americans whose habitual conception of life +is unalloyed prosperity. When any experience or observation of his went +counter to it he suffered--something like physical pain. He eagerly +shrugged away the impression left upon his buoyancy by Lindau, and added +to March's continued silence, “What did I tell you about meeting every +man in New York that you ever knew before?” + +“I never expected to meat Lindau in the world again,” said March, more +to himself than to Fulkerson. “I had an impression that he had been +killed in the war. I almost wish he had been.” + +“Oh, hello, now!” cried Fulkerson. + +March laughed, but went on soberly: “He was a man predestined to +adversity, though. When I first knew him out in Indianapolis he was +starving along with a sick wife and a sick newspaper. It was before +the Germans had come over to the Republicans generally, but Lindau was +fighting the anti-slavery battle just as naturally at Indianapolis in +1858 as he fought behind the barricades at Berlin in 1848. And yet he +was always such a gentle soul! And so generous! He taught me German for +the love of it; he wouldn't spoil his pleasure by taking a cent from me; +he seemed to get enough out of my being young and enthusiastic, and out +of prophesying great things for me. I wonder what the poor old fellow is +doing here, with that one hand of his?” + +“Not amassing a very 'handsome pittance,' I guess, as Artemus Ward would +say,” said Fulkerson, getting back some of his lightness. “There are +lots of two-handed fellows in New York that are not doing much better, I +guess. Maybe he gets some writing on the German papers.” + +“I hope so. He's one of the most accomplished men! He used to be a +splendid musician--pianist--and knows eight or ten languages.” + +“Well, it's astonishing,” said Fulkerson, “how much lumber those Germans +can carry around in their heads all their lives, and never work it up +into anything. It's a pity they couldn't do the acquiring, and let +out the use of their learning to a few bright Americans. We could make +things hum, if we could arrange 'em that way.” + +He talked on, unheeded by March, who went along half-consciously +tormented by his lightness in the pensive memories the meeting with +Lindau had called up. Was this all that sweet, unselfish nature could +come to? What a homeless old age at that meagre Italian table d'hote, +with that tall glass of beer for a half-hour's oblivion! That shabby +dress, that pathetic mutilation! He must have a pension, twelve dollars +a month, or eighteen, from a grateful country. But what else did he eke +out with? + +“Well, here we are,” said Fulkerson, cheerily. He ran up the steps +before March, and opened the carpenter's temporary valve in the door +frame, and led the way into a darkness smelling sweetly of unpainted +wood-work and newly dried plaster; their feat slipped on shavings and +grated on sand. He scratched a match, and found a candle, and then +walked about up and down stairs, and lectured on the advantages of the +place. He had fitted up bachelor apartments for himself in the house, +and said that he was going to have a flat to let on the top floor. “I +didn't offer it to you because I supposed you'd be too proud to live +over your shop; and it's too small, anyway; only five rooms.” + +“Yes, that's too small,” said March, shirking the other point. + +“Well, then, here's the room I intend for your office,” said Fulkerson, +showing him into a large back parlor one flight up. “You'll have it +quiet from the street noises here, and you can be at home or not, as you +please. There'll be a boy on the stairs to find out. Now, you see, this +makes the Grosvenor Green flat practicable, if you want it.” + +March felt the forces of fate closing about him and pushing him to a +decision. He feebly fought them off till he could have another look at +the flat. Then, baked and subdued still more by the unexpected presence +of Mrs. Grosvenor Green herself, who was occupying it so as to be able +to show it effectively, he took it. He was aware more than ever of its +absurdities; he knew that his wife would never cease to hate it; but he +had suffered one of those eclipses of the imagination to which men of +his temperament are subject, and into which he could see no future for +his desires. He felt a comfort in irretrievably committing himself, and +exchanging the burden of indecision for the burden of responsibility. + +“I don't know,” said Fulkerson, as they walked back to his hotel +together, “but you might fix it up with that lone widow and her pretty +daughter to take part of their house here.” He seemed to be reminded +of it by the fact of passing the house, and March looked up at its dark +front. He could not have told exactly why he felt a pang of remorse +at the sight, and doubtless it was more regret for having taken the +Grosvenor Green flat than for not having taken the widow's rooms. Still, +he could not forget her wistfulness when his wife and he were looking +at them, and her disappointment when they decided against them. He had +toyed, in, his after-talk to Mrs. March, with a sort of hypothetical +obligation they had to modify their plans so as to meet the widow's want +of just such a family as theirs; they had both said what a blessing +it would be to her, and what a pity they could not do it; but they had +decided very distinctly that they could not. Now it seemed to him that +they might; and he asked himself whether he had not actually departed as +much from their ideal as if he had taken board with the widow. Suddenly +it seemed to him that his wife asked him this, too. + +“I reckon,” said Fulkerson, “that she could have arranged to give you +your meals in your rooms, and it would have come to about the same thing +as housekeeping.” + +“No sort of boarding can be the same as house-keeping,” said March. “I +want my little girl to have the run of a kitchen, and I want the whole +family to have the moral effect of housekeeping. It's demoralizing to +board, in every way; it isn't a home, if anybody else takes the care of +it off your hands.” + +“Well, I suppose so,” Fulkerson assented; but March's words had a +hollow ring to himself, and in his own mind he began to retaliate his +dissatisfaction upon Fulkerson. + +He parted from him on the usual terms outwardly, but he felt obscurely +abused by Fulkerson in regard to the Dryfooses, father and son. He did +not know but Fulkerson had taken an advantage of him in allowing him to +commit himself to their enterprise with out fully and frankly telling +him who and what his backer was; he perceived that with young Dryfoos as +the publisher and Fulkerson as the general director of the paper there +might be very little play for his own ideas of its conduct. Perhaps it +was the hurt to his vanity involved by the recognition of this fact that +made him forget how little choice he really had in the matter, and how, +since he had not accepted the offer to edit the insurance paper, +nothing remained for him but to close with Fulkerson. In this moment of +suspicion and resentment he accused Fulkerson of hastening his decision +in regard to the Grosvenor Green apartment; he now refused to consider +it a decision, and said to himself that if he felt disposed to do so he +would send Mrs. Green a note reversing it in the morning. But he put it +all off till morning with his clothes, when he went to bed, he put +off even thinking what his wife would say; he cast Fulkerson and his +constructive treachery out of his mind, too, and invited into it some +pensive reveries of the past, when he still stood at the parting of the +ways, and could take this path or that. In his middle life this was not +possible; he must follow the path chosen long, ago, wherever, it led. He +was not master of himself, as he once seemed, but the servant of those +he loved; if he could do what he liked, perhaps he might renounce this +whole New York enterprise, and go off somewhere out of the reach of +care; but he could not do what he liked, that was very clear. In the +pathos of this conviction he dwelt compassionately upon the thought +of poor old Lindau; he resolved to make him accept a handsome sum of +money--more than he could spare, something that he would feel the loss +of--in payment of the lessons in German and fencing given so long +ago. At the usual rate for such lessons, his debt, with interest for +twenty-odd years, would run very far into the hundreds. Too far, he +perceived, for his wife's joyous approval; he determined not to add the +interest; or he believed that Lindau would refuse the interest; he put a +fine speech in his mouth, making him do so; and after that he got Lindau +employment on 'Every Other Week,' and took care of him till he died. + +Through all his melancholy and munificence he was aware of sordid +anxieties for having taken the Grosvenor Green apartment. These began +to assume visible, tangible shapes as he drowsed, and to became personal +entities, from which he woke, with little starts, to a realization of +their true nature, and then suddenly fell fast asleep. + +In the accomplishment of the events which his reverie played with, there +was much that retroactively stamped it with prophecy, but much also that +was better than he forboded. He found that with regard to the Grosvenor +Green apartment he had not allowed for his wife's willingness to get any +sort of roof over her head again after the removal from their old home, +or for the alleviations that grow up through mere custom. The practical +workings of the apartment were not so bad; it had its good points, and +after the first sensation of oppression in it they began to feel the +convenience of its arrangement. They were at that time of life when +people first turn to their children's opinion with deference, and, in +the loss of keenness in their own likes and dislikes, consult the young +preferences which are still so sensitive. It went far to reconcile Mrs. +March to the apartment that her children were pleased with its novelty; +when this wore off for them, she had herself begun to find it much more +easily manageable than a house. After she had put away several barrels +of gimcracks, and folded up screens and rugs and skins, and carried +them all off to the little dark store-room which the flat developed, +she perceived at once a roominess and coziness in it unsuspected before. +Then, when people began to call, she had a pleasure, a superiority, +in saying that it was a furnished apartment, and in disclaiming all +responsibility for the upholstery and decoration. If March was by, she +always explained that it was Mr. March's fancy, and amiably laughed it +off with her callers as a mannish eccentricity. Nobody really seemed to +think it otherwise than pretty; and this again was a triumph for Mrs. +March, because it showed how inferior the New York taste was to the +Boston taste in such matters. + +March submitted silently to his punishment, and laughed with her before +company at his own eccentricity. She had been so preoccupied with the +adjustment of the family to its new quarters and circumstances that the +time passed for laying his misgivings, if they were misgivings, about +Fulkerson before her, and when an occasion came for expressing them +they had themselves passed in the anxieties of getting forward the +first number of 'Every Other Week.' He kept these from her, too, and +the business that brought them to New York had apparently dropped into +abeyance before the questions of domestic economy that presented and +absented themselves. March knew his wife to be a woman of good mind and +in perfect sympathy with him, but he understood the limitations of +her perspective; and if he was not too wise, he was too experienced +to intrude upon it any affairs of his till her own were reduced to the +right order and proportion. It would have been folly to talk to her of +Fulkerson's conjecturable uncandor while she was in doubt whether her +cook would like the kitchen, or her two servants would consent to room +together; and till it was decided what school Tom should go to, and +whether Bella should have lessons at home or not, the relation which +March was to bear to the Dryfooses, as owner and publisher, was not to +be discussed with his wife. He might drag it in, but he was aware that +with her mind distracted by more immediate interests he could not get +from her that judgment, that reasoned divination, which he relied upon +so much. She would try, she would do her best, but the result would be a +view clouded and discolored by the effort she must make. + +He put the whole matter by, and gave himself to the details of the work +before him. In this he found not only escape, but reassurance, for it +became more and more apparent that whatever was nominally the structure +of the business, a man of his qualifications and his instincts could not +have an insignificant place in it. He had also the consolation of liking +his work, and of getting an instant grasp of it that grew constantly +firmer and closer. The joy of knowing that he had not made a mistake was +great. In giving rein to ambitions long forborne he seemed to get back +to the youth when he had indulged them first; and after half a lifetime +passed in pursuits alien to his nature, he was feeling the serene +happiness of being mated through his work to his early love. From the +outside the spectacle might have had its pathos, and it is not easy to +justify such an experiment as he had made at his time of life, except +upon the ground where he rested from its consideration--the ground of +necessity. + +His work was more in his thoughts than himself, however; and as the time +for the publication of the first number of his periodical came nearer, +his cares all centred upon it. Without fixing any date, Fulkerson had +announced it, and pushed his announcements with the shameless vigor of +a born advertiser. He worked his interest with the press to the utmost, +and paragraphs of a variety that did credit to his ingenuity were afloat +everywhere. Some of them were speciously unfavorable in tone; they +criticised and even ridiculed the principles on which the new departure +in literary journalism was based. Others defended it; others yet denied +that this rumored principle was really the principle. All contributed to +make talk. All proceeded from the same fertile invention. + +March observed with a degree of mortification that the talk was very +little of it in the New York press; there the references to the novel +enterprise were slight and cold. But Fulkerson said: “Don't mind that, +old man. It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this; +New York has very little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would +be different. New York does make or break a play; but it doesn't make or +break a book; it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great mass of +the readers are outside of New York, and the rural districts are what +we have got to go for. They don't read much in New York; they write, and +talk about what they've written. Don't you worry.” + +The rumor of Fulkerson's connection with the enterprise accompanied many +of the paragraphs, and he was able to stay March's thirst for employment +by turning over to him from day to day heaps of the manuscripts which +began to pour in from his old syndicate writers, as well as from +adventurous volunteers all over the country. With these in hand March +began practically to plan the first number, and to concrete a general +scheme from the material and the experience they furnished. They had +intended to issue the first number with the new year, and if it had been +an affair of literature alone, it would have been very easy; but it was +the art leg they limped on, as Fulkerson phrased it. They had not merely +to deal with the question of specific illustrations for this article +or that, but to decide the whole character of their illustrations, and +first of all to get a design for a cover which should both ensnare +the heedless and captivate the fastidious. These things did not come +properly within March's province--that had been clearly understood--and +for a while Fulkerson tried to run the art leg himself. The phrase was +again his, but it was simpler to make the phrase than to run the leg. +The difficult generation, at once stiff-backed and slippery, with which +he had to do in this endeavor, reduced even so buoyant an optimist to +despair, and after wasting some valuable weeks in trying to work the +artists himself, he determined to get an artist to work them. But what +artist? It could not be a man with fixed reputation and a following: he +would be too costly, and would have too many enemies among his brethren, +even if he would consent to undertake the job. Fulkerson had a man in +mind, an artist, too, who would have been the very thing if he had been +the thing at all. He had talent enough, and his sort of talent would +reach round the whole situation, but, as Fulkerson said, he was as many +kinds of an ass as he was kinds of an artist. + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Anticipative homesickness + Any sort of stuff was good enough to make a preacher out of + Appearance made him doubt their ability to pay so much + As much of his story as he meant to tell without prompting + Considerable comfort in holding him accountable + Extract what consolation lurks in the irreparable + Flavors not very sharply distinguished from one another + Handsome pittance + He expected to do the wrong thing when left to his own devices + Hypothetical difficulty + Never-blooming shrub + Poverty as hopeless as any in the world + Seeming interested in points necessarily indifferent to him + Servant of those he loved + Sigh with which ladies recognize one another's martyrdom + Sorry he hadn't asked more; that's human nature + That isn't very old--or not so old as it used to be + Tried to be homesick for them, but failed + Turn to their children's opinion with deference + Wish we didn't always recognize the facts as we do + + + + +PART SECOND + + + + +I. + +The evening when March closed with Mrs. Green's reduced offer, and +decided to take her apartment, the widow whose lodgings he had rejected +sat with her daughter in an upper room at the back of her house. In the +shaded glow of the drop-light she was sewing, and the girl was drawing +at the same table. From time to time, as they talked, the girl lifted +her head and tilted it a little on one side so as to get some desired +effect of her work. + +“It's a mercy the cold weather holds off,” said the mother. “We should +have to light the furnace, unless we wanted to scare everybody away with +a cold house; and I don't know who would take care of it, or what would +become of us, every way.” + +“They seem to have been scared away from a house that wasn't cold,” said +the girl. “Perhaps they might like a cold one. But it's too early for +cold yet. It's only just in the beginning of November.” + +“The Messenger says they've had a sprinkling of snow.” + +“Oh yes, at St. Barnaby! I don't know when they don't have sprinklings +of snow there. I'm awfully glad we haven't got that winter before us.” + +The widow sighed as mothers do who feel the contrast their experience +opposes to the hopeful recklessness of such talk as this. “We may have a +worse winter here,” she said, darkly. + +“Then I couldn't stand it,” said the girl, “and I should go in for +lighting out to Florida double-quick.” + +“And how would you get to Florida?” demanded her mother, severely. + +“Oh, by the usual conveyance Pullman vestibuled train, I suppose. What +makes you so blue, mamma?” The girl was all the time sketching away, +rubbing out, lifting her head for the effect, and then bending it over +her work again without looking at her mother. + +“I am not blue, Alma. But I cannot endure this--this hopefulness of +yours.” + +“Why? What harm does it do?” + +“Harm?” echoed the mother. + +Pending the effort she must make in saying, the girl cut in: “Yes, harm. +You've kept your despair dusted off and ready for use at an instant's +notice ever since we came, and what good has it done? I'm going to keep +on hoping to the bitter end. That's what papa did.” + +It was what the Rev. Archibald Leighton had done with all the +consumptive's buoyancy. The morning he died he told them that now he had +turned the point and was really going to get well. The cheerfulness was +not only in his disease, but in his temperament. Its excess was always +a little against him in his church work, and Mrs. Leighton was right +enough in feeling that if it had not been for the ballast of her +instinctive despondency he would have made shipwreck of such small +chances of prosperity as befell him in life. It was not from him that +his daughter got her talent, though he had left her his temperament +intact of his widow's legal thirds. He was one of those men of whom +the country people say when he is gone that the woman gets along better +without him. Mrs. Leighton had long eked out their income by taking a +summer boarder or two, as a great favor, into her family; and when the +greater need came, she frankly gave up her house to the summer-folks (as +they call them in the country), and managed it for their comfort from +the small quarter of it in which she shut herself up with her daughter. + +The notion of shutting up is an exigency of the rounded period. The fact +is, of course, that Alma Leighton was not shut up in any sense whatever. +She was the pervading light, if not force, of the house. She was a good +cook, and she managed the kitchen with the help of an Irish girl, while +her mother looked after the rest of the housekeeping. But she was not +systematic; she had inspiration but not discipline, and her mother +mourned more over the days when Alma left the whole dinner to the Irish +girl than she rejoiced in those when one of Alma's great thoughts took +form in a chicken-pie of incomparable savor or in a matchless pudding. +The off-days came when her artistic nature was expressing itself in +charcoal, for she drew to the admiration of all among the lady boarders +who could not draw. The others had their reserves; they readily conceded +that Alma had genius, but they were sure she needed instruction. On the +other hand, they were not so radical as to agree with the old painter +who came every summer to paint the elms of the St. Barnaby meadows. He +contended that she needed to be a man in order to amount to anything; +but in this theory he was opposed by an authority, of his own sex, whom +the lady sketchers believed to speak with more impartiality in a matter +concerning them as much as Alma Leighton. He said that instruction would +do, and he was not only, younger and handsomer, but he was fresher from +the schools than old Harrington, who, even the lady sketchers could see, +painted in an obsolescent manner. His name was Beaton--Angus Beaton; but +he was not Scotch, or not more Scotch than Mary Queen of Scots was. His +father was a Scotchman, but Beaton was born in Syracuse, New York, and +it had taken only three years in Paris to obliterate many traces of +native and ancestral manner in him. He wore his black beard cut shorter +than his mustache, and a little pointed; he stood with his shoulders +well thrown back and with a lateral curve of his person when he talked +about art, which would alone have carried conviction even if he had not +had a thick, dark bang coming almost to the brows of his mobile gray +eyes, and had not spoken English with quick, staccato impulses, so as +to give it the effect of epigrammatic and sententious French. One of the +ladies said that you always thought of him as having spoken French after +it was over, and accused herself of wrong in not being able to feel +afraid of him. None of the ladies was afraid of him, though they could +not believe that he was really so deferential to their work as he +seemed; and they knew, when he would not criticise Mr. Harrington's +work, that he was just acting from principle. + +They may or may not have known the deference with which he treated +Alma's work; but the girl herself felt that his abrupt, impersonal +comment recognized her as a real sister in art. He told her she ought +to come to New York, and draw in the League, or get into some painter's +private class; and it was the sense of duty thus appealed to which +finally resulted in the hazardous experiment she and her mother were +now making. There were no logical breaks in the chain of their reasoning +from past success with boarders in St. Barnaby to future success with +boarders in New York. Of course the outlay was much greater. The rent +of the furnished house they had taken was such that if they failed their +experiment would be little less than ruinous. + +But they were not going to fail; that was what Alma contended, with a +hardy courage that her mother sometimes felt almost invited failure, if +it did not deserve it. She was one of those people who believe that if +you dread harm enough it is less likely to happen. She acted on this +superstition as if it were a religion. + +“If it had not been for my despair, as you call it, Alma,” she answered, +“I don't know where we should have been now.” + +“I suppose we should have been in St. Barnaby,” said the girl. “And if +it's worse to be in New York, you see what your despair's done, mamma. +But what's the use? You meant well, and I don't blame you. You can't +expect even despair to come out always just the way you want it. +Perhaps you've used too much of it.” The girl laughed, and Mrs. Leighton +laughed, too. Like every one else, she was not merely a prevailing mood, +as people are apt to be in books, but was an irregularly spheroidal +character, with surfaces that caught the different lights of +circumstance and reflected them. Alma got up and took a pose before the +mirror, which she then transferred to her sketch. The room was pinned +about with other sketches, which showed with fantastic indistinctness in +the shaded gaslight. Alma held up the drawing. “How do you like it?” + +Mrs. Leighton bent forward over her sewing to look at it. “You've got +the man's face rather weak.” + +“Yes, that's so. Either I see all the hidden weakness that's in men's +natures, and bring it to the surface in their figures, or else I put my +own weakness into them. Either way, it's a drawback to their presenting +a truly manly appearance. As long as I have one of the miserable objects +before me, I can draw him; but as soon as his back's turned I get to +putting ladies into men's clothes. I should think you'd be scandalized, +mamma, if you were a really feminine person. It must be your despair +that helps you to bear up. But what's the matter with the young lady in +young lady's clothes? Any dust on her?” + +“What expressions!” said Mrs. Leighton. “Really, Alma, for a refined +girl you are the most unrefined!” + +“Go on--about the girl in the picture!” said Alma, slightly knocking her +mother on the shoulder, as she stood over her. + +“I don't see anything to her. What's she doing?” + +“Oh, just being made love to, I suppose.” + +“She's perfectly insipid!” + +“You're awfully articulate, mamma! Now, if Mr. Wetmore were to criticise +that picture he'd draw a circle round it in the air, and look at it +through that, and tilt his head first on one side and then on the other, +and then look at you, as if you were a figure in it, and then collapse +awhile, and moan a little and gasp, 'Isn't your young lady a little +too-too--' and then he'd try to get the word out of you, and groan and +suffer some more; and you'd say, 'She is, rather,' and that would give +him courage, and he'd say, 'I don't mean that she's so very--' 'Of +course not.' 'You understand?' 'Perfectly. I see it myself, now.' 'Well, +then'---and he'd take your pencil and begin to draw--'I should give +her a little more--Ah?' 'Yes, I see the difference.'--'You see the +difference?' And he'd go off to some one else, and you'd know that +you'd been doing the wishy-washiest thing in the world, though he hadn't +spoken a word of criticism, and couldn't. But he wouldn't have noticed +the expression at all; he'd have shown you where your drawing was bad. +He doesn't care for what he calls the literature of a thing; he says +that will take care of itself if the drawing's good. He doesn't like my +doing these chic things; but I'm going to keep it up, for I think it's +the nearest way to illustrating.” + +She took her sketch and pinned it up on the door. + +“And has Mr. Beaton been about, yet?” asked her mother. + +“No,” said the girl, with her back still turned; and she added, “I +believe he's in New York; Mr. Wetmore's seen him.” + +“It's a little strange he doesn't call.” + +“It would be if he were not an artist. But artists never do anything +like other people. He was on his good behavior while he was with us, and +he's a great deal more conventional than most of them; but even he +can't keep it up. That's what makes me really think that women can never +amount to anything in art. They keep all their appointments, and fulfil +all their duties just as if they didn't know anything about art. Well, +most of them don't. We've got that new model to-day.” + +“What new model?” + +“The one Mr. Wetmore was telling us about the old German; he's splendid. +He's got the most beautiful head; just like the old masters' things. He +used to be Humphrey Williams's model for his Biblical-pieces; but since +he's dead, the old man hardly gets anything to do. Mr. Wetmore says +there isn't anybody in the Bible that Williams didn't paint him as. He's +the Law and the Prophets in all his Old Testament pictures, and he's +Joseph, Peter, Judas Iscariot, and the Scribes and Pharisees in the +New.” + +“It's a good thing people don't know how artists work, or some of the +most sacred pictures would have no influence,” said Mrs. Leighton. + +“Why, of course not!” cried the girl. “And the influence is the last +thing a painter thinks of--or supposes he thinks of. What he knows +he's anxious about is the drawing and the color. But people will never +understand how simple artists are. When I reflect what a complex and +sophisticated being I am, I'm afraid I can never come to anything in +art. Or I should be if I hadn't genius.” + +“Do you think Mr. Beaton is very simple?” asked Mrs. Leighton. + +“Mr. Wetmore doesn't think he's very much of an artist. He thinks he +talks too well. They believe that if a man can express himself clearly +he can't paint.” + +“And what do you believe?” + +“Oh, I can express myself, too.” + +The mother seemed to be satisfied with this evasion. After a while she +said, “I presume he will call when he gets settled.” + +The girl made no answer to this. “One of the girls says that old model +is an educated man. He was in the war, and lost a hand. Doesn't it seem +a pity for such a man to have to sit to a class of affected geese like +us as a model? I declare it makes me sick. And we shall keep him a week, +and pay him six or seven dollars for the use of his grand old head, and +then what will he do? The last time he was regularly employed was when +Mr. Mace was working at his Damascus Massacre. Then he wanted so many +Arab sheiks and Christian elders that he kept old Mr. Lindau steadily +employed for six months. Now he has to pick up odd jobs where he can.” + +“I suppose he has his pension,” said Mrs. Leighton. + +“No; one of the girls”--that was the way Alma always described her +fellow-students--“says he has no pension. He didn't apply for it for +a long time, and then there was a hitch about it, and it was +somethinged--vetoed, I believe she said.” + +“Who vetoed it?” asked Mrs. Leighton, with some curiosity about the +process, which she held in reserve. + +“I don't know-whoever vetoes things. I wonder what Mr. Wetmore does +think of us--his class. We must seem perfectly crazy. There isn't one of +us really knows what she's doing it for, or what she expects to happen +when she's done it. I suppose every one thinks she has genius. I know +the Nebraska widow does, for she says that unless you have genius it +isn't the least use. Everybody's puzzled to know what she does with her +baby when she's at work--whether she gives it soothing syrup. I wonder +how Mr. Wetmore can keep from laughing in our faces. I know he does +behind our backs.” + +Mrs. Leighton's mind wandered back to another point. “Then if he says +Mr. Beaton can't paint, I presume he doesn't respect him very much.” + +“Oh, he never said he couldn't paint. But I know he thinks so. He says +he's an excellent critic.” + +“Alma,” her mother said, with the effect of breaking off, “what do you +suppose is the reason he hasn't been near us?” + +“Why, I don't know, mamma, except that it would have been natural for +another person to come, and he's an artist at least, artist enough for +that.” + +“That doesn't account for it altogether. He was very nice at St. +Barnaby, and seemed so interested in you--your work.” + +“Plenty of people were nice at St. Barnaby. That rich Mrs. Horn couldn't +contain her joy when she heard we were coming to New York, but she +hasn't poured in upon us a great deal since we got here.” + +“But that's different. She's very fashionable, and she's taken up with +her own set. But Mr. Beaton's one of our kind.” + +“Thank you. Papa wasn't quite a tombstone-cutter, mamma.” + +“That makes it all the harder to bear. He can't be ashamed of us. +Perhaps he doesn't know where we are.” + +“Do you wish to send him your card, mamma?” The girl flushed and towered +in scorn of the idea. + +“Why, no, Alma,” returned her mother. + +“Well, then,” said Alma. + +But Mrs. Leighton was not so easily quelled. She had got her mind on +Mr. Beaton, and she could not detach it at once. Besides, she was one of +those women (they are commoner than the same sort of men) whom it does +not pain to take out their most intimate thoughts and examine them in +the light of other people's opinions. “But I don't see how he can behave +so. He must know that--” + +“That what, mamma?” demanded the girl. + +“That he influenced us a great deal in coming--” + +“He didn't. If he dared to presume to think such a thing--” + +“Now, Alma,” said her mother, with the clinging persistence of such +natures, “you know he did. And it's no use for you to pretend that we +didn't count upon him in--in every way. You may not have noticed his +attentions, and I don't say you did, but others certainly did; and I +must say that I didn't expect he would drop us so.” + +“Drop us!” cried Alma, in a fury. “Oh!” + +“Yes, drop us, Alma. He must know where we are. Of course, Mr. Wetmore's +spoken to him about you, and it's a shame that he hasn't been near us. I +should have thought common gratitude, common decency, would have brought +him after--after all we did for him.” + +“We did nothing for him--nothing! He paid his board, and that ended it.” + +“No, it didn't, Alma. You know what he used to say--about its being like +home, and all that; and I must say that after his attentions to you, and +all the things you told me he said, I expected something very dif--” + +A sharp peal of the door-bell thrilled through the house, and as if the +pull of the bell-wire had twitched her to her feet, Mrs. Leighton sprang +up and grappled with her daughter in their common terror. + +They both glared at the clock and made sure that it was five minutes +after nine. Then they abandoned themselves some moments to the +unrestricted play of their apprehensions. + + + + +II. + +“Why, Alma,” whispered the mother, “who in the world can it be at this +time of night? You don't suppose he--” + +“Well, I'm not going to the door, anyhow, mother, I don't care who +it is; and, of course, he wouldn't be such a goose as to come at this +hour.” She put on a look of miserable trepidation, and shrank back from +the door, while the hum of the bell died away, in the hall. + +“What shall we do?” asked Mrs. Leighton, helplessly. + +“Let him go away--whoever they are,” said Alma. + +Another and more peremptory ring forbade them refuge in this simple +expedient. + +“Oh, dear! what shall we do? Perhaps it's a despatch.” + +The conjecture moved Alma to no more than a rigid stare. “I shall not +go,” she said. A third ring more insistent than the others followed, and +she said: “You go ahead, mamma, and I'll come behind to scream if it's +anybody. We can look through the side-lights at the door first.” + +Mrs. Leighton fearfully led the way from the back chamber where they +bad been sitting, and slowly descended the stairs. Alma came behind and +turned up the hall gas-jet with a sudden flash that made them both jump +a little. The gas inside rendered it more difficult to tell who was on +the threshold, but Mrs. Leighton decided from a timorous peep through +the scrims that it was a lady and gentleman. Something in this +distribution of sex emboldened her; she took her life in her hand, and +opened the door. + +The lady spoke. “Does Mrs. Leighton live heah?” she said, in a rich, +throaty voice; and she feigned a reference to the agent's permit she +held in her hand. + +“Yes,” said Mrs. Leighton; she mechanically occupied the doorway, while +Alma already quivered behind her with impatience of her impoliteness. + +“Oh,” said the lady, who began to appear more and more a young lady, “Ah +didn't know but Ah had mistaken the hoase. Ah suppose it's rather late +to see the apawtments, and Ah most ask you to pawdon us.” She put this +tentatively, with a delicately growing recognition of Mrs. Leighton as +the lady of the house, and a humorous intelligence of the situation in +the glance she threw Alma over her mother's shoulder. “Ah'm afraid we +most have frightened you.” + +“Oh, not at all,” said Alma; and at the same time her mother said, “Will +you walk in, please?” + +The gentleman promptly removed his hat and made the Leightons an +inclusive bow. “You awe very kind, madam, and I am sorry for the +trouble we awe giving you.” He was tall and severe-looking, with a gray, +trooperish mustache and iron-gray hair, and, as Alma decided, iron-gray +eyes. His daughter was short, plump, and fresh-colored, with an effect +of liveliness that did not all express itself in her broad-vowelled, +rather formal speech, with its odd valuations of some of the auxiliary +verbs, and its total elision of the canine letter. + +“We awe from the Soath,” she said, “and we arrived this mawning, but we +got this cyahd from the brokah just befo' dinnah, and so we awe rathah +late.” + +“Not at all; it's only nine o'clock,” said Mrs. Leighton. She looked up +from the card the young lady had given her, and explained, “We haven't +got in our servants yet, and we had to answer the bell ourselves, and--” + +“You were frightened, of coase,” said the young lady, caressingly. + +The gentleman said they ought not to have come so late, and he offered +some formal apologies. + +“We should have been just as much scared any time after five o'clock,” + Alma said to the sympathetic intelligence in the girl's face. + +She laughed out. “Of coase! Ah would have my hawt in my moath all day +long, too, if Ah was living in a big hoase alone.” + +A moment of stiffness followed; Mrs. Leighton would have liked to +withdraw from the intimacy of the situation, but she did not know how. +It was very well for these people to assume to be what they pretended; +but, she reflected too late, she had no proof of it except the agent's +permit. They were all standing in the hall together, and she prolonged +the awkward pause while she examined the permit. “You are Mr. Woodburn?” + she asked, in a way that Alma felt implied he might not be. + +“Yes, madam; from Charlottesboag, Virginia,” he answered, with the +slight umbrage a man shows when the strange cashier turns his check over +and questions him before cashing it. + +Alma writhed internally, but outwardly remained subordinate; she +examined the other girl's dress, and decided in a superficial +consciousness that she had made her own bonnet. + +“I shall be glad to show you my rooms,” said Mrs. Leighton, with an +irrelevant sigh. “You must excuse their being not just as I should wish +them. We're hardly settled yet.” + +“Don't speak of it, madam,” said the gentleman, “if you can overlook the +trouble we awe giving you at such an unseasonable houah.” + +“Ah'm a hoasekeepah mahself,” Miss Woodburn joined in, “and Ah know ho' +to accyoant fo' everything.” + +Mrs. Leighton led the way up-stairs, and the young lady decided upon the +large front room and small side room on the third story. She said she +could take the small one, and the other was so large that her father +could both sleep and work in it. She seemed not ashamed to ask if Mrs. +Leighton's price was inflexible, but gave way laughing when her father +refused to have any bargaining, with a haughty self-respect which he +softened to deference for Mrs. Leighton. His impulsiveness opened the +way for some confidence from her, and before the affair was arranged +she was enjoying in her quality of clerical widow the balm of the +Virginians' reverent sympathy. They said they were church people +themselves. + +“Ah don't know what yo' mothah means by yo' hoase not being in oddah,” + the young lady said to Alma as they went down-stairs together. “Ah'm a +great hoasekeepah mahself, and Ah mean what Ah say.” + +They had all turned mechanically into the room where the Leightons were +sitting when the Woodburns rang: Mr. Woodburn consented to sit down, and +he remained listening to Mrs. Leighton while his daughter bustled up to +the sketches pinned round the room and questioned Alma about them. + +“Ah suppose you awe going to be a great awtust?” she said, in friendly +banter, when Alma owned to having done the things. “Ah've a great notion +to take a few lessons mahself. Who's yo' teachah?” + +Alma said she was drawing in Mr. Wetmore's class, and Miss Woodburn +said: “Well, it's just beautiful, Miss Leighton; it's grand. Ah suppose +it's raght expensive, now? Mah goodness! we have to cyoant the coast so +much nowadays; it seems to me we do nothing but cyoant it. Ah'd like to +hah something once without askin' the price.” + +“Well, if you didn't ask it,” said Alma, “I don't believe Mr. Wetmore +would ever know what the price of his lessons was. He has to think, when +you ask him.” + +“Why, he most be chomming,” said Miss Woodburn. “Perhaps Ah maght get +the lessons for nothing from him. Well, Ah believe in my soul Ah'll +trah. Now ho' did you begin? and ho' do you expect to get anything oat +of it?” She turned on Alma eyes brimming with a shrewd mixture of +fun and earnest, and Alma made note of the fact that she had an early +nineteenth-century face, round, arch, a little coquettish, but extremely +sensible and unspoiled-looking, such as used to be painted a good deal +in miniature at that period; a tendency of her brown hair to twine and +twist at the temples helped the effect; a high comb would have completed +it, Alma felt, if she had her bonnet off. It was almost a Yankee +country-girl type; but perhaps it appeared so to Alma because it was, +like that, pure Anglo-Saxon. Alma herself, with her dull, dark skin, +slender in figure, slow in speech, with aristocratic forms in her +long hands, and the oval of her fine face pointed to a long chin, +felt herself much more Southern in style than this blooming, bubbling, +bustling Virginian. + +“I don't know,” she answered, slowly. + +“Going to take po'traits,” suggested Miss Woodburn, “or just paint the +ahdeal?” A demure burlesque lurked in her tone. + +“I suppose I don't expect to paint at all,” said Alma. “I'm going to +illustrate books--if anybody will let me.” + +“Ah should think they'd just joamp at you,” said Miss Woodburn. “Ah'll +tell you what let's do, Miss Leighton: you make some pictures, and Ah'll +wrahte a book fo' them. Ah've got to do something. Ali maght as well +wrahte a book. You know we Southerners have all had to go to woak. But +Ah don't mand it. I tell papa I shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' +poo' if it wasn't fo' the inconvenience.” + +“Yes, it's inconvenient,” said Alma; “but you forget it when you're at +work, don't you think?” + +“Mah, yes! Perhaps that's one reason why poo' people have to woak so +hawd-to keep their wands off their poverty.” + +The girls both tittered, and turned from talking in a low tone with +their backs toward their elders, and faced them. + +“Well, Madison,” said Mr. Woodburn, “it is time we should go. I bid you +good-night, madam,” he bowed to Mrs. Leighton. “Good-night,” he bowed +again to Alma. + +His daughter took leave of them in formal phrase, but with a jolly +cordiality of manner that deformalized it. “We shall be roand raght soon +in the mawning, then,” she threatened at the door. + +“We shall be all ready for you,” Alma called after her down the steps. + +“Well, Alma?” her mother asked, when the door closed upon them. + +“She doesn't know any more about art,” said Alma, “than--nothing at all. +But she's jolly and good-hearted. She praised everything that was bad +in my sketches, and said she was going to take lessons herself. When a +person talks about taking lessons, as if they could learn it, you know +where they belong artistically.” + +Mrs. Leighton shook her head with a sigh. “I wish I knew where they +belonged financially. We shall have to get in two girls at once. I shall +have to go out the first thing in the morning, and then our troubles +will begin.” + +“Well, didn't you want them to begin? I will stay home and help you get +ready. Our prosperity couldn't begin without the troubles, if you +mean boarders, and boarders mean servants. I shall be very glad to be +afflicted with a cook for a while myself.” + +“Yes; but we don't know anything about these people, or whether they +will be able to pay us. Did she talk as if they were well off?” + +“She talked as if they were poor; poo' she called it.” + +“Yes, how queerly she pronounced,” said Mrs. Leighton. “Well, I ought to +have told them that I required the first week in advance.” + +“Mamma! If that's the way you're going to act!” + +“Oh, of course, I couldn't, after he wouldn't let her bargain for the +rooms. I didn't like that.” + +“I did. And you can see that they were perfect ladies; or at least one +of them.” Alma laughed at herself, but her mother did not notice. + +“Their being ladies won't help if they've got no money. It 'll make it +all the worse.” + +“Very well, then; we have no money, either. We're a match for them any +day there. We can show them that two can play at that game.” + + + + +III. + +Arnus Beaton's studio looked at first glance like many other painters' +studios. A gray wall quadrangularly vaulted to a large north light; +casts of feet, hands, faces hung to nails about; prints, sketches in oil +and water-color stuck here and there lower down; a rickety table, +with paint and palettes and bottles of varnish and siccative tossed +comfortlessly on it; an easel, with a strip of some faded mediaeval silk +trailing from it; a lay figure simpering in incomplete nakedness, with +its head on one side, and a stocking on one leg, and a Japanese dress +dropped before it; dusty rugs and skins kicking over the varnished +floor; canvases faced to the mop-board; an open trunk overflowing with +costumes: these features one might notice anywhere. But, besides, there +was a bookcase with an unusual number of books in it, and there was an +open colonial writing-desk, claw-footed, brass-handled, and scutcheoned, +with foreign periodicals--French and English--littering its leaf, and +some pages of manuscript scattered among them. Above all, there was +a sculptor's revolving stand, supporting a bust which Beaton was +modelling, with an eye fixed as simultaneously as possible on the clay +and on the head of the old man who sat on the platform beside it. + +Few men have been able to get through the world with several gifts to +advantage in all; and most men seem handicapped for the race if they +have more than one. But they are apparently immensely interested as well +as distracted by them. When Beaton was writing, he would have agreed, +up to a certain point, with any one who said literature was his proper +expression; but, then, when he was painting, up to a certain point, +he would have maintained against the world that he was a colorist, and +supremely a colorist. At the certain point in either art he was apt to +break away in a frenzy of disgust and wreak himself upon some other. +In these moods he sometimes designed elevations of buildings, very +striking, very original, very chic, very everything but habitable. It +was in this way that he had tried his hand on sculpture, which he had +at first approached rather slightingly as a mere decorative accessory +of architecture. But it had grown in his respect till he maintained +that the accessory business ought to be all the other way: that temples +should be raised to enshrine statues, not statues made to ornament +temples; that was putting the cart before the horse with a vengeance. +This was when he had carried a plastic study so far that the sculptors +who saw it said that Beaton might have been an architect, but would +certainly never be a sculptor. At the same time he did some hurried, +nervous things that had a popular charm, and that sold in plaster +reproductions, to the profit of another. Beaton justly despised the +popular charm in these, as well as in the paintings he sold from time to +time; he said it was flat burglary to have taken money for them, and +he would have been living almost wholly upon the bounty of the old +tombstone-cutter in Syracuse if it had not been for the syndicate +letters which he supplied to Fulkerson for ten dollars a week. + +They were very well done, but he hated doing them after the first two or +three, and had to be punched up for them by Fulkerson, who did not cease +to prize them, and who never failed to punch him up. Beaton being what +he was, Fulkerson was his creditor as well as patron; and Fulkerson +being what he was, had an enthusiastic patience with the elusive, +facile, adaptable, unpractical nature of Beaton. He was very proud of +his art-letters, as he called them; but then Fulkerson was proud of +everything he secured for his syndicate. The fact that he had secured it +gave it value; he felt as if he had written it himself. + +One art trod upon another's heels with Beaton. The day before he had +rushed upon canvas the conception of a picture which he said to himself +was glorious, and to others (at the table d'hote of Maroni) was not +bad. He had worked at it in a fury till the light failed him, and he +execrated the dying day. But he lit his lamp and transferred the process +of his thinking from the canvas to the opening of the syndicate letter +which he knew Fulkerson would be coming for in the morning. He remained +talking so long after dinner in the same strain as he had painted and +written in that he could not finish his letter that night. The next +morning, while he was making his tea for breakfast, the postman brought +him a letter from his father enclosing a little check, and begging him +with tender, almost deferential, urgence to come as lightly upon him as +possible, for just now his expenses were very heavy. It brought tears of +shame into Beaton's eyes--the fine, smouldering, floating eyes that many +ladies admired, under the thick bang--and he said to himself that if he +were half a man he would go home and go to work cutting gravestones in +his father's shop. But he would wait, at least, to finish his picture; +and as a sop to his conscience, to stay its immediate ravening, he +resolved to finish that syndicate letter first, and borrow enough money +from Fulkerson to be able to send his father's check back; or, if not +that, then to return the sum of it partly in Fulkerson's check. While he +still teemed with both of these good intentions the old man from whom +he was modelling his head of Judas came, and Beaton saw that he must get +through with him before he finished either the picture or the letter; he +would have to pay him for the time, anyway. He utilized the remorse with +which he was tingling to give his Judas an expression which he found +novel in the treatment of that character--a look of such touching, +appealing self-abhorrence that Beaton's artistic joy in it amounted to +rapture; between the breathless moments when he worked in dead silence +for an effect that was trying to escape him, he sang and whistled +fragments of comic opera. + +In one of the hushes there came a blow on the outside of the door that +made Beaton jump, and swear with a modified profanity that merged itself +in apostrophic prayer. He knew it must be Fulkerson, and after roaring +“Come in!” he said to the model, “That 'll do this morning, Lindau.” + +Fulkerson squared his feet in front of the bust and compared it by +fleeting glances with the old man as he got stiffly up and suffered +Beaton to help him on with his thin, shabby overcoat. + +“Can you come to-morrow, Lindau?” + +“No, not to-morrow, Mr. Peaton. I haf to zit for the young ladties.” + +“Oh!” said Beaton. “Wet-more's class? Is Miss Leighton doing you?” + +“I don't know their namess,” Lindau began, when Fulkerson said: + +“Hope you haven't forgotten mine, Mr. Lindau? I met you with Mr. March +at Maroni's one night.” Fulkerson offered him a universally shakable +hand. + +“Oh yes! I am gladt to zee you again, Mr. Vulkerson. And Mr. Marge--he +don't zeem to gome any more?” + +“Up to his eyes in work. Been moving on from Boston and getting settled, +and starting in on our enterprise. Beaton here hasn't got a very +flattering likeness of you, hey? Well, good-morning,” he said, for +Lindau appeared not to have heard him and was escaping with a bow +through the door. + +Beaton lit a cigarette which he pinched nervously between his lips +before he spoke. “You've come for that letter, I suppose, Fulkerson? It +isn't done.” + +Fulkerson turned from staring at the bust to which he had mounted. “What +you fretting about that letter for? I don't want your letter.” + +Beaton stopped biting his cigarette and looked at him. “Don't want my +letter? Oh, very good!” he bristled up. He took his cigarette from +his lips, and blew the smoke through his nostrils, and then looked at +Fulkerson. + +“No; I don't want your letter; I want you.” + +Beacon disdained to ask an explanation, but he internally lowered his +crest, while he continued to look at Fulkerson without changing his +defiant countenance. This suited Fulkerson well enough, and he went on +with relish, “I'm going out of the syndicate business, old man, and I'm +on a new thing.” He put his leg over the back of a chair and rested his +foot on its seat, and, with one hand in his pocket, he laid the scheme +of 'Every Other Week' before Beaton with the help of the other. The +artist went about the room, meanwhile, with an effect of indifference +which by no means offended Fulkerson. He took some water into his mouth +from a tumbler, which he blew in a fine mist over the head of Judas +before swathing it in a dirty cotton cloth; he washed his brushes and +set his palette; he put up on his easel the picture he had blocked on +the day before, and stared at it with a gloomy face; then he gathered +the sheets of his unfinished letter together and slid them into a drawer +of his writing-desk. By the time he had finished and turned again to +Fulkerson, Fulkerson was saying: “I did think we could have the first +number out by New-Year's; but it will take longer than that--a month +longer; but I'm not sorry, for the holidays kill everything; and by +February, or the middle of February, people will get their breath again +and begin to look round and ask what's new. Then we'll reply in the +language of Shakespeare and Milton, 'Every Other Week; and don't you +forget it.'” He took down his leg and asked, “Got a pipe of 'baccy +anywhere?” + +Beaton nodded at a clay stem sticking out of a Japanese vase of bronze +on his mantel. “There's yours,” he said; and Fulkerson said, “Thanks,” + and filled the pipe and sat down and began to smoke tranquilly. + +Beaton saw that he would have to speak now. “And what do you want with +me?” + +“You? Oh yes,” Fulkerson humorously dramatized a return to himself from +a pensive absence. “Want you for the art department.” + +Beaton shook his head. “I'm not your man, Fulkerson,” he said, +compassionately. “You want a more practical hand, one that's in touch +with what's going. I'm getting further and further away from this +century and its claptrap. I don't believe in your enterprise; I don't +respect it, and I won't have anything to do with it. It would-choke me, +that kind of thing.” + +“That's all right,” said Fulkerson. He esteemed a man who was not going +to let himself go cheap. “Or if it isn't, we can make it. You and March +will pull together first-rate. I don't care how much ideal you put into +the thing; the more the better. I can look after the other end of the +schooner myself.” + +“You don't understand me,” said Beaton. “I'm not trying to get a rise +out of you. I'm in earnest. What you want is some man who can have +patience with mediocrity putting on the style of genius, and with genius +turning mediocrity on his hands. I haven't any luck with men; I don't +get on with them; I'm not popular.” Beaton recognized the fact with the +satisfaction which it somehow always brings to human pride. + +“So much the better!” Fulkerson was ready for him at this point. “I +don't want you to work the old-established racket the reputations. +When I want them I'll go to them with a pocketful of rocks--knock-down +argument. But my idea is to deal with the volunteer material. Look at +the way the periodicals are carried on now! Names! names! names! In a +country that's just boiling over with literary and artistic ability of +every kind the new fellows have no chance. The editors all engage +their material. I don't believe there are fifty volunteer contributions +printed in a year in all the New York magazines. It's all wrong; it's +suicidal. 'Every Other Week' is going back to the good old anonymous +system, the only fair system. It's worked well in literature, and it +will work well in art.” + +“It won't work well in art,” said Beaton. “There you have a totally +different set of conditions. What you'll get by inviting volunteer +illustrations will be a lot of amateur trash. And how are you going to +submit your literature for illustration? It can't be done. At any rate, +I won't undertake to do it.” + +“We'll get up a School of Illustration,” said Fulkerson, with cynical +security. “You can read the things and explain 'em, and your pupils can +make their sketches under your eye. They wouldn't be much further +out than most illustrations are if they never knew what they were +illustrating. You might select from what comes in and make up a sort of +pictorial variations to the literature without any particular reference +to it. Well, I understand you to accept?” + +“No, you don't.” + +“That is, to consent to help us with your advice and criticism. That's +all I want. It won't commit you to anything; and you can be as anonymous +as anybody.” At the door Fulkerson added: “By-the-way, the new man--the +fellow that's taken my old syndicate business--will want you to keep +on; but I guess he's going to try to beat you down on the price of the +letters. He's going in for retrenchment. I brought along a check for +this one; I'm to pay for that.” He offered Beaton an envelope. + +“I can't take it, Fulkerson. The letter's paid for already.” Fulkerson +stepped forward and laid the envelope on the table among the tubes of +paint. + +“It isn't the letter merely. I thought you wouldn't object to a little +advance on your 'Every Other Week' work till you kind of got started.” + +Beaton remained inflexible. “It can't be done, Fulkerson. Don't I tell +you I can't sell myself out to a thing I don't believe in? Can't you +understand that?” + +“Oh yes; I can understand that first-rate. I don't want to buy you; I +want to borrow you. It's all right. See? Come round when you can; I'd +like to introduce you to old March. That's going to be our address.” He +put a card on the table beside the envelope, and Beaton allowed him +to go without making him take the check back. He had remembered his +father's plea; that unnerved him, and he promised himself again to +return his father's poor little check and to work on that picture and +give it to Fulkerson for the check he had left and for his back debts. +He resolved to go to work on the picture at once; he had set his palette +for it; but first he looked at Fulkerson's check. It was for only fifty +dollars, and the canny Scotch blood in Beaton rebelled; he could not let +this picture go for any such money; he felt a little like a man whose +generosity has been trifled with. The conflict of emotions broke him up, +and he could not work. + + + + +IV + +The day wasted away in Beaton's hands; at half-past four o'clock he went +out to tea at the house of a lady who was At Home that afternoon from +four till seven. By this time Beaton was in possession of one of those +other selves of which we each have several about us, and was again the +laconic, staccato, rather worldlified young artist whose moments of a +controlled utterance and a certain distinction of manner had commended +him to Mrs. Horn's fancy in the summer at St. Barnaby. + +Mrs. Horn's rooms were large, and they never seemed very full, though +this perhaps was because people were always so quiet. The ladies, who +outnumbered the men ten to one, as they always do at a New York tea, +were dressed in sympathy with the low tone every one spoke in, and +with the subdued light which gave a crepuscular uncertainty to the few +objects, the dim pictures, the unexcited upholstery, of the rooms. One +breathed free of bric-a-brac there, and the new-comer breathed softly as +one does on going into church after service has begun. This might be a +suggestion from the voiceless behavior of the man-servant who let +you in, but it was also because Mrs. Horn's At Home was a ceremony, a +decorum, and not festival. At far greater houses there was more gayety, +at richer houses there was more freedom; the suppression at Mrs. Horn's +was a personal, not a social, effect; it was an efflux of her character, +demure, silentious, vague, but very correct. + +Beaton easily found his way to her around the grouped skirts and among +the detached figures, and received a pressure of welcome from the hand +which she momentarily relaxed from the tea-pot. She sat behind a table +put crosswise of a remote corner, and offered tea to people whom a niece +of hers received provisionally or sped finally in the outer room. They +did not usually take tea, and when they did they did not usually drink +it; but Beaton was, feverishly glad of his cup; he took rum and lemon in +it, and stood talking at Mrs. Horn's side till the next arrival should +displace him: he talked in his French manner. + +“I have been hoping to see you,” she said. “I wanted to ask you about +the Leightons. Did they really come?” + +“I believe so. They are in town--yes. I haven't seen them.” + +“Then you don't know how they're getting on--that pretty creature, with +her cleverness, and poor Mrs. Leighton? I was afraid they were venturing +on a rash experiment. Do you know where they are?” + +“In West Eleventh Street somewhere. Miss Leighton is in Mr. Wetmore's +class.” + +“I must look them up. Do you know their number?” + +“Not at the moment. I can find out.” + +“Do,” said Mrs. Horn. “What courage they must have, to plunge into New +York as they've done! I really didn't think they would. I wonder if +they've succeeded in getting anybody into their house yet?” + +“I don't know,” said Beaton. + +“I discouraged their coming all I could,” she sighed, “and I suppose you +did, too. But it's quite useless trying to make people in a place like +St. Barnaby understand how it is in town.” + +“Yes,” said Beaton. He stirred his tea, while inwardly he tried to +believe that he had really discouraged the Leightons from coming to New +York. Perhaps the vexation of his failure made him call Mrs. Horn in his +heart a fraud. + +“Yes,” she went on, “it is very, very hard. And when they won't +understand, and rush on their doom, you feel that they are going to hold +you respons--” + +Mrs. Horn's eyes wandered from Beaton; her voice faltered in the faded +interest of her remark, and then rose with renewed vigor in greeting a +lady who came up and stretched her glove across the tea-cups. + +Beaton got himself away and out of the house with a much briefer adieu +to the niece than he had meant to make. The patronizing compassion of +Mrs. Horn for the Leightons filled him with indignation toward her, +toward himself. There was no reason why he should not have ignored +them as he had done; but there was a feeling. It was his nature to +be careless, and he had been spoiled into recklessness; he neglected +everybody, and only remembered them when it suited his whim or his +convenience; but he fiercely resented the inattentions of others toward +himself. He had no scruple about breaking an engagement or failing +to keep an appointment; he made promises without thinking of their +fulfilment, and not because he was a faithless person, but because he +was imaginative, and expected at the time to do what he said, but was +fickle, and so did not. As most of his shortcomings were of a society +sort, no great harm was done to anybody else. He had contracted somewhat +the circle of his acquaintance by what some people called his rudeness, +but most people treated it as his oddity, and were patient with it. One +lady said she valued his coming when he said he would come because it +had the charm of the unexpected. “Only it shows that it isn't always the +unexpected that happens,” she explained. + +It did not occur to him that his behavior was immoral; he did not +realize that it was creating a reputation if not a character for him. +While we are still young we do not realize that our actions have this +effect. It seems to us that people will judge us from what we think and +feel. Later we find out that this is impossible; perhaps we find it out +too late; some of us never find it out at all. + +In spite of his shame about the Leightons, Beaton had no present +intention of looking them up or sending Mrs. Horn their address. As +a matter of fact, he never did send it; but he happened to meet Mr. +Wetmore and his wife at the restaurant where he dined, and he got it +of the painter for himself. He did not ask him how Miss Leighton was +getting on; but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a tacit text, on +the futility of women generally going in for art. “Even when they have +talent they've got too much against them. Where a girl doesn't seem very +strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount of chic is going to help.” + +His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as women always do. + +“No, Dolly,” he persisted; “she'd better be home milking the cows and +leading the horse to water.” + +“Do you think she'd better be up till two in the morning at balls and +going all day to receptions and luncheons?” + +“Oh, guess it isn't a question of that, even if she weren't drawing. You +knew them at home,” he said to Beaton. + +“Yes.” + +“I remember. Her mother said you suggested me. Well, the girl has some +notion of it; there's no doubt about that. But--she's a woman. The +trouble with these talented girls is that they're all woman. If they +weren't, there wouldn't be much chance for the men, Beaton. But we've +got Providence on our own side from the start. I'm able to watch all +their inspirations with perfect composure. I know just how soon it's +going to end in nervous breakdown. Somebody ought to marry them all and +put them out of their misery.” + +“And what will you do with your students who are married already?” his +wife said. She felt that she had let him go on long enough. + +“Oh, they ought to get divorced.” + +“You ought to be ashamed to take their money if that's what you think of +them.” + +“My dear, I have a wife to support.” + +Beaton intervened with a question. “Do you mean that Miss Leighton isn't +standing it very well?” + +“How do I know? She isn't the kind that bends; she's the kind that +breaks.” + +After a little silence Mrs. Wetmore asked, “Won't you come home with us, +Mr. Beaton?” + +“Thank you; no. I have an engagement.” + +“I don't see why that should prevent you,” said Wetmore. “But you always +were a punctilious cuss. Well!” + +Beaton lingered over his cigar; but no one else whom he knew came in, +and he yielded to the threefold impulse of conscience, of curiosity, +of inclination, in going to call at the Leightons'. He asked for the +ladies, and the maid showed him into the parlor, where he found Mrs. +Leighton and Miss Woodburn. + +The widow met him with a welcome neatly marked by resentment; she meant +him to feel that his not coming sooner had been noticed. Miss Woodburn +bubbled and gurgled on, and did what she could to mitigate his +punishment, but she did not feel authorized to stay it, till Mrs. +Leighton, by studied avoidance of her daughter's name, obliged Beaton to +ask for her. Then Miss Woodburn caught up her work, and said, “Ah'll go +and tell her, Mrs. Leighton.” At the top of the stairs she found Alma, +and Alma tried to make it seem as if she had not been standing there. +“Mah goodness, chald! there's the handsomest young man asking for you +down there you evah saw. Alh told you' mothah Ah would come up fo' you.” + +“What--who is it?” + +“Don't you know? But bo' could you? He's got the most beautiful eyes, +and he wea's his hai' in a bang, and he talks English like it was +something else, and his name's Mr. Beaton.” + +“Did he-ask for me?” said Alma, with a dreamy tone. She put her hand on +the stairs rail, and a little shiver ran over her. + +“Didn't I tell you? Of coase he did! And you ought to go raght down if +you want to save the poo' fellah's lahfe; you' mothah's just freezin' +him to death.” + + + + +V. + +“She is?” cried Alma. “Tchk!” She flew downstairs, and flitted swiftly +into the room, and fluttered up to Beaton, and gave him a crushing +hand-shake. + +“How very kind, of you to come and see us, Mr. Beaton! When did you come +to New York? Don't you find it warm here? We've only just lighted the +furnace, but with this mild weather it seems too early. Mamma does keep +it so hot!” She rushed about opening doors and shutting registers, and +then came back and sat facing him from the sofa with a mask of radiant +cordiality. “How have you been since we saw you?” + +“Very well,” said Beaton. “I hope you're well, Miss Leighton?” + +“Oh, perfectly! I think New York agrees with us both wonderfully. I +never knew such air. And to think of our not having snow yet! I should +think everybody would want to come here! Why don't you come, Mr. +Beaton?” + +Beaton lifted his eyes and looked at her. “I--I live in New York,” he +faltered. + +“In New York City!” she exclaimed. + +“Surely, Alma,” said her mother, “you remember Mr. Beaton's telling us +he lived in New York.” + +“But I thought you came from Rochester; or was it Syracuse? I always get +those places mixed up.” + +“Probably I told you my father lived at Syracuse. I've been in New York +ever since I came home from Paris,” said Beaton, with the confusion of a +man who feels himself played upon by a woman. + +“From Paris!” Alma echoed, leaning forward, with her smiling mask tight +on. “Wasn't it Munich where you studied?” + +“I was at Munich, too. I met Wetmore there.” + +“Oh, do you know Mr. Wetmore?” + +“Why, Alma,” her mother interposed again, “it was Mr. Beaton who told +you of Mr. Wetmore.” + +“Was it? Why, yes, to be sure. It was Mrs. Horn who suggested Mr. +Ilcomb. I remember now. I can't thank you enough for having sent me +to Mr. Wetmore, Mr. Beaton. Isn't he delightful? Oh yes, I'm a perfect +Wetmorian, I can assure you. The whole class is the same way.” + +“I just met him and Mrs. Wetmore at dinner,” said Beaton, attempting the +recovery of something that he had lost through the girl's shining ease +and steely sprightliness. She seemed to him so smooth and hard, with +a repellent elasticity from which he was flung off. “I hope you're not +working too hard, Miss Leighton?” + +“Oh no! I enjoy every minute of it, and grow stronger on it. Do I look +very much wasted away?” She looked him full in the face, brilliantly +smiling, and intentionally beautiful. + +“No,” he said, with a slow sadness; “I never saw you looking better.” + +“Poor Mr. Beaton!” she said, in recognition of his doleful tune. “It +seems to be quite a blow.” + +“Oh no--” + +“I remember all the good advice you used to give me about not working +too hard, and probably it's that that's saved my life--that and the +house-hunting. Has mamma told you of our adventures in getting settled? + +“Some time we must. It was such fun! And didn't you think we were +fortunate to get such a pretty house? You must see both our parlors.” + She jumped up, and her mother followed her with a bewildered look as she +ran into the back parlor and flashed up the gas. + +“Come in here, Mr. Beaton. I want to show you the great feature of +the house.” She opened the low windows that gave upon a glazed veranda +stretching across the end of the room. “Just think of this in New York! +You can't see it very well at night, but when the southern sun pours in +here all the afternoon--” + +“Yes, I can imagine it,” he said. He glanced up at the bird-cage hanging +from the roof. “I suppose Gypsy enjoys it.” + +“You remember Gypsy?” she said; and she made a cooing, kissing little +noise up at the bird, who responded drowsily. “Poor old Gypsum! Well, +he sha'n't be disturbed. Yes, it's Gyp's delight, and Colonel Woodburn +likes to write here in the morning. Think of us having a real live +author in the house! And Miss Woodburn: I'm so glad you've seen her! +They're Southern people.” + +“Yes, that was obvious in her case.” + +“From her accent? Isn't it fascinating? I didn't believe I could ever +endure Southerners, but we're like one family with the Woodburns. I +should think you'd want to paint Miss Woodburn. Don't you think her +coloring is delicious? And such a quaint kind of eighteenth-century type +of beauty! But she's perfectly lovely every way, and everything she says +is so funny. The Southerners seem to be such great talkers; better than +we are, don't you think?” + +“I don't know,” said Beaton, in pensive discouragement. He was sensible +of being manipulated, operated, but he was helpless to escape from the +performer or to fathom her motives. His pensiveness passed into gloom, +and was degenerating into sulky resentment when he went away, after +several failures to get back to the old ground he had held in relation +to Alma. He retrieved something of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma +glittered upon him to the last with a keen impenetrable candor, a +child-like singleness of glance, covering unfathomable reserve. + +“Well, Alma,” said her mother, when the door had closed upon him. + +“Well, mother.” Then, after a moment, she said, with a rush: “Did you +think I was going to let him suppose we were piqued at his not coming? +Did you suppose I was going to let him patronize us, or think that we +were in the least dependent on his favor or friendship?” + +Her mother did not attempt to answer her. She merely said, “I shouldn't +think he would come any more.” + +“Well, we have got on so far without him; perhaps we can live through +the rest of the winter.” + +“I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He was quite stupefied. I could +see that he didn't know what to make of you.” + +“He's not required to make anything of me,” said Alma. + +“Do you think he really believed you had forgotten all those things?” + +“Impossible to say, mamma.” + +“Well, I don't think it was quite right, Alma.” + +“I'll leave him to you the next time. Miss Woodburn said you were +freezing him to death when I came down.” + +“That was quite different. But, there won't be any next time, I'm +afraid,” sighed Mrs. Leighton. + +Beaton went home feeling sure there would not. He tried to read when he +got to his room; but Alma's looks, tones, gestures, whirred through and +through the woof of the story like shuttles; he could not keep them out, +and he fell asleep at last, not because he forgot them, but because he +forgave them. He was able to say to himself that he had been justly cut +off from kindness which he knew how to value in losing it. He did not +expect ever to right himself in Alma's esteem, but he hoped some day to +let her know that he had understood. It seemed to him that it would be +a good thing if she should find it out after his death. He imagined her +being touched by it under those circumstances. + + + + +VI. + +In the morning it seemed to Beaton that he had done himself injustice. +When he uncovered his Judas and looked at it, he could not believe +that the man who was capable of such work deserved the punishment +Miss Leighton had inflicted upon him. He still forgave her, but in the +presence of a thing like that he could not help respecting himself; he +believed that if she could see it she would be sorry that she had cut +herself off from his acquaintance. He carried this strain of conviction +all through his syndicate letter, which he now took out of his desk and +finished, with an increasing security of his opinions and a mounting +severity in his judgments. He retaliated upon the general condition of +art among us the pangs of wounded vanity, which Alma had made him feel, +and he folded up his manuscript and put it in his pocket, almost +healed of his humiliation. He had been able to escape from its sting so +entirely while he was writing that the notion of making his life more +and more literary commended itself to him. As it was now evident +that the future was to be one of renunciation, of self-forgetting, an +oblivion tinged with bitterness, he formlessly reasoned in favor of +reconsidering his resolution against Fulkerson's offer. One must call +it reasoning, but it was rather that swift internal dramatization which +constantly goes on in persons of excitable sensibilities, and which now +seemed to sweep Beaton physically along toward the 'Every Other Week' +office, and carried his mind with lightning celerity on to a time when +he should have given that journal such quality and authority in matters +of art as had never been enjoyed by any in America before. With the +prosperity which he made attend his work he changed the character of the +enterprise, and with Fulkerson's enthusiastic support he gave the public +an art journal of as high grade as 'Les Lettres et les Arts', and very +much that sort of thing. All this involved now the unavailing regret of +Alma Leighton, and now his reconciliation with her they were married +in Grace Church, because Beaton had once seen a marriage there, and had +intended to paint a picture of it some time. + +Nothing in these fervid fantasies prevented his responding with due +dryness to Fulkerson's cheery “Hello, old man!” when he found himself +in the building fitted up for the 'Every Other Week' office. Fulkerson's +room was back of the smaller one occupied by the bookkeeper; they had +been respectively the reception-room and dining-room of the little place +in its dwelling-house days, and they had been simply and tastefully +treated in their transformation into business purposes. The narrow +old trim of the doors and windows had been kept, and the quaintly +ugly marble mantels. The architect had said, Better let them stay they +expressed epoch, if not character. + +“Well, have you come round to go to work? Just hang up your coat on the +floor anywhere,” Fulkerson went on. + +“I've come to bring you that letter,” said Beaton, all the more +haughtily because he found that Fulkerson was not alone when he welcomed +him in these free and easy terms. There was a quiet-looking man, rather +stout, and a little above the middle height, with a full, close-cropped +iron-gray beard, seated beyond the table where Fulkerson tilted himself +back, with his knees set against it; and leaning against the mantel +there was a young man with a singularly gentle face, in which the look +of goodness qualified and transfigured a certain simplicity. His large +blue eyes were somewhat prominent; and his rather narrow face was drawn +forward in a nose a little too long perhaps, if it had not been for the +full chin deeply cut below the lip, and jutting firmly forward. + +“Introduce you to Mr. March, our editor, Mr. Beaton,” Fulkerson said, +rolling his head in the direction of the elder man; and then nodding +it toward the younger, he said, “Mr. Dryfoos, Mr. Beaton.” Beaton shook +hands with March, and then with Mr. Dryfoos, and Fulkerson went on, +gayly: “We were just talking of you, Beaton--well, you know the old +saying. Mr. March, as I told you, is our editor, and Mr. Dryfoos has +charge of the publishing department--he's the counting-room incarnate, +the source of power, the fountain of corruption, the element that +prevents journalism being the high and holy thing that it would be if +there were no money in it.” Mr. Dryfoos turned his large, mild eyes upon +Beaton, and laughed with the uneasy concession which people make to a +character when they do not quite approve of the character's language. +“What Mr. March and I are trying to do is to carry on this thing so that +there won't be any money in it--or very little; and we're planning +to give the public a better article for the price than it's ever had +before. Now here's a dummy we've had made up for 'Every Other Week', and +as we've decided to adopt it, we would naturally like your opinion of +it, so's to know what opinion to have of you.” He reached forward and +pushed toward Beaton a volume a little above the size of the ordinary +duodecimo book; its ivory-white pebbled paper cover was prettily +illustrated with a water-colored design irregularly washed over the +greater part of its surface: quite across the page at top, and narrowing +from right to left as it descended. In the triangular space left blank +the title of the periodical and the publisher's imprint were tastefully +lettered so as to be partly covered by the background of color. + +“It's like some of those Tartarin books of Daudet's,” said Beacon, +looking at it with more interest than he suffered to be seen. “But it's +a book, not a magazine.” He opened its pages of thick, mellow white +paper, with uncut leaves, the first few pages experimentally printed in +the type intended to be used, and illustrated with some sketches drawn +into and over the text, for the sake of the effect. + +“A Daniel--a Daniel come to judgment! Sit down, Dan'el, and take it +easy.” Fulkerson pushed a chair toward Beaton, who dropped into it. +“You're right, Dan'el; it's a book, to all practical intents and +purposes. And what we propose to do with the American public is to +give it twenty-four books like this a year--a complete library--for the +absurd sum of six dollars. We don't intend to sell 'em--it's no name +for the transaction--but to give 'em. And what we want to get out of +you--beg, borrow, buy, or steal from you is an opinion whether we shall +make the American public this princely present in paper covers like +this, or in some sort of flexible boards, so they can set them on the +shelf and say no more about it. Now, Dan'el, come to judgment, as our +respected friend Shylock remarked.” + +Beacon had got done looking at the dummy, and he dropped it on the table +before Fulkerson, who pushed it away, apparently to free himself from +partiality. “I don't know anything about the business side, and I can't +tell about the effect of either style on the sales; but you'll spoil +the whole character of the cover if you use anything thicker than that +thickish paper.” + +“All right; very good; first-rate. The ayes have it. Paper it is. I +don't mind telling you that we had decided for that paper before you +came in. Mr. March wanted it, because he felt in his bones just the +way you do about it, and Mr. Dryfoos wanted it, because he's the +counting-room incarnate, and it's cheaper; and I 'wanted it, because +I always like to go with the majority. Now what do you think of that +little design itself?” + +“The sketch?” Beaton pulled the book toward him again and looked at it +again. “Rather decorative. Drawing's not remarkable. Graceful; rather +nice.” He pushed the book away again, and Fulkerson pulled it to his +aide of the table. + +“Well, that's a piece of that amateur trash you despise so much. I went +to a painter I know-by-the-way, he was guilty of suggesting you for this +thing, but I told him I was ahead of him--and I got him to submit my +idea to one of his class, and that's the result. Well, now, there ain't +anything in this world that sells a book like a pretty cover, and we're +going to have a pretty cover for 'Every Other Week' every time. We've +cut loose from the old traditional quarto literary newspaper size, and +we've cut loose from the old two-column big page magazine size; we're +going to have a duodecimo page, clear black print, and paper that 'll +make your mouth water; and we're going to have a fresh illustration for +the cover of each number, and we ain't agoing to give the public any +rest at all. Sometimes we're going to have a delicate little landscape +like this, and sometimes we're going to have an indelicate little +figure, or as much so as the law will allow.” + +The young man leaning against the mantelpiece blushed a sort of protest. + +March smiled and said, dryly, “Those are the numbers that Mr. Fulkerson +is going to edit himself.” + +“Exactly. And Mr. Beaton, here, is going to supply the floating females, +gracefully airing themselves against a sunset or something of that +kind.” Beaton frowned in embarrassment, while Fulkerson went on +philosophically; “It's astonishing how you fellows can keep it up at +this stage of the proceedings; you can paint things that your harshest +critic would be ashamed to describe accurately; you're as free as the +theatre. But that's neither here nor there. What I'm after is the fact +that we're going to have variety in our title-pages, and we are going to +have novelty in the illustrations of the body of the book. March, here, +if he had his own way, wouldn't have any illustrations at all.” + +“Not because I don't like them, Mr. Beacon,” March interposed, “but +because I like them too much. I find that I look at the pictures in an +illustrated article, but I don't read the article very much, and I fancy +that's the case with most other people. You've got to doing them so +prettily that you take our eyes off the literature, if you don't take +our minds off.” + +“Like the society beauties on the stage: people go in for the beauty +so much that they don't know what the play is. But the box-office gets +there all the same, and that's what Mr. Dryfoos wants.” Fulkerson looked +up gayly at Mr. Dryfoos, who smiled deprecatingly. + +“It was different,” March went on, “when the illustrations used to be +bad. Then the text had some chance.” + +“Old legitimate drama days, when ugliness and genius combined to storm +the galleries,” said Fulkerson. + +“We can still make them bad enough,” said Beaton, ignoring Fulkerson in +his remark to March. + +Fulkerson took the reply upon himself. “Well, you needn't make 'em so +bad as the old-style cuts; but you can make them unobtrusive, modestly +retiring. We've got hold of a process something like that those French +fellows gave Daudet thirty-five thousand dollars to write a novel to use +with; kind of thing that begins at one side; or one corner, and spreads +in a sort of dim religious style over the print till you can't tell +which is which. Then we've got a notion that where the pictures don't +behave quite so sociably, they can be dropped into the text, like +a little casual remark, don't you know, or a comment that has some +connection, or maybe none at all, with what's going on in the story. +Something like this.” Fulkerson took away one knee from the table long +enough to open the drawer, and pull from it a book that he shoved toward +Beacon. “That's a Spanish book I happened to see at Brentano's, and I +froze to it on account of the pictures. I guess they're pretty good.” + +“Do you expect to get such drawings in this country?” asked Beaton, +after a glance at the book. “Such character--such drama? You won't.” + +“Well, I'm not so sure,” said Fulkerson, “come to get our amateurs +warmed up to the work. But what I want is to get the physical effect, +so to speak-get that sized picture into our page, and set the fashion +of it. I shouldn't care if the illustration was sometimes confined to an +initial letter and a tail-piece.” + +“Couldn't be done here. We haven't the touch. We're good in some things, +but this isn't in our way,” said Beaton, stubbornly. “I can't think of a +man who could do it; that is, among those that would.” + +“Well, think of some woman, then,” said Fulkerson, easily. “I've got a +notion that the women could help us out on this thing, come to get 'em +interested. There ain't anything so popular as female fiction; why not +try female art?” + +“The females themselves have been supposed to have been trying it for a +good while,” March suggested; and Mr. Dryfoos laughed nervously; Beaton +remained solemnly silent. + +“Yes, I know,” Fulkerson assented. “But I don't mean that kind exactly. +What we want to do is to work the 'ewig Weibliche' in this concern. We +want to make a magazine that will go for the women's fancy every time. +I don't mean with recipes for cooking and fashions and personal gossip +about authors and society, but real high-tone literature that will show +women triumphing in all the stories, or else suffering tremendously. +We've got to recognize that women form three-fourths of the reading +public in this country, and go for their tastes and their sensibilities +and their sex-piety along the whole line. They do like to think that +women can do things better than men; and if we can let it leak out +and get around in the papers that the managers of 'Every Other Week' +couldn't stir a peg in the line of the illustrations they wanted till +they got a lot of God-gifted girls to help them, it 'll make the fortune +of the thing. See?” + +He looked sunnily round at the other men, and March said: “You ought to +be in charge of a Siamese white elephant, Fulkerson. It's a disgrace to +be connected with you.” + +“It seems to me,” said Beaton, “that you'd better get a God-gifted girl +for your art editor.” + +Fulkerson leaned alertly forward, and touched him on the shoulder, with +a compassionate smile. “My dear boy, they haven't got the genius of +organization. It takes a very masculine man for that--a man who combines +the most subtle and refined sympathies with the most forceful purposes +and the most ferruginous will-power. Which his name is Angus Beaton, and +here he sets!” + +The others laughed with Fulkerson at his gross burlesque of flattery, +and Beaton frowned sheepishly. “I suppose you understand this man's +style,” he growled toward March. + +“He does, my son,” said Fulkerson. “He knows that I cannot tell a lie.” + He pulled out his watch, and then got suddenly upon his feet. + +“It's quarter of twelve, and I've got an appointment.” Beaton rose too, +and Fulkerson put the two books in his lax hands. “Take these along, +Michelangelo Da Vinci, my friend, and put your multitudinous mind on +them for about an hour, and let us hear from you to-morrow. We hang upon +your decision.” + +“There's no deciding to be done,” said Beaton. “You can't combine the +two styles. They'd kill each other.” + +“A Dan'el, a Dan'el come to judgment! I knew you could help us out! +Take 'em along, and tell us which will go the furthest with the 'ewig +Weibliche.' Dryfoos, I want a word with you.” He led the way into the +front room, flirting an airy farewell to Beaton with his hand as he +went. + + + + +VII. + +March and Beaton remained alone together for a moment, and March said: +“I hope you will think it worth while to take hold with us, Mr. Beaton. +Mr. Fulkerson puts it in his own way, of course; but we really want to +make a nice thing of the magazine.” He had that timidity of the elder in +the presence of the younger man which the younger, preoccupied with +his own timidity in the presence of the elder, cannot imagine. Besides, +March was aware of the gulf that divided him as a literary man from +Beaton as an artist, and he only ventured to feel his way toward +sympathy with him. “We want to make it good; we want to make it high. +Fulkerson is right about aiming to please the women, but of course he +caricatures the way of going about it.” + +For answer, Beaton flung out, “I can't go in for a thing I don't +understand the plan of.” + +March took it for granted that he had wounded some exposed sensibility, +of Beaton's. He continued still more deferentially: “Mr. Fulkerson's +notion--I must say the notion is his, evolved from his syndicate +experience--is that we shall do best in fiction to confine our selves +to short stories, and make each number complete in itself. He found that +the most successful things he could furnish his newspapers were short +stories; we Americans are supposed to excel in writing them; and most +people begin with them in fiction; and it's Mr. Fulkerson's idea to work +unknown talent, as he says, and so he thinks he can not only get them +easily, but can gradually form a school of short-story writers. I can't +say I follow him altogether, but I respect his experience. We shall not +despise translations of short stories, but otherwise the matter will all +be original, and, of course, it won't all be short stories. We shall use +sketches of travel, and essays, and little dramatic studies, and bits of +biography and history; but all very light, and always short enough to +be completed in a single number. Mr. Fulkerson believes in pictures, and +most of the things would be capable of illustration.” + +“I see,” said Beaton. + +“I don't know but this is the whole affair,” said March, beginning to +stiffen a little at the young man's reticence. + +“I understand. Thank you for taking the trouble to explain. +Good-morning.” Beaton bowed himself off, without offering to shake +hands. + +Fulkerson came in after a while from the outer office, and Mr. Dryfoos +followed him. “Well, what do you think of our art editor?” + +“Is he our art editor?” asked March. “I wasn't quite certain when he +left.” + +“Did he take the books?” + +“Yes, he took the books.” + +“I guess he's all right, then.” Fulkerson added, in concession to the +umbrage he detected in March. + +“Beaton has his times of being the greatest ass in the solar system, but +he usually takes it out in personal conduct. When it comes to work, he's +a regular horse.” + +“He appears to have compromised for the present by being a perfect +mule,” said March. + +“Well, he's in a transition state,” Fulkerson allowed. “He's the man for +us. He really understands what we want. You'll see; he'll catch on. That +lurid glare of his will wear off in the course of time. He's really a +good fellow when you take him off his guard; and he's full of ideas. +He's spread out over a good deal of ground at present, and so he's +pretty thin; but come to gather him up into a lump, there's a good deal +of substance to him. Yes, there is. He's a first-rate critic, and he's a +nice fellow with the other artists. They laugh at his universality, but +they all like him. He's the best kind of a teacher when he condescends +to it; and he's just the man to deal with our volunteer work. Yes, sir, +he's a prize. Well, I must go now.” + +Fulkerson went out of the street door, and then came quickly back. +“By-the-bye, March, I saw that old dynamiter of yours round at Beaton's +room yesterday.” + +“What old dynamiter of mine?” + +“That old one-handed Dutchman--friend of your youth--the one we saw at +Maroni's--” + +“Oh-Lindau!” said March, with a vague pang of self reproach for having +thought of Lindau so little after the first flood of his tender feeling +toward him was past. + +“Yes, our versatile friend was modelling him as Judas Iscariot. Lindau +makes a first-rate Judas, and Beaton has got a big thing in that head +if he works the religious people right. But what I was thinking of was +this--it struck me just as I was going out of the door: Didn't you tell +me Lindau knew forty or fifty, different languages?” + +“Four or five, yes.” + +“Well, we won't quarrel about the number. The question is, Why not work +him in the field of foreign literature? You can't go over all their +reviews and magazines, and he could do the smelling for you, if you +could trust his nose. Would he know a good thing?” + +“I think he would,” said March, on whom the scope of Fulkerson's +suggestion gradually opened. “He used to have good taste, and he must +know the ground. Why, it's a capital idea, Fulkerson! Lindau wrote very +fair English, and he could translate, with a little revision.” + +“And he would probably work cheap. Well, hadn't you better see him about +it? I guess it 'll be quite a windfall for him.” + +“Yes, it will. I'll look him up. Thank you for the suggestion, +Fulkerson.” + +“Oh, don't mention it! I don't mind doing 'Every Other Week' a good turn +now and then when it comes in my way.” Fulkerson went out again, and +this time March was finally left with Mr. Dryfoos. + +“Mrs. March was very sorry not to be at home when your sisters called +the other day. She wished me to ask if they had any afternoon in +particular. There was none on your mother's card.” + +“No, sir,” said the young man, with a flush of embarrassment that seemed +habitual with him. “She has no day. She's at home almost every day. She +hardly ever goes out.” + +“Might we come some evening?” March asked. “We should be very glad to do +that, if she would excuse the informality. Then I could come with Mrs. +March.” + +“Mother isn't very formal,” said the young man. “She would be very glad +to see you.” + +“Then we'll come some night this week, if you will let us. When do you +expect your father back?” + +“Not much before Christmas. He's trying to settle up some things at +Moffitt.” + +“And what do you think of our art editor?” asked March, with a smile, +for the change of subject. + +“Oh, I don't know much about such things,” said the young man, with +another of his embarrassed flushes. “Mr. Fulkerson seems to feel sure +that he is the one for us.” + +“Mr. Fulkerson seemed to think that I was the one for you, too,” said +March; and he laughed. “That's what makes me doubt his infallibility. +But he couldn't do worse with Mr. Beaton.” + +Mr. Dryfoos reddened and looked down, as if unable or unwilling to +cope with the difficulty of making a polite protest against March's +self-depreciation. He said, after a moment: “It's new business to all of +us except Mr. Fulkerson. But I think it will succeed. I think we can do +some good in it.” + +March asked rather absently, “Some good?” Then he added: “Oh yes; +I think we can. What do you mean by good? Improve the public taste? +Elevate the standard of literature? Give young authors and artists a +chance?” + +This was the only good that had ever been in March's mind, except the +good that was to come in a material way from his success, to himself and +to his family. + +“I don't know,” said the young man; and he looked down in a shamefaced +fashion. He lifted his head and looked into March's face. “I suppose +I was thinking that some time we might help along. If we were to have +those sketches of yours about life in every part of New York--” + +March's authorial vanity was tickled. “Fulkerson has been talking to you +about them? He seemed to think they would be a card. He believes that +there's no subject so fascinating to the general average of people +throughout the country as life in New York City; and he liked my notion +of doing these things.” March hoped that Dryfoos would answer that +Fulkerson was perfectly enthusiastic about his notion; but he did not +need this stimulus, and, at any rate, he went on without it. “The fact +is, it's something that struck my fancy the moment I came here; I found +myself intensely interested in the place, and I began to make notes, +consciously and unconsciously, at once. Yes, I believe I can get +something quite attractive out of it. I don't in the least know what it +will be yet, except that it will be very desultory; and I couldn't +at all say when I can get at it. If we postpone the first number till +February I might get a little paper into that. Yes, I think it might be +a good thing for us,” March said, with modest self-appreciation. + +“If you can make the comfortable people understand how the uncomfortable +people live, it will be a very good thing, Mr. March. Sometimes it +seems to me that the only trouble is that we don't know one another well +enough; and that the first thing is to do this.” The young fellow spoke +with the seriousness in which the beauty of his face resided. Whenever +he laughed his face looked weak, even silly. It seemed to be a sense of +this that made him hang his head or turn it away at such times. + +“That's true,” said March, from the surface only. “And then, those +phases of low life are immensely picturesque. Of course, we must try to +get the contrasts of luxury for the sake of the full effect. That won't +be so easy. You can't penetrate to the dinner-party of a millionaire +under the wing of a detective as you could to a carouse in Mulberry +Street, or to his children's nursery with a philanthropist as you can +to a street-boy's lodging-house.” March laughed, and again the young man +turned his head away. “Still, something can be done in that way by tact +and patience.” + + + + +VII. + +That evening March went with his wife to return the call of the Dryfoos +ladies. On their way up-town in the Elevated he told her of his talk +with young Dryfoos. “I confess I was a little ashamed before him +afterward for having looked at the matter so entirely from the aesthetic +point of view. But of course, you know, if I went to work at those +things with an ethical intention explicitly in mind, I should spoil +them.” + +“Of course,” said his wife. She had always heard him say something of +this kind about such things. + +He went on: “But I suppose that's just the point that such a nature as +young Dryfoos's can't get hold of, or keep hold of. We're a queer lot, +down there, Isabel--perfect menagerie. If it hadn't been that Fulkerson +got us together, and really seems to know what he did it for, I should +say he was the oddest stick among us. But when I think of myself and my +own crankiness for the literary department; and young Dryfoos, who ought +really to be in the pulpit, or a monastery, or something, for publisher; +and that young Beaton, who probably hasn't a moral fibre in his +composition, for the art man, I don't know but we could give Fulkerson +odds and still beat him in oddity.” + +His wife heaved a deep sigh of apprehension, of renunciation, of +monition. “Well, I'm glad you can feel so light about it, Basil.” + +“Light? I feel gay! With Fulkerson at the helm, I tell you the rocks and +the lee shore had better keep out of the way.” He laughed with pleasure +in his metaphor. “Just when you think Fulkerson has taken leave of his +senses he says or does something that shows he is on the most intimate +and inalienable terms with them all the time. You know how I've +been worrying over those foreign periodicals, and trying to get some +translations from them for the first number? Well, Fulkerson has brought +his centipedal mind to bear on the subject, and he's suggested that +old German friend of mine I was telling you of--the one I met in the +restaurant--the friend of my youth.” + +“Do you think he could do it?” asked Mrs. March, sceptically. + +“He's a perfect Babel of strange tongues; and he's the very man for the +work, and I was ashamed I hadn't thought of him myself, for I suspect he +needs the work.” + +“Well, be careful how you get mixed up with him, then, Basil,” said +his wife, who had the natural misgiving concerning the friends of +her husband's youth that all wives have. “You know the Germans are so +unscrupulously dependent. You don't know anything about him now.” + +“I'm not afraid of Lindau,” said March. “He was the best and kindest man +I ever saw, the most high-minded, the most generous. He lost a hand in +the war that helped to save us and keep us possible, and that stump of +his is character enough for me.” + +“Oh, you don't think I could have meant anything against him!” said Mrs. +March, with the tender fervor that every woman who lived in the time of +the war must feel for those who suffered in it. “All that I meant was +that I hoped you would not get mixed up with him too much. You're so apt +to be carried away by your impulses.” + +“They didn't carry me very far away in the direction of poor old Lindau, +I'm ashamed to think,” said March. “I meant all sorts of fine things by +him after I met him; and then I forgot him, and I had to be reminded of +him by Fulkerson.” + +She did not answer him, and he fell into a remorseful reverie, in which +he rehabilitated Lindau anew, and provided handsomely for his old age. +He got him buried with military honors, and had a shaft raised over him, +with a medallion likeness by Beaton and an epitaph by himself, by +the time they reached Forty-second Street; there was no time to write +Lindau's life, however briefly, before the train stopped. + +They had to walk up four blocks and then half a block across before they +came to the indistinctive brownstone house where the Dryfooses lived. It +was larger than some in the same block, but the next neighborhood of a +huge apartment-house dwarfed it again. March thought he recognized the +very flat in which he had disciplined the surly janitor, but he did +not tell his wife; he made her notice the transition character of the +street, which had been mostly built up in apartment-houses, with here +and there a single dwelling dropped far down beneath and beside them, to +that jag-toothed effect on the sky-line so often observable in such New +York streets. “I don't know exactly what the old gentleman bought here +for,” he said, as they waited on the steps after ringing, “unless he +expects to turn it into flats by-and-by. Otherwise, I don't believe +he'll get his money back.” + +An Irish serving-man, with a certain surprise that delayed him, said +the ladies were at home, and let the Marches in, and then carried their +cards up-stairs. The drawing-room, where he said they could sit down +while he went on this errand, was delicately, decorated in white and +gold, and furnished with a sort of extravagant good taste; there was +nothing to object to in the satin furniture, the pale, soft, rich +carpet, the pictures, and the bronze and china bric-a-brac, except that +their costliness was too evident; everything in the room meant money too +plainly, and too much of it. The Marches recognized this in the hoarse +whispers which people cannot get their voices above when they try +to talk away the interval of waiting in such circumstances; they +conjectured from what they had heard of the Dryfooses that this tasteful +luxury in no wise expressed their civilization. “Though when you come to +that,” said March, “I don't know that Mrs. Green's gimcrackery expresses +ours.” + +“Well, Basil, I didn't take the gimcrackery. That was your--” + +The rustle of skirts on the stairs without arrested Mrs. March in the +well-merited punishment which she never failed to inflict upon her +husband when the question of the gimcrackery--they always called +it that--came up. She rose at the entrance of a bright-looking, +pretty-looking, mature, youngish lady, in black silk of a neutral +implication, who put out her hand to her, and said, with a very cheery, +very ladylike accent, “Mrs. March?” and then added to both of them, +while she shook hands with March, and before they could get the name +out of their months: “No, not Miss Dryfoos! Neither of them; nor Mrs. +Dryfoos. Mrs. Mandel. The ladies will be down in a moment. Won't you +throw off your sacque, Mrs. March? I'm afraid it's rather warm here, +coming from the outside.” + +“I will throw it back, if you'll allow me,” said Mrs. March, with a sort +of provisionality, as if, pending some uncertainty as to Mrs. Mandel's +quality and authority, she did not feel herself justified in going +further. + +But if she did not know about Mrs. Mandel, Mrs. Mandel seemed to know +about her. “Oh, well, do!” she said, with a sort of recognition of the +propriety of her caution. “I hope you are feeling a little at home in +New York. We heard so much of your trouble in getting a flat, from Mr. +Fulkerson.” + +“Well, a true Bostonian doesn't give up quite so soon,” said Mrs. March. + +“But I will say New York doesn't seem so far away, now we're here.” + +“I'm sure you'll like it. Every one does.” Mrs. Mandel added to March, +“It's very sharp out, isn't it?” + +“Rather sharp. But after our Boston winters I don't know but I ought to +repudiate the word.” + +“Ah, wait till you have been here through March!” said Mrs. Mandel. She +began with him, but skillfully transferred the close of her remark, and +the little smile of menace that went with it, to his wife. + +“Yes,” said Mrs. March, “or April, either: Talk about our east winds!” + +“Oh, I'm sure they can't be worse than our winds,” Mrs. Mandel returned, +caressingly. + +“If we escape New York pneumonia,” March laughed, “it will only be +to fall a prey to New York malaria as soon as the frost is out of the +ground.” + +“Oh, but you know,” said Mrs. Mandel, “I think our malaria has really +been slandered a little. It's more a matter of drainage--of plumbing. I +don't believe it would be possible for malaria to get into this house, +we've had it gone over so thoroughly.” + +Mrs. March said, while she tried to divine Mrs. Mandel's position from +this statement, “It's certainly the first duty.” + +“If Mrs. March could have had her way, we should have had the drainage +of our whole ward put in order,” said her husband, “before we ventured +to take a furnished apartment for the winter.” + +Mrs. Mandel looked discreetly at Mrs. March for permission to laugh +at this, but at the same moment both ladies became preoccupied with a +second rustling on the stairs. + +Two tall, well-dressed young girls came in, and Mrs. Mandel introduced, +“Miss Dryfoos, Mrs. March; and Miss Mela Dryfoos, Mr. March,” she added, +and the girls shook hands in their several ways with the Marches. + +Miss Dryfoos had keen black eyes, and her hair was intensely black. Her +face, but for the slight inward curve of the nose, was regular, and the +smallness of her nose and of her mouth did not weaken her face, but gave +it a curious effect of fierceness, of challenge. She had a large black +fan in her hand, which she waved in talking, with a slow, watchful +nervousness. Her sister was blonde, and had a profile like her +brother's; but her chin was not so salient, and the weak look of the +mouth was not corrected by the spirituality or the fervor of his eyes, +though hers were of the same mottled blue. She dropped into the low seat +beside Mrs. Mandel, and intertwined her fingers with those of the hand +which Mrs. Mandel let her have. She smiled upon the Marches, while Miss +Dryfoos watched them intensely, with her eyes first on one and then on +the other, as if she did not mean to let any expression of theirs escape +her. + +“My mother will be down in a minute,” she said to Mrs. March. + +“I hope we're not disturbing her. It is so good of you to let us come in +the evening,” Mrs. March replied. + +“Oh, not at all,” said the girl. “We receive in the evening.” + +“When we do receive,” Miss Mela put in. “We don't always get the chance +to.” She began a laugh, which she checked at a smile from Mrs. Mandel, +which no one could have seen to be reproving. + +Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan, and looked up defiantly at Mrs. +March. “I suppose you have hardly got settled. We were afraid we would +disturb you when we called.” + +“Oh no! We were very sorry to miss your visit. We are quite settled in +our new quarters. Of course, it's all very different from Boston.” + +“I hope it's more of a sociable place there,” Miss Mela broke in again. +“I never saw such an unsociable place as New York. We've been in this +house three months, and I don't believe that if we stayed three years +any of the neighbors would call.” + +“I fancy proximity doesn't count for much in New York,” March suggested. + +Mrs. Mandel said: “That's what I tell Miss Mela. But she is a very +social nature, and can't reconcile herself to the fact.” + +“No, I can't,” the girl pouted. “I think it was twice as much fun in +Moffitt. I wish I was there now.” + +“Yes,” said March, “I think there's a great deal more enjoyment in +those smaller places. There's not so much going on in the way of public +amusements, and so people make more of one another. There are not so +many concerts, theatres, operas--” + +“Oh, they've got a splendid opera-house in Moffitt. It's just grand,” + said Miss Mela. + +“Have you been to the opera here, this winter?” Mrs. March asked of the +elder girl. + +She was glaring with a frown at her sister, and detached her eyes from +her with an effort. “What did you say?” she demanded, with an absent +bluntness. “Oh yes. Yes! We went once. Father took a box at the +Metropolitan.” + +“Then you got a good dose of Wagner, I suppose?” said March. + +“What?” asked the girl. + +“I don't think Miss Dryfoos is very fond of Wagner's music,” Mrs. Mandel +said. “I believe you are all great Wagnerites in Boston?” + +“I'm a very bad Bostonian, Mrs. Mandel. I suspect myself of preferring +Verdi,” March answered. + +Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan again, and said, “I like 'Trovatore' +the best.” + +“It's an opera I never get tired of,” said March, and Mrs. March and +Mrs. Mandel exchanged a smile of compassion for his simplicity. He +detected it, and added: “But I dare say I shall come down with the +Wagner fever in time. I've been exposed to some malignant cases of it.” + +“That night we were there,” said Miss Mela, “they had to turn the gas +down all through one part of it, and the papers said the ladies were +awful mad because they couldn't show their diamonds. I don't wonder, +if they all had to pay as much for their boxes as we did. We had to pay +sixty dollars.” She looked at the Marches for their sensation at this +expense. + +March said: “Well, I think I shall take my box by the month, then. It +must come cheaper, wholesale.” + +“Oh no, it don't,” said the girl, glad to inform him. “The people that +own their boxes, and that had to give fifteen or twenty thousand dollars +apiece for them, have to pay sixty dollars a night whenever there's a +performance, whether they go or not.” + +“Then I should go every night,” March said. + +“Most of the ladies were low neck--” + +March interposed, “Well, I shouldn't go low-neck.” + +The girl broke into a fondly approving laugh at his drolling. “Oh, I +guess you love to train! Us girls wanted to go low neck, too; but father +said we shouldn't, and mother said if we did she wouldn't come to the +front of the box once. Well, she didn't, anyway. We might just as well +'a' gone low neck. She stayed back the whole time, and when they had +that dance--the ballet, you know--she just shut her eyes. Well, Conrad +didn't like that part much, either; but us girls and Mrs. Mandel, we +brazened it out right in the front of the box. We were about the only +ones there that went high neck. Conrad had to wear a swallow-tail; but +father hadn't any, and he had to patch out with a white cravat. You +couldn't see what he had on in the back o' the box, anyway.” + +Mrs. March looked at Miss Dryfoos, who was waving her fan more and more +slowly up and down, and who, when she felt herself looked at, returned +Mrs. March's smile, which she meant to be ingratiating and perhaps +sympathetic, with a flash that made her start, and then ran her fierce +eyes over March's face. “Here comes mother,” she said, with a sort of +breathlessness, as if speaking her thought aloud, and through the open +door the Marches could see the old lady on the stairs. + +She paused half-way down, and turning, called up: “Coonrod! Coonrod! You +bring my shawl down with you.” + +Her daughter Mela called out to her, “Now, mother, Christine 'll give it +to you for not sending Mike.” + +“Well, I don't know where he is, Mely, child,” the mother answered back. +“He ain't never around when he's wanted, and when he ain't, it seems +like a body couldn't git shet of him, nohow.” + +“Well, you ought to ring for him!” cried Miss Mela, enjoying the joke. + +Her mother came in with a slow step; her head shook slightly as she +looked about the room, perhaps from nervousness, perhaps from a touch of +palsy. In either case the fact had a pathos which Mrs. March confessed +in the affection with which she took her hard, dry, large, old hand when +she was introduced to her, and in the sincerity which she put into the +hope that she was well. + +“I'm just middlin',” Mrs. Dryfoos replied. “I ain't never so well, +nowadays. I tell fawther I don't believe it agrees with me very well +here, but he says I'll git used to it. He's away now, out at Moffitt,” + she said to March, and wavered on foot a moment before she sank into a +chair. She was a tall woman, who had been a beautiful girl, and her gray +hair had a memory of blondeness in it like Lindau's, March noticed. She +wore a simple silk gown, of a Quakerly gray, and she held a handkerchief +folded square, as it had come from the laundress. Something like the +Sabbath quiet of a little wooden meeting-house in thick Western woods +expressed itself to him from her presence. + +“Laws, mother!” said Miss Mela; “what you got that old thing on for? If +I'd 'a' known you'd 'a' come down in that!” + +“Coonrod said it was all right, Mely,” said her mother. + +Miss Mela explained to the Marches: “Mother was raised among the +Dunkards, and she thinks it's wicked to wear anything but a gray silk +even for dress-up.” + +“You hain't never heared o' the Dunkards, I reckon,” the old woman said +to Mrs. March. “Some folks calls 'em the Beardy Men, because they don't +never shave; and they wash feet like they do in the Testament. My uncle +was one. He raised me.” + +“I guess pretty much everybody's a Beardy Man nowadays, if he ain't a +Dunkard!” + +Miss Mela looked round for applause of her sally, but March was saying +to his wife: “It's a Pennsylvania German sect, I believe--something like +the Quakers. I used to see them when I was a boy.” + +“Aren't they something like the Mennists?” asked Mrs. Mandel. + +“They're good people,” said the old woman, “and the world 'd be a heap +better off if there was more like 'em.” + +Her son came in and laid a soft shawl over her shoulders before he shook +hands with the visitors. “I am glad you found your way here,” he said to +them. + +Christine, who had been bending forward over her fan, now lifted herself +up with a sigh and leaned back in her chair. + +“I'm sorry my father isn't here,” said the young man to Mrs. March. +“He's never met you yet?” + +“No; and I should like to see him. We hear a great deal about your +father, you know, from Mr. Fulkerson.” + +“Oh, I hope you don't believe everything Mr. Fulkerson says about +people,” Mela cried. “He's the greatest person for carrying on when +he gets going I ever saw. It makes Christine just as mad when him and +mother gets to talking about religion; she says she knows he don't care +anything more about it than the man in the moon. I reckon he don't try +it on much with father.” + +“Your fawther ain't ever been a perfessor,” her mother interposed; “but +he's always been a good church-goin' man.” + +“Not since we come to New York,” retorted the girl. + +“He's been all broke up since he come to New York,” said the old woman, +with an aggrieved look. + +Mrs. Mandel attempted a diversion. “Have you heard any of our great New +York preachers yet, Mrs. March?” + +“No, I haven't,” Mrs. March admitted; and she tried to imply by her +candid tone that she intended to begin hearing them the very next +Sunday. + +“There are a great many things here,” said Conrad, “to take your +thoughts off the preaching that you hear in most of the churches. I +think the city itself is preaching the best sermon all the time.” + +“I don't know that I understand you,” said March. + +Mela answered for him. “Oh, Conrad has got a lot of notions that nobody +can understand. You ought to see the church he goes to when he does go. +I'd about as lief go to a Catholic church myself; I don't see a bit +o' difference. He's the greatest crony with one of their preachers; he +dresses just like a priest, and he says he is a priest.” She laughed for +enjoyment of the fact, and her brother cast down his eyes. + +Mrs. March, in her turn, tried to take from it the personal tone which +the talk was always assuming. “Have you been to the fall exhibition?” + she asked Christine; and the girl drew herself up out of the abstraction +she seemed sunk in. + +“The exhibition?” She looked at Mrs. Mandel. + +“The pictures of the Academy, you know,” Mrs. Mandel explained. “Where I +wanted you to go the day you had your dress tried on.” + +“No; we haven't been yet. Is it good?” She had turned to Mrs. March +again. + +“I believe the fall exhibitions are never so good as the spring ones. +But there are some good pictures.” + +“I don't believe I care much about pictures,” said Christine. “I don't +understand them.” + +“Ah, that's no excuse for not caring about them,” said March, lightly. +“The painters themselves don't, half the time.” + +The girl looked at him with that glance at once defiant and appealing, +insolent and anxious, which he had noticed before, especially when she +stole it toward himself and his wife during her sister's babble. In the +light of Fulkerson's history of the family, its origin and its ambition, +he interpreted it to mean a sense of her sister's folly and an ignorant +will to override his opinion of anything incongruous in themselves and +their surroundings. He said to himself that she was deathly proud--too +proud to try to palliate anything, but capable of anything that would +put others under her feet. Her eyes seemed hopelessly to question his +wife's social quality, and he fancied, with not unkindly interest, the +inexperienced girl's doubt whether to treat them with much or +little respect. He lost himself in fancies about her and her ideals, +necessarily sordid, of her possibilities of suffering, of the triumphs +and disappointments before her. Her sister would accept both with a +lightness that would keep no trace of either; but in her they would sink +lastingly deep. He came out of his reverie to find Mrs. Dryfoos saying +to him, in her hoarse voice: + +“I think it's a shame, some of the pictur's a body sees in the winders. +They say there's a law ag'inst them things; and if there is, I don't +understand why the police don't take up them that paints 'em. I hear 182 +tell, since I been here, that there's women that goes to have pictur's +took from them that way by men painters.” The point seemed aimed at +March, as if he were personally responsible for the scandal, and it fell +with a silencing effect for the moment. Nobody seemed willing to take it +up, and Mrs. Dryfoos went on, with an old woman's severity: “I say +they ought to be all tarred and feathered and rode on a rail. They'd be +drummed out of town in Moffitt.” + +Miss Mela said, with a crowing laugh: “I should think they would! And +they wouldn't anybody go low neck to the opera-house there, either--not +low neck the way they do here, anyway.” + +“And that pack of worthless hussies,” her mother resumed, “that come out +on the stage, and begun to kick.” + +“Laws, mother!” the girl shouted, “I thought you said you had your eyes +shut!” + +All but these two simpler creatures were abashed at the indecorum of +suggesting in words the commonplaces of the theatre and of art. + +“Well, I did, Mely, as soon as I could believe my eyes. I don't know +what they're doin' in all their churches, to let such things go on,” + said the old woman. “It's a sin and a shame, I think. Don't you, +Coonrod?” + +A ring at the door cut short whatever answer he was about to deliver. + +“If it's going to be company, Coonrod,” said his mother, making an +effort to rise, “I reckon I better go up-stairs.” + +“It's Mr. Fulkerson, I guess,” said Conrad. “He thought he might come”; +and at the mention of this light spirit Mrs. Dryfoos sank contentedly +back in her chair, and a relaxation of their painful tension seemed to +pass through the whole company. Conrad went to the door himself (the +serving-man tentatively, appeared some minutes later) and let in +Fulkerson's cheerful voice before his cheerful person. + +“Ah, how dye do, Conrad? Brought our friend, Mr. Beaton, with me,” those +within heard him say; and then, after a sound of putting off overcoats, +they saw him fill the doorway, with his feet set square and his arms +akimbo. + + + + +IX. + +“Ah! hello! hello!” Fulkerson said, in recognition of the Marches. +“Regular gathering of the clans. How are you, Mrs. Dryfoos? How do you +do, Mrs. Mandel, Miss Christine, Mela, Aunt Hitty, and all the folks? +How you wuz?” He shook hands gayly all round, and took a chair next the +old lady, whose hand he kept in his own, and left Conrad to introduce +Beaton. But he would not let the shadow of Beaton's solemnity fall +upon the company. He began to joke with Mrs. Dryfoos, and to match +rheumatisms with her, and he included all the ladies in the range of +appropriate pleasantries. “I've brought Mr. Beaton along to-night, and +I want you to make him feel at home, like you do me, Mrs. Dryfoos. He +hasn't got any rheumatism to speak of; but his parents live in Syracuse, +and he's a kind of an orphan, and we've just adopted him down at the +office. When you going to bring the young ladies down there, Mrs. +Mandel, for a champagne lunch? I will have some hydro-Mela, and +Christine it, heigh? How's that for a little starter? We dropped in at +your place a moment, Mrs. March, and gave the young folks a few pointers +about their studies. My goodness! it does me good to see a boy like +that of yours; business, from the word go; and your girl just scoops my +youthful affections. She's a beauty, and I guess she's good, too. Well, +well, what a world it is! Miss Christine, won't you show Mr. Beaton that +seal ring of yours? He knows about such things, and I brought him here +to see it as much as anything. It's an intaglio I brought from the other +side,” he explained to Mrs. March, “and I guess you'll like to look at +it. Tried to give it to the Dryfoos family, and when I couldn't, I sold +it to 'em. Bound to see it on Miss Christine's hand somehow! Hold on! +Let him see it where it belongs, first!” + +He arrested the girl in the motion she made to take off the ring, and +let her have the pleasure of showing her hand to the company with the +ring on it. Then he left her to hear the painter's words about it, which +he continued to deliver dissyllabically as he stood with her under a +gas-jet, twisting his elastic figure and bending his head over the ring. + +“Well, Mely, child,” Fulkerson went on, with an open travesty of her +mother's habitual address, “and how are you getting along? Mrs. Mandel +hold you up to the proprieties pretty strictly? Well, that's right. You +know you'd be roaming all over the pasture if she didn't.” + +The girl gurgled out her pleasure in his funning, and everybody took +him on his own ground of privileged character. He brought them all +together in their friendliness for himself, and before the evening was +over he had inspired Mrs. Mandel to have them served with coffee, +and had made both the girls feel that they had figured brilliantly in +society, and that two young men had been devoted to them. + +“Oh, I think he's just as lovely as he can live!” said Mela, as she +stood a moment with her sister on the scene of her triumph, where the +others had left them after the departure of their guests. + +“Who?” asked Christine, deeply. As she glanced down at her ring, her +eyes burned with a softened fire. + +She had allowed Beaton to change it himself from the finger where she +had worn it to the finger on which he said she ought to wear it. She did +not know whether it was right to let him, but she was glad she had done +it. + +“Who? Mr. Fulkerson, goosie-poosie! Not that old stuckup Mr. Beaton of +yours!” + +“He is proud,” assented Christine, with a throb of exultation. + +Beaton and Fulkerson went to the Elevated station with the Marches; but +the painter said he was going to walk home, and Fulkerson let him go +alone. + +“One way is enough for me,” he explained. “When I walk up, I don't walk +down. Bye-bye, my son!” He began talking about Beaton to the Marches +as they climbed the station stairs together. “That fellow puzzles me. +I don't know anybody that I have such a desire to kick, and at the same +time that I want to flatter up so much. Affect you that way?” he asked +of March. + +“Well, as far as the kicking goes, yes.” + +“And how is it with you, Mrs. March?” + +“Oh, I want to flatter him up.” + +“No; really? Why? Hold on! I've got the change.” + +Fulkerson pushed March away from the ticket-office window; and made +them his guests, with the inexorable American hospitality, for the +ride down-town. “Three!” he said to the ticket-seller; and, when he had +walked them before him out on the platform and dropped his tickets into +the urn, he persisted in his inquiry, “Why?” + +“Why, because you always want to flatter conceited people, don't you?” + Mrs. March answered, with a laugh. + +“Do you? Yes, I guess you do. You think Beaton is conceited?” + +“Well, slightly, Mr. Fulkerson.” + +“I guess you're partly right,” said Fulkerson, with a sigh, so +unaccountable in its connection that they all laughed. + +“An ideal 'busted'?” March suggested. + +“No, not that, exactly,” said Fulkerson. “But I had a notion maybe +Beaton wasn't conceited all the time.” + +“Oh!” Mrs. March exulted, “nobody could be so conceited all the time +as Mr. Beaton is most of the time. He must have moments of the direst +modesty, when he'd be quite flattery-proof.” + +“Yes, that's what I mean. I guess that's what makes me want to kick him. +He's left compliments on my hands that no decent man would.” + +“Oh! that's tragical,” said March. + +“Mr. Fulkerson,” Mrs. March began, with change of subject in her voice, +“who is Mrs. Mandel?” + +“Who? What do you think of her?” he rejoined. “I'll tell you about her +when we get in the cars. Look at that thing! Ain't it beautiful?” + +They leaned over the track and looked up at the next station, where the +train, just starting, throbbed out the flame-shot steam into the white +moonlight. + +“The most beautiful thing in New York--the one always and certainly +beautiful thing here,” said March; and his wife sighed, “Yes, yes.” She +clung to him, and remained rapt by the sight till the train drew near, +and then pulled him back in a panic. + +“Well, there ain't really much to tell about her,” Fulkerson resumed +when they were seated in the car. “She's an invention of mine.” + +“Of yours?” cried Mrs. March. + +“Of course!” exclaimed her husband. + +“Yes--at least in her present capacity. She sent me a story for the +syndicate, back in July some time, along about the time I first met old +Dryfoos here. It was a little too long for my purpose, and I thought +I could explain better how I wanted it cut in a call than I could in +a letter. She gave a Brooklyn address, and I went to see her. I found +her,” said Fulkerson, with a vague defiance, “a perfect lady. She was +living with an aunt over there; and she had seen better days, when she +was a girl, and worse ones afterward. I don't mean to say her husband +was a bad fellow; I guess he was pretty good; he was her music-teacher; +she met him in Germany, and they got married there, and got through her +property before they came over here. Well, she didn't strike me like a +person that could make much headway in literature. Her story was well +enough, but it hadn't much sand in it; kind of-well, academic, you know. +I told her so, and she understood, and cried a little; but she did the +best she could with the thing, and I took it and syndicated it. She kind +of stuck in my mind, and the first time I went to see the Dryfooses +they were stopping at a sort of family hotel then till they could find +a house--” Fulkerson broke off altogether, and said, “I don't know as I +know just how the Dryfooses struck you, Mrs. March?” + +“Can't you imagine?” she answered, with a kindly, smile. + +“Yes; but I don't believe I could guess how they would have struck you +last summer when I first saw them. My! oh my! there was the native earth +for you. Mely is a pretty wild colt now, but you ought to have seen her +before she was broken to harness. + +“And Christine? Ever see that black leopard they got up there in the +Central Park? That was Christine. Well, I saw what they wanted. They +all saw it--nobody is a fool in all directions, and the Dryfooses are +in their right senses a good deal of the time. Well, to cut a long story +short, I got Mrs. Mandel to take 'em in hand--the old lady as well as +the girls. She was a born lady, and always lived like one till she saw +Mandel; and that something academic that killed her for a writer was +just the very thing for them. She knows the world well enough to know +just how much polish they can take on, and she don't try to put on a bit +more. See?” + +“Yes, I can see,” said Mrs. March. + +“Well, she took hold at once, as ready as a hospital-trained nurse; and +there ain't anything readier on this planet. She runs the whole concern, +socially and economically, takes all the care of housekeeping off the +old lady's hands, and goes round with the girls. By-the-bye, I'm going +to take my meals at your widow's, March, and Conrad's going to have his +lunch there. I'm sick of browsing about.” + +“Mr. March's widow?” said his wife, looking at him with provisional +severity. + +“I have no widow, Isabel,” he said, “and never expect to have, till I +leave you in the enjoyment of my life-insurance. I suppose Fulkerson +means the lady with the daughter who wanted to take us to board.” + +“Oh yes. How are they getting on, I do wonder?” Mrs. March asked of +Fulkerson. + +“Well, they've got one family to board; but it's a small one. I guess +they'll pull through. They didn't want to take any day boarders at +first, the widow said; I guess they have had to come to it.” + +“Poor things!” sighed Mrs. March. “I hope they'll go back to the +country.” + +“Well, I don't know. When you've once tasted New York--You wouldn't go +back to Boston, would you?” + +“Instantly.” + +Fulkerson laughed out a tolerant incredulity. + + + + +X + +Beaton lit his pipe when he found himself in his room, and sat down +before the dull fire in his grate to think. It struck him there was +a dull fire in his heart a great deal like it; and he worked out a +fanciful analogy with the coals, still alive, and the ashes creeping +over them, and the dead clay and cinders. He felt sick of himself, sick +of his life and of all his works. He was angry with Fulkerson for having +got him into that art department of his, for having bought him up; and +he was bitter at fate because he had been obliged to use the money to +pay some pressing debts, and had not been able to return the check +his father had sent him. He pitied his poor old father; he ached with +compassion for him; and he set his teeth and snarled with contempt +through them for his own baseness. This was the kind of world it was; +but he washed his hands of it. The fault was in human nature, and he +reflected with pride that he had at least not invented human nature; he +had not sunk so low as that yet. The notion amused him; he thought he +might get a Satanic epigram out of it some way. But in the mean time +that girl, that wild animal, she kept visibly, tangibly before him; if +he put out his hand he might touch hers, he might pass his arm round +her waist. In Paris, in a set he knew there, what an effect she would be +with that look of hers, and that beauty, all out of drawing! They would +recognize the flame quality in her. He imagined a joke about her being +a fiery spirit, or nymph, naiad, whatever, from one of her native +gas-wells. He began to sketch on a bit of paper from the table at his +elbow vague lines that veiled and revealed a level, dismal landscape, +and a vast flame against an empty sky, and a shape out of the flame that +took on a likeness and floated detached from it. The sketch ran up the +left side of the sheet and stretched across it. Beaton laughed out. +Pretty good to let Fulkerson have that for the cover of his first +number! In black and red it would be effective; it would catch the eye +from the news-stands. He made a motion to throw it on the fire, but held +it back and slid it into the table-drawer, and smoked on. He saw the +dummy with the other sketch in the open drawer which he had brought away +from Fulkerson's in the morning and slipped in there, and he took it out +and looked at it. He made some criticisms in line with his pencil on it, +correcting the drawing here and there, and then he respected it a little +more, though he still smiled at the feminine quality--a young lady +quality. + +In spite of his experience the night he called upon the Leightons, +Beaton could not believe that Alma no longer cared for him. She played +at having forgotten him admirably, but he knew that a few months before +she had been very mindful of him. He knew he had neglected them since +they came to New York, where he had led them to expect interest, if not +attention; but he was used to neglecting people, and he was somewhat +less used to being punished for it--punished and forgiven. He felt +that Alma had punished him so thoroughly that she ought to have been +satisfied with her work and to have forgiven him in her heart afterward. +He bore no resentment after the first tingling moments were-past; he +rather admired her for it; and he would have been ready to go back half +an hour later and accept pardon and be on the footing of last summer +again. Even now he debated with himself whether it was too late to call; +but, decidedly, a quarter to ten seemed late. The next day he determined +never to call upon the Leightons again; but he had no reason for this; +it merely came into a transitory scheme of conduct, of retirement from +the society of women altogether; and after dinner he went round to see +them. + +He asked for the ladies, and they all three received him, Alma not +without a surprise that intimated itself to him, and her mother with +no appreciable relenting; Miss Woodburn, with the needlework which she +found easier to be voluble over than a book, expressed in her welcome a +neutrality both cordial to Beaton and loyal to Alma. + +“Is it snowing outdo's?” she asked, briskly, after the greetings were +transacted. “Mah goodness!” she said, in answer to his apparent surprise +at the question. “Ah mahght as well have stayed in the Soath, for all +the winter Ah have seen in New York yet.” + +“We don't often have snow much before New-Year's,” said Beaton. + +“Miss Woodburn is wild for a real Northern winter,” Mrs. Leighton +explained. + +“The othah naght Ah woke up and looked oat of the window and saw all the +roofs covered with snow, and it turned oat to be nothing but moonlaght. +Ah was never so disappointed in mah lahfe,” said Miss Woodburn. + +“If you'll come to St. Barnaby next summer, you shall have all the +winter you want,” said Alma. + +“I can't let you slander St. Barnaby in that way,” said Beaton, with the +air of wishing to be understood as meaning more than he said. + +“Yes?” returned Alma, coolly. “I didn't know you were so fond of the +climate.” + +“I never think of it as a climate. It's a landscape. It doesn't matter +whether it's hot or cold.” + +“With the thermometer twenty below, you'd find that it mattered,” Alma +persisted. + +“Is that the way you feel about St. Barnaby, too, Mrs. Leighton?” Beaton +asked, with affected desolation. + +“I shall be glad enough to go back in the summer,” Mrs. Leighton +conceded. + +“And I should be glad to go now,” said Beaton, looking at Alma. He had +the dummy of 'Every Other Week' in his hand, and he saw Alma's eyes +wandering toward it whenever he glanced at her. “I should be glad to +go anywhere to get out of a job I've undertaken,” he continued, to +Mrs. Leighton. “They're going to start some sort of a new illustrated +magazine, and they've got me in for their art department. I'm not fit +for it; I'd like to run away. Don't you want to advise me a little, Mrs. +Leighton? You know how much I value your taste, and I'd like to have you +look at the design for the cover of the first number: they're going to +have a different one for every number. I don't know whether you'll agree +with me, but I think this is rather nice.” + +He faced the dummy round, and then laid it on the table before Mrs. +Leighton, pushing some of her work aside to make room for it and +standing over her while she bent forward to look at it. + +Alma kept her place, away from the table. + +“Mah goodness! Ho' exciting!” said Miss Woodburn. “May anybody look?” + +“Everybody,” said Beaton. + +“Well, isn't it perfectly choming!” Miss Woodburn exclaimed. “Come +and look at this, Miss Leighton,” she called to Alma, who reluctantly +approached. + +“What lines are these?” Mrs. Leighton asked, pointing to Beaton's pencil +scratches. + +“They're suggestions of modifications,” he replied. + +“I don't think they improve it much. What do you think, Alma?” + +“Oh, I don't know,” said the girl, constraining her voice to an effect +of indifference and glancing carelessly down at the sketch. “The design +might be improved; but I don't think those suggestions would do it.” + +“They're mine,” said Beaton, fixing his eyes upon her with a beautiful +sad dreaminess that he knew he could put into them; he spoke with a +dreamy remoteness of tone--his wind-harp stop, Wetmore called it. + +“I supposed so,” said Alma, calmly. + +“Oh, mah goodness!” cried Miss Woodburn. “Is that the way you awtusts +talk to each othah? Well, Ah'm glad Ah'm not an awtust--unless I could +do all the talking.” + +“Artists cannot tell a fib,” Alma said, “or even act one,” and she +laughed in Beaton's upturned face. + +He did not unbend his dreamy gaze. “You're quite right. The suggestions +are stupid.” + +Alma turned to Miss Woodburn: “You hear? Even when we speak of our own +work.” + +“Ah nevah hoad anything lahke it!” + +“And the design itself?” Beaton persisted. + +“Oh, I'm not an art editor,” Alma answered, with a laugh of exultant +evasion. + +A tall, dark, grave-looking man of fifty, with a swarthy face and +iron-gray mustache and imperial and goatee, entered the room. Beaton +knew the type; he had been through Virginia sketching for one of the +illustrated papers, and he had seen such men in Richmond. Miss Woodburn +hardly needed to say, “May Ah introduce you to mah fathaw, Co'nel +Woodburn, Mr. Beaton?” + +The men shook hands, and Colonel Woodburn said, in that soft, gentle, +slow Southern voice without our Northern contractions: “I am very glad +to meet you, sir; happy to make yo' acquaintance. Do not move, madam,” + he said to Mrs. Leighton, who made a deprecatory motion to let him pass +to the chair beyond her; “I can find my way.” He bowed a bulk that did +not lend itself readily to the devotion, and picked up the ball of yarn +she had let drop out of her lap in half rising. “Yo' worsteds, madam.” + +“Yarn, yarn, Colonel Woodburn!” Alma shouted. “You're quite +incorrigible. A spade is a spade!” + +“But sometimes it is a trump, my dear young lady,” said the Colonel, +with unabated gallantry; “and when yo' mothah uses yarn, it is worsteds. +But I respect worsteds even under the name of yarn: our ladies--my own +mothah and sistahs--had to knit the socks we wore--all we could get in +the woe.” + +“Yes, and aftah the woe,” his daughter put in. “The knitting has +not stopped yet in some places. Have you been much in the Soath, Mr. +Beaton?” + +Beaton explained just how much. + +“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, “then you have seen a country making +gigantic struggles to retrieve its losses, sir. The South is advancing +with enormous strides, sir.” + +“Too fast for some of us to keep up,” said Miss Woodburn, in an audible +aside. “The pace in Charlottesboag is pofectly killing, and we had to +drop oat into a slow place like New York.” + +“The progress in the South is material now,” said the Colonel; +“and those of us whose interests are in another direction find +ourselves--isolated--isolated, sir. The intellectual centres are still +in the No'th, sir; the great cities draw the mental activity of the +country to them, sir. Necessarily New York is the metropolis.” + +“Oh, everything comes here,” said Beaton, impatient of the elder's +ponderosity. Another sort of man would have sympathized with the +Southerner's willingness to talk of himself, and led him on to speak of +his plans and ideals. But the sort of man that Beaton was could not do +this; he put up the dummy into the wrapper he had let drop on the floor +beside him, and tied it round with string while Colonel Woodburn was +talking. He got to his feet with the words he spoke and offered Mrs. +Leighton his hand. + +“Must you go?” she asked, in surprise. + +“I am on my way to a reception,” he said. She had noticed that he was +in evening dress; and now she felt the vague hurt that people invited +nowhere feel in the presence of those who are going somewhere. She did +not feel it for herself, but for her daughter; and she knew Alma would +not have let her feel it if she could have prevented it. But Alma had +left the room for a moment, and she tacitly indulged this sense of +injury in her behalf. + +“Please say good-night to Miss Leighton for me,” Beaton continued. He +bowed to Miss Woodburn, “Goodnight, Miss Woodburn,” and to her father, +bluntly, “Goodnight.” + +“Good-night, sir,” said the Colonel, with a sort of severe suavity. + +“Oh, isn't he choming!” Miss Woodburn whispered to Mrs. Leighton when +Beaton left the room. + +Alma spoke to him in the hall without. “You knew that was my design, Mr. +Beaton. Why did you bring it?” + +“Why?” He looked at her in gloomy hesitation. + +Then he said: “You know why. I wished to talk it over with you, to serve +you, please you, get back your good opinion. But I've done neither the +one nor the other; I've made a mess of the whole thing.” + +Alma interrupted him. “Has it been accepted?” + +“It will be accepted, if you will let it.” + +“Let it?” she laughed. “I shall be delighted.” She saw him swayed a +little toward her. “It's a matter of business, isn't it?” + +“Purely. Good-night.” + +When Alma returned to the room, Colonel Woodburn was saying to Mrs. +Leighton: “I do not contend that it is impossible, madam, but it is very +difficult in a thoroughly commercialized society, like yours, to have +the feelings of a gentleman. How can a business man, whose prosperity, +whose earthly salvation, necessarily lies in the adversity of some one +else, be delicate and chivalrous, or even honest? If we could have had +time to perfect our system at the South, to eliminate what was evil and +develop what was good in it, we should have had a perfect system. But +the virus of commercialism was in us, too; it forbade us to make the +best of a divine institution, and tempted us to make the worst. Now the +curse is on the whole country; the dollar is the measure of every value, +the stamp of every success. What does not sell is a failure; and what +sells succeeds.” + +“The hobby is oat, mah deah,” said Miss Woodburn, in an audible aside to +Alma. + +“Were you speaking of me, Colonel Woodburn?” Alma asked. + +“Surely not, my dear young lady.” + +“But he's been saying that awtusts are just as greedy aboat money as +anybody,” said his daughter. + +“The law of commercialism is on everything in a commercial society,” + the Colonel explained, softening the tone in which his convictions were +presented. “The final reward of art is money, and not the pleasure of +creating.” + +“Perhaps they would be willing to take it all oat in that if othah +people would let them pay their bills in the pleasure of creating,” his +daughter teased. + +“They are helpless, like all the rest,” said her father, with the same +deference to her as to other women. “I do not blame them.” + +“Oh, mah goodness! Didn't you say, sir, that Mr. Beaton had bad +manners?” + +Alma relieved a confusion which he seemed to feel in reference to her. +“Bad manners? He has no manners! That is, when he's himself. He has +pretty good ones when he's somebody else.” + +Miss Woodburn began, “Oh, mah-” and then stopped herself. Alma's mother +looked at her with distressed question, but the girl seemed perfectly +cool and contented; and she gave her mind provisionally to a point +suggested by Colonel Woodburn's talk. + +“Still, I can't believe it was right to hold people in slavery, to +whip them and sell them. It never did seem right to me,” she added, in +apology for her extreme sentiments to the gentleness of her adversary. + +“I quite agree with you, madam,” said the Colonel. “Those were the +abuses of the institution. But if we had not been vitiated on the one +hand and threatened on the other by the spirit of commercialism from the +North--and from Europe, too--those abuses could have been eliminated, +and the institution developed in the direction of the mild +patriarchalism of the divine intention.” The Colonel hitched his chair, +which figured a hobby careering upon its hind legs, a little toward Mrs. +Leighton and the girls approached their heads and began to whisper; they +fell deferentially silent when the Colonel paused in his argument, and +went on again when he went on. + +At last they heard Mrs. Leighton saying, “And have you heard from the +publishers about your book yet?” + +Then Miss Woodburn cut in, before her father could answer: “The coase of +commercialism is on that, too. They are trahing to fahnd oat whethah it +will pay.” + +“And they are right-quite right,” said the Colonel. “There is no longer +any other criterion; and even a work that attacks the system must be +submitted to the tests of the system.” + +“The system won't accept destruction on any othah tomes,” said Miss +Woodburn, demurely. + + + + +XI. + +At the reception, where two men in livery stood aside to let him pass +up the outside steps of the house, and two more helped him off with his +overcoat indoors, and a fifth miscalled his name into the drawing-room, +the Syracuse stone-cutter's son met the niece of Mrs. Horn, and began +at once to tell her about his evening at the Dryfooses'. He was in very +good spirits, for so far as he could have been elated or depressed by +his parting with Alma Leighton he had been elated; she had not treated +his impudence with the contempt that he felt it deserved; she must still +be fond of him; and the warm sense of this, by operation of an obscure +but well-recognized law of the masculine being, disposed him to be +rather fond of Miss Vance. She was a slender girl, whose semi-aesthetic +dress flowed about her with an accentuation of her long forms, and +redeemed them from censure by the very frankness with which it confessed +them; nobody could have said that Margaret Vance was too tall. Her +pretty little head, which she had an effect of choosing to have little +in the same spirit of judicious defiance, had a good deal of reading +in it; she was proud to know literary and artistic fashions as well as +society fashions. She liked being singled out by an exterior distinction +so obvious as Beaton's, and she listened with sympathetic interest to +his account of those people. He gave their natural history reality by +drawing upon his own; he reconstructed their plebeian past from the +experiences of his childhood and his youth of the pre-Parisian period; +and he had a pang of suicidal joy in insulting their ignorance of the +world. + +“What different kinds of people you meet!” said the girl at last, with +an envious sigh. Her reading had enlarged the bounds of her imagination, +if not her knowledge; the novels nowadays dealt so much with very common +people, and made them seem so very much more worth while than the people +one met. + +She said something like this to Beaton. He answered: “You can meet the +people I'm talking of very easily, if you want to take the trouble. It's +what they came to New York for. I fancy it's the great ambition of their +lives to be met.” + +“Oh yes,” said Miss Vance, fashionably, and looked down; then she looked +up and said, intellectually: “Don't you think it's a great pity? How +much better for them to have stayed where they were and what they were!” + +“Then you could never have had any chance of meeting them,” said Beaton. +“I don't suppose you intend to go out to the gas country?” + +“No,” said Miss Vance, amused. “Not that I shouldn't like to go.” + +“What a daring spirit! You ought to be on the staff of 'Every Other +Week,'” said Beaton. + +“The staff-Every Other Week? What is it?” + +“The missing link; the long-felt want of a tie between the Arts and the +Dollars.” Beaton gave her a very picturesque, a very dramatic sketch of +the theory, the purpose, and the personnel of the new enterprise. + +Miss Vance understood too little about business of any kind to know +how it differed from other enterprises of its sort. She thought it was +delightful; she thought Beaton must be glad to be part of it, though he +had represented himself so bored, so injured, by Fulkerson's insisting +upon having him. “And is it a secret? Is it a thing not to be spoken +of?” + +“'Tutt' altro'! Fulkerson will be enraptured to have it spoken of in +society. He would pay any reasonable bill for the advertisement.” + +“What a delightful creature! Tell him it shall all be spent in charity.” + +“He would like that. He would get two paragraphs out of the fact, and +your name would go into the 'Literary Notes' of all the newspapers.” + +“Oh, but I shouldn't want my name used!” cried the girl, half horrified +into fancying the situation real. + +“Then you'd better not say anything about 'Every Other Week'. Fulkerson +is preternaturally unscrupulous.” + +March began to think so too, at times. He was perpetually suggesting +changes in the make-up of the first number, with a view to its greater +vividness of effect. One day he came and said: “This thing isn't going +to have any sort of get up and howl about it, unless you have a paper +in the first number going for Bevans's novels. Better get Maxwell to do +it.” + +“Why, I thought you liked Bevans's novels?” + +“So I did; but where the good of 'Every Other Week' is concerned I am a +Roman father. The popular gag is to abuse Bevans, and Maxwell is the man +to do it. There hasn't been a new magazine started for the last three +years that hasn't had an article from Maxwell in its first number +cutting Bevans all to pieces. If people don't see it, they'll think +'Every Other Week' is some old thing.” + +March did not know whether Fulkerson was joking or not. He suggested, +“Perhaps they'll think it's an old thing if they do see it.” + +“Well, get somebody else, then; or else get Maxwell to write under an +assumed name. Or--I forgot! He'll be anonymous under our system, anyway. +Now there ain't a more popular racket for us to work in that first +number than a good, swinging attack on Bevans. People read his books +and quarrel over 'em, and the critics are all against him, and a regular +flaying, with salt and vinegar rubbed in afterward, will tell more with +people who like good old-fashioned fiction than anything else. I like +Bevans's things, but, dad burn it! when it comes to that first number, +I'd offer up anybody.” + +“What an immoral little wretch you are, Fulkerson!” said March, with a +laugh. + +Fulkerson appeared not to be very strenuous about the attack on the +novelist. “Say!” he called out, gayly, “what should you think of a paper +defending the late lamented system of slavery'?” + +“What do you mean, Fulkerson?” asked March, with a puzzled smile. + +Fulkerson braced his knees against his desk, and pushed himself back, +but kept his balance to the eye by canting his hat sharply forward. +“There's an old cock over there at the widow's that's written a book to +prove that slavery was and is the only solution of the labor problem. +He's a Southerner.” + +“I should imagine,” March assented. + +“He's got it on the brain that if the South could have been let alone by +the commercial spirit and the pseudophilanthropy of the North, it +would have worked out slavery into a perfectly ideal condition for the +laborer, in which he would have been insured against want, and protected +in all his personal rights by the state. He read the introduction to +me last night. I didn't catch on to all the points--his daughter's an +awfully pretty girl, and I was carrying that fact in my mind all the +time, too, you know--but that's about the gist of it.” + +“Seems to regard it as a lost opportunity?” said March. + +“Exactly! What a mighty catchy title, Neigh? Look well on the +title-page.” + +“Well written?” + +“I reckon so; I don't know. The Colonel read it mighty eloquently.” + +“It mightn't be such bad business,” said March, in a muse. “Could you +get me a sight of it without committing yourself?” + +“If the Colonel hasn't sent it off to another publisher this morning. He +just got it back with thanks yesterday. He likes to keep it travelling.” + +“Well, try it. I've a notion it might be a curious thing.” + +“Look here, March,” said Fulkerson, with the effect of taking a fresh +hold; “I wish you could let me have one of those New York things of +yours for the first number. After all, that's going to be the great +card.” + +“I couldn't, Fulkerson; I couldn't, really. I want to philosophize +the material, and I'm too new to it all yet. I don't want to do merely +superficial sketches.” + +“Of course! Of course! I understand that. Well, I don't want to hurry +you. Seen that old fellow of yours yet? I think we ought to have that +translation in the first number; don't you? We want to give 'em a notion +of what we're going to do in that line.” + +“Yes,” said March; “and I was going out to look up Lindau this morning. +I've inquired at Maroni's, and he hasn't been there for several days. +I've some idea perhaps he's sick. But they gave me his address, and I'm +going to see.” + +“Well, that's right. We want the first number to be the keynote in every +way.” + +March shook his head. “You can't make it so. The first number is bound +to be a failure always, as far as the representative character goes. +It's invariably the case. Look at the first numbers of all the things +you've seen started. They're experimental, almost amateurish, and +necessarily so, not only because the men that are making them up are +comparatively inexperienced like ourselves, but because the material +sent them to deal with is more or less consciously tentative. People +send their adventurous things to a new periodical because the whole +thing is an adventure. I've noticed that quality in all the volunteer +contributions; it's in the articles that have been done to order even. +No; I've about made up my mind that if we can get one good striking +paper into the first number that will take people's minds off the +others, we shall be doing all we can possible hope for. I should like,” + March added, less seriously, “to make up three numbers ahead, and +publish the third one first.” + +Fulkerson dropped forward and struck his fist on the desk. “It's a +first-rate idea. Why not do it?” + +March laughed. “Fulkerson, I don't believe there's any quackish thing +you wouldn't do in this cause. From time to time I'm thoroughly ashamed +of being connected with such a charlatan.” + +Fulkerson struck his hat sharply backward. “Ah, dad burn it! To give +that thing the right kind of start I'd walk up and down Broadway between +two boards, with the title-page of 'Every Other Week' facsimiled on one +and my name and address on the--” + +He jumped to his feet and shouted, “March, I'll do it!” + +“What?” + +“I'll hire a lot of fellows to make mud-turtles of themselves, and I'll +have a lot of big facsimiles of the title-page, and I'll paint the town +red!” + +March looked aghast at him. “Oh, come, now, Fulkerson!” + +“I mean it. I was in London when a new man had taken hold of the old +Cornhill, and they were trying to boom it, and they had a procession of +these mudturtles that reached from Charing Cross to Temple Bar. Cornhill +Magazine. Sixpence. Not a dull page in it.' I said to myself then that +it was the livest thing I ever saw. I respected the man that did that +thing from the bottom of my heart. I wonder I ever forgot it. But it +shows what a shaky thing the human mind is at its best.” + +“You infamous mountebank!”, said March, with great amusement at +Fulkerson's access; “you call that congeries of advertising instinct +of yours the human mind at its best? Come, don't be so diffident, +Fulkerson. Well, I'm off to find Lindau, and when I come back I hope +Mr. Dryfoos will have you under control. I don't suppose you'll be quite +sane again till after the first number is out. Perhaps public opinion +will sober you then.” + +“Confound it, March! How do you think they will take it? I swear I'm +getting so nervous I don't know half the time which end of me is up. I +believe if we don't get that thing out by the first of February it 'll +be the death of me.” + +“Couldn't wait till Washington's Birthday? I was thinking it would give +the day a kind of distinction, and strike the public imagination, if--” + +“No, I'll be dogged if I could!” Fulkerson lapsed more and more into +the parlance of his early life in this season of strong excitement. “I +believe if Beaton lags any on the art leg I'll kill him.” + +“Well, I shouldn't mind your killing Beaton,” said March, tranquilly, as +he went out. + +He went over to Third Avenue and took the Elevated down to Chatham +Square. He found the variety of people in the car as unfailingly +entertaining as ever. He rather preferred the East Side to the West +Side lines, because they offered more nationalities, conditions, and +characters to his inspection. They draw not only from the up-town +American region, but from all the vast hive of populations swarming +between them and the East River. He had found that, according to the +hour, American husbands going to and from business, and American wives +going to and from shopping, prevailed on the Sixth Avenue road, and that +the most picturesque admixture to these familiar aspects of human nature +were the brilliant eyes and complexions of the American Hebrews, +who otherwise contributed to the effect of well-clad comfort and +citizen-self-satisfaction of the crowd. Now and then he had found +himself in a car mostly filled with Neapolitans from the constructions +far up the line, where he had read how they are worked and fed and +housed like beasts; and listening to the jargon of their unintelligible +dialect, he had occasion for pensive question within himself as to +what notion these poor animals formed of a free republic from their +experience of life under its conditions; and whether they found them +practically very different from those of the immemorial brigandage and +enforced complicity with rapine under which they had been born. But, +after all, this was an infrequent effect, however massive, of travel on +the West Side, whereas the East offered him continual entertainment in +like sort. The sort was never quite so squalid. For short distances the +lowest poverty, the hardest pressed labor, must walk; but March never +entered a car without encountering some interesting shape of shabby +adversity, which was almost always adversity of foreign birth. New York +is still popularly supposed to be in the control of the Irish, but +March noticed in these East Side travels of his what must strike every +observer returning to the city after a prolonged absence: the numerical +subordination of the dominant race. If they do not outvote them, +the people of Germanic, of Slavonic, of Pelasgic, of Mongolian stock +outnumber the prepotent Celts; and March seldom found his speculation +centred upon one of these. The small eyes, the high cheeks, the broad +noses, the puff lips, the bare, cue-filleted skulls, of Russians, Poles, +Czechs, Chinese; the furtive glitter of Italians; the blonde dulness of +Germans; the cold quiet of Scandinavians--fire under ice--were aspects +that he identified, and that gave him abundant suggestion for the +personal histories he constructed, and for the more public-spirited +reveries in which he dealt with the future economy of our heterogeneous +commonwealth. It must be owned that he did not take much trouble about +this; what these poor people were thinking, hoping, fearing, enjoying, +suffering; just where and how they lived; who and what they individually +were--these were the matters of his waking dreams as he stared hard +at them, while the train raced farther into the gay ugliness--the +shapeless, graceful, reckless picturesqueness of the Bowery. + +There were certain signs, certain facades, certain audacities of the +prevailing hideousness that always amused him in that uproar to the +eye which the strident forms and colors made. He was interested in the +insolence with which the railway had drawn its erasing line across the +Corinthian front of an old theatre, almost grazing its fluted pillars, +and flouting its dishonored pediment. The colossal effigies of the fat +women and the tuft-headed Circassian girls of cheap museums; the vistas +of shabby cross streets; the survival of an old hip-roofed house here +and there at their angles; the Swiss chalet, histrionic decorativeness +of the stations in prospect or retrospect; the vagaries of the lines +that narrowed together or stretched apart according to the width of +the avenue, but always in wanton disregard of the life that dwelt, and +bought and sold, and rejoiced or sorrowed, and clattered or crawled, +around, below, above--were features of the frantic panorama that +perpetually touched his sense of humor and moved his sympathy. Accident +and then exigency seemed the forces at work to this extraordinary +effect; the play of energies as free and planless as those that force +the forest from the soil to the sky; and then the fierce struggle for +survival, with the stronger life persisting over the deformity, the +mutilation, the destruction, the decay of the weaker. The whole at +moments seemed to him lawless, godless; the absence of intelligent, +comprehensive purpose in the huge disorder, and the violent struggle +to subordinate the result to the greater good, penetrated with its dumb +appeal the consciousness of a man who had always been too self-enwrapped +to perceive the chaos to which the individual selfishness must always +lead. + +But there was still nothing definite, nothing better than a vague +discomfort, however poignant, in his half recognition of such facts; and +he descended the station stairs at Chatham Square with a sense of the +neglected opportunities of painters in that locality. He said to himself +that if one of those fellows were to see in Naples that turmoil of cars, +trucks, and teams of every sort, intershot with foot-passengers going +and coming to and from the crowded pavements, under the web of the +railroad tracks overhead, and amid the spectacular approach of the +streets that open into the square, he would have it down in his +sketch-book at once. He decided simultaneously that his own local +studies must be illustrated, and that he must come with the artist and +show him just which bits to do, not knowing that the two arts can never +approach the same material from the same point. He thought he would +particularly like his illustrator to render the Dickensy, cockneyish +quality of the shabby-genteel ballad-seller of whom he stopped to +ask his way to the street where Lindau lived, and whom he instantly +perceived to be, with his stock in trade, the sufficient object of an +entire study by himself. He had his ballads strung singly upon a cord +against the house wall, and held down in piles on the pavement with +stones and blocks of wood. Their control in this way intimated a +volatility which was not perceptible in their sentiment. They were +mostly tragical or doleful: some of them dealt with the wrongs of the +working-man; others appealed to a gay experience of the high seas; but +vastly the greater part to memories and associations of an Irish origin; +some still uttered the poetry of plantation life in the artless accents +of the end--man. Where they trusted themselves, with syntax that yielded +promptly to any exigency of rhythmic art, to the ordinary American +speech, it was to strike directly for the affections, to celebrate +the domestic ties, and, above all, to embalm the memories of angel and +martyr mothers whose dissipated sons deplored their sufferings too +late. March thought this not at all a bad thing in them; he smiled in +patronage of their simple pathos; he paid the tribute of a laugh when +the poet turned, as he sometimes did, from his conception of angel and +martyr motherhood, and portrayed the mother in her more familiar phases +of virtue and duty, with the retributive shingle or slipper in her hand. +He bought a pocketful of this literature, popular in a sense which the +most successful book can never be, and enlisted the ballad vendor so +deeply in the effort to direct him to Lindau's dwelling by the best +way that he neglected another customer, till a sarcasm on his +absent-mindedness stung hint to retort, “I'm a-trying to answer a +gentleman a civil question; that's where the absent-minded comes in.” + +It seemed for some reason to be a day of leisure with the Chinese +dwellers in Mott Street, which March had been advised to take first. +They stood about the tops of basement stairs, and walked two and two +along the dirty pavement, with their little hands tucked into their +sleeves across their breasts, aloof in immaculate cleanliness from the +filth around them, and scrutinizing the scene with that cynical sneer +of faint surprise to which all aspects of our civilization seem to +move their superiority. Their numbers gave character to the street, and +rendered not them, but what was foreign to them, strange there; so that +March had a sense of missionary quality in the old Catholic church, +built long before their incursion was dreamed of. It seemed to have come +to them there, and he fancied in the statued saint that looked down +from its facade something not so much tolerant as tolerated, something +propitiatory, almost deprecatory. It was a fancy, of course; the street +was sufficiently peopled with Christian children, at any rate, swarming +and shrieking at their games; and presently a Christian mother appeared, +pushed along by two policemen on a handcart, with a gelatinous tremor +over the paving and a gelatinous jouncing at the curbstones. She lay +with her face to the sky, sending up an inarticulate lamentation; but +the indifference of the officers forbade the notion of tragedy in her +case. She was perhaps a local celebrity; the children left off their +games, and ran gayly trooping after her; even the young fellow and young +girl exchanging playful blows in a robust flirtation at the corner of +a liquor store suspended their scuffle with a pleased interest as she +passed. March understood the unwillingness of the poor to leave the +worst conditions in the city for comfort and plenty in the country when +he reflected upon this dramatic incident, one of many no doubt which +daily occur to entertain them in such streets. A small town could rarely +offer anything comparable to it, and the country never. He said that +if life appeared so hopeless to him as it must to the dwellers in that +neighborhood he should not himself be willing to quit its distractions, +its alleviations, for the vague promise of unknown good in the distance +somewhere. + +But what charm could such a man as Lindau find in such a place? It could +not be that he lived there because he was too poor to live elsewhere: +with a shutting of the heart, March refused to believe this as he looked +round on the abounding evidences of misery, and guiltily remembered his +neglect of his old friend. Lindau could probably find as cheap a +lodging in some decenter part of the town; and, in fact, there was some +amelioration of the prevailing squalor in the quieter street which he +turned into from Mott. + +A woman with a tied-up face of toothache opened the door for him when he +pulled, with a shiver of foreboding, the bell-knob, from which a yard of +rusty crape dangled. But it was not Lindau who was dead, for the woman +said he was at home, and sent March stumbling up the four or five dark +flights of stairs that led to his tenement. It was quite at the top +of the house, and when March obeyed the German-English “Komm!” that +followed his knock, he found himself in a kitchen where a meagre +breakfast was scattered in stale fragments on the table before the +stove. The place was bare and cold; a half-empty beer bottle scarcely +gave it a convivial air. On the left from this kitchen was a room with +a bed in it, which seemed also to be a cobbler's shop: on the right, +through a door that stood ajar, came the German-English voice again, +saying this time, “Hier!” + + + + +XII. + +March pushed the door open into a room like that on the left, but with +a writing-desk instead of a cobbler's bench, and a bed, where Lindau sat +propped up; with a coat over his shoulders and a skull-cap on his head, +reading a book, from which he lifted his eyes to stare blankly over +his spectacles at March. His hairy old breast showed through the +night-shirt, which gaped apart; the stump of his left arm lay upon the +book to keep it open. + +“Ah, my tear yo'ng friendt! Passil! Marge! Iss it you?” he called out, +joyously, the next moment. + +“Why, are you sick, Lindau?” March anxiously scanned his face in taking +his hand. + +Lindau laughed. “No; I'm all righdt. Only a lidtle lazy, and a lidtle +eggonomigal. Idt's jeaper to stay in pedt sometimes as to geep a fire +a-goin' all the time. Don't wandt to gome too hardt on the 'brafer +Mann', you know: + + “Braver Mann, er schafft mir zu essen.” + +You remember? Heine? You readt Heine still? Who is your favorite boet +now, Passil? You write some boetry yourself yet? No? Well, I am gladt +to zee you. Brush those baperss off of that jair. Well, idt is goodt for +zore eyess. How didt you findt where I lif? + +“They told me at Maroni's,” said March. He tried to keep his eyes on +Lindau's face, and not see the discomfort of the room, but he was aware +of the shabby and frowsy bedding, the odor of stale smoke, and the pipes +and tobacco shreds mixed with the books and manuscripts strewn over the +leaf of the writing-desk. He laid down on the mass the pile of foreign +magazines he had brought under his arm. “They gave me another address +first.” + +“Yes. I have chust gome here,” said Lindau. “Idt is not very coy, +Neigh?” + +“It might be gayer,” March admitted, with a smile. “Still,” he added, +soberly, “a good many people seem to live in this part of the town. +Apparently they die here, too, Lindau. There is crape on your outside +door. I didn't know but it was for you.” + +“Nodt this time,” said Lindau, in the same humor. “Berhaps some other +time. We geep the ondertakers bratty puzy down here.” + +“Well,” said March, “undertakers must live, even if the rest of us have +to die to let them.” Lindau laughed, and March went on: “But I'm glad it +isn't your funeral, Lindau. And you say you're not sick, and so I don't +see why we shouldn't come to business.” + +“Pusiness?” Lindau lifted his eyebrows. “You gome on pusiness?” + +“And pleasure combined,” said March, and he went on to explain the +service he desired at Lindau's hands. + +The old man listened with serious attention, and with assenting nods +that culminated in a spoken expression of his willingness to undertake +the translations. March waited with a sort of mechanical expectation of +his gratitude for the work put in his way, but nothing of the kind came +from Lindau, and March was left to say, “Well, everything is understood, +then; and I don't know that I need add that if you ever want any little +advance on the work--” + +“I will ask you,” said Lindau, quietly, “and I thank you for that. But +I can wait; I ton't needt any money just at bresent.” As if he saw some +appeal for greater frankness in, March's eye, he went on: “I tidn't gome +here begause I was too boor to lif anywhere else, and I ton't stay in +pedt begause I couldn't haf a fire to geep warm if I wanted it. I'm nodt +zo padt off as Marmontel when he went to Paris. I'm a lidtle loaxurious, +that is all. If I stay in pedt it's zo I can fling money away on +somethings else. Heigh?” + +“But what are you living here for, Lindau?” March smiled at the irony +lurking in Lindau's words. + +“Well, you zee, I foundt I was begoming a lidtle too moch of an +aristograt. I hadt a room oap in Creenvidge Willage, among dose pig pugs +over on the West Side, and I foundt”--Liudau's voice lost its jesting +quality, and his face darkened--“that I was beginning to forget the +boor!” + +“I should have thought,” said March, with impartial interest, “that you +might have seen poverty enough, now and then, in Greenwich Village to +remind you of its existence.” + +“Nodt like here,” said Lindau. “Andt you must zee it all the dtime--zee +it, hear it, smell it, dtaste it--or you forget it. That is what I gome +here for. I was begoming a ploated aristograt. I thought I was nodt like +these beople down here, when I gome down once to look aroundt; I thought +I must be somethings else, and zo I zaid I better take myself in time, +and I gome here among my brothers--the becears and the thiefs!” A +noise made itself heard in the next room, as if the door were furtively +opened, and a faint sound of tiptoeing and of hands clawing on a table. + +“Thiefs!” Lindau repeated, with a shout. “Lidtle thiefs, that gabture +your breakfast. Ah! ha! ha!” A wild scurrying of feet, joyous cries +and tittering, and a slamming door followed upon his explosion, and he +resumed in the silence: “Idt is the children cot pack from school. They +gome and steal what I leaf there on my daple. Idt's one of our lidtle +chokes; we onderstand one another; that's all righdt. Once the gobbler +in the other room there he used to chase 'em; he couldn't onderstand +their lidtle tricks. Now dot goppler's teadt, and he ton't chase 'em any +more. He was a Bohemian. Gindt of grazy, I cuess.” + +“Well, it's a sociable existence,” March suggested. “But perhaps if you +let them have the things without stealing--” + +“Oh no, no! Most nodt mage them too gonceitedt. They mostn't go and feel +themselfs petter than those boor millionairss that hadt to steal their +money.” + +March smiled indulgently at his old friend's violence. “Oh, there are +fagots and fagots, you know, Lindau; perhaps not all the millionaires +are so guilty.” + +“Let us speak German!” cried Lindau, in his own tongue, pushing his +book aside, and thrusting his skullcap back from his forehead. “How much +money can a man honestly earn without wronging or oppressing some other +man?” + +“Well, if you'll let me answer in English,” said March, “I should say +about five thousand dollars a year. I name that figure because it's my +experience that I never could earn more; but the experience of other men +may be different, and if they tell me they can earn ten, or twenty, or +fifty thousand a year, I'm not prepared to say they can't do it.” + +Lindau hardly waited for his answer. “Not the most gifted man that ever +lived, in the practice of any art or science, and paid at the highest +rate that exceptional genius could justly demand from those who have +worked for their money, could ever earn a million dollars. It is the +landlords and the merchant princes, the railroad kings and the coal +barons (the oppressors to whom you instinctively give the titles of +tyrants)--it is these that make the millions, but no man earns them. +What artist, what physician, what scientist, what poet was ever a +millionaire?” + +“I can only think of the poet Rogers,” said March, amused by Lindau's +tirade. “But he was as exceptional as the other Rogers, the martyr, who +died with warm feet.” Lindau had apparently not understood his joke, and +he went on, with the American ease of mind about everything: “But you +must allow, Lindau, that some of those fellows don't do so badly with +their guilty gains. Some of them give work to armies of poor people--” + +Lindau furiously interrupted: “Yes, when they have gathered their +millions together from the hunger and cold and nakedness and ruin and +despair of hundreds of thousands of other men, they 'give work' to the +poor! They give work! They allow their helpless brothers to earn enough +to keep life in them! They give work! Who is it gives toil, and where +will your rich men be when once the poor shall refuse to give toil'? +Why, you have come to give me work!” + +March laughed outright. “Well, I'm not a millionaire, anyway, Lindau, +and I hope you won't make an example of me by refusing to give toil. +I dare say the millionaires deserve it, but I'd rather they wouldn't +suffer in my person.” + +“No,” returned the old man, mildly relaxing the fierce glare he had bent +upon March. “No man deserves to sufer at the hands of another. I lose +myself when I think of the injustice in the world. But I must not forget +that I am like the worst of them.” + +“You might go up Fifth Avenue and live among the rich awhile, when +you're in danger of that,” suggested March. “At any rate,” he added, by +an impulse which he knew he could not justify to his wife, “I wish you'd +come some day and lunch with their emissary. I've been telling Mrs. +March about you, and I want her and the children to see you. Come over +with these things and report.” He put his hand on the magazines as he +rose. + +“I will come,” said Lindau, gently. + +“Shall I give you your book?” asked March. + +“No; I gidt oap bretty soon.” + +“And--and--can you dress yourself?” + +“I vhistle, 'and one of those lidtle fellowss comess. We haf to dake +gare of one another in a blace like this. Idt iss nodt like the worldt,” + said Lindau, gloomily. + +March thought he ought to cheer him up. “Oh, it isn't such a bad world, +Lindau! After all, the average of millionaires is small in it.” He +added, “And I don't believe there's an American living that could look +at that arm of yours and not wish to lend you a hand for the one you +gave us all.” March felt this to be a fine turn, and his voice trembled +slightly in saying it. + +Lindau smiled grimly. “You think zo? I wouldn't moch like to drost 'em. +I've driedt idt too often.” He began to speak German again fiercely: +“Besides, they owe me nothing. Do you think I knowingly gave my hand +to save this oligarchy of traders and tricksters, this aristocracy +of railroad wreckers and stock gamblers and mine-slave drivers and +mill-serf owners? No; I gave it to the slave; the slave--ha! ha! +ha!--whom I helped to unshackle to the common liberty of hunger and +cold. And you think I would be the beneficiary of such a state of +things?” + +“I'm sorry to hear you talk so, Lindau,” said March; “very sorry.” He +stopped with a look of pain, and rose to go. Lindau suddenly broke into +a laugh and into English. + +“Oh, well, it is only dalk, Passil, and it toes me goodt. My parg is +worse than my pidte, I cuess. I pring these things roundt bretty soon. +Good-bye, Passil, my tear poy. Auf wiedersehen!” + + + + +XIII. + +March went away thinking of what Lindau had said, but not for the +impersonal significance of his words so much as for the light they +cast upon Lindau himself. He thought the words violent enough, but +in connection with what he remembered of the cheery, poetic, hopeful +idealist, they were even more curious than lamentable. In his own life +of comfortable reverie he had never heard any one talk so before, but he +had read something of the kind now and then in blatant labor newspapers +which he had accidentally fallen in with, and once at a strikers' +meeting he had heard rich people denounced with the same frenzy. He had +made his own reflections upon the tastelessness of the rhetoric, and +the obvious buncombe of the motive, and he had not taken the matter +seriously. + +He could not doubt Lindau's sincerity, and he wondered how he came to +that way of thinking. From his experience of himself he accounted for +a prevailing literary quality in it; he decided it to be from Lindau's +reading and feeling rather than his reflection. That was the notion he +formed of some things he had met with in Ruskin to much the same effect; +he regarded them with amusement as the chimeras of a rhetorician run +away with by his phrases. + +But as to Lindau, the chief thing in his mind was a conception of the +droll irony of a situation in which so fervid a hater of millionaires +should be working, indirectly at least, for the prosperity of a man like +Dryfoos, who, as March understood, had got his money together out of +every gambler's chance in speculation, and all a schemer's thrift from +the error and need of others. The situation was not more incongruous, +however, than all the rest of the 'Every Other Week' affair. It seemed +to him that there were no crazy fortuities that had not tended to its +existence, and as time went on, and the day drew near for the issue of +the first number, the sense of this intensified till the whole lost at +moments the quality of a waking fact, and came to be rather a fantastic +fiction of sleep. + +Yet the heterogeneous forces did co-operate to a reality which March +could not deny, at least in their presence, and the first number was +representative of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible form. As +a result, it was so respectable that March began to respect these +intentions, began to respect himself for combining and embodying them +in the volume which appealed to him with a novel fascination, when +the first advance copy was laid upon his desk. Every detail of it was +tiresomely familiar already, but the whole had a fresh interest now. +He now saw how extremely fit and effective Miss Leighton's decorative +design for the cover was, printed in black and brick-red on the delicate +gray tone of the paper. It was at once attractive and refined, and he +credited Beaton with quite all he merited in working it over to the +actual shape. The touch and the taste of the art editor were present +throughout the number. As Fulkerson said, Beaton had caught on with the +delicacy of a humming-bird and the tenacity of a bulldog to the virtues +of their illustrative process, and had worked it for all it was worth. +There were seven papers in the number, and a poem on the last page of +the cover, and he had found some graphic comment for each. It was a +larger proportion than would afterward be allowed, but for once in a way +it was allowed. Fulkerson said they could not expect to get their money +back on that first number, anyway. Seven of the illustrations were +Beaton's; two or three he got from practised hands; the rest were the +work of unknown people which he had suggested, and then related and +adapted with unfailing ingenuity to the different papers. He handled +the illustrations with such sympathy as not to destroy their individual +quality, and that indefinable charm which comes from good amateur work +in whatever art. He rescued them from their weaknesses and errors, while +he left in them the evidence of the pleasure with which a clever young +man, or a sensitive girl, or a refined woman had done them. Inevitably +from his manipulation, however, the art of the number acquired +homogeneity, and there was nothing casual in its appearance. The result, +March eagerly owned, was better than the literary result, and he foresaw +that the number would be sold and praised chiefly for its pictures. Yet +he was not ashamed of the literature, and he indulged his admiration of +it the more freely because he had not only not written it, but in a way +had not edited it. To be sure, he had chosen all the material, but he +had not voluntarily put it all together for that number; it had largely +put itself together, as every number of every magazine does, and as it +seems more and more to do, in the experience of every editor. There +had to be, of course, a story, and then a sketch of travel. There was +a literary essay and a social essay; there was a dramatic trifle, very +gay, very light; there was a dashing criticism on the new pictures, +the new plays, the new books, the new fashions; and then there was the +translation of a bit of vivid Russian realism, which the editor owed to +Lindau's exploration of the foreign periodicals left with him; Lindau +was himself a romanticist of the Victor Hugo sort, but he said this +fragment of Dostoyevski was good of its kind. The poem was a bit +of society verse, with a backward look into simpler and wholesomer +experiences. + +Fulkerson was extremely proud of the number; but he said it was too +good--too good from every point of view. The cover was too good, and the +paper was too good, and that device of rough edges, which got over the +objection to uncut leaves while it secured their aesthetic effect, was a +thing that he trembled for, though he rejoiced in it as a stroke of +the highest genius. It had come from Beaton at the last moment, as a +compromise, when the problem of the vulgar croppiness of cut leaves and +the unpopularity of uncut leaves seemed to have no solution but suicide. +Fulkerson was still morally crawling round on his hands and knees, as +he said, in abject gratitude at Beaton's feet, though he had his qualms, +his questions; and he declared that Beaton was the most inspired +ass since Balaam's. “We're all asses, of course,” he admitted, in +semi-apology to March; “but we're no such asses as Beaton.” He said that +if the tasteful decorativeness of the thing did not kill it with the +public outright, its literary excellence would give it the finishing +stroke. Perhaps that might be overlooked in the impression of novelty +which a first number would give, but it must never happen again. He +implored March to promise that it should never happen again; he said +their only hope was in the immediate cheapening of the whole affair. It +was bad enough to give the public too much quantity for their money, but +to throw in such quality as that was simply ruinous; it must be stopped. +These were the expressions of his intimate moods; every front that he +presented to the public wore a glow of lofty, of devout exultation. His +pride in the number gushed out in fresh bursts of rhetoric to every +one whom he could get to talk with him about it. He worked the personal +kindliness of the press to the utmost. He did not mind making himself +ridiculous or becoming a joke in the good cause, as he called it. He +joined in the applause when a humorist at the club feigned to drop dead +from his chair at Fulkerson's introduction of the topic, and he went on +talking that first number into the surviving spectators. He stood treat +upon all occasions, and he lunched attaches of the press at all hours. +He especially befriended the correspondents of the newspapers of other +cities, for, as he explained to March, those fellows could give him any +amount of advertising simply as literary gossip. Many of the fellows +were ladies who could not be so summarily asked out to lunch, but +Fulkerson's ingenuity was equal to every exigency, and he contrived +somehow to make each of these feel that she had been possessed of +exclusive information. There was a moment when March conjectured +a willingness in Fulkerson to work Mrs. March into the advertising +department, by means of a tea to these ladies and their friends which +she should administer in his apartment, but he did not encourage +Fulkerson to be explicit, and the moment passed. Afterward, when he told +his wife about it, he was astonished to find that she would not have +minded doing it for Fulkerson, and he experienced another proof of +the bluntness of the feminine instincts in some directions, and of the +personal favor which Fulkerson seemed to enjoy with the whole sex. This +alone was enough to account for the willingness of these correspondents +to write about the first number, but March accused him of sending it to +their addresses with boxes of Jacqueminot roses and Huyler candy. + +Fulkerson let him enjoy his joke. He said that he would do that or +anything else for the good cause, short of marrying the whole circle of +female correspondents. + +March was inclined to hope that if the first number had been made +too good for the country at large, the more enlightened taste of +metropolitan journalism would invite a compensating favor for it in New +York. But first Fulkerson and then the event proved him wrong. In spite +of the quality of the magazine, and in spite of the kindness which +so many newspaper men felt for Fulkerson, the notices in the New York +papers seemed grudging and provisional to the ardor of the editor. A +merit in the work was acknowledged, and certain defects in it for which +March had trembled were ignored; but the critics astonished him by +selecting for censure points which he was either proud of or had never +noticed; which being now brought to his notice he still could not feel +were faults. He owned to Fulkerson that if they had said so and so +against it, he could have agreed with them, but that to say thus and so +was preposterous; and that if the advertising had not been adjusted +with such generous recognition of the claims of the different papers, he +should have known the counting-room was at the bottom of it. As it was, +he could only attribute it to perversity or stupidity. It was certainly +stupid to condemn a magazine novelty like 'Every Other Week' for +being novel; and to augur that if it failed, it would fail through its +departure from the lines on which all the other prosperous magazines had +been built, was in the last degree perverse, and it looked malicious. +The fact that it was neither exactly a book nor a magazine ought to +be for it and not against it, since it would invade no other field; it +would prosper on no ground but its own. + + + + +XIV. + +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. Marcli; “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. + +Alma made him a courtesy of mock modesty. “Thanks to Miss Woodburn!” + +“Oh no! All she had to do was simply to stay put.” + +“Don't you think Ah might have improved it if Ah had, looked better?” + the girl asked, gravely. + +“Oh, you couldn't!” said Fulkerson, and he went off triumphant in their +applause and their cries of “Which? which?” + +Mrs. Leighton sank deep into an accusing gloom when at last she found +herself alone with her daughter. “I don't know what you are thinking +about, Alma Leighton. If you don't like Mr. Beaton--” + +“I don't.” + +“You don't? You know better than that. You know that, you did care for +him.” + +“Oh! that's a very different thing. That's a thing that can be got +over.” + +“Got over!” repeated Mrs. Leighton, aghast. + +“Of course, it can! Don't be romantic, mamma. People get over dozens of +such fancies. They even marry for love two or three times.” + +“Never!” cried her mother, doing her best to feel shocked; and at last +looking it. + +Her looking it had no effect upon Alma. “You can easily get over caring +for people; but you can't get over liking them--if you like them because +they are sweet and good. That's what lasts. I was a simple goose, and +he imposed upon me because he was a sophisticated goose. Now the case is +reversed.” + +“He does care for you, now. You can see it. Why do you encourage him to +come here?” + +“I don't,” said Alma. “I will tell him to keep away if you like. But +whether he comes or goes, it will be the same.” + +“Not to him, Alma! He is in love with you!” + +“He has never said so.” + +“And you would really let him say so, when you intend to refuse him?” + +“I can't very well refuse him till he does say so.” + +This was undeniable. Mrs. Leighton could only demand, in an awful tone, +“May I ask why--if you cared for him; and I know you care for him still +you will refuse him?” + +Alma laughed. “Because--because I'm wedded to my Art, and I'm not going +to commit bigamy, whatever I do.” + +“Alma!” + +“Well, then, because I don't like him--that is, I don't believe in him, +and don't trust him. He's fascinating, but he's false and he's fickle. +He can't help it, I dare say.” + +“And you are perfectly hard. Is it possible that you were actually +pleased to have Mr. Fulkerson tease you about Mr. Dryfoos?” + +“Oh, good-night, now, mamma! This is becoming personal” + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Artists never do anything like other people + Ballast of her instinctive despondency + Clinging persistence of such natures + Dividend: It's a chicken before it's hatched + Gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for it + Hopeful recklessness + How much can a man honestly earn without wronging or oppressing + I cannot endure this--this hopefulness of yours + If you dread harm enough it is less likely to happen + It must be your despair that helps you to bear up + Marry for love two or three times + No man deserves to sufer at the hands of another + Patience with mediocrity putting on the style of genius + Person talks about taking lessons, as if they could learn it + Say when he is gone that the woman gets along better without him + Shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo'--its inconvenience + Timidity of the elder in the presence of the younger man + + + + +PART THIRD + + + + +I. + +The scheme of a banquet to celebrate the initial success of 'Every +Other Week' expanded in Fulkerson's fancy into a series. Instead of the +publishing and editorial force, with certain of the more representative +artists and authors sitting down to a modest supper in Mrs. Leighton's +parlors, he conceived of a dinner at Delmonico's, with the principal +literary and artistic, people throughout the country as guests, and an +inexhaustible hospitality to reporters and correspondents, from whom +paragraphs, prophetic and historic, would flow weeks before and after +the first of the series. He said the thing was a new departure in +magazines; it amounted to something in literature as radical as the +American Revolution in politics: it was the idea of self government in +the arts; and it was this idea that had never yet been fully developed +in regard to it. That was what must be done in the speeches at the +dinner, and the speeches must be reported. Then it would go like +wildfire. He asked March whether he thought Mr. Depew could be got to +come; Mark Twain, he was sure, would come; he was a literary man. They +ought to invite Mr. Evarts, and the Cardinal and the leading Protestant +divines. His ambition stopped at nothing, nothing but the question of +expense; there he had to wait the return of the elder Dryfoos from the +West, and Dryfoos was still delayed at Moffitt, and Fulkerson openly +confessed that he was afraid he would stay there till his own enthusiasm +escaped in other activities, other plans. + +Fulkerson was as little likely as possible to fall under a superstitious +subjection to another man; but March could not help seeing that in this +possible measure Dryfoos was Fulkerson's fetish. He did not revere +him, March decided, because it was not in Fulkerson's nature to +revere anything; he could like and dislike, but he could not respect. +Apparently, however, Dryfoos daunted him somehow; and besides the homage +which those who have not pay to those who have, Fulkerson rendered +Dryfoos the tribute of a feeling which March could only define as a +sort of bewilderment. As well as March could make out, this feeling was +evoked by the spectacle of Dryfoos's unfailing luck, which Fulkerson was +fond of dazzling himself with. It perfectly consisted with a keen sense +of whatever was sordid and selfish in a man on whom his career must have +had its inevitable effect. He liked to philosophize the case with March, +to recall Dryfoos as he was when he first met him still somewhat in the +sap, at Moffitt, and to study the processes by which he imagined him to +have dried into the hardened speculator, without even the pretence to +any advantage but his own in his ventures. He was aware of painting the +character too vividly, and he warned March not to accept it exactly in +those tints, but to subdue them and shade it for himself. He said that +where his advantage was not concerned, there was ever so much good in +Dryfoos, and that if in some things he had grown inflexible, he had +expanded in others to the full measure of the vast scale on which he +did business. It had seemed a little odd to March that a man should put +money into such an enterprise as 'Every Other Week' and go off about +other affairs, not only without any sign of anxiety, but without any +sort of interest. But Fulkerson said that was the splendid side of +Dryfoos. He had a courage, a magnanimity, that was equal to the strain +of any such uncertainty. He had faced the music once for all, when he +asked Fulkerson what the thing would cost in the different degrees +of potential failure; and then he had gone off, leaving everything to +Fulkerson and the younger Dryfoos, with the instruction simply to go +ahead and not bother him about it. Fulkerson called that pretty tall for +an old fellow who used to bewail the want of pigs and chickens to occupy +his mind. He alleged it as another proof of the versatility of the +American mind, and of the grandeur of institutions and opportunities +that let every man grow to his full size, so that any man in America +could run the concern if necessary. He believed that old Dryfoos could +step into Bismarck's shoes and run the German Empire at ten days' +notice, or about as long as it would take him to go from New York to +Berlin. But Bismarck would not know anything about Dryfoos's plans till +Dryfoos got ready to show his hand. Fulkerson himself did not pretend +to say what the old man had been up to since he went West. He was at +Moffitt first, and then he was at Chicago, and then he had gone out to +Denver to look after some mines he had out there, and a railroad or two; +and now he was at Moffitt again. He was supposed to be closing up his +affairs there, but nobody could say. + +Fulkerson told March the morning after Dryfoos returned that he had not +only not pulled out at Moffitt, but had gone in deeper, ten times deeper +than ever. He was in a royal good-humor, Fulkerson reported, and was +going to drop into the office on his way up from the Street (March +understood Wall Street) that afternoon. He was tickled to death with +'Every Other Week' so far as it had gone, and was anxious to pay his +respects to the editor. + +March accounted for some rhetoric in this, but let it flatter him, and +prepared himself for a meeting about which he could see that Fulkerson +was only less nervous than he had shown himself about the public +reception of the first number. It gave March a disagreeable feeling of +being owned and of being about to be inspected by his proprietor; but +he fell back upon such independence as he could find in the thought of +those two thousand dollars of income beyond the caprice of his owner, +and maintained an outward serenity. + +He was a little ashamed afterward of the resolution it had cost him to +do so. It was not a question of Dryfoos's physical presence: that was +rather effective than otherwise, and carried a suggestion of moneyed +indifference to convention in the gray business suit of provincial cut, +and the low, wide-brimmed hat of flexible black felt. He had a stick +with an old-fashioned top of buckhorn worn smooth and bright by the palm +of his hand, which had not lost its character in fat, and which had a +history of former work in its enlarged knuckles, though it was now as +soft as March's, and must once have been small even for a man of Mr. +Dryfoos's stature; he was below the average size. But what struck March +was the fact that Dryfoos seemed furtively conscious of being a country +person, and of being aware that in their meeting he was to be tried +by other tests than those which would have availed him as a shrewd +speculator. He evidently had some curiosity about March, as the first +of his kind whom he had encountered; some such curiosity as the country +school trustee feels and tries to hide in the presence of the new +schoolmaster. But the whole affair was, of course, on a higher plane; on +one side Dryfoos was much more a man of the world than March was, and +he probably divined this at once, and rested himself upon the fact in +a measure. It seemed to be his preference that his son should introduce +them, for he came upstairs with Conrad, and they had fairly made +acquaintance before Fulkerson joined them. + +Conrad offered to leave them at once, but his father made him stay. “I +reckon Mr. March and I haven't got anything so private to talk about +that we want to keep it from the other partners. Well, Mr. March, are +you getting used to New York yet? It takes a little time.” + +“Oh yes. But not so much time as most places. Everybody belongs more or +less in New York; nobody has to belong here altogether.” + +“Yes, that is so. You can try it, and go away if you don't like it a +good deal easier than you could from a smaller place. Wouldn't make so +much talk, would it?” He glanced at March with a jocose light in +his shrewd eyes. “That is the way I feel about it all the time: just +visiting. Now, it wouldn't be that way in Boston, I reckon?” + +“You couldn't keep on visiting there your whole life,” said March. + +Dryfoos laughed, showing his lower teeth in a way that was at once +simple and fierce. “Mr. Fulkerson didn't hardly know as he could get +you to leave. I suppose you got used to it there. I never been in your +city.” + +“I had got used to it; but it was hardly my city, except by marriage. My +wife's a Bostonian.” + +“She's been a little homesick here, then,” said Dryfoos, with a smile of +the same quality as his laugh. + +“Less than I expected,” said March. “Of course, she was very much +attached to our old home.” + +“I guess my wife won't ever get used to New York,” said Dryfoos, and he +drew in his lower lip with a sharp sigh. “But my girls like it; they're +young. You never been out our way yet, Mr. March? Out West?” + +“Well, only for the purpose of being born, and brought up. I used to +live in Crawfordsville, and then Indianapolis.” + +“Indianapolis is bound to be a great place,” said Dryfoos. “I remember +now, Mr. Fulkerson told me you was from our State.” He went on to brag +of the West, as if March were an Easterner and had to be convinced. “You +ought to see all that country. It's a great country.” + +“Oh yes,” said March, “I understand that.” He expected the praise of the +great West to lead up to some comment on 'Every Other Week'; and there +was abundant suggestion of that topic in the manuscripts, proofs of +letter-press and illustrations, with advance copies of the latest number +strewn over his table. + +But Dryfoos apparently kept himself from looking at these things. He +rolled his head about on his shoulders to take in the character of the +room, and said to his son, “You didn't change the woodwork, after all.” + +“No; the architect thought we had better let it be, unless we meant to +change the whole place. He liked its being old-fashioned.” + +“I hope you feel comfortable here, Mr. March,” the old man said, +bringing his eyes to bear upon him again after their tour of inspection. + +“Too comfortable for a working-man,” said March, and he thought that +this remark must bring them to some talk about his work, but the +proprietor only smiled again. + +“I guess I sha'n't lose much on this house,” he returned, as if musing +aloud. “This down-town property is coming up. Business is getting in +on all these side streets. I thought I paid a pretty good price for +it, too.” He went on to talk of real estate, and March began to feel a +certain resentment at his continued avoidance of the only topic in +which they could really have a common interest. “You live down this way +somewhere, don't you?” the old man concluded. + +“Yes. I wished to be near my work.” March was vexed with himself for +having recurred to it; but afterward he was not sure but Dryfoos shared +his own diffidence in the matter, and was waiting for him to bring it +openly into the talk. At times he seemed wary and masterful, and then +March felt that he was being examined and tested; at others so simple +that March might well have fancied that he needed encouragement, and +desired it. He talked of his wife and daughters in a way that invited +March to say friendly things of his family, which appeared to give the +old man first an undue pleasure and then a final distrust. At moments he +turned, with an effect of finding relief in it, to his son and spoke to +him across March of matters which he was unacquainted with; he did not +seem aware that this was rude, but the young man must have felt it +so; he always brought the conversation back, and once at some cost to +himself when his father made it personal. + +“I want to make a regular New York business man out of that fellow,” he +said to March, pointing at Conrad with his stick. “You s'pose I'm ever +going to do it?” + +“Well, I don't know,” said March, trying to fall in with the joke. “Do +you mean nothing but a business man?” + +The old man laughed at whatever latent meaning he fancied in this, and +said: “You think he would be a little too much for me there? Well, I've +seen enough of 'em to know it don't always take a large pattern of a man +to do a large business. But I want him to get the business training, and +then if he wants to go into something else he knows what the world is, +anyway. Heigh?” + +“Oh yes!” March assented, with some compassion for the young man +reddening patiently under his father's comment. + +Dryfoos went on as if his son were not in hearing. “Now that boy wanted +to be a preacher. What does a preacher know about the world he preaches +against when he's been brought up a preacher? He don't know so much as a +bad little boy in his Sunday-school; he knows about as much as a girl. I +always told him, You be a man first, and then you be a preacher, if you +want to. Heigh?” + +“Precisely.” March began to feel some compassion for himself in being +witness of the young fellow's discomfort under his father's homily. + +“When we first come to New York, I told him, Now here's your chance to +see the world on a big scale. You know already what work and saving and +steady habits and sense will bring a man, to; you don't want to go round +among the rich; you want to go among the poor, and see what laziness and +drink and dishonesty and foolishness will bring men to. And I guess he +knows, about as well as anybody; and if he ever goes to preaching he'll +know what he's preaching about.” The old man smiled his fierce, simple +smile, and in his sharp eyes March fancied contempt of the ambition +he had balked in his son. The present scene must have been one of many +between them, ending in meek submission on the part of the young man, +whom his father, perhaps without realizing his cruelty, treated as +a child. March took it hard that he should be made to suffer in the +presence of a co-ordinate power like himself, and began to dislike the +old man out of proportion to his offence, which might have been mere +want of taste, or an effect of mere embarrassment before him. But +evidently, whatever rebellion his daughters had carried through against +him, he had kept his dominion over this gentle spirit unbroken. March +did not choose to make any response, but to let him continue, if he +would, entirely upon his own impulse. + + + + +II. + +A silence followed, of rather painful length. It was broken by the +cheery voice of Fulkerson, sent before him to herald Fulkerson's cheery +person. “Well, I suppose you've got the glorious success of 'Every Other +Week' down pretty cold in your talk by this time. I should have been +up sooner to join you, but I was nipping a man for the last page of the +cover. I guess we'll have to let the Muse have that for an advertisement +instead of a poem the next time, March. Well, the old gentleman given +you boys your scolding?” The person of Fulkerson had got into the room +long before he reached this question, and had planted itself astride a +chair. Fulkerson looked over the chairback, now at March, and now at the +elder Dryfoos as he spoke. + +March answered him. “I guess we must have been waiting for you, +Fulkerson. At any rate, we hadn't got to the scolding yet.” + +“Why, I didn't suppose Mr. Dryfoos could 'a' held in so long. I +understood he was awful mad at the way the thing started off, and wanted +to give you a piece of his mind, when he got at you. I inferred as much +from a remark that he made.” March and Dryfoos looked foolish, as men do +when made the subject of this sort of merry misrepresentation. + +“I reckon my scolding will keep awhile yet,” said the old man, dryly. + +“Well, then, I guess it's a good chance to give Mr. Dryfoos an idea of +what we've really done--just while we're resting, as Artemus Ward says. +Heigh, March?” + +“I will let you blow the trumpet, Fulkerson. I think it belongs strictly +to the advertising department,” said March. He now distinctly resented +the old man's failure to say anything to him of the magazine; he made +his inference that it was from a suspicion of his readiness to presume +upon a recognition of his share in the success, and he was determined to +second no sort of appeal for it. + +“The advertising department is the heart and soul of every business,” + said Fulkerson, hardily, “and I like to keep my hand in with a little +practise on the trumpet in private. I don't believe Mr. Dryfoos has +got any idea of the extent of this thing. He's been out among those +Rackensackens, where we were all born, and he's read the notices in +their seven by nine dailies, and he's seen the thing selling on the +cars, and he thinks he appreciates what's been done. But I should just +like to take him round in this little old metropolis awhile, and show +him 'Every Other Week' on the centre tables of the millionaires--the +Vanderbilts and the Astors--and in the homes of culture and refinement +everywhere, and let him judge for himself. It's the talk of the clubs +and the dinner-tables; children cry for it; it's the Castoria of +literature and the Pearline of art, the 'Won't-be-happy-till-he-gets-it +of every en lightened man, woman, and child in this vast city. I knew we +could capture the country; but, my goodness! I didn't expect to have +New York fall into our hands at a blow. But that's just exactly what New +York has done. 'Every Other Week' supplies the long-felt want that's been +grinding round in New York and keeping it awake nights ever since the +war. It's the culmination of all the high and ennobling ideals of the +past.” + +“How much,” asked Dryfoos, “do you expect to get out of it the first +year, if it keeps the start it's got?” + +“Comes right down to business, every time!” said Fulkerson, referring +the characteristic to March with a delighted glance. “Well, sir, if +everything works right, and we get rain enough to fill up the springs, +and it isn't a grasshopper year, I expect to clear above all expenses +something in the neighborhood of twenty-five thousand dollars.” + +“Humph! And you are all going to work a year--editor, manager, +publisher, artists, writers, printers, and the rest of 'em--to clear +twenty-five thousand dollars?--I made that much in half a day in Moffitt +once. I see it made in half a minute in Wall Street, sometimes.” The +old man presented this aspect of the case with a good-natured contempt, +which included Fulkerson and his enthusiasm in an obvious liking. + +His son suggested, “But when we make that money here, no one loses it.” + +“Can you prove that?” His father turned sharply upon him. “Whatever is +won is lost. It's all a game; it don't make any difference what you bet +on. Business is business, and a business man takes his risks with his +eyes open.” + +“Ah, but the glory!” Fulkerson insinuated with impudent persiflage. “I +hadn't got to the glory yet, because it's hard to estimate it; but +put the glory at the lowest figure, Mr. Dryfoos, and add it to the +twenty-five thousand, and you've got an annual income from 'Every Other +Week' of dollars enough to construct a silver railroad, double-track, +from this office to the moon. I don't mention any of the sister planets +because I like to keep within bounds.” + +Dryfoos showed his lower teeth for pleasure in Fulkerson's fooling, +and said, “That's what I like about you, Mr. Fulkerson--you always keep +within bounds.” + +“Well, I ain't a shrinking Boston violet, like March, here. More +sunflower in my style of diffidence; but I am modest, I don't deny it,” + said Fulkerson. “And I do hate to have a thing overstated.” + +“And the glory--you do really think there's something in the glory that +pays?” + +“Not a doubt of it! I shouldn't care for the paltry return in money,” + said Fulkerson, with a burlesque of generous disdain, “if it wasn't for +the glory along with it.” + +“And how should you feel about the glory, if there was no money along +with it?” + +“Well, sir, I'm happy to say we haven't come to that yet.” + +“Now, Conrad, here,” said the old man, with a sort of pathetic rancor, +“would rather have the glory alone. I believe he don't even care much +for your kind of glory, either, Mr. Fulkerson.” + +Fulkerson ran his little eyes curiously over Conrad's face and then +March's, as if searching for a trace there of something gone before +which would enable him to reach Dryfoos's whole meaning. He apparently +resolved to launch himself upon conjecture. “Oh, well, we know how +Conrad feels about the things of this world, anyway. I should like to +take 'em on the plane of another sphere, too, sometimes; but I noticed a +good while ago that this was the world I was born into, and so I made +up my mind that I would do pretty much what I saw the rest of the folks +doing here below. And I can't see but what Conrad runs the thing on +business principles in his department, and I guess you'll find it so if +you look into it. I consider that we're a whole team and big dog under +the wagon with you to draw on for supplies, and March, here, at the head +of the literary business, and Conrad in the counting-room, and me to do +the heavy lying in the advertising part. Oh, and Beaton, of course, in +the art. I 'most forgot Beaton--Hamlet with Hamlet left out.” + +Dryfoos looked across at his son. “Wasn't that the fellow's name that +was there last night?” + +“Yes,” said Conrad. + +The old man rose. “Well, I reckon I got to be going. You ready to go +up-town, Conrad?” + +“Well, not quite yet, father.” + +The old man shook hands with March, and went downstairs, followed by his +son. + +Fulkerson remained. + +“He didn't jump at the chance you gave him to compliment us all round, +Fulkerson,” said March, with a smile not wholly of pleasure. + +Fulkerson asked, with as little joy in the grin he had on, “Didn't he +say anything to you before I came in?” + +“Not a word.” + +“Dogged if I know what to make of it,” sighed Fulkerson, “but I guess +he's been having a talk with Conrad that's soured on him. I reckon maybe +he came back expecting to find that boy reconciled to the glory of this +world, and Conrad's showed himself just as set against it as ever.” + +“It might have been that,” March admitted, pensively. “I fancied +something of the kind myself from words the old man let drop.” + +Fulkerson made him explain, and then he said: + +“That's it, then; and it's all right. Conrad 'll come round in time; and +all we've got to do is to have patience with the old man till he does. +I know he likes you.” Fulkerson affirmed this only interrogatively, and +looked so anxiously to March for corroboration that March laughed. + +“He dissembled his love,” he said; but afterward, in describing to his +wife his interview with Mr. Dryfoos, he was less amused with this fact. + +When she saw that he was a little cast down by it, she began to +encourage him. “He's just a common, ignorant man, and probably didn't +know how to express himself. You may be perfectly sure that he's +delighted with the success of the magazine, and that he understands as +well as you do that he owes it all to you.” + +“Ah, I'm not so sure. I don't believe a man's any better for having made +money so easily and rapidly as Dryfoos has done, and I doubt if he's any +wiser. I don't know just the point he's reached in his evolution from +grub to beetle, but I do know that so far as it's gone the process must +have involved a bewildering change of ideals and criterions. I guess +he's come to despise a great many things that he once respected, and +that intellectual ability is among them--what we call intellectual +ability. He must have undergone a moral deterioration, an atrophy of the +generous instincts, and I don't see why it shouldn't have reached his +mental make-up. He has sharpened, but he has narrowed; his sagacity has +turned into suspicion, his caution to meanness, his courage to ferocity. +That's the way I philosophize a man of Dryfoos's experience, and I am +not very proud when I realize that such a man and his experience are the +ideal and ambition of most Americans. I rather think they came pretty +near being mine, once.” + +“No, dear, they never did,” his wife protested. + +“Well, they're not likely to be in the future. The Dryfoos feature of +'Every Other Week' is thoroughly distasteful to me.” + +“Why, but he hasn't really got anything to do with it, has he, beyond +furnishing the money?” + +“That's the impression that Fulkerson has allowed us to get. But the man +that holds the purse holds the reins. He may let us guide the horse, but +when he likes he can drive. If we don't like his driving, then we can +get down.” + +Mrs. March was less interested in this figure of speech than in the +personal aspects involved. “Then you think Mr. Fulkerson has deceived +you?” + +“Oh no!” said her husband, laughing. “But I think he has deceived +himself, perhaps.” + +“How?” she pursued. + +“He may have thought he was using Dryfoos, when Dryfoos was using him, +and he may have supposed he was not afraid of him when he was very much +so. His courage hadn't been put to the test, and courage is a matter of +proof, like proficiency on the fiddle, you know: you can't tell whether +you've got it till you try.” + +“Nonsense! Do you mean that he would ever sacrifice you to Mr. Dryfoos?” + +“I hope he may not be tempted. But I'd rather be taking the chances with +Fulkerson alone than with Fulkerson and Dryfoos to back him. Dryfoos +seems, somehow, to take the poetry and the pleasure out of the thing.” + +Mrs. March was a long time silent. Then she began, “Well, my dear, I +never wanted to come to New York--” + +“Neither did I,” March promptly put in. + +“But now that we're here,” she went on, “I'm not going to have you +letting every little thing discourage you. I don't see what there was +in Mr. Dryfoos's manner to give you any anxiety. He's just a common, +stupid, inarticulate country person, and he didn't know how to express +himself, as I said in the beginning, and that's the reason he didn't say +anything.” + +“Well, I don't deny you're right about it.” + +“It's dreadful,” his wife continued, “to be mixed up with such a man and +his family, but I don't believe he'll ever meddle with your management, +and, till he does, all you need do is to have as little to do with him +as possible, and go quietly on your own way.” + +“Oh, I shall go on quietly enough,” said March. “I hope I sha'n't begin +going stealthily.” + +“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. March, “just let me know when you're tempted +to do that. If ever you sacrifice the smallest grain of your honesty +or your self-respect to Mr. Dryfoos, or anybody else, I will simply +renounce you.” + +“In view of that I'm rather glad the management of 'Every Other Week' +involves tastes and not convictions,” said March. + + + + +III. + +That night Dryfoos was wakened from his after-dinner nap by the sound of +gay talk and nervous giggling in the drawing-room. The talk, which was +Christine's, and the giggling, which was Mela's, were intershot with the +heavier tones of a man's voice; and Dryfoos lay awhile on the leathern +lounge in his library, trying to make out whether he knew the voice. +His wife sat in a deep chair before the fire, with her eyes on his face, +waiting for him to wake. + +“Who is that out there?” he asked, without opening his eyes. + +“Indeed, indeed, I don't know, Jacob,” his wife answered. “I reckon it's +just some visitor of the girls'.” + +“Was I snoring?” + +“Not a bit. You was sleeping as quiet! I did hate to have 'em wake you, +and I was just goin' out to shoo them. They've been playin' something, +and that made them laugh.” + +“I didn't know but I had snored,” said the old man, sitting up. + +“No,” said his wife. Then she asked, wistfully, “Was you out at the old +place, Jacob?” + +“Yes.” + +“Did it look natural?” + +“Yes; mostly. They're sinking the wells down in the woods pasture.” + +“And--the children's graves?” + +“They haven't touched that part. But I reckon we got to have 'em moved +to the cemetery. I bought a lot.” + +The old woman began softly to weep. “It does seem too hard that they +can't be let to rest in peace, pore little things. I wanted you and me +to lay there, too, when our time come, Jacob. Just there, back o' the +beehives and under them shoomakes--my, I can see the very place! And I +don't believe I'll ever feel at home anywheres else. I woon't know where +I am when the trumpet sounds. I have to think before I can tell where +the east is in New York; and what if I should git faced the wrong way +when I raise? Jacob, I wonder you could sell it!” Her head shook, and +the firelight shone on her tears as she searched the folds of her dress +for her pocket. + +A peal of laughter came from the drawing-room, and then the sound of +chords struck on the piano. + +“Hush! Don't you cry, 'Liz'beth!” said Dryfoos. “Here; take my +handkerchief. I've got a nice lot in the cemetery, and I'm goin' to have +a monument, with two lambs on it--like the one you always liked so much. +It ain't the fashion, any more, to have family buryin' grounds; they're +collectin' 'em into the cemeteries, all round.” + +“I reckon I got to bear it,” said his wife, muffling her face in his +handkerchief. “And I suppose the Lord kin find me, wherever I am. But +I always did want to lay just there. You mind how we used to go out +and set there, after milkin', and watch the sun go down, and talk about +where their angels was, and try to figger it out?” + +“I remember, 'Liz'beth.” + +The man's voice in the drawing-room sang a snatch of French song, +insolent, mocking, salient; and then Christine's attempted the same +strain, and another cry of laughter from Mela followed. + +“Well, I always did expect to lay there. But I reckon it's all right. It +won't be a great while, now, anyway. Jacob, I don't believe I'm a-goin' +to live very long. I know it don't agree with me here.” + +“Oh, I guess it does, 'Liz'beth. You're just a little pulled down with +the weather. It's coming spring, and you feel it; but the doctor says +you're all right. I stopped in, on the way up, and he says so.” + +“I reckon he don't know everything,” the old woman persisted: “I've been +runnin' down ever since we left Moffitt, and I didn't feel any too well +there, even. It's a very strange thing, Jacob, that the richer you git, +the less you ain't able to stay where you want to, dead or alive.” + +“It's for the children we do it,” said Dryfoos. “We got to give them +their chance in the world.” + +“Oh, the world! They ought to bear the yoke in their youth, like we +done. I know it's what Coonrod would like to do.” + +Dryfoos got upon his feet. “If Coonrod 'll mind his own business, and do +what I want him to, he'll have yoke enough to bear.” He moved from his +wife, without further effort to comfort her, and pottered heavily out +into the dining-room. Beyond its obscurity stretched the glitter of +the deep drawing-room. His feet, in their broad; flat slippers, made +no sound on the dense carpet, and he came unseen upon the little group +there near the piano. Mela perched upon the stool with her back to the +keys, and Beaton bent over Christine, who sat with a banjo in her +lap, letting him take her hands and put them in the right place on the +instrument. Her face was radiant with happiness, and Mela was watching +her with foolish, unselfish pleasure in her bliss. + +There was nothing wrong in the affair to a man of Dryfoos's traditions +and perceptions, and if it had been at home in the farm sitting-room, +or even in his parlor at Moffitt, he would not have minded a young man's +placing his daughter's hands on a banjo, or even holding them there; it +would have seemed a proper, attention from him if he was courting her. +But here, in such a house as this, with the daughter of a man who had +made as much money as he had, he did not know but it was a liberty. +He felt the angry doubt of it which beset him in regard to so many +experiences of his changed life; he wanted to show his sense of it, if +it was a liberty, but he did not know how, and he did not know that +it was so. Besides, he could not help a touch of the pleasure in +Christine's happiness which Mela showed; and he would have gone back to +the library, if he could, without being discovered. + +But Beaton had seen him, and Dryfoos, with a nonchalant nod to the young +man, came forward. “What you got there, Christine?” + +“A banjo,” said the girl, blushing in her father's presence. + +Mela gurgled. “Mr. Beaton is learnun' her the first position.” + +Beaton was not embarrassed. He was in evening dress, and his face, +pointed with its brown beard, showed extremely handsome above the +expanse of his broad, white shirt-front. He gave back as nonchalant a +nod as he had got, and, without further greeting to Dryfoos, he said to +Christine: “No, no. You must keep your hand and arm so.” He held them in +position. “There! Now strike with your right hand. See?” + +“I don't believe I can ever learn,” said the girl, with a fond upward +look at him. + +“Oh yes, you can,” said Beaton. + +They both ignored Dryfoos in the little play of protests which followed, +and he said, half jocosely, half suspiciously, “And is the banjo the +fashion, now?” He remembered it as the emblem of low-down show business, +and associated it with end-men and blackened faces and grotesque +shirt-collars. + +“It's all the rage,” Mela shouted, in answer for all. “Everybody plays +it. Mr. Beaton borrowed this from a lady friend of his.” + +“Humph! Pity I got you a piano, then,” said Dryfoos. “A banjo would have +been cheaper.” + +Beaton so far admitted him to the conversation as to seem reminded of +the piano by his mentioning it. He said to Mela, “Oh, won't you just +strike those chords?” and as Mela wheeled about and beat the keys he +took the banjo from Christine and sat down with it. “This way!” He +strummed it, and murmured the tune Dryfoos had heard him singing from +the library, while he kept his beautiful eyes floating on Christine's. +“You try that, now; it's very simple.” + +“Where is Mrs. Mandel?” Dryfoos demanded, trying to assert himself. + +Neither of the girls seemed to have heard him at first in the chatter +they broke into over what Beaton proposed. Then Mela said, absently, +“Oh, she had to go out to see one of her friends that's sick,” and she +struck the piano keys. “Come; try it, Chris!” + +Dryfoos turned about unheeded and went back to the library. He would +have liked to put Beaton out of his house, and in his heart he burned +against him as a contumacious hand; he would have liked to discharge him +from the art department of 'Every Other Week' at once. But he was aware +of not having treated Beaton with much ceremony, and if the young man +had returned his behavior in kind, with an electrical response to his +own feeling, had he any right to complain? After all, there was no harm +in his teaching Christine the banjo. + +His wife still sat looking into the fire. “I can't see,” she said, “as +we've got a bit more comfort of our lives, Jacob, because we've got such +piles and piles of money. I wisht to gracious we was back on the farm +this minute. I wisht you had held out ag'inst the childern about sellin' +it; 'twould 'a' bin the best thing fur 'em, I say. I believe in my +soul they'll git spoiled here in New York. I kin see a change in 'em +a'ready--in the girls.” + +Dryfoos stretched himself on the lounge again. “I can't see as Coonrod +is much comfort, either. Why ain't he here with his sisters? What does +all that work of his on the East Side amount to? It seems as if he done +it to cross me, as much as anything.” Dryfoos complained to his wife +on the basis of mere affectional habit, which in married life often +survives the sense of intellectual equality. He did not expect her to +reason with him, but there was help in her listening, and though she +could only soothe his fretfulness with soft answers which were often +wide of the purpose, he still went to her for solace. “Here, I've gone +into this newspaper business, or whatever it is, on his account, and +he don't seem any more satisfied than ever. I can see he hain't got his +heart in it.” + +“The pore boy tries; I know he does, Jacob; and he wants to please you. +But he give up a good deal when he give up bein' a preacher; I s'pose we +ought to remember that.” + +“A preacher!” sneered Dryfoos. “I reckon bein' a preacher wouldn't +satisfy him now. He had the impudence to tell me this afternoon that he +would like to be a priest; and he threw it up to me that he never could +be because I'd kept him from studyin'.” + +“He don't mean a Catholic priest--not a Roman one, Jacob,” the old woman +explained, wistfully. “He's told me all about it. They ain't the kind +o' Catholics we been used to; some sort of 'Piscopalians; and they do a +heap o' good amongst the poor folks over there. He says we ain't got +any idea how folks lives in them tenement houses, hundreds of 'em in one +house, and whole families in a room; and it burns in his heart to help +'em like them Fathers, as he calls 'em, that gives their lives to it. He +can't be a Father, he says, because he can't git the eddication now; but +he can be a Brother; and I can't find a word to say ag'inst it, when it +gits to talkin', Jacob.” + +“I ain't saying anything against his priests, 'Liz'beth,” said Dryfoos. +“They're all well enough in their way; they've given up their lives to +it, and it's a matter of business with them, like any other. But what +I'm talking about now is Coonrod. I don't object to his doin' all the +charity he wants to, and the Lord knows I've never been stingy with him +about it. He might have all the money he wants, to give round any way he +pleases.” + +“That's what I told him once, but he says money ain't the thing--or not +the only thing you got to give to them poor folks. You got to give your +time and your knowledge and your love--I don't know what all you got to +give yourself, if you expect to help 'em. That's what Coonrod says.” + +“Well, I can tell him that charity begins at home,” said Dryfoos, +sitting up in his impatience. “And he'd better give himself to us a +little--to his old father and mother. And his sisters. What's he doin' +goin' off there to his meetings, and I don't know what all, an' leavin' +them here alone?” + +“Why, ain't Mr. Beaton with 'em?” asked the old woman. “I thought I +heared his voice.” + +“Mr. Beaton! Of course he is! And who's Mr. Beaton, anyway?” + +“Why, ain't he one of the men in Coonrod's office? I thought I heared--” + +“Yes, he is! But who is he? What's he doing round here? Is he makin' up +to Christine?” + +“I reckon he is. From Mely's talk, she's about crazy over the fellow. +Don't you like him, Jacob?” + +“I don't know him, or what he is. He hasn't got any manners. Who brought +him here? How'd he come to come, in the first place?” + +“Mr. Fulkerson brung him, I believe,” said the old woman, patiently. + +“Fulkerson!” Dryfoos snorted. “Where's Mrs. Mandel, I should like to +know? He brought her, too. Does she go traipsin' off this way every +evening?” + +“No, she seems to be here pretty regular most o' the time. I don't know +how we could ever git along without her, Jacob; she seems to know just +what to do, and the girls would be ten times as outbreakin' without her. +I hope you ain't thinkin' o' turnin' her off, Jacob?” + +Dryfoos did not think it necessary to answer such a question. “It's all +Fulkerson, Fulkerson, Fulkerson. It seems to me that Fulkerson about +runs this family. He brought Mrs. Mandel, and he brought that Beaton, +and he brought that Boston fellow! I guess I give him a dose, though; +and I'll learn Fulkerson that he can't have everything his own way. +I don't want anybody to help me spend my money. I made it, and I can +manage it. I guess Mr. Fulkerson can bear a little watching now. He's +been travelling pretty free, and he's got the notion he's driving, +maybe. I'm a-going to look after that book a little myself.” + +“You'll kill yourself, Jacob,” said his wife, “tryin' to do so many +things. And what is it all fur? I don't see as we're better off, any, +for all the money. It's just as much care as it used to be when we was +all there on the farm together. I wisht we could go back, Ja--” + +“We can't go back!” shouted the old man, fiercely. “There's no farm any +more to go back to. The fields is full of gas-wells and oil-wells and +hell-holes generally; the house is tore down, and the barn's goin'--” + +“The barn!” gasped the old woman. “Oh, my!” + +“If I was to give all I'm worth this minute, we couldn't go back to +the farm, any more than them girls in there could go back and be little +children. I don't say we're any better off, for the money. I've got more +of it now than I ever had; and there's no end to the luck; it pours +in. But I feel like I was tied hand and foot. I don't know which way +to move; I don't know what's best to do about anything. The money don't +seem to buy anything but more and more care and trouble. We got a big +house that we ain't at home in; and we got a lot of hired girls round +under our feet that hinder and don't help. Our children don't mind us, +and we got no friends or neighbors. But it had to be. I couldn't help +but sell the farm, and we can't go back to it, for it ain't there. So +don't you say anything more about it, 'Liz'beth.” + +“Pore Jacob!” said his wife. “Well, I woon't, dear.” + + + + +IV + +It was clear to Beaton that Dryfoos distrusted him; and the fact +heightened his pleasure in Christine's liking for him. He was as sure of +this as he was of the other, though he was not so sure of any reason for +his pleasure in it. She had her charm; the charm of wildness to which +a certain wildness in himself responded; and there were times when his +fancy contrived a common future for them, which would have a prosperity +forced from the old fellow's love of the girl. Beaton liked the idea of +this compulsion better than he liked the idea of the money; there was +something a little repulsive in that; he imagined himself rejecting +it; he almost wished he was enough in love with the girl to marry her +without it; that would be fine. He was taken with her in a certain +measure, in a certain way; the question was in what measure, in what +way. + +It was partly to escape from this question that he hurried down-town, +and decided to spend with the Leightons the hour remaining on his hands +before it was time to go to the reception for which he was dressed. It +seemed to him important that he should see Alma Leighton. After all, +it was her charm that was most abiding with him; perhaps it was to be +final. He found himself very happy in his present relations with her. +She had dropped that barrier of pretences and ironical surprise. It +seemed to him that they had gone back to the old ground of common +artistic interest which he had found so pleasant the summer before. +Apparently she and her mother had both forgiven his neglect of them +in the first months of their stay in New York; he was sure that Mrs. +Leighton liked him as well as ever, and, if there was still something +a little provisional in Alma's manner at times, it was something that +piqued more than it discouraged; it made him curious, not anxious. + +He found the young ladies with Fulkerson when he rang. He seemed to +be amusing them both, and they were both amused beyond the merit of +so small a pleasantry, Beaton thought, when Fulkerson said: “Introduce +myself, Mr. Beaton: Mr. Fulkerson of 'Every Other Week.' Think I've met +you at our place.” The girls laughed, and Alma explained that her mother +was not very well, and would be sorry not to see him. Then she turned, +as he felt, perversely, and went on talking with Fulkerson and left him +to Miss Woodburn. + +She finally recognized his disappointment: “Ah don't often get a chance +at you, Mr. Beaton, and Ah'm just goin' to toak yo' to death. Yo' have +been Soath yo'self, and yo' know ho' we do toak.” + +“I've survived to say yes,” Beaton admitted. + +“Oh, now, do you think we toak so much mo' than you do in the No'th?” + the young lady deprecated. + +“I don't know. I only know you can't talk too much for me. I should like +to hear you say Soath and house and about for the rest of my life.” + +“That's what Ah call raght personal, Mr. Beaton. Now Ah'm goin' to be +personal, too.” Miss Woodburn flung out over her lap the square of cloth +she was embroidering, and asked him: “Don't you think that's beautiful? +Now, as an awtust--a great awtust?” + +“As a great awtust, yes,” said Beaton, mimicking her accent. “If I were +less than great I might have something to say about the arrangement of +colors. You're as bold and original as Nature.” + +“Really? Oh, now, do tell me yo' favo'ite colo', Mr. Beaton.” + +“My favorite color? Bless my soul, why should I prefer any? Is blue +good, or red wicked? Do people have favorite colors?” Beaton found +himself suddenly interested. + +“Of co'se they do,” answered the girl. “Don't awtusts?” + +“I never heard of one that had--consciously.” + +“Is it possible? I supposed they all had. Now mah favo'ite colo' is +gawnet. Don't you think it's a pretty colo'?” + +“It depends upon how it's used. Do you mean in neckties?” Beaton stole a +glance at the one Fulkerson was wearing. + +Miss Woodburn laughed with her face bowed upon her wrist. “Ah do think +you gentlemen in the No'th awe ten tahms as lahvely as the ladies.” + +“Strange,” said Beaton. “In the South--Soath, excuse me! I made the +observation that the ladies were ten times as lively as the gentlemen. +What is that you're working?” + +“This?” Miss Woodburn gave it another flirt, and looked at it with a +glance of dawning recognition. “Oh, this is a table-covah. Wouldn't you +lahke to see where it's to go?” + +“Why, certainly.” + +“Well, if you'll be raght good I'll let yo' give me some professional +advass about putting something in the co'ners or not, when you have seen +it on the table.” + +She rose and led the way into the other room. Beaton knew she wanted to +talk with him about something else; but he waited patiently to let her +play her comedy out. She spread the cover on the table, and he advised +her, as he saw she wished, against putting anything in the corners; just +run a line of her stitch around the edge, he said. + +“Mr. Fulkerson and Ah, why, we've been having a regular faght aboat it,” + she commented. “But we both agreed, fahnally, to leave it to you; Mr. +Fulkerson said you'd be sure to be raght. Ah'm so glad you took mah +sahde. But he's a great admahrer of yours, Mr. Beaton,” she concluded, +demurely, suggestively. + +“Is he? Well, I'm a great admirer of Fulkerson,” said Beaton, with a +capricious willingness to humor her wish to talk about Fulkerson. +“He's a capital fellow; generous, magnanimous, with quite an ideal of +friendship and an eye single to the main chance all the time. He would +advertise 'Every Other Week' on his family vault.” + +Miss Woodburn laughed, and said she should tell him what Beaton had +said. + +“Do. But he's used to defamation from me, and he'll think you're +joking.” + +“Ah suppose,” said Miss Woodburn, “that he's quahte the tahpe of a New +York business man.” She added, as if it followed logically, “He's so +different from what I thought a New York business man would be.” + +“It's your Virginia tradition to despise business,” said Beaton, rudely. + +Miss Woodburn laughed again. “Despahse it? Mah goodness! we want to get +into it and woak it fo' all it's wo'th,' as Mr. Fulkerson says. That +tradition is all past. You don't know what the Soath is now. Ah suppose +mah fathaw despahses business, but he's a tradition himself, as Ah tell +him.” Beaton would have enjoyed joining the young lady in anything she +might be going to say in derogation of her father, but he restrained +himself, and she went on more and more as if she wished to account for +her father's habitual hauteur with Beaton, if not to excuse it. “Ah tell +him he don't understand the rising generation. He was brought up in the +old school, and he thinks we're all just lahke he was when he was young, +with all those ahdeals of chivalry and family; but, mah goodness! it's +money that cyoants no'adays in the Soath, just lahke it does everywhere +else. Ah suppose, if we could have slavery back in the fawm mah fathaw +thinks it could have been brought up to, when the commercial spirit +wouldn't let it alone, it would be the best thing; but we can't have it +back, and Ah tell him we had better have the commercial spirit as the +next best thing.” + +Miss Woodburn went on, with sufficient loyalty and piety, to expose +the difference of her own and her father's ideals, but with what Beaton +thought less reference to his own unsympathetic attention than to a +knowledge finally of the personnel and materiel of 'Every Other Week.' +and Mr. Fulkerson's relation to the enterprise. “You most excuse my +asking so many questions, Mr. Beaton. You know it's all mah doing that +we awe heah in New York. Ah just told mah fathaw that if he was evah +goin' to do anything with his wrahtings, he had got to come No'th, +and Ah made him come. Ah believe he'd have stayed in the Soath all his +lahfe. And now Mr. Fulkerson wants him to let his editor see some of his +wrahtings, and Ah wanted to know something aboat the magazine. We awe +a great deal excited aboat it in this hoase, you know, Mr. Beaton,” she +concluded, with a look that now transferred the interest from Fulkerson +to Alma. She led the way back to the room where they were sitting, +and went up to triumph over Fulkerson with Beaton's decision about the +table-cover. + +Alma was left with Beaton near the piano, and he began to talk about the +Dryfooses as he sat down on the piano-stool. He said he had been giving +Miss Dryfoos a lesson on the banjo; he had borrowed the banjo of Miss +Vance. Then he struck the chord he had been trying to teach Christine, +and played over the air he had sung. + +“How do you like that?” he asked, whirling round. + +“It seems rather a disrespectful little tune, somehow,” said Alma, +placidly. + +Beaton rested his elbow on the corner of the piano and gazed dreamily at +her. “Your perceptions are wonderful. It is disrespectful. I played it, +up there, because I felt disrespectful to them.” + +“Do you claim that as a merit?” + +“No, I state it as a fact. How can you respect such people?” + +“You might respect yourself, then,” said the girl. “Or perhaps that +wouldn't be so easy, either.” + +“No, it wouldn't. I like to have you say these things to me,” said +Beaton, impartially. + +“Well, I like to say them,” Alma returned. + +“They do me good.” + +“Oh, I don't know that that was my motive.” + +“There is no one like you--no one,” said Beaton, as if apostrophizing +her in her absence. “To come from that house, with its assertions of +money--you can hear it chink; you can smell the foul old banknotes; it +stifles you--into an atmosphere like this, is like coming into another +world.” + +“Thank you,” said Alma. “I'm glad there isn't that unpleasant odor here; +but I wish there was a little more of the chinking.” + +“No, no! Don't say that!” he implored. “I like to think that there +is one soul uncontaminated by the sense of money in this big, brutal, +sordid city.” + +“You mean two,” said Alma, with modesty. “But if you stifle at the +Dryfooses', why do you go there?” + +“Why do I go?” he mused. “Don't you believe in knowing all the natures, +the types, you can? Those girls are a strange study: the young one is a +simple, earthly creature, as common as an oat-field and the other a sort +of sylvan life: fierce, flashing, feline--” + +Alma burst out into a laugh. “What apt alliteration! And do they like +being studied? I should think the sylvan life might--scratch.” + +“No,” said Beaton, with melancholy absence, “it only-purrs.” + +The girl felt a rising indignation. “Well, then, Mr. Beaton, I should +hope it would scratch, and bite, too. I think you've no business to go +about studying people, as you do. It's abominable.” + +“Go on,” said the young man. “That Puritan conscience of yours! +It appeals to the old Covenanter strain in me--like a voice of +pre-existence. Go on--” + +“Oh, if I went on I should merely say it was not only abominable, but +contemptible.” + +“You could be my guardian angel, Alma,” said the young man, making his +eyes more and more slumbrous and dreamy. + +“Stuff! I hope I have a soul above buttons!” + +He smiled, as she rose, and followed her across the room. “Good-night; +Mr. Beaton,” she said. + +Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson came in from the other room. “What! You're +not going, Beaton?” + +“Yes; I'm going to a reception. I stopped in on my way.” + +“To kill time,” Alma explained. + +“Well,” said Fulkerson, gallantly, “this is the last place I should +like to do it. But I guess I'd better be going, too. It has sometimes +occurred to me that there is such a thing as staying too late. But with +Brother Beaton, here, just starting in for an evening's amusement, it +does seem a little early yet. Can't you urge me to stay, somebody?” + +The two girls laughed, and Miss Woodburn said: + +“Mr. Beaton is such a butterfly of fashion! Ah wish Ah was on mah way to +a pawty. Ah feel quahte envious.” + +“But he didn't say it to make you,” Alma explained, with meek softness. + +“Well, we can't all be swells. Where is your party, anyway, Beaton?” + asked Fulkerson. “How do you manage to get your invitations to those +things? I suppose a fellow has to keep hinting round pretty lively, +Neigh?” + +Beaton took these mockeries serenely, and shook hands with Miss +Woodburn, with the effect of having already shaken hands with Alma. She +stood with hers clasped behind her. + + + + +V. + +Beaton went away with the smile on his face which he had kept in +listening to Fulkerson, and carried it with him to the reception. He +believed that Alma was vexed with him for more personal reasons than she +had implied; it flattered him that she should have resented what he told +her of the Dryfooses. She had scolded him in their behalf apparently; +but really because he had made her jealous by his interest, of whatever +kind, in some one else. What followed, had followed naturally. Unless +she had been quite a simpleton she could not have met his provisional +love-making on any other terms; and the reason why Beaton chiefly liked +Alma Leighton was that she was not a simpleton. Even up in the country, +when she was overawed by his acquaintance, at first, she was not very +deeply overawed, and at times she was not overawed at all. At such times +she astonished him by taking his most solemn histrionics with flippant +incredulity, and even burlesquing them. But he could see, all the same, +that he had caught her fancy, and he admired the skill with which she +punished his neglect when they met in New York. He had really come very +near forgetting the Leightons; the intangible obligations of mutual +kindness which hold some men so fast, hung loosely upon him; it would +not have hurt him to break from them altogether; but when he recognized +them at last, he found that it strengthened them indefinitely to have +Alma ignore them so completely. If she had been sentimental, or softly +reproachful, that would have been the end; he could not have stood it; +he would have had to drop her. But when she met him on his own ground, +and obliged him to be sentimental, the game was in her hands. Beaton +laughed, now, when he thought of that, and he said to himself that the +girl had grown immensely since she had come to New York; nothing seemed +to have been lost upon her; she must have kept her eyes uncommonly wide +open. He noticed that especially in their talks over her work; she had +profited by everything she had seen and heard; she had all of Wetmore's +ideas pat; it amused Beaton to see how she seized every useful word that +he dropped, too, and turned him to technical account whenever she could. +He liked that; she had a great deal of talent; there was no question +of that; if she were a man there could be no question of her future. He +began to construct a future for her; it included provision for himself, +too; it was a common future, in which their lives and work were united. + +He was full of the glow of its prosperity when he met Margaret Vance at +the reception. + +The house was one where people might chat a long time together without +publicly committing themselves to an interest in each other except +such as grew out of each other's ideas. Miss Vance was there because +she united in her catholic sympathies or ambitions the objects of the +fashionable people and of the aesthetic people who met there on common +ground. It was almost the only house in New York where this happened +often, and it did not happen very often there. It was a literary house, +primarily, with artistic qualifications, and the frequenters of it +were mostly authors and artists; Wetmore, who was always trying to +fit everything with a phrase, said it was the unfrequenters who were +fashionable. There was great ease there, and simplicity; and if there +was not distinction, it was not for want of distinguished people, but +because there seems to be some solvent in New York life that reduces all +men to a common level, that touches everybody with its potent magic and +brings to the surface the deeply underlying nobody. The effect for +some temperaments, for consciousness, for egotism, is admirable; for +curiosity, for hero worship, it is rather baffling. It is the spirit of +the street transferred to the drawing-room; indiscriminating, levelling, +but doubtless finally wholesome, and witnessing the immensity of the +place, if not consenting to the grandeur of reputations or presences. + +Beaton now denied that this house represented a salon at all, in the old +sense; and he held that the salon was impossible, even undesirable, +with us, when Miss Vance sighed for it. At any rate, he said that this +turmoil of coming and going, this bubble and babble, this cackling and +hissing of conversation was not the expression of any such civilization +as had created the salon. Here, he owned, were the elements of +intellectual delightfulness, but he said their assemblage in such +quantity alone denied the salon; there was too much of a good thing. +The French word implied a long evening of general talk among the guests, +crowned with a little chicken at supper, ending at cock-crow. Here was +tea, with milk or with lemon-baths of it and claret-cup for the hardier +spirits throughout the evening. It was very nice, very pleasant, but +it was not the little chicken--not the salon. In fact, he affirmed, the +salon descended from above, out of the great world, and included the +aesthetic world in it. But our great world--the rich people, were +stupid, with no wish to be otherwise; they were not even curious about +authors and artists. Beaton fancied himself speaking impartially, and so +he allowed himself to speak bitterly; he said that in no other city in +the world, except Vienna, perhaps, were such people so little a part of +society. + +“It isn't altogether the rich people's fault,” said Margaret; and she +spoke impartially, too. “I don't believe that the literary men and the +artists would like a salon that descended to them. Madame Geoffrin, you +know, was very plebeian; her husband was a business man of some sort.” + +“He would have been a howling swell in New York,” said Beaton, still +impartially. + +Wetmore came up to their corner, with a scroll of bread and butter in +one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Large and fat, and clean-shaven, +he looked like a monk in evening dress. + +“We were talking about salons,” said Margaret. + +“Why don't you open a salon yourself?” asked Wetmore, breathing thickly +from the anxiety of getting through the crowd without spilling his tea. + +“Like poor Lady Barberina Lemon?” said the girl, with a laugh. “What a +good story! That idea of a woman who couldn't be interested in any of +the arts because she was socially and traditionally the material of +them! We can, never reach that height of nonchalance in this country.” + +“Not if we tried seriously?” suggested the painter. “I've an idea that +if the Americans ever gave their minds to that sort of thing, they could +take the palm--or the cake, as Beaton here would say--just as they do +in everything else. When we do have an aristocracy, it will be an +aristocracy that will go ahead of anything the world has ever seen. Why +don't somebody make a beginning, and go in openly for an ancestry, and +a lower middle class, and an hereditary legislature, and all the rest? +We've got liveries, and crests, and palaces, and caste feeling. We're +all right as far as we've gone, and we've got the money to go any +length.” + +“Like your natural-gas man, Mr. Beaton,” said the girl, with a smiling +glance round at him. + +“Ah!” said Wetmore, stirring his tea, “has Beaton got a natural-gas +man?” + +“My natural-gas man,” said Beaton, ignoring Wetmore's question, “doesn't +know how to live in his palace yet, and I doubt if he has any caste +feeling. I fancy his family believe themselves victims of it. They +say--one of the young ladies does--that she never saw such an unsociable +place as New York; nobody calls.” + +“That's good!” said Wetmore. “I suppose they're all ready for company, +too: good cook, furniture, servants, carriages?” + +“Galore,” said Beaton. + +“Well, that's too bad. There's a chance for you, Miss Vance. Doesn't +your philanthropy embrace the socially destitute as well as the +financially? Just think of a family like that, without a friend, in +a great city! I should think common charity had a duty there--not to +mention the uncommon.” + +He distinguished that kind as Margaret's by a glance of ironical +deference. She had a repute for good works which was out of proportion +to the works, as it always is, but she was really active in that way, +under the vague obligation, which we now all feel, to be helpful. She +was of the church which seems to have found a reversion to the imposing +ritual of the past the way back to the early ideals of Christian +brotherhood. + +“Oh, they seem to have Mr. Beaton,” Margaret answered, and Beaton felt +obscurely flattered by her reference to his patronage of the Dryfooses. + +He explained to Wetmore: “They have me because they partly own me. +Dryfoos is Fulkerson's financial backer in 'Every Other Week'.” + +“Is that so? Well, that's interesting, too. Aren't you rather +astonished, Miss Vance, to see what a petty thing Beaton is making of +that magazine of his?” + +“Oh,” said Margaret, “it's so very nice, every way; it makes you feel +as if you did have a country, after all. It's as chic--that detestable +little word!--as those new French books.” + +“Beaton modelled it on them. But you mustn't suppose he does everything +about 'Every Other Week'; he'd like you to. Beaton, you haven't come up +to that cover of your first number, since. That was the design of one of +my pupils, Miss Vance--a little girl that Beaton discovered down in New +Hampshire last summer.” + +“Oh yes. And have you great hopes of her, Mr. Wetmore?” + +“She seems to have more love of it and knack for it than any one of her +sex I've seen yet. It really looks like a case of art for art's sake, at +times. But you can't tell. They're liable to get married at any moment, +you know. Look here, Beaton, when your natural-gas man gets to the +picture-buying stage in his development, just remember your old friends, +will you? You know, Miss Vance, those new fellows have their regular +stages. They never know what to do with their money, but they find out +that people buy pictures, at one point. They shut your things up +in their houses where nobody comes, and after a while they overeat +themselves--they don't know what else to do--and die of apoplexy, and +leave your pictures to a gallery, and then they see the light. It's +slow, but it's pretty sure. Well, I see Beaton isn't going to move +on, as he ought to do; and so I must. He always was an unconventional +creature.” + +Wetmore went away, but Beaton remained, and he outstayed several +other people who came up to speak to Miss Vance. She was interested in +everybody, and she liked the talk of these clever literary, artistic, +clerical, even theatrical people, and she liked the sort of court with +which they recognized her fashion as well as her cleverness; it was very +pleasant to be treated intellectually as if she were one of themselves, +and socially as if she was not habitually the same, but a sort of guest +in Bohemia, a distinguished stranger. If it was Arcadia rather than +Bohemia, still she felt her quality of distinguished stranger. The +flattery of it touched her fancy, and not her vanity; she had very +little vanity. Beaton's devotion made the same sort of appeal; it was +not so much that she liked him as she liked being the object of his +admiration. She was a girl of genuine sympathies, intellectual rather +than sentimental. In fact, she was an intellectual person, whom +qualities of the heart saved from being disagreeable, as they saved her +on the other hand from being worldly or cruel in her fashionableness. +She had read a great many books, and had ideas about them, quite +courageous and original ideas; she knew about pictures--she had been in +Wetmore's class; she was fond of music; she was willing to understand +even politics; in Boston she might have been agnostic, but in New York +she was sincerely religious; she was very accomplished; and perhaps it +was her goodness that prevented her feeling what was not best in Beaton. + +“Do you think,” she said, after the retreat of one of the comers and +goers left her alone with him again, “that those young ladies would like +me to call on them?” + +“Those young ladies?” Beaton echoed. “Miss Leighton and--” + +“No; I have been there with my aunt's cards already.” + +“Oh yes,” said Beaton, as if he had known of it; he admired the pluck +and pride with which Alma had refrained from ever mentioning the fact +to him, and had kept her mother from mentioning it, which must have been +difficult. + +“I mean the Miss Dryfooses. It seems really barbarous, if nobody goes +near them. We do all kinds of things, and help all kinds of people in +some ways, but we let strangers remain strangers unless they know how to +make their way among us.” + +“The Dryfooses certainly wouldn't know how to make their way among you,” + said Beaton, with a sort of dreamy absence in his tone. + +Miss Vance went on, speaking out the process of reasoning in her mind, +rather than any conclusions she had reached. “We defend ourselves by +trying to believe that they must have friends of their own, or that they +would think us patronizing, and wouldn't like being made the objects of +social charity; but they needn't really suppose anything of the kind.” + +“I don't imagine they would,” said Beaton. “I think they'd be only +too happy to have you come. But you wouldn't know what to do with each +other, indeed, Miss Vance.” + +“Perhaps we shall like each other,” said the girl, bravely, “and then we +shall know. What Church are they of?” + +“I don't believe they're of any,” said Beaton. “The mother was brought +up a Dunkard.” + +“A Dunkard?” + +Beaton told what he knew of the primitive sect, with its early Christian +polity, its literal interpretation of Christ's ethics, and its quaint +ceremonial of foot-washing; he made something picturesque of that. “The +father is a Mammon-worshipper, pure and simple. I suppose the young +ladies go to church, but I don't know where. They haven't tried to +convert me.” + +“I'll tell them not to despair--after I've converted them,” said Miss +Vance. “Will you let me use you as a 'point d'appui', Mr. Beaton?” + +“Any way you like. If you're really going to see them, perhaps I'd +better make a confession. I left your banjo with them, after I got it +put in order.” + +“How very nice! Then we have a common interest already.” + +“Do you mean the banjo, or--” + +“The banjo, decidedly. Which of them plays?” + +“Neither. But the eldest heard that the banjo was 'all the rage,' as +the youngest says. Perhaps you can persuade them that good works are the +rage, too.” + +Beaton had no very lively belief that Margaret would go to see the +Dryfooses; he did so few of the things he proposed that he went upon the +theory that others must be as faithless. Still, he had a cruel amusement +in figuring the possible encounter between Margaret Vance, with her +intellectual elegance, her eager sympathies and generous ideals, and +those girls with their rude past, their false and distorted perspective, +their sordid and hungry selfishness, and their faith in the omnipotence +of their father's wealth wounded by their experience of its present +social impotence. At the bottom of his heart he sympathized with them +rather than with her; he was more like them. + +People had ceased coming, and some of them were going. Miss Vance said +she must go, too, and she was about to rise, when the host came up with +March; Beaton turned away. + +“Miss Vance, I want to introduce Mr. March, the editor of 'Every Other +Week.' You oughtn't to be restricted to the art department. We literary +fellows think that arm of the service gets too much of the glory +nowadays.” His banter was for Beaton, but he was already beyond +ear-shot, and the host went on: + +“Mr. March can talk with you about your favorite Boston. He's just +turned his back on it.” + +“Oh, I hope not!” said Miss Vance. “I can't imagine anybody voluntarily +leaving Boston.” + +“I don't say he's so bad as that,” said the host, committing March to +her. “He came to New York because he couldn't help it--like the rest of +us. I never know whether that's a compliment to New York or not.” + +They talked Boston a little while, without finding that they had common +acquaintance there; Miss Vance must have concluded that society was much +larger in Boston than she had supposed from her visits there, or else +that March did not know many people in it. But she was not a girl to +care much for the inferences that might be drawn from such conclusions; +she rather prided herself upon despising them; and she gave herself to +the pleasure of being talked to as if she were of March's own age. In +the glow of her sympathetic beauty and elegance he talked his best, and +tried to amuse her with his jokes, which he had the art of tingeing with +a little seriousness on one side. He made her laugh; and he flattered +her by making her think; in her turn she charmed him so much by enjoying +what he said that he began to brag of his wife, as a good husband always +does when another woman charms him; and she asked, Oh was Mrs. March +there; and would he introduce her? + +She asked Mrs. March for her address, and whether she had a day; and she +said she would come to see her, if she would let her. Mrs. March could +not be so enthusiastic about her as March was, but as they walked home +together they talked the girl over, and agreed about her beauty and her +amiability. Mrs. March said she seemed very unspoiled for a person who +must have been so much spoiled. They tried to analyze her charm, and +they succeeded in formulating it as a combination of intellectual +fashionableness and worldly innocence. “I think,” said Mrs. March, +“that city girls, brought up as she must have been, are often the most +innocent of all. They never imagine the wickedness of the world, and +if they marry happily they go through life as innocent as children. +Everything combines to keep them so; the very hollowness of society +shields them. They are the loveliest of the human race. But perhaps the +rest have to pay too much for them.” + +“For such an exquisite creature as Miss Vance,” said March, “we couldn't +pay too much.” + +A wild laughing cry suddenly broke upon the air at the street-crossing +in front of them. A girl's voice called out: “Run, run, Jen! The copper +is after you.” A woman's figure rushed stumbling across the way and into +the shadow of the houses, pursued by a burly policeman. + +“Ah, but if that's part of the price?” + +They went along fallen from the gay spirit of their talk into a silence +which he broke with a sigh. “Can that poor wretch and the radiant +girl we left yonder really belong to the same system of things? How +impossible each makes the other seem!” + + + + +VI. + +Mrs. Horn believed in the world and in society and its unwritten +constitution devoutly, and she tolerated her niece's benevolent +activities as she tolerated her aesthetic sympathies because these +things, however oddly, were tolerated--even encouraged--by society; and +they gave Margaret a charm. They made her originality interesting. +Mrs. Horn did not intend that they should ever go so far as to make her +troublesome; and it was with a sense of this abeyant authority of her +aunt's that the girl asked her approval of her proposed call upon the +Dryfooses. She explained as well as she could the social destitution of +these opulent people, and she had of course to name Beaton as the source +of her knowledge concerning them. + +“Did Mr. Beaton suggest your calling on them?” + +“No; he rather discouraged it.” + +“And why do you think you ought to go in this particular instance? New +York is full of people who don't know anybody.” + +Margaret laughed. “I suppose it's like any other charity: you reach the +cases you know of. The others you say you can't help, and you try to +ignore them.” + +“It's very romantic,” said Mrs. Horn. “I hope you've counted the cost; +all the possible consequences.” + +Margaret knew that her aunt had in mind their common experience with the +Leightons, whom, to give their common conscience peace, she had called +upon with her aunt's cards and excuses, and an invitation for her +Thursdays, somewhat too late to make the visit seem a welcome to New +York. She was so coldly received, not so much for herself as in her +quality of envoy, that her aunt experienced all the comfort which +vicarious penance brings. She did not perhaps consider sufficiently her +niece's guiltlessness in the expiation. Margaret was not with her at +St. Barnaby in the fatal fortnight she passed there, and never saw the +Leightons till she went to call upon them. She never complained: the +strain of asceticism, which mysteriously exists in us all, and makes us +put peas, boiled or unboiled, in our shoes, gave her patience with the +snub which the Leightons presented her for her aunt. But now she said, +with this in mind: “Nothing seems simpler than to get rid of people if +you don't want them. You merely have to let them alone.” + +“It isn't so pleasant, letting them alone,” said Mrs. Horn. + +“Or having them let you alone,” said Margaret; for neither Mrs. Leighton +nor Alma had ever come to enjoy the belated hospitality of Mrs. Horn's +Thursdays. + +“Yes, or having them let you alone,” Mrs. Horn courageously consented. +“And all that I ask you, Margaret, is to be sure that you really want to +know these people.” + +“I don't,” said the girl, seriously, “in the usual way.” + +“Then the question is whether you do in the unusual way. They will +build a great deal upon you,” said Mrs. Horn, realizing how much the +Leightons must have built upon her, and how much out of proportion to +her desert they must now dislike her; for she seemed to have had them on +her mind from the time they came, and had always meant to recognize any +reasonable claim they had upon her. + +“It seems very odd, very sad,” Margaret returned, “that you never could +act unselfishly in society affairs. If I wished to go and see those +girls just to do them a pleasure, and perhaps because if they're strange +and lonely, I might do them good, even--it would be impossible.” + +“Quite,” said her aunt. “Such a thing would be quixotic. Society doesn't +rest upon any such basis. It can't; it would go to pieces, if people +acted from unselfish motives.” + +“Then it's a painted savage!” said the girl. “All its favors are really +bargains. It's gifts are for gifts back again.” + +“Yes, that is true,” said Mrs. Horn, with no more sense of wrong in the +fact than the political economist has in the fact that wages are the +measure of necessity and not of merit. “You get what you pay for. It's a +matter of business.” She satisfied herself with this formula, which she +did not invent, as fully as if it were a reason; but she did not dislike +her niece's revolt against it. That was part of Margaret's originality, +which pleased her aunt in proportion to her own conventionality; she +was really a timid person, and she liked the show of courage which +Margaret's magnanimity often reflected upon her. She had through her +a repute, with people who did not know her well, for intellectual and +moral qualities; she was supposed to be literary and charitable; +she almost had opinions and ideals, but really fell short of their +possession. She thought that she set bounds to the girl's originality +because she recognized them. Margaret understood this better than +her aunt, and knew that she had consulted her about going to see +the Dryfooses out of deference, and with no expectation of luminous +instruction. She was used to being a law to herself, but she knew what +she might and might not do, so that she was rather a by-law. She was the +kind of girl that might have fancies for artists and poets, but might +end by marrying a prosperous broker, and leavening a vast lump +of moneyed and fashionable life with her culture, generosity, and +good-will. The intellectual interests were first with her, but she might +be equal to sacrificing them; she had the best heart, but she might know +how to harden it; if she was eccentric, her social orbit was defined; +comets themselves traverse space on fixed lines. She was like every one +else, a congeries of contradictions and inconsistencies, but obedient to +the general expectation of what a girl of her position must and must not +finally be. Provisionally, she was very much what she liked to be. + + + + +VII + +Margaret Vance tried to give herself some reason for going to call upon +the Dryfooses, but she could find none better than the wish to do a kind +thing. This seemed queerer and less and less sufficient as she examined +it, and she even admitted a little curiosity as a harmless element in +her motive, without being very well satisfied with it. She tried to add +a slight sense of social duty, and then she decided to have no motive +at all, but simply to pay her visit as she would to any other eligible +strangers she saw fit to call upon. She perceived that she must be very +careful not to let them see that any other impulse had governed her; she +determined, if possible, to let them patronize her; to be very modest +and sincere and diffident, and, above all, not to play a part. This was +easy, compared with the choice of a manner that should convey to them +the fact that she was not playing a part. When the hesitating Irish +serving-man had acknowledged that the ladies were at home, and had taken +her card to them, she sat waiting for them in the drawing-room. Her +study of its appointments, with their impersonal costliness, gave her no +suggestion how to proceed; the two sisters were upon her before she had +really decided, and she rose to meet them with the conviction that she +was going to play a part for want of some chosen means of not doing so. +She found herself, before she knew it, making her banjo a property in +the little comedy, and professing so much pleasure in the fact that Miss +Dryfoos was taking it up; she had herself been so much interested by it. +Anything, she said, was a relief from the piano; and then, between +the guitar and the banjo, one must really choose the banjo, unless one +wanted to devote one's whole natural life to the violin. Of course, +there was the mandolin; but Margaret asked if they did not feel that the +bit of shell you struck it with interposed a distance between you and +the real soul of the instrument; and then it did have such a faint, +mosquitoy little tone! She made much of the question, which they +left her to debate alone while they gazed solemnly at her till she +characterized the tone of the mandolin, when Mela broke into a large, +coarse laugh. + +“Well, that's just what it does sound like,” she explained defiantly to +her sister. “I always feel like it was going to settle somewhere, and +I want to hit myself a slap before it begins to bite. I don't see what +ever brought such a thing into fashion.” + +Margaret had not expected to be so powerfully seconded, and she asked, +after gathering herself together, “And you are both learning the banjo?” + “My, no!” said Mela, “I've gone through enough with the piano. Christine +is learnun' it.” + +“I'm so glad you are making my banjo useful at the outset, Miss +Dryfoos.” Both girls stared at her, but found it hard to cope with the +fact that this was the lady friend whose banjo Beaton had lent them. +“Mr. Beaton mentioned that he had left it here. I hope you'll keep it as +long as you find it useful.” + +At this amiable speech even Christine could not help thanking her. “Of +course,” she said, “I expect to get another, right off. Mr. Beaton is +going to choose it for me.” + +“You are very fortunate. If you haven't a teacher yet I should so like +to recommend mine.” + +Mela broke out in her laugh again. “Oh, I guess Christine's pretty well +suited with the one she's got,” she said, with insinuation. Her sister +gave her a frowning glance, and Margaret did not tempt her to explain. + +“Then that's much better,” she said. “I have a kind of superstition in +such matters; I don't like to make a second choice. In a shop I like to +take the first thing of the kind I'm looking for, and even if I choose +further I come back to the original.” + +“How funny!” said Mela. “Well, now, I'm just the other way. I always +take the last thing, after I've picked over all the rest. My luck always +seems to be at the bottom of the heap. Now, Christine, she's more like +you. I believe she could walk right up blindfolded and put her hand on +the thing she wants every time.” + +“I'm like father,” said Christine, softened a little by the celebration +of her peculiarity. “He says the reason so many people don't get what +they want is that they don't want it bad enough. Now, when I want a +thing, it seems to me that I want it all through.” + +“Well, that's just like father, too,” said Mela. “That's the way he done +when he got that eighty-acre piece next to Moffitt that he kept when he +sold the farm, and that's got some of the best gas-wells on it now that +there is anywhere.” She addressed the explanation to her sister, to the +exclusion of Margaret, who, nevertheless, listened with a smiling face +and a resolutely polite air of being a party to the conversation. Mela +rewarded her amiability by saying to her, finally, “You've never been in +the natural-gas country, have you?” + +“Oh no! And I should so much like to see it!” said Margaret, with a +fervor that was partly, voluntary. + +“Would you? Well, we're kind of sick of it, but I suppose it would +strike a stranger.” + +“I never got tired of looking at the big wells when they lit them up,” + said Christine. “It seems as if the world was on fire.” + +“Yes, and when you see the surface-gas burnun' down in the woods, like +it used to by our spring-house-so still, and never spreadun' any, just +like a bed of some kind of wild flowers when you ketch sight of it a +piece off.” + +They began to tell of the wonders of their strange land in an antiphony +of reminiscences and descriptions; they unconsciously imputed a merit to +themselves from the number and violence of the wells on their father's +property; they bragged of the high civilization of Moffitt, which they +compared to its advantage with that of New York. They became excited +by Margaret's interest in natural gas, and forgot to be suspicious and +envious. + +She said, as she rose, “Oh, how much I should like to see it all!” Then +she made a little pause, and added: + +“I'm so sorry my aunt's Thursdays are over; she never has them after +Lent, but we're to have some people Tuesday evening at a little concert +which a musical friend is going to give with some other artists. There +won't be any banjos, I'm afraid, but there'll be some very good singing, +and my aunt would be so glad if you could come with your mother.” + +She put down her aunt's card on the table near her, while Mela gurgled, +as if it were the best joke: “Oh, my! Mother never goes anywhere; you +couldn't get her out for love or money.” But she was herself overwhelmed +with a simple joy at Margaret's politeness, and showed it in a sensuous +way, like a child, as if she had been tickled. She came closer to +Margaret and seemed about to fawn physically upon her. + +“Ain't she just as lovely as she can live?” she demanded of her sister +when Margaret was gone. + +“I don't know,” said Christine. “I guess she wanted to know who Mr. +Beaton had been lending her banjo to.” + +“Pshaw! Do you suppose she's in love with him?” asked Mela, and then +she broke into her hoarse laugh at the look her sister gave her. “Well, +don't eat me, Christine! I wonder who she is, anyway? I'm goun' to git +it out of Mr. Beaton the next time he calls. I guess she's somebody. +Mrs. Mandel can tell. I wish that old friend of hers would hurry up and +git well--or something. But I guess we appeared about as well as she +did. I could see she was afraid of you, Christine. I reckon it's gittun' +around a little about father; and when it does I don't believe we shall +want for callers. Say, are you goun'? To that concert of theirs?” + +“I don't know. Not till I know who they are first.” + +“Well, we've got to hump ourselves if we're goun' to find out before +Tuesday.” + +As she went home Margaret felt wrought in her that most incredible of +the miracles, which, nevertheless, any one may make his experience. She +felt kindly to these girls because she had tried to make them happy, and +she hoped that in the interest she had shown there had been none of the +poison of flattery. She was aware that this was a risk she ran in such +an attempt to do good. If she had escaped this effect she was willing to +leave the rest with Providence. + + + + +VIII. + +The notion that a girl of Margaret Vance's traditions would naturally +form of girls like Christine and Mela Dryfoos would be that they were +abashed in the presence of the new conditions of their lives, and that +they must receive the advance she had made them with a certain grateful +humility. However they received it, she had made it upon principle, from +a romantic conception of duty; but this was the way she imagined they +would receive it, because she thought that she would have done so if she +had been as ignorant and unbred as they. Her error was in arguing their +attitude from her own temperament, and endowing them, for the purposes +of argument, with her perspective. They had not the means, intellectual +or moral, of feeling as she fancied. If they had remained at home on the +farm where they were born, Christine would have grown up that embodiment +of impassioned suspicion which we find oftenest in the narrowest +spheres, and Mela would always have been a good-natured simpleton; but +they would never have doubted their equality with the wisest and the +finest. As it was, they had not learned enough at school to doubt it, +and the splendor of their father's success in making money had blinded +them forever to any possible difference against them. They had no +question of themselves in the social abeyance to which they had been +left in New York. They had been surprised, mystified; it was not what +they had expected; there must be some mistake. + +They were the victims of an accident, which would be repaired as soon +as the fact of their father's wealth had got around. They had been +steadfast in their faith, through all their disappointment, that they +were not only better than most people by virtue of his money, but +as good as any; and they took Margaret's visit, so far as they, +investigated its motive, for a sign that at last it was beginning to get +around; of course, a thing could not get around in New York so quick as +it could in a small place. They were confirmed in their belief by the +sensation of Mrs. Mandel when she returned to duty that afternoon, and +they consulted her about going to Mrs. Horn's musicale. If she had felt +any doubt at the name for there were Horns and Horns--the address on the +card put the matter beyond question; and she tried to make her charges +understand what a precious chance had befallen them. She did not +succeed; they had not the premises, the experience, for a sufficient +impression; and she undid her work in part by the effort to explain +that Mrs. Horn's standing was independent of money; that though she was +positively rich, she was comparatively poor. Christine inferred that +Miss Vance had called because she wished to be the first to get in with +them since it had begun to get around. This view commended itself to +Mela, too, but without warping her from her opinion that Miss Vance +was all the same too sweet for anything. She had not so vivid a +consciousness of her father's money as Christine had; but she reposed +perhaps all the more confidently upon its power. She was far from +thinking meanly of any one who thought highly of her for it; that seemed +so natural a result as to be amiable, even admirable; she was willing +that any such person should get all the good there was in such an +attitude toward her. + +They discussed the matter that night at dinner before their father +and mother, who mostly sat silent at their meals; the father frowning +absently over his plate, with his head close to it, and making play into +his mouth with the back of his knife (he had got so far toward the use +of his fork as to despise those who still ate from the edge of their +knives), and the mother partly missing hers at times in the nervous +tremor that shook her face from side to side. + +After a while the subject of Mela's hoarse babble and of Christine's +high-pitched, thin, sharp forays of assertion and denial in the field +which her sister's voice seemed to cover, made its way into the old +man's consciousness, and he perceived that they were talking with Mrs. +Mandel about it, and that his wife was from time to time offering an +irrelevant and mistaken comment. He agreed with Christine, and silently +took her view of the affair some time before he made any sign of having +listened. There had been a time in his life when other things besides +his money seemed admirable to him. He had once respected himself for the +hard-headed, practical common sense which first gave him standing +among his country neighbors; which made him supervisor, school trustee, +justice of the peace, county commissioner, secretary of the Moffitt +County Agricultural Society. In those days he had served the public with +disinterested zeal and proud ability; he used to write to the Lake Shore +Farmer on agricultural topics; he took part in opposing, through the +Moffitt papers, the legislative waste of the people's money; on the +question of selling a local canal to the railroad company, which killed +that fine old State work, and let the dry ditch grow up to grass, +he might have gone to the Legislature, but he contented himself with +defeating the Moffitt member who had voted for the job. If he opposed +some measures for the general good, like high schools and school +libraries, it was because he lacked perspective, in his intense +individualism, and suspected all expense of being spendthrift. He +believed in good district schools, and he had a fondness, crude but +genuine, for some kinds of reading--history, and forensics of an +elementary sort. + +With his good head for figures he doubted doctors and despised +preachers; he thought lawyers were all rascals, but he respected them +for their ability; he was not himself litigious, but he enjoyed the +intellectual encounters of a difficult lawsuit, and he often attended +a sitting of the fall term of court, when he went to town, for the +pleasure of hearing the speeches. He was a good citizen, and a good +husband. As a good father, he was rather severe with his children, and +used to whip them, especially the gentle Conrad, who somehow crossed him +most, till the twins died. After that he never struck any of them; and +from the sight of a blow dealt a horse he turned as if sick. It was a +long time before he lifted himself up from his sorrow, and then the will +of the man seemed to have been breached through his affections. He let +the girls do as they pleased--the twins had been girls; he let them go +away to school, and got them a piano. It was they who made him sell the +farm. If Conrad had only had their spirit he could have made him keep +it, he felt; and he resented the want of support he might have found in +a less yielding spirit than his son's. + +His moral decay began with his perception of the opportunity of making +money quickly and abundantly, which offered itself to him after he sold +his farm. He awoke to it slowly, from a desolation in which he tasted +the last bitter of homesickness, the utter misery of idleness and +listlessness. When he broke down and cried for the hard-working, +wholesome life he had lost, he was near the end of this season of +despair, but he was also near the end of what was best in himself. He +devolved upon a meaner ideal than that of conservative good citizenship, +which had been his chief moral experience: the money he had already made +without effort and without merit bred its unholy self-love in him; he +began to honor money, especially money that had been won suddenly and +in large sums; for money that had been earned painfully, slowly, and +in little amounts, he had only pity and contempt. The poison of that +ambition to go somewhere and be somebody which the local speculators had +instilled into him began to work in the vanity which had succeeded his +somewhat scornful self-respect; he rejected Europe as the proper field +for his expansion; he rejected Washington; he preferred New York, +whither the men who have made money and do not yet know that money has +made them, all instinctively turn. He came where he could watch his +money breed more money, and bring greater increase of its kind in an +hour of luck than the toil of hundreds of men could earn in a year. He +called it speculation, stocks, the Street; and his pride, his faith +in himself, mounted with his luck. He expected, when he had sated his +greed, to begin to spend, and he had formulated an intention to build +a great house, to add another to the palaces of the country-bred +millionaires who have come to adorn the great city. In the mean time he +made little account of the things that occupied his children, except +to fret at the ungrateful indifference of his son to the interests that +could alone make a man of him. He did not know whether his daughters +were in society or not; with people coming and going in the house he +would have supposed they must be so, no matter who the people were; in +some vague way he felt that he had hired society in Mrs. Mandel, at so +much a year. He never met a superior himself except now and then a man +of twenty or thirty millions to his one or two, and then he felt his +soul creep within him, without a sense of social inferiority; it was +a question of financial inferiority; and though Dryfoos's soul bowed +itself and crawled, it was with a gambler's admiration of wonderful +luck. Other men said these many-millioned millionaires were smart, and +got their money by sharp practices to which lesser men could not attain; +but Dryfoos believed that he could compass the same ends, by the same +means, with the same chances; he respected their money, not them. + +When he now heard Mrs. Mandel and his daughters talking of that person, +whoever she was, that Mrs. Mandel seemed to think had honored his girls +by coming to see them, his curiosity was pricked as much as his pride +was galled. + +“Well, anyway,” said Mela, “I don't care whether Christine's goon' or +not; I am. And you got to go with me, Mrs. Mandel.” + +“Well, there's a little difficulty,” said Mrs. Mandel, with her +unfailing dignity and politeness. “I haven't been asked, you know.” + +“Then what are we goun' to do?” demanded Mela, almost crossly. She was +physically too amiable, she felt too well corporeally, ever to be quite +cross. “She might 'a' knowed--well known--we couldn't 'a' come alone, +in New York. I don't see why we couldn't. I don't call it much of an +invitation.” + +“I suppose she thought you could come with your mother,” Mrs. Mandel +suggested. + +“She didn't say anything about mother: Did she, Christine? Or, yes, +she did, too. And I told her she couldn't git mother out. Don't you +remember?” + +“I didn't pay much attention,” said Christine. “I wasn't certain we +wanted to go.” + +“I reckon you wasn't goun' to let her see that we cared much,” said +Mela, half reproachful, half proud of this attitude of Christine. “Well, +I don't see but what we got to stay at home.” She laughed at this lame +conclusion of the matter. + +“Perhaps Mr. Conrad--you could very properly take him without an express +invitation--” Mrs. Mandel began. + +Conrad looked up in alarm and protest. “I--I don't think I could go that +evening--” + +“What's the reason?” his father broke in, harshly. “You're not such a +sheep that you're afraid to go into company with your sisters? Or are +you too good to go with them?” + +“If it's to be anything like that night when them hussies come out and +danced that way,” said Mrs. Dryfoos, “I don't blame Coonrod for not +wantun' to go. I never saw the beat of it.” + +Mela sent a yelling laugh across the table to her mother. “Well, I wish +Miss Vance could 'a' heard that! Why, mother, did you think it like the +ballet?” + +“Well, I didn't know, Mely, child,” said the old woman. “I didn't know +what it was like. I hain't never been to one, and you can't be too +keerful where you go, in a place like New York.” + +“What's the reason you can't go?” Dryfoos ignored the passage between +his wife and daughter in making this demand of his son, with a sour +face. + +“I have an engagement that night--it's one of our meetings.” + +“I reckon you can let your meeting go for one night,” said Dryfoos. +“It can't be so important as all that, that you must disappoint your +sisters.” + +“I don't like to disappoint those poor creatures. They depend so much +upon the meetings--” + +“I reckon they can stand it for one night,” said the old man. He added, +“The poor ye have with you always.” + +“That's so, Coonrod,” said his mother. “It's the Saviour's own words.” + +“Yes, mother. But they're not meant just as father used them.” + +“How do you know how they were meant? Or how I used them?” cried the +father. “Now you just make your plans to go with the girls, Tuesday +night. They can't go alone, and Mrs. Mandel can't go with them.” + +“Pshaw!” said Mela. “We don't want to take Conrad away from his meetun', +do we, Chris?” + +“I don't know,” said Christine, in her high, fine voice. “They could get +along without him for one night, as father says.” + +“Well, I'm not a-goun' to take him,” said Mela. “Now, Mrs. Mandel, +just think out some other way. Say! What's the reason we couldn't get +somebody else to take us just as well? Ain't that rulable?” + +“It would be allowable--” + +“Allowable, I mean,” Mela corrected herself. + +“But it might look a little significant, unless it was some old family +friend.” + +“Well, let's get Mr. Fulkerson to take us. He's the oldest family friend +we got.” + +“I won't go with Mr. Fulkerson,” said Christine, serenely. + +“Why, I'm sure, Christine,” her mother pleaded, “Mr. Fulkerson is a very +good young man, and very nice appearun'.” + +Mela shouted, “He's ten times as pleasant as that old Mr. Beaton of +Christine's!” + +Christine made no effort to break the constraint that fell upon the +table at this sally, but her father said: “Christine is right, Mela. It +wouldn't do for you to go with any other young man. Conrad will go with +you.” + +“I'm not certain I want to go, yet,” said Christine. + +“Well, settle that among yourselves. But if you want to go, your brother +will go with you.” + +“Of course, Coonrod 'll go, if his sisters wants him to,” the old woman +pleaded. “I reckon it ain't agoun' to be anything very bad; and if it +is, Coonrod, why you can just git right up and come out.” + +“It will be all right, mother. And I will go, of course.” + +“There, now, I knowed you would, Coonrod. Now, fawther!” This appeal was +to make the old man say something in recognition of Conrad's sacrifice. + +“You'll always find,” he said, “that it's those of your own household +that have the first claim on you.” + +“That's so, Coonrod,” urged his mother. “It's Bible truth. Your +fawther ain't a perfesser, but he always did read his Bible. Search the +Scriptures. That's what it means.” + +“Laws!” cried Mely, “a body can see, easy enough from mother, where +Conrad's wantun' to be a preacher comes from. I should 'a' thought she'd +'a' wanted to been one herself.” + +“Let your women keep silence in the churches,” said the old woman, +solemnly. + +“There you go again, mother! I guess if you was to say that to some +of the lady ministers nowadays, you'd git yourself into trouble.” Mela +looked round for approval, and gurgled out a hoarse laugh. + + + + +IX. + +The Dryfooses went late to Mrs. Horn's musicale, in spite of Mrs. +Mandel's advice. Christine made the delay, both because she wished to +show Miss Vance that she was (not) anxious, and because she had +some vague notion of the distinction of arriving late at any sort of +entertainment. Mrs. Mandel insisted upon the difference between this +musicale and an ordinary reception; but Christine rather fancied +disturbing a company that had got seated, and perhaps making people rise +and stand, while she found her way to her place, as she had seen them do +for a tardy comer at the theatre. + +Mela, whom she did not admit to her reasons or feelings always, followed +her with the servile admiration she had for all that Christine did; +and she took on trust as somehow successful the result of Christine's +obstinacy, when they were allowed to stand against the wall at the back +of the room through the whole of the long piece begun just before they +came in. There had been no one to receive them; a few people, in the +rear rows of chairs near them, turned their heads to glance at them, and +then looked away again. Mela had her misgivings; but at the end of the +piece Miss Vance came up to them at once, and then Mela knew that she +had her eyes on them all the time, and that Christine must have been +right. Christine said nothing about their coming late, and so Mela did +not make any excuse, and Miss Vance seemed to expect none. She glanced +with a sort of surprise at Conrad, when Christine introduced him; Mela +did not know whether she liked their bringing him, till she shook hands +with him, and said: “Oh, I am very glad indeed! Mr. Dryfoos and I have +met before.” Without explaining where or when, she led them to her +aunt and presented them, and then said, “I'm going to put you with some +friends of yours,” and quickly seated them next the Marches. Mela liked +that well enough; she thought she might have some joking with Mr. March, +for all his wife was so stiff; but the look which Christine wore seemed +to forbid, provisionally at least, any such recreation. On her part, +Christine was cool with the Marches. It went through her mind that they +must have told Miss Vance they knew her; and perhaps they had boasted +of her intimacy. She relaxed a little toward them when she saw Beaton +leaning against the wall at the end of the row next Mrs. March. Then she +conjectured that he might have told Miss Vance of her acquaintance +with the Marches, and she bent forward and nodded to Mrs. March across +Conrad, Mela, and Mr. March. She conceived of him as a sort of hand of +her father's, but she was willing to take them at their apparent social +valuation for the time. She leaned back in her chair, and did not look +up at Beaton after the first furtive glance, though she felt his eyes on +her. + +The music began again almost at once, before Mela had time to make +Conrad tell her where Miss Vance had met him before. She would not have +minded interrupting the music; but every one else seemed so attentive, +even Christine, that she had not the courage. The concert went onto an +end without realizing for her the ideal of pleasure which one ought to +find in society. She was not exacting, but it seemed to her there were +very few young men, and when the music was over, and their opportunity +came to be sociable, they were not very sociable. They were not +introduced, for one thing; but it appeared to Mela that they might have +got introduced, if they had any sense; she saw them looking at her, +and she was glad she had dressed so much; she was dressed more than any +other lady there, and either because she was the most dressed of any +person there, or because it had got around who her father was, she felt +that she had made an impression on the young men. In her satisfaction +with this, and from her good nature, she was contented to be served with +her refreshments after the concert by Mr. March, and to remain joking +with him. She was at her ease; she let her hoarse voice out in her +largest laugh; she accused him, to the admiration of those near, +of getting her into a perfect gale. It appeared to her, in her own +pleasure, her mission to illustrate to the rather subdued people about +her what a good time really was, so that they could have it if they +wanted it. Her joy was crowned when March modestly professed himself +unworthy to monopolize her, and explained how selfish he felt in talking +to a young lady when there were so many young men dying to do so. + +“Oh, pshaw, dyun', yes!” cried Mela, tasting the irony. “I guess I see +them!” + +He asked if he might really introduce a friend of his to her, and she +said, Well, yes, if he thought he could live to get to her; and March +brought up a man whom he thought very young and Mela thought very old. +He was a contributor to 'Every Other Week,' and so March knew him; he +believed himself a student of human nature in behalf of literature, and +he now set about studying Mela. He tempted her to express her opinion on +all points, and he laughed so amiably at the boldness and humorous vigor +of her ideas that she was delighted with him. She asked him if he was +a New-Yorker by birth; and she told him she pitied him, when he said he +had never been West. She professed herself perfectly sick of New York, +and urged him to go to Moffitt if he wanted to see a real live town. He +wondered if it would do to put her into literature just as she was, with +all her slang and brag, but he decided that he would have to subdue her +a great deal: he did not see how he could reconcile the facts of her +conversation with the facts of her appearance: her beauty, her splendor +of dress, her apparent right to be where she was. These things +perplexed him; he was afraid the great American novel, if true, must be +incredible. Mela said he ought to hear her sister go on about New York +when they first came; but she reckoned that Christine was getting so +she could put up with it a little better, now. She looked significantly +across the room to the place where Christine was now talking with +Beaton; and the student of human nature asked, Was she here? and, Would +she introduce him? Mela said she would, the first chance she got; and +she added, They would be much pleased to have him call. She felt herself +to be having a beautiful time, and she got directly upon such intimate +terms with the student of human nature that she laughed with him about +some peculiarities of his, such as his going so far about to ask things +he wanted to know from her; she said she never did believe in beating +about the bush much. She had noticed the same thing in Miss Vance when +she came to call that day; and when the young man owned that he came +rather a good deal to Mrs. Horn's house, she asked him, Well, what sort +of a girl was Miss Vance, anyway, and where did he suppose she had met +her brother? The student of human nature could not say as to this, and +as to Miss Vance he judged it safest to treat of the non-society side of +her character, her activity in charity, her special devotion to the work +among the poor on the East Side, which she personally engaged in. + +“Oh, that's where Conrad goes, too!” Mela interrupted. “I'll bet +anything that's where she met him. I wisht I could tell Christine! But I +suppose she would want to kill me, if I was to speak to her now.” + +The student of human nature said, politely, “Oh, shall I take you to +her?” + +Mela answered, “I guess you better not!” with a laugh so significant +that he could not help his inferences concerning both Christine's +absorption in the person she was talking with and the habitual violence +of her temper. He made note of how Mela helplessly spoke of all her +family by their names, as if he were already intimate with them; he +fancied that if he could get that in skillfully, it would be a valuable +color in his study; the English lord whom she should astonish with it +began to form himself out of the dramatic nebulosity in his mind, and +to whirl on a definite orbit in American society. But he was puzzled +to decide whether Mela's willingness to take him into her confidence +on short notice was typical or personal: the trait of a daughter of the +natural-gas millionaire, or a foible of her own. + +Beaton talked with Christine the greater part of the evening that +was left after the concert. He was very grave, and took the tone of a +fatherly friend; he spoke guardedly of the people present, and moderated +the severity of some of Christine's judgments of their looks and +costumes. He did this out of a sort of unreasoned allegiance to +Margaret, whom he was in the mood of wishing to please by being very +kind and good, as she always was. He had the sense also of atoning +by this behavior for some reckless things he had said before that to +Christine; he put on a sad, reproving air with her, and gave her the +feeling of being held in check. + +She chafed at it, and said, glancing at Margaret in talk with her +brother, “I don't think Miss Vance is so very pretty, do you?” + +“I never think whether she's pretty or not,” said Beaton, with dreamy, +affectation. “She is merely perfect. Does she know your brother?” + +“So she says. I didn't suppose Conrad ever went anywhere, except to +tenement-houses.” + +“It might have been there,” Beaton suggested. “She goes among friendless +people everywhere.” + +“Maybe that's the reason she came to see us!” said Christine. + +Beaton looked at her with his smouldering eyes, and felt the wish to +say, “Yes, it was exactly that,” but he only allowed himself to deny the +possibility of any such motive in that case. He added: “I am so glad you +know her, Miss Dryfoos. I never met Miss Vance without feeling myself +better and truer, somehow; or the wish to be so.” + +“And you think we might be improved, too?” Christine retorted. “Well, I +must say you're not very flattering, Mr. Beaton, anyway.” + +Beaton would have liked to answer her according to her cattishness, with +a good clawing sarcasm that would leave its smart in her pride; but he +was being good, and he could not change all at once. Besides, the girl's +attitude under the social honor done her interested him. He was sure she +had never been in such good company before, but he could see that she +was not in the least affected by the experience. He had told her who +this person and that was; and he saw she had understood that the names +were of consequence; but she seemed to feel her equality with them all. +Her serenity was not obviously akin to the savage stoicism in which +Beaton hid his own consciousness of social inferiority; but having won +his way in the world so far by his talent, his personal quality, he did +not conceive the simple fact in her case. Christine was self-possessed +because she felt that a knowledge of her father's fortune had got +around, and she had the peace which money gives to ignorance; but Beaton +attributed her poise to indifference to social values. This, while he +inwardly sneered at it, avenged him upon his own too keen sense of them, +and, together with his temporary allegiance to Margaret's goodness, kept +him from retaliating Christine's vulgarity. He said, “I don't see how +that could be,” and left the question of flattery to settle itself. + +The people began to go away, following each other up to take leave of +Mrs. Horn. Christine watched them with unconcern, and either because +she would not be governed by the general movement, or because she liked +being with Beaton, gave no sign of going. Mela was still talking to the +student of human nature, sending out her laugh in deep gurgles amid the +unimaginable confidences she was making him about herself, her family, +the staff of 'Every Other Week,' Mrs. Mandel, and the kind of life they +had all led before she came to them. He was not a blind devotee of art +for art's sake, and though he felt that if one could portray Mela just +as she was she would be the richest possible material, he was rather +ashamed to know some of the things she told him; and he kept looking +anxiously about for a chance of escape. The company had reduced itself +to the Dryfoos groups and some friends of Mrs. Horn's who had the right +to linger, when Margaret crossed the room with Conrad to Christine and +Beaton. + +“I'm so glad, Miss Dryfoos, to find that I was not quite a stranger to +you all when I ventured to call, the other day. Your brother and I are +rather old acquaintances, though I never knew who he was before. I don't +know just how to say we met where he is valued so much. I suppose I +mustn't try to say how much,” she added, with a look of deep regard at +him. + +Conrad blushed and stood folding his arms tight over his breast, while +his sister received Margaret's confession with the suspicion which was +her first feeling in regard to any new thing. What she concluded was +that this girl was trying to get in with them, for reasons of her own. +She said: “Yes; it's the first I ever heard of his knowing you. He's so +much taken up with his meetings, he didn't want to come to-night.” + +Margaret drew in her lip before she answered, without apparent +resentment of the awkwardness or ungraciousness, whichever she found +it: “I don't wonder! You become so absorbed in such work that you think +nothing else is worth while. But I'm glad Mr. Dryfoos could come with +you; I'm so glad you could all come; I knew you would enjoy the music. +Do sit down--” + +“No,” said Christine, bluntly; “we must be going. Mela!” she called out, +“come!” + +The last group about Mrs. Horn looked round, but Christine advanced upon +them undismayed, and took the hand Mrs. Horn promptly gave her. “Well, I +must bid you good-night.” + +“Oh, good-night,” murmured the elder lady. “So very kind of you to +come.” + +“I've had the best kind of a time,” said Mela, cordially. “I hain't +laughed so much, I don't know when.” + +“Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it,” said Mrs. Horn, in the same polite murmur +she had used with Christine; but she said nothing to either sister about +any future meeting. + +They were apparently not troubled. Mela said over her shoulder to the +student of human nature, “The next time I see you I'll give it to you +for what you said about Moffitt.” + +Margaret made some entreating paces after them, but she did not succeed +in covering the retreat of the sisters against critical conjecture. She +could only say to Conrad, as if recurring to the subject, “I hope we +can get our friends to play for us some night. I know it isn't any real +help, but such things take the poor creatures out of themselves for the +time being, don't you think?” + +“Oh yes,” he answered. “They're good in that way.” He turned back +hesitatingly to Mrs. Horn, and said, with a blush, “I thank you for a +happy evening.” + +“Oh, I am very glad,” she replied, in her murmur. + +One of the old friends of the house arched her eyebrows in saying +good-night, and offered the two young men remaining seats home in her +carriage. Beaton gloomily refused, and she kept herself from asking the +student of human nature, till she had got him into her carriage, “What +is Moffitt, and what did you say about it?” + +“Now you see, Margaret,” said Mrs. Horn, with bated triumph, when the +people were all gone. + +“Yes, I see,” the girl consented. “From one point of view, of course +it's been a failure. I don't think we've given Miss Dryfoos a pleasure, +but perhaps nobody could. And at least we've given her the opportunity +of enjoying herself.” + +“Such people,” said Mrs. Horn, philosophically, “people with their +money, must of course be received sooner or later. You can't keep them +out. Only, I believe I would rather let some one else begin with them. +The Leightons didn't come?” + +“I sent them cards. I couldn't call again.” + +Mrs. Horn sighed a little. “I suppose Mr. Dryfoos is one of your +fellow-philanthropists?” + +“He's one of the workers,” said Margaret. “I met him several times at +the Hall, but I only knew his first name. I think he's a great friend of +Father Benedict; he seems devoted to the work. Don't you think he looks +good?” + +“Very,” said Mrs. Horn, with a color of censure in her assent. “The +younger girl seemed more amiable than her sister. But what manners!” + +“Dreadful!” said Margaret, with knit brows, and a pursed mouth of +humorous suffering. “But she appeared to feel very much at home.” + +“Oh, as to that, neither of them was much abashed. Do you suppose Mr. +Beaton gave the other one some hints for that quaint dress of hers? I +don't imagine that black and lace is her own invention. She seems to +have some sort of strange fascination for him.” + +“She's very picturesque,” Margaret explained. “And artists see points in +people that the rest of us don't.” + +“Could it be her money?” Mrs. Horn insinuated. “He must be very poor.” + +“But he isn't base,” retorted the girl, with a generous indignation that +made her aunt smile. + +“Oh no; but if he fancies her so picturesque, it doesn't follow that he +would object to her being rich.” + +“It would with a man like Mr. Beaton!” + +“You are an idealist, Margaret. I suppose your Mr. March has some +disinterested motive in paying court to Miss Mela--Pamela, I suppose, +is her name. He talked to her longer than her literature would have +lasted.” + +“He seems a very kind person,” said Margaret. + +“And Mr. Dryfoos pays his salary?” + +“I don't know anything about that. But that wouldn't make any difference +with him.” + +Mrs. Horn laughed out at this security; but she was not displeased by +the nobleness which it came from. She liked Margaret to be high-minded, +and was really not distressed by any good that was in her. + +The Marches walked home, both because it was not far, and because they +must spare in carriage hire at any rate. As soon as they were out of the +house, she applied a point of conscience to him. + +“I don't see how you could talk to that girl so long, Basil, and make +her laugh so.” + +“Why, there seemed no one else to do it, till I thought of Kendricks.” + +“Yes, but I kept thinking, Now he's pleasant to her because he thinks +it's to his interest. If she had no relation to 'Every Other Week,' he +wouldn't waste his time on her.” + +“Isabel,” March complained, “I wish you wouldn't think of me in he, him, +and his; I never personalize you in my thoughts: you remain always a +vague unindividualized essence, not quite without form and void, but +nounless and pronounless. I call that a much more beautiful mental +attitude toward the object of one's affections. But if you must he and +him and his me in your thoughts, I wish you'd have more kindly thoughts +of me.” + +“Do you deny that it's true, Basil?” + +“Do you believe that it's true, Isabel?” + +“No matter. But could you excuse it if it were?” + +“Ah, I see you'd have been capable of it in my place, and you're +ashamed.” + +“Yes,” sighed the wife, “I'm afraid that I should. But tell me that you +wouldn't, Basil!” + +“I can tell you that I wasn't. But I suppose that in a real exigency, I +could truckle to the proprietary Dryfooses as well as you.” + +“Oh no; you mustn't, dear! I'm a woman, and I'm dreadfully afraid. But +you must always be a man, especially with that horrid old Mr. Dryfoos. +Promise me that you'll never yield the least point to him in a matter of +right and wrong!” + +“Not if he's right and I'm wrong?” + +“Don't trifle, dear! You know what I mean. Will you promise?” + +“I'll promise to submit the point to you, and let you do the yielding. +As for me, I shall be adamant. Nothing I like better.” + +“They're dreadful, even that poor, good young fellow, who's so different +from all the rest; he's awful, too, because you feel that he's a martyr +to them.” + +“And I never did like martyrs a great deal,” March interposed. + +“I wonder how they came to be there,” Mrs. March pursued, unmindful of +his joke. + +“That is exactly what seemed to be puzzling Miss Mela about us. She +asked, and I explained as well as I could; and then she told me that +Miss Vance had come to call on them and invited them; and first they +didn't know how they could come till they thought of making Conrad bring +them. But she didn't say why Miss Vance called on them. Mr. Dryfoos +doesn't employ her on 'Every Other Week.' But I suppose she has her own +vile little motive.” + +“It can't be their money; it can't be!” sighed Mrs. March. + +“Well, I don't know. We all respect money.” + +“Yes, but Miss Vance's position is so secure. She needn't pay court to +those stupid, vulgar people.” + +“Well, let's console ourselves with the belief that she would, if +she needed. Such people as the Dryfooses are the raw material of good +society. It isn't made up of refined or meritorious people--professors +and litterateurs, ministers and musicians, and their families. All the +fashionable people there to-night were like the Dryfooses a generation +or two ago. I dare say the material works up faster now, and in a season +or two you won't know the Dryfooses from the other plutocrats. THEY +will--a little better than they do now; they'll see a difference, but +nothing radical, nothing painful. People who get up in the world by +service to others--through letters, or art, or science--may have their +modest little misgivings as to their social value, but people that rise +by money--especially if their gains are sudden--never have. And that's +the kind of people that form our nobility; there's no use pretending +that we haven't a nobility; we might as well pretend we haven't +first-class cars in the presence of a vestibuled Pullman. Those girls +had no more doubt of their right to be there than if they had been +duchesses: we thought it was very nice of Miss Vance to come and ask +us, but they didn't; they weren't afraid, or the least embarrassed; they +were perfectly natural--like born aristocrats. And you may be sure that +if the plutocracy that now owns the country ever sees fit to take on +the outward signs of an aristocracy--titles, and arms, and ancestors--it +won't falter from any inherent question of its worth. Money prizes and +honors itself, and if there is anything it hasn't got, it believes it +can buy it.” + +“Well, Basil,” said his wife, “I hope you won't get infected with +Lindau's ideas of rich people. Some of them are very good and kind.” + +“Who denies that? Not even Lindau himself. It's all right. And the great +thing is that the evening's enjoyment is over. I've got my society +smile off, and I'm radiantly happy. Go on with your little pessimistic +diatribes, Isabel; you can't spoil my pleasure.” + +“I could see,” said Mela, as she and Christine drove home together, +“that she was as jealous as she could be, all the time you was talkun' +to Mr. Beaton. She pretended to be talkun' to Conrad, but she kep' her +eye on you pretty close, I can tell you. I bet she just got us there to +see how him and you would act together. And I reckon she was satisfied. +He's dead gone on you, Chris.” + +Christine listened with a dreamy pleasure to the flatteries with which +Mela plied her in the hope of some return in kind, and not at all +because she felt spitefully toward Miss Vance, or in anywise wished her +ill. “Who was that fellow with you so long?” asked Christine. “I suppose +you turned yourself inside out to him, like you always do.” + +Mela was transported by the cruel ingratitude. “It's a lie! I didn't +tell him a single thing.” + +Conrad walked home, choosing to do so because he did not wish to hear +his sisters' talk of the evening, and because there was a tumult in his +spirit which he wished to let have its way. In his life with its single +purpose, defeated by stronger wills than his own, and now struggling +partially to fulfil itself in acts of devotion to others, the thought of +women had entered scarcely more than in that of a child. His ideals were +of a virginal vagueness; faces, voices, gestures had filled his fancy at +times, but almost passionately; and the sensation that he now indulged +was a kind of worship, ardent, but reverent and exalted. The brutal +experiences of the world make us forget that there are such natures in +it, and that they seem to come up out of the lowly earth as well as down +from the high heaven. In the heart of this man well on toward thirty +there had never been left the stain of a base thought; not that +suggestion and conjecture had not visited him, but that he had not +entertained them, or in any-wise made them his. In a Catholic age and +country, he would have been one of those monks who are sainted after +death for the angelic purity of their lives, and whose names are invoked +by believers in moments of trial, like San Luigi Gonzaga. As he now +walked along thinking, with a lover's beatified smile on his face, of +how Margaret Vance had spoken and looked, he dramatized scenes in which +he approved himself to her by acts of goodness and unselfishness, and +died to please her for the sake of others. He made her praise him for +them, to his face, when he disclaimed their merit, and after his death, +when he could not. All the time he was poignantly sensible of her grace, +her elegance, her style; they seemed to intoxicate him; some tones of +her voice thrilled through his nerves, and some looks turned his +brain with a delicious, swooning sense of her beauty; her refinement +bewildered him. But all this did not admit the idea of possession, even +of aspiration. At the most his worship only set her beyond the love of +other men as far as beyond his own. + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Affectional habit + Brag of his wife, as a good husband always does + But when we make that money here, no one loses it + Courage hadn't been put to the test + Family buryin' grounds + Homage which those who have not pay to those who have + Hurry up and git well--or something + Made money and do not yet know that money has made them + Society: All its favors are really bargains + Wages are the measure of necessity and not of merit + Without realizing his cruelty, treated as a child + + + + +PART FOURTH + + + + +I. + +Not long after Lent, Fulkerson set before Dryfoos one day his scheme for +a dinner in celebration of the success of 'Every Other Week.' Dryfoos +had never meddled in any manner with the conduct of the periodical; but +Fulkerson easily saw that he was proud of his relation to it, and he +proceeded upon the theory that he would be willing to have this relation +known: On the days when he had been lucky in stocks, he was apt to drop +in at the office on Eleventh Street, on his way up-town, and listen to +Fulkerson's talk. He was on good enough terms with March, who revised +his first impressions of the man, but they had not much to say to each +other, and it seemed to March that Dryfoos was even a little afraid +of him, as of a piece of mechanism he had acquired, but did not quite +understand; he left the working of it to Fulkerson, who no doubt bragged +of it sufficiently. The old man seemed to have as little to say to his +son; he shut himself up with Fulkerson, where the others could hear +the manager begin and go on with an unstinted flow of talk about 'Every +Other Week;' for Fulkerson never talked of anything else if he could +help it, and was always bringing the conversation back to it if it +strayed: + +The day he spoke of the dinner he rose and called from his door: “March, +I say, come down here a minute, will you? Conrad, I want you, too.” + +The editor and the publisher found the manager and the proprietor seated +on opposite sides of the table. “It's about those funeral baked meats, +you know,” Fulkerson explained, “and I was trying to give Mr. Dryfoos +some idea of what we wanted to do. That is, what I wanted to do,” he +continued, turning from March to Dryfoos. “March, here, is opposed to +it, of course. He'd like to publish 'Every Other Week' on the sly; +keep it out of the papers, and off the newsstands; he's a modest Boston +petunia, and he shrinks from publicity; but I am not that kind of +herb myself, and I want all the publicity we can get--beg, borrow, or +steal--for this thing. I say that you can't work the sacred rites of +hospitality in a better cause, and what I propose is a little dinner for +the purpose of recognizing the hit we've made with this thing. My +idea was to strike you for the necessary funds, and do the thing on a +handsome scale. The term little dinner is a mere figure of speech. A +little dinner wouldn't make a big talk, and what we want is the big +talk, at present, if we don't lay up a cent. My notion was that pretty +soon after Lent, now, when everybody is feeling just right, we +should begin to send out our paragraphs, affirmative, negative, and +explanatory, and along about the first of May we should sit down about +a hundred strong, the most distinguished people in the country, and +solemnize our triumph. There it is in a nutshell. I might expand and I +might expound, but that's the sum and substance of it.” + +Fulkerson stopped, and ran his eyes eagerly over the faces of his +three listeners, one after the other. March was a little surprised when +Dryfoos turned to him, but that reference of the question seemed to give +Fulkerson particular pleasure: “What do you think, Mr. March?” + +The editor leaned back in his chair. “I don't pretend to have Mr. +Fulkerson's genius for advertising; but it seems to me a little early +yet. We might celebrate later when we've got more to celebrate. At +present we're a pleasing novelty, rather than a fixed fact.” + +“Ah, you don't get the idea!” said Fulkerson. “What we want to do with +this dinner is to fix the fact.” + +“Am I going to come in anywhere?” the old man interrupted. + +“You're going to come in at the head of the procession! We are going to +strike everything that is imaginative and romantic in the newspaper soul +with you and your history and your fancy for going in for this thing. +I can start you in a paragraph that will travel through all the +newspapers, from Maine to Texas and from Alaska to Florida. We have +had all sorts of rich men backing up literary enterprises, but the +natural-gas man in literature is a new thing, and the combination of +your picturesque past and your aesthetic present is something that +will knock out the sympathies of the American public the first round. +I feel,” said Fulkerson, with a tremor of pathos in his voice, “that +'Every Other Week' is at a disadvantage before the public as long as +it's supposed to be my enterprise, my idea. As far as I'm known at all, +I'm known simply as a syndicate man, and nobody in the press believes +that I've got the money to run the thing on a grand scale; a suspicion +of insolvency must attach to it sooner or later, and the fellows on the +press will work up that impression, sooner or later, if we don't give +them something else to work up. Now, as soon as I begin to give it +away to the correspondents that you're in it, with your untold +millions--that, in fact, it was your idea from the start, that you +originated it to give full play to the humanitarian tendencies of Conrad +here, who's always had these theories of co-operation, and longed +to realize them for the benefit of our struggling young writers and +artists--” + +March had listened with growing amusement to the mingled burlesque and +earnest of Fulkerson's self-sacrificing impudence, and with wonder as +to how far Dryfoos was consenting to his preposterous proposition, when +Conrad broke out: “Mr. Fulkerson, I could not allow you to do that. +It would not be true; I did not wish to be here; and--and what I +think--what I wish to do--that is something I will not let any one put +me in a false position about. No!” The blood rushed into the young man's +gentle face, and he met his father's glance with defiance. + +Dryfoos turned from him to Fulkerson without speaking, and Fulkerson +said, caressingly: “Why, of course, Coonrod! I know how you feel, and I +shouldn't let anything of that sort go out uncontradicted afterward. But +there isn't anything in these times that would give us better standing +with the public than some hint of the way you feel about such things. +The public expects to be interested, and nothing would interest it more +than to be told that the success of 'Every Other Week' sprang from the +first application of the principle of Live and let Live to a literary +enterprise. It would look particularly well, coming from you and your +father, but if you object, we can leave that part out; though if you +approve of the principle I don't see why you need object. The main thing +is to let the public know that it owes this thing to the liberal and +enlightened spirit of one of the foremost capitalists of the country; +and that his purposes are not likely to be betrayed in the hands of his +son, I should get a little cut made from a photograph of your father, +and supply it gratis with the paragraphs.” + +“I guess,” said the old man, “we will get along without the cut.” + +Fulkerson laughed. “Well, well! Have it your own way, But the sight of +your face in the patent outsides of the country press would be worth +half a dozen subscribers in every school district throughout the length +and breadth of this fair land.” + +“There was a fellow,” Dryfoos explained, in an aside to March, “that was +getting up a history of Moffitt, and he asked me to let him put a steel +engraving of me in. He said a good many prominent citizens were going +to have theirs in, and his price was a hundred and fifty dollars. I told +him I couldn't let mine go for less than two hundred, and when he said +he could give me a splendid plate for that money, I said I should want +it cash. You never saw a fellow more astonished when he got it through +him. that I expected him to pay the two hundred.” + +Fulkerson laughed in keen appreciation of the joke. “Well, sir, I guess +'Every Other Week' will pay you that much. But if you won't sell at any +price, all right; we must try to worry along without the light of your +countenance on the posters, but we got to have it for the banquet.” + +“I don't seem to feel very hungry, yet,” said they old man, dryly. + +“Oh, 'l'appetit vient en mangeant', as our French friends say. You'll be +hungry enough when you see the preliminary Little Neck clam. It's too +late for oysters.” + +“Doesn't that fact seem to point to a postponement till they get back, +sometime in October,” March suggested. + +“No, no!” said Fulkerson, “you don't catch on to the business end of +this thing, my friends. You're proceeding on something like the old +exploded idea that the demand creates the supply, when everybody knows, +if he's watched the course of modern events, that it's just as apt to +be the other way. I contend that we've got a real substantial success to +celebrate now; but even if we hadn't, the celebration would do more than +anything else to create the success, if we got it properly before the +public. People will say: Those fellows are not fools; they wouldn't go +and rejoice over their magazine unless they had got a big thing in it. +And the state of feeling we should produce in the public mind would make +a boom of perfectly unprecedented grandeur for E. O. W. Heigh?” + +He looked sunnily from one to the other in succession. The elder Dryfoos +said, with his chin on the top of his stick, “I reckon those Little Neck +clams will keep.” + +“Well, just as you say,” Fulkerson cheerfully assented. “I understand +you to agree to the general principle of a little dinner?” + +“The smaller the better,” said the old man. + +“Well, I say a little dinner because the idea of that seems to cover the +case, even if we vary the plan a little. I had thought of a reception, +maybe, that would include the lady contributors and artists, and the +wives and daughters of the other contributors. That would give us the +chance to ring in a lot of society correspondents and get the thing +written up in first-class shape. By-the-way!” cried Fulkerson, slapping +himself on the leg, “why not have the dinner and the reception both?” + +“I don't understand,” said Dryfoos. + +“Why, have a select little dinner for ten or twenty choice spirits +of the male persuasion, and then, about ten o'clock, throw open your +palatial drawing-rooms and admit the females to champagne, salads, and +ices. It is the very thing! Come!” + +“What do you think of it, Mr. March?” asked Dryfoos, on whose social +inexperience Fulkerson's words projected no very intelligible image, and +who perhaps hoped for some more light. + +“It's a beautiful vision,” said March, “and if it will take more time to +realize it I think I approve. I approve of anything that will delay Mr. +Fulkerson's advertising orgie.” + +“Then,” Fulkerson pursued, “we could have the pleasure of Miss Christine +and Miss Mela's company; and maybe Mrs. Dryfoos would look in on us in +the course of the evening. There's no hurry, as Mr. March suggests, if +we can give the thing this shape. I will cheerfully adopt the idea of my +honorable colleague.” + +March laughed at his impudence, but at heart he was ashamed of Fulkerson +for proposing to make use of Dryfoos and his house in that way. He +fancied something appealing in the look that the old man turned on him, +and something indignant in Conrad's flush; but probably this was only +his fancy. He reflected that neither of them could feel it as people of +more worldly knowledge would, and he consoled himself with the fact +that Fulkerson was really not such a charlatan as he seemed. But it +went through his mind that this was a strange end for all Dryfoos's +money-making to come to; and he philosophically accepted the fact of his +own humble fortunes when he reflected how little his money could buy for +such a man. It was an honorable use that Fulkerson was putting it to +in 'Every Other Week;' it might be far more creditably spent on such an +enterprise than on horses, or wines, or women, the usual resources of +the brute rich; and if it were to be lost, it might better be lost that +way than in stocks. He kept a smiling face turned to Dryfoos while these +irreverent considerations occupied him, and hardened his heart against +father and son and their possible emotions. + +The old man rose to put an end to the interview. He only repeated, “I +guess those clams will keep till fall.” + +But Fulkerson was apparently satisfied with the progress he had made; +and when he joined March for the stroll homeward after office hours, he +was able to detach his mind from the subject, as if content to leave it. + +“This is about the best part of the year in New York,” he said; In some +of the areas the grass had sprouted, and the tender young foliage had +loosened itself froze the buds on a sidewalk tree here and there; the +soft air was full of spring, and the delicate sky, far aloof, had the +look it never wears at any other season. “It ain't a time of year to +complain much of, anywhere; but I don't want anything better than the +month of May in New York. Farther South it's too hot, and I've been in +Boston in May when that east wind of yours made every nerve in my body +get up and howl. I reckon the weather has a good deal to do with the +local temperament. The reason a New York man takes life so easily with +all his rush is that his climate don't worry him. But a Boston man must +be rasped the whole while by the edge in his air. That accounts for +his sharpness; and when he's lived through twenty-five or thirty Boston +Mays, he gets to thinking that Providence has some particular use for +him, or he wouldn't have survived, and that makes him conceited. See?” + +“I see,” said March. “But I don't know how you're going to work that +idea into an advertisement, exactly.” + +“Oh, pahaw, now, March! You don't think I've got that on the brain all +the time?” + +“You were gradually leading up to 'Every Other Week', somehow.” + +“No, sir; I wasn't. I was just thinking what a different creature a +Massachusetts man is from a Virginian. And yet I suppose they're both +as pure English stock as you'll get anywhere in America. Marsh, I think +Colonel Woodburn's paper is going to make a hit.” + +“You've got there! When it knocks down the sale about one-half, I shall +know it's made a hit.” + +“I'm not afraid,” said Fulkerson. “That thing is going to attract +attention. It's well written--you can take the pomposity out of it, here +and there and it's novel. Our people like a bold strike, and it's going +to shake them up tremendously to have serfdom advocated on high moral +grounds as the only solution of the labor problem. You see, in the first +place, he goes for their sympathies by the way he portrays the actual +relations of capital and labor; he shows how things have got to go from +bad to worse, and then he trots out his little old hobby, and proves +that if slavery had not been interfered with, it would have perfected +itself in the interest of humanity. He makes a pretty strong plea for +it.” + +March threw back his head and laughed. “He's converted you! I swear, +Fulkerson, if we had accepted and paid for an article advocating +cannibalism as the only resource for getting rid of the superfluous +poor, you'd begin to believe in it.” + +Fulkerson smiled in approval of the joke, and only said: “I wish you +could meet the colonel in the privacy of the domestic circle, March. +You'd like him. He's a splendid old fellow; regular type. Talk about +spring! + +“You ought to see the widow's little back yard these days. You know +that glass gallery just beyond the dining-room? Those girls have got the +pot-plants out of that, and a lot more, and they've turned the edges of +that back yard, along the fence, into a regular bower; they've got sweet +peas planted, and nasturtiums, and we shall be in a blaze of glory about +the beginning of June. Fun to see 'em work in the garden, and the bird +bossing the job in his cage under the cherry-tree. Have to keep the +middle of the yard for the clothesline, but six days in the week it's a +lawn, and I go over it with a mower myself. March, there ain't anything +like a home, is there? Dear little cot of your own, heigh? I tell +you, March, when I get to pushing that mower round, and the colonel is +smoking his cigar in the gallery, and those girls are pottering over the +flowers, one of these soft evenings after dinner, I feel like a human +being. Yes, I do. I struck it rich when I concluded to take my meals at +the widow's. For eight dollars a week I get good board, refined society, +and all the advantages of a Christian home. By-the-way, you've never had +much talk with Miss Woodburn, have you, March?” + +“Not so much as with Miss Woodburn's father.” + +“Well, he is rather apt to scoop the conversation. I must draw his fire, +sometime, when you and Mrs. March are around, and get you a chance with +Miss Woodburn.” + +“I should like that better, I believe,” said March. + +“Well, I shouldn't wonder if you did. Curious, but Miss Woodburn isn't +at all your idea of a Southern girl. She's got lots of go; she's never +idle a minute; she keeps the old gentleman in first-class shape, and she +don't believe a bit in the slavery solution of the labor problem; says +she's glad it's gone, and if it's anything like the effects of it, she's +glad it went before her time. No, sir, she's as full of snap as the +liveliest kind of a Northern girl. None of that sunny Southern languor +you read about.” + +“I suppose the typical Southerner, like the typical anything else, +is pretty difficult to find,” said March. “But perhaps Miss Woodburn +represents the new South. The modern conditions must be producing a +modern type.” + +“Well, that's what she and the colonel both say. They say there ain't +anything left of that Walter Scott dignity and chivalry in the rising +generation; takes too much time. You ought to see her sketch the +old-school, high-and-mighty manners, as they survive among some of the +antiques in Charlottesburg. If that thing could be put upon the stage +it would be a killing success. Makes the old gentleman laugh in spite +of himself. But he's as proud of her as Punch, anyway. Why don't you +and Mrs. March come round oftener? Look here! How would it do to have a +little excursion, somewhere, after the spring fairly gets in its work?” + +“Reporters present?” + +“No, no! Nothing of that kind; perfectly sincere and disinterested +enjoyment.” + +“Oh, a few handbills to be scattered around: 'Buy “Every Other Week”,' +'Look out for the next number of “Every Other Week,”' 'Every Other Week +at all the news-stands.' Well, I'll talk it over with Mrs. March. I +suppose there's no great hurry.” + +March told his wife of the idyllic mood in which he had left Fulkerson +at the widow's door, and she said he must be in love. + +“Why, of course! I wonder I didn't think of that. But Fulkerson is such +an impartial admirer of the whole sex that you can't think of his +liking one more than another. I don't know that he showed any unjust +partiality, though, in his talk of 'those girls,' as he called them. And +I always rather fancied that Mrs. Mandel--he's done so much for her, +you know; and she is such a well-balanced, well-preserved person, and so +lady-like and correct----” + +“Fulkerson had the word for her: academic. She's everything that +instruction and discipline can make of a woman; but I shouldn't think +they could make enough of her to be in love with.” + +“Well, I don't know. The academic has its charm. There are moods in +which I could imagine myself in love with an academic person. That +regularity of line; that reasoned strictness of contour; that neatness +of pose; that slightly conventional but harmonious grouping of the +emotions and morals--you can see how it would have its charm, the +Wedgwood in human nature? I wonder where Mrs. Mandel keeps her urn and +her willow.” + +“I should think she might have use for them in that family, poor thing!” + said Mrs. March. + +“Ah, that reminds me,” said her husband, “that we had another talk with +the old gentleman, this afternoon, about Fulkerson's literary, artistic, +and advertising orgie, and it's postponed till October.” + +“The later the better, I should think,” said Mrs. March, who did not +really think about it at all, but whom the date fixed for it caused to +think of the intervening time. “We have got to consider what we will do +about the summer, before long, Basil.” + +“Oh, not yet, not yet,” he pleaded; with that man's willingness to abide +in the present, which is so trying to a woman. “It's only the end of +April.” + +“It will be the end of June before we know. And these people wanting +the Boston house another year complicates it. We can't spend the summer +there, as we planned.” + +“They oughtn't to have offered us an increased rent; they have taken an +advantage of us.” + +“I don't know that it matters,” said Mrs. March. “I had decided not to +go there.” + +“Had you? This is a surprise.” + +“Everything is a surprise to you, Basil, when it happens.” + +“True; I keep the world fresh, that way.” + +“It wouldn't have been any change to go from one city to another for the +summer. We might as well have stayed in New York.” + +“Yes, I wish we had stayed,” said March, idly humoring a conception +of the accomplished fact. “Mrs. Green would have let us have the +gimcrackery very cheap for the summer months; and we could have made all +sorts of nice little excursions and trips off and been twice as well as +if we had spent the summer away.” + +“Nonsense! You know we couldn't spend the summer in New York.” + +“I know I could.” + +“What stuff! You couldn't manage.” + +“Oh yes, I could. I could take my meals at Fulkerson's widow's; or at +Maroni's, with poor old Lindau: he's got to dining there again. Or, I +could keep house, and he could dine with me here.” + +There was a teasing look in March's eyes, and he broke into a laugh, at +the firmness with which his wife said: “I think if there is to be any +housekeeping, I will stay, too; and help to look after it. I would try +not intrude upon you and your guest.” + +“Oh, we should be only too glad to have you join us,” said March, +playing with fire. + +“Very well, then, I wish you would take him off to Maroni's, the next +time he comes to dine here!” cried his wife. + +The experiment of making March's old friend free of his house had not +given her all the pleasure that so kind a thing ought to have afforded +so good a woman. She received Lindau at first with robust benevolence, +and the high resolve not to let any of his little peculiarities alienate +her from a sense of his claim upon her sympathy and gratitude, not only +as a man who had been so generously fond of her husband in his youth, +but a hero who had suffered for her country. Her theory was that his +mutilation must not be ignored, but must be kept in mind as a monument +of his sacrifice, and she fortified Bella with this conception, so that +the child bravely sat next his maimed arm at table and helped him to +dishes he could not reach, and cut up his meat for him. As for Mrs. +March herself, the thought of his mutilation made her a little faint; +she was not without a bewildered resentment of its presence as a sort +of oppression. She did not like his drinking so much of March's beer, +either; it was no harm, but it was somehow unworthy, out of character +with a hero of the war. But what she really could not reconcile +herself to was the violence of Lindau's sentiments concerning the whole +political and social fabric. She did not feel sure that he should be +allowed to say such things before the children, who had been nurtured in +the faith of Bunker Hill and Appomattox, as the beginning and the end of +all possible progress in human rights. As a woman she was naturally an +aristocrat, but as an American she was theoretically a democrat; and +it astounded, it alarmed her, to hear American democracy denounced as +a shuffling evasion. She had never cared much for the United States +Senate, but she doubted if she ought to sit by when it was railed at as +a rich man's club. It shocked her to be told that the rich and poor were +not equal before the law in a country where justice must be paid for at +every step in fees and costs, or where a poor man must go to war in his +own person, and a rich man might hire someone to go in his. Mrs. March +felt that this rebellious mind in Lindau really somehow outlawed him +from sympathy, and retroactively undid his past suffering for the +country: she had always particularly valued that provision of the law, +because in forecasting all the possible mischances that might befall her +own son, she had been comforted by the thought that if there ever +was another war, and Tom were drafted, his father could buy him a +substitute. Compared with such blasphemy as this, Lindau's declaration +that there was not equality of opportunity in America, and that +fully one-half the people were debarred their right to the pursuit of +happiness by the hopeless conditions of their lives, was flattering +praise. She could not listen to such things in silence, though, and +it did not help matters when Lindau met her arguments with facts and +reasons which she felt she was merely not sufficiently instructed to +combat, and he was not quite gentlemanly to urge. “I am afraid for +the effect on the children,” she said to her husband. “Such perfectly +distorted ideas--Tom will be ruined by them.” + +“Oh, let Tom find out where they're false,” said March. “It will be good +exercise for his faculties of research. At any rate, those things are +getting said nowadays; he'll have to hear them sooner or later.” + +“Had he better hear them at home?” demanded his wife. + +“Why, you know, as you're here to refute them, Isabel,” he teased, +“perhaps it's the best place. But don't mind poor old Lindau, my dear. +He says himself that his parg is worse than his pidte, you know.” + +“Ah, it's too late now to mind him,” she sighed. In a moment of rash +good feeling, or perhaps an exalted conception of duty, she had herself +proposed that Lindau should come every week and read German with Tom; +and it had become a question first how they could get him to take pay +for it, and then how they could get him to stop it. Mrs. March never +ceased to wonder at herself for having brought this about, for she had +warned her husband against making any engagement with Lindau which would +bring him regularly to the house: the Germans stuck so, and were so +unscrupulously dependent. Yet, the deed being done, she would not ignore +the duty of hospitality, and it was always she who made the old man +stay to their Sunday-evening tea when he lingered near the hour, reading +Schiller and Heine and Uhland with the boy, in the clean shirt with +which he observed the day; Lindau's linen was not to be trusted during +the week. She now concluded a season of mournful reflection by saying, +“He will get you into trouble, somehow, Basil.” + +“Well, I don't know how, exactly. I regard Lindau as a political +economist of an unusual type; but I shall not let him array me against +the constituted authorities. Short of that, I think I am safe.” + +“Well, be careful, Basil; be careful. You know you are so rash.” + +“I suppose I may continue to pity him? He is such a poor, lonely old +fellow. Are you really sorry he's come into our lives, my dear?” + +“No, no; not that. I feel as you do about it; but I wish I felt easier +about him--sure, that is, that we're not doing wrong to let him keep on +talking so.” + +“I suspect we couldn't help it,” March returned, lightly. “It's one of +what Lindau calls his 'brincibles' to say what he thinks.” + + + + +II. + +The Marches had no longer the gross appetite for novelty which urges +youth to a surfeit of strange scenes, experiences, ideas; and makes +travel, with all its annoyances and fatigues, an inexhaustible delight. +But there is no doubt that the chief pleasure of their life in New York +was from its quality of foreignness: the flavor of olives, which, once +tasted, can never be forgotten. The olives may not be of the first +excellence; they may be a little stale, and small and poor, to begin +with, but they are still olives, and the fond palate craves them. The +sort which grew in New York, on lower Sixth Avenue and in the region of +Jefferson Market and on the soft exposures south of Washington Square, +were none the less acceptable because they were of the commonest Italian +variety. + +The Marches spent a good deal of time and money in a grocery of +that nationality, where they found all the patriotic comestibles and +potables, and renewed their faded Italian with the friendly family in +charge. Italian table d'hotes formed the adventure of the week, on the +day when Mrs. March let her domestics go out, and went herself to dine +abroad with her husband and children; and they became adepts in the +restaurants where they were served, and which they varied almost +from dinner to dinner. The perfect decorum of these places, and their +immunity from offence in any, emboldened the Marches to experiment +in Spanish restaurants, where red pepper and beans insisted in every +dinner, and where once they chanced upon a night of 'olla podrida', with +such appeals to March's memory of a boyish ambition to taste the dish +that he became poetic and then pensive over its cabbage and carrots, +peas and bacon. For a rare combination of international motives they +prized most the table d'hote of a French lady, who had taken a Spanish +husband in a second marriage, and had a Cuban negro for her cook, with +a cross-eyed Alsation for waiter, and a slim young South-American for +cashier. March held that something of the catholic character of these +relations expressed itself in the generous and tolerant variety of the +dinner, which was singularly abundant for fifty cents, without wine. At +one very neat French place he got a dinner at the same price with wine, +but it was not so abundant; and March inquired in fruitless speculation +why the table d'hote of the Italians, a notoriously frugal and +abstemious people, should be usually more than you wanted at +seventy-five cents and a dollar, and that of the French rather less +at half a dollar. He could not see that the frequenters were greatly +different at the different places; they were mostly Americans, of +subdued manners and conjecturably subdued fortunes, with here and there +a table full of foreigners. There was no noise and not much smoking +anywhere; March liked going to that neat French place because there +Madame sat enthroned and high behind a 'comptoir' at one side of the +room, and everybody saluted her in going out. It was there that a +gentle-looking young couple used to dine, in whom the Marches became +effectlessly interested, because they thought they looked like that when +they were young. The wife had an aesthetic dress, and defined her pretty +head by wearing her back-hair pulled up very tight under her bonnet; the +husband had dreamy eyes set wide apart under a pure forehead. “They are +artists, August, I think,” March suggested to the waiter, when he had +vainly asked about them. “Oh, hartis, cedenly,” August consented; but +Heaven knows whether they were, or what they were: March never learned. + +This immunity from acquaintance, this touch-and go quality in their +New York sojourn, this almost loss of individuality at times, after the +intense identification of their Boston life, was a relief, though Mrs. +March had her misgivings, and questioned whether it were not perhaps too +relaxing to the moral fibre. March refused to explore his conscience; he +allowed that it might be so; but he said he liked now and then to feel +his personality in that state of solution. They went and sat a good +deal in the softening evenings among the infants and dotards of Latin +extraction in Washington Square, safe from all who ever knew them, and +enjoyed the advancing season, which thickened the foliage of the trees +and flattered out of sight the church warden's Gothic of the University +Building. The infants were sometimes cross, and cried in their weary +mothers' or little sisters' arms; but they did not disturb the dotards, +who slept, some with their heads fallen forward, and some with their +heads fallen back; March arbitrarily distinguished those with the +drooping faces as tipsy and ashamed to confront the public. The small +Italian children raced up and down the asphalt paths, playing American +games of tag and hide-and-whoop; larger boys passed ball, in training +for potential championships. The Marches sat and mused, or quarrelled +fitfully about where they should spend the summer, like sparrows, he +once said, till the electric lights began to show distinctly among the +leaves, and they looked round and found the infants and dotards gone and +the benches filled with lovers. That was the signal for the Marches +to go home. He said that the spectacle of so much courtship as the eye +might take in there at a glance was not, perhaps, oppressive, but the +thought that at the same hour the same thing was going on all over the +country, wherever two young fools could get together, was more than +he could bear; he did not deny that it was natural, and, in a +measure authorized, but he declared that it was hackneyed; and the fact +that it must go on forever, as long as the race lasted, made him tired. + +At home, generally, they found that the children had not missed them, +and were perfectly safe. It was one of the advantages of a flat that +they could leave the children there whenever they liked without anxiety. +They liked better staying there than wandering about in the evening with +their parents, whose excursions seemed to them somewhat aimless, and +their pleasures insipid. They studied, or read, or looked out of the +window at the street sights; and their mother always came back to them +with a pang for their lonesomeness. Bella knew some little girls in the +house, but in a ceremonious way; Tom had formed no friendships among +the boys at school such as he had left in Boston; as nearly as he could +explain, the New York fellows carried canes at an age when they would +have had them broken for them by the other boys at Boston; and they were +both sissyish and fast. It was probably prejudice; he never could +say exactly what their demerits were, and neither he nor Bella +was apparently so homesick as they pretended, though they answered +inquirers, the one that New York was a hole, and the other that it was +horrid, and that all they lived for was to get back to Boston. In the +mean time they were thrown much upon each other for society, which March +said was well for both of them; he did not mind their cultivating +a little gloom and the sense of a common wrong; it made them better +comrades, and it was providing them with amusing reminiscences for the +future. They really enjoyed Bohemianizing in that harmless way: though +Tom had his doubts of its respectability; he was very punctilious about +his sister, and went round from his own school every day to fetch her +home from hers. The whole family went to the theatre a good deal, and +enjoyed themselves together in their desultory explorations of the city. + +They lived near Greenwich Village, and March liked strolling through +its quaintness toward the waterside on a Sunday, when a hereditary +Sabbatarianism kept his wife at home; he made her observe that it even +kept her at home from church. He found a lingering quality of pure +Americanism in the region, and he said the very bells called to worship +in a nasal tone. He liked the streets of small brick houses, with here +and there one painted red, and the mortar lines picked out in white, +and with now and then a fine wooden portal of fluted pillars and a bowed +transom. The rear of the tenement-houses showed him the picturesqueness +of clothes-lines fluttering far aloft, as in Florence; and the new +apartment-houses, breaking the old sky-line with their towering +stories, implied a life as alien to the American manner as anything in +continental Europe. In fact, foreign faces and foreign tongues prevailed +in Greenwich Village, but no longer German or even Irish tongues or +faces. The eyes and earrings of Italians twinkled in and out of the +alleyways and basements, and they seemed to abound even in the streets, +where long ranks of trucks drawn up in Sunday rest along the curbstones +suggested the presence of a race of sturdier strength than theirs. March +liked the swarthy, strange visages; he found nothing menacing for the +future in them; for wickedness he had to satisfy himself as he could +with the sneering, insolent, clean-shaven mug of some rare American of +the b'hoy type, now almost as extinct in New York as the dodo or the +volunteer fireman. When he had found his way, among the ash-barrels +and the groups of decently dressed church-goers, to the docks, he +experienced a sufficient excitement in the recent arrival of a French +steamer, whose sheds were thronged with hacks and express-wagons, and +in a tacit inquiry into the emotions of the passengers, fresh from the +cleanliness of Paris, and now driving up through the filth of those +streets. + +Some of the streets were filthier than others; there was at least +a choice; there were boxes and barrels of kitchen offal on all the +sidewalks, but not everywhere manure-heaps, and in some places the +stench was mixed with the more savory smell of cooking. One Sunday +morning, before the winter was quite gone, the sight of the frozen +refuse melting in heaps, and particularly the loathsome edges of the +rotting ice near the gutters, with the strata of waste-paper and straw +litter, and egg-shells and orange peel, potato-skins and cigar-stumps, +made him unhappy. He gave a whimsical shrug for the squalor of the +neighboring houses, and said to himself rather than the boy who was +with him: “It's curious, isn't it, how fond the poor people are of +these unpleasant thoroughfares? You always find them living in the worst +streets.” + +“The burden of all the wrong in the world comes on the poor,” said the +boy. “Every sort of fraud and swindling hurts them the worst. The city +wastes the money it's paid to clean the streets with, and the poor have +to suffer, for they can't afford to pay twice, like the rich.” + +March stopped short. “Hallo, Tom! Is that your wisdom?” + +“It's what Mr. Lindau says,” answered the boy, doggedly, as if not +pleased to have his ideas mocked at, even if they were second-hand. + +“And you didn't tell him that the poor lived in dirty streets because +they liked them, and were too lazy and worthless to have them cleaned?” + +“No; I didn't.” + +“I'm surprised. What do you think of Lindau, generally speaking, Tom?” + +“Well, sir, I don't like the way he talks about some things. I don't +suppose this country is perfect, but I think it's about the best there +is, and it don't do any good to look at its drawbacks all the time.” + +“Sound, my son,” said March, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder and +beginning to walk on. “Well?” + +“Well, then, he says that it isn't the public frauds only that the poor +have to pay for, but they have to pay for all the vices of the rich; +that when a speculator fails, or a bank cashier defaults, or a firm +suspends, or hard times come, it's the poor who have to give up +necessaries where the rich give up luxuries.” + +“Well, well! And then?” + +“Well, then I think the crank comes in, in Mr. Lindau. He says there's +no need of failures or frauds or hard times. It's ridiculous. There +always have been and there always will be. But if you tell him that, it +seems to make him perfectly furious.” + +March repeated the substance of this talk to his wife. “I'm glad to +know that Tom can see through such ravings. He has lots of good common +sense.” + +It was the afternoon of the same Sunday, and they were sauntering up +Fifth Avenue, and admiring the wide old double houses at the lower end; +at one corner they got a distinct pleasure out of the gnarled elbows +that a pollarded wistaria leaned upon the top of a garden wall--for +its convenience in looking into the street, he said. The line of these +comfortable dwellings, once so fashionable, was continually broken by +the facades of shops; and March professed himself vulgarized by a want +of style in the people they met in their walk to Twenty-third Street. + +“Take me somewhere to meet my fellow-exclusives, Isabel,” he demanded. +“I pine for the society of my peers.” + +He hailed a passing omnibus, and made his wife get on the roof with him. +“Think of our doing such a thing in Boston!” she sighed, with a little +shiver of satisfaction in her immunity from recognition and comment. + +“You wouldn't be afraid to do it in London or Paris?” + +“No; we should be strangers there--just as we are in New York. I wonder +how long one could be a stranger here.” + +“Oh, indefinitely, in our way of living. The place is really vast, so +much larger than it used to seem, and so heterogeneous.” + +When they got down very far up-town, and began to walk back by Madison +Avenue, they found themselves in a different population from that they +dwelt among; not heterogeneous at all; very homogeneous, and almost +purely American; the only qualification was American Hebrew. Such a +well-dressed, well-satisfied, well-fed looking crowd poured down the +broad sidewalks before the handsome, stupid houses that March could +easily pretend he had got among his fellow-plutocrats at last. Still he +expressed his doubts whether this Sunday afternoon parade, which seemed +to be a thing of custom, represented the best form among the young +people of that region; he wished he knew; he blamed himself for becoming +of a fastidious conjecture; he could not deny the fashion and the +richness and the indigeneity of the spectacle; the promenaders looked +New-Yorky; they were the sort of people whom you would know for +New-Yorkers elsewhere,--so well equipped and so perfectly kept at all +points. Their silk hats shone, and their boots; their frocks had +the right distension behind, and their bonnets perfect poise and +distinction. + +The Marches talked of these and other facts of their appearance, and +curiously questioned whether this were the best that a great material +civilization could come to; it looked a little dull. The men's faces +were shrewd and alert, and yet they looked dull; the women's were pretty +and knowing, and yet dull. It was, probably, the holiday expression +of the vast, prosperous commercial class, with unlimited money, and no +ideals that money could not realize; fashion and comfort were all that +they desired to compass, and the culture that furnishes showily, that +decorates and that tells; the culture, say, of plays and operas, rather +than books. + +Perhaps the observers did the promenaders injustice; they might not have +been as common-minded as they looked. “But,” March said, “I understand +now why the poor people don't come up here and live in this clean, +handsome, respectable quarter of the town; they would be bored to death. +On the whole, I think I should prefer Mott Street myself.” + +In other walks the Marches tried to find some of the streets they had +wandered through the first day of their wedding journey in New York, so +long ago. They could not make sure of them; but once they ran down to +the Battery, and easily made sure of that, though not in its old aspect. +They recalled the hot morning, when they sauntered over the trodden +weed that covered the sickly grass-plots there, and sentimentalized the +sweltering paupers who had crept out of the squalid tenements about for +a breath of air after a sleepless night. Now the paupers were gone, and +where the old mansions that had fallen to their use once stood, there +towered aloft and abroad those heights and masses of many-storied +brick-work for which architecture has yet no proper form and aesthetics +no name. The trees and shrubs, all in their young spring green, blew +briskly over the guarded turf in the south wind that came up over the +water; and in the well-paved alleys the ghosts of eighteenth-century +fashion might have met each other in their old haunts, and exchanged +stately congratulations upon its vastly bettered condition, and perhaps +puzzled a little over the colossal lady on Bedloe's Island, with her +lifted torch, and still more over the curving tracks and chalet-stations +of the Elevated road. It is an outlook of unrivalled beauty across the +bay, that smokes and flashes with the innumerable stacks and sails of +commerce, to the hills beyond, where the moving forest of masts halts at +the shore, and roots itself in the groves of the many villaged uplands. +The Marches paid the charming prospects a willing duty, and rejoiced +in it as generously as if it had been their own. Perhaps it was, they +decided. He said people owned more things in common than they were apt +to think; and they drew the consolations of proprietorship from the +excellent management of Castle Garden, which they penetrated for a +moment's glimpse of the huge rotunda, where the immigrants first set +foot on our continent. It warmed their hearts, so easily moved to any +cheap sympathy, to see the friendly care the nation took of these humble +guests; they found it even pathetic to hear the proper authority calling +out the names of such as had kin or acquaintance waiting there to +meet them. No one appeared troubled or anxious; the officials had a +conscientious civility; the government seemed to manage their welcome +as well as a private company or corporation could have done. In fact, it +was after the simple strangers had left the government care that March +feared their woes might begin; and he would have liked the government to +follow each of them to his home, wherever he meant to fix it within our +borders. He made note of the looks of the licensed runners and touters +waiting for the immigrants outside the government premises; he intended +to work them up into a dramatic effect in some sketch, but they remained +mere material in his memorandum-book, together with some quaint old +houses on the Sixth Avenue road, which he had noticed on the way down. +On the way up, these were superseded in his regard by some hip-roof +structures on the Ninth Avenue, which he thought more Dutch-looking. +The perspectives of the cross-streets toward the river were very lively, +with their turmoil of trucks and cars and carts and hacks and foot +passengers, ending in the chimneys and masts of shipping, and final +gleams of dancing water. At a very noisy corner, clangorous with some +sort of ironworking, he made his wife enjoy with him the quiet sarcasm +of an inn that called itself the Home-like Hotel, and he speculated +at fantastic length on the gentle associations of one who should have +passed his youth under its roof. + + + + +III. + +First and last, the Marches did a good deal of travel on the Elevated +roads, which, he said, gave you such glimpses of material aspects in +the city as some violent invasion of others' lives might afford in human +nature. Once, when the impulse of adventure was very strong in them, +they went quite the length of the West Side lines, and saw the city +pushing its way by irregular advances into the country. Some spaces, +probably held by the owners for that rise in value which the industry +of others providentially gives to the land of the wise and good, it left +vacant comparatively far down the road, and built up others at remoter +points. It was a world of lofty apartment houses beyond the Park, +springing up in isolated blocks, with stretches of invaded rusticity +between, and here and there an old country-seat standing dusty in its +budding vines with the ground before it in rocky upheaval for city +foundations. But wherever it went or wherever it paused, New York gave +its peculiar stamp; and the adventurers were amused to find One +Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street inchoately like Twenty-third Street and +Fourteenth Street in its shops and shoppers. The butchers' shops and +milliners' shops on the avenue might as well have been at Tenth as at +One Hundredth Street. + +The adventurers were not often so adventurous. They recognized that +in their willingness to let their fancy range for them, and to let +speculation do the work of inquiry, they were no longer young. Their +point of view was singularly unchanged, and their impressions of New +York remained the same that they had been fifteen years before: huge, +noisy, ugly, kindly, it seemed to them now as it seemed then. The main +difference was that they saw it more now as a life, and then they only +regarded it as a spectacle; and March could not release himself from +a sense of complicity with it, no matter what whimsical, or alien, or +critical attitude he took. A sense of the striving and the suffering +deeply possessed him; and this grew the more intense as he gained some +knowledge of the forces at work--forces of pity, of destruction, of +perdition, of salvation. He wandered about on Sunday not only through +the streets, but into this tabernacle and that, as the spirit moved +him, and listened to those who dealt with Christianity as a system of +economics as well as a religion. He could not get his wife to go with +him; she listened to his report of what he heard, and trembled; it all +seemed fantastic and menacing. She lamented the literary peace, the +intellectual refinement of the life they had left behind them; and +he owned it was very pretty, but he said it was not life--it was +death-in-life. She liked to hear him talk in that strain of virtuous +self-denunciation, but she asked him, “Which of your prophets are you +going to follow?” and he answered: “All-all! And a fresh one every +Sunday.” And so they got their laugh out of it at last, but with some +sadness at heart, and with a dim consciousness that they had got their +laugh out of too many things in life. + +What really occupied and compassed his activities, in spite of his +strenuous reveries of work beyond it, was his editorship. On its social +side it had not fulfilled all the expectations which Fulkerson's radiant +sketch of its duties and relations had caused him to form of it. Most of +the contributions came from a distance; even the articles written in New +York reached him through the post, and so far from having his valuable +time, as they called it, consumed in interviews with his collaborators, +he rarely saw any of them. The boy on the stairs, who was to fence him +from importunate visitors, led a life of luxurious disoccupation, and +whistled almost uninterruptedly. When any one came, March found himself +embarrassed and a little anxious. The visitors were usually young men, +terribly respectful, but cherishing, as he imagined, ideals and opinions +chasmally different from his; and he felt in their presence something +like an anachronism, something like a fraud. He tried to freshen up +his sympathies on them, to get at what they were really thinking and +feeling, and it was some time before he could understand that they were +not really thinking and feeling anything of their own concerning their +art, but were necessarily, in their quality of young, inexperienced men, +mere acceptants of older men's thoughts and feelings, whether they were +tremendously conservative, as some were, or tremendously progressive, +as others were. Certain of them called themselves realists, certain +romanticists; but none of them seemed to know what realism was, or what +romanticism; they apparently supposed the difference a difference of +material. March had imagined himself taking home to lunch or dinner the +aspirants for editorial favor whom he liked, whether he liked their +work or not; but this was not an easy matter. Those who were at all +interesting seemed to have engagements and preoccupations; after two or +three experiments with the bashfuller sort--those who had come up to +the metropolis with manuscripts in their hands, in the good old literary +tradition--he wondered whether he was otherwise like them when he was +young like them. He could not flatter himself that he was not; and yet +he had a hope that the world had grown worse since his time, which his +wife encouraged. + +Mrs. March was not eager to pursue the hospitalities which she had at +first imagined essential to the literary prosperity of 'Every Other +Week'; her family sufficed her; she would willingly have seen no one +out of it but the strangers at the weekly table-d'hote dinner, or +the audiences at the theatres. March's devotion to his work made him +reluctant to delegate it to any one; and as the summer advanced, and +the question of where to go grew more vexed, he showed a man's base +willingness to shirk it for himself by not going anywhere. He asked his +wife why she did not go somewhere with the children, and he joined her +in a search for non-malarial regions on the map when she consented to +entertain this notion. But when it came to the point she would not go; +he offered to go with her then, and then she would not let him. She said +she knew he would be anxious about his work; he protested that he could +take it with him to any distance within a few hours, but she would not +be persuaded. She would rather he stayed; the effect would be better +with Mr. Fulkerson; they could make excursions, and they could all +get off a week or two to the seashore near Boston--the only real +seashore--in August. The excursions were practically confined to a +single day at Coney Island; and once they got as far as Boston on the +way to the seashore near Boston; that is, Mrs. March and the children +went; an editorial exigency kept March at the last moment. The Boston +streets seemed very queer and clean and empty to the children, and the +buildings little; in the horse-cars the Boston faces seemed to arraign +their mother with a down-drawn severity that made her feel very guilty. +She knew that this was merely the Puritan mask, the cast of a dead +civilization, which people of very amiable and tolerant minds were +doomed to wear, and she sighed to think that less than a year of the +heterogeneous gayety of New York should have made her afraid of it. The +sky seemed cold and gray; the east wind, which she had always thought so +delicious in summer, cut her to the heart. She took her children up to +the South End, and in the pretty square where they used to live they +stood before their alienated home, and looked up at its close-shuttered +windows. The tenants must have been away, but Mrs. March had not the +courage to ring and make sure, though she had always promised herself +that she would go all over the house when she came back, and see how +they had used it; she could pretend a desire for something she wished to +take away. She knew she could not bear it now; and the children did +not seem eager. She did not push on to the seaside; it would be forlorn +there without their father; she was glad to go back to him in the +immense, friendly homelessness of New York, and hold him answerable for +the change, in her heart or her mind, which made its shapeless tumult a +refuge and a consolation. + +She found that he had been giving the cook a holiday, and dining about +hither and thither with Fulkerson. Once he had dined with him at the +widow's (as they always called Mrs. Leighton), and then had spent the +evening there, and smoked with Fulkerson and Colonel Woodburn on the +gallery overlooking the back yard. They were all spending the summer +in New York. The widow had got so good an offer for her house at St. +Barnaby for the summer that she could not refuse it; and the Woodburns +found New York a watering-place of exemplary coolness after the burning +Augusts and Septembers of Charlottesburg. + +“You can stand it well enough in our climate, sir,” the colonel +explained, “till you come to the September heat, that sometimes runs +well into October; and then you begin to lose your temper, sir. It's +never quite so hot as it is in New York at times, but it's hot longer, +sir.” He alleged, as if something of the sort were necessary, the +example of a famous Southwestern editor who spent all his summers in +a New York hotel as the most luxurious retreat on the continent, +consulting the weather forecasts, and running off on torrid days to the +mountains or the sea, and then hurrying back at the promise of cooler +weather. The colonel had not found it necessary to do this yet; and he +had been reluctant to leave town, where he was working up a branch +of the inquiry which had so long occupied him, in the libraries, and +studying the great problem of labor and poverty as it continually +presented itself to him in the streets. He said that he talked with all +sorts of people, whom he found monstrously civil, if you took them +in the right way; and he went everywhere in the city without fear and +apparently without danger. March could not find out that he had ridden +his hobby into the homes of want which he visited, or had proposed their +enslavement to the inmates as a short and simple solution of the great +question of their lives; he appeared to have contented himself with the +collection of facts for the persuasion of the cultivated classes. It +seemed to March a confirmation of this impression that the colonel +should address his deductions from these facts so unsparingly to him; +he listened with a respectful patience, for which Fulkerson afterward +personally thanked him. Fulkerson said it was not often the colonel +found such a good listener; generally nobody listened but Mrs. Leighton, +who thought his ideas were shocking, but honored him for holding them +so conscientiously. Fulkerson was glad that March, as the literary +department, had treated the old gentleman so well, because there was an +open feud between him and the art department. Beaton was outrageously +rude, Fulkerson must say; though as for that, the old colonel seemed +quite able to take care of himself, and gave Beaton an unqualified +contempt in return for his unmannerliness. The worst of it was, it +distressed the old lady so; she admired Beaton as much as she respected +the colonel, and she admired Beaton, Fulkerson thought, rather more than +Miss Leighton did; he asked March if he had noticed them together. March +had noticed them, but without any very definite impression except +that Beaton seemed to give the whole evening to the girl. Afterward he +recollected that he had fancied her rather harassed by his devotion, and +it was this point that he wished to present for his wife's opinion. + +“Girls often put on that air,” she said. “It's one of their ways of +teasing. But then, if the man was really very much in love, and she was +only enough in love to be uncertain of herself, she might very well seem +troubled. It would be a very serious question. Girls often don't know +what to do in such a case.” + +“Yes,” said March, “I've often been glad that I was not a girl, on that +account. But I guess that on general principles Beaton is not more in +love than she is. I couldn't imagine that young man being more in love +with anybody, unless it was himself. He might be more in love with +himself than any one else was.” + +“Well, he doesn't interest me a great deal, and I can't say Miss +Leighton does, either. I think she can take care of herself. She has +herself very well in hand.” + +“Why so censorious?” pleaded March. “I don't defend her for having +herself in hand; but is it a fault?” + +Mrs. March did not say. She asked, “And how does Mr. Fulkerson's affair +get on?” + +“His affair? You really think it is one? Well, I've fancied so myself, +and I've had an idea of some time asking him; Fulkerson strikes one +as truly domesticable, conjugable at heart; but I've waited for him to +speak.” + +“I should think so.” + +“Yes. He's never opened on the subject yet. Do you know, I think +Fulkerson has his moments of delicacy.” + +“Moments! He's all delicacy in regard to women.” + +“Well, perhaps so. There is nothing in them to rouse his advertising +instincts.” + + + + +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. + + + + +V. + +“You see,” Fulkerson explained, “I find that the old man has got an idea +of his own about that banquet, and I guess there's some sense in it. He +wants to have a preliminary little dinner, where we can talk the thing +up first--half a dozen of us; and he wants to give us the dinner at his +house. Well, that's no harm. I don't believe the old man ever gave a +dinner, and he'd like to show off a little; there's a good deal of human +nature in the old man, after all. He thought of you, of course, and +Colonel Woodburn, and Beaton, and me at the foot of the table; and +Conrad; and I suggested Kendricks: he's such a nice little chap; and +the old man himself brought up the idea of Lindau. He said you told him +something about him, and he asked why couldn't we have him, too; and I +jumped at it.” + +“Have Lindau to dinner?” asked March. + +“Certainly; why not? Father Dryfoos has a notion of paying the old +fellow a compliment for what he done for the country. There won't be any +trouble about it. You can sit alongside of him, and cut up his meat for +him, and help him to things--” + +“Yes, but it won't do, Fulkerson! I don't believe Lindau ever had on a +dress-coat in his life, and I don't believe his 'brincibles' would let +him wear one.” + +“Well, neither had Dryfoos, for the matter of that. He's as +high-principled as old Pan-Electric himself, when it comes to a +dress-coat,” said Fulkerson. “We're all going to go in business dress; +the old man stipulated for that. + +“It isn't the dress-coat alone,” March resumed. “Lindau and Dryfoos +wouldn't get on. You know they're opposite poles in everything. You +mustn't do it. Dryfoos will be sure to say something to outrage Lindau's +'brincibles,' and there'll be an explosion. It's all well enough for +Dryfoos to feel grateful to Lindau, and his wish to honor him does him +credit; but to have Lindau to dinner isn't the way. At the best, the +old fellow would be very unhappy in such a house; he would have a +bad conscience; and I should be sorry to have him feel that he'd been +recreant to his 'brincibles'; they're about all he's got, and whatever +we think of them, we're bound to respect his fidelity to them.” March +warmed toward Lindau in taking this view of him. “I should feel ashamed +if I didn't protest against his being put in a false position. After +all, he's my old friend, and I shouldn't like to have him do himself +injustice if he is a crank.” + +“Of course,” said Fulkerson, with some trouble in his face. “I +appreciate your feeling. But there ain't any danger,” he added, +buoyantly. “Anyhow, you spoke too late, as the Irishman said to the +chicken when he swallowed him in a fresh egg. I've asked Lindau, and +he's accepted with blayzure; that's what he says.” + +March made no other comment than a shrug. + +“You'll see,” Fulkerson continued, “it 'll go off all right. I'll engage +to make it, and I won't hold anybody else responsible.” + +In the course of his married life March had learned not to censure the +irretrievable; but this was just what his wife had not learned; and she +poured out so much astonishment at what Fulkerson had done, and so much +disapproval, that March began to palliate the situation a little. + +“After all, it isn't a question of life and death; and, if it were, I +don't see how it's to be helped now.” + +“Oh, it's not to be helped now. But I am surprised at Mr. Fulkerson.” + +“Well, Fulkerson has his moments of being merely human, too.” + +Mrs. March would not deign a direct defence of her favorite. “Well, I'm +glad there are not to be ladies.” + +“I don't know. Dryfoos thought of having ladies, but it seems your +infallible Fulkerson overruled him. Their presence might have kept +Lindau and our host in bounds.” + +It had become part of the Marches' conjugal joke for him to pretend that +she could allow nothing wrong in Fulkerson, and he now laughed with a +mocking air of having expected it when she said: “Well, then, if Mr. +Fulkerson says he will see that it all comes out right, I suppose you +must trust his tact. I wouldn't trust yours, Basil. The first wrong step +was taken when Mr. Lindau was asked to help on the magazine.” + +“Well, it was your infallible Fulkerson that took the step, or at least +suggested it. I'm happy to say I had totally forgotten my early friend.” + +Mrs. March was daunted and silenced for a moment. Then she said: “Oh, +pshaw! You know well enough he did it to please you.” + +“I'm very glad he didn't do it to please you, Isabel,” said her husband, +with affected seriousness. “Though perhaps he did.” + +He began to look at the humorous aspect of the affair, which it +certainly had, and to comment on the singular incongruities which 'Every +Other Week' was destined to involve at every moment of its career. “I +wonder if I'm mistaken in supposing that no other periodical was ever +like it. Perhaps all periodicals are like it. But I don't believe +there's another publication in New York that could bring together, in +honor of itself, a fraternity and equality crank like poor old Lindau, +and a belated sociological crank like Woodburn, and a truculent +speculator like old Dryfoos, and a humanitarian dreamer like young +Dryfoos, and a sentimentalist like me, and a nondescript like Beaton, +and a pure advertising essence like Fulkerson, and a society spirit like +Kendricks. If we could only allow one another to talk uninterruptedly +all the time, the dinner would be the greatest success in the world, and +we should come home full of the highest mutual respect. But I suspect we +can't manage that--even your infallible Fulkerson couldn't work it--and +I'm afraid that there'll be some listening that 'll spoil the pleasure +of the time.” + +March was so well pleased with this view of the case that he suggested +the idea involved to Fulkerson. Fulkerson was too good a fellow not to +laugh at another man's joke, but he laughed a little ruefully, and he +seemed worn with more than one kind of care in the interval that passed +between the present time and the night of the dinner. + +Dryfoos necessarily depended upon him for advice concerning the scope +and nature of the dinner, but he received the advice suspiciously, +and contested points of obvious propriety with pertinacious stupidity. +Fulkerson said that when it came to the point he would rather have had +the thing, as he called it, at Delmonico's or some other restaurant; but +when he found that Dryfoos's pride was bound up in having it at his own +house, he gave way to him. Dryfoos also wanted his woman-cook to prepare +the dinner, but Fulkerson persuaded him that this would not do; he must +have it from a caterer. Then Dryfoos wanted his maids to wait at table, +but Fulkerson convinced him that this would be incongruous at a +man's dinner. It was decided that the dinner should be sent in from +Frescobaldi's, and Dryfoos went with Fulkerson to discuss it with the +caterer. He insisted upon having everything explained to him, and +the reason for having it, and not something else in its place; and he +treated Fulkerson and Frescobaldi as if they were in league to +impose upon him. There were moments when Fulkerson saw the varnish of +professional politeness cracking on the Neapolitan's volcanic surface, +and caught a glimpse of the lava fires of the cook's nature beneath; +he trembled for Dryfoos, who was walking rough-shod over him in the +security of an American who had known how to make his money, and must +know how to spend it; but he got him safely away at last, and gave +Frescobaldi a wink of sympathy for his shrug of exhaustion as they +turned to leave him. + +It was at first a relief and then an anxiety with Fulkerson that Lindau +did not come about after accepting the invitation to dinner, until he +appeared at Dryfoos's house, prompt to the hour. There was, to be sure, +nothing to bring him; but Fulkerson was uneasily aware that Dryfoos +expected to meet him at the office, and perhaps receive some verbal +acknowledgment of the honor done him. Dryfoos, he could see, thought +he was doing all his invited guests a favor; and while he stood in a +certain awe of them as people of much greater social experience than +himself, regarded them with a kind of contempt, as people who were going +to have a better dinner at his house than they could ever afford to have +at their own. He had finally not spared expense upon it; after pushing +Frescobaldi to the point of eruption with his misgivings and suspicions +at the first interview, he had gone to him a second time alone, and told +him not to let the money stand between him and anything he would like +to do. In the absence of Frescobaldi's fellow-conspirator he restored +himself in the caterer's esteem by adding whatever he suggested; and +Fulkerson, after trembling for the old man's niggardliness, was now +afraid of a fantastic profusion in the feast. Dryfoos had reduced the +scale of the banquet as regarded the number of guests, but a confusing +remembrance of what Fulkerson had wished to do remained with him in +part, and up to the day of the dinner he dropped in at Frescobaldi's +and ordered more dishes and more of them. He impressed the Italian as +an American original of a novel kind; and when he asked Fulkerson how +Dryfoos had made his money, and learned that it was primarily in natural +gas, he made note of some of his eccentric tastes as peculiarities that +were to be caressed in any future natural-gas millionaire who might +fall into his hands. He did not begrudge the time he had to give +in explaining to Dryfoos the relation of the different wines to the +different dishes; Dryfoos was apt to substitute a costlier wine where he +could for a cheaper one, and he gave Frescobaldi carte blanche for the +decoration of the table with pieces of artistic confectionery. Among +these the caterer designed one for a surprise to his patron and a +delicate recognition of the source of his wealth, which he found Dryfoos +very willing to talk about, when he intimated that he knew what it was. + +Dryfoos left it to Fulkerson to invite the guests, and he found ready +acceptance of his politeness from Kendricks, who rightly regarded the +dinner as a part of the 'Every Other Week' business, and was too sweet +and kind-hearted, anyway, not to seem very glad to come. March was +a matter of course; but in Colonel Woodburn, Fulkerson encountered a +reluctance which embarrassed him the more because he was conscious of +having, for motives of his own, rather strained a point in suggesting +the colonel to Dryfoos as a fit subject for invitation. There had been +only one of the colonel's articles printed as yet, and though it had +made a sensation in its way, and started the talk about that number, +still it did not fairly constitute him a member of the staff, or even +entitle him to recognition as a regular contributor. Fulkerson felt so +sure of pleasing him with Dryfoos's message that he delivered it in full +family council at the widow's. His daughter received it with all the +enthusiasm that Fulkerson had hoped for, but the colonel said, stiffly, +“I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Dryfoos.” Miss Woodburn appeared +ready to fall upon him at this, but controlled herself, as if aware that +filial authority had its limits, and pressed her lips together without +saying anything. + +“Yes, I know,” Fulkerson admitted. “But it isn't a usual case. Mr. +Dryfoos don't go in much for the conventionalities; I reckon he don't +know much about 'em, come to boil it down; and he hoped”--here Fulkerson +felt the necessity of inventing a little--“that you would excuse any +want of ceremony; it's to be such an informal affair, anyway; we're all +going in business dress, and there ain't going to be any ladies. He'd +have come himself to ask you, but he's a kind of a bashful old fellow. +It's all right, Colonel Woodburn.” + +“I take it that it is, sir,” said the colonel, courteously, but with +unabated state, “coming from you. But in these matters we have no right +to burden our friends with our decisions.” + +“Of course, of course,” said Fulkerson, feeling that he had been +delicately told to mind his own business. + +“I understand,” the colonel went on, “the relation that Mr. Dryfoos +bears to the periodical in which you have done me the honor to print my +papah, but this is a question of passing the bounds of a purely business +connection, and of eating the salt of a man whom you do not definitely +know to be a gentleman.” + +“Mah goodness!” his daughter broke in. “If you bah your own salt with +his money--” + +“It is supposed that I earn his money before I buy my salt with it,” + returned her father, severely. “And in these times, when money is got +in heaps, through the natural decay of our nefarious commercialism, it +behooves a gentleman to be scrupulous that the hospitality offered him +is not the profusion of a thief with his booty. I don't say that Mr. +Dryfoos's good-fortune is not honest. I simply say that I know nothing +about it, and that I should prefer to know something before I sat down +at his board.” + +“You're all right, colonel,” said Fulkerson, “and so is Mr. Dryfoos. I +give you my word that there are no flies on his personal integrity, if +that's what you mean. He's hard, and he'd push an advantage, but I don't +believe he would take an unfair one. He's speculated and made money +every time, but I never heard of his wrecking a railroad or belonging +to any swindling company or any grinding monopoly. He does chance it +in stocks, but he's always played on the square, if you call stocks +gambling.” + +“May I think this over till morning?” asked the colonel. + +“Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Fulkerson, eagerly. “I don't know as +there's any hurry.” + +Miss Woodburn found a chance to murmur to him before he went: “He'll +come. And Ah'm so much oblahged, Mr. Fulkerson. Ah jost know it's all +you' doing, and it will give papa a chance to toak to some new people, +and get away from us evahlastin' women for once.” + +“I don't see why any one should want to do that,” said Fulkerson, with +grateful gallantry. “But I'll be dogged,” he said to March when he +told him about this odd experience, “if I ever expected to find Colonel +Woodburn on old Lindau's ground. He did come round handsomely this +morning at breakfast and apologized for taking time to think the +invitation over before he accepted. 'You understand,' he says, 'that +if it had been to the table of some friend not so prosperous as Mr. +Dryfoos--your friend Mr. March, for instance--it would have been +sufficient to know that he was your friend. But in these days it is a +duty that a gentleman owes himself to consider whether he wishes to know +a rich man or not. The chances of making money disreputably are so great +that the chances are against a man who has made money if he's made a +great deal of it.'” + +March listened with a face of ironical insinuation. “That was very good; +and he seems to have had a good deal of confidence in your patience and +in your sense of his importance to the occasion--” + +“No, no,” Fulkerson protested, “there's none of that kind of thing +about the colonel. I told him to take time to think it over; he's the +simplest-hearted old fellow in the world.” + +“I should say so. After all, he didn't give any reason he had for +accepting. But perhaps the young lady had the reason.” + +“Pshaw, March!” said Fulkerson. + + + + +VI. + +So far as the Dryfoos family was concerned, the dinner might as well +have been given at Frescobaldi's rooms. None of the ladies appeared. +Mrs. Dryfoos was glad to escape to her own chamber, where she sat before +an autumnal fire, shaking her head and talking to herself at times, +with the foreboding of evil which old women like her make part of their +religion. The girls stood just out of sight at the head of the stairs, +and disputed which guest it was at each arrival; Mrs. Mandel had gone +to her room to write letters, after beseeching them not to stand there. +When Kendricks came, Christine gave Mela a little pinch, equivalent to a +little mocking shriek; for, on the ground of his long talk with Mela +at Mrs. Horn's, in the absence of any other admirer, they based a +superstition of his interest in her; when Beaton came, Mela returned the +pinch, but awkwardly, so that it hurt, and then Christine involuntarily +struck her. + +Frescobaldi's men were in possession everywhere they had turned the cook +out of her kitchen and the waitress out of her pantry; the reluctant +Irishman at the door was supplemented by a vivid Italian, who spoke +French with the guests, and said, “Bien, Monsieur,” and “toute suite,” + and “Merci!” to all, as he took their hats and coats, and effused a +hospitality that needed no language but the gleam of his eyes and teeth +and the play of his eloquent hands. From his professional dress-coat, +lustrous with the grease spotted on it at former dinners and parties, +they passed to the frocks of the elder and younger Dryfoos in the +drawing-room, which assumed informality for the affair, but did not +put their wearers wholly at their ease. The father's coat was of black +broadcloth, and he wore it unbuttoned; the skirts were long, and the +sleeves came down to his knuckles; he shook hands with his guests, and +the same dryness seemed to be in his palm and throat, as he huskily +asked each to take a chair. Conrad's coat was of modern texture and cut, +and was buttoned about him as if it concealed a bad conscience within +its lapels; he met March with his entreating smile, and he seemed no +more capable of coping with the situation than his father. They both +waited for Fulkerson, who went about and did his best to keep life +in the party during the half-hour that passed before they sat down at +dinner. Beaton stood gloomily aloof, as if waiting to be approached on +the right basis before yielding an inch of his ground; Colonel Woodburn, +awaiting the moment when he could sally out on his hobby, kept himself +intrenched within the dignity of a gentleman, and examined askance the +figure of old Lindau as he stared about the room, with his fine head up, +and his empty sleeve dangling over his wrist. March felt obliged to him +for wearing a new coat in the midst of that hostile luxury, and he was +glad to see Dryfoos make up to him and begin to talk with him, as if he +wished to show him particular respect, though it might have been because +he was less afraid of him than of the others. He heard Lindau saying, +“Boat, the name is Choarman?” and Dryfoos beginning to explain his +Pennsylvania Dutch origin, and he suffered himself, with a sigh of +relief, to fall into talk with Kendricks, who was always pleasant; he +was willing to talk about something besides himself, and had no opinions +that he was not ready to hold in abeyance for the time being out of +kindness to others. In that group of impassioned individualities, March +felt him a refuge and comfort--with his harmless dilettante intention of +some day writing a novel, and his belief that he was meantime collecting +material for it. + +Fulkerson, while breaking the ice for the whole company, was mainly +engaged in keeping Colonel Woodburn thawed out. He took Kendricks +away from March and presented him to the colonel as a person who, +like himself, was looking into social conditions; he put one hand on +Kendricks's shoulder, and one on the colonel's, and made some flattering +joke, apparently at the expense of the young fellow, and then left them. +March heard Kendricks protest in vain, and the colonel say, gravely: “I +do not wonder, sir, that these things interest you. They constitute a +problem which society must solve or which will dissolve society,” and he +knew from that formula, which the colonel had, once used with him, that +he was laying out a road for the exhibition of the hobby's paces later. + +Fulkerson came back to March, who had turned toward Conrad Dryfoos, and +said, “If we don't get this thing going pretty soon, it 'll be the death +of me,” and just then Frescobaldi's butler came in and announced to +Dryfoos that dinner was served. The old man looked toward Fulkerson with +a troubled glance, as if he did not know what to do; he made a gesture +to touch Lindau's elbow. Fulkerson called out, “Here's Colonel Woodburn, +Mr. Dryfoos,” as if Dryfoos were looking for him; and he set the example +of what he was to do by taking Lindau's arm himself. “Mr. Lindau is +going to sit at my end of the table, alongside of March. Stand not upon +the order of your going, gentlemen, but fall in at once.” He contrived +to get Dryfoos and the colonel before him, and he let March follow with +Kendricks. Conrad came last with Beaton, who had been turning over the +music at the piano, and chafing inwardly at the whole affair. At the +table Colonel Woodburn was placed on Dryfoos's right, and March on his +left. March sat on Fulkerson's right, with Lindau next him; and the +young men occupied the other seats. + +“Put you next to March, Mr. Lindau,” said Fulkerson, “so you can begin +to put Apollinaris in his champagne-glass at the right moment; you know +his little weakness of old; sorry to say it's grown on him.” + +March laughed with kindly acquiescence in Fulkerson's wish to start the +gayety, and Lindau patted him on the shoulder. “I know hiss veakness. +If he liges a class of vine, it iss begause his loaf ingludes efen hiss +enemy, as Shakespeare galled it.” + +“Ah, but Shakespeare couldn't have been thinking of champagne,” said +Kendricks. + +“I suppose, sir,” Colonel Woodburn interposed, with lofty courtesy, +“champagne could hardly have been known in his day.” + +“I suppose not, colonel,” returned the younger man, deferentially. “He +seemed to think that sack and sugar might be a fault; but he didn't +mention champagne.” + +“Perhaps he felt there was no question about that,” suggested Beaton, +who then felt that he had not done himself justice in the sally. + +“I wonder just when champagne did come in,” said March. + +“I know when it ought to come in,” said Fulkerson. “Before the soup!” + +They all laughed, and gave themselves the air of drinking champagne out +of tumblers every day, as men like to do. Dryfoos listened uneasily; he +did not quite understand the allusions, though he knew what Shakespeare +was, well enough; Conrad's face expressed a gentle deprecation of joking +on such a subject, but he said nothing. + +The talk ran on briskly through the dinner. The young men tossed the +ball back and forth; they made some wild shots, but they kept it going, +and they laughed when they were hit. The wine loosed Colonel Woodburn's +tongue; he became very companionable with the young fellows; with +the feeling that a literary dinner ought to have a didactic scope, he +praised Scott and Addison as the only authors fit to form the minds of +gentlemen. + +Kendricks agreed with him, but wished to add the name of Flaubert as a +master of style. “Style, you know,” he added, “is the man.” + +“Very true, sir; you are quite right, sir,” the colonel assented; he +wondered who Flaubert was. + +Beaton praised Baudelaire and Maupassant; he said these were the +masters. He recited some lurid verses from Baudelaire; Lindau pronounced +them a disgrace to human nature, and gave a passage from Victor Hugo +on Louis Napoleon, with his heavy German accent, and then he quoted +Schiller. “Ach, boat that is a peaudifool! Not zo?” he demanded of +March. + +“Yes, beautiful; but, of course, you know I think there's nobody like +Heine!” + +Lindau threw back his great old head and laughed, showing a want of +teeth under his mustache. He put his hand on March's back. “This poy--he +was a poy den--wars so gracy to pekin reading Heine that he gommence +with the tictionary bevore he knows any Grammar, and ve bick it out vort +by vort togeder.” + +“He was a pretty cay poy in those days, heigh, Lindau?” asked Fulkerson, +burlesquing the old man's accent, with an impudent wink that made Lindau +himself laugh. “But in the dark ages, I mean, there in Indianapolis. +Just how long ago did you old codgers meet there, anyway?” Fulkerson saw +the restiveness in Dryfoos's eye at the purely literary course the talk +had taken; he had intended it to lead up that way to business, to 'Every +Other Week;' but he saw that it was leaving Dryfoos too far out, and he +wished to get it on the personal ground, where everybody is at home. + +“Ledt me zee,” mused Lindau. “Wass it in fifty-nine or zixty, Passil? +Idt wass a year or dwo pefore the war proke oudt, anyway.” + +“Those were exciting times,” said Dryfoos, making his first entry into +the general talk. “I went down to Indianapolis with the first company +from our place, and I saw the red-shirts pouring in everywhere. They had +a song, + + “Oh, never mind the weather, but git over double trouble, + For we're bound for the land of Canaan.” + +The fellows locked arms and went singin' it up and down four or five +abreast in the moonlight; crowded everybody else off the sidewalk. + +“I remember, I remember,” said Lindau, nodding his head slowly up and +down. “A coodt many off them nefer gome pack from that landt of Ganaan, +Mr. Dryfoos?” + +“You're right, Mr. Lindau. But I reckon it was worth it--the country +we've got now. Here, young man!” He caught the arm of the waiter who +was going round with the champagne bottle. “Fill up Mr. Lindau's glass, +there. I want to drink the health of those old times with him. Here's to +your empty sleeve, Mr. Lindau. God bless it! No offence to you, Colonel +Woodburn,” said Dryfoos, turning to him before he drank. + +“Not at all, sir, not at all,” said the colonel. “I will drink with you, +if you will permit me.” + +“We'll all drink--standing!” cried Fulkerson. “Help March to get up, +somebody! Fill high the bowl with Samian Apollinaris for Coonrod! Now, +then, hurrah for Lindau!” + +They cheered, and hammered on the table with the butts of their +knife-handles. Lindau remained seated. The tears came into his eyes; he +said, “I thank you, chendlemen,” and hiccoughed. + +“I'd 'a' went into the war myself,” said Dryfoos, “but I was raisin' a +family of young children, and I didn't see how I could leave my +farm. But I helped to fill up the quota at every call, and when the +volunteering stopped I went round with the subscription paper myself; +and we offered as good bounties as any in the State. My substitute +was killed in one of the last skirmishes--in fact, after Lee's +surrender--and I've took care of his family, more or less, ever since.” + +“By-the-way, March,” said Fulkerson, “what sort of an idea would it be +to have a good war story--might be a serial--in the magazine? The war +has never fully panned out in fiction yet. It was used a good deal just +after it was over, and then it was dropped. I think it's time to take it +up again. I believe it would be a card.” + +It was running in March's mind that Dryfoos had an old rankling shame in +his heart for not having gone into the war, and that he had often made +that explanation of his course without having ever been satisfied with +it. He felt sorry for him; the fact seemed pathetic; it suggested a +dormant nobleness in the man. + +Beaton was saying to Fulkerson: “You might get a series of sketches by +substitutes; the substitutes haven't been much heard from in the war +literature. How would 'The Autobiography of a Substitute' do? You might +follow him up to the moment he was killed in the other man's place, and +inquire whether he had any right to the feelings of a hero when he was +only hired in the place of one. Might call it 'The Career of a Deputy +Hero.'” + +“I fancy,” said March, “that there was a great deal of mixed motive in +the men who went into the war as well as in those who kept out of it. +We canonized all that died or suffered in it, but some of them must have +been self-seeking and low-minded, like men in other vocations.” He +found himself saying this in Dryfoos's behalf; the old man looked at him +gratefully at first, he thought, and then suspiciously. + +Lindau turned his head toward him and said: “You are righdt, Passil; you +are righdt. I haf zeen on the fieldt of pattle the voarst eggsipitions +of human paseness--chelousy, fanity, ecodistic bridte. I haf zeen men +in the face off death itself gofferned by motifes as low as--as pusiness +motifes.” + +“Well,” said Fulkerson, “it would be a grand thing for 'Every Other +Week' if we could get some of those ideas worked up into a series. It +would make a lot of talk.” + +Colonel Woodburn ignored him in saying, “I think, Major Lindau--” + +“High brifate; prefet gorporal,” the old man interrupted, in rejection +of the title. + +Hendricks laughed and said, with a glance of appreciation at Lindau, +“Brevet corporal is good.” + +Colonel Woodburn frowned a little, and passed over the joke. “I think +Mr. Lindau is right. Such exhibitions were common to both sides, though +if you gentlemen will pardon me for saying so, I think they were less +frequent on ours. We were fighting more immediately for existence. We +were fewer than you were, and we knew it; we felt more intensely that if +each were not for all, then none was for any.” + +The colonel's words made their impression. Dryfoos said, with authority, +“That is so.” + +“Colonel Woodburn,” Fulkerson called out, “if you'll work up those ideas +into a short paper--say, three thousand words--I'll engage to make March +take it.” + +The colonel went on without replying: “But Mr. Lindau is right in +characterizing some of the motives that led men to the cannon's mouth as +no higher than business motives, and his comparison is the most forcible +that he could have used. I was very much struck by it.” + +The hobby was out, the colonel was in the saddle with so firm a seat +that no effort sufficed to dislodge him. The dinner went on from course +to course with barbaric profusion, and from time to time Fulkerson tried +to bring the talk back to 'Every Other Week.' But perhaps because that +was only the ostensible and not the real object of the dinner, which was +to bring a number of men together under Dryfoos's roof, and make them +the witnesses of his splendor, make them feel the power of his wealth, +Fulkerson's attempts failed. The colonel showed how commercialism was +the poison at the heart of our national life; how we began as a simple, +agricultural people, who had fled to these shores with the instinct, +divinely implanted, of building a state such as the sun never shone upon +before; how we had conquered the wilderness and the savage; how we had +flung off, in our struggle with the mother-country, the trammels of +tradition and precedent, and had settled down, a free nation, to the +practice of the arts of peace; how the spirit of commercialism had +stolen insidiously upon us, and the infernal impulse of competition had +embroiled us in a perpetual warfare of interests, developing the worst +passions of our nature, and teaching us to trick and betray and destroy +one another in the strife for money, till now that impulse had exhausted +itself, and we found competition gone and the whole economic problem in +the hands of monopolies--the Standard Oil Company, the Sugar Trust, the +Rubber Trust, and what not. And now what was the next thing? Affairs +could not remain as they were; it was impossible; and what was the next +thing? + +The company listened for the main part silently. Dryfoos tried to grasp +the idea of commercialism as the colonel seemed to hold it; he conceived +of it as something like the dry-goods business on a vast scale, and +he knew he had never been in that. He did not like to hear competition +called infernal; he had always supposed it was something sacred; but he +approved of what Colonel Woodburn said of the Standard Oil Company; it +was all true; the Standard Oil has squeezed Dryfoos once, and made him +sell it a lot of oil-wells by putting down the price of oil so low in +that region that he lost money on every barrel he pumped. + +All the rest listened silently, except Lindau; at every point the +colonel made against the present condition of things he said more and +more fiercely, “You are righdt, you are righdt.” His eyes glowed, his +hand played with his knife-hilt. When the colonel demanded, “And what is +the next thing?” he threw himself forward, and repeated: “Yes, sir! What +is the next thing?” + +“Natural gas, by thunder!” shouted Fulkerson. + +One of the waiters had profited by Lindau's posture to lean over him +and put down in the middle of the table a structure in white sugar. It +expressed Frescobaldi's conception of a derrick, and a touch of nature +had been added in the flame of brandy, which burned luridly up from +a small pit in the centre of the base, and represented the gas in +combustion as it issued from the ground. Fulkerson burst into a roar of +laughter with the words that recognized Frescobaldi's personal tribute +to Dryfoos. Everybody rose and peered over at the thing, while he +explained the work of sinking a gas-well, as he had already explained +it to Frescobaldi. In the midst of his lecture he caught sight of the +caterer himself, where he stood in the pantry doorway, smiling with an +artist's anxiety for the effect of his masterpiece. + +“Come in, come in, Frescobaldi! We want to congratulate you,” Fulkerson +called to him. “Here, gentlemen! Here's Frescobaldi's health.” + +They all drank; and Frescobaldi, smiling brilliantly and rubbing his +hands as he bowed right and left, permitted himself to say to Dryfoos: +“You are please; no? You like?” + +“First-rate, first-rate!” said the old man; but when the Italian had +bowed himself out and his guests had sunk into their seats again, he +said dryly to Fulkerson, “I reckon they didn't have to torpedo that +well, or the derrick wouldn't look quite so nice and clean.” + +“Yes,” Fulkerson answered, “and that ain't quite the style--that little +wiggly-waggly blue flame--that the gas acts when you touch off a good +vein of it. This might do for weak gas”; and he went on to explain: + +“They call it weak gas when they tap it two or three hundred feet down; +and anybody can sink a well in his back yard and get enough gas to light +and heat his house. I remember one fellow that had it blazing up from a +pipe through a flower-bed, just like a jet of water from a fountain. My, +my, my! You fel--you gentlemen--ought to go out and see that country, +all of you. Wish we could torpedo this well, Mr. Dryfoos, and let 'em +see how it works! Mind that one you torpedoed for me? You know, when +they sink a well,” he went on to the company, “they can't always most +generally sometimes tell whether they're goin' to get gas or oil or +salt water. Why, when they first began to bore for salt water out on the +Kanawha, back about the beginning of the century, they used to get +gas now and then, and then they considered it a failure; they called a +gas-well a blower, and give it up in disgust; the time wasn't ripe for +gas yet. Now they bore away sometimes till they get half-way to China, +and don't seem to strike anything worth speaking of. Then they put a +dynamite torpedo down in the well and explode it. They have a little +bar of iron that they call a Go-devil, and they just drop it down on the +business end of the torpedo, and then stand from under, if you please! +You hear a noise, and in about half a minute you begin to see one, and +it begins to rain oil and mud and salt water and rocks and pitchforks +and adoptive citizens; and when it clears up the derrick's painted--got +a coat on that 'll wear in any climate. That's what our honored host +meant. Generally get some visiting lady, when there's one round, to +drop the Go-devil. But that day we had to put up with Conrad here. They +offered to let me drop it, but I declined. I told 'em I hadn't much +practice with Go-devils in the newspaper syndicate business, and I +wasn't very well myself, anyway. Astonishing,” Fulkerson continued, with +the air of relieving his explanation by an anecdote, “how reckless they +get using dynamite when they're torpedoing wells. We stopped at one +place where a fellow was handling the cartridges pretty freely, and Mr. +Dryfoos happened to caution him a little, and that ass came up with one +of 'em in his hand, and began to pound it on the buggy-wheel to show us +how safe it was. I turned green, I was so scared; but Mr. Dryfoos kept +his color, and kind of coaxed the fellow till he quit. You could see he +was the fool kind, that if you tried to stop him he'd keep on hammering +that cartridge, just to show that it wouldn't explode, till he blew you +into Kingdom Come. When we got him to go away, Mr. Dryfoos drove up to +his foreman. 'Pay Sheney off, and discharge him on the spot,' says he. +'He's too safe a man to have round; he knows too much about dynamite.' I +never saw anybody so cool.” + +Dryfoos modestly dropped his head under Fulkerson's flattery and, +without lifting it, turned his eyes toward Colonel Woodburn. “I had all +sorts of men to deal with in developing my property out there, but I had +very little trouble with them, generally speaking.” + +“Ah, ah! you foundt the laboring-man reasonable--dractable--tocile?” + Lindau put in. + +“Yes, generally speaking,” Dryfoos answered. “They mostly knew which +side of their bread was buttered. I did have one little difficulty at +one time. It happened to be when Mr. Fulkerson was out there. Some of +the men tried to form a union--” + +“No, no!” cried Fulkerson. “Let me tell that! I know you wouldn't do +yourself justice, Mr. Dryfoos, and I want 'em to know how a strike can +be managed, if you take it in time. You see, some of those fellows got +a notion that there ought to be a union among the working-men to keep up +wages, and dictate to the employers, and Mr. Dryfoos's foreman was the +ringleader in the business. They understood pretty well that as soon as +he found it out that foreman would walk the plank, and so they watched +out till they thought they had Mr. Dryfoos just where they wanted +him--everything on the keen jump, and every man worth his weight in +diamonds--and then they came to him, and--told him to sign a promise to +keep that foreman to the end of the season, or till he was through with +the work on the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, under penalty of having +them all knock off. Mr. Dryfoos smelled a mouse, but he couldn't tell +where the mouse was; he saw that they did have him, and he signed, of +course. There wasn't anything really against the fellow, anyway; he was +a first-rate man, and he did his duty every time; only he'd got some of +those ideas into his head, and they turned it. Mr. Dryfoos signed, and +then he laid low.” + +March saw Lindau listening with a mounting intensity, and heard him +murmur in German, “Shameful! shameful!” + +Fulkerson went on: “Well, it wasn't long before they began to show their +hand, but Mr. Dryfoos kept dark. He agreed to everything; there never +was such an obliging capitalist before; there wasn't a thing they asked +of him that he didn't do, with the greatest of pleasure, and all went +merry as a marriage-bell till one morning a whole gang of fresh men +marched into the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, under the escort of a +dozen Pinkertons with repeating rifles at half-cock, and about fifty +fellows found themselves out of a job. You never saw such a mad set.” + +“Pretty neat,” said Kendricks, who looked at the affair purely from an +aesthetic point of view. “Such a coup as that would tell tremendously in +a play.” + +“That was vile treason,” said Lindau in German to March. “He's an +infamous traitor! I cannot stay here. I must go.” + +He struggled to rise, while March held him by the coat, and implored +him under his voice: “For Heaven's sake, don't, Lindau! You owe it to +yourself not to make a scene, if you come here.” Something in it all +affected him comically; he could not help laughing. + +The others were discussing the matter, and seemed not to have noticed +Lindau, who controlled himself and sighed: “You are right. I must have +patience.” + +Beaton was saying to Dryfoos, “Pity your Pinkertons couldn't have given +them a few shots before they left.” + +“No, that wasn't necessary,” said Dryfoos. “I succeeded in breaking up +the union. I entered into an agreement with other parties not to employ +any man who would not swear that he was non-union. If they had attempted +violence, of course they could have been shot. But there was no fear +of that. Those fellows can always be depended upon to cut one another's +throats in the long run.” + +“But sometimes,” said Colonel Woodburn, who had been watching +throughout for a chance to mount his hobby again, “they make a good +deal of trouble first. How was it in the great railroad strike of '77?” + +“Well, I guess there was a little trouble that time, colonel,” said +Fulkerson. “But the men that undertake to override the laws and paralyze +the industries of a country like this generally get left in the end.” + +“Yes, sir, generally; and up to a certain point, always. But it's the +exceptional that is apt to happen, as well as the unexpected. And a +little reflection will convince any gentleman here that there is always +a danger of the exceptional in your system. The fact is, those fellows +have the game in their own hands already. A strike of the whole body of +the Brotherhood of Engineers alone would starve out the entire Atlantic +seaboard in a week; labor insurrection could make head at a dozen given +points, and your government couldn't move a man over the roads without +the help of the engineers.” + +“That is so,” said Kendrick, struck by the dramatic character of +the conjecture. He imagined a fiction dealing with the situation as +something already accomplished. + +“Why don't some fellow do the Battle of Dorking act with that thing?” + said Fulkerson. “It would be a card.” + +“Exactly what I was thinking, Mr. Fulkerson,” said Kendricks. + +Fulkerson laughed. “Telepathy--clear case of mind transference. Better +see March, here, about it. I'd like to have it in 'Every Other Week.' It +would make talk.” + +“Perhaps it might set your people to thinking as well as talking,” said +the colonel. + +“Well, sir,” said Dryfoos, setting his lips so tightly together that his +imperial stuck straight outward, “if I had my way, there wouldn't be any +Brotherhood of Engineers, nor any other kind of labor union in the whole +country.” + +“What!” shouted Lindau. “You would sobbress the unionss of the +voarking-men?” + +“Yes, I would.” + +“And what would you do with the unionss of the gabidalists--the +drosts--and gompines, and boolss? Would you dake the righdt from one and +gif it to the odder?” + +“Yes, sir, I would,” said Dryfoos, with a wicked look at him. + +Lindau was about to roar back at him with some furious protest, but +March put his hand on his shoulder imploringly, and Lindau turned to +him to say in German: “But it is infamous--infamous! What kind of man is +this? Who is he? He has the heart of a tyrant.” + +Colonel Woodburn cut in. “You couldn't do that, Mr. Dryfoos, under your +system. And if you attempted it, with your conspiracy laws, and that +kind of thing, it might bring the climax sooner than you expected. Your +commercialized society has built its house on the sands. It will have to +go. But I should be sorry if it went before its time.” + +“You are righdt, sir,” said Lindau. “It would be a bity. I hobe it will +last till it feelss its rottenness, like Herodt. Boat, when its +hour gomes, when it trope to bieces with the veight off its own +gorrubtion--what then?” + +“It's not to be supposed that a system of things like this can drop to +pieces of its own accord, like the old Republic of Venice,” said the +colonel. “But when the last vestige of commercial society is gone, +then we can begin to build anew; and we shall build upon the +central idea, not of the false liberty you now worship, but of +responsibility--responsibility. The enlightened, the moneyed, the +cultivated class shall be responsible to the central authority--emperor, +duke, president; the name does not matter--for the national expense and +the national defence, and it shall be responsible to the working-classes +of all kinds for homes and lands and implements, and the opportunity to +labor at all times. + +“The working-classes shall be responsible to the leisure class for the +support of its dignity in peace, and shall be subject to its command in +war. The rich shall warrant the poor against planless production and +the ruin that now follows, against danger from without and famine from +within, and the poor--” + +“No, no, no!” shouted Lindau. “The State shall do that--the whole +beople. The men who voark shall have and shall eat; and the men that +will not voark, they shall sdarfe. But no man need sdarfe. He will go +to the State, and the State will see that he haf voark, and that he +haf foodt. All the roadts and mills and mines and landts shall be the +beople's and be ron by the beople for the beople. There shall be no rich +and no boor; and there shall not be war any more, for what bower wouldt +dare to addack a beople bound togeder in a broderhood like that?” + +“Lion and lamb act,” said Fulkerson, not well knowing, after so much +champagne, what words he was using. + +No one noticed him, and Colonel Woodburn said coldly to Lindau, “You are +talking paternalism, sir.” + +“And you are dalking feutalism!” retorted the old man. + +The colonel did not reply. A silence ensued, which no one broke +till Fulkerson said: “Well, now, look here. If either one of these +millenniums was brought about, by force of arms, or otherwise, what +would become of 'Every Other Week'? Who would want March for an editor? +How would Beaton sell his pictures? Who would print Mr. Kendricks's +little society verses and short stories? What would become of Conrad +and his good works?” Those named grinned in support of Fulkerson's +diversion, but Lindau and the colonel did not speak; Dryfoos looked down +at his plate, frowning. + +A waiter came round with cigars, and Fulkerson took one. “Ah,” he said, +as he bit off the end, and leaned over to the emblematic masterpiece, +where the brandy was still feebly flickering, “I wonder if there's +enough natural gas left to light my cigar.” His effort put the flame +out and knocked the derrick over; it broke in fragments on the table. +Fulkerson cackled over the ruin: “I wonder if all Moffitt will look that +way after labor and capital have fought it out together. I hope this +ain't ominous of anything personal, Dryfoos?” + +“I'll take the risk of it,” said the old man, harshly. + +He rose mechanically, and Fulkerson said to Frescobaldi's man, “You can +bring us the coffee in the library.” + +The talk did not recover itself there. Landau would not sit down; he +refused coffee, and dismissed himself with a haughty bow to the company; +Colonel Woodburn shook hands elaborately all round, when he had smoked +his cigar; the others followed him. It seemed to March that his own +good-night from Dryfoos was dry and cold. + + + + +VII. + +March met Fulkerson on the steps of the office next morning, when he +arrived rather later than his wont. Fulkerson did not show any of +the signs of suffering from the last night's pleasure which painted +themselves in March's face. He flirted his hand gayly in the air, and +said, “How's your poor head?” and broke into a knowing laugh. “You don't +seem to have got up with the lark this morning. The old gentleman is in +there with Conrad, as bright as a biscuit; he's beat you down. Well, we +did have a good time, didn't we? And old Lindau and the colonel, didn't +they have a good time? I don't suppose they ever had a chance before to +give their theories quite so much air. Oh, my! how they did ride over +us! I'm just going down to see Beaton about the cover of the Christmas +number. I think we ought to try it in three or four colors, if we are +going to observe the day at all.” He was off before March could pull +himself together to ask what Dryfoos wanted at the office at that hour +of the morning; he always came in the afternoon on his way up-town. + +The fact of his presence renewed the sinister misgivings with which +March had parted from him the night before, but Fulkerson's cheerfulness +seemed to gainsay them; afterward March did not know whether to +attribute this mood to the slipperiness that he was aware of at times in +Fulkerson, or to a cynical amusement he might have felt at leaving him +alone to the old man, who mounted to his room shortly after March had +reached it. + +A sort of dumb anger showed itself in his face; his jaw was set so +firmly that he did not seem able at once to open it. He asked, without +the ceremonies of greeting, “What does that one-armed Dutchman do on +this book?” + +“What does he do?” March echoed, as people are apt to do with a question +that is mandatory and offensive. + +“Yes, sir, what does he do? Does he write for it?” + +“I suppose you mean Lindau,” said March. He saw no reason for refusing +to answer Dryfoos's demand, and he decided to ignore its terms. “No, he +doesn't write for it in the usual way. He translates for it; he examines +the foreign magazines, and draws my attention to anything he thinks of +interest. But I told you about this before--” + +“I know what you told me, well enough. And I know what he is. He is a +red-mouthed labor agitator. He's one of those foreigners that come here +from places where they've never had a decent meal's victuals in their +lives, and as soon as they get their stomachs full, they begin to make +trouble between our people and their hands. There's where the strikes +come from, and the unions and the secret societies. They come here and +break our Sabbath, and teach their atheism. They ought to be hung! +Let 'em go back if they don't like it over here. They want to ruin the +country.” + +March could not help smiling a little at the words, which came fast +enough now in the hoarse staccato of Dryfoos's passion. “I don't know +whom you mean by they, generally speaking; but I had the impression +that poor old Lindau had once done his best to save the country. I don't +always like his way of talking, but I know that he is one of the truest +and kindest souls in the world; and he is no more an atheist than I am. +He is my friend, and I can't allow him to be misunderstood.” + +“I don't care what he is,” Dryfoos broke out, “I won't have him round. +He can't have any more work from this office. I want you to stop it. I +want you to turn him off.” + +March was standing at his desk, as he had risen to receive Dryfoos when +he entered. He now sat down, and began to open his letters. + +“Do you hear?” the old man roared at him. “I want you to turn him off.” + +“Excuse me, Mr. Dryfoos,” said March, succeeding in an effort to speak +calmly, “I don't know you, in such a matter as this. My arrangements as +editor of 'Every Other Week' were made with Mr. Fulkerson. I have always +listened to any suggestion he has had to make.” + +“I don't care for Mr. Fulkerson! He has nothing to do with it,” retorted +Dryfoos; but he seemed a little daunted by March's position. + +“He has everything to do with it as far as I am concerned,” March +answered, with a steadiness that he did not feel. “I know that you are +the owner of the periodical, but I can't receive any suggestion from +you, for the reason that I have given. Nobody but Mr. Fulkerson has any +right to talk with me about its management.” + +Dryfoos glared at him for a moment, and demanded, threateningly: “Then +you say you won't turn that old loafer off? You say that I have got +to keep on paying my money out to buy beer for a man that would cut my +throat if he got the chance?” + +“I say nothing at all, Mr. Dryfoos,” March answered. The blood came into +his face, and he added: “But I will say that if you speak again of Mr. +Lindau in those terms, one of us must leave this room. I will not hear +you.” + +Dryfoos looked at him with astonishment; then he struck his hat down on +his head, and stamped out of the room and down the stairs; and a vague +pity came into March's heart that was not altogether for himself. He +might be the greater sufferer in the end, but he was sorry to have got +the better of that old man for the moment; and he felt ashamed of the +anger into which Dryfoos's anger had surprised him. He knew he could not +say too much in defence of Lindau's generosity and unselfishness, and he +had not attempted to defend him as a political economist. He could not +have taken any ground in relation to Dryfoos but that which he held, and +he felt satisfied that he was right in refusing to receive instructions +or commands from him. Yet somehow he was not satisfied with the whole +affair, and not merely because his present triumph threatened his final +advantage, but because he felt that in his heart he had hardly done +justice to Dryfoos's rights in the matter; it did not quite console him +to reflect that Dryfoos had himself made it impossible. He was +tempted to go home and tell his wife what had happened, and begin his +preparations for the future at once. But he resisted this weakness +and kept mechanically about his work, opening the letters and the +manuscripts before him with that curious double action of the mind +common in men of vivid imaginations. It was a relief when Conrad +Dryfoos, having apparently waited to make sure that his father would +not return, came up from the counting-room and looked in on March with a +troubled face. + +“Mr. March,” he began, “I hope father hasn't been saying anything to you +that you can't overlook. I know he was very much excited, and when he is +excited he is apt to say things that he is sorry for.” + +The apologetic attitude taken for Dryfoos, so different from any +attitude the peremptory old man would have conceivably taken for +himself, made March smile. “Oh no. I fancy the boot is on the other leg. +I suspect I've said some things your father can't overlook, Conrad.” + He called the young man by his Christian name partly to distinguish him +from his father, partly from the infection of Fulkerson's habit, and +partly from a kindness for him that seemed naturally to express itself +in that way. + +“I know he didn't sleep last night, after you all went away,” Conrad +pursued, “and of course that made him more irritable; and he was tried a +good deal by some of the things that Mr. Lindau said.” + +“I was tried a good deal myself,” said March. “Lindau ought never to +have been there.” + +“No.” Conrad seemed only partially to assent. + +“I told Mr. Fulkerson so. I warned him that Lindau would be apt to +break out in some way. It wasn't just to him, and it wasn't just to your +father, to ask him.” + +“Mr. Fulkerson had a good motive,” Conrad gently urged. “He did it +because he hurt his feelings that day about the pension.” + +“Yes, but it was a mistake. He knew that Lindau was inflexible about his +principles, as he calls them, and that one of his first principles is +to denounce the rich in season and out of season. I don't remember just +what he said last night; and I really thought I'd kept him from +breaking out in the most offensive way. But your father seems very much +incensed.” + +“Yes, I know,” said Conrad. + +“Of course, I don't agree with Lindau. I think there are as many good, +kind, just people among the rich as there are among the poor, and that +they are as generous and helpful. But Lindau has got hold of one of +those partial truths that hurt worse than the whole truth, and--” + +“Partial truth!” the young man interrupted. “Didn't the Saviour himself +say, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of +God?'” + +“Why, bless my soul!” cried March. “Do you agree with Lindau?” + +“I agree with the Lord Jesus Christ,” said the young man, solemnly, and +a strange light of fanaticism, of exaltation, came into his wide blue +eyes. “And I believe He meant the kingdom of heaven upon this earth, as +well as in the skies.” + +March threw himself back in his chair and looked at him with a kind of +stupefaction, in which his eye wandered to the doorway, where he saw +Fulkerson standing, it seemed to him a long time, before he heard him +saying: “Hello, hello! What's the row? Conrad pitching into you on old +Lindau's account, too?” + +The young man turned, and, after a glance at Fulkerson's light, smiling +face, went out, as if in his present mood he could not bear the contact +of that persiflant spirit. + +March felt himself getting provisionally very angry again. “Excuse me, +Fulkerson, but did you know when you went out what Mr. Dryfoos wanted to +see me for?” + +“Well, no, I didn't exactly,” said Fulkerson, taking his usual seat on a +chair and looking over the back of it at March. “I saw he was on his car +about something, and I thought I'd better not monkey with him much. I +supposed he was going to bring you to book about old Lindau, somehow.” + Fulkerson broke into a laugh. + +March remained serious. “Mr. Dryfoos,” he said, willing to let the +simple statement have its own weight with Fulkerson, and nothing more, +“came in here and ordered me to discharge Lindau from his employment on +the magazine--to turn him off, as he put it.” + +“Did he?” asked Fulkerson, with unbroken cheerfulness. “The old man is +business, every time. Well, I suppose you can easily get somebody +else to do Lindau's work for you. This town is just running over with +half-starved linguists. What did you say?” + +“What did I say?” March echoed. “Look here, Fulkerson; you may regard +this as a joke, but I don't. I'm not used to being spoken to as if +I were the foreman of a shop, and told to discharge a sensitive and +cultivated man like Lindau, as if he were a drunken mechanic; and if +that's your idea of me--” + +“Oh, hello, now, March! You mustn't mind the old man's way. He don't +mean anything by it--he don't know any better, if you come to that.” + +“Then I know better,” said March. “I refused to receive any instructions +from Mr. Dryfoos, whom I don't know in my relations with 'Every Other +Week,' and I referred him to you.” + +“You did?” Fulkerson whistled. “He owns the thing!” + +“I don't care who owns the thing,” said March. “My negotiations were +with you alone from the beginning, and I leave this matter with you. +What do you wish done about Lindau?” + +“Oh, better let the old fool drop,” said Fulkerson. “He'll light on his +feet somehow, and it will save a lot of rumpus.” + +“And if I decline to let him drop?” + +“Oh, come, now, March; don't do that,” Fulkerson began. + +“If I decline to let him drop,” March repeated, “what will you do?” + +“I'll be dogged if I know what I'll do,” said Fulkerson. “I hope you +won't take that stand. If the old man went so far as to speak to you +about it, his mind is made up, and we might as well knock under first as +last.” + +“And do you mean to say that you would not stand by me in what I +considered my duty--in a matter of principle?” + +“Why, of course, March,” said Fulkerson, coaxingly, “I mean to do the +right thing. But Dryfoos owns the magazine--” + +“He doesn't own me,” said March, rising. “He has made the little mistake +of speaking to me as if he did; and when”--March put on his hat and took +his overcoat down from its nail--“when you bring me his apologies, +or come to say that, having failed to make him understand they were +necessary, you are prepared to stand by me, I will come back to this +desk. Otherwise my resignation is at your service.” + +He started toward the door, and Fulkerson intercepted him. “Ah, now, +look here, March! Don't do that! Hang it all, don't you see where it +leaves me? Now, you just sit down a minute and talk it over. I can make +you see--I can show you--Why, confound the old Dutch beer-buzzer! Twenty +of him wouldn't be worth the trouble he's makin'. Let him go, and the +old man 'll come round in time.” + +“I don't think we've understood each other exactly, Mr. Fulkerson,” + said March, very haughtily. “Perhaps we never can; but I'll leave you to +think it out.” + +He pushed on, and Fulkerson stood aside to let him pass, with a dazed +look and a mechanical movement. There was something comic in his rueful +bewilderment to March, who was tempted to smile, but he said to himself +that he had as much reason to be unhappy as Fulkerson, and he did +not smile. His indignation kept him hot in his purpose to suffer any +consequence rather than submit to the dictation of a man like Dryfoos; +he felt keenly the degradation of his connection with him, and all his +resentment of Fulkerson's original uncandor returned; at the same time +his heart ached with foreboding. It was not merely the work in which he +had constantly grown happier that he saw taken from him; but he felt the +misery of the man who stakes the security and plenty and peace of home +upon some cast, and knows that losing will sweep from him most that most +men find sweet and pleasant in life. He faced the fact, which no good +man can front without terror, that he was risking the support of his +family, and for a point of pride, of honor, which perhaps he had no +right to consider in view of the possible adversity. He realized, as +every hireling must, no matter how skillfully or gracefully the tie is +contrived for his wearing, that he belongs to another, whose will is his +law. His indignation was shot with abject impulses to go back and tell +Fulkerson that it was all right, and that he gave up. To end the anguish +of his struggle he quickened his steps, so that he found he was reaching +home almost at a run. + + + + +VIII. + +He must have made more clatter than he supposed with his key at the +apartment door, for his wife had come to let him in when he flung it +open. “Why, Basil,” she said, “what's brought you back? Are you sick? +You're all pale. Well, no wonder! This is the last of Mr. Fulkerson's +dinners you shall go to. You're not strong enough for it, and your +stomach will be all out of order for a week. How hot you are! and in a +drip of perspiration! Now you'll be sick.” She took his hat away, which +hung dangling in his hand, and pushed him into a chair with tender +impatience. “What is the matter? Has anything happened?” + +“Everything has happened,” he said, getting his voice after one or two +husky endeavors for it; and then he poured out a confused and huddled +statement of the case, from which she only got at the situation by +prolonged cross-questioning. + +At the end she said, “I knew Lindau would get you into trouble.” + +This cut March to the heart. “Isabel!” he cried, reproachfully. + +“Oh, I know,” she retorted, and the tears began to come. “I don't wonder +you didn't want to say much to me about that dinner at breakfast. I +noticed it; but I thought you were just dull, and so I didn't insist. I +wish I had, now. If you had told me what Lindau had said, I should have +known what would have come of it, and I could have advised you--” + +“Would you have advised me,” March demanded, curiously, “to submit +to bullying like that, and meekly consent to commit an act of cruelty +against a man who had once been such a friend to me?” + +“It was an unlucky day when you met him. I suppose we shall have to go. +And just when we had got used to New York, and begun to like it. I don't +know where we shall go now; Boston isn't like home any more; and we +couldn't live on two thousand there; I should be ashamed to try. I'm +sure I don't know where we can live on it. I suppose in some country +village, where there are no schools, or anything for the children. I +don't know what they'll say when we tell them, poor things.” + +Every word was a stab in March's heart, so weakly tender to his own; his +wife's tears, after so much experience of the comparative lightness of +the griefs that weep themselves out in women, always seemed wrung from +his own soul; if his children suffered in the least through him, he felt +like a murderer. It was far worse than he could have imagined, the +way his wife took the affair, though he had imagined certain words, or +perhaps only looks, from her that were bad enough. He had allowed for +trouble, but trouble on his account: a svmpathy that might burden and +embarrass him; but he had not dreamed of this merely domestic, this +petty, this sordid view of their potential calamity, which left him +wholly out of the question, and embraced only what was most crushing and +desolating in the prospect. He could not bear it. He caught up his hat +again, and, with some hope that his wife would try to keep him, rushed +out of the house. He wandered aimlessly about, thinking the same +exhausting thoughts over and over, till he found himself horribly +hungry; then he went into a restaurant for his lunch, and when he paid +he tried to imagine how he should feel if that were really his last +dollar. + +He went home toward the middle of the afternoon, basely hoping that +Fulkerson had sent him some conciliatory message, or perhaps was waiting +there for him to talk it over; March was quite willing to talk it over +now. But it was his wife who again met him at the door, though it seemed +another woman than the one he had left weeping in the morning. + +“I told the children,” she said, in smiling explanation of his absence +from lunch, “that perhaps you were detained by business. I didn't know +but you had gone back to the office.” + +“Did you think I would go back there, Isabel?” asked March, with a +haggard look. “Well, if you say so, I will go back, and do what Dryfoos +ordered me to do. I'm sufficiently cowed between him and you, I can +assure you.” + +“Nonsense,” she said. “I approve of everything you did. But sit down, +now, and don't keep walking that way, and let me see if I understand it +perfectly. Of course, I had to have my say out.” + +She made him go all over his talk with Dryfoos again, and report his own +language precisely. From time to time, as she got his points, she said, +“That was splendid,” “Good enough for him!” and “Oh, I'm so glad you +said that to him!” At the end she said: + +“Well, now, let's look at it from his point of view. Let's be perfectly +just to him before we take another step forward.” + +“Or backward,” March suggested, ruefully. “The case is simply this: he +owns the magazine.” + +“Of course.” + +“And he has a right to expect that I will consider his pecuniary +interests--” + +“Oh, those detestable pecuniary interests! Don't you wish there wasn't +any money in the world?” + +“Yes; or else that there was a great deal more of it. And I was +perfectly willing to do that. I have always kept that in mind as one +of my duties to him, ever since I understood what his relation to the +magazine was.” + +“Yes, I can bear witness to that in any court of justice. You've done it +a great deal more than I could, Basil. And it was just the same way with +those horrible insurance people.” + +“I know,” March went on, trying to be proof against her flatteries, +or at least to look as if he did not deserve praise; “I know that what +Lindau said was offensive to him, and I can understand how he felt that +he had a right to punish it. All I say is that he had no right to punish +it through me.” + +“Yes,” said Mrs. March, askingly. + +“If it had been a question of making 'Every Other Week' the vehicle +of Lindau's peculiar opinions--though they're not so very peculiar; he +might have got the most of them out of Ruskin--I shouldn't have had any +ground to stand on, or at least then I should have had to ask myself +whether his opinions would be injurious to the magazine or not.” + +“I don't see,” Mrs. March interpolated, “how they could hurt it much +worse than Colonel Woodburn's article crying up slavery.” + +“Well,” said March, impartially, “we could print a dozen articles +praising the slavery it's impossible to have back, and it wouldn't hurt +us. But if we printed one paper against the slavery which Lindau claims +still exists, some people would call us bad names, and the counting-room +would begin to feel it. But that isn't the point. Lindau's connection +with 'Every Other Week' is almost purely mechanical; he's merely a +translator of such stories and sketches as he first submits to me, +and it isn't at all a question of his opinions hurting us, but of +my becoming an agent to punish him for his opinions. That is what I +wouldn't do; that's what I never will do.” + +“If you did,” said his wife, “I should perfectly despise you. I didn't +understand how it was before. I thought you were just holding out +against Dryfoos because he took a dictatorial tone with you, and because +you wouldn't recognize his authority. But now I'm with you, Basil, every +time, as that horrid little Fulkerson says. But who would ever have +supposed he would be so base as to side against you?” + +“I don't know,” said March, thoughtfully, “that we had a right to expect +anything else. Fulkerson's standards are low; they're merely business +standards, and the good that's in him is incidental and something +quite apart from his morals and methods. He's naturally a generous and +right-minded creature, but life has taught him to truckle and trick, +like the rest of us.” + +“It hasn't taught you that, Basil.” + +“Don't be so sure. Perhaps it's only that I'm a poor scholar. But I +don't know, really, that I despise Fulkerson so much for his course this +morning as for his gross and fulsome flatteries of Dryfoos last night. I +could hardly stomach it.” + +His wife made him tell her what they were, and then she said, “Yes, that +was loathsome; I couldn't have believed it of Mr. Fulkerson.” + +“Perhaps he only did it to keep the talk going, and to give the old man +a chance to say something,” March leniently suggested. “It was a worse +effect because he didn't or couldn't follow up Fulkerson's lead.” + +“It was loathsome, all the same,” his wife insisted. “It's the end of +Mr. Fulkerson, as far as I'm concerned.” + +“I didn't tell you before,” March resumed, after a moment, “of my little +interview with Conrad Dryfoos after his father left,” and now he went on +to repeat what had passed between him and the young man. + +“I suspect that he and his father had been having some words before +the old man came up to talk with me, and that it was that made him so +furious.” + +“Yes, but what a strange position for the son of such a man to take! Do +you suppose he says such things to his father?” + +“I don't know; but I suspect that in his meek way Conrad would say +what he believed to anybody. I suppose we must regard him as a kind of +crank.” + +“Poor young fellow! He always makes me feel sad, somehow. He has such a +pathetic face. I don't believe I ever saw him look quite happy, except +that night at Mrs. Horn's, when he was talking with Miss Vance; and then +he made me feel sadder than ever.” + +“I don't envy him the life he leads at home, with those convictions of +his. I don't see why it wouldn't be as tolerable there for old Lindau +himself.” + +“Well, now,” said Mrs. March, “let us put them all out of our minds and +see what we are going to do ourselves.” + +They began to consider their ways and means, and how and where they +should live, in view of March's severance of his relations with 'Every +Other Week.' They had not saved anything from the first year's salary; +they had only prepared to save; and they had nothing solid but their +two thousand to count upon. But they built a future in which they easily +lived on that and on what March earned with his pen. He became a free +lance, and fought in whatever cause he thought just; he had no ties, +no chains. They went back to Boston with the heroic will to do what was +most distasteful; they would have returned to their own house if they +had not rented it again; but, any rate, Mrs. March helped out by taking +boarders, or perhaps only letting rooms to lodgers. They had some hard +struggles, but they succeeded. + +“The great thing,” she said, “is to be right. I'm ten times as happy +as if you had come home and told me that you had consented to do what +Dryfoos asked and he had doubled your salary.” + +“I don't think that would have happened in any event,” said March, +dryly. + +“Well, no matter. I just used it for an example.” + +They both experienced a buoyant relief, such as seems to come to people +who begin life anew on whatever terms. “I hope we are young enough yet, +Basil,” she said, and she would not have it when he said they had once +been younger. + +They heard the children's knock on the door; they knocked when they came +home from school so that their mother might let them in. “Shall we tell +them at once?” she asked, and ran to open for them before March could +answer. + +They were not alone. Fulkerson, smiling from ear to ear, was with them. +“Is March in?” he asked. + +“Mr. March is at home, yes,” she said very haughtily. “He's in his +study,” and she led the way there, while the children went to their +rooms. + +“Well, March,” Fulkerson called out at sight of him, “it's all right! +The old man has come down.” + +“I suppose if you gentlemen are going to talk business--” Mrs. March +began. + +“Oh, we don't want you to go away,” said Fulkerson. “I reckon March has +told you, anyway.” + +“Yes, I've told her,” said March. “Don't go, Isabel. What do you mean, +Fulkerson?” + +“He's just gone on up home, and he sent me round with his apologies. +He sees now that he had no business to speak to you as he did, and he +withdraws everything. He'd 'a' come round himself if I'd said so, but I +told him I could make it all right.” + +Fulkerson looked so happy in having the whole affair put right, and the +Marches knew him to be so kindly affected toward them, that they could +not refuse for the moment to share his mood. They felt themselves +slipping down from the moral height which they had gained, and March +made a clutch to stay himself with the question, “And Lindau?” + +“Well,” said Fulkerson, “he's going to leave Lindau to me. You won't +have anything to do with it. I'll let the old fellow down easy.” + +“Do you mean,” asked March, “that Mr. Dryfoos insists on his being +dismissed?” + +“Why, there isn't any dismissing about it,” Fulkerson argued. “If you +don't send him any more work, he won't do any more, that's all. Or if he +comes round, you can--He's to be referred to me.” + +March shook his head, and his wife, with a sigh, felt herself plucked up +from the soft circumstance of their lives, which she had sunk back into +so quickly, and set beside him on that cold peak of principle again. “It +won't do, Fulkerson. It's very good of you, and all that, but it comes +to the same thing in the end. I could have gone on without any apology +from Mr. Dryfoos; he transcended his authority, but that's a minor +matter. I could have excused it to his ignorance of life among +gentlemen; but I can't consent to Lindau's dismissal--it comes to that, +whether you do it or I do it, and whether it's a positive or a negative +thing--because he holds this opinion or that.” + +“But don't you see,” said Fulkerson, “that it's just Lindau's opinions +the old man can't stand? He hasn't got anything against him personally. +I don't suppose there's anybody that appreciates Lindau in some ways +more than the old man does.” + +“I understand. He wants to punish him for his opinions. Well, I can't +consent to that, directly or indirectly. We don't print his opinions, +and he has a perfect right to hold them, whether Mr. Dryfoos agrees with +them or not.” + +Mrs. March had judged it decorous for her to say nothing, but she now +went and sat down in the chair next her husband. + +“Ah, dog on it!” cried Fulkerson, rumpling his hair with both his hands. +“What am I to do? The old man says he's got to go.” + +“And I don't consent to his going,” said March. + +“And you won't stay if he goes.” + +Fulkerson rose. “Well, well! I've got to see about it. I'm afraid the +old man won't stand it, March; I am, indeed. I wish you'd reconsider. +I--I'd take it as a personal favor if you would. It leaves me in a fix. +You see I've got to side with one or the other.” + +March made no reply to this, except to say, “Yes, you must stand by him, +or you must stand by me.” + +“Well, well! Hold on awhile! I'll see you in the morning. Don't take any +steps--” + +“Oh, there are no steps to take,” said March, with a melancholy smile. +“The steps are stopped; that's all.” He sank back into his chair when +Fulkerson was gone and drew a long breath. “This is pretty rough. I +thought we had got through it.” + +“No,” said his wife. “It seems as if I had to make the fight all over +again.” + +“Well, it's a good thing it's a holy war.” + +“I can't bear the suspense. Why didn't you tell him outright you +wouldn't go back on any terms?” + +“I might as well, and got the glory. He'll never move Dryfoos. I suppose +we both would like to go back, if we could.” + +“Oh, I suppose so.” + +They could not regain their lost exaltation, their lost dignity. At +dinner Mrs. March asked the children how they would like to go back to +Boston to live. + +“Why, we're not going, are we?” asked Tom, without enthusiasm. + +“I was just wondering how you felt about it, now,” she said, with an +underlook at her husband. + +“Well, if we go back,” said Bella, “I want to live on the Back Bay. It's +awfully Micky at the South End.” + +“I suppose I should go to Harvard,” said Tom, “and I'd room out at +Cambridge. It would be easier to get at you on the Back Bay.” + +The parents smiled ruefully at each other, and, in view of these grand +expectations of his children, March resolved to go as far as he could in +meeting Dryfoos's wishes. He proposed the theatre as a distraction from +the anxieties that he knew were pressing equally on his wife. “We might +go to the 'Old Homestead,'” he suggested, with a sad irony, which only +his wife felt. + +“Oh yes, let's!” cried Bella. + +While they were getting ready, someone rang, and Bella went to the +door, and then came to tell her father that it was Mr. Lindau. “He says +he wants to see you just a moment. He's in the parlor, and he won't sit +down, or anything.” + +“What can he want?” groaned Mrs. March, from their common dismay. + +March apprehended a storm in the old man's face. But he only stood +in the middle of the room, looking very sad and grave. “You are Going +oudt,” he said. “I won't geep you long. I haf gome to pring pack dose +macassines and dis mawney. I can't do any more voark for you; and +I can't geep the mawney you haf baid me a'ready. It iss not hawnest +mawney--that hass been oarned py voark; it iss mawney that hass peen +mate py sbeculation, and the obbression off lapor, and the necessity +of the boor, py a man--Here it is, efery tollar, efery zent. Dake it; I +feel as if dere vas ploodt on it.” + +“Why, Lindau,” March began, but the old man interrupted him. + +“Ton't dalk to me, Passil! I could not haf believedt it of you. When you +know how I feel about dose tings, why tidn't you dell me whose mawney +you bay oudt to me? Ach, I ton't plame you--I ton't rebroach you. You +haf nefer thought of it; boat I have thought, and I should be Guilty, I +must share that man's Guilt, if I gept hiss mawney. If you hat toldt me +at the peginning--if you hat peen frank with me boat it iss all righdt; +you can go on; you ton't see dese tings as I see them; and you haf cot a +family, and I am a free man. I voark to myself, and when I ton't voark, +I sdarfe to myself. But, I geep my handts glean, voark or sdarfe. +Gif him hiss mawney pack! I am sawry for him; I would not hoart hiss +feelings, boat I could not pear to douch him, and hiss mawney iss like +boison!” + +March tried to reason with Lindau, to show him the folly, the injustice, +the absurdity of his course; it ended in their both getting angry, and +in Lindau's going away in a whirl of German that included Basil in the +guilt of the man whom Lindau called his master. + +“Well,” said Mrs. March. “He is a crank, and I think you're well rid of +him. Now you have no quarrel with that horrid old Dryfoos, and you can +keep right on.” + +“Yes,” said March, “I wish it didn't make me feel so sneaking. What a +long day it's been! It seems like a century since I got up.” + +“Yes, a thousand years. Is there anything else left to happen?” + +“I hope not. I'd like to go to bed.” + +“Why, aren't you going to the theatre?” wailed Bella, coming in upon her +father's desperate expression. + +“The theatre? Oh yes, certainly! I meant after we got home,” and March +amused himself at the puzzled countenance of the child. “Come on! Is Tom +ready?” + + + + +IX. + +Fulkerson parted with the Marches in such trouble of mind that he did +not feel able to meet that night the people whom he usually kept so gay +at Mrs. Leighton's table. He went to Maroni's for his dinner, for this +reason and for others more obscure. He could not expect to do anything +more with Dryfoos at once; he knew that Dryfoos must feel that he had +already made an extreme concession to March, and he believed that if he +was to get anything more from him it must be after Dryfoos had dined. +But he was not without the hope, vague and indefinite as it might be, +that he should find Lindau at Maroni's, and perhaps should get some +concession from him, some word of regret or apology which he could +report to Dryfoos, and at lest make the means of reopening the affair +with him; perhaps Lindau, when he knew how matters stood, would back +down altogether, and for March's sake would withdraw from all connection +with 'Every Other Week' himself, and so leave everything serene. +Fulkerson felt capable, in his desperation, of delicately suggesting +such a course to Lindau, or even of plainly advising it: he did not care +for Lindau a great deal, and he did care a great deal for the magazine. + +But he did not find Lindau at Maroni's; he only found Beaton. He sat +looking at the doorway as Fulkerson entered, and Fulkerson naturally +came and took a place at his table. Something in Beaton's large-eyed +solemnity of aspect invited Fulkerson to confidence, and he said, as +he pulled his napkin open and strung it, still a little damp (as the +scanty, often-washed linen at Maroni's was apt to be), across his +knees, “I was looking for you this morning, to talk with you about the +Christmas number, and I was a good deal worked up because I couldn't +find you; but I guess I might as well have spared myself my emotions.” + +“Why?” asked Beaton, briefly. + +“Well, I don't know as there's going to be any Christmas number.” + +“Why?” Beaton asked again. + +“Row between the financial angel and the literary editor about the chief +translator and polyglot smeller.” + +“Lindau?” + +“Lindau is his name.” + +“What does the literary editor expect after Lindau's expression of his +views last night?” + +“I don't know what he expected, but the ground he took with the old +man was that, as Lindau's opinions didn't characterize his work on the +magazine, he would not be made the instrument of punishing him for them +the old man wanted him turned off, as he calls it.” + +“Seems to be pretty good ground,” said Beaton, impartially, while he +speculated, with a dull trouble at heart, on the effect the row would +have on his own fortunes. His late visit home had made him feel that the +claim of his family upon him for some repayment of help given could not +be much longer delayed; with his mother sick and his father growing old, +he must begin to do something for them, but up to this time he had spent +his salary even faster than he had earned it. When Fulkerson came in he +was wondering whether he could get him to increase it, if he threatened +to give up his work, and he wished that he was enough in love with +Margaret Vance, or even Christine Dryfoos, to marry her, only to end in +the sorrowful conviction that he was really in love with Alma Leighton, +who had no money, and who had apparently no wish to be married for love, +even. “And what are you going to do about it?” he asked, listlessly. + +“Be dogged if I know what I'm going to do about it,” said Fulkerson. +“I've been round all day, trying to pick up the pieces--row began right +after breakfast this morning--and one time I thought I'd got the thing +all put together again. I got the old man to say that he had spoken to +March a little too authoritatively about Lindau; that, in fact, he ought +to have communicated his wishes through me; and that he was willing to +have me get rid of Lindau, and March needn't have anything to do with +it. I thought that was pretty white, but March says the apologies +and regrets are all well enough in their way, but they leave the main +question where they found it.” + +“What is the main question?” Beaton asked, pouring himself out some +Chianti. As he set the flask down he made the reflection that if he +would drink water instead of Chianti he could send his father three +dollars a week, on his back debts, and he resolved to do it. + +“The main question, as March looks at it, is the question of punishing +Lindau for his private opinions; he says that if he consents to my +bouncing the old fellow it's the same as if he bounced him.” + +“It might have that complexion in some lights,” said Beaton. He drank +off his Chianti, and thought he would have it twice a week, or make +Maroni keep the half-bottles over for him, and send his father two +dollars. “And what are you going to do now?” + +“That's what I don't know,” said Fulkerson, ruefully. After a moment he +said, desperately, “Beaton, you've got a pretty good head; why don't you +suggest something?” + +“Why don't you let March go?” Beaton suggested. + +“Ah, I couldn't,” said Fulkerson. “I got him to break up in Boston and +come here; I like him; nobody else could get the hang of the thing like +he has; he's--a friend.” Fulkerson said this with the nearest approach +he could make to seriousness, which was a kind of unhappiness. + +Beaton shrugged. “Oh, if you can afford to have ideals, I congratulate +you. They're too expensive for me. Then, suppose you get rid of +Dryfoos?” + +Fulkerson laughed forlornly. “Go on, Bildad. Like to sprinkle a few +ashes over my boils? Don't mind me!” + +They both sat silent a little while, and then Beaton said, “I suppose +you haven't seen Dryfoos the second time?” + +“No. I came in here to gird up my loins with a little dinner before I +tackled him. But something seems to be the matter with Maroni's cook. I +don't want anything to eat.” + +“The cooking's about as bad as usual,” said Beaton. After a moment he +added, ironically, for he found Fulkerson's misery a kind of relief from +his own, and was willing to protract it as long as it was amusing, “Why +not try an envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary?” + +“What do you mean?” + +“Get that other old fool to go to Dryfoos for you!” + +“Which other old fool? The old fools seem to be as thick as flies.” + +“That Southern one.” + +“Colonel Woodburn?” + +“Mmmmm.” + +“He did seem to rather take to the colonel!” Fulkerson mused aloud. + +“Of course he did. Woodburn, with his idiotic talk about patriarchal +slavery, is the man on horseback to Dryfoos's muddy imagination. He'd +listen to him abjectly, and he'd do whatever Woodburn told him to do.” + Beaton smiled cynically. + +Fulkerson got up and reached for his coat and hat. “You've struck it, +old man.” The waiter came up to help him on with his coat; Fulkerson +slipped a dollar in his hand. “Never mind the coat; you can give the +rest of my dinner to the poor, Paolo. Beaton, shake! You've saved my +life, little boy, though I don't think you meant it.” He took Beaton's +hand and solemnly pressed it, and then almost ran out of the door. + +They had just reached coffee at Mrs. Leighton's when he arrived and sat +down with them and began to put some of the life of his new hope into +them. His appetite revived, and, after protesting that he would not take +anything but coffee, he went back and ate some of the earlier courses. +But with the pressure of his purpose driving him forward, he did not +conceal from Miss Woodburn, at least, that he was eager to get her apart +from the rest for some reason. When he accomplished this, it seemed +as if he had contrived it all himself, but perhaps he had not wholly +contrived it. + +“I'm so glad to get a chance to speak to you alone,” he said at once; +and while she waited for the next word he made a pause, and then said, +desperately, “I want you to help me; and if you can't help me, there's +no help for me.” + +“Mah goodness,” she said, “is the case so bad as that? What in the woald +is the trouble?” + +“Yes, it's a bad case,” said Fulkerson. “I want your father to help me.” + +“Oh, I thoat you said me!” + +“Yes; I want you to help me with your father. I suppose I ought to go to +him at once, but I'm a little afraid of him.” + +“And you awe not afraid of me? I don't think that's very flattering, Mr. +Fulkerson. You ought to think Ah'm twahce as awful as papa.” + +“Oh, I do! You see, I'm quite paralyzed before you, and so I don't feel +anything.” + +“Well, it's a pretty lahvely kyand of paralysis. But--go on.” + +“I will--I will. If I can only begin.” + +“Pohaps Ah maght begin fo' you.” + +“No, you can't. Lord knows, I'd like to let you. Well, it's like this.” + +Fulkerson made a clutch at his hair, and then, after another hesitation, +he abruptly laid the whole affair before her. He did not think it +necessary to state the exact nature of the offence Lindau had given +Dryfoos, for he doubted if she could grasp it, and he was profuse of his +excuses for troubling her with the matter, and of wonder at himself for +having done so. In the rapture of his concern at having perhaps made a +fool of himself, he forgot why he had told her; but she seemed to like +having been confided in, and she said, “Well, Ah don't see what you can +do with you' ahdeals of friendship except stand bah Mr. Mawch.” + +“My ideals of friendship? What do you mean?” + +“Oh, don't you suppose we know? Mr. Beaton said you we' a pofect Bahyard +in friendship, and you would sacrifice anything to it.” + +“Is that so?” said Fulkerson, thinking how easily he could sacrifice +Lindau in this case. He had never supposed before that he was chivalrous +in such matters, but he now began to see it in that light, and he +wondered that he could ever have entertained for a moment the idea of +throwing March over. + +“But Ah most say,” Miss Woodburn went on, “Ah don't envy you you' next +interview with Mr. Dryfoos. Ah suppose you'll have to see him at once +aboat it.” + +The conjecture recalled Fulkerson to the object of his confidences. “Ah, +there's where your help comes in. I've exhausted all the influence I +have with Dryfoos--” + +“Good gracious, you don't expect Ah could have any!” + +They both laughed at the comic dismay with which she conveyed the +preposterous notion; and Fulkerson said, “If I judged from myself, I +should expect you to bring him round instantly.” + +“Oh, thank you, Mr. Fulkerson,” she said, with mock meekness. + +“Not at all. But it isn't Dryfoos I want you to help me with; it's your +father. I want your father to interview Dryfoos for me, and I--I'm afraid +to ask him.” + +“Poo' Mr. Fulkerson!” she said, and she insinuated something through her +burlesque compassion that lifted him to the skies. He swore in his heart +that the woman never lived who was so witty, so wise, so beautiful, and +so good. “Come raght with me this minute, if the cyoast's clea'.” She +went to the door of the diningroom and looked in across its gloom to the +little gallery where her father sat beside a lamp reading his evening +paper; Mrs. Leighton could be heard in colloquy with the cook below, +and Alma had gone to her room. She beckoned Fulkerson with the hand +outstretched behind her, and said, “Go and ask him.” + +“Alone!” he palpitated. + +“Oh, what a cyowahd!” she cried, and went with him. “Ah suppose you'll +want me to tell him aboat it.” + +“Well, I wish you'd begin, Miss Woodburn,” he said. “The fact is, you +know, I've been over it so much I'm kind of sick of the thing.” + +Miss Woodburn advanced and put her hand on her father's shoulder. “Look +heah, papa! Mr. Fulkerson wants to ask you something, and he wants me to +do it fo' him.” + +The colonel looked up through his glasses with the sort of ferocity +elderly men sometimes have to put on in order to keep their glasses from +falling off. His daughter continued: “He's got into an awful difficulty +with his edito' and his proprieto', and he wants you to pacify them.” + +“I do not know whethah I understand the case exactly,” said the colonel, +“but Mr. Fulkerson may command me to the extent of my ability.” + +“You don't understand it aftah what Ah've said?” cried the girl. +“Then Ah don't see but what you'll have to explain it you'self, Mr. +Fulkerson.” + +“Well, Miss Woodburn has been so luminous about it, colonel,” said +Fulkerson, glad of the joking shape she had given the affair, “that I +can only throw in a little side-light here and there.” + +The colonel listened as Fulkerson went on, with a grave diplomatic +satisfaction. He felt gratified, honored, even, he said, by Mr. +Fulkerson's appeal to him; and probably it gave him something of the +high joy that an affair of honor would have brought him in the days +when he had arranged for meetings between gentlemen. Next to bearing a +challenge, this work of composing a difficulty must have been grateful. +But he gave no outward sign of his satisfaction in making a resume of +the case so as to get the points clearly in his mind. + +“I was afraid, sir,” he said, with the state due to the serious nature +of the facts, “that Mr. Lindau had given Mr. Dryfoos offence by some of +his questions at the dinner-table last night.” + +“Perfect red rag to a bull,” Fulkerson put in; and then he wanted to +withdraw his words at the colonel's look of displeasure. + +“I have no reflections to make upon Mr. Landau,” Colonel Woodburn +continued, and Fulkerson felt grateful to him for going on; “I do not +agree with Mr. Lindau; I totally disagree with him on sociological +points; but the course of the conversation had invited him to the +expression of his convictions, and he had a right to express them, so +far as they had no personal bearing.” + +“Of course,” said Fulkerson, while Miss Woodburn perched on the arm of +her father's chair. + +“At the same time, sir, I think that if Mr. Dryfoos felt a personal +censure in Mr. Lindau's questions concerning his suppression of the +strike among his workmen, he had a right to resent it.” + +“Exactly,” Fulkerson assented. + +“But it must be evident to you, sir, that a high-spirited gentleman like +Mr. March--I confess that my feelings are with him very warmly in the +matter--could not submit to dictation of the nature you describe.” + +“Yes, I see,” said Fulkerson; and, with that strange duplex action of +the human mind, he wished that it was his hair, and not her father's, +that Miss Woodburn was poking apart with the corner of her fan. + +“Mr. Lindau,” the colonel concluded, “was right from his point of +view, and Mr. Dryfoos was equally right. The position of Mr. March is +perfectly correct--” + +His daughter dropped to her feet from his chair-arm. “Mah goodness! +If nobody's in the wrong, ho' awe you evah going to get the mattah +straight?” + +“Yes, you see,” Fulkerson added, “nobody can give in.” + +“Pardon me,” said the colonel, “the case is one in which all can give +in.” + +“I don't know which 'll begin,” said Fulkerson. + +The colonel rose. “Mr. Lindau must begin, sir. We must begin by seeing +Mr. Lindau, and securing from him the assurance that in the expression +of his peculiar views he had no intention of offering any personal +offence to Mr. Dryfoos. If I have formed a correct estimate of Mr. +Lindau, this will be perfectly simple.” + +Fulkerson shook his head. “But it wouldn't help. Dryfoos don't care a +rap whether Lindau meant any personal offence or not. As far as that +is concerned, he's got a hide like a hippopotamus. But what he hates +is Lindau's opinions, and what he says is that no man who holds such +opinions shall have any work from him. And what March says is that no +man shall be punished through him for his opinions, he don't care what +they are.” + +The colonel stood a moment in silence. “And what do you expect me to do +under the circumstances?” + +“I came to you for advice--I thought you might suggest----?” + +“Do you wish me to see Mr. Dryfoos?” + +“Well, that's about the size of it,” Fulkerson admitted. “You see, +colonel,” he hastened on, “I know that you have a great deal of +influence with him; that article of yours is about the only thing he's +ever read in 'Every Other Week,' and he's proud of your acquaintance. +Well, you know”--and here Fulkerson brought in the figure that +struck him so much in Beaton's phrase and had been on his tongue ever +since--“you're the man on horseback to him; and he'd be more apt to do +what you say than if anybody else said it.” + +“You are very good, sir,” said the colonel, trying to be proof against +the flattery, “but I am afraid you overrate my influence.” Fulkerson +let him ponder it silently, and his daughter governed her impatience +by holding her fan against her lips. Whatever the process was in the +colonel's mind, he said at last: “I see no good reason for declining +to act for you, Mr. Fulkerson, and I shall be very happy if I can be +of service to you. But”--he stopped Fulkerson from cutting in with +precipitate thanks--“I think I have a right, sir, to ask what your +course will be in the event of failure?” + +“Failure?” Fulkerson repeated, in dismay. + +“Yes, sir. I will not conceal from you that this mission is one not +wholly agreeable to my feelings.” + +“Oh, I understand that, colonel, and I assure you that I appreciate, +I--” + +“There is no use trying to blink the fact, sir, that there are certain +aspects of Mr. Dryfoos's character in which he is not a gentleman. We +have alluded to this fact before, and I need not dwell upon it now: +I may say, however, that my misgivings were not wholly removed last +night.” + +“No,” Fulkerson assented; though in his heart he thought the old man had +behaved very well. + +“What I wish to say now is that I cannot consent to act for you, in this +matter, merely as an intermediary whose failure would leave the affair +in state quo.” + +“I see,” said Fulkerson. + +“And I should like some intimation, some assurance, as to which party +your own feelings are with in the difference.” + +The colonel bent his eyes sharply on Fulkerson; Miss Woodburn let hers +fall; Fulkerson felt that he was being tested, and he said, to gain +time, “As between Lindau and Dryfoos?” though he knew this was not the +point. + +“As between Mr. Dryfoos and Mr. March,” said the colonel. + +Fulkerson drew a long breath and took his courage in both hands. “There +can't be any choice for me in such a case. I'm for March, every time.” + +The colonel seized his hand, and Miss Woodburn said, “If there had been +any choice fo' you in such a case, I should never have let papa stir a +step with you.” + +“Why, in regard to that,” said the colonel, with a literal application +of the idea, “was it your intention that we should both go?” + +“Well, I don't know; I suppose it was.” + +“I think it will be better for me to go alone,” said the colonel; and, +with a color from his experience in affairs of honor, he added: “In +these matters a principal cannot appear without compromising his +dignity. I believe I have all the points clearly in mind, and I think I +should act more freely in meeting Mr. Dryfoos alone.” + +Fulkerson tried to hide the eagerness with which he met these agreeable +views. He felt himself exalted in some sort to the level of the +colonel's sentiments, though it would not be easy to say whether this +was through the desperation bred of having committed himself to March's +side, or through the buoyant hope he had that the colonel would succeed +in his mission. + +“I'm not afraid to talk with Dryfoos about it,” he said. + +“There is no question of courage,” said the colonel. “It is a question +of dignity--of personal dignity.” + +“Well, don't let that delay you, papa,” said his daughter, following him +to the door, where she found him his hat, and Fulkerson helped him on +with his overcoat. “Ah shall be jost wald to know ho' it's toned oat.” + +“Won't you let me go up to the house with you?” Fulkerson began. “I +needn't go in--” + +“I prefer to go alone,” said the colonel. “I wish to turn the points +over in my mind, and I am afraid you would find me rather dull company.” + +He went out, and Fulkerson returned with Miss Woodburn to the +drawing-room, where she said the Leightons were. They, were not there, +but she did not seem disappointed. + +“Well, Mr. Fulkerson,” she said, “you have got an ahdeal of friendship, +sure enough.” + +“Me?” said Fulkerson. “Oh, my Lord! Don't you see I couldn't do anything +else? And I'm scared half to death, anyway. If the colonel don't bring +the old man round, I reckon it's all up with me. But he'll fetch him. +And I'm just prostrated with gratitude to you, Miss Woodburn.” + +She waved his thanks aside with her fan. “What do you mean by its being +all up with you?” + +“Why, if the old man sticks to his position, and I stick to March, we've +both got to go overboard together. Dryfoos owns the magazine; he can +stop it, or he can stop us, which amounts to the same thing, as far as +we're concerned.” + +“And then what?” the girl pursued. + +“And then, nothing--till we pick ourselves up.” + +“Do you mean that Mr. Dryfoos will put you both oat of your places?” + +“He may.” + +“And Mr. Mawch takes the risk of that jost fo' a principle?” + +“I reckon.” + +“And you do it jost fo' an ahdeal?” + +“It won't do to own it. I must have my little axe to grind, somewhere.” + +“Well, men awe splendid,” sighed the girl. “Ah will say it.” + +“Oh, they're not so much better than women,” said Fulkerson, with a +nervous jocosity. “I guess March would have backed down if it hadn't +been for his wife. She was as hot as pepper about it, and you could see +that she would have sacrificed all her husband's relations sooner than +let him back down an inch from the stand he had taken. It's pretty easy +for a man to stick to a principle if he has a woman to stand by him. But +when you come to play it alone--” + +“Mr. Fulkerson,” said the girl, solemnly, “Ah will stand bah you in +this, if all the woald tones against you.” The tears came into her eyes, +and she put out her hand to him. + +“You will?” he shouted, in a rapture. “In every way--and always--as long +as you live? Do you mean it?” He had caught her hand to his breast and +was grappling it tight there and drawing her to him. + +The changing emotions chased one another through her heart and over her +face: dismay, shame, pride, tenderness. “You don't believe,” she said, +hoarsely, “that Ah meant that?” + +“No, but I hope you do mean it; for if you don't, nothing else means +anything.” + +There was no space, there was only a point of wavering. “Ah do mean it.” + +When they lifted their eyes from each other again it was half-past ten. +“No' you most go,” she said. + +“But the colonel--our fate?” + +“The co'nel is often oat late, and Ah'm not afraid of ouah fate, no' +that we've taken it into ouah own hands.” She looked at him with dewy +eyes of trust, of inspiration. + +“Oh, it's going to come out all right,” he said. “It can't come out +wrong now, no matter what happens. But who'd have thought it, when I +came into this house, in such a state of sin and misery, half an hour +ago--” + +“Three houahs and a half ago!” she said. “No! you most jost go. Ah'm +tahed to death. Good-night. You can come in the mawning to see--papa.” + She opened the door and pushed him out with enrapturing violence, and he +ran laughing down the steps into her father's arms. + +“Why, colonel! I was just going up to meet you.” He had really thought +he would walk off his exultation in that direction. + +“I am very sorry to say, Mr. Fulkerson,” the colonel began, gravely, +“that Mr. Dryfoos adheres to his position.” + +“Oh, all right,” said Fulkerson, with unabated joy. “It's what I +expected. Well, my course is clear; I shall stand by March, and I +guess the world won't come to an end if he bounces us both. But I'm +everlastingly obliged to you, Colonel Woodburn, and I don't know what to +say to you. I--I won't detain you now; it's so late. I'll see you in the +morning. Good-ni--” + +Fulkerson did not realize that it takes two to part. The colonel laid +hold of his arm and turned away with him. “I will walk toward your +place with you. I can understand why you should be anxious to know the +particulars of my interview with Mr. Dryfoos”; and in the statement +which followed he did not spare him the smallest. It outlasted their +walk and detained them long on the steps of the 'Every Other Week' +building. But at the end Fulkerson let himself in with his key as light +of heart as if he had been listening to the gayest promises that fortune +could make. + +By the time he met March at the office next morning, a little, but only +a very little, misgiving saddened his golden heaven. He took March's +hand with high courage, and said, “Well, the old man sticks to his +point, March.” He added, with the sense of saying it before Miss +Woodburn: “And I stick by you. I've thought it all over, and I'd rather +be right with you than wrong with him.” + +“Well, I appreciate your motive, Fulkerson,” said March. “But +perhaps--perhaps we can save over our heroics for another occasion. +Lindau seems to have got in with his, for the present.” + +He told him of Lindau's last visit, and they stood a moment looking +at each other rather queerly. Fulkerson was the first to recover his +spirits. “Well,” he said, cheerily, “that let's us out.” + +“Does it? I'm not sure it lets me out,” said March; but he said this in +tribute to his crippled self-respect rather than as a forecast of any +action in the matter. + +“Why, what are you going to do?” Fulkerson asked. “If Lindau won't work +for Dryfoos, you can't make him.” + +March sighed. “What are you going to do with this money?” He glanced at +the heap of bills he had flung on the table between them. + +Fulkerson scratched his head. “Ah, dogged if I know: Can't we give it to +the deserving poor, somehow, if we can find 'em?” + +“I suppose we've no right to use it in any way. You must give it to +Dryfoos.” + +“To the deserving rich? Well, you can always find them. I reckon you +don't want to appear in the transaction! I don't, either; but I guess +I must.” Fulkerson gathered up the money and carried it to Conrad. He +directed him to account for it in his books as conscience-money, and he +enjoyed the joke more than Conrad seemed to do when he was told where it +came from. + +Fulkerson was able to wear off the disagreeable impression the affair +left during the course of the fore-noon, and he met Miss Woodburn with +all a lover's buoyancy when he went to lunch. She was as happy as he +when he told her how fortunately the whole thing had ended, and he took +her view that it was a reward of his courage in having dared the worst. +They both felt, as the newly plighted always do, that they were in the +best relations with the beneficent powers, and that their felicity had +been especially looked to in the disposition of events. They were in a +glow of rapturous content with themselves and radiant worship of each +other; she was sure that he merited the bright future opening to them +both, as much as if he owed it directly to some noble action of his own; +he felt that he was indebted for the favor of Heaven entirely to the +still incredible accident of her preference of him over other men. + +Colonel Woodburn, who was not yet in the secret of their love, perhaps +failed for this reason to share their satisfaction with a result so +unexpectedly brought about. The blessing on their hopes seemed to his +ignorance to involve certain sacrifices of personal feeling at which +he hinted in suggesting that Dryfoos should now be asked to make some +abstract concessions and acknowledgments; his daughter hastened to deny +that these were at all necessary; and Fulkerson easily explained why. +The thing was over; what was the use of opening it up again? + +“Perhaps none,” the colonel admitted. But he added, “I should like the +opportunity of taking Mr. Lindau's hand in the presence of Mr. Dryfoos +and assuring him that I considered him a man of principle and a man of +honor--a gentleman, sir, whom I was proud and happy to have known.” + +“Well, Ah've no doabt,” said his daughter, demurely, “that you'll have +the chance some day; and we would all lahke to join you. But at the same +tahme, Ah think Mr. Fulkerson is well oat of it fo' the present.” + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Anticipative reprisal + Buttoned about him as if it concealed a bad conscience + Courtship + Got their laugh out of too many things in life + Had learned not to censure the irretrievable + Had no opinions that he was not ready to hold in abeyance + Ignorant of her ignorance + It don't do any good to look at its drawbacks all the time + Justice must be paid for at every step in fees and costs + Life has taught him to truckle and trick + Man's willingness to abide in the present + No longer the gross appetite for novelty + No right to burden our friends with our decisions + Travel, with all its annoyances and fatigues + Typical anything else, is pretty difficult to find + + + + +PART FIFTH + + + + +I. + +Superficially, the affairs of 'Every Other Week' settled into their +wonted form again, and for Fulkerson they seemed thoroughly reinstated. +But March had a feeling of impermanency from what had happened, mixed +with a fantastic sense of shame toward Lindau. He did not sympathize +with Lindau's opinions; he thought his remedy for existing evils as +wildly impracticable as Colonel Woodburn's. But while he thought this, +and while he could justly blame Fulkerson for Lindau's presence at +Dryfoos's dinner, which his zeal had brought about in spite of March's +protests, still he could not rid himself of the reproach of uncandor +with Lindau. He ought to have told him frankly about the ownership of +the magazine, and what manner of man the man was whose money he was +taking. But he said that he never could have imagined that he was +serious in his preposterous attitude in regard to a class of men who +embody half the prosperity of the country; and he had moments of +revolt against his own humiliation before Lindau, in which he found it +monstrous that he should return Dryfoos's money as if it had been the +spoil of a robber. His wife agreed with him in these moments, and said +it was a great relief not to have that tiresome old German coming about. +They had to account for his absence evasively to the children, whom +they could not very well tell that their father was living on money that +Lindau disdained to take, even though Lindau was wrong and their father +was right. This heightened Mrs. March's resentment toward both Lindau +and Dryfoos, who between them had placed her husband in a false +position. If anything, she resented Dryfoos's conduct more than +Lindau's. He had never spoken to March about the affair since Lindau had +renounced his work, or added to the apologetic messages he had sent by +Fulkerson. So far as March knew, Dryfoos had been left to suppose that +Lindau had simply stopped for some reason that did not personally affect +him. They never spoke of him, and March was too proud to ask either +Fulkerson or Conrad whether the old man knew that Lindau had returned +his money. He avoided talking to Conrad, from a feeling that if he did +he should involuntarily lead him on to speak of his differences with his +father. Between himself and Fulkerson, even, he was uneasily aware of +a want of their old perfect friendliness. Fulkerson had finally behaved +with honor and courage; but his provisional reluctance had given March +the measure of Fulkerson's character in one direction, and he could not +ignore the fact that it was smaller than he could have wished. + +He could not make out whether Fulkerson shared his discomfort or not. +It certainly wore away, even with March, as time passed, and with +Fulkerson, in the bliss of his fortunate love, it was probably far +more transient, if it existed at all. He advanced into the winter as +radiantly as if to meet the spring, and he said that if there were any +pleasanter month of the year than November, it was December, especially +when the weather was good and wet and muddy most of the time, so that +you had to keep indoors a long while after you called anywhere. + +Colonel Woodburn had the anxiety, in view of his daughter's engagement, +when she asked his consent to it, that such a dreamer must have in +regard to any reality that threatens to affect the course of his +reveries. He had not perhaps taken her marriage into account, except +as a remote contingency; and certainly Fulkerson was not the kind of +son-in-law that he had imagined in dealing with that abstraction. But +because he had nothing of the sort definitely in mind, he could not +oppose the selection of Fulkerson with success; he really knew nothing +against him, and he knew, many things in his favor; Fulkerson inspired +him with the liking that every one felt for him in a measure; he amused +him, he cheered him; and the colonel had been so much used to leaving +action of all kinds to his daughter that when he came to close quarters +with the question of a son-in-law he felt helpless to decide it, and +he let her decide it, as if it were still to be decided when it was +submitted to him. She was competent to treat it in all its phases: +not merely those of personal interest, but those of duty to the broken +Southern past, sentimentally dear to him, and practically absurd to her. +No such South as he remembered had ever existed to her knowledge, and +no such civilization as he imagined would ever exist, to her belief, +anywhere. She took the world as she found it, and made the best of it. +She trusted in Fulkerson; she had proved his magnanimity in a serious +emergency; and in small things she was willing fearlessly to chance it +with him. She was not a sentimentalist, and there was nothing fantastic +in her expectations; she was a girl of good sense and right mind, and +she liked the immediate practicality as well as the final honor of +Fulkerson. She did not idealize him, but in the highest effect she +realized him; she did him justice, and she would not have believed +that she did him more than justice if she had sometimes known him to do +himself less. + +Their engagement was a fact to which the Leighton household adjusted +itself almost as simply as the lovers themselves; Miss Woodburn told the +ladies at once, and it was not a thing that Fulkerson could keep from +March very long. He sent word of it to Mrs. March by her husband; +and his engagement perhaps did more than anything else to confirm the +confidence in him which had been shaken by his early behavior in the +Lindau episode, and not wholly restored by his tardy fidelity to March. +But now she felt that a man who wished to get married so obviously and +entirely for love was full of all kinds of the best instincts, and only +needed the guidance of a wife, to become very noble. She interested +herself intensely in balancing the respective merits of the engaged +couple, and after her call upon Miss Woodburn in her new character she +prided herself upon recognizing the worth of some strictly Southern +qualities in her, while maintaining the general average of New England +superiority. She could not reconcile herself to the Virginian custom +illustrated in her having been christened with the surname of Madison; +and she said that its pet form of Mad, which Fulkerson promptly +invented, only made it more ridiculous. + +Fulkerson was slower in telling Beaton. He was afraid, somehow, of +Beaton's taking the matter in the cynical way; Miss Woodburn said she +would break off the engagement if Beaton was left to guess it or find +it out by accident, and then Fulkerson plucked up his courage. Beaton +received the news with gravity, and with a sort of melancholy meekness +that strongly moved Fulkerson's sympathy, and made him wish that Beaton +was engaged, too. + +It made Beaton feel very old; it somehow left him behind and +forgotten; in a manner, it made him feel trifled with. Something of the +unfriendliness of fate seemed to overcast his resentment, and he allowed +the sadness of his conviction that he had not the means to marry on +to tinge his recognition of the fact that Alma Leighton would not have +wanted him to marry her if he had. He was now often in that martyr mood +in which he wished to help his father; not only to deny himself Chianti, +but to forego a fur-lined overcoat which he intended to get for the +winter, He postponed the moment of actual sacrifice as regarded the +Chianti, and he bought the overcoat in an anguish of self-reproach. +He wore it the first evening after he got it in going to call upon +the Leightons, and it seemed to him a piece of ghastly irony when Alma +complimented his picturesqueness in it and asked him to let her sketch +him. + +“Oh, you can sketch me,” he said, with so much gloom that it made her +laugh. + +“If you think it's so serious, I'd rather not.” + +“No, no! Go ahead! How do you want me?” + +“Oh, fling yourself down on a chair in one of your attitudes of studied +negligence; and twist one corner of your mustache with affected absence +of mind.” + +“And you think I'm always studied, always affected?” + +“I didn't say so.” + +“I didn't ask you what you said.” + +“And I won't tell you what I think.” + +“Ah, I know what you think.” + +“What made you ask, then?” The girl laughed again with the satisfaction +of her sex in cornering a man. + +Beaton made a show of not deigning to reply, and put himself in the pose +she suggested, frowning. + +“Ah, that's it. But a little more animation-- + + “'As when a great thought strikes along the brain, + And flushes all the cheek.'” + +She put her forehead down on the back of her hand and laughed again. +“You ought to be photographed. You look as if you were sitting for it.” + +Beaton said: “That's because I know I am being photographed, in one way. +I don't think you ought to call me affected. I never am so with you; I +know it wouldn't be of any use.” + +“Oh, Mr. Beaton, you flatter.” + +“No, I never flatter you.” + +“I meant you flattered yourself.” + +“How?” + +“Oh, I don't know. Imagine.” + +“I know what you mean. You think I can't be sincere with anybody.” + +“Oh no, I don't.” + +“What do you think?” + +“That you can't--try.” Alma gave another victorious laugh. + +Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson would once have both feigned a great +interest in Alma's sketching Beaton, and made it the subject of talk, in +which they approached as nearly as possible the real interest of their +lives. Now they frankly remained away in the dining-room, which was very +cozy after the dinner had disappeared; the colonel sat with his lamp and +paper in the gallery beyond; Mrs. Leighton was about her housekeeping +affairs, in the content she always felt when Alma was with Beaton. + +“They seem to be having a pretty good time in there,” said Fulkerson, +detaching himself from his own absolute good time as well as he could. + +“At least Alma does,” said Miss Woodburn. + +“Do you think she cares for him?” + +“Quahte as moch as he desoves.” + +“What makes you all down on Beaton around here? He's not such a bad +fellow.” + +“We awe not all doan on him. Mrs. Leighton isn't doan on him.” + +“Oh, I guess if it was the old lady, there wouldn't be much question +about it.” + +They both laughed, and Alma said, “They seem to be greatly amused with +something in there.” + +“Me, probably,” said Beaton. “I seem to amuse everybody to-night.” + +“Don't you always?” + +“I always amuse you, I'm afraid, Alma.” + +She looked at him as if she were going to snub him openly for using +her name; but apparently she decided to do it covertly. “You didn't at +first. I really used to believe you could be serious, once.” + +“Couldn't you believe it again? Now?” + +“Not when you put on that wind-harp stop.” + +“Wetmore has been talking to you about me. He would sacrifice his best +friend to a phrase. He spends his time making them.” + +“He's made some very pretty ones about you.” + +“Like the one you just quoted?” + +“No, not exactly. He admires you ever so much. He says” She stopped, +teasingly. + +“What?” + +“He says you could be almost anything you wished, if you didn't wish to +be everything.” + +“That sounds more like the school of Wetmore. That's what you say, Alma. +Well, if there were something you wished me to be, I could be it.” + +“We might adapt Kingsley: 'Be good, sweet man, and let who will be +clever.'” He could not help laughing. She went on: “I always thought +that was the most patronizing and exasperating thing ever addressed to +a human girl; and we've had to stand a good deal in our time. I should +like to have it applied to the other 'sect' a while. As if any girl +that was a girl would be good if she had the remotest chance of being +clever.” + +“Then you wouldn't wish me to be good?” Beaton asked. + +“Not if you were a girl.” + +“You want to shock me. Well, I suppose I deserve it. But if I were +one-tenth part as good as you are, Alma, I should have a lighter heart +than I have now. I know that I'm fickle, but I'm not false, as you think +I am.” + +“Who said I thought you were false?” + +“No one,” said Beaton. “It isn't necessary, when you look it--live it.” + +“Oh, dear! I didn't know I devoted my whole time to the subject.” + +“I know I'm despicable. I could tell you something--the history of +this day, even--that would make you despise me.” Beaton had in mind his +purchase of the overcoat, which Alma was getting in so effectively, with +the money he ought to have sent his father. “But,” he went on, darkly, +with a sense that what he was that moment suffering for his selfishness +must somehow be a kind of atonement, which would finally leave him +to the guiltless enjoyment of the overcoat, “you wouldn't believe the +depths of baseness I could descend to.” + +“I would try,” said Alma, rapidly shading the collar, “if you'd give me +some hint.” + +Beaton had a sudden wish to pour out his remorse to her, but he was +afraid of her laughing at him. He said to himself that this was a very +wholesome fear, and that if he could always have her at hand he should +not make a fool of himself so often. A man conceives of such an office +as the very noblest for a woman; he worships her for it if he is +magnanimous. But Beaton was silent, and Alma put back her head for +the right distance on her sketch. “Mr. Fulkerson thinks you are the +sublimest of human beings for advising him to get Colonel Woodburn to +interview Mr. Dryfoos about Lindau. What have you ever done with your +Judas?” + +“I haven't done anything with it. Nadel thought he would take hold of +it at one time, but he dropped it again. After all, I don't suppose +it could be popularized. Fulkerson wanted to offer it as a premium to +subscribers for 'Every Other Week,' but I sat down on that.” + +Alma could not feel the absurdity of this, and she merely said, “'Every +Other Week' seems to be going on just the same as ever.” + +“Yes, the trouble has all blown over, I believe. Fulkerson,” said +Beaton, with a return to what they were saying, “has managed the whole +business very well. But he exaggerates the value of my advice.” + +“Very likely,” Alma suggested, vaguely. “Or, no! Excuse me! He couldn't, +he couldn't!” She laughed delightedly at Beaton's foolish look of +embarrassment. + +He tried to recover his dignity in saying, “He's 'a very good fellow, +and he deserves his happiness.” + +“Oh, indeed!” said Alma, perversely. “Does any one deserve happiness?” + +“I know I don't,” sighed Beaton. + +“You mean you don't get it.” + +“I certainly don't get it.” + +“Ah, but that isn't the reason.” + +“What is?” + +“That's the secret of the universe,” She bit in her lower lip, and +looked at him with eyes, of gleaming fun. + +“Are you never serious?” he asked. + +“With serious people always.” + +“I am serious; and you have the secret of my happiness--” He threw +himself impulsively forward in his chair. + +“Oh, pose, pose!” she cried. + +“I won't pose,” he answered, “and you have got to listen to me. You know +I'm in love with you; and I know that once you cared for me. Can't that +time--won't it--come back again? Try to think so, Alma!” + +“No,” she said, briefly and seriously enough. + +“But that seems impossible. What is it I've done what have you against +me?” + +“Nothing. But that time is past. I couldn't recall it if I wished. Why +did you bring it up? You've broken your word. You know I wouldn't have +let you keep coming here if you hadn't promised never to refer to it.” + +“How could I help it? With that happiness near us--Fulkerson--” + +“Oh, it's that? I might have known it!” + +“No, it isn't that--it's something far deeper. But if it's nothing you +have against me, what is it, Alma, that keeps you from caring for me now +as you did then? I haven't changed.” + +“But I have. I shall never care for you again, Mr. Beaton; you might as +well understand it once for all. Don't think it's anything in yourself, +or that I think you unworthy of me. I'm not so self-satisfied as that; I +know very well that I'm not a perfect character, and that I've no claim +on perfection in anybody else. I think women who want that are fools; +they won't get it, and they don't deserve it. But I've learned a good. +deal more about myself than I knew in St. Barnaby, and a life of work, +of art, and of art alone that's what I've made up my mind to.” + +“A woman that's made up her mind to that has no heart to hinder her!” + +“Would a man have that had done so?” + +“But I don't believe you, Alma. You're merely laughing at me. And, +besides, with me you needn't give up art. We could work together. You +know how much I admire your talent. I believe I could help it--serve it; +I would be its willing slave, and yours, Heaven knows!” + +“I don't want any slave--nor any slavery. I want to be free always. Now +do you see? I don't care for you, and I never could in the old way; but +I should have to care for some one more than I believe I ever shall to +give up my work. Shall we go on?” She looked at her sketch. + +“No, we shall not go on,” he said, gloomily, as he rose. + +“I suppose you blame me,” she said, rising too. + +“Oh no! I blame no one--or only myself. I threw my chance away.” + +“I'm glad you see that; and I'm glad you did it. You don't believe me, +of course. Why do men think life can be only the one thing to women? And +if you come to the selfish view, who are the happy women? I'm sure that +if work doesn't fail me, health won't, and happiness won't.” + +“But you could work on with me--” + +“Second fiddle. Do you suppose I shouldn't be woman enough to wish my +work always less and lower than yours? At least I've heart enough for +that!” + +“You've heart enough for anything, Alma. I was a fool to say you +hadn't.” + +“I think the women who keep their hearts have an even chance, at least, +of having heart--” + +“Ah, there's where you're wrong!” + +“But mine isn't mine to give you, anyhow. And now I don't want you ever +to speak to me about this again.” + +“Oh, there's no danger!” he cried, bitterly. “I shall never willingly +see you again.” + +“That's as you like, Mr. Beaton. We've had to be very frank, but I don't +see why we shouldn't be friends. Still, we needn't, if you don't like.” + +“And I may come--I may come here--as--as usual?” + +“Why, if you can consistently,” she said, with a smile, and she held out +her hand to him. + +He went home dazed, and feeling as if it were a bad joke that had been +put upon him. At least the affair went so deep that it estranged the +aspect of his familiar studio. Some of the things in it were not very +familiar; he had spent lately a great deal on rugs, on stuffs, on +Japanese bric-a-brac. When he saw these things in the shops he had felt +that he must have them; that they were necessary to him; and he was +partly in debt for them, still without having sent any of his earnings +to pay his father. As he looked at them now he liked to fancy something +weird and conscious in them as the silent witnesses of a broken life. He +felt about among some of the smaller objects on the mantel for his pipe. +Before he slept he was aware, in the luxury of his despair, of a remote +relief, an escape; and, after all, the understanding he had come to with +Alma was only the explicit formulation of terms long tacit between them. +Beaton would have been puzzled more than he knew if she had taken him +seriously. It was inevitable that he should declare himself in love with +her; but he was not disappointed at her rejection of his love; perhaps +not so much as he would have been at its acceptance, though he tried to +think otherwise, and to give himself airs of tragedy. He did not really +feel that the result was worse than what had gone before, and it left +him free. + +But he did not go to the Leightons again for so long a time that Mrs. +Leighton asked Alma what had happened. Alma told her. + +“And he won't come any more?” her mother sighed, with reserved censure. + +“Oh, I think he will. He couldn't very well come the next night. But he +has the habit of coming, and with Mr. Beaton habit is everything--even +the habit of thinking he's in love with some one.” + +“Alma,” said her mother, “I don't think it's very nice for a girl to let +a young man keep coming to see her after she's refused him.” + +“Why not, if it amuses him and doesn't hurt the girl?” + +“But it does hurt her, Alma. It--it's indelicate. It isn't fair to him; +it gives him hopes.” + +“Well, mamma, it hasn't happened in the given case yet. If Mr. Beaton +comes again, I won't see him, and you can forbid him the house.” + +“If I could only feel sure, Alma,” said her mother, taking up another +branch of the inquiry, “that you really knew your own mind, I should be +easier about it.” + +“Then you can rest perfectly quiet, mamma. I do know my own mind; and, +what's worse, I know Mr. Beaton's mind.” + +“What do you mean?” + +“I mean that he spoke to me the other night simply because Mr. +Fulkerson's engagement had broken him all up.” + +“What expressions!” Mrs. Leighton lamented. + +“He let it out himself,” Alma went on. “And you wouldn't have thought +it was very flattering yourself. When I'm made love to, after this, +I prefer to be made love to in an off-year, when there isn't another +engaged couple anywhere about.” + +“Did you tell him that, Alma?” + +“Tell him that! What do you mean, mamma? I may be indelicate, but I'm +not quite so indelicate as that.” + +“I didn't mean you were indelicate, really, Alma, but I wanted to warn +you. I think Mr. Beaton was very much in earnest.” + +“Oh, so did he!” + +“And you didn't?” + +“Oh yes, for the time being. I suppose he's very much in earnest with +Miss Vance at times, and with Miss Dryfoos at others. Sometimes he's a +painter, and sometimes he's an architect, and sometimes he's a sculptor. +He has too many gifts--too many tastes.” + +“And if Miss Vance and Miss Dryfoos--” + +“Oh, do say Sculpture and Architecture, mamma! It's getting so +dreadfully personal!” + +“Alma, you know that I only wish to get at your real feeling in the +matter.” + +“And you know that I don't want to let you--especially when I haven't +got any real feeling in the matter. But I should think--speaking in the +abstract entirely--that if either of those arts was ever going to be in +earnest about him, it would want his exclusive devotion for a week at +least.” + +“I didn't know,” said Mrs. Leighton, “that he was doing anything now at +the others. I thought he was entirely taken up with his work on 'Every +Other Week.'” + +“Oh, he is! he is!” + +“And you certainly can't say, my dear, that he hasn't been very +kind--very useful to you, in that matter.” + +“And so I ought to have said yes out of gratitude? Thank you, mamma! I +didn't know you held me so cheap.” + +“You know whether I hold you cheap or not, Alma. I don't want you to +cheapen yourself. I don't want you to trifle with any one. I want you to +be honest with yourself.” + +“Well, come now, mamma! Suppose you begin. I've been perfectly honest +with myself, and I've been honest with Mr. Beaton. I don't care for +him, and I've told him I didn't; so he may be supposed to know it. If he +comes here after this, he'll come as a plain, unostentatious friend +of the family, and it's for you to say whether he shall come in that +capacity or not. I hope you won't trifle with him, and let him get the +notion that he's coming on any other basis.” + +Mrs. Leighton felt the comfort of the critical attitude far too keenly +to abandon it for anything constructive. She only said, “You know very +well, Alma, that's a matter I can have nothing to do with.” + +“Then you leave him entirely to me?” + +“I hope you will regard his right to candid and open treatment.” + +“He's had nothing but the most open and candid treatment from me, mamma. +It's you that wants to play fast and loose with him. And, to tell you +the truth, I believe he would like that a good deal better; I believe +that, if there's anything he hates, it's openness and candor.” Alma +laughed, and put her arms round her mother, who could not help laughing +a little, too. + + + + +II. + +The winter did not renew for Christine and Mela the social opportunity +which the spring had offered. After the musicale at Mrs. Horn's, they +both made their party-call, as Mela said, in due season; but they did +not find Mrs. Horn at home, and neither she nor Miss Vance came to see +them after people returned to town in the fall. They tried to believe +for a time that Mrs. Horn had not got their cards; this pretence failed +them, and they fell back upon their pride, or rather Christine's pride. +Mela had little but her good-nature to avail her in any exigency, and +if Mrs. Horn or Miss Vance had come to call after a year of neglect, +she would have received them as amiably as if they had not lost a day in +coming. But Christine had drawn a line beyond which they would not have +been forgiven; and she had planned the words and the behavior with which +she would have punished them if they had appeared then. Neither +sister imagined herself in anywise inferior to them; but Christine was +suspicious, at least, and it was Mela who invented the hypothesis of the +lost cards. As nothing happened to prove or to disprove the fact, she +said, “I move we put Coonrod up to gittun' it out of Miss Vance, at some +of their meetun's.” + +“If you do,” said Christine, “I'll kill you.” + +Christine, however, had the visits of Beaton to console her, and, if +these seemed to have no definite aim, she was willing to rest in the +pleasure they gave her vanity; but Mela had nothing. Sometimes she even +wished they were all back on the farm. + +“It would be the best thing for both of you,” said Mrs. Dryfoos, in +answer to such a burst of desperation. “I don't think New York is any +place for girls.” + +“Well, what I hate, mother,” said Mela, “is, it don't seem to be any +place for young men, either.” She found this so good when she had said +it that she laughed over it till Christine was angry. + +“A body would think there had never been any joke before.” + +“I don't see as it's a joke,” said Mrs. Dryfoos. “It's the plain truth.” + +“Oh, don't mind her, mother,” said Mela. “She's put out because her old +Mr. Beaton ha'r't been round for a couple o' weeks. If you don't watch +out, that fellow 'll give you the slip yit, Christine, after all your +pains.” + +“Well, there ain't anybody to give you the slip, Mela,” Christine clawed +back. + +“No; I ha'n't ever set my traps for anybody.” This was what Mela said +for want of a better retort; but it was not quite true. When Kendricks +came with Beaton to call after her father's dinner, she used all her +cunning to ensnare him, and she had him to herself as long as Beaton +stayed; Dryfoos sent down word that he was not very well and had gone to +bed. The novelty of Mela had worn off for Kendricks, and she found him, +as she frankly told him, not half as entertaining as he was at Mrs. +Horn's; but she did her best with him as the only flirtable material +which had yet come to her hand. It would have been her ideal to have the +young men stay till past midnight, and her father come down-stairs in +his stocking-feet and tell them it was time to go. But they made a +visit of decorous brevity, and Kendricks did not come again. She met him +afterward, once, as she was crossing the pavement in Union Square to get +into her coupe, and made the most of him; but it was necessarily very +little, and so he passed out of her life without having left any trace +in her heart, though Mela had a heart that she would have put at the +disposition of almost any young man that wanted it. Kendricks himself, +Manhattan cockney as he was, with scarcely more out look into the +average American nature than if he had been kept a prisoner in New York +society all his days, perceived a property in her which forbade him as +a man of conscience to trifle with her; something earthly good and kind, +if it was simple and vulgar. In revising his impressions of her, it +seemed to him that she would come even to better literary effect if +this were recognized in her; and it made her sacred, in spite of her +willingness to fool and to be fooled, in her merely human quality. After +all, he saw that she wished honestly to love and to be loved, and the +lures she threw out to that end seemed to him pathetic rather than +ridiculous; he could not join Beaton in laughing at her; and he did +not like Beaton's laughing at the other girl, either. It seemed to +Kendricks, with the code of honor which he mostly kept to himself +because he was a little ashamed to find there were so few others like +it, that if Beaton cared nothing for the other girl--and Christine +appeared simply detestable to Kendricks--he had better keep away from +her, and not give her the impression he was in love with her. He rather +fancied that this was the part of a gentleman, and he could not have +penetrated to that aesthetic and moral complexity which formed the +consciousness of a nature like Beaton's and was chiefly a torment to +itself; he could not have conceived of the wayward impulses indulged at +every moment in little things till the straight highway was traversed +and well-nigh lost under their tangle. To do whatever one likes is +finally to do nothing that one likes, even though one continues to do +what one will; but Kendricks, though a sage of twenty-seven, was still +too young to understand this. + +Beaton scarcely understood it himself, perhaps because he was not yet +twenty-seven. He only knew that his will was somehow sick; that it spent +itself in caprices, and brought him no happiness from the fulfilment of +the most vehement wish. But he was aware that his wishes grew less and +less vehement; he began to have a fear that some time he might have none +at all. It seemed to him that if he could once do something that was +thoroughly distasteful to himself, he might make a beginning in the +right direction; but when he tried this on a small scale, it failed, and +it seemed stupid. Some sort of expiation was the thing he needed, he was +sure; but he could not think of anything in particular to expiate; a man +could not expiate his temperament, and his temperament was what Beaton +decided to be at fault. He perceived that it went deeper than even fate +would have gone; he could have fulfilled an evil destiny and had done +with it, however terrible. His trouble was that he could not escape from +himself; and, for the most part, he justified himself in refusing +to try. After he had come to that distinct understanding with Alma +Leighton, and experienced the relief it really gave him, he thought +for a while that if it had fallen out otherwise, and she had put him in +charge of her destiny, he might have been better able to manage his own. +But as it was, he could only drift, and let all other things take their +course. It was necessary that he should go to see her afterward, to show +her that he was equal to the event; but he did not go so often, and he +went rather oftener to the Dryfooses; it was not easy to see Margaret +Vance, except on the society terms. With much sneering and scorning, +he fulfilled the duties to Mrs. Horn without which he knew he should be +dropped from her list; but one might go to many of her Thursdays without +getting many words with her niece. Beaton hardly knew whether he wanted +many; the girl kept the charm of her innocent stylishness; but latterly +she wanted to talk more about social questions than about the psychical +problems that young people usually debate so personally. Son of the +working-people as he was, Beaton had never cared anything about such +matters; he did not know about them or wish to know; he was perhaps too +near them. Besides, there was an embarrassment, at least on her part, +concerning the Dryfooses. She was too high-minded to blame him for +having tempted her to her failure with them by his talk about them; but +she was conscious of avoiding them in her talk. She had decided not to +renew the effort she had made in the spring; because she could not do +them good as fellow-creatures needing food and warmth and work, and she +would not try to befriend them socially; she had a horror of any such +futile sentimentality. She would have liked to account to Beaton in this +way for a course which she suspected he must have heard their comments +upon, but she did not quite know how to do it; she could not be sure how +much or how little he cared for them. Some tentative approaches which +she made toward explanation were met with such eager disclaim of +personal interest that she knew less than before what to think; and +she turned the talk from the sisters to the brother, whom it seemed she +still continued to meet in their common work among the poor. + +“He seems very different,” she ventured. + +“Oh, quite,” said Beaton. “He's the kind of person that you might +suppose gave the Catholics a hint for the cloistral life; he's a +cloistered nature--the nature that atones and suffers for. But he's +awfully dull company, don't you think? I never can get anything out of +him.” + +“He's very much in earnest.” + +“Remorselessly. We've got a profane and mundane creature there at the +office who runs us all, and it's shocking merely to see the contact of +the tyro natures. When Fulkerson gets to joking Dryfoos--he likes to put +his joke in the form of a pretence that Dryfoos is actuated by a selfish +motive, that he has an eye to office, and is working up a political +interest for himself on the East Side--it's something inexpressible.” + +“I should think so,” said Miss Vance, with such lofty disapproval that +Beaton felt himself included in it for having merely told what caused +it. He could not help saying, in natural rebellion, “Well, the man of +one idea is always a little ridiculous.” + +“When his idea is right?” she demanded. “A right idea can't be +ridiculous.” + +“Oh, I only said the man that held it was. He's flat; he has no relief, +no projection.” + +She seemed unable to answer, and he perceived that he had silenced her +to his own, disadvantage. It appeared to Beaton that she was becoming a +little too exacting for comfort in her idealism. He put down the cup of +tea he had been tasting, and said, in his solemn staccato: “I must go. +Good-bye!” and got instantly away from her, with an effect he had of +having suddenly thought of something imperative. + +He went up to Mrs. Horn for a moment's hail and farewell, and felt +himself subtly detained by her through fugitive passages of conversation +with half a dozen other people. He fancied that at crises of this +strange interview Mrs. Horn was about to become confidential with him, +and confidential, of all things, about her niece. She ended by not +having palpably been so. In fact, the concern in her mind would have +been difficult to impart to a young man, and after several experiments +Mrs. Horn found it impossible to say that she wished Margaret could +somehow be interested in lower things than those which occupied her. She +had watched with growing anxiety the girl's tendency to various kinds +of self-devotion. She had dark hours in which she even feared her entire +withdrawal from the world in a life of good works. Before now, girls +had entered the Protestant sisterhoods, which appeal so potently to the +young and generous imagination, and Margaret was of just the temperament +to be influenced by them. During the past summer she had been unhappy +at her separation from the cares that had engrossed her more and more as +their stay in the city drew to an end in the spring, and she had hurried +her aunt back to town earlier in the fall than she would have chosen to +come. Margaret had her correspondents among the working-women whom she +befriended. Mrs. Horn was at one time alarmed to find that Margaret was +actually promoting a strike of the button-hole workers. This, of course, +had its ludicrous side, in connection with a young lady in good society, +and a person of even so little humor as Mrs. Horn could not help seeing +it. At the same time, she could not help foreboding the worst from it; +she was afraid that Margaret's health would give way under the strain, +and that if she did not go into a sisterhood she would at least go into +a decline. She began the winter with all such counteractive measures as +she could employ. At an age when such things weary, she threw herself +into the pleasures of society with the hope of dragging Margaret after +her; and a sympathetic witness must have followed with compassion +her course from ball to ball, from reception to reception, from +parlor-reading to parlor-reading, from musicale to musicale, from play +to play, from opera to opera. She tasted, after she had practically +renounced them, the bitter and the insipid flavors of fashionable +amusement, in the hope that Margaret might find them sweet, and now at +the end she had to own to herself that she had failed. It was coming +Lent again, and the girl had only grown thinner and more serious +with the diversions that did not divert her from the baleful works of +beneficence on which Mrs. Horn felt that she was throwing her youth +away. Margaret could have borne either alone, but together they were +wearing her out. She felt it a duty to undergo the pleasures her aunt +appointed for her, but she could not forego the other duties in which +she found her only pleasure. + +She kept up her music still because she could employ it at the +meetings for the entertainment, and, as she hoped, the elevation of her +working-women; but she neglected the other aesthetic interests which +once occupied her; and, at sight of Beaton talking with her, Mrs. +Horn caught at the hope that he might somehow be turned to account in +reviving Margaret's former interest in art. She asked him if Mr. Wetmore +had his classes that winter as usual; and she said she wished Margaret +could be induced to go again: Mr. Wetmore always said that she did not +draw very well, but that she had a great deal of feeling for it, and her +work was interesting. She asked, were the Leightons in town again; and +she murmured a regret that she had not been able to see anything of +them, without explaining why; she said she had a fancy that if Margaret +knew Miss Leighton, and what she was doing, it might stimulate her, +perhaps. She supposed Miss Leighton was still going on with her art? +Beaton said, Oh yes, he believed so. + +But his manner did not encourage Mrs. Horn to pursue her aims in that +direction, and she said, with a sigh, she wished he still had a class; +she always fancied that Margaret got more good from his instruction than +from any one else's. + +He said that she was very good; but there was really nobody who knew +half as much as Wetmore, or could make any one understand half as much. +Mrs. Horn was afraid, she said, that Mr. Wetmore's terrible sincerity +discouraged Margaret; he would not let her have any illusions about the +outcome of what she was doing; and did not Mr. Beaton think that some +illusion was necessary with young people? Of course, it was very nice of +Mr. Wetmore to be so honest, but it did not always seem to be the wisest +thing. She begged Mr. Beaton to try to think of some one who would be a +little less severe. Her tone assumed a deeper interest in the people +who were coming up and going away, and Beaton perceived that he was +dismissed. + +He went away with vanity flattered by the sense of having been appealed +to concerning Margaret, and then he began to chafe at what she had said +of Wetmore's honesty, apropos of her wish that he still had a class +himself. Did she mean, confound her? that he was insincere, and would +let Miss Vance suppose she had more talent than she really had? The more +Beaton thought of this, the more furious he became, and the more he +was convinced that something like it had been unconsciously if not +consciously in her mind. He framed some keen retorts, to the general +effect that with the atmosphere of illusion preserved so completely +at home, Miss Vance hardly needed it in her art studies. Having just +determined never to go near Mrs. Horn's Thursdays again, he decided to +go once more, in order to plant this sting in her capacious but somewhat +callous bosom; and he planned how he would lead the talk up to the point +from which he should launch it. + +In the mean time he felt the need of some present solace, such as only +unqualified worship could give him; a cruel wish to feel his power +in some direction where, even if it were resisted, it could not be +overcome, drove him on. That a woman who was to Beaton the embodiment of +artificiality should intimate, however innocently--the innocence made it +all the worse--that he was less honest than Wetmore, whom he knew to +be so much more honest, was something that must be retaliated somewhere +before his self-respect could be restored. It was only five o'clock, and +he went on up-town to the Dryfooses', though he had been there only the +night before last. He asked for the ladies, and Mrs. Mandel received +him. + +“The young ladies are down-town shopping,” she said, “but I am very glad +of the opportunity of seeing you alone, Mr. Beaton. You know I lived +several years in Europe.” + +“Yes,” said Beaton, wondering what that could have to do with her +pleasure in seeing him alone. “I believe so?” He involuntarily gave his +words the questioning inflection. + +“You have lived abroad, too, and so you won't find what I am going to +ask so strange. Mr. Beaton, why do you come so much to this house?” Mrs. +Mandel bent forward with an aspect of ladylike interest and smiled. + +Beaton frowned. “Why do I come so much?” + +“Yes.” + +“Why do I--Excuse me, Mrs. Mandel, but will you allow me to ask why you +ask?” + +“Oh, certainly. There's no reason why I shouldn't say, for I wish you to +be very frank with me. I ask because there are two young ladies in this +house; and, in a certain way, I have to take the place of a mother +to them. I needn't explain why; you know all the people here, and +you understand. I have nothing to say about them, but I should not be +speaking to you now if they were not all rather helpless people. They do +not know the world they have come to live in here, and they cannot help +themselves or one another. But you do know it, Mr. Beaton, and I am sure +you know just how much or how little you mean by coming here. You are +either interested in one of these young girls or you are not. If you +are, I have nothing more to say. If you are not--” Mrs. Mandel continued +to smile, but the smile had grown more perfunctory, and it had an icy +gleam. + +Beaton looked at her with surprise that he gravely kept to himself. He +had always regarded her as a social nullity, with a kind of pity, to be +sure, as a civilized person living among such people as the Dryfooses, +but not without a humorous contempt; he had thought of her as Mandel, +and sometimes as Old Mandel, though she was not half a score of years +his senior, and was still well on the sunny side of forty. He reddened, +and then turned an angry pallor. “Excuse me again, Mrs. Mandel. Do you +ask this from the young ladies?” + +“Certainly not,” she said, with the best temper, and with something in +her tone that convicted Beaton of vulgarity, in putting his question of +her authority in the form of a sneer. “As I have suggested, they would +hardly know how to help themselves at all in such a matter. I have no +objection to saying that I ask it from the father of the young ladies. +Of course, in and for myself I should have no right to know anything +about your affairs. I assure you the duty of knowing isn't very +pleasant.” The little tremor in her clear voice struck Beaton as +something rather nice. + +“I can very well believe that, Mrs. Mandel,” he said, with a dreamy +sadness in his own. He lifted his eyes and looked into hers. “If I told +you that I cared nothing about them in the way you intimate?” + +“Then I should prefer to let you characterize your own conduct in +continuing to come here for the year past, as you have done, and tacitly +leading them on to infer differently.” They both mechanically kept up +the fiction of plurality in speaking of Christine, but there was no +doubt in the mind of either which of the young ladies the other meant. +A good many thoughts went through Beaton's mind, and none of them were +flattering. He had not been unconscious that the part he had played +toward this girl was ignoble, and that it had grown meaner as the fancy +which her beauty had at first kindled in him had grown cooler. He was +aware that of late he had been amusing himself with her passion in a +way that was not less than cruel, not because he wished to do so, but +because he was listless and wished nothing. He rose in saying: “I +might be a little more lenient than you think, Mrs. Mandel; but I won't +trouble you with any palliating theory. I will not come any more.” + +He bowed, and Mrs. Mandel said, “Of course, it's only your action that I +am concerned with.” + +She seemed to him merely triumphant, and he could not conceive what it +had cost her to nerve herself up to her too easy victory. He left Mrs. +Mandel to a far harder lot than had fallen to him, and he went away +hating her as an enemy who had humiliated him at a moment when he +particularly needed exalting. It was really very simple for him to stop +going to see Christine Dryfoos, but it was not at all simple for Mrs. +Mandel to deal with the consequences of his not coming. He only thought +how lightly she had stopped him, and the poor woman whom he had left +trembling for what she had been obliged to do embodied for him the +conscience that accused him of unpleasant things. + +“By heavens! this is piling it up,” he said to himself through his set +teeth, realizing how it had happened right on top of that stupid insult +from Mrs. Horn. Now he should have to give up his place on 'Every Other +Week; he could not keep that, under the circumstances, even if some +pretence were not made to get rid of him; he must hurry and anticipate +any such pretence; he must see Fulkerson at once; he wondered where he +should find him at that hour. He thought, with bitterness so real that +it gave him a kind of tragical satisfaction, how certainly he could find +him a little later at Mrs. Leighton's; and Fulkerson's happiness became +an added injury. + +The thing had, of course, come about just at the wrong time. There never +had been a time when Beaton needed money more, when he had spent what +he had and what he expected to have so recklessly. He was in debt to +Fulkerson personally and officially for advance payments of salary. +The thought of sending money home made him break into a scoffing laugh, +which he turned into a cough in order to deceive the passers. What sort +of face should he go with to Fulkerson and tell him that he renounced +his employment on 'Every Other Week;' and what should he do when he had +renounced it? Take pupils, perhaps; open a class? A lurid conception +of a class conducted on those principles of shameless flattery at +which Mrs. Horn had hinted--he believed now she had meant to insult +him--presented itself. Why should not he act upon the suggestion? He +thought with loathing for the whole race of women--dabblers in art. How +easy the thing would be: as easy as to turn back now and tell that old +fool's girl that he loved her, and rake in half his millions. Why +should not he do that? No one else cared for him; and at a year's +end, probably, one woman would be like another as far as the love was +concerned, and probably he should not be more tired if the woman were +Christine Dryfoos than if she were Margaret Vance. He kept Alma Leighton +out of the question, because at the bottom of his heart he believed that +she must be forever unlike every other woman to him. + +The tide of his confused and aimless reverie had carried him far +down-town, he thought; but when he looked up from it to see where he +was he found himself on Sixth Avenue, only a little below Thirty-ninth +Street, very hot and blown; that idiotic fur overcoat was stifling. He +could not possibly walk down to Eleventh; he did not want to walk even +to the Elevated station at Thirty-fourth; he stopped at the corner to +wait for a surface-car, and fell again into his bitter fancies. After +a while he roused himself and looked up the track, but there was no car +coming. He found himself beside a policeman, who was lazily swinging his +club by its thong from his wrist. + +“When do you suppose a car will be along?” he asked, rather in a general +sarcasm of the absence of the cars than in any special belief that the +policeman could tell him. + +The policeman waited to discharge his tobacco-juice into the gutter. “In +about a week,” he said, nonchalantly. + +“What's the matter?” asked Beaton, wondering what the joke could be. + +“Strike,” said the policeman. His interest in Beaton's ignorance seemed +to overcome his contempt of it. “Knocked off everywhere this morning +except Third Avenue and one or two cross-town lines.” He spat again and +kept his bulk at its incline over the gutter to glance at a group of men +on the corner below: They were neatly dressed, and looked like something +better than workingmen, and they had a holiday air of being in their +best clothes. + +“Some of the strikers?” asked Beaton. + +The policeman nodded. + +“Any trouble yet?” + +“There won't be any trouble till we begin to move the cars,” said the +policeman. + +Beaton felt a sudden turn of his rage toward the men whose action would +now force him to walk five blocks and mount the stairs of the Elevated +station. “If you'd take out eight or ten of those fellows,” he said, +ferociously, “and set them up against a wall and shoot them, you'd save +a great deal of bother.” + +“I guess we sha'n't have to shoot much,” said the policeman, still +swinging his locust. “Anyway, we shant begin it. If it comes to a fight, +though,” he said, with a look at the men under the scooping rim of his +helmet, “we can drive the whole six thousand of 'em into the East River +without pullin' a trigger.” + +“Are there six thousand in it?” + +“About.” + +“What do the infernal fools expect to live on?” + +“The interest of their money, I suppose,” said the officer, with a grin +of satisfaction in his irony. “It's got to run its course. Then they'll +come back with their heads tied up and their tails between their legs, +and plead to be taken on again.” + +“If I was a manager of the roads,” said Beaton, thinking of how much he +was already inconvenienced by the strike, and obscurely connecting it as +one of the series with the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of Mrs. +Horn and Mrs. Mandel, “I would see them starve before I'd take them +back--every one of them.” + +“Well,” said the policeman, impartially, as a man might whom the +companies allowed to ride free, but who had made friends with a good +many drivers and conductors in the course of his free riding, “I guess +that's what the roads would like to do if they could; but the men +are too many for them, and there ain't enough other men to take their +places.” + +“No matter,” said Beaton, severely. “They can bring in men from other +places.” + +“Oh, they'll do that fast enough,” said the policeman. + +A man came out of the saloon on the corner where the strikers were +standing, noisy drunk, and they began, as they would have said, to have +some fun with him. The policeman left Beaton, and sauntered slowly down +toward the group as if in the natural course of an afternoon ramble. On +the other side of the street Beaton could see another officer sauntering +up from the block below. Looking up and down the avenue, so silent of +its horse-car bells, he saw a policeman at every corner. It was rather +impressive. + + + + +III. + +The strike made a good deal of talk in the office of 'Every Other +Week' that is, it made Fulkerson talk a good deal. He congratulated +himself that he was not personally incommoded by it, like some of the +fellows who lived uptown, and had not everything under one roof, as +it were. He enjoyed the excitement of it, and he kept the office boy +running out to buy the extras which the newsmen came crying through the +street almost every hour with a lamentable, unintelligible noise. He +read not only the latest intelligence of the strike, but the editorial +comments on it, which praised the firm attitude of both parties, and +the admirable measures taken by the police to preserve order. Fulkerson +enjoyed the interviews with the police captains and the leaders of the +strike; he equally enjoyed the attempts of the reporters to interview +the road managers, which were so graphically detailed, and with such +a fine feeling for the right use of scare-heads as to have almost the +value of direct expression from them, though it seemed that they had +resolutely refused to speak. He said, at second-hand from the papers, +that if the men behaved themselves and respected the rights of property, +they would have public sympathy with them every time; but just as soon +as they began to interfere with the roads' right to manage their own +affairs in their own way, they must be put down with an iron hand; the +phrase “iron hand” did Fulkerson almost as much good as if it had never +been used before. News began to come of fighting between the police and +the strikers when the roads tried to move their cars with men imported +from Philadelphia, and then Fulkerson rejoiced at the splendid courage +of the police. At the same time, he believed what the strikers said, +and that the trouble was not made by them, but by gangs of roughs acting +without their approval. In this juncture he was relieved by the arrival +of the State Board of Arbitration, which took up its quarters, with a +great many scare-heads, at one of the principal hotels, and invited the +roads and the strikers to lay the matter in dispute before them; he +said that now we should see the working of the greatest piece of social +machinery in modern times. But it appeared to work only in the alacrity +of the strikers to submit their grievance. The roads were as one road in +declaring that there was nothing to arbitrate, and that they were merely +asserting their right to manage their own affairs in their own way. One +of the presidents was reported to have told a member of the Board, who +personally summoned him, to get out and to go about his business. Then, +to Fulkerson's extreme disappointment, the august tribunal, acting on +behalf of the sovereign people in the interest of peace, declared +itself powerless, and got out, and would, no doubt, have gone about its +business if it had had any. Fulkerson did not know what to say, perhaps +because the extras did not; but March laughed at this result. + +“It's a good deal like the military manoeuvre of the King of France and +his forty thousand men. I suppose somebody told him at the top of the +hill that there was nothing to arbitrate, and to get out and go about +his business, and that was the reason he marched down after he had +marched up with all that ceremony. What amuses me is to find that in an +affair of this kind the roads have rights and the strikers have rights, +but the public has no rights at all. The roads and the strikers are +allowed to fight out a private war in our midst as thoroughly and +precisely a private war as any we despise the Middle Ages for having +tolerated--as any street war in Florence or Verona--and to fight it out +at our pains and expense, and we stand by like sheep and wait till they +get tired. It's a funny attitude for a city of fifteen hundred thousand +inhabitants.” + +“What would you do?” asked Fulkerson, a good deal daunted by this view +of the case. + +“Do? Nothing. Hasn't the State Board of Arbitration declared itself +powerless? We have no hold upon the strikers; and we're so used to being +snubbed and disobliged by common carriers that we have forgotten our +hold on the roads and always allow them to manage their own affairs in +their own way, quite as if we had nothing to do with them and they owed +us no services in return for their privileges.” + +“That's a good deal so,” said Fulkerson, disordering his hair. “Well, +it's nuts for the colonel nowadays. He says if he was boss of this +town he would seize the roads on behalf of the people, and man 'em with +policemen, and run 'em till the managers had come to terms with the +strikers; and he'd do that every time there was a strike.” + +“Doesn't that rather savor of the paternalism he condemned in Lindau?” + asked March. + +“I don't know. It savors of horse sense.” + +“You are pretty far gone, Fulkerson. I thought you were the most engaged +man I ever saw; but I guess you're more father-in-lawed. And before +you're married, too.” + +“Well, the colonel's a glorious old fellow, March. I wish he had the +power to do that thing, just for the fun of looking on while he waltzed +in. He's on the keen jump from morning till night, and he's up late and +early to see the row. I'm afraid he'll get shot at some of the fights; +he sees them all; I can't get any show at them: haven't seen a brickbat +shied or a club swung yet. Have you?” + +“No, I find I can philosophize the situation about as well from the +papers, and that's what I really want to do, I suppose. Besides, I'm +solemnly pledged by Mrs. March not to go near any sort of crowd, under +penalty of having her bring the children and go with me. Her theory is +that we must all die together; the children haven't been at school since +the strike began. There's no precaution that Mrs. March hasn't used. She +watches me whenever I go out, and sees that I start straight for this +office.” + +Fulkerson laughed and said: “Well, it's probably the only thing that's +saved your life. Have you seen anything of Beaton lately?” + +“No. You don't mean to say he's killed!” + +“Not if he knows it. But I don't know--What do you say, March? What's +the reason you couldn't get us up a paper on the strike?” + +“I knew it would fetch round to 'Every Other Week,' somehow.” + +“No, but seriously. There'll be plenty of news paper accounts. But you +could treat it in the historical spirit--like something that happened +several centuries ago; De Foe's Plague of London style. Heigh? What made +me think of it was Beaton. If I could get hold of him, you two could go +round together and take down its aesthetic aspects. It's a big thing, +March, this strike is. I tell you it's imposing to have a private war, +as you say, fought out this way, in the heart of New York, and New +York not minding it a bit. See? Might take that view of it. With your +descriptions and Beaton's sketches--well, it would just be the greatest +card! Come! What do you say?” + +“Will you undertake to make it right with Mrs. March if I'm killed and +she and the children are not killed with me?” + +“Well, it would be difficult. I wonder how it would do to get Kendricks +to do the literary part?” + +“I've no doubt he'd jump at the chance. I've yet to see the form of +literature that Kendricks wouldn't lay down his life for.” + +“Say!” March perceived that Fulkerson was about to vent another +inspiration, and smiled patiently. “Look here! What's the reason we +couldn't get one of the strikers to write it up for us?” + +“Might have a symposium of strikers and presidents,” March suggested. + +“No; I'm in earnest. They say some of those fellows--especially the +foreigners--are educated men. I know one fellow--a Bohemian--that used +to edit a Bohemian newspaper here. He could write it out in his kind of +Dutch, and we could get Lindau to translate it.” + +“I guess not,” said March, dryly. + +“Why not? He'd do it for the cause, wouldn't he? Suppose you put it up +on him the next time you see him.” + +“I don't see Lindau any more,” said March. He added, “I guess he's +renounced me along with Mr. Dryfoos's money.” + +“Pshaw! You don't mean he hasn't been round since?” + +“He came for a while, but he's left off coming now. I don't feel +particularly gay about it,” March said, with some resentment of +Fulkerson's grin. “He's left me in debt to him for lessons to the +children.” + +Fulkerson laughed out. “Well, he is the greatest old fool! Who'd 'a' +thought he'd 'a' been in earnest with those 'brincibles' of his? But I +suppose there have to be just such cranks; it takes all kinds to make a +world.” + +“There has to be one such crank, it seems,” March partially assented. +“One's enough for me.” + +“I reckon this thing is nuts for Lindau, too,” said Fulkerson. “Why, it +must act like a schooner of beer on him all the while, to see 'gabidal' +embarrassed like it is by this strike. It must make old Lindau feel like +he was back behind those barricades at Berlin. Well, he's a splendid old +fellow; pity he drinks, as I remarked once before.” + +When March left the office he did not go home so directly as he came, +perhaps because Mrs. March's eye was not on him. He was very curious +about some aspects of the strike, whose importance, as a great social +convulsion, he felt people did not recognize; and, with his temperance +in everything, he found its negative expressions as significant as its +more violent phases. He had promised his wife solemnly that he would +keep away from these, and he had a natural inclination to keep his +promise; he had no wish to be that peaceful spectator who always gets +shot when there is any firing on a mob. He interested himself in the +apparent indifference of the mighty city, which kept on about its +business as tranquilly as if the private war being fought out in its +midst were a vague rumor of Indian troubles on the frontier; and he +realized how there might once have been a street feud of forty years in +Florence without interfering materially with the industry and prosperity +of the city. On Broadway there was a silence where a jangle and clatter +of horse-car bells and hoofs had been, but it was not very noticeable; +and on the avenues, roofed by the elevated roads, this silence of the +surface tracks was not noticeable at all in the roar of the trains +overhead. Some of the cross-town cars were beginning to run again, with +a policeman on the rear of each; on the Third Avenge line, operated by +non-union men, who had not struck, there were two policemen beside the +driver of every car, and two beside the conductor, to protect them from +the strikers. But there were no strikers in sight, and on Second Avenue +they stood quietly about in groups on the corners. While March watched +them at a safe distance, a car laden with policemen came down the track, +but none of the strikers offered to molest it. In their simple Sunday +best, March thought them very quiet, decent-looking people, and he could +well believe that they had nothing to do with the riotous outbreaks in +other parts of the city. He could hardly believe that there were any +such outbreaks; he began more and more to think them mere newspaper +exaggerations in the absence of any disturbance, or the disposition to +it, that he could see. He walked on to the East River. + +Avenues A, B, and C presented the same quiet aspect as Second Avenue; +groups of men stood on the corners, and now and then a police-laden car +was brought unmolested down the tracks before them; they looked at it +and talked together, and some laughed, but there was no trouble. + +March got a cross-town car, and came back to the West Side. A policeman, +looking very sleepy and tired, lounged on the platform. + +“I suppose you'll be glad when this cruel war is over,” March suggested, +as he got in. + +The officer gave him a surly glance and made him no answer. + +His behavior, from a man born to the joking give and take of our life, +impressed March. It gave him a fine sense of the ferocity which he had +read of the French troops putting on toward the populace just before the +coup d'etat; he began to feel like the populace; but he struggled with +himself and regained his character of philosophical observer. In this +character he remained in the car and let it carry him by the corner +where he ought to have got out and gone home, and let it keep on with +him to one of the farthermost tracks westward, where so much of the +fighting was reported to have taken place. But everything on the way was +as quiet as on the East Side. + +Suddenly the car stopped with so quick a turn of the brake that he +was half thrown from his seat, and the policeman jumped down from the +platform and ran forward. + + + + +IV + +Dryfoos sat at breakfast that morning with Mrs. Mandel as usual to pour +out his coffee. Conrad had gone down-town; the two girls lay abed much +later than their father breakfasted, and their mother had gradually +grown too feeble to come down till lunch. Suddenly Christine appeared at +the door. Her face was white to the edges of her lips, and her eyes were +blazing. + +“Look here, father! Have you been saying anything to Mr. Beaton?” + +The old man looked up at her across his coffee-cup through his frowning +brows. “No.” + +Mrs. Mandel dropped her eyes, and the spoon shook in her hand. + +“Then what's the reason he don't come here any more?” demanded the girl; +and her glance darted from her father to Mrs. Mandel. “Oh, it's you, is +it? I'd like to know who told you to meddle in other people's business?” + +“I did,” said Dryfoos, savagely. “I told her to ask him what he wanted +here, and he said he didn't want anything, and he stopped coming. That's +all. I did it myself.” + +“Oh, you did, did you?” said the girl, scarcely less insolently than she +had spoken to Mrs. Mandel. “I should like to know what you did it for? +I'd like to know what made you think I wasn't able to take care of +myself. I just knew somebody had been meddling, but I didn't suppose it +was you. I can manage my own affairs in my own way, if you please, and +I'll thank you after this to leave me to myself in what don't concern +you.” + +“Don't concern me? You impudent jade!” her father began. + +Christine advanced from the doorway toward the table; she had her hands +closed upon what seemed trinkets, some of which glittered and dangled +from them. She said, “Will you go to him and tell him that this +meddlesome minx, here, had no business to say anything about me to him, +and you take it all back?” + +“No!” shouted the old man. “And if--” + +“That's all I want of you!” the girl shouted in her turn. “Here are +your presents.” With both hands she flung the jewels-pins and rings and +earrings and bracelets--among the breakfast-dishes, from which some of +them sprang to the floor. She stood a moment to pull the intaglio ring +from the finger where Beaton put it a year ago, and dashed that at her +father's plate. Then she whirled out of the room, and they heard her +running up-stairs. + +The old man made a start toward her, but he fell back in his chair +before she was gone, and, with a fierce, grinding movement of his jaws, +controlled himself. “Take--take those things up,” he gasped to Mrs. +Mandel. He seemed unable to rise again from his chair; but when she +asked him if he were unwell, he said no, with an air of offence, and got +quickly to his feet. He mechanically picked up the intaglio ring from +the table while he stood there, and put it on his little finger; his +hand was not much bigger than Christine's. “How do you suppose she found +it out?” he asked, after a moment. + +“She seems to have merely suspected it,” said Mrs. Mandel, in a tremor, +and with the fright in her eyes which Christine's violence had brought +there. + +“Well, it don't make any difference. She had to know, somehow, and now +she knows.” He started toward the door of the library, as if to go into +the hall, where his hat and coat hung. + +“Mr. Dryfoos,” palpitated Mrs. Mandel, “I can't remain here, after the +language your daughter has used to me--I can't let you leave me--I--I'm +afraid of her--” + +“Lock yourself up, then,” said the old man, rudely. He added, from the +hall before he went out, “I reckon she'll quiet down now.” + +He took the Elevated road. The strike seemed a vary far-off thing, +though the paper he bought to look up the stockmarket was full of noisy +typography about yesterday's troubles on the surface lines. Among the +millions in Wall Street there was some joking and some swearing, but not +much thinking, about the six thousand men who had taken such chances in +their attempt to better their condition. Dryfoos heard nothing of the +strike in the lobby of the Stock Exchange, where he spent two or three +hours watching a favorite stock of his go up and go down under the +betting. By the time the Exchange closed it had risen eight points, and +on this and some other investments he was five thousand dollars richer +than he had been in the morning. But he had expected to be richer +still, and he was by no means satisfied with his luck. All through the +excitement of his winning and losing had played the dull, murderous rage +he felt toward the child who had defied him, and when the game was over +and he started home his rage mounted into a sort of frenzy; he would +teach her, he would break her. He walked a long way without thinking, +and then waited for a car. None came, and he hailed a passing coupe. + +“What has got all the cars?” he demanded of the driver, who jumped down +from his box to open the door for him and get his direction. + +“Been away?” asked the driver. “Hasn't been any car along for a week. +Strike.” + +“Oh yes,” said Dryfoos. He felt suddenly giddy, and he remained staring +at the driver after he had taken his seat. + +The man asked, “Where to?” + +Dryfoos could not think of his street or number, and he said, with +uncontrollable fury: “I told you once! Go up to West Eleventh, and drive +along slow on the south side; I'll show you the place.” + +He could not remember the number of 'Every Other Week' office, where +he suddenly decided to stop before he went home. He wished to see +Fulkerson, and ask him something about Beaton: whether he had been +about lately, and whether he had dropped any hint of what had happened +concerning Christine; Dryfoos believed that Fulkerson was in the +fellow's confidence. + +There was nobody but Conrad in the counting-room, whither Dryfoos +returned after glancing into Fulkerson's empty office. “Where's +Fulkerson?” he asked, sitting down with his hat on. + +“He went out a few moments ago,” said Conrad, glancing at the clock. +“I'm afraid he isn't coming back again today, if you wanted to see him.” + +Dryfoos twisted his head sidewise and upward to indicate March's room. +“That other fellow out, too?” + +“He went just before Mr. Fulkerson,” answered Conrad. + +“Do you generally knock off here in the middle of the afternoon?” asked +the old man. + +“No,” said Conrad, as patiently as if his father had not been there a +score of times and found the whole staff of “Every Other Week” at work +between four and five. “Mr. March, you know, always takes a good deal +of his work home with him, and I suppose Mr. Fulkerson went out so early +because there isn't much doing to-day. Perhaps it's the strike that +makes it dull.” + +“The strike-yes! It's a pretty piece of business to have everything +thrown out because a parcel of lazy hounds want a chance to lay off and +get drunk.” Dryfoos seemed to think Conrad would make some answer +to this, but the young man's mild face merely saddened, and he said +nothing. “I've got a coupe out there now that I had to take because I +couldn't get a car. If I had my way I'd have a lot of those vagabonds +hung. They're waiting to get the city into a snarl, and then rob the +houses--pack of dirty, worthless whelps. They ought to call out the +militia, and fire into 'em. Clubbing is too good for them.” Conrad was +still silent, and his father sneered, “But I reckon you don't think so.” + +“I think the strike is useless,” said Conrad. + +“Oh, you do, do you? Comin' to your senses a little. Gettin' tired +walkin' so much. I should like to know what your gentlemen over there on +the East Side think about the strike, anyway.” + +The young fellow dropped his eyes. “I am not authorized to speak for +them.” + +“Oh, indeed! And perhaps you're not authorized to speak for yourself?” + +“Father, you know we don't agree about these things. I'd rather not +talk--” + +“But I'm goin' to make you talk this time!” cried Dryfoos, striking +the arm of the chair he sat in with the side of his fist. A maddening +thought of Christine came over him. “As long as you eat my bread, you +have got to do as I say. I won't have my children telling me what I +shall do and sha'n't do, or take on airs of being holier than me. Now, +you just speak up! Do you think those loafers are right, or don't you? +Come!” + +Conrad apparently judged it best to speak. “I think they were very +foolish to strike--at this time, when the Elevated roads can do the +work.” + +“Oh, at this time, heigh! And I suppose they think over there on the +East Side that it 'd been wise to strike before we got the Elevated.” + Conrad again refused to answer, and his father roared, “What do you +think?” + +“I think a strike is always bad business. It's war; but sometimes there +don't seem any other way for the workingmen to get justice. They say +that sometimes strikes do raise the wages, after a while.” + +“Those lazy devils were paid enough already,” shrieked the old man. + +“They got two dollars a day. How much do you think they ought to 'a' +got? Twenty?” + +Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his father. But he decided +to answer. “The men say that with partial work, and fines, and other +things, they get sometimes a dollar, and sometimes ninety cents a day.” + +“They lie, and you know they lie,” said his father, rising and coming +toward him. “And what do you think the upshot of it all will be, after +they've ruined business for another week, and made people hire hacks, +and stolen the money of honest men? How is it going to end?” + +“They will have to give in.” + +“Oh, give in, heigh! And what will you say then, I should like to know? +How will you feel about it then? Speak!” + +“I shall feel as I do now. I know you don't think that way, and I don't +blame you--or anybody. But if I have got to say how I shall feel, why, +I shall feel sorry they didn't succeed, for I believe they have a +righteous cause, though they go the wrong way to help themselves.” + +His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his teeth set. “Do you +dare so say that to me?” + +“Yes. I can't help it. I pity them; my whole heart is with those poor +men.” + +“You impudent puppy!” shouted the old man. He lifted his hand and struck +his son in the face. Conrad caught his hand with his own left, and, +while the blood began to trickle from a wound that Christine's intaglio +ring had made in his temple, he looked at him with a kind of grieving +wonder, and said, “Father!” + +The old man wrenched his fist away and ran out of the house. He +remembered his address now, and he gave it as he plunged into the coupe. +He trembled with his evil passion, and glared out of the windows at the +passers as he drove home; he only saw Conrad's mild, grieving, wondering +eyes, and the blood slowly trickling from the wound in his temple. + +Conrad went to the neat-set bowl in Fulkerson's comfortable room and +washed the blood away, and kept bathing the wound with the cold water +till it stopped bleeding. The cut was not deep, and he thought he +would not put anything on it. After a while he locked up the office and +started out, he hardly knew where. But he walked on, in the direction +he had taken, till he found himself in Union Square, on the pavement +in front of Brentano's. It seemed to him that he heard some one calling +gently to him, “Mr. Dryfoos!” + + + + +V. + +Conrad looked confusedly around, and the same voice said again, “Mr. +Dryfoos!” and he saw that it was a lady speaking to him from a coupe +beside the curbing, and then he saw that it was Miss Vance. + +She smiled when he gave signs of having discovered her, and came up to +the door of her carriage. “I am so glad to meet you. I have been longing +to talk to somebody; nobody seems to feel about it as I do. Oh, isn't it +horrible? Must they fail? I saw cars running on all the lines as I came +across; it made me sick at heart. Must those brave fellows give in? +And everybody seems to hate them so--I can't bear it.” Her face was +estranged with excitement, and there were traces of tears on it. “You +must think me almost crazy to stop you in the street this way; but when +I caught sight of you I had to speak. I knew you would sympathize--I +knew you would feel as I do. Oh, how can anybody help honoring those +poor men for standing by one another as they do? They are risking +all they have in the world for the sake of justice! Oh, they are true +heroes! They are staking the bread of their wives and children on the +dreadful chance they've taken! But no one seems to understand it. No one +seems to see that they are willing to suffer more now that other poor +men may suffer less hereafter. And those wretched creatures that are +coming in to take their places--those traitors--” + +“We can't blame them for wanting to earn a living, Miss Vance,” said +Conrad. + +“No, no! I don't blame them. Who am I, to do such a thing? It's +we--people like me, of my class--who make the poor betray one another. +But this dreadful fighting--this hideous paper is full of it!” She held +up an extra, crumpled with her nervous reading. “Can't something be done +to stop it? Don't you think that if some one went among them, and tried +to make them see how perfectly hopeless it was to resist the companies +and drive off the new men, he might do some good? I have wanted to go +and try; but I am a woman, and I mustn't! I shouldn't be afraid of the +strikers, but I'm afraid of what people would say!” Conrad kept pressing +his handkerchief to the cut in his temple, which he thought might be +bleeding, and now she noticed this. “Are you hurt, Mr. Dryfoos? You look +so pale.” + +“No, it's nothing--a little scratch I've got.” + +“Indeed, you look pale. Have you a carriage? How will you get home? Will +you get in here with me and let me drive you?” + +“No, no,” said Conrad, smiling at her excitement. “I'm perfectly well--” + +“And you don't think I'm foolish and wicked for stopping you here and +talking in this way? But I know you feel as I do!” + +“Yes, I feel as you do. You are right--right in every way--I mustn't +keep you--Good-bye.” He stepped back to bow, but she put her beautiful +hand out of the window, and when he took it she wrung his hand hard. + +“Thank you, thank you! You are good and you are just! But no one can do +anything. It's useless!” + +The type of irreproachable coachman on the box whose respectability had +suffered through the strange behavior of his mistress in this interview +drove quickly off at her signal, and Conrad stood a moment looking after +the carriage. His heart was full of joy; it leaped; he thought it would +burst. As he turned to walk away it seemed to him as if he mounted upon +the air. The trust she had shown him, the praise she had given him, that +crush of the hand: he hoped nothing, he formed no idea from it, but it +all filled him with love that cast out the pain and shame he had been +suffering. He believed that he could never be unhappy any more; the +hardness that was in his mind toward his father went out of it; he saw +how sorely he had tried him; he grieved that he had done it, but the +means, the difference of his feeling about the cause of their quarrel, +he was solemnly glad of that since she shared it. He was only sorry for +his father. “Poor father!” he said under his breath as he went along. +He explained to her about his father in his reverie, and she pitied his +father, too. + +He was walking over toward the West Side, aimlessly at first, and then +at times with the longing to do something to save those mistaken men +from themselves forming itself into a purpose. Was not that what she +meant when she bewailed her woman's helplessness? She must have wished +him to try if he, being a man, could not do something; or if she did +not, still he would try, and if she heard of it she would recall what +she had said and would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her +pleasure in what he was going to do, he forgot almost what it was; but +when he came to a street-car track he remembered it, and looked up and +down to see if there were any turbulent gathering of men whom he might +mingle with and help to keep from violence. He saw none anywhere; and +then suddenly, as if at the same moment, for in his exalted mood all +events had a dream-like simultaneity, he stood at the corner of an +avenue, and in the middle of it, a little way off, was a street-car, and +around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men. The driver +was lashing his horses forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with +the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs, brickbats hailed upon the +car, the horses, the men trying to move them. The mob closed upon them +in a body, and then a patrol-wagon whirled up from the other side, and +a squad of policemen leaped out and began to club the rioters. Conrad +could see how they struck them under the rims of their hats; the blows +on their skulls sounded as if they had fallen on stone; the rioters ran +in all directions. + +One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad stood, and +then he saw at his side a tall, old man, with a long, white beard, who +was calling out at the policemen: “Ah, yes! Glup the strikerss--gif +it to them! Why don't you co and glup the bresidents that insoalt +your lawss, and gick your Boart of Arpidration out-of-toors? Glup the +strikerss--they cot no friendts! They cot no money to pribe you, to +dreat you!” + +The officer lifted his club, and the old man threw his left arm up to +shield his head. Conrad recognized Lindau, and now he saw the empty +sleeve dangle in the air over the stump of his wrist. He heard a shot in +that turmoil beside the car, and something seemed to strike him in the +breast. He was going to say to the policeman: “Don't strike him! He's an +old soldier! You see he has no hand!” but he could not speak, he could +not move his tongue. The policeman stood there; he saw his face: it +was not bad, not cruel; it was like the face of a statue, fixed, +perdurable--a mere image of irresponsible and involuntary authority. +Then Conrad fell forward, pierced through the heart by that shot fired +from the car. + +March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his car, and at the same +moment he saw Lindau drop under the club of the policeman, who left him +where he fell and joined the rest of the squad in pursuing the rioters. +The fighting round the car in the avenue ceased; the driver whipped his +horses into a gallop, and the place was left empty. + +March would have liked to run; he thought how his wife had implored him +to keep away from the rioting; but he could not have left Lindau lying +there if he would. Something stronger than his will drew him to the +spot, and there he saw Conrad, dead beside the old man. + + + + +VI. + +In the cares which Mrs. March shared with her husband that night she was +supported partly by principle, but mainly by the potent excitement which +bewildered Conrad's family and took all reality from what had happened. +It was nearly midnight when the Marches left them and walked away toward +the Elevated station with Fulkerson. Everything had been done, by +that time, that could be done; and Fulkerson was not without that +satisfaction in the business-like despatch of all the details which +attends each step in such an affair and helps to make death tolerable +even to the most sorely stricken. We are creatures of the moment; we +live from one little space to another; and only one interest at a time +fills these. Fulkerson was cheerful when they got into the street, +almost gay; and Mrs. March experienced a rebound from her depression +which she felt that she ought not to have experienced. But she condoned +the offence a little in herself, because her husband remained so +constant in his gravity; and, pending the final accounting he must make +her for having been where he could be of so much use from the first +instant of the calamity, she was tenderly, gratefully proud of all the +use he had been to Conrad's family, and especially his miserable old +father. To her mind, March was the principal actor in the whole affair, +and much more important in having seen it than those who had suffered in +it. In fact, he had suffered incomparably. + +“Well, well,” said Fulkerson. “They'll get along now. We've done all we +could, and there's nothing left but for them to bear it. Of course +it's awful, but I guess it 'll come out all right. I mean,” he added, +“they'll pull through now.” + +“I suppose,” said March, “that nothing is put on us that we can't bear. +But I should think,” he went on, musingly, “that when God sees what we +poor finite creatures can bear, hemmed round with this eternal darkness +of death, He must respect us.” + +“Basil!” said his wife. But in her heart she drew nearer to him for the +words she thought she ought to rebuke him for. + +“Oh, I know,” he said, “we school ourselves to despise human nature. But +God did not make us despicable, and I say, whatever end He meant us for, +He must have some such thrill of joy in our adequacy to fate as a father +feels when his son shows himself a man. When I think what we can be if +we must, I can't believe the least of us shall finally perish.” + +“Oh, I reckon the Almighty won't scoop any of us,” said Fulkerson, with +a piety of his own. + +“That poor boy's father!” sighed Mrs. March. “I can't get his face out +of my sight. He looked so much worse than death.” + +“Oh, death doesn't look bad,” said March. “It's life that looks so in +its presence. Death is peace and pardon. I only wish poor old Lindau was +as well out of it as Conrad there.” + +“Ah, Lindau! He has done harm enough,” said Mrs. March. “I hope he will +be careful after this.” + +March did not try to defend Lindau against her theory of the case, which +inexorably held him responsible for Conrad's death. + +“Lindau's going to come out all right, I guess,” said Fulkerson. “He +was first-rate when I saw him at the hospital to-night.” He whispered +in March's ear, at a chance he got in mounting the station stairs: “I +didn't like to tell you there at the house, but I guess you'd better +know. They had to take Lindau's arm off near the shoulder. Smashed all +to pieces by the clubbing.” + +In the house, vainly rich and foolishly unfit for them, the bereaved +family whom the Marches had just left lingered together, and tried to +get strength to part for the night. They were all spent with the fatigue +that comes from heaven to such misery as theirs, and they sat in a +torpor in which each waited for the other to move, to speak. + +Christine moved, and Mela spoke. Christine rose and went out of the room +without saying a word, and they heard her going up-stairs. Then Mela +said: + +“I reckon the rest of us better be goun' too, father. Here, let's git +mother started.” + +She put her arm round her mother, to lift her from her chair, but the +old man did not stir, and Mela called Mrs. Mandel from the next room. +Between them they raised her to her feet. + +“Ain't there anybody agoin' to set up with it?” she asked, in her hoarse +pipe. “It appears like folks hain't got any feelin's in New York. Woon't +some o' the neighbors come and offer to set up, without waitin' to be +asked?” + +“Oh, that's all right, mother. The men 'll attend to that. Don't you +bother any,” Mela coaxed, and she kept her arm round her mother, with +tender patience. + +“Why, Mely, child! I can't feel right to have it left to hirelin's so. +But there ain't anybody any more to see things done as they ought. If +Coonrod was on'y here--” + +“Well, mother, you are pretty mixed!” said Mela, with a strong tendency +to break into her large guffaw. But she checked herself and said: “I +know just how you feel, though. It keeps acomun' and agoun'; and it's +so and it ain't so, all at once; that's the plague of it. Well, father! +Ain't you goun' to come?” + +“I'm goin' to stay, Mela,” said the old man, gently, without moving. +“Get your mother to bed, that's a good girl.” + +“You goin' to set up with him, Jacob?” asked the old woman. + +“Yes, 'Liz'beth, I'll set up. You go to bed.” + +“Well, I will, Jacob. And I believe it 'll do you good to set up. I +wished I could set up with you; but I don't seem to have the stren'th I +did when the twins died. I must git my sleep, so's to--I don't like very +well to have you broke of your rest, Jacob, but there don't appear to be +anybody else. You wouldn't have to do it if Coonrod was here. There I go +ag'in! Mercy! mercy!” + +“Well, do come along, then, mother,” said Mela; and she got her out of +the room, with Mrs. Mandel's help, and up the stairs. + +From the top the old woman called down, “You tell Coonrod--” She +stopped, and he heard her groan out, “My Lord! my Lord!” + +He sat, one silence in the dining-room, where they had all lingered +together, and in the library beyond the hireling watcher sat, another +silence. The time passed, but neither moved, and the last noise in the +house ceased, so that they heard each other breathe, and the vague, +remote rumor of the city invaded the inner stillness. It grew louder +toward morning, and then Dryfoos knew from the watcher's deeper +breathing that he had fallen into a doze. + +He crept by him to the drawing-room, where his son was; the place was +full of the awful sweetness of the flowers that Fulkerson had brought, +and that lay above the pulseless breast. The old man turned up a burner +in the chandelier, and stood looking on the majestic serenity of the +dead face. + +He could not move when he saw his wife coming down the stairway in the +hall. She was in her long, white flannel bed gown, and the candle she +carried shook with her nervous tremor. He thought she might be walking +in her sleep, but she said, quite simply, “I woke up, and I couldn't git +to sleep ag'in without comin' to have a look.” She stood beside their +dead son with him, “well, he's beautiful, Jacob. He was the prettiest +baby! And he was always good, Coonrod was; I'll say that for him. I +don't believe he ever give me a minute's care in his whole life. I +reckon I liked him about the best of all the children; but I don't know +as I ever done much to show it. But you was always good to him, Jacob; +you always done the best for him, ever since he was a little feller. I +used to be afraid you'd spoil him sometimes in them days; but I guess +you're glad now for every time you didn't cross him. I don't suppose +since the twins died you ever hit him a lick.” She stooped and peered +closer at the face. “Why, Jacob, what's that there by his pore eye?” + Dryfoos saw it, too, the wound that he had feared to look for, and that +now seemed to redden on his sight. He broke into a low, wavering cry, +like a child's in despair, like an animal's in terror, like a soul's in +the anguish of remorse. + + + + +VII. + +The evening after the funeral, while the Marches sat together talking +it over, and making approaches, through its shadow, to the question of +their own future, which it involved, they were startled by the twitter +of the electric bell at their apartment door. It was really not so late +as the children's having gone to bed made it seem; but at nine o'clock +it was too late for any probable visitor except Fulkerson. It might +be he, and March was glad to postpone the impending question to his +curiosity concerning the immediate business Fulkerson might have with +him. He went himself to the door, and confronted there a lady deeply +veiled in black and attended by a very decorous serving-woman. + +“Are you alone, Mr. March--you and Mrs. March?” asked the lady, behind +her veil; and, as he hesitated, she said: “You don't know me! Miss +Vance”; and she threw back her veil, showing her face wan and agitated +in the dark folds. “I am very anxious to see you--to speak with you +both. May I come in?” + +“Why, certainly, Miss Vance,” he answered, still too much stupefied by +her presence to realize it. + +She promptly entered, and saying, with a glance at the hall chair by the +door, “My maid can sit here?” followed him to the room where he had left +his wife. + +Mrs. March showed herself more capable of coping with the fact. She +welcomed Miss Vance with the liking they both felt for the girl, and +with the sympathy which her troubled face inspired. + +“I won't tire you with excuses for coming, Mrs. March,” she said, +“for it was the only thing left for me to do; and I come at my aunt's +suggestion.” She added this as if it would help to account for her more +on the conventional plane, and she had the instinctive good taste to +address herself throughout to Mrs. March as much as possible, though +what she had to say was mainly for March. “I don't know how to begin--I +don't know how to speak of this terrible affair. But you know what I +mean. I feel as if I had lived a whole lifetime since it happened. I +don't want you to pity me for it,” she said, forestalling a politeness +from Mrs. March. “I'm the last one to be thought of, and you mustn't +mind me if I try to make you. I came to find out all of the truth that +I can, and when I know just what that is I shall know what to do. I have +read the inquest; it's all burned into my brain. But I don't care for +that--for myself: you must let me say such things without minding me. I +know that your husband--that Mr. March was there; I read his testimony; +and I wished to ask him--to ask him--” She stopped and looked +distractedly about. “But what folly! He must have said everything he +knew--he had to.” Her eyes wandered to him from his wife, on whom she +had kept them with instinctive tact. + +“I said everything--yes,” he replied. “But if you would like to know--” + +“Perhaps I had better tell you something first. I had just parted +with him--it couldn't have been more than half an hour--in front of +Brentano's; he must have gone straight to his death. We were talking, +and I--I said, Why didn't some one go among the strikers and plead with +them to be peaceable, and keep them from attacking the new men. I knew +that he felt as I did about the strikers: that he was their friend. Did +you see--do you know anything that makes you think he had been trying to +do that?” + +“I am sorry,” March began, “I didn't see him at all till--till I saw him +lying dead.” + +“My husband was there purely by accident,” Mrs. March put in. “I had +begged and entreated him not to go near the striking anywhere. And he +had just got out of the car, and saw the policeman strike that wretched +Lindau--he's been such an anxiety to me ever since we have had anything +to do with him here; my husband knew him when he was a boy in the West. +Mr. March came home from it all perfectly prostrated; it made us all +sick! Nothing so horrible ever came into our lives before. I assure you +it was the most shocking experience.” + +Miss Vance listened to her with that look of patience which those who +have seen much of the real suffering of the world--the daily portion of +the poor--have for the nervous woes of comfortable people. March hung +his head; he knew it would be useless to protest that his share of the +calamity was, by comparison, infinitesimally small. + +After she had heard Mrs. March to the end even of her repetitions, Miss +Vance said, as if it were a mere matter of course that she should have +looked the affair up, “Yes, I have seen Mr. Lindau at the hospital--” + +“My husband goes every day to see him,” Mrs. March interrupted, to give +a final touch to the conception of March's magnanimity throughout. + +“The poor man seems to have been in the wrong at the time,” said Miss +Vance. + +“I could almost say he had earned the right to be wrong. He's a man of +the most generous instincts, and a high ideal of justice, of equity--too +high to be considered by a policeman with a club in his hand,” said +March, with a bold defiance of his wife's different opinion of Lindau. +“It's the policeman's business, I suppose, to club the ideal when he +finds it inciting a riot.” + +“Oh, I don't blame Mr. Lindau; I don't blame the policeman; he was as +much a mere instrument as his club was. I am only trying to find out +how much I am to blame myself. I had no thought of Mr. Dryfoos's going +there--of his attempting to talk with the strikers and keep them quiet; +I was only thinking, as women do, of what I should try to do if I were a +man. + +“But perhaps he understood me to ask him to go--perhaps my words sent +him to his death.” + +She had a sort of calm in her courage to know the worst truth as to +her responsibility that forbade any wish to flatter her out of it. “I'm +afraid,” said March, “that is what can never be known now.” After a +moment he added: “But why should you wish to know? If he went there as +a peacemaker, he died in a good cause, in such a way as he would wish to +die, I believe.” + +“Yes,” said the girl; “I have thought of that. But death is awful; we +must not think patiently, forgivingly of sending any one to their +death in the best cause.”--“I fancy life was an awful thing to Conrad +Dryfoos,” March replied. “He was thwarted and disappointed, without even +pleasing the ambition that thwarted and disappointed him. That poor +old man, his father, warped him from his simple, lifelong wish to be a +minister, and was trying to make a business man of him. If it will be +any consolation to you to know it, Miss Vance, I can assure you that +he was very unhappy, and I don't see how he could ever have been happy +here.” + +“It won't,” said the girl, steadily. “If people are born into this +world, it's because they were meant to live in it. It isn't a question +of being happy here; no one is happy, in that old, selfish way, or can +be; but he could have been of great use.” + +“Perhaps he was of use in dying. Who knows? He may have been trying to +silence Lindau.” + +“Oh, Lindau wasn't worth it!” cried Mrs. March. + +Miss Vance looked at her as if she did not quite understand. Then she +turned to March. “He might have been unhappy, as we all are; but I know +that his life here would have had a higher happiness than we wish for or +aim for.” The tears began to run silently down her cheeks. + +“He looked strangely happy that day when he left me. He had hurt +himself somehow, and his face was bleeding from a scratch; he kept his +handkerchief up; he was pale, but such a light came into his face when +he shook hands--ah, I know he went to try and do what I said!” They were +all silent, while she dried her eyes and then put her handkerchief back +into the pocket from which she had suddenly pulled it, with a series of +vivid, young-ladyish gestures, which struck March by their incongruity +with the occasion of their talk, and yet by their harmony with the +rest of her elegance. “I am sorry, Miss Vance,” he began, “that I can't +really tell you anything more--” + +“You are very kind,” she said, controlling herself and rising quickly. +“I thank you--thank you both very much.” She turned to Mrs. March and +shook hands with her and then with him. “I might have known--I did know +that there wasn't anything more for you to tell. But at least I've found +out from you that there was nothing, and now I can begin to bear what I +must. How are those poor creatures--his mother and father, his sisters? +Some day, I hope, I shall be ashamed to have postponed them to the +thought of myself; but I can't pretend to be yet. I could not come to +the funeral; I wanted to.” + +She addressed her question to Mrs. March, who answered: “I can +understand. But they were pleased with the flowers you sent; people are, +at such times, and they haven't many friends.” + +“Would you go to see them?” asked the girl. “Would you tell them what +I've told you?” + +Mrs. March looked at her husband. + +“I don't see what good it would do. They wouldn't understand. But if it +would relieve you--” + +“I'll wait till it isn't a question of self-relief,” said the girl. +“Good-bye!” + +She left them to long debate of the event. At the end Mrs. March said, +“She is a strange being; such a mixture of the society girl and the +saint.” + +Her husband answered: “She's the potentiality of several kinds of +fanatic. She's very unhappy, and I don't see how she's to be happier +about that poor fellow. I shouldn't be surprised if she did inspire him +to attempt something of that kind.” + +“Well, you got out of it very well, Basil. I admired the way you +managed. I was afraid you'd say something awkward.” + +“Oh, with a plain line of truth before me, as the only possible thing, I +can get on pretty well. When it comes to anything decorative, I'd rather +leave it to you, Isabel.” + +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.” + +“Of course not,” said Fulkerson. “If you won't take a year, take three +months, and call it a Sabbatical summer; but go, anyway. You can make up +half a dozen numbers ahead, and Tom, here, knows your ways so well that +you needn't think about 'Every Other Week' from the time you start till +the time you try to bribe the customs inspector when you get back. I can +take a hack at the editing myself, if Tom's inspiration gives out, and +put a little of my advertising fire into the thing.” He laid his hand +on the shoulder of the young fellow who stood smiling by, and pushed and +shook him in the liking there was between them. “Now you go, March! Mrs. +Fulkerson feels just as I do about it; we had our outing last year, and +we want Mrs. March and you to have yours. You let me go down and engage +your passage, and--” + +“No, no!” the editor rebelled. “I'll think about it;” but as he turned +to the work he was so fond of and so weary of, he tried not to think +of the question again, till he closed his desk in the afternoon, and +started to walk home; the doctor had said he ought to walk, and he did +so, though he longed to ride, and looked wistfully at the passing cars. + +He knew he was in a rut, as his wife often said; but if it was a rut, +it was a support too; it kept him from wobbling: She always talked as if +the flowery fields of youth lay on either side of the dusty road he had +been going so long, and he had but to step aside from it, to be among +the butterflies and buttercups again; he sometimes indulged this +illusion, himself, in a certain ironical spirit which caressed while it +mocked the notion. They had a tacit agreement that their youth, if they +were ever to find it again, was to be looked for in Europe, where they +met when they were young, and they had never been quite without the hope +of going back there, some day, for a long sojourn. They had not seen the +time when they could do so; they were dreamers, but, as they recognized, +even dreaming is not free from care; and in his dream March had been +obliged to work pretty steadily, if not too intensely. He had been +forced to forego the distinctly literary ambition with which he had +started in life because he had their common living to make, and he could +not make it by writing graceful verse, or even graceful prose. He had +been many years in a sufficiently distasteful business, and he had lost +any thought of leaving it when it left him, perhaps because his hold on +it had always been rather lax, and he had not been able to conceal that +he disliked it. At any rate, he was supplanted in his insurance agency +at Boston by a subordinate in his office, and though he was at the same +time offered a place of nominal credit in the employ of the company, he +was able to decline it in grace of a chance which united the charm of +congenial work with the solid advantage of a better salary than he had +been getting for work he hated. It was an incredible chance, but it was +rendered appreciably real by the necessity it involved that they should +leave Boston, where they had lived all their married life, where Mrs. +March as well as their children was born, and where all their tender and +familiar ties were, and come to New York, where the literary enterprise +which formed his chance was to be founded. + +It was then a magazine of a new sort, which his business partner had +imagined in such leisure as the management of a newspaper syndicate +afforded him, and had always thought of getting March to edit. The +magazine which is also a book has since been realized elsewhere on more +or less prosperous terms, but not for any long period, and 'Every Other +Week' was apparently--the only periodical of the kind conditioned for +survival. It was at first backed by unlimited capital, and it had the +instant favor of a popular mood, which has since changed, but which did +not change so soon that the magazine had not time to establish itself in +a wide acceptance. It was now no longer a novelty, it was no longer +in the maiden blush of its first success, but it had entered upon its +second youth with the reasonable hope of many years of prosperity before +it. In fact it was a very comfortable living for all concerned, and the +Marches had the conditions, almost dismayingly perfect, in which they +had often promised themselves to go and be young again in Europe, when +they rebelled at finding themselves elderly in America. Their daughter +was married, and so very much to her mother's mind that she did not +worry about her, even though she lived so far away as Chicago, still a +wild frontier town to her Boston imagination; and their son, as soon +as he left college, had taken hold on 'Every Other Week', under his +father's instruction, with a zeal and intelligence which won him +Fulkerson's praise as a chip of the old block. These two liked each +other, and worked into each other's hands as cordially and aptly as +Fulkerson and March had ever done. It amused the father to see his son +offering Fulkerson the same deference which the Business End paid +to seniority in March himself; but in fact, Fulkerson's forehead was +getting, as he said, more intellectual every day; and the years were +pushing them all along together. + +Still, March had kept on in the old rut, and one day he fell down in it. +He had a long sickness, and when he was well of it, he was so slow in +getting his grip of work again that he was sometimes deeply discouraged. +His wife shared his depression, whether he showed or whether he hid it, +and when the doctor advised his going abroad, she abetted the doctor +with all the strength of a woman's hygienic intuitions. March himself +willingly consented, at first; but as soon as he got strength for his +work, he began to temporize and to demur. He said that he believed it +would do him just as much good to go to Saratoga, where they always had +such a good time, as to go to Carlsbad; and Mrs. March had been obliged +several times to leave him to his own undoing; she always took him more +vigorously in hand afterwards. + + + + +II. + +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.” + +She shook her head. “You couldn't! They've all been!” + +“All but about sixty or seventy millions,” said March. + +“Well, those are just the millions you don't know, and couldn't +imagine.” + +“I'm not so sure of that.” + +“And even if you could imagine them, you couldn't make them interesting. +All the interesting ones have been, anyway.” + +“Some of the uninteresting ones too. I used, to meet some of that sort +over there. I believe I would rather chance it for my pleasure with +those that hadn't been.” + +“Then why not do it? I know you could get something out of it.” + +“It might be a good thing,” he mused, “to take a couple who had passed +their whole life here in New York, too poor and too busy ever to go; and +had a perfect famine for Europe all the time. I could have them spend +their Sunday afternoons going aboard the different boats, and looking +up their accommodations. I could have them sail, in imagination, and +discover an imaginary Europe, and give their grotesque misconceptions +of it from travels and novels against a background of purely American +experience. We needn't go abroad to manage that. I think it would be +rather nice.” + +“I don't think it would be nice in the least,” said Mrs. March, “and if +you don't want to talk seriously, I would rather not talk at all.” + +“Well, then, let's talk about our Silver Wedding Journey.” + +“I see. You merely want to tease and I am not in the humor for it.” + +She said this in a great many different ways, and then she was really +silent. He perceived that she was hurt; and he tried to win her back to +good-humor. He asked her if she would not like to go over to Hoboken and +look at one of the Hanseatic League steamers, some day; and she +refused. When he sent the next day and got a permit to see the boat; she +consented to go. + + + + +III. + +He was one of those men who live from the inside outward; he often took +a hint for his actions from his fancies; and now because he had fancied +some people going to look at steamers on Sundays, he chose the next +Sunday himself for their visit to the Hanseatic boat at Hoboken. To +be sure it was a leisure day with him, but he might have taken the +afternoon of any other day, for that matter, and it was really that +invisible thread of association which drew him. + +The Colmannia had been in long enough to have made her toilet for the +outward voyage, and was looking her best. She was tipped and edged +with shining brass, without and within, and was red-carpeted and +white-painted as only a ship knows how to be. A little uniformed steward +ran before the visitors, and showed them through the dim white corridors +into typical state-rooms on the different decks; and then let them +verify their first impression of the grandeur of the dining-saloon, and +the luxury of the ladies' parlor and music-room. March made his wife +observe that the tables and sofas and easy-chairs, which seemed so +carelessly scattered about, were all suggestively screwed fast to the +floor against rough weather; and he amused himself with the heavy German +browns and greens and coppers in the decorations, which he said must +have been studied in color from sausage, beer, and spinach, to the +effect of those large march-panes in the roof. She laughed with him at +the tastelessness of the race which they were destined to marvel at more +and more; but she made him own that the stewardesses whom they saw were +charmingly like serving-maids in the 'Fliegende Blatter'; when they went +ashore she challenged his silence for some assent to her own conclusion +that the Colmannia was perfect. + +“She has only one fault,” he assented. “She's a ship.” + +“Yes,” said his wife, “and I shall want to look at the Norumbia before I +decide.” + +Then he saw that it was only a question which steamer they should take, +and not whether they should take any. He explained, at first gently and +afterwards savagely, that their visit to the Colmannia was quite enough +for him, and that the vessel was not built that he would be willing to +cross the Atlantic in. + +When a man has gone so far as that he has committed himself to the +opposite course in almost so many words; and March was neither surprised +nor abashed when he discovered himself, before they reached home, +offering his wife many reasons why they should go to Europe. She +answered to all, No, he had made her realize the horror of it so much +that she was glad to give it up. She gave it up, with the best feeling; +all that she would ask of him was that he should never mention Europe to +her again. She could imagine how much he disliked to go, if such a ship +as the Colmannia did not make him want to go. + +At the bottom of his heart he knew that he had not used her very well. +He had kindled her fancy with those notions of a Sabbatical year and a +Silver Wedding Journey, and when she was willing to renounce both he +had persisted in taking her to see the ship, only to tell her afterwards +that he would not go abroad on any account. It was by a psychological +juggle which some men will understand that he allowed himself the next +day to get the sailings of the Norumbia from the steamship office; he +also got a plan of the ship showing the most available staterooms, so +that they might be able to choose between her and the Colmannia from all +the facts. + + + + +IV. + +From this time their decision to go was none the less explicit because +so perfectly tacit. + +They began to amass maps and guides. She got a Baedeker for Austria and +he got a Bradshaw for the continent, which was never of the least use +there, but was for the present a mine of unavailable information. He +got a phrase-book, too, and tried to rub up his German. He used to read +German, when he was a boy, with a young enthusiasm for its romantic +poetry, and now, for the sake of Schiller and Uhland and Heine, he held +imaginary conversations with a barber, a bootmaker, and a banker, and +tried to taste the joy which he had not known in the language of those +poets for a whole generation. He perceived, of course, that unless the +barber, the bootmaker, and the banker answered him in terms which the +author of the phrase-book directed them to use, he should not get on +with them beyond his first question; but he did not allow this to +spoil his pleasure in it. In fact, it was with a tender emotion that he +realized how little the world, which had changed in everything else so +greatly, had changed in its ideal of a phrase-book. + +Mrs. March postponed the study of her Baedeker to the time and place for +it; and addressed herself to the immediate business of ascertaining +the respective merits of the Colmannia and Norumbia. She carried on her +researches solely among persons of her own sex; its experiences were +alone of that positive character which brings conviction, and she valued +them equally at first or second hand. She heard of ladies who would not +cross in any boat but the Colmannia, and who waited for months to get a +room on her; she talked with ladies who said that nothing would induce +them to cross in her. There were ladies who said she had twice the +motion that the Norumbia had, and the vibration from her twin screws +was frightful; it always was, on those twin-screw boats, and it did +not affect their testimony with Mrs. March that the Norumbia was a +twin-screw boat too. It was repeated to her in the third or fourth +degree of hear-say that the discipline on the Colmannia was as perfect +as that on the Cunarders; ladies whose friends had tried every line +assured her that the table of the Norumbia was almost as good as the +table of the French boats. To the best of the belief of lady witnesses +still living who had friends on board, the Colmannia had once got +aground, and the Norumbia had once had her bridge carried off by a tidal +wave; or it might be the Colmannia; they promised to ask and let her +know. Their lightest word availed with her against the most solemn +assurances of their husbands, fathers, or brothers, who might be all +very well on land, but in navigation were not to be trusted; they would +say anything from a reckless and culpable optimism. She obliged +March all the same to ask among them, but she recognized their guilty +insincerity when he came home saying that one man had told him you could +have played croquet on the deck of the Colmannia the whole way over when +he crossed, and another that he never saw the racks on in three passages +he had made in the Norumbia. + +The weight of evidence was, he thought, in favor of the Norumbia, but +when they went another Sunday to Hoboken, and saw the ship, Mrs. March +liked her so much less than the Colmannia that she could hardly wait for +Monday to come; she felt sure all the good rooms on the Colmannia would +be gone before they could engage one. + +From a consensus of the nerves of all the ladies left in town so late in +the season, she knew that the only place on any steamer where your room +ought to be was probably just where they could not get it. If you went +too high, you felt the rolling terribly, and people tramping up and down +on the promenade under your window kept you awake the whole night; if +you went too low, you felt the engine thump, thump, thump in your head +the whole way over. If you went too far forward, you got the pitching; +if you went aft, on the kitchen side, you got the smell of the cooking. +The only place, really, was just back of the dining-saloon on the south +side of the ship; it was smooth there, and it was quiet, and you had the +sun in your window all the way over. He asked her if he must take their +room there or nowhere, and she answered that he must do his best, but +that she would not be satisfied with any other place. + +In his despair he went down to the steamer office, and took a room which +one of the clerks said was the best. When he got home, it appeared from +reference to the ship's plan that it was the very room his wife had +wanted from the beginning, and she praised him as if he had used a +wisdom beyond his sex in getting it. + +He was in the enjoyment of his unmerited honor when a belated lady came +with her husband for an evening call, before going into the country. At +sight of the plans of steamers on the Marches' table, she expressed the +greatest wonder and delight that they were going to Europe. They had +supposed everybody knew it, by this time, but she said she had not heard +a word of it; and she went on with some felicitations which March found +rather unduly filial. In getting a little past the prime of life he did +not like to be used with too great consideration of his years, and he +did not think that he and his wife were so old that they need be treated +as if they were going on a golden wedding journey, and heaped with all +sorts of impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much and +being so much the better for the little outing! Under his breath, he +confounded this lady for her impudence; but he schooled himself to let +her rejoice at their going on a Hanseatic boat, because the Germans were +always so careful of you. She made her husband agree with her, and it +came out that he had crossed several times on both the Colmannia and +the Norumbia. He volunteered to say that the Colmannia, was a capital +sea-boat; she did not have her nose under water all the time; she was +steady as a rock; and the captain and the kitchen were simply out of +sight; some people did call her unlucky. + +“Unlucky?” Mrs. March echoed, faintly. “Why do they call her unlucky?” + +“Oh, I don't know. People will say anything about any boat. You know she +broke her shaft, once, and once she got caught in the ice.” + +Mrs. March joined him in deriding the superstition of people, and she +parted gayly with this over-good young couple. As soon as they were +gone, March knew that she would say: “You must change that ticket, my +dear. We will go in the Norumbia.” + +“Suppose I can't get as good a room on the Norumbia?” + +“Then we must stay.” + +In the morning after a night so bad that it was worse than no night at +all, she said she would go to the steamship office with him and question +them up about the Colmannia. The people there had never heard she was +called an unlucky boat; they knew of nothing disastrous in her history. +They were so frank and so full in their denials, and so kindly +patient of Mrs. March's anxieties, that he saw every word was carrying +conviction of their insincerity to her. At the end she asked what rooms +were left on the Norumbia, and the clerk whom they had fallen to looked +through his passenger list with a shaking head. He was afraid there was +nothing they would like. + +“But we would take anything,” she entreated, and March smiled to think +of his innocence in supposing for a moment that she had ever dreamed of +not going. + +“We merely want the best,” he put in. “One flight up, no noise or dust, +with sun in all the windows, and a place for fire on rainy days.” + +They must be used to a good deal of American joking which they do +not understand, in the foreign steamship offices. The clerk turned +unsmilingly to one of his superiors and asked him some question in +German which March could not catch, perhaps because it formed no part +of a conversation with a barber, a bootmaker or a banker. A brief +drama followed, and then the clerk pointed to a room on the plan of the +Norumbia and said it had just been given up, and they could have it if +they decided to take it at once. + +They looked, and it was in the very place of their room on the +Colmannia; it was within one of being the same number. It was so +providential, if it was providential at all, that they were both humbly +silent a moment; even Mrs. March was silent. In this supreme moment she +would not prompt her husband by a word, a glance, and it was from his +own free will that he said, “We will take it.” + +He thought it was his free will, but perhaps one's will is never free; +and this may have been an instance of pure determinism from all the +events before it. No event that followed affected it, though the day +after they had taken their passage on the Norumbia he heard that she +had once been in the worst sort of storm in the month of August. He +felt obliged to impart the fact to his wife, but she said that it proved +nothing for or against the ship, and confounded him more by her reason +than by all her previous unreason. Reason is what a man is never +prepared for in women; perhaps because he finds it so seldom in men. + + + + +V. + +During nearly the whole month that now passed before the date of sailing +it seemed to March that in some familiar aspects New York had never been +so interesting. He had not easily reconciled himself to the place after +his many years of Boston; but he had got used to the ugly grandeur, to +the noise and the rush, and he had divined more and more the careless +good-nature and friendly indifference of the vast, sprawling, ungainly +metropolis. There were happy moments when he felt a poetry unintentional +and unconscious in it, and he thought there was no point more favorable +for the sense of this than Stuyvesant Square, where they had a flat. +Their windows looked down into its tree-tops, and across them to +the truncated towers of St. George's, and to the plain red-brick, +white-trimmed front of the Friends' Meeting House; he came and went +between his dwelling and his office through the two places that form the +square, and after dinner his wife and he had a habit of finding seats by +one of the fountains in Livingston Place, among the fathers and mothers +of the hybrid East Side children swarming there at play. The elders read +their English or Italian or German or Yiddish journals, or gossiped, +or merely sat still and stared away the day's fatigue; while the little +ones raced in and out among them, crying and laughing, quarrelling and +kissing. Sometimes a mother darted forward and caught her child from the +brink of the basin; another taught hers to walk, holding it tightly up +behind by its short skirts; another publicly nursed her baby to sleep. + +While they still dreamed, but never thought, of going to Europe, the +Marches often said how European all this was; if these women had brought +their knitting or sewing it would have been quite European; but as soon +as they had decided to go, it all began to seem poignantly American. +In like manner, before the conditions of their exile changed, and they +still pined for the Old World, they contrived a very agreeable illusion +of it by dining now and then at an Austrian restaurant in Union Square; +but later when they began to be homesick for the American scenes they +had not yet left, they had a keener retrospective joy in the strictly +New York sunset they were bowed out into. + +The sunsets were uncommonly characteristic that May in Union Square. +They were the color of the red stripes in the American flag, and when +they were seen through the delirious architecture of the Broadway side, +or down the perspective of the cross-streets, where the elevated trains +silhouetted themselves against their pink, they imparted a feeling +of pervasive Americanism in which all impression of alien savors and +civilities was lost. One evening a fire flamed up in Hoboken, and +burned for hours against the west, in the lurid crimson tones of a +conflagration as memorably and appealingly native as the colors of the +sunset. + +The weather for nearly the whole month was of a mood familiar enough in +our early summer, and it was this which gave the sunsets their vitreous +pink. A thrilling coolness followed a first blaze of heat, and in the +long respite the thoughts almost went back to winter flannels. But at +last a hot wave was telegraphed from the West, and the week before the +Norumbia sailed was an anguish of burning days and breathless nights, +which fused all regrets and reluctances in the hope of escape, and made +the exiles of two continents long for the sea, with no care for either +shore. + + + + +VI. + +Their steamer was to sail early; they were up at dawn because they +had scarcely lain down, and March crept out into the square for a last +breath of its morning air before breakfast. He was now eager to be gone; +he had broken with habit, and he wished to put all traces of the past +out of sight. But this was curiously like all other early mornings in +his consciousness, and he could not alienate himself from the wonted +environment. He stood talking on every-day terms of idle speculation +with the familiar policeman, about a stray parrot in the top of one of +the trees, where it screamed and clawed at the dead branch to which it +clung. Then he went carelessly indoors again as if he were secure of +reading the reporter's story of it in that next day's paper which he +should not see. + +The sense of an inseverable continuity persisted through the breakfast, +which was like other breakfasts in the place they would be leaving +in summer shrouds just as they always left it at the end of June. The +illusion was even heightened by the fact that their son was to be in the +apartment all summer, and it would not be so much shut up as usual. The +heavy trunks had been sent to the ship by express the afternoon before, +and they had only themselves and their stateroom baggage to transport +to Hoboken; they came down to a carriage sent from a neighboring +livery-stable, and exchanged good-mornings with a driver they knew by +name. + +March had often fancied it a chief advantage of living in New York +that you could drive to the steamer and start for Europe as if you were +starting for Albany; he was in the enjoyment of this advantage now, but +somehow it was not the consolation he had expected. He knew, of course, +that if they had been coming from Boston, for instance, to sail in the +Norumbia, they would probably have gone on board the night before, and +sweltered through its heat among the strange smells and noises of the +dock and wharf, instead of breakfasting at their own table, and smoothly +bowling down the asphalt on to the ferryboat, and so to the very foot +of the gangway at the ship's side, all in the cool of the early morning. +But though he had now the cool of the early morning on these conditions, +there was by no means enough of it. + +The sun was already burning the life out of the air, with the threat of +another day of the terrible heat that had prevailed for a week past; and +that last breakfast at home had not been gay, though it had been lively, +in a fashion, through Mrs. March's efforts to convince her son that she +did not want him to come and see them off. Of, her daughter's coming all +the way from Chicago there was no question, and she reasoned that if +he did not come to say good-by on board it would be the same as if they +were not going. + +“Don't you want to go?” March asked with an obscure resentment. + +“I don't want to seem to go,” she said, with the calm of those who have +logic on their side. + +As she drove away with her husband she was not so sure of her +satisfaction in the feint she had arranged, though when she saw the +ghastly partings of people on board, she was glad she had not allowed +her son to come. She kept saying this to herself, and when they climbed +to the ship from the wharf, and found themselves in the crowd that +choked the saloons and promenades and passages and stairways and +landings, she said it more than once to her husband. + +She heard weary elders pattering empty politenesses of farewell with +friends who had come to see them off, as they stood withdrawn in such +refuges as the ship's architecture afforded, or submitted to be pushed +and twirled about by the surging throng when they got in its way. She +pitied these in their affliction, which she perceived that they could +not lighten or shorten, but she had no patience with the young girls, +who broke into shrieks of nervous laughter at the coming of certain +young men, and kept laughing and beckoning till they made the young men +see them; and then stretched their hands to them and stood screaming and +shouting to them across the intervening heads and shoulders. Some girls, +of those whom no one had come to bid good-by, made themselves merry, +or at least noisy, by rushing off to the dining-room and looking at the +cards on the bouquets heaping the tables, to find whether any one had +sent them flowers. Others whom young men had brought bunches of violets +hid their noses in them, and dropped their fans and handkerchiefs and +card-cases, and thanked the young men for picking them up. Others, +had got places in the music-room, and sat there with open boxes of +long-stemmed roses in their laps, and talked up into the faces of the +men, with becoming lifts and slants of their eyes and chins. In the +midst of the turmoil children struggled against people's feet and knees, +and bewildered mothers flew at the ship's officers and battered them +with questions alien to their respective functions as they amiably +stifled about in their thick uniforms. + +Sailors, slung over the ship's side on swinging seats, were placidly +smearing it with paint at that last moment; the bulwarks were thickly +set with the heads and arms of passengers who were making signs to +friends on shore, or calling messages to them that lost themselves in +louder noises midway. Some of the women in the steerage were crying; +they were probably not going to Europe for pleasure like the first-cabin +passengers, or even for their health; on the wharf below March saw the +face of one young girl twisted with weeping, and he wished he had not +seen it. He turned from it, and looked into the eyes of his son, who +was laughing at his shoulder. He said that he had to come down with a +good-by letter from his sister, which he made an excuse for following +them; but he had always meant to see them off, he owned. The letter had +just come with a special delivery stamp, and it warned them that she +had sent another good-by letter with some flowers on board. Mrs. March +scolded at them both, but with tears in her eyes, and in the renewed +stress of parting which he thought he had put from him, March went on +taking note, as with alien senses, of the scene before him, while they +all talked on together, and repeated the nothings they had said already. + +A rank odor of beet-root sugar rose from the far-branching sheds where +some freight steamers of the line lay, and seemed to mingle chemically +with the noise which came up from the wharf next to the Norumbia. The +mass of spectators deepened and dimmed away into the shadow of the +roofs, and along their front came files of carriages and trucks and +carts, and discharged the arriving passengers and their baggage, and +were lost in the crowd, which they penetrated like slow currents, +becoming clogged and arrested from time to time, and then beginning to +move again. + +The passengers incessantly mounted by the canvas-draped galleries +leading, fore and aft, into the ship. Bareheaded, blue-jacketed, +brass-buttoned stewards dodged skillfully in and out among them with +their hand-bags, holdalls, hat-boxes, and state-room trunks, and ran +before them into the different depths and heights where they hid these +burdens, and then ran back for more. Some of the passengers followed +them and made sure that their things were put in the right places; most +of them remained wedged among the earlier comers, or pushed aimlessly in +and out of the doors of the promenades. + +The baggage for the hold continually rose in huge blocks from the wharf, +with a loud clucking of the tackle, and sank into the open maw of the +ship, momently gathering herself for her long race seaward, with harsh +hissings and rattlings and gurglings. There was no apparent reason why +it should all or any of it end, but there came a moment when there began +to be warnings that were almost threats of the end. The ship's whistle +sounded, as if marking a certain interval; and Mrs. March humbly +entreated, sternly commanded, her son to go ashore, or else be carried +to Europe. They disputed whether that was the last signal or not; she +was sure it was, and she appealed to March, who was moved against his +reason. He affected to talk calmly with his son, and gave him some last +charges about 'Every Other Week'. + +Some people now interrupted their leave-taking; but the arriving +passengers only arrived more rapidly at the gang-ways; the bulks of +baggage swung more swiftly into the air. A bell rang, and there rose +women's cries, “Oh, that is the shore-bell!” and men's protests, “It is +only the first bell!” More and more began to descend the gangways, fore +and aft, and soon outnumbered those who were coming aboard. + +March tried not to be nervous about his son's lingering; he was ashamed +of his anxiety; but he said in a low voice, “Better be off, Tom.” + +His mother now said she did not care if Tom were really carried to +Europe; and at last he said, Well, he guessed he must go ashore, as if +there had been no question of that before; and then she clung to him +and would not let him go; but she acquired merit with herself at last by +pushing him into the gangway with her own hands: he nodded and waved his +hat from its foot, and mixed with the crowd. + +Presently there was hardly any one coming aboard, and the sailors began +to undo the lashings of the gangways from the ship's side; files of +men on the wharf laid hold of their rails; the stewards guarding their +approach looked up for the signal to come aboard; and in vivid +pantomime forbade some belated leavetakers to ascend. These stood aside, +exchanging bows and grins with the friends whom they could not reach; +they all tried to make one another hear some last words. The moment came +when the saloon gangway was detached; then it was pulled ashore, and the +section of the bulwarks opening to it was locked, not to be unlocked on +this side of the world. An indefinable impulse communicated itself to +the steamer: while it still seemed motionless it moved. The thick spread +of faces on the wharf, which had looked at times like some sort of +strange flowers in a level field, broke into a universal tremor, and the +air above them was filled with hats and handkerchiefs, as if with the +flight of birds rising from the field. + +The Marches tried to make out their son's face; they believed that they +did; but they decided that they had not seen him, and his mother said +that she was glad; it would only have made it harder to bear, though she +was glad he had come over to say good-by it had seemed so unnatural that +he should not, when everybody else was saying good-by. + +On the wharf color was now taking the place of form; the scene ceased +to have the effect of an instantaneous photograph; it was like an +impressionistic study. As the ship swung free of the shed and got into +the stream, the shore lost reality. Up to a certain moment, all was +still New York, all was even Hoboken; then amidst the grotesque and +monstrous shows of the architecture on either shore March felt himself +at sea and on the way to Europe. + +The fact was accented by the trouble people were already making with the +deck-steward about their steamer chairs, which they all wanted put in +the best places, and March, with a certain heart-ache, was involuntarily +verifying the instant in which he ceased to be of his native shores, +while still in full sight of them, when he suddenly reverted to them, +and as it were landed on them again in an incident that held him +breathless. A man, bareheaded, and with his arms flung wildly abroad, +came flying down the promenade from the steerage. “Capitan! Capitan! +There is a woman!” he shouted in nondescript English. “She must go hout! +She must go hout!” Some vital fact imparted itself to the ship's command +and seemed to penetrate to the ship's heart; she stopped, as if with +a sort of majestic relenting. A tug panted to her side, and lifted a +ladder to it; the bareheaded man, and a woman gripping a baby in her +arms, sprawled safely down its rungs to the deck of the tug, and the +steamer moved seaward again. + +“What is it? Oh, what is it?” his wife demanded of March's share of +their common ignorance. A young fellow passing stopped, as if arrested +by the tragic note in her voice, and explained that the woman had left +three little children locked up in her tenement while she came to bid +some friends on board good-by. + +He passed on, and Mrs. March said, “What a charming face he had!” even +before she began to wreak upon that wretched mother the overwrought +sympathy which makes good women desire the punishment of people who have +escaped danger. She would not hear any excuse for her. “Her children +oughtn't to have been out of her mind for an instant.” + +“Don't you want to send back a line to ours by the pilot?” March asked. + +She started from him. “Oh, was I really beginning to forget them?” + +In the saloon where people were scattered about writing pilot's letters +she made him join her in an impassioned epistle of farewell, which +once more left none of the nothings unsaid that they had many times +reiterated. She would not let him put the stamp on, for fear it would +not stick, and she had an agonizing moment of doubt whether it ought not +to be a German stamp; she was not pacified till the steward in charge of +the mail decided. + +“I shouldn't have forgiven myself,” March said, “if we hadn't let Tom +know that twenty minutes after he left us we were still alive and well.” + +“It's to Bella, too,” she reasoned. + +He found her making their state-room look homelike with their familiar +things when he came with their daughter's steamer letter and the flowers +and fruit she had sent. She said, Very well, they would all keep, and +went on with her unpacking. He asked her if she did not think these home +things made it rather ghastly, and she said if he kept on in that way +she should certainly go back on the pilot-boat. He perceived that her +nerves were spent. He had resisted the impulse to an ill-timed joke +about the life-preservers under their berths when the sound of the +breakfast-horn, wavering first in the distance, found its way nearer and +clearer down their corridor. + + + + +VII. + +In one of the many visits to the steamship office which his wife's +anxieties obliged him to make, March had discussed the question of seats +in the dining-saloon. At first he had his ambition for the captain's +table, but they convinced him more easily than he afterwards convinced +Mrs. March that the captain's table had become a superstition of the +past, and conferred no special honor. It proved in the event that the +captain of the Norumbia had the good feeling to dine in a lower saloon +among the passengers who paid least for their rooms. But while the +Marches were still in their ignorance of this, they decided to get what +adventure they could out of letting the head steward put them where he +liked, and they came in to breakfast with a careless curiosity to see +what he had done for them. + +There seemed scarcely a vacant place in the huge saloon; through the +oval openings in the centre they looked down into the lower saloon +and up into the music-room, as thickly thronged with breakfasters. +The tables were brightened with the bouquets and the floral designs of +ships, anchors, harps, and doves sent to the lady passengers, and at one +time the Marches thought they were going to be put before a steam-yacht +realized to the last detail in blue and white violets. The ports of the +saloon were open, and showed the level sea; the ship rode with no motion +except the tremor from her screws. The sound of talking and laughing +rose with the clatter of knives and forks and the clash of crockery; the +homely smell of the coffee and steak and fish mixed with the spice of +the roses and carnations; the stewards ran hither and thither, and a +young foolish joy of travel welled up in the elderly hearts of the pair. +When the head steward turned out the swivel-chairs where they were to +sit they both made an inclination toward the people already at table, as +if it had been a company at some far-forgotten table d'hote in the later +sixties. The head steward seemed to understand as well as speak English, +but the table-stewards had only an effect of English, which they +eked out with “Bleace!” for all occasions of inquiry, apology, or +reassurance, as the equivalent of their native “Bitte!” Otherwise there +was no reason to suppose that they did not speak German, which was the +language of a good half of the passengers. The stewards looked English, +however, in conformity to what seems the ideal of every kind of +foreign seafaring people, and that went a good way toward making them +intelligible. + +March, to whom his wife mainly left their obeisance, made it so +tentative that if it should meet no response he could feel that it had +been nothing more than a forward stoop, such as was natural in sitting +down. He need not really have taken this precaution; those whose eyes he +caught more or less nodded in return. + +A nice-looking boy of thirteen or fourteen, who had the place on the +left of the lady in the sofa seat under the port, bowed with almost +magisterial gravity, and made the lady on the sofa smile, as if she were +his mother and understood him. March decided that she had been some time +a widow; and he easily divined that the young couple on her right had +been so little time husband and wife that they would rather not have +it known. Next them was a young lady whom he did not at first think so +good-looking as she proved later to be, though she had at once a pretty +nose, with a slight upward slant at the point, long eyes under fallen +lashes, a straight forehead, not too high, and a mouth which perhaps the +exigencies of breakfasting did not allow all its characteristic charm. +She had what Mrs. March thought interesting hair, of a dull black, +roughly rolled away from her forehead and temples in a fashion not +particularly becoming to her, and she had the air of not looking so well +as she might if she had chosen. The elderly man on her right, it was +easy to see, was her father; they had a family likeness, though his fair +hair, now ashen with age, was so different from hers. He wore his +beard cut in the fashion of the Second Empire, with a Louis Napoleonic +mustache, imperial, and chin tuft; his neat head was cropt close; +and there was something Gallic in its effect and something remotely +military: he had blue eyes, really less severe than he meant, though +be frowned a good deal, and managed them with glances of a staccato +quickness, as if challenging a potential disagreement with his opinions. + +The gentleman on his right, who sat at the head of the table, was of the +humorous, subironical American expression, and a smile at the corner +of his kindly mouth, under an iron-gray full beard cut short, at once +questioned and tolerated the new-comers as he glanced at them. He +responded to March's bow almost as decidedly as the nice boy, whose +mother he confronted at the other end of the table, and with his comely +bulk formed an interesting contrast to her vivid slightness. She was +brilliantly dark, behind the gleam of the gold-rimmed glasses perched on +her pretty nose. + +If the talk had been general before the Marches came, it did not at once +renew itself in that form. Nothing was said while they were having their +first struggle with the table-stewards, who repeated the order as if to +show how fully they had misunderstood it. The gentleman at the head +of the table intervened at last, and then, “I'm obliged to you,” March +said, “for your German. I left mine in a phrase-book in my other coat +pocket.” + +“Oh, I wasn't speaking German,” said the other. “It was merely their +kind of English.” + +The company were in the excitement of a novel situation which disposes +people to acquaintance, and this exchange of small pleasantries made +every one laugh, except the father and daughter; but they had the effect +of being tacitly amused. + +The mother of the nice boy said to Mrs. March, “You may not get what you +ordered, but it will be good.” + +“Even if you don't know what it is!” said the young bride, and then +blushed, as if she had been too bold. + +Mrs. March liked the blush and the young bride for it, and she asked, +“Have you ever been on one of these German boats before? They seem very +comfortable.” + +“Oh, dear, no! we've never been on any boat before.” She made a little +petted mouth of deprecation, and added, simple-heartedly, “My husband +was going out on business, and he thought he might as well take me +along.” + +The husband seemed to feel himself brought in by this, and said he +did not see why they should not make it a pleasure-trip, too. They put +themselves in a position to be patronized by their deference, and in the +pauses of his talk with the gentleman at the head of the table, March +heard his wife abusing their inexperience to be unsparingly instructive +about European travel. He wondered whether she would be afraid to own +that it was nearly thirty years since she had crossed the ocean; though +that might seem recent to people who had never crossed at all. + +They listened with respect as she boasted in what an anguish of wisdom +she had decided between the Colmannia and the Norumbia. The wife said +she did not know there was such a difference in steamers, but when Mrs. +March perfervidly assured her that there was all the difference in the +world, she submitted and said she supposed she ought to be thankful that +they, had hit upon the right one. They had telegraphed for berths and +taken what was given them; their room seemed to be very nice. + +“Oh,” said Mrs. March, and her husband knew that she was saying it to +reconcile them to the inevitable, “all the rooms on the Norumbia are +nice. The only difference is that if they are on the south side you have +the sun.” + +“I'm not sure which is the south side,” said the bride. “We seem to have +been going west ever since we started, and I feel as if we should reach +home in the morning if we had a good night. Is the ocean always so +smooth as this?” + +“Oh, dear, no!” said Mrs. March. “It's never so smooth as this,” and +she began to be outrageously authoritative about the ocean weather. She +ended by declaring that the June passages were always good, and that +if the ship kept a southerly course they would have no fogs and no +icebergs. She looked round, and caught her husband's eye. “What is it? +Have I been bragging? Well, you understand,” she added to the bride, +“I've only been over once, a great while ago, and I don't really know +anything about it,” and they laughed together. “But I talked so much +with people after we decided to go, that I feel as if I had been a +hundred times.” + +“I know,” said the other lady, with caressing intelligence. “That is +just the way with--” She stopped, and looked at the young man whom the +head steward was bringing up to take the vacant place next to March. He +came forward, stuffing his cap into the pocket of his blue serge sack, +and smiled down on the company with such happiness in his gay eyes that +March wondered what chance at this late day could have given any human +creature his content so absolute, and what calamity could be lurking +round the corner to take it out of him. The new-comer looked at March as +if he knew him, and March saw at a second glance that he was the young +fellow who had told him about the mother put off after the start. He +asked him whether there was any change in the weather yet outside, and +he answered eagerly, as if the chance to put his happiness into the mere +sound of words were a favor done him, that their ship had just spoken +one of the big Hanseatic mailboats, and she had signalled back that she +had met ice; so that they would probably keep a southerly course, and +not have it cooler till they were off the Banks. + +The mother of the boy said, “I thought we must be off the Banks when I +came out of my room, but it was only the electric fan at the foot of the +stairs.” + +“That was what I thought,” said Mrs. March. “I almost sent my husband +back for my shawl!” Both the ladies laughed and liked each other for +their common experience. + +The gentleman at the head of the table said, “They ought to have fans +going there by that pillar, or else close the ports. They only let in +heat.” + +They easily conformed to the American convention of jocosity in their +talk; it perhaps no more represents the individual mood than the +convention of dulness among other people; but it seemed to make the +young man feel at home. + +“Why, do you think it's uncomfortably warm?” he asked, from what March +perceived to be a meteorology of his own. He laughed and added, “It is +pretty summerlike,” as if he had not thought of it before. He talked +of the big mail-boat, and said he would like to cross on such a boat as +that, and then he glanced at the possible advantage of having your own +steam-yacht like the one which he said they had just passed, so near +that you could see what a good time the people were having on board. +He began to speak to the Marches; his talk spread to the young couple +across the table; it visited the mother on the sofa in a remark which +she might ignore without apparent rejection, and without really avoiding +the boy, it glanced off toward the father and daughter, from whom it +fell, to rest with the gentleman at the head of the table. + +It was not that the father and daughter had slighted his overture, if it +was so much as that, but that they were tacitly preoccupied, or were +of some philosophy concerning their fellow-breakfasters which did +not suffer them, for the present, at least, to share in the common +friendliness. This is an attitude sometimes produced in people by +a sense of just, or even unjust, superiority; sometimes by serious +trouble; sometimes by transient annoyance. The cause was not so +deep-seated but Mrs. March, before she rose from her place, believed +that she had detected a slant of the young lady's eyes, from under her +lashes, toward the young man; and she leaped to a conclusion concerning +them in a matter where all logical steps are impertinent. She did not +announce her arrival at this point till the young man had overtaken her +before she got out of the saloon, and presented the handkerchief she had +dropped under the table. + +He went away with her thanks, and then she said to her husband, “Well, +he's perfectly charming, and I don't wonder she's taken with him; that +kind of cold girl would be, though I'm not sure that she is cold. She's +interesting, and you could see that he thought so, the more he looked +at her; I could see him looking at her from the very first instant; he +couldn't keep his eyes off her; she piqued his curiosity, and made him +wonder about her.” + +“Now, look here, Isabel! This won't do. I can stand a good deal, but I +sat between you and that young fellow, and you couldn't tell whether he +was looking at that girl or not.” + +“I could! I could tell by the expression of her face.” + +“Oh, well! If it's gone as far as that with you, I give it up. When are +you going to have them married?” + +“Nonsense! I want you to find out who all those people are. How are you +going to do it?” + +“Perhaps the passenger list will say,” he suggested. + + + + +VIII. + +The list did not say of itself, but with the help of the head steward's +diagram it said that the gentleman at the head of the table was Mr. R. +M. Kenby; the father and the daughter were Mr. E. B. Triscoe and Miss +Triscoe; the bridal pair were Mr. and Mrs. Leffers; the mother and her +son were Mrs. Adding and Mr. Roswell Adding; the young man who came in +last was Mr. L. J. Burnamy. March carried the list, with these names +carefully checked and rearranged on a neat plan of the table, to his +wife in her steamer chair, and left her to make out the history and +the character of the people from it. In this sort of conjecture long +experience had taught him his futility, and he strolled up and down and +looked at the life about him with no wish to penetrate it deeply. + +Long Island was now a low yellow line on the left. Some fishing-boats +flickered off the shore; they met a few sail, and left more behind; +but already, and so near one of the greatest ports of the world, the +spacious solitude of the ocean was beginning. There was no swell; the +sea lay quite flat, with a fine mesh of wrinkles on its surface, and the +sun flamed down upon it from a sky without a cloud. With the light fair +wind, there was no resistance in the sultry air, the thin, dun smoke +from the smoke-stack fell about the decks like a stifling veil. + +The promenades, were as uncomfortably crowded as the sidewalk of +Fourteenth Street on a summer's day, and showed much the social average +of a New York shopping thoroughfare. Distinction is something that does +not always reveal itself at first sight on land, and at sea it is still +more retrusive. A certain democracy of looks and clothes was the most +notable thing to March in the apathetic groups and detached figures. His +criticism disabled the saloon passengers of even so much personal appeal +as he imagined in some of the second-cabin passengers whom he saw across +their barrier; they had at least the pathos of their exclusion, and +he could wonder if they felt it or envied him. At Hoboken he had seen +certain people coming on board who looked like swells; but they had +now either retired from the crowd, or they had already conformed to the +prevailing type. It was very well as a type; he was of it himself; but +he wished that beauty as well as distinction had not been so lost in it. + +In fact, he no longer saw so much beauty anywhere as he once did. It +might be that he saw life more truly than when he was young, and that +his glasses were better than his eyes had been; but there were analogies +that forbade his thinking so, and he sometimes had his misgivings that +the trouble was with his glasses. He made what he could of a pretty girl +who had the air of not meaning to lose a moment from flirtation, and was +luring her fellow-passengers from under her sailor hat. She had already +attached one of them; and she was hooking out for more. She kept moving +herself from the waist up, as if she worked there on a pivot, showing +now this side and now that side of her face, and visiting the admirer +she had secured with a smile as from the lamp of a revolving light as +she turned. + +While he was dwelling upon this folly, with a sense of impersonal +pleasure in it as complete through his years as if he were already a +disembodied spirit, the pulse of the engines suddenly ceased, and he +joined the general rush to the rail, with a fantastic expectation of +seeing another distracted mother put off; but it was only the pilot +leaving the ship. He was climbing down the ladder which hung over the +boat, rising and sinking on the sea below, while the two men in her held +her from the ship's side with their oars; in the offing lay the white +steam-yacht which now replaces the picturesque pilot-sloop of other +times. The Norumbia's screws turned again under half a head of steam; +the pilot dropped from the last rung of the ladder into the boat, and +caught the bundle of letters tossed after him. Then his men let go the +line that was towing their craft, and the incident of the steamer's +departure was finally closed. It had been dramatically heightened +perhaps by her final impatience to be off at some added risks to the +pilot and his men, but not painfully so, and March smiled to think how +men whose lives are all of dangerous chances seem always to take as many +of them as they can. + +He heard a girl's fresh voice saying at his shoulder, “Well, now we are +off; and I suppose you're glad, papa!” + +“I'm glad we're not taking the pilot on, at least,” answered the elderly +man whom the girl had spoken to; and March turned to see the father and +daughter whose reticence at the breakfast table had interested him. +He wondered that he had left her out of the account in estimating +the beauty of the ship's passengers: he saw now that she was not only +extremely pretty, but as she moved away she was very graceful; she even +had distinction. He had fancied a tone of tolerance, and at the same +time of reproach in her voice, when she spoke, and a tone of defiance +and not very successful denial in her father's; and he went back with +these impressions to his wife, whom he thought he ought to tell why the +ship had stopped. + +She had not noticed the ship's stopping, in her study of the passenger +list, and she did not care for the pilot's leaving; but she seemed to +think his having overheard those words of the father and daughter an +event of prime importance. With a woman's willingness to adapt the +means to the end she suggested that he should follow them up and try to +overhear something more; she only partially realized the infamy of her +suggestion when he laughed in scornful refusal. + +“Of course I don't want you to eavesdrop, but I do want you to find out +about them. And about Mr. Burnamy, too. I can wait, about the others, +or manage for myself, but these are driving me to distraction. Now, will +you?” + +He said he would do anything he could with honor, and at one of the +earliest turns he made on the other side of the ship he was smilingly +halted by Mr. Burnamy, who asked to be excused, and then asked if he +were not Mr. March of 'Every Other Week'; he had seen the name on the +passenger list, and felt sure it must be the editor's. He seemed so +trustfully to expect March to remember his own name as that of a writer +from whom he had accepted a short poem, yet unprinted, that the editor +feigned to do so until he really did dimly recall it. He even recalled +the short poem, and some civil words he said about it caused Burnamy to +overrun in confidences that at once touched and amused him. + + + + +IX. + +Burnamy, it seemed, had taken passage on the Norumbia because he found, +when he arrived in New York the day before, that she was the first boat +out. His train was so much behind time that when he reached the office +of the Hanseatic League it was nominally shut, but he pushed in by +sufferance of the janitor, and found a berth, which had just been given +up, in one of the saloon-deck rooms. It was that or nothing; and he felt +rich enough to pay for it himself if the Bird of Prey, who had cabled +him to come out to Carlsbad as his secretary, would not stand the +difference between the price and that of the lower-deck six-in-a-room +berth which he would have taken if he had been allowed a choice. + +With the three hundred dollars he had got for his book, less the price +of his passage, changed into German bank-notes and gold pieces, and +safely buttoned in the breast pocket of his waistcoat, he felt as safe +from pillage as from poverty when he came out from buying his ticket; he +covertly pressed his arm against his breast from time to time, for the +joy of feeling his money there and not from any fear of finding it gone. +He wanted to sing, he wanted to dance; he could not believe it was he, +as he rode up the lonely length of Broadway in the cable-car, between +the wild, irregular walls of the canyon which the cable-cars have all to +themselves at the end of a summer afternoon. + +He went and dined, and he thought he dined well, at a Spanish-American +restaurant, for fifty cents, with a half-bottle of California claret +included. When he came back to Broadway he was aware that it was +stiflingly hot in the pinkish twilight, but he took a cable-car again +in lack of other pastime, and the motion served the purpose of a breeze, +which he made the most of by keeping his hat off. It did not really +matter to him whether it was hot or cool; he was imparadised in weather +which had nothing to do with the temperature. Partly because he was born +to such weather, in the gayety of soul which amused some people +with him, and partly because the world was behaving as he had always +expected, he was opulently content with the present moment. But he +thought very tolerantly of the future, and he confirmed himself in the +decision he had already made, to stick to Chicago when he came back to +America. New York was very well, and he had no sentiment about Chicago; +but he had got a foothold there; he had done better with an Eastern +publisher, he believed, by hailing from the West, and he did not believe +it would hurt him with the Eastern public to keep on hailing from the +West. + +He was glad of a chance to see Europe, but he did not mean to come home +so dazzled as to see nothing else against the American sky. He fancied, +for he really knew nothing, that it was the light of Europe, not its +glare that he wanted, and he wanted it chiefly on his material, so as +to see it more and more objectively. It was his power of detachment +from this that had enabled him to do his sketches in the paper with such +charm as to lure a cash proposition from a publisher when he put them +together for a book, but he believed that his business faculty had +much to do with his success; and he was as proud of that as of the book +itself. Perhaps he was not so very proud of the book; he was at least +not vain of it; he could, detach himself from his art as well as his +material. + +Like all literary temperaments he was of a certain hardness, in spite of +the susceptibilities that could be used to give coloring to his work. +He knew this well enough, but he believed that there were depths of +unprofessional tenderness in his nature. He was good to his mother, and +he sent her money, and wrote to her in the little Indiana town where he +had left her when he came to Chicago. After he got that invitation from +the Bird of Prey, he explored his heart for some affection that he had +not felt for him before, and he found a wish that his employer should +not know it was he who had invented that nickname for him. He promptly +avowed this in the newspaper office which formed one of the eyries of +the Bird of Prey, and made the fellows promise not to give him away. +He failed to move their imagination when he brought up as a reason for +softening toward him that he was from Burnamy's own part of Indiana, +and was a benefactor of Tippecanoe University, from which Burnamy was +graduated. But they, relished the cynicism of his attempt; and they were +glad of his good luck, which he was getting square and not rhomboid, +as most people seem to get their luck. They liked him, and some of them +liked him for his clean young life as well as for his cleverness. His +life was known to be as clean as a girl's, and he looked like a girl +with his sweet eyes, though he had rather more chin than most girls. + +The conductor came to reverse his seat, and Burnamy told him he guessed +he would ride back with him as far as the cars to the Hoboken Ferry, if +the conductor would put him off at the right place. It was nearly nine +o'clock, and he thought he might as well be going over to the ship, +where he had decided to pass the night. After he found her, and went +on board, he was glad he had not gone sooner. A queasy odor of drainage +stole up from the waters of the dock, and mixed with the rank, gross +sweetness of the bags of beet-root sugar from the freight-steamers; +there was a coming and going of carts and trucks on the wharf, and on +the ship a rattling of chains and a clucking of pulleys, with sudden +outbreaks and then sudden silences of trampling sea-boots. Burnamy +looked into the dining-saloon and the music-room, with the notion +of trying for some naps there; then he went to his state-room. His +room-mate, whoever he was to be, had not come; and he kicked off his +shoes and threw off his coat and tumbled into his berth. + +He meant to rest awhile, and then get up and spend the night in +receiving impressions. He could not think of any one who had done the +facts of the eve of sailing on an Atlantic liner. He thought he would +use the material first in a letter to the paper and afterwards in a +poem; but he found himself unable to grasp the notion of its essential +relation to the choice between chicken croquettes and sweetbreads as +entrees of the restaurant dinner where he had been offered neither; he +knew that he had begun to dream, and that he must get up. He was just +going to get up, when he woke to a sense of freshness in the air, +penetrating from the new day outside. He looked at his watch and found +it was quarter past six; he glanced round the state-room and saw that +he had passed the night alone in it. Then he splashed himself hastily at +the basin next his berth, and jumped into his clothes, and went on deck, +anxious to lose no feature or emotion of the ship's departure. + +When she was fairly off he returned to his room to change the thick coat +he had put on at the instigation of the early morning air. His room-mate +was still absent, but he was now represented by his state-room baggage, +and Burnamy tried to infer him from it. He perceived a social quality +in his dress-coat case, capacious gladstone, hat-box, rug, umbrella, +and sole-leather steamer trunk which he could not attribute to his own +equipment. The things were not so new as his; they had an effect of +polite experience, with a foreign registry and customs label on them +here and there. They had been chosen with both taste and knowledge, and +Burnamy would have said that they were certainly English things, if it +had not been for the initials U. S. A. which followed the name of E. B. +Triscoe on the end of the steamer trunk showing itself under the foot of +the lower berth. + +The lower berth had fallen to Burnamy through the default of the +passenger whose ticket he had got at the last hour; the clerk in the +steamer office had been careful to impress him with this advantage, and +he now imagined a trespass on his property. But he reassured himself by +a glance at his ticket, and went out to watch the ship's passage down +the stream and through the Narrows. After breakfast he came to his room +again, to see what could be done from his valise to make him look better +in the eyes of a girl whom he had seen across the table; of course he +professed a much more general purpose. He blamed himself for not having +got at least a pair of the white tennis-shoes which so many of the +passengers were wearing; his russet shoes had turned shabby on his feet; +but there was a pair of enamelled leather boots in his bag which he +thought might do. + +His room was in the group of cabins on the upper deck; he had already +missed his way to it once by mistaking the corridor which it opened +into; and he was not sure that he was not blundering again when he +peered down the narrow passage where he supposed it was. A lady was +standing at an open state-room door, resting her hands against the jambs +and leaning forward with her head within and talking to some one there. +Before he could draw back and try another corridor he heard her say: +“Perhaps he's some young man, and wouldn't care.” + +Burnamy could not make out the answer that came from within. The lady +spoke again in a tone of reluctant assent, “No, I don't suppose you +could; but if he understood, perhaps he would offer.” + +She drew her head out of the room, stepping back a pace, and lingering +a moment at the threshold. She looked round over her shoulder and +discovered Burnamy, where he stood hesitating at the head of the +passage. She ebbed before him, and then flowed round him in her instant +escape; with some murmured incoherencies about speaking to her father, +she vanished in a corridor on the other side of the ship, while he stood +staring into the doorway of his room. + +He had seen that she was the young lady for whom he had come to put on +his enamelled shoes, and he saw that the person within was the elderly +gentleman who had sat next her at breakfast. He begged his pardon, as he +entered, and said he hoped he should not disturb him. “I'm afraid I left +my things all over the place, when I got up this morning.” + +The other entreated him not to mention it and went on taking from his +hand-bag a variety of toilet appliances which the sight of made Burnamy +vow to keep his own simple combs and brushes shut in his valise all the +way over. “You slept on board, then,” he suggested, arresting himself +with a pair of low shoes in his hand; he decided to put them in a +certain pocket of his steamer bag. + +“Oh, yes,” Burnamy laughed, nervously: “I came near oversleeping, and +getting off to sea without knowing it; and I rushed out to save myself, +and so--” + +He began to gather up his belongings while he followed the movements of +Mr. Triscoe with a wistful eye. He would have liked to offer his +lower berth to this senior of his, when he saw him arranging to take +possession of the upper; but he did not quite know how to manage it. He +noticed that as the other moved about he limped slightly, unless it +were rather a weary easing of his person from one limb to the other. He +stooped to pull his trunk out from under the berth, and Burnamy sprang +to help him. + +“Let me get that out for you!” He caught it up and put it on the sofa +under the port. “Is that where you want it?” + +“Why, yes,” the other assented. “You're very good,” and as he took +out his key to unlock the trunk he relented a little farther to the +intimacies of the situation. “Have you arranged with the bath-steward +yet? It's such a full boat.” + +“No, I haven't,” said Burnamy, as if he had tried and failed; till then +he had not known that there was a bath-steward. “Shall I get him for +you?” + +“No; no. Our bedroom-steward will send him, I dare say, thank you.” + +Mr. Triscoe had got his trunk open, and Burnamy had no longer an excuse +for lingering. In his defeat concerning the bath-steward, as he felt it +to be, he had not the courage, now, to offer the lower berth. He went +away, forgetting to change his shoes; but he came back, and as soon as +he got the enamelled shoes on, and shut the shabby russet pair in his +bag, he said, abruptly: “Mr. Triscoe, I wish you'd take the lower berth. +I got it at the eleventh hour by some fellow's giving it up, and it +isn't as if I'd bargained for it a month ago.” + +The elder man gave him one of his staccato glances in which Burnamy +fancied suspicion and even resentment. But he said, after the moment of +reflection which he gave himself, “Why, thank you, if you don't mind, +really.” + +“Not at all!” cried the young man. “I should like the upper berth +better. We'll, have the steward change the sheets.” + +“Oh, I'll see that he does that,” said Mr. Triscoe. “I couldn't allow +you to take any trouble about it.” He now looked as if he wished Burnamy +would go, and leave him to his domestic arrangements. + + + + +X. + +In telling about himself Burnamy touched only upon the points which he +believed would take his listener's intelligent fancy, and he stopped so +long before he had tired him that March said he would like to introduce +him to his wife. He saw in the agreeable young fellow an image of his +own youth, with some differences which, he was willing to own, were to +the young fellow's advantage. But they were both from the middle West; +in their native accent and their local tradition they were the same; +they were the same in their aspirations; they were of one blood in their +literary impulse to externate their thoughts and emotions. + +Burnamy answered, with a glance at his enamelled shoes, that he would be +delighted, and when her husband brought him up to her, Mrs. March said +she was always glad to meet the contributors to the magazine, and asked +him whether he knew Mr. Kendricks, who was her favorite. Without giving +him time to reply to a question that seemed to depress him, she said +that she had a son who must be nearly his own age, and whom his father +had left in charge of 'Every Other Week' for the few months they were +to be gone; that they had a daughter married and living in Chicago. She +made him sit down by her in March's chair, and before he left them March +heard him magnanimously asking whether Mr. Kendricks was going to do +something more for the magazine soon. He sauntered away and did not know +how quickly Burnamy left this question to say, with the laugh and blush +which became him in her eyes: + +“Mrs. March, there is something I should like to tell you about, if you +will let me.” + +“Why, certainly, Mr. Burnamy,” she began, but she saw that he did not +wish her to continue. + +“Because,” he went on, “it's a little matter that I shouldn't like to go +wrong in.” + +He told her of his having overheard what Miss Triscoe had said to her +father, and his belief that she was talking about the lower berth. He +said he would have wished to offer it, of course, but now he was afraid +they might think he had overheard them and felt obliged to do it. + +“I see,” said Mrs. March, and she added, thoughtfully, “She looks like +rather a proud girl.” + +“Yes,” the young fellow sighed. + +“She is very charming,” she continued, thoughtfully, but not so +judicially. + +“Well,” Burnamy owned, “that is certainly one of the complications,” and +they laughed together. + +She stopped herself after saying, “I see what you mean,” and suggested, +“I think I should be guided by circumstances. It needn't be done at +once, I suppose.” + +“Well,” Burnamy began, and then he broke out, with a laugh of +embarrassment, “I've done it already.” + +“Oh! Then it wasn't my advice, exactly, that you wanted.” + +“No!” + +“And how did he take it?” + +“He said he should be glad to make the exchange if I really didn't +mind.” Burnamy had risen restlessly, and she did not ask him to stay. +She merely said: + +“Oh, well, I'm glad it turned out so nicely.” + +“I'm so glad you think it was the thing to do.” He managed to laugh +again, but he could not hide from her that he was not feeling altogether +satisfied. “Would you like me to send Mr. March, if I see him?” he +asked, as if he did not know on what other terms to get away. + +“Do, please!” she entreated, and it seemed to her that he had hardly +left her when her husband came up. “Why, where in the world did he find +you so soon?” + +“Did you send him for me? I was just hanging round for him to go.” March +sank into the chair at her side. “Well, is he going to marry her?” + +“Oh, you may laugh! But there is something very exciting!” She told him +what had happened, and of her belief that Burnamy's handsome behavior +had somehow not been met in kind. + +March gave himself the pleasure of an immense laugh. “It seems to me +that this Mr. Burnamy of yours wanted a little more gratitude than he +was entitled to. Why shouldn't he have offered him the lower berth? And +why shouldn't the old gentleman have taken it just as he did? Did you +want him to make a counteroffer of his daughter's hand? If he does, I +hope Mr. Burnamy won't come for your advice till after he's accepted +her.” + +“He wasn't very candid. I hoped you would speak about that. Don't you +think it was rather natural, though?” + +“For him, very likely. But I think you would call it sinuous in some one +you hadn't taken a fancy to.” + +“No, no. I wish to be just. I don't see how he could have come straight +at it. And he did own up at last.” She asked him what Burnamy had done +for the magazine, and he could remember nothing but that one small poem, +yet unprinted; he was rather vague about its value, but said it had +temperament. + +“He has temperament, too,” she commented, and she had made him tell her +everything he knew, or could be forced to imagine about Burnamy, before +she let the talk turn to other things. + +The life of the promenade had already settled into seafaring form; the +steamer chairs were full, and people were reading or dozing in them +with an effect of long habit. Those who would be walking up and down had +begun their walks; some had begun going in and out of the smoking-room; +ladies who were easily affected by the motion were lying down in the +music-room. Groups of both sexes were standing at intervals along the +rail, and the promenaders were obliged to double on a briefer course or +work slowly round them. Shuffleboard parties at one point and ring-toss +parties at another were forming among the young people. It was as lively +and it was as dull as it would be two thousand miles at sea. It was not +the least cooler, yet; but if you sat still you did not suffer. + +In the prompt monotony the time was already passing swiftly. The +deck-steward seemed hardly to have been round with tea and bouillon, and +he had not yet gathered up all the empty cups, when the horn for lunch +sounded. It was the youngest of the table-stewards who gave the summons +to meals; and whenever the pretty boy appeared with his bugle, funny +passengers gathered round him to make him laugh, and stop him from +winding it. His part of the joke was to fulfill his duty with gravity, +and only to give way to a smile of triumph as he walked off. + + + + +XI. + +At lunch, in the faded excitement of their first meeting, the people +at the Marches' table did not renew the premature intimacy of their +breakfast talk. Mrs. March went to lie down in her berth afterwards, and +March went on deck without her. He began to walk to and from the barrier +between the first and second cabin promenades; lingering near it, and +musing pensively, for some of the people beyond it looked as intelligent +and as socially acceptable, even to their clothes, as their pecuniary +betters of the saloon. + +There were two women, a mother and daughter, whom he fancied to be +teachers, by their looks, going out for a little rest, or perhaps for +a little further study to fit them more perfectly for their work. They +gazed wistfully across at him whenever he came up to the barrier; and +he feigned a conversation with them and tried to convince them that the +stamp of inferiority which their poverty put upon them was just, or if +not just, then inevitable. He argued with them that the sort of barrier +which here prevented their being friends with him, if they wished it, +ran invisibly through society everywhere but he felt ashamed before +their kind, patient, intelligent faces, and found himself wishing to +excuse the fact he was defending. Was it any worse, he asked them, than +their not being invited to the entertainments of people in upper Fifth +Avenue? He made them own that if they were let across that barrier the +whole second cabin would have a logical right to follow; and they were +silenced. But they continued to gape at him with their sincere, gentle +eyes whenever he returned to the barrier in his walk, till he could bear +it no longer, and strolled off toward the steerage. + +There was more reason why the passengers there should be penned into a +little space of their own in the sort of pit made by the narrowing deck +at the bow. They seemed to be all foreigners, and if any had made their +fortunes in our country they were hiding their prosperity in the return +to their own. They could hardly have come to us more shabby and squalid +than they were going away; but he thought their average less apathetic +than that of the saloon passengers, as he leaned over the rail and +looked down at them. Some one had brought out an electric battery, and +the lumpish boys and slattern girls were shouting and laughing as they +writhed with the current. A young mother seated flat on the deck, +with her bare feet stuck out, inattentively nursed her babe, while she +laughed and shouted with the rest; a man with his head tied in a shawl +walked about the pen and smiled grotesquely with the well side of his +toothache-swollen face. The owner of the battery carried it away, and +a group of little children, with blue eyes and yellow hair, gathered in +the space he had left, and looked up at a passenger near March who was +eating some plums and cherries which he had brought from the luncheon +table. He began to throw the fruit down to them, and the children +scrambled for it. + +An elderly man, with a thin, grave, aquiline face, said, “I shouldn't +want a child of mine down there.” + +“No,” March responded, “it isn't quite what one would choose for one's +own. It's astonishing, though, how we reconcile ourselves to it in the +case of others.” + +“I suppose it's something we'll have to get used to on the other side,” + suggested the stranger. + +“Well,” answered March, “you have some opportunities to get used to +it on this side, if you happen to live in New York,” and he went on to +speak of the raggedness which often penetrated the frontier of comfort +where he lived in Stuyvesant Square, and which seemed as glad of alms in +food or money as this poverty of the steerage. + +The other listened restively like a man whose ideals are disturbed. “I +don't believe I should like to live in New York, much,” he said, and +March fancied that he wished to be asked where he did live. It appeared +that he lived in Ohio, and he named his town; he did not brag of it, +but he said it suited him. He added that he had never expected to go to +Europe, but that he had begun to run down lately, and his doctor thought +he had better go out and try Carlsbad. + +March said, to invite his further confidence, that this was exactly his +own case. The Ohio man met the overture from a common invalidism as if +it detracted from his own distinction; and he turned to speak of the +difficulty, he had in arranging his affairs for leaving home. His heart +opened a little with the word, and he said how comfortable he and his +wife were in their house, and how much they both hated to shut it up. +When March offered him his card, he said he had none of his own with +him, but that his name was Eltwin. He betrayed a simple wish to have +March realize the local importance he had left behind him; and it was +not hard to comply; March saw a Grand Army button in the lapel of his +coat, and he knew that he was in the presence of a veteran. + +He tried to guess his rank; in telling his wife about him, when he went +down to find her just before dinner, but he ended with a certain sense +of affliction. “There are too many elderly invalids on this ship. I +knock against people of my own age everywhere. Why aren't your youthful +lovers more in evidence, my dear? I don't believe they are lovers, and I +begin to doubt if they're young even.” + +“It wasn't very satisfactory at lunch, certainly,” she owned. “But I +know it will be different at dinner.” She was putting herself together +after a nap that had made up for the lost sleep of the night before. “I +want you to look very nice, dear. Shall you dress for dinner?” she asked +her husband's image in the state-room glass which she was preoccupying. + +“I shall dress in my pea-jacket and sea-boots,” it answered. + +“I have heard that they always dress for dinner on the big Cunard and +White Star boats, when it's good weather,” she went on, placidly. +“I shouldn't want those people to think you were not up in the +convenances.” + +They both knew that she meant the reticent father and daughter, and +March flung out, “I shouldn't want them to think you weren't. There's +such a thing as overdoing.” + +She attacked him at another point. “What has annoyed you? What else have +you been doing?” + +“Nothing. I've been reading most of the afternoon.” + +“The Maiden Knight?” + +This was the book which nearly everybody had brought on board. It was +just out, and had caught an instant favor, which swelled later to a +tidal wave. It depicted a heroic girl in every trying circumstance of +mediaeval life, and gratified the perennial passion of both sexes for +historical romance, while it flattered woman's instinct of superiority +by the celebration of her unintermitted triumphs, ending in a +preposterous and wholly superfluous self-sacrifice. + +March laughed for pleasure in her guess, and she pursued, “I suppose you +didn't waste time looking if anybody had brought the last copy of 'Every +Other Week'?” + +“Yes, I did; and I found the one you had left in your steamer chair--for +advertising purposes, probably.” + +“Mr. Burnamy has another,” she said. “I saw it sticking out of his +pocket this morning.” + +“Oh, yes. He told me he had got it on the train from Chicago to see if +it had his poem in it. He's an ingenuous soul--in some ways.” + +“Well, that is the very reason why you ought to find out whether the +men are going to dress, and let him know. He would never think of it +himself.” + +“Neither would I,” said her husband. + +“Very well, if you wish to spoil his chance at the outset,” she sighed. + +She did not quite know whether to be glad or not that the men were +all in sacks and cutaways at dinner; it saved her, from shame for her +husband and Mr. Burnamy; but it put her in the wrong. Every one talked; +even the father and daughter talked with each other, and at one moment +Mrs. March could not be quite sure that the daughter had not looked at +her when she spoke. She could not be mistaken in the remark which the +father addressed to Burnamy, though it led to nothing. + + + + +XII. + +The dinner was uncommonly good, as the first dinner out is apt to be; +and it went gayly on from soup to fruit, which was of the American +abundance and variety, and as yet not of the veteran freshness +imparted by the ice-closet. Everybody was eating it, when by a common +consciousness they were aware of alien witnesses. They looked up as by +a single impulse, and saw at the port the gaunt face of a steerage +passenger staring down upon their luxury; he held on his arm a child +that shared his regard with yet hungrier eyes. A boy's nose showed +itself as if tiptoed to the height of the man's elbow; a young girl +peered over his other arm. + +The passengers glanced at one another; the two table-stewards, with +their napkins in their hands, smiled vaguely, and made some indefinite +movements. + +The bachelor at the head of the table broke the spell. “I'm glad it +didn't begin with the Little Neck clams!” + +“Probably they only let those people come for the dessert,” March +suggested. + +The widow now followed the direction of the other eyes; and looked up +over her shoulder; she gave a little cry, and shrank down. The young +bride made her petted mouth, in appeal to the company; her husband +looked severe, as if he were going to do something, but refrained, not +to make a scene. The reticent father threw one of his staccato glances +at the port, and Mrs. March was sure that she saw the daughter steal a +look at Burnamy. + +The young fellow laughed. “I don't suppose there's anything to be done +about it, unless we pass out a plate.” + +Mr. Kenby shook his head. “It wouldn't do. We might send for the +captain. Or the chief steward.” + +The faces at the port vanished. At other ports profiles passed and +repassed, as if the steerage passengers had their promenade under them, +but they paused no more. + +The Marches went up to their steamer chairs, and from her exasperated +nerves Mrs. March denounced the arrangement of the ship which had made +such a cruel thing possible. + +“Oh,” he mocked, “they had probably had a good substantial meal of their +own, and the scene of our banquet was of the quality of a picture, a +purely aesthetic treat. But supposing it wasn't, we're doing something +like it every day and every moment of our lives. The Norumbia is a piece +of the whole world's civilization set afloat, and passing from shore to +shore with unchanged classes, and conditions. A ship's merely a small +stage, where we're brought to close quarters with the daily drama of +humanity.” + +“Well, then,” she protested, “I don't like being brought to close +quarters with the daily drama of humanity, as you call it. And I don't +believe that the large English ships are built so that the steerage +passengers can stare in at the saloon windows while one is eating; and +I'm sorry we came on the Norumbia.” + +“Ah, you think the Norumbia doesn't hide anything,” he began, and he was +going to speak of the men in the furnace pits of the steamer, how they +fed the fires in a welding heat, and as if they had perished in it +crept out on the forecastle like blanched phantasms of toil; but she +interposed in time. + +“If there's anything worse, for pity's sake don't tell me,” she +entreated, and he forebore. + +He sat thinking how once the world had not seemed to have even death in +it, and then how as he had grown older death had come into it more and +more, and suffering was lurking everywhere, and could hardly be kept out +of sight. He wondered if that young Burnamy now saw the world as he used +to see it, a place for making verse and making love, and full of beauty +of all kinds waiting to be fitted with phrases. He had lived a happy +life; Burnamy would be lucky if he should live one half as happy; and +yet if he could show him his whole happy life, just as it had truly +been, must not the young man shrink from such a picture of his future? + +“Say something,” said his wife. “What are you thinking about?” + +“Oh, Burnamy,” he answered, honestly enough. + +“I was thinking about the children,” she said. “I am glad Bella didn't +try to come from Chicago to see us off; it would have been too silly; +she is getting to be very sensible. I hope Tom won't take the covers off +the furniture when he has the fellows in to see him.” + +“Well, I want him to get all the comfort he can out of the place, even +if the moths eat up every stick of furniture.” + +“Yes, so do I. And of course you're wishing that you were there with +him!” March laughed guiltily. “Well, perhaps it was a crazy thing for us +to start off alone for Europe, at our age.” + +“Nothing of the kind,” he retorted in the necessity he perceived for +staying her drooping spirits. “I wouldn't be anywhere else on any +account. Isn't it perfectly delicious? It puts me in mind of that night +on the Lake Ontario boat, when we were starting for Montreal. There was +the same sort of red sunset, and the air wasn't a bit softer than this.” + +He spoke of a night on their wedding-journey when they were sill new +enough from Europe to be comparing everything at home with things there. + +“Well, perhaps we shall get into the spirit of it again,” she said, and +they talked a long time of the past. + +All the mechanical noises were muffled in the dull air, and the wash of +the ship's course through the waveless sea made itself pleasantly heard. +In the offing a steamer homeward bound swam smoothly by, so close that +her lights outlined her to the eye; she sent up some signal rockets that +soared against the purple heaven in green and crimson, and spoke to the +Norumbia in the mysterious mute phrases of ships that meet in the dark. + +Mrs. March wondered what had become of Burnamy; the promenades were much +freer now than they had been since the ship sailed; when she rose to go +below, she caught sight of Burnamy walking the deck transversely +with some lady. She clutched her husband's arm and stayed him in rich +conjecture. + +“Do you suppose he can have got her to walking with him already?” + +They waited till Burnamy and his companion came in sight again. She was +tilting forward, and turning from the waist, now to him and now from +him. + +“No; it's that pivotal girl,” said March; and his wife said, “Well, I'm +glad he won't be put down by them.” + +In the music-room sat the people she meant, and at the instant she +passed on down the stairs, the daughter was saying to the father, “I +don't see why you didn't tell me sooner, papa.” + +“It was such an unimportant matter that I didn't think to mention it. He +offered it, and I took it; that was all. What difference could it have +made to you?” + +“None. But one doesn't like to do any one an injustice.” + +“I didn't know you were thinking anything about it.” + +“No, of course not.” + + + + +XIII. + +The voyage of the Norumbia was one of those which passengers say they +have never seen anything like, though for the first two or three days +out neither the doctor nor the deck-steward could be got, to prophesy +when the ship would be in. There was only a day or two when it could +really be called rough, and the sea-sickness was confined to those who +seemed wilful sufferers; they lay on the cushioned benching around the +stairs-landing, and subsisted on biscuit and beef tea without qualifying +the monotonous well-being of the other passengers, who passed without +noticing them. + +The second morning there was rain, and the air freshened, but the leaden +sea lay level as before. The sun shone in the afternoon; with the sunset +the fog came thick and white; the ship lowed dismally through the night; +from the dense folds of the mist answering noises called back to her. +Just before dark two men in a dory shouted up to her close under her +bows, and then melted out of sight; when the dark fell the lights of +fishing-schooners were seen, and their bells pealed; once loud cries +from a vessel near at hand made themselves heard. Some people in the +dining-saloon sang hymns; the smoking-room was dense with cigar fumes, +and the card-players dealt their hands in an atmosphere emulous of the +fog without. + +The Norumbia was off the Banks, and the second day of fog was cold as +if icebergs were haunting the opaque pallor around her. In the ranks of +steamer chairs people lay like mummies in their dense wrappings; in the +music-room the little children of travel discussed the different lines +of steamers on which they had crossed, and babes of five and seven +disputed about the motion on the Cunarders and White Stars; their nurses +tried in vain to still them in behalf of older passengers trying to +write letters there. + +By the next morning the ship had run out of the fog; and people who +could keep their feet said they were glad of the greater motion which +they found beyond the Banks. They now talked of the heat of the first +days out, and how much they had suffered; some who had passed the night +on board before sailing tried to impart a sense of their misery in +trying to sleep. + +A day or two later a storm struck the ship, and the sailors stretched +canvas along the weather promenade and put up a sheathing of boards +across the bow end to keep off the rain. Yet a day or two more and the +sea had fallen again and there was dancing on the widest space of the +lee promenade. + +The little events of the sea outside the steamer offered themselves in +their poor variety. Once a ship in the offing, with all its square sails +set, lifted them like three white towers from the deep. On the rim of +the ocean the length of some westward liner blocked itself out against +the horizon, and swiftly trailed its smoke out of sight. A few tramp +steamers, lounging and lunging through the trough of the sea, were +overtaken and left behind; an old brigantine passed so close that her +rusty iron sides showed plain, and one could discern the faces of the +people on board. + +The steamer was oftenest without the sign of any life beyond her. One +day a small bird beat the air with its little wings, under the roof of +the promenade, and then flittered from sight over the surface, of the +waste; a school of porpoises, stiff and wooden in their rise, plunged +clumsily from wave to wave. The deep itself had sometimes the unreality, +the artificiality of the canvas sea of the theatre. Commonly it was +livid and cold in color; but there was a morning when it was delicately +misted, and where the mist left it clear, it was blue and exquisitely +iridescent under the pale sun; the wrinkled waves were finely pitted by +the falling spray. These were rare moments; mostly, when it was not like +painted canvas, is was hard like black rock, with surfaces of smooth +cleavage. Where it met the sky it lay flat and motionless, or in the +rougher weather carved itself along the horizon in successions of +surges. + +If the sun rose clear, it was overcast in a few hours; then the clouds +broke and let a little sunshine through, to close again before the dim +evening thickened over the waters. Sometimes the moon looked through the +ragged curtain of vapors; one night it seemed to shine till morning, and +shook a path of quicksilver from the horizon to the ship. Through every +change, after she had left the fog behind, the steamer drove on with the +pulse of her engines (that stopped no more than a man's heart stops) in +a course which had nothing to mark it but the spread of the furrows from +her sides, and the wake that foamed from her stern to the western verge +of the sea. + +The life of the ship, like the life of the sea, was a sodden monotony, +with certain events which were part of the monotony. In the morning the +little steward's bugle called the passengers from their dreams, and half +an hour later called them to their breakfast, after such as chose had +been served with coffee by their bedroom-stewards. Then they went on +deck, where they read, or dozed in their chairs, or walked up and down, +or stood in the way of those who were walking; or played shuffleboard +and ring-toss; or smoked, and drank whiskey and aerated waters over +their cards and papers in the smoking-room; or wrote letters in the +saloon or the music-room. At eleven o'clock they spoiled their appetites +for lunch with tea or bouillon to the music of a band of second-cabin +stewards; at one, a single blast of the bugle called them to lunch, +where they glutted themselves to the torpor from which they afterwards +drowsed in their berths or chairs. They did the same things in the +afternoon that they had done in the forenoon; and at four o'clock the +deck-stewards came round with their cups and saucers, and their +plates of sandwiches, again to the music of the band. There were two +bugle-calls for dinner, and after dinner some went early to bed, and +some sat up late and had grills and toast. At twelve the lights were put +out in the saloons and the smoking-rooms. + +There were various smells which stored themselves up in the +consciousness to remain lastingly relative to certain moments and +places: a whiff of whiskey and tobacco that exhaled from the door of the +smoking-room; the odor of oil and steam rising from the open skylights +over the engine-room; the scent of stale bread about the doors of the +dining-saloon. + +The life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, only more monotonous. +The walking was limited; the talk was the tentative talk of people aware +that there was no refuge if they got tired of one another. The flirting +itself, such as there was of it, must be carried on in the glare of the +pervasive publicity; it must be crude and bold, or not be at all. + +There seemed to be very little of it. There were not many young people +on board of saloon quality, and these were mostly girls. The young men +were mainly of the smoking-room sort; they seldom risked themselves +among the steamer chairs. It was gayer in the second cabin, and gayer +yet in the steerage, where robuster emotions were operated by the +accordion. The passengers there danced to its music; they sang to it +and laughed to it unabashed under the eyes of the first-cabin witnesses +clustered along the rail above the pit where they took their rude +pleasures. + +With March it came to his spending many hours of each long, swift day in +his berth with a book under the convenient electric light. He was safe +there from the acquaintances which constantly formed themselves only +to fall into disintegration, and cling to him afterwards as inorganic +particles of weather-guessing, and smoking-room gossip about the ship's +run. + +In the earliest hours of the voyage he thought that he saw some faces +of the great world, the world of wealth and fashion; but these afterward +vanished, and left him to wonder where they hid themselves. He did not +meet them even in going to and from his meals; he could only imagine +them served in those palatial state-rooms whose interiors the stewards +now and then rather obtruded upon the public. There were people whom he +encountered in the promenades when he got up for the sunrise, and whom +he never saw at other times; at midnight he met men prowling in the dark +whom he never met by day. But none of these were people of the great +world. Before six o'clock they were sometimes second-cabin passengers, +whose barrier was then lifted for a little while to give them the +freedom of the saloon promenade. + +From time to time he thought he would look up his Ohioan, and revive +from a closer study of him his interest in the rare American who had +never been to Europe. But he kept with his elderly wife, who had the +effect of withholding him from March's advances. Young Mr. and Mrs. +Leffers threw off more and more their disguise of a long-married pair, +and became frankly bride and groom. They seldom talked with any one +else, except at table; they walked up and down together, smiling into +each others faces; they sat side by side in their steamer chairs; one +shawl covered them both, and there was reason to believe that they were +holding each other's hands under it. + +Mrs. Adding often took the chair beside Mrs. March when her husband was +straying about the ship or reading in his berth; and the two ladies must +have exchanged autobiographies, for Mrs. March was able to tell him just +how long Mrs. Adding had been a widow, what her husband died of, and +what had been done to save him; how she was now perfectly wrapt up +in her boy, and was taking him abroad, with some notion of going to +Switzerland, after the summer's travel, and settling down with him at +school there. She and Mrs. March became great friends; and Rose, as his +mother called him, attached himself reverently to March, not only as a +celebrity of the first grade in his quality of editor of 'Every Other +Week', but as a sage of wisdom and goodness, with whom he must not lose +the chance of counsel upon almost every hypothesis and exigency of life. + +March could not bring himself to place Burnamy quite where he belonged +in contemporary literature, when Rose put him very high in virtue of the +poem which he heard Burnamy was going to have printed in 'Every Other +Week', and of the book which he was going to have published; and he let +the boy bring to the young fellow the flattery which can come to any +author but once, in the first request for his autograph that Burnamy +confessed to have had. They were so near in age, though they were ten +years apart, that Rose stood much more in awe of Burnamy than of others +much more his seniors. He was often in the company of Kenby, whom he +valued next to March as a person acquainted with men; he consulted March +upon Kenby's practice of always taking up the language of the country +he visited, if it were only for a fortnight; and he conceived a higher +opinion of him from March's approval. + +Burnamy was most with Mrs. March, who made him talk about himself when +he supposed he was talking about literature, in the hope that she could +get him to talk about the Triscoes; but she listened in vain as he +poured out-his soul in theories of literary art, and in histories of +what he had written and what he meant to write. When he passed them +where they sat together, March heard the young fellow's perpetually +recurring I, I, I, my, my, my, me, me, me; and smiled to think how she +was suffering under the drip-drip of his innocent egotism. + +She bore in a sort of scientific patience his attentions to the +pivotal girl, and Miss Triscoe's indifference to him, in which a less +penetrating scrutiny could have detected no change from meal to meal. +It was only at table that she could see them together, or that she could +note any break in the reserve of the father and daughter. The signs of +this were so fine that when she reported them March laughed in scornful +incredulity. But at breakfast the third day out, the Triscoes, with the +authority of people accustomed to social consideration, suddenly turned +to the Marches, and began to make themselves agreeable; the father +spoke to March of 'Every Other Week', which he seemed to know of in its +relation to him; and the young girl addressed herself to Mrs. March's +motherly sense not the less acceptably because indirectly. She spoke of +going out with her father for an indefinite time, as if it were rather +his wish than hers, and she made some inquiries about places in Germany; +they had never been in Germany. They had some idea of Dresden; but the +idea of Dresden with its American colony seemed rather tiresome; and did +Mrs. March know anything about Weimar? + +Mrs. March was obliged to say that she knew nothing about anyplace in +Germany; and she explained perhaps too fully where and why she was +going with her husband. She fancied a Boston note in that scorn for the +tiresomeness of Dresden; but the girl's style was of New York rather +than of Boston, and her accent was not quite of either place. Mrs. March +began to try the Triscoes in this place and in that, to divine them and +to class them. She had decided from the first that they were society +people, but they were cultivated beyond the average of the few swells +whom she had met; and there had been nothing offensive in their manner +of holding themselves aloof from the other people at the table; they had +a right to do that if they chose. + +When the young Lefferses came in to breakfast, the talk went on between +these and the Marches; the Triscoes presently left the table, and Mrs. +March rose soon after, eager for that discussion of their behavior which +March knew he should not be able to postpone. + +He agreed with her that they were society people, but she could not at +once accept his theory that they had themselves been the objects of an +advance from them because of their neutral literary quality, through +which they were of no social world, but potentially common to any. Later +she admitted this, as she said, for the sake of argument, though what +she wanted him to see, now, was that this was all a step of the girl's +toward finding out something about Burnamy. + +The same afternoon, about the time the deck-steward was making his +round with his cups, Miss Triscoe abruptly advanced upon her from a +neighboring corner of the bulkhead, and asked, with the air of one +accustomed to have her advances gratefully received, if she might sit +by her. The girl took March's vacant chair, where she had her cup of +bouillon, which she continued to hold untasted in her hand after the +first sip. Mrs. March did the same with hers, and at the moment she had +got very tired of doing it, Burnamy came by, for the hundredth time that +day, and gave her a hundredth bow with a hundredth smile. He perceived +that she wished to get rid of her cup, and he sprang to her relief. + +“May I take yours too?” he said very passively to Miss Triscoe. + +“You are very good.” she answered, and gave it. + +Mrs. March with a casual air suggested, “Do you know Mr. Burnamy, Miss +Triscoe?” The girl said a few civil things, but Burnamy did not try to +make talk with her while he remained a few moments before Mrs. March. +The pivotal girl came in sight, tilting and turning in a rare moment of +isolation at the corner of the music-room, and he bowed abruptly, and +hurried off to join her. + +Miss Triscoe did not linger; she alleged the necessity of looking up +her father, and went away with a smile so friendly that Mrs. March might +easily have construed it to mean that no blame attached itself to her in +Miss Triscoe's mind. + +“Then you don't feel that it was a very distinct success?” her husband +asked on his return. + +“Not on the surface,” she said. + +“Better let ill enough alone,” he advised. + +She did not heed him. “All the same she cares for him. The very fact +that she was so cold shows that.” + +“And do you think her being cold will make him care for her?” + +“If she wants it to.” + + + + +XIV. + +At dinner that day the question of 'The Maiden Knight' was debated among +the noises and silences of the band. Young Mrs. Leffers had brought the +book to the table with her; she said she had not been able to lay it +down before the last horn sounded; in fact she could have been seen +reading it to her husband where he sat under the same shawl, the whole +afternoon. + +“Don't you think it's perfectly fascinating,” she asked Mrs. Adding, +with her petted mouth. + +“Well,” said the widow, doubtfully, “it's nearly a week since I read it, +and I've had time to get over the glow.” + +“Oh, I could just read it forever!” the bride exclaimed. + +“I like a book,” said her husband, “that takes me out of myself. I don't +want to think when I'm reading.” + +March was going to attack this ideal, but he reflected in time that Mr. +Leffers had really stated his own motive in reading. He compromised. +“Well, I like the author to do my thinking for me.” + +“Yes,” said the other, “that is what I mean.” + +“The question is whether 'The Maiden Knight' fellow does it,” said +Kenby, taking duck and pease from the steward at his shoulder. + +“What my wife likes in it is to see what one woman can do and be +single-handed,” said March. + +“No,” his wife corrected him, “what a man thinks she can.” + +“I suppose,” said Mr. Triscoe, unexpectedly, “that we're like the +English in our habit of going off about a book like a train of powder.” + +“If you'll say a row of bricks,” March assented, “I'll agree with you. +It's certainly Anglo-Saxon to fall over one another as we do, when we +get going. It would be interesting to know just how much liking there is +in the popularity of a given book.” + +“It's like the run of a song, isn't it?” Kenby suggested. “You can't +stand either, when it reaches a given point.” + +He spoke to March and ignored Triscoe, who had hitherto ignored the rest +of the table. + +“It's very curious,” March said. “The book or the song catches a mood, +or feeds a craving, and when one passes or the other is glutted--” + +“The discouraging part is,” Triscoe put in, still limiting himself to +the Marches, “that it's never a question of real taste. The things that +go down with us are so crude, so coarsely spiced; they tickle such a +vulgar palate--Now in France, for instance,” he suggested. + +“Well, I don't know,” returned the editor. “After all, we eat a good +deal of bread, and we drink more pure water than any other people. Even +when we drink it iced, I fancy it isn't so bad as absinthe.” + +The young bride looked at him gratefully, but she said, “If we can't +get ice-water in Europe, I don't know what Mr. Leffers will do,” and the +talk threatened to pass among the ladies into a comparison of American +and European customs. + +Burnamy could not bear to let it. “I don't pretend to be very well up +in French literature,” he began, “but I think such a book as 'The Maiden +Knight' isn't such a bad piece of work; people are liking a pretty +well-built story when they like it. Of course it's sentimental, and +it begs the question a good deal; but it imagines something heroic in +character, and it makes the reader imagine it too. The man who wrote +that book may be a donkey half the time, but he's a genius the other +half. By-and-by he'll do something--after he's come to see that his +'Maiden Knight' was a fool--that I believe even you won't be down on, +Mr. March, if he paints a heroic type as powerfully as he does in this +book.” + +He spoke with the authority of a journalist, and though he deferred to +March in the end, he deferred with authority still. March liked him for +coming to the defence of a young writer whom he had not himself learned +to like yet. “Yes,” he said, “if he has the power you say, and can keep +it after he comes to his artistic consciousness!” + +Mrs. Leffers, as if she thought things were going her way, smiled; Rose +Adding listened with shining eyes expectantly fixed on March; his mother +viewed his rapture with tender amusement. The steward was at Kenby's +shoulder with the salad and his entreating “Bleace!” and Triscoe seemed +to be questioning whether he should take any notice of Burnamy's general +disagreement. He said at last: “I'm afraid we haven't the documents. You +don't seem to have cared much for French books, and I haven't read +'The Maiden Knight'.” He added to March: “But I don't defend absinthe. +Ice-water is better. What I object to is our indiscriminate taste both +for raw whiskey--and for milk-and-water.” + +No one took up the question again, and it was Kenby who spoke next. “The +doctor thinks, if this weather holds, that we shall be into Plymouth +Wednesday morning. I always like to get a professional opinion on the +ship's run.” + +In the evening, as Mrs. March was putting away in her portfolio the +journal-letter which she was writing to send back from Plymouth to her +children, Miss Triscoe drifted to the place where she sat at their table +in the dining-room by a coincidence which they both respected as casual. + +“We had quite a literary dinner,” she remarked, hovering for a moment +near the chair which she later sank into. “It must have made you feel +very much at home. Or perhaps you're so tired of it at home that you +don't talk about books.” + +“We always talk shop, in some form or other,” said Mrs. March. “My +husband never tires of it. A good many of the contributors come to us, +you know.” + +“It must be delightful,” said the girl. She added as if she ought to +excuse herself for neglecting an advantage that might have been hers +if she had chosen, “I'm sorry one sees so little of the artistic and +literary set. But New York is such a big place.” + +“New York people seem to be very fond of it,” said Mrs. March. “Those +who have always lived there.” + +“We haven't always lived there,” said the girl. “But I think one has +a good time there--the best time a girl can have. It's all very well +coming over for the summer; one has to spend the summer somewhere. Are +you going out for a long time?” + +“Only for the summer. First to Carlsbad.” + +“Oh, yes. I suppose we shall travel about through Germany, and then go +to Paris. We always do; my father is very fond of it.” + +“You must know it very well,” said Mrs. March, aimlessly. + +“I was born there,--if that means knowing it. I lived there--till I was +eleven years old. We came home after my mother died.” + +“Oh!” said Mrs. March. + +The girl did not go further into her family history; but by one of those +leaps which seem to women as logical as other progressions, she arrived +at asking, “Is Mr. Burnamy one of the contributors?” + +Mrs. March laughed. “He is going to be, as soon as his poem is printed.” + +“Poem?” + +“Yes. Mr. March thinks it's very good.” + +“I thought he spoke very nicely about 'The Maiden Knight'. And he has +been very nice to papa. You know they have the same room.” + +“I think Mr. Burnamy told me,” Mrs. March said. + +The girl went on. “He had the lower berth, and he gave it up to papa; +he's done everything but turn himself out of doors.” + +“I'm sure he's been very glad,” Mrs. March ventured on Burnamy's behalf, +but very softly, lest if she breathed upon these budding confidences +they should shrink and wither away. + +“I always tell papa that there's no country like America for real +unselfishness; and if they're all like that, in Chicago!” The girl +stopped, and added with a laugh, “But I'm always quarrelling with papa +about America.” + +“We have a daughter living in Chicago,” said Mrs. March, alluringly. + +But Miss Triscoe refused the bait, either because she had said all she +meant, or because she had said all she would, about Chicago, which Mrs. +March felt for the present to be one with Burnamy. She gave another of +her leaps. “I don't see why people are so anxious to get it like Europe, +at home. They say that there was a time when there were no chaperons +before hoops, you know.” She looked suggestively at Mrs. March, resting +one slim hand on the table, and controlling her skirt with the other, as +if she were getting ready to rise at any moment. “When they used to sit +on their steps.” + +“It was very pleasant before hoops--in every way,” said Mrs. March. “I +was young, then; and I lived in Boston, where I suppose it was always +simpler than in New York. I used to sit on our steps. It was delightful +for girls--the freedom.” + +“I wish I had lived before hoops,” said Miss Triscoe. + +“Well, there must be places where it's before hoops yet: Seattle, and +Portland, Oregon, for all I know,” Mrs. March suggested. “And there must +be people in that epoch everywhere.” + +“Like that young lady who twists and turns?” said Miss Triscoe, giving +first one side of her face and then the other. “They have a good time. I +suppose if Europe came to us in one way it had to come in another. If +it came in galleries and all that sort of thing, it had to come in +chaperons. You'll think I'm a great extremist, Mrs. March; but sometimes +I wish there was more America instead of less. I don't believe it's as +bad as people say. Does Mr. March,” she asked, taking hold of the chair +with one hand, to secure her footing from any caprice of the sea, while +she gathered her skirt more firmly into the other, as she rose, “does he +think that America is going--all wrong?” + +“All wrong? How?” + +“Oh, in politics, don't you know. And government, and all that. And +bribing. And the lower classes having everything their own way. And the +horrid newspapers. And everything getting so expensive; and no regard +for family, or anything of that kind.” + +Mrs. March thought she saw what Miss Triscoe meant, but she answered, +still cautiously, “I don't believe he does always. Though there are +times when he is very much disgusted. Then he says that he is getting +too old--and we always quarrel about that--to see things as they really +are. He says that if the world had been going the way that people over +fifty have always thought it was going, it would have gone to smash in +the time of the anthropoidal apes.” + +“Oh, yes: Darwin,” said Miss Triscoe, vaguely. “Well, I'm glad he +doesn't give it up. I didn't know but I was holding out just because I +had argued so much, and was doing it out of--opposition. Goodnight!” She +called her salutation gayly over her shoulder, and Mrs. March watched +her gliding out of the saloon with a graceful tilt to humor the slight +roll of the ship, and a little lurch to correct it, once or twice, and +wondered if Burnamy was afraid of her; it seemed to her that if she were +a young man she should not be afraid of Miss Triscoe. + +The next morning, just after she had arranged herself in her steamer +chair, he approached her, bowing and smiling, with the first of his +many bows and smiles for the day, and at the same time Miss Triscoe came +toward her from the opposite direction. She nodded brightly to him, and +he gave her a bow and smile too; he always had so many of them to spare. + +“Here is your chair!” Mrs. March called to her, drawing the shawl out +of the chair next her own. “Mr. March is wandering about the ship +somewhere.” + +“I'll keep it for him,” said Miss Triscoe, and as Burnamy offered to +take the shawl that hung in the hollow of her arm, she let it slip into +his hand with an “Oh; thank you,” which seemed also a permission for him +to wrap it about her in the chair. + +He stood talking before the ladies, but he looked up and down the +promenade. The pivotal girl showed herself at the corner of the +music-room, as she had done the day before. At first she revolved there +as if she were shedding her light on some one hidden round the corner; +then she moved a few paces farther out and showed herself more obviously +alone. Clearly she was there for Burnamy to come and walk with her; Mrs. +March could see that, and she felt that Miss Triscoe saw it too. She +waited for her to dismiss him to his flirtation; but Miss Triscoe kept +chatting on, and he kept answering, and making no motion to get away. +Mrs. March began to be as sorry for her as she was ashamed for him. Then +she heard him saying, “Would you like a turn or two?” and Miss Triscoe +answering, “Why, yes, thank you,” and promptly getting out of her chair +as if the pains they had both been at to get her settled in it were all +nothing. + +She had the composure to say, “You can leave your shawl with me, Miss +Triscoe,” and to receive her fervent, “Oh, thank you,” before they +sailed off together, with inhuman indifference to the girl at the corner +of the music-room. Then she sank into a kind of triumphal collapse, from +which she roused herself to point her husband to the chair beside her +when he happened along. + +He chose to be perverse about her romance. “Well, now, you had better +let them alone. Remember Kendricks.” He meant one of their young friends +whose love-affair they had promoted till his happy marriage left them +in lasting doubt of what they had done. “My sympathies are all with the +pivotal girl. Hadn't she as much right to him, for the time being, or +for good and all, as Miss Triscoe?” + +“That depends upon what you think of Burnamy.” + +“Well, I don't like to see a girl have a young man snatched away from +her just when she's made sure of him. How do you suppose she is feeling +now?” + +“She isn't feeling at all. She's letting her revolving light fall +upon half a dozen other young men by this time, collectively or +consecutively. All that she wants to make sure of is that they're young +men--or old ones, even.” + +March laughed, but not altogether at what his wife said. “I've been +having a little talk with Papa Triscoe, in the smoking-room.” + +“You smell like it,” said his wife, not to seem too eager: “Well?” + +“Well, Papa Triscoe seems to be in a pout. He doesn't think things are +going as they should in America. He hasn't been consulted, or if he has, +his opinion hasn't been acted upon.” + +“I think he's horrid,” said Mrs. March. “Who are they?” + +“I couldn't make out, and I couldn't ask. But I'll tell you what I +think.” + +“What?” + +“That there's no chance for, Burnamy. He's taking his daughter out to +marry her to a crowned head.” + + + + +XV. + +It was this afternoon that the dance took place on the south promenade. +Everybody came and looked, and the circle around the waltzers was three +or four deep. Between the surrounding heads and shoulders, the hats of +the young ladies wheeling and whirling, and the faces of the men who +were wheeling and whirling them, rose and sank with the rhythm of their +steps. The space allotted to the dancing was walled to seaward with +canvas, and was prettily treated with German, and American flags: it was +hard to go wrong with flags, Miss Triscoe said, securing herself under +Mrs. March's wing. + +Where they stood they could see Burnamy's face, flashing and flushing in +the dance; at the end of the first piece he came to them, and remained +talking and laughing till the music began again. + +“Don't you want to try it?” he asked abruptly of Miss Triscoe. + +“Isn't it rather--public?” she asked back. + +Mrs. March could feel the hand which the girl had put through her arm +thrill with temptation; but Burnamy could not. + +“Perhaps it is rather obvious,” he said, and he made a long glide over +the deck to the feet of the pivotal girl, anticipating another young man +who was rapidly advancing from the opposite quarter. The next moment her +hat and his face showed themselves in the necessary proximity to each +other within the circle. + +“How well she dances!” said Miss Triscoe. + +“Do you think so? She looks as if she had been wound up and set going.” + +“She's very graceful,” the girl persisted. + +The day ended with an entertainment in the saloon for one of the +marine charities which address themselves to the hearts and pockets +of passengers on all steamers. There were recitations in English and +German, and songs from several people who had kindly consented, and ever +more piano performance. Most of those who took part were of the race +gifted in art and finance; its children excelled in the music, and its +fathers counted the gate-money during the last half of the programme, +with an audible clinking of the silver on the table before them. + +Miss Triscoe was with her father, and Mrs. March was herself chaperoned +by Mr. Burnamy: her husband had refused to come to the entertainment. +She hoped to leave Burnamy and Miss Triscoe together before the evening +ended; but Miss Triscoe merely stopped with her father, in quitting the +saloon, to laugh at some features of the entertainment, as people +who take no part in such things do; Burnamy stood up to exchange some +unimpassioned words with her, and then they said good-night. + +The next morning, at five o'clock, the Norumbia came to anchor in the +pretty harbor of Plymouth. In the cool early light the town lay distinct +along the shore, quaint with its small English houses, and stately with +come public edifices of unknown function on the uplands; a country-seat +of aristocratic aspect showed itself on one of the heights; on another +the tower of a country church peered over the tree-tops; there were +lines of fortifications, as peaceful, at their distance, as the stone +walls dividing the green fields. The very iron-clads in the harbor close +at hand contributed to the amiable gayety of the scene under the pale +blue English sky, already broken with clouds from which the flush of +the sunrise had not quite faded. The breath of the land came freshly out +over the water; one could almost smell the grass and the leaves. Gulls +wheeled and darted over the crisp water; the tones of the English voices +on the tender were pleasant to the ear, as it fussed and scuffled to the +ship's side. A few score of the passengers left her; with their baggage +they formed picturesque groups on the tender's deck, and they set out +for the shore waving their hands and their handkerchiefs to the friends +they left clustering along the rail of the Norumbia. Mr. and Mrs. +Leffers bade March farewell, in the final fondness inspired by his +having coffee with them before they left the ship; they said they hated +to leave. + +The stop had roused everybody, and the breakfast tables were promptly +filled, except such as the passengers landing at Plymouth had vacated; +these were stripped of their cloths, and the remaining commensals placed +at others. The seats of the Lefferses were given to March's old Ohio +friend and his wife. He tried to engage them in the tally which began to +be general in the excitement of having touched land; but they shyly held +aloof. + +Some English newspapers had come aboard from the tug, and there was the +usual good-natured adjustment of the American self-satisfaction, among +those who had seen them, to the ever-surprising fact that our continent +is apparently of no interest to Europe. There were some meagre New +York stock-market quotations in the papers; a paragraph in fine print +announced the lynching of a negro in Alabama; another recorded a +coal-mining strike in Pennsylvania. + +“I always have to get used to it over again,” said Kenby. “This is the +twentieth time I have been across, and I'm just as much astonished as I +was the first, to find out that they don't want to know anything about +us here.” + +“Oh,” said March, “curiosity and the weather both come from the west. +San Francisco wants to know about Denver, Denver about Chicago, Chicago +about New York, and New York about London; but curiosity never travels +the other way any more than a hot wave or a cold wave.” + +“Ah, but London doesn't care a rap about Vienna,” said Kenby. + +“Well, some pressures give out before they reach the coast, on our own +side. It isn't an infallible analogy.” + +Triscoe was fiercely chewing a morsel, as if in haste to take part in +the discussion. He gulped it, and broke out. “Why should they care about +us, anyway?” + +March lightly ventured, “Oh, men and brothers, you know.” + +“That isn't sufficient ground. The Chinese are men and brothers; so are +the South-Americans and Central-Africans, and Hawaiians; but we're +not impatient for the latest news about them. It's civilization that +interests civilization.” + +“I hope that fact doesn't leave us out in the cold with the barbarians?” + Burnamy put in, with a smile. + +“Do you think we are civilized?” retorted the other. + +“We have that superstition in Chicago,” said Burnamy. He added, still +smiling, “About the New-Yorkers, I mean.” + +“You're more superstitious in Chicago than I supposed. New York is an +anarchy, tempered by vigilance committees.” + +“Oh, I don't think you can say that,” Kenby cheerfully protested, “since +the Reformers came in. Look at our streets!” + +“Yes, our streets are clean, for the time being, and when we look at +them we think we have made a clean sweep in our manners and morals. But +how long do you think it will be before Tammany will be in the saddle +again?” + +“Oh, never in the world!” said the optimistic head of the table. + +“I wish I had your faith; or I should if I didn't feel that it is one +of the things that help to establish Tammanys with us. You will see +our Tammany in power after the next election.” Kenby laughed in a +large-hearted incredulity; and his laugh was like fuel to the other's +flame. “New York is politically a mediaeval Italian republic, and it's +morally a frontier mining-town. Socially it's--” He stopped as if he +could not say what. + +“I think it's a place where you have a very nice time, papa,” said his +daughter, and Burnamy smiled with her; not because he knew anything +about it. + +Her father went on as if he had not heard her. “It's as vulgar and crude +as money can make it. Nothing counts but money, and as soon as there's +enough, it counts for everything. In less than a year you'll have +Tammany in power; it won't be more than a year till you'll have it in +society.” + +“Oh no! Oh no!” came from Kenby. He did not care much for society, but +he vaguely respected it as the stronghold of the proprieties and the +amenities. + +“Isn't society a good place for Tammany to be in?” asked March in the +pause Triscoe let follow upon Kenby's laugh. + +“There's no reason why it shouldn't be. Society is as bad as all the +rest of it. And what New York is, politically, morally, and socially, +the whole country wishes to be and tries to be.” + +There was that measure of truth in the words which silences; no one +could find just the terms of refutation. + +“Well,” said Kenby at last, “it's a good thing there are so many lines +to Europe. We've still got the right to emigrate.” + +“Yes, but even there we don't escape the abuse of our infamous +newspapers for exercising a man's right to live where he chooses. And +there is no country in Europe--except Turkey, or Spain--that isn't a +better home for an honest man than the United States.” + +The Ohioan had once before cleared his throat as if he were going to +speak. Now, he leaned far enough forward to catch Triscoe's eye, and +said, slowly and distinctly: “I don't know just what reason you have +to feel as you do about the country. I feel differently about it +myself--perhaps because I fought for it.” + +At first, the others were glad of this arrogance; it even seemed an +answer; but Burnamy saw Miss Triscoe's cheek, flush, and then he doubted +its validity. + +Triscoe nervously crushed a biscuit in his hand, as if to expend a +violent impulse upon it. He said, coldly, “I was speaking from that +stand-point.” + +The Ohioan shrank back in his seat, and March felt sorry for him, though +he had put himself in the wrong. His old hand trembled beside his plate, +and his head shook, while his lips formed silent words; and his shy wife +was sharing his pain and shame. + +Kenby began to talk about the stop which the Norumbia was to make +at Cherbourg, and about what hour the next day they should all be in +Cuxhaven. Miss Triscoe said they had never come on the Hanseatic Line +before, and asked several questions. Her father did not speak again, and +after a little while he rose without waiting for her to make the move +from table; he had punctiliously deferred to her hitherto. Eltwin rose +at the same time, and March feared that he might be going to provoke +another defeat, in some way. + +Eltwin lifted his voice, and said, trying to catch Triscoe's eye, “I +think I ought to beg your pardon, sir. I do beg your pardon.” + +March perceived that Eltwin wished to make the offer of his reparation +as distinct as his aggression had been; and now he quaked for Triscoe, +whose daughter he saw glance apprehensively at her father as she swayed +aside to let the two men come together. + +“That is all right, Colonel--” + +“Major,” Eltwin conscientiously interposed. + +“Major,” Triscoe bowed; and he put out his hand and grasped the hand +which had been tremulously rising toward him. “There can't be any doubt +of what we did, no matter what we've got.” + +“No, no!” said the other, eagerly. “That was what I meant, sir. I don't +think as you do; but I believe that a man who helped to save the country +has a right to think what he pleases about it.” + +Triscoe said, “That is all right, my dear sir. May I ask your regiment?” + +The Marches let the old fellows walk away together, followed by the wife +of the one and the daughter of the other. They saw the young girl making +some graceful overtures of speech to the elder woman as they went. + +“That was rather fine, my dear,” said Mrs. March. + +“Well, I don't know. It was a little too dramatic, wasn't it? It wasn't +what I should have expected of real life.” + +“Oh, you spoil everything! If that's the spirit you're going through +Europe in!” + +“It isn't. As soon as I touch European soil I shall reform.” + + + + +XVI. + +That was not the first time General Triscoe had silenced question of his +opinions with the argument he had used upon Eltwin, though he was seldom +able to use it so aptly. He always found that people suffered, his +belief in our national degeneration much more readily when they knew +that he had left a diplomatic position in Europe (he had gone abroad +as secretary of a minor legation) to come home and fight for the Union. +Some millions of other men had gone into the war from the varied +motives which impelled men at that time; but he was aware that he had +distinction, as a man of property and a man of family, in doing so. His +family had improved as time passed, and it was now so old that back of +his grandfather it was lost in antiquity. This ancestor had retired from +the sea and become a merchant in his native Rhode Island port, where his +son established himself as a physician, and married the daughter of a +former slave-trader whose social position was the highest in the place; +Triscoe liked to mention his maternal grandfather when he wished a +listener to realize just how anomalous his part in a war against slavery +was; it heightened the effect of his pose. + +He fought gallantly through the war, and he was brevetted +Brigadier-General at the close. With this honor, and with the wound +which caused an almost imperceptible limp in his gait, he won the heart +of a rich New York girl, and her father set him up in a business, which +was not long in going to pieces in his hands. Then the young couple went +to live in Paris, where their daughter was born, and where the mother +died when the child was ten years old. A little later his father-in-law +died, and Triscoe returned to New York, where he found the fortune which +his daughter had inherited was much less than he somehow thought he had +a right to expect. + +The income from her fortune was enough to live on, and he did not go +back to Paris, where, in fact, things were not so much to his mind under +the Republic as they had been under the Second Empire. He was still +willing to do something for his country, however, and he allowed +his name to be used on a citizen's ticket in his district; but his +provision-man was sent to Congress instead. Then he retired to +Rhode Island and attempted to convert his shore property into a +watering-place; but after being attractively plotted and laid out with +streets and sidewalks, it allured no one to build on it except the birds +and the chipmonks, and he came back to New York, where his daughter had +remained in school. + +One of her maternal aunts made her a coming-out tea, after she left +school; and she entered upon a series of dinners, dances, theatre +parties, and receptions of all kinds; but the tide of fairy gold pouring +through her fingers left no engagement-ring on them. She had no duties, +but she seldom got out of humor with her pleasures; she had some odd +tastes of her own, and in a society where none but the most serious +books were ever seriously mentioned she was rather fond of good ones, +and had romantic ideas of a life that she vaguely called bohemian. Her +character was never tested by anything more trying than the fear that +her father might take her abroad to live; he had taken her abroad +several times for the summer. + +The dreaded trial did not approach for several years after she had +ceased to be a bud; and then it came when her father was again willing +to serve his country in diplomacy, either at the Hague, or at Brussels, +or even at Berne. Reasons of political geography prevented his +appointment anywhere, but General Triscoe having arranged his affairs +for going abroad on the mission he had expected, decided to go without +it. He was really very fit for both of the offices he had sought, and so +far as a man can deserve public place by public service, he had deserved +it. His pessimism was uncommonly well grounded, and if it did not go +very deep, it might well have reached the bottom of his nature. + +His daughter had begun to divine him at the early age when parents +suppose themselves still to be mysteries to their children. She did not +think it necessary ever to explain him to others; perhaps she would not +have found it possible; and now after she parted from Mrs. Eltwin and +went to sit down beside Mrs. March she did not refer to her father. She +said how sweet she had found the old lady from Ohio; and what sort of +place did Mrs. March suppose it was where Mrs. Eltwin lived? They seemed +to have everything there, like any place. She had wanted to ask Mrs. +Eltwin if they sat on their steps; but she had not quite dared. + +Burnamy came by, slowly, and at Mrs. March's suggestion he took one of +the chairs on her other side, to help her and Miss Triscoe look at the +Channel Islands and watch the approach of the steamer to Cherbourg, +where the Norumbia was to land again. The young people talked across +Mrs. March to each other, and said how charming the islands were, in +their gray-green insubstantiality, with valleys furrowing them far +inward, like airy clefts in low banks of clouds. It seemed all the +nicer not to know just which was which; but when the ship drew nearer to +Cherbourg, he suggested that they could see better by going round to the +other side of the ship. Miss Triscoe, as at the other times when she had +gone off with Burnamy, marked her allegiance, to Mrs. March by leaving a +wrap with her. + +Every one was restless in breaking with the old life at sea. There had +been an equal unrest when the ship first sailed; people had first come +aboard in the demoralization of severing their ties with home, and they +shrank from forming others. Then the charm of the idle, eventless life +grew upon them, and united them in a fond reluctance from the inevitable +end. + +Now that the beginning of the end had come, the pangs of disintegration +were felt in all the once-more-repellant particles. Burnamy and Miss +Triscoe, as they hung upon the rail, owned to each other that they hated +to have the voyage over. They had liked leaving Plymouth and being +at sea again; they wished that they need not be reminded of another +debarkation by the energy of the crane in hoisting the Cherbourg baggage +from the hold. + +They approved of the picturesqueness of three French vessels of war that +passed, dragging their kraken shapes low through the level water. +At Cherbourg an emotional French tender came out to the ship, very +different in her clamorous voices and excited figures from the steady +self-control of the English tender at Plymouth; and they thought the +French fortifications much more on show than the English had been. +Nothing marked their youthful date so much to the Marches, who presently +joined them, as their failure to realize that in this peaceful sea the +great battle between the Kearsarge and the Alabama was fought. The elder +couple tried to affect their imaginations with the fact which reanimated +the spectre of a dreadful war for themselves; but they had to pass on +and, leave the young people unmoved. + +Mrs. March wondered if they noticed the debarkation of the pivotal girl, +whom she saw standing on the deck of the tender, with her hands at her +waist, and giving now this side and now that side of her face to the +young men waving their hats to her from the rail of the ship. Burnamy +was not of their number, and he seemed not to know that the girl was +leaving him finally to Miss Triscoe. If Miss Triscoe knew it she did +nothing the whole of that long, last afternoon to profit by the fact. +Burnamy spent a great part of it in the chair beside Mrs. March, and he +showed an intolerable resignation to the girl's absence. + +“Yes,” said March, taking the place Burnamy left at last, “that terrible +patience of youth!” + +“Patience? Folly! Stupidity! They ought to be together every instant! Do +they suppose that life is full of such chances? Do they think that fate +has nothing to do but--” + +She stopped for a fit climax, and he suggested, “Hang round and wait on +them?” + +“Yes! It's their one chance in a life-time, probably.” + +“Then you've quite decided that they're in love?” He sank comfortably +back, and put up his weary legs on the chair's extension with the +conviction that love had no such joy as that to offer. + +“I've decided that they're intensely interested in each other.” + +“Then what more can we ask of them? And why do you care what they do +or don't do with their chance? Why do you wish their love well, if it's +that? Is marriage such a very certain good?” + +“It isn't all that it might be, but it's all that there is. What would +our lives have been without it?” she retorted. + +“Oh, we should have got on. It's such a tremendous risk that we, ought +to go round begging people to think twice, to count a hundred, or a +nonillion, before they fall in love to the marrying-point. I don't mind +their flirting; that amuses them; but marrying is a different thing. I +doubt if Papa Triscoe would take kindly to the notion of a son-in-law he +hadn't selected himself, and his daughter doesn't strike me as a young +lady who has any wisdom to throw away on a choice. She has her little +charm; her little gift of beauty, of grace, of spirit, and the other +things that go with her age and sex; but what could she do for a fellow +like Burnamy, who has his way to make, who has the ladder of fame +to climb, with an old mother at the bottom of it to look after? You +wouldn't want him to have an eye on Miss Triscoe's money, even if she +had money, and I doubt if she has much. It's all very pretty to have a +girl like her fascinated with a youth of his simple traditions; though +Burnamy isn't altogether pastoral in his ideals, and he looks forward to +a place in the very world she belongs to. I don't think it's for us to +promote the affair.” + +“Well, perhaps you're right,” she sighed. “I will let them alone from +this out. Thank goodness, I shall not have them under my eyes very +long.” + +“Oh, I don't think there's any harm done yet,” said her husband, with a +laugh. + +At dinner there seemed so little harm of the kind he meant that she +suffered from an illogical disappointment. The young people got through +the meal with no talk that seemed inductive; Burnamy left the table +first, and Miss Triscoe bore his going without apparent discouragement; +she kept on chatting with March till his wife took him away to their +chairs on deck. + +There were a few more ships in sight than there were in mid-ocean; but +the late twilight thickened over the North Sea quite like the night +after they left New York, except that it was colder; and their hearts +turned to their children, who had been in abeyance for the week past, +with a remorseful pang. “Well,” she said, “I wish we were going to be in +New York to-morrow, instead of Hamburg.” + +“Oh, no! Oh, no!” he protested. “Not so bad as that, my dear. This is +the last night, and it's hard to manage, as the last night always is. I +suppose the last night on earth--” + +“Basil!” she implored. + +“Well, I won't, then. But what I want is to see a Dutch lugger. I've +never seen a Dutch lugger, and--” + +She suddenly pressed his arm, and in obedience to the signal he was +silent; though it seemed afterwards that he ought to have gone on +talking as if he did not see Burnamy and Miss Triscoe swinging slowly +by. They were walking close together, and she was leaning forward and +looking up into his face while he talked. + +“Now,” Mrs. March whispered, long after they were out of hearing, “let +us go instantly. I wouldn't for worlds have them see us here when they +get found again. They would feel that they had to stop and speak, and +that would spoil everything. Come!” + + + + +XVII. + +Burnamy paused in a flow of autobiography, and modestly waited for Miss +Triscoe's prompting. He had not to wait long. + +“And then, how soon did you think of printing your things in a book?” + +“Oh, about as soon as they began to take with the public.” + +“How could you tell that they were-taking?” + +“They were copied into other papers, and people talked about them.” + +“And that was what made Mr. Stoller want you to be his secretary?” + +“I don't believe it was. The theory in the office was that he didn't +think much of them; but he knows I can write shorthand, and put things +into shape.” + +“What things?” + +“Oh--ideas. He has a notion of trying to come forward in politics. +He owns shares in everything but the United States Senate--gas, +electricity, railroads, aldermen, newspapers--and now he would like some +Senate. That's what I think.” + +She did not quite understand, and she was far from knowing that this +cynic humor expressed a deadlier pessimism than her father's fiercest +accusals of the country. “How fascinating it is!” she said, innocently. + +“And I suppose they all envy your coming out?” + +“In the office?” + +“Yes. I should envy, them--staying.” + +Burnamy laughed. “I don't believe they envy me. It won't be all roses +for me--they know that. But they know that I can take care of myself if +it isn't.” He remembered something one of his friends in the office +had said of the painful surprise the Bird of Prey would feel if he ever +tried his beak on him in the belief that he was soft. + +She abruptly left the mere personal question. “And which would you +rather write: poems or those kind of sketches?” + +“I don't know,” said Burnamy, willing to talk of himself on any terms. +“I suppose that prose is the thing for our time, rather more; but there +are things you can't say in prose. I used to write a great deal of verse +in college; but I didn't have much luck with editors till Mr. March took +this little piece for 'Every Other Week'.” + +“Little? I thought it was a long poem!” + +Burnamy laughed at the notion. “It's only eight lines.” + +“Oh!” said the girl. “What is it about?” + +He yielded to the temptation with a weakness which he found incredible +in a person of his make. “I can repeat it if you won't give me away to +Mrs. March.” + +“Oh, no indeed! He said the lines over to her very simply and well. They +are beautiful--beautiful!” + +“Do you think so?” he gasped, in his joy at her praise. + +“Yes, lovely. Do you know, you are the first literary man--the only +literary man--I ever talked with. They must go out--somewhere! Papa must +meet them at his clubs. But I never do; and so I'm making the most of +you.” + +“You can't make too much of me, Miss Triscoe,” said Burnamy. + +She would not mind his mocking. “That day you spoke about 'The Maiden +Knight', don't you know, I had never heard any talk about books in that +way. I didn't know you were an author then.” + +“Well, I'm not much of an author now,” he said, cynically, to retrieve +his folly in repeating his poem to her. + +“Oh, that will do for you to say. But I know what Mrs. March thinks.” + +He wished very much to know what Mrs. March thought, too; 'Every Other +Week' was such a very good place that he could not conscientiously +neglect any means of having his work favorably considered there; if Mrs. +March's interest in it would act upon her husband, ought not he to know +just how much she thought of him as a writer? “Did she like the poem.” + +Miss Triscoe could not recall that Mrs. March had said anything about +the poem, but she launched herself upon the general current of Mrs. +March's liking for Burnamy. “But it wouldn't do to tell you all she +said!” This was not what he hoped, but he was richly content when she +returned to his personal history. “And you didn't know any one when, you +went up to Chicago from--” + +“Tippecanoe? Not exactly that. I wasn't acquainted with any one in the +office, but they had printed somethings of mine, and they were willing +to let me try my hand. That was all I could ask.” + +“Of course! You knew you could do the rest. Well, it is like a romance. +A woman couldn't have such an adventure as that!” sighed the girl. + +“But women do!” Burnamy retorted. “There is a girl writing on the paper +now--she's going to do the literary notices while I'm gone--who came to +Chicago from Ann Arbor, with no more chance than I had, and who's made +her way single-handed from interviewing up.” + +“Oh,” said Miss Triscoe, with a distinct drop in her enthusiasm. “Is she +nice?” + +“She's mighty clever, and she's nice enough, too, though the kind of +journalism that women do isn't the most dignified. And she's one of the +best girls I know, with lots of sense.” + +“It must be very interesting,” said Miss Triscoe, with little interest +in the way she said it. “I suppose you're quite a little community by +yourselves.” + +“On the paper?” + +“Yes.” + +“Well, some of us know one another, in the office, but most of us don't. +There's quite a regiment of people on a big paper. If you'd like to come +out,” Burnamy ventured, “perhaps you could get the Woman's Page to do.” + +“What's that?” + +“Oh, fashion; and personal gossip about society leaders; and recipes for +dishes and diseases; and correspondence on points of etiquette.” + +He expected her to shudder at the notion, but she merely asked, “Do +women write it?” + +He laughed reminiscently. “Well, not always. We had one man who used +to do it beautifully--when he was sober. The department hasn't had any +permanent head since.” + +He was sorry he had said this, but it did not seem to shock her, and no +doubt she had not taken it in fully. She abruptly left the subject. “Do +you know what time we really get in to-morrow?” + +“About one, I believe--there's a consensus of stewards to that effect, +anyway.” After a pause he asked, “Are you likely to be in Carlsbad?” + +“We are going to Dresden, first, I believe. Then we may go on down to +Vienna. But nothing is settled, yet.” + +“Are you going direct to Dresden?” + +“I don't know. We may stay in Hamburg a day or two.” + +“I've got to go straight to Carlsbad. There's a sleeping-car that will +get me there by morning: Mr. Stoller likes zeal. But I hope you'll let +me be of use to you any way I can, before we part tomorrow.” + +“You're very kind. You've been very good already--to papa.” He protested +that he had not been at all good. “But he's used to taking care of +himself on the other side. Oh, it's this side, now!” + +“So it is! How strange that seems! It's actually Europe. But as long as +we're at sea, we can't realize it. Don't you hate to have experiences +slip through your fingers?” + +“I don't know. A girl doesn't have many experiences of her own; they're +always other people's.” + +This affected Burnamy as so profound that he did not question its truth. +He only suggested, “Well; sometimes they make other people have the +experiences.” + +Whether Miss Triscoe decided that this was too intimate or not she left +the question. “Do you understand German?” + +“A little. I studied it at college, and I've cultivated a sort of +beer-garden German in Chicago. I can ask for things.” + +“I can't, except in French, and that's worse than English, in Germany, I +hear.” + +“Then you must let me be your interpreter up to the last moment. Will +you?” + +She did not answer. “It must be rather late, isn't it?” she asked. He +let her see his watch, and she said, “Yes, it's very late,” and led the +way within. “I must look after my packing; papa's always so prompt, and +I must justify myself for making him let me give up my maid when we left +home; we expect to get one in Dresden. Good-night!” + +Burnamy looked after her drifting down their corridor, and wondered +whether it would have been a fit return for her expression of a sense +of novelty in him as a literary man if he had told her that she was the +first young lady he had known who had a maid. The fact awed him; Miss +Triscoe herself did not awe him so much. + + + + +XVIII. + +The next morning was merely a transitional period, full of turmoil and +disorder, between the broken life of the sea and the untried life of the +shore. No one attempted to resume the routine of the voyage. People went +and came between their rooms and the saloons and the decks, and were no +longer careful to take their own steamer chairs when they sat down for a +moment. + +In the cabins the berths were not made up, and those who remained below +had to sit on their hard edges, or on the sofas, which were cumbered +with, hand-bags and rolls of shawls. At an early hour after breakfast +the bedroom stewards began to get the steamer trunks out and pile them +in the corridors; the servants all became more caressingly attentive; +and people who had left off settling the amount of the fees they were +going to give, anxiously conferred together. The question whether you +ought ever to give the head steward anything pressed crucially at the +early lunch, and Kenby brought only a partial relief by saying that he +always regarded the head steward as an officer of the ship. March made +the experiment of offering him six marks, and the head steward took +them quite as if he were not an officer of the ship. He also collected a +handsome fee for the music, which is the tax levied on all German ships +beyond the tolls exacted on the steamers of other nations. + +After lunch the flat shore at Cuxhaven was so near that the summer +cottages of the little watering-place showed through the warm drizzle +much like the summer cottages of our own shore, and if it had not +been for the strange, low sky, the Americans might easily have fancied +themselves at home again. + +Every one waited on foot while the tender came out into the stream +where the Norumbia had dropped anchor. People who had brought their +hand-baggage with them from their rooms looked so much safer with it +that people who had left theirs to their stewards had to go back and +pledge them afresh not to forget it. The tender came alongside, and the +transfer of the heavy trunks began, but it seemed such an endless work +that every one sat down in some other's chair. At last the trunks were +all on the tender, and the bareheaded stewards began to run down the +gangways with the hand-baggage. “Is this Hoboken?” March murmured in his +wife's ear, with a bewildered sense of something in the scene like the +reversed action of the kinematograph. + +On the deck of the tender there was a brief moment of reunion among +the companions of the voyage, the more intimate for their being crowded +together under cover from the drizzle which now turned into a dashing +rain. Burnamy's smile appeared, and then Mrs. March recognized Miss +Triscoe and her father in their travel dress; they were not far from +Burnamy's smile, but he seemed rather to have charge of the Eltwins, +whom he was helping look after their bags and bundles. Rose Adding was +talking with Kenby, and apparently asking his opinion of something; Mrs. +Adding sat near them tranquilly enjoying her son. + +Mrs. March made her husband identify their baggage, large and small, and +after he had satisfied her, he furtively satisfied himself by a fresh +count that it was all there. But he need not have taken the trouble; +their long, calm bedroom-steward was keeping guard over it; his eyes +expressed a contemptuous pity for their anxiety, whose like he must have +been very tired of. He brought their handbags into the customs-room at +the station where they landed; and there took a last leave and a last +fee with unexpected cordiality. + +Again their companionship suffered eclipse in the distraction which the +customs inspectors of all countries bring to travellers; and again they +were united during the long delay in the waiting-room, which was also +the restaurant. It was full of strange noises and figures and odors--the +shuffling of feet, the clash of crockery, the explosion of nervous +German voices, mixed with the smell of beer and ham, and the smoke of +cigars. Through it all pierced the wail of a postman standing at the +door with a letter in his hand and calling out at regular intervals, +“Krahnay, Krahnay!” When March could bear it no longer he went up to him +and shouted, “Crane! Crane!” and the man bowed gratefully, and began to +cry, “Kren! Kren!” But whether Mr. Crane got his letter or not, he never +knew. + +People were swarming at the window of the telegraph-office, and sending +home cablegrams to announce their safe arrival; March could not forbear +cabling to his son, though he felt it absurd. There was a great deal +of talking, but no laughing, except among the Americans, and the girls +behind the bar who tried to understand, what they wanted, and then +served them with what they chose for them. Otherwise the Germans, though +voluble, were unsmiling, and here on the threshold of their empire the +travellers had their first hint of the anxious mood which seems habitual +with these amiable people. + +Mrs. Adding came screaming with glee to March where he sat with his +wife, and leaned over her son to ask, “Do you know what lese-majesty is? +Rose is afraid I've committed it!” + +“No, I don't,” said March. “But it's the unpardonable sin. What have you +been doing?” + +“I asked the official at the door when our train would start, and +when he said at half past three, I said, 'How tiresome!' Rose says the +railroads belong to the state here, and that if I find fault with +the time-table, it's constructive censure of the Emperor, and that's +lese-majesty.” She gave way to her mirth, while the boy studied March's +face with an appealing smile. + +“Well, I don't think you'll be arrested this time, Mrs. Adding; but I +hope it will be a warning to Mrs. March. She's been complaining of the +coffee.” + +“Indeed I shall say what I like,” said Mrs. March. “I'm an American.” + +“Well, you'll find you're a German, if you like to say anything +disagreeable about the coffee in the restaurant of the Emperor's +railroad station; the first thing you know I shall be given three months +on your account.” + +Mrs. Adding asked: “Then they won't punish ladies? There, Rose! I'm +safe, you see; and you're still a minor, though you are so wise for your +years.” + +She went back to her table, where Kenby came and sat down by her. + +“I don't know that I quite like her playing on that sensitive child,”, +said Mrs. March. “And you've joined with her in her joking. Go and +speak, to him!” + +The boy was slowly following his mother, with his head fallen. March +overtook him, and he started nervously at the touch of a hand on his +shoulder, and then looked gratefully up into the man's face. March tried +to tell him what the crime of lese-majesty was, and he said: “Oh, yes. +I understood that. But I got to thinking; and I don't want my mother to +take any risks.” + +“I don't believe she will, really, Rose. But I'll speak to her, and tell +her she can't be too cautious.” + +“Not now, please!” the boy entreated. + +“Well, I'll find another chance,” March assented. He looked round and +caught a smiling nod from Burnamy, who was still with the Eltwins; the +Triscoes were at a table by themselves; Miss Triseoe nodded too, but her +father appeared not to see March. “It's all right, with Rose,” he said, +when he sat down again by his wife; “but I guess it's all over with +Burnamy,” and he told her what he had seen. “Do you think it came to any +displeasure between them last night? Do you suppose he offered himself, +and she--” + +“What nonsense!” said Mrs. March, but she was not at peace. “It's her +father who's keeping her away from him.” + +“I shouldn't mind that. He's keeping her away from us, too.” But at that +moment Miss Triscoe as if she had followed his return from afar, came +over to speak to his wife. She said they were going on to Dresden that +evening, and she was afraid they might have no chance to see each other +on the train or in Hamburg. March, at this advance, went to speak with +her father; he found him no more reconciled to Europe than America. + +“They're Goths,” he said of the Germans. “I could hardly get that stupid +brute in the telegraph-office to take my despatch.” + +On his way back to his wife March met Miss Triscoe; he was not +altogether surprised to meet Burnamy with her, now. The young fellow +asked if he could be of any use to him, and then he said he would look +him up in the train. He seemed in a hurry, but when he walked away with +Miss Triscoe he did not seem in a hurry. + +March remarked upon the change to his wife, and she sighed, “Yes, you +can see that as far as they're concerned.” + +“It's a great pity that there should be parents to complicate these +affairs,” he said. “How simple it would be if there were no parties to +them but the lovers! But nature is always insisting upon fathers and +mothers, and families on both sides.” + + + + +XIX. + +The long train which they took at last was for the Norumbia's people +alone, and it was of several transitional and tentative types of cars. +Some were still the old coach-body carriages; but most were of a strange +corridor arrangement, with the aide at the aide, and the seats crossing +from it, with compartments sometimes rising to the roof, and sometimes +rising half-way. No two cars seemed quite alike, but all were very +comfortable; and when the train began to run out through the little +sea-side town into the country, the old delight of foreign travel began. +Most of the houses were little and low and gray, with ivy or flowering +vines covering their walls to their browntiled roofs; there was here and +there a touch of Northern Gothic in the architecture; but usually where +it was pretentious it was in the mansard taste, which was so bad with us +a generation ago, and is still very bad in Cuxhaven. + +The fields, flat and wide, were dotted with familiar shapes of Holstein +cattle, herded by little girls, with their hair in yellow pigtails. The +gray, stormy sky hung low, and broke in fitful rains; but perhaps for +the inclement season of mid-summer it was not very cold. Flowers were +blooming along the embankments and in the rank green fields with a +dogged energy; in the various distances were groups of trees +embowering cottages and even villages, and always along the ditches and +watercourses were double lines of low willows. At the first stop the +train made, the passengers flocked to the refreshment-booth, prettily +arranged beside the station, where the abundance of the cherries and +strawberries gave proof that vegetation was in other respects superior +to the elements. But it was not of the profusion of the sausages, and +the ham which openly in slices or covertly in sandwiches claimed its +primacy in the German affections; every form of this was flanked by tall +glasses of beer. + +A number of the natives stood by and stared unsmiling at the train, +which had broken out in a rash of little American flags at every window. +This boyish display, which must have made the Americans themselves +laugh, if their sense of humor had not been lost in their impassioned +patriotism, was the last expression of unity among the Norumbia's +passengers, and they met no more in their sea-solidarity. Of their table +acquaintance the Marches saw no one except Burnamy, who came through the +train looking for them. He said he was in one of the rear cars with the +Eltwins, and was going to Carlsbad with them in the sleeping-car train +leaving Hamburg at seven. He owned to having seen the Triscoes since +they had left Cuxhaven; Mrs. March would not suffer herself to ask him +whether they were in the same carriage with the Eltwins. He had got a +letter from Mr. Stoller at Cuxhaven, and he begged the Marches to let +him engage rooms for them at the hotel where he was going to stay with +him. + +After they reached Hamburg they had flying glimpses of him and of others +in the odious rivalry to get their baggage examined first which seized +upon all, and in which they no longer knew one another, but selfishly +struggled for the good-will of porters and inspectors. There was really +no such haste; but none could govern themselves against the general +frenzy. With the porter he secured March conspired and perspired to win +the attention of a cold but not unkindly inspector. The officer opened +one trunk, and after a glance at it marked all as passed, and then there +ensued a heroic strife with the porter as to the pieces which were to go +to the Berlin station for their journey next day, and the pieces which +were to go to the hotel overnight. At last the division was made; the +Marches got into a cab of the first class; and the porter, crimson and +steaming at every pore from the physical and intellectual strain, went +back into the station. + +They had got the number of their cab from the policeman who stands at +the door of all large German stations and supplies the traveller with a +metallic check for the sort of vehicle he demands. They were not proud, +but it seemed best not to risk a second-class cab in a strange city, and +when their first-class cab came creaking and limping out of the rank, +they saw how wise they had been, if one of the second class could have +been worse. + +As they rattled away from the station they saw yet another kind of +turnout, which they were destined to see more and more in the German +lands. It was that team of a woman harnessed with a dog to a cart +which the women of no other country can see without a sense of personal +insult. March tried to take the humorous view, and complained that they +had not been offered the choice of such an equipage by the policeman, +but his wife would not be amused. She said that no country which +suffered such a thing could be truly civilized, though he made her +observe that no city in the world, except Boston or Brooklyn, was +probably so thoroughly trolleyed as Hamburg. The hum of the electric car +was everywhere, and everywhere the shriek of the wires overhead; batlike +flights of connecting plates traversed all the perspectives through +which they drove to the pleasant little hotel they had chosen. + + + + +XX. + +On one hand their windows looked toward a basin of the Elbe, where +stately white swans were sailing; and on the other to the new Rathhaus, +over the trees that deeply shaded the perennial mud of a cold, dim +public garden, where water-proof old women and impervious nurses sat, +and children played in the long twilight of the sour, rain-soaked summer +of the fatherland. It was all picturesque, and within-doors there was +the novelty of the meagre carpets and stalwart furniture of the Germans, +and their beds, which after so many ages of Anglo-Saxon satire remain +immutably preposterous. They are apparently imagined for the stature +of sleepers who have shortened as they broadened; their pillows are +triangularly shaped to bring the chin tight upon the breast under the +bloated feather bulk which is meant for covering, and which rises over +the sleeper from a thick substratum of cotton coverlet, neatly buttoned +into the upper sheet, with the effect of a portly waistcoat. + +The hotel was illumined by the kindly splendor of the uniformed portier, +who had met the travellers at the door, like a glowing vision of the +past, and a friendly air diffused itself through the whole house. At +the dinner, which, if not so cheap as they had somehow hoped, was by no +means bad, they took counsel with the English-speaking waiter as to what +entertainment Hamburg could offer for the evening, and by the time +they had drunk their coffee they had courage for the Circus Renz, which +seemed to be all there was. + +The conductor of the trolley-car, which they hailed at the street +corner, stopped it and got off the platform, and stood in the street +until they were safely aboard, without telling them to step lively, or +pulling them up the steps; or knuckling them in the back to make them +move forward. He let them get fairly seated before he started the car, +and so lost the fun of seeing them lurch and stagger violently, and +wildly clutch each other for support. The Germans have so little sense +of humor that probably no one in the car would have been amused to see +the strangers flung upon the floor. No one apparently found it droll +that the conductor should touch his cap to them when he asked for their +fare; no one smiled at their efforts to make him understand where they +wished to go, and he did not wink at the other passengers in trying +to find out. Whenever the car stopped he descended first, and did not +remount till the dismounting passenger had taken time to get well away +from it. When the Marches got into the wrong car in coming home, and +were carried beyond their street, the conductor would not take their +fare. + +The kindly civility which environed them went far to alleviate the +inclemency of the climate; it began to rain as soon as they left the +shelter of the car, but a citizen of whom they asked the nearest way to +the Circus Renz was so anxious to have them go aright that they did +not mind the wet, and the thought of his goodness embittered March's +self-reproach for under-tipping the sort of gorgeous heyduk, with a +staff like a drum-major's, who left his place at the circus door to get +their tickets. He brought them back with a magnificent bow, and was then +as visibly disappointed with the share of the change returned to him as +a child would have been. + +They went to their places with the sting of his disappointment rankling +in their hearts. “One ought always to overpay them,” March sighed, “and +I will do it from this time forth; we shall not be much the poorer for +it. That heyduk is not going to get off with less than a mark when +we come out.” As an earnest of his good faith he gave the old man who +showed them to their box a tip that made him bow double, and he bought +every conceivable libretto and play-bill offered him at prices fixed by +his remorse. + +“One ought to do it,” he said. “We are of the quality of good geniuses +to these poor souls; we are Fortune in disguise; we are money found in +the road. It is an accursed system, but they are more its victims than +we.” His wife quite agreed with him, and with the same good conscience +between them they gave themselves up to the pure joy which the circus, +of all modern entertainments, seems alone to inspire. The house was full +from floor to roof when they came ins and every one was intent upon the +two Spanish clowns, Lui-Lui and Soltamontes, whose drolleries spoke +the universal language of circus humor, and needed no translation into +either German or English. They had missed by an event or two the more +patriotic attraction of “Miss Darlings, the American Star,” as she was +billed in English, but they were in time for one of those equestrian +performances which leave the spectator almost exanimate from their +prolixity, and the pantomimic piece which closed the evening. + +This was not given until nearly the whole house had gone out and stayed +itself with beer and cheese and ham and sausage, in the restaurant +which purveys these light refreshments in the summer theatres all over +Germany. When the people came back gorged to the throat, they sat down +in the right mood to enjoy the allegory of “The Enchanted Mountain's +Fantasy; the Mountain episodes; the High-interesting Sledges-Courses on +the Steep Acclivities; the Amazing-Up-rush of the thence plunging-Four +Trains, which arrive with Lightnings-swiftness at the Top of the +over-40-feet-high Mountain-the Highest Triumph of the To-day's +Circus-Art; the Sledge-journey in the Wizard-mountain, and the Fairy +Ballet in the Realm of the Ghost-prince, with Gold and Silver, Jewel, +Bloomghosts, Gnomes, Gnomesses, and Dwarfs, in never-till-now-seen +Splendor of Costume.” The Marches were happy in this allegory, and +happier in the ballet, which is everywhere delightfully innocent, and +which here appealed with the large flat feet and the plain good faces of +the 'coryphees' to all that was simplest and sweetest in their natures. +They could not have resisted, if they had wished, that environment, +of good-will; and if it had not been for the disappointed heyduk, they +would have got home from their evening at the Circus Renz without a +pang. + +They looked for him everywhere when they came out, but he had vanished, +and they were left with a regret which, if unavailing, was not too +poignant. In spite of it they had still an exhilaration in their release +from the companionship of their fellow-voyagers which they analyzed as +the psychical revulsion from the strain of too great interest in them. +Mrs. March declared that for the present, at least, she wanted Europe +quite to themselves; and she said that not even for the pleasure of +seeing Burnamy and Miss Triscoe come into their box together world she +have suffered an American trespass upon their exclusive possession of +the Circus Renz. + +In the audience she had seen German officers for the first time in +Hamburg, and she meant, if unremitting question could bring out the +truth, to know why she had not met any others. She had read much of the +prevalence and prepotence of the German officers who would try to push +her off the sidewalk, till they realized that she was an American woman, +and would then submit to her inflexible purpose of holding it. But she +had been some seven or eight hours in Hamburg, and nothing of the kind +had happened to her, perhaps because she had hardly yet walked a block +in the city streets, but perhaps also because there seemed to be very +few officers or military of any kind in Hamburg. + + + + +XXI. + +Their absence was plausibly explained, the next morning, by the young +German friend who came in to see the Marches at breakfast. He said +Hamburg had been so long a free republic that the presence of a large +imperial garrison was distasteful to the people, and as a matter of fact +there were very few soldiers quartered there, whether the authorities +chose to indulge the popular grudge or not. He was himself in a joyful +flutter of spirits, for he had just the day before got his release from +military service. He gave them a notion of what the rapture of a man +reprieved from death might be, and he was as radiantly happy in the +ill health which had got him his release as if it had been the greatest +blessing of heaven. He bubbled over with smiling regrets that he should +be leaving his home for the first stage of the journey which he was to +take in search of strength, just as they had come, and he pressed them +to say if there were not something that he could do for them. + +“Yes,” said Mrs. March, with a promptness surprising to her husband, who +could think of nothing; “tell us where Heinrich Heine lived when he was +in Hamburg. My husband has always had a great passion for him and wants +to look him up everywhere.” + +March had forgotten that Heine ever lived in Hamburg, and the young man +had apparently never known it. His face fell; he wished to make Mrs. +March believe that it was only Heine's uncle who had lived there; but +she was firm; and when he had asked among the hotel people he came +back gladly owning that he was wrong, and that the poet used to live in +Konigstrasse, which was very near by, and where they could easily know +the house by his bust set in its front. The portier and the head waiter +shared his ecstasy in so easily obliging the friendly American pair, and +joined him in minutely instructing the driver when they shut them into +their carriage. + +They did not know that his was almost the only laughing face they should +see in the serious German Empire; just as they did not know that it +rained there every day. As they drove off in the gray drizzle with the +unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine, they bade +their driver be very slow in taking them through Konigstrasse, so that +he should by no means Miss Heine's dwelling, and he duly stopped in +front of a house bearing the promised bust. They dismounted in order to +revere it more at their ease, but the bust proved, by an irony bitterer +than the sick, heart-breaking, brilliant Jew could have imagined in his +cruelest moment, to be that of the German Milton, the respectable poet +Klopstock, whom Heine abhorred and mocked so pitilessly. + +In fact it was here that the good, much-forgotten Klopstock dwelt, +when he came home to live with a comfortable pension from the Danish +government; and the pilgrims to the mistaken shrine went asking about +among the neighbors in Konigstrasse, for some manner of house where +Heine might have lived; they would have been willing to accept a flat, +or any sort of two-pair back. The neighbors were somewhat moved by the +anxiety of the strangers; but they were not so much moved as neighbors +in Italy would have been. There was no eager and smiling sympathy in the +little crowd that gathered to see what was going on; they were patient +of question and kind in their helpless response, but they were not gay. +To a man they had not heard of Heine; even the owner of a sausage and +blood-pudding shop across the way had not heard of him; the clerk of a +stationer-and-bookseller's next to the butcher's had heard of him, but +he had never heard that he lived in Konigstrasse; he never had heard +where he lived in Hamburg. + +The pilgrims to the fraudulent shrine got back into their carriage, and +drove sadly away, instructing their driver with the rigidity which their +limited German favored, not to let any house with a bust in its front +escape him. He promised, and took his course out through Konigstrasse, +and suddenly they found themselves in a world of such eld and quaintness +that they forgot Heine as completely as any of his countrymen had done. +They were in steep and narrow streets, that crooked and turned with no +apparent purpose of leading anywhere, among houses that looked down upon +them with an astonished stare from the leaden-sashed windows of their +timber-laced gables. The facades with their lattices stretching in +bands quite across them, and with their steep roofs climbing high +in successions of blinking dormers, were more richly mediaeval than +anything the travellers had ever dreamt of before, and they feasted +themselves upon the unimagined picturesqueness with a leisurely +minuteness which brought responsive gazers everywhere to the windows; +windows were set ajar; shop doors were darkened by curious figures from +within, and the traffic of the tortuous alleys was interrupted by their +progress. They could not have said which delighted them more--the +houses in the immediate foreground, or the sharp high gables in the +perspectives and the background; but all were like the painted scenes +of the stage, and they had a pleasant difficulty in realizing that they +were not persons in some romantic drama. + +The illusion remained with them and qualified the impression which +Hamburg made by her much-trolleyed Bostonian effect; by the decorous +activity and Parisian architecture of her business streets; by the +turmoil of her quays, and the innumerable masts and chimneys of her +shipping. At the heart of all was that quaintness, that picturesqueness +of the past, which embodied the spirit of the old Hanseatic city, and +seemed the expression of the home-side of her history. The sense of this +gained strength from such slight study of her annals as they afterwards +made, and assisted the digestion of some morsels of tough statistics. In +the shadow of those Gothic houses the fact that Hamburg was one of +the greatest coffee marts and money marts of the world had a romantic +glamour; and the fact that in the four years from 1870 till 1874 a +quarter of a million emigrants sailed on her ships for the United +States seemed to stretch a nerve of kindred feeling from those mediaeval +streets through the whole shabby length of Third Avenue. + +It was perhaps in this glamour, or this feeling of commercial +solidarity, that March went to have a look at the Hamburg Bourse, in the +beautiful new Rathhaus. It was not undergoing repairs, it was too new +for that; but it was in construction, and so it fulfilled the function +of a public edifice, in withholding its entire interest from the +stranger. He could not get into the Senate Chamber; but the Bourse was +free to him, and when he stepped within, it rose at him with a roar of +voices and of feet like the New York Stock Exchange. The spectacle was +not so frantic; people were not shaking their fists or fingers in each +other's noses; but they were all wild in the tamer German way, and +he was glad to mount from the Bourse to the poor little art gallery +upstairs, and to shut out its clamor. He was not so glad when he looked +round on these, his first, examples of modern German art. The custodian +led him gently about and said which things were for sale, and it made +his heart ache to see how bad they were, and to think that, bad as they +were, he could not buy any of them. + + + + +XXII. + +In the start from Cuxhaven the passengers had the irresponsible ease of +people ticketed through, and the steamship company had still the charge +of their baggage. But when the Marches left Hamburg for Leipsic (where +they had decided to break the long pull to Carlsbad), all the anxieties +of European travel, dimly remembered from former European days, offered +themselves for recognition. A porter vanished with their hand-baggage +before they could note any trait in him for identification; other +porters made away with their trunks; and the interpreter who helped +March buy his tickets, with a vocabulary of strictly railroad English, +had to help him find the pieces in the baggage-room, curiously estranged +in a mountain of alien boxes. One official weighed them; another obliged +him to pay as much in freight as for a third passenger, and gave him an +illegible scrap of paper which recorded their number and destination. +The interpreter and the porters took their fees with a professional +effect of dissatisfaction, and he went to wait with his wife amidst the +smoking and eating and drinking in the restaurant. They burst through +with the rest when the doors were opened to the train, and followed a +glimpse of the porter with their hand-bags, as he ran down the platform, +still bent upon escaping them, and brought him to bay at last in a car +where he had got very good seats for them, and sank into their places, +hot and humiliated by their needless tumult. + +As they cooled, they recovered their self-respect, and renewed a +youthful joy in some of the long-estranged facts. The road was rougher +than the roads at home; but for much less money they had the comfort, +without the unavailing splendor, of a Pullman in their second-class +carriage. Mrs. March had expected to be used with the severity on the +imperial railroads which she had failed to experience from the military +on the Hamburg sidewalks, but nothing could be kindlier than the whole +management toward her. Her fellow-travellers were not lavish of their +rights, as Americans are; what they got, that they kept; and in the run +from Hamburg to Leipsic she had several occasions to observe that no +German, however young or robust, dreams of offering a better place, if +he has one, to a lady in grace to her sex or age; if they got into a +carriage too late to secure a forward-looking seat, she rode backward to +the end of that stage. But if they appealed to their fellow-travellers +for information about changes, or stops, or any of the little facts that +they wished to make sure of, they were enlightened past possibility of +error. At the point where they might have gone wrong the explanations +were renewed with a thoughtfulness which showed that their anxieties had +not been forgotten. She said she could not see how any people could be +both so selfish and so sweet, and her husband seized the advantage of +saying something offensive: + +“You women are so pampered in America that you are astonished when you +are treated in Europe like the mere human beings you are.” + +She answered with unexpected reasonableness: + +“Yes, there's something in that; but when the Germans have taught us +how despicable we are as women, why do they treat us so well as human +beings?” + +This was at ten o'clock, after she had ridden backward a long way, and +at last, within an hour of Leipsic, had got a seat confronting him. The +darkness had now hidden the landscape, but the impression of its few +simple elements lingered pleasantly in their sense: long levels, densely +wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests, and +checkered with fields of grain and grass, soaking under the thin rain +that from time to time varied the thin sunshine. + +The villages and peasants' cottages were notably few; but there was +here and there a classic or a gothic villa, which, at one point, an +English-speaking young lady turned from her Tauchnitz novel to explain +as the seat of some country gentleman; the land was in large holdings, +and this accounted for the sparsity of villages and cottages. + +She then said that she was a German teacher of English, in Hamburg, and +was going home to Potsdam for a visit. She seemed like a German girl +out of 'The Initials', and in return for this favor Mrs. March tried to +invest herself with some romantic interest as an American. She failed +to move the girl's fancy, even after she had bestowed on her an immense +bunch of roses which the young German friend in Hamburg had sent to them +just before they left their hotel. She failed, later, on the same ground +with the pleasant-looking English woman who got into their carriage +at Magdeburg, and talked over the 'London Illustrated News' with an +English-speaking Fraulein in her company; she readily accepted the +fact of Mrs. March's nationality, but found nothing wonderful in it, +apparently; and when she left the train she left Mrs. March to recall +with fond regret the old days in Italy when she first came abroad, and +could make a whole carriage full of Italians break into ohs and ahs by +saying that she was an American, and telling how far she had come across +the sea. + +“Yes,” March assented, “but that was a great while ago, and Americans +were much rarer than they are now in Europe. The Italians are so much +more sympathetic than the Germans and English, and they saw that you +wanted to impress them. Heaven knows how little they cared! And then, +you were a very pretty young girl in those days; or at least I thought +so.” + +“Yes,” she sighed, “and now I'm a plain old woman.” + +“Oh, not quite so bad as that.” + +“Yes, I am! Do you think they would have cared more if it had been Miss +Triscoe?” + +“Not so much as if it had been the pivotal girl. They would have found +her much more their ideal of the American woman; and even she would have +had to have been here thirty years ago.” + +She laughed a little ruefully. “Well, at any rate, I should like to know +how Miss Triscoe would have affected them.” + +“I should much rather know what sort of life that English woman is +living here with her German husband; I fancied she had married rank. I +could imagine how dull it must be in her little Saxon town, from the +way she clung to her Illustrated News, and explained the pictures of the +royalties to her friend. There is romance for you!” + +They arrived at Leipsic fresh and cheerful after their five hours' +journey, and as in a spell of their travelled youth they drove up +through the academic old town, asleep under its dimly clouded sky, and +silent except for the trolley-cars that prowled its streets with their +feline purr, and broke at times into a long, shrill caterwaul. A sense +of the past imparted itself to the well-known encounter with the portier +and the head waiter at the hotel door, to the payment of the driver, to +the endeavor of the secretary to have them take the most expensive rooms +in the house, and to his compromise upon the next most, where they found +themselves in great comfort, with electric lights and bells, and a quick +succession of fee-taking call-boys in dress-coats too large for them. +The spell was deepened by the fact, which March kept at the bottom of +his consciousness for the present, that one of their trunks was missing. +This linked him more closely to the travel of other days, and he spent +the next forenoon in a telegraphic search for the estray, with emotions +tinged by the melancholy of recollection, but in the security that +since it was somewhere in the keeping of the state railway, it would be +finally restored to him. + + + + +XXIII. + +Their windows, as they saw in the morning, looked into a large square +of aristocratic physiognomy, and of a Parisian effect in architecture, +which afterwards proved characteristic of the town, if not quite so +characteristic as to justify the passion of Leipsic for calling itself +Little Paris. The prevailing tone was of a gray tending to the pale +yellow of the Tauchnitz editions with which the place is more familiarly +associated in the minds of English-speaking travellers. It was rather +more sombre than it might have been if the weather had been fair; but +a quiet rain was falling dreamily that morning, and the square was +provided with a fountain which continued to dribble in the rare moments +when the rain forgot itself. The place was better shaded than need be +in that sunless land by the German elms that look like ours and it was +sufficiently stocked with German statues, that look like no others. It +had a monument, too, of the sort with which German art has everywhere +disfigured the kindly fatherland since the war with France. These +monuments, though they are so very ugly, have a sort of pathos as +records of the only war in which Germany unaided has triumphed against +a foreign foe, but they are as tiresome as all such memorial pomps must +be. It is not for the victories of a people that any other people can +care. The wars come and go in blood and tears; but whether they are bad +wars, or what are comically called good wars, they are of one effect in +death and sorrow, and their fame is an offence to all men not concerned +in them, till time has softened it to a memory + + “Of old, unhappy, far-off things, + And battles long ago.” + +It was for some such reason that while the Marches turned with instant +satiety from the swelling and strutting sculpture which celebrated the +Leipsic heroes of the war of 1870, they had heart for those of the war +of 1813; and after their noonday dinner they drove willingly, in a pause +of the rain, out between yellowing harvests of wheat and oats to the +field where Napoleon was beaten by the Russians, Austrians and Prussians +(it always took at least three nations to beat the little wretch) +fourscore years before. Yet even there Mrs. March was really more +concerned for the sparsity of corn-flowers in the grain, which in their +modern character of Kaiserblumen she found strangely absent from their +loyal function; and March was more taken with the notion of the little +gardens which his guide told him the citizens could have in the suburbs +of Leipsic and enjoy at any trolley-car distance from their homes. +He saw certain of these gardens in groups, divided by low, unenvious +fences, and sometimes furnished with summer-houses, where the tenant +could take his pleasure in the evening air, with his family. The guide +said he had such a garden himself, at a rent of seven dollars a year, +where he raised vegetables and flowers, and spent his peaceful leisure; +and March fancied that on the simple domestic side of their life, which +this fact gave him a glimpse of, the Germans were much more engaging +than in their character of victors over either the First or the Third +Napoleon. But probably they would not have agreed with him, and probably +nations will go on making themselves cruel and tiresome till humanity at +last prevails over nationality. + +He could have put the case to the guide himself; but though the guide +was imaginably liberated to a cosmopolitan conception of things by +three years' service as waiter in English hotels, where he learned the +language, he might not have risen to this. He would have tried, for he +was a willing and kindly soul, though he was not a 'valet de place' by +profession. There seemed in fact but one of that useless and amusing +race (which is everywhere falling into decay through the rivalry of the +perfected Baedeker,) left in Leipsic, and this one was engaged, so that +the Marches had to devolve upon their ex-waiter, who was now the keeper +of a small restaurant. He gladly abandoned his business to the care of +his wife, in order to drive handsomely about in his best clothes, with +strangers who did not exact too much knowledge from him. In his zeal +to do something he possessed himself of March's overcoat when they +dismounted at their first gallery, and let fall from its pocket his +prophylactic flask of brandy, which broke with a loud crash on the +marble floor in the presence of several masterpieces, and perfumed the +whole place. The masterpieces were some excellent works of Luke Kranach, +who seemed the only German painter worth looking at when there were any +Dutch or Italian pictures near, but the travellers forgot the name and +nature of the Kranachs, and remembered afterwards only the shattered +fragments of the brandy-flask, just how they looked on the floor, and +the fumes, how they smelt, that rose from the ruin. + +It might have been a warning protest of the veracities against what they +were doing; but the madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel, was +on them, and they delivered themselves up to it as they used in their +ignorant youth, though now they knew its futility so well. They spared +themselves nothing that they had time for, that day, and they felt +falsely guilty for their omissions, as if they really had been duties +to art and history which must be discharged, like obligations to one's +maker and one's neighbor. + +They had a touch of genuine joy in the presence of the beautiful old +Rathhaus, and they were sensible of something like a genuine emotion in +passing the famous and venerable university; the very air of Leipsic +is redolent of printing and publication, which appealed to March in his +quality of editor, and they could not fail of an impression of the quiet +beauty of the town, with its regular streets of houses breaking into +suburban villas of an American sort, and intersected with many canals, +which in the intervals of the rain were eagerly navigated by pleasure +boats, and contributed to the general picturesqueness by their frequent +bridges, even during the drizzle. There seemed to be no churches to do, +and as it was a Sunday, the galleries were so early closed against them +that they were making a virtue as well as a pleasure of the famous scene +of Napoleon's first great defeat. + +By a concert between their guide and driver their carriage drew up at +the little inn by the road-side, which is also a museum stocked with +relics from the battle-field, and with objects of interest relating to +it. Old muskets, old swords, old shoes and old coats, trumpets, drums, +gun-carriages, wheels, helmets, cannon balls, grape-shot, and all the +murderous rubbish which battles come to at last, with proclamations, +autographs, caricatures and likenesses of Napoleon, and effigies of +all the other generals engaged, and miniatures and jewels of their +womenkind, filled room after room, through which their owner vaunted his +way, with a loud pounding voice and a bad breath. When he wished them +to enjoy some gross British satire or clumsy German gibe at Bonaparte's +expense, and put his face close to begin the laugh, he was something +so terrible that March left the place with a profound if not a reasoned +regret that the French had not won the battle of Leipsic. He walked +away musing pensively upon the traveller's inadequacy to the ethics of +history when a breath could so sway him against his convictions; but +even after he had cleansed his lungs with some deep respirations he +found himself still a Bonapartist in the presence of that stone on +the rising ground where Napoleon sat to watch the struggle on the vast +plain, and see his empire slipping through his blood-stained fingers. +It was with difficulty that he could keep from revering the hat and coat +which are sculptured on the stone, but it was well that he succeeded, +for he could not make out then or afterwards whether the habiliments +represented were really Napoleon's or not, and they might have turned +out to be Barclay de Tolly's. + +While he stood trying to solve this question of clothes he was startled +by the apparition of a man climbing the little slope from the opposite +quarter, and advancing toward them. He wore the imperial crossed by the +pointed mustache once so familiar to a world much the worse for them, +and March had the shiver of a fine moment in which he fancied the Third +Napoleon rising to view the scene where the First had looked his coming +ruin in the face. + +“Why, it's Miss Triscoe!” cried his wife, and before March had noticed +the approach of another figure, the elder and the younger lady had +rushed upon each other, and encountered with a kiss. At the same time +the visage of the last Emperor resolved itself into the face of General +Triscoe, who gave March his hand in a more tempered greeting. + +The ladies began asking each other of their lives since their parting +two days before, and the men strolled a few paces away toward the +distant prospect of Leipsic, which at that point silhouettes itself in a +noble stretch of roofs and spires and towers against the horizon. + +General Triscoe seemed no better satisfied with Germany than he had been +on first stepping ashore at Cuxhaven. He might still have been in a pout +with his own country, but as yet he had not made up with any other; and +he said, “What a pity Napoleon didn't thrash the whole dunderheaded lot! +His empire would have been a blessing to them, and they would have had +some chance of being civilized under the French. All this unification +of nationalities is the great humbug of the century. Every stupid race +thinks it's happy because it's united, and civilization has been set +back a hundred years by the wars that were fought to bring the unions +about; and more wars will have to be fought to keep them up. What +a farce it is! What's become of the nationality of the Danes in +Schleswig-Holstein, or the French in the Rhine Provinces, or the +Italians in Savoy?” + +March had thought something like this himself, but to have it put +by General Triscoe made it offensive. “I don't know. Isn't it rather +quarrelling with the course of human events to oppose accomplished +facts? The unifications were bound to be, just as the separations before +them were. And so far they have made for peace, in Europe at least, and +peace is civilization. Perhaps after a great many ages people will +come together through their real interests, the human interests; but at +present it seems as if nothing but a romantic sentiment of patriotism +can unite them. By-and-by they may find that there is nothing in it.” + +“Perhaps,” said the general, discontentedly. “I don't see much promise +of any kind in the future.” + +“Well, I don't know. When you think of the solid militarism of Germany, +you seem remanded to the most hopeless moment of the Roman Empire; you +think nothing can break such a force; but my guide says that even in +Leipsic the Socialists outnumber all the other parties, and the army +is the great field of the Socialist propaganda. The army itself may be +shaped into the means of democracy--even of peace.” + +“You're very optimistic,” said Triscoe, curtly. “As I read the signs, +we are not far from universal war. In less than a year we shall make +the break ourselves in a war with Spain.” He looked very fierce as he +prophesied, and he dotted March over with his staccato glances. + +“Well, I'll allow that if Tammany comes in this year, we shall have war +with Spain. You can't ask more than that, General Triscoe?” + +Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe had not said a word of the 'battle of +Leipsic', or of the impersonal interests which it suggested to the +men. For all these, they might still have been sitting in their steamer +chairs on the promenade of the Norumbia at a period which seemed now of +geological remoteness. The girl accounted for not being in Dresden by +her father's having decided not to go through Berlin but to come by way +of Leipsic, which he thought they had better see; they had come without +stopping in Hamburg. They had not enjoyed Leipsic much; it had rained +the whole day before, and they had not gone out. She asked when Mrs. +March was going on to Carlsbad, and Mrs. March answered, the next +morning; her husband wished to begin his cure at once. + +Then Miss Triscoe pensively wondered if Carlsbad would do her father any +good; and Mrs. March discreetly inquired General Triscoe's symptoms. + +“Oh, he hasn't any. But I know he can't be well--with his gloomy +opinions.” + +“They may come from his liver,” said Mrs. March. “Nearly everything of +that kind does. I know that Mr. March has been terribly depressed at +times, and the doctor said it was nothing but his liver; and Carlsbad is +the great place for that, you know.” + +“Perhaps I can get papa to run over some day, if he doesn't like +Dresden. It isn't very far, is it?” + +They referred to Mrs. March's Baedeker together, and found that it was +five hours. + +“Yes, that is what I thought,” said Miss Triscoe, with a carelessness +which convinced Mrs. March she had looked up the fact already. + +“If you decide to come, you must let us get rooms for you at our hotel. +We're going to Pupp's; most of the English and Americans go to the +hotels on the Hill, but Pupp's is in the thick of it in the lower town; +and it's very gay, Mr. Kenby says; he's been there often. Mr. Burnamy is +to get our rooms.” + +“I don't suppose I can get papa to go,” said Miss Triscoe, so +insincerely that Mrs. March was sure she had talked over the different +routes; to Carlsbad with Burnamy--probably on the way from Cuxhaven. +She looked up from digging the point of her umbrella in the ground. “You +didn't meet him here this morning?” + +Mrs. March governed herself to a calm which she respected in asking, +“Has Mr. Burnamy been here?” + +“He came on with Mr. and Mrs. Eltwin, when we did, and they all decided +to stop over a day. They left on the twelve-o'clock train to-day.” + +Mrs. March perceived that the girl had decided not to let the facts +betray themselves by chance, and she treated them as of no significance. + +“No, we didn't see him,” she said, carelessly. + +The two men came walking slowly towards them, and Miss Triscoe +said, “We're going to Dresden this evening, but I hope we shall meet +somewhere, Mrs. March.” + +“Oh, people never lose sight of each other in Europe; they can't; it's +so little!” + +“Agatha,” said the girl's father, “Mr. March tells me that the museum +over there is worth seeing.” + +“Well,” the girl assented, and she took a winning leave of the Marches, +and moved gracefully away with her father. + +“I should have thought it was Agnes,” said Mrs. March, following them +with her eyes before she turned upon her husband. “Did he tell you +Burnamy had been here? Well, he has! He has just gone on to Carlsbad. +He made, those poor old Eltwins stop over with him, so he could be with +her.” + +“Did she say that?” + +“No, but of course he did.” + +“Then it's all settled?” + +“No, it isn't settled. It's at the most interesting point.” + +“Well, don't read ahead. You always want to look at the last page.” + +“You were trying to look at the last page yourself,” she retorted, and +she would have liked to punish him for his complex dishonesty toward the +affair; but upon the whole she kept her temper with him, and she made +him agree that Miss Triscoe's getting her father to Carlsbad was only a +question of time. + +They parted heart's-friends with their ineffectual guide, who was +affectionately grateful for the few marks they gave him, at the hotel +door; and they were in just the mood to hear men singing in a farther +room when they went down to supper. The waiter, much distracted from +their own service by his duties to it, told them it was the breakfast +party of students which they had heard beginning there about noon. The +revellers had now been some six hours at table, and he said they might +not rise before midnight; they had just got to the toasts, which were +apparently set to music. + +The students of right remained a vivid color in the impression of the +university town. They pervaded the place, and decorated it with their +fantastic personal taste in coats and trousers, as well as their corps +caps of green, white, red, and blue, but above all blue. They were not +easily distinguishable from the bicyclers who were holding one of the +dull festivals of their kind in Leipsic that day, and perhaps they were +sometimes both students and bicyclers. As bicyclers they kept about in +the rain, which they seemed not to mind; so far from being disheartened, +they had spirits enough to take one another by the waist at times and +waltz in the square before the hotel. At one moment of the holiday some +chiefs among them drove away in carriages; at supper a winner of prizes +sat covered with badges and medals; another who went by the hotel +streamed with ribbons; and an elderly man at his side was bespattered +with small knots and ends of them, as if he had been in an explosion of +ribbons somewhere. It seemed all to be as exciting for them, and it was +as tedious for the witnesses, as any gala of students and bicyclers at +home. + +Mrs. March remained with an unrequited curiosity concerning their +different colors and different caps, and she tried to make her husband +find out what they severally meant; he pretended a superior interest +in the nature of a people who had such a passion for uniforms that +they were not content with its gratification in their immense army, +but indulged it in every pleasure and employment of civil life. He +estimated, perhaps not very accurately, that only one man out of ten in +Germany wore citizens' dress; and of all functionaries he found that the +dogs of the women-and-dog teams alone had no distinctive dress; even the +women had their peasant costume. + +There was an industrial fair open at Leipsic which they went out of the +city to see after supper, along with a throng of Leipsickers, whom an +hour's interval of fine weather tempted forth on the trolley; and with +the help of a little corporal, who took a fee for his service with the +eagerness of a civilian, they got wheeled chairs, and renewed their +associations with the great Chicago Fair in seeing the exposition from +them. This was not, March said, quite the same as being drawn by a +woman-and-dog team, which would have been the right means of doing a +German fair; but it was something to have his chair pushed by a slender +young girl, whose stalwart brother applied his strength to the chair of +the lighter traveller; and it was fit that the girl should reckon the +common hire, while the man took the common tip. They made haste to leave +the useful aspects of the fair, and had themselves trundled away to +the Colonial Exhibit, where they vaguely expected something like the +agreeable corruptions of the Midway Plaisance. The idea of her colonial +progress with which Germany is trying to affect the home-keeping +imagination of her people was illustrated by an encampment of savages +from her Central-African possessions. They were getting their supper at +the moment the Marches saw them, and were crouching, half naked, around +the fires under the kettles, and shivering from the cold, but they were +not very characteristic of the imperial expansion, unless perhaps when +an old man in a red blanket suddenly sprang up with a knife in his hand +and began to chase a boy round the camp. The boy was lighter-footed, and +easily outran the sage, who tripped at times on his blanket. None of the +other Central Africans seemed to care for the race, and without waiting +for the event, the American spectators ordered themselves trundled +away to another idle feature of the fair, where they hoped to amuse +themselves with the image of Old Leipsic. + +This was so faithfully studied from the past in its narrow streets and +Gothic houses that it was almost as picturesque as the present epoch in +the old streets of Hamburg. A drama had just begun to be represented +on a platform of the public square in front of a fourteenth-century +beer-house, with people talking from the windows round, and revellers in +the costume of the period drinking beer and eating sausages at tables in +the open air. Their eating and drinking were genuine, and in the midst +of it a real rain began, to pour down upon them, without affecting them +any more than if they had been Germans of the nineteenth century. But it +drove the Americans to a shelter from which they could not see the play, +and when it held up, they made their way back to their hotel. + +Their car was full of returning pleasurers, some of whom were happy +beyond the sober wont of the fatherland. The conductor took a special +interest in his tipsy passengers, trying to keep them in order, and +genially entreating them to be quiet when they were too obstreperous. +From time to time he got some of them off, and then, when he remounted +the car, he appealed to the remaining passengers for their sympathy with +an innocent smile, which the Americans, still strange to the unjoyous +physiognomy of the German Empire, failed to value at its rare worth. + +Before he slept that night March tried to assemble from the experiences +and impressions of the day some facts which he would not be ashamed of +as a serious observer of life in Leipsic, and he remembered that their +guide had said house-rent was very low. He generalized from the guide's +content with his fee that the Germans were not very rapacious; and he +became quite irrelevantly aware that in Germany no man's clothes fitted +him, or seemed expected to fit him; that the women dressed somewhat +better, and were rather pretty sometimes, and that they had feet as +large as the kind hearts of the Germans of every age and sex. He was +able to note, rather more freshly, that with all their kindness the +Germans were a very nervous people, if not irritable, and at the least +cause gave way to an agitation, which indeed quickly passed, but was +violent while it lasted. Several times that day he had seen encounters +between the portier and guests at the hotel which promised violence, but +which ended peacefully as soon as some simple question of train-time was +solved. The encounters always left the portier purple and perspiring, +as any agitation must with a man so tight in his livery. He bemoaned +himself after one of them as the victim of an unhappy calling, in which +he could take no exercise. “It is a life of excitements, but not of +movements,” he explained to March; and when he learned where he was +going, he regretted that he could not go to Carlsbad too. “For sugar?” + he asked, as if there were overmuch of it in his own make. + +March felt the tribute, but he had to say, “No; liver.” + +“Ah!” said the portier, with the air of failing to get on common ground +with him. + + + + +XXV. + +The next morning was so fine that it would have been a fine morning +in America. Its beauty was scarcely sullied, even subjectively, by the +telegram which the portier sent after the Marches from the hotel, saying +that their missing trunk had not yet been found, and their spirits were +as light as the gay little clouds which blew about in the sky, when +their train drew out in the sunshine, brilliant on the charming +landscape all the way to Carlsbad. A fatherly 'traeger' had done his +best to get them the worst places in a non-smoking compartment, but had +succeeded so poorly that they were very comfortable, with no companions +but a mother and daughter, who spoke German in soft low tones together. +Their compartment was pervaded by tobacco fumes from the smokers, but as +these were twice as many as the non-smokers, it was only fair, and after +March had got a window open it did not matter, really. + +He asked leave of the strangers in his German, and they consented in +theirs; but he could not master the secret of the window-catch, and the +elder lady said in English, “Let me show you,” and came to his help. + +The occasion for explaining that they were Americans and accustomed to +different car windows was so tempting that Mrs. March could not forbear, +and the other ladies were affected as deeply as she could wish. Perhaps +they were the more affected because it presently appeared that they had +cousins in New York whom she knew of, and that they were acquainted with +an American family that had passed the winter in Berlin. Life likes to +do these things handsomely, and it easily turned out that this was a +family of intimate friendship with the Marches; the names, familiarly +spoken, abolished all strangeness between the travellers; and they +entered into a comparison of tastes, opinions, and experiences, from +which it seemed that the objects and interests of cultivated people in +Berlin were quite the same as those of cultivated people in New York. +Each of the parties to the discovery disclaimed any superiority for +their respective civilizations; they wished rather to ascribe a greater +charm and virtue to the alien conditions; and they acquired such merit +with one another that when the German ladies got out of the train +at Franzensbad, the mother offered Mrs. March an ingenious folding +footstool which she had admired. In fact, she left her with it clasped +to her breast, and bowing speechless toward the giver in a vain wish to +express her gratitude. + +“That was very pretty of her, my dear,” said March. “You couldn't have +done that.” + +“No,” she confessed; “I shouldn't have had the courage. The courage of +my emotions,” she added, thoughtfully. + +“Ah, that's the difference! A Berliner could do it, and a Bostonian +couldn't. Do you think it so much better to have the courage of your +convictions?” + +“I don't know. It seems to me that I'm less and less certain of +everything that I used to be sure of.” + +He laughed, and then he said, “I was thinking how, on our wedding +journey, long ago, that Gray Sister at the Hotel Dieu in Quebec offered +you a rose.” + +“Well?” + +“That was to your pretty youth. Now the gracious stranger gives you a +folding stool.” + +“To rest my poor old feet. Well, I would rather have it than a rose, +now.” + +“You bent toward her at just the slant you had when you took the flower +that time; I noticed it. I didn't see that you looked so very different. +To be sure the roses in your cheeks have turned into rosettes; but +rosettes are very nice, and they're much more permanent; I prefer them; +they will keep in any climate.” + +She suffered his mockery with an appreciative sigh. “Yes, our age +caricatures our youth, doesn't it?” + +“I don't think it gets much fun out of it,” he assented. + +“No; but it can't help it. I used to rebel against it when it first +began. I did enjoy being young.” + +“You did, my dear,” he said, taking her hand tenderly; she withdrew it, +because though she could bear his sympathy, her New England nature could +not bear its expression. “And so did I; and we were both young a long +time. Travelling brings the past back, don't you think? There at that +restaurant, where we stopped for dinner--” + +“Yes, it was charming! Just as it used to be! With that white cloth, and +those tall shining bottles of wine, and the fruit in the centre, and the +dinner in courses, and that young waiter who spoke English, and was so +nice! I'm never going home; you may, if you like.” + +“You bragged to those ladies about our dining-cars; and you said that +our railroad restaurants were quite as good as the European.” + +“I had to do that. But I knew better; they don't begin to be.” + +“Perhaps not; but I've been thinking that travel is a good deal alike +everywhere. It's the expression of the common civilization of the world. +When I came out of that restaurant and ran the train down, and then +found that it didn't start for fifteen minutes, I wasn't sure whether +I was at home or abroad. And when we changed cars at Eger, and got into +this train which had been baking in the sun for us outside the station, +I didn't know but I was back in the good old Fitchburg depot. To be +sure, Wallenstein wasn't assassinated at Boston, but I forgot his murder +at Eger, and so that came to the same thing. It's these confounded +fifty-odd years. I used to recollect everything.” + +He had got up and was looking out of the window at the landscape, which +had not grown less amiable in growing rather more slovenly since they +had crossed the Saxon bolder into Bohemia. All the morning and early +afternoon they had run through lovely levels of harvest, where men were +cradling the wheat and women were binding it into sheaves in the narrow +fields between black spaces of forest. After they left Eger, there was +something more picturesque and less thrifty in the farming among the +low hills which they gradually mounted to uplands, where they tasted +a mountain quality in the thin pure air. The railroad stations were +shabbier; there was an indefinable touch of something Southern in the +scenery and the people. Lilies were rocking on the sluggish reaches of +the streams, and where the current quickened, tall wheels were lifting +water for the fields in circles of brimming and spilling pockets. Along +the embankments, where a new track was being laid, barefooted women were +at work with pick and spade and barrow, and little yellow-haired girls +were lugging large white-headed babies, and watching the train go by. At +an up grade where it slowed in the ascent he began to throw out to +the children the pfennigs which had been left over from the passage +in Germany, and he pleased himself with his bounty, till the question +whether the children could spend the money forced itself upon him. He +sat down feeling less like a good genius than a cruel magician who had +tricked them with false wealth; but he kept his remorse to himself, and +tried to interest his wife in the difference of social and civic ideal +expressed in the change of the inhibitory notices at the car windows, +which in Germany had strongliest forbidden him to outlean himself, and +now in Austria entreated him not to outbow himself. She refused to share +in the speculation, or to debate the yet nicer problem involved by the +placarded prayer in the washroom to the Messrs. Travellers not to take +away the soap; and suddenly he felt himself as tired as she looked, with +that sense of the futility of travel which lies in wait for every one +who profits by travel. + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Bad wars, or what are comically called good wars + Calm of those who have logic on their side + Decided not to let the facts betray themselves by chance + Explained perhaps too fully + Futility of travel + Humanity may at last prevail over nationality + Impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much + Less certain of everything that I used to be sure of + Life of the ship, like the life of the sea: a sodden monotony + Life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, but more monotonous + Madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel + Night so bad that it was worse than no night at all + Our age caricatures our youth + Prices fixed by his remorse + Recipes for dishes and diseases + Reckless and culpable optimism + Repeated the nothings they had said already + She cares for him: that she was so cold shows that + She could bear his sympathy, but not its expression + Suffering under the drip-drip of his innocent egotism + They were so near in age, though they were ten years apart + Unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine + Wilful sufferers + Woman harnessed with a dog to a cart + Wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests + Work he was so fond of and so weary of + + + + +PART II. + + + + +XXVI. + +They found Burnamy expecting them at the station in Carlsbad, and she +scolded him like a mother for taking the trouble to meet them, while she +kept back for the present any sign of knowing that he had staid over a +day with the Triscoes in Leipsic. He was as affectionately glad to see +her and her husband as she could have wished, but she would have liked +it better if he had owned up at once about Leipsic. He did not, and it +seemed to her that he was holding her at arm's-length in his answers +about his employer. He would not say how he liked his work, or how he +liked Mr. Stoller; he merely said that they were at Pupp's together, and +that he had got in a good day's work already; and since he would say no +more, she contented herself with that. + +The long drive from the station to the hotel was by streets that wound +down the hill-side like those of an Italian mountain town, between gay +stuccoed houses, of Southern rather than of Northern architecture; and +the impression of a Latin country was heightened at a turn of the road +which brought into view a colossal crucifix planted against a curtain +of dark green foliage on the brow of one of the wooded heights that +surrounded Carlsbad. When they reached the level of the Tepl, the +hill-fed torrent that brawls through the little city under pretty +bridges within walls of solid masonry, they found themselves in almost +the only vehicle on a brilliant promenade thronged with a cosmopolitan +world. Germans in every manner of misfit; Polish Jews in long black +gabardines, with tight corkscrew curls on their temples under their +black velvet derbys; Austrian officers in tight corsets; Greek priests +in flowing robes and brimless high hats; Russians in caftans and +Cossacks in Astrakhan caps, accented the more homogeneous masses of +western Europeans, in which it would have been hard to say which were +English, French or Italians. Among the vividly dressed ladies, some were +imaginably Parisian from their chic costumes, but they might easily have +been Hungarians or Levantines of taste; some Americans, who might have +passed unknown in the perfection of their dress, gave their nationality +away in the flat wooden tones of their voices, which made themselves +heard above the low hum of talk and the whisper of the innumerable feet. + +The omnibus worked its way at a slow walk among the promenaders going +and coming between the rows of pollard locusts on one side and the +bright walls of the houses on the other. Under the trees were tables, +served by pretty bareheaded girls who ran to and from the restaurants +across the way. On both sides flashed and glittered the little shops +full of silver, glass, jewelry, terracotta figurines, wood-carvings, and +all the idle frippery of watering-place traffic: they suggested Paris, +and they suggested Saratoga, and then they were of Carlsbad and of no +place else in the world, as the crowd which might have been that of +other cities at certain moments could only have been of Carlsbad in its +habitual effect. + +“Do you like it?” asked Burnamy, as if he owned the place, and Mrs. +March saw how simple-hearted he was in his reticence, after all. She +was ready to bless him when they reached the hotel and found that his +interest had got them the only rooms left in the house. This satisfied +in her the passion for size which is at the bottom of every American +heart, and which perhaps above all else marks us the youngest of the +peoples. We pride ourselves on the bigness of our own things, but we +are not ungenerous, and when we go to Europe and find things bigger +than ours, we are magnanimously happy in them. Pupp's, in its altogether +different way, was larger than any hotel at Saratoga or at Niagara; and +when Burnamy told her that it sometimes fed fifteen thousand people a +day in the height of the season, she was personally proud of it. + +She waited with him in the rotunda of the hotel, while the secretary led +March off to look at the rooms reserved for them, and Burnamy hospitably +turned the revolving octagonal case in the centre of the rotunda where +the names of the guests were put up. They were of all nations, but there +were so many New Yorkers whose names ended in berg, and thal, and stern, +and baum that she seemed to be gazing upon a cyclorama of the signs on +Broadway. A large man of unmistakable American make, but with so little +that was of New England or New York in his presence that she might not +at once have thought him American, lounged toward them with a quill +toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He had a jealous blue eye, into +which he seemed trying to put a friendly light; his straight mouth +stretched into an involuntary smile above his tawny chin-beard, and he +wore his soft hat so far back from his high forehead (it showed to +the crown when he took his hat off) that he had the effect of being +uncovered. + +At his approach Burnamy turned, and with a flush said: “Oh! Let me +introduce Mr. Stoller, Mrs. March.” + +Stoller took his toothpick out of his mouth and bowed; then he seemed to +remember, and took off his hat. “You see Jews enough, here to make you +feel at home?” he asked; and he added: “Well, we got some of 'em in +Chicago, too, I guess. This young man”--he twisted his head toward +Burnamy--“found you easy enough?” + +“It was very good of him to meet us,” Mrs. March began. “We didn't +expect--” + +“Oh, that's all right,” said Stoller, putting his toothpick back, and +his hat on. “We'd got through for the day; my doctor won't let me work +all I want to, here. Your husband's going to take the cure, they tell +me. Well, he wants to go to a good doctor, first. You can't go and drink +these waters hit or miss. I found that out before I came.” + +“Oh, no!” said Mrs. March, and she wished to explain how they had been +advised; but he said to Burnamy: + +“I sha'n't want you again till ten to-morrow morning. Don't let me +interrupt you,” he added patronizingly to Mrs. March. He put his hand up +toward his hat, and sauntered away out of the door. + +Burnamy did not speak; and she only asked at last, to relieve the +silence, “Is Mr. Stoller an American?” + +“Why, I suppose so,” he answered, with an uneasy laugh. “His people were +German emigrants who settled in Southern Indiana. That makes him as much +American as any of us, doesn't it?” + +Burnamy spoke with his mind on his French-Canadian grandfather, who had +come down through Detroit, when their name was Bonami; but Mrs. March +answered from her eight generations of New England ancestry. “Oh, for +the West, yes, perhaps,” and they neither of them said anything more +about Stoller. + +In their room, where she found March waiting for her amidst their +arriving baggage, she was so full of her pent-up opinions of Burnamy's +patron that she, would scarcely speak of the view from their windows of +the wooded hills up and down the Tepl. “Yes, yes; very nice, and I know +I shall enjoy it ever so much. But I don't know what you will think of +that poor young Burnamy!” + +“Why, what's happened to him?” + +“Happened? Stoller's happened.” + +“Oh, have you seen him, already? Well?” + +“Well, if you had been going to pick out that type of man, you'd have +rejected him, because you'd have said he was too pat. He's like an actor +made up for a Western millionaire. Do you remember that American in +'L'Etranger' which Bernhardt did in Boston when she first came? He, +looks exactly like that, and he has the worst manners. He stood talking +to me with his hat on, and a toothpick in his mouth; and he made me feel +as if he had bought me, along with Burnamy, and had paid too much. If +you don't give him a setting down, Basil, I shall never speak to you; +that's all. I'm sure Burnamy is in some trouble with him; he's got some +sort of hold upon him; what it could be in such a short time, I can't +imagine; but if ever a man seemed to be, in a man's power, he does, in +his! + +“Now,” said March, “your pronouns have got so far beyond me that I think +we'd better let it all go till after supper; perhaps I shall see Stoller +myself by that time.” + +She had been deeply stirred by her encounter with Stoller, but she +entered with impartial intensity into the fact that the elevator at +Pupp's had the characteristic of always coming up and never going down +with passengers. It was locked into its closet with a solid door, and +there was no bell to summon it, or any place to take it except on the +ground-floor; but the stairs by which she could descend were abundant +and stately; and on one landing there was the lithograph of one of the +largest and ugliest hotels in New York; how ugly it was, she said she +should never have known if she had not seen it there. + +The dining-room was divided into the grand saloon, where they supped +amid rococo sculptures and frescoes, and the glazed veranda opening by +vast windows on a spread of tables without, which were already filling +up for the evening concert. Around them at the different tables there +were groups of faces and figures fascinating in their strangeness, with +that distinction which abashes our American level in the presence of +European inequality. + +“How simple and unimpressive we are, Basil,” she said, “beside all +these people! I used to feel it in Europe when I was young, and now I'm +certain that we must seem like two faded-in old village photographs. We +don't even look intellectual! I hope we look good.” + +“I know I do,” said March. The waiter went for their supper, and they +joined in guessing the different nationalities in the room. A French +party was easy enough; a Spanish mother and daughter were not difficult, +though whether they were not South-American remained uncertain; two +elderly maiden ladies were unmistakably of central Massachusetts, and +were obviously of a book-club culture that had left no leaf unturned; +some Triestines gave themselves away by their Venetian accent; but a +large group at a farther table were unassignable in the strange language +which they clattered loudly together, with bursts of laughter. They were +a family party of old and young, they were having a good time, with a +freedom which she called baronial; the ladies wore white satin, or black +lace, but the men were in sack-coats; she chose to attribute them, for +no reason but their outlandishness, to Transylvania. March pretended to +prefer a table full of Germans, who were unmistakably bourgeois, and yet +of intellectual effect. He chose as his favorite a middle-aged man +of learned aspect, and they both decided to think of him as the Herr +Professor, but they did not imagine how perfectly the title fitted him +till he drew a long comb from his waistcoat pocket and combed his hair +and beard with it above the table. + +The wine wrought with the Transylvanians, and they all jargoned together +at once, and laughed at the jokes passing among them. One old gentleman +had a peculiar fascination from the infantile innocence of his gums +when he threw his head back to laugh, and showed an upper jaw toothless +except for two incisors, standing guard over the chasm between. Suddenly +he choked, coughed to relieve himself, hawked, held his napkin up before +him, and-- + +“Noblesse oblige,” said March, with the tone of irony which he reserved +for his wife's preoccupations with aristocracies of all sorts. “I think +I prefer my Hair Professor, bourgeois, as he is.” + +The ladies attributively of central Massachusetts had risen from their +table, and were making for the door without having paid for their +supper. The head waiter ran after them; with a real delicacy for their +mistake he explained that though in most places the meals were charged +in the bill, it was the custom in Carlsbad to pay for them at the table; +one could see that he was making their error a pleasant adventure to +them which they could laugh over together, and write home about without +a pang. + +“And I,” said Mrs. March, shamelessly abandoning the party of the +aristocracy, “prefer the manners of the lower classes.” + +“Oh, yes,” he admitted. “The only manners we have at home are black +ones. But you mustn't lose courage. Perhaps the nobility are not always +so baronial.” + +“I don't know whether we have manners at home,” she said, “and I don't +believe I care. At least we have decencies.” + +“Don't be a jingo,” said her husband. + + + + +XXVII. + +Though Stoller had formally discharged Burnamy from duty for the day, +he was not so full of resources in himself, and he had not so general an +acquaintance in the hotel but he was glad to have the young fellow make +up to him in the reading-room, that night. He laid down a New York paper +ten days old in despair of having left any American news in it, and +pushed several continental Anglo-American papers aside with his elbow, +as he gave a contemptuous glance at the foreign journals, in Bohemian, +Hungarian, German, French, and Italian, which littered the large table. + +“I wonder,” he said, “how long it'll take'em, over here, to catch on to +our way of having pictures?” + +Burnamy had come to his newspaper work since illustrated journalism +was established, and he had never had any shock from it at home, but so +sensitive is youth to environment that, after four days in Europe, the +New York paper Stoller had laid down was already hideous to him. From +the politic side of his nature, however, he temporized with Stoller's +preference. “I suppose it will be some time yet.” + +“I wish,” said Stoller, with a savage disregard of expressed sequences +and relevancies, “I could ha' got some pictures to send home with that +letter this afternoon: something to show how they do things here, and +be a kind of object-lesson.” This term had come up in a recent campaign +when some employers, by shutting down their works, were showing their +employees what would happen if the employees voted their political +opinions into effect, and Stoller had then mastered its meaning and was +fond of using it. “I'd like 'em to see the woods around here, that the +city owns, and the springs, and the donkey-carts, and the theatre, and +everything, and give 'em some practical ideas.” + +Burnamy made an uneasy movement. + +“I'd 'a' liked to put 'em alongside of some of our improvements, +and show how a town can be carried on when it's managed on business +principles.” + +“Why didn't you think of it?” + +“Really, I don't know,” said Burnamy, with a touch of impatience. + +They had not met the evening before on the best of terms. Stoller +had expected Burnamy twenty-four hours earlier, and had shown his +displeasure with him for loitering a day at Leipsic which he might have +spent at Carlsbad; and Burnamy had been unsatisfactory in accounting for +the delay. But he had taken hold so promptly and so intelligently that +by working far into the night, and through the whole forenoon, he had +got Stoller's crude mass of notes into shape, and had sent off in +time for the first steamer the letter which was to appear over the +proprietor's name in his paper. It was a sort of rough but very full +study of the Carlsbad city government, the methods of taxation, the +municipal ownership of the springs and the lands, and the public +control in everything. It condemned the aristocratic constitution of +the municipality, but it charged heavily in favor of the purity, +beneficence, and wisdom of the administration, under which there was no +poverty and no idleness, and which was managed like any large business. + +Stoller had sulkily recurred to his displeasure, once or twice, and +Burnamy suffered it submissively until now. But now, at the change in +Burnamy's tone, he changed his manner a little. + +“Seen your friends since supper?” he asked. + +“Only a moment. They are rather tired, and they've gone to bed.” + +“That the fellow that edits that book you write for?” + +“Yes; he owns it, too.” + +The notion of any sort of ownership moved Stoller's respect, and he +asked more deferentially, “Makin' a good thing out of it?” + +“A living, I suppose. Some of the high-class weeklies feel the +competition of the ten-cent monthlies. But 'Every Other Week' is about +the best thing we've got in the literary way, and I guess it's holding +its own.” + +“Have to, to let the editor come to Carlsbad,” Stoller said, with a +return to the sourness of his earlier mood. “I don't know as I care much +for his looks; I seen him when he came in with you. No snap to him.” He +clicked shut the penknife he had been paring his nails with, and +started up with the abruptness which marked all his motions, mental and +physical; as he walked heavily out of the room he said, without looking +at Burnamy, “You want to be ready by half past ten at the latest.” + +Stoller's father and mother were poor emigrants who made their way to +the West with the instinct for sordid prosperity native to their race +and class; and they set up a small butcher shop in the little Indiana +town where their son was born, and throve in it from the start. He could +remember his mother helping his father make the sausage and head-cheese +and pickle the pigs' feet, which they took turns in selling at as great +a price as they could extort from the townspeople. She was a good and +tender mother, and when her little Yawcup, as the boys called Jacob in +mimicry after her, had grown to the school-going age, she taught him to +fight the Americans, who stoned him when he came out of his gate, and +mobbed his home-coming; and mocked and tormented him at play-time +till they wore themselves into a kindlier mind toward him through the +exhaustion of their invention. No one, so far as the gloomy, stocky, +rather dense little boy could make out, ever interfered in his behalf; +and he grew up in bitter shame for his German origin, which entailed +upon him the hard fate of being Dutch among the Americans. He hated his +native speech so much that he cried when he was forced to use it with +his father and mother at home; he furiously denied it with the boys who +proposed to parley with him in it on such terms as “Nix come arouce in +de Dytchman's house.” He disused it so thoroughly that after his father +took him out of school, when he was old enough to help in the shop, he +could not get back to it. He regarded his father's business as part of +his national disgrace, and at the cost of leaving his home he broke away +from it, and informally apprenticed himself to the village blacksmith +and wagon-maker. When it came to his setting up for himself in the +business he had chosen, he had no help from his father, who had gone on +adding dollar to dollar till he was one of the richest men in the place. + +Jacob prospered too; his old playmates, who had used him so cruelly, had +many of them come to like him; but as a Dutchman they never dreamt of +asking him to their houses when they were young people, any more than +when they were children. He was long deeply in love with an American +girl whom he had never spoken to, and the dream of his life was to marry +an American. He ended by marrying the daughter of Pferd the brewer, who +had been at an American school in Indianapolis, and had come home as +fragilely and nasally American as anybody. She made him a good, sickly, +fretful wife; and bore him five children, of whom two survived, with no +visible taint of their German origin. + +In the mean time Jacob's father had died and left his money to his son, +with the understanding that he was to provide for his mother, who would +gladly have given every cent to him and been no burden to him, if she +could. He took her home, and cared tenderly for her as long as she +lived; and she meekly did her best to abolish herself in a household +trying so hard to be American. She could not help her native accent, but +she kept silence when her son's wife had company; and when her eldest +granddaughter began very early to have American callers, she went out of +the room; they would not have noticed her if she had staid. + +Before this Jacob had come forward publicly in proportion to his +financial importance in the community. He first commended himself to the +Better Element by crushing out a strike in his Buggy Works, which were +now the largest business interest of the place; and he rose on a wave of +municipal reform to such a height of favor with the respectable classes +that he was elected on a citizens' ticket to the Legislature. In the +reaction which followed he was barely defeated for Congress, and was +talked of as a dark horse who might be put up for the governorship some +day; but those who knew him best predicted that he would not get far in +politics, where his bull-headed business ways would bring him to ruin +sooner or later; they said, “You can't swing a bolt like you can a +strike.” + +When his mother died, he surprised his old neighbors by going to live +in Chicago, though he kept his works in the place where he and they had +grown up together. His wife died shortly after, and within four years +he lost his three eldest children; his son, it was said, had begun to +go wrong first. But the rumor of his increasing wealth drifted back from +Chicago; he was heard of in different enterprises and speculations; at +last it was said that he had bought a newspaper, and then his boyhood +friends decided that Jake was going into politics again. + +In the wider horizons and opener atmosphere of the great city he came +to understand better that to be an American in all respects was not the +best. His mounting sense of importance began to be retroactive in the +direction of his ancestral home; he wrote back to the little town near +Wurzburg which his people had come from, and found that he had relatives +still living there, some of whom had become people of substance; and +about the time his health gave way from life-long gluttony, and he was +ordered to Carlsbad, he had pretty much made up his mind to take his +younger daughters and put them in school for a year or two in Wurzburg, +for a little discipline if not education. He had now left them there, to +learn the language, which he had forgotten with such heart-burning and +shame, and music, for which they had some taste. + +The twins loudly lamented their fate, and they parted from their +father with open threats of running away; and in his heart he did +not altogether blame them. He came away from Wurzburg raging at the +disrespect for his money and his standing in business which had brought +him a more galling humiliation there than anything he had suffered +in his boyhood at Des Vaches. It intensified him in his dear-bought +Americanism to the point of wishing to commit lese majesty in the teeth +of some local dignitaries who had snubbed him, and who seemed to enjoy +putting our eagle to shame in his person; there was something like the +bird of his step-country in Stoller's pale eyes and huge beak. + + + + +XXVIII. + +March sat with a company of other patients in the anteroom of the +doctor, and when it came his turn to be prodded and kneaded, he was +ashamed at being told he was not so bad a case as he had dreaded. The +doctor wrote out a careful dietary for him, with a prescription of a +certain number of glasses of water at a certain spring and a certain +number of baths, and a rule for the walks he was to take before and +after eating; then the doctor patted him on the shoulder and pushed +him caressingly out of his inner office. It was too late to begin his +treatment that day, but he went with his wife to buy a cup, with a +strap for hanging it over his shoulder, and he put it on so as to be +an invalid with the others at once; he came near forgetting the small +napkin of Turkish towelling which they stuffed into their cups, but +happily the shopman called him back in time to sell it to him. + +At five the next morning he rose, and on his way to the street exchanged +with the servants cleaning the hotel stairs the first of the gloomy +'Guten Morgens' which usher in the day at Carlsbad. They cannot be so +finally hopeless as they sound; they are probably expressive only of +the popular despair of getting through with them before night; but March +heard the salutations sorrowfully groaned out on every hand as he joined +the straggling current of invalids which swelled on the way past the +silent shops and cafes in the Alte Wiese, till it filled the street, and +poured its thousands upon the promenade before the classic colonnade +of the Muhlbrunn. On the other bank of the Tepl the Sprudel flings its +steaming waters by irregular impulses into the air under a pavilion of +iron and glass; but the Muhlbrunn is the source of most resort. There +is an instrumental concert somewhere in Carlsbad from early rising +till bedtime; and now at the Muhlbrunn there was an orchestra already +playing; and under the pillared porch, as well as before it, the +multitude shuffled up and down, draining their cups by slow sips, +and then taking each his place in the interminable line moving on to +replenish them at the spring. + +A picturesque majority of Polish Jews, whom some vice of their climate +is said peculiarly to fit for the healing effects of Carlsbad, most took +his eye in their long gabardines of rusty black and their derby hats +of plush or velvet, with their corkscrew curls coming down before their +ears. They were old and young, they were grizzled and red and black, +but they seemed all well-to-do; and what impresses one first and last +at Carlsbad is that its waters are mainly for the healing of the rich. +After the Polish Jews, the Greek priests of Russian race were the most +striking figures. There were types of Latin ecclesiastics, who were +striking in their way too; and the uniforms of certain Austrian officers +and soldiers brightened the picture. Here and there a southern face, +Italian or Spanish or Levantine, looked passionately out of the mass of +dull German visages; for at Carlsbad the Germans, more than any other +gentile nation, are to the fore. Their misfits, their absence of style, +imparted the prevalent effect; though now and then among the women a +Hungarian, or Pole, or Parisian, or American, relieved the eye which +seeks beauty and grace rather than the domestic virtues. There were +certain faces, types of discomfort and disease, which appealed from +the beginning to the end. A young Austrian, yellow as gold, and a livid +South-American, were of a lasting fascination to March. + +What most troubled him, in his scrutiny of the crowd, was the difficulty +of assigning people to their respective nations, and he accused his +years of having dulled his perceptions; but perhaps it was from their +long disuse in his homogeneous American world. The Americans themselves +fused with the European races who were often so hard to make out; his +fellow-citizens would not be identified till their bad voices gave them +away; he thought the women's voices the worst. + +At the springs, a line of young girls with a steady mechanical action +dipped the cups into the steaming source, and passed them impersonally +up to their owners. With the patients at the Muhlbrunn it was often a +half-hour before one's turn came, and at all a strict etiquette forbade +any attempt to anticipate it. The water was merely warm and flat, and +after the first repulsion one could forget it. March formed a childish +habit of counting ten between the sips, and of finishing the cup with a +gulp which ended it quickly; he varied his walks between cups by going +sometimes to a bridge at the end of the colonnade where a group of +Triestines were talking Venetian, and sometimes to the little Park +beyond the Kurhaus, where some old women were sweeping up from the close +sward the yellow leaves which the trees had untidily dropped overnight. +He liked to sit there and look at the city beyond the Tepl, where it +climbed the wooded heights in terraces till it lost its houses in +the skirts and folds of the forest. Most mornings it rained, quietly, +absent-mindedly, and this, with the chili in the air, deepened a +pleasant illusion of Quebec offered by the upper town across the stream; +but there were sunny mornings when the mountains shone softly through a +lustrous mist, and the air was almost warm. + +Once in his walk he found himself the companion of Burnamy's employer, +whom he had sometimes noted in the line at the Muhlbrunn, waiting his +turn, cup in hand, with a face of sullen impatience. Stoller explained +that though you could have the water brought to you at your hotel, he +chose to go to the spring for the sake of the air; it was something you +had got to live through; before he had that young Burnamy to help him he +did not know what to do with his time, but now, every minute he was not +eating or sleeping he was working; his cure did not oblige him to walk +much. He examined March, with a certain mixture of respect and contempt, +upon the nature of the literary life, and how it differed from the life +of a journalist. He asked if he thought Burnamy would amount to anything +as a literary man; he so far assented to March's faith in him as to say, +“He's smart.” He told of leaving his daughters in school at Wurzburg; +and upon the whole he moved March with a sense of his pathetic +loneliness without moving his liking, as he passed lumberingly on, +dangling his cup. + +March gave his own cup to the little maid at his spring, and while she +gave it to a second, who dipped it and handed it to a third for its +return to him, he heard an unmistakable fellow-countryman saying good-, +morning to them all in English. “Are you going to teach them United +States?” he asked of a face with which he knew such an appeal would not +fail. + +“Well,” the man admitted, “I try to teach them that much. They like it. +You are an American? I am glad of it. I have 'most lost the use of my +lungs, here. I'm a great talker, and I talk to my wife till she's about +dead; then I'm out of it for the rest of the day; I can't speak German.” + +His manner was the free, friendly manner of the West. He must be that +sort of untravelled American whom March had so seldom met, but he was +afraid to ask him if this was his first time at Carlsbad, lest it should +prove the third or fourth. “Are you taking the cure?” he asked instead. + +“Oh, no. My wife is. She'll be along directly; I come down here and +drink the waters to encourage her; doctor said to. That gets me in for +the diet, too. I've e't more cooked fruit since I been here than I ever +did in my life before. Prunes? My Lord, I'm full o' prunes! Well, it +does me good to see an American, to know him. I couldn't 'a' told you, +it you hadn't have spoken.” + +“Well,” said March, “I shouldn't have been so sure of you, either, by +your looks.” + +“Yes, we can't always tell ourselves from these Dutch. But they know us, +and they don't want us, except just for one thing, and that's our money. +I tell you, the Americans are the chumps over here. Soon's they got all +our money, or think they have, they say, 'Here, you Americans, this is +my country; you get off;' and we got to get. Ever been over before?” + +“A great while ago; so long that I can hardly believe it.” + +“It's my first time. My name's Otterson: I'm from out in Iowa.” + +March gave him his name, and added that he was from New York. + +“Yes. I thought you was Eastern. But that wasn't an Eastern man you was +just with?” + +“No; he's from Chicago. He's a Mr. Stoller.” + +“Not the buggy man?” + +“I believe he makes buggies.” + +“Well, you do meet everybody here.” The Iowan was silent for a moment, +as if, hushed by the weighty thought. “I wish my wife could have seen +him. I just want her to see the man that made our buggy. I don't know +what's keeping her, this morning,” he added, apologetically. “Look at +that fellow, will you, tryin' to get away from those women!” A young +officer was doing his best to take leave of two ladies, who seemed to be +mother and daughter; they detained him by their united arts, and clung +to him with caressing words and looks. He was red in the face with his +polite struggles when he broke from them at last. “How they do hang on +to a man, over here!” the Iowa man continued. “And the Americans are as +bad as any. Why, there's one ratty little Englishman up at our place, +and our girls just swarm after him; their mothers are worse. Well, +it's so, Jenny,” he said to the lady who had joined them and whom March +turned round to see when he spoke to her. “If I wanted a foreigner I +should go in for a man. And these officers! Put their mustaches up at +night in curl-papers, they tell me. Introduce you to Mrs. Otterson, Mr. +March. Well, had your first glass, yet, Jenny? I'm just going for my +second tumbler.” + +He took his wife back to the spring, and began to tell her about +Stoller; she made no sign of caring for him; and March felt inculpated. +She relented a little toward him as they drank together; when he said +he must be going to breakfast with his wife, she asked where he +breakfasted, and said, “Why, we go to the Posthof, too.” He answered +that then they should be sure some time to meet there; he did not +venture further; he reflected that Mrs. March had her reluctances too; +she distrusted people who had amused or interested him before she met +them. + + + + +XXIX. + +Burnamy had found the Posthof for them, as he had found most of the +other agreeable things in Carlsbad, which he brought to their knowledge +one by one, with such forethought that March said he hoped he should be +cared for in his declining years as an editor rather than as a father; +there was no tenderness like a young contributor's. + +Many people from the hotels on the hill found at Pupp's just the time +and space between their last cup of water and their first cup of coffee +which are prescribed at Carlsbad; but the Marches were aware somehow +from the beginning that Pupp's had not the hold upon the world at +breakfast which it had at the mid-day dinner, or at supper on the +evenings when the concert was there. Still it was amusing, and they were +patient of Burnamy's delay till he could get a morning off from Stoller +and go with them to the Posthof. He met Mrs. March in the reading-room, +where March was to join them on his way from the springs with his bag +of bread. The earlier usage of buying the delicate pink slices of +Westphalia ham, which form the chief motive of a Carlsbad breakfast, at +a certain shop in the town, and carrying them to the cafe with you, is +no longer of such binding force as the custom of getting your bread at +the Swiss bakery. You choose it yourself at the counter, which begins +to be crowded by half past seven, and when you have collected the +prescribed loaves into the basket of metallic filigree given you by one +of the baker's maids, she puts it into a tissue-paper bag of a gay red +color, and you join the other invalids streaming away from the bakery, +their paper bags making a festive rustling as they go. + +Two roads lead out of the town into the lovely meadow-lands, a good mile +up the brawling Tepl, before they join on the right side of the torrent, +where the Posthof lurks nestled under trees whose boughs let the sun and +rain impartially through upon its army of little tables. By this time +the slow omnibus plying between Carlsbad and some villages in the valley +beyond has crossed from the left bank to the right, and keeps on past +half a dozen other cafes, where patients whose prescriptions marshal +them beyond the Posthof drop off by the dozens and scores. + +The road on the left bank of the Tepl is wild and overhung at points +with wooded steeps, when it leaves the town; but on the right it is +bordered with shops and restaurants a great part of its length. In leafy +nooks between these, uphill walks begin their climb of the mountains, +from the foot of votive shrines set round with tablets commemorating +in German, French, Russian, Hebrew, Magyar and Czech, the cure of +high-well-borns of all those races and languages. Booths glittering +with the lapidary's work in the cheaper gems, or full of the ingenious +figures of the toy-makers, alternate with the shrines and the cafes on +the way to the Posthof, and with their shoulders against the overhanging +cliff, spread for the passing crowd a lure of Viennese jewelry in +garnets, opals, amethysts, and the like, and of such Bohemian playthings +as carrot-eating rabbits, worsted-working cats, dancing-bears, and +peacocks that strut about the feet of the passers and expand their +iridescent tails in mimic pride. + +Burnamy got his charges with difficulty by the shrines in which they +felt the far-reflected charm of the crucifixes of the white-hot Italian +highways of their early travel, and by the toyshops where they had a +mechanical, out-dated impulse to get something for the children, ending +in a pang for the fact that they were children no longer. He waited +politely while Mrs. March made up her mind that she would not buy any +laces of the motherly old women who showed them under pent-roofs +on way-side tables; and he waited patiently at the gate of the +flower-gardens beyond the shops where March bought lavishly of +sweetpease from the businesslike flower-woman, and feigned a grateful +joy in her because she knew no English, and gave him a chance of +speaking his German. + +“You'll find,” he said, as they crossed the road again, “that it's well +to trifle a good deal; it makes the time pass. I should still be lagging +along in my thirties if it hadn't been for fooling, and here I am well +on in my fifties, and Mrs. March is younger than ever.” + +They were at the gate of the garden and grounds of the cafe at last, and +a turn of the path brought them to the prospect of its tables, under the +trees, between the two long glazed galleries where the breakfasters take +refuge at other tables when it rains; it rains nearly always, and the +trunks of the trees are as green with damp as if painted; but that +morning the sun was shining. At the verge of the open space a group of +pretty serving-maids, each with her name on a silver band pinned upon +her breast, met them and bade them a 'Guten Morgen' of almost cheerful +note, but gave way, to an eager little smiling blonde, who came pushing +down the path at sight of Burnamy, and claimed him for her own. + +“Ah, Lili! We want an extra good table, this morning. These are some +American Excellencies, and you must do your best for them.” + +“Oh, yes,” the girl answered in English, after a radiant salutation of +the Marches; “I get you one.” + +“You are a little more formerly, to-day, and I didn't had one already.” + +She ran among the tables along the edge of the western edge of the +gallery, and was far beyond hearing his protest that he was not earlier +than usual when she beckoned him to the table she had found. She had +crowded it in between two belonging to other girls, and by the time her +breakfasters came up she was ready for their order, with the pouting +pretence that the girls always tried to rob her of the best places. +Burnamy explained proudly, when she went, that none of the other girls +ever got an advantage of her; she had more custom than any three of +them, and she had hired a man to help her carry her orders. The girls +were all from the neighboring villages, he said, and they lived at home +in the winter on their summer tips; their wages were nothing, or less, +for sometimes they paid for their places. + +“What a mass of information!” said March. “How did you come by it?” + +“Newspaper habit of interviewing the universe.” + +“It's not a bad habit, if one doesn't carry it too far. How did Lili +learn her English?” + +“She takes lessons in the winter. She's a perfect little electric motor. +I don't believe any Yankee girl could equal her.” + +“She would expect to marry a millionaire if she did. What astonishes one +over here is to see how contentedly people prosper along on their own +level. And the women do twice the work of the men without expecting +to equal them in any other way. At Pupp's, if we go to one end of the +out-door restaurant, it takes three men to wait on us: one to bring our +coffee or tea, another to bring our bread and meat, and another to make +out our bill, and I have to tip all three of them. If we go to the other +end, one girl serves us, and I have to give only one fee; I make it less +than the least I give any three of the men waiters.” + +“You ought to be ashamed of that,” said his wife. + +“I'm not. I'm simply proud of your sex, my dear.” + +“Women do nearly everything, here,” said Burnamy, impartially. “They +built that big new Kaiserbad building: mixed the mortar, carried the +hods, and laid the stone.” + +“That makes me prouder of the sex than ever. But come, Mr. Burnamy! +Isn't there anybody of polite interest that you know of in this crowd?” + +“Well, I can't say,” Burnamy hesitated. + +The breakfasters had been thronging into the grove and the galleries; +the tables were already filled, and men were bringing other tables on +their heads, and making places for them, with entreaties for pardon +everywhere; the proprietor was anxiously directing them; the pretty +serving-girls were running to and from the kitchen in a building apart +with shrill, sweet promises of haste. The morning sun fell broken +through the leaves on the gay hats and dresses of the ladies, and +dappled the figures of the men with harlequin patches of light and +shade. A tall woman, with a sort of sharpened beauty, and an artificial +permanency of tint in her cheeks and yellow hair, came trailing +herself up the sun-shot path, and found, with hardy insistence upon the +publicity, places for the surly-looking, down-faced young man behind +her, and for her maid and her black poodle; the dog was like the black +poodle out of Faust. Burnamy had heard her history; in fact, he had +already roughed out a poem on it, which he called Europa, not after the +old fable, but because it seemed to him that she expressed Europe, on +one side of its civilization, and had an authorized place in its order, +as she would not have had in ours. She was where she was by a toleration +of certain social facts which corresponds in Europe to our reverence +for the vested interests. In her history there, had been officers and +bankers; even foreign dignitaries; now there was this sullen young +fellow.... Burnamy had wondered if it would do to offer his poem to +March, but the presence of the original abashed him, and in his mind he +had torn the poem up, with a heartache for its aptness. + +“I don't believe,” he said, “that I recognize-any celebrities here.” + +“I'm sorry,” said March. “Mrs. March would have been glad of some +Hoheits, some Grafs and Grafins, or a few Excellenzes, or even some mere +well-borns. But we must try to get along with the picturesqueness.” + +“I'm satisfied with the picturesqueness,” said his wife. “Don't worry +about me, Mr. Burnamy.” + +“Why can't we have this sort of thing at home?” + +“We're getting something like it in the roof-gardens,” said March. “We +couldn't have it naturally because the climate is against it, with us. +At this time in the morning over there, the sun would be burning the +life out of the air, and the flies would be swarming on every table. At +nine A. M. the mosquitoes would be eating us up in such a grove as this. +So we have to use artifice, and lift our Posthof above the fly-line and +the mosquito-line into the night air. I haven't seen a fly since I came +to Europe. I really miss them; it makes me homesick.” + +“There are plenty in Italy,” his wife suggested. + +“We must get down there before we go home.” + +“But why did nobody ever tell us that there were no flies in Germany? +Why did no traveller ever put it in his book? When your stewardess +said so on the steamer, I remember that you regarded it as a bluff.” + He turned to Burnamy, who was listening with the deference of a +contributor: “Isn't Lili rather long? I mean for such a very prompt +person. Oh, no!” + +But Burnamy got to his feet, and shouted “Fraulein!” to Lili; with her +hireling at her heels she was flying down a distant aisle between the +tables. She called back, with a face laughing over her shoulder, “In a +minute!” and vanished in the crowd. + +“Does that mean anything in particular? There's really no hurry.” + +“Oh, I think she'll come now,” said Burnamy. March protested that he +had only been amused at Lili's delay; but his wife scolded him for his +impatience; she begged Burnamy's pardon, and repeated civilities passed +between them. She asked if he did not think some of the young ladies +were pretty beyond the European average; a very few had style; the +mothers were mostly fat, and not stylish; it was well not to regard the +fathers too closely; several old gentlemen were clearing their throats +behind their newspapers, with noises that made her quail. There was no +one so effective as the Austrian officers, who put themselves a good +deal on show, bowing from their hips to favored groups; with the +sun glinting from their eyeglasses, and their hands pressing their +sword-hilts, they moved between the tables with the gait of tight-laced +women. + +“They all wear corsets,” Burnamy explained. + +“How much you know already!” said Mrs. March. “I can see that Europe +won't be lost on you in anything. Oh, who's that?” A lady whose costume +expressed saris at every point glided up the middle aisle of the grove +with a graceful tilt. Burnamy was silent. “She must be an American. Do +you know who she is?” + +“Yes.” He hesitated, a little to name a woman whose tragedy had once +filled the newspapers. + +Mrs. March gazed after her with the fascination which such tragedies +inspire. “What grace! Is she beautiful?” + +“Very.” Burnamy had not obtruded his knowledge, but somehow Mrs. March +did not like his knowing who she was, and how beautiful. She asked March +to look, but he refused. + +“Those things are too squalid,” he said, and she liked him for saying +it; she hoped it would not be lost upon Burnamy. + +One of the waitresses tripped on the steps near them and flung the +burden off her tray on the stone floor before her; some of the dishes +broke, and the breakfast was lost. Tears came into the girl's eyes and +rolled down her hot cheeks. “There! That is what I call tragedy,” said +March. “She'll have to pay for those things.” + +“Oh, give her the money, dearest!” + +“How can I?” + +The girl had just got away with the ruin when Lili and her hireling +behind her came bearing down upon them with their three substantial +breakfasts on two well-laden trays. She forestalled Burnamy's reproaches +for her delay, laughing and bridling, while she set down the dishes of +ham and tongue and egg, and the little pots of coffee and frothed milk. + +“I could not so soon I wanted, because I was to serve an American +princess.” + +Mrs. March started with proud conjecture of one of those noble +international marriages which fill our women with vainglory for such of +their compatriots as make them. + +“Oh, come now, Lili!” said Burnamy. “We have queens in America, but +nothing so low as princesses. This was a queen, wasn't it?” + +She referred the case to her hireling, who confirmed her. “All people +say it is princess,” she insisted. + +“Well, if she's a princess we must look her up after breakfast,” said +Burnamy. “Where is she sitting?” + +She pointed at a corner so far off on the other side that no one could +be distinguished, and then was gone, with a smile flashed over her +shoulder, and her hireling trying to keep up with her. + +“We're all very proud of Lili's having a hired man,” said Burnamy. “We +think it reflects credit on her customers.” + +March had begun his breakfast with-the voracious appetite of an +early-rising invalid. “What coffee!” + +He drew a long sigh after the first draught. + +“It's said to be made of burnt figs,” said Burnamy, from the +inexhaustible advantage of his few days' priority in Carlsbad. + +“Then let's have burnt figs introduced at home as soon as possible. +But why burnt figs? That seems one of those doubts which are much more +difficult than faith.” + +“It's not only burnt figs,” said Burnamy, with amiable superiority, “if +it is burnt figs, but it's made after a formula invented by a consensus +of physicians, and enforced by the municipality. Every cafe in Carlsbad +makes the same kind of coffee and charges the same price.” + +“You are leaving us very little to find out for ourselves,” sighed +March. + +“Oh, I know a lot more things. Are you fond of fishing?” + +“Not very.” + +“You can get a permit to catch trout in the Tepl, but they send an +official with you who keeps count, and when you have had your sport, +the trout belong to the municipality just as they did before you caught +them.” + +“I don't see why that isn't a good notion: the last thing I should +want to do would be to eat a fish that I had caught, and that I was +personally acquainted with. Well, I'm never going away from Carlsbad. I +don't wonder people get their doctors to tell them to come back.” + +Burnamy told them a number of facts he said Stoller had got together +about the place, and had given him to put in shape. It was run in the +interest of people who had got out of order, so that they would keep +coming to get themselves in order again; you could hardly buy an +unwholesome meal in the town; all the cooking was 'kurgemass'. He won +such favor with his facts that he could not stop in time: he said to +March, “But if you ever should have a fancy for a fish of your personal +acquaintance, there's a restaurant up the Tepl, where they let you pick +out your trout in the water; then they catch him and broil him for you, +and you know what you are eating.” + +“Is it a municipal restaurant?” + +“Semi-municipal,” said Burnamy, laughing. + +“We'll take Mrs. March,” said her husband, and in her gravity Burnamy +felt the limitations of a woman's sense of humor, which always define +themselves for men so unexpectedly. + +He did what he could to get back into her good graces by telling her +what he knew about distinctions and dignities that he now saw among the +breakfasters. The crowd had now grown denser till the tables were set +together in such labyrinths that any one who left the central aisle was +lost in them. The serving-girls ran more swiftly to and fro, responding +with a more nervous shrillness to the calls of “Fraulein! Fraulein!” + that followed them. The proprietor, in his bare head, stood like one +paralyzed by his prosperity, which sent up all round him the clash of +knives and crockery, and the confusion of tongues. It was more than an +hour before Burnamy caught Lili's eye, and three times she promised to +come and be paid before she came. Then she said, “It is so nice, when +you stay a little,” and when he told her of the poor Fraulein who +had broken the dishes in her fall near them, she almost wept with +tenderness; she almost winked with wickedness when he asked if the +American princess was still in her place. + +“Do go and see who it can be!” Mrs. March entreated. “We'll wait here,” + and he obeyed. “I am not sure that I like him,” she said, as soon as +he was out of hearing. “I don't know but he's coarse, after all. Do you +approve of his knowing so many people's 'taches' already?” + +“Would it be any better later?” he asked in tern. “He seemed to find you +interested.” + +“It's very different with us; we're not young,” she urged, only half +seriously. + +Her husband laughed. “I see you want me to defend him. Oh, hello!” he +cried, and she saw Burnamy coming toward them with a young lady, who +was nodding to them from as far as she could see them. “This is the easy +kind of thing that makes you Blush for the author if you find it in a +novel.” + + + + +XXX. + +Mrs. March fairly took Miss Triscoe in her arms to kiss her. “Do you +know I felt it must be you, all the time! When did you come? Where is +your father? What hotel are you staying at?” + +It appeared, while Miss Triscoe was shaking hands with March, that it +was last night, and her father was finishing his breakfast, and it was +one of the hotels on the hill. On the way back to her father it appeared +that he wished to consult March's doctor; not that there was anything +the matter. + +The general himself was not much softened by the reunion with his +fellow-Americans; he confided to them that his coffee was poisonous; but +he seemed, standing up with the Paris-New York Chronicle folded in his +hand, to have drunk it all. Was March going off on his forenoon tramp? +He believed that was part of the treatment, which was probably all +humbug, though he thought of trying it, now he was there. He was told +the walks were fine; he looked at Burnamy as if he had been praising +them, and Burnamy said he had been wondering if March would not like to +try a mountain path back to his hotel; he said, not so sincerely, that +he thought Mrs. March would like it. + +“I shall like your account of it,” she answered. “But I'll walk back on +a level, if you please.” + +“Oh, yes,” Miss Triscoe pleaded, “come with us!” + +She played a little comedy of meaning to go back with her father so +gracefully that Mrs. March herself could scarcely have told just where +the girl's real purpose of going with Burnamy began to be evident, or +just how she managed to make General Triscoe beg to have the pleasure of +seeing Mrs. March back to her hotel. + +March went with the young people across the meadow behind the Posthof +and up into the forest, which began at the base of the mountain. At +first they tried to keep him in the range of their talk; but he fell +behind more and more, and as the talk narrowed to themselves it was less +and less possible to include him in it. When it began to concern their +common appreciation of the Marches, they even tried to get out of his +hearing. + +“They're so young in their thoughts,” said Burnamy, “and they seem as +much interested in everything as they could have been thirty years ago. +They belong to a time when the world was a good deal fresher than it is +now; don't you think? I mean, in the eighteen-sixties.” + +“Oh, yes, I can see that.” + +“I don't know why we shouldn't be born older in each generation than +people were in the last. Perhaps we are,” he suggested. + +“I don't know how you mean,” said the girl, keeping vigorously up with +him; she let him take the jacket she threw off, but she would not have +his hand at the little steeps where he wanted to give it. + +“I don't believe I can quite make it out myself. But fancy a man that +began to act at twenty, quite unconsciously of course, from the past +experience of the whole race--” + +“He would be rather a dreadful person, wouldn't he?” + +“Rather monstrous, yes,” he owned, with a laugh. “But that's where the +psychological interest would come in.” + +As if she did not feel the notion quite pleasant she turned from it. “I +suppose you've been writing all sorts of things since you came here.” + +“Well, it hasn't been such a great while as it's seemed, and I've had +Mr. Stoller's psychological interests to look after.” + +“Oh, yes! Do you like him?” + +“I don't know. He's a lump of honest selfishness. He isn't bad. You know +where to have him. He's simple, too.” + +“You mean, like Mr. March?” + +“I didn't mean that; but why not? They're not of the same generation, +but Stoller isn't modern.” + +“I'm very curious to see him,” said the girl. + +“Do you want me to introduce him?” + +“You can introduce him to papa.” + +They stopped and looked across the curve of the mounting path, down on +March, who had sunk on a way-side seat, and was mopping his forehead. He +saw them, and called up: “Don't wait for me. I'll join you, gradually.” + +“I don't want to lose you,” Burnamy called back, but he kept on with +Miss Triscoe. “I want to get the Hirschensprung in,” he explained. “It's +the cliff where a hunted deer leaped down several hundred feet to get +away from an emperor who was after him.” + +“Oh, yes. They have them everywhere.” + +“Do they? Well, anyway, there's a noble view up there.” + +There was no view on the way up. The Germans' notion of a woodland +is everywhere that of a dense forest such as their barbarous tribes +primevally herded in. It means the close-set stems of trees, with their +tops interwoven in a roof of boughs and leaves so densely that you may +walk dry through it almost as long as a German shower lasts. When the +sun shines there is a pleasant greenish light in the aisles, shot here +and there with the gold that trickles through. There is nothing of the +accident of an American wood in these forests, which have been watched +and weeded by man ever since they burst the soil. They remain nurseries, +but they have the charm which no human care can alienate. The smell of +their bark and their leaves, and of the moist, flowerless earth about +their roots, came to March where he sat rich with the memories of his +country-bred youth, and drugged all consciousness of his long life in +cities since, and made him a part of nature, with dulled interests and +dimmed perspectives, so that for the moment he had the enjoyment of +exemption from care. There was no wild life to penetrate his isolation; +no birds, not a squirrel, not an insect; an old man who had bidden him +good-morning, as he came up, kept fumbling at the path with his hoe, and +was less intrusive than if he had not been there. + +March thought of the impassioned existence of these young people playing +the inevitable comedy of hide and seek which the youth of the race has +played from the beginning of time. The other invalids who haunted the +forest, and passed up and down before him in fulfilment of their several +prescriptions, had a thin unreality in spite of the physical bulk +that prevailed among them, and they heightened the relief that the +forest-spirit brought him from the strenuous contact of that young +drama. He had been almost painfully aware that the persons in it had +met, however little they knew it, with an eagerness intensified by their +brief separation, and he fancied it was the girl who had unconsciously +operated their reunion in response to the young man's longing, her will +making itself electrically felt through space by that sort of wireless +telegraphy which love has long employed, and science has just begun to +imagine. + +He would have been willing that they should get home alone, but he knew +that his wife would require an account of them from him, and though he +could have invented something of the kind, if it came to the worst, +he was aware that it would not do for him to arrive without them. The +thought goaded him from his seat, and he joined the upward procession of +his fellow-sick, as it met another procession straggling downward; the +ways branched in all directions, with people on them everywhere, bent +upon building up in a month the health which they would spend the rest +of the year in demolishing. + +He came upon his charges unexpectedly at a turn of the path, and Miss +Triscoe told him that he ought to have been with them for the view from +the Hirschensprung. It was magnificent, she said, and she made Burnamy +corroborate her praise of it, and agree with her that it was worth the +climb a thousand times; he modestly accepted the credit she appeared +willing to give him, of inventing the Hirschensprung. + + + + +XXXI. + +Between his work for Stoller and what sometimes seemed the +obstructiveness of General Triscoe, Burnamy was not very much with +Miss Triscoe. He was not devout, but he went every Sunday to the pretty +English church on the hill, where he contributed beyond his means to the +support of the English clergy on the Continent, for the sake of looking +at her back hair during the service, and losing himself in the graceful +lines which defined, the girl's figure from the slant of her flowery +hat to the point where the pewtop crossed her elastic waist. One happy +morning the general did not come to church, and he had the fortune to +walk home with her to her pension, where she lingered with him a moment, +and almost made him believe she might be going to ask him to come in. + +The next evening, when he was sauntering down the row of glittering +shops beside the Tepl, with Mrs. March, they overtook the general and +his daughter at a place where the girl was admiring some stork-scissors +in the window; she said she wished she were still little, so that she +could get them. They walked home with the Triscoes, and then he hurried +Mrs. March back to the shop. The man had already put up his shutters, +and was just closing his door, but Burnamy pushed in, and asked to look +at the stork-scissors they had seen in the window. The gas was out, and +the shopman lighted a very dim candle, to show them. + +“I knew you wanted to get them for her, after what she said, Mrs. +March,” he laughed, nervously, “and you must let me lend you the money.” + +“Why, of course!” she answered, joyfully humoring his feint. “Shall I +put my card in for the man to send home to her with them?” + +“Well--no. No. Not your card--exactly. Or, yes! Yes, you must, I +suppose.” + +They made the hushing street gay with their laughter; the next evening +Miss Triscoe came upon the Marches and Burnamy where they sat after +supper listening to the concert at Pupp's, and thanked Mrs. March for +the scissors. Then she and Burnamy had their laugh again, and Miss +Triscoe joined them, to her father's frowning mystification. He stared +round for a table; they were all taken, and he could not refuse the +interest Burnamy made with the waiters to bring them one and crowd it +in. He had to ask him to sup with them, and Burnamy sat down and heard +the concert through beside Miss Triscoe. + +“What is so tremendously amusing in a pair of stork-scissors?” March +demanded, when his wife and he were alone. + +“Why, I was wanting to tell you, dearest,” she began, in a tone which he +felt to be wheedling, and she told the story of the scissors. + +“Look here, my dear! Didn't you promise to let this love-affair alone?” + +“That was on the ship. And besides, what would you have done, I should +like to know? Would you have refused to let him buy them for her?” She +added, carelessly, “He wants us to go to the Kurhaus ball with him.” + +“Oh, does he!” + +“Yes. He says he knows that she can get her father to let her go if we +will chaperon them. And I promised that you would.” + +“That I would?” + +“It will do just as well if you go. And it will be very amusing; you can +see something of Carlsbad society.” + +“But I'm not going!” he declared. “It would interfere with my cure. The +sitting up late would be bad enough, but I should get very hungry, and +I should eat potato salad and sausages, and drink beer, and do all sorts +of unwholesome things.” + +“Nonsense! The refreshments will be 'kurgemass', of course.” + +“You can go yourself,” he said. + +A ball is not the same thing for a woman after fifty as it is before +twenty, but still it has claims upon the imagination, and the novel +circumstance of a ball in the Kurhaus in Carlsbad enhanced these for +Mrs. March. It was the annual reunion which is given by municipal +authority in the large hall above the bathrooms; it is frequented with +safety and pleasure by curious strangers, and now, upon reflection, it +began to have for Mrs. March the charm of duty; she believed that she +could finally have made March go in her place, but she felt that she +ought really to go in his, and save him from the late hours and the late +supper. + +“Very well, then,” she said at last, “I will go.” + +It appeared that any civil person might go to the reunion who chose +to pay two florins and a half. There must have been some sort of +restriction, and the ladies of Burnamy's party went with a good deal of +amused curiosity to see what the distinctions were; but they saw none +unless it was the advantages which the military had. The long hall over +the bathrooms shaped itself into a space for the dancing at one end, and +all the rest of it was filled with tables, which at half past eight were +crowded with people, eating, drinking, and smoking. The military enjoyed +the monopoly of a table next the rail dividing the dancing from the +dining space. There the tight-laced Herr Hauptmanns and Herr Lieutenants +sat at their sausage and beer and cigars in the intervals of the +waltzes, and strengthened themselves for a foray among the gracious +Fraus and Frauleins on the benches lining three sides of the +dancing-space. From the gallery above many civilian spectators looked +down upon the gayety, and the dress-coats of a few citizens figured +among the uniforms. + +As the evening wore on some ladies of greater fashion found their way +to the dancing-floor, and toward ten o'clock it became rather crowded. A +party of American girls showed their Paris dresses in the transatlantic +versions of the waltz. At first they danced with the young men who came +with them; but after a while they yielded to the custom of the place, +and danced with any of the officers who asked them. + +“I know it's the custom,” said Mrs. March to Miss Triscoe, who was at +her side in one of the waltzes she had decided to sit out, so as not to +be dancing all the time with Burnamy, “but I never can like it without +an introduction.” + +“No,” said the girl, with the air of putting temptation decidedly away, +“I don't believe papa would, either.” + +A young officer came up, and drooped in mute supplication before her. +She glanced at Mrs. March, who turned her face away; and she excused +herself with the pretence that she had promised the dance, and by good +fortune, Burnamy, who had been unscrupulously waltzing with a lady he +did not know, came up at the moment. She rose and put her hand on his +arm, and they both bowed to the officer before they whirled away. The +officer looked after them with amiable admiration; then he turned +to Mrs. March with a light of banter in his friendly eyes, and was +unmistakably asking her to dance. She liked his ironical daring, she +liked it so much that she forgot her objection to partners without +introductions; she forgot her fifty-odd years; she forgot that she was +a mother of grown children and even a mother-in-law; she remembered only +the step of her out-dated waltz. + +It seemed to be modern enough for the cheerful young officer, and +they were suddenly revolving with the rest... A tide of long-forgotten +girlhood welled up in her heart, and she laughed as she floated off on +it past the astonished eyes of Miss Triscoe and Burnamy. She saw them +falter, as if they had lost their step in their astonishment; then they +seemed both to vanish, and her partner had released her, and was helping +Miss Triscoe up from the floor; Burnamy was brushing the dust from +his knees, and the citizen who had bowled them over was boisterously +apologizing and incessantly bowing. + +“Oh, are you hurt?” Mrs. March implored. “I'm sure you must be killed; +and I did it! I don't know, what I was thinking of!” + +The girl laughed. “I'm not hurt a bit!” + +They had one impulse to escape from the place, and from the sympathy and +congratulation. In the dressing-room she declared again that she was +all right. “How beautifully you waltz, Mrs. March!” she said, and +she laughed again, and would not agree with her that she had been +ridiculous. “But I'm glad those American girls didn't see me. And I +can't be too thankful papa didn't come!” + +Mrs. March's heart sank at the thought of what General Triscoe would +think of her. “You must tell him I did it. I can never lift up my head!” + +“No, I shall not. No one did it,” said the girl, magnanimously. She +looked down sidelong at her draperies. “I was so afraid I had torn my +dress! I certainly heard something rip.” + +It was one of the skirts of Burnamy's coat, which he had caught into his +hand and held in place till he could escape to the men's dressing-room, +where he had it pinned up so skillfully that the damage was not +suspected by the ladies. He had banged his knee abominably too; but they +did not suspect that either, as he limped home on the air beside them, +first to Miss Triscoe's pension, and then to Mrs. March's hotel. + +It was quite eleven o'clock, which at Carlsbad is as late as three +in the morning anywhere else, when she let herself into her room. She +decided not to tell her husband, then; and even at breakfast, which they +had at the Posthof, she had not got to her confession, though she had +told him everything else about the ball, when the young officer with +whom she had danced passed between the tables near her. He caught her +eye and bowed with a smile of so much meaning that March asked, “Who's +your pretty young friend?” + +“Oh, that!” she answered carelessly. “That was one of the officers at +the ball,” and she laughed. + +“You seem to be in the joke, too,” he said. “What is it?” + +“Oh, something. I'll tell you some time. Or perhaps you'll find out.” + +“I'm afraid you won't let me wait.” + +“No, I won't,” and now she told him. She had expected teasing, ridicule, +sarcasm, anything but the psychological interest mixed with a sort of +retrospective tenderness which he showed. “I wish I could have seen you; +I always thought you danced well.” He added: “It seems that you need a +chaperon too.” + +The next morning, after March and General Triscoe had started off upon +one of the hill climbs, the young people made her go with them for a +walk up the Tepl, as far as the cafe of the Freundschaftsaal. In the +grounds an artist in silhouettes was cutting out the likenesses of +people who supposed themselves to have profiles, and they begged +Mrs. March to sit for hers. It was so good that she insisted on Miss +Triscoe's sitting in turn, and then Burnamy. Then he had the inspiration +to propose that they should all three sit together, and it appeared that +such a group was within the scope of the silhouettist's art; he posed +them in his little bower, and while he was mounting the picture they +took turns, at five kreutzers each, in listening to American tunes +played by his Edison phonograph. + +Mrs. March felt that all this was weakening her moral fibre; but she +tried to draw the line at letting Burnamy keep the group. “Why not?” he +pleaded. + +“You oughtn't to ask,” she returned. “You've no business to have Miss +Triscoe's picture, if you must know.” + +“But you're there to chaperon us!” he persisted. + +He began to laugh, and they all laughed when she said, “You need a +chaperon who doesn't lose her head, in a silhouette.” But it seemed +useless to hold out after that, and she heard herself asking, “Shall we +let him keep it, Miss Triscoe?” + +Burnamy went off to his work with Stoller, carrying the silhouette with +him, and she kept on with Miss Triscoe to her hotel. In turning from the +gate after she parted with the girl she found herself confronted +with Mrs. Adding and Rose. The ladies exclaimed at each other in an +astonishment from which they had to recover before they could begin to +talk, but from the first moment Mrs. March perceived that Mrs. Adding +had something to say. The more freely to say it she asked Mrs. March +into her hotel, which was in the same street with the pension of the +Triscoes, and she let her boy go off about the exploration of Carlsbad; +he promised to be back in an hour. + +“Well, now what scrape are you in?” March asked when his wife came home, +and began to put off her things, with signs of excitement which he could +not fail to note. He was lying down after a long tramp, and he seemed +very comfortable. + +His question suggested something of anterior import, and she told him +about the silhouettes, and the advantage the young people had taken of +their power over her through their knowledge of her foolish behavior at +the ball. + +He said, lazily: “They seem to be working you for all you're worth. Is +that it?” + +“No; there is something worse. Something's happened which throws all +that quite in the shade. Mrs. Adding is here.” + +“Mrs. Adding?” he repeated, with a dimness for names which she would not +allow was growing on him. + +“Don't be stupid, dear! Mrs. Adding, who sat opposite Mr. Kenby on the +Norumbia. The mother of the nice boy.” + +“Oh, yes! Well, that's good!” + +“No, it isn't! Don't say such a thing--till you know!” she cried, with a +certain shrillness which warned him of an unfathomed seriousness in the +fact. He sat up as if better to confront the mystery. “I have been at +her hotel, and she has been telling me that she's just come from Berlin, +and that Mr. Kenby's been there, and--Now I won't have you making a joke +of it, or breaking out about it, as if it were not a thing to be looked +for; though of course with the others on our hands you're not to blame +for not thinking of it. But you can see yourself that she's young and +good-looking. She did speak beautifully of her son, and if it were not +for him, I don't believe she would hesitate--” + +“For heaven's sake, what are you driving at?” March broke in, and she +answered him as vehemently: + +“He's asked her to marry him!” + +“Kenby? Mrs. Adding?” + +“Yes!” + +“Well, now, Isabel, this won't do! They ought to be ashamed of +themselves. With that morbid, sensitive boy! It's shocking--” + +“Will you listen? Or do you want me to stop?” He arrested himself at +her threat, and she resumed, after giving her contempt of his turbulence +time to sink in, “She refused him, of course!” + +“Oh, all right, then!” + +“You take it in such a way that I've a great mind not to tell you +anything more about it.” + +“I know you have,” he said, stretching himself out again; “but you'll +do it, all the same. You'd have been awfully disappointed if I had been +calm and collected.” + +“She refused him,” she began again, “although she respects him, because +she feels that she ought to devote herself to her son. Of course she's +very young, still; she was married when she was only nineteen to a man +twice her age, and she's not thirty-five yet. I don't think she ever +cared much for her husband; and she wants you to find out something +about him.” + +“I never heard of him. I--” + +Mrs. March made a “tchck!” that would have recalled the most consequent +of men from the most logical and coherent interpretation to the true +intent of her words. He perceived his mistake, and said, resolutely: +“Well, I won't do it. If she's refused him, that's the end of it; she +needn't know anything about him, and she has no right to.” + +“Now I think differently,” said Mrs. March, with an inductive air. “Of +course she has to know about him, now.” She stopped, and March turned +his head and looked expectantly at her. “He said he would not consider +her answer final, but would hope to see her again and--She's afraid he +may follow her--What are you looking at me so for?” + +“Is he coming here?” + +“Am I to blame if he is? He said he was going to write to her.” + +March burst into a laugh. “Well, they haven't been beating about the +bush! When I think how Miss Triscoe has been pursuing Burnamy from the +first moment she set eyes on him, with the settled belief that she was +running from him, and he imagines that he has been boldly following +her, without the least hope from her, I can't help admiring the simple +directness of these elders.” + +“And if Kenby wants to talk with you, what will you say?” she cut in +eagerly. + +“I'll say I don't like the subject. What am I in Carlsbad for? I came +for the cure, and I'm spending time and money on it. I might as well go +and take my three cups of Felsenquelle on a full stomach as to listen to +Kenby.” + +“I know it's bad for you, and I wish we had never seen those people,” + said Mrs. March. “I don't believe he'll want to talk with you; but if--” + +“Is Mrs. Adding in this hotel? I'm not going to have them round in my +bread-trough!” + +“She isn't. She's at one of the hotels on the hill.” + +“Very well, let her stay there, then. They can manage their love-affairs +in their own way. The only one I care the least for is the boy.” + +“Yes, it is forlorn for him. But he likes Mr. Kenby, and--No, it's +horrid, and you can't make it anything else!” + +“Well, I'm not trying to.” He turned his face away. “I must get my nap, +now.” After she thought he must have fallen asleep, he said, “The first +thing you know, those old Eltwins will be coming round and telling us +that they're going to get divorced.” Then he really slept. + + + + +XXXII. + +The mid-day dinner at Pupp's was the time to see the Carlsbad world, and +the Marches had the habit of sitting long at table to watch it. + +There was one family in whom they fancied a sort of literary quality, as +if they had come out of some pleasant German story, but they never knew +anything about them. The father by his dress must have been a Protestant +clergyman; the mother had been a beauty and was still very handsome; the +daughter was good-looking, and of a good-breeding which was both girlish +and ladylike. They commended themselves by always taking the table +d'hote dinner, as the Marches did, and eating through from the soup and +the rank fresh-water fish to the sweet, upon the same principle: the +husband ate all the compote and gave the others his dessert, which was +not good for him. A young girl of a different fascination remained as +much a mystery. She was small and of an extreme tenuity, which became +more bewildering as she advanced through her meal, especially at supper, +which she made of a long cucumber pickle, a Frankfort sausage of twice +the pickle's length, and a towering goblet of beer; in her lap she held +a shivering little hound; she was in the decorous keeping of an elderly +maid, and had every effect of being a gracious Fraulein. A curious +contrast to her Teutonic voracity was the temperance of a young Latin +swell, imaginably from Trieste, who sat long over his small coffee and +cigarette, and tranquilly mused upon the pages of an Italian newspaper. +At another table there was a very noisy lady, short and fat, in flowing +draperies of white, who commanded a sallow family of South-Americans, +and loudly harangued them in South-American Spanish; she flared out in +a picture which nowhere lacked strong effects; and in her background +lurked a mysterious black face and figure, ironically subservient to the +old man, the mild boy, and the pretty young girl in the middle distance +of the family group. + +Amidst the shows of a hardened worldliness there were touching glimpses +of domesticity and heart: a young bride fed her husband soup from her +own plate with her spoon, unabashed by the publicity; a mother and her +two pretty daughters hung about a handsome officer, who must have been +newly betrothed to one of the girls; and, the whole family showed a +helpless fondness for him, which he did not despise, though he held it +in check; the girls dressed alike, and seemed to have for their whole +change of costume a difference from time to time in the color of their +sleeves. The Marches believed they had seen the growth of the romance +which had eventuated so happily; and they saw other romances which +did not in any wise eventuate. Carlsbad was evidently one of the great +marriage marts of middle Europe, where mothers brought their daughters +to be admired, and everywhere the flower of life was blooming for the +hand of love. It blew by on all the promenades in dresses and hats as +pretty as they could be bought or imagined; but it was chiefly at Pupp's +that it flourished. For the most part it seemed to flourish in vain, and +to be destined to be put by for another season to dream, bulblike, of +the coming summer in the quiet of Moldavian and Transylvanian homes. + +Perhaps it was oftener of fortunate effect than the spectators knew; but +for their own pleasure they would not have had their pang for it less; +and March objected to having a more explicit demand upon his sympathy. +“We could have managed,” he said, at the close of their dinner, as he +looked compassionately round upon the parterre of young girls, “we could +have managed with Burnamy and Miss Triscoe; but to have Mrs. Adding and +Kenby launched upon us is too much. Of course I like Kenby, and if the +widow alone were concerned I would give him my blessing: a wife more or +a widow less is not going to disturb the equilibrium of the universe; +but--” He stopped, and then he went on: “Men and women are well enough. +They complement each other very agreeably, and they have very good times +together. But why should they get in love?--It is sure to make them +uncomfortable to themselves and annoying to others.” He broke off, and +stared about him. “My dear, this is really charming--almost as charming +as the Posthof.” The crowd spread from the open vestibule of the hotel +and the shelter of its branching pavilion roofs until it was dimmed in +the obscurity of the low grove across the way in an ultimate depth +where the musicians were giving the afternoon concert. Between its two +stationary divisions moved a current of promenaders, with some such +effect as if the colors of a lovely garden should have liquefied and +flowed in mingled rose and lilac, pink and yellow, and white and orange, +and all the middle tints of modern millinery. Above on one side were the +agreeable bulks of architecture, in the buff and gray of Carlsbad; and +far beyond on the other were the upland slopes, with villas and long +curves of country roads, belted in with miles of wall. “It would be +about as offensive to have a love-interest that one personally knew +about intruded here,” he said, “as to have a two-spanner carriage driven +through this crowd. It ought to be forbidden by the municipality.” + +Mrs. March listened with her ears, but not with her eyes, and +she answered: “See that handsome young Greek priest! Isn't he an +archimandrite? The portier said he was.” + +“Then let him pass for an archimandrite. Now,” he recurred to his +grievance again, dreamily, “I have got to take Papa Triscoe in hand, and +poison his mind against Burnamy, and I shall have to instil a few drops +of venomous suspicion against Kenby into the heart of poor little Rose +Adding. Oh;” he broke out, “they will spoil everything. They'll be +with us morning, noon, and night,” and he went on to work the joke of +repining at his lot. The worst thing, he said, would be the lovers' +pretence of being interested in something besides themselves, which they +were no more capable of than so many lunatics. How could they care for +pretty girls playing tennis on an upland level, in the waning afternoon? +Or a cartful of peasant women stopping to cross themselves at a way-side +shrine? Or a whistling boy with holes in his trousers pausing from some +wayside raspberries to touch his hat and say good-morning? Or those +preposterous maidens sprinkling linen on the grass from watering-pots +while the skies were full of rain? Or that blacksmith shop where Peter +the Great made a horseshoe. Or the monument of the young warrior-poet +Koerner, with a gentle-looking girl and her mother reading and knitting +on a bench before it? These simple pleasures sufficed them, but what +could lovers really care for them? A peasant girl flung down on the +grassy road-side, fast asleep, while her yoke-fellow, the gray old dog, +lay in his harness near her with one drowsy eye half open for her and +the other for the contents of their cart; a boy chasing a red squirrel +in the old upper town beyond the Tepl, and enlisting the interest of all +the neighbors; the negro door-keeper at the Golden Shield who ought to +have spoken our Southern English, but who spoke bad German and was +from Cairo; the sweet afternoon stillness in the woods; the good German +mothers crocheting at the Posthof concerts. Burnamy as a young poet +might hate felt the precious quality of these things, if his senses had +not been holden by Miss Triscoe; and she might have felt it if only he +had done so. But as it was it would be lost upon their preoccupation; +with Mrs. Adding and Kenby it would be hopeless. + +A day or two after Mrs. March had met Mrs. Adding, she went with +her husband to revere a certain magnificent blackamoor whom he had +discovered at the entrance of one of the aristocratic hotels on the +Schlossberg, where he performed the function of a kind of caryatid, and +looked, in the black of his skin and the white of his flowing costume, +like a colossal figure carved in ebony and ivory. They took a roundabout +way through a street entirely of villa-pensions; every house in Carlsbad +but one is a pension if it is not a hotel; but these were of a sort of +sentimental prettiness; with each a little garden before it, and a bower +with an iron table in it for breakfasting and supping out-doors; and he +said that they would be the very places for bridal couples who wished +to spend the honey-moon in getting well of the wedding surfeit. She +denounced him for saying such a thing as that, and for his inconsistency +in complaining of lovers while he was willing to think of young married +people. He contended that there was a great difference in the sort of +demand that young married people made upon the interest of witnesses, +and that they were at least on their way to sanity; and before they +agreed, they had come to the hotel with the blackamoor at the door. +While they lingered, sharing the splendid creature's hospitable pleasure +in the spectacle he formed, they were aware of a carriage with liveried +coachman and footman at the steps of the hotel; the liveries were very +quiet and distinguished, and they learned that the equipage was waiting +for the Prince of Coburg, or the Princess of Montenegro, or Prince Henry +of Prussia; there were differing opinions among the twenty or thirty +bystanders. Mrs. March said she did not care which it was; and she was +patient of the denouement, which began to postpone itself with +delicate delays. After repeated agitations at the door among portiers, +proprietors, and waiters, whose fluttered spirits imparted their +thrill to the spectators, while the coachman and footman remained +sculpturesquely impassive in their places, the carriage moved aside and +let an energetic American lady and her family drive up to the steps. The +hotel people paid her a tempered devotion, but she marred the effect by +rushing out and sitting on a balcony to wait for the delaying royalties. +There began to be more promises of their early appearance; a footman +got down and placed himself at the carriage door; the coachman stiffened +himself on his box; then he relaxed; the footman drooped, and even +wandered aside. There came a moment when at some signal the carriage +drove quite away from the portal and waited near the gate of the +stableyard; it drove back, and the spectators redoubled their attention. +Nothing happened, and some of them dropped off. At last an indescribable +significance expressed itself in the official group at the door; a man +in a high hat and dresscoat hurried out; a footman hurried to meet him; +they spoke inaudibly together. The footman mounted to his place; the +coachman gathered up his reins and drove rapidly out of the hotel-yard, +down the street, round the corner, out of sight. The man in the tall hat +and dress-coat went in; the official group at the threshold dissolved; +the statue in ivory and ebony resumed its place; evidently the Hoheit of +Coburg, or Montenegro, or Prussia, was not going to take the air. + +“My dear, this is humiliating.” + +“Not at all! I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Think how near we +came to seeing them!” + +“I shouldn't feel so shabby if we had seen them. But to hang round here +in this plebeian abeyance, and then to be defeated and defrauded at +last! I wonder how long this sort of thing is going on?” + +“What thing?” + +“This base subjection of the imagination to the Tom Foolery of the +Ages.” + +“I don't know what you mean. I'm sure it's very natural to want to see a +Prince.” + +“Only too natural. It's so deeply founded in nature that after denying +royalty by word and deed for a hundred years, we Americans are hungrier +for it than anybody else. Perhaps we may come back to it!” + +“Nonsense!” + +They looked up at the Austrian flag on the tower of the hotel, languidly +curling and uncurling in the bland evening air, as it had over a +thousand years of stupid and selfish monarchy, while all the generous +republics of the Middle Ages had perished, and the commonwealths of +later times had passed like fever dreams. That dull, inglorious empire +had antedated or outlived Venice and Genoa, Florence and Siena, the +England of Cromwell, the Holland of the Stadtholders, and the France +of many revolutions, and all the fleeting democracies which sprang from +these. + +March began to ask himself how his curiosity differed from that of +the Europeans about him; then he became aware that these had detached +themselves, and left him exposed to the presence of a fellow countryman. +It was Otterson, with Mrs. Otterson; he turned upon March with hilarious +recognition. “Hello! Most of the Americans in Carlsbad seem to be +hanging round here for a sight of these kings. Well, we don't have a +great many of 'em, and it's natural we shouldn't want to miss any. But +now, you Eastern fellows, you go to Europe every summer, and yet you +don't seem to get enough of 'em. Think it's human nature, or did it +get so ground into us in the old times that we can't get it out, no +difference what we say?” + +“That's very much what I've been asking myself,” said March. “Perhaps +it's any kind of show. We'd wait nearly as long for the President to +come out, wouldn't we?” + +“I reckon we would. But we wouldn't for his nephew, or his second +cousin.” + +“Well, they wouldn't be in the way of the succession.” + +“I guess you're right.” The Iowan seemed better satisfied with March's +philosophy than March felt himself, and he could not forbear adding: + +“But I don't, deny that we should wait for the President because he's +a kind of king too. I don't know that we shall ever get over wanting to +see kings of some kind. Or at least my wife won't. May I present you to +Mrs. March?” + +“Happy to meet you, Mrs. March,” said the Iowan. “Introduce you to Mrs. +Otterson. I'm the fool in my family, and I know just how you feel about +a chance like this. I don't mean that you're--” + +They all laughed at the hopeless case, and Mrs. March said, with one of +her unexpected likings: “I understand, Mr. Otterson. And I would rather +be our kind of fool than the kind that pretends not to care for the +sight of a king.” + +“Like you and me, Mrs. Otterson,” said March. + +“Indeed, indeed,” said the lady, “I'd like to see a king too, if it +didn't take all night. Good-evening,” she said, turning her husband +about with her, as if she suspected a purpose of patronage in Mrs. +March, and was not going to have it. + +Otterson looked over his shoulder to explain, despairingly: “The trouble +with me is that when I do get a chance to talk English, there's such +a flow of language it carries me away, and I don't know just where I'm +landing.” + + + + +XXXIII. + +There were several kings and their kindred at Carlsbad that summer. One +day the Duchess of Orleans drove over from Marienbad, attended by the +Duke on his bicycle. After luncheon, they reappeared for a moment +before mounting to her carriage with their Secretaries: two young French +gentlemen whose dress and bearing better satisfied Mrs. March's exacting +passion for an aristocratic air in their order. The Duke was fat and +fair, as a Bourbon should be, and the Duchess fatter, though not so +fair, as became a Hapsburg, but they were both more plebeian-looking +than their retainers, who were slender as well as young, and as +perfectly appointed as English tailors could imagine them. + +“It wouldn't do for the very highest sort of Highhotes,” March declared, +“to look their own consequence personally; they have to leave that, like +everything else, to their inferiors.” + +By a happy heterophemy of Mrs. March's the German Hoheit had now become +Highhote, which was so much more descriptive that they had permanently +adopted it, and found comfort to their republican pride in the mockery +which it poured upon the feudal structure of society. They applied it +with a certain compunction, however, to the King of Servia, who came a +few days after the Duke and Duchess: he was such a young King, and of +such a little country. They watched for him from the windows of the +reading-room, while the crowd outside stood six deep on the three sides +of the square before the hotel, and the two plain public carriages which +brought the King and his suite drew tamely up at the portal, where +the proprietor and some civic dignitaries received him. His moderated +approach, so little like that of royalty on the stage, to which +Americans are used, allowed Mrs. March to make sure of the pale, slight, +insignificant, amiable-looking youth in spectacles as the sovereign she +was ambuscading. Then no appeal to her principles could keep her from +peeping through the reading-room door into the rotunda, where the +King graciously but speedily dismissed the civic gentlemen and the +proprietor, and vanished into the elevator. She was destined to see +him so often afterwards that she scarcely took the trouble to time her +dining and supping by that of the simple potentate, who had his meals +in one of the public rooms, with three gentlemen of his suite, in +sack-coats like himself, after the informal manner of the place. + +Still another potentate, who happened that summer to be sojourning +abroad, in the interval of a successful rebellion, was at the opera +one night with some of his faithful followers. Burnamy had offered Mrs. +March, who supposed that he merely wanted her and her husband with +him, places in a box; but after she eagerly accepted, it seemed that he +wished her to advise him whether it would do to ask Miss Triscoe and her +father to join them. + +“Why not?” she returned, with an arching of the eyebrows. + +“Why,” he said, “perhaps I had better make a clean breast of it.” + +“Perhaps you had,” she said, and they both laughed, though he laughed +with a knot between his eyes. + +“The fact is, you know, this isn't my treat, exactly. It's Mr. +Stoller's.” At the surprise in her face he hurried on. “He's got back +his first letter in the paper, and he's so much pleased with the way he +reads in print, that he wants to celebrate.” + +“Yes,” said Mrs. March, non-committally. + +Burnamy laughed again. “But he's bashful, and he isn't sure that you +would all take it in the right way. He wants you as friends of mine; and +he hasn't quite the courage to ask you himself.” + +This seemed to Mrs. March so far from bad that she said: “That's very +nice of him. Then he's satisfied with--with your help? I'm glad of +that.” + +“Thank you. He's met the Triscoes, and he thought it would be pleasant +to you if they went, too.” + +“Oh, certainly.” + +“He thought,” Burnamy went on, with the air of feeling his way, “that +we might all go to the opera, and then--then go for a little supper +afterwards at Schwarzkopf's.” + +He named the only place in Carlsbad where you can sup so late as ten +o'clock; as the opera begins at six, and is over at half past eight, +none but the wildest roisterers frequent the place. + +“Oh!” said Mrs. March. “I don't know how a late supper would agree with +my husband's cure. I should have to ask him.” + +“We could make it very hygienic,” Burnamy explained. + +In repeating his invitation she blamed Burnamy's uncandor so much that +March took his part, as perhaps she intended, and said, “Oh, nonsense,” + and that he should like to go in for the whole thing; and General +Triscoe accepted as promptly for himself and his daughter. That made six +people, Burnamy counted up, and he feigned a decent regret that there +was not room for Mrs. Adding and her son; he would have liked to ask +them. + +Mrs. March did not enjoy it so much as coming with her husband alone +when they took two florin seats in the orchestra for the comedy. The +comedy always began half an hour earlier than the opera, and they had a +five-o'clock supper at the Theatre-Cafe before they went, and they got +to sleep by nine o'clock; now they would be up till half past ten at +least, and that orgy at Schwarzkopf's might not be at all good for him. +But still she liked being there; and Miss Triscoe made her take the best +seat; Burnamy and Stoller made the older men take the other seats beside +the ladies, while they sat behind, or stood up, when they, wished to +see, as people do in the back of a box. Stoller was not much at ease in +evening dress, but he bore himself with a dignity which was not perhaps +so gloomy as it looked; Mrs. March thought him handsome in his way, and +required Miss Triscoe to admire him. As for Burnamy's beauty it was not +necessary to insist upon that; he had the distinction of slender youth; +and she liked to think that no Highhote there was of a more patrician +presence than this yet unprinted contributor to 'Every Other Week'. He +and Stoller seemed on perfect terms; or else in his joy he was able to +hide the uneasiness which she had fancied in him from the first time she +saw them together, and which had never been quite absent from his manner +in Stoller's presence. Her husband always denied that it existed, or if +it did that it was anything but Burnamy's effort to get on common ground +with an inferior whom fortune had put over him. + +The young fellow talked with Stoller, and tried to bring him into the +range of the general conversation. He leaned over the ladies, from time +to time, and pointed out the notables whom he saw in the house; she was +glad, for his sake, that he did not lean less over her than over Miss +Triscoe. He explained certain military figures in the boxes opposite, +and certain ladies of rank who did not look their rank; Miss Triscoe, +to Mrs. March's thinking, looked their united ranks, and more; her dress +was very simple, but of a touch which saved it from being insipidly +girlish; her beauty was dazzling. + +“Do you see that old fellow in the corner chair just behind the +orchestra?” asked Burnamy. “He's ninety-six years old, and he comes to +the theatre every night, and falls asleep as soon as the curtain rises, +and sleeps through till the end of the act.” + +“How dear!” said the girl, leaning forward to fix the nonagenarian with +her glasses, while many other glasses converged upon her. “Oh, wouldn't +you like to know him, Mr. March?” + +“I should consider it a liberal education. They have brought these +things to a perfect system in Europe. There is nothing to make life +pass smoothly like inflexible constancy to an entirely simple custom. +My dear,” he added to his wife, “I wish we'd seen this sage before. He'd +have helped us through a good many hours of unintelligible comedy. I'm +always coming as Burnamy's guest, after this.” + +The young fellow swelled with pleasure in his triumph, and casting +an eye about the theatre to cap it, he caught sight of that other +potentate. He whispered joyfully, “Ah! We've got two kings here +to-night,” and he indicated in a box of their tier just across from that +where the King of Servia sat, the well-known face of the King of New +York. + +“He isn't bad-looking,” said March, handing his glass to General +Triscoe. “I've not seen many kings in exile; a matter of a few Carlist +princes and ex-sovereign dukes, and the good Henry V. of France, once, +when I was staying a month in Venice; but I don't think they any of them +looked the part better. I suppose he has his dream of recurring power +like the rest.” + +“Dream!” said General Triscoe with the glass at his eyes. “He's dead +sure of it.” + +“Oh, you don't really mean that!” + +“I don't know why I should have changed my mind.” + +“Then it's as if we were in the presence of Charles II. just before he +was called back to England, or Napoleon in the last moments of Elba. +It's better than that. The thing is almost unique; it's a new situation +in history. Here's a sovereign who has no recognized function, no legal +status, no objective existence. He has no sort of public being, except +in the affection of his subjects. It took an upheaval little short of an +earthquake to unseat him. His rule, as we understand it, was bad for all +classes; the poor suffered more than the rich; the people have now had +three years of self-government; and yet this wonderful man has such +a hold upon the masses that he is going home to win the cause of +oppression at the head of the oppressed. When he's in power again, he +will be as subjective as ever, with the power of civic life and death, +and an idolatrous following perfectly ruthless in the execution of his +will.” + +“We've only begun,” said the general. “This kind of king is municipal, +now; but he's going to be national. And then, good-by, Republic!” + +“The only thing like it,” March resumed, too incredulous of the evil +future to deny himself the aesthetic pleasure of the parallel, “is +the rise of the Medici in Florence, but even the Medici were not mere +manipulators of pulls; they had some sort of public office, with some +sort of legislated tenure of it. The King of New York is sovereign by +force of will alone, and he will reign in the voluntary submission of +the majority. Is our national dictator to be of the same nature and +quality?” + +“It would be the scientific evolution, wouldn't it?” + +The ladies listened with the perfunctory attention which women pay to +any sort of inquiry which is not personal. Stoller had scarcely spoken +yet; he now startled them all by demanding, with a sort of vindictive +force, “Why shouldn't he have the power, if they're willing to let him?” + +“Yes,” said General Triscoe, with a tilt of his head towards March. +“That's what we must ask ourselves more and more.” + +March leaned back in his chair, and looked up over his shoulder at +Stoller. “Well, I don't know. Do you think it's quite right for a man to +use an unjust power, even if others are willing that he should?” + +Stoller stopped with an air of bewilderment as if surprised on the point +of saying that he thought just this. He asked instead, “What's wrong +about it?” + +“Well, that's one of those things that have to be felt, I suppose. +But if a man came to you, and offered to be your slave for a certain +consideration--say a comfortable house, and a steady job, that wasn't +too hard--should you feel it morally right to accept the offer? I don't +say think it right, for there might be a kind of logic for it.” + +Stoller seemed about to answer; he hesitated; and before he had made any +response, the curtain rose. + + + + +XXXIV. + +There are few prettier things than Carlsbad by night from one of the +many bridges which span the Tepl in its course through the town. If +it is a starry night, the torrent glides swiftly away with an inverted +firmament in its bosom, to which the lamps along its shores and in the +houses on either side contribute a planetary splendor of their own. By +nine o'clock everything is hushed; not a wheel is heard at that dead +hour; the few feet shuffling stealthily through the Alte Wiese whisper +a caution of silence to those issuing with a less guarded tread from the +opera; the little bowers that overhang the stream are as dark and mute +as the restaurants across the way which serve meals in them by day; +the whole place is as forsaken as other cities at midnight. People get +quickly home to bed, or if they have a mind to snatch a belated joy, +they slip into the Theater-Cafe, where the sleepy Frauleins serve them, +in an exemplary drowse, with plates of cold ham and bottles of the +gently gaseous waters of Giesshubl. Few are of the bold badness which +delights in a supper at Schwarzkopf's, and even these are glad of the +drawn curtains which hide their orgy from the chance passer. + +The invalids of Burnamy's party kept together, strengthening themselves +in a mutual purpose not to be tempted to eat anything which was not +strictly 'kurgemass'. Mrs. March played upon the interest which each +of them felt in his own case so artfully that she kept them talking of +their cure, and left Burnamy and Miss Triscoe to a moment on the bridge, +by which they profited, while the others strolled on, to lean against +the parapet and watch the lights in the skies and the water, and be +alone together. The stream shone above and below, and found its way out +of and into the darkness under the successive bridges; the town climbed +into the night with lamp-lit windows here and there, till the woods of +the hill-sides darkened down to meet it, and fold it in an embrace from +which some white edifice showed palely in the farthest gloom. + +He tried to make her think they could see that great iron crucifix which +watches over it day and night from its piny cliff. He had a fancy for +a poem, very impressionistic, which should convey the notion of the +crucifix's vigil. He submitted it to her; and they remained talking till +the others had got out of sight and hearing; and she was letting him +keep the hand on her arm which he had put there to hold her from falling +over the parapet, when they were both startled by approaching steps, and +a voice calling, “Look here! Who's running this supper party, anyway?” + +His wife had detached March from her group for the mission, as soon as +she felt that the young people were abusing her kindness. They answered +him with hysterical laughter, and Burnamy said, “Why, it's Mr. Stoller's +treat, you know.” + +At the restaurant, where the proprietor obsequiously met the party on +the threshold and bowed them into a pretty inner room, with a table set +for their supper, Stoller had gained courage to play the host openly. +He appointed General Triscoe to the chief seat; he would have put his +daughter next to him, if the girl had not insisted upon Mrs. March's +having the place, and going herself to sit next to March, whom she said +she had not been able to speak a word to the whole evening. But she did +not talk a great deal to him; he smiled to find how soon he dropped out +of the conversation, and Burnamy, from his greater remoteness across the +table, dropped into it. He really preferred the study of Stoller, whose +instinct of a greater worldly quality in the Triscoes interested him; he +could see him listening now to what General Triscoe was saying to Mrs. +March, and now to what Burnamy was saying to Miss Triscoe; his strong, +selfish face, as he turned it on the young people, expressed a mingled +grudge and greed that was very curious. + +Stoller's courage, which had come and gone at moments throughout, rose +at the end, and while they lingered at the table well on to the hour +of ten, he said, in the sort of helpless offence he had with Burnamy, +“What's the reason we can't all go out tomorrow to that old castle you +was talking about?” + +“To Engelhaus? I don't know any reason, as far as I'm concerned,” + answered Burnamy; but he refused the initiative offered him, and Stoller +was obliged to ask March: + +“You heard about it?” + +“Yes.” General Triscoe was listening, and March added for him, “It was +the hold of an old robber baron; Gustavus Adolphus knocked it down, and +it's very picturesque, I believe.” + +“It sounds promising,” said the general. “Where is it?” + +“Isn't to-morrow our mineral bath?” Mrs. March interposed between her +husband and temptation. + +“No; the day after. Why, it's about ten or twelve miles out on the old +postroad that Napoleon took for Prague.” + +“Napoleon knew a good road when he saw it,” said the general, and he +alone of the company lighted a cigar. He was decidedly in favor of the +excursion, and he arranged for it with Stoller, whom he had the effect +of using for his pleasure as if he were doing him a favor. They were +six, and two carriages would take them: a two-spanner for four, and a +one-spanner for two; they could start directly after dinners and get +home in time for supper. + +Stoller asserted himself to say: “That's all right, then. I want you to +be my guests, and I'll see about the carriages.” He turned to Burnamy: +“Will you order them?” + +“Oh,” said the young fellow, with a sort of dryness, “the portier will +get them.” + +“I don't understand why General Triscoe was so willing to accept. +Surely, he can't like that man!” said Mrs. March to her husband in their +own room. + +“Oh, I fancy that wouldn't be essential. The general seems to me, +capable of letting even an enemy serve his turn. Why didn't you speak, +if you didn't want to go?” + +“Why didn't you?” + +“I wanted to go.” + +“And I knew it wouldn't do to let Miss Triscoe go alone; I could see +that she wished to go.” + +“Do you think Burnamy did?” + +“He seemed rather indifferent. And yet he must have realized that he +would be with Miss Triscoe the whole afternoon.” + + + + +XXXV. + +If Burnamy and Miss Triscoe took the lead in the one-spanner, and the +others followed in the two-spanner, it was not from want of politeness +on the part of the young people in offering to give up their places to +each of their elders in turn. It would have been grotesque for +either March or Stoller to drive with the girl; for her father it was +apparently no question, after a glance at the more rigid uprightness of +the seat in the one-spanner; and he accepted the place beside Mrs. March +on the back seat of the two-spanner without demur. He asked her leave to +smoke, and then he scarcely spoke to her. But he talked to the two men +in front of him almost incessantly, haranguing them upon the inferiority +of our conditions and the futility of our hopes as a people, with the +effect of bewildering the cruder arrogance of Stoller, who could +have got on with Triscoe's contempt for the worthlessness of our +working-classes, but did not know what to do with his scorn of the +vulgarity and venality of their employers. He accused some of Stoller's +most honored and envied capitalists of being the source of our worst +corruptions, and guiltier than the voting-cattle whom they bought and +sold. + +“I think we can get rid of the whole trouble if we go at it the right +way,” Stoller said, diverging for the sake of the point he wished +to bring in. “I believe in having the government run on business +principles. They've got it here in Carlsbad, already, just the right +sort of thing, and it works. I been lookin' into it, and I got this +young man, yonder”--he twisted his hand in the direction of the +one-spanner! “to help me put it in shape. I believe it's going to make +our folks think, the best ones among them. Here!” He drew a newspaper +out of his pocket, folded to show two columns in their full length, and +handed it to Triscoe, who took it with no great eagerness, and began to +run his eye over it. “You tell me what you think of that. I've put it +out for a kind of a feeler. I got some money in that paper, and I just +thought I'd let our people see how a city can be managed on business +principles.” + +He kept his eye eagerly upon Triscoe, as if to follow his thought while +he read, and keep him up to the work, and he ignored the Marches so +entirely that they began in self-defence to talk with each other. + +Their carriage had climbed from Carlsbad in long irregular curves to the +breezy upland where the great highroad to Prague ran through fields +of harvest. They had come by heights and slopes of forest, where the +serried stems of the tall firs showed brown and whitish-blue and grew +straight as stalks of grain; and now on either side the farms opened +under a sky of unwonted cloudlessness. Narrow strips of wheat and rye, +which the men were cutting with sickles, and the women in red bodices +were binding, alternated with ribands of yellowing oats and grass, and +breadths of beets and turnips, with now and then lengths of ploughed +land. In the meadows the peasants were piling their carts with heavy +rowen, the girls lifting the hay on the forks, and the men giving +themselves the lighter labor of ordering the load. From the upturned +earth, where there ought to have been troops of strutting crows, a few +sombre ravens rose. But they could not rob the scene of its gayety; it +smiled in the sunshine with colors which vividly followed the slope of +the land till they were dimmed in the forests on the far-off mountains. +Nearer and farther, the cottages and villages shone in the valleys, or +glimmered through the veils of the distant haze. Over all breathed the +keen pure air of the hills, with a sentiment of changeless eld, which +charmed March, back to his boyhood, where he lost the sense of his +wife's presence, and answered her vaguely. She talked contentedly on in +the monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men learn to resign +themselves. They were both roused from their vagary by the voice of +General Triscoe. He was handing back the folded newspaper to Stoller, +and saying, with a queer look at him over his glasses, “I should like to +see what your contemporaries have to say to all that.” + +“Well, sir,” Stoller returned, “maybe I'll have the chance to show you. +They got my instructions over there to send everything to me.” + +Burnamy and Miss Triscoe gave little heed to the landscape as landscape. +They agreed that the human interest was the great thing on a landscape, +after all; but they ignored the peasants in the fields and meadows, who +were no more to them than the driver on the box, or the people in the +two-spanner behind. They were talking of the hero and heroine of a +novel they had both read, and he was saying, “I suppose you think he was +justly punished.” + +“Punished?” she repeated. “Why, they got married, after all!” + +“Yes, but you could see that they were not going to be happy.” + +“Then it seems to me that she was punished; too.” + +“Well, yes; you might say that. The author couldn't help that.” + +Miss Triscoe was silent a moment before she said: + +“I always thought the author was rather hard on the hero. The girl was +very exacting.” + +“Why,” said Burnamy, “I supposed that women hated anything like +deception in men too much to tolerate it at all. Of course, in this +case, he didn't deceive her; he let her deceive herself; but wasn't that +worse?” + +“Yes, that was worse. She could have forgiven him for deceiving her.” + +“Oh!” + +“He might have had to do that. She wouldn't have minded his fibbing +outright, so much, for then it wouldn't have seemed to come from his +nature. But if he just let her believe what wasn't true, and didn't say +a word to prevent her, of course it was worse. It showed something weak, +something cowardly in him.” + +Burnamy gave a little cynical laugh. “I suppose it did. But don't you +think it's rather rough, expecting us to have all the kinds of courage?” + +“Yes, it is,” she assented. “That is why I say she was too exacting. But +a man oughn't to defend him.” + +Burnamy's laugh had more pleasure in it, now. “Another woman might?” + +“No. She might excuse him.” + +He turned to look back at the two-spanner; it was rather far behind, and +he spoke to their driver bidding him go slowly till it caught up with +them. By the time it did so, they were so close to it that they could +distinguish the lines of its wandering and broken walls. Ever since they +had climbed from the wooded depths of the hills above Carlsbad to the +open plateau, it had shown itself in greater and greater detail. The +detached mound of rock on which it stood rose like an island in the +midst of the plain, and commanded the highways in every direction. + +“I believe,” Burnamy broke out, with a bitterness apparently relevant to +the ruin alone, “that if you hadn't required any quarterings of nobility +from him, Stoller would have made a good sort of robber baron. He's a +robber baron by nature, now, and he wouldn't have any scruple in levying +tribute on us here in our one-spanner, if his castle was in good repair +and his crossbowmen were not on a strike. But they would be on a strike, +probably, and then he would lock them out, and employ none but non-union +crossbowmen.” + +If Miss Triscoe understood that he arraigned the morality as well as the +civility of his employer, she did not take him more seriously than he +meant, apparently, for she smiled as she said, “I don't see how you can +have anything to do with him, if you feel so about him.” + +“Oh,” Burnamy replied in kind, “he buys my poverty and not my will. And +perhaps if I thought better of myself, I should respect him more.” + +“Have you been doing something very wicked?” + +“What should you have to say to me, if I had?” he bantered. + +“Oh, I should have nothing at all to say to you,” she mocked back. + +They turned a corner of the highway, and drove rattling through a +village street up a long slope to the rounded hill which it crowned. A +church at its base looked out upon an irregular square. + +A gaunt figure of a man, with a staring mask, which seemed to hide a +darkling mind within, came out of the church, and locked it behind +him. He proved to be the sacristan, and the keeper of all the village's +claims upon the visitors' interest; he mastered, after a moment, their +wishes in respect to the castle, and showed the path that led to it; +at the top, he said, they would find a custodian of the ruins who would +admit them. + + + + +XXXVI. + +The path to the castle slanted upward across the shoulder of the +hill, to a certain point, and there some rude stone steps mounted +more directly. Wilding lilac-bushes, as if from some forgotten garden, +bordered the ascent; the chickory opened its blue flower; the clean +bitter odor of vermouth rose from the trodden turf; but Nature spreads +no such lavish feast in wood or field in the Old World as she spoils us +with in the New; a few kinds, repeated again and again, seem to be all +her store, and man must make the most of them. Miss Triscoe seemed to +find flowers enough in the simple bouquet which Burnamy put together for +her. She took it, and then gave it back to him, that she might have both +hands for her skirt, and so did him two favors. + +A superannuated forester of the nobleman who owns the ruin opened a gate +for the party at the top, and levied a tax of thirty kreutzers each upon +them, for its maintenance. The castle, by his story, had descended from +robber sire to robber son, till Gustavus knocked it to pieces in the +sixteenth century; three hundred years later, the present owner restored +it; and now its broken walls and arches, built of rubble mixed with +brick, and neatly pointed up with cement, form a ruin satisfyingly +permanent. The walls were not of great extent, but such as they were +they enclosed several dungeons and a chapel, all underground, and a +cistern which once enabled the barons and their retainers to water their +wine in time of siege. + +From that height they could overlook the neighboring highways in every +direction, and could bring a merchant train to, with a shaft from +a crossbow, or a shot from an arquebuse, at pleasure. With General +Triscoe's leave, March praised the strategic strength of the unique +position, which he found expressive of the past, and yet suggestive of +the present. It was more a difference in method than anything else that +distinguished the levy of customs by the authorities then and now. +What was the essential difference, between taking tribute of travellers +passing on horseback, and collecting dues from travellers arriving by +steamer? They did not pay voluntarily in either case; but it might be +proof of progress that they no longer fought the customs officials. + +“Then you believe in free trade,” said Stoller, severely. + +“No. I am just inquiring which is the best way of enforcing the tariff +laws.” + +“I saw in the Paris Chronicle, last night,” said Miss Triscoe, “that +people are kept on the docks now for hours, and ladies cry at the way +their things are tumbled over by the inspectors.” + +“It's shocking,” said Mrs. March, magisterially. + +“It seems to be a return to the scenes of feudal times,” her husband +resumed. “But I'm glad the travellers make no resistance. I'm opposed to +private war as much as I am to free trade.” + +“It all comes round to the same thing at last,” said General Triscoe. +“Your precious humanity--” + +“Oh, I don't claim it exclusively,” March protested. + +“Well, then, our precious humanity is like a man that has lost his road. +He thinks he is finding his way out, but he is merely rounding on his +course, and coming back to where he started.” + +Stoller said, “I think we ought to make it so rough for them, over +here, that they will come to America and set up, if they can't stand the +duties.” + +“Oh, we ought to make it rough for them anyway,” March consented. + +If Stoller felt his irony, he did not know what to answer. He followed +with his eyes the manoeuvre by which Burnamy and Miss Triscoe eliminated +themselves from the discussion, and strayed off to another corner of the +ruin, where they sat down on the turf in the shadow of the wall; a thin, +upland breeze drew across them, but the sun was hot. The land fell away +from the height, and then rose again on every side in carpetlike fields +and in long curving bands, whose parallel colors passed unblended into +the distance. “I don't suppose,” Burnamy said, “that life ever does much +better than this, do you? I feel like knocking on a piece of wood and +saying 'Unberufen.' I might knock on your bouquet; that's wood.” + +“It would spoil the flowers,” she said, looking down at them in her +belt. She looked up and their eyes met. + +“I wonder,” he said, presently, “what makes us always have a feeling of +dread when we are happy?” + +“Do you have that, too?” she asked. + +“Yes. Perhaps it's because we know that change must come, and it must be +for the worse.” + +“That must be it. I never thought of it before, though.” + +“If we had got so far in science that we could predict psychological +weather, and could know twenty-four hours ahead when a warm wave of +bliss or a cold wave of misery was coming, and prepare for smiles and +tears beforehand--it may come to that.” + +“I hope it won't. I'd rather not know when I was to be happy; it would +spoil the pleasure; and wouldn't be any compensation when it was the +other way.” + +A shadow fell across them, and Burnamy glanced round to see Stoller +looking down at them, with a slant of the face that brought his aquiline +profile into relief. “Oh! Have a turf, Mr. Stoller?” he called gayly up +to him. + +“I guess we've seen about all there is,” he answered. “Hadn't we better +be going?” He probably did not mean to be mandatory. + +“All right,” said Burnamy, and he turned to speak to Miss Triscoe again +without further notice of him. + +They all descended to the church at the foot of the hill where the +weird sacristan was waiting to show them the cold, bare interior, and +to account for its newness with the fact that the old church had been +burnt, and this one built only a few years before. Then he locked the +doors after them, and ran forward to open against their coming the +chapel of the village cemetery, which they were to visit after they had +fortified themselves for it at the village cafe. + +They were served by a little hunch-back maid; and she told them who +lived in the chief house of the village. It was uncommonly pretty; where +all the houses were picturesque, and she spoke of it with respect as +the dwelling of a rich magistrate who was clearly the great man of the +place. March admired the cat which rubbed against her skirt while she +stood and talked, and she took his praises modestly for the cat; but +they wrought upon the envy, of her brother so that he ran off to the +garden, and came back with two fat, sleepy-eyed puppies which he held +up, with an arm across each of their stomachs, for the acclaim of the +spectators. + +“Oh, give him something!” Mrs. March entreated. “He's such a dear.” + +“No, no! I am not going to have my little hunchback and her cat +outdone,” he refused; and then he was about to yield. + +“Hold on!” said Stoller, assuming the host. “I got the change.” + +He gave the boy a few kreutzers, when Mrs. March had meant her husband +to reward his naivete with half a florin at least; but he seemed to feel +that he had now ingratiated himself with the ladies, and he put himself +in charge of them for the walk to the cemetery chapel; he made Miss +Triscoe let him carry her jacket when she found it warm. + +The chapel is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and the Jesuit brother who +designed it, two or three centuries ago, indulged a devotional fancy +in the triangular form of the structure and the decorative details. +Everything is three-cornered; the whole chapel, to begin with, and then +the ark of the high altar in the middle of it, and each of the three +side-altars. The clumsy baroque taste of the architecture is a German +version of the impulse that was making Italy fantastic at the time; the +carving is coarse, and the color harsh and unsoftened by years, though +it is broken and obliterated in places. + +The sacristan said that the chapel was never used for anything but +funeral services, and he led the way out into the cemetery, where he +wished to display the sepultural devices. The graves here were planted +with flowers, and some were in a mourning of black pansies; but a space +fenced apart from the rest held a few neglected mounds, overgrown with +weeds and brambles: This space, he said, was for suicides; but to +March it was not so ghastly as the dapper grief of certain tombs in +consecrated ground where the stones had photographs of the dead on +porcelain let into them. One was the picture of a beautiful young woman, +who had been the wife of the local magnate; an eternal love was vowed +to her in the inscription, but now, the sacristan said, with nothing of +irony, the magnate was married again, and lived in that prettiest house +of the village. He seemed proud of the monument, as the thing worthiest +the attention of the strangers, and he led them with less apparent +hopefulness to the unfinished chapel representing a Gethsemane, with the +figure of Christ praying and his apostles sleeping. It is a subject much +celebrated in terra-cotta about Carlsbad, and it was not a novelty to +his party; still, from its surroundings, it had a fresh pathos, and +March tried to make him understand that they appreciated it. He knew +that his wife wished the poor man to think he had done them a great +favor in showing it; he had been touched with all the vain shows of +grief in the poor, ugly little place; most of all he had felt the exile +of those who had taken their own lives and were parted in death from +the more patient sufferers who had waited for God to take them. With a +curious, unpainful self-analysis he noted that the older members of the +party, who in the course of nature were so much nearer death, did not +shrink from its shows; but the young girl and the young man had not +borne to look on them, and had quickly escaped from the place, +somewhere outside the gate. Was it the beginning, the promise of that +reconciliation with death which nature brings to life at last, or was +it merely the effect, or defect, of ossified sensibilities, of toughened +nerves? + +“That is all?” he asked of the spectral sacristan. + +“That is all,” the man said, and March felt in his pocket for a coin +commensurate to the service he had done them; it ought to be something +handsome. + +“No, no,” said Stoller, detecting his gesture. “Your money a'n't good.” + +He put twenty or thirty kreutzers into the hand of the man, who regarded +them with a disappointment none the less cruel because it was so +patient. In France, he would have been insolent; in Italy, he would have +frankly said it was too little; here, he merely looked at the money and +whispered a sad “Danke.” + +Burnamy and Miss Triscoe rose from the grassy bank outside where they +were sitting, and waited for the elders to get into their two-spanner. + +“Oh, have I lost my glove in there?” said Mrs. March, looking at her +hands and such parts of her dress as a glove might cling to. + +“Let me go and find it for you,” Burnamy entreated. + +“Well,” she consented, and she added, “If the sacristan has found it, +give him something for me something really handsome, poor fellow.” + +As Burnamy passed her, she let him see that she had both her gloves, and +her heart yearned upon him for his instant smile of intelligence: some +men would have blundered out that she had the lost glove in her hand. He +came back directly, saying, “No, he didn't find it.” + +She laughed, and held both gloves up. “No wonder! I had it all the time. +Thank you ever so much.” + +“How are we going to ride back?” asked Stoller. + +Burnamy almost turned pale; Miss Triscoe smiled impenetrably. No one +else spoke, and Mrs. March said, with placid authority, “Oh, I think the +way we came, is best.” + +“Did that absurd creature,” she apostrophized her husband as soon as she +got him alone after their arrival at Pupp's, “think I was going to let +him drive back with Agatha?” + +“I wonder,” said March, “if that's what Burnamy calls her now?” + +“I shall despise him if it isn't.” + + + + +XXXVII. + +Burnamy took up his mail to Stoller after the supper which they had +eaten in a silence natural with two men who have been off on a picnic +together. He did not rise from his writing-desk when Burnamy came in, +and the young man did not sit down after putting his letters before him. +He said, with an effort of forcing himself to speak at once, “I have +looked through the papers, and there is something that I think you ought +to see.” + +“What do you mean?” said Stoller. + +Burnamy laid down three or four papers opened to pages where certain +articles were strongly circumscribed in ink. The papers varied, but +their editorials did not, in purport at least. Some were grave and +some were gay; one indignantly denounced; another affected an ironical +bewilderment; the third simply had fun with the Hon. Jacob Stoller. They +all, however, treated his letter on the city government of Carlsbad as +the praise of municipal socialism, and the paper which had fun with him +gleefully congratulated the dangerous classes on the accession of the +Honorable Jacob to their ranks. + +Stoller read the articles, one after another, with parted lips and +gathering drops of perspiration on his upper lip, while Burnamy waited +on foot. He flung the papers all down at last. “Why, they're a pack +of fools! They don't know what they're talking about! I want city +government carried on on business principles, by the people, for the +people. I don't care what they say! I know I'm right, and I'm going +ahead on this line if it takes all--” The note of defiance died out of +his voice at the sight of Burnamy's pale face. “What's the matter with +you?” + +“There's nothing the matter with me.” + +“Do you mean to tell me it is”--he could not bring himself to use the +word--“what they say?” + +“I suppose,” said Burnamy, with a dry mouth, “it's what you may call +municipal socialism.” + +Stoller jumped from his seat. “And you knew it when you let me do it?” + +“I supposed you knew what you were about.” + +“It's a lie!” Stoller advanced upon him, wildly, and Burnamy took a step +backward. + +“Look out!” shouted Burnamy. “You never asked me anything about it. You +told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you were +such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were talking +about?” He added, in cynical contempt, “But you needn't worry. You can +make it right with the managers by spending a little more money than you +expected to spend.” + +Stoller started as if the word money reminded him of something. “I can +take care of myself, young man. How much do I owe you?” + +“Nothing!” said Burnamy, with an effort for grandeur which failed him. + +The next morning as the Marches sat over their coffee at the Posthof, +he came dragging himself toward them with such a haggard air that Mrs. +March called, before he reached their table, “Why, Mr. Burnamy, what's +the matter?” + +He smiled miserably. “Oh, I haven't slept very well. May I have my +coffee with you? I want to tell you something; I want you to make +me. But I can't speak till the coffee comes. Fraulein!” he besought a +waitress going off with a tray near them. “Tell Lili, please, to bring +me some coffee--only coffee.” + +He tried to make some talk about the weather, which was rainy, and +the Marches helped him, but the poor endeavor lagged wretchedly in the +interval between the ordering and the coming of the coffee. “Ah, thank +you, Lili,” he said, with a humility which confirmed Mrs. March in her +instant belief that he had been offering himself to Miss Triscoe and +been rejected. After gulping his coffee, he turned to her: “I want to +say good-by. I'm going away.” + +“From Carlsbad?” asked Mrs. March with a keen distress. + +The water came into his eyes. “Don't, don't be good to me, Mrs. March! I +can't stand it. But you won't, when you know.” + +He began to speak of Stoller, first to her, but addressing himself +more and more to the intelligence of March, who let him go on without +question, and laid a restraining hand upon his wife when he saw her +about to prompt him. At the end, “That's all,” he said, huskily, and +then he seemed to be waiting for March's comment. He made none, and the +young fellow was forced to ask, “Well, what do you think, Mr. March?” + +“What do you think yourself?” + +“I think, I behaved badly,” said Burnamy, and a movement of protest +from Mrs. March nerved him to add: “I could make out that it was not my +business to tell him what he was doing; but I guess it was; I guess +I ought to have stopped him, or given him a chance to stop himself. +I suppose I might have done it, if he had treated me decently when I +turned up a day late, here; or hadn't acted toward me as if I were +a hand in his buggy-works that had come in an hour after the whistle +sounded.” + +He set his teeth, and an indignant sympathy shone in Mrs. March's eyes; +but her husband only looked the more serious. + +He asked gently, “Do you offer that fact as an explanation, or as a +justification.” + +Burnamy laughed forlornly. “It certainly wouldn't justify me. You might +say that it made the case all the worse for me.” March forbore to say, +and Burnamy went on. “But I didn't suppose they would be onto him so +quick, or perhaps at all. I thought--if I thought anything--that it +would amuse some of the fellows in the office, who know about those +things.” He paused, and in March's continued silence he went on. “The +chance was one in a hundred that anybody else would know where he had +brought up.” + +“But you let him take that chance,” March suggested. + +“Yes, I let him take it. Oh, you know how mixed all these things are!” + +“Yes.” + +“Of course I didn't think it out at the time. But I don't deny that I +had a satisfaction in the notion of the hornets' nest he was poking his +thick head into. It makes me sick, now, to think I had. I oughtn't to +have let him; he was perfectly innocent in it. After the letter went, I +wanted to tell him, but I couldn't; and then I took the chances too. +I don't believe he could have ever got forward in politics; he's too +honest--or he isn't dishonest in the right way. But that doesn't let +me out. I don't defend myself! I did wrong; I behaved badly. But I've +suffered for it. + +“I've had a foreboding all the time that it would come to the worst, and +felt like a murderer with his victim when I've been alone with Stoller. +When I could get away from him I could shake it off, and even believe +that it hadn't happened. You can't think what a nightmare it's been! +Well, I've ruined Stoller politically, but I've ruined myself, too. +I've spoiled my own life; I've done what I can never explain to--to the +people I want to have believe in me; I've got to steal away like the +thief I am. Good-by!” He jumped to his feet, and put out his hand to +March, and then to Mrs. March. + +“Why, you're not going away now!” she cried, in a daze. + +“Yes, I am. I shall leave Carlsbad on the eleven-o'clock train. I don't +think I shall see you again.” He clung to her hand. “If you see General +Triscoe--I wish you'd tell them I couldn't--that I had to--that I was +called away suddenly--Good-by!” He pressed her hand and dropped it, and +mixed with the crowd. Then he came suddenly back, with a final appeal to +March: “Should you--do you think I ought to see Stoller, and--and tell +him I don't think I used him fairly?” + +“You ought to know--” March began. + +But before he could say more, Burnamy said, “You're right,” and was off +again. + +“Oh, how hard you were with him, my dear!” Mrs. March lamented. + +“I wish,” he said, “if our boy ever went wrong that some one would be as +true to him as I was to that poor fellow. He condemned himself; and he +was right; he has behaved very badly.” + +“You always overdo things so, when you act righteously!” + +“Now, Isabel!” + +“Oh, yes, I know what you will say. But I should have tempered justice +with mercy.” + +Her nerves tingled with pity for Burnamy, but in her heart she was glad +that her husband had had strength to side with him against himself, and +she was proud of the forbearance with which he had done it. In their +earlier married life she would have confidently taken the initiative on +all moral questions. She still believed that she was better fitted for +their decision by her Puritan tradition and her New England birth, but +once in a great crisis when it seemed a question of their living, she +had weakened before it, and he, with no such advantages, had somehow met +the issue with courage and conscience. She could not believe he did so +by inspiration, but she had since let him take the brunt of all such +issues and the responsibility. He made no reply, and she said: “I +suppose you'll admit now there was always something peculiar in the poor +boy's manner to Stoller.” + +He would confess no more than that there ought to have been. “I don't +see how he could stagger through with that load on his conscience. I'm +not sure I like his being able to do so.” + +She was silent in the misgiving which she shared with him, but she said: +“I wonder how far it has gone with him and Miss Triscoe?” + +“Well, from his wanting you to give his message to the general in the +plural--” + +“Don't laugh! It's wicked to laugh! It's heartless!” she cried, +hysterically. “What will he do, poor fellow?” + +“I've an idea that he will light on his feet, somehow. But, at any rate, +he's doing the right thing in going to own up to Stoller.” + +“Oh, Stoller! I care nothing for Stoller! Don't speak to me of Stoller!” + +Burnamy fond the Bird of Prey, as he no longer had the heart to call +him, walking up and down in his room like an eagle caught in a trap. He +erected his crest fiercely enough, though, when the young fellow came in +at his loudly shouted, “Herein!” + +“What do you want?” he demanded, brutally. + +This simplified Burnamy's task, while it made it more loathsome. He +answered not much less brutally, “I want to tell you that I think I used +you badly, that I let you betray yourself, that I feel myself to blame.” + He could have added, “Curse you!” without change of tone. + +Stoller sneered in a derision that showed his lower teeth like a dog's +when he snarls. “You want to get back!” + +“No,” said Burnamy, mildly, and with increasing sadness as he spoke. “I +don't want to get back. Nothing would induce me. I'm going away on the +first train.” + +“Well, you're not!” shouted Stoller. “You've lied me into this--” + +“Look out!” Burnamy turned white. + +“Didn't you lie me into it, if you let me fool myself, as you say?” + Stoller pursued, and Burnamy felt himself weaken through his wrath. +“Well, then, you got to lie me out of it. I been going over the damn +thing, all night--and you can do it for me. I know you can do it,” he +gave way in a plea that was almost a whimper. “Look here! You see if you +can't. I'll make it all right with you. I'll pay you whatever you think +is right--whatever you say.” + +“Oh!” said Burnamy, in otherwise unutterable disgust. + +“You kin,” Stoller went on, breaking down more and more into his adopted +Hoosier, in the stress of his anxiety. “I know you kin, Mr. Burnamy.” He +pushed the paper containing his letter into Burnamy's hands, and pointed +out a succession of marked passages. “There! And here! And this place! +Don't you see how you could make out that it meant something else, or +was just ironical?” He went on to prove how the text might be given the +complexion he wished, and Burnamy saw that he had really thought it not +impossibly out. “I can't put it in writing as well as you; but I've done +all the work, and all you've got to do is to give it some of them +turns of yours. I'll cable the fellows in our office to say I've been +misrepresented, and that my correction is coming. We'll get it into +shape here together, and then I'll cable that. I don't care for the +money. And I'll get our counting-room to see this scoundrel”--he picked +up the paper that had had fun with him--“and fix him all right, so that +he'll ask for a suspension of public opinion, and--You see, don't you?” + +The thing did appeal to Burnamy. If it could be done, it would enable +him to make Stoller the reparation he longed to make him more than +anything else in the world. But he heard himself saying, very gently, +almost tenderly, “It might be done, Mr. Stoller. But I couldn't do it. +It wouldn't be honest--for me.” + +“Yah!” yelled Stoller, and he crushed the paper into a wad and flung it +into Burnamy's face. “Honest, you damn humbug! You let me in for this, +when you knew I didn't mean it, and now you won't help me out because it +a'n't honest! Get out of my room, and get out quick before I--” + +He hurled himself toward Burnamy, who straightened himself, with “If you +dare!” He knew that he was right in refusing; but he knew that Stoller +was right, too, and that he had not meant the logic of what he had +said in his letter, and of what Burnamy had let him imply. He braved +Stoller's onset, and he left his presence untouched, but feeling as +little a moral hero as he well could. + + + + +XXXVIII. + +General Triscoe woke in the bad humor of an elderly man after a day's +pleasure, and in the self-reproach of a pessimist who has lost his point +of view for a time, and has to work back to it. He began at the belated +breakfast with his daughter when she said, after kissing him gayly, in +the small two-seated bower where they breakfasted at their hotel when +they did not go to the Posthof, “Didn't you have a nice time, yesterday, +papa?” + +She sank into the chair opposite, and beamed at him across the little +iron table, as she lifted the pot to pour out his coffee. + +“What do you call a nice time?” he temporized, not quite able to resist +her gayety. + +“Well, the kind of time I had.” + +“Did you get rheumatism from sitting on the grass? I took cold in that +old church, and the tea at that restaurant must have been brewed in +a brass kettle. I suffered all night from it. And that ass from +Illinois--” + +“Oh, poor papa! I couldn't go with Mr. Stoller alone, but I might have +gone in the two-spanner with him and let you have Mr. or Mrs. March in +the one-spanner.” + +“I don't know. Their interest in each other isn't so interesting to +other people as they seem to think.” + +“Do you feel that way really, papa? Don't you like their being so much +in love still?” + +“At their time of life? Thank you it's bad enough in young people.” + +The girl did not answer; she appeared altogether occupied in pouring out +her father's coffee. + +He tasted it, and then he drank pretty well all of it; but he said, as +he put his cup down, “I don't know what they make this stuff of. I wish +I had a cup of good, honest American coffee.” + +“Oh, there's nothing like American food!” said his daughter, with so +much conciliation that he looked up sharply. + +But whatever he might have been going to say was at least postponed by +the approach of a serving-maid, who brought a note to his daughter. She +blushed a little at sight of it, and then tore it open and read: + +“I am going away from Carlsbad, for a fault of my own which forbids me +to look you in the face. If you wish to know the worst of me, ask Mrs. +March. I have no heart to tell you.” + +Agatha read these mystifying words of Burnamy's several times over in a +silent absorption with them which left her father to look after himself, +and he had poured out a second cup of coffee with his own hand, and was +reaching for the bread beside her before she came slowly back to a sense +of his presence. + +“Oh, excuse me, papa,” she said, and she gave him the butter. “Here's a +very strange letter from Mr. Burnamy, which I think you'd better see.” + She held the note across the table to him, and watched his face as he +read it. + +After he had read it twice, he turned the sheet over, as people do with +letters that puzzle them, in the vain hope of something explanatory on +the back. Then he looked up and asked: “What do you suppose he's been +doing?” + +“I don't believe he's been doing anything. It's something that Mr. +Stoller's been doing to him.” + +“I shouldn't infer that from his own words. What makes you think the +trouble is with Stoller?” + +“He said--he said yesterday--something about being glad to be through +with him, because he disliked him so much he was always afraid of +wronging him. And that proves that now Mr. Stoller has made him believe +that he's done wrong, and has worked upon him till he does believe it.” + +“It proves nothing of the kind,” said the general, recurring to +the note. After reading it again, he looked keenly at her: “Am I to +understand that you have given him the right to suppose you would want +to know the worst--or the best of him?” + +The girl's eyes fell, and she pushed her knife against her plate. She +began: “No--” + +“Then confound his impudence!” the general broke out. “What business has +he to write to you at all about this?” + +“Because he couldn't go away without it!” she returned; and she met her +father's eye courageously. “He had a right to think we were his friends; +and if he has done wrong, or is in disgrace any way, isn't it manly of +him to wish to tell us first himself?” + +Her father could not say that it was not. But he could and did say, very +sceptically: “Stuff! Now, see here, Agatha: what are you going to do?” + +“I'm going to see Mrs. March, and then--” + +“You mustn't do anything of the kind, my dear,” said her father, gently. +“You've no right to give yourself away to that romantic old goose.” He +put up his hand to interrupt her protest. “This thing has got to be gone +to the bottom of. But you're not to do it. I will see March myself. We +must consider your dignity in this matter--and mine. And you may as +well understand that I'm not going to have any nonsense. It's got to be +managed so that it can't be supposed we're anxious about it, one way or +the other, or that he was authorized to write to you in this way--” + +“No, no! He oughtn't to have done so. He was to blame. He couldn't have +written to you, though, papa--” + +“Well, I don't know why. But that's no reason why we should let it be +understood that he has written to you. I will see March; and I +will manage to see his wife, too. I shall probably find them in the +reading-room at Pupp's, and--” + +The Marches were in fact just coming in from their breakfast at the +Posthof, and he met them at the door of Pupp's, where they all sat down +on one of the iron settees of the piazza, and began to ask one another +questions of their minds about the pleasure of the day before, and to +beat about the bush where Burnamy lurked in their common consciousness. + +Mrs. March was not able to keep long from starting him. “You knew,” she +said, “that Mr. Burnamy had left us?” + +“Left! Why?” asked the general. + +She was a woman of resource, but in a case like this she found it best +to trust her husband's poverty of invention. She looked at him, and he +answered for her with a promptness that made her quake at first, but +finally seemed the only thing, if not the best thing: “He's had some +trouble with Stoller.” He went on to tell the general just what the +trouble was. + +At the end the general grunted as from an uncertain mind. “You think +he's behaved badly.” + +“I think he's behaved foolishly--youthfully. But I can understand how +strongly he was tempted. He could say that he was not authorized to stop +Stoller in his mad career.” + +At this Mrs. March put her hand through her husband's arm. + +“I'm not so sure about that,” said the general. + +March added: “Since I saw him this morning, I've heard something that +disposes me to look at his performance in a friendlier light. It's +something that Stoller told me himself; to heighten my sense of +Burnamy's wickedness. He seems to have felt that I ought to know what a +serpent I was cherishing in my bosom,” and he gave Triscoe the facts of +Burnamy's injurious refusal to help Stoller put a false complexion on +the opinions he had allowed him ignorantly to express. + +The general grunted again. “Of course he had to refuse, and he has +behaved like a gentleman so far. But that doesn't justify him in having +let Stoller get himself into the scrape.” + +“No,” said March. “It's a tough nut for the casuist to try his tooth on. +And I must say I feel sorry for Stoller.” + +Mrs. March plucked her hand from his arm. “I don't, one bit. He +was thoroughly selfish from first to last. He has got just what he +deserved.” + +“Ah, very likely,” said her husband. “The question is about Burnamy's +part in giving him his deserts; he had to leave him to them, of course.” + +The general fixed her with the impenetrable glitter of his eye-glasses, +and left the subject as of no concern to him. “I believe,” he said, +rising, “I'll have a look at some of your papers,” and he went into the +reading-room. + +“Now,” said Mrs. March, “he will go home and poison that poor girl's +mind. And, you will have yourself to thank for prejudicing him against +Burnamy.” + +“Then why didn't you do it yourself, my dear?” he teased; but he was +really too sorry for the whole affair, which he nevertheless enjoyed as +an ethical problem. + +The general looked so little at the papers that before March went off +for his morning walk he saw him come out of the reading-room and take +his way down the Alte Wiese. He went directly back to his daughter, and +reported Burnamy's behavior with entire exactness. He dwelt upon his +making the best of a bad business in refusing to help Stoller out of it, +dishonorably and mendaciously; but he did not conceal that it was a bad +business. + +“Now, you know all about it,” he said at the end, “and I leave the whole +thing to you. If you prefer, you can see Mrs. March. I don't know but +I'd rather you'd satisfy yourself--” + +“I will not see Mrs. March. Do you think I would go back of you in that +way? I am satisfied now.” + + + + +XXXIX. + +Instead of Burnamy, Mrs. Adding and her son now breakfasted with the +Marches at the Posthof, and the boy was with March throughout the day a +good deal. He rectified his impressions of life in Carlsbad by March's +greater wisdom and experience, and did his best to anticipate his +opinions and conform to his conclusions. This was not easy, for +sometimes he could not conceal from himself, that March's opinions +were whimsical, and his conclusions fantastic; and he could not always +conceal from March that he was matching them with Kenby's on some +points, and suffering from their divergence. He came to join the sage in +his early visit to the springs, and they walked up and down talking; and +they went off together on long strolls in which Rose was proud to bear +him company. He was patient of the absences from which he was often +answered, and he learned to distinguish between the earnest and the +irony of which March's replies seemed to be mixed. He examined him upon +many features of German civilization, but chiefly upon the treatment of +women in it; and upon this his philosopher was less satisfactory than +he could have wished him to be. He tried to excuse his trifling as an +escape from the painful stress of questions which he found so afflicting +himself; but in the matter of the woman-and-dog teams, this was not +easy. March owned that the notion of their being yokemates was shocking; +but he urged that it was a stage of evolution, and a distinct advance +upon the time when women dragged the carts without the help of the dogs; +and that the time might not be far distant when the dogs would drag the +carts without the help of the women. + +Rose surmised a joke, and he tried to enjoy it, but inwardly he was +troubled by his friend's apparent acceptance of unjust things on their +picturesque side. Once as they were sauntering homeward by the brink of +the turbid Eger, they came to a man lying on the grass with a pipe +in his mouth, and lazily watching from under his fallen lids the cows +grazing by the river-side, while in a field of scraggy wheat a file of +women were reaping a belated harvest with sickles, bending wearily over +to clutch the stems together and cut them with their hooked blades. “Ah, +delightful!” March took off his hat as if to salute the pleasant sight. + +“But don't you think, Mr. March,” the boy ventured, “that the man had +better be cutting the wheat, and letting the women watch the cows?” + +“Well, I don't know. There are more of them; and he wouldn't be half so +graceful as they are, with that flow of their garments, and the sway of +their aching backs.” The boy smiled sadly, and March put his hand on +his shoulder as they walked on. “You find a lot of things in Europe that +need putting right, don't you, Rose?” + +“Yes; I know it's silly.” + +“Well, I'm not sure. But I'm afraid it's useless. You see, these old +customs go such a way back, and are so grounded in conditions. We think +they might be changed, if those who rule could be got to see how cruel +and ugly they are; but probably they couldn't. I'm afraid that the +Emperor of Austria himself couldn't change them, in his sovereign +plenitude of power. The Emperor is only an old custom too, and he's as +much grounded in the conditions as any.” This was the serious way Rose +felt that March ought always to talk; and he was too much grieved to +laugh when he went on. “The women have so much of the hard work to do, +over here, because the emperors need the men for their armies. They +couldn't let their men cut wheat unless it was for their officers' +horses, in the field of some peasant whom it would ruin.” + +If Mrs. March was by she would not allow him to work these paradoxes +for the boy's confusion. She said the child adored him, and it was a +sacrilege to play with his veneration. She always interfered to save +him, but with so little logic though so much justice that Rose suffered +a humiliation from her championship, and was obliged from a sense +of self-respect to side with the mocker. She understood this, and +magnanimously urged it as another reason why her husband should not +trifle with Rose's ideal of him; to make his mother laugh at him was +wicked. + +“Oh, I'm not his only ideal,” March protested. “He adores Kenby too, +and every now and then he brings me to book with a text from Kenby's +gospel.” + +Mrs. March caught her breath. “Kenby! Do you really think, then, that +she--” + +“Oh, hold on, now! It isn't a question of Mrs. Adding; and I don't say +Rose had an eye on poor old Kenby as a step-father. I merely want you to +understand that I'm the object of a divided worship, and that when I'm +off duty as an ideal I don't see why I shouldn't have the fun of making +Mrs. Adding laugh. You can't pretend she isn't wrapped up in the boy. +You've said that yourself.” + +“Yes, she's wrapped up in him; she'd give her life for him; but she is +so light. I didn't suppose she was so light; but it's borne in upon me +more and more.” + +They were constantly seeing Rose and his mother, in the sort of abeyance +the Triscoes had fallen into. One afternoon the Addings came to Mrs. +March's room to look from her windows at a parade of bicyclers' clubs +from the neighboring towns. The spectacle prospered through its first +half-hour, with the charm which German sentiment and ingenuity, are able +to lend even a bicycle parade. The wheelmen and wheelwomen filed by on +machines wreathed with flowers and ribbons, and decked with streaming +banners. Here and there one sat under a moving arch of blossoms, or in +a bower of leaves and petals, and they were all gay with their club +costumes and insignia. In the height of the display a sudden mountain +shower gathered and broke upon them. They braved it till it became a +drenching down-pour; then they leaped from their machines and fled to +any shelter they could find, under trees and in doorways. The men used +their greater agility to get the best places, and kept them; the women +made no appeal for them by word or look, but took the rain in the open +as if they expected nothing else. + +Rose watched the scene with a silent intensity which March interpreted. +“There's your chance, Rose. Why don't you go down and rebuke those +fellows?” + +Rose blushed and shrank away without answer, and Mrs. March promptly +attacked her husband in his behalf. “Why don't you go and rebuke them +yourself?” + +“Well, for one thing, there isn't any conversation in my phrase-book +Between an indignant American Herr and a Party of German Wheelmen who +have taken Shelter from the Rain and are keeping the Wheelwomen out in +the Wet.” Mrs. Adding shrieked her delight, and he was flattered into +going on. “For another thing, I think it's very well for you ladies to +realize from an object-lesson of this sort what spoiled children of +our civilization you are. It ought to make you grateful for your +privileges.” + +“There is something in that,” Mrs. Adding joyfully consented. + +“Oh, there is no civilization but ours,” said Mrs. March, in a burst of +vindictive patriotism. “I am more and more convinced of it the longer I +stay in Europe.” + +“Perhaps that's why we like to stay so long in Europe; it strengthens +us in the conviction that America is the only civilized country in the +world,” said March. + +The shower passed as quickly as it had gathered, and the band which it +had silenced for a moment burst forth again in the music which fills +the Carlsbad day from dawn till dusk. Just now, it began to play a pot +pourri of American airs; at the end some unseen Americans under the +trees below clapped and cheered. + +“That was opportune of the band,” said March. “It must have been a +telepathic impulse from our patriotism in the director. But a pot pourri +of American airs is like that tablet dedicating the American Park up +here on the Schlossberg, which is signed by six Jews and one Irishman. +The only thing in this medley that's the least characteristic or +original is Dixie; and I'm glad the South has brought us back into the +Union.” + +“You don't know one note from another, my dear,” said his wife. + +“I know the 'Washington Post.'” + +“And don't you call that American?” + +“Yes, if Sousa is an American name; I should have thought it was +Portuguese.” + +“Now that sounds a little too much like General Triscoe's pessimism,” + said Mrs. March; and she added: “But whether we have any national +melodies or not, we don't poke women out in the rain and keep them +soaking!” + +“No, we certainly don't,” he assented, with such a well-studied effect +of yielding to superior logic that Mrs. Adding screamed for joy. + +The boy had stolen out of the room, and he said, “I hope Rose isn't +acting on my suggestion?” + +“I hate to have you tease him, dearest,” his wife interposed. + +“Oh, no,” the mother said, laughing still, but with a note of tenderness +in her laugh, which dropped at last to a sigh. “He's too much afraid of +lese-majesty, for that. But I dare say he couldn't stand the sight. He's +queer.” + +“He's beautiful!” said Mrs. March. + +“He's good,” the mother admitted. “As good as the day's long. He's never +given me a moment's trouble--but he troubles me. If you can understand!” + +“Oh, I do understand!” Mrs. March returned. “By his innocence, you mean. +That is the worst of children. Their innocence breaks our hearts and +makes us feel ourselves such dreadful old things.” + +“His innocence, yes,” pursued Mrs. Adding, “and his ideals.” She began +to laugh again. “He may have gone off for a season of meditation and +prayer over the misbehavior of these bicyclers. His mind is turning that +way a good deal lately. It's only fair to tell you, Mr. March, that +he seems to be giving up his notion of being an editor. You mustn't be +disappointed.” + +“I shall be sorry,” said the editor. “But now that you mention it, +I think I have noticed that Rose seems rather more indifferent to +periodical literature. I supposed he might simply have exhausted his +questions--or my answers.” + +“No; it goes deeper than that. I think it's Europe that's turned his +mind in the direction of reform. At any rate he thinks now he will be a +reformer.” + +“Really! What kind of one? Not religious, I hope?” + +“No. His reform has a religious basis, but its objects are social. I +don't make it out, exactly; but I shall, as soon as Rose does. He tells +me everything, and sometimes I don't feel equal to it, spiritually or +even intellectually.” + +“Don't laugh at him, Mrs. Adding!” Mrs. March entreated. + +“Oh, he doesn't mind my laughing,” said the mother, gayly. Rose came +shyly back into the room, and she said, “Well, did you rebuke those bad +bicyclers?” and she laughed again. + +“They're only a custom, too, Rose,”, said March, tenderly. “Like the +man resting while the women worked, and the Emperor, and all the rest of +it.” + +“Oh, yes, I know,” the boy returned. + +“They ride modern machines, but they live in the tenth century. That's +what we're always forgetting when we come to Europe and see these +barbarians enjoying all our up-to-date improvements.” + +“There, doesn't that console you?” asked his mother, and she took him +away with her, laughing back from the door. “I don't believe it does, a +bit!” + +“I don't believe she understands the child,” said Mrs. March. “She +is very light, don't you think? I don't know, after all, whether it +wouldn't be a good thing for her to marry Kenby. She is very easygoing, +and she will be sure to marry somebody.” + +She had fallen into a tone of musing censure, and he said, “You might +put these ideas to her.” + + + + +XL. + +With the passage of the days and weeks, the strange faces which had +familiarized themselves at the springs disappeared; even some of +those which had become the faces of acquaintance began to go. In the +diminishing crowd the smile of Otterson was no longer to be seen; the +sad, severe visage of Major Eltwin, who seemed never to have quite got +his bearings after his error with General Triscoe, seldom showed itself. +The Triscoes themselves kept out of the Marches' way, or they fancied +so; Mrs. Adding and Rose alone remained of their daily encounter. + +It was full summer, as it is everywhere in mid-August, but at Carlsbad +the sun was so late getting up over the hills that as people went to +their breakfasts at the cafes up the valley of the Tepl they found him +looking very obliquely into it at eight o'clock in the morning. The +yellow leaves were thicker about the feet of the trees, and the grass +was silvery gray with the belated dews. The breakfasters were fewer than +they had been, and there were more little barefooted boys and girls with +cups of red raspberries which they offered to the passers with cries of +“Himbeeren! Himbeeren!” plaintive as the notes of birds left songless by +the receding summer. + +March was forbidden the fruit, but his wife and Mrs. Adding bought +recklessly of it, and ate it under his eyes with their coffee and bread, +pouring over it pots of clotted cream that the 'schone' Lili brought +them. Rose pretended an indifference to it, which his mother betrayed +was a sacrifice in behalf of March's inability. + +Lili's delays in coming to be paid had been such that the Marches now +tried to pay her when she brought their breakfast, but they sometimes +forgot, and then they caught her whenever she came near them. In this +event she liked to coquet with their impatience; she would lean against +their table, and say: “Oh, no. You stay a little. It is so nice.” One +day after such an entreaty, she said, “The queen is here, this morning.” + +Mrs. March started, in the hope of highhotes. “The queen!” + +“Yes; the young lady. Mr. Burnamy was saying she was a queen. She is +there with her father.” She nodded in the direction of a distant corner, +and the Marches knew that she meant Miss Triscoe and the general. “She +is not seeming so gayly as she was being.” + +March smiled. “We are none of us so gayly as we were being, Lili. The +summer is going.” + +“But Mr. Burnamy will be returning, not true?” the girl asked, resting +her tray on the corner of the table. + +“No, I'm afraid he won't,” March returned sadly. + +“He was very good. He was paying the proprietor for the dishes that +Augusta did break when she was falling down. He was paying before he +went away, when he was knowing that the proprietor would make Augusta to +pay.” + +“Ah!” said March, and his wife said, “That was like him!” and she +eagerly explained to Mrs. Adding how good and great Burnamy had been +in this characteristic instance, while Lili waited with the tray to add +some pathetic facts about Augusta's poverty and gratitude. “I think Miss +Triscoe ought to know it. There goes the wretch, now!” she broke off. +“Don't look at him!” She set her husband the example of averting his +face from the sight of Stoller sullenly pacing up the middle aisle of +the grove, and looking to the right and left for a vacant table. “Ugh! I +hope he won't be able to find a single place.” + +Mrs. Adding gave one of her pealing laughs, while Rose watched March's +face with grave sympathy. “He certainly doesn't deserve one. Don't let +us keep you from offering Miss Triscoe any consolation you can.” They +got up, and the boy gathered up the gloves, umbrella, and handkerchief +which the ladies let drop from their laps. + +“Have you been telling?” March asked his wife. + +“Have I told you anything?” she demanded of Mrs. Adding in turn. +“Anything that you didn't as good as know, already?” + +“Not a syllable!” Mrs. Adding replied in high delight. “Come, Rose!” + +“Well, I suppose there's no use saying anything,” said March, after she +left them. + +“She had guessed everything, without my telling her,” said his wife. + +“About Stoller?” + +“Well-no. I did tell her that part, but that was nothing. It was about +Burnamy and Agatha that she knew. She saw it from the first.” + +“I should have thought she would have enough to do to look after poor +old Kenby.” + +“I'm not sure, after all, that she cares for him. If she doesn't, she +oughtn't to let him write to her. Aren't you going over to speak to the +Triscoes?” + +“No, certainly not. I'm going back to the hotel. There ought to be +some steamer letters this morning. Here we are, worrying about these +strangers all the time, and we never give a thought to our own children +on the other side of the ocean.” + +“I worry about them, too,” said the mother, fondly. “Though there is +nothing to worry about,” she added. + +“It's our duty to worry,” he insisted. + +At the hotel the portier gave them four letters. There was one from each +of their children: one very buoyant, not to say boisterous, from the +daughter, celebrating her happiness in her husband, and the loveliness +of Chicago as a summer city (“You would think she was born out there!” + sighed her mother); and one from the son, boasting his well-being in +spite of the heat they were having (“And just think how cool it is +here!” his mother upbraided herself), and the prosperity of 'Every Other +Week'. There was a line from Fulkerson, praising the boy's editorial +instinct, and ironically proposing March's resignation in his favor. + +“I do believe we could stay all winter, just as well as not,” said Mrs. +March, proudly. “What does 'Burnamy say?” + +“How do you know it's from him?” + +“Because you've been keeping your hand on it! Give it here.” + +“When I've read it.” + +The letter was dated at Ansbach, in Germany, and dealt, except for some +messages of affection to Mrs. March, with a scheme for a paper which +Burnamy wished to write on Kaspar Hauser, if March thought he could use +it in 'Every Other Week'. He had come upon a book about that hapless +foundling in Nuremberg, and after looking up all his traces there he had +gone on to Ansbach, where Kaspar Hauser met his death so pathetically. +Burnamy said he could not give any notion of the enchantment of +Nuremberg; but he besought March, if he was going to the Tyrol for his +after-cure, not to fail staying a day or so in the wonderful place. He +thought March would enjoy Ansbach too, in its way. + +“And, not a word--not a syllable--about Miss Triscoe!” cried Mrs. March. +“Shall you take his paper?” + +“It would be serving him right, if I refused it, wouldn't it?” + +They never knew what it cost Burnamy to keep her name out of his letter, +or by what an effort of the will he forbade himself even to tell of his +parting interview with Stoller. He had recovered from his remorse for +letting Stoller give himself away; he was still sorry for that, but he +no longer suffered; yet he had not reached the psychological moment when +he could celebrate his final virtue in the matter. He was glad he had +been able to hold out against the temptation to retrieve himself by +another wrong; but he was humbly glad, and he felt that until happier +chance brought him and his friends together he must leave them to their +merciful conjectures. He was young, and he took the chance, with an +aching heart. If he had been older, he might not have taken it. + + + + +XLI. + +The birthday of the Emperor comes conveniently, in late August, in the +good weather which is pretty sure to fall then, if ever in the Austrian +summer. For a week past, at Carlsbad, the workmen had been building a +scaffolding for the illumination in the woods on a height overlooking +the town, and making unobtrusive preparations at points within it. + +The day was important as the last of March's cure, and its pleasures +began for him by a renewal of his acquaintance in its first kindliness +with the Eltwins. He had met them so seldom that at one time he thought +they must have gone away, but now after his first cup he saw the quiet, +sad old pair, sitting together on a bench in the Stadt Park, and he +asked leave to sit down with them till it was time for the next. Eltwin +said that this was their last day, too; and explained that his wife +always came with him to the springs, while he took the waters. + +“Well,” he apologized, “we're all that's left, and I suppose we like to +keep together.” He paused, and at the look in March's face he suddenly +went on. “I haven't been well for three or four years; but I always +fought against coming out here, when the doctors wanted me to. I said +I couldn't leave home; and, I don't suppose I ever should. But my home +left me.” + +As he spoke his wife shrank tenderly near him, and March saw her steal +her withered hand into his. + +“We'd had a large family, but they'd all died off, with one thing +or another, and here in the spring we lost our last daughter. Seemed +perfectly well, and all at once she died; heart-failure, they called it. +It broke me up, and mother, here, got at me to go. And so we're here.” + His voice trembled; and his eyes softened; then they flashed up, and +March heard him add, in a tone that astonished him less when he looked +round and saw General Triscoe advancing toward them, “I don't know what +it is always makes me want to kick that man.” + +The general lifted his hat to their group, and hoped that Mrs. Eltwin +was well, and Major Eltwin better. He did not notice their replies, but +said to March, “The ladies are waiting for you in Pupp's readingroom, to +go with them to the Posthof for breakfast.” + +“Aren't you going, too?” asked March. + +“No, thank you,” said the general, as if it were much finer not; “I +shall breakfast at our pension.” He strolled off with the air of a man +who has done more than his duty. + +“I don't suppose I ought to feel that way,” said Eltwin, with a remorse +which March suspected a reproachful pressure of his wife's hand had +prompted in him. “I reckon he means well.” + +“Well, I don't know,” March said, with a candor he could not wholly +excuse. + +On his way to the hotel he fancied mocking his wife for her interest in +the romantic woes of her lovers, in a world where there was such real +pathos as these poor old people's; but in the company of Miss Triscoe he +could not give himself this pleasure. He tried to amuse her on the +way from Pupp's, with the doubt he always felt in passing the Cafe +Sans-Souci, whether he should live to reach the Posthof where he meant +to breakfast. She said, “Poor Mr. March!” and laughed inattentively; +when he went on to philosophize the commonness of the sparse company +always observable at the Sans-Souci as a just effect of its Laodicean +situation between Pupp's and the Posthof, the girl sighed absently, and +his wife frowned at him. + +The flower-woman at the gate of her garden had now only autumnal blooms +for sale in the vases which flanked the entrance; the windrows of the +rowen, left steeping in the dews overnight, exhaled a faint fragrance; +a poor remnant of the midsummer multitudes trailed itself along to the +various cafes of the valley, its pink paper bags of bread rustling like +sere foliage as it moved. + +At the Posthof the 'schone' Lili alone was as gay, as in the prime of +July. She played archly about the guests she welcomed to a table in +a sunny spot in the gallery. “You are tired of Carlsbad?” she said +caressingly to Miss Triscoe, as she put her breakfast before her. + +“Not of the Posthof,” said the girl, listlessly. + +“Posthof, and very little Lili?” She showed, with one forefinger on +another, how very little she was. + +Miss Triscoe laughed, not cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs. March, with +abrupt seriousness, “Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table, +and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it. I have +scolded her, and I have made her give it to me.” + +She took from under her apron a man's handkerchief, which she offered to +Mrs. March. It bore, as she saw Miss Triscoe saw, the initials L. J. B. +But, “Whose can it be?” they asked each other. + +“Why, Burnamy's,” said March; and Lili's eyes danced. “Give it here!” + +His wife caught it farther away. “No, I'm going to see whose it is, +first; if it's his, I'll send it to him myself.” + +She tried to put it into the pocket which was not in her dress by +sliding it down her lap; then she handed it to the girl, who took it +with a careless air, but kept it after a like failure to pocket it. + +Mrs. March had come out in her India-rubber sandals, but for once in +Carlsbad the weather was too dry for them, and she had taken them off +and was holding them in her lap. They fell to the ground when she now +rose from breakfast, and she stooped to pick them up. Miss Triscoe was +too quick for her. + +“Oh, let me carry them for you!” she entreated, and after a tender +struggle she succeed in enslaving herself to them, and went away wearing +them through the heel-bands like manacles on her wrist. She was not the +kind of girl to offer such pretty devotions, and Mrs. March was not the +kind of woman to suffer them; but they played the comedy through, and +let March go off for his last hill-climb with the promise to meet him in +the Stadt Park when he came to the Kurhaus for his last mineral bath. + +Mrs. March in the mean time went about some final shopping, and invited +the girl's advice with a fondness which did not prevent her rejecting +it in every case, with Miss Triscoe's eager approval. In the Stadt +Park they sat down and talked; from time to time Mrs. March made polite +feints of recovering her sandals, but the girl kept them with increased +effusion. + +When they rose, and strolled away from the bench where they had been +sitting, they seemed to be followed. They looked round and saw no one +more alarming than a very severe-looking old gentleman, whose hat brim +in spite of his severity was limp with much lifting, as all Austrian +hat brims are. He touched it, and saying haughtily in German, “Something +left lying,” passed on. + +They stared at each other; then, as women do, they glanced down at their +skirts to see if there was anything amiss with them, and Miss Triscoe +perceived her hands empty of Mrs. March's sandals and of Burnamy's +handkerchief. + +“Oh, I put it in one of the toes!” she lamented, and she fled back to +their bench, alarming in her course the fears of a gendarme for the +public security, and putting a baby in its nurse's arms into such doubts +of its personal safety that it burst into a desolate cry. She laughed +breathlessly as she rejoined Mrs. March. “That comes of having no +pocket; I didn't suppose I could forget your sandals, Mrs. March! Wasn't +it absurd?” + +“It's one of those things,” Mrs. March said to her husband afterwards, +“that they can always laugh over together.” + +“They? And what about Burnamy's behavior to Stoller?” + +“Oh, I don't call that anything but what will come right. Of course he +can make it up to him somehow. And I regard his refusal to do wrong when +Stoller wanted him to as quite wiping out the first offence.” + +“Well, my dear, you have burnt your ships behind you. My only hope is +that when we leave here tomorrow, her pessimistic papa's poison will +neutralize yours somehow.” + + + + +XLII. + +One of the pleasantest incidents of March's sojourn in Carlsbad was his +introduction to the manager of the municipal theatre by a common friend +who explained the editor in such terms to the manager that he conceived +of him as a brother artist. This led to much bowing and smiling from +the manager when the Marches met him in the street, or in their frequent +visits to the theatre, with which March felt that it might well have +ended, and still been far beyond his desert. He had not thought of going +to the opera on the Emperor's birthnight, but after dinner a box came +from the manager, and Mrs. March agreed with him that they could not in +decency accept so great a favor. At the same time she argued that they +could not in decency refuse it, and that to show their sense of the +pleasure done them, they must adorn their box with all the beauty +and distinction possible; in other words, she said they must ask Miss +Triscoe and her father. + +“And why not Major Eltwin and his wife? Or Mrs. Adding and Rose?” + +She begged him, simply in his own interest, not to be foolish; and they +went early, so as to be in their box when their guests came. The +foyer of the theatre was banked with flowers, and against a curtain of +evergreens stood a high-pedestalled bust of the paternal Caesar, with +whose side-whiskers a laurel crown comported itself as well as it could. +At the foot of the grand staircase leading to the boxes the manager +stood in evening dress, receiving his friends and their felicitations +upon the honor which the theatre was sure to do itself on an occasion so +august. The Marches were so cordial in their prophecies that the manager +yielded to an artist's impulse and begged his fellow-artist to do him +the pleasure of coming behind the scenes between the acts of the opera; +he bowed a heart-felt regret to Mrs. March that he could not make the +invitation include her, and hoped that she would not be too lonely while +her husband was gone. + +She explained that they had asked friends, and she should not be alone, +and then he entreated March to bring any gentleman who was his guest +with him. On the way up to their box, she pressed his arm as she used in +their young married days, and asked him if it was not perfect. “I wish +we were going to have it all to ourselves; no one else can appreciate +the whole situation. Do you think we have made a mistake in having the +Triscoes?” + +“We!” he retorted. “Oh, that's good! I'm going to shirk him, when it +comes to going behind the scenes.” + +“No, no, dearest,” she entreated. “Snubbing will only make it worse. We +must stand it to the bitter end, now.” + +The curtain rose upon another laurelled bust of the Emperor, with a +chorus of men formed on either side, who broke into the grave and noble +strains of the Austrian Hymn, while every one stood. Then the curtain +fell again, and in the interval before the opera could begin, General +Triscoe and his daughter came in. + +Mrs. March took the splendor in which the girl appeared as a tribute to +her hospitality. She had hitherto been a little disappointed of the open +homage to American girlhood which her readings of international romance +had taught her to expect in Europe, but now her patriotic vanity feasted +full. Fat highhotes of her own sex levelled their lorgnettes at Miss +Triscoe all around the horseshoe, with critical glances which fell +blunted from her complexion and costume; the house was brilliant +with the military uniforms, which we have not yet to mingle with our +unrivalled millinery, and the ardent gaze of the young officers dwelt on +the perfect mould of her girlish arms and neck, and the winning lines of +her face. The girl's eyes shone with a joyful excitement, and her little +head, defined by its dark hair, trembled as she slowly turned it from +side to side, after she removed the airy scarf which had covered it. +Her father, in evening dress, looked the Third Emperor complaisant to +a civil occasion, and took a chair in the front of the box without +resistance; and the ladies disputed which should yield the best place +to the other, till Miss Triscoe forced Mrs. March fondly into it for the +first act at least. + +The piece had to be cut a good deal to give people time for the +illuminations afterwards; but as it was it gave scope to the actress +who, 'als Gast' from a Viennese theatre, was the chief figure in it. She +merited the distinction by the art which still lingered, deeply embedded +in her massive balk, but never wholly obscured. + +“That is grand, isn't it?” said March, following one of the tremendous +strokes by which she overcame her physical disadvantages. “It's fine +to see how her art can undo, for one splendid instant, the work of +all those steins of beer, those illimitable licks of sausage, those +boundless fields of cabbage. But it's rather pathetic.” + +“It's disgusting,” said his wife; and at this General Triscoe, who +had been watching the actress through his lorgnette, said, as if his +contrary-mindedness were irresistibly invoked: + +“Well, I don't know. It's amusing. Do you suppose we shall see her when +we go behind, March?” + +He still professed a desire to do so when the curtain fell, and they +hurried to the rear door of the theatre. It was slightly ajar, and they +pulled it wide open, with the eagerness of their age and nation, and +began to mount the stairs leading up from it between rows of painted +dancing-girls, who had come out for a breath of air, and who pressed +themselves against the walls to make room for the intruders. With their +rouged faces, and the stare of their glassy eyes intensified by the +coloring of their brows and lashes, they were like painted statues, as +they stood there with their crimsoned lips parted in astonished smiles. + +“This is rather weird,” said March, faltering at the sight. “I wonder +if we might ask these young ladies where to go?” General Triscoe made no +answer, and was apparently no more prepared than himself to accost the +files of danseuses, when they were themselves accosted by an angry voice +from the head of the stairs with a demand for their business. The voice +belonged to a gendarme, who descended toward them and seemed as deeply +scandalized at their appearance as they could have been at that of the +young ladies. + +March explained, in his ineffective German, with every effect of +improbability, that they were there by appointment of the manager, and +wished to find his room. + +The gendarme would not or could not make anything out of it. He pressed +down upon them, and laying a rude hand on a shoulder of either, began +to force them back to the door. The mild nature of the editor might have +yielded to his violence, but the martial spirit of General Triscoe was +roused. He shrugged the gendarme's hand from his shoulder, and with a +voice as furious as his own required him, in English, to say what the +devil he meant. The gendarme rejoined with equal heat in German; the +general's tone rose in anger; the dancing-girls emitted some little +shrieks of alarm, and fled noisily up the stairs. From time to time +March interposed with a word of the German which had mostly deserted +him in his hour of need; but if it had been a flow of intelligible +expostulation, it would have had no effect upon the disputants. They +grew more outrageous, till the manager himself, appeared at the head of +the stairs, and extended an arresting hand over the hubbub. As soon as +the situation clarified itself he hurried down to his visitors with a +polite roar of apology and rescued them from the gendarme, and led +them up to his room and forced them into arm-chairs with a rapidity of +reparation which did not exhaust itself till he had entreated them with +every circumstance of civility to excuse an incident so mortifying to +him. But with all his haste he lost so much time in this that he had +little left to show them through the theatre, and their presentation to +the prima donna was reduced to the obeisances with which they met and +parted as she went upon the stage at the lifting of the curtain. In +the lack of a common language this was perhaps as well as a longer +interview; and nothing could have been more honorable than their +dismissal at the hands of the gendarme who had received them so +stormily. He opened the door for them, and stood with his fingers to his +cap saluting, in the effect of being a whole file of grenadiers. + + + + +XLIII. + +At the same moment Burnamy bowed himself out of the box where he had +been sitting with the ladies during the absence of the gentlemen. He had +knocked at the door almost as soon as they disappeared, and if he did +not fully share the consternation which his presence caused, he looked +so frightened that Mrs. March reserved the censure which the sight of +him inspired, and in default of other inspiration treated his coming +simply as a surprise. She shook hands with him, and then she asked him +to sit down, and listened to his explanation that he had come back to +Carlsbad to write up the birthnight festivities, on an order from the +Paris-New York Chronicle; that he had seen them in the box and had +ventured to took in. He was pale, and so discomposed that the heart of +justice was softened more and more in Mrs. March's breast, and she left +him to the talk that sprang up, by an admirable effect of tact in the +young lady, between him and Miss Triscoe. + +After all, she decided, there was nothing criminal in his being in +Carlsbad, and possibly in the last analysis there was nothing so very +wicked in his being in her box. One might say that it was not very nice +of him after he had gone away under such a cloud; but on the other hand +it was nice, though in a different way, if he longed so much to see Miss +Triscoe that he could not help coming. It was altogether in his favor +that he was so agitated, though he was momently becoming less agitated; +the young people were beginning to laugh at the notion of Mr. March and +General Triscoe going behind the scenes. Burnamy said he envied them the +chance; and added, not very relevantly, that he had come from Baireuth, +where he had seen the last of the Wagner performances. He said he was +going back to Baireuth, but not to Ansbach again, where he had finished +looking up that Kaspar Hauser business. He seemed to think Mrs. March +would know about it, and she could not help saying; Oh, yes, Mr. March +was so much interested. She wondered if she ought to tell him about his +handkerchief; but she remembered in time that she had left it in Miss +Triscoe's keeping. She wondered if the girl realized how handsome he +was. He was extremely handsome, in his black evening dress, with his +Tuxedo, and the pallor of his face repeated in his expanse of shirt +front. + +At the bell for the rising of the curtain he rose too, and took their +offered hands. In offering hers Mrs. March asked if he would not stay +and speak with Mr. March and the general; and now for the first time he +recognized anything clandestine in his visit. He laughed nervously, and +said, “No, thank you!” and shut himself out. + +“We must tell them,” said Mrs. March, rather interrogatively, and she +was glad that the girl answered with a note of indignation. + +“Why, certainly, Mrs. March.” + +They could not tell them at once, for the second act had begun when +March and the general came back; and after the opera was over and they +got out into the crowded street there was no chance, for the general was +obliged to offer his arm to Mrs. March, while her husband followed with +his daughter. + +The facades of the theatre and of the hotels were outlined with thickly +set little lamps, which beaded the arches of the bridges spanning the +Tepl, and lighted the casements and portals of the shops. High above +all, against the curtain of black woodland on the mountain where its +skeleton had been growing for days, glittered the colossal effigy of the +doubleheaded eagle of Austria, crowned with the tiara of the Holy Roman +Empire; in the reflected splendor of its myriad lamps the pale Christ +looked down from the mountain opposite upon the surging multitudes in +the streets and on the bridges. + +They were most amiable multitudes, March thought, and they responded +docilely to the entreaties of the policemen who stood on the steps +of the bridges, and divided their encountering currents with patient +appeals of “Bitte schon! Bitte schon!” He laughed to think of a New York +cop saying “Please prettily! Please prettily!” to a New York crowd which +he wished to have go this way or that, and then he burned with shame to +think how far our manners were from civilization, wherever our heads and +hearts might be, when he heard a voice at his elbow: + +“A punch with a club would start some of these fellows along quicker.” + +It was Stoller, and March turned from him to lose his disgust in the +sudden terror of perceiving that Miss Triscoe was no longer at his side. +Neither could he see his wife and General Triscoe, and he began to +push frantically about in the crowd looking for the girl. He had an +interminable five or ten minutes in his vain search, and he was going +to call out to her by name, when Burnamy saved him from the hopeless +absurdity by elbowing his way to him with Miss. Triscoe on his arm. + +“Here she is, Mr. March,” he said, as if there were nothing strange in +his having been there to find her; in fact he had followed them all +from the theatre, and at the moment he saw the party separated, and Miss +Triscoe carried off helpless in the human stream, had plunged in +and rescued her. Before March could formulate any question in his +bewilderment, Burnamy was gone again; the girl offered no explanation +for him, and March had not yet decided to ask any when he caught sight +of his wife and General Triscoe standing tiptoe in a doorway and craning +their necks upward and forward to scan the crowd in search of him and +his charge. Then he looked round at her and opened his lips to express +the astonishment that filled him, when he was aware of an ominous +shining of her eyes and trembling of her hand on his arm. + +She pressed his arm nervously, and he understood her to beg him to +forbear at once all question of her and all comment on Burnamy's +presence to her father. + +It would not have been just the time for either. Not only Mrs. March was +with the general, but Mrs. Adding also; she had called to them from that +place, where she was safe with Rose when she saw them eddying about in +the crowd. The general was still, expressing a gratitude which became +more pressing the more it was disclaimed; he said casually at sight of +his daughter, “Ah; you've found us, have you?” and went on talking to +Mrs. Adding, who nodded to them laughingly, and asked, “Did you see me +beckoning?” + +“Look here, my dear!” March said to his wife as soon as they parted from +the rest, the general gallantly promising that his daughter and he would +see Mrs. Adding safe to her hotel, and were making their way slowly home +alone. “Did you know that Burnamy was in Carlsbad?” + +“He's going away on the twelve-o'clock train tonight,” she answered, +firmly. + +“What has that got to do with it? Where did you see him?” + +“In the box, while you were behind the scenes.” + +She told him all about it, and he listened in silent endeavor for the +ground of censure from which a sense of his own guilt forced him. She +asked suddenly, “Where did you see him?” and he told her in turn. + +He added severely, “Her father ought to know. Why didn't you tell him?” + +“Why didn't you?” she retorted with great reason. + +“Because I didn't think he was just in the humor for it.” He began to +laugh as he sketched their encounter with the gendarme, but she did not +seem to think it amusing; and he became serious again. “Besides, I was +afraid she was going to blubber, any way.” + +“She wouldn't have blubbered, as you call it. I don't know why you need +be so disgusting! It would have given her just the moral support she +needed. Now she will have to tell him herself, and he will blame us. You +ought to have spoken; you could have done it easily and naturally +when you came up with her. You will have yourself to thank for all the +trouble that comes of it, now, my dear.” + +He shouted in admiration of her skill in shifting the blame on him. “All +right! I should have had to stand it, even if you hadn't behaved with +angelic wisdom.” + +“Why,” she said, after reflection, “I don't see what either of us has +done. We didn't get Burnamy to come here, or connive at his presence in +any way.” + +“Oh! Make Triscoe believe that! He knows you've done all you could to +help the affair on.” + +“Well, what if I have? He began making up to Mrs. Adding himself as soon +as he saw her, to-night. She looked very pretty.” + +“Well, thank Heaven! we're off to-morrow morning, and I hope we've seen +the last of them. They've done what they could to spoil my cure, but I'm +not going to have them spoil my aftercure.” + + + + +XLIV. + +Mrs. March had decided not to go to the Posthof for breakfast, where +they had already taken a lavish leave of the 'schone' Lili, with a sense +of being promptly superseded in her affections. They found a place in +the red-table-cloth end of the pavilion at Pupp's, and were served by +the pretty girl with the rose-bud mouth whom they had known only as +Ein-und-Zwanzig, and whose promise of “Komm' gleich, bitte schon!” was +like a bird's note. Never had the coffee been so good, the bread so +aerially light, the Westphalian ham so tenderly pink. A young married +couple whom they knew came by, arm in arm, in their morning walk, and +sat down with them, like their own youth, for a moment. + +“If you had told them we were going, dear,” said Mrs. March, when the +couple were themselves gone, “we should have been as old as ever. Don't +let us tell anybody, this morning, that we're going. I couldn't bear +it.” + +They had been obliged to take the secretary of the hotel into their +confidence, in the process of paying their bill. He put on his high hat +and came out to see them off. The portier was already there, standing at +the step of the lordly two-spanner which they had ordered for the long +drive to the station. The Swiss elevator-man came to the door to offer +them a fellow-republican's good wishes for their journey; Herr Pupp +himself appeared at the last moment to hope for their return another +summer. Mrs. March bent a last look of interest upon the proprietor as +their two-spanner whirled away. + +“They say that he is going to be made a count.” + +“Well, I don't object,” said March. “A man who can feed fourteen +thousand people, mostly Germans, in a day, ought to be made an +archduke.” + +At the station something happened which touched them even more than +these last attentions of the hotel. They were in their compartment, and +were in the act of possessing themselves of the best places by putting +their bundles and bags on them, when they heard Mrs. March's name +called. + +They turned and saw Rose Adding at the door, his thin face flushed with +excitement and his eyes glowing. “I was afraid I shouldn't get here in +time,” he panted, and he held up to her a huge bunch of flowers. + +“Why Rose! From your mother?” + +“From me,” he said, timidly, and he was slipping out into the corridor, +when she caught him and his flowers to her in one embrace. “I want to +kiss you,” she said; and presently, when he had waved his hand to them +from the platform outside, and the train had started, she fumbled for +her handkerchief. “I suppose you call it blubbering; but he is the +sweetest child!” + +“He's about the only one of our Carlsbad compatriots that I'm sorry to +leave behind,” March assented. “He's the only unmarried one that wasn't +in danger of turning up a lover on my hands; if there had been some +rather old girl, or some rather light matron in our acquaintance, I'm +not sure that I should have been safe even from Rose. Carlsbad has been +an interruption to our silver wedding journey, my dear; but I hope now +that it will begin again.” + +“Yes,” said his wife, “now we can have each other all to ourselves.” + +“Yes. It's been very different from our first wedding journey in that. +It isn't that we're not so young now as we were, but that we don't seem +so much our own property. We used to be the sole proprietors, and now we +seem to be mere tenants at will, and any interloping lover may come +in and set our dearest interests on the sidewalk. The disadvantage of +living along is that we get too much into the hands of other people.” + +“Yes, it is. I shall be glad to be rid of them all, too.” + +“I don't know that the drawback is serious enough to make us wish we had +died young--or younger,” he suggested. + +“No, I don't know that it is,” she assented. She added, from an absence +where he was sufficiently able to locate her meaning, “I hope she'll +write and tell me what her father says and does when she tells him that +he was there.” + +There were many things, in the weather, the landscape, their +sole occupancy of an unsmoking compartment, while all the smoking +compartments round overflowed with smokers, which conspired to offer +them a pleasing illusion of the past; it was sometimes so perfect +that they almost held each other's hands. In later life there are such +moments when the youthful emotions come back, as certain birds do in +winter, and the elderly heart chirps and twitters to itself as if it +were young. But it is best to discourage this fondness; and Mrs. March +joined her husband in mocking it, when he made her observe how fit it +was that their silver wedding journey should be resumed as part of his +after-cure. If he had found the fountain of youth in the warm, flat, +faintly nauseous water of the Felsenquelle, he was not going to call +himself twenty-eight again till his second month of the Carlsbad regimen +was out, and he had got back to salad and fruit. + +At Eger they had a memorable dinner, with so much leisure for it that +they could form a life-long friendship for the old English-speaking +waiter who served them, and would not suffer them to hurry themselves. +The hills had already fallen away, and they ran along through a cheerful +country, with tracts of forest under white clouds blowing about in a +blue sky, and gayly flinging their shadows down upon the brown ploughed +land, and upon the yellow oat-fields, where women were cutting the +leisurely harvest with sickles, and where once a great girl with swarthy +bare arms unbent herself from her toil, and rose, a statue of rude vigor +and beauty, to watch them go by. Hedges of evergreen enclosed the yellow +oat-fields, where slow wagons paused to gather the sheaves of the week +before, and then loitered away with them. Flocks of geese waddled in +sculpturesque relief against the close-cropt pastures, herded by little +girls with flaxen pigtails, whose eyes, blue as corn-flowers, followed +the flying train. There were stretches of wild thyme purpling long +barren acreages, and growing up the railroad banks almost to the rails +themselves. From the meadows the rowen, tossed in long loose windrows, +sent into their car a sad autumnal fragrance which mingled with the +tobacco smoke, when two fat smokers emerged into the narrow corridor +outside their compartments and tried to pass each other. Their vast +stomachs beat together in a vain encounter. + +“Zu enge!” said one, and “Ja, zu enge!” said the other, and they laughed +innocently in each other's' faces, with a joy in their recognition of +the corridor's narrowness as great as if it had been a stroke of the +finest wit. + +All the way the land was lovely, and as they drew near Nuremberg it grew +enchanting, with a fairy quaintness. The scenery was Alpine, but the +scale was toy-like, as befitted the region, and the mimic peaks and +valleys with green brooks gushing between them, and strange rock forms +recurring in endless caprice, seemed the home of children's story. All +the gnomes and elves might have dwelt there in peaceful fellowship with +the peasants who ploughed the little fields, and gathered the garlanded +hops, and lived in the farmsteads and village houses with those high +timber-laced gables. + +“We ought to have come here long ago with the children, when they were +children,” said March. + +“No,” his wife returned; “it would have been too much for them. Nobody +but grown people could bear it.” + +The spell which began here was not really broken by anything that +afterwards happened in Nuremberg, though the old toy-capital was +trolley-wired through all its quaintness, and they were lodged in a +hotel lighted by electricity and heated by steam, and equipped with an +elevator which was so modern that it came down with them as well as went +up. All the things that assumed to be of recent structure or invention +were as nothing against the dense past, which overwhelmed them with the +sense of a world elsewhere outlived. In Nuremberg it is not the quaint +or the picturesque that is exceptional; it is the matter-of-fact and +the commonplace. Here, more than anywhere else, you are steeped in the +gothic spirit which expresses itself in a Teutonic dialect of homely +sweetness, of endearing caprice, of rude grotesqueness, but of positive +grace and beauty almost never. It is the architectural speech of a +strenuous, gross, kindly, honest people's fancy; such as it is it was +inexhaustible, and such as it is it was bewitching for the travellers. + +They could hardly wait till they had supper before plunging into the +ancient town, and they took the first tram-car at a venture. It was a +sort of transfer, drawn by horses, which delivered them a little +inside of the city gate to a trolley-car. The conductor with their fare +demanded their destination; March frankly owned that they did not know +where they wanted to go; they wanted to go anywhere the conductor chose; +and the conductor, after reflection, decided to put them down at the +public garden, which, as one of the newest things in the city, would +make the most favorable impression upon strangers. It was in fact so +like all other city gardens, with the foliage of its trimly planted +alleys, that it sheltered them effectually from the picturesqueness of +Nuremberg, and they had a long, peaceful hour on one of its benches, +where they rested from their journey, and repented their hasty attempt +to appropriate the charm of the city. + +The next morning it rained, according to a custom which the elevator-boy +(flown with the insolent recollection of a sunny summer in Milan) said +was invariable in Nuremberg; but after the one-o'clock table d'hote +they took a noble two-spanner carriage, and drove all round the city. +Everywhere the ancient moat, thickly turfed and planted with trees and +shrubs, stretched a girdle of garden between their course and the wall +beautifully old, with knots of dead ivy clinging to its crevices, or +broad meshes of the shining foliage mantling its blackened masonry. A +tile-roofed open gallery ran along the top, where so many centuries of +sentries had paced, and arched the massive gates with heavily moulded +piers, where so countlessly the fierce burgher troops had sallied forth +against their besiegers, and so often the leaguer hosts had dashed +themselves in assault. The blood shed in forgotten battles would have +flooded the moat where now the grass and flowers grew, or here and there +a peaceful stretch of water stagnated. + +The drive ended in a visit to the old Burg, where the Hapsburg Kaisers +dwelt when they visited their faithful imperial city. From its ramparts +the incredible picturesqueness of Nuremberg best shows itself, and if +one has any love for the distinctive quality of Teutonic architecture it +is here that more than anywhere else one may feast it. The prospect of +tower and spire and gable is of such a mediaeval richness, of such an +abounding fulness, that all incidents are lost in it. The multitudinous +roofs of red-brown tiles, blinking browsily from their low dormers, +press upon one another in endless succession; they cluster together on +a rise of ground and sink away where the street falls, but they nowhere +disperse or scatter, and they end abruptly at the other rim of the city, +beyond which looms the green country, merging in the remoter blue of +misty uplands. + +A pretty young girl waited at the door of the tower for the visitors +to gather in sufficient number, and then led them through the terrible +museum, discanting in the same gay voice and with the same smiling air +on all the murderous engines and implements of torture. First in German +and then in English she explained the fearful uses of the Iron Maiden, +she winningly illustrated the action of the racks and wheels on which +men had been stretched and broken, and she sweetly vaunted a sword which +had beheaded eight hundred persons. When she took the established fee +from March she suggested, with a demure glance, “And what more you +please for saying it in English.” + +“Can you say it in Russian?” demanded a young man, whose eyes he +had seen dwelling on her from the beginning. She laughed archly, and +responded with some Slavic words, and then delivered her train of +sight-seers over to the custodian who was to show them through the halls +and chambers of the Burg. These were undergoing the repairs which the +monuments of the past are perpetually suffering in the present, and +there was some special painting and varnishing for the reception of the +Kaiser, who was coming to Nuremberg for the military manoeuvres then +at hand. But if they had been in the unmolested discomfort of their +unlivable magnificence, their splendor was such as might well reconcile +the witness to the superior comfort of a private station in our snugger +day. The Marches came out owning that the youth which might once have +found the romantic glories of the place enough was gone from them. But +so much of it was left to her that she wished to make him stop and look +at the flirtation which had blossomed out between that pretty young girl +and the Russian, whom they had scarcely missed from their party in the +Burg. He had apparently never parted from the girl, and now as they +sat together on the threshold of the gloomy tower, he most have been +teaching her more Slavic words, for they were both laughing as if they +understood each other perfectly. + +In his security from having the affair in any wise on his hands, March +would have willingly lingered, to see how her education got on; but it +began to rain, The rain did not disturb the lovers, but it obliged the +elderly spectators to take refuge in their carriage; and they drove +off to find the famous Little Goose Man. This is what every one does at +Nuremberg; it would be difficult to say why. When they found the Little +Goose Man, he was only a mediaeval fancy in bronze, who stood on his +pedestal in the market-place and contributed from the bill of the goose +under his arm a small stream to the rainfall drenching the wet wares of +the wet market-women round the fountain, and soaking their cauliflowers +and lettuce, their grapes and pears, their carrots and turnips, to the +watery flavor of all fruits and vegetables in Germany. + +The air was very raw and chill; but after supper the clouds cleared +away, and a pleasant evening tempted the travellers out. The portier +dissembled any slight which their eagerness for the only amusement he +could think of inspired, and directed them to a popular theatre which +was giving a summer season at low prices to the lower classes, and which +they surprised, after some search, trying to hide itself in a sort of +back square. They got the best places at a price which ought to have +been mortifyingly cheap, and found themselves, with a thousand other +harmless bourgeois folk, in a sort of spacious, agreeable barn, of a +decoration by no means ugly, and of a certain artless comfort. Each seat +fronted a shelf at the back of the seat before it, where the spectator +could put his hat; there was a smaller shelf for his stein of the beer +passed constantly throughout the evening; and there was a buffet +where he could stay himself with cold ham and other robust German +refreshments. + +It was “The Wedding Journey to Nuremberg” upon which they had oddly +chanced, and they accepted as a national tribute the character of an +American girl in it. She was an American girl of the advanced pattern, +and she came and went at a picnic on the arm of a head waiter. She +seemed to have no office in the drama except to illustrate a German +conception of American girlhood, but even in this simple function she +seemed rather to puzzle the German audience; perhaps because of the +occasional English words which she used. + +To the astonishment of her compatriots, when they came out of the +theatre it was not raining; the night was as brilliantly starlit as +a night could be in Germany, and they sauntered home richly content +through the narrow streets and through the beautiful old Damenthor, +beyond which their hotel lay. How pretty, they said, to call that +charming port the Ladies' Gate! They promised each other to find out +why, and they never did so, but satisfied themselves by assigning it +to the exclusive use of the slim maidens and massive matrons of the old +Nuremberg patriciate, whom they imagined trailing their silken splendors +under its arch in perpetual procession. + + + + +XLV. + +The life of the Nuremberg patriciate, now extinct in the control of the +city which it builded so strenuously and maintained so heroically, is +still insistent in all its art. This expresses their pride at once and +their simplicity with a childish literality. At its best it is never so +good as the good Italian art, whose influence is always present in its +best. The coloring of the great canvases is Venetian, but there is no +such democracy of greatness as in the painting at Venice; in decoration +the art of Nuremberg is at best quaint, and at the worst puerile. +Wherever it had obeyed an academic intention it seemed to March poor and +coarse, as in the bronze fountain beside the Church of St. Lawrence. The +water spins from the pouted breasts of the beautiful figures in streams +that cross and interlace after a fancy trivial and gross; but in +the base of the church there is a time-worn Gethsemane, exquisitely +affecting in its simple-hearted truth. The long ages have made it even +more affecting than the sculptor imagined it; they have blurred +the faces and figures in passing till their features are scarcely +distinguishable; and the sleeping apostles seem to have dreamed +themselves back into the mother-marble. It is of the same tradition and +impulse with that supreme glory of the native sculpture, the ineffable +tabernacle of Adam Krafft, which climbs a column of the church within, +a miracle of richly carven story; and no doubt if there were a Nuremberg +sculptor doing great things today, his work would be of kindred +inspiration. + +The descendants of the old patrician who ordered the tabernacle at +rather a hard bargain from the artist still worship on the floor below, +and the descendants of his neighbor patricians have their seats in +the pews about, and their names cut in the proprietary plates on the +pew-tops. The vergeress who showed the Marches through the church was +devout in the praise of these aristocratic fellow-citizens of hers. “So +simple, and yet so noble!” she said. She was a very romantic vergeress, +and she told them at unsparing length the legend of the tabernacle, how +the artist fell asleep in despair of winning his patron's daughter, and +saw in a vision the master-work with the lily-like droop at top, which +gained him her hand. They did not realize till too late that it was all +out of a novel of Georg Ebers's, but added to the regular fee for the +church a gift worthy of an inedited legend. + +Even then they had a pleasure in her enthusiasm rarely imparted by the +Nuremberg manner. They missed there the constant, sweet civility of +Carlsbad, and found themselves falling flat in their endeavors for a +little cordiality. They indeed inspired with some kindness the old woman +who showed them through that cemetery where Albert Durer and Hans Sachs +and many other illustrious citizens lie buried under monumental brasses +of such beauty: + + “That kings to have the like, might wish to die.” + +But this must have been because they abandoned themselves so +willingly to the fascination of the bronze skull on the tomb of a +fourteenth-century patrician, which had the uncommon advantage of a +lower jaw hinged to the upper. She proudly clapped it up and down for +their astonishment, and waited, with a toothless smile, to let them +discover the bead of a nail artfully figured in the skull; then she gave +a shrill cackle of joy, and gleefully explained that the wife of this +patrician had killed him by driving a nail into his temple, and had been +fitly beheaded for the murder. + +She cared so much for nothing else in the cemetery, but she consented +to let them wonder at the richness of the sculpture in the level tombs, +with their escutcheons and memorial tablets, overrun by the long grass +and the matted ivy; she even consented to share their indignation at the +destruction of some of the brasses and the theft of others. She suffered +more reluctantly their tenderness for the old, old crucifixion figured +in sculpture at one corner of the cemetery, where the anguish of the +Christ had long since faded into the stone from which it had been +evoked, and the thieves were no longer distinguishable in their +penitence or impenitence; but she parted friends with them when she saw +how much they seemed taken with the votive chapel of the noble Holzschuh +family, where a line of wooden shoes puns upon the name in the frieze, +like the line of dogs which chase one another, with bones in their +mouths, around the Canossa palace at Verona. A sense of the beautiful +house by the Adige was part of the pleasing confusion which possessed +them in Nuremberg whenever they came upon the expression of the gothic +spirit common both to the German and northern Italian art. They knew +that it was an effect which had passed from Germany into Italy, but in +the liberal air of the older land it had come to so much more beauty +that now, when they found it in its home, it seemed something fetched +from over the Alps and coarsened in the attempt to naturalize it to an +alien air. + +In the Germanic Museum they fled to the Italian painters from the German +pictures they had inspired; in the great hall of the Rathhaus the noble +Processional of Durer was the more precious, because his Triumph of +Maximilian somehow suggested Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar. There was to +be a banquet in the hall, under the mighty fresco, to welcome the German +Emperor, coming the next week, and the Rathhaus was full of work-people +furbishing it up against his arrival, and making it difficult for the +custodian who had it in charge to show it properly to strangers. She was +of the same enthusiastic sisterhood as the vergeress of St. Lawrence and +the guardian of the old cemetery, and by a mighty effort she prevailed +over the workmen so far as to lead her charges out through the corridor +where the literal conscience of the brothers Kuhn has wrought in the +roof to an exact image of a tournament as it was in Nuremberg four +hundred years ago. In this relief, thronged with men and horses, the +gala-life of the past survives in unexampled fulness; and March blamed +himself after enjoying it for having felt in it that toy-figure quality +which seems the final effect of the German gothicism in sculpture. + + + + +XLVI. + +On Sunday Mrs. March partially conformed to an earlier New England ideal +of the day by ceasing from sight-seeing. She could not have understood +the sermon if she had gone to church, but she appeased the lingering +conscience she had on this point by not going out till afternoon. Then +she found nothing of the gayety which Sunday afternoon wears in Catholic +lands. The people were resting from their week-day labors, but they +were not playing; and the old churches, long since converted to Lutheran +uses, were locked against tourist curiosity. + +It was as it should be; it was as it would be at home; and yet in +this ancient city, where the past was so much alive in the perpetual +picturesqueness, the Marches felt an incongruity in it; and they were +fain to escape from the Protestant silence and seriousness of the +streets to the shade of the public garden they had involuntarily visited +the evening of their arrival. + +On a bench sat a quiet, rather dejected man, whom March asked some +question of their way. He answered in English, and in the parley that +followed they discovered that they were all Americans. The stranger +proved to be an American of the sort commonest in Germany, and he said +he had returned to his native country to get rid of the ague which he +had taken on Staten Island. He had been seventeen years in New York, and +now a talk of Tammany and its chances in the next election, of pulls and +deals, of bosses and heelers, grew up between the civic step-brothers, +and joined them is a common interest. The German-American said he was +bookkeeper in some glass-works which had been closed by our tariff, and +he confessed that he did not mean to return to us, though he spoke of +German affairs with the impartiality of an outsider. He said that the +Socialist party was increasing faster than any other, and that this +tacitly meant the suppression of rank and the abolition of monarchy. He +warned March against the appearance of industrial prosperity in Germany; +beggary was severely repressed, and if poverty was better clad than with +us, it was as hungry and as hopeless in Nuremberg as in New York. The +working classes were kindly and peaceable; they only knifed each other +quietly on Sunday evenings after having too much beer. + +Presently the stranger rose and bowed to the Marches for good-by; and +as he walked down the aisle of trees in which they had been fitting +together, he seemed to be retreating farther and farther from such +Americanism as they had in common. He had reverted to an entirely German +effect of dress and figure; his walk was slow and Teutonic; he must be a +type of thousands who have returned to the fatherland without wishing +to own themselves its children again, and yet out of heart with the only +country left them. + +“He was rather pathetic, my dear,” said March, in the discomfort he knew +his wife must be feeling as well as himself. “How odd to have the lid +lifted here, and see the same old problems seething and bubbling in the +witch's caldron we call civilization as we left simmering away at home! +And how hard to have our tariff reach out and snatch the bread from the +mouths of those poor glass-workers!” + +“I thought that was hard,” she sighed. “It must have been his bread, +too.” + +“Let's hope it was not his cake, anyway. I suppose,” he added, dreamily, +“that what we used to like in Italy was the absence of all the modern +activities. The Italians didn't repel us by assuming to be of our epoch +in the presence of their monuments; they knew how to behave as pensive +memories. I wonder if they're still as charming.” + +“Oh, no,” she returned, “nothing is as charming as it used to be. And +now we need the charm more than ever.” + +He laughed at her despair, in the tacit understanding they had lived +into that only one of them was to be desperate at a time, and that they +were to take turns in cheering each other up. “Well, perhaps we don't +deserve it. And I'm not sure that we need it so much as we did when we +were young. We've got tougher; we can stand the cold facts better now. +They made me shiver once, but now they give me a sort of agreeable +thrill. Besides, if, life kept up its pretty illusions, if it insisted +upon being as charming as it used to be, how could we ever bear to +die? We've got that to consider.” He yielded to the temptation of his +paradox, but he did not fail altogether of the purpose with which he +began, and they took the trolley back to their hotel cheerful in the +intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate when they had only had the +hardihood to face a phrase. + +They agreed that now he ought really to find out something about the +contemporary life of Nuremberg, and the next morning he went out before +breakfast, and strolled through some of the simpler streets, in the hope +of intimate impressions. The peasant women, serving portions of milk +from house to house out of the cans in the little wagons which they drew +themselves, were a touch of pleasing domestic comedy; a certain effect +of tragedy imparted itself from the lamentations of the sucking-pigs +jolted over the pavements in handcarts; a certain majesty from the long +procession of yellow mail-wagons, with drivers in the royal Bavarian +blue, trooping by in the cold small rain, impassibly dripping from their +glazed hat-brims upon their uniforms. But he could not feel that these +things were any of them very poignantly significant; and he covered +his retreat from the actualities of Nuremberg by visiting the chief +book-store and buying more photographs of the architecture than he +wanted, and more local histories than he should ever read. He made a +last effort for the contemporaneous life by asking the English-speaking +clerk if there were any literary men of distinction living in Nuremberg, +and the clerk said there was not one. + +He went home to breakfast wondering if he should be able to make his +meagre facts serve with his wife; but he found her far from any wish to +listen to them. She was intent upon a pair of young lovers, at a table +near her own, who were so absorbed in each other that they were proof +against an interest that must otherwise have pierced them through. +The bridegroom, as he would have called himself, was a pretty little +Bavarian lieutenant, very dark and regular, and the bride was as pretty +and as little, but delicately blond. Nature had admirably mated them, +and if art had helped to bring them together through the genius of the +bride's mother, who was breakfasting with them, it had wrought almost as +fitly. Mrs. March queried impartially who they were, where they met, and +how, and just when they were going to be married; and March consented, +in his personal immunity from their romance, to let it go on under his +eyes without protest. But later, when they met the lovers in the street, +walking arm in arm, with the bride's mother behind them gloating upon +their bliss, he said the woman ought, at her time of life, to be ashamed +of such folly. She must know that this affair, by nine chances out of +ten, could not fail to eventuate at the best in a marriage as tiresome +as most other marriages, and yet she was abandoning herself with +those ignorant young people to the illusion that it was the finest and +sweetest thing in life. + +“Well, isn't it?” his wife asked. + +“Yes, that's the worst of it. It shows how poverty-stricken life really +is. We want somehow to believe that each pair of lovers will find the +good we have missed, and be as happy as we expected to be.” + +“I think we have been happy enough, and that we've had as much good as +was wholesome for us,” she returned, hurt. + +“You're always so concrete! I meant us in the abstract. But if you will +be personal, I'll say that you've been as happy as you deserve, and got +more good than you had any right to.” + +She laughed with him, and then they laughed again to perceive that they +were walking arm in arm too, like the lovers, whom they were insensibly +following. + +He proposed that while they were in the mood they should go again to +the old cemetery, and see the hinged jaw of the murdered Paumgartner, +wagging in eternal accusation of his murderess. “It's rather hard on +her, that he should be having the last word, that way,” he said. “She +was a woman, no matter what mistakes she had committed.” + +“That's what I call 'banale',” said Mrs. March. + +“It is, rather,” he confessed. “It makes me feel as if I must go to see +the house of Durer, after all.” + +“Well, I knew we should have to, sooner or later.” + +It was the thing that they had said would not do, in Nuremberg, because +everybody did it; but now they hailed a fiacre, and ordered it driven +to Durer's house, which they found in a remote part of the town near +a stretch of the city wall, varied in its picturesqueness by the +interposition of a dripping grove; it was raining again by the time they +reached it. The quarter had lapsed from earlier dignity, and without +being squalid, it looked worn and hard worked; otherwise it could hardly +have been different in Durer's time. His dwelling, in no way impressive +outside, amidst the environing quaintness, stood at the corner of a +narrow side-hill street that sloped cityward; and within it was stripped +bare of all the furniture of life below-stairs, and above was none the +cozier for the stiff appointment of a show-house. It was cavernous and +cold; but if there had been a fire in the kitchen, and a table laid +in the dining-room, and beds equipped for nightmare, after the German +fashion, in the empty chambers, one could have imagined a kindly, +simple, neighborly existence there. It in no wise suggested the calling +of an artist, perhaps because artists had not begun in Durer's time to +take themselves so objectively as they do now, but it implied the life +of a prosperous citizen, and it expressed the period. + +The Marches wrote their names in the visitors' book, and paid the +visitor's fee, which also bought them tickets in an annual lottery for a +reproduction of one of Durer's pictures; and then they came away, by no +means dissatisfied with his house. By its association with his sojourns +in Italy it recalled visits to other shrines, and they had to own that +it was really no worse than Ariosto's house at Ferrara, or Petrarch's at +Arqua, or Michelangelo's at Florence. “But what I admire,” he said, “is +our futility in going to see it. We expected to surprise some quality of +the man left lying about in the house because he lived and died in it; +and because his wife kept him up so close there, and worked him so hard +to save his widow from coming to want.” + +“Who said she did that?” + +“A friend of his who hated her. But he had to allow that she was a +God-fearing woman, and had a New England conscience.” + +“Well, I dare say Durer was easy-going.” + +“Yes; but I don't like her laying her plans to survive him; though women +always do that.” + +They were going away the next day, and they sat down that evening to a +final supper in such good-humor with themselves that they were willing +to include a young couple who came to take places at their table, though +they would rather have been alone. They lifted their eyes for their +expected salutation, and recognized Mr. and Mrs. Leffers, of the +Norumbia. + +The ladies fell upon each other as if they had been mother and daughter; +March and the young man shook hands, in the feeling of passengers +mutually endeared by the memories of a pleasant voyage. They arrived +at the fact that Mr. Leffers had received letters in England from his +partners which allowed him to prolong his wedding journey in a tour +of the continent, while their wives were still exclaiming at their +encounter in the same hotel at Nuremberg; and then they all sat down to +have, as the bride said, a real Norumbia time. + +She was one of those young wives who talk always with their eyes +submissively on their husbands, no matter whom they are speaking to; but +she was already unconsciously ruling him in her abeyance. No doubt she +was ruling him for his good; she had a livelier, mind than he, and she +knew more, as the American wives of young American business men always +do, and she was planning wisely for their travels. She recognized her +merit in this devotion with an artless candor, which was typical rather +than personal. March was glad to go out with Leffers for a little +stroll, and to leave Mrs. March to listen to Mrs. Leffers, who did not +let them go without making her husband promise to wrap up well, and not +get his feet wet. She made March promise not to take him far, and to +bring him back early, which he found himself very willing to do, after +an exchange of ideas with Mr. Leffers. The young man began to talk about +his wife, in her providential, her almost miraculous adaptation to the +sort of man he was, and when he had once begun to explain what sort of +man he was, there was no end to it, till they rejoined the ladies in the +reading-room. + + + + +XLVII. + +The young couple came to the station to see the Marches off after dinner +the next day; and the wife left a bank of flowers on the seat beside +Mrs. March, who said, as soon as they were gone, “I believe I would +rather meet people of our own age after this. I used to think that you +could keep young by being with young people; but I don't, now. There +world is very different from ours. Our world doesn't really exist any +more, but as long as we keep away from theirs we needn't realize it. +Young people,” she went on, “are more practical-minded than we used to +be; they're quite as sentimental; but I don't think they care so much +for the higher things. They're not so much brought up on poetry as we +were,” she pursued. “That little Mrs. Leffers would have read Longfellow +in our time; but now she didn't know of his poem on Nuremberg; she +was intelligent enough about the place, but you could see that its +quaintness was not so precious as it was to us; not so sacred.” Her tone +entreated him to find more meaning in her words than she had put into +them. “They couldn't have felt as we did about that old ivied wall and +that grassy, flowery moat under it; and the beautiful Damenthor and that +pile-up of the roofs from the Burg; and those winding streets with +their Gothic facades all, cobwebbed with trolley wires; and that yellow, +aguish-looking river drowsing through the town under the windows of +those overhanging houses; and the market-place, and the squares before +the churches, with their queer shops in the nooks and corners round +them!” + +“I see what you mean. But do you think it's as sacred to us as it would +have been twenty-five years ago? I had an irreverent feeling now and +then that Nuremberg was overdoing Nuremberg.” + +“Oh, yes; so had I. We're that modern, if we're not so young as we +were.” + +“We were very simple, in those days.” + +“Well, if we were simple, we knew it!” + +“Yes; we used to like taking our unconsciousness to pieces and looking +at it.” + +“We had a good time.” + +“Too good. Sometimes it seems as if it would have lasted longer if it +had not been so good. We might have our cake now if we hadn't eaten it.” + +“It would be mouldy, though.” + +“I wonder,” he said, recurring to the Lefferses; “how we really struck +them.” + +“Well, I don't believe they thought we ought to be travelling about +alone, quite, at our age.” + +“Oh, not so bad as that!” After a moment he said, “I dare say they don't +go round quarrelling on their wedding journey, as we did.” + +“Indeed they do! They had an awful quarrel just before they got to +Nuremberg: about his wanting to send some of the baggage to Liverpool +by express that she wanted to keep with them. But she said it had been +a lesson, and they were never going to quarrel again.” The elders looked +at each other in the light of experience, and laughed. “Well,” she +ended, “that's one thing we're through with. I suppose we've come to +feel more alike than we used to.” + +“Or not to feel at all. How did they settle it about the baggage?” + +“Oh! He insisted on her keeping it with her.” March laughed again, but +this time he laughed alone, and after a while she said: “Well, they +gave just the right relief to Nuremberg, with their good, clean American +philistinism. I don't mind their thinking us queer; they must have +thought Nuremberg was queer.” + +“Yes. We oldsters are always queer to the young. We're either +ridiculously lively and chirpy, or we're ridiculously stiff and grim; +they never expect to be like us, and wouldn't, for the world. The worst +of it is, we elderly people are absurd to one another; we don't, at the +bottom of our hearts, believe we're like that, when we meet. I suppose +that arrogant old ass of a Triscoe looks upon me as a grinning dotard.” + +“I wonder,” said Mrs. March, “if she's told him yet,” and March +perceived that she was now suddenly far from the mood of philosophic +introspection; but he had no difficulty in following her. + +“She's had time enough. But it was an awkward task Burnamy left to her.” + +“Yes, when I think of that, I can hardly forgive him for coming back in +that way. I know she is dead in love with him; but she could only have +accepted him conditionally.” + +“Conditionally to his making it all right with Stoller?” + +“Stoller? No! To her father's liking it.” + +“Ah, that's quite as hard. What makes you think she accepted him at +all?” + +“What do you think she was crying about?” + +“Well, I have supposed that ladies occasionally shed tears of pity. If +she accepted him conditionally she would have to tell her father about +it.” Mrs. March gave him a glance of silent contempt, and he hastened to +atone for his stupidity. “Perhaps she's told him on the instalment plan. +She may have begun by confessing that Burnamy had been in Carlsbad. Poor +old fellow, I wish we were going to find him in Ansbach! He could make +things very smooth for us.” + +“Well, you needn't flatter yourself that you'll find him in Ansbach. I'm +sure I don't know where he is.” + +“You might write to Miss Triscoe and ask.” + +“I think I shall wait for Miss Triscoe to write to me,” she said, with +dignity. + +“Yes, she certainly owes you that much, after all your suffering for +her. I've asked the banker in Nuremberg to forward our letters to the +poste restante in Ansbach. Isn't it good to see the crows again, after +those ravens around Carlsbad?” + +She joined him in looking at the mild autumnal landscape through the +open window. The afternoon was fair and warm, and in the level fields +bodies of soldiers were at work with picks and spades, getting the +ground ready for the military manoeuvres; they disturbed among the +stubble foraging parties of crows, which rose from time to time with +cries of indignant protest. She said, with a smile for the crows, +“Yes. And I'm thankful that I've got nothing on my conscience, whatever +happens,” she added in dismissal of the subject of Burnamy. + +“I'm thankful too, my dear. I'd much rather have things on my own. I'm +more used to that, and I believe I feel less remorse than when you're to +blame.” + +They might have been carried near this point by those telepathic +influences which have as yet been so imperfectly studied. It was +only that morning, after the lapse of a week since Burnamy's furtive +reappearance in Carlsbad, that Miss Triscoe spoke to her father about +it, and she had at that moment a longing for support and counsel that +might well have made its mystical appeal to Mrs. March. + +She spoke at last because she could put it off no longer, rather than +because the right time had come. She began as they sat at breakfast. +“Papa, there is something that I have got to tell you. It is something +that you ought to know; but I have put off telling you because--” + +She hesitated for the reason, and “Well!” said her father, looking up at +her from his second cup of coffee. “What is it?” + +Then she answered, “Mr. Burnamy has been here.” + +“In Carlsbad? When was he here?” + +“The night of the Emperor's birthday. He came into the box when you were +behind the scenes with Mr. March; afterwards I met him in the crowd.” + +“Well?” + +“I thought you ought to know. Mrs. March said I ought to tell you.” + +“Did she say you ought to wait a week?” He gave way to an irascibility +which he tried to check, and to ask with indifference, “Why did he come +back?” + +“He was going to write about it for that paper in Paris.” The girl had +the effect of gathering her courage up for a bold plunge. She looked +steadily at her father, and added: “He said he came back because he +couldn't help it. He--wished to speak with me, He said he knew he had no +right to suppose I cared anything about what had happened with him and +Mr. Stoller. He wanted to come back and tell me--that.” + +Her father waited for her to go on, but apparently she was going to +leave the word to him, now. He hesitated to take it, but he asked +at last with a mildness that seemed to surprise her, “Have you heard +anything from him since?” + +“No.” + +“Where is he?” + +“I don't know. I told him I could not say what he wished; that I must +tell you about it.” + +The case was less simple than it would once have been for General +Triscoe. There was still his affection for his daughter, his wish for +her happiness, but this had always been subordinate to his sense of his +own interest and comfort, and a question had recently arisen which put +his paternal love and duty in a new light. He was no more explicit with +himself than other men are, and the most which could ever be said of him +without injustice was that in his dependence upon her he would rather +have kept his daughter to himself if she could not have been very +prosperously married. On the other hand, if he disliked the man for +whom she now hardly hid her liking, he was not just then ready to go to +extremes concerning him. + +“He was very anxious,” she went on, “that you should know just how +it was. He thinks everything of your judgment and--and--opinion.” The +general made a consenting noise in his throat. “He said that he did not +wish me to 'whitewash' him to you. He didn't think he had done right; +he didn't excuse himself, or ask you to excuse him unless you could from +the stand-point of a gentleman.” + +The general made a less consenting noise in his throat, and asked, “How +do you look at it, yourself, Agatha?” + +“I don't believe I quite understand it; but Mrs. March--” + +“Oh, Mrs. March!” the general snorted. + +“--says that Mr. March does not think so badly of it as Mr. Burnamy +does.” + +“I doubt it. At any rate, I understood March quite differently.” + +“She says that he thinks he behaved very nobly afterwards when Mr. +Stoller wanted him to help him put a false complexion on it; that it was +all the more difficult for him to do right then, because of his remorse +for what he had done before.” As she spoke on she had become more eager. + +“There's something in that,” the general admitted, with a candor that he +made the most of both to himself and to her. “But I should like to know +what Stoller had to say of it all. Is there anything,” he inquired, “any +reason why I need be more explicit about it, just now?” + +“N--no. Only, I thought--He thinks so much of your opinion that--if--” + +“Oh, he can very well afford to wait. If he values my opinion so highly +he can give me time to make up my mind.” + +“Of course--” + +“And I'm not responsible,” the general continued, significantly, “for +the delay altogether. If you had told me this before--Now, I don't know +whether Stoller is still in town.” + +He was not behaving openly with her; but she had not behaved openly with +him. She owned that to herself, and she got what comfort she could from +his making the affair a question of what Burnamy had done to Stoller +rather than of what Burnamy had said to her, and what she had answered +him. If she was not perfectly clear as to what she wanted to do, or +wished to have happen, there was now time and place in which she could +delay and make sure. The accepted theory of such matters is that people +know their minds from the beginning, and that they do not change them. +But experience seems to contradict this theory, or else people often +act contrary to their convictions and impulses. If the statistics were +accessible, it might be found that many potential engagements hovered in +a doubtful air, and before they touched the earth in actual promise were +dissipated by the play of meteorological chances. + +When General Triscoe put down his napkin in rising he said that he would +step round to Pupp's and see if Stoller were still there. But on the +way he stepped up to Mrs. Adding's hotel on the hill, and he came back, +after an interval which he seemed not to have found long, to report +rather casually that Stoller had left Carlsbad the day before. By this +time the fact seemed not to concern Agatha herself very vitally. + +He asked if the Marches had left any address with her, and she answered +that they had not. They were going to spend a few days in Nuremberg, +and then push on to Holland for Mr. March's after-cure. There was no +relevance in his question unless it intimated his belief that she was in +confidential correspondence with Mrs. March, and she met this by saying +that she was going to write her in care of their bankers; she asked +whether he wished to send any word. + +“No. I understand,” he intimated, “that there is nothing at all in the +nature of a--a--an understanding, then, with--” + +“No, nothing.” + +“Hm!” The general waited a moment. Then he ventured, “Do you care to +say--do you wish me to know--how he took it?” + +The tears came into the girl's eyes, but she governed herself to say, +“He--he was disappointed.” + +“He had no right to be disappointed.” + +It was a question, and she answered: “He thought he had. He said--that +he wouldn't--trouble me any more.” + +The general did not ask at once, “And you don't know where he is +now--you haven't heard anything from him since?” + +Agatha flashed through her tears, “Papa!” + +“Oh! I beg your pardon. I think you told me.” + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Americans are hungrier for royalty than anybody else + Effort to get on common ground with an inferior + He buys my poverty and not my will + Honest selfishness + Intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate + Less intrusive than if he had not been there + Monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men resign + Only one of them was to be desperate at a time + Reconciliation with death which nature brings to life at last + Voting-cattle whom they bought and sold + We don't seem so much our own property + We get too much into the hands of other people + + + + +PART III. + + + +XLVIII. + +At the first station where the train stopped, a young German bowed +himself into the compartment with the Marches, and so visibly resisted +an impulse to smoke that March begged him to light his cigarette. In the +talk which this friendly overture led to between them he explained that +he was a railway architect, employed by the government on that line of +road, and was travelling officially. March spoke of Nuremberg; he owned +the sort of surfeit he had suffered from its excessive mediaevalism, and +the young man said it was part of the new imperial patriotism to +cherish the Gothic throughout Germany; no other sort of architecture +was permitted in Nuremberg. But they would find enough classicism at +Ansbach, he promised them, and he entered with sympathetic intelligence +into their wish to see this former capital when March told him they were +going to stop there, in hopes of something typical of the old disjointed +Germany of the petty principalities, the little paternal despotisms now +extinct. + +As they talked on, partly in German and partly in English, their purpose +in visiting Ansbach appeared to the Marches more meditated than it was. +In fact it was somewhat accidental; Ansbach was near Nuremberg; it was +not much out of the way to Holland. They took more and more credit to +themselves for a reasoned and definite motive, in the light of their +companion's enthusiasm for the place, and its charm began for them with +the drive from the station through streets whose sentiment was both +Italian and French, and where there was a yellowish cast in the gray +of the architecture which was almost Mantuan. They rested their +sensibilities, so bruised and fretted by Gothic angles and points, +against the smooth surfaces of the prevailing classicistic facades of +the houses as they passed, and when they arrived at their hotel, an old +mansion of Versailles type, fronting on a long irregular square planted +with pollard sycamores, they said that it might as well have been Lucca. + +The archway and stairway of the hotel were draped with the Bavarian +colors, and they were obscurely flattered to learn that Prince Leopold, +the brother of the Prince-Regent of the kingdom, had taken rooms there, +on his way to the manoeuvres at Nuremberg, and was momently expected +with his suite. They realized that they were not of the princely +party, however, when they were told that he had sole possession of the +dining-room, and they went out to another hotel, and had their supper in +keeping delightfully native. People seemed to come there to write their +letters and make up their accounts, as well as to eat their suppers; +they called for stationery like characters in old comedy, and the +clatter of crockery and the scratching of pens went on together; and +fortune offered the Marches a delicate reparation for their exclusion +from their own hotel in the cold popular reception of the prince which +they got back just in time to witness. A very small group of people, +mostly women and boys, had gathered to see him arrive, but there was no +cheering or any sign of public interest. Perhaps he personally merited +none; he looked a dull, sad man, with his plain, stubbed features; and +after he had mounted to his apartment, the officers of his staff stood +quite across the landing, and barred the passage of the Americans, +ignoring even Mrs. March's presence, as they talked together. + +“Well, my dear,” said her husband, “here you have it at last. This is +what you've been living for, ever since we came to Germany. It's a great +moment.” + +“Yes. What are you going to do?” + +“Who? I? Oh, nothing! This is your affair; it's for you to act.” + +If she had been young, she might have withered them with a glance; she +doubted now if her dim eyes would have any such power; but she advanced +steadily upon them, and then the officers seemed aware of her, and stood +aside. + +March always insisted that they stood aside apologetically, but she +held as firmly that they stood aside impertinently, or at least +indifferently, and that the insult to her American womanhood was +perfectly ideal. It is true that nothing of the kind happened again +during their stay at the hotel; the prince's officers were afterwards +about in the corridors and on the stairs, but they offered no shadow of +obstruction to her going and coming, and the landlord himself was not so +preoccupied with his highhotes but he had time to express his grief that +she had been obliged to go out for supper. + +They satisfied the passion for the little obsolete capital which had +been growing upon them by strolling past the old Resident at an hour so +favorable for a first impression. It loomed in the gathering dusk even +vaster than it was, and it was really vast enough for the pride of a +King of France, much more a Margrave of Ansbach. Time had blackened and +blotched its coarse limestone walls to one complexion with the statues +swelling and strutting in the figure of Roman legionaries before it, and +standing out against the evening sky along its balustraded roof, and +had softened to the right tint the stretch of half a dozen houses with +mansard roofs and renaissance facades obsequiously in keeping with +the Versailles ideal of a Resident. In the rear, and elsewhere at fit +distance from its courts, a native architecture prevailed; and at no +great remove the Marches found themselves in a simple German town again. +There they stumbled upon a little bookseller's shop blinking in a quiet +corner, and bought three or four guides and small histories of Ansbach, +which they carried home, and studied between drowsing and waking. The +wonderful German syntax seems at its most enigmatical in this sort +of literature, and sometimes they lost themselves in its labyrinths +completely, and only made their way perilously out with the help of +cumulative declensions, past articles and adjectives blindly seeking +their nouns, to long-procrastinated verbs dancing like swamp-fires in +the distance. They emerged a little less ignorant than they went in, and +better qualified than they would otherwise have been for their second +visit to the Schloss, which they paid early the next morning. + +They were so early, indeed, that when they mounted from the great inner +court, much too big for Ansbach, if not for the building, and rung the +custodian's bell, a smiling maid who let them into an ante-room, where +she kept on picking over vegetables for her dinner, said the custodian +was busy, and could not be seen till ten o'clock. She seemed, in her +nook of the pretentious pile, as innocently unconscious of its +history as any hen-sparrow who had built her nest in some coign of +its architecture; and her friendly, peaceful domesticity remained a +wholesome human background to the tragedies and comedies of the past, +and held them in a picturesque relief in which they were alike tolerable +and even charming. + +The history of Ansbach strikes its roots in the soil of fable, and above +ground is a gnarled and twisted growth of good and bad from the time +of the Great Charles to the time of the Great Frederick. Between these +times she had her various rulers, ecclesiastical and secular, in various +forms of vassalage to the empire; but for nearly four centuries +her sovereignty was in the hands of the margraves, who reigned in a +constantly increasing splendor till the last sold her outright to the +King of Prussia in 1791, and went to live in England on the proceeds. +She had taken her part in the miseries and glories of the wars that +desolated Germany, but after the Reformation, when she turned from +the ancient faith to which she owed her cloistered origin under St. +Gumpertus, her people had peace except when their last prince sold them +to fight the battles of others. It is in this last transaction that her +history, almost in the moment when she ceased to have a history of her +own, links to that of the modern world, and that it came home to the +Marches in their national character; for two thousand of those poor +Ansbach mercenaries were bought up by England and sent to put down a +rebellion in her American colonies. + +Humanly, they were more concerned for the Last Margrave, because of +certain qualities which made him the Best Margrave, in spite of the +defects of his qualities. He was the son of the Wild Margrave, equally +known in the Ansbach annals, who may not have been the Worst Margrave, +but who had certainly a bad trick of putting his subjects to death +without trial, and in cases where there was special haste, with his own +hand. He sent his son to the university at Utrecht because he believed +that the republican influences in Holland would be wholesome for him, +and then he sent him to travel in Italy; but when the boy came +home looking frail and sick, the Wild Margrave charged his official +travelling companion with neglect, and had the unhappy Hofrath Meyer +hanged without process for this crime. One of the gentlemen of his +realm, for a pasquinade on the Margrave, was brought to the scaffold; he +had, at various times, twenty-two of his soldiers shot with arrows +and bullets or hanged for desertion, besides many whose penalties his +clemency commuted to the loss of an ear or a nose; a Hungarian who +killed his hunting-dog, he had broken alive on the wheel. A soldier's +wife was hanged for complicity in a case of desertion; a young soldier +who eloped with the girl he loved was brought to Ansbach from a +neighboring town, and hanged with her on the same gallows. A sentry +at the door of one of the Margrave's castles amiably complied with the +Margrave's request to let him take his gun for a moment, on the pretence +of wishing to look at it. For this breach of discipline the prince +covered him with abuse and gave him over to his hussars, who bound him +to a horse's tail and dragged him through the streets; he died of his +injuries. The kennel-master who had charge of the Margrave's dogs was +accused of neglecting them: without further inquiry the Margrave rode to +the man's house and shot him down on his own threshold. A shepherd who +met the Margrave on a shying horse did not get his flock out of the way +quickly enough; the Margrave demanded the pistols of a gentleman in his +company, but he answered that they were not loaded, and the shepherd's +life was saved. As they returned home the gentleman fired them off. +“What does that mean?” cried the Margrave, furiously. “It means, +gracious lord, that you will sleep sweeter tonight, for not having heard +my pistols an hour sooner.” + +From this it appears that the gracious lord had his moments of regret; +but perhaps it is not altogether strange that when he died, the whole +population “stormed through the streets to meet his funeral train, not +in awe-stricken silence to meditate on the fall of human grandeur, but +to unite in an eager tumult of rejoicing, as if some cruel brigand who +had long held the city in terror were delivered over to them bound and +in chains.” For nearly thirty years this blood-stained miscreant had +reigned over his hapless people in a sovereign plenitude of power, which +by the theory of German imperialism in our day is still a divine right. + +They called him the Wild Margrave, in their instinctive revolt from +the belief that any man not untamably savage could be guilty of his +atrocities; and they called his son the Last Margrave, with a touch +of the poetry which perhaps records a regret for their extinction as a +state. He did not harry them as his father had done; his mild rule was +the effect partly of the indifference and distaste for his country bred, +by his long sojourns abroad; but doubtless also it was the effect of a +kindly nature. Even in the matter of selling a few thousands of them to +fight the battles of a bad cause on the other side of the world, he had +the best of motives, and faithfully applied the proceeds to the payment +of the state debt and the embellishment of the capital. + +His mother was a younger sister of Frederick the Great, and was so +constantly at war with her husband that probably she had nothing to do +with the marriage which the Wild Margrave forced upon their son. Love +certainly had nothing to do with it, and the Last Margrave early escaped +from it to the society of Mlle. Clairon, the great French tragedienne, +whom he met in Paris, and whom he persuaded to come and make her home +with him in Ansbach. She lived there seventeen years, and though always +an alien, she bore herself with kindness to all classes, and is +still remembered there by the roll of butter which calls itself a +Klarungswecke in its imperfect French. + +No roll of butter records in faltering accents the name of the brilliant +and disdainful English lady who replaced this poor tragic muse in +the Margrave's heart, though the lady herself lived to be the last +Margravine of Ansbach, where everybody seems to have hated her with a +passion which she doubtless knew how to return. She was the daughter +of the Earl of Berkeley, and the wife of Lord Craven, a sufficiently +unfaithful and unworthy nobleman by her account, from whom she was +living apart when the Margrave asked her to his capital. There she set +herself to oust Mlle. Clairon with sneers and jests for the theatrical +style which the actress could not outlive. Lady Craven said she was +sure Clairon's nightcap must be a crown of gilt paper; and when Clairon +threatened to kill herself, and the Margrave was alarmed, “You forget,” + said Lady Craven, “that actresses only stab themselves under their +sleeves.” + +She drove Clairon from Ansbach, and the great tragedienne returned to +Paris, where she remained true to her false friend, and from time +to time wrote him letters full of magnanimous counsel and generous +tenderness. But she could not have been so good company as Lady Craven, +who was a very gifted person, and knew how to compose songs and sing +them, and write comedies and play them, and who could keep the Margrave +amused in many ways. When his loveless and childless wife died he +married the English woman, but he grew more and more weary of his dull +little court and his dull little country, and after a while, considering +the uncertain tenure sovereigns had of their heads since the French King +had lost his, and the fact that he had no heirs to follow him in his +principality, he resolved to cede it for a certain sum to Prussia. To +this end his new wife's urgence was perhaps not wanting. They went to +England, where she outlived him ten years, and wrote her memoirs. + +The custodian of the Schloss came at last, and the Marches saw instantly +that he was worth waiting for. He was as vainglorious of the palace as +any grand-monarching margrave of them all. He could not have been more +personally superb in showing their different effigies if they had been +his own family portraits, and he would not spare the strangers a single +splendor of the twenty vast, handsome, tiresome, Versailles-like +rooms he led them through. The rooms were fatiguing physically, but so +poignantly interesting that Mrs. March would not have missed, though she +perished of her pleasure, one of the things she saw. She had for once a +surfeit of highhoting in the pictures, the porcelains, the thrones and +canopies, the tapestries, the historical associations with the margraves +and their marriages, with the Great Frederick and the Great Napoleon. +The Great Napoleon's man Bernadotte made the Schloss his headquarters +when he occupied Ansbach after Austerlitz, and here he completed his +arrangements for taking her bargain from Prussia and handing it over +to Bavaria, with whom it still remains. Twice the Great Frederick had +sojourned in the palace; visiting his sister Louise, the wife of the +Wild Margrave, and more than once it had welcomed her next neighbor +and sister Wilhelmina, the Margravine of Baireuth, whose autobiographic +voice, piercingly plaintive and reproachful, seemed to quiver in the +air. Here, oddly enough, the spell of the Wild Margrave weakened in the +presence of his portrait, which signally failed to justify his fame of +furious tyrant. That seems, indeed, to have been rather the popular +and historical conception of him than the impression he made upon his +exalted contemporaries. The Margravine of Baireuth at any rate could +so far excuse her poor blood-stained brother-in-law as to say: “The +Margrave of Ansbach... was a young prince who had been very badly +educated. He continually ill-treated my sister; they led the life of cat +and dog. My sister, it is true, was sometimes in fault.... Her education +had been very bad... She was married at fourteen.” + +At parting, the custodian told the Marches that he would easily have +known them for Americans by the handsome fee they gave him; they +came away flown with his praise; and their national vanity was again +flattered when they got out into the principal square of Ansbach. +There, in a bookseller's window, they found among the pamphlets teaching +different languages without a master, one devoted to the Amerikanische +Sprache as distinguished from the Englische Sprache. That there could be +no mistake, the cover was printed with colors in a German ideal of +the star-spangled banner; and March said he always knew that we had a +language of our own, and that now he was going in to buy that pamphlet +and find out what it was like. He asked the young shop-woman how it +differed from English, which she spoke fairly well from having lived +eight years in Chicago. She said that it differed from the English +mainly in emphasis and pronunciation. “For instance, the English say +'HALF past', and the Americans 'Half PAST'; the English say 'laht' and +the Americans say 'late'.” + +The weather had now been clear quite long enough, and it was raining +again, a fine, bitter, piercing drizzle. They asked the girl if it +always rained in Ansbach; and she owned that it nearly always did. She +said that sometimes she longed for a little American summer; that it was +never quite warm in Ansbach; and when they had got out into the rain, +March said: “It was very nice to stumble on Chicago in an Ansbach +book-store. You ought to have told her you had a married daughter in +Chicago. Don't miss another such chance.” + +“We shall need another bag if we keep on buying books at this rate,” + said his wife with tranquil irrelevance; and not to give him time for +protest; she pushed him into a shop where the valises in the window +perhaps suggested her thought. March made haste to forestall her there +by saying they were Americans, but the mistress of the shop seemed to +have her misgivings, and “Born Americans, perhaps?” she ventured. She +had probably never met any but the naturalized sort, and supposed these +were the only sort. March re-assured her, and then she said she had a +son living in Jersey City, and she made March take his address that he +might tell him he had seen his mother; she had apparently no conception +what a great way Jersey City is from New York. + +Mrs. March would not take his arm when they came out. “Now, that is what +I never can get used to in you, Basil, and I've tried to palliate it for +twenty-seven years. You know you won't look up that poor woman's son! +Why did you let her think you would?” + +“How could I tell her I wouldn't? Perhaps I shall.” + +“No, no! You never will. I know you're good and kind, and that's why +I can't understand your being so cruel. When we get back, how will you +ever find time to go over to Jersey City?” + +He could not tell, but at last he said: “I'll tell you what! You must +keep me up to it. You know how much you enjoy making me do my duty, and +this will be such a pleasure!” + +She laughed forlornly, but after a moment she took his arm; and he +began, from the example of this good mother, to philosophize the +continuous simplicity and sanity of the people of Ansbach under all +their civic changes. Saints and soldiers, knights and barons, +margraves, princes, kings, emperors, had come and gone, and left their +single-hearted, friendly subjectfolk pretty much what they found them. +The people had suffered and survived through a thousand wars, and +apparently prospered on under all governments and misgovernments. When +the court was most French, most artificial, most vicious, the citizen +life must have remained immutably German, dull, and kind. After all, he +said, humanity seemed everywhere to be pretty safe, and pretty much the +same. + +“Yes, that is all very well,” she returned, “and you can theorize +interestingly enough; but I'm afraid that poor mother, there, had no +more reality for you than those people in the past. You appreciate her +as a type, and you don't care for her as a human being. You're nothing +but a dreamer, after all. I don't blame you,” she went on. “It's your +temperament, and you can't change, now.” + +“I may change for the worse,” he threatened. “I think I have, already. +I don't believe I could stand up to Dryfoos, now, as I did for poor +old Lindau, when I risked your bread and butter for his. I look back +in wonder and admiration at myself. I've steadily lost touch with life +since then. I'm a trifler, a dilettante, and an amateur of the right and +the good as I used to be when I was young. Oh, I have the grace to be +troubled at times, now, and once I never was. It never occurred to +me then that the world wasn't made to interest me, or at the best to +instruct me, but it does, now, at times.” + +She always came to his defence when he accused himself; it was the +best ground he could take with her. “I think you behaved very well with +Burnamy. You did your duty then.” + +“Did I? I'm not so sure. At any rate, it's the last time I shall do it. +I've served my term. I think I should tell him that he was all right in +that business with Stoller, if I were to meet him, now.” + +“Isn't it strange,” she said, provisionally, “that we don't come upon a +trace of him anywhere in Ansbach?” + +“Ah, you've been hoping he would turn up!” + +“Yes. I don't deny it. I feel very unhappy about him.” + +“I don't. He's too much like me. He would have been quite capable of +promising that poor woman to look up her son in Jersey City. When I +think of that, I have no patience with Burnamy.” + +“I am going to ask the landlord about him, now he's got rid of his +highhotes,” said Mrs. March. + + + + +XLIX. + +They went home to their hotel for their midday dinner, and to the +comfort of having it nearly all to themselves. Prince Leopold had risen +early, like all the hard-working potentates of the continent, and got +away to the manoeuvres somewhere at six o'clock; the decorations had +been removed, and the court-yard where the hired coach and pair of the +prince had rolled in the evening before had only a few majestic ducks +waddling about in it and quacking together, indifferent to the presence +of a yellow mail-wagon, on which the driver had been apparently dozing +till the hour of noon should sound. He sat there immovable, but at the +last stroke of the clock he woke up and drove vigorously away to the +station. + +The dining-room which they had been kept out of by the prince the night +before was not such as to embitter the sense of their wrong by its +splendor. After all, the tastes of royalty must be simple, if the prince +might have gone to the Schloss and had chosen rather to stay at this +modest hotel; but perhaps the Schloss was reserved for more immediate +royalty than the brothers of prince-regents; and in that case he could +not have done better than dine at the Golden Star. If he paid no more +than two marks, he dined as cheaply as a prince could wish, and as +abundantly. The wine at Ansbach was rather thin and sour, but the bread, +March declared, was the best bread in the whole world, not excepting the +bread of Carlsbad. + +After dinner the Marches had some of the local pastry, not so +incomparable as the bread, with their coffee, which they had served them +in a pavilion of the beautiful garden remaining to the hotel from the +time when it was a patrician mansion. The garden had roses in it +and several sorts of late summer flowers, as well as ripe cherries, +currants, grapes, and a Virginia-creeper red with autumn, all +harmoniously contemporaneous, as they might easily be in a climate where +no one of the seasons can very well know itself from the others. It had +not been raining for half an hour, and the sun was scalding hot, so +that the shelter of their roof was very grateful, and the puddles of +the paths were drying up with the haste which puddles have to make in +Germany, between rains, if they are ever going to dry up at all. + +The landlord came out to see if they were well served, and he was +sincerely obliging in the English he had learned as a waiter in London. +Mrs. March made haste to ask him if a young American of the name of +Burnamy had been staying with him a few weeks before; and she described +Burnamy's beauty and amiability so vividly that the landlord, if he had +been a woman, could not have failed to remember him. But he failed, with +a real grief, apparently, and certainly a real politeness, to recall +either his name or his person. The landlord was an intelligent, +good-looking young fellow; he told them that he was lately married, +and they liked him so much that they were sorry to see him afterwards +privately boxing the ears of the piccolo, the waiter's little +understudy. Perhaps the piccolo deserved it, but they would rather not +have witnessed his punishment; his being in a dress-coat seemed to make +it also an indignity. + +In the late afternoon they went to the cafe in the old Orangery of the +Schloss for a cup of tea, and found themselves in the company of several +Ansbach ladies who had brought their work, in the evident habit of +coming there every afternoon for their coffee and for a dish of gossip. +They were kind, uncomely, motherly-looking bodies; one of them combed +her hair at the table; and they all sat outside of the cafe with their +feet on the borders of the puddles which had not dried up there in the +shade of the building. + +A deep lawn, darkened at its farther edge by the long shadows of trees, +stretched before them with the sunset light on it, and it was all very +quiet and friendly. The tea brought to the Marches was brewed from some +herb apparently of native growth, with bits of what looked like willow +leaves in it, but it was flavored with a clove in each cup, and they sat +contentedly over it and tried to make out what the Ansbach ladies were, +talking about. These had recognized the strangers for Americans, and one +of them explained that Americans spoke the same language as the English +and yet were not quite the same people. + +“She differs from the girl in the book-store,” said March, translating +to his wife. “Let us get away before she says that we are not so nice +as the English,” and they made off toward the avenue of trees beyond the +lawn. + +There were a few people walking up and down in the alley, making +the most of the moment of dry weather. They saluted one another like +acquaintances, and three clean-shaven, walnut-faced old peasants bowed +in response to March's stare, with a self-respectful civility. They were +yeomen of the region of Ansbach, where the country round about is dotted +with their cottages, and not held in vast homeless tracts by the nobles +as in North Germany. + +The Bavarian who had imparted this fact to March at breakfast, +not without a certain tacit pride in it to the disadvantage of the +Prussians, was at the supper table, and was disposed to more talk, which +he managed in a stout, slow English of his own. He said he had never +really spoken English with an English-speaking person before, or at all +since he studied it in school at Munich. + +“I should be afraid to put my school-boy German against your English,” + March said, and, when he had understood, the other laughed for pleasure, +and reported the compliment to his wife in their own parlance. “You +Germans certainly beat us in languages.” + +“Oh, well,” he retaliated, “the Americans beat us in some other things,” + and Mrs. March felt that this was but just; she would have liked to +mention a few, but not ungraciously; she and the German lady kept +smiling across the table, and trying detached vocables of their +respective tongues upon each other. + +The Bavarian said he lived in Munich still, but was in Ansbach on an +affair of business; he asked March if he were not going to see the +manoeuvres somewhere. Till now the manoeuvres had merely been the +interesting background of their travel; but now, hearing that the +Emperor of Germany, the King of Saxony, the Regent of Bavaria, and the +King of Wurtemberg, the Grand-Dukes of Weimar and Baden, with visiting +potentates of all sorts, and innumerable lesser highhotes, foreign and +domestic, were to be present, Mrs. March resolved that they must go to +at least one of the reviews. + +“If you go to Frankfort, you can see the King of Italy too,” said the +Bavarian, but he owned that they probably could not get into a hotel +there, and he asked why they should not go to Wurzburg, where they could +see all the sovereigns except the King of Italy. + +“Wurzburg? Wurzburg?” March queried of his wife. “Where did we hear of +that place?” + +“Isn't it where Burnamy said Mr. Stoller had left his daughters at +school?” + +“So it is! And is that on the way to the Rhine?” he asked the Bavarian. + +“No, no! Wurzburg is on the Main, about five hours from Ansbach. And it +is a very interesting place. It is where the good wine comes from.” + +“Oh, yes,” said March, and in their rooms his wife got out all their +guides and maps and began to inform herself and to inform him about +Wurzburg. But first she said it was very cold and he must order some +fire made in the tall German stove in their parlor. The maid who came +said “Gleich,” but she did not come back, and about the time they were +getting furious at her neglect, they began getting warm. He put his hand +on the stove and found it hot; then he looked down for a door in the +stove where he might shut a damper; there was no door. + +“Good heavens!” he shouted. “It's like something in a dream,” and he ran +to pull the bell for help. + +“No, no! Don't ring! It will make us ridiculous. They'll think Americans +don't know anything. There must be some way of dampening the stove; and +if there isn't, I'd rather suffocate than give myself away.” Mrs. March +ran and opened the window, while her husband carefully examined the +stove at every point, and explored the pipe for the damper in vain. +“Can't you find it?” The night wind came in raw and damp, and threatened +to blow their lamp out, and she was obliged to shut the window. + +“Not a sign of it. I will go down and ask the landlord in strict +confidence how they dampen their stoves in Ansbach.” + +“Well, if you must. It's getting hotter every moment.” She followed him +timorously into the corridor, lit by a hanging lamp, turned low for the +night. + +He looked at his watch; it was eleven o'clock. “I'm afraid they're all +in bed.” + +“Yes; you mustn't go! We must try to find out for ourselves. What can +that door be for?” + +It was a low iron door, half the height of a man, in the wall near their +room, and it yielded to his pull. “Get a candle,” he whispered, and when +she brought it, he stooped to enter the doorway. + +“Oh, do you think you'd better?” she hesitated. + +“You can come, too, if you're afraid. You've always said you wanted to +die with me.” + +“Well. But you go first.” + +He disappeared within, and then came back to the doorway. “Just come in +here, a moment.” She found herself in a sort of antechamber, half the +height of her own room, and following his gesture she looked down where +in one corner some crouching monster seemed showing its fiery teeth in a +grin of derision. This grin was the damper of their stove, and this was +where the maid had kindled the fire which had been roasting them alive, +and was still joyously chuckling to itself. “I think that Munich man was +wrong. I don't believe we beat the Germans in anything. There isn't a +hotel in the United States where the stoves have no front doors, and +every one of them has the space of a good-sized flat given up to the +convenience of kindling a fire in it.” + + + + +L. + +After a red sunset of shameless duplicity March was awakened to a +rainy morning by the clinking of cavalry hoofs on the pavement of the +long-irregular square before the hotel, and he hurried out to see the +passing of the soldiers on their way to the manoeuvres. They were troops +of all arms, but mainly infantry, and as they stumped heavily through +the groups of apathetic citizens in their mud-splashed boots, they +took the steady downpour on their dripping helmets. Some of them were +smoking, but none smiling, except one gay fellow who made a joke to a +serving-maid on the sidewalk. An old officer halted his staff to scold a +citizen who had given him a mistaken direction. The shame of the erring +man was great, and the pride of a fellow-citizen who corrected him was +not less, though the arrogant brute before whom they both cringed used +them with equal scorn; the younger officers listened indifferently round +on horseback behind the glitter of their eyeglasses, and one of them +amused himself by turning the silver bangles on his wrist. + +Then the files of soldier slaves passed on, and March crossed the bridge +spanning the gardens in what had been the city moat, and found his way +to the market-place, under the walls of the old Gothic church of St. +Gumpertus. The market, which spread pretty well over the square, seemed +to be also a fair, with peasants' clothes and local pottery for sale, +as well as fruits and vegetables, and large baskets of flowers, with old +women squatting before them. It was all as picturesque as the markets +used to be in Montreal and Quebec, and in a cloudy memory of his wedding +journey long before, he bought so lavishly of the flowers to carry back +to his wife that a little girl, who saw his arm-load from her window +as he returned, laughed at him, and then drew shyly back. Her laugh +reminded him how many happy children he had seen in Germany, and how +freely they seemed to play everywhere, with no one to make them afraid. +When they grow up the women laugh as little as the men, whose rude toil +the soldiering leaves them to. + +He got home with his flowers, and his wife took them absently, and +made him join her in watching the sight which had fascinated her in the +street under their windows. A slender girl, with a waist as slim as a +corseted officer's, from time to time came out of the house across the +way to the firewood which had been thrown from a wagon upon the sidewalk +there. Each time she embraced several of the heavy four-foot logs and +disappeared with them in-doors. Once she paused from her work to joke +with a well-dressed man who came by; and seemed to find nothing odd in +her work; some gentlemen lounging at the window over head watched her +with no apparent sense of anomaly. + +“What do you think of that?” asked Mrs. March. “I think it's good +exercise for the girl, and I should like to recommend it to those fat +fellows at the window. I suppose she'll saw the wood in the cellar, and +then lug it up stairs, and pile it up in the stoves' dressing-rooms.” + +“Don't laugh! It's too disgraceful.” + +“Well, I don't know! If you like, I'll offer these gentlemen across the +way your opinion of it in the language of Goethe and Schiller.” + +“I wish you'd offer my opinion of them. They've been staring in here +with an opera-glass.” + +“Ah, that's a different affair. There isn't much going on in Ansbach, +and they have to make the most of it.” + +The lower casements of the houses were furnished with mirrors set at +right angles with them, and nothing which went on in the streets was +lost. Some of the streets were long and straight, and at rare moments +they lay full of sun. At such times the Marches were puzzled by the +sight of citizens carrying open umbrellas, and they wondered if they had +forgotten to put them down, or thought it not worth while in the brief +respites from the rain, or were profiting by such rare occasions to dry +them; and some other sights remained baffling to the last. Once a man +with his hands pinioned before him, and a gendarme marching stolidly +after him with his musket on his shoulder, passed under their windows; +but who he was, or what he, had done, or was to suffer, they never knew. +Another time a pair went by on the way to the railway station: a young +man carrying an umbrella under his arm, and a very decent-looking old +woman lugging a heavy carpet bag, who left them to the lasting question +whether she was the young man's servant in her best clothes, or merely +his mother. + +Women do not do everything in Ansbach, however, the sacristans being +men, as the Marches found when they went to complete their impression +of the courtly past of the city by visiting the funeral chapel of +the margraves in the crypt of St. Johannis Church. In the little +ex-margravely capital there was something of the neighborly interest +in the curiosity of strangers which endears Italian witness. The +white-haired street-sweeper of Ansbach, who willingly left his broom +to guide them to the house of the sacristan, might have been a +street-sweeper in Vicenza; and the old sacristan, when he put his velvet +skull-cap out of an upper window and professed his willingness to +show them the chapel, disappointed them by saying “Gleich!” instead of +“Subito!” The architecture of the houses was a party to the illusion. +St. Johannis, like the older church of St. Gumpertus, is Gothic, with +the two unequal towers which seem distinctive of Ansbach; at the St. +Gumpertus end of the place where they both stand the dwellings are +Gothic too, and might be in Hamburg; but at the St. Johannis end they +seem to have felt the exotic spirit of the court, and are of a sort of +Teutonized renaissance. + +The rococo margraves and margravines used of course to worship in St. +Johannis Church. Now they all, such as did not marry abroad, lie in the +crypt of the church, in caskets of bronze and copper and marble, with +draperies of black samite, more and more funereally vainglorious to the +last. Their courtly coffins are ranged in a kind of hemicycle, with +the little coffins of the children that died before they came to the +knowledge of their greatness. On one of these a kneeling figurine in +bronze holds up the effigy of the child within; on another the epitaph +plays tenderly with the fate of a little princess, who died in her first +year. + + In the Rose-month was this sweet Rose taken. + For the Rose-kind hath she earth forsaken. + The Princess is the Rose, that here no longer blows. + From the stem by death's hand rudely shaken. + Then rest in the Rose-house. + Little Princess-Rosebud dear! + There life's Rose shall bloom again + In Heaven's sunshine clear. + +While March struggled to get this into English words, two German ladies, +who had made themselves of his party, passed reverently away and left +him to pay the sacristan alone. + +“That is all right,” he said, when he came out. “I think we got the most +value; and they didn't look as if they could afford it so well; though +you never can tell, here. These ladies may be the highest kind of +highhotes practising a praiseworthy economy. I hope the lesson won't +be lost on us. They have saved enough by us for their coffee at the +Orangery. Let us go and have a little willow-leaf tea!” + +The Orangery perpetually lured them by what it had kept of the days when +an Orangery was essential to the self-respect of every sovereign prince, +and of so many private gentlemen. On their way they always passed the +statue of Count Platen, the dull poet whom Heine's hate would have +delivered so cruelly over to an immortality of contempt, but who stands +there near the Schloss in a grass-plot prettily planted with flowers, +and ignores his brilliant enemy in the comfortable durability of bronze; +and there always awaited them in the old pleasaunce the pathos of Kaspar +Hauser's fate; which his murder affixes to it with a red stain. + +After their cups of willow leaves at the cafe they went up into that +nook of the plantation where the simple shaft of church-warden's Gothic +commemorates the assassination on the spot where it befell. Here the +hapless youth, whose mystery will never be fathomed on earth, used to +come for a little respite from his harsh guardian in Ansbach, homesick +for the kindness of his Nuremberg friends; and here his murderer found +him and dealt him the mortal blow. + +March lingered upon the last sad circumstance of the tragedy in which +the wounded boy dragged himself home, to suffer the suspicion and +neglect of his guardian till death attested his good faith beyond cavil. +He said this was the hardest thing to bear in all his story, and that he +would like to have a look into the soul of the dull, unkind wretch who +had so misread his charge. He was going on with an inquiry that pleased +him much, when his wife pulled him abruptly away. + +“Now, I see, you are yielding to the fascination of it, and you are +wanting to take the material from Burnamy!” + +“Oh, well, let him have the material; he will spoil it. And I can always +reject it, if he offers it to 'Every Other Week'.” + +“I could believe, after your behavior to that poor woman about her son +in Jersey City, you're really capable of it.” + +“What comprehensive inculpation! I had forgotten about that poor woman.” + + + + +LI. + +The letters which March had asked his Nuremberg banker to send them came +just as they were leaving Ansbach. The landlord sent them down to the +station, and Mrs. March opened them in the train, and read them first so +that she could prepare him if there were anything annoying in them, as +well as indulge her livelier curiosity. + +“They're from both the children,” she said, without waiting for him to +ask. “You can look at them later. There's a very nice letter from +Mrs. Adding to me, and one from dear little Rose for you.” Then she +hesitated, with her hand on a letter faced down in her lap. “And there's +one from Agatha Triscoe, which I wonder what you'll think of.” She +delayed again, and then flashed it open before him, and waited with a +sort of impassioned patience while he read it. + +He read it, and gave it back to her. “There doesn't seem to be very much +in it.” + +“That's it! Don't you think I had a right to there being something in +it, after all I did for her?” + +“I always hoped you hadn't done anything for her, but if you have, why +should she give herself away on paper? It's a very proper letter.” + +“It's a little too proper, and it's the last I shall have to do with +her. She knew that I should be on pins and needles till I heard how her +father had taken Burnamy's being there, that night, and she doesn't say +a word about it.” + +“The general may have had a tantrum that she couldn't describe. Perhaps +she hasn't told him, yet.” + +“She would tell him instantly!” cried Mrs. March who began to find +reason in the supposition, as well as comfort for the hurt which the +girl's reticence had given her. “Or if she wouldn't, it would be because +she was waiting for the best chance.” + +“That would be like the wise daughter of a difficult father. She may be +waiting for the best chance to say how he took it. No, I'm all for Miss +Triscoe, and I hope that now, if she's taken herself off our hands, +she'll keep off.” + +“It's altogether likely that he's made her promise not to tell me +anything about it,” Mrs. March mused aloud. + +“That would be unjust to a person who had behaved so discreetly as you +have,” said her husband. + +They were on their way to Wurzburg, and at the first station, which was +a junction, a lady mounted to their compartment just before the train +began to move. She was stout and middle-aged, and had never been pretty, +but she bore herself with a kind of authority in spite of her thread +gloves, her dowdy gray travelling-dress, and a hat of lower middle-class +English tastelessness. She took the only seat vacant, a backward-riding +place beside a sleeping passenger who looked like a commercial +traveller, but she seemed ill at ease in it, and March offered her +his seat. She accepted it very promptly, and thanked him for it in the +English of a German, and Mrs. March now classed her as a governess who +had been teaching in England and had acquired the national feeling +for dress. But in this character she found her interesting, and even a +little pathetic, and she made her some overtures of talk which the +other met eagerly enough. They were now running among low hills, not so +picturesque as those between Eger and Nuremberg, but of much the same +toylike quaintness in the villages dropped here and there in their +valleys. One small town, completely walled, with its gray houses and +red roofs, showed through the green of its trees and gardens so like a +colored print in a child's story-book that Mrs. March cried out for joy +in it, and then accounted for her rapture by explaining to the stranger +that they were Americans and had never been in Germany before. The lady +was not visibly affected by the fact, she said casually that she had +often been in that little town, which she named; her uncle had a +castle in the country back of it, and she came with her husband for +the shooting in the autumn. By a natural transition she spoke of her +children, for whom she had an English governess; she said she had never +been in England, but had learnt the language from a governess in her own +childhood; and through it all Mrs. March perceived that she was trying +to impress them with her consequence. To humor her pose, she said they +had been looking up the scene of Kaspar Hauser's death at Ansbach; and +at this the stranger launched into such intimate particulars concerning +him, and was so familiar at first hands with the facts of his life, +that Mrs. March let her run on, too much amused with her pretensions to +betray any doubt of her. She wondered if March were enjoying it all as +much, and from time to time she tried to catch his eye, while the lady +talked constantly and rather loudly, helping herself out with words +from them both when her English failed her. In the safety of her perfect +understanding of the case, Mrs. March now submitted farther, and even +suffered some patronage from her, which in another mood she would have +met with a decided snub. + +As they drew in among the broad vine-webbed slopes of the Wurzburg, +hills, the stranger said she was going to change there, and take a train +on to Berlin. Mrs. March wondered whether she would be able to keep up +the comedy to the last; and she had to own that she carried it off very +easily when the friends whom she was expecting did not meet her on the +arrival of their train. She refused March's offers of help, and remained +quietly seated while he got out their wraps and bags. She returned with +a hardy smile the cold leave Mrs. March took of her; and when a porter +came to the door, and forced his way by the Marches, to ask with anxious +servility if she, were the Baroness von-----, she bade the man get them. +a 'traeger', and then come back for her. She waved them a complacent +adieu before they mixed with the crowd and lost sight of her. + +“Well, my dear,” said March, addressing the snobbishness in his wife +which he knew to be so wholly impersonal, “you've mingled with one +highhote, anyway. I must say she didn't look it, any more than the Duke +and Duchess of Orleans, and yet she's only a baroness. Think of our +being three hours in the same compartment, and she doing all she could +to impress us and our getting no good of it! I hoped you were feeling +her quality, so that we should have it in the family, anyway, and always +know what it was like. But so far, the highhotes have all been terribly +disappointing.” + +He teased on as they followed the traeger with their baggage out of the +station; and in the omnibus on the way to their hotel, he recurred to +the loss they had suffered in the baroness's failure to dramatize her +nobility effectually. “After all, perhaps she was as much disappointed +in us. I don't suppose we looked any more like democrats than she looked +like an aristocrat.” + +“But there's a great difference,” Mrs. March returned at last. “It isn't +at all a parallel case. We were not real democrats, and she was a real +aristocrat.” + +“To be sure. There is that way of looking at it. That's rather novel; I +wish I had thought of that myself. She was certainly more to blame than +we were.” + + + + +LII. + +The square in front of the station was planted with flag-poles wreathed +in evergreens; a triumphal arch was nearly finished, and a colossal +allegory in imitation bronze was well on the way to completion, in honor +of the majesties who were coming for the manoeuvres. The streets which +the omnibus passed through to the Swan Inn were draped with the imperial +German and the royal Bavarian colors; and the standards of the visiting +nationalities decked the fronts of the houses where their military +attaches were lodged; but the Marches failed to see our own banner, and +were spared for the moment the ignominy of finding it over an apothecary +shop in a retired avenue. The sun had come out, the sky overhead was of +a smiling blue; and they felt the gala-day glow and thrill in the depths +of their inextinguishable youth. + +The Swan Inn sits on one of the long quays bordering the Main, and its +windows look down upon the bridges and shipping of the river; but the +traveller reaches it by a door in the rear, through an archway into a +back street, where an odor dating back to the foundation of the city is +waiting to welcome him. + +The landlord was there, too, and he greeted the Marches so cordially +that they fully partook his grief in being able to offer them rooms on +the front of the house for two nights only. They reconciled themselves +to the necessity of then turning out for the staff of the King of +Saxony, the more readily because they knew that there was no hope of +better things at any other hotel. + +The rooms which they could have for the time were charming, and they +came down to supper in a glazed gallery looking out on the river +picturesque with craft of all fashions: with row-boats, sail-boats, and +little steamers, but mainly with long black barges built up into houses +in the middle, and defended each by a little nervous German dog. +Long rafts of logs weltered in the sunset red which painted the swift +current, and mantled the immeasurable vineyards of the hills around +like the color of their ripening grapes. Directly in face rose a castled +steep, which kept the ranging walls and the bastions and battlements of +the time when such a stronghold could have defended the city from foes +without or from tumult within. The arches of a stately bridge spanned +the river sunsetward, and lifted a succession of colossal figures +against the crimson sky. + +“I guess we have been wasting our time, my dear,” said March, as they, +turned from this beauty to the question of supper. “I wish we had always +been here!” + +Their waiter had put them at a table in a division of the gallery beyond +that which they entered, where some groups of officers were noisily +supping. There was no one in their room but a man whose face was +indistinguishable against the light, and two young girls who glanced at +them with looks at once quelled and defiant, and then after a stare at +the officers in the gallery beyond, whispered together with suppressed +giggling. The man fed on without noticing them, except now and then to +utter a growl that silenced the whispering and giggling for a moment. +The Marches, from no positive evidence of any sense, decided that they +were Americans. + +“I don't know that I feel responsible for them as their +fellow-countryman; I should, once,” he said. + +“It isn't that. It's the worry of trying to make out why they are just +what they are,” his wife returned. + +The girls drew the man's attention to them and he looked at them for the +first time; then after a sort of hesitation he went on with his supper. +They had only begun theirs when he rose with the two girls, whom Mrs. +March now saw to be of the same size and dressed alike, and came heavily +toward them. + +“I thought you was in Carlsbad,” he said bluntly to March, with a nod at +Mrs. March. He added, with a twist of his head toward the two girls, +“My daughters,” and then left them to her, while he talked on with her +husband. “Come to see this foolery, I suppose. I'm on my way to the +woods for my after-cure; but I thought I might as well stop and give the +girls a chance; they got a week's vacation, anyway.” Stoller glanced at +them with a sort of troubled tenderness in his strong dull face. + +“Oh, yes. I understood they were at school here,” said March, and he +heard one of them saying, in a sweet, high pipe to his wife: + +“Ain't it just splendid? I ha'n't seen anything equal to it since the +Worrld's Fairr.” She spoke with a strong contortion of the Western r, +and her sister hastened to put in: + +“I don't think it's to be compared with the Worrld's Fairr. But these +German girls, here, just think it's great. It just does me good to laff +at 'em, about it. I like to tell 'em about the electric fountain and +the Courrt of Lionorr when they get to talkin' about the illuminations +they're goun' to have. You goun' out to the parade? You better engage +your carriage right away if you arre. The carrs'll be a perfect jam. +Father's engaged ourrs; he had to pay sixty marrks forr it.” + +They chattered on without shyness and on as easy terms with a woman of +three times their years as if she had been a girl of their own age; +they willingly took the whole talk to themselves, and had left her quite +outside of it before Stoller turned to her. + +“I been telling Mr. March here that you better both come to the parade +with us. I guess my twospanner will hold five; or if it won't, we'll +make it. I don't believe there's a carriage left in Wurzburg; and if you +go in the cars, you'll have to walk three or four miles before you get +to the parade-ground. You think it over,” he said to March. “Nobody else +is going to have the places, anyway, and you can say yes at the last +minute just as well as now.” + +He moved off with his girls, who looked over their shoulders at the +officers as they passed on through the adjoining room. + +“My dear!” cried Mrs. March. “Didn't you suppose he classed us with +Burnamy in that business? Why should he be polite to us?” + +“Perhaps he wants you to chaperon his daughters. He's probably heard +of your performance at the Kurhaus ball. But he knows that I thought +Burnamy in the wrong. This may be Stoller's way of wiping out an +obligation. Wouldn't you like to go with him?” + +“The mere thought of his being in the same town is prostrating. I'd far +rather he hated us; then he would avoid us.” + +“Well, he doesn't own the town, and if it comes to the worst, perhaps we +can avoid him. Let us go out, anyway, and see if we can't.” + +“No, no; I'm too tired; but you go. And get all the maps and guides +you can; there's so very little in Baedeker, and almost nothing in that +great hulking Bradshaw of yours; and I'm sure there must be the most +interesting history of Wurzburg. Isn't it strange that we haven't the +slightest association with the name?” + +“I've been rummaging in my mind, and I've got hold of an association at +last,” said March. “It's beer; a sign in a Sixth Avenue saloon window +Wurzburger Hof-Brau.” + +“No matter if it is beer. Find some sketch of the history, and we'll +try to get away from the Stollers in it. I pitied those wild girls, too. +What crazy images of the world must fill their empty minds! How their +ignorant thoughts must go whirling out into the unknown! I don't envy +their father. Do hurry back! I shall be thinking about them every +instant till you come.” + +She said this, but in their own rooms it was so soothing to sit looking +through the long twilight at the lovely landscape that the sort +of bruise given by their encounter with the Stollers had left her +consciousness before March returned. She made him admire first the +convent church on a hill further up the river which exactly balanced the +fortress in front of them, and then she seized upon the little books he +had brought, and set him to exploring the labyrinths of their German, +with a mounting exultation in his discoveries. There was a general guide +to the city, and a special guide, with plans and personal details of the +approaching manoeuvres and the princes who were to figure in them; +and there was a sketch of the local history: a kind of thing that the +Germans know how to write particularly, well, with little gleams of +pleasant humor blinking through it. For the study of this, Mrs. March +realized, more and more passionately, that they were in the very most +central and convenient point, for the history of Wurzburg might be +said to have begun with her prince-bishops, whose rule had begun in +the twelfth century, and who had built, on a forgotten Roman work, the +fortress of the Marienburg on that vineyarded hill over against the +Swan Inn. There had of course been history before that, but 'nothing so +clear, nothing so peculiarly swell, nothing that so united the glory of +this world and the next as that of the prince-bishops. They had made the +Marienburg their home, and kept it against foreign and domestic foes for +five hundred years. Shut within its well-armed walls they had awed +the often-turbulent city across the Main; they had held it against the +embattled farmers in the Peasants' War, and had splendidly lost it to +Gustavus Adolphus, and then got it back again and held it till Napoleon +took it from them. He gave it with their flock to the Bavarians, who +in turn briefly yielded it to the Prussians in 1866, and were now in +apparently final possession of it. + +Before the prince-bishops, Charlemagne and Barbarossa had come and +gone, and since the prince-bishops there had been visiting thrones and +kingdoms enough in the ancient city, which was soon to be illustrated +by the presence of imperial Germany, royal, Wirtemberg and Saxony, +grand-ducal Baden and Weimar, and a surfeit of all the minor potentates +among those who speak the beautiful language of the Ja. + +But none of these could dislodge the prince-bishops from that supreme +place which they had at once taken in Mrs. March's fancy. The potentates +were all going to be housed in the vast palace which the prince-bishops +had built themselves in Wurzburg as soon as they found it safe to come +down from their stronghold of Marienburg, and begin to adorn their city, +and to confirm it in its intense fidelity to the Church. Tiepolo had +come up out of Italy to fresco their palace, where he wrought year after +year, in that worldly taste which has somehow come to express the most +sovereign moment of ecclesiasticism. It prevailed so universally in +Wurzburg that it left her with the name of the Rococo City, intrenched +in a period of time equally remote from early Christianity and modern +Protestantism. Out of her sixty thousand souls, only ten thousand are +now of the reformed religion, and these bear about the same relation to +the Catholic spirit of the place that the Gothic architecture bears to +the baroque. + +As long as the prince-bishops lasted the Wurzburgers got on very well +with but one newspaper, and perhaps the smallest amount of merrymaking +known outside of the colony of Massachusetts Bay at the same epoch. The +prince-bishops had their finger in everybody's pie, and they portioned +out the cakes and ale, which were made according to formulas of their +own. The distractions were all of a religious character; churches, +convents, monasteries, abounded; ecclesiastical processions and +solemnities were the spectacles that edified if they did not amuse the +devout population. + +It seemed to March an ironical outcome of all this spiritual severity +that one of the greatest modern scientific discoveries should have been +made in Wurzburg, and that the Roentgen rays should now be giving her +name a splendor destined to eclipse the glories of her past. + +Mrs. March could not allow that they would do so; or at least that the +name of Roentgen would ever lend more lustre to his city than that of +Longfellow's Walther von der Vogelweide. She was no less surprised than +pleased to realize that this friend of the birds was a Wurzburger, and +she said that their first pilgrimage in the morning should be to the +church where he lies buried. + + + + +LIII. + +March went down to breakfast not quite so early as his wife had planned, +and left her to have her coffee in her room. He got a pleasant table in +the gallery overlooking the river, and he decided that the landscape, +though it now seemed to be rather too much studied from a drop-certain, +had certainly lost nothing of its charm in the clear morning light. The +waiter brought his breakfast, and after a little delay came back with +a card which he insisted was for March. It was not till he put on his +glasses and read the name of Mr. R. M. Kenby that he was able at all to +agree with the waiter, who stood passive at his elbow. + +“Well,” he said, “why wasn't this card sent up last night?” + +The waiter explained that the gentleman had just, given him his card, +after asking March's nationality, and was then breakfasting in the next +room. March caught up his napkin and ran round the partition wall, and +Kenby rose with his napkin and hurried to meet him. + +“I thought it must be you,” he called out, joyfully, as they struck +their extended hands together, “but so many people look alike, nowadays, +that I don't trust my eyes any more.” + +Kenby said he had spent the time since they last met partly in Leipsic +and partly in Gotha, where he had amused himself in rubbing up his rusty +German. As soon as he realized that Wurzburg was so near he had slipped +down from Gotha for a glimpse of the manoeuvres. He added that he +supposed March was there to see them, and he asked with a quite +unembarrassed smile if they had met Mr. Adding in Carlsbad, and without +heeding March's answer, he laughed and added: “Of course, I know she +must have told Mrs. March all about it.” + +March could not deny this; he laughed, too; though in his wife's absence +he felt bound to forbid himself anything more explicit. + +“I don't give it up, you know,” Kenby went on, with perfect ease. “I'm +not a young fellow, if you call thirty-nine old.” + +“At my age I don't,” March put in, and they roared together, in men's +security from the encroachments of time. + +“But she happens to be the only woman I've ever really wanted to marry, +for more than a few days at a stretch. You know how it is with us.” + +“Oh, yes, I know,” said March, and they shouted again. + +“We're in love, and we're out of love, twenty times. But this isn't a +mere fancy; it's a conviction. And there's no reason why she shouldn't +marry me.” + +March smiled gravely, and his smile was not lost upon Kenby. “You mean +the boy,” he said. “Well, I like Rose,” and now March really felt swept +from his feet. “She doesn't deny that she likes me, but she seems to +think that her marrying again will take her from him; the fact is, it +will only give me to him. As for devoting her whole life to him, she +couldn't do a worse thing for him. What the boy needs is a man's care, +and a man's will--Good heavens! You don't think I could ever be unkind +to the little soul?” Kenby threw himself forward over the table. + +“My dear fellow!” March protested. + +“I'd rather cut off my right hand!” Kenby pursued, excitedly, and then +he said, with a humorous drop: “The fact is, I don't believe I should +want her so much if I couldn't have Rose too. I want to have them both. +So far, I've only got no for an answer; but I'm not going to keep it. I +had a letter from Rose at Carlsbad, the other day; and--” + +The waiter came forward with a folded scrap of paper on his salver, +which March knew must be from his wife. “What is keeping you so?” she +wrote. “I am all ready.” “It's from Mrs. March,” he explained to Kenby. +“I am going out with her on some errands. I'm awfully glad to see you +again. We must talk it all over, and you must--you mustn't--Mrs. March +will want to see you later--I--Are you in the hotel?” + +“Oh yes. I'll see you at the one-o'clock table d'hote, I suppose.” + +March went away with his head whirling in the question whether he should +tell his wife at once of Kenby's presence, or leave her free for the +pleasures of Wurzburg, till he could shape the fact into some safe and +acceptable form. She met him at the door with her guide-books, wraps and +umbrellas, and would hardly give him time to get on his hat and coat. + +“Now, I want you to avoid the Stollers as far as you can see them. This +is to be a real wedding-journey day, with no extraneous acquaintance to +bother; the more strangers the better. Wurzburg is richer than anything +I imagined. I've looked it all up; I've got the plan of the city, so +that we can easily find the way. We'll walk first, and take carriages +whenever we get tired. We'll go to the cathedral at once; I want a good +gulp of rococo to begin with; there wasn't half enough of it at Ansbach. +Isn't it strange how we've come round to it?” + +She referred to that passion for the Gothic which they had obediently +imbibed from Ruskin in the days of their early Italian travel and +courtship, when all the English-speaking world bowed down to him in +devout aversion from the renaissance, and pious abhorrence of the +rococo. + +“What biddable little things we were!” she went on, while March was +struggling to keep Kenby in the background of his consciousness. “The +rococo must have always had a sneaking charm for us, when we were +pinning our faith to pointed arches; and yet I suppose we were perfectly +sincere. Oh, look at that divinely ridiculous Madonna!” They were now +making their way out of the crooked footway behind their hotel toward +the street leading to the cathedral, and she pointed to the Blessed +Virgin over the door of some religious house, her drapery billowing +about her feet; her body twisting to show the sculptor's mastery of +anatomy, and the halo held on her tossing head with the help of stout +gilt rays. In fact, the Virgin's whole figure was gilded, and so was +that of the child in her arms. “Isn't she delightful?” + +“I see what you mean,” said March, with a dubious glance at the statue, +“but I'm not sure, now, that I wouldn't like something quieter in my +Madonnas.” + +The thoroughfare which they emerged upon, with the cathedral ending +the prospective, was full of the holiday so near at hand. The narrow +sidewalks were thronged with people, both soldiers and civilians, and up +the middle of the street detachments of military came and went, halting +the little horse-cars and the huge beer-wagons which otherwise seemed +to have the sole right to the streets of Wurzburg; they came jingling +or thundering out of the aide streets and hurled themselves round +the corners reckless of the passers, who escaped alive by flattening +themselves like posters against the house walls. There were peasants, +men and women, in the costume which the unbroken course of their country +life had kept as quaint as it was a hundred years before; there were +citizens in the misfits of the latest German fashions; there were +soldiers of all arms in their vivid uniforms, and from time to time +there were pretty young girls in white dresses with low necks, and bare +arms gloved to the elbows, who were following a holiday custom of the +place in going about the streets in ball costume. The shop windows +were filled with portraits of the Emperor and the Empress, and the +Prince-Regent and the ladies of his family; the German and Bavarian +colors draped the facades of the houses and festooned the fantastic +Madonnas posing above so many portals. The modern patriotism included +the ancient piety without disturbing it; the rococo city remained +ecclesiastical through its new imperialism, and kept the stamp given it +by the long rule of the prince-bishops under the sovereignty of its King +and the suzerainty of its Kaiser. + +The Marches escaped from the present, when they entered the cathedral, +as wholly as if they had taken hold of the horns of the altar, though +they were far from literally doing this in an interior so grandiose. +There area few rococo churches in Italy, and perhaps more in Spain, +which approach the perfection achieved by the Wurzburg cathedral in the +baroque style. For once one sees what that style can do in architecture +and sculpture, and whatever one may say of the details, one cannot deny +that there is a prodigiously effective keeping in it all. This interior +came together, as the decorators say, with a harmony that the travellers +had felt nowhere in their earlier experience of the rococo. It was, +unimpeachably perfect in its way, “Just,” March murmured to his wife, +“as the social and political and scientific scheme of the eighteenth +century was perfected in certain times and places. But the odd thing is +to find the apotheosis of the rococo away up here in Germany. I wonder +how much the prince-bishops really liked it. But they had become rococo, +too! Look at that row of their statues on both sides of the nave! What +magnificent swell! How they abash this poor plain Christ, here; he would +like to get behind the pillar; he knows that he could never lend himself +to the baroque style. It expresses the eighteenth century, though. +But how you long for some little hint of the thirteenth, or even the +nineteenth.” + +“I don't,” she whispered back. “I'm perfectly wild with Wurzburg. I +like to have a thing go as far as it can. At Nuremberg I wanted all the +Gothic I could get, and in Wurzburg I want all the baroque I can get. I +am consistent.” + +She kept on praising herself to his disadvantage, as women do, all the +way to the Neumunster Church, where they were going to revere the tomb +of Walther von der Vogelweide, not so much for his own sake as for +Longfellow's. The older poet lies buried within, but his monument is +outside the church, perhaps for the greater convenience of the sparrows, +which now represent the birds he loved. The cenotaph is surmounted by +a broad vase, and around this are thickly perched the effigies of the +Meistersinger's feathered friends, from whom the canons of the church, +as Mrs. March read aloud from her Baedeker, long ago directed his +bequest to themselves. In revenge for their lawless greed the defrauded +beneficiaries choose to burlesque the affair by looking like the +four-and-twenty blackbirds when the pie was opened. + +She consented to go for a moment to the Gothic Marienkapelle with her +husband in the revival of his mediaeval taste, and she was rewarded +amidst its thirteenth-century sincerity by his recantation. “You are +right! Baroque is the thing for Wurzburg; one can't enjoy Gothic here +any more than one could enjoy baroque in Nuremberg.” + +Reconciled in the rococo, they now called a carriage, and went to visit +the palace of the prince-bishops who had so well known how to make the +heavenly take the image and superscription of the worldly; and they were +jointly indignant to find it shut against the public in preparation for +the imperialities and royalties coming to occupy it. They were in time +for the noon guard-mounting, however, and Mrs. March said that the way +the retiring squad kicked their legs out in the high martial step of the +German soldiers was a perfect expression of the insolent militarism of +their empire, and was of itself enough to make one thank Heaven that +one was an American and a republican. She softened a little toward their +system when it proved that the garden of the palace was still open, +and yet more when she sank down upon a bench between two marble groups +representing the Rape of Proserpine and the Rape of Europa. They stood +each in a gravelled plot, thickly overrun by a growth of ivy, and the +vine climbed the white naked limbs of the nymphs, who were present on a +pretence of gathering flowers, but really to pose at the spectators, +and clad them to the waist and shoulders with an effect of modesty never +meant by the sculptor, but not displeasing. There was an old fountain +near, its stone rim and centre of rock-work green with immemorial mould, +and its basin quivering between its water-plants under the soft fall of +spray. At a waft of fitful breeze some leaves of early autumn fell from +the trees overhead upon the elderly pair where they sat, and a little +company of sparrows came and hopped about their feet. Though the square +without was so all astir with festive expectation, there were few people +in the garden; three or four peasant women in densely fluted white +skirts and red aprons and shawls wandered by and stared at the Europa +and at the Proserpine. + +It was a precious moment in which the charm of the city's past seemed to +culminate, and they were loath to break it by speech. + +“Why didn't we have something like all this on our first wedding +journey?” she sighed at last. “To think of our battening from Boston to +Niagara and back! And how hard we tried to make something of Rochester +and Buffalo, of Montreal and Quebec!” + +“Niagara wasn't so bad,” he said, “and I will never go back on Quebec.” + +“Ah, but if we could have had Hamburg and Leipsic, and Carlsbad +and Nuremberg, and Ansbach and Wurzburg! Perhaps this is meant as a +compensation for our lost youth. But I can't enjoy it as I could when +I was young. It's wasted on my sere and yellow leaf. I wish Burnamy and +Miss Triscoe were here; I should like to try this garden on them.” + +“They wouldn't care for it,” he replied, and upon a daring impulse he +added, “Kenby and Mrs. Adding might.” If she took this suggestion in +good part, he could tell her that Kenby was in Wurzburg. + +“Don't speak of them! They're in just that besotted early middle-age +when life has settled into a self-satisfied present, with no past and +no future; the most philistine, the most bourgeois, moment of existence. +Better be elderly at once, as far as appreciation of all this goes.” She +rose and put her hand on his arm, and pushed him away in the impulsive +fashion of her youth, across alleys of old trees toward a balustraded +terrace in the background which had tempted her. + +“It isn't so bad, being elderly,” he said. “By that time we have +accumulated enough past to sit down and really enjoy its associations. +We have got all sorts of perspectives and points of view. We know where +we are at.” + +“I don't mind being elderly. The world's just as amusing as ever, and +lots of disagreeable things have dropped out. It's the getting more than +elderly; it's the getting old; and then--” + +They shrank a little closer together, and walked on in silence till he +said, “Perhaps there's something else, something better--somewhere.” + +They had reached the balustraded terrace, and were pausing for pleasure +in the garden tops below, with the flowery spaces, and the statued +fountains all coming together. She put her hand on one of the fat little +urchin-groups on the stone coping. “I don't want cherubs, when I can +have these putti. And those old prince-bishops didn't, either!” + +“I don't suppose they kept a New England conscience,” he said, with a +vague smile. “It would be difficult in the presence of the rococo.” + +They left the garden through the beautiful gate which the old court +ironsmith Oegg hammered out in lovely forms of leaves and flowers, and +shaped laterally upward, as lightly as if with a waft of his hand, in +gracious Louis Quinze curves; and they looked back at it in the kind of +despair which any perfection inspires. They said how feminine it was, +how exotic, how expressive of a luxurious ideal of life which art had +purified and left eternally charming. They remembered their Ruskinian +youth, and the confidence with which they would once have condemned it; +and they had a sense of recreance in now admiring it; but they certainly +admired it, and it remained for them the supreme expression of that +time-soul, mundane, courtly, aristocratic, flattering, which once +influenced the art of the whole world, and which had here so curiously +found its apotheosis in a city remote from its native place and under +a rule sacerdotally vowed to austerity. The vast superb palace of the +prince bishops, which was now to house a whole troop of sovereigns, +imperial, royal, grand ducal and ducal, swelled aloft in superb +amplitude; but it did not realize their historic pride so effectively +as this exquisite work of the court ironsmith. It related itself in its +aerial beauty to that of the Tiepolo frescoes which the travellers knew +were swimming and soaring on the ceilings within, and from which it +seemed to accent their exclusion with a delicate irony, March said. “Or +iron-mongery,” he corrected himself upon reflection. + + + + +LIV. + +He had forgotten Kenby in these aesthetic interests, but he remembered +him again when he called a carriage, and ordered it driven to their +hotel. It was the hour of the German mid-day table d'hote, and they +would be sure to meet him there. The question now was how March should +own his presence in time to prevent his wife from showing her ignorance +of it to Kenby himself, and he was still turning the question hopelessly +over in his mind when the sight of the hotel seemed to remind her of a +fact which she announced. + +“Now, my dear, I am tired to death, and I am not going to sit through a +long table d'hote. I want you to send me up a simple beefsteak and a +cup of tea to our rooms; and I don't want you to come near for hours; +because I intend to take a whole afternoon nap. You can keep all the +maps and plans, and guides, and you had better go and see what the +Volksfest is like; it will give you some notion of the part the people +are really taking in all this official celebration, and you know I don't +care. Don't come up after dinner to see how I am getting along; I shall +get along; and if you should happen to wake me after I had dropped +off--” + +Kenby had seen them arrive from where he sat at the reading-room window, +waiting for the dinner hour, and had meant to rush out and greet Mrs. +March as they passed up the corridor. But she looked so tired that he +had decided to spare her till she came down to dinner; and as he sat +with March at their soup, he asked if she were not well. + +March explained, and he provisionally invented some regrets from her +that she should not see Kenby till supper. + +Kenby ordered a bottle of one of the famous Wurzburg wines for their +mutual consolation in her absence, and in the friendliness which its +promoted they agreed to spend the afternoon together. No man is so +inveterate a husband as not to take kindly an occasional release to +bachelor companionship, and before the dinner was over they agreed that +they would go to the Volksfest, and get some notion of the popular life +and amusements of Wurzburg, which was one of the few places where Kenby +had never been before; and they agreed that they would walk. + +Their way was partly up the quay of the Main, past a barrack full +of soldiers. They met detachments of soldiers everywhere, infantry, +artillery, cavalry. + +“This is going to be a great show,” Kenby said, meaning the manoeuvres, +and he added, as if now he had kept away from the subject long enough +and had a right to recur to it, at least indirectly, “I should like to +have Rose see it, and get his impressions.” + +“I've an idea he wouldn't approve of it. His mother says his mind is +turning more and more to philanthropy.” + +Kenby could not forego such a chance to speak of Mrs. Adding. “It's one +of the prettiest things to see how she understands Rose. It's charming +to see them together. She wouldn't have half the attraction without +him.” + +“Oh, yes,” March assented. He had often wondered how a man wishing to +marry a widow managed with the idea of her children by another marriage; +but if Kenby was honest; it was much simpler than he had supposed. He +could not say this to him, however, and in a certain embarrassment he +had with the conjecture in his presence he attempted a diversion. “We're +promised something at the Volksfest which will be a great novelty to +us as Americans. Our driver told us this morning that one of the houses +there was built entirely of wood.” + +When they reached the grounds of the Volksfest, this civil feature of +the great military event at hand, which the Marches had found largely +set forth in the programme of the parade, did not fully keep the glowing +promises made for it; in fact it could not easily have done so. It was +in a pleasant neighborhood of new villas such as form the modern quarter +of every German city, and the Volksfest was even more unfinished than +its environment. It was not yet enclosed by the fence which was to hide +its wonders from the non-paying public, but March and Kenby went in +through an archway where the gate-money was as effectually collected +from them as if they were barred every other entrance. + +The wooden building was easily distinguishable from the other edifices +because these were tents and booths still less substantial. They did not +make out its function, but of the others four sheltered merry-go-rounds, +four were beer-gardens, four were restaurants, and the rest were devoted +to amusements of the usual country-fair type. Apparently they had little +attraction for country people. The Americans met few peasants in the +grounds, and neither at the Edison kinematograph, where they refreshed +their patriotism with some scenes of their native life, nor at the +little theatre where they saw the sports of the arena revived, in the +wrestle of a woman with a bear, did any of the people except tradesmen +and artisans seem to be taking part in the festival expression of the +popular pleasure. + +The woman, who finally threw the bear, whether by slight, or by main +strength, or by a previous understanding with him, was a slender +creature, pathetically small and not altogether plain; and March as +they walked away lapsed into a pensive muse upon her strange employ. He +wondered how she came to take it up, and whether she began with the bear +when they were both very young, and she could easily throw him. + +“Well, women have a great deal more strength than we suppose,” Kenby +began with a philosophical air that gave March the hope of some rational +conversation. Then his eye glazed with a far-off look, and a doting +smile came into his face. “When we went through the Dresden gallery +together, Rose and I were perfectly used up at the end of an hour, but +his mother kept on as long as there was anything to see, and came away +as fresh as a peach.” + +Then March saw that it was useless to expect anything different from +him, and he let him talk on about Mrs. Adding all the rest of the way +back to the hotel. Kenby seemed only to have begun when they reached the +door, and wanted to continue the subject in the reading-room. + +March pleaded his wish to find how his wife had got through the +afternoon, and he escaped to her. He would have told her now that Kenby +was in the house, but he was really so sick of the fact himself that he +could not speak of it at once, and he let her go on celebrating all she +had seen from the window since she had waked from her long nap. She said +she could never be glad enough that they had come just at that time. +Soldiers had been going by the whole afternoon, and that made it so +feudal. + +“Yes,” he assented. “But aren't you coming up to the station with me to +see the Prince-Regent arrive? He's due at seven, you know.” + +“I declare I had forgotten all about it. No, I'm not equal to it. You +must go; you can tell me everything; be sure to notice how the Princess +Maria looks; the last of the Stuarts, you know; and some people consider +her the rightful Queen of England; and I'll have the supper ordered, and +we can go down as soon as you've got back.” + + + + +LV. + +March felt rather shabby stealing away without Kenby; but he had really +had as much of Mrs. Adding as he could stand, for one day, and he was +even beginning to get sick of Rose. Besides, he had not sent back a +line for 'Every Other Week' yet, and he had made up his mind to write a +sketch of the manoeuvres. To this end he wished to receive an impression +of the Prince-Regent's arrival which should not be blurred or clouded +by other interests. His wife knew the kind of thing he liked to see, and +would have helped him out with his observations, but Kenby would have +got in the way, and would have clogged the movement of his fancy in +assigning the facts to the parts he would like them to play in the +sketch. + +At least he made some such excuses to himself as he hurried along toward +the Kaiserstrasse. The draught of universal interest in that direction +had left the other streets almost deserted, but as he approached +the thoroughfare he found all the ways blocked, and the horse-cars, +ordinarily so furiously headlong, arrested by the multiple ranks of +spectators on the sidewalks. The avenue leading from the railway station +to the palace was decorated with flags and garlands, and planted with +the stems of young firs and birches. The doorways were crowded, and the +windows dense with eager faces peering out of the draped bunting. The +carriageway was kept clear by mild policemen who now and then allowed +one of the crowd to cross it. + +The crowd was made up mostly of women and boys, and when March joined +them, they had already been waiting an hour for the sight of the princes +who were to bless them with a vision of the faery race which kings +always are to common men. He thought the people looked dull, and +therefore able to bear the strain of expectation with patience better +than a livelier race. They relieved it by no attempt at joking; here +and there a dim smile dawned on a weary face, but it seemed an effect +of amiability rather than humor. There was so little of this, or else +it was so well bridled by the solemnity of the occasion, that not a man, +woman, or child laughed when a bareheaded maid-servant broke through +the lines and ran down between them with a life-size plaster bust of the +Emperor William in her arms: she carried it like an overgrown infant, +and in alarm at her conspicuous part she cast frightened looks from side +to side without arousing any sort of notice. Undeterred by her failure, +a young dog, parted from his owner, and seeking him in the crowd, +pursued his search in a wild flight down the guarded roadway with an air +of anxiety that in America would have won him thunders of applause, and +all sorts of kindly encouragements to greater speed. But this German +crowd witnessed his progress apparently without interest, and without a +sign of pleasure. They were there to see the Prince-Regent arrive, +and they did not suffer themselves to be distracted by any preliminary +excitement. Suddenly the indefinable emotion which expresses the +fulfilment of expectation in a waiting crowd passed through the +multitude, and before he realized it March was looking into the friendly +gray-bearded face of the Prince-Regent, for the moment that his carriage +allowed in passing. This came first preceded by four outriders, and +followed by other simple equipages of Bavarian blue, full of highnesses +of all grades. Beside the Regent sat his daughter-in-law, the Princess +Maria, her silvered hair framing a face as plain and good as the +Regent's, if not so intelligent. + +He, in virtue of having been born in Wurzburg, is officially supposed +to be specially beloved by his fellow townsmen; and they now testified +their affection as he whirled through their ranks, bowing right and +left, by what passes in Germany for a cheer. It is the word Hoch, +groaned forth from abdominal depths, and dismally prolonged in a hollow +roar like that which the mob makes behind the scenes at the theatre +before bursting in visible tumult on the stage. Then the crowd +dispersed, and March came away wondering why such a kindly-looking +Prince-Regent should not have given them a little longer sight of +himself; after they had waited so patiently for hours to see him. But +doubtless in those countries, he concluded, the art of keeping the +sovereign precious by suffering him to be rarely and briefly seen is +wisely studied. + +On his way home he resolved to confess Kenby's presence; and he did so +as soon as he sat down to supper with his wife. “I ought to have told +you the first thing after breakfast. But when I found you in that mood +of having the place all to ourselves, I put it off.” + +“You took terrible chances, my dear,” she said, gravely. + +“And I have been terribly punished. You've no idea how much Kenby has +talked to me about Mrs. Adding!” + +She broke out laughing. “Well, perhaps you've suffered enough. But you +can see now, can't you, that it would have been awful if I had met him, +and let out that I didn't know he was here?” + +“Terrible. But if I had told, it would have spoiled the whole morning +for you; you couldn't have thought of anything else.” + +“Oh, I don't know,” she said, airily. “What should you think if I told +you I had known he was here ever since last night?” She went on in +delight at the start he gave. “I saw him come into the hotel while you +were gone for the guide-books, and I determined to keep it from you as +long as I could; I knew it would worry you. We've both been very nice; +and I forgive you,” she hurried on, “because I've really got something +to tell you.” + +“Don't tell me that Burnamy is here!” + +“Don't jump to conclusions! No, Burnamy isn't here, poor fellow! And +don't suppose that I'm guilty of concealment because I haven't told you +before. I was just thinking whether I wouldn't spare you till morning, +but now I shall let you take the brunt of it. Mrs. Adding and Rose are +here.” She gave the fact time to sink in, and then she added, “And Miss +Triscoe and her father are here.” + +“What is the matter with Major Eltwin and his wife being here, too? Are +they in our hotel?” + +“No, they are not. They came to look for rooms while you were off +waiting for the Prince-Regent, and I saw them. They intended to go to +Frankfort for the manoeuvres, but they heard that there was not even +standing-room there, and so the general telegraphed to the Spanischer +Hof, and they all came here. As it is, he will have to room with Rose, +and Agatha and Mrs. Adding will room together. I didn't think Agatha was +looking very well; she looked unhappy; I don't believe she's heard, from +Burnamy yet; I hadn't a chance to ask her. And there's something else +that I'm afraid will fairly make you sick.” + +“Oh, no; go on. I don't think anything can do that, after an afternoon +of Kenby's confidences.” + +“It's worse than Kenby,” she said with a sigh. “You know I told you +at Carlsbad I thought that ridiculous old thing was making up to Mrs. +Adding.” + +“Kenby? Why of co--” + +“Don't be stupid, my dear! No, not Kenby: General Triscoe. I wish +you could have been here to see him paying her all sort; of silly +attentions, and hear him making her compliments.” + +“Thank you. I think I'm just as well without it. Did she pay him silly +attentions and compliments, too?” + +“That's the only thing that can make me forgive her for his wanting her. +She was keeping him at arm's-length the whole time, and she was doing it +so as not to make him contemptible before his daughter.” + +“It must have been hard. And Rose?” + +“Rose didn't seem very well. He looks thin and pale; but he's sweeter +than ever. She's certainly commoner clay than Rose. No, I won't say +that! It's really nothing but General Triscoe's being an old goose about +her that makes her seem so, and it isn't fair.” + +March went down to his coffee in the morning with the delicate duty of +telling Kenby that Mrs. Adding was in town. Kenby seemed to think it +quite natural she should wish to see the manoeuvres, and not at all +strange that she should come to them with General Triscoe and his +daughter. He asked if March would not go with him to call upon her after +breakfast, and as this was in the line of his own instructions from Mrs. +March, he went. + +They found Mrs. Adding with the Triscoes, and March saw nothing that was +not merely friendly, or at the most fatherly, in the general's behavior +toward her. If Mrs. Adding or Miss Triscoe saw more, they hid it in +a guise of sisterly affection for each other. At the most the general +showed a gayety which one would not have expected of him under any +conditions, and which the fact that he and Rose had kept each other +awake a good deal the night before seemed so little adapted to call +out. He joked with Rose about their room and their beds, and put on +a comradery with him that was not a perfect fit, and that suffered by +contrast with the pleasure of the boy and Kenby in meeting. There was a +certain question in the attitude of Mrs. Adding till March helped Kenby +to account for his presence; then she relaxed in an effect of security +so tacit that words overstate it, and began to make fun of Rose. + +March could not find that Miss Triscoe looked unhappy, as his wife had +said; he thought simply that she had grown plainer; but when he reported +this, she lost her patience with him. In a girl, she said, plainness was +unhappiness; and she wished to know when he would ever learn to look an +inch below the surface: She was sure that Agatha Triscoe had not +heard from Burnamy since the Emperor's birthday; that she was at +swords'-points with her father, and so desperate that she did not care +what became of her. + +He had left Kenby with the others, and now, after his wife had talked +herself tired of them all, he proposed going out again to look about +the city, where there was nothing for the moment to remind them of the +presence of their friends or even of their existence. She answered that +she was worrying about all those people, and trying to work out +their problem for them. He asked why she did not let them work it out +themselves as they would have to do, after all her worry, and she said +that where her sympathy had been excited she could not stop worrying, +whether it did any good or not, and she could not respect any one who +could drop things so completely out of his mind as he could; she had +never been able to respect that in him. + +“I know, my dear,” he assented. “But I don't think it's a question of +moral responsibility; it's a question of mental structure, isn't it? +Your consciousness isn't built in thought-tight compartments, and one +emotion goes all through it, and sinks you; but I simply close the doors +and shut the emotion in, and keep on.” + +The fancy pleased him so much that he worked it out in all its +implications, and could not, after their long experience of each other, +realize that she was not enjoying the joke too, till she said she saw +that he merely wished to tease. Then, too late, he tried to share her +worry; but she protested that she was not worrying at all; that she +cared nothing about those people: that she was nervous, she was tired; +and she wished he would leave her, and go out alone. + +He found himself in the street again, and he perceived that he must be +walking fast when a voice called him by name, and asked him what his +hurry was. The voice was Stoller's, who got into step with him and +followed the first with a second question. + +“Made up your mind to go to the manoeuvres with me?” + +His bluntness made it easy for March to answer: “I'm afraid my wife +couldn't stand the drive back and forth.” + +“Come without her.” + +“Thank you. It's very kind of you. I'm not certain that I shall go at +all. If I do, I shall run out by train, and take my chances with the +crowd.” + +Stoller insisted no further. He felt no offence at the refusal of his +offer, or chose to show none. He said, with the same uncouth abruptness +as before: “Heard anything of that fellow since he left Carlsbad?” + +“Burnamy?” + +“Mm.” + +“No.” + +“Know where he is?” + +“I don't in the least.” + +Stoller let another silence elapse while they hurried on, before he +said, “I got to thinking what he done afterwards. He wasn't bound to +look out for me; he might suppose I knew what I was about.” + +March turned his face and stared in Stoller's, which he was letting hang +forward as he stamped heavily on. Had the disaster proved less than +he had feared, and did he still want Burnamy's help in patching up +the broken pieces; or did he really wish to do Burnamy justice to his +friend? + +In any case March's duty was clear. “I think Burnamy was bound to look +out for you; Mr. Stoller, and I am glad to know that he saw it in the +same light.” + +“I know he did,” said Stoker with a blaze as from a long-smouldering +fury, “and damn him, I'm not going to have it. I'm not going to, plead +the baby act with him, or with any man. You tell him so, when you get +the chance. You tell him I don't hold him accountable for anything I +made him do. That ain't business; I don't want him around me, any more; +but if he wants to go back to the paper he can have his place. You tell +him I stand by what I done; and it's all right between him and me. I +hain't done anything about it, the way I wanted him to help me to; I've +let it lay, and I'm a-going to. I guess it ain't going to do me any +harm, after all; our people hain't got very long memories; but if it is, +let it. You tell him it's all right.” + +“I don't know where he is, Mr. Stoller, and I don't know that I care to +be the bearer of your message,” said March. + +“Why not?” + +“Why, for one thing, I don't agree with you that it's all right. Your +choosing to stand by the consequences of Burnamy's wrong doesn't undo +it. As I understand, you don't pardon it--” + +Stoller gulped and did not answer at once. Then he said, “I stand by +what I done. I'm not going to let him say I turned him down for doing +what I told him to, because I hadn't the sense to know what I was +about.” + +“Ah, I don't think it's a thing he'll like to speak of in any case,” + said March. + +Stoller left him, at the corner they had reached, as abruptly as he had +joined him, and March hurried back to his wife, and told her what had +just passed between him and Stoller. + +She broke out, “Well, I am surprised at you, my dear! You have always +accused me of suspecting people, and attributing bad motives; and here +you've refused even to give the poor man the benefit of the doubt. He +merely wanted to save his savage pride with you, and that's all he wants +to do with Burnamy. How could it hurt the poor boy to know that Stoller +doesn't blame him? Why should you refuse to give his message to Burnamy? +I don't want you to ridicule me for my conscience any more, Basil; +you're twice as bad as I ever was. Don't you think that a person can +ever expiate an offence? I've often heard you say that if any one owned +his fault, he put it from him, and it was the same as if it hadn't been; +and hasn't Burnamy owned up over and over again? I'm astonished at you, +dearest.” + +March was in fact somewhat astonished at himself in the light of her +reasoning; but she went on with some sophistries that restored him to +his self-righteousness. + +“I suppose you think he has interfered with Stoller's political +ambition, and injured him in that way. Well, what if he has? Would it be +a good thing to have a man like that succeed in politics? You're always +saying that the low character of our politicians is the ruin of the +country; and I'm sure,” she added, with a prodigious leap over all the +sequences, “that Mr. Stoller is acting nobly; and it's your duty to help +him relieve Burnamy's mind.” At the laugh he broke into she hastened to +say, “Or if you won't, I hope you'll not object to my doing so, for I +shall, anyway!” + +She rose as if she were going to begin at once, in spite of his +laughing; and in fact she had already a plan for coming to Stoller's +assistance by getting at Burnamy through Miss Triscoe, whom she +suspected of knowing where he was. There had been no chance for them +to speak of him either that morning or the evening before, and after +a great deal of controversy with herself in her husband's presence she +decided to wait till they came naturally together the next morning for +the walk to the Capuchin Church on the hill beyond the river, which +they had agreed to take. She could not keep from writing a note to +Miss Triscoe begging her to be sure to come, and hinting that she had +something very important to speak of. + +She was not sure but she had been rather silly to do this, but when they +met the girl confessed that she had thought of giving up the walk, and +might not have come except for Mrs. March's note. She had come with +Rose, and had left him below with March; Mrs. Adding was coming later +with Kenby and General Triscoe. + +Mrs. March lost no time in telling her the great news; and if she had +been in doubt before of the girl's feeling for Burnamy she was now in +none. She had the pleasure of seeing her flush with hope, and then the +pain which was also a pleasure, of seeing her blanch with dismay. + +“I don't know where he is, Mrs. March. I haven't heard a word from him +since that night in Carlsbad. I expected--I didn't know but you--” + +Mrs. March shook her head. She treated the fact skillfully as something +to be regretted simply because it would be such a relief to Burnamy to +know how Mr. Stoller now felt. Of course they could reach him somehow; +you could always get letters to people in Europe, in the end; and, +in fact, it was altogether probable that he was that very instant in +Wurzburg; for if the New York-Paris Chronicle had wanted him to write +up the Wagner operas, it would certainly want him to write up the +manoeuvres. She established his presence in Wurzburg by such an +irrefragable chain of reasoning that, at a knock outside, she was just +able to kelp back a scream, while she ran to open the door. It was not +Burnamy, as in compliance with every nerve it ought to have been, but +her husband, who tried to justify his presence by saying that they were +all waiting for her and Miss Triscoe, and asked when they were coming. + +She frowned him silent, and then shut herself outside with him long +enough to whisper, “Say she's got a headache, or anything you please; +but don't stop talking here with me, or I shall go wild.” She then shut +herself in again, with the effect of holding him accountable for the +whole affair. + + + + +LVI. + +General Triscoe could not keep his irritation, at hearing that his +daughter was not coming, out of the excuses he made to Mrs. Adding; he +said again and again that it must seem like a discourtesy to her. She +gayly disclaimed any such notion; she would not hear of putting off +their excursion to another day; it had been raining just long enough to +give them a reasonable hope of a few hours' drought, and they might not +have another dry spell for weeks. She slipped off her jacket after they +started, and gave it to Kenby, but she let General Triscoe hold her +umbrella over her, while he limped beside her. She seemed to March, as +he followed with Rose, to be playing the two men off against each other, +with an ease which he wished his wife could be there to see, and to +judge aright. + +They crossed by the Old Bridge, which is of the earliest years of the +seventh century, between rows of saints whose statues surmount the +piers. Some are bishops as well as saints; one must have been at Rome +in his day, for he wore his long thick beard in the fashion of +Michelangelo's Moses. He stretched out toward the passers two fingers +of blessing and was unaware of the sparrow which had lighted on them +and was giving him the effect of offering it to the public admiration. +Squads of soldiers tramping by turned to look and smile, and the dull +faces of citizens lighted up at the quaint sight. Some children stopped +and remained very quiet, not to scare away the bird; and a cold-faced, +spiritual-looking priest paused among them as if doubting whether to +rescue the absent-minded bishop from a situation derogatory to his +dignity; but he passed on, and then the sparrow suddenly flew off. + +Rose Adding had lingered for the incident with March, but they now +pushed on, and came up with the others at the end of the bridge, where +they found them in question whether they had not better take a carriage +and drive to the foot of the hill before they began their climb. March +thanked them, but said he was keeping up the terms of his cure, and +was getting in all the walking he could. Rose begged his mother not to +include him in the driving party; he protested that he was feeling so +well, and the walk was doing him good. His mother consented, if he would +promise not to get tired, and then she mounted into the two-spanner +which had driven instinctively up to their party when their parley +began, and General Triscoe took the place beside her, while Kenby, with +smiling patience, seated himself in front. + +Rose kept on talking with March about Wurzburg and its history, which it +seemed he had been reading the night before when he could not sleep. He +explained, “We get little histories of the places wherever we go. That's +what Mr. Kenby does, you know.” + +“Oh, yes,” said March. + +“I don't suppose I shall get a chance to read much here,” Rose +continued, “with General Triscoe in the room. He doesn't like the +light.” + +“Well, well. He's rather old, you know. And you musn't read too much, +Rose. It isn't good for you.” + +“I know, but if I don't read, I think, and that keeps me awake worse. +Of course, I respect General Triscoe for being in the war, and getting +wounded,” the boy suggested. + +“A good many did it,” March was tempted to say. + +The boy did not notice his insinuation. “I suppose there were some +things they did in the army, and then they couldn't get over the habit. +But General Grant says in his 'Life' that he never used a profane +expletive.” + +“Does General Triscoe?” + +Rose answered reluctantly, “If anything wakes him in the night, or if he +can't make these German beds over to suit him--” + +“I see.” March turned his face to hide the smile which he would not +have let the boy detect. He thought best not to let Rose resume his +impressions of the general; and in talk of weightier matters they found +themselves at that point of the climb where the carriage was waiting +for them. From this point they followed an alley through ivied, garden +walls, till they reached the first of the balustraded terraces which +ascend to the crest of the hill where the church stands. Each terrace +is planted with sycamores, and the face of the terrace wall supports +a bass-relief commemorating with the drama of its lifesize figures the +stations of the cross. + +Monks and priests were coming and going, and dropped on the steps +leading from terrace to terrace were women and children on their knees +in prayer. It was all richly reminiscent of pilgrim scenes in other +Catholic lands; but here there was a touch of earnest in the Northern +face of the worshipers which the South had never imparted. Even in the +beautiful rococo interior of the church at the top of the hill there +was a sense of something deeper and truer than mere ecclesiasticism; +and March came out of it in a serious muse while the boy at his side +did nothing to interrupt. A vague regret filled his heart as he gazed +silently out over the prospect of river and city and vineyard, purpling +together below the top where he stood, and mixed with this regret was a +vague resentment of his wife's absence. She ought to have been there +to share his pang and his pleasure; they had so long enjoyed everything +together that without her he felt unable to get out of either emotion +all there was in it. + +The forgotten boy stole silently down the terraces after the rest of +the party who had left him behind with March. At the last terrace they +stopped and waited; and after a delay that began to be long to Mrs. +Adding, she wondered aloud what could have become of them. + +Kenby promptly offered to go back and see, and she consented in seeming +to refuse: “It isn't worth while. Rose has probably got Mr. March into +some deep discussion, and they've forgotten all about us. But if you +will go, Mr. Kenby, you might just remind Rose of my existence.” She let +him lay her jacket on her shoulders before he left her, and then she sat +down on one of the steps, which General Triscoe kept striking with the +point of her umbrella as he stood before her. + +“I really shall have to take it from you if you do that any more,” she +said, laughing up in his face. “I'm serious.” + +He stopped. “I wish I could believe you were serious, for a moment.” + +“You may, if you think it will do you any good. But I don't see why.” + +The general smiled, but with a kind of tremulous eagerness which might +have been pathetic to any one who liked him. “Do you know this is almost +the first time I have spoken alone with you?” + +“Really, I hadn't noticed,” said Mrs. Adding. + +General Triscoe laughed in rather a ghastly way. “Well, that's +encouraging, at least, to a man who's had his doubts whether it wasn't +intended.” + +“Intended? By whom? What do you mean, General Triscoe? Why in the world +shouldn't you have spoken alone with me before?” + +He was not, with all his eagerness, ready to say, and while she smiled +pleasantly she had the look in her eyes of being brought to bay and +being prepared, if it must come to that, to have the worst over, then +and there. She was not half his age, but he was aware of her having no +respect for his years; compared with her average American past as he +understood it, his social place was much higher, but, she was not in the +least awed by it; in spite of his war record she was making him behave +like a coward. He was in a false position, and if he had any one but +himself to blame he had not her. He read her equal knowledge of these +facts in the clear eyes that made him flush and turn his own away. + +Then he started with a quick “Hello!” and stood staring up at the steps +from the terrace above, where Rose Adding was staying himself weakly by +a clutch of Kenby on one side and March on the other. + +His mother looked round and caught herself up from where she sat and ran +toward him. “Oh, Rose!” + +“It's nothing, mother,” he called to her, and as she dropped on her +knees before him he sank limply against her. “It was like what I had in +Carlsbad; that's all. Don't worry about me, please!” + +“I'm not worrying, Rose,” she said with courage of the same texture as +his own. “You've been walking too much. You must go back in the carriage +with us. Can't you have it come here?” she asked Kenby. + +“There's no road, Mrs. Adding. But if Rose would let me carry him--” + +“I can walk,” the boy protested, trying to lift himself from her neck. + +“No, no! you mustn't.” She drew away and let him fall into the arms that +Kenby put round him. He raised the frail burden lightly to his shoulder, +and moved strongly away, followed by the eyes of the spectators who had +gathered about the little group, but who dispersed now, and went back to +their devotions. + +March hurried after Kenby with Mrs. Adding, whom he told he had just +missed Rose and was looking about for him, when Kenby came with her +message for them. They made sure that he was nowhere about the church, +and then started together down the terraces. At the second or third +station below they found the boy clinging to the barrier that protected +the bass-relief from the zeal of the devotees. He looked white and sick, +though he insisted that he was well, and when he turned to come away +with them he reeled and would have fallen if Kenby had not caught him. +Kenby wanted to carry him, but Rose would not let him, and had made his +way down between them. + +“Yea, he has such a spirit,” she said, “and I've no doubt he's suffering +now more from Mr. Kenby's kindness than from his own sickness he had one +of these giddy turns in Carlsbad, though, and I shall certainly have a +doctor to see him.” + +“I think I should, Mrs. Adding,” said March, not too gravely, for it +seemed to him that it was not quite his business to alarm her further, +if she was herself taking the affair with that seriousness. He +questioned whether she was taking it quite seriously enough, when she +turned with a laugh, and called to General Triscoe, who was limping down +the steps of the last terrace behind them: + +“Oh, poor General Triscoe! I thought you had gone on ahead.” + +General Triscoe could not enter into the joke of being forgotten, +apparently. He assisted with gravity at the disposition of the party +for the return, when they all reached the carriage. Rose had the place +beside his mother, and Kenby wished March to take his with the general +and let him sit with the driver; but he insisted that he would rather +walk home, and he did walk till they had driven out of eight. Then he +called a passing one-spanner, and drove to his hotel in comfort and +silence. + + + + +LVII. + +Kenby did not come to the Swan before supper; then he reported that +the doctor had said Rose was on the verge of a nervous collapse. He had +overworked at school, but the immediate trouble was the high, thin air, +which the doctor said he must be got out of at once, into a quiet place +at the sea-shore somewhere. He had suggested Ostend; or some point on +the French coast; Kenby had thought of Schevleningen, and the doctor had +said that would do admirably. + +“I understood from Mrs. Adding,” he concluded, “that you were going. +there for your after-cure, Mr. March, and I didn't know but you might be +going soon.” + +At the mention of Schevleningen the Marches had looked at each +other with a guilty alarm, which they both tried to give the cast of +affectionate sympathy but she dismissed her fear that he might be going +to let his compassion prevail with him to his hurt when he said: “Why, +we ought to have been there before this, but I've been taking my life in +my hands in trying to see a little of Germany, and I'm afraid now that +Mrs. March has her mind too firmly fixed on Berlin to let me think of +going to Schevleningen till we've been there.” + +“It's too bad!” said Mrs. March, with real regret. “I wish we were +going.” But she had not the least notion of gratifying her wish; and +they were all silent till Kenby broke out: + +“Look here! You know how I feel about Mrs Adding! I've been pretty frank +with Mr. March myself, and I've had my suspicions that she's been frank +with you, Mrs. March. There isn't any doubt about my wanting to marry +her, and up to this time there hasn't been any doubt about her not +wanting to marry me. But it isn't a question of her or of me, now. It's +a question of Rose. I love the boy,” and Kenby's voice shook, and he +faltered a moment. “Pshaw! You understand.” + +“Indeed I do, Mr. Kenby,” said Mrs. March. “I perfectly understand you.” + +“Well, I don't think Mrs. Adding is fit to make the journey with +him alone, or to place herself in the best way after she gets to +Schevleningen. She's been badly shaken up; she broke down before +the doctor; she said she didn't know what to do; I suppose she's +frightened--” + +Kenby stopped again, and March asked, “When is she going?” + +“To-morrow,” said Kenby, and he added, “And now the question is, why +shouldn't I go with her?” + +Mrs. March gave a little start, and looked at her husband, but he +said nothing, and Kenby seemed not to have supposed that he would say +anything. + +“I know it would be very American, and all that, but I happen to be an +American, and it wouldn't be out of character for me. I suppose,” he +appealed to Mrs. March, “that it's something I might offer to do if it +were from New York to Florida--and I happened to be going there? And I +did happen to be going to Holland.” + +“Why, of course, Mr. Kenby,” she responded, with such solemnity that +March gave way in an outrageous laugh. + +Kenby laughed, and Mrs. March laughed too, but with an inner note of +protest. + +“Well,” Kenby continued, still addressing her, “what I want you to do is +to stand by me when I propose it.” + +Mrs. March gathered strength to say, “No, Mr. Kenby, it's your own +affair, and you must take the responsibility.” + +“Do you disapprove?” + +“It isn't the same as it would be at home. You see that yourself.” + +“Well,” said Kenby, rising, “I have to arrange about their getting away +to-morrow. It won't be easy in this hurly-burly that's coming off.” + +“Give Rose our love; and tell Mrs. Adding that I'll come round and see +her to-morrow before she starts.” + +“Oh! I'm afraid you can't, Mrs. March. They're to start at six in the +morning.” + +“They are! Then we must go and see them tonight. We'll be there almost +as soon as you are.” + +March went up to their rooms with, his wife, and she began on the +stairs: + +“Well, my dear, I hope you realize that your laughing so gave us +completely away. And what was there to keep grinning about, all +through?” + +“Nothing but the disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love. It's always +the most amusing thing in the world; but to see it trying to pass itself +off in poor old Kenby as duty and humanity, and disinterested affection +for Rose, was more than I could stand. I don't apologize for laughing; I +wanted to yell.” + +His effrontery and his philosophy both helped to save him; and she said +from the point where he had side-tracked her mind: “I don't call it +disingenuous. He was brutally frank. He's made it impossible to treat +the affair with dignity. I want you to leave the whole thing to me, from +this out. Now, will you?” + +On their way to the Spanischer Hof she arranged in her own mind for Mrs. +Adding to get a maid, and for the doctor to send an assistant with her +on the journey, but she was in such despair with her scheme that she +had not the courage to right herself when Mrs. Adding met her with the +appeal: + +“Oh, Mrs. March, I'm so glad you approve of Mr. Kenby's plan. It does +seem the only thing to do. I can't trust myself alone with Rose, and Mr. +Kenby's intending to go to Schevleningen a few days later anyway. Though +it's too bad to let him give up the manoeuvres.” + +“I'm sure he won't mind that,” Mrs. March's voice said mechanically, +while her thought was busy with the question whether this scandalous +duplicity was altogether Kenby's, and whether Mrs. Adding was as +guiltless of any share in it as she looked. She looked pitifully +distracted; she might not have understood his report; or Kenby might +really have mistaken Mrs. March's sympathy for favor. + +“No, he only lives to do good,” Mrs. Adding returned. “He's with Rose; +won't you come in and see them?” + +Rose was lying back on the pillows of a sofa, from which they would +not let him get up. He was full of the trip to Holland, and had already +pushed Kenby, as Kenby owned, beyond the bounds of his very general +knowledge of the Dutch language, which Rose had plans for taking up +after they were settled in Schevleningen. The boy scoffed at the notion +that he was not perfectly well, and he wished to talk with March on the +points where he had found Kenby wanting. + +“Kenby is an encyclopaedia compared with me, Rose,” the editor +protested, and he amplified his ignorance for the boy's good to an +extent which Rose saw was a joke. He left Holland to talk about other +things which his mother thought quite as bad for him. He wished to know +if March did not think that the statue of the bishop with the sparrow on +its finger was a subject for a poem; and March said gayly that if Rose +would write it he would print it in 'Every Other Week'. + +The boy flushed with pleasure at his banter. “No, I couldn't do it. But +I wish Mr. Burnamy had seen it. He could. Will you tell him about it?” + He wanted to know if March had heard from Burnamy lately, and in the +midst of his vivid interest he gave a weary sigh. + +His mother said that now he had talked enough, and bade him say good-by +to the Marches, who were coming so soon to Holland, anyway. Mrs. March +put her arms round him to kiss him, and when she let him sink back her +eyes were dim. + +“You see how frail he is?” said Mrs. Adding. “I shall not let him out of +my sight, after this, till he's well again.” + +She had a kind of authority in sending Kenby away with them which was +not lost upon the witnesses. He asked them to come into the reading-room +a moment with him, and Mrs. March wondered if he were going to make +some excuse to her for himself; but he said: “I don't know how we're to +manage about the Triscoes. The general will have a room to himself, but +if Mrs. Adding takes Rose in with her, it leaves Miss Triscoe out, and +there isn't a room to be had in this house for love or money. Do you +think,” he appealed directly to Mrs. March, “that it would do to offer +her my room at the Swan?” + +“Why, yes,” she assented, with a reluctance rather for the complicity +in which he had already involved her, and for which he was still +unpunished, than for what he was now proposing. “Or she could come in +with me, and Mr. March could take it.” + +“Whichever you think,” said Kenby so submissively that she relented, to +ask: + +“And what will you do?” + +He laughed. “Well, people have been known to sleep in a chair. I shall +manage somehow.” + +“You might offer to go in with the general,” March suggested, and the +men apparently thought this was a joke. Mrs. March did not laugh in her +feminine worry about ways and means. + +“Where is Miss Triscoe?” she asked. “We haven't seen them.” + +“Didn't Mrs. Adding tell you? They went to supper at a restaurant; the +general doesn't like the cooking here. They ought to have been back +before this.” + +He looked up at the clock on the wall, and she said, “I suppose you +would like us to wait.” + +“It would be very kind of you.” + +“Oh, it's quite essential,” she returned with an airy freshness which +Kenby did not seem to feel as painfully as he ought. + +They all sat down, and the Triscoes came in after a few minutes, and a +cloud on the general's face lifted at the proposition Kenby left Mrs. +March to make. + +“I thought that child ought to be in his mother's charge,” he said. +With his own comfort provided for, he made no objections to Mrs. +March's plan; and Agatha went to take leave of Rose and his mother. +“By-the-way,” the general turned to March, “I found Stoller at the +restaurant where we supped. He offered me a place in his carriage for +the manoeuvres. How are you going?” + +“I think I shall go by train. I don't fancy the long drive.” + +“Well, I don't know that it's worse than the long walk after you leave +the train,” said the general from the offence which any difference of +taste was apt to give him. “Are you going by train, too?” he asked Kenby +with indifference. + +“I'm not going at all,” said Kenby. “I'm leaving Wurzburg in the +morning.” + +“Oh, indeed,” said the general. + +Mrs. March could not make out whether he knew that Kenby was going with +Rose and Mrs. Adding, but she felt that there must be a full and open +recognition of the fact among them. “Yes,” she said, “isn't it fortunate +that Mr. Kenby should be going to Holland, too! I should have been so +unhappy about them if Mrs. Adding had been obliged to make that long +journey with poor little Rose alone.” + +“Yes, yes; very fortunate, certainly,” said the general colorlessly. + +Her husband gave her a glance of intelligent appreciation; but Kenby was +too simply, too densely content with the situation to know the value of +what she had done. She thought he must certainly explain, as he walked +back with her to the Swan, whether he had misrepresented her to Mrs. +Adding, or Mrs. Adding had misunderstood him. Somewhere there had been +an error, or a duplicity which it was now useless to punish; and Kenby +was so apparently unconscious of it that she had not the heart to be +cross with him. She heard Miss Triscoe behind her with March laughing +in the gayety which the escape from her father seemed to inspire in her. +She was promising March to go with him in the morning to see the Emperor +and Empress of Germany arrive at the station, and he was warning her +that if she laughed there, like that, she would subject him to fine +and imprisonment. She pretended that she would like to see him led off +between two gendarmes, but consented to be a little careful when he +asked her how she expected to get back to her hotel without him, if such +a thing happened. + + + + +LVIII. + +After all, Miss Triscoe did not go with March; she preferred to sleep. +The imperial party was to arrive at half past seven, but at six the +crowd was already dense before the station, and all along the street +leading to the Residenz. It was a brilliant day, with the promise of +sunshine, through which a chilly wind blew, for the manoeuvres. The +colors of all the German states flapped in this breeze from the poles +wreathed with evergreen which encircled the square; the workmen putting +the last touches on the bronzed allegory hurried madly to be done, and +they had, scarcely finished their labors when two troops of dragoons +rode into the place and formed before the station, and waited as +motionlessly as their horses would allow. + +These animals were not so conscious as lions at the approach of princes; +they tossed and stamped impatiently in the long interval before the +Regent and his daughter-in-law came to welcome their guests. All the +human beings, both those who were in charge and those who were under +charge, were in a quiver of anxiety to play their parts well, as if +there were some heavy penalty for failure in the least point. The +policemen keeping the people, in line behind the ropes which restrained +them trembled with eagerness; the faces of some of the troopers +twitched. An involuntary sigh went up from the crowd as the Regent's +carriage appeared, heralded by outriders, and followed by other plain +carriages of Bavarian blue with liveries of blue and silver. Then the +whistle of the Kaiser's train sounded; a trumpeter advanced and began to +blow his trumpet as they do in the theatre; and exactly at the appointed +moment the Emperor and Empress came out of the station through the +brilliant human alley leading from it, mounted their carriages, with +the stage trumpeter always blowing, and whirled swiftly round half the +square and flashed into the corner toward the Residenz out of sight. +The same hollow groans of Ho-o-o-ch greeted and followed them from the +spectators as had welcomed the Regent when he first arrived among his +fellow-townsmen, with the same effect of being the conventional cries of +a stage mob behind the scenes. + +The Emperor was like most of his innumerable pictures, with a swarthy +face from which his blue eyes glanced pleasantly; he looked good-humored +if not good-natured; the Empress smiled amiably beneath her deeply +fringed white parasol, and they both bowed right and left in +acknowledgment of those hollow groans; but again it seemed, to March +that sovereignty, gave the popular curiosity, not to call it devotion, a +scantier return than it merited. He had perhaps been insensibly working +toward some such perception as now came to him that the great difference +between Europe and America was that in Europe life is histrionic +and dramatized, and that in America, except when it is trying to be +European, it is direct and sincere. He wondered whether the innate +conviction of equality, the deep, underlying sense of a common humanity +transcending all social and civic pretences, was what gave their +theatrical effect to the shows of deference from low to high, and of +condescension from high to low. If in such encounters of sovereigns and +subjects, the prince did not play his part so well as the people, it +might be that he had a harder part to play, and that to support +his dignity at all, to keep from being found out the sham that he +essentially was, he had to hurry across the stage amidst the distracting +thunders of the orchestra. If the star staid to be scrutinized by the +soldiers, citizens, and so forth, even the poor supernumeraries and +scene-shifters might see that he was a tallow candle like themselves. + +In the censorious mood induced by the reflection that he had waited an +hour and a half for half a minute's glimpse of the imperial party, March +now decided not to go to the manoeuvres, where he might be subjected to +still greater humiliation and disappointment. He had certainly come to +Wurzburg for the manoeuvres, but Wurzburg had been richly repaying in +itself; and why should he stifle half an hour in an overcrowded train, +and struggle for three miles on foot against that harsh wind, to see a +multitude of men give proofs of their fitness to do manifold murder? He +was, in fact, not the least curious for the sight, and the only thing +that really troubled him was the question of how he should justify his +recreance to his wife. This did alloy the pleasure with which he began, +after an excellent breakfast at a neighboring cafe, to stroll about +the streets, though he had them almost to himself, so many citizens had +followed the soldiers to the manoeuvres. + +It was not till the soldiers began returning from the manoeuvres, +dusty-footed, and in white canvas overalls drawn over their trousers to +save them, that he went back to Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe at the +Swan. He had given them time enough to imagine him at the review, and to +wonder whether he had seen General Triscoe and the Stollers there, and +they met him with such confident inquiries that he would not undeceive +them at once. He let them divine from his inventive answers that he +had not gone to the manoeuvres, which put them in the best humor with +themselves, and the girl said it was so cold and rough that she wished +her father had not gone, either. The general appeared just before dinner +and frankly avowed the same wish. He was rasping and wheezing from the +dust which filled his lungs; he looked blown and red, and he was too +angry with the company he had been in to have any comments on the +manoeuvres. He referred to the military chiefly in relation to the +Miss Stollers' ineffectual flirtations, which he declared had been +outrageous. Their father had apparently no control over them whatever, +or else was too ignorant to know that they were misbehaving. They were +without respect or reverence for any one; they had talked to General +Triscoe as if he were a boy of their own age, or a dotard whom nobody +need mind; they had not only kept up their foolish babble before him, +they had laughed and giggled, they had broken into snatches of American +song, they had all but whistled and danced. They made loud comments in +Illinois English--on the cuteness of the officers whom they admired, and +they had at one time actually got out their handkerchiefs. He supposed +they meant to wave them at the officers, but at the look he gave them +they merely put their hats together and snickered in derision of +him. They were American girls of the worst type; they conformed to no +standard of behavior; their conduct was personal. They ought to be taken +home. + +Mrs. March said she saw what he meant, and she agreed with him that +they were altogether unformed, and were the effect of their own ignorant +caprices. Probably, however, it was too late to amend them by taking +them away. + +“It would hide them, at any rate,” he answered. “They would sink back +into the great mass of our vulgarity, and not be noticed. We behave like +a parcel of peasants with our women. We think that if no harm is meant +or thought, we may risk any sort of appearance, and we do things that +are scandalously improper simply because they are innocent. That may +be all very well at home, but people who prefer that sort of thing +had better stay there, where our peasant manners won't make them +conspicuous.” + +As their train ran northward out of Wurzburg that afternoon, Mrs. March +recurred to the general's closing words. “That was a slap at Mrs. Adding +for letting Kenby go off with her.” + +She took up the history of the past twenty-four hours, from the time +March had left her with Miss Triscoe when he went with her father and +the Addings and Kenby to see that church. She had had no chance to bring +up these arrears until now, and she atoned to herself for the delay by +making the history very full, and going back and adding touches at any +point where she thought she had scanted it. After all, it consisted +mainly of fragmentary intimations from Miss Triscoe and of half-uttered +questions which her own art now built into a coherent statement. + +March could not find that the general had much resented Burnamy's +clandestine visit to Carlsbad when his daughter told him of it, or that +he had done more than make her promise that she would not keep up the +acquaintance upon any terms unknown to him. + +“Probably,” Mrs. March said, “as long as he had any hopes of Mrs. +Adding, he was a little too self-conscious to be very up and down about +Burnamy.” + +“Then you think he was really serious about her?” + +“Now my dear! He was so serious that I suppose he was never so +completely taken aback in his life as when he met Kenby in Wurzburg and +saw how she received him. Of course, that put an end to the fight.” + +“The fight?” + +“Yes--that Mrs. Adding and Agatha were keeping up to prevent his +offering himself.” + +“Oh! And how do you know that they were keeping up the fight together?” + +“How do I? Didn't you see yourself what friends they were? Did you tell +him what Stoller had, said about Burnamy?” + +“I had no chance. I don't know that I should have done it, anyway. It +wasn't my affair.” + +“Well, then, I think you might. It would have been everything for that +poor child; it would have completely justified her in her own eyes.” + +“Perhaps your telling her will serve the same purpose.” + +“Yes, I did tell her, and I am glad of it. She had a right to know it.” + +“Did she think Stoller's willingness to overlook Burnamy's performance +had anything to do with its moral quality?” + +Mrs. March was daunted for the moment, but she said, “I told her you +thought that if a person owned to a fault they disowned it, and put it +away from them just as if it had never been committed; and that if a +person had taken their punishment for a wrong they had done, they +had expiated it so far as anybody else was concerned. And hasn't poor +Burnamy done both?” + +As a moralist March was flattered to be hoist with his own petard, but +as a husband he was not going to come down at once. “I thought probably +you had told her that. You had it pat from having just been over it with +me. When has she heard from him?” + +“Why, that's the strangest thing about it. She hasn't heard at all. She +doesn't know where he is. She thought we must know. She was terribly +broken up.” + +“How did she show it?” + +“She didn't show it. Either you want to tease, or you've forgotten how +such things are with young people--or at least girls.” + +“Yes, it's all a long time ago with me, and I never was a girl. Besides, +the frank and direct behavior of Kenby and Mrs. Adding has been very +obliterating to my early impressions of love-making.” + +“It certainly hasn't been ideal,” said Mrs. March with a sigh. + +“Why hasn't it been ideal?” he asked. “Kenby is tremendously in love +with her; and I believe she's had a fancy for him from the beginning. +If it hadn't been for Rose she would have accepted him at once; and now +he's essential to them both in their helplessness. As for Papa Triscoe +and his Europeanized scruples, if they have any reality at all they're +the residuum of his personal resentment, and Kenby and Mrs. Adding have +nothing to do with their unreality. His being in love with her is no +reason why he shouldn't be helpful to her when she needs him, and every +reason why he should. I call it a poem, such as very few people have the +luck to live out together.” + +Mrs. March listened with mounting fervor, and when he stopped, she cried +out, “Well, my dear, I do believe you are right! It is ideal, as you +say; it's a perfect poem. And I shall always say--” + +She stopped at the mocking light which she caught in his look, and +perceived that he had been amusing himself with her perennial enthusiasm +for all sorts of love-affairs. But she averred that she did not care; +what he had said was true, and she should always hold him to it. + +They were again in the wedding-journey sentiment in which they had left +Carlsbad, when they found themselves alone together after their escape +from the pressure of others' interests. The tide of travel was towards +Frankfort, where the grand parade was to take place some days later. +They were going to Weimar, which was so few hours out of their way +that they simply must not miss it; and all the way to the old literary +capital they were alone in their compartment, with not even a stranger, +much less a friend to molest them. The flying landscape without was of +their own early autumnal mood, and when the vineyards of Wurzburg ceased +to purple it, the heavy after-math of hay and clover, which men, women, +and children were loading on heavy wains, and driving from the meadows +everywhere, offered a pastoral and pleasing change. It was always the +German landscape; sometimes flat and fertile, sometimes hilly and poor; +often clothed with dense woods, but always charming, with castled tops +in ruin or repair, and with levels where Gothic villages drowsed within +their walls, and dreamed of the mediaeval past, silent, without apparent +life, except for some little goose-girl driving her flock before her +as she sallied out into the nineteenth century in search of fresh +pasturage. + +As their train mounted among the Thuringian uplands they were aware of +a finer, cooler air through their open window. The torrents foamed white +out of the black forests of fir and pine, and brawled along the valleys, +where the hamlets roused themselves in momentary curiosity as the train +roared into them from the many tunnels. The afternoon sunshine had +the glister of mountain sunshine everywhere, and the travellers had a +pleasant bewilderment in which their memories of Switzerland and +the White Mountains mixed with long-dormant emotions from Adirondack +sojourns. They chose this place and that in the lovely region where they +lamented that they had not come at once for the after-cure, and they +appointed enough returns to it in future years to consume all the +summers they had left to live. + + + + +LIX. + +It was falling night when they reached Weimar, where they found at the +station a provision of omnibuses far beyond the hotel accommodations. +They drove first to the Crown-Prince, which was in a promising state +of reparation, but which for the present could only welcome them to an +apartment where a canvas curtain cut them off from a freshly plastered +wall. The landlord deplored the fact, and sent hospitably out to try and +place them at the Elephant. But the Elephant was full, and the Russian +Court was full too. Then the landlord of the Crown-Prince bethought +himself of a new hotel, of the second class, indeed, but very nice, +where they might get rooms, and after the delay of an hour, they got +a carriage and drove away from the Crown-Prince, where the landlord +continued to the last as benevolent as if they had been a profit instead +of a loss to him. + +The streets of the town at nine o'clock were empty and quiet, and they +instantly felt the academic quality of the place. Through the pale night +they could see that the architecture was of the classic sentiment which +they were destined to feel more and more; at one point they caught a +fleeting glimpse of two figures with clasped hands and half embraced, +which they knew for the statues of Goethe and Schiller; and when they +mounted to their rooms at the Grand-Duke of Saxe-Weimar, they passed +under a fresco representing Goethe and four other world-famous poets, +Shakspere, Milton, Tasso, and Schiller. The poets all looked like +Germans, as was just, and Goethe was naturally chief among them; he +marshalled the immortals on their way, and Schiller brought up the rear +and kept them from going astray in an Elysium where they did not speak +the language. For the rest, the hotel was brand-new, of a quite American +freshness, and was pervaded by a sweet smell as of straw matting, and +provided with steam-radiators. In the sense of its homelikeness the +Marches boasted that they were never going away from it. + +In the morning they discovered that their windows looked out on +the grand-ducal museum, with a gardened space before and below its +classicistic bulk, where, in a whim of the weather, the gay flowers +were full of sun. In a pleasant illusion of taking it unawares, March +strolled up through the town; but Weimar was as much awake at that hour +as at any of the twenty-four, and the tranquillity of its streets, where +he encountered a few passers several blocks apart, was their habitual +mood. He came promptly upon two objects which he would willingly have +shunned: a 'denkmal' of the Franco-German war, not so furiously bad +as most German monuments, but antipathetic and uninteresting, as all +patriotic monuments are; and a woman-and-dog team. In the shock from +this he was sensible that he had not seen any woman-and-dog teams for +some time, and he wondered by what civic or ethnic influences their +distribution was so controlled that they should have abounded in +Hamburg, Leipsic, and Carlsbad, and wholly ceased in Nuremberg, Ansbach, +and Wurzburg, to reappear again in Weimar, though they seemed as +characteristic of all Germany as the ugly denkmals to her victories over +France. + +The Goethe and Schiller monument which he had glimpsed the night before +was characteristic too, but less offensively so. German statues at the +best are conscious; and the poet-pair, as the inscription calls them, +have the air of showily confronting posterity with their clasped hands, +and of being only partially rapt from the spectators. But they were more +unconscious than any other German statues that March had seen, and he +quelled a desire to ask Goethe, as he stood with his hand on Schiller's +shoulder, and looked serenely into space far above one of the typical +equipages of his country, what he thought of that sort of thing. But +upon reflection he did not know why Goethe should be held personally +responsible for the existence of the woman-and-dog team. He felt that he +might more reasonably attribute to his taste the prevalence of classic +profiles which he began to note in the Weimar populace. This could be +a sympathetic effect of that passion for the antique which the poet +brought back with him from his sojourn in Italy; though many of the +people, especially the children, were bow-legged. Perhaps the antique +had: begun in their faces, and had not yet got down to their legs; in +any case they were charming children, and as a test of their culture, he +had a mind to ask a little girl if she could tell him where the statue +of Herder was, which he thought he might as well take in on his ramble, +and so be done with as many statues as he could. She answered with a +pretty regret in her tender voice, “That I truly cannot,” and he was +more satisfied than if she could, for he thought it better to be a child +and honest, than to know where any German statue was. + +He easily found it for himself in the place which is called the Herder +Platz after it. He went into the Peter and Paul Church there; where +Herder used to preach sermons, sometimes not at all liked by the +nobility and gentry for their revolutionary tendency; the sovereign was +shielded from the worst effects of his doctrine by worshipping apart +from other sinners in a glazed gallery. Herder is buried in the church, +and when you ask where, the sacristan lifts a wooden trap-door in the +pavement, and you think you are going down into the crypt, but you are +only to see Herder's monumental stone, which is kept covered so to save +it from passing feet. Here also is the greatest picture of that great +soul Luke Kranach, who had sincerity enough in his paining to atone for +all the swelling German sculptures in the world. It is a crucifixion, +and the cross is of a white birch log, such as might have been cut out +of the Weimar woods, shaved smooth on the sides, with the bark showing +at the edges. Kranach has put himself among the spectators, and a stream +of blood from the side of the Savior falls in baptism upon the painter's +head. He is in the company of John the Baptist and Martin Luther; Luther +stands with his Bible open, and his finger on the line, “The blood of +Jesus cleanseth us.” + +Partly because he felt guilty at doing all these things without his +wife, and partly because he was now very hungry, March turned from them +and got back to his hotel, where she was looking out for him from their +open window. She had the air of being long domesticated there, as she +laughed down at seeing him come; and the continued brilliancy of the +weather added to the illusion of home. + +It was like a day of late spring in Italy or America; the sun in that +gardened hollow before the museum was already hot enough to make him +glad of the shelter of the hotel. The summer seemed to have come back +to oblige them, and when they learned that they were to see Weimar in a +festive mood because this was Sedan Day, their curiosity, if not their +sympathy, accepted the chance gratefully. But they were almost moved +to wish that the war had gone otherwise when they learned that all the +public carriages were engaged, and they must have one from a stable if +they wished to drive after breakfast. Still it was offered them for +such a modest number of marks, and their driver proved so friendly and +conversable, that they assented to the course of history, and were more +and more reconciled as they bowled along through the grand-ducal park +beside the waters of the classic Ilm. + +The waters of the classic Ilm are sluggish and slimy in places, and in +places clear and brooklike, but always a dull dark green in color. They +flow in the shadow of pensive trees, and by the brinks of sunny meadows, +where the after-math wanders in heavy windrows, and the children sport +joyously over the smooth-mown surfaces in all the freedom that there is +in Germany. At last, after immemorial appropriation the owners of the +earth are everywhere expropriated, and the people come into the pleasure +if not the profit of it. At last, the prince, the knight, the noble +finds, as in his turn the plutocrat will find, that his property is not +for him, but for all; and that the nation is to enjoy what he takes from +it and vainly thinks to keep from it. Parks, pleasaunces, gardens, set +apart for kings, are the play-grounds of the landless poor in the +Old World, and perhaps yield the sweetest joy of privilege to some +state-sick ruler, some world-weary princess, some lonely child born to +the solitude of sovereignty, as they each look down from their palace +windows upon the leisure of overwork taking its little holiday amidst +beauty vainly created for the perpetual festival of their empty lives. + +March smiled to think that in this very Weimar, where sovereignty +had graced and ennobled itself as nowhere else in the world by the +companionship of letters and the arts, they still were not hurrying +first to see the palace of a prince, but were involuntarily making it +second to the cottage of a poet. But in fact it is Goethe who is forever +the prince in Weimar. His greatness blots out its history, his name +fills the city; the thought of him is its chiefest imitation and largest +hospitality. The travellers remembered, above all other facts of the +grand-ducal park, that it was there he first met Christiane Vulpius, +beautiful and young, when he too was beautiful and young, and took her +home to be his love, to the just and lasting displeasure of Fran von +Stein, who was even less reconciled when, after eighteen years of due +reflection, the love of Goethe and Christiane became their marriage. +They, wondered just where it was he saw the young girl coming to meet +him as the Grand-Duke's minister with an office-seeking petition from +her brother, Goethe's brother author, long famed and long forgotten for +his romantic tale of “Rinaldo Rinaldini.” + +They had indeed no great mind, in their American respectability, for +that rather matter-of-fact and deliberate liaison, and little as their +sympathy was for the passionless intellectual intrigue with the Frau von +Stein, it cast no halo of sentiment about the Goethe cottage to suppose +that there his love-life with Christiane began. Mrs. March even resented +the fact, and when she learned later that it was not the fact at all, +she removed it from her associations with the pretty place almost +indignantly. + +In spite of our facile and multiple divorces we Americans are worshipers +of marriage, and if a great poet, the minister of a prince, is going +to marry a poor girl, we think he had better not wait till their son is +almost of age. Mrs. March would not accept as extenuating circumstances +the Grand-Duke's godfatherhood, or Goethe's open constancy to +Christiane, or the tardy consecration of their union after the French +sack of, Weimar, when the girl's devotion had saved him from the +rudeness of the marauding soldiers. For her New England soul there were +no degrees in such guilt; and, perhaps there are really not so many as +people have tried to think, in their deference to Goethe's greatness. +But certainly the affair was not so simple for a grand-ducal minister of +world-wide renown, and he might well have felt its difficulties, for +he could not have been proof against the censorious public opinion of +Weimar, or the yet more censorious private opinion of Fran von Stein. + +On that lovely Italo-American morning no ghost of these old dead +embarrassments lingered within or without the Goethe garden-house. The +trees which the poet himself planted flung a sun-shot shadow upon it, +and about its feet basked a garden of simple flowers, from which the +sweet lame girl who limped through the rooms and showed them, gathered +a parting nosegay for her visitors. The few small livingrooms were above +the ground-floor, with kitchen and offices below in the Italian fashion; +in one of the little chambers was the camp-bed which Goethe carried with +him on his journeys through Italy; and in the larger room at the front +stood the desk where he wrote, with the chair before it from which he +might just have risen. + +All was much more livingly conscious of the great man gone than the +proud little palace in the town, which so abounds with relics and +memorials of him. His library, his study, his study table, with +everything on it just as he left it when + + “Cadde la stanca mana” + +are there, and there is the death-chair facing the window, from which he +gasped for “more light” at last. The handsome, well-arranged rooms are +full of souvenirs of his travel, and of that passion for Italy which +he did so much to impart to all German hearts, and whose modern waning +leaves its records here of an interest pathetically, almost amusingly, +faded. They intimate the classic temper to which his mind tended more +and more, and amidst the multitude of sculptures, pictures, prints, +drawings, gems, medals, autographs, there is the sense of the +many-mindedness, the universal taste, for which he found room in little +Weimar, but not in his contemporaneous Germany. But it is all less +keenly personal, less intimate than the simple garden-house, or else, +with the great troop of people going through it, and the custodians +lecturing in various voices and languages to the attendant groups, the +Marches had it less to themselves, and so imagined him less in it. + + + + +LX. + +All palaces have a character of tiresome unlivableness which is +common to them everywhere, and very probably if one could meet their +proprietors in them one would as little remember them apart afterwards +as the palaces themselves. It will not do to lift either houses or men +far out of the average; they become spectacles, ceremonies; they cease +to have charm, to have character, which belong to the levels of life, +where alone there are ease and comfort, and human nature may be itself, +with all the little delightful differences repressed in those who +represent and typify. + +As they followed the custodian through the grand-ducal Residenz at +Weimar, March felt everywhere the strong wish of the prince who was +Goethe's friend to ally himself with literature, and to be human at +least in the humanities. He came honestly by his passion for poets; his +mother had known it in her time, and Weimar was the home of Wieland +and of Herder before the young Grand-Duke came back from his travels +bringing Goethe with him, and afterwards attracting Schiller. The story +of that great epoch is all there in the Residenz, told as articulately +as a palace can. + +There are certain Poets' Rooms, frescoed with illustrations of Goethe, +Schiller, and Wieland; there is the room where Goethe and the Grand-Duke +used to play chess together; there is the conservatory opening from +it where they liked to sit and chat; everywhere in the pictures and +sculptures, the engraving and intaglios, are the witnesses of the tastes +they shared, the love they both had for Italy, and for beautiful Italian +things. The prince was not so great a prince but that he could very +nearly be a man; the court was perhaps the most human court that ever +was; the Grand-Duke and the grand poet were first boon companions, and +then monarch and minister working together for the good of the country; +they were always friends, and yet, as the American saw in the light of +the New World, which he carried with him, how far from friends! At best +it was make-believe, the make-believe of superiority and inferiority, +the make-believe of master and man, which could only be the more painful +and ghastly for the endeavor of two generous spirits to reach and rescue +each other through the asphyxiating unreality; but they kept up the show +of equality faithfully to the end. Goethe was born citizen of a free +republic, and his youth was nurtured in the traditions of liberty; he +was one of the greatest souls of any time, and he must have known the +impossibility of the thing they pretended; but he died and made no +sign, and the poet's friendship with the prince has passed smoothly +into history as one of the things that might really be. They worked and +played together; they dined and danced, they picnicked and poetized, +each on his own side of the impassable gulf; with an air of its not +being there which probably did not deceive their contemporaries so much +as posterity. + +A part of the palace was of course undergoing repair; and in the gallery +beyond the conservatory a company of workmen were sitting at a table +where they had spread their luncheon. They were somewhat subdued by the +consciousness of their august environment; but the sight of them was +charming; they gave a kindly interest to the place which it had wanted +before; and which the Marches felt again in another palace where the +custodian showed them the little tin dishes and saucepans which the +German Empress Augusta and her sisters played with when they were +children. The sight of these was more affecting even than the withered +wreaths which they had left on the death-bed of their mother, and which +are still mouldering there. + +This was in the Belvedere, the country house on the height overlooking +Weimar, where the grand-ducal family spend the month of May, and where +the stranger finds himself amid overwhelming associations of Goethe, +although the place is so full of relics and memorials of the owners. It +seemed in fact to be a storehouse for the wedding-presents of the whole +connection, which were on show in every room; Mrs. March hardly knew +whether they heightened the domestic effect or took from it; but +they enabled her to verify with the custodian's help certain royal +intermarriages which she had been in doubt about before. + +Her zeal for these made such favor with him that he did not spare them a +portrait of all those which March hoped to escape; he passed them +over, scarcely able to stand, to the gardener, who was to show them the +open-air theatre where Goethe used to take part in the plays. + +The Natur-Theater was of a classic ideal, realized in the trained vines +and clipped trees which formed the coulisses. There was a grassy space +for the chorus and the commoner audience, and then a few semicircular +gradines cut in the turf, one alcove another, where the more honored +spectators sat. Behind the seats were plinths bearing the busts of +Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Herder. It was all very pretty, and if +ever the weather in Weimar was dry enough to permit a performance, it +must have been charming to see a play in that open day to which the +drama is native, though in the late hours it now keeps in the thick air +of modern theatres it has long forgotten the fact. It would be difficult +to be Greek under a German sky, even when it was not actually raining, +but March held that with Goethe's help it might have been done at +Weimar, and his wife and he proved themselves such enthusiasts for +the Natur-Theater that the walnut-faced old gardener who showed it put +together a sheaf of the flowers that grew nearest it and gave them to +Mrs. March for a souvenir. + +They went for a cup of tea to the cafe which looks, as from another +eyebrow of the hill, out over lovely little Weimar in the plain below. +In a moment of sunshine the prospect was very smiling; but their spirits +sank over their tea when it came; they were at least sorry they had +not asked for coffee. Most of the people about them were taking beer, +including the pretty girls of a young ladies' school, who were there +with their books and needle-work, in the care of one of the teachers, +apparently for the afternoon. + +Mrs. March perceived that they were not so much engaged with their +books or their needle-work but they had eyes for other things, and she +followed the glances of the girls till they rested upon the people at a +table somewhat obliquely to the left. These were apparently a mother and +daughter, and they were listening to a young man who sat with his back +to Mrs. March, and leaned low over the table talking to them. They were +both smiling radiantly, and as the girl smiled she kept turning herself +from the waist up, and slanting her face from this side to that, as if +to make sure that every one saw her smiling. + +Mrs. March felt her husband's gaze following her own, and she had +just time to press her finger firmly on his arm and reduce his cry of +astonishment to the hoarse whisper in which he gasped, “Good gracious! +It's the pivotal girl!” + +At the same moment the girl rose with her mother, and with the young +man, who had risen too, came directly toward the Marches on their way +out of the place without noticing them, though Burnamy passed so near +that Mrs. March could almost have touched him. + +She had just strength to say, “Well, my dear! That was the cut direct.” + +She said this in order to have her husband reassure her. “Nonsense! He +never saw us. Why didn't you speak to him?” + +“Speak to him? I never shall speak to him again. No! This is the last of +Mr. Burnamy for me. I shouldn't have minded his not recognizing us, for, +as you say, I don't believe he saw us; but if he could go back to such a +girl as that, and flirt with her, after Miss Triscoe, that's all I wish +to know of him. Don't you try to look him up, Basil! I'm glad-yes, I'm +glad he doesn't know how Stoller has come to feel about him; he deserves +to suffer, and I hope he'll keep on suffering: You were quite right, +my dear--and it shows how true your instinct is in such things (I don't +call it more than instinct)--not to tell him what Stoller said, and I +don't want you ever should.” + +She had risen in her excitement, and was making off in such haste that +she would hardly give him time to pay for their tea, as she pulled him +impatiently to their carriage. + +At last he got a chance to say, “I don't think I can quite promise that; +my mind's been veering round in the other direction. I think I shall +tell him.” + +“What! After you've seen him flirting with that girl? Very well, then, +you won't, my dear; that's all! He's behaving very basely to Agatha.” + +“What's his flirtation with all the girls in the universe to do with my +duty to him? He has a right to know what Stoller thinks. And as to his +behaving badly toward Miss Triscoe, how has he done it? So far as you +know, there is nothing whatever between them. She either refused him +outright, that last night in Carlsbad, or else she made impossible +conditions with him. Burnamy is simply consoling himself, and I don't +blame him.” + +“Consoling himself with a pivotal girl!” cried Mrs. March. + +“Yes, with a pivotal girl. Her pivotality may be a nervous idiosyncrasy, +or it may be the effect of tight lacing; perhaps she has to keep turning +and twisting that way to get breath. But attribute the worst motive: say +it is to make people look at her! Well, Burnamy has a right to look with +the rest; and I am not going to renounce him because he takes refuge +with one pretty girl from another. It's what men have been doing from +the beginning of time.” + +“Oh, I dare say!” + +“Men,” he went on, “are very delicately constituted; very peculiarly. +They have been known to seek the society of girls in general, of any +girl, because some girl has made them happy; and when some girl has made +them unhappy, they are still more susceptible. Burnamy may be merely +amusing himself, or he may be consoling himself; but in either case I +think the pivotal girl has as much right to him as Miss Triscoe. She had +him first; and I'm all for her.” + + + + +LXI. + +Burnamy came away from seeing the pivotal girl and her mother off on the +train which they were taking that evening for Frankfort and Hombourg, +and strolled back through the Weimar streets little at ease with +himself. While he was with the girl and near her he had felt the +attraction by which youth impersonally draws youth, the charm which mere +maid has for mere man; but once beyond the range of this he felt sick at +heart and ashamed. He was aware of having used her folly as an anodyne +for the pain which was always gnawing at him, and he had managed to +forget it in her folly, but now it came back, and the sense that he had +been reckless of her rights came with it. He had done his best to make +her think him in love with her, by everything but words; he wondered how +he could be such an ass, such a wicked ass, as to try making her promise +to write to him from Frankfort; he wished never to see her again, and he +wished still less to hear from her. It was some comfort to reflect that +she had not promised, but it was not comfort enough to restore him to +such fragmentary self-respect as he had been enjoying since he parted +with Agatha Triscoe in Carlsbad; he could not even get back to the +resentment with which he had been staying himself somewhat before the +pivotal girl unexpectedly appeared with her mother in Weimar. + +It was Sedan Day, but there was apparently no official observance of the +holiday, perhaps because the Grand-Duke was away at the manoeuvres, +with all the other German princes. Burnamy had hoped for some voluntary +excitement among the people, at least enough to warrant him in making a +paper about Sedan Day in Weimar, which he could sell somewhere; but the +night was falling, and there was still no sign of popular rejoicing +over the French humiliation twenty-eight years before, except in the +multitude of Japanese lanterns which the children were everywhere +carrying at the ends of sticks. Babies had them in their carriages, +and the effect of the floating lights in the winding, up-and-down-hill +streets was charming even to Burnamy's lack-lustre eyes. He went by +his hotel and on to a cafe with a garden, where there was a patriotic, +concert promised; he supped there, and then sat dreamily behind his +beer, while the music banged and brayed round him unheeded. + +Presently he heard a voice of friendly banter saying in English, “May +I sit at your table?” and he saw an ironical face looking down on him. +“There doesn't seem any other place.” + +“Why, Mr. March!” Burnamy sprang up and wrung the hand held out to him, +but he choked with his words of recognition; it was so good to see this +faithful friend again, though he saw him now as he had seen him last, +just when he had so little reason to be proud of himself. + +March settled his person in the chair facing Burnamy, and then glanced +round at the joyful jam of people eating and drinking, under a firmament +of lanterns. “This is pretty,” he said, “mighty pretty. I shall make +Mrs. March sorry for not coming, when I go back.” + +“Is Mrs. March--she is--with you--in Weimar?” Burnamy asked stupidly. + +March forbore to take advantage of him. “Oh, yes. We saw you out at +Belvedere this afternoon. Mrs. March thought for a moment that you meant +not to see us. A woman likes to exercise her imagination in those little +flights.” + +“I never dreamed of your being there--I never saw--” Burnamy began. + +“Of course not. Neither did Mrs. Etkins, nor Miss Etkins; she was +looking very pretty. Have you been here some time?” + +“Not long. A week or so. I've been at the parade at Wurzburg.” + +“At Wurzburg! Ah, how little the world is, or how large Wurzburg is! +We were there nearly a week, and we pervaded the place. But there was +a great crowd for you to hide in from us. What had I better take?” A +waiter had come up, and was standing at March's elbow. “I suppose I +mustn't sit here without ordering something?” + +“White wine and selters,” said Burnamy vaguely. + +“The very thing! Why didn't I think of it? It's a divine drink: it +satisfies without filling. I had it a night or two before we left home, +in the Madison Square Roof Garden. Have you seen 'Every Other Week' +lately?” + +“No,” said Burnamy, with more spirit than he had yet shown. + +“We've just got our mail from Nuremberg. The last number has a poem in +it that I rather like.” March laughed to see the young fellow's face +light up with joyful consciousness. “Come round to my hotel, after +you're tired here, and I'll let you see it. There's no hurry. Did you +notice the little children with their lanterns, as you came along? +It's the gentlest effect that a warlike memory ever came to. The French +themselves couldn't have minded those innocents carrying those soft +lights on the day of their disaster. You ought to get something out of +that, and I've got a subject in trust for you from Rose Adding. He +and his mother were at Wurzburg; I'm sorry to say the poor little chap +didn't seem very well. They've gone to Holland for the sea air.” March +had been talking for quantity in compassion of the embarrassment in +which Burnamy seemed bound; but he questioned how far he ought to bring +comfort to the young fellow merely because he liked him. So far as +he could make out, Burnamy had been doing rather less than nothing to +retrieve himself since they had met; and it was by an impulse that he +could not have logically defended to Mrs. March that he resumed. “We +found another friend of yours in Wurzburg: Mr. Stoller.” + +“Mr. Stoller?” Burnamy faintly echoed. + +“Yes; he was there to give his daughters a holiday during the +manoeuvres; and they made the most of it. He wanted us to go to the +parade with his family but we declined. The twins were pretty nearly the +death of General Triscoe.” + +Again Burnamy echoed him. “General Triscoe?” + +“Ah, yes: I didn't tell you. General Triscoe and his daughter had +come on with Mrs. Adding and Rose. Kenby--you remember Kenby, On the +Norumbia?--Kenby happened to be there, too; we were quite a family +party; and Stoller got the general to drive out to the manoeuvres with +him and his girls.” + +Now that he was launched, March rather enjoyed letting himself go. He +did not know what he should say to Mrs. March when he came to confess +having told Burnamy everything before she got a chance at him; he pushed +on recklessly, upon the principle, which probably will not hold in +morals, that one may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. “I have a +message for you from Mr. Stoller.” + +“For me?” Burnamy gasped. + +“I've been wondering how I should put it, for I hadn't expected to see +you. But it's simply this: he wants you to know--and he seemed to want +me to know--that he doesn't hold you accountable in the way he did. He's +thought it all over, and he's decided that he had no right to expect +you to save him from his own ignorance where he was making a show of +knowledge. As he said, he doesn't choose to plead the baby act. He says +that you're all right, and your place on the paper is open to you.” + +Burnamy had not been very prompt before, but now he seemed braced for +instant response. “I think he's wrong,” he said, so harshly that the +people at the next table looked round. “His feeling as he does has +nothing to do with the fact, and it doesn't let me out.” + +March would have liked to take him in his arms; he merely said, “I think +you're quite right, as to that. But there's such a thing as forgiveness, +you know. It doesn't change the nature of what you've done; but as far +as the sufferer from it is concerned, it annuls it.” + +“Yes, I understand that. But I can't accept his forgiveness if I hate +him.” + +“But perhaps you won't always hate him. Some day you may have a chance +to do him a good turn. It's rather banale; but there doesn't seem any +other way. Well, I have given you his message. Are you going with me to +get that poem?” + +When March had given Burnamy the paper at his hotel, and Burnamy had +put it in his pocket, the young man said he thought he would take some +coffee, and he asked March to join him in the dining-room where they had +stood talking. + +“No, thank you,” said the elder, “I don't propose sitting up all night, +and you'll excuse me if I go to bed now. It's a little informal to leave +a guest--” + +“You're not leaving a guest! I'm at home here. I'm staying in this hotel +too.” + +March said, “Oh!” and then he added abruptly, “Good-night,” and went up +stairs under the fresco of the five poets. + +“Whom were you talking with below?” asked Mrs. March through the door +opening into his room from hers. + +“Burnamy,” he answered from within. “He's staying in this house. He let +me know just as I was going to turn him out for the night. It's one of +those little uncandors of his that throw suspicion on his honesty in +great things.” + +“Oh! Then you've been telling him,” she said, with a mental bound high +above and far beyond the point. + +“Everything.” + +“About Stoller, too?” + +“About Stoller and his daughters, and Mrs. Adding and Rose and Kenby and +General Triscoe--and Agatha.” + +“Very well. That's what I call shabby. Don't ever talk to me again +about the inconsistencies of women. But now there's something perfectly +fearful.” + +“What is it?” + +“A letter from Miss Triscoe came after you were gone, asking us to find +rooms in some hotel for her and her father to-morrow. He isn't well, and +they're coming. And I've telegraphed them to come here. Now what do you +say?” + + + + +LXII. + +They could see no way out of the trouble, and Mrs. March could not +resign herself to it till her husband suggested that she should consider +it providential. This touched the lingering superstition in which she +had been ancestrally taught to regard herself as a means, when in a very +tight place, and to leave the responsibility with the moral government +of the universe. As she now perceived, it had been the same as ordered +that they should see Burnamy under such conditions in the afternoon that +they could not speak to him, and hear where he was staying; and in an +inferior degree it had been the same as ordered that March should see +him in the evening and tell him everything, so that she should know +just how to act when she saw him in the morning. If he could plausibly +account for the renewal of his flirtation with Miss Elkins, or if he +seemed generally worthy apart from that, she could forgive him. + +It was so pleasant when he came in at breakfast with his well-remembered +smile, that she did not require from him any explicit defence. While +they talked she was righting herself in an undercurrent of drama with +Miss Triscoe, and explaining to her that they could not possibly wait +over for her and her father in Weimar, but must be off that day for +Berlin, as they had made all their plans. It was not easy, even in drama +where one has everything one's own way, to prove that she could not +without impiety so far interfere with the course of Providence as to +prevent Miss Triscoe's coming with her father to the same hotel where +Burnamy was staying. She contrived, indeed, to persuade her that she had +not known he was staying there when she telegraphed them where to come, +and that in the absence of any open confidence from Miss Triscoe she was +not obliged to suppose that his presence would be embarrassing. + +March proposed leaving her with Burnamy while he went up into the town +and interviewed the house of Schiller, which he had not done yet; and +as soon as he got himself away she came to business, breaking altogether +from the inner drama with Miss Triscoe and devoting herself to Burnamy. +They had already got so far as to have mentioned the meeting with the +Triscoes in Wurzburg, and she said: “Did Mr. March tell you they +were coming here? Or, no! We hadn't heard then. Yes, they are coming +to-morrow. They may be going to stay some time. She talked of Weimar +when we first spoke of Germany on the ship.” Burnamy said nothing, and +she suddenly added, with a sharp glance, “They wanted us to get them +rooms, and we advised their coming to this house.” He started very +satisfactorily, and “Do you think they would be comfortable, here?” she +pursued. + +“Oh, yes, very. They can have my room; it's southeast; I shall be going +into other quarters.” She did not say anything; and “Mrs. March,” he +began again, “what is the use of my beating about the bush? You must +know what I went back to Carlsbad for, that night--” + +“No one ever told--” + +“Well, you must have made a pretty good guess. But it was a failure. I +ought to have failed, and I did. She said that unless her father liked +it--And apparently he hasn't liked it.” Burnamy smiled ruefully. + +“How do you know? She didn't know where you were!” + +“She could have got word to me if she had had good news for me. They've +forwarded other letters from Pupp's. But it's all right; I had no +business to go back to Carlsbad. Of course you didn't know I was in this +house when you told them to come; and I must clear out. I had better +clear out of Weimar, too.” + +“No, I don't think so; I have no right to pry into your affairs, but--” + +“Oh, they're wide enough open!” + +“And you may have changed your mind. I thought you might, when I saw you +yesterday at Belvedere--” + +“I was only trying to make bad worse.” + +“Then I think the situation has changed entirely through what Mr. +Stoller said to Mr. March.” + +“I can't see how it has. I committed an act of shabby treachery, and I'm +as much to blame as if he still wanted to punish me for it.” + +“Did Mr. March say that to you?” + +“No; I said that to Mr. March; and he couldn't answer it, and you can't. +You're very good, and very kind, but you can't answer it.” + +“I can answer it very well,” she boasted, but she could find nothing +better to say than, “It's your duty to her to see her and let her know.” + +“Doesn't she know already?” + +“She has a right to know it from you. I think you are morbid, Mr. +Burnamy. You know very well I didn't like your doing that to Mr. +Stoller. I didn't say so at the time, because you seemed to feel it +enough yourself. But I did like your owning up to it,” and here Mrs. +March thought it time to trot out her borrowed battle-horse again. “My +husband always says that if a person owns up to an error, fully +and faithfully, as you've always done, they make it the same in its +consequences to them as if it had never been done.” + +“Does Mr. March say that?” asked Burnamy with a relenting smile. + +“Indeed he does!” + +Burnamy hesitated; then he asked, gloomily again: + +“And what about the consequences to the other fellow?” + +“A woman,” said Mrs. March, “has no concern with them. And besides, +I think you've done all you could to save Mr. Stoller from the +consequences.” + +“I haven't done anything.” + +“No matter. You would if you could. I wonder,” she broke off, to prevent +his persistence at a point where her nerves were beginning to give way, +“what can be keeping Mr. March?” + +Nothing much more important, it appeared later, than the pleasure of +sauntering through the streets on the way to the house of Schiller, and +looking at the pretty children going to school, with books under their +arms. It was the day for the schools to open after the long summer +vacation, and there was a freshness of expectation in the shining faces +which, if it could not light up his own graybeard visage, could at least +touch his heart: + +When he reached the Schiller house he found that it was really not +the Schiller house, but the Schiller flat, of three or four rooms, one +flight up, whose windows look out upon the street named after the poet. +The whole place is bare and clean; in one corner of the large room +fronting the street stands Schiller's writing-table, with his chair +before it; with the foot extending toward this there stands, in another +corner, the narrow bed on which he died; some withered wreaths on the +pillow frame a picture of his deathmask, which at first glance is like +his dead face lying there. It is all rather tasteless, and all rather +touching, and the place with its meagre appointments, as compared with +the rich Goethe house, suggests that personal competition with Goethe in +which Schiller is always falling into the second place. Whether it will +be finally so with him in literature it is too early to ask of time, and +upon other points eternity will not be interrogated. “The great, Goethe +and the good Schiller,” they remain; and yet, March reasoned, there was +something good in Goethe and something great, in Schiller. + +He was so full of the pathos of their inequality before the world that +he did not heed the warning on the door of the pastry-shop near the +Schiller house, and on opening it he bedaubed his hand with the fresh +paint on it. He was then in such a state, that he could not bring his +mind to bear upon the question of which cakes his wife would probably +prefer, and he stood helplessly holding up his hand till the good woman +behind the counter discovered his plight, and uttered a loud cry of +compassion. She ran and got a wet napkin, which she rubbed with soap, +and then she instructed him by word and gesture to rub his hand upon +it, and she did not leave him till his rescue was complete. He let her +choose a variety of the cakes for him, and came away with a gay paper +bag full of them, and with the feeling that he had been in more intimate +relations with the life of Weimar than travellers are often privileged +to be. He argued from the instant and intelligent sympathy of the pastry +woman a high grade of culture in all classes; and he conceived the +notion of pretending to Mrs. March that he had got these cakes from, a +descendant of Schiller. + +His deceit availed with her for the brief moment in which she always, +after so many years' experience of his duplicity, believed anything he +told her. They dined merrily together at their hotel, and then Burnamy +came down to the station with them and was very comfortable to March in +helping him to get their tickets and their baggage registered. The train +which was to take them to Halle, where they were to change for Berlin, +was rather late, and they had but ten minutes after it came in before it +would start again. Mrs. March was watching impatiently at the window of +the waiting-room for the dismounting passengers to clear the platform +and allow the doors to be opened; suddenly she gave a cry, and turned +and ran into the passage by which the new arrivals were pouring out +toward the superabundant omnibuses. March and Burnamy, who had been +talking apart, mechanically rushed after her and found her kissing Miss +Triscoe and shaking hands with the general amidst a tempest of questions +and answers, from which it appeared that the Triscoes had got tired of +staying in Wurzburg, and had simply come on to Weimar a day sooner than +they had intended. + +The general was rather much bundled up for a day which was mild for a +German summer day, and he coughed out an explanation that he had taken +an abominable cold at that ridiculous parade, and had not shaken it +off yet. He had a notion that change of air would be better for him; it +could not be worse. + +He seemed a little vague as to Burnamy, rather than inimical. While the +ladies were still talking eagerly together in proffer and acceptance +of Mrs. March's lamentations that she should be going away just as Miss +Triscoe was coming, he asked if the omnibus for their hotel was there. +He by no means resented Burnamy's assurance that it was, and he did not +refuse to let him order their baggage, little and large, loaded upon +it. By the time this was done, Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe had so far +detached themselves from each other that they could separate after one +more formal expression of regret and forgiveness. With a lament into +which she poured a world of inarticulate emotions, Mrs. March wrenched +herself from the place, and suffered herself, to be pushed toward her +train. But with the last long look which she cast over her shoulder, +before she vanished into the waiting-room, she saw Miss Triscoe and +Burnamy transacting the elaborate politenesses of amiable strangers +with regard to the very small bag which the girl had in her hand. He +succeeded in relieving her of it; and then he led the way out of the +station on the left of the general, while Miss Triscoe brought up the +rear. + + + + +LXIII. + +From the window of the train as it drew out Mrs. March tried for a +glimpse of the omnibus in which her proteges were now rolling away +together. As they were quite out of sight in the omnibus, which was +itself out of sight, she failed, but as she fell back against her seat +she treated the recent incident with a complexity and simultaneity +of which no report can give an idea. At the end one fatal conviction +remained: that in everything she had said she had failed to explain to +Miss Triscoe how Burnamy happened to be in Weimar and how he happened to +be there with them in the station. She required March to say how she had +overlooked the very things which she ought to have mentioned first, and +which she had on the point of her tongue the whole time. She went over +the entire ground again to see if she could discover the reason why she +had made such an unaccountable break, and it appeared that she was led +to it by his rushing after her with Burnamy before she had had a chance +to say a word about him; of course she could not say anything in his +presence. This gave her some comfort, and there was consolation in the +fact that she had left them together without the least intention or +connivance, and now, no matter what happened, she could not accuse +herself, and he could not accuse her of match-making. + +He said that his own sense of guilt was so great that he should not +dream of accusing her of anything except of regret that now she +could never claim the credit of bringing the lovers together under +circumstances so favorable. As soon as they were engaged they could join +in renouncing her with a good conscience, and they would probably make +this the basis of their efforts to propitiate the general. + +She said she did not care, and with the mere removal of the lovers in +space, her interest in them began to abate. They began to be of a minor +importance in the anxieties of the change of trains at Halle, and in +the excitement of settling into the express from Frankfort there were +moments when they were altogether forgotten. The car was of almost +American length, and it ran with almost American smoothness; when the +conductor came and collected an extra fare for their seats, the Marches +felt that if the charge had been two dollars instead of two marks they +would have had every advantage of American travel. + +On the way to Berlin the country was now fertile and flat, and now +sterile and flat; near the capital the level sandy waste spread almost +to its gates. The train ran quickly through the narrow fringe of +suburbs, and then they were in one of those vast Continental stations +which put our outdated depots to shame. The good 'traeger' who +took possession of them and their hand-bags, put their boxes on a +baggage-bearing drosky, and then got them another drosky for their +personal transportation. This was a drosky of the first-class, but they +would not have thought it so, either from the vehicle itself, or from +the appearance of the driver and his horses. The public carriages of +Germany are the shabbiest in the world; at Berlin the horses look like +old hair trunks and the drivers like their moth-eaten contents. + +The Marches got no splendor for the two prices they paid, and their +approach to their hotel on Unter den Linden was as unimpressive as +the ignoble avenue itself. It was a moist, cold evening, and the mean, +tiresome street, slopped and splashed under its two rows of small trees, +to which the thinning leaves clung like wet rags, between long lines +of shops and hotels which had neither the grace of Paris nor the +grandiosity of New York. March quoted in bitter derision: + + “Bees, bees, was it your hydromel, + Under the Lindens?” + +and his wife said that if Commonwealth Avenue in Boston could be +imagined with its trees and without their beauty, flanked by the +architecture of Sixth Avenue, with dashes of the west side of Union +Square, that would be the famous Unter den Linden, where she had so +resolutely decided that they would stay while in Berlin. + +They had agreed upon the hotel, and neither could blame the other +because it proved second-rate in everything but its charges. They ate a +poorish table d'hote dinner in such low spirits that March had no heart +to get a rise from his wife by calling her notice to the mouse which +fed upon the crumbs about their feet while they dined. Their +English-speaking waiter said that it was a very warm evening, and they +never knew whether this was because he was a humorist, or because he was +lonely and wished to talk, or because it really was a warm evening, +for Berlin. When they had finished, they went out and drove about the +greater part of the evening looking for another hotel, whose first +requisite should be that it was not on Unter den Linden. What mainly +determined Mrs. March in favor of the large, handsome, impersonal place +they fixed upon was the fact that it was equipped for steam-heating; +what determined March was the fact that it had a passenger-office where +when he wished to leave, he could buy his railroad tickets and have +his baggage checked without the maddening anxiety, of doing it at the +station. But it was precisely in these points that the hotel which +admirably fulfilled its other functions fell short. The weather made a +succession of efforts throughout their stay to clear up cold; it merely +grew colder without clearing up, but this seemed to offer no suggestion +of steam for heating their bleak apartment and the chilly corridors to +the management. With the help of a large lamp which they kept burning +night and day they got the temperature of their rooms up to sixty; there +was neither stove nor fireplace, the cold electric bulbs diffused a +frosty glare; and in the vast, stately dining-room with its vaulted +roof, there was nothing to warm them but their plates, and the handles +of their knives and forks, which, by a mysterious inspiration, were +always hot. When they were ready to go, March experienced from the +apathy of the baggage clerk and the reluctance of the porters a more +piercing distress than any he had known at the railroad stations; and +one luckless valise which he ordered sent after him by express reached +his bankers in Paris a fortnight overdue, with an accumulation of +charges upon it outvaluing the books which it contained. + +But these were minor defects in an establishment which had many merits, +and was mainly of the temperament and intention of the large English +railroad hotels. They looked from their windows down into a gardened +square, peopled with a full share of the superabounding statues of +Berlin and frequented by babies and nurse maids who seemed not to mind +the cold any more than the stone kings and generals. The aspect of this +square, like the excellent cooking of the hotel and the architecture of +the imperial capital, suggested the superior civilization of Paris. Even +the rows of gray houses and private palaces of Berlin are in the French +taste, which is the only taste there is in Berlin. The suggestion of +Paris is constant, but it is of Paris in exile, and without the chic +which the city wears in its native air. The crowd lacks this as much as +the architecture and the sculpture; there is no distinction among the +men except for now and then a military figure, and among the women no +style such as relieves the commonplace rash of the New York streets. The +Berliners are plain and ill dressed, both men and women, and even the +little children are plain. Every one is ill dressed, but no one is +ragged, and among the undersized homely folk of the lower classes there +is no such poverty-stricken shabbiness as shocks and insults the sight +in New York. That which distinctly recalls our metropolis is the lofty +passage of the elevated trains intersecting the prospectives of many +streets; but in Berlin the elevated road is carried on massive brick +archways and not lifted upon gay, crazy iron ladders like ours. + +When you look away from this, and regard Berlin on its aesthetic, side +you are again in that banished Paris, whose captive art-soul is made +to serve, so far as it may be enslaved to such an effect, in the +celebration of the German triumph over France. Berlin has never +the presence of a great capital, however, in spite of its perpetual +monumental insistence. There is no streaming movement in broad vistas; +the dull looking population moves sluggishly; there is no show of fine +equipages. The prevailing tone of the city and the sky is gray; but +under the cloudy heaven there is no responsive Gothic solemnity in the +architecture. There are hints of the older German cities in some of the +remote and observe streets, but otherwise all is as new as Boston, which +in fact the actual Berlin hardly antedates. + +There are easily more statues in Berlin than in any other city in the +world, but they only unite in failing to give Berlin an artistic air. +They stand in long rows on the cornices; they crowd the pediments; they +poise on one leg above domes and arches; they shelter themselves in +niches; they ride about on horseback; they sit or lounge on street +corners or in garden walks; all with a mediocrity in the older sort +which fails of any impression. If they were only furiously baroque they +would be something, and it may be from a sense of this that there is +a self-assertion in the recent sculptures, which are always patriotic, +more noisy and bragging than anything else in perennial brass. This +offensive art is the modern Prussian avatar of the old German romantic +spirit, and bears the same relation to it that modern romanticism in +literature bears to romance. It finds its apotheosis in the monument to +Kaiser Wilhelm I., a vast incoherent group of swelling and swaggering +bronze, commemorating the victory of the first Prussian Emperor in the +war with the last French Emperor, and avenging the vanquished upon the +victors by its ugliness. The ungainly and irrelevant assemblage of men +and animals backs away from the imperial palace, and saves itself too +soon from plunging over the border of a canal behind it, not far from +Rauch's great statue of the great Frederic. To come to it from the +simplicity and quiet of that noble work is like passing from some +exquisite masterpiece of naturalistic acting to the rant and uproar +of melodrama; and the Marches stood stunned and bewildered by its wild +explosions. + +When they could escape they found themselves so convenient to the +imperial palace that they judged best to discharge at once the +obligation to visit it which must otherwise weigh upon them. They +entered the court without opposition from the sentinel, and joined other +strangers straggling instinctively toward a waiting-room in one corner +of the building, where after they had increased to some thirty, a +custodian took charge of them, and led them up a series of inclined +plains of brick to the state apartments. In the antechamber they found a +provision of immense felt over-shoes which they were expected to put +on for their passage over the waxed marquetry of the halls. These roomy +slippers were designed for the accommodation of the native boots; and +upon the mixed company of foreigners the effect was in the last degree +humiliating. The women's skirts some what hid their disgrace, but the +men were openly put to shame, and they shuffled forward with their +bodies at a convenient incline like a company of snow-shoers. In the +depths of his own abasement March heard a female voice behind him +sighing in American accents, “To think I should be polishing up these +imperial floors with my republican feet!” + +The protest expressed the rebellion which he felt mounting in his +own heart as they advanced through the heavily splendid rooms, in the +historical order of the family portraits recording the rise of the +Prussian sovereigns from Margraves to Emperors. He began to realize here +the fact which grew open him more and more that imperial Germany is not +the effect of a popular impulse but of a dynastic propensity. There is +nothing original in the imperial palace, nothing national; it embodies +and proclaims a powerful personal will, and in its adaptations of French +art it appeals to no emotion in the German witness nobler than his pride +in the German triumph over the French in war. March found it tiresome +beyond the tiresome wont of palaces, and he gladly shook off the sense +of it with his felt shoes. “Well,” he confided to his wife when they +were fairly out-of-doors, “if Prussia rose in the strength of silence, +as Carlyle wants us to believe, she is taking it out in talk now, and +tall talk.” + +“Yes, isn't she!” Mrs. March assented, and with a passionate desire for +excess in a bad thing, which we all know at times, she looked eagerly +about her for proofs of that odious militarism of the empire, which +ought to have been conspicuous in the imperial capital; but possibly +because the troops were nearly all away at the manoeuvres, there were +hardly more in the streets than she had sometimes seen in Washington. +Again the German officers signally failed to offer her any rudeness when +she met them on the side-walks. There were scarcely any of them, +and perhaps that might have been the reason why they were not more +aggressive; but a whole company of soldiers marching carelessly up to +the palace from the Brandenburg gate, without music, or so much style as +our own militia often puts on, regarded her with inoffensive eyes so far +as they looked at her. She declared that personally there was nothing +against the Prussians; even when in uniform they were kindly and +modest-looking men; it was when they got up on pedestals, in bronze or +marble, that they, began to bully and to brag. + + + + +LXIV. + +The dinner which the Marches got at a restaurant on Unter den Linden +almost redeemed the avenue from the disgrace it had fallen into with +them. It was, the best meal they had yet eaten in Europe, and as to fact +and form was a sort of compromise between a French dinner and an English +dinner which they did not hesitate to pronounce Prussian. The waiter +who served it was a friendly spirit, very sensible of their intelligent +appreciation of the dinner; and from him they formed a more respectful +opinion of Berlin civilization than they had yet held. After the manner +of strangers everywhere they judged the country they were visiting from +such of its inhabitants as chance brought them in contact with; and it +would really be a good thing for nations that wish to stand well with +the world at large to look carefully to the behavior of its cabmen and +car conductors, its hotel clerks and waiters, its theatre-ticket sellers +and ushers, its policemen and sacristans, its landlords and salesmen; +for by these rather than by its society women and its statesmen and +divines, is it really judged in the books of travellers; some attention +also should be paid to the weather, if the climate is to be praised. In +the railroad cafe at Potsdam there was a waiter so rude to the Marches +that if they had not been people of great strength of character he +would have undone the favorable impression the soldiers and civilians +of Berlin generally had been at such pains to produce in them; and +throughout the week of early September which they passed there, it +rained so much and so bitterly, it was so wet and so cold, that they +might have come away thinking it's the worst climate in the world, if +it had not been for a man whom they saw in one of the public gardens +pouring a heavy stream from his garden hose upon the shrubbery already +soaked and shuddering in the cold. But this convinced them that they +were suffering from weather and not from the climate, which must really +be hot and dry; and they went home to their hotel and sat contentedly +down in a temperature of sixty degrees. The weather, was not always +so bad; one day it was dry cold instead of wet cold, with rough, rusty +clouds breaking a blue sky; another day, up to eleven in the forenoon, +it was like Indian summer; then it changed to a harsh November air; +and then it relented and ended so mildly, that they hired chairs in +the place before the imperial palace for five pfennigs each, and sat +watching the life before them. Motherly women-folk were there knitting; +two American girls in chairs near them chatted together; some fine +equipages, the only ones they saw in Berlin, went by; a dog and a man +(the wife who ought to have been in harness was probably sick, and the +poor fellow was forced to take her place) passed dragging a cart; some +schoolboys who had hung their satchels upon the low railing were playing +about the base of the statue of King William III. in the joyous freedom +of German childhood. + +They seemed the gayer for the brief moments of sunshine, but to the +Americans, who were Southern by virtue of their sky, the brightness had +a sense of lurking winter in it, such as they remembered feeling on a +sunny day in Quebec. The blue heaven looked sad; but they agreed that it +fitly roofed the bit of old feudal Berlin which forms the most ancient +wing of the Schloss. This was time-blackened and rude, but at least it +did not try to be French, and it overhung the Spree which winds through +the city and gives it the greatest charm it has. In fact Berlin, +which is otherwise so grandiose without grandeur and so severe without +impressiveness, is sympathetic wherever the Spree opens it to the +sky. The stream is spanned by many bridges, and bridges cannot well be +unpicturesque, especially if they have statues to help them out. The +Spree abounds in bridges, and it has a charming habit of slow hay-laden +barges; at the landings of the little passenger-steamers which ply upon +it there are cafes and summer-gardens, and these even in the inclement +air of September suggested a friendly gayety. + +The Marches saw it best in the tour of the elevated road in Berlin which +they made in an impassioned memory of the elevated road in New York. The +brick viaducts which carry this arch the Spree again and again in +their course through and around the city, but with never quite such +spectacular effects as our spidery tressels, achieve. The stations are +pleasant, sometimes with lunch-counters and news-stands, but have not +the comic-opera-chalet prettiness of ours, and are not so frequent. The +road is not so smooth, the cars not so smooth-running or so swift. +On the other hand they are comfortably cushioned, and they are never +overcrowded. The line is at times above, at times below the houses, and +at times on a level with them, alike in city and in suburbs. The train +whirled out of thickly built districts, past the backs of the old +houses, into outskirts thinly populated, with new houses springing up +without order or continuity among the meadows and vegetable-gardens, and +along the ready-made, elm-planted avenues, where wooden fences divided +the vacant lots. Everywhere the city was growing out over the country, +in blocks and detached edifices of limestone, sandstone, red and yellow +brick, larger or smaller, of no more uniformity than our suburban +dwellings, but never of their ugliness or lawless offensiveness. + +In an effort for the intimate life of the country March went two +successive mornings for his breakfast to the Cafe Bauer, which has some +admirable wall-printings, and is the chief cafe on Unter den Linden; but +on both days there were more people in the paintings than out of them. +The second morning the waiter who took his order recognized him and +asked, “Wie gestern?” and from this he argued an affectionate constancy +in the Berliners, and a hospitable observance of the tastes of +strangers. At his bankers, on the other hand, the cashier scrutinized +his signature and remarked that it did not look like the signature in +his letter of credit, and then he inferred a suspicious mind in the +moneyed classes of Prussia; as he had not been treated with such unkind +doubt by Hebrew bankers anywhere, he made a mental note that the Jews +were politer than the Christians in Germany. In starting for Potsdam he +asked a traeger where the Potsdam train was and the man said, “Dat train +dare,” and in coming back he helped a fat old lady out of the car, and +she thanked him in English. From these incidents, both occurring the +same day in the same place, the inference of a widespread knowledge of +our language in all classes of the population was inevitable. + +In this obvious and easy manner he studied contemporary civilization in +the capital. He even carried his researches farther, and went one rainy +afternoon to an exhibition of modern pictures in a pavilion of the +Thiergarten, where from the small attendance he inferred an indifference +to the arts which he would not ascribe to the weather. One evening at a +summer theatre where they gave the pantomime of the 'Puppenfee' and the +operetta of 'Hansel and Gretel', he observed that the greater part of +the audience was composed of nice plain young girls and children, and he +noted that there was no sort of evening dress; from the large number of +Americans present he imagined a numerous colony in Berlin, where they +mast have an instinctive sense of their co-nationality, since one of +them in the stress of getting his hat and overcoat when they all came +out, confidently addressed him in English. But he took stock of his +impressions with his wife, and they seemed to him so few, after all, +that he could not resist a painful sense of isolation in the midst of +the environment. + +They made a Sunday excursion to the Zoological Gardens in the +Thiergarten, with a large crowd of the lower classes, but though they +had a great deal of trouble in getting there by the various kinds of +horsecars and electric cars, they did not feel that they had got near +to the popular life. They endeavored for some sense of Berlin society by +driving home in a drosky, and on the way they passed rows of beautiful +houses, in French and Italian taste, fronting the deep, damp green park +from the Thiergartenstrasse, in which they were confident cultivated and +delightful people lived; but they remained to the last with nothing but +their unsupported conjecture. + + + + +LXV. + +Their excursion to Potsdam was the cream of their sojourn in Berlin. +They chose for it the first fair morning, and they ran out over the +flat sandy plains surrounding the capital, and among the low hills +surrounding Potsdam before it actually began to rain. + +They wished immediately to see Sans Souci for the great Frederick's +sake, and they drove through a lively shower to the palace, where they +waited with a horde of twenty-five other tourists in a gusty colonnade +before they were led through Voltaire's room and Frederick's death +chamber. + +The French philosopher comes before the Prussian prince at Sans Souci +even in the palatial villa which expresses the wilful caprice of the +great Frederick as few edifices have embodied the whims or tastes of +their owners. The whole affair is eighteenth-century French, as the +Germans conceived it. The gardened terrace from which the low, one-story +building, thickly crusted with baroque sculptures, looks down into a +many-colored parterre, was luxuriantly French, and sentimentally French +the colonnaded front opening to a perspective of artificial ruins, with +broken pillars lifting a conscious fragment of architrave against the +sky. Within, all again was French in the design, the decoration and +the furnishing. At that time there, was in fact no other taste, and +Frederick, who despised and disused his native tongue, was resolved upon +French taste even in his intimate companionship. The droll story of his +coquetry with the terrible free spirit which he got from France to be +his guest is vividly reanimated at Sans Souci, where one breathes the +very air in which the strangely assorted companions lived, and in which +they parted so soon to pursue each other with brutal annoyance on one +side, and with merciless mockery on the other. Voltaire was long ago +revenged upon his host for all the indignities he suffered from him in +their comedy; he left deeply graven upon Frederick's fame the trace of +those lacerating talons which he could strike to the quick; and it is +the singular effect of this scene of their brief friendship that one +feels there the pre-eminence of the wit in whatever was most important +to mankind. + +The rain had lifted a little and the sun shone out on the bloom of the +lovely parterre where the Marches profited by a smiling moment to wander +among the statues and the roses heavy with the shower. Then they walked +back to their carriage and drove to the New Palace, which expresses in +differing architectural terms the same subjection to an alien ideal +of beauty. It is thronged without by delightfully preposterous rococco +statues, and within it is rich in all those curiosities and memorials +of royalty with which palaces so well know how to fatigue the flesh and +spirit of their visitors. + +The Marches escaped from it all with sighs and groans of relief, and +before they drove off to see the great fountain of the Orangeries, they +dedicated a moment of pathos to the Temple of Friendship which Frederick +built in memory of unhappy Wilhelmina of Beyreuth, the sister he loved +in the common sorrow of their wretched home, and neglected when he came +to his kingdom. It is beautiful in its rococco way, swept up to on +its terrace by most noble staircases, and swaggered over by baroque +allegories of all sorts: Everywhere the statues outnumbered the +visitors, who may have been kept away by the rain; the statues naturally +did not mind it. + +Sometime in the midst of their sight-seeing the Marches had dinner in a +mildewed restaurant, where a compatriotic accent caught their ear in a +voice saying to the waiter, “We are in a hurry.” They looked round and +saw that it proceeded from the pretty nose of a young American girl, who +sat with a party of young American girls at a neighboring table. Then +they perceived that all the people in that restaurant were Americans, +mostly young girls, who all looked as if they were in a hurry. But +neither their beauty nor their impatience had the least effect with +the waiter, who prolonged the dinner at his pleasure, and alarmed the +Marches with the misgiving that they should not have time for the final +palace on their list. + +This was the palace where the father of Frederick, the mad old Frederick +William, brought up his children with that severity which Solomon urged +but probably did not practise. It is a vast place, but they had time for +it all, though the custodian made the most of them as the latest comers +of the day, and led them through it with a prolixity as great as their +waiter's. He was a most friendly custodian, and when he found that they +had some little notion of what they wanted to see, he mixed zeal with +his patronage, and in a manner made them his honored guests. They saw +everything but the doorway where the faithful royal father used to lie +in wait for his children and beat them, princes and princesses alike, +with his knobby cane as they came through. They might have seen +this doorway without knowing it; but from the window overlooking the +parade-ground where his family watched the manoeuvres of his gigantic +grenadiers, they made sure of just such puddles as Frederick William +forced his family to sit with their feet in, while they dined alfresco +on pork and cabbage; and they visited the room of the Smoking Parliament +where he ruled his convives with a rod of iron, and made them the +victims of his bad jokes. The measuring-board against which he took +the stature of his tall grenadiers is there, and one room is devoted to +those masterpieces which he used to paint in the agonies of gout. His +chef d'oeuvre contains a figure with two left feet, and there seemed +no reason why it might not have had three. In another room is a small +statue of Carlyle, who did so much to rehabilitate the house which the +daughter of it, Wilhelmina, did so much to demolish in the regard of +men. + +The palace is now mostly kept for guests, and there is a chamber where +Napoleon slept, which is not likely to be occupied soon by any other +self-invited guest of his nation. It is perhaps to keep the princes +of Europe humble that hardly a palace on the Continent is without the +chamber of this adventurer, who, till he stooped to be like them, was +easily their master. Another democracy had here recorded its invasion in +the American stoves which the custodian pointed out in the corridor +when Mrs. March, with as little delay as possible, had proclaimed their +country. The custodian professed an added respect for them from the +fact, and if he did not feel it, no doubt he merited the drink money +which they lavished on him at parting. + +Their driver also was a congenial spirit, and when he let them out of +his carriage at the station, he excused the rainy day to them. He was +a merry fellow beyond the wont of his nation, and he-laughed at the bad +weather, as if it had been a good joke on them. + +His gayety, and the red sunset light, which shone on the stems of the +pines on the way back to Berlin, contributed to the content in which +they reviewed their visit to Potsdam. They agreed that the place was +perfectly charming, and that it was incomparably expressive of kingly +will and pride. These had done there on the grand scale what all +the German princes and princelings had tried to do in imitation and +emulation of French splendor. In Potsdam the grandeur, was not a +historical growth as at Versailles, but was the effect of family genius, +in which there was often the curious fascination of insanity. + +They felt this strongly again amidst the futile monuments of the +Hohenzollern Museum, in Berlin, where all the portraits, effigies, +personal belongings and memorials of that gifted, eccentric race are +gathered and historically disposed. The princes of the mighty line +who stand out from the rest are Frederick the Great and his infuriate. +father; and in the waxen likeness of the son, a small thin figure, +terribly spry, and a face pitilessly alert, appears something of the +madness which showed in the life of the sire. + +They went through many rooms in which the memorials of the kings and +queens, the emperors and empresses were carefully ordered, and felt no +kindness except before the relics relating to the Emperor Frederick +and his mother. In the presence of the greatest of the dynasty they +experienced a kind of terror which March expressed, when they were +safely away, in the confession of his joy that those people were dead. + + + + +LXVI. + +The rough weather which made Berlin almost uninhabitable to Mrs. March +had such an effect with General Triscoe at Weimar that under the orders +of an English-speaking doctor he retreated from it altogether and went +to bed. Here he escaped the bronchitis which had attacked him, and his +convalesence left him so little to complain of that he could not always +keep his temper. In the absence of actual offence, either from his +daughter or from Burnamy, his sense of injury took a retroactive form; +it centred first in Stoller and the twins; then it diverged toward Rose +Adding, his mother and Kenby, and finally involved the Marches in +the same measure of inculpation; for they had each and all had part, +directly or indirectly, in the chances that brought on his cold. + +He owed to Burnamy the comfort of the best room in the hotel, and he was +constantly dependent upon his kindness; but he made it evident that he +did not over-value Burnamy's sacrifice and devotion, and that it was not +an unmixed pleasure, however great a convenience, to have him about. +In giving up his room, Burnamy had proposed going out of the hotel +altogether; but General Triscoe heard of this with almost as great +vexation as he had accepted the room. He besought him not to go, but so +ungraciously that his daughter was ashamed, and tried to atone for his +manner by the kindness of her own. + +Perhaps General Triscoe would not have been without excuse if he were +not eager to have her share with destitute merit the fortune which she +had hitherto shared only with him. He was old, and certain luxuries had +become habits if not necessaries with him. Of course he did not say this +to himself; and still less did he say it to her. But he let her see that +he did not enjoy the chance which had thrown them again in such close +relations with Burnamy, and he did pot hide his belief that the Marches +were somehow to blame for it. This made it impossible for her to write +at once to Mrs. March as she had promised; but she was determined that +it should not make her unjust to Burnamy. She would not avoid him; she +would not let anything that had happened keep her from showing that she +felt his kindness and was glad of his help. + +Of course they knew no one else in Weimar, and his presence merely as +a fellow-countryman would have been precious. He got them a doctor, +against General Triscoe's will; he went for his medicines; he lent him +books and papers; he sat with him and tried to amuse him. But with +the girl he attempted no return to the situation at Carlsbad; there is +nothing like the delicate pride of a young man who resolves to forego +unfair advantage in love. + +The day after their arrival, when her father was making up for the sleep +he had lost by night, she found herself alone in the little reading-room +of the hotel with Burnamy for the first time, and she said: “I suppose +you must have been all over Weimar by this time.” + +“Well, I've been here, off and on, almost a month. It's an interesting +place. There's a good deal of the old literary quality left.” + +“And you enjoy that! I saw”--she added this with a little unnecessary +flush--“your poem in the paper you lent papa.” + +“I suppose I ought to have kept that back. But I couldn't.” He laughed, +and she said: + +“You must find a great deal of inspiration in such a literary place.” + +“It isn't lying about loose, exactly.” Even in the serious and +perplexing situation in which he found himself he could not help being +amused with her unliterary notions of literature, her conventional and +commonplace conceptions of it. They had their value with him as those of +a more fashionable world than his own, which he believed was somehow a +greater world. At the same time he believed that she was now interposing +them between the present and the past, and forbidding with them any +return to the mood of their last meeting in Carlsbad. He looked at her +ladylike composure and unconsciousness, and wondered if she could be the +same person and the same person as they who lost themselves in the crowd +that night and heard and said words palpitant with fate. Perhaps there +had been no such words; perhaps it was all a hallucination. He must +leave her to recognize that it was reality; till she did so, he felt +bitterly that there was nothing for him but submission and patience; if +she never did so, there was nothing for him but acquiescence. + +In this talk and in the talks they had afterwards she seemed willing +enough to speak of what had happened since: of coming on to Wurzburg +with the Addings and of finding the Marches there; of Rose's collapse, +and of his mother's flight seaward with him in the care of Kenby, who +was so fortunately going to Holland, too. He on his side told her of +going to Wurzburg for the manoeuvres, and they agreed that it was very +strange they had not met. + +She did not try to keep their relations from taking the domestic +character which was inevitable, and it seemed to him that this in itself +was significant of a determination on her part that was fatal to his +hopes. With a lover's indefinite power of blinding himself to what is +before his eyes, he believed that if she had been more diffident of him, +more uneasy in his presence, he should have had more courage; but for +her to breakfast unafraid with him, to meet him at lunch and dinner in +the little dining-room where they were often the only guests, and always +the only English-speaking guests, was nothing less than prohibitive. + +In the hotel service there was one of those men who are porters in this +world, but will be angels in the next, unless the perfect goodness +of their looks, the constant kindness of their acts, belies them. The +Marches had known and loved the man in their brief stay, and he had been +the fast friend of Burnamy from the moment they first saw each other at +the station. He had tenderly taken possession of General Triscoe on +his arrival, and had constituted himself the nurse and keeper of the +irascible invalid, in the intervals of going to the trains, with a +zeal that often relieved his daughter and Burnamy. The general in fact +preferred him to either, and a tacit custom grew up by which when August +knocked at his door, and offered himself in his few words of serviceable +English, that one of them who happened to be sitting with the general +gave way, and left him in charge. The retiring watcher was then apt to +encounter the other watcher on the stairs, or in the reading-room, or in +the tiny, white-pebbled door-yard at a little table in the shade of +the wooden-tubbed evergreens. From the habit of doing this they one day +suddenly formed the habit of going across the street to that gardened +hollow before and below the Grand-Ducal Museum. There was here a +bench in the shelter of some late-flowering bush which the few other +frequenters of the place soon recognized as belonging to the young +strangers, so that they would silently rise and leave it to them when +they saw them coming. Apparently they yielded not only to their right, +but to a certain authority which resides in lovers, and which all other +men, and especially all other women, like to acknowledge and respect. + +In the absence of any civic documents bearing upon the affair it is +difficult to establish the fact that this was the character in which +Agatha and Burnamy were commonly regarded by the inhabitants of Weimar. +But whatever their own notion of their relation was, if it was not that +of a Brant and a Brautigam, the people of Weimar would have been puzzled +to say what it was. It was known that the gracious young lady's father, +who would naturally have accompanied them, was sick, and in the fact +that they were Americans much extenuation was found for whatever was +phenomenal in their unencumbered enjoyment of each other's society. + +If their free American association was indistinguishably like the +peasant informality which General Triscoe despised in the relations of +Kenby and Mrs. Adding, it is to be said in his excuse that he could not +be fully cognizant of it, in the circumstances, and so could do nothing +to prevent it. His pessimism extended to his health; from the first he +believed himself worse than the doctor thought him, and he would have +had some other physician if he had not found consolation in their +difference of opinion and the consequent contempt which he was enabled +to cherish for the doctor in view of the man's complete ignorance of the +case. In proof of his own better understanding of it, he remained in bed +some time after the doctor said he might get up. + +Nearly ten days had passed before he left his room, and it was not till +then that he clearly saw how far affairs had gone with his daughter +and Burnamy, though even then his observance seemed to have anticipated +theirs. He found them in a quiet acceptance of the fortune which had +brought them together, so contented that they appeared to ask nothing +more of it. The divine patience and confidence of their youth might +sometimes have had almost the effect of indifference to a witness who +had seen its evolution from the moods of the first few days of their +reunion in Weimar. To General Triscoe, however, it looked like an +understanding which had been made without reference to his wishes, and +had not been directly brought to his knowledge. + +“Agatha,” he said, after due note of a gay contest between her and +Burnamy over the pleasure and privilege of ordering his supper sent to +his room when he had gone back to it from his first afternoon in the +open air, “how long is that young man going to stay in Weimar?” + +“Why, I don't know!” she answered, startled from her work of beating the +sofa pillows into shape, and pausing with one of them in her hand. “I +never asked him.” She looked down candidly into his face where he sat in +an easy-chair waiting for her arrangement of the sofa. “What makes you +ask?” + +He answered with another question. “Does he know that we had thought of +staying here?” + +“Why, we've always talked of that, haven't we? Yes, he knows it. Didn't +you want him to know it, papa? You ought to have begun on the ship, +then. Of course I've asked him what sort of place it was. I'm sorry if +you didn't want me to.” + +“Have I said that? It's perfectly easy to push on to Paris. Unless--” + +“Unless what?” Agatha dropped the pillow, and listened respectfully. +But in spite of her filial attitude she could not keep her youth and +strength and courage from quelling the forces of the elderly man. + +He said querulously, “I don't see why you take that tone with me. You +certainly know what I mean. But if you don't care to deal openly with +me, I won't ask you.” He dropped his eyes from her face, and at the same +time a deep blush began to tinge it, growing up from her neck to her +forehead. “You must know--you're not a child,” he continued, still +with averted eyes, “that this sort of thing can't go on... It must be +something else, or it mustn't be anything at all. I don't ask you for +your confidence, and you know that I've never sought to control you.” + +This was not the least true, but Agatha answered, either absently or +provisionally, “No.” + +“And I don't seek to do so now. If you have nothing that you wish to +tell me--” + +He waited, and after what seemed a long time, she asked as if she had +not heard him, “Will you lie down a little before your supper, papa?” + +“I will lie down when I feel like it,” he answered. “Send August with +the supper; he can look after me.” + +His resentful tone, even more than his words, dismissed her, but she +left him without apparent grievance, saying quietly, “I will send +August.” + + + + +LXVII. + +Agatha did not come down to supper with Burnamy. She asked August, when +she gave him her father's order, to have a cup of tea sent to her room, +where, when it came, she remained thinking so long that it was rather +tepid by the time she drank it. + +Then she went to her window, and looked out, first above and next below. +Above, the moon was hanging over the gardened hollow before the Museum +with the airy lightness of an American moon. Below was Burnamy behind +the tubbed evergreens, sitting tilted in his chair against the house +wall, with the spark of his cigar fainting and flashing like an American +firefly. Agatha went down to the door, after a little delay, and seemed +surprised to find him there; at least she said, “Oh!” in a tone of +surprise. + +Burnamy stood up, and answered, “Nice night.” + +“Beautiful!” she breathed. “I didn't suppose the sky in Germany could +ever be so clear.” + +“It seems to be doing its best.” + +“The flowers over there look like ghosts in the light,” she said +dreamily. + +“They're not. Don't you want to get your hat and wrap, and go over and +expose the fraud?” + +“Oh,” she answered, as if it were merely a question of the hat and wrap, +“I have them.” + +They sauntered through the garden walks for a while, long enough to have +ascertained that there was not a veridical phantom among the flowers, if +they had been looking, and then when they came to their accustomed seat, +they sat down, and she said, “I don't know that I've seen the moon so +clear since we left Carlsbad.” At the last word his heart gave a jump +that seemed to lodge it in his throat and kept him from speaking, so +that she could resume without interruption, “I've got something of +yours, that you left at the Posthof. The girl that broke the dishes +found it, and Lili gave it to Mrs. March for you.” This did not account +for Agatha's having the thing, whatever it was; but when she took a +handkerchief from her belt, and put out her hand with it toward him, he +seemed to find that her having it had necessarily followed. He tried to +take it from her, but his own hand trembled so that it clung to hers, +and he gasped, “Can't you say now, what you wouldn't say then?” + +The logical sequence was no more obvious than be fore; but she +apparently felt it in her turn as he had felt it in his. She whispered +back, “Yes,” and then she could not get out anything more till she +entreated in a half-stifled voice, “Oh, don't!” + +“No, no!” he panted. “I won't--I oughtn't to have done it--I beg your +pardon--I oughtn't to have spoken,--even--I--” + +She returned in a far less breathless and tremulous fashion, but still +between laughing and crying, “I meant to make you. And now, if you're +ever sorry, or I'm ever too topping about anything, you can be perfectly +free to say that you'd never have spoken if you hadn't seen that I +wanted you to.” + +“But I didn't see any such thing,” he protested. “I spoke because I +couldn't help it any longer.” + +She laughed triumphantly. “Of course you think so! And that shows that +you are only a man after all; in spite of your finessing. But I am going +to have the credit of it. I knew that you were holding back because you +were too proud, or thought you hadn't the right, or something. Weren't +you?” She startled him with the sudden vehemence of her challenge: “If +you pretend, that you weren't I shall never forgive you!” + +“But I was! Of course I was. I was afraid--” + +“Isn't that what I said?” She triumphed over him with another laugh, and +cowered a little closer to him, if that could be. + +They were standing, without knowing how they had got to their feet; and +now without any purpose of the kind, they began to stroll again among +the garden paths, and to ask and to answer questions, which touched +every point of their common history, and yet left it a mine of +inexhaustible knowledge for all future time. Out of the sweet and dear +delight of this encyclopedian reserve two or three facts appeared with +a present distinctness. One of these was that Burnamy had regarded her +refusal to be definite at Carlsbad as definite refusal, and had meant +never to see her again, and certainly never to speak again of love to +her. Another point was that she had not resented his coming back that +last night, but had been proud and happy in it as proof of his love, +and had always meant somehow to let him know that she was torched by +his trusting her enough to come back while he was still under that cloud +with Mr. Stoller. With further logic, purely of the heart, she acquitted +him altogether of wrong in that affair, and alleged in proof, what Mr. +Stoller had said of it to Mr. March. Burnamy owned that he knew what +Stoller had said, but even in his present condition he could not accept +fully her reading of that obscure passage of his life. He preferred to +put the question by, and perhaps neither of them cared anything about +it except as it related to the fact that they were now each other's +forever. + +They agreed that they must write to Mr. and Mrs. March at once; or at +least, Agatha said, as soon as she had spoken to her father. At her +mention of her father she was aware of a doubt, a fear, in Burnamy which +expressed itself by scarcely more than a spiritual consciousness from +his arm to the hands which she had clasped within it. “He has always +appreciated you,” she said courageously, “and I know he will see it in +the right light.” + +She probably meant no more than to affirm her faith in her own ability +finally to bring her father to a just mind concerning it; but Burnamy +accepted her assurance with buoyant hopefulness, and said he would see +General Triscoe the first thing in the morning. + +“No, I will see him,” she said, “I wish to see him first; he will expect +it of me. We had better go in, now,” she added, but neither made any +motion for the present to do so. On the contrary, they walked in the +other direction, and it was an hour after Agatha declared their duty in +the matter before they tried to fulfil it. + +Then, indeed, after they returned to the hotel, she lost no time +in going to her father beyond that which must be given to a long +hand-pressure under the fresco of the five poets on the stairs landing, +where her ways and Burnamy's parted. She went into her own room, and +softly opened the door into her father's and listened. + +“Well?” he said in a sort of challenging voice. + +“Have you been asleep?” she asked. + +“I've just blown out my light. What has kept you?” + +She did not reply categorically. Standing there in the sheltering dark, +she said, “Papa, I wasn't very candid with you, this afternoon. I am +engaged to Mr. Burnamy.” + +“Light the candle,” said her father. “Or no,” he added before she could +do so. “Is it quite settled?” + +“Quite,” she answered in a voice that admitted of no doubt. “That is, as +far as it can be, without you.” + +“Don't be a hypocrite, Agatha,” said the general. “And let me try to get +to sleep. You know I don't like it, and you know I can't help it.” + +“Yes,” the girl assented. + +“Then go to bed,” said the general concisely. + +Agatha did not obey her father. She thought she ought to kiss him, but +she decided that she had better postpone this; so she merely gave him +a tender goodnight, to which he made no response, and shut herself +into her own room, where she remained sitting and staring out into the +moonlight, with a smile that never left her lips. + +When the moon sank below the horizon, the sky was pale with the coming +day, but before it was fairly dawn, she saw something white, not much +greater than some moths, moving before her window. She pulled the valves +open and found it a bit of paper attached to a thread dangling from +above. She broke it loose and in the morning twilight she read the great +central truth of the universe: + +“I love you. L. J. B.” + +She wrote under the tremendous inspiration: + +“So do I. Don't be silly. A. T.” + +She fastened the paper to the thread again, and gave it a little twitch. +She waited for the low note of laughter which did not fail to flutter +down from above; then she threw herself upon the bed, and fell asleep. + +It was not so late as she thought when she woke, and it seemed, at +breakfast, that Burnamy had been up still earlier. Of the three involved +in the anxiety of the night before General Triscoe was still respited +from it by sleep, but he woke much more haggard than either of the young +people. They, in fact, were not at all haggard; the worst was over, if +bringing their engagement to his knowledge was the worst; the formality +of asking his consent which Burnamy still had to go through was +unpleasant, but after all it was a formality. Agatha told him everything +that had passed between herself and her father, and if it had not that +cordiality on his part which they could have wished it was certainly not +hopelessly discouraging. + +They agreed at breakfast that Burnamy had better have it over as quickly +as possible, and he waited only till August came down with the general's +tray before going up to his room. The young fellow did not feel more at +his ease than the elder meant he should in taking the chair to which the +general waved him from where he lay in bed; and there was no talk wasted +upon the weather between them. + +“I suppose I know what you have come for, Mr. Burnamy,” said General +Triscoe in a tone which was rather judicial than otherwise, “and I +suppose you know why you have come.” The words certainly opened the way +for Burnamy, but he hesitated so long to take it that the general had +abundant time to add, “I don't pretend that this event is unexpected, +but I should like to know what reason you have for thinking I should +wish you to marry my daughter. I take it for granted that you are +attached to each other, and we won't waste time on that point. Not to +beat about the bush, on the next point, let me ask at once what your +means of supporting her are. How much did you earn on that newspaper in +Chicago?” + +“Fifteen hundred dollars,” Burnamy answered, promptly enough. + +“Did you earn anything more, say within the last year?” + +“I got three hundred dollars advance copyright for a book I sold to a +publisher.” The glory had not yet faded from the fact in Burnamy's mind. + +“Eighteen hundred. What did you get for your poem in March's book?” + +“That's a very trifling matter: fifteen dollars.” + +“And your salary as private secretary to that man Stoller?” + +“Thirty dollars a week, and my expenses. But I wouldn't take that, +General Triscoe,” said Burnamy. + +General Triscoe, from his 'lit de justice', passed this point in +silence. “Have you any one dependent on you?” + +“My mother; I take care of my mother,” answered Burnamy, proudly. + +“Since you have broken with Stoller, what are your prospects?” + +“I have none.” + +“Then you don't expect to support my daughter; you expect to live upon +her means.” + +“I expect to do nothing of the kind!” cried Burnamy. “I should be +ashamed--I should feel disgraced--I should--I don't ask you--I don't ask +her till I have the means to support her--” + +“If you were very fortunate,” continued the general, unmoved by the +young fellow's pain, and unperturbed by the fact that he had himself +lived upon his wife's means as long as she lived, and then upon his +daughter's, “if you went back to Stoller--” + +“I wouldn't go back to him. I don't say he's knowingly a rascal, but +he's ignorantly a rascal, and he proposed a rascally thing to me. I +behaved badly to him, and I'd give anything to undo the wrong I let him +do himself; but I'll never go back to him.” + +“If you went back, on your old salary,” the general persisted +pitilessly, “you would be very fortunate if you brought your earnings up +to twenty-five hundred a year.” + +“Yes--” + +“And how far do you think that would go in supporting my daughter on the +scale she is used to? I don't speak of your mother, who has the first +claim upon you.” + +Burnamy sat dumb; and his head which he had lifted indignantly when the +question was of Stoller, began to sink. + +The general went on. “You ask me to give you my daughter when you +haven't money enough to keep her in gowns; you ask me to give her to a +stranger--” + +“Not quite a stranger, General Triscoe,” Burnamy protested. “You have +known me for three months at least, and any one who knows me in Chicago +will tell you--” + +“A stranger, and worse than a stranger,” the general continued, so +pleased with the logical perfection of his position that he almost +smiled, and certainly softened toward Burnamy. “It isn't a question of +liking you, Mr. Burnamy, but of knowing you; my daughter likes you; so +do the Marches; so does everybody who has met you. I like you myself. +You've done me personally a thousand kindnesses. But I know very little +of you, in spite of our three months' acquaintance; and that little +is--But you shall judge for yourself! You were in the confidential +employ of a man who trusted you, and you let him betray himself.” + +“I did. I don't excuse it. The thought of it burns like fire. But +it wasn't done maliciously; it wasn't done falsely; it was done +inconsiderately; and when it was done, it seemed irrevocable. But it +wasn't; I could have prevented, I could have stooped the mischief; and I +didn't! I can never outlive that.” + +“I know,” said the general relentlessly, “that you have never attempted +any defence. That has been to your credit with me. It inclined me to +overlook your unwarranted course in writing to my daughter, when you +told her you would never see her again. What did you expect me to think, +after that, of your coming back to see her? Or didn't you expect me to +know it?” + +“I expected you to know it; I knew she would tell you. But I don't +excuse that, either. It was acting a lie to come back. All I can say is +that I had to see her again for one last time.” + +“And to make sure that it was to be the last time, you offered yourself +to her.” + +“I couldn't help doing that.” + +“I don't say you could. I don't judge the facts at all. I leave them +altogether to you; and you shall say what a man in my position ought to +say to such a man as you have shown yourself.” + +“No, I will say.” The door into the adjoining room was flung open, and +Agatha flashed in from it. + +Her father looked coldly at her impassioned face. “Have you been +listening?” he asked. + +“I have been hearing--” + +“Oh!” As nearly as a man could, in bed, General Triscoe shrugged. + +“I suppose I had, a right to be in my own room. I couldn't help hearing; +and I was perfectly astonished at you, papa, the cruel way you went on, +after all you've said about Mr. Stoller, and his getting no more than he +deserved.” + +“That doesn't justify me,” Burnamy began, but she cut him short almost +as severely as she--had dealt with her father. + +“Yes, it does! It justifies you perfectly! And his wanting you to +falsify the whole thing afterwards, more than justifies you.” + +Neither of the men attempted anything in reply to her casuistry; they +both looked equally posed by it, for different reasons; and Agatha went +on as vehemently as before, addressing herself now to one and now to the +other. + +“And besides, if it didn't justify you, what you have done yourself +would; and your never denying it, or trying to excuse it, makes it the +same as if you hadn't done it, as far as you are concerned; and that is +all I care for.” Burnamy started, as if with the sense of having heard +something like this before, and with surprise at hearing it now; and she +flushed a little as she added tremulously, “And I should never, never +blame you for it, after that; it's only trying to wriggle out of things +which I despise, and you've never done that. And he simply had to come +back,” she turned to her father, “and tell me himself just how it was. +And you said yourself, papa--or the same as said--that he had no right +to suppose I was interested in his affairs unless he--unless--And I +should never have forgiven him, if he hadn't told me then that he that +he had come back because he--felt the way he did. I consider that that +exonerated him for breaking his word, completely. If he hadn't broken +his word I should have thought he had acted very cruelly and--and +strangely. And ever since then, he has behaved so nobly, so honorably, +so delicately, that I don't believe he would ever have said anything +again--if I hadn't fairly forced him. Yes! Yes, I did!” she cried at a +movement of remonstrance from Burnamy. “And I shall always be proud of +you for it.” Her father stared steadfastly at her, and he only lifted +his eyebrows, for change of expression, when she went over to where +Burnamy stood, and put her hand in his with a certain childlike +impetuosity. “And as for the rest,” she declared, “everything I have is +his; just as everything of his would be mine if I had nothing. Or if +he wishes to take me without anything, then he can have me so, and I +sha'n't be afraid but we can get along somehow.” She added, “I have +managed without a maid, ever since I left home, and poverty has no +terrors for me!” + + + + +LXVIII. + +General Triscoe submitted to defeat with the patience which soldiers +learn. He did not submit amiably; that would have been out of character, +and perhaps out of reason; but Burnamy and Agatha were both so amiable +that they supplied good-humor for all. They flaunted their rapture in +her father's face as little as they could, but he may have found their +serene satisfaction, their settled confidence in their fate, as hard to +bear as a more boisterous happiness would have been. + +It was agreed among them all that they were to return soon to America, +and Burnamy was to find some sort of literary or journalistic employment +in New York. She was much surer than he that this could be done with +perfect ease; but they were of an equal mind that General Triscoe was +not to be disturbed in any of his habits, or vexed in the tenor of his +living; and until Burnamy was at least self-supporting there must be no +talk of their being married. + +The talk of their being engaged was quite enough for the time. It +included complete and minute auto-biographies on both sides, reciprocal +analyses of character, a scientifically exhaustive comparison of tastes, +ideas and opinions; a profound study of their respective chins, noses, +eyes, hands, heights, complexions, moles and freckles, with some account +of their several friends. + +In this occupation, which was profitably varied by the confession of +what they had each thought and felt and dreamt concerning the other at +every instant since they met, they passed rapidly the days which the +persistent anxiety of General Triscoe interposed before the date of +their leaving Weimar for Paris, where it was arranged that they should +spend a month before sailing for New York. Burnamy had a notion, which +Agatha approved, of trying for something there on the New York-Paris +Chronicle; and if he got it they might not go home at once. His gains +from that paper had eked out his copyright from his book, and had almost +paid his expenses in getting the material which he had contributed +to it. They were not so great, however, but that his gold reserve was +reduced to less than a hundred dollars, counting the silver coinages +which had remained to him in crossing and recrossing frontiers. He was +at times dimly conscious of his finances, but he buoyantly disregarded +the facts, as incompatible with his status as Agatha's betrothed, if not +unworthy of his character as a lover in the abstract. + +The afternoon before they were to leave Weimar, they spent mostly in the +garden before the Grand-Ducal Museum, in a conference so important that +when it came on to rain, at one moment, they put up Burnamy's umbrella, +and continued to sit under it rather than interrupt the proceedings even +to let Agatha go back to the hotel and look after her father's packing. +Her own had been finished before dinner, so as to leave her the whole +afternoon for their conference, and to allow her father to remain in +undisturbed possession of his room as long as possible. + +What chiefly remained to be put into the general's trunk were his coats +and trousers, hanging in the closet, and August took these down, and +carefully folded and packed them. Then, to make sure that nothing had +been forgotten, Agatha put a chair into the closet when she came in, and +stood on it to examine the shelf which stretched above the hooks. + +There seemed at first to be nothing on it, and then there seemed to be +something in the further corner, which when it was tiptoed for, proved +to be a bouquet of flowers, not so faded as to seem very old; the blue +satin ribbon which they were tied up with, and which hung down half a +yard, was of entire freshness except far the dust of the shelf where it +had lain. + +Agatha backed out into the room with her find in her hand, and examined +it near to, and then at arm's length. August stood by with a pair of the +general's trousers lying across his outstretched hands, and as Agatha +absently looked round at him, she caught a light of intelligence in +his eyes which changed her whole psychological relation to the withered +bouquet. Till then it had been a lifeless, meaningless bunch of flowers, +which some one, for no motive, had tossed up on that dusty shelf in +the closet. At August's smile it became something else. Still she asked +lightly enough, “Was ist loss, August?” + +His smile deepened and broadened. “Fur die Andere,” he explained. + +Agatha demanded in English, “What do you mean by feardy ondery?” + +“Oddaw lehdy.” + +“Other lady?” August nodded, rejoicing in big success, and Agatha closed +the door into her own room, where the general had been put for the time +so as to be spared the annoyance of the packing; then she sat down with +her hands in her lap, and the bouquet in her hands. “Now, August,” + she said very calmly, “I want you to tell me-ich wunsche Sie zu mir +sagen--what other lady--wass andere Dame--these flowers belonged +to--diese Blumen gehorte zu. Verstehen Sie?” + +August nodded brightly, and with German carefully adjusted to Agatha's +capacity, and with now and then a word or phrase of English, he conveyed +that before she and her Herr Father had appeared, there had been in +Weimar another American Fraulein with her Frau Mother; they had not +indeed staid in that hotel, but had several times supped there with +the young Herr Bornahmee, who was occupying that room before her Herr +Father. The young Herr had been much about with these American Damen, +driving and walking with them, and sometimes dining or supping with them +at their hotel, The Elephant. August had sometimes carried notes to them +from the young Herr, and he had gone for the bouquet which the gracious +Fraulein was holding, on the morning of the day that the American Damen +left by the train for Hanover. + +August was much helped and encouraged throughout by the friendly +intelligence of the gracious Fraulein, who smiled radiantly in clearing +up one dim point after another, and who now and then supplied the +English analogues which he sought in his effort to render his German +more luminous. + +At the end she returned to the work of packing, in which she directed +him, and sometimes assisted him with her own hands, having put the +bouquet on the mantel to leave herself free. She took it up again and +carried it into her own room, when she went with August to summon her +father back to his. She bade August say to the young Herr, if he saw +him, that she was going to sup with her father, and August gave her +message to Burnamy, whom he met on the stairs coming down as he was +going up with their tray. + +Agatha usually supped with her father, but that evening Burnamy was less +able than usual to bear her absence in the hotel dining-room, and he +went up to a cafe in the town for his supper. He did not stay long, and +when he returned his heart gave a joyful lift at sight of Agatha looking +out from her balcony, as if she were looking for him. He made her a gay +flourishing bow, lifting his hat high, and she came down to meet him +at the hotel door. She had her hat on and jacket over one arm and she +joined him at once for the farewell walk he proposed in what they had +agreed to call their garden. + +She moved a little ahead of him, and when they reached the place where +they always sat, she shifted her jacket to the other arm and uncovered +the hand in which she had been carrying the withered bouquet. “Here is +something I found in your closet, when I was getting papa's things out.” + +“Why, what is it?” he asked innocently, as he took it from her. + +“A bouquet, apparently,” she answered, as he drew the long ribbons +through his fingers, and looked at the flowers curiously, with his head +aslant. + +“Where did you get it?” + +“On the shelf.” + +It seemed a long time before Burnamy said with a long sigh, as of final +recollection, “Oh, yes,” and then he said nothing; and they did not sit +down, but stood looking at each other. + +“Was it something you got for me, and forgot to give me?” she asked in +a voice which would not have misled a woman, but which did its work with +the young man. + +He laughed and said, “Well, hardly! The general has been in the room +ever since you came.” + +“Oh, yes. Then perhaps somebody left it there before you had the room?” + +Burnamy was silent again, but at last he said, “No, I flung it up there +I had forgotten all about it.” + +“And you wish me to forget about it, too?” Agatha asked in a gayety of +tone that still deceived him. + +“It would only be fair. You made me,” he rejoined, and there was +something so charming in his words and way, that she would have been +glad to do it. + +But she governed herself against the temptation and said, “Women are not +good at forgetting, at least till they know what.” + +“Oh, I'll tell you, if you want to know,” he said with a laugh, and at +the words she--sank provisionally in their accustomed seat. He sat down +beside her, but not so near as usual, and he waited so long before he +began that it seemed as if he had forgotten again. “Why, it's nothing. +Miss Etkins and her mother were here before you came, and this is a +bouquet that I meant to give her at the train when she left. But I +decided I wouldn't, and I threw it onto the shelf in the closet.” + +“May I ask why you thought of taking a bouquet to her at the train?” + +“Well, she and her mother--I had been with them a good deal, and I +thought it would be civil.” + +“And why did you decide not to be civil?” + +“I didn't want it to look like more than civility.” + +“Were they here long?” + +“About a week. They left just after the Marches came.” + +Agatha seemed not to heed the answer she had exacted. She sat reclined +in the corner of the seat, with her head drooping. After an interval +which was long to Burnamy she began to pull at a ring on the third +finger of her left hand, absently, as if she did not know what she was +doing; but when she had got it off she held it towards Burnamy and said +quietly, “I think you had better have this again,” and then she rose and +moved slowly and weakly away. + +He had taken the ring mechanically from her, and he stood a moment +bewildered; then he pressed after her. + +“Agatha, do you--you don't mean--” + +“Yes,” she said, without looking round at his face, which she knew was +close to her shoulder. “It's over. It isn't what you've done. It's what +you are. I believed in you, in spite of what you did to that man--and +your coming back when you said you wouldn't--and--But I see now that +what you did was you; it was your nature; and I can't believe in you any +more.” + +“Agatha!” he implored. “You're not going to be so unjust! There was +nothing between you and me when that girl was here! I had a right to--” + +“Not if you really cared for me! Do you think I would have flirted with +any one so soon, if I had cared for you as you pretended you did for +me that night in Carlsbad? Oh, I don't say you're false. But you're +fickle--” + +“But I'm not fickle! From the first moment I saw you, I never cared for +any one but you!” + +“You have strange ways of showing your devotion. Well, say you are not +fickle. Say, that I'm fickle. I am. I have changed my mind. I see +that it would never do. I leave you free to follow all the turning and +twisting of your fancy.” She spoke rapidly, almost breathlessly, and she +gave him no chance to get out the words that seemed to choke him. She +began to run, but at the door of the hotel she stopped and waited till +he came stupidly up. “I have a favor to ask, Mr. Burnamy. I beg you will +not see me again, if you can help it before we go to-morrow. My father +and I are indebted to you for too many kindnesses, and you mustn't take +any more trouble on our account. August can see us off in the morning.” + +She nodded quickly, and was gone in-doors while he was yet struggling +with his doubt of the reality of what had all so swiftly happened. + +General Triscoe was still ignorant of any change in the status to which +he had reconciled himself with so much difficulty, when he came down to +get into the omnibus for the train. Till then he had been too proud +to ask what had become of Burnamy, though he had wondered, but now he +looked about and said impatiently, “I hope that young man isn't going to +keep us waiting.” + +Agatha was pale and worn with sleeplessness, but she said firmly, “He +isn't going, papa. I will tell you in the train. August will see to the +tickets and the baggage.” + +August conspired with the traeger to get them a first-class compartment +to themselves. But even with the advantages of this seclusion Agatha's +confidences to her father were not full. She told her father that her +engagement was broken for reasons that did not mean anything very +wrong in Mr. Burnamy but that convinced her they could never be happy +together. As she did not give the reasons, he found a natural difficulty +in accepting them, and there was something in the situation which +appealed strongly to his contrary-mindedness. Partly from this, partly +from his sense of injury in being obliged so soon to adjust himself to +new conditions, and partly from his comfortable feeling of security +from an engagement to which his assent had been forced, he said, “I hope +you're not making a mistake.” + +“Oh, no,” she answered, and she attested her conviction by a burst of +sobbing that lasted well on the way to the first stop of the train. + + + + +LXIX. + +It would have been always twice as easy to go direct from Berlin to the +Hague through Hanover; but the Marches decided to go by Frankfort and +the Rhine, because they wished to revisit the famous river, which +they remembered from their youth, and because they wished to stop at +Dusseldorf, where Heinrich Heine was born. Without this Mrs. March, who +kept her husband up to his early passion for the poet with a feeling +that she was defending him from age in it, said that their silver +wedding journey would not be complete; and he began himself to think +that it would be interesting. + +They took a sleeping-car for Frankfort and they woke early as people do +in sleeping-cars everywhere. March dressed and went out for a cup of +the same coffee of which sleeping-car buffets have the awful secret in +Europe as well as America, and for a glimpse of the twilight landscape. +One gray little town, towered and steepled and red-roofed within its +mediaeval walls, looked as if it would have been warmer in something +more. There was a heavy dew, if not a light frost, over all, and in +places a pale fog began to lift from the low hills. Then the sun rose +without dispersing the cold, which was afterwards so severe in +their room at the Russischer Hof in Frankfort that in spite of +the steam-radiators they sat shivering in all their wraps till +breakfast-time. + +There was no steam on in the radiators, of course; when they implored +the portier for at least a lamp to warm their hands by he turned on all +the electric lights without raising the temperature in the slightest +degree. Amidst these modern comforts they were so miserable that they +vowed each other to shun, as long as they were in Germany, or at +least while the summer lasted, all hotels which were steam-heated and +electric-lighted. They heated themselves somewhat with their wrath, +and over their breakfast they relented so far as to suffer themselves a +certain interest in the troops of all arms beginning to pass the hotel. +They were fragments of the great parade, which had ended the day before, +and they were now drifting back to their several quarters of the empire. +Many of them were very picturesque, and they had for the boys and +girls running before and beside them, the charm which armies and circus +processions have for children everywhere. But their passage filled with +cruel anxiety a large old dog whom his master had left harnessed to +a milk-cart before the hotel door; from time to time he lifted up his +voice, and called to the absentee with hoarse, deep barks that almost +shook him from his feet. + +The day continued blue and bright and cold, and the Marches gave the +morning to a rapid survey of the city, glad that it was at least not +wet. What afterwards chiefly remained to them was the impression of an +old town as quaint almost and as Gothic as old Hamburg, and a new +town, handsome and regular, and, in the sudden arrest of some streets, +apparently overbuilt. The modern architectural taste was of course +Parisian; there is no other taste for the Germans; but in the prevailing +absence of statues there was a relief from the most oppressive +characteristic of the imperial capital which was a positive delight. +Some sort of monument to the national victory over France there must +have been; but it must have been unusually inoffensive, for it left no +record of itself in the travellers' consciousness. They were aware +of gardened squares and avenues, bordered by stately dwellings, of +dignified civic edifices, and of a vast and splendid railroad station, +such as the state builds even in minor European cities, but such as our +paternal corporations have not yet given us anywhere in America. They +went to the Zoological Garden, where they heard the customary Kalmucks +at their public prayers behind a high board fence; and as pilgrims from +the most plutrocratic country in the world March insisted that they +must pay their devoirs at the shrine of the Rothschilds, whose natal +banking-house they revered from the outside. + +It was a pity, he said, that the Rothschilds were not on his letter +of credit; he would have been willing to pay tribute to the Genius +of Finance in the percentage on at least ten pounds. But he consoled +himself by reflecting that he did not need the money; and he consoled +Mrs. March for their failure to penetrate to the interior of the +Rothschilds' birthplace by taking her to see the house where Goethe +was born. The public is apparently much more expected there, and in the +friendly place they were no doubt much more welcome than they would +have been in the Rothschild house. Under that roof they renewed a happy +moment of Weimar, which after the lapse of a week seemed already so +remote. They wondered, as they mounted the stairs from the basement +opening into a clean little court, how Burnamy was getting on, and +whether it had yet come to that understanding between him and Agatha, +which Mrs. March, at least, had meant to be inevitable. Then they became +part of some such sight-seeing retinue as followed the custodian about +in the Goethe horse in Weimar, and of an emotion indistinguishable from +that of their fellow sight-seers. They could make sure, afterwards, of +a personal pleasure in a certain prescient classicism of the house. +It somehow recalled both the Goethe houses at Weimar, and it somehow +recalled Italy. It is a separate house of two floors above the entrance, +which opens to a little court or yard, and gives access by a decent +stairway to the living-rooms. The chief of these is a sufficiently +dignified parlor or salon, and the most important is the little chamber +in the third story where the poet first opened his eyes to the light +which he rejoiced in for so long a life, and which, dying, he implored +to be with him more. It is as large as his death-chamber in +Weimar, where he breathed this prayer, and it looks down into the +Italian-looking court, where probably he noticed the world for the first +time, and thought it a paved enclosure thirty or forty feet square. In +the birth-room they keep his puppet theatre, and the place is fairly +suggestive of his childhood; later, in his youth, he could look from the +parlor windows and see the house where his earliest love dwelt. So much +remains of Goethe in the place where he was born, and as such things go, +it is not a little. The house is that of a prosperous and well-placed +citizen, and speaks of the senatorial quality in his family which Heine +says he was fond of recalling, rather than the sartorial quality of the +ancestor who, again as Heine says, mended the Republic's breeches. + +From the Goethe house, one drives by the Goethe monument to the Romer, +the famous town-hall of the old free imperial city which Frankfort once +was; and by this route the Marches drove to it, agreeing with their +coachman that he was to keep as much in the sun as possible. It was +still so cold that when they reached the Romer, and he stopped in a +broad blaze of the only means of heating that they have in Frankfort +in the summer, the travellers were loath to leave it for the chill +interior, where the German emperors were elected for so many centuries. +As soon as an emperor was chosen, in the great hall effigied round +with the portraits of his predecessors, he hurried out in the balcony, +ostensibly to show himself to the people, but really, March contended, +to warm up a little in the sun. The balcony was undergoing repairs that +day, and the travellers could not go out on it; but under the spell of +the historic interest of the beautiful old Gothic place, they lingered +in the interior till they were half-torpid with the cold. Then she +abandoned to him the joint duty of viewing the cathedral, and hurried +to their carriage where she basked in the sun till he came to her. He +returned shivering, after a half-hour's absence, and pretended that she +had missed the greatest thing in the world, but as he could never be got +to say just what she had lost, and under the closest cross-examination +could not prove that this cathedral was memorably different from +hundreds of other fourteenth-century cathedrals, she remained in a +lasting content with the easier part she had chosen. His only definite +impression at the cathedral seemed to be confined to a Bostonian of +gloomily correct type, whom he had seen doing it with his Baedeker, +and not letting an object of interest escape; and his account of her +fellow-townsman reconciled Mrs. March more and more to not having gone. + +As it was warmer out-doors than in-doors at Frankfort, and as the +breadth of sunshine increased with the approach of noon they gave the +rest of the morning to driving about and ignorantly enjoying the +outside of many Gothic churches, whose names even they did not trouble +themselves to learn. They liked the river Main whenever they came to it, +because it was so lately from Wurzburg, and because it was so beautiful +with its bridges, old and new, and its boats of many patterns. They +liked the market-place in front of the Romer not only because it was +full of fascinating bargains in curious crockery and wooden-ware, but +because there was scarcely any shade at all in it. They read from their +Baedeker that until the end of the last century no Jew was suffered to +enter the marketplace, and they rejoiced to find from all appearances +that the Jews had been making up for their unjust exclusion ever since. +They were almost as numerous there as the Anglo-Saxons were everywhere +else in Frankfort. These, both of the English and American branches of +the race, prevailed in the hotel diningroom, where the Marches had a +mid-day dinner so good that it almost made amends for the steam-heating +and electric-lighting. + +As soon as possible after dinner they took the train for Mayence, +and ran Rhinewards through a pretty country into what seemed a milder +climate. It grew so much milder, apparently, that a lady in their +compartment to whom March offered his forward-looking seat, ordered the +window down when the guard came, without asking their leave. Then the +climate proved much colder, and Mrs. March cowered under her shawls +the rest of the way, and would not be entreated to look at the pleasant +level landscape near, or the hills far off. He proposed to put up the +window as peremptorily as it had been put down, but she stayed him with +a hoarse whisper, “She may be another Baroness!” At first he did not +know what she meant, then he remembered the lady whose claims to rank +her presence had so poorly enforced on the way to Wurzburg, and he +perceived that his wife was practising a wise forbearance with their +fellow-passengers, and giving her a chance to turn out any sort of +highhote she chose. She failed to profit by the opportunity; she +remained simply a selfish, disagreeable woman, of no more perceptible +distinction than their other fellow-passenger, a little commercial +traveller from Vienna (they resolved from his appearance and the +lettering on his valise that he was no other), who slept with a sort of +passionate intensity all the way to Mayence. + + + + +LXX. + +The Main widened and swam fuller as they approached the Rhine, and +flooded the low-lying fields in-places with a pleasant effect under +a wet sunset. When they reached the station in Mayence they drove +interminably to the hotel they had chosen on the river-shore, through a +city handsomer and cleaner than any American city they could think of, +and great part of the way by a street of dwellings nobler, Mrs. March +owned, than even Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. It was planted, like +that, with double rows of trees, but lacked its green lawns; and at +times the sign of Weinhandlung at a corner, betrayed that there was no +such restriction against shops as keeps the Boston street so sacred. +Otherwise they had to confess once more that any inferior city of +Germany is of a more proper and dignified presence than the most +parse-proud metropolis in America. To be sure, they said, the German +towns had generally a thousand years' start; but all the same the fact +galled them. + +It was very bleak, though very beautiful when they stopped before their +hotel on the Rhine, where all their impalpable memories of their visit +to Mayence thirty years earlier precipitated themselves into something +tangible. There were the reaches of the storied and fabled stream with +its boats and bridges and wooded shores and islands; there were the +spires and towers and roofs of the town on either bank crowding to the +river's brink; and there within-doors was the stately portier in gold +braid, and the smiling, bowing, hand-rubbing landlord, alluring them to +his most expensive rooms, which so late in the season he would fain +have had them take. But in a little elevator, that mounted slowly, very +slowly, in the curve of the stairs, they went higher to something lower, +and the landlord retired baked, and left them to the ministrations of +the serving-men who arrived with their large and small baggage. All +these retired in turn when they asked to have a fire lighted in the +stove, without which Mrs. March would never have taken the fine stately +rooms, and sent back a pretty young girl to do it. She came indignant, +not because she had come lugging a heavy hod of coal and a great +arm-load of wood, but because her sense of fitness was outraged by the +strange demand. + +“What!” she cried. “A fire in September!” + +“Yes,” March returned, inspired to miraculous aptness in his German by +the exigency, “yes, if September is cold.” + +The girl looked at him, and then, either because she thought him mad, or +liked him merry, burst into a loud laugh, and kindled the fire without a +word more. + +He lighted all the reluctant gas-jets in the vast gilt chandelier, and +in less than half an hour the temperature of the place rose to at least +sixty-five Fahrenheit, with every promise of going higher. Mrs. March +made herself comfortable in a deep chair before the stove, and said +she would have her supper there; and she bade him send her just such a +supper of chicken and honey and tea as they had all had in Mayence when +they supped in her aunt's parlor there all those years ago. He wished to +compute the years, but she drove him out with an imploring cry, and +he went down to a very gusty dining-room on the ground-floor, where he +found himself alone with a young English couple and their little boy. +They were friendly, intelligent people, and would have been conversable, +apparently, but for the terrible cold of the husband, which he said he +had contracted at the manoeuvres in Hombourg. March said he was going +to Holland, and the Englishman was doubtful of the warmth which March +expected to find there. He seemed to be suffering from a suspense of +faith as to the warmth anywhere; from time to time the door of the +dining-room self-opened in a silent, ghostly fashion into the court +without, and let in a chilling draught about the legs of all, till the +little English boy got down from his place and shut it. + +He alone continued cheerful, for March's spirits certainly did not rise +when some mumbling Americans came in and muttered over their meat at +another table. He hated to own it, but he had to own that wherever he +had met the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon race together in Europe, the +elder had shown, by a superior chirpiness, to the disadvantage of the +younger. The cast clothes of the old-fashioned British offishness seemed +to have fallen to the American travellers who were trying to be correct +and exemplary; and he would almost rather have had back the old-style +bragging Americans whom he no longer saw. He asked of an agreeable +fellow-countryman whom he found later in the reading-room, what had +become of these; and this compatriot said he had travelled with one +only the day before, who had posed before their whole compartment in +his scorn of the German landscape, the German weather, the German +government, the German railway management, and then turned out an +American of German birth! March found his wife in great bodily comfort +when he went back to her, but in trouble of mind about a clock which she +had discovered standing on the lacquered iron top of the stove. It was +a French clock, of architectural pretensions, in the taste of the +first Empire, and it looked as if it had not been going since Napoleon +occupied Mayence early in the century. But Mrs. March now had it sorely +on her conscience where, in its danger from the heat of the stove, it +rested with the weight of the Pantheon, whose classic form it recalled. +She wondered that no one had noticed it before the fire was kindled, and +she required her husband to remove it at once from the top of the stove +to the mantel under the mirror, which was the natural habitat of such a +clock. He said nothing could be simpler, but when he lifted it, it began +to fall all apart, like a clock in the house of the Hoodoo. Its marble +base dropped-off; its pillars tottered; its pediment swayed to one side. +While Mrs. March lamented her hard fate, and implored him to hurry it +together before any one came, he contrived to reconstruct it in its new +place. Then they both breathed freer, and returned to sit down before +the stove. But at the same moment they both saw, ineffaceably outlined +on the lacquered top, the basal form of the clock. The chambermaid would +see it in the morning; she would notice the removal of the clock, and +would make a merit of reporting its ruin by the heat to the landlord, +and in the end they would be mulcted of its value. Rather than suffer +this wrong they agreed to restore it to its place, and, let it go to +destruction upon its own terms. March painfully rebuilt it where he had +found it, and they went to bed with a bad conscience to worse dreams. + +He remembered, before he slept, the hour of his youth when he was in +Mayence before, and was so care free that he had heard with impersonal +joy two young American voices speaking English in the street under his +window. One of them broke from the common talk with a gay burlesque of +pathos in the line: + + “Oh heavens! she cried, my Heeding country save!” + +and then with a laughing good-night these unseen, unknown spirits of +youth parted and departed. Who were they, and in what different places, +with what cares or ills, had their joyous voices grown old, or fallen +silent for evermore? It was a moonlight night, March remembered, and he +remembered how he wished he were out in it with those merry fellows. + +He nursed the memory and the wonder in his dreaming thought, and he +woke early to other voices under his window. But now the voices, though +young, were many and were German, and the march of feet and the stamp +of hooves kept time with their singing. He drew his curtain and saw +the street filled with broken squads of men, some afoot and some on +horseback, some in uniform and some in civil dress with students' caps, +loosely straggling on and roaring forth that song whose words he could +not make out. At breakfast he asked the waiter what it all meant, and he +said that these were conscripts whose service had expired with the late +manoeuvres, and who were now going home. He promised March a translation +of the song, but he never gave it; and perhaps the sense of their joyful +home-going remained the more poetic with him because its utterance +remained inarticulate. + +March spent the rainy Sunday, on which they had fallen, in wandering +about the little city alone. His wife said she was tired and would sit +by the fire, and hear about Mayence when he came in. He went to the +cathedral, which has its renown for beauty and antiquity, and he there +added to his stock of useful information the fact that the people +of Mayence seemed very Catholic and very devout. They proved it by +preferring to any of the divine old Gothic shrines in the cathedral, +an ugly baroque altar, which was everywhere hung about with votive +offerings. A fashionably dressed young man and young girl sprinkled +themselves with holy water as reverently as if they had been old and +ragged. Some tourists strolled up and down the aisles with their red +guide-books, and studied the objects of interest. A resplendent beadle +in a cocked hat, and with along staff of authority posed before his own +ecclesiastical consciousness in blue and silver. At the high altar a +priest was saying mass, and March wondered whether his consciousness was +as wholly ecclesiastical as the beadle's, or whether somewhere in it he +felt the historical majesty, the long human consecration of the place. + +He wandered at random in the town through streets German and quaint and +old, and streets French and fine and new, and got back to the river, +which he crossed on one of the several handsome bridges. The rough river +looked chill under a sky of windy clouds, and he felt out of season, +both as to the summer travel, and as to the journey he was making. +The summer of life as well as the summer of that year was past. Better +return to his own radiator in his flat on Stuyvesant Square; to the +great ugly brutal town which, if it was not home to him, was as much +home to him as to any one. A longing for New York welled up his heart, +which was perhaps really a wish to be at work again. He said he must +keep this from his wife, who seemed not very well, and whom he must try +to cheer up when he returned to the hotel. + +But they had not a very joyous afternoon, and the evening was no gayer. +They said that if they had not ordered their letters sent to Dusseldorf +they believed they should push on to Holland without stopping; and March +would have liked to ask, Why not push on to America? But he forbore, and +he was afterwards glad that he had done so. + +In the morning their spirits rose with the sun, though the sun got up +behind clouds as usual; and they were further animated by the imposition +which the landlord practised upon them. After a distinct and repeated +agreement as to the price of their rooms he charged them twice as much, +and then made a merit of throwing off two marks out of the twenty he had +plundered them of. + +“Now I see,” said Mrs. March, on their way down to the boat, “how +fortunate it was that we baked his clock. You may laugh, but I believe +we were the instruments of justice.” + +“Do you suppose that clock was never baked before?” asked her husband. +“The landlord has his own arrangement with justice. When he overcharges +his parting guests he says to his conscience, Well, they baked my +clock.” + + + + +LXXI. + +The morning was raw, but it was something not to have it rainy; and the +clouds that hung upon the hills and hid their tops were at least as fine +as the long board signs advertising chocolate on the river banks. The +smoke rising from the chimneys of the manufactories of Mayence was not +so bad, either, when one got them in the distance a little; and March +liked the way the river swam to the stems of the trees on the low grassy +shores. It was like the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cairo in that, +and it was yellow and thick, like the Mississippi, though he thought he +remembered it blue and clear. A friendly German, of those who began to +come aboard more and more at all the landings after leaving Mayence, +assured him that he was right, and that the Rhine was unusually turbid +from the unusual rains. March had his own belief that whatever the +color of the Rhine might be the rains were not unusual, but he could not +gainsay the friendly German. + +Most of the passengers at starting were English and American; but they +showed no prescience of the international affinition which has since +realized itself, in their behavior toward one another. They held +silently apart, and mingled only in the effect of one young man who +kept the Marches in perpetual question whether he was a Bostonian or an +Englishman. His look was Bostonian, but his accent was English; and was +he a Bostonian who had been in England long enough to get the accent, or +was he an Englishman who had been in Boston long enough to get the look? +He wore a belated straw hat, and a thin sack-coat; and in the rush of +the boat through the raw air they fancied him very cold, and longed +to offer him one of their superabundant wraps. At times March actually +lifted a shawl from his knees, feeling sure that the stranger was +English and that he might make so bold with him; then at some glacial +glint in the young man's eye, or at some petrific expression of his +delicate face, he felt that he was a Bostonian, and lost courage and let +the shawl sink again. March tried to forget him in the wonder of seeing +the Germans begin to eat and drink, as soon as they came on boards +either from the baskets they had brought with them, or from the boat's +provision. But he prevailed, with his smile that was like a sneer, +through all the events of the voyage; and took March's mind off the +scenery with a sudden wrench when he came unexpectedly into view after a +momentary disappearance. At the table d'hote, which was served when the +landscape began to be less interesting, the guests were expected to hand +their plates across the table to the stewards but to keep their knives +and forks throughout the different courses, and at each of these partial +changes March felt the young man's chilly eyes upon him, inculpating him +for the semi-civilization of the management. At such times he knew that +he was a Bostonian. + +The weather cleared, as they descended the river, and under a sky at +last cloudless, the Marches had moments of swift reversion to their +former Rhine journey, when they were young and the purple light of love +mantled the vineyarded hills along the shore, and flushed the castled +steeps. The scene had lost nothing of the beauty they dimly remembered; +there were certain features of it which seemed even fairer and grander +than they remembered. The town of Bingen, where everybody who knows +the poem was more or less born, was beautiful in spite of its factory +chimneys, though there were no compensating castles near it; and the +castles seemed as good as those of the theatre. Here and there some of +them had been restored and were occupied, probably by robber barons who +had gone into trade. Others were still ruinous, and there was now and +then such a mere gray snag that March, at sight of it, involuntarily put +his tongue to the broken tooth which he was keeping for the skill of the +first American dentist. + +For natural sublimity the Rhine scenery, as they recognized once more, +does not compare with the Hudson scenery; and they recalled one point on +the American river where the Central Road tunnels a jutting cliff, which +might very well pass for the rock of the Loreley, where she dreams + + 'Solo sitting by the shores of old romance' + +and the trains run in and out under her knees unheeded. “Still, still +you know,” March argued, “this is the Loreley on the Rhine, and not +the Loreley on the Hudson; and I suppose that makes all the difference. +Besides, the Rhine doesn't set up to be sublime; it only means to be +storied and dreamy and romantic and it does it. And then we have really +got no Mouse Tower; we might build one, to be sure.” + +“Well, we have got no denkmal, either,” said his wife, meaning the +national monument to the German reconquest of the Rhine, which they had +just passed, “and that is something in our favor.” + +“It was too far off for us to see how ugly it was,” he returned. + +“The denkmal at Coblenz was so near that the bronze Emperor almost rode +aboard the boat.” + +He could not answer such a piece of logic as that. He yielded, and +began to praise the orcharded levels which now replaced the vine-purpled +slopes of the upper river. He said they put him in mind of orchards that +he had known in his boyhood; and they, agreed that the supreme charm of +travel, after all, was not in seeing something new and strange, but in +finding something familiar and dear in the heart of the strangeness. + +At Cologne they found this in the tumult of getting ashore with their +baggage and driving from the steamboat landing to the railroad station, +where they were to get their train for Dusseldorf an hour later. The +station swarmed with travellers eating and drinking and smoking; but +they escaped from it for a precious half of their golden hour, and gave +the time to the great cathedral, which was built, a thousand years ago, +just round the corner from the station, and is therefore very handy +to it. Since they saw the cathedral last it had been finished, and now +under a cloudless evening sky, it soared and swept upward like a pale +flame. Within it was a bit over-clean, a bit bare, but without it was +one of the great memories of the race, the record of a faith which +wrought miracles of beauty, at least, if not piety. + +The train gave the Marches another, and last, view of it as they slowly +drew out of the city, and began to run through a level country walled +with far-off hills; past fields of buckwheat showing their stems like +coral under their black tops; past peasant houses changing their wonted +shape to taller and narrower forms; past sluggish streams from which the +mist rose and hung over the meadows, under a red sunset, glassy clear +till the manifold factory chimneys of Dusseldorf stained it with their +dun smoke. + +This industrial greeting seemed odd from the town where Heinrich Heine +was born; but when they had eaten their supper in the capital little +hotel they found there, and went out for a stroll, they found nothing to +remind them of the factories, and much to make them think of the poet. +The moon, beautiful and perfect as a stage moon, came up over the +shoulder of a church as they passed down a long street which they +had all to themselves. Everybody seemed to have gone to bed, but at a +certain corner a girl opened a window above them, and looked out at the +moon. + +When they returned to their hotel they found a highwalled garden facing +it, full of black depths of foliage. In the night March woke and saw the +moon standing over the garden, and silvering its leafy tops. This was +really as it should be in the town where the idolized poet of his youth +was born; the poet whom of all others he had adored, and who had once +seemed like a living friend; who had been witness of his first love, +and had helped him to speak it. His wife used to laugh at him for his +Heine-worship in those days; but she had since come to share it, and +she, even more than he, had insisted upon this pilgrimage. He thought +long thoughts of the past, as he looked into the garden across the way, +with an ache for his perished self and the dead companionship of his +youth, all ghosts together in the silvered shadow. The trees shuddered +in the night breeze, and its chill penetrated to him where he stood. + +His wife called to him from her room, “What are you doing?” + +“Oh, sentimentalizing,” he answered boldly. + +“Well, you will be sick,” she said, and he crept back into bed again. + +They had sat up late, talking in a glad excitement. But he woke early, +as an elderly man is apt to do after broken slumbers, and left his wife +still sleeping. He was not so eager for the poetic interests of the +town as he had been the night before; he even deferred his curiosity for +Heine's birth-house to the instructive conference which he had with +his waiter at breakfast. After all, was not it more important to know +something of the actual life of a simple common class of men than to +indulge a faded fancy for the memory of a genius, which no amount of +associations could feed again to its former bloom? The waiter said he +was a Nuremberger, and had learned English in London where he had served +a year for nothing. Afterwards, when he could speak three languages he +got a pound a week, which seemed low for so many, though not so low as +the one mark a day which he now received in Dusseldorf; in Berlin he +paid the hotel two marks a day. March confided to him his secret trouble +as to tips, and they tried vainly to enlighten each other as to what a +just tip was. + +He went to his banker's, and when he came back he found his wife +with her breakfast eaten, and so eager for the exploration of Heine's +birthplace that she heard with indifference of his failure to get any +letters. It was too soon to expect them, she said, and then she showed +him her plan, which she had been working out ever since she woke. It +contained every place which Heine had mentioned, and she was determined +not one should escape them. She examined him sharply upon his condition, +accusing him of having taken cold when he got up in the night, and +acquitting him with difficulty. She herself was perfectly well, but a +little fagged, and they must have a carriage. + +They set out in a lordly two-spanner, which took up half the little +Bolkerstrasse where Heine was born, when they stopped across the way +from his birthhouse, so that she might first take it all in from the +outside before they entered it. It is a simple street, and not the +cleanest of the streets in a town where most of them are rather dirty. +Below the houses are shops, and the first story of Heine's house is +a butcher shop, with sides of pork and mutton hanging in the windows; +above, where the Heine family must once have lived, a gold-beater and a +frame-maker displayed their signs. + +But did the Heine family really once live there? The house looked so +fresh and new that in spite of the tablet in its front affirming it +the poet's birthplace, they doubted; and they were not reassured by the +people who half halted as they passed, and stared at the strangers, so +anomalously interested in the place. They dismounted, and crossed to the +butcher shop where the provision man corroborated the tablet, but could +not understand their wish to go up stairs. He did not try to prevent +them, however, and they climbed to the first floor above, where a +placard on the door declared it private and implored them not to knock. +Was this the outcome of the inmate's despair from the intrusion of other +pilgrims who had wised to see the Heine dwelling-rooms? They durst not +knock and ask so much, and they sadly descended to the ground-floor, +where they found a butcher boy of much greater apparent intelligence +than the butcher himself, who told them that the building in front was +as new as it looked, and the house where Heine was really born was the +old house in the rear. He showed them this house, across a little court +patched with mangy grass and lilac-bushes; and when they wished to visit +it he led the way. The place was strewn both underfoot and overhead with +feathers; it had once been all a garden out to the street, the boy said, +but from these feathers, as well as the odor which prevailed, and the +anxious behavior of a few hens left in the high coop at one side, it was +plain that what remained of the garden was now a chicken slaughteryard. +There was one well-grown tree, and the boy said it was of the poet's +time; but when he let them into the house, he became vague as to the +room where Heine was born; it was certain only that it was somewhere +upstairs and that it could not be seen. The room where they stood was +the frame-maker's shop, and they bought of him a small frame for a +memorial. They bought of the butcher's boy, not so commercially, a +branch of lilac; and they came away, thinking how much amused Heine +himself would have been with their visit; how sadly, how merrily he +would have mocked at their effort to revere his birthplace. + +They were too old if not too wise to be daunted by their defeat, and +they drove next to the old court garden beside the Rhine where the poet +says he used to play with the little Veronika, and probably did not. At +any rate, the garden is gone; the Schloss was burned down long ago; +and nothing remains but a detached tower in which the good Elector +Jan Wilhelm, of Heine's time, amused himself with his many mechanical +inventions. The tower seemed to be in process of demolition, but an +intelligent workman who came down out of it, was interested in the +strangers' curiosity, and directed them to a place behind the Historical +Museum where they could find a bit of the old garden. It consisted of +two or three low trees, and under them the statue of the Elector by +which Heine sat with the little Veronika, if he really did. Afresh gale +blowing through the trees stirred the bushes that backed the statue, but +not the laurel wreathing the Elector's head, and meeting in a neat point +over his forehead. The laurel wreath is stone, like the rest of the +Elector, who stands there smirking in marble ermine and armor, and +resting his baton on the nose of a very small lion, who, in the +exigencies of foreshortening, obligingly goes to nothing but a tail +under the Elector's robe. + +This was a prince who loved himself in effigy so much that he raised +an equestrian statue to his own renown in the market-place, though he +modestly refused the credit of it, and ascribed its erection to the +affection of his subjects. You see him therein a full-bottomed wig, +mounted on a rampant charger with a tail as big round as a barrel, and +heavy enough to keep him from coming down on his fore legs as long as he +likes to hold them up. It was to this horse's back that Heine +clambered when a small boy, to see the French take formal possession +of Dusseldorf; and he clung to the waist of the bronze Elector, who +had just abdicated, while the burgomaster made a long speech, from the +balcony of the Rathhaus, and the Electoral arms were taken down from its +doorway. + +The Rathhaus is a salad-dressing of German gothic and French rococo as +to its architectural style, and is charming in its way, but the Marches +were in the market-place for the sake of that moment of Heine's boyhood. +They felt that he might have been the boy who stopped as he ran before +them, and smacked the stomach of a large pumpkin lying at the feet of an +old market-woman, and then dashed away before she could frame a protest +against the indignity. From this incident they philosophized that the +boys of Dusseldorf are as mischievous at the end of the century as +they were at the beginning; and they felt the fascination that such a +bounteous, unkempt old marketplace must have for the boys of any period. +There were magnificent vegetables of all sorts in it, and if the +fruits were meagre that was the fault of the rainy summer, perhaps. The +market-place was very dirty, and so was the narrow street leading down +from it to the Rhine, which ran swift as a mountain torrent along a +slatternly quay. A bridge of boats crossing the stream shook in the +rapid current, and a long procession of market carts passed slowly over, +while a cluster of scows waited in picturesque patience for the draw to +open. + +They saw what a beautiful town that was for a boy to grow up in, and +how many privileges it offered, how many dangers, how many chances +for hairbreadth escapes. They chose that Heine must often have rushed +shrieking joyfully down that foul alley to the Rhine with other boys; +and they easily found a leaf-strewn stretch of the sluggish Dussel, in +the Public Garden, where his playmate, the little Wilhelm, lost his +life and saved the kitten's. They were not so sure of the avenue through +which the poet saw the Emperor Napoleon come riding on his small white +horse when he took possession of the Elector's dominions. But if it was +that where the statue of the Kaiser Wilhelm I. comes riding on a horse +led by two Victories, both poet and hero are avenged there on the +accomplished fact. Defeated and humiliated France triumphs in the +badness of that foolish denkmal (one of the worst in all denkmal-ridden +Germany), and the memory of the singer whom the Hohenzollern family +pride forbids honor in his native place, is immortal in its presence. + +On the way back to their hotel, March made some reflections upon the +open neglect, throughout Germany, of the greatest German lyrist, by +which the poet might have profited if he had been present. He contended +that it was not altogether an effect of Hohenzollern pride, which could +not suffer a joke or two from the arch-humorist; but that Heine had +said things of Germany herself which Germans might well have found +unpardonable. He concluded that it would not do to be perfectly frank +with one's own country. Though, to be sure, there would always be the +question whether the Jew-born Heine had even a step-fatherland in the +Germany he loved so tenderly and mocked so pitilessly. He had to own +that if he were a negro poet he would not feel bound to measure terms +in speaking of America, and he would not feel that his fame was in her +keeping. + +Upon the whole he blamed Heine less than Germany and he accused her of +taking a shabby revenge, in trying to forget him; in the heat of his +resentment that there should be no record of Heine in the city where +he was born, March came near ignoring himself the fact that the poet +Freiligrath was also born there. As for the famous Dusseldorf school of +painting, which once filled the world with the worst art, he rejoiced +that it was now so dead, and he grudged the glance which the beauty of +the new Art Academy extorted from him. It is in the French taste, and +is so far a monument to the continuance in one sort of that French +supremacy, of which in another sort another denkmal celebrates the +overthrow. Dusseldorf is not content with the denkmal of the Kaiser on +horseback, with the two Victories for grooms; there is a second, which +the Marches found when they strolled out again late in the afternoon. It +is in the lovely park which lies in the heart of the city, and they felt +in its presence the only emotion of sympathy which the many patriotic +monuments of Germany awakened in them. It had dignity and repose, which +these never had elsewhere; but it was perhaps not so much for the dying +warrior and the pitying lion of the sculpture that their hearts were +moved as for the gentle and mournful humanity of the inscription, which +dropped into equivalent English verse in March's note-book: + + Fame was enough for the Victors, and glory and verdurous laurel; + Tears by their mothers wept founded this image of stone. + +To this they could forgive the vaunting record, on the reverse, of the +German soldiers who died heroes in the war with France, the war with +Austria, and even the war with poor little Denmark! + +The morning had been bright and warm, and it was just that the afternoon +should be dim and cold, with a pale sun looking through a September +mist, which seemed to deepen the seclusion and silence of the forest +reaches; for the park was really a forest of the German sort, as parks +are apt to be in Germany. But it was beautiful, and they strayed through +it, and sometimes sat down on the benches in its damp shadows, and +said how much seemed to be done in Germany for the people's comfort and +pleasure. In what was their own explicitly, as well as what was tacitly +theirs, they were not so restricted as we were at home, and especially +the children seemed made fondly and lovingly free of all public things. +The Marches met troops of them in the forest, as they strolled slowly +back by the winding Dussel to the gardened avenue leading to the park, +and they found them everywhere gay and joyful. But their elders seemed +subdued, and were silent. The strangers heard no sound of laughter in +the streets of Dusseldorf, and they saw no smiling except on the part +of a very old couple, whose meeting they witnessed and who grinned and +cackled at each other like two children as they shook hands. Perhaps +they were indeed children of that sad second childhood which one would +rather not blossom back into. + +In America, life is yet a joke with us, even when it is grotesque and +shameful, as it so often is; for we think we can make it right when we +choose. But there is no joking in Germany, between the first and second +childhoods, unless behind closed doors. Even there, people do not joke +above their breath about kings and emperors. If they joke about them +in print, they take out their laugh in jail, for the press laws are +severely enforced, and the prisons are full of able editors, serious +as well as comic. Lese-majesty is a crime that searches sinners out +in every walk of life, and it is said that in family jars a husband +sometimes has the last word of his wife by accusing her of blaspheming +the sovereign, and so having her silenced for three months at least +behind penitential bars. + +“Think,” said March, “how simply I could adjust any differences of +opinion between us in Dusseldorf.” + +“Don't!” his wife implored with a burst of feeling which surprised him. +“I want to go home!” + +They had been talking over their day, and planning their journey to +Holland for the morrow, when it came to this outburst from her in the +last half-hour before bed which they sat prolonging beside their stove. + +“What! And not go to Holland? What is to become of my after-cure?” + +“Oh, it's too late for that, now. We've used up the month running about, +and tiring ourselves to death. I should like to rest a week--to get into +my berth on the Norumbia and rest!” + +“I guess the September gales would have something to say about that.” + +“I would risk the September gales.” + + + + +LXXII. + +In the morning March came home from his bankers gay with the day's +provisional sunshine in his heart, and joyously expectant of his wife's +pleasure in the letters he was bringing. There was one from each of +their children, and there was one from Fulkerson, which March opened and +read on the street, so as to intercept any unpleasant news there might +be in them; there were two letters for Mrs. March which he knew without +opening were from Miss Triscoe and Mrs. Adding respectively; Mrs. +Adding's, from the postmarks, seemed to have been following them about +for some time. + +“They're all right at home,” he said. “Do see what those people have +been doing.” + +“I believe,” she said, taking a knife from the breakfast tray beside her +bed to cut the envelopes, “that you've really cared more about them all +along than I have.” + +“No, I've only been anxious to be done with them.” + +She got the letters open, and holding one of them up in each hand she +read them impartially and simultaneously; then she flung them both down, +and turned her face into her pillow with an impulse of her inalienable +girlishness. “Well, it is too silly.” + +March felt authorized to take them up and read them consecutively; when +he had done, so he did not differ from his wife. In one case, Agatha +had written to her dear Mrs. March that she and Burnamy had just that +evening become engaged; Mrs. Adding, on her part owned a farther step, +and announced her marriage to Mr. Kenby. Following immemorial usage in +such matters Kenby had added a postscript affirming his happiness in +unsparing terms, and in Agatha's letter there was an avowal of like +effect from Burnamy. Agatha hinted her belief that her father would soon +come to regard Burnamy as she did; and Mrs. Adding professed a certain +humiliation in having realized that, after all her misgiving about him, +Rose seemed rather relieved than otherwise, as if he were glad to have +her off his hands. + +“Well,” said March, “with these troublesome affairs settled, I don't see +what there is to keep us in Europe any longer, unless it's the consensus +of opinion in Tom, Bella, and Fulkerson, that we ought to stay the +winter.” + +“Stay the winter!” Mrs. March rose from her pillow, and clutched the +home letters to her from the abeyance in which they had fallen on the +coverlet while she was dealing with the others. “What do you mean?” + +“It seems to have been prompted by a hint you let drop, which Tom has +passed to Bella and Fulkerson.” + +“Oh, but that was before we left Carlsbad!” she protested, while she +devoured the letters with her eyes, and continued to denounce the +absurdity of the writers. Her son and daughter both urged that now their +father and mother were over there, they had better stay as long as they +enjoyed it, and that they certainly ought not to come home without going +to Italy, where they had first met, and revisiting the places which +they had seen together when they were young engaged people: without that +their silver wedding journey would not be complete. Her son said that +everything was going well with 'Every Other Week', and both himself and +Mr. Fulkerson thought his father ought to spend the winter in Italy, and +get a thorough rest. “Make a job of it, March,” Fulkerson wrote, “and +have a Sabbatical year while you're at it. You may not get another.” + +“Well, I can tell them,” said Mrs. March indignantly, “we shall not do +anything of the kind.” + +“Then you didn't mean it?” + +“Mean it!” She stopped herself with a look at her husband, and asked +gently, “Do you want to stay?” + +“Well, I don't know,” he answered vaguely. The fact was, he was sick of +travel and of leisure; he was longing to be at home and at work again. +But if there was to be any self-sacrifice which could be had, as it +were, at a bargain; which could be fairly divided between them, and +leave him the self and her the sacrifice, he was too experienced a +husband not to see the advantage of it, or to refuse the merit. “I +thought you wished to stay.” + +“Yes,” she sighed, “I did. It has been very, very pleasant, and, if +anything, I have over-enjoyed myself. We have gone romping through it +like two young people, haven't we?” + +“You have,” he assented. “I have always felt the weight of my years in +getting the baggage registered; they have made the baggage weigh more +every time.” + +“And I've forgotten mine. Yes, I have. But the years haven't forgotten +me, Basil, and now I remember them. I'm tired. It doesn't seem as if +I could ever get up. But I dare say it's only a mood; it may be only a +cold; and if you wish to stay, why--we will think it over.” + +“No, we won't, my dear,” he said, with a generous shame for his +hypocrisy if not with a pure generosity. “I've got all the good out of +it that there was in it, for me, and I shouldn't go home any better six +months hence than I should now. Italy will keep for another time, and +so, for the matter of that, will Holland.” + +“No, no!” she interposed. “We won't give up Holland, whatever we do. I +couldn't go home feeling that I had kept you out of your after-cure; and +when we get there, no doubt the sea air will bring me up so that I shall +want to go to Italy, too, again. Though it seems so far off, now! But +go and see when the afternoon train for the Hague leaves, and I shall be +ready. My mind's quite made up on that point.” + +“What a bundle of energy!” said her husband laughing down at her. + +He went and asked about the train to the Hague, but only to satisfy a +superficial conscience; for now he knew that they were both of one mind +about going home. He also looked up the trains for London, and found +that they could get there by way of Ostend in fourteen hours. Then +he went back to the banker's, and with the help of the Paris-New +York Chronicle which he found there, he got the sailings of the first +steamers home. After that he strolled about the streets for a last +impression of Dusseldorf, but it was rather blurred by the constantly +recurring pull of his thoughts toward America, and he ended by turning +abruptly at a certain corner, and going to his hotel. + +He found his wife dressed, but fallen again on her bed, beside which +her breakfast stood still untasted; her smile responded wanly to his +brightness. “I'm not well, my dear,” she said. “I don't believe I could +get off to the Hague this afternoon.” + +“Could you to Liverpool?” he returned. + +“To Liverpool?” she gasped. “What do you mean?” + +“Merely that the Cupania is sailing on the twentieth, and I've +telegraphed to know if we can get a room. I'm afraid it won't be a good +one, but she's the first boat out, and--” + +“No, indeed, we won't go to Liverpool, and we will never go home till +you've had your after-cure in Holland.” She was very firm in this, +but she added, “We will stay another night, here, and go to the Hague +tomorrow. Sit down, and let us talk it over. Where were we?” + +She lay down on the sofa, and he put a shawl over her. “We were just +starting for Liverpool.” + +“No, no we weren't! Don't say such things, dearest! I want you to help +me sum it all, up. You think it's been a success, don't you?” + +“As a cure?” + +“No, as a silver wedding journey?” + +“Perfectly howling.” + +“I do think we've had a good time. I never expected to enjoy myself so +much again in the world. I didn't suppose I should ever take so much +interest in anything. It shows that when we choose to get out of our +rut we shall always find life as fresh and delightful as ever. There is +nothing to prevent our coming any year, now that Tom's shown himself +so capable, and having another silver wedding journey. I don't like to +think of it's being confined to Germany quite.” + +“Oh, I don't know. We can always talk of it as our German-Silver Wedding +Journey.” + +“That's true. But nobody would understand nowadays what you meant by +German-silver; it's perfectly gone out. How ugly it was! A sort of +greasy yellowish stuff, always getting worn through; I believe it was +made worn through. Aunt Mary had a castor of it, that I can remember +when I was a child; it went into the kitchen long before I grew up. +Would a joke like that console you for the loss of Italy?” + +“It would go far to do it. And as a German-Silver Wedding Journey, it's +certainly been very complete.” + +“What do you mean?” + +“It's given us a representative variety of German cities. First we had +Hamburg, you know, a great modern commercial centre.” + +“Yes! Go on!” + +“Then we had Leipsic, the academic.” + +“Yes!” + +“Then Carlsbad, the supreme type of a German health resort; then +Nuremberg, the mediaeval; then Anspach, the extinct princely capital; +then Wurzburg, the ecclesiastical rococo; then Weimar, for the +literature of a great epoch; then imperial Berlin; then Frankfort, the +memory of the old free city; then Dusseldorf, the centre of the most +poignant personal interest in the world--I don't see how we could have +done better, if we'd planned it all, and not acted from successive +impulses.” + +“It's been grand; it's been perfect! As German-Silver Wedding Journey +it's perfect--it seems as if it had been ordered! But I will never let +you give up Holland! No, we will go this afternoon, and when I get to +Schevleningen, I'll go to bed, and stay there, till you've completed +your after-cure.” + +“Do you think that will be wildly gay for the convalescent?” + +She suddenly began to cry. “Oh, dearest, what shall we do? I feel +perfectly broken down. I'm afraid I'm going to be sick--and away from +home! How could you ever let me overdo, so?” She put her handkerchief to +her eyes, and turned her face into the sofa pillow. + +This was rather hard upon him, whom her vivid energy and +inextinguishable interest had not permitted a moment's respite from +pleasure since they left Carlsbad. But he had been married, too long not +to understand that her blame of him was only a form of self-reproach +for her own self-forgetfulness. She had not remembered that she was no +longer young till she had come to what he saw was a nervous collapse. +The fact had its pathos and its poetry which no one could have felt +more keenly than he. If it also had its inconvenience and its danger he +realized these too. + +“Isabel,” he said, “we are going home.” + +“Very well, then it will be your doing.” + +“Quite. Do you think you could stand it as far as Cologne? We get the +sleeping-car there, and you can lie down the rest of the way to Ostend.” + +“This afternoon? Why I'm perfectly strong; it's merely my nerves that +are gone.” She sat up, and wiped her eyes. “But Basil! If you're doing +this for me--” + +“I'm doing it for myself,” said March, as he went out of the room. + +She stood the journey perfectly well, and in the passage to Dover she +suffered so little from the rough weather that she was an example to +many robust matrons who filled the ladies' cabin with the noise of their +anguish during the night. She would have insisted upon taking the first +train up to London, if March had not represented that this would not +expedite the sailing of the Cupania, and that she might as well stay the +forenoon at the convenient railway hotel, and rest. It was not quite his +ideal of repose that the first people they saw in the coffee-room when +they went to breakfast should be Kenby and Rose Adding, who were +having their tea and toast and eggs together in the greatest apparent +good-fellowship. He saw his wife shrink back involuntarily from the +encounter, but this was only to gather force for it; and the next moment +she was upon them in all the joy of the surprise. Then March allowed +himself to be as glad as the others both seemed, and he shook hands with +Kenby while his wife kissed Rose; and they all talked at once. In the +confusion of tongues it was presently intelligible that Mrs. Kenby +was going to be down in a few minutes; and Kenby took March into his +confidence with a smile which was, almost a wink in explaining that he +knew how it was with the ladies. He said that Rose and he usually got +down to breakfast first, and when he had listened inattentively to Mrs. +March's apology for being on her way home, he told her that she was +lucky not to have gone to Schevleningen, where she and March would have +frozen to death. He said that they were going to spend September at a +little place on the English coast, near by, where he had been the day +before with Rose to look at lodgings, and where you could bathe all +through the month. He was not surprised that the Marches were going +home, and said, Well, that was their original plan, wasn't it? + +Mrs. Kenby, appearing upon this, pretended to know better, after the +outburst of joyful greeting with the Marches; and intelligently reminded +Kenby that he knew the Marches had intended to pass the winter in Paris. +She was looking extremely pretty, but she wished only to make them see +how well Rose was looking, and she put her arm round his shoulders as +she spoke, Schevleningen had done wonders for him, but it was fearfully +cold there, and now they were expecting everything from Westgate, where +she advised March to come, too, for his after-cure: she recollected in +time to say, She forgot they were on their way home. She added that she +did not know when she should return; she was merely a passenger, now; +she left everything to the men of the family. She had, in fact, the +air of having thrown off every responsibility, but in supremacy, not +submission. She was always ordering Kenby about; she sent him for her +handkerchief, and her rings which she had left either in the tray of +her trunk, or on the pin-cushion, or on the wash-stand or somewhere, and +forbade him to come back without them. He asked for her keys, and then +with a joyful scream she owned that she had left the door-key in the +door and the whole bunch of trunk-keys in her trunk; and Kenby treated +it all as the greatest joke; Rose, too, seemed to think that Kenby would +make everything come right, and he had lost that look of anxiety which +he used to have; at the most he showed a friendly sympathy for Kenby, +for whose sake he seemed mortified at her. He was unable to regard his +mother as the delightful joke which she appeared to Kenby, but that +was merely temperamental; and he was never distressed except when she +behaved with unreasonable caprice at Kenby's cost. + +As for Kenby himself he betrayed no dissatisfaction with his fate to +March. He perhaps no longer regarded his wife as that strong character +which he had sometimes wearied March by celebrating; but she was still +the most brilliant intelligence, and her charm seemed only to have grown +with his perception of its wilful limitations. He did not want to talk +about her so much; he wanted rather to talk about Rose, his health, his +education, his nature, and what was best to do for him. The two were on +terms of a confidence and affection which perpetually amused Mrs. +Kenby, but which left the sympathetic witness nothing to desire in their +relation. + +They all came to the train when the Marches started up to London, and +stood waving to them as they pulled out of the station. “Well, I can't +see but that's all right,” he said as he sank back in his seat with a +sigh of relief. “I never supposed we should get out of their marriage +half so well, and I don't feel that you quite made the match either, my +dear.” + +She was forced to agree with him that the Kenbys seemed happy together, +and that there was nothing to fear for Rose in their happiness. He would +be as tenderly cared for by Kenby as he could have been by his mother, +and far more judiciously. She owned that she had trembled for him till +she had seen them all together; and now she should never tremble again. + +“Well?” March prompted, at a certain inconclusiveness in her tone rather +than her words. + +“Well, you can see that it, isn't ideal.” + +“Why isn't it ideal? I suppose you think that the marriage of +Burnamy and Agatha Triscoe will be ideal, with their ignorances and +inexperiences and illusions.” + +“Yes! It's the illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them, and +at their age the Kenbys can't have them.” + +“Kenby is a solid mass of illusion. And I believe that people can go and +get as many new illusions as they want, whenever they've lost their old +ones.” + +“Yes, but the new illusions won't wear so well; and in marriage you +want illusions that will last. No; you needn't talk to me. It's all very +well, but it isn't ideal.” + +March laughed. “Ideal! What is ideal?” + +“Going home!” she said with such passion that he had not the heart to +point out that they were merely returning to their old duties, cares +and pains, with the worn-out illusion that these would be altogether +different when they took them up again. + + + + +LXXIII. + +In fulfilment of another ideal Mrs. March took straightway to her berth +when she got on board the Cupania, and to her husband's admiration she +remained there till the day before they reached New York. Her theory +was that the complete rest would do more than anything else to calm her +shaken nerves; and she did not admit into her calculations the chances +of adverse weather which March would not suggest as probable in the last +week in September. The event justified her unconscious faith. The ship's +run was of unparalled swiftness, even for the Cupania, and of unparalled +smoothness. For days the sea was as sleek as oil; the racks were never +on the tables once; the voyage was of the sort which those who make it +no more believe in at the time than those whom they afterwards weary in +boasting of it. + +The ship was very full, but Mrs. March did not show the slightest +curiosity to know who her fellow-passengers were. She said that she +wished to be let perfectly alone, even by her own emotions, and for +this reason she forbade March to bring her a list of the passengers till +after they had left Queenstown lest it should be too exciting. He did +not take the trouble to look it up, therefore; and the first night out +he saw no one whom he knew at dinner; but the next morning at breakfast +he found himself to his great satisfaction at the same table with the +Eltwins. They were so much at ease with him that even Mrs. Eltwin +took part in the talk, and told him how they had spent the time of her +husband's rigorous after-cure in Switzerland, and now he was going home +much better than they had expected. She said they had rather thought +of spending the winter in Europe, but had given it up because they were +both a little homesick. March confessed that this was exactly the case +with his wife and himself; and he had to add that Mrs. March was not +very well otherwise, and he should be glad to be at home on her account. +The recurrence of the word home seemed to deepen Eltwin's habitual +gloom, and Mrs. Eltwin hastened to leave the subject of their return +for inquiry into Mrs. March's condition; her interest did not so far +overcome her shyness that she ventured to propose a visit to her; and +March found that the fact of the Eltwins' presence on board did not +agitate his wife. It seemed rather to comfort her, and she said she +hoped he would see all he could of the poor old things. She asked if +he had met any one else he knew, and he was able to tell her that there +seemed to be a good many swells on board, and this cheered her very +much, though he did not know them; she liked to be near the rose, though +it was not a flower that she really cared for. + +She did not ask who the swells were, and March took no trouble to find +out. He took no trouble to get a passenger-list, and he had the more +trouble when he tried at last; the lists seemed to have all vanished, +as they have a habit of doing, after the first day; the one that he made +interest for with the head steward was a second-hand copy, and had no +one he knew in it but the Eltwins. The social solitude, however, was +rather favorable to certain other impressions. There seemed even more +elderly people than there were on the Norumbia; the human atmosphere was +gray and sober; there was nothing of the gay expansion of the outward +voyage; there was little talking or laughing among those autumnal men +who were going seriously and anxiously home, with faces fiercely set for +the coming grapple; or necks meekly bowed for the yoke. They had eaten +their cake, and it had been good, but there remained a discomfort in the +digestion. They sat about in silence, and March fancied that the flown +summer was as dreamlike to each of them as it now was to him. He hated +to be of their dreary company, but spiritually he knew that he was of +it; and he vainly turned to cheer himself with the younger passengers. +Some matrons who went about clad in furs amused him, for they must have +been unpleasantly warm in their jackets and boas; nothing but the hope +of being able to tell the customs inspector with a good conscience that +the things had been worn, would have sustained one lady draped from head +to foot in Astrakhan. + +They were all getting themselves ready for the fray or the play of the +coming winter; but there seemed nothing joyous in the preparation. There +were many young girls, as there always are everywhere, but there were +not many young men, and such as there were kept to the smoking-room. +There was no sign of flirtation among them; he would have given much for +a moment of the pivotal girl, to see whether she could have brightened +those gloomy surfaces with her impartial lamp. March wished that he +could have brought some report from the outer world to cheer his wife, +as he descended to their state-room. They had taken what they could get +at the eleventh hour, and they had got no such ideal room as they had in +the Norumbia. It was, as Mrs. March graphically said, a basement room. +It was on the north side of the ship, which is a cold exposure, and if +there had been any sun it could not have got into their window, which +was half the time under water. The green waves, laced with foam, hissed +as they ran across the port; and the electric fan in the corridor moaned +like the wind in a gable. + +He felt a sinking of the heart as he pushed the state-room door open, +and looked at his wife lying with her face turned to the wall; and he +was going to withdraw, thinking her asleep, when she said quietly, “Are +we going down?” + +“Not that I know of,” he answered with a gayety he did not feel. “But +I'll ask the head steward.” + +She put out her hand behind her for him to take, and clutched his +fingers convulsively. “If I'm never any better, you will always remember +this happy, summer, won't you? Oh, it's been such a happy summer! It has +been one long joy, one continued triumph! But it was too late; we were +too old; and it's broken me.” + +The time had been when he would have attempted comfort; when he would +have tried mocking; but that time was long past; he could only pray +inwardly for some sort of diversion, but what it was to be in their +barren circumstance he was obliged to leave altogether to Providence. He +ventured, pending an answer to his prayers upon the question, “Don't you +think I'd better see the doctor, and get you some sort of tonic?” + +She suddenly turned and faced him. “The doctor! Why, I'm not sick, +Basil! If you can see the purser and get our rooms changed, or do +something to stop those waves from slapping against that horrible +blinking one-eyed window, you can save my life; but no tonic is going to +help me.” + +She turned her face from him again, and buried it in the bedclothes, +while he looked desperately at the racing waves, and the port that +seemed to open and shut like a weary eye. + +“Oh, go away!” she implored. “I shall be better presently, but if you +stand there like that--Go and see if you can't get some other room, +where I needn't feel as if I were drowning, all the way over.” + +He obeyed, so far as to go away at once, and having once started, he +did not stop short of the purser's office. He made an excuse of getting +greenbacks for some English bank-notes, and then he said casually that +he supposed there would be no chance of having his room on the lower +deck changed for something a little less intimate with the sea. The +purser was not there to take the humorous view, but he conceived that +March wanted something higher up, and he was able to offer him a room +of those on the promenade where he had seen swells going in and out, +for six hundred dollars. March did not blench, but said he would get his +wife to look at it with him, and then he went out somewhat dizzily to +take counsel with himself how he should put the matter to her. She would +be sure to ask what the price of the new room would be, and he debated +whether to take it and tell her some kindly lie about it, or trust to +the bracing effect of the sum named in helping restore the lost balance +of her nerves. He was not so rich that he could throw six hundred +dollars away, but there might be worse things; and he walked up and down +thinking. All at once it flashed upon him that he had better see the +doctor, anyway, and find out whether there were not some last hope in +medicine before he took the desperate step before him. He turned in half +his course, and ran into a lady who had just emerged from the door of +the promenade laden with wraps, and who dropped them all and clutched +him to save herself from falling. + +“Why, Mr. March!” she shrieked. + +“Miss Triscoe!” he returned, in the astonishment which he shared with +her to the extent of letting the shawls he had knocked from her hold lie +between them till she began to pick them up herself. Then he joined her +and in the relief of their common occupation they contrived to possess +each other of the reason of their presence on, the same boat. She had +sorrowed over Mrs. March's sad state, and he had grieved to hear that +her father was going home because he was not at all well, before they +found the general stretched out in his steamer-chair, and waiting with a +grim impatience for his daughter. + +“But how is it you're not in the passenger-list?” he inquired of them +both, and Miss Triscoe explained that they had taken their passage at +the last moment, too late, she supposed, to get into the list. They +were in London, and had run down to Liverpool on the chance of getting +berths. Beyond this she was not definite, and there was an absence +of Burnamy not only from her company but from her conversation which +mystified March through all his selfish preoccupations with his wife. +She was a girl who had her reserves, but for a girl who had so lately +and rapturously written them of her engagement, there was a silence +concerning her betrothed that had almost positive quality. With his +longing to try Miss Triscoe upon Mrs. March's malady as a remedial +agent, he had now the desire to try Mrs. March upon Miss Triscoe's +mystery as a solvent. She stood talking to him, and refusing to sit down +and be wrapped up in the chair next her father. She said that if he were +going to ask Mrs. March to let her come to her, it would not be worth +while to sit down; and he hurried below. + +“Did you get it?” asked his wife, without looking round, but not so +apathetically as before. + +“Oh, yes. That's all right. But now, Isabel, there's something I've got +to tell you. You'd find it out, and you'd better know it at once.” + +She turned her face, and asked sternly, “What is it?” + +Then he said, with, an almost equal severity, “Miss Triscoe is on board. +Miss Triscoe-and-her-father. She wishes to come down and see you.” + +Mrs. March sat up and began to twist her hair into shape. “And Burnamy?” + +“There is no Burnamy physically, or so far as I can make out, +spiritually. She didn't mention him, and I talked at least five minutes +with her.” + +“Hand me my dressing-sack,” said Mrs. March, “and poke those things on +the sofa under the berth. Shut up that wash-stand, and pull the curtain +across that hideous window. Stop! Throw those towels into your berth. +Put my shoes, and your slippers into the shoe-bag on the door. Slip the +brushes into that other bag. Beat the dent out of the sofa cushion that +your head has made. Now!” + +“Then--then you will see her?” + +“See her!” + +Her voice was so terrible that he fled before it, and he returned with +Miss Triscoe in a dreamlike simultaneity. He remembered, as he led +the way into his corridor, to apologize for bringing her down into a +basement room. + +“Oh, we're in the basement, too; it was all we could get,” she said in +words that ended within the state-room he opened to her. Then he went +back and took her chair and wraps beside her father. + +He let the general himself lead the way up to his health, which he was +not slow in reaching, and was not quick in leaving. He reminded March of +the state he had seen him in at Wurzburg, and he said it had gone from +bad to worse with him. At Weimar he had taken to his bed and merely +escaped from it with his life. Then they had tried Schevleningen for a +week, where, he said in a tone of some injury, they had rather thought +they might find them, the Marches. The air had been poison to him, and +they had come over to England with some notion of Bournemouth; but +the doctor in London had thought not, and urged their going home. “All +Europe is damp, you know, and dark as a pocket in winter,” he ended. + +There had been nothing about Burnamy, and March decided that he must +wait to see his wife if he wished to know anything, when the general, +who had been silent, twisted his head towards him, and said without +regard to the context, “It was complicated, at Weimar, by that young +man in the most devilish way. Did my daughter write to Mrs. March +about--Well it came to nothing, after all; and I don't understand how, +to this day. I doubt if they do. It was some sort of quarrel, I suppose. +I wasn't consulted in the matter either way. It appears that parents are +not consulted in these trifling affairs, nowadays.” He had married his +daughter's mother in open defiance of her father; but in the glare of +his daughter's wilfulness this fact had whitened into pious obedience. +“I dare say I shall be told, by-and-by, and shall be expected to approve +of the result.” + +A fancy possessed March that by operation of temperamental laws General +Triscoe was no more satisfied with Burnamy's final rejection than with +his acceptance. If the engagement was ever to be renewed, it might be +another thing; but as it stood, March divined a certain favor for the +young man in the general's attitude. But the affair was altogether too +delicate for comment; the general's aristocratic frankness in dealing +with it might have gone farther if his knowledge had been greater; but +in any case March did not see how he could touch it. He could only say, +He had always liked Burnamy, himself. + +He had his good qualities, the general owned. He did not profess to +understand the young men of our time; but certainly the fellow had the +instincts of a gentleman. He had nothing to say against him, unless in +that business with that man--what was his name? + +“Stoller?” March prompted. “I don't excuse him in that, but I don't +blame him so much, either. If punishment means atonement, he had the +opportunity of making that right very suddenly, and if pardon means +expunction, then I don't see why that offence hasn't been pretty well +wiped out. + +“Those things are not so simple as they used to seem,” said the general, +with a seriousness beyond his wont in things that did not immediately +concern his own comfort or advantage. + + + + +LXXVI. + +In the mean time Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe were discussing another +offence of Burnamy's. + +“It wasn't,” said the girl, excitedly, after a plunge through all the +minor facts to the heart of the matter, “that he hadn't a perfect right +to do it, if he thought I didn't care for him. I had refused him at +Carlsbad, and I had forbidden him to speak to me about--on the subject. +But that was merely temporary, and he ought to have known it. He ought +to have known that I couldn't accept him, on the spur of the moment, +that way; and when he had come back, after going away in disgrace, +before he had done anything to justify himself. I couldn't have kept my +self-respect; and as it was I had the greatest difficulty; and he ought +to have seen it. Of course he said afterwards that he didn't see it. But +when--when I found out that SHE had been in Weimar, and all that time, +while I had been suffering in Carlsbad and Wurzburg, and longing to +see him--let him know how I was really feeling--he was flirting with +that--that girl, then I saw that he was a false nature, and I determined +to put an end to everything. And that is what I did; and I shall always +think I--did right--and--” + +The rest was lost in Agatha's handkerchief, which she put up to +her eyes. Mrs. March watched her from her pillow keeping the girl's +unoccupied hand in her own, and softly pressing it till the storm was +past sufficiently to allow her to be heard. + +Then she said, “Men are very strange--the best of them. And from the +very fact that he was disappointed, he would be all the more apt to rush +into a flirtation with somebody else.” + +Miss Triscoe took down her handkerchief from a face that had certainly +not been beautified by grief. “I didn't blame him for the flirting; or +not so much. It was his keeping it from me afterwards. He ought to have +told me the very first instant we were engaged. But he didn't. He let it +go on, and if I hadn't happened on that bouquet I might never have known +anything about it. That is what I mean by--a false nature. I wouldn't +have minded his deceiving me; but to let me deceive myself--Oh, it was +too much!” + +Agatha hid her face in her handkerchief again. She was perching on the +edge of the berth, and Mrs. March said, with a glance, which she did not +see, toward the sofa, “I'm afraid that's rather a hard seat for you. + +“Oh, no, thank you! I'm perfectly comfortable--I like it--if you don't +mind?” + +Mrs. March pressed her hand for answer, and after another little delay, +sighed and said, “They are not like us, and we cannot help it. They are +more temporizing.” + +“How do you mean?” Agatha unmasked again. + +“They can bear to keep things better than we can, and they trust to time +to bring them right, or to come right of themselves.” + +“I don't think Mr. March would trust things to come right of +themselves!” said Agatha in indignant accusal of Mrs. March's sincerity. + +“Ah, that's just what he would do, my dear, and has done, all along; and +I don't believe we could have lived through without it: we should have +quarrelled ourselves into the grave!” + +“Mrs. March!” + +“Yes, indeed. I don't mean that he would ever deceive me. But he would +let things go on, and hope that somehow they would come right without +any fuss.” + +“Do you mean that he would let anybody deceive themselves?” + +“I'm afraid he would--if he thought it would come right. It used to be a +terrible trial to me; and it is yet, at times when I don't remember +that he means nothing but good and kindness by it. Only the other day +in Ansbach--how long ago it seems!--he let a poor old woman give him her +son's address in Jersey City, and allowed her to believe he would look +him up when we got back and tell him we had seen her. I don't believe, +unless I keep right round after him, as we say in New England, that +he'll ever go near the man.” + +Agatha looked daunted, but she said, “That is a very different thing.” + +“It isn't a different kind of thing. And it shows what men are,--the +sweetest and best of them, that is. They are terribly apt to +be--easy-going.” + +“Then you think I was all wrong?” the girl asked in a tremor. + +“No, indeed! You were right, because you really expected perfection of +him. You expected the ideal. And that's what makes all the trouble, in +married life: we expect too much of each other--we each expect more of +the other than we are willing to give or can give. If I had to begin +over again, I should not expect anything at all, and then I should be +sure of being radiantly happy. But all this talking and all this writing +about love seems to turn our brains; we know that men are not perfect, +even at our craziest, because women are not, but we expect perfection of +them; and they seem to expect it of us, poor things! If we could keep +on after we are in love just as we were before we were in love, and take +nice things as favors and surprises, as we did in the beginning! But we +get more and more greedy and exacting--” + +“Do you think I was too exacting in wanting him to tell me everything +after we were engaged?” + +“No, I don't say that. But suppose he had put it off till you were +married?” Agatha blushed a little, but not painfully, “Would it have +been so bad? Then you might have thought that his flirting up to the +last moment in his desperation was a very good joke. You would have +understood better just how it was, and it might even have made you +fonder of him. You might have seen that he had flirted with some one +else because he was so heart-broken about you.” + +“Then you believe that if I could have waited till--till--but when I had +found out, don't you see I couldn't wait? It would have been all very +well if I hadn't known it till then. But as I did know it. Don't you +see?” + +“Yes, that certainly complicated it,” Mrs. March admitted. “But I don't +think, if he'd been a false nature, he'd have owned up as he did. You +see, he didn't try to deny it; and that's a great point gained.” + +“Yes, that is true,” said Agatha, with conviction. “I saw that +afterwards. But you don't think, Mrs. March, that I was unjust or--or +hasty?” + +“No, indeed! You couldn't have done differently under the circumstances. +You may be sure he felt that--he is so unselfish and generous--” Agatha +began to weep into her handkerchief again; Mrs. March caressed her hand. +“And it will certainly come right if you feel as you do.” + +“No,” the girl protested. “He can never forgive me; it's all over, +everything is over. It would make very little difference to me, what +happened now--if the steamer broke her shaft, or anything. But if I can +only believe I wasn't unjust--” + +Mrs. March assured her once more that she had behaved with absolute +impartiality; and she proved to her by a process of reasoning quite +irrefragable that it was only a question of time, with which place had +nothing to do, when she and Burnamy should come together again, and all +should be made right between them. The fact that she did not know where +he was, any more than Mrs. March herself, had nothing to do with the +result; that was a mere detail, which would settle itself. She clinched +her argument by confessing that her own engagement had been broken off, +and that it had simply renewed itself. All you had to do was to keep +willing it, and waiting. There was something very mysterious in it. + +“And how long was it till--” Agatha faltered. + +“Well, in our ease it was two years.” + +“Oh!” said the girl, but Mrs. March hastened to reassure her. + +“But our case was very peculiar. I could see afterwards that it needn't +have been two months, if I had been willing to acknowledge at once that +I was in the wrong. I waited till we met.” + +“If I felt that I was in the wrong, I should write,” said Agatha. “I +shouldn't care what he thought of my doing it.” + +“Yes, the great thing is to make sure that you were wrong.” + +They remained talking so long, that March and the general had exhausted +all the topics of common interest, and had even gone through those they +did not care for. At last the general said, “I'm afraid my daughter will +tire Mrs. March.” + +“Oh, I don't think she'll tire my wife. But do you want her?” + +“Well, when you're going down.” + +“I think I'll take a turn about the deck, and start my circulation,” + said March, and he did so before he went below. + +He found his wife up and dressed, and waiting provisionally on the sofa. +“I thought I might as well go to lunch,” she said, and then she told him +about Agatha and Burnamy, and the means she had employed to comfort +and encourage the girl. “And now, dearest, I want you to find out where +Burnamy is, and give him a hint. You will, won't you! If you could have +seen how unhappy she was!” + +“I don't think I should have cared, and I'm certainly not going to +meddle. I think Burnamy has got no more than he deserved, and that he's +well rid of her. I can't imagine a broken engagement that would more +completely meet my approval. As the case stands, they have my blessing.” + +“Don't say that, dearest! You know you don't mean it.” + +“I do; and I advise you to keep your hands off. You've done all and more +than you ought to propitiate Miss Triscoe. You've offered yourself up, +and you've offered me up--” + +“No, no, Basil! I merely used you as an illustration of what men +were--the best of them.” + +“And I can't observe,” he continued, “that any one else has been +considered in the matter. Is Miss Triscoe the sole sufferer by Burnamy's +flirtation? What is the matter with a little compassion for the pivotal +girl?” + +“Now, you know you're not serious,” said his wife; and though he would +not admit this, he could not be seriously sorry for the new interest +which she took in the affair. There was no longer any question of +changing their state-room. Under the tonic influence of the excitement +she did not go back to her berth after lunch, and she was up later after +dinner than he could have advised. She was absorbed in Agatha, but +in her liberation from her hypochondria, she began also to make a +comparative study of the American swells, in the light of her late +experience with the German highhotes. It is true that none of the +swells gave her the opportunity of examining them at close range, as the +highhotes had done. They kept to their state-rooms mostly, where, after +he thought she could bear it, March told her how near he had come to +making her their equal by an outlay of six hundred dollars. She now +shuddered at the thought; but she contended that in their magnificent +exclusiveness they could give points to European princes; and that this +showed again how when Americans did try to do a thing, they beat the +world. Agatha Triscoe knew who they were, but she did not know them; +they belonged to another kind of set; she spoke of them as “rich +people,” and she seemed content to keep away from them with Mrs. +March and with the shy, silent old wife of Major Eltwin, to whom March +sometimes found her talking. + +He never found her father talking with Major Eltwin. General Triscoe had +his own friends in the smoking-room, where he held forth in a certain +corner on the chances of the approaching election in New York, and +mocked their incredulity when he prophesied the success of Tammany and +the return of the King. March himself much preferred Major Eltwin to the +general and his friends; he lived back in the talk of the Ohioan into +his own younger years in Indiana, and he was amused and touched to find +how much the mid-Western life seemed still the same as he had known. The +conditions had changed, but not so much as they had changed in the East +and the farther West. The picture that the major drew of them in his +own region was alluring; it made March homesick; though he knew that +he should never go back to his native section. There was the comfort +of kind in the major; and he had a vein of philosophy, spare but sweet, +which March liked; he liked also the meekness which had come through +sorrow upon a spirit which had once been proud. + +They had both the elderly man's habit of early rising, and they usually +found themselves together waiting impatiently for the cup of coffee, +ingenuously bad, which they served on the Cupania not earlier than half +past six, in strict observance of a rule of the line discouraging to +people of their habits. March admired the vileness of the decoction, +which he said could not be got anywhere out of the British Empire, and +he asked Eltwin the first morning if he had noticed how instantly on +the Channel boat they had dropped to it and to the sour, heavy, sodden +British bread, from the spirited and airy Continental tradition of +coffee and rolls. + +The major confessed that he was no great hand to notice such things, and +he said he supposed that if the line had never lost a passenger, and got +you to New York in six days it had a right to feed you as it pleased; +he surmised that if they could get their airing outside before they took +their coffee, it would give the coffee a chance to taste better; and +this was what they afterwards did. They met, well buttoned and well +mined up, on the promenade when it was yet so early that they were not +at once sure of each other in the twilight, and watched the morning +planets pale east and west before the sun rose. Sometimes there were no +paling planets and no rising sun, and a black sea, ridged with white, +tossed under a low dark sky with dim rifts. + +One morning, they saw the sun rise with a serenity and majesty which it +rarely has outside of the theatre. The dawn began over that sea which +was like the rumpled canvas imitations of the sea on the stage, under +long mauve clouds bathed in solemn light. Above these, in the pale +tender sky, two silver stars hung, and the steamer's smoke drifted +across them like a thin dusky veil. To the right a bank of dun cloud +began to burn crimson, and to burn brighter till it was like a low +hill-side full of gorgeous rugosities fleeced with a dense dwarfish +growth of autumnal shrubs. The whole eastern heaven softened and flushed +through diaphanous mists; the west remained a livid mystery. The eastern +masses and flakes of cloud began to kindle keenly; but the stars shone +clearly, and then one star, till the tawny pink hid it. All the zenith +reddened, but still the sun did not show except in the color of the +brilliant clouds. At last the lurid horizon began to burn like a +flame-shot smoke, and a fiercely bright disc edge pierced its level, and +swiftly defined itself as the sun's orb. + +Many thoughts went through March's mind; some of them were sad, but in +some there was a touch of hopefulness. It might have been that beauty +which consoled him for his years; somehow he felt himself, if no longer +young, a part of the young immortal frame of things. His state was +indefinable, but he longed to hint at it to his companion. + +“Yes,” said Eltwin, with a long deep sigh. “I feel as if I could walk +out through that brightness and find her. I reckon that such hopes +wouldn't be allowed to lie to us; that so many ages of men couldn't have +fooled themselves so. I'm glad I've seen this.” He was silent and they +both remained watching the rising sun till they could not bear its +splendor. “Now,” said the major, “it must be time for that mud, as you +call it.” Over their coffee and crackers at the end of the table which +they had to themselves, he resumed. “I was thinking all the time--we +seem to think half a dozen things at once, and this was one of +them--about a piece of business I've got to settle when I reach home; +and perhaps you can advise me about it; you're an editor. I've got a +newspaper on my hands; I reckon it would be a pretty good thing, if it +had a chance; but I don't know what to do with it: I got it in trade +with a fellow who has to go West for his lungs, but he's staying till I +get back. What's become of that young chap--what's his name?--that went +out with us?” + +“Burnamy?” prompted March, rather breathlessly. + +“Yes. Couldn't he take hold of it? I rather liked him. He's smart, isn't +he?” + +“Very,” said March. “But I don't know where he is. I don't know that he +would go into the country--. But he might, if--” + +They entered provisionally into the case, and for argument's sake +supposed that Burnamy would take hold of the major's paper if he could +be got at. It really looked to March like a good chance for him, on +Eltwin's showing; but he was not confident of Burnamy's turning up very +soon, and he gave the major a pretty clear notion why, by entering into +the young fellow's history for the last three months. + +“Isn't it the very irony of fate?” he said to his wife when he found +her in their room with a cup of the same mud he had been drinking, and +reported the facts to her. + +“Irony?” she said, with all the excitement he could have imagined or +desired. “Nothing of the kind. It's a leading, if ever there was one. +It will be the easiest thing in the world to find Burnamy. And out there +she can sit on her steps!” + +He slowly groped his way to her meaning, through the hypothesis of +Burnamy's reconciliation and marriage with Agatha Triscoe, and their +settlement in Major Eltwin's town under social conditions that implied a +habit of spending the summer evenings on their front porch. While he +was doing this she showered him with questions and conjectures and +requisitions in which nothing but the impossibility of going ashore +saved him from the instant devotion of all his energies to a world-wide, +inquiry into Burnamy's whereabouts. + +The next morning he was up before Major Eltwin got out, and found the +second-cabin passengers free of the first-cabin promenade at an hour +when their superiors were not using it. As he watched these inferiors, +decent-looking, well-clad men and women, enjoying their privilege with +a furtive air, and with stolen glances at him, he asked himself in what +sort he was their superior, till the inquiry grew painful. Then he rose +from his chair, and made his way to the place where the material barrier +between them was lifted, and interested himself in a few of them who +seemed too proud to avail themselves of his society on the terms made. A +figure seized his attention with a sudden fascination of conjecture and +rejection: the figure of a tall young man who came out on the promenade +and without looking round, walked swiftly away to the bow of the ship, +and stood there, looking down at the water in an attitude which was +bewilderingly familiar. His movement, his posture, his dress, even, +was that of Burnamy, and March, after a first flush of pleasure, felt +a sickening repulsion in the notion of his presence. It would have been +such a cheap performance on the part of life, which has all sorts +of chances at command, and need not descend to the poor tricks of +second-rate fiction; and he accused Burnamy of a complicity in the bad +taste of the affair, though he realized, when he reflected, that if it +were really Burnamy he must have sailed in as much unconsciousness of +the Triscoes as he himself had done. He had probably got out of money +and had hurried home while he had still enough to pay the second-cabin +fare on the first boat back. Clearly he was not to blame, but life was +to blame for such a shabby device; and March felt this so keenly that +he wished to turn from the situation, and have nothing to do with it. +He kept moving toward him, drawn by the fatal attraction, and at a few +paces' distance the young man whirled about and showed him the face of a +stranger. + +March made some witless remark on the rapid course of the ship as it +cut its way through the water of the bow; the stranger answered with a +strong Lancashire accent; and in the talk which followed, he said he was +going out to see the cotton-mills at Fall River and New Bedford, and he +seemed hopeful of some advice or information from March; then he said he +must go and try to get his Missus out; March understood him to mean +his wife, and he hurried down to his own, to whom he related his +hair-breadth escape from Burnamy. + +“I don't call it an escape at all!” she declared. “I call it the +greatest possible misfortune. If it had been Burnamy we could have +brought them together at once, just when she has seen so clearly that +she was in the wrong, and is feeling all broken up. There wouldn't have +been any difficulty about his being in the second-cabin. We could have +contrived to have them meet somehow. If the worst came to the worst you +could have lent him money to pay the difference, and got him into the +first-cabin.” + +“I could have taken that six-hundred-dollar room for him,” said March, +“and then he could have eaten with the swells.” + +She answered that now he was teasing; that he was fundamentally +incapable of taking anything seriously; and in the end he retired before +the stewardess bringing her first coffee, with a well-merited feeling +that if it had not been for his triviality the young Lancashireman would +really have been Burnamy. + + + + +LXXV. + +Except for the first day and night out from Queenstown, when the ship +rolled and pitched with straining and squeaking noises, and a thumping +of the lifted screws, there was no rough weather, and at last the ocean +was livid and oily, with a long swell, on which she swayed with no +perceptible motion save from her machinery. + +Most of the seamanship seemed to be done after dark, or in those early +hours when March found the stewards cleaning the stairs, and the +sailors scouring the promenades. He made little acquaintance with his +fellow-passengers. One morning he almost spoke with an old Quaker lady +whom he joined in looking at the Niagara flood which poured from the +churning screws; but he did not quite get the words out. On the contrary +he talked freely with an American who, bred horses on a farm near +Boulogne, and was going home to the Horse Show; he had been thirty-five +years out of the country, but he had preserved his Yankee accent in all +its purity, and was the most typical-looking American on board. Now and +then March walked up and down with a blond Mexican whom he found of the +usual well-ordered Latin intelligence, but rather flavorless; at times +he sat beside a nice Jew, who talked agreeably, but only about business; +and he philosophized the race as so tiresome often because it seemed +so often without philosophy. He made desperate attempts at times to +interest himself in the pool-selling in the smoking-room where the +betting on the ship's wonderful run was continual. + +He thought that people talked less and less as they drew nearer home; +but on the last day out there was a sudden expansion, and some whom he +had not spoken with voluntarily addressed him. The sweet, soft air was +like midsummer the water rippled gently, without a swell, blue under the +clear sky, and the ship left a wide track that was silver in the sun. +There were more sail; the first and second class baggage was got up and +piled along the steerage deck. + +Some people dressed a little more than usual for the last dinner which +was earlier than usual, so as to be out of the way against the arrival +which had been variously predicted at from five to seven-thirty. An +indescribable nervousness culminated with the appearance of the customs +officers on board, who spread their papers on cleared spaces of the +dining-tables, and summoned the passengers to declare that they had +nothing to declare, as a preliminary to being searched like thieves at +the dock. + +This ceremony proceeded while the Cupania made her way up the Narrows, +and into the North River, where the flare of lights from the crazy +steeps and cliffs of architecture on the New York shore seemed a +persistence of the last Fourth of July pyrotechnics. March blushed for +the grotesque splendor of the spectacle, and was confounded to find some +Englishmen admiring it, till he remembered that aesthetics were not the +strong point of our race. His wife sat hand in hand with Miss Triscoe, +and from time to time made him count the pieces of small baggage in +the keeping of their steward; while General Triscoe held aloof in a +sarcastic calm. + +The steamer groped into her dock; the gangways were lifted to her side; +the passengers fumbled and stumbled down their incline, and at the +bottom the Marches found themselves respectively in the arms of their +son and daughter. They all began talking at once, and ignoring +and trying to remember the Triscoes to whom the young Marches were +presented. Bella did her best to be polite to Agatha, and Tom offered +to get an inspector for the general at the same time as for his father. +Then March, remorsefully remembered the Eltwins, and looked about for +them, so that his son might get them an inspector too. He found the +major already in the hands of an inspector, who was passing all his +pieces after carelessly looking into one: the official who received the +declarations on board had noted a Grand Army button like his own in the +major's lapel, and had marked his fellow-veteran's paper with the mystic +sign which procures for the bearer the honor of being promptly treated +as a smuggler, while the less favored have to wait longer for this +indignity at the hands of their government. When March's own inspector +came he was as civil and lenient as our hateful law allows; when he had +finished March tried to put a bank-note in his hand, and was brought to +a just shame by his refusal of it. The bed-room steward keeping guard +over the baggage helped put-it together after the search, and protested +that March had feed him so handsomely that he would stay there with it +as long as they wished. This partly restored March's self-respect, and +he could share in General Triscoe's indignation with the Treasury ruling +which obliged him to pay duty on his own purchases in excess of the +hundred-dollar limit, though his daughter had brought nothing, and they +jointly came far within the limit for two. + +He found that the Triscoes were going to a quiet old hotel on the way +to Stuyvesant Square, quite in his own neighborhood, and he quickly +arranged for all the ladies and the general to drive together while he +was to follow with his son on foot and by car. They got away from +the scene of the customs' havoc while the steamer shed, with its vast +darkness dimly lit by its many lamps, still showed like a battle-field +where the inspectors groped among the scattered baggage like details +from the victorious army searching for the wounded. His son clapped him +on the shoulder when he suggested this notion, and said he was the +same old father; and they got home as gayly together as the dispiriting +influences of the New York ugliness would permit. It was still in those +good and decent times, now so remote, when the city got something for +the money paid out to keep its streets clean, and those they passed +through were not foul but merely mean. + +The ignoble effect culminated when they came into Broadway, and found +its sidewalks, at an hour when those of any European metropolis would +have been brilliant with life, as unpeopled as those of a minor country +town, while long processions of cable-cars carted heaps of men and women +up and down the thoroughfare amidst the deformities of the architecture. + +The next morning the March family breakfasted late after an evening +prolonged beyond midnight in spite of half-hourly agreements that now +they must really all go to bed. The children had both to recognize +again and again how well their parents were looking; Tom had to tell his +father about the condition of 'Every Other Week'; Bella had to explain +to her mother how sorry her husband was that he could not come on to +meet them with her, but was coming a week later to take her home, +and then she would know the reason why they could not all, go back to +Chicago with him: it was just the place for her father to live, for +everybody to live. At breakfast she renewed the reasoning with which +she had maintained her position the night before; the travellers entered +into a full expression of their joy at being home again; March asked +what had become of that stray parrot which they had left in the tree-top +the morning they started; and Mrs. March declared that this was the last +Silver Wedding Journey she ever wished to take, and tried to convince +them all that she had been on the verge of nervous collapse when she +reached the ship. They sat at table till she discovered that it was very +nearly eleven o'clock, and said it was disgraceful. + +Before they rose, there was a ring at the door, and a card was brought +in to Tom. He glanced at it, and said to his father, “Oh, yes! This man +has been haunting the office for the last three days. He's got to leave +to-day, and as it seemed to be rather a case of life and death with him, +I said he'd probably find you here this morning. But if you don't want +to see him, I can put him off till afternoon, I suppose.” + +He tossed the card to his father, who looked at it quietly, and then +gave it to his wife. “Perhaps I'd as well see him?” + +“See him!” she returned in accents in which all the intensity of her +soul was centred. By an effort of self-control which no words can convey +a just sense of she remained with her children, while her husband with +a laugh more teasing than can be imagined went into the drawing-room to +meet Burnamy. + +The poor fellow was in an effect of belated summer as to clothes, and he +looked not merely haggard but shabby. He made an effort for dignity +as well as gayety, however, in stating himself to March, with many +apologies for his persistency. But, he said, he was on his way West, +and he was anxious to know whether there was any chance of his 'Kasper +Hauler' paper being taken if he finished it up. March would have been a +far harder-hearted editor than he was, if he could have discouraged the +suppliant before him. He said he would take the Kasper Hauler paper and +add a band of music to the usual rate of ten dollars a thousand words. +Then Burnamy's dignity gave way, if not his gayety; he began to laugh, +and suddenly he broke down and confessed that he had come home in the +steerage; and was at his last cent, beyond his fare to Chicago. His +straw hat looked like a withered leaf in the light of his sad facts; +his thin overcoat affected March's imagination as something like the +diaphanous cast shell of a locust, hopelessly resumed for comfort at the +approach of autumn. He made Burnamy sit down, after he had once risen, +and he told him of Major Eltwin's wish to see him; and he promised to +go round with him to the major's hotel before the Eltwins left town that +afternoon. + +While he prolonged the interview in this way, Mrs. March was kept from +breaking in upon them only by the psychical experiment which she was +making with the help and sympathy of her daughter at the window of the +dining-room which looked up Sixteenth Street. At the first hint she gave +of the emotional situation which Burnamy was a main part of, her +son; with the brutal contempt of young men for other young men's love +affairs, said he must go to the office; he bade his mother tell his +father there was no need of his coming down that day, and he left the +two women together. This gave the mother a chance to develop the whole +fact to the daughter with telegrammic rapidity and brevity, and then +to enrich the first-outline with innumerable details, while they both +remained at the window, and Mrs. March said at two-minutely intervals, +with no sense of iteration for either of them, “I told her to come +in the morning, if she felt like it, and I know she will. But if she +doesn't, I shall say there is nothing in fate, or Providence either. At +any rate I'm going to stay here and keep longing for her, and we'll see +whether there's anything in that silly theory of your father's. I don't +believe there is,” she said, to be on the safe side. + +Even when she saw Agatha Triscoe enter the park gate on Rutherford +Place, she saved herself from disappointment by declaring that she was +not coming across to their house. As the girl persisted in coming and +coming, and at last came so near that she caught sight of Mrs. March at +the window and nodded, the mother turned ungratefully upon her daughter, +and drove her away to her own room, so that no society detail should +hinder the divine chance. She went to the door herself when Agatha rang, +and then she was going to open the way into the parlor where March was +still closeted with Burnamy, and pretend that she had not known they +were there. But a soberer second thought than this prevailed, and she +told the girl who it was that was within and explained the accident of +his presence. “I think,” she said nobly, “that you ought to have the +chance of going away if you don't wish to meet him.” + +The girl, with that heroic precipitation which Mrs. March had noted in +her from the first with regard to what she wanted to do, when Burnamy +was in question, answered, “But I do wish to meet him, Mrs. March.” + +While they stood looking at each other, March came out to ask his wife +if she would see Burnamy, and she permitted herself so much stratagem as +to substitute Agatha, after catching her husband aside and subduing his +proposed greeting of the girl to a hasty handshake. + +Half an hour later she thought it time to join the young people, urged +largely by the frantic interest of her daughter. But she returned from +the half-open door without entering. “I couldn't bring myself to break +in on the poor things. They are standing at the window together looking +over at St. George's.” + +Bella silently clasped her hands. March gave cynical laugh, and said, +“Well we are in for it, my dear.” Then he added, “I hope they'll take us +with them on their Silver Wedding Journey.” + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + Declare that they had nothing to declare + Despair which any perfection inspires + Disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love + Fundamentally incapable of taking anything seriously + Held aloof in a sarcastic calm + Illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them + Married life: we expect too much of each other + Not do to be perfectly frank with one's own country + Offence which any difference of taste was apt to give him + Passionate desire for excess in a bad thing + Puddles of the paths were drying up with the haste + Race seemed so often without philosophy + Self-sacrifice which could be had, as it were, at a bargain + She always came to his defence when he accused himself + + +PG EDITORS BOOKMARKS FOR THE COMPLETE TRILOGY: + + Affected absence of mind + Affectional habit + All the loveliness that exists outside of you, dearest is little + All luckiest or the unluckiest, the healthiest or the sickest + Americans are hungrier for royalty than anybody else + Amusing world, if you do not refuse to be amused + Anticipative homesickness + Anticipative reprisal + Any sort of stuff was good enough to make a preacher out of + Appearance made him doubt their ability to pay so much + Artists never do anything like other people + As much of his story as he meant to tell without prompting + At heart every man is a smuggler + Bad wars, or what are comically called good wars + Ballast of her instinctive despondency + Be good, sweet man, and let who will be clever + Beautiful with the radiance of loving and being loved + Bewildering labyrinth of error + Biggest place is always the kindest as well as the cruelest + Brag of his wife, as a good husband always does + Brown-stone fronts + But when we make that money here, no one loses it + Buttoned about him as if it concealed a bad conscience + Calm of those who have logic on their side + Civilly protested and consented + Clinging persistence of such natures + Coldly and inaccessibly vigilant + Collective silence which passes for sociality + Comfort of the critical attitude + Conscience weakens to the need that isn't + Considerable comfort in holding him accountable + Courage hadn't been put to the test + Courtship + Deadly summer day + Death is peace and pardon + Death is an exile that no remorse and no love can reach + Decided not to let the facts betray themselves by chance + Declare that they had nothing to declare + Despair which any perfection inspires + Did not idealize him, but in the highest effect she realized him + Dinner unites the idea of pleasure and duty + Disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love + Dividend: It's a chicken before it's hatched + Does any one deserve happiness + Does anything from without change us? + Dog that had plainly made up his mind to go mad + Effort to get on common ground with an inferior + Europe, where society has them, as it were, in a translation + Evil which will not let a man forgive his victim + Explained perhaps too fully + Extract what consolation lurks in the irreparable + Family buryin' grounds + Favorite stock of his go up and go down under the betting + Feeblest-minded are sure to lead the talk + Feeling rather ashamed,--for he had laughed too + Feeling of contempt for his unambitious destination + Flavors not very sharply distinguished from one another + Fundamentally incapable of taking anything seriously + Futility of travel + Gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for it + Glad; which considering, they ceased to be + Got their laugh out of too many things in life + Guilty rapture of a deliberate dereliction + Had learned not to censure the irretrievable + Had no opinions that he was not ready to hold in abeyance + Handsome pittance + Happiness is so unreasonable + Happiness built upon and hedged about with misery + He expected to do the wrong thing when left to his own devices + He buys my poverty and not my will + Headache darkens the universe while it lasts + Heart that forgives but does not forget + Held aloof in a sarcastic calm + Helplessness begets a sense of irresponsibility + Helplessness accounts for many heroic facts in the world + Hemmed round with this eternal darkness of death + Homage which those who have not pay to those who have + Honest selfishness + Hopeful recklessness + How much can a man honestly earn without wronging or oppressing + Humanity may at last prevail over nationality + Hurry up and git well--or something + Hypothetical difficulty + I cannot endure this--this hopefulness of yours + I want to be sorry upon the easiest possible terms + I supposed I had the pleasure of my wife's acquaintance + I'm not afraid--I'm awfully demoralized + If you dread harm enough it is less likely to happen + Ignorant of her ignorance + Illusions: no marriage can be perfect without them + Impertinent prophecies of their enjoying it so much + Indispensable + Indulge safely in the pleasures of autobiography + Intrepid fancy that they had confronted fate + It had come as all such calamities come, from nothing + It must be your despair that helps you to bear up + It don't do any good to look at its drawbacks all the time + It's the same as a promise, your not saying you wouldn't + Jesting mood in the face of all embarrassments + Justice must be paid for at every step in fees and costs + Less intrusive than if he had not been there + Less certain of everything that I used to be sure of + Life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, but more monotonous + Life of the ship, like the life of the sea: a sodden monotony + Life has taught him to truckle and trick + Long life of holidays which is happy marriage + Love of justice hurry them into sympathy with violence + Made money and do not yet know that money has made them + Madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel + Man's willingness to abide in the present + Married life: we expect too much of each other + Married the whole mystifying world of womankind + Married for no other purpose than to avoid being an old maid + Marry for love two or three times + Monologue to which the wives of absent-minded men resign + Muddy draught which impudently affected to be coffee + Nervous woes of comfortable people + Never-blooming shrub + Never could have an emotion without desiring to analyze it + Night so bad that it was worse than no night at all + No man deserves to sufer at the hands of another + No longer the gross appetite for novelty + No right to burden our friends with our decisions + Not do to be perfectly frank with one's own country + Nothing so apt to end in mutual dislike,--except gratitude + Nothing so sad to her as a bride, unless it's a young mother + Novelists, who really have the charge of people's thinking + Oblivion of sleep + Offence which any difference of taste was apt to give him + Only so much clothing as the law compelled + Only one of them was to be desperate at a time + Our age caricatures our youth + Parkman + Passionate desire for excess in a bad thing + Patience with mediocrity putting on the style of genius + Patronizing spirit of travellers in a foreign country + People that have convictions are difficult + Person talks about taking lessons, as if they could learn it + Poverty as hopeless as any in the world + Prices fixed by his remorse + Puddles of the paths were drying up with the haste + Race seemed so often without philosophy + Recipes for dishes and diseases + Reckless and culpable optimism + Reconciliation with death which nature brings to life at last + Rejoice in everything that I haven't done + Rejoice as much at a non-marriage as a marriage + Repeated the nothings they had said already + Respect for your mind, but she don't think you've got any sense + Say when he is gone that the woman gets along better without him + Seemed the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed + Seeming interested in points necessarily indifferent to him + Self-sufficiency, without its vulgarity + Self-sacrifice which could be had, as it were, at a bargain + Servant of those he loved + She always came to his defence when he accused himself + She cares for him: that she was so cold shows that + She could bear his sympathy, but not its expression + Shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo'--its inconvenience + Sigh with which ladies recognize one another's martyrdom + So hard to give up doing anything we have meant to do + So old a world and groping still + Society: All its favors are really bargains + Sorry he hadn't asked more; that's human nature + Suffering under the drip-drip of his innocent egotism + Superstition that having and shining is the chief good + Superstition of the romances that love is once for all + That isn't very old--or not so old as it used to be + The knowledge of your helplessness in any circumstances + There is little proportion about either pain or pleasure + They were so near in age, though they were ten years apart + They can only do harm by an expression of sympathy + Timidity of the elder in the presence of the younger man + 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 + Tragical character of heat + Travel, with all its annoyances and fatigues + Tried to be homesick for them, but failed + Turn to their children's opinion with deference + Typical anything else, is pretty difficult to find + Unfounded hope that sooner or later the weather would be fine + Used to having his decisions reached without his knowledge + Vexed by a sense of his own pitifulness + Voice of the common imbecility and incoherence + Voting-cattle whom they bought and sold + Wages are the measure of necessity and not of merit + We get too much into the hands of other people + We don't seem so much our own property + Weariness of buying + What we can be if we must + When you look it--live it + Wilful sufferers + Willingness to find poetry in things around them + Wish we didn't always recognize the facts as we do + Without realizing his cruelty, treated as a child + Woman harnessed with a dog to a cart + Wooded with the precise, severely disciplined German forests + Work he was so fond of and so weary of + Would sacrifice his best friend to a phrase + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The March Family Trilogy, Complete +by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARCH FAMILY TRILOGY, COMPLETE *** + +***** This file should be named 3374-0.txt or 3374-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/7/3374/ + +Produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so 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