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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Hazard of New Fortunes, Part Fifth
+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: A Hazard of New Fortunes, Part Fifth
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+Release Date: October 23, 2004 [EBook #3370]
+[Last updated: June 29, 2014]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES
+
+By William Dean Howells
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Hazard of New Fortunes, Part Fifth
+by William Dean Howells
+
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+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*
+
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+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the authors ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES
+
+By William Dean Howells
+
+
+
+
+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 be 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 it he 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 road; 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 lie 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 they 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 leek 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, be 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 Zindau, 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 eight.  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 eves 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)" be 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 be
+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," be 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
+be 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 band 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 news papers 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."
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT 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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of A Hazard of New Fortunes V5,
+by William Dean Howells
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Hazard of New Fortunes, by Howells, v5
+#17 in our series by William Dean Howells
+
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+Title: A Hazard of New Fortunes, v5
+
+Author: William Dean Howells
+
+Release Date: August, 2002  [Etext #3370]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 03/19/01]
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+Edition: 11
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Hazard of New Fortunes, by Howells, v5
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+
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+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks at the end of this file
+for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making
+an entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES
+
+By William Dean Howells
+
+
+
+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 be 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 it he 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 road; 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 lie 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 they 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 leek 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, be 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 Zindau, 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 eves 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 be
+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
+be 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 band 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 news papers 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."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT 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
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of A Hazard of New Fortunes, v5
+by William Dean Howells
+
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