A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES

By William Dean Howells

PART SECOND

I. 

The evening when March closed with Mrs. Green's reduced offer, anddecided to take her apartment, the widow whose lodgings he had rejectedsat with her daughter in an upper room at the back of her house. In theshaded glow of the drop-light she was sewing, and the girl was drawing atthe same table. From time to time, as they talked, the girl lifted herhead and tilted it a little on one side so as to get some desired effectof her work. 

"It's a mercy the cold weather holds off, " said the mother. "We shouldhave to light the furnace, unless we wanted to scare everybody away witha cold house; and I don't know who would take care of it, or what wouldbecome of us, every way. "

"They seem to have been scared away from a house that wasn't cold, " saidthe girl. "Perhaps they might like a cold one. But it's too early forcold yet. It's only just in the beginning of November. "

"The Messenger says they've had a sprinkling of snow. "

"Oh yes, at St. Barnaby! I don't know when they don't have sprinklings ofsnow there. I'm awfully glad we haven't got that winter before us. "

The widow sighed as mothers do who feel the contrast their experienceopposes to the hopeful recklessness of such talk as this. "We may have aworse winter here, " she said, darkly. 

"Then I couldn't stand it, " said the girl, "and I should go in forlighting out to Florida double-quick. "

"And how would you get to Florida?" demanded her mother, severely. 

"Oh, by the usual conveyance Pullman vestibuled train, I suppose. Whatmakes you so blue, mamma?" The girl was all the time sketching away, rubbing out, lifting her head for the effect, and then bending it overher work again without looking at her mother. 

"I am not blue, Alma. But I cannot endure this--this hopefulness ofyours. "

"Why? What harm does it do?"

"Harm?" echoed the mother. 

Pending the effort she must make in saying, the girl cut in: "Yes, harm. You've kept your despair dusted off and ready for use at an instant'snotice ever since we came, and what good has it done? I'm going to keepon hoping to the bitter end. That's what papa did. "

It was what the Rev. Archibald Leighton had done with all theconsumptive's buoyancy. The morning he died he told them that now he hadturned the point and was really going to get well. The cheerfulness wasnot only in his disease, but in his temperament. Its excess was always alittle against him in his church work, and Mrs. Leighton was right enoughin feeling that if it had not been for the ballast of her instinctivedespondency he would have made shipwreck of such small chances ofprosperity as befell him in life. It was not from him that his daughtergot her talent, though he had left her his temperament intact of hiswidow's legal thirds. He was one of those men of whom the country peoplesay when he is gone that the woman gets along better without him. Mrs. Leighton had long eked out their income by taking a summer boarder ortwo, as a great favor, into her family; and when the greater need came, she frankly gave up her house to the summer-folks (as they call them inthe country), and managed it for their comfort from the small quarter ofit in which she shut herself up with her daughter. 

The notion of shutting up is an exigency of the rounded period. The factis, of course, that Alma Leighton was not shut up in any sense whatever. She was the pervading light, if not force, of the house. She was a goodcook, and she managed the kitchen with the help of an Irish girl, whileher mother looked after the rest of the housekeeping. But she was notsystematic; she had inspiration but not discipline, and her mothermourned more over the days when Alma left the whole dinner to the Irishgirl than she rejoiced in those when one of Alma's great thoughts tookform in a chicken-pie of incomparable savor or in a matchless pudding. The off-days came when her artistic nature was expressing itself incharcoal, for she drew to the admiration of all among the lady boarderswho could not draw. The others had their reserves; they readily concededthat Alma had genius, but they were sure she needed instruction. On theother hand, they were not so radical as to agree with the old painter whocame every summer to paint the elms of the St. Barnaby meadows. Hecontended that she needed to be a man in order to amount to anything; butin this theory he was opposed by an authority, of his own sex, whom thelady sketchers believed to speak with more impartiality in a matterconcerning them as much as Alma Leighton. He said that instruction woulddo, and he was not only, younger and handsomer, but he was fresher fromthe schools than old Harrington, who, even the lady sketchers could see, painted in an obsolescent manner. His name was Beaton--Angus Beaton; buthe was not Scotch, or not more Scotch than Mary Queen of Scots was. Hisfather was a Scotchman, but Beaton was born in Syracuse, New York, and ithad taken only three years in Paris to obliterate many traces of nativeand ancestral manner in him. He wore his black beard cut shorter than hismustache, and a little pointed; he stood with his shoulders well thrownback and with a lateral curve of his person when he talked about art, which would alone have carried conviction even if he had not had a thick, dark bang coming almost to the brows of his mobile gray eyes, and had notspoken English with quick, staccato impulses, so as to give it the effectof epigrammatic and sententious French. One of the ladies said that youalways thought of him as having spoken French after it was over, andaccused herself of wrong in not being able to feel afraid of him. None ofthe ladies was afraid of him, though they could not believe that he wasreally so deferential to their work as he seemed; and they knew, when hewould not criticise Mr. Harrington's work, that he was just acting fromprinciple. 

They may or may not have known the deference with which he treated Alma'swork; but the girl herself felt that his abrupt, impersonal commentrecognized her as a real sister in art. He told her she ought to come toNew York, and draw in the League, or get into some painter's privateclass; and it was the sense of duty thus appealed to which finallyresulted in the hazardous experiment she and her mother were now making. There were no logical breaks in the chain of their reasoning from pastsuccess with boarders in St. Barnaby to future success with boarders inNew York. Of course the outlay was much greater. The rent of thefurnished house they had taken was such that if they failed theirexperiment would be little less than ruinous. 

But they were not going to fail; that was what Alma contended, with ahardy courage that her mother sometimes felt almost invited failure, ifit did not deserve it. She was one of those people who believe that ifyou dread harm enough it is less likely to happen. She acted on thissuperstition as if it were a religion. 

"If it had not been for my despair, as you call it, Alma, " she answered, "I don't know where we should have been now. "

"I suppose we should have been in St. Barnaby, " said the girl. "And ifit's worse to be in New York, you see what your despair's done, mamma. But what's the use? You meant well, and I don't blame you. You can'texpect even despair to come out always just the way you want it. Perhapsyou've used too much of it. " The girl laughed, and Mrs. Leighton laughed, too. Like every one else, she was not merely a prevailing mood, as peopleare apt to be in books, but was an irregularly spheroidal character, withsurfaces that caught the different lights of circumstance and reflectedthem. Alma got up and took a pose before the mirror, which she thentransferred to her sketch. The room was pinned about with other sketches, which showed with fantastic indistinctness in the shaded gaslight. Almaheld up the drawing. "How do you like it?"

Mrs. Leighton bent forward over her sewing to look at it. "You've got theman's face rather weak. "

"Yes, that's so. Either I see all the hidden weakness that's in men'snatures, and bring it to the surface in their figures, or else I put myown weakness into them. Either way, it's a drawback to their presenting atruly manly appearance. As long as I have one of the miserable objectsbefore me, I can draw him; but as soon as his back's turned I get toputting ladies into men's clothes. I should think you'd be scandalized, mamma, if you were a really feminine person. It must be your despair thathelps you to bear up. But what's the matter with the young lady in younglady's clothes? Any dust on her?"

"What expressions!" said Mrs. Leighton. "Really, Alma, for a refined girlyou are the most unrefined!"

"Go on--about the girl in the picture!" said Alma, slightly knocking hermother on the shoulder, as she stood over her. 

"I don't see anything to her. What's she doing?"

"Oh, just being made love to, I suppose. "

"She's perfectly insipid!"

"You're awfully articulate, mamma! Now, if Mr. Wetmore were to criticisethat picture he'd draw a circle round it in the air, and look at itthrough that, and tilt his head first on one side and then on the other, and then look at you, as if you were a figure in it, and then collapseawhile, and moan a little and gasp, 'Isn't your young lady a littletoo-too--' and then he'd try to get the word out of you, and groan andsuffer some more; and you'd say, 'She is, rather, ' and that would givehim courage, and he'd say, 'I don't mean that she's so very--' 'Of coursenot. ' 'You understand?' 'Perfectly. I see it myself, now. ' 'Well, then'---and he'd take your pencil and begin to draw--'I should give her alittle more--Ah?' 'Yes, I see the difference. '--'You see the difference?'And he'd go off to some one else, and you'd know that you'd been doingthe wishy-washiest thing in the world, though he hadn't spoken a word ofcriticism, and couldn't. But he wouldn't have noticed the expression atall; he'd have shown you where your drawing was bad. He doesn't care forwhat he calls the literature of a thing; he says that will take care ofitself if the drawing's good. He doesn't like my doing these chic things;but I'm going to keep it up, for I think it's the nearest way toillustrating. "

She took her sketch and pinned it up on the door. 

"And has Mr. Beaton been about, yet?" asked her mother. 

"No, " said the girl, with her back still turned; and she added, "Ibelieve he's in New York; Mr. Wetmore's seen him. "

"It's a little strange he doesn't call. "

"It would be if he were not an artist. But artists never do anything likeother people. He was on his good behavior while he was with us, and he'sa great deal more conventional than most of them; but even he can't keepit up. That's what makes me really think that women can never amount toanything in art. They keep all their appointments, and fulfil all theirduties just as if they didn't know anything about art. Well, most of themdon't. We've got that new model to-day. "

"What new model?"

"The one Mr. Wetmore was telling us about the old German; he's splendid. He's got the most beautiful head; just like the old masters' things. Heused to be Humphrey Williams's model for his Biblical-pieces; but sincehe's dead, the old man hardly gets anything to do. Mr. Wetmore says thereisn't anybody in the Bible that Williams didn't paint him as. He's theLaw and the Prophets in all his Old Testament pictures, and he's Joseph, Peter, Judas Iscariot, and the Scribes and Pharisees in the New. "

"It's a good thing people don't know how artists work, or some of themost sacred pictures would have no influence, " said Mrs. Leighton. 

"Why, of course not!" cried the girl. "And the influence is the lastthing a painter thinks of--or supposes he thinks of. What he knows he'sanxious about is the drawing and the color. But people will neverunderstand how simple artists are. When I reflect what a complex andsophisticated being I am, I'm afraid I can never come to anything in art. Or I should be if I hadn't genius. "

"Do you think Mr. Beaton is very simple?" asked Mrs. Leighton. 

"Mr. Wetmore doesn't think he's very much of an artist. He thinks hetalks too well. They believe that if a man can express himself clearly hecan't paint. "

"And what do you believe?"

"Oh, I can express myself, too. "

The mother seemed to be satisfied with this evasion. After a while shesaid, "I presume he will call when he gets settled. "

The girl made no answer to this. "One of the girls says that old model isan educated man. He was in the war, and lost a hand. Doesn't it seem apity for such a man to have to sit to a class of affected geese like usas a model? I declare it makes me sick. And we shall keep him a week, andpay him six or seven dollars for the use of his grand old head, and thenwhat will he do? The last time he was regularly employed was when Mr. Mace was working at his Damascus Massacre. Then he wanted so many Arabsheiks and Christian elders that he kept old Mr. Lindau steadily employedfor six months. Now he has to pick up odd jobs where he can. "

"I suppose he has his pension, " said Mrs. Leighton. 

"No; one of the girls"--that was the way Alma always described herfellow-students--"says he has no pension. He didn't apply for it for along time, and then there was a hitch about it, and it wassomethinged--vetoed, I believe she said. "

"Who vetoed it?" asked Mrs. Leighton, with some curiosity about theprocess, which she held in reserve. 

"I don't know-whoever vetoes things. I wonder what Mr. Wetmore does thinkof us--his class. We must seem perfectly crazy. There isn't one of usreally knows what she's doing it for, or what she expects to happen whenshe's done it. I suppose every one thinks she has genius. I know theNebraska widow does, for she says that unless you have genius it isn'tthe least use. Everybody's puzzled to know what she does with her babywhen she's at work--whether she gives it soothing syrup. I wonder how Mr. Wetmore can keep from laughing in our faces. I know he does behind ourbacks. "

Mrs. Leighton's mind wandered back to another point. "Then if he says Mr. Beaton can't paint, I presume he doesn't respect him very much. "

"Oh, he never said he couldn't paint. But I know he thinks so. He sayshe's an excellent critic. "

"Alma, " her mother said, with the effect of breaking off, "what do yousuppose is the reason he hasn't been near us?"

"Why, I don't know, mamma, except that it would have been natural foranother person to come, and he's an artist at least, artist enough forthat. "

"That doesn't account for it altogether. He was very nice at St. Barnaby, and seemed so interested in you--your work. "

"Plenty of people were nice at St. Barnaby. That rich Mrs. Horn couldn'tcontain her joy when she heard we were coming to New York, but she hasn'tpoured in upon us a great deal since we got here. "

"But that's different. She's very fashionable, and she's taken up withher own set. But Mr. Beaton's one of our kind. "

"Thank you. Papa wasn't quite a tombstone-cutter, mamma. "

"That makes it all the harder to bear. He can't be ashamed of us. Perhapshe doesn't know where we are. "

"Do you wish to send him your card, mamma?" The girl flushed and toweredin scorn of the idea. 

"Why, no, Alma, " returned her mother. 

"Well, then, " said Alma. 

But Mrs. Leighton was not so easily quelled. She had got her mind on Mr. Beaton, and she could not detach it at once. Besides, she was one ofthose women (they are commoner than the same sort of men) whom it doesnot pain to take out their most intimate thoughts and examine them in thelight of other people's opinions. "But I don't see how he can behave so. He must know that--"

"That what, mamma?" demanded the girl. 

"That he influenced us a great deal in coming--"

"He didn't. If he dared to presume to think such a thing--"

"Now, Alma, " said her mother, with the clinging persistence of suchnatures, "you know he did. And it's no use for you to pretend that wedidn't count upon him in--in every way. You may not have noticed hisattentions, and I don't say you did, but others certainly did; and I mustsay that I didn't expect he would drop us so. "

"Drop us!" cried Alma, in a fury. "Oh!"

"Yes, drop us, Alma. He must know where we are. Of course, Mr. Wetmore'sspoken to him about you, and it's a shame that he hasn't been near us. Ishould have thought common gratitude, common decency, would have broughthim after--after all we did for him. "

"We did nothing for him--nothing! He paid his board, and that ended it. "

"No, it didn't, Alma. You know what he used to say--about its being likehome, and all that; and I must say that after his attentions to you, andall the things you told me he said, I expected something very dif--"

A sharp peal of the door-bell thrilled through the house, and as if thepull of the bell-wire had twitched her to her feet, Mrs. Leighton sprangup and grappled with her daughter in their common terror. 

They both glared at the clock and made sure that it was five minutesafter nine. Then they abandoned themselves some moments to theunrestricted play of their apprehensions. 

II. 

"Why, Alma, " whispered the mother, "who in the world can it be at thistime of night? You don't suppose he--"

"Well, I'm not going to the door, anyhow, mother, I don't care who it is;and, of course, he wouldn't be such a goose as to come at this hour. " Sheput on a look of miserable trepidation, and shrank back from the door, while the hum of the bell died away, in the hall. 

"What shall we do?" asked Mrs. Leighton, helplessly. 

"Let him go away--whoever they are, " said Alma. 

Another and more peremptory ring forbade them refuge in this simpleexpedient. 

"Oh, dear! what shall we do? Perhaps it's a despatch. "

The conjecture moved Alma to no more than a rigid stare. "I shall notgo, " she said. A third ring more insistent than the others followed, andshe said: "You go ahead, mamma, and I'll come behind to scream if it'sanybody. We can look through the side-lights at the door first. "

Mrs. Leighton fearfully led the way from the back chamber where they badbeen sitting, and slowly descended the stairs. Alma came behind andturned up the hall gas-jet with a sudden flash that made them both jump alittle. The gas inside rendered it more difficult to tell who was on thethreshold, but Mrs. Leighton decided from a timorous peep through thescrims that it was a lady and gentleman. Something in this distributionof sex emboldened her; she took her life in her hand, and opened thedoor. 

The lady spoke. "Does Mrs. Leighton live heah?" she said, in a rich, throaty voice; and she feigned a reference to the agent's permit she heldin her hand. 

"Yes, " said Mrs. Leighton; she mechanically occupied the doorway, whileAlma already quivered behind her with impatience of her impoliteness. 

"Oh, " said the lady, who began to appear more and more a young lady, "Ahdidn't know but Ah had mistaken the hoase. Ah suppose it's rather late tosee the apawtments, and Ah most ask you to pawdon us. " She put thistentatively, with a delicately growing recognition of Mrs. Leighton asthe lady of the house, and a humorous intelligence of the situation inthe glance she threw Alma over her mother's shoulder. "Ah'm afraid wemost have frightened you. "

"Oh, not at all, " said Alma; and at the same time her mother said, "Willyou walk in, please?"

The gentleman promptly removed his hat and made the Leightons aninclusive bow. "You awe very kind, madam, and I am sorry for the troublewe awe giving you. " He was tall and severe-looking, with a gray, trooperish mustache and iron-gray hair, and, as Alma decided, iron-grayeyes. His daughter was short, plump, and fresh-colored, with an effect ofliveliness that did not all express itself in her broad-vowelled, ratherformal speech, with its odd valuations of some of the auxiliary verbs, and its total elision of the canine letter. 

"We awe from the Soath, " she said, "and we arrived this mawning, but wegot this cyahd from the brokah just befo' dinnah, and so we awe rathahlate. "

"Not at all; it's only nine o'clock, " said Mrs. Leighton. She looked upfrom the card the young lady had given her, and explained, "We haven'tgot in our servants yet, and we had to answer the bell ourselves, and--"

"You were frightened, of coase, " said the young lady, caressingly. 

The gentleman said they ought not to have come so late, and he offeredsome formal apologies. 

"We should have been just as much scared any time after five o'clock, "Alma said to the sympathetic intelligence in the girl's face. 

She laughed out. "Of coase! Ah would have my hawt in my moath all daylong, too, if Ah was living in a big hoase alone. "

A moment of stiffness followed; Mrs. Leighton would have liked towithdraw from the intimacy of the situation, but she did not know how. Itwas very well for these people to assume to be what they pretended; but, she reflected too late, she had no proof of it except the agent's permit. They were all standing in the hall together, and she prolonged theawkward pause while she examined the permit. "You are Mr. Woodburn?" sheasked, in a way that Alma felt implied he might not be. 

"Yes, madam; from Charlottesboag, Virginia, " he answered, with the slightumbrage a man shows when the strange cashier turns his check over andquestions him before cashing it. 

Alma writhed internally, but outwardly remained subordinate; she examinedthe other girl's dress, and decided in a superficial consciousness thatshe had made her own bonnet. 

"I shall be glad to show you my rooms, " said Mrs. Leighton, with anirrelevant sigh. "You must excuse their being not just as I should wishthem. We're hardly settled yet. "

"Don't speak of it, madam, " said the gentleman, "if you can overlook thetrouble we awe giving you at such an unseasonable houah. "

"Ah'm a hoasekeepah mahself, " Miss Woodburn joined in, "and Ah know ho'to accyoant fo' everything. "

Mrs. Leighton led the way up-stairs, and the young lady decided upon thelarge front room and small side room on the third story. She said shecould take the small one, and the other was so large that her fathercould both sleep and work in it. She seemed not ashamed to ask if Mrs. Leighton's price was inflexible, but gave way laughing when her fatherrefused to have any bargaining, with a haughty self-respect which hesoftened to deference for Mrs. Leighton. His impulsiveness opened the wayfor some confidence from her, and before the affair was arranged she wasenjoying in her quality of clerical widow the balm of the Virginians'reverent sympathy. They said they were church people themselves. 

"Ah don't know what yo' mothah means by yo' hoase not being in oddah, "the young lady said to Alma as they went down-stairs together. "Ah'm agreat hoasekeepah mahself, and Ah mean what Ah say. "

They had all turned mechanically into the room where the Leightons weresitting when the Woodburns rang: Mr. Woodburn consented to sit down, andhe remained listening to Mrs. Leighton while his daughter bustled up tothe sketches pinned round the room and questioned Alma about them. 

"Ah suppose you awe going to be a great awtust?" she said, in friendlybanter, when Alma owned to having done the things. "Ah've a great notionto take a few lessons mahself. Who's yo' teachah?"

Alma said she was drawing in Mr. Wetmore's class, and Miss Woodburn said:"Well, it's just beautiful, Miss Leighton; it's grand. Ah suppose it'sraght expensive, now? Mah goodness! we have to cyoant the coast so muchnowadays; it seems to me we do nothing but cyoant it. Ah'd like to hahsomething once without askin' the price. "

"Well, if you didn't ask it, " said Alma, "I don't believe Mr. Wetmorewould ever know what the price of his lessons was. He has to think, whenyou ask him. "

"Why, he most be chomming, " said Miss Woodburn. "Perhaps Ah maght get thelessons for nothing from him. Well, Ah believe in my soul Ah'll trah. Nowho' did you begin? and ho' do you expect to get anything oat of it?" Sheturned on Alma eyes brimming with a shrewd mixture of fun and earnest, and Alma made note of the fact that she had an early nineteenth-centuryface, round, arch, a little coquettish, but extremely sensible andunspoiled-looking, such as used to be painted a good deal in miniature atthat period; a tendency of her brown hair to twine and twist at thetemples helped the effect; a high comb would have completed it, Almafelt, if she had her bonnet off. It was almost a Yankee country-girltype; but perhaps it appeared so to Alma because it was, like that, pureAnglo-Saxon. Alma herself, with her dull, dark skin, slender in figure, slow in speech, with aristocratic forms in her long hands, and the ovalof her fine face pointed to a long chin, felt herself much more Southernin style than this blooming, bubbling, bustling Virginian. 

"I don't know, " she answered, slowly. 

"Going to take po'traits, " suggested Miss Woodburn, "or just paint theahdeal?" A demure burlesque lurked in her tone. 

"I suppose I don't expect to paint at all, " said Alma. "I'm going toillustrate books--if anybody will let me. "

"Ah should think they'd just joamp at you, " said Miss Woodburn. "Ah'lltell you what let's do, Miss Leighton: you make some pictures, and Ah'llwrahte a book fo' them. Ah've got to do something. Ali maght as wellwrahte a book. You know we Southerners have all had to go to woak. But Ahdon't mand it. I tell papa I shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo'if it wasn't fo' the inconvenience. "

"Yes, it's inconvenient, " said Alma; "but you forget it when you're atwork, don't you think?"

"Mah, yes! Perhaps that's one reason why poo' people have to woak sohawd-to keep their wands off their poverty. "

The girls both tittered, and turned from talking in a low tone with theirbacks toward their elders, and faced them. 

"Well, Madison, " said Mr. Woodburn, "it is time we should go. I bid yougood-night, madam, " he bowed to Mrs. Leighton. "Good-night, " he bowedagain to Alma. 

His daughter took leave of them in formal phrase, but with a jollycordiality of manner that deformalized it. "We shall be roand raght soonin the mawning, then, " she threatened at the door. 

"We shall be all ready for you, " Alma called after her down the steps. 

"Well, Alma?" her mother asked, when the door closed upon them. 

"She doesn't know any more about art, " said Alma, "than--nothing at all. But she's jolly and good-hearted. She praised everything that was bad inmy sketches, and said she was going to take lessons herself. When aperson talks about taking lessons, as if they could learn it, you knowwhere they belong artistically. "

Mrs. Leighton shook her head with a sigh. "I wish I knew where theybelonged financially. We shall have to get in two girls at once. I shallhave to go out the first thing in the morning, and then our troubles willbegin. "

"Well, didn't you want them to begin? I will stay home and help you getready. Our prosperity couldn't begin without the troubles, if you meanboarders, and boarders mean servants. I shall be very glad to beafflicted with a cook for a while myself. "

"Yes; but we don't know anything about these people, or whether they willbe able to pay us. Did she talk as if they were well off?"

"She talked as if they were poor; poo' she called it. "

"Yes, how queerly she pronounced, " said Mrs. Leighton. "Well, I ought tohave told them that I required the first week in advance. "

"Mamma! If that's the way you're going to act!"

"Oh, of course, I couldn't, after he wouldn't let her bargain for therooms. I didn't like that. "

"I did. And you can see that they were perfect ladies; or at least one ofthem. " Alma laughed at herself, but her mother did not notice. 

"Their being ladies won't help if they've got no money. It 'll make itall the worse. "

"Very well, then; we have no money, either. We're a match for them anyday there. We can show them that two can play at that game. "

III. 

Arnus Beaton's studio looked at first glance like many other painters'studios. A gray wall quadrangularly vaulted to a large north light; castsof feet, hands, faces hung to nails about; prints, sketches in oil andwater-color stuck here and there lower down; a rickety table, with paintand palettes and bottles of varnish and siccative tossed comfortlessly onit; an easel, with a strip of some faded mediaeval silk trailing from it;a lay figure simpering in incomplete nakedness, with its head on oneside, and a stocking on one leg, and a Japanese dress dropped before it;dusty rugs and skins kicking over the varnished floor; canvases faced tothe mop-board; an open trunk overflowing with costumes: these featuresone might notice anywhere. But, besides, there was a bookcase with anunusual number of books in it, and there was an open colonialwriting-desk, claw-footed, brass-handled, and scutcheoned, with foreignperiodicals--French and English--littering its leaf, and some pages ofmanuscript scattered among them. Above all, there was a sculptor'srevolving stand, supporting a bust which Beaton was modelling, with aneye fixed as simultaneously as possible on the clay and on the head ofthe old man who sat on the platform beside it. 

Few men have been able to get through the world with several gifts toadvantage in all; and most men seem handicapped for the race if they havemore than one. But they are apparently immensely interested as well asdistracted by them. When Beaton was writing, he would have agreed, up toa certain point, with any one who said literature was his properexpression; but, then, when he was painting, up to a certain point, hewould have maintained against the world that he was a colorist, andsupremely a colorist. At the certain point in either art he was apt tobreak away in a frenzy of disgust and wreak himself upon some other. Inthese moods he sometimes designed elevations of buildings, very striking, very original, very chic, very everything but habitable. It was in thisway that he had tried his hand on sculpture, which he had at firstapproached rather slightingly as a mere decorative accessory ofarchitecture. But it had grown in his respect till he maintained that theaccessory business ought to be all the other way: that temples should beraised to enshrine statues, not statues made to ornament temples; thatwas putting the cart before the horse with a vengeance. This was when hehad carried a plastic study so far that the sculptors who saw it saidthat Beaton might have been an architect, but would certainly never be asculptor. At the same time he did some hurried, nervous things that had apopular charm, and that sold in plaster reproductions, to the profit ofanother. Beaton justly despised the popular charm in these, as well as inthe paintings he sold from time to time; he said it was flat burglary tohave taken money for them, and he would have been living almost whollyupon the bounty of the old tombstone-cutter in Syracuse if it had notbeen for the syndicate letters which he supplied to Fulkerson for tendollars a week. 

They were very well done, but he hated doing them after the first two orthree, and had to be punched up for them by Fulkerson, who did not ceaseto prize them, and who never failed to punch him up. Beaton being what hewas, Fulkerson was his creditor as well as patron; and Fulkerson beingwhat he was, had an enthusiastic patience with the elusive, facile, adaptable, unpractical nature of Beaton. He was very proud of hisart-letters, as he called them; but then Fulkerson was proud ofeverything he secured for his syndicate. The fact that he had secured itgave it value; he felt as if he had written it himself. 

One art trod upon another's heels with Beaton. The day before he hadrushed upon canvas the conception of a picture which he said to himselfwas glorious, and to others (at the table d'hote of Maroni) was not bad. He had worked at it in a fury till the light failed him, and he execratedthe dying day. But he lit his lamp and transferred the process of histhinking from the canvas to the opening of the syndicate letter which heknew Fulkerson would be coming for in the morning. He remained talking solong after dinner in the same strain as he had painted and written inthat he could not finish his letter that night. The next morning, whilehe was making his tea for breakfast, the postman brought him a letterfrom his father enclosing a little check, and begging him with tender, almost deferential, urgence to come as lightly upon him as possible, forjust now his expenses were very heavy. It brought tears of shame intoBeaton's eyes--the fine, smouldering, floating eyes that many ladiesadmired, under the thick bang--and he said to himself that if he werehalf a man he would go home and go to work cutting gravestones in hisfather's shop. But he would wait, at least, to finish his picture; and asa sop to his conscience, to stay its immediate ravening, he resolved tofinish that syndicate letter first, and borrow enough money fromFulkerson to be able to send his father's check back; or, if not that, then to return the sum of it partly in Fulkerson's check. While he stillteemed with both of these good intentions the old man from whom he wasmodelling his head of Judas came, and Beaton saw that he must get throughwith him before he finished either the picture or the letter; he wouldhave to pay him for the time, anyway. He utilized the remorse with whichhe was tingling to give his Judas an expression which he found novel inthe treatment of that character--a look of such touching, appealingself-abhorrence that Beaton's artistic joy in it amounted to rapture;between the breathless moments when he worked in dead silence for aneffect that was trying to escape him, he sang and whistled fragments ofcomic opera. 

In one of the hushes there came a blow on the outside of the door thatmade Beaton jump, and swear with a modified profanity that merged itselfin apostrophic prayer. He knew it must be Fulkerson, and after roaring"Come in!" he said to the model, "That 'll do this morning, Lindau. "

Fulkerson squared his feet in front of the bust and compared it byfleeting glances with the old man as he got stiffly up and sufferedBeaton to help him on with his thin, shabby overcoat. 

"Can you come to-morrow, Lindau?"

"No, not to-morrow, Mr. Peaton. I haf to zit for the young ladties. "

"Oh!" said Beaton. "Wet-more's class? Is Miss Leighton doing you?"

"I don't know their namess, " Lindau began, when Fulkerson said:

"Hope you haven't forgotten mine, Mr. Lindau? I met you with Mr. March atMaroni's one night. " Fulkerson offered him a universally shakable hand. 

"Oh yes! I am gladt to zee you again, Mr. Vulkerson. And Mr. Marge--hedon't zeem to gome any more?"

"Up to his eyes in work. Been moving on from Boston and getting settled, and starting in on our enterprise. Beaton here hasn't got a veryflattering likeness of you, hey? Well, good-morning, " he said, for Lindauappeared not to have heard him and was escaping with a bow through thedoor. 

Beaton lit a cigarette which he pinched nervously between his lips beforehe spoke. "You've come for that letter, I suppose, Fulkerson? It isn'tdone. "

Fulkerson turned from staring at the bust to which he had mounted. "Whatyou fretting about that letter for? I don't want your letter. "

Beaton stopped biting his cigarette and looked at him. "Don't want myletter? Oh, very good!" he bristled up. He took his cigarette from hislips, and blew the smoke through his nostrils, and then looked atFulkerson. 

"No; I don't want your letter; I want you. "

Beacon disdained to ask an explanation, but he internally lowered hiscrest, while he continued to look at Fulkerson without changing hisdefiant countenance. This suited Fulkerson well enough, and he went onwith relish, "I'm going out of the syndicate business, old man, and I'mon a new thing. " He put his leg over the back of a chair and rested hisfoot on its seat, and, with one hand in his pocket, he laid the scheme of'Every Other Week' before Beaton with the help of the other. The artistwent about the room, meanwhile, with an effect of indifference which byno means offended Fulkerson. He took some water into his mouth from atumbler, which he blew in a fine mist over the head of Judas beforeswathing it in a dirty cotton cloth; he washed his brushes and set hispalette; he put up on his easel the picture he had blocked on the daybefore, and stared at it with a gloomy face; then he gathered the sheetsof his unfinished letter together and slid them into a drawer of hiswriting-desk. By the time he had finished and turned again to Fulkerson, Fulkerson was saying: "I did think we could have the first number out byNew-Year's; but it will take longer than that--a month longer; but I'mnot sorry, for the holidays kill everything; and by February, or themiddle of February, people will get their breath again and begin to lookround and ask what's new. Then we'll reply in the language of Shakespeareand Milton, 'Every Other Week; and don't you forget it. '" He took downhis leg and asked, "Got a pipe of 'baccy anywhere?"

Beaton nodded at a clay stem sticking out of a Japanese vase of bronze onhis mantel. "There's yours, " he said; and Fulkerson said, "Thanks, " andfilled the pipe and sat down and began to smoke tranquilly. 

Beaton saw that he would have to speak now. "And what do you want withme?"

"You? Oh yes, " Fulkerson humorously dramatized a return to himself from apensive absence. "Want you for the art department. "

Beaton shook his head. "I'm not your man, Fulkerson, " he said, compassionately. "You want a more practical hand, one that's in touchwith what's going. I'm getting further and further away from this centuryand its claptrap. I don't believe in your enterprise; I don't respect it, and I won't have anything to do with it. It would-choke me, that kind ofthing. "

"That's all right, " said Fulkerson. He esteemed a man who was not goingto let himself go cheap. "Or if it isn't, we can make it. You and Marchwill pull together first-rate. I don't care how much ideal you put intothe thing; the more the better. I can look after the other end of theschooner myself. "

"You don't understand me, " said Beaton. "I'm not trying to get a rise outof you. I'm in earnest. What you want is some man who can have patiencewith mediocrity putting on the style of genius, and with genius turningmediocrity on his hands. I haven't any luck with men; I don't get on withthem; I'm not popular. " Beaton recognized the fact with the satisfactionwhich it somehow always brings to human pride. 

"So much the better!" Fulkerson was ready for him at this point. "I don'twant you to work the old-established racket the reputations. When I wantthem I'll go to them with a pocketful of rocks--knock-down argument. Butmy idea is to deal with the volunteer material. Look at the way theperiodicals are carried on now! Names! names! names! In a country that'sjust boiling over with literary and artistic ability of every kind thenew fellows have no chance. The editors all engage their material. Idon't believe there are fifty volunteer contributions printed in a yearin all the New York magazines. It's all wrong; it's suicidal. 'EveryOther Week' is going back to the good old anonymous system, the only fairsystem. It's worked well in literature, and it will work well in art. "

"It won't work well in art, " said Beaton. "There you have a totallydifferent set of conditions. What you'll get by inviting volunteerillustrations will be a lot of amateur trash. And how are you going tosubmit your literature for illustration? It can't be done. At any rate, Iwon't undertake to do it. "

"We'll get up a School of Illustration, " said Fulkerson, with cynicalsecurity. "You can read the things and explain 'em, and your pupils canmake their sketches under your eye. They wouldn't be much further outthan most illustrations are if they never knew what they wereillustrating. You might select from what comes in and make up a sort ofpictorial variations to the literature without any particular referenceto it. Well, I understand you to accept?"

"No, you don't. "

"That is, to consent to help us with your advice and criticism. That'sall I want. It won't commit you to anything; and you can be as anonymousas anybody. " At the door Fulkerson added: "By-the-way, the new man--thefellow that's taken my old syndicate business--will want you to keep on;but I guess he's going to try to beat you down on the price of theletters. He's going in for retrenchment. I brought along a check for thisone; I'm to pay for that. " He offered Beaton an envelope. 

"I can't take it, Fulkerson. The letter's paid for already. " Fulkersonstepped forward and laid the envelope on the table among the tubes ofpaint. 

"It isn't the letter merely. I thought you wouldn't object to a littleadvance on your 'Every Other Week' work till you kind of got started. "

Beaton remained inflexible. "It can't be done, Fulkerson. Don't I tellyou I can't sell myself out to a thing I don't believe in? Can't youunderstand that?"

"Oh yes; I can understand that first-rate. I don't want to buy you; Iwant to borrow you. It's all right. See? Come round when you can; I'dlike to introduce you to old March. That's going to be our address. " Heput a card on the table beside the envelope, and Beaton allowed him to gowithout making him take the check back. He had remembered his father'splea; that unnerved him, and he promised himself again to return hisfather's poor little check and to work on that picture and give it toFulkerson for the check he had left and for his back debts. He resolvedto go to work on the picture at once; he had set his palette for it; butfirst he looked at Fulkerson's check. It was for only fifty dollars, andthe canny Scotch blood in Beaton rebelled; he could not let this picturego for any such money; he felt a little like a man whose generosity hasbeen trifled with. The conflict of emotions broke him up, and he couldnot work. 

IV

The day wasted away in Beaton's hands; at half-past four o'clock he wentout to tea at the house of a lady who was At Home that afternoon fromfour till seven. By this time Beaton was in possession of one of thoseother selves of which we each have several about us, and was again thelaconic, staccato, rather worldlified young artist whose moments of acontrolled utterance and a certain distinction of manner had commendedhim to Mrs. Horn's fancy in the summer at St. Barnaby. 

Mrs. Horn's rooms were large, and they never seemed very full, thoughthis perhaps was because people were always so quiet. The ladies, whooutnumbered the men ten to one, as they always do at a New York tea, weredressed in sympathy with the low tone every one spoke in, and with thesubdued light which gave a crepuscular uncertainty to the few objects, the dim pictures, the unexcited upholstery, of the rooms. One breathedfree of bric-a-brac there, and the new-comer breathed softly as one doeson going into church after service has begun. This might be a suggestionfrom the voiceless behavior of the man-servant who let you in, but it wasalso because Mrs. Horn's At Home was a ceremony, a decorum, and notfestival. At far greater houses there was more gayety, at richer housesthere was more freedom; the suppression at Mrs. Horn's was a personal, not a social, effect; it was an efflux of her character, demure, silentious, vague, but very correct. 

Beaton easily found his way to her around the grouped skirts and amongthe detached figures, and received a pressure of welcome from the handwhich she momentarily relaxed from the tea-pot. She sat behind a tableput crosswise of a remote corner, and offered tea to people whom a nieceof hers received provisionally or sped finally in the outer room. Theydid not usually take tea, and when they did they did not usually drinkit; but Beaton was, feverishly glad of his cup; he took rum and lemon init, and stood talking at Mrs. Horn's side till the next arrival shoulddisplace him: he talked in his French manner. 

"I have been hoping to see you, " she said. "I wanted to ask you about theLeightons. Did they really come?"

"I believe so. They are in town--yes. I haven't seen them. "

"Then you don't know how they're getting on--that pretty creature, withher cleverness, and poor Mrs. Leighton? I was afraid they were venturingon a rash experiment. Do you know where they are?"

"In West Eleventh Street somewhere. Miss Leighton is in Mr. Wetmore'sclass. "

"I must look them up. Do you know their number?"

"Not at the moment. I can find out. "

"Do, " said Mrs. Horn. "What courage they must have, to plunge into NewYork as they've done! I really didn't think they would. I wonder ifthey've succeeded in getting anybody into their house yet?"

"I don't know, " said Beaton. 

"I discouraged their coming all I could, " she sighed, "and I suppose youdid, too. But it's quite useless trying to make people in a place likeSt. Barnaby understand how it is in town. "

"Yes, " said Beaton. He stirred his tea, while inwardly he tried tobelieve that he had really discouraged the Leightons from coming to NewYork. Perhaps the vexation of his failure made him call Mrs. Horn in hisheart a fraud. 

"Yes, " she went on, "it is very, very hard. And when they won'tunderstand, and rush on their doom, you feel that they are going to holdyou respons--"

Mrs. Horn's eyes wandered from Beaton; her voice faltered in the fadedinterest of her remark, and then rose with renewed vigor in greeting alady who came up and stretched her glove across the tea-cups. 

Beaton got himself away and out of the house with a much briefer adieu tothe niece than he had meant to make. The patronizing compassion of Mrs. Horn for the Leightons filled him with indignation toward her, towardhimself. There was no reason why he should not have ignored them as hehad done; but there was a feeling. It was his nature to be careless, andhe had been spoiled into recklessness; he neglected everybody, and onlyremembered them when it suited his whim or his convenience; but hefiercely resented the inattentions of others toward himself. He had noscruple about breaking an engagement or failing to keep an appointment;he made promises without thinking of their fulfilment, and not because hewas a faithless person, but because he was imaginative, and expected atthe time to do what he said, but was fickle, and so did not. As most ofhis shortcomings were of a society sort, no great harm was done toanybody else. He had contracted somewhat the circle of his acquaintanceby what some people called his rudeness, but most people treated it ashis oddity, and were patient with it. One lady said she valued his comingwhen he said he would come because it had the charm of the unexpected. "Only it shows that it isn't always the unexpected that happens, " sheexplained. 

It did not occur to him that his behavior was immoral; he did not realizethat it was creating a reputation if not a character for him. While weare still young we do not realize that our actions have this effect. Itseems to us that people will judge us from what we think and feel. Laterwe find out that this is impossible; perhaps we find it out too late;some of us never find it out at all. 

In spite of his shame about the Leightons, Beaton had no presentintention of looking them up or sending Mrs. Horn their address. As amatter of fact, he never did send it; but he happened to meet Mr. Wetmoreand his wife at the restaurant where he dined, and he got it of thepainter for himself. He did not ask him how Miss Leighton was getting on;but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a tacit text, on the futility ofwomen generally going in for art. "Even when they have talent they've gottoo much against them. Where a girl doesn't seem very strong, like MissLeighton, no amount of chic is going to help. "

His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as women always do. 

"No, Dolly, " he persisted; "she'd better be home milking the cows andleading the horse to water. "

Do you think she'd better be up till two in the morning at balls andgoing all day to receptions and luncheons?"

"Oh, guess it isn't a question of that, even if she weren't drawing. Youknew them at home, " he said to Beaton. 

"Yes. "

"I remember. Her mother said you suggested me. Well, the girl has somenotion of it; there's no doubt about that. But--she's a woman. Thetrouble with these talented girls is that they're all woman. If theyweren't, there wouldn't be much chance for the men, Beaton. But we've gotProvidence on our own side from the start. I'm able to watch all theirinspirations with perfect composure. I know just how soon it's going toend in nervous breakdown. Somebody ought to marry them all and put themout of their misery. "

"And what will you do with your students who are married already?" hiswife said. She felt that she had let him go on long enough. 

"Oh, they ought to get divorced. "

"You ought to be ashamed to take their money if that's what you think ofthem. "

"My dear, I have a wife to support. "

Beaton intervened with a question. "Do you mean that Miss Leighton isn'tstanding it very well?"

"How do I know? She isn't the kind that bends; she's the kind thatbreaks. "

After a little silence Mrs. Wetmore asked, "Won't you come home with us, Mr. Beaton?"

"Thank you; no. I have an engagement. "

"I don't see why that should prevent you, " said Wetmore. "But you alwayswere a punctilious cuss. Well!"

Beaton lingered over his cigar; but no one else whom he knew came in, andhe yielded to the threefold impulse of conscience, of curiosity, ofinclination, in going to call at the Leightons'. He asked for the ladies, and the maid showed him into the parlor, where he found Mrs. Leighton andMiss Woodburn. 

The widow met him with a welcome neatly marked by resentment; she meanthim to feel that his not coming sooner had been noticed. Miss Woodburnbubbled and gurgled on, and did what she could to mitigate hispunishment, but she did not feel authorized to stay it, till Mrs. Leighton, by studied avoidance of her daughter's name, obliged Beaton toask for her. Then Miss Woodburn caught up her work, and said, "Ah'll goand tell her, Mrs. Leighton. " At the top of the stairs she found Alma, and Alma tried to make it seem as if she had not been standing there. "Mah goodness, chald! there's the handsomest young man asking for youdown there you evah saw. Alh told you' mothah Ah would come up fo' you. "

"What--who is it?"

"Don't you know? But bo' could you? He's got the most beautiful eyes, and he wea's his hai' in a bang, and he talks English like it wassomething else, and his name's Mr. Beaton. "

"Did he-ask for me?" said Alma, with a dreamy tone. She put her hand onthe stairs rail, and a little shiver ran over her. 

"Didn't I tell you? Of coase he did! And you ought to go raght down ifyou want to save the poo' fellah's lahfe; you' mothah's just freezin' himto death. "

V. 

"She is?" cried Alma. "Tchk!" She flew downstairs, and flitted swiftlyinto the room, and fluttered up to Beaton, and gave him a crushinghand-shake. 

"How very kind, of you to come and see us, Mr. Beaton! When did you cometo New York? Don't you find it warm here? We've only just lighted thefurnace, but with this mild weather it seems too early. Mamma does keepit so hot!" She rushed about opening doors and shutting registers, andthen came back and sat facing him from the sofa with a mask of radiantcordiality. "How have you been since we saw you?"

"Very well, " said Beaton. "I hope you're well, Miss Leighton?"

"Oh, perfectly! I think New York agrees with us both wonderfully. I neverknew such air. And to think of our not having snow yet! I should thinkeverybody would want to come here! Why don't you come, Mr. Beaton?"

Beaton lifted his eyes and looked at her. "I--I live in New York, " hefaltered. 

"In New York City!" she exclaimed. 

"Surely, Alma, " said her mother, "you remember Mr. Beaton's telling us helived in New York. "

"But I thought you came from Rochester; or was it Syracuse? I always getthose places mixed up. "

"Probably I told you my father lived at Syracuse. I've been in New Yorkever since I came home from Paris, " said Beaton, with the confusion of aman who feels himself played upon by a woman. 

"From Paris!" Alma echoed, leaning forward, with her smiling mask tighton. "Wasn't it Munich where you studied?"

"I was at Munich, too. I met Wetmore there. "

"Oh, do you know Mr. Wetmore?"

"Why, Alma, " her mother interposed again, "it was Mr. Beaton who told youof Mr. Wetmore. "

"Was it? Why, yes, to be sure. It was Mrs. Horn who suggested Mr. Ilcomb. I remember now. I can't thank you enough for having sent me to Mr. Wetmore, Mr. Beaton. Isn't he delightful? Oh yes, I'm a perfectWetmorian, I can assure you. The whole class is the same way. "

"I just met him and Mrs. Wetmore at dinner, " said Beaton, attempting therecovery of something that he had lost through the girl's shining easeand steely sprightliness. She seemed to him so smooth and hard, with arepellent elasticity from which he was flung off. "I hope you're notworking too hard, Miss Leighton?"

"Oh no! I enjoy every minute of it, and grow stronger on it. Do I lookvery much wasted away?" She looked him full in the face, brilliantlysmiling, and intentionally beautiful. 

"No, " he said, with a slow sadness; "I never saw you looking better. "

"Poor Mr. Beaton!" she said, in recognition of his doleful tune. "Itseems to be quite a blow. "

"Oh no--"

"I remember all the good advice you used to give me about not working toohard, and probably it's that that's saved my life--that and thehouse-hunting. Has mamma told you of our adventures in getting settled?

"Some time we must. It was such fun! And didn't you think we werefortunate to get such a pretty house? You must see both our parlors. " Shejumped up, and her mother followed her with a bewildered look as she raninto the back parlor and flashed up the gas. 

"Come in here, Mr. Beaton. I want to show you the great feature of thehouse. " She opened the low windows that gave upon a glazed verandastretching across the end of the room. "Just think of this in New York!You can't see it very well at night, but when the southern sun pours inhere all the afternoon--"

"Yes, I can imagine it, " he said. He glanced up at the bird-cage hangingfrom the roof. "I suppose Gypsy enjoys it. "

"You remember Gypsy?" she said; and she made a cooing, kissing littlenoise up at the bird, who responded drowsily. "Poor old Gypsum! Well, hesha'n't be disturbed. Yes, it's Gyp's delight, and Colonel Woodburn likesto write here in the morning. Think of us having a real live author inthe house! And Miss Woodburn: I'm so glad you've seen her! They'reSouthern people. "

"Yes, that was obvious in her case. "

"From her accent? Isn't it fascinating? I didn't believe I could everendure Southerners, but we're like one family with the Woodburns. Ishould think you'd want to paint Miss Woodburn. Don't you think hercoloring is delicious? And such a quaint kind of eighteenth-century typeof beauty! But she's perfectly lovely every way, and everything she saysis so funny. The Southerners seem to be such great talkers; better thanwe are, don't you think?"

"I don't know, " said Beaton, in pensive discouragement. He was sensibleof being manipulated, operated, but he was helpless to escape from theperformer or to fathom her motives. His pensiveness passed into gloom, and was degenerating into sulky resentment when he went away, afterseveral failures to get back to the old ground he had held in relation toAlma. He retrieved something of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma glitteredupon him to the last with a keen impenetrable candor, a child-likesingleness of glance, covering unfathomable reserve. 

"Well, Alma, " said her mother, when the door had closed upon him. 

"Well, mother. " Then, after a moment, she said, with a rush: "Did youthink I was going to let him suppose we were piqued at his not coming?Did you suppose I was going to let him patronize us, or think that wewere in the least dependent on his favor or friendship?"

Her mother did not attempt to answer her. She merely said, "I shouldn'tthink he would come any more. "

"Well, we have got on so far without him; perhaps we can live through therest of the winter. "

"I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. He was quite stupefied. I couldsee that he didn't know what to make of you. "

"He's not required to make anything of me, " said Alma. 

"Do you think he really believed you had forgotten all those things?"

"Impossible to say, mamma. "

"Well, I don't think it was quite right, Alma. "

"I'll leave him to you the next time. Miss Woodburn said you werefreezing him to death when I came down. "

"That was quite different. But, there won't be any next time, I'mafraid, " sighed Mrs. Leighton. 

Beaton went home feeling sure there would not. He tried to read when hegot to his room; but Alma's looks, tones, gestures, whirred through andthrough the woof of the story like shuttles; he could not keep them out, and he fell asleep at last, not because he forgot them, but because heforgave them. He was able to say to himself that he had been justly cutoff from kindness which he knew how to value in losing it. He did notexpect ever to right himself in Alma's esteem, but he hoped some day tolet her know that he had understood. It seemed to him that it would be agood thing if she should find it out after his death. He imagined herbeing touched by it under those circumstances. 

VI. 

In the morning it seemed to Beaton that he had done himself injustice. When he uncovered his Judas and looked at it, he could not believe thatthe man who was capable of such work deserved the punishment MissLeighton had inflicted upon him. He still forgave her, but in thepresence of a thing like that he could not help respecting himself; hebelieved that if she could see it she would be sorry that she had cutherself off from his acquaintance. He carried this strain of convictionall through his syndicate letter, which he now took out of his desk andfinished, with an increasing security of his opinions and a mountingseverity in his judgments. He retaliated upon the general condition ofart among us the pangs of wounded vanity, which Alma had made him feel, and he folded up his manuscript and put it in his pocket, almost healedof his humiliation. He had been able to escape from its sting so entirelywhile he was writing that the notion of making his life more and moreliterary commended itself to him. As it was now evident that the futurewas to be one of renunciation, of self-forgetting, an oblivion tingedwith bitterness, he formlessly reasoned in favor of reconsidering hisresolution against Fulkerson's offer. One must call it reasoning, but itwas rather that swift internal dramatization which constantly goes on inpersons of excitable sensibilities, and which now seemed to sweep Beatonphysically along toward the 'Every Other Week' office, and carried hismind with lightning celerity on to a time when he should have given thatjournal such quality and authority in matters of art as had never beenenjoyed by any in America before. With the prosperity which he madeattend his work he changed the character of the enterprise, and withFulkerson's enthusiastic support he gave the public an art journal of ashigh grade as 'Les Lettres et les Arts', and very much that sort ofthing. All this involved now the unavailing regret of Alma Leighton, andnow his reconciliation with her they were married in Grace Church, because Beaton had once seen a marriage there, and had intended to painta picture of it some time. 

Nothing in these fervid fantasies prevented his responding with duedryness to Fulkerson's cheery "Hello, old man!" when he found himself inthe building fitted up for the 'Every Other Week' office. Fulkerson'sroom was back of the smaller one occupied by the bookkeeper; they hadbeen respectively the reception-room and dining-room of the little placein its dwelling-house days, and they had been simply and tastefullytreated in their transformation into business purposes. The narrow oldtrim of the doors and windows had been kept, and the quaintly ugly marblemantels. The architect had said, Better let them stay they expressedepoch, if not character. 

"Well, have you come round to go to work? Just hang up your coat on thefloor anywhere, " Fulkerson went on. 

"I've come to bring you that letter, " said Beaton, all the more haughtilybecause he found that Fulkerson was not alone when he welcomed him inthese free and easy terms. There was a quiet-looking man, rather stout, and a little above the middle height, with a full, close-croppediron-gray beard, seated beyond the table where Fulkerson tilted himselfback, with his knees set against it; and leaning against the mantel therewas a young man with a singularly gentle face, in which the look ofgoodness qualified and transfigured a certain simplicity. His large blueeyes were somewhat prominent; and his rather narrow face was drawnforward in a nose a little too long perhaps, if it had not been for thefull chin deeply cut below the lip, and jutting firmly forward. 

"Introduce you to Mr. March, our editor, Mr. Beaton, " Fulkerson said, rolling his head in the direction of the elder man; and then nodding ittoward the younger, he said, "Mr. Dryfoos, Mr. Beaton. " Beaton shookhands with March, and then with Mr. Dryfoos, and Fulkerson went on, gayly: "We were just talking of you, Beaton--well, you know the oldsaying. Mr. March, as I told you, is our editor, and Mr. Dryfoos hascharge of the publishing department--he's the counting-room incarnate, the source of power, the fountain of corruption, the element thatprevents journalism being the high and holy thing that it would be ifthere were no money in it. " Mr. Dryfoos turned his large, mild eyes uponBeaton, and laughed with the uneasy concession which people make to acharacter when they do not quite approve of the character's language. "What Mr. March and I are trying to do is to carry on this thing so thatthere won't be any money in it--or very little; and we're planning togive the public a better article for the price than it's ever had before. Now here's a dummy we've had made up for 'Every Other Week', and as we'vedecided to adopt it, we would naturally like your opinion of it, so's toknow what opinion to have of you. " He reached forward and pushed towardBeaton a volume a little above the size of the ordinary duodecimo book;its ivory-white pebbled paper cover was prettily illustrated with awater-colored design irregularly washed over the greater part of itssurface: quite across the page at top, and narrowing from right to leftas it descended. In the triangular space left blank the title of theperiodical and the publisher's imprint were tastefully lettered so as tobe partly covered by the background of color. 

"It's like some of those Tartarin books of Daudet's, " said Beacon, looking at it with more interest than he suffered to be seen. "But it's abook, not a magazine. " He opened its pages of thick, mellow white paper, with uncut leaves, the first few pages experimentally printed in the typeintended to be used, and illustrated with some sketches drawn into andover the text, for the sake of the effect. 

"A Daniel--a Daniel come to judgment! Sit down, Dan'el, and take iteasy. " Fulkerson pushed a chair toward Beaton, who dropped into it. "You're right, Dan'el; it's a book, to all practical intents andpurposes. And what we propose to do with the American public is to giveit twenty-four books like this a year--a complete library--for the absurdsum of six dollars. We don't intend to sell 'em--it's no name for thetransaction--but to give 'em. And what we want to get out of you--beg, borrow, buy, or steal from you is an opinion whether we shall make theAmerican public this princely present in paper covers like this, or insome sort of flexible boards, so they can set them on the shelf and sayno more about it. Now, Dan'el, come to judgment, as our respected friendShylock remarked. "

Beacon had got done looking at the dummy, and he dropped it on the tablebefore Fulkerson, who pushed it away, apparently to free himself frompartiality. "I don't know anything about the business side, and I can'ttell about the effect of either style on the sales; but you'll spoil thewhole character of the cover if you use anything thicker than thatthickish paper. "

"All right; very good; first-rate. The ayes have it. Paper it is. I don'tmind telling you that we had decided for that paper before you came in. Mr. March wanted it, because he felt in his bones just the way you doabout it, and Mr. Dryfoos wanted it, because he's the counting-roomincarnate, and it's cheaper; and I 'wanted it, because I always like togo with the majority. Now what do you think of that little designitself?"

"The sketch?" Beaton pulled the book toward him again and looked at itagain. "Rather decorative. Drawing's not remarkable. Graceful; rathernice. " He pushed the book away again, and Fulkerson pulled it to his aideof the table. 

"Well, that's a piece of that amateur trash you despise so much. I wentto a painter I know-by-the-way, he was guilty of suggesting you for thisthing, but I told him I was ahead of him--and I got him to submit my ideato one of his class, and that's the result. Well, now, there ain'tanything in this world that sells a book like a pretty cover, and we'regoing to have a pretty cover for 'Every Other Week' every time. We've cutloose from the old traditional quarto literary newspaper size, and we'vecut loose from the old two-column big page magazine size; we're going tohave a duodecimo page, clear black print, and paper that 'll make yourmouth water; and we're going to have a fresh illustration for the coverof each number, and we ain't agoing to give the public any rest at all. Sometimes we're going to have a delicate little landscape like this, andsometimes we're going to have an indelicate little figure, or as much soas the law will allow. "

The young man leaning against the mantelpiece blushed a sort of protest. 

March smiled and said, dryly, "Those are the numbers that Mr. Fulkersonis going to edit himself. "

"Exactly. And Mr. Beaton, here, is going to supply the floating females, gracefully airing themselves against a sunset or something of that kind. "Beaton frowned in embarrassment, while Fulkerson went on philosophically;"It's astonishing how you fellows can keep it up at this stage of theproceedings; you can paint things that your harshest critic would beashamed to describe accurately; you're as free as the theatre. But that'sneither here nor there. What I'm after is the fact that we're going tohave variety in our title-pages, and we are going to have novelty in theillustrations of the body of the book. March, here, if he had his ownway, wouldn't have any illustrations at all. "

"Not because I don't like them, Mr. Beacon, " March interposed, "butbecause I like them too much. I find that I look at the pictures in anillustrated article, but I don't read the article very much, and I fancythat's the case with most other people. You've got to doing them soprettily that you take our eyes off the literature, if you don't take ourminds off. "

"Like the society beauties on the stage: people go in for the beauty somuch that they don't know what the play is. But the box-office gets thereall the same, and that's what Mr. Dryfoos wants. " Fulkerson looked upgayly at Mr. Dryfoos, who smiled deprecatingly. 

"It was different, " March went on, "when the illustrations used to bebad. Then the text had some chance. "

"Old legitimate drama days, when ugliness and genius combined to stormthe galleries, " said Fulkerson. 

"We can still make them bad enough, " said Beaton, ignoring Fulkerson inhis remark to March. 

Fulkerson took the reply upon himself. "Well, you needn't make 'em so badas the old-style cuts; but you can make them unobtrusive, modestlyretiring. We've got hold of a process something like that those Frenchfellows gave Daudet thirty-five thousand dollars to write a novel to usewith; kind of thing that begins at one side; or one corner, and spreadsin a sort of dim religious style over the print till you can't tell whichis which. Then we've got a notion that where the pictures don't behavequite so sociably, they can be dropped into the text, like a littlecasual remark, don't you know, or a comment that has some connection, ormaybe none at all, with what's going on in the story. Something likethis. " Fulkerson took away one knee from the table long enough to openthe drawer, and pull from it a book that he shoved toward Beacon. "That'sa Spanish book I happened to see at Brentano's, and I froze to it onaccount of the pictures. I guess they're pretty good. "

"Do you expect to get such drawings in this country?" asked Beaton, aftera glance at the book. "Such character--such drama? You won't. "

"Well, I'm not so sure, " said Fulkerson, "come to get our amateurs warmedup to the work. But what I want is to get the physical effect, so tospeak-get that sized picture into our page, and set the fashion of it. Ishouldn't care if the illustration was sometimes confined to an initialletter and a tail-piece. "

"Couldn't be done here. We haven't the touch. We're good in some things, but this isn't in our way, " said Beaton, stubbornly. "I can't think of aman who could do it; that is, among those that would. "

"Well, think of some woman, then, " said Fulkerson, easily. "I've got anotion that the women could help us out on this thing, come to get 'eminterested. There ain't anything so popular as female fiction; why nottry female art?"

"The females themselves have been supposed to have been trying it for agood while, " March suggested; and Mr. Dryfoos laughed nervously; Beatonremained solemnly silent. 

"Yes, I know, " Fulkerson assented. "But I don't mean that kind exactly. What we want to do is to work the 'ewig Weibliche' in this concern. Wewant to make a magazine that will go for the women's fancy every time. Idon't mean with recipes for cooking and fashions and personal gossipabout authors and society, but real high-tone literature that will showwomen triumphing in all the stories, or else suffering tremendously. We've got to recognize that women form three-fourths of the readingpublic in this country, and go for their tastes and their sensibilitiesand their sex-piety along the whole line. They do like to think thatwomen can do things better than men; and if we can let it leak out andget around in the papers that the managers of 'Every Other Week' couldn'tstir a peg in the line of the illustrations they wanted till they got alot of God-gifted girls to help them, it 'll make the fortune of thething. See?"

He looked sunnily round at the other men, and March said: "You ought tobe in charge of a Siamese white elephant, Fulkerson. It's a disgrace tobe connected with you. "

"It seems to me, " said Becton, "that you'd better get a God-gifted girlfor your art editor. "

Fulkerson leaned alertly forward, and touched him on the shoulder, with acompassionate smile. "My dear boy, they haven't got the genius oforganization. It takes a very masculine man for that--a man who combinesthe most subtle and refined sympathies with the most forceful purposesand the most ferruginous will-power. Which his name is Angus Beaton, andhere he sets!"

The others laughed with Fulkerson at his gross burlesque of flattery, andBecton frowned sheepishly. "I suppose you understand this man's style, "he growled toward March. 

"He does, my son, " said Fulkerson. "He knows that I cannot tell a lie. "He pulled out his watch, and then got suddenly upon his feet. 

"It's quarter of twelve, and I've got an appointment. " Beaton rose too, and Fulkerson put the two books in his lax hands. "Take these along, Michelangelo Da Vinci, my friend, and put your multitudinous mind on themfor about an hour, and let us hear from you to-morrow. We hang upon yourdecision. "

"There's no deciding to be done, " said Beaton. "You can't combine the twostyles. They'd kill each other. "

"A Dan'el, a Dan'el come to judgment! I knew you could help us out! Take'em along, and tell us which will go the furthest with the 'ewigWeibliche. ' Dryfoos, I want a word with you. " He led the way into thefront room, flirting an airy farewell to Beaton with his hand as he went. 

VII. 

March and Beaton remained alone together for a moment, and March said: "Ihope you will think it worth while to take hold with us, Mr. Beaton. Mr. Fulkerson puts it in his own way, of course; but we really want to make anice thing of the magazine. " He had that timidity of the elder in thepresence of the younger man which the younger, preoccupied with his owntimidity in the presence of the elder, cannot imagine. Besides, March wasaware of the gulf that divided him as a literary man from Beaton as anartist, and he only ventured to feel his way toward sympathy with him. "We want to make it good; we want to make it high. Fulkerson is rightabout aiming to please the women, but of course he caricatures the way ofgoing about it. "

For answer, Beaton flung out, "I can't go in for a thing I don'tunderstand the plan of. "

March took it for granted that he had wounded some exposed sensibility, of Beaton's. He continued still more deferentially: "Mr. Fulkerson'snotion--I must say the notion is his, evolved from his syndicateexperience--is that we shall do best in fiction to confine our selves toshort stories, and make each number complete in itself. He found that themost successful things he could furnish his newspapers were shortstories; we Americans are supposed to excel in writing them; and mostpeople begin with them in fiction; and it's Mr. Fulkerson's idea to workunknown talent, as he says, and so he thinks he can not only get themeasily, but can gradually form a school of short-story writers. I can'tsay I follow him altogether, but I respect his experience. We shall notdespise translations of short stories, but otherwise the matter will allbe original, and, of course, it won't all be short stories. We shall usesketches of travel, and essays, and little dramatic studies, and bits ofbiography and history; but all very light, and always short enough to becompleted in a single number. Mr. Fulkerson believes in pictures, andmost of the things would be capable of illustration. "

"I see, " said Beaton. 

"I don't know but this is the whole affair, " said March, beginning tostiffen a little at the young man's reticence. 

"I understand. Thank you for taking the trouble to explain. Good-morning. " Beaton bowed himself off, without offering to shake hands. 

Fulkerson came in after a while from the outer office, and Mr. Dryfoosfollowed him. "Well, what do you think of our art editor?"

"Is he our art editor?" asked March. "I wasn't quite certain when heleft. "

"Did he take the books?"

"Yes, he took the books. "

"I guess he's all right, then. " Fulkerson added, in concession to theumbrage he detected in March. 

"Beaton has his times of being the greatest ass in the solar system, buthe usually takes it out in personal conduct. When it comes to work, he'sa regular horse. "

"He appears to have compromised for the present by being a perfect mule, "said March. 

"Well, he's in a transition state, " Fulkerson allowed. "He's the man forus. He really understands what we want. You'll see; he'll catch on. Thatlurid glare of his will wear off in the course of time. He's really agood fellow when you take him off his guard; and he's full of ideas. He'sspread out over a good deal of ground at present, and so he's prettythin; but come to gather him up into a lump, there's a good deal ofsubstance to him. Yes, there is. He's a first-rate critic, and he's anice fellow with the other artists. They laugh at his universality, butthey all like him. He's the best kind of a teacher when he condescends toit; and he's just the man to deal with our volunteer work. Yes, sir, he'sa prize. Well, I must go now. "

Fulkerson went out of the street door, and then came quickly back. "By-the-bye, March, I saw that old dynamiter of yours round at Beaton'sroom yesterday. "

"What old dynamiter of mine?"

"That old one-handed Dutchman--friend of your youth--the one we saw atMaroni's--"

"Oh-Lindau!" said March, with a vague pang of self reproach for havingthought of Lindau so little after the first flood of his tender feelingtoward him was past. 

"Yes, our versatile friend was modelling him as Judas Iscariot. Lindaumakes a first-rate Judas, and Beaton has got a big thing in that head ifhe works the religious people right. But what I was thinking of wasthis--it struck me just as I was going out of the door: Didn't you tellme Lindau knew forty or fifty, different languages?"

"Four or five, yes. "

"Well, we won't quarrel about the number. The question is, Why not workhim in the field of foreign literature? You can't go over all theirreviews and magazines, and he could do the smelling for you, if you couldtrust his nose. Would he know a good thing?"

"I think he would, " said March, on whom the scope of Fulkerson'ssuggestion gradually opened. "He used to have good taste, and he mustknow the ground. Why, it's a capital idea, Fulkerson! Lindau wrote veryfair English, and he could translate, with a little revision. "

"And he would probably work cheap. Well, hadn't you better see him aboutit? I guess it 'll be quite a windfall for him. "

"Yes, it will. I'll look him up. Thank you for the suggestion, Fulkerson. "

"Oh, don't mention it! I don't mind doing 'Every Other Week' a good turnnow and then when it comes in my way. " Fulkerson went out again, and thistime March was finally left with Mr. Dryfoos. 

"Mrs. March was very sorry not to be at home when your sisters called theother day. She wished me to ask if they had any afternoon in particular. There was none on your mother's card. "

"No, sir, " said the young man, with a flush of embarrassment that seemedhabitual with him. "She has no day. She's at home almost every day. Shehardly ever goes out. "

"Might we come some evening?" March asked. "We should be very glad to dothat, if she would excuse the informality. Then I could come with Mrs. March. "

"Mother isn't very formal, " said the young man. "She would be very gladto see you. "

"Then we'll come some night this week, if you will let us. When do youexpect your father back?"

"Not much before Christmas. He's trying to settle up some things atMoffitt. "

"And what do you think of our art editor?" asked March, with a smile, forthe change of subject. 

"Oh, I don't know much about such things, " said the young man, withanother of his embarrassed flushes. "Mr. Fulkerson seems to feel surethat he is the one for us. "

"Mr. Fulkerson seemed to think that I was the one for you, too, " saidMarch; and he laughed. "That's what makes me doubt his infallibility. Buthe couldn't do worse with Mr. Beaton. "

Mr. Dryfoos reddened and looked down, as if unable or unwilling to copewith the difficulty of making a polite protest against March'sself-depreciation. He said, after a moment: "It's new business to all ofus except Mr. Fulkerson. But I think it will succeed. I think we can dosome good in it. "

March asked rather absently, "Some good?" Then he added: "Oh yes; I thinkwe can. What do you mean by good? Improve the public taste? Elevate thestandard of literature? Give young authors and artists a chance?"

This was the only good that had ever been in March's mind, except thegood that was to come in a material way from his success, to himself andto his family. 

"I don't know, " said the young man; and he looked down in a shamefacedfashion. He lifted his head and looked into March's face. "I suppose Iwas thinking that some time we might help along. If we were to have thosesketches of yours about life in every part of New York--"

March's authorial vanity was tickled. "Fulkerson has been talking to youabout them? He seemed to think they would be a card. He believes thatthere's no subject so fascinating to the general average of peoplethroughout the country as life in New York City; and he liked my notionof doing these things. " March hoped that Dryfoos would answer thatFulkerson was perfectly enthusiastic about his notion; but he did notneed this stimulus, and, at any rate, he went on without it. "The factis, it's something that struck my fancy the moment I came here; I foundmyself intensely interested in the place, and I began to make notes, consciously and unconsciously, at once. Yes, I believe I can getsomething quite attractive out of it. I don't in the least know what itwill be yet, except that it will be very desultory; and I couldn't at allsay when I can get at it. If we postpone the first number till February Imight get a little paper into that. Yes, I think it might be a good thingfor us, " March said, with modest self-appreciation. 

"If you can make the comfortable people understand how the uncomfortablepeople live, it will be a very good thing, Mr. March. Sometimes it seemsto me that the only trouble is that we don't know one another wellenough; and that the first thing is to do this. " The young fellow spokewith the seriousness in which the beauty of his face resided. Whenever helaughed his face looked weak, even silly. It seemed to be a sense of thisthat made him hang his head or turn it away at such times. 

"That's true, " said March, from the surface only. "And then, those phasesof low life are immensely picturesque. Of course, we must try to get thecontrasts of luxury for the sake of the full effect. That won't be soeasy. You can't penetrate to the dinner-party of a millionaire under thewing of a detective as you could to a carouse in Mulberry Street, or tohis children's nursery with a philanthropist as you can to a street-boy'slodging-house. " March laughed, and again the young man turned his headaway. "Still, something can be done in that way by tact and patience. "

VII. 

That evening March went with his wife to return the call of the Dryfoosladies. On their way up-town in the Elevated he told her of his talk withyoung Dryfoos. "I confess I was a little ashamed before him afterward forhaving looked at the matter so entirely from the aesthetic point of view. But of course, you know, if I went to work at those things with anethical intention explicitly in mind, I should spoil them. "

"Of course, " said his wife. She had always heard him say something ofthis kind about such things. 

He went on: "But I suppose that's just the point that such a nature asyoung Dryfoos's can't get hold of, or keep hold of. We're a queer lot, down there, Isabel--perfect menagerie. If it hadn't been that Fulkersongot us together, and really seems to know what he did it for, I shouldsay he was the oddest stick among us. But when I think of myself and myown crankiness for the literary department; and young Dryfoos, who oughtreally to be in the pulpit, or a monastery, or something, for publisher;and that young Beaton, who probably hasn't a moral fibre in hiscomposition, for the art man, I don't know but we could give Fulkersonodds and still beat him in oddity. "

His wife heaved a deep sigh of apprehension, of renunciation, ofmonition. "Well, I'm glad you can feel so light about it, Basil. "

"Light? I feel gay! With Fulkerson at the helm, I tell you the rocks andthe lee shore had better keep out of the way. " He laughed with pleasurein his metaphor. "Just when you think Fulkerson has taken leave of hissenses he says or does something that shows he is on the most intimateand inalienable terms with them all the time. You know how I've beenworrying over those foreign periodicals, and trying to get sometranslations from them for the first number? Well, Fulkerson has broughthis centipedal mind to bear on the subject, and he's suggested that oldGerman friend of mine I was telling you of--the one I met in therestaurant--the friend of my youth. "

"Do you think he could do it?" asked Mrs. March, sceptically. 

"He's a perfect Babel of strange tongues; and he's the very man for thework, and I was ashamed I hadn't thought of him myself, for I suspect heneeds the work. "

"Well, be careful how you get mixed up with him, then, Basil, " said hiswife, who had the natural misgiving concerning the friends of herhusband's youth that all wives have. "You know the Germans are sounscrupulously dependent. You don't know anything about him now. "

"I'm not afraid of Lindau, " said March. "He was the best and kindest manI ever saw, the most high-minded, the most generous. He lost a hand inthe war that helped to save us and keep us possible, and that stump ofhis is character enough for me. "

"Oh, you don't think I could have meant anything against him!" said Mrs. March, with the tender fervor that every woman who lived in the time ofthe war must feel for those who suffered in it. "All that I meant wasthat I hoped you would not get mixed up with him too much. You're so aptto be carried away by your impulses. "

"They didn't carry me very far away in the direction of poor old Lindau, I'm ashamed to think, " said March. "I meant all sorts of fine things byhim after I met him; and then I forgot him, and I had to be reminded ofhim by Fulkerson. "

She did not answer him, and he fell into a remorseful reverie, in whichhe rehabilitated Lindau anew, and provided handsomely for his old age. Hegot him buried with military honors, and had a shaft raised over him, with a medallion likeness by Beaton and an epitaph by himself, by thetime they reached Forty-second Street; there was no time to writeLindau's life, however briefly, before the train stopped. 

They had to walk up four blocks and then half a block across before theycame to the indistinctive brownstone house where the Dryfooses lived. Itwas larger than some in the same block, but the next neighborhood of ahuge apartment-house dwarfed it again. March thought he recognized thevery flat in which he had disciplined the surly janitor, but he did nottell his wife; he made her notice the transition character of the street, which had been mostly built up in apartment-houses, with here and there asingle dwelling dropped far down beneath and beside them, to thatjag-toothed effect on the sky-line so often observable in such New Yorkstreets. "I don't know exactly what the old gentleman bought here for, "he said, as they waited on the steps after ringing, "unless he expects toturn it into flats by-and-by. Otherwise, I don't believe he'll get hismoney back. "

An Irish serving-man, with a certain surprise that delayed him, said theladies were at home, and let the Marches in, and then carried their cardsup-stairs. The drawing-room, where he said they could sit down while hewent on this errand, was delicately, decorated in white and gold, andfurnished with a sort of extravagant good taste; there was nothing toobject to in the satin furniture, the pale, soft, rich carpet, thepictures, and the bronze and china bric-a-brac, except that theircostliness was too evident; everything in the room meant money tooplainly, and too much of it. The Marches recognized this in the hoarsewhispers which people cannot get their voices above when they try to talkaway the interval of waiting in such circumstances; they conjectured fromwhat they had heard of the Dryfooses that this tasteful luxury in no wiseexpressed their civilization. "Though when you come to that, " said March, "I don't know that Mrs. Green's gimcrackery expresses ours. "

"Well, Basil, I didn't take the gimcrackery. That was your--"

The rustle of skirts on the stairs without arrested Mrs. March in thewell-merited punishment which she never failed to inflict upon herhusband when the question of the gimcrackery--they always called itthat--came up. She rose at the entrance of a bright-looking, pretty-looking, mature, youngish lady, in black silk of a neutralimplication, who put out her hand to her, and said, with a very cheery, very ladylike accent, "Mrs. March?" and then added to both of them, whileshe shook hands with March, and before they could get the name out oftheir months: "No, not Miss Dryfoos! Neither of them; nor Mrs. Dryfoos. Mrs. Mandel. The ladies will be down in a moment. Won't you throw offyour sacque, Mrs. March? I'm afraid it's rather warm here, coming fromthe outside. "

"I will throw it back, if you'll allow me, " said Mrs. March, with a sortof provisionality, as if, pending some uncertainty as to Mrs. Mandel'squality and authority, she did not feel herself justified in goingfurther. 

But if she did not know about Mrs. Mandel, Mrs. Mandel seemed to knowabout her. "Oh, well, do!" she said, with a sort of recognition of thepropriety of her caution. "I hope you are feeling a little at home in NewYork. We heard so much of your trouble in getting a flat, from Mr. Fulkerson. "

"Well, a true Bostonian doesn't give up quite so soon, " said Mrs. March. 

"But I will say New York doesn't seem so far away, now we're here. "

"I'm sure you'll like it. Every one does. " Mrs. Mandel added to March, "It's very sharp out, isn't it?"

"Rather sharp. But after our Boston winters I don't know but I ought torepudiate the word. "

"Ah, wait till you have been here through March!" said Mrs. Mandel. Shebegan with him, but skillfully transferred the close of her remark, andthe little smile of menace that went with it, to his wife. 

"Yes, " said Mrs. March, "or April, either: Talk about our east winds!"

"Oh, I'm sure they can't be worse than our winds, " Mrs. Mandel returned, caressingly. 

"If we escape New York pneumonia, " March laughed, "it will only be tofall a prey to New York malaria as soon as the frost is out of theground. "

"Oh, but you know, " said Mrs. Mandel, "I think our malaria has reallybeen slandered a little. It's more a matter of drainage--of plumbing. Idon't believe it would be possible for malaria to get into this house, we've had it gone over so thoroughly. "

Mrs. March said, while she tried to divine Mrs. Mandel's position fromthis statement, "It's certainly the first duty. "

"If Mrs. March could have had her way, we should have had the drainage ofour whole ward put in order, " said her husband, "before we ventured totake a furnished apartment for the winter. "

Mrs. Mandel looked discreetly at Mrs. March for permission to laugh atthis, but at the same moment both ladies became preoccupied with a secondrustling on the stairs. 

Two tall, well-dressed young girls came in, and Mrs. Mandel introduced, "Miss Dryfoos, Mrs. March; and Miss Mela Dryfoos, Mr. March, " she added, and the girls shook hands in their several ways with the Marches. 

Miss Dryfoos had keen black eyes, and her hair was intensely black. Herface, but for the slight inward curve of the nose, was regular, and thesmallness of her nose and of her mouth did not weaken her face, but gaveit a curious effect of fierceness, of challenge. She had a large blackfan in her hand, which she waved in talking, with a slow, watchfulnervousness. Her sister was blonde, and had a profile like her brother's;but her chin was not so salient, and the weak look of the mouth was notcorrected by the spirituality or the fervor of his eyes, though hers wereof the same mottled blue. She dropped into the low seat beside Mrs. Mandel, and intertwined her fingers with those of the hand which Mrs. Mandel let her have. She smiled upon the Marches, while Miss Dryfooswatched them intensely, with her eyes first on one and then on the other, as if she did not mean to let any expression of theirs escape her. 

"My mother will be down in a minute, " she said to Mrs. March. 

"I hope we're not disturbing her. It is so good of you to let us come inthe evening, " Mrs. March replied. 

"Oh, not at all, " said the girl. "We receive in the evening. "

"When we do receive, " Miss Mela put in. "We don't always get the chanceto. " She began a laugh, which she checked at a smile from Mrs. Mandel, which no one could have seen to be reproving. 

Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan, and looked up defiantly at Mrs. March. "I suppose you have hardly got settled. We were afraid we woulddisturb you when we called. "

"Oh no! We were very sorry to miss your visit. We are quite settled inour new quarters. Of course, it's all very different from Boston. "

"I hope it's more of a sociable place there, " Miss Mela broke in again. "I never saw such an unsociable place as New York. We've been in thishouse three months, and I don't believe that if we stayed three years anyof the neighbors would call. "

"I fancy proximity doesn't count for much in New York, " March suggested. 

Mrs. Mandel said: "That's what I tell Miss Mela. But she is a very socialnature, and can't reconcile herself to the fact. "

"No, I can't, " the girl pouted. "I think it was twice as much fun inMoffitt. I wish I was there now. "

"Yes, " said March, "I think there's a great deal more enjoyment in thosesmaller places. There's not so much going on in the way of publicamusements, and so people make more of one another. There are not so manyconcerts, theatres, operas--"

"Oh, they've got a splendid opera-house in Moffitt. It's just grand, "said Miss Mela. 

"Have you been to the opera here, this winter?" Mrs. March asked of theelder girl. 

She was glaring with a frown at her sister, and detached her eyes fromher with an effort. "What did you say?" she demanded, with an absentbluntness. "Oh yes. Yes! We went once. Father took a box at theMetropolitan. "

"Then you got a good dose of Wagner, I suppose?" said March. 

"What?" asked the girl. 

"I don't think Miss Dryfoos is very fond of Wagner's music, " Mrs. Mandelsaid. "I believe you are all great Wagnerites in Boston?"

"I'm a very bad Bostonian, Mrs. Mandel. I suspect myself of preferringVerdi, " March answered. 

Miss Dryfoos looked down at her fan again, and said, "I like 'Trovatore'the best. "

"It's an opera I never get tired of, " said March, and Mrs. March and Mrs:Mandel exchanged a smile of compassion for his simplicity. He detectedit, and added: "But I dare say I shall come down with the Wagner fever intime. I've been exposed to some malignant cases of it. "

"That night we were there, " said Miss Mela, "they had to turn the gasdown all through one part of it, and the papers said the ladies wereawful mad because they couldn't show their diamonds. I don't wonder, ifthey all had to pay as much for their boxes as we did. We had to paysixty dollars. " She looked at the Marches for their sensation at thisexpense. 

March said: "Well, I think I shall take my box by the month, then. Itmust come cheaper, wholesale. "

"Oh no, it don't, " said the girl, glad to inform him. "The people thatown their boxes, and that had to give fifteen or twenty thousand dollarsapiece for them, have to pay sixty dollars a night whenever there's aperformance, whether they go or not. "

"Then I should go every night, " March said. 

"Most of the ladies were low neck--"

March interposed, "Well, I shouldn't go low-neck. "

The girl broke into a fondly approving laugh at his drolling. "Oh, Iguess you love to train! Us girls wanted to go low neck, too; but fathersaid we shouldn't, and mother said if we did she wouldn't come to thefront of the box once. Well, she didn't, anyway. We might just as well'a' gone low neck. She stayed back the whole time, and when they had thatdance--the ballet, you know--she just shut her eyes. Well, Conrad didn'tlike that part much, either; but us girls and Mrs. Mandel, we brazened itout right in the front of the box. We were about the only ones there thatwent high neck. Conrad had to wear a swallow-tail; but father hadn't any, and he had to patch out with a white cravat. You couldn't see what he hadon in the back o' the box, anyway. "

Mrs. March looked at Miss Dryfoos, who was waving her fan more and moreslowly up and down, and who, when she felt herself looked at, returnedMrs. March's smile, which she meant to be ingratiating and perhapssympathetic, with a flash that made her start, and then ran her fierceeyes over March's face. "Here comes mother, " she said, with a sort ofbreathlessness, as if speaking her thought aloud, and through the opendoor the Marches could see the old lady on the stairs. 

She paused half-way down, and turning, called up: "Coonrod! Coonrod! Youbring my shawl down with you. "

Her daughter Mela called out to her, "Now, mother, Christine 'll give itto you for not sending Mike. "

"Well, I don't know where he is, Mely, child, " the mother answered back. "He ain't never around when he's wanted, and when he ain't, it seems likea body couldn't git shet of him, nohow. "

"Well, you ought to ring for him!" cried Miss Mela, enjoying the joke. 

Her mother came in with a slow step; her head shook slightly as shelooked about the room, perhaps from nervousness, perhaps from a touch ofpalsy. In either case the fact had a pathos which Mrs. March confessed inthe affection with which she took her hard, dry, large, old hand when shewas introduced to her, and in the sincerity which she put into the hopethat she was well. 

"I'm just middlin', " Mrs. Dryfoos replied. "I ain't never so well, nowadays. I tell fawther I don't believe it agrees with me very wellhere, but he says I'll git used to it. He's away now, out at Moffitt, "she said to March, and wavered on foot a moment before she sank into achair. She was a tall woman, who had been a beautiful girl, and her grayhair had a memory of blondeness in it like Lindau's, March noticed. Shewore a simple silk gown, of a Quakerly gray, and she held a handkerchieffolded square, as it had come from the laundress. Something like theSabbath quiet of a little wooden meeting-house in thick Western woodsexpressed itself to him from her presence. 

"Laws, mother!" said Miss Mela; "what you got that old thing on for? IfI'd 'a' known you'd 'a' come down in that!"

"Coonrod said it was all right, Mely, " said her mother. 

Miss Mela explained to the Marches: "Mother was raised among theDunkards, and she thinks it's wicked to wear anything but a gray silkeven for dress-up. "

"You hain't never heared o' the Dunkards, I reckon, " the old woman saidto Mrs. March. "Some folks calls 'em the Beardy Men, because they don'tnever shave; and they wash feet like they do in the Testament. My unclewas one. He raised me. "

"I guess pretty much everybody's a Beardy Man nowadays, if he ain't aDunkard!"

Miss Mela looked round for applause of her sally, but March was saying tohis wife: "It's a Pennsylvania German sect, I believe--something like theQuakers. I used to see them when I was a boy. "

"Aren't they something like the Mennists?" asked Mrs. Mandel. 

"They're good people, " said the old woman, "and the world 'd be a heapbetter off if there was more like 'em. "

Her son came in and laid a soft shawl over her shoulders before he shookhands with the visitors. "I am glad you found your way here, " he said tothem. 

Christine, who had been bending forward over her fan, now lifted herselfup with a sigh and leaned back in her chair. 

"I'm sorry my father isn't here, " said the young man to Mrs. March. "He'snever met you yet?"

"No; and I should like to see him. We hear a great deal about yourfather, you know, from Mr. Fulkerson. "

"Oh, I hope you don't believe everything Mr. Fulkerson says aboutpeople, " Mela cried. "He's the greatest person for carrying on when hegets going I ever saw. It makes Christine just as mad when him and mothergets to talking about religion; she says she knows he don't care anythingmore about it than the man in the moon. I reckon he don't try it on muchwith father. "

"Your fawther ain't ever been a perfessor, " her mother interposed; "buthe's always been a good church-goin' man. "

"Not since we come to New York, " retorted the girl. 

"He's been all broke up since he come to New York, " said the old woman, with an aggrieved look. 

Mrs. Mandel attempted a diversion. "Have you heard any of our great NewYork preachers yet, Mrs. March?"

"No, I haven't, " Mrs. March admitted; and she tried to imply by hercandid tone that she intended to begin hearing them the very next Sunday. 

"There are a great many things here, " said Conrad, "to take your thoughtsoff the preaching that you hear in most of the churches. I think the cityitself is preaching the best sermon all the time. "

"I don't know that I understand you, " said March. 

Mela answered for him. "Oh, Conrad has got a lot of notions that nobodycan understand. You ought to see the church he goes to when he does go. I'd about as lief go to a Catholic church myself; I don't see a bit o'difference. He's the greatest crony with one of their preachers; hedresses just like a priest, and he says he is a priest. " She laughed forenjoyment of the fact, and her brother cast down his eyes. 

Mrs. March, in her turn, tried to take from it the personal tone whichthe talk was always assuming. "Have you been to the fall exhibition?" sheasked Christine; and the girl drew herself up out of the abstraction sheseemed sunk in. 

"The exhibition?" She looked at Mrs. Mandel. 

"The pictures of the Academy, you know, " Mrs. Mandel explained. "Where Iwanted you to go the day you had your dress tried on. "

"No; we haven't been yet. Is it good?" She had turned to Mrs. Marchagain. 

"I believe the fall exhibitions are never so good as the spring ones. Butthere are some good pictures. "

"I don't believe I care much about pictures, " said Christine. "I don'tunderstand them. "

"Ah, that's no excuse for not caring about them, " said March, lightly. "The painters themselves don't, half the time. "

The girl looked at him with that glance at once defiant and appealing, insolent and anxious, which he had noticed before, especially when shestole it toward himself and his wife during her sister's babble. In thelight of Fulkerson's history of the family, its origin and its ambition, he interpreted it to mean a sense of her sister's folly and an ignorantwill to override his opinion of anything incongruous in themselves andtheir surroundings. He said to himself that she was deathly proud--tooproud to try to palliate anything, but capable of anything that would putothers under her feet. Her eyes seemed hopelessly to question his wife'ssocial quality, and he fancied, with not unkindly interest, theinexperienced girl's doubt whether to treat them with much or littlerespect. He lost himself in fancies about her and her ideals, necessarilysordid, of her possibilities of suffering, of the triumphs anddisappointments before her. Her sister would accept both with a lightnessthat would keep no trace of either; but in her they would sink lastinglydeep. He came out of his reverie to find Mrs. Dryfoos saying to him, inher hoarse voice:

"I think it's a shame, some of the pictur's a body sees in the winders. They say there's a law ag'inst them things; and if there is, I don'tunderstand why the police don't take up them that paints 'em. I hear 182tell, since I been here, that there's women that goes to have pictur'stook from them that way by men painters. " The point seemed aimed atMarch, as if he were personally responsible for the scandal, and it fellwith a silencing effect for the moment. Nobody seemed willing to take itup, and Mrs. Dryfoos went on, with an old woman's severity: "I say theyought to be all tarred and feathered and rode on a rail. They'd bedrummed out of town in Moffitt. "

Miss Mela said, with a crowing laugh: "I should think they would! Andthey wouldn't anybody go low neck to the opera-house there, either--notlow neck the way they do here, anyway. "

"And that pack of worthless hussies, " her mother resumed, "that come outon the stage, and begun to kick"

"Laws, mother!" the girl shouted, "I thought you said you had your eyesshut!"

All but these two simpler creatures were abashed at the indecorum ofsuggesting in words the commonplaces of the theatre and of art. 

"Well, I did, Mely, as soon as I could believe my eyes. I don't know whatthey're doin' in all their churches, to let such things go on, " said theold woman. "It's a sin and a shame, I think. Don't you, Coonrod?"

A ring at the door cut short whatever answer he was about to deliver. 

"If it's going to be company, Coonrod, " said his mother, making an effortto rise, "I reckon I better go up-stairs. "

"It's Mr. Fulkerson, I guess, " said Conrad. "He thought he might come";and at the mention of this light spirit Mrs. Dryfoos sank contentedlyback in her chair, and a relaxation of their painful tension seemed topass through the whole company. Conrad went to the door himself (theserving-man tentatively, appeared some minutes later) and let inFulkerson's cheerful voice before his cheerful person. 

"Ah, how dye do, Conrad? Brought our friend, Mr. Beaton, with me, " thosewithin heard him say; and then, after a sound of putting off overcoats, they saw him fill the doorway, with his feet set square and his armsakimbo. 

IX. 

"Ah! hello! hello!" Fulkerson said, in recognition of the Marches. "Regular gathering of the clans. How are you, Mrs. Dryfoos? How do youdo, Mrs. Mandel, Miss Christine, Mela, Aunt Hitty, and all the folks? Howyou wuz?" He shook hands gayly all round, and took a chair next the oldlady, whose hand he kept in his own, and left Conrad to introduce Beaton. But he would not let the shadow of Beaton's solemnity fall upon thecompany. He began to joke with Mrs. Dryfoos, and to match rheumatismswith her, and he included all the ladies in the range of appropriatepleasantries. "I've brought Mr. Beaton along to-night, and I want you tomake him feel at home, like you do me, Mrs. Dryfoos. He hasn't got anyrheumatism to speak of; but his parents live in Syracuse, and he's a kindof an orphan, and we've just adopted him down at the office. When yougoing to bring the young ladies down there, Mrs. Mandel, for a champagnelunch? I will have some hydro-Mela, and Christine it, heigh? How's thatfor a little starter? We dropped in at your place a moment, Mrs. March, and gave the young folks a few pointers about their studies. My goodness!it does me good to see a boy like that of yours; business, from the wordgo; and your girl just scoops my youthful affections. She's a beauty, andI guess she's good, too. Well, well, what a world it is! Miss Christine, won't you show Mr. Beaton that seal ring of yours? He knows about suchthings, and I brought him here to see it as much as anything. It's anintaglio I brought from the other side, " he explained to Mrs. March, "andI guess you'll like to look at it. Tried to give it to the Dryfoosfamily, and when I couldn't, I sold it to 'em. Bound to see it on MissChristine's hand somehow! Hold on! Let him see it where it belongs, first!"

He arrested the girl in the motion she made to take off the ring, and lether have the pleasure of showing her hand to the company with the ring onit. Then he left her to hear the painter's words about it, which hecontinued to deliver dissyllabically as he stood with her under agas-jet, twisting his elastic figure and bending his head over the ring. 

"Well, Mely, child, " Fulkerson went on, with an open travesty of hermother's habitual address, "and how are you getting along? Mrs. Mandelhold you up to the proprieties pretty strictly? Well, that's right. Youknow you'd be roaming all over the pasture if she didn't. "

The girl gurgled out her pleasure in his funning, and everybody took him. On his own ground of privileged character. He brought them all togetherin their friendliness for himself, and before the evening was over he hadinspired Mrs. Mandel to have them served with coffee, and had made boththe girls feel that they had figured brilliantly in society, and that twoyoung men had been devoted to them. 

"Oh, I think he's just as lovely as he can live!" said Mela, as she stooda moment with her sister on the scene of her triumph, where the othershad left them after the departure of their guests. 

"Who?" asked Christine, deeply. As she glanced down at her ring, her eyesburned with a softened fire. 

She had allowed Beaton to change it himself from the finger where she hadworn it to the finger on which he said she ought to wear it. She did notknow whether it was right to let him, but she was glad she had done it. 

"Who? Mr. Fulkerson, goosie-poosie! Not that old stuckup Mr. Beaton ofyours!"

"He is proud, " assented Christine, with a throb of exultation. 

Beaton and Fulkerson went to the Elevated station with the Marches; butthe painter said he was going to walk home, and Fulkerson let him goalone. 

"One way is enough for me, " he explained. "When I walk up, I don't walkdown. Bye-bye, my son!" He began talking about Beaton to the Marches asthey climbed the station stairs together. "That fellow puzzles me. Idon't know anybody that I have such a desire to kick, and at the sametime that I want to flatter up so much. Affect you that way?" he asked ofMarch. 

"Well, as far as the kicking goes, yes. "

"And how is it with you, Mrs. March?"

"Oh, I want to flatter him up. "

"No; really? Why? Hold on! I've got the change. "

Fulkerson pushed March away from the ticket-office window; and made themhis guests, with the inexorable American hospitality, for the ridedown-town. "Three!" he said to the ticket-seller; and, when he had walkedthem before him out on the platform and dropped his tickets into the urn, he persisted in his inquiry, "Why?"

"Why, because you always want to flatter conceited people, don't you?"Mrs. March answered, with a laugh. 

"Do you? Yes, I guess you do. You think Beaton is conceited?"

"Well, slightly, Mr. Fulkerson. "

"I guess you're partly right, " said Fulkerson, with a sigh, sounaccountable in its connection that they all laughed. 

"An ideal 'busted'?" March suggested. 

"No, not that, exactly, " said Fulkerson. "But I had a notion maybe Beatonwasn't conceited all the time. "

"Oh!" Mrs. March exulted, "nobody could be so conceited all the time asMr. Beaton is most of the time. He must have moments of the direstmodesty, when he'd be quite flattery-proof. "

"Yes, that's what I mean. I guess that's what makes me want to kick him. He's left compliments on my hands that no decent man would. "

"Oh! that's tragical, " said March. 

"Mr. Fulkerson, " Mrs. March began, with change of subject in her voice, "who is Mrs. Mandel?"

"Who? What do you think of her?" he rejoined. "I'll tell you about herwhen we get in the cars. Look at that thing! Ain't it beautiful?"

They leaned over the track and looked up at the next station, where thetrain, just starting, throbbed out the flame-shot steam into the whitemoonlight. 

"The most beautiful thing in New York--the one always and certainlybeautiful thing here, " said March; and his wife sighed, "Yes, yes. " Sheclung to him, and remained rapt by the sight till the train drew near, and then pulled him back in a panic. 

"Well, there ain't really much to tell about her, " Fulkerson resumed whenthey were seated in the car. "She's an invention of mine. "

"Of yours?" cried Mrs. March. 

"Of course!" exclaimed her husband. 

"Yes--at least in her present capacity. She sent me a story for thesyndicate, back in July some time, along about the time I first met oldDryfoos here. It was a little too long for my purpose, and I thought Icould explain better how I wanted it cut in a call than I could in aletter. She gave a Brooklyn address, and I went to see her. I found her, "said Fulkerson, with a vague defiance, "a perfect lady. She was livingwith an aunt over there; and she had seen better days, when she was agirl, and worse ones afterward. I don't mean to say her husband was a badfellow; I guess he was pretty good; he was her music-teacher; she met himin Germany, and they got married there, and got through her propertybefore they came over here. Well, she didn't strike me like a person thatcould make much headway in literature. Her story was well enough, but ithadn't much sand in it; kind of-well, academic, you know. I told her so, and she understood, and cried a little; but she did the best she couldwith the thing, and I took it and syndicated it. She kind of stuck in mymind, and the first time I went to see the Dryfooses they were stoppingat a sort of family hotel then till they could find a house--" Fulkersonbroke off altogether, and said, "I don't know as I know just how theDryfooses struck you, Mrs. March?"

"Can't you imagine?" she answered, with a kindly, smile. 

"Yes; but I don't believe I could guess how they would have struck youlast summer when I first saw them. My! oh my! there was the native earthfor you. Mely is a pretty wild colt now, but you ought to have seen herbefore she was broken to harness. 

"And Christine? Ever see that black leopard they got up there in theCentral Park? That was Christine. Well, I saw what they wanted. They allsaw it--nobody is a fool in all directions, and the Dryfooses are intheir right senses a good deal of the time. Well, to cut a long storyshort, I got Mrs. Mandel to take 'em in hand--the old lady as well as thegirls. She was a born lady, and always lived like one till she sawMandel; and that something academic that killed her for a writer was justthe very thing for them. She knows the world well enough to know just howmuch polish they can take on, and she don't try to put on a bit more. See?"

"Yes, I can see, " said Mrs. March. 

"Well, she took hold at once, as ready as a hospital-trained nurse; andthere ain't anything readier on this planet. She runs the whole concern, socially and economically, takes all the care of housekeeping off the oldlady's hands, and goes round with the girls. By-the-bye, I'm going totake my meals at your widow's, March, and Conrad's going to have hislunch there. I'm sick of browsing about. "

"Mr. March's widow?" said his wife, looking at him with provisionalseverity. 

"I have no widow, Isabel, " he said, "and never expect to have, till Ileave you in the enjoyment of my life-insurance. I suppose Fulkersonmeans the lady with the daughter who wanted to take us to board. "

"Oh yes. How are they getting on, I do wonder?" Mrs. March asked ofFulkerson. 

"Well, they've got one family to board; but it's a small one. I guessthey'll pull through. They didn't want to take any day boarders at first, the widow said; I guess they have had to come to it. "

"Poor things!" sighed Mrs. March. "I hope they'll go back to thecountry. "

"Well, I don't know. When you've once tasted New York--You wouldn't goback to Boston, would you?"

"Instantly. "

Fulkerson laughed out a tolerant incredulity. 

X

Beaton lit his pipe when he found himself in his room, and sat downbefore the dull fire in his grate to think. It struck him there was adull fire in his heart a great deal like it; and he worked out a fancifulanalogy with the coals, still alive, and the ashes creeping over them, and the dead clay and cinders. He felt sick of himself, sick of his lifeand of all his works. He was angry with Fulkerson for having got him intothat art department of his, for having bought him up; and he was bitterat fate because he had been obliged to use the money to pay some pressingdebts, and had not been able to return the check his father had sent him. He pitied his poor old father; he ached with compassion for him; and heset his teeth and snarled with contempt through them for his ownbaseness. This was the kind of world it was; but he washed his hands ofit. The fault was in human nature, and he reflected with pride that hehad at least not invented human nature; he had not sunk so low as thatyet. The notion amused him; he thought he might get a Satanic epigram outof it some way. But in the mean time that girl, that wild animal, shekept visibly, tangibly before him; if he put out his hand he might touchhers, he might pass his arm round her waist. In Paris, in a set he knewthere, what an effect she would be with that look of hers, and thatbeauty, all out of drawing! They would recognize the flame quality inher. He imagined a joke about her being a fiery spirit, or nymph, naiad, whatever, from one of her native gas-wells. He began to sketch on a bitof paper from the table at his elbow vague lines that veiled and revealeda level, dismal landscape, and a vast flame against an empty sky, and ashape out of the flame that took on a likeness and floated detached fromit. The sketch ran up the left side of the sheet and stretched across it. Beaton laughed out. Pretty good to let Fulkerson have that for the coverof his first number! In black and red it would be effective; it wouldcatch the eye from the news-stands. He made a motion to throw it on thefire, but held it back and slid it into the table-drawer, and smoked on. He saw the dummy with the other sketch in the open drawer which he hadbrought away from Fulkerson's in the morning and slipped in there, and hetook it out and looked at it. He made some criticisms in line with hispencil on it, correcting the drawing here and there, and then herespected it a little more, though he still smiled at the femininequality--a young lady quality. 

In spite of his experience the night he called upon the Leightons, Beatoncould not believe that Alma no longer cared for him. She played at havingforgotten him admirably, but he knew that a few months before she hadbeen very mindful of him. He knew he had neglected them since they cameto New York, where he had led them to expect interest, if not attention;but he was used to neglecting people, and he was somewhat less used tobeing punished for it--punished and forgiven. He felt that Alma hadpunished him so thoroughly that she ought to have been satisfied with herwork and to have forgiven him in her heart afterward. He bore noresentment after the first tingling moments were-past; he rather admiredher for it; and he would have been ready to go back half an hour laterand accept pardon and be on the footing of last summer again. Even now hedebated with himself whether it was too late to call; but, decidedly, aquarter to ten seemed late. The next day he determined never to call uponthe Leightons again; but he had no reason for this; it merely came into atransitory scheme of conduct, of retirement from the society of womenaltogether; and after dinner he went round to see them. 

He asked for the ladies, and they all three received him, Alma notwithout a surprise that intimated itself to him, and her mother with noappreciable relenting; Miss Woodburn, with the needlework which she foundeasier to be voluble over than a book, expressed in her welcome aneutrality both cordial to Beaton and loyal to Alma. 

"Is it snowing outdo's?" she asked, briskly, after the greetings weretransacted. "Mah goodness!" she said, in answer to his apparent surpriseat the question. "Ah mahght as well have stayed in the Soath, for all thewinter Ah have seen in New York yet. "

"We don't often have snow much before New-Year's, " said Beaton. 

"Miss Woodburn is wild for a real Northern winter, " Mrs. Leightonexplained. 

"The othah naght Ah woke up and looked oat of the window and saw all theroofs covered with snow, and it turned oat to be nothing but moonlaght. Ah was never so disappointed in mah lahfe, " said Miss Woodburn. 

"If you'll come to St. Barnaby next summer, you shall have all the winteryou want, " said Alma. 

"I can't let you slander St. Barnaby in that way, " said Beaton, with theair of wishing to be understood as meaning more than he said. 

"Yes?" returned Alma, coolly. "I didn't know you were so fond of theclimate. "

"I never think of it as a climate. It's a landscape. It doesn't matterwhether it's hot or cold. "

"With the thermometer twenty below, you'd find that it mattered, " Almapersisted. 

"Is that the way you feel about St. Barnaby, too, Mrs. Leighton?" Beatonasked, with affected desolation. 

"I shall be glad enough to go back in the summer, " Mrs. Leightonconceded. 

"And I should be glad to go now, " said Beaton, looking at Alma. He hadthe dummy of 'Every Other Week' in his hand, and he saw Alma's eyeswandering toward it whenever he glanced at her. "I should be glad to goanywhere to get out of a job I've undertaken, " he continued, to Mrs. Leighton. "They're going to start some sort of a new illustratedmagazine, and they've got me in for their art department. I'm not fit forit; I'd like to run away. Don't you want to advise me a little, Mrs. Leighton? You know how much I value your taste, and I'd like to have youlook at the design for the cover of the first number: they're going tohave a different one for every number. I don't know whether you'll agreewith me, but I think this is rather nice. "

He faced the dummy round, and then laid it on the table before Mrs. Leighton, pushing some of her work aside to make room for it and standingover her while she bent forward to look at it. 

Alma kept her place, away from the table. 

"Mah goodness! Ho' exciting!" said Miss Woodburn. "May anybody look?"

"Everybody, " said Beaton. 

"Well, isn't it perfectly choming!" Miss Woodburn exclaimed. "Come andlook at this, Miss Leighton, " she called to Alma, who reluctantlyapproached. 

"What lines are these?" Mrs. Leighton asked, pointing to Beaton's pencilscratches. 

"They're suggestions of modifications, " he replied. 

"I don't think they improve it much. What do you think, Alma?"

"Oh, I don't know, " said the girl, constraining her voice to an effect ofindifference and glancing carelessly down at the sketch. "The designmight be improved; but I don't think those suggestions would do it. "

"They're mine, " said Beaton, fixing his eyes upon her with a beautifulsad dreaminess that he knew he could put into them; he spoke with adreamy remoteness of tone--his wind-harp stop, Wetmore called it. 

"I supposed so, " said Alma, calmly. 

"Oh, mah goodness!" cried Miss Woodburn. "Is that the way you awtuststalk to each othah? Well, Ah'm glad Ah'm not an awtust--unless I could doall the talking. "

"Artists cannot tell a fib, " Alma said, "or even act one, " and shelaughed in Beaton's upturned face. 

He did not unbend his dreamy gaze. "You're quite right. The suggestionsare stupid. "

Alma turned to Miss Woodburn: "You hear? Even when we speak of our ownwork. "

"Ah nevah hoad anything lahke it!"

"And the design itself?" Beaton persisted. 

"Oh, I'm not an art editor, " Alma answered, with a laugh of exultantevasion. 

A tall, dark, grave-looking man of fifty, with a swarthy face andiron-gray mustache and imperial and goatee, entered the room. Beaton knewthe type; he had been through Virginia sketching for one of theillustrated papers, and he had seen such men in Richmond. Miss Woodburnhardly needed to say, "May Ah introduce you to mah fathaw, Co'nelWoodburn, Mr. Beaton?"

The men shook hands, and Colonel Woodburn said, in that soft, gentle, slow Southern voice without our Northern contractions: "I am very glad tomeet you, sir; happy to make yo' acquaintance. Do not move, madam, " hesaid to Mrs. Leighton, who made a deprecatory motion to let him pass tothe chair beyond her; "I can find my way. " He bowed a bulk that did notlend itself readily to the devotion, and picked up the ball of yarn shehad let drop out of her lap in half rising. "Yo' worsteds, madam. "

"Yarn, yarn, Colonel Woodburn!" Alma shouted. "You're quite incorrigible. A spade is a spade!"

"But sometimes it is a trump, my dear young lady, " said the Colonel, withunabated gallantry; "and when yo' mothah uses yarn, it is worsteds. But Irespect worsteds even under the name of yarn: our ladies--my own mothahand sistahs--had to knit the socks we wore--all we could get in the woe. "

"Yes, and aftah the woe, " his daughter put in. "The knitting has notstopped yet in some places. Have you been much in the Soath, Mr. Beaton?"

Beaton explained just how much. 

"Well, sir, " said the Colonel, "then you have seen a country makinggigantic struggles to retrieve its losses, sir. The South is advancingwith enormous strides, sir. "

"Too fast for some of us to keep up, " said Miss Woodburn, in an audibleaside. "The pace in Charlottesboag is pofectly killing, and we had todrop oat into a slow place like New York. "

"The progress in the South is material now, " said the Colonel; "and thoseof us whose interests are in another direction find ourselves--isolated--isolated, sir. The intellectual centres are still in the No'th, sir;the great cities draw the mental activity of the country to them, sir. Necessarily New York is the metropolis. "

"Oh, everything comes here, " said Beaton, impatient of the elder'sponderosity. Another sort of man would have sympathized with theSoutherner's willingness to talk of himself, and led him on to speak ofhis plans and ideals. But the sort of man that Beaton was could not dothis; he put up the dummy into the wrapper he had let drop on the floorbeside him, and tied it round with string while Colonel Woodburn wastalking. He got to his feet with the words he spoke and offered Mrs. Leighton his hand. 

"Must you go?" she asked, in surprise. 

"I am on my way to a reception, " he said. She had noticed that he was inevening dress; and now she felt the vague hurt that people invitednowhere feel in the presence of those who are going somewhere. She didnot feel it for herself, but for her daughter; and she knew Alma wouldnot have let her feel it if she could have prevented it. But Alma hadleft the room for a moment, and she tacitly indulged this sense of injuryin her behalf. 

"Please say good-night to Miss Leighton for me, " Beaton continued. Hebowed to Miss Woodburn, "Goodnight, Miss Woodburn, " and to her father, bluntly, "Goodnight. "

"Good-night, sir, " said the Colonel, with a sort of severe suavity. 

"Oh, isn't he choming!" Miss Woodburn whispered to Mrs. Leighton whenBeaton left the room. 

Alma spoke to him in the hall without. "You knew that was my design, Mr. Beaton. Why did you bring it?"

"Why?" He looked at her in gloomy hesitation. 

Then he said: "You know why. I wished to talk it over with you, to serveyou, please you, get back your good opinion. But I've done neither theone nor the other; I've made a mess of the whole thing. "

Alma interrupted him. "Has it been accepted?"

"It will be accepted, if you will let it. "

"Let it?" she laughed. "I shall be delighted. " She saw him swayed alittle toward her. "It's a matter of business, isn't it?"

"Purely. Good-night. "

When Alma returned to the room, Colonel Woodburn was saying to Mrs. Leighton: "I do not contend that it is impossible, madam, but it is verydifficult in a thoroughly commercialized society, like yours, to have thefeelings of a gentleman. How can a business man, whose prosperity, whoseearthly salvation, necessarily lies in the adversity of some one else, bedelicate and chivalrous, or even honest? If we could have had time toperfect our system at the South, to eliminate what was evil and developwhat was good in it, we should have had a perfect system. But the virusof commercialism was in us, too; it forbade us to make the best of adivine institution, and tempted us to make the worst. Now the curse is onthe whole country; the dollar is the measure of every value, the stamp ofevery success. What does not sell is a failure; and what sells succeeds. "

"The hobby is oat, mah deah, " said Miss Woodburn, in an audible aside toAlma. 

"Were you speaking of me, Colonel Woodburn?" Alma asked. 

"Surely not, my dear young lady. "

"But he's been saying that awtusts are just as greedy aboat money asanybody, " said his daughter. 

"The law of commercialism is on everything in a commercial society, " theColonel explained, softening the tone in which his convictions werepresented. "The final reward of art is money, and not the pleasure ofcreating. "

"Perhaps they would be willing to take it all oat in that if othah peoplewould let them pay their bills in the pleasure of creating, " his daughterteased. 

"They are helpless, like all the rest, " said her father, with the samedeference to her as to other women. "I do not blame them. "

"Oh, mah goodness! Didn't you say, sir, that Mr. Beaton had bad manners?"

Alma relieved a confusion which he seemed to feel in reference to her. "Bad manners? He has no manners! That is, when he's himself. He haspretty good ones when he's somebody else. "

Miss Woodburn began, "Oh, mah-" and then stopped herself. Alma's motherlooked at her with distressed question, but the girl seemed perfectlycool and contented; and she gave her mind provisionally to a pointsuggested by Colonel Woodburn's talk. 

"Still, I can't believe it was right to hold people in slavery, to whipthem and sell them. It never did seem right to me, " she added, in apologyfor her extreme sentiments to the gentleness of her adversary. 

"I quite agree with you, madam, " said the Colonel. "Those were the abusesof the institution. But if we had not been vitiated on the one hand andthreatened on the other by the spirit of commercialism from theNorth--and from Europe, too--those abuses could have been eliminated, andthe institution developed in the direction of the mild patriarchalism ofthe divine intention. " The Colonel hitched his chair, which figured ahobby careering upon its hind legs, a little toward Mrs. Leighton and thegirls approached their heads and began to whisper; they felldeferentially silent when the Colonel paused in his argument, and went onagain when he went on. 

At last they heard Mrs. Leighton saying, "And have you heard from thepublishers about your book yet?"

Then Miss Woodburn cut in, before her father could answer: "The coase ofcommercialism is on that, too. They are trahing to fahnd oat whethah itwill pay. "

"And they are right-quite right, " said the Colonel. "There is no longerany other criterion; and even a work that attacks the system must besubmitted to the tests of the system. "

"The system won't accept destruction on any othah tomes, " said MissWoodburn, demurely. 

XI. 

At the reception, where two men in livery stood aside to let him pass upthe outside steps of the house, and two more helped him off with hisovercoat indoors, and a fifth miscalled his name into the drawing-room, the Syracuse stone-cutter's son met the niece of Mrs. Horn, and began atonce to tell her about his evening at the Dryfooses'. He was in very goodspirits, for so far as he could have been elated or depressed by hisparting with Alma Leighton he had been elated; she had not treated hisimpudence with the contempt that he felt it deserved; she must still befond of him; and the warm sense of this, by operation of an obscure butwell-recognized law of the masculine being, disposed him to be ratherfond of Miss Vance. She was a slender girl, whose semi-aesthetic dressflowed about her with an accentuation of her long forms, and redeemedthem from censure by the very frankness with which it confessed them;nobody could have said that Margaret Vance was too tall. Her prettylittle head, which she had an effect of choosing to have little in thesame spirit of judicious defiance, had a good deal of reading in it; shewas proud to know literary and artistic fashions as well as societyfashions. She liked being singled out by an exterior distinction soobvious as Beaton's, and she listened with sympathetic interest to hisaccount of those people. He gave their natural history reality by drawingupon his own; he reconstructed their plebeian past from the experiencesof his childhood and his youth of the pre-Parisian period; and he had apang of suicidal joy in insulting their ignorance of the world. 

"What different kinds of people you meet!" said the girl at last, with anenvious sigh. Her reading had enlarged the bounds of her imagination, ifnot her knowledge; the novels nowadays dealt so much with very commonpeople, and made them seem so very much more worth while than the peopleone met. 

She said something like this to Beaton. He answered: "You can meet thepeople I'm talking of very easily, if you want to take the trouble. It'swhat they came to New York for. I fancy it's the great ambition of theirlives to be met. "

"Oh yes, " said Miss Vance, fashionably, and looked down; then she lookedup and said, intellectually: "Don't you think it's a great pity? How muchbetter for them to have stayed where they were and what they were!"

"Then you could never have had any chance of meeting them, " said Beaton. "I don't suppose you intend to go out to the gas country?"

"No, " said Miss Vance, amused. "Not that I shouldn't like to go. "

"What a daring spirit! You ought to be on the staff of 'Every OtherWeek, '" said Beaton. 

"The staff-Every Other Week? What is it?"

"The missing link; the long-felt want of a tie between the Arts and theDollars. " Beaton gave her a very picturesque, a very dramatic sketch ofthe theory, the purpose, and the personnel of the new enterprise. 

Miss Vance understood too little about business of any kind to know howit differed from other enterprises of its sort. She thought it wasdelightful; she thought Beaton must be glad to be part of it, though hehad represented himself so bored, so injured, by Fulkerson's insistingupon having him. "And is it a secret? Is it a thing not to be spoken of?"

"'Tutt' altro'! Fulkerson will be enraptured to have it spoken of insociety. He would pay any reasonable bill for the advertisement. "

"What a delightful creature! Tell him it shall all be spent in charity. "

"He would like that. He would get two paragraphs out of the fact, andyour name would go into the 'Literary Notes' of all the newspapers. "

"Oh, but I shouldn't want my name used!" cried the girl, half horrifiedinto fancying the situation real. 

"Then you'd better not say anything about 'Every Other Week'. Fulkersonis preternaturally unscrupulous. "

March began to think so too, at times. He was perpetually suggestingchanges in the make-up of the first number, with a view to its greatervividness of effect. One day he came and said: "This thing isn't going tohave any sort of get up and howl about it, unless you have a paper in thefirst number going for Bevans's novels. Better get Maxwell to do it. "

"Why, I thought you liked Bevans's novels?"

"So I did; but where the good of 'Every Other Week' is concerned I am aRoman father. The popular gag is to abuse Bevans, and Maxwell is the manto do it. There hasn't been a new magazine started for the last threeyears that hasn't had an article from Maxwell in its first number cuttingBevans all to pieces. If people don't see it, they'll think 'Every OtherWeek' is some old thing. "

March did not know whether Fulkerson was joking or not. He suggested, "Perhaps they'll think it's an old thing if they do see it. "

"Well, get somebody else, then; or else get Maxwell to write under anassumed name. Or--I forgot! He'll be anonymous under our system, anyway. Now there ain't a more popular racket for us to work in that first numberthan a good, swinging attack on Bevans. People read his books and quarrelover 'em, and the critics are all against him, and a regular flaying, with salt and vinegar rubbed in afterward, will tell more with people wholike good old-fashioned fiction than anything else. I like Bevans'sthings, but, dad burn it! when it comes to that first number, I'd offerup anybody. "

"What an immoral little wretch you are, Fulkerson!" said March, with alaugh. 

Fulkerson appeared not to be very strenuous about the attack on thenovelist. "Say!" he called out, gayly, "what should you think of a paperdefending the late lamented system of slavery'?"

"What do you mean, Fulkerson?" asked March, with a puzzled smile. 

Fulkerson braced his knees against his desk, and pushed himself back, butkept his balance to the eye by canting his hat sharply forward. "There'san old cock over there at the widow's that's written a book to prove thatslavery was and is the only solution of the labor problem. He's aSoutherner. "

"I should imagine, " March assented. 

"He's got it on the brain that if the South could have been let alone bythe commercial spirit and the pseudophilanthropy of the North, it wouldhave worked out slavery into a perfectly ideal condition for the laborer, in which he would have been insured against want, and protected in allhis personal rights by the state. He read the introduction to me lastnight. I didn't catch on to all the points--his daughter's an awfullypretty girl, and I was carrying that fact in my mind all the time, too, you know--but that's about the gist of it. "

"Seems to regard it as a lost opportunity?" said March. 

"Exactly! What a mighty catchy title, Neigh? Look well on thetitle-page. "

"Well written?"

"I reckon so; I don't know. The Colonel read it mighty eloquently. "

"It mightn't be such bad business, " said March, in a muse. "Could you getme a sight of it without committing yourself?"

"If the Colonel hasn't sent it off to another publisher this morning. Hejust got it back with thanks yesterday. He likes to keep it travelling. "

"Well, try it. I've a notion it might be a curious thing. "

"Look here, March, " said Fulkerson, with the effect of taking a freshhold; "I wish you could let me have one of those New York things of yoursfor the first number. After all, that's going to be the great card. "

"I couldn't, Fulkerson; I couldn't, really. I want to philosophize thematerial, and I'm too new to it all yet. I don't want to do merelysuperficial sketches. "

"Of course! Of course! I understand that. Well, I don't want to hurryyou. Seen that old fellow of yours yet? I think we ought to have thattranslation in the first number; don't you? We want to give 'em a notionof what we're going to do in that line. "

"Yes, " said March; "and I was going out to look up Lindau this morning. I've inquired at Maroni's, and he hasn't been there for several days. I've some idea perhaps he's sick. But they gave me his address, and I'mgoing to see. "

"Well, that's right. We want the first number to be the keynote in everyway. "

March shook his head. "You can't make it so. The first number is bound tobe a failure always, as far as the representative character goes. It'sinvariably the case. Look at the first numbers of all the things you'veseen started. They're experimental, almost amateurish, and necessarilyso, not only because the men that are making them up are comparativelyinexperienced like ourselves, but because the material sent them to dealwith is more or less consciously tentative. People send their adventurousthings to a new periodical because the whole thing is an adventure. I'venoticed that quality in all the volunteer contributions; it's in thearticles that have been done to order even. No; I've about made up mymind that if we can get one good striking paper into the first numberthat will take people's minds off the others, we shall be doing all wecan possible hope for. I should like, " March added, less seriously, "tomake up three numbers ahead, and publish the third one first. "

Fulkerson dropped forward and struck his fist on the desk. "It's afirst-rate idea. Why not do it?"

March laughed. "Fulkerson, I don't believe there's any quackish thing youwouldn't do in this cause. From time to time I'm thoroughly ashamed ofbeing connected with such a charlatan. "

Fulkerson struck his hat sharply backward. "Ah, dad burn it! To give thatthing the right kind of start I'd walk up and down Broadway between twoboards, with the title-page of Every Other Week facsimiled on one and myname and address on the--"

He jumped to his feet and shouted, "March, I'll do it!"

"What?"

"I'll hire a lot of fellows to make mud-turtles of themselves, and I'llhave a lot of big facsimiles of the title-page, and I'll paint the townred!"

March looked aghast at him. "Oh, come, now, Fulkerson!"

"I mean it. I was in London when a new man had taken hold of the oldCornhill, and they were trying to boom it, and they had a procession ofthese mudturtles that reached from Charing Cross to Temple Bar. CornhillMagazine. Sixpence. Not a dull page in it. ' I said to myself then that itwas the livest thing I ever saw. I respected the man that did that thingfrom the bottom of my heart. I wonder I ever forgot it. But it shows whata shaky thing the human mind is at its best. "

"You infamous mountebank!", said March, with great amusement atFulkerson's access; "you call that congeries of advertising instinct ofyours the human mind at its best? Come, don't be so diffident, Fulkerson. Well, I'm off to find Lindau, and when I come back I hope Mr. Dryfooswill have you under control. I don't suppose you'll be quite sane againtill after the first number is out. Perhaps public opinion will sober youthen. "

"Confound it, March! How do you think they will take it? I swear I'mgetting so nervous I don't know half the time which end of me is up. Ibelieve if we don't get that thing out by the first of February it 'll bethe death of me. "

"Couldn't wait till Washington's Birthday? I was thinking it would givethe day a kind of distinction, and strike the public imagination, if--"

"No, I'll be dogged if I could!" Fulkerson lapsed more and more into theparlance of his early life in this season of strong excitement. "Ibelieve if Beaton lags any on the art leg I'll kill him. "

"Well, I shouldn't mind your killing Beaton, " said March, tranquilly, ashe went out. 

He went over to Third Avenue and took the Elevated down to ChathamSquare. He found the variety of people in the car as unfailinglyentertaining as ever. He rather preferred the East Side to the West Sidelines, because they offered more nationalities, conditions, andcharacters to his inspection. They draw not only from the up-townAmerican region, but from all the vast hive of populations swarmingbetween them and the East River. He had found that, according to thehour, American husbands going to and from business, and American wivesgoing to and from shopping, prevailed on the Sixth Avenue road, and thatthe most picturesque admixture to these familiar aspects of human naturewere the brilliant eyes and complexions of the American Hebrews, whootherwise contributed to the effect of well-clad comfort andcitizen-self-satisfaction of the crowd. Now and then he had found himselfin a car mostly filled with Neapolitans from the constructions far up theline, where he had read how they are worked and fed and housed likebeasts; and listening to the jargon of their unintelligible dialect, hehad occasion for pensive question within himself as to what notion thesepoor animals formed of a free republic from their experience of lifeunder its conditions; and whether they found them practically verydifferent from those of the immemorial brigandage and enforced complicitywith rapine under which they had been born. But, after all, this was aninfrequent effect, however massive, of travel on the West Side, whereasthe East offered him continual entertainment in like sort. The sort wasnever quite so squalid. For short distances the lowest poverty, thehardest pressed labor, must walk; but March never entered a car withoutencountering some interesting shape of shabby adversity, which was almostalways adversity of foreign birth. New York is still popularly supposedto be in the control of the Irish, but March noticed in these East Sidetravels of his what must strike every observer returning to the cityafter a prolonged absence: the numerical subordination of the dominantrace. If they do not outvote them, the people of Germanic, of Slavonic, of Pelasgic, of Mongolian stock outnumber the prepotent Celts; and Marchseldom found his speculation centred upon one of these. The small eyes, the high cheeks, the broad noses, the puff lips, the bare, cue-filletedskulls, of Russians, Poles, Czechs, Chinese; the furtive glitter ofItalians; the blonde dulness of Germans; the cold quiet ofScandinavians--fire under ice--were aspects that he identified, and thatgave him abundant suggestion for the personal histories he constructed, and for the more public-spirited reveries in which he dealt with thefuture economy of our heterogeneous commonwealth. It must be owned thathe did not take much trouble about this; what these poor people werethinking, hoping, fearing, enjoying, suffering; just where and how theylived; who and what they individually were--these were the matters of hiswaking dreams as he stared hard at them, while the train raced fartherinto the gay ugliness--the shapeless, graceful, reckless picturesquenessof the Bowery. 

There were certain signs, certain facades, certain audacities of theprevailing hideousness that always amused him in that uproar to the eyewhich the strident forms and colors made. He was interested in theinsolence with which the railway had drawn its erasing line across theCorinthian front of an old theatre, almost grazing its fluted pillars, and flouting its dishonored pediment. The colossal effigies of the fatwomen and the tuft-headed Circassian girls of cheap museums; the vistasof shabby cross streets; the survival of an old hip-roofed house here andthere at their angles; the Swiss chalet, histrionic decorativeness of thestations in prospect or retrospect; the vagaries of the lines thatnarrowed together or stretched apart according to the width of theavenue, but always in wanton disregard of the life that dwelt, and boughtand sold, and rejoiced or sorrowed, and clattered or crawled, around, below, above--were features of the frantic panorama that perpetuallytouched his sense of humor and moved his sympathy. Accident and thenexigency seemed the forces at work to this extraordinary effect; the playof energies as free and planless as those that force the forest from thesoil to the sky; and then the fierce struggle for survival, with thestronger life persisting over the deformity, the mutilation, thedestruction, the decay of the weaker. The whole at moments seemed to himlawless, godless; the absence of intelligent, comprehensive purpose inthe huge disorder, and the violent struggle to subordinate the result tothe greater good, penetrated with its dumb appeal the consciousness of aman who had always been too self-enwrapped to perceive the chaos to whichthe individual selfishness must always lead. 

But there was still nothing definite, nothing better than a vaguediscomfort, however poignant, in his half recognition of such facts; andhe descended the station stairs at Chatham Square with a sense of theneglected opportunities of painters in that locality. He said to himselfthat if one of those fellows were to see in Naples that turmoil of cars, trucks, and teams of every sort, intershot with foot-passengers going andcoming to and from the crowded pavements, under the web of the railroadtracks overhead, and amid the spectacular approach of the streets thatopen into the square, he would have it down in his sketch-book at once. He decided simultaneously that his own local studies must be illustrated, and that he must come with the artist and show him just which bits to do, not knowing that the two arts can never approach the same material fromthe same point. He thought he would particularly like his illustrator torender the Dickensy, cockneyish quality of the, shabby-genteelballad-seller of whom he stopped to ask his way to the street whereLindau lived, and whom he instantly perceived to be, with his stock intrade, the sufficient object of an entire study by himself. He had hisballads strung singly upon a cord against the house wall, and held downin piles on the pavement with stones and blocks of wood. Their control inthis way intimated a volatility which was not perceptible in theirsentiment. They were mostly tragical or doleful: some of them dealt withthe wrongs of the working-man; others appealed to a gay experience of thehigh seas; but vastly the greater part to memories and associations of anIrish origin; some still uttered the poetry of plantation life in theartless accents of the end--man. Where they trusted themselves, withsyntax that yielded promptly to any exigency of rhythmic art, to theordinary American speech, it was to strike directly for the affections, to celebrate the domestic ties, and, above all, to embalm the memories ofangel and martyr mothers whose dissipated sons deplored their sufferingstoo late. March thought this not at all a bad thing in them; he smiled inpatronage of their simple pathos; he paid the tribute of a laugh when thepoet turned, as he sometimes did, from his conception of angel and martyrmotherhood, and portrayed the mother in her more familiar phases ofvirtue and duty, with the retributive shingle or slipper in her hand. Hebought a pocketful of this literature, popular in a sense which the mostsuccessful book can never be, and enlisted the ballad vendor so deeply inthe effort to direct him to Lindau's dwelling by the best way that heneglected another customer, till a sarcasm on his absent-mindedness stunghint to retort, "I'm a-trying to answer a gentleman a civil question;that's where the absent-minded comes in. "

It seemed for some reason to be a day of leisure with the Chinesedwellers in Mott Street, which March had been advised to take first. Theystood about the tops of basement stairs, and walked two and two along thedirty pavement, with their little hands tucked into their sleeves acrosstheir breasts, aloof in immaculate cleanliness from the filth aroundthem, and scrutinizing the scene with that cynical sneer of faintsurprise to which all aspects of our civilization seem to move theirsuperiority. Their numbers gave character to the street, and rendered notthem, but what was foreign to them, strange there; so that March had asense of missionary quality in the old Catholic church, built long beforetheir incursion was dreamed of. It seemed to have come to them there, andhe fancied in the statued saint that looked down from its facadesomething not so much tolerant as tolerated, something propitiatory, almost deprecatory. It was a fancy, of course; the street wassufficiently peopled with Christian children, at any rate, swarming andshrieking at their games; and presently a Christian mother appeared, pushed along by two policemen on a handcart, with a gelatinous tremorover the paving and a gelatinous jouncing at the curbstones. She lay withher face to the sky, sending up an inarticulate lamentation; but theindifference of the officers forbade the notion of tragedy in her case. She was perhaps a local celebrity; the children left off their games, andran gayly trooping after her; even the young fellow and young girlexchanging playful blows in a robust flirtation at the corner of a liquorstore suspended their scuffle with a pleased interest as she passed. March understood the unwillingness of the poor to leave the worstconditions in the city for comfort and plenty in the country when hereflected upon this dramatic incident, one of many no doubt which dailyoccur to entertain them in such streets. A small town could rarely offeranything comparable to it, and the country never. He said that if lifeappeared so hopeless to him as it must to the dwellers in thatneighborhood he should not himself be willing to quit its distractions, its alleviations, for the vague promise of unknown good in the distancesomewhere. 

But what charm could such a man as Lindau find in such a place? It couldnot be that he lived there because he was too poor to live elsewhere:with a shutting of the heart, March refused to believe this as he lookedround on the abounding evidences of misery, and guiltily remembered hisneglect of his old friend. Lindau could probably find as cheap a lodgingin some decenter part of the town; and, in fact, there was someamelioration of the prevailing squalor in the quieter street which heturned into from Mott. 

A woman with a tied-up face of toothache opened the door for him when hepulled, with a shiver of foreboding, the bell-knob, from which a yard ofrusty crape dangled. But it was not Lindau who was dead, for the womansaid he was at home, and sent March stumbling up the four or five darkflights of stairs that led to his tenement. It was quite at the top ofthe house, and when March obeyed the German-English "Komm!" that followedhis knock, he found himself in a kitchen where a meagre breakfast wasscattered in stale fragments on the table before the stove. The place wasbare and cold; a half-empty beer bottle scarcely gave it a convivial air. On the left from this kitchen was a room with a bed in it, which seemedalso to be a cobbler's shop: on the right, through a door that stoodajar, came the German-English voice again, saying this time, "Hier!"

XII. 

March pushed the door open into a room like that on the left, but with awriting-desk instead of a cobbler's bench, and a bed, where Lindau satpropped up; with a coat over his shoulders and a skull-cap on his head, reading a book, from which he lifted his eyes to stare blankly over hisspectacles at March. His hairy old breast showed through the night-shirt, which gaped apart; the stump of his left arm lay upon the book to keep itopen. 

"Ah, my tear yo'ng friendt! Passil! Marge! Iss it you?" he called out, joyously, the next moment. 

"Why, are you sick, Lindau?" March anxiously scanned his face in takinghis hand. 

Lindau laughed. "No; I'm all righdt. Only a lidtle lazy, and a lidtleeggonomigal. Idt's jeaper to stay in pedt sometimes as to geep a firea-goin' all the time. Don't wandt to gome too hardt on the 'brafer Mann', you know:

 "Braver Mann, er schafft mir zu essen. "

You remember? Heine? You readt Heine still? Who is your favorite boetnow, Passil? You write some boetry yourself yet? No? Well, I am gladt tozee you. Brush those baperss off of that jair. Well, idt is goodt forzore eyess. How didt you findt where I lif?

"They told me at Maroni's, " said March. He tried to keep his eyes onLindau's face, and not see the discomfort of the room, but he was awareof the shabby and frowsy bedding, the odor of stale smoke, and the pipesand tobacco shreds mixed with the books and manuscripts strewn over theleaf of the writing-desk. He laid down on the mass the pile of foreignmagazines he had brought under his arm. "They gave me another addressfirst. "

"Yes. I have chust gome here, " said Lindau. "Idt is not very coy, Neigh?"

"It might be gayer, " March admitted, with a smile. "Still, " he added, soberly, "a good many people seem to live in this part of the town. Apparently they die here, too, Lindau. There is crape on your outsidedoor. I didn't know but it was for you. "

"Nodt this time, " said Lindau, in the same humor. "Berhaps some othertime. We geep the ondertakers bratty puzy down here. "

"Well, " said March, "undertakers must live, even if the rest of us haveto die to let them. " Lindau laughed, and March went on: "But I'm glad itisn't your funeral, Lindau. And you say you're not sick, and so I don'tsee why we shouldn't come to business. "

"Pusiness?" Lindau lifted his eyebrows. "You gome on pusiness?"

"And pleasure combined, " said March, and he went on to explain theservice he desired at Lindau's hands. 

The old man listened with serious attention, and with assenting nods thatculminated in a spoken expression of his willingness to undertake thetranslations. March waited with a sort of mechanical expectation of hisgratitude for the work put in his way, but nothing of the kind came fromLindau, and March was left to say, "Well, everything is understood, then;and I don't know that I need add that if you ever want any little advanceon the work--"

"I will ask you, " said Lindau, quietly, "and I thank you for that. But Ican wait; I ton't needt any money just at bresent. " As if he saw someappeal for greater frankness in, March's eye, he went on: "I tidn't gomehere begause I was too boor to lif anywhere else, and I ton't stay inpedt begause I couldn't haf a fire to geep warm if I wanted it. I'm nodtzo padt off as Marmontel when he went to Paris. I'm a lidtle loaxurious, that is all. If I stay in pedt it's zo I can fling money away onsomethings else. Heigh?"

"But what are you living here for, Lindau?" March smiled at the ironylurking in Lindau's words. 

"Well, you zee, I foundt I was begoming a lidtle too moch of anaristograt. I hadt a room oap in Creenvidge Willage, among dose pig pugsover on the West Side, and I foundt"--Liudau's voice lost its jestingquality, and his face darkened--"that I was beginning to forget theboor!"

"I should have thought, " said March, with impartial interest, "that youmight have seen poverty enough, now and then, in Greenwich Village toremind you of its existence. "

"Nodt like here, " said Lindau. "Andt you must zee it all the dtime--zeeit, hear it, smell it, dtaste it--or you forget it. That is what I gomehere for. I was begoming a ploated aristograt. I thought I was nodt likethese beople down here, when I gome down once to look aroundt; I thoughtI must be somethings else, and zo I zaid I better take myself in time, and I gome here among my brothers--the becears and the thiefs!" A noisemade itself heard in the next room, as if the door were furtively opened, and a faint sound of tiptoeing and of hands clawing on a table. 

"Thiefs!" Lindau repeated, with a shout. "Lidtle thiefs, that gabtureyour breakfast. Ah! ha! ha!" A wild scurrying of feet, joyous cries andtittering, and a slamming door followed upon his explosion, and heresumed in the silence: "Idt is the children cot pack from school. Theygome and steal what I leaf there on my daple. Idt's one of our lidtlechokes; we onderstand one another; that's all righdt. Once the gobbler inthe other room there he used to chase 'em; he couldn't onderstand theirlidtle tricks. Now dot goppler's teadt, and he ton't chase 'em any more. He was a Bohemian. Gindt of grazy, I cuess. "

"Well, it's a sociable existence, " March suggested. "But perhaps if youlet them have the things without stealing--"

"Oh no, no! Most nodt mage them too gonceitedt. They mostn't go and feelthemselfs petter than those boor millionairss that hadt to steal theirmoney. "

March smiled indulgently at his old friend's violence. "Oh, there arefagots and fagots, you know, Lindau; perhaps not all the millionaires areso guilty. "

"Let us speak German!" cried Lindau, in his own tongue, pushing his bookaside, and thrusting his skullcap back from his forehead. "How much moneycan a man honestly earn without wronging or oppressing some other man?"

"Well, if you'll let me answer in English, " said March, "I should sayabout five thousand dollars a year. I name that figure because it's myexperience that I never could earn more; but the experience of other menmay be different, and if they tell me they can earn ten, or twenty, orfifty thousand a year, I'm not prepared to say they can't do it. "

Lindau hardly waited for his answer. "Not the most gifted man that everlived, in the practice of any art or science, and paid at the highestrate that exceptional genius could justly demand from those who haveworked for their money, could ever earn a million dollars. It is thelandlords and the merchant princes, the railroad kings and the coalbarons (the oppressors to whom you instinctively give the titles oftyrants)--it is these that make the millions, but no man earns them. Whatartist, what physician, what scientist, what poet was ever amillionaire?"

"I can only think of the poet Rogers, " said March, amused by Lindau'stirade. "But he was as exceptional as the other Rogers, the martyr, whodied with warm feet. " Lindau had apparently not understood his joke, andhe went on, with the American ease of mind about everything: "But youmust allow, Lindau, that some of those fellows don't do so badly withtheir guilty gains. Some of them give work to armies of poor people--"

Lindau furiously interrupted: "Yes, when they have gathered theirmillions together from the hunger and cold and nakedness and ruin anddespair of hundreds of thousands of other men, they 'give work' to thepoor! They give work! They allow their helpless brothers to earn enoughto keep life in them! They give work! Who is it gives toil, and wherewill your rich men be when once the poor shall refuse to give toil'? Why, you have come to give me work!"

March laughed outright. "Well, I'm not a millionaire, anyway, Lindau, andI hope you won't make an example of me by refusing to give toil. I daresay the millionaires deserve it, but I'd rather they wouldn't suffer inmy person. "

"No, " returned the old man, mildly relaxing the fierce glare he had bentupon March. "No man deserves to sufer at the hands of another. I losemyself when I think of the injustice in the world. But I must not forgetthat I am like the worst of them. "

"You might go up Fifth Avenue and live among the rich awhile, when you'rein danger of that, " suggested March. "At any rate, " he added, by animpulse which he knew he could not justify to his wife, "I wish you'dcome some day and lunch with their emissary. I've been telling Mrs. Marchabout you, and I want her and the children to see you. Come over withthese things and report. " He put his hand on the magazines as he rose. 

"I will come, " said Lindau, gently. 

"Shall I give you your book?" asked March. 

"No; I gidt oap bretty soon. "

"And--and--can you dress yourself?"

"I vhistle, 'and one of those lidtle fellowss comess. We haf to dake gareof one another in a blace like this. Idt iss nodt like the worldt, " saidLindau, gloomily. 

March thought he ought to cheer him up. "Oh, it isn't such a bad world, Lindau! After all, the average of millionaires is small in it. " He added, "And I don't believe there's an American living that could look at thatarm of yours and not wish to lend you a hand for the one you gave usall. " March felt this to be a fine turn, and his voice trembled slightlyin saying it. 

Lindau smiled grimly. "You think zo? I wouldn't moch like to drost 'em. I've driedt idt too often. " He began to speak German again fiercely:"Besides, they owe me nothing. Do you think I knowingly gave my hand tosave this oligarchy of traders and tricksters, this aristocracy ofrailroad wreckers and stock gamblers and mine-slave drivers and mill-serfowners? No; I gave it to the slave; the slave--ha! ha! ha!--whom I helpedto unshackle to the common liberty of hunger and cold. And you think Iwould be the beneficiary of such a state of things?"

"I'm sorry to hear you talk so, Lindau, " said March; "very sorry. " Hestopped with a look of pain, and rose to go. Lindau suddenly broke into alaugh and into English. 

"Oh, well, it is only dalk, Passil, and it toes me goodt. My parg isworse than my pidte, I cuess. I pring these things roundt bretty soon. Good-bye, Passil, my tear poy. Auf wiedersehen!"

XIII. 

March went away thinking of what Lindau had said, but not for theimpersonal significance of his words so much as for the light they castupon Lindau himself. He thought the words violent enough, but inconnection with what he remembered of the cheery, poetic, hopefulidealist, they were even more curious than lamentable. In his own life ofcomfortable reverie he had never heard any one talk so before, but he hadread something of the kind now and then in blatant labor newspapers whichhe had accidentally fallen in with, and once at a strikers' meeting hehad heard rich people denounced with the same frenzy. He had made his ownreflections upon the tastelessness of the rhetoric, and the obviousbuncombe of the motive, and he had not taken the matter seriously. 

He could not doubt Lindau's sincerity, and he wondered how he came tothat way of thinking. From his experience of himself he accounted for aprevailing literary quality in it; he decided it to be from Lindau'sreading and feeling rather than his reflection. That was the notion heformed of some things he had met with in Ruskin to much the same effect;he regarded them with amusement as the chimeras of a rhetorician run awaywith by his phrases. 

But as to Lindau, the chief thing in his mind was a conception of thedroll irony of a situation in which so fervid a hater of millionairesshould be working, indirectly at least, for the prosperity of a man likeDryfoos, who, as March understood, had got his money together out ofevery gambler's chance in speculation, and all a schemer's thrift fromthe error and need of others. The situation was not more incongruous, however, than all the rest of the 'Every Other Week' affair. It seemed tohim that there were no crazy fortuities that had not tended to itsexistence, and as time went on, and the day drew near for the issue ofthe first number, the sense of this intensified till the whole lost atmoments the quality of a waking fact, and came to be rather a fantasticfiction of sleep. 

Yet the heterogeneous forces did co-operate to a reality which Marchcould not deny, at least in their presence, and the first number wasrepresentative of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible form. As aresult, it was so respectable that March began to respect theseintentions, began to respect himself for combining and embodying them inthe volume which appealed to him with a novel fascination, when the firstadvance copy was laid upon his desk. Every detail of it was tiresomelyfamiliar already, but the whole had a fresh interest now. He now saw howextremely fit and effective Miss Leighton's decorative design for thecover was, printed in black and brick-red on the delicate gray tone ofthe paper. It was at once attractive and refined, and he credited Beatonwith quite all he merited in working it over to the actual shape. Thetouch and the taste of the art editor were present throughout the number. As Fulkerson said, Beaton had caught on with the delicacy of ahumming-bird and the tenacity of a bulldog to the virtues of theirillustrative process, and had worked it for all it was worth. There wereseven papers in the number, and a poem on the last page of the cover, andhe had found some graphic comment for each. It was a larger proportionthan would afterward be allowed, but for once in a way it was allowed. Fulkerson said they could not expect to get their money back on thatfirst number, anyway. Seven of the illustrations were Beaton's; two orthree he got from practised hands; the rest were the work of unknownpeople which he had suggested, and then related and adapted withunfailing ingenuity to the different papers. He handled the illustrationswith such sympathy as not to destroy their individual quality, and thatindefinable charm which comes from good amateur work in whatever art. Herescued them from their weaknesses and errors, while he left in them theevidence of the pleasure with which a clever young man, or a sensitivegirl, or a refined woman had done them. Inevitably from his manipulation, however, the art of the number acquired homogeneity, and there wasnothing casual in its appearance. The result, March eagerly owned, wasbetter than the literary result, and he foresaw that the number would besold and praised chiefly for its pictures. Yet he was not ashamed of theliterature, and he indulged his admiration of it the more freely becausehe had not only not written it, but in a way had not edited it. To besure, he had chosen all the material, but he had not voluntarily put itall together for that number; it had largely put itself together, asevery number of every magazine does, and as it seems more and more to do, in the experience of every editor. There had to be, of course, a story, and then a sketch of travel. There was a literary essay and a socialessay; there was a dramatic trifle, very gay, very light; there was adashing criticism on the new pictures, the new plays, the new books, thenew fashions; and then there was the translation of a bit of vividRussian realism, which the editor owed to Lindau's exploration of theforeign periodicals left with him; Lindau was himself a romanticist ofthe Victor Hugo sort, but he said this fragment of Dostoyevski was goodof its kind. The poem was a bit of society verse, with a backward lookinto simpler and wholesomer experiences. 

Fulkerson was extremely proud of the number; but he said it was toogood--too good from every point of view. The cover was too good, and thepaper was too good, and that device of rough edges, which got over theobjection to uncut leaves while it secured their aesthetic effect, was athing that he trembled for, though he rejoiced in it as a stroke of thehighest genius. It had come from Beaton at the last moment, as acompromise, when the problem of the vulgar croppiness of cut leaves andthe unpopularity of uncut leaves seemed to have no solution but suicide. Fulkerson was still morally crawling round on his hands and knees, as hesaid, in abject gratitude at Beaton's feet, though he had his qualms, hisquestions; and he declared that Beaton was the most inspired ass sinceBalaam's. "We're all asses, of course, " he admitted, in semi-apology toMarch; "but we're no such asses as Beaton. " He said that if the tastefuldecorativeness of the thing did not kill it with the public outright, itsliterary excellence would give it the finishing stroke. Perhaps thatmight be overlooked in the impression of novelty which a first numberwould give, but it must never happen again. He implored March to promisethat it should never happen again; he said their only hope was in theimmediate cheapening of the whole affair. It was bad enough to give thepublic too much quantity for their money, but to throw in such quality asthat was simply ruinous; it must be stopped. These were the expressionsof his intimate moods; every front that he presented to the public wore aglow of lofty, of devout exultation. His pride in the number gushed outin fresh bursts of rhetoric to every one whom he could get to talk withhim about it. He worked the personal kindliness of the press to theutmost. He did not mind making himself ridiculous or becoming a joke inthe good cause, as he called it. He joined in the applause when ahumorist at the club feigned to drop dead from his chair at Fulkerson'sintroduction of the topic, and he went on talking that first number intothe surviving spectators. He stood treat upon all occasions, and helunched attaches of the press at all hours. He especially befriended thecorrespondents of the newspapers of other cities, for, as he explained toMarch, those fellows could give him any amount of advertising simply asliterary gossip. Many of the fellows were ladies who could not be sosummarily asked out to lunch, but Fulkerson's ingenuity was equal toevery exigency, and he contrived somehow to make each of these feel thatshe had been possessed of exclusive information. There was a moment whenMarch conjectured a willingness in Fulkerson to work Mrs. March into theadvertising department, by means of a tea to these ladies and theirfriends which she should administer in his apartment, but he did notencourage Fulkerson to be explicit, and the moment passed. Afterward, when he told his wife about it, he was astonished to find that she wouldnot have minded doing it for Fulkerson, and he experienced another proofof the bluntness of the feminine instincts in some directions, and of thepersonal favor which Fulkerson seemed to enjoy with the whole sex. Thisalone was enough to account for the willingness of these correspondentsto write about the first number, but March accused him of sending it totheir addresses with boxes of Jacqueminot roses and Huyler candy. 

Fulkerson let him enjoy his joke. He said that he would do that oranything else for the good cause, short of marrying the whole circle offemale correspondents. 

March was inclined to hope that if the first number had been made toogood for the country at large, the more enlightened taste of metropolitanjournalism would invite a compensating favor for it in New York. Butfirst Fulkerson and then the event proved him wrong. In spite of thequality of the magazine, and in spite of the kindness which so manynewspaper men felt for Fulkerson, the notices in the New York papersseemed grudging and provisional to the ardor of the editor. A merit inthe work was acknowledged, and certain defects in it for which March hadtrembled were ignored; but the critics astonished him by selecting forcensure points which he was either proud of or had never noticed; whichbeing now brought to his notice he still could not feel were faults. Heowned to Fulkerson that if they had said so and so against it, he couldhave agreed with them, but that to say thus and so was preposterous; andthat if the advertising had not been adjusted with such generousrecognition of the claims of the different papers, he should have knownthe counting-room was at the bottom of it. As it was, he could onlyattribute it to perversity or stupidity. It was certainly stupid tocondemn a magazine novelty like 'Every Other Week' for being novel; andto augur that if it failed, it would fail through its departure from thelines on which all the other prosperous magazines had been built, was inthe last degree perverse, and it looked malicious. The fact that it wasneither exactly a book nor a magazine ought to be for it and not againstit, since it would invade no other field; it would prosper on no groundbut its own. 

XIV. 

The more March thought of the injustice of the New York press (which hadnot, however, attacked the literary quality of the number) the morebitterly he resented it; and his wife's indignation superheated his own. 'Every Other Week' had become a very personal affair with the wholefamily; the children shared their parents' disgust; Belle was outspokenin, her denunciations of a venal press. Mrs. March saw nothing but ruinahead, and began tacitly to plan a retreat to Boston, and anestablishment retrenched to the basis of two thousand a year. She shedsome secret tears in anticipation of the privations which this mustinvolve; but when Fulkerson came to see March rather late the night ofthe publication day, she nobly told him that if the worst came to theworst she could only have the kindliest feeling toward him, and shouldnot regard him as in the slightest degree responsible. 

"Oh, hold on, hold on!" he protested. "You don't think we've made afailure, do you?"

"Why, of course, " she faltered, while March remained gloomily silent. 

"Well, I guess we'll wait for the official count, first. Even New Yorkhasn't gone against us, and I guess there's a majority coming down toHarlem River that could sweep everything before it, anyway. "

"What do you mean, Fulkerson?" March demanded, sternly. 

"Oh, nothing! Only, the 'News Company' has ordered ten thousand now; andyou know we had to give them the first twenty on commission. "

"What do you mean?" March repeated; his wife held her breath. 

"I mean that the first number is a booming success already, and that it'sgoing to a hundred thousand before it stops. That unanimity and varietyof censure in the morning papers, combined with the attractiveness of thething itself, has cleared every stand in the city, and now if the favorof the country press doesn't turn the tide against us, our fortune'smade. " The Marches remained dumb. "Why, look here! Didn't I tell youthose criticisms would be the making of us, when they first began to turnyou blue this morning, March?"

"He came home to lunch perfectly sick, " said Mrs. Marcli; "and I wouldn'tlet him go back again. "

"Didn't I tell you so?" Fulkerson persisted. 

March could not remember that he had, or that he had been anything butincoherently and hysterically jocose over the papers, but he said, "Yes, yes--I think so. "

"I knew it from the start, " said Fulkerson. "The only other person whotook those criticisms in the right spirit was Mother Dryfoos--I've justbeen bolstering up the Dryfoos family. She had them read to her by Mrs. Mandel, and she understood them to be all the most flattering propheciesof success. Well, I didn't read between the lines to that extent, quite;but I saw that they were going to help us, if there was anything in us, more than anything that could have been done. And there was something inus! I tell you, March, that seven-shooting self-cocking donkey of aBeaton has given us the greatest start! He's caught on like a mouse. He'smade the thing awfully chic; it's jimmy; there's lots of dog about it. He's managed that process so that the illustrations look as expensive asfirst-class wood-cuts, and they're cheaper than chromos. He's put styleinto the whole thing. "

"Oh yes, " said March, with eager meekness, "it's Beaton that's done it. "

Fulkerson read jealousy of Beaton in Mrs. March's face. "Beaton has givenus the start because his work appeals to the eye. There's no denying thatthe pictures have sold this first number; but I expect the literature ofthis first number to sell the pictures of the second. I've been readingit all over, nearly, since I found how the cat was jumping; I was anxiousabout it, and I tell you, old man, it's good. Yes, sir! I was afraidmaybe you had got it too good, with that Boston refinement of yours; butI reckon you haven't. I'll risk it. I don't see how you got so muchvariety into so few things, and all of them palpitant, all of 'em on thekeen jump with actuality. "

The mixture of American slang with the jargon of European criticism inFulkerson's talk made March smile, but his wife did not seem to notice itin her exultation. "That is just what I say, " she broke in. "It'sperfectly wonderful. I never was anxious about it a moment, except, asyou say, Mr. Fulkerson, I was afraid it might be too good. "

They went on in an antiphony of praise till March said: "Really, I don'tsee what's left me but to strike for higher wages. I perceive that I'mindispensable. "

"Why, old man, you're coming in on the divvy, you know, " said Fulkerson. 

They both laughed, and when Fulkerson was gone, Mrs. March asked herhusband what a divvy was. 

"It's a chicken before it's hatched. "

"No! Truly?"

He explained, and she began to spend the divvy. 

At Mrs. Leighton's Fulkerson gave Alma all the honor of the success; hetold her mother that the girl's design for the cover had sold everynumber, and Mrs. Leighton believed him. 

"Well, Ah think Ah maght have some of the glory, " Miss Woodburn pouted. "Where am Ah comin' in?"

"You're coming in on the cover of the next number, " said Fulkerson. "We're going to have your face there; Miss Leighton's going to sketch itin. " He said this reckless of the fact that he had already shown them thedesign of the second number, which was Beaton's weird bit of gas-countrylandscape. 

"Ah don't see why you don't wrahte the fiction for your magazine, Mr. Fulkerson, " said the girl. 

This served to remind Fulkerson of something. He turned to her father. "I'll tell you what, Colonel Woodburn, I want Mr. March to see somechapters of that book of yours. I've been talking to him about it. "

"I do not think it would add to the popularity of your periodical, sir, "said the Colonel, with a stately pleasure in being asked. "My views of acivilization based upon responsible slavery would hardly be acceptable toyour commercialized society. "

"Well, not as a practical thing, of course, " Fulkerson admitted. "But assomething retrospective, speculative, I believe it would make a hit. There's so much going on now about social questions; I guess people wouldlike to read it. "

"I do not know that my work is intended to amuse people, " said theColonel, with some state. 

"Mah goodness! Ah only wish it WAS, then, " said his daughter; and sheadded: "Yes, Mr. Fulkerson, the Colonel will be very glad to submitpo'tions of his woak to yo' edito'. We want to have some of the honaw. Perhaps we can say we helped to stop yo' magazine, if we didn't help tostawt it. "

They all laughed at her boldness, and Fulkerson said: "It 'll take a gooddeal more than that to stop 'Every Other Week'. The Colonel's whole bookcouldn't do it. " Then he looked unhappy, for Colonel Woodburn did notseem to enjoy his reassuring words; but Miss Woodburn came to his rescue. "You maght illustrate it with the po'trait of the awthoris daughtaw, ifit's too late for the covah. "

"Going to have that in every number, Miss Woodburn!" he cried. 

"Oh, mah goodness!" she said, with mock humility. 

Alma sat looking at her piquant head, black, unconsciously outlinedagainst the lamp, as she sat working by the table. "Just keep still amoment!"

She got her sketch-block and pencils, and began to draw; Fulkerson tiltedhimself forward and looked over her shoulder; he smiled outwardly;inwardly he was divided between admiration of Miss Woodburn's arch beautyand appreciation of the skill which reproduced it; at the same time hewas trying to remember whether March had authorized him to go so far asto ask for a sight of Colonel Woodburn's manuscript. He felt that he hadtrenched upon March's province, and he framed one apology to the editorfor bringing him the manuscript, and another to the author for bringingit back. 

"Most Ah hold raght still like it was a photograph?" asked Miss Woodburn. "Can Ah toak?"

"Talk all you want, " said Alma, squinting her eyes. "And you needn't beeither adamantine, nor yet--wooden. "

"Oh, ho' very good of you! Well, if Ah can toak--go on, Mr. Fulkerson!"

"Me talk? I can't breathe till this thing is done!" sighed Fulkerson; atthat point of his mental drama the Colonel was behaving rustily about thereturn of his manuscript, and he felt that he was looking his last onMiss Woodburn's profile. 

"Is she getting it raght?" asked the girl. 

"I don't know which is which, " said Fulkerson. 

"Oh, Ah hope Ah shall! Ah don't want to go round feelin' like a sheet ofpapah half the time. "

"You could rattle on, just the same, " suggested Alma. 

"Oh, now! Jost listen to that, Mr. Fulkerson. Do you call that any way totoak to people?"

"You might know which you were by the color, " Fulkerson began, and thenhe broke off from the personal consideration with a business inspiration, and smacked himself on the knee, "We could print it in color!"

Mrs. Leighton gathered up her sewing and held it with both hands in herlap, while she came round, and looked critically at the sketch and themodel over her glasses. "It's very good, Alma, " she said. 

Colonel Woodburn remained restively on his side of the table. "Of course, Mr. Fulkerson, you were jesting, sir, when you spoke of printing a sketchof my daughter. "

"Why, I don't know--If you object--?

"I do, sir--decidedly, " said the Colonel. 

"Then that settles it, of course, --I only meant--"

"Indeed it doesn't!" cried the girl. "Who's to know who it's from? Ah'mjost set on havin' it printed! Ah'm going to appear as the head ofSlavery--in opposition to the head of Liberty. "

"There'll be a revolution inside of forty-eight hours, and we'll have theColonel's system going wherever a copy of 'Every Other Week' circulates, "said Fulkerson. 

"This sketch belongs to me, " Alma interposed. "I'm not going to let it beprinted. "

"Oh, mah goodness!" said Miss Woodburn, laughing good-humoredly. "That'sbecose you were brought up to hate slavery. "

"I should like Mr. Beaton to see it, " said Mrs. Leighton, in a sort ofabsent tone. She added, to Fulkerson: "I rather expected he might be into-night. "

"Well, if he comes we'll leave it to Beaton, " Fulkerson said, with reliefin the solution, and an anxious glance at the Colonel, across the table, to see how he took that form of the joke. Miss Woodburn intercepted hisglance and laughed, and Fulkerson laughed, too, but rather forlornly. 

Alma set her lips primly and turned her head first on one side and thenon the other to look at the sketch. "I don't think we'll leave it to Mr. Beaton, even if he comes. "

"We left the other design for the cover to Beaton, " Fulkerson insinuated. "I guess you needn't be afraid of him. "

"Is it a question of my being afraid?" Alma asked; she seemed coollyintent on her drawing. 

"Miss Leighton thinks he ought to be afraid of her, " Miss Woodburnexplained. 

"It's a question of his courage, then?" said Alma. 

"Well, I don't think there are many young ladies that Beaton's afraidof, " said Fulkerson, giving himself the respite of this purely randomremark, while he interrogated the faces of Mrs. Leighton and ColonelWoodburn for some light upon the tendency of their daughters' words. 

He was not helped by Mrs. Leighton's saying, with a certain anxiety, "Idon't know what you mean, Mr. Fulkerson. "

"Well, you're as much in the dark as I am myself, then, " said Fulkerson. "I suppose I meant that Beaton is rather--a--favorite, you know. Thewomen like him. "

Mrs. Leighton sighed, and Colonel Woodburn rose and left the room. 

In the silence that followed, Fulkerson looked from one lady to the otherwith dismay. "I seem to have put my foot in it, somehow, " he suggested, and Miss Woodburn gave a cry of laughter. 

"Poo' Mr. Fulkerson! Poo' Mr. Fulkerson! Papa thoat you wanted him togo. "

"Wanted him to go?" repeated Fulkerson. 

"We always mention Mr. Beaton when we want to get rid of papa. "

"Well, it seems to me that I have noticed that he didn't take muchinterest in Beaton, as a general topic. But I don't know that I ever sawit drive him out of the room before!"

"Well, he isn't always so bad, " said Miss Woodburn. "But it was a case ofhate at first sight, and it seems to be growin' on papa. "

"Well, I can understand that, " said Fulkerson. "The impulse to destroyBeaton is something that everybody has to struggle against at the start. "

"I must say, Mr. Fulkerson, " said Mrs. Leighton, in the tremor throughwhich she nerved herself to differ openly with any one she liked, "Inever had to struggle with anything of the kind, in regard to Mr. Beaton. He has always been most respectful and--and--considerate, with me, whatever he has been with others. "

"Well, of course, Mrs. Leighton!" Fulkerson came back in a soothing tone. "But you see you're the rule that proves the exception. I was speaking ofthe way men felt about Beaton. It's different with ladies; I just saidso. "

"Is it always different?" Alma asked, lifting her head and her hand fromher drawing, and staring at it absently. 

Fulkerson pushed both his hands through his whiskers. "Look here! Lookhere!" he said. "Won't somebody start some other subject? We haven't hadthe weather up yet, have we? Or the opera? What is the matter with a fewremarks about politics?"

"Why, Ah thoat you lahked to toak about the staff of yo' magazine, " saidMiss Woodburn. 

"Oh, I do!" said Fulkerson. "But not always about the same member of it. He gets monotonous, when he doesn't get complicated. I've just come roundfrom the Marches', " he added, to Mrs. Leighton. 

"I suppose they've got thoroughly settled in their apartment by thistime. " Mrs. Leighton said something like this whenever the Marches werementioned. At the bottom of her heart she had not forgiven them for nottaking her rooms; she had liked their looks so much; and she was alwayshoping that they were uncomfortable or dissatisfied; she could not helpwanting them punished a little. 

"Well, yes; as much as they ever will be, " Fulkerson answered. "TheBoston style is pretty different, you know; and the Marches areold-fashioned folks, and I reckon they never went in much for bric-a-bracThey've put away nine or ten barrels of dragon candlesticks, but theykeep finding new ones. "

"Their landlady has just joined our class, " said Alma. "Isn't her nameGreen? She happened to see my copy of 'Every Other Week', and said sheknew the editor; and told me. "

"Well, it's a little world, " said Fulkerson. "You seem to be touchingelbows with everybody. Just think of your having had our head translatorfor a model. "

"Ah think that your whole publication revolves aroand the Leightonfamily, " said Miss Woodburn. 

"That's pretty much so, " Fulkerson admitted. "Anyhow, the publisher seemsdisposed to do so. "

"Are you the publisher? I thought it was Mr. Dryfoos, " said Alma. 

"It is. "

"Oh!"

The tone and the word gave Fulkerson a discomfort which he promptlyconfessed. "Missed again. "

The girls laughed, and he regained something of his lost spirits, andsmiled upon their gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for it. 

Miss Woodburn asked, "And is Mr. Dryfoos senio' anything like ouah Mr. Dryfoos?"

"Not the least. "

"But he's jost as exemplary?"

"Yes; in his way. "

"Well, Ah wish Ah could see all those pinks of puffection togethah, once. "

"Why, look here! I've been thinking I'd celebrate a little, when the oldgentleman gets back. Have a little supper--something of that kind. Howwould you like to let me have your parlors for it, Mrs. Leighton? Youladies could stand on the stairs, and have a peep at us, in the bunch. "

"Oh, mah! What a privilege! And will Miss Alma be there, with the othahcontributors? Ah shall jost expah of envy!"

"She won't be there in person, " said Fulkerson, "but she'll berepresented by the head of the art department. "

"Mah goodness! And who'll the head of the publishing departmentrepresent?"

"He can represent you, " said Alma. 

"Well, Ah want to be represented, someho'. "

"We'll have the banquet the night before you appear on the cover of ourfourth number, " said Fulkerson. 

"Ah thoat that was doubly fo'bidden, " said Miss Woodburn. "By the sternparent and the envious awtust. "

"We'll get Beaton to get round them, somehow. I guess we can trust him tomanage that. "

Mrs. Leighton sighed her resentment of the implication. 

"I always feel that Mr. Beaton doesn't do himself justice, " she began. 

Fulkerson could not forego the chance of a joke. "Well, maybe he wouldrather temper justice with mercy in a case like his. " This made both theyounger ladies laugh. "I judge this is my chance to get off with mylife, " he added, and he rose as he spoke. "Mrs. Leighton, I am about theonly man of my sex who doesn't thirst for Beaton's blood most of thetime. But I know him and I don't. He's more kinds of a good fellow thanpeople generally understand. He doesn't wear his heart upon hissleeve-not his ulster sleeve, anyway. You can always count me on yourside when it's a question of finding Beaton not guilty if he'll leave theState. "

Alma set her drawing against the wall, in rising to say goodnight toFulkerson. He bent over on his stick to look at it. "Well, it'sbeautiful, " he sighed, with unconscious sincerity. 

Alma made him a courtesy of mock modesty. "Thanks to Miss Woodburn!"

"Oh no! All she had to do was simply to stay put. "

"Don't you think Ah might have improved it if Ah had, looked better?" thegirl asked, gravely. 

"Oh, you couldn't!" said Fulkerson, and he went off triumphant in theirapplause and their cries of "Which? which?"

Mrs. Leighton sank deep into an accusing gloom when at last she foundherself alone with her daughter. "I don't know what you are thinkingabout, Alma Leighton. If you don't like Mr. Beaton--"

"I don't. "

"You don't? You know better than that. You know that, you did care forhim. "

"Oh! that's a very different thing. That's a thing that can be got over. "

"Got over!" repeated Mrs. Leighton, aghast. 

"Of course, it can! Don't be romantic, mamma. People get over dozens ofsuch fancies. They even marry for love two or three times. "

"Never!" cried her mother, doing her best to feel shocked; and at lastlooking it. 

Her looking it had no effect upon Alma. "You can easily get over caringfor people; but you can't get over liking them--if you like them becausethey are sweet and good. That's what lasts. I was a simple goose, and heimposed upon me because he was a sophisticated goose. Now the case isreversed. "

"He does care for you, now. You can see it. Why do you encourage him tocome here?"

"I don't, " said Alma. "I will tell him to keep away if you like. Butwhether he comes or goes, it will be the same. "

"Not to him, Alma! He is in love with you!"

"He has never said so. "

"And you would really let him say so, when you intend to refuse him?"

"I can't very well refuse him till he does say so. "

This was undeniable. Mrs. Leighton could only demand, in an awful tone, "May I ask why--if you cared for him; and I know you care for him stillyou will refuse him?"

Alma laughed. "Because--because I'm wedded to my Art, and I'm not goingto commit bigamy, whatever I do. "

"Alma!"

"Well, then, because I don't like him--that is, I don't believe in him, and don't trust him. He's fascinating, but he's false and he's fickle. Hecan't help it, I dare say. "

"And you are perfectly hard. Is it possible that you were actuallypleased to have Mr. Fulkerson tease you about Mr. Dryfoos?"

"Oh, good-night, now, mamma! This is becoming personal"

PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 Artists never do anything like other people Ballast of her instinctive despondency Clinging persistence of such natures Dividend: It's a chicken before it's hatched Gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for it Hopeful recklessness How much can a man honestly earn without wronging or oppressing I cannot endure this--this hopefulness of yours If you dread harm enough it is less likely to happen It must be your despair that helps you to bear up Marry for love two or three times No man deserves to sufer at the hands of another Patience with mediocrity putting on the style of genius Person talks about taking lessons, as if they could learn it Say when he is gone that the woman gets along better without him Shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo'--its inconvenience Timidity of the elder in the presence of the younger man