A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES

By William Dean Howells

PART FIFTH

I. 

Superficially, the affairs of 'Every Other Week' settled into theirwonted form again, and for Fulkerson they seemed thoroughly reinstated. But March had a feeling of impermanency from what had happened, mixedwith a fantastic sense of shame toward Lindau. He did not sympathize withLindau's opinions; he thought his remedy for existing evils as wildlyimpracticable as Colonel Woodburn's. But while he thought this, and whilehe could justly blame Fulkerson for Lindau's presence at Dryfoos'sdinner, which his zeal had brought about in spite of March's protests, still he could not rid himself of the reproach of uncandor with Lindau. He ought to have told him frankly about the ownership of the magazine, and what manner of man the man was whose money he was taking. But he saidthat he never could have imagined that he was serious in his preposterousattitude in regard to a class of men who embody half the prosperity ofthe country; and he had moments of revolt against his own humiliationbefore Lindau, in which he found it monstrous that he should returnDryfoos's money as if it had been the spoil of a robber. His wife agreedwith him in these moments, and said it was a great relief not to havethat tiresome old German coming about. They had to account for hisabsence evasively to the children, whom they could not very well tellthat their father was living on money that Lindau disdained to take, eventhough Lindau was wrong and their father was right. This heightened Mrs. March's resentment toward both Lindau and Dryfoos, who between them hadplaced her husband in a false position. If anything, she resentedDryfoos's conduct more than Lindau's. He had never spoken to March aboutthe affair since Lindau had renounced his work, or added to theapologetic messages he had sent by Fulkerson. So far as March knew, Dryfoos had been left to suppose that Lindau had simply stopped for somereason that did not personally affect him. They never spoke of him, andMarch was too proud to ask either Fulkerson or Conrad whether the old manknew that Lindau had returned his money. He avoided talking to Conrad, from a feeling that if he did he should involuntarily lead him on tospeak of his differences with his father. Between himself and Fulkerson, even, he was uneasily aware of a want of their old perfect friendliness. Fulkerson had finally behaved with honor and courage; but his provisionalreluctance had given March the measure of Fulkerson's character in onedirection, and he could not ignore the fact that it was smaller than hecould have wished. 

He could not make out whether Fulkerson shared his discomfort or not. Itcertainly wore away, even with March, as time passed, and with Fulkerson, in the bliss of his fortunate love, it was probably far more transient, if it existed at all. He advanced into the winter as radiantly as if tomeet the spring, and he said that if there were any pleasanter month ofthe year than November, it was December, especially when the weather wasgood and wet and muddy most of the time, so that you had to keep indoorsa long while after you called anywhere. 

Colonel Woodburn had the anxiety, in view of his daughter's engagement, when she asked his consent to it, that such a dreamer must have in regardto any reality that threatens to affect the course of his reveries. Hehad not perhaps taken her marriage into account, except as a remotecontingency; and certainly Fulkerson was not the kind of son-in-law thathe had imagined in dealing with that abstraction. But because he hadnothing of the sort definitely in mind, he could not oppose the selectionof Fulkerson with success; he really knew nothing against him, and heknew, many things in his favor; Fulkerson inspired him with the likingthat every one felt for him in a measure; he amused him, he cheered him;and the colonel had been so much used to leaving action of all kinds tohis daughter that when he came to close quarters with the question of ason-in-law he felt helpless to decide it, and he let her decide it, as ifit were still to be decided when it was submitted to him. She wascompetent to treat it in all its phases: not merely those of personalinterest, but those of duty to the broken Southern past, sentimentallydear to him, and practically absurd to her. No such South as heremembered had ever existed to her knowledge, and no such civilization ashe imagined would ever exist, to her belief, anywhere. She took the worldas she found it, and made the best of it. She trusted in Fulkerson; shehad proved his magnanimity in a serious emergency; and in small thingsshe was willing fearlessly to chance it with him. She was not asentimentalist, and there was nothing fantastic in her expectations; shewas a girl of good sense and right mind, and she liked the immediatepracticality as well as the final honor of Fulkerson. She did notidealize him, but in the highest effect she realized him; she did himjustice, and she would not have believed that she did him more thanjustice if she had sometimes known him to do himself less. 

Their engagement was a fact to which the Leighton household adjusteditself almost as simply as the lovers themselves; Miss Woodburn told theladies at once, and it was not a thing that Fulkerson could keep fromMarch very long. He sent word of it to Mrs. March by her husband; and hisengagement perhaps did more than anything else to confirm the confidencein him which had been shaken by his early behavior in the Lindau episode, and not wholly restored by his tardy fidelity to March. But now she feltthat a man who wished to get married so obviously and entirely for lovewas full of all kinds of the best instincts, and only needed the guidanceof a wife, to become very noble. She interested herself intensely inbalancing the respective merits of the engaged couple, and after her callupon Miss Woodburn in her new character she prided herself uponrecognizing the worth of some strictly Southern qualities in her, whilemaintaining the general average of New England superiority. She could notreconcile herself to the Virginian custom illustrated in her having beenchristened with the surname of Madison; and she said that its pet form ofMad, which Fulkerson promptly invented, only made it more ridiculous. 

Fulkerson was slower in telling Beaton. He was afraid, somehow, ofBeaton's taking the matter in the cynical way; Miss Woodburn said shewould break off the engagement if Beaton was left to guess it or find itout by accident, and then Fulkerson plucked up his courage. Beatonreceived the news with gravity, and with a sort of melancholy meeknessthat strongly moved Fulkerson's sympathy, and made him wish that Beatonwas engaged, too. 

It made Beaton feel very old; it somehow left him behind and forgotten;in a manner, it made him feel trifled with. Something of theunfriendliness of fate seemed to overcast his resentment, and he allowedthe sadness of his conviction that he had not the means to marry on totinge his recognition of the fact that Alma Leighton would not havewanted him to marry her if he had. He was now often in that martyr moodin which he wished to help his father; not only to deny himself Chianti, but to forego a fur-lined overcoat which he intended to get for thewinter, He postponed the moment of actual sacrifice as regarded theChianti, and he bought the overcoat in an anguish of self-reproach. Hewore it the first evening after he got it in going to call upon theLeightons, and it seemed to him a piece of ghastly irony when Almacomplimented his picturesqueness in it and asked him to let her sketchhim. 

"Oh, you can sketch me, " he said, with so much gloom that it made herlaugh. 

"If you think it's so serious, I'd rather not. "

"No, no! Go ahead! How do you want me?"

Oh, fling yourself down on a chair in one of your attitudes of studiednegligence; and twist one corner of your mustache with affected absenceof mind. "

"And you think I'm always studied, always affected?"

"I didn't say so. "

"I didn't ask you what you said. "

"And I won't tell you what I think. "

"Ah, I know what you think. "

"What made you ask, then?" The girl laughed again with the satisfactionof her sex in cornering a man. 

Beaton made a show of not deigning to reply, and put himself in the poseshe suggested, frowning. 

"Ah, that's it. But a little more animation--

 "'As when a great thought strikes along the brain, And flushes all the cheek. '"

She put her forehead down on the back of her hand and laughed again. "Youought to be photographed. You look as if you were sitting for it. "

Beaton said: "That's because I know I am being photographed, in one way. I don't think you ought to call me affected. I never am so with you; Iknow it wouldn't be of any use. "

"Oh, Mr. Beaton, you flatter. "

"No, I never flatter you. "

"I meant you flattered yourself. "

"How?"

"Oh, I don't know. Imagine. "

"I know what you mean. You think I can't be sincere with anybody. "

"Oh no, I don't. "

"What do you think?"

"That you can't--try. " Alma gave another victorious laugh. 

Miss Woodburn and Fulkerson would once have both feigned a great interestin Alma's sketching Beaton, and made it the subject of talk, in whichthey approached as nearly as possible the real interest of their lives. Now they frankly remained away in the dining-room, which was very cozyafter the dinner had disappeared; the colonel sat with his lamp and paperin the gallery beyond; Mrs. Leighton was about her housekeeping affairs, in the content she always felt when Alma was with Beaton. 

"They seem to be having a pretty good time in there, " said Fulkerson, detaching himself from his own absolute good time as well as he could. 

"At least Alma does, " said Miss Woodburn. 

"Do you think she cares for him?"

"Quahte as moch as he desoves. "

"What makes you all down on Beaton around here? He's not such a badfellow. "

"We awe not all doan on him. Mrs. Leighton isn't doan on him. "

"Oh, I guess if it was the old lady, there wouldn't be much questionabout it. "

They both laughed, and Alma said, "They seem to be greatly amused withsomething in there. "

"Me, probably, " said Beaton. "I seem to amuse everybody to-night. "

"Don't you always?"

"I always amuse you, I'm afraid, Alma. "

She looked at him as if she were going to snub him openly for using hername; but apparently she decided to do it covertly. "You didn't at first. I really used to believe you could be serious, once. "

"Couldn't you believe it again? Now?"

"Not when you put on that wind-harp stop. "

"Wetmore has been talking to you about me. He would sacrifice his bestfriend to a phrase. He spends his time making them. "

"He's made some very pretty ones about you. "

"Like the one you just quoted?"

"No, not exactly. He admires you ever so much. He says" She stopped, teasingly. 

"What?"

"He says you could be almost anything you wished, if you didn't wish tobe everything. "

"That sounds more like the school of Wetmore. That's what you say, Alma. Well, if there were something you wished me to be, I could be it. "

"We might adapt Kingsley: 'Be good, sweet man, and let who will beclever. '" He could not help laughing. She went on: "I always thought thatwas the most patronizing and exasperating thing ever addressed to a humangirl; and we've had to stand a good deal in our time. I should like tohave it applied to the other 'sect' a while. As if any girl that was agirl would be good if she had the remotest chance of being clever. "

"Then you wouldn't wish me to be good?" Beaton asked. 

"Not if you were a girl. "

"You want to shock me. Well, I suppose I deserve it. But if I wereone-tenth part as good as you are, Alma, I should have a lighter heartthan I have now. I know that I'm fickle, but I'm not false, as you thinkI am. "

"Who said I thought you were false?"

"No one, " said Beaton. "It isn't necessary, when you look it--live it. "

"Oh, dear! I didn't know I devoted my whole time to the subject. "

"I know I'm despicable. I could tell you something--the history of thisday, even--that would make you despise me. " Beaton had in mind hispurchase of the overcoat, which Alma was getting in so effectively, withthe money he ought to have sent his father. "But, " he went on, darkly, with a sense that what he was that moment suffering for his selfishnessmust somehow be a kind of atonement, which would finally leave him to theguiltless enjoyment of the overcoat, "you wouldn't believe the depths ofbaseness I could descend to. "

"I would try, " said Alma, rapidly shading the collar, "if you'd give mesome hint. "

Beaton had a sudden wish to pour out his remorse to her, but he wasafraid of her laughing at him. He said to himself that this was a verywholesome fear, and that if he could always have her at hand he shouldnot make a fool of himself so often. A man conceives of such an office asthe very noblest for a woman; he worships her for it if he ismagnanimous. But Beaton was silent, and Alma put back her head for theright distance on her sketch. "Mr. Fulkerson thinks you are the sublimestof human beings for advising him to get Colonel Woodburn to interview Mr. Dryfoos about Lindau. What have you ever done with your Judas?"

"I haven't done anything with it. Nadel thought he would take hold of itat one time, but he dropped it again. After all, I don't suppose it couldbe popularized. Fulkerson wanted to offer it as a premium to subscribersfor 'Every Other Week, ' but I sat down on that. "

Alma could not feel the absurdity of this, and she merely said, "'EveryOther Week' seems to be going on just the same as ever. "

"Yes, the trouble has all blown over, I believe. Fulkerson, " said Beaton, with a return to what they were saying, "has managed the whole businessvery well. But he exaggerates the value of my advice. "

"Very likely, " Alma suggested, vaguely. "Or, no! Excuse me! He couldn't, he couldn't!" She laughed delightedly at Beaton's foolish look ofembarrassment. 

He tried to recover his dignity in saying, "He's 'a very good fellow, andhe deserves his happiness. "

"Oh, indeed!" said Alma, perversely. "Does any one deserve happiness?"

"I know I don't, " sighed Beaton. 

"You mean you don't get it. "

"I certainly don't get it. "

"Ah, but that isn't the reason. "

"What is?"

"That's the secret of the universe, " She bit in her lower lip, and lookedat him with eyes, of gleaming fun. 

"Are you never serious?" he asked. 

"With serious people always. "

"I am serious; and you have the secret of my happiness--" He threwhimself impulsively forward in his chair. 

"Oh, pose, pose!" she cried. 

"I won't pose, " he answered, "and you have got to listen to me. You knowI'm in love with you; and I know that once you cared for me. Can't thattime--won't it--come back again? Try to think so, Alma!"

"No, " she said, briefly and seriously enough. 

"But that seems impossible. What is it I've done what have you againstme?"

"Nothing. But that time is past. I couldn't recall it if I wished. Whydid you bring it up? You've broken your word. You know I wouldn't havelet you keep coming here if you hadn't promised never to refer to it. "

"How could I help it? With that happiness near us--Fulkerson--"

"Oh, it's that? I might have known it!"

"No, it isn't that--it's something far deeper. But if it's nothing youhave against me, what is it, Alma, that keeps you from caring for me nowas you did then? I haven't changed. "

"But I have. I shall never care for you again, Mr. Beaton; you might aswell understand it once for all. Don't think it's anything in yourself, or that I think you unworthy of me. I'm not so self-satisfied as that; Iknow very well that I'm not a perfect character, and that I've no claimon perfection in anybody else. I think women who want that are fools;they won't get it, and they don't deserve it. But I've learned a good. Deal more about myself than I knew in St. Barnaby, and a life of work, ofart, and of art alone that's what I've made up my mind to. "

"A woman that's made up her mind to that has no heart to hinder her!"

"Would a man have that had done so?"

"But I don't believe you, Alma. You're merely laughing at me. And, besides, with me you needn't give up art. We could work together. Youknow how much I admire your talent. I believe I could help it--serve it;I would be its willing slave, and yours, Heaven knows!"

"I don't want any slave--nor any slavery. I want to be free always. Nowdo you see? I don't care for you, and I never could in the old way; but Ishould have to care for some one more than I believe I ever shall to giveup my work. Shall we go on?" She looked at her sketch. 

"No, we shall not go on, " he said, gloomily, as he rose. 

"I suppose you blame me, " she said, rising too. 

"Oh no! I blame no one--or only myself. I threw my chance away. "

"I'm glad you see that; and I'm glad you did it. You don't believe me, ofcourse. Why do men think life can be only the one thing to women? And ifyou come to the selfish view, who are the happy women? I'm sure that ifwork doesn't fail me, health won't, and happiness won't. "

"But you could work on with me--"

"Second fiddle. Do you suppose I shouldn't be woman enough to wish mywork always less and lower than yours? At least I've heart enough forthat!"

"You've heart enough for anything, Alma. I was a fool to say you hadn't. "

"I think the women who keep their hearts have an even chance, at least, of having heart--"

"Ah, there's where you're wrong!"

"But mine isn't mine to give you, anyhow. And now I don't want you everto speak to me about this again. "

"Oh, there's no danger!" he cried, bitterly. "I shall never willingly seeyou again. "

"That's as you like, Mr. Beaton. We've had to be very frank, but I don'tsee why we shouldn't be friends. Still, we needn't, if you don't like. "

"And I may come--I may come here--as--as usual?"

"Why, if you can consistently, " she said, with a smile, and she held outher hand to him. 

He went home dazed, and feeling as if it were a bad joke that had beenput upon him. At least the affair went so deep that it estranged theaspect of his familiar studio. Some of the things in it were not veryfamiliar; he had spent lately a great deal on rugs, on stuffs, onJapanese bric-a-brac. When he saw these things in the shops he had feltthat he must have them; that they were necessary to him; and he waspartly in debt for them, still without having sent any of his earnings topay his father. As he looked at them now he liked to fancy somethingweird and conscious in them as the silent witnesses of a broken life. Hefelt about among some of the smaller objects on the mantel for his pipe. Before he slept he was aware, in the luxury of his despair, of a remoterelief, an escape; and, after all, the understanding he had come to withAlma was only the explicit formulation of terms long tacit between them. Beaton would have been puzzled more than he knew if she had taken himseriously. It was inevitable that he should declare himself in love withher; but he was not disappointed at her rejection of his love; perhapsnot so much as he would have been at its acceptance, though he tried tothink otherwise, and to give himself airs of tragedy. He did not reallyfeel that the result was worse than what had gone before, and it left himfree. 

But he did not go to the Leightons again for so long a time that Mrs. Leighton asked Alma what had happened. Alma told her. 

"And he won't come any more?" her mother sighed, with reserved censure. 

"Oh, I think he will. He couldn't very well come the next night. But hehas the habit of coming, and with Mr. Beaton habit is everything--eventhe habit of thinking he's in love with some one. "

"Alma, " said her mother, "I don't think it's very nice for a girl to leta young man keep coming to see her after she's refused him. "

"Why not, if it amuses him and doesn't hurt the girl?"

"But it does hurt her, Alma. It--it's indelicate. It isn't fair to him;it gives him hopes. "

"Well, mamma, it hasn't happened in the given case yet. If Mr. Beatoncomes again, I won't see him, and you can forbid him the house. "

"If I could only feel sure, Alma, " said her mother, taking up anotherbranch of the inquiry, "that you really knew your own mind, I should beeasier about it. "

"Then you can rest perfectly quiet, mamma. I do know my own mind; and, what's worse, I know Mr. Beaton's mind. "

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that he spoke to me the other night simply because Mr. Fulkerson's engagement had broken him all up. "

"What expressions!" Mrs. Leighton lamented. 

"He let it out himself, " Alma went on. "And you wouldn't have thought itwas very flattering yourself. When I'm made love to, after this, I preferto be made love to in an off-year, when there isn't another engagedcouple anywhere about. "

"Did you tell him that, Alma?"

"Tell him that! What do you mean, mamma? I may be indelicate, but I'm notquite so indelicate as that. "

"I didn't mean you were indelicate, really, Alma, but I wanted to warnyou. I think Mr. Beaton was very much in earnest. "

"Oh, so did he!"

"And you didn't?"

"Oh yes, for the time being. I suppose he's very much in earnest withMiss Vance at times, and with Miss Dryfoos at others. Sometimes he's apainter, and sometimes he's an architect, and sometimes he's a sculptor. He has too many gifts--too many tastes. "

"And if Miss Vance and Miss Dryfoos--"

"Oh, do say Sculpture and Architecture, mamma! It's getting so dreadfullypersonal!"

"Alma, you know that I only wish to get at your real feeling in thematter. "

"And you know that I don't want to let you--especially when I haven't gotany real feeling in the matter. But I should think--speaking in theabstract entirely--that if either of those arts was ever going to be inearnest about him, it would want his exclusive devotion for a week atleast. "

"I didn't know, " said Mrs. Leighton, "that he was doing anything now atthe others. I thought he was entirely taken up with his work on 'EveryOther Week. '"

"Oh, he is! he is!"

"And you certainly can't say, my dear, that he hasn't been verykind--very useful to you, in that matter. "

"And so I ought to have said yes out of gratitude? Thank you, mamma! Ididn't know you held me so cheap. "

"You know whether I hold you cheap or not, Alma. I don't want you tocheapen yourself. I don't want you to trifle with any one. I want you tobe honest with yourself. "

"Well, come now, mamma! Suppose you begin. I've been perfectly honestwith myself, and I've been honest with Mr. Beaton. I don't care for him, and I've told him I didn't; so he may be supposed to know it. If he comeshere after this, he'll come as a plain, unostentatious friend of thefamily, and it's for you to say whether he shall come in that capacity ornot. I hope you won't trifle with him, and let him get the notion thathe's coming on any other basis. "

Mrs. Leighton felt the comfort of the critical attitude far too keenly toabandon it for anything constructive. She only said, "You know very well, Alma, that's a matter I can have nothing to do with. "

"Then you leave him entirely to me?"

"I hope you will regard his right to candid and open treatment. "

"He's had nothing but the most open and candid treatment from me, mamma. It's you that wants to play fast and loose with him. And, to tell you thetruth, I believe he would like that a good deal better; I believe that, if there's anything he hates, it's openness and candor. " Alma laughed, and put her arms round her mother, who could not help laughing a little, too. 

II. 

The winter did not renew for Christine and Mela the social opportunitywhich the spring had offered. After the musicale at Mrs. Horn's, theyboth made their party-call, as Mela said, in due season; but they did notfind Mrs. Horn at home, and neither she nor Miss Vance came to see themafter people returned to town in the fall. They tried to believe for atime that Mrs. Horn had not got their cards; this pretence failed them, and they fell back upon their pride, or rather Christine's pride. Melahad little but her good-nature to avail her in any exigency, and if Mrs. Horn or Miss Vance had come to call after a year of neglect, she wouldhave received them as amiably as if they had not lost a day in coming. But Christine had drawn a line beyond which they would not have beenforgiven; and she had planned the words and the behavior with which shewould have punished them if they had appeared then. Neither sisterimagined herself in anywise inferior to them; but Christine wassuspicious, at least, and it was Mela who invented the hypothesis of thelost cards. As nothing happened to prove or to disprove the fact, shesaid, "I move we put Coonrod up to gittun' it out of Miss Vance, at someof their meetun's. "

"If you do, " said Christine, "I'll kill you. "

Christine, however, had the visits of Beaton to console her, and, ifthese seemed to have no definite aim, she was willing to rest in thepleasure they gave her vanity; but Mela had nothing. Sometimes she evenwished they were all back on the farm. 

"It would be the best thing for both of you, " said Mrs. Dryfoos, inanswer to such a burst of desperation. "I don't think New York is anyplace for girls. "

"Well, what I hate, mother, " said Mela, "is, it don't seem to be anyplace for young men, either. " She found this so good when she had said itthat she laughed over it till Christine was angry. 

"A body would think there had never been any joke before. "

"I don't see as it's a joke, " said Mrs. Dryfoos. "It's the plain truth. "

"Oh, don't mind her, mother, " said Mela. "She's put out because her oldMr. Beaton ha'r't been round for a couple o' weeks. If you don't watchout, that fellow 'll give you the slip yit, Christine, after all yourpains. "

"Well, there ain't anybody to give you the slip, Mela, " Christine clawedback. 

"No; I ha'n't ever set my traps for anybody. " This was what Mela said forwant of a better retort; but it was not quite true. When Kendricks camewith Beaton to call after her father's dinner, she used all her cunningto ensnare him, and she had him to herself as long as Beaton stayed;Dryfoos sent down word that he was not very well and had gone to bed. Thenovelty of Mela had worn off for Kendricks, and she found him, as shefrankly told him, not half as entertaining as he was at Mrs. Horn's; butshe did her best with him as the only flirtable material which had yetcome to her hand. It would have been her ideal to have the young men staytill past midnight, and her father come down-stairs in his stocking-feetand tell them it was time to go. But they made a visit of decorousbrevity, and Kendricks did not come again. She met him afterward, once, as she was crossing the pavement in Union Square to get into her coupe, and made the most of him; but it was necessarily very little, and so hepassed out of her life without having left any trace in her heart, thoughMela had a heart that she would have put at the disposition of almost anyyoung man that wanted it. Kendricks himself, Manhattan cockney as he was, with scarcely more out look into the average American nature than if hehad been kept a prisoner in New York society all his days, perceived aproperty in her which forbade him as a man of conscience to trifle withher; something earthly good and kind, if it was simple and vulgar. Inrevising his impressions of her, it seemed to him that she would comeeven to better literary effect if this were recognized in her; and itmade her sacred, in spite of her willingness to fool and to be fooled, inher merely human quality. After all, he saw that she wished honestly tolove and to be loved, and the lures she threw out to that end seemed tohim pathetic rather than ridiculous; he could not join Beaton in laughingat her; and he did not like Beaton's laughing at the other girl, either. It seemed to Kendricks, with the code of honor which he mostly kept tohimself because he was a little ashamed to find there were so few otherslike it, that if Beaton cared nothing for the other girl--and Christineappeared simply detestable to Kendricks--he had better keep away fromher, and not give her the impression he was in love with her. He ratherfancied that this was the part of a gentleman, and he could not havepenetrated to that aesthetic and moral complexity which formed theconsciousness of a nature like Beaton's and was chiefly a torment toitself; he could not have conceived of the wayward impulses indulged atevery moment in little things till the straight highway was traversed andwell-nigh lost under their tangle. To do whatever one likes is finally todo nothing that one likes, even though one continues to do what one will;but Kendricks, though a sage of twenty-seven, was still too young tounderstand this. 

Beaton scarcely understood it himself, perhaps because he was not yettwenty-seven. He only knew that his will was somehow sick; that it spentitself in caprices, and brought him no happiness from the fulfilment ofthe most vehement wish. But he was aware that his wishes grew less andless vehement; he began to have a fear that some time he might have noneat all. It seemed to him that if he could once do something that wasthoroughly distasteful to himself, he might make a beginning in the rightdirection; but when he tried this on a small scale, it failed, and itseemed stupid. Some sort of expiation was the thing he needed, he wassure; but he could not think of anything in particular to expiate; a mancould not expiate his temperament, and his temperament was what Beatondecided to be at fault. He perceived that it went deeper than even fatewould have gone; he could have fulfilled an evil destiny and had donewith it, however terrible. His trouble was that he could not escape fromhimself; and, for the most part, he justified himself in refusing to try. After he had come to that distinct understanding with Alma Leighton, andexperienced the relief it really gave him, he thought for a while that ifit had fallen out otherwise, and she had put him in charge of herdestiny, he might have been better able to manage his own. But as it was, he could only drift, and let all other things take their course. It wasnecessary that he should go to see her afterward, to show her that he wasequal to the event; but he did not go so often, and he went ratheroftener to the Dryfooses; it was not easy to see Margaret Vance, excepton the society terms. With much sneering and scorning, he fulfilled theduties to Mrs. Horn without which he knew he should be dropped from herlist; but one might go to many of her Thursdays without getting manywords with her niece. Beaton hardly knew whether he wanted many; the girlkept the charm of her innocent stylishness; but latterly she wanted totalk more about social questions than about the psychical problems thatyoung people usually debate so personally. Son of the working-people ashe was, Beaton had never cared anything about such matters; he did notknow about them or wish to know; he was perhaps too near them. Besides, there was an embarrassment, at least on her part, concerning theDryfooses. She was too high-minded to blame him for having tempted her toher failure with them by his talk about them; but she was conscious ofavoiding them in her talk. She had decided not to renew the effort shehad made in the spring; because she could not do them good asfellow-creatures needing food and warmth and work, and she would not tryto befriend them socially; she had a horror of any such futilesentimentality. She would have liked to account to Beaton in this way fora course which she suspected he must have heard their comments upon, butshe did not quite know how to do it; she could not be sure how much orhow little he cared for them. Some tentative approaches which she madetoward explanation were met with such eager disclaim of personal interestthat she knew less than before what to think; and she turned the talkfrom the sisters to the brother, whom it seemed she still continued tomeet in their common work among the poor. 

"He seems very different, " she ventured. 

"Oh, quite, " said Beaton. "He's the kind of person that you might supposegave the Catholics a hint for the cloistral life; he's a cloisterednature--the nature that atones and suffers for. But he's awfully dullcompany, don't you think? I never can get anything out of him. "

"He's very much in earnest. "

"Remorselessly. We've got a profane and mundane creature there at theoffice who runs us all, and it's shocking merely to see the contact ofthe tyro natures. When Fulkerson gets to joking Dryfoos--he likes to puthis joke in the form of a pretence that Dryfoos is actuated by a selfishmotive, that he has an eye to office, and is working up a politicalinterest for himself on the East Side--it's something inexpressible. "

"I should think so, " said Miss Vance, with such lofty disapproval thatBeaton felt himself included in it for having merely told what caused it. He could not help saying, in natural rebellion, "Well, the man of oneidea is always a little ridiculous. "

"When his idea is right?" she demanded. "A right idea can't beridiculous. "

"Oh, I only said the man that held it was. He's flat; he has no relief, no projection. "

She seemed unable to answer, and he perceived that he had silenced her tohis own, disadvantage. It appeared to Beaton that she was becoming alittle too exacting for comfort in her idealism. He put down the cup oftea he had been tasting, and said, in his solemn staccato: "I must go. Good-bye!" and got instantly away from her, with an effect he had ofhaving suddenly thought of something imperative. 

He went up to Mrs. Horn for a moment's hail and farewell, and felthimself subtly detained by her through fugitive passages of conversationwith half a dozen other people. He fancied that at crises of this strangeinterview Mrs. Horn was about to become confidential with him, andconfidential, of all things, about her niece. She ended by not havingpalpably been so. In fact, the concern in her mind would have beendifficult to impart to a young man, and after several experiments Mrs. Horn found it impossible to say that she wished Margaret could somehow beinterested in lower things than those which occupied her. She had watchedwith growing anxiety the girl's tendency to various kinds ofself-devotion. She had dark hours in which she even feared her entirewithdrawal from the world in a life of good works. Before now, girls hadentered the Protestant sisterhoods, which appeal so potently to the youngand generous imagination, and Margaret was of just the temperament to beinfluenced by them. During the past summer she had been unhappy at herseparation from the cares that had engrossed her more and more as theirstay in the city drew to an end in the spring, and she had hurried heraunt back to town earlier in the fall than she would have chosen to come. Margaret had her correspondents among the working-women whom shebefriended. Mrs. Horn was at one time alarmed to find that Margaret wasactually promoting a strike of the button-hole workers. This, of course, had its ludicrous side, in connection with a young lady in good society, and a person of even so little humor as Mrs. Horn could not help seeingit. At the same time, she could not help foreboding the worst from it;she was afraid that Margaret's health would give way under the strain, and that if she did not go into a sisterhood she would at least go into adecline. She began the winter with all such counteractive measures as shecould employ. At an age when such things weary, she threw herself intothe pleasures of society with the hope of dragging Margaret after her;and a sympathetic witness must have followed with compassion her coursefrom ball to ball, from reception to reception, from parlor-reading toparlor-reading, from musicale to musicale, from play to play, from operato opera. She tasted, after she had practically renounced them, thebitter and the insipid flavors of fashionable amusement, in the hope thatMargaret might find them sweet, and now at the end she had to own toherself that she had failed. It was coming Lent again, and the girl hadonly grown thinner and more serious with the diversions that did notdivert her from the baleful works of beneficence on which Mrs. Horn feltthat she was throwing her youth away. Margaret could have borne eitheralone, but together they were wearing her out. She felt it a duty toundergo the pleasures her aunt appointed for her, but she could notforego the other duties in which she found her only pleasure. 

She kept up her music still because she could employ it at the meetingsfor the entertainment, and, as she hoped, the elevation of herworking-women; but she neglected the other aesthetic interests which onceoccupied her; and, at sight of Beaton talking with her, Mrs. Horn caughtat the hope that he might somehow be turned to account in revivingMargaret's former interest in art. She asked him if Mr. Wetmore had hisclasses that winter as usual; and she said she wished Margaret could beinduced to go again: Mr. Wetmore always said that she did not draw verywell, but that she had a great deal of feeling for it, and her work wasinteresting. She asked, were the Leightons in town again; and shemurmured a regret that she had not been able to see anything of them, without explaining why; she said she had a fancy that if Margaret knewMiss Leighton, and what she was doing, it might stimulate her, perhaps. She supposed Miss Leighton was still going on with her art? Beaton said, Oh yes, he believed so. 

But his manner did not encourage Mrs. Horn to pursue her aims in thatdirection, and she said, with a sigh, she wished he still had a class;she always fancied that Margaret got more good from his instruction thanfrom any one else's. 

He said that she was very good; but there was really nobody who knew halfas much as Wetmore, or could make any one understand half as much. Mrs. Horn was afraid, she said, that Mr. Wetmore's terrible sinceritydiscouraged Margaret; he would not let her have any illusions about theoutcome of what she was doing; and did not Mr. Beaton think that someillusion was necessary with young people? Of course, it was very nice ofMr. Wetmore to be so honest, but it did not always seem to be the wisestthing. She begged Mr. Beaton to try to think of some one who would be alittle less severe. Her tone assumed a deeper interest in the people whowere coming up and going away, and Beaton perceived that he wasdismissed. 

He went away with vanity flattered by the sense of having been appealedto concerning Margaret, and then he began to chafe at what she had saidof Wetmore's honesty, apropos of her wish that he still had a classhimself. Did she mean, confound her? that he was insincere, and would letMiss Vance suppose she had more talent than she really had? The moreBeaton thought of this, the more furious he became, and the more he wasconvinced that something like it had been unconsciously if notconsciously in her mind. He framed some keen retorts, to the generaleffect that with the atmosphere of illusion preserved so completely athome, Miss Vance hardly needed it in her art studies. Having justdetermined never to go near Mrs. Horn's Thursdays again, he decided to goonce more, in order to plant this sting in her capacious but somewhatcallous bosom; and he planned how he would lead the talk up to the pointfrom which he should launch it. 

In the mean time he felt the need of some present solace, such as onlyunqualified worship could give him; a cruel wish to feel his power insome direction where, even if it were resisted, it could not be overcome, drove him on. That a woman who was to Beaton the embodiment ofartificiality should intimate, however innocently--the innocence made itall the worse--that he was less honest than Wetmore, whom he knew to beso much more honest, was something that must be retaliated somewherebefore his self-respect could be restored. It was only five o'clock, andhe went on up-town to the Dryfooses', though he had been there only thenight before last. He asked for the ladies, and Mrs. Mandel received him. 

"The young ladies are down-town shopping, " she said, "but I am very gladof the opportunity of seeing you alone, Mr. Beaton. You know I livedseveral years in Europe. "

"Yes, " said Beaton, wondering what that could have to do with herpleasure in seeing him alone. "I believe so?" He involuntarily gave hiswords the questioning inflection. 

"You have lived abroad, too, and so you won't find what I am going to askso strange. Mr. Beaton, why do you come so much to this house?" Mrs. Mandel bent forward with an aspect of ladylike interest and smiled. 

Beaton frowned. "Why do I come so much?"

"Yes. "

"Why do I--Excuse me, Mrs. Mandel, but will you allow me to ask why youask?"

"Oh, certainly. There's no reason why I shouldn't say, for I wish you tobe very frank with me. I ask because there are two young ladies in thishouse; and, in a certain way, I have to take the place of a mother tothem. I needn't explain why; you know all the people here, and youunderstand. I have nothing to say about them, but I should not bespeaking to you now if they were not all rather helpless people. They donot know the world they have come to live in here, and they cannot helpthemselves or one another. But you do know it, Mr. Beaton, and I am sureyou know just how much or how little you mean by coming here. You areeither interested in one of these young girls or you are not. If you are, I have nothing more to say. If you are not--" Mrs. Mandel continued tosmile, but the smile had grown more perfunctory, and it had an icy gleam. 

Beaton looked at her with surprise that he gravely kept to himself. Hehad always regarded her as a social nullity, with a kind of pity, to besure, as a civilized person living among such people as the Dryfooses, but not without a humorous contempt; he had thought of her as Mandel, andsometimes as Old Mandel, though she was not half a score of years hissenior, and was still well on the sunny side of forty. He reddened, andthen turned an angry pallor. "Excuse me again, Mrs. Mandel. Do you askthis from the young ladies?"

"Certainly not, " she said, with the best temper, and with something inher tone that convicted Beaton of vulgarity, in putting his question ofher authority in the form of a sneer. "As I have suggested, they wouldhardly know how to help themselves at all in such a matter. I have noobjection to saying that I ask it from the father of the young ladies. Ofcourse, in and for myself I should have no right to know anything aboutyour affairs. I assure you the duty of knowing isn't very pleasant. " Thelittle tremor in her clear voice struck Beaton as something rather nice. 

"I can very well believe that, Mrs. Mandel, " he said, with a dreamysadness in his own. He lifted his eyes and looked into hers. "If I toldyou that I cared nothing about them in the way you intimate?"

"Then I should prefer to let you characterize your own conduct incontinuing to come here for the year past, as you have done, and tacitlyleading them on to infer differently. " They both mechanically kept up thefiction of plurality in speaking of Christine, but there was no doubt inthe mind of either which of the young ladies the other meant. A good manythoughts went through Beaton's mind, and none of them were flattering. Hehad not been unconscious that the part he had played toward this girl wasignoble, and that it had grown meaner as the fancy which her beauty hadat first kindled in him had grown cooler. He was aware that of late hehad been amusing himself with her passion in a way that was not less thancruel, not because he wished to do so, but because he was listless andwished nothing. He rose in saying: "I might be a little more lenient thanyou think, Mrs. Mandel; but I won't trouble you with any palliatingtheory. I will not come any more. "

He bowed, and Mrs. Mandel said, "Of course, it's only your action that Iam concerned with. "

She seemed to him merely triumphant, and he could not conceive what ithad cost her to nerve herself up to her too easy victory. He left Mrs. Mandel to a far harder lot than had fallen to him, and he went awayhating her as an enemy who had humiliated him at a moment when heparticularly needed exalting. It was really very simple for him to stopgoing to see Christine Dryfoos, but it was not at all simple for Mrs. Mandel to deal with the consequences of his not coming. He only thoughthow lightly she had stopped him, and the poor woman whom he had lefttrembling for what she had been obliged to do embodied for him theconscience that accused him of unpleasant things. 

"By heavens! this is piling it up, " he said to himself through his setteeth, realizing how it had happened right on top of that stupid insultfrom Mrs. Horn. Now he should have to give up his place on 'Every OtherWeek; he could not keep that, under the circumstances, even if somepretence were not made to get rid of him; he must hurry and anticipateany such pretence; he must see Fulkerson at once; he wondered where heshould find him at that hour. He thought, with bitterness so real that itgave him a kind of tragical satisfaction, how certainly he could find hima little later at Mrs. Leighton's; and Fulkerson's happiness became anadded injury. 

The thing had, of course, come about just at the wrong time. There neverhad been a time when Beaton needed money more, when he had spent what hehad and what he expected to have so recklessly. He was in debt toFulkerson personally and officially for advance payments of salary. Thethought of sending money home made him break into a scoffing laugh, whichhe turned into a cough in order to deceive the passers. What sort of faceshould he go with to Fulkerson and tell him that he renounced hisemployment on 'Every Other Week;' and what should he do when he hadrenounced it? Take pupils, perhaps; open a class? A lurid conception of aclass conducted on those principles of shameless flattery at which Mrs. Horn had hinted--he believed now she had meant to insult him--presenteditself. Why should not he act upon the suggestion? He thought withloathing for the whole race of women--dabblers in art. How easy the thingwould be: as easy as to turn back now and tell that old fool's girl thathe loved her, and rake in half his millions. Why should not he do that?No one else cared for him; and at a year's end, probably, one woman wouldbe like another as far as the love was concerned, and probably he shouldnot be more tired if the woman were Christine Dryfoos than if she wereMargaret Vance. He kept Alma Leighton out of the question, because at thebottom of his heart he believed that she must be forever unlike everyother woman to him. 

The tide of his confused and aimless reverie had carried him fardown-town, he thought; but when he looked up from it to see where he washe found himself on Sixth Avenue, only a little below Thirty-ninthStreet, very hot and blown; that idiotic fur overcoat was stifling. Hecould not possibly walk down to Eleventh; he did not want to walk even tothe Elevated station at Thirty-fourth; he stopped at the corner to waitfor a surface-car, and fell again into his bitter fancies. After a whilehe roused himself and looked up the track, but there was no car coming. He found himself beside a policeman, who was lazily swinging his club byits thong from his wrist. 

"When do you suppose a car will be along?" he asked, rather in a generalsarcasm of the absence of the cars than in any special belief that thepoliceman could tell him. 

The policeman waited to discharge his tobacco-juice into the gutter. "Inabout a week, " he said, nonchalantly. 

"What's the matter?" asked Beaton, wondering what the joke could be. 

"Strike, " said the policeman. His interest in Beaton's ignorance seemedto overcome his contempt of it. "Knocked off everywhere this morningexcept Third Avenue and one or two cross-town lines. " He spat again andkept his bulk at its incline over the gutter to glance at a group of menon the corner below: They were neatly dressed, and looked like somethingbetter than workingmen, and they had a holiday air of being in their bestclothes. 

"Some of the strikers?" asked Beaton. 

The policeman nodded. 

"Any trouble yet?"

"There won't be any trouble till we begin to move the cars, " said thepoliceman. 

Beaton felt a sudden turn of his rage toward the men whose action wouldnow force him to walk five blocks and mount the stairs of the Elevatedstation. "If you'd take out eight or ten of those fellows, " he said, ferociously, "and set them up against a wall and shoot them, you'd save agreat deal of bother. "

"I guess we sha'n't have to shoot much, " said the policeman, stillswinging his locust. "Anyway, we shant begin it. If it comes to a fight, though, " he said, with a look at the men under the scooping rim of hishelmet, "we can drive the whole six thousand of 'em into the East Riverwithout pullin' a trigger. "

"Are there six thousand in it?"

"About. "

"What do the infernal fools expect to live on?"

"The interest of their money, I suppose, " said the officer, with a grinof satisfaction in his irony. "It's got to run its course. Then they'llcome back with their heads tied up and their tails between their legs, and plead to be taken on again. "

"If I was a manager of the roads, " said Beaton, thinking of how much hewas already inconvenienced by the strike, and obscurely connecting it asone of the series with the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of Mrs. Horn and Mrs. Mandel, "I would see them starve before I'd take themback--every one of them. "

"Well, " said the policeman, impartially, as a man might whom thecompanies allowed to ride free, but who had made friends with a good manydrivers and conductors in the course of his free riding, "I guess that'swhat the roads would like to do if they could; but the men are too manyfor them, and there ain't enough other men to take their places. "

"No matter, " said Beaton, severely. "They can bring in men from otherplaces. "

"Oh, they'll do that fast enough, " said the policeman. 

A man came out of the saloon on the corner where the strikers werestanding, noisy drunk, and they began, as they would have said, to havesome fun with him. The policeman left Beaton, and sauntered slowly downtoward the group as if in the natural course of an afternoon ramble. Onthe other side of the street Beaton could see another officer saunteringup from the block below. Looking up and down the avenue, so silent of itshorse-car bells, he saw a policeman at every corner. It was ratherimpressive. 

III. 

The strike made a good deal of talk in it he office of 'Every Other Week'that is, it made Fulkerson talk a good deal. He congratulated himselfthat he was not personally incommoded by it, like some of the fellows wholived uptown, and had not everything under one roof, as it were. Heenjoyed the excitement of it, and he kept the office boy running out tobuy the extras which the newsmen came crying through the street almostevery hour with a lamentable, unintelligible noise. He read not only thelatest intelligence of the strike, but the editorial comments on it, which praised the firm attitude of both parties, and the admirablemeasures taken by the police to preserve order. Fulkerson enjoyed theinterviews with the police captains and the leaders of the strike; heequally enjoyed the attempts of the reporters to interview the roadmanagers, which were so graphically detailed, and with such a finefeeling for the right use of scare-heads as to have almost the value ofdirect expression from them, though it seemed that they had resolutelyrefused to speak. He said, at second-hand from the papers, that if themen behaved themselves and respected the rights of property, they wouldhave public sympathy with them every time; but just as soon as they beganto interfere with the roads' right to manage their own affairs in theirown way, they must be put down with an iron hand; the phrase "iron hand"did Fulkerson almost as much good as if it had never been used before. News began to come of fighting between the police and the strikers whenthe roads tried to move their cars with men imported from Philadelphia, and then Fulkerson rejoiced at the splendid courage of the police. At thesame time, he believed what the strikers said, and that the trouble wasnot made by them, but by gangs of roughs acting without their approval. In this juncture he was relieved by the arrival of the State Board ofArbitration, which took up its quarters, with a great many scare-heads, at one of the principal hotels, and invited the roads and the strikers tolay the matter in dispute before them; he said that now we should see theworking of the greatest piece of social machinery in modern times. But itappeared to work only in the alacrity of the strikers to submit theirgrievance. The road; were as one road in declaring that there was nothingto arbitrate, and that they were merely asserting their right to managetheir own affairs in their own way. One of the presidents was reported tohave told a member of the Board, who personally summoned him, to get outand to go about his business. Then, to Fulkerson's extremedisappointment, the august tribunal, acting on behalf of the sovereignpeople in the interest of peace, declared itself powerless, and got out, and would, no doubt, have gone about its business if it had had any. Fulkerson did not know what to say, perhaps because the extras did not;but March laughed at this result. 

"It's a good deal like the military manoeuvre of the King of France andhis forty thousand men. I suppose somebody told him at the top of thehill that there was nothing to arbitrate, and to get out and go about hisbusiness, and that was the reason he marched down after he had marched upwith all that ceremony. What amuses me is to find that in an affair ofthis kind the roads have rights and the strikers have rights, but thepublic has no rights at all. The roads and the strikers are allowed tofight out a private war in our midst as thoroughly and precisely aprivate war as any we despise the Middle Ages for having tolerated--asany street war in Florence or Verona--and to fight it out at our painsand expense, and we stand by like sheep and wait till they get tired. It's a funny attitude for a city of fifteen hundred thousandinhabitants. "

"What would you do?" asked Fulkerson, a good deal daunted by this view ofthe case. 

"Do? Nothing. Hasn't the State Board of Arbitration declared itselfpowerless? We have no hold upon the strikers; and we're so used to beingsnubbed and disobliged by common carriers that we have forgotten our holdon the roads and always allow them to manage their own affairs in theirown way, quite as if we had nothing to do with them and they owed us noservices in return for their privileges. "

"That's a good deal so, " said Fulkerson, disordering his hair. "Well, it's nuts for the colonel nowadays. He says if he was boss of this townhe would seize the roads on behalf of the people, and man 'em withpolicemen, and run 'em till the managers had come to terms with thestrikers; and he'd do that every time there was a strike. "

"Doesn't that rather savor of the paternalism he condemned in Lindau?"asked March. 

"I don't know. It savors of horse sense. "

"You are pretty far gone, Fulkerson. I thought you were the most engagedman I ever saw; but I guess you're more father-in-lawed. And beforeyou're married, too. "

"Well, the colonel's a glorious old fellow, March. I wish he had thepower to do that thing, just for the fun of looking on while he waltzedin. He's on the keen jump from morning till night, and he's up late andearly to see the row. I'm afraid he'll get shot at some of the fights; hesees them all; I can't get any show at them: haven't seen a brickbatshied or a club swung yet. Have you?"

"No, I find I can philosophize the situation about as well from thepapers, and that's what I really want to do, I suppose. Besides, I'msolemnly pledged by Mrs. March not to go near any sort of crowd, underpenalty of having her bring the children and go with me. Her theory isthat we must all die together; the children haven't been at school sincethe strike began. There's no precaution that Mrs. March hasn't used. Shewatches me whenever I go out, and sees that I start straight for thisoffice. "

Fulkerson laughed and said: "Well, it's probably the only thing that'ssaved your life. Have you seen anything of Beaton lately?"

"No. You don't mean to say he's killed!"

"Not if he knows it. But I don't know--What do you say, March? What's thereason you couldn't get us up a paper on the strike?"

"I knew it would fetch round to 'Every Other Week, ' somehow. "

"No, but seriously. There 'll be plenty of news paper accounts. But youcould treat it in the historical spirit--like something that happenedseveral centuries ago; De Foe's Plague of London style. Heigh? What mademe think of it was Beaton. If I could get hold of him, you two could goround together and take down its aesthetic aspects. It's a big thing, March, this strike is. I tell you it's imposing to have a private war, asyou say, fought out this way, in the heart of New York, and New York notminding, it a bit. See? Might take that view of it. With yourdescriptions and Beaton's sketches--well, it would just be the greatestcard! Come! What do you say?"

"Will you undertake to make it right with Mrs. March if I'm killed andshe and the children are not killed with me?"

"Well, it would be difficult. I wonder how it would do to get Kendricksto do the literary part?"

"I've no doubt he'd jump at the chance. I've yet to see the form ofliterature that Kendricks wouldn't lay down his life for. "

"Say!" March perceived that Fulkerson was about to vent anotherinspiration, and smiled patiently. "Look here! What's the reason wecouldn't get one of the strikers to write it up for us?"

"Might have a symposium of strikers and presidents, " March suggested. 

"No; I'm in earnest. They say some of those fellows-especially theforeigners--are educated men. I know one fellow--a Bohemian--that used toedit a Bohemian newspaper here. He could write it out in his kind ofDutch, and we could get Lindau to translate it. "

"I guess not, " said March, dryly. 

"Why not? He'd do it for the cause, wouldn't he? Suppose you put it up onhim the next time you see him. "

"I don't see Lindau any more, " said March. He added, "I guess he'srenounced me along with Mr. Dryfoos's money. "

"Pshaw! You don't mean he hasn't been round since?"

"He came for a while, but he's left off coming now. I don't feelparticularly gay about it, " March said, with some resentment ofFulkerson's grin. "He's left me in debt to him for lessons to thechildren. "

Fulkerson laughed out. "Well, he is the greatest old fool! Who'd 'a'thought he'd 'a' been in earnest with those 'brincibles' of his? But Isuppose there have to be just such cranks; it takes all kinds to make aworld. "

"There has to be one such crank, it seems, " March partially assented. "One's enough for me. "

"I reckon this thing is nuts for Lindau, too, " said Fulkerson. "Why, itmust act like a schooner of beer on him all the while, to see 'gabidal'embarrassed like it is by this strike. It must make old Lindau feel likehe was back behind those barricades at Berlin. Well, he's a splendid oldfellow; pity he drinks, as I remarked once before. "

When March left the office he did not go home so directly as he came, perhaps because Mrs. March's eye was not on him. He was very curiousabout some aspects of the strike, whose importance, as a great socialconvulsion, he felt people did not recognize; and, with his temperance ineverything, he found its negative expressions as significant as its moreviolent phases. He had promised his wife solemnly that he would keep awayfrom these, and he had a natural inclination to keep his promise; he hadno wish to be that peaceful spectator who always gets shot when there isany firing on a mob. He interested himself in the apparent indifferenceof the mighty city, which kept on about its business as tranquilly as ifthe private war being fought out in its midst were a vague rumor ofIndian troubles on the frontier; and he realized how there might oncehave been a street feud of forty years in Florence without interferingmaterially with the industry and prosperity of the city. On Broadwaythere was a silence where a jangle and clatter of horse-car bells andhoofs had been, but it was not very noticeable; and on the avenues, roofed by the elevated roads, this silence of the surface tracks was notnoticeable at all in the roar of the trains overhead. Some of thecross-town cars were beginning to run again, with a policeman on the rearof each; on the Third Avenge line, operated by non-union men, who had notstruck, there were two policemen beside the driver of every car, and twobeside the conductor, to protect them from the strikers. But there wereno strikers in sight, and on Second Avenue they stood quietly about ingroups on the corners. While March watched them at a safe distance, a carladen with policemen came down the track, but none of the strikersoffered to molest it. In their simple Sunday best, March thought themvery quiet, decent-looking people, and he could well believe that theyhad nothing to do with the riotous outbreaks in other parts of the city. He could hardly believe that there were any such outbreaks; he began moreand more to think them mere newspaper exaggerations in the absence of anydisturbance, or the disposition to it, that he could see. He walked on tothe East River. 

Avenues A, B, and C presented the same quiet aspect as Second Avenue;groups of men stood on the corners, and now and then a police-laden carwas brought unmolested down the tracks before them; they looked at it andtalked together, and some laughed, but there was no trouble. 

March got a cross-town car, and came back to the West Side. A policeman, looking very sleepy and tired, lounged on the platform. 

"I suppose you'll be glad when this cruel war is over, " March suggested, as he got in. 

The officer gave him a surly glance and made him no answer. 

His behavior, from a man born to the joking give and take of our life, impressed March. It gave him a fine sense of the ferocity which he hadread of the French troops putting on toward the populace just before thecoup d'etat; he began to feel like the populace; but he struggled withhimself and regained his character of philosophical observer. In thischaracter he remained in the car and let it carry him by the corner wherehe ought to have got out and gone home, and let it keep on with him toone of the farthermost tracks westward, where so much of the fighting wasreported to have taken place. But everything on the way was as quiet ason the East Side. 

Suddenly the car stopped with so quick a turn of the brake that he washalf thrown from his seat, and the policeman jumped down from theplatform and ran forward. 

IV

Dryfoos sat at breakfast that morning with Mrs. Mandel as usual to pourout his coffee. Conrad had gone down-town; the two girls lay abed muchlater than their father breakfasted, and their mother had gradually growntoo feeble to come down till lunch. Suddenly Christine appeared at thedoor. Her face was white to the edges of her lips, and her eyes wereblazing. 

"Look here, father! Have you been saying anything to Mr. Beaton?"

The old man looked up at her across his coffee-cup through his frowningbrows. "No. "

Mrs. Mandel dropped her eyes, and the spoon shook in her hand. 

"Then what's the reason he don't come here any more?" demanded the girl;and her glance darted from her father to Mrs. Mandel. "Oh, it's you, isit? I'd like to know who told you to meddle in other people's business?"

"I did, " said Dryfoos, savagely. "I told her to ask him what he wantedhere, and he said he didn't want anything, and he stopped coming. That'sall. I did it myself. "

"Oh, you did, did you?" said the girl, scarcely less insolently than shehad spoken to Mrs. Mandel. "I should like to know what you did it for?I'd like to know what made you think I wasn't able to take care ofmyself. I just knew somebody had been meddling, but I didn't suppose itwas you. I can manage my own affairs in my own way, if you please, andI'll thank you after this to leave me to myself in what don't concernyou. "

"Don't concern me? You impudent jade!" her father began. 

Christine advanced from the doorway toward the table; she had her handsclosed upon what seemed trinkets, some of which glittered and dangledfrom them. She said, "Will you go to him and tell him that thismeddlesome minx, here, had no business to say anything about me to him, and you take it all back?"

"No!" shouted the old man. "And if--"

"That's all I want of you!" the girl shouted in her turn. "Here are yourpresents. " With both hands she flung the jewels-pins and rings andearrings and bracelets--among the breakfast-dishes, from which some ofthem sprang to the floor. She stood a moment to pull the intaglio ringfrom the finger where Beaton put it a year ago, and dashed that at herfather's plate. Then she whirled out of the room, and they heard herrunning up-stairs. 

The old man made a start toward her, but he fell back in his chair beforeshe was gone, and, with a fierce, grinding movement of his jaws, controlled himself. "Take-take those things up, " he gasped to Mrs. Mandel. He seemed unable to rise again from his chair; but when she askedhim if he were unwell, he said no, with an air of offence, and gotquickly to his feet. He mechanically picked up the intaglio ring from thetable while he stood there, and put it on his little finger; his hand wasnot much bigger than Christine's. "How do you suppose she found it out?"he asked, after a moment. 

"She seems to have merely suspected it, " said Mrs. Mandel, in a tremor, and with the fright in her eyes which Christine's violence had broughtthere. 

"Well, it don't make any difference. She had to know, somehow, and nowshe knows. " He started toward the door of the library, as if to go intothe hall, where his hat and coat hung. 

"Mr. Dryfoos, " palpitated Mrs. Mandel, "I can't remain here, after thelanguage your daughter has used to me--I can't let you leave me--I--I'mafraid of her--"

"Lock yourself up, then, " said the old man, rudely. He added, from thehall before he went out, "I reckon she'll quiet down now. "

He took the Elevated road. The strike seemed a vary far-off thing, thoughthe paper he bought to look up the stockmarket was full of noisytypography about yesterday's troubles on the surface lines. Among themillions in Wall Street there was some joking and some swearing, but notmuch thinking, about the six thousand men who had taken such chances intheir attempt to better their condition. Dryfoos heard nothing of thestrike in the lobby of the Stock Exchange, where he spent two or threehours watching a favorite stock of his go up and go down under thebetting. By the time the Exchange closed it had risen eight points, andon this and some other investments he was five thousand dollars richerthan he had been in the morning. But he had expected to be richer still, and he was by no means satisfied with his luck. All through theexcitement of his winning and losing had played the dull, murderous ragehe felt toward they child who had defied him, and when the game was overand he started home his rage mounted into a sort of frenzy; he wouldteach her, he would break her. He walked a long way without thinking, andthen waited for a car. None came, and he hailed a passing coupe. 

"What has got all the cars?" he demanded of the driver, who jumped downfrom his box to open the door for him and get his direction. 

"Been away?" asked the driver. "Hasn't been any car along for a week. Strike. "

"Oh yes, " said Dryfoos. He felt suddenly giddy, and he remained staringat the driver after he had taken his seat. 

The man asked, "Where to?"

Dryfoos could not think of his street or number, and he said, withuncontrollable fury: "I told you once! Go up to West Eleventh, and drivealong slow on the south side; I'll show you the place. "

He could not remember the number of 'Every Other Week' office, where hesuddenly decided to stop before he went home. He wished to see Fulkerson, and ask him something about Beaton: whether he had been about lately, andwhether he had dropped any hint of what had happened concerningChristine; Dryfoos believed that Fulkerson was in the fellow'sconfidence. 

There was nobody but Conrad in the counting-room, whither Dryfoosreturned after glancing into Fulkerson's empty office. "Where'sFulkerson?" he asked, sitting down with his hat on. 

"He went out a few moments ago, " said Conrad, glancing at the clock. "I'mafraid he isn't coming back again today, if you wanted to see him. "

Dryfoos twisted his head sidewise and upward to indicate March's room. "That other fellow out, too?"

"He went just before Mr. Fulkerson, " answered Conrad. 

"Do you generally knock off here in the middle of the afternoon?" askedthe old man. 

"No, " said Conrad, as patiently as if his father had not been there ascore of times and found the whole staff of "Every Other Week" at workbetween four and five. "Mr. March, you know, always takes a good deal ofhis work home with him, and I suppose Mr. Fulkerson went out so earlybecause there isn't much doing to-day. Perhaps it's the strike that makesit dull. "

"The strike-yes! It's a pretty piece of business to have everythingthrown out because a parcel of lazy hounds want a chance to lay off andget drunk. " Dryfoos seemed to think Conrad would make some answer tothis, but the young man's mild face merely saddened, and he said nothing. "I've got a coupe out there now that I had to take because I couldn't geta car. If I had my way I'd have a lot of those vagabonds hung. They'rewaiting to get the city into a snarl, and then rob the houses--pack ofdirty, worthless whelps. They ought to call out the militia, and fireinto 'em. Clubbing is too good for them. " Conrad was still silent, andhis father sneered, "But I reckon you don't think so. "

"I think the strike is useless, " said Conrad. 

"Oh, you do, do you? Comin' to your senses a little. Gettin' tiredwalkin' so much. I should like to know what your gentlemen over there onthe East Side think about the strike, anyway. "

The young fellow dropped his eyes. "I am not authorized to speak forthem. "

"Oh, indeed! And perhaps you're not authorized to speak for yourself?"

"Father, you know we don't agree about these things. I'd rather nottalk--"

"But I'm goin' to make you talk this time!" cried Dryfoos, striking thearm of the chair he sat in with the side of his fist. A maddening thoughtof Christine came over him. "As long as you eat my bread, you have got todo as I say. I won't have my children telling me what I shall do andsha'n't do, or take on airs of being holier than me. Now, you just speakup! Do you think those loafers are right, or don't you? Come!"

Conrad apparently judged it best to speak. "I think they were veryfoolish to strike--at this time, when the Elevated roads can do thework. "

"Oh, at this time, heigh! And I suppose they think over there on the EastSide that it 'd been wise to strike before we got the Elevated. " Conradagain refused to answer, and his father roared, "What do you think?"

"I think a strike is always bad business. It's war; but sometimes theredon't seem any other way for the workingmen to get justice. They say thatsometimes strikes do raise the wages, after a while. "

"Those lazy devils were paid enough already, " shrieked the old man. 

"They got two dollars a day. How much do you think they ought to 'a' got?Twenty?"

Conrad hesitated, with a beseeching look at his father. But he decided toanswer. "The men say that with partial work, and fines, and other things, they get sometimes a dollar, and sometimes ninety cents a day. "

"They lie, and you know they lie, " said his father, rising and comingtoward him. "And what do you think the upshot of it all will be, afterthey've ruined business for another week, and made people hire hacks, andstolen the money of honest men? How is it going to end?"

"They will have to give in. "

"Oh, give in, heigh! And what will you say then, I should like to know?How will you feel about it then? Speak!"

"I shall feel as I do now. I know you don't think that way, and I don'tblame you--or anybody. But if I have got to say how I shall feel, why, Ishall feel sorry they didn't succeed, for I believe they have a righteouscause, though they go the wrong way to help themselves. "

His father came close to him, his eyes blazing, his teeth set. "Do youdare so say that to me?"

"Yes. I can't help it. I pity them; my whole heart is with those poormen. "

"You impudent puppy!" shouted the old man. He lifted his hand and struckhis son in the face. Conrad caught his hand with his own left, and, whilethe blood began to trickle from a wound that Christine's intaglio ringhad made in his temple, he looked at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and said, "Father!"

The old man wrenched his fist away and ran out of the house. Heremembered his address now, and he gave it as he plunged into the coupe. He trembled with his evil passion, and glared out of the windows at thepassers as he drove home; he only saw Conrad's mild, grieving, wonderingeyes, and the blood slowly trickling from the wound in his temple. 

Conrad went to the neat-set bowl in Fulkerson's comfortable room andwashed the blood away, and kept bathing the wound with the cold watertill it stopped bleeding. The cut was not deep, and he thought he wouldnot put anything on it. After a while he locked up the office and startedout, he hardly knew where. But he walked on, in the direction he hadtaken, till he found himself in Union Square, on the pavement in front ofBrentano's. It seemed to him that he heard some one calling gently tohim, "Mr. Dryfoos!"

V. 

Conrad looked confusedly around, and the same voice said again, "Mr. Dryfoos!" and he saw that it was a lady speaking to him from a coupebeside the curbing, and then he saw that it was Miss Vance. 

She smiled when, he gave signs of having discovered her, and came up tothe door of her carriage. "I am so glad to meet you. I have been longingto talk to somebody; nobody seems to feel about it as I do. Oh, isn't ithorrible? Must they fail? I saw cars running on all the lines as I cameacross; it made me sick at heart. Must those brave fellows give in? Andeverybody seems to hate them so--I can't bear it. " Her face was estrangedwith excitement, and there were traces of tears on it. "You must think mealmost crazy to stop you in the street this way; but when I caught sightof you I had to speak. I knew you would sympathize--I knew you would feelas I do. Oh, how can anybody help honoring those poor men for standing byone another as they do? They are risking all they have in the world forthe sake of justice! Oh, they are true heroes! They are staking the breadof their wives and children on the dreadful chance they've taken! But noone seems to understand it. No one seems to see that they are willing tosuffer more now that other poor men may suffer less hereafter. And thosewretched creatures that are coming in to take their places--thosetraitors--"

"We can't blame them for wanting to earn a living, Miss Vance, " saidConrad. 

"No, no! I don't blame them. Who am I, to do such a thing? It'swe--people like me, of my class--who make the poor betray one another. But this dreadful fighting--this hideous paper is full of it!" She heldup an extra, crumpled with her nervous reading. "Can't something be doneto stop it? Don't you think that if some one went among them, and triedto make them see how perfectly hopeless it was to resist the companiesand drive off the new men, he might do some good? I have wanted to go andtry; but I am a woman, and I mustn't! I shouldn't be afraid of thestrikers, but I'm afraid of what people would say!" Conrad kept pressinghis handkerchief to the cut in his temple, which he thought might bebleeding, and now she noticed this. "Are you hurt, Mr. Dryfoos? You lookso pale. "

"No, it's nothing--a little scratch I've got. "

"Indeed, you look pale. Have you a carriage? How will you get home? Willyou get in here with me and let me drive you?"

"No, no, " said Conrad, smiling at her excitement. "I'm perfectly well--"

"And you don't think I'm foolish and wicked for stopping you here andtalking in this way? But I know you feel as I do!"

"Yes, I feel as you do. You are right--right in every way--I mustn't keepyou--Good-bye. " He stepped back to bow, but she put her beautiful handout of the window, and when he took it she wrung his hand hard. 

"Thank you, thank you! You are good and you are just! But no one can doanything. It's useless!"

The type of irreproachable coachman on the box whose respectability hadsuffered through the strange behavior of his mistress in this interviewdrove quickly off at her signal, and Conrad stood a moment looking afterthe carriage. His heart was full of joy; it leaped; he thought it wouldburst. As he turned to walk away it seemed to him as if he mounted uponthe air. The trust she had shown him, the praise she had given him, thatcrush of the hand: he hoped nothing, he formed no idea from it, but itall filled him with love that cast out the pain and shame he had beensuffering. He believed that he could never be unhappy any more; thehardness that was in his mind toward his father went out of it; he sawhow sorely he had tried him; he grieved that he had done it, but themeans, the difference of his feeling about the cause of their quarrel, hewas solemnly glad of that since she shared it. He was only sorry for hisfather. "Poor father!" he said under his breath as he went along. Heexplained to her about his father in his reverie, and she pitied hisfather, too. 

He was walking over toward the West Side, aimlessly at first, and then attimes with the longing to do something to save those mistaken men fromthemselves forming itself into a purpose. Was not that what she meantwhen she bewailed her woman's helplessness? She must have wished him totry if he, being a man, could not do something; or if she did not, stillhe would try, and if she heard of it she would recall what she had saidand would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her pleasure inwhat he was going to do, he forgot almost what it was; but when he cameto a street-car track he remembered it, and looked up and down to see ifthere were any turbulent gathering of men whom he might mingle with andhelp to keep from violence. He saw none anywhere; and then suddenly, asif at the same moment, for in his exalted mood all events had adream-like simultaneity, he stood at the corner of an avenue, and in themiddle of it, a little way off, was a street-car, and around the car atumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men. The driver was lashing hishorses forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs, brickbats hailed upon the car, the horses, the men trying to move them. The mob closed upon them in a body, and thena patrol-wagon whirled up from the other side, and a squad of policemenleaped out and began to club the rioters. Conrad could see how theystruck them under the rims of their hats; the blows on their skullssounded as if they had fallen on stone; the rioters ran in alldirections. 

One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad stood, andthen he saw at his side a tall, old man, with a long, white beard, whowas calling out at the policemen: "Ah, yes! Glup the strikerss--gif it tothem! Why don't you co and glup the bresidents that insoalt your lawss, and gick your Boart of Arpidration out-of-toors? Glup the strikerss--theycot no friendts! They cot no money to pribe you, to dreat you!"

The officer lifted his club, and the old man threw his left arm up toshield his head. Conrad recognized Zindau, and now he saw the emptysleeve dangle in the air over the stump of his wrist. He heard a shot inthat turmoil beside the car, and something seemed to strike him in thebreast. He was going to say to the policeman: "Don't strike him! He's anold soldier! You see he has no hand!" but he could not speak, he couldnot move his tongue. The policeman stood there; he saw his face: it wasnot bad, not cruel; it was like the face of a statue, fixed, perdurable--a mere image of irresponsible and involuntary authority. ThenConrad fell forward, pierced through the heart by that shot fired fromthe car. 

March heard the shot as he scrambled out of his car, and at the samemoment he saw Lindau drop under the club of the policeman, who left himwhere he fell and joined the rest of the squad in pursuing the rioters. The fighting round the car in the avenue ceased; the driver whipped hishorses into a gallop, and the place was left empty. 

March would have liked to run; he thought how his wife had implored himto keep away from the rioting; but he could not have left Lindau lyingthere if he would. Something stronger than his will drew him to the spot, and there he saw Conrad, dead beside the old man. 

VI. 

In the cares which Mrs. March shared with her husband that night she wassupported partly by principle, but mainly by the, potent excitement whichbewildered Conrad's family and took all reality from what had happened. It was nearly midnight when the Marches left them and walked away towardthe Elevated station with Fulkerson. Everything had been done, by thattime, that could be done; and Fulkerson was not without that satisfactionin the business-like despatch of all the details which attends each stepin such an affair and helps to make death tolerable even to the mostsorely stricken. We are creatures of the moment; we live from one littlespace to another; and only one interest at a time fills these. Fulkersonwas cheerful when they got into the street, almost gay; and Mrs. Marchexperienced a rebound from her depression which she felt that she oughtnot to have experienced. But she condoned the offence a little inherself, because her husband remained so constant in his gravity; and, pending the final accounting he must make her for having been where hecould be of so much use from the first instant of the calamity, she wastenderly, gratefully proud of all the use he had been to Conrad's family, and especially his miserable old father. To her mind, March was theprincipal actor in the whole affair, and much more important in havingseen it than those who had suffered in it. In fact, he had sufferedincomparably. 

"Well, well, " said Fulkerson. "They'll get along now. We've done all wecould, and there's nothing left but for them to bear it. Of course it'sawful, but I guess it 'll come out all right. I mean, " he added, "they'llpull through now. "

"I suppose, " said March, "that nothing is put on us that we can't bear. But I should think, " he went on, musingly, "that when God sees what wepoor finite creatures can bear, hemmed round with this eternal darknessof death, He must respect us. "

"Basil!" said his wife. But in her heart she drew nearer to him for thewords she thought she ought to rebuke him for. 

"Oh, I know, " he said, "we school ourselves to despise human nature. ButGod did not make us despicable, and I say, whatever end He meant us for, He must have some such thrill of joy in our adequacy to fate as a fatherfeels when his son shows himself a man. When I think what we can be if wemust, I can't believe the least of us shall finally perish. "

"Oh, I reckon the Almighty won't scoop any of us, " said Fulkerson, with apiety of his own. 

"That poor boy's father!" sighed Mrs. March. "I can't get his face out ofmy sight. He looked so much worse than death. "

"Oh, death doesn't look bad, " said March. "It's life that looks so in itspresence. Death is peace and pardon. I only wish poor old Lindau was aswell out of it as Conrad there. "

"Ah, Lindau! He has done harm enough, " said Mrs. March. "I hope he willbe careful after this. "

March did not try to defend Lindau against her theory of the case, whichinexorably held him responsible for Conrad's death. 

"Lindau's going to come out all right, I guess, " said Fulkerson. "He wasfirst-rate when I saw him at the hospital to-night. " He whispered inMarch's ear, at a chance he got in mounting the station stairs: "I didn'tlike to tell you there at the house, but I guess you'd better know. Theyhad to take Lindau's arm off near the shoulder. Smashed all to pieces bythe clubbing. "

In the house, vainly rich and foolishly unfit for them, the bereavedfamily whom the Marches had just left lingered together, and tried to getstrength to part for the night. They were all spent with the fatigue thatcomes from heaven to such misery as theirs, and they sat in a torpor inwhich each waited for the other to move, to speak. 

Christine moved, and Mela spoke. Christine rose and went out of the roomwithout saying a word, and they heard her going up-stairs. Then Melasaid:

"I reckon the rest of us better be goun' too, father. Here, let's gitmother started. "

She put her arm round her mother, to lift her from her chair, but the oldman did not stir, and Mela called Mrs. Mandel from the next room. Betweenthem they raised her to her feet. 

"Ain't there anybody agoin' to set up with it?" she asked, in her hoarsepipe. "It appears like folks hain't got any feelin's in New York. Woon'tsome o' the neighbors come and offer to set up, without waitin' to beasked?"

"Oh, that's all right, mother. The men 'll attend to that. Don't youbother any, " Mela coaxed, and she kept her arm round her mother, withtender patience. 

"Why, Mely, child! I can't feel right to have it left to hirelin's so. But there ain't anybody any more to see things done as they ought. IfCoonrod was on'y here--"

"Well, mother, you are pretty mixed!" said Mela, with a strong tendencyto break into her large guffaw. But she checked herself and said: "I knowjust how you feel, though. It keeps acomun' and agoun'; and it's so andit ain't so, all at once; that's the plague of it. Well, father! Ain'tyou goun' to come?"

"I'm goin' to stay, Mela, " said the old man, gently, without moving. "Getyour mother to bed, that's a good girl. "

"You goin' to set up with him, Jacob?" asked the old woman. 

"Yes, 'Liz'beth, I'll set up. You go to bed. "

"Well, I will, Jacob. And I believe it 'll do you good to set up. Iwished I could set up with you; but I don't seem to have the stren'th Idid when the twins died. I must git my sleep, so's to--I don't like verywell to have you broke of your rest, Jacob, but there don't appear to beanybody else. You wouldn't have to do it if Coonrod was here. There I goag'in! Mercy! mercy!"

"Well, do come along, then, mother, " said Mela; and she got her out ofthe room, with Mrs. Mandel's help, and up the stairs. 

From the top the old woman called down, "You tell Coonrod--" She stopped, and he heard her groan out, "My Lord! my Lord!"

He sat, one silence in the dining-room, where they had all lingeredtogether, and in the library beyond the hireling watcher sat, anothersilence. The time passed, but neither moved, and the last noise in thehouse ceased, so that they heard each other breathe, and the vague, remote rumor of the city invaded the inner stillness. It grew loudertoward morning, and then Dryfoos knew from the watcher's deeper breathingthat he had fallen into a doze. 

He crept by him to the drawing-room, where his son was; the place wasfull of the awful sweetness of the flowers that Fulkerson had brought, and that lay above the pulseless breast. The old man turned up a burnerin the chandelier, and stood looking on the majestic serenity of the deadface. 

He could not move when he saw his wife coming down the stairway in thehall. She was in her long, white flannel bed gown, and the candle shecarried shook with her nervous tremor. He thought she might be walking inher sleep, but she said, quite simply, "I woke up, and I couldn't git tosleep ag'in without comin' to have a look. " She stood beside their deadson with him, "well, he's beautiful, Jacob. He was the prettiest baby!And he was always good, Coonrod was; I'll say that for him. I don'tbelieve he ever give me a minute's care in his whole life. I reckon Iliked him about the best of all the children; but I don't know as I everdone much to show it. But you was always good to him, Jacob; you alwaysdone the best for him, ever since he was a little feller. I used to beafraid you'd spoil him sometimes in them days; but I guess you're gladnow for every time you didn't cross him. I don't suppose since the twinsdied you ever hit him a lick. " She stooped and peered closer at the face. "Why, Jacob, what's that there by his pore eye?" Dryfoos saw it, too, thewound that he had feared to look for, and that now seemed to redden onhis sight. He broke into a low, wavering cry, like a child's in despair, like an animal's in terror, like a soul's in the anguish of remorse. 

VII. 

The evening after the funeral, while the Marches sat together talking itover, and making approaches, through its shadow, to the question of theirown future, which it involved, they were startled by the twitter of theelectric bell at their apartment door. It was really not so late as thechildren's having gone to bed made it seem; but at nine o'clock it wastoo late for any probable visitor except Fulkerson. It might be he, andMarch was glad to postpone the impending question to his curiosityconcerning the immediate business Fulkerson might have with him. He wenthimself to the door, and confronted there a lady deeply veiled in blackand attended by a very decorous serving-woman. 

"Are you alone, Mr. March--you and Mrs. March?" asked the lady, behindher veil; and, as he hesitated, she said: "You don't know me! MissVance"; and she threw back her veil, showing her face wan and agitated inthe dark folds. "I am very anxious to see you--to speak with you both. May I come in?"

"Why, certainly, Miss Vance, " he answered, still too much stupefied byher presence to realize it. 

She promptly entered, and saying, with a glance at the hall chair by thedoor, "My maid can sit here?" followed him to the room where he had lefthis wife. 

Mrs. March showed herself more capable of coping with the fact. Shewelcomed Miss Vance with the liking they both felt for the girl, and withthe sympathy which her troubled face inspired. 

"I won't tire you with excuses for coming, Mrs. March, " she said, "for itwas the only thing left for me to do; and I come at my aunt'ssuggestion. " She added this as if it would help to account for her moreon the conventional plane, and she had the instinctive good taste toaddress herself throughout to Mrs. March as much as possible, though whatshe had to say was mainly for March. "I don't know how to begin--I don'tknow how to speak of this terrible affair. But you know what I mean. Ifeel as if I had lived a whole lifetime since it happened. I don't wantyou to pity me for it, " she said, forestalling a politeness from Mrs. March. "I'm the last one to be thought of, and you mustn't mind me if Itry to make you. I came to find out all of the truth that I can, and whenI know just what that is I shall know what to do. I have read theinquest; it's all burned into my brain. But I don't care for that--formyself: you must let me say such things without minding me. I know thatyour husband--that Mr. March was there; I read his testimony; and Iwished to ask him--to ask him--" She stopped and looked distractedlyabout. "But what folly! He must have said everything he knew--he had to. "Her eyes wandered to him from his wife, on whom she had kept them withinstinctive tact. 

"I said everything--yes, " he replied. "But if you would like to know--"

"Perhaps I had better tell you something first. I had just parted withhim--it couldn't have been more than half an hour--in front ofBrentano's; he must have gone straight to his death. We were talking, andI--I said, Why didn't some one go among the strikers and plead with themto be peaceable, and keep them from attacking the new men. I knew that hefelt as I did about the strikers: that he was their friend. Did yousee--do you know anything that makes you think he had been trying to dothat?"

"I am sorry, " March began, "I didn't see him at all till--till I saw himlying dead. "

"My husband was there purely by accident, " Mrs. March put in. "I hadbegged and entreated him not to go near the striking anywhere. And he hadjust got out of the car, and saw the policeman strike that wretchedLindau--he's been such an anxiety to me ever since we have had anythingto do with him here; my husband knew him when he was a boy in the West. Mr. March came home from it all perfectly prostrated; it made us allsick! Nothing so horrible ever came into our lives before. I assure youit was the most shocking experience. "

Miss Vance listened to her with that look of patience which those whohave seen much of the real suffering of the world--the daily portion ofthe poor--have for the nervous woes of comfortable people. March hung hishead; he knew it would be useless to protest that his share of thecalamity was, by comparison, infinitesimally small. 

After she had heard Mrs. March to the end even of her repetitions, MissVance said, as if it were a mere matter of course that she should havelooked the affair up, "Yes, I have seen Mr. Lindau at the hospital--"

"My husband goes every day to see him, " Mrs. March interrupted, to give. A final touch to the conception of March's magnanimity throughout. 

"The poor man seems to have been in the wrong at the time, " said MissVance. 

"I could almost say he had earned the right to be wrong. He's a man ofthe most generous instincts, and a high ideal of justice, of equity--toohigh to be considered by a policeman with a club in his hand, " saidMarch, with a bold defiance of his wife's different opinion of Lindau. "It's the policeman's business, I suppose, to club the ideal when hefinds it inciting a riot. "

"Oh, I don't blame Mr. Lindau; I don't blame the policeman; he was asmuch a mere instrument as his club was. I am only trying to find out howmuch I am to blame myself. I had no thought of Mr. Dryfoos's goingthere--of his attempting to talk with the strikers and keep them quiet; Iwas only thinking, as women do, of what I should try to do if I were aman. 

"But perhaps he understood me to ask him to go--perhaps my words sent himto his death. "

She had a sort of calm in her courage to know the worst truth as to herresponsibility that forbade any wish to flatter her out of it. "I'mafraid, " said March, "that is what can never be known now. " After amoment he added: "But why should you wish to know? If he went there as apeacemaker, he died in a good cause, in such a way as he would wish todie, I believe. "

"Yes, " said the girl; "I have thought of that. But death is awful; wemust not think patiently, forgivingly of sending any one to their deathin the best cause. "--"I fancy life was an awful thing to Conrad Dryfoos, "March replied. "He was thwarted and disappointed, without even pleasingthe ambition that thwarted and disappointed him. That poor old man, hisfather, warped him from his simple, lifelong wish to be a minister, andwas trying to make a business man of him. If it will be any consolationto you to know it, Miss Vance, I can assure you that he was very unhappy, and I don't see how he could ever have been happy here. "

"It won't, " said the girl, steadily. "If people are born into this world, it's because they were meant to live in it. It isn't a question of beinghappy here; no one is happy, in that old, selfish way, or can be; but hecould have been of great use. "

"Perhaps he was of use in dying. Who knows? He may have been trying tosilence Lindau. "

"Oh, Lindau wasn't worth it!" cried Mrs. March. 

Miss Vance looked at her as if she did not quite understand. Then sheturned to March. "He might have been unhappy, as we all are; but I knowthat his life here would have had a higher happiness than we wish for oraim for. " The tears began to run silently down her cheeks. 

"He looked strangely happy that day when he left me. He had hurt himselfsomehow, and his face was bleeding from a scratch; he kept hishandkerchief up; he was pale, but such a light came into his face when heshook hands--ah, I know he went to try and do what I said!" They were allsilent, while she dried her eyes and then put her handkerchief back intothe pocket from which she had suddenly pulled it, with a series of vivid, young-ladyish gestures, which struck March by their incongruity with theoccasion of their talk, and yet by their harmony with the rest of herelegance. "I am sorry, Miss Vance, " he began, "that I can't really tellyou anything more--"

"You are very kind, " she said, controlling herself and rising quickly. "Ithank you--thank you both very much. " She turned to Mrs. March and shookhands with her and then with him. "I might have known--I did know thatthere wasn't anything more for you to tell. But at least I've found outfrom you that there was nothing, and now I can begin to bear what I must. How are those poor creatures--his mother and father, his sisters? Someday, I hope, I shall be ashamed to have postponed them to the thought ofmyself; but I can't pretend to be yet. I could not come to the funeral; Iwanted to. "

She addressed her question to Mrs. March, who answered: "I canunderstand. But they were pleased with the flowers you sent; people are, at such times, and they haven't many friends. "

"Would you go to see them?" asked the girl. "Would you tell them whatI've told you?"

Mrs. March looked at her husband. 

"I don't see what good it would do. They wouldn't understand. But if itwould relieve you--"

"I'll wait till it isn't a question of self-relief, " said the girl. "Good-bye!"

She left them to long debate of the event. At the end Mrs. March said, "She is a strange being; such a mixture of the society girl and thesaint. "

Her husband answered: "She's the potentiality of several kinds offanatic. She's very unhappy, and I don't see how she's to be happierabout that poor fellow. I shouldn't be surprised if she did inspire himto attempt something of that kind. "

"Well, you got out of it very well, Basil. I admired the way you managed. I was afraid you'd say something awkward. "

"Oh, with a plain line of truth before me, as the only possible thing, Ican get on pretty well. When it comes to anything decorative, I'd ratherleave it to you, Isabel. "

She seemed insensible of his jest. "Of course, he was in love with her. That was the light that came into his face when he was going to do whathe thought she wanted him to do. "

"And she--do you think that she was--"

"What an idea! It would have been perfectly grotesque!"

VIII. 

Their affliction brought the Dryfooses into humaner relations with theMarches, who had hitherto regarded them as a necessary evil, as theodious means of their own prosperity. Mrs. March found that the women ofthe family seemed glad of her coming, and in the sense of her usefulnessto them all she began to feel a kindness even for Christine. But shecould not help seeing that between the girl and her father there was anunsettled account, somehow, and that it was Christine and not the old manwho was holding out. She thought that their sorrow had tended to refinethe others. Mela was much more subdued, and, except when she abandonedherself to a childish interest in her mourning, she did nothing to shockMrs. March's taste or to seem unworthy of her grief. She was very good toher mother, whom the blow had left unchanged, and to her father, whom ithad apparently fallen upon with crushing weight. Once, after visitingtheir house, Mrs. March described to March a little scene between Dryfoosand Mela, when he came home from Wall Street, and the girl met him at thedoor with a kind of country simpleness, and took his hat and stick, andbrought him into the room where Mrs. March sat, looking tired and broken. She found this look of Dryfoos's pathetic, and dwelt on the sort ofstupefaction there was in it; he must have loved his son more than theyever realized. "Yes, " said March, "I suspect he did. He's never beenabout the place since that day; he was always dropping in before, on hisway up-town. He seems to go down to Wall Street every day, just asbefore, but I suppose that's mechanical; he wouldn't know what else todo; I dare say it's best for him. The sanguine Fulkerson is getting alittle anxious about the future of 'Every Other Week. ' Now Conrad's gone, he isn't sure the old man will want to keep on with it, or whether he'llhave to look up another Angel. He wants to get married, I imagine, and hecan't venture till this point is settled. "

"It's a very material point to us too, Basil, " said Mrs. March. 

"Well, of course. I hadn't overlooked that, you may be sure. One of thethings that Fulkerson and I have discussed is a scheme for buying themagazine. Its success is pretty well assured now, and I shouldn't beafraid to put money into it--if I had the money. "

"I couldn't let you sell the house in Boston, Basil!"

"And I don't want to. I wish we could go back and live in it and get therent, too! It would be quite a support. But I suppose if Dryfoos won'tkeep on, it must come to another Angel. I hope it won't be a literaryone, with a fancy for running my department. "

"Oh, I guess whoever takes the magazine will be glad enough to keep you!"

"Do you think so? Well, perhaps. But I don't believe Fulkerson would letme stand long between him and an Angel of the right description. "

"Well, then, I believe he would. And you've never seen anything, Basil, to make you really think that Mr. Fulkerson didn't appreciate you to theutmost. "

"I think I came pretty near an undervaluation in that Lindau trouble. Ishall always wonder what put a backbone into Fulkerson just at thatcrisis. Fulkerson doesn't strike me as the stuff of a moral hero. "

"At any rate, he was one, " said Mrs. March, "and that's quite enough forme. "

March did not answer. "What a noble thing life is, anyway! Here I am, well on the way to fifty, after twenty-five years of hard work, lookingforward to the potential poor-house as confidently as I did in youth. Wemight have saved a little more than we have saved; but the little morewouldn't avail if I were turned out of my place now; and we should havelived sordidly to no purpose. Some one always has you by the throat, unless you have some one else in your grip. I wonder if that's theattitude the Almighty intended His respectable creatures to take towardone another! I wonder if He meant our civilization, the battle we fightin, the game we trick in! I wonder if He considers it final, and if thekingdom of heaven on earth, which we pray for--"

"Have you seen Lindau to-day?" Mrs. March asked. 

"You inferred it from the quality of my piety?" March laughed, and thensuddenly sobered. "Yes, I saw him. It's going rather hard with him, I'mafraid. The amputation doesn't heal very well; the shock was very great, and he's old. It 'll take time. There's so much pain that they have tokeep him under opiates, and I don't think he fully knew me. At any rate, I didn't get my piety from him to-day. "

"It's horrible! Horrible!" said Mrs. March. "I can't get over it! Afterlosing his hand in the war, to lose his whole arm now in this way! Itdoes seem too cruel! Of course he oughtn't to have been there; we can saythat. But you oughtn't to have been there, either, Basil. "

"Well, I wasn't exactly advising the police to go and club the railroadpresidents. "

"Neither was poor Conrad Dryfoos. "

"I don't deny it. All that was distinctly the chance of life and death. That belonged to God; and no doubt it was law, though it seems chance. But what I object to is this economic chance-world in which we live, andwhich we men seem to have created. It ought to be law as inflexible inhuman affairs as the order of day and night in the physical world that ifa man will work he shall both rest and eat, and shall not be harassedwith any question as to how his repose and his provision shall come. Nothing less ideal than this satisfies the reason. But in our state ofthings no one is secure of this. No one is sure of finding work; no oneis sure of not losing it. I may have my work taken away from me at anymoment by the caprice, the mood, the indigestion of a man who has not thequalification for knowing whether I do it well, or ill. At my time oflife--at every time of life--a man ought to feel that if he will keep ondoing his duty he shall not suffer in himself or in those who are dear tohim, except through natural causes. But no man can feel this as thingsare now; and so we go on, pushing and pulling, climbing and crawling, thrusting aside and trampling underfoot; lying, cheating, stealing; andthen we get to the end, covered with blood and dirt and sin and shame, and look back over the way we've come to a palace of our own, or thepoor-house, which is about the only possession we can claim in commonwith our brother-men, I don't think the retrospect can be pleasing. "

"I know, I know!" said his wife. "I think of those things, too, Basil. Life isn't what it seems when you look forward to it. But I think peoplewould suffer less, and wouldn't have to work so hard, and could make allreasonable provision for the future, if they were not so greedy and sofoolish. "

"Oh, without doubt! We can't put it all on the conditions; we must putsome of the blame on character. But conditions make character; and peopleare greedy and foolish, and wish to have and to shine, because having andshining are held up to them by civilization as the chief good of life. Weall know they are not the chief good, perhaps not good at all; but ifsome one ventures to say so, all the rest of us call him a fraud and acrank, and go moiling and toiling on to the palace or the poor-house. Wecan't help it. If one were less greedy or less foolish, some one elsewould have and would shine at his expense. We don't moil and toil toourselves alone; the palace or the poor-house is not merely forourselves, but for our children, whom we've brought up in thesuperstition that having and shining is the chief good. We dare not teachthem otherwise, for fear they may falter in the fight when it comes theirturn, and the children of others will crowd them out of the palace intothe poor-house. If we felt sure that honest work shared by all wouldbring them honest food shared by all, some heroic few of us, who did notwish our children to rise above their fellows--though we could not bearto have them fall below--might trust them with the truth. But we have nosuch assurance, and so we go on trembling before Dryfooses and living ingimcrackeries. "

"Basil, Basil! I was always willing to live more simply than you. Youknow I was!"

"I know you always said so, my dear. But how many bell-ratchets andspeaking-tubes would you be willing to have at the street door below? Iremember that when we were looking for a flat you rejected every buildingthat had a bell-ratchet or a speaking-tube, and would have nothing to dowith any that had more than an electric button; you wanted a hall-boy, with electric buttons all over him. I don't blame you. I find such thingsquite as necessary as you do. "

"And do you mean to say, Basil, " she asked, abandoning this unprofitablebranch of the inquiry, "that you are really uneasy about your place? thatyou are afraid Mr. Dryfoos may give up being an Angel, and Mr. Fulkersonmay play you false?"

"Play me false? Oh, it wouldn't be playing me false. It would be merelylooking out for himself, if the new Angel had editorial tastes and wantedmy place. It's what any one would do. "

"You wouldn't do it, Basil!"

"Wouldn't I? Well, if any one offered me more salary than 'Every OtherWeek' pays--say, twice as much--what do you think my duty to my sufferingfamily would be? It's give and take in the business world, Isabel;especially take. But as to being uneasy, I'm not, in the least. I've thespirit of a lion, when it comes to such a chance as that. When I see howreadily the sensibilities of the passing stranger can be worked in NewYork, I think of taking up the role of that desperate man on Third Avenuewho went along looking for garbage in the gutter to eat. I think I couldpick up at least twenty or thirty cents a day by that little game, andmaintain my family in the affluence it's been accustomed to. "

"Basil!" cried his wife. "You don't mean to say that man was an impostor!And I've gone about, ever since, feeling that one such case in a million, the bare possibility of it, was enough to justify all that Lindau saidabout the rich and the poor!"

March laughed teasingly. "Oh, I don't say he was an impostor. Perhaps hereally was hungry; but, if he wasn't, what do you think of a civilizationthat makes the opportunity of such a fraud? that gives us all such a badconscience for the need which is that we weaken to the need that isn't?Suppose that poor fellow wasn't personally founded on fact: nevertheless, he represented the truth; he was the ideal of the suffering which wouldbe less effective if realistically treated. That man is a great comfortto me. He probably rioted for days on that quarter I gave him; made adinner very likely, or a champagne supper; and if 'Every Other Week'wants to get rid of me, I intend to work that racket. You can hang roundthe corner with Bella, and Tom can come up to me in tears, at statedintervals, and ask me if I've found anything yet. To be sure, we might bearrested and sent up somewhere. But even in that extreme case we shouldbe provided for. Oh no, I'm not afraid of losing my place! I've merely asort of psychological curiosity to know how men like Dryfoos andFulkerson will work out the problem before them. "

IX. 

It was a curiosity which Fulkerson himself shared, at least concerningDryfoos. "I don't know what the old man's going to do, " he said to Marchthe day after the Marches had talked their future over. "Said anything toyou yet?"

"No, not a word. "

"You're anxious, I suppose, same as I am. Fact is, " said Fulkerson, blushing a little, "I can't ask to have a day named till I know where Iam in connection with the old man. I can't tell whether I've got to lookout for something else or somebody else. Of course, it's full soon yet. "

"Yes, " March said, "much sooner than it seems to us. We're so anxiousabout the future that we don't remember how very recent the past is. "

"That's something so. The old man's hardly had time yet to pull himselftogether. Well, I'm glad you feel that way about it, March. I guess it'smore of a blow to him than we realize. He was a good deal bound up inCoonrod, though he didn't always use him very well. Well, I reckon it'sapt to happen so oftentimes; curious how cruel love can be. Heigh? We'rean awful mixture, March!"

"Yes, that's the marvel and the curse, as Browning says. "

"Why, that poor boy himself, " pursued Fulkerson, had streaks of the mulein him that could give odds to Beaton, and he must have tried the old manby the way he would give in to his will and hold out against hisjudgment. I don't believe he ever budged a hairs-breadth from hisoriginal position about wanting to be a preacher and not wanting to be abusiness man. Well, of course! I don't think business is all in all; butit must have made the old man mad to find that without saying anything, or doing anything to show it, and after seeming to come over to hisground, and really coming, practically, Coonrod was just exactly where hefirst planted himself, every time. "

"Yes, people that have convictions are difficult. Fortunately, they'rerare. "

"Do you think so? It seems to me that everybody's got convictions. Beatonhimself, who hasn't a principle to throw at a dog, has got convictionsthe size of a barn. They ain't always the same ones, I know, but they'realways to the same effect, as far as Beaton's being Number One isconcerned. The old man's got convictions or did have, unless this thinglately has shaken him all up--and he believes that money will doeverything. Colonel Woodburn's got convictions that he wouldn't part withfor untold millions. Why, March, you got convictions yourself!"

"Have I?" said March. "I don't know what they are. "

"Well, neither do I; but I know you were ready to kick the trough overfor them when the old man wanted us to bounce Lindau that time. "

"Oh yes, " said March; he remembered the fact; but he was still uncertainjust what the convictions were that he had been so stanch for. 

"I suppose we could have got along without you, " Fulkerson mused aloud. "It's astonishing how you always can get along in this world without theman that is simply indispensable. Makes a fellow realize that he couldtake a day off now and then without deranging the solar system a greatdeal. Now here's Coonrod--or, rather, he isn't. But that boy managed hispart of the schooner so well that I used to tremble when I thought of hisgetting the better of the old man and going into a convent or somethingof that kind; and now here he is, snuffed out in half a second, and Idon't believe but what we shall be sailing along just as chipper as usualinside of thirty days. I reckon it will bring the old man to the pointwhen I come to talk with him about who's to be put in Coonrod's place. Idon't like very well to start the subject with him; but it's got to bedone some time. "

"Yes, " March admitted. "It's terrible to think how unnecessary even thebest and wisest of us is to the purposes of Providence. When I looked atthat poor young fellow's face sometimes--so gentle and true and pure--Iused to think the world was appreciably richer for his being in it. Butare we appreciably poorer for his being out of it now?"

"No, I don't reckon we are, " said Fulkerson. "And what a lot of the rawmaterial of all kinds the Almighty must have, to waste us the way Heseems to do. Think of throwing away a precious creature like CoonrodDryfoos on one chance in a thousand of getting that old fool of a Lindauout of the way of being clubbed! For I suppose that was what Coonrod wasup to. Say! Have you been round to see Lindau to-day?"

Something in the tone or the manner of Fulkerson startled March. "No! Ihaven't seen him since yesterday. "

"Well, I don't know, " said Fulkerson. "I guess I saw him a little whileafter you did, and that young doctor there seemed to feel kind of worriedabout him. 

"Or not worried, exactly; they can't afford to let such things worrythem, I suppose; but--"

"He's worse?" asked March. 

"Oh, he didn't say so. But I just wondered if you'd seen him to-day. "

"I think I'll go now, " said March, with a pang at heart. He had goneevery day to see Lindau, but this day he had thought he would not go, andthat was why his heart smote him. He knew that if he were in Lindau'splace Lindau would never have left his side if he could have helped it. March tried to believe that the case was the same, as it stood now; itseemed to him that he was always going to or from the hospital; he saidto himself that it must do Lindau harm to be visited so much. But he knewthat this was not true when he was met at the door of the ward whereLindau lay by the young doctor, who had come to feel a personal interestin March's interest in Lindau. 

He smiled without gayety, and said, "He's just going. "

"What! Discharged?"

"Oh no. He has been failing very fast since you saw him yesterday, andnow--" They had been walking softly and talking softly down the aislebetween the long rows of beds. "Would you care to see him?"

The doctor made a slight gesture toward the white canvas screen which insuch places forms the death-chamber of the poor and friendless. "Comeround this way--he won't know you! I've got rather fond of the poor oldfellow. He wouldn't have a clergyman--sort of agnostic, isn't he? A goodmany of these Germans are--but the young lady who's been coming to seehim--"

They both stopped. Lindau's grand, patriarchal head, foreshortened totheir view, lay white upon the pillow, and his broad, white beard flowedupon the sheet, which heaved with those long last breaths. Beside his bedMargaret Vance was kneeling; her veil was thrown back, and her face waslifted; she held clasped between her hands the hand of the dying man; shemoved her lips inaudibly. 

X. 

In spite of the experience of the whole race from time immemorial, whendeath comes to any one we know we helplessly regard it as an incident oflife, which will presently go on as before. Perhaps this is aninstinctive perception of the truth that it does go on somewhere; but wehave a sense of death as absolutely the end even for earth only if itrelates to some one remote or indifferent to us. March tried to projectLindau to the necessary distance from himself in order to realize thefact in his case, but he could not, though the man with whom his youthhad been associated in a poetic friendship had not actually reentered theregion of his affection to the same degree, or in any like degree. Thechanged conditions forbade that. He had a soreness of heart concerninghim; but he could not make sure whether this soreness was grief for hisdeath, or remorse for his own uncandor with him about Dryfoos, or aforeboding of that accounting with his conscience which he knew his wifewould now exact of him down to the last minutest particular of theirjoint and several behavior toward Lindau ever since they had met him inNew York. 

He felt something knock against his shoulder, and he looked up to havehis hat struck from his head by a horse's nose. He saw the horse put hisfoot on the hat, and he reflected, "Now it will always look like anaccordion, " and he heard the horse's driver address him some sarcasmsbefore he could fully awaken to the situation. He was standing bareheadedin the middle of Fifth Avenue and blocking the tide of carriages flowingin either direction. Among the faces put out of the carriage windows hesaw that of Dryfoos looking from a coupe. The old man knew him, and said, "Jump in here, Mr. March"; and March, who had mechanically picked up hishat, and was thinking, "Now I shall have to tell Isabel about this atonce, and she will never trust me on the street again without her, "mechanically obeyed. Her confidence in him had been undermined by hisbeing so near Conrad when he was shot; and it went through his mind thathe would get Dryfoos to drive him to a hatter's, where he could buy a newhat, and not be obliged to confess his narrow escape to his wife till theincident was some days old and she could bear it better. It quite droveLindau's death out of his mind for the moment; and when Dryfoos said ifhe was going home he would drive up to the first cross-street and turnback with him, March said he would be glad if he would take him to ahat-store. The old man put his head out again and told the driver to takethem to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. "There's a hat-store around theresomewhere, seems to me, " he said; and they talked of March's accident aswell as they could in the rattle and clatter of the street till theyreached the place. March got his hat, passing a joke with the hatterabout the impossibility of pressing his old hat over again, and came outto thank Dryfoos and take leave of him. 

"If you ain't in any great hurry, " the old man said, "I wish you'd get inhere a minute. I'd like to have a little talk with you. "

"Oh, certainly, " said March, and he thought: "It's coming now about whathe intends to do with 'Every Other Week. ' Well, I might as well have allthe misery at once and have it over. "

Dryfoos called up to his driver, who bent his head down sidewise tolisten: "Go over there on Madison Avenue, onto that asphalt, and keepdrivin' up and down till I stop you. I can't hear myself think on thesepavements, " he said to March. But after they got upon the asphalt, andbegan smoothly rolling over it, he seemed in no haste to begin. At lasthe said, "I wanted to talk with you about that--that Dutchman that was atmy dinner--Lindau, " and March's heart gave a jump with wonder whether hecould already have heard of Lindau's death; but in an instant heperceived that this was impossible. "I been talkin' with Fulkerson abouthim, and he says they had to take the balance of his arm off. "

March nodded; it seemed to him he could not speak. He could not make outfrom the close face of the old man anything of his motive. It was set, but set as a piece of broken mechanism is when it has lost the power torelax itself. There was no other history in it of what the man had passedthrough in his son's death. 

"I don't know, " Dryfoos resumed, looking aside at the cloth window-strap, which he kept fingering, "as you quite understood what made me themaddest. I didn't tell him I could talk Dutch, because I can't keep it upwith a regular German; but my father was Pennsylvany Dutch, and I couldunderstand what he was saying to you about me. I know I had no businessto understood it, after I let him think I couldn't but I did, and Ididn't like very well to have a man callin' me a traitor and a tyrant atmy own table. Well, I look at it differently now, and I reckon I hadbetter have tried to put up with it; and I would, if I could haveknown--" He stopped with a quivering lip, and then went on: "Then, again, I didn't like his talkin' that paternalism of his. I always heard it wasthe worst kind of thing for the country; I was brought up to think thebest government was the one that governs the least; and I didn't want tohear that kind of talk from a man that was livin' on my money. I couldn'tbear it from him. Or I thought I couldn't before--before--" He stoppedagain, and gulped. "I reckon now there ain't anything I couldn't bear. "March was moved by the blunt words and the mute stare forward with whichthey ended. "Mr. Dryfoos, I didn't know that you understood Lindau'sGerman, or I shouldn't have allowed him he wouldn't have allowedhimself--to go on. He wouldn't have knowingly abused his position ofguest to censure you, no matter how much he condemned you. " "I don't carefor it now, " said Dryfoos. "It's all past and gone, as far as I'mconcerned; but I wanted you to see that I wasn't tryin' to punish him forhis opinions, as you said. "

"No; I see now, " March assented, though he thought, his position stilljustified. "I wish--"

"I don't know as I understand much about his opinions, anyway; but Iain't ready to say I want the men dependent on me to manage my businessfor me. I always tried to do the square thing by my hands; and in thatparticular case out there I took on all the old hands just as fast asthey left their Union. As for the game I came on them, it was dog eatdog, anyway. "

March could have laughed to think how far this old man was from evenconceiving of Lindau's point'of view, and how he was saying the worst ofhimself that Lindau could have said of him. No one could havecharacterized the kind of thing he had done more severely than he when hecalled it dog eat dog. 

"There's a great deal to be said on both sides, " March began, hoping tolead up through this generality to the fact of Lindau's death; but theold man went on:

"Well, all I wanted him to know is that I wasn't trying to punish him forwhat he said about things in general. You naturally got that idea, Ireckon; but I always went in for lettin' people say what they please andthink what they please; it's the only way in a free country. "

"I'm afraid, Mr. Dryfoos, that it would make little difference to Lindaunow--"

"I don't suppose he bears malice for it, " said Dryfoos, "but what I wantto do is to have him told so. He could understand just why I didn't wantto be called hard names, and yet I didn't object to his thinkin' whateverhe pleased. I'd like him to know--"

"No one can speak to him, no one can tell him, " March began again, butagain Dryfoos prevented him from going on. 

"I understand it's a delicate thing; and I'm not askin' you to do it. What I would really like to do--if you think he could be prepared for it, some way, and could stand it--would be to go to him myself, and tell himjust what the trouble was. I'm in hopes, if I done that, he could see howI felt about it. "

A picture of Dryfoos going to the dead Lindau with his vain regretspresented itself to March, and he tried once more to make the old manunderstand. "Mr. Dryfoos, " he said, "Lindau is past all that forever, "and he felt the ghastly comedy of it when Dryfoos continued, withoutheeding him. 

"I got a particular reason why I want him to believe it wasn't his ideasI objected to--them ideas of his about the government carryin' everythingon and givin' work. I don't understand 'em exactly, but I found awritin'--among--my son's-things" (he seemed to force the words throughhis teeth), "and I reckon he--thought--that way. Kind of a diary--wherehe--put down--his thoughts. My son and me--we differed about a good-manythings. " His chin shook, and from time to time he stopped. "I wasn't verygood to him, I reckon; I crossed him where I guess I got no business tocross him; but I thought everything of--Coonrod. He was the best boy, from a baby, that ever was; just so patient and mild, and done whateverhe was told. I ought to 'a' let him been a preacher! Oh, my son! my son!"The sobs could not be kept back any longer; they shook the old man with aviolence that made March afraid for him; but he controlled himself atlast with a series of hoarse sounds like barks. "Well, it's all past andgone! But as I understand you from what you saw, when Coonrodwas--killed, he was tryin' to save that old man from trouble?"

Yes, yes! It seemed so to me. "

"That 'll do, then! I want you to have him come back and write for thebook when he gets well. I want you to find out and let me know if there'sanything I can do for him. I'll feel as if I done it--for my--son. I'lltake him into my own house, and do for him there, if you say so, when hegets so he can be moved. I'll wait on him myself. It's what Coonrod 'ddo, if he was here. I don't feel any hardness to him because it was himthat got Coonrod killed, as you might say, in one sense of the term; butI've tried to think it out, and I feel like I was all the more beholdento him because my son died tryin' to save him. Whatever I do, I'll bedoin' it for Coonrod, and that's enough for me. " He seemed to havefinished, and he turned to March as if to hear what he had to say. 

March hesitated. "I'm afraid, Mr. Dryfoos--Didn't Fulkerson tell you thatLindau was very sick?"

"Yes, of course. But he's all right, he said. "

Now it had to come, though the fact had been latterly playing fast andloose with March's consciousness. Something almost made him smile; thewillingness he had once felt to give this old man pain; then he consoledhimself by thinking that at least he was not obliged to meet Dryfoos'swish to make atonement with the fact that Lindau had renounced him, andwould on no terms work for such a man as he, or suffer any kindness fromhim. In this light Lindau seemed the harder of the two, and March had themomentary force to say--

"Mr. Dryfoos--it can't be. Lindau--I have just come from him--is dead. "

XI. 

"How did he take it? How could he bear it? Oh, Basil! I wonder you couldhave the heart to say it to him. It was cruel!"

"Yes, cruel enough, my dear, " March owned to his wife, when they talkedthe matter over on his return home. He could not wait till the childrenwere out of the way, and afterward neither he nor his wife was sorry thathe had spoken of it before them. The girl cried plentifully for her oldfriend who was dead, and said she hated Mr. Dryfoos, and then was sorryfor him, too; and the boy listened to all, and spoke with a serious sensethat pleased his father. "But as to how he took it, " March went on toanswer his wife's question about Dryfoos--"how do any of us take a thingthat hurts? Some of us cry out, and some of us don't. Dryfoos drew a kindof long, quivering breath, as a child does when it grieves--there'ssomething curiously simple and primitive about him--and didn't sayanything. After a while he asked me how he could see the people at thehospital about the remains; I gave him my card to the young doctor therethat had charge of Lindau. I suppose he was still carrying forward hisplan of reparation in his mind--to the dead for the dead. But howuseless! If he could have taken the living Lindau home with him, andcared for him all his days, what would it have profited the gentlecreature whose life his worldly ambition vexed and thwarted here? Hemight as well offer a sacrifice at Conrad's grave. Children, " said March, turning to them, "death is an exile that no remorse and no love canreach. Remember that, and be good to every one here on earth, for yourlonging to retrieve any harshness or unkindness to the dead will be thevery ecstasy of anguish to you. I wonder, " he mused, "if one of thereasons why we're shut up to our ignorance of what is to be hereafterisn't because if we were sure of another world we might be still morebrutal to one another here, in the hope of making reparation somewhereelse. Perhaps, if we ever come to obey the law of love on earth, themystery of death will be taken away. "

"Well"--the ancestral Puritanism spoke in Mrs. March--"these two old menhave been terribly punished. They have both been violent and wilful, andthey have both been punished. No one need ever tell me there is not amoral government of the universe!"

March always disliked to hear her talk in this way, which did both herhead and heart injustice. "And Conrad, " he said, "what was he punishedfor?"

"He?"--she answered, in an exaltation--"he suffered for the sins ofothers. "

"Ah, well, if you put it in that way, yes. That goes on continually. That's another mystery. "

He fell to brooding on it, and presently he heard his son saying, "Isuppose, papa, that Mr. Lindau died in a bad cause?"

March was startled. He had always been so sorry for Lindau, and admiredhis courage and generosity so much, that he had never fairly consideredthis question. "Why, yes, " he answered; "he died in the cause ofdisorder; he was trying to obstruct the law. No doubt there was a wrongthere, an inconsistency and an injustice that he felt keenly; but itcould not be reached in his way without greater wrong. "

"Yes; that's what I thought, " said the boy. "And what's the use of ourever fighting about anything in America? I always thought we could voteanything we wanted. "

"We can, if we're honest, and don't buy and sell one another's votes, "said his father. "And men like Lindau, who renounce the American means ashopeless, and let their love of justice hurry them into sympathy withviolence--yes, they are wrong; and poor Lindau did die in a bad cause, asyou say, Tom. "

"I think Conrad had no business there, or you, either, Basil, " said hiswife. 

"Oh, I don't defend myself, " said March. "I was there in the cause ofliterary curiosity and of conjugal disobedience. But Conrad--yes, he hadsome business there: it was his business to suffer there for the sins ofothers. Isabel, we can't throw aside that old doctrine of the Atonementyet. The life of Christ, it wasn't only in healing the sick and goingabout to do good; it was suffering for the sins of others. That's asgreat a mystery as the mystery of death. Why should there be such aprinciple in the world? But it's been felt, and more or less dumbly, blindly recognized ever since Calvary. If we love mankind, pity them, weeven wish to suffer for them. That's what has created the religiousorders in all times--the brotherhoods and sisterhoods that belong to ourday as much as to the mediaeval past. That's what is driving a girl likeMargaret Vance, who has everything that the world can offer her youngbeauty, on to the work of a Sister of Charity among the poor and thedying. "

"Yes, yes!" cried Mrs. March. "How--how did she look there, Basil?" Shehad her feminine misgivings; she was not sure but the girl was somethingof a poseuse, and enjoyed the picturesqueness, as well as the pain; andshe wished to be convinced that it was not so. 

"Well, " she said, when March had told again the little there was to tell, "I suppose it must be a great trial to a woman like Mrs. Horn to have herniece going that way. "

"The way of Christ?" asked March, with a smile. 

"Oh, Christ came into the world to teach us how to live rightly in it, too. If we were all to spend our time in hospitals, it would be ratherdismal for the homes. But perhaps you don't think the homes are worthminding?" she suggested, with a certain note in her voice that he knew. 

He got up and kissed her. "I think the gimcrackeries are. " He took thehat he had set down on the parlor table on coming in, and started to putit in the hall, and that made her notice it. 

"You've been getting a new hat!"

"Yes, " he hesitated; "the old one had got--was decidedly shabby. "

"Well, that's right. I don't like you to wear them too long. Did youleave the old one to be pressed?"

"Well, the hatter seemed to think it was hardly worth pressing, " saidMarch. He decided that for the present his wife's nerves had quite allthey could bear. 

XII. 

It was in a manner grotesque, but to March it was all the more naturalfor that reason, that Dryfoos should have Lindau's funeral from hishouse. He knew the old man to be darkly groping, through the payment ofthese vain honors to the dead, for some atonement to his son, and heimagined him finding in them such comfort as comes from doing all onecan, even when all is useless. 

No one knew what Lindau's religion was, and in default they had had theAnglican burial service read over him; it seems so often the refuge ofthe homeless dead. Mrs. Dryfoos came down for the ceremony. Sheunderstood that it was for Coonrod's sake that his father wished thefuneral to be there; and she confided to Mrs. March that she believedCoonrod would have been pleased. "Coonrod was a member of the 'PiscopalChurch; and fawther's doin' the whole thing for Coonrod as much as foranybody. He thought the world of Coonrod, fawther did. Mela, she kind ofthought it would look queer to have two funerals from the same house, hand-runnin', as you might call it, and one of 'em no relation, either;but when she saw how fawther was bent on it, she give in. Seems as if shewas tryin' to make up to fawther for Coonrod as much as she could. Melaalways was a good child, but nobody can ever come up to Coonrod. "

March felt all the grotesqueness, the hopeless absurdity of Dryfoos'sendeavor at atonement in these vain obsequies to the man for whom hebelieved his son to have died; but the effort had its magnanimity, itspathos, and there was a poetry that appealed to him in the reconciliationthrough death of men, of ideas, of conditions, that could only have gonewarring on in life. He thought, as the priest went on with the solemnliturgy, how all the world must come together in that peace which, struggle and strive as we may, shall claim us at last. He looked atDryfoos, and wondered whether he would consider these rites a sufficienttribute, or whether there was enough in him to make him realize theirfutility, except as a mere sign of his wish to retrieve the past. Hethought how we never can atone for the wrong we do; the heart we havegrieved and wounded cannot kindle with pity for us when once it isstilled; and yet we can put our evil from us with penitence, and somehow, somewhere, the order of loving kindness, which our passion or ourwilfulness has disturbed, will be restored. 

Dryfoos, through Fulkerson, had asked all the more intimate contributorsof 'Every Other Week' to come. Beaton was absent, but Fulkerson hadbrought Miss Woodburn, with her father, and Mrs. Leighton and Alma, tofill up, as he said. Mela was much present, and was official with thearrangement of the flowers and the welcome of the guests. She impartedthis impersonality to her reception of Kendricks, whom Fulkerson met inthe outer hall with his party, and whom he presented in whisper to themall. Kendricks smiled under his breath, as it were, and was then mutelyand seriously polite to the Leightons. Alma brought a little bunch offlowers, which were lost in those which Dryfoos had ordered to beunsparingly provided. 

It was a kind of satisfaction to Mela to have Miss Vance come, andreassuring as to how it would look to have the funeral there; Miss Vancewould certainly not have come unless it had been all right; she had come, and had sent some Easter lilies. 

"Ain't Christine coming down?" Fulkerson asked Mela. 

"No, she ain't a bit well, and she ain't been, ever since Coonrod died. Idon't know, what's got over her, " said Mela. She added, "Well, I should'a' thought Mr. Beaton would 'a' made out to 'a' come!"

"Beaton's peculiar, " said Fulkerson. "If he thinks you want him he takesa pleasure in not letting you have him. "

"Well, goodness knows, I don't want him, " said the girl. 

Christine kept her room, and for the most part kept her bed; but thereseemed nothing definitely the matter with her, and she would not let themcall a doctor. Her mother said she reckoned she was beginning to feel thespring weather, that always perfectly pulled a body down in New York; andMela said if being as cross as two sticks was any sign of spring-fever, Christine had it bad. She was faithfully kind to her, and submitted toall her humors, but she recompensed herself by the freest criticism ofChristine when not in actual attendance on her. Christine would notsuffer Mrs. Mandel to approach her, and she had with her father a sullensubmission which was not resignation. For her, apparently, Conrad had notdied, or had died in vain. 

"Pshaw!" said Mela, one morning when she came to breakfast, "I reckon ifwe was to send up an old card of Mr. Beaton's she'd rattle down-stairsfast enough. If she's sick, she's love-sick. It makes me sick to seeher. "

Mela was talking to Mrs. Mandel, but her father looked up from his plateand listened. Mela went on: "I don't know what's made the fellow quitcomun'. But he was an aggravatun' thing, and no more dependable thanwater. It's just like Air. Fulkerson said, if he thinks you want himhe'll take a pleasure in not lettun' you have him. I reckon that's what'sthe matter with Christine. I believe in my heart the girl 'll die if shedon't git him. "

Mela went on to eat her breakfast with her own good appetite. She nowalways came down to keep her father company, as she said, and she did herbest to cheer and comfort him. At least she kept the talk going, and shehad it nearly all to herself, for Mrs. Mandel was now merely staying onprovisionally, and, in the absence of any regrets or excuses fromChristine, was looking ruefully forward to the moment when she must leaveeven this ungentle home for the chances of the ruder world outside. 

The old man said nothing at table, but, when Mela went up to see if shecould do anything for Christine, he asked Mrs. Mandel again about all thefacts of her last interview with Beaton. 

She gave them as fully as she could remember them, and the old man madeno comment on them. But he went out directly after, and at the 'EveryOther Week' office he climbed the stairs to Fulkerson's room and askedfor Beaton's address. No one yet had taken charge of Conrad's work, andFulkerson was running the thing himself, as he said, till he could talkwith Dryfoos about it. The old man would not look into the empty roomwhere he had last seen his son alive; he turned his face away and hurriedby the door. 

XIII. 

The course of public events carried Beaton's private affairs beyond thereach of his simple first intention to renounce his connection with'Every Other Week. ' In fact, this was not perhaps so simple as it seemed, and long before it could be put in effect it appeared still simpler to donothing about the matter--to remain passive and leave the initiative toDryfoos, to maintain the dignity of unconsciousness and let recognitionof any change in the situation come from those who had caused the change. After all, it was rather absurd to propose making a purely personalquestion the pivot on which his relations with 'Every Other Week' turned. He took a hint from March's position and decided that he did not knowDryfoos in these relations; he knew only Fulkerson, who had certainly hadnothing to do with Mrs. Mandel's asking his intentions. As he reflectedupon this he became less eager to look Fulkerson up and make the magazinea partner of his own sufferings. This was the soberer mood to whichBeaton trusted that night even before he slept, and he awoke fullyconfirmed in it. As he examined the offence done him in the cold light ofday, he perceived that it had not come either from Mrs. Mandel, who wasvisibly the faltering and unwilling instrument of it, or from Christine, who was altogether ignorant of it, but from Dryfoos, whom he could nothurt by giving up his place. He could only punish Fulkerson by that, andFulkerson was innocent. Justice and interest alike dictated the passivecourse to which Beaton inclined; and he reflected that he might safelyleave the punishment of Dryfoos to Christine, who would find out what hadhappened, and would be able to take care of herself in any encounter oftempers with her father. 

Beaton did not go to the office during the week that followed upon thisconclusion; but they were used there to these sudden absences of his, and, as his work for the time was in train, nothing was made of hisstaying away, except the sarcastic comment which the thought of him wasapt to excite in the literary department. He no longer came so much tothe Leightons, and Fulkerson was in no state of mind to miss any onethere except Miss Woodburn, whom he never missed. Beaton was left, then, unmolestedly awaiting the course of destiny, when he read in the morningpaper, over his coffee at Maroni's, the deeply scare-headed story ofConrad's death and the clubbing of Lindau. He probably cared as littlefor either of them as any man that ever saw them; but he felt a shock, ifnot a pang, at Conrad's fate, so out of keeping with his life andcharacter. He did not know what to do; and he did nothing. He was notasked to the funeral, but he had not expected that, and, when Fulkersonbrought him notice that Lindau was also to be buried from Dryfoos'shouse, it was without his usual sullen vindictiveness that he kept away. In his sort, and as much as a man could who was necessarily so much takenup with himself, he was sorry for Conrad's father; Beaton had a peculiartenderness for his own father, and he imagined how his father would feelif it were he who had been killed in Conrad's place, as it might verywell have been; he sympathized with himself in view of the possibility;and for once they were mistaken who thought him indifferent and merelybrutal in his failure to appear at Lindau's obsequies. 

He would really have gone if he had known how to reconcile his presencein that house with the terms of his effective banishment from it; and hewas rather forgivingly finding himself wronged in the situation, whenDryfoos knocked at the studio door the morning after Lindau's funeral. Beaton roared out, "Come in!" as he always did to a knock if he had not amodel; if he had a model he set the door slightly ajar, and with hispalette on his thumb frowned at his visitor and told him he could notcome in. Dryfoos fumbled about for the knob in the dim passagewayoutside, and Beaton, who had experience of people's difficulties with it, suddenly jerked the door open. The two men stood confronted, and at firstsight of each other their quiescent dislike revived. Each would have beenwilling to turn away from the other, but that was not possible. Beatonsnorted some sort of inarticulate salutation, which Dryfoos did not tryto return; he asked if he could see him alone for a minute or two, andBeaton bade him come in, and swept some paint-blotched rags from thechair which he told him to take. He noticed, as the old man sanktremulously into it, that his movement was like that of his own father, and also that he looked very much like Christine. Dryfoos folded hishands tremulously on the top of his horn-handled stick, and he was ratherfinely haggard, with the dark hollows round his black eyes and the fallof the muscles on either side of his chin. He had forgotten to take hissoft, wide-brimmed hat off; and Beaton felt a desire to sketch him justas he sat. 

Dryfoos suddenly pulled himself together from the dreary absence intowhich he fell at first. "Young man, " he began, "maybe I've come here on afool's errand, " and Beaton rather fancied that beginning. 

But it embarrassed him a little, and he said, with a shy glance aside, "Idon't know what you mean. " "I reckon, " Dryfoos answered, quietly, "yougot your notion, though. I set that woman on to speak to you the way shedone. But if there was anything wrong in the way she spoke, or if youdidn't feel like she had any right to question you up as if we suspectedyou of anything mean, I want you to say so. "

Beaton said nothing, and the old man went on. 

"I ain't very well up in the ways of the world, and I don't pretend tobe. All I want is to be fair and square with everybody. I've mademistakes, though, in my time--" He stopped, and Beaton was not proofagainst the misery of his face, which was twisted as with some strongphysical ache. "I don't know as I want to make any more, if I can helpit. I don't know but what you had a right to keep on comin', and if youhad I want you to say so. Don't you be afraid but what I'll take it inthe right way. I don't want to take advantage of anybody, and I don't askyou to say any more than that. "

Beaton did not find the humiliation of the man who had humiliated him sosweet as he could have fancied it might be. He knew how it had comeabout, and that it was an effect of love for his child; it did not matterby what ungracious means she had brought him to know that he loved herbetter than his own will, that his wish for her happiness was strongerthan his pride; it was enough that he was now somehow brought to giveproof of it. Beaton could not be aware of all that dark coil ofcircumstance through which Dryfoos's present action evolved itself; theworst of this was buried in the secret of the old man's heart, a worm ofperpetual torment. What was apparent to another was that he was broken bythe sorrow that had fallen upon him, and it was this that Beatonrespected and pitied in his impulse to be frank and kind in his answer. 

"No, I had no right to keep coming to your house in the way I did, unless--unless I meant more than I ever said. " Beaton added: "I don't saythat what you did was usual--in this country, at any rate; but I can'tsay you were wrong. Since you speak to me about the matter, it's onlyfair to myself to say that a good deal goes on in life without muchthinking of consequences. That's the way I excuse myself. "

"And you say Mrs. Mandel done right?" asked Dryfoos, as if he wishedsimply to be assured of a point of etiquette. 

"Yes, she did right. I've nothing to complain of. "

"That's all I wanted to know, " said Dryfoos; but apparently he had notfinished, and he did not go, though the silence that Beaton now kept gavehim a chance to do so. He began a series of questions which had norelation to the matter in hand, though they were strictly personal toBeaton. "What countryman are you?" he asked, after a moment. 

"What countryman?" Beaton frowned back at him. 

"Yes, are you an American by birth?"

"Yes; I was born in Syracuse. "

"Protestant?"

"My father is a Scotch Seceder. "

"What business is your father in?"

Beaton faltered and blushed; then he answered:

"He's in the monument business, as he calls it. He's a tombstone cutter. "Now that he was launched, Beaton saw no reason for not declaring, "Myfather's always been a poor man, and worked with his own hands for hisliving. " He had too slight esteem socially for Dryfoos to conceal a factfrom him that he might have wished to blink with others. 

"Well, that's right, " said Dryfoos. "I used to farm it myself. I've got agood pile of money together, now. At first it didn't come easy; but nowit's got started it pours in and pours in; it seems like there was no endto it. I've got well on to three million; but it couldn't keep me fromlosin' my son. It can't buy me back a minute of his life; not all themoney in the world can do it!"

He grieved this out as if to himself rather than to Beaton, who, scarcelyventured to say, "I know--I am very sorry--"

"How did you come, " Dryfoos interrupted, "to take up paintin'?"

"Well, I don't know, " said Beaton, a little scornfully. "You don't takea thing of that kind up, I fancy. I always wanted to paint. "

"Father try to stop you?"

"No. It wouldn't have been of any use. Why--"

"My son, he wanted to be a preacher, and I did stop him or I thought Idid. But I reckon he was a preacher, all the same, every minute of hislife. As you say, it ain't any use to try to stop a thing like that. Ireckon if a child has got any particular bent, it was given to it; andit's goin' against the grain, it's goin' against the law, to try to bendit some other way. There's lots of good business men, Mr. Beaton, twentyof 'em to every good preacher?"

"I imagine more than twenty, " said Beaton, amused and touched through hiscuriosity as to what the old man was driving at by the quaint simplicityof his speculations. 

"Father ever come to the city?"

"No; he never has the time; and my mother's an invalid. "

"Oh! Brothers and sisters?"

"Yes; we're a large family. "

"I lost two little fellers--twins, " said Dryfoos, sadly. "But we hain'tever had but just the five. Ever take portraits?"

"Yes, " said Beaton, meeting this zigzag in the queries as seriously asthe rest. "I don't think I am good at it. "

Dryfoos got to his feet. "I wish you'd paint a likeness of my son. You'veseen him plenty of times. We won't fight about the price, don't you beafraid of that. "

Beaton was astonished, and in a mistaken way he was disgusted. He sawthat Dryfoos was trying to undo Mrs. Mandel's work practically, and gethim to come again to his house; that he now conceived of the offencegiven him as condoned, and wished to restore the former situation. Heknew that he was attempting this for Christine's sake, but he was not theman to imagine that Dryfoos was trying not only to tolerate him, but tolike him; and, in fact, Dryfoos was not wholly conscious himself of thisend. What they both understood was that Dryfoos was endeavoring to get atBeaton through Conrad's memory; but with one this was its dedication to apurpose of self sacrifice, and with the other a vulgar and shameless useof it. 

"I couldn't do it, " said Beaton. "I couldn't think of attempting it. "

"Why not?" Dryfoos persisted. "We got some photographs of him; he didn'tlike to sit very well; but his mother got him to; and you know how helooked. "

"I couldn't do it--I couldn't. I can't even consider it. I'm very sorry. I would, if it were possible. But it isn't possible. "

"I reckon if you see the photographs once"

"It isn't that, Mr. Dryfoos. But I'm not in the way of that kind of thingany more. "

"I'd give any price you've a mind to name--"

"Oh, it isn't the money!" cried Beaton, beginning to lose control ofhimself. 

The old man did not notice him. He sat with his head fallen forward, andhis chin resting on his folded hands. Thinking of the portrait, he sawConrad's face before him, reproachful, astonished, but all gentle as itlooked when Conrad caught his hand that day after he struck him; he heardhim say, "Father!" and the sweat gathered on his forehead. "Oh, my God!"he groaned. "No; there ain't anything I can do now. "

Beaton did not know whether Dryfoos was speaking to him or not. Hestarted toward him. "Are you ill?"

"No, there ain't anything the matter, " said the old man. "But I guessI'll lay down on your settee a minute. " He tottered with Beaton's help tothe aesthetic couch covered with a tiger-skin, on which Beaton had oncethought of painting a Cleopatra; but he could never get the right model. As the old man stretched himself out on it, pale and suffering, he didnot look much like a Cleopatra, but Beaton was struck with hiseffectiveness, and the likeness between him and his daughter; she wouldmake a very good Cleopatra in some ways. All the time, while thesethoughts passed through his mind, he was afraid Dryfoos would die. Theold man fetched his breath in gasps, which presently smoothed andlengthened into his normal breathing. Beaton got him a glass of wine, andafter tasting it he sat up. 

"You've got to excuse me, " he said, getting back to his characteristicgrimness with surprising suddenness, when once he began to recoverhimself. "I've been through a good deal lately; and sometimes it ketchesme round the heart like a pain. "

In his life of selfish immunity from grief, Beaton could not understandthis experience that poignant sorrow brings; he said to himself thatDryfoos was going the way of angina pectoris; as he began shuffling offthe tiger-skin he said: "Had you better get up? Wouldn't you like me tocall a doctor?"

"I'm all right, young man. " Dryfoos took his hat and stick from him, buthe made for the door so uncertainly that Beaton put his hand under hiselbow and helped him out, and down the stairs, to his coupe. 

"Hadn't you better let me drive home with you?" he asked. 

"What?" said Dryfoos, suspiciously. 

Beaton repeated his question. 

"I guess I'm able to go home alone, " said Dryfoos, in a surly tone, andhe put his head out of the window and called up "Home!" to the driver, who immediately started off and left Beaton standing beside thecurbstone. 

XIV. 

Beaton wasted the rest of the day in the emotions and speculations whichDryfoos's call inspired. It was not that they continuously occupied him, but they broke up the train of other thoughts, and spoiled him for work;a very little spoiled Beaton for work; he required just the right moodfor work. He comprehended perfectly well that Dryfoos had made him thatextraordinary embassy because he wished him to renew his visits, and heeasily imagined the means that had brought him to this pass. From what heknew of that girl he did not envy her father his meeting with her when hemust tell her his mission had failed. But had it failed? When Beaton cameto ask himself this question, he could only perceive that he and Dryfooshad failed to find any ground of sympathy, and had parted in the samedislike with which they had met. But as to any other failure, it wascertainly tacit, and it still rested with him to give it effect. He couldgo back to Dryfoos's house, as freely as before, and it was clear that hewas very much desired to come back. But if he went back it was also clearthat he must go back with intentions more explicit than before, and nowhe had to ask himself just how much or how little he had meant by goingthere. His liking for Christine had certainly not increased, but thecharm, on the other hand, of holding a leopardess in leash had not yetpalled upon him. In his life of inconstancies, it was a pleasure to restupon something fixed, and the man who had no control over himself likedlogically enough to feel his control of some one else. The fact cannotother wise be put in terms, and the attraction which Christine Dryfooshad for him, apart from this, escapes from all terms, as anything purelyand merely passional must. He had seen from the first that she was a cat, and so far as youth forecasts such things, he felt that she would be ashrew. But he had a perverse sense of her beauty, and he knew a sort oflife in which her power to molest him with her temper could be reduced tothe smallest proportions, and even broken to pieces. Then theconsciousness of her money entered. It was evident that the old man hadmentioned his millions in the way of a hint to him of what he mightreasonably expect if he would turn and be his son-in-law. Beaton did notput it to himself in those words; and in fact his cogitations were not inwords at all. It was the play of cognitions, of sensations, formlesslytending to the effect which can only be very clumsily interpreted inlanguage. But when he got to this point in them, Beaton rose tomagnanimity and in a flash of dramatic reverie disposed of a part ofDryfoos's riches in placing his father and mother, and his brothers andsisters, beyond all pecuniary anxiety forever. He had no shame, noscruple in this, for he had been a pensioner upon others ever since aSyracusan amateur of the arts had detected his talent and given him themoney to go and study abroad. Beaton had always considered the money aloan, to be repaid out of his future success; but he now never dreamt ofrepaying it; as the man was rich, he had even a contempt for the notionof repaying him; but this did not prevent him from feeling very keenlythe hardships he put his father to in borrowing money from him, though henever repaid his father, either. In this reverie he saw himselfsacrificed in marriage with Christine Dryfoos, in a kind of admiringself-pity, and he was melted by the spectacle of the dignity with whichhe suffered all the lifelong trials ensuing from his unselfishness. Thefancy that Alma Leighton came bitterly to regret him, contributed tosoothe and flatter him, and he was not sure that Margaret. Vance did notsuffer a like loss in him. 

There had been times when, as he believed, that beautiful girl's highthoughts had tended toward him; there had been looks, gestures, evenwords, that had this effect to him, or that seemed to have had it; andBeaton saw that he might easily construe Mrs. Horn's confidential appealto him to get Margaret interested in art again as something by no meansnecessarily offensive, even though it had been made to him as to a masterof illusion. If Mrs. Horn had to choose between him and the life of goodworks to which her niece was visibly abandoning herself, Beaton could notdoubt which she would choose; the only question was how real the dangerof a life of good works was. 

As he thought of these two girls, one so charming and the other sodivine, it became indefinitely difficult to renounce them for ChristineDryfoos, with her sultry temper and her earthbound ideals. Life had beenso flattering to Beaton hitherto that he could not believe them bothfinally indifferent; and if they were not indifferent, perhaps he did notwish either of them to be very definite. What he really longed for wastheir sympathy; for a man who is able to walk round quite ruthlessly onthe feelings of others often has very tender feelings of his own, easilylacerated, and eagerly responsive to the caresses of compassion. In thisframe Beaton determined to go that afternoon, though it was not Mrs. Horn's day, and call upon her in the hope of possibly seeing Miss Vancealone. As he continued in it, he took this for a sign and actually went. It did not fall out at once as he wished, but he got Mrs. Horn to talkingagain about her niece, and Mrs. Horn again regretted that nothing couldbe done by the fine arts to reclaim Margaret from good works. 

"Is she at home? Will you let me see her?" asked Beacon, with somethingof the scientific interest of a physician inquiring for a patient whosesymptoms have been rehearsed to him. He had not asked for her before. 

"Yes, certainly, " said Mrs. Horn, and she went herself to call Margaret, and she did not return with her. The girl entered with the gentle gracepeculiar to her; and Beaton, bent as he was on his own consolation, couldnot help being struck with the spiritual exaltation of her look. At sightof her, the vague hope he had never quite relinquished, that they mightbe something more than aesthetic friends, died in his heart. She woreblack, as she often did; but in spite of its fashion her dress received anun-like effect from the pensive absence of her face. "Decidedly, "thought Beaton, "she is far gone in good works. "

But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old level, and he began atonce to talk to her of the subject he had been discussing with her aunt. He said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably turned her backupon possibilities which she ought not to neglect. 

"You know very well, " she answered, "that I couldn't do anything in thatway worth the time I should waste on it. Don't talk of it, please. Isuppose my aunt has been asking you to say this, but it's no use. I'msorry it's no use, she wishes it so much; but I'm not sorry otherwise. You can find the pleasure at least of doing good work in it; but Icouldn't find anything in it but a barren amusement. Mr. Wetmore isright; for me, it's like enjoying an opera, or a ball. "

"That's one of Wetmore's phrases. He'd sacrifice anything to them. "

She put aside the whole subject with a look. "You were not at Mr. Dryfoos's the other day. Have you seen them, any of them, lately?"

"I haven't been there for some time, no, " said Beaton, evasively. But hethought if he was to get on to anything, he had better be candid. "Mr. Dryfoos was at my studio this morning. He's got a queer notion. He wantsme to paint his son's portrait. "

She started. "And will you--"

"No, I couldn't do such a thing. It isn't in my way. I told him so. Hisson had a beautiful face an antique profile; a sort of early Christiantype; but I'm too much of a pagan for that sort of thing. "

"Yes. "

"Yes, " Beaton continued, not quite liking her assent after he had invitedit. He had his pride in being a pagan, a Greek, but it failed him in herpresence, now; and he wished that she had protested he was none. "He wasa singular creature; a kind of survival; an exile in our time and place. I don't know: we don't quite expect a saint to be rustic; but with allhis goodness Conrad Dryfoos was a country person. If he were not dyingfor a cause you could imagine him milking. " Beaton intended a contemptthat came from the bitterness of having himself once milked the familycow. 

His contempt did not reach Miss Vance. "He died for a cause, " she said. "The holiest. "

"Of labor?"

"Of peace. He was there to persuade the strikers to be quiet and gohome. "

"I haven't been quite sure, " said Beaton. "But in any case he had nobusiness there. The police were on hand to do the persuading. "

"I can't let you talk so!" cried the girl. "It's shocking! Oh, I knowit's the way people talk, and the worst is that in the sight of the worldit's the right way. But the blessing on the peacemakers is not for thepolicemen with their clubs. "

Beaton saw that she was nervous; he made his reflection that she wasaltogether too far gone in good works for the fine arts to reach her; hebegan to think how he could turn her primitive Christianity to theaccount of his modern heathenism. He had no deeper design than to getflattered back into his own favor far enough to find courage for somesort of decisive step. In his heart he was trying to will whether heshould or should not go back to Dryfoos's house. It could not be from thecaprice that had formerly taken him; it must be from a definite purpose;again he realized this. "Of course; you are right, " he said. "I wish Icould have answered that old man differently. I fancy he was bound up inhis son, though he quarrelled with him, and crossed him. But I couldn'tdo it; it wasn't possible. " He said to himself that if she said "No, "now, he would be ruled by her agreement with him; and if she disagreedwith him, he would be ruled still by the chance, and would go no more tothe Dryfooses'. He found himself embarrassed to the point of blushingwhen she said nothing, and left him, as it were, on his own hands. "Ishould like to have given him that comfort; I fancy he hasn't muchcomfort in life; but there seems no comfort in me. "

He dropped his head in a fit attitude for compassion; but she poured nopity upon it. 

"There is no comfort for us in ourselves, " she said. "It's hard to getoutside; but there's only despair within. When we think we have donesomething for others, by some great effort, we find it's all for our ownvanity. "

"Yes, " said Beaton. "If I could paint pictures for righteousness' sake, Ishould have been glad to do Conrad Dryfoos for his father. I felt sorryfor him. Did the rest seem very much broken up? You saw them all?"

"Not all. Miss Dryfoos was ill, her sister said. It's hard to tell howmuch people suffer. His mother seemed bewildered. The younger sister is asimple creature; she looks like him; I think she must have something ofhis spirit. "

"Not much spirit of any kind, I imagine, " said Beaton. "But she's amiablymaterial. Did they say Miss Dryfoos was seriously ill?"

"No. I supposed she might be prostrated by her brother's death. "

"Does she seem that kind of person to you, Miss Vance?" asked Beaton. 

"I don't know. I haven't tried to see so much of them as I might, thepast winter. I was not sure about her when I met her; I've never seenmuch of people, except in my own set, and the--very poor. I have beenafraid I didn't understand her. She may have a kind of pride that wouldnot let her do herself justice. "

Beaton felt the unconscious dislike in the endeavor of praise. "Then sheseems to you like a person whose life--its trials, its chances--wouldmake more of than she is now?"

"I didn't say that. I can't judge of her at all; but where we don't know, don't you think we ought to imagine the best?"

"Oh yes, " said Beaton. "I didn't know but what I once said of them mighthave prejudiced you against them. I have accused myself of it. " He alwaystook a tone of conscientiousness, of self-censure, in talking with MissVance; he could not help it. 

"Oh no. And I never allowed myself to form any judgment of her. She isvery pretty, don't you think, in a kind of way?"

"Very. "

"She has a beautiful brunette coloring: that floury white and thedelicate pink in it. Her eyes are beautiful. "

"She's graceful, too, " said Beaton. "I've tried her in color; but Ididn't make it out. "

"I've wondered sometimes, " said Miss Vance, "whether that elusive qualityyou find in some people you try to paint doesn't characterize them allthrough. Miss Dryfoos might be ever so much finer and better than wewould find out in the society way that seems the only way. "

"Perhaps, " said Beaton, gloomily; and he went away profoundly discouragedby this last analysis of Christine's character. The angelicimperviousness of Miss Vance to properties of which his own wickednesswas so keenly aware in Christine might have made him laugh, if it had notbeen such a serious affair with him. As it was, he smiled to think howvery differently Alma Leighton would have judged her from Miss Vance'spremises. He liked that clear vision of Alma's even when it pierced hisown disguises. Yes, that was the light he had let die out, and it mighthave shone upon his path through life. Beaton never felt so poignantlythe disadvantage of having on any given occasion been wanting to his owninterests through his self-love as in this. He had no one to blame buthimself for what had happened, but he blamed Alma for what might happenin the future because she shut out the way of retrieval and return. Whenbe thought of the attitude she had taken toward him, it seemedincredible, and he was always longing to give her a final chance toreverse her final judgment. It appeared to him that the time had come forthis now, if ever. 

XV. 

While we are still young we feel a kind of pride, a sort of fiercepleasure, in any important experience, such as we have read of or heardof in the lives of others, no matter how painful. It was this pride, thispleasure, which Beaton now felt in realizing that the toils of fate wereabout him, that between him and a future of which Christine Dryfoos mustbe the genius there was nothing but the will, the mood, the fancy of agirl who had not given him the hope that either could ever again be inhis favor. He had nothing to trust to, in fact, but his knowledge that hehad once had them all; she did not deny that; but neither did she concealthat he had flung away his power over them, and she had told him thatthey never could be his again. A man knows that he can love and whollycease to love, not once merely, but several times; he recognizes the factin regard to himself, both theoretically and practically; but in regardto women he cherishes the superstition of the romances that love is oncefor all, and forever. It was because Beaton would not believe that AlmaLeighton, being a woman, could put him out of her heart after sufferinghim to steal into it, that he now hoped anything from her, and she hadbeen so explicit when they last spoke of that affair that he did not hopemuch. He said to himself that he was going to cast himself on her mercy, to take whatever chance of life, love, and work there was in her havingthe smallest pity on him. If she would have none, then there was but onething he could do: marry Christine and go abroad. He did not see how hecould bring this alternative to bear upon Alma; even if she knew what hewould do in case of a final rejection, he had grounds for fearing shewould not care; but he brought it to bear upon himself, and it nerved himto a desperate courage. He could hardly wait for evening to come, beforehe went to see her; when it came, it seemed to have come too soon. He hadwrought himself thoroughly into the conviction that he was in earnest, and that everything depended upon her answer to him, but it was not tillhe found himself in her presence, and alone with her, that he realizedthe truth of his conviction. Then the influences of her grace, hergayety, her arch beauty, above all, her good sense, penetrated his soullike a subtle intoxication, and he said to himself that he was right; hecould not live without her; these attributes of hers were what he neededto win him, to cheer him, to charm him, to guide him. He longed so toplease her, to ingratiate himself with her, that he attempted to be lightlike her in his talk, but lapsed into abysmal absences and gloomyrecesses of introspection. 

"What are you laughing at?" he asked, suddenly starting from one ofthese. 

"What you are thinking of. "

"It's nothing to laugh at. Do you know what I'm thinking of?"

"Don't tell, if it's dreadful. "

"Oh, I dare say you wouldn't think it's dreadful, " he said, withbitterness. "It's simply the case of a man who has made a fool of himselfand sees no help of retrieval in himself. "

"Can any one else help a man unmake a fool of himself?" she asked, with asmile. 

"Yes. In a case like this. "

"Dear me! This is very interesting. "

She did not ask him what the case was, but he was launched now, and hepressed on. "I am the man who has made a fool of himself--"

"Oh!"

"And you can help me out if you will. Alma, I wish you could see me as Ireally am. "

"Do you, Mr. Beacon? Perhaps I do. "

"No; you don't. You formulated me in a certain way, and you won't allowfor the change that takes place in every one. You have changed; whyshouldn't I?"

"Has this to do with your having made a fool of yourself?"

"Yes. "

"Oh! Then I don't see how you have changed. "

She laughed, and he too, ruefully. "You're cruel. Not but what I deserveyour mockery. But the change was not from the capacity of making a foolof myself. I suppose I shall always do that more or less--unless you helpme. Alma! Why can't you have a little compassion? You know that I mustalways love you. "

"Nothing makes me doubt that like your saying it, Mr. Beaton. But nowyou've broken your word--"

"You are to blame for that. You knew I couldn't keep it!"

"Yes, I'm to blame. I was wrong to let you come--after that. And so Iforgive you for speaking to me in that way again. But it's perfectlyimpossible and perfectly useless for me to hear you any more on thatsubject; and so-good-bye!"

She rose, and he perforce with her. "And do you mean it?" he asked. "Forever?"

"Forever. This is truly the last time I will ever see you if I can helpit. Oh, I feel sorry enough for you!" she said, with a glance at hisface. "I do believe you are in earnest. But it's too late now. Don't letus talk about it any more! But we shall, if we meet, and so, --"

"And so good-bye! Well, I've nothing more to say, and I might as well saythat. I think you've been very good to me. It seems to me as if you hadbeen--shall I say it?--trying to give me a chance. Is that so?" Shedropped her eyes and did not answer. 

"You found it was no use! Well, I thank you for trying. It's curious tothink that I once had your trust, your regard, and now I haven't it. Youdon't mind my remembering that I had? It'll be some little consolation, and I believe it will be some help. I know I can't retrieve the past now. It is too late. It seems too preposterous--perfectly lurid--that I couldhave been going to tell you what a tangle I'd got myself in, and to askyou to help untangle me. I must choke in the infernal coil, but I'd liketo have the sweetness of your pity in it--whatever it is. "

She put out her hand. "Whatever it is, I do pity you; I said that. "

"Thank you. " He kissed the band she gave him and went. 

He had gone on some such terms before; was it now for the last time? Shebelieved it was. She felt in herself a satiety, a fatigue, in which hisgood looks, his invented airs and poses, his real trouble, were all alikerepulsive. She did not acquit herself of the wrong of having let himthink she might yet have liked him as she once did; but she had beenhonestly willing to see whether she could. It had mystified her to findthat when they first met in New York, after their summer in St. Barnaby, she cared nothing for him; she had expected to punish him for hisneglect, and then fancy him as before, but she did not. More and more shesaw him selfish and mean, weak-willed, narrow-minded, and hard-hearted;and aimless, with all his talent. She admired his talent in proportion asshe learned more of artists, and perceived how uncommon it was; but shesaid to herself that if she were going to devote herself to art, shewould do it at first-hand. She was perfectly serene and happy in herfinal rejection of Beaton; he had worn out not only her fancy, but hersympathy, too. 

This was what her mother would not believe when Alma reported theinterview to her; she would not believe it was the last time they shouldmeet; death itself can hardly convince us that it is the last time ofanything, of everything between ourselves and the dead. "Well, Alma, " shesaid, "I hope you'll never regret what you've done. "

"You may be sure I shall not regret it. If ever I'm low-spirited aboutanything, I'll think of giving Mr. Beaton his freedom, and that willcheer me up. "

"And don't you expect to get married? Do you intend to be an old maid?"demanded her mother, in the bonds of the superstition women have so longbeen under to the effect that every woman must wish to get married, iffor no other purpose than to avoid being an old maid. 

"Well, mamma, " said Alma, "I intend being a young one for a few yearsyet; and then I'll see. If I meet the right person, all well and good; ifnot, not. But I shall pick and choose, as a man does; I won't merely bepicked and chosen. "

"You can't help yourself; you may be very glad if you are picked andchosen. "

"What nonsense, mamma! A girl can get any man she wants, if she goesabout it the right way. And when my 'fated fairy prince' comes along, Ishall just simply make furious love to him and grab him. Of course, Ishall make a decent pretence of talking in my sleep. I believe it's donethat way more than half the time. The fated fairy prince wouldn't see theprincess in nine cases out of ten if she didn't say something; he wouldgo mooning along after the maids of honor. "

Mrs. Leighton tried to look unspeakable horror; but she broke down andlaughed. "Well, you are a strange girl, Alma. "

"I don't know about that. But one thing I do know, mamma, and that isthat Prince Beaton isn't the F. F. P. For me. How strange you are, mamma!Don't you think it would be perfectly disgusting to accept a person youdidn't care for, and let him go on and love you and marry you? It'ssickening. "

"Why, certainly, Alma. It's only because I know you did care for himonce--"

"And now I don't. And he didn't care for me once, and now he does. And sowe're quits. "

"If I could believe--"

"You had better brace up and try, mamma; for as Mr. Fulkerson says, it'sas sure as guns. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he'sloathsome to me; and he keeps getting loathsomer. Ugh! Goodnight!"

XVI. 

"Well, I guess she's given him the grand bounce at last, " said Fulkersonto March in one of their moments of confidence at the office. "That'sMad's inference from appearances--and disappearances; and some littlehints from Alma Leighton. "

"Well, I don't know that I have any criticisms to offer, " said March. "Itmay be bad for Beaton, but it's a very good thing for Miss Leighton. Uponthe whole, I believe I congratulate her. "

"Well, I don't know. I always kind of hoped it would turn out the otherway. You know I always had a sneaking fondness for the fellow. "

"Miss Leighton seems not to have had. "

"It's a pity she hadn't. I tell you, March, it ain't so easy for a girlto get married, here in the East, that she can afford to despise anychance. "

"Isn't that rather a low view of it?"

"It's a common-sense view. Beaton has the making of a first-rate fellowin him. He's the raw material of a great artist and a good citizen. Allhe wants is somebody to take him in hand and keep him from makin' an assof himself and kickin' over the traces generally, and ridin' two or threehorses bareback at once. "

"It seems a simple problem, though the metaphor is rather complicated, "said March. "But talk to Miss Leighton about it. I haven't given Beatonthe grand bounce. "

He began to turn over the manuscripts on his table, and Fulkerson wentaway. But March found himself thinking of the matter from time to timeduring the day, and he spoke to his wife about it when he went home. Shesurprised him by taking Fulkerson's view of it. 

"Yes, it's a pity she couldn't have made up her mind to have him. It'sbetter for a woman to be married. "

"I thought Paul only went so far as to say it was well. But what wouldbecome of Miss Leighton's artistic career if she married?"

"Oh, her artistic career!" said Mrs. March, with matronly contempt of it. 

"But look here!" cried her husband. "Suppose she doesn't like him?"

"How can a girl of that age tell whether she likes any one or not?"

"It seems to me you were able to tell at that age, Isabel. But let'sexamine this thing. (This thing! I believe Fulkerson is characterizing mywhole parlance, as well as your morals. ) Why shouldn't we rejoice as muchat a non-marriage as a marriage? When we consider the enormous riskspeople take in linking their lives together, after not half so muchthought as goes to an ordinary horse trade, I think we ought to be gladwhenever they don't do it. I believe that this popular demand for thematrimony of others comes from our novel-reading. We get to thinking thatthere is no other happiness or good-fortune in life except marriage; andit's offered in fiction as the highest premium for virtue, courage, beauty, learning, and saving human life. We all know it isn't. We knowthat in reality marriage is dog cheap, and anybody can have it for theasking--if he keeps asking enough people. By-and-by some fellow will wakeup and see that a first-class story can be written from the anti-marriagepoint of view; and he'll begin with an engaged couple, and devote hisnovel to disengaging them and rendering them separately happy ever afterin the denouement. It will make his everlasting fortune. "

"Why don't you write it, Basil?" she asked. "It's a delightful idea. Youcould do it splendidly. "

He became fascinated with the notion. He developed it in detail; but atthe end he sighed and said: "With this 'Every Other Week' work on myhands, of course I can't attempt a novel. But perhaps I sha'n't have itlong. "

She was instantly anxious to know what he meant, and the novel and MissLeighton's affair were both dropped out of their thoughts. "What do youmean? Has Mr. Fulkerson said anything yet?"

"Not a word. He knows no more about it than I do. Dryfoos hasn't spoken, and we're both afraid to ask him. Of course, I couldn't ask him. "

"No. "

"But it's pretty uncomfortable, to be kept hanging by the gills so, asFulkerson says. "

"Yes, we don't know what to do. "

March and Fulkerson said the same to each other; and Fulkerson said thatif the old man pulled out, he did not know what would happen. He had nocapital to carry the thing on, and the very fact that the old man hadpulled out would damage it so that it would be hard to get anybody elseto put it. In the mean time Fulkerson was running Conrad's office-work, when he ought to be looking after the outside interests of the thing; andhe could not see the day when he could get married. 

"I don't know which it's worse for, March: you or me. I don't know, underthe circumstances, whether it's worse to have a family or to want to haveone. Of course--of course! We can't hurry the old man up. It wouldn't bedecent, and it would be dangerous. We got to wait. "

He almost decided to draw upon Dryfoos for some money; he did not needany, but, he said maybe the demand would act as a hint upon him. One day, about a week after Alma's final rejection of Beaton, Dryfoos came intoMarch's office. Fulkerson was out, but the old man seemed not to havetried to see him. 

He put his hat on the floor by his chair, after he sat down, and lookedat March awhile with his old eyes, which had the vitreous glitter of old. Eyes stimulated to sleeplessness. Then he said, abruptly, "Mr. March, howwould you like to take this thing off my hands?"

"I don't understand, exactly, " March began; but of course he understoodthat Dryfoos was offering to let him have 'Every Other Week' on someterms or other, and his heart leaped with hope. 

The old man knew he understood, and so he did not explain. He said: "I amgoing to Europe, to take my family there. The doctor thinks it might domy wife some good; and I ain't very well myself, and my girls both wantto go; and so we're goin'. If you want to take this thing off my hands, Ireckon I can let you have it in 'most any shape you say. You're allsettled here in New York, and I don't suppose you want to break up, much, at your time of life, and I've been thinkin' whether you wouldn't like totake the thing. "

The word, which Dryfoos had now used three times, made March at lastthink of Fulkerson; he had been filled too full of himself to think ofany one else till he had mastered the notion of such wonderful goodfortune as seemed about falling to him. But now he did think ofFulkerson, and with some shame and confusion; for he remembered how, whenDryfoos had last approached him there on the business of his connectionwith 'Every Other Week, ' he had been very haughty with him, and told himthat he did not know him in this connection. He blushed to find how farhis thoughts had now run without encountering this obstacle of etiquette. 

"Have you spoken to Mr. Fulkerson?" he asked. 

"No, I hain't. It ain't a question of management. It's a question ofbuying and selling. I offer the thing to you first. I reckon Fulkersoncouldn't get on very well without you. "

March saw the real difference in the two cases, and he was glad to seeit, because he could act more decisively if not hampered by an obligationto consistency. "I am gratified, of course, Mr. Dryfoos; extremelygratified; and it's no use pretending that I shouldn't be happy beyondbounds to get possession of 'Every Other Week. ' But I don't feel quitefree to talk about it apart from Mr. Fulkerson. "

"Oh, all right!" said the old man, with quick offence. 

March hastened to say: "I feel bound to Mr. Fulkerson in every way. Hegot me to come here, and I couldn't even seem to act without him. "

He put it questioningly, and the old man answered:

"Yes, I can see that. When 'll he be in? I can wait. " But he lookedimpatient. 

"Very soon, now, " said March, looking at his watch. "He was only to begone a moment, " and while he went on to talk with Dryfoos, he wonderedwhy the old man should have come first to speak with him, and whether itwas from some obscure wish to make him reparation for displeasures in thepast, or from a distrust or dislike of Fulkerson. Whichever light helooked at it in, it was flattering. 

"Do you think of going abroad soon?" he asked. 

"What? Yes--I don't know--I reckon. We got our passage engaged. It's onone of them French boats. We're goin' to Paris. "

"Oh! That will be interesting to the young ladies. "

"Yes. I reckon we're goin' for them. 'Tain't likely my wife and me wouldwant to pull up stakes at our age, " said the old man, sorrowfully. 

"But you may find it do you good, Mr. Dryfoos, " said March, with akindness that was real, mixed as it was with the selfish interest he nowhad in the intended voyage. 

"Well, maybe, maybe, " sighed the old man; and he dropped his headforward. "It don't make a great deal of difference what we do or we don'tdo, for the few years left. "

"I hope Mrs. Dryfoos is as well as usual, " said March, finding the grounddelicate and difficult. 

"Middlin', middlin', " said the old man. "My daughter Christine, she ain'tvery well. "

"Oh, " said March. It was quite impossible for him to affect a moreexplicit interest in the fact. He and Dryfoos sat silent for a fewmoments, and he was vainly casting about in his thought for somethingelse which would tide them over the interval till Fulkerson came, when heheard his step on the stairs. 

"Hello, hello!" he said. "Meeting of the clans!" It was always a meetingof the clans, with Fulkerson, or a field day, or an extra session, or aregular conclave, whenever he saw people of any common interest together. "Hain't seen you here for a good while, Mr. Dryfoos. Did think some ofrunning away with 'Every Other Week' one while, but couldn't seem to workMarch up to the point. "

He gave Dryfoos his hand, and pushed aside the papers on the corner ofMarch's desk, and sat down there, and went on briskly with the nonsensehe could always talk while he was waiting for another to develop anymatter of business; he told March afterward that he scented business inthe air as soon as he came into the room where he and Dryfoos weresitting. 

Dryfoos seemed determined to leave the word to March, who said, after aninquiring look at him, "Mr. Dryfoos has been proposing to let us have'Every Other Week, ' Fulkerson. "

"Well, that's good; that suits yours truly; March & Fulkerson, publishersand proprietors, won't pretend it don't, if the terms are all right. "

"The terms, " said the old man, "are whatever you want 'em. I haven't gotany more use for the concern--" He gulped, and stopped; they knew what hewas thinking of, and they looked down in pity. He went on: "I won't putany more money in it; but what I've put in a'ready can stay; and you canpay me four per cent. "

He got upon his feet; and March and Fulkerson stood, too. 

"Well, I call that pretty white, " said Fulkerson. "It's a bargain as faras I'm concerned. I suppose you'll want to talk it over with your wife, March?"

"Yes; I shall, " said March. "I can see that it's a great chance; but Iwant to talk it over with my wife. "

"Well, that's right, " said the old man. "Let me hear from you tomorrow. "

He went out, and Fulkerson began to dance round the room. He caught Marchabout his stalwart girth and tried to make him waltz; the office-boy cameto the door and looked on with approval. 

"Come, come, you idiot!" said March, rooting himself to the carpet. 

"It's just throwing the thing into our mouths, " said Fulkerson. "Thewedding will be this day week. No cards! Teedle-lumpty-diddle!Teedle-lumpty-dee! What do you suppose he means by it, March?" he asked, bringing himself soberly up, of a sudden. "What is his little game? Or ishe crazy? It don't seem like the Dryfoos of my previous acquaintance. "

"I suppose, " March suggested, "that he's got money enough, so that hedon't care for this--"

"Pshaw! You're a poet! Don't you know that the more money that kind ofman has got, the more he cares for money? It's some fancy of his--likehaving Lindau's funeral at his house--By Jings, March, I believe you'rehis fancy!"

"Oh, now! Don't you be a poet, Fulkerson!"

"I do! He seemed to take a kind of shine to you from the day you wouldn'tturn off old Lindau; he did, indeed. It kind of shook him up. It made himthink you had something in you. He was deceived by appearances. Lookhere! I'm going round to see Mrs. March with you, and explain the thingto her. I know Mrs. March! She wouldn't believe you knew what you weregoing in for. She has a great respect for your mind, but she don't thinkyou've got any sense. Heigh?"

"All right, " said March, glad of the notion; and it was really a comfortto have Fulkerson with him to develop all the points; and it wasdelightful to see how clearly and quickly she seized them; it made Marchproud of her. She was only angry that they had lost any time in coming tosubmit so plain a case to her. 

Mr. Dryfoos might change his mind in the night, and then everything wouldbe lost. They must go to him instantly, and tell him that they accepted;they must telegraph him. 

"Might as well send a district messenger; he'd get there next week, " saidFulkerson. "No, no! It 'll all keep till to-morrow, and be the better forit. If he's got this fancy for March, as I say, he ain't agoing to changeit in a single night. People don't change their fancies for March in alifetime. Heigh?"

When Fulkerson turned up very early at the office next morning, as Marchdid, he was less strenuous about Dryfoos's fancy for March. It was as ifMiss Woodburn might have blown cold upon that theory, as something unjustto his own merit, for which she would naturally be more jealous than he. 

March told him what he had forgotten to tell him the day before, thoughhe had been trying, all through their excited talk, to get it in, thatthe Dryfooses were going abroad. 

"Oh, ho!" cried Fulkerson. "That's the milk in the cocoanut, is it? Well, I thought there must be something. "

But this fact had not changed Mrs. March at all in her conviction that itwas Mr. Dryfoos's fancy for her husband which had moved him to make himthis extraordinary offer, and she reminded him that it had first beenmade to him, without regard to Fulkerson. "And perhaps, " she went on, "Mr. Dryfoos has been changed---softened; and doesn't find money all inall any more. He's had enough to change him, poor old man!"

"Does anything from without change us?" her husband mused aloud. "We'rebrought up to think so by the novelists, who really have the charge ofpeople's thinking, nowadays. But I doubt it, especially if the thingoutside is some great event, something cataclysmal, like this tremendoussorrow of Dryfoos's. "

"Then what is it that changes us?" demanded his wife, almost angry withhim for his heresy. 

"Well, it won't do to say, the Holy Spirit indwelling. That would soundlike cant at this day. But the old fellows that used to say that had someglimpses of the truth. They knew that it is the still, small voice thatthe soul heeds, not the deafening blasts of doom. I suppose I should haveto say that we didn't change at all. We develop. There's the making ofseveral characters in each of us; we are each several characters, andsometimes this character has the lead in us, and sometimes that. Fromwhat Fulkerson has told me of Dryfoos, I should say he had always had thepotentiality of better things in him than he has ever been yet; andperhaps the time has come for the good to have its chance. The growth inone direction has stopped; it's begun in another; that's all. The manhasn't been changed by his son's death; it stunned, it benumbed him; butit couldn't change him. It was an event, like any other, and it had tohappen as much as his being born. It was forecast from the beginning oftime, and was as entirely an effect of his coming into the world--"

"Basil! Basil!" cried his wife. "This is fatalism!"

"Then you think, " he said, "that a sparrow falls to the ground withoutthe will of God?" and he laughed provokingly. But he went on moresoberly: "I don't know what it all means Isabel though I believe it meansgood. What did Christ himself say? That if one rose from the dead itwould not avail. And yet we are always looking for the miraculous! Ibelieve that unhappy old man truly grieves for his son, whom he treatedcruelly without the final intention of cruelty, for he loved him andwished to be proud of him; but I don't think his death has changed him, any more than the smallest event in the chain of events remotely workingthrough his nature from the beginning. But why do you think he's changedat all? Because he offers to sell me Every Other Week on easy terms? Hesays himself that he has no further use for the thing; and he knowsperfectly well that he couldn't get his money out of it now, without anenormous shrinkage. He couldn't appear at this late day as the owner, andsell it to anybody but Fulkerson and me for a fifth of what it's costhim. He can sell it to us for all it's cost him; and four per cent. Is nobad interest on his money till we can pay it back. It's a good thing forus; but we have to ask whether Dryfoos has done us the good, or whetherit's the blessing of Heaven. If it's merely the blessing of Heaven, Idon't propose being grateful for it. "

March laughed again, and his wife said, "It's disgusting. "

"It's business, " he assented. "Business is business; but I don't say itisn't disgusting. Lindau had a low opinion of it. "

"I think that with all his faults Mr. Dryfoos is a better man thanLindau, " she proclaimed. 

"Well, he's certainly able to offer us a better thing in 'Every OtherWeek, '" said March. 

She knew he was enamoured of the literary finish of his cynicism, andthat at heart he was as humbly and truly grateful as she was for thegood-fortune opening to them. 

XVII. 

Beaton was at his best when he parted for the last time with AlmaLeighton, for he saw then that what had happened to him was the necessaryconsequence of what he had been, if not what he had done. Afterward helost this clear vision; he began to deny the fact; he drew upon hisknowledge of life, and in arguing himself into a different frame of mindhe alleged the case of different people who had done and been much worsethings than he, and yet no such disagreeable consequence had befallenthem. Then he saw that it was all the work of blind chance, and he saidto himself that it was this that made him desperate, and willing to callevil his good, and to take his own wherever he could find it. There was agreat deal that was literary and factitious and tawdry in the mood inwhich he went to see Christine Dryfoos, the night when the Marches sattalking their prospects over; and nothing that was decided in hispurpose. He knew what the drift of his mind was, but he had alwayspreferred to let chance determine his events, and now since chance hadplayed him such an ill turn with Alma, he left it the wholeresponsibility. Not in terms, but in effect, this was his thought as hewalked on up-town to pay the first of the visits which Dryfoos hadpractically invited him to resume. He had an insolent satisfaction inhaving delayed it so long; if he was going back he was going back on hisown conditions, and these were to be as hard and humiliating as he couldmake them. But this intention again was inchoate, floating, the stuff ofan intention, rather than intention; an expression of temperamentchiefly. 

He had been expected before that. Christine had got out of Mela that herfather had been at Beaton's studio; and then she had gone at the old manand got from him every smallest fact of the interview there. She hadflung back in his teeth the good-will toward herself with which he hadgone to Beaton. She was furious with shame and resentment; she told himhe had made bad worse, that he had made a fool of himself to no end; shespared neither his age nor his grief-broken spirit, in which his willcould not rise against hers. She filled the house with her rage, screaming it out upon him; but when her fury was once spent, she began tohave some hopes from what her father had done. She no longer kept herbed; every evening she dressed herself in the dress Beaton admired themost, and sat up till a certain hour to receive him. She had fixed a dayin her own mind before which, if he came, she would forgive him all hehad made her suffer: the mortification, the suspense, the despair. Beyondthis, she had the purpose of making her father go to Europe; she feltthat she could no longer live in America, with the double disgrace thathad been put upon her. 

Beaton rang, and while the servant was coming the insolent caprice seizedhim to ask for the young ladies instead of the old man, as he hadsupposed of course he should do. The maid who answered the bell, in theplace of the reluctant Irishman of other days, had all his hesitation inadmitting that the young ladies were at home. 

He found Mela in the drawing-room. At sight of him she looked scared; butshe seemed to be reassured by his calm. He asked if he was not to havethe pleasure of seeing Miss Dryfoos, too; and Mela said she reckoned thegirl had gone up-stairs to tell her. Mela was in black, and Beaton notedhow well the solid sable became her rich red-blonde beauty; he wonderedwhat the effect would be with Christine. 

But she, when she appeared, was not in mourning. He fancied that she worethe lustrous black silk, with the breadths of white Venetian lace aboutthe neck which he had praised, because he praised it. Her cheeks burnedwith a Jacqueminot crimson; what should be white in her face was chalkywhite. She carried a plumed ostrich fan, black and soft, and after givinghim her hand, sat down and waved it to and fro slowly, as he rememberedher doing the night they first met. She had no ideas, except such asrelated intimately to herself, and she had no gabble, like Mela; and shelet him talk. It was past the day when she promised herself she wouldforgive him; but as he talked on she felt all her passion for him revive, and the conflict of desires, the desire to hate, the desire to love, madea dizzying whirl in her brain. She looked at him, half doubting whetherhe was really there or not. He had never looked so handsome, with hisdreamy eyes floating under his heavy overhanging hair, and his pointedbrown beard defined against his lustrous shirtfront. His mellowlymodulated, mysterious voice lulled her; when Mela made an errand out ofthe room, and Beaton crossed to her and sat down by her, she shivered. 

"Are you cold?" he asked, and she felt the cruel mockery and exultantconsciousness of power in his tone, as perhaps a wild thing feelscaptivity in the voice of its keeper. But now, she said she would stillforgive him if he asked her. 

Mela came back, and the talk fell again to the former level; but Beatonhad not said anything that really meant what she wished, and she saw thathe intended to say nothing. Her heart began to burn like a fire in herbreast. 

"You been tellun' him about our goun' to Europe?" Mela asked. 

"No, " said Christine, briefly, and looking at the fan spread out on herlap. 

Beaton asked when; and then he rose, and said if it was so soon, hesupposed he should not see them again, unless he saw them in Paris; hemight very likely run over during the summer. He said to himself that hehad given it a fair trial with Christine, and he could not make it go. 

Christine rose, with a kind of gasp; and mechanically followed him to thedoor of the drawing-room; Mela came, too; and while he was putting on hisovercoat, she gurgled and bubbled in good-humor with all the world. Christine stood looking at him, and thinking how still handsomer he wasin his overcoat; and that fire burned fiercer in her. She felt him morethan life to her and knew him lost, and the frenzy, that makes a womankill the man she loves, or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty she cannothave for all hers, possessed her lawless soul. He gave his hand to Mela, and said, in his wind-harp stop, "Good-bye. "

As he put out his hand to Christine, she pushed it aside with a scream ofrage; she flashed at him, and with both hands made a feline pass at theface he bent toward her. He sprang back, and after an instant ofstupefaction he pulled open the door behind him and ran out into thestreet. 

"Well, Christine Dryfoos!" said Mela, "Sprang at him like a wild-cat!"

"I, don't care, " Christine shrieked. "I'll tear his eyes out!" She flewup-stairs to her own room, and left the burden of the explanation toMela, who did it justice. 

Beaton found himself, he did not know how, in his studio, reeking withperspiration and breathless. He must almost have run. He struck a matchwith a shaking hand, and looked at his face in the glass. He expected tosee the bleeding marks of her nails on his cheeks, but he could seenothing. He grovelled inwardly; it was all so low and coarse and vulgar;it was all so just and apt to his deserts. 

There was a pistol among the dusty bric-a-brac on the mantel which he hadkept loaded to fire at a cat in the area. He took it and sat looking intothe muzzle, wishing it might go off by accident and kill him. It slippedthrough his hand and struck the floor, and there was a report; he spranginto the air, feeling that he had been shot. But he found himself stillalive, with only a burning line along his cheek, such as one ofChristine's finger-nails might have left. 

He laughed with cynical recognition of the fact that he had got hispunishment in the right way, and that his case was not to be dignifiedinto tragedy. 

XVIII. 

The Marches, with Fulkerson, went to see the Dryfooses off on the Frenchsteamer. There was no longer any business obligation on them to be civil, and there was greater kindness for that reason in the attention theyoffered. 'Every Other Week' had been made over to the joint ownership ofMarch and Fulkerson, and the details arranged with a hardness onDryfoos's side which certainly left Mrs. March with a sense of hisincomplete regeneration. Yet when she saw him there on the steamer, shepitied him; he looked wearied and bewildered; even his wife, with hertwitching head, and her prophecies of evil, croaked hoarsely out, whileshe clung to Mrs. March's hand where they sat together till theleave-takers were ordered ashore, was less pathetic. Mela was lookingafter both of them, and trying to cheer them in a joyful excitement. "Itell 'em it's goun' to add ten years to both their lives, " she said. "Thevoyage 'll do their healths good; and then, we're gittun' away from thatmiser'ble pack o' servants that was eatun' us up, there in New York. Ihate the place!" she said, as if they had already left it. "Yes, Mrs. Mandel's goun', too, " she added, following the direction of Mrs. March'seyes where they noted Mrs. Mandel, speaking to Christine on the otherside of the cabin. "Her and Christine had a kind of a spat, and she wasgoun' to leave, but here only the other day, Christine offered to make itup with her, and now they're as thick as thieves. Well, I reckon wecouldn't very well 'a' got along without her. She's about the only onethat speaks French in this family. "

Mrs. March's eyes still dwelt upon Christine's face; it was full of afurtive wildness. She seemed to be keeping a watch to prevent herselffrom looking as if she were looking for some one. "Do you know, " Mrs. March said to her husband as they jingled along homeward in theChristopher Street bob-tail car, "I thought she was in love with thatdetestable Mr. Beaton of yours at one time; and that he was amusinghimself with her. "

"I can bear a good deal, Isabel, " said March, "but I wish you wouldn'tattribute Beaton to me. He's the invention of that Mr. Fulkerson ofyours. "

"Well, at any rate, I hope, now, you'll both get rid of him, in thereforms you're going to carry out. "

These reforms were for a greater economy in the management of 'EveryOther Week;' but in their very nature they could not include thesuppression of Beaton. He had always shown himself capable and loyal tothe interests of the magazine, and both the new owners were glad to keephim. He was glad to stay, though he made a gruff pretence ofindifference, when they came to look over the new arrangement with him. In his heart he knew that he was a fraud; but at least he could say tohimself with truth that he had not now the shame of taking Dryfoos'smoney. 

March and Fulkerson retrenched at several points where it had seemedindispensable to spend, as long as they were not spending their own: thatwas only human. Fulkerson absorbed Conrad's department into his, andMarch found that he could dispense with Kendricks in the place ofassistant which he had lately filled since Fulkerson had decided thatMarch was overworked. They reduced the number of illustrated articles, and they systematized the payment of contributors strictly according tothe sales of each number, on their original plan of co-operation: theyhad got to paying rather lavishly for material without reference to thesales. 

Fulkerson took a little time to get married, and went on his weddingjourney out to Niagara, and down the St. Lawrence to Quebec over the lineof travel that the Marches had taken on their wedding journey. He had thepleasure of going from Montreal to Quebec on the same boat on which hefirst met March. 

They have continued very good friends, and their wives are almost withoutthe rivalry that usually embitters the wives of partners. At first Mrs. March did not like Mrs. Fulkerson's speaking of her husband as the Ownah, and March as the Edito'; but it appeared that this was only a convenientmethod of recognizing the predominant quality in each, and was meantneither to affirm nor to deny anything. Colonel Woodburn offered as hiscontribution to the celebration of the copartnership, which Fulkersoncould not be prevented from dedicating with a little dinner, the story ofFulkerson's magnanimous behavior in regard to Dryfoos at that crucialmoment when it was a question whether he should give up Dryfoos or giveup March. Fulkerson winced at it; but Mrs. March told her husband thatnow, whatever happened, she should never have any misgivings of Fulkersonagain; and she asked him if he did not think he ought to apologize to himfor the doubts with which he had once inspired her. March said that hedid not think so. 

The Fulkersons spent the summer at a seaside hotel in easy reach of thecity; but they returned early to Mrs. Leighton's, with whom they are toboard till spring, when they are going to fit up Fulkerson's bachelorapartment for housekeeping. Mrs. March, with her Boston scruple, thinksit will be odd, living over the 'Every Other Week' offices; but therewill be a separate street entrance to the apartment; and besides, in NewYork you may do anything. 

The future of the Leightons promises no immediate change. Kendricks goesthere a good deal to see the Fulkersons, and Mrs. Fulkerson says he comesto see Alma. He has seemed taken with her ever since he first met her atDryfoos's, the day of Lindau's funeral, and though Fulkerson objects todating a fancy of that kind from an occasion of that kind, he justlyargues with March that there can be no harm in it, and that we are liableto be struck by lightning any time. In the mean while there is no proofthat Alma returns Kendricks's interest, if he feels any. She has got alittle bit of color into the fall exhibition; but the fall exhibition isnever so good as the spring exhibition. Wetmore is rather sorry she hassucceeded in this, though he promoted her success. He says her real hopeis in black and white, and it is a pity for her to lose sight of heroriginal aim of drawing for illustration. 

News has come from Paris of the engagement of Christine Dryfoos. Therethe Dryfooses met with the success denied them in New York; many Americanplutocrats must await their apotheosis in Europe, where society has them, as it were, in a translation. Shortly after their arrival they werecelebrated in the news papers as the first millionaire American family ofnatural-gas extraction who had arrived in the capital of civilization;and at a French watering-place Christine encountered her fate--a noblemanfull of present debts and of duels in the past. Fulkerson says the oldman can manage the debtor, and Christine can look out for the duellist. "They say those fellows generally whip their wives. He'd better not tryit with Christine, I reckon, unless he's practised with a panther. "

One day, shortly after their return to town in the autumn from the briefsummer outing they permitted themselves, the Marches met Margaret Vance. At first they did not know her in the dress of the sisterhood which shewore; but she smiled joyfully, almost gayly, on seeing them, and thoughshe hurried by with the sister who accompanied her, and did not stay tospeak, they felt that the peace that passeth understanding had looked atthem from her eyes. 

"Well, she is at rest, there can't be any doubt of that, " he said, as heglanced round at the drifting black robe which followed her free, nun-like walk. 

"Yes, now she can do all the good she likes, " sighed his wife. "Iwonder--I wonder if she ever told his father about her talk with poorConrad that day he was shot?"

"I don't know. I don't care. In any event, it would be right. She didnothing wrong. If she unwittingly sent him to his death, she sent him todie for God's sake, for man's sake. "

"Yes--yes. But still--"

"Well, we must trust that look of hers. "

PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 Affected absence of mind Be good, sweet man, and let who will be clever Comfort of the critical attitude Conscience weakens to the need that isn't Death is an exile that no remorse and no love can reach Death is peace and pardon Did not idealize him, but in the highest effect she realized him Does any one deserve happiness Does anything from without change us? Europe, where society has them, as it were, in a translation Favorite stock of his go up and go down under the betting Hemmed round with this eternal darkness of death Indispensable Love of justice hurry them into sympathy with violence Married for no other purpose than to avoid being an old maid Nervous woes of comfortable people Novelists, who really have the charge of people's thinking People that have convictions are difficult Rejoice as much at a non-marriage as a marriage Respect for your mind, but she don't think you've got any sense Superstition of the romances that love is once for all Superstition that having and shining is the chief good To do whatever one likes is finally to do nothing that one likes Took the world as she found it, and made the best of it What we can be if we must When you look it--live it Would sacrifice his best friend to a phrase