"Oh, there are no steps to take," said March, with a melancholy smile.
"The steps are stopped; that"s all." He sank back into his chair when Fulkerson was gone and drew a long breath. "This is pretty rough. I thought we had got through it."
"No," said his wife. "It seems as if I had to make the fight all over again."
"Well, it"s a good thing it"s a holy war."
"I can"t bear the suspense. Why didn"t you tell him outright you wouldn"t go back on any terms?"
"I might as well, and got the glory. He"ll never move Dryfoos. I suppose we both would like to go back, if we could."
"Oh, I suppose so."
They could not regain their lost exaltation, their lost dignity. At dinner Mrs. March asked the children how they would like to go back to Boston to live.
"Why, we"re not going, are we?" asked Tom, without enthusiasm.
"I was just wondering how you felt about it, now," she said, with an underlook at her husband.
"Well, if we go back," said Bella, "I want to live on the Back Bay. It"s awfully Micky at the South End."
"I suppose I should go to Harvard," said Tom, "and I"d room out at Cambridge. It would be easier to get at you on the Back Bay."
The parents smiled ruefully at each other, and, in view of these grand expectations of his children, March resolved to go as far as he could in meeting Dryfoos"s wishes. He proposed the theatre as a distraction from the anxieties that he knew were pressing equally on his wife. "We might go to the "Old Homestead,"" he suggested, with a sad irony, which only his wife felt.
"Oh yes, let"s!" cried Bella.
While they were getting ready, some one rang, and Bella went to the door, and then came to tell her father that it was Mr. Lindau. "He says he wants to see you just a moment. He"s in the parlor, and he won"t sit down, or anything."
"What can he want?" groaned Mrs. March, from their common dismay.
March apprehended a storm in the old man"s face. But he only stood in the middle of the room, looking very sad and grave. "You are Going oudt," he said. "I won"t geep you long. I haf gome to pring pack dose maca.s.sines and dis mawney. I can"t do any more voark for you; and I can"t geep the mawney you haf baid me a"ready. It iss not hawnest mawney--that ha.s.s been oarned py voark; it iss mawney that ha.s.s peen mate py sbeculation, and the obbression off lapor, and the necessity of the boor, py a man--Here it is, efery tollar, efery zent. Dake it; I feel as if dere vas ploodt on it."
"Why, Lindau," March began, but the old man interrupted him.
"Ton"t dalk to me, Pa.s.sil! I could not haf believedt it of you. When you know how I feel about dose tings, why tidn"t you dell me whose mawney you bay oudt to me? Ach, I ton"t plame you--I ton"t rebroach you. You haf nefer thought of it; boat I have thought, and I should be Guilty, I must share that man"s Guilt, if I gept hiss mawney. If you hat toldt me at the peginning--if you hat peen frank with meboat it iss all righdt; you can go on; you ton"t see dese tings as I see them; and you haf cot a family, and I am a free man. I voark to myself, and when I ton"t voark, I sdarfe to myself. But I geep my handts glean, voark or sdarfe. Gif him hiss mawney pack! I am sawry for him; I would not h.o.a.rt hiss feelings, boat I could not pear to douch him, and hiss mawney iss like boison!"
March tried to reason with Lindau, to show him the folly, the injustice, the absurdity of his course; it ended in their both getting angry, and in Lindau"s going away in a whirl of German that included Basil in the guilt of the man whom Lindau called his master.
"Well," said Mrs. March. "He is a crank, and I think you"re well rid of him. Now you have no quarrel with that horrid old Dryfoos, and you can keep right on."
"Yes," said March, "I wish it didn"t make me feel so sneaking. What a long day it"s been! It seems like a century since I got up."
"Yes, a thousand years. Is there anything else left to happen?"
"I hope not. I"d like to go to bed."
"Why, aren"t you going to the theatre?" wailed Bella, coming in upon her father"s desperate expression.
"The theatre? Oh yes, certainly! I meant after we got home," and March amused himself at the puzzled countenance of the child. "Come on! Is Tom ready?"
IX.
Fulkerson parted with the Marches in such trouble of mind that he did not feel able to meet that night the people whom he usually kept so gay at Mrs. Leighton"s table. He went to Maroni"s for his dinner, for this reason and for others more obscure. He could not expect to do anything more with Dryfoos at once; he knew that Dryfoos must feel that he had already made an extreme concession to March, and he believed that if he was to get anything more from him it must be after Dryfoos had dined. But he was not without the hope, vague and indefinite as it might be, that he should find Lindau at Maroni"s, and perhaps should get some concession from him, some word of regret or apology which he could report to Dryfoos, and at lest make the means of reopening the affair with him; perhaps Lindau, when he knew how matters stood, would back down altogether, and for March"s sake would withdraw from all connection with "Every Other Week" himself, and so leave everything serene. Fulkerson felt capable, in his desperation, of delicately suggesting such a course to Lindau, or even of plainly advising it: he did not care for Lindau a great deal, and he did care a great deal for the magazine.
But he did not find Lindau at Maroni"s; he only found Beaton. He sat looking at the doorway as Fulkerson entered, and Fulkerson naturally came and took a place at his table. Something in Beaton"s large-eyed solemnity of aspect invited Fulkerson to confidence, and he said, as he pulled his napkin open and strung it, still a little damp (as the scanty, often-washed linen at Maroni"s was apt to be), across his knees, "I was looking for you this morning, to talk with you about the Christmas number, and I was a good deal worked up because I couldn"t find you; but I guess I might as well have spared myself my emotions."
"Why?" asked Beaton, briefly.
"Well, I don"t know as there"s going to be any Christmas number."
"Why?" Beaton asked again.
"Row between the financial angel and the literary editor about the chief translator and polyglot smeller."
"Lindau?"
"Lindau is his name."
"What does the literary editor expect after Lindau"s expression of his views last night?"
"I don"t know what he expected, but the ground he took with the old man was that, as Lindau"s opinions didn"t characterize his work on the magazine, he would not be made the instrument of punishing him for them the old man wanted him turned off, as he calls it."
"Seems to be pretty good ground," said Beaton, impartially, while he speculated, with a dull trouble at heart, on the effect the row would have on his own fortunes. His late visit home had made him feel that the claim of his family upon him for some repayment of help given could not be much longer delayed; with his mother sick and his father growing old, he must begin to do something for them, but up to this time he had spent his salary even faster than he had earned it. When Fulkerson came in he was wondering whether he could get him to increase it, if he threatened to give up his work, and he wished that he was enough in love with Margaret Vance, or even Christine Dryfoos, to marry her, only to end in the sorrowful conviction that he was really in love with Alma Leighton, who had no money, and who had apparently no wish to be married for love, even. "And what are you going to do about it?" he asked, listlessly.
"Be dogged if I know what I"m going to do about it," said Fulkerson.
"I"ve been round all day, trying to pick up the pieces--row began right after breakfast this morning--and one time I thought I"d got the thing all put together again. I got the old man to say that he had spoken to March a little too authoritatively about Lindau; that, in fact, he ought to have communicated his wishes through me; and that he was willing to have me get rid of Lindau, and March needn"t have anything to do with it.
I thought that was pretty white, but March says the apologies and regrets are all well enough in their way, but they leave the main question where they found it."
"What is the main question?" Beaton asked, pouring himself out some Chianti. As he set the flask down he made the reflection that if he would drink water instead of Chianti he could send his father three dollars a week, on his back debts, and he resolved to do it.
"The main question, as March looks at it, is the question of punishing Lindau for his private opinions; he says that if he consents to my bouncing the old fellow it"s the same as if he bounced him."
"It might have that complexion in some lights," said Beaton. He drank off his Chianti, and thought he would have it twice a week, or make Maroni keep the half-bottles over for him, and send his father two dollars. "And what are you going to do now?"
"That"s what I don"t know," said Fulkerson, ruefully. After a moment he said, desperately, "Beaton, you"ve got a pretty good head; why don"t you suggest something?"
"Why don"t you let March go?" Beaton suggested.
"Ah, I couldn"t," said Fulkerson. "I got him to break up in Boston and come here; I like him; n.o.body else could get the hang of the thing like he has; he"s--a friend." Fulkerson said this with the nearest approach he could make to seriousness, which was a kind of unhappiness.
Beaton shrugged. "Oh, if you can afford to have ideals, I congratulate you. They"re too expensive for me. Then, suppose you get rid of Dryfoos?"
Fulkerson laughed forlornly. "Go on, Bildad. Like to sprinkle a few ashes over my boils? Don"t mind me!"
They both sat silent a little while, and then Beaton said, "I suppose you haven"t seen Dryfoos the second time?"