"I don"t know but this is the whole affair," said March, beginning to stiffen a little at the young man"s reticence.
"I understand. Thank you for taking the trouble to explain.
Good-morning." Beaton bowed himself off, without offering to shake hands.
Fulkerson came in after a while from the outer office, and Mr. Dryfoos followed him. "Well, what do you think of our art editor?"
"Is he our art editor?" asked March. "I wasn"t quite certain when he left."
"Did he take the books?"
"Yes, he took the books."
"I guess he"s all right, then." Fulkerson added, in concession to the umbrage he detected in March.
"Beaton has his times of being the greatest a.s.s in the solar system, but he usually takes it out in personal conduct. When it comes to work, he"s a regular horse."
"He appears to have compromised for the present by being a perfect mule," said March.
"Well, he"s in a transition state," Fulkerson allowed. "He"s the man for us. He really understands what we want. You"ll see; he"ll catch on. That lurid glare of his will wear off in the course of time. He"s really a good fellow when you take him off his guard; and he"s full of ideas.
He"s spread out over a good deal of ground at present, and so he"s pretty thin; but come to gather him up into a lump, there"s a good deal of substance to him. Yes, there is. He"s a first-rate critic, and he"s a nice fellow with the other artists. They laugh at his universality, but they all like him. He"s the best kind of a teacher when he condescends to it; and he"s just the man to deal with our volunteer work. Yes, sir, he"s a prize. Well, I must go now."
Fulkerson went out of the street door, and then came quickly back.
"By-the-bye, March, I saw that old dynamiter of yours round at Beaton"s room yesterday."
"What old dynamiter of mine?"
"That old one-handed Dutchman--friend of your youth--the one we saw at Maroni"s--"
"Oh-Lindau!" said March, with a vague pang of self reproach for having thought of Lindau so little after the first flood of his tender feeling toward him was past.
"Yes, our versatile friend was modelling him as Judas Iscariot. Lindau makes a first-rate Judas, and Beaton has got a big thing in that head if he works the religious people right. But what I was thinking of was this--it struck me just as I was going out of the door: Didn"t you tell me Lindau knew forty or fifty, different languages?"
"Four or five, yes."
"Well, we won"t quarrel about the number. The question is, Why not work him in the field of foreign literature? You can"t go over all their reviews and magazines, and he could do the smelling for you, if you could trust his nose. Would he know a good thing?"
"I think he would," said March, on whom the scope of Fulkerson"s suggestion gradually opened. "He used to have good taste, and he must know the ground. Why, it"s a capital idea, Fulkerson! Lindau wrote very fair English, and he could translate, with a little revision."
"And he would probably work cheap. Well, hadn"t you better see him about it? I guess it "ll be quite a windfall for him."
"Yes, it will. I"ll look him up. Thank you for the suggestion, Fulkerson."
"Oh, don"t mention it! I don"t mind doing "Every Other Week" a good turn now and then when it comes in my way." Fulkerson went out again, and this time March was finally left with Mr. Dryfoos.
"Mrs. March was very sorry not to be at home when your sisters called the other day. She wished me to ask if they had any afternoon in particular. There was none on your mother"s card."
"No, sir," said the young man, with a flush of embarra.s.sment that seemed habitual with him. "She has no day. She"s at home almost every day. She hardly ever goes out."
"Might we come some evening?" March asked. "We should be very glad to do that, if she would excuse the informality. Then I could come with Mrs.
March."
"Mother isn"t very formal," said the young man. "She would be very glad to see you."
"Then we"ll come some night this week, if you will let us. When do you expect your father back?"
"Not much before Christmas. He"s trying to settle up some things at Moffitt."
"And what do you think of our art editor?" asked March, with a smile, for the change of subject.
"Oh, I don"t know much about such things," said the young man, with another of his embarra.s.sed flushes. "Mr. Fulkerson seems to feel sure that he is the one for us."
"Mr. Fulkerson seemed to think that I was the one for you, too," said March; and he laughed. "That"s what makes me doubt his infallibility.
But he couldn"t do worse with Mr. Beaton."
Mr. Dryfoos reddened and looked down, as if unable or unwilling to cope with the difficulty of making a polite protest against March"s self-depreciation. He said, after a moment: "It"s new business to all of us except Mr. Fulkerson. But I think it will succeed. I think we can do some good in it."
March asked rather absently, "Some good?" Then he added: "Oh yes; I think we can. What do you mean by good? Improve the public taste?
Elevate the standard of literature? Give young authors and artists a chance?"
This was the only good that had ever been in March"s mind, except the good that was to come in a material way from his success, to himself and to his family.
"I don"t know," said the young man; and he looked down in a shamefaced fashion. He lifted his head and looked into March"s face. "I suppose I was thinking that some time we might help along. If we were to have those sketches of yours about life in every part of New York--"
March"s authorial vanity was tickled. "Fulkerson has been talking to you about them? He seemed to think they would be a card. He believes that there"s no subject so fascinating to the general average of people throughout the country as life in New York City; and he liked my notion of doing these things." March hoped that Dryfoos would answer that Fulkerson was perfectly enthusiastic about his notion; but he did not need this stimulus, and, at any rate, he went on without it. "The fact is, it"s something that struck my fancy the moment I came here; I found myself intensely interested in the place, and I began to make notes, consciously and unconsciously, at once. Yes, I believe I can get something quite attractive out of it. I don"t in the least know what it will be yet, except that it will be very desultory; and I couldn"t at all say when I can get at it. If we postpone the first number till February I might get a little paper into that. Yes, I think it might be a good thing for us," March said, with modest self-appreciation.
"If you can make the comfortable people understand how the uncomfortable people live, it will be a very good thing, Mr. March. Sometimes it seems to me that the only trouble is that we don"t know one another well enough; and that the first thing is to do this." The young fellow spoke with the seriousness in which the beauty of his face resided. Whenever he laughed his face looked weak, even silly. It seemed to be a sense of this that made him hang his head or turn it away at such times.
"That"s true," said March, from the surface only. "And then, those phases of low life are immensely picturesque. Of course, we must try to get the contrasts of luxury for the sake of the full effect. That won"t be so easy. You can"t penetrate to the dinner-party of a millionaire under the wing of a detective as you could to a carouse in Mulberry Street, or to his children"s nursery with a philanthropist as you can to a street-boy"s lodging-house." March laughed, and again the young man turned his head away. "Still, something can be done in that way by tact and patience."
VII.
That evening March went with his wife to return the call of the Dryfoos ladies. On their way up-town in the Elevated he told her of his talk with young Dryfoos. "I confess I was a little ashamed before him afterward for having looked at the matter so entirely from the aesthetic point of view. But of course, you know, if I went to work at those things with an ethical intention explicitly in mind, I should spoil them."
"Of course," said his wife. She had always heard him say something of this kind about such things.
He went on: "But I suppose that"s just the point that such a nature as young Dryfoos"s can"t get hold of, or keep hold of. We"re a queer lot, down there, Isabel--perfect menagerie. If it hadn"t been that Fulkerson got us together, and really seems to know what he did it for, I should say he was the oddest stick among us. But when I think of myself and my own crankiness for the literary department; and young Dryfoos, who ought really to be in the pulpit, or a monastery, or something, for publisher; and that young Beaton, who probably hasn"t a moral fibre in his composition, for the art man, I don"t know but we could give Fulkerson odds and still beat him in oddity."
His wife heaved a deep sigh of apprehension, of renunciation, of monition. "Well, I"m glad you can feel so light about it, Basil."
"Light? I feel gay! With Fulkerson at the helm, I tell you the rocks and the lee sh.o.r.e had better keep out of the way." He laughed with pleasure in his metaphor. "Just when you think Fulkerson has taken leave of his senses he says or does something that shows he is on the most intimate and inalienable terms with them all the time. You know how I"ve been worrying over those foreign periodicals, and trying to get some translations from them for the first number? Well, Fulkerson has brought his centipedal mind to bear on the subject, and he"s suggested that old German friend of mine I was telling you of--the one I met in the restaurant--the friend of my youth."
"Do you think he could do it?" asked Mrs. March, sceptically.
"He"s a perfect Babel of strange tongues; and he"s the very man for the work, and I was ashamed I hadn"t thought of him myself, for I suspect he needs the work."