He almost decided to draw upon Dryfoos for some money; he did not need any, but, he said maybe the demand would act as a hint upon him. One day, about a week after Alma"s final rejection of Beaton, Dryfoos came into March"s office. Fulkerson was out, but the old man seemed not to have tried to see him.
He put his hat on the floor by his chair, after he sat down, and looked at March awhile with his old eyes, which had the vitreous glitter of old eyes stimulated to sleeplessness. Then he said, abruptly, "Mr.
March, how would you like to take this thing off my hands?"
"I don"t understand, exactly," March began; but of course he understood that Dryfoos was offering to let him have "Every Other Week" on some terms or other, and his heart leaped with hope.
The old man knew he understood, and so he did not explain. He said: "I am going to Europe, to take my family there. The doctor thinks it might do my wife some good; and I ain"t very well myself, and my girls both want to go; and so we"re goin". If you want to take this thing off my hands, I reckon I can let you have it in "most any shape you say. You"re all settled here in New York, and I don"t suppose you want to break up, much, at your time of life, and I"ve been thinkin" whether you wouldn"t like to take the thing."
The word, which Dryfoos had now used three times, made March at last think of Fulkerson; he had been filled too full of himself to think of any one else till he had mastered the notion of such wonderful good fortune as seemed about falling to him. But now he did think of Fulkerson, and with some shame and confusion; for he remembered how, when Dryfoos had last approached him there on the business of his connection with "Every Other Week," he had been very haughty with him, and told him that he did not know him in this connection. He blushed to find how far his thoughts had now run without encountering this obstacle of etiquette.
"Have you spoken to Mr. Fulkerson?" he asked.
"No, I hain"t. It ain"t a question of management. It"s a question of buying and selling. I offer the thing to you first. I reckon Fulkerson couldn"t get on very well without you."
March saw the real difference in the two cases, and he was glad to see it, because he could act more decisively if not hampered by an obligation to consistency. "I am gratified, of course, Mr. Dryfoos; extremely gratified; and it"s no use pretending that I shouldn"t be happy beyond bounds to get possession of "Every Other Week." But I don"t feel quite free to talk about it apart from Mr. Fulkerson."
"Oh, all right!" said the old man, with quick offence.
March hastened to say: "I feel bound to Mr. Fulkerson in every way. He got me to come here, and I couldn"t even seem to act without him."
He put it questioningly, and the old man answered:
"Yes, I can see that. When "ll he be in? I can wait." But he looked impatient.
"Very soon, now," said March, looking at his watch. "He was only to be gone a moment," and while he went on to talk with Dryfoos, he wondered why the old man should have come first to speak with him, and whether it was from some obscure wish to make him reparation for displeasures in the past, or from a distrust or dislike of Fulkerson. Whichever light he looked at it in, it was flattering.
"Do you think of going abroad soon?" he asked.
"What? Yes--I don"t know--I reckon. We got our pa.s.sage engaged. It"s on one of them French boats. We"re goin" to Paris."
"Oh! That will be interesting to the young ladies."
"Yes. I reckon we"re goin" for them. "Tain"t likely my wife and me would want to pull up stakes at our age," said the old man, sorrowfully.
"But you may find it do you good, Mr. Dryfoos," said March, with a kindness that was real, mixed as it was with the selfish interest he now had in the intended voyage.
"Well, maybe, maybe," sighed the old man; and he dropped his head forward. "It don"t make a great deal of difference what we do or we don"t do, for the few years left."
"I hope Mrs. Dryfoos is as well as usual," said March, finding the ground delicate and difficult.
"Middlin", middlin"," said the old man. "My daughter Christine, she ain"t very well."
"Oh," said March. It was quite impossible for him to affect a more explicit interest in the fact. He and Dryfoos sat silent for a few moments, and he was vainly casting about in his thought for something else which would tide them over the interval till Fulkerson came, when he heard his step on the stairs.
"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo!" he said. "Meeting of the clans!" It was always a meeting of the clans, with Fulkerson, or a field day, or an extra session, or a regular conclave, whenever he saw people of any common interest together. "Hain"t seen you here for a good while, Mr. Dryfoos. Did think some of running away with "Every Other Week" one while, but couldn"t seem to work March up to the point."
He gave Dryfoos his hand, and pushed aside the papers on the corner of March"s desk, and sat down there, and went on briskly with the nonsense he could always talk while he was waiting for another to develop any matter of business; he told March afterward that he scented business in the air as soon as he came into the room where he and Dryfoos were sitting.
Dryfoos seemed determined to leave the word to March, who said, after an inquiring look at him, "Mr. Dryfoos has been proposing to let us have "Every Other Week," Fulkerson."
"Well, that"s good; that suits yours truly; March & Fulkerson, publishers and proprietors, won"t pretend it don"t, if the terms are all right."
"The terms," said the old man, "are whatever you want "em. I haven"t got any more use for the concern--" He gulped, and stopped; they knew what he was thinking of, and they looked down in pity. He went on: "I won"t put any more money in it; but what I"ve put in a"ready can stay; and you can pay me four per cent."
He got upon his feet; and March and Fulkerson stood, too.
"Well, I call that pretty white," said Fulkerson. "It"s a bargain as far as I"m concerned. I suppose you"ll want to talk it over with your wife, March?"
"Yes; I shall," said March. "I can see that it"s a great chance; but I want to talk it over with my wife."
"Well, that"s right," said the old man. "Let me hear from you tomorrow."
He went out, and Fulkerson began to dance round the room. He caught March about his stalwart girth and tried to make him waltz; the office-boy came to the door and looked on with approval.
"Come, come, you idiot!" said March, rooting himself to the carpet.
"It"s just throwing the thing into our mouths," said Fulkerson.
"The wedding will be this day week. No cards! Teedle-lumpty-diddle!
Teedle-lumpty-dee! What do you suppose he means by it, March?" he asked, bringing himself soberly up, of a sudden. "What is his little game?
Or is he crazy? It don"t seem like the Dryfoos of my previous acquaintance."
"I suppose," March suggested, "that he"s got money enough, so that he don"t care for this--"
"Pshaw! You"re a poet! Don"t you know that the more money that kind of man has got, the more he cares for money? It"s some fancy of his--like having Lindau"s funeral at his house--By Jings, March, I believe you"re his fancy!"
"Oh, now! Don"t you be a poet, Fulkerson!"
"I do! He seemed to take a kind of shine to you from the day you wouldn"t turn off old Lindau; he did, indeed. It kind of shook him up. It made him think you had something in you. He was deceived by appearances. Look here! I"m going round to see Mrs. March with you, and explain the thing to her. I know Mrs. March! She wouldn"t believe you knew what you were going in for. She has a great respect for your mind, but she don"t think you"ve got any sense. Heigh?"
"All right," said March, glad of the notion; and it was really a comfort to have Fulkerson with him to develop all the points; and it was delightful to see how clearly and quickly she seized them; it made March proud of her. She was only angry that they had lost any time in coming to submit so plain a case to her.
Mr. Dryfoos might change his mind in the night, and then everything would be lost. They must go to him instantly, and tell him that they accepted; they must telegraph him.
"Might as well send a district messenger; he"d get there next week,"
said Fulkerson. "No, no! It "ll all keep till to-morrow, and be the better for it. If he"s got this fancy for March, as I say, he ain"t agoing to change it in a single night. People don"t change their fancies for March in a lifetime. Heigh?"
When Fulkerson turned up very early at the office next morning, as March did, he was less strenuous about Dryfoos"s fancy for March. It was as if Miss Woodburn might have blown cold upon that theory, as something unjust to his own merit, for which she would naturally be more jealous than he.
March told him what he had forgotten to tell him the day before, though he had been trying, all through their excited talk, to get it in, that the Dryfooses were going abroad.
"Oh, ho!" cried Fulkerson. "That"s the milk in the cocoanut, is it?
Well, I thought there must be something."
But this fact had not changed Mrs. March at all in her conviction that it was Mr. Dryfoos"s fancy for her husband which had moved him to make him this extraordinary offer, and she reminded him that it had first been made to him, without regard to Fulkerson. "And perhaps," she went on, "Mr. Dryfoos has been changed---softened; and doesn"t find money all in all any more. He"s had enough to change him, poor old man!"
"Does anything from without change us?" her husband mused aloud. "We"re brought up to think so by the novelists, who really have the charge of people"s thinking, nowadays. But I doubt it, especially if the thing outside is some great event, something cataclysmal, like this tremendous sorrow of Dryfoos"s."
"Then what is it that changes us?" demanded his wife, almost angry with him for his heresy.