Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “But Ah most say,” Miss Woodburn went on, “Ah don’t envy you you’ next interview with Mr. Dryfoos. Ah suppose you’ll have to see him at once aboat it.”

  The conjecture recalled Fulkerson to the object of his confidences. “Ah, there’s where your help comes in. I’ve exhausted all the influence I have with Dryfoos—”

  “Good gracious, you don’t expect Ah could have any!”

  They both laughed at the comic dismay with which she conveyed the preposterous notion; and Fulkerson said, “If I judged from myself, I should expect you to bring him round instantly.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Fulkerson,” she said, with mock meekness.

  “Not at all. But it isn’t Dryfoos I want you to help me with; it’s your father. I want your father to interview Dryfoos for me, and I — I’m afraid to ask him.”

  “Poo’ Mr. Fulkerson!” she said, and she insinuated something through her burlesque compassion that lifted him to the skies. He swore in his heart that the woman never lived who was so witty, so wise, so beautiful, and so good. “Come raght with me this minute, if the cyoast’s clea’.” She went to the door of the diningroom and looked in across its gloom to the little gallery where her father sat beside a lamp reading his evening paper; Mrs. Leighton could be heard in colloquy with the cook below, and Alma had gone to her room. She beckoned Fulkerson with the hand outstretched behind her, and said, “Go and ask him.”

  “Alone!” he palpitated.

  “Oh, what a cyowahd!” she cried, and went with him. “Ah suppose you’ll want me to tell him aboat it.”

  “Well, I wish you’d begin, Miss Woodburn,” he said. “The fact is, you know, I’ve been over it so much I’m kind of sick of the thing.”

  Miss Woodburn advanced and put her hand on her father’s shoulder. “Look heah, papa! Mr. Fulkerson wants to ask you something, and he wants me to do it fo’ him.”

  The colonel looked up through his glasses with the sort of ferocity elderly men sometimes have to put on in order to keep their glasses from falling off. His daughter continued: “He’s got into an awful difficulty with his edito’ and his proprieto’, and he wants you to pacify them.”

  “I do not know whethah I understand the case exactly,” said the colonel, “but Mr. Fulkerson may command me to the extent of my ability.”

  “You don’t understand it aftah what Ah’ve said?” cried the girl. “Then Ah don’t see but what you’ll have to explain it you’self, Mr. Fulkerson.”

  “Well, Miss Woodburn has been so luminous about it, colonel,” said Fulkerson, glad of the joking shape she had given the affair, “that I can only throw in a little side-light here and there.”

  The colonel listened as Fulkerson went on, with a grave diplomatic satisfaction. He felt gratified, honored, even, he said, by Mr. Fulkerson’s appeal to him; and probably it gave him something of the high joy that an affair of honor would have brought him in the days when he had arranged for meetings between gentlemen. Next to bearing a challenge, this work of composing a difficulty must have been grateful. But he gave no outward sign of his satisfaction in making a resume of the case so as to get the points clearly in his mind.

  “I was afraid, sir,” he said, with the state due to the serious nature of the facts, “that Mr. Lindau had given Mr. Dryfoos offence by some of his questions at the dinner-table last night.”

  “Perfect red rag to a bull,” Fulkerson put in; and then he wanted to withdraw his words at the colonel’s look of displeasure.

  “I have no reflections to make upon Mr. Landau,” Colonel Woodburn continued, and Fulkerson felt grateful to him for going on; “I do not agree with Mr. Lindau; I totally disagree with him on sociological points; but the course of the conversation had invited him to the expression of his convictions, and he had a right to express them, so far as they had no personal bearing.”

  “Of course,” said Fulkerson, while Miss Woodburn perched on the arm of her father’s chair.

  “At the same time, sir, I think that if Mr. Dryfoos felt a personal censure in Mr. Lindau’s questions concerning his suppression of the strike among his workmen, he had a right to resent it.”

  “Exactly,” Fulkerson assented.

  “But it must be evident to you, sir, that a high-spirited gentleman like Mr. March — I confess that my feelings are with him very warmly in the matter — could not submit to dictation of the nature you describe.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Fulkerson; and, with that strange duplex action of the human mind, he wished that it was his hair, and not her father’s, that Miss Woodburn was poking apart with the corner of her fan.

  “Mr. Lindau,” the colonel concluded, “was right from his point of view, and Mr. Dryfoos was equally right. The position of Mr. March is perfectly correct—”

  His daughter dropped to her feet from his chair-arm. “Mah goodness! If nobody’s in the wrong, ho’ awe you evah going to get the mattah straight?”

  “Yes, you see,” Fulkerson added, “nobody can give in.”

  “Pardon me,” said the colonel, “the case is one in which all can give in.”

  “I don’t know which ‘ll begin,” said Fulkerson.

  The colonel rose. “Mr. Lindau must begin, sir. We must begin by seeing Mr. Lindau, and securing from him the assurance that in the expression of his peculiar views he had no intention of offering any personal offence to Mr. Dryfoos. If I have formed a correct estimate of Mr. Lindau, this will be perfectly simple.”

  Fulkerson shook his head. “But it wouldn’t help. Dryfoos don’t care a rap whether Lindau meant any personal offence or not. As far as that is concerned, he’s got a hide like a hippopotamus. But what he hates is Lindau’s opinions, and what he says is that no man who holds such opinions shall have any work from him. And what March says is that no man shall be punished through him for his opinions, he don’t care what they are.”

  The colonel stood a moment in silence. “And what do you expect me to do under the circumstances?”

  “I came to you for advice — I thought you might suggest —— ?”

  “Do you wish me to see Mr. Dryfoos?”

  “Well, that’s about the size of it,” Fulkerson admitted. “You see, colonel,” he hastened on, “I know that you have a great deal of influence with him; that article of yours is about the only thing he’s ever read in ‘Every Other Week,’ and he’s proud of your acquaintance. Well, you know” — and here Fulkerson brought in the figure that struck him so much in Beaton’s phrase and had been on his tongue ever since— “you’re the man on horseback to him; and he’d be more apt to do what you say than if anybody else said it.”

  “You are very good, sir,” said the colonel, trying to be proof against the flattery, “but I am afraid you overrate my influence.” Fulkerson let him ponder it silently, and his daughter governed her impatience by holding her fan against her lips. Whatever the process was in the colonel’s mind, he said at last: “I see no good reason for declining to act for you, Mr. Fulkerson, and I shall be very happy if I can be of service to you. But” — he stopped Fulkerson from cutting in with precipitate thanks— “I think I have a right, sir, to ask what your course will be in the event of failure?”

  “Failure?” Fulkerson repeated, in dismay.

  “Yes, sir. I will not conceal from you that this mission is one not wholly agreeable to my feelings.”

  “Oh, I understand that, colonel, and I assure you that I appreciate, I—”

  “There is no use trying to blink the fact, sir, that there are certain aspects of Mr. Dryfoos’s character in which he is not a gentleman. We have alluded to this fact before, and I need not dwell upon it now: I may say, however, that my misgivings were not wholly removed last night.”

  “No,” Fulkerson assented; though in his heart he thought the old man had behaved very well.

  “What I wish to say now is that I cannot consent to act for you, in this matter, merely as an intermediary whose failure would leave the affair in state quo.”

 
; “I see,” said Fulkerson.

  “And I should like some intimation, some assurance, as to which party your own feelings are with in the difference.”

  The colonel bent his eyes sharply on Fulkerson; Miss Woodburn let hers fall; Fulkerson felt that he was being tested, and he said, to gain time, “As between Lindau and Dryfoos?” though he knew this was not the point.

  “As between Mr. Dryfoos and Mr. March,” said the colonel.

  Fulkerson drew a long breath and took his courage in both hands. “There can’t be any choice for me in such a case. I’m for March, every time.”

  The colonel seized his hand, and Miss Woodburn said, “If there had been any choice fo’ you in such a case, I should never have let papa stir a step with you.”

  “Why, in regard to that,” said the colonel, with a literal application of the idea, “was it your intention that we should both go?”

  “Well, I don’t know; I suppose it was.”

  “I think it will be better for me to go alone,” said the colonel; and, with a color from his experience in affairs of honor, he added: “In these matters a principal cannot appear without compromising his dignity. I believe I have all the points clearly in mind, and I think I should act more freely in meeting Mr. Dryfoos alone.”

  Fulkerson tried to hide the eagerness with which he met these agreeable views. He felt himself exalted in some sort to the level of the colonel’s sentiments, though it would not be easy to say whether this was through the desperation bred of having committed himself to March’s side, or through the buoyant hope he had that the colonel would succeed in his mission.

  “I’m not afraid to talk with Dryfoos about it,” he said.

  “There is no question of courage,” said the colonel. “It is a question of dignity — of personal dignity.”

  “Well, don’t let that delay you, papa,” said his daughter, following him to the door, where she found him his hat, and Fulkerson helped him on with his overcoat. “Ah shall be jost wald to know ho’ it’s toned oat.”

  “Won’t you let me go up to the house with you?” Fulkerson began. “I needn’t go in—”

  “I prefer to go alone,” said the colonel. “I wish to turn the points over in my mind, and I am afraid you would find me rather dull company.”

  He went out, and Fulkerson returned with Miss Woodburn to the drawing-room, where she said the Leightons were. They, were not there, but she did not seem disappointed.

  “Well, Mr. Fulkerson,” she said, “you have got an ahdeal of friendship, sure enough.”

  “Me?” said Fulkerson. “Oh, my Lord! Don’t you see I couldn’t do anything else? And I’m scared half to death, anyway. If the colonel don’t bring the old man round, I reckon it’s all up with me. But he’ll fetch him. And I’m just prostrated with gratitude to you, Miss Woodburn.”

  She waved his thanks aside with her fan. “What do you mean by its being all up with you?”

  “Why, if the old man sticks to his position, and I stick to March, we’ve both got to go overboard together. Dryfoos owns the magazine; he can stop it, or he can stop us, which amounts to the same thing, as far as we’re concerned.”

  “And then what?” the girl pursued.

  “And then, nothing — till we pick ourselves up.”

  “Do you mean that Mr. Dryfoos will put you both oat of your places?”

  “He may.”

  “And Mr. Mawch takes the risk of that jost fo’ a principle?”

  “I reckon.”

  “And you do it jost fo’ an ahdeal?”

  “It won’t do to own it. I must have my little axe to grind, somewhere.”

  “Well, men awe splendid,” sighed the girl. “Ah will say it.”

  “Oh, they’re not so much better than women,” said Fulkerson, with a nervous jocosity. “I guess March would have backed down if it hadn’t been for his wife. She was as hot as pepper about it, and you could see that she would have sacrificed all her husband’s relations sooner than let him back down an inch from the stand he had taken. It’s pretty easy for a man to stick to a principle if he has a woman to stand by him. But when you come to play it alone—”

  “Mr. Fulkerson,” said the girl, solemnly, “Ah will stand bah you in this, if all the woald tones against you.” The tears came into her eyes, and she put out her hand to him.

  “You will?” he shouted, in a rapture. “In every way — and always — as long as you live? Do you mean it?” He had caught her hand to his breast and was grappling it tight there and drawing her to him.

  The changing emotions chased one another through her heart and over her face: dismay, shame, pride, tenderness. “You don’t believe,” she said, hoarsely, “that Ah meant that?”

  “No, but I hope you do mean it; for if you don’t, nothing else means anything.”

  There was no space, there was only a point of wavering. “Ah do mean it.”

  When they lifted their eyes from each other again it was half-past ten.

  “No’ you most go,” she said.

  “But the colonel — our fate?”

  “The co’nel is often oat late, and Ah’m not afraid of ouah fate, no’ that we’ve taken it into ouah own hands.” She looked at him with dewy eyes of trust, of inspiration.

  “Oh, it’s going to come out all right,” he said. “It can’t come out wrong now, no matter what happens. But who’d have thought it, when I came into this house, in such a state of sin and misery, half an hour ago—”

  “Three houahs and a half ago!” she said. “No! you most jost go. Ah’m tahed to death. Good-night. You can come in the mawning to see — papa.” She opened the door and pushed him out with enrapturing violence, and he ran laughing down the steps into her father’s arms.

  “Why, colonel! I was just going up to meet you.” He had really thought he would walk off his exultation in that direction.

  “I am very sorry to say, Mr. Fulkerson,” the colonel began, gravely, “that Mr. Dryfoos adheres to his position.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Fulkerson, with unabated joy. “It’s what I expected. Well, my course is clear; I shall stand by March, and I guess the world won’t come to an end if he bounces us both. But I’m everlastingly obliged to you, Colonel Woodburn, and I don’t know what to say to you. I — I won’t detain you now; it’s so late. I’ll see you in the morning. Good-ni—”

  Fulkerson did not realize that it takes two to part. The colonel laid hold of his arm and turned away with him. “I will walk toward your place with you. I can understand why you should be anxious to know the particulars of my interview with Mr. Dryfoos”; and in the statement which followed he did not spare him the smallest. It outlasted their walk and detained them long on the steps of the ‘Every Other Week’ building. But at the end Fulkerson let himself in with his key as light of heart as if he had been listening to the gayest promises that fortune could make.

  By the time he met March at the office next morning, a little, but only a very little, misgiving saddened his golden heaven. He took March’s hand with high courage, and said, “Well, the old man sticks to his point, March.” He added, with the sense of saying it before Miss Woodburn: “And I stick by you. I’ve thought it all over, and I’d rather be right with you than wrong with him.”

  “Well, I appreciate your motive, Fulkerson,” said March. “But perhaps — perhaps we can save over our heroics for another occasion. Lindau seems to have got in with his, for the present.”

  He told him of Lindau’s last visit, and they stood a moment looking at each other rather queerly. Fulkerson was the first to recover his spirits. “Well,” he said, cheerily, “that let’s us out.”

  “Does it? I’m not sure it lets me out,” said March; but he said this in tribute to his crippled self-respect rather than as a forecast of any action in the matter.

  “Why, what are you going to do?” Fulkerson asked. “If Lindau won’t work for Dryfoos, you can’t make him.”

  March sighed. “What are you going to do with
this money?” He glanced at the heap of bills he had flung on the table between them.

  Fulkerson scratched his head. “Ah, dogged if I know: Can’t we give it to the deserving poor, somehow, if we can find ‘em?”

  “I suppose we’ve no right to use it in any way. You must give it to

  Dryfoos.”

  “To the deserving rich? Well, you can always find them. I reckon you don’t want to appear in the transaction! I don’t, either; but I guess I must.” Fulkerson gathered up the money and carried it to Conrad. He directed him to account for it in his books as conscience-money, and he enjoyed the joke more than Conrad seemed to do when he was told where it came from.

  Fulkerson was able to wear off the disagreeable impression the affair left during the course of the fore-noon, and he met Miss Woodburn with all a lover’s buoyancy when he went to lunch. She was as happy as he when he told her how fortunately the whole thing had ended, and he took her view that it was a reward of his courage in having dared the worst. They both felt, as the newly plighted always do, that they were in the best relations with the beneficent powers, and that their felicity had been especially looked to in the disposition of events. They were in a glow of rapturous content with themselves and radiant worship of each other; she was sure that he merited the bright future opening to them both, as much as if he owed it directly to some noble action of his own; he felt that he was indebted for the favor of Heaven entirely to the still incredible accident of her preference of him over other men.

  Colonel Woodburn, who was not yet in the secret of their love, perhaps failed for this reason to share their satisfaction with a result so unexpectedly brought about. The blessing on their hopes seemed to his ignorance to involve certain sacrifices of personal feeling at which he hinted in suggesting that Dryfoos should now be asked to make some abstract concessions and acknowledgments; his daughter hastened to deny that these were at all necessary; and Fulkerson easily explained why. The thing was over; what was the use of opening it up again?