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wanted to get out of the insurance business, and now with
that fear of being turned out which you have you mustnt neglect this
offer. I suppose it has its risks, but its a risk keeping on as we are;
and perhaps you will make a great success of it. I do want you to try,
Basil. If I could once feel that you had fairly seen what you could do in
literature, I should die happy."
"Not immediately after, I hope," he suggested, taking the second cup of
coffee she had been pouring out for him. "And Boston?"
"We neednt make a complete break. We can keep this place for the
present, anyway; we could let it for the winter, and come back in the
summer next year. It would be change enough from New York."
"Fulkerson and I hadnt got as far as to talk of a vacation."
"No matter. The children and I could come. And if you didnt like New
York, or the enterprise failed, you could get into something in Boston
again; and we have enough to live on till you did. Yes, Basil, Im
going."
"I can see by the way your chin trembles that nothing could stop you. You
may go to New York if you wish, Isabel, but I shall stay here."
"Be serious, Basil. Im in earnest."
"Serious? If I were any more serious I should shed tears. Come, my dear,
I know what you mean, and if I had my heart set on this thing--Fulkerson
always calls it this thing I would cheerfully accept any sacrifice you
could make to it. But Id rather not offer you up on a shrine I dont
feel any particular faith in. Im very comfortable where I am; that is, I
know just where the pinch comes, and if it comes harder, why, Ive got
used to bearing that kind of pinch. Im too old to change pinches."
"Now, that does decide me."
"It decides me, too."
"I will take all the responsibility, Basil," she pleaded.
"Oh yes; but youll hand it back to me as soon as youve carried your
point with it. Theres nothing mean about you, Isabel, where
responsibility is concerned. No; if I do this thing--Fulkerson again? I
cant get away from this thing; its ominous--I must do it because I
want to do it, and not because you wish that you wanted me to do it. I
understand your position, Isabel, and that youre really acting from a
generous impulse, but theres nothing so precarious at our time of life
as a generous impulse. When we were younger we could stand it; we could
give way to it and take the consequences. But now we cant bear it. We
must act from cold reason even in the ardor of self-sacrifice."
"Oh, as if you did that!" his wife retorted.
"Is that any cause why you shouldnt?" She could not say that it was, and
he went on triumphantly:
"No, I wont take you away from the only safe place on the planet and
plunge you into the most perilous, and then have you say in your
revulsion of feeling that you were all against it from the first, and you
gave way because you saw I had my heart set on it." He supposed he was
treating the matter humorously, but in this sort of banter between
husband and wife there is always much more than the joking. March had
seen some pretty feminine inconsistencies and trepidations which once
charmed him in his wife hardening into traits of middle-age which were
very like those of less interesting older women. The sight moved him with
a kind of pathos, but he felt the result hindering and vexatious.
She now retorted that if he did not choose to take her at her word be
need not, but that whatever he did she should have nothing to reproach
herself with; and, at least, he could not say that she had trapped him
into anything.
"What do you mean by trapping?" he demanded.
"I dont know what you call it," she answered; "but when you get me to
commit myself to a thing by leaving out the most essential point, I call
it trapping."
"I wonder you stop at trapping, if you think I got you to favor
Fulkersons scheme and then sprung New York on you. I dont suppose you
do, though. But I guess we wont talk about it any more."
He went out for a long walk, and she went to her room. Hazard Of New Fortunes page 11 Hazard Of New Fortunes page 13 | ||||