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get the
contrasts of luxury for the sake of the full effect. That wont be so
easy. You cant 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 childrens nursery with a philanthropist as you can to a street-boys
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 thats just the point that such a nature as
young Dryfooss cant get hold of, or keep hold of. Were a queer lot,
down there, Isabel--perfect menagerie. If it hadnt 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 hasnt a moral fibre in his
composition, for the art man, I dont 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, Im 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 shore 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 Ive 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 hes 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.
"Hes a perfect Babel of strange tongues; and hes the very man for the
work, and I was ashamed I hadnt thought of him myself, for I suspect he
needs the work."
"Well, be careful how you get mixed up with him, then, Basil," said his
wife, who had the natural misgiving concerning the friends of her
husbands youth that all wives have. "You know the Germans are so
unscrupulously dependent. You dont know anything about him now."
"Im not afraid of Lindau," said March. "He was the best and kindest man
I ever saw, the most high-minded, the most generous. He lost a hand in
the war that helped to save us and keep us possible, and that stump of
his is character enough for me."
"Oh, you dont think I could have meant anything against him!" said Mrs.
March, with the tender fervor that every woman who lived in the time of
the war must feel for those who suffered in it. "All that I meant was
that I hoped you would not get mixed up with him too much. Youre so apt
to be carried away by your impulses."
"They didnt carry me very far away in the direction of poor old Lindau,
Im ashamed to think," said March. "I meant all sorts of fine things by
him after I met him; and then I forgot him, and I had to be reminded of
him by Fulkerson."
She did not answer him, and he fell into a remorseful reverie, in which
he rehabilitated Lindau anew, and provided handsomely for his old age. He
got him buried with military honors, and had a shaft raised over him,
with a medallion likeness by Beaton and an epitaph by himself, by the
time they reached Forty-second Street; there was no time to write
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