第34章 PART FIRST(32)

March submitted silently to his punishment,and laughed with her before company at his own eccentricity.She had been so preoccupied with the adjustment of the family to its new quarters and circumstances that the time passed for laying his misgivings,if they were misgivings,about Fulkerson before her,and when an occasion came for expressing them they had themselves passed in the anxieties of getting forward the first number of 'Every Other Week.'He kept these from her,too,and the business that brought them to New York had apparently dropped into abeyance before the questions of domestic economy that presented and absented themselves.March knew his wife to be a woman of good mind and in perfect sympathy with him,but he understood the limitations of her perspective;and if he was not too wise,he was too experienced to intrude upon it any affairs of his till her own were reduced to the right order and proportion.It would have been folly to talk to her of Fulkerson's conjecturable uncandor while she was in doubt whether her cook would like the kitchen,or her two servants would consent to room together;and till it was decided what school Tom should go to,and whether Bella should have lessons at home or not,the relation which March was to bear to the Dryfooses,as owner and publisher,was not to be discussed with his wife.He might drag it in,but he was aware that with her mind distracted by more immediate interests he could not get from her that judgment,that reasoned divination,which he relied upon so much.

She would try,she would do her best,but the result would be a view clouded and discolored by the effort she must make.

He put the whole matter by,and gave himself to the details of the work before him.In this he found not only escape,but reassurance,for it became more and more apparent that whatever was nominally the structure of the business,a man of his qualifications and his instincts could not have an insignificant place in it.He had also the consolation of liking his work,and of getting an instant grasp of it that grew constantly firmer and closer.The joy of knowing that he had not made a mistake was great.In giving rein to ambitions long forborne he seemed to get back to the youth when he had indulged them first;and after half a lifetime passed in pursuits alien to his nature,he was feeling the serene happiness of being mated through his work to his early love.From the outside the spectacle might have had its pathos,and it is not easy to justify such an experiment as he had made at his time of life,except upon the ground where he rested from its consideration--the ground of necessity.

His work was more in his thoughts than himself,however;and as the time for the publication of the first number of his periodical came nearer,his cares all centred upon it.Without fixing any date,Fulkerson had announced it,and pushed his announcements with the shameless vigor of a born advertiser.He worked his interest with the press to the utmost,and paragraphs of a variety that did credit to his ingenuity were afloat everywhere.Some of them were speciously unfavorable in tone;they criticised and even ridiculed the principles on which the new departure in literary journalism was based.Others defended it;others yet denied that this rumored principle was really the principle.All contributed to make talk.All proceeded from the same fertile invention.

March observed with a degree of mortification that the talk was very little of it in the New York press;there the references to the novel enterprise were slight and cold.But Fulkerson said:"Don't mind that,old man.It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this;New York has very little to do with it.Now if it were a play,it would be different.New York does make or break a play;but it doesn't make or break a book;it doesn't make or break a magazine.The great mass of the readers are outside of New York,and the rural districts are what we have got to go for.They don't read much in New York;they write,and talk about what they've written.Don't you worry."The rumor of Fulkerson's connection with the enterprise accompanied many of the paragraphs,and he was able to stay March's thirst for employment by turning over to him from day to day heaps of the manus which began to pour in from his old syndicate writers,as well as from adventurous volunteers all over the country.With these in hand March began practically to plan the first number,and to concrete a general scheme from the material and the experience they furnished.They had intended to issue the first number with the new year,and if it had been an affair of literature alone,it would have been very easy;but it was the art leg they limped on,as Fulkerson phrased it.They had not merely to deal with the question of specific illustrations for this article or that,but to decide the whole character of their illustrations,and first of all to get a design for a cover which should both ensnare the heedless and captivate the fastidious.These things did not come properly within March's province--that had been clearly understood--and for a while Fulkerson tried to run the art leg himself.The phrase was again his,but it was simpler to make the phrase than to run the leg.The difficult generation,at once stiff-backed and slippery,with which he had to do in this endeavor,reduced even so buoyant an optimist to despair,and after wasting some valuable weeks in trying to work the artists himself,he determined to get an artist to work them.But what artist?It could not be a man with fixed reputation and a following:he would be too costly,and would have too many enemies among his brethren,even if he would consent to undertake the job.Fulkerson had a man in mind,an artist,too,who would have been the very thing if he had been the thing at all.

He had talent enough,and his sort of talent would reach round the whole situation,but,as Fulkerson said,he was as many kinds of an ass as he was kinds of an artist.