“I agree with the Lord Jesus Christ,” said the young man, solemnly, and a strange light of fanaticism, of exaltation, came into his wide blue eyes. “And I believe He meant the kingdom of heaven upon this earth, as well as in the skies.”
March threw himself back in his chair and looked at him with a kind of stupefaction, in which his eye wandered to the doorway, where he saw Fulkerson standing, it seemed to him a long time, before he heard him saying: “Hello, hello! What’s the row? Conrad pitching into you on old Lindau’s account, too?”
The young man turned, and, after a glance at Fulkerson’s light, smiling face, went out, as if in his present mood he could not bear the contact of that persiflant spirit.
March felt himself getting provisionally very angry again. “Excuse me, Fulkerson, but did you know when you went out what Mr. Dryfoos wanted to see me for?”
“Well, no, I didn’t exactly,” said Fulkerson, taking his usual seat on a chair and looking over the back of it at March. “I saw he was on his ear about something, and I thought I’d better not monkey with him much. I supposed he was going to bring you to book about old Lindau, somehow.” Fulkerson broke into a laugh.
March remained serious. “Mr. Dryfoos,” he said, willing to let the simple statement have its own weight with Fulkerson, and nothing more, “came in here and ordered me to discharge Lindau from his employment on the magazine—to turn him off, as he put it.”
“Did he?” asked Fulkerson, with unbroken cheerfulness. “The old man is business, every time. Well, I suppose you can easily get somebody else to do Lindau’s work for you. This town is just running over with half-starved linguists. What did you say?”
“What did I say?” March echoed. “Look here, Fulkerson; you may regard this as a joke, but I don’t. I’m not used to being spoken to as if I were the foreman of a shop, and told to discharge a sensitive and cultivated man like Lindau, as if he were a drunken mechanic; and if that’s your idea of me—”
“Oh, hello, now, March! You mustn’t mind the old man’s way. He don’t mean anything by it—he don’t know any better, if you come to that.”
“Then I know better,” said March. “I refused to receive any instructions from Mr. Dryfoos, whom I don’t know in my relations with Every Other Week, and I referred him to you.”
“You did?” Fulkerson whistled. “He owns the thing!”
“I don’t care who owns the thing,” said March. “My negotiations were with you alone from the beginning, and I leave this matter with you. What do you wish done about Lindau?”
“Oh, better let the old fool drop,” said Fulkerson. “He’ll light on his feet somehow, and it will save a lot of rumpus.”
“And if I decline to let him drop?”
“Oh, come, now, March; don’t do that,” Fulkerson began.
“If I decline to let him drop,” March repeated, “what will you do?”
“I’ll be dogged if I know what I’ll do,” said Fulkerson. “I hope you won’t take that stand. If the old man went so far as to speak to you about it, his mind is made up, and we might as well knock under first as last.”
“And do you mean to say that you would not stand by me in what I considered my duty—in a matter of principle?”
“Why, of course, March,” said Fulkerson, coaxingly, “I mean to do the right thing. But Dryfoos owns the magazine—”
“He doesn’t own me,” said March, rising. “He has made the little mistake of speaking to me as if he did; and when”—March put on his hat and took his overcoat down from its nail—“when you bring me his apologies, or come to say that, having failed to make him understand they were necessary, you are prepared to stand by me, I will come back to this desk. Otherwise my resignation is at your service.”
He started toward the door, and Fulkerson intercepted him. “Ah, now, look here, March! Don’t do that! Hang it all, don’t you see where it leaves me? Now, you just sit down a minute and talk it over. I can make you see—I can show you—Why, confound the old Dutch beer-buzzer! Twenty of him wouldn’t be worth the trouble he’s makin’. Let him go, and the old man’ll come round in time.”
“I don’t think we’ve understood each other exactly, Mr. Fulkerson,” said March, very haughtily. “Perhaps we never can; but I’ll leave you to think it out.”
He pushed on, and Fulkerson stood aside to let him pass, with a dazed look and a mechanical movement. There was something comic in his rueful bewilderment to March, who was tempted to smile, but he said to himself that he had as much reason to be unhappy as Fulkerson, and he did not smile. His indignation kept him hot in his purpose to suffer any consequence rather than submit to the dictation of a man like Dryfoos; he felt keenly the degradation of his connection with him, and all his resentment of Fulkerson’s original uncandor returned; at the same time his heart ached with foreboding. It was not merely the work in which he had constantly grown happier that he saw taken from him; but he felt the misery of the man who stakes the security and plenty and peace of home upon some cast, and knows that losing will sweep from him most that most men find sweet and pleasant in life. He faced the fact, which no good man can front without terror, that he was risking the support of his family, and for a point of pride, of honor, which perhaps he had no right to consider in view of the possible adversity. He realized, as every hireling must, no matter how skillfully or gracefully the tie is contrived for his wearing, that he belongs to another, whose will is his law.
