第14章 PART FIRST(12)

They thought well of themselves now that they could be both critical and tolerant of flavors not very sharply distinguished from one another in their dinner,and they lingered over their coffee and watched the autumn landscape through the windows.

"Not quite so loud a pattern of calico this year,"he said,with patronizing forbearance toward the painted woodlands whirling by.

"Do you see how the foreground next the train rushes from us and the background keeps ahead of us,while the middle distance seems stationary?

I don't think I ever noticed that effect before.There ought to be something literary in it:retreating past and advancing future and deceitfully permanent present--something like that?"His wife brushed some crumbs from her lap before rising."Yes.You mustn't waste any of these ideas now.""Oh no;it would be money out of Fulkerson's pocket."VII.

They went to a quiet hotel far down-town,and took a small apartment which they thought they could easily afford for the day or two they need spend in looking up a furnished flat.They were used to staying at this hotel when they came on for a little outing in New York,after some rigid winter in Boston,at the time of the spring exhibitions.They were remembered there from year to year;the colored call-boys,who never seemed to get any older,smiled upon them,and the clerk called March by name even before he registered.He asked if Mrs.March were with him,and said then he supposed they would want their usual quarters;and in a moment they were domesticated in a far interior that seemed to have been waiting for them in a clean,quiet,patient disoccupation ever since they left it two years before.The little parlor,with its gilt paper and ebonized furniture,was the lightest of the rooms,but it was not very light at noonday without the gas,which the bell-boy now flared up for them.The uproar of the city came to it in a soothing murmur,and they took possession of its peace and comfort with open celebration.After all,they agreed,there was no place in the world so delightful as a hotel apartment like that;the boasted charms of home were nothing to it;and then the magic of its being always there,ready for any one,every one,just as if it were for some one alone:it was like the experience of an Arabian Nights hero come true for all the race.

"Oh,why can't we always stay here,just we two!"Mrs.March sighed to her husband,as he came out of his room rubbing his face red with the towel,while she studied a new arrangement of her bonnet and handbag on the mantel.

"And ignore the past?I'm willing.I've no doubt that the children could get on perfectly well without us,and could find some lot in the scheme of Providence that would really be just as well for them.""Yes;or could contrive somehow never to have existed.I should insist upon that.If they are,don't you see that we couldn't wish them not to be?""Oh yes;I see your point;it's simply incontrovertible."She laughed and said:"Well,at any rate,if we can't find a flat to suit us we can all crowd into these three rooms somehow,for the winter,and then browse about for meals.By the week we could get them much cheaper;and we could save on the eating,as they do in Europe.Or on something else.""Something else,probably,"said March."But we won't take this apartment till the ideal furnished flat winks out altogether.We shall not have any trouble.We can easily find some one who is going South for the winter and will be glad to give up their flat 'to the right party'at a nominal rent.That's my notion.That's what the Evanses did one winter when they came on here in February.All but the nominality of the rent.""Yes,and we could pay a very good rent and still save something on letting our house.You can settle yourselves in a hundred different ways in New York,that is one merit of the place.But if everything else fails,we can come back to this.I want you to take the refusal of it,Basil.And we'll commence looking this very evening as soon as we've had dinner.I cut a lot of things out of the Herald as we came on.

See here!"

She took a long strip of paper out of her hand-bag with minute advertisements pinned transversely upon it,and forming the effect of some glittering nonde vertebrate.

"Looks something like the sea-serpent,"said March,drying his hands on the towel,while he glanced up and down the list."But we sha'n't have any trouble.I've no doubt there are half a dozen things there that will do.You haven't gone up-town?Because we must be near the 'Every Other Week'office.""No;but I wish Mr.Fulkerson hadn't called it that!It always makes one think of 'jam yesterday and jam tomorrow,but never jam to-day,'in 'Through the Looking-Glass.'They're all in this region."They were still at their table,beside a low window,where some sort of never-blooming shrub symmetrically balanced itself in a large pot,with a leaf to the right and a leaf to the left and a spear up the middle,when Fulkerson came stepping square-footedly over the thick dining-room carpet.He wagged in the air a gay hand of salutation at sight of them,and of repression when they offered to rise to meet him;then,with an apparent simultaneity of action he gave a hand to each,pulled up a chair from the next table,put his hat and stick on the floor beside it,and seated himself.

"Well,you've burned your ships behind you,sure enough,"he said,beaming his satisfaction upon them from eyes and teeth.