第97章 PART FOURTH(5)

The experiment of making March's old friend free of his house had not given her all the pleasure that so kind a thing ought to have afforded so good a woman.She received Lindau at first with robust benevolence,and the high resolve not to let any of his little peculiarities alienate her from a sense of his claim upon her sympathy and gratitude,not only as a man who had been so generously fond of her husband in his youth,but a hero who had suffered for her country.Her theory was that his mutilation must not be ignored,but must be kept in mind as a monument of his sacrifice,and she fortified Bella with this conception,so that the child bravely sat next his maimed arm at table and helped him to dishes he could not reach,and cut up his meat for him.As for Mrs.March herself,the thought of his mutilation made her a little faint;she was not without a bewildered resentment of its presence as a sort of oppression.She did not like his drinking so much of March's beer,either;it was no harm,but it was somehow unworthy,out of character with a hero of the war.But what she really could not reconcile herself to was the violence of Lindau's sentiments concerning the whole political and social fabric.She did not feel sure that he should be allowed to say such things before the children,who had been nurtured in the faith of Bunker Hill and Appomattox,as the beginning and the end of all possible progress in human rights.As a woman she was naturally an aristocrat,but as an American she was theoretically a democrat;and it astounded,it alarmed her,to hear American democracy denounced as a shuffling evasion.She had never cared much for the United States Senate,but she doubted if she ought to sit by when it was railed at as a rich man's club.It shocked her to be told that the rich and poor were not equal before the law in a country where justice must be paid for at every step in fees and costs,or where a poor man must go to war in his own person,and a rich man might hire someone to go in his.Mrs.March felt that this rebellious mind in Lindau really somehow outlawed him from sympathy,and retroactively undid his past suffering for the country:she had always particularly valued that provision of the law,because in forecasting all the possible mischances that might befall her own son,she had been comforted by the thought that if there ever was another war,and Tom were drafted,his father could buy him a substitute.Compared with such blasphemy as this,Lindau's declaration that there was not equality of opportunity in America,and that fully one-half the people were debarred their right to the pursuit of happiness by the hopeless conditions of their lives,was flattering praise.She could not listen to such things in silence,though,and it did not help matters when Lindau met her arguments with facts and reasons which she felt she was merely not sufficiently instructed to combat,and he was not quite gentlemanly to urge."I am afraid for the effect on the children,"she said to her husband."Such perfectly distorted ideas--Tom will be ruined by them.""Oh,let Tom find out where they're false,"said March."It will be good exercise for his faculties of research.At any rate,those things are getting said nowadays;he'll have to hear them sooner or later.""Had he better hear them at home?"demanded his wife.

"Why,you know,as you're here to refute them,Isabel,"he teased,"perhaps it's the best place.But don't mind poor old Lindau,my dear.

He says himself that his parg is worse than his pidte,you know.""Ah,it's too late now to mind him,"she sighed.In a moment of rash good feeling,or perhaps an exalted conception of duty,she had herself proposed that Lindau should come every week and read German with Tom;and it had become a question first how they could get him to take pay for it,and then how they could get him to stop it.Mrs.March never ceased to wonder at herself for having brought this about,for she had warned her husband against making any engagement with Lindau which would bring him regularly to the house:the Germans stuck so,and were so unscrupulously dependent.Yet,the deed being done,she would not ignore the duty of hospitality,and it was always she who made the old man stay to their Sunday-evening tea when he lingered near the hour,reading Schiller and Heine and Uhland with the boy,in the clean shirt with which he observed the day;Lindau's linen was not to be trusted during the week.She now concluded a season of mournful reflection by saying,"He will get you into trouble,somehow,Basil.""Well,I don't know how,exactly.I regard Lindau as a political economist of an unusual type;but I shall not let him array me against the constituted authorities.Short of that,I think I am safe.""Well,be careful,Basil;be careful.You know you are so rash.""I suppose I may continue to pity him?He is such a poor,lonely old fellow.Are you really sorry he's come into our lives,my dear?""No,no;not that.I feel as you do about it;but I wish I felt easier about him--sure,that is,that we're not doing wrong to let him keep on talking so.""I suspect we couldn't help it,"March returned,lightly."It's one of what Lindau calls his 'brincibles'to say what he thinks."II.

The Marches had no longer the gross appetite for novelty which urges youth to a surfeit of strange scenes,experiences,ideas;and makes travel,with all its annoyances and fatigues,an inexhaustible delight.

But there is no doubt that the chief pleasure of their life in New York was from its quality of foreignness:the flavor of olives,which,once tasted,can never be forgotten.The olives may not be of the first excellence;they may be a little stale,and small and poor,to begin with,but they are still olives,and the fond palate craves them.

The sort which grew in New York,on lower Sixth Avenue and in the region of Jefferson Market and on the soft exposures south of Washington Square,were none the less acceptable because they were of the commonest Italian variety.