Their Silver Wedding Journey - Volume 1 , livre ebook

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74 pages

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. [NOTE: Several chapter heading numerals are out of order or missing in this 1899 edition, however the text is all present in the three volumes. D. W.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819947936
Langue	English

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Part I.
[NOTE: Several chapter heading numerals areout of order or missing in this 1899 edition, however the text isall present in the three volumes. D. W. ]
I.
“You need the rest, ” said the Business End; “andyour wife wants you to go, as well as your doctor. Besides, it'syour Sabbatical year, and you, could send back a lot of stuff forthe magazine. ”
“Is that your notion of a Sabbatical year? ” askedthe editor.
“No; I throw that out as a bait to your conscience.You needn't write a line while you're gone. I wish you wouldn't foryour own sake; although every number that hasn't got you in it is aback number for me. ”
“That's very nice of you, Fulkerson, ” said theeditor. “I suppose you realize that it's nine years since we took'Every Other Week' from Dryfoos? ”
“Well, that makes it all the more Sabbatical, ” saidFulkerson. “The two extra years that you've put in here, over andabove the old style Sabbatical seven, are just so much more to yourcredit. It was your right to go, two years ago, and now it's yourduty. Couldn't you look at it in that light? ”
“I dare say Mrs. March could, ” the editor assented.“I don't believe she could be brought to regard it as a pleasure onany other terms. ”
“Of course not, ” said Fulkerson. “If you won't takea year, take three months, and call it a Sabbatical summer; but go,anyway. You can make up half a dozen numbers ahead, and Tom, here,knows your ways so well that you needn't think about 'Every OtherWeek' from the time you start till the time you try to bribe thecustoms inspector when you get back. I can take a hack at theediting myself, if Tom's inspiration gives out, and put a little ofmy advertising fire into the thing. ” He laid his hand on theshoulder of the young fellow who stood smiling by, and pushed andshook him in the liking there was between them. “Now you go, March!Mrs. Fulkerson feels just as I do about it; we had our outing lastyear, and we want Mrs. March and you to have yours. You let me godown and engage your passage, and— ”
“No, no! ” the editor rebelled. “I'll think aboutit; ” but as he turned to the work he was so fond of and so wearyof, he tried not to think of the question again, till he closed hisdesk in the afternoon, and started to walk home; the doctor hadsaid he ought to walk, and he did so, though he longed to ride, andlooked wistfully at the passing cars.
He knew he was in a rut, as his wife often said; butif it was a rut, it was a support too; it kept him from wobbling:She always talked as if the flowery fields of youth lay on eitherside of the dusty road he had been going so long, and he had but tostep aside from it, to be among the butterflies and buttercupsagain; he sometimes indulged this illusion, himself, in a certainironical spirit which caressed while it mocked the notion. They hada tacit agreement that their youth, if they were ever to find itagain, was to be looked for in Europe, where they met when theywere young, and they had never been quite without the hope of goingback there, some day, for a long sojourn. They had not seen thetime when they could do so; they were dreamers, but, as theyrecognized, even dreaming is not free from care; and in his dreamMarch had been obliged to work pretty steadily, if not toointensely. He had been forced to forego the distinctly literaryambition with which he had started in life because he had theircommon living to make, and he could not make it by writing gracefulverse, or even graceful prose. He had been many years in asufficiently distasteful business, and he had lost any thought ofleaving it when it left him, perhaps because his hold on it hadalways been rather lax, and he had not been able to conceal that hedisliked it. At any rate, he was supplanted in his insurance agencyat Boston by a subordinate in his office, and though he was at thesame time offered a place of nominal credit in the employ of thecompany, he was able to decline it in grace of a chance whichunited the charm of congenial work with the solid advantage of abetter salary than he had been getting for work he hated. It was anincredible chance, but it was rendered appreciably real by thenecessity it involved that they should leave Boston, where they hadlived all their married life, where Mrs. March as well as theirchildren was born, and where all their tender and familiar tieswere, and come to New York, where the literary enterprise whichformed his chance was to be founded.
It was then a magazine of a new sort, which hisbusiness partner had imagined in such leisure as the management ofa newspaper syndicate afforded him, and had always thought ofgetting March to edit. The magazine which is also a book has sincebeen realized elsewhere on more or less prosperous terms, but notfor any long period, and 'Every Other Week' was apparently— theonly periodical of the kind conditioned for survival. It was atfirst backed by unlimited capital, and it had the instant favor ofa popular mood, which has since changed, but which did not changeso soon that the magazine had not time to establish itself in awide acceptance. It was now no longer a novelty, it was no longerin the maiden blush of its first success, but it had entered uponits second youth with the reasonable hope of many years ofprosperity before it. In fact it was a very comfortable living forall concerned, and the Marches had the conditions, almostdismayingly perfect, in which they had often promised themselves togo and be young again in Europe, when they rebelled at findingthemselves elderly in America. Their daughter was married, and sovery much to her mother's mind that she did not worry about her,even though she lived so far away as Chicago, still a wild frontiertown to her Boston imagination; and their son, as soon as he leftcollege, had taken hold on 'Every Other Week', under his father'sinstruction, with a zeal and intelligence which won him Fulkerson'spraise as a chip of the old block. These two liked each other, andworked into each other's hands as cordially and aptly as Fulkersonand March had ever done. It amused the father to see his sonoffering Fulkerson the same deference which the Business End paidto seniority in March himself; but in fact, Fulkerson's foreheadwas getting, as he said, more intellectual every day; and the yearswere pushing them all along together.
Still, March had kept on in the old rut, and one dayhe fell down in it. He had a long sickness, and when he was well ofit, he was so slow in getting his grip of work again that he wassometimes deeply discouraged. His wife shared his depression,whether he showed or whether he hid it, and when the doctor advisedhis going abroad, she abetted the doctor with all the strength of awoman's hygienic intuitions. March himself willingly consented, atfirst; but as soon as he got strength for his work, he began totemporize and to demur. He said that he believed it would do himjust as much good to go to Saratoga, where they always had such agood time, as to go to Carlsbad; and Mrs. March had been obligedseveral times to leave him to his own undoing; she always took himmore vigorously in hand afterwards.
II.
When he got home from the 'Every Other Week' office,the afternoon of that talk with the Business End, he wanted tolaugh with his wife at Fulkerson's notion of a Sabbatical year. Shedid not think it was so very droll; she even urged it seriouslyagainst him, as if she had now the authority of Holy Writ forforcing him abroad; she found no relish of absurdity in the ideathat it was his duty to take this rest which had been his rightbefore.
He abandoned himself to a fancy which had beenworking to the surface of his thought. “We could call it our SilverWedding Journey, and go round to all the old places, and see themin the reflected light of the past. ”
“Oh, we could! ” she responded, passionately; and hehad now the delicate responsibility of persuading her that he wasjoking.
He could think of nothing better than a return toFulkerson's absurdity. “It would be our Silver Wedding Journey justas it would be my Sabbatical year— a good deal after date. But Isuppose that would make it all the more silvery. ”
She faltered in her elation. “Didn't you say aSabbatical year yourself? ” she demanded.
“Fulkerson said it; but it was a figurativeexpression. ”
“And I suppose the Silver Wedding Journey was afigurative expression too! ”
“It was a notion that tempted me; I thought youwould enjoy it. Don't you suppose I should be glad too, if we couldgo over, and find ourselves just as we were when we first metthere? ”
“No; I don't believe now that you care anythingabout it. ”
“Well, it couldn't be done, anyway; so that doesn'tmatter. ”
“It could be done, if you were a mind to think so.And it would be the greatest inspiration to you. You are alwayslonging for some chance to do original work, to get away from yourediting, but you've let the time slip by without really trying todo anything; I don't call those little studies of yours in themagazine anything; and now you won't take the chance that's almostforcing itself upon you. You could write an original book of thenicest kind; mix up travel and fiction; get some love in. ”
“Oh, that's the stalest kind of thing! ”
“Well, but you could see it from a perfectly newpoint of view. You could look at it as a sort of dispassionatewitness, and treat it humorously— of course it is ridiculous— anddo something entirely fresh. ”
“It wouldn't work. It would be carrying water onboth shoulders. The fiction would kill the travel, the travel wouldkill the fiction; the love and the humor wouldn't mingle any morethan oil and vinegar. ”
“Well, and what is better than a salad? ”
“But this would be all salad-dressing, and nothingto put it on. ” She was silent, and he yielded to another fancy.“We might imagine coming upon our former selves over there, andtravelling round with them— a wedding journey 'en partie carree'.”
“Something like that. I call it a very poeticalidea,