Episode 5

"You think it over now,March.You talk it over with Mrs.March;I know you will,anyway;and I might as well make a virtue of advising you to do it.Tell her I advised you to do it,and you let me know before next Saturday what you've decided."March shut down the rolling top of his desk in the corner of the room,and walked Fulkerson out before him.It was so late that the last of the chore-women who washed down the marble halls and stairs of the great building had wrung out her floor-cloth and departed,leaving spotless stone and a clean,damp smell in the darkening corridors behind her.

"Couldn't offer you such swell quarters in New York,March,"Fulkerson said,as he went tack-tacking down the steps with his small boot-heels.

"But I've got my eye on a little house round in West Eleventh Street that I'm going to fit up for my bachelor's hall in the third story,and adapt for 'The Lone Hand'in the first and second,if this thing goes through;and I guess we'll be pretty comfortable.It's right on the Sand Strip --no malaria of any kind.""I don't know that I'm going to share its salubrity with you yet,"March sighed,in an obvious travail which gave Fulkerson hopes.

"Oh yes,you are,"he coaxed."Now,you talk it over with your wife.

You give her a fair,unprejudiced chance at the thing on its merits,and I'm very much mistaken in Mrs.March if she doesn't tell you to go in and win.We're bound to win!"They stood on the outside steps of the vast edifice beetling like a granite crag above them,with the stone groups of an allegory of life-insurance foreshortened in the bas-relief overhead.March absently lifted his eyes to it.It was suddenly strange after so many years'familiarity,and so was the well-known street in its Saturday-evening solitude.He asked himself,with prophetic homesickness,if it were an omen of what was to be.But he only said,musingly:"A fortnightly.You know that didn't work in England.The fortnightly is published once a month now.""It works in France,"Fulkerson retorted."The 'Revue des Deux Mondes'is still published twice a month.I guess we can make it work in America--with illustrations.""Going to have illustrations?"

"My dear boy!What are you giving me?Do I look like the sort of lunatic who would start a thing in the twilight of the nineteenth century without illustrations?Come off!""Ah,that complicates it!I don't know anything about art."March's look of discouragement confessed the hold the scheme had taken upon him.

"I don't want you to!"Fulkerson retorted."Don't you suppose I shall have an art man?""And will they--the artists--work at a reduced rate,too,like the writers,with the hopes of a share in the success?""Of course they will!And if I want any particular man,for a card,I'll pay him big money besides.But I can get plenty of first-rate sketches on my own terms.You'll see!They'll pour in!""Look here,Fulkerson,"said March,"you'd better call this fortnightly of yours 'The Madness o f the Half-Moon';or 'Bedlam Broke Loose'wouldn't be bad!Why do you throw away all your hard earnings on such a crazy venture?Don't do it!"The kindness which March had always felt,in spite of his wife's first misgivings and reservations,for the merry,hopeful,slangy,energetic little creature trembled in his voice.They had both formed a friendship for Fulkerson during the week they were together in Quebec.When he was not working the newspapers there,he went about with them over the familiar ground they were showing their children,and was simply grateful for the chance,as well as very entertaining about it all.The children liked him,too;when they got the clew to his intention,and found that he was not quite serious in many of the things he said,they thought he was great fun.They were always glad when their father brought him home on the occasion of Fulkerson's visits to Boston;and Mrs.March,though of a charier hospitality,welcomed Fulkerson with a grateful sense of his admiration for her husband.He had a way of treating March with deference,as an older and abler man,and of qualifying the freedom he used toward every one with an implication that March tolerated it voluntarily,which she thought very sweet and even refined.

"Ah,now you're talking like a man and a brother,"said Fulkerson."Why,March,old man,do you suppose I'd come on here and try to talk you into this thing if I wasn't morally,if I wasn't perfectly,sure of success?

There isn't any if or and about it.I know my ground,every inch;and Idon't stand alone on it,"he added,with a significance which did not escape March."When you've made up your mind I can give you the proof;but I'm not at liberty now to say anything more.I tell you it's going to be a triumphal march from the word go,with coffee and lemonade for the procession along the whole line.All you've got to do is to fall in."He stretched out his hand to March."You let me know as soon as you can."March deferred taking his hand till he could ask,"Where are you going?""Parker House.Take the eleven for New York to-night.""I thought I might walk your way."March looked at his watch."But Ishouldn't have time.Goodbye!"

He now let Fulkerson have his hand,and they exchanged a cordial pressure.Fulkerson started away at a quick,light pace.Half a block off he stopped,turned round,and,seeing March still standing where he had left him,he called back,joyously,"I've got the name!""What?"