A Hazard of New Fortunes | Page 8

now that you think they're going to
take it from you. Give it up and take Mr. Fulkerson's offer! It's a perfect
interposition, coming just at this time! Why, do it! Mercy!" she
suddenly arrested herself, "he wouldn't expect you to get along on the
possible profits?" Her face expressed the awfulness of the notion.
March smiled reassuringly, and waited to give himself the pleasure of
the sensation he meant to give her. "If I'll make striking phrases for it
and edit it, too, he'll give me four thousand dollars."
He leaned back in his chair, and stuck his hands deep into his pockets,
and watched his wife's face, luminous with the emotions that flashed
through her mind-doubt, joy, anxiety.
"Basil! You don't mean it! Why, take it! Take it instantly! Oh, what a
thing to happen! Oh, what luck! But you deserve it, if you first
suggested it. What an escape, what a triumph over all those hateful
insurance people! Oh, Basil, I'm afraid he'll change his mind! You
ought to have accepted on the spot. You might have known I would
approve, and you could so easily have taken it back if I didn't.
Telegraph him now! Run right out with the despatch--Or we can send
Tom!"
In these imperatives of Mrs. March's there was always much of the
conditional. She meant that he should do what she said, if it were
entirely right; and she never meant to be considered as having urged
him.
"And suppose his enterprise went wrong?" her husband suggested.
"It won't go wrong. Hasn't he made a success of his syndicate?"
"He says so--yes."
"Very well, then, it stands to reason that he'll succeed in this, too. He
wouldn't undertake it if he didn't know it would succeed; he must have
capital."
"It will take a great deal to get such a thing going; and even if he's got
an Angel behind him--"
She caught at the word--"An Angel?"
"It's what the theatrical people call a financial backer. He dropped a
hint of something of that kind."
"Of course, he's got an Angel," said his wife, promptly adopting the
word. "And even if he hadn't, still, Basil, I should be willing to have
you risk it. The risk isn't so great, is it? We shouldn't be ruined if it

failed altogether. With our stocks we have two thousand a year, anyway,
and we could pinch through on that till you got into some other
business afterward, especially if we'd saved something out of your
salary while it lasted. Basil, I want you to try it! I know it will give you
a new lease of life to have a congenial occupation." March laughed, but
his wife persisted. "I'm all for your trying it, Basil; indeed I am. If it's
an experiment, you can give it up."
"It can give me up, too."
"Oh, nonsense! I guess there's not much fear of that. Now, I want you
to telegraph Mr. Fulkerson, so that he'll find the despatch waiting for
him when he gets to New York. I'll take the whole responsibility, Basil,
and I'll risk all the consequences."

III.
March's face had sobered more and more as she followed one hopeful
burst with another, and now it expressed a positive pain. But he forced
a smile and said: "There's a little condition attached. Where did you
suppose it was to be published?"
"Why, in Boston, of course. Where else should it be published?"
She looked at him for the intention of his question so searchingly that
he quite gave up the attempt to be gay about it. "No," he said, gravely,
"it's to be published in New York."
She fell back in her chair. "In New York?" She leaned forward over the
table toward him, as if to make sure that she heard aright, and said,
with all the keen reproach that he could have expected: "In New York,
Basil! Oh, how could you have let me go on?"
He had a sufficiently rueful face in owning: "I oughtn't to have done it,
but I got started wrong. I couldn't help putting the best foot, forward at
first--or as long as the whole thing was in the air. I didn't know that you
would take so much to the general enterprise, or else I should have
mentioned the New York condition at once; but, of course, that puts an
end to it."
"Oh, of course," she assented, sadly. "We COULDN'T go to New
York."
"No, I know that," he said; and with this a perverse desire to tempt her
to the impossibility awoke in him, though he was really quite cold
about the affair himself now. "Fulkerson thought we could get a nice

flat in New York for about what the interest and taxes came