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A Modern Instance

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He returned in half an hour and said, with an air of frank concession,
touched with personal grief: "Mr. Hubbard, I can see how, from your point
of view, you were perfectly justifiable in selling your article to the
Chronicle-Abstract. My point of view is different, but I shall not insist
upon it; and I wish to withdraw--and--and apologize for--any hasty
expressions I may have used."

"All right," said Bartley, with a wicked grin. He had triumphed; but his
triumph was one to leave some men with an uneasy feeling, and there was not
altogether a pleasant taste in Bartley's mouth. After that his position in
the Events office was whatever he chose to make it, but he did not abuse
his ascendency, and he even made a point of increased deference towards
Witherby. Many courtesies passed between them; each took some trouble to
show the other that he had no ill feeling.

Three or four weeks later Bartley received a letter with an Illinois
postmark which gave him a disagreeable sensation, at first, for he knew it
must be from Kinney. But the letter was so amusingly characteristic,
so helplessly ill-spelled and ill-constructed, that he could not help
laughing. Kinney gave an account of his travels to the mining town, and of
his present situation and future prospects; he was full of affectionate
messages and inquiries for Bartley's family, and he said he should never
forget that Sunday he had passed with them. In a postscript he added: "They
copied that String of lies into our paper, here, out of the Chron.-Ab. It
was pretty well done, but if your friend Mr. Ricker done it, I'me not goen
to Insult him soon again by calling him a gentleman."

This laconic reference to the matter in a postscript was delicious to
Bartley; he seemed to hear Kinney saying the words, and imagined his air of
ineffective sarcasm. He carried the letter about with him, and the first
time he saw Ricker he showed it to him. Ricker read it without appearing
greatly diverted; when he came to the postscript he flushed, and demanded,
"What have you done about it?"

"Oh, I haven't done anything. It wasn't necessary. You see, now, what
Kinney could have done with his facts if we had left them to him. It would
have been a wicked waste of material I thought the sight of some of his
literature would help you wash up your uncleanly scruples on that point."

"How long have you had this letter?" pursued Ricker.

"_I_ don't know. A week or ten days."

Ricker folded it up and returned it to him. "Mr. Hubbard," he said, "the
next time we meet, will you do me the favor to cut my acquaintance?"

Bartley stared at him; he thought he must be joking. "Why, Ricker, what's
the matter? I didn't suppose you'd care anything about old Kinney. I
thought it would amuse you. Why, confound it! I'd just as soon write out
and tell him that I did the thing." He began to be angry. "But I can cut
your acquaintance fast enough, or any man's, if you're really on your ear!"

"I'm on my ear," said Ricker. He left Bartley standing where they had met.

It was peculiarly unfortunate, for Bartley had occasion within that week
to ask Ricker's advice, and he was debarred from doing so by this absurd
displeasure. Since their recent perfect understanding, Witherby had
slighted no opportunity to cement their friendship, and to attach Bartley
more and more firmly to the Events. He now offered him some of the Events
stock on extremely advantageous terms, with the avowed purpose of attaching
him to the paper. There seemed nothing covert in this, and Bartley had
never heard any doubts of the prosperity of the Events, but he would have
especially liked to have Ricker's mind upon this offer of stock. Witherby
had urged him not to pay for the whole outright, but to accept a somewhat
lower salary, and trust to his dividends to make up the difference. The
shares had paid fifteen per cent the year before, and Bartley could judge
for himself of the present chances from that showing. Witherby advised him
to borrow only fifteen hundred dollars on the three thousand of stock which
he offered him, and to pay up the balance in three years by dropping five
hundred a year from his salary. It was certainly a flattering proposal;
and under his breath, where Bartley still did most of his blaspheming, he
cursed Ricker for an old fool; and resolved to close with Witherby on his
own responsibility. After he had done so he told Marcia of the step he had
taken.

Since their last quarrel there had been an alienation in her behavior
toward him, different from any former resentment. She was submissive and
quiescent; she looked carefully after his comfort, and was perfect in
her housekeeping; but she held aloof from him somehow, and left him to a
solitude in her presence in which he fancied, if he did not divine, her
contempt. But in this matter of common interest, something of their
community of feeling revived; they met on a lower level, but they met, for
the moment, and Marcia joined eagerly in the discussion of ways and means.

The notion of dropping five hundred from his salary delighted her, because
they must now cut down their expenses as much; and she had long grieved
over their expenses without being able to make Bartley agree to their
reduction. She went upstairs at once and gave the little nurse-maid a
week's warning; she told the maid of all work that she must take three
dollars a week hereafter instead of four, or else find another place; she
mentally forewent new spring dresses for herself and the baby, and arranged
to do herself all of the wash she had been putting out; she put a note in
the mouth of the can at the back door, telling the milkman to leave only
two quarts in future; and she came radiantly back to tell Bartley that she
had saved half of the lost five hundred a year already. But her countenance
fell. "Why, where are you to get the other fifteen hundred dollars,
Bartley?"

"Oh, I Ve thought of that," said Bartley, laughing at her swift
alternations of triumph and despair. "You trust to me for that."

"You're not--not going to ask father for it?" she faltered.

"Not very much," said Bartley, as he took his hat to go out.

He meant to make a raise out of Ben Halleck, as he phrased it to himself.
He knew that Halleck had plenty of money; he could make the stock itself
over to him as security; he did not see why Halleck should hesitate. But
when he entered Halleck's room, having asked Cyrus to show him directly
there, Halleck gave a start which seemed ominous to Bartley. He had
scarcely the heart to open his business, and Halleck listened with changing
color, and something only too like the embarrassment of a man who intends a
refusal. He would not look Bartley in the face, and when Bartley had made
an end he sat for a time without speaking. At last he said with a quick
sigh, as if at the close of an internal conflict, "I will lend you the
money!"

Bartley's heart gave a bound, and he broke out into an immense laugh of
relief, and clapped Halleck on the shoulder. "You looked deucedly as it'
you _wouldn't_, old man! By George, you had on such a dismal, hang-dog
expression that I didn't know but _you'd_ come to borrow money of _me_, and
I'd made up my mind not to let you have it! But I'm everlastingly obliged
to you, Halleck, and I promise you that you won't regret it."

"I shall have to speak to my father about this," said Halleck, responding
coldly to Bartley's robust pressure of his hand.

"Of course,--of course."

"How soon shall you want the money?"

"Well, the sooner the better, now. Bring the check round--can't
you?--to-morrow night,--and take dinner with us, you and Olive; and we'll
celebrate a little. I know it will please Marcia when she finds out who my
hard-hearted creditor is!"

"Well," assented Halleck with a smile so ghastly that Bartley noticed it
even in his joy.

"Curse me," he said to himself, "if ever I saw a man so ashamed of doing a
good action!"




XXX.


The Presidential canvas of the summer--which, followed upon these events in
Bartley's career was not very active. Sometimes, in fact, it languished so
much that people almost forgot it, and a good field was afforded the Events
for the practice of independent journalism. To hold a course of strict
impartiality, and yet come out on the winning side was a theory of
independent journalism which Bartley illustrated with cynical enjoyment. He
developed into something rather artistic the gift which he had always shown
in his newspaper work for ironical persiflage. Witherby was not a man to
feel this burlesque himself; but when it was pointed out to him by others,
he came to Bartley in some alarm from its effect upon the fortunes of the
paper. "We can't afford, Mr. Hubbard," he said, with virtuous trepidation,
"we can't _afford_ to make fun of our friends!"

Bartley laughed at Witherby's anxiety. "They're no more our friends than
the other fellows are. We are independent journalists; and this way of
treating the thing leaves us perfectly free hereafter to claim, just as we
choose, that we were in fun or in earnest on any particular question if
we're ever attacked. See?"

"I see," said Witherby, with not wholly subdued misgiving. But after due
time for conviction no man enjoyed Bartley's irony more than Witherby when
once he had mastered an instance of it. Sometimes it happened that Bartley
found him chuckling over a perfectly serious paragraph, but he did not mind
that; he enjoyed Witherby's mistake even more than his appreciation.

In these days Bartley was in almost uninterrupted good humor, as he had
always expected to be when he became fairly prosperous. He was at no time
an unamiable fellow, as he saw it; he had his sulks, he had his moments of
anger; but generally he felt good, and he had always believed, and he had
promised Marcia, that when he got squarely on his legs he should feel good
perpetually. This sensation he now agreeably realized; and he was also now
in that position in which he had proposed to himself some little moral
reforms. He was not much in the habit of taking stock; but no man wholly
escapes the contingencies in which he is confronted with himself, and sees
certain habits, traits, tendencies, which he would like to change for the
sake of his peace of mind hereafter. To some souls these contingencies are
full of anguish, of remorse for the past, of despair; but Bartley had never
yet seen the time when he did not feel himself perfectly able to turn over
a new leaf and blot the old one. There were not many things in his life
which he really cared to have very different; but there were two or three
shady little corners which he always intended to clean up. He had meant
some time or other to have a religious belief of some sort, he did not much
care what; since Marcia had taken to the Hallecks' church, he did not see
why he should not go with her, though he had never yet done so. He was not
quite sure whether he was always as candid with her as he might be, or as
kind; though he maintained against this question that in all their quarrels
it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. He had never been tipsy
but once in his life, and he considered that he had repented and atoned for
that enough, especially as nothing had ever come of it; but sometimes he
thought he might be over-doing the beer; yes, he thought he must cut down
on the tivoli; he was getting ridiculously fat. If ever he met Kinney again
he should tell him that it was he and not Ricker who had appropriated his
facts and he intended to make it up with Ricker somehow.

He had not found just the opportunity yet; but in the mean time he did not
mind telling the real cause of their alienation to good fellows who
could enjoy a joke. He had his following, though so many of his brother
journalists had cooled toward him, and those of his following considered
him as smart as chain-lightning and bound to rise. These young men and not
very wise elders roared over Bartley's frank declaration of the situation
Between himself and Ricker, and they contended that, if Ricker had taken
the article for the Chronicle-Abstract, he ought to take the consequences.
Bartley told them that, of course, he should explain the facts to Kinney;
but that he meant to let Ricker enjoy his virtuous indignation awhile.
Once, after a confidence of this kind at the club, where Ricker had refused
to speak to him, he came away with a curious sense of moral decay. It did
not pain him a great deal, but it certainly surprised him that now, with
all these prosperous conditions, so favorable for cleaning up, he had so
little disposition to clean up. He found himself quite willing to let
the affair with Ricker go, and he suspected that he had been needlessly
virtuous in his intentions concerning church-going and beer. As to Marcia,
it appeared to him that he could not treat a woman of her disposition
otherwise than as he did. At any rate, if he had not done everything he
could to make her happy, she seemed to be getting along well enough, and
was probably quite as happy as she deserved to be. They were getting on
very quietly now; there had been no violent outbreak between them since the
trouble about Kinney, and then she had practically confessed herself in
the wrong, as Bartley looked at it. She had appeared contented with his
explanation; there was what might be called a perfect business amity
between them. If her life with him was no longer an expression of that
intense devotion which she used to show him, it was more like what married
life generally comes to, and he accepted her tractability and what seemed
her common-sense view of their relations as greatly preferable. With his
growth in flesh, Bartley liked peace more and more.

Marcia had consented to go down to Equity alone, that summer, for he had
convinced her that during a heated political contest it would not do for
him to be away from the paper. He promised to go down for her when she
wished to come home; and it was easily arranged for her to travel as far as
the Junction under Halleck's escort, when he went to join his sisters in
the White Mountains. Bartley missed her and the baby at first. But he
soon began to adjust himself with resignation to his solitude. They had
determined to keep their maid over this summer, for they had so much
trouble in replacing her the last time after their return; and Bartley said
he should live very economically. It was quiet, and the woman kept the
house cool and clean; she was a good cook, and when Bartley brought a man
home to dinner she took an interest in serving it well. Bartley let her
order the things from the grocer and butcher, for she knew what they were
used to getting, and he had heard so much talk from Marcia about bills
since he bought that Events stock that he was sick of the prices of things.
There was no extravagance, and vet he seemed to live very much better after
Marcia went. There is no doubt but he lived very much more at his ease. One
little restriction after another fell away from him; he went and came with
absolute freedom, not only without having to account for his movements, but
without having a pang for not doing so. He had the sensation of stretching
himself after a cramping posture; and he wrote Marcia the cheerfulest
letters, charging her not to cut short her visit from anxiety on his
account. He said that he was working hard, but hard work evidently agreed
with him, for he was never better in his life. In this high content he
maintained a feeling of loyalty by going to the Hallecks, where Mrs.
Halleck often had him to tea in pity of his loneliness. They were dull
company, certainly; but Marcia liked them, and the cooking was always good.
Other evenings he went to the theatres, where there were amusing variety
bills; and sometimes he passed the night at Nantasket, or took a run for
a day to Newport; he always reported these excursions to Marcia, with
expressions of regret that Equity was too far away to run down to for a
day.

Marcia's letters were longer and more regular than his; but he could have
forgiven some want of constancy for the sake of a less searching anxiety on
her part. She was anxious not only for his welfare, which was natural and
proper, but she was anxious about the housekeeping and the expenses, things
Bartley could not afford to let trouble him, though he did what he could in
a general way to quiet her mind. She wrote fully of the visit which Olive
Halleck had paid her, but said that they had not gone about much, for Ben
Halleck had only been able to come for a day. She was very well, and so was
Flavia.

Bartley realized Flavia's existence with an effort, and for the rest this
letter bored him. What could he care about Olive Halleck's coming, or Ben
Halleck's staying away? All that he asked of Ben Halleck was a little
extension of time when his interest fell due. The whole thing was
disagreeable; and he resented what he considered Marcia's endeavor to clap
the domestic harness on him again. His thoughts wandered to conditions, to
contingencies, of which a man does not permit himself even to think without
a degree of moral disintegration. In these ill-advised reveries he mused
upon his life as it might have been if he had never met her, or if they had
never met after her dismissal of him. As he recalled the facts, he was at
that time in an angry and embittered mood, but he was in a mood of entire
acquiescence; and the reconciliation had been of her own seeking. He could
not blame her for it; she was very much in love with him, and he had been
fond of her. In fact, he was still very fond of her; when he thought of
little ways of hers, it filled him with tenderness. He did justice to her
fine qualities, too: her generosity, her truthfulness, her entire loyalty
to his best interests; he smiled to realize that he himself preferred his
second-best interests, and in her absence he remembered that her virtues
were tedious, and even painful at times. He had his doubts whether there
was sufficient compensation in them. He sometimes questioned whether he
had not made a great mistake to get married; he expected now to stick it
through; but this doubt occurred to him. A moment came in which he asked
himself, What if he had never come back to Marcia that night when she
locked him out of her room? Might it not have been better for both of them?
She would soon have reconciled herself to the irreparable; he even thought
of her happy in a second marriage; and the thought did not enrage him; he
generously wished Marcia well. He wished--he hardly knew what he wished. He
wished nothing at all but to have his wife and child back again as soon as
possible; and he put aside with a laugh the fancies which really found
no such distinct formulation as I have given them; which were mere vague
impulses, arrested mental tendencies, scraps of undirected revery. Their
recurrence had nothing to do with what he felt to be his sane and waking
state. But they recurred, and he even amused himself in turning them over.




XXXI.


One morning in September, not long before Marcia returned, Bartley found
Witherby at the office waiting for him. Witherby wore a pensive face, which
had the effect of being studied. "Good morning, Mr. Hubbard," he said, and
when Bartley answered, "Good morning," cheerfully ignoring his mood, he
added, "What is this I hear, Mr. Hubbard, about a personal misunderstanding
between you and Mr. Ricker?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Bartley; "but I suppose that if you have
heard anything _you_ know."

"I have heard," proceeded Witherby, a little dashed by Bartley's coolness,
"that Mr. Ricker accuses you of having used material in that article you
sold him which had been intrusted to you under the seal of confidence, and
that you had left it to be inferred by the party concerned--that Mr. Ricker
had written the article himself."

"All right," said Bartley.

"But, Mr. Hubbard," said Witherby, struggling to rise into virtuous
supremacy, "what am I to think of such a report?"

"I can't say; unless you should think that it wasn't your affair. That
would be the easiest thing."

"But I _can't_ think that, Mr. Hubbard! Such a report reflects through you
upon the Events; it reflects upon _me_!" Bartley laughed. "I can't approve
of such a thing. If you admit the report, it appears to me that you
have--a--done a--a--wrong action, Mr. Hubbard."

Bartley turned upon him with a curious look; at the same time he felt a
pang, and there was a touch of real anguish in the sarcasm of his demand,
"Have I fallen so low as to be rebuked by _you_?"

"I--I don't know what you mean by such an expression as that, Mr. Hubbard,"
said Witherby. "I don't know what I've done to forfeit your esteem,--to
justify you in using such language to me."

"I don't suppose you really do," said Bartley. "Go on."

"I have nothing more to say, Mr. Hubbard, except--except to add that this
has given me a great blow,--a _great_ blow. I had begun to have my doubts
before as to whether we were quite adapted to each other, and this
has--increased them. I pass no judgment upon what you have done, but I
will say that it has made me anxious and--a--unrestful. It has made me ask
myself whether upon the whole we should not be happier apart. I don't say
that we should; but I only feel that nine out of ten business men would
consider you, in the position you occupy on the Events,--a--a--dangerous
person."

Bartley got up from his desk, and walked toward Witherby, with his hands in
his pockets; he halted a few paces from him, and looked down on him with a
sinister smile. "I don't think they'd consider you a dangerous person in
any position."

"May be not, may be not," said Witherby, striving to be easy and dignified.
In the effort he took up an open paper from the desk before him, and,
lifting it between Bartley and himself, feigned to be reading it.

Bartley struck it out of his trembling hands. "You impudent old scoundrel!
Do you pretend to be reading when I speak to you? For half a cent--"

Witherby, slipping and sliding in his swivel chair, contrived to get to his
feet "No violence, Mr. Hubbard, no violence _here_!"

"Violence!" laughed Bartley. "I should have to _touch_ you! Come! Don't be
afraid! But don't you put on airs of any sort! I understand your game.
You want, for some reason, to get rid of me, and you have seized the
opportunity with a sharpness that does credit to your cunning. I don't
condescend to deny this report,"--speaking in this lofty strain, Bartley
had a momentary sensation of its being a despicable slander,--"but I see
that as far as you are concerned it answers all the purposes of truth. You
think that with the chance of having this thing exploited against me I
won't expose your nefarious practices, and you can get rid of me more
safely now than ever you could again. Well, you're right. I dare say you
heard of this report a good while ago, and you've waited till you could
fill my place without inconvenience to yourself. So I can go at once. Draw
your check for all you owe me, and pay me back the money I put into your
stock, and I'll clear out at once." He went about putting together a few
personal effects on his desk.

"I must protest against any allusion to nefarious practices, Mr. Hubbard,"
said Witherby, "and I wish you to understand that I part from you without
the slightest ill-feeling. I shall always have a high regard for your
ability, and--and--your social qualities." While he made these expressions
he hastened to write two checks.

Bartley, who had paid no attention to what Witherby was saying, came up and
took the checks. "This is all right," he said of one. But looking at the
other, he added, "Fifteen hundred dollars? Where is the dividend?"

"That is not due till the end of the month," said Witherby. "If you
withdraw your money now, you lose it."

Bartley looked at the face to which Witherby did his best to give a high
judicial expression. "You old thief!" he said good-humoredly, almost
affectionately. "I _have_ a mind to tweak your nose!" But he went out of
the room without saying or doing anything more. He wondered a little at his
own amiability; but with the decay of whatever was right-principled in him,
he was aware of growing more and more incapable of indignation. Now, his
flash of rage over, he was not at all discontented. With these checks in
his pocket, with his youth, his health, and his practised hand, he could
have faced the world, with a light heart, if he had not also had to face
his wife. But when he thought of the inconvenience of explaining to her, of
pacifying her anxiety, of clearing up her doubts on a thousand points, and
of getting her simply to eat or sleep till he found something else to do,
it dismayed him. "Good Lord!" he said to himself, "I wish I was dead--or
some one." That conclusion made him smile again.

He decided not to write to Marcia of the change in his affairs, but to take
the chance of finding something better before she returned. There was very
little time for him to turn round, and he was still without a place or any
prospect when she came home. It had sufficed with his acquaintance when he
said that he had left the Events because he could not get on with Witherby;
but he was very much astonished when it seemed to suffice with her.

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