Mrs. March

“ This immunity from acquaintance, this touch-and go quality in their New York sojourn, this almost loss of individuality at times, after the intense identification of their Boston life, was a relief, though Mrs. March had her misgivings, and questioned whether it were not perhaps too relaxing to the moral fibre. March refused to explore his conscience ”

“ You stay a little. It is so nice.” One day after such an entreaty, she said, “The queen is here, this morning.”
Mrs. March started, in the hope of highhotes. “The queen!”
“Yes; the young lady. Mr. Burnamy was saying she was a queen. She is there with her father.” She nodded in the direction of a distant corner, and the Marches knew that she meant Miss Triscoe and the general. “She is not seeming so gayly as she was being.”
March smiled. “We are none of us so gayly as we were being, Lili. The summer is going.” ”

“ At lunch, in the faded excitement of their first meeting, the people at the Marches' table did not renew the premature intimacy of their breakfast talk. Mrs. March went to lie down in her berth afterwards, and March went on deck without her. He began to walk to and from the barrier between the first and second cabin promenades; lingering near it, and musing pensively, for some of the people beyond it looked as intelligent and as socially acceptable, even to their clothes, as their pecuniary betters of the saloon. ”

“ Agatha hid her face in her handkerchief again. She was perching on the edge of the berth, and Mrs. March said, with a glance, which she did not see, toward the sofa, “I'm afraid that's rather a hard seat for you.
“Oh, no, thank you! I'm perfectly comfortable—I like it—if you don't mind?”
Mrs. March pressed her hand for answer, and after another little delay, sighed and said, “They are not like us, and we cannot help it. They are more temporizing.” ”

“ March.
“Ah, that reminds me,” said her husband, “that we had another talk with the old gentleman, this afternoon, about Fulkerson's literary, artistic, and advertising orgie, and it's postponed till October.”
“The later the better, I should think,” said Mrs. March, who did not really think about it at all, but whom the date fixed for it caused to think of the intervening time. “We have got to consider what we will do about the summer, before long, Basil.”
“Oh, not yet, not yet,” he pleaded; with that man's willingness to abide in the present, which is so trying to a woman. ”

“ Adding!” Mrs. March entreated.
“Oh, he doesn't mind my laughing,” said the mother, gayly. Rose came shyly back into the room, and she said, “Well, did you rebuke those bad bicyclers?” and she laughed again.
“They're only a custom, too, Rose,”, said March, tenderly. “Like the man resting while the women worked, and the Emperor, and all the rest of it.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” the boy returned.
“They ride modern machines, but they live in the tenth century. That's what we're always forgetting when we come to Europe and see these barbarians enjoying all our up-to-date improvements.” ”

“ March could take it.”
“Whichever you think,” said Kenby so submissively that she relented, to ask:
“And what will you do?”
He laughed. “Well, people have been known to sleep in a chair. I shall manage somehow.”
“You might offer to go in with the general,” March suggested, and the men apparently thought this was a joke. Mrs. March did not laugh in her feminine worry about ways and means.
“Where is Miss Triscoe?” she asked. “We haven't seen them.”
“Didn't Mrs. Adding tell you? They went to supper at a restaurant; the general doesn't like the cooking here. ”

“ It isn't a question of being happy here; no one is happy, in that old, selfish way, or can be; but he could have been of great use.”
“Perhaps he was of use in dying. Who knows? He may have been trying to silence Lindau.”
“Oh, Lindau wasn't worth it!” cried Mrs. March.
Miss Vance looked at her as if she did not quite understand. Then she turned to March. “He might have been unhappy, as we all are; but I know that his life here would have had a higher happiness than we wish for or aim for.” ”

“ But Miss Triscoe refused the bait, either because she had said all she meant, or because she had said all she would, about Chicago, which Mrs. March felt for the present to be one with Burnamy. She gave another of her leaps. “I don't see why people are so anxious to get it like Europe, at home. They say that there was a time when there were no chaperons before hoops, you know.” She looked suggestively at Mrs. March, resting one slim hand on the table, and controlling her skirt with the other, as if she were getting ready to rise at any moment. “When they used to sit on their steps.” ”

“ March was not the kind of woman to suffer them; but they played the comedy through, and let March go off for his last hill-climb with the promise to meet him in the Stadt Park when he came to the Kurhaus for his last mineral bath.
Mrs. March in the mean time went about some final shopping, and invited the girl's advice with a fondness which did not prevent her rejecting it in every case, with Miss Triscoe's eager approval. In the Stadt Park they sat down and talked; from time to time Mrs. March made polite feints of recovering her sandals, but the girl kept them with increased effusion. ”

“ March was obliged to say that she knew nothing about anyplace in Germany; and she explained perhaps too fully where and why she was going with her husband. She fancied a Boston note in that scorn for the tiresomeness of Dresden; but the girl's style was of New York rather than of Boston, and her accent was not quite of either place. Mrs. March began to try the Triscoes in this place and in that, to divine them and to class them. She had decided from the first that they were society people, but they were cultivated beyond the average of the few swells whom she had met ”

“ Fulkerson went out again, and this time March was finally left with Mr. Dryfoos.
“Mrs. March was very sorry not to be at home when your sisters called the other day. She wished me to ask if they had any afternoon in particular. There was none on your mother's card.”
“No, sir,” said the young man, with a flush of embarrassment that seemed habitual with him. “She has no day. She's at home almost every day. She hardly ever goes out.”
“Might we come some evening?” March asked. “We should be very glad to do that, if she would excuse the informality. Then I could come with Mrs. March.” ”

“ It seemed all to be as exciting for them, and it was as tedious for the witnesses, as any gala of students and bicyclers at home.
Mrs. March remained with an unrequited curiosity concerning their different colors and different caps, and she tried to make her husband find out what they severally meant; he pretended a superior interest in the nature of a people who had such a passion for uniforms that they were not content with its gratification in their immense army, but indulged it in every pleasure and employment of civil life. ”

“ The occasion for explaining that they were Americans and accustomed to different car windows was so tempting that Mrs. March could not forbear, and the other ladies were affected as deeply as she could wish. Perhaps they were the more affected because it presently appeared that they had cousins in New York whom she knew of, and that they were acquainted with an American family that had passed the winter in Berlin. Life likes to do these things handsomely, and it easily turned out that this was a family of intimate friendship with the Marches ”

“ March smiled dyingly on John, and said she feared her son wouldn't either. John looked distressed and then laughed; but the president declared her the picture of robust health. This did not seem to please her entirely, and so he added,
"You've got to be, to write good poetry. It must be lots of fun, Mrs. March, to dash off a rhyme just to while away the time—ha, ha, ha! My wife often writes poetry when she feels tired and lazy. I know that whirling this way through this beautiful country is inspiring you right now to write half a dozen poems. ”

“ There is nothing, March, that will keep a young man in the right way like his love for just 'the one girl in the world'--if only she be worthy of his love. And I think Hazel will be--even of you."
March flung his arms about her neck and kissed her heartily:
"Dear, little Mother Blossom, I 'll try, and even if I fail, just the thought of such a glorious-filorious mother that does n't laugh at a fellow--I was afraid you would, though,--will keep me straight enough. Why, Mother Blossom! ”

“ A simultaneous photograph could alone reproduce Mrs. March's tumultuous and various emotions as she seized the fact conveyed in my words. She poured out a volume of mingled conjectures, assertions, suspicions, conclusions, in which there was nothing final but the decision that we must not dream of going there; that it would look like thrusting ourselves in, and would be in the worst sort of taste; they would all hate us, and we should feel that we were spies upon the young people ”

“ March's anxieties, that he saw every word was carrying conviction of their insincerity to her. At the end she asked what rooms were left on the Norumbia, and the clerk whom they had fallen to looked through his passenger list with a shaking head. He was afraid there was nothing they would like.
“But we would take anything,” she entreated, and March smiled to think of his innocence in supposing for a moment that she had ever dreamed of not going.
“We merely want the best,” he put in. “One flight up, no noise or dust, with sun in all the windows, and a place for fire on rainy days.” ”

“ March's or Mrs. March's? I think Mrs. March's was; and I think Rob and Nelly were very fortunate children to have a mother who taught them such a good doctrine of life. This is the way she would have put it, if she had been going to write it out in rules.
First. If you don't like a thing, try with all your might to make it as you do like it. ”

“ March saw how simple-hearted he was in his reticence, after all. She was ready to bless him when they reached the hotel and found that his interest had got them the only rooms left in the house. This satisfied in her the passion for size which is at the bottom of every American heart, and which perhaps above all else marks us the youngest of the peoples. We pride ourselves on the bigness of our own things, but we are not ungenerous, and when we go to Europe and find things bigger than ours, we are magnanimously happy in them. ”

“ March. “My husband never tires of it. A good many of the contributors come to us, you know.”
“It must be delightful,” said the girl. She added as if she ought to excuse herself for neglecting an advantage that might have been hers if she had chosen, “I'm sorry one sees so little of the artistic and literary set. But New York is such a big place.”
“New York people seem to be very fond of it,” said Mrs. March. “Those who have always lived there.” ”

“ No; you needn't talk to me. It's all very well, but it isn't ideal."
March laughed. "Ideal! What is ideal?"
"Going home!" she said with such passion that he had not the heart to point out that they were merely returning to their old duties, cares and pains, with the worn-out illusion that these would be altogether different when they took them up again.
LXXIII. In fulfilment of another ideal Mrs. March took straightway to her berth when she got on board the Cupania, and to her husband's admiration she remained there till the day before they reached New York. ”

“ Miss Woodburn told the ladies at once, and it was not a thing that Fulkerson could keep from March very long. He sent word of it to Mrs. March by her husband; and his engagement perhaps did more than anything else to confirm the confidence in him which had been shaken by his early behavior in the Lindau episode, and not wholly restored by his tardy fidelity to March. But now she felt that a man who wished to get married so obviously and entirely for love was full of all kinds of the best instincts, and only needed the guidance of a wife, to become very noble. ”

“ March, there ain't anything like a home, is there? Dear little cot of your own, heigh? I tell you, March, when I get to pushing that mower round, and the colonel is smoking his cigar in the gallery, and those girls are pottering over the flowers, one of these soft evenings after dinner, I feel like a human being. Yes, I do. I struck it rich when I concluded to take my meals at the widow's. For eight dollars a week I get good board, refined society, and all the advantages of a Christian home. By-the-way, you've never had much talk with Miss Woodburn, have you, March? ”

“ March. There isn't any doubt about my wanting to marry her, and up to this time there hasn't been any doubt about her not wanting to marry me. But it isn't a question of her or of me, now. It's a question of Rose. I love the boy,” and Kenby's voice shook, and he faltered a moment. “Pshaw! You understand.”
“Indeed I do, Mr. Kenby,” said Mrs. March. “I perfectly understand you.”
“Well, I don't think Mrs. Adding is fit to make the journey with him alone, or to place herself in the best way after she gets to Schevleningen. She's been badly shaken up ”

“ March. “I was young, then; and I lived in Boston, where I suppose it was always simpler than in New York. I used to sit on our steps. It was delightful for girls—the freedom.”
“I wish I had lived before hoops,” said Miss Triscoe.
“Well, there must be places where it's before hoops yet: Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, for all I know,” Mrs. March suggested. “And there must be people in that epoch everywhere.”
“Like that young lady who twists and turns?” said Miss Triscoe, giving first one side of her face and then the other. “They have a good time. ”