Hazard of New Fortunes, a — Complete eBook

roof spun in iron over the cross street on which they ran to the depot; but for the present they were mostly inarticulate before it.  They had another moment of rich silence when they paused in the gallery that leads from the Elevated station to the waiting-rooms in the Central Depot and looked down upon the great night trains lying on the tracks dim under the rain of gas-lights that starred without dispersing the vast darkness of the place.  What forces, what fates, slept in these bulks which would soon be hurling themselves north and south and west through the night!  Now they waited there like fabled monsters of Arab story ready for the magician’s touch, tractable, reckless, will-less—­organized lifelessness full of a strange semblance of life.

The Marches admired the impressive sight with a thrill of patriotic pride in the fact that the whole world perhaps could not afford just the like.  Then they hurried down to the ticket-offices, and he got her a lower berth in the Boston sleeper, and went with her to the car.  They made the most of the fact that her berth was in the very middle of the car; and she promised to write as soon as she reached home.  She promised also that, having seen the limitations of New York in respect to flats, she would not be hard on him if he took something not quite ideal.  Only he must remember that it was not to be above Twentieth Street nor below Washington Square; it must not be higher than the third floor; it must have an elevator, steam heat, hail-boys, and a pleasant janitor.  These were essentials; if he could not get them, then they must do without.  But he must get them.

XI.

Mrs.

March was one of those wives who exact a more rigid adherence to their ideals from their husbands than from themselves.  Early in their married life she had taken charge of him in all matters which she considered practical.  She did not include the business of bread-winning in these; that was an affair that might safely be left to his absent-minded, dreamy inefficiency, and she did not interfere with him there.  But in such things as rehanging the pictures, deciding on a summer boarding-place, taking a seaside cottage, repapering rooms, choosing seats at the theatre, seeing what the children ate when she was not at table, shutting the cat out at night, keeping run of calls and invitations, and seeing if the furnace was dampered, he had failed her so often that she felt she could not leave him the slightest discretion in regard to a flat.  Her total distrust of his judgment in the matters cited and others like them consisted with the greatest admiration of his mind and respect for his character.  She often said that if he would only bring these to bear in such exigencies he would be simply perfect; but she had long given up his ever doing so.  She subjected him, therefore, to an iron code, but after proclaiming it she was apt to abandon him to the native lawlessness