But are we appreciably poorer for his being out of it now?""No,I don't reckon we are,"said Fulkerson."And what a lot of the raw material of all kinds the Almighty must have,to waste us the way He seems to do.Think of throwing away a precious creature like Coonrod Dryfoos on one chance in a thousand of getting that old fool of a Lindau out of the way of being clubbed!For I suppose that was what Coonrod was up to.Say!Have you been round to see Lindau to-day?"Something in the tone or the manner of Fulkerson startled March."No!
I haven't seen him since yesterday."
"Well,I don't know,"said Fulkerson."I guess I saw him a little while after you did,and that young doctor there seemed to feel kind of worried about him.
Or not worried,exactly;they can't afford to let such things worry them,I suppose;but--""He's worse?"asked March.
"Oh,he didn't say so.But I just wondered if you'd seen him to-day.""I think I'll go now,"said March,with a pang at heart.He had gone every day to see Lindau,but this day he had thought he would not go,and that was why his heart smote him.He knew that if he were in Lindau's place Lindau would never have left his side if he could have helped it.
March tried to believe that the case was the same,as it stood now;it seemed to him that he was always going to or from the hospital;he said to himself that it must do Lindau harm to be visited so much.But be knew that this was not true when he was met at the door of the ward where Lindau lay by the young doctor,who had come to feel a personal interest in March's interest in Lindau.
He smiled without gayety,and said,"He's just going.""What!Discharged?"
"Oh no.He has been failing very fast since you saw him yesterday,and now--"They had been walking softly and talking softly down the aisle between the long rows of beds."Would you care to see him?"The doctor made a slight gesture toward the white canvas screen which in such places forms the death-chamber of the poor and friendless."Come round this way--he won't know you!I've got rather fond of the poor old fellow.He wouldn't have a clergyman--sort of agnostic,isn't he?Agood many of these Germans are--but the young lady who's been coming to see him--"They both stopped.Lindau's grand,patriarchal head,foreshortened to their view,lay white upon the pillow,and his broad,white beard flowed upon the sheet,which heaved with those long last breaths.Beside his bed Margaret Vance was kneeling;her veil was thrown back,and her face was lifted;she held clasped between her hands the hand of the dying man;she moved her lips inaudibly.
X.
In spite of the experience of the whole race from time immemorial,when death comes to any one we know we helplessly regard it as an incident of life,which will presently go on as before.Perhaps this is an instinctive perception of the truth that it does go on somewhere;but we have a sense of death as absolutely the end even for earth only if it relates to some one remote or indifferent to us.March tried to project Lindau to the necessary distance from himself in order to realize the fact in his case,but he could not,though the man with whom his youth had been associated in a poetic friendship had not actually reentered the region of his affection to the same degree,or in any like degree.The changed conditions forbade that.He had a soreness of heart concerning him;but he could not make sure whether this soreness was grief for his death,or remorse for his own uncandor with him about Dryfoos,or a foreboding of that accounting with his conscience which he knew his wife would now exact of him down to the last minutest particular of their joint and several behavior toward Lindau ever since they had met him in New York.
He felt something knock against his shoulder,and he looked up to have his hat struck from his head by a horse's nose.He saw the horse put his foot on the hat,and he reflected,"Now it will always look like an accordion,"and he heard the horse's driver address him some sarcasms before he could fully awaken to the situation.He was standing bareheaded in the middle of Fifth Avenue and blocking the tide of carriages flowing in either direction.Among the faces put out of the carriage windows he saw that of Dryfoos looking from a coupe.The old man knew him,and said,"Jump in here,Mr.March";and March,who had mechanically picked up his hat,and was thinking,"Now I shall have to tell Isabel about this at once,and she will never trust me on the street again without her,"mechanically obeyed.Her confidence in him had been undermined by his being so near Conrad when he was shot;and it went through his mind that he would get Dryfoos to drive him to a hatter's,where he could buy a new hat,and not be obliged to confess his narrow escape to his wife till the incident was some days old and she could bear it better.It quite drove Lindau's death out of his mind for the moment;and when Dryfoos said if he was going home he would drive up to the first cross-street and turn back with him,March said he would be glad if he would take him to a hat-store.The old man put his head out again and told the driver to take them to the Fifth Avenue Hotel."There's a hat-store around there somewhere,seems to me,"he said;and they talked of March's accident as well as they could in the rattle and clatter of the street till they reached the place.March got his hat,passing a joke with the hatter about the impossibility of pressing his old hat over again,and came out to thank Dryfoos and take leave of him.
