XIII.

The course of public events carried Beaton’s private affairs beyond the reach of his simple first intention to renounce his connection with ‘Every Other Week.’  In fact, this was not perhaps so simple as it seemed, and long before it could be put in effect it appeared still simpler to do nothing about the matter—­to remain passive and leave the initiative to Dryfoos, to maintain the dignity of unconsciousness and let recognition of any change in the situation come from those who had caused the change.  After all, it was rather absurd to propose making a purely personal question the pivot on which his relations with ‘Every Other Week’ turned.  He took a hint from March’s position and decided that he did not know Dryfoos in these relations; he knew only Fulkerson, who had certainly had nothing to do with Mrs. Mandel’s asking his intentions.  As he reflected upon this he became less eager to look Fulkerson up and make the magazine a partner of his own sufferings.  This was the soberer mood to which Beaton trusted that night even before he slept, and he awoke fully confirmed in it.  As he examined the offence done him in the cold light of day, he perceived that it had not come either from Mrs. Mandel, who was visibly the faltering and unwilling instrument of it, or from Christine, who was altogether ignorant of it, but from Dryfoos, whom he could not hurt by giving up his place.  He could only punish Fulkerson by that, and Fulkerson was innocent.  Justice and interest alike dictated the passive course to which Beaton inclined; and he reflected that he might safely leave the punishment of Dryfoos to Christine, who would find out what had happened, and would be able to take care of herself in any encounter of tempers with her father.

Beaton did not go to the office during the week that followed upon this conclusion; but they were used there to these sudden absences of his, and, as his work for the time was in train, nothing was made of his staying away, except the sarcastic comment which the thought of him was apt to excite in the literary department.  He no longer came so much to the Leightons, and Fulkerson was in no state of mind to miss any one there except Miss Woodburn, whom he never missed.  Beaton was left, then, unmolestedly awaiting the course of destiny, when he read in the morning paper, over his coffee at Maroni’s, the deeply scare-headed story of Conrad’s death and the clubbing of Lindau.  He probably cared as little for either of them as any man that ever saw them; but he felt a shock, if not a pang, at Conrad’s fate, so out of keeping with his life and character.  He did not know what to do; and he did nothing.  He was not asked to the funeral, but he had not expected that, and, when Fulkerson brought him notice that Lindau was also to be buried from Dryfoos’s house, it was without his usual sullen vindictiveness that he kept away.  In his sort, and as much as