By Meredith Nicholson
THE POET. Illustrated.
OTHERWISE PHYLLIS. With frontispiece in color.
THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN AND OTHER PAPERS.
A HOOSIER CHRONICLE. With Illustrations.
THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS. With illustrations.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
THE POET
[Illustration: POOR MARJORIE (p. 3)]
THE POET
BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
WITH PICTURES BY FRANKLIN BOOTH
AND DECORATIONS BY W. A. DWIGGINS
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1914_
ILLUSTRATIONS
“POOR MARJORIE!” (Page 3) _Frontispiece_
“EVERY TRIFLING THING HAD TO BE ARGUED” 74
THE APPROACHING CANOE 110
“ELIZABETH!” 188
[Illustration: PART ONE]
[Illustration]
PART ONE
I
“The lonesomeness of that little girl over there is becoming painful,”
said the Poet from his chair by the hedge. “I can’t make out whether
she’s too dressed up to play or whether it’s only shyness.”
“Poor Marjorie!” murmured Mrs. Waring. “We’ve all coaxed her to
play, but she won’t budge. By the way, that’s one of the saddest
cases we’ve had; it’s heartbreaking, discouraging. Little waifs like
Marjorie, whose fathers and mothers can’t hit it off, don’t have a fair
chance,--they are handicapped from the start.--Oh, I thought you knew;
that’s the Redfields’ little girl.”
The Poet gazed with a new intentness at the dark-haired child of five
who stood rigidly at the end of the pergola with her hands clasped
behind her back. The Poet All the People Loved was a philosopher also,
but his philosophy was not quite equal to forecasting the destiny of
little Marjorie.
“Children,” he observed, “should not be left on the temple steps when
the pillars of society crack and rock; the good fairies ought to carry
them out of harm’s way. Little Marjorie looks as though she had never
smiled.” And then he murmured with characteristic self-mockery,--
“Oh, little child that never smiled--
Somebody might build a poem around that line, but I hope nobody ever
will! If that child doesn’t stop looking that way, I shall have to cry
or crawl over there on my knees and ride her pickaback.”
Mrs. Waring’s two daughters had been leading the children in a march
and dance that now broke up in a romp; and the garden echoed with
gleeful laughter. The spell of restraint was broken, and the children
began initiating games of their own choosing; but Marjorie stood
stolidly gazing at them as though they were of another species. Her
nurse, having failed to interest her sad-eyed charge in the games that
were delighting the other children, had withdrawn, leaving Marjorie to
her own devices.
“She’s always like that,” the girl explained with resignation, “and you
can’t do anything with her.”
A tall, fair girl appeared suddenly at the garden entrance. The abrupt
manner of her coming, the alert poise of her figure, as though she had
been arrested in flight and had paused only for breath before winging
farther, interested the Poet at once.
She stood there as unconscious as though she were the first woman,
and against the white gate of the garden was imaginably of kin to the
bright goddesses of legend. She was hatless, and the Poet was grateful
for this, for a hat, he reflected, should never weigh upon a head so
charming, so lifted as though with courage and hope, and faith in
the promise of life. A tennis racket held in the hollow of her arm
explained her glowing color. Essentially American, he reflected, this
young woman, and worthy to stand as a type in his thronging gallery.
She so satisfied the eye in that hesitating moment that the Poet
shrugged his shoulders impatiently when she threw aside the racket
and bounded across the lawn, darting in and out among the children,
laughingly eluding small hands thrust out to catch her, and then
dropped on her knees before Marjorie. She caught the child’s hands,
laughed into the sad little face, holding herself away so that the
homesick, bewildered heart might have time to adjust itself, and then
Marjorie’s arms clasped her neck tightly, and the dark head lay close
to the golden one.
There was a moment’s parley, begun in tears and ending in laughter;
and then Marian tripped away with Marjorie, and joined with her in the
mazes of a dance that enmeshed the whole company of children in bright
ribbons and then freed them again. The Poet, beating time to the music
with his hat, wished that Herrick might have been there; it was his
habit to think, when something pleased him particularly, that “Keats
would have liked that!”--“Shelley would have made a golden line of
this!” He felt songs beating with eager wings at the door of his own
heart as his glance followed the fair girl who had so easily turned a
child’s tears to laughter. For Marjorie was laughing with the rest now;
in ten minutes she was one of them--had found friends and seemed not to
mind at all when her good angel dropped out to become a spectator of
her happiness.
“I have saved my trousers,” remarked the Poet to Mrs. Waring, who had
watched the transformation in silence; “but that girl has spoiled her
frock kneeling to Marjorie. I suppose I couldn’t with delicacy offer to
reimburse her for the damage. If there were any sort of gallantry in me
I would have sacrificed myself, and probably have scared Marjorie to
death. If a child should put its arms around me that way and cry on my
shoulder and then run off and play, I should be glad to endow laundries
to the limit of my bank account. If the Diana who rescued Marjorie has
another name--”
“I thought you knew! That’s Marian Agnew, Marjorie’s aunt.”
“I’ve read of her in many books,” said the Poet musingly, “but she’s an
elusive person. I might have known that if I would sit in a pleasant
garden like this in June and watch children at play, something
beautiful would pass this way.”
Mrs. Waring glanced at him quickly, as people usually did to make sure
he was not trifling with them.
“You really seem interested in the way she hypnotized Marjorie! Well,
to be quite honest, I sent for her to come! She was playing tennis a
little farther up the street, but she came running when I sent word
that Marjorie was here and that we had all given her up in despair.”
“My first impression was that she had dropped down from heaven or
had run away from Olympus. Please don’t ask me to say which I think
likelier!”
“I’m sorry to spoil an illusion, but after all Marian is one of the
daughters of men; though I remember that when she was ten she told me
in solemn confidence that she believed in fairies, because she had seen
them--an excellent reason! She graduated from Vassar last year, and I
have an idea that college may have shaken her faith in fairies. She’s
going to begin teaching school next fall,--she has to do something,
you know. She’s an eminently practical person, blessed with a sound
appetite, and she can climb a rope, and swim and play tennis all day.”
“The Olympians ate three meals a day, I imagine; and we shouldn’t
begrudge this fair-haired Marian her daily bread and butter. Let me
see; she’s Marjorie’s aunt; and Marjorie’s father is Miles Redfield. I
know Redfield well; his wife was Elizabeth Agnew. I saw a good deal of
them in their early married days. They’ve agreed to quit--is that the
way of it?”
“How fortunate you are that people don’t tell you gossip! I suppose
it’s one of the rewards of being a poet! The whole town has been upset
by the Redfields’ troubles;--they have separated. I’ve sent Elizabeth
up to Waupegan to open my house--made an excuse to get her away.
Marjorie’s with her grandmother, waiting for the courts to do something
about it;--as though courts could do anything about such cases!” she
ended with feeling.
The Poet, searching for Marjorie in the throng of children, made no
reply.
“You are a poet,” Mrs. Waring resumed tauntingly, with the privilege of
old friendship, “and have a reputation for knowing the human heart.
Why can’t you do something about the Redfields’ troubles?--there’s a
fine chance for you! It begins to look as though sentiment, romance,
love--all those things you poets have been writing about for thousands
of years--have gone out with the old-fashioned roses. I confess that
it’s because I’m afraid that’s true that I’m clinging to all the
flowers my grandmother used to love--and I’m nearly seventy and a
grandmother myself.”
She was still a handsome woman, and the Poet’s eyes followed her
admiringly as she crossed the lawn, leaving him to find an answer to
her question. In the days of his beginnings she had been his steadfast
friend, and he was fond of telling her that he had learned the
kindliness and cheer he put into his poems from her.
She and her assistants were marshaling the children for refreshments
under a canopy at the farther corner of the garden, and the animated
scene delighted and charmed him. He liked thus to sit apart and
observe phases of life,--and best of all he loved scenes like this
that were brightened by the presence of children. He was a bachelor,
but the world’s children were his; and he studied them, loved them,
wrote for them and of them. He was quite alone, as he liked to be
often, pondering the misfortunes of the Redfields as lightly limned
by Mrs. Waring. Little Marjorie, as she had stood forlornly against
the pergola, haunted him still in spite of her capitulation to the
charms of her Aunt Marian. He knew perfectly well that Mrs. Waring
hadn’t meant what she said in her fling about the passing of poetry and
romance; she was the last woman in the world to utter such sentiments
seriously; but he was aware that many people believed them to be true.
Every day the postman brought him letters in dismaying numbers from
people of all sorts and conditions who testified to the validity of his
message. The most modest of men, he found it difficult to understand
how he reached so many hearts; he refused to believe himself, what
some essayist had called him, “a lone piper in the twilight of the
poets.” With maturity his attitude toward his own genius had changed;
and under his joy in the song for the song’s sake was a deep, serious
feeling of responsibility. It was a high privilege to comfort and
uplift so many; and if he were, indeed, one of the apostolic line of
poets, he must have a care to keep his altar clean and bright for those
who should come after him.
He was so deep in thought that he failed to observe Marian advancing
toward him.
“If you please, I have brought you an ice, and there will be cake and
bonbons,” said the girl. “And Mrs. Waring said if you didn’t mind I
might sit and talk to you.”
“You should be careful,” said the Poet, taking the plate, “about
frightening timid men to death. I was thinking about you so hard that
my watch and my heart both stopped when you spoke to me.”
“And this,” exclaimed the girl, “from the poet of gracious words! I’ve
been told that I’m rather unexpected and generally annoying, but I
didn’t know I was so bad as that!”
“Then let us begin all over again,” said the Poet. “Mrs. Waring told
me your name and gave you a high reputation as an athlete, and spoke
feelingly of your appetite. It’s only fair to give you a chance to
speak for yourself. So kindly begin by telling me about Marjorie and
why she’s so forlorn, and just what you said to her a while ago!”
The color deepened in the girl’s face. It was disconcerting to be
sitting beside the Poet All the People Loved and to be talking to him
for the first time in her life; but to have him ask a question of so
many obscure connotations, touching upon so many matters that were best
left to whispering gossips, quite took her breath away.
“Not a word that I can remember,” she answered; “but Marjorie said,
‘Take me home!’--and after she had cried a little she felt better and
was glad to play.”
“Of course that’s only the most superficial and modest account of the
incident,” the Poet replied; “but I can’t blame you for not telling. If
I knew how to do what you did, I should very likely keep the secret.
Another case of the flower in the crannied wall,--
Little flower--but _if_ I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is!”
“You give me far too much credit,” the girl responded gravely. “It was
merely a matter of my knowing Marjorie better than any one else at
the party; I hadn’t known she was coming or I should have brought her
myself.”
“I thought you would say something like that,” the Poet observed, “and
that is why I liked you before you said it.”
She looked at him with the frank curiosity aroused by her nearness to
a celebrity. Now that the first little heartache over the mention of
Marjorie had passed, she found herself quite at ease with him.
“My feelings have been hurt,” he was saying. “Oh, nobody has told
me--at least not to-day--that I am growing old, or that it’s silly to
carry an umbrella on bright days! It’s much worse than that.”
Sympathy spoke in her face and from the tranquil depths of her violet
eyes.
“I shall hate whoever said it, forever and forever!” she averred.
“Oh, no! That would be a very serious mistake! The person who hurt my
feelings is the nicest possible person and one of my best friends. So
many people are saying the same thing that we needn’t ascribe it to any
individual. Let us assume that I’ve been hurt by many people, who say
that romance and old-fashioned roses are not what they were; that such
poetry as we have nowadays isn’t of any use, and that we are all left
floundering here
As on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
I want you to tell me, honestly and truly, whether you really believe
that.”
He was more eager for her reply than she knew; and when it was not
immediately forthcoming a troubled look stole into his face. The
readiness of the poetic temperament to idealize had betrayed him for
once, at least, and he felt his disappointments deeply. The laughter of
the children floated fitfully from the corner of the garden where they
were arraying themselves in the tissue caps that had been hidden in
their bonbons. A robin, wondering at all the merriment, piped cheerily
from a tall maple, and a jay, braving the perils of urban life, winged
over the garden with a flash of blue. The gleeful echoes from the
bright canopy, the bird calls, the tender green of the foliage, the
scents and sounds of early summer all spoke for happiness; and yet
Marian Agnew withheld the reply on which he had counted. She still
delayed as though waiting for the robin to cease; and when a flutter of
wings announced his departure, she began irresolutely:--
“I wish I could say no, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am to
disappoint you--you, of all men! I know you wouldn’t want me to be
dishonest--to make the answer you expected merely to please you. Please
forgive me! but I’m not sure I think as you do about life. If I had
never known trouble--if I didn’t know that faith and love can die, then
I shouldn’t hesitate. But I’m one of the doubting ones.”
“I’m sorry,” said the Poet; “but we may as well assume that we are
old friends and be frank. Please believe that I’m not bothering you in
this way without a purpose. I think I know what has obscured the light
for you. You are thinking of your sister’s troubles; and when I asked
you what sorcery you had exercised upon little Marjorie, you knew her
mother had been in my mind. That isn’t, of course, any of my affair,
in one sense; but in another sense it is. For one thing, I knew your
sister when she was a girl--which wasn’t very long ago. And I know
the man she married; and there was never any marriage that promised
so well as that! And for another thing, I don’t like to think that
we’ve cut all the old moorings; that the anchorages of life, that were
safe enough in old times, snap nowadays in any passing gust. The very
thought of it makes me uncomfortable! You are not fair to yourself when
you allow other people’s troubles to darken your own outlook. When you
stood over there at the gate, I called the roll of all the divinities
of light and sweetness and charm to find a name for you; when you ran
to Marjorie and won her back to happiness so quickly, I was glad that
these are not the old times of fauns and dryads, but that you are very
real, and a healthy-minded American girl, seeing life quite steadily
and whole.”
“Oh, but I don’t; I can’t!” she faltered; “and doesn’t--doesn’t the
mistake you made about me prove that what poets see and feel isn’t
reality, isn’t life as it really is?”
“I object,” said the Poet with a humorous twinkle, “to any such
sacrifice of yourself to support the wail of the pessimists. I
positively refuse to sanction anything so sacrilegious!”
“I’m not terribly old,” she went on, ignoring his effort to give a
lighter tone to the talk; “and I don’t pretend to be wise; but life
can’t be just dreams and flowers: I see that! I wish it were that way,
for everything would be so simple and easy and every one would live
happy ever after.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t quite true,” said the Poet. “I can’t think of
anything more disagreeable than half an hour spent in a big hothouse
full of roses. I’ve made the experiment occasionally; and if all
creation lived in such an atmosphere, we should be a pale, stifled,
anæmic race. And think of the stone-throwing there would be if we all
lived in glass houses!”
She smiled at this; and their eyes met in a look that marked the
beginnings of a friendship.
“There’s Marjorie, and I must go!” she cried suddenly. “Isn’t she quite
the prettiest of them all in her paper cap! We haven’t really decided
anything, have we?” she asked, lingering a moment. “And I haven’t even
fed you very well, for which Mrs. Waring will scold me. But I hope
you’re going to like me a little bit--even if I am a heathen!”
“We were old friends when the stars first sang together! Something
tells me that I shall see you soon again--very soon; but you have not
got rid of me yet; I crave the honor of an introduction to Marjorie.”
In a moment the Poet stood with Marjorie close at his side, her hand
thrust warmly and contentedly into his, while all the other children
pressed close about. He was telling them one of the stories in rhyme
for which he was famous, and telling it with an art that was not less
a gift from Heaven than the genius that had put the words into his
ink-pot. Thousands of children had heard that poem at their mothers’
knees, but to-day it seemed new, even to those of the attentive young
auditors whose lips moved with his, repeating the quaint, whimsical
phrases and musical lines that seem, indeed, to be the spontaneous
creation of any child who lisps them.
And when he began to retreat, followed by the clamorous company with
demands for more, he slipped away through the low garden gate, leaned
upon it and looked down upon them with feigned surprise as though he
had never seen them before.
“How remarkable!” he exclaimed, lingering to parley with them. “Tell
you another story! Who has been telling stories! I just stopped
to look at the garden and all the flowers jumped up and became
children--children calling for stories! How very remarkable! And all
the brown-eyed children are pansies and all the blue-eyed ones are
roses,--really this is the most remarkable thing I ever heard of!”
They drew closer as he whispered:--
“You must do just what I tell you--will you promise, every single boy
and girl?”
They pressed nearer, presenting a compact semicircle of awed faces,
and nodded eagerly. An older boy giggled in excess of joy and in
anticipation of what was to come, and his neighbors rebuked him with
frowns.
“Now, when I say ‘one,’ begin to count, and count ten slowly--oh, very
slowly; and then, when everybody has counted, everybody stand on one
foot with eyes shut tight and hop around real quick and look at the
back wall of the garden--there’s a robin sitting there at this very
minute;--but don’t look. Nobody must look--yet! And when you open your
eyes there will be a fairy in a linen duster and a cocked hat; that is,
_maybe_ you’ll see him! Now shut your eyes and count--one!”
When they swung round to take him to task for this duplicity, he had
reached the street and was waving his hand to them.
II
Under the maples that arched the long street the Poet walked homeward,
pondering the afternoon’s adventures. His encounter with the children
had sent him away from Mrs. Waring’s garden in a happy mood. Down
the long aisle of trees the tall shaft of the soldiers’ monument
rose before him. He had watched its building, and the memories that
had gone to its making had spoken to his imagination with singular
poignancy. It expressed the high altitudes of aspiration and endeavor
of his own people; for the gray shaft was not merely the center of
his city, the teeming, earnest capital of his State; but his name and
fame were inseparably linked to it. He had found within an hour’s
journey of the monument the material for a thousand poems. As a boy
he had ranged the near-by fields and followed, like a young Columbus,
innumerable creeks and rivers; he had learned and stored away the
country lore and the country faith, and fixed in his mind unconsciously
the homely speech in which he was to express these things later as
one having authority. So profitably had he occupied his childhood and
youth that years spent on “paven ground” had not dimmed the freshness
of those memories. It seemed that by some magic he was able to cause
the springs he had known in youth (and springs are dear to youth!)
to bubble anew in the crowded haunts of men; and urban scenes never
obscured for him the labors and incidents of the farm. He had played
upon the theme of home with endless variations, and never were songs
honester than these. The home round which he had flung his defense of
song domiciled folk of simple aims and kindly mirth; he had established
them as a type, written them down in their simple dialect that has the
tang of wild persimmons, the mellow flavor of the pawpaw.
He turned into the quiet street from which for many years he had sent
his songs winging,--an absurdly inaccessible and delightful street that
baffled all seekers,--that had to be rediscovered with each visit by
the Poet’s friends. Not only was its seclusion dear to him; but the
difficulties experienced by his visitors in finding it tickled his
humor. It was pleasant to be tucked away in a street that never was
in danger of precipitating one into the market-place, and in a house
set higher than its neighbors and protected by an iron fence and a
gate whose chain one must fumble a moment before gaining access to the
whitest of stone steps, and the quaint door that had hospitably opened
to so many of the good and great of all lands.
There was a visitor waiting--a young man who explained himself
diffidently and seemed taken aback by the cordiality with which the
Poet greeted him.
“Frederick Fulton,” repeated the Poet, waving his hand toward a
chair. “You are not the young man who sent me a manuscript to read
last summer,--and very long it was, indeed, a poetic drama, ‘The
Soul of Eros.’ Nor the one who wrote an ode in hexameters ‘To the
Spirit of Shelley,’ nor yet the other one who seemed bent on doing
Omar Khayyám over again--‘Verses from Persian Sources’ he called it.
You needn’t bother to repudiate those efforts; I have seen your name
in the ‘Chronicle’ tacked to very good things--very good, and very
American. Yes, I recall half a dozen pieces under one heading--‘Songs
of Journeys’ End’--and good work--excellent! I suppose they were all
refused by magazines or you wouldn’t have chucked them into a Sunday
supplement. Oh, don’t jump! I’m not a mind reader--it’s only that I’ve
been through all that myself.”
“Not lately, though, of course,” Fulton remarked, with the laugh that
the Poet’s smile invited.
“Not so lately, but they sent me back so much when I was young, and
even after I wasn’t so young, that the account isn’t balanced yet!
There are things in those verses of yours that I remember--they were
very delicate, and beautifully put together,--cobwebs with dew clinging
to them. I impudently asked about you at the office to make sure there
really was a Frederick Fulton.”
“That was kind and generous; I heard about it, and that emboldened me
to come and see you--without any manuscript in my pocket!”
“I should like another handful like those ‘Journeys’ End’ pieces.
There was a rare sort of joy in them, exultance, ardor. You had a line
beginning--
‘If love should wait for May to come--’
that was like a bubble tossed into the air, quivering with life and
flashing all manner of colors. And there was something about swallows
darting down from the bank and skimming over the creek to cool their
wings on the water. I liked that! I can see that you were a country
boy; we learned the alphabet out of the same primer!”
“I have done my share of ploughing,” Fulton remarked a little later,
after volunteering the few facts of his biography. “There are lots of
things about corn that haven’t been put into rhyme just right; the
smell of the up-turned earth, and the whisper and glisten of young
leaves; the sweating horses as the sun climbs to the top, and the
lonesome rumble of a wagon in the road, and the little cloud of dust
that follows and drifts after it.”
“And little sister in a pink sunbonnet strolls down the lane with a jug
of buttermilk about the time you begin to feel that Pharaoh has given
you the hardest job in his brickyard! I’ve never had those experiences
but”--the Poet laughed--“I’ve sat on the fence and watched other boys
do it; so you’re just that much richer than I am by your experience.
But we must be careful, though, or some evil spirit will come down
the chimney and tell us we’re not academic! I suppose we ought to be
threshing out old straw--you and I--writing of English skylarks and
the gorse and the yew and nightingales, instead of what we see out of
the window, here at home. How absurd of us! A scientist would be caught
up quick enough if he wrote of something he knew nothing about--if,
for example, an astronomer ventured to write an essay about the
starfish; and yet there are critics who sniff at such poetry as yours
and mine”--Fulton felt that the laurel had been pressed down on his
brows by this correlation--“because it’s about corn and stake-and-rider
fences with wild roses and elderberry blooming in the corners. You had
a fine poem about the kingfisher--and I suppose it would be more likely
to impress a certain type of austere critics if you’d written about
some extinct bird you’d seen in a college museum! But, dear me, I’m
doing all the talking!”
“I wish you would do much more. You’ve said just what I hoped you
would; in fact, I came to-day because I had a blue day, and I needed to
talk to some one, and I chose you. I know perfectly well that I ought
really to quit bothering my head about rhyme. I get too much happiness
out of it; it’s spoiling me for other things.”
“Let’s have all the story, then, if you really want to tell me,” said
the Poet. “Most people give only half confidences,” he added.
“I went into newspaper work after I’d farmed my way through college.
I’ve been with the ‘Chronicle’ three years, and I believe they say I’m
a good reporter; but however that may be, I don’t see my way very far
ahead. Promotions are uncertain, and the rewards of journalism at best
are not great. And of course I haven’t any illusions about poetry--the
kind I can do! I couldn’t live by it!”
He ended abruptly with an air of throwing all his cards on the table.
The Poet picked up a paper-cutter and began idly tapping his knee with
it.
“How do you know you can’t!”
It was an exclamation rather than a question, and he smiled at the
blank stare with which Fulton received it.
“Oh, I mean that it won’t pay my board bill or buy clothes! It feeds
the spirit, maybe, but that’s all. You see, I’m not a genius like you!”
“We will pass that as an irrelevant point and one you’d better not
try to defend. I agree with you about journalism, so we needn’t argue
that. But scribbling verses has taught you some things--the knack of
appraising material--quick and true selection--and the ability to write
clean straight prose, so you needn’t be ungrateful. Very likely it has
cultivated your sympathies, broadened your knowledge of people, shown
you lights and shadows you would otherwise have missed. These are all
worth while.”
“Yes, I appreciate all that; but for the long future I must have a
surer refuge than the newspaper office, where the tenure is decidedly
uncertain. I feel that I ought to break away pretty soon. I’m
twenty-six, and the years count; and I want to make the best use of
them; I’d like to crowd twenty years of hard work into ten and then
be free to lie back and play on my little tin whistle,” he continued
earnestly. “And I have a chance to go into business; Mr. Redfield has
offered me a place with him; he’s the broker, you know, one of the real
live wires and already very successful. My acquaintance with people all
over the State suggested the idea that I might make myself useful to
him.”
The Poet dropped the paper-cutter, and permitted Fulton to grope for it
to give himself time to think.
The narrow circumference within which the game of life is played had
always had for the Poet a fascinating interest; and he read into
coincidences all manner of mysteries, but it was nothing short of
startling that this young man, whom he had never seen before, should
have spoken Miles Redfield’s name just when it was in his own mind.
“I know Redfield quite well,” he said, “though he’s much younger than I
am. I understand that he’s prospering. He had somewhat your own problem
to solve not so very long ago; maybe you don’t know that?”
“No; I know him only in a business way; he occasionally has news; he’s
been in some important deals lately.”
“It’s odd, but he came to me a dozen years ago and talked to me much as
you have been talking. Art, not poetry, was his trouble. He had a lot
of talent--maybe not genius but undeniable talent. He had been to an
art school and made a fine record, and this, he used to say jokingly,
fitted him for a bank clerkship. He has a practical side, and most
of the year could clean up his day’s work early enough to save a few
daylight hours for himself. There’s a pen-and-ink sketch of me just
behind your head that’s Miles’s work. Yes; it’s good; and he could
pluck the heart out of a landscape, too;--in oils, I mean. He was
full of enthusiasm and meant to go far. Then he struck the reefs of
discouragement as we all do, and gave it up; got a job in a bank, got
married--and there you are!”
“It’s too bad about his domestic affairs,” Fulton volunteered, as the
Poet broke off with a gesture that was eloquent with vague implications.
“He seems to have flung aside all his ideals with his crayons and
brushes!” exclaimed the Poet impatiently. “Mind you, I don’t blame him
for abandoning art; I always have an idea that those who grow restless
over their early failures and quit the game haven’t heard the call very
clearly. A poet named McPhelim once wrote a sonnet, that began--
‘All-lovely Art, stern Labor’s fair-haired child,--’
working out the idea that we must serve seven years and yet seven
other years to win the crown. We might almost say that it’s an endless
apprenticeship; we are all tyros to the end of the chapter!”
“It must be the gleam we follow forever!” said the young man. “No
matter how slight the spark I feel--I want to feel that it’s worth
following if I never come in sight of the Grail.”
It was not the way of the Poet to become too serious even in matters
that lay nearest his heart.
“We must follow the firefly even though it leads us into bramble
patches and we emerge on the other side with our hands and faces
scratched! It’s our joke on a world that regards us with suspicion
that, when we wear our singing robes into the great labor houses, we
are really more practical than the men who spend their days there. I’m
making that statement in confidence to you as a comrade and brother;
we must keep our conceit to ourselves; but it’s true, nevertheless.
The question at issue is whether you shall break with the ‘Chronicle’
and join forces with Miles Redfield; and whether doing so would mean
inevitably that you must bid your literary ambitions get behind you,
Satan.”
Fulton nodded.
“Of course,” he said, “there have been many men who first and last have
made an avocation of literature and looked elsewhere for their daily
bread: Lamb’s heart, pressed against his desk in the India office, was
true to literature in spite of his necessities. And poets have always
had a hard time of it, stealing like Villon, or inspecting schools,
like Arnold, or teaching, like Longfellow and Lowell; they have usually
paid a stiff price for their tickets to the Elysian Fields.”
The Poet crossed the room, glanced at the portrait that Redfield had
made of him, and then leaned against the white marble mantel.
“We’ve wandered pretty far afield; we are talking as though this thing
we call art were something quite detachable--something we could stand
off and look at, or put on or off at will. I wonder if we won’t reach
the beginning--or the end--of the furrow we’re scratching with our
little plough, by agreeing that it must be in our lives, a vital part
of us, and quite inseparable from the thing we are!”
“Yes; to those of high consecration--to the masters! But you are
carrying the banner too high; my lungs weren’t made for that clearer
ether and diviner air.”
“Let us consider that, then,” said the Poet, finding a new seat by the
window. “I have known and loved half a dozen men who have painted,--we
will take painters, to get away from our own shop,--and have passed the
meridian and kept on painting without gaining any considerable success
as men measure it; never winning much more than local reputation. They
have done pot-boilers with their left hands, and not grumbled. They’ve
found the picking pretty lean, too, and their lives have been one long
sacrifice. They’ve had to watch in some instances men of meaner aims
win the handful of silver and the ribbon to wear in their coats; but
they’ve gone on smilingly; they are like acolytes who light tapers
and sing chants without ever being summoned to higher service at the
altar--who would scruple to lay their hands on it!”
“They, of course, are the real thing!” Fulton exclaimed fervently, “and
there are scores of such men and women. They are amateurs in the true
sense. I know some of them, and I take off my hat to them!”
“I get down on my knees to them,” said the Poet with deep feeling.
“Success is far from spelling greatness; it takes a great soul to find
success and happiness in defeat. You will have to elect whether you
will take your chances with the kind of men I’ve mentioned or delve
where the returns are surer; and that’s a decision you will have to
make for yourself. All I can do is to suggest points for consideration.
Quite honestly I will say that your work promises well; that it’s
better than I was doing at your age, and that very likely you can
go far with it. How about prose--the novel, for example? Thackeray,
Howells, Aldrich--a number of novelists have been poets, too.”
“Oh, of course I mean to try a novel--or maybe a dozen of them! In
fact,” Fulton continued, after a moment’s hesitation, “I’m working
right now on a poetical romance with a layer of realism here and there
to hold it together. It’s modern with an up-to-date setting. I’ve done
some lyrics and songs to weave into it. There’s a poet who tends an
orchard on the shore of a lake,--almost like Waupegan,--and a girl he
doesn’t know; but he sees her paddling her canoe or sometimes playing
tennis near an inn not far from his orchard. He leaves poems around
for her to find, tacked to trees or pinned to the paddle in her canoe;
I suppose I’m stealing from Rosalind and Orlando. She’s tall, with
light brown hair,--there’s a glint of gold in it,--and she’s no end
beautiful. He watches her at the tennis court--lithe, eager, sure of
hand and foot; and writes madly, all kinds of extravagant songs in
praise of her. The horizon itself becomes the net, and she serves her
ball to the sun--you see he has a bad case! You know how pretty a girl
is on a tennis court,--that is, a graceful girl, all in white,--a tall,
fair girl with fluffy hair; a very human, wide-awake girl, who can make
a smashing return or drop the ball with maddening ease just over the
net with a quick twist of the wrist. There’s nothing quite like that
girl--those girls, I should say!”
“I like your orchard and the lake, and the goddess skipping over the
tennis court; but I fancy that behind all romance there’s some realism.
You sketch your girl vividly. You must have seen some one who suggested
her; perhaps, if it isn’t impertinent, you yourself are imaginably the
young gentleman casually spraying the apple trees to keep the bugs off!”
It was in the Poet’s mind that young men of poetical temperament are
hardly likely to pass their twenty-sixth birthday without a love
affair. He knew nothing of Fulton beyond what the young man had just
told him, and presumably his social contacts had been meager; but his
voluble description of his heroine encouraged a suspicion that she was
not wholly a creature of the imagination.
“Oh, of course I’ve had a particular girl in mind!” Fulton laughed.
“I’ve gone the lengths of realism in trying to describe her. I was
assigned to the Country Club to do a tennis tournament last fall,
and I saw her there. She all but took the prize away from a girl
college champion they had coaxed out from the East to give snap to
the exhibition. My business was to write a newspaper story about the
game, and being a mere reporter I made myself small on the side lines
and kept score. Our photographer got a wonderful picture of her--my
goddess, I mean--as she pulled one down from the clouds and smashed
it over the net, the neatest stroke of the match. It seemed perfectly
reasonable that she could roll the sun under her racket, catch it up
and drive it over the rim of the world!”
“Her name,” said the Poet, as Fulton paused, abashed by his own
eloquence, “is Marian Agnew.”
“How on earth did you guess that!” exclaimed the young man.
“Oh, there is something to be said for realism, after all, and your
description gave me all but her name. I might quote a poem I have seen
somewhere about the robin--
‘There’s only one bird sings like that--
From Paradise it flew.’”
“I haven’t heard her sing, but she laughed like an angel that
day,--usually when she failed to connect with the ball; but she didn’t
even smile when the joke was on the other girl,--that’s being a good
sportsman! I rather laid myself out praising her game. But if you know
her I shall burn my manuscript and let you do the immortalizing.”
“On the other hand, you should go right on and finish your story. Don’t
begin to accumulate a litter of half-finished things; you’ll find such
stuff depressing when you clean up your desk on rainy days. As to
Marian, you’ve never spoken to her?”
“No; but I’ve seen her now and then in the street, and at the theater,
and quite a bit at Waupegan last fall. She has plenty of admirers and
doesn’t need me.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” the Poet replied absently.
“I must be going,” said the young man, jumping up as the clock chimed
six. “You’ve been mighty good to me; I shan’t try to tell you how
greatly I appreciate this talk.”
“Well, we haven’t got anywhere; but we’ve made a good beginning. I wish
you’d send me half a dozen poems you haven’t printed, in the key of
‘Journeys’ End.’ And come again soon!”
He stood on the steps and watched the young fellow’s vigorous stride as
he hurried out of the tranquil street. Oftener than not his pilgrims
left nothing behind, but the Poet was aware of something magnetic
and winning in Fulton. Several times during the evening he found
himself putting down his book to recur to their interview. He had not
overpraised Fulton’s verses; they were unusual, clean-cut, fresh, and
informed with a haunting music. Most of the young poets who sought the
Poet’s counsel frankly imitated his own work; and it was a relief to
find some one within the gates of the city he loved best of all who had
notched a different reed.
The Poet preferred the late hours for his writing. Midnight found him
absorbed in a poem he had carried in his heart for days. Some impulse
loosened the cords now; it began to slip from his pencil quickly, line
upon line. It was of the country folk, told in the _lingua rustica_
to which his art had given dignity and fame. The lines breathed
atmosphere; the descriptive phrases adumbrated the lonely farmhouse
with its simple comforts as a stage for the disclosure of a little
drama, direct, penetrating, poignant. He was long hardened to the
rejections of rigorous self-criticism, and not infrequently he cast
the results of a night’s labor into the waste-paper basket; but he
experienced now a sense of elation. Perhaps, he reflected, the various
experiences of the day had induced just the right mood for this task.
He knew that what he had wrought was good; that it would stand with his
best achievements. He made a clean copy of the verses in his curiously
small hand with its quaint capitals, and dropped them into a drawer
to lose their familiarity against the morrow’s fresh inspection. Like
all creative artists, he looked upon each of his performances with
something of wonder. “How did I come to do that, in just that way?
What was it that suggested this?” If it were Marjorie and Marian, or
Elizabeth Redfield!... Perhaps young Fulton’s enthusiasm had been a
contributing factor.
This association of ideas led him to open a drawer and rummage among
old letters. He found the one he sought, and began to read. It had been
written from Lake Waupegan, that pretty teacupful of blue water which,
he recalled, young Fulton had chosen as the scene for his story. The
Redfields had gone there for their honeymoon, and Elizabeth had written
this letter in acknowledgment of his wedding gift. It was not the usual
formula of thanks that brides send fluttering back to their friends;
and it was because it was different that he had kept it.
* * * * *
“We are having just the June days that you have written about, and
Miles and I keep quoting you, and saying over and over again, ‘he must
have watched the silvery ripple on the lake from this very point!’ or,
‘How did he know that clover was like that?’ And how did you?... Miles
brought his painting-kit, and when we’re not playing like children he’s
hard at work. I know you always thought he ought to go on; that he had
a real talent; and I keep reminding him of that. You know we’ve got a
little bungalow on the edge of Nowhere to go to when we come home and
there’ll be a line of hollyhocks along the fence in your honor. Miles
says we’ve got to learn to be practical; that he doesn’t propose to let
me starve to death for Art’s sake! I’m glad you know and understand
him so well, for it makes you seem much closer; and the poem you wrote
me in that beautiful, beautiful Keats makes me feel so proud! I didn’t
deserve that! Those things aren’t true of me--but I want them to be;
I’m going to keep that lovely book in its cool green covers where I
shall see it the first and last thing every day. Your lines are already
written in my heart!”
* * * * *
The Poet turned back to the date: only seven years ago!
The sparrows under the eaves chirruped, and drawing back the blind he
watched the glow of dawn spread through the sky. This was a familiar
vigil; he had seen many a dream vanish through the ivory portals at the
coming of day.
III
A certain inadvertence marked the Poet’s ways. His deficiencies in
orientation, even in the city he knew best of all, were a joke among
his friends. He apparently gained his destinations by good luck rather
than by intention.
Incurable modesty made him shy of early or precipitate arrivals at any
threshold. Even in taking up a new book he dallied, scanned the covers,
pondered the title-page, to delay his approach, as though not quite
sure of the author’s welcome and anxious to avoid rebuff. The most
winning and charming, the most lovable of men--and entitled to humor
himself in such harmless particulars!
The affairs that men busied themselves with were incomprehensible to
him. It was with a sense of encroachment upon forbidden preserves
that he suffered himself to be shot skyward in a tall office building
and dropped into a long corridor whose doors bore inscriptions that
advertised divers unfamiliar occupations to his puzzled eyes.
The poem that had slipped so readily from his pencil in the watches
of the night had proved, upon inspection in the light of day, to be
as good as he had believed it to be, but he carried it stowed away in
his pocket, hoping that he might yet detect a shaky line that further
mulling would better, before submitting it to other eyes.
This was a new building and he had never explored its fastnesses
before. He was staring about helplessly on the threshold of Miles
Redfield’s office, where there was much din of typewriters, when his
name was spoken in hearty tones.
“Very odd!” the Poet exclaimed; “very odd, indeed! But this is the way
it always happens with me, Miles. I start out to look for a dentist and
stumble into the wrong place. I’m in luck that I didn’t fall down the
elevator shaft. I can’t recall now whether it was the dentist I was
looking for or the oculist.”
“I hoped you were looking for me!” said Redfield; “it’s a long time
since you remembered my presence on earth!”
The typewriters had ceased to click and three young women were staring
their admiration. The Poet bowed to them all in turn, and thus
rubricated the day in three calendars! Redfield’s manifestations of
pleasure continued as he ushered the Poet into his private office.
Nothing could have been managed more discreetly; the Poet felt proud
of himself; and there was no questioning the sincerity of the phrases
in which Redfield welcomed him. It was with a sense of satisfaction
and relief that he soon found himself seated in a mahogany chair by
a broad window, facing Redfield, and listening to his assurances that
this was an idle hour and that he had nothing whatever to do but to
make himself agreeable to poets. The subdued murmur of the clicking
machines and an occasional tinkle of telephones reached them; but
otherwise the men were quite shut off from the teeming world without.
Redfield threw himself back in his chair and knit his hands behind his
head to emphasize his protestations of idleness.
“I haven’t seen you since that last dinner at the University Club where
you did yourself proud--the same old story! I don’t see you as much as
I did before you got so famous and I got so busy. I wish you’d get into
the habit of dropping in; it’s a comfort to see a man occasionally that
you’re not inclined to wring money out of; or who adds zest to the game
by trying to get some out of you!”
“From all accounts you take pretty good care of yourself. You look
almost offensively prosperous; and that safe would hold an elephant.
I suppose it’s crammed full of works of art--some of those old
etching-plates you used to find such delight in. I can imagine you
bolting the door and sitting down here with a plate to scratch the
urban sky-line. Crowd waiting outside; stenographers assuring them that
you will appear in a moment.”
“The works of art in that safe are engravings all right,” laughed
Redfield; “I’ve got ’em to sell,--shares of stock, bonds, and that
sort of trash. I’ll say to you in confidence that I’m pretty critical
of the designs they offer me when I have a printing job to do. There’s
a traction bond I’m particularly fond of,--done from an old design of
my own,--corn in the shock, with pumpkins scattered around. Strong
local color! You used to think rather well of my feeble efforts; I
can’t remember that any one else ever did! Hence, as I rather like to
eat, I gave over trying to be another Whistler and here we are!”
“Rather shabby, when you come to think of it,” laughed the Poet, “to
spurn my approval and advice to keep on. If you’d gone ahead--”