touch--begging you for a few dollars to carry me over Saturday night!
No; I tell you my talent wasn’t big enough; I was sharp enough to
realize my limitations and try new pastures. Where a man can climb to
the top, art’s all right; but look at McPherson, Banning, Myers,--these
other fellows around here we’re all so proud of,--and where have they
got? Why, even Stiles, who gets hung in the best exhibitions and has a
reputation, barely keeps alive. I saw him in New York last week, and he
was in the clouds over the sale of a picture for two hundred dollars!
Think of it--and I wormed it out of him that that fixed his high-water
mark. He was going to buy an abandoned farm up in Connecticut
somewhere; two hundred dollars down on a thousand dollars of New
England landscape; said he hoped to paint enough pictures up there this
summer to make it possible to keep a horse! There’s an idea for you;
being rich enough to keep a horse, just when the zoölogical museums are
hustling to get specimens of the species before the last one dies! You
could do something funny, awfully funny on that--eminent zoölogist out
looking for a stuffed horse to stand up beside the ichthyosaurus and
the diplodocus.”
The Poet expressed his gratitude for the suggestion good-naturedly. He
was studying the man before him in the hope of determining just how far
he had retrograded, if indeed there had been retrogression. Redfield
was a trifle stouter than he had been in the days of their intimacy,
and spoke with a confidence and assurance that the Redfield of old
days had lacked. The interview had come about much easier than he had
hoped, and Redfield’s warmth was making it easier. He was relieved to
find on this closer inspection that Redfield had not changed greatly.
Once or twice the broker’s brown eyes dimmed with a dreaminess that
his visitor remembered. He was still a handsome fellow, not over
thirty-five the Poet reckoned, and showing no traces of hard living.
The coarse, unruly brown hair had not shared the general smoothing-out
that was manifest in the man’s apparel. It was a fine head, set
strongly on broad shoulders. The Poet, always minutely observant in
such matters, noted the hands--slim, long, supple, that had once been
deft with brush and graver. In spite of the changes of seven years,
concretely expressed in the “Investment Securities” on the outer door,
the Poet concluded that much remained of the Miles Redfield he had
known. And this being true increased his difficulties in reconciling
his friend with the haunting picture of Marjorie as she had stood
plaintively aloof at the children’s party, or with the young wife whose
cheery, hopeful letter he had read in the early hours of the morning.
“I passed your old house this afternoon,” the Poet observed casually.
“I was out getting a breath of country air and came in through Marston.
You were a pioneer when you went there and it’s surprising how that
region has developed. I had a hard time finding the cottage, and
shouldn’t have known it if it hadn’t been for some of the ineffaceable
marks. The shack you built for a studio, chiefly with your own hands,
seems to have been turned into a garage by the last tenant--Oh,
profanest usurpation! But the house hasn’t been occupied for some time.
That patch of shrubbery you set out against the studio has become a
flourishing jungle. Let me see,--I seem to recall that I once did a
pretty good sonnet in the studio, to the gentle whizz of the lawn-mower
you were manipulating outside.”
“I remember that afternoon perfectly--and the sonnet, which is one of
your best. I dare say a bronze tablet will be planted there in due
course of time to mark a favorite haunt of the mighty bard.”
Redfield had found the note of reminiscence ungrateful, and he was
endeavoring to keep the talk in a light key. He very much hoped that
the Poet would make one of his characteristic tangential excursions
into the realms of impersonal anecdote. It was rather remarkable that
this man of all men had happened in just now, fresh from an inspection
of the bungalow and the studio behind the lilacs that Elizabeth had
planted. He began to feel uncomfortable. It was not so much the
presence of the small, compact, dignified gentleman in the chair by
the window that disturbed him as the aims, standards, teachings that
were so inseparably associated with his visitor’s name. Redfield’s
perplexity yielded suddenly to annoyance, and he remarked shortly, as
though anticipating questions that were presumably in his friend’s
mind:--
“Elizabeth and I have quit; you’ve probably heard that.” And then,
as though to dispose of the matter quickly, he added: “It wouldn’t
work--too much incompatibility; I’m willing to take the blame--guess
I’ll have to, anyhow!” he ended grimly. “I suppose it’s rather a shock
to a friend like you, who knew us at the beginning, when we were
planting a garden to live in forever, to find that seven years wound it
up. I confess that I was rather knocked out myself to find that I had
lost my joy in trimming the hedge and sticking bulbs in the ground.”
“I noticed,” said the Poet musingly, “that the weeds are rioting
deliriously in the garden.”
“Weeds!” Redfield caught him up harshly; “I dare say there are weeds!
Our trouble was that we thought too much about the crocuses, and forgot
to put in cabbages!”
“Well, you’re putting them in now!”
“Oh, don’t be hard on me! I’ll let most people jump on me and never
talk back, but you with your fine perceptions ought to understand. Life
isn’t what it used to be; the pace is quicker, changes come faster, and
if a man and woman find that they’ve made a mistake, it’s better to cut
it all out than to live under the same roof and scowl at each other
across the table. I guess you can’t duck that!”
“I shan’t try to duck it,” replied the Poet calmly. “There’s never
anything gained by evading a clean-cut issue. It’s you who are dodging.
Remember,” he said, with a smile, “that I shouldn’t have broached the
subject myself; but now that you’ve brought it up--”
He paused, in his habitual deliberate fashion, reflecting with grateful
satisfaction upon the care with which he had hidden his tracks! He was
now in Redfield’s office; and his old friend had instructed the clerks
outside that he was not to be disturbed so long as this distinguished
citizen chose to honor him. The Poet, for the first time in his life,
took advantage of his reputation. Redfield, on his side, knew that it
was impossible to evict the best-loved man in the Commonwealth, whose
presence in his office had doubtless sent a thrill to the very core of
the skyscraper.
“Of course, these things really concern only the parties immediately
interested,” Redfield remarked, disturbed by his caller’s manner and
anxious to hide behind generalizations. He swung himself round in his
chair, hoping that this utterance would deflect the discussion into
more comfortable channels; but the Poet waited patiently for Redfield
to face him again.
“That is perfectly true,” he admitted; “and I should certainly resent
the interference of outsiders if I were in your plight.”
Redfield was nodding his assent, feeling that here, after all, was a
reasonable being, who would go far to avoid an unwelcome intrusion upon
another’s affairs. He was still nodding complacently when the Poet
remarked, with a neatness of delivery that he usually reserved for
humorous effects,--
“But it happens, Miles, that I _am_ an interested party!”
The shock of this surprise shook Redfield’s composure. He glanced
quickly at his caller and then at the door.
“You mean that Elizabeth has sent you!” he gasped. “If that’s the
case--”
“No; I haven’t seen Elizabeth for some time--not since I heard of your
troubles; and I’m not here to represent her--at least, not in the way
you mean.”
Redfield’s face expressed relief; he had been about to refer his
visitor to his lawyer, but he was still pretty much at sea.
“I represent not one person, but several millions of people,” the Poet
proceeded to explain himself unsmilingly, in a tone that Redfield did
not remember. “You see, Miles, your difficulties and your attitude
toward your family and life in general are hurting my business; this
may sound strange, but it’s quite true. And it’s of importance to me
and to my clients, so to speak.”
Redfield stared at him frowningly.
“What on earth are you driving at?” he blurted, still hoping that this
parley was only the introduction to a joke of some sort. There was,
however, nothing in the Poet’s manner to sustain this hope--nor could
he detect any trace of the furtive smile which, he recalled, sometimes
gave warning of the launching of some absurdity by this man who so
easily played upon laughter and tears.
“There’s no such thing as you and me in this world, Redfield,” pursued
the Poet--and his smile reappeared now, fleetingly, and he was wholly
at ease, confident, direct, business-like. “We’re all Us--you might
say that mankind is a lot of Us-es. And when you let the weeds grow up
in your garden they’re a menace to all the neighbors. And you can’t
just go off and leave them; it isn’t fair or square. I see you don’t
yet quite understand where I come in--how you’re embarrassing me,
cheating me, hurting my business, to put it flatly. You’re making it
appear that I’m a false prophet, a teacher of an outworn creed. Any
reputation that you’re willing to concede I have doesn’t rest upon
profound scholarship, which I don’t pretend to possess, but upon the
feeble testimony I’ve borne to some very old ideals. You’ve known me
a long time and you can’t say that I’ve ever bragged of myself--and
if you knew how humbly I’ve taken such success as I’ve had you’d know
that I’m not likely to be misled by the public’s generous kindness
toward my work. But I owe something to the rest of Us; I can’t afford
to stand by and see the little fringes I’ve tacked on to old fabrics
torn off without making a protest. To put it another way, I’m not going
to have it said that the gulf is so widening between poetry and life
that another generation will be asking what our rhymed patter was all
about--not without a protest. I hope you see what I’m driving at, and
where I’m coming out--”
Redfield walked to the window and stared across the roofs, with his
hands thrust into his pockets.
“It isn’t easy, you know, Miles, for me to be doing this: I shouldn’t
be doing it if your affairs hadn’t been thrown in my face; if I didn’t
feel that they were very much my business. Yesterday I saw Marjorie--it
was at a children’s party at Mrs. Waring’s--and the sight of her was
like a stab. I believe I wrote some verses for her second--maybe it was
her third--birthday--pinned one of my little pink ribbons on her, so to
speak, and made her one of my children. I tell you it hurt me to see
her yesterday--and know that the weeds had sprung up in _her_ garden!”
Redfield flung round impatiently.
“But you’re applying the wrong tests;--you don’t know all the
circumstances! You wouldn’t have a child brought up in a home of
strife, would you? I’m willing for Elizabeth to have full charge of
Marjorie--I’ve waived all my right to her. I’m not as callous as you
think: I’d have you know that it’s a wrench to part with her.”
“You haven’t any right to part with her,” said the Poet. “You can’t
turn her over to Elizabeth as though she were a piece of furniture that
you don’t particularly care for! It isn’t fair to the child; it’s not
fair to Elizabeth. Don’t try to imagine that there’s anything generous
or magnanimous in waiving your claims to your own child. A man can’t
throw off his responsibilities as easily as that. It’s contemptible; it
won’t do!”
“I tell you,” said Redfield angrily, “the whole thing had grown
intolerable. It didn’t begin yesterday; it dates back three years ago,
and--”
“Just how did it begin?” the Poet interrupted.
“Well, it began with money--not debts, strange to say, but the
other way around! My father died and left me about eight thousand
dollars--more than I ever hoped to hold in my hand at once if I lived
forever. It looked bigger than a million, I can tell you. I was a
bank-teller, earning fifteen hundred dollars a year and playing at art
on the side. We lived on the edge of nowhere and pinched along with no
prospect of getting anywhere. When that money fell in my lap I saw the
way out--it was like a dream come true, straight down from heaven. I’d
picked up a good deal about the bond business in the bank--used to take
a turn in that department occasionally; and it wasn’t like tackling
something new. So I quit my bank job and jumped in for myself. After
the third month I made expenses, and the second year I cleaned up five
thousand dollars--and I’m not through yet,” he concluded with a note of
triumph.
“And how does all that affect Elizabeth?” asked the Poet quietly.
“Well, Elizabeth is one of those timid creatures, who’d be content to
sit on a suburban veranda all her days and wait for the milk wagon. She
couldn’t realize that opportunity was knocking at the door. How do you
think she wanted to invest that eight thousand--wanted me to go to New
York to study in the League; figured out that we could do that and then
go to Paris for a year. And if she hadn’t got to crying about it, I
might have been fool enough to do it!”
He took a turn across the room and then paused before his caller with
the air of one about to close a debate. The Poet was scrutinizing the
handle of his umbrella fixedly, as though the rough wood presented a
far more important problem than the matter under discussion.
“Elizabeth rather showed her faith in you there, didn’t she?” he asked,
without looking up. “Eight thousand dollars had come into the family,
quite unexpectedly, and she was willing to invest it in _you_, in a
talent she highly valued; in what had been to her the fine thing in
you--the quality that had drawn you together. There was a chance that
it might all have been wasted--that you wouldn’t, as the saying is,
have made good, and that at the end of a couple of years you would not
only have been out the money, but out of a job. She was willing to take
the chance. The fact that you ignored her wishes and are prospering in
spite of her isn’t really the answer; a man who has shaken his wife and
child--who has permitted them to be made the subjects of disagreeable
gossip through his obstinate unreasonableness isn’t prospering. In
fact, I’d call him a busted community.”
“Oh, there were other things!” exclaimed Redfield. “We made each other
uncomfortable; it got to a point where every trifling thing had to
be argued--constant contention and wrangle. When I started into this
business I had to move into town. After I’d got the nicest flat I could
hope to pay for that first year, Elizabeth insisted on being unhappy
about _that_. It was important for me to cultivate people who would
be of use to me; it’s a part of this game; but she didn’t like my new
acquaintances--made it as hard for me as possible. She always had a
way of carrying her chin a little high, you know. These people that
have always lived in this town are the worst lot of snobs that ever
breathed free air, and just because her great-grandfather happened to
land here in time to say good-bye to the last Indian is no reason for
snubbing the unfortunates who only arrived last summer. If her people
hadn’t shown the deterioration you find in all old stock, and if her
father hadn’t died broke, you might excuse her; but this thing of
living on your ancestors is no good--it’s about as thin as starving
your stomach on art and feeding your soul on sunsets. I tell you, my
good brother,”--with an ironic grin on his face he clapped his hand
familiarly on the Poet’s shoulder,--“there are more things in real life
than are dreamed of in your poet’s philosophy!”
[Illustration: EVERY TRIFLING THING HAD TO BE ARGUED]
The Poet particularly disliked this sort of familiarity; his best
friends never laid hands on him. He resented even more the leer
that had written itself in Redfield’s face. Traces of a coarsening of
fiber that he had looked for at the beginning of the interview were
here apparent in tone and gesture, and did not contribute to the Poet’s
peace of mind. The displeasure in his face seemed to remind Redfield
that this was not a man one slapped on the back, or spoke to leeringly.
He flushed and muttered an apology, which the Poet chose to ignore.
“A woman who has had half an acre of Mother Earth to play in for seven
years and has fashioned it into an expression of her own soul, and
has swung her baby in a hammock under cherry trees in bloom, must be
pardoned if she doesn’t like being cooped up in a flat and asked to be
polite to people her husband expects to make money out of. I understand
that you have left the flat for a room at the club.”
“I mean to take care of them--you must give me credit for that!” said
Redfield, angry that he was not managing his case more effectively.
“But Elizabeth is riding the high horse and refuses to accept anything
from me!”
“I should think she would! She would be the woman I’ve admired all
these years if she’d let you throw crumbs to her from your club window!”
“She thinks she’s going to rub it into me by going to work! She’s going
to teach a kindergarten, in the hope, I suppose, of humiliating me!”
“It would be too bad if some of the humiliation landed on your door!”
“I’ve been as decent as I could; I’ve done everything I could to
protect her.”
“I suppose,” observed the Poet carelessly, “there’s another woman
somewhere--”
“That’s a lie!” Redfield flared. “I’ve always been square with
Elizabeth, and you know it! If there’s any scandalous gossip of that
kind afloat it’s damnably unjust! I hoped you had a better idea of me
than that!”
“I’m sorry,” said the Poet, with sincere contrition. “We’ll consider,
then, that there’s no such bar to a reconciliation.”
He let his last word fall quietly as though it were a pebble he had
dropped into a pool for the pleasure of watching the resulting ripples.
“If that’s what’s in your mind, the sooner you get it out the better!”
snapped Redfield. “We’ve gone beyond all that!”
“The spring was unusually fine,” the Poet hastened to remark with
cheerful irrelevance, as though all that had gone before had merely
led up to the weather; “June is justifying Lowell’s admiration. Your
view off there is splendid. It just occurs to me that these tall
buildings are not bad approximations of ivory towers; a good place for
dreams--nice horizons--edges of green away off there, and unless my
sight is failing that’s a glimpse of the river you get beyond those
heaven-kissing chimneys.”
Redfield mopped his brow and sighed his relief. Clearly the Poet,
realizing the futility of the discussion, was glad to close it; and
Redfield had no intention of allowing him to return to it.
He opened the door with an eagerness at which the Poet smiled as he
walked deliberately through the outer room, exposing himself once more
to the admiring smiles of the girls at the typewriters. He paused
and told them a story, to which Redfield, from the threshold of his
sanctum, listened perforce.
At the street entrance the Poet met Fulton hurrying into the building.
“I was just thinking of you!” cried the young man. “Half a minute
ago I dropped a little packet with your name on it into the box at
the corner, and was feeling like a criminal to think of what I was
inflicting!”
“It occurs to me,” mused the Poet, leaning on his umbrella, quite
indifferent to the hurrying crowd that swept through the entrance,
“that the mail-box might be a good subject for a cheerful jingle--the
repository of hopes, ambitions, abuse, threats, love letters, and duns.
It’s by treating such subjects attractively that we may hope to reach
the tired business man and persuade him that not weak-winged is song!
Apollo leaning against a letter-box and twanging his lyre divine for
the muses to dance a light fantastic round--a very pretty thought, Mr.
Fulton!”
The Poet, obviously on excellent terms with the world, indulged himself
further in whimsical comment on possible subjects for verse, even
improvising a few lines of doggerel for the reporter’s amusement.
And then, after he had turned away, he called the young man back, as
though by an afterthought.
“As to Redfield, you haven’t done anything yet?”
“No; I’m on my way to see him now.”
“Well, don’t be in a hurry about making the change. You’d better go up
to the lake Sunday and sit on the shore all day and let June soak in.
You will find that it helps. I’ll meet those verses you’re sending me
at the outer wicket; I’m sure I’ll like them!”
IV
When Saturday proved to be the fairest of June days, the Poet decided
that it was a pity to remain in city pent when three hours on the train
would carry him to Waupegan, a spot whose charms had been brought
freshly to his attention by the sheaf of verses Fulton had sent him. He
had hoped to find Fulton on the train; but when the young man did not
appear, he found compensation in the presence of Mrs. Waring, who was
bound for Waupegan to take possession of her house.
“Marian took Marjorie up yesterday. It occurred to me, after I’d
posted Elizabeth off with a servant to straighten up my house, that
I’d done the crudest thing imaginable, for Elizabeth went honeymooning
to Waupegan--I gave her and Miles my house for a fortnight, as you may
remember. I wanted to get her out of town and I never thought of that
until she’d gone.”
“Isn’t it a good sign that Elizabeth would go? It shows that the
associations of the lake still mean something to her.”
“Oh, but they don’t mean anything to him--that’s the trouble! If there
ever was a brute--”
“There are worse men--or brutes,” the Poet mildly suggested.
“I can’t imagine it!” Mrs. Waring replied tartly.
“I’m going fishing,” the Poet explained, when Mrs. Waring demanded to
know what errand was carrying him lakeward. His dislike of railway
journeys was well known to all his friends; and no one had ever heard
of his going fishing.
“I have asked you to the lake scores of times to visit me, and you
have scorned all my invitations. Now that I’ve caught you in the act
of going up alone, I demand that you make me the visit you’ve been
promising for twenty years.”
“Fishing,” observed the Poet soberly, “is a business that requires
the closest attention and strictest privacy. I should be delighted
to make that visit at this time, but when I fish I’m an intolerable
person--unsociable and churlish; you’d always hate me if I accepted
your hospitable shelter when I would a-fishing go.”
“You’ll not find the hotel a particularly tranquil place for literary
labor, and the food at my house couldn’t be worse than you’ll get
there. I’ve warned you!”
She was frankly curious as to the nature of his errand, and continued
to chaff him about his piscatorial ambitions. He gave his humor full
rein in adding to her mystification.
“Perhaps,” he finally confessed, “I shall hire a boy to do the fishing
for me, while I sit under a tree and boss him.”
“No boy with any spirit would fish for anybody else--no respectable,
well-brought-up boy would!”
“There’s where you’re quite mistaken! I expect to find a boy--and a
pretty likely young fellow he is, reared on a farm, and all that--I
expect to find him ready for business in the morning. Mind you, he
didn’t promise to come, but if he’s the youngster I think he is, he’ll
be there right side up with care to-morrow morning.”
“I don’t believe I like you so well when you play at being mysterious.
This idea, that if you serenely fold your hands and wait--John
Burroughs, isn’t it?--your own will come to you, never worked for me. I
should never have got anywhere in my life if I had folded my hands and
waited.”
“There must always be one who journeys to meet him who waits, and with
your superb energy you have done the traveling. I’m playing both parts
in this affair just as an experiment. To-day I travel; to-morrow I
shall sit on the dock and wait for that boy who’s to do my fishing for
me. I’m not prepared for disappointment; I have every confidence that
he will arrive in due season. Particularly now that you tell me Marian
is already illuminating the landscape!”
Mrs. Waring was giving him only half attention, but she pricked up her
ears at this statement.
“Marian! What on earth has she to do with this fishing-trip?”
“Nothing, except that I have a message for her from the cool slopes of
Parnassus. It’s almost like something you read of in books--her being
here waiting for the sacred papyri.”
He tapped his pocket and smiled.
“I hadn’t the slightest idea she was up there waiting,” he continued.
“You must confess that it’s rather remarkable! Folding her hands,
utterly unconscious of what Fate has in store for her; and poems being
written to her, and my fisher-boy on the trail looking for me--and
her!”