your verses for somebody else. Marian’s a much more practical girl than
Elizabeth; I don’t quite see her receiving messages from the Muses
with more than chilly politeness. You may be sure she will profit
by Elizabeth’s experience. Elizabeth married a man with an artistic
temperament and she’s paid dearly for it. A blow like that falling
so close to Marian is bound to have its effect. If you want to win
her smiles, don’t appeal to her through poetry. As I was saying the
other day, poetry is charming, and sometimes it’s uplifting; but we’re
getting away from it. These are changing times, and pretty soon it
won’t be respectable to be decent!”
“You said something to the same effect the other day when your garden
was full of children. I was greatly disappointed in you; it wasn’t fair
to the children to talk that way--even if they didn’t hear you. I was
all broken up after that party; I haven’t been the same man since!”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to reflect on you or your work; you know that!”
“I know nothing of the kind,” returned the Poet amiably. “You have
said it twice, though the first time was enough. I’m a different
person; you’ve changed the whole current of my life! I’m making a
journey, on a very hot afternoon, that I should never have thought
of making if it hadn’t been for your cynical remarks. I’ve taken
employment as an agent of Providence, just to prove to you that my
little preachments in rhyme are not altogether what our young people
call piffle. I’ve come down out of the pulpit, so to speak, to put my
sermons into effect--a pretty good thing for all parsons to do. Or, to
go back to the starting-point, I’ve hung my harp on the willows that I
may fish the more conveniently.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to make sport of a woman of my
years! You had better tell me a funny story,” said Mrs. Waring, fearing
that he was laughing at her.
“I shall do nothing of the kind! I am heavily armed with magazines and
I shall read the rest of the way to Waupegan. Besides, I need time for
planning my work to-morrow. It will be my busiest day!”
* * * * *
It was dark when the train paused at the lake station, and Mrs.
Redfield was waiting, having come over in a launch to meet Mrs. Waring.
She was wrapped in a long coat and carried a lantern, which she held up
laughingly to verify her identification of the Poet.
“Marian and I have just been talking of you! She and Marjorie have told
me all about the garden-party, and of the beautiful time you gave the
children.”
“If she didn’t mention the beautiful time they gave me, she didn’t
tell the whole story. And if I hadn’t gone to Mrs. Waring’s party, I
shouldn’t be here!”
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” interposed Mrs. Waring, counting her
trunks as they were transferred to the miniature steamer that plied
the lake. “There’s some joke about his coming here; he’s told you one
story and an hour ago he was assuring me that he had come up to fish!”
She turned away for a moment to speak to some old friends among the
cottagers, leaving Mrs. Redfield and the Poet alone.
“I’m glad you are here,” said the Poet, “for I shall stay a few days
and I hope we can have some talks.”
“I hope so; but I must go very soon. I’ve only been waiting for Mrs.
Waring to come. It was like her to make a chance for me to get away;
you know Waupegan is like home; my father used to have a cottage here
and we children were brought up on the lake.”
She was a small, dark-eyed woman, a marked contrast to her tall, fair
sister. Her sense of fun had always been a delight to her friends;
she was a capital mimic and had been a star in amateur theatricals.
The troubles of the past year--or of the years, to accept Redfield’s
complaint at its full value--had not destroyed her vivacity. She was of
that happy company who carry into middle life and beyond the freshness
of youth. She had been married at twenty, and to the Poet’s eyes she
seemed little older now.
He had been wondering since his interview with Redfield how he had ever
dared go as far in meddling with other people’s affairs. Face to face
with Redfield’s wife, he was more self-conscious than was comfortable.
It would not be easy to talk to Elizabeth of her difficulties, for the
Poet was not a man whom women took into their confidence over a teacup.
He abused himself for leaving his proper orbit for foolish adventures
in obscure, unmapped corners of the heavens.
He said that the stars were fine, and having failed to amplify this
with anything like the grace that might be expected of a poet,
he glanced at her and found her eyes bright with tears. This was
altogether disconcerting, but it illustrated the embarrassments of the
situation into which he had projected himself. Clearly the ambition to
harmonize poetry and life was not without peril; he felt that as the
ambassador from the court of Poesy it might be necessary to learn a new
language to make himself understood at the portals of Life. Instead of
promoting peace, he might, by the least tactless remark, prolong the
war, and the thought was dismaying.
As she turned her head to hide treasonable tears he saw her draw
herself up, and lift her head as though to prove to him that there
was still courage in her heart, no matter if her eyes did betray the
citadel.
“You see, we hung up a new moon in honor of your coming. It’s like a
little feather, just as Rossetti says.”
“Too suggestive of a feather duster,” he remarked lightly; and seeing
Mrs. Waring walking toward them he added, gravely:--
“I’ve lied like the most miserable of sinners about this trip; I
came in answer to your letter. I find that most letters will answer
themselves if you wait long enough. Yours is just seven years old!”
“Oh,” she cried, with a quick catch of the breath; “you don’t mean that
you kept _that_!”
“I most certainly did! It was a very beautiful letter. I happened to be
re-reading it the other night and decided that it deserved an answer;
so here I am!”
“I’m both sorry and glad you came. It’s immensely good of you; it’s
just like you! But it’s no use; of course you know that!”
“Oh, I should never have come on my own hook! I’m only the humble
representative of thousands and thousands of people, and the
stars--maybe--and that frugal slice of melon up there we call the moon.
Nobody else wanted the job, so I took it.”
He laughed at the puzzled look in the dark eyes, which was like the
wondering gaze of a child, half-fearful, half-confiding.
“Elizabeth, are you going to stand there all night talking to any poet
that comes along!” demanded Mrs. Waring; and as she joined them the
Poet began talking amusingly to allay suspicion.
He again declined to accompany her home, protesting that he must not
disappoint the boy who would certainly be on hand in the morning to
fish for him. He waved his hand as the launch swung off, called the man
who was guarding his suit-case and followed him to the inn.
[Illustration: PART TWO]
[Illustration]
PART TWO
V
Marian and Marjorie had builded a house of sand on a strip of shaded
beach, and by the fraudulent use of sticks and stones they had made it
stand in violation of all physical laws. Now that the finishing touches
had been given to the tower, Marjorie thrust her doll through a window.
“That will never do!” protested Marian. “In a noble château like
this the châtelaine must not stand on her head. When the knights come
riding, she must be waiting, haughty and proud, in the great hall to
meet them.”
“Should ums?” asked Marjorie, watching her aunt gouge a new window
in the moist wall so that the immured lady might view the lake more
comfortably.
“‘Ums should,’ indeed!”
“Should the lady have coffee-cake for ums tea? We never made no pantry
nor kitchen in ums house, and lady will be awful hungry. I’ll push ums
a cracker. There, you lady, you can eat ums supper!”
“When her knight comes riding, he will bring a deer or maybe a big
black boar and there will be feasting in the great hall this night,”
said Marian.
“Maybe,” suggested Marjorie, lying flat and peering into the château,
“he will kill the grand lady with ums sword; and it will be all over
bluggy.”
“Horrible!” cried Marian, closing her eyes and shuddering. “Let us
hope he will be a parfait, gentil knight who will be nice to the lady
and tell her beautiful stories of the warriors bold he has killed for
love of her.”
“My boy doll got all smashed,” said Marjorie; “and ums can’t come
a-widing.”
“A truly good knight who got smashed would arrive on his shield just
the same; he wouldn’t let anything keep him from coming back to his
lady.”
“If ums got all killed dead, would ums come back?”
“He would; he most certainly would!” declared Marian convincingly. “And
there would be a beautiful funeral, probably at night, and the other
knights would march to the grave bearing torches. And they would repeat
a vow to avenge his death and the slug-horn would sound and off they’d
go.”
“And ums lady would be lonesome some more,” sighed Marjorie.
“Oh, that’s nothing! Ladies have to get used to being lonesome when
knights go riding. They must sit at home and knit or make beautiful
tapestries to show the knights when they come home.”
“Marjorie not like to be lonesome. What if Dolly est sit in the
shotum--”
“Château is more elegant; though ‘shotum’ is flavorsome and colorful.
Come to think of it ‘shotum’ is just as good. Dolly must sit and keep
sitting. She couldn’t go out to look for her knight without committing
a grave social error.”
These matters having been disposed of, Marjorie thought a stable should
be built for the knights’ horses, and they began scooping sand to that
end. Marian’s eyes rested dreamily upon distant prospects. The cool
airs of early morning were still stirring, and here and there a white
sail floated lazily on the blue water. The sandy beach lay only a short
distance from Mrs. Waring’s house, whose red roof was visible through
a cincture of maples on the bluff above.
“If knights comes widing to our shotum and holler for ums shootolain,
would you holler to come in?” asked Marjorie, from the stable wall.
“It would be highly improper for a châtelaine to ‘holler’; but if I
were there, I should order the drawbridge to be lowered, and I should
bid my knight lift the lid of the coal-bucket thing they always wear on
their heads,--you know how they look in the picture books,--and then
ask him what tidings he brought. You always ask for tidings.”
“Does ums? Me would ask ums for candy, and new hats with long fithery
feathers; and ums--”
“Hail, ladies of the Lake! May a lone harper descend and graciously
vouchsafe a song?”
From the top of the willow-lined bluff behind them came a voice with
startling abruptness. In their discussion of the proprieties of château
life they had forgotten the rest of the world, and it was disconcerting
thus to be greeted from the unknown.
“Is it ums knight come walking?” whispered Marjorie, glancing round
guardedly.
Marian jumped up and surveyed the overhanging willow screen intently.
She discerned through the shrubbery a figure in gray, supported by a
tightly sheathed umbrella. A narrow-brimmed straw hat and a pair of
twinkling eye-glasses attached to the most familiar countenance in the
Commonwealth now contributed to a partial portrait of the lone harper.
Marian, having heard from her sister and Mrs. Waring of the Poet’s
advent, was able to view this apparition without surprise.
“Come down, O harper, and gladden us with song!” she called.
“I have far to go ere the day end; but I bring writings for one whom
men call fair.”
He tossed a long envelope toward them; the breeze caught and held it,
then dropped it close to the château. Marjorie ran to pick it up.
“Miss Agnew,” said the Poet, lifting his hat, “a young gentleman will
pass this way shortly; I believe him to be a person of merit. He will
come overseas from a far country, and answer promptly to the name of
Frederick. Consider that you have been properly introduced by the
contents of yonder packet and bid him welcome in my name.”
“Ums a cwazy man,” Marjorie announced in disgust. “Ums the man what
told a funny story at Auntie Waring’s party and then runned off.”
The quivering of the willows already marked the Poet’s passing. He had
crossed the lake to the Waring cottage, Marian surmised, and was now
returning thither.
Marjorie, uninterested in letters, which, she had observed, frequently
made people cry, attacked with renewed zeal the problem of housing the
knights’ horses, while Marian opened the long envelope and drew out
half a dozen blue onion-skin letter-sheets and settled herself to read.
She read first with pleasurable surprise and then with bewilderment.
Poetry, she had heard somewhere, should be read out of doors, and
clearly these verses were of that order; and quite as unmistakably
this, of all the nooks and corners in the world, was the proper spot in
which to make the acquaintance of these particular verses. Indeed, it
seemed possible, by a lifting of the eyes, to verify the impressions
they recorded,--the blue arch, the gnarled boughs of the beeches, the
overhanging sycamores, the distant daisy-starred pastures running down
to meet the clear water. Such items as these were readily intelligible;
but she found dancing through all the verses a figure that under
various endearing names was the _dea ex machina_ of every scene;
and this seemed irreconcilable with the backgrounds afforded by the
immediate landscape. Pomona had, it appeared, at some time inspected
the apple harvest in this neighborhood:--
The dew flashed from her sandals gold
As down the orchard aisles she sped;--
or this same delightful divinity became Diana, her arrows cast aside,
smashing a tennis ball, or once again paddling a canoe through
wind-ruffled water into the flames of a dying September sun. Or, the
bright doors of dawn swinging wide, down the steps tripped this same
incredible young person taunting the waiting hours for their delay. Was
it possible that her own early morning dives from Mrs. Waring’s dock
could have suggested this!
Marian read hurriedly; then settled herself for the more deliberate
perusal that these pictorial stanzas demanded. It was with a feeling
of unreality that she envisaged every point the slight, graceful
verses described. Where was there another orchard that stole down to
a lake’s edge; or where could Atalanta ever have indulged herself at
tennis to the applause of rapping woodpeckers if not in the court by
the casino on the other side of the lake? The Poet--that is, the Poet
All the People Loved--was not greatly given to the invoking of gods
and goddesses; and this was not his stroke--unless he were playing
some practical joke, which, to be sure, was quite possible. But she
felt herself in contact with someone very different from _the_ Poet;
with quite another poet who sped Pomona down orchard aisles catching
at the weighted boughs for the joy of hearing the thump of falling
apples, and turning with a laugh to glance at the shower of ruddy
fruit. A lively young person, this Pomona; a spirited and agile being,
half-real, half-mythical. A series of quatrains, under the caption “In
September,” described the many-named goddess as the unknown poet had
observed her in her canoe at night:--
I watched afar her steady blade
Flash in the path the moon had made,
And saw the stars on silvery ripples
Shine clear and dance and faint and fade.
Then through the windless night I heard
Her song float toward me, dim and blurred;
’Twas like a call to vanished summers
From a lost, summer-seeking bird.
There were many canoes on Waupegan; without turning her head she
counted a dozen flashing paddles. And there were many girls who played
capital tennis, or who were quite capable of sprinting gracefully
down the aisles of fruitful orchards. She had remained at the lake
late the previous year, and had perhaps shaken apple boughs when in
flight through orchards; and she had played tennis diligently and had
paddled her canoe on many September nights through the moon’s path
and over quivering submerged stars; and yet it was inconceivable that
her performances had attracted the attention of any one capable of
transferring them to rhyme. It would be pleasant, though, to be the
subject of verses like these! Once, during her college days, she had
moved a young gentleman to song, but the amatory verses she had evoked
from his lyre had been pitiful stuff that had offended her critical
sense. These blue sheets bore a very different message--delicate and
fanciful, with a nice restraint under their buoyancy.
While the Poet had said that the author of the verses would arrive
shortly, she had taken this as an expression of the make-believe in
which he constantly indulged in his writings; but one of the canoes she
had been idly observing now bore unmistakably toward the cove.
Marjorie called for assistance and Marian thrust the blue sheets into
her belt and busied herself with perplexing architectural problems.
Marjorie’s attention was distracted a moment later by the approaching
canoe.
“Aunt Marian!” she chirruped, pointing with a sand-encrusted finger,
“more foolish mans coming with glad tidings. Ums should come by horses,
not by ums canoe.”
“We mustn’t be too particular how ums come, Marjorie,” replied Marian
glancing up with feigned carelessness. “It’s the knights’ privilege to
come as they will. Many a maiden sits waiting just as we are and no
knight ever comes.”
“When ums comes they might knock down our house--maybe?” She tacked on
the query with so quaint a turn that Marian laughed.
“We mustn’t grow realistic! We must pretend it’s play, and keep
pretending that they will be kind and considerate gentlemen.”
Her own efforts to pretend that they were building a stable for the
steeds of Arthur’s knights did not conceal her curiosity as to a young
man who had driven his craft very close inshore, and now, after a
moment’s scrutiny of the cove, chose a spot for landing and sent the
canoe with a whish up the sandy beach half out of the water.
He jumped out and begged their pardon as Marjorie planted herself
defensively before the castle.
“Ums can go ’way! Ums didn’t come widing on ums horse like my story
book.”
“I apologize! Not being Neptune I couldn’t ride my horse through the
water. And besides I’m merely obeying orders. I was told to appear here
at ten o’clock, sharp, by a gentleman I paddled over from the village
and left on Mrs. Waring’s dock an hour ago. He gave me every assurance
that I should be received hospitably, but if I’m intruding I shall
proceed farther upon the wine-dark sea.”
[Illustration: THE APPROACHING CANOE]
“Is ums name Fwedwick?” asked Marjorie.
Fulton controlled with difficulty an impulse to laugh at the child’s
curious twist of his name, but admitted gravely that such, indeed, was
the case.
“Then ums can stay,” said Marjorie in a tone of resignation, and
returned to her building.
Marian, who, during his colloquy with Marjorie, had risen and was
brushing the sand from her skirt, now spoke for the first time.
“It’s hardly possible you’re looking for me--I’m Miss Agnew.”
He bowed profoundly.
“A distinguished man of letters assured me that I should find him
here,” the young man explained as he drew on a blue serge coat he had
thrown out of the canoe; “but unless he is hiding in the bushes he
has played me false. Such being the case I can’t do less than offer to
withdraw if my presence is annoying.”
The faint mockery of these sentences was relieved by the mischievous
twinkle in his eyes. They were very dark eyes, and his hair was
intensely black and brushed back from his forehead smoothly. His face
was dark even to swarthiness and his cheek bones were high and a trifle
prominent.
He was dressed for the open: white ducks, canvas shoes, and a flannel
shirt with soft collar and a scarlet tie.
In spite of his offer to withdraw if his presence proved ungrateful to
the established tenants of the cove, it occurred to Marian that he was
not, apparently, expecting to be rebuffed. Marjorie, satisfied that the
stranger in no way menaced her peace, was addressing herself with new
energy to the refashioning of the stable walls along lines recommended
by Marian.
“The ways of the Poet are inscrutable,” observed Fulton; “he told me
your name and spoke in the highest terms of your kindness of heart and
tolerance of stupidity.”
“He was more sparing of facts in warning me of your approach. He said
your name would be Frederick, as though the birds would supply the rest
of it.”
“Very likely that’s the way of the illustrious--to assume that we are
all as famous as themselves; highly flattering, but calculated to
deceive. As the birds don’t know me, I will say that my surname is
Fulton. A poor and an ill-favored thing, but mine own.”
“It quite suffices,” replied Marian in his own key. “We have built a
château,” she explained, “and the châtelaine is even now gazing sadly
upon the waters hoping that her true knight will appear. We have mixed
metaphor and history most unforgivably--a French château, set here on
an American lake in readiness for the Knights of the Round Table.”
“We mustn’t quibble over details in such matters; it’s the spirit
of the thing that counts. I can see that Marjorie isn’t troubled by
anachronisms.”
The blue sheets containing, presumably, this young man’s verses,
were still in her belt, and their presence there did not add to her
comfort. Of course he might not be the real author of those tributes
to the lake’s divinities. His appearance did not strongly support the
suspicion. The young man who had sent her flowers accompanied by verses
on various occasions was an anæmic young person who would never have
entrusted himself to so tricksy a bark as a canoe. Frederick Fulton
was of a more heroic mould; she thought it quite likely that he could
shoulder his canoe and march off with it if it pleased him to do so.
He looked capable of doing many things besides scribbling verses. His
manner, as she analyzed it, left nothing to be desired. While he was
enjoying this encounter to the full, as his ready smile assured her,
he did not presume upon her tolerance, but seemed satisfied to let her
prescribe the terms of their acquaintance. This was a lark of some
kind, and whether he had connived at the meeting, or whether he was
as much in the dark as she as to the Poet’s purpose in bringing them
together, remained a mystery.
She found a seat on a log near the engrossed Marjorie, and Fulton
settled himself comfortably on the sand.
“This has been a day of strange meetings,” he began. “I really had
no intention of coming to Waupegan; and I was astonished to find our
friend the Poet on the hotel veranda this morning. He had told me to
come;--it was rather odd--”
“Oh, he told you to come!”
“In town, two days ago he suggested it. I wonder if he’s in the habit
of doing that sort of thing.”
“It would hardly be polite for me to criticize him now that he has
introduced us. I fear we shall have to make the best of it!”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of it in that way!”
They regarded each other with searching inquiry and then laughed. Her
possession of the verses had already advertised itself to him; she
saw his eyes rest upon them carelessly for an instant and then he
disregarded them; and this pleased her. If he were their author--if,
possibly, he had written them of her--she approved of his good breeding
in ignoring them.
“I know this part of the world better than almost any other,” he went
on, clasping his hands over his knees. “I was born only ten miles from
here on a farm; and I fished here a lot when I was a boy.”
“But, of course, you’ve escaped from the farm into the larger world or
the Poet wouldn’t know you.”
“Well, you see, I’m a newspaper reporter down at the capital and
reporters know everybody.”
“Oh, the Poet doesn’t know everybody; though everybody knows him.
Perhaps we’d better pass that. Tell me some more about your early
adventures on the lake.”