over and fish before the city men filched all the bass and left only
sunfish and suckers. Then I grew up and went to the State Agricultural
School--to fit me for a literary career!--and I didn’t get here
again until last fall when my paper gave me a vacation and I spent a
fortnight at the farm and used to ride over here on my bicycle every
morning to watch the summer resorters and read books.”
“It’s strange I never saw you,” said Marian, “for I was here last
fall. My own memories of the pioneers go back almost to the Indians. My
father used to own that red-roofed cottage you see across the lake; and
I’ve tumbled into the water from every point in sight.”
“September and June are the best months here, I think. It was all much
nicer, though, before the place became so popular.”
“Hardly a gracious remark, seeing that Marjorie and I are here, and all
these cottagers are friends of ours!”
“I haven’t the slightest objection to you and Marjorie. You fit into
the landscape delightfully--give it tone and color; but I was thinking
of the noisy people at the inns down by the village. They seem rather
unnecessary. The Poet and I agreed about that this morning while we
were looking for a quiet place for an after-breakfast smoke.”
“It must be quite fine to know him--really know him,” she said
musingly.
“Yes; but before you grow too envious of my acquaintance I’ll have to
confess that I’ve known him less than a week.”
“A great deal can happen in a week,” she remarked absently.
“A great deal has!” he returned quickly.
This seemed to be rather leading; but a cry for help from Marjorie
provided a diversion.
Fulton jumped up and ran to the perplexed builder’s aid, neatly
repaired a broken wall, and when he had received the child’s grave
thanks reseated himself at Marian’s feet. The blue onion-skin paper had
disappeared from her belt; he caught her in the act of crumpling the
sheets into her sleeve.
With their disappearance she felt her courage returning. His
confessions as to the farm, the university, the newspaper--created an
outline which she meant to encourage him to fill in. Journalism, like
war and the labors of those who go down to the sea in ships, suggests
romance; and Marian had never known a reporter before.
“I should think it would be great fun working on a newspaper, and
knowing things before they happen.”
“And things that never happen!”
She was quick to seize upon this.
“The imagination must enter into all writing--even facts, history.
Bryant was a newspaper man, and he wrote poetry, but I heard in school
that he was a very good editor, too.”
“I’m not an editor and nobody has called me a poet; but the suggestion
pleases me,” he said.
“If our own Poet offered you a leaf of his laurel, that would help
establish your claims,--set you up in business, so to speak.”
“I should hasten to return it before it withered! My little experiments
in rhyme are not of the wreath-winning kind.”
“Then you do write verses!”
“Yards!” he confessed shamelessly.
She was taken aback by this bold admission. His tone and manner implied
that he set no great store by his performances, and this piqued her.
It seemed like a commentary on her critical judgment which had found
them good. Fulton now became impersonal and philosophical.
“It’s a great thing to have done what our Poet has done--give to the
purely local a touch that makes it universal. That’s what art does when
it has heart behind it, and there’s the value of provincial literature.
Hundreds of men had seen just what he saw,--the same variety of types
and individuals against this Western landscape,--but it was left for
him to set them forth with just the right stroke. And he has done
other things, too, besides the _genre_ studies that make him our own
particular Burns; he has sung of days like this when hope rises high,
and sung of them beautifully; and he has preached countless little
sermons of cheer and contentment and aspiration. And he’s the first
poet who ever really understood children--wrote not merely of them but
to them. He’s the poet of a thousand scrapbooks! I came up on a late
train last night and got to talking to a stranger who told me he was
on his way to visit his old home; pulled one of the Poet’s songs of
June out of his pocket and asked me to read it; said he’d cut it out
of a newspaper that had come to him wrapped round a pair of shoes in
some forsaken village in Texas, and that it had made him homesick for a
sight of the farm where he was born. The old fellow grew tearful about
it, and almost wrung a sob out of me. He was carrying that clipping
pinned to his railway ticket--in a way it was his ticket home.”
“Of course our Poet has the power to move people like that,” murmured
Marian. “It’s genius, a gift of the gods.”
“He’s been able to do it without ever cheapening himself; there’s never
any suggestion of that mawkishness we hear in vaudeville songs that
implore us to write home to mother to-night! He takes the simplest
theme and makes literature of it.”
Marian was thinking of her talk with the Poet at Mrs. Waring’s
garden-party. Strange to say, it seemed more difficult to express her
disdain of romance and poetry to this young man than it had been to
the Poet. And yet he evidently accepted unquestioningly the Poet’s
philosophy of life, which she had dismissed contemptuously, and in
which, she assured herself, she did not believe to-day any more than
she did a week ago. The incident of a pilgrim from Texas with a poem
attached to his railway ticket had its touch of sentiment and pathos,
but it did not weigh heavily against the testimony of experience
which had proved in her own observation that life is perplexing and
difficult, and that poetry and romance are only a lure and mesh to
delude and betray the trustful.
“Poets have a good deal to fight against these days,” she said, wishing
to state her dissent as kindly as possible. “The Bible is full of
poetry, but it has lost its hold on the people; it’s like an outworn
sun that no longer lights and warms the world. I wish it weren’t so;
but unfortunately we’re all pretty helpless when it comes to the iron
hoofs of the Time-Spirit.”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, sitting erect, “we mustn’t make the mistake of
thinking the Time-Spirit a new invention. We’re lucky to live in the
twentieth century when it goes on rubber heels;--when people are living
poetry more and talking about it less. Why, the spirit of the Bible
has just gone to work! I was writing an account of a new summer camp
for children the day before I came up--one of those Sunday supplement
pieces around a lot of pictures; and it occurred to me as I watched
youngsters, who had never seen green grass before, having the time of
their lives, that such philanthropies didn’t exist in the good old
days when people dusted their Bibles oftener than they do now. There’s
a difference between the Bible as a fetish and as a working plan for
daily use. Preaching isn’t left to the men who stand up in pulpits in
black coats on Sundays; there’s preaching in all the magazines and
newspapers all the time. For example, my paper raises money every
summer to send children into the country; and then starts another fund
to buy them Christmas presents. The apostles themselves didn’t do much
better than that!”
“Of course there are many agencies and a great deal of generosity,”
replied Marian colorlessly. The young men she knew were not in the
habit of speaking of the Bible or of religion in this fashion. Religion
had never made any strong appeal to her and she had dabbled in
philanthropy fitfully without enthusiasm. Fulton’s direct speech made
some response necessary and she tried to reply with an equally frank
confidence.
“I suppose I’m a sort of heathen; I don’t know what a pantheist is, but
I think I must be one.”
“Oh, you can be a pantheist without being a heathen! There’s a natural
religion that we all subscribe to, whether we’re conscious of it or
not. There’s no use bothering about definitions or quarreling with
anybody’s church or creed. We’re getting beyond that; it’s the thing
we make of ourselves that counts; and when it comes to the matter of
worship, I suppose every one who looks up at a blue sky like that,
and knows it to be good, is performing a sort of ritual and saying a
prayer.”
There was nothing in the breezy, exultant verses she had thrust into
her sleeve to prepare her for such statements as these. While he spoke
simply and half-smilingly, as though to minimize the seriousness of
his statements, his utterances had an undeniable ring of sincerity. He
was provokingly at ease--this dark young gentleman who had been cast
by the waters upon this tranquil beach. He was not at all like young
men who called upon her and made themselves agreeable by talking of the
theater or country club dances or the best places to spend vacations.
She could not recall that any one had ever spoken to her before of
man’s aspirations in the terms employed by this newspaper reporter.
Marjorie, having prepared for the stabling of all the king’s horses
and all the king’s men, announced her intention of contributing a
wing to the château. This called for a conference in which they all
participated. Then, when the addition had been planned in all soberness
and the child had resumed her labors, Marian and Fred stared at the
lake until the silence became oppressive. Marian spoke first, tossing
the ball of conversation into a new direction.
“You have confessed to yards of verses,” she began, gathering up a
handful of sand which she let slip through her fingers lingeringly,
catching the grains in her palm. “I’ve seen--about a yard of them.”
Clearly flirtation was not one of his accomplishments. His “Oh, I’ve
scattered them round rather freely,” ignored a chance to declare
gracefully that she had been the inspiration of those lyrics, written
in a perfectly legible hand on onion-skin letter-sheets, that were
concealed in her sleeve. His indifference to the opening she had made
for him piqued her. She was quite dashed by the calm tone in which he
added, with no hint of sidling or simpering:--
“I’ve written reams of poems about you.” (He might as well have said
that he had scraped the ice off her sidewalk or carried coal into her
cellar, for all the thrill she derived from his admission.) “I hope
you won’t be displeased; but when I was ranging the lake last September
we seemed to find the same haunts and to be interested in the same
sort of thing, and it kept me busy dodging you, I can tell you! I
exhausted the Classical Dictionary finding names for you; and it wasn’t
any trouble at all to make verses about you. I was really astonished
to find how necessary you were to the completion of my pen-and-ink
sketches of all this,”--a wave of the arm placed the lake shores in
evidence,--“I liked you best in action; when the spirit moved you to
run or drive your canoe over the water. You do all the outdoor things
as though you had never done anything else; it’s a joy to watch you! I
was sitting on a fence one day over there in Mrs. Waring’s orchard and
you ran by,--so near that I could hear the swish of your skirts,--and
you made a high jump for a bough and shook down the apples and ran off
laughing like a boy afraid of being caught. I pulled out my notebook
and scribbled seven stanzas on that little incident.”
Any admiration that was conveyed by these frankly uttered sentences
was of the most impersonal sort conceivable. She was not used to being
treated in this fashion. Even his manner of asking her pardon for his
temerariousness in apostrophizing her in his verses had lacked, in her
critical appraisement of it, the humility a self-respecting young woman
had a right to demand of a young poet who observes her without warrant,
is pleased to admire her athletic prowess, her ways and her manners,
and puts her into his verses as coolly as he might pick a flower from
the wayside and wear it in his coat.
“Then you used me merely to give human interest to your poems; any girl
running through Mrs. Waring’s orchard and snatching at the apples would
have done just as well?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t say that,” he replied, unabashed; “but even the
poorest worm of a scribbler has to have an ideal and you supplied
mine. You were like a model who strolls along just when it occurs to
the painter that his landscape needs a figure to set it off. You don’t
mind, I hope?”
This made it necessary for her to assure him in as few words as
possible that she didn’t in the least object to his view of the matter;
and she added, not without a trace of irony, that she was always glad
to be of use; that if she could further the cause of art in any way she
was ready to do it.
“Please don’t; that hurt a little! By the way, the Poet told me I ought
to know you. He recommended you in the noblest terms. I see now what
was in his mind; he thought I needed your gentle chastening.”
“It’s more likely he thought it well for you to see your ideal
shattered! It’s too bad, for the sake of your ambitions, that I didn’t
remain just an unknown girl in an orchard--who suggested Pomona
inspecting her crops and then vanished forever.”
“Oh, I had to know you; it was inevitable,” he replied with irritating
resignation. “You see I’ve written about you in prose, too; you’ve been
immensely provocative and stimulating. My best prose, as well as my
only decent jingles, has had you for a subject. I laid myself out to
describe you at the tennis tournament last fall. Next to watching you
run through an orchard trippingly, like one of Swinburne’s long lines,
I like you best when you show your snappy stroke with the racket and
make a champion look well to her knitting.”
She turned crimson at this, remembering very well the “Chronicle’s”
report of the tennis match, which she had cut out and still treasured
in her portfolio. Clearly, her obligations to this impudent young man
were increasing rapidly.
Marjorie, seized with an ambition to add a new tower to the château,
opportunely demanded their assistance. The architectural integrity of
the château was in jeopardy and the proposed changes called for much
debate by the elders. This consumed considerable time, and after the
new tower was finished by their joint labors they set Marjorie to work
constructing a moat which Fulton declared to be essential.
He got on famously with Marjorie; and this scored heavily in his favor
with Marian. His way with the child was informed with the nicest tact
and understanding; he entered into the spirit of the château-building
with just the earnestness that her young imagination demanded. He
promised to take her canoeing to a place where he thought there might
be fairies, though he would not go the length of saying that he had
seen them, to be sure, for when people saw fairies they must never
tell any one; it wouldn’t be kind to the fairies, who got into the
most dreadful predicaments when human folk talked about them. Marjorie
listened big-eyed, while he held her sandy little fingers. Yes; there
was something pleasing in this young man, who described tennis matches
for the sporting page of a newspaper or wrote verses or spoke of
religion or fairies all as part of the day’s work.
“The Poet will think I’ve fallen into the lake,” he remarked
presently. “The ride to Mrs. Waring’s dock was a great concession on
his part and he expressed misgivings as to allowing me to paddle him
back to the inn. He’s waiting at this moment on Mrs. Waring’s veranda,
hoping that I won’t show up with the canoe so he can take passage on
the steamer and reduce the hazards of the journey. The height of the
sun proclaims the luncheon hour, and Marjorie must be hungry. Won’t you
honor my humble argosy!”
Marian could think of no good reason for declining this invitation,
particularly after Marjorie had chirruped an immediate and grateful
acceptance. Moreover, Mr. Fulton had made himself so agreeable and had
contributed so many elements to the morning’s pleasure, that it was not
in her heart to be rude to him.
They embarked after a promise had been exacted by Marjorie that “ums”
should all meet again on the morrow, to perfect the moat and build a
drawbridge.
“I’m glad to have an excuse for staying,” Fulton declared, “and I
hope I’m not the man to go off and leave a noble shotum without
the finishing touches. We shall meet frequently, maid Marjorie. In
fact”--he lifted the paddle and let it drip with a pleasant tinkle into
the calm water, while he half-turned toward Marian--“I don’t believe
I’ll ever go back to ‘the heat and dust and noise of trades.’ As old
Walt says, in effect, the earth, that is sufficient; so why not stay
close to it?”
“Ums splashed water on me!” protested Marjorie.
“A thousand pardons, my young realist!”
“The Poet and Elizabeth are waving to us from the landing,” remarked
Marian. “Perhaps you’d better save the rest of the peroration until
to-morrow.”
“No unkinder word was ever spoken!” cried Fulton cheerfully, and swept
the light craft forward with long, splashless strokes.
VI
“It’s beautifully kind of you to want to help; but you see how
impossible it is!”
“I don’t like that word,” replied the Poet patiently. “Most things are
possible that we really want to do.”
For two hours that morning Mrs. Redfield and he had talked of her
troubles, first with a reluctance, a wariness on both sides that
yielded gradually to the warmth of his kindness. However, on the whole,
the Poet found her easier to talk to than her husband had been. She
understood, as Redfield had not, that his appearance in the matter was
not merely the assertion of a right inhering in an old friendship,
but that it was dictated by something larger,--a resentment of an
apostasy touching intimately his own good faith as a public teacher.
This attitude had not only its poignancy for her, but it broadened
the horizon against which she had been contemplating the broken and
distorted structure that had been her life.
“I suppose,” she said bravely, “that we oughtn’t to ask so much! We
ought to be prepared for calamity; then we shouldn’t break under it
when the blow falls. When I saw other people in just such troubles
I used to think, ‘There’s something that will never come to me’: I
suppose Miles is right in saying that I have no ambition, that I had
become merely a drag on him. And I can see his side of it; there wasn’t
much ahead of him but standing behind a bank counter to the end of his
days. The novels are full of the conflicts between the man who wants to
rise and the woman without wings. It’s my misfortune to be one of the
wingless ones.”
She was less bitter than he expected; and he took courage from this
fact. He had hoped to avoid any minute dissection of the situation; but
she had given him a pretty full account of the whole affair, and he
was both dismayed and relieved to find how trivial the details of the
dissension proved. She had wept--beyond doubt there had been tears--and
Miles on his side had exhausted persuasion before her obstinacy kindled
his wrath. The crux had come with his demand that she should do her
part toward cultivating acquaintances that he believed to be essential
to the success of his new undertaking. She had never known such
people, she assured the Poet, feeling that he knew she never had and
would sympathize with her position. Miles had no right to ask her to
countenance them, and all that.
The Poet preferred to be amused by this. The obnoxious persons were
strangers to him; he had merely heard of them; he admitted that he
would never deliberately have chosen them for intimate companionship.
And yet it was not so egregious a thing to sit at the same table for an
hour with a man and woman one wouldn’t care to meet daily.
“If there weren’t such people as the Farnams in the world we’d never
know how to appreciate our own kind of folks,” remarked the Poet.
“And that fellow can’t be so bad. I heard only recently of an instance
of his generosity--he made a very handsome subscription to the new
children’s hospital. Men of that stamp frequently grow emotional when
they’re touched on the right chord.”
“But you wouldn’t have Miles--the Miles you used to know--become like
that, or get down on his knees to such people in the hope of getting
some of their money!”
The Poet chuckled.
“If Miles can pry that particular man loose from any of his money I’d
say it proved that Miles was right and you were wrong! Farnam doesn’t
carry his philanthropy into his business affairs. He’s quite capable of
eating your lobster to-night and to-morrow morning exacting the last
ounce of flesh from the man who paid for it. It’s possible that Miles
will pay dearly for his daring; I understand that this new business is
beset with pitfalls.”
“Oh, I want him to succeed! He’s free now to do as he likes and I hope
he will prosper. At any rate, Marjorie and I are not dragging him down!”
Angry tears came with this; the Poet looked away to the green-fringed
shores. When she was calm again he thought it wise to drop the matter
for the present. At least it was best to withdraw to safe ground, from
which it might, however, be possible to approach the citadel obliquely.
“Marian,” he remarked, “is a charming girl.”
She seconded his praise of her sister ardently, saying that Marian had
been splendid throughout her troubles.
“She sees everything so clearly; I don’t know what I should have done
without her.”
“She sees things your way, then,” he ventured quietly. “I’m a little
afraid we always prefer counselors who tell us we’re doing the right
thing.”
“Oh, she reasons things out wonderfully. I hope she will profit by my
troubles! Fortunately we’re unlike; she’s much more practical than I
am. She has a wider outlook; I think her college training shows there.”
“We must see to it that she doesn’t make mistakes,” said the Poet,
his thoughts reverting to his efforts to place some new ideals
where Marian might contemplate them without suspecting that he was
responsible for putting them in her way. The humorous aspects of his
intervention--and particularly his employment of the unconscious Fulton
as a missionary--caused him to smile--a smile which Mrs. Redfield
detected but failed to understand.
“I can never look on marriage again as I used to,” she ventured. “Most
of the good things of life have been spoiled for me.”
“I can’t agree to that: you are less than thirty, which isn’t the
age at which we can afford to haul down the flag. If I’d subsided at
thirty,--had concluded that the world would never listen to my little
tin horn,--I should have missed most of the joy of life. And Marian
at twenty-two mustn’t be allowed to say that the world at best is a
dreary place. She mustn’t be allowed to form foolish opinions of life
and destiny and call to the stage-hands to drop the curtain the first
time some actor misses his cue. And do you know,” he continued with the
humor glinting through his glasses, “that girl had the bad manners to
tell me to my face only a few days ago that there was no substance to
all our poetizing--that the romance had been trampled out of life! To
think of that--at twenty-two _or_ thirty!”
“Well,” said Mrs. Redfield, a little defiantly, “you must remember that
_I’ve_ tried poetry and romance.”
It was clear from her tone that she thought this scored heavily on her
side, and offset any blame that might attach to her in his mind. She
was surprised by the quickness with which he retorted.
“Ah, but have you!”
This was rather discouraging when she had been at such pains to tell
him the truth; when she had bared her soul to him. She felt that it
was unchivalrous for him to question her fairness when she had been so
frank.