when, seemingly by chance, he met Fulton in the street; and when the
young man asked for light the Poet went on to explain. “When Marjorie
was born her father and I set apart her birthday to be All-Children’s
Day--a crystallization of all children’s birthdays, from the beginning
of time, and we meant to celebrate it to the end of our days. It just
occurs to me that you and I might make it an excuse for calling on
Mrs. Redfield and Marian and Marjorie to-morrow afternoon, the same
being Sunday. Very likely you have another engagement--” he ended, with
provoking implications that caused Fulton, who was already pledged to
visit Marjorie and inferentially Marian and Mrs. Redfield on this very
Sunday afternoon, to stammer in the most incriminating fashion.
“Then if you haven’t anything better to do we can call together,” said
the Poet.
It would have been clear to less observant eyes than the Poet’s that
the reporter was on excellent terms with the household, and even if the
elders had tried to mask the cordiality of their welcome, Marjorie’s
delight in Fulton was too manifest for concealment. She transparently
disclosed the existence of much unfinished business between herself
and the young man that pointed irrefutably to many previous and recent
interviews.
“Inside is no good for houses,” Marjorie was saying, as the Poet
accommodated himself to the friendly atmosphere; “nobody builds houses
inside of houses.”
This suggestion of the open was promptly supported by Fulton; and in
the most natural manner imaginable Marian was pressed into service to
assist in transferring building-materials to the few square yards of
lawn at the side of the house. September was putting forth all her pomp
and the air was of summer warmth. Marjorie’s merry treble floated in
with the laughter of Marian and Fulton. They were engaged with utmost
seriousness in endeavoring to reproduce with blocks the elaborate
château of sand, sticks, and stones that had been their rallying-point
on the shores of Waupegan.
The Poet, left alone with Mrs. Redfield, noted the presence in the tiny
parlor of some of the lares and penates that had furnished forth the
suburban bungalow and that had survived the transfer to the flat and
the subsequent disaster. They seemed curiously wistful in these new
surroundings. As though aware that this was in his mind, Mrs. Redfield
began speaking of matters as far removed from her own affairs as
possible. The Poet understood, and, when the topics she suggested gave
opportunity, played upon them whimsically. The trio in the yard were
evidently having the best of times; and their happiness stirred various
undercurrents of thought in the Poet’s mind. He was not quite sure of
his ground. It was one thing to urge charity, mercy, and tolerance in
cloistral security; to put one’s self forward as the protagonist of any
of these virtues was quite another.
The Poet rose, picked up a magazine from the center table, scanned the
table of contents, and then said, very quietly,--
“Miles is in trouble.”
He watched her keenly for the effect of this, and then proceeded
quickly:--
“It’s fortunate that the jar came so soon; a few years later and it
mightn’t have been possible for him to recover; but I think there’s
hope for him.”
“What Miles does or what he becomes is of no interest to me,” she
answered sharply. “He didn’t feel that there was any disgrace to him in
casting Marjorie and me aside; his pride’s not likely to suffer from
anything else that may happen to him.”
“He’s down and out; there’s no possibility of his going on with the
brokerage business; he’s got to make a new start. It’s to be said for
him that he has made good the losses of the people who charged him
with unfair dealing. I’m disposed to think he was carried away by his
enthusiasm; he was trying to get on too fast.”
In spite of her flash of anger at the mention of her husband’s name,
it was clear that her curiosity had been aroused. Nor was the Poet
dismayed by a light in her dark eyes which he interpreted as expressing
a sense of triumph and vindication.
“I suppose he’s satisfied now,” she said.
“I fancy his state of mind isn’t enviable,” the Poet replied evenly.
“Life, when you come to think of it, is a good deal like writing a
sonnet. You start off bravely with your rhyme words scrawled at the
top of the page. Four lines may come easily enough; but the words
you have counted on to carry you through lead into all manner of
complications. You are betrayed into saying the reverse of the thing
you started out to say. You begin with spring and after you’ve got the
birds to singing, the powers of mischief turn the seasons upside down,
and before you know it the autumn leaves are falling; it’s extremely
discouraging! If we could only stick to the text--”
His gesture transferred the illustration from the field of literary
composition to the ampler domain of life.
She smiled at his feigned helplessness to pursue his argument further.
“But when the rhyme words won’t carry sense, and you have to throw the
whole thing overboard--” she ventured.
“No, oh, no! That’s the joy of rhyming--its endless fascination! The
discreet and economical poet never throws away even a single line;
there’s always a chance that it may be of use.” He was feeling his
way back to his illustration of life from the embarrassments of
sonneteering, and smiled as his whimsical fancy caught at a clue. “If
you don’t forget the text,--if you’re quite sure you have an idea,--or
an ideal!--then it’s profitable to keep fussing away at it. If a bad
line offend you, pluck it out; or maybe a line gets into the wrong
place and has to be moved around until it fits. It’s all a good deal
like the work Marjorie’s doing outside--fitting blocks together that
have to go in a certain way or the whole structure will tumble. It’s
the height of cowardice to give up and persuade yourself that you’ve
exhausted the subject in a quatrain. The good craftsman will follow the
pattern--perfect his work, make it express the best in himself!”
And this referred to the estrangement of Miles Redfield and his wife or
not; just as one might please to take it.
“Miles has gone away, I suppose,” she remarked listlessly.
This made the situation quite concrete again, and any expression of
interest, no matter how indifferent, would have caused the Poet’s heart
to bound; but his face did not betray him.
“Oh, he will be back shortly, I understand. I rather think he will
show himself a man and pull his sonnet together again! There’s a fine
courage in Miles; unless I’ve mistaken him, he won’t sit down and cry,
even if he has made a pretty bad blunder. A man hardly ever loses all
his friends; there’s always somebody around who will hand a tract in at
the jail door!”
“You don’t mean,” she exclaimed, “that Miles has come to that!”
“Bless me, no!” the Poet cried, with another heart throb. “The worst
is over now; I’m quite satisfied of that!” he answered with an ease
that conveyed nothing of the pains he had taken, by ways devious and
concealed, to assure himself that Miles had made complete restitution.
“A man of cheaper metal might have taken chances with the law; I’m
confident that Miles was less the culprit than the victim. He sold
something that wasn’t good, on the strength of statements he wasn’t
responsible for. I believe that to be honestly true, and I got it
through men who have no interest in him, who might be expected to
chortle over his misfortune.”
“In business matters,” she replied, with an emphasis that was eloquent
of reservations as to other fields, “Miles was always perfectly
honorable. I don’t believe anybody would question that.”
It hadn’t entered into the Poet’s most sanguine speculations that she
would defend Miles, or speak even remotely in praise of him. Wisdom
dictated an immediate change of topic. He walked to the open window and
established communication with the builders outside, who had reproduced
the Waupegan château with added splendors and were anxious to have it
admired.
X
Indirection as a method and means to ends has its disadvantages; but
it is not to be scorned utterly. A week following Marjorie’s birthday
children idling on their way home from school in Marston grew silent
and conferred in whispers as a gentleman whose name and fame had been
interwoven in their alphabet lounged by. He turned with a smile to lift
his hat to an urchin bolder than the rest who shouted his name from a
discreet distance.
Within a few days the signs had vanished from the Redfield cottage
and the weeds had been cut. As the Poet opened the gate, Fulton came
out of the front door: neither seemed surprised to see the other. The
odor of fresh paint elicited a sniff of satisfaction from the Poet, a
satisfaction that deepened a moment later as he entered the studio and
noted its neatness and order.
“Mrs. Waring sent a maid out to do all this, and lent me the things
we needed for the tea-table,” Fulton explained. “I had hard work to
persuade her this wasn’t one of your jokes. I had harder work to get
Mrs. Redfield to come and bring Marjorie; but Marian supported the
scheme, and brought Mrs. Redfield round. I fell back heavily on your
argument that Marjorie ought to have a final picnic before the turn o’
the year--a last chance to build a shotum ready for knights to come
widing.”
“Marian is a persuasive person, I imagine,” the Poet remarked. “By
the way, I shall be a little late arriving. Myers, the artist, lives
a little farther down Audubon Road and I want to have a look at his
summer’s work. Nice fellow; good workman. Redfield promised to meet me
there; I want to be sure he doesn’t run away. We don’t want the party
spoiled after all the work we’ve done on it.”
* * * * *
“I wonder,” Mrs. Redfield remarked, over the tea-table, “who has bought
the place?”
“A trust company, I think,” replied Fulton, glancing through the broad
north window of the studio with careful dissimulation. “As I passed
the other day I saw that the grounds had been put in order, and decided
that this would be just the place for a picnic.”
“This little house would be nice for my playhouse; and we could use
that big window to watch ums knights come widing.”
“That chimney used to roar the way you read about,” remarked Marian. “I
think every house ought to have a detached place like this, for tea and
sewing and children to play in.”
Mrs. Redfield, ill at ease, was attending listlessly to the talk.
Fulton’s explanation had not wholly explained. She had agreed to the
excursion only after Marjorie had clamorously insisted upon the outing
her devoted cavalier had proposed. Marjorie’s comments upon the broad
yard, her childish delight in the studio playhouse, touched chords of
memory that jangled harshly.
Fulton was in high spirits. His romance had been accepted and a
representative of the publishing house was coming to confer with him
about illustrations.
“They say it won’t break any best-selling records, but it will give me
a start. The scoundrels had the cheek to suggest that I cut out some of
my jingles, but I scorned such impiousness in an expensive telegram.”
“I should hope so!” cried Marian approvingly. “The story’s only an
excuse for the poems. Even the noblest prose wouldn’t express the lake,
the orchard, and the fields; if you cut out your verses, there wouldn’t
be much left but a young gentleman spraying apple trees and looking off
occasionally at the girls paddling across the lake.”
“You do my orchardist hero a cruel injustice,” protested Fulton, “for
he saw only one girl--and a very nice girl she was--or is!”
“What on earth are you two talking about?” asked Mrs. Redfield, looking
from one to the other, while thwarting Marjorie in a forbidden attack
upon the cookies. “It seems to me that you’ve been talking for years
about this story, and I don’t know yet what it’s all about.”
“Hims witing books like the funny poetry man, and hims told me if I’m
good and nice to you and Aunt Marian he’ll wite a book all about me,
and my dollies, and how we builded shotums by the lake and in our yard;
and Marian can’t be in any more books, but just be sitting on a wock by
the lake, having ums picture painted.”
“Thank you, Marjorie; I knew he was a deceiver and that proves it,”
laughed Marian, avoiding her sister’s eyes. “Let’s all go out and see
the sun go down.”
Marjorie toddled off along the walk that bisected what had once been a
kitchen-garden.
The sun was resting his fiery burden on the dark edge of a wood on the
western horizon. The front door of the bungalow was ajar and Mrs.
Redfield crossed the piazza and peered in. The place was clean and
freshly papered: a fire burned m the fireplace--no mere careless blaze
of litter left by workmen, but flaming logs that crackled cheerily.
Her memory distributed her own belongings; here had been the table and
there the couch and chair; and she saw restored to the bare walls the
pictures that now cluttered the attic of the home she had established
with Marian, that had once hung here--each with its special meaning for
the occupants.
She stood, a girlish figure, with her hands thrust into the pockets of
her sweater, staring with unseeing eyes at the mocking flames.
The Poet had spoken of the visits he paid in fancy to his house
of dreams, and she half-wondered whether she were not herself a
disembodied spirit imprisoned in a house of shadows. A light, furtive
step on the piazza startled her, and lifting her eyes with the Poet
still in her mind she saw him crossing the room quickly, like a guest
approaching his hostess.
“It’s pleasant to find the mistress back in the house of dreams,” he
said. “And she brings, oh, so many things with her!”
He glanced about the empty room as though envisaging remembered
comforts.
“I might have known,” she murmured, “that this was your plan.”
“No,” he replied, with a smile that brought to his face a rare
kindliness and sweetness, “it wasn’t mine; I’m merely an inefficient
agent. It’s all born of things hoped for--”
He waved his hand to the bare walls, brought it round and placed
something in her palm.
“There’s the key to my house of dreams. As you see, it needs
people--its own people--Marjorie and you, for example, to make it home
again. I shall be much happier to know you’re back....”
[Illustration: ELIZABETH!]
He was gone and she gazed after him with a deepened sense of unreality.
A moment later she heard Marjorie calling to him in the garden.
She stood staring at the flat bit of metal he had left in her hand, the
key of his house of dreams; then she laid her arms upon the long shelf
of the mantel and wept. The sound of her sobbing filled the room. Never
before--not when the anger and shame of her troubles were fresh upon
her--had she been so shaken.
She was still there, with her head bowed upon her arms, when a voice
spoke her name, “Elizabeth,” and “Elizabeth,” again, very softly.
* * * * *
The sun flamed beyond the woodland. The Poet joined with Marian and
Fulton in praising the banners of purple and gold that were flung
across the west, while Marjorie tugged at his umbrella.
“It’s all good--everything is good! A pretty good, cheerful kind of
world when you consider it. I think,” he added with his eyes on Marian,
“that maybe Miles can find time to do the pictures for Fred’s book.
His old place at the bank won’t be ready until the first of the year,
and that will give him a chance to work up something pretty fine. I’ll
see that publisher about it when he comes; and--” He withdrew several
steps, and looked absently at the glories of the dying day before
concluding, “it’s just as well to keep all the good things in the
family.”
When they hurried to the gate, they saw him walking in his leisurely
fashion toward the trolley terminus, swinging his umbrella. The golden
light enfolded him and the scarlet maples bent down in benediction.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.