WELL, there was my father, there was myself. If people did not want
their stories told, it would be better for them to keep away from me.
I would tell if I could get at the heart of it--as the fellow who
went off to Vinland with Fredis told--and for just the reasons that
made him tell. And like that fellow, after he returned to Greenland,
I would have to walk alone in the woods or in city streets thinking,
trying to think, trying to get all in accord, seeking always just that
illuminating touch the Norse story-teller had found when he thought up
the bit about Fredis--that about her getting into bed and touching the
back of her sleeping husband with the cold feet. The foxy devil! Do I
not know what happened after that? First he thought of the two in the
warm bed--the determined woman and the startled weak man--with a little
jump of delight and then he went back over his story and put that in
about her having got up in the first place without putting on shoes and
stockings and the cold wet dew on the grass and the log against the
wall of the house on which they sat. Now he had got going just right
and he knew he had got going just right. What a splendid feeling! It
was like a dance. How neatly everything fitted in! Words came--ah--just
the right words.
How many times, in these modern days when I have seen how
story-tellers and painters have got themselves so often all balled-up
with the question of style I have wondered whether the story-tellers
among the old Norse and those most marvelous story-tellers of the older
Testaments, whether they also did not have their periods of escaping
out into words because they had grown weary of seeking after the heart
of their stories.
I dare say they stole when they could without being detected as I have
so often done. Well, there was the heart of the tale itself. That had
first to be got at and then one had to find the words wherewith to
clothe it. One got a bit feverish at times and used feverish words,
made his telling too turgid or too wordy. One was like a runner who has
a long race to run but who is feverishly forcing the pace. How many
times I have sat writing, hoping I had got at the heart of the tale I
was trying to put down on the paper when inside myself I knew I had
not. I have tried to bluff myself. Often I have gone to others, hoping
they would say words that would quiet the voices within. “You have not
got it and you know you have not got it. Tear all up. Well, then, be
a fool and go on trying to bluff yourself. Perhaps you can get some
critic to say you have got what you know well enough you have not got,
the very heart, the very music of your tale.”