The writer of football stories had gone out of my room. He is an
American artist. No doubt he is at this moment sitting somewhere in a
hotel room, writing football stories. As I now sit writing of him my
own mind is filled with fragmentary glimpses of life caught and held
from our talk. The little fragments caught in the field of my fancy are
like flies caught in molasses--they cannot escape. They will not go
out of the house of my fancy and I am wondering, as no doubt you, the
reader, will be wondering, what became of the daughter of the seller of
fish who wanted to be a lady. Did she become a famous pianist or did
she in the end run away with a man from New York City who was spending
his vacation in the New England town only to find, after she got to
the city with him, that he already had a wife? I am wondering about
her--about the man whose wife ran away with his friend and about the
running man in the city streets. He stays in my fancy the most sharply
of all. What happened to him? He had evidently committed a crime. Did
he escape or did he, after he had got out into the adjoining street,
run into the arms of a waiting policeman?
Like the writer of football stories, my own fancy is haunted. To-day is
just such a day as the one on which he came to see me. It is evening
now and he came in the evening. In fancy again I see him, going about
on Spring, Summer and early Fall days, on the streets of his New
England town. Being an author he is somewhat timid and hesitates about
speaking with people he meets. Well, he is lonely. By this time his
daughter has no doubt graduated from Vassar. Perhaps she is married to
a writer of stories. It may be that she has married a writer of cowboy
stories who lives in the New England town and works in a garden.
Perhaps at this very moment the man who has written so many stories of
football games is writing another. In fancy I can hear the click of his
typewriting machine. He is fighting, it seems, to maintain a certain
position in life, a house by the sea, an automobile and he blames that
fact on his wife, and on his daughter who wanted to go to Vassar.
He is fighting to maintain his position in life and at the same time
there is another fight going on. On that day in the hotel in the city
of New York he told me, with tears in his eyes, that he wanted to grow
up, to let his fanciful life keep pace with his physical life but
that the magazine editors would not let him. He blamed the editors
of magazines--he blamed his wife and daughter--as I remember our
conversation, he did not blame himself.
Perhaps he did not dare let his fanciful life mature to keep pace with
his physical life. He lives in America, where as yet to mature in one’s
fanciful life is thought of as something like a crime.
In any event there he is, haunting my fancy. As the man running in the
streets will always stay in his fancy, disturbing him when he wants to
be thinking out new plots for football stories, so he will always stay
in my fancy--unless, well unless I can unload him into the fanciful
lives of you readers.
As the matter stands I see him now as I saw him on that Winter evening
long ago. He is standing at the door of my room with the strained look
in his eyes and is bewailing the fact that after our talk he will have
to go back to his own room and begin writing another football story.
He speaks of that as one might speak of going to prison and then the
door of my room closes and he is gone. I hear his footsteps in the
hallway.
My own hands are trembling a little. “Perhaps his fate is also my own,”
I am telling myself. I hear his human footsteps in the hallway of the
hotel and then through my mind go the words of the poet Sandburg he has
quoted to me:
“_Such a beautiful pail of fish, such a beautiful peck of apples, I
cannot bring you now. It is too early and I am not footloose yet._”
The words of the American poet rattle in my head and then I turn my
eyes to the floor where my destroyed Balzac is lying. The soft brown
leather back is uninjured and now again, in fancy, the name of the
author is staring at me. The name is stamped on the back of the book in
letters of gold.
From the floor of my room the name Balzac is grinning ironically up
into my own American face.
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.