I

“The lonesomeness of that little girl over there is becoming painful,” said the Poet from his chair by the hedge. “I can’t make out whether she’s too dressed up to play or whether it’s only shyness.”

“Poor Marjorie!” murmured Mrs. Waring. “We’ve all coaxed her to play, but she won’t budge. By the way, that’s one of the saddest cases we’ve had; it’s heartbreaking, discouraging. Little waifs like Marjorie, whose fathers and mothers can’t hit it off, don’t have a fair chance,—they are handicapped from the start.—Oh, I thought you knew; that’s the Redfields’ little girl.”

The Poet gazed with a new intentness at the dark-haired child of five who stood rigidly at the end of the pergola with her hands clasped behind her back. The Poet All the People Loved was a philosopher also, but his philosophy was not quite equal to forecasting the destiny of little Marjorie.

“Children,” he observed, “should not be left on the temple steps when the pillars of society crack and rock; the good fairies ought to carry them out of harm’s way. Little Marjorie looks as though she had never smiled.” And then he murmured with characteristic self-mockery,—

“Oh, little child that never smiled—

Somebody might build a poem around that line, but I hope nobody ever will! If that child doesn’t stop looking that way, I shall have to cry or crawl over there on my knees and ride her pickaback.”

Mrs. Waring’s two daughters had been leading the children in a march and dance that now broke up in a romp; and the garden echoed with gleeful laughter. The spell of restraint was broken, and the children began initiating games of their own choosing; but Marjorie stood stolidly gazing at them as though they were of another species. Her nurse, having failed to interest her sad-eyed charge in the games that were delighting the other children, had withdrawn, leaving Marjorie to her own devices.

“She’s always like that,” the girl explained with resignation, “and you can’t do anything with her.”

A tall, fair girl appeared suddenly at the garden entrance. The abrupt manner of her coming, the alert poise of her figure, as though she had been arrested in flight and had paused only for breath before winging farther, interested the Poet at once.

She stood there as unconscious as though she were the first woman, and against the white gate of the garden was imaginably of kin to the bright goddesses of legend. She was hatless, and the Poet was grateful for this, for a hat, he reflected, should never weigh upon a head so charming, so lifted as though with courage and hope, and faith in the promise of life. A tennis racket held in the hollow of her arm explained her glowing color. Essentially American, he reflected, this young woman, and worthy to stand as a type in his thronging gallery. She so satisfied the eye in that hesitating moment that the Poet shrugged his shoulders impatiently when she threw aside the racket and bounded across the lawn, darting in and out among the children, laughingly eluding small hands thrust out to catch her, and then dropped on her knees before Marjorie. She caught the child’s hands, laughed into the sad little face, holding herself away so that the homesick, bewildered heart might have time to adjust itself, and then Marjorie’s arms clasped her neck tightly, and the dark head lay close to the golden one.

There was a moment’s parley, begun in tears and ending in laughter; and then Marian tripped away with Marjorie, and joined with her in the mazes of a dance that enmeshed the whole company of children in bright ribbons and then freed them again. The Poet, beating time to the music with his hat, wished that Herrick might have been there; it was his habit to think, when something pleased him particularly, that “Keats would have liked that!”—“Shelley would have made a golden line of this!” He felt songs beating with eager wings at the door of his own heart as his glance followed the fair girl who had so easily turned a child’s tears to laughter. For Marjorie was laughing with the rest now; in ten minutes she was one of them—had found friends and seemed not to mind at all when her good angel dropped out to become a spectator of her happiness.

“I have saved my trousers,” remarked the Poet to Mrs. Waring, who had watched the transformation in silence; “but that girl has spoiled her frock kneeling to Marjorie. I suppose I couldn’t with delicacy offer to reimburse her for the damage. If there were any sort of gallantry in me I would have sacrificed myself, and probably have scared Marjorie to death. If a child should put its arms around me that way and cry on my shoulder and then run off and play, I should be glad to endow laundries to the limit of my bank account. If the Diana who rescued Marjorie has another name—”

“I thought you knew! That’s Marian Agnew, Marjorie’s aunt.”“I’ve read of her in many books,” said the Poet musingly, “but she’s an elusive person. I might have known that if I would sit in a pleasant garden like this in June and watch children at play, something beautiful would pass this way.”

Mrs. Waring glanced at him quickly, as people usually did to make sure he was not trifling with them.

“You really seem interested in the way she hypnotized Marjorie! Well, to be quite honest, I sent for her to come! She was playing tennis a little farther up the street, but she came running when I sent word that Marjorie was here and that we had all given her up in despair.”

“My first impression was that she had dropped down from heaven or had run away from Olympus. Please don’t ask me to say which I think likelier!”

“I’m sorry to spoil an illusion, but after all Marian is one of the daughters of men; though I remember that when she was ten she told me in solemn confidence that she believed in fairies, because she had seen them—an excellent reason! She graduated from Vassar last year, and I have an idea that college may have shaken her faith in fairies. She’s going to begin teaching school next fall,—she has to do something, you know. She’s an eminently practical person, blessed with a sound appetite, and she can climb a rope, and swim and play tennis all day.”

“The Olympians ate three meals a day, I imagine; and we shouldn’t begrudge this fair-haired Marian her daily bread and butter. Let me see; she’s Marjorie’s aunt; and Marjorie’s father is Miles Redfield. I know Redfield well; his wife was Elizabeth Agnew. I saw a good deal of them in their early married days. They’ve agreed to quit—is that the way of it?”

“How fortunate you are that people don’t tell you gossip! I suppose it’s one of the rewards of being a poet! The whole town has been upset by the Redfields’ troubles;—they have separated. I’ve sent Elizabeth up to Waupegan to open my house—made an excuse to get her away. Marjorie’s with her grandmother, waiting for the courts to do something about it;—as though courts could do anything about such cases!” she ended with feeling.

The Poet, searching for Marjorie in the throng of children, made no reply.

“You are a poet,” Mrs. Waring resumed tauntingly, with the privilege of old friendship, “and have a reputation for knowing the human heart. Why can’t you do something about the Redfields’ troubles?—there’s a fine chance for you! It begins to look as though sentiment, romance, love—all those things you poets have been writing about for thousands of years—have gone out with the old-fashioned roses. I confess that it’s because I’m afraid that’s true that I’m clinging to all the flowers my grandmother used to love—and I’m nearly seventy and a grandmother myself.”

She was still a handsome woman, and the Poet’s eyes followed her admiringly as she crossed the lawn, leaving him to find an answer to her question. In the days of his beginnings she had been his steadfast friend, and he was fond of telling her that he had learned the kindliness and cheer he put into his poems from her.

She and her assistants were marshaling the children for refreshments under a canopy at the farther corner of the garden, and the animated scene delighted and charmed him. He liked thus to sit apart and observe phases of life,—and best of all he loved scenes like this that were brightened by the presence of children. He was a bachelor, but the world’s children were his; and he studied them, loved them, wrote for them and of them. He was quite alone, as he liked to be often, pondering the misfortunes of the Redfields as lightly limned by Mrs. Waring. Little Marjorie, as she had stood forlornly against the pergola, haunted him still in spite of her capitulation to the charms of her Aunt Marian. He knew perfectly well that Mrs. Waring hadn’t meant what she said in her fling about the passing of poetry and romance; she was the last woman in the world to utter such sentiments seriously; but he was aware that many people believed them to be true.

Every day the postman brought him letters in dismaying numbers from people of all sorts and conditions who testified to the validity of his message. The most modest of men, he found it difficult to understand how he reached so many hearts; he refused to believe himself, what some essayist had called him, “a lone piper in the twilight of the poets.” With maturity his attitude toward his own genius had changed; and under his joy in the song for the song’s sake was a deep, serious feeling of responsibility. It was a high privilege to comfort and uplift so many; and if he were, indeed, one of the apostolic line of poets, he must have a care to keep his altar clean and bright for those who should come after him.

He was so deep in thought that he failed to observe Marian advancing toward him.

“If you please, I have brought you an ice, and there will be cake and bonbons,” said the girl. “And Mrs. Waring said if you didn’t mind I might sit and talk to you.”

“You should be careful,” said the Poet, taking the plate, “about frightening timid men to death. I was thinking about you so hard that my watch and my heart both stopped when you spoke to me.”

“And this,” exclaimed the girl, “from the poet of gracious words! I’ve been told that I’m rather unexpected and generally annoying, but I didn’t know I was so bad as that!”

“Then let us begin all over again,” said the Poet. “Mrs. Waring told me your name and gave you a high reputation as an athlete, and spoke feelingly of your appetite. It’s only fair to give you a chance to speak for yourself. So kindly begin by telling me about Marjorie and why she’s so forlorn, and just what you said to her a while ago!”

The color deepened in the girl’s face. It was disconcerting to be sitting beside the Poet All the People Loved and to be talking to him for the first time in her life; but to have him ask a question of so many obscure connotations, touching upon so many matters that were best left to whispering gossips, quite took her breath away.

“Not a word that I can remember,” she answered; “but Marjorie said, ‘Take me home!’—and after she had cried a little she felt better and was glad to play.”

“Of course that’s only the most superficial and modest account of the incident,” the Poet replied; “but I can’t blame you for not telling. If I knew how to do what you did, I should very likely keep the secret. Another case of the flower in the crannied wall,—

“You give me far too much credit,” the girl responded gravely. “It was merely a matter of my knowing Marjorie better than any one else at the party; I hadn’t known she was coming or I should have brought her myself.”

“I thought you would say something like that,” the Poet observed, “and that is why I liked you before you said it.”

She looked at him with the frank curiosity aroused by her nearness to a celebrity. Now that the first little heartache over the mention of Marjorie had passed, she found herself quite at ease with him.

“My feelings have been hurt,” he was saying. “Oh, nobody has told me—at least not to-day—that I am growing old, or that it’s silly to carry an umbrella on bright days! It’s much worse than that.”

Sympathy spoke in her face and from the tranquil depths of her violet eyes.

“I shall hate whoever said it, forever and forever!” she averred.

“Oh, no! That would be a very serious mistake! The person who hurt my feelings is the nicest possible person and one of my best friends. So many people are saying the same thing that we needn’t ascribe it to any individual. Let us assume that I’ve been hurt by many people, who say that romance and old-fashioned roses are not what they were; that such poetry as we have nowadays isn’t of any use, and that we are all left floundering here

I want you to tell me, honestly and truly, whether you really believe that.”

He was more eager for her reply than she knew; and when it was not immediately forthcoming a troubled look stole into his face. The readiness of the poetic temperament to idealize had betrayed him for once, at least, and he felt his disappointments deeply. The laughter of the children floated fitfully from the corner of the garden where they were arraying themselves in the tissue caps that had been hidden in their bonbons. A robin, wondering at all the merriment, piped cheerily from a tall maple, and a jay, braving the perils of urban life, winged over the garden with a flash of blue. The gleeful echoes from the bright canopy, the bird calls, the tender green of the foliage, the scents and sounds of early summer all spoke for happiness; and yet Marian Agnew withheld the reply on which he had counted. She still delayed as though waiting for the robin to cease; and when a flutter of wings announced his departure, she began irresolutely:—

“I wish I could say no, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am to disappoint you—you, of all men! I know you wouldn’t want me to be dishonest—to make the answer you expected merely to please you. Please forgive me! but I’m not sure I think as you do about life. If I had never known trouble—if I didn’t know that faith and love can die, then I shouldn’t hesitate. But I’m one of the doubting ones.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Poet; “but we may as well assume that we are old friends and be frank. Please believe that I’m not bothering you in this way without a purpose. I think I know what has obscured the light for you. You are thinking of your sister’s troubles; and when I asked you what sorcery you had exercised upon little Marjorie, you knew her mother had been in my mind. That isn’t, of course, any of my affair, in one sense; but in another sense it is. For one thing, I knew your sister when she was a girl—which wasn’t very long ago. And I know the man she married; and there was never any marriage that promised so well as that! And for another thing, I don’t like to think that we’ve cut all the old moorings; that the anchorages of life, that were safe enough in old times, snap nowadays in any passing gust. The very thought of it makes me uncomfortable! You are not fair to yourself when you allow other people’s troubles to darken your own outlook. When you stood over there at the gate, I called the roll of all the divinities of light and sweetness and charm to find a name for you; when you ran to Marjorie and won her back to happiness so quickly, I was glad that these are not the old times of fauns and dryads, but that you are very real, and a healthy-minded American girl, seeing life quite steadily and whole.”

“Oh, but I don’t; I can’t!” she faltered; “and doesn’t—doesn’t the mistake you made about me prove that what poets see and feel isn’t reality, isn’t life as it really is?”

“I object,” said the Poet with a humorous twinkle, “to any such sacrifice of yourself to support the wail of the pessimists. I positively refuse to sanction anything so sacrilegious!”

“I’m not terribly old,” she went on, ignoring his effort to give a lighter tone to the talk; “and I don’t pretend to be wise; but life can’t be just dreams and flowers: I see that! I wish it were that way, for everything would be so simple and easy and every one would live happy ever after.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t quite true,” said the Poet. “I can’t think of anything more disagreeable than half an hour spent in a big hothouse full of roses. I’ve made the experiment occasionally; and if all creation lived in such an atmosphere, we should be a pale, stifled, anÆmic race. And think of the stone-throwing there would be if we all lived in glass houses!”

She smiled at this; and their eyes met in a look that marked the beginnings of a friendship.

“There’s Marjorie, and I must go!” she cried suddenly. “Isn’t she quite the prettiest of them all in her paper cap! We haven’t really decided anything, have we?” she asked, lingering a moment. “And I haven’t even fed you very well, for which Mrs. Waring will scold me. But I hope you’re going to like me a little bit—even if I am a heathen!”

“We were old friends when the stars first sang together! Something tells me that I shall see you soon again—very soon; but you have not got rid of me yet; I crave the honor of an introduction to Marjorie.”

In a moment the Poet stood with Marjorie close at his side, her hand thrust warmly and contentedly into his, while all the other children pressed close about. He was telling them one of the stories in rhyme for which he was famous, and telling it with an art that was not less a gift from Heaven than the genius that had put the words into his ink-pot. Thousands of children had heard that poem at their mothers’ knees, but to-day it seemed new, even to those of the attentive young auditors whose lips moved with his, repeating the quaint, whimsical phrases and musical lines that seem, indeed, to be the spontaneous creation of any child who lisps them.

And when he began to retreat, followed by the clamorous company with demands for more, he slipped away through the low garden gate, leaned upon it and looked down upon them with feigned surprise as though he had never seen them before.

“How remarkable!” he exclaimed, lingering to parley with them. “Tell you another story! Who has been telling stories! I just stopped to look at the garden and all the flowers jumped up and became children—children calling for stories! How very remarkable! And all the brown-eyed children are pansies and all the blue-eyed ones are roses,—really this is the most remarkable thing I ever heard of!”

They drew closer as he whispered:—

“You must do just what I tell you—will you promise, every single boy and girl?”

They pressed nearer, presenting a compact semicircle of awed faces, and nodded eagerly. An older boy giggled in excess of joy and in anticipation of what was to come, and his neighbors rebuked him with frowns.

“Now, when I say ‘one,’ begin to count, and count ten slowly—oh, very slowly; and then, when everybody has counted, everybody stand on one foot with eyes shut tight and hop around real quick and look at the back wall of the garden—there’s a robin sitting there at this very minute;—but don’t look. Nobody must look—yet! And when you open your eyes there will be a fairy in a linen duster and a cocked hat; that is, maybe you’ll see him! Now shut your eyes and count—one!”

When they swung round to take him to task for this duplicity, he had reached the street and was waving his hand to them.

II

Under the maples that arched the long street the Poet walked homeward, pondering the afternoon’s adventures. His encounter with the children had sent him away from Mrs. Waring’s garden in a happy mood. Down the long aisle of trees the tall shaft of the soldiers’ monument rose before him. He had watched its building, and the memories that had gone to its making had spoken to his imagination with singular poignancy. It expressed the high altitudes of aspiration and endeavor of his own people; for the gray shaft was not merely the center of his city, the teeming, earnest capital of his State; but his name and fame were inseparably linked to it. He had found within an hour’s journey of the monument the material for a thousand poems. As a boy he had ranged the near-by fields and followed, like a young Columbus, innumerable creeks and rivers; he had learned and stored away the country lore and the country faith, and fixed in his mind unconsciously the homely speech in which he was to express these things later as one having authority. So profitably had he occupied his childhood and youth that years spent on “paven ground” had not dimmed the freshness of those memories. It seemed that by some magic he was able to cause the springs he had known in youth (and springs are dear to youth!) to bubble anew in the crowded haunts of men; and urban scenes never obscured for him the labors and incidents of the farm. He had played upon the theme of home with endless variations, and never were songs honester than these. The home round which he had flung his defense of song domiciled folk of simple aims and kindly mirth; he had established them as a type, written them down in their simple dialect that has the tang of wild persimmons, the mellow flavor of the pawpaw.

He turned into the quiet street from which for many years he had sent his songs winging,—an absurdly inaccessible and delightful street that baffled all seekers,—that had to be rediscovered with each visit by the Poet’s friends. Not only was its seclusion dear to him; but the difficulties experienced by his visitors in finding it tickled his humor. It was pleasant to be tucked away in a street that never was in danger of precipitating one into the market-place, and in a house set higher than its neighbors and protected by an iron fence and a gate whose chain one must fumble a moment before gaining access to the whitest of stone steps, and the quaint door that had hospitably opened to so many of the good and great of all lands.

There was a visitor waiting—a young man who explained himself diffidently and seemed taken aback by the cordiality with which the Poet greeted him.

“Frederick Fulton,” repeated the Poet, waving his hand toward a chair. “You are not the young man who sent me a manuscript to read last summer,—and very long it was, indeed, a poetic drama, ‘The Soul of Eros.’ Nor the one who wrote an ode in hexameters ‘To the Spirit of Shelley,’ nor yet the other one who seemed bent on doing Omar KhayyÁm over again—‘Verses from Persian Sources’ he called it. You needn’t bother to repudiate those efforts; I have seen your name in the ‘Chronicle’ tacked to very good things—very good, and very American. Yes, I recall half a dozen pieces under one heading—‘Songs of Journeys’ End’—and good work—excellent! I suppose they were all refused by magazines or you wouldn’t have chucked them into a Sunday supplement. Oh, don’t jump! I’m not a mind reader—it’s only that I’ve been through all that myself.”

“Not lately, though, of course,” Fulton remarked, with the laugh that the Poet’s smile invited.

“Not so lately, but they sent me back so much when I was young, and even after I wasn’t so young, that the account isn’t balanced yet! There are things in those verses of yours that I remember—they were very delicate, and beautifully put together,—cobwebs with dew clinging to them. I impudently asked about you at the office to make sure there really was a Frederick Fulton.”

“That was kind and generous; I heard about it, and that emboldened me to come and see you—without any manuscript in my pocket!”

“I should like another handful like those ‘Journeys’ End’ pieces. There was a rare sort of joy in them, exultance, ardor. You had a line beginning—

‘If love should wait for May to come—’

that was like a bubble tossed into the air, quivering with life and flashing all manner of colors. And there was something about swallows darting down from the bank and skimming over the creek to cool their wings on the water. I liked that! I can see that you were a country boy; we learned the alphabet out of the same primer!”

“I have done my share of ploughing,” Fulton remarked a little later, after volunteering the few facts of his biography. “There are lots of things about corn that haven’t been put into rhyme just right; the smell of the up-turned earth, and the whisper and glisten of young leaves; the sweating horses as the sun climbs to the top, and the lonesome rumble of a wagon in the road, and the little cloud of dust that follows and drifts after it.”

“And little sister in a pink sunbonnet strolls down the lane with a jug of buttermilk about the time you begin to feel that Pharaoh has given you the hardest job in his brickyard! I’ve never had those experiences but”—the Poet laughed—“I’ve sat on the fence and watched other boys do it; so you’re just that much richer than I am by your experience. But we must be careful, though, or some evil spirit will come down the chimney and tell us we’re not academic! I suppose we ought to be threshing out old straw—you and I—writing of English skylarks and the gorse and the yew and nightingales, instead of what we see out of the window, here at home. How absurd of us! A scientist would be caught up quick enough if he wrote of something he knew nothing about—if, for example, an astronomer ventured to write an essay about the starfish; and yet there are critics who sniff at such poetry as yours and mine”—Fulton felt that the laurel had been pressed down on his brows by this correlation—“because it’s about corn and stake-and-rider fences with wild roses and elderberry blooming in the corners. You had a fine poem about the kingfisher—and I suppose it would be more likely to impress a certain type of austere critics if you’d written about some extinct bird you’d seen in a college museum! But, dear me, I’m doing all the talking!”

“I wish you would do much more. You’ve said just what I hoped you would; in fact, I came to-day because I had a blue day, and I needed to talk to some one, and I chose you. I know perfectly well that I ought really to quit bothering my head about rhyme. I get too much happiness out of it; it’s spoiling me for other things.”

“Let’s have all the story, then, if you really want to tell me,” said the Poet. “Most people give only half confidences,” he added.

“I went into newspaper work after I’d farmed my way through college. I’ve been with the ‘Chronicle’ three years, and I believe they say I’m a good reporter; but however that may be, I don’t see my way very far ahead. Promotions are uncertain, and the rewards of journalism at best are not great. And of course I haven’t any illusions about poetry—the kind I can do! I couldn’t live by it!”

He ended abruptly with an air of throwing all his cards on the table. The Poet picked up a paper-cutter and began idly tapping his knee with it.“How do you know you can’t!”

It was an exclamation rather than a question, and he smiled at the blank stare with which Fulton received it.

“Oh, I mean that it won’t pay my board bill or buy clothes! It feeds the spirit, maybe, but that’s all. You see, I’m not a genius like you!”

“We will pass that as an irrelevant point and one you’d better not try to defend. I agree with you about journalism, so we needn’t argue that. But scribbling verses has taught you some things—the knack of appraising material—quick and true selection—and the ability to write clean straight prose, so you needn’t be ungrateful. Very likely it has cultivated your sympathies, broadened your knowledge of people, shown you lights and shadows you would otherwise have missed. These are all worth while.”

“Yes, I appreciate all that; but for the long future I must have a surer refuge than the newspaper office, where the tenure is decidedly uncertain. I feel that I ought to break away pretty soon. I’m twenty-six, and the years count; and I want to make the best use of them; I’d like to crowd twenty years of hard work into ten and then be free to lie back and play on my little tin whistle,” he continued earnestly. “And I have a chance to go into business; Mr. Redfield has offered me a place with him; he’s the broker, you know, one of the real live wires and already very successful. My acquaintance with people all over the State suggested the idea that I might make myself useful to him.”

The Poet dropped the paper-cutter, and permitted Fulton to grope for it to give himself time to think.

The narrow circumference within which the game of life is played had always had for the Poet a fascinating interest; and he read into coincidences all manner of mysteries, but it was nothing short of startling that this young man, whom he had never seen before, should have spoken Miles Redfield’s name just when it was in his own mind.

“I know Redfield quite well,” he said, “though he’s much younger than I am. I understand that he’s prospering. He had somewhat your own problem to solve not so very long ago; maybe you don’t know that?”

“No; I know him only in a business way; he occasionally has news; he’s been in some important deals lately.”

“It’s odd, but he came to me a dozen years ago and talked to me much as you have been talking. Art, not poetry, was his trouble. He had a lot of talent—maybe not genius but undeniable talent. He had been to an art school and made a fine record, and this, he used to say jokingly, fitted him for a bank clerkship. He has a practical side, and most of the year could clean up his day’s work early enough to save a few daylight hours for himself. There’s a pen-and-ink sketch of me just behind your head that’s Miles’s work. Yes; it’s good; and he could pluck the heart out of a landscape, too;—in oils, I mean. He was full of enthusiasm and meant to go far. Then he struck the reefs of discouragement as we all do, and gave it up; got a job in a bank, got married—and there you are!”

“It’s too bad about his domestic affairs,” Fulton volunteered, as the Poet broke off with a gesture that was eloquent with vague implications.

“He seems to have flung aside all his ideals with his crayons and brushes!” exclaimed the Poet impatiently. “Mind you, I don’t blame him for abandoning art; I always have an idea that those who grow restless over their early failures and quit the game haven’t heard the call very clearly. A poet named McPhelim once wrote a sonnet, that began—

‘All-lovely Art, stern Labor’s fair-haired child,—’working out the idea that we must serve seven years and yet seven other years to win the crown. We might almost say that it’s an endless apprenticeship; we are all tyros to the end of the chapter!”

“It must be the gleam we follow forever!” said the young man. “No matter how slight the spark I feel—I want to feel that it’s worth following if I never come in sight of the Grail.”

It was not the way of the Poet to become too serious even in matters that lay nearest his heart.

“We must follow the firefly even though it leads us into bramble patches and we emerge on the other side with our hands and faces scratched! It’s our joke on a world that regards us with suspicion that, when we wear our singing robes into the great labor houses, we are really more practical than the men who spend their days there. I’m making that statement in confidence to you as a comrade and brother; we must keep our conceit to ourselves; but it’s true, nevertheless. The question at issue is whether you shall break with the ‘Chronicle’ and join forces with Miles Redfield; and whether doing so would mean inevitably that you must bid your literary ambitions get behind you, Satan.”

Fulton nodded.

“Of course,” he said, “there have been many men who first and last have made an avocation of literature and looked elsewhere for their daily bread: Lamb’s heart, pressed against his desk in the India office, was true to literature in spite of his necessities. And poets have always had a hard time of it, stealing like Villon, or inspecting schools, like Arnold, or teaching, like Longfellow and Lowell; they have usually paid a stiff price for their tickets to the Elysian Fields.”

The Poet crossed the room, glanced at the portrait that Redfield had made of him, and then leaned against the white marble mantel.

“We’ve wandered pretty far afield; we are talking as though this thing we call art were something quite detachable—something we could stand off and look at, or put on or off at will. I wonder if we won’t reach the beginning—or the end—of the furrow we’re scratching with our little plough, by agreeing that it must be in our lives, a vital part of us, and quite inseparable from the thing we are!”

“Yes; to those of high consecration—to the masters! But you are carrying the banner too high; my lungs weren’t made for that clearer ether and diviner air.”

“Let us consider that, then,” said the Poet, finding a new seat by the window. “I have known and loved half a dozen men who have painted,—we will take painters, to get away from our own shop,—and have passed the meridian and kept on painting without gaining any considerable success as men measure it; never winning much more than local reputation. They have done pot-boilers with their left hands, and not grumbled. They’ve found the picking pretty lean, too, and their lives have been one long sacrifice. They’ve had to watch in some instances men of meaner aims win the handful of silver and the ribbon to wear in their coats; but they’ve gone on smilingly; they are like acolytes who light tapers and sing chants without ever being summoned to higher service at the altar—who would scruple to lay their hands on it!”

“They, of course, are the real thing!” Fulton exclaimed fervently, “and there are scores of such men and women. They are amateurs in the true sense. I know some of them, and I take off my hat to them!”

“I get down on my knees to them,” said the Poet with deep feeling. “Success is far from spelling greatness; it takes a great soul to find success and happiness in defeat. You will have to elect whether you will take your chances with the kind of men I’ve mentioned or delve where the returns are surer; and that’s a decision you will have to make for yourself. All I can do is to suggest points for consideration. Quite honestly I will say that your work promises well; that it’s better than I was doing at your age, and that very likely you can go far with it. How about prose—the novel, for example? Thackeray, Howells, Aldrich—a number of novelists have been poets, too.”

“Oh, of course I mean to try a novel—or maybe a dozen of them! In fact,” Fulton continued, after a moment’s hesitation, “I’m working right now on a poetical romance with a layer of realism here and there to hold it together. It’s modern with an up-to-date setting. I’ve done some lyrics and songs to weave into it. There’s a poet who tends an orchard on the shore of a lake,—almost like Waupegan,—and a girl he doesn’t know; but he sees her paddling her canoe or sometimes playing tennis near an inn not far from his orchard. He leaves poems around for her to find, tacked to trees or pinned to the paddle in her canoe; I suppose I’m stealing from Rosalind and Orlando. She’s tall, with light brown hair,—there’s a glint of gold in it,—and she’s no end beautiful. He watches her at the tennis court—lithe, eager, sure of hand and foot; and writes madly, all kinds of extravagant songs in praise of her. The horizon itself becomes the net, and she serves her ball to the sun—you see he has a bad case! You know how pretty a girl is on a tennis court,—that is, a graceful girl, all in white,—a tall, fair girl with fluffy hair; a very human, wide-awake girl, who can make a smashing return or drop the ball with maddening ease just over the net with a quick twist of the wrist. There’s nothing quite like that girl—those girls, I should say!”“I like your orchard and the lake, and the goddess skipping over the tennis court; but I fancy that behind all romance there’s some realism. You sketch your girl vividly. You must have seen some one who suggested her; perhaps, if it isn’t impertinent, you yourself are imaginably the young gentleman casually spraying the apple trees to keep the bugs off!”

It was in the Poet’s mind that young men of poetical temperament are hardly likely to pass their twenty-sixth birthday without a love affair. He knew nothing of Fulton beyond what the young man had just told him, and presumably his social contacts had been meager; but his voluble description of his heroine encouraged a suspicion that she was not wholly a creature of the imagination.

“Oh, of course I’ve had a particular girl in mind!” Fulton laughed. “I’ve gone the lengths of realism in trying to describe her. I was assigned to the Country Club to do a tennis tournament last fall, and I saw her there. She all but took the prize away from a girl college champion they had coaxed out from the East to give snap to the exhibition. My business was to write a newspaper story about the game, and being a mere reporter I made myself small on the side lines and kept score. Our photographer got a wonderful picture of her—my goddess, I mean—as she pulled one down from the clouds and smashed it over the net, the neatest stroke of the match. It seemed perfectly reasonable that she could roll the sun under her racket, catch it up and drive it over the rim of the world!”

“Her name,” said the Poet, as Fulton paused, abashed by his own eloquence, “is Marian Agnew.”

“How on earth did you guess that!” exclaimed the young man.

“Oh, there is something to be said for realism, after all, and your description gave me all but her name. I might quote a poem I have seen somewhere about the robin—

“I haven’t heard her sing, but she laughed like an angel that day,—usually when she failed to connect with the ball; but she didn’t even smile when the joke was on the other girl,—that’s being a good sportsman! I rather laid myself out praising her game. But if you know her I shall burn my manuscript and let you do the immortalizing.”

“On the other hand, you should go right on and finish your story. Don’t begin to accumulate a litter of half-finished things; you’ll find such stuff depressing when you clean up your desk on rainy days. As to Marian, you’ve never spoken to her?”

“No; but I’ve seen her now and then in the street, and at the theater, and quite a bit at Waupegan last fall. She has plenty of admirers and doesn’t need me.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” the Poet replied absently.

“I must be going,” said the young man, jumping up as the clock chimed six. “You’ve been mighty good to me; I shan’t try to tell you how greatly I appreciate this talk.”

“Well, we haven’t got anywhere; but we’ve made a good beginning. I wish you’d send me half a dozen poems you haven’t printed, in the key of ‘Journeys’ End.’ And come again soon!”

He stood on the steps and watched the young fellow’s vigorous stride as he hurried out of the tranquil street. Oftener than not his pilgrims left nothing behind, but the Poet was aware of something magnetic and winning in Fulton. Several times during the evening he found himself putting down his book to recur to their interview. He had not overpraised Fulton’s verses; they were unusual, clean-cut, fresh, and informed with a haunting music. Most of the young poets who sought the Poet’s counsel frankly imitated his own work; and it was a relief to find some one within the gates of the city he loved best of all who had notched a different reed.

The Poet preferred the late hours for his writing. Midnight found him absorbed in a poem he had carried in his heart for days. Some impulse loosened the cords now; it began to slip from his pencil quickly, line upon line. It was of the country folk, told in the lingua rustica to which his art had given dignity and fame. The lines breathed atmosphere; the descriptive phrases adumbrated the lonely farmhouse with its simple comforts as a stage for the disclosure of a little drama, direct, penetrating, poignant. He was long hardened to the rejections of rigorous self-criticism, and not infrequently he cast the results of a night’s labor into the waste-paper basket; but he experienced now a sense of elation. Perhaps, he reflected, the various experiences of the day had induced just the right mood for this task. He knew that what he had wrought was good; that it would stand with his best achievements. He made a clean copy of the verses in his curiously small hand with its quaint capitals, and dropped them into a drawer to lose their familiarity against the morrow’s fresh inspection. Like all creative artists, he looked upon each of his performances with something of wonder. “How did I come to do that, in just that way? What was it that suggested this?” If it were Marjorie and Marian, or Elizabeth Redfield!... Perhaps young Fulton’s enthusiasm had been a contributing factor.

This association of ideas led him to open a drawer and rummage among old letters. He found the one he sought, and began to read. It had been written from Lake Waupegan, that pretty teacupful of blue water which, he recalled, young Fulton had chosen as the scene for his story. The Redfields had gone there for their honeymoon, and Elizabeth had written this letter in acknowledgment of his wedding gift. It was not the usual formula of thanks that brides send fluttering back to their friends; and it was because it was different that he had kept it.

“We are having just the June days that you have written about, and Miles and I keep quoting you, and saying over and over again, ‘he must have watched the silvery ripple on the lake from this very point!’ or, ‘How did he know that clover was like that?’ And how did you?... Miles brought his painting-kit, and when we’re not playing like children he’s hard at work. I know you always thought he ought to go on; that he had a real talent; and I keep reminding him of that. You know we’ve got a little bungalow on the edge of Nowhere to go to when we come home and there’ll be a line of hollyhocks along the fence in your honor. Miles says we’ve got to learn to be practical; that he doesn’t propose to let me starve to death for Art’s sake! I’m glad you know and understand him so well, for it makes you seem much closer; and the poem you wrote me in that beautiful, beautiful Keats makes me feel so proud! I didn’t deserve that! Those things aren’t true of me—but I want them to be; I’m going to keep that lovely book in its cool green covers where I shall see it the first and last thing every day. Your lines are already written in my heart!”

The Poet turned back to the date: only seven years ago!

The sparrows under the eaves chirruped, and drawing back the blind he watched the glow of dawn spread through the sky. This was a familiar vigil; he had seen many a dream vanish through the ivory portals at the coming of day.

III

A certain inadvertence marked the Poet’s ways. His deficiencies in orientation, even in the city he knew best of all, were a joke among his friends. He apparently gained his destinations by good luck rather than by intention.

Incurable modesty made him shy of early or precipitate arrivals at any threshold. Even in taking up a new book he dallied, scanned the covers, pondered the title-page, to delay his approach, as though not quite sure of the author’s welcome and anxious to avoid rebuff. The most winning and charming, the most lovable of men—and entitled to humor himself in such harmless particulars!

The affairs that men busied themselves with were incomprehensible to him. It was with a sense of encroachment upon forbidden preserves that he suffered himself to be shot skyward in a tall office building and dropped into a long corridor whose doors bore inscriptions that advertised divers unfamiliar occupations to his puzzled eyes.

The poem that had slipped so readily from his pencil in the watches of the night had proved, upon inspection in the light of day, to be as good as he had believed it to be, but he carried it stowed away in his pocket, hoping that he might yet detect a shaky line that further mulling would better, before submitting it to other eyes.

This was a new building and he had never explored its fastnesses before. He was staring about helplessly on the threshold of Miles Redfield’s office, where there was much din of typewriters, when his name was spoken in hearty tones.

“Very odd!” the Poet exclaimed; “very odd, indeed! But this is the way it always happens with me, Miles. I start out to look for a dentist and stumble into the wrong place. I’m in luck that I didn’t fall down the elevator shaft. I can’t recall now whether it was the dentist I was looking for or the oculist.”

“I hoped you were looking for me!” said Redfield; “it’s a long time since you remembered my presence on earth!”

The typewriters had ceased to click and three young women were staring their admiration. The Poet bowed to them all in turn, and thus rubricated the day in three calendars! Redfield’s manifestations of pleasure continued as he ushered the Poet into his private office. Nothing could have been managed more discreetly; the Poet felt proud of himself; and there was no questioning the sincerity of the phrases in which Redfield welcomed him. It was with a sense of satisfaction and relief that he soon found himself seated in a mahogany chair by a broad window, facing Redfield, and listening to his assurances that this was an idle hour and that he had nothing whatever to do but to make himself agreeable to poets. The subdued murmur of the clicking machines and an occasional tinkle of telephones reached them; but otherwise the men were quite shut off from the teeming world without. Redfield threw himself back in his chair and knit his hands behind his head to emphasize his protestations of idleness.

“I haven’t seen you since that last dinner at the University Club where you did yourself proud—the same old story! I don’t see you as much as I did before you got so famous and I got so busy. I wish you’d get into the habit of dropping in; it’s a comfort to see a man occasionally that you’re not inclined to wring money out of; or who adds zest to the game by trying to get some out of you!”

“From all accounts you take pretty good care of yourself. You look almost offensively prosperous; and that safe would hold an elephant. I suppose it’s crammed full of works of art—some of those old etching-plates you used to find such delight in. I can imagine you bolting the door and sitting down here with a plate to scratch the urban sky-line. Crowd waiting outside; stenographers assuring them that you will appear in a moment.”

“The works of art in that safe are engravings all right,” laughed Redfield; “I’ve got ’em to sell,—shares of stock, bonds, and that sort of trash. I’ll say to you in confidence that I’m pretty critical of the designs they offer me when I have a printing job to do. There’s a traction bond I’m particularly fond of,—done from an old design of my own,—corn in the shock, with pumpkins scattered around. Strong local color! You used to think rather well of my feeble efforts; I can’t remember that any one else ever did! Hence, as I rather like to eat, I gave over trying to be another Whistler and here we are!”

“Rather shabby, when you come to think of it,” laughed the Poet, “to spurn my approval and advice to keep on. If you’d gone ahead—”

“If I had, I should be seizing a golden opportunity like this to make a touch—begging you for a few dollars to carry me over Saturday night! No; I tell you my talent wasn’t big enough; I was sharp enough to realize my limitations and try new pastures. Where a man can climb to the top, art’s all right; but look at McPherson, Banning, Myers,—these other fellows around here we’re all so proud of,—and where have they got? Why, even Stiles, who gets hung in the best exhibitions and has a reputation, barely keeps alive. I saw him in New York last week, and he was in the clouds over the sale of a picture for two hundred dollars! Think of it—and I wormed it out of him that that fixed his high-water mark. He was going to buy an abandoned farm up in Connecticut somewhere; two hundred dollars down on a thousand dollars of New England landscape; said he hoped to paint enough pictures up there this summer to make it possible to keep a horse! There’s an idea for you; being rich enough to keep a horse, just when the zoÖlogical museums are hustling to get specimens of the species before the last one dies! You could do something funny, awfully funny on that—eminent zoÖlogist out looking for a stuffed horse to stand up beside the ichthyosaurus and the diplodocus.”

The Poet expressed his gratitude for the suggestion good-naturedly. He was studying the man before him in the hope of determining just how far he had retrograded, if indeed there had been retrogression. Redfield was a trifle stouter than he had been in the days of their intimacy, and spoke with a confidence and assurance that the Redfield of old days had lacked. The interview had come about much easier than he had hoped, and Redfield’s warmth was making it easier. He was relieved to find on this closer inspection that Redfield had not changed greatly. Once or twice the broker’s brown eyes dimmed with a dreaminess that his visitor remembered. He was still a handsome fellow, not over thirty-five the Poet reckoned, and showing no traces of hard living. The coarse, unruly brown hair had not shared the general smoothing-out that was manifest in the man’s apparel. It was a fine head, set strongly on broad shoulders. The Poet, always minutely observant in such matters, noted the hands—slim, long, supple, that had once been deft with brush and graver. In spite of the changes of seven years, concretely expressed in the “Investment Securities” on the outer door, the Poet concluded that much remained of the Miles Redfield he had known. And this being true increased his difficulties in reconciling his friend with the haunting picture of Marjorie as she had stood plaintively aloof at the children’s party, or with the young wife whose cheery, hopeful letter he had read in the early hours of the morning.

“I passed your old house this afternoon,” the Poet observed casually. “I was out getting a breath of country air and came in through Marston. You were a pioneer when you went there and it’s surprising how that region has developed. I had a hard time finding the cottage, and shouldn’t have known it if it hadn’t been for some of the ineffaceable marks. The shack you built for a studio, chiefly with your own hands, seems to have been turned into a garage by the last tenant—Oh, profanest usurpation! But the house hasn’t been occupied for some time. That patch of shrubbery you set out against the studio has become a flourishing jungle. Let me see,—I seem to recall that I once did a pretty good sonnet in the studio, to the gentle whizz of the lawn-mower you were manipulating outside.”

“I remember that afternoon perfectly—and the sonnet, which is one of your best. I dare say a bronze tablet will be planted there in due course of time to mark a favorite haunt of the mighty bard.”

Redfield had found the note of reminiscence ungrateful, and he was endeavoring to keep the talk in a light key. He very much hoped that the Poet would make one of his characteristic tangential excursions into the realms of impersonal anecdote. It was rather remarkable that this man of all men had happened in just now, fresh from an inspection of the bungalow and the studio behind the lilacs that Elizabeth had planted. He began to feel uncomfortable. It was not so much the presence of the small, compact, dignified gentleman in the chair by the window that disturbed him as the aims, standards, teachings that were so inseparably associated with his visitor’s name. Redfield’s perplexity yielded suddenly to annoyance, and he remarked shortly, as though anticipating questions that were presumably in his friend’s mind:—

“Elizabeth and I have quit; you’ve probably heard that.” And then, as though to dispose of the matter quickly, he added: “It wouldn’t work—too much incompatibility; I’m willing to take the blame—guess I’ll have to, anyhow!” he ended grimly. “I suppose it’s rather a shock to a friend like you, who knew us at the beginning, when we were planting a garden to live in forever, to find that seven years wound it up. I confess that I was rather knocked out myself to find that I had lost my joy in trimming the hedge and sticking bulbs in the ground.”

“I noticed,” said the Poet musingly, “that the weeds are rioting deliriously in the garden.”

“Weeds!” Redfield caught him up harshly; “I dare say there are weeds! Our trouble was that we thought too much about the crocuses, and forgot to put in cabbages!”

“Well, you’re putting them in now!”

“Oh, don’t be hard on me! I’ll let most people jump on me and never talk back, but you with your fine perceptions ought to understand. Life isn’t what it used to be; the pace is quicker, changes come faster, and if a man and woman find that they’ve made a mistake, it’s better to cut it all out than to live under the same roof and scowl at each other across the table. I guess you can’t duck that!”

“I shan’t try to duck it,” replied the Poet calmly. “There’s never anything gained by evading a clean-cut issue. It’s you who are dodging. Remember,” he said, with a smile, “that I shouldn’t have broached the subject myself; but now that you’ve brought it up—”

He paused, in his habitual deliberate fashion, reflecting with grateful satisfaction upon the care with which he had hidden his tracks! He was now in Redfield’s office; and his old friend had instructed the clerks outside that he was not to be disturbed so long as this distinguished citizen chose to honor him. The Poet, for the first time in his life, took advantage of his reputation. Redfield, on his side, knew that it was impossible to evict the best-loved man in the Commonwealth, whose presence in his office had doubtless sent a thrill to the very core of the skyscraper.

“Of course, these things really concern only the parties immediately interested,” Redfield remarked, disturbed by his caller’s manner and anxious to hide behind generalizations. He swung himself round in his chair, hoping that this utterance would deflect the discussion into more comfortable channels; but the Poet waited patiently for Redfield to face him again.

“That is perfectly true,” he admitted; “and I should certainly resent the interference of outsiders if I were in your plight.”

Redfield was nodding his assent, feeling that here, after all, was a reasonable being, who would go far to avoid an unwelcome intrusion upon another’s affairs. He was still nodding complacently when the Poet remarked, with a neatness of delivery that he usually reserved for humorous effects,—

“But it happens, Miles, that I am an interested party!”

The shock of this surprise shook Redfield’s composure. He glanced quickly at his caller and then at the door.

“You mean that Elizabeth has sent you!” he gasped. “If that’s the case—”

“No; I haven’t seen Elizabeth for some time—not since I heard of your troubles; and I’m not here to represent her—at least, not in the way you mean.”

Redfield’s face expressed relief; he had been about to refer his visitor to his lawyer, but he was still pretty much at sea.

“I represent not one person, but several millions of people,” the Poet proceeded to explain himself unsmilingly, in a tone that Redfield did not remember. “You see, Miles, your difficulties and your attitude toward your family and life in general are hurting my business; this may sound strange, but it’s quite true. And it’s of importance to me and to my clients, so to speak.”

Redfield stared at him frowningly.

“What on earth are you driving at?” he blurted, still hoping that this parley was only the introduction to a joke of some sort. There was, however, nothing in the Poet’s manner to sustain this hope—nor could he detect any trace of the furtive smile which, he recalled, sometimes gave warning of the launching of some absurdity by this man who so easily played upon laughter and tears.“There’s no such thing as you and me in this world, Redfield,” pursued the Poet—and his smile reappeared now, fleetingly, and he was wholly at ease, confident, direct, business-like. “We’re all Us—you might say that mankind is a lot of Us-es. And when you let the weeds grow up in your garden they’re a menace to all the neighbors. And you can’t just go off and leave them; it isn’t fair or square. I see you don’t yet quite understand where I come in—how you’re embarrassing me, cheating me, hurting my business, to put it flatly. You’re making it appear that I’m a false prophet, a teacher of an outworn creed. Any reputation that you’re willing to concede I have doesn’t rest upon profound scholarship, which I don’t pretend to possess, but upon the feeble testimony I’ve borne to some very old ideals. You’ve known me a long time and you can’t say that I’ve ever bragged of myself—and if you knew how humbly I’ve taken such success as I’ve had you’d know that I’m not likely to be misled by the public’s generous kindness toward my work. But I owe something to the rest of Us; I can’t afford to stand by and see the little fringes I’ve tacked on to old fabrics torn off without making a protest. To put it another way, I’m not going to have it said that the gulf is so widening between poetry and life that another generation will be asking what our rhymed patter was all about—not without a protest. I hope you see what I’m driving at, and where I’m coming out—”

Redfield walked to the window and stared across the roofs, with his hands thrust into his pockets.

“It isn’t easy, you know, Miles, for me to be doing this: I shouldn’t be doing it if your affairs hadn’t been thrown in my face; if I didn’t feel that they were very much my business. Yesterday I saw Marjorie—it was at a children’s party at Mrs. Waring’s—and the sight of her was like a stab. I believe I wrote some verses for her second—maybe it was her third—birthday—pinned one of my little pink ribbons on her, so to speak, and made her one of my children. I tell you it hurt me to see her yesterday—and know that the weeds had sprung up in her garden!”

Redfield flung round impatiently.

“But you’re applying the wrong tests;—you don’t know all the circumstances! You wouldn’t have a child brought up in a home of strife, would you? I’m willing for Elizabeth to have full charge of Marjorie—I’ve waived all my right to her. I’m not as callous as you think: I’d have you know that it’s a wrench to part with her.”

“You haven’t any right to part with her,” said the Poet. “You can’t turn her over to Elizabeth as though she were a piece of furniture that you don’t particularly care for! It isn’t fair to the child; it’s not fair to Elizabeth. Don’t try to imagine that there’s anything generous or magnanimous in waiving your claims to your own child. A man can’t throw off his responsibilities as easily as that. It’s contemptible; it won’t do!”

“I tell you,” said Redfield angrily, “the whole thing had grown intolerable. It didn’t begin yesterday; it dates back three years ago, and—”

“Just how did it begin?” the Poet interrupted.

“Well, it began with money—not debts, strange to say, but the other way around! My father died and left me about eight thousand dollars—more than I ever hoped to hold in my hand at once if I lived forever. It looked bigger than a million, I can tell you. I was a bank-teller, earning fifteen hundred dollars a year and playing at art on the side. We lived on the edge of nowhere and pinched along with no prospect of getting anywhere. When that money fell in my lap I saw the way out—it was like a dream come true, straight down from heaven. I’d picked up a good deal about the bond business in the bank—used to take a turn in that department occasionally; and it wasn’t like tackling something new. So I quit my bank job and jumped in for myself. After the third month I made expenses, and the second year I cleaned up five thousand dollars—and I’m not through yet,” he concluded with a note of triumph.

“And how does all that affect Elizabeth?” asked the Poet quietly.

“Well, Elizabeth is one of those timid creatures, who’d be content to sit on a suburban veranda all her days and wait for the milk wagon. She couldn’t realize that opportunity was knocking at the door. How do you think she wanted to invest that eight thousand—wanted me to go to New York to study in the League; figured out that we could do that and then go to Paris for a year. And if she hadn’t got to crying about it, I might have been fool enough to do it!”

He took a turn across the room and then paused before his caller with the air of one about to close a debate. The Poet was scrutinizing the handle of his umbrella fixedly, as though the rough wood presented a far more important problem than the matter under discussion.

“Elizabeth rather showed her faith in you there, didn’t she?” he asked, without looking up. “Eight thousand dollars had come into the family, quite unexpectedly, and she was willing to invest it in you, in a talent she highly valued; in what had been to her the fine thing in you—the quality that had drawn you together. There was a chance that it might all have been wasted—that you wouldn’t, as the saying is, have made good, and that at the end of a couple of years you would not only have been out the money, but out of a job. She was willing to take the chance. The fact that you ignored her wishes and are prospering in spite of her isn’t really the answer; a man who has shaken his wife and child—who has permitted them to be made the subjects of disagreeable gossip through his obstinate unreasonableness isn’t prospering. In fact, I’d call him a busted community.”

“Oh, there were other things!” exclaimed Redfield. “We made each other uncomfortable; it got to a point where every trifling thing had to be argued—constant contention and wrangle. When I started into this business I had to move into town. After I’d got the nicest flat I could hope to pay for that first year, Elizabeth insisted on being unhappy about that. It was important for me to cultivate people who would be of use to me; it’s a part of this game; but she didn’t like my new acquaintances—made it as hard for me as possible. She always had a way of carrying her chin a little high, you know. These people that have always lived in this town are the worst lot of snobs that ever breathed free air, and just because her great-grandfather happened to land here in time to say good-bye to the last Indian is no reason for snubbing the unfortunates who only arrived last summer. If her people hadn’t shown the deterioration you find in all old stock, and if her father hadn’t died broke, you might excuse her; but this thing of living on your ancestors is no good—it’s about as thin as starving your stomach on art and feeding your soul on sunsets. I tell you, my good brother,”—with an ironic grin on his face he clapped his hand familiarly on the Poet’s shoulder,—“there are more things in real life than are dreamed of in your poet’s philosophy!”

EVERY TRIFLING THING HAD TO BE ARGUED

The Poet particularly disliked this sort of familiarity; his best friends never laid hands on him. He resented even more the leer that had written itself in Redfield’s face. Traces of a coarsening of fiber that he had looked for at the beginning of the interview were here apparent in tone and gesture, and did not contribute to the Poet’s peace of mind. The displeasure in his face seemed to remind Redfield that this was not a man one slapped on the back, or spoke to leeringly. He flushed and muttered an apology, which the Poet chose to ignore.

“A woman who has had half an acre of Mother Earth to play in for seven years and has fashioned it into an expression of her own soul, and has swung her baby in a hammock under cherry trees in bloom, must be pardoned if she doesn’t like being cooped up in a flat and asked to be polite to people her husband expects to make money out of. I understand that you have left the flat for a room at the club.”“I mean to take care of them—you must give me credit for that!” said Redfield, angry that he was not managing his case more effectively. “But Elizabeth is riding the high horse and refuses to accept anything from me!”

“I should think she would! She would be the woman I’ve admired all these years if she’d let you throw crumbs to her from your club window!”

“She thinks she’s going to rub it into me by going to work! She’s going to teach a kindergarten, in the hope, I suppose, of humiliating me!”

“It would be too bad if some of the humiliation landed on your door!”

“I’ve been as decent as I could; I’ve done everything I could to protect her.”

“I suppose,” observed the Poet carelessly, “there’s another woman somewhere—”

“That’s a lie!” Redfield flared. “I’ve always been square with Elizabeth, and you know it! If there’s any scandalous gossip of that kind afloat it’s damnably unjust! I hoped you had a better idea of me than that!”

“I’m sorry,” said the Poet, with sincere contrition. “We’ll consider, then, that there’s no such bar to a reconciliation.”

He let his last word fall quietly as though it were a pebble he had dropped into a pool for the pleasure of watching the resulting ripples.

“If that’s what’s in your mind, the sooner you get it out the better!” snapped Redfield. “We’ve gone beyond all that!”

“The spring was unusually fine,” the Poet hastened to remark with cheerful irrelevance, as though all that had gone before had merely led up to the weather; “June is justifying Lowell’s admiration. Your view off there is splendid. It just occurs to me that these tall buildings are not bad approximations of ivory towers; a good place for dreams—nice horizons—edges of green away off there, and unless my sight is failing that’s a glimpse of the river you get beyond those heaven-kissing chimneys.”

Redfield mopped his brow and sighed his relief. Clearly the Poet, realizing the futility of the discussion, was glad to close it; and Redfield had no intention of allowing him to return to it.

He opened the door with an eagerness at which the Poet smiled as he walked deliberately through the outer room, exposing himself once more to the admiring smiles of the girls at the typewriters. He paused and told them a story, to which Redfield, from the threshold of his sanctum, listened perforce.

At the street entrance the Poet met Fulton hurrying into the building.

“I was just thinking of you!” cried the young man. “Half a minute ago I dropped a little packet with your name on it into the box at the corner, and was feeling like a criminal to think of what I was inflicting!”

“It occurs to me,” mused the Poet, leaning on his umbrella, quite indifferent to the hurrying crowd that swept through the entrance, “that the mail-box might be a good subject for a cheerful jingle—the repository of hopes, ambitions, abuse, threats, love letters, and duns. It’s by treating such subjects attractively that we may hope to reach the tired business man and persuade him that not weak-winged is song! Apollo leaning against a letter-box and twanging his lyre divine for the muses to dance a light fantastic round—a very pretty thought, Mr. Fulton!”

The Poet, obviously on excellent terms with the world, indulged himself further in whimsical comment on possible subjects for verse, even improvising a few lines of doggerel for the reporter’s amusement.

And then, after he had turned away, he called the young man back, as though by an afterthought.

“As to Redfield, you haven’t done anything yet?”

“No; I’m on my way to see him now.”

“Well, don’t be in a hurry about making the change. You’d better go up to the lake Sunday and sit on the shore all day and let June soak in. You will find that it helps. I’ll meet those verses you’re sending me at the outer wicket; I’m sure I’ll like them!”

IV

When Saturday proved to be the fairest of June days, the Poet decided that it was a pity to remain in city pent when three hours on the train would carry him to Waupegan, a spot whose charms had been brought freshly to his attention by the sheaf of verses Fulton had sent him. He had hoped to find Fulton on the train; but when the young man did not appear, he found compensation in the presence of Mrs. Waring, who was bound for Waupegan to take possession of her house.

“Marian took Marjorie up yesterday. It occurred to me, after I’d posted Elizabeth off with a servant to straighten up my house, that I’d done the crudest thing imaginable, for Elizabeth went honeymooning to Waupegan—I gave her and Miles my house for a fortnight, as you may remember. I wanted to get her out of town and I never thought of that until she’d gone.”

“Isn’t it a good sign that Elizabeth would go? It shows that the associations of the lake still mean something to her.”

“Oh, but they don’t mean anything to him—that’s the trouble! If there ever was a brute—”

“There are worse men—or brutes,” the Poet mildly suggested.

“I can’t imagine it!” Mrs. Waring replied tartly.“I’m going fishing,” the Poet explained, when Mrs. Waring demanded to know what errand was carrying him lakeward. His dislike of railway journeys was well known to all his friends; and no one had ever heard of his going fishing.

“I have asked you to the lake scores of times to visit me, and you have scorned all my invitations. Now that I’ve caught you in the act of going up alone, I demand that you make me the visit you’ve been promising for twenty years.”

“Fishing,” observed the Poet soberly, “is a business that requires the closest attention and strictest privacy. I should be delighted to make that visit at this time, but when I fish I’m an intolerable person—unsociable and churlish; you’d always hate me if I accepted your hospitable shelter when I would a-fishing go.”

“You’ll not find the hotel a particularly tranquil place for literary labor, and the food at my house couldn’t be worse than you’ll get there. I’ve warned you!”

She was frankly curious as to the nature of his errand, and continued to chaff him about his piscatorial ambitions. He gave his humor full rein in adding to her mystification.

“Perhaps,” he finally confessed, “I shall hire a boy to do the fishing for me, while I sit under a tree and boss him.”

“No boy with any spirit would fish for anybody else—no respectable, well-brought-up boy would!”

“There’s where you’re quite mistaken! I expect to find a boy—and a pretty likely young fellow he is, reared on a farm, and all that—I expect to find him ready for business in the morning. Mind you, he didn’t promise to come, but if he’s the youngster I think he is, he’ll be there right side up with care to-morrow morning.”“I don’t believe I like you so well when you play at being mysterious. This idea, that if you serenely fold your hands and wait—John Burroughs, isn’t it?—your own will come to you, never worked for me. I should never have got anywhere in my life if I had folded my hands and waited.”

“There must always be one who journeys to meet him who waits, and with your superb energy you have done the traveling. I’m playing both parts in this affair just as an experiment. To-day I travel; to-morrow I shall sit on the dock and wait for that boy who’s to do my fishing for me. I’m not prepared for disappointment; I have every confidence that he will arrive in due season. Particularly now that you tell me Marian is already illuminating the landscape!”

Mrs. Waring was giving him only half attention, but she pricked up her ears at this statement.“Marian! What on earth has she to do with this fishing-trip?”

“Nothing, except that I have a message for her from the cool slopes of Parnassus. It’s almost like something you read of in books—her being here waiting for the sacred papyri.”

He tapped his pocket and smiled.

“I hadn’t the slightest idea she was up there waiting,” he continued. “You must confess that it’s rather remarkable! Folding her hands, utterly unconscious of what Fate has in store for her; and poems being written to her, and my fisher-boy on the trail looking for me—and her!”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re driving at, but you’d better keep 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.

PART TWO