Meredith Nicholson

“ Indirection as a method and means to ends has its disadvantages; but it is not to be scorned [182] 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. ”

“ You were like a mariner who doesn’t question his charts when the sea is calm; but who begins to doubt them when he hears the breakers roaring on hidden reefs. Ideals are no good if we haven’t a tolerably strong faith in them. I’m going to tell you something that may surprise [145] you. You and Miles have been an ideal of mine. Not only was your house with its pretty garden and the hollyhocks a refuge, but it was one of my chief inspirations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the Poet spent a restless evening. He listlessly turned over many books without finding any to arrest his interest. He was troubled, deeply troubled, by what Fulton had told him of Redfield. And he was wandering whether there might not be some way of turning his old friend’s humiliation to good account. A man of Redfield’s character and training would feel disgrace keenly; and coming at a time when he believed himself well launched toward success, the shock to his pride would be all the greater. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet he evidently accepted unquestioningly the Poet’s philosophy of life, which she had dismissed contemptuously, and in which, she assured herself, she did not believe to-day any more than she did a week ago. The incident of a pilgrim from Texas with a poem attached to his railway ticket had its touch of sentiment and pathos, but it did not weigh heavily against the testimony of experience which had proved in her own observation that life is perplexing and difficult, and that poetry and romance are only a lure and mesh to delude and betray the trustful. ”

“ Even his manner of asking her pardon for his temerariousness in apostrophizing her in his verses had lacked, in her critical appraisement of it, the humility a self-respecting young woman had a right to demand of a young poet who observes her without warrant, is pleased to admire her athletic prowess, her ways and her manners, and puts her into his verses as coolly as he might pick a flower from the wayside and wear it in his coat. ”

“ Fulton now became impersonal and philosophical.
“It’s a great thing to have done what our Poet has done—give to the purely local a touch that makes it universal. That’s what art does when it has heart behind it, and there’s the value of provincial literature. Hundreds of men had seen just what he saw,—the same variety of types and individuals against this Western landscape,—but it was left for him to set them forth with just the right stroke. ”

“ My best prose, as well as my only decent jingles, has had you for a subject. I laid myself out to describe you at the tennis tournament last fall. Next to watching you run through an orchard trippingly, like one of Swinburne’s long lines, I like you best when you show your snappy stroke with the racket and make a champion look well to her knitting.”
She turned crimson at this, remembering very well the “Chronicle’s” report of the tennis match, which she had cut out and still treasured in her portfolio. Clearly, her obligations to this impudent young man were increasing rapidly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [39] 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. ”

“ 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 [11] tell you gossip! I suppose it’s one of the rewards of being a poet! ”

“ 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.
[67] “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. ”

“ 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 [86] 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. ”

“ February and March are tricky and unreliable. April, on the other hand, is much safer than she gets credit for being. But it was lucky that we thought of June as an arbiter in your case. If we would all get out under a June sky like this with our troubles we’d be a good deal happier. It was a bad day for the human race when it moved indoors.”
The Poet, absorbed in the passage of a launch across the lake, had not applauded Fulton’s determination not to ally himself with Redfield, as the young man had expected. Fulton felt that the subject required something more. ”