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[26] 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[27] 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[28] 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[29] 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[30] 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,”[31] 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[32] 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[33] 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.

[34]“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[35] 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,[36] 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[37] 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,—’

[38]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[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.

“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[40] 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[41] 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[42] 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[43] 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!”

[44]“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[45] 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,[46] after all, and your description gave me all but her name. i might quote a poem i have seen somewhere about the robin—

‘there’s only one bird sings like that—

from paradise it flew.’”

“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[47] 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[48] 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[49] 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,[50] 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[51] 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[52] familiar vigil; he had seen many a dream vanish through the ivory portals at the coming of day.