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[53] 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[54] 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[55] 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[56] 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[57] 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[58] 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[59] 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[60] 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[61] 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[62] 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;[63] “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[64] 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[65] 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[66] 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.

[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. 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[68] 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[69] 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.[70] 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[71] 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[72] 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[73] 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[74] 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!”

the poet particularly disliked this sort of familiarity; his best friends never laid hands[75] 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.”

[76]“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[77] 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[78] 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[79] 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[80] 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!”