“it’s beautifully kind of you to want to help; but you see how impossible it is!”

“i don’t like that word,” replied the poet patiently. “most things are possible that we really want to do.”

for two hours that morning mrs. redfield and he had talked of her troubles, first with a[137] reluctance, a wariness on both sides that yielded gradually to the warmth of his kindness. however, on the whole, the poet found her easier to talk to than her husband had been. she understood, as redfield had not, that his appearance in the matter was not merely the assertion of a right inhering in an old friendship, but that it was dictated by something larger,—a resentment of an apostasy touching intimately his own good faith as a public teacher. this attitude had not only its poignancy for her, but it broadened the horizon against which she had been contemplating the broken and distorted structure that had been her life.

“i suppose,” she said bravely, “that we oughtn’t to ask so much! we ought to be prepared for calamity; then we shouldn’t break under it when the blow falls. when i saw other people in just such troubles i used to think, ‘there’s something that will never come to[138] me’: i suppose miles is right in saying that i have no ambition, that i had become merely a drag on him. and i can see his side of it; there wasn’t much ahead of him but standing behind a bank counter to the end of his days. the novels are full of the conflicts between the man who wants to rise and the woman without wings. it’s my misfortune to be one of the wingless ones.”

she was less bitter than he expected; and he took courage from this fact. he had hoped to avoid any minute dissection of the situation; but she had given him a pretty full account of the whole affair, and he was both dismayed and relieved to find how trivial the details of the dissension proved. she had wept—beyond doubt there had been tears—and miles on his side had exhausted persuasion before her obstinacy kindled his wrath. the crux had come with his demand that she should do her part toward cultivating acquaintances that he believed[139] to be essential to the success of his new undertaking. she had never known such people, she assured the poet, feeling that he knew she never had and would sympathize with her position. miles had no right to ask her to countenance them, and all that.

the poet preferred to be amused by this. the obnoxious persons were strangers to him; he had merely heard of them; he admitted that he would never deliberately have chosen them for intimate companionship. and yet it was not so egregious a thing to sit at the same table for an hour with a man and woman one wouldn’t care to meet daily.

“if there weren’t such people as the farnams in the world we’d never know how to appreciate our own kind of folks,” remarked the poet. “and that fellow can’t be so bad. i heard only recently of an instance of his generosity—he made a very handsome subscription to the new children’s hospital. men of that[140] stamp frequently grow emotional when they’re touched on the right chord.”

“but you wouldn’t have miles—the miles you used to know—become like that, or get down on his knees to such people in the hope of getting some of their money!”

the poet chuckled.

“if miles can pry that particular man loose from any of his money i’d say it proved that miles was right and you were wrong! farnam doesn’t carry his philanthropy into his business affairs. he’s quite capable of eating your lobster to-night and to-morrow morning exacting the last ounce of flesh from the man who paid for it. it’s possible that miles will pay dearly for his daring; i understand that this new business is beset with pitfalls.”

“oh, i want him to succeed! he’s free now to do as he likes and i hope he will prosper. at any rate, marjorie and i are not dragging him down!”

[141]angry tears came with this; the poet looked away to the green-fringed shores. when she was calm again he thought it wise to drop the matter for the present. at least it was best to withdraw to safe ground, from which it might, however, be possible to approach the citadel obliquely.

“marian,” he remarked, “is a charming girl.”

she seconded his praise of her sister ardently, saying that marian had been splendid throughout her troubles.

“she sees everything so clearly; i don’t know what i should have done without her.”

“she sees things your way, then,” he ventured quietly. “i’m a little afraid we always prefer counselors who tell us we’re doing the right thing.”

“oh, she reasons things out wonderfully. i hope she will profit by my troubles! fortunately we’re unlike; she’s much more practical[142] than i am. she has a wider outlook; i think her college training shows there.”

“we must see to it that she doesn’t make mistakes,” said the poet, his thoughts reverting to his efforts to place some new ideals where marian might contemplate them without suspecting that he was responsible for putting them in her way. the humorous aspects of his intervention—and particularly his employment of the unconscious fulton as a missionary—caused him to smile—a smile which mrs. redfield detected but failed to understand.

“i can never look on marriage again as i used to,” she ventured. “most of the good things of life have been spoiled for me.”

“i can’t agree to that: you are less than thirty, which isn’t the age at which we can afford to haul down the flag. if i’d subsided at thirty,—had concluded that the world would never listen to my little tin horn,—i should have missed most of the joy of life.[143] and marian at twenty-two mustn’t be allowed to say that the world at best is a dreary place. she mustn’t be allowed to form foolish opinions of life and destiny and call to the stage-hands to drop the curtain the first time some actor misses his cue. and do you know,” he continued with the humor glinting through his glasses, “that girl had the bad manners to tell me to my face only a few days ago that there was no substance to all our poetizing—that the romance had been trampled out of life! to think of that—at twenty-two or thirty!”

“well,” said mrs. redfield, a little defiantly, “you must remember that i’ve tried poetry and romance.”

it was clear from her tone that she thought this scored heavily on her side, and offset any blame that might attach to her in his mind. she was surprised by the quickness with which he retorted.

[144]“ah, but have you!”

this was rather discouraging when she had been at such pains to tell him the truth; when she had bared her soul to him. she felt that it was unchivalrous for him to question her fairness when she had been so frank.

“you can hardly say,” he went on, “that you made much of a trial of romance when you dropped it at the first sign of trouble. please don’t misunderstand me. that letter you wrote me during your honeymoon from this very house was in a sense the declaration of a faith. you meant to live by it always; and if no troubles had ever come it would have been perfectly satisfactory—no doubts, no questions! 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. a good many of the best things i’ve written came out of that little establishment. i was astonished the other day, in looking over my work of the past half-dozen years, to find how much of you and miles there is in it. and now i feel that i ought to modify those things—stick in footnotes to say that the ideal home—the ideal of happiness i had derived from you—was all a fraud. just think how that would look: an asterisk tacked to the end of every stanza, leading the eye down to an admission that my statements were not true, only poetry, romance, a flimsy invention which no one need be deceived by!”

“i hope,” she said despairingly, “that i haven’t lost everything! i’ve got to hold on to something for marjorie’s sake!”

[146]“but miles,” he persisted, “what about him!”

“that isn’t kind or fair,” she replied, at the point of tears again. “if i’ve lost my ideals he’s responsible! he’s thrown away all of his own!”

“no, not quite! if he had he wouldn’t have been angry at me when i went to him to discuss these matters!”

“so you’ve talked to him! then, of course, you came to me prejudiced in his favor! i don’t call that being fair. and if he asked you to talk to me—”

her eyes flashed indignantly.

“it’s rather funny that both of you should be so afraid of that. nothing is further from the truth!”

“i know you mean to be kind, and i know it wasn’t easy for you to come to me. but you can see that matters have gone too far—after the heartache and the gossip—”

“the heartache is deplorable, and the gossip[147] isn’t agreeable,” he assented readily. “we mustn’t let the chatter of the neighbors worry us. think how a reconciliation would dull the knives of the expectant cynics and hearten the good people—and they are the majority, after all—who want to see the gospel of happiness and love rule this good old world. as for things having gone too far, nothing’s been done, no irrevocable step taken—”

“you don’t understand, then,—” and there was a note of triumph in this,—“i’ve brought a suit; it will be determined in october.”

“october,” replied the poet, with his provoking irrelevance, “is a month of delight, ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.’ the warmth of summer still hovering; the last flowers challenging the frost to do its worst; plans for the indoor life of winter—the fire, cozy talks that aren’t possible anywhere but at the hearthside; the friendly lamp and the neglected book calling us back. i don’t think[148] you and miles are going to have a very happy winter of it under different roofs. i’m sure i’ll miss the thought of you, running upstairs on tiptoe when you thought you heard marjorie. miles was always reading kipling aloud and we’d forget ourselves and laugh till you’d hush us and run away in a panic. you know,” he continued, “your cottage wasn’t only a place for you to live in; it was my house of dreams—a house of realities that were dreams come true. i’ve sat by the table many a time when you didn’t know i was there—an intruder stealing in, a cheerful sort of ghost, sensible of an unspoken welcome. odd, isn’t it, about the spirit of place? not a great many places really take hold of most of us; but they have a way of haunting us; or maybe it’s the other way round and we haunt them, and without knowing how we get into them. we explore strange frontiers into undiscovered countries; we cross from our own existences into other[149] people’s lives,—lose identity, feel, see as other people do,—and then lift our heads, rub our eyes, and become our old selves again—but not quite. we are likely to be wiser and more just and tolerant. and it’s discouraging,” he went on, “to go to your house of dreams and find it plastered with ‘for rent’ and ‘for sale’ signs—or worse yet, to let yourself in with your old key to find only ghosts there! that’s what i’ve been doing. your bungalow is empty—doubly empty—for the last tenant didn’t stay long; the ghosts were probably too much for him! but i’m there—in spirit, you might say. if the owner knew how much i loaf there, in a disembodied sort of fashion, he’d begin to charge me rent! but it’s mighty lonesome—nobody around to dig out old songs and play the airs for me, as you used to, while i limped along with miles’s old banjo.”

he spoke with a certain air of injury, as though after all he were the chief sufferer from[150] the passing of the old familiar faces from his house of dreams. he complained as a guest might who suddenly finds that his hosts have taken their departure without warning, leaving him sitting at their fireside all unconscious of their flight.

elizabeth was surprised to find that his interposition in this fashion impressed her more than the counsels of other friends who, supporting her cause loyally, urged her to maintain her “stand” and recommended sharp reprisals. she had not recovered from her amazement that this shyest and most unobtrusive of men should have come to her in any guise; and when he spoke of his house of dreams—her house with its old-fashioned garden that contained the flowers he scattered oftenest through his poems—she was half-persuaded that he was really a sad, wistful visitor of this house of dreams—her house—that symbolized for him contentment and peace.

[151]his way of stating the case touched her deeply, and seeing this he rose and walked to the veranda rail and scanned the limpid water.

“that looks like the boy i sent to do my fishing for me,” he remarked. “he’s bringing marian and marjorie home. a pretty capable boy, that! what do you think of a youngster who pops up out of nowhere and chucks bunches of verses into mail-boxes on crowded corners where any one with any sort of ear, passing along, would hear them singing inside! let’s go down and meet them.”

on their way to the dock the poet continued to talk of the young man in the canoe as though he were a great personage. his extravagant praise of frederick fulton justified any one in believing that either shelley or keats had stolen away from paradise and was engaged just now in paddling a canoe upon lake waupegan. the poet had risen from the long interview[152] with apparent satisfaction and was now his more familiar amusing self.

“how on earth did marian get acquainted with this young man?” asked mrs. redfield in perplexity, as fulton skillfully maneuvered the canoe inshore.

“why assume that i know anything about it? marian doubtless knows scores of people that i never heard of; she’s not an old friend like you. i dare say he saw her wandering alone on the shore and at once landed and handed her a poem as though it were the advertisement of a ventriloquist billed for one night at waupegan town hall! very likely, being a girl of discriminating literary taste, she liked his verses and bade him welcome. and what could be more natural than that he should offer to bring her home! the longer i live the more i wonder that people meet who were always destined to meet. we think we’re yielding to chance when we’re really doing things[153] we’ve been rehearsing in our subconsciousness for a thousand years!”

when the party landed he parleyed with marjorie to make it necessary for marian to introduce fulton to elizabeth. he avoided marian’s eyes, and warily eluded the combined efforts of the sisters to detain him. the obvious result of his artfulness, so far as marian and fulton were concerned, was eminently satisfactory. the most delightful comradeship seemed to have been established between the young people. the poet was highly pleased with his morning’s work, but having dared so much he was anxious to retire while the spell of mystification was still upon them. luncheon was offered; mrs. waring would soon be home and would be inconsolable if she found they had come in her absence.

“we are very busy—fishing,” said the poet as he entrusted himself with exaggerated apprehensions to the canoe. “when you have a boy[154] fishing for you you have to watch him. he’ll hide half the fish if you’re not careful.”

“you absurd man!” cried marian, with an accession of boldness, as fulton swung the canoe round with sophisticated strokes.

“ims a cwazy man,” piped marjorie; “but ims nice!”