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. as the poet opened the gate, fulton came out of the front door: neither seemed surprised to see the other. the odor of fresh paint elicited a sniff of satisfaction from the poet, a satisfaction that deepened a moment later as he entered the studio and noted its neatness and order.
“mrs. waring sent a maid out to do all this, and lent me the things we needed for the tea-table,” fulton explained. “i had hard work to persuade her this wasn’t one of your jokes.[183] i had harder work to get mrs. redfield to come and bring marjorie; but marian supported the scheme, and brought mrs. redfield round. i fell back heavily on your argument that marjorie ought to have a final picnic before the turn o’ the year—a last chance to build a shotum ready for knights to come widing.”
“marian is a persuasive person, i imagine,” the poet remarked. “by the way, i shall be a little late arriving. myers, the artist, lives a little farther down audubon road and i want to have a look at his summer’s work. nice fellow; good workman. redfield promised to meet me there; i want to be sure he doesn’t run away. we don’t want the party spoiled after all the work we’ve done on it.”
“i wonder,” mrs. redfield remarked, over the tea-table, “who has bought the place?”
“a trust company, i think,” replied fulton, glancing through the broad north window of[184] the studio with careful dissimulation. “as i passed the other day i saw that the grounds had been put in order, and decided that this would be just the place for a picnic.”
“this little house would be nice for my playhouse; and we could use that big window to watch ums knights come widing.”
“that chimney used to roar the way you read about,” remarked marian. “i think every house ought to have a detached place like this, for tea and sewing and children to play in.”
mrs. redfield, ill at ease, was attending listlessly to the talk. fulton’s explanation had not wholly explained. she had agreed to the excursion only after marjorie had clamorously insisted upon the outing her devoted cavalier had proposed. marjorie’s comments upon the broad yard, her childish delight in the studio playhouse, touched chords of memory that jangled harshly.
[185]fulton was in high spirits. his romance had been accepted and a representative of the publishing house was coming to confer with him about illustrations.
“they say it won’t break any best-selling records, but it will give me a start. the scoundrels had the cheek to suggest that i cut out some of my jingles, but i scorned such impiousness in an expensive telegram.”
“i should hope so!” cried marian approvingly. “the story’s only an excuse for the poems. even the noblest prose wouldn’t express the lake, the orchard, and the fields; if you cut out your verses, there wouldn’t be much left but a young gentleman spraying apple trees and looking off occasionally at the girls paddling across the lake.”
“you do my orchardist hero a cruel injustice,” protested fulton, “for he saw only one girl—and a very nice girl she was—or is!”
“what on earth are you two talking about?”[186] asked mrs. redfield, looking from one to the other, while thwarting marjorie in a forbidden attack upon the cookies. “it seems to me that you’ve been talking for years about this story, and i don’t know yet what it’s all about.”
“hims witing books like the funny poetry man, and hims told me if i’m good and nice to you and aunt marian he’ll wite a book all about me, and my dollies, and how we builded shotums by the lake and in our yard; and marian can’t be in any more books, but just be sitting on a wock by the lake, having ums picture painted.”
“thank you, marjorie; i knew he was a deceiver and that proves it,” laughed marian, avoiding her sister’s eyes. “let’s all go out and see the sun go down.”
marjorie toddled off along the walk that bisected what had once been a kitchen-garden.
the sun was resting his fiery burden on the dark edge of a wood on the western horizon.[187] the front door of the bungalow was ajar and mrs. redfield crossed the piazza and peered in. the place was clean and freshly papered: a fire burned m the fireplace—no mere careless blaze of litter left by workmen, but flaming logs that crackled cheerily. her memory distributed her own belongings; here had been the table and there the couch and chair; and she saw restored to the bare walls the pictures that now cluttered the attic of the home she had established with marian, that had once hung here—each with its special meaning for the occupants.
she stood, a girlish figure, with her hands thrust into the pockets of her sweater, staring with unseeing eyes at the mocking flames.
the poet had spoken of the visits he paid in fancy to his house of dreams, and she half-wondered whether she were not herself a disembodied spirit imprisoned in a house of shadows. a light, furtive step on the piazza[188] startled her, and lifting her eyes with the poet still in her mind she saw him crossing the room quickly, like a guest approaching his hostess.
“it’s pleasant to find the mistress back in the house of dreams,” he said. “and she brings, oh, so many things with her!”
he glanced about the empty room as though envisaging remembered comforts.
“i might have known,” she murmured, “that this was your plan.”
“no,” he replied, with a smile that brought to his face a rare kindliness and sweetness, “it wasn’t mine; i’m merely an inefficient agent. it’s all born of things hoped for—”
he waved his hand to the bare walls, brought it round and placed something in her palm.
“there’s the key to my house of dreams. as you see, it needs people—its own people—marjorie and you, for example, to make it home again. i shall be much happier to know you’re back....”
he was gone and she gazed after him with a deepened sense of unreality. a moment later she heard marjorie calling to him in the garden.
she stood staring at the flat bit of metal he had left in her hand, the key of his house of dreams; then she laid her arms upon the long shelf of the mantel and wept. the sound of her sobbing filled the room. never before—not when the anger and shame of her troubles were fresh upon her—had she been so shaken.
she was still there, with her head bowed upon her arms, when a voice spoke her name, “elizabeth,” and “elizabeth,” again, very softly.
the sun flamed beyond the woodland. the poet joined with marian and fulton in praising the banners of purple and gold that were flung across the west, while marjorie tugged at his umbrella.
“it’s all good—everything is good! a[190] pretty good, cheerful kind of world when you consider it. i think,” he added with his eyes on marian, “that maybe miles can find time to do the pictures for fred’s book. his old place at the bank won’t be ready until the first of the year, and that will give him a chance to work up something pretty fine. i’ll see that publisher about it when he comes; and—” he withdrew several steps, and looked absently at the glories of the dying day before concluding, “it’s just as well to keep all the good things in the family.”
when they hurried to the gate, they saw him walking in his leisurely fashion toward the trolley terminus, swinging his umbrella. the golden light enfolded him and the scarlet maples bent down in benediction.
