THE GIRL AND THE POET
I
WILLIARD sat down to his evening meal. He was later than usual. The dining-room of the boarding-house was deserted, save for the presence of the maid servant, who was sweeping the crumbs from the tablecloth. His entrance was acknowledged by a sour smile. Williard was a sort of pariah to the narrow minds of that household, who could not associate greatness of soul with failure and poverty.
"You won't get much," said the maid. "We are too busy with to-morrow's Christmas dinner."
To-morrow's Christmas dinner! Williard drew the bread-dish toward him rather mechanically. To-morrow's Christmas dinner! It was Christmas Eve to-night, and he had forgotten! All that day he had wondered why every face looked so eager and bright in the office, why the jostling crowds in the streets were so merry and good-humored. To-morrow was Christmas, and he had forgotten!
The maid grumblingly fetched what remained of the supper. The hanging lamp sputtered for lack of oil to feed upon; and all the food tasted vaguely of kerosene. But Williard made no complaint; he was hungry. To-morrow's Christmas dinner!
He was tired. Great names had danced before his eyes that day: names resounding the fickle world's applause and the jingle of her inconsiderate largess. Not that he envied them, no; rather that they taught him to despair. In the daytime he read proof in the attic of a large publishing house; this was existence, it was bread and butter. But at night, in his little hall bedroom, where the clamors of the city streets sounded murmurous and indistinct, he still clung to the fragments of early dreams. His verses and stories, lofty and proud, lacked something, for they found no entrance to the garden of fame, which is at best full of false flowers and spurious scents.
For ten years he had striven to attain; and he had failed. He had come to New York, as thousands of others had come, with hope and her thousand stars, to see them fade away one by one from the firmament of his dreams. The world has no patience with failure, no treasures for the obscure defeat. Ah, to see one's own people, dressed in clear, beautiful type, move across the white pages, from margin to margin, thinking, acting, speaking! To unravel the scheme of life, with its loves, ambitions and revenges—was there any rapture, any pleasure, half so fine?
The harsh voice of the maid brought him out of his idle dream: for to be a poet is to dream and to suffer.