“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 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 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 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!”
“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 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.”