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 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 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 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 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 gave over trying to be another Whistler and here we are!”