“Oh, no! That would be a very serious mistake! The person who hurt my feelings is the nicest possible person and one of my best friends. So many people are saying the same thing that we needn’t ascribe it to any individual. Let us assume that I’ve been hurt by many people, who say that romance and old-fashioned roses are not what they were; that such poetry as we have nowadays isn’t of any use, and that we are all left floundering here
As on a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
I want you to tell me, honestly and truly, whether you really believe that.”
He was more eager for her reply than she knew; and when it was not immediately forthcoming a troubled look stole into his face. The readiness of the poetic temperament to idealize had betrayed him for once, at least, and he felt his disappointments deeply. The laughter of the children floated fitfully from the corner of the garden where they were arraying themselves in the tissue caps that had been hidden in their bonbons. A robin, wondering at all the merriment, piped cheerily from a tall maple, and a jay, braving the perils of urban life, winged over the garden with a flash of blue. The gleeful echoes from the bright canopy, the bird calls, the tender green of the foliage, the scents and sounds of early summer all spoke for happiness; and yet Marian Agnew withheld the reply on which he had counted. She still delayed as though waiting for the robin to cease; and when a flutter of wings announced his departure, she began irresolutely:—
“I wish I could say no, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am to disappoint you—you, of all men! I know you wouldn’t want me to be dishonest—to make the answer you expected merely to please you. Please forgive me! but I’m not sure I think as you do about life. If I had never known trouble—if I didn’t know that faith and love can die, then I shouldn’t hesitate. But I’m one of the doubting ones.”
“I’m sorry,” said the Poet; “but we may as well assume that we are old friends and be frank. Please believe that I’m not bothering you in this way without a purpose. I think I know what has obscured the light for you. You are thinking of your sister’s troubles; and when I asked you what sorcery you had exercised upon little Marjorie, you knew her mother had been in my mind. That isn’t, of course, any of my affair, in one sense; but in another sense it is. For one thing, I knew your sister when she was a girl—which wasn’t very long ago. And I know the man she married; and there was never any marriage that promised so well as that! And for another thing, I don’t like to think that we’ve cut all the old moorings; that the anchorages of life, that were safe enough in old times, snap nowadays in any passing gust. The very thought of it makes me uncomfortable! You are not fair to yourself when you allow other people’s troubles to darken your own outlook. When you stood over there at the gate, I called the roll of all the divinities of light and sweetness and charm to find a name for you; when you ran to Marjorie and won her back to happiness so quickly, I was glad that these are not the old times of fauns and dryads, but that you are very real, and a healthy-minded American girl, seeing life quite steadily and whole.”
“Oh, but I don’t; I can’t!” she faltered; “and doesn’t—doesn’t the mistake you made about me prove that what poets see and feel isn’t reality, isn’t life as it really is?”
“I object,” said the Poet with a humorous twinkle, “to any such sacrifice of yourself to support the wail of the pessimists. I positively refuse to sanction anything so sacrilegious!”