“Why not the beautiful house?” asked Wayne, still more coldly.
“Oh, he gets everything upside down. Guilford is harmless, you’ll see.” He began to whistle Fatinitza softly. There was a silence; then Wayne said:
“You interrupted your narrative.”
“Where was I?”
“In the foreground with eight pink pajamas in the middle distance.”
“Oh, yes. So there I was, travel-worn, thirsty, weary, uncertain–”
“Cut it,” observed Wayne.
“And a stranger,” continued Briggs with dignity, “in a strange country–”
“Peculiarity of strangers.”
Briggs took no notice. “I drank from the cool springs; I lingered to pluck a delicious berry or two, I bathed my hot face, I–”
“Where,” demanded Wayne, “were the eight pink ’uns?”
“Still in the middle distance. Don’t interrupt me, George; I’m slowly drawing closer to them.”
“Well, get a move on,” retorted Wayne sulkily.
“I’m quite close to them now,” explained Briggs; “close enough to remove my hat and smile and inquire the way to Guilford’s. One superb young creature, with creamy skin and very red lips–”
Wayne halted and set down his suit-case.
“I’m not romancing; you’ll see,” said Briggs earnestly. “As I was saying, this young goddess looked at me in the sweetest way and said that Guilford was her father. And, Wayne, do you know what she did? She—er—came straight up to me and took hold of my hand, and led me up the path toward the high-art house, which is built of cobblestones! Think! Built of cobble–”
“Took you by the hand?” repeated Wayne incredulously.
“Oh, it was all right, George! I found out all about that sort of innocent thing later.”
“Did you?”
“Certainly. These girls have been brought up like so many guileless speckled fawns out here in the backwoods. You know all about Guilford, the poet who’s dead stuck on Nature and simplicity. Well, that’s the man and that’s his pose. He hasn’t any money, and he won’t work. His daughters raise vegetables, and he makes ’em wear bloomers, and he writes about chippy-birds and the house beautiful, and tells people to be natural, and wishes that everybody could go around without clothes and pick daisies–”
“Do they?” demanded Wayne in an awful voice. “You said they wore bloomers. Did you say that to break the news more gently? Did you!”
“Of course they are clothed,” explained his friend querulously; “though sometimes they wade about without shoes and stockings and do the nymph business. And, George, it’s astonishing how modest that sort of dress is. And it’s amazing how much they know. Why, they can talk Greek—talk it, mind you. Every one of them can speak half a dozen languages—Guilford is a corker on culture, you know—and they can play harps and pianos and things, and give me thirty at tennis, even Chlorippe, the twelve-year-old–”
“Is that her name?” asked Wayne.
“Chlorippe? Yes. That bat-headed poet named all his children after butterflies. Let’s see,” he continued, telling off the names on his fingers; “there’s Chlorippe, twelve; Philodice, thirteen; Dione, fourteen; Aphrodite, fifteen; Cybele, sixteen; Lissa, seventeen; Iole, eighteen, and Vanessa, nineteen. And, Wayne, never have the Elysian fields contained such a bunch of wholesome beauty as that mountain meadow contains all day long.”
Wayne, trudging along, suit-case firmly gripped, turned a pair of suspicious eyes upon his friend.
“Of course,” observed Briggs candidly, “I simply couldn’t foreclose on the father of such children, could I? Besides, he won’t let me discuss the subject.”
“I’ll investigate the matter personally,” said Wayne.
“Nowhere to lay their heads! Think of it, George. And all because a turtle-fed, claret-flushed, idle and rich young man wants their earthly Paradise for a fish-hatchery. Think of it! A pampered, turtle-fed–”
“You’ve said that before,” snapped Wayne. “If you were half decent you’d help me with this suit-case. Whew! It’s hot as Yonkers on this cattle-trail you call a road. How near are we to Guilford’s?”
An hour later Briggs said: “By the way, George, what are you going to do about the matter?”
Wayne, flushed, dusty, perspiring, scowled at him.
“What matter?”
“The foreclosure.”
“I don’t know; how can I know until I see Guilford?”
“But you need the hatchery–”
“I know it.”
“But he won’t let you discuss it–”
“If,” said Wayne angrily, “you had spent half the time talking business with the poet that you spent picking strawberries with his helpless children I should not now be lugging this suit-case up this mountain. Decency requires few observations from you just now.”
“Pooh!” said Briggs. “Wait till you see Iole.”
“Why Iole? Why not Vanessa?”
“Don’t—that’s all,” retorted Briggs, reddening.
Wayne plumped his valise down in the dust, mopped his brow, folded his arms, and regarded Briggs between the eyes.
“You have the infernal cheek, after getting me up here, to intimate that you have taken the pick?”
“I do,” replied Briggs firmly. The two young fellows faced each other.
“By the way,” observed Briggs casually, “the stock they come from is as good if not better than ours. This is a straight game.”
“Do you mean to say that you—you are—seriously–”
“Something like it. There! Now you know.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Stuyve–”
“Yes, for Heaven’s sake and in Heaven’s name don’t get any wrong ideas into your vicious head.”
“What?”
“I tell you,” said Briggs, “that I was never closer to falling in love than I am to-day. And I’ve been here just two weeks.”
“Oh, Lord–”
“Amen,” muttered Briggs. “Here, give me your carpet-bag, you brute. We’re on the edge of Paradise.”
III
BEFORE we discuss my financial difficulties,” said the poet, lifting his plump white hand and waving it in unctuous waves about the veranda, “let me show you our home, Mr. Wayne. May I?”
“Certainly,” said Wayne politely, following Guilford into the house.
They entered a hall; there was absolutely nothing in the hall except a small table on which reposed a single daisy in a glass of water.
“Simplicity,” breathed Guilford—“a single blossom against a background of nothing at all. You follow me, Mr. Wayne?”
“Not—exactly–”
The poet smiled a large, tender smile, and, with inverted thumb, executed a gesture as though making several spots in the air.
“The concentration of composition,” he explained; “the elimination of complexity; the isolation of the concrete in the center of the abstract; something