“What have you been doing lately?” he demanded. Presley, wondering, told of his various comings and goings.
“I don’t mean that,” returned the other. “Something has happened to you, something has aroused you. I am right, am I not? Yes, I thought so. In this poem of yours, you have not been trying to make a sounding piece of literature. You wrote it under tremendous stress. Its very imperfections show that. It is better than a mere rhyme. It is an Utterance—a Message. It is Truth. You have come back to the primal heart of things, and you have seen clearly. Yes, it is a great poem.”
“Thank you,” exclaimed Presley fervidly. “I had begun to mistrust myself.”
“Now,” observed Vanamee, “I presume you will rush it into print. To have formulated a great thought, simply to have accomplished, is not enough.”
“I think I am sincere,” objected Presley. “If it is good it will do good to others. You said yourself it was a Message. If it has any value, I do not think it would be right to keep it back from even a very small and most indifferent public.”
“Don’t publish it in the magazines at all events,” Vanamee answered. “Your inspiration has come from the People. Then let it go straight to the People—not the literary readers of the monthly periodicals, the rich, who would only be indirectly interested. If you must publish it, let it be in the daily press. Don’t interrupt. I know what you will say. It will be that the daily press is common, is vulgar, is undignified; and I tell you that such a poem as this of yours, called as it is, ‘The Toilers,’ must be read by the Toilers. It must be common; it must be vulgarised. You must not stand upon your dignity with the People, if you are to reach them.”
“That is true, I suppose,” Presley admitted, “but I can’t get rid of the idea that it would be throwing my poem away. The great magazine gives me such—a—background; gives me such weight.”
“Gives you such weight, gives you such background. Is it yourself you think of? You helper of the helpless. Is that your sincerity? You must sink yourself; must forget yourself and your own desire of fame, of admitted success. It is your poem, your message, that must prevail—not you, who wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem, but the poet. Presley, there are many like you. The social reformer writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the proceeds, buys a corner lot. The economist who laments the hardships of the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon the sale of his book.”
But Presley would hear no further.
“No,” he cried, “I know I am sincere, and to prove it to you, I will publish my poem, as you say, in the daily press, and I will accept no money for it.”
They talked on for about an hour, while the evening wore away. Presley very soon noticed that Vanamee was again preoccupied. More than ever of late, his silence, his brooding had increased. By and by he rose abruptly, turning his head to the north, in the direction of the Mission church of San Juan. “I think,” he said to Presley, “that I must be going.”
“Going? Where to at this time of night?”
“Off there.” Vanamee made an uncertain gesture toward the north. “Goodbye,” and without another word he disappeared in the grey of the twilight. Presley was left alone wondering. He found his horse, and, tightening the girths, mounted and rode home under the sheen of the stars, thoughtful, his head bowed. Before he went to bed that night he sent “The Toilers” to the Sunday Editor of a daily newspaper in San Francisco.
Upon leaving Presley, Vanamee, his thumbs hooked into his empty cartridge belt, strode swiftly down from the hills of the Los Muertos stock-range and on through the silent town of Guadalajara. His lean, swarthy face, with its hollow cheeks, fine, black, pointed beard, and sad eyes, was set to the northward. As was his custom, he was bareheaded, and the rapidity of his stride made a breeze in his long, black hair. He knew where he was going. He knew what he must live through that night.
Again, the deathless grief that never slept leaped out of the shadows, and fastened upon his shoulders. It was scourging him back to that scene of a vanished happiness, a dead romance, a perished idyl—the Mission garden in the shade of the venerable pear trees.
But, besides this, other influences tugged at his heart. There was a mystery in the garden. In that spot the night was not always empty, the darkness not always silent. Something far off stirred and listened to his cry, at times drawing nearer to him. At first this presence had been a matter for terror; but of late, as he felt it gradually drawing nearer, the terror had at long intervals given place to a feeling of an almost ineffable sweetness. But distrusting his own senses, unwilling to submit himself to such torturing, uncertain happiness, averse to the terrible confusion of spirit that followed upon a night spent in the garden, Vanamee had tried to keep away from the place. However, when the sorrow of his life reassailed him, and the thoughts and recollections of Angéle brought the ache into his heart, and the tears to his eyes, the temptation to return to the garden invariably gripped him close. There were times when he could not resist. Of themselves, his
