in the afternoon of a breezy day, at the time when the shadows were taking full possession of the valley, the coach arrived at hotel helicon from the little railway station at the foot of mt. boab.
a man, the only passenger, alighted from his perch beside the driver and for a moment stood as if a little dazed by what he saw.
he was very short, rather round and stout, and bore himself quietly, almost demurely. his head was large, his feet and hands were small and his face wore the expression of an habitual good humor amounting nearly to jolliness, albeit two vertical wrinkles between his brows hinted of a sturdy will seated behind a heavy napoleonic forehead. the stubby tufts of grizzled hair that formed his mustaches shaded[11] a mouth and chin at once strong and pleasing. he impressed the group of people on the hotel veranda most favorably, and at once a little buzz of inquiry circulated. no one knew him.
that this was an important arrival could not be doubted; it was felt at once and profoundly. great men carry an air of individuality about with them; each, like a planet, has his own peculiar atmosphere by which his light is modified. there was no mistaking the light in this instance; it indicated a luminary of the first magnitude.
unfortunately the guests at hotel helicon were not required to record their names in a register, therefore the new comer could bide his own time to make himself known.
miss alice moyne, of virginia, the beautiful young author of two or three picturesque short stories lately published in a popular magazine, was in conversation with hartley crane, the rising poet from kentucky, just at the moment when this new arrival caused a flutter on the veranda.
“oh, i do wonder if he can be edgar de vere?” she exclaimed.
“no,” said hartley crane, “i have seen de vere; he is as large and as fascinating as his romances. that little pudgy individual could never make a great romantic fiction like solway moss, by de vere.”
“but that is a superb head,” whispered miss moyne, “the head of a master, a genius.”
[12]
“oh, there are heads and heads, genius and genius,” replied crane. “i guess the new-comer off as a newspaper man from chicago or new york. it requires first-class genius to be a good reporter.”
the stranger under discussion was now giving some directions to a porter regarding his luggage. this he did with that peculiar readiness, or sleight, so to call it, which belongs to none but the veteran traveler. a moment later he came up the wooden steps of the hotel, cast a comprehensive but apparently indifferent glance over the group of guests and passed into the hall, where they heard him say to the boy in waiting: “my room is 24.”
“that is the reserved room,” remarked two or three persons at once.
great expectations hung about room 24; much guessing had been indulged in considering who was to be the happy and exalted person chosen to occupy it. now he had arrived, an utter stranger to them all. everybody looked inquiry.
“who can he be?”
“it must be mark twain,” suggested little mrs. philpot, of memphis.
“oh, no; mark twain is tall, and very handsome; i know mark,” said crane.
“how strange!” ejaculated miss moyne, and when everybody laughed, she colored a little and added hastily:
“i didn’t mean that it was strange that mr. crane should know mr. twain, but——”
[13]
they drowned her voice with their laughter and hand-clapping.
they were not always in this very light mood at hotel helicon, but just now they all felt in a trivial vein. it was as if the new guest had brought a breath of frivolous humor along with him and had blown it over them as he passed by.
room 24 was the choice one of hotel helicon. every guest wanted it, on account of its convenience, its size and the superb view its windows afforded; but from the first it had been reserved for this favored individual whose arrival added greater mystery to the matter.
as the sun disappeared behind the western mountains, and the great gulf of the valley became a sea of purplish gloom, conversation clung in half whispers to the subject who meantime was arraying himself in evening dress for dinner, posing before the large mirror in room 24 and smiling humorously at himself as one who, criticising his own foibles, still holds to them with a fortitude almost christian.
he parted his hair in the middle, but the line of division was very slight, and he left a pretty, half-curled short wisp hanging over the centre of his forehead. the wide collar that hid his short neck creased his heavy well-turned jaws, giving to his chin the appearance of being propped up. although he was quite stout, his head was so broad and his feet so small that he appeared to taper from top to toe in a way that emphasized very forcibly his expression of blended dignity and jollity, youth and middle[14] age, sincerity and levity. when he had finished his toilet, he sat down by the best window in the best room of hotel helicon, and gazed out over the dusky valley to where a line of quivering silver light played fantastically along the line of peaks that notched the delicate blue of the evening sky. the breeze came in, cool and sweet, with a sort of champagne sparkle in its freshness and purity. it whetted his appetite and blew the dust of travel out of his mind. he was glad when the dinner hour arrived.
the long table was nearly full when he went down, and he was given a seat between miss moyne and little mrs. philpot. by that secret cerebral trick we all know, but which none of us can explain, he was aware that the company had just been discussing him. in fact, someone had ventured to wonder if he were mr. howells, whereupon mr. crane had promptly said that he knew mr. howells quite well, and that although in a general way the new-comer was not unlike the famous realist, he was far from identical with him.
laurens peck, the bushy-bearded new england critic, whispered in someone’s ear that it appeared as if crane knew everybody, but that the poet’s lively imagination had aided him more than his eyes, in all probability. “fact is,” said he, “a kentuckian soon gets so that he thinks he has been everywhere and seen everybody, whether he has or not.”
out of this remark grew a serious affair[15] which it will be my duty to record at the proper place.
little mrs. philpot, who wore gold eye-glasses and had elongated dimples in her cheeks and chin, dexterously managed to have a word or two with the stranger, who smiled upon her graciously without attempting to enter into a conversation. miss moyne fared a little better, for she had the charm of grace and beauty to aid her, attended by one of those puffs of good luck which come to none but the young and the beautiful. mr. b. hobbs lucas, a large and awkward historian from new york, knocked over a bottle of claret with his elbow, and the liquor shot with an enthusiastic sparkle diagonally across the table in order to fall on miss moyne’s lap.
with that celerity which in very short and stout persons appears to be spontaneous, a sort of elastic quality, the gentleman from room 24 interposed his suddenly outspread napkin. the historian flung himself across the board after the bottle, clawing rather wildly and upsetting things generally. it was but a momentary scene, such as children at school and guests at a summer hotel make more or less merry over, still it drew forth from the genial man of room 24 a remark which slipped into miss moyne’s ear with the familiarity of well trained humor.
“a deluge of wine in a free hotel!” he exclaimed, just above a whisper. “such generosity is nearly shocking.”
“i am sorry you mention it,” said miss[16] moyne, with her brightest and calmest smile; “i have been idealizing the place. a gush of grape-juice on helicon is a picturesque thing to contemplate.”
“but a lap-full of claret on mt. boab is not so fine, eh? what a farce poetry is! what a humbug is romance!”
the historian had sunk back in his chair and was scowling at the purple stain which kept slowly spreading through the fiber of the cloth.
“i always do something,” he sighed, and his sincerity was obvious.
“and always with aplomb,” remarked little mrs. philpot.
“it would be a genius who could knock over a claret bottle with grace,” added peck. “now a jug of ale——”
“i was present at table once with mr. emerson,” began the kentucky poet, but nobody heard the rest. a waiter came with a heavy napkin to cover the stain, and as he bent over the table he forced the man from room 24 to incline very close to miss moyne.
“to think of making an instance of emerson!” he murmured. “emerson who died before he discovered that men and women have to eat, or that wine will stain a new dress!”
“but then he discovered so many things——” she began.
“please mention one of them,” he glibly interrupted. “what did emerson ever discover? did he ever pen a single truth?”
[17]
“aloft in secret veins of air
blows the sweet breath of song,”
she replied. “he trod the very headlands of truth. but you are not serious——” she checked herself, recollecting that she was speaking to a stranger.
“not serious but emphatically in earnest,” he went on, in the same genial tone with which he had begun. “there isn’t a thing but cunning phrase-form in anything the man ever wrote. he didn’t know how to represent life.”
“oh, i see,” miss moyne ventured, “you are a realist.”
it is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the peculiar shade of contempt she conveyed through the words. she lifted her head a little higher and her beauty rose apace. it was as if she had stamped her little foot and exclaimed: “of all things i detest realism—of all men, i hate realists.”
“but i kept the wine off your dress!” he urged, as though he had heard her thought. “there’s nothing good but what is real. romance is lie-tissue. reality is truth-tissue.”
“permit me to thank you for your good intentions,” she said, with a flash of irony; “you held the napkin just in the right position, but the wine never fell from the table. still your kindness lost nothing in quality because the danger was imaginary.”
when dinner was over, miss moyne sought out hartley crane, the kentucky poet who knew everybody, and suggested that perhaps[18] the stranger was mr. arthur selby, the analytical novelist whose name was on everybody’s tongue.
“but arthur selby is thin and bald and has a receding chin. i met him often at the—i forget the club in new york,” said crane. “it’s more likely that he’s some reporter. he’s a snob, anyway.”
“dear me, no, not a snob, mr. crane; he is the most american man i ever met,” replied miss moyne.
“but americans are the worst of all snobs,” he insisted, “especially literary americans. they adore everything that’s foreign and pity everything that’s home-made.”
as he said this he was remembering how tennyson’s and browning’s poems were overshadowing his own, even in kentucky. from the ring of his voice miss moyne suspected something of this sort, and adroitly changed the subject.
