it was, of course, not long that the newspapers of our wide-awake country were kept from giving their readers very picturesque glimpses of what was going on among the dwellers on mt. boab. the humorists of the press, those charming fellows whose work is so enjoyable when performed upon one’s neighbor and so excruciating when turned against oneself, saw the vulnerable points of the situation and let go a broadside of ridicule that reverberated from the atlantic to the pacific. it became a matter of daily amusement among the inmates of hotel helicon to come together in little groups and discuss these humorous missiles fired upon them from california, texas, arkansas and wisconsin, from brooklyn, pittsburgh, atlanta, and oil-city, detroit and—, but from everywhere, indeed.
when it came to miss crabb’s adventure, every humorist excelled himself in descriptive smartness and in cunning turns of ironical phrasing. the head-line experts did telling work in the same connection. all this was[68] perfectly understood and enjoyed at home, but foreigners, especially the english, stubbornly insisted upon viewing it as the high-water mark of american refinement and culture.
when that genial periodical, the smartsburgh bulldozer, announced with due gravity that miss crabb, a western journalist, had leaped from the top of mt. boab to the valley below, and had been caught in the arms of a stalwart moonshiner, where she safely reposed, etc., the london times copied the paragraph and made it a text for a heavy editorial upon the barbaric influences of republican institutions, to which the american minister felt bound to advert in a characteristic after-dinner speech at a london club. so humorous, however, were his remarks that he was understood to be vigorously in earnest, and the result was perfect confirmation of the old world’s opinion as to the rudimentary character of our national culture.
meantime hotel helicon continued to be the scene of varied if not startling incidents. in their search for local color and picturesque material, the litterateurs invaded every nook and corner of the region upon and round about mt. boab, sketching, making notes, recording suggestions, studying dialect, and filling their minds with the uncouth peculiarities of the mountain folk.
“it has come to this,” grumbled peck, “that american literature, its fiction i mean, is founded on dialect drivel and vulgar yawp. look at our magazines; four-fifths of their[69] short stories are full of negro talk, or cracker lingo, or mountain jibberish, or new england farm yawp, or hoosier dialect. it is horribly humiliating. it actually makes foreigners think that we are a nation of green-horns. why, a day or two ago i had occasion to consult the article on american literature in the encyclopædia britannica and therein i was told in one breath how great a writer and how truly american mr. lowell is, and in the next breath i was informed that a poem beginning with the verse, ‘under the yaller pines i house’ is one of his master-pieces! do you see? do you catch the drift of the englishman’s argument? to be truly great, as an american, one must be surpassingly vulgar, even in poetry!”
this off-hand shower of critical observation had as little effect upon the minds of peck’s hearers as a summer rain has on the backs of a flock of ducks. they even grew more vehement in their pursuit of local color.
“when i was spending a month at rockledge castle with lord knownaught,” said crane, “his lordship frequently suggested that i should make a poem on the life of jesse james.”
“well, why didn’t you do it?” inquired miss crabb with a ring of impatience in her voice, “if you had you might have made a hit. you might have attracted some attention.”
dufour laughed heartily, as if he had caught some occult humor from the young woman’s words.
“i did write it,” said crane retrospectively, “and sent it to george dunkirk & co.”
“well?” sighed miss crabb with intense interest.
“well,” replied crane, “they rejected the ms. without reading it.”
again dufour laughed, as if at a good joke.
“george dunkirk & co.!” cried guilford ferris, the romancer, “george dunkirk & co.! they are thieves. they have been making false reports on copyright to me for five years or more!”
dufour chuckled as if his jaws would fall off, and finally with a red face and gleaming humorous eyes got up from the chair he was filling on the veranda, and went up to his room.
the rest of the company looked at one another inquiringly.
“who is he, anyhow?” demanded peck.
“that’s just my query,” said ferris.
“nobody in the house knows anything definite about him,” remarked r. hobbs lucas. “and yet he evidently is a distinguished person, and his name haunts me.”
“so it does me,” said miss moyne.
“i tell you he’s a newspaper reporter. his cheek proves that,” remarked peck.
miss crabb made a note, her own cheek flaming. “i presume you call that humor,” she observed, “it’s about like new york’s best efforts. in the west reporters are respectable people.”
“i beg pardon,” peck said hastily, “i did not mean to insinuate that anybody is not respectable. everybody is eminently respectable if i speak of them. i never trouble myself with the other kind.”
“well, i don’t believe that mr. dufour is a reporter at all,” replied miss crabb, with emphasis, “for he’s not inquisitive, he don’t make notes, and he don’t appear to be writing any.”
“in my opinion he’s a realist—a genuine analytical, motive-dissecting, commonplace-recording, international novelist in disguise,” said ferris.
“oh!”
“ah!”
“dear me!”
“but who?”
“it may be arthur selby himself, incog. who knows?”
“humph!” growled crane with a lofty scrowl, “i should think i ought to know selby. i drank wine with him at—”
his remark was cut short by the arrival of the mail and the general scramble that followed.
upon this occasion the number of newspapers that fell to the hand of each guest was much greater than usual, and it was soon discovered that miss crabb’s latest letter had been forwarded to a “syndicate” and was appearing simultaneously in ninety odd different journals.
no piece of composition ever was more stunningly realistic or more impartially, nay, abjectly truthful than was that letter. it gave[72] a minute account of the quarrel between peck and crane over their attentions to miss moyne, the fight, miss crabb’s fall, the subsequent adventures and all the hotel gossip of every sort. it was personal to the last degree, but it was not in the slightest libelous. no person could say that any untruth had been told, or even that any tinge of false-coloring had been laid upon the facts as recorded; and yet how merciless!
of course miss crabb’s name did not appear with the article, save as one of its subjects, and she saw at once that she had better guard her secret.
that was a breeze which rustled through hotel helicon. everybody was supremely indignant; but there was no clue to the traitor who had thus betrayed everybody’s secrets. it would be absurd to suppose that miss crabb was not suspected at once, on account of her constant and superfluous show of note-making, still there were others who might be guilty. crane and peck were indignant, the former especially ready to resent to the death any allusion to the details of the duel. miss moyne with the quick insight of a clever and gifted young woman, comprehended the situation in its general terms and was vexed as much as amused. the whole thing had to her mind the appearance of a melodramatic, broadly sensational sketch, in which she had played the part of the innocent, unconscious, but all-powerful heroine. indeed the newspaper account placed[73] her in this unpleasant attitude before a million readers.
“a lucky affair for you, miss moyne,” said dufour to her, a few days later, “you cannot over-reckon the boom it will give to your latest book. you may expect a pretty round sum with your next copyright statement.”
he spoke with the voice and air of one who knew how to read the signs of the day.
“but the ridiculous idea of having all this stuff about me going the rounds of the newspapers!” she responded, her beautiful patrician face showing just a hint of color.
“don’t care for it a moment,” said dufour, “it will not hurt you.”
“the thought of having that hideous picture in all the patent inside pages of the cheap press, with my name under it, en toutes lettres, and—why it is horrible!” she went on, with trembling lips.
dufour smiled upon her, as if indulgently, a curious, tender gleam in his eyes.
“wait,” he said, “and don’t allow it to trouble you. the world discriminates pretty well, after all. it will not hurt you. it’s a mighty boom for you.”
she looked at him with a sudden flash in her cheeks and eyes, and exclaimed almost vehemently: “i will not permit it! they shall not do it. i cannot bear to be treated as if—as if i were a theatrical person—a variety actress!”
“my dear miss moyne,” he hurriedly said, his own face showing a tinge of embarrassment,、 “you are taking a wrong point of view, indeed you are. wait till you see the out-come.” his tone was humble and apologetic as he continued—“my opinion is that this very thing will quadruple the sales of your book.”
“i don’t want them quadrupled,” she cried, “just look at that front hair and that nose!” she held up a newspaper for him to inspect a picture of herself, a miserable, distorted thing. “it is absolutely disgraceful. my dresses never fit like that, and who ever saw me with a man’s collar on!”
tears were in her beautiful eyes.
dufour consoled her as best he could, though he could not resist the temptation to suggest that even a caricature of her face was sure to have in it the fascination of genuine loveliness, a suggestion which was phrased with consummate art and received with an appearance of innocence that was beyond all art.
