Public-domain ebook
A Fortnight of Folly
by Thompson, Maurice; Conway, Hugh
Language: en481 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Humour·Novels·American Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #41660.
The opening · free to read
The Hotel Helicon stood on a great rock promontory that jutted far out into a sea of air whose currents and eddies filled a wide, wild valley in the midst of our southern mountain region. It was a new hotel, built by a Cincinnati man who founded his fortune in natural gas speculations, and who had conceived the bright thought of making the house famous at the start by a stroke of rare liberality.
Viewing the large building from any favorable point in the valley, it looked like a huge white bird sitting with outstretched wings on the gray rock far up against the tender blue sky. All around it the forests were thick and green, the ravines deep and gloomy and the rocks tumbled into fantastic heaps. When you reached it, which was after a whole day of hard zig-zag climbing, you found it a rather plain three-story house, whose broad verandas were worried with a mass of jig-saw fancies and whose windows glared at you between wide open green Venetian shutters. Everything look new, almost raw, from the stumps of fresh-cut trees on the lawn and the rope swings and long benches, upon which the paint was scarcely dry, to the resonant floor of the spacious halls and the cedar-fragrant hand-rail of the stairway.
There were springs among the rocks. Here the water trickled out with a red gleam of iron oxide, there it sparkled with an excess of carbonic acid, and yonder it bubbled up all the more limpid and clear on account of the offensive sulphuretted hydrogen it was bringing forth. Masses of fern, great cushions of cool moss and tangles of blooming shrubs and vines fringed the sides of the little ravines down which the spring-streams sang their way to the silver thread of a river in the valley.
It was altogether a dizzy perch, a strange, inconvenient, out-of-the-way spot for a summer hotel. You reached it all out of breath, confused as to the points of the compass and disappointed, in every sense of the word, with what at first glance struck you as a colossal pretense, empty, raw, vulgar, loud--a great trap into which you had been inveigled by an eloquent hand-bill! Hotel Helicon, as a name for the place, was considered a happy one. It had come to the proprietor, as if in a dream, one day as he sat smoking. He slapped his thigh with his hand and sprang to his feet. The word that went so smoothly with hotel, as he fancied, had no special meaning in his mind, for the gas man had never been guilty of classical lore-study, but it furnished a taking alliteration.
"Hotel Helicon, Hotel Helicon," he repeated; "that's just a dandy name. Hotel Helicon on Mount Boab, open for the season! If that doesn't get 'em I'll back down."
His plans matured themselves very rapidly in his mind. One brilliant idea followed another in swift succession, until at last he fell upon the scheme of making Hotel Helicon free for the initial season to a select company of authors chosen from among the most brilliant and famous in our country.
"Zounds!" he exclaimed, all to himself, "but won't that be a darling old advertisement! I'll have a few sprightly newspaper people along with 'em, too, to do the interviewing and puffing. By jacks, it's just the wrinkle to a dot!"
Mr. Gaslucky was of the opinion that, like Napoleon, he was in the hands of irresistible destiny which would ensure the success of whatever he might undertake; still he was also a realist and depended largely upon tricks for his results. He had felt the great value of what he liked to term legitimate advertising, and he was fond of saying to himself that any scheme would succeed if properly set before the world. He regarded it a maxim that anything which can be clearly described is a fact. His realism was the gospel of success, he declared, and needed but to be stated to be adopted by all the world.
From the first he saw how his hotel was to be an intellectual focus; moreover he designed to have it radiate its own glory like a star set upon Mt. Boab.
The difficulties inherent in this project were from the first quite apparent to Mr. Gaslucky, but he was full of expedients and cunning. He had come out of the lowest stratum of life, fighting his way up to success, and his knowledge of human nature was accurate if not very broad.
Early in the summer, about the first days of June, in fact, certain well-known and somewhat distinguished American authors received by due course of mail an autograph letter from Mr. Gaslucky, which was substantially as follows:
CINCINNATI, O., May 30, 1887.
My Dear Sir:
The Hotel Helicon, situated on the Lencadian promontory, far up the height of Mt. Boab and overlooking the glorious valley of the Big Mash River, amid the grandest scenery of the Cumberland Mountains, where at their southern extremity they break into awful peaks, chasms and escarpments, is now thrown open to a few favored guests for the summer. The proprietor in a spirit of liberality (and for the purpose of making this charming hotel known to a select public) is issuing a few special invitations to distinguished people to come and spend the summer free of charge. You are cordially and urgently invited. The Hotel Helicon is a place to delight the artist and the litterateur. It is high, airy, cool, surrounded by wild scenes, good shooting and fishing at hand, incomparable mineral springs, baths, grottos, dark ravines and indeed everything engaging to the imagination. The proprietor will exhaust effort to make his chosen guests happy. The rooms are new, sweet, beautifully furnished and altogether comfortable, and the table will have every delicacy of the season served in the best style. There will be no uninvited guests, all will be chosen from the most exalted class. Come, and for one season taste the sweets of the dews of Helicon, without money and without price.
If you accept this earnest and cordial invitation, notify me at once. Hotel Helicon is at your command.
Truly yours, ISAIAH R. GASLUCKY.
It is needless to say that this letter was the product of a professional advertising agent employed for the occasion by the proprietor of Hotel Helicon. The reader will observe the earmarks of the creation and readily recognize the source. Of course, when the letter was addressed to a woman there was a change, not only in the gender of the terms, but in the tone, which took on a more persuasive color. The attractions of the place were described in more poetic phrasing and a cunningly half-hidden thread of romance, about picturesque mountaineers and retired and reformed bandits, was woven in.
Naturally enough, each individual who received this rather uncommon letter, read it askance, at first, suspecting a trick, but the newspapers soon cleared the matter up by announcing that Mr. Isaiah Gaslucky, of Cincinnati, had "conceived the happy idea of making his new and picturesque Hotel Helicon free this season to a small and select company of distinguished guests. The hotel will not be open to the public until next year."
And thus it came to pass that in midsummer such a company as never before was assembled, met on Mt. Boab and made the halls of Hotel Helicon gay with their colors and noisy with their mirth. The woods, the dizzy cliffs, the bubbling springs, the cool hollows, the windy peaks and the mossy nooks were filled with song, laughter, murmuring under-tones of sentiment, or something a little sweeter and warmer, and there were literary conversations, and critical talks, and jolly satire bandied about, with some scraps of adventure and some bits of rather ludicrous mishap thrown in for variety.
Over all hung a summer sky, for the most part cloudless, and the days were as sweet as the nights were delicious.
II.
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 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."
"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----"
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.
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