Events, are consequential or inconsequential irrespective of their size.
The wars of Troy were fought for a woman, and Charles VIII, of France,
bumped his head against a stone doorway and died because he did not
stoop low enough. And to descend from history down to my own poor
chronicle, Mr. Cooke's railroad case, my first experience at the bar of
any gravity or magnitude, had tied to it a string of consequences then
far beyond my guessing. The suit was my stepping-stone not only to
a larger and more remunerative practice, but also, I believe, to the
position of district attorney, which I attained shortly afterwards.
Mr. Cooke had laid out Mohair as ruthlessly as Napoleon planned the
new Paris; though not, I regret to say, with a like genius. Fortunately
Farrar interposed and saved the grounds, but there was no guardian angel
to do a like turn for the house. Mr. Langdon Willis, of Philadelphia,
was the architect who had nominal charge of the building. He had
regularly submitted some dozen plans for Mr. Cooke's approval, which
were as regularly rejected. My client believed, in common with a great
many other people, that architects should be driven and not followed,
and was plainly resolved to make this house the logical development of
many cherished ideas. It is not strange, therefore, that the edifice
was completed by a Chicago contractor who had less self-respect than Mr.
Willis, the latter having abruptly refused to have his name tacked on to
the work.
Mohair was finished and ready for occupation in July, two years after
the suit. I drove out one day before Mr. Cooke's arrival to look it
over. The grounds, where Farrar had had matters pretty much his own way,
to my mind rivalled the best private parks in the East. The stables were
filled with a score or so of Mr. Cooke's best horses, brought hither
in his private cars, and the trotters were exercising on the track.
The middle of June found Farrar and myself at the Asquith Inn. It was
Farrar's custom to go to Asquith in the summer, being near the forest
properties in his charge; and since Asquith was but five miles from the
county-seat it was convenient for me, and gave me the advantages of
the lake breezes and a comparative rest, which I should not have had
in town. At that time Asquith was a small community of summer residents
from Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and other western cities, most of
whom owned cottages and the grounds around them. They were a quiet lot
that long association had made clannish; and they had a happy faculty,
so rare in summer resorts, of discrimination between an amusement and a
nuisance. Hence a great many diversions which are accounted pleasurable
elsewhere are at Asquith set down at their true value. It was,
therefore, rather with resentment than otherwise that the approaching
arrival of Mr. Cooke and the guests he was likely to have at Mohair were
looked upon.
I had not been long at Asquith before I discovered that Farrar was
acting in a peculiar manner, though I was longer in finding out what the
matter was. I saw much less of him than in town. Once in a while in the
evenings, after ten, he would run across me on the porch of the inn,
or drift into my rooms. Even after three years of more or less
intimacy between us, Farrar still wore his exterior of pessimism and
indifference, the shell with which he chose to hide a naturally warm and
affectionate disposition. In the dining-room we sat together at the end
of a large table set aside for bachelors and small families of two
or three, and it seemed as though we had all the humorists and
story-tellers in that place. And Farrar as a source of amusement proved
equal to the best of them. He would wait until a story was well under
way, and then annihilate the point of it with a cutting cynicism and set
the table in a roar of laughter. Among others who were seated here was
a Mr. Trevor, of Cincinnati, one of the pioneers of Asquith. Mr. Trevor
was a trifle bombastic, with a tendency towards gesticulation, an art
which he had learned in no less a school than the Ohio State Senate. He
was a self-made man,--a fact which he took good care should not escape
one,--and had amassed his money, I believe, in the dry-goods business.
He always wore a long, shiny coat, a low, turned-down collar, and a
black tie, all of which united to give him the general appearance of a
professional pallbearer.
But Mr. Trevor possessed a daughter who amply made up for his
shortcomings. She was the only one who could meet Farrar on his own
ground, and rarely a meal passed that they did not have a tilt. They
filled up the holes of the conversation with running commentaries,
giving a dig at the luckless narrator and a side-slap at each other,
until one would have given his oath they were sworn enemies. At least
I, in the innocence of my heart, thought so until I was forcibly
enlightened. I had taken rather a prejudice to Miss Trevor. I could find
no better reason than her antagonism to Farrar. I was revolving this
very thing in my mind one day as I was paddling back to the inn after a
look at my client's new pier and boat-houses, when I descried Farrar's
catboat some distance out. The lake was glass, and the sail hung
lifeless. It was near lunch-time, and charity prompted me to head for
the boat and give it a tow homeward. As I drew near, Farrar himself
emerged from behind the sail and asked me, with a great show of
nonchalance, what I wanted.
“To tow you back for lunch, of course,” I answered, used to his ways.
He threw me a line, which I made fast to the stern, and then he
disappeared again. I thought this somewhat strange, but as the boat
was a light one, I towed it in and hitched it to the wharf, when, to my
great astonishment, there disembarked not Farrar, but Miss Trevor. She
leaped lightly ashore and was gone before I could catch my breath, while
Farrar let down the sail and offered me a cigarette. I had learned a
lesson in appearances.
It could not have been very long after this that I was looking over my
batch of New York papers, which arrived weekly, when my eye was arrested
by a name. I read the paragraph, which announced the fact that my friend
the Celebrity was about to sail for Europe in search of “color” for his
next novel; this was already contracted for at a large price, and was
to be of a more serious nature than any of his former work. An interview
was published in which the Celebrity had declared that a new novel was
to appear in a short time. I do not know what impelled me, but I began
at once to search through the other papers, and found almost identically
the same notice in all of them.
By one of those odd coincidents which sometimes start one to thinking,
the Celebrity was the subject of a lively discussion when I reached
the table that evening. I had my quota of information concerning his
European trip, but I did not commit myself when appealed to for an
opinion. I had once known the man (which, however, I did not think it
worth while to mention) and I did not feel justified in criticising him
in public. Besides, what I knew of him was excellent, and entirely apart
from the literary merit or demerit of his work. The others, however,
were within their right when they censured or praised him, and they
did both. Farrar, in particular, surprised me by the violence of his
attacks, while Miss Trevor took up the Celebrity's defence with equal
ardor. Her motives were beyond me now. The Celebrity's works spoke
for themselves, she said, and she could not and would not believe such
injurious reports of one who wrote as he did.
The next day I went over to the county-seat, and got back to Asquith
after dark. I dined alone, and afterwards I was strolling up and down
one end of the long veranda when I caught sight of a lonely figure in a
corner, with chair tilted back and feet on the rail. A gleam of a cigar
lighted up the face, and I saw that it was Farrar. I sat down beside
him, and we talked commonplaces for a while, Farrar's being almost
monosyllabic, while now and again feminine voices and feminine laughter
reached our ears from the far end of the porch. They seemed to go
through Farrar like a knife, and he smoked furiously, his lips tightly
compressed the while. I had a dozen conjectures, none of which I dared
voice. So I waited in patience.
“Crocker,” said he, at length, “there's a man here from Boston, Charles
Wrexell Allen; came this morning. You know Boston. Have you ever heard
of him?”
“Allen,” I repeated, reflecting; “no Charles Wrexell.”
“It is Charles Wrexell, I think,” said Farrar, as though the matter were
trivial. “However, we can go into the register and make sure.”
“What about him?” I asked, not feeling inclined to stir.
The Celebrity
“Oh, nothing. An arrival is rather an occurrence, though. You can hear
him down there now,” he added, tossing his head towards the other end of
the porch, “with the women around him.”
In fact, I did catch the deeper sound of a man's voice among the lighter
tones, and the voice had a ring to it which was not wholly unfamiliar,
although I could not place it.
I threw Farrar a bait.
“He must make friends easily,” I said.
“With the women?--yes,” he replied, so scathingly that I was forced to
laugh in spite of myself.
“Let us go in and look at the register,” I suggested. “You may have his
name wrong.”
We went in accordingly. Sure enough, in bold, heavy characters, was the
name Charles Wrexell Allen written out in full. That handwriting was one
in a thousand. I made sure I had seen it before, and yet I did not know
it; and the more I puzzled over it the more confused I became. I turned
to Farrar.
“I have had a poor cigar passed off on me and deceive me for a while.
That is precisely the case here. I think I should recognize your man if
I were to see him.”
“Well,” said Farrar, “here's your chance.”
The company outside were moving in. Two or three of the older ladies
came first, carrying their wraps; then a troop of girls, among whom
was Miss Trevor; and lastly, a man. Farrar and I had walked to the door
while the women turned into the drawing-room, so that we were brought
face to face with him, suddenly. At sight of me he halted abruptly, as
though he had struck the edge of a door, changed color, and held out
his hand, tentatively. Then he withdrew it again, for I made no sign of
recognition.
It was the Celebrity!
I felt a shock of disgust as I passed out. Masquerading, it must be
admitted, is not pleasant to the taste; and the whole farce, as it
flashed through my mind,--his advertised trip, his turning up here under
an assumed name, had an ill savor. Perhaps some of the things they said
of him might be true, after all.
“Who the devil is he?” said Farrar, dropping for once his indifference;
“he looked as if he knew you.”
I evaded.
“He may have taken me for some one else,” I answered with all the
coolness I could muster. “I have never met any one of his name. His
voice and handwriting, however, are very much like those of a man I used
to know.”
Farrar was very poor company that evening, and left me early. I went
to my rooms and had taken down a volume of Carlyle, who can generally
command my attention, when there came a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I replied, with an instinctive sense of prophecy.
This was fulfilled at once by the appearance of the Celebrity. He
was attired--for the details of his dress forced themselves upon me
vividly--in a rough-spun suit of knickerbockers, a colored-shirt having
a large and prominent gold stud, red and brown stockings of a diamond
pattern, and heavy walking-boots. And he entered with an air of
assurance that was maddening.
“My dear Crocker,” he exclaimed, “you have no idea how delighted I am to
see you here!”
I rose, first placing a book-mark in Carlyle, and assured him that I was
surprised to see him here.
“Surprised to see me!” he returned, far from being damped by my manner.
“In fact, I am a little surprised to see myself here.”
He sank back on the window-seat and clasped his hands behind his head.
“But first let me thank you for respecting my incognito,” he said.
I tried hard to keep my temper, marvelling at the ready way he had
chosen to turn my action.
“And now,” he continued, “I suppose you want to know why I came out
here.” He easily supplied the lack of cordial solicitation on my part.
“Yes, I should like to know,” I said.
Thus having aroused my curiosity, he took his time about appeasing it,
after the custom of his kind. He produced a gold cigarette case, offered
me a cigarette, which I refused, took one himself and blew the smoke in
rings toward the ceiling. Then, raising himself on his elbow, he drew
his features together in such a way as to lead me to believe he was
about to impart some valuable information.
“Crocker,” said he, “it's the very deuce to be famous, isn't it?”
“I suppose it is,” I replied curtly, wondering what he was driving at;
“I have never tried it.”
“An ordinary man, such as you, can't conceive of the torture a fellow in
my position is obliged to go through the year round, but especially in
the summer, when one wishes to go off on a rest. You know what I mean,
of course.”
“I am afraid I do not,” I answered, in a vain endeavor to embarrass him.
“You're thicker than when I used to know you, then,” he returned with
candor. “To tell the truth, Crocker, I often wish I were back at the
law, and had never written a line. I am paying the penalty of fame.
Wherever I go I am hounded to death by the people who have read my
books, and they want to dine and wine me for the sake of showing me off
at their houses. I am heartily sick and tired of it all; you would be if
you had to go through it. I could stand a winter, but the worst comes
in the summer, when one meets the women who fire all sorts of
socio-psychological questions at one for solution, and who have
suggestions for stories.” He shuddered.
“And what has all this to do with your coming here?” I cut in,
strangling a smile.
He twisted his cigarette at an acute angle with his face, and looked at
me out of the corner of his eye.
“I'll try to be a little plainer,” he went on, sighing as one unused to
deal with people who require crosses on their t's. “I've been worried
almost out of my mind with attention--nothing but attention the whole
time. I can't go on the street but what I'm stared at and pointed out,
so I thought of a scheme to relieve it for a time. It was becoming
unbearable. I determined to assume a name and go to some quiet little
place for the summer, West, if possible, where I was not likely to be
recognized, and have three months of rest.”
He paused, but I offered no comment.
“Well, the more I thought of it, the better I liked the idea. I met a
western man at the club and asked him about western resorts, quiet ones.
'Have you heard of Asquith?' says he. 'No,' said I; 'describe it.' He
did, and it was just the place; quaint, restful, and retired. Of course
I put him off the track, but I did not count on striking you. My man
boxed up, and we were off in twenty-four hours, and here I am.”
Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the
Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that
adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought
the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.
“You won't tell anyone who I am, will you?” he asked anxiously.
He even misinterpreted my silences.
“Certainly not,” I replied. “It is no concern of mine. You might come
here as Emil Zola or Ralph Waldo Emerson and it would make no difference
to me.”
He looked at me dubiously, even suspiciously.
“That's a good chap,” said he, and was gone, leaving me to reflect on
the ways of genius.
And the longer I reflected, the more positive I became that there
existed a more potent reason for the Celebrity's disguise than ennui.
As actions speak louder than words, so does a man's character often give
the lie to his tongue.