Questionable Shapes | Page 2

to be matters of future
observation in a second ordeal; for the first emotion which the incident
imparted was the feeling that it would happen again, and in this return
would interpret itself. Hewson was so strongly persuaded of something
of the kind, that after standing for an indefinite period at the window in
his pajamas, he got hardily back into bed, and waited for the repetition.
He was agreeably aware of waiting without a tremor, and rather eagerly
than otherwise; then he began to feel drowsy, and this at first flattered
him, as a proof of his strange courage in circumstances which would
have rendered sleep impossible to most men; but in another moment he
started from it. If he slept every one would say he had dreamt the whole
thing; and he could never himself be quite sure that he had not.
He got up, and began to dress, thinking all the time, in a dim way, how
very long it would be till breakfast, and wondering what he should do
till then with his appetite and his apparition. It was now only a little
after four o'clock of the June morning, and nobody would be down till
after eight; most people at that very movable feast, which St. John had
in the English fashion, did not show themselves before nine. It was
impossible to get a book and read for five hours; he would be dropping
with hunger if he walked so long. Yet he must not sleep; and he must
do something to keep from sleeping. He remembered a little interloping
hotel, which had lately forced its way into precincts sacred to cottage
life, and had impudently called itself the St. Johnswort Inn, after St.
John's place, by a name which he prided himself on having poetically
invented from his own and that of a prevalent wild flower. Upon the
chance of getting an early cup of coffee at this hotel, Hewson finished
dressing, and crept down stairs to let himself out of the house.
He not only found the door locked, as he had expected, but the key
taken out; and after some misgiving he decided to lift one of the long
library windows, from which he could get into the garden, closing the
window after him, and so make his escape. No one was stirring outside
the house any more than within; he knocked down a trellis by which a
clematis was trying to climb over the window he emerged from, and
found his way out of the grounds without alarming any one. He was not
so successful at the hotel, where a lank boy, sweeping the long piazzas,
recognized one of the St. Johnswort guests in the figure approaching
the steps, and apparently had his worst fears roused for Hewson's sanity

when Hewson called to him and wondered if he could get a cup of
coffee at that hour; he openly owned it was an unnatural hour, and he
had a fine inward sense that it was supernatural. The boy dropped his
broom without a word, and vanished through the office door,
reappearing after a blank interval to pick up his broom and say, "I guess
so," as he began sweeping again. It was well, for one reason that he did
not state his belief too confidently, Hewson thought; but after another
interval of unknown length a rude, sad girl came to tell him his coffee
was waiting for him. He followed her back into the still dishevelled
dining room, and sat down at a long table to a cup of lukewarm drink
that in color and quality recalled terrible mornings of Atlantic travel
when he haplessly rose and descended to the dining-saloon of the
steamer, and had a marine version of British coffee brought him by an
alien table-steward.
He remembered the pock-marked nose of one alien steward, and how
he had questioned whether he should give the fellow six-pence or a
shilling, seeing that apart from this tribute he should have to fee his
own steward for the voyage; at the same time his fancy played with the
question whether that uncouth, melancholy waitress had found a
moment to wash her face before hurrying to fetch his coffee. He
amused himself by contrasting her sloven dejection with the brisk
neatness of the service at St. Johnswort; but through all he never lost
the awe, the sense of responsibility which he bore to the vision
vouchsafed him, doubtless for some reason and to some end that it
behooved him to divine.
He found a yesterday's paper in the office of the hotel, and read it till he
began to drowse over it, when he pulled himself up with a sharp jerk.
He discovered that it was now six o'clock, and he thought if