Questionable Shapes | Page 4

said, "Poor Mr. Hewson!" when the host, failing Hewson's confession,
went on to betray that he had risen at that unearthly hour to go down to
the St. Johnswort Inn for a cup of its famous coffee. The coffee turned
out to be the greatest kind of joke; one of the men asked Hewson if he
could say on his honor that it was really any better than St. John's
coffee there before them, and another professed to be in a secret more
recondite than had yet been divined: it was that long grim girl, who
served it; she had lured Hewson from his rest at five o'clock in the
morning; and this humorist proposed a Welsh rarebit some night at the
inn, where they could all see for themselves why Hewson broke out of
the house and smashed a trellis before sunrise.
Hewson sat silent, not even attempting a defensive sally. In fact it was
only his surface mind which was employed with what was going on; as

before, his deeper thought was again absorbed with his great experience.
He could not, if his conscience had otherwise suffered him, have
spoken of it in that company, and the laughter died away from his
silence as if it had been his offence. He was not offended, but he was
ashamed, and not ashamed so much for St. John as for himself, that he
could have ever imagined acquiring merit in such company by
exploiting an experience which should have been sacred to him. How
could he have been so shabby? He was justly punished in the
humiliating contrast between being the butt of these poor wits, and the
hero of an incident which, whatever its real quality was, had an august
character of mystery. He had recognized this from the first instant; he
had perceived that the occurrence was for him, and for him alone, until
he had reasoned some probable meaning into it or from it; and yet he
had been willing, he saw it, he owned it! to win the applause of that
crowd as a man who had just seen a ghost.
He thought of them as that crowd, but after all, they were good-natured
people, and when they fancied that he was somehow vexed with the
turn the talk had taken, they began to speak of other things; St. John
himself led the way, and when he got Hewson alone after breakfast, he
made him a sort of amend. "I didn't mean to annoy you, old fellow," he
said, "with my story about the burglary."
"Oh, that's all right," Hewson brisked up in response, as he took the
cigar St. John offered him. "I'm afraid I must have seemed rather stupid.
I had got to thinking about something else, and I couldn't pull myself
away from it. I wasn't annoyed at all."
Whether St. John thought this sufficient gratitude for his reparation did
not appear. As Hewson did not offer to break the silence in which they
went on smoking, his host made a pretext, toward the end of their
cigars, after bearing the burden of the conversation apparently as long
as he could, of being reminded of something by the group of women
descending into the garden from the terraced walk beyond it and then
slowly, with little pauses, trailing their summer draperies among the
flower-beds and bushes toward the house.
"Oh, by-the-way," he said, "I should like to introduce you to Miss
Hernshaw; she came last night with Mrs. Rock: that tall girl, there,
lagging behind a little. She's an original."
"I noticed her at breakfast," Hewson answered, now first aware of

having been struck with the strange beauty and strange behavior of the
slim girl, who drooped in her chair, with her little head fallen forward,
and played with her bread, ignoring her food otherwise, while she
listened with a bored air to the talk which made Hewson its prey. She
had an effect of being both shy and indifferent, in this retrospect; and
when St. John put up the window, and led the way out to the women in
the garden, and presented Hewson, she had still this effect. She did not
smile or speak in acknowledgement of Hewson's bow; she merely
looked at him with a sort of swift intensity, and then, when one of the
women said, "We were coming to view the scene of your burglarious
exploit, Mr. Hewson. Was that the very window?" the girl looked
impatiently away.
"The very window," Hewson owned. "You wouldn't know it. St. John
has had the trellis put up and the spot fresh turfed," and he detached the
interlocutory widow in the direction of their bachelor host, as she
perhaps intended he should, and dropped back to the side of Miss
Hernshaw.
She was