A Fortnight of Folly
BY
MAURICE THOMPSON
AUTHOR OF
“Alice of Old Vincennes,” “A Banker of Bankersville,” etc.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1888
By THE ALDEN PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyright, 1902
By STREET & SMITH
A Fortnight of Folly
CONTENTS
- A FORTNIGHT OF FOLLY.
- THE TALE OF A SCULPTOR, by HUGH CONWAY
- CARRISTON’S GIFT.
A FORTNIGHT OF
FOLLY.
I.
The Hotel Helicon stood on a great rockpromontory that jutted far out into a sea of airwhose currents and eddies filled a wide, wild valleyin the midst of our southern mountain region.It was a new hotel, built by a Cincinnatiman who founded his fortune in natural gasspeculations, and who had conceived the brightthought of making the house famous at thestart by a stroke of rare liberality.
Viewing the large building from any favorablepoint in the valley, it looked like a huge white birdsitting with outstretched wings on the gray rockfar up against the tender blue sky. All aroundit the forests were thick and green, the ravinesdeep and gloomy and the rocks tumbled intofantastic heaps. When you reached it, whichwas 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 massof jig-saw fancies and whose windows glared atyou between wide open green Venetian shutters.Everything look new, almost raw, from the stumpsof fresh-cut trees on the lawn and the rope swingsand long benches, upon which the paint wasscarcely dry, to the resonant floor of the spacioushalls and the cedar-fragrant hand-rail of thestairway.
There were springs among the rocks. Herethe water trickled out with a red gleam of ironoxide, there it sparkled with an excess of carbonicacid, and yonder it bubbled up all themore limpid and clear on account of the offensivesulphuretted hydrogen it was bringing forth.Masses of fern, great cushions of cool moss andtangles of blooming shrubs and vines fringedthe sides of the little ravines down which thespring-streams sang their way to the silverthread of a river in the valley.
It was altogether a dizzy perch, a strange, inconvenient,out-of-the-way spot for a summerhotel. You reached it all out of breath, confusedas to the points of the compass and disappointed,in every sense of the word, withwhat at first glance struck you as a colossalpretense, empty, raw, vulgar, loud—a greattrap into which you had been inveigled by aneloquent hand-bill! Hotel Helicon, as a namefor the place, was considered a happy one. Ithad come to the proprietor, as if in a dream, oneday as he sat smoking. He slapped his thighwith his hand and sprang to his feet. The wordthat went so smoothly with hotel, as he fancied,had no special meaning in his mind, for th