“Quite alone.”
“All right, for I have no coat but this one;” and he looked down at the coarse sleeve as he spoke, with a strange and sad smile, and then waving his band in token of farewell, he said, “I 'll join you in half an hour,” and disappeared up the lane.
I have already owned that I did not like this man; he had a certain short abrupt way that repelled me at every moment. When he differed in opinion with me, he was not satisfied to record his dissent, but he must set about demolishing my conviction, and this sort of intolerance pervaded all he said. There was, too, that business-like practical tone about him that jars fearfully on the sensitive fibre of the idler's nature.
It was exactly in proportion as his society was distasteful to me, that I felt a species of pride in associating with him, as though to say, “I am not one of those who must be fawned on and flattered. I am of a healthier and manlier stamp; I can afford to hear my judgments arraigned, and my opinions opposed.” And in this humor I ascended the stairs of the hotel, and entered the room where our table was already laid out.
To compensate, as far as they could, for the rude reception of the day before, they had given me now the “grand apartment” of the inn, which, by a long balcony, looked over the lake, and that fine mountain range that leads to the Splugen pass. A beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers ornamented the centre of the small dinner-table, tastily decked with Bohemian glass, and napkins with lace borders. I rather liked this little display of elegance. It was a sort of ally on my side against the utilitarian plainness of my guest. As I walked up and down the room, awaiting his arrival, I could not help a sigh, and a very deep one too, over the thought of what had been my enjoyment that moment if my guest had been one of a different temperament,—a man willing to take me on my own showing, and ready to accept any version I should like to give of myself. How gracefully, how charmingly I could have played the host to such a man! What vigor would it have imparted to my imagination, what brilliancy to my fancy! With what a princely grace might I have dispensed my hospitalities, as though such occasions were the daily habit of my life; whereas a dinner with Harpar would be nothing more or less than an airing with a “Slave in the chariot,”—a perpetual reminder, like the face of a poor relation, that my lot was cast in an humble sphere, and it was no use trying to disguise it.
“What's all this for?” said Harpar's harsh voice, as he entered the room. “Why did n't you order our mutton-chop below stairs in the common room, and not a banquet in this fashion? You must be well aware I could n't do this sort of thing by you. Why, then, have you attempted it with me?”
“I have always thought it was a host's prerogative,” said I, meekly, “to be the arbiter of his own entertainment.”
“So it might where he is the arbiter of his purse; but you know well enough neither you nor I have any pretension to these costly ways, and they have this disadvantage, that they make all intercourse stilted and unnatural. If you and I had to sit down to table, dressed in court suits, with wigs and bags, ain't it likely we'd be easy and cordial together? Well, this is precisely the same.”
“I am really sorry,” said I, with a forced appearance of courtesy, “to have incurred so severe a lesson, but you must allow me this one trangression before I begin to profit by it.” And so saying, I rang the bell and ordered dinner.
Harpar made no reply, but walked the room, with his hands deep in his pockets, humming a tune to himself as he went.