True to his code, he then feared that he had spoken with insufficient mediocrity, and blushed. A small circular patch of red, like a rose, appeared high up on either cheek, suddenly bringing the rest of his face into competition with his vivid lips.
“You are wrong about the twopence,” said the gardener, “I have three halfpence.”
“Come and see my Red Place,” said Mr. Rust. “That is, if you’re not bored.”
Boredom and the gardener were strangers. One can never be bored if one is always busy creating oneself with all the range of humanity as model.
“This is an hotel,” said the owner, as they approached the door. “It is my hotel, and it promised to make my fortune. So far it has confined itself to costing a fortune. When I remind it of its promise it puts its tongue in its cheek—what?”
The northern side of the Red Place was quite different in character from the side which first smiled on the gardener. This was because one essential detail was lacking—the heather. Fire had passed over the little space at some recent date in its sleepy history, and had left it sinister. Tortured roots and branches appealed from the black ground to a blue heaven. The surrounding pine trees, with their feet charred and blistered, and their higher limbs still fiercely red, still looked like flames now turned into pillars of delight in answer to the prayer of the beseeching heather.
“Is there anybody in your hotel?” asked the gardener, smoothing his hair hopefully—the young man’s invariable prelude to romance.
“Nobody, except the gods,” replied the host. “We sit here waiting, the divine and I. There is a blessing on the place, and I intend to make money out of it. You can see for yourself how wonderfully good it is. If people knew of the peace and the delight.... The table is excellent too—I am the chef as well as the proprietor. Our terms are most moderate.”
“All the same you need advertisement,” said the gardener, who, in unguarded moments, was more modern than he knew. “I can imagine most sensational advertising of a place with such a pronounced blessing on it. Buy up the front page of the Daily Mail, and let’s compose a series of splashes.”
“I am penniless,” began Mr. Rust dramatically, and interrupted himself. “A slight tendency towards financial inadequacy—what?”