The Fascinating Stranger, and Other StoriesTarkington, Booth
General
The Fascinating Stranger, and Other Stories
Tarkington, Booth
Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
HENRY MILLICK CHESTER, rising early from intermittent slumbers, found
himself the first of the crowded Pullman to make a toilet in the men’s
smoke-and-wash-room, and so had the place to himself—an advantage of
high dramatic value to a person of his age and temperament, on account
of the mirrors which, set at various angles, afford a fine view of the
profile. Henry Millick Chester, scouring cinders and stickiness from his
eyes and rouging his ears with honest friction, enriched himself of this
too unfamiliar opportunity. He smiled and was warmly interested in the
results of his smile in reflection, particularly in some pleasant
alterations it effected upon an outline of the cheek usually invisible
to the bearer. He smiled graciously, then he smiled sardonically. Other
smiles he offered—the tender smile, the forbidding smile, the austere
and the seductive, the haughty and the pleading, the mordant and the
compassionate, the tolerant but incredulous smile of a man of the world,
and the cold, ascetic smile that shows a woman that her shallow soul has
been read all too easily—pastimes abandoned only with the purely
decorative application of shaving lather to his girlish chin. However,
as his unbeetling brow was left unobscured, he was able to pursue his
physiognomical researches and to produce for his continued enlightenment
a versatile repertory of frowns—the stern, the quizzical, the bitter,
the treacherous, the bold, the agonized, the inquisitive, the ducal, and
the frown of the husband who says: “I forgive you. Go!” A few minutes
later Mr. Chester, abruptly pausing in the operation of fastening his
collar, bent a sudden, passionate interest upon his right forearm,
without apparent cause and with the air of never having seen it until
that moment. He clenched his fingers tightly, producing a slight
stringiness above the wrist, then crooked his elbow with intensity,
noting this enormous effect in all the mirrors. Regretfully, he let his
shirtsleeves fall and veil the rare but private beauties just
discovered, rested his left hand negligently upon his hip, extended his
right in a gesture of flawlessly aristocratic grace, and, with a slight
inclination of his head, uttered aloud these simple but befitting words:
“I thank ye, my good people.” T’ yoong Maister was greeting the loyal
tenantry who acclaimed his return to Fielding Manor, a flowered progress
thoroughly incomprehensible to the Pullman porter whose transfixed
eye—glazed upon an old-gold face intruded through the narrow
doorway—Mr. Chester encountered in the glass above the nickeled
washbasins. The Libyan withdrew in a cloud of silence, and t’ yoong
Maister, flushing somewhat, resumed his toilet with annoyed precision
and no more embroidery. He had yesterday completed his sophomore year;
the brushes he applied to his now adult locks were those of a junior.
And with a man’s age had come a man’s cares and responsibilities.
Several long years had rolled away since for the last time he had made
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