Myron's balance-sheet for January twenty-seventh to February twenty-seventh, scrupulously mailed to the New York office on February twenty-eighth, showed only a slight loss in operation, and the number of guests had increased from the eighty-seven who had been left two days after he had taken charge to one hundred and twenty-three. He had retained the address of every prosperous-looking guest whom he had known at the Pierre Ronsard, along with the addresses of most of the 'better-class'--i.e., richer--guests whom he had met in New Haven. To all of these he had written about the glories of swimming at Pontevedra Island beach and playing tennis among the palms what time the north was paralysed with snow. He had written also to his new acquaintances in the hotels he had explored on his way south. These letters he dictated to a young stenographer whose salary he was paying from his own pocket till he should be able to judge of the wisdom of his experiment.
Myron was certainly one of the first hotel managers in America to write personal letters, curiously frank and not too hand-rubbingly cordial, to possible guests. Perhaps he was the very first.
The chary world gives credit to Homer and Hippocrates and Gutenberg and the Wright Brothers and Edison and Ivy Lee, inventor of government by propaganda, but no one remembers the originators of really important details of life--the discoverers of fire and coffee and the wheel, the inventors of the pocket handkerchief and cigarettes, the innovators who first discovered that man can sleep from midnight till eight instead of from six to two, or the creators, like Myron, of the first enticing and flattering sales-letters.
His report sent out March twenty-eighth--next to the last for the year, as the Lodge closed on April fifteenth--showed a small profit, the first in a year and a half; it would provide about two per cent on the investment, which was about twelve per cent more than Fred Barrow had been able to earn in the two years since he had taken to the amusing hobby of collecting jags.
But before that end-of-March report went to New York Ora Weagle had descended upon Tippecanoe Lodge.
Ora walked in as casually as though he had seen Myron yesterday, not a year and a quarter before. Myron, arranging a picnic for half a dozen guests, gaped over their heads at his brother. Ora was shabby, not much shaved, and his hair saw-edged in front of his ears. He swayed as though he were half-drunk even now, at nine in the morning and just off the train. But he waved at Myron most airily, he shouted, 'No hurry, kid', and slouched over to a chair, in which he promptly went to sleep.
When Myron woke him, Ora peered up blearily, shivered into wakefulness, and croaked, 'Oh, Oh, hello, Myron. How about some breakfast? Haven't had anything to eat for two days. And a drink!'
'You haven't lacked that for two days!' complained Myron, sniffing.
'Oh no; I don't want to be a fanatic--carry things too far! Well, hello! Touching picture of reunion of two loving brothers! I got sick of New York--remember I wrote you from there? Damn cold and sleety. Thought I'd come to see this celebrated land of romance, if you can put me up awhile? Could you--conveniently?'
Ora had ended his speech with less hint of jeering than usual, and Myron roused to cry affectionately, 'Why, sure! I'll give you the best room in the house! Tickled to death you could come down here. Seen so blame little of you, recent years. Like a bath? Then I'll have some breakfast sent right up to you, or you can come down, as you prefer. We have some beautiful sun-ripened oranges--don't get 'em like that up in your lousy frozen north!'
'And the drink?'
'Well--if you want one.'
With a bath, a large breakfast--of which Ora was able to endure only orange and coffee and one finger of toast--a private bottle of Scotch, a jar of dusky roses, and a large dim room with a balcony from which he could look across hammock-land to Pontevedra Inlet, Ora felt reorganized, and when Myron came up to the room, he sniggered, 'Well, I suppose the Big Boss, the manager here, will bawl you out, you poor white-collar office slave, for sticking your insignificant brother in the bridal suite! Huh! Hack-writing may not pay so much, but it certainly leaves me independent of grouchy bosses!'
'I'm the boss myself.'
'Huh?'
'I'm manager here now, manager-in-chief.'
'The hell you are! Manager.' Ora reeked with contemptuous laughter. 'Well, I told you so, long ago--in New Haven, I guess it was. I told you you were a regular Horatio Alger Rags-to-Riches hero. Sure, the real climber! Industrious. Cautious. Never taking a chance--or taking a drink with a man who wouldn't be useful to you! Typical American fiction-hero; the edifying young moucher! Kiss the boss's hand and keep sober and write a nice Spencerian hand, and you'll be able to marry the Old Man's daughter and grow a fat belly and be a complete success, while the poor, lazy, irreverent sap of a poet is a failure in the gutter.' Ora had a drink--another drink. He was rolling it on his tongue and thinking up a new dunciad when Myron plunged.
'I get the idea, Ora. Let's admit I'm a dull plodder, and you're a winged genius . . .'
'My God, Myron Weagle, you've been trying to hatch a vocabulary! You're lucky, you night-clerks that can sit up and have a chance to read while I'm trying to pound out Wild West stories! You'll talk like a regular little gent, if you keep on!'
'Will you shut up?' Ora stared at this new, unapologetic brother. 'It's quite true that you have imagination or ingenuity or whatever it is, and I haven't much. But I'm good and sick and tired of your sneering, Ora. I am what I am--and then some! I'm glad you're here, and I thought your story in Yankee Doodle was a swell yarn, as I wrote you, but I haven't done so badly and I know it and I don't want any more would-be funny lip--or any more of your getting drunk in the morning like this--at ten o'clock, and you a boy of only--let's see, you're only twenty-three. Think of it! I'll try to give you a good time here, but I don't want any more of your being cute. Savvy?'
'Oh yes--yes--sure--I was just trying to be funny. Really, I'm awfully obliged to you. Ora, my son, your skit is a frost. Go choke yourself,' said Ora with a demure smile which suddenly changed him from a haggard wastrel into a charming boy.
They went fishing together, next day.
Ora was a more talented fisherman than Myron. He had been trained by Tom Weagle, with a book of verses underneath the boughs of Housatonic willows, and jug of applejack.
The day after that Ora saw Tansy Quill.
She was bustling down a corridor, fresh in a new linen uniform, inspecting rooms. The pile of towels on her arm did not seem menial, for they were of the shining new linen which Myron had purchased to replace the wormy old towels provided by Fred Barrow.
'Lord, what a picture! Swell-looking dinge. Who is she?' Ora demanded of Myron.
'Assistant housekeeper--Miss Quill, Miss Tansy Quill.'
'Introduce me!'
'I will not! You keep away from Tansy!'
But that night Myron saw his brother ambling through the grounds with Tansy, and heard from him, from a distance, wailing '. . . yes, a hard-working poet, just an impractical poet . . .' and '. . . agree with you; old Myron, the finest, keenest mind I've ever . . .'