Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/147

Rh player, an enthusiastic hunter and fisherman, and a conscientious punisher of booze. His poems were exquisite, but he concealed the side of him that produced them as though it were a vice. The fact that he was large, burly, and redfaced helped him in this. Gordon Carlson would have resented being called a poet as he would have resented an epithet. He was sick and tired of poets, and he did everything he could think of in the way of rude, rough coarse things to prove that he did not belong to that breed. In the long run it spoiled his hand and greatly limited his output, which was a tremendous pity.

Kenneth fell under Mrs. Carlson's eye at one of the Fremont hops, and made an impression.

"The young Keats!" she murmured to Mrs. Iredell, her right bower. "We must have him with us!"

So Kenneth received his invitation and in due time presented himself, correctly attired, at the Carlson door.

He began to be awed at once. The whole place was dim. You could hardly see anything. There were queer paintings, and very dark, carved woodwork, and vases on wabbly pillars, and a faint aromatic smell as of incense. Mrs. Carlson swayed to meet him. Her black hair was parted smoothly in the middle and the braids wound around her head crown-wise—a sufficient departure from the universal choice between a square "bang" and a friz; earrings of jade almost touched her shoulder; her gown was of black and fitted closely, in defiance of the fashion. To display a plat-white skin it was cut very low, and yet the impression of Mrs. Carlson's figure was such that one felt it could have gone even lower without much damage. She addressed Kenneth in a low, deep, rich voice several tones below a contralto.

"I am so glad that you could come," she told him. She turned at once to the dim shadows. "I want you to meet the members of our little group. And to you, dear friends, I have brought the embodiment of the Spirit of Youth, the hyacinthine boy! Mrs. Iredell, may I present Mr. Boyd."

Kenneth very awkard [sic], much embarrassed, bowed toward the fussy, fat, severe looking little woman.

"And Mr. Oliver Iredell." She turned to Kenneth in an