FORGET who the clever, ugly Frenchman was who asked only ten minutes' start of the handsomest man in Europe. I believe that Archibold Cameron would have been quicker; I believe that he would have done with six minutes. I saw him hypnotize a dinner party in about so much. He slid into the room where we stood assembled, waiting for him, half apologetically, half respectfully, as if he knew himself inadequate to look at, but as if he did not want to come to begin with, and it was none of our business if he was long and drooping and weather-beaten and his clothes needed pressing. With blue eyes dropped, with a sun-faded mustache and a British air of saying "Tell me what you think and I'll disagree with you," he made a rapid bow to each one of us and was silent and defied us.
Mrs. McDonald, our hostess, had talked much of this war-correspondent Scotch friend who had been into hot water all over the world, wherever hot water and hot blood were spilling; I felt a chill of disappointment at sight of the hero. But Mrs. McDonald knew her affair. We went directly out to dinner; the resentful one did not lift a finger to conciliate or amuse us and in five minutes no one at the table willingly talked to anyone but him. So does personality triumph over manner, the big thing that a man is over the small things that he does. In less than half an hour we all knew that this stranger who was cheerfully at ease in an uncanny Tartar camp or a fierce African village, was afraid of us. Incredibly, absurdly, he was shy; almost as incredibly his shyness was a force that made for instant popularity. In much less than half an hour we all meant, earnestly, to give him a good time, and meanwhile he gave us one, for forgetting himself, he talked like a fairy story. He told us in a commonplace, choppy way, in the loveliest pure voice, in burring Scottish speech, of things which one reads, without a twinge of realizing,—and we lived them as he told. He talked casually about elephant shooting on the Zambesi; he spun a merry tale of pig-sticking with a lady whose hair came down and who rolled off her pony and would not let him stop to pick her up,—and we felt a glow of comradeship with that plucky woman. Then he made us laugh as if at an episode of the Bowery, over a life-and-death stampede he had done on a lame horse out of a Thibet stronghold. It was the gossip of his life he was talking to us, only Mr. Cameron's gossip was of the caliber of history. And in and out of his vibrant voice shot magnetism—the unexplainable quality which may let all other gifts have cards and spades, and win the game. And the argument to this long preamble is only that we listened with all our ears to whatever he said.
He said much, for he liked to be killed, as other people, yet at times the absurd shyness seized him, and he flashed down the line of faces a startled glance, and then his eyes dulled and dropped and he fell silent. And with that we must provoke the lion's roar again. It was part of his charm, it added an attraction to the appealing blue glance to know that at any second it might be frosted. I half coaxed him, half prodded him through such a spasm of uncertainty, sitting sidewise in my chair to look at him—I was placed next—when the Japanese butler bent with a tray at his left hand and Mr. Cameron did not see it. I stopped to call his attention, and he turned, and then instead of taking a squab he threw back his head and flashed up a smile at the little dark man and slid off a sentence of queer sounds. The butler stood as if petrified; his masklike face twisted and he answered with a low syllable and was gone.
"What did you say?" I asked.
"I merely told him, don't you know, that they were making heroes of stuff like him out in Japan," he answered, and fell to at his salad.
"Merely!" I said. "Merely a bomb. Those little fellows are inflammable as tow, they say. You'll be owing Mrs. McDonald a butler."
"Dear me—I hope not."
And then some one spoke to him from the other end of the table, and much too soon the dinner was over, and next day the quiet hero of many adventures was gone, no one knew to what hidden corner of the world.
Two years later, in December, 1900, Mrs. McDonald called me up on the telephone.
"Something good is going to happen," she said. "Archie Cameron is coming Thursday but for only one night. He's just from China. He was in the Boxer trouble and got into Pekin with the allied armies last summer. He was awfully ill—but I'll let him tell you the rest. Will you come to dinner? He's sure to ask for you—he always does in his letters."
"You don't need to flatter me," I hurriedly threw down the wire. "I'll come without urging—you couldn't keep me away."