I have never been able to recall the precise moment the next morning when I began to feel a strange disquietude but the opening hours of the day were marked by a series of occurrences slight in themselves yet so cumulatively ominous that they seemed to lower above me like a cloud of menace.
Looking from my window, shortly after the rising hour, I observed a paper boy pass through the street, whistling a popular melody as he ran up to toss folded journals into doorways. Something I cannot explain went through me even then; some premonition of disaster slinking furtively under my casual reflection that even in this remote wild the public press was not unknown.
Half an hour later the telephone rang in a lower room and I heard Mrs. Effie speak in answer. An unusual note in her voice caused me to listen more attentively. I stepped outside my door. To some one she was expressing amazement, doubt, and quick impatience which seemed to culminate, after she had again, listened, in a piercing cry of consternation. The term is not too strong. Evidently by the unknown speaker she had been first puzzled, then startled, then horrified; and now, as her anguished cry still rang in my ears, that snaky premonition of evil again writhed across my consciousness.
Presently I heard the front door open and close. Peering into the hallway below I saw that she had secured the newspaper I had seen dropped. Her own door now closed upon her. I waited, listening intently. Something told me that the incident was not closed. A brief interval elapsed and she was again at the telephone, excitedly demanding to be put through to a number.
“Come at once!” I heard her cry. “It’s unspeakable! There isn’t a moment to lose! Come as you are!” Hereupon, banging the receiver into its place with frenzied roughness, she ran halfway up the stairs to shout:
“Egbert Floud! Egbert Floud! You march right down here this minute, sir!”
From his room I heard an alarmed response, and a moment later knew that he had joined her. The door closed upon them, but high words reached me. Mostly the words of Mrs. Effie they were, though I could detect muffled retorts from the other. Wondering what this could portend, I noted from my window some ten minutes later the hurried arrival of the C. Belknap-Jacksons. The husband clenched a crumpled newspaper in one hand and both he and his wife betrayed signs to the trained eye of having performed hasty toilets for this early call.
As the door of the drawing-room closed upon them there ensued a terrific outburst carrying a rich general effect of astounded rage. Some moments the sinister chorus continued, then a door sharply opened and I heard my own name cried out by Mrs. Effie in a tone that caused me to shudder. Rapidly descending the stairs, I entered the room to face the excited group. Cousin Egbert crouched on a sofa in a far corner like a hunted beast, but the others were standing, and all glared at me furiously.
The ladies addressed me simultaneously, one of them, I believe, asking me what I meant by it and the other demanding how dared I, which had the sole effect of adding to my bewilderment, nor did the words of Cousin Egbert diminish this.
“Hello, Bill!” he called, adding with a sort of timid bravado: “Don’t you let ‘em bluff you, not for a minute!”
“Yes, and it was probably all that wretched Cousin Egbert’s fault in the first place,” snapped Mrs. Belknap-Jackson almost tearfully.
“Say, listen here, now; I don’t see as how I’ve done anything wrong,” he feebly protested. “Bill’s human, ain’t he? Answer me that!”
“One sees it all!” This from Belknap-Jackson in bitter and judicial tones. He flung out his hands at Cousin Egbert in a gesture of pitiless scorn. “I dare say,” he continued, “that poor Ruggles was merely a tool in his hands—weak, possibly, but not vicious.”
“May I inquire——” I made bold to begin, but Mrs. Effie shut me off, brandishing the newspaper before me.
“Read it!” she commanded in hoarse, tragic tones. “There!” she added, pointing at monstrous black headlines on the page as I weakly took it from her. And then I saw. There before them, divining now the enormity of what had come to pass, I controlled myself to master the following screed:
RED GAP’S DISTINGUISHED VISITORColonel Marmaduke Ruggles of London and Paris, late of theBritish army, bon-vivant and man of the world, is in our midstfor an indefinite stay, being at present the honoured houseguest of Senator and Mrs. James Knox Floud, who returned fromforeign parts on the 5:16 flyer yesterday afternoon. ColonelRuggles has long been intimately associated with the familyof his lordship the Earl of Brinstead, and especially withhis lordship’s brother, the Honourable George AugustusVane-Basingwell, with whom he has recently been sojourningin la belle France. In a brief interview which the Colonelgenially accorded ye scribe, he expressed himself as delightedwith our thriving little city.“It’s somewhat a town—if I’ve caught your American slang,”he said with a merry twinkle in his eyes. “You have the gardenspot of the West, if not of the civilized world, and yourpeople display a charm that must be, I dare say, typicallyAmerican. Altogether, I am enchanted with the wonders I havebeheld since landing at your New York, particularly with thehabit your best people have of roughing it in camps like thatof Mr. C. Belknap-Jackson among the mountains of New York, whereI was most pleasantly entertained by himself and his delightfulwife. The length of my stay among you is uncertain, though Ihave been pressed by the Flouds, with whom I am stopping, andby the C. Belknap-Jacksons to prolong it indefinitely, and infact to identify myself to an extent with your social life.”The Colonel is a man of distinguished appearance, with theseasoned bearing of an old campaigner, and though at momentshe displays that cool reserve so typical of the Englishgentleman, evidence was not lacking last evening that he canunbend on occasion. At the lawn fête held in the spaciousgrounds of Judge Ballard, where a myriad Japanese lanternsmade the scene a veritable fairyland, he was quite the mostsought-after notable present, and gayly tripped the lightfantastic toe with the élite of Red Gap’s smart set thereassembled.From his cordial manner of entering into the spirit of theaffair we predict that Colonel Ruggles will be a decidedacquisition to our social life, and we understand that aseries of recherché entertainments in his honour has alreadybeen planned by Mrs. County Judge Ballard, who took thedistinguished guest under her wing the moment he appearedlast evening. Welcome to our city, Colonel! And may the warmhearts of Red Gap cause you to forget that European world offashion of which you have long been so distinguished anornament!
In a sickening silence I finished the thing. As the absurd sheet fell from my nerveless fingers Mrs. Effie cried in a voice hoarse with emotion:
“Do you realize the dreadful thing you’ve done to us?”
Speechless I was with humiliation, unequal even to protesting that I had said nothing of the sort to the press-chap. I mean to say, he had wretchedly twisted my harmless words.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” demanded Mrs. Belknap-Jackson, also in a voice hoarse with emotion. I glanced at her husband. He, too, was pale with anger and trembling, so that I fancied he dared not trust himself to speak.
“The wretched man,” declared Mrs. Effie, addressing them all, “simply can’t realize—how disgraceful it is. Oh, we shall never be able to live it down!”
“Imagine those flippant Spokane sheets dressing up the thing,” hissed Belknap-Jackson, speaking for the first time. “Imagine their blackguardly humour!”
“And that awful Cousin Egbert,” broke in Mrs. Effie, pointing a desperate finger toward him. “Think of the laughing-stock he’ll become! Why, he’ll simply never be able to hold up his head again.”
“Say, you listen here,” exclaimed Cousin Egbert with sudden heat; “never you mind about my head. I always been able to hold up my head any time I felt like it.” And again to me he threw out, “Don’t you let ‘em bluff you, Bill!”
“I gave him a notice for the paper,” explained Mrs. Effie plaintively; “I’d written it all nicely out to save them time in the office, and that would have prevented this disgrace, but he never gave it in.”
“I clean forgot it,” declared the offender. “What with one thing and another, and gassing back and forth with some o’ the boys, it kind of went out o’ my head.”
“Meeting our best people—actually dancing with them!” murmured Mrs. Belknap-Jackson in a voice vibrant with horror. “My dear, I truly am so sorry for you.”
“You people entertained him delightfully at your camp,” murmured Mrs. Effie quickly in her turn, with a gesture toward the journal.
“Oh, we’re both in it, I know. I know. It’s appalling!”
“We’ll never be able to live it down!” said Mrs. Effie. “We shall have to go away somewhere.”
“Can’t you imagine what Jen’ Ballard will say when she learns the truth?” asked the other bitterly. “Say we did it on purpose to humiliate her, and just as all our little scraps were being smoothed out, so we could get together and put that Bohemian set in its place. Oh, it’s so dreadful!” On the verge of tears she seemed.
“And scarcely a word mentioned of our own return—when I’d taken such pains with the notice!”
“Listen here!” said Cousin Egbert brightly. “I’ll take the piece down now and he can print it in his paper for you to-morrow.”
“You can’t understand,” she replied impatiently. “I casually mentioned our having brought an English manservant. Print that now and insult all our best people who received him!”
“Pathetic how little the poor chap understands,” sighed Belknap-Jackson. “No sense at all of our plight—naturally, naturally!”
“‘A series of entertainments being planned in his honour!’” quavered Mrs. Belknap-Jackson.
“‘The most sought-after notable present!’” echoed Mrs. Effie viciously.
Again and again I had essayed to protest my innocence, only to provoke renewed outbursts. I could but stand there with what dignity I retained and let them savage me. Cousin Egbert now spoke again:
“Shucks! What’s all the fuss? Just because I took Bill out and give him a good time! Didn’t you say yourself in that there very piece that he’d impart to coming functions an air of smartiness like they have all over Europe? Didn’t you write them very words? And ain’t he already done it the very first night he gets here, right at that there lawn-feet where I took him? What for do you jump on me then? I took him and he done it; he done it good. Bill’s a born mixer. Why, he had all them North Side society dames stung the minute I flashed him; after him quicker than hell could scorch a feather; run out from under their hats to get introduced to him—and now you all turn on me like a passel of starved wolves.” He finished with a note of genuine irritation I had never heard in his voice.
“The poor creature’s demented,” remarked Mrs. Belknap-Jackson pityingly.
“Always been that way,” said Mrs. Effie hopelessly.
Belknap-Jackson contented himself with a mere clicking sound of commiseration.
“All right, then, if you’re so smart,” continued Cousin Egbert. “Just the same Bill, here, is the most popular thing in the whole Kulanche Valley this minute, so all I got to say is if you want to play this here society game you better stick close by him. First thing you know, some o’ them other dames’ll have him won from you. That Mis’ Ballard’s going to invite him to supper or dinner or some other doings right away. I heard her say so.”
To my amazement a curious and prolonged silence greeted this amazing tirade. The three at length were regarding each other almost furtively. Belknap-Jackson began to pace the floor in deep thought.
“After all, no one knows except ourselves,” he said in curiously hushed tones at last.
“Of course it’s one way out of a dreadful mess,” observed his wife.
“Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles of the British army,” said Mrs. Effie in a peculiar tone, as if she were trying over a song.
“It may indeed be the best way out of an impossible situation,” continued Belknap-Jackson musingly. “Otherwise we face a social upheaval that might leave us demoralized for years—say nothing of making us a laughingstock with the rabble. In fact, I see nothing else to be done.”
“Cousin Egbert would be sure to spoil it all again,” objected Mrs. Effie, glaring at him.
“No danger,” returned the other with his superior smile. “Being quite unable to realize what has happened, he will be equally unable to realize what is going to happen. We may speak before him as before a babe in arms; the amenities of the situation are forever beyond him.”
“I guess I always been able to hold up my head when I felt like it,” put in Cousin Egbert, now again both sullen and puzzled. Once more he threw out his encouragement to me: “Don’t let ‘em run any bluffs, Bill! They can’t touch you, and they know it.”
“‘Touch him,’” murmured Mrs. Belknap-Jackson with an able sneer. “My dear, what a trial he must have been to you. I never knew. He’s as bad as the mater, actually.”
“And such hopes I had of him in Paris,” replied Mrs. Effie, “when he was taking up Art and dressing for dinner and everything!”
“I can be pushed just so far!” muttered the offender darkly.
There was now a ring at the door which I took the liberty of answering, and received two notes from a messenger. One bore the address of Mrs. Floud and the other was quite astonishingly to myself, the name preceded by “Colonel.”
“That’s Jen’ Ballard’s stationery!” cried Mrs. Belknap-Jackson. “Trust her not to lose one second in getting busy!”
“But he mustn’t answer the door that way,” exclaimed her husband as I handed Mrs. Effie her note.
They were indeed both from my acquaintance of the night before. Receiving permission to read my own, I found it to be a dinner invitation for the following Friday. Mrs. Effie looked up from hers.
“It’s all too true,” she announced grimly. “We’re asked to dinner and she earnestly hopes dear Colonel Ruggles will have made no other engagement. She also says hasn’t he the darlingest English accent. Oh, isn’t it a mess!”
“You see how right I am,” said Belknap-Jackson.
“I guess we’ve got to go through with it,” conceded Mrs. Effie.
“The pushing thing that Ballard woman is!” observed her friend.
“Ruggles!” exclaimed Belknap-Jackson, addressing me with sudden decision.
“Yes, sir.”
“Listen carefully—I’m quite serious. In future you will try to address me as if I were your equal. Ah! rather you will try to address me as if you weremyequal. I dare say it will come to you easily after a bit of practice. Your employers will wish you to address them in the same manner. You will cultivate toward us a manner of easy friendliness—remember I’m entirely serious—quite as if you were one of us. You must try to be, in short, the Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles that wretched penny-a-liner has foisted upon these innocent people. We shall thus avert a most humiliating contretemps.”
The thing fair staggered me. I fell weakly into the chair by which I had stood, for the first time in a not uneventful career feeling that mysavoir fairehad been overtaxed.
“Quite right,” he went on. “Be seated as one of us,” and he amazingly proffered me his cigarette case. “Do take one, old chap,” he insisted as I weakly waved it away, and against my will I did so. “Dare say you’ll fancy them—a non-throat cigarette especially prescribed for me.” He now held a match so that I was obliged to smoke. Never have I been in less humour for it.
“There, not so hard, is it? You see, we’re getting on famously.”
“Ain’t I always said Bill was a good mixer?” called Cousin Egbert, but his gaucherie was pointedly ignored.
“Now,” continued Belknap-Jackson, “suppose you tell us in a chatty, friendly way just what you think about this regrettable affair.” All sat forward interestedly.
“But I met what I supposed were your villagers,” I said; “your small tradesmen, your artisans, clerks, shop-assistants, tenant-farmers, and the like, I’d no idea in the world they were your county families. Seemed quite a bit too jolly for that. And your press-chap—preposterous, quite! He quizzed me rather, I admit, but he made it vastly different. Your pressmen are remarkable. That thing is a fair crumpler.”
“But surely,” put in Mrs. Effie, “you could see that Mrs. Judge Ballard must be one of our best people.”
“I saw she was a goodish sort,” I explained, “but it never occurred to me one would meet her in your best houses. And when she spoke of entertaining me I fancied I might stroll by her cottage some fair day and be asked in to a slice from one of her own loaves and a dish of tea. There was that about her.”
“Mercy!” exclaimed both ladies, Mrs. Belknap-Jackson adding a bit maliciously I thought, “Oh, don’t you awfully wish she could hear him say it just that way?”
“As to the title,” I continued, “Mr. Egbert has from the first had a curious American tendency to present me to his many friends as ‘Colonel.’ I am sure he means as little by it as when he calls me ‘Bill,’ which I have often reminded him is not a name of mine.”
“Oh, we understand the poor chap is a social incompetent,” said Belknap-Jackson with a despairing shrug.
“Say, look here,” suddenly exclaimed Cousin Egbert, a new heat in his tone, “what I call Bill ain’t a marker to what I call you when I really get going. You ought to hear me some day when I’m feeling right!”
“Really!” exclaimed the other with elaborate sarcasm.
“Yes, sir. Surest thing you know. I could call you a lot of good things right now if so many ladies wasn’t around. You don’t think I’d be afraid, do you? Why, Bill there had you licked with one wallop.”
“But really, really!” protested the other with a helpless shrug to the ladies, who were gasping with dismay.
“You ruffian!” cried his wife.
“Egbert Floud,” said Mrs. Effie fiercely, “you will apologize to Charles before you leave this room. The idea of forgetting yourself that way. Apologize at once!”
“Oh, very well,” he grumbled, “I apologize like I’m made to.” But he added quickly with even more irritation, “only don’t you get the idea it’s because I’m afraid of you.”
“Tush, tush!” said Belknap-Jackson.
“No, sir; I apologize, but it ain’t for one minute because I’m afraid of you.”
“Your bare apology is ample; I’m bound to accept it,” replied the other, a bit uneasily I thought.
“Come right down to it,” continued Cousin Egbert, “I ain’t afraid of hardly any person. I can be pushed just so far.” Here he looked significantly at Mrs. Effie.
“After all I’ve tried to do for him!” she moaned. “I thought he had something in him.”
“Darn it all, I like to be friendly with my friends,” he bluntly persisted. “I call a man anything that suits me. And I ain’t ever apologized yet because I was afraid. I want all parties here to get that.”
“Say no more, please. It’s quite understood,” said Belknap-Jackson hastily. The other subsided into low mutterings.
“I trust you fully understand the situation, Ruggles—Colonel Ruggles,” he continued to me.
“It’s preposterous, but plain as a pillar-box,” I answered. “I can only regret it as keenly as any right-minded person should. It’s not at all what I’ve been accustomed to.”
“Very well. Then I suggest that you accompany me for a drive this afternoon. I’ll call for you with the trap, say at three.”
“Perhaps,” suggested his wife, “it might be as well if Colonel Ruggles were to come to us as a guest.” She was regarding me with a gaze that was frankly speculative.
“Oh, not at all, not at all!” retorted Mrs. Effie crisply. “Having been announced as our house guest—never do in the world for him to go to you so soon. We must be careful in this. Later, perhaps, my dear.”
Briefly the ladies measured each other with a glance. Could it be, I asked myself, that they were sparring for the possession of me?
“Naturally he will be asked about everywhere, and there’ll be loads of entertaining to do in return.”
“Of course,” returned Mrs. Effie, “and I’d never think of putting it off on to you, dear, when we’re wholly to blame for the awful thing.”
“That’s so thoughtful of you, dear,” replied her friend coldly.
“At three, then,” said Belknap-Jackson as we arose.
“I shall be delighted,” I murmured.
“I bet you won’t,” said Cousin Egbert sourly. “He wants to show you off.” This, I could see, was ignored as a sheer indecency.
“We shall have to get a reception in quick,” said Mrs. Effie, her eyes narrowed in calculation.
“I don’t see what all the fuss was about,” remarked Cousin Egbert again, as if to himself; “tearing me to pieces like a passel of wolves!”
The Belknap-Jacksons left hastily, not deigning him a glance. And to do the poor soul justice, I believe he did not at all know what the “fuss” had been about. The niceties of the situation were beyond him, dear old sort though he had shown himself to be. I knew then I was never again to be harsh with him, let him dress as he would.
“Say,” he asked, the moment we were alone, “you remember that thing you called him back there that night—‘blighted little mug,’ was it?”
“It’s best forgotten, sir,” I said.
“Well, sir, some way it sounded just the thing to call him. It sounded bully. What does it mean?”
So far was his darkened mind from comprehending that I, in a foreign land, among a weird people, must now have a go at being a gentleman; and that if I fluffed my catch we should all be gossipped to rags!
Alone in my room I made a hasty inventory of my wardrobe. Thanks to the circumstance that the Honourable George, despite my warning, had for several years refused to bant, it was rather well stocked. The evening clothes were irreproachable; so were the frock coat and a morning suit. Of waistcoats there were a number showing but slight wear. The three lounge-suits of tweed, though slightly demoded, would still be vogue in this remote spot. For sticks, gloves, cravats, and body-linen I saw that I should be compelled to levy on the store I had laid in for Cousin Egbert, and I happily discovered that his top-hat set me quite effectively.
Also in a casket of trifles that had knocked about in my box I had the good fortune to find the monocle that the Honourable George had discarded some years before on the ground that it was “bally nonsense.” I screwed the glass into my eye. The effect was tremendous.
Rather a lark I might have thought it but for the false military title. That was rank deception, and I have always regarded any sort of wrongdoing as detestable. Perhaps if he had introduced me as a mere subaltern in a line regiment—but I was powerless.
For the afternoon’s drive I chose the smartest of the lounge-suits, a Carlsbad hat which Cousin Egbert had bitterly resented for himself, and for top-coat a light weight, straight-hanging Chesterfield with velvet collar which, although the cut studiously avoids a fitted effect, is yet a garment that intrigues the eye when carried with any distinction. So many top-coats are but mere wrappings! I had, too, gloves of a delicately contrasting tint.
Altogether I felt I had turned myself out well, and this I found to be the verdict of Mrs. Effie, who engaged me in the hall to say that I was to have anything in the way of equipment I liked to ask for. Belknap-Jackson also, arriving now in a smart trap to which he drove two cobs tandem, was at once impressed and made me compliments upon my tenue. I was aware that I appeared not badly beside him. I mean to say, I felt that I was vogue in the finest sense of the word.
Mrs. Effie waved us a farewell from the doorway, and I was conscious that from several houses on either side of the avenue we attracted more than a bit of attention. There were doors opened, blinds pushed aside, faces—that sort of thing.
At a leisurely pace we progressed through the main thoroughfares. That we created a sensation, especially along the commercial streets, where my host halted at shops to order goods, cannot be denied. Furore is perhaps the word. I mean to say, almost quite every one stared. Rather more like a parade it was than I could have wished, but I was again resolved to be a dead sportsman.
Among those who saluted us from time to time were several of the lesser townsmen to whom Cousin Egbert had presented me the evening before, and I now perceived that most of these were truly persons I must not know in my present station—hodmen, road-menders, grooms, delivery-chaps, that sort. In responding to the often florid salutations of such, I instilled into my barely perceptible nod a certain frigidity that I trusted might be informing. I mean to say, having now a position to keep up, it would never do at all to chatter and pal about loosely as Cousin Egbert did.
When we had done a fairish number of streets, both of shops and villas, we drove out a winding roadway along a tarn to the country club. The house was an unpretentious structure of native wood, fronting a couple of tennis courts and a golf links, but although it was tea-time, not a soul was present. Having unlocked the door, my host suggested refreshment and I consented to partake of a glass of sherry and a biscuit. But these, it seemed, were not to be had; so over pegs of ginger ale, found in an ice-chest, we sat for a time and chatted.
“You will find us crude, Ruggles, as I warned you,” my host observed. “Take this deserted clubhouse at this hour. It tells the story. Take again the matter of sherry and a biscuit—so simple! Yet no one ever thinks of them, and what you mean by a biscuit is in this wretched hole spoken of as a cracker.”
I thanked him for the item, resolving to add it to my list of curious Americanisms. Already I had begun a narrative of my adventures in this wild land, a thing I had tentatively entitled, “Alone in North America.”
“Though we have people in abundance of ample means,” he went on, “you will regret to know that we have not achieved a leisured class. Barely once in a fortnight will you see this club patronized, after all the pains I took in its organization. They simply haven’t evolved to the idea yet; sometimes I have moments in which I despair of their ever doing so.”
As usual he grew depressed when speaking of social Red Gap, so that we did not tarry long in the silent place that should have been quite alive with people smartly having their tea. As we drove back he touched briefly and with all delicacy on our changed relations.
“What made me only too glad to consent to it,” he said, “is the sodden depravity of that Floud chap. Really he’s a menace to the community. I saw from the degenerate leer on his face this morning that he will not be able to keep silent about that little affair of ours back there. Mark my words, he’ll talk. And fancy how embarrassing had you continued in the office for which you were engaged. Fancy it being known I had been assaulted by a—you see what I mean. But now, let him talk his vilest. What is it? A mere disagreement between two gentlemen, generous, hot-tempered chaps, followed by mutual apologies. A mere nothing!”
I was conscious of more than a little irritation at his manner of speaking of Cousin Egbert, but this in my new character I could hardly betray.
When he set me down at the Floud house, “Thanks for the breeze-out,” I said; then, with an easy wave of the hand and in firm tones, “Good day, Jackson! See you again, old chap!”
I had nerved myself to it as to an icy tub and was rewarded by a glow such as had suffused me that morning in Paris after the shameful proceedings with Cousin Egbert and the Indian Tuttle. I mean to say, I felt again that wonderful thrill of equality—quite as if my superiors were not all about me.
Inside the house Mrs. Effie addressed the last of a heap of invitations for an early reception—“To meet Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles,” they read.
Of the following fortnight I find it difficult to write coherently. I found myself in a steady whirl of receptions, luncheons, dinners, teas, and assemblies of rather a pretentious character, at the greater number of which I was obliged to appear as the guest of honour. It began with the reception of Mrs. Floud, at which I may be said to have made my first formal bow to the smarter element of Red Gap, followed by the dinner of the Mrs. Ballard, with whom I had formed acquaintance on that first memorable evening.
I was during this time like a babe at blind play with a set of chess men, not knowing king from pawn nor one rule of the game. Senator Floud—who was but a member of their provincial assembly, I discovered—sought an early opportunity to felicitate me on my changed estate, though he seemed not a little amused by it.
“Good work!” he said. “You know I was afraid our having an English valet would put me in bad with the voters this fall. They’re already saying I wear silk stockings since I’ve been abroad. My wife did buy me six pair, but I’ve never worn any. Shows how people talk, though. And even now they’ll probably say I’m making up to the British army. But it’s better than having a valet in the house. The plain people would never stand my having a valet and I know it.”
I thought this most remarkable, that his constituency should resent his having proper house service. American politics were, then, more debased than even we of England had dreamed.
“Good work!” he said again. “And say, take out your papers—become one of us. Be a citizen. Nothing better than an American citizen on God’s green earth. Read the Declaration of Independence. Here——” From a bookcase at his hand he reached me a volume. “Read and reflect, my man! Become a citizen of a country where true worth has always its chance and one may hope to climb to any heights whatsoever.” Quite like an advertisement he talked, but I read their so-called Declaration, finding it snarky in the extreme and with no end of silly rot about equality. In no way at all did it solve the problems by which I had been so suddenly confronted.
Social lines in the town seemed to have been drawn by no rule whatever. There were actually tradesmen who seemed to matter enormously; on the other hand, there were those of undoubted qualifications, like Mrs. Pettengill, for example, and Cousin Egbert, who deliberately chose not to matter, and mingled as freely with the Bohemian set as they did with the county families. Thus one could never be quite certain whom one was meeting. There was the Tuttle person. I had learned from Mrs. Effie in Paris that he was an Indian (accounting for much that was startling in his behaviour there) yet despite his being an aborigine I now learned that his was one of the county families and he and his white American wife were guests at that first dinner. Throughout the meal both Cousin Egbert and he winked atrociously at me whenever they could catch my eye.
There was, again, an English person calling himself Hobbs, a baker, to whom Cousin Egbert presented me, full of delight at the idea that as compatriots we were bound to be congenial. Yet it needed only a glance and a moment’s listening to the fellow’s execrable cockney dialect to perceive that he was distinctly low-class, and I was immensely relieved, upon inquiry, to learn that he affiliated only with the Bohemian set. I felt a marked antagonism between us at that first meeting; the fellow eyed me with frank suspicion and displayed a taste for low chaffing which I felt bound to rebuke. He it was, I may now disclose, who later began a fashion of referring to me as “Lord Algy,” which I found in the worst possible taste. “Sets himself up for a gentleman, does he? He ain’t no more a gentleman than wot I be!” This speech of his reported to me will show how impossible the creature was. He was simply a person one does not know, and I was not long in letting him see it.
And there was the woman who was to play so active a part in my later history, of whom it will be well to speak at once. I had remarked her on the main street before I knew her identity. I am bound to say she stood out from the other women of Red Gap by reason of a certain dash, not to say beauty. Rather above medium height and of pleasingly full figure, her face was piquantly alert, with long-lashed eyes of a peculiar green, a small nose, the least bit raised, a lifted chin, and an abundance of yellowish hair. But it was the expertness of her gowning that really held my attention at that first view, and the fact that she knew what to put on her head. For the most part, the ladies I had met were well enough gotten up yet looked curiously all wrong, lacking a genius for harmony of detail.
This person, I repeat, displayed a taste that was faultless, a knowledge of the peculiar needs of her face and figure that was unimpeachable. Rather with regret it was I found her to be a Mrs. Kenner, the leader of the Bohemian set. And then came the further items that marked her as one that could not be taken up. Perhaps a summary of these may be conveyed when I say that she had long been known as Klondike Kate. She had some years before, it seemed, been a dancing person in the far Alaska north and had there married the proprietor of one of the resorts in which she disported herself—a man who had accumulated a very sizable fortune in his public house and who was shot to death by one of his patrons who had alleged unfairness in a game of chance. The widow had then purchased a townhouse in Red Gap and had quickly gathered about her what was known as the Bohemian set, the county families, of course, refusing to know her.
After that first brief study of her I could more easily account for the undercurrents of bitterness I had felt in Red Gap society. She would be, I saw, a dangerous woman in any situation where she was opposed; there was that about her—a sort of daring disregard of the established social order. I was not surprised to learn that the men of the community strongly favoured her, especially the younger dancing set who were not restrained by domestic considerations. Small wonder then that the women of the “old noblesse,” as I may call them, were outspokenly bitter in their comments upon her. This I discovered when I attended an afternoon meeting of the ladies’ “Onwards and Upwards Club,” which, I had been told, would be devoted to a study of the English Lake poets, and where, it having been discovered that I read rather well, I had consented to favour the assembly with some of the more significant bits from these bards. The meeting, I regret to say, after a formal enough opening was diverted from its original purpose, the time being occupied in a quite heated discussion of a so-called “Dutch Supper” the Klondike person had given the evening before, the same having been attended, it seemed, by the husbands of at least three of those present, who had gone incognito, as it were. At no time during the ensuing two hours was there a moment that seemed opportune for the introduction of some of our noblest verse.
And so, by often painful stages, did my education progress. At the country club I played golf with Mr. Jackson. At social affairs I appeared with the Flouds. I played bridge. I danced the more dignified dances. And, though there was no proper church in the town—only dissenting chapels, Methodist, Presbyterian, and such outlandish persuasions—I attended services each Sabbath, and more than once had tea with what at home would have been the vicar of the parish.
It was now, when I had begun to feel a bit at ease in my queer foreign environment, that Mr. Belknap-Jackson broached his ill-starred plan for amateur theatricals. At the first suggestion of this I was immensely taken with the idea, suspecting that he would perhaps present “Hamlet,” a part to which I have devoted long and intelligent study and to which I feel that I could bring something which has not yet been imparted to it by even the most skilled of our professional actors. But at my suggestion of this Mr. Belknap-Jackson informed me that he had already played Hamlet himself the year before, leaving nothing further to be done in that direction, and he wished now to attempt something more difficult; something, moreover, that would appeal to the little group of thinking people about us—he would have “a little theatre of ideas,” as he phrased it—and he had chosen for his first offering a play entitled “Ghosts” by the foreign dramatist Ibsen.
I suspected at first that this might be a farce where a supposititious ghost brings about absurd predicaments in a country house, having seen something along these lines, but a reading of the thing enlightened me as to its character, which, to put it bluntly, is rather thick. There is a strain of immorality running through it which I believe cannot be too strongly condemned if the world is to be made better, and this is rendered the more repugnant to right-thinking people by the fact that the participants are middle-class persons who converse in quite commonplace language such as one may hear any day in the home.
Wrongdoing is surely never so objectionable as when it is indulged in by common people and talked about in ordinary language, and the language of this play is not stage language at all. Immorality such as one gets in Shakespeare is of so elevated a character that one accepts it, the language having a grandeur incomparably above what any person was ever capable of in private life, being always elegant and unnatural.
Though I felt this strongly, I was in no position to urge my objections, and at length consented to take a part in the production, reflecting that the people depicted were really foreigners and the part I would play was that of a clergyman whose behaviour throughout is above reproach. For himself Mr. Jackson had chosen the part of Oswald, a youth who goes quite dotty at the last for reasons which are better not talked about. His wife was to play the part of a serving-maid, who was rather a baggage, while Mrs. Judge Ballard was to enact his mother. (I may say in passing I have learned that the plays of this foreigner are largely concerned with people who have been queer at one time or another, so that one’s parentage is often uncertain, though they always pay for it by going off in the head before the final curtain. I mean to say, there is too much neighbourhood scandal in them.)
There remained but one part to fill, that of the father of the serving-maid, an uncouth sort of drinking-man, quite low-class, who, in my opinion, should never have been allowed on the stage at all, since no moral lesson is taught by him. It was in the casting of this part that Mr. Jackson showed himself of a forgiving nature. He offered it to Cousin Egbert, saying he was the true “type”—“with his weak, dissolute face”—and that “types” were all the rage in theatricals.
At first the latter heatedly declined the honour, but after being urged and browbeaten for three days by Mrs. Effie he somewhat sullenly consented, being shown that there were not many lines for him to learn. From the first, I think, he was rendered quite miserable by the ordeal before him, yet he submitted to the rehearsals with a rather pathetic desire to please, and for a time all seemed well. Many an hour found him mugging away at the book, earnestly striving to memorize the part, or, as he quaintly expressed it, “that there piece they want me to speak.” But as the day of our performance drew near it became evident to me, at least, that he was in a desperately black state of mind. As best I could I cheered him with words of praise, but his eye met mine blankly at such times and I could see him shudder poignantly while waiting the moment of his entrance.
And still all might have been well, I fancy, but for the extremely conscientious views of Mr. Jackson in the matter of our costuming and make-up. With his lines fairly learned, Cousin Egbert on the night of our dress rehearsal was called upon first to don the garb of the foreign carpenter he was to enact, the same involving shorts and gray woollen hose to his knees, at which he protested violently. So far as I could gather, his modesty was affronted by this revelation of his lower legs. Being at length persuaded to this sacrifice, he next submitted his face to Mr. Jackson, who adjusted it to a labouring person’s beard and eyebrows, crimsoning the cheeks and nose heavily with grease-paint and crowning all with an unkempt wig.
The result, I am bound to say, was artistic in the extreme. No one would have suspected the identity of Cousin Egbert, and I had hopes that he would feel a new courage for his part when he beheld himself. Instead, however, after one quick glance into the glass he emitted a gasp of horror that was most eloquent, and thereafter refused to be comforted, holding himself aloof and glaring hideously at all who approached him. Rather like a mad dog he was.
Half an hour later, when all was ready for our first act, Cousin Egbert was not to be found. I need not dwell upon the annoyance this occasioned, nor upon how a substitute in the person of our hall’s custodian, or janitor, was impressed to read the part. Suffice it to tell briefly that Cousin Egbert, costumed and bedizened as he was, had fled not only the theatre but the town as well. Search for him on the morrow was unavailing. Not until the second day did it become known that he had been seen at daybreak forty miles from Red Gap, goading a spent horse into the wilds of the adjacent mountains. Our informant disclosed that one side of his face was still bearded and that he had kept glancing back over his shoulder at frequent intervals, as if fearful of pursuit. Something of his frantic state may also be gleaned from the circumstance that the horse he rode was one he had found hitched in a side street near the hall, its ownership being unknown to him.
For the rest it may be said that our performance was given as scheduled, announcement being made of the sudden illness of Mr. Egbert Floud, and his part being read from the book in a rich and cultivated voice by the superintendent of the high school. Our efforts were received with respectful attention by a large audience, among whom I noted many of the Bohemian set, and this I took as an especial tribute to our merits. Mr. Belknap-Jackson, however, to whom I mentioned the circumstance, was pessimistic.
“I fear,” said he, “we have not heard the last of it. I am sure they came for no good purpose.”
“They were quite orderly in their behaviour,” I suggested
“Which is why I suspect them. That Kenner woman, Hobbs, the baker, the others of their set—they’re not thinking people; I dare say they never consider social problems seriously. And you may have noticed that they announce an amateur minstrel performance for a week hence. I’m quite convinced that they mean to be vulgar to the last extreme—there has been so much talk of the behaviour of the wretched Floud, a fellow who really has no place in our modern civilization. He should be compelled to remain on his ranche.”
And indeed these suspicions proved to be only too well founded. That which followed was so atrociously personal that in any country but America we could have had an action against them. As Mr. Belknap-Jackson so bitterly said when all was over, “Our boasted liberty has degenerated into license.”
It is best told in a few words, this affair of the minstrel performance, which I understood was to be an entertainment wherein the participants darkened themselves to resemble blackamoors. Naturally, I did not attend, it being agreed that the best people should signify their disapproval by staying away, but the disgraceful affair was recounted to me in all its details by more than one of the large audience that assembled. In the so-called “grand first part” there seemed to have been little that was flagrantly insulting to us, although in their exchange of conundrums, which is a peculiar feature of this form of entertainment, certain names were bandied about with a freedom that boded no good.
It was in the after-piece that the poltroons gave free play to their vilest fancies. Our piece having been announced as “Ghosts; a Drama for Thinking People,” this part was entitled on their programme, “Gloats; a Dram for Drinking People,” a transposition that should perhaps suffice to show the dreadful lengths to which they went; yet I feel that the thing should be set down in full.
The stage was set as our own had been, but it would scarce be credited that the Kenner woman in male attire had made herself up in a curiously accurate resemblance to Belknap-Jackson as he had rendered the part of Oswald, copying not alone his wig, moustache, and fashion of speech, but appearing in a golfing suit which was recognized by those present as actually belonging to him.
Nor was this the worst, for the fellow Hobbs had copied my own dress and make-up and persisted in speaking in an exaggerated manner alleged to resemble mine. This, of course, was the most shocking bad taste, and while it was quite to have been expected of Hobbs, I was indeed rather surprised that the entire assembly did not leave the auditorium in disgust the moment they perceived his base intention. But it was Cousin Egbert whom they had chosen to rag most unmercifully, and they were not long in displaying their clumsy attempts at humour.
As the curtain went up they were searching for him, affecting to be unconscious of the presence of their audience, and declaring that the play couldn’t go on without him. “Have you tried all the saloons?” asked one, to which another responded, “Yes, and he’s been in all of them, but now he has fled. The sheriff has put bloodhounds on his trail and promises to have him here, dead or alive.”
“Then while we are waiting,” declared the character supposed to represent myself, “I will tell you a wheeze,” whereupon both the female characters fell to their knees shrieking, “Not that! My God, not that!” while Oswald sneered viciously and muttered, “Serves me right for leaving Boston.”
To show the infamy of the thing, I must here explain that at several social gatherings, in an effort which I still believe was praiseworthy, I had told an excellent wheeze which runs: “Have you heard the story of the three holes in the ground?” I mean to say, I would ask this in an interested manner, as if I were about to relate the anecdote, and upon being answered “No!” I would exclaim with mock seriousness, “Well! Well! Well!” This had gone rippingly almost quite every time I had favoured a company with it, hardly any one of my hearers failing to get the joke at a second telling. I mean to say, the three holes in the ground being three “Wells!” uttered in rapid succession.
Of course if one doesn’t see it at once, or finds it a bit subtle, it’s quite silly to attempt to explain it, because logically there is no adequate explanation. It is merely a bit of nonsense, and that’s quite all to it. But these boors now fell upon it with their coarse humour, the fellow Hobbs pretending to get it all wrong by asking if they had heard the story about the three wells and the others replying: “No, tell us the hole thing,” which made utter nonsense of it, whereupon they all began to cry, “Well! well! well!” at each other until interrupted by a terrific noise in the wings, which was followed by the entrance of the supposed Cousin Egbert, a part enacted by the cab-driver who had conveyed us from the station the day of our arrival. Dragged on he was by the sheriff and two of the town constables, the latter being armed with fowling-pieces and the sheriff holding two large dogs in leash. The character himself was heavily manacled and madly rattled his chains, his face being disguised to resemble Cousin Egbert’s after the beard had been adjusted.
“Here he is!” exclaimed the supposed sheriff; “the dogs ran him into the third hole left by the well-diggers, and we lured him out by making a noise like sour dough.” During this speech, I am told, the character snarled continuously and tried to bite his captors. At this the woman, who had so deplorably unsexed herself for the character of Mr. Belknap-Jackson as he had played Oswald, approached the prisoner and smartly drew forth a handful of his beard which she stuffed into a pipe and proceeded to smoke, after which they pretended that the play went on. But no more than a few speeches had been uttered when the supposed Cousin Egbert eluded his captors and, emitting a loud shriek of horror, leaped headlong through the window at the back of the stage, his disappearance being followed by the sounds of breaking glass as he was supposed to fall to the street below.
“How lovely!” exclaimed the mimic Oswald. “Perhaps he has broken both his legs so he can’t run off any more,” at which the fellow Hobbs remarked in his affected tones: “That sort of thing would never do with us.”
This I learned aroused much laughter, the idea being that the remark had been one which I am supposed to make in private life, though I dare say I have never uttered anything remotely like it.
“The fellow is quite impossible,” continued the spurious Oswald, with a doubtless rather clever imitation of Mr. Belknap-Jackson’s manner. “If he is killed, feed him to the goldfish and let one of the dogs read his part. We must get along with this play. Now, then. ‘Ah! why did I ever leave Boston where every one is nice and proper?’” To which his supposed mother replied with feigned emotion: “It was because of your father, my poor boy. Ah, what I had to endure through those years when he cursed and spoke disrespectfully of our city. ‘Scissors and white aprons,’ he would cry out, ‘Why is Boston?’ But I bore it all for your sake, and now you, too, are smoking—you will go the same way.”
“But promise me, mother,” returns Oswald, “promise me if I ever get dusty in the garret, that Lord Algy here will tell me one of his funny wheezes and put me out of pain. You could not bear to hear me knocking Boston as poor father did. And I feel it coming—already my mother-in-law has bluffed me into admitting that Red Gap has a right to be on the same map with Boston if it’s a big map.”
And this was the coarsely wretched buffoonery that refined people were expected to sit through! Yet worse followed, for at their climax, the mimic Oswald having gone quite off his head, the Hobbs person, still with the preposterous affectation of taking me off in speech and manner, was persuaded by the stricken mother to sing. “Sing that dear old plantation melody from London,” she cried, “so that my poor boy may know there are worse things than death.” And all this witless piffle because of a quite natural misunderstanding of mine.
I have before referred to what I supposed was an American plantation melody which I had heard a black sing at Brighton, meaning one of the English blacks who colour themselves for the purpose, but on reciting the lines at an evening affair, when the American folksongs were under discussion, I was told that it could hardly have been written by an American at all, but doubtless by one of our own composers who had taken too little trouble with his facts. I mean to say, the song as I had it, betrayed misapprehensions both of a geographical and faunal nature, but I am certain that no one thought the worse of me for having been deceived, and I had supposed the thing forgotten. Yet now what did I hear but that a garbled version of this song had been supposedly sung by myself, the Hobbs person meantime mincing across the stage and gesturing with a monocle which he had somehow procured, the words being quite simply: