There are times when all Nature seems to smile, yet when to the sensitive mind it will be faintly brought that the possibilities are quite tremendously otherwise if one will consider them pro and con. I mean to say, one often suspects things may happen when it doesn’t look so.
The succeeding three days passed with so ordered a calm that little would any but a profound thinker have fancied tragedy to lurk so near their placid surface. Mrs. Effie and Mrs. Belknap-Jackson continued to plan the approaching social campaign at Red Gap. Cousin Egbert and the Mixer continued their card game for the trifling stake of a shilling a game, or “two bits,” as it is known in the American monetary system. And our host continued his recreation.
Each morning I turned him out in the smartest of fishing costumes and each evening I assisted him to change. It is true I was now compelled to observe at these times a certain lofty irritability in his character, yet I more than half fancied this to be queerly assumed in order to inform me that he was not unaccustomed to services such as I rendered him. There was that about him. I mean to say, when he sharply rebuked me for clumsiness or cried out “Stupid!” it had a perfunctory languor, as if meant to show me he could address a servant in what he believed to be the grand manner. In this, to be sure, he was so oddly wrong that the pathos of it quite drowned what I might otherwise have felt of resentment.
But I next observed that he was sharp in the same manner with the hairy backwoods person who took him to fish each day, using words to him which I, for one, would have employed, had I thought them merited, only after the gravest hesitation. I have before remarked that I did not like the gleam in this person’s eyes: he was very apparently a not quite nice person. Also I more than once observed him to wink at Cousin Egbert in an evil manner.
As I have so truly said, how close may tragedy be to us when life seems most correct! It was Belknap-Jackson’s custom to raise a view halloo each evening when he returned down the lake, so that we might gather at the dock to oversee his landing. I must admit that he disembarked with somewhat the manner of a visiting royalty, demanding much attention and assistance with his impedimenta. Undoubtedly he liked to be looked at. This was what one rather felt. And I can fancy that this very human trait of his had in a manner worn upon the probably undisciplined nerves of the backwoods josser—had, in fact, deprived him of his “goat,” as the native people have it.
Be this as it may, we gathered at the dock on the afternoon of the third day of our stay to assist at the return. As the native log craft neared the dock our host daringly arose to a graceful kneeling posture in the bow and saluted us charmingly, the woods person in the stern wielding his single oar in gloomy silence. At the moment a most poetic image occurred to me—that he was like a dull grim figure of Fate that fetches us low at the moment of our highest seeming. I mean to say, it was a silly thought, perhaps, yet I afterward recalled it most vividly.
Holding his creel aloft our host hailed us:
“Full to-day, thanks to going where I wished and paying no attention to silly guides’ talk.” He beamed upon us in an unquestionably superior manner, and again from the moody figure at the stern I intercepted the flash of a wink to Cousin Egbert. Then as the frail craft had all but touched the dock and our host had half risen, there was a sharp dipping of the thing and he was ejected into the chilling waters, where he almost instantly sank. There were loud cries of alarm from all, including the woodsman himself, who had kept the craft upright, and in these Mr. Belknap-Jackson heartily joined the moment his head appeared above the surface, calling “Help!” in the quite loudest of tones, which was thoughtless enough, as we were close at hand and could easily have heard his ordinary speaking voice.
The woods person now stepped to the dock, and firmly grasping the collar of the drowning man hauled him out with but little effort, at the same time becoming voluble with apologies and sympathy. The rescued man, however, was quite off his head with rage and bluntly berated the fellow for having tried to assassinate him. Indeed he put forth rather a torrent of execration, but to all of this the fellow merely repeated his crude protestations of regret and astonishment, seeming to be sincerely grieved that his intentions should have been doubted.
From his friends about him the unfortunate man was receiving the most urgent advice to seek dry garments lest he perish of chill, whereupon he turned abruptly to me and cried: “Well, Stupid, don’t you see the state that fellow has put me in? What are you doing? Have you lost your wits?”
Now I had suffered a very proper alarm and solicitude for him, but the injustice of this got a bit on me. I mean to say, I suddenly felt a bit of temper myself, though to be sure retaining my control.
“Yes, sir; quite so, sir,” I replied smoothly. “I’ll have you right as rain in no time at all, sir,” and started to conduct him off the dock. But now, having gone a little distance, he began to utter the most violent threats against the woods person, declaring, in fact, he would pull the fellow’s nose. However, I restrained him from rushing back, as I subtly felt I was wished to do, and he at length consented again to be led toward his hut.
But now the woods person called out: “You’re forgetting all your pretties!” By which I saw him to mean the fishing impedimenta he had placed on the dock. And most unreasonably at this Mr. Belknap-Jackson again turned upon me, wishing anew to be told if I had lost my wits and directing me to fetch the stuff. Again I was conscious of that within me which no gentleman’s man should confess to. I mean to say, I felt like shaking him. But I hastened back to fetch the rod, the creel, the luncheon hamper, the midge ointment, the camera, and other articles which the woods fellow handed me.
With these somewhat awkwardly carried, I returned to our still turbulent host. More like a volcano he was than a man who has had a narrow squeak from drowning, and before we had gone a dozen feet more he again turned and declared he would “go back and thrash the unspeakable cad within an inch of his life.” Their relative sizes rendering an attempt of this sort quite too unwise, I was conscious of renewed irritation toward him; indeed, the vulgar words, “Oh, stow that piffle!” swiftly formed in the back of my mind, but again I controlled myself, as the chap was now sneezing violently.
“Best hurry on, sir,” I said with exemplary tact. “One might contract a severe head-cold from such a wetting,” and further endeavoured to sooth him while I started ahead to lead him away from the fellow. Then there happened that which fulfilled my direst premonitions. Looking back from a moment of calm, the psychology of the crisis is of a rudimentary simplicity.
Enraged beyond measure at the woods person, Mr. Belknap-Jackson yet retained a fine native caution which counselled him to attempt no violence upon that offender; but his mental tension was such that it could be relieved only by his attacking some one; preferably some one forbidden to retaliate. I walked there temptingly but a pace ahead of him, after my well-meant word of advice.
I make no defence of my own course. I am aware there can be none. I can only plead that I had already been vexed not a little by his unjust accusations of stupidity, and dismiss with as few words as possible an incident that will ever seem to me quite too indecently criminal. Briefly, then, with my well-intended “Best not lower yourself, sir,” Mr. Belknap-Jackson forgot himself and I forgot myself. It will be recalled that I was in front of him, but I turned rather quickly. (His belongings I had carried were widely disseminated.)
Instantly there were wild outcries from the others, who had started toward the main, or living house.
“He’s killed Charles!” I heard Mrs. Belknap-Jackson scream; then came the deep-chested rumble of the Mixer, “Jackson kicked him first!” They ran for us. They had reached us while our host was down, even while my fist was still clenched. Now again the unfortunate man cried “Help!” as his wife assisted him to his feet.
“Send for an officer!” cried she.
“The man’s an anarchist!” shouted her husband.
“Nonsense!” boomed the Mixer. “Jackson got what he was looking for. Do it myself if he kicked me!”
“Oh, Maw! Oh, Mater!” cried her daughter tearfully.
“Gee! He done it in one punch!” I heard Cousin Egbert say with what I was aghast to suspect was admiration.
Mrs. Effie, trembling, could but glare at me and gasp. Mercifully she was beyond speech for the moment.
Mr. Belknap-Jackson was now painfully rubbing his right eye, which was not what he should have done, and I said as much.
“Beg pardon, sir, but one does better with a bit of raw beef.”
“How dare you, you great hulking brute!” cried his wife, and made as if to shield her husband from another attack from me, which I submit was unjust.
“Bill’s right,” said Cousin Egbert casually. “Put a piece of raw steak on it. Gee! with one wallop!” And then, quite strangely, for a moment we all amiably discussed whether cold compresses might not be better. Presently our host was led off by his wife. Mrs. Effie followed them, moaning: “Oh, oh, oh!” in the keenest distress.
At this I took to my own room in dire confusion, making no doubt I would presently be given in charge and left to languish in gaol, perhaps given six months’ hard.
Cousin Egbert came to me in a little while and laughed heartily at my fear that anything legal would be done. He also made some ill-timed compliments on the neatness of the blow I had dealt Mr. Belknap-Jackson, but these I found in wretched taste and was begging him to desist, when the Mixer entered and began to speak much in the same strain.
“Don’t you ever dare do a thing like that again,” she warned me, “unless I got a ringside seat,” to which I remained severely silent, for I felt my offence should not be made light of.
“Three rousing cheers!” exclaimed Cousin Egbert, whereat the two most unfeelingly went through a vivid pantomime of cheering.
Our host, I understood, had his dinner in bed that night, and throughout the evening, as I sat solitary in remorse, came the mocking strains of another of their American folksongs with the refrain:
“You made me what I am to-day,I hope you’re satisfied!”
I conceived it to be the Mixer and Cousin Egbert who did this and, considering the plight of our host, I thought it in the worst possible taste. I had raised my hand against the one American I had met who was at all times vogue. And not only this: For I now recalled a certain phrase I had flung out as I stood over him, ranting indeed no better than an anarchist, a phrase which showed my poor culture to be the flimsiest veneer.
Late in the night, as I lay looking back on the frightful scene, I recalled with wonder a swift picture of Cousin Egbert caught as I once looked back to the dock. He had most amazingly shaken the woods person by the hand, quickly but with marked cordiality. And yet I am quite certain he had never been presented to the fellow.
Promptly the next morning came the dreaded summons to meet Mrs. Effie. I was of course prepared to accept instant dismissal without a character, if indeed I were not to be given in charge. I found her wearing an expression of the utmost sternness, erect and formidable by the now silent phonograph. Cousin Egbert, who was present, also wore an expression of sternness, though I perceived him to wink at me.
“I really don’t know what we’re to do with you, Ruggles,” began the stricken woman, and so done out she plainly was that I at once felt the warmest sympathy for her as she continued: “First you lead poor Cousin Egbert into a drunken debauch——”
Cousin Egbert here coughed nervously and eyed me with strong condemnation.
“—then you behave like a murderer. What have you to say for yourself?”
At this I saw there was little I could say, except that I had coarsely given way to the brute in me, and yet I knew I should try to explain.
“I dare say, Madam, it may have been because Mr. Belknap-Jackson was quite sober at the unfortunate moment.”
“Of course Charles was sober. The idea! What of it?”
“I was remembering an occasion at Chaynes-Wotten when Lord Ivor Cradleigh behaved toward me somewhat as Mr. Belknap-Jackson did last night and when my own deportment was quite all that could be wished. It occurs to me now that it was because his lordship was, how shall I say?—quite far gone in liquor at the time, so that I could without loss of dignity pass it off as a mere prank. Indeed, he regarded it as such himself, performing the act with a good nature that I found quite irresistible, and I am certain that neither his lordship nor I have ever thought the less of each other because of it. I revert to this merely to show that I have not always acted in a ruffianly manner under these circumstances. It seems rather to depend upon how the thing is done—the mood of the performer—his mental state. Had Mr. Belknap-Jackson been—pardon me—quite drunk, I feel that the outcome would have been happier for us all. So far as I have thought along these lines, it seems to me that if one is to be kicked at all, one must be kicked good-naturedly. I mean to say, with a certain camaraderie, a lightness, a gayety, a genuine good-will that for the moment expresses itself uncouthly—an element, I regret to say, that was conspicuously lacking from the brief activities of Mr. Belknap-Jackson.”
“I never heard such crazy talk,” responded Mrs. Effie, “and really I never saw such a man as you are for wanting people to become disgustingly drunk. You made poor Cousin Egbert and Jeff Tuttle act like beasts, and now nothing will satisfy you but that Charles should roll in the gutter. Such dissipated talk I never did hear, and poor Charles rarely taking anything but a single glass of wine, it upsets him so; even our reception punch he finds too stimulating!”
I mean to say, the woman had cleanly missed my point, for never have I advocated the use of fermented liquors to excess; but I saw it was no good trying to tell her this.
“And the worst of it,” she went rapidly on, “Cousin Egbert here is acting stranger than I ever knew him to act. He swears if he can’t keep you he’ll never have another man, and you know yourself what that means in his case—and Mrs. Pettengill saying she means to employ you herself if we let you go. Heaven knows what the poor woman can be thinking of! Oh, it’s awful—and everything was going so beautifully. Of course Charles would simply never be brought to accept an apology——”
“I am only too anxious to make one,” I submitted.
“Here’s the poor fellow now,” said Cousin Egbert almost gleefully, and our host entered. He carried a patch over his right eye and was not attired for sport on the lake, but in a dark morning suit of quietly beautiful lines that I thought showed a fine sense of the situation. He shot me one superior glance from his left eye and turned to Mrs. Effie.
“I see you still harbour the ruffian?”
“I’ve just given him a call-down,” said Mrs. Effie, plainly ill at ease, “and he says it was all because you were sober; that if you’d been in the state Lord Ivor Cradleigh was the time it happened at Chaynes-Wotten he wouldn’t have done anything to you, probably.”
“What’s this, what’s this? Lord Ivor Cradleigh—Chaynes-Wotten?” The man seemed to be curiously interested by the mere names, in spite of himself. “His lordship was at Chaynes-Wotten for the shooting, I suppose?” This, most amazingly, to me.
“A house party at Whitsuntide, sir,” I explained.
“Ah! And you say his lordship was——”
“Oh, quite, quite in his cups, sir. If I might explain, it was that, sir—its being done under circumstances and in a certain entirely genial spirit of irritation to which I could take no offence, sir. His lordship is a very decent sort, sir. I’ve known him intimately for years.”
“Dear, dear!” he replied. “Too bad, too bad! And I dare say you thought me out of temper last night? Nothing of the sort. You should have taken it in quite the same spirit as you did from Lord Ivor Cradleigh.”
“It seemed different, sir,” I said firmly. “If I may take the liberty of putting it so, I felt quite offended by your manner. I missed from it at the most critical moment, as one might say, a certain urbanity that I found in his lordship, sir.”
“Well, well, well! It’s too bad, really. I’m quite aware that I show a sort of brusqueness at times, but mind you, it’s all on the surface. Had you known me as long as you’ve known his lordship, I dare say you’d have noticed the same rough urbanity in me as well. I rather fancy some of us over here don’t do those things so very differently. A few of us, at least.”
“I’m glad, indeed, to hear it, sir. It’s only necessary to understand that there is a certain mood in which one really cannot permit one’s self to be—you perceive, I trust.”
“Perfectly, perfectly,” said he, “and I can only express my regret that you should have mistaken my own mood, which, I am confident, was exactly the thing his lordship might have felt.”
“I gladly accept your apology, sir,” I returned quickly, “as I should have accepted his lordship’s had his manner permitted any misapprehension on my part. And in return I wish to apologize most contritely for the phrase I applied to you just after it happened, sir. I rarely use strong language, but——”
“I remember hearing none,” said he.
“I regret to say, sir, that I called you a blighted little mug——”
“You needn’t have mentioned it,” he replied with just a trace of sharpness, “and I trust that in future——”
“I am sure, sir, that in future you will give me no occasion to misunderstand your intentions—no more than would his lordship,” I added as he raised his brows.
Thus in a manner wholly unexpected was a frightful situation eased off.
“I’m so glad it’s settled!” cried Mrs. Effie, who had listened almost breathlessly to our exchange.
“I fancy I settled it as Cradleigh would have—eh, Ruggles?” And the man actually smiled at me.
“Entirely so, sir,” said I.
“If only it doesn’t get out,” said Mrs. Effie now. “We shouldn’t want it known in Red Gap. Think of the talk!”
“Certainly,” rejoined Mr. Belknap-Jackson jauntily, “we are all here above gossip about an affair of that sort. I am sure—” He broke off and looked uneasily at Cousin Egbert, who coughed into his hand and looked out over the lake before he spoke.
“What would I want to tell a thing like that for?” he demanded indignantly, as if an accusation had been made against him. But I saw his eyes glitter with an evil light.
An hour later I chanced to be with him in our detached hut, when the Mixer entered.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“What do you reckon happened?” returned Cousin Egbert. “They get to talking about Lord Ivy Craddles, or some guy, and before we know it Mr. Belknap Hyphen Jackson is apologizing to Bill here.”
“No?” bellowed the Mixer.
“Sure did he!” affirmed Cousin Egbert.
Here they grasped each other’s arms and did a rude native dance about the room, nor did they desist when I sought to explain that the name was not at all Ivy Craddles.
Now once more it seemed that for a time I might lead a sanely ordered existence. Not for long did I hope it. I think I had become resigned to the unending series of shocks that seemed to compose the daily life in North America. Few had been my peaceful hours since that fatal evening in Paris. And the shocks had become increasingly violent. When I tried to picture what the next might be I found myself shuddering. For the present, like a stag that has eluded the hounds but hears their distant baying, I lay panting in momentary security, gathering breath for some new course. I mean to say, one couldn’t tell what might happen next. Again and again I found myself coming all over frightened.
Wholly restored I was now in the esteem of Mr. Belknap-Jackson, who never tired of discussing with me our own life and people. Indeed he was quite the most intelligent foreigner I had encountered. I may seem to exaggerate in the American fashion, but I doubt if a single one of the others could have named the counties of England or the present Lord Mayor of London. Our host was not like that. Also he early gave me to know that he felt quite as we do concerning the rebellion of our American colonies, holding it a matter for the deepest regret; and justly proud he was of the circumstance that at the time of that rebellion his own family had put all possible obstacles in the way of the traitorous Washington. To be sure, I dare say he may have boasted a bit in this.
It was during the long journey across America which we now set out upon that I came to this sympathetic understanding of his character and of the chagrin he constantly felt at being compelled to live among people with whom he could have as little sympathy as I myself had.
This journey began pleasantly enough, and through the farming counties of Philadelphia, Ohio, and Chicago was not without interest. Beyond came an incredibly large region, much like the steppes of Siberia, I fancy: vast uninhabited stretches of heath and down, with but here and there some rude settlement about which the poor peasants would eagerly assemble as our train passed through. I could not wonder that our own travellers have always spoken so disparagingly of the American civilization. It is a country that would never do with us.
Although we lived in this train a matter of nearly four days, I fancy not a single person dressed for dinner as one would on shipboard. Even Belknap-Jackson dined in a lounge-suit, though he wore gloves constantly by day, which was more than I could get Cousin Egbert to do.
As we went ever farther over these leagues of fen and fell and rolling veldt, I could but speculate unquietly as to what sort of place the Red Gap must be. A residential town for gentlemen and families, I had understood, with a little colony of people that really mattered, as I had gathered from Mrs. Effie. And yet I was unable to divine their object in going so far away to live. One goes to distant places for the winter sports or for big game shooting, but this seemed rather grotesquely perverse.
Little did I then dream of the spiritual agencies that were to insure my gradual understanding of the town and its people. Unsuspectingly I fronted a future so wildly improbable that no power could have made me credit it had it then been foretold by the most rarely endowed gypsy. It is always now with a sort of terror that I look back to those last moments before my destiny had unfolded far enough to be actually alarming. I was as one floating in fancied security down the calm river above their famous Niagara Falls—to be presently dashed without warning over the horrible verge. I mean to say, I never suspected.
Our last day of travel arrived. We were now in a roughened and most untidy welter of mountain and jungle and glen, with violent tarns and bleak bits of moorland that had all too evidently never known the calming touch of the landscape gardener; a region, moreover, peopled by a much more lawless appearing peasantry than I had observed back in the Chicago counties, people for the most part quite wretchedly gotten up and distinctly of the lower or working classes.
Late in the afternoon our train wound out of a narrow cutting and into a valley that broadened away on every hand to distant mountains. Beyond doubt this prospect could, in a loose way of speaking, be called scenery, but of too violent a character it was for cultivated tastes. Then, as my eye caught the vague outlines of a settlement or village in the midst of this valley, Cousin Egbert, who also looked from, the coach window, amazed me by crying out:
“There she is—little old Red Gap! The fastest growing town in the State, if any one should ask you.”
“Yes, sir; I’ll try to remember, sir,” I said, wondering why I should be asked this.
“Garden spot of the world,” he added in a kind of ecstasy, to which I made no response, for this was too preposterous. Nearing the place our train passed an immense hoarding erected by the roadway, a score of feet high, I should say, and at least a dozen times as long, upon which was emblazoned in mammoth red letters on a black ground, “Keep Your Eye on Red Gap!” At either end of this lettering was painted a gigantic staring human eye. Regarding this monstrosity with startled interest, I heard myself addressed by Belknap-Jackson:
“The sort of vulgarity I’m obliged to contend with,” said he, with a contemptuous gesture toward the hoarding. Indeed the thing lacked refinement in its diction, while the painted eyes were not Art in any true sense of the word. “The work of our precious Chamber of Commerce,” he added, “though I pleaded with them for days and days.”
“It’s a sort of thing would never do with us, sir,” I said.
“It’s what one has to expect from a commercialized bourgeoise,” he returned bitterly. “And even our association, ‘The City Beautiful,’ of which I was president, helped to erect the thing. Of course I resigned at once.”
“Naturally, sir; the colours are atrocious.”
“And the words a mere blatant boast!” He groaned and left me, for we were now well into a suburb of detached villas, many of them of a squalid character, and presently we had halted at the station. About this bleak affair was the usual gathering of peasantry and the common people, villagers, agricultural labourers, and the like, and these at once showed a tremendous interest in our party, many of them hailing various members of us with a quite offensive familiarity.
Belknap-Jackson, of course, bore himself through this with a proper aloofness, as did his wife and Mrs. Effie, but I heard the Mixer booming salutations right and left. It was Cousin Egbert, however, who most embarrassed me by the freedom of his manner with these persons. He shook hands warmly with at least a dozen of them and these hailed him with rude shouts, dealt him smart blows on the back and, forming a circle about him, escorted him to a carriage where Mrs. Effie and I awaited him. Here the driver, a loutish and familiar youth, also seized his hand and, with some crude effect of oratory, shouted to the crowd.
“What’s the matter with Sour-dough?” To this, with a flourish of their impossible hats, they quickly responded in unison,
“He’s all right!” accenting the first word terrifically.
Then, to the immense relief of Mrs. Effie and myself, he was released and we were driven quickly off from the raffish set. Through their Regent and Bond streets we went, though I mean to say they were on an unbelievably small or village scale, to an outlying region of detached villas that doubtless would be their St. John’s Wood, but my efforts to observe closely were distracted by the extraordinary freedom with which our driver essayed to chat with us, saying he “guessed” we were glad to get back to God’s country, and things of a similar intimate nature. This was even more embarrassing to Mrs. Effie than it was to me, since she more than once felt obliged to answer the fellow with a feigned cordiality.
Relieved I was when we drew up before the town house of the Flouds. Set well back from the driveway in a faded stretch of common, it was of rather a garbled architecture, with the Tudor, late Gothic, and French Renaissance so intermixed that one was puzzled to separate the periods. Nor was the result so vast as this might sound. Hardly would the thing have made a wing of the manor house at Chaynes-Wotten. The common or small park before it was shielded from the main thoroughfare by a fence of iron palings, and back of this on either side of a gravelled walk that led to the main entrance were two life-sized stags not badly sculptured from metal.
Once inside I began to suspect that my position was going to be more than a bit dicky. I mean to say, it was not an establishment in our sense of the word, being staffed, apparently, by two China persons who performed the functions of cook, housemaids, footmen, butler, and housekeeper. There was not even a billiard room.
During the ensuing hour, marked by the arrival of our luggage and the unpacking of boxes, I meditated profoundly over the difficulties of my situation. In a wilderness, beyond the confines of civilization, I would undoubtedly be compelled to endure the hardships of the pioneer; yet for the present I resolved to let no inkling of my dismay escape.
The evening meal over—dinner in but the barest technical sense—I sat alone in my own room, meditating thus darkly. Nor was I at all cheered by the voice of Cousin Egbert, who sang in his own room adjoining. I had found this to be a habit of his, and his songs are always dolorous to the last degree. Now, for example, while life seemed all too black to me, he sang a favourite of his, the pathetic ballad of two small children evidently begging in a business thoroughfare:
“Lone and weary through the streets we wander,For we have no place to lay our head;Not a friend is left on earth to shelter us,For both our parents now are dead.”
It was a fair crumpler in my then mood. It made me wish to be out of North America—made me long for London; London with a yellow fog and its greasy pavements, where one knew what to apprehend. I wanted him to stop, but still he atrociously sang in his high, cracked voice:
“Dear mother died when we were both young,And father built for us a home,But now he’s killed by falling timbers,And we are left here all alone.”
I dare say I should have rushed madly into the night had there been another verse, but now he was still. A moment later, however, he entered my room with the suggestion that I stroll about the village streets with him, he having a mission to perform for Mrs. Effie. I had already heard her confide this to him. He was to proceed to the office of their newspaper and there leave with the press chap a notice of our arrival which from day to day she had been composing on the train.
“I just got to leave this here piece for theRecorder,” he said; “then we can sasshay up and down for a while and meet some of the boys.”
How profoundly may our whole destiny be affected by the mood of an idle moment; by some superficial indecision, mere fruit of a transient unrest. We lightly debate, we hesitate, we yawn, unconscious of the brink. We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly accept from sheer ennui, and “life,” as I have read in a quite meritorious poem, “is never the same again.” It was thus I now toyed there with my fate in my hands, as might a child have toyed with a bauble. I mean to say, I was looking for nothing thick.
“She’s wrote a very fancy piece for that newspaper,” Cousin Egbert went on, handing me the sheets of manuscript. Idly I glanced down the pages.
“Yesterday saw the return to Red Gap of Mrs. Senator James Knox Floud and Egbert G. Floud from their extensive European tour,” it began. Farther I caught vagrant lines, salient phrases: “—the well-known social leader of our North Side set ... planning a series of entertainments for the approaching social season that promise to eclipse all previous gayeties of Red Gap’s smart set ... holding the reins of social leadership with a firm grasp ... distinguished for her social graces and tact as a hostess ... their palatial home on Ophir Avenue, the scene of so much of the smart social life that has distinguished our beautiful city.”
It left me rather unmoved from my depression, even the concluding note: “The Flouds are accompanied by their English manservant, secured through the kind offices of the brother of his lordship Earl of Brinstead, the well-known English peer, who will no doubt do much to impart to the coming functions that air of smartness which distinguishes the highest social circles of London, Paris, and other capitals of the great world of fashion.”
“Some mess of words, that,” observed Cousin Egbert, and it did indeed seem to be rather intimately phrased.
“Better come along with me,” he again urged. There was a moment’s fateful silence, then, quite mechanically, I arose and prepared to accompany him. In the hall below I handed him his evening stick and gloves, which he absently took from me, and we presently traversed that street of houses much in the fashion of the Floud house and nearly all boasting some sculptured bit of wild life on their terraces.
It was a calm night of late summer; all Nature seemed at peace. I looked aloft and reflected that the same stars were shining upon the civilization I had left so far behind. As we walked I lost myself in musing pensively upon this curious astronomical fact and upon the further vicissitudes to which I would surely be exposed. I compared myself whimsically to an explorer chap who has ventured among a tribe of natives and who must seem to adopt their weird manners and customs to save himself from their fanatic violence.
From this I was aroused by Cousin Egbert, who, with sudden dismay regarding his stick and gloves, uttered a low cry of anguish and thrust them into my hands before I had divined his purpose.
“You’ll have to tote them there things,” he swiftly explained. “I forgot where I was.” I demurred sharply, but he would not listen.
“I didn’t mind it so much in Paris and Europe, where I ain’t so very well known, but my good gosh! man, this is my home town. You’ll have to take them. People won’t notice it in you so much, you being a foreigner, anyway.”
Without further objection I wearily took them, finding a desperate drollery in being regarded as a foreigner, whereas I was simply alone among foreigners; but I knew that Cousin Egbert lacked the subtlety to grasp this point of view and made no effort to lay it before him. It was clear to me then, I think, that he would forever remain socially impossible, though perhaps no bad sort from a mere human point of view.
We continued our stroll, turning presently from this residential avenue to a street of small unlighted shops, and from this into a wider and brilliantly lighted thoroughfare of larger shops, where my companion presently began to greet native acquaintances. And now once more he affected that fashion of presenting me to his friends that I had so deplored in Paris. His own greeting made, he would call out heartily: “Shake hands with my friend Colonel Ruggles!” Nor would he heed my protests at this, so that in sheer desperation I presently ceased making them, reflecting that after all we were encountering the street classes of the town.
At a score of such casual meetings I was thus presented, for he seemed to know quite almost every one and at times there would be a group of natives about us on the pavement. Twice we went into “saloons,” as they rather pretentiously style their public houses, where Cousin Egbert would stand the drinks for all present, not omitting each time to present me formally to the bar-man. In all these instances I was at once asked what I thought of their town, which was at first rather embarrassing, as I was confident that any frank disclosure of my opinion, being necessarily hurried, might easily be misunderstood. I at length devised a conventional formula of praise which, although feeling a frightful fool, I delivered each time thereafter.
Thus we progressed the length of their commercial centre, the incidents varying but little.
“Hello, Sour-dough, you old shellback! When did you come off the trail?”
“Just got in. My lands! but it’s good to be back. Billy, shake hands with my friend Colonel Ruggles.”
I mean to say, the persons were not all named “Billy,” that being used only by way of illustration. Sometimes they would be called “Doc” or “Hank” or “Al” or “Chris.” Nor was my companion invariably called “shellback.” “Horned-toad” and “Stinging-lizard” were also epithets much in favour with his friends.
At the end of this street we at length paused before the office, as I saw, of “The Red GapRecorder; Daily and Weekly.” Cousin Egbert entered here, but came out almost at once.
“Henshaw ain’t there, and she said I got to be sure and give him this here piece personally; so come on. He’s up to a lawn-feet.”
“A social function, sir?” I asked.
“No; just a lawn-feet up in Judge Ballard’s front yard to raise money for new uniforms for the band—that’s what the boy said in there.”
“But would it not be highly improper for me to appear there, sir?” I at once objected. “I fear it’s not done, sir.”
“Shucks!” he insisted, “don’t talk foolish that way. You’re a peach of a little mixer all right. Come on! Everybody goes. They’ll even let me in. I can give this here piece to Henshaw and then we’ll spend a little money to help the band-boys along.”
My misgivings were by no means dispelled, yet as the affair seemed to be public rather than smart, I allowed myself to be led on.
Into another street of residences we turned, and after a brisk walk I was able to identify the “front yard” of which my companion had spoken. The strains of an orchestra came to us and from the trees and shrubbery gleamed the lights of paper lanterns. I could discern tents and marquees, a throng of people moving among them. Nearer, I observed a refreshment pavilion and a dancing platform.
Reaching the gate, Cousin Egbert paid for us an entrance fee of two shillings to a young lady in gypsy costume whom he greeted cordially as Beryl Mae, not omitting to present me to her as Colonel Ruggles.
We moved into the thick of the crowd. There was much laughter and hearty speech, and it at once occurred to me that Cousin Egbert had been right: it would not be an assemblage of people that mattered, but rather of small tradesmen, artisans, tenant-farmers and the like with whom I could properly mingle.
My companion was greeted by several of the throng, to whom he in turn presented me, among them after a bit to a slight, reddish-bearded person wearing thick nose-glasses whom I understood to be the pressman we were in search of. Nervous of manner he was and preoccupied with a notebook in which he frantically scribbled items from time to time. Yet no sooner was I presented to him than he began a quizzing sort of conversation with me that lasted near a half-hour, I should say. Very interested he seemed to hear of my previous life, having in full measure that naïve curiosity about one which Americans take so little pains to hide. Like the other natives I had met that evening, he was especially concerned to know what I thought of Red Gap. The chat was not at all unpleasant, as he seemed to be a well-informed person, and it was not without regret that I noted the approach of Cousin Egbert in company with a pleasant-faced, middle-aged lady in Oriental garb, carrying a tambourine.
“Mrs. Ballard, allow me to make you acquainted with my friend Colonel Ruggles!” Thus Cousin Egbert performed his ceremony. The lady grasped my hand with great cordiality.
“You men have monopolized the Colonel long enough,” she began with a large coquetry that I found not unpleasing, and firmly grasping my arm she led me off in the direction of the refreshment pavilion, where I was playfully let to know that I should purchase her bits of refreshment, coffee, plum-cake, an ice, things of that sort. Through it all she kept up a running fire of banter, from time to time presenting me to other women young and old who happened about us, all of whom betrayed an interest in my personality that was not unflattering, even from this commoner sort of the town’s people.
Nor would my new friend release me when she had refreshed herself, but had it that I must dance with her. I had now to confess that I was unskilled in the native American folk dances which I had observed being performed, whereupon she briskly chided me for my backwardness, but commanded a valse from the musicians, and this we danced together.
I may here say that I am not without a certain finesse on the dancing-floor and I rather enjoyed the momentary abandon with this village worthy. Indeed I had rather enjoyed the whole affair, though I felt that my manner was gradually marking me as one apart from the natives; made conscious I was of a more finished, a suaver formality in myself—the Mrs. Ballard I had met came at length to be by way of tapping me coquettishly with her tambourine in our lighter moments. Also my presence increasingly drew attention, more and more of the village belles and matrons demanding in their hearty way to be presented to me. Indeed the society was vastly more enlivening, I reflected, than I had found it in a similar walk of life at home.
Rather regretfully I left with Cousin Egbert, who found me at last in one of the tents having my palm read by the gypsy young person who had taken our fees at the gate. Of course I am aware that she was probably without any real gifts for this science, as so few are who undertake it at charity bazaars, yet she told me not a few things that were significant: that my somewhat cold exterior and air of sternness were but a mask to shield a too-impulsive nature; that I possessed great firmness of character and was fond of Nature. She added peculiarly at the last “I see trouble ahead, but you are not to be downcast—the skies will brighten.”
It was at this point that Cousin Egbert found me, and after he had warned the young woman that I was “some mixer” we departed. Not until we had reached the Floud home did he discover that he had quite forgotten to hand the press-chap Mrs. Effie’s manuscript.
“Dog on the luck!” said he in his quaint tone of exasperation, “here I’ve went and forgot to give Mrs. Effie’s piece to the editor.” He sighed ruefully. “Well, to-morrow’s another day.”
And so the die was cast. To-morrow was indeed another day!
Yet I fell asleep on a memory of the evening that brought me a sort of shamed pleasure—that I had falsely borne the stick and gloves of Cousin Egbert. I knew they had given me rather an air.