With a curious friendly glow upon me I set about helping Cousin Egbert in the preparation of our evening meal, a work from which, owing to the number and apparent difficulty of my suggestions, he presently withdrew, leaving me in entire charge. It is quite true that I have pronounced views as to the preparation and serving of food, and I dare say I embarrassed the worthy fellow without at all meaning to do so, for too many of his culinary efforts betray the fumbling touch of the amateur. And as I worked over the open fire, doing the trout to a turn, stirring the beans, and perfecting the stew with deft touches of seasoning, I worded to myself for the first time a most severe indictment against the North American cookery, based upon my observations across the continent and my experience as a diner-out in Red Gap.
I saw that it would never do with us, and that it ought, as a matter of fact, to be uplifted. Even then, while our guest chattered gossip of the town over her brown paper cigarettes, I felt the stirring of an impulse to teach Americans how to do themselves better at table. For the moment, of course, I was hampered by lack of equipment (there was not even a fish slice in the establishment), but even so I brewed proper tea and was able to impart to the simple viands a touch of distinction which they had lacked under Cousin Egbert’s all-too-careless manipulation.
As I served the repast Cousin Egbert produced a bottle of the brown American whiskey at which we pegged a bit before sitting to table.
“Three rousing cheers!” said he, and the Mixer responded with “Happy days!”
As on that former occasion, the draught of spirits flooded my being with a vast consciousness of personal worth and of good feeling toward my companions. With a true insight I suddenly perceived that one might belong to the great lower middle-class in America and still matter in the truest, correctest sense of the term.
As we fell hungrily to the food, the Mixer did not fail to praise my cooking of the trout, and she and Cousin Egbert were presently lamenting the difficulty of obtaining a well-cooked meal in Red Gap. At this I boldly spoke up, declaring that American cookery lacked constructive imagination, making only the barest use of its magnificent opportunities, following certain beaten and all-too-familiar roads with a slavish stupidity.
“We nearly had a good restaurant,” said the Mixer. “A Frenchman came and showed us a little flash of form, but he only lasted a month because he got homesick. He had half the people in town going there for dinner, too, to get away from their Chinamen—and after I spent a lot of money fixing the place up for him, too.”
I recalled the establishment, on the main street, though I had not known that our guest was its owner. Vacant it was now, and looking quite as if the bailiffs had been in.
“He couldn’t cook ham and eggs proper,” suggested Cousin Egbert. “I tried him three times, and every time he done something French to ‘em that nobody had ought to do to ham and eggs.”
Hereupon I ventured to assert that a too-intense nationalism would prove the ruin of any chef outside his own country; there must be a certain breadth of treatment, a blending of the best features of different schools. One must know English and French methods and yet be a slave to neither; one must even know American cookery and be prepared to adapt its half-dozen or so undoubted excellencies. From this I ventured further into a general criticism of the dinners I had eaten at Red Gap’s smartest houses. Too profuse they were, I said, and too little satisfying in any one feature; too many courses, constructed, as I had observed, after photographs printed in the back pages of women’s magazines; doubtless they possessed a certain artistic value as sights for the eye, but considered as food they were devoid of any inner meaning.
“Bill’s right,” said Cousin Egbert warmly. “Mrs. Effie, she gets up about nine of them pictures, with nuts and grated eggs and scrambled tomatoes all over ‘em, and nobody knowing what’s what, and even when you strike one that tastes good they’s only a dab of it and you mustn’t ask for any more. When I go out to dinner, what I want is to have ‘em say, ‘Pass up your plate, Mr. Floud, for another piece of the steak and some potatoes, and have some more squash and help yourself to the quince jelly.’ That’s how it had ought to be, but I keep eatin’ these here little plates of cut-up things and waiting for the real stuff, and first thing I know I get a spoonful of coffee in something like you put eye medicine into, and I know it’s all over. Last time I was out I hid up a dish of these here salted almuns under a fern and et the whole lot from time to time, kind of absent like. It helped some, but it wasn’t dinner.”
“Same here,” put in the Mixer, saturating half a slice of bread in the sauce of the stew. “I can’t afford to act otherwise than like I am a lady at one of them dinners, but the minute I’m home I beat it for the icebox. I suppose it’s all right to be socially elegant, but we hadn’t ought to let it contaminate our food none. And even at that New York hotel this summer you had to make trouble to get fed proper. I wanted strawberry shortcake, and what do you reckon they dealt me? A thing looking like a marble palace—sponge cake and whipped cream with a few red spots in between. Well, long as we’re friends here together, I may say that I raised hell until I had the chef himself up and told him exactly what to do; biscuit dough baked and prized apart and buttered, strawberries with sugar on ‘em in between and on top, and plenty of regular cream. Well, after three days’ trying he finally managed to get simple—he just couldn’t believe I meant it at first, and kept building on the whipped cream—and the thing cost eight dollars, but you can bet he had me, even then; the bonehead smarty had sweetened the cream and grated nutmeg into it. I give up.
“And if you can’t get right food in New York, how can you expect to here? And Jackson, the idiot, has just fired the only real cook in Red Gap. Yes, sir; he’s let the coons go. It come out that Waterman had sneaked out that suit of his golf clothes that Kate Kenner wore in the minstrel show, so he fired them both, and now I got to support ‘em, because, as long as we’re friends here, I don’t mind telling you I egged the coon on to do it.”
I saw that she was referring to the black and his wife whom I had met at the New York camp, though it seemed quaint to me that they should be called “coons,” which is, I take it, a diminutive for “raccoon,” a species of ground game to be found in America.
Truth to tell, I enjoyed myself immensely at this simple but satisfying meal, feeling myself one with these homely people, and I was sorry when we had finished.
“That was some little dinner itself,” said the Mixer as she rolled a cigarette; “and now you boys set still while I do up the dishes.” Nor would she allow either of us to assist her in this work. When she had done, Cousin Egbert proceeded to mix hot toddies from the whiskey, and we gathered about the table before the open fire.
“Now we’ll have a nice home evening,” said the Mixer, and to my great embarrassment she began at once to speak to myself.
“A strong man like him has got no business becoming a social butterfly,” she remarked to Cousin Egbert.
“Oh, Bill’s all right,” insisted the latter, as he had done so many times before.
“He’s all right so far, but let him go on for a year or so and he won’t be a darned bit better than what Jackson is, mark my words. Just a social butterfly, wearing funny clothes and attending afternoon affairs.”
“Well, I don’t say you ain’t right,” said Cousin Egbert thoughtfully; “that’s one reason I got him out here where everything is nice. What with speaking pieces like an actor, I was afraid they’d have him making more kinds of a fool of himself than what Jackson does, him being a foreigner, and his mind kind o’ running on what clothes a man had ought to wear.”
Hereupon, so flushed was I with the good feeling of the occasion, I told them straight that I had resolved to quit being Colonel Ruggles of the British army and associate of the nobility; that I had determined to forget all class distinctions and to become one of themselves, plain, simple, and unpretentious. It is true that I had consumed two of the hot grogs, but my mind was clear enough, and both my companions applauded this resolution.
“If he can just get his mind off clothes for a bit he might amount to something,” said Cousin Egbert, and it will scarcely be credited, but at the moment I felt actually grateful to him for this admission.
“We’ll think about his case,” said the Mixer, taking her own second toddy, whereupon the two fell to talking of other things, chiefly of their cattle plantations and the price of beef-stock, which then seemed to be six and one half, though what this meant I had no notion. Also I gathered that the Mixer at her own cattle-farm had been watching her calves marked with her monogram, though I would never have credited her with so much sentiment.
When the retiring hour came, Cousin Egbert and I prepared to take our blankets outside to sleep, but the Mixer would have none of this.
“The last time I slept in here,” she remarked, “mice was crawling over me all night, so you keep your shack and I’ll bed down outside. I ain’t afraid of mice, understand, but I don’t like to feel their feet on my face.”
And to my great dismay, though Cousin Egbert took it calmly enough, she took a roll of blankets and made a crude pallet on the ground outside, under a spreading pine tree. I take it she was that sort. The least I could do was to secure two tins of milk from our larder and place them near her cot, in case of some lurking high-behind, though I said nothing of this, not wishing to alarm her needlessly.
Inside the hut Cousin Egbert and I partook of a final toddy before retiring. He was unusually thoughtful and I had difficulty in persuading him to any conversation. Thus having noted a bearskin before my bed, I asked him if he had killed the animal.
“No,” said he shortly, “I wouldn’t lie for a bear as small as that.” As he was again silent, I made no further approaches to him.
From my first sleep I was awakened by a long, booming yell from our guest outside. Cousin Egbert and I reached the door at the same time.
“I’ve got it!” bellowed the Mixer, and we went out to her in the chill night. She sat up with the blankets muffled about her.
“We start Bill in that restaurant,” she began. “It come to me in a flash. I judge he’s got the right ideas, and Waterman and his wife can cook for him.”
“Bully!” exclaimed Cousin Egbert. “I was thinking he ought to have a gents’ furnishing store, on account of his mind running to dress, but you got the best idea.”
“I’ll stake him to the rent,” she put in.
“And I’ll stake him to the rest,” exclaimed Cousin Egbert delightedly, and, strange as it may seem, I suddenly saw myself a licensed victualler.
“I’ll call it the ‘United States Grill,’” I said suddenly, as if by inspiration.
“Three rousing cheers for the U.S. Grill!” shouted Cousin Egbert to the surrounding hills, and repairing to the hut he brought out hot toddies with which we drank success to the new enterprise. For a half-hour, I dare say, we discussed details there in the cold night, not seeing that it was quite preposterously bizarre. Returning to the hut at last, Cousin Egbert declared himself so chilled that he must have another toddy before retiring, and, although I was already feeling myself the equal of any American, I consented to join him.
Just before retiring again my attention centred a second time upon the bearskin before my bed and, forgetting that I had already inquired about it, I demanded of him if he had killed the animal. “Sure,” said he; “killed it with one shot just as it was going to claw me. It was an awful big one.”
Morning found the three of us engrossed with the new plan, and by the time our guest rode away after luncheon the thing was well forward and I had the Mixer’s order upon her estate agent at Red Gap for admission to the vacant premises. During the remainder of the day, between games of cribbage, Cousin Egbert and I discussed the venture. And it was now that I began to foresee a certain difficulty.
How, I asked myself, would the going into trade of Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles be regarded by those who had been his social sponsors in Red Gap? I mean to say, would not Mrs. Effie and the Belknap-Jacksons feel that I had played them false? Had I not given them the right to believe that I should continue, during my stay in their town, to be one whom their county families would consider rather a personage? It was idle, indeed, for me to deny that my personality as well as my assumed origin and social position abroad had conferred a sort of prestige upon my sponsors; that on my account, in short, the North Side set had been newly armed in its battle with the Bohemian set. And they relied upon my continued influence. How, then, could I face them with the declaration that I meant to become a tradesman? Should I be doing a caddish thing, I wondered?
Putting the difficulty to Cousin Egbert, he dismissed it impatiently by saying: “Oh, shucks!” In truth I do not believe he comprehended it in the least. But then it was that I fell upon my inspiration. I might take Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles from the North Side set, but I would give them another and bigger notable in his place. This should be none other than the Honourable George, whom I would now summon. A fortnight before I had received a rather snarky letter from him demanding to know how long I meant to remain in North America and disclosing that he was in a wretched state for want of some one to look after him. And he had even hinted that in the event of my continued absence he might himself come out to America and fetch me back. His quarter’s allowance, would, I knew, be due in a fortnight, and my letter would reach him, therefore, before some adventurer had sold him a system for beating the French games of chance. And my letter would be compelling. I would make it a summons he could not resist. Thus, when I met the reproachful gaze of the C. Belknap-Jacksons and of Mrs. Effie, I should be able to tell them: “I go from you, but I leave you a better man in my place.” With the Honourable George Augustus Vane-Basingwell, next Earl of Brinstead, as their house guest, I made no doubt that the North Side set would at once prevail as it never had before, the Bohemian set losing at once such of its members as really mattered, who would of course be sensible of the tremendous social importance of the Honourable George.
Yet there came moments in which I would again find myself in no end of a funk, foreseeing difficulties of an insurmountable character. At such times Cousin Egbert strove to cheer me with all sorts of assurances, and to divert my mind he took me upon excursions of the roughest sort into the surrounding jungle, in search either of fish or ground game. After three days of this my park-suit became almost a total ruin, particularly as to the trousers, so that I was glad to borrow a pair of overalls such as Cousin Egbert wore. They were a tidy fit, but, having resolved not to resist America any longer, I donned them without even removing the advertising placard.
With my ever-lengthening stubble of beard it will be understood that I now appeared as one of their hearty Western Americans of the roughest type, which was almost quite a little odd, considering my former principles. Cousin Egbert, I need hardly say, was immensely pleased with my changed appearance, and remarked that I was “sure a live wire.” He also heartened me in the matter of the possible disapproval of C. Belknap-Jackson, which he had divined was the essential rabbit in my moodiness.
“I admit the guy uses beautiful language,” he conceded, “and probably he’s top-notched in education, but jest the same he ain’t the whole seven pillars of the house of wisdom, not by a long shot. If he gets fancy with you, sock him again. You done it once.” So far was the worthy fellow from divining the intimate niceties involved in my giving up a social career for trade. Nor could he properly estimate the importance of my plan to summon the Honourable George to Red Gap, merely remarking that the “Judge” was all right and a good mixer and that the boys would give him a swell time.
Our return journey to Red Gap was made in company with the Indian Tuttle, and the two cow-persons, Hank and Buck, all of whom professed themselves glad to meet me again, and they, too, were wildly enthusiastic at hearing from Cousin Egbert of my proposed business venture. Needless to say they were of a class that would bother itself little with any question of social propriety involved in my entering trade, and they were loud in their promises of future patronage. At this I again felt some misgiving, for I meant the United States Grill to possess an atmosphere of quiet refinement calculated to appeal to particular people that really mattered; and yet it was plain that, keeping a public house, I must be prepared to entertain agricultural labourers and members of the lower or working classes. For a time I debated having an ordinary for such as these, where they could be shut away from my selecter patrons, but eventually decided upon a tariff that would be prohibitive to all but desirable people. The rougher or Bohemian element, being required to spring an extra shilling, would doubtless seek other places.
For two days we again filed through mountain gorges of a most awkward character, reaching Red Gap at dusk. For this I was rather grateful, not only because of my beard and the overalls, but on account of a hat of the most shocking description which Cousin Egbert had pressed upon me when my own deer-stalker was lost in a glen. I was willing to roughen it in all good-fellowship with these worthy Americans, but I knew that to those who had remarked my careful taste in dress my present appearance would seem almost a little singular. I would rather I did not shock them to this extent.
Yet when our animals had been left in their corral, or rude enclosure, I found it would be ungracious to decline the hospitality of my new friends who wished to drink to the success of the U.S. Grill, and so I accompanied them to several public houses, though with the shocking hat pulled well down over my face. Also, as the dinner hour passed, I consented to dine with them at the establishment of a Chinese, where we sat on high stools at a counter and were served ham and eggs and some of the simpler American foods.
The meal being over, I knew that we ought to cut off home directly, but Cousin Egbert again insisted upon visiting drinking-places, and I had no mind to leave him, particularly as he was growing more and more bitter in my behalf against Mr. Belknap-Jackson. I had a doubtless absurd fear that he would seek the gentleman out and do him a mischief, though for the moment he was merely urging me to do this. It would, he asserted, vastly entertain the Indian Tuttle and the cow-persons if I were to come upon Mr. Belknap-Jackson and savage him without warning, or at least with only a paltry excuse, which he seemed proud of having devised.
“You go up to the guy,” he insisted, “very polite, you understand, and ask him what day this is. If he says it’s Tuesday, sock him.”
“But it is Tuesday,” I said.
“Sure,” he replied, “that’s where the joke comes in.”
Of course this was the crudest sort of American humour and not to be given a moment’s serious thought, so I redoubled my efforts to detach him from our honest but noisy friends, and presently had the satisfaction of doing so by pleading that I must be up early on the morrow and would also require his assistance. At parting, to my embarrassment, he insisted on leading the group in a cheer. “What’s the matter with Ruggles?” they loudly demanded in unison, following the query swiftly with: “He’s all right!” the “he” being eloquently emphasized.
But at last we were away from them and off into the darker avenue, to my great relief, remembering my garb. I might be a living wire, as Cousin Egbert had said, but I was keenly aware that his overalls and hat would rather convey the impression that I was what they call in the States a bad person from a bitter creek.
To my further relief, the Floud house was quite dark as we approached and let ourselves in. Cousin Egbert, however, would enter the drawing-room, flood it with light, and seat himself in an easy-chair with his feet lifted to a sofa. He then raised his voice in a ballad of an infant that had perished, rendering it most tearfully, the refrain being, “Empty is the cradle, baby’s gone!” Apprehensive at this, I stole softly up the stairs and had but reached the door of my own room when I heard Mrs. Effie below. I could fancy the chilling gaze which she fastened upon the singer, and I heard her coldly demand, “Where are your feet?” Whereupon the plaintive voice of Cousin Egbert arose to me, “Just below my legs.” I mean to say, he had taken the thing as a quiz in anatomy rather than as the rebuke it was meant to be. As I closed my door, I heard him add that he could be pushed just so far.
Having written and posted my letter to the Honourable George the following morning, I summoned Mr. Belknap-Jackson, conceiving it my first duty to notify him and Mrs. Effie of my trade intentions. I also requested Cousin Egbert to be present, since he was my business sponsor.
All being gathered at the Floud house, including Mrs. Belknap-Jackson, I told them straight that I had resolved to abandon my social career, brilliant though it had been, and to enter trade quite as one of their middle-class Americans. They all gasped a bit at my first words, as I had quite expected them to do, but what was my surprise, when I went on to announce the nature of my enterprise, to find them not a little intrigued by it, and to discover that in their view I should not in the least be lowering myself.
“Capital, capital!” exclaimed Belknap-Jackson, and the ladies emitted little exclamations of similar import.
“At last,” said Mrs. Belknap-Jackson, “we shall have a place with tone to it. The hall above will be splendid for our dinner dances, and now we can have smart luncheons and afternoon teas.”
“And a red-coated orchestra and after-theatre suppers,” said Mrs. Effie.
“Only,” put in Belknap-Jackson thoughtfully, “he will of course be compelled to use discretion about his patrons. The rabble, of course——” He broke off with a wave of his hand which, although not pointedly, seemed to indicate Cousin Egbert, who once more wore the hunted look about his eyes and who sat by uneasily. I saw him wince.
“Some people’s money is just as good as other people’s if you come right down to it,” he muttered, “and Bill is out for the coin. Besides, we all got to eat, ain’t we?”
Belknap-Jackson smiled deprecatingly and again waved his hand as if there were no need for words.
“That rowdy Bohemian set——” began Mrs. Effie, but I made bold to interrupt. There might, I said, be awkward moments, but I had no doubt that I should be able to meet them with a flawless tact. Meantime, for the ultimate confusion of the Bohemian set of Red Gap, I had to announce that the Honourable George Augustus Vane-Basingwell would presently be with us. With him as a member of the North Side set, I pointed out, it was not possible to believe that any desirable members of the Bohemian set would longer refuse to affiliate with the smartest people.
My announcement made quite all the sensation I had anticipated. Belknap-Jackson, indeed, arose quickly and grasped me by the hand, echoing, “The Honourable George Augustus Vane-Basingwell, brother of the Earl of Brinstead,” with little shivers of ecstasy in his voice, while the ladies pealed their excitement incoherently, with “Really! really!” and “Actually coming to Red Gap—the brother of a lord!”
Then almost at once I detected curiously cold glances being darted at each other by the ladies.
“Of course we will be only too glad to put him up,” said Mrs. Belknap-Jackson quickly.
“But, my dear, he will of course come to us first,” put in Mrs. Effie. “Afterward, to be sure——”
“It’s so important that he should receive a favourable impression,” responded Mrs. Belknap-Jackson.
“That’s exactly why——” Mrs. Effie came back with not a little obvious warmth. Belknap-Jackson here caught my eye.
“I dare say Ruggles and I can be depended upon to decide a minor matter like that,” he said.
The ladies both broke in at this, rather sputteringly, but Cousin Egbert silenced them.
“Shake dice for him,” he said—“poker dice, three throws, aces low.”
“How shockingly vulgar!” hissed Mrs. Belknap-Jackson.
“Even if there were no other reason for his coming to us,” remarked her husband coldly, “there are certain unfortunate associations which ought to make his entertainment here quite impossible.”
“If you’re calling me ‘unfortunate associations,’” remarked Cousin Egbert, “you want to get it out of your head right off. I don’t mind telling you, the Judge and I get along fine together. I told him when I was in Paris and Europe to look me up the first thing if ever he come here, and he said he sure would. The Judge is some mixer, believe me!”
“The ‘Judge’!” echoed the Belknap-Jacksons in deep disgust.
“You come right down to it—I bet a cookie he stays just where I tell him to stay,” insisted Cousin Egbert. The evident conviction of his tone alarmed his hearers, who regarded each other with pained speculation.
“Right where I tell him to stay and no place else,” insisted Cousin Egbert, sensing the impression he had made.
“But this is too monstrous!” said Mr. Jackson, regarding me imploringly.
“The Honourable George,” I admitted, “has been known to do unexpected things, and there have been times when he was not as sensitive as I could wish to the demands of his caste——”
“Bill is stalling—he knows darned well the Judge is a mixer,” broke in Cousin Egbert, somewhat to my embarrassment, nor did any reply occur to me. There was a moment’s awkward silence during which I became sensitive to a radical change in the attitude which these people bore to Cousin Egbert. They shot him looks of furtive but unmistakable respect, and Mrs. Effie remarked almost with tenderness: “We must admit that Cousin Egbert has a certain way with him.”
“I dare say Floud and I can adjust the matter satisfactorily to all,” remarked Belknap-Jackson, and with a jaunty affection of good-fellowship, he opened his cigarette case to Cousin Egbert.
“I ain’t made up my mind yet where I’ll have him stay,” announced the latter, too evidently feeling his newly acquired importance. “I may have him stay one place, then again I may have him stay another. I can’t decide things like that off-hand.”
And here the matter was preposterously left, the aspirants for this social honour patiently bending their knees to the erstwhile despised Cousin Egbert, and the latter being visibly puffed up. By rather awkward stages they came again to a discussion of the United States Grill.
“The name, of course, might be thought flamboyant,” suggested Belknap-Jackson delicately.
“But I have determined,” I said, “no longer to resist America, and so I can think of no name more fitting.”
“Your determination,” he answered, “bears rather sinister implications. One may be vanquished by America as I have been. One may even submit; but surely one may always resist a little, may not one? One need not abjectly surrender one’s finest convictions, need one?”
“Oh, shucks,” put in Cousin Egbert petulantly, “what’s the use of all that ‘one’ stuff? Bill wants a good American name for his place. Me? I first thought the ‘Bon Ton Eating House’ would be kind of a nice name for it, but as soon as he said the ‘United States Grill’ I knew it was a better one. It sounds kind of grand and important.”
Belknap-Jackson here made deprecating clucks, but not too directly toward Cousin Egbert, and my choice of a name was not further criticised. I went on to assure them that I should have an establishment quietly smart rather than noisily elegant, and that I made no doubt the place would give a new tone to Red Gap, whereat they all expressed themselves as immensely pleased, and our little conference came to an end.
In company with Cousin Egbert I now went to examine the premises I was to take over. There was a spacious corner room, lighted from the front and side, which would adapt itself well to the decorative scheme I had in mind. The kitchen with its ranges I found would be almost quite suitable for my purpose, requiring but little alteration, but the large room was of course atrociously impossible in the American fashion, with unsightly walls, the floors covered with American cloth of a garish pattern, and the small, oblong tables and flimsy chairs vastly uninviting.
As to the gross ideals of the former tenant, I need only say that he had made, as I now learned, a window display of foods, quite after the manner of a draper’s window: moulds of custard set in a row, flanked on either side by “pies,” as the natives call their tarts, with perhaps a roast fowl or ham in the centre. Artistic vulgarity could of course go little beyond this, but almost as offensive were the abundant wall-placards pathetically remaining in place.
“Coffee like mother used to make,” read one. Impertinently intimate this, professing a familiarity with one’s people that would never do with us. “Try our Boston Baked Beans,” pleaded another, quite abjectly. And several others quite indelicately stated the prices at which different dishes might be had: “Irish Stew, 25 cents”; “Philadelphia Capon, 35 cents”; “Fried Chicken, Maryland, 50 cents”; “New York Fancy Broil, 40 cents.” Indeed the poor chap seemed to have been possessed by a geographical mania, finding it difficult to submit the simplest viands without crediting them to distant towns or provinces.
Upon Cousin Egbert’s remarking that these bedizened placards would “come in handy,” I took pains to explain to him just how different the United States Grill would be. The walls would be done in deep red; the floor would be covered with a heavy Turkey carpet of the same tone; the present crude electric lighting fixtures must be replaced with indirect lighting from the ceiling and electric candlesticks for the tables. The latter would be massive and of stained oak, my general colour-scheme being red and brown. The chairs would be of the same style, comfortable chairs in which patrons would be tempted to linger. The windows would be heavily draped. In a word, the place would have atmosphere; not the loud and blaring, elegance which I had observed in the smartest of New York establishments, with shrieking decorations and tables jammed together, but an atmosphere of distinction which, though subtle, would yet impress shop-assistants, plate-layers and road-menders, hodmen, carters, cattle-persons—in short the middle-class native.
Cousin Egbert, I fear, was not properly impressed with my plan, for he looked longingly at the wall-placards, yet he made the most loyal pretence to this effect, even when I explained further that I should probably have no printed menu, which I have always regarded as the ultimate vulgarity in a place where there are any proper relations between patrons and steward. He made one wistful, timid reference to the “Try Our Merchant’s Lunch for 35 cents,” after which he gave in entirely, particularly when I explained that ham and eggs in the best manner would be forthcoming at his order, even though no placard vaunted them or named their price. Advertising one’s ability to serve ham and eggs, I pointed out to him, would be quite like advertising that one was a member of the Church of England.
After this he meekly enough accompanied me to his bank, where he placed a thousand pounds to my credit, adding that I could go as much farther as I liked, whereupon I set in motion the machinery for decorating and furnishing the place, with particular attention to silver, linen, china, and glassware, all of which, I was resolved, should have an air of its own.
Nor did I neglect to seek out the pair of blacks and enter into an agreement with them to assist in staffing my place. I had feared that the male black might have resolved to return to his adventurous life of outlawry after leaving the employment of Belknap-Jackson, but I found him peacefully inclined and entirely willing to accept service with me, while his wife, upon whom I would depend for much of the actual cooking, was wholly enthusiastic, admiring especially my colour-scheme of reds. I observed at once that her almost exclusive notion of preparing food was to fry it, but I made no doubt that I would be able to broaden her scope, since there are of course things that one simply does not fry.
The male black, or raccoon, at first alarmed me not a little by reason of threats he made against Belknap-Jackson on account of having been shopped. He nursed an intention, so he informed me, of putting snake-dust in the boots of his late employer and so bringing evil upon him, either by disease or violence, but in this I discouraged him smartly, apprising him that the Belknap-Jacksons would doubtless be among our most desirable patrons, whereupon his wife promised for him that he would do nothing of the sort. She was a native of formidable bulk, and her menacing glare at her consort as she made this promise gave me instant confidence in her power to control him, desperate fellow though he was.
Later in the day, at the door of the silversmith’s, Cousin Egbert hailed the pressman I had met on the evening of my arrival, and insisted that I impart to him the details of my venture. The chap seemed vastly interested, and his sheet the following morning published the following:
THE DELMONICO OF THE WESTColonel Marmaduke Ruggles of London and Paris, for the pasttwo months a social favourite in Red Gap’s select North Sideset, has decided to cast his lot among us and will henceforthbe reckoned as one of our leading business men. The plan ofthe Colonel is nothing less than to give Red Gap a truly éliteand recherché restaurant after the best models of London andParis, to which purpose he will devote a considerable portionof his ample means. The establishment will occupy the roomycorner store of the Pettengill block, and orders have alreadybeen placed for its decoration and furnishing, which will besumptuous beyond anything yet seen in our thriving metropolis.In speaking of his enterprise yesterday, the Colonel remarked,with a sly twinkle in his eye, “Demosthenes was the son of acutler, Cromwell’s father was a brewer, your General Grant wasa tanner, and a Mr. Garfield, who held, I gather, an importantpost in your government, was once employed on a canal-ship, soI trust that in this land of equality it will not be presumptuouson my part to seek to become the managing owner of a restaurantthat will be a credit to the fastest growing town in the state.“You Americans have,” continued the Colonel in his dry, inimitablemanner, “a bewildering variety of foodstuffs, but I trust I maybe forgiven for saying that you have used too little constructiveimagination in the cooking of it. In the one matter of tea,for example, I have been obliged to figure in some episodesthat were profoundly regrettable. Again, amid the profusion offresh vegetables and meats, you are becoming a nation of tinnedfood eaters, or canned food as you prefer to call it. This,I need hardly say, adds to your cost of living and also makesyou liable to one of the most dreaded of modern diseases, adisease whose rise can be traced to the rise of the tinned-foodindustry. Your tin openers rasp into the tin with the resultthat a fine sawdust of metal must drop into the contents andso enter the human system. The result is perhaps negligible ina large majority of cases, but that it is not universally sois proved by the prevalence of appendicitis. Not orange orgrape pips, as was so long believed, but the deadly fine rainof metal shavings must be held responsible for this scourge.I need hardly say that at the United States Grill no tinnedfood will be used.”This latest discovery of the Colonel’s is important if true.Be that as it may, his restaurant will fill a long-felt want,and will doubtless prove to be an important factor in the socialgayeties of our smart set. Due notice of its opening will begiven in the news and doubtless in the advertising columns ofthis journal.
Again I was brought to marvel at a peculiarity of the American press, a certain childish eagerness for marvels and grotesque wonders. I had given but passing thought to my remarks about appendicitis and its relation to the American tinned-food habit, nor, on reading the chap’s screed, did they impress me as being fraught with vital interest to thinking people; in truth, I was more concerned with the comparison of myself to a restaurateur of the crude new city of New York, which might belittle rather than distinguish me, I suspected. But what was my astonishment to perceive in the course of a few days that I had created rather a sensation, with attending newspaper publicity which, although bizarre enough, I am bound to say contributed not a little to the consideration in which I afterward came to be held by the more serious-minded persons of Red Gap.
Busied with the multitude of details attending my installation, I was called upon by another press chap, representing a Spokane sheet, who wished me to elaborate my views concerning the most probable cause of appendicitis, which I found myself able to do with some eloquence, reciting among other details that even though the metal dust might be of an almost microscopic fineness, it could still do a mischief to one’s appendix. The press chap appeared wholly receptive to my views, and, after securing details of my plan to smarten Red Gap with a restaurant of real distinction, he asked so civilly for a photographic portrait of myself that I was unable to refuse him. The thing was a snap taken of me one morning at Chaynes-Wotten by Higgins, the butler, as I stood by his lordship’s saddle mare. It was not by any means the best likeness I have had, but there was a rather effective bit of background disclosing the driveway and the façade of the East Wing.
This episode I had well-nigh forgotten when on the following Sunday I found the thing emblazoned across a page of the Spokane sheet under a shrieking headline: “Can Opener Blamed for Appendicitis.” A secondary heading ran, “Famous British Sportsman and Bon Vivant Advances Novel Theory.” Accompanying this was a print of the photograph entitled, “Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles with His Favourite Hunter, at His English Country Seat.”
Although the article made suitable reference to myself and my enterprise, it was devoted chiefly to a discussion of my tin-opening theory and was supplemented by a rather snarky statement signed by a physician declaring it to be nonsense. I thought the fellow might have chosen his words with more care, but again dismissed the matter from my mind. Yet this was not to be the last of it. In due time came a New York sheet with a most extraordinary page. “Titled Englishman Learns Cause of Appendicitis,” read the heading in large, muddy type. Below was the photograph of myself, now entitled, “Sir Marmaduke Ruggles and His Favourite Hunter.” But this was only one of the illustrations. From the upper right-hand corner a gigantic hand wielding a tin-opener rained a voluminous spray of metal, presumably, upon a cowering wretch in the lower left-hand corner, who was quite plainly all in. There were tables of statistics showing the increase, side by side of appendicitis and the tinned-food industry, a matter to which I had devoted, said the print, years of research before announcing my discovery. Followed statements from half a dozen distinguished surgeons, each signed autographically, all but one rather bluntly disagreeing with me, insisting that the tin-opener cuts cleanly and, if not man’s best friend, should at least be considered one of the triumphs of civilization. The only exception announced that he was at present conducting laboratory experiments with a view to testing my theory and would disclose his results in due time. Meantime, he counselled the public to be not unduly alarmed.
Of the further flood of these screeds, which continued for the better part of a year, I need not speak. They ran the gamut from serious leaders in medical journals to paid ridicule of my theory in advertisements printed by the food-tinning persons, and I have to admit that in the end the public returned to a full confidence in its tinned foods. But that is beside the point, which was that Red Gap had become intensely interested in the United States Grill, and to this I was not averse, though I would rather I had been regarded as one of their plain, common sort, instead of the fictitious Colonel which Cousin Egbert’s well-meaning stupidity had foisted upon the town. The “Sir Marmaduke Ruggles and His Favourite Hunter” had been especially repugnant to my finer taste, particularly as it was seized upon by the cheap one-and-six fellow Hobbs for some of his coarsest humour, he more than once referring to that detestable cur of Mrs. Judson’s, who had quickly resumed his allegiance to me, as my “hunting pack.”
The other tradesmen of the town, I am bound to say, exhibited a friendly interest in my venture which was always welcome and often helpful. Even one of my competitors showed himself to be a dead sport by coming to me from time to time with hints and advice. He was an entirely worthy person who advertised his restaurant as “Bert’s Place.” “Go to Bert’s Place for a Square Meal,” was his favoured line in the public prints. He, also, I regret to say, made a practice of displaying cooked foods in his show-window, the window carrying the line in enamelled letters, “Tables Reserved for Ladies.”
Of course between such an establishment and my own there could be little in common, and I was obliged to reject a placard which he offered me, reading, “No Checks Cashed. This Means You!” although he and Cousin Egbert warmly advised that I display it in a conspicuous place. “Some of them dead beats in the North Side set will put you sideways if you don’t,” warned the latter, but I held firmly to the line of quiet refinement which I had laid down, and explained that I could allow no such inconsiderate mention of money to be obtruded upon the notice of my guests. I would devise some subtler protection against the dead beet-roots.
In the matter of music, however, I was pleased to accept the advice of Cousin Egbert. “Get one of them musical pianos that you put a nickel in,” he counselled me, and this I did, together with an assorted repertoire of selections both classical and popular, the latter consisting chiefly of the ragging time songs to which the native Americans perform their folkdances.
And now, as the date of my opening drew near, I began to suspect that its social values might become a bit complicated. Mrs. Belknap-Jackson, for example, approached me in confidence to know if she might reserve all the tables in my establishment for the opening evening, remarking that it would be as well to put the correct social cachet upon the place at once, which would be achieved by her inviting only the desirable people. Though she was all for settling the matter at once, something prompted me to take it under consideration.
The same evening Mrs. Effie approached me with a similar suggestion, remarking that she would gladly take it upon herself to see that the occasion was unmarred by the presence of those one would not care to meet in one’s own home. Again I was non-committal, somewhat to her annoyance.
The following morning I was sought by Mrs. Judge Ballard with the information that much would depend upon my opening, and if the matter were left entirely in her hands she would be more than glad to insure its success. Of her, also, I begged a day’s consideration, suspecting then that I might be compelled to ask these three social leaders to unite amicably as patronesses of an affair that was bound to have a supreme social significance. But as I still meditated profoundly over the complication late that afternoon, overlooking in the meanwhile an electrician who was busy with my shaded candlesticks, I was surprised by the self-possessed entrance of the leader of the Bohemian set, the Klondike person of whom I have spoken. Again I was compelled to observe that she was quite the most smartly gowned woman in Red Gap, and that she marvellously knew what to put on her head.
She coolly surveyed my decorations and such of the furnishings as were in place before addressing me.
“I wish to engage one of your best tables,” she began, “for your opening night—the tenth, isn’t it?—this large one in the corner will do nicely. There will be eight of us. Your place really won’t be half bad, if your food is at all possible.”
The creature spoke with a sublime effrontery, quite as if she had not helped a few weeks before to ridicule all that was best in Red Gap society, yet there was that about her which prevented me from rebuking her even by the faintest shade in my manner. More than this, I suddenly saw that the Bohemian set would be a factor in my trade which I could not afford to ignore. While I affected to consider her request she tapped the toe of a small boot with a correctly rolled umbrella, lifting her chin rather attractively meanwhile to survey my freshly done ceiling. I may say here that the effect of her was most compelling, and I could well understand the bitterness with which the ladies of the Onwards and Upwards Society had gossiped her to rags. Incidently, this was the first correctly rolled umbrella, saving my own, that I had seen in North America.
“I shall be pleased,” I said, “to reserve this table for you—eight places, I believe you said?”
She left me as a duchess might have. She was that sort. I felt almost quite unequal to her. And the die was cast. I faced each of the three ladies who had previously approached me with the declaration that I was a licensed victualler, bound to serve all who might apply. That while I was keenly sensitive to the social aspects of my business, it was yet a business, and I must, therefore, be in supreme control. In justice to myself I could not exclusively entertain any faction of the North Side set, nor even the set in its entirety. In each instance, I added that I could not debar from my tables even such members of the Bohemian set as conducted themselves in a seemly manner. It was a difficult situation, calling out all my tact, yet I faced it with a firmness which was later to react to my advantage in ways I did not yet dream of.
So engrossed for a month had I been with furnishers, decorators, char persons, and others that the time of the Honourable George’s arrival drew on quite before I realized it. A brief and still snarky note had apprised me of his intention to come out to North America, whereupon I had all but forgotten him, until a telegram from Chicago or one of those places had warned me of his imminence. This I displayed to Cousin Egbert, who, much pleased with himself, declared that the Honourable George should be taken to the Floud home directly upon his arrival.
“I meant to rope him in there on the start,” he confided to me, “but I let on I wasn’t decided yet, just to keep ‘em stirred up. Mrs. Effie she butters me up with soft words every day of my life, and that Jackson lad has offered me about ten thousand of them vegetable cigarettes, but I’ll have to throw him down. He’s the human flivver. Put him in a car of dressed beef and he’d freeze it between here and Spokane. Yes, sir; you could cut his ear off and it wouldn’t bleed. I ain’t going to run the Judge against no such proposition like that.” Of course the poor chap was speaking his own backwoods metaphor, as I am quite sure he would have been incapable of mutilating Belknap-Jackson, or even of imprisoning him in a goods van of beef. I mean to say, it was merely his way of speaking and was not to be taken at all literally.
As a result of his ensuing call upon the pressman, the sheet of the following morning contained word of the Honourable George’s coming, the facts being not garbled more than was usual with this chap.