Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles of London and Paris, late of the
British army, bon-vivant and man of the world, is in our midst
for an indefinite stay, being at present the honoured house
guest of Senator and Mrs. James Knox Floud, who returned from
foreign parts on the 5:16 flyer yesterday afternoon. Colonel
Ruggles has long been intimately associated with the family
of his lordship the Earl of Brinstead, and especially with
his lordship’s brother, the Honourable George Augustus
Vane-Basingwell, with whom he has recently been sojourning
in la belle France. In a brief interview which the Colonel
genially accorded ye scribe, he expressed himself as delighted
with 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 garden
spot of the West, if not of the civilized world, and your
people display a charm that must be, I dare say, typically
American. Altogether, I am enchanted with the wonders I have
beheld since landing at your New York, particularly with the
habit your best people have of roughing it in camps like that
of Mr. C. Belknap-Jackson among the mountains of New York, where
I was most pleasantly entertained by himself and his delightful
wife. The length of my stay among you is uncertain, though I
have been pressed by the Flouds, with whom I am stopping, and
by the C. Belknap-Jacksons to prolong it indefinitely, and in
fact to identify myself to an extent with your social life.”
The Colonel is a man of distinguished appearance, with the
seasoned bearing of an old campaigner, and though at moments
he displays that cool reserve so typical of the English
gentleman, evidence was not lacking last evening that he can
unbend on occasion. At the lawn fête held in the spacious
grounds of Judge Ballard, where a myriad Japanese lanterns
made the scene a veritable fairyland, he was quite the most
sought-after notable present, and gayly tripped the light
fantastic toe with the élite of Red Gap’s smart set there
assembled.
From his cordial manner of entering into the spirit of the
affair we predict that Colonel Ruggles will be a decided
acquisition to our social life, and we understand that a
series of recherché entertainments in his honour has already
been planned by Mrs. County Judge Ballard, who took the
distinguished guest under her wing the moment he appeared
last evening. Welcome to our city, Colonel! And may the warm
hearts of Red Gap cause you to forget that European world of
fashion of which you have long been so distinguished an
ornament!
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 were _my_ equal. 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
my _savoir faire_ had 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.