I must do Cousin Egbert the justice to say that he showed a due sense of
his responsibility in meeting the Honourable George. By general consent
the honour had seemed to fall to him, both the Belknap-Jacksons and Mrs.
Effie rather timidly conceding his claim that the distinguished guest
would prefer it so. Indeed, Cousin Egbert had been loudly arrogant in
the matter, speaking largely of his European intimacy with the “Judge”
until, as he confided to me, he “had them all bisoned,” or, I believe,
“buffaloed” is the term he used, referring to the big-game animal that
has been swept from the American savannahs.
At all events no one further questioned his right to be at the station
when the Honourable George arrived, and for the first time almost
since his own homecoming he got himself up with some attention to
detail. If left to himself I dare say he would have donned frock-coat
and top-hat, but at my suggestion he chose his smartest lounge-suit,
and I took pains to see that the minor details of hat, boots, hose,
gloves, etc., were studiously correct without being at all assertive.
For my own part, I was also at some pains with my attire going
consciously a bit further with details than Cousin Egbert, thinking it
best the Honourable George should at once observe a change in my
bearing and social consequence so that nothing in his manner toward me
might embarrassingly publish our former relations. The stick, gloves,
and monocle would achieve this for the moment, and once alone I meant
to tell him straight that all was over between us as master and man,
we having passed out of each other’s lives in that respect. If
necessary, I meant to read to him certain passages from the so-called
“Declaration of Independence,” and to show him the fateful little card
I had found, which would acquaint him, I made no doubt, with the great
change that had come upon me, after which our intimacy would rest
solely upon the mutual esteem which I knew to exist between us. I mean
to say, it would never have done for one moment at home, but finding
ourselves together in this wild and lawless country we would neither
of us try to resist America, but face each other as one equal native
to another.
Waiting on the station platform with Cousin Egbert, he confided to the
loungers there that he was come to meet his friend Judge Basingwell,
whereat all betrayed a friendly interest, though they were not at all
persons that mattered, being of the semi-leisured class who each day
went down, as they put it, “to see Number Six go through.” There was
thus a rather tense air of expectancy when the train pulled in. From
one of the Pullman night coaches emerged the Honourable George,
preceded by a blackamoor or raccoon bearing bags and bundles, and
followed by another uniformed raccoon and a white guard, also bearing
bags and bundles, and all betraying a marked anxiety.
One glance at the Honourable George served to confirm certain fears I
had suffered regarding his appearance. Topped by a deer-stalking
fore-and-aft cap in an inferior state of preservation, he wore the
jacket of a lounge-suit, once possible, doubtless, but now demoded,
and a blazered golfing waistcoat, striking for its poisonous greens,
trousers from an outing suit that I myself had discarded after it came
to me, and boots of an entirely shocking character. Of his cravat I
have not the heart to speak, but I may mention that all his garments
were quite horrid with wrinkles and seemed to have been slept in
repeatedly.
Cousin Egbert at once rushed forward to greet his guest, while I
busied myself in receiving the hand-luggage, wishing to have our guest
effaced from the scene and secluded, with all possible speed. There
were three battered handbags, two rolls of travelling rugs, a
stick-case, a dispatch-case, a pair of binoculars, a hat-box, a
top-coat, a storm-coat, a portfolio of correspondence materials, a
camera, a medicine-case, some of these lacking either strap or handle.
The attendants all emitted hearty sighs of relief when these articles
had been deposited upon the platform. Without being told, I divined
that the Honourable George had greatly worried them during the long
journey with his fretful demands for service, and I tipped them
handsomely while he was still engaged with Cousin Egbert and the
latter’s station-lounging friends to whom he was being presented. At
last, observing me, he came forward, but halted on surveying the
luggage, and screamed hoarsely to the last attendant who was now
boarding the train. The latter vanished, but reappeared, as the train
moved off, with two more articles, a vacuum night-flask and a tin of
charcoal biscuits, the absence of which had been swiftly detected by
their owner.
It was at that moment that one of the loungers nearby made a peculiar
observation. “Gee!” said he to a native beside him, “it must take an
awful lot of trouble to be an Englishman.” At the moment this seemed
to me to be pregnant with meaning, though doubtless it was because I
had so long been a resident of the North American wilds.
Again the Honourable George approached me and grasped my hand before
certain details of my attire and, I fancy, a certain change in my
bearing, attracted his notice. Perhaps it was the single glass. His
grasp of my hand relaxed and he rubbed his eyes as if dazed from a
blow, but I was able to carry the situation off quite nicely under
cover of the confusion attending his many bags and bundles, being
helped also at the moment by the deeply humiliating discovery of a
certain omission from his attire. I could not at first believe my eyes
and was obliged to look again and again, but there could be no doubt
about it: the Honourable George was wearing a single spat!
I cried out at this, pointing, I fancy, in a most undignified manner,
so terrific had been the shock of it, and what was my amazement to
hear him say: “But I _had_ only one, you silly! How could I wear
‘em both when the other was lost in that bally rabbit-hutch they put
me in on shipboard? No bigger than a parcels-lift!” And he had too
plainly crossed North America in this shocking state! Glad I was then
that Belknap-Jackson was not present. The others, I dare say,
considered it a mere freak of fashion. As quickly as I could, I
hustled him into the waiting carriage, piling his luggage about him to
the best advantage and hurrying Cousin Egbert after him as rapidly as
I could, though the latter, as on the occasion of my own arrival,
halted our departure long enough to present the Honourable George to
the driver.
“Judge, shake hands with my friend Eddie Pierce.” adding as the
ceremony was performed, “Eddie keeps a good team, any time you want a
hack-ride.”
“Sure, Judge,” remarked the driver cordially. “Just call up Main 224,
any time. Any friend of Sour-dough’s can have anything they want night
or day.” Whereupon he climbed to his box and we at last drove away.
The Honourable George had continued from the moment of our meeting to
glance at me in a peculiar, side-long fashion. He seemed fascinated
and yet unequal to a straight look at me. He was undoubtedly dazed, as
I could discern from his absent manner of opening the tin of charcoal
biscuits and munching one. I mean to say, it was too obviously a mere
mechanical impulse.
“I say,” he remarked to Cousin Egbert, who was beaming fondly at him,
“how strange it all is! It’s quite foreign.”
“The fastest-growing little town in the State,” said Cousin Egbert.
“But what makes it grow so silly fast?” demanded the other.
“Enterprise and industries,” answered Cousin Egbert loftily.
“Nothing to make a dust about,” remarked the Honourable George,
staring glassily at the main business thoroughfare. “I’ve seen larger
towns--scores of them.”
“You ain’t begun to see this town yet,” responded Cousin Egbert
loyally, and he called to the driver, “Has he, Eddie?”
“Sure, he ain’t!” said the driver person genially. “Wait till he sees
the new waterworks and the sash-and-blind factory!”
“Is he one of your gentleman drivers?” demanded the Honourable George.
“And why a blind factory?”
“Oh, Eddie’s good people all right,” answered the other, “and the
factory turns out blinds and things.”
“Why turn them out?” he left this and continued: “He’s like that
American Johnny in London that drives his own coach to Brighton, yes?
Ripping idea! Gentleman driver. But I say, you know, I’ll sit on the
box with him. Pull up a bit, old son!”
To my consternation the driver chap halted, and before I could
remonstrate the Honourable George had mounted to the box beside him.
Thankful I was we had left the main street, though in the residence
avenue where the change was made we attracted far more attention than
was desirable. “Didn’t I tell you he was some mixer?” demanded Cousin
Egbert of me, but I was too sickened to make any suitable response.
The Honourable George’s possession of a single spat was now flaunted,
as it were, in the face of Red Gap’s best families.
“How foreign it all is!” he repeated, turning back to us, yet with
only his side-glance for me. “But the American Johnny in London had a
much smarter coach than this, and better animals, too. You’re not up
to his class yet, old thing!”
“That dish-faced pinto on the off side,” remarked the driver, “can
outrun anything in this town for fun, money, or marbles.”
“Marbles!” called the Honourable George to us; “why marbles? Silly
things! It’s all bally strange! And why do your villagers stare so?”
“Some little mixer, all right, all right,” murmured Cousin Egbert in a
sort of ecstasy, as we drew up at the Floud home. “And yet one of them
guys back there called him a typical Britisher. You bet I shut him up
quick--saying a thing like that about a plumb stranger. I’d ‘a’ mixed
it with him right there except I thought it was better to have things
nice and not start something the minute the Judge got here.”
With all possible speed I hurried the party indoors, for already faces
were appearing at the windows of neighbouring houses. Mrs. Effie, who
met us, allowed her glare at Cousin Egbert, I fancy, to affect the
cordiality of her greeting to the Honourable George; at least she
seemed to be quite as dazed as he, and there was a moment of
constraint before he went on up to the room that had been prepared for
him. Once safely within the room I contrived a moment alone with him
and removed his single spat, not too gently, I fear, for the nervous
strain since his arrival had told upon me.
“You have reason to be thankful,” I said, “that Belknap-Jackson was
not present to witness this.”
“They cost seven and six,” he muttered, regarding the one spat
wistfully. “But why Belknap-Jackson?”
“Mr. C. Belknap-Jackson of Boston and Red Gap,” I returned sternly.
“He does himself perfectly. To think he might have seen you in this
rowdyish state!” And I hastened to seek a presentable lounge-suit from
his bags.
“Everything is so strange,” he muttered again, quite helplessly. “And
why the mural decoration at the edge of the settlement? Why keep one’s
eye upon it? Why should they do such things? I say, it’s all quite
monstrous, you know.”
I saw that indeed he was quite done for with amazement, so I ran him a
bath and procured him a dish of tea. He rambled oddly at moments of
things the guard on the night-coach had told him of North America, of
Niagara Falls, and Missouri and other objects of interest. He was
still almost quite a bit dotty when I was obliged to leave him for an
appointment with the raccoon and his wife to discuss the menu of my
opening dinner, but Cousin Egbert, who had rejoined us, was listening
sympathetically. As I left, the two were pegging it from a bottle of
hunting sherry which the Honourable George had carried in his
dispatch-case. I was about to warn him that he would come out spotted,
but instantly I saw that there must be an end to such surveillance. I
could not manage an enterprise of the magnitude of the United States
Grill and yet have an eye to his meat and drink. I resolved to let
spots come as they would.
On all hands I was now congratulated by members of the North Side set
upon the master-stroke I had played in adding the Honourable George to
their number. Not only did it promise to reunite certain warring
factions in the North Side set itself, but it truly bade fair to
disintegrate the Bohemian set. Belknap-Jackson wrung my hand that
afternoon, begging me to inform the Honourable George that he would
call on the morrow to pay his respects. Mrs. Judge Ballard besought me
to engage him for an early dinner, and Mrs. Effie, it is needless to
say, after recovering from the shock of his arrival, which she
attributed to Cousin Egbert’s want of taste, thanked me with a wealth
of genuine emotion.
Only by slight degrees, then, did it fall to be noticed that the
Honourable George did not hold himself to be too strictly bound by our
social conventions as to whom one should be pally with. Thus, on the
morrow, at the hour when the Belknap-Jacksons called, he was
regrettably absent on what Cousin Egbert called “a hack-ride” with the
driver person he had met the day before, nor did they return until
after the callers had waited the better part of two hours. Cousin
Egbert, as usual, received the blame for this, yet neither of the
Belknap-Jacksons nor Mrs. Effie dared to upbraid him.
Being presented to the callers, I am bound to say that the Honourable
George showed himself to be immensely impressed by Belknap-Jackson,
whom I had never beheld more perfectly vogue in all his appointments.
He became, in fact, rather moody in the presence of this subtle
niceness of detail, being made conscious, I dare say, of his own
sloppy lounge-suit, rumpled cravat, and shocking boots, and despite
Belknap-Jackson’s amiable efforts to draw him into talk about hunting
in the shires and our county society at home, I began to fear that
they would not hit it off together. The Honourable George did,
however, consent to drive with his caller the following day, and I
relied upon the tandem to recall him to his better self. But when the
callers had departed he became quite almost plaintive to me.
“I say, you know, I shan’t be wanted to pal up much with that chap,
shall I? I mean to say, he wears so many clothes. They make me writhe
as if I wore them myself. It won’t do, you know.”
I told him very firmly that this was piffle of the most wretched sort.
That his caller wore but the prescribed number of garments, each vogue
to the last note, and that he was a person whom one must know. He
responded pettishly that he vastly preferred the gentleman driver with
whom he had spent the afternoon, and “Sour-dough,” as he was now
calling Cousin Egbert.
“Jolly chaps, with no swank,” he insisted. “We drove quite almost
everywhere--waterworks, cemetery, sash-and-blind factory. You know I
thought ‘blind factory’ was some of their bally American slang for the
shop of a chap who made eyeglasses and that sort of thing, but nothing
of the kind. They saw up timbers there quite all over the place and
nail them up again into articles. It’s all quite foreign.”
Nor was his account of his drive with Belknap-Jackson the following
day a bit more reassuring.
“He wouldn’t stop again at the sash-and-blind factory, where I wished
to see the timbers being sawed and nailed, but drove me to a country
club which was not in the country and wasn’t a club; not a human
there, not even a barman. Fancy a club of that sort! But he took me to
his own house for a glass of sherry and a biscuit, and there it wasn’t
so rotten. Rather a mother-in-law I think, she is--bally old booming
grenadier--topping sort--no end of fun. We palled up immensely and I
quite forgot the Jackson chap till it was time for him to drive me
back to these diggings. Rather sulky he was, I fancy; uppish sort.
Told him the old one was quite like old Caroline, dowager duchess of
Clewe, but couldn’t tell if it pleased him. Seemed to like it and
seemed not to: rather uncertain.
“Asked him why the people of the settlement pronounced his name
‘Belknap Hyphen Jackson,’ and that seemed to make him snarky again. I
mean to say names with hyphen marks in ‘em--I’d never heard the hyphen
pronounced before, but everything is so strange. He said only the
lowest classes did it as a form of coarse wit, and that he was wasting
himself here. Wouldn’t stay another day if it were not for family
reasons. Queer sort of wheeze to say ‘hyphen’ in a chap’s name as if
it were a word, when it wasn’t at all. The old girl, though--bellower
she is--perfectly top-hole; familiar with cattle--all that sort of
thing. Sent away the chap’s sherry and had ‘em bring whiskey and soda.
The hyphen chap fidgeted a good bit--nervous sort, I take it. Looked
through a score of magazines, I dare say, when he found we didn’t
notice him much; turned the leaves too fast to see anything, though;
made noises and coughed--that sort of thing. Fine old girl. Daughter,
hyphen chap’s wife, tried to talk, too, some rot about the season
being well on here, and was there a good deal of society in London,
and would I be free for dinner on the ninth?
“Silly chatter! old girl talked sense: cattle, mines, timber, blind
factory, two-year olds, that kind of thing. Shall see her often. Not
the hyphen chap, though; too much like one of those Bond Street
milliner-chap managers.”
Vague misgivings here beset me as to the value of the Honourable
George to the North Side set. Nor could I feel at all reassured on the
following day when Mrs. Effie held an afternoon reception in his
honour. That he should be unaware of the event’s importance was to be
expected, for as yet I had been unable to get him to take the Red Gap
social crisis seriously. At the hour when he should have been dressed
and ready I found him playing at cribbage with Cousin Egbert in the
latter’s apartment, and to my dismay he insisted upon finishing the
rubber although guests were already arriving.
Even when the game was done he flatly refused to dress suitably,
declaring that his lounge-suit should be entirely acceptable to these
rough frontier people, and he consented to go down at all only on
condition that Cousin Egbert would accompany him. Thereafter for an
hour the two of them drank tea uncomfortably as often as it was given
them, and while the Honourable George undoubtedly made his impression,
I could not but regret that he had so few conversational graces.
How different, I reflected, had been my own entrée into this county
society! As well as I might I again carried off the day for the
Honourable George, endeavouring from time to time to put him at his
ease, yet he breathed an unfeigned sigh of relief when the last guest
had left and he could resume his cribbage with Cousin Egbert. But he
had received one impression of which I was glad: an impression of my
own altered social quality, for I had graced the occasion with an
urbanity which was as far beyond him as it must have been astonishing.
It was now that he began to take seriously what I had told him of my
business enterprise, so many of the guests having mentioned it to him
in terms of the utmost enthusiasm. After my first accounts to him he
had persisted in referring to it as a tuck-shop, a sort of place where
schoolboys would exchange their halfpence for toffy, sweet-cakes, and
marbles.
Now he demanded to be shown the premises and was at once duly
impressed both with their quiet elegance and my own business acumen.
How it had all come about, and why I should be addressed as “Colonel
Ruggles” and treated as a person of some importance in the community,
I dare say he has never comprehended to this day. As I had planned to
do, I later endeavoured to explain to him that in North America
persons were almost quite equal to one another--being born so--but at
this he told me not to be silly and continued to regard my rise as an
insoluble part of the strangeness he everywhere encountered, even
after I added that Demosthenes was the son of a cutler, that Cardinal
Wolsey’s father had been a pork butcher, and that Garfield had worked
on a canal-boat. I found him quite hopeless. “Chaps go dotty talkin’
that piffle,” was his comment.
At another time, I dare say, I should have been rather distressed over
this inability of the Honourable George to comprehend and adapt
himself to the peculiarities of American life as readily as I had
done, but just now I was quite too taken up with the details of my
opening to give it the deeper consideration it deserved. In fact,
there were moments when I confessed to myself that I did not care
tuppence about it, such was the strain upon my executive faculties.
When decorators and furnishers had done their work, when the choice
carpet was laid, when the kitchen and table equipments were completed
to the last detail, and when the lighting was artistically correct,
there was still the matter of service.
As to this, I conceived and carried out what I fancy was rather a
brilliant stroke, which was nothing less than to eliminate the fellow
Hobbs as a social factor of even the Bohemian set. In contracting with
him for my bread and rolls, I took an early opportunity of setting the
chap in his place, as indeed it was not difficult to do when he had
observed the splendid scale on which I was operating. At our second
interview he was removing his hat and addressing me as “sir.”
While I have found that I can quite gracefully place myself on a level
with the middle-class American, there is a serving type of our own
people to which I shall eternally feel superior; the Hobbs fellow was
of this sort, having undeniably the soul of a lackey. In addition to
jobbing his bread and rolls, I engaged him as pantry man, and took on
such members of his numerous family as were competent. His wife was to
assist my raccoon cook in the kitchen, three of his sons were to serve
as waiters, and his youngest, a lad in his teens, I installed as
vestiare, garbing him in a smart uniform and posting him to relieve my
gentleman patrons of their hats and top-coats. A daughter was
similarly installed as maid, and the two achieved an effect of
smartness unprecedented in Red Gap, an effect to which I am glad to
say that the community responded instantly.
In other establishments it was the custom for patrons to hang their
garments on hat-pegs, often under a printed warning that the
proprietor would disclaim responsibility in case of loss. In the one
known as “Bert’s Place” indeed the warning was positively vulgar:
“Watch Your Overcoat.” Of course that sort of coarseness would have
been impossible in my own place.
As another important detail I had taken over from Mrs. Judson her
stock of jellies and compotes which I had found to be of a most
excellent character, and had ordered as much more as she could manage
to produce, together with cut flowers from her garden for my tables.
She, herself, being a young woman of the most pleasing capabilities,
had done a bit of charring for me and was now to be in charge of the
glassware, linen, and silver. I had found her, indeed, highly
sympathetic with my highest aims, and not a few of her suggestions as
to management proved to be entirely sound. Her unspeakable dog
continued his quite objectionable advances to me at every opportunity,
in spite of my hitting him about, rather, when I could do so
unobserved, but the sinister interpretation that might be placed upon
this by the baser-minded was now happily answered by the circumstance
of her being in my employment. Her child, I regret to say, was still
grossly overfed, seldom having its face free from jam or other smears.
It persisted, moreover, in twisting my name into “Ruggums,” which I
found not a little embarrassing.
The night of my opening found me calmly awaiting the triumph that was
due me. As some one has said of Napoleon, I had won my battle in my
tent before the firing of a single shot. I mean to say, I had looked
so conscientiously after details, even to assuring myself that Cousin
Egbert and the Honourable George would appear in evening dress, my
last act having been to coerce each of them into purchasing varnished
boots, the former submitting meekly enough, though the Honourable
George insisted it was a silly fuss.
At seven o’clock, having devoted a final inspection to the kitchen
where the female raccoon was well on with the dinner, and having noted
that the members of my staff were in their places, I gave a last
pleased survey of my dining-room, with its smartly equipped tables,
flower-bedecked, gleaming in the softened light from my shaded
candlesticks. Truly it was a scene of refined elegance such as Red Gap
had never before witnessed within its own confines, and I had seen to
it that the dinner as well would mark an epoch in the lives of these
simple but worthy people.
Not a heavy nor a cloying repast would they find. Indeed, the bare
simplicity of my menu, had it been previously disclosed, would
doubtless have disappointed more than one of my dinner-giving
patronesses; but each item had been perfected to an extent never
achieved by them. Their weakness had ever been to serve a profusion of
neutral dishes, pleasing enough to the eye, but unedifying except as a
spectacle. I mean to say, as food it was noncommittal; it failed to
intrigue.
I should serve only a thin soup, a fish, small birds, two vegetables,
a salad, a sweet and a savoury, but each item would prove worthy of
the profoundest consideration. In the matter of thin soup, for
example, the local practice was to serve a fluid of which, beyond the
circumstance that it was warmish and slightly tinted, nothing of
interest could ever be ascertained. My own thin soup would be a
revelation to them. Again, in the matter of fish. This course with the
hostesses of Red Gap had seemed to be merely an excuse for a pause. I
had truly sympathized with Cousin Egbert’s bitter complaint: “They
hand you a dab of something about the size of a watch-charm with two
strings of potato.”
For the first time, then, the fish course in Red Gap was to be an
event, an abundant portion of native fish with a lobster sauce which I
had carried out to its highest power. My birds, hot from the oven,
would be food in the strictest sense of the word, my vegetables cooked
with a zealous attention, and my sweet immensely appealing without
being pretentiously spectacular. And for what I believed to be quite
the first time in the town, good coffee would be served.
Disheartening, indeed, had been the various attenuations of coffee
which had been imposed upon me in my brief career as a diner-out among
these people. Not one among them had possessed the genius to master an
acceptable decoction of the berry, the bald simplicity of the correct
formula being doubtless incredible to them.
The blare of a motor horn aroused me from this musing, and from that
moment I had little time for meditation until the evening, as the
_Journal_ recorded the next morning, “had gone down into history.”
My patrons arrived in groups, couples, or singly, almost faster than
I could seat them. The Hobbs lad, as vestiare, would halt them for
hats and wraps, during which pause they would emit subdued cries of
surprise and delight at my beautifully toned ensemble, after which,
as they walked to their tables, it was not difficult to see that they
were properly impressed.
Mrs. Effie, escorted by the Honourable George and cousin Egbert, was
among the early arrivals; the Senator being absent from town at a
sitting of the House. These were quickly followed by the
Belknap-Jacksons and the Mixer, resplendent in purple satin and
diamonds, all being at one of my large tables, so that the Honourable
George sat between Mrs. Belknap-Jackson and Mrs. Effie, though he at
first made a somewhat undignified essay to seat himself next the
Mixer. Needless to say, all were in evening dress, though the
Honourable George had fumbled grossly with his cravat and rumpled his
shirt, nor had he submitted to having his beard trimmed, as I had
warned him to do. As for Belknap-Jackson, I had never beheld him more
truly vogue in every detail, and his slightly austere manner in any
Red Gap gathering had never set him better. Both Mrs. Belknap-Jackson
and Mrs. Effie wielded their lorgnons upon the later comers, thus
giving their table quite an air.
Mrs. Judge Ballard, who had come to be one of my staunchest adherents,
occupied an adjacent table with her family party and two or three of
the younger dancing set. The Indian Tuttle with his wife and two
daughters were also among the early comers, and I could not but marvel
anew at the red man’s histrionic powers. In almost quite correct
evening attire, and entirely decorous in speech and gesture, he might
readily have been thought some one that mattered, had he not at an
early opportunity caught my eye and winked with a sly significance.
Quite almost every one of the North Side set was present, imparting to
my room a general air of distinguished smartness, and in addition
there were not a few of what Belknap-Jackson had called the “rabble,”
persons of no social value, to be sure, but honest, well-mannered
folk, small tradesmen, shop-assistants, and the like. These plain
people, I may say, I took especial pains to welcome and put at their
ease, for I had resolved, in effect, to be one of them, after the
manner prescribed by their Declaration thing.
With quite all of them I chatted easily a moment or two, expressing
the hope that they would be well pleased with their entertainment. I
noted while thus engaged that Belknap-Jackson eyed me with frank and
superior cynicism, but this affected me quite not at all and I took
pains to point my indifference, chatting with increased urbanity with
the two cow-persons, Hank and Buck, who had entered rather
uncertainly, not in evening dress, to be sure, but in decent black as
befitted their stations. When I had prevailed upon them to surrender
their hats to the vestiare and had seated them at a table for two,
they informed me in hoarse undertones that they were prepared to “put
a bet down on every card from soda to hock,” so that I at first
suspected they had thought me conducting a gaming establishment, but
ultimately gathered that they were merely expressing a cordial
determination to enter into the spirit of the occasion.
There then entered, somewhat to my uneasiness, the Klondike woman and
her party. Being almost the last, it will be understood that they
created no little sensation as she led them down the thronged room to
her table. She was wearing an evening gown of lustrous black with the
apparently simple lines that are so baffling to any but the expert
maker, with a black picture hat that suited her no end. I saw more
than one matron of the North Side set stiffen in her seat, while Mrs.
Belknap-Jackson and Mrs. Effie turned upon her the chilling broadside
of their lorgnons. Belknap-Jackson merely drew himself up austerely.
The three other women of her party, flutterers rather, did little but
set off their hostess. The four men were of a youngish sort, chaps in
banks, chemists’ assistants, that sort of thing, who were constantly
to be seen in her train. They were especially reprobated by the
matrons of the correct set by reason of their deliberately choosing to
ally themselves with the Bohemian set.
Acutely feeling the antagonism aroused by this group, I was
momentarily discouraged in a design I had half formed of using my
undoubted influence to unite the warring social factions of Red Gap,
even as Bismarck had once brought the warring Prussian states together
in a federated Germany. I began to see that the Klondike woman would
forever prove unacceptable to the North Side set. The cliques would
unite against her, even if one should find in her a spirit of
reconciliation, which I supremely doubted.
The bustle having in a measure subsided, I gave orders for the soup to
be served, at the same time turning the current into the electric
pianoforte. I had wished for this opening number something attractive
yet dignified, which would in a manner of speaking symbolize an
occasion to me at least highly momentous. To this end I had chosen
Handel’s celebrated Largo, and at the first strains of this highly
meritorious composition I knew that I had chosen surely. I am sure the
piece was indelibly engraved upon the minds of those many
dinner-givers who were for the first time in their lives realizing
that a thin soup may be made a thing to take seriously.
Nominally, I occupied a seat at the table with the Belknap-Jacksons
and Mrs. Effie, though I apprehended having to be more or less up and
down in the direction of my staff. Having now seated myself to soup, I
was for the first time made aware of the curious behaviour of the
Honourable George. Disregarding his own soup, which was of itself
unusual with him, he was staring straight ahead with a curious
intensity. A half turn of my head was enough. He sat facing the
Klondike woman. As I again turned a bit I saw that under cover of her
animated converse with her table companions she was at intervals
allowing her very effective eyes to rest, as if absently, upon him. I
may say now that a curious chill seized me, bringing with it a sudden
psychic warning that all was not going to be as it should be. Some
calamity impended. The man was quite apparently fascinated, staring
with a fixed, hypnotic intensity that had already been noted by his
companions on either side.
With a word about the soup, shot quickly and directly at him, I
managed to divert his gaze, but his eyes had returned even before the
spoon had gone once to his lips. The second time there was a soup
stain upon his already rumpled shirt front. Presently it became only
too horribly certain that the man was out of himself, for when the
fish course was served he remained serenely unconscious that none of
the lobster sauce accompanied his own portion. It was a rich sauce,
and the almost immediate effect of shell-fish upon his complexion
being only too well known to me, I had directed that his fish should
be served without it, though I had fully expected him to row me for it
and perhaps create a scene. The circumstance of his blindly attacking
the unsauced fish was eloquent indeed.
The Belknap-Jacksons and Mrs. Effie were now plainly alarmed, and
somewhat feverishly sought to engage his attention, with the result
only that he snapped monosyllables at them without removing his gaze
from its mark. And the woman was now too obviously pluming herself
upon the effect she had achieved; upon us all she flashed an amused
consciousness of her power, yet with a fine affectation of quite
ignoring us. I was here obliged to leave the table to oversee the
serving of the wine, returning after an interval to find the situation
unchanged, save that the woman no longer glanced at the Honourable
George. Such were her tactics. Having enmeshed him, she confidently
left him to complete his own undoing. I had returned with the serving
of the small birds. Observing his own before him, the Honourable
George wished to be told why he had not been served with fish, and
only with difficulty could be convinced that he had partaken of this.
“Of course in public places one must expect to come into contact with
persons of that sort,” remarked Mrs. Effie.
“Something should be done about it,” observed Mrs. Belknap-Jackson,
and they both murmured “Creature!” though it was plain that the
Honourable George had little notion to whom they referred. Observing,
however, that the woman no longer glanced at him, he fell to his bird
somewhat whole-heartedly, as indeed did all my guests.
From every side I could hear eager approval of the repast which was
now being supplemented at most of the tables by a sound wine of the
Burgundy type which I had recommended or by a dry champagne. Meantime,
the electric pianoforte played steadily through a repertoire that had
progressed from the Largo to more vivacious pieces of the American
folkdance school. As was said in the press the following day, “Gayety
and good-feeling reigned supreme, and one and all felt that it was
indeed good to be there.”
Through the sweet and the savoury the dinner progressed, the latter
proving to be a novelty that the hostesses of Red Gap thereafter
slavishly copied, and with the advent of the coffee ensued a
noticeable relaxation. People began to visit one another’s tables and
there was a blithe undercurrent of praise for my efforts to smarten
the town’s public dining.
The Klondike woman, I fancy, was the first to light a cigarette,
though quickly followed by the ladies of her party. Mrs.
Belknap-Jackson and Mrs. Effie, after a period of futile glaring at
her through the lorgnons, seemed to make their resolves
simultaneously, and forthwith themselves lighted cigarettes.
“Of course it’s done in the smart English restaurants,” murmured
Belknap-Jackson as he assisted the ladies to their lights. Thereupon
Mrs. Judge Ballard, farther down the room, began to smoke what I
believe was her first cigarette, which proved to be a signal for other
ladies of the Onwards and Upwards Society to do the same, Mrs. Ballard
being their president. It occurred to me that these ladies were grimly
bent on showing the Klondike woman that they could trifle quite as
gracefully as she with the lesser vices of Bohemia; or perhaps they
wished to demonstrate to the younger dancing men in her train that the
North Side set was not desolately austere in its recreation. The
Honourable George, I regret to say, produced a smelly pipe which he
would have lighted; but at a shocked and cold glance from me he put it
by and allowed the Mixer to roll him one of the yellow paper
cigarettes from a sack of tobacco which she had produced from some
secret recess of her costume.
Cousin Egbert had been excitedly happy throughout the meal and now
paid me a quaint compliment upon the food. “Some eats, Bill!” he
called to me. “I got to hand it to you,” though what precisely it was
he wished to hand me I never ascertained, for the Mixer at that moment
claimed my attention with a compliment of her own. “That,” said she,
“is the only dinner I’ve eaten for a long time that was composed
entirely of food.”
This hour succeeding the repast I found quite entirely agreeable, more
than one person that mattered assuring me that I had assisted Red Gap
to a notable advance in the finest and correctest sense of the word,
and it was with a very definite regret that I beheld my guests
departing. Returning to our table from a group of these who had called
me to make their adieus, I saw that a most regrettable incident had
occurred--nothing less than the formal presentation of the Honourable
George to the Klondike woman. And the Mixer had appallingly done it!
“Everything is so strange here,” I heard him saying as I passed their
table, and the woman echoed, “Everything!” while her glance enveloped
him with a curious effect of appraisal. The others of her party were
making much of him, I could see, quite as if they had preposterous
designs of wresting him from the North Side set to be one of
themselves. Mrs. Belknap-Jackson and Mrs. Effie affected to ignore the
meeting. Belknap-Jackson stared into vacancy with a quite shocked
expression as if vandals had desecrated an altar in his presence.
Cousin Egbert having drawn off one of his newly purchased boots during
the dinner was now replacing it with audible groans, but I caught his
joyous comment a moment later: “Didn’t I tell you the Judge was some
mixer?”
“Mixing, indeed,” snapped the ladies.
A half-hour later the historic evening had come to an end. The last
guest had departed, and all of my staff, save Mrs. Judson and her male
child. These I begged to escort to their home, since the way was
rather far and dark. The child, incautiously left in the kitchen at
the mercy of the female black, had with criminal stupidity been
stuffed with food, traces of almost every course of the dinner being
apparent upon its puffy countenance. Being now in a stupor from
overfeeding, I was obliged to lug the thing over my shoulder. I
resolved to warn the mother at an early opportunity of the perils of
an unrestricted diet, although the deluded creature seemed actually to
glory in its corpulence. I discovered when halfway to her residence
that the thing was still tightly clutching the gnawed thigh-bone of a
fowl which was spotting the shoulder of my smartest top-coat. The
mother, however, was so ingenuously delighted with my success and so
full of prattle concerning my future triumphs that I forbore to
instruct her at this time. I may say that of all my staff she had
betrayed the most intelligent understanding of my ideals, and I bade
her good-night with a strong conviction that she would greatly assist
me in the future. She also promised that Mr. Barker should thereafter
be locked in a cellar at such times as she was serving me.
Returning through the town, I heard strains of music from the
establishment known as “Bert’s Place,” and was shocked on staring
through his show window to observe the Honourable George and Cousin
Egbert waltzing madly with the cow-persons, Hank and Buck, to the
strains of a mechanical piano. The Honourable George had exchanged his
top-hat for his partner’s cow-person hat, which came down over his
ears in a most regrettable manner.
I thought it best not to intrude upon their coarse amusement and went
on to the grill to see that all was safe for the night. Returning from
my inspection some half-hour later, I came upon the two, Cousin Egbert
in the lead, the Honourable George behind him. They greeted me
somewhat boisterously, but I saw that they were now content to return
home and to bed. As they walked somewhat mincingly, I noticed that
they were in their hose, carrying their varnished boots in either
hand.
Of the Honourable George, who still wore the cow-person’s hat, I began
now to have the gravest doubts. There had been an evil light in the
eyes of the Klondike woman and her Bohemian cohorts as they surveyed
him. As he preceded me I heard him murmur ecstatically: “Sush is
life.”