Mrs. Judson, polishing my glassware, burst into tears at my approach,
frankly stanching them with her towel. I saw it to be a mere overflow
of the meaningless emotion that women stock so abundantly on the
occasion of a wedding. She is an almost intensely feminine person, as
can be seen at once by any one who understands women. In a goods box
in the passage beyond I noted her nipper fast asleep, a mammoth
beef-rib clasped to its fat chest. I debated putting this abuse to her
once more but feared the moment was not propitious. She dried her eyes
and smiled again.
“A prince in his palace,” she murmured inanely. “She thought first he
was going to be as funny as the other one; then she found he wasn’t. I
liked him, too. I didn’t blame her a bit. He’s one of that kind--his
bark’s worse than his bite. And to think you knew all the time what
was coming off. My, but you’re the Mr. Deep-one!”
I saw no reason to stultify myself by denying this. I mean to say, if
she thought it, let her!
“The last thing yesterday she gave me this dress.”
I had already noted the very becoming dull blue house gown she wore.
Quite with an air she carried it. To be sure, it was not suitable to
her duties. The excitements of the day, I suppose, had rendered me a
bit sterner than is my wont. Perhaps a little authoritative.
“A handsome gown,” I replied icily, “but one would hardly choose it
for the work you are performing.”
“Rubbish!” she retorted plainly. “I wanted to look nice--I had to go
in there lots of times. And I wanted to be dressed for to-night.”
“Why to-night, may I ask?” I was all at once uncomfortably curious.
“Why, the boys are coming for me. They’re going to take No-no home,
then we’re all going to the movies. They’ve got a new bill at the
Bijou, and Buck Edwards especially wants me to see it. One of the
cowboys in it that does some star riding looks just like Buck--wavy
chestnut hair. Buck himself is one of the best riders in the whole
Kulanche.”
The woman seemed to have some fiendish power to enrage me. As she
prattled thus, her eyes demurely on the glass she dried, I felt a deep
flush mantle my brow. She could never have dreamed that she had this
malign power, but she was now at least to suspect it.
“Your Mr. Edwards,” I began calmly enough, “may be like the cinema
actor: the two may be as like each other as makes no difference--but
you are not going.” I was aware that the latter phrase was heated
where I had merely meant it to be impressive. Dignified firmness had
been the line I intended, but my rage was mounting. She stared at me.
Astonished beyond words she was, if I can read human expressions.
“I am!” she snapped at last.
“You are not!” I repeated, stepping a bit toward her. I was conscious
of a bit of the rowdy in my manner, but I seemed powerless to prevent
it. All my culture was again but the flimsiest veneer.
“I am, too!” she again said, though plainly dismayed.
“No!” I quite thundered it, I dare say. “No, no! No, no!”
The nipper cried out from his box. Not until later did it occur to me
that he had considered himself to be addressed in angry tones.
“No, no!” I thundered again. I couldn’t help myself, though silly rot
I call it now. And then to my horror the mother herself began to weep.
“I will!” she sobbed. “I will! I will! I will!”
“No, no!” I insisted, and I found myself seizing her shoulders, not
knowing if I mightn’t shake her smartly, so drawn-out had the woman
got me; and still I kept shouting my senseless “No, no!” at which the
nipper was now yelling.
She struggled her best as I clutched her, but I seemed to have the
strength of a dozen men; the woman was nothing in my grasp, and my
arms were taking their blind rage out on her.
Secure I held her, and presently she no longer struggled, and I was
curiously no longer angry, but found myself soothing her in many
strange ways. I mean to say, the passage between us had fallen to be
of the very shockingly most sentimental character.
“You are so masterful!” she panted.
“I’ll have my own way,” I threatened; “I’ve told you often enough.”
“Oh, you’re so domineering!” she murmured. I dare say I am a bit that
way.
“I’ll show you who’s to be master!”
“But I never dreamed you meant this,” she answered. True, I had most
brutally taken her by surprise. I could easily see how, expecting
nothing of the faintest sort, she had been rudely shocked.
“I meant it all along,” I said firmly, “from the very first moment.”
And now again she spoke in almost awed tones of my “deepness.” I have
never believed in that excessive intuition which is so widely boasted
for woman.
“I never dreamed of it,” she said again, and added: “Mrs. Kenner and I
were talking about this dress only last night and I said--I never,
never dreamed of such a thing!” She broke off with sudden
inconsequence, as women will.
We had now to quiet the nipper in his box. I saw even then that,
domineering though I may be, I should probably never care to bring the
child’s condition to her notice again. There was something about
her--something volcanic in her femininity. I knew it would never do.
Better let the thing continue to be a monstrosity! I might, unnoticed,
of course, snatch a bun from its grasp now and then.
Our evening rush came and went quite as if nothing had happened. I may
have been rather absent, reflecting pensively. I mean to say, I had at
times considered this alliance as a dawning possibility, but never had
I meant to be sudden. Only for the woman’s remarkably stubborn
obtuseness I dare say the understanding might have been deferred to a
more suitable moment and arranged in a calm and orderly manner. But
the die was cast. Like his lordship, I had chosen an American
bride--taken her by storm and carried her off her feet before she knew
it. We English are often that way.
At ten o’clock we closed the Grill upon a day that had been historic
in the truest sense of the word. I shouldered the sleeping nipper. He
still passionately clutched the beef-rib and for some reason I felt
averse to depriving him of it, even though it would mean a spotty
top-coat.
Strangely enough, we talked but little in our walk. It seemed rather
too tremendous to talk of.
When I gave the child into her arms at the door it had become half
awake.
“Ruggums!” it muttered sleepily.
“Ruggums!” echoed the mother, and again, very softly in the still
night: “Ruggums--Ruggums!”
* * * * *
That in the few months since that rather agreeable night I have
acquired the title of Red Gap’s social dictator cannot be denied. More
than one person of discernment may now be heard to speak of my
“reign,” though this, of course, is coming it a bit thick.
The removal by his lordship of one who, despite her sterling
qualities, had been a source of discord, left the social elements of
the town in a state of the wildest disorganization. And having for
myself acquired a remarkable prestige from my intimate association
with the affair, I promptly seized the reins and drew the scattered
forces together.
First, at an early day I sought an interview with Belknap-Jackson and
Mrs. Effie and told them straight precisely why I had played them both
false in the matter of the wedding breakfast. With the honour granted
to either of them, I explained, I had foreseen another era of cliques,
divisions, and acrimony. Therefore I had done the thing myself, as a
measure of peace.
Flatly then I declared my intention of reconciling all those formerly
opposed elements and of creating a society in Red Gap that would be a
social union in the finest sense of the word. I said that contact with
their curious American life had taught me that their equality should
be more than a name, and that, especially in the younger settlements,
a certain relaxation from the rigid requirements of an older order is
not only unavoidable but vastly to be desired. I meant to say, if we
were going to be Americans it was silly rot trying to be English at
the same time.
I pointed out that their former social leaders had ever been inspired
by the idea of exclusion; the soul of their leadership had been to
cast others out; and that the campaign I planned was to be one of
inclusion--even to the extent of Bohemians and well-behaved
cattle-persons---which I believed to be in the finest harmony with
their North American theory of human association. It might be thought
a naïve theory, I said, but so long as they had chosen it I should
staunchly abide by it.
I added what I dare say they did not believe: that the position of
leader was not one I should cherish for any other reason than the
public good. That when one better fitted might appear they would find
me the first to rejoice.
I need not say that I was interrupted frequently and acridly during
this harangue, but I had given them both a buffalo and well they knew
it. And I worked swiftly from that moment. I gave the following week
the first of a series of subscription balls in the dancing hall above
the Grill, and both Mrs. Belknap-Jackson and Mrs. Effie early enrolled
themselves as patronesses, even after I had made it plain that I alone
should name the guests.
The success of the affair was all I could have wished. Red Gap had
become a social unit. Nor was appreciation for my leadership wanting.
There will be malcontents, I foresee, and from the informed inner
circles I learn that I have already been slightingly spoken of as a
foreigner wielding a sceptre over native-born Americans, but I have
the support of quite all who really matter, and I am confident these
rebellions may be put down by tact alone. It is too well understood by
those who know me that I have Equality for my watchword.
I mean to say, at the next ball of the series I may even see that the
fellow Hobbs has a card if I can become assured that he has quite
freed himself from certain debasing class-ideals of his native
country. This to be sure is an extreme case, because the fellow is
that type of our serving class to whom equality is unthinkable. They
must, from their centuries of servility, look either up or down; and I
scarce know in which attitude they are more offensive to our American
point of view. Still I mean to be broad. Even Hobbs shall have his
chance with us!
* * * * *
It is late June. Mrs. Ruggles and I are comfortably installed in her
enlarged and repaired house. We have a fowl-run on a stretch of her
free-hold, and the kitchen-garden thrives under the care of the
Japanese agricultural labourer I have employed.
Already I have discharged more than half my debt to Cousin Egbert, who
exclaims, “Oh, shucks!” each time I make him a payment. He and the
Honourable George remain pally no end and spend much of their abundant
leisure at Cousin Egbert’s modest country house. At times when they
are in town they rather consort with street persons, but such is the
breadth of our social scheme that I shall never exclude them from our
gayeties, though it is true that more often than not they decline to
be present.
Mrs. Ruggles, I may say, is a lady of quite amazing capacities
combined strangely with the commonest feminine weaknesses. She has
acute business judgment at most times, yet would fly at me in a rage
if I were to say what I think of the nipper’s appalling grossness.
Quite naturally I do not push my unquestioned mastery to this extreme.
There are other matters in which I amusedly let her have her way,
though she fondly reminds me almost daily of my brutal self-will.
On one point I have just been obliged to assert this. She came running
to me with a suggestion for economizing in the manufacture of the
relish. She had devised a cheaper formula. But I was firm.
“So long as the inventor’s face is on that flask,” I said, “its
contents shall not be debased a tuppence. My name and face will
guarantee its purity.”
She gave in nicely, merely declaring that I needn’t growl like one of
their bears with a painful foot.
At my carefully mild suggestion she has just brought the nipper in
from where he was cattying the young fowls, much to their detriment.
But she is now heaping compote upon a slice of thickly buttered bread
for him, glancing meanwhile at our evening newspaper.
“Ruggums always has his awful own way, doesn’t ums?” she remarks to
the nipper.
Deeply ignoring this, I resume my elocutionary studies of the
Declaration of Independence. For I should say that a signal honour of
a municipal character has just been done me. A committee of the
Chamber of Commerce has invited me to participate in their exercises
on an early day in July--the fourth, I fancy--when they celebrate the
issuance of this famous document. I have been asked to read it,
preceding a patriotic address to be made by Senator Floud.
I accepted with the utmost pleasure, and now on my vine-sheltered
porch have begun trying it out for the proper voice effects. Its
substance, I need not say, is already familiar to me.
The nipper is horribly gulping at its food, jam smears quite all about
its countenance. Mrs. Ruggles glances over her journal.
“How would you like it,” she suddenly demands, “if I went around town
like these English women--burning churches and houses of Parliament
and cutting up fine oil paintings. How would that suit your grouchy
highness?”
“This is not England,” I answer shortly. “That sort of thing would
never do with us.”
“My, but isn’t he the fierce old Ruggums!” she cries in affected alarm
to the now half-suffocated nipper.
Once more I take up the Declaration of Independence. It lends itself
rather well to reciting. I feel that my voice is going to carry.