Ruggles of Red Gap Part 22

"I mean to say, I'm glad to be here with you," I said.

"I knew you'd like it," he answered. "Everything is nice here."

"America is some country," I said.

"She is, she is," he answered. "And now you can bile up a pot of tea in your own way while I clean these here fish for sapper."

I made the tea. I regret to say there was not a tea cozy in the place; indeed the linen, silver, and general table equipment were sadly deficient, but in my reckless mood I made no comment.

"Your tea smells good, but it ain't got no kick to it," he observed over his first cup. "When I drench my insides with tea I sort of want it to take a hold." And still I made no effort to set him right. I now saw that in all true essentials he did not need me to set him right.

For so uncouth a person he was strangely commendable and worthy.

As we sipped our tea in companionable silence, I busy with my new and disturbing thoughts, a long shout came to us from the outer distance.

Cousin Egbert brightened.

"I'm darned if that ain't Ma Pettengill!" he exclaimed. "She's rid over from the Arrowhead."

We rushed to the door, and in the distance, riding down upon us at terrific speed, I indeed beheld the Mixer. A moment later she reigned in her horse before us and hoa.r.s.ely rumbled her greetings. I had last seen her at a formal dinner where she was rather formidably done out in black velvet and diamonds. Now she appeared in a startling tenue of khaki riding-breeches and flannel shirt, with one of the wide-brimmed cow-person hats. Even at the moment of greeting her I could not but reflect how shocked our dear Queen would be at the sight of this riding habit.

She dismounted with hearty explanations of how she had left her "round-up" and ridden over to visit, having heard from the Tuttle person that we were here. Cousin Egbert took her horse and she entered the hut, where to my utter amazement she at once did a feminine thing.

Though from her garb one at a little distance might have thought her a man, a portly, florid, carelessly attired man, she made at once for the wrinkled mirror where, after anxiously scanning her burned face for an instant, she produced powder and puff from a pocket of her shirt and daintily powdered her generous blob of a nose. Having achieved this to her apparent satisfaction, she unrolled a bundle she had carried at her saddle and donned a riding skirt, b.u.t.toning it about the waist and smoothing down its folds--before I could retire.

"There, now," she boomed, as if some satisfying finality had been brought about. Such was the Mixer. That sort of thing would never do with us, and yet I suddenly saw that she, like Cousin Egbert, was strangely commendable and worthy. I mean to say, I no longer felt it was my part to set her right in any of the social niceties. Some curious change had come upon me. I knew then that I should no longer resist America.

CHAPTER TWELVE

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 p.r.o.nounced views as to the preparation and serving of food, and I dare say I embarra.s.sed 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-cla.s.s 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 n.o.body had ought to do to ham and eggs."

Hereupon I ventured to a.s.sert 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 n.o.body 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, 'Pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.l until I had the chef himself up and told him exactly what to do; biscuit dough baked and prized apart and b.u.t.tered, 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 c.o.o.ns 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 c.o.o.n 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 "c.o.o.ns," which is, I take it, a diminutive for "racc.o.o.n," 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 a.s.sist 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 embarra.s.sment she began at once to speak to myself.

"A strong man like him has got no business becoming a social b.u.t.terfly," 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 b.u.t.terfly, 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 a.s.sociate of the n.o.bility; that I had determined to forget all cla.s.s 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 m.u.f.fled 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."