Ruggles of Red Gap Part 25

As a result of his ensuing call upon the pressman, the sheet of the following morning contained word of the Honourable George's coming, the facts being not garbled more than was usual with this chap.

RED GAP'S NOTABLE GUEST

En route for our thriving metropolis is a personage no less distinguished than the Honourable George Augustus Vane-Basingwell, only brother and next in line of succession to his lordship the Earl of Brinstead, the well-known British peer of London, England. Our n.o.ble visitor will be the house guest of Senator and Mrs.

J. K. Floud, at their palatial residence on Ophir Avenue, where he will be extensively entertained, particularly by our esteemed fellow-townsman, Egbert G. Floud, with whom he recently hobn.o.bbed during the latter's stay in Paris, France. His advent will doubtless prelude a season of unparalleled gayety, particularly as Mr. Egbert Floud a.s.sures us that the "Judge," as he affectionately calls him, is "sure some mixer." If this be true, the gentleman has selected a community where his talent will find ample scope, and we bespeak for his lordship a hearty welcome.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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 a.s.sertive.

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 embarra.s.singly 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 pa.s.sed out of each other's lives in that respect. If necessary, I meant to read to him certain pa.s.sages 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 cla.s.s 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 racc.o.o.n bearing bags and bundles, and followed by another uniformed racc.o.o.n 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 hoa.r.s.ely 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 gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.sily 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 cla.s.s 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 racc.o.o.n 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 sw.a.n.k," 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 eyegla.s.ses 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."