Ruggles of Red Gap Part 27

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Launched now upon a business venture that would require my unremitting attention if it were to prosper, it may be imagined that I had little leisure for the social vagaries of the Honourable George, shocking as these might be to one's finer tastes. And yet on the following morning I found time to tell him what. To put it quite bluntly, I gave him beans for his loose behaviour the previous evening, in publicly ogling and meeting as an equal one whom one didn't know.

To my amazement, instead of being heartily ashamed of his licentiousness, I found him recalcitrant. Stubborn as a mule he was and with a low animal cunning that I had never given him credit for.

"Demosthenes was the son of a cutler," said he, "and Napoleon worked on a ca.n.a.l-boat, what? Didn't you say so yourself, you juggins, what?

Fancy there being upper and lower cla.s.ses among natives! What rot! And I like North America. I don't mind telling you straight I'm going to take it up."

Horrified by these reckless words, I could only say "n.o.blesse oblige,"

meaning to convey that whatever the North Americans did, the next Earl of Brinstead must not meet persons one doesn't know, whereat he rejoined tartly that I was "to stow that piffle!"

Being now quite alarmed, I took the further time to call upon Belknap-Jackson, believing that he, if any one, could recall the Honourable George to his better nature. He, too, was shocked, as I had been, and at first would have put the blame entirely upon the shoulders of Cousin Egbert, but at this I was obliged to admit that the Honourable George had too often shown a regrettable fondness for the society of persons that did not matter, especially females, and I cited the case of the typing-girl and the Brixton millinery person, with either of whom he would have allied himself in marriage had not his lordship intervened. Belknap-Jackson was quite properly horrified at these revelations.

"Has he no sense of 'n.o.blesse oblige'?" he demanded, at which I quoted the result of my own use of this phrase to the unfortunate man. Quite too plain it was that "n.o.blesse oblige!" would never stop him from yielding to his baser impulses.

"We must be tactful, then," remarked Belknap-Jackson. "Without appearing to oppose him we must yet show him who is really who in Red Gap. We shall let him see that we have standards which must be as rigidly adhered to as those of an older civilization. I fancy it can be done."

Privately I fancied not, yet I forbore to say this or to prolong the painful interview, particularly as I was due at the United States Grill.

The _Recorder_ of that morning had done me handsomely, declaring my opening to have been a social event long to be remembered, and describing the costumes of a dozen or more of the smartly gowned matrons, quite as if it had been an a.s.sembly ball. My task now was to see that the Grill was kept to the high level of its opening, both as a social ganglion, if one may use the term, and as a place to which the public would ever turn for food that mattered. For my first luncheon the racc.o.o.ns had prepared, under my direction, a steak-and-kidney pie, in addition to which I offered a thick soup and a pudding of high nutritive value.

To my pleased astonishment the crowd at midday was quite all that my staff could serve, several of the Hobbs brood being at school, and the luncheon was received with every sign of approval by the business persons who sat to it. Not only were there drapers, chemists, and shop-a.s.sistants, but solicitors and barristers, bankers and estate agents, and all quite eager with their praise of my fare. To each of these I explained that I should give them but few things, but that these would be food in the finest sense of the word, adding that the fault of the American school lay in attempting a too-great profusion of dishes, none of which in consequence could be raised to its highest power.

So sound was my theory and so nicely did my simple-dished luncheon demonstrate it that I was engaged on the spot to provide the bi-monthly banquet of the Chamber of Commerce, the president of which rather seriously proposed that it now be made a monthly affair, since they would no longer be at the mercy of a hotel caterer whose ambition ran inversely to his skill. Indeed, after the pudding, I was this day asked to become a member of the body, and I now felt that I was indubitably one of them--America and I had taken each other as seriously as could be desired.

More than once during the afternoon I wondered rather painfully what the Honourable George might be doing. I knew that he had been promised to a meeting of the Onwards and Upwards Club through the influence of Mrs. Effie, where it had been hoped that he would give a talk on Country Life in England. At least she had hinted to them that he might do this, though I had known from the beginning that he would do nothing of the sort, and had merely hoped that he would appear for a dish of tea and stay quiet, which was as much as the North Side set could expect of him. Induced to speak, I was quite certain he would tell them straight that Country Life in England was silly rot, and that was all to it. Now, not having seen him during the day, I could but hope that he had attended the gathering in suitable afternoon attire, and that he would have divined that the cattle-person's hat did not coordinate with this.

At four-thirty, while I was still concerned over the possible misadventures of the Honourable George, my first patrons for tea began to arrive, for I had let it be known that I should specialize in this.

Toasted crumpets there were, and m.u.f.fins, and a tea cake rich with plums, and tea, I need not say, which was all that tea could be.

Several tables were filled with prominent ladies of the North Side set, who were loud in their exclamations of delight, especially at the finished smartness of my service, for it was perhaps now that the profoundly serious thought I had given to my silver, linen, and gla.s.sware showed to best advantage. I suspect that this was the first time many of my guests had encountered a tea cozy, since from that day they began to be prevalent in Red Gap homes. Also my wagon containing the crumpets, m.u.f.fins, tea cake, jam and bread-and-b.u.t.ter, which I now used for the first time created a veritable sensation.

There was an agreeable hum of chatter from these early comers when I found myself welcoming Mrs. Judge Ballard and half a dozen members of the Onwards and Upwards Club, all of them wearing what I made out to be a baffled look. From these I presently managed to gather that their guest of honour for the afternoon had simply not appeared, and that the meeting, after awaiting him for two hours, had dissolved in some resentment, the time having been spent chiefly in an unflattering dissection of the Klondike woman's behaviour the evening before.

"He is a naughty man to disappoint us so cruelly!" declared Mrs. Judge Ballard of the Honourable George, but the coquetry of it was feigned to cover a very real irritation. I made haste with possible excuses. I said that he might be ill, or that important letters in that day's post might have detained him. I knew he had been astonishingly well that morning, also that he loathed letters and almost practically never received any; but something had to be said.

"A naughty, naughty fellow!" repeated Mrs. Ballard, and the members of her party echoed it. They had looked forward rather pathetically, I saw, to hearing about Country Life in England from one who had lived it.

I was now drawn to greet the Belknap-Jacksons, who entered, and to the pleasure of winning their hearty approval for the perfection of my arrangements. As the wife presently joined Mrs. Ballard's group, the husband called me to his table and disclosed that almost the worst might be feared of the Honourable George. He was at that moment, it appeared, with a rabble of cow-persons and members of the lower cla.s.s gathered at a stockade at the edge of town, where various native horses fresh from the wilderness were being taught to be ridden.

"The wretched Floud is with him," continued my informant, "also the Tuttle chap, who continues to be received by our best people in spite of my remonstrances, and he yells quite like a demon when one of the riders is thrown. I pa.s.sed as quickly as I could. The spectacle was--of course I make allowances for Vane-Basingwell's ignorance of our standards--it was nothing short of disgusting; a man of his position consorting with the herd!"

"He told me no longer ago than this morning," I said, "that he was going to take up America."

"He _has_!" said Belknap-Jackson with bitter emphasis. "You should see what he has on--a cowboy hat and chapps! And the very lowest of them are calling him 'Judge'!"

"He flunked a meeting of the Onwards and Upwards Society," I added.

"I know! I know! And who could have expected it in one of his lineage?

At this very moment he should be conducting himself as one of his cla.s.s. Can you wonder at my impatience with the West? Here at an hour when our social life should be in evidence, when all trade should be forgotten, I am the only man in the town who shows himself in a tea-room; and Vane-Basingwell over there debasing himself with our commonest sort!"

All at once I saw that I myself must bear the brunt of this scandal. I had brought hither the Honourable George, promising a personage who would for once and all unify the North Side set and perhaps disintegrate its rival. I had been felicitated upon my master-stroke.

And now it seemed I had come a cropper. But I resolved not to give up, and said as much now to Belknap-Jackson.

"I may be blamed for bringing him among you, but trust me if things are really as bad as they seem. I'll get him off again. I'll not let myself be bowled by such a silly lob as that. Trust me to devote profound thought to this problem."

"We all have every confidence in you," he a.s.sured me, "but don't be too severe all at once with the chap. He might recover a sane balance even yet."

"I shall use discretion," I a.s.sured him, "but if it proves that I have fluffed my catch, rely upon me to use extreme measures."

"Red Gap needs your best effort," he replied in a voice that brimmed with feeling.

At five-thirty, my rush being over, I repaired to the neighbourhood where the Honourable George had been reported. The stockade now contained only a half-score of the untaught horses, but across the road from it was a public house, or saloon, from which came unmistakable sounds of carousing. It was an unsavoury place, frequented only by cattle and horse persons, the proprietor being an abandoned character named Spilmer, who had once done a patron to death in a drunken quarrel. Only slight legal difficulties had been made for him, however, it having been pleaded that he acted in self-defence, and the creature had at once resumed his trade as publican. There was even public sympathy for him at the time on the ground that he possessed a blind mother, though I have never been able to see that this should have been a factor in adjudging him.

I paused now before the low place, imagining I could detect the tones of the Honourable George high above the chorus that came out to me.

Deciding that in any event it would not become me to enter a resort of this stamp, I walked slowly back toward the more reputable part of town, and was presently rewarded by seeing the crowd emerge. It was led, I saw, by the Honourable George. The cattle-hat was still down upon his ears, and to my horror he had come upon the public thoroughfare with his legs encased in the chapps--a species of leathern pantalettes covered with goat's wool--a garment which I need not say no gentleman should be seen abroad in. As worn by the cow-persons in their daily toil they are only just possible, being as far from true vogue as anything well could be.

Accompanying him were Cousin Egbert, the Indian Tuttle, the cow-persons, Hank and Buck, and three or four others of the same rough stamp. Un.o.btrusively I followed them to our main thoroughfare, deeply humiliated by the atrocious spectacle the Honourable George was making of himself, only to observe them turn into another public house ent.i.tled "The Family Liquor Store," where if seemed only too certain, since the bearing of all was highly animated, that they would again carouse.

At once seeing my duty, I boldly entered, finding them aligned against the American bar and clamouring for drink. My welcome was heartfelt, even enthusiastic, almost every one of them beginning to regale me with incidents of the afternoon's horse-breaking. The Honourable George, it seemed, had himself briefly mounted one of the animals, having fallen into the belief that the cow-persons did not try earnestly enough to stay on their mounts. I gathered that one experience had dissuaded him from this opinion.

"That there little paint horse," observed Cousin Egbert genially, "stepped out from under the Judge the prettiest you ever saw."

"He sure did," remarked the Honourable George, with a palpable effort to speak the American brogue. "A most flighty beast he was--nerves all gone--I dare say a hopeless neurasthenic."

And then when I would have rebuked him for so shamefully disappointing the ladies of the Onwards and Upwards Society, he began to tell me of the public house he had just left.

"I say, you know that Spilmer chap, he's a genuine murderer--he let me hold the weapon with which he did it--and he has blind relatives dependent upon him, or something of that sort, otherwise I fancy they'd have sent him to the gallows. And, by Gad! he's a witty scoundrel, what! Looking at his sign--leaving the settlement it reads, 'Last Chance,' but entering the settlement it reads, 'First Chance.'

Last chance and first chance for a peg, do you see what I mean? I tried it out; walked both ways under the sign and looked up; it worked perfectly. Enter the settlement, 'First Chance'; leave the settlement, 'Last Chance.' Do you see what I mean? Suggestive, what! Witty! You'd never have expected that murderer-Johnny to be so subtle. Our own murderers aren't that way. I say, it's a tremendous wheeze. I wonder the press-chaps don't take it up. It's better than the blind factory, though the chap's mother or something is blind. What ho! But that's silly! To be sure one has nothing to do with the other. I say, have another, you chaps! I've not felt so fit in ages. I'm going to take up America!"

Plainly it was no occasion to use serious words to the man. He slapped his companions smartly on their backs and was slapped in turn by all of them. One or two of them called him an old horse! Not only was I doing no good for the North Side set, but I had felt obliged to consume two gla.s.ses of spirits that I did not wish. So I discreetly withdrew. As I went, the Honourable George was again telling them that he was "going in" for North America, and Cousin Egbert was calling "Three rousing cheers!"

Thus luridly began, I may say, a scandal that was to be far-reaching in its dreadful effects. Far from feeling a proper shame on the following day, the Honourable George was as pleased as Punch with himself, declaring his intention of again consorting with the cattle and horse persons and very definitely declining an invitation to play at golf with Belknap-Jackson.

"Golf!" he spluttered. "You do it, and then you've directly to do it all over again. I mean to say, one gets nowhere. A silly game--what!"

Wishing to be in no manner held responsible for his vicious pursuits, I that day removed my diggings from the Floud home to chambers in the Pettengill block above the Grill, where I did myself quite nicely with decent mantel ornaments, some vivacious prints of old-world cathedrals, and a few good books, having for body-servant one of the Hobbs lads who seemed rather teachable. I must admit, however, that I was frequently obliged to address him more sharply than one should ever address one's servant, my theory having always been that a serving person should be treated quite as if he were a gentleman temporarily performing menial duties, but there was that strain of lowness in all the Hobbses which often forbade this, a blending of servility with more or less skilfully dissembled impertinence, which I dare say is the distinguishing mark of our lower-cla.s.s serving people.

Removed now from the immediate and more intimate effects of the Honourable George's digressions, I was privileged for days at a time to devote my attention exclusively to my enterprise. It had thriven from the beginning, and after a month I had so perfected the minor details of management that everything was right as rain. In my catering I continued to steer a middle course between the British school of plain roast and boiled and a too often piffling French complexity, seeking to retain the desirable features of each. My luncheons for the tradesmen rather held to a cut from the joint with vegetables and a suitable sweet, while in my dinners I relaxed a bit into somewhat imaginative salads and entrees. For the tea-hour I constantly strove to provide some appetizing novelty, often, I confess, sacrificing nutrition to mere sightliness in view of my almost exclusive feminine patronage, yet never carrying this to an undignified extreme.

As a result of my sound judgment, dinner-giving in Red Gap began that winter to be done almost entirely in my place. There might be small informal affairs at home, but for dinners of any pretension the hostesses of the North Side set came to me, relying almost quite entirely upon my taste in the selection of the menu. Although at first I was required to employ unlimited tact in dissuading them from strange and laboured concoctions, whose photographs they fetched me from their women's magazines, I at length converted them from this unwholesome striving for novelty and laid the foundations for that sound scheme of gastronomy which to-day distinguishes this fastest-growing town in the state, if not in the West of America.

It was during these early months, I ought perhaps to say, that I rather distinguished myself in the matter of a relish which I compounded one day when there was a cold round of beef for luncheon.

Little dreaming of the magnitude of the moment, I brought together English mustard and the American tomato catsup, in proportions which for reasons that will be made obvious I do not here disclose, together with three other and lesser condiments whose ident.i.ty also must remain a secret. Serving this with my cold joint, I was rather amazed at the sensation it created. My patrons clamoured for it repeatedly and a barrister wished me to prepare a flask of it for use in his home. The following day it was again demanded and other requests were made for private supplies, while by the end of the week my relish had become rather famous. Followed a suggestion from Mrs. Judson as she overlooked my preparation of it one day from her own task of polishing the gla.s.sware.

"Put it on the market," said she, and at once I felt the inspiration of her idea. To her I entrusted the formula. I procured a quant.i.ty of suitable flasks, while in her own home she compounded the stuff and filled them. Having no mind to claim credit not my own, I may now say that this rather remarkable woman also evolved the idea of the label, including the name, which was pasted upon the bottles when our product was launched.