In that first sleep how often do we dream that our calamity has been only a dream. It was so in my first moments of awakening. Vestiges of some grotesquely hideous nightmare remained with me. Wearing the shackles of the slave, I had been mowing the corn under the fierce sun that beats down upon the American savannahs. Sickeningly, then, a wind of memory blew upon me and I was alive to my situation.
Nor was I forgetful of the plight in which the Honourable George would now find himself. He is as good as lost when not properly looked after. In the ordinary affairs of life he is a simple, trusting, incompetent duffer, if ever there was one. Even in so rudimentary a matter as collar-studs he is like a storm-tossed mariner—I mean to say, like a chap in a boat on the ocean who doesn’t know what sails to pull up nor how to steer the silly rudder.
One rather feels exactly that about him.
And now he was bound to go seedy beyond description—like the time at Mentone when he dreamed a system for playing the little horses, after which for a fortnight I was obliged to nurse a well-connected invalid in order that we might last over till next remittance day. The havoc he managed to wreak among his belongings in that time would scarce be believed should I set it down—not even a single boot properly treed—and his appearance when I was enabled to recover him (my client having behaved most handsomely on the eve of his departure for Spain) being such that I passed him in the hotel lounge without even a nod—climbing-boots, with trousers from his one suit of boating flannels, a blazered golfing waistcoat, his best morning-coat with the wide braid, a hunting-stock and a motoring-cap, with his beard more than discursive, as one might say, than I had ever seen it. If I disclose this thing it is only that my fears for him may be comprehended when I pictured him being permanently out of hand.
Meditating thus bitterly, I had but finished dressing when I was startled by a knock on my door and by the entrance, to my summons, of the elder and more subdued Floud, he of the drooping mustaches and the mournful eyes of pale blue. One glance at his attire brought freshly to my mind the atrocious difficulties of my new situation. I may be credited or not, but combined with tan boots and wretchedly fitting trousers of a purple hue he wore a black frock-coat, revealing far, far too much of a blue satin “made” cravat on which was painted a cluster of tiny white flowers—lilies of the valley, I should say. Unbelievably above this monstrous mélange was a rather low-crowned bowler hat.
Hardly repressing a shudder, I bowed, whereupon he advanced solemnly to me and put out his hand. To cover the embarrassing situation tactfully I extended my own, and we actually shook hands, although the clasp was limply quite formal.
“How do you do, Mr. Ruggles?” he began.
I bowed again, but speech failed me.
“She sent me over to get you,” he went on. He uttered the word “She” with such profound awe that I knew he could mean none other than Mrs. Effie. It was most extraordinary, but I dare say only what was to have been expected from persons of this sort. In any good-class club or among gentlemen at large it is customary to allow one at least twenty-four hours for the payment of one’s gambling debts. Yet there I was being collected by the winner at so early an hour as half-after seven. If I had been a five-pound note instead of myself, I fancy it would have been quite the same. These Americans would most indecently have sent for their winnings before the Honourable George had awakened. One would have thought they had expected him to refuse payment of me after losing me the night before. How little they seemed to realize that we were both intending to be dead sportsmen.
“Very good, sir,” I said, “but I trust I may be allowed to brew the Honourable George his tea before leaving? I’d hardly like to trust to him alone with it, sir.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, so respectfully that it gave me an odd feeling. “Take your time, Mr. Ruggles. I don’t know as I am in any hurry on my own account. It’s only account of Her.”
I trust it will be remembered that in reporting this person’s speeches I am making an earnest effort to set them down word for word in all their terrific peculiarities. I mean to say, I would not be held accountable for his phrasing, and if I corrected his speech, as of course the tendency is, our identities might become confused. I hope this will be understood when I report him as saying things in ways one doesn’t word them. I mean to say that it should not be thought that I would say them in this way if it chanced that I were saying the same things in my proper person. I fancy this should now be plain.
“Very well, sir,” I said.
“If it was me,” he went on, “I wouldn’t want you a little bit. But it’s Her. She’s got her mind made up to do the right thing and have us all be somebody, and when she makes her mind up——” He hesitated and studied the ceiling for some seconds. “Believe me,” he continued, “Mrs. Effie is some wildcat!”
“Yes, sir—some wildcat,” I repeated.
“Believe me, Bill,” he said again, quaintly addressing me by a name not my own—“believe me, she’d fight a rattlesnake and give it the first two bites.”
Again let it be recalled that I put down this extraordinary speech exactly as I heard it. I thought to detect in it that grotesque exaggeration with which the Americans so distressingly embellish their humour. I mean to say, it could hardly have been meant in all seriousness. So far as my researches have extended, the rattlesnake is an invariably poisonous reptile. Fancy giving one so downright an advantage as the first two bites, or even one bite, although I believe the thing does not in fact bite at all, but does one down with its forked tongue, of which there is an excellent drawing in my little volume, “Inquire Within; 1,000 Useful Facts.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, somewhat at a loss; “quite so, sir!”
“I just thought I’d wise you up beforehand.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, for his intention beneath the weird jargon was somehow benevolent. “And if you’ll be good enough to wait until I have taken tea to the Honourable George——”
“How is the Judge this morning?” he broke in.
“The Judge, sir?” I was at a loss, until he gestured toward the room of the Honourable George.
“The Judge, yes. Ain’t he a justice of the peace or something?”
“But no, sir; not at all, sir.”
“Then what do you call him ‘Honourable’ for, if he ain’t a judge or something?”
“Well, sir, it’s done, sir,” I explained, but I fear he was unable to catch my meaning, for a moment later (the Honourable George, hearing our voices, had thrown a boot smartly against the door) he was addressing him as “Judge” and thereafter continued to do so, nor did the Honourable George seem to make any moment of being thus miscalled.
I served the Ceylon tea, together with biscuits and marmalade, the while our caller chatted nervously. He had, it appeared, procured his own breakfast while on his way to us.
“I got to have my ham and eggs of a morning,” he confided. “But she won’t let me have anything at that hotel but a continental breakfast, which is nothing but coffee and toast and some of that there sauce you’re eating. She says when I’m on the continent I got to eat a continental breakfast, because that’s the smart thing to do, and not stuff myself like I was on the ranch; but I got that game beat both ways from the jack. I duck out every morning before she’s up. I found a place where you can get regular ham and eggs.”
“Regular ham and eggs?” murmured the Honourable George.
“French ham and eggs is a joke. They put a slice of boiled ham in a little dish, slosh a couple of eggs on it, and tuck the dish into the oven a few minutes. Say, they won’t ever believe that back in Red Gap when I tell it. But I found this here little place where they do it right, account of Americans having made trouble so much over the other way. But, mind you, don’t let on to her,” he warned me suddenly.
“Certainly not, sir,” I said. “Trust me to be discreet, sir.”
“All right, then. Maybe we’ll get on better than what I thought we would. I was looking for trouble with you, the way she’s been talking about what you’d do for me.”
“I trust matters will be pleasant, sir,” I replied.
“I can be pushed just so far,” he curiously warned me, “and no farther—not by any man that wears hair.”
“Yes, sir,” I said again, wondering what the wearing of hair might mean to this process of pushing him, and feeling rather absurdly glad that my own face is smoothly shaven.
“You’ll find Ruggles fairish enough after you’ve got used to his ways,” put in the Honourable George.
“All right, Judge; and remember it wasn’t my doings,” said my new employer, rising and pulling down to his ears his fearful bowler hat. “And now we better report to her before she does a hot-foot over here. You can pack your grip later in the day,” he added to me.
“Pack my grip—yes, sir,” I said numbly, for I was on the tick of leaving the Honourable George helpless in bed. In a voice that I fear was broken I spoke of clothes for the day’s wear which I had laid out for him the night before. He waved a hand bravely at us and sank back into his pillow as my new employer led me forth. There had been barely a glance between us to betoken the dreadfulness of the moment.
At our door I was pleased to note that a taximetre cab awaited us. I had acutely dreaded a walk through the streets, even of Paris, with my new employer garbed as he was. The blue satin cravat of itself would have been bound to insure us more attention than one would care for.
I fear we were both somewhat moody during the short ride. Each of us seemed to have matters of weight to reflect upon. Only upon reaching our destination did my companion brighten a bit. For a fare of five francs forty centimes he gave the driver a ten-franc piece and waited for no change.
“I always get around them that way,” he said with an expression of the brightest cunning. “She used to have the laugh on me because I got so much counterfeit money handed to me. Now I don’t take any change at all.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Quite right, sir.”
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” he added as we ascended to the Floud’s drawing-room, though why his mind should have flown to this brutal sport, if it be a sport, was quite beyond me. At the door he paused and hissed at me: “Remember, no matter what she says, if you treat me white I’ll treat you white.” And before I could frame any suitable response to this puzzling announcement he had opened the door and pushed me in, almost before I could remove my cap.
Seated at the table over coffee and rolls was Mrs. Effie. Her face brightened as she saw me, then froze to disapproval as her glance rested upon him I was to know as Cousin Egbert. I saw her capable mouth set in a straight line of determination.
“You did your very worst, didn’t you?” she began. “But sit down and eat your breakfast. He’ll soon change that.” She turned to me. “Now, Ruggles, I hope you understand the situation, and I’m sure I can trust you to take no nonsense from him. You see plainly what you’ve got to do. I let him dress to suit himself this morning, so that you could know the worst at once. Take a good look at him—shoes, coat, hat—that dreadful cravat!”
“I call this a right pretty necktie,” mumbled her victim over a crust of toast. She had poured coffee for him.
“You hear that?” she asked me. I bowed sympathetically.
“What does he look like?” she insisted. “Just tell him for his own good, please.”
But this I could not do. True enough, during our short ride he had been reminding me of one of a pair of cross-talk comedians I had once seen in a music-hall. This, of course, was not a thing one could say.
“I dare say, Madam, he could be smartened up a bit. If I might take him to some good-class shop——”
“And burn the things he’s got on——” she broke in.
“Not this here necktie,” interrupted Cousin Egbert rather stubbornly. “It was give to me by Jeff Tuttle’s littlest girl last Christmas; and this here Prince Albert coat—what’s the matter of it, I’d like to know? It come right from the One Price Clothing Store at Red Gap, and it’s plenty good to go to funerals in——”
“And then to a barber-shop with him,” went on Mrs. Effie, who had paid no heed to his outburst. “Get him done right for once.”
Her relative continued to nibble nervously at a bit of toast.
“I’ve done something with him myself,” she said, watching him narrowly. “At first he insisted on having the whole bill-of-fare for breakfast, but I put my foot down, and now he’s satisfied with the continental breakfast. That goes to show he has something in him, if we can only bring it out.”
“Something in him, indeed, yes, Madam!” I assented, and Cousin Egbert, turning to me, winked heavily.
“I want him to look like some one,” she resumed, “and I think you’re the man can make him if you’re firm with him; but you’ll have to be firm, because he’s full of tricks. And if he starts any rough stuff, just come to me.”
“Quite so, Madam,” I said, but I felt I was blushing with shame at hearing one of my own sex so slanged by a woman. That sort of thing would never do with us. And yet there was something about this woman—something weirdly authoritative. She showed rather well in the morning light, her gray eyes crackling as she talked. She was wearing a most elaborate peignoir, and of course she should not have worn the diamonds; it seemed almost too much like the morning hour of a stage favourite; but still one felt that when she talked one would do well to listen.
Hereupon Cousin Egbert startled me once more.
“Won’t you set up and have something with us, Mr. Ruggles?” he asked me.
I looked away, affecting not to have heard, and could feel Mrs. Effie scowling at him. He coughed into his cup and sprayed coffee well over himself. His intention had been obvious in the main, though exactly what he had meant by “setting up” I couldn’t fancy—as if I had been a performing poodle!
The moment’s embarrassment was well covered by Mrs. Effie, who again renewed her instructions, and from an escritoire brought me a sheaf of the pretentiously printed sheets which the French use in place of our banknotes.
“You will spare no expense,” she directed, “and don’t let me see him again until he looks like some one. Try to have him back here by five. Some very smart friends of ours are coming for tea.”
“I won’t drink tea at that outlandish hour for any one,” said Cousin Egbert rather snappishly.
“You will at least refuse it like a man of the world, I hope,” she replied icily, and he drooped submissive once more. “You see?” she added to me.
“Quite so, Madam,” I said, and resolved to be firm and thorough with Cousin Egbert. In a way I was put upon my mettle. I swore to make him look like some one. Moreover, I now saw that his half-veiled threats of rebellion to me had been pure swank. I had in turn but to threaten to report him to this woman and he would be as clay in my hands.
I presently had him tucked into a closed taxicab, half-heartedly muttering expostulations and protests to which I paid not the least heed. During my strolls I had observed in what would have been Regent Street at home a rather good-class shop with an English name, and to this I now proceeded with my charge. I am afraid I rather hustled him across the pavement and into the shop, not knowing what tricks he might be up to, and not until he was well to the back did I attempt to explain myself to the shop-walker who had followed us. To him I then gave details of my charge’s escape from a burning hotel the previous night, which accounted for his extraordinary garb of the moment, he having been obliged to accept the loan of garments that neither fitted him nor harmonized with one another. I mean to say, I did not care to have the chap suspect we would don tan boots, a frock-coat, and bowler hat except under the most tremendous compulsion.
Cousin Egbert stared at me open mouthed during this recital, but the shop-walker was only too readily convinced, as indeed who would not have been, and called an intelligent assistant to relieve our distress. With his help I swiftly selected an outfit that was not half bad for ready-to-wear garments. There was a black morning-coat, snug at the waist, moderately broad at the shoulders, closing with two buttons, its skirt sharply cut away from the lower button and reaching to the bend of the knee. The lapels were, of course, soft-rolled and joined the collar with a triangular notch. It is a coat of immense character when properly worn, and I was delighted to observe in the trying on that Cousin Egbert filled it rather smartly. Moreover, he submitted more meekly than I had hoped. The trousers I selected were of gray cloth, faintly striped, the waistcoat being of the same material as the coat, relieved at the neck-opening by an edging of white.
With the boots I had rather more trouble, as he refused to wear the patent leathers that I selected, together with the pearl gray spats, until I grimly requested the telephone assistant to put me through to the hotel, desiring to speak to Mrs. Senator Floud. This brought him around, although muttering, and I had less trouble with shirts, collars, and cravats. I chose a shirt of white piqué, a wing collar with small, square-cornered tabs, and a pearl ascot.
Then in a cabinet I superintended Cousin Egbert’s change of raiment. We clashed again in the matter of sock-suspenders, which I was astounded to observe he did not possess. He insisted that he had never worn them—garters he called them—and never would if he were shot for it, so I decided to be content with what I had already gained.
By dint of urging and threatening I at length achieved my ground-work and was more than a little pleased with my effect, as was the shop-assistant, after I had tied the pearl ascot and adjusted a quiet tie-pin of my own choosing.
“Now I hope you’re satisfied!” growled my charge, seizing his bowler hat and edging off.
“By no means,” I said coldly. “The hat, if you please, sir.”
He gave it up rebelliously, and I had again to threaten him with the telephone before he would submit to a top-hat with a moderate bell and broad brim. Surveying this in the glass, however, he became perceptibly reconciled. It was plain that he rather fancied it, though as yet he wore it consciously and would turn his head slowly and painfully, as if his neck were stiffened.
Having chosen the proper gloves, I was, I repeat, more than pleased with this severely simple scheme of black, white, and gray. I felt I had been wise to resist any tendency to colour, even to the most delicate of pastel tints. My last selection was a smartish Malacca stick, the ideal stick for town wear, which I thrust into the defenceless hands of my client.
“And now, sir,” I said firmly, “it is but a step to a barber’s stop where English is spoken.” And ruefully he accompanied me. I dare say that by that time he had discovered that I was not to be trifled with, for during his hour in the barber’s chair he did not once rebel openly. Only at times would he roll his eyes to mine in dumb appeal. There was in them something of the utter confiding helplessness I had noted in the eyes of an old setter at Chaynes-Wotten when I had been called upon to assist the undergardener in chloroforming him. I mean to say, the dog had jolly well known something terrible was being done to him, yet his eyes seemed to say he knew it must be all for the best and that he trusted us. It was this look I caught as I gave directions about the trimming of the hair, and especially when I directed that something radical should be done to the long, grayish moustache that fell to either side of his chin in the form of a horseshoe. I myself was puzzled by this difficulty, but the barber solved it rather neatly, I thought, after a whispered consultation with me. He snipped a bit off each end and then stoutly waxed the whole affair until the ends stood stiffly out with distinct military implications. I shall never forget, and indeed I was not a little touched by the look of quivering anguish in the eyes of my client when he first beheld this novel effect. And yet when we were once more in the street I could not but admit that the change was worth all that it had cost him in suffering. Strangely, he now looked like some one, especially after I had persuaded him to a carnation for his buttonhole. I cannot say that his carriage was all that it should have been, and he was still conscious of his smart attire, but I nevertheless felt a distinct thrill of pride in my own work, and was eager to reveal him to Mrs. Effie in his new guise.
But first he would have luncheon—dinner he called it—and I was not averse to this, for I had put in a long and trying morning. I went with him to the little restaurant where Americans had made so much trouble about ham and eggs, and there he insisted that I should join him in chops and potatoes and ale. I thought it only proper then to point out to him that there was certain differences in our walks of life which should be more or less denoted by his manner of addressing me. Among other things he should not address me as Mr. Ruggles, nor was it customary for a valet to eat at the same table with his master. He seemed much interested in these distinctions and thereupon addressed me as “Colonel,” which was of course quite absurd, but this I could not make him see. Thereafter, I may say, that he called me impartially either “Colonel” or “Bill.” It was a situation that I had never before been obliged to meet, and I found it trying in the extreme. He was a chap who seemed ready to pal up with any one, and I could not but recall the strange assertion I had so often heard that in America one never knows who is one’s superior. Fancy that! It would never do with us. I could only determine to be on my guard.
Our luncheon done, he consented to accompany me to the hotel of the Honourable George, whence I wished to remove my belongings. I should have preferred to go alone, but I was too fearful of what he might do to himself or his clothes in my absence.
We found the Honourable George still in bed, as I had feared. He had, it seemed, been unable to discover his collar studs, which, though I had placed them in a fresh shirt for him, he had carelessly covered with a blanket. Begging Cousin Egbert to be seated in my room, I did a few of the more obvious things required by my late master.
“You’d leave me here like a rat in a trap,” he said reproachfully, which I thought almost quite a little unjust. I mean to say, it had all been his own doing, he having lost me in the game of drawing poker, so why should he row me about it now? I silently laid out the shirt once more.
“You might have told me where I’m to find my brown tweeds and the body linen.”
Again he was addressing me as if I had voluntarily left him without notice, but I observed that he was still mildly speckled from the night before, so I handed him the fruit-lozenges, and went to pack my own box. Cousin Egbert I found sitting as I had left him, on the edge of a chair, carefully holding his hat, stick, and gloves, and staring into the wall. He had promised me faithfully not to fumble with his cravat, and evidently he had not once stirred. I packed my box swiftly—my “grip,” as he called it—and we were presently off once more, without another sight of the Honourable George, who was to join us at tea. I could hear him moving about, using rather ultra-frightful language, but I lacked heart for further speech with him at the moment.
An hour later, in the Floud drawing-room, I had the supreme satisfaction of displaying to Mrs. Effie the happy changes I had been able to effect in my charge. Posing him, I knocked at the door of her chamber. She came at once and drew a long breath as she surveyed him, from varnished boots, spats, and coat to top-hat, which he still wore. He leaned rather well on his stick, the hand to his hip, the elbow out, while the other hand lightly held his gloves. A moment she looked, then gave a low cry of wonder and delight, so that I felt repaid for my trouble. Indeed, as she faced me to thank me I could see that her eyes were dimmed.
“Wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Now he looks like some one!” And I distinctly perceived that only just in time did she repress an impulse to grasp me by the hand. Under the circumstances I am not sure that I wouldn’t have overlooked the lapse had she yielded to it. “Wonderful!” she said again.
Hereupon Cousin Egbert, much embarrassed, leaned his stick against the wall; the stick fell, and in reaching down for it his hat fell, and in reaching for that he dropped his gloves; but I soon restored him to order and he was safely seated where he might be studied in further detail, especially as to his moustaches, which I had considered rather the supreme touch.
“He looks exactly like some well-known clubman,” exclaimed Mrs. Effie.
Her relative growled as if he were quite ready to savage her.
“Like a man about town,” she murmured. “Who would have thought he had it in him until you brought it out?” I knew then that we two should understand each other.
The slight tension was here relieved by two of the hotel servants who brought tea things. At a nod from Mrs. Effie I directed the laying out of these.
At that moment came the other Floud, he of the eyebrows, and a cousin cub called Elmer, who, I understood, studied art. I became aware that they were both suddenly engaged and silenced by the sight of Cousin Egbert. I caught their amazed stares, and then terrifically they broke into gales of laughter. The cub threw himself on a couch, waving his feet in the air, and holding his middle as if he’d suffered a sudden acute dyspepsia, while the elder threw his head back and shrieked hysterically. Cousin Egbert merely glared at them and, endeavouring to stroke his moustache, succeeded in unwaxing one side of it so that it once more hung limply down his chin, whereat they renewed their boorishness. The elder Floud was now quite dangerously purple, and the cub on the couch was shrieking: “No matter how dark the clouds, remember she is still your stepmother,” or words to some such silly effect as that. How it might have ended I hardly dare conjecture—perhaps Cousin Egbert would presently have roughed them—but a knock sounded, and it became my duty to open our door upon other guests, women mostly; Americans in Paris; that sort of thing.
I served the tea amid their babble. The Honourable George was shown up a bit later, having done to himself quite all I thought he might in the matter of dress. In spite of serious discrepancies in his attire, however, I saw that Mrs. Effie meant to lionize him tremendously. With vast ceremony he was presented to her guests—the Honourable George Augustus Vane-Basingwell, brother of his lordship the Earl of Brinstead. The women fluttered about him rather, though he behaved moodily, and at the first opportunity fell to the tea and cakes quite wholeheartedly.
In spite of my aversion to the American wilderness, I felt a bit of professional pride in reflecting that my first day in this new service was about to end so auspiciously. Yet even in that moment, being as yet unfamiliar with the room’s lesser furniture, I stumbled slightly against a hassock hid from me by the tray I carried. A cup of tea was lost, though my recovery was quick. Too late I observed that the hitherto self-effacing Cousin Egbert was in range of my clumsiness.
“There goes tea all over my new pants!” he said in a high, pained voice.
“Sorry, indeed, sir,” said I, a ready napkin in hand. “Let me dry it, sir!”
“Yes, sir, I fancy quite so, sir,” said he.
I most truly would have liked to shake him smartly for this. I saw that my work was cut out for me among these Americans, from whom at their best one expects so little.
As I brisked out of bed the following morning at half-after six, I could not but wonder rather nervously what the day might have in store for me. I was obliged to admit that what I was in for looked a bit thick. As I opened my door I heard stealthy footsteps down the hall and looked out in time to observe Cousin Egbert entering his own room. It was not this that startled me. He would have been abroad, I knew, for the ham and eggs that were forbidden him. Yet I stood aghast, for with the lounge-suit of tweeds I had selected the day before he had worn his top-hat! I am aware that these things I relate of him may not be credited. I can only put them down in all sincerity.
I hastened to him and removed the thing from his head. I fear it was not with the utmost deference, for I have my human moments.
“It’s not done, sir,” I protested. He saw that I was offended.
“All right, sir,” he replied meekly. “But how was I to know? I thought it kind of set me off.” He referred to it as a “stove-pipe” hat. I knew then that I should find myself overlooking many things in him. He was not a person one could be stern with, and I even promised that Mrs. Effie should not be told of his offence, he promising in turn never again to stir abroad without first submitting himself to me and agreeing also to wear sock-suspenders from that day forth. I saw, indeed, that diplomacy might work wonders with him.
At breakfast in the drawing-room, during which Cousin Egbert earned warm praise from Mrs. Effie for his lack of appetite (he winking violently at me during this), I learned that I should be expected to accompany him to a certain art gallery which corresponds to our British Museum. I was a bit surprised, indeed, to learn that he largely spent his days there, and was accustomed to make notes of the various objects of interest.
“I insisted,” explained Mrs. Effie, “that he should absorb all the culture he could on his trip abroad, so I got him a notebook in which he puts down his impressions, and I must say he’s done fine. Some of his remarks are so good that when he gets home I may have him read a paper before our Onwards and Upwards Club.”
Cousin Egbert wriggled modestly at this and said: “Shucks!” which I took to be a term of deprecation.
“You needn’t pretend,” said Mrs. Effie. “Just let Ruggles here look over some of the notes you have made,” and she handed me a notebook of ruled paper in which there was a deal of writing. I glanced, as bidden, at one or two of the paragraphs, and confess that I, too, was amazed at the fluency and insight displayed along lines in which I should have thought the man entirely uninformed. “This choice work represents the first or formative period of the Master,” began one note, “but distinctly foreshadows that later method which made him at once the hope and despair of his contemporaries. In the ‘Portrait of the Artist by Himself’ we have a canvas that well repays patient study, since here is displayed in its full flower that ruthless realism, happily attenuated by a superbly subtle delicacy of brush work——” It was really quite amazing, and I perceived for the first time that Cousin Egbert must be “a diamond in the rough,” as the well-known saying has it. I felt, indeed, that I would be very pleased to accompany him on one of his instructive strolls through this gallery, for I have always been of a studious habit and anxious to improve myself in the fine arts.
“You see?” asked Mrs. Effie, when I had perused this fragment. “And yet folks back home would tell you that he’s just a——” Cousin Egbert here coughed alarmingly. “No matter,” she continued. “He’ll show them that he’s got something in him, mark my words.”
“Quite so, Madam,” I said, “and I shall consider it a privilege to be present when he further prosecutes his art studies.”
“You may keep him out till dinner-time,” she continued. “I’m shopping this morning, and in the afternoon I shall motor to have tea in the Boy with the Senator and Mr. Nevil Vane-Basingwell.”
Presently, then, my charge and I set out for what I hoped was to be a peaceful and instructive day among objects of art, though first I was obliged to escort him to a hatter’s and glover’s to remedy some minor discrepancies in his attire. He was very pleased when I permitted him to select his own hat. I was safe in this, as the shop was really artists in gentlemen’s headwear, and carried only shapes, I observed, that were confined to exclusive firms so as to insure their being worn by the right set. As to gloves and a stick, he was again rather pettish and had to be set right with some firmness. He declared he had lost his stick and gloves of the previous day. I discovered later that he had presented them to the lift attendant. But I soon convinced him that he would not be let to appear without these adjuncts to a gentleman’s toilet.
Then, having once more stood by at the barber’s while he was shaved and his moustaches firmly waxed anew, I saw that he was fit at last for his art studies. The barber this day suggested curling the moustaches with a heated iron, but at this my charge fell into so unseemly a rage that I deemed it wise not to insist. He, indeed, bluntly threatened a nameless violence to the barber if he were so much as touched with the iron, and revealed an altogether shocking gift for profanity, saying loudly: “I’ll be—dashed—if you will!” I mean to say, I have written “dashed” for what he actually said. But at length I had him once more quieted.
“Now, sir,” I said, when I had got him from the barber’s shop, to the barber’s manifest relief: “I fancy we’ve time to do a few objects of art before luncheon. I’ve the book here for your comments,” I added.
“Quite so,” he replied, and led me at a rapid pace along the street in what I presumed was the direction of the art museum. At the end of a few blocks he paused at one of those open-air public houses that disgracefully line the streets of the French capital. I mean to say that chairs and tables are set out upon the pavement in the most brazen manner and occupied by the populace, who there drink their silly beverages and idle away their time. After scanning the score or so of persons present, even at so early an hour as ten of the morning, he fell into one of the iron chairs at one of the iron tables and motioned me to another at his side.
When I had seated myself he said “Beer” to the waiter who appeared, and held up two fingers.
“Now, look at here,” he resumed to me, “this is a good place to do about four pages of art, and then we can go out and have some recreation somewhere.” Seeing that I was puzzled, he added: “This way—you take that notebook and write in it out of this here other book till I think you’ve done enough, then I’ll tell you to stop.” And while I was still bewildered, he drew from an inner pocket a small, well-thumbed volume which I took from him and saw to be entitled “One Hundred Masterpieces of the Louvre.”
“Open her about the middle,” he directed, “and pick out something that begins good, like ‘Here the true art-lover will stand entranced——’ You got to write it, because I guess you can write faster than what I can. I’ll tell her I dictated to you. Get a hustle on now, so’s we can get through. Write down about four pages of that stuff.”
Stunned I was for a moment at his audacity. Too plainly I saw through his deception. Each day, doubtless, he had come to a low place of this sort and copied into the notebook from the printed volume.
“But, sir,” I protested, “why not at least go to the gallery where these art objects are stored? Copy the notes there if that must be done.”
“I don’t know where the darned place is,” he confessed. “I did start for it the first day, but I run into a Punch and Judy show in a little park, and I just couldn’t get away from it, it was so comical, with all the French kids hollering their heads off at it. Anyway, what’s the use? I’d rather set here in front of this saloon, where everything is nice.”
“It’s very extraordinary, sir,” I said, wondering if I oughtn’t to cut off to the hotel and warn Mrs. Effie so that she might do a heated foot to him, as he had once expressed it.
“Well, I guess I’ve got my rights as well as anybody,” he insisted. “I’ll be pushed just so far and no farther, not if I never get any more cultured than a jack-rabbit. And now you better go on and write or I’ll be—dashed—if I’ll ever wear another thing you tell me to.”
He had a most bitter and dangerous expression on his face, so I thought best to humour him once more. Accordingly I set about writing in his notebook from the volume of criticism he had supplied.
“Change a word now and then and skip around here and there,” he suggested as I wrote, “so’s it’ll sound more like me.”
“Quite so, sir,” I said, and continued to transcribe from the printed page. I was beginning the fifth page in the notebook, being in the midst of an enthusiastic description of the bit of statuary entitled “The Winged Victory,” when I was startled by a wild yell in my ear. Cousin Egbert had leaped to his feet and now danced in the middle of the pavement, waving his stick and hat high in the air and shouting incoherently. At once we attracted the most undesirable attention from the loungers about us, the waiters and the passers-by in the street, many of whom stopped at once to survey my charge with the liveliest interest. It was then I saw that he had merely wished to attract the attention of some one passing in a cab. Half a block down the boulevard I saw a man likewise waving excitedly, standing erect in the cab to do so. The cab thereupon turned sharply, came back on the opposite side of the street, crossed over to us, and the occupant alighted.
He was an American, as one might have fancied from his behaviour, a tall, dark-skinned person, wearing a drooping moustache after the former style of Cousin Egbert, supplemented by an imperial. He wore a loose-fitting suit of black which had evidently received no proper attention from the day he purchased it. Under a folded collar he wore a narrow cravat tied in a bowknot, and in the bosom of his white shirt there sparkled a diamond such as might have come from a collection of crown-jewels. This much I had time to notice as he neared us. Cousin Egbert had not ceased to shout, nor had he paid the least attention to my tugs at his coat. When the cab’s occupant descended to the pavement they fell upon each other and did for some moments a wild dance such as I imagine they might have seen the red Indians of western America perform. Most savagely they punched each other, calling out in the meantime: “Well, old horse!” and “Who’d ever expected to see you here, darn your old skin!” (Their actual phrases, be it remembered.)
The crowd, I was glad to note, fell rapidly away, many of them shrugging their shoulders in a way the French have, and even the waiters about us quickly lost interest in the pair, as if they were hardened to the sight of Americans greeting one another. The two were still saying: “Well! well!” rather breathlessly, but had become a bit more coherent.
“Jeff Tuttle, you—dashed—old long-horn!” exclaimed Cousin Egbert.
“Good old Sour-dough!” exploded the other. “Ain’t this just like old home week!”
“I thought mebbe you wouldn’t know me with all my beadwork and my new war-bonnet on,” continued Cousin Egbert.
“Know you, why, you knock-kneed old Siwash, I could pick out your hide in a tanyard!”
“Well, well, well!” replied Cousin Egbert.
“Well, well, well!” said the other, and again they dealt each other smart blows.
“Where’d you turn up from?” demanded Cousin Egbert.
“Europe,” said the other. “We been all over Europe and Italy—just come from some place up over the divide where they talk Dutch, the Madam and the two girls and me, with the Reverend Timmins and his wife riding line on us. Say, he’s an out-and-out devil for cathedrals—it’s just one church after another with him—Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, takes ‘em all in—never overlooks a bet. He’s got Addie and the girls out now. My gosh! it’s solemn work! Me? I ducked out this morning.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Told the little woman I had to have a tooth pulled—I was working it up on the train all day yesterday. Say, what you all rigged out like that for, Sour-dough, and what you done to your face?”
Cousin Egbert here turned to me in some embarrassment. “Colonel Ruggles, shake hands with my friend Jeff Tuttle from the State of Washington.”
“Pleased to meet you, Colonel,” said the other before I could explain that I had no military title whatever, never having, in fact, served our King, even in the ranks. He shook my hand warmly.
“Any friend of Sour-dough Floud’s is all right with me,” he assured me. “What’s the matter with having a drink?”
“Say, listen here! I wouldn’t have to be blinded and backed into it,” said Cousin Egbert, enigmatically, I thought, but as they sat down I, too, seated myself. Something within me had sounded a warning. As well as I know it now I knew then in my inmost soul that I should summon Mrs. Effie before matters went farther.
“Beer is all I know how to say,” suggested Cousin Egbert.
“Leave that to me,” said his new friend masterfully. “Where’s the boy? Here, boy! Veesky-soda! That’s French for high-ball,” he explained. “I’ve had to pick up a lot of their lingo.”
Cousin Egbert looked at him admiringly. “Good old Jeff!” he said simply. He glanced aside to me for a second with downright hostility, then turned back to his friend. “Something tells me, Jeff, that this is going to be the first happy day I’ve had since I crossed the state line. I’ve been pestered to death, Jeff—what with Mrs. Effie after me to improve myself so’s I can be a social credit to her back in Red Gap, and learn to wear clothes and go without my breakfast and attend art galleries. If you’d stand by me I’d throw her down good and hard right now, but you know what she is——”
“I sure do,” put in Mr. Tuttle so fervently that I knew he spoke the truth. “That woman can bite through nails. But here’s your drink, Sour-dough. Maybe it will cheer you up.”
Extraordinary! I mean to say, biting through nails.
“Three rousing cheers!” exclaimed Cousin Egbert with more animation than I had ever known him display.
“Here’s looking at you, Colonel,” said his friend to me, whereupon I partook of the drink, not wishing to offend him. Decidedly he was not vogue. His hat was remarkable, being of a black felt with high crown and a wide and flopping brim. Across his waistcoat was a watch-chain of heavy links, with a weighty charm consisting of a sculptured gold horse in full gallop. That sort of thing would never do with us.
“Here, George,” he immediately called to the waiter, for they had quickly drained their glasses, “tell the bartender three more. By gosh! but that’s good, after the way I’ve been held down.”
“Me, too,” said Cousin Egbert. “I didn’t know how to say it in French.”
“The Reverend held me down,” continued the Tuttle person. “‘A glass of native wine,’ he says, ‘may perhaps be taken now and then without harm.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘leave us have ales, wines, liquors, and cigars,’ I says, but not him. I’d get a thimbleful of elderberry wine or something about every second Friday, except when I’d duck out the side door of a church and find some caffy. Here, George, foomer, foomer—bring us some seegars, and then stay on that spot—I may want you.”
“Well, well!” said Cousin Egbert again, as if the meeting were still incredible.
“You old stinging-lizard!” responded the other affectionately. The cigars were brought and I felt constrained to light one.
“The State of Washington needn’t ever get nervous over the prospect of losing me,” said the Tuttle person, biting off the end of his cigar.
I gathered at once that the Americans have actually named one of our colonies “Washington” after the rebel George Washington, though one would have thought that the indelicacy of this would have been only too apparent. But, then, I recalled, as well, the city where their so-called parliament assembles, Washington, D. C. Doubtless the initials indicate that it was named in “honour” of another member of this notorious family. I could not but reflect how shocked our King would be to learn of this effrontery.
Cousin Egbert, who had been for some moments moving his lips without sound, here spoke:
“I’m going to try it myself,” he said. “Here, Charley, veesky-soda! He made me right off,” he continued as the waiter disappeared. “Say, Jeff, I bet I could have learned a lot of this language if I’d had some one like you around.”
“Well, it took me some time to get the accent,” replied the other with a modesty which I could detect was assumed. More acutely than ever was I conscious of a psychic warning to separate these two, and I resolved to act upon it with the utmost diplomacy. The third whiskey and soda was served us.
“Three rousing cheers!” said Cousin Egbert.
“Here’s looking at you!” said the other, and I drank. When my glass was drained I arose briskly and said:
“I think we should be getting along now, sir, if Mr. Tuttle will be good enough to excuse us.” They both stared at me.
“Yes, sir—I fancy not, sir,” said Cousin Egbert.
“Stop your kidding, you fat rascal!” said the other.
“Old Bill means all right,” said Cousin Egbert, “so don’t let him irritate you. Bill’s our new hired man. He’s all right—just let him talk along.”
“Can’t he talk setting down?” asked the other. “Does he have to stand up every time he talks? Ain’t that a good chair?” he demanded of me. “Here, take mine,” and to my great embarrassment he arose and offered me his chair in such a manner that I felt moved to accept it. Thereupon he took the chair I had vacated and beamed upon us, “Now that we’re all home-folks, together once more, I would suggest a bit of refreshment. Boy, veesky-soda!”
“I fancy so, sir,” said Cousin Egbert, dreamily contemplating me as the order was served. I was conscious even then that he seemed to be studying my attire with a critical eye, and indeed he remarked as if to himself: “What a coat!” I was rather shocked by this, for my suit was quite a decent lounge-suit that had become too snug for the Honourable George some two years before. Yet something warned me to ignore the comment.
“Three rousing cheers!” he said as the drink was served.
“Here’s looking at you!” said the Tuttle person.
And again I drank with them, against my better judgment, wondering if I might escape long enough to be put through to Mrs. Floud on the telephone. Too plainly the situation was rapidly getting out of hand, and yet I hesitated. The Tuttle person under an exterior geniality was rather abrupt. And, moreover, I now recalled having observed a person much like him in manner and attire in a certain cinema drama of the far Wild West. He had been a constable or sheriff in the piece and had subdued a band of armed border ruffians with only a small pocket pistol. I thought it as well not to cross him.
When they had drunk, each one again said, “Well! well!”
“You old maverick!” said Cousin Egbert.
“You—dashed—old horned toad!” responded his friend.
“What’s the matter with a little snack?”
“Not a thing on earth. My appetite ain’t been so powerful craving since Heck was a pup.”
These were their actual words, though it may not be believed. The Tuttle person now approached his cabman, who had waited beside the curb.
“Say, Frank,” he began, “Ally restorong,” and this he supplemented with a crude but informing pantomime of one eating. Cousin Egbert was already seated in the cab, and I could do nothing but follow. “Ally restorong!” commanded our new friend in a louder tone, and the cabman with an explosion of understanding drove rapidly off.
“It’s a genuine wonder to me how you learned the language so quick,” said Cousin Egbert.