Ruggles of Red Gap — Chapter 3 Part 1
CHAPTER THREE
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.
“It’s all in the accent,” protested the other.
I occupied a narrow seat in the front.
Facing me in the back seat, they lolled easily and smoked their cigars.
Down the thronged boulevard we proceeded at a rapid pace and were passing presently before an immense gray edifice which I recognized as the so-called Louvre from its illustration on the cover of Cousin Egbert’s art book.
He himself regarded it with interest, though I fancy he did not recognize it, for, waving his cigar toward it, he announced to his friend: “The Public Library.
” His friend surveyed the building with every sign of approval.
“That Carnegie is a hot sport, all right,” he declared warmly.
“I’ll bet that shack set him back some.
” “Three rousing cheers!
” said Cousin Egbert, without point that I could detect.
We now crossed their Thames over what would have been Westminster Bridge, I fancy, and were presently bowling through a sort of Battersea part of the city.
The streets grew quite narrow and the shops smaller, and I found myself wondering not without alarm what sort of restaurant our abrupt friend had chosen.
“Three rousing cheers!
” said Cousin Egbert from time to time, with almost childish delight.
Debouching from a narrow street again into what the French term a boulevard, we halted before what was indeed a restaurant, for several tables were laid on the pavement before the door, but I saw at once that it was anything but a nice place.
“Au Rendezvous des Cochers Fideles,” read the announcement on the flap of the awning, and truly enough it was a low resort frequented by cabbies--“The meeting-place of faithful coachmen.
” Along the curb half a score of horses were eating from their bags, while their drivers lounged before the place, eating, drinking, and conversing excitedly in their grotesque jargon.
We descended, in spite of the repellent aspect of the place, and our driver went to the foot of the line, where he fed his own horse.
Cousin Egbert, already at one of the open-air tables, was rapping smartly for a waiter.
“What’s the matter with having just one little one before grub?
” asked the Tuttle person as we joined him.
He had a most curious fashion of speech.
I mean to say, when he suggested anything whatsoever he invariably wished to know what might be the matter with it.
“Veesky-soda!
” demanded Cousin Egbert of the serving person who now appeared, “and ask your driver to have one,” he then urged his friend.
The latter hereupon addressed the cabman who had now come up.
“Vooley-voos take something!
” he demanded, and the cabman appeared to accept.
“Vooley-voos your friends take something, too?
” he demanded further, with a gesture that embraced all the cabmen present, and these, too, appeared to accept with the utmost cordiality.
“You’re a wonder, Jeff,” said Cousin Egbert.
“You talk it like a professor.
” “It come natural to me,” said the fellow, “and it’s a good thing, too.
If you know a little French you can go all over Europe without a bit of trouble.
” Inside the place was all activity, for many cabmen were now accepting the proffered hospitality, and calling “votry santy!
” to their host, who seemed much pleased.
Then to my amazement Cousin Egbert insisted that our cabman should sit at table with us.
I trust I have as little foolish pride as most people, but this did seem like crowding it on a bit thick.
In fact, it looked rather dicky.
I was glad to remember that we were in what seemed to be the foreign quarter of the town, where it was probable that no one would recognize us.
The drink came, though our cabman refused the whiskey and secured a bottle of native wine.
“Three rousing cheers!
” said Cousin Egbert as we drank once more, and added as an afterthought, “What a beautiful world we live in!
” “Vooley-voos make-um bring dinner!
” said the Tuttle person to the cabman, who thereupon spoke at length in his native tongue to the waiter.
By this means we secured a soup that was not half bad and presently a stew of mutton which Cousin Egbert declared was “some goo.
” To my astonishment I ate heartily, even in such raffish surroundings.
In fact, I found myself pigging it with the rest of them.
With coffee, cigars were brought from the tobacconist’s next-door, each cabman present accepting one.
Our own man was plainly feeling a vast pride in his party, and now circulated among his fellows with an account of our merits.
“This is what I call life,” said the Tuttle person, leaning back in his chair.
“I’m coming right back here every day,” declared Cousin Egbert happily.
“What’s the matter with a little drive to see some well-known objects of interest?
” inquired his friend.
“Not art galleries,” insisted Cousin Egbert.
“And not churches,” said his friend.
“Every day’s been Sunday with me long enough.
” “And not clothing stores,” said Cousin Egbert firmly.
“The Colonel here is awful fussy about my clothes,” he added.
