Ruggles of Red Gap/Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FROM the innocent lips of Cousin Egbert the following morning there fell a tale of such cold-blooded depravity that I found myself with difficulty giving it credit. At ten o'clock, while I still mused pensively over the events of the previous day, he entered the Grill in search of breakfast, as had lately become his habit. I greeted him with perceptible restraint, not knowing what guilt might be his, but his manner to me was so unconsciously genial that I at once acquitted him of any complicity in whatever base doings had been forward.
He took his accustomed seat with a pleasant word to me. I waited.
"Feeling a mite off this morning," he began, "account of a lot of truck I eat yesterday. I guess I'll just take something kind of dainty. Tell Clarice to cook me up a nice little steak with plenty of fat on it, and some fried potatoes, and a cup of coffee and a few waffles to come. The Judge he wouldn't get up yet. He looked kind of mottled and anguished, but I guess he'll pull around all right. I had the chink take him up about a gallon of strong tea. Say, listen here, the Judge ain't so awful much of a stayer, is he?"
Burning with curiosity I was to learn what he could tell me of the day before, yet I controlled myself to the calmest of leisurely questioning in order not to alarm him. It was too plain that he had no realization of what had occurred. It was always the way with him, I had noticed. Events the most momentous might culminate furiously about his head, but he never knew that anything had happened.
"The Honourable George," I began, "was with you yesterday? Perhaps he ate something he shouldn't."
"He did, he did; he done it repeatedly. He et pretty near as much of that sauerkraut and frankfurters as the piano guy himself did, and that's some tribute, believe me, Bill! Some tribute!"
"The piano guy?" I murmured quite casually.
"And say, listen here, that guy is all right if anybody should ask you. You talk about your mixers!"
This was a bit puzzling, for of course I had never "talked about my mixers." I shouldn't a bit know how to go on. I ventured another query.
"Where was it this mixing and that sort of thing took place?"
"Why, up at Mis' Kenner's, where we was having a little party: frankfurters and sauerkraut and beer. My stars! but that steak looks good. I'm feeling better already." His food was before him, and he attacked it with no end of spirit.
"Tell me quite all about it," I amiably suggested, and after a moment's hurried devotion to the steak, he slowed up a bit to talk.
"Well, listen here, now. The Judge says to me when Eddie Pierce comes, 'Sour-dough,' he says, 'look in at Mis' Kenner's this afternoon if you got nothing else on; I fancy it will repay you.' Just like that. 'Well,' I says, 'all right, Judge, I fancy I will. I fancy I ain't got anything else on,' I says. 'And I'm always glad to go there,' I says, because no matter what they're always saying about this here Bohemian stuff, Kate Kenner is one good scout, take it from me. So in a little while I slicked up some and went on around to her house. Then hitched outside I seen Eddie Pierce's hack, and I says, 'My lands! that's a funny thing,' I says. 'I thought the Judge was going to haul this here piano guy out to the Jackson place where he could while away the tejum, like Jackson said, and now it looks as if they was here. Or mebbe it's just Eddie himself that has fancied to look in, not having anything else on.'
"Well, so anyway I go up on the stoop and knock, and when I get in the parlour there the piano guy is and the Judge and Eddie Pierce, too, Eddie helping the Jap around with frankfurters and sauerkraut and beer and one thing and another.
"Besides them was about a dozen of Mis' Kenner's own particular friends, all of 'em good scouts, let me tell you, and everybody laughing and gassing back and forth and cutting up and having a good time all around. Well, so as soon as they seen me, everybody says, 'Oh, here comes Sour-dough—good old Sour-dough!' and all like that, and they introduced me to the piano guy, who gets up to shake hands with me and spills his beer off the chair arm on to the wife of Eddie Fosdick in the Farmers' and Merchants' National, and so I sat down and et with 'em and had a few steins of beer, and everybody had a good time all around."
The wonderful man appeared to believe that he had told me quite all of interest concerning this monstrous festivity. He surveyed the mutilated remnant of his steak and said: "I guess Clarice might as well fry me a few eggs. I'm feeling a lot better." I directed that this be done, musing upon the dreadful menu he had recited and recalling the exquisite finish of the collation I myself had prepared. Sausages, to be sure, have their place, and beer as well, but sauerkraut I have never been able to regard as an at all possible food for persons that really matter. Germans, to be sure!
Discreetly I renewed my inquiry: "I dare say the Honourable George was in good form?" I suggested.
"Well, he et a lot. Him and the piano guy was bragging which could eat the most sausages."
I was unable to restrain a shudder at the thought of this revolting contest.
"The piano guy beat him out, though. He'd been at the Palace Hotel for three meals and I guess his appetite was right craving."
"And afterward?"
"Well, it was like Jackson said: this lad wanted to while away the tejum of a Sunday afternoon, and so he whiled it, that's all. Purty soon Mis' Kenner set down to the piano and sung some coon songs that tickled him most to death, and then she got to playing ragtime—say, believe me, Bill, when she starts in on that rag stuff she can make a piano simply stutter itself to death.
"Well, at that the piano guy says it's great stuff, and so he sets down himself to try it, and he catches on pretty good, I'll say that for him, so we got to dancing while he plays for us, only he don't remember the tunes good and has to fake a lot. Then he makes Mis' Kenner play again while he dances with Mis' Fosdick that he spilled the beer on, and after that we had some more beer and this guy et another plate of kraut and a few sausages, and Mis' Kenner sings 'The Robert E. Lee' and a couple more good ones, and the guy played some more ragtime himself, trying to get the tunes right, and then he played some fancy pieces that he'd practised up on, and we danced some and had a few more beers, with everybody laughing and cutting up and having a nice home afternoon.
"Well, the piano guy enjoyed himself every minute, if anybody asks you, being lit up like a main chandelier. They made him feel like he was one of their own folks. You certainly got to hand it to him for being one little good mixer. Talk about whiling away the tejum! He done it, all right, all right. He whiled away so much tejum there he darned near missed his train. Eddie Pierce kept telling him what time it was, only he'd keep asking Mis' Kenner to play just one more rag, and at last we had to just shoot him into his fur overcoat while he was kissing all the women on their hands, and we'd have missed the train at that if Eddie hadn't poured the leather into them skates of his all the way down to the dee-po. He just did make it, and he told the Judge and Eddie and me that he ain't had such a good time since he left home. I kind of hated to see him go."
He here attacked the eggs with what seemed to be a freshening of his remarkable appetite. And as yet, be it noted, I had detected no consciousness on his part that a foul betrayal of confidence had been committed. I approached the point.
"The Belknap-Jacksons were rather expecting him, you know. My impression was that the Honourable George had been sent to escort him to the Belknap-Jackson house."
"Well, that's what I thought, too, but I guess the Judge forgot it, or mebbe he thinks the guy will mix in better with Mis' Kenner's crowd. Anyway, there they was, and it probably didn't make any difference to the guy himself. He likely thought he could while away the tejum there as well as he could while it any place, all of them being such good scouts. And the Judge has certainly got a case on Mis' Kenner, so mebby she asked him to drop in with any friend of his. She's got him bridle-wise and broke to all gaits." He visibly groped for an illumining phrase. "He—he just looks at her."
The simple words fell upon my ears with a sickening finality. "He just looks at her." I had seen him "just look" at the typing-girl and at the Brixton milliner. All too fearfully I divined their preposterous significance. Beyond question a black infamy had been laid bare, but I made no effort to convey its magnitude to my guileless informant. As I left him he was mildly bemoaning his own lack of skill on the pianoforte.
"Darned if I don't wish I'd 'a' took some lessons on the piano myself like that guy done. It certainly does help to while away the tejum when you got friends in for the afternoon. But then I was just a hill-billy. Likely I couldn't have learned the notes good."
It was a half-hour later that I was called to the telephone to listen to the anguished accents of Belknap-Jackson.
"Have you heard it?" he called. I answered that I had.
"The man is a paranoiac. He should be at once confined in an asylum for the criminal insane."
"I shall row him fiercely about it, never fear. I've not seen him yet."
"But the creature should be watched. He may do harm to himself or to some innocent person. They—they run wild, they kill, they burn—set fire to buildings—that sort of thing. I tell you, none of us is safe."
"The situation," I answered, "has even more shocking possibilities, but I've an idea I shall be equal to it. If the worst seems to be imminent I shall adopt extreme measures." I closed the interview. It was too painful. I wished to summon all my powers of deliberation.
To my amazement who should presently appear among my throng of luncheon patrons but the Honourable George. I will not say that he slunk in, but there was an unaccustomed diffidence in his bearing. He did not meet my eye, and it was not difficult to perceive that he had no wish to engage my notice. As he sought a vacant table I observed that he was spotted quite profusely, and his luncheon order was of the simplest.
Straight I went to him. He winced a bit, I thought, as he saw me approach, but then he apparently resolved to brass it out, for he glanced full at me with a terrific assumption of bravado and at once began to give me beans about my service.
"Your bally tea shop running down, what! Louts for waiters, cloddish louts! Disgraceful, my word! Slow beggars! Take a year to do you a rasher and a bit of toast, what!"
To this absurd tirade I replied not a word, but stood silently regarding him. I dare say my gaze was of the most chilling character and steady. He endured it but a moment. His eyes fell, his bravado vanished, he fumbled with the cutlery. Quite abashed he was.
"Come, your explanation!" I said curtly, divining that the moment was one in which to adopt a tone with him. He wriggled a bit, crumpling a roll with panic fingers.
"Come, come!" I commanded.
His face brightened, though with an intention most obviously false. He coughed—a cough of pure deception. Not only were his eyes averted from mine, but they were glassed to an uncanny degree. The fingers wrought piteously at the now plastic roll.
"My word, the chap was taken bad; had to be seen to, what! Revived, I mean to say. All piano Johnnies that way—nervous wrecks, what! Spells! Spells, man—spells!"
"Come, come!" I said crisply. The glassed eyes were those of one hypnotized.
"In the carriage—to the hyphen chap's place, to be sure. Fainting spell—weak heart, what! No stimulants about. Passing house! Perhaps have stimulants—heart tablets, er—beer—things of that sort. Lead him in. Revive him. Quite well presently, but not well enough to go on. Couldn't let a piano Johnny die on our hands, what! Inquest, evidence, witnesses—all that silly rot. Save his life, what! Presence of mind! Kind hearts, what! Humanity! Do as much for any chap. Not let him die like a dog in the gutter, what! Get no credit, though" His curiously mechanical utterance trailed off to be lost in a mere husky murmur. The glassy stare was still at my wall.
I have in the course of my eventful career had occasion to mark the varying degrees of plausibility with which men speak untruths, but never, I confidently aver, have I beheld one lie with so piteous a futility. The art—and I dare say with diplomat chaps and that sort it may properly be called an art—demands as its very essence that the speaker seem to be himself convinced of the truth of that which he utters. And the Honourable George in his youth mentioned for the Foreign Office!
I turned away. The exhibition was quite too indecent, I left him to mince at his meagre fare. As I glanced his way at odd moments thereafter, he would be muttering feverishly to himself. I mean to say, he no longer was himself. He presently made his way to the street, looking neither to right nor left. He had, in truth, the dazed manner of one stupefied by some powerful narcotic. I wondered pityingly when I should again behold him—if it might be that his poor wits were bedevilled past mending.
My period of uncertainty was all too brief. Some two hours later, full into the tide of our afternoon shopping throng, there issued a spectacle that removed any lingering doubt of the unfortunate man's plight. In the rather smart pony-trap of the Klondike woman, driven by the person herself, rode the Honourable George. Full in the startled gaze of many of our best people he advertised his defection from all that makes for a sanely governed stability in our social organism. He had gone flagrantly over to the Bohemian set.
I could detect that his eyes were still glassy, but his head was erect. He seemed to flaunt his shame. And the guilty partner of his downfall drove with an affectation of easy carelessness, yet with a lift of the chin which, though barely perceptible, had all the effect of binding the prisoner to her chariot wheels; a prisoner, moreover, whom it was plain she meant to parade to the last ignominious degree. She drove leisurely, and in the little infrequent curt turns of her head to address her companion she contrived to instill so finished an effect of boredom that she must have goaded to frenzy any matron of the North Side set who chanced to observe her, as more than one of them did.
Thrice did she halt along our main thoroughfare for bits of shopping, a mere running into of shops or to the doors of them where she could issue verbal orders, the while she surveyed her waiting and drugged captive with a certain half-veiled but good-humoured insolence. At these moments—for I took pains to overlook the shocking scene—the Honourable George followed her with eyes no longer glassed; the eyes of helpless infatuation. "He looks at her," Cousin Egbert had said. He had told it all and told it well. The equipage graced our street upon one paltry excuse or another for the better part of an hour, the woman being minded that none of us should longer question her supremacy over the next and eleventh Earl of Brinstead.
Not for another hour did the effects of the sensation die out among tradesmen and the street crowds. It was like waves that recede but gradually. They talked. They stopped to talk. They passed on talking. They hissed vivaciously; they rose to exclamations. I mean to say, there was no end of a gabbling row about it.
There was in my mind no longer any room for hesitation. The quite harshest of extreme measures must be at once adopted before all was too late. I made my way to the telegraph office. It was not a time for correspondence by post.
Afterward I had myself put through by telephone to Belknap-Jackson. With his sensitive nature he had stopped in all day. Although still averse to appearing publicly, he now consented to meet me at my chambers late that evening.
"The whole town is seething with indignation," he called to me. "It was disgraceful. I shall come at ten. We rely upon you."
Again I saw that he was concerned solely with his humiliation as a would-be host. Not yet had he divined that the deluded Honourable George might go to the unspeakable length of a matrimonial alliance with the woman who had enchained him. And as to his own disaster, he was less than accurate when he said that the whole town was seething with indignation. The members of the North Side set, to be sure, were seething furiously, but a flippant element of the baser sort was quite openly rejoicing. As at the time of that most slanderous minstrel performance, it was said that the Bohemian set had again, if I have caught the phrase, "put a thing over upon" the North Side set. Many persons of low taste seemed quite to enjoy the dreadful affair, and the members of the Bohemian set, naturally, throughout the day had been quite coarsely beside themselves with glee.
Little they knew, I reflected, what power I could wield nor that I had already set in motion its deadly springs. Little did the woman dream, flaunting her triumph up and down our main business thoroughfare, that one who watched her there had but to raise his hand to wrest the victim from her toils. Little did she now dream that he would stop at no half measures. I mean to say, she would never think I could bowl her out as easy as buying cockles off a barrow.
At the hour for our conference Belknap-Jackson arrived at my chambers muffled in an ulster and with a soft hat well over his face. I gathered that he had not wished to be observed.
"I feel that this is a crisis," he began as he gloomily shook my hand. "Where is our boasted twentieth-century culture if outrages like this are permitted? For the first time I understand how these Western communities have in the past resorted to mob violence. Public feeling is already running high against the creature and her unspeakable set."
I met this outburst with the serenity of one who holds the winning cards in his hand, and begged him to be seated. Thereupon I disclosed to him the weakly, susceptible nature of the Honourable George, reciting the incidents of the typing-girl and the Brixton milliner. I added that now, as before, I should not hesitate to preserve the family honour.
"A dreadful thing, indeed," he murmured, "if that adventuress should trap him into a marriage. Imagine her one day a Countess of Brinstead! But suppose the fellow prove stubborn; suppose his infatuation dulls all his finer instincts?"
I explained that the Honourable George, while he might upon the spur of the moment commit a folly, was not to be taken too seriously; that he was, I believed, quite incapable of a grand passion. I mean to say, he always forgot them after a few days. More like a child staring into shop-windows he was, rapidly forgetting one desired object in the presence of others. I added that I had adopted the extremest measures.
Thereupon, perceiving that I had something in my sleeve, as the saying is, my caller besought me to confide in him. Without a word I handed him a copy of my cable message sent that afternoon to his lordship:
"Your immediate presence required to prevent a monstrous folly."
He brightened as he read it.
"You actually mean to say" he began.
"His lordship," I explained, "will at once understand the nature of what is threatened. He knows, moreover, that I would not alarm him without cause. He will come at once, and the Honourable George will be told what. His lordship has never failed. He tells him what perfectly, and that's quite all to it. The poor chap will be saved."
My caller was profoundly stirred. "Coming here—to Red Gap—his lordship the Earl of Brinstead—actually coming here! My God! This is wonderful!" He paused; he seemed to moisten his dry lips; he began once more, and now his voice trembled with emotion: "He will need a place to stay; our hotel is impossible; had you thought" He glanced at me appealingly.
"I dare say," I replied, "that his lordship will be pleased to have you put him up; you would do him quite nicely."
"You mean it—seriously? That would be—oh, inexpressible. He would be our house guest! The Earl of Brinstead! I fancy that would silence a few of these serpent tongues that are wagging so venomously to-day!"
"But before his coming," I insisted, "there must be no word of his arrival. The Honourable George would know the meaning of it, and the woman, though I suspect now that she is only making a show of him, might go on to the bitter end. They must suspect nothing."
"I had merely thought of a brief and dignified notice in our press," he began, quite wistfully, "but if you think it might defeat our ends"
"It must wait until he has come."
"Glorious!" he exclaimed. "It will be even more of a blow to them." He began to murmur as if reading from a journal, "'His lordship the Earl of Brinstead is visiting for a few days'—it will surely be as much as a few days, perhaps a week or more—'is visiting for a few days the C. Belknap-Jacksons of Boston and Red Gap.'" He seemed to regard the printed words. "Better still, 'The C. Belknap-Jacksons of Boston and Red Gap are for a few days entertaining as their honoured house guest his lordship the Earl of Brinstead' Yes, that's admirable."
He arose and impulsively clasped my hand. "Ruggles, dear old chap, I shan't know at all how to repay you. The Bohemian set, such as are possible, will be bound to come over to us. There will be left of it but one unprincipled woman—and she wretched and an outcast. She has made me absurd. I shall grind her under my heel. The east room shall be prepared for his lordship; he shall breakfast there if he wishes. I fancy he'll find us rather more like himself than he suspects. He shall see that we have ideals that are not half bad."
He wrung my hand again. His eyes were misty with gratitude.