Ruggles of Red Gap. Harry Leon Wilson
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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.
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