"Listen here!" said Cousin Egbert brightly. "I"ll take the piece down now and he can print it in his paper for you to-morrow."
"You can"t understand," she replied impatiently. "I casually mentioned our having brought an English manservant. Print that now and insult all our best people who received him!"
"Pathetic how little the poor chap understands," sighed Belknap-Jackson. "No sense at all of our plight--naturally, naturally!"
""A series of entertainments being planned in his honour!"" quavered Mrs. Belknap-Jackson.
""The most sought-after notable present!"" echoed Mrs. Effie viciously.
Again and again I had essayed to protest my innocence, only to provoke renewed outbursts. I could but stand there with what dignity I retained and let them savage me. Cousin Egbert now spoke again:
"Shucks! What"s all the fuss? Just because I took Bill out and give him a good time! Didn"t you say yourself in that there very piece that he"d impart to coming functions an air of smartiness like they have all over Europe? Didn"t you write them very words? And ain"t he already done it the very first night he gets here, right at that there lawn-feet where I took him? What for do you jump on me then? I took him and he done it; he done it good. Bill"s a born mixer. Why, he had all them North Side society dames stung the minute I flashed him; after him quicker than h.e.l.l could scorch a feather; run out from under their hats to get introduced to him--and now you all turn on me like a pa.s.sel of starved wolves." He finished with a note of genuine irritation I had never heard in his voice.
"The poor creature"s demented," remarked Mrs. Belknap-Jackson pityingly.
"Always been that way," said Mrs. Effie hopelessly.
Belknap-Jackson contented himself with a mere clicking sound of commiseration.
"All right, then, if you"re so smart," continued Cousin Egbert. "Just the same Bill, here, is the most popular thing in the whole Kulanche Valley this minute, so all I got to say is if you want to play this here society game you better stick close by him. First thing you know, some o" them other dames"ll have him won from you. That Mis" Ballard"s going to invite him to supper or dinner or some other doings right away. I heard her say so."
To my amazement a curious and prolonged silence greeted this amazing tirade. The three at length were regarding each other almost furtively. Belknap-Jackson began to pace the floor in deep thought.
"After all, no one knows except ourselves," he said in curiously hushed tones at last.
"Of course it"s one way out of a dreadful mess," observed his wife.
"Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles of the British army," said Mrs. Effie in a peculiar tone, as if she were trying over a song.
"It may indeed be the best way out of an impossible situation,"
continued Belknap-Jackson musingly. "Otherwise we face a social upheaval that might leave us demoralized for years--say nothing of making us a laughingstock with the rabble. In fact, I see nothing else to be done."
"Cousin Egbert would be sure to spoil it all again," objected Mrs.
Effie, glaring at him.
"No danger," returned the other with his superior smile. "Being quite unable to realize what has happened, he will be equally unable to realize what is going to happen. We may speak before him as before a babe in arms; the amenities of the situation are forever beyond him."
"I guess I always been able to hold up my head when I felt like it,"
put in Cousin Egbert, now again both sullen and puzzled. Once more he threw out his encouragement to me: "Don"t let "em run any bluffs, Bill! They can"t touch you, and they know it."
""Touch him,"" murmured Mrs. Belknap-Jackson with an able sneer. "My dear, what a trial he must have been to you. I never knew. He"s as bad as the mater, actually."
"And such hopes I had of him in Paris," replied Mrs. Effie, "when he was taking up Art and dressing for dinner and everything!"
"I can be pushed just so far!" muttered the offender darkly.
There was now a ring at the door which I took the liberty of answering, and received two notes from a messenger. One bore the address of Mrs. Floud and the other was quite astonishingly to myself, the name preceded by "Colonel."
"That"s Jen" Ballard"s stationery!" cried Mrs. Belknap-Jackson. "Trust her not to lose one second in getting busy!"
"But he mustn"t answer the door that way," exclaimed her husband as I handed Mrs. Effie her note.
They were indeed both from my acquaintance of the night before.
Receiving permission to read my own, I found it to be a dinner invitation for the following Friday. Mrs. Effie looked up from hers.
"It"s all too true," she announced grimly. "We"re asked to dinner and she earnestly hopes dear Colonel Ruggles will have made no other engagement. She also says hasn"t he the darlingest English accent. Oh, isn"t it a mess!"
"You see how right I am," said Belknap-Jackson.
"I guess we"ve got to go through with it," conceded Mrs. Effie.
"The pushing thing that Ballard woman is!" observed her friend.
"Ruggles!" exclaimed Belknap-Jackson, addressing me with sudden decision.
"Yes, sir."
"Listen carefully--I"m quite serious. In future you will try to address me as if I were your equal. Ah! rather you will try to address me as if you were _my_ equal. I dare say it will come to you easily after a bit of practice. Your employers will wish you to address them in the same manner. You will cultivate toward us a manner of easy friendliness--remember I"m entirely serious--quite as if you were one of us. You must try to be, in short, the Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles that wretched penny-a-liner has foisted upon these innocent people. We shall thus avert a most humiliating contretemps."
The thing fair staggered me. I fell weakly into the chair by which I had stood, for the first time in a not uneventful career feeling that my _savoir faire_ had been overtaxed.
"Quite right," he went on. "Be seated as one of us," and he amazingly proffered me his cigarette case. "Do take one, old chap," he insisted as I weakly waved it away, and against my will I did so. "Dare say you"ll fancy them--a non-throat cigarette especially prescribed for me." He now held a match so that I was obliged to smoke. Never have I been in less humour for it.
"There, not so hard, is it? You see, we"re getting on famously."
"Ain"t I always said Bill was a good mixer?" called Cousin Egbert, but his gaucherie was pointedly ignored.
"Now," continued Belknap-Jackson, "suppose you tell us in a chatty, friendly way just what you think about this regrettable affair." All sat forward interestedly.
"But I met what I supposed were your villagers," I said; "your small tradesmen, your artisans, clerks, shop-a.s.sistants, tenant-farmers, and the like, I"d no idea in the world they were your county families.
Seemed quite a bit too jolly for that. And your press-chap--preposterous, quite! He quizzed me rather, I admit, but he made it vastly different.
Your pressmen are remarkable. That thing is a fair crumpler."
"But surely," put in Mrs. Effie, "you could see that Mrs. Judge Ballard must be one of our best people."
"I saw she was a goodish sort," I explained, "but it never occurred to me one would meet her in your best houses. And when she spoke of entertaining me I fancied I might stroll by her cottage some fair day and be asked in to a slice from one of her own loaves and a dish of tea. There was that about her."
"Mercy!" exclaimed both ladies, Mrs. Belknap-Jackson adding a bit maliciously I thought, "Oh, don"t you awfully wish she could hear him say it just that way?"
"As to the t.i.tle," I continued, "Mr. Egbert has from the first had a curious American tendency to present me to his many friends as "Colonel." I am sure he means as little by it as when he calls me "Bill," which I have often reminded him is not a name of mine."
"Oh, we understand the poor chap is a social incompetent," said Belknap-Jackson with a despairing shrug.
"Say, look here," suddenly exclaimed Cousin Egbert, a new heat in his tone, "what I call Bill ain"t a marker to what I call you when I really get going. You ought to hear me some day when I"m feeling right!"
"Really!" exclaimed the other with elaborate sarcasm.
"Yes, sir. Surest thing you know. I could call you a lot of good things right now if so many ladies wasn"t around. You don"t think I"d be afraid, do you? Why, Bill there had you licked with one wallop."