Part 16 (2/2)
RED GAP'S DISTINGUISHED VISITOR
Colonel Marmaduke Ruggles of London and Paris, late of the British army, bon-vivant and man of the world, is in our midst for an indefinite stay, being at present the honoured house guest of Senator and Mrs. James Knox Floud, who returned from foreign parts on the 5:16 flyer yesterday afternoon. Colonel Ruggles has long been intimately a.s.sociated with the family of his lords.h.i.+p the Earl of Brinstead, and especially with his lords.h.i.+p's brother, the Honourable George Augustus Vane-Basingwell, with whom he has recently been sojourning in la belle France. In a brief interview which the Colonel genially accorded ye scribe, he expressed himself as delighted with our thriving little city.
”It's somewhat a town--if I've caught your American slang,”
he said with a merry twinkle in his eyes. ”You have the garden spot of the West, if not of the civilized world, and your people display a charm that must be, I dare say, typically American. Altogether, I am enchanted with the wonders I have beheld since landing at your New York, particularly with the habit your best people have of roughing it in camps like that of Mr. C. Belknap-Jackson among the mountains of New York, where I was most pleasantly entertained by himself and his delightful wife. The length of my stay among you is uncertain, though I have been pressed by the Flouds, with whom I am stopping, and by the C. Belknap-Jacksons to prolong it indefinitely, and in fact to identify myself to an extent with your social life.”
The Colonel is a man of distinguished appearance, with the seasoned bearing of an old campaigner, and though at moments he displays that cool reserve so typical of the English gentleman, evidence was not lacking last evening that he can unbend on occasion. At the lawn fete held in the s.p.a.cious grounds of Judge Ballard, where a myriad j.a.panese lanterns made the scene a veritable fairyland, he was quite the most sought-after notable present, and gayly tripped the light fantastic toe with the elite of Red Gap's smart set there a.s.sembled.
From his cordial manner of entering into the spirit of the affair we predict that Colonel Ruggles will be a decided acquisition to our social life, and we understand that a series of recherche entertainments in his honour has already been planned by Mrs. County Judge Ballard, who took the distinguished guest under her wing the moment he appeared last evening. Welcome to our city, Colonel! And may the warm hearts of Red Gap cause you to forget that European world of fas.h.i.+on of which you have long been so distinguished an ornament!
In a sickening silence I finished the thing. As the absurd sheet fell from my nerveless fingers Mrs. Effie cried in a voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion:
”Do you realize the dreadful thing you've done to us?”
Speechless I was with humiliation, unequal even to protesting that I had said nothing of the sort to the press-chap. I mean to say, he had wretchedly twisted my harmless words.
”Have you nothing to say for yourself?” demanded Mrs. Belknap-Jackson, also in a voice hoa.r.s.e with emotion. I glanced at her husband. He, too, was pale with anger and trembling, so that I fancied he dared not trust himself to speak.
”The wretched man,” declared Mrs. Effie, addressing them all, ”simply can't realize--how disgraceful it is. Oh, we shall never be able to live it down!”
”Imagine those flippant Spokane sheets dressing up the thing,” hissed Belknap-Jackson, speaking for the first time. ”Imagine their blackguardly humour!”
”And that awful Cousin Egbert,” broke in Mrs. Effie, pointing a desperate finger toward him. ”Think of the laughing-stock he'll become! Why, he'll simply never be able to hold up his head again.”
”Say, you listen here,” exclaimed Cousin Egbert with sudden heat; ”never you mind about my head. I always been able to hold up my head any time I felt like it.” And again to me he threw out, ”Don't you let 'em bluff you, Bill!”
”I gave him a notice for the paper,” explained Mrs. Effie plaintively; ”I'd written it all nicely out to save them time in the office, and that would have prevented this disgrace, but he never gave it in.”
”I clean forgot it,” declared the offender. ”What with one thing and another, and ga.s.sing back and forth with some o' the boys, it kind of went out o' my head.”
”Meeting our best people--actually dancing with them!” murmured Mrs.
Belknap-Jackson in a voice vibrant with horror. ”My dear, I truly am so sorry for you.”
”You people entertained him delightfully at your camp,” murmured Mrs.
Effie quickly in her turn, with a gesture toward the journal.
”Oh, we're both in it, I know. I know. It's appalling!”
”We'll never be able to live it down!” said Mrs. Effie. ”We shall have to go away somewhere.”
”Can't you imagine what Jen' Ballard will say when she learns the truth?” asked the other bitterly. ”Say we did it on purpose to humiliate her, and just as all our little sc.r.a.ps were being smoothed out, so we could get together and put that Bohemian set in its place.
Oh, it's so dreadful!” On the verge of tears she seemed.
”And scarcely a word mentioned of our own return--when I'd taken such pains with the notice!”
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