Ruggles of Red Gap | Page 2

boot-cream could do, but they were things no sensitive
gentleman would endure with evening dress. I was glad to reflect that
doubtless only Americans would observe them.
So began the final hours of a 14th of July in Paris that must ever be
memorable. My own birthday, it is also chosen by the French as one on
which to celebrate with carnival some one of those regrettable events in
their own distressing past.
To begin with, the day was marked first of all by the breezing in of his
lordship the Earl of Brinstead, brother of the Honourable George, on
his way to England from the Engadine. More peppery than usual had
his lordship been, his grayish side-whiskers in angry upheaval and his
inflamed words exploding quite all over the place, so that the
Honourable George and I had both perceived it to be no time for
admitting our recent financial reverse at the gaming tables of Ostend.
On the contrary, we had gamely affirmed the last quarter's allowance to
be practically untouched--a desperate stand, indeed! But there was that
in his lordship's manner to urge us to it, though even so he appeared to
be not more than half deceived.

"No good greening me!" he exploded to both of us. "Tell in a
flash--gambling, or a woman--typing-girl, milliner, dancing person,
what, what! Guilty faces, both of you. Know you too well. My word,
what, what!"
Again we stoutly protested while his lordship on the hearthrug rocked
in his boots and glared. The Honourable George gamely rattled some
loose coin of the baser sort in his pockets and tried in return for a glare
of innocence foully aspersed. I dare say he fell short of it. His histrionic
gifts are but meagre.
"Fools, quite fools, both of you!" exploded his lordship anew. "And,
make it worse, no longer young fools. Young and a fool, people make
excuses. Say, 'Fool? Yes, but so young!' But old and a fool--not a word
to say, what, what! Silly rot at forty." He clutched his side-whiskers
with frenzied hands. He seemed to comb them to a more bristling rage.
"Dare say you'll both come croppers. Not surprise me. Silly old George,
course, course! Hoped better of Ruggles, though. Ruggles different
from old George. Got a brain. But can't use it. Have old George wed to
a charwoman presently. Hope she'll be a worker. Need to be--support
you both, what, what!"
I mean to say, he was coming it pretty thick, since he could not have
forgotten that each time I had warned him so he could hasten to save
his brother from distressing mésalliances. I refer to the affair with the
typing-girl and to the later entanglement with a Brixton milliner
encountered informally under the portico of a theatre in Charing Cross
Road. But he was in no mood to concede that I had thus far shown a
scrupulous care in these emergencies. Peppery he was, indeed. He
gathered hat and stick, glaring indignantly at each of them and then at
us.
"Greened me fair, haven't you, about money? Quite so, quite so! Not
hear from you then till next quarter. No telegraphing--no begging
letters. Shouldn't a bit know what to make of them. Plenty you got to
last. Say so yourselves." He laughed villainously here. "Morning," said
he, and was out.

"Old Nevil been annoyed by something," said the Honourable George
after a long silence. "Know the old boy too well. Always tell when he's
been annoyed. Rather wish he hadn't been."
So we had come to the night of this memorable day, and to the
Honourable George's departure on his mysterious words about the
hundred pounds.
Left alone, I began to meditate profoundly. It was the closing of a day I
had seen dawn with the keenest misgiving, having had reason to
believe it might be fraught with significance if not disaster to myself.
The year before a gypsy at Epsom had solemnly warned me that a great
change would come into my life on or before my fortieth birthday. To
this I might have paid less heed but for its disquieting confirmation on
a later day at a psychic parlour in Edgware Road. Proceeding there in
company with my eldest brother-in-law, a plate-layer and surfaceman
on the Northern (he being uncertain about the Derby winner for that
year), I was told by the person for a trifle of two shillings that I was
soon to cross water and to meet many strange adventures. True, later
events proved her to have been psychically unsound as to the Derby
winner (so that my brother-in-law, who was out two pounds ten,
thereby threatened to have an action against her); yet her reference to
myself had confirmed the words of the gypsy; so it will be plain