Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Somewhere in Red Gap




"Angus was always reckless that way, adding to his wife's burden of
anxiety. She'd got her own vile past well buried, but she never knew
when his was going to stick its ugly head up out of its grave. He'd go
along all right for a while like one of the best set had ought to--then
Zooey! We was out to dinner at another millionaire's one night--in that
town you're either a millionaire or drawing wages from one--and Angus
talked along with his host for half an hour about the impossibility of
getting a decent valet on this side of the water, Americans not knowing
their place like the English do, till you'd have thought he was born to
it, and then all at once he breaks out about the hardwood finish to the
dining-room, and how the art of graining has perished and ought to be
revived. 'And I wish I had a silver dollar,' he says, 'for every door
like that one there that I've grained to resemble the natural wood so
cunningly you'd never guess it--hardly.'

"At that his break didn't faze any one but Ellabelle. The host was an
old train-robber who'd cut your throat for two bits--I'll bet he
couldn't play an honest game of solitaire--and he let out himself right
off that he had once worked in a livery stable and was proud of it; but
poor Ellabelle, who'd been talking about the dear Countess of Comtessa
or somebody, and the dukes and earls that was just one-two-three with
her on the other side, she blushed up till it almost showed through the
second coating. Angus was certainly poison ivy to her on occasion, and
he'd refuse to listen to reason when she called him down about it. He'd
do most of the things she asked him to about food and clothes and so
forth--like the time he had the two gold teeth took out and replaced by
real porcelain nature fakers--but he never could understand why he
wasn't free to chat about the days when he earned what money he had.

"It was this time that I first saw little Angus since he had changed
from a governess to a governor--or whatever they call the he-teacher of
a millionaire's brat. He was home for the summer vacation. Naturally I'd
been prejudiced against him not only by his mother's praise but by his
father's steady coppering of the same. Judiciously comparing the two, I
was led to expect a kind of cross between Little Lord Fauntleroy and the
late Sitting Bull, with the vices of each and the virtues of neither.
Instead of which I found him a winsome whelp of six-foot or so with
Scotch eyes and his mother's nose and chin and a good, big, straight
mouth, and full of the most engaging bedevilments for one and all. He
didn't seem to be any brighter in his studies than a brute of that age
should be, and though there was something easy and grand in his manner
that his pa and ma never had, he wasn't really any more foreign than
what I be. Of course he spoke Eastern American instead of Western, but
you forgive him that after a few minutes when you see how nice he
naturally meant to be. I admit we took to each other from the start.
They often say I'm a good mixer, but it took no talent to get next to
that boy. I woke up the first night thinking I knew what old silly would
do her darndest to adopt him if ever his poor pa and ma was to get
buttered over the right of way in some railroad accident.

"And yet I didn't see Angus, Junior, one bit the way either of his
parents saw him. Ellabelle seemed to look on him merely as a smart
dresser and social know-it-all that would be a 98 cent credit to her in
the position of society queen for which the good God had always intended
her. And his father said he wasn't any good except to idle away his time
and spend money, and would come to a bad end by manslaughter in a
high-powered car; or in the alcoholic ward of some hospital; that he
was, in fact, a mere helling scapegrace that would have been put in some
good detention home years before if he hadn't been born to a father that
was all kinds of a so-and-so old Scotch fool. There you get Angus,
_fills_, from three different slants, and I ain't saying there wasn't
justification for the other two besides mine. The boy could act in a
crowd of tea-drinking women with a finish that made his father look like
some one edging in to ask where they wanted the load of coal dumped. But
also Angus, _peer_, was merely painting the lily, as they say, when he'd
tell all the different kinds of Indian the boy was. That very summer
before he went back to the educational centre where they teach such
arts, he helped wreck a road house a few miles up the line till it
looked like one of them pictures of what a Zeppelin does to a rare old
English drug store in London. And a week later he lost a race with the
Los Angeles flyer, account of not having as good a roadbed to run on as
the train had, and having to take too short a turn with his new car.

"I remember we three was wondering where he could be that night the
telephone rung from the place where kindly strangers had hauled him for
first aid to the foolish. But it was the boy himself that was able to
talk and tell his anxious parents to forget all about it. His father
took the message and as soon as he got the sense of it he begun to get
hopeful that the kid had broke at least one leg--thinking, he must have
been, of the matched pacing stallions that once did himself such a good
turn without meaning to. His disappointment was pitiful as he turned to
us after learning that he had lit on his head but only sustained a few
bruises and sprains and concussions, with the wall-paper scraped off
here and there.

"'Struck on his head, the only part of him that seems invulnerable,'
says the fond father. 'What's that?' he yells, for the boy was talking
again. He listened a minute, and it was right entertaining to watch his
face work as the words come along. It registered all the evil that
Scotland has suffered from her oppressors since they first thought up
the name for it. Finally he begun to splutter back--it must have sounded
fine at the other end--but he had to hang up, he was that emotional.
After he got his face human again he says to us:

"'Would either of you think now that you could guess at what might have
been his dying speech? Would you guess it might be words of cheer to the
bereaved mother that nursed him, or even a word of comfort to the idiot
father that never touched whipleather to his back while he was still
husky enough to get by with it? Well, you'd guess wild. He's but
inflamed with indignation over the state of the road where he passed out
for some minutes. He says it's a disgrace to any civilized community,
and he means to make trouble about it with the county supervisor, who
must be a murderer at heart, and then he'll take it up to the supreme
court and see if we can't have roads in this country as good as
Napoleon the First made them build in France, so a gentleman can speed
up a bit over five miles an hour without breaking every bone in his
body, to say nothing of totally ruining a car costing forty-eight
hundred dollars of his good money, with the ink on the check for it
scarce dry. He was going on to say that he had the race for the crossing
as good as won and had just waved mockingly at the engineer of the
defeated train who was pretending to feel indifferent about it--but I
hung up on him. My strength was waning. Was he here this minute I make
no doubt I'd go to the mat with him, unequal as we are in prowess.' He
dribbled off into vicious mutterings of what he'd say to the boy if he
was to come to the door.

"Then dear Ellabelle pipes up: 'And doesn't the dear boy say who was
with him in this prank?'

"Angus snorted horribly at the word 'prank,' just like he'd never had
one single advantage of foreign travel. 'He does indeed--one of those
Hammersmith twin louts was with him--the speckled devil with the lisp, I
gather--and praise God his bones, at least, are broke in two places!'

"Ellabelle's eyes shined up at this with real delight. 'How terrible!'
she says, not looking it. 'That's Gerald Hammersmith, son of Mrs. St.
John Hammersmith, leader of the most exclusive set here--oh, she's quite
in the lead of everything that has class! And after this we must know
each other far, far better than we have in the past. She has never
called up to this time. I must inquire after her poor boy directly
to-morrow comes.' That is Ellabelle. Trust her not to overlook a single
bet.

"Angus again snorted in a common way. 'St. John Hammersmith!' says he,
steaming up, 'When he trammed ore for three-fifty a day and went to bed
with his clothes on any night he'd the price of a quart of gin-and-beer
mixed--liking to get his quick--his name was naked 'John' with never a
Saint to it, which his widow tacked on a dozen years later. And speaking
of names, Mrs. McDonald, I sorely regret you didn't name your own son
after your first willful fancy. It was no good day for his father when
you put my own name to him.'

"But Ellabelle paid no attention whatever to this rough stuff, being
already engaged in courting the Hammersmith dame for the good of her
social importance. I make no doubt before the maid finished rubbing in
the complexion cream that night she had reduced this upstart to the
ranks and stepped into her place as leader of the most exclusive social
set between South San Francisco and old Henry Miller's ranch house at
Gilroy. Anyway, she kept talking to herself about it, almost over the
mangled remains of her own son, as you might say.

"A year later the new mansion was done, setting in the centre of sixty
acres of well-manicured land as flat as a floor and naturally called
Hillcrest. Angus asked me down for another visit. There had been grand
doings to open the new house, and Ellabelle felt she was on the way to
ruling things social with an iron hand if she was just careful and
didn't overbet her cards. Angus, not being ashamed of his scandalous
past, was really all that kept her nerves strung up. It seems he'd give
her trouble while the painters and decorators was at work, hanging round
'em fascinated and telling 'em how he'd had to work ten hours a day in
his time and how he could grain a door till it looked exactly like the
natural wood, so they'd say it wasn't painted at all. And one day he
become so inflamed with evil desire that Ellabelle, escorting a bunch of
the real triple-platers through the mansion, found him with his coat off
learning how to rub down a hardwood panel with oil and pumice stone.
Gee! Wouldn't I like to of been there! I suppose I got a lower nature as
well as the rest of us.

"After I'd been there a few days, along comes Angus, _fills_, out into
the world from college to make a name for himself. By ingenuity or
native brute force he had contrived to graduate. He was nice as ever and
told me he was going to look about a bit until he could decide what his
field of endeavour should be. Apparently it was breaking his neck in
outdoor sports, including loop-the-loop in his new car on roads not
meant for it, and delighting Ellabelle because he was a fine social drag
in her favour, and enraging his father by the same reasons. Ellabelle
was especially thrilled by his making up to a girl that was daughter to
this here old train-robber I mentioned. It was looking like he might
form an alliance, as they say, with this old family which had lived
quite a decent life since they actually got it. The girl looked to me
nice enough even for Angus, Junior, but his pa denounced her as a
yellow-haired pest with none but frivolous aims in life, who wouldn't
know whether a kitchen was a room in a house or a little woolly animal
from Paraguay. We had some nice, friendly breakfasts, I believe not,
whilst they discussed this poisonous topic, old Angus being only further
embittered when it comes out that the train-robber is also dead set
against this here alliance because his only daughter needs a decent,
reputable man who would come home nights from some low mahogany den in a
bank building, and not a worthless young hound that couldn't make a
dollar of his own and had displayed no talent except for winning the
notice of head waiters and policemen. Old Angus says he knows well
enough his son can be arrested out of most crowds just on that
description alone, but who is this So-and-So old thug to be saying it in
public?

"And so it went, with Ellabelle living in high hopes and young Angus
busy inventing new ways to bump himself off, and old Angus getting more
and more seething--quiet enough outside, but so desperate inside that it
wasn't any time at all till I saw he was just waiting for a good chance
to make some horrible Scotch exhibition of himself.

"Then comes the fatal polo doings, with young Angus playing on the side
that won, and Ellabelle being set up higher than ever till she actually
begins to snub people here and there at the game that look like they'd
swallow it, and old Angus ashamed and proud and glaring round as if he'd
like to hear some one besides himself call his son a worthless young
hound--if they wanted to start something.

"And the polo victory of course had to be celebrated by a banquet at the
hotel, attended by all the players and their huskiest ruffian friends.
They didn't have the ponies there, but I guess they would of if they'd
thought of it. It must have been a good banquet, with vintages and song
and that sort of thing--I believe they even tried to have food at
first--and hearty indoor sports with the china and silver and chairs
that had been thoughtlessly provided and a couple of big mirrors that
looked as if you could throw a catsup bottle clear through them, only
you couldn't, because it would stop there after merely breaking the
glass, and spatter in a helpless way.

"And of course there was speeches. The best one, as far as I could
learn, was made by the owner of the outraged premises at a late
hour--when the party was breaking up--as you might put it. He said the
bill would be about eighteen hundred dollars, as near as he could tell
at first glance. He was greeted with hearty laughter and applause from
the high-spirited young incendiaries and retired hastily through an
unsuspected door to the pantry as they rushed for him. It was then they
found out what to do with the rest of the catsup--and did it--so the
walls and ceiling wouldn't look so monotonous, and fixed the windows so
they would let out the foul tobacco smoke, and completed a large
painting of the Yosemite that hung on the wall, doing several things to
it that hadn't occurred to the artist in his hurry, and performed a
serious operation on the piano without the use of gas. The tables, I
believe, was left flat on their backs.

"Angus, _fills_, was fetched home in a car by a gang of his roguish
young playmates. They stopped down on the stately drive under my window
and a quartet sung a pathetic song that run:

"Don't forget your parents,
Think all they done for you!

"Then young Angus ascended the marble steps to the top one, bared his
agreeable head to the moonlight, and made them a nice speech. He said
the campaign now in progress, fellow-citizens, marked the gravest crisis
in the affairs of our grand old state that an intelligent constituency
had ever been called upon to vote down, but that he felt they were on
the eve of a sweeping victory that would sweep the corrupt hell-hounds
of a venal opposition into an ignominy from which they would never be
swept by any base act of his while they honoured him with their
suffrages, because his life was an open book and he challenged any
son-of-a-gun within sound of his voice to challenge this to his face or
take the consequences of being swept into oblivion by the high tide of
a people's indignation that would sweep everything before it on the
third day of November next, having been aroused in its might at last
from the debasing sloth into which the corrupt hell-hounds of a venal
opposition had swept them, but a brighter day had dawned, which would
sweep the onrushing hordes of petty chicanery to where they would get
theirs; and, as one who had heard the call of an oppressed people, he
would accept this fitting testimonial, not for its intrinsic worth but
for the spirit in which it was tendered. As for the nefarious tariff on
watch springs, sawed lumber, and indigo, he would defer his masterly
discussion of these burning issues to a more fitting time because a man
had to get a little sleep now and then or he wasn't any good next day.
In the meantime he thanked them one and all, and so, gentlemen,
good-night.

"The audience cheered hoarsely and drove off. I guess the speech would
have been longer if a light hadn't showed in the east wing of the castle
where Angus, _peer_, slept. And then all was peace and quiet till the
storm broke on a rocky coast next day. It didn't really break until
evening, but suspicious clouds no bigger than a man's hand might have
been observed earlier. If young Angus took any breakfast that morning it
was done in the privacy of his apartment under the pitying glances of a
valet or something. But here he was at lunch, blithe as ever, and full
of merry details about the late disaster. He spoke with much humour
about a wider use for tomato catsup than was ever encouraged by the old
school of house decorators. Old Angus listened respectfully, taking only
a few bites of food but chewing them long and thoughtfully. Ellabelle
was chiefly interested in the names of the hearty young vandals. She was
delighted to learn that they was all of the right set, and her eyes
glowed with pride. The eyes of Angus, _peer_, was now glowing with what
I could see was something else, though I couldn't make out just what it
was. He never once exploded like you'd of thought he was due to.

"Then come a note for the boy which the perfect-mannered Englishman that
was tending us said was brought by a messenger. Young Angus glanced at
the page and broke out indignantly. 'The thieving old pirate!' he says.
'Last night he thought it would be about eighteen hundred dollars, and
that sounded hysterical enough for the few little things we'd scratched
or mussed up. I told him he would doubtless feel better this morning,
but in any event to send the bill to me and I would pay it.'

"'Quite right of you,' says Ellabelle proudly.

"'And now the scoundrel sends me one for twenty-three hundred and odd.
He's a robber, net!'

"Old Angus said never a word, but chewed slowly, whilst various puzzling
expressions chased themselves acrost his eloquent face. I couldn't make
a thing out of any of them.

"'Never patronize the fellow again,' says Ellabelle warmly.

"'As to that,' says her son, 'he hinted something last night about
having me arrested if I ever tried to patronize him again, but that
isn't the point. He's robbing me now.'

"'Oh, money!' says Ellabelle in a low tone of disgust and with a gesture
like she was rebuking her son for mentioning such a thing before the
servant.

"'But I don't like to be taken advantage of,' says he, looking very
annoyed and grand. Then old Angus swallowed something he'd been chewing
for eight minutes and spoke up with an entirely new expression that
puzzled me more than ever.

"'If you're sure you have the right of it, don't you submit to the
outrage.'

"Angus, Junior, backed up a little bit at this, not knowing quite how to
take the old man's mildness. 'Oh, of course the fellow might win out if
he took it into court,' he says. 'Every one knows the courts are just a
mass of corruption.'

"'True, I've heard gossip to that effect,' says his father. 'Yet there
must be some way to thwart the crook. I'm feeling strangely ingenious at
the moment.' He was very mild, and yet there was something sinister and
Scotch about him that the boy felt.

"'Of course I'd pay it out of my own money,' he remarks generously.

"'Even so, I hate to see you cheated,' says his father kindly. 'I hate
to have you pay unjust extortions out of the mere pittance your
tight-fisted old father allows you.'

"Young Angus said nothing to this, but blushed and coughed
uncomfortably.

"'If you hurt that hotel anything like twenty-three hundred dollars'
worth, it must be an interesting sight,' his father goes on brightly.

"'Oh, it was funny at the time,' says Angus boy, cheering up again.

"'Things often are,' says old Angus. 'I'll have a look.'

"'At the bill?'

"'No, at the wreck,' says he. The old boy was still quiet on the
outside, but was plainly under great excitement, for he now folded his
napkin with care, a crime of which I knew Ellabelle had broken him the
first week in New York, years before. I noticed their butler had the
fine feeling to look steadily away at the wall during this obscenity.
The offender then made a pleasant remark about the beauty of the day and
left the palatial apartment swiftly. Young Angus and his mother looked
at each other and strolled after him softly over rugs costing about
eighty thousand dollars. The husband and father was being driven off by
a man he could trust in a car they had let him have for his own use.
Later Ellabelle confides to me that she mistrusts old Angus is
contemplating some bit of his national deviltry. 'He had a strange look
on his face,' says she, 'and you know--once a Scotchman, always a
Scotchman! Oh, it would be pitiful if he did anything peculiarly Scotch
just at our most critical period here!' Then she felt of her face to
see if there was any nervous lines come into it, and there was, and she
beat it for the maid to have 'em rubbed out ere they set.

"Yet at dinner that night everything seemed fine, with old Angus as
jovial as I'd ever seen him, and the meal come to a cheerful end and we
was having coffee in the Looey de Medisee saloon, I think it is, before
a word was said about this here injured hotel.

"'You were far too modest this morning, you sly dog!' says Angus,
_peer_, at last, chuckling delightedly. 'You misled me grievously. That
job of wrecking shows genius of a quality that was all too rare in my
time. I suspect it's the college that does it. I shouldn't wonder now if
going through college is as good as a liberal education. I don't believe
mere uneducated house-wreckers could have done so pretty a job in twice
the time, and there's clever little touches they never would have
thought of at all.'

"'It did look thorough when we left,' says young Angus, not quite
knowing whether to laugh.

"'It's nothing short of sublime,' says his father proudly. 'I stood in
that deserted banquet hall, though it looks never a bit like one, with
ruin and desolation on every hand as far as the eye could reach. It
inspired such awe in the bereaved owner and me that we instinctively
spoke in hushed whispers. I've had no such gripping sensation as that
since I gazed upon the dead city of Pompeii. No longer can it be said
that Europe possesses all the impressive ruins.'

"Angus boy grinned cheerfully now, feeling that this tribute was
heartfelt.

"'I suspect now,' goes on the old boy, 'that when the wreckage is
cleared away we shall find the mangled bodies of several that perished
when the bolts descended from a clear sky upon the gay scene.'

"'Perhaps under the tables,' says young Angus, chirking up still more at
this geniality. 'Two or three went down early and may still be there.'

"'Yet twenty-three hundred for it is a monstrous outrage,' says the old
man, changing his voice just a mite. 'Too well I know the cost of such
repairs. Fifteen hundred at most would make the place better than
ever--and to think that you, struggling along to keep up appearances on
the little I give you, should be imposed upon by a crook that
undoubtedly has the law on his side! I could endure no thought of it, so
I foiled him.'

"'How?' says young Angus, kind of alarmed.

"Angus, _peer_, yawned and got up. 'It's a long story and would hardly
interest you,' says he, moving over to the door. 'Besides, I must be to
bed against the morrow, which will be a long, hard day for me.' His
voice had tightened up.

"'What have you done?' demands Ellabelle passionately.

"'Saved your son eight hundred dollars,' says Angus, 'or the equivalent
of his own earnings for something like eight hundred years at current
prices for labour.'

"'I've a right to know,' says Ellabelle through her teeth and stiffening
in her chair. Young Angus just set there with his mouth open.

"'So you have,' says old Angus, and he goes on as crisp as a bunch of
celery: 'I told you I felt ingenious. I've kept this money in the family
by the simple device of taking the job. I've engaged two other painters
and decorators besides myself, a carpenter, an electrician, a glazier,
and a few proletariats of minor talent for clearing away the wreckage. I
shall be on the job at eight. The loafers won't start at seven, as I
used to. Don't think I'd see any son of mine robbed before my very eyes.
My new overalls are laid out and my valet has instructions to get me
into them at seven, though he persists in believing I'm to attend a
fancy-dress ball at some strangely fashionable hour. So I bid you all
good evening.'

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