Ruggles of Red Gap | Page 6

or a physician at forty,"
he remarked, drawing the blanket more closely about him.
"I should hardly rank you as a Harley Street consultant, sir," I swiftly
retorted, which was slanging him enormously because he had turned
forty. I mean to say, there was but one thing he could take me as
meaning him to be, since at forty I considered him no physician. But at
least I had not been too blunt, the touch about the Harley Street
consultant being rather neat, I thought, yet not too subtle for him.
He now demanded a pipe of tobacco, and for a time smoked in silence.
I could see that his mind worked painfully.

"Stiffish lot, those Americans," he said at last.
"They do so many things one doesn't do," I answered.
"And their brogue is not what one could call top-hole, is it now? How
often they say 'I guess!' I fancy they must say it a score of times in a
half-hour."
"I fancy they do, sir," I agreed.
"I fancy that Johnny with the eyebrows will say it even oftener."
"I fancy so, sir. I fancy I've counted it well up to that."
"I fancy you're quite right. And the chap 'guesses' when he awfully well
knows, too. That's the essential rabbit. To-night he said 'I guess I've got
you beaten to a pulp,' when I fancy he wasn't guessing at all. I mean to
say, I swear he knew it perfectly."
"You lost the game of drawing poker?" I asked coldly, though I knew
he had carried little to lose.
"I lost----" he began. I observed he was strangely embarrassed. He
strangled over his pipe and began anew: "I said that to play the game
soundly you've only to know when to bluff. Studied it out myself, and
jolly well right I was, too, as far as I went. But there's further to go in
the silly game. I hadn't observed that to play it greatly one must also
know when one's opponent is bluffing."
"Really, sir?"
"Oh, really; quite important, I assure you. More important than one
would have believed, watching their silly ways. You fancy a chap's
bluffing when he's doing nothing of the sort. I'd enormously have liked
to know it before we played. Things would have been so awfully
different for us"--he broke off curiously, paused, then added--"for you."
"Different for me, sir?" His words seemed gruesome. They seemed
open to some vaguely sinister interpretation. But I kept myself steady.

"We live and learn, sir," I said, lightly enough.
"Some of us learn too late," he replied, increasingly ominous.
"I take it you failed to win the hundred pounds, sir?"
[Illustration: "I TAKE IT YOU FAILED TO WIN THE HUNDRED
POUNDS, SIR?"]
"I have the hundred pounds; I won it--by losing."
Again he evaded my eye.
"Played, indeed, sir," said I.
"You jolly well won't believe that for long."
Now as he had the hundred pounds, I couldn't fancy what the deuce and
all he meant by such prattle. I was half afraid he might be having me on,
as I have known him do now and again when he fancied he could get
me. I fearfully wanted to ask questions. Again I saw the dark, absorbed
face of the gipsy as he studied my future.
"Rotten shift, life is," now murmured the Honourable George quite as if
he had forgotten me. "If I'd have but put through that Monte Carlo
affair I dare say I'd have chucked the whole business--gone to South
Africa, perhaps, and set up a mine or a plantation. Shouldn't have come
back. Just cut off, and good-bye to this mess. But no capital. Can't do
things without capital. Where these American Johnnies have the pull of
us. Do anything. Nearly do what they jolly well like to. No sense to
money. Stuff that runs blind. Look at the silly beggars that have it----"
On he went quite alarmingly with his tirade. Almost as violent he was
as an ugly-headed chap I once heard ranting when I went with my
brother-in-law to a meeting of the North Brixton Radical Club. Quite
like an anarchist he was. Presently he quieted. After a long pull at his
pipe he regarded me with an entire change of manner. Well I knew
something was coming; coming swift as a rocketing woodcock. Word
for word I put down our incredible speeches:

"You are going out to America, Ruggles."
"Yes, sir; North or South, sir?"
"North, I fancy; somewhere on the West coast--Ohio, Omaha, one of
those Indian places."
"Perhaps Indiana or the Yellowstone Valley, sir."
"The chap's a sort of millionaire."
"The chap, sir?"
"Eyebrow chap. Money no end--mines, lumber, domestic animals, that
sort of thing."
"Beg pardon, sir! I'm to go----"
"Chap's wife taken a great