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Effie affected to ignore the meeting. Belknap-Jackson stared into vacancy with a quite shocked expression as if vandals had desecrated an altar in his presence. Cousin Egbert having drawn off one of his newly purchased boots during the dinner was now replacing it with audible groans, but I caught his joyous comment a moment later: "Didn't I tell you the Judge was some mixer?"
I still scanned the street crowd for some one who could acquaint me with developments I must have missed. But then a moment later came the call by telephone of Belknap-Jackson. I answered it, though with little hope than to hear more of his unending complaints about his lordship's negligence.
I led him below, hardly daring at the moment to confess my own responsibility for his fears. Another time, I thought, we might chat of it. Belknap-Jackson with his wife and the Mixer awaited us. His lordship was presented, and I excused myself. "Mrs. Pettengill, his lordship the Earl of Brinstead," had been the host's speech of presentation to the Mixer.
"Gee! He done it in one punch!" I heard Cousin Egbert say with what I was aghast to suspect was admiration. Mrs. Effie, trembling, could but glare at me and gasp. Mercifully she was beyond speech for the moment. Mr. Belknap-Jackson was now painfully rubbing his right eye, which was not what he should have done, and I said as much. "Beg pardon, sir, but one does better with a bit of raw beef."
Saturday's Recorder, in its advance notice of the recital, announced that the Belknap-Jacksons of Boston and Red Gap would entertain the artist on the following afternoon at their palatial home in the Pettengill addition, where a select few of the North Side set had been invited to meet him. Belknap-Jackson himself was as a man uplifted.
Egbert Floud, and his part being read from the book in a rich and cultivated voice by the superintendent of the high school. Our efforts were received with respectful attention by a large audience, among whom I noted many of the Bohemian set, and this I took as an especial tribute to our merits. Mr. Belknap-Jackson, however, to whom I mentioned the circumstance, was pessimistic.
It sounds kind of grand and important." Belknap-Jackson here made deprecating clucks, but not too directly toward Cousin Egbert, and my choice of a name was not further criticised.
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.
About this bleak affair was the usual gathering of peasantry and the common people, villagers, agricultural labourers, and the like, and these at once showed a tremendous interest in our party, many of them hailing various members of us with a quite offensive familiarity. Belknap-Jackson, of course, bore himself through this with a proper aloofness, as did his wife and Mrs.
So easily she could have been crude here! Belknap-Jackson, enduring his ignominious solitude to the limit of his powers, had joined his wife at the lower end of the room. They had taken the unfortunate development with what grace they could. His lordship had dropped in upon them quite informally charming man that he was. Of course he would quickly break up the disgraceful affair.
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