Filling his own shoes

Front matter

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Chapter I

THE piercing notes of the porcelain-mender’s pipe shrilled out from down the street, and Ruggles stretched, yawned, and ran his fingers through his mop of yellow hair, with the disagreeable duty sense of a sleepy soldier on hearing the first echoes of the reveille.

The vendor of water-cress had passed twenty minutes before, and his melodious howl, which said so many different things to different ears along the narrow, tortuous street had drowsily prepared Ruggles for his own particular summons. No need for alarm clocks in Paris! On working days, the chair-mender announced the dreary fact that it was time to rise and shine; on Sundays Ruggles usually waited for the cress-seller; but on holidays for the spending of which he had made no especial plans he was wont to repose himself up to the advent of the porcelain-man and his pipe.

Now, as he sat up in bed and observed the square patch of vivid blue sky through his wide-opened mansard window, he was inclined to regret his sloth. It was a féte-day, and the weather perfect, so far as he could see for the impeding roofs. The heavy

I clouds of the evening before had been urged away by the “‘little north wind”’ so dear to the hearts of French picnickers, and the sun was softly brilliant. Ruggles sprang from his bed and, going to the window, filled his lungs with the sweet spring air.

‘“‘Some day — !”’ said he to himself. ‘‘ Me for the road. I’ll get on the wheel and pike off up the Marne. It must be fine up there, now.”

He pulled a round tin bathtub from under the bed, and kicked it to the open window, peeled off his pajamas, and, filling a big bath-sponge, proceeded to stimulate his circulation to the accompaniment of song, for the water was so cold as to induce vocalism. Thus at his ablutions, Ruggles would have pleased Praxiteles or Michelangelo, who might have immortalized the youthful symmetry of his well-knit figure in a Hermes or son of LaocoGén.

Of medium height and physical proportions in perfect accord with his twenty-three years, Ruggles could have posed to the credit of any young demigod. His face, too, was in keeping with his body, with its clear, well-spaced blue eyes, short, straight nose, mirthful mouth, and resolute chin. He was a handsome youngster, not only in feature, but in expression, and with his wavy yellow hair, which showed copper tones in certain lights, had put romantic ideas in the pretty head of many a midinette who happened to pass him on the boulevards.

But Ruggles had no answering eye for midinettes.

His allegiance had been early given to one whose various portraits, cut from different illustrated papers, comprised the sole decoration of the bare walls of his little mansard room. Ruggles had never seen the original of these, nor was his adoration more than that of the liege subject for his princess. But the remote ideal had so far triumphed over the present real as to have made Ruggles indifferent to such charms as were offered in comparison to those of his ivory-towered goddess.

He finished his birdlike bath and proceeded to dress for his holiday on the road. His costume was simple, but effective — a loose-fitting bicycle suit of light-gray worsted, the coat unlined and of a Norfolk cut, with stockings to match and gray buckskin shoes lacing from the toes. Fully equipped, he had the appearance of an English or American undergraduate off for a Continental holiday. He spoke good colloquial French, which added to the impression that he was a young fellow who had enjoyed educational advantages.

Three or four hours later found Ruggles pedaling blithely along the towpath of the pretty Marne. The day was perfect. The forested hillsides glowed with the delicate purple of mounting sap beneath a billowy, greenish cloud of tender infant foliage, while the lush pastures were smeared with the golden yellow of primrose, wild mustard, and dandelion. The soft air was sweet with Mother Nature’s baby perfumes.

Riding cheerily on, Ruggles lent his mind to romantic fancies inspired by his surroundings.

It was five hundred years ago, and he, a knight in shining armor, was ambling down the bank of that twisting stream astride a great charger with arched neck and blood-red nostrils. Then down from the wooded slopes, to dispute his passage came a grim, mailed figure with black, waving plumes and visor closed, to wait like some equestrian figure wrought in iron, silent and sinister, the bright sun shimmering on his burnished helmet and emblazoned shield. Ruggles recognized him at once from his device — le Sieur Morgaunt de la Marne, a robber baron of ill repute, a pillager and ravisher, in the dungeons of whose castle back there in the forest languished many a wretched victim, of whom perchance the wife or daughter or sister served as a handmaiden in Morgaunt’s gloomy lair.

There could be no parley with such a miscreant. Ruggles’s mailed hand rose to his visor,—he gripped at the visor of his bicycling cap, where was pinned the insignia of ‘‘ Le Touring Club de France,”’ to be a member of which costs five francs a year - and protects one on the road throughout France, — his lance was laid at rest. ‘‘Have at you, Sir Robber!” The hoofs of his great war-horse ground in the shale as, scenting the fray, it sprang forward with a snort of eagerness. Ruggles lowered his head and began to pedal furiously. The next instant he spun beneath an arched bridge and around a bend, where he pitched upon a tableau which went far to dampen his knightly ardor.

Standing with her back to an easel was a slender girl with a pallid face, a palette hanging from her thumb, and her finger closed upon a paint-brush. Before her stood two lusty vagabonds in baggy corduroy trousers caught about their waists by soiled sashes of red flannel and with stout cudgels in their thick, grimy paws. The group was on the edge of a steep bank which dropped almost precipitously for ten feet into the dark-green, eddying water. It looked as if the girl had backed away and the tramps had followed her.

Ruggles was no coward, but the situation shot him through with a sudden chill. Like most people who live in France and read the daily press of that country, he had not the slightest desire in the world for an encounter with French footpads or any of their kind. In this he is hardly to be blamed, since he realized, as must all people who are acquainted with the French type of bandit, that, once departed on an act of violence, he has no idea of where to stop. At violence of any kind he seems to develop an insensate fury to which there is no control, and the results are often of indescribable horror. Ruggles read ‘‘Le Petit Parisien’? and other sensational journals, and was quite aware with what sort of a situation he had to deal.

Nevertheless, he braked, dismounted, and let his bicycle fall upon its side; then turned to the girl a face nearly as pale as her own. He saw ata glance that she was English, not only from the pure Anglo-Saxon type of her blanched face, but from her dress. Besides, the fact of her being quite alone in so isolated a spot showed that she could not possibly be French. The two young thugs had not changed their positions at Ruggles’s approach; they merely swayed at the waist, gave him a sullen look, then muttered something that Ruggles could not understand.

“What do they want?”’ asked Ruggles in English, of the girl.

“They — they want my purse,”’ she answered unsteadily. “‘I gave them a franc each to buy some food, but when I opened my purse, they saw a twenty-franc piece—and now they want that. Perhaps I’d better give it to them.”’

Ruggles looked at the tramps. Both were young men, not more than twenty at most, swarthy of feature and with the heavy, clumsy strength of a certain type of French peasant. They seemed little more than brute beasts, and in all probability were for the moment far more dangerous, as even tigers and hyenas do not inflame their savage blood with absinthe and marc. Ruggles, watching them warily, saw what was coming, — or, at least, what was being planned in the slow-witted, perverted brains, — a crashing blow on the head for him; then some crime indescribably horrid. Such things were constantly being described in the press. True, the fugitives were always taken a few hours later by the Gendarmerie National and sometimes punished and more often not, this laxity of justice accounting, no doubt, for the increasing prevalence of such crimes.

But he did not wait for this dénouement. The pair were almost on the edge of the bank, not six feet from where he stood, and before their dulled faculties had time to realize that the occasion called for defensive, rather than offensive, action, they found themselves splashing into the swirling river; one with his front teeth badly loosened and the other blinking and cursing and wondering what had happened to his right eye.

The water was only shoulder deep, and Ruggles, seeing that they were in no danger of being drowned, spun about and grabbed the girl by the elbow.

“Can you ride a bike?”’ he gasped.

46 Yes ee 99

“Then jump on mine and beat it. I'll follow with your stuff.”

He grabbed up the bicycle and held it while she mounted; then ran a few steps and gave the girl a vigorous push. She started off, wabbling dangerously close to the edge of the bank; then found her pedals and straightened her course. As Ruggles turned, he saw a shock head thrusting itself above the rim of sward, and without pausing to reflect that he might be destroying a masterpiece, he grabbed up the easel, canvas and all, and smote. The head disappeared, with another splash from below. Ruggles seized the paint-box and, forsaking the easel, which was merely a flimsy five-franc affair, took to his heels in pursuit of the girl, who had already skimmed under the old stone-arched bridge and was out of sight around the bend.

But this panic of hers was of short duration, and Ruggles came on her a moment later standing beside the bicycle and looking back fearsomely.

‘“‘Are they coming?’’ she asked breathlessly.

“‘T don’t believe so,’’ he answered. ‘I guess the ducking cooled ’em off. We’d better keep on, though.”’

“Do you think they could have drowned?” she asked. ‘‘The river was deep right under the bank.”

“Oh, they’re all right,’’ he answered. ‘‘I looked over and saw them hanging on to the bushes. One of them started to climb up, and I swiped him over the head with the easel. I’m sorry, but your picture fell into the river.”’

‘“‘Never mind the picture. Let’s hurry on. I say, it was plucky of you! Such horrid beasts!’’ She gave a little shiver. ‘‘I fancy it would have been all up with me if you had n’t come along just then.”’

“Oh, they may have been just trying to bluff you into giving up your purse,” said Ruggles, though he had his doubts on this score.

He took the bicycle by the handle-bars, and they started to walk on rapidly, with occasional backward glances. The girl had recovered herself and, though still rather pale, was entirely self-possessed.

She told Ruggles that while she had been making a study of the river, the two tramps had come along the towpath and, after pausing for a few moments and making some flattering remarks about the sketch, had informed her that they were making their way back to Paris from Epernay, where they had gone hoping to find work. But there had been no work to be had, and they were penniless and hungry and in need of shoes. She had given them a franc apiece, saying that that was all she could spare, but unfortunately they had caught sight of the money in her purse and it had aroused their cupidity. When Ruggles had arrived on the scene, one of the tramps had been saying to the other that a person might easily fall into the river and drown, just at that point, and nobody be the wiser.

“T was horribly frightened,” she concluded, ‘“fand if you had n’t come at that moment, I meant to jump into the river and try to swim across.”

As she talked, Ruggles observed her with unobtrusive admiration, and he thought that he had never met a more charming girl. She was of little less than his own height, which was five feet nine, strongly, but gracefully shaped, with a smooth, broad forehead, dark chestnut hair, with delicate features, and slaty-gray eyes fringed by a double row of long, dark lashes. Everything about her pleased him exceedingly.

Finding that they were not pursued, they slackened their pace.

‘‘Are you doing a bicycle tour?’”’ asked the girl, glancing at the waterproof bundle on the handle-bars.

“No. Just a little spin for the day. I’m in business in Paris. Been there for the last three years. My name is Ruggles.”’

‘‘Mine is Darthea Westbrooke,”’ she answered, and Ruggles thought the name precisely fitted her. “‘T live in Paris, too, with my aunt, Miss Challand. We’re stopping for a few days at this little village on ahead. I’m studying art, and I wanted to make some sketches of the river. We come out here quite often in the summer. Here’s aunty, now.”

Ruggles had already seen approaching them a woman with a tall and rather angular figure, who walked with a swinging, masculine stride, the speed of which increased as she discovered her niece strolling along in company with an entirely strange young man. She bore down upon the couple like an osprey on a brace of young and downy ducks, and Ruggles observed that her features were high and, at that particular moment, severe.

‘“‘Suppose you thought I was never coming, my dear,”’ said Miss Challand, and stared questioningly at Ruggles. As a rule, of which that particu-_ lar morning was the rare exception, Miss Challand

IO took excellent good care of her pretty niece, to which more than one admiring stranger could bear witness.

‘“‘This is Mr. Ruggles, aunty,” said Darthea; and added to Ruggles, ‘‘My aunt, Miss Challand.”’

Miss Challand returned Ruggles’s best professional bow with a brief nod, and the austerity of her face did not soften. Darthea quickly smoothed the situation. In a few brief words she described what had just occurred, and, having the artistic temperament, she may possibly have exaggerated the heroism of her rescue, quite omitting the precipitate retreat of the rescuer. Ruggles, listening modestly, was impressed by the fact that perhaps he was more of a hero than he had realized. Whether true or not, it was certainly gratifying to hear Darthea’s glowing version of the affair, while the gradual softening that overspread Miss Challand’s austere features was if anything even more flattering. Then, much to his surprise, he discovered that the aquamarine eyes of the spinster were filling with tears, and that her sallow skin held a warm flush. At the conclusion of the brief narrative, she took a stride forward and gave him a grip of the hand that might have made him wince, had he been of the wincing sort.

‘‘Good for you!’’ said Miss Challand huskily. “Mercy, what an escape! All my fault for letting the child go off alone. We ought to inform the gendarmes immediately.”

II

~ “Oh, I don’t think I’d do that if I were you,” said Ruggles. ‘‘They’d haul ’em up before the juge de la paix, and we’d have to hang around and give evidence, and then they’d let ’em off with a warning. I guess they’ve had their lesson.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right,’’ admitted Miss Challand; then glanced at a small cheap watch on her bony wrist. ‘‘It’snearly twelve. Can’t youcome and have déjeuner with us, Mr. Ruggles? We’re stopping at the little hotel on the river, and there’s usually a friture de la Marne and an omelette and | a salad and cold meats and things.”

“Thank you, I should enjoy it very much,”’ said Ruggles.

Chapter II

THE Paris branch of the great Walkeasy Shoe Company of America was, like all of the company’s retail stores, a splendidly stocked and handsomely furnished extablishment which did a steady and profitable business and was the despair of the local trade. It was situated on a prominent boulevard in the heart of the city, and there was seldom a space of five minutes in the day when its handsome plate-glass doors were not swinging open to welcome the coming or to speed the parting customer.

The Walkeasy Company was naturally very proud of its handsome retail stores, and the managers of these stores were in turn proud of their various equipments and the high-class character of their personnel. In the Paris branch there were seven salesmen in the gentlemen’s department and four saleswomen upstairs in the ladies’. Of the male clerks, two were Americans, two French, one English, one German, and one Spaniard. Of the Americans, one was Ruggles. They were trim, well-dressed, efficient young men, and all on excellent terms with one another, though frequently of but slight esteem in the eyes of the manager, who was a fat and fussy Frenchman with an undue sense of his own importance and a tongue which could be bitingly insulting to those over whom he held the power of bread and cheese. In the whole establishment there was but one employee whom he did not dislike and who did not return the sentiment with an interest which compounded with almost every passing day. From a business standpoint, however, he was a good manager and kept the store up to the highest of commercial levels.

The middle of the forenoon following his adventure on the Marne found Ruggles in the shop trying on a pair of shoes. He was not trying them on his own trim feet, but upon those of a listless young American tourist who was leaning back in the chair with a cigarette hanging from his lips, his hat on the back of his head, and a bored, petulant look in his watery eyes.

Down on his knees before this peevish youth, who was of about his own age, knelt Ruggles, shoe-horn in hand and the vortex of a veritable maelstrom of shoes. His face was rather red, for his customer’s listless remarks had been in no way flattering to ready-made shoes in general and to those of the Walkeasy Company in particular, while Ruggles’s patient and respectful efforts to fit a well-shaped shoe to a badly shaped foot had met with no return courtesy nor appreciation.

“‘Go easy, there,” snarled the customer as Ruggles eased his foot as gently as possible into a buttoned box-calf; “‘I got a hammer-toe with a tender callus on it. Hang it, your beastly shoes are all too low across the foot —”’

‘“‘T can ease that for you over the sore spot,” said Ruggles.

‘‘Ease it be damned,” replied the customer peevishly. ‘‘Have n’t you got anything higher across the foot?”

“‘T’m afraid not, sir, in that shape,”’ said Ruggles, who had been at his task for nearly half an hour and had tried every available shape and form in the required size; ‘‘but I’m quite sure that I can make this one comfortable.”

‘‘Oh, never mind,” snapped the young man; “‘T’ll try somewhere else. You bet my shoemaker ‘ll hear from me when I get back to N’York. Just put that old shoe on again, will you?”’

Ruggles did so in silence, and the pampered youth got up and limped out in sulky silence and without a word of thanks or regret. He belonged to that class of people, not so uncommon, who take courtesy on the part of a clerk for an obsequiousness to be met with rudeness, and who are accountable for the lack of this former quality which is unfortunately becoming so prevalent in many shops.

Ruggles gathered up the loose shoes and proceeded to put them away in silence. Such an experience as this was unusual for him. Thanks to his pleasing manner and its utter freedom from that subtle hectoring peculiar to some salesmen and so irritating to certain people, once addressed he very seldom failed to effect a sale. Regular clients once served by him usually preferred thereafter to wait until he might be free rather than to have their needs attended to by one of the other clerks, all of which counted in Ruggles’s favor on the sales slips. He prided himself on being a good retail salesman of the best shoes on the market, and it was a matter of gratification to him that his tact and delicacy were of such quality that the most modest of lady clients never objected to his fitting their delicate ankles even with high gaiters, if they were in a hurry and the saleswomen were all busy. It had never occurred to him that there might be a double reason for this, one being the wholesomeness of his open, boyish face and the other the fact that they regarded him and his shoe-horn in precisely the same impersonal light. No doubt they also felt instinctively that he would be every bit as nice if, after taking down a dozen boxes from the shelves and having made several pilgrimages to the reserve stock in the cellar, they might come to decide that their needs could not be satisfactorily supplied.

So far as his immediate forbears were concerned, Ruggles had really no legitimate quarrel with his place in the world. His father had made shoes, or parts of shoes, all of his life, for many years as an operative in a manufacturing concern from which the Walkeasy had partially sprung. It was there that he met Ruggles’s mother, a pretty Irish girl and also one of the factory force. Ruggles, senior, had been with the Walkeasy Company as foreman ever since its incorporation, and being of an inventive mind, he had evolved some highly valuable machines for stretching and stitching calfskin. Any one of the elder Ruggles’s inventions, if properly handled, might have brought him a small fortune. As it was, they had been appropriated by the company, which in compensation had slightly increased his salary, but had paid him no royalties. Unfortunately, Ruggles, while a clever inventor, had been a poor business man, and when he had died suddenly of pneumonia, it had been found that his savings were all invested in worthless paper. Ruggles, junior’s, mother had died when he was twelve years old.

So Ruggles, junior, had been left penniless on finishing school, and, following hereditary instinct, had gone first into the factory and afterwards into the retail service of the company. He liked the business and was at this time full of ambitious dreams, for it had been hinted to him that if his success in selling shoes were to continue on the same high plane, he might before long be promoted to the managership of a new retail shop which there was some talk of opening in Vienna.

Ruggles, it must be understood, was really and sincerely proud of the great industrial machine of which he was so small a working part. It seemed to him a magnificent achievement for an American concern to enter into successful competition with the trade of Europe and beat it on its own ground. The splendidly equipped retail shops in Paris and London and other cities suggested, in a way, the powerful outposts of an invading army, carrying as they did the American ensign far and wide and compelling admiration for American enterprise and commercial daring. Ruggles had loftly visions of the day to come when, these outposts pushing farther and farther into the East, the sun would never set on the flag of the Walkeasy Shoe Company; when, no matter what the hour, in some part of the world the doors of the company would be open to customers, whether in New York, Paris, Budapest, Bombay, Hongkong, Sydney, Honolulu, San Francisco. And he, Ruggles, might be commandant of one of these dépots, jealously guarding the interests of the great organization and defying the attacks of foreign trade rivals. It was an inspiring thought.

Of course he was still young for such a position, but he knew the business thoroughly and stood well with the company, and he felt that he had a certain claim to advancement, not only on account of his own faithfulness and devotion, but because of his father’s efforts in its behalf. As a matter of fact, Ruggles, senior’s, inventions had been of far greater commercial profit to the company than even the inventor had ever dreamed. A man of any business sense would have resigned his salaried position and found some means of producing

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The morning following Ruggles’s adventure on the Marne passed in its usual well-ordered manner, and, the noon hour arriving, Monsieur Durand, the manager, went out for his déjeuner. In the absence of Durand, Ruggles, as senior salesman, was nominally in charge of the shop. There were others who had been longer in the Paris store than he, but he ranked all but Durand in seniority of service with the company. In a general way the organization of the Walkeasy Shoe Company was based on the principles of a military service, which, however, did not prevent a more efficient employee from being promoted over the heads of his less capable seniors — which same may be said to hold true of any service, whether it be military, commercial, or of any other sort, and nobody can deny the justice thereof.

It was the slack hour, and Ruggles was looking out upon the traffic flowing up and down the boulevard when a big, heavy limousine of American make drew silently up to the curb, and from it there descended a handsome young giant with a fresh skin and the hall-mark of his nationality stamped most legibly upon him. Ruggles had a good look at him as he stepped down from the car, and his vigorous young heart went off with a whirr of a motor when the clutch is suddenly released with the gas turned on full. He recognized that strong, good-humored face with its heavy forehead, high-bridged nose, masterful jaw, and dark, deep-set eyes. At a single glance, it proclaimed the young man as Richard P. Downing, Jr., the illustrious son of an illustrious father, which latter was none other than the president and principal stockholder of the Walkeasy Shoe Company of America.

Ruggles had no need to look again at that strong, rugged young-old face. In his honest heart, Ruggles was a good deal of a hero-worshiper, and the Downings, father and son, were his most favored idols. He had followed with the keenest interest the career of Dick Downing at Yale, rejoicing at his numerous successes — which it must be admitted had been rather athletic and social than intellectual — and condoning his few failures as due to a lack of proper support on the part of those whom he had striven so hard to lead to victory. Dick had captained the football team, stroked the crew, and won ather athletic victories as opportunity offered, for his had been the good old days when trainers’ jealousies had not been allowed to interfere with the athletic glory of Yale.

This brilliant epoch at an end, Dick had buckled down to work like a sturdy colt which, after having kicked up its heels in the pasture for a term, is not too proud to throw its neck into the collar. He had started in to find out how shoes were made, and had helped to make them, working shoulder to shoulder with the operatives in the factory and swamping prejudice with the overflow of his big, kindly nature until he had undergone a sort of apotheosis and become the factory deity. This was not the result of handicraft alone. He had interested himself in the conditions of the employees and bettered those conditions with never so much as the faintest hint of patronage. Instead of devoting his attention to the perfection of laborsaving devices, he had devised means for the saving of labor as represented in his toiling fellow men and women, and the result had proved more profitable than the invention of soulless machines could possibly have been. It must be admitted, however, that the profits had not accrued solely to the company. Several thousands of human beings who worked for the company had been likewise benefited.