The Count next morning consumed a solitary breakfast, his noble friend having risen some hours previously and gone for an early walk upon the hill. But he was far from feeling any trace of boredom, since an open letter beside his plate appeared to provide him with an ample fund of pleasant and entertaining reflections.
“I have not withered yet,” he said to himself. “Here is proof positive that some blossom, some aroma remains!”
The precise terms of this encouraging epistle were these:
“THE LASH, near NETHERBRIG.
“Tuesday night.
“DEAR COUNT BUNKER,—Forgive what must seem to you INCREDIBLE boldness (!), and do not think worse of me than I deserve. It seems such a pity that you should be so near and yet that I should lose this chance of gratifying my great desire. If you knew how I prized the name of Bunker you would understand; but no doubt I am only one among many, and you do understand better than I can explain.
“My father is away from home, and the WORLD dictates prudence; but I know your views on conventionality are those I too have learned to share, so will you come and see me before you leave Scotland?
“With kindest regards and in great haste because I want you to get this to-morrow morning. Believe me, yours very sincerely,
“JULIA WALLINGFORD.”
“P.S.—If it would upset your arrangements to come only for the day, Miss Minchell agrees with me that we could easily put you up.—J. W.”
“By Jingo!” mused the Count, “that's what I call a sporting offer. Her father away from home, and Count Bunker understanding better than she can explain! Gad, it's my duty to go!”
But besides the engaging cordiality of Miss Wallingford's invitation, there was something about the letter that puzzled almost as much as it cheered him.
“She prizes the name of Bunker, does she? Never struck me it was very ornamental; and in any case the compliment seems a trifle stretched. But, hang it! this is looking a gift-horse in the mouth. Such ardor deserves to be embraced, not dissected.”
He swiftly debated how best to gratify the lady. Last night it had been his own counsel, and likewise the Baron's desire, to leave by the night mail that very evening, with their laurels still unfaded and blessings heaped upon their heads. Why not make his next stage The Lash?
“Hang it, the Baron has had such a good innings that he can scarcely grudge me a short knock,” he said to himself. “He can wait for me at Perth or somewhere.”
And, ringing the bell, he wrote and promptly despatched this brief telegram:
“Delighted. Shall spend to-night in passing. Bunker.”
Hardly was this point settled when the footman re-entered to inform him that Mr. Maddison's motor car was at the door waiting to convey him without delay to Lincoln Lodge. Accompanying this announcement came the Silver King's card bearing the words, “Please come and see me at once.”
The Count stroked his chin, and lit a cigarette.
“There is something fresh in the wind,” thought he.
In the course of his forty-miles-an-hour rush through the odors of pine woods, he had time to come to a pretty correct conclusion regarding the business before him, and was thus enabled to adopt the mien most suitable to the contingency when he found himself ushered into the presence of the millionaire and his son. The set look upon their faces, the ceremonious manner of their greeting, and the low buzzing of the phonograph, audible above the tinkle of a musical box ingeniously intended to drown it, confirmed his guess even before a word had passed.
“Be seated, Count,” said the Silver King; and the Count sat.
“Now, sir,” he continued, “I have sent for you, owing, sir, to the high opinion I have formed of your intelligence and business capabilities.”
The Count bowed profoundly.
“Yes, sir, I believe, and my son believes, you to be a white man, even though you are a Count.”
“That is so,” said Ri.
“Now, sir, you must be aware—in fact, you ARE aware—of the matrimonial project once entertained between my daughter and Lord Tulliwuddle.”
“Once!” exclaimed the Count in protest.
“ONCE!” echoed Ri in his deepest voice.
“Hish, Ri! Let your poppa do the talking this time,” said the millionaire sternly, though with an indulgent eye.
“But—er—ONCE?” repeated the Count, as if bewildered by the past tense implied; though to himself he murmured—“I knew it!”
“When I gave my sanction to Lord Tulliwuddle's proposition, I did so under the impression that I was doing a deal with a man, sir, of integrity and honor. But what do I find?”
“Yes, what?” thundered Ri.
“I find, sir, that his darned my-lordship—and be damned to his titles——”
“Mr. Maddison!” expostulated the Count gently.
“I find, Count, I find that Lord Tulliwuddle, under pretext of paying my Eleanor a compliment, has provided an entertainment—a musical and athletic entertainment—for another woman!”
The Count sprang to his feet.
“Impossible!” he cried.
“It is true!”
“Name her!”
“She answers, sir, to the plebeian cognomen of Gallosh.”
“A nobody!” sneered Ri.
“In trade!” added his father scornfully.
Had the occasion been more propitious, the Count could scarcely have refrained from commenting upon this remarkably republican criticism; but, as it was, he deemed it more advisable to hunt with the hounds.
“That canaille!” he shouted. “Ha, ha! Lord Tulliwuddle would never so far demean himself!”
“I have it from old Gallosh himself,” declared Mr. Maddison.
“And that girl Gallosh told Eleanor the same,” added Ri.
“Pooh!” cried the Count. “A mere invention.”
“You are certain, sir, that Lord Tulliwuddle gave them no grounds whatever for supposing such a thing?”
“I pledge my reputation as Count of the Austrian Empire, that if my friend be indeed a Tulliwuddle he is faithful to your charming daughter!”
Father and son looked at him shrewdly.
“Being a Tulliwuddle, or any other sort of pampered aristocrat, doesn't altogether guarantee faithfulness,” observed the Silver King.
“If he has deceived you, he shall answer to ME!” declared the Count. “And between ourselves, as nature's gentleman to nature's gentleman, you may assure Miss Maddison that there is not the remotest likelihood of this scheming Miss Gallosh ever becoming my friend's bride!”
The two Dariuses were sensibly affected by this assurance.
“As nature's gentleman to nature's gentleman!” repeated the elder with unction, wringing his hand.
His son displayed an equal enthusiasm, and the Count departed with an enhanced reputation and the lingering fragrance of a cocktail upon his tongue.
“Now I think we are in comparatively smooth water,” he said to himself as he whizzed back to the castle.
At the door he was received by the butler.
“Mr. Gallosh is waiting for you in the library, my lord,” said he, adding confidentially (since the Count had endeared himself to all), “He's terrible impatient for to see your lordship.”
Evidently Mr. Gallosh, while waiting for the Count's return, had so worked up his wrath that it was ready to explode on a hair-trigger touch; and, as evidently, his guest's extreme urbanity made it exceedingly difficult to carry out his threatening intentions.
“I want a word with you, Count. I've been wanting a word with you all morning,” he began.
“Believe me, Mr. Gallosh, I appreciate the compliment.”
“Where were you? I mean it was verra annoying not to find you when I wanted you.”
The merchant was so evidently divided between anxiety to blurt out his mind while it was yet hot from the making up, and desire not to affront a guest and a man of rank, that the Count could scarcely restrain a smile.
“It is equally annoying to myself. I should have enjoyed a conversation with you at any hour since breakfast.”
“Umph,” replied his host.
“What can I do for you now?”
Mr. Gallosh looked at him steadfastly.
“Count Bunker,” said he, “I am only a plain man——”
“The ladies, I assure you, are not of that opinion,” interposed the Count politely.
Mr. Gallosh seemed to him to receive this compliment with more suspicion than pleasure.
“I'm saying,” he repeated, “that I'm only a plain man of business, and you and your friend are what you'd call swells.”
“God forbid that I should!” the Count interjected fervently. “'Toffs,' possibly—but no matter, please continue.”
“Well, now, so long as his lordship likes to treat me and my family as kind of belonging to a different sphere, I'm well enough content. I make no pretensions, Count, to be better than what I am.”
“I also, Mr. Gallosh, endeavor to affect a similar modesty. It's rather becoming, I think, to a fine-looking man.”
“It's becoming to any kind of man that he should know his place. But I was saying, I'd have been content if his lordship had been distant and polite and that kind of thing. But was he? You know yourself, Count, how he's behaved!”
“Perfectly politely, I trust.”
“But he's not been what you'd call distant, Count Bunker. In fac', the long and the short of it is just this—what's his intentions towards my Eva?”
“Is it Mrs. Gallosh who desires this information?”
“It is. And myself too; oh, I'm not behindhand where the reputation of my daughters is concerned!”
“Mrs. G. has screwed him up to this,” said the Count to himself. Aloud, he asked with his blandest air—
“Was not Lord Tulliwuddle available himself?”
“No; he's gone out.”
“Alone?”
“No, not alone.”
“In brief, with Miss Gallosh?”
“Quite so; and what'll he be saying to her?”
“He is a man of such varied information that it's hard to guess.”
“From all I hear, there's not been much variety so far,” said Mr. Gallosh drily.
“Dear me!” observed the Count.
His host looked at him for a few moments.
“Well?” he demanded at length.
“Pardon me if I am stupid, but what comment do you expect me to make?”
“Well, you see, we all know quite well you're more in his lordship's confidence than any one else in the house, and I'd take it as a favor if you'd just give me your honest opinion. Is he just playing himself—or what?”
The worthy Mr. Gallosh was so evidently sincere, and looked at him with such an appealing eye, that the Count found the framing of a suitable reply the hardest task that had yet been set him.
“Mr. Gallosh, if I were in Tulliwuddle's shoes I can only say that I should consider myself a highly fortunate individual; and I do sincerely believe that that is his own conviction also.”
“You think so?”
“I do indeed.”
Though sensibly relieved, Mr. Gallosh still felt vaguely conscious that if he attempted to repeat this statement for the satisfaction of his wife, he would find it hard to make it sound altogether as reassuring as when accompanied by the Count's sympathetic voice. He ruminated for a minute, and then suddenly recalled what the Count's evasive answers and sympathetic assurances had driven from his mind. Yet it was, in fact, the chief occasion of concern.
“Do you know, Count Bunker, what his lordship has gone and done?”
“Should one inquire too specifically?” smiled the Count; but Mr. Gallosh remained unmoved.
“You can bear me witness that he told us he was giving this gathering in my Eva's honor?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Well, he went and told Miss Maddison it was for her sake?”
“Incredible!”
“It's a fact!”
“I refuse to believe my friend guilty of such perfidy! Who told you this?”
“The Maddisons themselves.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the Count, as heartily as he had laughed at Lincoln Lodge; “don't you know these Americans sometimes draw the long bow?”
“You mean to say you don't believe they told the truth?”
“My dear Mr. Gallosh, I would answer you in the oft-quoted words of Horace—'Arma virumque cano.' The philosophy of a solar system is some times compressed within an eggshell. Say nothing and see!”
He shook his host heartily by the hand as he spoke, and Mr. Gallosh, to his subsequent perplexity, found the interview apparently at a satisfactory conclusion.
“And now,” said the Count to himself, “'Bolt!' is the word.”
As he set about his packing in the half-hour that yet remained before luncheon, he was surprised to note that his friend had evidently left no orders yet concerning any preparations for his departure.
“Confound him! I thought he had made up his mind last night! Ah, there he comes—and singing, too, by Jingo! If he wants another day's dalliance——”
At this point his reflections were interrupted by the entrance of the jovial Baron himself. He stopped and stared at his friend.
“Vat for do you pack up?”
“Because we leave this afternoon.”
“Ach, Bonker, absurd! To-morrow—yes, to-morrow ve vill leave.”
Bunker folded his arms and looked at him seriously.
“I have had two interviews this morning—one with Mr. Maddison, the other with Mr. Gallosh. They were neither of them pleased with you, Baron.”
“Not pleased? Vat did zey say?”
Depicting the ire of these gentlemen in the most vivid terms, the Count gave him a summary of his morning's labors.
“Pooh, pooh! Tuts, tuts!” exclaimed the Baron. “I vill make zat all right; never do you fear. Eva, she does smile on me already. Eleanor, she vill also ven I see her. Leave it to me.”
“You won't go to-day?”
“To-morrow, Bonker, I swear I vill for certain!”
Bonker pondered.
“Hang it!” he exclaimed. “The worst of it is, I've pledged myself to go upon a visit.”
The Baron listened to the tale of his incipient romance with the greatest relish.
“Bot go, my friend! Bot go!” he cried, “and zen come back here to-morrow and ve vill leave togezzer.”
“Leave you alone, with the barometer falling and the storm-cone hoisted? I don't like to, Baron.”
“Bot to leave zat leetle girl—eh, Bonker? How is zat?”
“Was ever a man so torn between two duties!” exclaimed the conscientious Count.
“Ladies come first!” quoth the Baron.
Bunker was obviously strongly tending to this opinion also.
“Can I trust you to guide your own destinies without me?”
The Baron drew himself up with a touch of indignation.
“Am I a child or a fool? I have guided mine destiny vary vell so far, and I zink I can still so do. Ven vill you go to see Miss Wallingford?”
“I'll hire a trap from the village after lunch and be off about four,” said the Count. “Long live the ladies! Learn wisdom by my example! Will this tie conquer her, do you think?”
In this befitting spirit he drove off that afternoon, and the Baron, after waving his adieus from the door, strode brimful of confidence towards the drawing-room. His thoughts must have gone astray, for he turned by accident into the wrong room—a small apartment hardly used at all; and before he had time to turn back he stopped petrified at the sight of a picture on the wall. There could be no mistake—it was the original of that ill-omened print he had seen in the Edinburgh hotel, “The Execution of Lord Tulliwuddle.” The actual title was there plain to see.
“Zen it vas not a hoax!” he gasped.
His first impulse was to look for a bicycle and tear after the dog-cart.
“But can I ride him in a kilt?” he reflected.
By the time he had fully debated this knotty point his friend was miles upon his way, and the Baron was left ruefully to lament his rashness in parting with such an ally.
During the horrid period of suspense that followed her visit to Sir Justin, the Baroness von Blitzenberg naturally enough felt disinclined to go much into society, and in fact rarely went out at all during the Baron's absence, except to the houses of one or two of her mother's particular friends. Even then she felt much more inclined to stay at home.
“Need we go to Mrs. Jerwin-Speedy's to-night?” she said one afternoon.
“Certainly,” replied the Countess decisively.
Alicia sighed submissively; but this attitude was abruptly changed into one of readiness, nay, even of alacrity, when her mother remarked—
“By the way, she is an aunt of the present Tulliwuddle. I believe it was you who were asking about him the other day.”
“Was I?” said the Baroness carelessly; but she offered no further objections to attending Mrs. Jerwin-Speedy's reception.
She found there a large number of people compressed into a couple of small rooms, and she soon felt so lost in the crush of strangers, and the chances of obtaining any information about Lord Tulliwuddle or his Eva seemed so remote, that she soon began to wish herself comfortably at home again, even though it were only to fret. But fortune, which had so long been unkind to her and indulgent to her erring spouse, chose that night as the turning-point in her tide of favors. Little dreaming how much hung on a mere introduction, Mrs. Jerwin-Speedy led up to the Baroness an apparently nervous and diffident young man.
“Let me introduce my nephew, Lord Tulliwuddle—the Baroness von Blitzenberg,” said she; and having innocently hurled this bomb, retired from further participation in the drama.
With young and diffident men Alicia had a pleasant instinct for conducting herself as smilingly as though they were the greatest wits about the town. The envious of her sex declared that it was because she scarcely recognized the difference; but be that as it may, it served her on this occasion in the most admirable stead. She detached the agitated peer from the thickest of the throng, propped him beside her against the wall, and by her kindness at length unloosed his tongue. Then it was she began to suspect that his nervous manner must surely be due to some peculiar circumstance rather than mere constitutional shyness. Made observant by her keen curiosity, she noticed at first a worried, almost hunted, look in his eyes and an extreme impatience of scrutiny by his fellow-guests; but as he gained confidence in her kindness and discretion these passed away, and he appeared simply a garrulous young man, with a tolerably good opinion of himself.
“Poor fellow! He is in trouble of some kind. Something to do with Eva, of course!” she said to her sympathetically.
The genuine Tulliwuddle had indeed some cause for perturbation. After keeping himself out of the way of all his friends and most of his acquaintances ever since the departure of his substitute, hearing nothing of what was happening at Hechnahoul, and living in daily dread of the ignominious exposure of their plot, he had stumbled by accident against his aunt, explained his prolonged absence from her house with the utmost difficulty, and found himself forced to appease her wounded feelings by appearing where he least wished to be seen—in a crowded London reception-room. No wonder the unfortunate young man seemed nervous and ill at ease.
As for Alicia, she was consumed with anxiety to know why he was here and not in Scotland, as Sir Justin had supposed; and, indeed, to learn a number of things. And now they were rapidly getting on sufficiently familiar terms for her to put a tactful question or two. Encouraged by her sympathy, he began to touch upon his own anxieties.
“A young man ought to get married, I suppose,” he remarked confidentially.
The Baroness smiled.
“That depends on whether he likes any one well enough to marry her, doesn't it?”
He sighed.
“Do you think—honestly now,” he said solemnly, “that one should marry for love or marry for money?”
“For love, certainly!”
“You really think so? You'd advise—er—advise a fellow to blow the prejudices of his friends, and that sort of thing?”
“I should have to know a little more about the case.”
He was evidently longing for a confidant.
“Suppose er—one girl was ripping, but—well—on the stage, for instance.”
“On the stage!” exclaimed the Baroness. “Yes, please go on. What about the other girl?”
“Suppose she had simply pots of money, but the fellow didn't know much more about her?”
“I certainly shouldn't marry a girl I didn't know a good deal about,” said the Baroness with conviction.
Lord Tulliwuddle seemed impressed with this opinion.
“That's just what I have begun to think,” said he, and gazed down at his pumps with a meditative air.
The Baroness thought the moment had come when she could effect a pretty little surprise.
“Which of them is called Eva?” she asked archly.
To her intense disappointment he merely stared.
“Don't you really know any girl called Eva?”
He shook his head.
“Can't think of any one.”
Suspicion, fear, bewilderment, made her reckless.
“Have you been in Scotland—at your castle, as I heard you were going?”
A mighty change came over the young man. He backed away from her, stammering hurriedly,
“No—yes—I—er—why do you ask me that?”
“Is there any other Lord Tulliwuddle?” she demanded breathlessly.
He gave her one wild look, and then without so much as a farewell had turned and elbowed his way out of the room.
“It's all up!” he said to himself. “There's no use trying to play that game any longer—Essington has muddled it somehow. Well, I'm free to do what I like now!”
In this state of mind he found himself in the street, hailed the first hansom, and drove headlong from the dangerous regions of Belgravia.
. . . . . .
Till the middle of the next day the Baroness still managed to keep her own counsel, though she was now so alarmed that she was twenty times on the point of telling everything to her mother. But the arrival of a note from Sir Justin ended her irresolution. It ran thus:
“MY DEAR ALICIA,—I have just learned for certain that Lord T. is at his place in Scotland. Singularly enough, he is described as apparently of foreign extraction, and I hear that he is accompanied by a friend of the name of Count Bunker. I am just setting out for the North myself, and trust that I may be able to elucidate the mystery. Yours very truly,
“JUSTIN WALLINGFORD.”
“Foreign extraction! Count Bunker!” gasped the Baroness; and without stopping to debate the matter again, she rushed into her mother's arms, and there sobbed out the strange story of her second letter and the two Lord Tulliwuddles.
It were difficult to say whether anger at her daughter's deceit, indignation with the treacherous Baron, or a stern pleasure in finding her worst prognostications in a fair way to being proved, was the uppermost emotion in Lady Grillyer's mind when she had listened to this relation. Certainly poor Alicia could not but think that sympathy for her troubles formed no ingredient in the mixture.
“To think of your concealing this from me for so long!” she cried: “and Sir Justin abetting you! I shall tell him very plainly what I think of him! But if my daughter sets an example in treachery, what can one expect of one's friends?”
“After all, mamma, it was my own and Rudolph's concern more than your's!” exclaimed Alicia, flaring up for an instant.
“Don't answer me, child!” thundered the Countess. “Fetch me a railway time-table, and say nothing that may add to your sin!”
“A time-table, mamma? What for?”
“I am going to Scotland,” pronounced the Countess.
“Then I shall go too!”
“Indeed you shall not. You will wait here till I have brought Rudolph back to you.”
The Baroness said nothing aloud, but within her wounded heart she thought bitterly,
“Mamma seems to forget that even worms will turn sometimes!”
“A decidedly delectable residence,” said Count Bunker to himself as his dog-cart approached the lodge gates of The Lash. “And a very proper setting for the pleasant scenes so shortly to be enacted. Lodge, avenue, a bogus turret or two, and a flagstaff on top of 'em—by Gad, I think one may safely assume a tolerable cellar in such a mansion.”
As he drove up the avenue between a double line of ancient elms and sycamores, his satisfaction increased and his spirits rose ever higher.
“I wonder if I can forecast the evening: a game of three-handed bridge, in which I trust I'll be lucky enough to lose a little silver, that'll put 'em in good-humor and make old Miss What-d'ye-may-call-her the more willing to go to bed early; then the departure of the chaperon; and then the tete-a-tete! I hope to Heaven I haven't got rusty!”
With considerable satisfaction he ran over the outfit he had brought, deeming it even on second thoughts a singularly happy selection: the dining coat with pale-blue lapels, the white tie of a new material and cut borrowed from the Baron's finery, the socks so ravishingly embroidered that he had more than once caught the ladies at Hechnahoul casting affectionate glances upon them.
“A first-class turn-out,” he thought. “And what a lucky thing I thought of borrowing a banjo from young Gallosh! A coon song in the twilight will break the ground prettily.”
By this time they had stopped before the door, and an elderly man-servant, instead of waiting for the Count, came down the steps to meet him. In his manner there was something remarkably sheepish and constrained, and, to the Count's surprise, he thrust forth his hand almost as if he expected it to be shaken. Bunker, though a trifle puzzled, promptly handed him the banjo case, remarking pleasantly—
“My banjo; take care of it, please.”
The man started so violently that he all but dropped it upon the steps.
“What the deuce did he think I said?” wondered the Count. “'Banjo' can't have sounded 'dynamite.'”
He entered the house, and found himself in a pleasant hall, where his momentary uneasiness was at once forgotten in the charming welcome of his hostess. Not only she, but her chaperon, received him with a flattering warmth that realized his utmost expectations.
“It was so good of you to come!” cried Miss Wallingford.
“So very kind,” murmured Miss Minchell.
“I knew you wouldn't think it too unorthodox!” added Julia.
“I'm afraid orthodoxy is a crime I shall never swing for,” said the Count, with his most charming smile.
“I am sure my father wouldn't REALLY mind,” said Julia.
“Not if Sir Justin shared your enthusiasm, dear,” added Miss Minchell.
“I must teach him to!”
“Good Lord!” thought the Count. “This is friendly indeed.”
A few minutes passed in the exchange of these preliminaries, and then his hostess said, with a pretty little air of discipleship that both charmed and slightly puzzled him,
“You do still think that nobody should dine later than six, don't you? I have ordered dinner for six to-night.”
“Six!” exclaimed the Count, but recovering himself, added, “An ideal hour—and it is half-past five now. Perhaps I had better think of dressing.”
“What YOU call dressing!” smiled Julia, to his justifiable amazement. “Let me show you to your room.”
She led him upstairs, and finally stopped before an open door.
“There!” she said, with an air of pride. “It is really my father's bedroom when he is at home, but I've had it specially prepared for YOU! Is it just as you would like?”
Bunker was incapable of observing anything very particularly beyond the fact that the floor was uncarpeted, and as nearly free from furniture as a bedroom floor could well be.
“It is ravishing!” he murmured, and dismissed her with a well-feigned smile.
Bereft even of expletives, he gazed round the apartment prepared for him. It was a few moments before he could bring himself to make a tour of its vast bleakness.
“I suppose that's what they call a truckle-bed,” he mused. “Oh, there is one chair—nothing but cold water-towels made of vegetable fibre apparently. The devil take me, is this a reformatory for bogus noblemen!”
He next gazed at the bare whitewashed wall. On it hung one picture—the portrait of a strangely attired man.
“What a shocking-looking fellow!” he exclaimed, and went up to examine it more closely.
Then, with a stupefying shock, he read this legend beneath it:
“Count Bunker. Philosopher, teacher, and martyr.”
For a minute he stared in rapt amazement, and then sharply rang the bell.
“Hang it,” he said to himself, “I must throw a little light on this somehow!”
Presently the elderly man-servant appeared, this time in a state of still more obvious confusion. For a moment he stared at the Count—who was too discomposed by his manner to open his lips—and then, once more stretching out his hand, exclaimed in a choked voice and a strong Scotch accent—
“How are ye, Bunker!”
“What the deuce!” shouted the Count, evading the proffered hand-shake with an agile leap.
The poor fellow turned scarlet, and in an humble voice blurted out—
“She told me to do it! Miss Julia said ye'd like me to shake hands and just ca' ye plain Bunker. I beg your pardon, sir; oh, I beg your pardon humbly!”
The Count looked at him keenly.
“He is evidently telling the truth,” he thought.
Thereupon he took from his pocket half a sovereign.
“My good fellow,” he began. “By the way, what's your name?”
“Mackenzie, sir.”
“Mackenzie, my honest friend, I clearly perceive that Miss Wallingford, in her very kind efforts to gratify my unconventional tastes, has put herself to quite unnecessary trouble. She has even succeeded in surprising me, and I should be greatly obliged if you would kindly explain to me the reasons for her conduct, so far as you can.”
At this point the half-sovereign changed hands.
“In the first place,” resumed the Count, “what is the meaning of this remarkably villainous portrait labelled with my name?”
“That, sir,” stammered Mackenzie, greatly taken aback by the inquiry. “Why, sir, that's the famous Count Bunker—your uncle, sir, is he no'?”
Bunker began to see a glimmer of light, though the vista it illumined was scarcely a much pleasanter prospect than the previous bank of fog. He remembered now, for the first time since his journey north, that the Baron, in dubbing him Count Bunker, had encouraged him to take the title on the ground that it was a real dignity once borne by a famous personage; and in a flash he realized the pitfalls that awaited a solitary false step.
“THAT my uncle!” he exclaimed with an air of pleased surprise, examining the portrait more attentively; “by Gad, I suppose it is! But I can't say it is a flattering likeness. 'Philosopher, teacher, and martyr'—how apt a description! I hadn't noticed that before, or I should have known at once who it was.”
Still Mackenzie was looking at him with a perplexed and uneasy air.
“Miss Wallingford, sir, seems under the impression that you would be wanting jist the same kind of things as he likit,” he remarked diffidently.
The Count laughed.
“Hence the condemned cell she's put me in? I see! Ha, ha! No, Mackenzie, I have moved with the times. In fact, my uncle's philosophy and teachings always struck me as hardly suitable for a gentleman.”
“I was thinking that mysel',” observed Mackenzie.
“Well, you understand now how things are, don't you? By the way, you haven't put out my evening clothes, I notice.”
“You werena to dress, sir, Miss Julia said.”
“Not to dress! What the deuce does she expect me to dine in?”
With a sheepish grin Mackenzie pointed to something upon the bed which the Count had hitherto taken to be a rough species of quilt.
“She said you might like to wear that, sir.”
The Count took it up.
“It appears to be a dressing-gown!” said he.
“She said, sir, your uncle was wont to dine in it.”
“Ah! It's one of my poor uncle's eccentricities, is it? Very nice of Miss Wallingford; but all the same I think you can put out my evening clothes for me; and, I say, get me some hot water and a couple of towels that feel a little less like sandpaper, will you? By the way—one moment, Mackenzie!—you needn't mention anything of this to Miss Wallingford. I'll explain it all to her myself.”
It is remarkable how the presence or absence of a few of the very minor accessories of life will affect the humor even of a man so essentially philosophical as Count Bunker. His equanimity was most marvelously restored by a single jugful of hot water, and by the time he came to survey his blue lapels in the mirror the completest confidence shone in his humorous eyes.
“How deuced pleased she'll be to find I'm a white man after all,” he reflected. “Supposing I'd really turned out a replica of that unshaved heathen on the wall—poor girl, what a dull evening she'd have spent! Perhaps I'd better break the news gently for the chaperon's sake, but once we get her of to bed I rather fancy the fair Julia and I will smile together over my dear uncle's dressing-gown!”
And in this humor he strode forth to conquer.
Count Bunker could not but observe that Miss Wallingford's eyes expressed more surprise than pleasure when he entered the drawing-room, and he was confirmed in his resolution to let his true character appear but gradually. Afterwards he could not congratulate himself too heartily on this prudent decision.
“I fear,” he said, “that I am late.” (It was in fact half-past six by now.) “I have been searching through my wardrobe to find some nether garments at all appropriate to the overall—if I may so term it—which you were kind enough to lay out for me. But I found mustard of that particular shade so hard to match that I finally decided in favor of this more conventional habit. I trust you don't mind?”
Both the ladies, though evidently disappointed, excused him with much kindness, and Miss Minchell alluded directly to his blue lapels as evidence that even now he held himself somewhat aloof from strict orthodoxy.
“May we see any allusion to your uncle, the late Count Bunker, in his choice of color?” she asked in a reverently hushed voice.
“Yes,” replied the Count readily; “my aunt's stockings were of that hue.”
From the startled glances of the two ladies it became plain that the late Count Bunker had died a bachelor.
“My other aunt,” he exclaimed unabashed; yet nevertheless it was with decided pleasure that he heard dinner announced immediately afterwards.
“They seem to know something about my uncle,” he said to himself. “I must glean a few particulars too.”
A horrible fear lest his namesake might have dined solely upon herbs, and himself be expected to follow his example, was pleasantly dissipated by a glance at the menu; but he confessed to a sinking of his heart when he observed merely a tumbler beside his own plate and a large brown jug before him.
“Good heavens!” he thought, “do they imagine an Austrian count is necessarily a beer drinker?”
With a sigh he could not quite smother, he began to pour the contents into his glass, and then set it down abruptly, emitting a startled exclamation.
“What is the matter?” cried Julia sympathetically.
Her eyes (he was embarrassed to note) followed his every movement like a dog's, and her apprehension clearly was extreme.
“This seems to be water,” smiled the Count, with an effort to carry off their error as pleasantly for them as possible.
“Isn't it good water?” asked Julia with an air of concern.
It was the Count's turn to open his eyes.
“You have concluded then that I am a teetotaler?”
“Of course, we know you are!”
“If we may judge by your prefaces,” smiled Miss Minchell.
The Count began to realize the hazards that beset him; but his spirit stoutly rose to meet the shock of the occasion.
“There is no use in attempting to conceal my idiosyncrasies, I see,” he answered. “But to-night, will you forgive me if I break through the cardinal rule of my life and ask you for a little stimulant? My doctor——”
“I see!” cried Miss Wallingford compassionately. “Of course, one can't dispute a doctor's orders. What would you like?”
“Oh, anything you have. He did recommend champagne—if it was good; but anything will do.”
“A bottle of the VERY best champagne, Mackenzie!”
The dinner now became an entirely satisfactory meal. Inspired by his champagne and by the success of his audacity in so easily surmounting all difficulties, the Count delighted his hostesses by the vivacity and originality of his conversation. On the one hand, he chose topics not too flippant in themselves and treated them with a becomingly serious air; on the other, he carefully steered the talk away from the neighborhood of his uncle.
“By the time I fetch out my banjo they'll have forgotten all about him,” he said to himself complacently.
Knowing well the importance of the individual factor in all the contingencies of life, he set himself, in the meanwhile, to study with some attention the two ladies beside him. Miss Minchell he had already summarized as an agreeable nonentity, and this impression was only confirmed on better acquaintance. It was quite evident, he perceived, that she was dragged practically unresisting in Miss Wallingford's wake—even to the length of abetting the visit of an unknown bachelor in the absence of Miss Wallingford's parent.
As for Julia, he decided that she was even better-looking and more agreeable than he had at first imagined; though, having the gayest of hearts himself, he was a trifle disconcerted to observe the uniform seriousness of her ideas. How one could reconcile her ecstatic enthusiasm for the ideal with her evident devotion to himself he was at a loss to conceive.
“However, we will investigate that later,” he thought.
But first came a more urgent question: Had his uncle and his “prefaces” committed him to forswear tobacco? He resolved to take the bull by the horns.
“I hope you will not be scandalized to learn that I have acquired the pernicious habit of smoking?” he said as they rose from the table.
“I told you he was smoking a cigar at Hechnahoul!” cried Miss Minchell with an air of triumph.
“I thought you were mistaken,” said Julia, and the Count could see that he had slipped a little from his pedestal.
This must not be permitted; yet he must smoke.
“Of course I don't smoke REAL tobacco!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, in that case,” cried Julia, “certainly then you may smoke in the drawing-room. What is it you use?”
“A kind of herb that subdues the appetites, Miss Wallingford.”
He could see at a glance that he was more firmly on his pedestal than ever.