The Count and she were seated over the drawing-room fire, Bunker in an easy-chair, smoking one of the excellent cigars which he had so grievously slandered, Julia upon a stool by his knees, her face suffused with the most intense expression of rapture. Miss Minchell was in the background, shrouded in shadow, purporting to be enjoying a nap; yet the Count could not but think that in so large a house a separate apartment might well have been provided for her. Her presence, he felt, circumscribed his actions uncomfortably.
“So have I!” he murmured, deeming this the most appropriate answer.
“Now we can talk about HIM!”
He started, but preserved his composure.
“Couldn't we keep HIM till morning?” he suggested.
“But that is why you are here!”
She spoke as if this were self-evident; while the Count read himself a thousand lessons upon the errors vanity is apt to lead one into. Yet his politeness remained unruffled.
“Of course,” he answered. “Of course! But you see my knowledge of him——”
He was about to say that it was very slight, when, fortunately for him, she interrupted with an eager—
“I know! I know! You were more than a son to him!”
“The deuce and all!” thought the Count. “That was a narrow squeak!”
“Do you know,” she continued in the same tone, “I have actually had the audacity to translate one of his books—your preface and all.”
“I understand the allusion now,” thought Bunker.
Aloud he had the presence of mind to inquire—
“Which was it?”
“'Existence Seriously Reviewed.'”
“You couldn't have made a better choice,” he assured her.
“And now, what can you tell me about him?” she cried.
“Suppose we talk about the book instead,” suggested Bunker, choosing what seemed the lesser of two evils.
“Oh, do!”
She rose impetuously, brought with a reverent air a beautifully written and neatly tied-up manuscript, and sat again by his knee. Looking over his shoulder he could see that the chaperon was wide awake and prepared to listen rapturously also.
“I have so often longed to have some one with me who could explain things—the very deep things, you know. But to think of having you—the Editor and nephew! It's too good to be true.”
“Only eight o'clock,” he said to himself, glancing at the clock. “I'm in for a night of it.”
The vision of a game of bridge and a coon song on the banjo from that moment faded quite away, and the Count even tucked his feet as far out of sight as possible, since those entrancing socks served to remind him too poignantly of what might have been.
“What exactly did he mean by this?” began Julia, “'Let Potentates fear! Let Dives tremble! The horny hand of the poor Man in the Street is stretched forth to grasp his birthright!'”
“For 'birthright' read 'pocket-book.' There's a mistake in the translation,” he answered promptly. “It appears to be an indirect argument for an increase in the Metropolitan police.”
“Are you sure? I thought—surely it alludes to Socialism!”
“Of course; and the best advertisement for Socialism is a collision with the bobbies. My uncle was a remarkably subtle man, I assure you.”
“How very ingenious!” exclaimed Miss Minchell from the background.
Julia did her best to feel convinced; but it was in a distinctly less ecstatic voice that she read her next extract.
“'Alcohol, riches, and starched linen are the moths and worms of society.' I suppose he means that they eat away its foundations?”
“On the contrary, he was an enthusiastic entomologist. He merely meant to imply that it isn't every one who can appreciate a glass of port and a clean shirt.”
“But he didn't appreciate those things himself!”
“No; poor fellow. He often wished he could, though.”
“Did he really?”
“Oh, you've no idea how tired he grew of flannel and ginger-beer! Many a time he's said to me, 'My boy, learn to take what's set before you, even at an alderman's table.' Ah, his was a generous creed, Miss Wallingford!”
“Yes, I suppose it was,” said Julia submissively.
His advantage in being able to claim an intimate personal knowledge of the late philosopher's tastes encouraged the Count greatly. Realizing that a nephew could not well be contradicted, he was emboldened to ask whether there were any more points on which his authority could be of assistance.
“Oh yes,” said she, “only—only somehow you seem to throw a different light on everything.”
“Naturally, dear,” chimed in Miss Minchell, “a personal explanation always makes things seem different.”
Julia sighed, but summed up her courage to read out—
“'When woman is prized according to her intellect and man according to his virtue; oh, then mankind will return to Eden!'”
“That,” said he, “is one of the rare instances of my uncle's pessimism.”
“Of his pessimism! How can you say that?”
“He meant to imply that mankind would have to wait for some considerable time. But do not feel dismayed. My own opinion is that so long as woman is fair and man has the wit to appreciate her, we ARE in Eden.”
The gracious tone in which he delivered this dictum, and the moving smile that accompanied it, appeared to atone completely for his relative's cynical philosophy. With a smile and a sigh Julia murmured—
“Do you really think so?”
“I do,” said the Count fervently; “and now suppose we were to have a little music?”
“Oh yes!” cried Miss Minchell; “do you perform, Count Bunker?”
“I sometimes sing a little to the guitar.”
“To the guitar!” said Julia. “How delicious! Have you brought it?”
“I have been so bold,” he smiled, and promptly went to fetch this instrument.
In a few minutes he returned with an apologetic air.
“I find that by some error they have sent me away with a banjo instead,” he exclaimed. “But I dare say I could manage an accompaniment on that if you would condescend to listen to me.”
He felt so exceedingly disinclined for expounding a philosophy any longer that he gave them no time to dissent, even had they wished to, but on the instant struck up that pathetic ditty—
“Down by whar de beans grow blue.”
And no sooner had he finished it than (barely waiting for his meed of applause) he further regaled them with—
“Twould make a fellowTurn green and yellow!
Finally, as a tit-bit, he contributed—
“When hubby s gone to Brighton,And I ve sent the cook to bed,Oh who's that a-knocking on the window!”
At the conclusion of this concert he knew not whether to feel more relieved or chagrined to observe that his fair hostess had her eyes fixed upon the clock. Thanking him with a slightly embarrassed air, she threw a pointed glance at Miss Minchell, and the two ladies rose.
“I am afraid you will think we keep very early hours,” she began.
“It is one of the best rules in my uncle's philosophy,” he interposed.
Yet though glad enough to have come so triumphantly to the end of his ordeal, he could not bring himself to let his charming disciple leave him in a wounded or even disappointed mood. As soon as Miss Minchell had passed through the door he quietly laid his hand upon Julia's arm, and with a gesture beckoned her back into the room.
“Pardon my seeming levity, Miss Wallingford,” he said in a grave and gentle voice, “but you know not what emotions I had to contend with! I thank you for your charming sympathy, and I beg you to accept in my uncle's name that salute by which his followers distinguish the faithful.”
And he thereupon kissed the blushing girl with a heartiness that restored her confidence in him completely.
“Well,” he said to himself as he retired with his candle, “I've managed to get a fair penn'orth out of it after all.”
In spite of the Spartan transformation which Sir Justin's bedroom had undergone, our adventurer enjoyed an excellent night's rest. So fast asleep was he at the hour of eight next morning that it took him a few seconds to awake to the full possession of his faculties, even when disturbed by a loud exclamation at his bedside. He then became aware of the presence of an entire stranger in his room—a tall and elderly man, with a long nose and a grizzled beard. This intruder had apparently just drawn up the blind, and was now looking about him with an expression of the greatest concern.
“Mackenzie!” he cried, in the voice of one accustomed to be heard with submission, “What have you been doing to my room?”
The butler, too confused for coherent speech, was in the act of bringing in a small portmanteau.
“I—I mentioned, Sir Justin, your room was hardly ready for ye, sir. Perhaps, sir, if ye'd come into the pink room——”
“What the deuce, there's hardly a stick of furniture left! And whose clothes are these?”
“Mine,” answered the Count suavely.
The stranger started violently, and turned upon the bed an eye at first alarmed, then rapidly becoming lit with indignation.
“Who—who is this?” he shouted.
“That, sir—that——” stammered Mackenzie.
“Is Count Bunker,” said the Count, who remained entirely courteous in spite of the inconvenience of this intrusion. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Sir Justin Wallingford?”
“You have, sir.”
“In that case, Mackenzie will be able to give you a satisfactory account of my presence; and in half an hour or so I shall have the pleasure of joining you downstairs.”
The Count, with a polite smile, turned over in bed, as though to indicate that the interview was now at an end. But his visitor apparently had other views.
“I should be obliged by some explanation from yourself of your entry into my house,” said he, steadily keeping his eye upon the Count.
“Now how the deuce shall I get out of this hole without letting Julia into another?” wondered Bunker; but before he could speak, Mackenzie had blurted out—
“Miss Wallingford, sir—the gentleman is a friend of hers, sir.”
“What!” thundered Sir Justin.
“I assure you that Miss Wallingford was actuated by the highest motives in honoring me with an invitation to The Lash,” said Bunker earnestly.
He had already dismissed an ingenious account of himself as a belated wanderer, detained by stress of weather, as certain to be contradicted by Julia herself, and decided instead on risking all upon his supposed uncle's saintly reputation.
“How came she to invite you, sir?” demanded Sir Justin.
“As my uncle's nephew, merely.”
Sir Justin stared at him in silence, while he brought the full force of his capacious mind to bear upon the situation.
“Your name, you say, is Bunker?” he observed at length.
“Count Bunker,” corrected that nobleman.
“Ah! Doubtless, then, you are the same gentleman who has been residing with Lord Tulliwuddle?”
“I am unaware of a duplicate.”
“And the uncle you allude to——?”
By a wave of his hand the Count referred him to the portrait upon the wall. Sir Justin now stared at it.
“Bunker—Count Bunker,” he repeated in a musing tone, and then turned to the present holder of that dignity with a look in his eye which the adventurer disliked exceedingly.
“I will confer with you later,” he observed. “Mackenzie, remove my portmanteau.”
In a voice inaudible to the Count he gave another order, which was followed by Mackenzie also removing the Count's clothes from their chair.
“I say, Mackenzie!” expostulated Bunker, now beginning to feel seriously uneasy; but heedless of his protest the butler hastened with them from the room.
Then, with a grim smile and a surprising alacrity of movement, Sir Justin changed the key into the outside of the lock, passed through the door, and shut and locked it behind him.
“The devil!” ejaculated Count Bunker.
Here was a pretty predicament! And the most ominous feature about it appeared to him to be the deliberation with which his captor had acted. It seemed that he had got himself into a worse scrape than he could estimate.
He wasted no time in examining his prison with an eye to the possibility of an escape, but it became very quickly evident that he was securely trapped. From the windows he could not see even a water-pipe within hail, and the door was unburstably ponderous. Besides, a gentleman attired either in pajamas or evening dress will naturally shrink from flight across country at nine o'clock in the morning. It seemed to the Count that he was as well in bed as anywhere else, and upon this opinion he acted.
In about an hour's time the door was cautiously unlocked, and a tray, containing some breakfast, laid upon the floor; but at the same time he was permitted to see that a cordon of grooms and keepers guarded against his flight. He showed a wonderful appetite, all circumstances considered, smoked a couple of cigars, and at last decided upon getting up and donning his evening clothes. Thereafter nothing occurred, beyond the arrival of a luncheon tray, till the afternoon was well advanced; by which time even his good spirits had become a trifle damped, and his apprehensions considerably increased.
At last his prison door was again thrown open, this time by Sir Justin himself.
“Come in, my dear,” he said in a grave voice; and with a downcast eye and scarlet cheek the fair Julia met her guest again.
Her father closed the door, and they seated themselves before their prisoner, who, after a profound obeisance to the lady, faced them from the edge of his bed with an air of more composure than he felt.
“I await your explanation, Sir Justin,” he began, striking at once the note which seemed to him (so far as he could guess) most likely to be characteristic of an innocent and much-injured man.
“You shall have it,” said Sir Justin grimly. “Julia, you asked this person to my house under the impression that he was the nephew of that particularly obnoxious fanatic, Count Herbrand Bunker, and still engaged upon furthering his relative's philanthropic and other visionary schemes.”
“But isn't he——” began Julia with startled eyes.
“I am Count Bunker,” said our hero firmly.
“The nephew in question?” inquired Sir Justin.
“Certainly, sir.”
Again Sir Justin turned to his daughter.
“I have already told you what I think of your conduct under any circumstances. What your feelings will be I can only surmise when I inform you that I have detained this adventurer here until I had time to despatch a wire and receive an answer from Scotland Yard.”
Both Count and Julia started.
“What, sir!” exclaimed Bunker.
Quite unmoved by his protest, his captor continued, this time addressing him—
“My memory, fortunately, is unusually excellent, and when you told me this morning who you were related to, I recalled at once something I had heard of your past career. It is now confirmed by the reply I received to my telegram.”
“And what, Sir Justin, does Scotland Yard have to say about me?”
“Julia,” said her parent, “this unhappy young man did indeed profess for some time a regard for his uncle's teachings, and even, I believe, advocated them in writing. In this way he obtained the disposal of considerable funds contributed by unsuspicious persons for ostensibly philanthropic purposes. About two years ago these funds and Count Bunker simultaneously disappeared, and your estimable guest was last heard of under an assumed name in the republic of Uruguay.”
Uncomfortable as his predicament was, this picture of himself as the fraudulent philanthropist was too much for Bunker's sense of humor, and to the extreme astonishment of his visitors he went off into a fit of laughter so hearty and prolonged that it was some time before he recovered his gravity.
“My dear friends,” he exclaimed at last, “I am not that Bunker at all! In fact I was only created a few weeks ago. Bring me back my clothes, and in return I'll tell you a deuced sight funnier story even than that.”
Sir Justin rose and led his daughter to the door.
“You will have an opportunity to-morrow,” he replied stiffly. “In the meantime I shall leave you to the enjoyment of the joke.”
“But, my dear sir——”
Sir Justin turned his back, and the door closed upon him again.
Count Bunker's position was now less supportable than ever.
“Escape I must,” he thought.
And hardly had he breathed the word when a gleam of his old luck seemed to return. He was standing by the window, and presently he observed a groom ride up on a bicycle, dismount, and push it through an outhouse door. Then the man strolled off, and he said to himself, with an uprising of his spirits—
“There's my steed—if I could once get to it!”
Then again he thought the situation over, and gradually the prospect of a midnight ride on a bicycle over a road he had only once traversed, clad in his emblazoned socks and blue-lapelled coat, appeared rather less entertaining than another night's confinement. So he lit his last cigar, threw himself on the bed, and resigned himself to the consolations of an innocent heart and a practical philosophy.
The clearness of the Count's conscience may be gauged when it is narrated that no sooner had he dismissed the stump of his cigar toward the grate than he dropped into a peaceful doze and remained placidly unconscious of his perils for the space of an hour or more. He was then awakened by the sound of a key being gently turned, and his opening eyes rested upon a charming vision of Julia Wallingford framed in the outline of the door.
“Hush!” she whispered; “I—I have brought a note for you!”
Smoothing his hair as he met her, the Count thanked her with an air of considerable feeling, and took from her hand a twisted slip of paper.
“It was brought by a messenger—a man in a kilt, who came in a motor car. I didn't know whether father would let you have it, so I brought it up myself.”
“Is the messenger waiting?”
“No; he went straight off again.”
Unrolling the scrap he read this brief message scrawled in pencil and evidently in dire haste—
“All is lost! I am prisoner! Go straightway to London for help from my Embassy.
“R. VON B.”
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed aloud.
“Is it bad news?” asked Julia, with a solicitude that instantly suggested possibilities to his fertile brain.
“Horribly!” he said. “It tells of a calamity that has befallen a very dear friend of mine! Oh, Rudolph, Rudolph! And I a helpless prisoner!”
As he anticipated, this outburst of emotion was not without its effect.
“I am so sorry!” she said. “I—I don't believe, Count Bunker, you are as guilty as father says!”
“I swear to you I am not!”
“Can I—help you?”
He thought swiftly.
“Is there any one about the house just now?”
“Oh yes; the keeper is stationed in the hall!”
“Miss Wallingford, if you would atone for a deep injury which you have inadvertently done an innocent man, bring me fifty feet of stout rope! And, I say, see that the door of the bicycle house is left unlocked. Will you do this?”
“I—I'll try.”
A sound on the stairs alarmed her, and with a fleeting smile of sympathy she was gone and the door locked upon him again.
Again the time passed slowly by, and he was left to ponder over the critical nature of the situation as revealed by the luckless Baron's intelligence. Clearly he must escape to-night, at all hazards.
“What's that? My rope?” he wondered.
But it was only the arrival of his dinner, brought as before upon a tray and set just within the door, as though they feared for the bearer's life should he venture within reach of this desperate adventurer from Uruguay.
“A very large dish for a very small appetite,” he thought, as he bore his meal over to the bed and drew his chair up before it.
It looked indeed as though a roasted goose must be beneath the cover. He raised it, and there, behold! lay a large coil of excellent new rope. The Count chuckled.
“Commend me to the heart and the wit of women! What man would ever have provided so dainty a dish as this? Unless, indeed” (he had the breadth of mind to add) “it happened to be a charming adventuress who was in trouble.”
Drinking the half pint of moderate claret which they had allowed him to the happiness and prosperity of all true-hearted women, he could not help regretting that his imprisoned confederate should be so unlikely to enjoy similar good fortune.
“He went too far with those two dear girls. A woman deceived as he has deceived them will never forgive him. They'd stand sentry at his cell-door sooner than let the poor Baron escape,” he reflected commiserately, and sighed to think of the disastrous effect this mishap might have both upon his friend's diplomatic career and domestic felicity.
While waiting for the dusk to deepen, and endeavoring to console himself for the lack of cigars with the poor remedy of cigarettes, he employed his time profitably in tying a series of double knots upon the line of rope. Then at last, when he could see the stars bright above the trees and hear no sound in the house, he pulled his bed softly to the open window, and to it fastened one end of his rope securely. The other he quietly let drop, and losing not an instant followed it hand under hand, murmuring anathemas on the rough wall that so scraped his evening trousers.
On tiptoe he stole to the door through which the bicycle had gone. It yielded to a push, and once inside he ventured to strike a match.
“By Gad! I've a choice of half a dozen,” he exclaimed.
It need scarcely be said that he selected the best; and after slitting with his pocket-knife the tires of all the others, he mounted and pedalled quietly down the drive. The lodge gates stood open; the road, a trifle muddy but clear of all traffic, stretched visible for a long way in the starlight; the breeze blew fair behind him.
“May Providence guide me to the station,” he prayed, and rode off into the night.
Suppose the clock be set back four-and-twenty hours, and behold now the Baron von Blitzenberg, the diplomatist and premier baron of Bavaria, engaged in unhappy argument with himself. Unhappy, because his reason, though so carefully trained from the kindergarten upward, proved unable to combat the dismal onsets of superstition.
“Pooh! who cares for an old picture?” Reason would reiterate.
“It is an omen,” said Superstition simply; and Reason stood convicted as an empty braggart.
But if Time be the great healer, Dinner is at least a clever quack, and when he and old Mr. Rentoul had consumed well-nigh a bottle and a half of their host's port between them, the outlook became much less gloomy. A particularly hilarious evening in the drawing-room completed the triumph of mind over what he was now able to term “jost nonsense,” and he slept that night as soundly as the Count was simultaneously slumbering in Sir Justin's bed-room. And there was no unpleasant awakening in the Baron's case. On the contrary, all nature seemed in a conspiracy to make the last day of his adventure pleasant. The sun shone brightly, his razors had an excellent edge, sausages were served for breakfast, and when he joined the family afterwards he found them as affectionately kind as a circle of relations. In fact, the Baron had dropped more than one hint the night before of such a nature that they had some reason for supposing relationship imminent. It is true Eva was a little disappointed that the actual words were not yet said, and when he made an airy reference to paying a farewell call that morning upon their neighbors at Lincoln Lodge, she exhibited so much disapproval in her air that he said at once—
“Ach, vell, I shall jost go after lonch and be back in an hour and a half. I jost vish to say good-bye, zat is all.”
Little guessing how much was to hang upon this postponement, he drove over after luncheon with a mind entirely reassured. With only an afternoon to be safely passed, no mishap, he was sure, could possibly happen now. If indeed the Maddisons chose to be offended with him, why, then, his call would merely be the briefer and he would recommend Eva for the post of Lady Tulliwuddle without qualification. It was his critics who had reason to fear, not he.
Miss Maddison was at home, the staff of footmen assured him, and, holding his head as high as a chieftain should, he strode into her sanctuary.
“Do I disturb you?”
He asked this with a quicker beating heart. Not Eleanor alone, but her father and Ri confronted him, and it was very plain to see that a tempest was in the brewing. Her eyes were bright with tears and indignation; their brows heavy with formidable frowns. At the first moment of his entering, extreme astonishment at seeing him was clearly their dominant emotion, and as evidently it rapidly developed into a sentiment even less hospitable.
“Why, this beats the devil!” ejaculated Mr. Maddison; and for a moment this was the sole response to his inquiry.
The next to speak was Ri—
“Show it him, Poppa! Confront him with the evidence!”
With ominous deliberation the millionaire picked up a newspaper from the floor, where apparently it had been crumpled and flung, smoothed out the creases, and approached the Baron till their noses were in danger of collision. While executing this manoeuvre the silence was only broken by the suppressed sobbing of his daughter. Then at last he spoke.
“Our mails, sir, have just arrived. This, sir, is 'The Times' newspaper, published in the city of London yesterday morning.”
He shook it in the Baron's face with a sudden vehemence that caused that nobleman to execute an abrupt movement backward.
“Take it,” continued the millionaire—“take it, sir, and explain this if you can!”
So confused had the Baron's mind become already that it was with difficulty he could decipher the following petrifying announcement—
“Tulliwuddle—Herringay.—In London, privately, Lord Tulliwuddle to Constance, daughter of Robert Herringay.”
The Baron's brain reeled.
“Here is another paragraph that may interest you,” pursued Mr. Maddison, turning the paper outside in with an alarmingly vigorous movement, and presenting a short paragraph for the Baron's inspection. This ran—
“PEER AND ACTRESS.
“As announced in our marriage column, the wedding took place yesterday, privately, of Lord Tulliwuddle, kinsman and heir of the late peer of that name, so well known in London and Scottish society, and Miss Constance Herringay, better known as 'Connie Fitz Aubyn,' of the Gaiety Theatre. It is understood that the young couple have departed for the Mediterranean.”
In a few seconds given him to prepare his mind, the Baron desperately endeavored to imagine what the resourceful Bunker would say or do under these awful circumstances.
“Well, sir?” said Mr. Maddison.
“It is a lie!”
“A lie?”
Ri laughed scornfully.
“Mean to say no such marriage took place?”
“It vas not me.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Anozzer man, perhaps.”
“Another Lord Tulliwuddle?” inquired the millionaire.
“Zey have made a mistake mit ze name. Yes, zat is how.”
“Can it be possible?” cried Eleanor eagerly, her grief for the moment forgotten.
“No,” said her father; “it is not possible. The announcement is confirmed by the paragraph. A mistake is inconceivable.”
The Baron thought he perceived a brilliant idea.
“Ach, it is ze ozzer Tollvoddle!” he exclaimed. “So! zat is it, of course.”
“You mean to say there is another peerage of Tulliwuddle?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Fetch Debrett, Ri!”
But Ri had already not only fetched Debrett, but found the place.
“A darned lie. Thought so,” he observed succinctly.
The luckless diplomatist was now committed to perdition.
“It is not in ze books,” he exclaimed. “It is bot a baronetcy.”
“A baronetcy!”
“And illegitimate also.”
“Sir,” burst forth Ri, “you are a thundering liar! Is this your marriage notice?”
The Baron changed his tactics.
“Yes!” he declared.
Eleanor screamed.
“Don't fuss, Eleanor,” said her father kindly. “That ain't true, anyhow. Why, the day before yesterday he was throwing that darned hammer.”
“Which came down last night in our yard with the head burst!” added Ri contemptuously. “Found you out there too!”
“Is that so!” exclaimed his father.
“That is so, sir!”
The three looked at him, and it was hard to say whether indignation or contempt was more prominent in their faces. This was more than he could endure.
“I vill not be so looked at!” he cried; “I vill leave you!”
“No you won't!” said Ri.
And the Baron saw his retreat cut of by the athletic and determined young man.
“Before you leave, we have one or two questions to ask you,” said Mr. Maddison. “Are you Lord Tulliwuddle, or are you not?”
“Yes!—No!” replied the Baron.
“Which, sir?”
Expanding his chest, he made the awe-inspiring announcement—
“I am moch greater zan Tollyvoddle! I am ze Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg!”
“Another darned lie!” commented Ri.
Mr. Maddison laughed sardonically; while Eleanor, with flashing eyes, now joined in the attack upon the hapless nobleman.
“You wretched creature! Isn't it enough to have shammed to be one peer without shamming to be another?”
“Bot I am! Ja, I swear to you! Can you not see zat I am noble?”
“Curiously enough we can't,” replied Mr. Maddison.
But his daughter's scepticism was a little shaken by the fervor of his assurances.
“But, Poppa, perhaps he may be a German peer.”
“German waiter, more likely!” sneered Ri. “What shall we do with him? Tar and feathers, I guess, would just about suit his complaint.”
“No, Ri, no,” said his father cautiously. “Remember we are no longer beneath the banner of freedom. In this benighted country it might lead into trouble. Guess we can find him accommodation, though, in that bit of genuine antique above the harness-room. It's fitted with a very substantial lock. We'll make Dugald M'Culloch responsible for this BARON till the police take him over.”
Vain were the Baron's protests; and upon the appearance of Dugald M'Culloch, fisherman and factotum to the millionaire, accompanied by three burly satellites, vain, he perceived, would be the most desperate resistance. He plead the privileges of a foreign diplomatist, threatened a descent of the German army upon Lincoln Lodge, guaranteed an intimate acquaintance with the American ambassador—“Who vill make you sorry for zis!” but all without moving Mr. Maddison's resolution. Even Eleanor whispered a word for him and was repulsed, for he overheard her father replying to her—
“No, no, Eleanor; no more a diplomatist than you would have been Lady Tulliwuddle. Guess I know what I'm doing.”
Whereupon the late Lord Tulliwuddle, kilt and all, was conveyed by a guard of six tall men and deposited in the bit of genuine antique above the harness-room. This proved to be a small chamber in a thick-walled wing of the original house, now part of the back premises; and there, with his face buried in his hands, the poor prisoner moaned aloud—
“Oh, my life, she is geblasted! I am undone! Oh, I am lost!”
“Will it be so bad as that, indeed?”
He looked up with a start, and perceived Dugald, his jailor, gazing upon him with an expression of indescribable sagacity.
“The master will be sending me with his car to tell the folks at Hechnahoul,” added Dugald.
Still the Baron failed to comprehend the exchange of favors suggested by his jailor's sympathetic voice.
“Go, zen!” he muttered, and bent his head.
“You will not be wishing to send no messages to your friends?”
At last the prisoner understood. For a sovereign Dugald promised to convey a note to the Count; for five he undertook to bribe the chauffeur to convey him to The Lash, when he learned where that gentleman was to be found. And he further decided to be faithful to his trust, since, as he prudently reflected—
“If he will be a real chentleman after all it shall not be well to be hard with him. And if he will not be, nobody shall know.”
The Baron felt a trifle less hopeless now, yet so black did the prospect remain that he firmly believed he should never be able to raise his head again and meet the gaze of his fellow-men; not at least if he stayed in that room till the police arrived.
Not even the news of Flodden brought direr dismay to Hechnahoul than Mr. Maddison's brief note. Lord Tulliwuddle an impostor? That magnificent young man a fraud? So much geniality, brawn, and taste for the bagpipes merely the sheep's clothing that hid a wandering wolf? Incredible! Yet, on second thoughts, how very much more thrilling than if he had really been an ordinary peer! And what a judgment on the presumption of Mr. and Mrs. Gallosh! Hard luck on Eva, of course—but, then, girls who aspire to marry out of their own station must expect this kind of thing.
The latter part of this commentary was naturally not that of the pretender's host and hostess. In the throes of their anger and chagrin their one consoling reflection was that no friends less tried than Mr. and Mrs. Rentoul happened to be there to witness their confusion. Yet other sufferers since Job have found that the oldest friends do not necessarily of er the most acceptable consolation.
“Oh, oh! I feel like to die of grief!” wailed poor Mrs. Gallosh.
“Aye; it's an awful smack in the eye for you,” said Mr. Rentoul sagely.
“Smack in the eye!” thundered his host. “It's a criminal offence—that's what it is! It's a damned swindle! It's a——”
“Oh, hush, hush!” interrupted Mrs. Rentoul in a shocked voice. “What words for a lady to hear! After all, you must remember you never made any inquiries.”
“Inquiries! What for should I be making inquiries about my guests? YOU never dropped a word of such a thing! Who'd have listened if I had? It was just Lord Tulliwuddle this and Lord Tulliwuddle that from morning to night since ever he came to the Castle.”
“Duncan's so simple-minded,” groaned Mrs. Gallosh.
“And what were you, I'd like to know? What were you?” retorted her justly incensed spouse. “Never a word did I hear, but just that he was such an aristocratic young man, and any one could see he had blue blood in his veins, and stuff of that kind!”
“I more than once had my own doubts about that,” said the alcohol expert with a knowing wink. “There was something about him—— Ah, well, he was not exactly my own idea of a lord.”
“YOUR idea?” scoffed his oldest and best of friends. “What do YOU know of lords, I'd like to know?”
“Well, well,” answered the sage peaceably, “maybe we've neither of us had much opportunity of judging of the nobility. It's just more bad luck than anything else that you should have gone to the expense of setting up in style in a lord's castle and then having this downcome. If I'd had similar ambeetions it might have been me.”
This soft answer was so far from turning away wrath, that Mrs. Rentoul again felt compelled to stem the tide of her host's eloquence.
“Oh, hush!” she exclaimed; “I'd have fancied you'd be having no thoughts beyond your daughter's affliction.”
“My Eva! my poor Eva! Where is the suffering child?” cried Mrs. Gallosh. “Duncan, what'll she be doing?”
“Making a to-do like the rest of the women-folk,” replied her husband, with rather less sympathy than the occasion seemed to demand.
In point of fact Eva had disappeared from the company immediately after hearing the contents of Mr. Maddison's letter, and whatever she had been doing, it had not been weeping alone, for at that moment she ran into the room, her face agitated, but rather, it seemed, with excitement than grief.
“Papa, lend me five pounds,” she panted.
“Lend you—five pounds! And what for, I'd like to know?”
“Don't ask me now. I—I promise to tell you later—some time later.”
“I'll see myself——! I mean, you're talking nonsense.”
Eva's lip trembled.
“Hi, hist! Eva, my dear,” said Mr. Rentoul; “if you're wanting the money badly, and your papa doesn't see his way——”
He concluded his sentence with a wink and a dive into his trousers-pocket, and a minute later Eva had fled from the room again.
This action of the sage, being at total variance to his ordinary habits (which indeed erred on the economical side), was attributed by his irate host—with a certain show of reason—to the mere intention of annoying him; and the conversation took a more acrimonious turn than ever. In fact, when Eva returned a few minutes later she was just in time to hear her father thunder in an infuriated voice—
“A German waiter, is he? Aye, that's verra probable, verra probable indeed. In fact I might have known it when I saw you and him swilling a bottle and a half of my best port together! Birds of a feather—aye, aye, exactly!”
The crushing retort which the sage evidently had ready to heap upon the fire of this controversy was anticipated by Miss Gallosh.
“He isn't a German waiter, papa! He is a German BARON—and an ambassador, too!”
The four started and stared at her.
“Where did you learn that?” demanded her father.
“I've been talking to the man who brought the letter, and he says that Lord Tulli—I mean the Baron—declares positively that he is a German nobleman!”
“Tuts, fiddlesticks!” scoffed her father.
“Verra like a whale,” pronounced the sage.
“I wouldn't believe what HE said,” declared Mrs. Gallosh.
“One can SEE he isn't,” said Mrs. Rentoul.
“The kind of Baron that plays in a German band, perhaps,” added her husband, with a whole series of winks to give point to this mot.
“He's just a scoundrelly adventurer!” shouted Mr. Gallosh.
“I hope he'll get penal servitude, that's what I hope,” said his wife with a sob.
“And, judging from his appearance, that'll be no new experience for him,” commented the sage.
So remarkably had their judgment of the late Lord Tulliwuddle waxed in discrimination. And, strange to say, his only defender was the lady he had injured most.
“I still believe him a gentleman!” she cried, and swept tearfully from the room.