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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Count Bunker, by J. Storer Clouston
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Count Bunker
+       Being a Bald yet Veracious Chronicle Containing some Further
+       Particulars of Two Gentlemen Whose Previous Careers Were
+       Touched Upon in a Tome Entitled “The Lunatic At Large”
+
+Author: J. Storer Clouston
+
+Posting Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #1613]
+Release Date: January, 1999
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNT BUNKER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller
+
+
+
+
+
+COUNT BUNKER
+
+Being A Bald Yet Veracious Chronicle Containing Some Further Particulars
+Of Two Gentlemen Whose Previous Careers Were Touched Upon In A Tome
+Entitled “The Lunatic At Large”
+
+By J. Storer Clouston
+
+
+
+
+COUNT BUNKER
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+It is only with the politest affectation of interest, as a rule,
+that English Society learns the arrival in its midst of an ordinary
+Continental nobleman; but the announcement that the Baron Rudolph von
+Blitzenberg had been appointed attache to the German embassy at the
+Court of St. James was unquestionably received with a certain flutter of
+excitement. That his estates were as vast as an average English county,
+and his ancestry among the noblest in Europe, would not alone perhaps
+have arrested the attention of the paragraphists, since acres and
+forefathers of foreign extraction are rightly regarded as conferring
+at the most a claim merely to toleration. But in addition to these
+he possessed a charming English wife, belonging to one of the
+most distinguished families in the peerage (the Grillyers of
+Monkton-Grillyer), and had further demonstrated his judgment by
+purchasing the winner of the last year's Derby, with a view to improving
+the horse-flesh of his native land.
+
+From a footnote attached to the engraving of the Baron in a Homburg hat
+holding the head of the steed in question, which formed the principal
+attraction in several print-sellers' windows in Piccadilly, one gathered
+that though his faculties had been cultivated and exercised in every
+conceivable direction, yet this was his first serious entrance into the
+diplomatic world. There was clearly, therefore, something unusual
+about the appointment; so that it was rumored, and rightly, that an
+international importance was to be attached to the incident, and a
+delicate compliment to be perceived in the selection of so popular a
+link between the Anglo-Saxon and the Teutonic peoples. Accordingly “Die
+Wacht am Rhein” was played by the Guards' band down the entire length
+of Ebury Street, photographs of the Baroness appeared in all the leading
+periodicals, and Society, after its own less demonstrative but equally
+sincere fashion, prepared to welcome the distinguished visitors.
+
+They arrived in town upon a delightful day in July, somewhat late in
+the London season, to be sure, yet not too late to be inundated with a
+snowstorm of cards and invitations to all the smartest functions that
+remained. For the first few weeks, at least, you would suppose the Baron
+to have no time for thought beyond official receptions and unofficial
+dinners; yet as he looked from his drawing-room windows into the gardens
+of Belgrave Square upon the second afternoon since they had settled into
+this great mansion, it was not upon such functions that his fancy ran.
+Nobody was more fond of gaiety, nobody more appreciative of purple and
+fine linen, than the Baron von Blitzenberg; but as he mused there he
+began to recall more and more vividly, and with an ever rising pleasure,
+quite different memories of life in London. Then by easy stages regret
+began to cloud this reminiscent satisfaction, until at last he sighed--
+
+“Ach, my dear London! How moch should I enjoy you if I were free!”
+
+For the benefit of those who do not know the Baron either personally or
+by repute, he may briefly be described as an admirably typical Teuton.
+When he first visited England (some five years previously) he stood
+for Bavarian manhood in the flower; now, you behold the fruit. As
+magnificently mustached, as ruddy of skin, his eye as genial, and his
+impulses as hearty; he added to-day to these two more stone of Teutonic
+excellences incarnate.
+
+In his ingenuous glance, as in the more rounded contour of his
+waistcoat, you could see at once that fate had dealt kindly with him.
+Indeed, to hear him sigh was so unwonted an occurrence that the Baroness
+looked up with an air of mild surprise.
+
+“My dear Rudolph,” said she, “you should really open the window. You are
+evidently feeling the heat.”
+
+“No, not ze heat,” replied the Baron.
+
+He did not turn his head towards her, and she looked at him more
+anxiously.
+
+“What is it, then? I have noticed a something strange about you ever
+since we landed at Dover. Tell me, Rudolph!”
+
+Thus adjured, he cast a troubled glance in her direction. He saw a face
+whose mild blue eyes and undetermined mouth he still swore by as the
+standard by which to try all her inferior sisters, and a figure whose
+growing embonpoint yearly approached the outline of his ideal hausfrau.
+But it was either St. Anthony or one of his fellow-martyrs who observed
+that an occasional holiday from the ideal is the condiment in the
+sauce of sanctity; and some such reflection perturbed the Baron at this
+moment.
+
+“It is nozing moch,” he answered.
+
+“Oh, I know what it is. You have grown so accustomed to seeing the same
+people, year after year--the Von Greifners, and Rosenbaums, and all
+those. You miss them, don't you? Personally, I think it a very good
+thing that you should go abroad and be a diplomatist, and not stay in
+Fogelschloss so much; and you'll soon make loads of friends here. Mother
+comes to us next week, you know.”
+
+“Your mozzer is a nice old lady,” said the Baron slowly. “I respect her,
+Alicia; bot it vas not mozzers zat I missed just now.”
+
+“What was it?”
+
+“Life!” roared the Baron, with a sudden outburst of thundering
+enthusiasm that startled the Baroness completely out of her composure.
+“I did have fun for my money vunce in London. Himmel, it is too hot to
+eat great dinners and to vear clothes like a monkey-jack.”
+
+“Like a what?” gasped the Baroness.
+
+To hear the Baron von Blitzenberg decry the paraphernalia and splendors
+of his official liveries was even more astonishing than his remarkable
+denunciation of the pleasures of the table, since to dress as well
+as play the part of hereditary grandee had been till this minute his
+constant and enthusiastic ambition.
+
+“A meat-jack, I mean--or a--I know not vat you call it. Ach, I vant a
+leetle fun, Alicia.”
+
+“A little fun,” repeated the Baroness in a breathless voice. “What kind
+of fun?”
+
+“I know not,” said he, turning once more to stare out of the window.
+
+To this dignified representative of a particularly dignified State
+even the trees of Belgrave Square seemed at that moment a trifle too
+conventionally perpendicular. If they would but dance and wave their
+boughs he would have greeted their greenness more gladly. A good-looking
+nursemaid wheeled a perambulator beneath their shade, and though she
+never looked his way, he took a wicked pleasure in surreptitiously
+closing first one eye and then the other in her direction. This might
+not entirely satisfy the aspirations of his soul, yet it seemed to serve
+as some vent for his pent-up spirit. He turned to his spouse with a
+pleasantly meditative air.
+
+“I should like to see old Bonker vunce more,” he observed.
+
+“Bunker? You mean Mr. Mandell-Essington?” said she, with an apprehensive
+note in her voice.
+
+“To me he vill alvays be Bonker.”
+
+The Baroness looked at him reproachfully.
+
+“You promised me, Rudolph, you would see as little as possible of Mr.
+Essington.”
+
+“Oh, ja, as leetle--as possible,” answered the Baron, though not with
+his most ingenuous air. “Besides, it is tree years since I promised.
+For tree years I have seen nozing. My love Alicia, you vould not have me
+forget mine friends altogezzer?”
+
+But the Baroness had too vivid a recollection of their last (and only)
+visit to England since their marriage. By a curious coincidence that
+also was three years ago.
+
+“When you last met you remember what happened?” she asked, with an
+ominous hint of emotion in her accents.
+
+“My love, how often have I eggsplained? Zat night you mean, I did
+schleep in mine hat because I had got a cold in my head. I vas not
+dronk, no more zan you. Vat you found in my pocket vas a mere joke,
+and ze cabman who called next day vas jost vat I told him to his ogly
+face--a blackmail.”
+
+“You gave him money to go away.”
+
+“A Blitzenberg does not bargain mit cabmen,” said the Baron loftily.
+
+His wife's spirits began to revive. There seemed to speak the owner of
+Fogelschloss, the haughty magnate of Bavaria.
+
+“You have too much self-respect to wish to find yourself in such a
+position again,” she said. “I know you have, Rudolph!”
+
+The Baron was silent. This appeal met with distinctly less response than
+she confidently counted upon. In a graver note she inquired--
+
+“You know what mother thinks of Mr. Essington?”
+
+“Your mozzer is a vise old lady, Alicia; but we do not zink ze same on
+all opinions.”
+
+“She will be exceedingly displeased if you--well, if you do anything
+that she THOROUGHLY disapproves of.”
+
+The Baron left the window and took his wife's plump hand affectionately
+within his own broad palm.
+
+“You can assure her, my love, zat I shall never do vat she dislikes. You
+vill say zat to her if she inquires?”
+
+“Can I, truthfully?”
+
+“Ach, my own dear!”
+
+From his enfolding arms she whispered tenderly--
+
+“Of course I will, Rudolph!”
+
+With a final hug the embrace abruptly ended, and the Baron hastily
+glanced at his watch.
+
+“Ach, nearly had I forgot! I must go to ze club for half an hour.”
+
+“Must you?”
+
+“To meet a friend.”
+
+“What friend?” asked the Baroness quickly.
+
+“A man whose name you vould know vell--oh, vary vell known he is! But
+in diplomacy, mine Alicia, a quiet meeting in a club is sometimes better
+not to be advertised too moch. Great wars have come from one vord
+of indiscretion. You know ze axiom of Bismarck--'In diplomacy it is
+necessary for a diplomatist to be diplomatic.' Good-by, my love.”
+
+He bowed as profoundly as if she were a reigning sovereign, blew an
+affectionate kiss as he went through the door, and then descended the
+stairs with a rapidity that argued either that his appointment was
+urgent or that diplomacy shrank from a further test within this mansion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+For the last year or two the name of Rudolph von Blitzenberg had
+appeared in the members' list of that most exclusive of institutions,
+the Regent's Club, Pall Mall; and it was thither he drove on this fine
+afternoon of July. At no resort in London were more famous personages
+to be found, diplomatic and otherwise, and nothing would have been
+more natural than a meeting between the Baron and a European celebrity
+beneath its roof; so that if you had seen him bounding impetuously up
+the steps, and noted the eagerness with which he inquired whether a
+gentleman had called for him, you would have had considerable excuse
+for supposing his appointment to be with a dignitary of the highest
+importance.
+
+“Goot!” he cried on learning that a stranger was indeed waiting for
+him. His face beamed with anticipatory joy. Aha! he was not to be
+disappointed.
+
+“Vill he be jost the same?” he wondered. “Ah, if he is changed I shall
+veep!”
+
+He rushed into the smoking-room, and there, instead of any bald
+notability or spectacled statesman, there advanced to meet him a merely
+private English gentleman, tolerably young, undeniably good-looking, and
+graced with the most debonair of smiles.
+
+“My dear Bonker!” cried the Baron, crimsoning with joy. “Ach, how
+pleased I am!”
+
+“Baron!” replied his visitor gaily. “You cannot deceive me--that
+waistcoat was made in Germany! Let me lead you to a respectable tailor!”
+
+Yet, despite his bantering tone, it was easy to see that he took an
+equal pleasure in the meeting.
+
+“Ha, ha!” laughed the Baron, “vot a fonny zing to say! Droll as ever,
+eh?”
+
+“Five years less droll than when we first met,” said the late Bunker and
+present Essington. “You meet a dullish dog, Baron--a sobered reveller.”
+
+“Ach, no! Not surely? Do not disappoint me, dear Bonker!”
+
+The Baron's plaintive note seemed to amuse his friend.
+
+“You don't mean to say you actually wish a boon companion? You, Baron,
+the modern Talleyrand, the repository of three emperors' secrets? My
+dear fellow, I nearly came in deep mourning.”
+
+“Mourning! For vat?”
+
+“For our lamented past: I supposed you would have the air of a
+Nonconformist beadle.”
+
+“My friend!” said the Baron eagerly, and yet with a lowering of his
+voice, “I vould not like to engage a beadle mit jost ze same feelings
+as me. Come here to zis corner and let us talk! Vaiter!
+whisky--soda--cigars--all for two. Come, Bonker!”
+
+Stretched in arm-chairs, in a quiet corner of the room, the two surveyed
+one another with affectionate and humorous interest. For three years
+they had not seen one another at all, and save once they had not met
+for five. In five years a man may change his religion or lose his hair,
+inherit a principality or part with a reputation, grow a beard or
+turn teetotaler. Nothing so fundamental had happened to either of our
+friends. The Baron's fullness of contour we have already noticed; in
+Mandell-Essington, EX Bunker, was to be seen even less evidence of
+the march of time. But years, like wheels upon a road, can hardly pass
+without leaving in their wake some faint impress, however fair the
+weather, and perhaps his hair lay a fraction of an inch higher up the
+temple, and in the corners of his eyes a hint might even be discerned of
+those little wrinkles that register the smiles and frowns. Otherwise
+he was the same distinguished-looking, immaculately dressed, supremely
+self-possessed, and charming Francis Bunker, whom the Baron's memory
+stored among its choicer possessions.
+
+“Tell me,” demanded the Baron, “vat you are doing mit yourself, mine
+Bonker.”
+
+“Doing?” said Essington, lighting his cigar. “Well, my dear Baron, I am
+endeavoring to live as I imagine a gentleman should.”
+
+“And how is zat?”
+
+“Riding a little, shooting a little, and occasionally telling the truth.
+At other times I cock a wise eye at my modest patrimony, now and then I
+deliver a lecture with magic-lantern slides; and when I come up to town
+I sometimes watch cricket-matches. A devilish invigorating programme,
+isn't it?”
+
+“Ha, ha!” laughed the Baron again; he had come prepared to laugh, and
+carried out his intention religiously. “But you do not feel more old and
+sober, eh?”
+
+“I don't want to, but no man can avoid his destiny. The natives of this
+island are a serious people, or if they are frivolous, it is generally a
+trifle vulgarly done. The diversions of the professedly gay-hooting
+over pointless badinage and speculating whose turn it is to get divorced
+next--become in time even more sobering than a scientific study with
+diagrams of how to breed pheasants or play golf. If some one would teach
+us the simple art of being light-hearted he would deserve to be placed
+along with Nelson on his monument.”
+
+“Oh, my dear vellow!” cried the Baron. “Do I hear zese kind of vords
+from you?”
+
+“If you starved a city-full of people, wouldn't you expect to hear the
+man with the biggest appetite cry loudest?”
+
+The Baron's face fell further and Essington laughed aloud.
+
+“Come, Baron, hang it! You of all people should be delighted to see me
+a fellow-member of respectable society. I take you to be the type of the
+conventional aristocrat. Why, a fellow who's been travelling in Germany
+said to me lately, when I asked about you--'Von Blitzenberg,' said he,
+'he's used as a simile for traditional dignity. His very dogs have to
+sit up on their hind-legs when he inspects the kennels!'”
+
+The Baron with a solemn face gulped down his whisky-and-soda.
+
+“Zat is not true about my dogs,” he replied, “but I do confess my life
+is vary dignified. So moch is expected of a Blitzenberg. Oh, ja, zere is
+moch state and ceremony.”
+
+“And you seem to thrive on it.”
+
+“Vell, it does not destroy ze appetite,” the Baron admitted; “and it
+is my duty so to live at Fogelschloss, and I alvays vish to do my duty.
+But, ach, sometimes I do vant to kick ze trace!”
+
+“You mean you would want to if it were not for the Baroness?”
+
+Bunker smiled whimsically; but his friend continued as simply serious as
+ever.
+
+“Alicia is ze most divine woman in ze world--I respect her, Bonker, I
+love her, I gonsider her my better angel; but even in Heaven, I suppose,
+peoples sometimes vould enjoy a stroll in Piccadeelly, or in some vay
+to exercise ze legs and shout mit excitement. No doubt you zink it
+unaccountable and strange--pairhaps ungrateful of me, eh?”
+
+“On the contrary, I feel as I should if I feared this cigar had gone out
+and then found it alight after all.”
+
+“You say so! Ah, zen I will have more boldness to confess my heart!
+Bonker, ven I did land in England ze leetle thought zat vould rise
+vas--'Ze land of freedom vunce again! Here shall I not have to be
+alvays ze Baron von Blitzenberg, oldest noble in Bavaria, hereditary
+carpet-beater to ze Court! I vill disguise and go mit old Bonker for a
+frolic!'”
+
+“You touch my tenderest chord, Baron!”
+
+“Goot, goot, my friend!” cried the Baron, warming to his work of
+confession like a penitent whose absolution is promised in advance; “you
+speak ze vords I love to hear! Of course I vould not be vicked, and
+I vould not disgrace myself; but I do need a leetle exercise. Is it
+possible?”
+
+Essington sprang up and enthusiastically shook his hand.
+
+“Dear Baron, you come like a ray of sunshine through a London fog--like
+a moulin rouge alighting in Carlton House Terrace! I thought my own
+leaves were yellowing; I now perceive that was only an autumnal change.
+Spring has returned, and I feel like a green bay tree!”
+
+“Hoch, hoch!” roared the Baron, to the great surprise of two Cabinet
+Ministers and a Bishop who were taking tea at the other side of the
+room. “Vat shall ve do to show zere is no sick feeling?”
+
+“H'm,” reflected Essington, with a comical look. “There's a lot of
+scaffolding at the bottom of St. James's Street. Should we have it down
+to-night? Or what do you say to a packet of dynamite in the two-penny
+tube?”
+
+The Baron sobered down a trifle.
+
+“Ach, not so fast, not qvite so fast, dear Bonker. Remember I must not
+get into troble at ze embassy.”
+
+“My dear fellow, that's your pull. Foreign diplomatists are
+police-proof!”
+
+“Ah, but my wife!”
+
+“One stormy hour--then tears and forgiveness!”
+
+The Baron lowered his voice.
+
+“Her mozzer vill visit us next veek. I loff and respect Lady Grillyer;
+but I should not like to have to ask her for forgiveness.”
+
+“Yes, she has rather an uncompromising nose, so far as I remember.”
+
+“It is a kind nose to her friends, Bonker,” the Baron explained, “but
+severe towards----”
+
+“Myself, for instance,” laughed Essington. “Well, what do you suggest?”
+
+“First, zat you dine mit me to-night. No, I vill take no refusal!
+Listen! I am now meeting a distinguished person on important
+international business--do you pairceive? Ha, ha, ha! To-night it vill
+be necessary ve most dine togezzer. I have an engagement, but he can be
+put off for soch a great person as the man I am now meeting at ze club!
+You vill gom?”
+
+“I should have been delighted--only unluckily I have a man dining with
+me. I tell you what! You come and join us! Will you?”
+
+“If zat is ze only vay--yes, mit pleasure! Who is ze man?”
+
+“Young Tulliwuddle. Do you remember going to a dance at Lord
+Tulliwuddle's, some five and a half years ago?”
+
+“Himmel! Ha, ha! Vell do I remember!”
+
+“Well, our host of that evening died the other day, and this fellow is
+his heir--a second or third cousin whose existence was so displeasing to
+the old peer that he left him absolutely nothing that wasn't entailed,
+and never said 'How-do-you-do?' to him in his life. In consequence, he
+may not entertain you as much as I should like.”
+
+“If he is your friend, I shall moch enjoy his society!”
+
+“I am flattered, but hardly convinced. Tulliwuddle's intellect is
+scarcely of the sparkling kind. However, come and try.”
+
+The hour, the place, were arranged; a reminiscence or two exchanged;
+fresh suggestions thrown out for the rejuvenation of a Bavarian magnate;
+another baronial laugh shook the foundations of the club; and then, as
+the afternoon was wearing on, the Baron hailed a cab and galloped for
+Belgrave Square, and the late Mr. Bunker sauntered off along Pall Mall.
+
+“Who can despair of human nature while the Baron von Blitzenberg adorns
+the earth?” he reflected. “The discovery of champagne and the invention
+of summer holidays were minor events compared with his descent from
+Olympus!”
+
+He bought a button-hole at the street corner and cocked his hat, more
+airily than ever.
+
+“A volcanic eruption may inspire one to succor humanity, a wedding to
+condole with it, and a general election to warn it of its folly; but the
+Baron inspires one to amuse!”
+
+Meanwhile that Heaven-sent nobleman, with a manner enshrouded in
+mystery, was comforting his wife.
+
+“Ah, do not grieve, mine Alicia! No doubt ze Duke vill be disappointed
+not to see us to-night, but I have telegraphed. Ja, I have said I had so
+important an affair. Ach, do not veep! I did not know you wanted so moch
+to dine mit ze old Duke. I sopposed you vould like a quiet evening at
+home. But anyhow I have now telegraphed--and my leetle dinner mit my
+friend--Ach, it is so important zat I most rosh and get dressed. Cheer
+up, my loff! Good-by!”
+
+He paused in answer to a tearful question.
+
+“His name? Alas, I have promised not to say. You vould not have a
+European war by my indiscretion?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+With mirrors reflecting a myriad lights, with the hum of voices, the
+rustle of satin and lace, the hurrying steps of waiters, the bubbling
+of laughter, of life, and of wine--all these on each side of them, and
+a plate, a foaming glass, and a friend in front, the Baron and his host
+smiled radiantly down upon less favored mortals.
+
+“Tulliwuddle is very late,” said Essington; “but he's a devilish casual
+gentleman in all matters.”
+
+“I am selfish enoff to hope he vill not gom at all!” exclaimed the
+Baron.
+
+“Unfortunately he has had the doubtful taste to conceive a curiously
+high opinion of myself. I am afraid he won't desert us. But I don't
+propose that we shall suffer for his slackness. Bring the fish, waiter.”
+
+The Baron was happy; and that is to say that his laughter re-echoed
+from the shining mirrors, his tongue was loosed, his heart expanded, his
+glass seemed ever empty.
+
+“Ach, how to make zis joie de vivre to last beyond to-night!” he cried.
+“May ze Teufel fly off mit of offeecial duties and receptions and--and
+even mit my vife for a few days.”
+
+“My dear Baron!”
+
+“To Alicia!” cried the Baron hastily, draining his glass at the toast.
+“But some fun first!”
+
+     “'I could not love thee, dear, so well,
+         Loved I not humor more!'”
+
+misquoted his host gaily. “Ah!” he added, “here comes Tulliwuddle.”
+
+A young man, with his hands in his pockets and an eyeglass in his eye,
+strolled up to their table.
+
+“I'm beastly sorry for being so late,” said he; “but I'm hanged if
+I could make up my mind whether to risk wearing one of these frilled
+shirt-fronts. It's not bad, I think, with one's tie tied this way. What
+do you say?”
+
+“It suits you like a halo,” Essington assured him. “But let me introduce
+you to my friend the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg.”
+
+Lord Tulliwuddle bowed politely and took the empty chair; but it was
+evident that his attention could not concentrate itself upon sublunary
+matters till the shirt-front had been critically inspected and
+appreciatively praised by his host. Indeed, it was quite clear that
+Essington had not exaggerated his regard for himself. This admiration
+was perhaps the most pleasing feature to be noted on a brief
+acquaintance with his lordship. He was obviously intended neither for a
+strong man of action nor a great man of thought. A tolerable appearance
+and considerable amiability he might no doubt claim; but unfortunately
+the effort to retain his eye-glass had apparently the effect of forcing
+his mouth chronically open, which somewhat marred his appearance; while
+his natural good-humor lapsed too frequently into the lamentations of
+an idle man that Providence neglected him or that his creditors were too
+attentive.
+
+It happens, however, that it is rather his circumstances than his person
+which concern this history. And, briefly, these were something in
+this sort. Born a poor relation and guided by no strong hand, he had
+gradually seen himself, as Reverend uncles and Right Honorable cousins
+died off, approach nearer and nearer to the ancient barony of Tulliwuddle
+(created 1475 in the peerage of Scotland), until this year he had
+actually succeeded to it. But after his first delight in this piece of
+good fortune had subsided he began to realize in himself two notable
+deficiencies very clearly, the lack of money, and more vaguely, the
+want of any preparation for filling the shoes of a stately courtier
+and famous Highland chieftain. He would often, and with considerable
+feeling, declare that any ordinary peer he could easily have become, but
+that being old Tulliwuddle's heir, by Gad! he didn't half like the job.
+
+At present he was being tolerated or befriended by a small circle of
+acquaintances, and rapidly becoming a familiar figure to three or four
+tailors and half a dozen door-keepers at the stage entrances to divers
+Metropolitan theatres. In the circle of acquaintances, the humorous
+sagacity of Essington struck him as the most astonishing thing he had
+ever known. He felt, in fact, much like a village youth watching his
+first conjuring performance, and while the whim lasted (a period which
+Essington put down as probably six weeks) he would have gone the length
+of paying a bill or ordering a tie on his recommendation alone.
+
+To-night the distinguished appearance and genial conversation of
+Essington's friend impressed him more than ever with the advantages of
+knowing so remarkable a personage. A second bottle succeeded the first,
+and a third the second, the cordiality of the dinner growing all the
+while, till at last his lordship had laid aside the last traces of his
+national suspicion of even the most charming strangers.
+
+“I say, Essington,” he said, “I had meant to tell you about a devilish
+delicate dilemma I'm in. I want your advice.”
+
+“You have it,” interrupted his host. “Give her a five-pound note, see
+that she burns your letters, and introduce her to another fellow.”
+
+“But--er--that wasn't the thing----”
+
+“Tell him you'll pay in six months, and order another pair of trousers,”
+ said Essington, briskly as ever.
+
+“But, I say, it wasn't that----”
+
+“My dear Tulliwuddle, I never give racing tips.”
+
+“Hang it!”
+
+“What is the matter?”
+
+Tulliwuddle glanced at the Baron.
+
+“I don't know whether the Baron would be interested----”
+
+“Immensely, my goot Tollyvoddle! Supremely! hugely! I could be
+interested to-night in a museum!”
+
+“The Baron's past life makes him a peculiarly catholic judge of
+indiscretions,” said Essington.
+
+Thus reassured, Tulliwuddle began--
+
+“You know I've an aunt who takes an interest in me--wants me to collar
+an heiress and that sort of thing. Well, she has more or less arranged a
+marriage for me.”
+
+“Fill your glasses, gentlemen!” cried Essington.
+
+“Hoch, hoch!” roared the Baron.
+
+“But, I say, wait a minute! That's only the beginning. I don't know the
+girl--and she doesn't know me.”
+
+He said the last words in a peculiarly significant tone.
+
+“Do you wish me to introduce you?”
+
+“Oh, hang it! Be serious, Essington. The point is--will she marry me if
+she does know me?”
+
+“Himmel! Yes, certainly!” cried the Baron.
+
+“Who is she?” asked their host, more seriously.
+
+“Her father is Darius P. Maddison, the American Silver King.”
+
+The other two could not withhold an exclamation.
+
+“He has only two children, a son and a daughter, and he wants to marry
+his daughter to an English peer--or a Scotch, it's all the same. My aunt
+knows 'em pretty well, and she has recommended me.”
+
+“An excellent selection,” commented his host.
+
+“But the trouble is, they want rather a high-class peer. Old Maddison is
+deuced particular, and I believe the girl is even worse.”
+
+“What are the qualifications desired?”
+
+“Oh, he's got to be ambitious, and a promising young man--and elevated
+tastes--and all that kind of nonsense.”
+
+“But you can be all zat if you try!” said the Baron eagerly. “Go to
+Germany and get trained. I did vork twelve hours a day for ten years to
+be vat I am.”
+
+“I'm different,” replied the young peer gloomily. “Nobody ever trained
+me. Old Tulliwuddle might have taken me up if he had liked, but he was
+prejudiced against me. I can't become all those things now.”
+
+“And yet you do want to marry the lady?”
+
+“My dear Essington, I can't afford to lose such a chance! One doesn't
+get a Miss Maddison every day. She's a deuced handsome girl too, they
+say.”
+
+“By Gad, it's worth a trip across the Atlantic to try your luck,” said
+Essington. “Get 'em to guarantee your expenses and you'll at least learn
+to play poker and see Niagara for nothing.”
+
+“They aren't in America. They've got a salmon river in Scotland, and
+they are there now. It's not far from my place, Hechnahoul.”
+
+“She's practically in your arms, then?”
+
+“Ach. Ze affair is easy!”
+
+“Pipe up the clan and abduct her!”
+
+“Approach her mit a kilt!”
+
+But even those optimistic exhortations left the peer still melancholy.
+
+“It sounds all very well,” said he, “but my clansmen, as you call 'em,
+would expect such a devil of a lot from me too. Old Tulliwuddle
+spoiled them for any ordinary mortal. He went about looking like an
+advertisement for whisky, and called 'em all by their beastly Gaelic
+names. I have never been in Scotland in my life, and I can't do that
+sort of thing. I'd merely make a fool of myself. If I'd had to go to
+America it wouldn't have been so bad.”
+
+At this weak-kneed confession the Baron could hardly withhold an
+exclamation of contempt, but Essington, with more sympathy, inquired--
+
+“What do you propose to do, then?”
+
+His lordship emptied his glass.
+
+“I wish I had your brains and your way of carrying things off,
+Essington!” he said, with a sigh. “If you got a chance of showing
+yourself off to Miss Maddison she'd jump at you!”
+
+A gleam, inspired and humorous, leaped into Essington's eyes. The Baron,
+whose glance happened at the moment to fall on him, bounded gleefully
+from his seat.
+
+“Hoch!” he cried, “it is mine old Bonker zat I see before me! Vat have
+you in your mind?”
+
+“Sit down, my dear Baron; that lady over there thinks you are preparing
+to attack her. Shall we smoke? Try these cigars.”
+
+Throwing the Baron a shrewd glance to calm his somewhat alarming
+exhilaration, their host turned with a graver air to his other guest.
+
+“Tulliwuddle,” said he, “I should like to help you.”
+
+“I wish to the deuce you could!”
+
+Essington bent over the table confidentially.
+
+“I have an idea.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The three heads bent forward towards a common centre--the Baron agog
+with suppressed excitement, Tulliwuddle revived with curiosity and a
+gleam of hope, Essington impressive and cool.
+
+“I take it,” he began, “that if Mr. Darius P. Maddison and his coveted
+daughter could see a little of Lord Tulliwuddle--meet him at lunch, talk
+to him afterwards, for instance--and carry away a favorable impression
+of the nobleman, there would not be much difficulty in subsequently
+arranging a marriage?”
+
+“Oh, none,” said Tulliwuddle. “They'd be only too keen, IF they approved
+of me; but that's the rub, you know.”
+
+“So far so good. Now it appears to me that our modest friend here
+somewhat underrates his own powers of fascination.”
+
+“Ach, Tollyvoddle, you do indeed,” interjected the Baron.
+
+“But since this idea is so firmly established in his mind that it may
+actually prevent him from displaying himself to the greatest advantage,
+and since he has been good enough to declare that he would regard with
+complete confidence my own chances of success were I in his place, I
+would propose--with all becoming diffidence--that _I_ should interview
+the lady and her parent instead of him.”
+
+“A vary vise idea, Bonker,” observed the Baron.
+
+“What!” said Tulliwuddle. “Do you mean that you would go and crack me
+up, and that sort of thing?”
+
+“No; I mean that I should enjoy a temporary loan of your name and of
+your residence, and assure them by a personal inspection that I have a
+sufficient assortment of virtues for their requirements.”
+
+“Splendid!” shouted the Baron. “Tollyvoddle, accept zis generous offer
+before it is too late!”
+
+“But,” gasped the diffident nobleman, “they would find out the next time
+they saw me.”
+
+“If the business is properly arranged, that would only be when you came
+out of church with her. Look here--what fault have you to find with this
+scheme? I produce the desired impression, and either propose at once and
+am accepted----”
+
+“H'm,” muttered Tulliwuddle doubtfully.
+
+“Or I leave things in such good train that you can propose and get
+accepted afterwards by letter.”
+
+“That's better,” said Tulliwuddle.
+
+“Then, by a little exercise of our wits, you find an excuse for hurrying
+on the marriage--have it a private affair for family reasons, and so
+on. You will be prevented by one excuse or another from meeting the lady
+till the wedding-day. We shall choose a darkish church, you will have a
+plaster on your face--and the deed is done!”
+
+“Not a fault can I find,” commented the Baron sagely. “Essington, I
+congratulate you.”
+
+Between his complete confidence in Essington and the Baron's unqualified
+commendation, Lord Tulliwuddle was carried away by the project.
+
+“I say, Essington, what a good fellow you are!” he cried. “You really
+think it will work?”
+
+“What do you say, Baron?”
+
+“It cannot fail, I do solemnly assure you. Be thankful you have soch a
+friend, Tollyvoddle!”
+
+“You don't think anybody will suspect that you aren't really me?”
+
+“Does any one up at Hechnahoul know you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“And no one there knows me. They will never suspect for an instant.”
+
+His lordship assumed a look that would have been serious, almost
+impressive, had he first removed his eye-glass. Evidently some weighty
+consideration had occurred to him.
+
+“You are an awfully clever chap, Essington,” he said, “and
+deuced superior to most fellows, and--er--all that kind of thing.
+But--well--you don't mind my saying it?”
+
+“My morals? My appearance? Say anything you like, my dear fellow.”
+
+“It's only this, that noblesse oblige, and that kind of thing, you
+know.”
+
+“I am afraid I don't quite follow.”
+
+“Well, I mean that you aren't a nobleman, and do you think you could
+carry things off like a--ah--like a Tulliwuddle?”
+
+Essington remained entirely serious.
+
+“I shall have at my elbow an adviser whose knowledge of the highest
+society in Europe is, without exaggeration, unequalled. Your perfectly
+natural doubts will be laid at rest when I tell you that I hope to be
+accompanied by the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg.”
+
+The Baron could no longer contain himself.
+
+“Himmel! Hurray! My dear friend, I vill go mit you to hell!”
+
+“That's very good of you,” said Essington, “but you mistake my present
+destination. I merely wish your company as far as the Castle of
+Hechnahoul.”
+
+“I gom mit so moch pleasure zat I cannot eggspress! Tollyvoddle, be no
+longer afraid. I have helped to write a book on ze noble families
+of Germany--zat is to say, I have contributed my portrait and some
+anecdote. Our dear friend shall make no mistakes!”
+
+By this guarantee Lord Tulliwuddle's last doubts were completely set
+at rest. His spirits rose as he perceived how happily this easy avenue
+would lead him out of all his troubles. He insisted on calling for
+wine and pledging success to the adventure with the most resolute and
+confident air, and nothing but a few details remained now to be settled.
+These were chiefly with regard to the precise limits up to which the
+duplicate Lord Tulliwuddle might advance his conquering arms.
+
+“You won't formally propose, will you?” said the first edition of that
+peer.
+
+“Certainly not, if you prefer to negotiate the surrender yourself,” the
+later impression assured him.
+
+“And you mustn't--well--er----”
+
+“I shall touch nothing.”
+
+“A girl might get carried away by you,” said the original peer a trifle
+doubtfully.
+
+“The Baron is the most scrupulous of men. He will be by my side
+almost continually. Baron, you will act as my judge, my censor, and my
+chaperon?”
+
+“Tollyvoddle, I swear to you zat I shall use an eye like ze eagle. He
+shall be so careful--ach, I shall see to it! Myself, I am a Bayard mit
+ze ladies, and Bonker he shall not be less so!”
+
+“Thanks, Baron, thanks awfully,” said his lordship. “Now my mind is
+quite at rest!”
+
+In the vestibule of the restaurant they bade good-night to the confiding
+nobleman, and then turned to one another with an adventurer's smile.
+
+“You are sure you can leave your diplomatic duties?” asked Essington.
+
+“Zey vill be my diplomatic duties zat I go to do! Oh, I shall prepare a
+leetle story--do not fear me.”
+
+The Baron chuckled, and then burst forth
+
+“Never was zere a man like you. Oh, cunning Mistair Bonker! And you vill
+give me zomezing to do in ze adventure, eh?”
+
+“I promise you that, Baron.”
+
+As he gave this reassuring pledge, a peculiar smile stole over Mr.
+Bunker's face--a smile that seemed to suggest even happier possibilities
+than either of his distinguished friends contemplated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+It is at all times pleasant to contemplate thorough workmanship
+and sagacious foresight, particularly when these are allied with
+disinterested purpose and genuine enthusiasm. For the next few days Mr.
+Bunker, preparing to carry out to the best of his ability the delicate
+commission with which he had been entrusted, presented this stimulating
+spectacle.
+
+Absolutely no pains were left untaken. By the aid of some volumes lent
+him by Tulliwuddle he learned, and digested in a pocketbook, as much
+information as he thought necessary to acquire concerning the history of
+the noble family he was temporarily about to enter; together with
+notes of their slogan or war-cry (spelled phonetically to avoid the
+possibility of a mistake), of their acreage, gross and net rentals, the
+names of their land-agents, and many other matters equally to the point.
+It was further to be observed that he spared no pains to imprint these
+particulars in the Baron's Teutonic memory--whether to support his own
+in case of need, or for some more secret purpose, it were impossible to
+fathom. Disguised as unconspicuous and harmless persons, they would meet
+in many quiet haunts whose unsuspected excellences they could guarantee
+from their old experience, and there mature their philanthropic plan.
+
+Not only had its talented originator to impress the Tulliwuddle annals
+and statistics into his ally's eager mind, but he had to exercise the
+nicest tact and discernment lest the Baron's excess of zeal should trip
+their enterprise at the very outset.
+
+“To-day I have told Alicia zat my visit to Russia vill probably be
+vollowed by a visit to ze Emperor of China,” the Baron would recount
+with vast pride in his inventive powers. “And I have dropped a leetle
+hint zat for an envoy to be imprisoned in China is not to be surprised.
+Zat vill prepare her in case I am avay longer zan ve expect.”
+
+“And how did she take that intimation?” asked Essington, with a less
+congratulatory air than he had expected.
+
+“I did leave her in tears.”
+
+“My dear Baron, fly to her to tell her you are not going to China!
+She will get so devilish alarmed if you are gone a week that she'll go
+straight to the embassy and make inquiries.”
+
+He shook his head, and added in an impressive voice--
+
+“Never lie for lying's sake, Blitzenberg. Besides, how do you propose to
+forge a Chinese post-mark?”
+
+The Baron had laid the foundations of his Russian trip on a sound basis
+by requesting a friend of his in that country to post to the Baroness
+the bi-weekly budgets of Muscovite gossip which he intended to
+compose at Hechnahoul. This, it seemed to him, would be a simple feat,
+particularly with his friend Bunker to assist; but he had to confess
+that the provision of Chinese news would certainly be more difficult.
+
+“Ach, vell, I shall contradict China,” he agreed.
+
+It will be readily believed that what with getting up his brief, pruning
+the legends with which the Baron proposed to satisfy his wife and his
+ambassador, and purchasing an outfit suitable to the roles of peer and
+chieftain, this indefatigable gentleman passed three or four extremely
+busy days.
+
+“Ve most start before my dear mozzer-in-law does gom!” the Baron more
+than once impressed upon him, so that there was no moment to be wasted.
+
+Two days before their departure Mr. Bunker greeted his ally with a
+peculiarly humorous smile.
+
+“The pleasures of our visit to Hechnahoul are to be considerably
+augmented,” said he. “Tulliwuddle has only just made the discovery
+that his ancestral castle is let; but his tenant, in the most handsome
+spirit, invites us to be his guests so long as we are in Scotland. A
+very hospitable letter, isn't it?”
+
+He handed him a large envelope with a more than proportionately large
+crest upon it, and drawing from this a sheet of note-paper headed by a
+second crest, the Baron read this epistle:
+
+
+“MY LORD,--Learning that you propose visiting your Scottish estates, and
+Mr. M'Fadyen, your factor, informing me no lodge is at present available
+for your reception, it will give Mrs. Gallosh and myself great pleasure,
+and we will esteem it a distinguished honor, if you and your friend will
+be our guests at Hechnahoul Castle during the duration of your visit.
+Should you do us the honor of accepting, I shall send my steam launch
+to meet you at Torrydhulish pier and convey you across the loch, if you
+will be kind enough to advise me which train you are coming by.
+
+“In conclusion, Mrs. Gallosh and myself beg to assure you that although
+you find strangers in your ancestral halls, you will receive both from
+your tenantry and ourselves a very hearty welcome to your native land.
+Believe me, your obedient servant,
+
+“DUNCAN JNO. GALLOSH.”
+
+
+“Zat is goot news!” cried the Baron. “Ve shall have company--perhaps
+ladies! Ach, Bonker, I have ze soft spot in mine heart: I am so constant
+as ze needle to ze pole; but I do like sometimes to talk mit voman!”
+
+“With Mrs. Gallosh, for instance?”
+
+“But, Bonker, zere may be a Miss Gallosh.”
+
+“If you consulted the Baroness,” said Bunker, smiling, “I suspect she
+would prefer you to be imprisoned in China.”
+
+The Baron laughed, and curled his martial mustache with a dangerous air.
+
+“Who is zis Gallosh?” he inquired.
+
+“Scottish, I judge from his name; commercial, from his literary style;
+elevated by his own exertions, from the size of his crest; and wealthy,
+from the fact that he rents Hechnahoul Castle. His mention of Mrs.
+Gallosh points to the fact that he is either married or would have us
+think so; and I should be inclined to conclude that he has probably
+begot a family.”
+
+“Aha!” said the Baron. “Ve vill gom and see, eh?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A carefully clothed young man, with an eyeglass and a wavering gait,
+walked slowly out of Euston Station. He had just seen the Scottish
+express depart, and this event seemed to have filled him with dubious
+reflections. In fact, at the very last moment Lord Tulliwuddle's
+confidence in his two friends had been a trifling degree disturbed. It
+occurred to him as he lingered by the door of their reserved first-class
+compartment that they had a little too much the air of gentlemen
+departing on their own pleasure rather than on his business. No sooner
+did he drop a fretful hint of this opinion than their affectionate
+protestations had quickly revived his spirit; but now that they were no
+longer with him to counsel and encourage, it once more drooped.
+
+“Confound it!” he thought, “I hadn't bargained on having to keep out
+of people's way till they came back. If Essington had mentioned that
+sooner, I don't know that I'd have been so keen about the notion. Hang
+it! I'll have to chuck the Morrells' dance. And I can't go with the
+Greys to Ranelagh. I can't even dine with my own aunt on Sunday. Oh, the
+devil!”
+
+The perturbed young peer waved his umbrella and climbed into a hansom.
+
+“Well, anyhow, I can still go on seeing Connie. That's some
+consolation,” he told himself; and without stopping to consider what
+would be the thoughts of his two obliging friends had they known he was
+seeking consolation in the society of one lady while they were arranging
+his nuptials with another, the baptismal Tulliwuddle drove back to the
+civilization of St. James's.
+
+Within the reserved compartment was no foreboding, no faint-hearted
+paling of the cheek. As the train clattered, hummed, and presently
+thundered on its way, the two laughed cheerfully towards one another,
+delighted beyond measure with the prosperous beginning of their
+enterprise. The Baron could not sufficiently express his gratitude and
+admiration for the promptitude with which his friend had purveyed so
+promising an adventure.
+
+“Ve vill have fon, my Bonker. Ach! ve vill,” he exclaimed for the third
+or fourth time within a dozen miles from Euston.
+
+His Bunker assumed an air half affectionate, half apologetic.
+
+“I only regret that I should have the lion's share of the adventure, my
+dear Baron.”
+
+“Yes,” said the Baron, with a symptom of a sigh, “I do envy you indeed.
+Yet I should not say zat----” Bunker swiftly interrupted him.
+
+“You would like to play a worthier part than merely his lordship's
+friend?”
+
+“Ach! if I could.”
+
+Bunker smiled benignantly.
+
+“Ah, Baron, you cannot suppose that I would really do Tulliwuddle such
+injustice as to attempt, in my own feeble manner, to impersonate him?”
+
+The Baron stared.
+
+“Vat mean you?”
+
+“YOU shall be the lion, _I_ the humble necessary jackal. As our friend
+so aptly quoted, noblesse oblige. Of course, there can be no doubt about
+it. You, Baron, must play the part of peer, I of friend.”
+
+The Baron gasped.
+
+“Impossible!”
+
+“Quite simple, my dear fellow.”
+
+“You--you don't mean so?”
+
+“I do indeed.”
+
+“Bot I shall not do it so vell as you.”
+
+“A hundred times better.”
+
+“Bot vy did you not say so before?”
+
+“Tulliwuddle might not have agreed with me.”
+
+“Bot vould he like it now?”
+
+“It is not what he likes that we should consider, it's what is good for
+his interests.”
+
+“Bot if I should fail?”
+
+“He will be no worse off than before. Left to himself, he certainly
+won't marry the lady. You give him his only chance.”
+
+“Bot more zan you vould, really and truthfully?”
+
+“My dear Baron, you are admitted by all to be an ideal German nobleman.
+Therefore you will certainly make an ideal British peer. You have the
+true Grand-Seigneur air. No one would mistake you for anything but a
+great aristocrat, if they merely saw you in bathing pants; whereas
+I have something a little different about my manner. I'm not so
+impressive--not so hall-marked, in fact.”
+
+His friend's omniscient air and candidly eloquent tone impressed the
+Baron considerably. His ingrained conviction of his own importance
+accorded admirably with these arguments. His thirst for “life” craved
+this lion's share. His sanguine spirit leaped at the appeal. Yet
+his well-regulated conscience could not but state one or two patent
+objections.
+
+“Bot I have not read so moch of the Tollyvoddles as you. I do not know
+ze strings so vell.”
+
+“I have told you nearly everything I know. You will find the rest here.”
+
+Essington handed him the note-book containing his succinct digest.
+In intelligent anticipation of this contingency it was written in his
+clearest handwriting.
+
+“You should have been a German,” said the Baron admiringly.
+
+He glanced with sparkling eyes at the note-book, and then with a
+distinctly greater effort the Teutonic conscience advanced another
+objection.
+
+“Bot you have bought ze kilt, ze Highland hat, ze brogue shoes.”
+
+“I had them made to your measurements.”
+
+The Baron impetuously embraced his thoughtful friend. Then again his
+smile died away.
+
+“Bot, Bonker, my voice! Zey tell me I haf nozing zat you vould call
+qvite an accent; bot a foreigner--one does regognize him, eh?”
+
+“I shall explain that in a sentence. The romantic tincture of--well, not
+quite accent, is a pleasant little piece of affectation adopted by the
+young bloods about the Court in compliment to the German connections of
+the Royal family.”
+
+The Baron raised no more objections.
+
+“Bonker, I agree! Tollyvoddle I shall be, by Jove and all!”
+
+He beamed his satisfaction, and then in an eager voice asked--
+
+“You haf not ze kilt in zat hat-box?”
+
+Unfortunately, however, the kilt was in the van.
+
+Now the journey, propitiously begun, became more exhilarating, more
+exciting with each mile flung by. The Baron, egged on by his friend's
+high spirits and his own imagination to anticipate pleasure upon
+pleasure, watched with rapture the summer landscape whiz past the
+windows. Through the flat midlands of England they sped; field after
+field, hedgerow after hedgerow, trees by the dozen, by the hundred,
+by the thousand, spinning by in one continuous green vista. Red brick
+towns, sluggish rivers, thatched villages and ancient churches dark with
+yews, the shining web of junctions, and a whisking glimpse of wayside
+stations leaped towards them, past them, and leagues away behind. But
+swiftly as they sped, it was all too slowly for the fresh-created Lord
+Tulliwuddle.
+
+“Are we not nearly to Scotland yet?” he inquired some fifty times.
+
+“'My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the dears!'” hummed the
+abdicated nobleman, whose hilarity had actually increased (if that were
+possible) since his descent into the herd again.
+
+All the travellers' familiar landmarks were hailed by the gleeful
+diplomatist with encouraging comments.
+
+“Ach, look! Beauteeful view! How quickly it is gone! Hurray! Ve must be
+nearly to Scotland.”
+
+A panegyric on the rough sky-line of the north country fells was
+interrupted by the entrance of the dining-car attendant. Learning that
+they would dine, he politely inquired in what names he should engage
+their seats. Then, for an instant, a horrible confusion nearly overcame
+the Baron. He--a von Blitzenberg--to give a false name! His color rose,
+he stammered, and only in the nick of time caught his companion's eye.
+
+“Ze Lord Tollyvoddle,” he announced, with an effort as heroic as any of
+his ancestors' most warlike enterprises.
+
+Too impressed to inquire how this remarkable title should be spelled,
+the man turned to the other distinguished-looking passenger.
+
+“Bunker,” said that gentleman, with smiling assurance.
+
+The man went out.
+
+“Now are ve named!” cried the Baron, his courage rising the higher for
+the shock it had sustained. “And you vunce more vill be Bonker? Goot!”
+
+“That satisfies you?”
+
+The Baron hesitated.
+
+“My dear friend, I have a splendid idea! Do you know I did disgover zere
+used to be a nobleman in Austria really called Count Bonker? He vas a
+famous man; you need not be ashamed to take his name. Vy should not you
+be Count Bonker?”
+
+“You prefer to travel in titled company? Well, be hanged--why not! When
+one comes to think of it, it seems a pity that my sins should always be
+attributed to the middle classes.”
+
+Accordingly this history has now the honorable task of chronicling the
+exploits of no fewer than two noblemen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Late that evening they reached a city which the home-coming chieftain in
+an outburst of Celtic fervor dubbed “mine own bonny Edinburg!” and there
+they repaired for the night to a hotel. Once more the Baron (we may
+still style him so since the peerage of Tulliwuddle was of that standing
+also) showed a certain diffidence when it came to answering to his new
+title in public; but in the seclusion of their private sitting-room he
+was careful to assure his friend that this did not arise from any lack
+of nerve or qualms zof conscience, but merely through a species of
+headache--the result of railway travelling.
+
+“Do not fear for me,” he declared as he stirred the sugar in his glass,
+“I have ze heart of a lion.”
+
+The liquid he was sipping being nothing less potent than a brew of
+whisky punch, which he had ordered (or rather requested Bunker to order)
+as the most romantically national compound he could think of, produced,
+indeed, a fervor of foolhardiness. He insisted upon opening the door
+wide, and getting Bunker to address him as “Tollyvoddle,” in a strident
+voice, “so zat zey all may hear,” and then answering in a firm “Yes,
+Count Bonker, vat vould you say to me?”
+
+It is true that he instantly closed the door again, and even bolted it,
+but his display seemed to make a vast impression upon himself.
+
+“Many men vould not dare so to go mit anozzer name,” he announced; “bot
+I have my nerves onder a good gontrol.”
+
+“You astonish me,” said the Count.
+
+“I do even surprise myself,” admitted the Baron.
+
+In truth the ordeal of carelessly carrying off an alias is said by those
+who have undergone it (and the report is confirmed by an experienced
+class of public officials) to require a species of hardihood which,
+fortunately for society, is somewhat rare. The most daring Smith will
+sometimes stammer when it comes to merely answering “Yes” to a cry of
+“Brown!” and Count Bunker, whose knowledge of human nature was profound
+and remarkably accurate, was careful to fortify his friend by example
+and praise, till by the time they went to bed the Baron could scarcely
+be withheld from seeking out the manager and airing his assurance upon
+him. Or, at least, he declared he would have done this had he been sure
+that the manager was not already in bed himself.
+
+Unfortunately at this juncture the Count committed one of those
+indiscretions to which a gay spirit is always prone, but which, to do
+him justice, seldom sullied his own record as a successful adventurer.
+At an hour considerably past midnight, hearing an excited summons from
+the Baron's bedroom, he laid down his toothbrush and hastened across the
+passage, to find the new peer in a crimson dressing-gown of quilted silk
+gazing enthusiastically at a lithograph that hung upon the wall.
+
+“See!” he cried gleefully, “here is my own ancestor. Bonker, I feel I am
+Tollyvoddle indeed.”
+
+The print which had inspired this enthusiasm depicted a historical but
+treasonable Lord Tulliwuddle preparing to have his head removed.
+
+Giving it a droll look, the Count observed--
+
+“Well, if it inspires you, my dear Baron, that's all right. The omen
+would have struck me differently.”
+
+“Ze omen!” murmured the Baron with a start.
+
+It required all Bunker's tact to revive his ally's damped enthusiasm,
+and even at breakfast next morning he referred in a gloomy voice to
+various premonitions recorded in the history of his family, and the
+horrible consequences of disregarding them.
+
+But by the time they had started upon their journey north, his spirits
+rose a trifle; and when at length all lowland landscapes were left
+far behind them, and they had come into a province of peat streams and
+granite pinnacles, with the gloom of pines and the freshness of the
+birch blended like a May and December marriage, all appearance, at
+least, of disquietude had passed away.
+
+Yet the Count kept an anxious eye upon him. He was becoming decidedly
+restless. At one moment he would rave about the glorious scenery; the
+next, plunge into a brown study of the Tulliwuddle rent-roll; and then
+in an instant start humming an air and smoking so fast that both their
+cases were empty while they were yet half an hour from Torrydhulish
+Station. Now the Baron took to biting his nails, looking at his watch,
+and answering questions at random--a very different spectacle from the
+enthusiastic traveller of yesterday.
+
+“Only ten minutes more,” observed Bunker in his most cheering manner.
+
+The Baron made no reply.
+
+They were now running along the brink of a glimmering loch, the piled
+mountains on the farther shore perfectly mirrored; a tern or two lazily
+fishing; a delicate summer sky smiling above. All at once Count Bunker
+started--
+
+“That must be Hechnahoul!” said he.
+
+The Baron looked and beheld, upon an eminence across the loch, the
+towers and turrets of an imposing mansion overtopping a green grove.
+
+“And here is the station,” added the Count.
+
+The Baron's face assumed a piteous expression.
+
+“Bonker,” he stammered, “I--I am afraid! You be ze Tollyvoddle--I cannot
+do him!”
+
+“My dear Baron!”
+
+“Oh, I cannot!”
+
+“Be brave--for the honor of the fatherland. Play the bold Blitzenberg!”
+
+“Ach, ja; but not bold Tollyvoddle. Zat picture--you vere right--it vas
+omen!”
+
+Never did the genius of Bunker rise more audaciously to an occasion.
+
+“My dear Baron,” said he, assuming on the instant a confidence-inspiring
+smile, “that print was a hoax; it wasn't old Tulliwuddle at all. I faked
+it myself.”
+
+“So?” gasped the Baron. “You assure me truly?”
+
+Muttering (the historian sincerely hopes) a petition for forgiveness,
+Bunker firmly answered--
+
+“I do assure you!”
+
+The train had stopped, and as they were the only first-class passengers
+on board, a peculiarly magnificent footman already had his hand upon the
+door. Before turning the handle, he touched his hat.
+
+“Lord Tulliwuddle?” he respectfully inquired.
+
+“Ja--zat is, yes, I am,” replied the Baron.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+From the platform down to the pier was only some fifty yards, and before
+them the travellers perceived an exceedingly smart steam-launch, and
+a stout middle-aged gentleman, in a blue serge suit and yachting cap,
+advancing from it to greet them. They had only time to observe that
+he had a sanguine complexion, iron-gray whiskers, and a wide-open eye,
+before he raised the cap and, in a decidedly North British accent, thus
+addressed them--
+
+“My lord--ahem!--your lordship, I should say--I presume I've the
+pleasure of seeing Lord Tulliwuddle?”
+
+The Count gently pushed his more distinguished friend in front. With
+an embarrassment equal to their host's, his lordship bowed and gave his
+hand.
+
+“I am ze Tollyvoddle--vary pleased--Mistair Gosh, I soppose?”
+
+“Gallosh, my lord. Very honored to welcome you.”
+
+In the round eyes of Mr. Gallosh, Count Bunker perceived an unmistakable
+stare of astonishment at the sound of his lordship's accented voice.
+The Baron, on his part, was evidently still suffering from his attack of
+stage fright; but again the Count's gifts smoothed the creases from the
+situation.
+
+“You have not introduced me to our host, Tulliwuddle,” he said, with a
+gay, infectious confidence.
+
+“Ah, so! Zis is my friend Count Bunker--gom all ze vay from Austria,”
+ responded the Baron, with no glimmer of his customary aplomb.
+
+Making a mental resolution to warn his ally never to say one word more
+about his fictitious past than was wrung by cross-examination, the
+distinguished-looking Austrian shook his host's hand warmly.
+
+“From Austria via London,” he explained in his pleasantest manner. “I
+object altogether to be considered a foreigner, Mr. Gallosh; and, in
+fact, I often tell Tulliwuddle that people will think me more English
+than himself. The German fashions so much in vogue at Court are
+transforming the very speech of your nobility. Don't you sometimes
+notice it?”
+
+Thus directly appealed to, Mr. Gallosh became manifestly perplexed.
+
+“Yes--yes, you're right in a way,” he pronounced cautiously. “I suppose
+they do that. But will ye not take a seat? This is my launch. Hi!
+Robert, give his lordship a hand on board!”
+
+Two mariners and a second tall footman assisted the guests to embark,
+and presently they were cutting the waters of the loch at a merry pace.
+
+In the prow, like youth, the Baron insisted upon sitting with folded
+arms and a gloomy aspect; and as his nerve was so patently disturbed,
+the Count decidedly approved of an arrangement which left his host and
+himself alone together in the stern. In his present state of mind the
+Baron was capable of any indiscretion were he compelled to talk; while,
+silent and brooding in isolated majesty, he looked to perfection the
+part of returning exile. So, evidently, thought Mr. Gallosh.
+
+“His lordship is looking verra well,” he confided to the Count in a
+respectfully lowered voice.
+
+“The improvement has been remarkable ever since his foot touched his
+native heath.”
+
+“You don't say so,” said Mr. Gallosh, with even greater interest. “Was
+he delicate before?”
+
+“A London life, Mr. Gallosh.”
+
+“True--true, he'll have been busy seeing his friends; it'll have been
+verra wearing.”
+
+“The anxiety, the business of being invested, and so on, has upset him
+a trifle. You must put down any little--well, peculiarity to that, Mr.
+Gallosh.”
+
+“I understand--aye, umh'm, quite so. He'll like to be left to himself,
+perhaps?”
+
+“That depends on his condition,” said the Count diplomatically.
+
+“It's a great responsibility for a young man; yon's a big property to
+look after,” observed Mr. Gallosh in a moment.
+
+“You have touched the spot!” said the Count warmly. “That is, in
+fact, the chief cause of Tulliwuddle's curious moodiness ever since
+he succeeded to the title. He feels his responsibilities a little too
+acutely.”
+
+Again Mr. Gallosh ruminated, while his guest from the corner of his eye
+surveyed him shrewdly.
+
+“My forecast was wonderfully accurate,” he said to himself.
+
+The silence was first broken by Mr. Gallosh. As if thinking aloud, he
+remarked--
+
+“I was awful surprised to hear him speak! It's the Court fashion, you
+say?”
+
+“Partly that; partly a prolonged residence on the Continent in his
+youth. He acquired his accent then; he has retained it for fashion's
+sake,” explained the Count, who thought it as well to bolster up the
+weakest part of his case a little more securely.
+
+With this prudent purpose, he added, with a flattering air of taking his
+host into his aristocratic confidence--
+
+“You will perhaps be good enough to explain this to the friends and
+dependants Lord Tulliwuddle is about to meet? A breath of unsympathetic
+criticism would grieve him greatly if it came to his ears.”
+
+“Quite, quite,” said Mr. Gallosh eagerly. “I'll make it all right. I
+understand the sentiment pairfectly. It's verra natural--verra natural
+indeed.”
+
+At that moment the Baron started from his reverie with an affrighted
+air.
+
+“Vat is zat strange sound!” he exclaimed.
+
+The others listened.
+
+“That's just the pipes, my lord,” said Mr. Gallosh. “They're tuning up
+to welcome you.”
+
+His lordship stared at the shore ahead of them.
+
+“Zere are many peoples on ze coast!” he cried. “Vat makes it for?”
+
+“They've come to receive you,” his host explained. “It's just a little
+spontaneous demonstration, my lord.”
+
+His lordship's composure in no way increased.
+
+“It was Mrs. Gallosh organized a wee bit entertainment on his lordship's
+landing,” their host explained confidentially to the Count. “It's just
+informal, ye understand. She's been instructing some of the tenants--and
+ma own girls will be there--but, oh, it's nothing to speak of. If he
+says a few words in reply, that'll be all they'll be expecting.”
+
+The strains of “Tulliwuddle wha hae” grew ever louder and, to an
+untrained ear, more terrific. In a moment they were mingled with a
+clapping of hands and a Highland cheer, the launch glided alongside the
+pier, and, supported on his faithful friend's arm, the panic-stricken
+Tulliwuddle staggered ashore. Before his dazed eyes there seemed to be
+arrayed the vastest and most barbaric concourse his worst nightmare had
+ever imagined. Six pipers played within ten paces of him, each of them
+arrayed in the full panoply of the clan; at least a dozen dogs yelped
+their exultation; and from the surrounding throng two ancient men
+in tartan and four visions in snowy white stepped forth to greet the
+distinguished visitors.
+
+The first hitch in the proceedings occurred at this point. According to
+the unofficial but carefully considered programme, the pipers ought to
+have ceased their melody; but, whether inspired by ecstatic loyalty or
+because the Tulliwuddle pibroch took longer to perform than had been
+anticipated, they continued to skirl with such vigor that expostulations
+passed entirely unheard. Under the circumstances there was nothing for
+it but shouting, and in a stentorian yell Mr. Gallosh introduced his
+wife and three fair daughters.
+
+Thereupon Mrs. Gallosh, a broad-beamed matron whose complexion
+contrasted pleasantly with her costume, delivered the following
+oration--
+
+“Lord Tulliwuddle, in the name of the women of Hechnahoul--I may say in
+the name of the women of all the Highlands--oor ain Heelands, my lord”
+ (this with the most insinuating smile)--“I bid you welcome to your
+ancestral estates. Remembering the conquests your ancestors used to
+make both in war and in a gentler sphere” (Mrs. Gallosh looked archness
+itself), “we ladies, I suppose, should regard your home-coming with some
+misgivings; but, my lord, every bonny Prince Charlie has his bonny Flora
+Macdonald, and in this land of mountain, mist, and flood, where 'Dark
+Ben More frowns o'er the wave,' and where 'Ilka lassie has her laddie,'
+you will find a thousand romantic maidens ready to welcome you as Ellen
+welcomed Fitz-James! For centuries your heroic race has adorned the
+halls and trod the heather of Hechnahoul, and for centuries more we hope
+to see the offspring of your lordship and some winsome Celtic maid rule
+these cataracts and glens!”
+
+At this point the exertion of shouting down six bagpipes in active
+eruption caused a temporary cessation of the lady's eloquence, and the
+pause was filled by the cheers of the crowd led by the “Hip-hip-hip!”
+ of Count Bunker, and by the broken and fortunately inaudible protests of
+the embarrassed father of future Tulliwuddles. In a moment Mrs. Gallosh
+had resumed--
+
+“Lord Tulliwuddle, though I myself am only a stranger to your clan, your
+Highland heart will feel reassured when I mention that I belong through
+my grandmother to the kindred clan of the Mackays!” (“Hear, hear!” from
+two or three ladies and gentlemen, evidently guests of the Gallosh.) “We
+are but visitors at Hechnahoul, yet we assure you that no more devoted
+hearts beat in all Caledonia! Lord Tulliwuddle, we welcome you!”
+
+“Put your hand on your heart and bow,” whispered Bunker. “Keep on bowing
+and say nothing!”
+
+Mechanically the bewildered Baron obeyed, and for a few moments
+presented a spectacle not unlike royalty in procession.
+
+But as some reply from him had evidently been expected at this point,
+and the pipers had even ceased playing lest any word of their chief's
+should be lost, a pause ensued which might have grown embarrassing had
+not the Count promptly stepped forward.
+
+“I think,” he said, indicating two other snow-white figures who held
+gigantic bouquets, “that a pleasant part of the ceremony still remains
+before us.”
+
+With a grateful glance at this discerning guest, Mrs. Gallosh thereupon
+led forward her two youngest daughters (aged fifteen and thirteen), who,
+with an air so delightfully coy that it fell like a ray of sunshine
+on the poor Baron's heart, presented him with their flowery symbols of
+Hechnahoul's obeisance to its lord.
+
+His consternation returned with the advance of the two ancient
+clansmen who, after a guttural panegyric in Gaelic, offered him further
+symbols--a claymore and target, very formidable to behold. All these
+gifts having been adroitly transferred to the arms of the footmen by the
+ubiquitous Count, the Baron's emotions swiftly passed through another
+phase when the eldest Miss Gallosh, aged twenty, with burning eyes
+and the most distracting tresses, dropped him a sweeping courtesy and
+offered a final contribution--a fiery cross, carved and painted by her
+own fair hands.
+
+A fresh round of applause followed this, and then a sudden silence fell
+upon the assembly. All eyes were turned upon the chieftain: not even a
+dog barked: it was the moment of a lifetime.
+
+“Can you manage a speech, old man?” whispered Bunker.
+
+“Ach, no, no, no! Let me escape. Oh, let me fly!”
+
+“Bury your face in your hands and lean on my shoulder,” prompted the
+Count.
+
+This stage direction being obeyed, the most effective tableau
+conceivable was presented, and the climax was reached when the Count,
+after a brief dumb-show intended to indicate how vain were Lord
+Tulliwuddle's efforts to master his emotion, spoke these words in the
+most thrilling accents he could muster:
+
+“Fair ladies and brave men of Hechnahoul! Your chief, your friend,
+your father requests me to express to you the sentiments which his
+over-wrought emotions prevent him from uttering himself. On his behalf I
+tender to his kind and courteous friends, Mr., Mrs., and the fair maids
+Gallosh, the thanks of a long-absent exile returned to his native land
+for the welcome they have given him! To his devoted clan he not only
+gives his thanks, but his promise that all rents shall be reduced by one
+half--so long as he dwells among them!” (Tumultuous applause, disturbed
+only by a violent ejaculation from a large man in knickerbockers whom
+Bunker justly judged to be the factor.)
+
+“With his last breath he shall perpetually thunder:
+Ahasheen--comara--mohr!”
+
+The Tulliwuddle slogan, pronounced with the most conscientious accuracy
+of which a Sassenach was capable, proved as effective a curtain as he
+had anticipated; and amid a perfect babel of cheering and bagpiping the
+chieftain was led to his host's carriage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+“Well, the worst of it is over,” said Bunker cheerfully.
+
+The Baron groaned. “Ze vorst is only jost beginning to gommence.”
+
+They were sitting over a crackling fire of logs in the sitting-room of
+the suite which their host had reserved for his honored visitors. How
+many heirlooms and dusky portraits the romantic thoughtfulness of the
+ladies had managed to crowd into this apartment for the occasion were
+hard to compute; enough, certainly, one would think, to inspire the most
+sluggish-blooded Tulliwuddle with a martial exultation. Instead, the
+chieftain groaned again.
+
+“Tell zem I am ill. I cannot gom to dinner. To-morrow I shall take
+ze train back to London. Himmel! Vy vas I fool enof to act soch
+dishonorable lies! I deceive all these kind peoples!”
+
+“It isn't that which worries me,” said Bunker imperturbably. “I am only
+afraid that if you display this spirit you won't deceive them.”
+
+“I do not vish to,” said the Baron sulkily.
+
+It required half an hour of the Count's most artful blandishments to
+persuade him that duty, honor, and prudence all summoned him to the
+feast. This being accomplished, he next endeavored to convince him that
+he would feel more comfortable in the airy freedom of the Tulliwuddle
+tartan. But here the Baron was obdurate. Now that the kilt lay ready to
+his hand he could not be persuaded even to look at it. In gloomy silence
+he donned his conventional evening dress and announced, last thing
+before they left their room--
+
+“Bonker, say no more! To-morrow morning I depart!”
+
+Their hostess had explained that a merely informal dinner awaited them,
+since his lordship (she observed) would no doubt prefer a quiet evening
+after his long journey. But Mrs. Gallosh was one of those good ladies
+who are fond of asking their friends to take “pot luck,” and then
+providing them with fourteen courses; or suggesting a “quiet little
+evening together,” when they have previously removed the drawing-room
+carpet. It is an affectation of modesty apt to disconcert the retiring
+guest who takes them at their word. In the drawing-room of Mrs. Gallosh
+the startled Baron found assembled--firstly, the Gallosh family,
+consisting of all those whose acquaintance we have already made, and in
+addition two stalwart school-boy sons; secondly, their house-party, who
+comprised a Mr. and Mrs. Rentoul, from the same metropolis of commerce
+as Mr. Gallosh, and a hatchet-faced young man with glasses, answering to
+the name of Mr. Cromarty-Gow; and, finally, one or two neighbors. These
+last included Mr. M'Fadyen, the large factor; the Established Church,
+U.F., Wee Free, Episcopalian, and Original Secession ministers, all of
+whom, together with their kirks, flourished within a four-mile radius of
+the Castle; the wives to three of the above; three young men and their
+tutor, being some portion of a reading-party in the village; and Mrs.
+Cameron-Campbell and her five daughters, from a neighboring dower-house
+upon the loch.
+
+It was fortunate that all these people were prepared to be impressed
+with Lord Tulliwuddle, whatever he should say or do; and further, that
+the unique position of such a famous hereditary magnate even led them
+to anticipate some marked deviation from the ordinary canons of conduct.
+Otherwise, the gloomy brows; the stare, apparently haughty, in reality
+alarmed; the strange accent and the brief responses of the chief guest,
+might have caused an unfavorable opinion of his character.
+
+As it was, his aloofness, however natural, would probably have proved
+depressing had it not been for the gay charm and agreeable condescension
+of the other nobleman. Seldom had more rested upon that adventurer's
+shoulders, and never had he acquitted himself with greater credit. It
+was with considerable secret concern that he found himself placed at
+the opposite end of the table from his friend, but his tongue rattled as
+gaily and his smiles came as readily as ever. With Mrs. Cameron-Campbell
+on one side, and a minister's lady upon the other, his host two places
+distant, and a considerable audience of silent eaters within earshot,
+he successfully managed to divert the attention of quite half the table
+from the chieftain's moody humor.
+
+“I always feel at home with a Scotsman,” he discoursed genially.
+“His imagination is so quick, his intellect so clear, his honesty so
+remarkable, and” (with an irresistible glance at the minister's lady)
+“his wife so charming.”
+
+“Ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Gallosh, who was mellowing rapidly under the
+influence of his own champagne. “I'm verra glad to see you know good
+folks when you meet them. What do you think now of the English?”
+
+Having previously assured himself that his audience was neat Scotch, the
+polished Austrian unblushingly replied--
+
+“The Englishman, I have observed, has a slightly slower imagination, a
+denser intelligence, and is less conspicuous for perfect honesty. His
+womankind also have less of that nameless grace and ethereal beauty
+which distinguish their Scottish sisters.”
+
+It is needless to say that a more popular visitor never was seen than
+this discriminating foreigner, and if his ambitions had not risen above
+a merely personal triumph, he would have been in the highest state of
+satisfaction. But with a disinterested eye he every now and then
+sought the farther end of the table, where, between his hostess and her
+charming eldest daughter, and facing his factor, the Baron had to endure
+his ordeal unsupported.
+
+“I wonder how the devil he's getting on!” he more than once said to
+himself.
+
+For better or for worse, as the dinner advanced, he began to hear the
+Court accent more frequently, till his curiosity became extreme.
+
+“His lordship seems in better spirits,” remarked Mr. Gallosh.
+
+“I hope to Heaven he may be!” was the fervent thought of Count Bunker.
+
+At that moment the point was settled. With his old roar of exuberant
+gusto the Baron announced, in a voice that drowned even the five
+ministers--
+
+“Ach, yes, I vill toss ze caber to-morrow! I vill toss him--so high!”
+ (his napkin flapped upwards). “How long shall he be? So tall as my
+castle: Mees Gallosh, you shall help me? Ach, yes! Mit hands so fair ze
+caber vill spring like zis!”
+
+His pudding-spoon, in vivid illustration, skipped across the table and
+struck his factor smartly on the shirt-front.
+
+“Sare, I beg your pardon,” he beamed with a graciousness that charmed
+Mrs. Gallosh even more than his spirited conversation--“Ach, do not
+return it, please! It is from my castle silver--keep it in memory of zis
+happy night!”
+
+The royal generosity of this act almost reconciled Mrs. Gallosh to the
+loss of one of her own silver spoons.
+
+“Saved!” sighed Bunker, draining his glass with a relish he had not felt
+in any item of the feast hitherto.
+
+Now that the Baron's courage had returned, no heraldic lion ever pranced
+more bravely. His laughter, his jests, his compliments were showered
+upon the delighted diners. Mr. Gallosh and he drank healths down the
+whole length of the table “mit no tap-heels!” at least four times.
+He peeled an orange for Miss Gallosh, and cut the skin into the most
+diverting figures, pressing her hand tenderly as he presented her
+with these works of art. He inquired of Mrs. Gallosh the names of the
+clergymen, and, shouting something distantly resembling these, toasted
+them each and all with what he conceived to be appropriate comments.
+Finally he rose to his feet, and, to the surprise and delight of all,
+delivered the speech they had been disappointed of earlier in the day.
+
+“Goot Mr. Gallosh, fair Mrs. Gallosh, divine Mees Gallosh, and all
+ze ladies and gentlemans, how sorry I vas I could not make my speech
+before, I cannot eggspress. I had a headache, and vas not vell vithin.
+Ach, soch zings vill happen in a new climate. Bot now I am inspired to
+tell you I loff you all! I zank you eggstremely! How can I return
+zis hospitality? I vill tell you! You must all go to Bavaria and stay
+mit----”
+
+“Tulliwuddle! Tulliwuddle!” shouted Bunker frantically, to the great
+amazement of the company. “Allow me to invite the company myself to stay
+with me in Bavaria!”
+
+The Baron turned crimson, as he realized the abyss of error into which
+he had so nearly plunged. Adroitly the Count covered his confusion with
+a fit of laughter so ingeniously hearty that in a moment he had joined
+in it too.
+
+“Ha, ha, ha!” he shouted. “Zat was a leetle joke at my friend's
+eggspense. It is here, in my castle, you shall visit me; some day very
+soon I shall live in him. Meanvile, dear Mrs. Gallosh, gonsider it your
+home! For me you make it heaven, and I cannot ask more zan zat! Now let
+us gom and have some fon!”
+
+A salvo of applause greeted this conclusion. At the Baron's impetuous
+request the cigars were brought into the hall, and ladies and gentlemen
+all trooped out together.
+
+“I cannot vait till I have seen Miss Gallosh dance ze Highland reel,” he
+explained to her gratified mother; “she has promised me.”
+
+“But you must dance too, Lord Tulliwuddle,” said ravishing Miss Gallosh.
+“You know you said you would.”
+
+“A promise to a lady is a law,” replied the Baron gallantly, adding in a
+lower tone, “especially to so fair a lady!”
+
+“It's a pity his lordship hadn't on his kilt,” put in Mr. Gallosh
+genially.
+
+“By ze Gad, I vill put him on! Hoch! Ve vill have some fon!”
+
+The Baron rushed from the hall, followed in a moment by his noble
+friend. Bunker found him already wrapping many yards of tartan about his
+waist.
+
+“But, my dear fellow, you must take off your trousers,” he expostulated.
+
+Despite his glee, the Baron answered with something of the Blitzenberg
+dignity--
+
+“Ze bare leg I cannot show to-night--not to dance mit ze young ladies.
+Ven I have practised, perhaps; but not now, Bonker.”
+
+Accordingly the portraits of four centuries of Tulliwuddles beheld
+their representative appear in the very castle of Hechnahoul with his
+trouser-legs capering beneath an ill-hung petticoat of tartan. And, to
+make matters worse in their canvas eyes, his own shameless laugh rang
+loudest in the mirth that greeted his entrance.
+
+“Ze garb of Gaul!” he announced, shaking with hilarity. “Gom, Bonker,
+dance mit me ze Highland fling!”
+
+The first night of Lord Tulliwuddle's visit to his ancestral halls is
+still remembered among his native hills. The Count also, his mind now
+rapturously at ease, performed prodigies. They danced together what they
+were pleased to call the latest thing in London, sang a duet, waltzed
+with the younger ladies, till hardly a head was left unturned, and,
+in short, sent away the ministers and their ladies, the five Miss
+Cameron-Campbells, the reading-party, and particularly the factor, with
+a new conception of a Highland chief. As for the house-party, they felt
+that they were fortunate beyond the lot of most ordinary mortals.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The Baron sat among his heirlooms, laboriously disengaging himself from
+his kilt. Fitfully throughout this process he would warble snatches of
+an air which Miss Gallosh had sung.
+
+“Whae vould not dee for Sharlie?” he trolled, “Ze yong chevalier!”
+
+“Then you don't think of leaving to-morrow morning?” asked Count Bunker,
+who was watching him with a complacent air.
+
+“Mein Gott, no fears!”
+
+“We had better wait, perhaps, till the afternoon?”
+
+“I go not for tree veeks! Gaben sie--das ist, gim'me zat tombler. Vun
+more of mountain juice to ze health of all Galloshes! Partic'ly of vun!
+Eh, old Bonker?”
+
+The Count took care to see that the mountain juice was well diluted.
+His friend had already found Scottish hospitality difficult to enjoy in
+moderation.
+
+“Baron, you gave us a marvellously lifelike representation of a Jacobite
+chieftain!”
+
+The Baron laughed a trifle vacantly.
+
+“Ach, it is easy for me. Himmel, a Blitzenberg should know how!
+Vollytoddle--Toddyvolly--whatsh my name, Bonker?”
+
+The Count informed him.
+
+“Tollivoddlesh is nozing to vat I am at home! Abs'lutely nozing! I have
+a house twice as big as zis, and servants--Ach, so many I know not! Bot,
+mein Bonker, it is not soch fon as zis! Mein Gott, I most get to bed. I
+toss ze caber to-morrow.”
+
+And upon the arm of his faithful ally he moved cautiously towards his
+bedroom.
+
+But if he had enjoyed his evening well, his pleasure was nothing to the
+gratification of his hosts. They could not bring themselves to break up
+their party for the night: there were so many delightful reminiscences
+to discuss.
+
+“Of all the evenings ever I spent,” declared Mr. Gallosh, “this fair
+takes the cake. Just to think of that aristocratic young fellow being
+as companionable-like! When first I put eyes on him, I said to
+myself--'You're not for the likes of us. All lords and ladies is your
+kind. Never a word did he say in the boat till he heard the pipes play,
+and then I really thought he was frightened! It must just have been a
+kind of home-sickness or something.”
+
+“It'll have been the tuning up that set his teeth on edge,” Mrs. Gallosh
+suggested practically.
+
+“Or perhaps his heart was stirred with thoughts of the past!” said Miss
+Gallosh, her eyes brightening.
+
+In any case, all were agreed that the development of his hereditary
+instincts had been extraordinarily rapid.
+
+“I never really properly talked with a lord before,” sighed Mrs.
+Rentoul; “I hope they're all like this one.”
+
+Mrs. Gallosh, on the other hand, who boasted of having had one
+tete-a-tete and joined in several general conversations with the
+peerage, appraised Lord Tulliwuddle with greater discrimination.
+
+“Ah, he's got a soupcon!” she declared. “That's what I admire!”
+
+“Do you mean his German accent?” asked Mr. Cromarty-Gow, who was
+renowned for a cynical wit, and had been seeking an occasion to air it
+ever since Lord Tulliwuddle had made Miss Gallosh promise to dance a
+reel with him.
+
+But the feeling of the party was so strongly against a breath of
+irreverent criticism, and their protest so emphatic, that he presently
+strolled off to the smoking-room, wishing that Miss Gallosh, at least,
+would exercise more critical discrimination.
+
+“Do you think would they like breakfast in their own room, Duncan?”
+ asked Mrs. Gallosh.
+
+“Offer it them--offer it them; they can but refuse, and it's a kind of
+compliment to give them the opportunity.”
+
+“His lordship will not be wanting to rise early,” said Mr. Rentoul. “Did
+you notice what an amount he could drink, Duncan? Man, and he carried it
+fine! But he'll be the better of a sleep-in in the morning, him coming
+from a journey too.”
+
+Mr. Rentoul was a recognized authority on such questions, having, before
+the days of his affluence, travelled for a notable firm of distillers.
+His praise of Lord Tulliwuddle's capacity was loudly echoed by Mr.
+Gallosh, and even the ladies could not but indulgently agree that he had
+exhibited a strength of head worthy of his race.
+
+“And yet he was a wee thing touched too,” said Mr. Rentoul sagely.
+“Maybe you were too far gone yourself, Duncan, to notice it, and the
+ladies would just think it was gallantry; but I saw it in his voice and
+his legs--oh, just a wee thingie, nothing to speak of.”
+
+“Surely you are mistaken!” cried Miss Gallosh. “Wasn't it only
+excitement at finding himself at Hechnahoul?”
+
+“There's two kinds of excitement,” answered the oracle. “And this was
+the kind I'm best acquaint with. Oh, but it was just a wee bittie.”
+
+“And who thinks the worse of him for it?” cried Mr. Gallosh.
+
+This question was answered by general acclamation in a manner and with a
+spirit that proved how deeply his lordship's gracious behavior had laid
+hold of all hearts.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Breakfast in the private parlor was laid for two; but it was only Count
+Bunker, arrayed in a becoming suit of knickerbockers, and looking as
+fresh as if he had feasted last night on aerated water, who sat down to
+consume it.
+
+“Who would be his ordinary everyday self when there are fifty more
+amusing parts to play,” he reflected gaily, as he sipped his coffee.
+“Blitzenberg and Essington were two conventional members of society,
+ageing ingloriously, tamely approaching five-and-thirty in bath-chairs.
+Tulliwuddle and Bunker are paladins of romance! We thought we had grown
+up--thank Heaven, we were deceived!”
+
+Having breakfasted and lit a cigarette, he essayed for the second
+time to arouse the Baron; but getting nothing but the most somnolent
+responses, he set out for a stroll, visiting the gardens, stables,
+kennels, and keeper's house, and even inspecting a likely pool or
+two upon the river, and making in the course of it several useful
+acquaintances among the Tulliwuddle retainers.
+
+When he returned he found the Baron stirring a cup of strong tea and
+staring at an ancestral portrait with a thoughtful frown.
+
+“They are preparing the caber, Baron,” he remarked genially.
+
+“Stoff and nonsense; I vill not fling her!” was the wholly unexpected
+reply. “I do not love to play ze fool alvays!”
+
+“My dear Baron!”
+
+“Zat picture,” said the Baron, nodding his head solemnly towards the
+portrait. “It is like ze Lord Tollyvoddle in ze print at ze hotel. I do
+believe he is ze same.”
+
+“But I explained that he wasn't Tulliwuddle.”
+
+“He is so like,” repeated the Baron moodily. “He most be ze same.”
+
+Bunker looked at it and shook his head.
+
+“A different man, I assure you.”
+
+“Oh, ze devil!” replied the Baron.
+
+“What's the matter?”
+
+“I haff a head zat tvists and turns like my head never did since many
+years.”
+
+The Count had already surmised as much.
+
+“Hang it out of the window,” he suggested.
+
+The Baron made no reply for some minutes. Then with an earnest air he
+began--
+
+“Bonker, I have somezing to say to you.”
+
+“You have the most sympathetic audience outside the clan.”
+
+The Count's cheerful tone did not seem to please his friend.
+
+“Your heart, he is too light, Bonker; ja, too light. Last night you did
+engourage me not to be seemly.”
+
+“I!”
+
+“I did get almost dronk. If my head vas not so hard I should be dronk.
+Das ist not right. If I am to be ze Tollyvoddle, it most be as I vould
+be Von Blitzenberg. I most not forget zat I am not as ozzer men. I am
+noble, and most be so accordingly.”
+
+“What steps do you propose to take?” inquired Bunker with perfect
+gravity.
+
+The Baron stared at the picture.
+
+“Last night I had a dream. It vas zat man--at least, probably it vas,
+for I cannot remember eggsactly. He did pursue me mit a kilt.”
+
+“With what did you defend yourself?”
+
+“I know not: I jost remember zat it should be a warning. Ve Blitzenbergs
+have ze gift to dream.”
+
+The Baron rose from the table and lit a cigar. After three puffs he
+threw it from him.
+
+“I cannot smoke,” he said dismally. “It has a onpleasant taste.”
+
+The Count assumed a seriously thoughtful air.
+
+“No doubt you will wish to see Miss Maddison as soon as possible and get
+it over,” he began. “I have just learned that their place is about seven
+miles away. We could borrow a trap this afternoon----”
+
+“Nein, nein!” interrupted the Baron. “Donnerwetter! Ach, no, it most not
+be so soon. I most practise a leetle first. Not so immediately, Bonker.”
+
+Bunker looked at him with a glance of unfathomable calm.
+
+“I find that it will be necessary for you to observe one or two ancient
+ceremonies, associated from time immemorial with the accession of a
+Tulliwuddle. You are prepared for the ordeal?”
+
+“I most do my duty, Bonker.”
+
+“This suggests some more inspiring vision than the gentleman in the gold
+frame,” thought the Count acutely.
+
+Aloud he remarked
+
+“You have high ideals, Baron.”
+
+“I hope so.”
+
+Again the Baron was the unconscious object of a humorous, perspicacious
+scrutiny.
+
+“Last night I did hear zat moch was to be expected from me,” he observed
+at length.
+
+“From Mrs. Gallosh?”
+
+“I do not zink it vas from Mrs. Gallosh.”
+
+Count Bunker smiled.
+
+“You inflamed all hearts last night,” said he.
+
+The Baron looked grave.
+
+“I did drink too moch last night. But I did not say vat I should not,
+eh? I vas not rude or gross to--Mistair Gallosh?”
+
+“Not to Mr. Gallosh.”
+
+The Baron looked a trifle perturbed at the gravity of his tone.
+
+“I vas not too free, too undignified in presence of zat innocent and
+charming lady--Miss Gallosh?”
+
+The air of scrutiny passed from Count Bunker's face, and a droll smile
+came instead.
+
+“Baron, I understand your ideals and I appreciate your motives. As you
+suggest, you had better rehearse your part quietly for a few days. Miss
+Maddison will find you the more perfect suitor.”
+
+The Baron looked as though he knew not whether to feel satisfied or not.
+
+“By the way,” said the Count in a moment, “have you written to the
+Baroness yet? Pardon me for reminding you, but you must remember that
+your letters will have to go out to Russia and back.”
+
+The Baron started.
+
+“Teufel!” he exclaimed. “I most indeed write.”
+
+“The post goes at twelve.”
+
+The Baron reflected gloomily, and then slowly moved to the writing-table
+and toyed with his pen. A few minutes passed, and then in a fretful
+voice he asked--
+
+“Vat shall I say?”
+
+“Tell her about your journey across Europe--how the crops look in
+Russia--what you think of St. Petersburg--that sort of thing.”
+
+A silent quarter of an hour went by, and then the Baron burst out
+
+“Ach, I cannot write to-day! I cannot invent like you. Ze crops--I have
+got zat--and zat I arrived safe--and zat Petersburg is nice. Vat else?”
+
+“Anything you can remember from text-books on Muscovy or illustrated
+interviews with the Czar. Just a word or two, don't you know, to show
+you've been there; with a few comments of your own.”
+
+“Vat like comments?”
+
+“Such as--'Somewhat annoyed with bombs this afternoon,' or 'This caused
+me to reflect upon the disadvantages of an alcoholic marine'--any little
+bit of philosophy that occurs to you.”
+
+The Baron pondered.
+
+“It is a pity zat I have not been in Rossia,” he observed.
+
+“On the other hand, it is a blessing your wife hasn't. Look at the
+bright side of things, my dear fellow.”
+
+For a short time, from the way in which the Baron took hasty notes in
+pencil and elaborated them in ink (according to the system of Professor
+Virchausen), it appeared that he was following his friend's directions.
+Later, from a sentimental look in his eye, the Count surmised that he
+was composing an amorous addendum; and at last he laid down his pen with
+a sigh which the cynical (but only the cynical) might have attributed to
+relief.
+
+“Ha, my head he is getting more clear!” he announced. “Gom, let us
+present ourselves to ze ladies, mine Bonker!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+“It is necessary, Bonker--you are sure?”
+
+“No Tulliwuddle has ever omitted the ceremony. If you shirked, I am
+assured on the very best authority that it would excite the gravest
+suspicions of your authenticity.”
+
+Count Bunker spoke with an air of the most resolute conviction. Ever
+since they arrived he had taken infinite pains to discover precisely
+what was expected of the chieftain, and having by great good luck made
+the acquaintance of an elderly individual who claimed to be the piper
+of the clan, and who proved a perfect granary of legends, he was able to
+supply complete information on every point of importance. Once the Baron
+had endeavored to corroborate these particulars by interviewing the
+piper himself, but they had found so much difficulty in understanding
+one another's dialects that he had been content to trust implicitly to
+his friend's information. The Count, indeed, had rather avoided than
+sought advice on the subject, and the piper, after several confidential
+conversations and the passage of a sum of silver into his sporran,
+displayed an equally Delphic tendency.
+
+The Baron, therefore, argued the present point no longer.
+
+“It is jost a mere ceremony,” he said. “Ach, vell, nozing vill happen.
+Zis ghost--vat is his name?”
+
+“It is known as the Wraith of the Tulliwuddles. The heir must interview
+it within a week of coming to the Castle.”
+
+“Vere most I see him?”
+
+“In the armory, at midnight. You bring one friend, one candle, and wear
+a bonnet with one eagle's feather in it. You enter at eleven and
+wait for an hour--and, by the way, neither of you must speak above a
+whisper.”
+
+“Pooh! Jost hombog!” said the Baron valiantly. “I do not fear soch
+trash.”
+
+“When the Wraith appears----”
+
+“My goot Bonker, he vill not gom!”
+
+“Supposing he does come--and mind you, strange things happen in these
+old buildings, particularly in the Highlands, and after dinner; if he
+comes, Baron, you must ask him three questions.”
+
+The Baron laughed scornfully.
+
+“If I see a ghost I vill ask him many interesting questions--if he does
+feel cold, and sochlike, eh? Ha, ha!”
+
+With an imperturbable gravity that was not without its effect upon the
+other, however gaily he might talk, Bunker continued,
+
+“The three questions are: first, 'What art thou?' second, 'Why comest
+thou here, O spirit?' third, 'What instructions desirest thou to give
+me?' Strictly speaking, they ought to be asked in Gaelic, but exceptions
+have been made on former occasions, and Mac-Dui--who pipes, by the way,
+in the anteroom--assures me that English will satisfy the Wraith in your
+case.”
+
+The Baron sniffed and laughed, and twirled up the ends of his mustaches
+till they presented a particularly desperate appearance. Yet there was a
+faint intonation of anxiety in his voice as he inquired--
+
+“You vill gom as my friend, of course?”
+
+“I? Quite out of the question, I am sorry to say. To bring a foreigner
+(as I am supposed to be) would rouse the clan to rebellion. No, Baron,
+you have a chance of paying a graceful compliment to your host which you
+must not lose. Ask Mr. Gallosh to share your vigil.”
+
+“Gallosh--he vould not be moch good sopposing--Ach, but nozing vill
+happen! I vill ask him.”
+
+The pride of Mr. Gallosh on being selected as his lordship's friend on
+this historic occasion was pleasant to witness.
+
+“It's just a bit of fiddle-de-dee,” he informed his delighted family.
+“Duncan Gallosh to be looking for bogles is pretty ridiculous--but oh, I
+can't refuse to disoblige his lordship.”
+
+“I should think not, when he's done you the honor to invite you out
+of all his friends!” said Mrs. Gallosh warmly. “Eva! do you hear the
+compliment that's been paid your papa?”
+
+Eva, their fair eldest daughter, came into the room at a run. She had
+indeed heard (since the news was on every tongue), and impetuously she
+flung her arms about her father's neck.
+
+“Oh, papa, do him credit!” she cried; “it's like a story come true! What
+a romantic thing to happen!”
+
+“What a spirit!” her mother reflected proudly. “She is just the girl for
+a chieftain's bride!”
+
+That very night was chosen for the ceremony, and eleven o'clock found
+them all assembled breathless in the drawing-room: all, save Lord
+Tulliwuddle and his host.
+
+“Will they have to wait for a whole hour?” asked Mrs. Gallosh in a low
+voice.
+
+Indeed they all spoke in subdued accents.
+
+“I am told,” replied the Count, “that the apparition never appears till
+after midnight has struck. Any time between twelve and one he may be
+expected.”
+
+“Think of the terrible suspense after twelve has passed!” whispered Eva.
+
+The Count had thought of this.
+
+“I advised Duncan to take his flask,” said Mr. Rentoul, with a solemn
+wink. “So he'll not be so badly off.”
+
+“Papa would never do such a thing to-night!” cried Eva.
+
+“It's always a kind of precaution,” said the sage.
+
+Presently Count Bunker, who had been imparting the most terrific
+particulars of former interviews with the Wraith to the younger
+Galloshes, remarked that he must pass the time by overtaking some
+pressing correspondence.
+
+“You will forgive me, I hope, for shutting myself up for an hour or so,”
+ he said to his hostess. “I shall come back in time to learn the results
+of the meeting.”
+
+And with the loss of his encouraging company a greater uneasiness fell
+upon the party.
+
+Meanwhile, in a vast cavern of darkness, lit only by the solitary
+candle, the Baron and his host endeavored to maintain the sceptical
+buoyancy with which they had set forth upon their adventure. But the
+chilliness of the room (they had no fire, and it was a misty night with
+a moaning wind), the inordinate quantity of odd-looking shadows, and
+the profound silence, were immediately destructive to buoyancy and
+ultimately trying to scepticism.
+
+“I wish ze piper vould play,” whispered the Baron.
+
+“Mebbe he'll begin nearer the time,” his companion suggested.
+
+The Baron shivered. For the first time he had been persuaded to wear the
+full panoply of a Highland chief, and though he had exhibited himself
+to the ladies with much pride, and even in the course of dinner had
+promised Eva Gallosh that he would never again don anything less
+romantic, he now began to think that a travelling-rug of the Tulliwuddle
+tartan would prove a useful addition to the outfit on the occasion of
+a midnight vigil. Also the stern prohibition against talking aloud
+(corroborated by the piper with many guttural warnings) grew more and
+more irksome as the night advanced.
+
+“It's an awesome place,” whispered Mr. Gallosh.
+
+“I hardly thought it would have been as lonesome-like.”
+
+There was a tremor in his voice that irritated the Baron.
+
+“Pooh!” he answered, “it is jost vun old piece of hombog! I do not
+believe in soch things myself.”
+
+“Neither do I, my lord; oh, neither do I; but--would you fancy a dram?”
+
+“Not for me, I zank you,” said his lordship stiffly.
+
+Blessing the foresight of Mr. Rentoul, his host unscrewed his flask and
+had a generous swig. As he was screwing on the top again, the Baron, in
+a less haughty voice, whispered,
+
+“Perhaps jost vun leetle taste.”
+
+They felt now for a few minutes more aggressively disposed.
+
+“Ve need not have ze curtain shut,” said the Baron. “Soppose you do draw
+him?”
+
+Through the gloom Mr. Gallosh took one or two faltering steps.
+
+“Man, it's awful hard to see one's way,” he said nervously.
+
+The Baron took the candle, and with a martial stride escorted him to the
+window. They pulled aside one corner of the heavy curtain, and then let
+it fall again and hurried back. So far north there was indeed a gleam of
+daylight left, but it was such a pale and ghostly ray, and the wreaths
+of mist swept so eerily and silently across the pane, that candle-light
+and shadows seemed vastly preferable.
+
+“How much more time will there be?” whispered Mr. Gallosh presently.
+
+“It is twenty-five minutes to twelve.”
+
+“Your lordship! Can we leave at twelve?”
+
+The Baron started.
+
+“Oh, Himmel!” he exclaimed. “Vy did I not realize before? If nozing
+comes--and nozing vill come--ve most stay till one, I soppose.”
+
+Mr. Gallosh emitted something like a groan.
+
+“Oh my, and that candle will not last more than half an hour at the
+most!”
+
+“Teufel!” said the Baron. “It vas Bonker did give him to me. He might
+have made a more proper calculation.”
+
+The prospect was now gloomy indeed. An hour of candle-light had been
+bad, but an hour of pitch darkness or of mist wreaths would be many
+times worse.
+
+“A wee tastie more, my lord?” Mr. Gallosh suggested, in a voice whose
+vibrations he made an effort to conceal.
+
+“Jost a vee,” said his lordship, hardly more firmly.
+
+With a dismal disregard for their suspense the minutes dragged
+infinitely slowly. The flask was finished; the candle guttered and
+flickered ominously; the very shadows grew restless.
+
+“There's a lot of secret doors and such like in this part of the
+house--let's hope there'll be nothing coming through one of them,” said
+Mr. Gallosh in a breaking voice.
+
+The Baron muttered an inaudible reply, and then with a start their
+shoulders bumped together.
+
+“Damn it, what's yon!” whispered Mr. Gallosh.
+
+“Ze pipes! Gallosh, how beastly he does play!”
+
+In point of fact the air seemed to consist of only one wailing note.
+
+“Bong!”--they heard the first stroke of midnight on the big clock on
+the Castle Tower; and so unfortunately had Count Bunker timed the candle
+that on the instant its flame expired.
+
+“Vithdraw ze curtains!” gasped the Baron.
+
+“I canna, my lord! Oh, I canna!” wailed Mr. Gallosh, breaking out into
+his broadest native Scotch.
+
+This time the Baron made no movement, and in the palpitating silence
+the two sat through one long dark minute after another, till some ten of
+them had passed.
+
+“I shall stand it no more!” muttered the Baron. “Ve vill creep for ze
+door.”
+
+“My lord, my lord! For maircy's sake gie's a hold of you!” stammered Mr.
+Gallosh, falling on his hands and knees and feeling for the skirt of his
+lordship's kilt.
+
+But their flight was arrested by a portent so remarkable that had there
+been only a single witness one would suppose it to be a figment of his
+imagination. Fortunately, however, both the Baron and Mr. Gallosh can
+corroborate each detail. About the middle, apparently, of the wall
+opposite, an oblong of light appeared in the thickest of the gloom.
+
+“Mein Gott!” cried the Baron.
+
+“It's filled wi' reek!” gasped Mr. Gallosh.
+
+And indeed the space seemed filled with a slowly rising cloud of pungent
+blue smoke. Then their horrified eyes beheld the figure of an undoubted
+Being hazily outlined behind the cloud, and at the same time the piper,
+as if sympathetically aware of the crisis, burst into his most dreadful
+discords. A yell rang through the gloom, followed by the sounds of a
+heavy body alternately scuffling across the floor and falling prostrate
+over unseen furniture. The Baron felt for his host, and realized that
+this was the escaping Gallosh.
+
+“Tulliwuddle! Speak!” a hollow voice muttered out of the smoke.
+
+The Baron has never ceased to exult over the hardihood he displayed in
+this unnerving crisis. Rising to his feet and drawing his claymore, he
+actually managed to stammer out--
+
+“Who--who are you?”
+
+The Being (he could now perceive dimly that it was clad in tartan)
+answered in the same deep, measured voice--
+
+          “Your senses to confound and fuddle,
+            Behold the Wraith of Tulliwuddle!”
+
+
+This was sufficiently terrifying, one would think, to excuse the Baron
+for following the example of his host. But, though he found afterwards
+that he must have perspired freely, he courageously stood his ground.
+
+“Vy have you gomed here?” he demanded in a voice nearly as hollow as the
+Wraith.
+
+As solemnly as before the spirit replied--
+
+          “From Pit that's bottomless and dark--
+            Methinks I hear it shrieking--Hark!”
+
+
+(The Baron certainly did hear a tumult that might well be termed
+infernal; though whether it emanated from Mr. Gallosh, fiends, or the
+piper, he could not at the moment feel certain.)
+
+          “I came o'er many leagues of heather
+            To carry back the answer whether
+            The noble chieftain of my clan
+            Conducts him like a gentleman.”
+
+
+After this warning, to put the third question required an effort of the
+most supreme resolution. The Baron was equal to it, however.
+
+“Vat instroction do you give me?” he managed to utter.
+
+In the gravest accents the Wraith chanted--
+
+          “Hang ever kilt above the knee,
+            With Usquebaugh be not too free,
+            When toasts and sic'like games be mooted
+            See that your dram be well diluted;
+            And oh, if you'd escape from Hades,
+            Lord Tulliwuddle, 'ware the ladies!”
+
+
+The spirit vanished as magically as he had appeared, and with this
+solemn warning ringing in his ears, the Baron found himself in inky
+darkness again. This time he did not hesitate to grope madly for the
+door, but hardly had he reached it, when, with a fresh sensation of
+horror, he stumbled upon a writhing form that seemed to be pawing the
+panels. He was, fortunately; as quickly reassured by hearing the voice
+of Mr. Gallosh exclaim in terrified accents--
+
+“I canna find the haundle! Oh, Gosh, where's the haundle?”
+
+Being the less frenzied of the two, the Baron did succeed in finding the
+handle, and with a gasp of relief burst into the lighted anteroom. The
+piper had already departed, and evidently in haste, since he had
+left some portion of a bottle of whisky unfinished. This fortunate
+circumstance enabled them to recover something of their color, though,
+even when he felt his blood warming again, Mr. Gallosh could scarcely
+speak coherently of his terrible ordeal.
+
+“What an awfu' night! what an awfu' night!” he murmured. “Oh, my lord,
+let's get out of this!”
+
+He was making for the door when the Baron seized his arm.
+
+“Vait!” he cried. “Ze danger is past! Ach, vas I not brave? Did you not
+hear me speak to him? You can bear vitness how brave I vas, eh?”
+
+“I'll not swear I heard just exactly what passed, my lord. Man, I'll own
+I was awful feared!”
+
+“Tuts! tuts!” said the Baron kindly. “Ve vill say nozing about zat. You
+stood vell by me, I shall say. And you vill tell zem I did speak mit
+courage to ze ghost.”
+
+“I will that!” said Mr. Gallosh.
+
+By the time they reached the drawing-room he had so far recovered his
+equanimity as to prove a very creditable witness, and between them they
+gave such an account of their adventure as satisfied even the excited
+expectations of their friends; though the Baron thought it both prudent
+and more becoming his dignity to leave considerable mystery attaching to
+the precise revelations of his ancestral spirit.
+
+“Bot vere is Bonker?” he asked, suddenly noticing the absence of his
+friend.
+
+A moment later the Count entered and listened with the greatest interest
+to a second (and even more graphic) account of the adventure. More
+intimate particulars still were confided to him when they had retired
+to their own room, and he appeared as surprised and impressed as any
+wraith-seer could desire. As they parted for the night, the Baron
+started and sniffed at him.
+
+“Vat a strange smell you have!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Peat smoke, probably. This fire wouldn't draw.”
+
+“Strange!” mused the Baron. “I did smell a leetle smell of zat before
+to-night.”
+
+“Yes; one notices it all through the house with an east wind.”
+
+This seemed to the Baron a complete explanation of the coincidence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+At the house in Belgrave Square at present tenanted by the Baron and
+Baroness von Blitzenberg, an event of considerable importance had
+occurred. This was nothing less than the arrival of the Countess of
+Grillyer upon a visit both of affection and state. So important was she,
+and so great the attachment of her daughter, that the preparations
+for her reception would have served for a reigning sovereign. But the
+Countess had an eye as quick and an appetite for respect as exacting as
+Queen Elizabeth, and she had no sooner embraced the Baroness and kissed
+her ceremoniously upon either cheek, than her glance appeared to seek
+something that she deemed should have been there also.
+
+“And where is Rudolph?” she demanded. “Is he so very busy that he cannot
+spare a moment even to welcome me?”
+
+The Baroness changed color, but with as easy an air as she could assume
+she answered that Rudolph had most unfortunately been summoned from
+England.
+
+“Indeed?” observed the Countess, and the observation was made in a tone
+that suggested the advisability of a satisfactory explanation.
+
+This paragon among mothers and peeresses was a lady of majestic port,
+whose ascendant expression and commanding voice were commonly held to
+typify all that is best in the feudal system; or, in other words, to
+indicate that her opinions had never been contradicted in her life.
+When one of these is a firm belief in the holder's divine rights and
+semi-divine origin, the effect is undoubtedly impressive. And the
+Countess impressed.
+
+“My dear Alicia,” said she, when they had settled down to tea and
+confidential talk, “you have not yet told me what has taken Rudolph
+abroad again so soon.”
+
+On nothing had the Baron laid more stress than on the necessity of
+maintaining the most profound secrecy respecting his mission. “No, not
+even to your mozzer most you say. My love, you vill remember?” had been
+almost his very last words before departing for St. Petersburg. His
+devoted wife had promised this not once, but many times, while his
+finger was being shaken at her, and would have scorned herself had she
+thought it possible to break her vows.
+
+“That is a secret, mamma,” she declared.
+
+Her mother opened her eyes.
+
+“A secret from me, Alicia?”
+
+“Rudolph made me promise.”
+
+“Not to tell your friends--but that hardly was intended to include your
+mother.”
+
+The Baroness looked uncomfortable.
+
+“I--I'm afraid----” she began, and stopped in hesitation.
+
+“Did he specifically include me?” demanded the Countess in an altered
+tone.
+
+“I think, mamma, he did,” her daughter faltered.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+And there was a world of meaning in that comment.
+
+“Believe me, mamma, it is something very, very important, or Rudolph
+would certainly have let me tell you all about it.”
+
+Lady Grillyer opened her eyes still wider.
+
+“Then I am to understand that he wishes to conceal from me anything that
+he considers of importance?”
+
+“Oh, no! Not that! I only mean that this thing is very secret.”
+
+“Alicia,” pronounced the Countess, “when a man specifically conceals
+anything from his mother-in-law, you may be quite certain that she ought
+to be informed of it at once.”
+
+“I--I can't, mamma!”
+
+“A trip to Germany--for it is there, I presume, he has gone--back to the
+scenes of his bachelorhood, unprotected by the influence of his wife! Do
+you call that a becoming procedure?”
+
+“But he hasn't gone to Germany.”
+
+“He has no business anywhere else!”
+
+“You forget his diplomatic duties.”
+
+“Ah! He professes to have gone on diplomatic business?”
+
+“Professes, mamma?” exclaimed the poor Baroness. “How can you say such a
+thing! He certainly has gone on a diplomatic mission!”
+
+“To Paris, no doubt?” suggested Lady Grillyer, with an intonation that
+made it quite impossible not to contradict her.
+
+“Certainly not! He has gone to Russia.”
+
+The more the Countess learned, the more anxious she appeared to grow.
+
+“To Russia, on a diplomatic mission? This is incredible, Alicia!”
+
+“Why should it be incredible?” demanded Alicia, flushing.
+
+“Because he is a mere tyro in diplomacy. Because there is a German
+embassy at Petersburg, and they would not send a man from London on a
+mission--at least, it is most unlikely.”
+
+“It seems to me quite natural,” declared the Baroness.
+
+She was showing more fight than her mother had ever encountered from her
+before, and the opposition seemed to inflame Lady Grillyer's resentment
+against the unfilial couple.
+
+“You know nothing about it! What is this mission about?”
+
+“That certainly is a secret,” said Alicia, relieved that there was
+something left to keep her promise over.
+
+“Has he gone alone?”
+
+“I--I mustn't tell you, mamma.”
+
+Alicia's face betrayed this subterfuge.
+
+“You do not know yourself, Alicia,” said the Countess incisively. “And
+so you need no longer pretend to be keeping a secret from me. It now
+becomes our joint business to discover the actual truth. Do not attempt
+to wrangle with me further! This investigation is necessary for your
+peace of mind, dear.”
+
+The unfortunate Baroness dropped a silent tear. Her peace of mind had
+been serenely undisturbed till this moment, and now it was only broken
+by the thought of her husband's displeasure should he ever learn how she
+had disobeyed his injunctions. Further investigation was the very last
+thing to cure it, she said to herself bitterly. She looked piteously
+at her parent, but there she only saw an expression of concentrated
+purpose.
+
+“Have you any reason, Alicia, to suspect an attachment--an affair of any
+kind?”
+
+“Mamma!”
+
+“Do not jump in that excitable manner. Think quietly. He has evidently
+returned to Germany for some purpose which he wishes to conceal from us:
+the natural supposition is that a woman is at the bottom of it.”
+
+“Rudolph is incapable----”
+
+“No man is incapable who is in the full possession of his faculties. I
+know them perfectly.”
+
+“But, mamma, I cannot bear to think of such a thing!”
+
+“That is a merely middle-class prejudice. I can't imagine where you have
+picked it up.”
+
+In point of fact, during Alicia's girlhood Lady Grillyer had always been
+at the greatest pains to preserve her daughter's innocent simplicity,
+as being preeminently a more marketable commodity than precocious
+worldliness. But if reminded of this she would probably have retorted
+that consistency was middle-class also.
+
+“I have no reason to suspect anything of the sort,” the Baroness
+declared emphatically.
+
+Her mother indulged her with a pitying smile and inquired--
+
+“What other explanation can you offer? Among his men friends is there
+anyone likely to lead him into mischief?”
+
+“None--at least----”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“He promised me he would avoid Mr. Bunker--I mean Mr. Essington.”
+
+The Countess started. She had vivid and exceedingly distasteful
+recollections of Mr. Bunker.
+
+“That man! Are they still acquainted?”
+
+“Acquainted--oh yes; but I give Rudolph credit for more sense and more
+truthfulness than to renew their friendship.”
+
+The Countess pondered with a very grave expression upon her face, while
+Alicia gently wiped her eyes and ardently wished that her honest Rudolph
+was here to defend his character and refute these baseless insinuations.
+At length her mother said with a brisker air--
+
+“Ah! I know exactly what we must do. I shall make a point of seeing Sir
+Justin Wallingford tomorrow.”
+
+“Sir Justin Wallingford!”
+
+“If anybody can obtain private information for us he can. We shall soon
+learn whether the Baron has been sent to Russia.”
+
+Alicia uttered a cry of protest. Sir Justin, ex-diplomatist, author of
+a heavy volume of Victorian reminiscences, and confidant of many public
+personages, was one of her mother's oldest friends; but to her he was
+only one degree less formidable than the Countess, and quite the last
+person she would have chosen for consultation upon this, or indeed upon
+any other subject.
+
+“I am not going to intrust my husband's secrets to him!” she exclaimed.
+
+“I am,” replied the Countess.
+
+“But I won't allow it! Rudolph would be----”
+
+“Rudolph has only himself to blame. My dear Alicia, you can trust Sir
+Justin implicitly. When my child's happiness is at stake I would consult
+no one who was not discretion itself. I am very glad I thought of him.”
+
+The Baroness burst into tears.
+
+“My child, my child!” said her mother compassionately. “The world is no
+Garden of Eden, however much we may all try to make it so.”
+
+“You--you don't se--seem to be trying now, mamma.”
+
+“May Heaven forgive you, my darling,” pronounced the Countess piously.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+“Sir Justin,” said the Countess firmly, “please tell my daughter exactly
+what you have discovered.”
+
+Sir Justin Wallingford sat in the drawing-room at Belgrave Square with
+one of these ladies on either side of him. He was a tall, gaunt man
+with a grizzled black beard, a long nose, and such a formidably solemn
+expression that ambitious parents were in the habit of wishing that
+their offspring might some day be as wise as Sir Justin Wallingford
+looked. His fund of information was prodigious, while his reasoning
+powers were so remarkable that he had never been known to commit the
+slightest action without furnishing a full and adequate explanation of
+his conduct. Thus the discrimination shown by the Countess in choosing
+him to restore a lady's peace of mind will at once be apparent.
+
+“The results of my inquiries,” he pronounced, “have been on the whole
+of a negative nature. If this mission on which the Baron von Blitzenberg
+professes to be employed is in fact of an unusually delicate nature,
+it is just conceivable that the answer I received from Prince
+Gommell-Kinchen, when I sounded him at the Khalifa's luncheon, may have
+been intended merely to throw dust in my eyes. At the same time, his
+highness appeared to speak with the candor of a man who has partaken,
+not excessively, you understand, but I may say freely, of the pleasures
+of the table.”
+
+He looked steadily first at one lady and then at the other, to let this
+point sink in.
+
+“And what did the Prince say?” asked the Baroness, who, in spite of her
+supreme confidence in her husband, showed a certain eager nervousness
+inseparable from a judicial inquiry.
+
+“He told me--I merely give you his word, and not my own opinion; you
+perfectly understand that, Baroness?”
+
+“Oh yes,” she answered hurriedly.
+
+“He informed me that, in fact, the Baron had been obliged to ask for a
+fortnight's leave of absence to attend to some very pressing and private
+business in connection with his Silesian estates.”
+
+“I think, Alicia, we may take that as final,” said her mother
+decisively.
+
+“Indeed _I_ shan't!” cried Alicia warmly. “That was just an excuse, of
+course. Rudolph's business is so very delicate that--that--well, that
+you could only expect Prince Gommell-Kinchen to say something of that
+sort.”
+
+“What do you say to that, Sir Justin?” demanded the Countess.
+
+With the air of a man doing what was only his duty, he replied--
+
+“I say that I think it is improbable. In fact, since you demand to know
+the truth, I may inform you that the Prince added that leave of absence
+was readily given, since the Baron's diplomatic duties are merely
+nominal. To quote his own words, 'Von Blitzenberg is a nice fellow, and
+it pleases the English ladies to play with him.'”
+
+Even Lady Grillyer was a trifle taken aback at this description of her
+son-in-law, while Alicia turned scarlet with anger.
+
+“I don't believe he said anything of the sort!” she cried. “You both of
+you only want to hurt me and insult Rudolph! I won't stand it!”
+
+She was already on her feet to leave them, when her mother stopped her,
+and Sir Justin hastened to explain.
+
+“No reflection upon the Baron's character was intended, I assure you.
+The Prince merely meant to imply that he represented the social rather
+than the business side of the embassy. And both are equally necessary, I
+assure you--equally essential, Baroness, believe me.”
+
+“In fact,” said the Countess, “the remark comes to this, that Rudolph
+would never be sent to Russia, whatever else they might expect of him.”
+
+Even through their tears Alicia's eyes brightened with triumph.
+
+“But he HAS gone, mamma! I got a letter from him this morning--from St.
+Petersburg!”
+
+The satisfaction of her two physicians on hearing this piece of good
+news took the form of a start which might well have been mistaken for
+mere astonishment, or even for dismay.
+
+“And you did not tell ME of it!” cried her mother.
+
+“Rudolph did not wish me to. I have only told you now to prove how
+utterly wrong you both are.”
+
+“Let me see this letter!”
+
+“Indeed, mamma, I won't!”
+
+The two ladies looked at one another with such animosity that Sir Justin
+felt called upon to interfere.
+
+“Suppose the Baroness were to read us as much as is necessary to
+convince us that there is no possibility of a mistake,” he suggested.
+
+So profoundly did the Countess respect his advice that she graciously
+waived her maternal rights so far as actually following the text with
+her eyes went; while her daughter, after a little demur, was induced to
+depart this one step further from her husband's injunctions.
+
+“You have no objections to my glancing at the post-mark?” said Sir
+Justin when this point was settled.
+
+With a toss of her head the Baroness silently handed him the envelope.
+
+“It seems correct,” he observed cautiously.
+
+“But post-marks can be forged, can't they?” inquired the Countess.
+
+“I fear they can,” he admitted, with a sorrowful air.
+
+Scorning to answer this insinuation, the Baroness proceeded to read
+aloud the following extracts:
+
+“'I travelled with comfort through Europe, and having by many countries
+passed, such as Germany and others, I arrived, my dear Alicia, in
+Russia.'”
+
+“Is that all he says about his journey?” interrupted Lady Grillyer.
+
+“It is certainly a curiously insufficient description of a particularly
+interesting route,” commented Sir Justin.
+
+“It almost seems as if he didn't know what other countries lie between
+England and Russia,” added the Countess.
+
+“It only means that he knows geography doesn't interest me!” replied
+Alicia. “And he does say more about his journey--'Alone by myself, in
+a carriage very quietly I travelled.' And again--'To be observed not
+wishing, and strict orders being given to me, with no man I spoke all
+the way.' There!”
+
+“That certainly makes it more difficult to check his statements,” Sir
+Justin admitted.
+
+“Ah, he evidently thought of that!” said the Countess. “If he had said
+there was anyone with him, we could have asked him afterwards who it
+was. What a pity! Read on, my child--we are vastly interested.”
+
+Thus encouraged, the Baroness continued
+
+“'In Russia the crops are good, and from my window with pleasure I
+observe them. Petersburg is a nice town, and I have a pleasant apartment
+in it!'”
+
+“What!” exclaimed the Countess. “He is looking at the crops from his
+window in St. Petersburg!”
+
+Sir Justin grimly pursed his lips, but his silence was more ominous
+than speech. In fact, the Baron's unfortunate effort at realism by the
+introduction of his window struck the first blow at his wife's implicit
+trust in him. She was evidently a little disconcerted, though she
+stoutly declared--
+
+“He is evidently living in the suburbs, mamma.”
+
+“Will you be so kind as to read on a little farther?” interposed Sir
+Justin in a grave voice.
+
+“'The following reflections have I made. Russia is very large and cold,
+where people in furs are to be seen, and sledges. Bombs are thrown
+sometimes, and the marine is not good when it does drink too much.' Now,
+mamma, he must have seen these things or he wouldn't put them in his
+letter.”
+
+The Baroness broke of somewhat hurriedly to make this comment, almost
+indeed as though she felt it to be necessary. As for her two comforters,
+they looked at one another with so much sorrow that their eyes gleamed
+and their lips appeared to smile.
+
+“The Baron did not write that letter in Russia,” said Sir Justin
+decisively. “Furs are not worn in summer, nor do the inhabitants travel
+in sledges at this time of the year.”
+
+“But--but he doesn't say he actually saw them,” pleaded the Baroness.
+
+“Then that remark, just like the rest of his reflections, makes utter
+nonsense,” rejoined her mother.
+
+“Is that all?” inquired Sir Justin.
+
+“Almost all--all that is important,” faltered the Baroness.
+
+“Let us hear the rest,” said her mother inexorably.
+
+“There is only a postscript, and that merely says--'The flask that you
+filled I thank you for; it was so large that it was sufficient for----'
+I can't read the last word.”
+
+“Let me see it, Alicia.”
+
+A few minutes ago Alicia would have torn the precious letter up rather
+than let another eye fall upon it. That her devotion was a little
+disturbed was proved by her allowing her two advisers to study even a
+single sentence. Keeping her hand over the rest, she showed it to them.
+They bent their brows, and then simultaneously exclaimed--
+
+“'Us both!'”
+
+“Oh, it can't be!” cried the poor Baroness.
+
+“It is absolutely certain,” said her mother in a terrible voice--“'It
+was so large that it was sufficient for us both!'”
+
+“There is no doubt about it,” corroborated Sir Justin sternly. “The
+unfortunate young man has inadvertently confessed his deception.”
+
+“It cannot be!” murmured the Baroness. “He said at the beginning that he
+travelled quite alone.”
+
+“That is precisely what condemns him,” said her mother.
+
+“Precisely,” reiterated Sir Justin.
+
+The Baroness audibly sobbed, while the two patchers of her peace of mind
+gazed at her commiserately.
+
+“What am I to do?” she asked at length. “I can't believe he really----
+But how am I to find out?”
+
+“I shall make further investigations,” promptly replied Sir Justin.
+
+“And I also,” added the Countess.
+
+“Meanwhile,” said Sir Justin, “we shall be exceedingly interested to
+learn what further particulars of his wanderings the Baron supplies you
+with.”
+
+“Yes,” observed the Countess, “he can fortunately be trusted to betray
+himself. You will inform me, Alicia, as soon as you hear from him
+again.”
+
+Her daughter made no reply.
+
+Sir Justin rose and bade them a grave farewell.
+
+“In my daughter's name I thank you cordially,” said the Countess, as she
+pressed his hand.
+
+“Anything I have done has been a pleasure to me,” he assured them with a
+sincerity there was no mistaking.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+In an ancient and delightful garden, where glimpses of the loch below
+gleamed through a mass of summer foliage, and the gray castle walls
+looked down on smooth, green glades, the Baron slowly paced the shaven
+turf. But he did not pace it quite alone, for by his side moved
+a graceful figure in a wide, sun-shading hat and a frock entirely
+irresistible. Beneath the hat, by bending a little down, you could have
+seen the dark liquid eyes and tender lips of Eva Gallosh. And the Baron
+frequently bent down.
+
+“I am proud of everyzing zat I find in my home,” said the Baron
+gallantly.
+
+The lady's color rose, but not apparently in anger.
+
+“Ach, here is a pretty leetle seat!” he exclaimed in a tone of pleased
+discovery, just as though he had not been leading her insidiously
+towards it ever since they, came into the garden.
+
+It was, indeed, a most shady and secluded bench, an ideal seat for any
+gallant young Baron who had left his Baroness sufficiently far away. He
+glanced down complacently upon his brawny knees, displayed (he could
+not but think) to great advantage beneath his kilt and sporran, and then
+with a tenderer complacency, turned his gaze upon his fair companion.
+
+“You say you like me in ze tartan?” he murmured.
+
+“I adore everything Highland! Oh, Lord Tulliwuddle, how fortunate you
+are!”
+
+Nature had gifted Miss Gallosh with a generous share of romantic
+sentiment. It was she who had egged on her father to rent this Highland
+castle for the summer, instead of chartering a yacht as he had done for
+the past few years; and ever since they had come here that sentiment
+had grown, till she was ready to don the white cockade and plot a new
+Jacobite uprising. Then, while her heart was in this inspired condition,
+a noble young chief had stepped in to complete the story. No wonder her
+dark eyes burned.
+
+“What attachment you must feel for each stone of the Castle!” she
+continued in a rapt voice. “How your heart must beat to remember that
+your great-grandfather--wasn't his name Fergus?”
+
+“Fergus: yes,” said the Baron, blindly but promptly.
+
+“No, no; it was Ian, of course.”
+
+“Ach, so! Ian he vas.”
+
+“You were thinking of his father,” she smiled.
+
+“Yes, his fazzer.”
+
+She reflected sagely.
+
+“I am afraid I get my facts mixed up some times. Ian--ah, Reginald came
+before him--not Fergus!”
+
+“Reginald--oh yes, so he did!”
+
+She looked a trifle disappointed.
+
+“If I were you I should know them all by heart,” said she.
+
+“I vill learn zem. Oh yes, I most not make soch mistakes.”
+
+Indeed he registered a very sincere vow to study his family history that
+afternoon.
+
+“What was I saying? Oh yes--about your brave great-grandfather. Do you
+know, Lord Tulliwuddle, I want to ask you a strange favor? You won't
+think it very odd of me?”
+
+“Odd? Never! Already it is granted.”
+
+“I want to hear from your own lips--from the lips of an actual Lord
+Tulliwuddle--the story of your ancestor Ian's exploit.”
+
+With beseeching eyes and a face flushed with a sense of her presumption,
+she uttered this request in a voice that tore the Baron with conflicting
+emotions.
+
+“Vich exploit do you mean?” he asked in a kindly voice but with a
+troubled eye.
+
+“You must know! When he defended the pass, of course.”
+
+“Ach, so!”
+
+The Baron looked at her, and though he boasted of no such inventive
+gifts as his friend Bunker, his ardent heart bade him rather commit
+himself to perdition than refuse.
+
+“You will tell it to me?”
+
+“I vill!”
+
+Making as much as possible of the raconteur's privileges of clearing his
+throat, settling himself into good position, and gazing dreamily at the
+tree-tops for inspiration, he began in a slow, measured voice--
+
+“In ze pass he stood. Zen gomed his enemies. He fired his gon and
+shooted some dead. Zen did zey run avay. Zat vas vat happened.”
+
+When he ventured to meet her candid gaze after thus lamely libelling his
+forefather, he was horrified to observe that she had already recoiled
+some feet away from him, and seemed still to be in the act of recoiling.
+
+“It would have been kinder to tell me at once that I had asked too
+much!” she exclaimed in a voice affected by several emotions. “I only
+wanted to hear you repeat his death-cry as his foes slew him, so that it
+might always seem more real to me. And you snub me like this!”
+
+The Baron threw himself upon one knee.
+
+“Forgive me! I did jost lose mine head mit your eyes looking so at me! I
+get confused, you are so lovely! I did not mean to snob!”
+
+In the ardor of his penitence he discovered himself holding her hand;
+she no longer seemed to be recoiling; and Heaven knows what might have
+happened next if an ostentatious sound of whistling had not come to
+their rescue.
+
+“Bot you vill forgive?” he whispered, as they sprang up from their shady
+seat.
+
+“Ye-es,” she answered, just as the serene glance of Count Bunker fell
+humorously upon them.
+
+“You seem to have been plucking flowers, Tulliwuddle,” he observed.
+
+“Flowers? Oh, no.”
+
+The Count glanced pointedly at his soiled knee.
+
+“Indeed!” said he. “Don't I see traces of a flower-bed?”
+
+“I think I should go in,” murmured Eva, and she was gone before the
+Count had time to frame a compensating speech.
+
+His friend Tulliwuddle looked at him with marked displeasure, yet seemed
+to find some difficulty in adequately expressing it.
+
+“I do not care for vat you said,” he remarked stiffly. “Nor for ze look
+now on your face.”
+
+“Baron,” said the Count imperturbably, “what did you tell me the Wraith
+said to you--something about 'Beware of the ladies,' wasn't it?”
+
+“You do not onderstand. Ze ghost” (he found some difficulty in
+pronouncing the spirit's chosen name) “did soppose naturally zat I vas
+ze real Lord Tollyvoddle, who is, as you have told me yourself, Bonker,
+somezing of a fast fish. Ze varning vas to him obviously, so you should
+not turn it upon me.”
+
+Bunker opened his eyes.
+
+“A deuced ingenious argument,” he commented. “It wouldn't have occurred
+to me if you hadn't explained. Then you claim the privilege of wooing
+whom you wish?”
+
+“Wooing! You forget zat I am married, Bonker.”
+
+“Oh no, I remember perfectly.”
+
+His tone disturbed the Baron. Taking the Count's arm, he said to him
+with moving earnestness--
+
+“Have I not told you how constant I am--like ze magnet and ze pole?”
+
+“I have heard you employ the simile.”
+
+“Ach, bot it is true! I am inside my heart so constant as it is
+possible! But I now represent Tollyvoddle, and for his sake most try to
+do my best.”
+
+Again Count Bunker glanced at his knee.
+
+“And that is your best, then?”
+
+“Listen, Bonker, and try to onderstand--not jost to make jokes. It
+appears to me zat Miss Gallosh vill make a good vife to Tollyvoddle. She
+is so fair, so amiable, and so rich. Could he do better? Should I not
+lay ze foundations of a happy marriage mit her? Soppose ve do get her
+instead of Miss Maddison, eh?”
+
+His artful eloquence seemed to impress his friend, for he smiled
+thoughtfully and did not reply at once. More persuasively than ever the
+Baron continued--
+
+“I do believe mit patience and mit--er--mit kindness, Bonker, I might
+persuade Miss Gallosh to listen to ze proposal of Tollyvoddle. And vould
+it not be better far to get him a lady of his own people, and not a
+stranger from America? Ve vill not like Miss Maddison, I feel sure. Vy
+troble mit her--eh, Bonker?”
+
+“But don't you think, Baron, that we ought to give Tulliwuddle his
+choice? He may prefer an American heiress to a Scottish.”
+
+“Not if he sees Eva Gallosh!”
+
+Again the Count gently raised his eyebrows in a way that the Baron could
+not help considering unsuitable to the occasion.
+
+“On the other hand, Baron, Miss Maddison will probably have five or ten
+times as much money as Miss Gallosh. In arranging a marriage for another
+man, one must attend to such trifles as a few million dollars more or
+less.”
+
+For the moment the Baron was silenced, but evidently not convinced.
+
+“Supposing I were to call upon the Maddisons as your envoy?” suggested
+Bunker, who, to tell the truth, had already begun to tire of a life of
+luxurious inaction.
+
+“Pairhaps in a few days we might gonsider it.”
+
+“We have been here for a week already.”
+
+“Ven vould you call?”
+
+“To-morrow, for instance.”
+
+The Baron frowned; but argument was difficult.
+
+“You only jost vill go to see?”
+
+“And report to you.”
+
+“And suppose she is ogly--or not so nice--or so on----zen vill I not see
+her, eh?”
+
+“But suppose she is tolerable?”
+
+“Zen vill ve give him a choice, and I vill continue to be polite to Miss
+Gallosh. Ah, Bonker, she is so nice! He vill not like Miss Maddison so
+vell! Himmel, I do admire her!”
+
+The Baron's eyes shone with reminiscent affection.
+
+“To how many poles is the magnet usually constant?” inquired the Count
+with a serious air.
+
+The Baron smiled a little foolishly, and then, with a confidential air,
+replied--
+
+“Ach, Bonker, marriage is blessed and it is happy, and it is
+everyzing that my heart desires; only I jost sometimes vish it vas not
+qvite--qvite so uninterruptable!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+In a dog-cart borrowed from his obliging host, Count Bunker approached
+the present residence of Mr. Darius P. Maddison. He saw, and--in his
+client's interest--noted with approval the efforts that were being
+made to convert an ordinary fishing-lodge into a suitable retreat for a
+gentleman worth so many million dollars. “Corryvohr,” as the house was
+originally styled, or “Lincoln Lodge,” as the patriotic Silver King had
+re-named it, had already been enlarged for his reception by the addition
+of four complete suites of apartments, each suitable for a nobleman
+and his retinue, an organ hall, 10,000 cubic yards of scullery
+accommodation, and a billiard-room containing three tables. But since he
+had taken up his residence there he had discovered the lack of several
+other essentials for a quiet “mountain life” (as he appropriately
+phrased it), and these defects were rapidly being remedied as our friend
+drove up. The conservatory was already completed, with the exception
+of the orchid and palm houses; the aviary was practically ready, and
+several crates of the rarer humming-birds were expected per goods train
+that evening; while a staff of electricians could be seen erecting the
+private telephone by which Mr. Maddison proposed to keep himself in
+touch with the silver market.
+
+The Count had no sooner pressed the electric bell than a number of
+men-servants appeared, sufficient to conduct him in safety to a handsome
+library fitted with polished walnut, and carpeted as softly as the moss
+on a mountain-side. Having sent in his card, he entertained himself by
+gazing out of the window and wondering what strange operation was
+being conducted on a slope above the house, where a grove of pines were
+apparently being rocked to and fro by a concourse of men with poles and
+pulleys. But he had not to wait long, for with a promptitude that gave
+one some inkling of the secret of Mr. Maddison's business success, the
+millionaire entered.
+
+In a rapid survey the Count perceived a tall man in the neighborhood
+of sixty: gray-haired, gray-eyed, and gray-faced. The clean-shaved and
+well-cut profile included the massive foundation of jaw which Bunker
+had confidently anticipated, and though his words sounded florid in a
+European ear, they were uttered in a voice that corresponded excellently
+with this predominant chin.
+
+“I am very pleased to see you, sir, very pleased indeed,” he assured the
+Count not once but several times, shaking him heartily by the hand and
+eyeing him with a glance accustomed to foresee several days before his
+fellows the probable fluctuations in the price of anything.
+
+“I have taken the liberty of calling upon you in the capacity of Lord
+Tulliwuddle's confidential friend,” the Count began. “He is at present,
+as you may perhaps have learned, visiting his ancestral possessions----”
+
+“My dear sir, for some days we have been expecting his lordship and
+yourself to honor us with a visit,” Mr. Maddison interposed. “You need
+not trouble to introduce yourself. The name of Count Bunker is already
+familiar to us.”
+
+He bowed ceremoniously as he spoke, and the Count with no less
+politeness laid his hand upon his heart and bowed also.
+
+“I looked forward to the meeting with pleasure,” he replied. “But it has
+already exceeded my anticipations.”
+
+He would have still further elaborated these assurances, but with his
+invariable tact he perceived a shrewd look in the millionaire's eye that
+warned him he had to do with a man accustomed to flowery preliminaries
+from the astutest manipulators of a deal.
+
+“I am only sorry you should find our little cottage in such disorder,”
+ said Mr. Maddison. “The contractor for the conservatory undertook to
+erect it in a week, and my only satisfaction is that he is now paying me
+a forfeit of 500 dollars a day. As for the electricians in this country,
+sir, they are not incompetent men, but they must be taught to hustle if
+they are to work under American orders; and I don't quite see how they
+are to find a job anyways else.”
+
+He turned to the window with a more satisfied air.
+
+“Here, however, you will perceive a tolerably satisfactory piece of
+work. I guess those trees will be ready pretty near as soon as the
+capercailzies are ready for them.”
+
+Count Bunker opened his eyes.
+
+“Do I understand that you are erecting a pine wood?”
+
+“You do. That fir forest is my daughter's notion. She thought ordinary
+plane-trees looked kind of unsuitable for our mountain home. The land
+of Burns and of the ill-fated Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, should have
+more appropriate foliage than that! Well, sir, it took four hundred men
+just three days to remove the last traces of the last root of the last
+of those plane-trees.”
+
+“And the pines, I suppose, you brought from a neighboring wood?” said
+the Count, patriotically endeavoring not to look too dumbfoundered.
+
+“No, sir. Lord Tulliwuddle's factor was too slow for me--said he must
+consult his lordship before removing the timber on the estate. I cabled
+to Norway: the trees arrived yesterday in Aberdeen, and I guess half
+of them are as near perpendicular by now as a theodolite can make them.
+They are being erected, sir, on scientific principles.”
+
+Restraining his emotion with a severe effort, Bunker quietly observed
+
+“Very good idea. I don't know that it would have occurred to me to land
+them at Aberdeen.”
+
+From the corner of his eye he saw that his composure had produced a
+distinct impression, but he found it hard to retain it through the
+Silver King's next statement.
+
+“You have taken a long lease of Lincoln Lodge, I presume?” he inquired.
+
+“One year,” said Mr. Maddison. “But I reckon to be comfortable if I'm
+spending twenty minutes at a railroad junction.”
+
+“Ah!” responded the Count, “in that case shifting a forest must be
+child's-play.”
+
+The millionaire smiled affably at this pleasantry and invited his guest
+to be seated.
+
+“You will try something American, I hope, Count Bunker?” he asked,
+touching the bell.
+
+Count Bunker, rightly conceiving this to indicate a cock-tail, replied
+that he would, and in as nearly seven and a half seconds as he could
+calculate, a tray appeared with two of these remarkable compounds.
+Following his host's example, the Count threw his down at a gulp.
+
+“The same,” said Mr. Maddison simply. And in an almost equally brief
+space the same arrived.
+
+“Now,” said he, when they were alone again, “I hope you will pardon
+me, Count, if I am discourteous enough to tell you that my time is
+uncomfortably cramped. When I first came here I found that I was
+expected to stand upon the shore of the river for two hours on the
+chance of catching one salmon. But I have changed all that. As soon as I
+step outside my door, my ghillie brings me my rod, and if there ain't
+a salmon at the end for me to land, another ghillie will receive his
+salary. Since lunch I have caught a fish, despatched fifteen cablegrams,
+and dictated nine letters. I am only on holiday here, and if I don't get
+through double that amount in the next two hours I scarcely see my way
+to do much more fishing to-day. That being so, let us come right to
+the point. You bring some kind of proposition from Lord Tulliwuddle, I
+guess?”
+
+During his drive the Count had cogitated over a number of judicious
+methods of opening the delicate business; but his adaptability was equal
+to the occasion. In as business-like a tone as his host, he replied--
+
+“You are quite right, Mr. Maddison. Lord Tulliwuddle has deputed me to
+open negotiations for a certain matrimonial project.”
+
+Mr. Maddison's expression showed his appreciation of this candor and
+delicacy.
+
+“Well,” said he, “to be quite frank, Count, I should have thought all
+the better of his lordship if he had been a little more prompt about the
+business.”
+
+“It is not through want of admiration for Miss Maddison, I assure
+you----”
+
+“No,” interrupted Mr. Maddison, “it is because he does not realize the
+value of time--which is considerably more valuable than admiration, I
+can assure you. Since I discussed the matter with Lord Tulliwuddle's
+aunt we have had several more buyers--I should say, suitors--in the
+market--er--in the field, Count Bunker. But so far, fortunately for his
+lordship, my Eleanor has not approved of the samples sent, and if
+he still cares to come forward we shall be pleased to consider his
+proposition.”
+
+The millionaire looked at him out of an impenetrable eye; and the Count
+in an equally guarded tone replied,
+
+“I greatly approve of putting things on so sound a footing, and with
+equal frankness I may tell you--in confidence, of course--that Lord
+Tulliwuddle also is not without alternatives. He would, however, prefer
+to offer his title and estates to Miss Maddison, provided that there is
+no personal objection to be found on either side.”
+
+Mr. Maddison's eye brightened and his tone warmed.
+
+“Sir,” said he, “I guess there won't be much objection to Eleanor
+Maddison when your friend has seen her. Without exaggeration, I may say
+that she is the most beautiful girl in America, and that is to say, the
+most beautiful girl anywhere. The precise amount of her fortune we can
+discuss, supposing the necessity arrives: but I can assure you it will
+be sufficient to set three of your mortgaged British aristocrats upon
+their legs again. No, sir, the objection will not come from THAT side!”
+
+With a gentle smile and a deprecatory gesture the Count answered, “I
+am convinced that Miss Maddison is all--indeed, more than all--your
+eloquence has painted. On the other hand, I trust that you will not be
+disappointed in my friend Tulliwuddle.”
+
+Mr. Maddison crossed his legs and interlocked his fingers like a man
+about to air his views. This, in fact, was what he proceeded to do.
+
+“My opinion of aristocracies and the pampered individuals who compose
+them is the opinion of an intelligent and enlightened democrat. I see
+them from the vantage-ground of a man who has made his own way in the
+world unhampered by ancestry, who has dwelt in a country fortunately
+unencumbered by such hindrances to progress, and who has no personal
+knowledge of their defects. You will admit that I speak with unusual
+opportunities of forming a judgment?”
+
+“You should have the impartiality of a missionary,” said Bunker gravely.
+
+“That is so, sir. Now, in proposing to marry my daughter to a member of
+this class, I am actuated solely by a desire to take advantage of
+the opportunities such an alliance would confer. I am still perfectly
+clear?”
+
+“Perfectly,” replied Bunker, with the same profound gravity.
+
+“In consequence,” resumed the millionaire, with the impressiveness of
+a logician drawing a conclusion from two irrefutable premises--“in
+consequence, Count Bunker, I demand--and my daughter demands--and my
+son demands, sir, that the nobleman should possess an unusual number of
+high-class, fire-proof, expert-guaranteed qualities. That is only fair,
+you must admit?”
+
+“I agree with you entirely.”
+
+Mr. Maddison glanced at the clock and sprang to his feet.
+
+“I have not the pleasure of knowing my neighbor, Mr. Gallosh,” he said,
+resuming his brisk business tone; “but I beg you to convey to him and to
+his wife and daughter my compliments--and my daughter's compliments--and
+tell them that we hope they will excuse ceremony and bring Lord
+Tulliwuddle to luncheon to-morrow.”
+
+Count Bunker expressed his readiness to carry this message, and the
+millionaire even more briskly resumed--
+
+“I shall now give myself the pleasure of presenting you to my son and
+daughter.”
+
+With his swiftest strides he escorted his distinguished guest to another
+room, flung the door open, announced, “My dears, Count Bunker!” and
+pressed the Count's hand even as he was effecting this introduction.
+
+“Very pleased to have met you, Count. Good day,” he ejaculated, and
+vanished on the instant.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Raising his eyes after the profound bow which the Count considered
+appropriate to his character of plenipotentiary, he beheld at last
+the object of his mission; and whether or not she was the absolutely
+peerless beauty her father had vaunted, he at once decided that she was
+lovely enough to grace Hechnahoul, or any other, Castle. Black eyes
+and a mass of coal-black hair, an ivory pale skin, small well-chiselled
+features, and that distinctively American plumpness of contour--these
+marked her face; while as for her figure, it was the envy of her women
+friends and the distraction of all mankind who saw her.
+
+“Fortunate Baron!” thought Bunker.
+
+Beside her, though sufficiently in the rear to mark the relative
+position of the sexes in the society they adorned, stood Darius P.
+Maddison, junior--or “Ri,” in the phrase of his relatives and friends--a
+broad-shouldered, well-featured young man, with keen eyes, a mouth
+compressed with the stern resolve to die richer than Mr. Rockefeller,
+and a pair of perfectly ironed trousers.
+
+“I am very delighted to meet you,” declared the heiress.
+
+“Very honored to have this pleasure,” said the brother.
+
+“While I enjoy both sensations,” replied the Count, with his most
+agreeable smile.
+
+A little preliminary conversation ensued, in the course of which the two
+parties felt an increasing satisfaction in one another's society; while
+Bunker had the further pleasure of enjoying a survey of the room in
+which they sat. Evidently it was Miss Maddison's peculiar sanctum,
+and it revealed at once her taste and her power of gratifying it. The
+tapestry that covered two sides of the room could be seen at a glance to
+be no mere modern imitation, but a priceless relic of the earlier middle
+ages. The other walls were so thickly hung with pictures that one could
+scarcely see the pale-green satin beneath; and among these paintings the
+Count's educated eye recognized the work of Raphael, Botticelli, Turner,
+and Gainsborough among other masters; while beneath the cornice hung a
+well-chosen selection from the gems of the modern Anglo-American school.
+The chairs and sofa were upholstered in a figured satin of a slightly
+richer hue of green, and on several priceless oriental tables lay
+displayed in ivory, silver, crystal, and alabaster more articles of
+vertu than were to be found in the entire house of an average collector.
+
+“Fortunate Tulliwuddle!” thought Bunker.
+
+They had been conversing on general topics for a few minutes, when Miss
+Maddison turned to her brother and said, with a frankness that both
+pleased and entertained the Count--
+
+“Ri, dear, don't you think we had better come right straight to the
+point? I feel sure Count Bunker is only waiting till he knows us a
+little better, and I guess it will save him considerable embarrassment
+if we begin.”
+
+“You are the best judge, Eleanor. I guess your notions are never far of
+being all right.”
+
+With a gratified smile Eleanor addressed the Count.
+
+“My brother and I are affinities,” she said. “You can speak to him just
+as openly as you can to me. What is fit for me to hear is fit for him.”
+
+Assuring her that he would not hesitate to act upon this guarantee if
+necessary, the Count nevertheless diplomatically suggested that he would
+sooner leave it to the lady to open the discussion.
+
+“Well,” she said, “I suppose we may presume you have called here as Lord
+Tulliwuddle's friend?”
+
+“You may, Miss Maddison.”
+
+“And no doubt he has something pretty definite to suggest?”
+
+“Matrimony,” smiled the Count.
+
+Her brother threw him a stern smile of approval.
+
+“That's right slick THERE!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Lord Tulliwuddle has made a very happy selection in his ambassador,”
+ said Eleanor, with equal cordiality. “People who are afraid to come to
+facts tire me. No doubt you will think it strange and forward of me to
+talk in this spirit, Count, but if you'd had to go through the worry of
+being an American heiress in a European state you would sympathize. Why,
+I'm hardly ever left in peace for twenty-four hours--am I, Ri?”
+
+“That is so,” quoth Ri.
+
+“What would you guess my age to be, Count Bunker?”
+
+“Twenty-one,” suggested Bunker, subtracting two or three years on
+general principles.
+
+“Well, you're nearer it than most people. Nineteen on my last birthday,
+Count!”
+
+The Count murmured his surprise and pleasure, and Ri again declared,
+“That is so.”
+
+“And it isn't the American climate that ages one, but the terrible
+persecutions of the British aristocracy! I can be as romantic as any
+girl, Count Bunker; why, Ri, you remember poor Abe Sellar and the stolen
+shoe-lace?”
+
+“Guess I do!” said Ri.
+
+“That was a romance if ever there was one! But I tell you, Count,
+sentiment gets rubbed off pretty quick when you come to a bankrupt
+Marquis writing three ill-spelled sheets to assure me of the
+disinterested affection inspired by my photograph, or a divorced Duke
+offering to read Tennyson to me if I'll hire a punt!”
+
+“I can well believe it,” said the Count sympathetically.
+
+“Well, now,” the heiress resumed, with a candid smile that made her
+cynicism become her charmingly, “you see how it is. I want a man one
+can RESPECT, even if he is a peer. He may have as many titles as dad has
+dollars, but he must be a MAN!”
+
+“That is so,” said Ri, with additional emphasis.
+
+“I can guarantee Lord Tulliwuddle as a model for a sculptor and an
+eligible candidate for canonization,” declared the Count.
+
+“I guess we want something grittier than that,” said Ri.
+
+“And what there is of it sounds almost too good news to be true,” added
+his sister. “I don't want a man like a stained-glass window, Count;
+because for one thing I couldn't get him.”
+
+“If you specify your requirements we shall do our best to satisfy you,”
+ replied the Count imperturbably.
+
+“Well, now,” said Eleanor thoughtfully, “I may just as well tell you
+that if I'm going to take a peer--and I must own peers are rather my
+fancy at present--it was Mohammedan pashas last year, wasn't it, Ri?”
+ (“That is so,” from Ri.)--“If I AM going to take a peer, I must have
+a man that LOOKS a peer. I've been plagued with so many undersized
+and round-shouldered noblemen that I'm beginning to wonder whether the
+aristocracy gets proper nourishment. How tall is Lord Tulliwuddle?”
+
+“Six feet and half an inch.”
+
+“That's something more like!” said Ri; and his sister smiled her
+acquiescence.
+
+“And does he weigh up to it?” she inquired.
+
+“Fourteen, twelve, and three-quarters.”
+
+“What's that in pounds, Ri? We don't count people in stones in America.”
+
+A tense frown, a nervous twitching of the lip, and in an instant the
+young financier produced the answer:
+
+“Two hundred and nine pounds all but four ounces.”
+
+“Well,” said Eleanor, “it all depends on how he holds himself. That's a
+lot to carry for a young man.”
+
+“He holds himself like one of his native pine-trees, Miss Maddison!”
+
+She clapped her hands.
+
+“Now I call that just a lovely metaphor, Count Bunker!” she cried.
+“Oh, if he's going to look like a pine, and walk like the pipers at the
+Torrydhulish gathering, and really be a chief like Fergus MacIvor or
+Roderick Dhu, I do believe I'll actually fall in love with him!”
+
+“Say, Count,” interposed Ri, “I guess we've heard he's half German.”
+
+“It was indeed in Germany that he learned his thorough grasp of
+politics, statesmanship, business, and finance, and acquired his lofty
+ambitions and indomitable perseverance.”
+
+“He'll do, Eleanor,” said the young man. “That's to say, if he is
+anything like the prospectus.”
+
+His sister made no immediate reply. She seemed to be musing--and not
+unpleasantly.
+
+At that moment a motor car passed the window.
+
+“My!” exclaimed Eleanor, “I'd quite forgot! That will be to take the
+Honorable Stanley to the station. We must say good-by to him, I suppose.”
+
+She turned to the Count and added in explanation--
+
+“The last to apply was the Honorable Stanley Pilkington--Lord Didcott's
+heir, you know. Oh, if you could see him, you'd realize what I've had to
+go through!”
+
+Even as she spoke he was given the opportunity, for the door somewhat
+diffidently opened and an unhappy-looking young man came slowly into
+the room. He was clearly to be classified among the round-shouldered
+ineligibles; being otherwise a tall and slender youth, with an amiable
+expression and a smoothly well-bred voice.
+
+“I've come to say good-by, Miss Maddison,” he said, with a mournful air.
+“I--I've enjoyed my visit very much,” he added, as he timidly shook her
+hand.
+
+“So glad you have, Mr. Pilkington,” she replied cordially. “It has been
+a very great pleasure to entertain you. Our friend Count Bunker--Mr.
+Pilkington.”
+
+The young man bowed with a look in his eye that clearly said--
+
+“The next candidate, I perceive.”
+
+Then having said good-by to Ri, the Count heard him murmur to Eleanor--
+
+“Couldn't you--er--couldn't you just manage to see me off?”
+
+“With very great pleasure!” she replied in a hearty voice that seemed
+curiously enough rather to damp than cheer his drooping spirits.
+
+No sooner had they left the room together than Darius, junior, turned
+energetically to his guest, and said in a voice ringing with pride--
+
+“You may not believe me, Count, but I assure you that is the third
+fellow she has seen to the door inside a fortnight! One Duke, one
+Viscount--who will expand into something more considerable some day--and
+this Honorable Pilkington! Your friend, sir, will be a fortunate man if
+he is able to please my sister.”
+
+“She seems, indeed, a charming girl.”
+
+“Charming! She is an angel in human form! And I, sir, her brother, will
+see to it that she is not deceived in the man she chooses--not if I can
+help it!”
+
+The young man said this with such an air as Bunker supposed his
+forefathers to have worn when they hurled the tea into Boston harbor.
+
+“I trust that Lord Tulliwuddle, at least, will not fall under your
+displeasure, sir,” he replied with an air of sincere conviction that
+exactly echoed his thoughts.
+
+“Oh, Ri!” cried Eleanor, running back into the room, “he was so sweet as
+he said good-by in the hall that I nearly kissed him! I would have, only
+it might have made him foolish again. But did you see his shoulders,
+Count! And oh, to think of marrying a gentle thing like that! Is Lord
+Tulliwuddle a firm man, Count Bunker?”
+
+“Adamant--when in the right,” the Count assured her.
+
+A renewed air of happy musing in her eyes warned him that he had
+probably said exactly enough, and with the happiest mean betwixt
+deference and dignity he bade them farewell.
+
+“Then, Count, we shall see you all to-morrow,” said Eleanor as they
+parted. “Please tell your hosts that I am very greatly looking forward
+to the pleasure of knowing them. There is a Miss Gallosh, isn't there?”
+
+The Count informed her that there was in fact such a lady.
+
+“That is very good news for me! I need a girl friend very badly, Count;
+these proposals lose half their fun with only Ri to tell them to. I
+intend to make a confidante of Miss Gallosh on the spot!”
+
+“H'm,” thought the Count, as he drove away, “I wonder whether she will.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+As the plenipotentiary approached the Castle he was somewhat
+surprised to pass a dog-cart containing not only his fellow-guest, Mr.
+Cromarty-Gow, but Mr. Gow's luggage also, and although he had hitherto
+taken no particular interest in that gentleman, yet being gifted with
+the true adventurer's instinct for promptly investigating any unusual
+circumstance, he sought his host as soon as he reached the house, with
+a view to putting a careless question or two. For no one, he felt sure,
+had been expected to leave for a few days to come.
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Gallosh, “the young spark's off verra suddenly. We
+didn't expect him to be leaving before Tuesday. But--well, the fact
+is--umh'm--oh, it's nothing to speak off.”
+
+This reticence, however, was easily cajoled away by the insidious Count,
+and at last Mr. Gallosh frankly confided to him--
+
+“Well, Count, between you and me he seems to have had a kind of fancy
+for my daughter Eva, and then his lordship coming--well, you'll see for
+yourself how it was.”
+
+“He considered his chances lessened?”
+
+“He told Rentoul they were clean gone.”
+
+Count Bunker looked decidedly serious.
+
+“The devil!” he reflected. “The Baron is exceeding his commission.
+Tulliwuddle is a brisk young fellow, but to commit him to two marriages
+is neither Christian nor kind. And, without possessing the Baron's
+remarkable enthusiasm for the sex, I feel sorry for whichever lady is
+not chosen to cut the cake.”
+
+He inquired for his friend, and was somewhat relieved to learn that
+though he had gone out on the loch with Miss Gallosh, they had been
+accompanied by her brothers and sisters.
+
+“We still have half an hour before dressing,” he said. “I shall stroll
+down and meet them.”
+
+His creditable anxiety returned when, upon the path to the loch shore,
+he met the two Masters and the two younger Misses Gallosh returning
+without their sister.
+
+“Been in different boats, have you?” said he, after they had explained
+this curious circumstance; “well, I hope you all had a good sail.”
+
+To himself he uttered a less philosophical comment, and quickened his
+stride perceptibly. He reached the shore, but far or near was never a
+sign of boat upon the waters.
+
+“Have they gone down!” he thought.
+
+Just then he became aware of a sound arising from beneath the wooded
+bank a short distance away. It was evidently intended to be muffled,
+but the Baron's lungs were powerful, and there was no mistaking his deep
+voice as he sang--
+
+          “'My loff she's like a red, red rose
+               Zat's newly sprong in June!
+          My loff she's like a melody
+               Zat's sveetly blayed in tune!
+
+Ach, how does he end?”
+
+Before his charmer had time to prompt him, the Count raised his own
+tolerably musical voice and replied--
+
+          “'And fare thee weel, my second string!
+               And fare thee weel awhile!
+          I won t come back again, my love,
+               For tis ower mony mile!
+
+
+For an instant there followed a profound silence, and then the voice of
+the Baron replied, with somewhat forced mirth--
+
+“Vary goot, Bonker! Ha, ha! Vary goot!”
+
+Meanwhile Bunker, without further delay, was pushing his way through a
+tangle of shrubbery till in a moment he spied the boat moored beneath
+the leafy bank, and although it was a capacious craft he observed that
+its two occupants were both crowded into one end.
+
+“I am sent to escort you back to dinner,” he said blandly.
+
+“Tell zem ve shall be back in three minutes,” replied the Baron, making
+a prodigious show of preparation for coming ashore.
+
+“I am sorry to say that my orders were strictly to escort, not to herald
+you,” said the Count apologetically.
+
+Fortifying himself against unpopularity by the consciousness that he was
+doing his duty, this well-principled, even if spurious, nobleman paced
+back towards the house with the lady between him and the indignant
+Baron.
+
+“Well, Tulliwuddle,” he discoursed, in as friendly a tone as ever, “I
+left your cards with our American neighbors.”
+
+“So?” muttered the Baron stolidly.
+
+“They received me with open arms, and I have taken the liberty of
+accepting on behalf of Mr., Mrs., and Miss Gallosh, and of our two
+selves, a very cordial invitation to lunch with them to-morrow.”
+
+“Impossible!” cried the Baron gruffly.
+
+Eva turned a reproachful eye upon him.
+
+“Oh, Lord Tulliwuddle! I should so like to go.”
+
+The Baron looked at her blankly.
+
+“You vould!”
+
+“I have heard they are such nice people, and have such a beautiful
+place!”
+
+“I can confirm both statements,” said the Count heartily.
+
+“Besides, papa and mamma would be very disappointed if we didn't go.”
+
+“Make it as you please,” said the Baron gloomily.
+
+His unsuspicious hosts heard of the invitation with such outspoken
+pleasure that their honored guest could not well renew his protest. He
+had to suffer the arrangement to be made; but that night when he and
+Bunker withdrew to their own room, the Count perceived the makings of an
+argumentative evening.
+
+“Sometimes you interfere too moch,” the Baron began without preamble.
+
+“Do you mind being a little more specific?” replied the Count with
+smiling composure.
+
+“Zere vas no hurry to lonch mit Maddison.”
+
+“I didn't name the date.”
+
+“You might have said next veek.”
+
+“By next week Miss Maddison may be snapped up by some one else.”
+
+“Zen vould Tollyvoddle be more lucky! I have nearly got for him ze most
+charming girl, mit as moch money as he vants. Ach, you do interfere! You
+should gonsider ze happiness of Tollyvoddle.”
+
+“That is the only consideration that affects yourself, Baron?”
+
+“Of course! I cannot marry more zan vonce.” (Bunker thought he perceived
+a symptom of a sigh.) “And I most be faithful to Alicia. I most! Ach,
+yes, Bonker, do not fear for me! I am so constant as--ach, I most keep
+faithful!”
+
+As he supplied this remarkable testimony to his own fidelity, the Baron
+paced the floor with an agitation that clearly showed how firmly his
+constancy was based.
+
+Nevertheless the Count was smiling oddly at something he espied upon the
+mantelpiece, and stepping up to it he observed--
+
+“Here is a singular phenomenon--a bunch of white heather that has got
+itself tied together with ribbon!”
+
+The Baron started, and took the tiny bouquet from his hand, his eyes
+sparkling with delight.
+
+“It must be a gift from----” he began, and then laid it down again,
+though his gaze continued fixed upon it. “How did it gom in?” he mused.
+“Ach! she most have brought it herself. How vary nice!”
+
+He turned suddenly and met his friend's humorous eyes.
+
+“I shall be faithful, Bonker! You can trust me!” he exclaimed; “I shall
+put it in my letter to Alicia, and send it mit my love! See, Bonker!”
+
+He took a letter from his desk--its envelope still open--hurriedly
+slipped in the white heather, and licked the gum while his resolution
+was hot. Then, having exhibited this somewhat singular evidence of his
+constancy, he sighed again.
+
+“It vas ze only safe vay,” he said dolefully. “Vas I not right, Bonker?”
+
+“Quite, my dear Baron,” replied the Count sympathetically. “Believe me,
+I appreciate your self-sacrifice. In fact, it was to relieve the strain
+upon your too generous heart that I immediately accepted Mr. Maddison's
+invitation for to-morrow.”
+
+“How so?” demanded the Baron with perhaps excusable surprise.
+
+“You will be able to decide at once which is the most suitable bride for
+Tulliwuddle, and then, if you like, we can leave in a day or two.”
+
+“Bot I do not vish to leave so soon!”
+
+“Well then, while you stay, you can at least make sure that you are
+engaging the affections of the right girl.”
+
+Though Bunker spoke with an air of desiring merely to assist his friend,
+the speech seemed to arouse some furious thinking in the Baron's mind.
+
+For some moments he made no reply, and then at last, in a troubled
+voice, he said--
+
+“I have already a leetle gommitted Tollyvoddle to Eva. Ach, bot not
+moch! Still it vas a leetle. Miss Maddison--vat is she like?”
+
+To the best of his ability the Count sketched the charms of Eleanor
+Maddison--her enthusiasm for large and manly noblemen, and the probable
+effects of the Baron's stalwart form set off by the tartan which (in
+deference, he declared, to the Wraith's injunctions) he now invariably
+wore. Also, he touched upon her father's colossal fortune, and the
+genuine Tulliwuddle's necessities.
+
+The Baron listened with growing interest.
+
+“Vell,” he said, “I soppose I most make a goot impression for ze sake of
+Tollyvoddle. For instance, ven we drive up----”
+
+“Drive? my dear Baron, we shall march! Leave it to me; I have a very
+pretty design shaping in my head.”
+
+“Aha!” smiled the Baron; “my showman again, eh?”
+
+His expression sobered, and he added as a final contribution to the
+debate--
+
+“But I may tell you, Bonker, I do not eggspect to like Miss Maddison.
+Ah, my instinct he is vonderful! It vas my instinct vich said. 'Chose
+Miss Gallosh for Tollyvoddle!'”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+While the Baron was thus loyally doing his duty, his Baroness, being
+ignorant of the excellence of his purpose, and knowing only that he had
+deceived her in one matter, and that the descent to Avernus is easy,
+passed a number of very miserable days. That heart-breaking “us both”
+ kept her awake at nights and distraught throughout the day, and when for
+a little she managed to explain the phrase away, and tried to anchor
+her trust in Rudolph once more, the vision of the St. Petersburg window
+overlooking the crops would come to shatter her confidence. She wrote
+a number of passionate replies, but as the Baron in making his
+arrangements with his Russian friend had forgotten to provide him with
+his Scotch address, these letters only reached him after the events
+of this chronicle had passed into history. Strange to say, her only
+consolation was that neither her mother nor Sir Justin was able to
+supply any further evidence of any kind whatsoever. One would naturally
+suppose that the assistance they had gratuitously given would have
+made her feel eternally indebted to them; but, on the contrary, she was
+actually inconsistent enough to resent their head-shakings nearly as
+much as her Rudolph's presumptive infidelity. So that her lot was indeed
+to be deplored.
+
+At last a second letter came, and with trembling fingers, locked in her
+room, the forsaken lady tore the curiously bulky envelope apart. Then,
+at the sight of the enclosure that had given it this shape, her heart
+lightened once more.
+
+“A sprig of white heather!” she cried. “Ah, he loves me still!”
+
+With eager eyes she next devoured the writing accompanying this token;
+and as the Baron's head happened to be clearer when he composed this
+second epistle, and his friend's hints peculiarly judicious, it conveyed
+so plausible an account of his proceedings, and contained so many
+expressions of his unaltered esteem, that his character was completely
+reinstated in her regard.
+
+Having read every affectionate sentence thrice over, and given his
+exceedingly interesting statements of fact the attention they deserved,
+she once more took up the little bouquet and examined it more curiously
+and intently. She even untied the ribbon, when, lo and behold! there
+fell a tiny and tightly folded twist of paper upon the floor. Preparing
+herself for a delicious bit of sentiment, she tenderly unfolded and
+smoothed it out.
+
+“Verses!” she exclaimed rapturously; but the next instant her pleasure
+gave place to a look of the extremest mystification.
+
+“What does this mean?” she gasped.
+
+There was, in fact, some excuse for her perplexity, since the precise
+text of the enclosure ran thus:
+
+          “TO LORD TULLIWUDDLE.
+
+     “O Chieftain, trample on this heath
+     Which lies thy springing foot beneath!
+     It can recover from thy tread,
+     And once again uplift its head!
+     But spare, O Chief, the tenderer plant,
+     Because when trampled on, it can't!
+                              “EVA.”
+
+
+Too confounded for coherent speculation, the Baroness continued to stare
+at this baffling effusion. Who Lord Tulliwuddle and Eva were; why
+this glimpse into their drama (for such it appeared to be) should be
+forwarded to her; and where the Baron von Blitzenberg came into the
+story--these, among a dozen other questions, flickered chaotically
+through her mind for some minutes. Again and again she studied the
+cryptogram, till at last a few definite conclusions began to crystallize
+out of the confusion. That the “tenderer plant” symbolized the lady
+herself, that she was a person to be regarded with extreme suspicion,
+and that emphatically the bouquet was never originally intended for the
+Baroness von Blitzenberg, all became settled convictions. The fact that
+she knew Tulliwuddle to be an existing peerage afforded her some relief;
+yet the longer she pondered on the problem of Rudolph's part in the
+episode, the more uneasy grew her mind.
+
+Composing her face before the mirror till it resumed its normal
+round-eyed placidity, she locked the letter and its contents in a safe
+place, and sought out her mother.
+
+“Did you get any letter, dear, by the last post?” inquired the Countess
+as soon as she had entered the room.
+
+“Nothing of importance, mamma.”
+
+That so sweet and docile a daughter should stoop to deceit was
+inconceivable. The Countess merely frowned her disappointment and
+resumed the novel which she was beguiling the hours between eating and
+eating again.
+
+“Mamma,” said the Baroness presently, “can you tell me whether heather
+is found in many other European countries?”
+
+The Countess raised her firmly penciled eyebrows.
+
+“In some, I believe. What a remarkable question, Alicia.”
+
+“I was thinking about Russia,” said Alicia with an innocent air. “Do you
+suppose heather grows there?”
+
+The Countess remembered the floral symptoms displayed by Ophelia, and
+grew a trifle nervous.
+
+“My child, what is the matter?”
+
+“Oh, nothing,” replied Alicia hastily.
+
+A short silence followed, during which she was conscious of undergoing a
+curious scrutiny.
+
+“By the way, mamma,” she found courage to ask at length, “do you know
+anything about Lord Tulliwuddle?”
+
+Lady Grillyer continued uneasy. These irrelevant questions undoubtedly
+indicated a mind unhinged.
+
+“I was acquainted with the late Lord Tulliwuddle.”
+
+“Oh, he is dead, then?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+Alicia's face clouded for a moment, and then a ray of hope lit it again.
+
+“Is there a present Lord Tulliwuddle?”
+
+“I believe so. Why do you ask?”
+
+“I heard some one speak of him the other day.”
+
+She spoke so naturally that her mother began to feel relieved.
+
+“Sir Justin Wallingford can tell you all about the family, if you are
+curious,” she remarked.
+
+“Sir Justin!”
+
+Alicia recoiled from the thought of him. But presently her curiosity
+prevailed, and she inquired--
+
+“Does he know them well?”
+
+“He inherited a place in Scotland a number of years ago, you
+remember. It is somewhere near Lord Tulliwuddle's
+place--Hech--Hech--Hech-something-or-other Castle. He was very well
+acquainted with the last Tulliwuddle.”
+
+“Oh,” said Alicia indifferently, “I am not really interested. It was
+mere idle curiosity.”
+
+For the greater part of twenty-four hours she kept this mystery locked
+within her heart, till at last she could contain it no longer. The
+resolution she came to was both desperate and abruptly taken. At five
+minutes to three she was resolved to die rather than mention that sprig
+of heather to a soul; at five minutes past she was on her way to Sir
+Justin Wallingford's house.
+
+“It may be going behind mamma's back,” she said to herself; “but she
+went behind mine when SHE consulted Sir Justin.”
+
+It was probably in consequence of her urgent voice and agitated manner
+that she came to be shown straight into Sir Justin's library, without
+warning on either side, and thus surprised her counsellor in the act
+of softly singing a well-known hymn to the accompaniment of a small
+harmonium. He seemed for a moment to be a trifle embarrassed, and the
+glance he threw at his footman appeared to indicate an early vacancy
+in his establishment; but as soon as he had recovered his customary
+solemnity his explanation reflected nothing but credit upon his
+character.
+
+“The fact is,” said he, “that I am shortly going to rejoin my daughter
+in Scotland. You are aware of her disposition, Baroness?”
+
+“I have heard that she is inclined to be devotional.”
+
+“She is devotional,” answered this excellent man. “I have taken
+considerable pains to see to it. As your mother and I have often agreed,
+there is no such safeguard for a young girl as a hobby or mania of this
+sort.”
+
+“A hobby or mania?” exclaimed the Baroness in a pained voice.
+
+Sir Justin looked annoyed. He was evidently surprised to find that the
+principles inculcated by his old friend and himself appeared to outlive
+the occasion for which they were intended--to wit, the protection
+of virgin hearts from undesirable aspirations till calm reason and a
+husband should render them unnecessary.
+
+“I use the terms employed by the philosophical,” he hastened to explain;
+“but my own opinion is inclined to coincide with yours, my dear Alicia.”
+
+This paternal use of her Christian name, coupled with the kindly tone of
+his justification, encouraged the Baroness to open her business.
+
+“Sir Justin,” she began, “can I trust you--may I ask you not to tell my
+mother that I have visited you?”
+
+“If you can show me an adequate reason, you may rely upon my
+discretion,” said the ex-diplomatist cautiously, yet with an encouraging
+smile.
+
+“In some things one would sooner confide in a man than a woman, Sir
+Justin.”
+
+“That is undoubtedly true,” he agreed cordially. “You may confide in me,
+Baroness.”
+
+“I have heard from my husband again. I need not show you the letter;
+it is quite satisfactory--oh, quite, I assure you! Only I found this
+enclosed with it.”
+
+In breathless silence she watched him examine critically first the
+heather and then the verses.
+
+“Lord Tulliwuddle!” he exclaimed. “Is there anything in the Baron's
+letter to throw any light upon this?”
+
+“Not one word--not the slightest hint.”
+
+Again he studied the paper.
+
+“Oh, what does it mean?” she cried. “I came to you because you know all
+about the Tulliwuddles. Where is Lord Tulliwuddle now?”
+
+“I am not acquainted with the present peer,” he ansevered meditatively.
+“In fact, I know singularly little about him. I did hear--yes, I heard
+from my daughter some rumor that he was shortly expected to visit his
+place in Scotland; but whether he went there or not I cannot say.”
+
+“You can find out for me?”
+
+“I shall lose no time in ascertaining.”
+
+The Baroness thanked him effusively, and rose to depart with a mind a
+little comforted.
+
+“And you won't tell mamma?”
+
+“I never tell a woman anything that is of any importance.”
+
+The Baroness was confirmed in her opinion that Sir Justin was not a very
+nice man, but she felt an increased confidence in his judgment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+From the gargoyled keep which the cultured enthusiasm of Eleanor and the
+purse of her father had recently erected at Lincoln Lodge, the brother
+and sister looked over a bend of the river, half a mile of valley road,
+a wave of forest country, and the greater billows of the bare hillsides
+towering beyond. But out of all this prospect it was only upon the
+stretch of road that their eyes were bent.
+
+“Surely one should see their carriage soon!” exclaimed Eleanor.
+
+“Seems to me,” said her brother, “that you're sitting something like a
+cat on the pounce for this Tulliwuddle fellow. Why, Eleanor, I never
+saw you so excited since the first duke came along. I thought that had
+passed right off.”
+
+“Oh, Ri, I was reading 'Waverley' again last night, and somehow I felt
+the top of the keep was the only place to watch for a chief!”
+
+“Why, you don't expect him to be different from other people?”
+
+“Ri! I tell you I'll cry if he looks like any one I've ever seen before!
+Don't you remember the Count said he moved like a pine in his native
+forests?”
+
+“He won't make much headway like that,” said Ri incisively. “I'd sooner
+he moved like something more spry than a tree. I guess that Count was
+talking through his hat.”
+
+But his sister was not to be argued out of her exalted mood by such
+prosaic reasoning. She exclaimed at his sluggish imagination, reiterated
+her faith in the insinuating count's assurances, and was only withheld
+from sending her brother down for a spy-glass by the reflection that she
+could not remember reading of its employment by any maiden in analogous
+circumstances.
+
+It was at this auspicious moment, when the heart of the expectant
+heiress was inflamed with romantic fancies and excited with the suspense
+of waiting, and before it had time to cool through any undue delay, that
+a little cloud of dust first caught her straining eyes.
+
+“He comes at last!” she cried.
+
+At the same instant the faint strains of the pibroch were gently wafted
+to her embattled tower.
+
+“He is bringing his piper! Oh, what a duck he is!”
+
+“Seems to me he is bringing a dozen of them,” observed Ri.
+
+“And look, Ri! The sun is glinting upon steel! Claymores, Ri! oh, how
+heavenly! There must be fifty men! And they are still coming! I do
+believe he has brought the whole clan!”
+
+Too petrified with delight to utter another exclamation, she watched in
+breathless silence the approach of a procession more formidable than
+had ever escorted a Tulliwuddle since the year of Culloden. As they drew
+nearer, her ardent gaze easily distinguished a stalwart figure in plaid
+and kilt, armed to the teeth with target and claymore, marching with a
+stately stride fully ten paces before his retinue.
+
+“The chief!” she murmured.
+
+Now indeed she saw there was no cause to mourn, for any one at all
+resembling the Baron von Blitzenberg as he appeared at that moment she
+had certainly never met before. Intoxicated with his finery and with the
+terrific peals of melody behind him, he pranced rather than walked up to
+the portals of Lincoln Lodge, and there, to the amazement and admiration
+alike of his clansmen and his expectant host, he burst forth into the
+following Celtic fragment, translated into English for the occasion by
+his assiduous friend from a hitherto undiscovered manuscript of Ossian:
+
+     “I am ze chieftain,
+       Nursed in ze mountains,
+       Behold me, Mac--ig--ig--ig ish!
+
+(Yet the Count had written this word very distinctly.)
+
+     “Oich for ze claymore!
+       Hoch for ze philabeg!
+       Sons of ze red deers,
+       Children of eagles,
+       I will supply you
+       Mit Sassenach carcases!”
+
+At this point came a momentary lull, the chieftain's eyes rolling
+bloodthirstily, but the rhapsody having apparently become congested
+within his fiery heart. His audience, however, were not given time to
+recover their senses, before a striking-looking individual, adorned with
+tartan trews and a feathered hat, in whom all were pleased to recognize
+Count Bunker, whispered briefly in his lordship's ear, and like a river
+in spate he foamed on:
+
+     “Donald and Ronald
+       Avake from your slumbers!
+       Maiden so lovely,
+       Smile mit your bright eyes!
+       Ze heather is blooming!
+       Ze vild cat is growling!
+       Hech Dummeldirroch!
+       Behold Tollyvoddle,
+       Ze Lord of ze Mountains!”
+
+
+Hardly had the reverberations of the chieftain's voice died away, when
+the Count, uttering a series of presumably Gaelic cries, advanced with
+the most dramatic air, and threw his broad-sword upon the ground. The
+Baron laid his across it, the pipes struck up a less formidable, but
+if anything more exciting air, and the two noblemen, springing
+simultaneously from the ground, began what the Count confidently trusted
+their American hosts would accept as the national sworddance.
+
+This lasted for some considerable time, and gave the Count an
+opportunity of testifying his remarkable agility and the Baron of
+displaying the greater part of his generously proportioned limbs, while
+the lung power of both became from that moment proverbial in the glen.
+
+At the conclusion of this ceremony the chieftain, crimson, breathless,
+and radiant, a sight for gods and ladies, advanced to greet his host.
+
+“Very happy to see you, Lord Tulliwuddle,” said Mr. Maddison. “Allow
+me to offer you my very sincere congratulations on your exceedingly
+interesting exhibition. Welcome to Lincoln Lodge, your lordship! My
+daughter--my son.”
+
+Eleanor, almost as flushed as the Baron by her headlong rush from the
+keep at the conclusion of the sword-dance, threw him such a smile as
+none of her admirers had ever enjoyed before; while he, incapable of
+speech beyond a gasped “Ach!” bowed so low that the Count had gently
+to adjust his kilt. Then followed the approach of the Gallosh family,
+attired in costumes of Harris tweed and tartan selected and arranged
+under the artistic eye of Count Bunker, and escorted, to their huge
+delight, by six picked clansmen. Their formal presentation having been
+completed by a last skirl on the bagpipes, the whole party moved in
+procession to the banqueting-hall.
+
+“A complete success, I flatter myself,” thought Count Bunker, with
+excusable complacency.
+
+To the banquet itself it is scarcely possible for a mere mortal
+historian to pay a fitting tribute. Every rarity known to the gourmet
+that telegraph could summon to the table in time was served in course
+upon course. Even the sweetmeats in the little gold dishes cost on an
+average a dollar a bon-bon, while the wine was hardly less valuable than
+liquid radium. Or at least such was the sworn information subsequently
+supplied by Count Bunker to the reporter of “The Torrydhulish Herald.”
+
+Eleanor was in her highest spirits. She sat between the Baron and
+Mr. Gallosh, delighted with the honest pleasure and admiration of the
+merchant, and all the time becoming more satisfied with the demeanor and
+conversation of the chief. In fact, the only disappointment she felt was
+connected with the appearance of Miss Gallosh. Much as she had desired a
+confidante, she had never demanded one so remarkably beautiful, and she
+could not but feel that a very much plainer friend would have served her
+purpose quite as well--and indeed better. Once or twice she intercepted
+a glance passing between this superfluously handsome lady and the
+principal guest, until at last it occurred to her as a strange and
+unseemly thing that Lord Tulliwuddle should be paying so long a visit
+to his shooting tenants. Eva, on her part, felt a curiously similar
+sensation. These American gentlemen were as pleasant as report had
+painted them, but she now discovered an odd antipathy to American women,
+or at least to their unabashed method of making themselves agreeable
+to noblemen. It confirmed, indeed, the worst reports she had heard
+concerning the way in which they raided the British marriage market.
+
+Being placed beside one of these lovely girls and opposite the
+other, the Baron, one would think, would be in the highest state of
+contentment; but though still flushed with his triumphant caperings over
+the broadswords, and exhibiting a graciousness that charmed his hosts,
+he struck his observant friend as looking a trifle disturbed at soul.
+He would furtively glance across the table and then as furtively throw
+a sidelong look at his neighbor, and each time he appeared to grow more
+thoughtful. And yet he did not look precisely unhappy either. In
+fact, there was a gleam in his eye during each of these glances which
+suggested that both fell upon something he approved of.
+
+The after-luncheon procedure had been carefully arranged between the
+two adventurers. The Count was to keep by the Baron's side, and, thus
+supported, negotiations were to be delicately opened. Accordingly, when
+the party rose, the Count whispered a word in Mr. Maddison's ear. The
+millionaire answered with a grave, shrewd look, and his daughter, as if
+perfectly grasping the situation, led the Galloshes out to inspect the
+new fir forest. And then the two noblemen and the two Dariuses faced one
+another over their cigars.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+“Well, gentlemen,” said Mr. Maddison, “pleasure is pleasure, and
+business is business. I guess we mean to do a little of both to-day, if
+you are perfectly disposed. What do you say, Count?”
+
+“I consider that an occasion selected by you, Mr. Maddison, is not to be
+neglected.”
+
+The millionaire bowed his acknowledgment of the compliment, and turned
+to the Baron, who, it may be remarked, was wearing an expression of
+thoughtful gravity not frequently to be noted at Hechnahoul.
+
+“You desire to say a few words to me, Lord Tulliwuddle, I understand. I
+shall be pleased to hear them.”
+
+With this both father and son bent such earnest brows on the Baron and
+waited for his answer in such intense silence, that he began to regret
+the absence of his inspiring pipers.
+
+“I vould like ze honor to address mine--mine----”
+
+He threw an imploring glance at his friend, who, without hesitation,
+threw himself into the breach.
+
+“Lord Tulliwuddle feels the natural diffidence of a lover in adequately
+expressing his sentiments. I understand that he craves your permission
+to lay a certain case before a certain lady. I am right, Tulliwuddle?”
+
+“Pairfectly,” said the Baron, much relieved; “to lay a certain case
+before a certain lady. Zat is so, yes, exactly.”
+
+Father and son glanced at one another.
+
+“Your delicacy does you honor, very great honor,” said Mr. Maddison;
+“but business is business, Lord Tulliwuddle, and I should like to hear
+your proposition more precisely stated. In fact, sir, I like to know
+just where I am.”
+
+“That's just about right,” assented Ri.
+
+“I vould perhaps vish to marry her.”
+
+“Perhaps!” exclaimed the two together.
+
+Again the Count adroitly interposed--
+
+“You mean that you do not intend to thrust your attentions upon an
+unwilling lady?”
+
+“Yes, yes; zat is vat I mean.”
+
+“I see,” said Mr. Maddison slowly. “H'm, yes.”
+
+“Sounds what you Scotch call 'canny,'” commented Ri shrewdly.
+
+“Well,” resumed the millionaire, “I have nothing to say against that;
+provided--provided, I say, that you stipulate to marry the lady so long
+as she has no objections to you. No fooling around--that's all we want
+to see to. Our time, sir, is too valuable.”
+
+“That is so,” said Ri.
+
+The Baron's color rose, and a look of displeasure came into his eyes,
+but before he had time to make a retort that might have wrecked his
+original's hopes, Bunker said quickly--
+
+“Tulliwuddle places himself in your hands, with the implicit confidence
+that one gentleman reposes in another.”
+
+Gulping down his annoyance, the Baron assented--
+
+“Yes, I vill do zat.”
+
+Again father and son looked at one another, and this time exchanged a
+nod.
+
+“That, sir, will satisfy us,” said Mr. Maddison. “Ri, you may turn off
+the phonograph.”
+
+And thereupon the cessation of a loud buzzing sound, which the visitors
+had hitherto attributed to flies, showed that their host now considered
+he had received a sufficient guarantee of his lordship's honorable
+intentions.
+
+“So far, so good,” resumed Mr. Maddison. “I may now inform you, Lord
+Tulliwuddle, that the reports about you which I have been able to gather
+read kind of mixed, and before consenting to your reception within my
+daughter's boudoir we should feel obliged if you would satisfy us that
+the worst of them are not true--or, at least, sir, exaggerated.”
+
+This time the Baron could not restrain an exclamation of displeasure.
+
+“Vat, sir!” he cried, addressing the millionaire. “Do you examine me on
+my life!”
+
+“No, sir,” said Ri, frowning his most determined frown. “It is to ME you
+will be kind enough to give any explanation you have to offer! Dad may
+be the spokesman, but I am the inspirer of these interrogations. My
+sister, sir, the purest girl in America, the most beautiful creature
+beneath the star-spangled banner of Columbia, is not going to be the
+companion of dissolute idleness and gilded dishonor--not, sir, if _I_
+know it.”
+
+Too confounded by this unusual warning to think of any adequate retort,
+the Baron could only stare his sensations; while Mr. Maddison, taking
+up the conversation the instant his son had ceased, proceeded in a
+deliberate and impressive voice to say--
+
+“Yes, sir, my son--and I associate myself with him--my son and I, sir,
+would be happy to learn that it is NOT the case as here stated” (he
+glanced at a paper in his hand), “namely, Item 1, that you sup rather
+too frequently with ladies--I beg your pardon, Count Bunker, for
+introducing the theme--with ladies of the theatrical profession.”
+
+“I!” gasped the Baron. “I do only vish I sometimes had ze cha----”
+
+“Tulliwuddle!” interrupted the Count. “Don't let your natural
+indignation carry you away! Mr. Maddison, that statement is not true. I
+can vouch for it.”
+
+“Ach, of course it is not true,” said the Baron more calmly, as he began
+to realize that it was not his own character that was being aspersed.
+
+“I am very glad to hear it,” continued Mr. Maddison, who apparently did
+not share the full austerity of his son's views, since without further
+question he hurried on to the next point.
+
+“Item 2, sir, states that at least two West End firms are threatening
+you with proceedings if you do not discharge their accounts within a
+reasonable time.”
+
+“A lie!” declared the Baron emphatically.
+
+“Will you be so kind as to favor us with the name of the individual who
+is thus libelling his lordship?” demanded the Count with a serious air.
+
+Mr. Maddison hastily put the paper back in his pocket, and with a glance
+checked his son's gesture of protest.
+
+“Guess we'd better pass on to the next thing, Ri. I told you it wasn't
+any darned use just asking. But you boys always think you know better
+than your Poppas,” said he; and then, turning to the Count, “It
+isn't worth while troubling, Count; I'll see that these reports get
+contradicted, if I have to buy up a daily paper and issue it at a
+halfpenny. Yes, sir, you can leave it to me.”
+
+The Count glanced at his friend, and they exchanged a grave look.
+
+“Again we place ourselves in your hands,” said Bunker.
+
+Though considerably impressed with these repeated evidences of
+confidence on the part of two such important personages, their host
+nevertheless maintained something of his inquisitorial air as he
+proceeded--
+
+“For my own satisfaction, Lord Tulliwuddle, and meaning to convey no
+aspersion whatsoever upon your character, I would venture to inquire
+what are your views upon some of the current topics. Take any one you
+like, sir, so long as it's good and solid, and let me hear what you have
+to say about it. What you favor us with will not be repeated beyond this
+room, but merely regarded by my son and myself as proving that we are
+getting no dunder-headed dandy for our Eleanor, but an article of
+real substantial value--the kind of thing they might make into a
+Lord-lieutenant or a Viceroy in a bad year.”
+
+Tempting in every way as this suggestion sounded, his lordship
+nevertheless appeared to find a little initial difficulty in choosing a
+topic.
+
+“Speak out, sir,” said Mr. Maddison in an encouraging tone. “Our
+standard for noblemen isn't anything remarkably high. With a duke I'd be
+content with just a few dates and something about model cottages, and,
+though a baron ought to know a little more than that, still we'll count
+these feudal bagpipers and that ancestral hop-scotch performance as a
+kind of set-off to your credit. Suppose you just say a few words on the
+future of the Anglo-Saxon race. What you've learned from the papers will
+do, so long as you seem to understand it.”
+
+Perceiving that his Teutonic friend looked a trifle dismayed at this
+selection, Count Bunker suggested the Triple Alliance as an alternative.
+
+“That needs more facts, I guess,” said the millionaire; “but it will be
+all the more creditable if you can manage it.”
+
+The Baron cleared his throat to begin, and as he happened (as the Count
+was well aware) to have the greatest enthusiasm for this policy, and to
+have recently read the thirteen volumes of Professor Bungstrumpher
+on the subject, he delivered a peroration so remarkable alike for its
+fervor, its facts, and its phenomenal length, that when, upon a gentle
+hint from the Count, he at last paused, all traces of objection had
+vanished from the minds of Darius P. Maddison, senior and junior.
+
+“I need no longer detain you, Lord Tulliwuddle,” said the millionaire
+respectfully. “Ri, fetch your sister into her room. Your lordship, I
+have received an intellectual treat. I am very deeply gratified, sir.
+Allow me to conduct you to my daughter's boudoir.”
+
+Flushed with his exertions and his triumph though the Baron was, he yet
+remembered so vividly the ordeal preceding the oration that as they went
+he whispered in his friend's ear:
+
+“Ah, Bonker, stay mit me, I pray you! If she should ask more questions!
+
+“Mr. Maddison, ze Count will stay mit me.”
+
+Though a little surprised at this arrangement, which scarcely accorded
+with his lordship's virile appearance and dashing air, Mr. Maddison
+was by this time too favorably disposed to question the wisdom of
+any suggestion he might make, and accordingly the two friends found
+themselves closeted together in Miss Maddison's sanctum awaiting the
+appearance of the heiress.
+
+“Shall I remain through the entire interview?” asked the Count.
+
+“Oh yes, mine Bonker, you most! Or--vell, soppose it gets unnecessary
+zen vill I cry 'By ze Gad!' and you vill know to go.”
+
+“'By the Gad'? I see.”
+
+“Or--vell, not ze first time, but if I say it tree times, zen vill you
+make an excuse.”
+
+“Three times? I understand, Baron.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+In the eye of the heiress, as in her father's, might be noted a shade of
+surprise at finding two gentlemen instead of one. But though the Count
+instantly perceived his superfluity, and though it had been his greatest
+ambition throughout his life to add no shade to the dullness with which
+he frequently complained that life was overburdened, yet his sense of
+obligation to his friend was so strong that he preferred to bore rather
+than desert. As the only compensation he could offer, he assumed the
+most retiring look of which his mobile features were capable, and
+pretended to examine one of the tables of curios.
+
+“Lord Tulliwuddle, I congratulate you on the very happy impression you
+have made!” began Eleanor with the most delightful frankness.
+
+But his lordship had learned to fear the Americans, even bearing
+compliments.
+
+“So?” he answered stolidly.
+
+“Indeed you have! Ri is just wild about your cleverness.”
+
+“Zat is kind of him.”
+
+“He declares you are quite an authority on European politics. Now you
+will be able to tell me----”
+
+“Ach, no! I shall not to-day, please!” interrupted the Baron hurriedly.
+
+The heiress seemed disconcerted.
+
+“Oh, not if you'd rather not, Lord Tulliwuddle.”
+
+“Not to-day.”
+
+“Well!”
+
+She turned with a shrug and cast her eyes upon the wall.
+
+“How do you like this picture? It's my latest toy. I call it just
+sweet!”
+
+He cautiously examined the painting.
+
+“It is vary pretty.”
+
+“Do you know Romney's work?”
+
+The Baron shrank back.
+
+“Not again to-day, please!”
+
+Miss Maddison opened her handsome eyes to their widest.
+
+“My word!” she cried. “If these are Highland manners, Lord Tulliwuddle!”
+
+In extreme confusion the Baron stammered--
+
+“I beg your pardon! Forgif me--but--ach, not zose questions, please!”
+
+Relenting a little, she inquired
+
+“What may I ask you, then? Do tell me! You see I want just to know all
+about you.”
+
+With an affrighted gesture the Baron turned to his friend.
+
+“Bonker,” said he, “she does vant to know yet more about me! Vill you
+please to tell her.”
+
+The Count looked up from the curios with an expression so bland that the
+air began to clear even before he spoke.
+
+“Miss Maddison, I must explain that my friend's proud Highland spirit
+has been a little disturbed by some inquiries, made in all good faith
+by your father. No offence, I am certain, was intended; erroneous
+information--a little hastiness in jumping to conclusions--a sensitive
+nature wounded by the least insinuation--such were the unfortunate
+causes of Tulliwuddle's excusable reticence. Believe me, if you knew
+all, your opinion of him would alter very, very considerably!”
+
+The perfectly accurate peroration to this statement produced an
+immediate effect.
+
+“What a shame!” cried Eleanor, her eyes sparkling brightly. “Lord
+Tulliwuddle, I am so sorry!”
+
+The Baron looked into these eyes, and his own mien altered perceptibly.
+For an instant he gazed, and then in a low voice remarked--
+
+“By ze Gad!”
+
+“Once!” counted the conscientious Bunker.
+
+“Lord Tulliwuddle,” she continued, “I declare I feel so ashamed of those
+stupid men, I could just wring their necks! Now, just to make us quits,
+you ask me anything in the world you like!”
+
+Over his shoulder the Baron threw a stealthy glance at his friend, but
+this time he did not invoke his assistance. Instead, he again murmured
+very distinctly--
+
+“By ze Gad!”
+
+“Twice!” counted Bunker.
+
+“Miss Maddison,” said the Baron to the flushed and eager girl, “am I
+to onderstand zat you now are satisfied zat I am not too vicked, too
+suspeecious, too unvorthy of your charming society? I do not say I am
+yet vorthy--bot jost not too bad!”
+
+Had the Baroness at that moment heard merely the intonation of his
+voice, she would undoubtedly have preferred a Chinese prison.
+
+“Indeed, Lord Tulliwuddle, you may.”
+
+“By ze Gad!” announced the Baron, in a voice braced with resolution.
+
+“May I take the liberty of inspecting the aviary?” said the Count.
+
+“With the very greatest pleasure,” replied the heiress kindly.
+
+His last distinct impression as he withdrew was of the Baron giving his
+mustache a more formidable twirl.
+
+“A very pretty little scene,” he reflected, as he strolled out in search
+of others. “Though, hang me, I'm not sure if it ended in the right man
+leaving the stage!”
+
+This “second-fiddle feeling,” as he styled it humorously to himself,
+was further increased by the demeanor of Miss Gallosh, to whom he now
+endeavored to make himself agreeable. Though sharing the universal
+respect felt for the character and talents of the Count, she was
+evidently too perturbed at seeing him appear alone to appreciate his
+society as it deserved. Ever since luncheon poor Eva's heart had been
+sinking. The beauty, the assurance, the cleverness, and the charm of the
+fabulously wealthy American heiress had filled her with vague misgivings
+even while the gentlemen were safely absent; but when Miss Maddison was
+summoned away, and her father and brother took her place, her uneasiness
+vastly increased. Now here was the last buffer removed between the
+chieftain and her audacious rival (so she already counted her). What
+drama could these mysterious movements have been leading to?
+
+In vain did Count Bunker exercise his unique powers of conversation.
+In vain did he discourse on the beauties of nature as displayed in
+the wooded valley and the towering hills, and the beauties of art as
+exhibited in the aviary and the new fir forest. Eva's thoughts were
+too much engrossed with the beauties of woman, and their dreadful
+consequences if improperly used.
+
+“Is--is Miss Maddison still in the house?” she inquired, with an effort
+to put the question carelessly.
+
+“I believe so,” said the Count in his kindest voice.
+
+“And--and--that isn't Lord Tulliwuddle with my father, is it?”
+
+“I believe not,” said the Count, still more sympathetically.
+
+She could no longer withhold a sigh, and the Count tactfully turned
+the conversation to the symbolical eagle arrived that morning from Mr.
+Maddison's native State.
+
+They had passed from the aviary to the flower garden, when at last they
+saw the Baron and Eleanor appear. She joined the rest of the party,
+while he, walking thoughtfully in search of his friend, advanced
+in their direction. He raised his eyes, and then, to complete Eva's
+concern, he started in evident embarrassment at discovering her there
+also. To do him justice, he quickly recovered his usual politeness. Yet
+she noticed that he detained the Count beside him and showed a curious
+tendency to discourse solely on the fine quality of the gravel and the
+advantages of having a brick facing to a garden wall.
+
+“My lord,” said Mr. Gallosh, approaching them, “would you be thinking of
+going soon? I've noticed Mr. Maddison's been taking out his watch verra
+frequently.”
+
+“Certainly, certainly!” cried my lord. “Oh, ve have finished all ve have
+come for.”
+
+Eva started, and even Mr. Gallosh looked a trifle perturbed.
+
+“Yes,” added the Count quickly, “we have a very good idea of the heating
+system employed. I quite agree with you: we can leave the rest to your
+engineer.”
+
+But even his readiness failed to efface the effects of his friend's
+unfortunate admission.
+
+Farewells were said, the procession reformed, the pipers struck up, and
+amidst the heartiest expressions of pleasure from all, the chieftain
+and his friends marched off to the spot where (out of sight of Lincoln
+Lodge) the forethought of their manager had arranged that the carriages
+should be waiting.
+
+“Well,” said Bunker, when they found themselves in their room again,
+“what do you think of Miss Maddison?”
+
+The Baron lit a cigar, gazed thoughtfully and with evident satisfaction
+at the daily deepening shade of tan upon his knees, and then answered
+slowly--
+
+“Vell, Bonker, she is not so bad.”
+
+“Ah,” commented Bunker.
+
+“Bot, Bonker, it is not vat I do think of her. Ach, no! It is not for
+mein own pleasure. Ach, nein! How shall I do my duty to Tollyvoddle? Zat
+is vat I ask myself.”
+
+“And what answer do you generally return?”
+
+“Ze answer I make is,” said the Baron gravely and with the deliberation
+the point deserved--“Ze answer is zat I shall vait and gonsider vich
+lady is ze best for him.”
+
+“The means you employ will no doubt include a further short personal
+interview with each of them?”
+
+“Vun short! Ach, Bonker, I most investigate mit carefulness. No, no; I
+most see zem more zan zat.”
+
+“How long do you expect the process will take you?”
+
+For the first time the Baron noticed with surprise a shade of impatience
+in his friend's voice.
+
+“Are you in a horry, Bonker?”
+
+“My dear Baron, I grudge no man his sport--particularly if he is careful
+to label it his duty. But, to tell the truth, I have never played
+gamekeeper for so long before, and I begin to find that picking up your
+victims and carrying them after you in a bag is less exhilarating to-day
+than it was a week ago. I wouldn't curtail your pleasure for the world,
+my dear fellow! But I do ask you to remember the poor keeper.”
+
+“My dear friend,” said the Baron cordially, “I shall remember! It shall
+take bot two or tree days to do my duty. I shall not be long.”
+
+          “A day or two of sober duty,
+            Then, Hoch! for London, home, and beauty!”
+
+trolled the Count pleasantly.
+
+The Baron did not echo the “Hoch”; but after retaining his thoughtful
+expression for a few moments, a smile stole over his face, and he
+remarked in an absent voice--
+
+“Vun does not alvays need to go home to find beauty.”
+
+“Yes,” said the Count, “I have always held it to be one of the
+advantages of travel that one learns to tolerate the inhabitants of
+other lands.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+“Ach, you are onfair,” exclaimed the Baron. “Really?” said Eva, with a
+sarcastic intonation he had not believed possible in so sweet a voice.
+
+It was the day following the luncheon at Lincoln Lodge, and they were
+once more seated in the shady arbor: this time the Count had guaranteed
+not only to leave them uninterrupted by his own presence, but to protect
+the garden from all other intruders. Everything, in fact, had presaged
+the pleasantest of tete-a-tetes. But, alas! the Baron was learning that
+if Amaryllis pouts, the shadiest corner may prove too warm. Why, he was
+asking himself, should she exhibit this incomprehensible annoyance? What
+had he done? How to awake her smiles again?
+
+“I do not forget my old friends so quickly,” he protested. “No, I do
+assure you! I do not onderstand vy you should say so.”
+
+“Oh, we don't profess to be old FRIENDS, Lord Tulliwuddle! After all,
+there is no reason why you shouldn't turn your back on us as soon as you
+see a newer--and more amusing--ACQUAINTANCE.”
+
+“But I have not turned my back!”
+
+“We saw nothing else all yesterday.”
+
+“Ah, Mees Gallosh, zat is not true! Often did I look at you!”
+
+“Did you? I had forgotten. One doesn't treasure every glance, you know.”
+
+The Baron tugged at his mustache and frowned.
+
+“She vill not do for Tollyvoddle,” he said to himself.
+
+But the next instant a glance from Eva's brilliant eyes--a glance
+so reproachful, so appealing, and so stimulating, that there was no
+resisting it--diverted his reflections into quite another channel.
+
+“Vat can I do to prove zat I am so friendly as ever?” he exclaimed.
+
+“So FRIENDLY?” she repeated, with an innocently meditative air.
+
+“So vary parteecularly friendly!”
+
+Her air relented a little--just enough, in fact, to make him ardently
+desire to see it relent still further.
+
+“You promise things to me, and then do them for other people's benefit.”
+
+The Baron eagerly demanded a fuller statement of this abominable charge.
+
+“Well,” she said, “you told me twenty times you would show me something
+really Highland--that you'd kill a deer by torchlight, or hold a
+gathering of the clans upon the castle lawn. All sorts of things you
+offered to do for me, and the only thing you have done has been for the
+sake of your NEW friends! You gave THEM a procession and a dance.”
+
+“But you did see it too!” he interrupted eagerly.
+
+“As part of your procession,” she retorted scornfully. “We felt much
+obliged to you--especially as you were so attentive to us afterwards!”
+
+“I did not mean to leave you,” exclaimed the Baron weakly. “It was jost
+zat Miss Maddison----”
+
+“I am not interested in Miss Maddison. No doubt she is very charming;
+but, really, she doesn't interest me at all. You were unavoidably
+prevented from talking to us--that is quite sufficient for me. I excuse
+you, Lord Tulliwuddle. Only, please, don't make me any more promises.”
+
+“Eva! Ach, I most say 'Eva' jost vunce more! I am going to leave my
+castle, to leave you, and say good-by.”
+
+She started and looked quickly at him.
+
+“Bot before I go I shall keep my promise! Ve shall have ze pipers, and
+ze kilts, and ze dancing, and toss ze caber, and fling ze hammer, and it
+shall be on ze castle lawn, and all for your sake! Vill you not forgive
+me and be friends?”
+
+“Will it really be all for my sake?”
+
+She spoke incredulously, yet looked as if she were willing to be
+convinced.
+
+“I swear it vill!”
+
+The latter part of this interview was so much more agreeable than the
+beginning that when the distant rumble of the luncheon gong brought
+it to an end at last they sighed, and for fully half a minute lingered
+still in silence. If one may dare to express in crude language a
+maiden's unspoken, formless thought, Eva's might be read--“There is yet
+a moment left for him to say the three short words that seem to hang
+upon his tongue!” While on his part he was reflecting that he had
+another duologue arranged for that very afternoon, and that, for
+the simultaneous suitor of two ladies, an open mind was almost
+indispensable.
+
+“Then you are going for a drive with the Count Bunker this afternoon?”
+ she asked, as they strolled slowly towards the house.
+
+“For a leetle tour in my estate,” he answered easily.
+
+“On business, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, vorse luck!”
+
+He knew not whether to feel more relieved or embarrassed to find that he
+evidently rose in her estimation as a conscientious landlord.
+
+. . . . . .
+
+“You are having a capital day's sport, Baron,” said the Count gaily, as
+they drew near Lincoln Lodge.
+
+During their drive the Baron had remained unusually silent. He now
+roused himself and said in a guarded whisper--
+
+“Bonker, vill you please to give ze coachman some money not to say jost
+vere he did drive us.”
+
+“I have done so,” smiled the Count.
+
+His friend gratefully grasped his hand and curled his mustache with an
+emboldened air.
+
+A similar display of address on the part of Count Bunker resulted in the
+Baron's finding himself some ten minutes later alone with Miss Maddison
+in her sanctuary. But, to his great surprise, he was greeted with none
+of the encouraging cordiality that had so charmed him yesterday. The
+lady was brief in her responses, critical in her tone, and evidently
+disposed to quarrel with her admirer on some ground at present
+entirely mysterious. Indeed, so discouraging was she that at length he
+exclaimed--
+
+“Tell me, Miss Maddison--I should not have gom to-day? You did not vish
+to see me. Eh?”
+
+“I certainly was perfectly comfortable without you, Lord Tulliwuddle,”
+ said the heiress tartly.
+
+“Shall I go avay?”
+
+“You have come here entirely for your own pleasure; and the moment you
+begin to feel tired there is nothing to hinder you going home again.”
+
+“You vere more kind to me yesterday,” said the Baron sadly.
+
+“I did not learn till after you had gone how much I was to blame for
+keeping you so long away from your friends. Please do not think I shall
+repeat the offence.”
+
+There was an accent on the word “friends” that enlightened the
+bewildered nobleman, even though quickness in taking a hint was not his
+most conspicuous attribute. That the voice of gossip had reached the
+fair American was only too evident; but though considerably annoyed, he
+could not help feeling at the same time flattered to see the concern he
+was able to inspire.
+
+“My friends!” said he with amorous artfulness.
+
+“Do you mean Count Bunker? He is ze only FRIEND I have here mit me.”
+
+“The ONLY friend? Indeed!”
+
+“Zat is since I see you vill not treat me as soch.”
+
+Upon these lines a pretty little passage-of-arms ensued, the Baron
+employing with considerable effect the various blandishments of which
+he was admitted a past master; the heiress modifying her resentment by
+degrees under their insidious influence. Still she would not entirely
+quit her troublesome position, till at last a happy inspiration came to
+reinforce his assaults. Why, he reflected, should an entertainment that
+would require a considerable outlay of money and trouble serve to win
+the affections of only one girl? With the same expenditure of ammunition
+it might be possible to double the bag.
+
+“Miss Maddison,” he said with a regretful air, “I did come here to-day
+in ze hope----But ach!”
+
+So happily had he succeeded in whetting her curiosity that she
+begged--nay, insisted--that he should finish his sentence.
+
+“If you had been kind I did hope zat you vould allow me to give in your
+honor an entertainment at my castle.”
+
+“An entertainment!” she cried, with a marked increase of interest.
+
+“Jost a leetle EXPOSITION of ze Highland sport, mit bagpipes and caber
+and so forth; unvorthy of your notice perhaps, bot ze best I can do.”
+
+Eleanor clapped her hands enthusiastically.
+
+“I should just love it!”
+
+The triumphant diplomatist smiled complacently.
+
+“Bonker vill arrange it all nicely,” he said to himself.
+
+And there rose in his fancy such a pleasing and gorgeous picture of
+himself in the panoply of the North, hurling a hammer skywards amidst
+the plaudits of his clan and the ravished murmurs of the ladies, that
+he could not but congratulate himself upon this last master-stroke of
+policy. For if instead of ladies there were only one lady, exactly
+half the pleasure would be lacking. So generous were this nobleman's
+instincts!
+
+During their drive to Lincoln Lodge the Baron had hesitated to broach
+his new project to his friend for the very reason that, after the glow
+of his first enthusiastic proposal to Eva was over, it seemed to him a
+vast undertaking for a limited object; but driving home he lost no time
+in confiding his scheme to the Count.
+
+“The deuce!” cried Bunker. “That will mean three more days here at
+least!”
+
+“Vat is tree days, mine Bonker?”
+
+“My dear Baron, I am the last man in the world to drop an unpleasant
+hint; yet I can't help thinking we have been so unconscionably lucky up
+till now that it would be wise to retire before an accident befalls us.”
+
+“Vat kind of accident?”
+
+“The kind that may happen to the best regulated adventurer.”
+
+The Baron pondered. When Bunker suggested caution it indeed seemed time
+to beat a retreat; yet--those two charming ladies, and that alluring
+tartan tableau!
+
+“Ach, let ze devil take ze man zat is afraid!” he exclaimed at last.
+“Bonker, it vill be soch fun!”
+
+“Watching you complete two conquests?”
+
+“Be not impatient, good Bonker!”
+
+“My dear fellow, if you could find me one girl--even one would content
+me--who would condescend to turn her eyes from the dazzling spectacle of
+Baron Tulliwuddle, and cast them for so much as half an hour a day upon
+his obscure companion, I might see some fun in it too.”
+
+The Baron, with an air of patronizing kindness that made his
+fellow-adventurer's lot none the easier to bear, answered reassuringly--
+
+“Bot I shall leave all ze preparations to be made by you; you vill not
+have time zen to feel lonely.”
+
+“Thank you, Baron; you have the knack of conferring the most princely
+favors.”
+
+“Ach, I am used to do so,” said the Baron simply, and then burst out
+eagerly, “Some feat you must design for me at ze sports so zat I can
+show zem my strength, eh?”
+
+“With the caber, for instance?”
+
+The Baron had seen the caber tossed, and he shook his head.
+
+“He is too big.”
+
+“I might fit a strong spring in one end.”
+
+But the Baron still seemed disinclined. His friend reflected, and then
+suddenly exclaimed--
+
+“The village doctor keeps some chemical apparatus, I believe! You'll
+throw the hammer, Baron. I can manage it.”
+
+The Baron appeared mystified by the juxtaposition of ideas, but serenely
+expressed himself as ready to entrust this and all other arrangements
+for the Hechnahoul Gathering to the ingenious Count, as some small
+compensation for so conspicuously outshining him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+The day of the Gathering broke gray and still, and the Baron, who was no
+weather prophet, declared gloomily--
+
+“It vill rain. Donnerwetter!”
+
+A couple of hours later the sun was out, and the distant hills
+shimmering in the heat haze.
+
+“Himmel! Ve are alvays lucky, Bonker!” he cried, and with gleeful
+energy brandished his dumb-bells in final preparation for his muscular
+exploits.
+
+“We certainly have escaped hanging so far,” said the Count, as he drew
+on the trews which became his well-turned leg so happily.
+
+His arrangements were admirable and complete, and by twelve o'clock the
+castle lawn looked as barbarically gay as the colored supplement to
+an illustrated paper. Pipes were skirling, skirts fluttering, flags
+flapping; and as invitations had been issued to various magnates in the
+district, whether acquainted with the present peer or not, there were
+to be seen quite a number of dignified personages in divers shades of
+tartan, and parasols of all the hues in the rainbow. The Baron was in
+his element. He judged the bagpipe competition himself, and held one
+end of the tape that measured the jumps, besides delighting the whole
+assembled company by his affability and good spirits.
+
+“Your performance comes next, I see,” said Eleanor Maddison, throwing
+him her brightest smile. “I can't tell you how I am looking forward to
+seeing you do it!”
+
+The Baron started and looked at the programme in her hand. He had been
+too excited to study it carefully before, and now for the first time he
+saw the announcement (in large type)--
+
+“7. Lord Tulliwuddle throws the 85-lb. hammer.”
+
+The sixth event was nearly through, and there--there evidently was the
+hammer in question being carried into the ring by no fewer than three
+stalwart Highlanders! The Baron had learned enough of the pastimes of
+his adopted country to be aware that this gigantic weapon was something
+like four times as heavy as any hammer hitherto thrown by the hardiest
+Caledonian.
+
+“Teufel! Bonker vill make a fool of me,” he muttered, and hastily
+bursting from the circle of spectators, hurried towards the Count, who
+appeared to be busied in keeping the curious away from the Chieftain's
+hammer.
+
+“Bonker, vat means zis?” he demanded.
+
+“Your hammer,” smiled the Count.
+
+“A hammer zat takes tree men----”
+
+“Hush!” whispered the Count. “They are only holding it down!”
+
+The Baron laid his hand upon the round enormous head, and started.
+
+“It is not iron!” he gasped. “It is of rubber.”
+
+“Filled with hydrogen,” breathed the Count in his ear. “Just swing it
+once and let go--and, I say, mind it doesn't carry you away with it.”
+
+The chief bared his arms and seized the handle; his three clansmen let
+go; and then, with what seemed to the breathless spectators to be a
+merely trifling effort of strength, he dismissed the projectile upon
+the most astounding journey ever seen even in that land of brawny
+hammer-hurlers. Up, up, up it soared, over the trees; high above the
+topmost turret of the castle, and still on and on and ever upwards till
+it became a mere speck in the zenith, and at last faded utterly from
+sight.
+
+Then, and not till then, did the pent-up applause break out into such
+a roar of cheering as Hechnahoul had never heard before in all its long
+history.
+
+“Eighty-five pounds of pig-iron gone straight to heaven!” gasped the
+Silver King. “Guess that beats all records!”
+
+“America must wake up!” frowned Ri.
+
+Meanwhile the Baron, after bowing in turn towards all points of the
+compass, turned confidentially to his friend.
+
+“Vill not ze men that carried it----?”
+
+“I've told 'em you'd give 'em a couple of sovereigns apiece.”
+
+The Baron came from an economical nation.
+
+“Two to each!”
+
+“My dear fellow, wasn't it worth it?”
+
+The Baron grasped his hand.
+
+“Ja, mine Bonker, it vas! I vill pay zem.”
+
+Radiant and smiling, he returned to receive the congratulations of his
+guests, dreaming that his triumph was complete, and that nothing more
+arduous remained than pleasant dalliance alternately with his Eleanor
+and his Eva. But he speedily discovered that hurling an inflated
+hammer heavenwards was child's play as compared with the simultaneous
+negotiation of a double wooing. The first person to address him was the
+millionaire, and he could not but feel a shiver of apprehension to note
+that he was evidently in the midst of a conversation with Mr. Gallosh.
+
+“I must congratulate you, Lord Tulliwuddle,” said Mr. Maddison, “and I
+must further congratulate my daughter upon the almost miraculous feat
+you have performed for her benefit. You know, I dare say”--here he
+turned to Mr. Gallosh--“that this very delightful entertainment was
+given primarily in my Eleanor's honor?”
+
+“Whut!” exclaimed the merchant. “That's--eh--that's scarcely the fac's
+as we've learned them. But his lordship will be able to tell you best
+himself.”
+
+His lordship smiled affably upon both, murmured something incoherent,
+and passed on hastily towards the scarlet parasol of Eleanor. But he had
+no sooner reached it than he paused and would have turned had she not
+seen him, for under a blue parasol beside her he espied, too late, the
+fair face of Eva, and too clearly perceived that the happy maidens had
+been comparing notes, with the result that neither looked very happy
+now.
+
+“I hope you do enjoy ze sports,” he began, endeavoring to distribute
+this wish as equally as possible.
+
+“Miss Gallosh has been remarkably fortunate in her weather,” said
+Eleanor, and therewith gave him an uninterrupted view of her sunshade.
+
+“Miss Maddison has seen you to great advantage, Lord Tulliwuddle,” said
+Eva, affording him the next instant a similar prospect of silk.
+
+The unfortunate chief recoiled from this ungrateful reception of his
+kindness. Only one refuge, one mediator, he instinctively looked for;
+but where could the Count have gone?
+
+“Himmel! Has he deserted me?” he muttered, frantically elbowing his way
+in search of him.
+
+But this once it happened that the Count was engaged upon business
+of his own. Strolling outside the ring of spectators, with a view
+to enjoying a cigar and a little relaxation from the anxieties of
+stage-management, his attention had been arrested in a singular and
+flattering way. At that place where he happened to be passing stood an
+open carriage containing a girl and an older lady, evidently guests from
+the neighborhood personally unknown to his lordship, and just as he
+went by he heard pronounced in a thrilling whisper--“THAT must be Count
+Bunker!”
+
+The Count was too well-bred to turn at once, but it is hardly necessary
+to say that a few moments later he casually repassed the carriage; nor
+will it astonish any who have been kind enough to follow his previous
+career with some degree of attention to learn that when opposite the
+ladies he paused, looked from them to the enclosure and back again, and
+presently raising his feathered bonnet, said in the most ingratiating
+tones--
+
+“Pardon me, but I am requested by Lord Tulliwuddle to show any attention
+I can to the comfort of his guests. Can you see well from where you
+are?”
+
+The younger lady with an eager air assured him that they saw perfectly,
+and even in the course of the three or four sentences she spoke he was
+able to come to several conclusions regarding her: that her companion
+was in a subsidiary and doubtless salaried position; that she herself
+was decidedly attractive to look upon; that her voice had spoken the
+whispered words; and that her present animated air might safely be
+attributed rather to the fact that she addressed Count Bunker than to
+the subject-matter of her reply.
+
+No one possessed in a higher degree than the Count the nice art of
+erecting a whole conversation upon the foundation of the lightest
+phrase. He contrived a reply to the lady's answer, was able to put the
+most natural question next, to follow that with a happy stroke of wit,
+and within three minutes to make it seem the most obvious thing in the
+world that he should be saying
+
+“I am sure that Lord Tulliwuddle will never forgive me if I fail to
+learn the names of any visitors who have honored him to-day.”
+
+“Mine,” said the girl, her color rising slightly, but her glance as kind
+as ever, “is Julia Wallingford. This is my friend Miss Minchell.”
+
+The Count bowed.
+
+“And may I introduce myself as a friend of Tulliwuddle's, answering to
+the name of Count Bunker.”
+
+Again Miss Wallingford's color rose. In a low and ardent voice she began
+
+“I am so glad to meet you! Your name is already----”
+
+But at that instant, when the Count was bending forward to catch the
+words and the lady bending down to utter them, a hand grasped him by the
+sleeve, and the Baron's voice exclaimed,
+
+“Come, Bonker, quickly here to help me!”
+
+He would fain have presented his lordship to the ladies, but the Baron
+was too hurried to pause, and with a parting bow he was reluctantly
+borne off to assist his friend out of his latest dilemma.
+
+“Pooh, my dear Baron!” he cried, when the situation was explained to
+him; “you couldn't have done more damage to their hearts if you had
+hurled your hammer at them! A touch of jealousy was all that was
+needed to complete your conquests. But for me you have spoiled the most
+promising affair imaginable. There goes their carriage trotting down the
+drive! And I shall probably never know whether my name was already in
+her heart or in her prayers. Those are the two chief receptacles for
+gentlemen's names, I believe--aren't they, Baron?”
+
+On his advice the rival families were left to the soothing influences of
+a good dinner and a night's sleep, and he found himself free to ponder
+over his interrupted adventure.
+
+“Undoubtedly one feels all the better for a little appreciation,” he
+reflected complacently. “I wonder if it was my trews that bowled her
+over?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+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.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+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!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+“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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+“I have been longing for this moment!” said Julia softly.
+
+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 fellow
+            Turn 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.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+While his late worshippers were trampling his memory in the mire, the
+Baron von Blitzenberg, deserted and dejected, his face still buried in
+his hands, endured the slow passage of the doleful afternoon. Unlike the
+prisoner at The Lash, who, by a coincidence that happily illustrates
+the dispensations of Providence, was undergoing at the same moment an
+identical ordeal, the Baron had no optimistic, whimsical philosophy to
+fall back upon. Instead, he had a most tender sense of personal dignity
+that had been egregiously outraged--and also a wife. Indeed, the thought
+of Alicia and of Alicia's parent was alone enough to keep his head bowed
+down.
+
+“Ach, zey most not know,” he muttered. “I shall give moch
+money--hondreds of pound--not to let zem find out. Oh, what for fool
+have I been!”
+
+So deeply was he plunged in these sorrowful meditations, and so
+constantly were they concerned with the two ladies whose feelings he
+wished to spare, that when a hum of voices reached his ear, one of them
+strangely--even ominously--familiar, he only thought at first that his
+imagination had grown morbidly vivid. To dispel the unpleasant fancies
+suggested by this imagined voice, he raised his head, and then the next
+instant bounded from his chair.
+
+“Mein Gott!” he muttered, “it is she.”
+
+Too thunderstruck to move, he saw his prison door open, and there,
+behold! stood the Countess of Grillyer, a terrible look upon her
+high-born features, a Darius at either shoulder. In silence they
+surveyed one another, and it was Mr. Maddison who spoke first.
+
+“Guess this is a friend of yours,” he observed.
+
+One thought and one only filled the prisoner's mind--she must leave him,
+and immediately.
+
+“No, no; I do not know her!” he cried.
+
+“You do not know me?” repeated the Countess in a voice rich in promise.
+
+“Certainly I do not.”
+
+“She knows you all right,” said the millionaire.
+
+“Says she does,” put in Ri in a lower voice; “but I wouldn't lay much
+money on her word either.”
+
+“Rudolph! You pretend you do not know me?” cried the Countess between
+wrath and bewilderment.
+
+“I never did ever see sochlike a voman before,” reiterated the Baron.
+
+“What do you say to that, ma'am?” inquired Mr. Maddison.
+
+“I say--I blush to say--that this wretched young man is my son-in-law,”
+ declared the Countess.
+
+As she had come to the house inquiring merely for Lord Tulliwuddle, and
+been conducted straight to the prisoner's cell, the stupefying effect of
+this announcement may readily be conceived.
+
+“What!” ejaculated the Dariuses.
+
+“It is not true! She is mad! Take her avay, please!” shouted the Baron,
+now desperate in his resolution to say or do anything, so long as he got
+rid of his formidable relative.
+
+The Countess staggered back.
+
+“Is he demented?” she inquired.
+
+“Say, ma'am,” put in Ri, “are you the mother of Miss Constance
+Herringay?”
+
+“Of----? I am Lady Grillyer!”
+
+“See here, my good lady, that's going a little too far,” said the
+millionaire not unkindly. “This friend of yours here first calls himself
+Lord Tulliwuddle, and then the Baron von something or other. Well, now,
+that's two of the aristocracy in this under-sized apartment already.
+There's hardly room for a third--see? Can't you be plain Mrs. Smith for
+a change?”
+
+The Countess tottered.
+
+“Fellow!” she said in a faint voice, “I--I do not understand you.”
+
+“Thought that would fetch her down,” commented Ri.
+
+“Lead her back to ze train and make her go to London!” pleaded the Baron
+earnestly.
+
+“You stick to it, you don't know her?” asked Mr. Maddison shrewdly.
+
+“No, no, I do not!”
+
+“Is her name Lady Grillyer?”
+
+“Not more zan it is mine!”
+
+“Rudolph!” gasped the Countess inarticulately. “He is--he WAS my son!”
+
+“Stoff and nonsense!” roared the Baron. “Remove her!--I am tired.”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Maddison, “I guess I don't much believe either of you;
+but whether you know each other or not, you make such a remarkably fine
+couple that I reckon you'd better get acquainted now. Come, Ri.”
+
+And before either Countess or Baron could interpose, their captors
+had slipped out, the key was turned, and they were left to the dual
+enjoyment of the antique apartment.
+
+“Teufel!” shouted the Baron, kicking the door frantically. “Open him,
+open him! I vill pay you a hondred pound! Goddam! Open!”
+
+But only the gasps of the Countess answered him.
+
+It is generally conceded that if you want to see the full depths of
+brutality latent in man, you must thoroughly frighten him first. This
+condition the Countess of Grillyer had exactly succeeded in fulfilling,
+with the consequence that the Baron, hitherto the most complacent and
+amiable of sons-in-law, seemed ambitious of rivalling the Turk. When he
+perceived that no answer to his appeals was forthcoming, dark despair
+for a moment overcame him. Then the fiendishly ingenious idea struck
+him--might not a woman's screams accomplish what his own lungs were
+unable to effect? Turning an inflamed and frowning countenance upon
+the lady who had intrusted her daughter's happiness to his hands, he
+addressed her in a deep hissing voice--
+
+“Shcream, shcream, voman! Shcream loudly, or I vill knock you!”
+
+But the Countess was made of stern stuff. Outraged and frightened though
+she was, she yet retorted huskily--
+
+“I will not scream, Rudolph! I--I demand an explanation first!”
+
+Executing a step of the sword-dance within a yard of her, he reiterated
+
+“Shcream so zat zey may come back!”
+
+She blinked, but held her ground.
+
+“I insist upon knowing what you mean, Rudolph! I insist upon your
+telling me! What are you doing here in that preposterous kilt?”
+
+The Baron's wits brightened with the acuteness of the emergency.
+
+“Ha!” he cried, “I vill take my kilt off--take him off before your eyes
+this instant if you do not shcream!”
+
+But she merely closed her eyes.
+
+“If you dare! If you dare, Rudolph, I shall inform your Emperor! And I
+will not look! I cannot see you!”
+
+Whether in deference to imperial prejudices, or because a kiltless man
+would be thrown away upon a lady who refused to look at him, the Baron
+regretfully desisted from this project. At his wits' end, he besought
+her--
+
+“Make zem take you avay, so zat you vill be safe from my rage! I do not
+trost myself mit you. I am so violent as a bull! Better zat you should
+go; far better--do you not see?”
+
+“No, Rudolph, no!” replied the adamant lady. “I have come to guard you
+against your own abandoned nature, and I shall only leave this room when
+you do!”
+
+She sat down and faced him, palpitating, but immovable; and against such
+obstinacy the unhappy Rudolph gave up the contest in despair.
+
+“But I shall not talk mit her; oh, Himmel, nein!” he said to himself;
+and in pursuance of this policy sat with his back turned to her while
+the shadows of evening gradually filled the room. In vain did she
+address him: he neither answered nor moved. Indeed, to discourage her
+still further, he even summoned up a forced gaiety of demeanor, and in
+a low rumble of discords sang to himself the least respectable songs he
+knew.
+
+“His mind is certainly deranged,” thought the Countess. “I must not let
+him out of my sight. Ah, poor Alicia!”
+
+But in time, when the dusk was thickening so fast that her son-in-law's
+broad back had already grown indistinct of outline, and no voice or
+footstep had come near their prison, her thoughts began to wander
+from his case to her own. The outrageous conduct of those Americans in
+discrediting her word and incarcerating her person, though overshadowed
+at the time by the yet greater atrocity of the Baron's behavior, now
+loomed up in formidable proportions. And the gravity of their offence
+was emphasized by an unpleasant sensation she now began to experience
+with considerable acuteness.
+
+“Do they mean to starve us as well as insult us?” she wondered.
+
+The Baron's thoughts also seemed to have drifted into a different
+channel. He no longer sang; he fidgeted in his chair; he even softly
+groaned; and at last he actually changed his attitude so far as to
+survey the dim form of his mother-in-law over one shoulder.
+
+“Oh, ze devil!” he exclaimed aloud. “I am so hongry!”
+
+“That is no reason why you should also be profane,” said the Countess
+severely.
+
+“I did not speak to you,” retorted the Baron, and again a constrained
+silence fell on the room.
+
+The Baron was the first to break it.
+
+“Ha!” he cried. “I hear a step.”
+
+“Thank God!” exclaimed the Countess devoutly.
+
+In the blaze of a stable lantern there entered to them Dugald M'Culloch,
+jailor.
+
+“Will you be for any supper?” he inquired, with a politeness he felt due
+to prisoners with purses.
+
+“I do starve!” replied the Baron.
+
+“And I am nearly fainting!” cried the Countess.
+
+Both rose with an alacrity astonishing in people so nearly exhausted,
+and made as though they would pass out. With a deprecatory gesture
+Dugald arrested them.
+
+“I will bring your supper fery soon,” said he.
+
+“Here?” gasped the Countess.
+
+“It is the master's orders.”
+
+“Tell him I vill have him ponished mit ze law, if he does not let me
+come out!” roared the Baron.
+
+Their jailor was courtesy itself; but it was in their prison that they
+supped--a silent meal, and very plain. And, bitterest pill of all, they
+were further informed that in their prison they must pass the night.
+
+“In ze same room!” cried the Baron frantically. “Impossible! Improper!”
+
+Even his mother-in-law's solicitude shrank from this vigil; but with
+unruffled consideration for their comfort their guardian and his
+assistants made up two beds forthwith. The Baron, subdued to a fierce
+and snarling moodiness, watched their preparations with a lurid eye.
+
+“Put not zat bed so near ze door,” he snapped.
+
+In his ear his jailor whispered, “That one's for you, sir, and dinna put
+off your clothes!”
+
+The Baron started, and from that moment his air of resignation began to
+affront the Countess as deeply as his previous violence. When they were
+again alone, stretched in black darkness each upon their couch, she
+lifted up her voice in a last word of protest--
+
+“Rudolph! have you no single feeling for me left? Why didn't you stab
+that man?”
+
+But the Baron merely retorted with a lifelike affectation of snoring.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+For a long time the Baron lay wide awake, every sense alert, listening
+for the creak of a footstep on the wooden stair that led up from the
+harness-room to his prison. What else could the strange words of Dugald
+have meant, save that some friend proposed to climb those stairs
+and gently open that stubborn door? And in this opinion he had been
+confirmed when he observed that on Dugald's departure the key turned
+with a silence suggesting a recently oiled lock. His bed lay along the
+wall, with the head so close to the door that any one opening it and
+stretching forth a hand could tweak him by the nose without an effort
+(supposing that were the object of their visit). Clearly, he thought, it
+was not thus arranged without some very special purpose. Yet when hour
+after hour passed and nothing happened, he began to sleep fitfully,
+and at last, worn out with fruitless waiting, dropped into a profound
+slumber.
+
+He was in the midst of a harassing dream or drama, wherein Bunker and
+Eva played an incoherent part and he himself passed wearily from peril
+to peril, when the stage suddenly was cleared, his eyes started open,
+and he became wakefully conscious of a little ray of light that fell
+upon his face. Before he could raise his head a soft voice whispered
+urgently,
+
+“Don't move!”
+
+With admirable self-control he obeyed implicitly.
+
+“Who is zere?” he whispered back.
+
+The voice seemed for a moment to hesitate, and then answered--
+
+“Eleanor Maddison!”
+
+He started so audibly that again she breathed peremptorily--
+
+“Hush! Lie still till I come back. You--you don't deserve it, but I want
+to save you from the disgrace of arrest.”
+
+“Ach, zank you--mine better angel!” he murmured, with a fervor that
+seemed not unpleasing to his rescuer.
+
+“You really are a nobleman in trouble?”
+
+“I swear I am!”
+
+“And didn't mean anything really wrong?”
+
+“Never--oh, never!”
+
+More kindly than before she murmured--
+
+“Well, I guess I'll take you out, then. I've bribed Dugald, so that's
+all right. When my car's ready I'll send him up for you. You just lie
+still till he comes.”
+
+From which it appears that Count Bunker's appreciation of the sex fell
+short of their meed.
+
+Hardly daring to breathe for fear of awakening his fellow-prisoner,
+trembling with agitation, and consumed by a mad impatience for action,
+the Baron passed five of the longest minutes he had ever endured. At
+the end of that time he heard a stealthy step upon the stairs, and with
+infinite precautions threw off his bedclothes and sat upright, ready
+for instant departure. But how slowly and with what a superfluity of
+precaution his jailor moved! When the door at length opened he wondered
+that no ray of light fell this time.
+
+“Dugald!” he whispered eagerly.
+
+“Hush!” replied a softer voice than Dugald's; as soft, indeed, as
+Eleanor's, yet clearly different.
+
+“Who is zat?” he gasped.
+
+“Eva Gallosh!” said the silken voice. “Oh, is that you?”
+
+“Yes--yes--it is me.”
+
+“And are you really a Baron and an ambassador?”
+
+“Oh yes--yes--certainly I am.”
+
+“Then--then I've come to help you to escape! I've bribed Dugald--and
+I've got a dog-cart here. Come quickly--but oh, be very quiet!”
+
+For a moment the Baron actually hesitated to flee from that loathed
+apartment. It seemed to him that if Fortune desired to provide him with
+opportunities of escape she might have had the sense to offer these one
+at a time. For how could he tell which of these overtures to close with?
+A wrong decision might be fatal; yet time unquestionably pressed.
+
+“Mein Gott!” he muttered irresolutely, “vich shall I do?”
+
+At that moment the other bed creaked, and, to his infinite horror, he
+heard a suspicious voice demand--
+
+“Is that you talking, Rudolph?”
+
+Poor Eva, who was quite unaware of the presence of another prisoner,
+uttered a stifled shriek; with a cry of “Fly, quickly!” the Baron leaped
+from his bed, and headlong down the wooden stairs they clattered for
+freedom.
+
+A dim vision of the thrice-bribed Dugald, screeching, “The car's ready
+for ye, sir!” but increased their speed.
+
+Outside, a motor car stood panting by the door, and in the youthful
+driver, turning a pale face toward them in the lamp's radiance, the
+Baron had just time to recognize his first fair deliverer.
+
+“Good-bye!” he whispered to his second, and flung himself in.
+
+Some one followed him; the door was slammed, and with a mighty throbbing
+they began to move.
+
+“Rudolph! Rudolph!” wailed a voice behind them.
+
+“Zank ze goodness SHE is not here!” exclaimed the Baron.
+
+“Whisht! whisht!” he could hear Dugald expostulate.
+
+With a violent start he turned to the fellow-passenger who had followed
+him in.
+
+“Are you not Dugald?” he demanded hoarsely.
+
+“No--it's--it's me! I dursn't wait for my dog-cart!”
+
+“Eva!” he murmured. “Oh, Himmel! Vat shall I do?”
+
+Only a screen of glass separated his two rescuers, and the one had
+but to turn her head and look inside, or the other to study with any
+attention the roll of hair beneath their driver's cap, in order to lead
+to most embarrassing consequences. Not that it was his fault he should
+receive such universal sympathy: but would these charming ladies admit
+his innocence?
+
+“How thoughtful of Dugald to have this car----” began Eva.
+
+“Hush!” he muttered hoarsely. “Yes, it was thoughtful, but you most not
+speak too loudly.”
+
+“For fear----?” she smiled, and turned her eyes instinctively toward
+their driver.
+
+“Excuse me,” he muttered, sweeping her as gently as possible from her
+seat and placing her upon the floor.
+
+“It vill not do for zem to see you,” he explained in a whisper.
+
+“How awful a position,” he reflected. “Oh, I hope it may still be dark
+ven we get to ze station.”
+
+But with rising concern he presently perceived that the telegraph posts
+along the roadside were certainly grown plainer already; he could even
+see the two thin wires against a paling sky; the road behind was visible
+for half a mile; the hill-tops might no longer be confounded with the
+clouds-day indubitably was breaking. Also he recollected that to go
+from Lincoln Lodge to Torrydhulish Station one had to make a vast detour
+round half the loch; and, further, began to suspect that though Miss
+Maddison's driving was beyond reproach her knowledge of topography was
+scarcely so dependable. In point of fact she increased the distance by
+at least a third, and all the while day was breaking more fatally clear.
+
+To discourage Miss Gallosh's efforts at conversation, yet keep her
+sitting contentedly upon the floor; to appear asleep whenever Miss
+Maddison turned her head and threw a glance inside, and to devise some
+adequate explanation against the inevitable discovery at the end of
+their drive, provided him with employment worthy of a diplomatist's
+steel. But now, at last, they were within sight of railway signals and
+a long embankment; and over a pine wood a stream of smoke moved with a
+swelling roar. Then into plain view broke the engine and carriage after
+carriage racing behind. Regardless of risk, he leaped from his seat and
+flung up the window, crying--
+
+“Ach, look! Ve shall be late!”
+
+“That train is going north,” said Eleanor. “Guess we've half an hour
+good before yours comes in.”
+
+So little can mortals read the stars that he heaved a sigh of relief,
+and even murmured--
+
+“Ve have timed him very luckily!”
+
+Ten minutes later they descended the hill to Torrydhulish Station. The
+north-going train had paid its brief call and vanished nearly from sight
+again; no one seemed to be moving about the station, and the Baron told
+himself that nothing worse remained than the exercise of a little tact
+in parting with his deliverers.
+
+“Ach! I shall carry it off gaily,” he thought, and leaping lightly to
+the ground, exclaimed with a genial air, as he gave his hand to Eva.
+
+“Vell! Now have I a leetle surprise for you, ladies!”
+
+Nor did he at all exaggerate their sensation.
+
+“Miss Maddison!”
+
+Alas, that it should be so far beyond the power of mere inky words to
+express all that was implied in Eva's accents!
+
+“Miss Gallosh!”
+
+Nor is it less impossible to supply the significance of Eleanor's
+intonation.
+
+“Ladies, ladies!” he implored, “do not, I pray you, misunderstand! I vas
+not responsible--I could not help it. You both VOULD come mit me! No,
+no, do not look so at me! I mean not zat--I mean I could not do vizout
+both of you. Ach, Himmel! Vat do I say? I should say zat--zat----”
+
+He broke off with a start of apprehension.
+
+“Look! Zere comes a man mit a bicycle! Zis is too public! Come mit me
+into ze station and I shall eggsplain! He waves his fist! Come! you
+vould not be seen here?”
+
+He offered one arm to Eva, the other to Eleanor; and so alarming were
+the gesticulations of the approaching cyclist, and so beseeching the
+Baron's tones, that without more ado they clung to him and hurried on to
+the platform.
+
+“Come to ze vaiting-room!” he whispered. “Zere shall ve be safe!”
+
+Alack for the luck of the Baron von Blitzenberg! Out of the very door
+they were approaching stepped a solitary lady, sole passenger from the
+south train, and at the sight of those three, linked arm in arm, she
+staggered back and uttered a cry more piercing than the engine's distant
+whistle.
+
+“Rudolph!” cried this lady.
+
+“Alicia!” gasped the Baron.
+
+His rescuers said nothing, but clung to him the more tightly, while in
+the Baroness's startled eyes a harder light began to blaze.
+
+“Who are these, Rudolph?”
+
+He cleared his throat, but the process seemed to take some time, and in
+the meanwhile he felt the grip of his deliverers relax.
+
+“Who is that lady?” demanded Eleanor.
+
+“His wife,” replied the Baroness.
+
+The Baron felt his arms freed now; but still his Alicia waited an
+answer. It came at last, but not from the Baron's lips.
+
+“Well, here you all are!” said a cheerful voice behind them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+They turned as though they expected to see an apparition. Nor was the
+appearance of the speaker calculated to disappoint such expectations.
+Their startled eyes beheld indeed the most remarkable figure that
+had ever wheeled a bicycle down the platform of Torrydhulish Station.
+Hatless, in evening clothes with blue lapels upon the coat, splashed
+liberally with mud, his feet equipped only with embroidered socks and
+saturated pumps, his shirt-front bestarred with souvenirs of all the
+soils for thirty miles, Count Bunker made a picture that lived long in
+their memories. Yet no foolish consciousness of his plight disturbed him
+as he addressed the Baron.
+
+“Thank you, Baron, for escorting my fair friends so far. I shall now
+take them off your hands.”
+
+He smiled with pleasant familiarity upon the two astonished girls, and
+then started as though for the first time he recognized the Baroness.
+
+“Baroness!” he cried, bowing profoundly, “this is a very unexpected
+pleasure! You came by the early train, I presume? A tiresome journey,
+isn't it?”
+
+But bewilderment and suspicion were all that he could read in reply.
+
+“What--what are YOU doing here?”
+
+He was not in the least disconcerted.
+
+“Meeting my cousins” (he indicated the Misses Gallosh and Maddison with
+an amiable glance), “whom the Baron has been kind enough to look after
+till my arrival.”
+
+Audaciously approaching more closely, he added, in a voice intended for
+her ear and the Baron's alone--
+
+“I must throw myself, I see, upon your mercy, and ask you not to tell
+any tales out of school. Cousins, you know, don't always want their
+meetings advertised--do they, Baron?”
+
+Alicia's eyes softened a little.
+
+“Then, they are really your----”
+
+“Call 'em cousins, please! I have your pledge that you won't tell? Ah,
+Baron, your charming wife and I understand one another.”
+
+Then raising his voice for the benefit of the company generally--
+
+“Well, you two will want to have a little talk in the waiting-room, I've
+no doubt. We shall pace the platform. Very fit Rudolph's looking, isn't
+he, Baroness? You've no idea how his lungs have strengthened.”
+
+“His lungs!” exclaimed the Baroness in a changed voice.
+
+Giving the Baron a wink to indicate that there lay the ace of trumps, he
+answered reassuringly--
+
+“When you learn how he has improved you'll forgive me, I'm sure, for
+taking him on this little trip. Well, see you somewhere down the line,
+no doubt--I'm going by the same train.”
+
+He watched them pass into the waiting-room, and then turned an altered
+face to the two dumbfounded girls. It was expressive now solely of
+sympathy and contrition.
+
+“Let us walk a little this way,” he began, and thus having removed them
+safely from earshot of the waiting-room door, he addressed himself to
+the severest part of his task.
+
+“My dear girls, I owe you I don't know how many apologies for presuming
+to claim you as my friends. The acuteness of the emergency is my only
+excuse, and I throw myself most contritely upon your mercy!”
+
+This second projection of himself upon a lady's mercy proved as
+successful as the first.
+
+“Well,” said Eleanor slowly, “I guess maybe we can forgive you for that;
+but what I want to know is--what's happened?--who's who?--and where just
+exactly are we?”
+
+“That's just what I want to know too,” added Eva sadly.
+
+Indeed, they both had a hint of tears in their eyes, and in their
+voices.
+
+“What has happened,” replied the Count, “is that a couple of thoughtless
+masqueraders came up here to play a little joke, and succeeded in
+getting themselves into a scrape. For your share in getting us out of it
+we cannot feel too grateful.”
+
+“But, who is----?” the girls began together, and then stopped, with a
+rise of color and a suspicion of displeasure in their interchange of
+eyes.
+
+“Who is who? Well, my friend is the Baron von Blitzenberg; and the lady
+is, as she stated, his wife.”
+
+“Then all this time----” began Eva.
+
+“He was married!” Eleanor finished for her. “Oh, the heartless
+scoundrel! To think that I rescued him!”
+
+“I wouldn't have either!” said Eva; “I mean if--if I had known he
+treated you so badly.”
+
+“Treated ME! I was only thinking of YOU, Miss Gallosh!”
+
+“Dear ladies!” interposed the Count with his ready tact, “remember his
+excuse.”
+
+“His excuse?”
+
+“The beauty, the charm, the wit of the lady who took by storm a heart
+not easily captured! He himself, poor fellow, thought it love-proof; but
+he had not then met HER. Think mercifully of him!”
+
+He was so careful to give no indication which of the rival belles
+was “her,” that each was able to take to herself a certain mournful
+consolation.
+
+“That wasn't MUCH excuse,” said Eleanor, yet with a less vindictive air.
+
+“Certainly not VERY much,” murmured Eva.
+
+“He ought to have thought of the pain he was giving HER,” added Eleanor.
+
+“Yes,” said Eva. “Indeed he ought!”
+
+“Yes, that is true,” allowed the Count; “but remember his punishment! To
+be married already now proves to be less his fault than his misfortune.”
+
+By this time he had insidiously led them back to their car.
+
+“And must you return at once?” he exclaimed.
+
+“We had better,” said Eleanor, with a suspicion of a sigh. “Miss
+Gallosh, I'll drive you home first.”
+
+“You're too kind, Miss Maddison.”
+
+“Oh, no!”
+
+The Count assisted them in, greatly pleased to see this amicable spirit.
+Then shaking hands heartily with each, he said--
+
+“I can speak for my friend with conviction, because my own regard for
+the lady in question is as deep and as sincere as his. Believe me, I
+shall never forget her!”
+
+He was rewarded with two of the kindest smiles ever bestowed upon him,
+and as they drove away each secretly wondered why she had previously
+preferred the Baron to the Count. It seemed a singular folly.
+
+“Two deuced nice girls,” mused he; “I do believe I told 'em the truth in
+every particular!”
+
+He watched their car dwindle to a scurrying speck, and then strolled
+back thoughtfully to purchase his ticket.
+
+He found the signals down, and the far-off clatter of the train
+distinctly audible through the early morning air. A few minutes more and
+he was stepping into a first-class compartment, his remarkable costume
+earning (he could not but observe) the pronounced attention of the
+guard. The Baron and Alicia, with an air of mutual affection, entered
+another; both the doors were closed, everything seemed ready, yet the
+train lingered.
+
+“Start ze train! Start ze train! I vill give you a pound--two
+pound--tree pound, to start him!”
+
+The Count leaped up and thrust his head through the window.
+
+“What the dickens----!” thought he.
+
+Hanging out of the other window he beheld the clamant Baron urging the
+guard with frenzied entreaty.
+
+“But they're wanting to go by the train, sir,” said the guard.
+
+“No, no. Zey do not! It is a mistake! Start him!”
+
+Following their gaze he saw, racing toward them, the cause of their
+delay. It was a motor car, yet not the same that had so lately departed.
+In this were seated a young man and an elderly lady, both waving to
+hold back the train; and to his vast amazement he recognized in the man
+Darius Maddison, junior, in the lady the Countess of Grillyer.
+
+The car stopped, the occupants alighted, and the Countess, supported on
+the strong arm of Ri, scuttled down the platform.
+
+“Bonker, take her in mit you!” groaned the Baron, and his head vanished
+from the Count's sight.
+
+Even this ordeal was not too much for Bunker's fidelity.
+
+“Madam, there is room here!” he announced politely, as they swept past;
+but with set faces they panted toward the doomed von Blitzenberg.
+
+All of the tragedy that the Count, with strained neck, could see or
+overhear, was a vision of the Countess being pushed by the guard and her
+escort into that first-class compartment whence so lately the Baron's
+crimson visage had protruded, and the voice of Ri stridently declaring--
+
+“Guess you'll recognize your momma this time, Baron!”
+
+A whistle from the guard, another from the engine, and they were off,
+clattering southward in the first of the morning sunshine.
+
+Inadequately attired, damp, hungry, and divorced from tobacco as the
+Count was, he yet could say to himself with the sincerest honesty,
+
+“I wouldn't change carriages with the Baron von Blitzenberg--not even
+for a pair of dry socks and a cigar! Alas, poor Rudolph! May this teach
+all young men a lesson in sobriety of conduct!”
+
+For which moral reflection the historian feels it incumbent upon him,
+as a philosopher and serious psychologist, to express his conscientious
+admiration.
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+IT was an evening in early August, luminous and warm; the scene, a
+certain club now emptied of all but a sprinkling of its members; the
+festival, dinner; and the persons of the play, that gentleman lately
+known as Count Bunker and his friend the Baron von Blitzenberg. The
+Count was habited in tweeds; the Baron in evening dress.
+
+“It vas good of you to come up to town jost to see me,” said the Baron.
+
+“I'd have crossed Europe, Baron!”
+
+The Baron smiled faintly. Evidently he was scarcely in his most florid
+humor.
+
+“I vish I could have asked you to my club, Bonker.”
+
+“Are you dissatisfied with mine?”
+
+“Oh, no, no! But---- vell, ze fact is, it vould be reported by some one
+if I took you to ze Regents. Bonker, she does have me watched!”
+
+“The Baroness?”
+
+“Her mozzer.”
+
+“The deuce, Baron!”
+
+The diplomatist gloomily sipped his wine.
+
+“You did hush it all up, eh?” he inquired presently.
+
+“Completely.”
+
+“Zank you. I vas so afraid of some scandal!”
+
+“So were they; that's where I had 'em.”
+
+“Did zey write in moch anger?”
+
+“No--not very much; rather nice letters, in fact.”
+
+The Baron began to cheer up.
+
+“Ach, so! Vas zere any news of--ze Galloshes?”
+
+“Yes, they seem very well. Old Rentoul has caught a salmon. Gallosh
+hopes to get a fair bag----”
+
+“Bot did zey say nozing about--about Miss Eva?”
+
+“The letter was written by her, you see.”
+
+“SHE wrote to YOU! Strange!”
+
+“Very odd, isn't it?”
+
+The Baron meditated for a minute and then inquired--
+
+“Vat of ze Maddisons?”
+
+“Well, I gather that Mr. Maddison is erecting an ibis house in
+connection with the aviary. Ri has gone to Kamchatka, but hopes to be
+back by the 12th----”
+
+“And Eleanor--no vord of her?”
+
+“It was she who wrote, don't you know.”
+
+“Eleanor--and also to you! Bot vy should she?”
+
+“Can't imagine; can you?”
+
+The Baron shook his head solemnly. “No, Bonker, I cannot.”
+
+For some moments he pondered over the remarkable conduct of these
+ladies; and then--
+
+“Did you also hear of ze Wallingfords?” he asked.
+
+“I had a short note from them.”
+
+“From him, or----”
+
+“Her.”
+
+“So! Humph, zey all seem fond of writing letters.”
+
+“Why--have you had any too?”
+
+“No; and I do not vant zem.”
+
+Yet his immunity did not appear to exhilarate the diplomatist.
+
+“Another bottle of the same,” said Bunker aside to the waiter.
+
+. . . . . .
+
+
+It was an hour later; the scene and the personages the same, but the
+atmosphere marvellously altered.
+
+“To ze ladies, Bonker!”
+
+“To HER, Baron!”
+
+“To zem both!”
+
+The genial heart, the magnanimous soul of Rudolph von Blitzenberg had
+asserted their dominion again. Depression, jealousy, repentance, qualms,
+and all other shackles of the spirit whatsoever, had fled discomfited.
+Now at last he saw his late exploits in their true heroic proportions,
+and realized his marvellous good fortune in satisfying his aspirations
+so gloriously. Raising his glass once more, he cried--
+
+“Dear Bonker, my heart he does go out to you! Ach, you have given me
+soch a treat. Vunce more I schmell ze mountain dew--I hear ze pipes--I
+gaze into loffly eyes--I am ze noblest part of mineself! Bonker, I
+vill defy ze mozzer of my wife! I drink to you, my friend, mit
+hip--hip--hip--hooray!”
+
+“You have more than repaid me,” replied the Count, “by the spectacle
+you have provided. Dear Baron, it was a panorama calculated to convert a
+continent!”
+
+“To vat should it convert him?” inquired the Baron with interest.
+
+“To a creed even merrier than Socialism, more convivial than
+Total Abstinence, and more perfectly designed for human needs than
+Esperanto--the gospel of 'Cheer up.'”
+
+“Sheerup?” repeated the Baron, whose acquaintance with the English
+words used in commerce and war was singularly intimate, but who was
+occasionally at fault with terms of less portentous import.
+
+“A name given to the bridge that crosses the Slough of Despond,”
+ explained the Count.
+
+The Baron still seemed puzzled. “I am not any wiser,” said he.
+
+“Never cease thanking Heaven for that!” cried Bunker fervently. “The
+man who once dubs himself wise is the jest of gods and the plague of
+mortals.”
+
+With this handsome tribute to the character and attainments of one of
+these heroes, and the Baronial roar that congratulated the other, our
+chronicle may fittingly leave them; since the mutual admiration of
+two such catholic critics is surely more significant than the colder
+approval of a mere historian.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Count Bunker, by J. Storer Clouston
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