Mr Bunker arrived at the Hôtel Mayonaise in what, from his appearance, was
an unusually reflective state of mind for him. The other visitors, many of
whom had begun to regard him and his noble friend with great interest, saw
him pass through the crowd in the hall and about the lifts with a
thoughtful air. He went straight to the Baron’s room. Outside the door he
paused for an instant to set his face in a cheerful smile, and then burst
gaily in upon his friend.
“Well, my dear Baron!” he cried, “what luck in the Park?”
The Baron was pulling his moustache over an English novel. He laid down
his book and frowned at Mr Bunker.
“I do not onderstand your English vays,” he replied.
Mr Bunker perceived that something was very much amiss, nor was he without
a suspicion of the cause. He laughed, however, and asked, “What’s the
matter, old man?”
“I vent to ze Park,” said the Baron, with a solemn deliberation that
evidently came hardly to him. “I entered ze Park. I vas dressed, as you
know, viz taste and appropriety. I vas sober, as you know. I valked under
ze trees, and I looked agreeably at ze people. Goddam!”
“My dear Baron!” expostulated Mr Bunker.
The Baron resumed his intense composure with a great effort.
“Not long vas ven I see ze Lady Hilton drive past mit ze ozzer Lady Hilton
and vun old lady. I raise my hat—no bow from zem. ‘Pairhaps,’ I zink, ‘zey
see me not.’ Zey stop by ze side to speak viz a gentleman. I gomed up and
again I raise my hat and I say, ‘How do you do, Lady Hilton? I hope you
are regovered from ze dance.’ Zat was gorrect, vas it not?”
“Perfectly,” replied Mr Bunker, with great gravity.
“Zen vy did ze Lady Hilton schream and ze ozzer Lady Hilton cry, ‘Ach, zat
German man!’ And vy did ze old lady schream to ze gentleman, ‘Send him
avay! How dare you? Insolence!’ and suchlike vords?”
“What remarkable conduct, my dear Baron!” said Mr Bunker.
“Remargable!” roared the justly incensed Baron. “Is it not more zan
_remargable?_ Donner und blitzen! Mon Dieu! Blood! I know not ze English
vord so bad enoff for soch conduct.”
“It must have been a joke,” his friend suggested, soothingly.
“Vun dashed bad joke, zen! Ze gentleman said to me, ‘Get out of zis, you
rasgal!’ ‘Vat mean you, sare?’ say I. ‘You know quite vell,’ said he.
‘Glear out!’ So I gave him my card and tell him I would be glad to see his
frient zat he should send, for zat I vas not used to be called zo. Zen I
raise my hat to ze Lady Hilton and say, ‘Adieu, madame, I know now ze
English lady,’ and I valk on. Himmel!”
“What a very extraordinary affair, Baron!”
The Baron grunted with inarticulate indignation and nearly pulled his
moustache out by the roots. Abruptly he broke out again, “English ladies?
I do not believe zey are ladies! Never haf I been treated zo! Vat do you
mean, Bonker, by taking me among soch peoples?”
“_I_, my dear Baron? It was not I who introduced you to the Hiltons. I
never saw them before.”
The difficulty of attaching any blame to his friend seemed to have
anything but a soothing effect on the Baron. You could almost fancy that
you heard his tail lash the floor.
“Zat vas not all,” he continued, after a short struggle with his wrath. “I
valked on, and soon I see two of ze frients I made last night at supper.”
“Which two?”
“Ze yong man zat spoke to you ven you rise from ze table, and vun of ze
ladies. Again I raise my hat and say, ‘How do you do? I hope zat you are
regovered from ze dance.’ Zat is gorrect, you say?”
“Under most circumstances.”
“Ze man stared at me, and ze voman—I vill not say lady—says to him zo zat
I can hear, ‘Zat awful German!’ Ze man says, ‘Zo it is,’ and laughed. ‘I
haf ze pleasure of meeting you last night at ze Lady Tollyvoddle,’ I said.
‘I remember,’ he said; ‘but I haf no vish to meet you again.’ I take out
my card to gif him, but he only said, ‘Go avay, or I vill call ze police!’
‘Ze police! To me, Baron von Blitzenberg! Teufel!’ I replied.”
“And that was all, Baron?” asked Mr Bunker, in what seemed rather like a
tone of relief.
“No; suddenly he did turn back and said, ‘By ze vay, who vas zat viz you
last night?’ To vich I replied, ‘If you address me again, my man, I vill
call ze police. Go avay!’ ”
“Bravo, Baron! Ha, ha, ha! Excellent!” laughed Mr Bunker.
This applause served to reinstate the Baron a little in his own good
opinion. He laughed too, though rather noisily than heartily, and suddenly
became grave again.
“Vat means zis, Bonker? Vat haf I done? Vy should zey treat me zo?”
“Well, you see, my dear Baron,” his friend explained, “I ought to have
warned you that it is not usual in England to address ladies you have met
at a dance without some direct invitation on their part. At the same time,
it is evident that the Hiltons and the other man, who of course must be
connected with the Foreign Office, are aware of some sudden strain in the
diplomatic relations between England and Germany, which as yet is unknown
to the public. Your ancient name and your high rank have naturally led
them to conclude that you are an agent of the German Government, and an
international significance was of course attached to your presence in the
Park. I certainly think they took a most outrageous advantage of a
trifling detail of etiquette to repulse you; but then you must remember,
Baron, that their families might have been seriously compromised with the
Government if they had been seen with so prominent a member of the German
aristocracy in the middle of Hyde Park.”
“Zo?” said the Baron, thoughtfully. “I begin to onderstand. My name, as
you say, is cairtainly distinguished. Bot zen should I remain in London?”
“Just what I was wondering, Baron. What do you say to a trip down to St
Egbert’s-on-Sea? It’s a very select watering-place, and we might spend a
week or two there very pleasantly.”
“Egxellent!” said the Baron; “ven shall we start?”
“To-morrow morning.”
“Goot! zo let it be. I am tired of London and of ze English ladies’
manners. Police to ze Baron von Blitzenberg! Ve shall go to St Egbert’s,
Bonker!”
PART III.
CHAPTER I.
The Baron and Mr Bunker walked arm-in-arm along the esplanade at St
Egbert’s-on-Sea.
“Aha!” said the Baron, “zis is more fresh zan London!”
“Yes,” replied his friend; “we are now in the presence of that stimulating
element which provides patriotic Britons with music-hall songs, and
dyspeptic Britons with an appetite.”
A stirring breeze swept down the long white esplanade, threatening hats
and troubling skirts; the pale-green south-coast sea rumbled up the
shingle; the day was bright and pleasant for the time of year, and drove
the Baron’s mischances from his head; altogether it seemed to Mr Bunker
that the omens were good. They were both dressed in the smartest of tweed
suits, and walked jauntily, like men who knew their own value. Every now
and then, as they passed a pretty face, the Baron would say, “Aha, Bonker!
zat is not so bad, eh?”
And Mr Bunker, who seemed not unwilling that his friend should find some
entertaining distraction in St Egbert’s, would look at the owners of these
faces with a prospector’s eye and his own unrivalled assurance.
They had walked up and down three or four times, when a desire for a
different species of diversion began to overtake the Baron. It was the one
kind of desire that the Baron never even tried to wrestle with.
“My vriend Bonker,” said he, “is it not somevere about time for loncheon,
eh?”
“I should say it was precisely the hour.”
“Ha, ha! zen, let us gom and eat. Himmel, zis sea is ze fellow to make von
hungry!”
The Baron had taken a private suite of rooms on the first floor of the
best hotel in St Egbert’s, and after a very substantial lunch Mr Bunker
stretched himself on the luxurious sitting-room sofa and announced his
intention of having a nap.
“I shall go out,” said the Baron. “You vill not gom?”
“I shall leave you to make a single-handed conquest,” replied Mr Bunker.
“Besides, I have a little matter I want to look into.”
So the Baron arranged his hat airily, at what he had perceived to be the
most fashionable and effective English angle, and strutted off to the
esplanade.
It was about two hours later that he burst excitedly into the room,
crying, “Aha, mine Bonker! I haf disgovered zomzing!” and then he stopped
in some surprise. “Ello, vat make you, my vriend?”
His friend, in fact, seemed to be somewhat singularly employed. Through a
dense cloud of tobacco-smoke you could just pick him out of the depths of
an armchair, his feet resting on the mantelpiece, while his lap and all
the floor round about were covered with immense books. The Baron’s
curiosity was still further excited by observing that they consisted
principally of a London and a St Egbert’s directory, several volumes of a
Dictionary of National Biography, and one or two peerages and county
family compilations.
He looked up with a smile. “You may well wonder, my dear Baron. The fact
is, I am looking for a name.”
“A name! vat name?”
“Alas! if I knew what it was I should stop looking, and I confess I’m
rather sick of the job.”
“Vich vay do you look, zen?”
“Simply by wading my way through all the lists of names I could steal or
borrow. It’s devilish dry work.”
“Ze name of a vriend, is it?”
“Yes; but I’m afraid I must wait till it comes. And what is this
discovery, Baron? A petticoat, I presume. After all, they are the only
things worth finding,” and he shut the books one after another.
“A petticoat with ze fairest girl inside it!” exclaimed the Baron,
rapturously.
“Your eyes seem to have been singularly penetrating, Baron. Was she dark
or fair, tall or short, fat or slender, widow, wife, or maid?”
“Fair, viz blue eyes, short pairhaps but not too short, slender as
a—a—drom-stick, and I vould say a maid; at least I see vun stout old lady
mit her, mozzer and daughter I soppose.”
“And did this piece of perfection seem to appreciate you?”
“Vy should I know? Zey are ze real ladies and pairtend not to see me, bot
I zink zey notice me all ze same. Not ‘lady vriends,’ Bonker, ha, ha, ha!”
Mr Bunker laughed with reminiscent amusement, and inquired, “And how did
the romance end—in a cab, Baron?”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the Baron; “better zan zat, Bonker—moch better!”
Mr Bunker raised his eyebrows.
“It’s hardly the time of year for a romance to end in a bathing-machine.
You followed the divinity to her rented heaven, perhaps?”
The Baron bent forward and answered in a stage whisper, “Zey live in zis
hotel, Bonker!”
“Then I can only wish you joy, Baron, and if my funds allow me, send her a
wedding present.”
“Ach, not quite so fast, my vriend! I am not caught so easy.”
“My dear fellow, a week at close quarters is sufficient to net any man.”
“Ven I marry,” replied the Baron, “moch most be considered. A von
Blitzenberg does not mate viz every vun.”
“A good many families have made the same remark, but one does not always
meet the fathers-in-law.”
“Ha, ha! ve shall see. Bot, Bonker, she is lofly!”
The Baron awaited dinner with even more than his usual ardour. He dressed
with the greatest care, and at an absurdly early hour was already urging
his friend to come down and take their places. Indeed after a time there
was no withholding him, and they finally took their seats in the
dining-room before anybody else.
At what seemed to the impatient Baron unconscionably long intervals a few
people dropped in and began to study their menus and glance with an air of
uncomfortable suspicion at their neighbours.
“I vonder vill she gom,” he said three or four times at least.
“Console yourself, my dear Baron,” his friend would reply; “they always
come. That’s seldom the difficulty.”
And the Baron would dally with his victuals in the most unwonted fashion,
and growl at the rapidity with which the courses followed one another.
“Do zey suppose ve vish to eat like——?” he began, and then laying his hand
on his friend’s sleeve, he whispered, “She goms!”
Mr Bunker turned his head just in time to see in the doorway the Countess
of Grillyer and the Lady Alicia à Fyre.
“Is she not fair?” asked the Baron, excitedly.
“I entirely approve of your taste, Baron. I have only once seen any one
quite like her before.”
With a gratified smile the Baron filled his glass, while his friend seemed
amused by some humorous reflection of his own.
The Lady Alicia and her mother had taken their seats at a table a little
way off, and at first their eyes never happened to turn in the direction
of the two friends. But at last, after looking at the ceiling, the carpet,
the walls, the other people, everything else in the room it seemed, Lady
Alicia’s glance fell for an instant on the Baron. That nobleman looked as
interesting as a mouthful of roast duck would permit him, but the glance
passed serenely on to Mr Bunker. For a moment it remained serene; suddenly
it became startled and puzzled, and at that instant Mr Bunker turned his
own eyes full upon her, smiled slightly, and raised his glass to his lips.
The glance fell, and the Lady Alicia blushed down to the diamonds in her
necklace.
The Baron insisted on lingering over his dinner till the charmer was
finished, and so by a fortuitous coincidence they left the room
immediately behind the Countess. The Baron passed them in the passage, and
a few yards farther he looked round for his friend, and the Countess
turned to look for her daughter.
They saw Lady Alicia following with an intensely unconscious expression,
while Mr Bunker was in the act of returning to the dining-room.
“I wanted to secure a table for breakfast,” he explained.
CHAPTER II.
The Baron was in high hopes of seeing the fair unknown at breakfast, but
it seemed she must be either breakfasting in her own room or lying long
abed.
“I think I shall go out for a little constitutional,” said Mr Bunker, when
he had finished. “I suppose the hotel has a stronger attraction for you.”
“Ach, yes, I shall remain,” his friend replied. “Pairhaps I may see zem.”
“Take care then, Baron!”
“I shall not propose till you return, Bonker!”
“No,” said Mr Bunker to himself, “I don’t think you will.”
Just outside St Egbert’s there is a high breezy sweep of downs, falling
suddenly to a chalky seaward cliff. It overlooks the town and the
undulating inland country and a great spread of shining sea; and even
without a spy-glass you can see sail after sail and smoke-wreath after
smoke-wreath go by all day long.
But Mr Bunker had apparently walked there for other reasons than to see
the view. He did stop once or twice, but it was only to scan the downs
ahead, and at the sight of a fluttering skirt he showed no interest in
anything else, but made a straight line for its owner. For her part, the
lady seemed to await his coming. She gathered her countenance into an
expression of as perfect unconcern as a little heightening of her colour
would allow her, and returned his salute with rather a distant bow. But Mr
Bunker was not to be damped by this hint of barbed wire. He held out his
hand and exclaimed cordially, “My dear Lady Alicia! this is charming of
you!”
“Of course you understand, Mr Beveridge, it’s only——”
“Perfectly,” he interrupted, gaily; “I understand everything I should and
nothing I shouldn’t. In fact, I have altered little, except in the
trifling matter of a beard, a moustache or two, and, by the way, a name.”
“A name?”
“I am now Francis Bunker, but as much at your service as ever.”
“But why—I mean, have you really changed your name?”
“Circumstances have changed it, just as circumstances shaved me.”
Lady Alicia made a great endeavour to look haughty. “I do not quite
understand, Mr——”
“Bunker—a temporary title, but suggestive, and simple for the tradesmen.”
“I do not understand your conduct. Why have you changed your name?”
“Why not?”
This retort was so evidently unanswerable that Lady Alicia changed her
inquiry.
“Where have you been?”
“Till yesterday, in London.”
“Then you didn’t go to your own parish?” she demanded, reproachfully.
“There were difficulties,” he replied; “in fact, a certified lunatic is
not in great demand as a parish priest. They seem to prefer them
uncertified.”
“But didn’t you try?”
“Hard, but it was no use. The bishop was out of town, and I had to wait
till his return; besides, my position was somewhat insecure. I have had at
least two remarkable escapes since I saw you last.”
“Are you safe here?” she asked, hurriedly.
“With your consent, yes.”
She looked a little troubled. “I don’t know that I am doing right, Mr
Bev—Bunker, but——”
“Thank you, my friend,” he interrupted, tenderly.
“Don’t,” she began, hastily. “You mustn’t talk like——”
“Francis Beveridge?” he interrupted. “The trouble is, this rascal Bunker
bears an unconscionably awkward resemblance to our old friend.”
“You must see that it is quite—ridiculous.”
“Absurd,” he agreed,—“perfectly preposterous. I laugh whenever I think of
it!”
Poor Lady Alicia felt like a man at a telephone who has been connected
with the wrong person. Again she made a desperate shift to fall back on a
becoming pride.
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
“If I mean anything at all, which is always rather doubtful,” he replied,
candidly, “I mean that Beveridge and his humbug were creatures of an
occasion, just as Bunker and his are of another. The one occasion is
passed, and with it the first entertaining gentleman has vanished into
space. The second gentleman will doubtless follow when his time is up. In
fact, I may be said to be a series of dissolving views.”
“Then isn’t what you said true?”
“I’m afraid you must be more specific; you see I’ve talked so much.”
“What you said about yourself—and your work.”
He shook his head humorously. “I have no means of checking my statements.”
She looked at him in a troubled way, and then her eyes fell.
“At least,” she said, “you won’t—you mustn’t treat me as—as you did.”
“As Beveridge did? Certainly not; Bunker is the soul of circumspection.
Besides, he doesn’t require to get out of an asylum.”
“Then it was only to get away?” she cried, turning scarlet.
“Let us call it so,” he replied, looking pensively out to sea.
It seemed wiser to Lady Alicia to change the subject.
“Who is the friend you are staying with?” she asked, suddenly.
“My old friend the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, and your own most recent
admirer,” he replied. “I am at present living with, in fact I may say
upon, him.”
“Does he know?”
“If you meet him, you had perhaps better not inquire into my past
history.”
“I meant, does he know about—about your knowing me?”
“Bless them!” thought Mr Bunker; “one forgets they’re not _always_
thinking about us!”
“My noble friend has no idea that I have been so fortunate,” he replied.
Lady Alicia looked relieved. “Who is he?” she asked.
“A German nobleman of great wealth, long descent, and the most
accommodating disposition. He is at present exploring England under my
guidance, and I flatter myself that he has already seen and done a number
of things that are not on most programmes.”
Lady Alicia was silent for a minute. Then she said with a little
hesitation, “Didn’t you get a letter from me?”
“A letter? No,” he replied, in some surprise.
“I wrote twice—because you asked me to, and I thought—I wondered if you
were safe.”
“To what address did you write?”
“The address you gave me.”
“And what was that?” he asked, still evidently puzzled.
“You said care of the Archbishop of York would find you.”
Mr Bunker abruptly looked the other way.
“By Jove!” he said, as if lost in speculation, “I must find out what the
matter was. I can’t imagine why they haven’t been forwarded.”
Lady Alicia appeared a little dissatisfied.
“Was that a _real_ address?” she asked, suddenly.
“Perfectly,” he replied; “as real as Pentonville Jail or the House of
Commons.” (“And as likely to find me,” he added to himself.)
Lady Alicia seemed to hesitate whether to pursue the subject further, but
in the middle of her debate Mr Bunker asked, “By the way, has Lady
Grillyer any recollection of having seen me before?”
“No, she doesn’t remember you at all.”
“Then we shall meet as strangers?”
“Yes, I think it would be better; don’t you?”
“It will save our imaginations certainly.”
Lady Alicia looked at him as though she expected something more; but as
nothing came, she said, “I think it’s time I went back.”
“For the present then _au revoir_, my dear Alicia. I beg your pardon, Lady
Alicia; it was that rascal Beveridge who made the slip. It now remains to
make your formal acquaintance.”
“You—you mustn’t try!”
“The deuce is in these people beginning with B!” he laughed. “They seem to
do things without trying.”
He pressed her hand, raised his hat, and started back to the town. She, on
her part, lingered to let him get a clear start of her, and her blue eyes
looked as though a breeze had blown across and ruffled them.
Mr Bunker had reached the esplanade, and was sauntering easily back
towards the hotel, looking at the people and smiling now and then to
himself, when he observed with considerable astonishment two familiar
figures strolling towards him. They were none other than the Baron and the
Countess, engaged in animated conversation, and apparently on the very
best terms with each other. At the sight of him the Baron beamed joyfully.
“Aha, Bonker, so you haf returned!” he cried. “In ze meanvile I haf had
vun great good fortune. Let me present my friend Mr Bonker, ze Lady
Grillyer.”
The Countess bowed most graciously, and raising a pair of
tortoise-shell-rimmed eye-glasses mounted on a stem of the same material,
looked at Mr Bunker through these with a by no means disapproving glance.
At first sight it was evident that Lady Alicia must “take after” her noble
father. The Countess was aquiline of nose, large of person, and emphatic
in her voice and manner.
“You are the ‘showman,’ Mr Bunker, are you not?” she said, with a smile
for which many of her acquaintances would have given a tolerable
percentage of their incomes.
“It seems,” replied Mr Bunker, smiling back agreeably, “that the Baron is
now the showman, and I must congratulate him on his first venture.”
For an instant the Countess seemed a trifle taken aback. It was a
considerable number of years since she had been addressed in precisely
this strain, and in fact at no time had her admirers ventured quite so
dashingly to the attack. But there was something entirely irresistible in
Mr Bunker’s manner, partly perhaps because he never made the mistake of
heeding a first rebuff. The Countess coughed, then smiled a little again,
and said to the Baron, “You didn’t tell me that your showman supplied the
little speeches as well.”
“I could not know it; zere has not before been ze reason for a pretty
speech,” responded the Baron, gallantly.
If Lady Grillyer had been anybody else, one would have said that she
actually giggled. Certainly a little wave of scandalised satisfaction
rippled all over her.
“Oh, really!” she cried, “I don’t know which of you is the worst
offender.”
All this time, as may be imagined, Mr Bunker had been in a state of high
mystification at his friend’s unusual adroitness.
“How the deuce did he get hold of her?” he said to himself.
In the next pause the Baron solved the riddle.
“You vil vunder, Bonker,” he said, “how I did gom to know ze Lady
Grillyer.”
“I envied, certainly,” replied his friend, with a side glance at the now
purring Countess.
“She vas of my introdogtions, bot till after you vent out zis morning I
did not lairn her name. Zen I said to myself, ‘Ze sun shines, Himmel is
kind! Here now is ze fair Lady Grillyer—my introdogtion!’ and zo zat is
how, you see.”
“To think of the Baron being here and our only finding each other out by
chance!” said the Countess.
“By a fortunate providence for me!” exclaimed the Baron, fervently.
“Baron,” said the Countess, trying hard to look severe, “you must really
keep some of these nice speeches for my daughter. Which reminds me, I
wonder where she can be?”
“Ach, here she goms!” cried the Baron.
“Why, how did you know her?” asked the Countess.
“I—I did see her last night at dinnair,” explained the Baron, turning red.
“Ah, of course, I remember,” replied the Countess, in a matter-of-fact
tone; but her motherly eye was sharp, and already it began to look on the
highly eligible Rudolph with more approval than ever.
“My daughter Alicia, the Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg, Mr Bunker,” she
said the next moment.
The Baron went nearly double as he bowed, and the flourish of his hat
stirred the dust on the esplanade. Mr Bunker’s salutation was less
profound, but his face expressed an almost equal degree of interested
respect. Her mother thought that when one of the gentlemen was a nobleman
with an indefinite number of thousands a-year and the other a person of so
much discrimination, Lady Alicia’s own bow might have been a trifle less
reserved. But then even the most astute mother cannot know the reasons for
everything.
CHAPTER III.
“Alicia,” said the Countess, “it was really a most fortunate coincidence
our meeting the Baron at St Egbert’s.”
She paused for a reply and looked expectantly at her daughter. It was not
the first time in the course of the morning that Lady Alicia had listened
to similar observations, and perhaps that was why she answered somewhat
listlessly, “Yes, wasn’t it?”
The Countess frowned, and continued with emphasis, “I consider him one of
the most agreeable and best informed young men I have ever met.”
“Is he?” said Lady Alicia, absently.
“I wonder, Alicia, you hadn’t noticed it,” her mother observed, severely;
“you talked with him most of the afternoon. I should have thought that no
observant, well-bred girl would have failed to have been struck with his
air and conversation.”
“I—I thought him very pleasant, mamma.”
“I am glad you had so much sense. He is _extremely_ pleasant.”
As Lady Alicia made no reply, the Countess felt obliged to continue his
list of virtues herself.
“He is of most excellent family, Alicia, one of the oldest in Bavaria. I
don’t remember what I heard his income was in pfennigs, or whatever they
measure money by in Germany, but I know that it is more than £20,000
a-year in English money. A very large sum nowadays,” she added, as if
£20,000 had grown since she was a girl.
“Yes, mamma.”
“He is considered, besides, an unusually promising and intelligent young
nobleman, and in Germany, where noblemen are still constantly used, that
says a great deal for him.”
“Does it, mamma?”
“Certainly it does. Education there is so severe that young Englishmen are
beginning to know less than they ever did, and in most cases that isn’t
saying much. Compare the Baron with the young men you meet here!”
She looked at her daughter triumphantly, and Alicia could only reply,
“Yes, mamma?”
“Compare them and see the difference. Look at the Baron’s friend, Mr
Bunker, who is a very agreeable and amusing man, I admit, but look at the
difference!”
“What is it?” Alicia could not help asking.
“_What_ is it, Alicia! It is—ah—it’s—er—it is, in short, the effect of a
carefully cultivated mind and good blood.”
“But don’t you think Mr Bunker cultivated, mamma—and—and—well-bred?”
“He has an amusing way of saying things,—but then you must remember that
the Baron is doubtless equally entertaining in his native language,—and
possibly a superficial knowledge of a few of the leading questions of the
day; but the Baron talked to me for half an hour on the relations of
something or other in Germany to—er—something else—a very important point,
I assure you.”
“I always thought him very clever,” said Lady Alicia with a touch of
warmth, and then instantly changed colour at the horrible slip.
“You always,” said the Countess in alarmed astonishment; “you hardly spoke
to him yesterday, and—had you met him before?”
“I—I meant the Baron, mamma.”
“But I have just been saying that he was _unusually_ clever.”
“But I thought, I mean it seemed as though you considered him only well
informed.”
Lady Alicia’s blushes and confusion deepened. Her mother looked at her
with a softening eye. Suddenly she rose, kissed her affectionately, and
said with the tenderness of triumph, “My _dear_ girl! Of course he is;
clever, well informed, and a most _desirable_ young man. My Alicia could
not do——”
She stopped, as if she thought this was perhaps a little premature (though
the Countess’s methods inclined to the summary and decisive), and again
kissing her daughter affectionately, remarked gaily, “Let me see, why,
it’s almost time we went for our little walk! We mustn’t really disappoint
those young men. I am in the middle of such an amusing discussion with Mr
Bunker, who is really a very sensible man and quite worthy of the Baron’s
judgment.”
Poor Lady Alicia hardly knew whether to feel more relieved at her escape
or dismayed at the construction put upon her explanation. She went out to
meet the Baron, determined to give no further colour to her mother’s
unlucky misconception. The Countess was far too experienced and determined
a general to leave it at all doubtful who should walk by whose side, and
who should have the opportunity of appreciating whose merits, but Lady
Alicia was quite resolved that the Baron’s blandishments should fall on
stony ground.
But a soft heart and an undecided mouth are treacherous companions. The
Baron was so amiable and so gallant, that at the end of half an hour she
was obliged to abate the strictness of her resolution. She should treat
him with the friendliness of a brother. She learned that he had no
sisters: her decision was confirmed.
The enamoured and delighted Baron was in the seventh heaven of happy
loquacity. He poured out particulars of his travels, his more recordable
adventures, his opinions on various social and political matters, and at
last even of the family ghost, the hereditary carpet-beatership, and the
glories of Bavaria. And Lady Alicia listened with what he could not doubt
was an interest touched with tenderness.
“I wonder,” she said, artlessly, “that you find anything to admire in
England—compared with Bavaria, I mean.”
“Two zings I haf not zere,” replied the Baron, waving his hand round
towards the horizon. “Vun is ze vet sheet of flowing sea—says not your
poet so? Ze ozzer” (laying his hand on his heart) “is ze Lady Alicia à
Fyre.”
There are some people who catch sentiment whenever it happens to be in the
air, just as others almost equally unfortunate regularly take hay-fever.
Lady Alicia’s reply was much softer than she intended, especially as she
could have told anybody that the Baron’s compliment was the merest figure
of speech.
“You needn’t have included me: I’m sure _I’m_ not a great attraction.”
“Ze sea is less, so zat leaves none,” the Baron smiled.
“Didn’t you see anybody—I mean, anything in London that attracted you—that
you liked?”
“Zat I liked, yes, zat pairhaps for the moment attracted me; but not zat
shall still attract me ven I am gone avay.”
The Baron sighed this time, and she felt impelled to reply, with the most
sisterly kindness, “I—we should, of course, like to think that you didn’t
forget us _altogether_.”
“You need not fear.”
Then Lady Alicia began to realise that this was more like a second cousin
than a brother, and with sudden sprightliness she cried, “I wonder where
that steamer’s going!”
The Baron turned his eyes towards his first-named attraction, but for a
professed lover of the ocean his interest appeared slight. He only replied
absently, “Ach, zo?”
A little way behind them walked Mr Bunker and the Countess. The attention
of Lady Grillyer was divided between the agreeable conversation of her
companion and the pleasant spectacle of a fabulous number of pfennigs
a-year bending its titled head over her daughter. In the middle of one of
Mr Bunker’s most amusing stories she could not forbear interrupting with a
complacent “they _do_ make a very handsome couple!”
Mr Bunker politely stopped his narrative, and looked critically from his
friend’s gaily checked back to Lady Alicia’s trim figure.
“Pray go on with your story, Mr Bunker,” said the Countess, hastily,
realising that she had thought a little too loudly.
“They are like,” responded Mr Bunker, replying to her first remark—“they
are like a pair of gloves.”
The Countess raised her brows and looked at him sharply.
“I mean, of course, the best quality.”
“I think,” said the Countess, suspiciously, “that you spoke a little
carelessly.”
“My simile was a little premature?”
“I think so,” said the Countess, decisively.
“Let us call them then an odd pair,” smiled Mr Bunker, unruffled; “and
only hope that they’ll turn out to be the same size and different hands.”
The Countess actually condescended to smile back.
“She is a _dear_ child,” she murmured.
“His income, I think, is sufficient,” he answered.
Humour was not conspicuous in the Grillyer family. The Countess replied
seriously, “I am one of those out-of-date people, Mr Bunker, who consider
some things come before money, but the Baron’s birth and position are
fortunately unimpeachable.”
“While his mental qualities,” said Mr Bunker, “are, in my experience,
almost unique.”
The Countess was confirmed in her opinion of Mr Bunker’s discrimination.
Late that night, after they had parted with their friends, the Baron
smoked in the most unwonted silence while Mr Bunker dozed on the sofa.
Several times Rudolph threw restive glances at his friend, as if he had
something on his mind that he needed a helping hand to unburden himself
of. At last the silence grew so intolerable that he screwed up his courage
and with desperate resolution exclaimed, “Bonker!”
Mr Bunker opened his eyes and sat up.
“Bonker, I am in loff!”
Mr Bunker smiled and stretched himself out again.
“I have also been in love,” he replied.
“You are not now?”
“Alas! no.”
“Vy alas?”
“Because follies _without_ illusions get so infernally dull, Baron.”
The Baron smiled a little foolishly.
“I haf ze illusions, I fear.” Then he broke out enthusiastically, “Ach,
bot is she not lofly, Bonker? If she will bot lof me back I shall be ze
happiest man out of heaven!”
“You have wasted no time, Baron.”
The Baron shook his head in melancholy pleasure.
“You are quite sure it is really love this time?” his friend pursued.
“Qvite!” said the Baron, with the firmness of a martyr.
“There are so many imitations.”
“Not so close zat zey can deceive!”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Mr Bunker. “These first symptoms are common to them
all, and yet the varieties of the disease are almost beyond counting. I
myself have suffered from it in eight different forms. There was the
virulent, spotted-all-over variety, known as calf-love; there was the kind
that accompanied itself by a course of the Restoration dramatists; another
form I may call the strayed-Platonic, and that may be subdivided into at
least two; then there was——”
“Schtop! schtop!” cried the Baron. “Ha, ha, ha! Zat will do! Teufel! I
most examine my heart strictly. And yet, Bonker, I zink my loff is anozzer
kind—ze _real!_”
“They are all that, Baron; but have it your own way. Anything I can do to
make you worse shall be done.”
“Zanks, my best of friends,” said the Baron, warmly, seizing his hand; “I
knew you would stand by me!”
Mr Bunker gave a little laugh, and returning the pressure, replied, “My
dear fellow, I’d do anything to oblige a friend in such an interesting
condition.”
CHAPTER IV.
The Baron was a few minutes late in joining the party at lunch, and when
he appeared he held an open letter in his hand. It was only the middle of
the next day, and yet he could have sworn that last night he was
comparatively whole-hearted, he felt so very much more in love already.
“Yet anozzer introdogtion has found me out,” he said as he took his seat.
“I have here a letter of invitation vich I do not zink I shall accept.”
He threw an amorous glance at Lady Alicia, which her watchful mother
rightly interpreted as indicating the cause of his intended refusal.
“Who is it this time?” asked Mr Bunker.
“Sir Richard Brierley of Brierley Park, Dampshire. Is zat how you
pronounce it?”
“Sir Richard Brierley!” exclaimed the Countess; “why, Alicia and I are
going to visit some relatives of ours who live only six miles from
Brierley Park! When has he asked you, Baron?”
“Ze end of next week.”
“How odd! We are going down to Dampshire at the end of next week too. You
must accept, Baron!”
“I shall!” exclaimed the overjoyed Baron. “Shall ve go, Bonker?”
“I’m not asked, I’m afraid.”
“Ach, bot zat is nozzing. I shall tell him.”
“As you please, Baron,” replied Mr Bunker, with a half glance at Lady
Alicia.
The infatuated Baron had already begun to dread the inevitable hour of
separation, and this piece of good fortune put him into the highest
spirits. He felt so amiable towards the whole world that when the four
went out for a stroll in the afternoon he lingered for a minute by Lady
Grillyer’s side, and in that minute Mr Bunker and Lady Alicia were out of
hail ahead. The Baron’s face fell.
“Shall I come down to this place?” said Mr Bunker.
“Would you like to?”
“I should be sorry,” he replied, “to part with—the Baron.”
Lady Alicia had expected a slightly different ending to this sentence, and
so, to tell the truth, Mr Bunker had intended.
“Oh, if you can’t stay away from the Baron, you had better go.”
“It is certainly very hard to tear myself away from so charming a person
as the Baron; perhaps you can feel for me?”
“I think he is very—nice.”
“He thinks you very nice.”
“Does he?” said Lady Alicia, with great indifference, and a moment later
changed the subject.
Meanwhile the Baron was growing very uneasy. Of course it was quite
natural that Mr Bunker should find it pleasant to walk for a few minutes
by the side of the fairest creature on earth, and very possibly he was
artfully pleading his friend’s cause. Yet the Baron felt uneasy. He
remembered Mr Bunker’s invariable success with the gentler sex, his wit,
his happy smile, and his good looks; and he began to wish most sincerely
that these fascinations were being exercised on the now somewhat
breathless Countess, for his efforts to overtake the pair in front had
both annoyed and exhausted Lady Grillyer.
“Need we walk quite so fast, Baron?” she suggested; and Lady Grillyer’s
suggestions were of the kind that are evidently meant to be acted upon.
“Ach, I did forged,” said the Baron, absently, and without further remark
he slackened his pace for a few yards and then was off again.
“You were telling me,” gasped the Countess, “of something you thought
of—doing when—you went—home.”
“Zo? Oh yes, it vas—Teufel! I do not remember.”
“Really, Baron,” said the Countess, decidedly, “I cannot go any farther at
this rate. Let us turn. The others will be turning too, in a minute.”
In fact the unlucky Baron had clean run Lady Grillyer’s maternal instincts
off their feet, and he suffered for it by seeing nothing of either his
friend or his charmer for an hour and a half.
That night he accepted Sir Richard’s invitation, but said nothing whatever
about bringing a friend.
For the next week Rudolph was in as many states of mind as there were
hours in each day. He walked and rode and drove with Lady Alicia through
the most romantic spots he could find. He purchased a large assortment of
golf-clubs, and under her tuition essayed to play that most dangerous of
games for mixed couples. In turn he broke every club in his set; the
cavities he hewed in the links are still pointed out to the curious; but
the heart of the Lady Alicia alone he seemed unable to damage. There was
always a moment at which his courage failed him, and in that fatal pause
she invariably changed the subject with the most innocent air in the
world.
Every now and then the greenest spasms of jealousy would seize him. Why
did she elect to disappear with Mr Bunker on the very morning that he had
resolved should settle his fate? It is true he had made the same
resolution every morning, but on this particular one he had no doubt he
would have put his fate to the touch. And why on a certain moonlight
evening was he left to the unsentimental company of the Countess?
He made no further reference to the visit to Brierley Park; in fact he
shunned discussion of any kind with his quondam bosom friend.
The time slipped past, till the visit to St Egbert’s was almost at an end.
On the day after to-morrow all four were going to leave (where Mr Bunker
was going, his friend never troubled to inquire).
They sat together latish in the evening in the Baron’s room. That very
afternoon Lady Alicia had spent more time in Mr Bunker’s society than in
his, and the Baron felt that the hour had come for an explanation.
“Bonker, I haf a suspection!” he exclaimed, suddenly. “It is not I, bot
you, who are ze friend to ze beautiful Lady Alicia. You are not doing me
fair!”
“My dear Baron!”
“It is so: you are not doing me fair,” the Baron reiterated.
“My dear fellow,” replied Mr Bunker, “it is you are so much in love that
you have lost your wonted courage. You don’t use your chances.”
“I do not get zem.”
“Nonsense, Baron! I haven’t spent one hour in Lady Alicia’s company to
your twenty-four, and yet if I’d been matrimonially inclined I could have
proposed twice over. You’ve had the chance of being accepted fifty times.”
“I haf not been accepted vunce,” said the Baron, moodily.
“Have you put the question?”
“I haf not dared.”
“Well, my dear Baron, whose fault is that?”
The Baron was silent.
“Ask her to-morrow.”
“No, Bonker,” said the Baron, sadly; “she treats me not like a lover. She
talks of friendship. I do not vish a frient!”
Mr Bunker looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “You don’t think you have
touched her heart?” he asked at length.
“I fear not.”
“You must try an infallible recipe for winning a woman’s heart. You must
be in trouble.”
“In trouble!”
“I have tried it once myself, with great success.”
“Bot how?”
“You must fall ill.”
“Bot I cannot; I am too healthful, alas!”
Mr Bunker smiled artfully. “They come to tea in our rooms to-morrow, you
know. By then, Baron, you must be laid up, ill or not, just as you please.
A grain of Lady Alicia’s sympathy is worth more than a ton of even your
wit.”
The standard chosen for the measurement of his wit escaped the Baron, the
scheme delighted him.
“Ha, Bonker! schön! I tvig! Goot!” he cried. “How shall ve do?”
“Leave it to me.”
The Baron reflected, and his smile died away.
“Sopposing,” he said, slowly, “zey find out? Is it vise? Is it straight?”
“They can’t find out. They go the next morning, and what’s to prevent your
making a quick recovery and pluckily going down to Brierley Park as the
interesting convalescent? She will know that you’ve made a dangerous
journey on her account.”
The Baron’s face cleared again.
“Let us try!” he said; “anyzing is better zan my present state. Bot, be
careful, Bonker!”
“I shall take the most minute precautions,” replied Mr Bunker.
CHAPTER V.
The next morning the two conspirators breakfasted early. The Baron seemed
a little nervous now that it came so near the venture, but his friend was
as cheerful as a schoolboy, and his confident air soon put fresh courage
into Rudolph.
Mr Bunker’s bedroom opened out of their common sitting-room, and so he
declared that in the afternoon the Baron must be laid up there.
“Keep your room all morning,” he said, “and look as pale as you can. I
shall make my room ready for you.”
When the Baron had retired, he threw himself into a chair and gazed for a
few minutes round his bedroom. Then he rang his bell, ordered the servant
to make the bed immediately, and presently went out to do some shopping.
On the way he sent word to the Countess, telling her only that the Baron
was indisposed, but that in spite of this misfortune he hoped he should
have the pleasure of their company at tea. The rest of the morning he
spent in his bedroom, prudently keeping out of the ladies’ way.
When, after a substantial lunch which he insisted upon getting up to eat,
the Baron was allowed to enter the sick-room, he uttered an exclamation of
astonishment,—and indeed his surprise was natural. The room was as full of
flowers as a conservatory; chairs, wardrobe, and fireplace were most
artistically draped with art hangings; a plate filled with grapes, a large
bottle labelled “Two table-spoonfuls every half hour,” and a
medicine-glass were placed conspicuously on a small table; and, most
remarkable feature of all, Mr Bunker’s bath filled with water and alive
with goldfish stood by the side of the bed. A couple of canaries sang in a
cage by the window, the half-drawn curtains only permitted the most
delicate light to steal into the room, and in short the whole arrangement
reflected the utmost credit on his ingenious friend.
The Baron was delighted, but a little puzzled.
“Vat for are zese fishes and ze canaries?” he asked.
“To show your love of nature.”
“Vy so?”
“There is nothing that pleases a woman more.”
“My friend, you zink of everyzing!” exclaimed the Baron, admiringly.
When four o’clock approached he drew a night-shirt over his other garments
and got into bed. Mr Bunker at first was in favour of a complete change of
attire, but on his friend’s expostulating against such a thorough
precaution, he admitted that it would be perhaps rather like the historic
blacking of Othello.
“Leave it all to me, my dear Baron,” he said, reassuringly, as he tucked
him in; and with that he went into the other room and awaited the arrival
of their guests.
They came punctually. The Countess was full of concern for the “dear
Baron,” while Lady Alicia, he could not help thinking, appeared unusually
reserved. In fact, his quick eye soon divined that something was the
matter.
“She has either been getting a lecture from the dowager or has found
something out,” he said to himself.
However, it seemed that if she had found anything out it could have
nothing to do with the Baron’s indisposition, for she displayed the most
ingenuous sympathy, and, he thought, she even appeared to aim it pointedly
at himself.
“So sudden!” exclaimed the Countess.
“It is rather sudden, but we’ll hope it may pass as quickly as it came,”
said Mr Bunker, conveying a skilful impression of deep concern veiled by a
cheerful manner.
“Tell me honestly, Mr Bunker, is it dangerous?” demanded the countess.
Mr Bunker hesitated, gave a half-hearted laugh, and replied, “Oh, dear,
no! that is—at present, Lady Grillyer, we have really no reason to be
alarmed.”
“I am _so_ sorry,” murmured Lady Alicia.
Her mother looked at her approvingly.
“Poor Baron!” she said, in a tone of the greatest commiseration.
“So far from home!” sighed Mr Bunker. “And yet so cheerful through it
all,” he added.
“What did you say was the matter?” asked the Countess.
Mr Bunker had thought it both wiser and more effective to maintain a
little mystery round his friend’s malady.
“The doctor hasn’t yet given a decided opinion,” he replied.
“Can’t we do anything?” said Lady Alicia, softly.
Mr Bunker thought the guests were nearly worked up to the proper pitch of
sympathy.
“Poor Rudolph!” he exclaimed. “It would cheer him immensely, I know, and
ease my own anxiety as well, if you would venture in to see him for a few
minutes. In such a case there is no sympathy so welcome as a woman’s.”
The Countess glanced at her daughter, and wavered for an instant between
those proprieties for which she was a famous stickler and this admirable
chance of completing the Baron’s conquest.
“His relations are far away,” said Mr Bunker, looking pensively out of the
window.
“We might come in for a few minutes, Alicia?” suggested Lady Grillyer.
“Yes, mamma,” replied Lady Alicia, with an alacrity that rather surprised
their host.
With a pleasantly dejected air he ushered the ladies into the darkened
sick-room. The Baron, striving to conceal his exultation under a rueful
semblance, greeted them with a languid yet happy smile.
“Ah, Lady Grillyer, zis is kind indeed! And you, Lady Alicia, how can I
zank you?”
“My daughter and I are much distressed, Baron, to find our host _hors de
combat_,” said the Countess, graciously.
“Just when you wanted to go away too!” added Lady Alicia, sympathetically.
The Baron emitted a happy blend of sigh and groan.
“Alas!” he replied, “it is hard indeed.”
“You must hurry up and get better,” said the Countess, in her most
cheering sick-room manner. “It won’t do to disappoint the Brierleys, you
know.”
“You must come down for _part_ of the time,” smiled her daughter.
These expressions of sympathy so affected the Baron that he placed his
hand on his brow and turned slightly away to conceal his emotion. At the
same time Mr Bunker, with well-timed dramatic effect, sank wearily into a
chair, and, laying his elbow on the back, hid his own face in his hand.
Their guests jumped to the most alarming conclusions, and looked from one
to the other with great concern.
“Dear me!” said the Countess, “surely it isn’t so very serious, Mr Bunker;
it isn’t _infectious_, is it?”
The unlucky Baron here made his first mistake: without waiting for his
more diplomatic friend to reply, he answered hastily, “Ach, no, it is bot
a cold.”
Lady Grillyer’s expression changed.
“A cold!” she said. “Dear me, that can’t be so very serious, Baron.”
“It is a bad cold,” said the Baron.
By this time the ladies’ eyes were growing more used to the dim light, and
Mr Bunker could see that they were taking rapid stock of the garnishings.
“This, I suppose, is your cough-mixture,” said the Countess, examining the
bottle.
The Baron incautiously admitted it was.
“Two table-spoonfuls every half hour!” she exclaimed; “why, I never heard
of taking a cough-mixture in such doses. Besides, your cough doesn’t seem
so very bad, Baron.”
“Ze doctor told me to take it so,” replied the Baron.
The Countess turned towards Mr Bunker and said, with a touch of suspicion
in her voice, “I thought, Mr Bunker, the doctor had given no opinion.”
The Baron threw a glance of intense ferocity at his friend.
“In the Baron’s desire to spare your feelings,” replied Mr Bunker,
gravely, “he has been a little inaccurate; that is not precisely an
ordinary cough-mixture.”
“Oh,” said the Countess.
Lady Alicia’s attention had been strongly attracted by the bath, and
suddenly she exclaimed, “Why, there are goldfish in it!”
The Baron’s nerve was fast deserting him.
“Ze doctor ordered zem,” he began—“I mean, I am fond of fishes.”
The Countess looked hard at the unhappy young man, and then turned
severely to his friend.
“_What_ is the matter with the Baron?” she demanded.
Mr Bunker saw there was nothing for it but heroic measures.
“The dog was destroyed at once,” he replied, with intense gravity. “It is
therefore impossible to say exactly what is the matter.”
“_The dog!_” cried the two ladies together.
“By this evening,” he continued, “we shall know the worst—or the best.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed the Countess, withdrawing a step from the
bed.
“I mean,” replied Mr Bunker, with a happy inspiration, “that this bath is
a delicate test. No victim of the dread disease of hydrophobia can bear to
look——”
But the Countess gave him no time to finish. Even as he was speaking the
Baron’s face had passed through a series of the most extraordinary
expressions, which she not unnaturally put down to premonitory symptoms.
“It’s beginning already!” she shrieked. “Alicia, my love, come quickly.
How dare you expose us, sir?”
“Calm yourselves. I assure you——” pleaded Mr Bunker, coming hastily after
them, but they were at the door before him.
The hapless Baron could stand it no longer. Crying, “No, no, it is false!”
he sprang out of bed, arrayed in a tweed suit only half concealed by his
night-shirt, and, forgetting all about the bath, descended with a great
splash among the startled goldfish.
The Countess paused in the half-opened door and looked at him with horror
that rapidly passed into intense indignation.
“I am not ill!” he cried. “It vos zat rascal Bonker’s plot. He made me! I
haf not hydrophobia!”
Most unkindest cut of all, Lady Alicia went off into hysterical giggles.
For a moment her mother glared at the two young men in silence, and then
only remarking, “I have never been so insulted before,” she went out, and
her daughter followed her.
As the door closed Mr Bunker went off into roar after roar of laughter,
but the humorous side of the situation seemed to appeal very slightly to
his injured friend.
“You rascal! you villain!” he shouted, “zis is ze end of our friendship,
Bonker! Do you use ze pistols? Tell me, sare!”
“My dear Baron,” gasped Mr Bunker, “I could not put such an inartistic end
to so fine a joke for the world.”
“You vill not fight? Coward! poltroon! I know not ze English name bad
enoff for you!”
With difficulty Mr Bunker composed himself and replied, still smiling:
“After all, Baron, what harm has been done? I get all the blame, and the
sympathy you wanted is sure to turn to you.”
“False friend!” thundered the Baron.
“My dear Baron!” said Mr Bunker, mildly, “whose fault was it that the plot
miscarried? If you’d only left it all to me——”
“Left it to you! Yes, I left too moch to you! Traitor, it vas a trick to
vin ze Lady Alicia for yourself! Speak to me nevermore!” And with that the
infuriated nobleman rushed off to his own room.
As there was no further sign of him for the next half hour, Mr Bunker,
still smiling to himself at the recollection, went out to take the air;
but just as he was about to descend the stairs he spied Lady Alicia
lingering in a passage. He turned back and went up to her.
She began at once in a low, hurried voice that seemed to have a strain of
anger running beneath it.
“I got the two letters I wrote you returned to me to-day through the
dead-letter office. Nothing was known about you at the address you gave.”
“I am not surprised,” he replied.
“Then it was false?”
“As an address it was perfectly genuine, only it didn’t happen to be
mine.”
“Were you _ever_ in the Church?”
“Not to my personal knowledge.”
“Yet you said you were?”
“I was in an asylum.”
She looked up at him with fine contempt, while he smiled back at her with
great amusement.
“You have deceived _me_,” she said, “and you have treated your other
friend—who is far too good for you—disgracefully. Have you anything to say
for yourself?”
“Not a word,” he replied, cheerfully.
“You must _never_ treat me again as—as I let you.”
As a smile played for an instant about his face, she added quickly, “I
don’t _suppose_ I shall ever see you again. In future we are not _likely_
to meet.”
“The lady and the lunatic?” said he. “Well, perhaps not. Good-bye, and
better luck.”
“Good-bye,” she answered coldly, and added as they parted, “my mother, of
course, is extremely angry with you.”
“There,” he said with a smile, “you see I still come in useful.”
She hurried away, and Mr Bunker walked slowly downstairs and out of the
hotel.
“It seems to me,” he reflected, “that I shall have to set out on my
adventures again alone.”
CHAPTER VI.
The Baron’s natural good temper might have forgiven his friend, but all
night he was a prey to something against which no temper is proof. The
Baron was bitterly jealous. All through breakfast he never spoke a word,
and when Mr Bunker asked him what train he intended to take, he replied
curtly, as he went to the door, “Ze 5.30.”
“And where do you go now?”
“Vat is zat to you? I go for a valk. I vould be alone.”
“Good-bye, then, Baron,” said Mr Bunker. “I think I shall go up to town.”
“Go, zen,” replied the Baron, opening the door; “I haf no furzer vish to
see a treacherous _sponge_ zat vill neizer be true nor fight, bot jost
takes money.”
He slammed the door and went out. If he had waited for a moment, he would
have seen a look in Mr Bunker’s face that he had never seen before. He
half started from his chair to follow, and then sat down again and thought
with his lips very tight set.
All at once they broke into a smile that was grimmer than anything the
Baron had known.
“I accept your challenge, Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg,” he said to
himself; “but the weapons I shall choose myself.”
He took a telegraph form, wrote and despatched a wire, and then with
considerable haste proceeded to pack. Within an hour he had left the
hotel.
* * * * *
When a servant, later in the day, was performing, under the Baron’s
directions, the same office for him, a series of discoveries that still
further disturbed his peace of mind were jointly made. Not only the more
sporting portions of his wardrobe but his gun and cartridges as well, had
vanished, and, search and storm as he liked, there was not a trace of them
to be found.
“Ze rascal!” he muttered; “I did not zink he was zief as well.”
It is hardly wonderful that he arrived at Brierley station in anything but
an amiable frame of mind. There, to his great annoyance and surprise, he
found no signs of Sir Richard’s carriage; there were no stables near, and,
after fuming for some time on the platform, he was forced to leave his
luggage with the station-master and proceed on foot to Brierley Park.
He arrived shortly before seven o’clock, after a dark and muddy tramp,
and, still swearing under his breath, pulled the bell with indignant
energy.
“I am ze Baron von Blitzenberg, bot zere vas no carriage at ze station,”
he informed the butler in his haughtiest tones.
The man looked at him suspiciously.
“The Baron arrived this morning,” he said.
“Ze Baron? Vat Baron? I am ze Baron!”
“I shall fetch Sir Richard,” said the butler, turning away.
Presently a stout florid gentleman, accompanied by three friends, all
evidently very curious and amused about something, came to the door, and,
to the poor Baron’s amazement and horror, he recognised in one of these
none other than Mr Bunker, arrayed with much splendour in his own ornate
shooting suit.
“What do you want?” asked the florid gentleman, sternly.
“Have I ze pleasure of addressing Sir Richard Brierley?” inquired the
Baron, raising his hat and bowing profoundly.
“You have.”
“Zen I must tell you zat I am ze Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg.”
“Gom, gom, my man!” interposed Mr Bunker. “I know you. Zis man, Sir
Richard, has before annoyed me. He is vat you call impostor, cracked; he
has vollowed me from Germany. Go avay, man!”
“You are impostor! You scoundrel, Bonker!” shouted the wrathful Baron. “He
is no Baron, Sir Richard! Ha! Vould you again deceive me, Bonker?”
“You must lock him up, I fear,” said Mr Bunker. “To-morrow, my man, you
vill see ze police.”
So completely did the Baron lose his head that he became almost
inarticulate with rage: his protestations, however, were not of the
slightest avail. That morning Sir Richard had received a wire informing
him that the Baron was coming by an earlier train than he had originally
intended, and, since his arrival, the spurious nobleman had so ingratiated
himself with his host that Sir Richard was filled with nothing but
sympathy for him in his persecution. After a desperate struggle the
unfortunate Rudolph was overpowered and conveyed in the undignified
fashion known as the frog’s march to a room in a remote wing, there to
pass the night under lock and key.
“The scoundrelly German impostor!” exclaimed a young man, a fellow visitor
of the Baron Bunker’s, to a tall, military-looking gentleman.
Colonel Savage seemed lost in thought.
“It is a curious thing, Trelawney,” he replied, at length, “that the
footman who attends the Baron should have told my man—who, of course, told
me—that a number of his things are marked ‘Francis Beveridge.’ It is also
rather strange that this impostor should have known so little of the
Baron’s movements as to arrive several hours after him, assuming he had
hatched a plot to impersonate him.”
“But the man’s obviously mad.”
“Must be,” said the colonel.
The house party were assembled in the drawing-room waiting for dinner to
be announced. The bogus Baron was engaged in an animated discussion with
Colonel Savage on the subject of Bavarian shootings, and the colonel
having omitted to inform him that he had some personal experience of
these, Mr Bunker was serving up such of his friend’s anecdotes as he could
remember with sauce more peculiarly his own.
“Five hondred vild boars,” he was saying, “eight hondred brace of
partridges, many bears, and rabbits so moch zat it took five veeks to bury
zem. All zese ve did shoot before breakfast, colonel. Aftair breakfast
again ve did go out——”
But at that moment his attention was sharply arrested by a question of
Lady Brierley’s.
“Has Dr Escott arrived?” she asked.
The Baron Bunker paused, and in spite of his habitual coolness, the
observant colonel noticed that he started ever so slightly.
“He came half an hour ago,” replied Sir Richard. “Ah, here he is.”
As he spoke, a well-remembered figure came into the room, and after a
welcome from his hostess, the dinner procession started.
“Whoever is that tall fair man in front?” Dr Escott asked his partner as
they crossed the hall.
“Oh, that’s the Baron von Blitzenberg: such an amusing man! We are all in
love with him already.”
All through dinner the spurious Baron saw that Dr Escott’s eyes turned
continually and curiously on him; yet never for an instant did his spirits
droop or his conversation flag. Witty and charming as ever, he discoursed
in his comical foreign accent to the amusement of all within hearing, and
by the time the gentlemen adjourned to the billiard-room, he had
established the reputation of being the most delightful German ever seen.
Yet Dr Escott grew more suspicious and bewildered, and Mr Bunker felt that
he was being narrowly watched. The skill at billiards of a certain Francis
Beveridge used to be the object of the doctor’s unbounded admiration, and
it was with the liveliest interest that he watched a game between Colonel
Savage and the Baron.
That nobleman knew well the danger of displaying his old dexterity, and to
the onlookers it soon became apparent that this branch of his education
had been neglected. He not only missed the simplest shots, but seemed very
ignorant of the rules of the English game, and in consequence he came in
for a little good-natured chaff from Sir Richard and Trelawney. When the
colonel’s score stood at 90 and the Baron had scarcely reached 25
Trelawney cried, “I’ll bet you ten to one you don’t win, Baron!”
“What in?” asked the Baron, and the colonel noticed that for the first
time be pronounced a _w_ correctly.
“Sovereigns,” said Trelawney, gaily.
The temptation was irresistible.
“Done!” said the Baron. With a professional disregard for conventions he
bolted the white into the middle pocket, leaving his own ball nicely
beside the red. Down in its turn went the red, and Mr Bunker was on the
spot. Three followed three in monotonous succession, Trelawney’s face
growing longer and Dr Escott getting more and more excited, till with a
smile Mr Bunker laid down his cue, a sensational winner.
His victory was received in silence: Trelawney handed over two five-pound
notes without a word, and the colonel returned to his whisky-and-soda. Dr
Escott could contain himself no longer, and whispering something to Sir
Richard, the two left the room.
Imperturbable as ever, Mr Bunker talked gaily for a few minutes to an
unresponsive audience, and then, remarking that he would join the ladies,
left the room.
A minute or two later Sir Richard, with an anxious face, returned with Dr
Escott.
“Where is the Baron?” he asked.
“Gone to join the ladies,” replied Trelawney, adding under his breath,
“d—— n him!”
But the Baron was not with the ladies, nor, search the house as they
might, was there a trace to be seen of that accomplished nobleman.
“He has gone!” said Sir Richard.
“What the deuce is the meaning of it?” exclaimed Trelawney.
Colonel Savage smiled grimly and suggested, “Perhaps he wants to give the
impostor an innings.”
“Dr Escott, I think, can tell you,” replied the baronet.
“Gentlemen,” said the doctor, “the man whom you have met as the Baron von
Blitzenberg is none other than a most cunning and determined lunatic. He
escaped from the asylum where I am at present assistant doctor, after all
but murdering me; he has been seen in London since, but how he came to
impersonate the unfortunate gentleman whom you locked up this afternoon I
cannot say.”
Before they broke up for the night the genuine Baron, released from
confinement and soothed by the humblest apologies and a heavy supper,
recounted the main events in Mr Beveridge _alias_ Bunker’s brief career in
town. On his exploits in St Egbert’s he felt some delicacy in touching,
but at the end of what was after all only a fragmentary and one-sided
narrative, even the defrauded Trelawney could not but admit that, whatever
the departed gentleman’s failings, his talents at least were worthy of a
better cause.
CHAPTER VII.
The party at Brierley Park had gone at last to bed. The Baron was
installed in his late usurper’s room, and from the clock-tower the hour of
three had just been tolled. Sympathy and Sir Richard’s cellar had greatly
mollified the Baron’s wrath; he had almost begun to see the humorous side
of his late experience; as a rival Mr Bunker was extinct, and with an easy
mind and a placid smile he had fallen asleep some two hours past.
The fire burned low, and for long nothing but the occasional sigh of the
wind in the trees disturbed the silence. At length, had the Baron been
awake, he might have heard the stealthiest of footsteps in the corridor
outside. Then they stopped; his door was gently opened, and first a head
and then a whole man slipped in.
Still the Baron slept, dreaming peacefully of his late companion. They
were driving somewhere in a hansom, Mr Bunker was telling one of his most
amusing stories, when there came a shock, the hansom seemed to turn a
somersault, and the Baron awoke. At first he thought he must be dreaming
still; the electric light had been turned on and the room was bright as
day, but, more bewildering yet, Mr Bunker was seated on his bed, gazing at
him with an expression of thoughtful amusement.
“Well, Baron,” he said, “I trust you are comfortable in these excellent
quarters.”
The Baron, half awake and wholly astonished, was unable to collect his
ideas in time to make any reply.
“But remember,” continued Mr Bunker, “you have a reputation to live up to.
I have set the standard high for Bavarian barons.”
The indignant Baron at last recovered his wits.
“If you do not go away _at vonce_,” he said, raising himself on his
elbows, “I shall raise ze house upon you!”
“Have you forgotten that you are talking to a dangerous lunatic, who
probably never stirs without his razor?”
The Baron looked at him and turned a little pale. He made no further
movement, but answered stoutly enough, “Vat do you vant?”
“In the first place, I want my brush and comb, a few clothes, and my
hand-bag. Events happened rather more quickly this evening than I had
anticipated.”
“Take zem.”
“I should also like,” continued Mr Bunker, unmoved, “to have a little talk
with you. I think I owe you some explanation—perhaps an apology or two—and
I’m afraid it’s my last chance.”
“Zay it zen.”
“Of course I understand that you make no hostile demonstration till I am
finished? A hunted man must take precautions, you know.”
“I vill let you go.”
“Thanks, Baron.”
Mr Bunker folded his arms, leaned his back against the foot of the bed,
and began in his half-bantering way, “I have amused you, Baron, now and
then, you must admit?”
The Baron made no reply.