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.