Count Bunker

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.