University of Virginia Library

35. 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.