Count Bunker Part 46

"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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d!" 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 astonis.h.i.+ng in people so nearly exhausted, and made as though they would pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sistants made up two beds forthwith. The Baron, subdued to a fierce and snarling moodiness, watched their preparations with a lurid eye.

"Put not zat bed so near ze door," he snapped.

In his ear his jailor whispered, "That one's for you, sir, and dinna put off your clothes!"

The Baron started, and from that moment his air of resignation began to affront the Countess as deeply as his previous violence. When they were again alone, stretched in black darkness each upon their couch, she lifted up her voice in a last word of protest--

"Rudolph! have you no single feeling for me left? Why didn't you stab that man?"

But the Baron merely retorted with a lifelike affectation of snoring.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

For a long time the Baron lay wide awake, every sense alert, listening for the creak of a footstep on the wooden stair that led up from the harness-room to his prison. What else could the strange words of Dugald have meant, save that some friend proposed to climb those stairs and gently open that stubborn door? And in this opinion he had been confirmed when he observed that on Dugald's departure the key turned with a silence suggesting a recently oiled lock. His bed lay along the wall, with the head so close to the door that any one opening it and stretching forth a hand could tweak him by the nose without an effort (supposing that were the object of their visit). Clearly, he thought, it was not thus arranged without some very special purpose. Yet when hour after hour pa.s.sed and nothing happened, he began to sleep fitfully, and at last, worn out with fruitless waiting, dropped into a profound slumber.

He was in the midst of a hara.s.sing dream or drama, wherein Bunker and Eva played an incoherent part and he himself pa.s.sed wearily from peril to peril, when the stage suddenly was cleared, his eyes started open, and he became wakefully conscious of a little ray of light that fell upon his face. Before he could raise his head a soft voice whispered urgently,

"Don't move!"

With admirable self-control he obeyed implicitly.

"Who is zere?" he whispered back.

The voice seemed for a moment to hesitate, and then answered--

"Eleanor Maddison!"

He started so audibly that again she breathed peremptorily--

"Hus.h.!.+ Lie still till I come back. You--you don't deserve it, but I want to save you from the disgrace of arrest."