As we disembarked at Colico to take the train for Chiavenna, Mrs. Portheris, after seeing that Mr. Mafferton was collecting the portmanteaux, gave me a word of comfort and of admonition. "Take my advice, my child," she said, "and be faithful to poor dear Richard. Your father must, in the end, give way. I shall keep at him in your interests. When you left us this afternoon," continued the lady mysteriously, "he immediately took out his fountain pen and wrote a letter. It was directed—I saw that much—to a Mr. Arthur Page. Is he the creature who is to be forced upon you, my child?" Mrs. Portheris in the sentimental view was really affecting.

"I think it very likely," I said calmly, "but I have promised to be faithful to Richard, Mrs. Portheris, and I will."

But I really felt a little nervous.



CHAPTER XXIII.

The instant we saw the diligence momma declared that if she had to sit anywhere but in the middle of it she would remain in Chiavenna until next day. Mrs. Portheris was of the same mind. She said that even the interieur would be dangerous enough going down hill, but if the Senator would sit there too she would try not to be nervous. The coupe was terrifying—one saw everything the poor dear horses did—and as to the banquette she could imagine herself flying out of it, if we so much as went over a stone. As a party we were strangers to the diligence; we had all the curiosity and hesitation about it, as Dicky remarked, of the animals when Noah introduced them to the Ark. I asked Dicky to describe the diligence for the purpose of this volume, thinking that it might, here and there, have a reader who had never seen one, and he said that, as soon as he had made up his mind whether it was most like a triumphal chariot in a circus procession or a boudoir car in an ambulance, he would; but then his eyes wandered to Isabel, who was pinker than ever in the mountain air, and his reasoning faculties left him. A small German with a very red nose, most incoherent in his apparel—he might have been a Baron or again a hair-dresser—already occupied one of the seats in the interieur, so after our elders had been safely deposited beside him the banquette and the coupe were left, as Mrs. Portheris said, to the adventurous young people. Dicky and I had conspired, for the sustained effect on Mrs. Portheris, to sit in the banquette, while Isabel was to suffer Mr. Mafferton in the coupe—an arrangement which her mother viewed with entire complacency. "After all," said Mrs. Portheris to momma, "we're not in Hyde Park—and young people will be young people." We had not counted, however, with the Senator, who suddenly realised, as Dicky was handing me up, that it was his business, in the capacity of Doge, to interfere. It is to his credit that he found it embarrassing, on account of his natural, almost paternal, dislike to make things unpleasant for Dicky. He assumed a sternly impenetrable expression, thought about it for a moment, and then approached Mr. Mafferton.

"I'd be obliged to you," he said, "if you could arrange, without putting yourself out any, to change places with young Dod, there, as far as St. Moritz. I have my reasons—but not necessarily for publication. See?"

Mr. Mafferton's eye glistened with appreciation of the confidence reposed in him. "I shall be most happy," he said, "if Dod doesn't mind." But Dicky, with indecent haste, was already in the coupe. "Don't mention it, Mafferton," he said out of the window. "I'm delighted—at least—whatever the Senator says has got to be done, of course," and he made an attempt to look hurt that would not have imposed upon anybody but a self-constituted Doge with a guilty conscience. I took my bereavement in stony calm, with possibly just a suggestion about my eyebrows and under-lip that some day, on the far free shores of Lake Michigan, a downtrodden daughter would re-assert herself; poppa re-entered an interieur darkened by a thunder-cloud on the brow of his Aunt Caroline; and we started.

It was some time before Mr. Mafferton interfered in the least with the Engadine. He seemed wrapped in a cloud of vain imaginings, sprung, obviously, from poppa's ill-considered request. I understood his emotions and carefully respected his silence. I was unwilling to be instructed about the Engadine either botanically or geologically—it was more agreeable not to know the names of the lovely little foreign flowers, and quite pleasant enough that every turn in the road showed us a white mountain or a purple one without having to understand what it was made of. Besides, I particularly did not wish to precipitate anything, and there are moments when a mere remark about the weather will do it. I had been suffering a good deal from my conscience since Mrs. Portheris had told me that poppa had written to Arthur—I didn't mind him enduring unnumbered pangs of hope deferred, but it was quite another thing that he should undergo the unnecessary martyrdom of imagining that he had been superseded by Dicky Dod. On reflection, I thought it would be safer to start Mr. Mafferton on the usual lines, and I nerved myself to ask him whether he could tell me anything about the prehistoric appearance of these lovely mountains.

"I am glad," he responded absently, "that you admire my favourite Alps." Nothing more. I tried to prick him to the consideration of the scenery by asking him which were his favourite Alps, but this also came to nothing. Having acknowledged his approval of the Alps, he seemed willing to let them go unadorned by either fact or fancy. I offered him sandwiches, but he seemed to prefer his moustache. Presently he roused himself.

"I'm afraid you must think me very uninteresting, Miss Wick," he said.

"Dear me, no," I replied. "On the contrary, I think you are a lovely type."

"Type of an Englishman?" Mr. Mafferton was not displeased.

"Type of some Englishmen. You would not care to represent the—ah, commercial classes?"

"If I had been born in that station," replied Mr. Mafferton modestly, "I should be very glad to represent them. But I should not care to be a Labour candidate."

"It wouldn't be very appropriate, would it?" I suggested. "But do you ever mean to run for anything, really?"

"Certainly not," Mr. Mafferton replied, with slight resentment. "In our family we never run. But, of course, I will succeed my uncle in the Upper House."

"Dear me!" I exclaimed. "So you will! I should think it would be simply lovely to be born a legislator. In our country it is attained by such painful degrees." It flashed upon me in a moment why Mr. Mafferton was so industrious in collecting general information. He was storing it up against the day when he would be able to make speeches, which nobody could interrupt, in the House of Lords.

The conversation flagged again, and I was driven to comment upon the appearance of the little German down in the interieur. It was quite remarkable, apart from the bloom on his nose, his pale-blue eyes wandered so irresponsibly in their sockets, and his scanty, flaxen beard made such an unsuccessful effort to disguise the amiability of his chin. He wore a braided cotton coat to keep cool, and a woollen comforter to keep warm, and from time to time he smilingly invited the attention of the other three to vast green maps of the country, which I could see him apologising for spreading over Mrs. Portheris's capacious lap. It was interesting to watch his joyous sense of being in foreign society, and his determination to be agreeable even if he had to talk all the time. Now and then a sentence bubbled up over the noise of the wheels, as when he had the happiness to discover the nationalities of his fellow-travellers.

"Ach, is it so? From England, from America also, and I from Markadorf am! Four peoples, to see zis so beautiful Switzerland from everyveres in one carriage we are come!" He smiled at them one after another in the innocent joy of this wonderful fact, and it made me quite unhappy to see how unresponsive they had grown.

"In America I haf one uncle got——"

"No, I don't know him," said the Senator, who was extremely tired of being expected to keep up with society in Castle Garden.

"But before I vas born going, mein uncle I myself haf never seen! To Chicago mit nossings he went, und now letters ve are always getting it is goot saying."

"Made money, has he?" poppa inquired, with indifference.

"Mit some small flours of large manufacture selling. Dose small flours—ze name forgotten I haf—ze breads making, ze cakes making, ze maedschen——"

"Baking powder!" divined momma.

"Bakings—powder! In America it is moch eat. So mine uncle Blittens——"

"Josef Blittens?" exclaimed poppa.

"Blittens und Josef also! The name of mine uncle to you is known! He is so rich, mit carriage, piano, large family—he is now famous also, hein? My goot uncle!"

"He's been my foreman for fifteen years," said poppa, "and I don't care where he came from; he's as good an American now as there is in the Union. I am pleased to make the acquaintance of any member of his family. There's nothing in the way of refreshments to be got till we next change horses, but as soon as that happens, sir, I hope you will take something."

After that we began to rattle down the other side of the Julier and I lost the thread of the conversation, but I saw that Herr Blittens' determination to practise English was completely swamped in the Senator's desire to persuade him of the advantages of emigration.

"I never see a foreigner in his native land," said Mr. Mafferton, regarding this one with disapproval, "without thinking what a pity it is that any portion of the earth, so desirable for instance as this is, should belong to him." Which led me to suggest that when he entered political life in his native land Mr. Mafferton should aim at the Cabinet, he was obviously so well qualified to sustain British traditions.

My companion's mind seemed to be so completely diverted by this prospect that I breathed again. He could be depended upon I knew, never to think seriously of me when there was an opportunity of thinking seriously of himself, and in that certainty I relaxed my efforts to make it quite impossible that anything should happen. I forgot the contingencies of the situation in finding whiter glaciers and deeper gorges, and looking for the Bergamesque sheep and their shepherds which Baedeker assured us were to be seen pasturing on the slopes and heights of the Julier wearing long curling locks, mantles of brown wool, and peaked Calabrian hats. We grew quite frivolous over this phenomenon, which did not appear, and it was only after some time that we observed the Baedeker to be of 1877, and decided that the home of truth was not in old editions. It seemed to me afterwards that Mr. Mafferton had been waiting for his opportunity; he certainly took advantage of a very insufficient one.

"It's exactly," said I, talking of the compartments of the diligence, "as if Isabel and Dicky had the first floor front, momma and poppa the dining room, and you and I the second floor back."

It was one of those things that one lives to repent if one survives them five seconds; but my remorse was immediately swallowed up in consequences. I do not propose to go into the details of Mr. Mafferton's second attempt upon my insignificant hand—to be precise, I wear fives and a quarter—but he began by saying that he thought we could do better than that, meaning the second floor back, and he mentioned Park Lane. He also said that ever since Dicky, doubtless before his affections had become involved, had told him that there was a possibility of my changing my mind—I was nearly false to Dicky at this point—he had been giving the matter his best consideration, and he had finally decided that it was only fair that I should have an opportunity of doing so. These were not his exact words, but I can be quite sure of my impression. We were trotting past the lake at Maloja when this came upon me, and when I reflected that I owed it about equally to poppa and to Dicky Dod I felt that I could have personally chastised them—could have slapped them—both. What I longed to do with Mr. Mafferton was to hurl him, figuratively speaking, down an abyss, but that would have been to send him into Mrs. Portheris's beckoning arms next morning, and I had little faith in any floral hat and pink bun once its mamma's commands were laid upon it. I thought of my cradle companion—not tenderly, I confess—and told Mr. Mafferton that I didn't know what I had done to deserve such an honour a second time, and asked him if he had properly considered the effect on Isabel. I added that I fancied Dicky was generalising about American girls changing their minds, but I would try and see if I had changed mine and would let him know in six days, at Harwich. Any decision made on this side of the Channel might so easily be upset. And this I did knowing quite well that Dicky and Isabel and I were all to elope from Boulogne, Dicky and Isabel for frivolity and I for propriety; for this had been arranged. In writing a description of our English tour I do not wish to exculpate myself in any particular.

We arrived late at St. Moritz, and the little German, on a very fraternal footing, was still talking as the party descended from the interieur. He spoke of the butterflies the day before in Pontresina, and he laughed with delight as he recounted.

"Vorty maybe der vas, vifty der vas, mit der diligence vlying along; und der brittiest of all I catch; he vill come at my nose"



CHAPTER XXIV.

Leaving out the scenery—the Senator declares that nothing spoils a book of travels like scenery—the impressions of St. Moritz which remain with me have something of the quality, for me, of the illustrations in a French novel. I like to consult them; they are so crisp and daintily defined and isolated and individual. Yet I can only write about an upper class German mamma eating brodchen and honey with three fair square daughters, young, younger, youngest, and not a flaxen hair mislaid among them, and the intelligent accuracy with which they looked out of the window and said that it was a horse, the horse was lame, and it was a pity to drive a lame horse. Or about the two American ladies from the south, creeping, wrapped up in sealskins, along the still white road from the Hof to the Bad, and saying one to the other, "Isn't it nice to feel the sun on yo' back?" Or about the curio shops on the ridge where the politest little Frenchwomen endeavour to persuade you that you have come to the very top of the Engadine for the purpose of buying Japanese candlesticks and Italian scarves to carry down again. It was all so clear and sharp and still at St. Moritz; everything drew a double significance from its height and its loneliness. But, as poppa says, a great deal of trouble would be saved if people who feel that they can't describe things would be willing to consider the alternative of leaving them alone; and I will only dwell on St. Moritz long enough to say that it nearly shattered one of Mr. Mafferton's most cherished principles. Never in his life before, he said, had he felt inclined to take warm water in his bath in the morning. He made a note of the temperature of his tub to send to the Times. "You never can tell," he said, "the effect these little things may have." I was beginning to be accustomed to the effect they had on me.

Before we got to Coire the cool rushing night had come and the glaciers had blotted themselves out. I find a mere note against Coire to the effect that it often rains when you arrive there, and also that it is a place in which you may count on sleeping particularly sound if you come by diligence; but there is no reason why I should not mention that it was under the sway of the Dukes of Swabia until 1268, as momma wishes me to do so. We took the train there for Constance, and between Coire and Constance, on the Bodensee, occurred Rorshach and Romanshorn; but we didn't get out, and, as momma says, there was nothing in the least individual about their railway stations. We went on that Bodensee, however, I remember with animosity, taking a small steamer at Constance for Neuhausen. It was a gray and sulky Bodensee, full of little dull waves and a cold head wind that never changed its mind for a moment. Isabel and I huddled together for comfort on the very hard wooden seat that ran round the deck, and the depth of our misery may be gathered from the fact that, when the wind caught Isabel's floral hat under the brim and cast it suddenly into that body of water, neither of us looked round! Mrs. Portheris was very much annoyed at our unhappy indifference. She implied that it was precisely to enable Isabel to stop a steamer on the Bodensee in an emergency of this sort that she had had her taught German. Dicky told me privately that if it had happened a week before he would have gone overboard in pursuit, for the sake of business, without hesitation, but, under the present happy circumstances, he preferred the prospect of buying a new hat. Nothing else actually transpired during the afternoon, though there were times when other events seemed as precipitant, to most of us, as upon the tossing Atlantic, and we made port without having realised anything about the Bodensee, except that we would rather not be on it.

Neuhausen was the port, but Schaffhausen was of course the place, two or three dusty miles along a river the identity of which revealed itself to Mrs. Portheris through the hotel omnibus windows as an inspiration. "Do we all fully understand," she demanded, "that we are looking upon the Rhine?" And we endeavoured to do so, though the Senator said that if it were not so intimately connected with the lake we had just been delivered from he would have felt more cordial about it. I should like to have it understood that relations were hardly what might be called strained at this time between the Senator and myself. There were subjects which we avoided, and we had enough regard for our dignity, respectively, not to drop into personalities whatever we did, but we had a modus vivendi, we got along. Dicky maintained a noble and pained reserve, giving poppa hours of thought, out of which he emerged with the almost visible reflection that a Wick never changed his mind.

There was a garden with funny little flowers in it which went out of fashion in America about twenty years ago. There was also a chalet in the garden, where we saw at once that we could buy cuckoo clocks and edelweiss and German lace if we wanted to. There was a big hotel full of people speaking strange languages—by this time we all sympathised with Mr. Mafferton in his resentment of foreigners in Continental hotels; as he said, one expected them to do their travelling in England. There were the "Laufen" foaming down the valley under the dining room windows, there were the Swiss waitresses in short petticoats and velvet bodices and white chemisettes, and at the dinner table, sitting precisely opposite, there were the Malts. Mr. Malt, Mrs. Malt, Emmeline Malt, and Miss Callis, not one of them missing. The Malts whom we had left at Rome, left in the same hotel with Count Filgiatti, and to some purpose apparently, for seated attentively next to Mrs. Malt there also was that diminutive nobleman.

As a family we saw at a glance that America was not likely to be the poorer by one Count in spite of the way we had behaved to him. Miss Callis, with four thousand dollars a year of her own, was going to offer them up to sustain the traditions of her country. A Count, if she could help it, should not go a-begging more than twice. Further impressions were lost in the shock of greeting, but it recurred to me instantly to wonder whether Miss Callis had really gone into the question of keeping a Count on that income, whether she would be able to give him all the luxuries he had been brought up in anticipation of. It was interesting to observe the slight embarrassment with which Count Filgiatti re-encountered his earlier American vision, and his re-assurance when I gave him the bow of the most travelling of acquaintances. Nothing was further from my thoughts than interfering. When I considered the number of engagements upon my hands already, it made me quite faint to contemplate even an arrangimento in addition to them.

We told the Malts where we had been and they told us where they had been as well as we could across the table without seeming too confidential, and after dinner Emmeline led the way to the enclosed verandah which commanded the Falls. "Come along, ladies and gentlemen," said Emmeline, "and see the great big old Schaffhausen Fraud. Performance begins at nine o'clock exactly, and no reserve seats, so unless you want to get left, Mrs. Portheris, you'd better put a hustle on."

Miss Malt had gone through several processes of annihilation at Mrs. Portheris's hands, and had always come out of them so much livelier than ever, that our Aunt Caroline had abandoned her to America some time previously.

"Emmeline!" exclaimed Mrs. Malt, "you are too personal."

"She ought to be sent to the children's table," Mrs. Portheris remarked severely.

"Oh, that's all right, Mrs. Portheris. I don't like milk puddings—they give you a double chin. I expect you've eaten a lot of 'em in your time, haven't you, Mis' Portheris? Now, Mr. Mafferton, you sit here, and you, Mis' Wick, you sit here. That's right, Mr. Wick, you hold up the wall. I ain't proud, I'll sit on the floor—there now, we're every one fixed. No, Mr. Dod, none of us ladies object to smoking—Mis' Portheris smokes herself, don't you, Mis' Portheris?"

"Emmeline, if you pass another remark to bed you go!" exclaimed her mother with unction.

"I was fourteen the day before yesterday, and you don't send people of fourteen to bed. I got a town lot for a birthday present. Oh, there's the French gentleman! Bon soir, Monsieur! Comment va-t-il! Attendez!" and we were suddenly bereft of Emmeline.

"She's gone to play poker with that man from Marseilles," remarked Mrs. Malt. "Really, husband, I don't know——"

"You able to put a limit on the game?" asked poppa.

Everybody laughed, and Mr. Malt said that it wasn't possible for Emmeline to play for money because she never could keep as much as five francs in her possession, but if she did he'd think it necessary to warn the man from Marseilles that Miss Malt knew the game.

"And she's perfectly right," continued her father, "in describing this illumination business as a fraud. I don't say it isn't pretty enough, but it's a fraud this way, they don't give you any choice about paying your money for it. Now we didn't start boarding at this hotel, we went to the one down there on the other side of the river. We were very much fatigued when we arrived, and every member of our party went straight to bed. Next day—I always call for my bills daily—what do I find in my account but 'Illumination de la chute de la Rhin' one franc apiece."

"And you hadn't ordered anything of the kind," said poppa.

"Ordered it? I hadn't even seen it! Well, I didn't lose my temper. I took the document down to the office and asked to have it explained to me. The explanation was that it cost the hotel a large sum of money. I said I guessed it did, and it was also probably expensive to get hot and cold water laid on, but I didn't see any mention of that in the bill, though I used the hot and cold water, and didn't use the illumination."

"That's so," said poppa.

"Well, then the fellow said it was done all on my account, or words to that effect, and that it was a beautiful illumination and worth twice the money, and as it was the rule of the hotel he'd have to trouble me for the price of it."

"Did you oblige him?" asked poppa.

"Yes, I did. I hated to awfully, but you never can tell where the law will land you in a foreign country, especially when you can't converse with the judge, and I don't expect any stranger could get justice in Schaffhausen against an hotel anyway. But I sent for my party's trunks, and we moved—down there to that little thing like a castle overhanging the Falls. It was a castle once, I believe, but it's a deception now, for they've turned it into an hotel."

"Find it comfortable there?" inquired the Senator.

"Well, I'm telling you. Pretty comfortable. You could sit in the garden and get as wet as you liked from the spray, and no extra charge; and if you wanted to eat apricots at the same time they only cost you a franc apiece. So when I saw how moderate they were every way, I didn't think I'd have any trouble about the illumination, specially as I heard that the three hotels which compose Schaffhausen subscribed to run the electric plant, and I'd already helped one hotel with its subscription."

"When did you move in here?" asked poppa.

"I am coming to that. Well, I saw the show that night. I happened to be on an outside balcony when it came off, and I couldn't help seeing it. I wouldn't let myself out so far as to enjoy it, for fear it might prejudice me later, but I certainly looked on. You can't keep your eyes shut for three-quarters of an hour for the sake of a principle valued at a franc a head."

"I expect you had to pay," said poppa.

"You're so impatient. I looked coldly on, and between the different coloured acts I made a calculation of the amount the hotel opposite was losing by its extortion. I took considerable satisfaction in doing it. You can get excited over a little thing like that just as much as if it were the entire Monroe Doctrine; and I couldn't sleep, hardly, that night for thinking of the things I'd say to the hotel clerk if the illumination item decorated the bill next day. Cut myself shaving in the morning over it—thing I never do. Well, there it was—'Illumination de la chute de la Rhin,' same old French story, a franc apiece."

"I thought, somehow, from what you've been saying, that it would be there," remarked the Senator patiently.

"Well, sir, I tried to control myself, but I guess the clerk would tell you I was pretty wild. There wasn't an argument I didn't use. I threw as many lights on the situation as they did on the Falls. I asked him how it would be if a person preferred his Falls plain? I told him I paid him board and lodging for what Schaffhausen could show me, not for what I could show Schaffhausen. I used the words 'pillage,' 'outrage,' and other unmistakable terms, and I spoke of communicating the matter to the American Consul at Berne."

"And after that?" inquired the Senator.

"Oh, it wasn't any use. After that I paid, and moved. Moved right up here, this morning. But I thought about it a good deal on the way, and concluded that, if I wasn't prepared to sample every hotel within ten miles of this cataract for the sake of not being imposed upon, I'd have to take up a different attitude. So I walked up to the manager the minute we arrived, fierce as an Englishman—beg your pardon, Squire Mafferton, but the British have a ferocious way with hotel managers, as a rule. I didn't mean anything personal—and said to him exactly as if it was my hotel, and he was merely stopping in it, 'Sir,' I said, 'I understand that the guests of this hotel are allowed to subscribe to an electric illumination of the Falls of the Rhine. You may put me down for ten francs. Now I'm prepared, for the first time, to appreciate the evening's entertainment."

Shortly after the recital of Mr. Malt's experiences the illumination began, and we realised what it was to drink coffee in fairyland. Poppa advises me, however, to attempt no description of the Falls of Schaffhausen by any light, because "there," he says, "you will come into competition with Ruskin." The Senator is perfectly satisfied with Ruskin's description of the Falls; he says he doesn't believe much could be added to it. Though he himself was somewhat depressed by them, he found that he liked them so much better than Niagara. I heard him myself tell five different Alpine climbers, in precise figures, how much more water went over our own cataract.

It was discovered that evening that Mr. and Mrs. Malt, and Emmeline, and Miss Callis and the Count were going on to Heidelberg and down the Rhine by precisely the same train and steamer that we had ourselves selected. Mrs. Malt was looking forward to the ruins on the embattled Rhine with all the enthusiasm we had expended upon Venice, but Mr. Malt declared himself so full of the picturesque already that he didn't know how he was going to hold another castle.



CHAPTER XXV.

We were on our way from Basle to Heidelberg, I remember, and Mr. Malt was commenting sarcastically upon Swiss resources for naming towns as exemplified in "Neuhausen." "There's a lot about this country," said Mr. Malt, "that reminds you of the world as it appeared about the time you built it for yourself every day with blocks, and made it lively with animals out of your Noah's Ark. I can't say what it is, but that's a sample of it—'New Houses!' What a baby baa-lamb name for a town! It would settle the municipality in our part of the world—any railway would make a circuit of fifty miles to avoid it!"

Mr. Mafferton and I had paused in our conversation, and these remarks reached us in full. They gave him the opportunity of bending a sympathetic glance upon me and saying, "How graphic your countrymen are, Miss Wick." Cologne was only three days off, but Mr. Mafferton never departed from the proprieties in his form of address. He was in that respect quite the most docile and respectful person I have ever found it necessary to keep in suspense.

I said they were not all as pictorial as Mr. Malt, and noticed that his eye was wandering. It had wandered to Miss Callis, who was snubbing the Count, and looking wonderfully well. I don't know whether I have mentioned that she had blue eyes and black hair, but her occupation, of course, would be becoming to anybody.

"And for the matter of that your country-women, too," said Mr. Mafferton. "I am much gratified to have the opportunity of making the acquaintance of another of them in this unexpected way. I find your friend, Miss Callis, a charming creature."

She wasn't my friend, but the moment did not seem opportune for saying so.

"I saw you talking a good deal to her yesterday," I said.

Mr. Mafferton twisted his moustache with a look of guilty satisfaction which I found hard to bear. "Must I cry Peccavi?" he said. "You see you were so—er—preoccupied. You said you would rather hear about the growth of the Swiss Confederacy and its relation to the Helvetia of the Ancients another day."

"That was quite true," I said indignantly.

"I found Miss Callis anxious to be informed without delay," said Mr. Mafferton, with a slightly rebuking accent. "She has a very open mind," he went on musingly.

"Oh, wonderfully," I said.

"And a highly retentive memory. It seems she was shown over our place in Surrey last summer. She described it to me in the most perfect detail. She must be very observant."

"She's as observant as ever she can be," I remarked. "I expect she could describe you in the most perfect detail too, if she tried." I sweetened this with an exterior smile, but I felt extremely rude inside.

"Oh, I fear I could not flatter myself—but how interesting that would be! One has always had a desire to know the impression one makes as a whole, so to speak, upon a fresh and unsophisticated young intelligence like that."

"Well," I said, "there isn't any reason why you shouldn't find out at once." For the Count had melted away, and Miss Callis was not nearly so much occupied with her novel as she appeared to be.

Mr. Mafferton rose, and again stroked his moustache, with a quizzical disciplinary air.

"Oh woman, in your hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please!"

He quoted. "You are a very whimsical young lady, but since you send me away I must abandon you."

"Thanks so much!" I said. "I mean—I have myself to blame, I know," and as Mr. Mafferton dropped into the seat opposite Miss Callis I saw Mrs. Portheris regard him austerely, as one for whom it was possible to make too much allowance.

In connection with Heidelberg I wish there were something authentic to say about Perkeo; but nobody would believe the quantity of wine he is supposed to have drunk in a day, which is the statement oftenest made about him, so it is of no consequence that I have forgotten the number of bottles. He isn't the patron saint of Heidelberg, because he only lived about a hundred and fifty years ago, and the first qualification for a patron saint is antiquity. As poppa says, there may be elderly gentlemen in Heidelberg now whose grandfathers have warned them against the personal habits of Perkeo from actual observation. Also we know that he was a court jester, and the pages of the Calendar, for some reason, are closed to persons in that walk of life. Judging by the evidences of his popularity that survive on all sides, Mr. Malt declared that he was probably worth more to the town in attracting residents and investors than half-a-dozen patron saints, and in this there may have been more truth than reverence. The Elector Charles Philip, whose court he jested for, certainly made no such mark upon his town and time as Perkeo did, and in that, perhaps, there is a moral for sovereigns, although the Senator advises me not to dwell upon it. At all events, one writes of Heidelberg but one thinks of Perkeo, as he swings from the sign-boards of the Haupt-Strasse, and stands on the lids of the beer mugs, and smiles from the extra-mural decoration of the wine shops, and lifts his glass, in eternally good wooden fellowship, beside the big Tun in the Castle cellar. There is a Hotel Perkeo, there must be Clubs Perkeo, probably a suburb and steamboats of the same name, and the local oath "Per Perkeo!" has a harmless sound, but nothing could be more binding in Heidelberg. Momma thought his example a very unfortunate one for a University town, but the rest of us were inclined to admire Perkeo as a self-made man and a success. As Dicky protested he had made the fullest use of the capacities Nature had given him, it was evident from his figure that he had even developed them, and what more profitable course should the German youth follow? He was cheerful everywhere—as the forerunner of the comic paper one supposes he had to be—but most impressive in his effigy by his master's wine vat, in the perpetual aroma that most inspired him, where, by a mechanical arrangement inside him, he still makes a joke of sorts, in somewhat graceless aspersion of the methods of the professional humorists. Emmeline found him very like her father, and confided her impression to Mrs. Malt. "But of course," she added condoningly, "poppa was different when you married him."

Perkeo was not so sentimental as the Trumpeter of Sakkingen, and the Trumpeter of Sakkingen was not so sentimental as the Heidelberg University student. The Heidelberg University student was as a rule very round and very young, and he seemed to give up the whole of his spare time to imitating the passion which I hope has not been permitted to enter too largely into this book of travels.

Dicky and I agreed that it was a mere imitation; that is, Dicky said it was and I agreed. It could not possibly amount to anything more, for it consisted wholly in walking up and down in front of the house in which its object lived. We saw it being done, and it looked so uninteresting that we failed to realise what it meant until we inquired. Mrs. Portheris's nephew, Mr. Jarvis Portheris, who was acquiring German in Heidelberg, told us about it. Mrs. Portheris's nephew was just fourteen and small of his age, but he, too, had selected the lady of his admiration, and was taking regular daily pedestrian exercise in front of her residence. He pointed out the residence, and observed with an enormous frown that "another man" had usurped the pavement in his absence, and was doing it in quick step doubtless to show his ardour. "He's a beastly German too," said Mrs. Portheris's nephew, "so I can't challenge him, but I'll jolly well punch his head."

"Come on," said Dicky, "you'd better steady your nerves," and treated him liberally to ginger-beer and currant buns; but we were not allowed to see the encounter, which Mr. Jarvis Portheris, gratefully satiate, assured us must be conducted on strict lines of etiquette, with formal preliminaries. He was so very young, and obviously knew so little about what he was doing, that we questioned him with some delicacy, but we discovered that the practice had no parallel, as Dicky put it, for lack of incident. It was accompanied in some cases by the writing of poetry, "German poetry, of course," said Mrs. Portheris's nephew ineffably, but even that was more likely to be exhibited as evidence of the writer's fervid state of mind than to be sent to its object, who plaited her hair and attended to her domestic duties as if nobody were in the street but the fishmonger. In Mr. Jarvis Portheris's case he did not know the colour of her eyes, or the number of her years; he had selected her, it seemed, at a venture, in church, from a rear view, sitting; and had never seen her since. Dicky, whose predilections of this sort have always been very active, asked him seriously why he adhered to such a hollow mockery, and he said regretfully that a fellow more or less had to; it was one of the beastly nuisances of being educated abroad. But from what we saw of the German temperament generally we were convinced that as a native demonstration it was sincere, and that its idiocy arose only, as Dicky expressed it, from the remarkable lack in foreigners of business capacity.

We all congratulated ourselves on seeing Heidelberg while the University was in session, and we could observe the large fat students in flat blue and pink and green club caps, swaggering about the town accompanied by dogs of almost equal importance. The largest and fattest, I thought, wore white caps, and, though Mr. Jarvis Portheris said that white was the most aristocratic club's colour, they looked remarkably like bakers. The Senator had an object in Heidelberg, as he had in so many places, and that object was to investigate the practice of duelling, which everybody understands to prevail to a deadly extent among the students. It was plain from their appearance that personal assault at all events was regrettably common, for nearly everyone of them wore traces of it in their faces, wore them as if they were particularly becoming. Every variety of scar that could well be imagined was represented, some healed, some healing, and some freshly gory. The youth with the most scars, we observed, gave himself the most airs, and the really vainglorious were, more or less, obscured in cotton-wool, evidently just from the hands of the surgeon. The Senator examined them individually as they passed, with an inquisitiveness which they plainly enjoyed, and was much impressed with their fighting qualities as a race, until Mr. Jarvis Portheris happened to explain that the scars were very carefully given and received with an almost exclusive view to personal adornment. Mr. Mafferton appeared to have known this before; but that was an irritating way he had—none of the rest of us did. The Senator regarded the next youth he met, who had elongated his mouth to run up into his ear without adding in the least to his charms of appearance, with barely disguised contempt, and when Mr. Jarvis Portheris proceeded to explain how the doctors pulled open the cuts if they promised to heal without leaving any sign of valour, poppa's impatience with the noble army of duellists grew so great that he could hardly remain in Heidelberg till the train was ready to take him away.

"But don't they ever by accident do themselves any harm?" inquired my disappointed parent.

"There's one case on record," said Mr. Jarvis Portheris, "and everybody here says it's true. One fellow that was fighting happened to have a dog, and the dog was allowed in. Well, the other fellow, by accident, sliced off the end of the fellow that had the dog's nose—I don't mean the dog's nose, you know, but the fellow's. That was going a bit far, you know; they don't generally go so far. Well, the doctor said that would be all right, they could easily make it grow on again; but when they looked for the nose—the dog had eaten it! They never allow dogs in now."

It was a simple little story, and it bore marks of unmistakable age and many aliases, but it did much to reconcile the Senator to the University student of Heidelberg, and especially to his dog.



CHAPTER XXVI.

Emmeline had childlike lapses; she rejoiced greatly, for instance, at seeing a Strasbourg stork. She confessed, when she saw it, to having read Hans Andersen when she was a little girl, and was happy in the resemblance of the tall chimneys he stood on, and the high-pitched red roofs he surveyed, to the pictures she remembered. But, for that matter, so were we all. We had an hour and a half at Strasbourg, and we drove, of course, to the Cathedral; but it was the stork that we saw, and that each of us privately considered the really valuable impression. He stood beside his nest with his chin sunk in his neck, looking immensely lucky and wise, and one quite agreed with Emmeline that it must be lovely to live under him.

We lunched at the station, and, as the meal progressed, saw again how widespread and sincere is the German sentiment to which I alluded, perhaps too lightly, in the last chapter. Our waitresses were all that could be desired, until there came between us and them a youth from parts without. He was sallow, and the waitresses were buxom; he might have been a student of law or medicine, they were naturally of much lower degree. But they frankly forsook us and sat down beside him in terms of devotion and an open aspect of radiant happiness. When one went to draw his lager beer he put an unrepelled arm round the waist of the other, and when the first came back he chucked her under the chin with undisguised affection, the while we looked on and starved, none knowing the language except Isabel, who thought of nothing but blushing. As Mr. Malt said, if the young man could only have made up his mind, we might have been able to get along with the rejected one; but, apparently, he was not in the least embarrassed by numbers, sending a large and beguiling smile to yet a further hand-maiden, who passed enviously through the speise-salle with a basin of soup. It was only when Dicky stalked across to the old woman who sold sausages and biscuits behind a counter, and pointed indignantly to the person who held all the available table service of the Strasbourg railway station on his knees, that we obtained redress. The old woman laughed as if it were amusing, and called the maidens shrilly; but even then they came with reluctance, as if we had been mere schnapps instead of ten complete luncheons, one soup, and a bread and cheese, as Dicky said. The bread and cheese was the Count, and one gathered from it that the improvement in his immediate prospects was not yet assured, that the arrangimento was still in futuro.

We had become such a large party, that it is impossible to relate the whole of our experiences even in the half hour during which we dawdled round the Strasbourg waiting-room until the train should start. I know it was then, for instance, that Mrs. Portheris took Dicky aside and told him how deeply she sympathised with him in his trying position, and bade him only be faithful to the dictates of his own heart and all would come right in time. I know Dicky promised faithfully to do so, but I must not dwell upon it. Nor is the opportunity adequate to express the indignation we all felt, and not Mr. Mafferton merely, at the insufficient personal impression we made upon the German railway officials. They were so completely preoccupied with their magnificent selves and their vast business that they were unable even to look at us when we asked them questions, and their sole conception of a reply was an order, in terms that sounded brutal to a degree. They were objectionably burly and red in the face; they wore an offensive number of buttons and straps upon their uniforms. As Mr. Mafferton said, they utterly misconceived their position in life, attempting to Kaiser the travelling public by Divine right instead of recognising themselves as humble servants, buttoned only to be made more agreeable to the eye.

One such person trampled upon us to such an extent that I have never been able to satisfy myself that the Senator was sincere in making his little mistake. We were sitting in dejected rows, with a number of other foreigners who had been similarly reduced, when this official entered the waiting-room, advanced to the middle of it, posed with great majesty, and emitted several bars of a kind of chant or chime. It was delivered with too much vigour, and it stopped too abruptly, to be entirely enjoyable; but there was no doubt about the musical intention. It was not even intoning; it was singing, beginning with moderation, going on stronger with indignation, and ending suddenly in a crescendo of denunciation.

We smiled in difficult self-restraint as he went away, and Dicky remarked that he supposed we were in their hands, we couldn't object to anything they did to us. In five minutes he came back to exactly the same spot and sang again the same words, in the same key, with the same unction. "Encore!" exclaimed Mr. Malt boldly, but cowered under the glare that was turned upon him, and utterly fell away when we reminded him of the punishments attached in Germany to the charge of lese majeste. Precisely five minutes more passed away, and Bawlinbuttons, as Miss Callis called him, entered again. Then occurred the Senator's little mistake. In the midst of the second bar, the indignant one, Bawlinbuttons stopped short, petrified by poppa, who had advanced and was holding out copper coins whose usefulness we had left behind us, to the value of about fifteen cents.

"Here's the collection," said poppa benevolently—for an instant or two he was quite audible—"but unless you know some other tune the company wish me to say that they won't trouble you any further."

There are misunderstandings that are never rectified, sometimes because a train draws up at the platform as in this case, and sometimes for other reasons, and it was natural enough that poppa should fail to comprehend Bawlinbuttons' indignant shouts to the effect that a Kaiser should never be mistaken for an organ-grinder, merely because his tastes are musical. Neither is it likely that the various Teutons who were waiting for the information will ever understand why the announcement that the train for Saarburg, Nancy, Frankfort, and Mayence would leave at ten o'clock precisely was never completed for the third time, according to the regulation. But we have often wondered since what Bawlinbuttons did with the coppers.

We divided up on the way to Mayence, and Mr. and Mrs. Malt came into the compartment with the Senator, momma, and me. Mr. Malt was unsatisfied with poppa's revenge on Bawlinbuttons, and proposed to make things awkward further for the guard. He said it could be done very simply, by a disagreement between himself and the Senator as to whether the windows should be open or shut. He said he had heard of a German guard put to the most enjoyable misery by such a dispute, not knowing the language of the disputants and being forced to arbitrate upon their respective demands. Mr. Malt had laughed at the Senator's joke, so the Senator, of course, had to assist at Mr. Malt's, and they began to work themselves up, as Mr. Malt said, into the spirit of it. Mr. Malt was to insist that the windows should be shut, he said he had got a trifling cold, and the Senator was to require them open in the interests of ventilation. They rehearsed their arguments, and momma putting her head out of the window at the first small station cried, "Be quick and change your expressions—he's coming!"

In the presence of the guard Mr. Malt rose with dignity and closed the windows. The Senator, with a well-simulated scowl, at once opened them both.

"Stranger!" said Mr. Malt, while momma fumbled for her ticket, "I shut those windows."

"Sir," responded poppa, "if you had not done so I shouldn't have been obliged to open them."

"I can't die of pneumonia, sir," said Mr. Malt, again closing the window, "to oblige you."

"Nor do I feel compelled," returned the Senator furiously, "to asphyxiate my family to make it comfortable for you!" and the window fell with a bang.

The guard, holding out a massive hand for my ticket, took no notice whatever.

"Put it up again," said Mrs. Malt, who was more anxious than any of us to avenge herself upon the German railway system, "and try to break the glass."

"Attract his attention, Alexander," said momma. "Pull one of his silly buttons off."

The guard gave no sign—he was replacing the elastic round my book of coupons after detaching the green one on which was printed, "Strasburg nach Mainz."

Poppa and Mr. Malt were sitting opposite each other in the middle of the carriage.

"I tell you I've got bronchial trouble, and I won't be manslaughtered," cried Mr. Malt, hurling himself upon the strap, while poppa seized the guard by the arm and pointed to the closed window. The only foreign language with which poppa is acquainted is that used by the Indians on the banks of the Saguenay river, a few words of which he acquired while salmon fishing there two years ago. These he poured forth upon the guard—they were the only ones that occurred to him, he said—at the same time threatening with his disengaged fist bodily assault upon Mr. Malt.

"That ought to draw him," said Mrs. Malt.

It did draw him.

"Leave go!" he said to poppa, and his air of authority was such that poppa left go. "Is this here a lunatic party, or a young menagerie, or what? Now look here," he continued, taking Mr. Malt by the elbow and seating him with some violence in a corner seat and shutting the window. "If you've got eight tickets for yourself say so, if you haven't that's as much an' more than you are entitled to. The other gentleman——" But the Senator had already collapsed into the furthest corner and was looking fixedly through the closed glass. "Well, all I've got to say is," he went on, lowering that window with decision, "that you can't go kickin' up rows in this country same as you do at home, an' if you can't get along more satisfactory together I'll——" here something interrupted him, requiring to be transferred from the Senator's hand to the nearest convenient pocket. "As I was goin' to say, gentlemen, there isn't any what you might call strict rule about the windows, an' as far as I'm concerned, you can settle it for yourselves."

Whereupon he swung along to the next carriage, the train having started, and left us to reflect on the incongruity of an English railway guard in Germany.

It was curious, but the incident left behind it a certain coolness, so well defined that when momma suggested that the Malts' window should be lowered as it was before to give us a current of air, Mrs. Malt said she thought it would be better to abide by the decision of the guard, now that we had referred it to him, and momma said, "Oh dear me, yes," if she preferred to do so, and everybody established the most aggressively private relations with books and newspapers. It was quite a relief when Mrs. Portheris came at the next station to inquire whether, if we had no married Germans in our compartment, we could possibly make room for Isabel. Mrs. Portheris had married Germans in her compartment, two pairs of them, and she could no longer permit her daughter to observe their behaviour. "They obtrude their domestic relations," said Mrs. Portheris, "in the most disgusting way. They are continually patting each other. Quite middle-aged, too! And calling each other 'Leibchen,' and other things which may be worse. My poor Isabel is dreadfully embarrassed, for, of course, she can't always look out of the window. And as she understands the language, I can't possibly tell what she may overhear!"

We made room for Isabel, but the train to Mayence was crowded that day, and before we arrived we had ample reason to believe that conjugal affection is not only at home but abroad in Germany. The Senator, at one point, threatened to travel on the engine to avoid it. He used, I think the language of exaggeration about it. He said it was the most objectionable article made in Germany. But I did not notice that Isabel devoted herself at all seriously to looking out of the window.



CHAPTER XXVII.

"He tells me," said Miss Callis, "that you are to give him his answer at Cologne."

"Does he, indeed?" said I. We were floating down the Rhine in the society of our friends, two hundred and fifty other floaters, and a string band. We had left the battlements of Bingen, and the Mouse Tower was in sight. As we had already acquired the legend, and were sitting behind the smoke stack, there was no reason why we should not discuss Mr. Mafferton.

"I suppose he does not, by any chance, mention an alternative lady," I said carelessly.

"I don't know," said Miss Callis, "that I should be disposed to listen to him if he did. He would have to put it in some other light."

"Why should you object?" I asked. "Isabel is quite a proper person to marry him. Much more so, I often think, than I."

"Oh!" said Miss Callis without meaning to. "I think he has outgrown that taste. In fact, he told me so."

"He is for ever seeking a fresh bosom for a confidence!" I cried.

Miss Callis looked at me with more interest than she would have wished to express.

"What do you really think of him?" she asked. "I sometimes feel as if I had known you for years," and she took my hand.

I gave hers a gentle pressure, and edged a little nearer. "He has good shoulders," I remarked critically.

"You would hardly marry him for his shoulders!"

"It doesn't seem quite enough," I admitted, "but then—his information is always so accurate."

"If you think you would like living with an encyclopedia." Miss Callis had begun to look embarrassed by my hand, but I still permitted it to nestle confidingly in hers.

"He pronounces all his g's," I said, "and—did you ever see him in a silk hat?"

"I don't think you are really attached to him, dear." (The "dear" was a really creditable sacrifice to the situation.)

"I sometimes think," I murmured, "that one never knows one's own heart until some sudden circumstance puts it to the test. Now if I had a rival—in you, for instance—and I suddenly saw myself losing—but, of course, that is impossible so far as you are concerned. Because of the Count."

"The Count isn't in it," said Miss Callis firmly. "At least at present."

"But," I protested, "somebody must provide for him! I was so happy in the thought that you had undertaken it."

Miss Callis gave me back my hand. She looked as if she would have liked to throw it overboard.

"As you say," she said, "it is a little difficult to make up one's mind. Don't you think those rocks to the right may be the Lorelei? I must go and tell Mrs. Malt. She won't be fit to travel with for a week if she misses the Lorelei." And Miss Callis left me to reflect upon the inconsistencies of my sex.

"Do you realise," said Dicky, as, with an assumed air of nonchalance, he sauntered up and took her chair, "that we shall be in Cologne in five hours?"

"Fateful Cologne," I said. "There are Roman remains, I believe, as well as the Cathedral and the scent. Also a Museum of Industrial Art, but we'll skip that."

"We'll skip all of it," replied Mr. Dod, with determination, "you and I and Isabel. The train for Paris leaves at nine precisely."

"Haven't you made up your minds to let me off," I pleaded. "I am sure you would be happier alone. It's so unusual to elope with two ladies."

"You don't seem to realise how Isabel has been brought up," Dicky returned patiently. "She can't travel alone with me, don't you see, until we are married. Afterwards she'll chaperone you back to your party again. So it will be all right for you, don't you see?"

I was obliged to say I saw, and we arranged the details. We would reach Cologne about six, and Isabel and I, who would share a room as usual, were secretly to pack one bag between us, which Dicky would smuggle out of the hotel and send to the station. Isabel was to be fatigued and dine in her room; I was to leave the table d'hote early to solace her, Dicky was to dine at a cafe and meet us at the station. We would put out the lights and lock the door of the apartment on our departure, and the chambermaid with hot water in the morning would be the first to discover our flight. We only regretted that we could not be there to see the astonishment of the chambermaid. "I won't fail you," I assured Mr. Dod, "but what about Isabel? Isabel is essential; in fact, I won't consent to this elopement without her."

"Isabel," said Dicky dubiously, "is all right, so far as her intentions go. But she'd be the better for a little stiffening. Would you mind——"

I groaned in spirit, but went in search of Isabel, thinking of phrases that might stiffen her. I found her looking undecided, with a pencil and a slip of paper.

"How lucky you are," I said diplomatically, sinking into the nearest chair, "to be going to wind up your trip on the Continent in such a delightful way. It will be—ah—something to remember all your life."

"Oh, I suppose so," said Isabel plaintively, "but I should so much prefer to be done in church. If mamma would only consent!"

"She never would," I declared, for I felt that I must see Isabel Mrs. Dod within the next day or two at all costs.

"A registry office sounds so uninteresting. I suppose one just goes—as one is."

"I don't think veils and trains are worn," I observed, "except by persons of high rank who do not approve of the marriage service. I don't know what the Marquis of Queensberry might do, or Mr. Grant Allen."

"Of course, the ceremony doesn't matter to them," replied Isabel intelligently, "because they would just wear morning dress anywhere."

"Looking at it that way, they haven't much to lose," I conceded.

"And no wedding cake," grieved Isabel, "and no reception at the house of the bride's mother. And you can't have your picture in the Queen."

"There would be a difficulty," I said, "about the descriptive part."

"And no favours for the coachman, and no trousseau——"

"I wonder," I said, "whether, under those circumstances, it's really worth while."

"Oh, well!" said Isabel.

"It's a night to Paris, and a morning to Dover," I said. "We will wait for the others at Dover—I fancy they'll hurry—that'll be another day. I'll take one robe de nuit, Isabel, three pocket handkerchiefs, one brush and comb, and tooth brush. You shall have all the rest of the bag."

"You are a perfect love," exclaimed Miss Portheris, with the most touching gratitude.

"We will share the soap," I continued, "until you are married. Afterwards——"

"Oh, you can have it then," said Isabel, "of course," and she looked at the Castle of Rheinfels and blushed beautifully.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

"There was only one thing that disappointed me," Mrs. Malt was saying at the dinner table of the Cologne hotel, "and that wasn't so much what you would call a disappointment as a surprise. White windows-blinds in a robber castle on the Rhine I did not expect to see."

I slipped away before momma had time to announce and explain her disappointments, but I heard her begin. Then I felt safe, for criticism of the Rhine is absorbing matter for conversation. The steamer's custom of giving one stewed plums with chicken is an affront to civilisation to last a good twenty minutes by myself. I tried to occupy and calm Isabel's mind with it as we walked over to the station, under the twin towers of the Cathedral, but with indifferent success. To add to her agitation at this crisis of her life, the top button came off her glove, and when that happened I felt the inutility of words.

We passed the policemen on the Cathedral square with affected indifference. We believed we were not liable to arrest, but policemen, when one is eloping, have a forbidding look. We refrained, by mutual arrangement, from turning once to look back for possible pursuers, but that is not a thing I would undertake to do again under similar circumstances. We even had the hardihood to buy a box of chocolates on the way, that is, Isabel bought them, while I watched current events at the confectioner's door. The station was really only about seven minutes' walk from the hotel, but it seemed an hour before I was able to point out Dicky, alert and expectant, on the edge of the platform behind the line of cabs.

"So near the fulfilment of his hopes, poor fellow," I remarked.

"Yes," concurred Isabel, "but do you know I almost wish he wasn't coming."

"Don't tell him so, whatever you do," I exclaimed. "I know Dicky's sensitive nature, and it is just as likely as not that he would take you at your word. And I will not elope with you alone."

I need not have been alarmed. Isabel had no intention of reducing the party at the last moment. I listened for protests and hesitations when they met, but all I heard was, "Have you got the bag?"

Dicky had the bag, the tickets, the places, everything. He had already assumed, though only a husband of to-morrow, the imperative and responsible connection with Isabel's arrangements. He told her she was to sleep with her head toward the engine, that she was to drink nothing but soda-water at any of the stations, and that she must not, on any account, leave the carriage when we changed for Paris until he came for her. It would be my business to see that these instructions were carried out.

"What shall I do," I asked, "if she cries in the night?"

But Dicky was sweeping us toward the waiting-room, and did not hear me. He placed us carefully in the seats nearest the main door, which opened upon the departure platform, full of people hurrying to and fro, and of the more leisurely movement of shunting trains. The lamps were lighted, though twilight still hung about; the scene was pleasantly exciting. I said to Isabel that I never thought I should enjoy an elopement so much.

"I shall enjoy settling down," she replied thoughtfully. "Dicky has promised me that all the china shall be hand-painted."

"You won't mind my leaving you for five seconds," said Mr. Dod, suddenly exploring his breast-pocket; "the train doesn't leave for a quarter of an hour yet, and I find I haven't a smoke about me," and he opened the door.

"Not more that five seconds then," I said, for nothing is more trying to the nerves than to wait for a train which is due in a few minutes and a man who is buying cigars at the same time.

Dicky left the door open, and that was how I heard a strangely familiar voice, with an inflexion of enforced calm and repression, suddenly address him from behind it.

"Good evening, Dod!"

I did not shriek, or even grasp Isabel's hand. I simply got up and stood a little nearer the door. But I have known few moments so electrical.

"My dear chap, how are you?" exclaimed Dicky. "How are you? Staying in Cologne? I'm just off to Paris."

I thought I heard a heavy sigh, but it was somewhat lost in the trundling of the porters' trucks.

"Then," said Arthur Page, for I had not been deceived, "it is as I supposed."

"What did you suppose, old chap?" asked Dicky in a joyous and expansive tone.

"You do not go alone?"

The bitterness of this was not a thing that could be communicated to paper and ink.

"Why, no," said Dicky, "the fact is——"

I saw the wave—it was characteristic—with which Mr. Page stopped him. "I have been made acquainted with the facts," he said. "Do not dwell upon them. I do not, cannot, blame you, if you have really won her heart."

"So far as I know," said Dicky, with some hauteur, "there's nothing in it to give you the hump."

"Why waste time in idle words?" replied Arthur. "You will lose your train. I could never forgive myself if I were the cause of that."

"You won't be," said Dicky sententiously, looking at his watch.

"But I must ask—must demand—the privilege of one parting word," said Arthur firmly. "Do not be apprehensive of any painful scene. I desire only to wish her every happiness, and to bid her farewell."

Mr. Dod, though on the eve of his wedding day, was not wholly oblivious of the love affairs of other people. I could see a new-born and overwhelming comprehension of the situation in his face as he put his head in at the door and beckoned to Isabel. Evidently he could not trust himself to speak.

"Miss Portheris," he said, with magnificent self-control, "Mr. Page. Mr. Page would like to wish you every happiness and to bid you farewell, Isabel, and I don't see why he shouldn't. We have still five minutes."

There are limits to the propriety of all practical jokes, and I walked out at once to assure Arthur that his misunderstanding was quite natural, and somewhat less exquisitely humorous than Mr. Dod appeared to find it.

"I am merely eloping too," I said, "in case anything should happen to Isabel." Realising that this was also being misinterpreted, I added, "She is not accustomed to travelling alone."

We had shaken hands, and that always makes a situation more normal, but there was still plainly an enormous amount to clear up, and painfully little time to do it in, though Dicky with great consideration immediately put Isabel into the carriage and followed her to its remotest corner, leaving me standing at the door, and Arthur holding it open. The second bell rang as I learned from Mr. Page that the Pattersons had gone to Newport this summer, and that it was extremely hot in New York when he left. As the guard came along the platform shutting up the doors of the train, Arthur's agitation increased, and I saw that his customary suffering in connection with me, was quite as great as anybody could desire. The guard had skipped our carriage, but it was already vibrating in departure—creaking—moving. I looked at Arthur in a manner—I confess it—which annihilated our two months of separation.

"Then since you're not going to marry Dod," he inquired breathlessly, walking along with the train—"I've heard various reports—whom, may I ask, are you going to marry?"

"Why, nobody," I said, "unless——"

"Well, I should think so!" ejaculated Arthur, and in spite of the frightful German language used by the guard, he jumped into the carriage.

He has maintained ever since that he was obliged to do it in order to explain his presence on the platform, which was, of course, carrying the matter to its logical conclusion. It seemed that the Senator had advised him to come over and meet us accidentally in Venice, where he had intimated that reunion would be only a question of privacy and a full moon. On his arrival at Venice—it was his gondola that we shared—the Senator had discouraged him for the moment, and had since constantly telegraphed him that the opportune moment had not yet arrived. Finally poppa had written to say that, though he grieved to announce that I was engaged to Dicky, and he could not guarantee any disengagement, he was still operating to that end. This, however, precipitated Mr. Page to Cologne, where observation of our movements at a distance brought him to the wrong conclusion, but fortunately to the right platform. As Isabel remarked, if such things were put in books nobody would believe them.



It seemed quite unreasonable and absurd when we talked it over that Arthur and I should travel from Cologne to Dover merely to witness the nuptials of Dicky and Isabel. As Dicky pointed out, moreover, our moral support when it came to the interview with Mrs. Portheris would be much more valuable if it were united. There would be the registrar—one registrar would do—and there would be the opportunity of making it a square party. These were Dicky's arguments; Arthur's were more personal but equally convincing, and I must admit that I thought a good deal of the diplomatic anticipation of that magnificent wedding which was to illustrate and adorn the survival of the methods of the Doge of Venice in the family of a Senator of Chicago. And thus it was that we were all married sociably together in Dover the following morning, despatching a telegram immediately afterwards to the Senator at the Cologne hotel as follows:

"We have eloped. (Signed) R. and I. Dod. A. and M. Page."

Later on in the day we added details, to show that we bore no malice, and announced that we were prepared to await the arrival of the rest of the party for any length of time at Dover.

We even went down to the station to meet them, where recriminations and congratulations were so mingled that it was impossible, for some time, to tell whether we were most blessed or banned. Even in the confusion of the moment, however, I noticed that Mr. Mafferton made Miss Callis's baggage his special care, and saw clearly in the cordiality of her sentiments toward me, and the firmness of her manner in ordering him about, that the future peer had reached his last alternative.

I rejoice to add that the day also showed that even Count Filgiatti had fallen, in the general ordering of fates, upon happiness with honour. I noticed that Emmeline vigorously protected him from the Customs officer who wished to confiscate his cigarettes, and I mentioned her air of proprietorship to her father.

"Why, yes," said Mr. Malt, "he offered himself as a count you see, and Emmeline seemed to think she'd like to have one, so I closed with him. There isn't anything likely to come of it for three or four years, but he's willing to wait, and she's got to grow."

I expressed my felicitations, and Mr. Malt added somewhat regretfully that it would have been better if he'd had more in his clothes, but that was what you had to expect with counts; as a rule they didn't seem to have what you might call any money use for pockets. In the meantime they were taking him home to educate him in the duties of American citizenship. Emmeline put it to me briefly, "I'm not any Daisy Miller," she said, "and I prefer to live out of Rome."

Once a year the present Lady Mafferton invites Mrs. Portheris to tea, and I know they discuss my theory of engagements in a critical spirit. We have never seen either Miss Nancy or Miss Cora Bingham again, and I should have forgotten the names of Mr. Pabbley and Mr. Hinkson by this time if I had not written them down in earlier chapters. Arthur and I have not yet made up our minds to another visit to England. We have several friends there, however, whom we appreciate exceedingly, in spite, as we often say to one another, of their absurd and deplorable accent.

THE END.



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