THE EMBARRASSMENTS OF THE DUKE OF BALLYWINKLE
Mr. Frank Collins, of the Atlanta Palladium, trod the ties beyond Kildare with a light heart, gaily swinging a suit-case. He had walked far, but a narrow-brim straw hat, perched on the back of his head, and the cheery lilt of the waltz he whistled spoke for a jaunty spirit. As his eye ranged the landscape he marked a faint cloud of smoke rising beyond a lonely strip of wood; and coming to a dilapidated piece of track that led vaguely away into the heart of the forest, he again noted the tiny smoke-cloud. On such a day the half-gods go and the gods arrive; and the world that afternoon knew no cheerfuller spirit than the Palladium's agile young commissioner. Mr. Collins was not only in capital health and spirits but he rejoiced in that delicious titillation of expectancy which is the chief compensation of the journalist's life. His mission was secret, and this in itself gave flavor to his errand; and, moreover, it promised adventures of a kind that were greatly to his liking.
As the woodland closed in about him and the curving spur carried him farther from the main right of way he ceased whistling and his steps became more guarded. Suddenly a man rose from the bushes and leveled a long arm at him detainingly.
"Stop, young man, stop where you are!"
"Hello!" called Collins, pausing. "Well, I'm jiggered if it ain't old Cookie. I say, old man, is the untaxed juice flowing in the forest primeval or what brings you here?"
Cooke grinned as he recalled the reporter, whom he remembered as a particularly irrepressible specimen of his genus whom he had met while pursuing moonshiners in Georgia. The two shook hands amiably midway of the two streaks of rust.
"Young man, I think I told you once before that your legs were altogether too active. I want you to light right out of here—skip!"
"Not for a million dollars. Our meeting is highly opportune, Cookie. It's not for me to fly in the face of Providence. I'm going to see what's doing down here."
"All right," replied Cooke. "Take it all in and enjoy yourself; but you're my prisoner."
"Oh, that will be all right! So long as I'm with you I can't lose out."
"March!" called Cooke, dropping behind; and thus the two came in a few minutes to the engine, the cars and the caboose. From the locomotive a slight smoke still trailed hazily upward.
Thomas Ardmore, coatless and hatless, sat on the caboose steps writing messages on a broad pad, while a telegraph instrument clicked busily within. One of his men had qualified as operator and a pile of messages at his elbow testified to Ardmore's industry. Ardmore clutched in his left hand a message recently caught from the wire which he re-read from time to time with increasing satisfaction. It had been sent from Ardsley and ran:
I shall ride to-night on the road that leads south beyond the red bungalow, and on the bridle-path that climbs the ridge on the west, called Sunset Trail. A certain English gentleman will accompany me. It will be perfectly agreeable to me to come back alone.
G. D.
Ardmore was still writing when Cooke stood beneath him under the caboose platform.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Ardmore, but this is our first prisoner."
Ardmore signed a despatch and then looked up and took the pipe from his mouth. Collins lifted his hat politely.
"Ah, Mr. Ardmore, you see I have taken advantage of your exceedingly kind invitation to look you up in North Carolina."
"He was looking for you very hard when I found him, Mr. Ardmore," interposed Cooke.
"Your appearance delights me," said Ardmore, extending his hand to the reporter. "It was nice of you to walk out here to find me. Wouldn't they put you up at the house?"
"Well, the fact is I didn't stop there. My paper sent me in this general direction on business, but I had every honorable intention of making you that visit after I finished my assignment. But Cookie here says I'm arrested."
"He's a dangerous character and can't be allowed to run loose in these parts. I'm going to tie him up," said Cooke.
"May I ask you, Mr. Collins, just what you are doing here?" inquired Ardmore.
"You may, and I'll bet a boiled goose that Cooke and I are on the same job."
"What are you looking for?" demanded Ardmore's chief of staff.
"It's a big story if I get it, and I have every intention of getting it," said Collins guardedly.
"Out with it!" commanded Ardmore.
"The fact is, then, that I'm looking for a person of importance."
"Go right on, please."
"And that person is the governor of North Carolina, who is mysteriously absent from Raleigh. He attended the Cotton Planters' Convention in New Orleans. He got as far as Atlanta on his way home and then disappeared. I need not say to gentlemen of your intelligence that a lost governor is ripe fruit in my business, and I have reason to believe that for some purpose of his own the governor of North Carolina is hiding in this very neighborhood."
Cooke glanced at Ardmore for instructions, but the master of Ardsley preferred to keep the matter in his own hands.
"So you want to find the governor of North Carolina, do you? Well you shall not be disappointed. You are too able and zealous to be wasted on journalism. I have a feeling that you are destined to higher things. Something told me when we met in Atlanta that fate had set us apart for each other. That was why I asked you to visit me when I really didn't know but that, after learning where the spoons are kept, you would skip without leaving your subsequent address. But now there is important business on hand and the state of North Carolina will take the liberty of borrowing you from Georgia until the peace of the Old North State is restored. And now, Collins, I will make a disclosure that will undoubtedly startle you a good deal, but you are no longer employed by the Atlanta Palladium, and your obligations to that journal must be transferred to the state in which you now stand. You came here, Collins, to look for the governor of North Carolina, and your wits and your argus-nose for news have served you well. You have found the governor of North Carolina: I am he!"
Collins had stood during this recital in the middle of the track, with his legs wide apart, calmly fanning himself with his hat; but as Ardmore proceeded the reporter's hand dropped to his side, and a grin that had overspread his face slowly yielded to a blank stare.
"Would you mind repeating those last words?"
"I am the governor of North Carolina, Mr. Collins. The manner in which I attained that high office is not important. It must suffice that I am in sole charge of the affairs of this great state, without relief from valuation or appraisement laws and without benefit of clergy. And we have much to do here; mere social conversation must await an ampler time. I now appoint you publicity agent to the governor. Your business is to keep the people fooled—all the people all the time. In other words, you are chief liar to the administration, a position of vast responsibility, for which you have, if I am a judge of character, the greatest talents. You will begin by sending out word that Governor Dangerfield has given up all other work at present but the destruction of the Appleweight gang. These stories that the governor has hidden himself to dodge certain duties are all punk—do you understand?—he is serving the people as he has always served them, faithfully and with the noblest self-sacrifice. That's the sort of stuff I want you to jam into the newspapers all over the world. And remember—my name does not appear in the business at all—neither now nor hereafter."
"But by the ghost of John C. Calhoun, don't you see that I'm losing the chance of my life in my own profession? There's a story in this that would put me to the top and carry me right into New York," and Collins glanced about for his suit-case, as though meditating flight.
"Your appointment has gone into effect," said Ardmore with finality, "and if you bolt you will be caught and made to walk the plank. And so far as your future is concerned, you shall have a newspaper of your own anywhere you please as soon as this war is over."
The three men adjourned to the caboose where Ardmore told Collins all that it seemed necessary for the newspaper man to know; and within half an hour the new recruit had entered thoroughly into the spirit of the adventure, though his mirth occasionally got the better of him, and he bowed his head in his hands and surrendered himself to laughter. Thereafter, until the six o'clock supper was ready, he kept the operator occupied. He sent to the Palladium a thoroughly plausible story giving prominence to the Appleweight case and laying stress on Governor Dangerfield's vigorous personality and high sense of official responsibility. He sent queries to leading journals everywhere, offering exclusive news of the rumored disappearance of North Carolina's governor. His campaign of publicity for the state administration was broadly planned, though he was losing a great opportunity to beat the world with a stunning story of the amazing nerve with which Ardmore, the young millionaire, had assumed the duties of governor of North Carolina in the unaccountable absence of Governor Dangerfield from his capital. The whole thing was almost too good to be true, and Collins put away the idea of flight only upon realizing the joyous possibilities of sharing, no matter how humbly, in the fate of an administration which was fashioning the drollest of card houses. He did not know, and was not to know until long afterward, just how the young master of Ardsley had leaped into the breach; but Ardmore was an extraordinary person, whose whims set him quite apart from other men, and while, even if he escaped being shot, the present enterprise would undoubtedly lead to a long term in jail, Collins had committed himself to Ardmore's cause and would be faithful to it, no matter what happened.
Ardmore took Collins more fully into his confidence during the lingering twilight, and the reporter made many suggestions that were of real value. Meanwhile Cooke's men brought three horses from the depths of the forest, and saddled them. Cooke entered the caboose for a final conference with Ardmore and a last look at the maps.
"Too bad," remarked the acting governor, "that we must wait until to-morrow night to pick up the Appleweights, but our present business is more important. It's time to move, Cooke."
They rode off in single file on the faintest of trails through the woods, Cooke leading and Ardmore and Collins following immediately behind him. The great host of summer stars thronged the sky, and the moon sent its soft effulgence across the night. They presently forded a noisy stream, and while they were seeking the trail again on the farther side an owl hooted a thousand yards up the creek, and while the line re-formed Cooke paused and listened. Then the owl's call was repeated farther off and so faintly that Cooke alone heard it. He laid his hand on Ardmore's rein:
"There's a foot-trail that leads along that creek, and it's very rough and difficult to follow. Half a mile from here there used to be a still, run by one of the Appleweights. We smashed it once, but no doubt they are operating again by this time. That hoot of the owl is a warning common among the pickets put out by these people. Wireless telegraphy isn't in it with them. Every Appleweight within twenty miles will know in half an hour how many there are of us and just what direction we are taking. We must not come back here to-night. We must put up on your place somewhere and let them think, if they will, we are guests of yours out for an evening ride."
"That's all right. Unless we complete this job in about two days my administration is a fizzle," said Ardmore, as they resumed their march through the forest. There was a wilder fling to the roll of the land now, but the underbrush was better cleared, and the trail had become a bridle-path that had known man's care.
"This is some of Paul's work," said Ardmore; "and if I am not very much mistaken we are on my land now and headed straight enough for the wagon-road that leads south beyond the red bungalow. These roads in here were planned to give variety, but I never before appreciated how complicated they are."
The path stretched away through the heavy forest, and they climbed to a ridge that commanded a wide region that lay bathed in silver moonlight, so softly luminous that it seemed of the stuff of shadows made light. Westward, a mile distant, lay Ardsley, only a little below the level of the ridge and touched with a faint purple as of spring twilight.
Ardmore sat his saddle, quietly contemplating the great house that struck him almost for the first time as imposing. He felt, too, a little heartache that he did not quite understand. He was not sure whether it was the effect of the moon, or whether he was tired, or what it was, though he thought perhaps the moon had something to do with it. His own house, of which he was sincerely fond, seemed mistily hung between heaven and earth, in the moonlight, a thing not wholly of this world; and in his depression of spirit he reflected for a moment on his own aimless, friendless life; he knew then that he was lonely and that there was a great void in his mind and heart and soul and he knew also that Jerry Dangerfield and not the moon was the cause of his melancholy.
"We'd better be moving," suggested Cooke.
"It's too bad to leave that picture," remarked Collins, sighing. "Had I the lyre of Gray I should compose an Ode on a Distant Prospect of Ardsley Castle, which would ultimately reach the school readers and bring me fame more enduring than brass."
"Did you say brass?" ironically scoffed Cooke.
Whereupon the Palladium's late representative laughed softly and muttered to himself,
"Proud pile, by mighty Ardmore's hand upreared!"
"Cut it out," commanded Cooke, "or I'll drop you into the ravine. Look below there!"
Looking off from the ridge they saw a man and a woman riding along a strip of road from which the timber had been cut. The night was so still, the gray light so subdued, that the two figures moved as steadily and softly as shadow pictures on a screen.
The slow even movement of the riders was interrupted suddenly. The man, who was nearer the remote observers, had stopped and bent toward the woman as though to snatch her rein, when her horse threw up its head and fell back on its haunches. Then the woman struck the man a blow with her riding-crop, and galloped swiftly away along the white ribbon-like road. In the perfect night-silence it was like a scene of pantomime.
"That's all right!" cried Cooke. "Come along! We'll cut into that road at the bungalow."
They swung their horses away from the ridge and back into the bridle-path, which once more dipped sharply down into heavy timber, Cooke leading the way, and three of the best hunters known to the Ardsley stables flew down the clear but winding path. The incident which the trio had witnessed required no interpretation: the girl's blow and flight had translated it into language explicit enough.
Ardmore thanked his German forester a thousand times for the admirable bridle-path over which they galloped, with its certain footing beneath and clean sweep from the boughs above. The blood surged hotly through his heart, and he was angry for the first time in his life; but his head was cool, and the damp air of the forest flowing by tranquilized him into a new elation of spirit. Jerry Dangerfield was the dearest and noblest and bravest girl in the world—he knew that: and she was clever and resourceful enough to devise means for preserving her father's official and private honor; and not less quick to defend herself from insult from a titled scoundrel. She was the most inexplicable of girls; but at the same time she was beyond any question the wisest. The thought that he should now see her soon, after all the years that had passed since he had introduced her to his sister at Raleigh, filled him with wild delight, and he prayed that in her mad flight from the Duke of Ballywinkle no harm might come to her.
The three men rode out into the broad highway at the red bungalow and paused to listen.
"He hasn't got here yet. Only one person has passed and these must be the tracks of the girl's horse," said Cooke, who had dismounted and struck matches, the better to observe the faint hoof-prints in the hard shell road.
"He'll be along in a minute. Let us get into the shadow of the bungalow, and when he comes we'll ride out and nail him. The bungalow's a sort of way house. I often stop here when I'm out on the estate and want to rest, I have the key in my pocket."
As Ardmore's keys jingled in the lock Cooke cried out softly. Their quarry was riding swiftly toward them, and he drew rein before the bungalow as Cooke and Collins rode out to meet him.
"I say," panted the duke.
"You are our prisoner. Dismount and come into this house."
"Prisoner, you fool! I'm a guest at Ardsley and I'm looking for a lady."
"That's a very unlikely story. Collins, help the gentleman down;" and the reporter obeyed instructions with so much zeal that the noble gentleman fell prone, and was assisted to his feet with a fine mockery of helpfulness.
"I tell you I'm looking for a lady whose horse ran away with her! I'm the Duke of Ballywinkle and brother-in-law to Mr. Ardmore. I'll have you sent to jail if you stop me here."
"Come along, Duke, and we'll see what you look like," said Cooke, leading the way to the bungalow veranda. Within Ardmore was lighting lamps. There was a long room finished in black oak, with a fireplace at one end, and a table in the center. The floors were covered with handsome rugs and the walls were hung with photographs and etchings. Ardmore sat on the back of a leather settee in a pose assumed at the moment of the duke's entrance. It was a pose of entire nonchalance, and Ardmore's cap, perched on the back of his head, and his brown hair rumpled boyishly, added to the general effect of comfort and ease.
The duke blinked for a moment in the lamplight, then he roared out joyously:
"Ardy, old man!" and advanced toward his brother-in-law with outstretched hand.
"Keep him off; he's undoubtedly quite mad," said Ardmore, staring coldly, and bending his riding-crop across his knees. "Collins, please ride on after the lady and bring her back this way."
Cooke had seated the prisoner rather rudely in a chair, and the noble duke, having lost the power of speech in amazement and fright, rubbed his eyes and then fastened them incredulously on Ardmore; but there was no question about it, he had been seized with violence; he had been repudiated by his own brother-in-law—the useless, stupid Tommy Ardmore, who, at best, had only a child's mind for pirate stories and who was indubitably the most negligible of negligible figures in the drama of life as the duke knew it.
"Cooke," began Ardmore, addressing his lieutenant gravely from his perch on the settee, "what is the charge against this person?"
"He says he's a duke," grinned Cooke, taking his cue from Ardmore's manner. "And he says he's visiting at Ardsley."
"That," said Ardmore with decision, "is creditable only to the gentleman's romantic imagination. His face is anything but dukely, and there's a red streak across it which points clearly to the recent sharp blow of a weapon; and no one would ever strike a duke. It's utterly incredible," and Ardmore lifted his brows and leaned back with his arms at length and his hands clasping the riding-crop, as he contemplated with supreme satisfaction the tell-tale red line across the duke's cheek.
The Duke of Ballywinkle leaped to his feet, the color that suffused his pale face hiding for the moment the mark of the riding-stick.
"What the devil is this joke, Ardy?" screamed the duke. "You know I'm a guest at your house; you know I'm your sister's husband. I was riding with Miss Dangerfield and her horse ran away with her, and she may come to harm unless I go after her. This cut on the face I got from a low limb of one of your infernal trees. You are putting me in a devil of an embarrassing position by holding me here."
He spoke with dignity, and Ardmore heard him through in silence; but when he had finished, the master of Ardsley pointed to the chair.
"As I understand you, you are pleading not guilty; and you pretend to some acquaintance with me; but I am unable to recall you. We may have met somewhere, sometime, but I really don't know you. The title to which you pretend is unfamiliar to me; but I will frankly disclose to you that I, sir, am the governor of North Carolina."
"The what?" bleated the duke, his eyes bulging.
"I repeat, that I am the governor of North Carolina, and as a state of war now exists in my unhappy kingdom, I, sir, have assumed all the powers conferred upon the three coördinate branches of government under the American system, namely, or if you prefer it, I will say, to wit: the legislative, the executive and the judicial. It is thus not only my privilege but my painful duty to pass upon your case in all its sad aspects. As I have already suspended the writ of habeas corpus and set aside the right to trial by jury we will consider that I sit here as the supreme court."
"For God's sake, Ardy—" howled the duke.
"That remark I will not now construe as profanity, but don't let it occur again. The first charge against you is that of insulting a woman on the Sunset Trail in the estate called Ardsley, owned by a person known in law as Thomas Ardmore. There are three witnesses to the fact that you tried to stop a woman in the road, and that streak on your face is even more conclusive. Are you guilty or not guilty?"
"You are mad! You are crazy!" shouted the duke; but his face was very white now, and the mark of the crop flamed scarlet.
"You are guilty, beyond any question. But the further charge against you that you pretend to be—what did he say his name was, Cooke?—that you pretend to be the Duke of Ballywinkle must now be considered. That is quite right, is it; you say you are the Duke?"
"Yes; you fool!" howled the duke. "I'll have the law on you for this! I'll appeal to the British ambassador."
"I advise you not to appeal to anybody," said Ardmore, "and the British ambassador is without jurisdiction in North Carolina. You have yourself asserted that you are the Duke of Ballywinkle. Why Ballywinkle? Why not Argyll; why not Westminster? Why not, if duke you must be, the noble Duke of York?"
The Duke of Ballywinkle sat staring, stupefied. The whole thing was one of his silly brother-in-law's stupid jokes; there was no question of that; and Tommy Ardmore was always a bore; but in spite of the comfort he derived from these reflections the duke was not a little uneasy; for he had never seen his brother-in-law in just this mood, and he did not like it. Ardmore was carrying the joke too far; and there was an assurance in Ardmore's tone, and a light in Ardmore's eyes that were ominous. Cooke had meanwhile lighted his pipe and was calmly smoking until his chief should have his fling.
Ardmore now drew from his pocket Johnston's American Politics with an air of greatest seriousness.
"Cooke," he said, half to himself as he turned the pages, "do you remember just what the constitution says about dukes? Oh, yes; here we are! Now, Mr. Duke of Ballywinkle, listen to what it says here in Section IX of the Constitution of the United States, which reads exactly as follows in this book: 'No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.' And it says in Section X that 'No state shall grant any title of nobility.' Now, Mr. Ballywinkle, it is perfectly clear that this government can't recognize anything that it can't create, for that would be foolish. As I, the governor of North Carolina, can't make a duke, I can't see one. You are therefore wholly illegal; it's against the most sacred law of the land for you to be here at all; and, painful though it is to me, it is nevertheless my duty to order you to leave the United States at once, never to return. In fact, if you ever appear in the United States again, I hereby order that you be hanged by the neck until you be dead. One of Mr. Cooke's men will accompany you to New York to-morrow and see to it that you take passage on a steamer bound for a British port. The crime of having insulted a woman will still hang over you until you are well east of Sandy Hook, and I advise you not to risk being tried on that charge in North Carolina, as my people are very impulsive and emotional and lynchings are not infrequent in our midst. You shall spend to-night in my official caboose some distance from here, and your personal effects will be brought from Ardsley, where, you have said, you are a guest of Mr. Thomas Ardmore, who is officially unknown to me. The supreme court will now adjourn."
Cooke pulled the limp, bewildered duke to his feet, and dragged him from the bungalow.
As they stepped out on the veranda Collins rode up in alarm.
"I followed this road to a cross-road where it becomes a bridle-path and runs off into the forest. There I lost all trace of the lady, but here is her riding-crop."
"Cooke, take your prisoner to the caboose; and Collins, come with me," commanded Ardmore; and a moment later he and the reporter rode off furiously in search of Jerry Dangerfield.