The Water Ghost and Others by John Kendrick Bangs (good novels to read in english .txt) 📖

negotiable. Now I have called you here this afternoon to make a proposition to you. If you will marry according to my wishes I will give you an income of five thousand pounds a year for the next five years."

"I don't quite understand you," the earl replied, in a disappointed tone. It was evident that five thousand pounds per annum was too small a figure for his tastes.

"I think I was quite plain," said Terwilliger, and he repeated his offer.

"I certainly admire the lady very much," said the earl; "but the settlement of income seems very small."

Terwilliger opened his eyes wide with astonishment. "Oh, you admire the lady, eh?" he said. "Well, there is no accounting for tastes."

"You surprise me slightly," said the earl, in response to this remark. "The lady is certainly worthy of any man's admiration. She is refined, cultivated, beautiful, and----"

"Ahem!" said Terwilliger. "May I ask, my dear Earl, to whom you refer?"

"To Ariadne, of course. I thought your course somewhat unusual, but we do not pretend to comprehend you Americans over here. Your proposition is that I shall marry Ariadne?"

I hesitate to place on record what Terwilliger said in answer to this statement. It was forcible rather than polite, and the earl from that moment adopted a new simile for degrees of profanity, substituting "to swear like an American" for the old forms having to do with pirates and troopers. The string of expletives was about five minutes in length, at the end of which time Terwilliger managed to say:

"No such d---- proposition ever entered my mind. I want you to marry a cold, misty, musty spectre, nothing more or less, and I'll tell you why."

And then he proceeded to tell the Earl of Mugley all that he knew of the history of Bangletop Hall, concluding with a narration of his experiences with the ghost cook.

"My rent here," he said, in conclusion, "is five thousand pounds per annum. The advertising I get out of the fact of my being here and swelling it with you nabobs is worth twenty-five thousand pounds a year, and I'm willing to pay, in good hard cash, twenty per cent of that amount rather than be forced to give up. Now here's your chance to get an income without an encumbrance and stave off your creditors. Marry the spook, so that she can go back to the spirit land a countess and make it hot for the Bangletops, and don't be so allfired proud. She'll be disappointed enough I can tell you, when I inform her that an earl was the best I could do, the promised duke not being within reach. If she says earls are drugs in the market, I won't be able to deny it; and, after all, my lad, a good cook is a greater blessing in this world than any earl that ever lived, and a blamed sight rarer."

"Your proposition is absolutely ridiculous, Mr. Terwilliger," replied the earl. "I'd look well marrying a draught from a dark cavern, as you call it, now wouldn't I? To say nothing of the impossibility of a Mugley marrying a cook. I cannot entertain the proposition."

"You'll find you can't entertain anything if you don't watch out," fumed Terwilliger, in return.

"I'm not so sure about that," replied the earl, haughtily, sipping his lemon squash. "I fancy Miss Ariadne is not entirely indifferent to me."

"Well, you might just as well understand on this 18th day of July, 18--, as any other time, that my daughter Ariadne never becomes the Earless of Mugley," said Terwilliger, in a tone of exasperation.

"Not even when her father considers the commercial value of such an alliance for his daughter?" retorted the earl, shaking his finger in Terwilliger's face. "Not even when the President of the Three-dollar Shoe Company, of Soleton, Massachusetts (Limited), considers the advertising sure to result from a marriage between his house and that of Mugley, with presents from her majesty the queen, the Duke of York acting as best man, and telegrams of congratulation from the crowned heads of Europe pouring in at the rate of two an hour for half as many hours as there are thrones?"

Terwilliger turned pale.

The picture painted by the earl was terribly alluring.

He hesitated.

He was lost.

"Mugley," he whispered, hoarsely--"Mugley, I have wronged you. I thought you were a fortune-hunter. I see you love her. Take her, my boy, and pass me the brandy."

"Certainly, Mr. Terwilliger," replied the earl, affably. "And then, if you've no objection, you may pass it back, and I'll join you in a thimbleful myself."

And then the two men drank each other's health in silence, which was prolonged for at least five minutes, during which time the earl and his host both appeared to be immersed in deep thought.

"Come," said Terwilliger at last. "Let us go back to the drawing-room, or they'll miss us, and, by-the-way, you might speak of that little matter to Ariadne to-night. It'll help the fall trade to have the engagement announced."

"I will, Mr. Terwilliger," returned the earl, as they started to leave the room; "but I say, father-in-law elect," he whispered, catching Terwilliger's coat sleeve and drawing him back into the office for an instant, "you couldn't let me have five pounds on account this evening, could you?"

Two minutes later Terwilliger and the earl appeared in the drawing-room, the former looking haggard and worn, his eyes feverishly bright, and his manner betraying the presence of disturbing elements in his nerve centres; the latter smiling more affably than was consistent with his title, and jingling a number of gold coins in his pocket, which his intimate friend and old college chum, Lord Dufferton, on the other side of the room, marvelled at greatly, for he knew well that upon the earl's arrival at Bangletop Hall an hour before his pockets were as empty as a flunky's head.


IV

Terwilliger's time was almost up. The hour for his interview with the spectre cook of Bangletop was hardly forty-eight hours distant, and he was wellnigh distracted. No solution of the problem seemed possible since the earl had so peremptorily declined to fall in with his plan. He was glad the earl had done so, for otherwise he would have been denied the tremendous satisfaction which the consummation of an alliance between his own and one of the oldest and noblest houses of England was about to give him, not to mention the commercial phase of the situation, which had been so potent a factor in bringing the engagement about; for Ariadne had said yes to the earl that same night, and the betrothal was shortly to be announced. It would have been announced at once, only the earl felt that he should break the news himself first to his mother, the countess--an operation which he dreaded, and for which he believed some eight or ten weeks of time were necessary.

"What is the matter, Judson?" Mrs. Terwilliger asked finally, her husband was growing so careworn of aspect.

"Nothing, my dear, nothing."

"But there is something, Judson, and as your wife I demand to know what it is. Perhaps I can help you."

And then Mr. Terwilliger broke down, and told the whole story to Mrs. Terwilliger, omitting no detail, stopping only to bring that worthy lady to on the half-dozen or more occasions when her emotions were too strong for her nerves, causing her to swoon. When he had quite done, she looked him reproachfully in the eye, and said that if he had told her the truth instead of deceiving her on the night of the spectral visitation, he might have been spared all his trouble.

"For you know, Judson," she said, "I have made a study of the art of acquiring titles. Since I read the story of the girl who started in life as an innkeeper's daughter and died a duchess, by Elizabeth Harley Hicks, of Salem, and realized how one might be lowly born and yet rise to lofty heights, it has been my dearest wish that my girls might become noblewomen, and at times, Judson, I have even hoped that you might yet become a duke."

"Great Scott!" ejaculated Terwilliger. "That would be awful. Hankinson, Duke of Terwilliger! Why, Molly, I'd never be able to hold up my head in shoe circles with a name on me like that."

"Is there nothing in the world but shoes, Judson?" asked his wife, seriously.

"You'll find shoes are the foundation upon which society stands," chuckled Terwilliger in return.

"You are never serious," returned Mrs. Terwilliger; "but now you must be. You are coping with the supernatural. Now I have discovered," continued the lady, "that there are three methods by which titles are acquired--birth, marriage, and purchase."

"You forget the fourth--achievement," suggested Terwilliger.

"Not these days, Judson. It used to be so, but it is not so now. Now the spectre hasn't birth, we can't get any living duke to marry her, dead dukes are hard to find, so there's nothing to do but to buy her a title."

"But where?"

"In Italy. You can get 'em by the dozen. Every hand-organ grinder in America grinds away in the hope of going back to Italy and purchasing a title. Why can't you do the same?"

"Me? Me grind a hand-organ in America?" cried Hankinson.

"No, no; purchase a dukedom."

"I don't want a dukedom; I want a duchessdom."

"That's all right. Buy the title, give it to the cook, and let her marry some spectre of her own rank; she can give him the title; and there you are!"

"Good scheme!" cried Terwilliger. "But I say, Molly, don't you think it would be better to get her to bring the spectre over here, and have me give him the title, and then let him marry her here?"

"No, I don't. If you give it to him first, the chances are he would go back on his bargain. He'd say that, being a duke, he couldn't marry a cook."

"You have a large mind, Molly," said Terwilliger.

"I know men!" snapped Mrs. Terwilliger.

And so it happened. Hankinson Judson Terwilliger applied by wire to the authorities in Rome for all right, title, and interest in one dukedom, free from encumbrances, irrevocable, and duly witnessed by the proper dignitaries of the Italian government, and at the second interview with the spectre cook of Bangletop, he was able to show her a cablegram received from the Eternal City stating that the papers would be sent upon receipt of the applicant's check for one hundred lire.

"'Ow much his that?" asked the ghost.

"One hundred lire?" returned Terwilliger, repeating the sum to gain time to think. He was himself surprised at the cheapness of the duchy, and he was afraid that if the ghost knew its real value she would decline to take it. "One hundred lire? Why, that's about 750,000 dollars--150,000 pounds. They charge high for their titles," he added, blushing slightly.

"Pretty 'igh," returned the ghost. "But h'I carn't be a duke, ye know. 'Ow'll I manidge that?"

Hankinson explained his wife's scheme to the spectre.

"That's helegant," said she. "H'I've loved a butler o' the Bangletops for nigh hon to two 'undred years, but, some'ow or hother, he's kep' shy o' me. This'll fix 'im. But h'I say, Mr. Terwilliger, his one o' them Heyetalian dukes as good as a Henglish one?"

"Every bit," said Terwilliger. "A duke's a duke the world over. Don't you know the lines of