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."
[Illustration]
"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 Burns, 'A duke's a duke for a' that'?"
"Never 'eard of 'im," replied the ghost.
"Well, you look him up when you get settled down at home. He was a smart man here, and, if his ghost does him justice, you'll be mighty glad to know him," Terwilliger answered.
And thus was Bangletop Hall delivered of its uncanny visitor. The ducal appointment, entitling its owner to call himself "Duke of Cavalcadi," was received in due time, and handed over to the curse of the kitchen, who immediately disappeared, and permanently, from the haunts that had known her for so long and so disadvantageously. Bangletop Hall is now the home of a happy family, to whom all are devoted, and from whose menage no cook has ever been known to depart, save for natural causes, despite all that has gone before.
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Ariadne has become Countess of Mugley, and Mrs. Terwilliger is content with her Judson, whom, however, she occasionally calls Duke of Cavalcadi, claiming that he is the representative of that ancient and noble family on earth. As for Judson, he always smiles when his wife calls him Duke, but denies the titular impeachment, for he is on good terms with his landlord, whose admiration for his tenant's wholly unexpected ability to retain his cook causes him to regard him as a supernatural being, and therefore worthy of a Bangletop's regard.
"All of which," Terwilliger says to Mrs. Terwilliger, "might not be so, my dear, were I really the duke, for I honestly believe that if there is a feud of long standing anywhere in the universe, it is between the noble families of Bangletop and Cavalcadi over on the other shore."