Read Ebook: Condensed Novels: New Burlesques by Harte Bret

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Ebook has 602 lines and 33343 words, and 13 pages

"Shertenly not," replied the King, with his reckless laugh. "The King mush be able to pronounsh--name of his country--intel-lillil-gibly: mush shay : 'I'm King of--King of--Tootoo-tooral-looral-anyer.'" He staggered, laughed, and fell under the table.

"He cannot say it!" gasped Fritz and Spitz in one voice. "He is lost!"

"Unless," said Fritz suddenly, pointing at me with a flash of intelligence, "HE can personate him, and say it. Can you?" he turned to me brusquely.

It was an awful moment. I had been drinking heavily too, but I resolved to succeed. "I'm King of Trooly-rooly--" I murmured; but I could not master it--I staggered and followed the King under the table.

"No one can say 'Tooral-looral--'" muttered Fritz; and, grasping Spitz in despair, they both rolled under the table.

How long we lay there, Heaven knows! I was awakened by Spitz playing the garden hose on me. He was booted and spurred, with Fritz by his side. The King was lying on a bench, saying feebly: "Blesh you, my chillen."

I was--well!--intoxicated at the thought! But what would my sister-in-law say? Would she--in her Nonconformist conscience--consider it strictly honorable? But I swept all scruples aside. A King was to be saved! "I will go," I said. "Let us on to Kohlslau--riding like the wind!" We rode like the wind, furiously, madly. Mounted on a wild, dashing bay--known familiarly as the "Bay of Biscay" from its rough turbulence--I easily kept the lead. But our horses began to fail. Suddenly Spitz halted, clapped his hand to his head, and threw himself from his horse. "Fools!" he said, "we should have taken the train! It will get there an hour before we will!" He pointed to a wayside station where the 7.15 excursion train for Kohlslau was waiting.

"But how dreadfully unmediaeval!--What will the public say?" I began.

"Bother the public!" he said gruffly. "Who's running this dynasty--you or I? Come!" With the assistance of Fritz he tied up my face with a handkerchief to simulate toothache, and then, with a shout of defiance, we three rushed madly into a closely packed third-class carriage.

Never shall I forget the perils, the fatigue, the hopes and fears of that mad journey. Panting, perspiring, packed together with cheap trippers, but exalted with the one hope of saving the King, we at last staggered out on the Kohlslau platform utterly exhausted. As we did so we heard a distant roar from the city. Fritz turned an ashen gray, Spitz a livid blue. "Are we too late?" he gasped, as we madly fought our way into the street, where shouts of "The King! The King!" were rending the air. "Can it be Black Michael?" But here the crowd parted, and a procession, preceded by outriders, flashed into the square. And there, seated in a carriage beside the most beautiful red-haired girl I had ever seen, was the King,--the King whom we had left two hours ago, dead drunk in the hut in the forest!

We reeled against each other aghast! Spitz recovered himself first. "We must fly!" he said hoarsely. "If the King has discovered our trick--we are lost!"

"But where shall we go?" I asked.

"Back to the hut."

We caught the next train to Bock. An hour later we stood panting within the hut. Its walls and ceiling were splashed with sinister red stains. "Blood!" I exclaimed joyfully. "At last we have a real mediaeval adventure!"

"It's Burgundy, you fool," growled Spitz; "good Burgundy wasted!" At this moment Fritz appeared dragging in the hut-keeper.

"Where is the King?" demanded Spitz fiercely of the trembling peasant.

"He was carried away an hour ago by Black Michael and taken to the castle."

"And when did he LEAVE the castle?" roared Spitz.

"He never left the castle, sir, and, alas! I fear never will, alive!" replied the man, shuddering.

We stared at each other! Spitz bit his grizzled mustache. "So," he said bitterly, "Black Michael has simply anticipated us with the same game! We have been tricked. I knew it could not be the King whom they crowned! No!" he added quickly, "I see it all--it was Rupert of Glasgow!"

"Who is Rupert of Glasgow?" I cried.

"Oh, I really can't go over all that family rot again," grunted Spitz. "Tell him, Fritz."

Then, taking me aside, Fritz delicately informed me that Rupert of Glasgow--a young Scotchman--claimed equally with myself descent from the old Rupert, and that equally with myself he resembled the King. That Michael had got possession of him on his arrival in the country, kept him closely guarded in the castle, and had hid his resemblance in a black wig and false mustache; that the young Scotchman, however, seemed apparently devoted to Michael and his plots; and there was undoubtedly some secret understanding between them. That it was evidently Michael's trick to have the pretender crowned, and then, by exposing the fraud and the condition of the real King, excite the indignation of the duped people, and seat himself on the throne! "But," I burst out, "shall this base-born pretender remain at Kohlslau beside the beautiful Princess Flirtia? Let us to Kohlslau at once and hurl him from the throne!"

"One pretender is as good as another," said Spitz dryly. "But leave HIM to me. 'Tis the King we must protect and succor! As for that Scotch springald, before midnight I shall have him kidnaped, brought back to his master in a close carriage, and you--YOU shall take his place at Kohlslau."

"I will," I said enthusiastically, drawing my sword; "but I have done nothing yet. Please let me kill something!"

"Aye, lad!" said Spitz, with a grim smile at my enthusiasm. "There's a sheep in your path. Go out and cleave it to the saddle. And bring the saddle home!"

My sister-in-law might have thought me cruel--but I did it.

I know not how it was compassed, but that night Rupert of Glasgow was left bound and gagged against the door of the castle, and the night-bell pulled. And that night I was seated on the throne of the S'helpburgs. As I gazed at the Princess Flirtia, glowing in the characteristic beauty of the S'helpburgs, and admired her striking profile, I murmured softly and half audibly: "Her nose is as a tower that looketh toward Damascus."

She looked puzzled, and knitted her pretty brows. "Is that poetry?" she asked.

She toyed with it a moment, and then said softly: "You have changed, Rupert. Do ye no ken hoo?"

I looked at her--as surprised at her dialect as at the imputation.

"You don't talk that way, as you did. And you don't say, 'It WILL be twelve o'clock,' when you mean, 'It IS twelve o'clock,' nor 'I will be going out,' when you mean 'I AM.' And you didn't say, 'Eh, sirs!' or 'Eh, mon,' to any of the Court--nor 'Hoot awa!' nor any of those things. And," she added with a divine little pout, "you haven't told me I was 'sonsie' or 'bonnie' once."

I could with difficulty restrain myself. Rage, indignation, and jealousy filled my heart almost to bursting. I understood it all; that rascally Scotchman had made the most of his time, and dared to get ahead of me! I did not mind being taken for the King, but to be confounded with this infernal descendant of a gamekeeper--was too much! Yet with a superhuman effort I remained calm--and even smiled.

"You are not well?" said the Princess earnestly. "I thought you were taking too much of the Strasbourg pie at supper! And you are not going, surely--so soon?" she added, as I rose.

"I must go at once," I said. "I have forgotten some important business at Bock."

"Not boar hunting again?" she said poutingly.

"No, I'm hunting a red dear," I said with that playful subtlety which would make her take it as a personal compliment, though I was only thinking of that impostor, and longing to get at him, as I bowed and withdrew.

In another hour I was before Black Michael's castle at Bock. These are lightning changes, I know--and the sovereignty of Trulyruralania WAS somewhat itinerant--but when a kingdom and a beautiful Princess are at stake, what are you to do? Fritz had begged me to take him along, but I arranged that he should come later, and go up unostentatiously in the lift. I was going by way of the moat. I was to succor the King, but I fear my real object was to get at Rupert of Glasgow.

I had noticed the day before that a large outside drain pipe, decreed by the Bock County Council, ran from the moat to the third floor of the donjon keep. I surmised that the King was imprisoned on that floor. Examining the pipe closely, I saw that it was really a pneumatic dispatch tube, for secretly conveying letters and dispatches from the castle through the moat beyond the castle walls. Its extraordinary size, however, gave me the horrible conviction that it was to be used to convey the dead body of the King to the moat. I grew cold with horror--but I was determined.

I crept up the pipe. As I expected, it opened funnel-wise into a room where the poor King was playing poker with Black Michael. It took me but a moment to dash through the window into the room, push the King aside, gag and bind Black Michael, and lower him by a stout rope into the pipe he had destined for another. Having him in my power, I lowered him until I heard his body splash in the water in the lower part of the pipe. Then I proceeded to draw him up again, intending to question him in regard to Rupert of Glasgow. But this was difficult, as his saturated clothing made him fit the smooth pipe closely. At last I had him partly up, when I was amazed at a rush of water from the pipe which flooded the room. I dropped him and pulled him up again with the same result. Then in a flash I saw it all. His body, acting like a piston in the pipe, had converted it into a powerful pump. Mad with joy, I rapidly lowered and pulled him up again and again, until the castle was flooded--and the moat completely drained! I had created the diversion I wished; the tenants of the castle were disorganized and bewildered in trying to escape from the deluge, and the moat was accessible to my friends. Placing the poor King on a table to be out of the water, and tying up his head in my handkerchief to disguise him from Michael's guards, I drew my sword and plunged downstairs with the cataract in search of the miscreant Rupert. I reached the drawbridge, when I heard the sounds of tumult and was twice fired at,--once, as I have since learned, by my friends, under the impression that I was the escaping Rupert of Glasgow, and once by Black Michael's myrmidons, under the belief that I was the King. I was struck by the fact that these resemblances were confusing and unfortunate! At this moment, however, I caught sight of a kilted figure leaping from a lower window into the moat. Some instinct impelled me to follow it. It rapidly crossed the moat and plunged into the forest, with me in pursuit. I gained upon it; suddenly it turned, and I found myself again confronted with MYSELF--and apparently the King! But that very resemblance made me recognize the Scotch pretender, Rupert of Glasgow. Yet he would have been called a "braw laddie," and his handsome face showed a laughing good humor, even while he opposed me, claymore in hand.

"Bide a wee, Maister Rupert Razorbill," he said lightly, lowering his sword, "before we slit ane anither's weasands. I'm no claimin' any descent frae kings, and I'm no acceptin' any auld wife's clavers against my women forbears, as ye are! I'm just paid gude honest siller by Black Michael for the using of ma face and figure--sic time as his Majesty is tae worse frae trink! And I'm commeesioned frae Michael to ask ye what price YE would take to join me in performing these duties--turn and turn aboot. Eh, laddie--but he would pay ye mair than that daft beggar, Spitz."

Rage and disgust overpowered me. "And THIS is my answer," I said, rushing upon him.

I have said earlier in these pages that I was a "strong" swordsman. In point of fact, I had carefully studied in the transpontine theatres that form of melodramatic mediaeval sword-play known as "two up and two down." To my disgust, however, this wretched Scotchman did not seem to understand it, but in a twinkling sent my sword flying over my head. Before I could recover it, he had mounted a horse ready saddled in the wood, and, shouting to me that he would take my "compleements" to the Princess, galloped away. Even then I would have pursued him afoot, but, hearing shouts behind me, I turned as Spitz and Fritz rode up.

"Has the King escaped to Kohlslau?" asked Fritz, staring at me.

"No," I said, "but Rupert of Glasgow"--

"--Rupert of Glasgow," growled Spitz. "We've settled him! He's gagged and bound and is now on his way to the frontier in a close carriage."

"Rupert--on his way to the frontier?" I gasped.

"Yes. Two of my men found him, disguised with a handkerchief over his face, trying to escape from the castle. And while we were looking for the King, whom we supposed was with you, they have sent the rascally Scotchman home."

"Fool!" I gasped. "Rupert of Glasgow has just left me! YOU HAVE DEPORTED YOUR OWN KING." And overcome by my superhuman exertions, I sank unconscious to the ground.

When I came to, I found myself in a wagon lit, speeding beyond the Trulyruralania frontier. On my berth was lying a missive with the seal of the S'helpburgs. Tearing it open I recognized the handwriting of the Princess Flirtia.

MY DEAR RUPERT,--Owing to the confusion that arises from there being so many of you, I have concluded to accept the hand of the Duke Michael. I may not become a Queen, but I shall bring rest to my country, and Michael assures me in his playful manner that "three of a kind," "even of the same color," do not always win at poker. It will tranquilize you somewhat to know that the Lord Chancellor assures me that on examining the records of the dynasty he finds that my ancestor Rupert never left his kingdom during his entire reign, and that consequently your ancestress has been grossly maligned. I am sending typewritten copies of this to Rupert of Glasgow and the King. Farewell.

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