“You may. Thank you. Now you shall have that privilege whenever you are
good.”
Meantime Hawkins had long ago returned and slipped up into the
laboratory. He was rather disconcerted to find his late invention,
Snodgrass, there. The news was told him: that the English Rossmore was
come,
–“and I’m his son, Viscount Berkeley, not Howard Tracy any more.”
Hawkins was aghast. He said:
“Good gracious, then you’re dead!”
“Dead?”
“Yes you are–we’ve got your ashes.”
“Hang those ashes, I’m tired of them; I’ll give them to my father.”
Slowly and painfully the statesman worked the truth into his head that
this was really a flesh and blood young man, and not the insubstantial
resurrection he and Sellers had so long supposed him to be. Then he said
with feeling–
“I’m so glad; so glad on Sally’s account, poor thing. We took you for a
departed materialized bank thief from Tahlequah. This will be a heavy
blow to Sellers.” Then he explained the whole matter to Berkeley, who
said:
“Well, the Claimant must manage to stand the blow, severe as it is.
But he’ll get over the disappointment.”
“Who–the colonel? He’ll get over it the minute he invents a new miracle
to take its place. And he’s already at it by this time. But look here–
what do you suppose became of the man you’ve been representing all this
time?”
“I don’t know. I saved his clothes–it was all I could do. I am afraid
he lost his life.”
“Well, you must have found twenty or thirty thousand dollars in those
clothes, in money or certificates of deposit.”
“No, I found only five hundred and a trifle. I borrowed the trifle and
banked the five hundred.”
“What’ll we do about it?”
“Return it to the owner.”
“It’s easy said, but not easy to manage. Let’s leave it alone till we
get Sellers’s advice. And that reminds me. I’ve got to run and meet
Sellers and explain who you are not and who you are, or he’ll come
thundering in here to stop his daughter from marrying a phantom. But–
suppose your father came over here to break off the match?”
“Well, isn’t he down stairs getting acquainted with Sally? That’s all
safe.”
So Hawkins departed to meet and prepare the Sellerses.
Rossmore Towers saw great times and late hours during the succeeding
week. The two earls were such opposites in nature that they fraternized
at once. Sellers said privately that Rossmore was the most extraordinary
character he had ever met–a man just made out of the condensed milk of
human kindness, yet with the ability to totally hide the fact from any
but the most practised character-reader; a man whose whole being was
sweetness, patience and charity, yet with a cunning so profound, an
ability so marvelous in the acting of a double part, that many a person
of considerable intelligence might live with him for centuries and never
suspect the presence in him of these characteristics.
Finally there was a quiet wedding at the Towers, instead of a big one at
the British embassy, with the militia and the fire brigades and the
temperance organizations on hand in torchlight procession, as at first
proposed by one of the earls. The art-firm and Barrow were present at
the wedding, and the tinner and Puss had been invited, but the tinner was
ill and Puss was nursing him–for they were engaged.
The Sellerses were to go to England with their new allies for a brief
visit, but when it was time to take the train from Washington,
the colonel was missing.
Hawkins was going as far as New York with the party, and said he would
explain the matter on the road.
The explanation was in a letter left by the colonel in Hawkins’s hands.
In it he promised to join Mrs. Sellers later, in England, and then went
on to say:
The truth is, my dear Hawkins, a mighty idea has been born to me within
the hour, and I must not even stop to say goodbye to my dear ones.
A man’s highest duty takes precedence of all minor ones, and must be
attended to with his best promptness and energy, at whatsoever cost to