The Baron Rudolf von Blitzenberg sat by himself at a table in the dining-room of the HÔtel Mayonaise, which, as everybody knows, is the largest and most expensive in London. He was a young man of a florid and burly Teutonic type and the most ingenuous countenance. Being possessed of a curious and enterprising disposition, as well as the most ample means, he had left his ancestral castle in Bavaria to study for a few months the customs and politics of England. In the language he was already proficient, and he had promised himself an amusing as well as an instructive visit. But, although he had only arrived in London that morning, he was already beginning to feel an uncomfortable apprehension lest in both respects he should be disappointed. Though his introductions were the best with which the British Ambassador could supply him, they were only three or four in number,—for, not wishing to be hampered with too many acquaintances, he had rather chosen quality than quantity: and now, in the course of the afternoon, he had found to his chagrin that in every case the families were out of town. In fact, so far as he could learn, they were [pg 66] not even at their own country seats. One was abroad, another gone to the seaside to recover from the mumps, or a third paying a round of visits.

The disappointment was sharp, he felt utterly at sea as to what he should do, and he was already beginning to experience the loneliness of a single mortal in a crowded hotel.

As the frosty evening was setting in and the shops were being lit, he had strolled out into the streets in the vague hope of meeting some strange foreign adventure, or perhaps even happily lighting upon some half-forgotten diplomatic acquaintance. But he found the pavements crowded with a throng who took no notice of him at all, but seemed every man and most women of them to be pushing steadily, and generally silently, towards a million mysterious goals. Not that he could tell they were silent except by their set lips, for the noise of wheels and horses on so many hundreds of miles of streets, and the cries of busmen and vendors of evening papers, made such a hubbub that he felt before long in a maze. He lost his way four times, and was patronisingly set right by beneficent policemen; and at last, feeling like a man who has fallen off a precipice on to a soft place—none the worse but quite bewildered—he struggled back to his hotel. There he spun out his time by watching the people come and go, and at last dressed with extra deliberation.

About eight o’clock he sat down to his solitary dinner. The great gilt and panelled room was full of diners and bustling waiters, but there was not a face the Baron had ever seen before. He was just finishing a plate of whitebait [pg 67] when he observed a stranger enter the room and stroll in a very self-possessed manner down the middle, glancing at the tables round him as though he was looking either for a friend or a desirable seat. This gentleman was tall, fair, and clean-shaved; he was dressed in a suit of well-fitting tweeds, and his air impressed the Baron as being natural and yet distinguished. At last his eye fell upon the Baron, who felt conscious of undergoing a quick, critical scrutiny. The table at which that nobleman sat was laid for two, and coming apparently to a sudden resolution, the good-looking stranger seated himself in the vacant chair. In an agreeable voice and with an unmistakably well-bred air he asked a waiter for the wine-list, and then, like a man with an excellent appetite, fell to upon the various hors d’oeuvres, the entire collection of which, in fact, he consumed in a wonderfully short space of time. The Baron, being himself no trifler with his victuals, regarded this feat with sympathetic approval, and began to feel a little less alone in the world. His naturally open disposition was warmed besides, owing to a slight misconception he had fallen into, perfectly excusable however in a foreigner. He thought he had read somewhere that port was the usual accompaniment to the first courses of an English dinner, and as his waiter had been somewhat dilatory in bringing him the more substantial items of the repast, he had already drunk three claret-glasses of this cheering wine. The chill recollections of his sixteen quarterings and the exclusiveness he had determined to maintain as becoming to his rank were already melting, and he met the stranger’s [pg 68] eye with what for the life of him he could not help being a cordial look.

His vis-À-vis caught the glance, smiled back, and immediately asked, with the most charming politeness, “Do you care, sir, to split a bottle of champagne?”

“To—er—shplid?” said the Baron, with a disappointed consciousness of having been put at a loss in his English by the very first man who had spoken to him.

“I beg your pardon,—I am afraid I was unintelligibly idiomatic. To divide, I should say, you consuming one-half, I the other. Am I clear, sir?”

For a moment the Baron was a little taken aback, and then recollecting that the dining habits of the English were still new to him, he concluded that the suggestion was probably a customary act of courtesy. He had already come to the conclusion that the gentleman must be a person of rank, and he replied affably, “Yah—zat is, vid pleasure. Zanks, very.”

“The pleasure is mine,” said the stranger—“and half the bottle,” he added, smiling.

The Baron, whose perception of humour had been abnormally increased by this time, laughed hilariously at the infection of his new acquaintance’s smile.

“Goot, goot!” he cried. “Ach, yah, zo.”

“Am I right, sir, in supposing that, despite the perfection of your English accent, I cannot be fortunate enough to claim you as a countryman?” asked the stranger.

The Baron’s resolutions of reticence had vanished altogether before such unexpected and (he could not [pg 69] but think) un-English friendliness. He unburdened his heart with a rush.

“You have ze right. I am Deutsch. I have gom to England zis day for to lairn and to amuse myself. But mein, vat you call?—introdogtions zey are not inside, zat is zey are from off. Not von, all, every single gone to ze gontry or to abroad. I am alone, I eat my dinner in zolitude, I am pleased to meet you, sare.”

A cork popped and the champagne frothed into the stranger’s glass. Raising it to his lips, he said, “Prosit!”

“Prosit!” responded the Baron, enthusiastically. “You know ze Deutsch, sare?”

“I am safer in English, I confess.”

“Ach, das ist goot, I vant for to practeese. Ve vill talk English.”

“With all my heart,” said the stranger. “I, too, am alone, and I hold myself more than fortunate in making your acquaintance. It’s a devilish dull world when one can’t share a bottle—or a brace of them, for the matter of that.”

“You know London?” asked the Baron.

“I used to, and I daresay my memory will revive.”

“I know it not, pairhaps you can inform. I haf gom, as I say, to-day.”

“With pleasure,” said the stranger, readily. “In fact, if you are ever disengaged I may possibly be able to act as showman.”

“Showman!” roared the Baron, thinking he had discovered a jest. “Ha, ha, ha! Goot, zehr goot!”

The other looked a trifle astonished for an instant, [pg 70] and then as he sipped his champagne an expression of intense satisfaction came over his face.

“I can put away my lantern,” he said to himself,—“I have found him.”

“May I have the boldness to ask your name, sir?” he asked aloud.

“Ze Baron Rudolph von Blitzenberg,” that nobleman replied. “Yours, sare—may I dare?”

“Francis Bunker, at your service, Baron.”

“You are noble?” queried the Baron a little anxiously, for his prejudices on this point were strong.

“According to your standard I believe I may say so. That’s to say, my family have borne arms for two hundred odd generations; twenty-five per cent of them have died of good living; and the most malicious have never accused us of brains. I myself may not be very typical, but I assure you it isn’t my ancestors’ fault.”

The latter part of this explanation entirely puzzled the Baron. The first statement, though eminently satisfactory, was also a little bewildering.

“Two hondred generations?” he asked, courteously. “Zat is a vary old family. All bore arms you say, Mistair Bonker?”

“All,” replied Mr Bunker, gravely. “The first few bore tails as well.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed the Baron. “You are a fonny man I pairceive, vat you call clown, yes?”

“What my friends call clown, and I call wit,” Mr Bunker corrected.

“Vit! Ha, ha, ha!” roared the Baron, whose mind [pg 71] was now in an El Dorado of humour when jokes grew like daisies. His loneliness had disappeared as if by magic; as course succeeded course his contentment showed itself in a perpetually beaming smile: he ceased to worry even about his friend’s pedigree, convinced in his mind that manners so delightful and distinguished could only result from repeated quarterings and unoccupied forefathers. Yet by the time dessert arrived and he had again returned to his port, he began to feel an extreme curiosity to know more concerning Mr Bunker. He himself had volunteered a large quantity of miscellaneous information: about Bavaria, its customs and its people, more especially the habits and history of the Blitzenberg family; about himself, his parentage and education; all about his family ghost, his official position as hereditary carpet-beater to the Bavarian Court, and many other things equally entertaining and instructive. Mr Bunker, for his part, had so far confined his confidences to his name.

“My dear Bonker,” said the Baron at last—he had become quite familiar by this time—“vat make you in London? I fear you are bird of passage. Do you stay long?”

Mr Bunker cracked a nut, looking very serious; then he leant on one elbow, glanced up at the ceiling pensively, and sighed.

“I hope I do not ask vat I should not,” the Baron interposed, courteously.

“My dear Baron, ask what you like,” replied Mr Bunker. “In a city full of strangers, or of friends who [pg 72] have forgotten me, you alone have my confidence. My story is a common one of youthful folly and present repentance, but such as it is, you are welcome to it.”

The Baron gulped down half a glass of port and leaned forward sympathetically.

“My father,” Mr Bunker continued with an air of half-sad reminiscence, “is one of the largest landowners and the head of one of the most ancient families in the north of England. I was his eldest son and heir. I am still, I have every reason to believe, his eldest son, but my heirship, I regret to say, is more doubtful. I spent a prodigal youth and a larger sum of money than my poor father approved of. He was a strict though a kind parent, and for the good of my health and the replenishment of the family coffers, which had been sadly drained by my extravagance, he sent me abroad. There I have led a roving life for the last six years, and at last, my wild oats sown, reaped, and gathered in (and a well-filled stackyard they made, I can assure you), I decided to return to England and become an ornament to respectable society. Like you, I arrived in London to-day, but only to find to my disgust that my family have gone to winter in Egypt. So you see that at present I am like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a rock and waiting, with what patience I can muster, for a boat to take me off.”

“You mean,” inquired the Baron, anxiously, “that you vish to go to Egypt at vonce?”

“I had thought of it; though there is a difficulty in the way, I admit.”

“You vill not stay zen here?” [pg 73] “My dear Baron, why should I? I have neither friends nor——”

He stopped abruptly.

“I do not like to zink I shall lose your company so soon.”

“I admit,” allowed Mr Bunker, “that this fortunate meeting tempts me to stay.”

“Vy not?” said the Baron, cordially. “Can your fader not vait to see you?”

“I hardly think he will worry about me, I confess.”

“Zen stay, my goot Bonker!”

“Unfortunately there is the same difficulty as stands in the way of my going to Egypt.”

“And may I inquire vat zat is?”

“To tell you the truth,” replied Mr Bunker, with an air of reluctant candour, “my funds are rather low. I had trusted to finding my father at home, but as he isn’t, why——” he shrugged his shoulders and threw himself back in his chair.

The Baron seemed struck with an idea which he hesitated to express.

“Shall we smoke?” his friend suggested.

“Vaiter!” cried the Baron, “bring here two best cigars and two coffee!”

“A liqueur, Baron?”

“Ach, yah. Vat for you?”

“A liqueur brandy suggests itself.”

“Vaiter! and two brandy.”

“And now,” said the Baron, “I haf an idea, Bonker.”