Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 118, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1916 — THE DUKE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE DUKE

By VIOLA TREHERNE ADAMS.

It was nothing to be a duke in Mountphalia, Ned Vernon told Miss Hazel Bridges the first time he was introduced to her, and he begged her not to be awed at the pretentious title. ‘"Call me Mr. Vernon, plain American that.” he pleaded, with a laugh. •‘Or better —Ned." Hazel flushed at the idea of such familiarity. She could not be on her dignity, however, with the bright spirit at her side, ingenuous, a sham hater, a beauty lover —and he showed it on the occasion vividly—who quite won her heart. “You see,” explained Ned, “my father did some rare diplomatic work for the prince of the little Bavarian kingdom here and he was given a dukedom—all but the ‘dom.’ Duke he was, but no perquisites or property. He nearly starved and when he died he left me a hollow title. It hangs to me with the students here —‘Duke Edward.’ I'm glad I can leave it and the memory behind me. I've made enough to educate myself and get back to real civilization. I suppose you’ll be going home to the United States, too, after this term. If you ever meet me on American soil, promise that you won’t trail in the royal highnesß feature!” Hazel promised, with her happy mirthful smile, little dreaming that within two months war would leap

forth from the shadows and drive them like fugitives from the peaceful burg where he was studying engineering and she music. It was amid the first clangor of arms that Ned Vernon said: “I love you!” It was when alarm bells announcing invasion were hoarsely warning the people, that they were married, in haste —never to repent at leisure, however. It was to the dread eeho of distant cannon that they caught the last train for Paris. It was at the gay capital that the sour-visaged, crabbed-souled preceptress, Madame Roscoff, left them, feeling it her duty to cable to the humble little village of Merton, nestling among the peaceful hills of Vermont, to plain, honest John Bridges, Hazel’s father, the brief words: “Your daughter has married a duke and is on her way home with him?” — John Bridges was a wealthy man. He and his wife lived in a handsome mansion. They had moved from Summerdale, fifty miles distant, never telling Hazel, anticipating a pleasant surprise for her when she came home. When John Bridges read the cablegram Mrs. Bridges fainted dead away. “Married to a duke!” gasped her husband. “I never thought a daughter of mine would disgrace me by taking a foreign noodle head for a husband.” Mrs, Bridges wept, declared her heart was broken. She had read in the newspapers about “titled misery” until she had created a positive bugbear in her mind.

Her husband was grumpy and restless for a day or two, then savage and wrathful. He brightened up at the end of the week, coming into the elegantly furnished parlor, to which he had not yet become accustomed. “Nancy,” he announced, with a grim chuckle, “I’ve found a way out.” “Out of what?” questioned his wife desolately, for 6he was still mourning over her daughter’s mesalliance, as she called it. “That duke,” responded Mr. Bridges. His wife groaned. She wrung her hands. "You know, and I know, and everybody knows that these foreign princes never marry except for. money,” continued Mr. Bridges. “Yes, John," assented his wife woefully. “I’ve got some money," pursued her husband, “but—he isn’t going to get it! I’ve planned it all out I’m going to put that duke through a course of sprouts that will either wear him out and send hixj snooping back to ‘Yurrup’ post haste, or make a man of him,” "•' • —— “But if he deserts our darling!” “She’s brought it on herself, hain’t she?" sniffed Bridges, "and good ridance to bad rubbish, hey? Get ready to move; Nancy." “Get ready to move!" repeated Mrs. Bridges, marveling. “Bight away,”

“Where to, for goodness sake?" “Back to the old home.” “Why, John!” “Not a word now,” directed Bridges, with a decisive wave of his hand. “Can’t you see through a millstone with a hole in it? I’m poor, don’t you understand —poor! poor! poor!'* and there was a vengeful, gloating satisfaction in the emphatf c repetition. “I —I think I see, John,” faltered Mrs. Pridges, “but, oh! what a tearing up.” “Worth it, if it scares away this scamp of a duke!” declared her husband. “Oh! I’ll make it real to the public—to Hazel and tips precious sprig of nobility of hers. Poverty, howling, grinding pauperism! Now then —no sentiment. We’ll furnish up the old house Just as bare and uninviting as it can be done. As to the meals, no fatted calf, wife! Give_ his ludship a genuine workhouse diet. It will take some of the grand notions out of him.” So the plot was laid. The new neighbors of the Bridges pitied their “sud-j den fall from affluence.” The old oneSj back at the home town commiserated them for making a costly splurge only to come back to even more humble and restricted surroundings than before. And one day bride and groom arrived. At the sight of the sunny nappy face of winsome Hazel, the mother broke down and the father’s heart softened. To the duke, however, the mother was distant and the father fairly uncivil. “Duke Edward,” however, broke the ice of severity, despite his gloomy ception. He praised the meals, he was like some high chevalier in his respect for Mrs. Bridges, in his love for Hazel. Early the next morning he strolled outside to join his father-in-law on the porch. “Mr. Bridges,” he began in his brisk animated way, “Hazel was telling me you had over two hundred acres in your place here.” “Oh, yes, such as it is,” growled the old man. “Not much good without capital to work it.” “Why,” enthused Duke Edward, “there you are mistaken! I’m up on soils and you’ve got the right sort here.”

“What do you know about It?” queried Mr. Bridges charily. * “Oh, my principal course at one time was scientific farming. It would Just delight me to join you in good hard work, making this wilderness blossom like the rose. Say, won’t you let me try it—father’” John Bridges winced. Then the barrier broke, dowm. The duke had disappeared. The hopeful, helpful real man had become manifest. “Heard your daughter had married a prince or something like that, Bridges,” observed a neighbor to her father a few days later. “That’s right,” assented the proud father-in-law —“a prince of a good fellow ! ” Then he went home with a happy smile on his face. He started whistling as he saw his son-in-law out in the fields in true farmer garb, hoe in hand, Hazel fluttering near by. “I say, son,” he called out as he passed them by, “we’re going to move back to our real home tomorrow,” and then he told where It was and why they had left it. “You’re the right sort!" declared the bluff old fellow heartily, “and I reckon smart enough to hold a good business if I start you in at it with the capital, hey? Call the scientific farming quits and let’s all settle down to enjoy lifq together!” (Copyright, 1916, by W. G. Chapman.)

Savage and Wrathful.