He awaited his American visitor in the chill confines of his study, which he liked to keep unheated, despite his good wife’s nagging about the utility of the fireplace, in order to keep his mind sharp. He was beginning to feel weary of mind, something he had never considered possible as a young man. He had never been thought vain, even by his enemies, yet he looked nervously into a folding pocket mirror the housekeeper had thoughtfully left on his desk.

Your cheeks are sinking man. It must have been that time in the tropics. Your diplomatic service is coming back to haunt you in more ways than one. Fevers in the night—keep that from dear Anne—and now some nosey American newspaperman wanting to know about that brute Burton.

He rose and paced the study, wishing he could have ridden that Arabian mare this morning. He was not feeling up to it though. Strolling along as the trainers put his stable through their paces was his limit these days.

Ah, spring. Perhaps come spring your strength shall return, at least enough of it…

Herford’s deep voice broke through his musings, “Lord Blunt, Mister Bing, the American…”

“Yes, yes Herford, send him in.”

He had been expecting some cigar puffing overfed capitalist apologist stuffed into a crude vest. Instead he was confronted by a mild-mannered man with perfect features, completely average in size—a bit athletic perhaps—with keen eyes, blonde hair and an even smile. He knew right off that this man was no mere hack. He would have mistaken him for a lettered Austrian if he had not known better. The man approached with a briefcase and a half bow. “Sir Blunt, thank you for agreeing to this meeting. I have quite enjoyed your verse and empathize with your political sacrifices.”

The voice was a little large for the man, but not loud or rude, just deeper than one would expect.

This man has the better of me.

“I am flattered Mister Bing. Please, be seated, and tell me something of yourself.”

The man’s voice had no discernible accent. His age was likewise hard to factor. He had the smooth slightly creased skin of a man in his late twenties. He was tanned though, and a blonde such as him who took the sun would be more weathered for his age, yet he could be no younger. Bing showed the easy courtesy and spoke with the bearing of a man in his middle years, perhaps fifty.

Wilfrid was so baffled by his appearance and demeanor he did not quite hear the first few sentences. But he was getting on in years, still proud, and not wanting to seem rude, so he pretended to have heard the first part of the man’s introduction, and now sat back to gather the rest, hopefully enabling him to cast around within for an answer to this cipher of a man.

“…Later Day Saints. The hierarchy of my church has employed me to investigate the doings of Captain Richard Francis Burton. We are particularly interested in his time in South America which remains largely unaccounted for. You Sir, I was led to understand, had dealings with Sir Richard there.”

“Why yes Mister Bing, I knew Sir Richard and his darling wife, and was once also well-acquainted with his activities elsewhere, as we were both members of the Diplomatic Corp, although I was just an attaché and did not serve so long as Sir Richard—he made an impression though. One must give the man that.”

The American pressed on, just like his bustling nation, “What was he like, as a man?”

“I understand that Sir Richard did write of your church and its people during that brief span of history when you were also a nation. I do not know of your church’s opinion of his work. In the interest of balance I will, understanding that Sir Richard was a great man in his own—odd—right, endeavor not to paint too biased a picture.

“Sir, I did not like him. I, in fact, feared him and found his company to be dreadful in the main—and his treatment of his darling deluded wife Isabel—rest her kind yearning soul—was reprehensible.”

“He was not, should I say, cruel, or mean. To her only he did not present his barbed personality—and also to the Queen I suppose. It was not as if he were some brute of the lower orders who laid hand to wife. No, but he was deep in his cups—not a drunkard—something darker. And he had other vile pursuits. He neglected the poor woman who comforted and worshipped him. In her he was blessed. So the Lord did see something in the Captain that I, in my youthfully critical eye, surely missed. Perhaps I was jealous in some ways. But also having a devoted and beautiful wife who shared my travels I could not understand his neglect of Isabel.”

Mister Bing nodded and set his pencil to making some copious shorthand notes, which, according to the strokes were not English.

Mister Bing then looked up with a wry smile and blinked with both of his clear blue eyes. “I have it word-for-word Sir Blunt. I am utilizing a form of notation developed by the father of my church—something of a trade secret I should say. I will translate your words back to my superiors faithfully in English—or at least our version of English,” he said with a smile.

A kind young fellow he is. Offer him some brandy—“Herford, some brandy for Mister Bing and myself please. It is early I know, and I trust you shall not inform upon me to my dear wife.”

Bing nodded gratefully with a twinkle in his eye as Herford half-filled their glasses. The opportunity for generosity tinged with a friendly swipe at that young arrogant nation was too much to pass up. “Now now Herford, Mister Bing is an American after all—fill her up!”

Bing grinned the wider and offered a toast, “To you Sir Blunt, and your health, and may Nineteen-twenty-two be a smashing good year.”

“Yes, hear, hear.”

“And may the sun never set—be kind—on...humankind.”

Mister Bing gave a reserved “Hear, hear,” and drank his fill before continuing in a fine spirit of Inquiry, Wilfrid thought.

“I am much interested in your time with Captain Burton in Buenos Aires. I was of the impression that he did not care for the place.”

“None of us cared for the place. It was dank and foul. At least it was not pretentious. The Captain was finishing his convalescence which he actually undertook as a working matter in route, spending some time at the front during that hideous conflict. It touched him, as had his time in the tropics, but particularly so in the growing darkness of his mood. He claimed not to have seen any of the atrocious sights and did seem to disparage the losing side in favor of our allies. However, he harbored an admiration in his dark part for those poor souls. Sir Richard had a deep dark well within him. Only Isabel possessed the rope and bucket to plumb it and find that hidden soul. He was in many ways a reflection of the terrible places he had been, but had gone to willingly I might add.”

Bing continued with his dot circle and slash notations, took another swig of Brandy, and continued, “Sir, what was Richard Burton like, specifically in Buenos Ares, his state-of-mind I suppose?”

Wilfrid nodded with some embarrassment at his drifting off into thought. Bing had continued to notate, perhaps to amuse himself. He smiled kindly as Wilfrid continued, “Three times I happened to cross his path in Buenos Aires. He seemed to me then almost a broken man. His appearance suggested a released convict, with close cut hair, rusty black coat and rumpled silk stock [neck cloth]. He was habitually destitute of collar. His immense chest and muscular frame made this costume all the more hideous. He looked a highway man at best.

“His continence always was dark, cruel and treacherous. The scar accented it and he maintained the forked beard, I used to think, to play the devil himself in his own malevolent

play. We spent the first day of our meeting drinking into the long hours. I asked, as courtesy demanded, of his loving wife, and he responded with a boastful rant about his ability to dominate her through his gaze alone. I thought him mad, behaving as if he were a sorcerer keeping his wife at the loom for him back in London even as he tramped about the wilds.

“At length, he became dark and deep in his cups and staggered off into the night with revolver in hand. He had something of the American in him—your western highwaymen I mean.

“Our duties later brought us together around a dinner table at a well-to-do hotel…I apologize. It has been decades, the name is lost. Captain Burton sat as translator at a table occupied by some wealthy Italian immigrants whose sloop had been appropriated as a war vessel by the Argentine military. They had little recompense but accommodations and promises of land grants in conquered Paraguayan territory. Two of these men in particular struck up a friendship with him. He was always one for the tales of lost cities and gold fields.

“These fellows went in for his wild ideas as he sat beast-like with his open shirt and wild animal eyes. His color was returning and I had never seen him so frightful as that night when he reveled the captain and mate of the Italian sloop with tales of Eldorado, even in the presence of the beautiful and recently widowed wife of the expedition’s leader, a minor Don of Naples I think.

“Talk of such treasure hunts before the widow was doubly offensive, as the tale was told that her husband and his business partner—some Tyrollian rogue—had only recently perished at the hands of bandits on the pampas, where they had gone to trade for horses. Only the Don’s body had been recovered, so the Tyrollian was suspected. Needless to say the captain and his mate were not then inclined to go in for any like foray into the wilds. This simply spurred Burton on in his tales, which he had the ability to relate in their own native tongue, not sparring the widow her sorrow in the least.”

“Later on however, he found two Americans inclined to listen to his wild tales, and offer many of their own misdeeds for his appraisal as well.”

Bing scratched away as Wilfrid had a sip of brandy, and then asked, “The men, what of their appearance?”

You have not lost your verve man. You can still spin a yarn as the Americans say.

He forged on, “I happened into a waterfront cantina, seeking news of a packet ship, which would not arrive for months, when I happened upon Burton. Soon a brutal American—apparently the man servant of a well-heeled American, who had somehow acquired the company of the Don’s widow—interrupted us most rudely and I left. In any event the young widow was well-cared after by the American who left her with an endowment. You see, Burton had convinced this man—or at least he told me—to accompany him on his wild scheme to explore the pampas, Patagonia and the Andes.”

Bing became pointed, “What of the American?”

“Oh, I forget the name, but he was big as Americans tend to be, with light hair. His profession was not spoken of but he was lettered and very courteous. I suspected him to be a rail man or some frontier business sort, for his man-servant was a figure even more sinister than Sir Richard—and did they get on famously, indulging in opium, some pampas weed they smoked and whiskey brought in by an American smuggler. Somehow I knew that Captain Burton and this evil Confederate—as he seemed with his long coat and many pistols—would not end up dead upon the pampas.”

He stopped for a sip and continued, “You know Mister Bing, I have often wondered what became of those men, for Captain Burton came out of the wilds alone it is said, in the Andes as he had predicted. Perhaps they found their Eldorado and remained to mine it as he carried on in his wandering way until he finally came home to She who labored so tirelessly to win for him another post.

“If the man had not been so imbued with extreme brutality and had not—by his own words—committed every vice known to man, theirs’ could have made a wonderful love song. But then that would not have pleased the man, lest it been plucked on some shrill sitar by a gypsy… Hmm, I digress…”

He senses the end of the tale and sits patiently.

“I must admit that Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton was quite a man and that I stood in envy of his prowess, as bitter that he squandered it upon odd pursuits as that the Good Lord had denied it to me.”

He raised the glass to clang faintly against the raised glass of the ever-courteous American Mister Bing, who seemed to predict his every concern. “To Sir Richard Burton, a hard haunted man he was.”

Mister Bing’s voice seemed deeper than before, “Hear, hear.”

What a fine young chap he is, and an American at that.