“Yes. I bought it six months ago. I learnt to drive in France, and, as soon as I heard of the new American engine, I—er—couldn’t rest until I had tried it.”
He was on the point of saying something wholly different, but managed to twist the second half of the sentence in time. What would Miss Vanrenen have thought had he continued: “I sent my chauffeur to England, and, on receipt of his report, I had this car shipped within a week?”
There are problems too deep for speculation when a man is guiding a ton of palpitating metal along a hedge-lined road at forty miles an hour. This was one.
Cynthia, knowing nothing of any “new American engine,” would die rather than confess her ignorance. Moreover, she was pondering a problem of her own. If it was not his master’s car he might be open to a bargain.
“Simmonds is an old friend of yours, I suppose?” she said.
“Yes, I have known him some years. We were in South Africa together.”
“In the war, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“How dreadful! Have you ever killed anybody?”
“Not with petrol, I am happy to state.”
There was an eloquent pause. Cynthia examinedhis reply, and discovered that it covered a good deal of ground. Perhaps, too, it conveyed the least little bit of a snub. Hence, her tone stiffened perceptibly.
“I mentioned Simmonds,” she explained, “because I think my father might arrange—to the satisfaction of all parties, of course—that you should carry through this present tour, while Simmonds would come into our service when we return to London.”
Medenham laughed. In its way, the compliment was graceful and well meant, but the utter absurdity of his position was now thrust upon him with overwhelming force.
“I am very much obliged to you, Miss Vanrenen,” he said, venturing to look once more into those alluring eyes, so shy, so daring, so divinely wise and childishly candid. “If circumstances permitted, there is nothing I would like better than to take you through this Paradise of a June England; but it is quite impossible. Simmonds must bring his car to Bristol, as I positively cannot be absent from town longer than three days.”
Cynthia did not pout. She nodded appreciation of the weighty if undescribed business that called Fitzroy and his Mercury back to London, but in her heart she mused on the strangeness of things, and wondered if this smiling land produced many chauffeurs who lauded it in such phrases.
Up and down Handcross Hill they whirred, treating that respectable eminence as if it were a snowbump in the path of a flying toboggan. Medenham had roamed the South Downs as a boy, and he was able now to point out Chanctonbury Ring, the Devil’s Dyke, Ditchling Beacon, and the rest of the round-shouldered giants that guard the Weald. In the mellow light of a superlatively fine afternoon the Downs wore their gayest raiment of blue and purple, red and green—decked, too, with ribands of white roads and ruffs of rose-laden hedges.
Cynthia forgot many times, and he hardly ever remembered, that he was a chauffeur, and the miles, too, were disregarded until the sea sparkled in their eyes as they emerged from the great gap which the Devil forebore to use when he planned to swamp a land of churches by cutting the famous dyke.
Then the girl awoke from a day-dream, and the car was stopped on the pretense that this marvelous landscape must be viewed in silence and at rest. She rejoined Mrs. Devar, and began instantly to expatiate on the beauties of Sussex, so Medenham ran slowly down the hill through Patcham and Preston into Brighton.
And there, sitting in the wide porch of the Hotel Metropole, was a slim, handsome Frenchman, who sprang up with all the vivacity of his race when the Mercury drew up at the foot of the steps, dusty after its long run, but circumspect as though it had just quitted the garage.
“Mrs. Devar, Miss Vanrenen! what a delightful surprise!” cried the stranger with an accompanimentof wide smiles and hat flourishing. “Who would have thought of meeting you here?Voyez,donc, I was moping in solitude when suddenly the sky opens and you appear.”
“Deæ ex machinâ, in fact, Monsieur Marigny,” said Cynthia, shaking hands with this overjoyed gentleman.
Mrs. Devar, not understanding, cackled loudly.
“We’ve had a lovely run from town, Count Edouard,” she gushed, “and it is just too awfully nice of you to be in Brighton. Now,don’tsay you have made all sorts of engagements for the evening.”
“Such as they are they go by the board, dear lady,” said the gallant Count, who had good teeth, and showed them in a succession of grins.
“Ten to-morrow morning, Fitzroy,” said Cynthia, turning on the steps as she was about to enter the hotel. He lifted his cap.
“The car will be ready, Miss Vanrenen,” said he.
He got down, and scowled, yes, actually scowled, at a porter who was hauling too strongly at the straps and buckles of the dust-covered trunks.
“Damage the car’s paint and I’ll raise bigger blisters on yours,” was what he said to the man. But his thoughts were of Count Edouard Marigny, and, like the people’s discussion of the Derby, they took the form of question and answer.
“When is a coincidence not a coincidence?” he asked himself.
“When it is prearranged,” was the answer.
Then he drove round to the yard at the rear of the hotel, where Dale awaited him, for Medenham would intrust the cleaning of the car to no other hands.
“You’ve booked my room at the Grand Hotel and taken my bag there?” he inquired.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Make these people give you the key when the door is locked for the night, and bring the car to my hotel at nine o’clock.”
He hurried away, and Dale looked after him.
“Something must ha’ worried his lordship,” said the man. “First time I’ve ever seen him in a bad temper. An’ what about Eyot? Three to one the paper says. P’raps he’ll think of it in the morning.”
Not until he was dressing, and the contents of his pockets were spread on a table, did Medenham remember Dale’s commission. It was quite true, as he told Mrs. Devar, that he had backed Vendetta for a small stake on his own account. But that was an afterthought, and the bet was made with another bookmaker at reduced odds. Altogether, including the few sovereigns in his possession at the beginning of the day, he counted nearly fifty pounds in gold, an exceptionally large amount to be carried in England, where considerations of weight alone render banknotes preferable.
He slipped Dale’s money into an envelope, and took thirty pounds to be exchanged for notes by the hotel’s cashier. At the same time he wrote a telegram to his father, destroying two drafts before he evolved something that left his story untold while quieting any scruples as to lack of candor. It was not that the Earl would resent his unexpected disappearance after nearly four years’ absence from home, because father and son had met in South Africa during thewar, and were together in Cannes and Paris subsequently. His difficulty was to explain this freak journey satisfactorily. The Earl of Fairholme held feudal views anent the place occupied in the world by the British aristocracy. His own hot youth was crowded with episodes that Medenham might regard with disdain, yet he would be shocked out of his well-fed cynicism by the notion that his son was gallivanting round the country as the chauffeur of an unconventional American girl and a middle-aged harpy like Mrs. Devar.
So Medenham’s message was non-committal.
Aunt Susan was unable to come Epsom to-day. Have taken car to Brighton, and Bournemouth. Home Saturday, perhaps earlier.George.
Aunt Susan was unable to come Epsom to-day. Have taken car to Brighton, and Bournemouth. Home Saturday, perhaps earlier.George.
Of course, he meant to fill in details verbally. It was possible in conversation to impart a jesting turn to an adventure which would be unconvincing and ambiguous in the bald phrases of a telegram.
Then he dined, filled a cigarette case from the box of Salonikas which Tomkinson had not omitted to pack with his clothes, and strolled out, bare-headed, to enrich Dale. He could trust his man absolutely, and was quite sure that the Mercury would then be in the drying stage after a thorough cleaning. Thus far he was justified, but he had not counted on the pride of the born mechanic. Though the car was housed for the night, when he enteredthe garage the hood was off, and Dale was annoying two brothers of the craft by explaining the superiority ofhisengine to every other type of engine.
All three were bent over the cylinders, and Dale was saying:
“Just take a squint at them valves, will you?—ever seen anything like ’em before? Of course you haven’t. Don’t look like valves, eh? Can you break ’em, can you warp ’em, can you pit ’em? D’ye twig how the mixture reaches the cylinder? None of your shoulders or kinks to choke it up—is there?—and the same with the exhaust. Would you ever have a mushroom valve again after you’ve once cast your peepers over this arrangement? Now, if I took up areonotting—ifIwanted to fly the Channel——”
He stopped abruptly, having seen his master standing in the open doorway.
“By gad, Dale,” cried Medenham, “I have never heard your tongue wagging in that fashion before.”
Dale was flustered.
“Beg pardon, my lord, but I was only——” he began.
“Only using the cut-out, I fancy. Come here, I want you a minute.”
The other chauffeurs suddenly discovered that they had urgent business elsewhere. They vanished. Dale thought it necessary to explain.
“One of them chaps has a new French car, my lord, and he was blowing so loudly about it that I had to take him down a peg or two.”
Medenham grew interested. Like every keen motorist, he could “talk shop” at all times.
“What sort of car?”
“A 59 Du Vallon, my lord. It is the first of its class in England, and I rather think his guv’nor is running it on show.”
“Indeed. Who ishe?”
“A count Somebody-or-other, my lord. I did hear his name——”
“Not Count Edouard Marigny?” said Medenham, with a sharp emphasis that startled Dale.
“That’s him, my lord. I hope I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Medenham, early in life, had formed the habit of not expressing his feelings when really vexed, and it stood him in good stead now. Dale’s blunder was almost irreparable, yet he could not find it in his heart to blame the man for being an enthusiast.
“You have put me in a deuce of a fix,” he said at last. “This Frenchman is acquainted with Miss Vanrenen. He knows she is here, and will probably see her off in the morning. If his chauffeur recognizes the car he will be sure to speak of it. That gives the whole show away.”
“I’m very sorry, my lord——”
“Dash it all, there you go again. But it is largely my own fault. I ought to have warned you, though I little expected this sort of a mix-up. In future, Dale, while this trip lasts, you must forget my title. Look here, I have brought you your winnings overEyot—can’t you rig up some sort of a yarn that I am a sporting friend of yours, and that you were just trying to be funny when you addressed me as ‘my lord’? If you have an opportunity, tell Count Marigny’s man that your job is taken temporarily by a driver named Fitzroy. By the way, is the chauffeur a Frenchman, too?”
“No, my l——.” Dale caught Medenham’s eye, a very cold eye at that instant. “No, sir. He’s just a fitter from the London agency.”
“Well, we must trust to luck. He may not remember me in my chauffeur’s kit, which is beastly uncomfortable, by the way. I must get you a summer rig. Here is your money—five to one I took. Don’t lose sight of those two fellows, and spend this half sovereign on them. If you can fill that chap with beer to-night he may have a head in the morning that will keep him in bed too late to cause any mischief. When we meet in Bournemouth and Bristol, say nothing to anybody about either the car or me.”
Dale was a model of sobriety, but the excitement of “fives” when he looked for “threes” was too much for him.
“I’ll tank him all right, my l——, I mean, sir,” he vowed cheerfully.
Medenham lit a new cigarette and strolled out of the yard.
From the corner of his eye he saw Marigny’s helper looking at him. Without undue exaggeration,he craned his neck, rounded his shoulders, and carried himself with the listless air of a Piccadilly idler. He reflected, too, that a bare-headed man in evening dress would not readily be identified with a leather-coated chauffeur, and Dale, he hoped, was sufficiently endowed with mother wit to frame a story plausible enough to account for his unforeseen appearance. On the whole, the position was not so bad as it seemed in that first moment when the owner of the 59 Du Vallon was revealed in the handsome Count. In any event, what did it matter if his harmless subterfuge were revealed? The girl would surely laugh, while Mrs. Devar would squirm. So now for a turn along the front, and then to bed.
It was a perfect June evening, the fitting sequel to a day of unbroken sunshine. A marvelous amber light hovered beyond the level line of the sea to the west; an exquisite blue suffused the horizon from south to east, deepening from sapphire to ultramarine as it blended with the soft shadows of a summer’s night. He found himself comparing the sky’s southeasterly tint with the azure depths of Cynthia Vanrenen’s eyes, but he shook off that fantasy quickly, crossed the roadway and promenade, and, propping himself against the railings, turned a resolute back on romance. He did not gain a great deal by this maneuver, since his next active thought was centered in a species of quest for the particular window among all those storeyed rows through whichCynthia Vanrenen might even then be gazing at the shining ocean.
He looked at his watch. Half-past nine.
“I am behaving like a blithering idiot,” he told himself. “Miss Vanrenen and her friends are either on the pier listening to the band, or sitting over their coffee in the glass cage behind there. I’ll wire Simmonds in the morning to hurry up.”
A man descended the steps of the hotel and walked straight across King’s Road. A light gray overcoat, thrown wide on his shoulders, gave a lavish display of frilled shirt, and a gray Homburg hat was set rakishly on one side of his head. In the half light Medenham at once discerned the regular, waxen-skinned features of Count Marigny, and during the next few seconds it really seemed as if the Frenchman were making directly for him. But another man, short, rotund, very erect of figure, and strutting in gait, came from the interior of a “shelter” that stood a little to the right of Medenham’s position on the rails.
“Hello, Marigny,” said he jauntily.
The Count looked back towards the hotel. His tubby acquaintance chuckled. The effort squeezed an eyeglass out of his right eye.
“Aie pas peur, mon vieux!” cried he in very colloquial French. “My mother sent a note to say that the fair Cynthia has retired to her room to write letters. I have been waiting here ten minutes.”
Now, it chanced that Medenham’s widespread touringin France had rubbed up his knowledge of the language. It is ever the ear that needs training more than the tongue, and in all likelihood he would not have caught the exact meaning of the words were it not for the hap of recent familiarity with the accents of all sorts and conditions of French-speaking folk.
“Jimmy Devar!” he breathed, and his amazement lost him Marigny’s muttered answer.
But he heard Devar’s confident outburst as the two walked off together in the direction of the West Pier.
“You are growing positively nervous, my dear Edouard. And why? The affair arranges itself admirably. I shall be always on hand, ready to turn up exactly at the right moment. What the deuce, this is the luck of a lifetime....”
The squeaky, high-pitched voice—a masculine variant of Mrs. Devar’s ultra-fashionable intonation—died away midst the chatter and laughter of other promenaders. Medenham’s first impulse was to follow and listen, since Devar had yielded to the common delusion of imagining that none except his companion on the sea-front that night understood a foreign language. But he swept the notion aside ere it had well presented itself as a means of solving an astounding puzzle.
“No, dash it all, I’m not a private detective,” he muttered angrily. “Why should I interfere? Confound Simmonds, and d—n that railway van! Ihave a good mind to hand the car over to Dale in the morning and return to town by the first train.”
If he really meant what he said he ought to have gone back to his hotel, played billiards for an hour, and sought his bedroom with an easy conscience. He was debating the point when the conceit intruded itself that Cynthia’s pretty head was at that moment bent over a writing-table in a certain well-lighted corner apartment of the second floor, so he compromised with his half-formed intent, whisked round to face the sea again, and lighted another cigarette from the glowing end of its predecessor. Some part of his unaccountable irritation took wings with the cloud of smoke.
“Blessed if I can tell why I should worry,” he communed. “Never saw the girl before to-day ... shall never see her again if I put Dale in charge.... Her father must be a special sort of fool, though, to trust her to the care of the Devar woman.... What was it that rotter said?—‘The affair arranges itself admirably.’ And he would be ‘always on hand.’ What is arranging itself?... And why should Jimmy Devar be ready, if need be, ‘to turn up exactly at the right moment?’ I suppose the answer to the first bit of the acrostic is simple enough. Cynthia Vanrenen is to become the Countess Marigny, and the Devar gang stands in on the cash proceeds. Oh, a nice scheme! This Frenchman is posted as to the tour. By the most curious of coincidences he will reappear at Bournemouth,or Bristol, or in the Wye Valley. What more natural than a day’s run in company?... Ah, I’ve got it! Jimmy is to come along when Marigny thinks that Cynthia will take a seat in the 59 Du Vallon for a change—just to try the new French car.... By gad, I shall have a word to say there.... Steady, now, George Augustus! Woa, my boy; keep a tight hand on the reins. Why in thunder should you concern yourself with the wretched business, anyhow?”
It was a marvelously still night. Beneath him, on an asphalted path nearly level with the stone-strewed beach, passed a young couple. The man’s voice came up to him.
“Jones expects to be taken into partnership after this season, and I am pretty certain to be given the management of the woolen department. If that comes off, no more long hours in the shop for you, Lucy, but a nice little house up there on the hill, just as quick as we can find it.”
“Oh, Charlie dear, I shall never be tired then....”
A black arm was suddenly silhouetted across the shoulders of a white blouse, whose wearer received a reassuring hug.
“Let’s reckon up,” said the owner of the arm—“July, August, September—three months, sweetheart....”
Medenham had never given a thought to marrying until his father hinted at the notion during dinnerthe previous evening, and he had laughed at it, being absolutely heart-whole. There was something irresistibly comical then about the Earl’s bland theory that Fairholme House needed a sprightly viscountess, yet now, twenty-four hours later, he could extract no shred of humor from the idyl of a draper’s assistant. It seemed to be a perfectly natural thing that these lovers should talk of mating. Of what else should they whisper on this midsummer’s night, when the gloaming already bore the promise of dawn, and the glory of the sea and sky spread quiet harmonies through the silent air?
Perhaps he sighed as he turned away, but his own evidence on that point would be inconclusive, since the first object his wondering eyes dwelt on was the graceful figure of Cynthia Vanrenen. There was no possibility of error. An arc lamp blazed overhead, and, to make assurance doubly sure, his recognition of Cynthia was obviously duplicated by Cynthia’s recognition of her deputy chauffeur.
In the girl’s case some degree of surprise was justified. It is a truism of social life that far more distinctiveness is attached to the seemingly democratic severity of evening dress than to any other class of masculine garniture. Medenham now looked exactly what he was—a man born and bred in the purple. No one could possibly mistake this well-groomed soldier for Dale or Simmonds. His clever, resourceful face, his erect carriage, the very suggestion of mess uniform conveyed by his clothing, toldof lineage and a career. He might, in sober earnest, have been compelled to earn a living by driving a motor-car, but no freak of fortune could rob him of his birthright as an aristocrat.
Of course, Cynthia was easily first in the effort to recover disturbed wits.
“Like myself, you have been tempted out by this beautiful night, Mr. Fitzroy,” she said.
Then “Mr.” was a concession to his attire; somehow she imagined it would savor of presumption if she addressed him as an inferior. She could not define her mental attitude in words, but her quick intelligence responded to its subtle influence as a mirrored lake records the passing of a breeze. Very dainty and self-possessed she looked as she stood there smiling at him. Her motor dust-coat was utilized as a wrap. Beneath it she wore a white muslin dress of a studied simplicity that, to another woman’s assessing gaze, would reveal its expensiveness. She had tied a veil of delicate lace around her hair and under her chin, and Medenham noted, with a species of awe, that her eyes, so vividly blue in daylight, were now dark as the sky at night.
And he was strangely tongue-tied. He found nothing to say until after a pause that verged on awkwardness. Then he floundered badly.
“I am prepared to vouch for any explanation so long as it brings you here, Miss Vanrenen,” he said.
Cynthia wanted to laugh. It was sufficientlyridiculous to be compelled, as it were, to treat a paid servant as an equal, but it savored of madness to find him verging on the perilous borderland of a flirtation.
“Do you wish, then, to consult me on any matter?” she asked, with American directness.
“I was standing here and thinking of you,” he said. “Perhaps that accounts for your appearance. Since you have visited India you may have heard that the higher Buddhists, when they are anxious that another person shall act according to their desire, remain motionless in front of that person’s residence and concentrate ardent thought on their fixed intent.... Sitting indhurmaon a man, they call it. I suppose the same principle applies to a woman.”
“It follows that you are a higher Buddhist, and that you willed I should come out. Your theory of sitting on the door-mat, is it? wobbles a bit in practice, because I really ran downstairs to tell Mrs. Devar something I had forgotten previously. Not finding her, I decided on a stroll. Instead of crossing the road I walked up to the left a couple of blocks. Then I noticed the pier, and meant to have a look at it before returning to the hotel. Anyhow, you wanted me, Mr. Fitzroy, and here I am. What can I do for you?”
Her tone of light raillery, supplemented by that truly daring adaptation of the method of gaining a cause favored by the esoteric philosophy of theEast, went far to restore Medenham’s wandering faculties.
“I wanted to ask you a few questions, Miss Vanrenen,” he explained.
“Pray do, as they say in Boston.”
But he was not quite himself yet. He noticed that the lights were extinguished in the corner of the second floor.
“Is that your room?” he asked, pointing to it.
“Yes.”
Her air of blank amazement supplied a further tonic.
“Queer thing!” he said. “I thought so. More of the occult, I suppose. But I really wished to speak to you about Mrs. Devar.”
Cynthia was obviously relieved.
“Dear me!” she cried. “You two have taken a violent dislike to each other. You see, Mr. Fitzroy, we Americans are rather pleased than otherwise if a man acts and speaks like a gentleman even though he has to earn a living by hustling an automobile, but your sure-enough British dames exact a kind of servility from a chauffeur that doesn’t seem to fit in with your make-up. Servility is a hard word, but it is the best I can throw on the screen at the moment, and I’m real sorry if I have hurt your feelings by using it.”
Medenham smiled. Each instant his calmer judgment showed more and more clearly that he could not offer any valid excuse for interference in thegirl’s affairs. For all he knew to the contrary, she might be tremulous with delight at the prospect of becoming a French countess; if that were so, the fact that he disapproved of Mrs. Devar’s matchmaking tactics would be received very coldly. Cynthia’s natural interpretation of his allusion to her chaperon offered a means of escape from a difficult position.
“I am greatly obliged by your hint,” he said. “Not that my lack of good manners is of much account, seeing that I am only a stop gap for the courtly Simmonds, but I shall endeavor to profit by it in my next situation.”
“Now you are getting at me,” cried Cynthia, her eyes sparkling somewhat. “Do you know, Mr. Fitzroy, I am inclined to think you are not a chauffeur at all.”
“I assure you there is not a man living who understands my special type of car better,” he protested.
“That isn’t what I mean, so don’t wriggle. You met Simmonds when he was in trouble, and just offered to take his place for a day or so, thereby doing him a good turn—isn’t that the truth?”
“Yes.”
“And you are not in the automobile business?”
“I am, for the time being.”
“Well, I am glad to hear it. I was shy of telling you when we reached the hotel, but you understand, of course, that I pay your expenses during this trip. The arrangement with Simmonds was that my father ante’d for petrol and allowed twelve shillings a dayfor the chauffeur’s meals and lodgings. Is that satisfactory?”
“Quite satisfactory, Miss Vanrenen,” said Medenham, fully alive to the girl’s effective ruse for the re-establishment of matters on a proper footing.
“So you don’t need to worry about Mrs. Devar. In any event, since you refused my offer to hire you for the tour, you will not see a great deal of her,” she went on, a trifle hurriedly.
“There only remains one other point,” he said, trying to help her. “Would you mind giving me Mr. Vanrenen’s address in Paris?”
“He is staying at the Ritz—but why do you want to know that?” she demanded with a sudden lifting of eyebrows, for the hope was strong in her that he might be induced to change his plans so far as the next nine days were concerned.
“A man in my present position ought always to ascertain the whereabouts of millionaires interested in motoring,” he answered promptly. “And now, pardon me for advising you not to walk towards the pier alone.”
“Gracious me! Why not?”
“There is a certain class of boisterous holiday-maker who might annoy you—not by downright ill-behavior, but by exercising a crude humor which is deemed peculiarly suitable to the seaside, though it would be none the less distressing to you.”
“In the States that sort of man gets shot,” she said, and her cheeks glowed with a rush of color.
“Here, on the contrary, he often takes the young lady’s arm and walks off with her,” persisted Medenham.
“I’m going to that pier,” she announced. “Guess you’d better escort me, Mr. Fitzroy.”
“Fate closes every door in my face,” he said sadly. “I cannot go with you—in that direction.”
“Well, of all the odd people!—why not that way, if any other?”
“Because Count Edouard Marigny, the gentleman whose name I could not help overhearing to-day, has just gone there—with another man.”
“Have you a grudge against him, too?”
“I never set eyes on him before six o’clock this evening, but I imagine you would not care to have him see you walking with your chauffeur.”
Cynthia looked up and down the broad sea front, with its thousands of lamps and droves of promenaders.
“At last I am beginning to size up this dear little island,” she said. “I may go with you to a racetrack, I may sit by your side for days in an automobile, I may even eat your luncheon and drink your aunt’s St. Galmier, but I may not ask you to accompany me a hundred yards from my hotel to a pier. Very well, I’ll quit. But before I go, do tell me one thing. Did you really mean to bring your aunt to Epsom to-day?”
“Yes.”
“A mother’s sister sort of aunt—a nice old lady with white hair?”
“One would almost fancy you had met her, Miss Vanrenen.”
“Perhaps I may, some day. Father and I are going to Scotland for a month from the twelfth of August. After that we shall be in the Savoy Hotel about six weeks. Bring her to see me.”
Medenham almost jumped when he heard of the projected visit to the Highlands, but some demon of mischief urged him to say:
“Let’s reckon up. July, August, September—three months——”
He stopped with a jerk. Cynthia, already aware of some vague power she possessed of stirring this man’s emotions, did not fail to detect his air of restraint.
“It isn’t a proposition that calls for such a lot of calculation,” she said sharply. “Good-night, Mr. Fitzroy. I hope you are punctual morning-time. When there is a date to be kept, I’m a regular alarm clock, my father says.”
She sped across the road, and into the hotel. Then Medenham noticed how dark it had become—reminded him of the tropics, he thought—and made for his own caravanserai, while his brain was busy with a number of disturbing but nebulous problems that seemed to be pronounced in character yet singularly devoid of a beginning, a middle, or an end.Indeed, so puzzling and contradictory were they that he soon fell asleep. When he rose at seven o’clock next morning the said problems had vanished. They must have been part and parcel with the glamor of a June night, and a starlit sky, and the blue depths of the sea and of a girl’s eyes, for the wizard sun had dispelled them long ere he awoke. But he did not telegraph to Simmonds.
Dale brought the car to the Grand Hotel in good time, and Medenham ran it some distance along the front before drawing up at the Metropole. By that means he dissipated any undue curiosity that might be experienced by some lounger on the pavement who happened to notice the change of chauffeurs, while he avoided a prolonged scrutiny by the visitors already packed in chairs on both sides of the porch. He kept his face hidden during the luggage strapping process, and professed not to be aware of Cynthia’s presence until she bade him a cheery “Good-morning.”
Of course, Marigny was there, and Mrs. Devar gushed loudly for the benefit of the other people while settling herself comfortably in the tonneau.
“It was awfully devey of you, Count Edouard, to enliven our first evening away from town. No such good fortune awaits us in Bournemouth, I am afraid.”
“If I am to accept that charming reference as applying to myself, I can only say thatmygood fortune has exhausted itself already, madame,” saidthe Frenchman. “When do you return to London?”
“About the end of next week,” put in Cynthia.
“And your father—that delightful Monsieur Vanrenen,” said the Count, breaking into French, “he will join you there?”
“Oh, yes. My father and I are seldom separated a whole fortnight.”
“Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you there. I go to-day to Salisbury—after that, to Hereford and Liverpool.”
“Why, we shall be in Hereford one day soon. What fun if we met again!”
Marigny looked to heaven, or as far in the direction popularly assigned to heaven as the porch of the Metropole would permit. He was framing a suitable speech, but the Mercury shot out into the open road with a noiseless celerity that disconcerted him.
Medenham at once slackened speed and leaned back.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, “but I clean forgot to ask if you were quite ready to start.”
Cynthia laughed.
“Go right ahead, Fitzroy,” she cried. “Guess the Count is pretty mad, anyhow. He was telling us last night that his Du Vallon is the only car that can hit up twenty at the first buzz.”
“Unpardonable rudeness,” murmured Mrs. Devar.
“On the Count’s part?” asked the girl demurely.
“No, of course not—on the part of this chauffeur person.”
“Oh, I like him,” was the candid answer. “He is a chauffeur of moods, but he can make this car hum. He and I had quite a long chat last night after dinner.”
Mrs. Devar sat up quickly.
“After dinner—last night!” she gasped.
“Yes—I ran into him outside the hotel.”
“At what time?”
“About ten o’clock. I came to the lounge, but you had vanished, and the wonderful light on the sea drew me out of doors.”
“My dear Cynthia!”
“Well, go on; that sounds like the beginning of a letter.”
Mrs. Devar suddenly determined not to feel scandalized.
“Ah, well!” she sighed, “one must relax a little when touring, but you Americans have such free and easy manners that we staid Britons are apt to lose our breath occasionally when we hear of something out of the common.”
“From what Fitzroy said when I told him I was going as far as the pier unaccompanied it seems to me that you staid Britons can be freer if not easier,” retorted Miss Vanrenen.
Her friend smiled sourly.
“If he disapproved he was right, I admit,” she purred.
Cynthia withheld any further confidences.
“What a splendid morning!” she said. “England is marvelously attractive on a day like this. And now, where is the map? I didn’t look up our route yesterday evening. But Fitzroy has it. We lunch at Winchester, I know, and there I see my first English Cathedral. Father advised me to leave St. Paul’s until I visit it with him. He says it is the most perfect building in the world architecturally, but that no one would realize it unless the facts were pointed out. When we were in Rome he said that St. Peter’s, grand as it is, is all wrong in construction. The thrust downwards from the dome is false, it seems.”
“Really,” said Mrs. Devar, who had just caught sight of Lady Somebody-or-other at the window of a house in Hove, and hoped that her ladyship’s eyes were sufficiently good to distinguish at least one occupant of the car.
“Yes; and Sir Christopher Wren mixed beams of oak with the stonework of his pillars, too. It gave them strength, he believed, though Michael Angelo had probably never heard of such a thing.”
“You don’t say so.”
The other woman had traveled far on similar conversational counters. They would have failed with Cynthia, but the girl had opened the map, and talk lagged for the moment.
Leaving the coast at Shoreham, Medenham turned the car northward at Bramber, with its stone-roofedcottages gilded with lichen, its tiny gardens gay with flowers, and the ruins of its twelfth-century castle frowning from the crest of an elm-clothed hill. Two miles to the northwest they came upon ancient Steyning, now a sleepy country town, but of greater importance than Bath or Birmingham or Southampton in the days of the Confessor, and redolent of the past by reason of its church, with an early Norman chancel, its houses bearing stone moldings and window mullions of the Elizabethan period, and its quaint street names, such as Dog Lane, Sheep-pen Street, and Chantry Green, where two martyrs were burnt.
Thence the way lay through the leafy wonderland of West Sussex, when the Mercury crept softly through Midhurst and Petersfield into Hampshire, and so to Winchester, where Cynthia, enraptured with the cathedral, used up a whole reel of films, and bought some curios carved out of oak imbedded in the walls when the Conqueror held England in his firm grip.
They lunched at a genuine old coaching-house in the main street, and Medenham persuaded the girl to turn aside from Salisbury in order to pass through the heart of the New Forest. She sat with him in front then, and their talk dealt more with the magnificent scenery than with personal matters until they reached Ringwood, where they halted for tea.
Before alighting at the inn there she asked him where he meant to stay in Bournemouth. He answered the one question by another.
“You put up at the Bath Hotel, I think?” he said.
“Yes. Someone told me it was more like a Florentine picture gallery than a hotel. Is that true?”
“I have not been to Florence, but the picture gallery notion is all right. When I was a youngster I came here often, and my—my people always—well, you see——”
He nibbled his mustache in dismay, for it was hard to keep up a pretense when Cynthia was so near. She ended the sentence for him.
“You came to the Bath Hotel. Why not stay there to-night?”
“I would like it very much, if you have no objection.”
“Just the opposite. But—please forgive me for touching on money matters—the charges may be rather dear. Won’t you let me tell the head waiter to—to include your bill with ours?”
“On the strict condition that you deduct twelve shillings from my account,” he said, stealing a glance at her.
“I shall be quite business-like, I promise.”
She was smiling at the landscape, or at some fancy that took her, perhaps. But it followed that a messenger was sent for Dale to the hostelry where he had booked a room for his master, and that Mrs. Devar, after one stony and indignant glare, whispered to Cynthia in the dining-room:
“Can that man in evening dress, sitting alone near the window, by any possibility be our chauffeur?”
“Yes,” laughed the girl. “That is Fitzroy. Say, doesn’t he look fine and dandy? Don’t you wish he was with us—to order the wine? And, by the way, is there a pier at Bournemouth?”
Mrs. Devar ate her soup in petrified silence. Among the diners were at least two peers and a countess, all of whom she knew slightly; at no other time during the last twenty years would she have missed such an opportunity of impressing the company in general and her companion in particular by waddling from table to table and greeting these acquaintances with shrill volubility.
But to-night she was beginning to be alarmed. Her youthful protégée was carrying democratic training too far; it was quite possible that a request to modify an unconventional freedom of manner where Fitzroy was concerned would meet with a blank refusal. That threatened a real difficulty in the near future, and she was much perturbed by being called on to decide instantly on a definite course of action. Too strong a line might have worse consequences than alaissez faireattitude. As matters stood, the girl was eminently plastic, her naturally gentle disposition inducing respect for the opinions and wishes of an older and more experienced woman, yet there was a fearlessness, a frank candor of thought, inCynthia’s character that awed and perplexed Mrs. Devar, in whom the unending struggle to keep afloat in the swift and relentless torrent of social existence had atrophied every sense save that of self-preservation. An open rupture, such as she feared might take place if she asserted her shadowy authority, was not to be dreamed of. What was to be done? Small wonder, then, that she should tackle her fish vindictively.
“Are you angry because Fitzroy is occupying the same hotel as ourselves?” asked Cynthia at last.
The girl had amused herself by watching the small coteries of stiff and starched Britons scattered throughout the room; she was endeavoring to classify the traveled and the untraveled by varying degrees of frigidity. As it happened, she was wholly wrong in her rough analysis. The Englishman who has wandered over the map is, if anything, more self-contained than his stay-at-home brother. He is often a stranger in his own land, and the dozen most reserved men present that evening were probably known by name and deed throughout the widest bounds of the empire.
But, though eyes and brain were busy, she could not help noticing Mrs. Devar’s taciturn mood. That a born gossip, a retailer of personal reminiscences confined exclusively to “the best people,” should eat stolidly for five consecutive minutes, seemed somewhat of a miracle, and Cynthia, as was her habit, came straight to the point.
Mrs. Devar managed to smile, pouting her lips in wry mockery of the suggestion that a chauffeur’s affairs should cause her any uneasiness whatsoever.
“I was really thinking of our tour,” she lied glibly. “I am so sorry you missed seeing Salisbury Cathedral. Why was the route altered?”
“Because Fitzroy remarked that the cathedral would always remain at Salisbury, whereas a perfect June day in the New Forest does not come once in a blue moon when one really wants it.”
“For a person of his class he appears to say that sort of thing rather well.”
Cynthia’s arched eyebrows were raised a little.
“Why do you invariably insist on the class distinction?” she cried. “I have always been taught that in England the barrier of rank is being broken down more and more every day. Your society is the easiest in the world to enter. You tolerate people in the highest circles who would certainly suffer from cold feet if they showed up too prominently in New York or Philadelphia; isn’t it rather out of fashion to be so exclusive?”
“Our aristocracy has such an assured position that it can afford to unbend,” quoted the other.
“Oh, is that it? I heard my father say the other day that it has often made him tired to see the way in which some of your titled nonentities grovel before a Lithuanian Jew who is a power on the Rand. But unbending is a different thing to groveling, perhaps?”
Mrs. Devar sighed, yet she gave a moment’s scrutiny to a wine-list brought by the head waiter.
“A small bottle of 61, please,” she said in an undertone.
Then she sighed again, deprecating the Vanrenen directness.
“Unfortunately, my dear, few of our set can avoid altogether the worship of the golden calf.”
Cynthia thrust an obstinate chin into the argument.
“People will do things for bread and butter that they would shy at if independent,” she said. “I can understand the calf proposition much more easily than the snobbishness that would forbid a gentleman like Fitzroy from eating a meal in the same apartment as his employers, simply because he earns money by driving an automobile.”
In her earnestness, Cynthia had gone just a little beyond the bounds of fair comment, and Mrs. Devar was quick to seize the advantage thus offered.
“From some points of view, Fitzroy and I are in the same boat,” she said quietly. “Still, I cannot agree that it is snobbish to regard a groom or a coachman as a social inferior. I have been told that there are several broken-down gentlemen driving omnibuses in London, but that is no reason why one should ask one of them to dinner, even though his taste in wine might be beyond dispute.”
Cynthia had already regretted her impulsive outburst. Her vein of romance was imbedded in a rockof good sense, and she took the implied reproof penitently.
“I am afraid my sympathies rather ran away with my manners,” she said. “Please forgive me. I really didn’t mean to charge you with being a snob. The absurdity of the statement carries its own refutation. I spoke in general terms, and I am willing to admit that I was wrong in asking the man to come here to-night. But the incident happened quite naturally. He mentioned the fact that he often stayed in the hotel as a boy——”
“Very probably,” agreed Mrs. Devar cheerfully. “We are all subject to ups and downs. For my part, I was speakingà lachaperon, my sole thought being to safeguard you from the disagreeable busy-bodies who misconstrue one’s motives. And now, let us talk of something more amusing. You see that woman in old rose brocade—she is sitting with a bald-headed man at the third table on your left. Well, that is the Countess of Porthcawl, and the man with her is Roger Ducrot, the banker. Porthcawl is a most complaisant husband. He never comes within a thousand miles of Millicent. She is awfully nice; clever, and witty, and the rest of it—quite a man’s woman. We are sure to meet her in the lounge after dinner and I will introduce you.”
Cynthia said she would be delighted. Reading between the lines of Mrs. Devar’s description, it was not easy to comprehend the distinction that forbade friendship with Fitzroy while offering it with Millicent,Countess of Porthcawl. But the girl was resolved not to open a new rift. In her heart she longed for the day that would reunite her to her father; meanwhile, Mrs. Devar must be dealt with gently.
Despite its tame ending, this unctuous discussion on social ethics led to wholly unforeseen results.
The allusion to a possible pier at Bournemouth meant more than Mrs. Devar imagined, but Cynthia resisted the allurements of another entrancing evening, went early to her room, and wrote duty letters for a couple of hours. The excuse served to cut short her share of the Countess’s brilliant conversation, though Mr. Ducrot tried to make himself very agreeable when he heard the name of Vanrenen.
Medenham, standing in the hall, suddenly came face to face with Lady Porthcawl, who was endowed with an unerring eye for minute shades of distinction in the evening dress garments of the opposite sex. Her correspondence consisted largely of picture postcards, and she had just purchased some stamps from the hall porter when she saw Medenham take a telegram from the rack where it had been reposing since the afternoon. It was, she knew, addressed to “Viscount Medenham.” That, and her recollection of his father, banished doubt.
“George!” she cried, with a charming air of having found the one man whom she was longing to meet, “don’t say I’ve grown so old that you have forgotten me!”
He started, rather more violently than might be looked for in a shikari whose nerves had been tested in many a ticklish encounter with other members of the cat tribe. In fact, he had just been disturbed by coming across the unexpected telegram, wherein Simmonds assured his lordship that the rejuvenated car would arrive at the College Green Hotel, Bristol, on Friday evening. At the very moment that he realized the imminence of Cynthia’s disappearance into the void it was doubly disconcerting to be hailed by a woman who knew his world so intimately that it would be folly to smile vacantly at her presumed mistake.
Some glint of annoyance must have leaped to his eyes, for the lively countess glanced around with a mimic fright that testified to her skill as an actress.
“Good gracious!” she whispered, “have I given you away? I couldn’t guess you were here under anom de voyage—now, could I?—when that telegram has been staring at everybody for hours.”
“You have misinterpreted my amazement, Lady Porthcawl,” he said, spurred into self-possession by the hint at an intrigue. “I could not believe that time would turn back even for a pretty woman. You look younger than ever, though I have not seen you for——”
“Oh, hush!” she cried. “Don’t spoil your nice speech by counting years. When did you arrive in England? Are you alone—really? You’ve grown quite a man in your jungles. Will you come tothe lounge? I want ever so much to have a long talk with you. Mr. Ducrot is there—the financier, you know—but I have left him safely anchored alongside Maud Devar—a soft-furred old pussie who is clawing me now behind my back, I am sure. Have you ever met her? Wiggy Devar she was christened in Monte, because an excited German leaned over her at the tables one night and things happened to her coiffure. And to show you how broad-minded I am, I’ll get her to bring downstairs the sweetest and daintiest American ingénue you’d find between here and Chicago, even if you went by way of Paris. Cynthia Vanrenen is her name, daughter oftheVanrenen. He made, not a pile, but a pyramid, out of Milwaukees. She isit—a pukka Gibson girl, quite ducky, with the dearest bit of an accent, and Mamma Devar is gadding around with her in a mo-car. Do come!”
Medenham was able to pick and choose where he listed in answering this hail of words.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said, “but the telegram I have just received affects all my plans. I must hurry away this instant. When will you be in town? Then I shall call, praying meanwhile that there may be no Ducrots or Devars there to blight a glorious gossip. If you bring me up to date as to affairs in Park Lane I’ll reciprocate about the giddy equator. How—or perhaps I ought to say where—is Porthcawl?”
“In China,” snapped her ladyship, fully aliveto Medenham’s polite evasion of her blandishments.
“By gad,” he laughed, “that is a long way from Bournemouth. Well, good-bye. Keep me a date in Clarges Street.”
“Clarges Street is off the map,” she said coldly. “It’s South Belgravia, verging on Pimlico, nowadays. That is why Porthcawl is in China ... and it explains Ducrot, too.”
An unconscious bitterness crept into the smooth voice; Medenham, who hated confidences from the butterfly type of woman, nevertheless pitied her.
“Tell me where you live and I’ll come round and hear all about it,” he said sympathetically.
She gave him an address, and suddenly smiled on him with a yearning tenderness. She watched his tall figure as he strode down the hill towards the town to keep an imaginary appointment.
“He used to be a nice boy,” she sighed, “and now he is a man.... Heigh-ho, you’re a back number, Millie, dear!”
But she was her own bright self when she returned to the bald-headed Ducrot and the bewigged Mrs. Devar.
“What a small world it is!” she vowed. “I ran across Medenham in the hall.”
The banker’s shining forehead wrinkled in a reflective frown.
“Medenham?” he said.
“Fairholme’s eldest son.”
Mrs. Devar chortled.
“Such fun!” she said. “Our chauffeur calls himself George Augustus Fitzroy.”
“How odd!” agreed Countess Millicent.
“You people speak in riddles. Who or what is odd?” asked Ducrot.
“Oh, don’t worry, but listen to that adorable waltz.” Ducrot’s polished dome compared badly with the bronzed skin of the nice boy who had grown to be a man, so her ladyship’s rebellious tongue sought safety in silence, since she could not afford to quarrel with him.
It is certainly true that the gods make mad those whom they mean to destroy. Never was woman nearer to a momentous discovery than Mrs. Devar at that instant, but her active brain was plotting how best to develop a desirable acquaintance in Roger Ducrot, financier, and she missed utterly the astounding possibility that Viscount Medenham and George Augustus Fitzroy might be one and the same person.
In any other conditions Millicent Porthcawl’s sharp wits could scarcely have failed to ferret out the truth. Even if Cynthia were present it was almost a foregone conclusion that the girl would have told how Fitzroy joined her. The luncheon provided for a missing aunt, the crest on the silver and linen, the style of the Mercury, a chance allusion to this somewhat remarkable chauffeur’s knowledge of the South Downs and of Bournemouth, would surely have put her ladyship on the right track. From sheer enjoyment of an absurd situation she wouldhave caused Fitzroy to be summoned then and there, if only to see Wiggy Devar’s crestfallen face on learning that she had entertained a viscount unawares.
But the violins were singing the Valse Bleu, and Cynthia was upstairs, longing for an excuse to venture forth into the night, and three people, at least, in the crowded lounge were thinking of anything but the amazing oddity that had puzzled Ducrot, who did not con his Burke.
Medenham, of course, realized that he had been vouchsafed another narrow escape. What the morrow might bring forth he neither knew nor cared. The one disconcerting fact that already shaped itself in the mists of the coming day was Simmonds tearing breathlessly along the Bath Road during the all too brief hours between morn and evening.
It is not to be wondered at if he read Cynthia’s thoughts. There is a language without code or symbol known to all young men and maidens—a language that pierces stout walls and leaps wide valleys—and that unlettered tongue whispered the hope that the girl might saunter towards the pier. He turned forthwith into the public gardens, and quickened his pace. Arrived at the pier, he glanced up at the hotel. Of girls there were many on cliff and roadway, girls summer-like in attire, girls slender of waist and airy of tread, but no Cynthia. He went on the pier, and met more than one pair of bright eyes, but not Cynthia’s.
Then he made off in a fume to Dale’s lodging, secured a linen dust-coat which the man happened to have with him, returned to the hotel, and hurried unseen to his room, an easy matter in the Royal Bath, where many staircases twine deviously to the upper floors, and brilliantly decorated walls dazzle the stranger.
He counted on the exigencies of Lady Porthcawl’s toilette stopping a too early appearance in the morning, and he was right.
At ten o’clock, when Cynthia and Mrs. Devar came out, the men lounging near the porch were too interested in the girl and the car to bestow a glance on the chauffeur. Ducrot was there, bland and massive in a golf suit. He pestered Cynthia with inquiries as to the exact dates when her father would be in London, and Medenham did not hesitate to cut short the banker’s awkward gallantries by throwing the Mercury into her stride with a whirl.
“By Jove, Ducrot,” said someone, “your pretty friend’s car jumped off like a gee-gee under the starting gate.”
“If that chauffeur of hers was mine, I’d boot him,” was the wrathful reply.
“Why? What’s he done?”
“He strikes me as an impudent puppy.”
“Anyhow, he can swing a motor. See that!” for the Mercury had executed a corkscrew movement between several vehicles with the sinuous grace of a greyhound.
Now it was Mrs. Devar, and not Cynthia, who leaned forward and said pleasantly:
“You seem to be in a hurry to leave Bournemouth, Fitzroy.”
“I am not enamored of bricks and mortar on a fine morning,” he answered.
“Well, I have full confidence in you, but don’t embroil us with the police. We have a good deal to see to-day, I understand.”
Then he heard the strenuous voice addressing Cynthia.
“Millicent Porthcawl says that Glastonbury is heavenly, and Wells a peaceful dream. I visited Cheddar once, some years ago, but it rained, and I felt like a watery cheese.”
Lady Porthcawl’s commendation ought to have sanctified Glastonbury and Wells—Mrs. Devar’s blue-moldy joke might even have won a smile—but Cynthia was preoccupied; strange that she, too, should be musing of Simmonds and a hurrying car, for Medenham had told her that the transfer would take place at Bristol.
She was only twenty-two, and her very extensive knowledge of the world had been obtained by three years of travel and constant association with her father. But her lines had always been cast in pleasant places. She had no need to deny herself any of the delights that life has to offer to youth and good health and unlimited means. The discovery that friendship called for discretion came now almostas a shock. It seemed to be a stupid social law that barred the way when she wished to enjoy the company of a well-favored man whom fate had placed at her disposal for three whole days. Herself a blue-blooded American, descendant of old Dutch and New England families, she was quite able to discriminate between reality and sham. Mrs. Devar, she was sure, was a pinchbeck aristocrat; Count Edouard Marigny might have sprung from many generations of French gentlemen, but her paid chauffeur was his superior in every respect save one—since, to all appearance, Marigny was rich and Fitzroy was poor.
Curiously enough, the man whose alert shoulders and well-poised head were ever in view as the car hummed joyously through the pine woods had taken on something of the mere mechanic in aspect since donning that serviceable linen coat. The garment was weather-stained. It bore records of over-lubrication, of struggles with stiff outer covers, of rain and mud—that bird-lime type of mud peculiar to French military roads in the Alpes Maritimes—while a zealous detective might have found traces of the black and greasy deposit that collects on the door handles and side rails of P. L. M. railway carriages. Medenham borrowed it because of the intolerable heat of the leather jacket. Its distinctive character became visible when he viewed it in the June sunshine, and he wore it as a substitute for sackcloth, since he, no less than Cynthia, recognized that a dangerous acquaintance was drawing to an end. So Dale’scoat imposed a shield, as it were, between the two, but the man drove with little heed to the witching scenery that Dorset unfolded at each turn of the road, and the woman sat distrait, almost downcast.
Mrs. Devar was smugly complacent. Difficulties that loomed large overnight were now vague shadows. When the Mercury stopped in front of a comfortable inn at Yeovil it was she, and not Cynthia, who suggested a social departure.
“This seems to be the only place in the town where luncheon is provided. You had better leave the car in charge of a stableman, and join us, Fitzroy,” she said graciously.
“Thank you, madam,” said Medenham, rousing himself from a reverie, “I prefer to remain here. The hotel people will look after my slight wants, as I dislike the notion of anyone tampering with the engine while I am absent.”
“Is it so delicate, then?” asked Cynthia, with a smile that he hardly understood, since he could not know how thoroughly he had routed Mrs. Devar’s theories of the previous night.
“No, far from it. But its very simplicity challenges examination, and an inquisitive clodhopper can effect more damage in a minute than I can repair in an hour.”
His gruff tone was music in Mrs. Devar’s ears. She actually sighed her relief, but explained the lapse instantly.
“I do hope there is something nice to eat,” shesaid. “This wonderful air makes one dreadfully hungry. When our tour is ended, Cynthia, I shall have to bant for months.”
The fare was excellent. Under its stimulating influence Miss Vanrenen forgot her vapors and elected for the front seat during the run to Glastonbury. Medenham thawed, too. By chance their talk turned to wayside flowers, and he let the Mercury creep through a high-banked lane, all ablaze with wild roses and honeysuckle, while he pointed out the blue field scabious, the pink and cream meadow-sweet, the samphire, the milk-wort and the columbine, the campions in the cornland, and the yellow vetchling that ran up the hillside towards one of the wooded “islands” peculiar to the center of Somerset.
Cynthia listened, and, if she marveled, betrayed no hint of surprise that a chauffeur should have such a store of the woodman’s craft. Medenham, aware only of a rapt audience of one, threw disguise to the breeze created by the car when the pace quickened. He told of the Glastonbury Thorn, and how it was brought to the west country by no less a gardener than Joseph of Arimathea, and how St. Patrick was born in the Isle of Avallon, so called because its apple-orchards bore golden fruit, and how the very name of Glastonbury is derived from the crystal water that hemmed the isle——
“Please let me intrude one little question,” murmured the girl. “I am very ignorant of some things. What has ‘Avallon’ got to do with ‘apples’?”
“Ha!” cried Medenham, warming to his subject and retarding speed again, “that opens up a wide field. In Celtic mythology Avallon is Ynys yr Afallon, the Island of Apples. It is the Land of the Blessed, where Morgana holds her court. Great heroes like King Arthur and Ogier le Dane were carried there after death, and, as apples were the only first-rate fruit known to the northern nations, a place where they grew in luscious abundance came to be regarded as the soul-kingdom. Merlin says that fairyland is full of apple trees——”
“I believe it is,” cried Cynthia, nudging his arm and pointing to an orchard in full bloom.
Mrs. Devar could hear little and understand less of what they were saying; but the nudge was eloquent; her steel-blue eyes narrowed, and she thrust her face between them.
“We mustn’t dawdle on the road, Fitzroy. Bristol is still a long way off, and we have so much to see—Glastonbury, Wells, Cheddar.”
Though Cynthia was vexed by the interruption she did not show it. Indeed, she was aware of her companion’s strange reiteration of the towns to be visited, since Mrs. Devar had already admitted a special weakness in geography, and during the trip from Brighton to Bournemouth was quite unable to name a town, a county, or a landmark. But the queer thought of a moment was dispelled by sight of the ruins of St. Dunstan’s monastery appearing above a low wall. In front of the broken archesand tottering walls grew some apple trees so old and worn that no blossom decked their gnarled branches. Unbidden tears glistened in the girl’s eyes.
“If I lived here I would plant a new orchard,” she said tremulously. “I think Guinevere would like it, and you say she is buried with her king in St. Joseph’s Chapel.”
Medenham had suddenly grown stern again. He glanced at her, and then made great business with brakes and levers, for Mrs. Devar was still inquisitive.
“There is a fine old Pilgrims’ Inn, the George, in the main street,” he said jerkily. “I propose to stop there; the entrance to the Abbey is exactly opposite. In the George they will show you a room in which Henry the Eighth slept, and I would recommend you to get a guide for half an hour at least.”