In such a nightStood Dido with a willow in her handUpon the wild sea-banks, and waft her loveTo come again to Carthage.
In such a nightStood Dido with a willow in her handUpon the wild sea-banks, and waft her loveTo come again to Carthage.
Marigny had indeed arranged a situation worthy of his nurturing among the decadents of Paris. He believed that in these surroundings an impressionable girl would admit him to a degree of intimacy not to be attained by many days of prosaic meetings. At the right moment, when his well-bribed servant was gone to Langford, he would remember a bottle of wine and some sandwiches stored in the car that morning to provide the luncheon that he might not obtain at a wayside inn. Cynthia and he would make merry over the feast. The magnetism that hadnever yet failed him in affairs of the heart would surely prove potent now at this real crisis in his life. Marriage to a rich woman could alone snatch him from the social abyss, and the prospect became doubly alluring when it took the guise of Cynthia. He would restore her to a disconsolate chaperon some time before midnight, and he was cynic enough to admit that if he had not then succeeded in winning her esteem by his chivalry, his unobtrusive tenderness, his devoted attentions—above all, by his flow of interesting talk and well-turned epigram—the fault would be his own, and not attributable to adverse conditions.
It was not surprising, therefore, that he failed to choke back the curse quick risen to his lips when the throb of the Mercury’s engine came over the crest of the hill. Never was mailed dragon more terrible to the beholder, even in the days of knight-errantry. In an instant his well-conceived project had gone by the board. He saw himself discredited, suspected, a skulking plotter driven into the open, a self-confessed trickster utterly at the mercy of some haphazard question that would lay bare his pretenses and cover his counterfeit rhapsody with ridicule.
If Cynthia had heard, and hearing understood, it is possible that a great many remarkable incidents then in embryo would have passed into the mists of what might have been. For instance, she would not have deigned to notice Count Edouard Marigny’s further existence. The next time she met him hewould fill a place in the landscape comparable to that occupied by a migratory beetle. But her heart was leaping for joy, and her cry of thankfulness quite drowned in her ears the Frenchman’s furious oath.
Mrs. Devar, having had time to gather her wits, made a gallant attempt to retrieve her fellow-conspirator’s shattered fortunes.
“My dearest Cynthia,” she cried effusively, “do say you are not hurt!”
“Not a bit,” was the cheerful answer. “It is not I, but the car, that is out of commission. Didn’t you see me do the Salomé act when you were thrown on the screen?”
“Ah! the car has broken down. I do not wonder—this fearful road——”
“The road seems to have strayed out of Colorado, but that isn’t the trouble. We are short of petrol. Please give some to Monsieur Marigny, Fitzroy. Then we can hurry to Bristol, and the Count must pick up his chauffeur on the way.”
Without more ado, she seated herself by Mrs. Devar’s side, and Marigny realized that he had been robbed of a golden opportunity. No persuasion would bring Cynthia back into the Du Vallon that evening; it would need the exercise of all his subtle tact to induce her to re-enter it at any time in the near future.
He strove to appear at his ease, even essayed a few words of congratulation on the happy chancethat brought the Mercury to their relief, but the imperious young lady cut short his limping phrases.
“Oh, don’t let us waste these precious minutes,” she protested. “It will be quite dark soon, and if there is much more of this wretched track——”
Medenham broke in at that. Mrs. Devar’s change of front had caused him some grim amusement, but the discovery of Marigny’s artifice roused his wrath again. It was high time that Cynthia should be enlightened, partly at least, as to the true nature of the “accident” that had befallen her; he had already solved the riddle of Smith’s disappearance.
“The road to Bristol lies behind you, Miss Vanrenen,” he said.
“One of the roads,” cried the Frenchman.
“No, the only road,” persisted Medenham. “We return to it some two miles in the rear. Had you followed your present path much farther you could not possibly have reached Bristol to-night.”
“But there is a village quite near. My chauffeur has gone there for petrol. Someone would have told us of our mistake.”
“There is no petrol to be bought at Blagdon, which is a mere hamlet on the downs. Anyhow, here are two gallons—ample for your needs—but if your man is walking to Blagdon you will be compelled to wait till he returns, Monsieur Marigny.”
Though Medenham did not endeavor to check the contemptuous note that crept into his voice, he certainly ought not to have uttered those two concludingwords. Had he ransacked his ample vocabulary of the French language he could scarcely have hit upon another set of syllables offering similar difficulties to the foreigner. It was quite evident that his accurate pronunciation startled the accomplices. Each arrived at the same conclusion, though by different channels; this man was no mere chauffeur, and the fact rendered his marked hostility all the more significant.
Nevertheless, for the moment, Marigny concealed his uneasiness: by a display of good humor he hoped to gloss over the palpable absurdity of his earlier statements to Cynthia.
“I seem to have bungled this business very badly,” he said airily. “Please don’t be too hard on me. I shall make theamendewhen I see you in Bristol.Au revoir, chères dames!Tell them to keep me some dinner. I may not be so very far behind, since you ladies will take some time over your toilette, and I shall—what do you call it—scorch like mad after I have found that careless scoundrel, Smith.”
Cynthia had suddenly grown dumb, so Mrs. Devar tried once more to relax the tension.
“Do be careful, Count Edouard,” she cried; “this piece of road is dreadfully dangerous, and, when all is said and done, another half hour is now of no great consequence.”
“If your chauffeur has really gone to Blagdon, he will not be back under an hour at least,” broke in Medenham’s disdainful voice. “Unless you wishto wreck your car you will not attempt to follow him.”
With that he bent over the head lamps, and their radiance fell unexpectedly on Marigny’s scowling face, since the discomfited adventurer could no longer pretend to ignore the Englishman’s menace. Still, he was powerless. Though quivering with anger and balked desire, he dared not provoke a scene in Cynthia’s presence, and her continued silence already warned him that she was bewildered if not actually suspicious. He forced a laugh.
“Explanations are like swamps,” he said. “The farther you plunge into them the deeper you sink. So, good-bye! To please you, Mrs. Devar, I shall crawl. As for Miss Vanrenen, I see that she does not care what becomes of me.”
Cynthia weakened a little at that. Certainly she wondered why her model chauffeur chose to express his opinions so bluntly, while Marigny’s unwillingness to take offense was admirable.
“Is there no better plan?” she asked quickly, for Medenham had started the engine, and his hand was on the reversing lever.
“For what?” he demanded.
“For extricating my friend from his difficulty?”
“If he likes to come with us, he can leave his car here all night, and return for it to-morrow.”
“Perhaps——”
“Please do not trouble yourself in the least on my account,” broke in the Count gayly. “As forabandoning my car, such a stupid notion would never enter my mind. No, no! I wait for Smith, but you may rely on my appearance in Bristol before you have finished dinner.”
Though it was no simple matter to back and turn the Mercury in that rough and narrow road, Medenham accomplished the maneuver with a skill that the Frenchman appreciated to the full. For the first time he noted the number when the tail-lamp revealed it.
“X L 4000,” he commented to himself. “I must inquire who the owner is. Devar or Smith will know where to apply for the information. And I must also ascertain that fellow’s history. Confound him, and my luck, too! If the Devar woman has any sense she will keep Cynthia well out of his way until the other chauffeur arrives.”
As it happened, the “Devar woman” was thinking the same thing at the same moment, but, being nervous, dared not attempt to utter her thoughts while the car was creeping cautiously over the ruts and stones. At last, when the highroad was reached, the pace quickened, and she regained the faculty of speech.
“We have had a quite eventful day,” she said with an air of motherly solicitude, turning to the distrait girl by her side. “I am sure you are tired. What between an extra amount of sightseeing and poor Count Edouard’s unfortunate mistake, we have been in the car nearly twelve hours.”
“How did Fitzroy discover that we had taken the wrong road?” asked Cynthia, rousing herself from a perplexed reverie.
“Well, he drove very fast from Cheddar, much too fast, to my thinking, though the risk has been more than justified by circumstances. Of course, it is always easy to be wise after the event. At any rate, there being no sign of your car when we reached the top of a long hill, we—er—we discussed matters, and decided to explore the byroad.”
“Did you remain long in Cheddar? If Fitzroy hit up the pace, why were you so far behind?”
“I waited a few minutes to address some postcards. And that reminds me—Fitzroy sent a most impertinent message by one of theservants——”
“Impertinent!”
“My dear, there is no other word for it—something about going off without me if I did not start instantly. Really, I shall be glad when Simmonds takes his place. But there! We must not renew our Bournemouth argument.”
“And he caused a servant in the hotel to speak to you in that manner?”
“Yes—the very girl who waited on us at tea—a pert creature, who seemed to find the task congenial.”
Mrs. Devar was building better than she knew. Cynthia laughed, though not with the whole-souled merriment that was music in Medenham’s ears.
“She has been properly punished; I forgot to tip her,” she explained.
“Count Edouard would see to that——”
“He didn’t. I noticed what he paid—out of sheer curiosity. Perhaps I ought to send her something.”
“My dear Cynthia!”
But dear Cynthia was making believe to be quite amused by a notion that had just suggested itself. She leaned forward in the darkness and touched Medenham’s shoulder.
“Do you happen to know the name of the waitress who brought you some tea at Cheddar?” she asked. “None of us gave her anything, and I hate to omit these small items. If I had her name I could forward a postal order from Bristol.”
“There is no need, Miss Vanrenen,” said Medenham. “I handed her—well, sufficient to clear all claims.”
“Youdid? But why?”
The temptation to explain that he had never seen the girl before that day was strong, but he waived it, and contented himself with saying:
“I—er—can’t exactly say—force of habit, I imagine.”
“Is she a friend of yours?”
“No.”
Cynthia subsided into the tonneau.
“Of all the odd things!” she murmured, little dreaming that her chance question had sent a thrill of sheer delight through Medenham’s every vein.
“What is it now?” inquired Mrs. Devar vindictively, for she detested these half confidences.
“Oh, nothing of any importance. Fitzroy footed the bill, it seems.”
“Very probably. He must have bribed the girl to be impudent.”
Cynthia left it at that. She wished these people would stop their quarreling, which threatened to spoil an otherwise perfect day.
The Mercury ran smoothly into ancient Bristol, crossed the Avon by the pontoon bridge, and whirled up the hill to the College Green Hotel. There, on the steps, stood Captain James Devar. Obviously, he did not recognize them, and Medenham guessed the reason—he expected to meet his mother only, and bestowed no second glance on a car containing two ladies. Indeed, his first words betrayed sheer amazement. Mrs. Devar cried, “Ah, there you are, James!” and James’s eyeglass fell from its well-worn crease.
“Hello, mater!” he exclaimed. “But what’s up? Why are you—where is Marigny?”
“Miles away—the silly man ran short of petrol. Fortunately our car came to the rescue, or it would have been most awkward, since Miss Vanrenen was with the Count at the time. Cynthia, you have not met my son. James, this is Miss Vanrenen.”
The little man danced forward. Like all short and stout mortals, he was nimble on his feet, and his mother’s voluble outburst warned him of an unforeseen hitch in the arrangements.
“Delighted, I’m shaw,” said he. “But, by gad,fancy losing poo-aw Eddie! What have you done with him? Dwiven a stake through him and buwied him at a cwoss woad?”
Medenham dreaded that the too-faithful Simmonds, car and all, would be found awaiting their arrival, and it was a decided relief when the only automobile in sight proved to be the state equipage of some local magnate dining at the hotel. Cynthia, apparently, had shared his thoughts so far as they concerned Simmonds.
“I suppose your friend Simmonds will reveal his whereabouts during the evening,” she said, while disencumbering herself of her wraps. Mrs. Devar had already alighted, but the girl was standing in the car and spoke over Medenham’s shoulder.
“Of course, he may not be here,” was the answer, not given too loudly, since Mrs. Devar had hastened to give details to the perplexed James, and there was no need to let either of them overhear his words.
“Oh my! What will happen, then?”
“In that event, I should feel compelled to take his place again.”
“But the compulsion, as you put it, tends rather to take you to London.”
“I have changed my mind, Miss Vanrenen,” he said simply.
She tittered. There was just a spice of coquetry in her manner as she stooped nearer.
“You believe that Simmonds would not have found me in that wretched lane to-night,” she whispered.
“I am quite sure of it.”
“But the whole affair was a mere stupid error.”
“I am only too glad that I was enabled to put it right,” he said with due gravity.
“Cynthia,” came a shrill voice, “do make haste, I am positively starving.”
“Guess you’d better lose Simmonds,” breathed the girl, and an unaccountable fluttering of her heart induced a remarkably high color in her cheeks when she sped up the steps of the hotel and entered the brilliantly-lighted atrium.
As for Medenham, though he had carefully mapped out the exact line of conduct to be followed in Bristol while watching the radiantly white arc of road that quivered in front of the car during the run from the Mendips, for a second or two he dared not trust his voice to ask the hall-porter certain necessary questions. Unaided by the glamor of birth or position he had won this delightful girl’s confidence. She believed in him now as she would never again believe in Count Edouard Marigny; what that meant in such a moment, none can tell but a devout lover. Naturally, that was his point of view; it did not occur to him that Cynthia might already have regretted the impulse which led her to utter her thoughts aloud. Her nature was of the Martian type revealed to Swedenborg in one of his philosophic trances. “The inhabitants of Mars,” said he, “account it wicked to think one thing and speak another—to wish one thing while the face expressesanother.” Happy Martians, perhaps, but not quite happy Cynthia, still blushing hotly because of her daring suggestion as to the disposal of Simmonds.
But she was deeply puzzled by the mishap to the Du Vallon. Unwilling to think evil of anyone, she felt, nevertheless, that Fitzroy (as she called him) would never have treated both Mrs. Devar and the Frenchman so cavalierly if he had not anticipated the very incident that happened on the Mendips. Why did he turn back? How did he really find out what had become of them? What would Simmonds have done in his stead? A hundred strange doubts throbbed in her brain, but they were jumbled in confusion before that more intimate and insistent question—how would Fitzroy interpret her eagerness to retain him in her service?
Meanwhile, the Swedish seer’s theory of Martian speech and thought acting in unity was making itself at home on the pavement in front of the hotel.
Medenham learnt from the hall-porter that a motor-car had reached Bristol from London about five o’clock. The driver, who was alone, had asked for Miss Vanrenen, and was told that she was expected but had not yet arrived, whereupon he went off, saying that he would call after dinner.
“Another shuffer kem a bit later an’ axed the same thing,” went on the man, “but he didn’t have no car, an’ he left no word about callin’ again.”
“Excellent!” said Medenham. “Now please go and tell Captain Devar that I wish to see him.”
“Here?”
“Yes. I cannot leave my car. He must be at liberty, as he is in evening dress, and the ladies will not come downstairs under half an hour.”
Devar soon appeared. His mother had managed to inform him that the substituted driver was responsible for the complete collapse of Marigny’s project, and he was puffing with annoyance, though well aware that he must not display it.
“Well,” said he, strutting up to Medenham and blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke from his thick lips, “well, what is it, my man?”
For answer, Medenham disconnected a lamp and held it close to his own face.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked.
Devar, in blank astonishment, affected to screw in his eyeglass more firmly.
“No,” he said, “nor am I particularly anxious to make your acquaintance. You have behaved wather badly, I understand, but that is of no consequence now, as Simmonds has bwought his car he-aw——”
“Look again, Devar. We last met in Calcutta, where you swindled me out of fifty pounds. Unfortunately I did not hear of your presence in South Africa until you were cashiered at Cape Town, or I might have saved the authorities some trouble.”
The man wilted under those stern eyes.
“Good gad! Medenham!” he stammered.
Medenham replaced the lamp in its socket.
“I am glad you are not trying any pretense,” he said. “Otherwise I would be forced to take action, with the most lamentable consequences for you, Devar. Now, I will hold my hand, provided you obey me implicitly. Send for your overcoat, go straight to the Central Station, and travel to London by the next train. You can scribble some excuse to your mother, but, if I have any cause even to suspect that you have told her who I am, I shall not hesitate to put the police on your track. You must vanish, and be dumb—for three months at least. If you are hard up, I will give you some money—sufficient for a fortnight’s needs—and you can write to me for further supplies at my London address. Even a rascal like you must be permitted to live, I suppose, so I risk breaking the law myself by screening you from justice. Those are my terms. Do you accept them?”
The red face had grown yellow, and the steel-gray eyes that were a heritage of the Devar family glistened with terror, but the man endeavored to obtain mercy.
“Dash it all, Medenham,” he groaned, “don’t be too hard on me. I’m goin’ stwaight now—’pon me honor. This chap,Marigny——”
“You fool! I offer you liberty and money, yet you try brazenly to get me to fall in with your wretched designs against Miss Vanrenen! Which is it to be—a police cell or the railway station?”
Medenham moved as if to summon the hall-porter. In a very frenzy of fear Devar caught his arm.
“For Gawd’s sake——” he whispered.
“You go, then?”
“Yes.”
“I am prepared to spare you to the utmost extent. Tell the hall-porter to bring your overcoat and hat, and to give you a sheet of note-paper and an envelope. Show me what you write. If it is satisfactory I shall start you with twenty pounds. You can send from London to-morrow for your belongings, as your hotel bill will be paid. But remember! One treacherous word from you and I telegraph to Scotland Yard.”
Mrs. Devar had a bad quarter of an hour when a penciled note from her son was delivered at her room and she read:
Dear Mater—I hardly had time to tell you that I am obliged to return to town this evening. Please make my apologies to Miss Vanrenen and Count Marigny. Yours ever,J.
Dear Mater—I hardly had time to tell you that I am obliged to return to town this evening. Please make my apologies to Miss Vanrenen and Count Marigny. Yours ever,
J.
Medenham frowned a little at the reference to Cynthia, but something of the sort was necessary if an open scandal was to be avoided. As for “Dear Mater,” she was so unnerved that she actually wept. Hard and calculating though she might be, the man was her son, and the bitter experiences of twenty years warned her that he had been driven from Bristol by some ghost new risen from an evil past.
Medenham, however, believed that he had settled one difficulty, and prepared blithely to tackle another. He ran the car to the garage where he had arranged to meet Dale.
“Have you seen Simmonds?” was his first question.
“Yes, my l——, yes, sir.”
“Where is he?”
“Just off for a snack, sir, before goin’ to the hotel.”
“Bring him here at once. We will attend to the snack afterwards. No mistake, now, Dale. He must see no one in the hotel until he and I have had a talk.”
Simmonds was produced. He saluted.
“Glad to meet you again, my lord,” he said. “I hope I haven’t caused any trouble by sending that telegram to Bournemouth, but Dale tells me that you don’t wish your title to be known.”
“Forget it,” said Medenham. “I have done you a good turn, Simmonds—are you prepared to do me one?”
“Just try me, sir.”
“Put your car out of commission. Stick a pin through the earth contact of your magneto and jam it against a cylinder, or something of the sort. Then go to Miss Vanrenen and tell her how sorry you are, but you must have another week at least to pull things straight. She will not be vexed, and I guarantee you against any possible loss. To put the bestface on affairs, you had better remain in Bristol a few days at my expense. Of course, it is understood that I deputize for you during the remainder of the tour.”
Simmonds, no courtier, grinned broadly, and even Dale winked at the North Star; Medenham had steeled himself against such manifestations of crude opinion—his face was impassive as that of a graven image.
“Of course I’ll oblige you in that way, my lord. Who wouldn’t?” came the slow reply.
When the Mercury, shining from Dale’s attentions, halted noiselessly opposite the College Green Hotel on the Saturday morning, Count Edouard Marigny was standing there; the Du Vallon was not in evidence, and its owner’s attire bespoke other aims than motoring, at any rate for the hour.
Evidently he was well content with himself. A straw hat was set on the back of his head, a cigarette stuck between his lips, his hands were thrust into his trousers pockets, and his feet were spread widely apart. Taken altogether, he had the air of a man without a care in the world.
He smiled, too, in the most friendly fashion, when Medenham’s eyes met his.
“I hear that Simmonds is unable to carry out his contract,” he said cheerfully.
“You are mistaken, a second time, monsieur,” said Medenham.
“Why, then, areyouhere this morning?”
“I am acting for Simmonds. If anything, my car is slightly superior to his, while I may be regardedas an equally competent driver, so the contract is kept in all essentials.”
Marigny still smiled. The Frenchman of mid-Victorian romance would have shelved this point by indulging in “an inimitable shrug”; but nowadays Parisians of the Count’s type do not shrug—with John Bull’s clothing they have adopted no small share of his stolidness.
“It is immaterial,” he said. “I have sent my man to offer him my Du Vallon, and Smith will go with him to explain its humors. You, as a skilled motorist, understand that a car is of the feminine gender. Like any other charming demoiselle, it demands the exercise of tact—it yields willingly to gentlehandling——”
Medenham cut short the Count’s neatly turned phrases.
“Simmonds has no need to avail himself of your courtesy,” he said. “As for the rest, give me your address in Paris, and when next I visit the French capital I shall be delighted to analyze these subtleties with you.”
“Ah, most admirable! But the really vital question before us to-day is your address in London, Mr. Fitzroy.”
Marigny dwelt on the surname as if it were a succulent oyster, and, in the undeniable surprise of the moment, Medenham was forced to believe that “Captain” Devar, formerly of Horton’s Horse, had dared all by telling his confederate the truth, or somepart of the truth. The two men looked squarely at each other, and Marigny did not fail to misinterpret the dubious frown on Medenham’s face.
He descended a step or two, and crossed the pavement leisurely, dropping his voice so that it might not reach the ears of a porter, laden with the ladies’ traveling boxes, who appeared in the doorway.
“Why should we quarrel?” he asked, with an engaging frankness well calculated to reassure a startled evildoer. “In this matter I am anxious to treat you as a gentleman.Allons, donc!Hurry off instantly, and tell Simmonds to bring the Du Vallon here. Leave me to explain everything to Miss Vanrenen. Surely you agree that she ought to be spared the unpleasantness of a wrangle—or, shall we say, an exposure? You see,” he continued with a trifle more animation, and speaking in French, “the game is not worth the candle. In a few hours, at the least, you will be in the hands of the police, whereas, by reaching London to-night, you may be able to pacify the Earl of Fairholme. I can help, perhaps. I will say all that is possible, and my testimony ought to carry some weight.”
Medenham was thoroughly mystified. That the Frenchman was not yet aware of his identity was now clear enough, though, with Devar’s probable duplicity still running in his mind, he could not solve the puzzle presented by this vaunted half-knowledge.
Again the other attributed his perplexity to anything except its real cause.
“I am willing to befriend you,” he urged emphatically. “You have acted foolishly, but not criminally, I hope. In your anxiety to help a colleague you forgot the fine distinction which the law draws betweenmeumandtuum——”
“No,” said Medenham, turning to the porter. “Put the larger box on the carrier, and strap the other on top of it—the locks outwards. Then you will find that they fit exactly.”
“Don’t be a headstrong idiot,” muttered the Count, with a certain heat of annoyance making itself felt in his patronizing tone. “Miss Vanrenen will come out at anyminute——”
Medenham glanced at the clock by the side of the speed indicator.
“Miss Vanrenen is due now unless she is being purposely detained by Mrs. Devar,” he commented dryly.
“But why persist in this piece of folly?” growled Marigny, to whose reluctant consciousness the idea of failure suddenly presented itself. “You must realize by this time that I know who owns your car. A telegram from me will put the authorities on your track, your arrest will follow, and Miss Vanrenen will be subjected to the gravest inconvenience.Sacré nom d’un pipe!If you will not yield to fair means I must resort to foul. It comes to this—you either quit Bristol at once or I informMiss Vanrenen of the trick you have played on her.”
Medenham turned and picked up from the seat the pair of stout driving-gloves which had caught Smith’s inquiring eye by reason of their quality and substance. He drew on the right-hand glove, and buttoned it. When he answered, he spoke with irritating slowness.
“Would it not be better for all concerned that the lady in whose behalf you profess to be so deeply moved should be permitted to continue her tour without further disturbance? You and I can meet in London, monsieur, and I shall then have much pleasure in convincing you that I am a most peaceable and law-abiding person.”
“No,” came the angry retort. “I have decided. I withdraw my offer to overlook your offense. At whatever cost, Miss Vanrenen must be protected until her father learns how his wishes have been disregarded by a couple of English bandits.”
“Sorry,” said Medenham coolly.
He alighted in the roadway, as the driving seat was near the curb. A glance into the vestibule of the hotel revealed Cynthia, in motor coat and veil, giving some instructions, probably with regard to letters, to a deferential hall-porter. Walking rapidly round the front of the car, he caught Marigny’s shoulder with his left hand.
“If you dare to open your mouth in Miss Vanrenen’s presence, other than by way of some commonplaceremark, I shall forthwith smash your face to a jelly,” he said.
A queer shiver ran through the Frenchman’s body, but Medenham did not commit the error of imagining that his adversary was afraid. His grip on Marigny’s shoulder tightened. The two were now not twelve inches apart, and the Englishman read that involuntary tension of the muscles aright, for there is a palsy of rage as of fear.
“I have some acquaintance with thesavate,” he said suavely. “Please take my word for it, and you will be spared an injury. A moment ago you offered to treat me like a gentleman. I reciprocate now by being willing to accept your promise to hold your tongue. Miss Vanrenen is coming.... What say you?”
“I agree,” said Marigny, though his dark eyes blazed redly.
“Ah, thanks!” and Medenham’s left hand busied itself once more with the fastening of the glove.
“You understand, of course?” he heard, in a soft snarl.
“Perfectly. The truce ends with my departure. Meanwhile, you are acting wisely. I don’t suppose I shall ever respect you so much again.”
“Now, you two—what are you discussing?” cried Cynthia from the porch. “I hope you are not trying to persuade my chauffeur to yield his place to you, Monsieur Marigny. Once bitten, twice shy, you know, and I would insist on checkingeach mile by the map if you were at the wheel.”
“Now, you two—what are you discussing?”“Now, you two—what are you discussing?”Page148
“Your chauffeur is immovable, mademoiselle,” was the ready answer, though the accompanying smile was not one of the Count’s best efforts.
“He looks it. Why are you vexed, Fitzroy? Can’t you forgive your friend Simmonds?”
Cynthia lifted those demure blue eyes of hers, and held Medenham’s gaze steadfast.
“I trust you are not challenging contradiction, Miss Vanrenen?” he said, with deliberate resolve not to let her slip back thus easily into the rôle of gracious employer.
She did not flinch, but her eyebrows arched a little.
“Oh, no,” she said offhandedly. “Simmonds told me his misfortunes last night, and I assumed that you and he had settled matters satisfactorily between you.”
“As for that,” broke in the Count, “I have just offered my car as a substitute, but Fitzroy prefers to take you as far as Hereford, at any cost.”
“Hereford! I understood from Simmonds that Mr. Fitzroy would see us through the remainder of the tour?”
“Monsieur Marigny is somewhat vague in our island topography: you saw that last evening,” said Medenham.
He smiled. Cynthia, too, glanced from one to the other with a frank merriment that showed howfully she appreciated their mutual dislike. As for Marigny, his white teeth gleamed now in a sarcastic grin.
“Adversity is a strict master,” he said, lapsing into his own language again. “My blunder of yesterday has shown me the need of caution, so I go no farther than Hereford in my thoughts.”
“It is more to the point to tell us how far you are going in your car,” cried the girl lightly.
“I, too, hope to be in Hereford to-night. Mrs. Devar says you mean to spend Sunday there. If that is a fixed thing, and you can bear with me for a few hours, I shall meet you there without fail.”
“Come, by all means, if your road lies that way; but don’t let us make formal engagements. I love to think that I am drifting at will through this land of gardens and apple blossom. And, just think of it—three cathedrals in one day—a Minster for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with Tintern Abbey thrown in for afternoon tea. Such a wealth of medievalism makes my head reel.... I was in there for matins,” and she nodded to the grave old pile rearing its massive Gothic within a few paces of the hotel. “At high noon we shall visit Gloucester, and to-night we shall see Hereford. All that within a short hundred miles, to say nothing of Chepstow, Monmouth, the Wye Valley! Ah, me! I shall never overtake my correspondence while there are so many glories to describe. See, I have bought some darling little guidebooks which tell you just what to sayin a letter. What between judicious extracts and a sheaf of picture postcards scribbled at each place I’ll try and keep my friends in good humor.”
She produced from a pocket three of the red-covered volumes so familiar to Americans in Britain—and to Britons themselves, for that matter, when the belated discovery is made that it is not necessary to cross the Channel in order to enjoy a holiday—and showed them laughingly to Medenham.
“Now,” she cried, “I am armed against you. No longer will you be able to paralyze me with your learning. If you say 1269 at Tintern I shall retort with 1387 at Monmouth. When you point out Nell Gwynne’s birthplace in Hereford, I shall take you to the Haven Inn, where David Garrick was born, and, if you aren’t very, very good, I shall tell you how much the New Town Hall cost, and who laid the foundation stone.”
Medenham alone held the key to the girl’s lively mood, and it was a novel and quite delightful sensation to be thus admitted to the inner shrine of her emotions, as it were. She was chattering at random in order to smooth away the awkwardness of meeting him after that whispered indiscretion at their parting overnight. Here, at least, Marigny was hopelessly at sea—désorienté, as he would have put it—because he could not possibly know that Cynthia herself had counseled the disappearance of Simmonds. Indeed, he attributed her high spiritsto mere politeness—to her wish that he should believe she had forgotten the fiasco on the Mendips.
This imagined salving of his wounded vanity served only to inflame him the more against Medenham. He was still afire with resentment, since no Frenchman can understand the rude Saxon usage that enforces submission under a threat of physical violence. That a man should be ready to defend his honor—to convince an opponent by endeavoring to kill him—yes, he accepted without cavil those tenets of the French social code. But the brutal British fixity of purpose displayed by this truculent chauffeur left him gasping with indignation. He was quite sure that the man meant exactly what he had said. He felt that any real departure from the compact wrung from him by force would prove disastrous to his personal appearance, and he was sensible of a certain weighing underlook in the Englishman’s eyes when his seemingly harmless chatter hinted at a change of existing plans as soon as Hereford was reached.
But that was a mere feint, a preliminary flourish, such as a practiced swordsman executes in empty air before saluting his opponent. He had not the slightest intention of testing Medenham’s pugilistic powers just then. The reasonable probability of having his chief features beaten to a pulp was not inviting, while the crude efficacy of the notion, in its influence on Miss Vanrenen’s affairs, was not the least stupefying element in a difficult and whollyunforeseen situation. He realized fully that anything in the nature of a scuffle would alienate the girl’s sympathies forever, no matter how strong a case for interference he might present afterwards. The chauffeur would be dismissed on the spot, but with the offender would go his own prospect of winning the heiress to the Vanrenen millions.
So Count Edouard swallowed his spleen, though the requisite effort must have dissipated some of his natural shrewdness, or he could not have failed to read more correctly the tokens of embarrassment given by Cynthia’s heightened color, by her eager vivacity, by her breathless anxiety not to discuss the substitution of one driver for the other.
Medenham was about to disclaim any intention of measuring his lore against that in the guidebooks when Mrs. Devar bustled out.
“Awfully sorry,” she began, “but I had to wire James——”
Her eyes fell on Medenham and the Mercury. Momentarily rendered speechless, she rallied bravely.
“I thought, from what Count Edouard said——”
“Miss Vanrenen has lost faith in me, even in my beautiful automobile,” broke in Marigny with a quickness that spoiled a pathetic glance meant for Cynthia.
The American girl, however, was weary of the fog of innuendo and hidden purpose that seemed to be an appanage of the Frenchman and his car.
“For goodness’ sake,” she cried, “let us regardit as a settled thing that Fitzroy takes Simmonds’s place until we reach London again. Surely we have the best of the bargain. If the two men are satisfied why should we have anything to say against it?”
Cynthia was her father’s daughter, and the attribute of personal dominance that in the man’s case had proved so effective in dealing with Milwaukees now made itself felt in the minor question of “transportation” presented by Medenham and his motor. Her blue eyes hardened, and a firm note rang in her voice. Nor did Medenham help to smooth the path for Mrs. Devar by saying quietly:
“In the meantime, Miss Vanrenen, the information stored in those little red books is growing rusty.”
She settled the dispute at once by asking her companion which side of the car she preferred, and the other woman was compelled to say graciously that she really had no choice in the matter, but, to avoid further delay, would take the left-hand seat. Cynthia followed, and Medenham, still ready to deal harshly with Marigny if necessary, adjusted their rugs, saw to the safe disposal of the camera, and closed the door.
At that instant, the hall-porter hurried down the steps.
“Beg pardon, mum,” he said to Mrs. Devar, thrusting an open telegram between Medenham and Cynthia, “but there’s one wordhere——”
She snatched the form angrily from his outstretched hand.
“Which one?” she asked.
“The word after——”
“Come round this side. You are incommoding Miss Vanrenen.”
The man obeyed. With the curious fatality which attends such incidents, even among well-bred people, not a word was spoken by any of the others. To all seeming, Mrs. Devar’s cramped handwriting might have concealed some secret of gravest import to each person present. It was not really so thrilling when heard.
“That is ‘Raven,’ plain enough I should think,” she snapped.
“Thank you, mum. ‘The Raven, Shrewsbury,’” read the hall-porter.
Medenham caught Marigny’s eye. He was minded to laugh outright, but forebore. Then he sprang into his seat, and the car curled in quick semicircle and climbed the hill to the left, while the Frenchman, surprised by this rapid movement, signaled frantically to Mrs. Devar, nodding farewell, that they had taken the wrong road.
“Not at all,” explained Medenham. “I want you to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which is a hundred feet higher in the air than the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” cried Cynthia indignantly. “The next thing you will tell me is that the Thames is wider than the Hudson.”
“So it is, at an equal distance from the sea.”
“Well, trot out your bridge. Seeing is believing, all the time.”
But Cynthia had yet to learn the exceeding wisdom of Ezekiel when he wrote of those “which have eyes to see, and see not,” for never was optical delusion better contrived than the height above water level of the fairylike structure that spans the Avon below Bristol. The reason is not far to seek. The mind is not prepared for the imminence of the swaying roadway that leaps from side to side of that tremendous gorge. On either crest are pleasant gardens, pretty houses, tree-shaded paths, and the opposing precipices are so prompt in their sheer fall that the eye insensibly rests on the upper level and refuses to dwell on the river far beneath.
So Cynthia was charmed but not convinced, and Medenham himself could scarce believe his recollection that the tops of the towers of the far larger bridge at Brooklyn would be only twenty-six feet higher than the roadway at Clifton. Mrs. Devar, of course, showed an utter lack of interest in the debate. Indeed, she refused emphatically to walk to the middle of the bridge, on the plea of light-headedness, and Cynthia instantly availed herself of the few minutes’ tête-à-tête thus vouchsafed.
“Now,” said she, looking, not at Medenham, but at the Titanic cleft cut by a tiny river, “now, please, tell me all about it.”
“Just as at Cheddar, the rocks are limestone——” he began.
“Oh, bother the rocks! How did you get rid of Simmonds? And why is Count Marigny mad? And are you mixed up in Captain Devar’s mighty smart change of base? Tell me everything. I hate mysteries. If we go on at the present rate some of us will soon be wearing masks and cloaks, and stamping our feet, and saying ‘Ha! Ha!’ or ‘Sdeath!’ or something equally absurd.”
“Simmonds is a victim of science. If the earth wire of a magneto makes a metallic contact there is trouble in the cylinders, so Simmonds is switched off until he can locate the fault.”
“The work of a minute.”
“It will take him five days at least.”
Then Cynthia did flash an amused glance at him, but he was watching a small steamer puffing against the tide, and his face was adamant.
“Go on,” she cried quizzically. “What’s the matter with the Count’s cylinders?”
“He professed to believe that I had stolen somebody’s car, and graciously undertook to shield me if I would consent to run away at once, leaving you and Mrs. Devar to finish your tour in the Du Vallon.”
“And you refused?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“Very little; he agreed.”
“But he is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to the smiter.”
“I didn’t smite him,” Medenham blurted out.
Cynthia fastened on to the hesitating denial with the hawklike pounce of some barrister famous for merciless cross-examination of a hostile witness.
“Did you offer to?” she asked.
“We dealt with possible eventualities,” he said weakly.
“I knew it.... There was such a funny look in your eyes when I first saw you....”
“Funny is the right word. The crisiswasrather humorous.”
“Poor man, he only wished to be civil, perhaps—I mean, that is, in lending his car; and he may really have thought you—you were not a chauffeur—like Simmonds, or Smith, for example. You wouldn’t have hit him, of course?”
“I sincerely hope not.”
She caught her breath and peered at him again, and there was a light in her eyes that would have infuriated Marigny had he seen it. It was well, too, that Medenham’s head was averted, since he simply dared not meet her frankly inquisitive gaze.
“You know that such a thing would be horrid for me—for all of us,” she persisted.
“Yes,” he said, “I feel that very keenly. Thank goodness, the Frenchman felt it also.”
Cynthia thought fit to skip to the third item in her list.
“Now as to Captain Devar?” she cried. “His mother is dreadfully annoyed. She hates dull evenings,and the four of us were to play bridge to-night at Hereford. Why was he sent away?”
“Sent away?” echoed Medenham in mock amazement.
“Oh, come, you knew him quite well. You said so in London. I am not exactly the silly young thing I look, Mr. Fitzroy, and Count Marigny’s coincidences are a trifle far-fetched. Both he and Captain Devar fully understood what they were doing when they arranged to meet in Bristol, and somebody must have fired a very big gun quite close to the fat little man that he should be scared off the instant he set eyes on me.”
Then Medenham resolved to end a catechism that opened up illimitable vistas, for he did not want to lose Cynthia just yet, and there was no knowing what she might do if she suspected the truth. Although, if the situation were strictly dissected, Mrs. Devar’s chaperonage was as useful to him as the lady herself intended it to be to Marigny, there was a vital difference between the two sets of circumstances. He had been pitchforked by fate into the company of a charming girl whom he was learning to love as he had never loved woman before, whereas the members of the money-hunting gang whose scheme he had accidentally overheard at Brighton were engaged in a deliberate intrigue, outlined in Paris as soon as Mr. Vanrenen planned the motor tour for his daughter, and perfected during Cynthia’s brief stay in London.
So he appealed for her forbearance on a plea that he imagined was sure to succeed.
“I don’t wish to conceal from you that Captain Devar and I have fallen out in the past,” he said. “But I am genuinely sorry for his mother, who certainly does not know what a rascal he is. Don’t ask me for further details now, Miss Vanrenen. He will not cross your path in the near future, and I promise to tell you the whole story long before there is any chance of your meeting him again.”
For some reason, deep hidden yet delicately distinct, Cynthia extracted a good deal more from that simple speech than the mere words implied. The air of the downs was peculiarly fresh and strong in the center of the bridge, a fact which probably accounted for the vivid color that lit her face and added luster to her bright eyes. At any rate, she dropped the conversation suddenly.
“Mrs. Devar will be growing quite impatient,” she said, with an admirable assumption of ease, “and I want to buy some pictures of this pretty toy bridge of yours. What a pity the light is altogether wrong for a snapshot, and itisso stupid to use films when one knows that the sun is in the camera!”
Whereat Medenham breathed freely again, while thanking the gods for the delightfully effective resources that every woman—even a candid, outspoken Cynthia—has at her fingers’ ends.
The simplest means of reaching the Gloucester road was to run back past the hotel, but the goddessof happy chance elected, for her own purposes, that Medenham should ask a policeman to direct him to Cabot’s Tower, and, the man having the brain of a surveyor, he was sent through by-streets that saved a few yards, perhaps, but cost him many minutes in stopping to inquire the way. Hence, he missed an amazing sight. The merest glimpse of Count Edouard Marigny’s new acquaintance would surely have pulled him up, if it did not put an end to the tour forthwith. But that was not to be. Blissfully unconscious of the fact that the Frenchman was eagerly explaining to a dignified yet strangely perturbed old gentleman that the car Number X L 4000—containing a young American lady and her friend, and driven by a conceited puppy of a chauffeur who suffered badly fromtête montée—had just gone up the hill to the left, Medenham at last reached the open road, and the Mercury leaped forward as if Gloucester would hardly wait till it arrived there.
The old gentleman had only that minute alighted from a station cab, and a question he addressed to the hall-porter led that civil functionary to refer him to Marigny “as a friend of the parties concerned.”
But the newcomer drew himself up somewhat stiffly when the foreign personage spoke of Medenham as a “puppy.”
“Before our conversation proceeds any farther I think I ought to tell you that I am the Earl of Fairholme and that Viscount Medenham is my son,” he said.
Marigny looked so blank at this that the Earl’s explanation took fresh shape.
“I mean,” he went on, perceiving that his hearer was none the wiser, “I mean that the chauffeur you allude to is Viscount Medenham.”
Marigny, though born on the banks of the Loire, was a Southern Frenchman by descent, and the hereditary tint of olive in his skin became prominent only when his emotions were aroused. Now the pink and white of his complexion was tinged with yellowish-green. Never before in his life had he been quite so surprised—never.
“He—he said his name was Fitzroy,” was all he could gasp.
“So it is—the dog. Took the family name and dropped his title in order to go gallivanting about the country with this young person.... An American, I am told—and with that detestable creature, Mrs. Devar! Nice thing! No wonder Lady Porthcawl was shocked. May I ask, sir, whoyouare?”
Lord Fairholme was very angry, and not without good reason. He had traveled from London at an absurdly early hour in response to the urgent representations of Susan, Lady St. Maur, to whom her intimate friend, Millicent Porthcawl, had written a thrilling account of the goings-on at Bournemouth. It happened that the Countess of Porthcawl’s bedroom overlooked the carriage-way in front of the Royal Bath Hotel, and, when she recovered fromthe stupor of recognizing Medenham in the chauffeur of the Vanrenen equipage, she gratified her spite by sending a lively and wholly distorted version of the tour to his aunt.
The letter reached Curzon Street during the afternoon, and exercised a remarkably restorative effect on the now convalescent lover of forced strawberries. Lady St. Maur ordered her carriage, and was driven in a jiffy to the Fairholme mansion in Cavendish Square, where she and her brother indulged in the most lugubrious opinions as to the future of “poor George.” They assumed that he would fall an easy prey to the wiles of a “designing American.” Neither of them had met many citizens of the United States, and each shared to the fullest extent the common British dislike of every person and every thing that is new and strange, so they had visions of a Countess of Fairholme who would speak in the weird tongue of Chicago, whose name would be “Mamie,” who would call the earl “poppa number two,” and prefix every utterance with “Say,” or “My land!”
Both brother and sister had laughed many a time at the stage version of a Briton as presented in Paris, but they forgot that the average Englishman’s conception of the average American is equally ludicrous in its blunders. In devising means “to save George” they flew into a panic. Lady St. Maur telegraphed a frantic appeal to Lady Porthcawl for information, but “dear Millicent” took thought, saw that she was already sufficiently committed, and caused her maidto reply that she had left Bournemouth for the weekend.
A telegram to the hotel manager produced more definite news. Cynthia, providing against the receipt of any urgent message from her father, had given the College Green Hotel as her address for the night; but this intelligence arrived too late to permit of the Earl’s departure till next morning. Lady Porthcawl’s hint that the “devoted George was traveling incognito” prevented the use of wire or post. If the infatuated viscount were to be brought to reason there was nothing for it but that the Earl should hurry to Bristol by an early train next morning. He did hurry, and arrived five minutes too late.
Marigny, of course, saw that lightning had darted from a summer sky. If the despised chauffeur had proved such a tough opponent, what would happen now that he turned out to be a sprig of the aristocracy? He guessed at once that the Earl of Fairholme appraised Cynthia Vanrenen by the Devar standard. He knew that five minutes in Cynthia’s company would alter this doughty old gentleman’s views so greatly that his present fury would give place to idolatry. No matter what the cost, they two must not meet, and it was very evident that if Hereford were mentioned as the night’s rendezvous, the Earl would proceed there by the next train.
What was to be done? He decided promptly. Lifting his hat, and offering Lord Fairholme hiscard, he made up his mind to lie, and lie speciously, with circumstantial detail and convincing knowledge.
“I happened to meet the Vanrenens in Paris,” he said. “Business brought me here, and I was surprised to see Miss Vanrenen without her father. You will pardon my reference to your son, I am sure. His attitude is explicable now. He resented my offer of friendly assistance to the young lady. Perhaps he thought she might avail herself of it.”
“Assistance? What is the matter?”
“She had arranged for a car to meet her here. As it was not forthcoming, she altered her plans for a tour of Oxford, Kenilworth, and Warwick, and has gone in Viscount—Viscount——”
“Medenham’s.”
“Ah, yes—I did not catch the name precisely—in your son’s car to London.”
By this time Lord Fairholme had ascertained the Frenchman’s description, and he was sufficiently well acquainted with the Valley of the Loire to recollect the Château Marigny as a house of some importance.
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Comte, if I seemed to speak brusquely at first,” he said, “but we all appear to be mixed up in a comedy of errors. I remember now that my son telegraphed from Brighton to say that he would return to-day. Perhaps my journey from town was unnecessary, and he may be only engaged in some harmless escapade that is now nearing its end. I am very much obliged to you, and—er—I hope you will call when next you arein London. You know my name—my place is in Cavendish Square. Good-day.”
So Marigny was left a second time on the steps of the hotel, while the cab which brought the Earl of Fairholme from the railway station took him back to it.
The Du Vallon came panting from the garage, but the Frenchman sent it away again. Hereford was no great distance by the direct road, and he had already determined not to follow the tortuous route devised by Cynthia for the day’s run. Moreover, he must now reconsider his schemes. The long telegrams which he had just dispatched to Devar in London and to Peter Vanrenen in Paris might demand supplements.
And to think of that accursed chauffeur being a viscount! His gorge rose at that. The thought almost choked him. It was well that the hall-porter did not understand French, or the words that were muttered by Marigny as he turned on his heel and re-entered the hotel might have shocked him. And, indeed, they were most unsuited for the ears of a hall-porter who dwelt next door to a cathedral.