Sir—My daughter received a note from you this morning, and she was about to answer it when I informed her that she was communicating with a person who had given her an assumed name. I also asked her, as a favor, to permit me to reply in her stead. Now, I have this to say—Miss Vanrenen does not know, and will never know from me, the true nature of the trick you played on her. You bear the label of a gentleman, so it is my earnest hope—indeed, my sincere belief—that you will respect the trust she placed in you, and not expose her to the idle chatter of clubs and scandal-spreading drawing-rooms. During two days I have been very bitter against you. To-day I take a calmer view, and, provided that neither my daughter nor I ever see or hear of you again, I shall be willing to credit that you acted more in a spirit of youthful capricethan from any foul desire to injure the good repute of one who has done no harm to you or yours.I am,Yours truly,Peter Vanrenen.
Sir—My daughter received a note from you this morning, and she was about to answer it when I informed her that she was communicating with a person who had given her an assumed name. I also asked her, as a favor, to permit me to reply in her stead. Now, I have this to say—Miss Vanrenen does not know, and will never know from me, the true nature of the trick you played on her. You bear the label of a gentleman, so it is my earnest hope—indeed, my sincere belief—that you will respect the trust she placed in you, and not expose her to the idle chatter of clubs and scandal-spreading drawing-rooms. During two days I have been very bitter against you. To-day I take a calmer view, and, provided that neither my daughter nor I ever see or hear of you again, I shall be willing to credit that you acted more in a spirit of youthful capricethan from any foul desire to injure the good repute of one who has done no harm to you or yours.
I am,Yours truly,Peter Vanrenen.
Medenham read and reread this harsh letter many times. Then, out of brooding chaos, leaped one fiery question—where was Marigny?
The gate which Cynthia’s father had shut and bolted in his face did not frighten him. He had leaped a wall of brass and triple steel when he won Cynthia Vanrenen’s love in the guise of an humble chauffeur, so it was unbelievable that the barrier interposed by a father’s misguided wrath should prove unsurmountable.
But Marigny! He wanted to feel his fingers clutching that slender throat, to see that pink and white face empurple and grow black under their strain, and it was all-important that the scoundrel should be brought to book before the Vanrenens returned to London. He gave a passing thought to Mrs. Leland, it was true. If she shared with Vanrenen the silly little secret of his identity, it was beyond comprehension that she should let her friend hold the view that he (Medenham) was merely an enterprising blackguard.
Still, these considerations were light as thistle-down compared with the need of finding Marigny. He and Dale began to hunt London for the Frenchman. But they had to deal with a wary bird, who wouldnot break covert till it suited his own convenience. And then, the sublime cheek of the man! On the Friday morning, when Medenham rose with a fixed resolve to obtain the services of a private detective, he received this note:
Dear Viscount Medenham—I have a notion, as our mutual acquaintance Mr. Vanrenen would say (Do you know him? Now that I consider the matter, I think not), that you are anxious to meet me. We have things to discuss, have we not? Well, then I await you at the above address.Yours to command,Edouard Marigny.
Dear Viscount Medenham—I have a notion, as our mutual acquaintance Mr. Vanrenen would say (Do you know him? Now that I consider the matter, I think not), that you are anxious to meet me. We have things to discuss, have we not? Well, then I await you at the above address.
Yours to command,Edouard Marigny.
At any other moment the tone of confidence underlying the effrontery of this letter would certainly have revealed its presence to a brain more than ordinarily acute. But in the storm and stress of his rage against gods and men, Medenham did not wait to ponder subtleties of expression. No matter what the hidden reason that inspired Marigny’s pen, it was enough for Medenham to know that at last that arch-plotter and very perfect rascal was within his reach. He breakfasted in a fury of haste, crammed on a hat, and rushed away, meaning to drive in a cab to the hotel in Northumberland Avenue from which Marigny wrote.
Such was his agitated state that he was not even surprised when he found the Mercury waiting outside, with Dale, taciturn as ever, scrutinizing the day’s sporting news. In sober fact, the man was almost as perturbed as his master. For an hour in the morning, and again during certain periods of suspense in the afternoon, he forgot his troubles in the effort either to “spot winners” or to persuadehimself that the horses he had selected for particular races had not run, since their names failed to appear among the “first three.” But these spasms of anticipation and disillusionment soon passed. During the remainder of the long hours of daylight Dale was ever on thequi vivefor a wild rush of two or three hundred miles in pursuit of the woman whose charms had so effectually subjugated the young Viscount. Even the hunt for Marigny did not weaken Dale’s belief, and Medenham was never in Cavendish Square or at his club at any practicable hour that the Mercury was not at hand, with petrol tanks full, luggage carriers attached, and a full stock of spares and reserve spirit on board. At any rate, on this occasion Medenham merely gave him Marigny’s address, and jumped inside. Dale was disappointed. He expected the order to be “Carlisle,” at the least.
Soon his lordship was being conducted by an hotel servant to a private sitting-room. The Frenchman, who was seated at a table, writing, when he entered, rose and bowed politely.
“I thought it highly probable that I should have the honor of seeing you this morning, Viscount Medenham,” he said, and there was a touch of restraint, of formal courtesy, in his voice that the other, even in his anger against the man, did not fail to notice. Oddly enough, it savored of brutality to attack him without preface, and Marigny seemed to be unconscious of his visitor’s unconcealed animosity.
“I am glad you are here,” he went on glibly.“Recent events call for a full discussion between you and me, do you agree? But before we come to close quarters, as you say in England, I wish to know whether the argument is to be conducted on lines that befit gentlemen. On the last occasion when we differed, you used the methods of the costermonger.”
“They served their purpose,” said Medenham, annoyed at finding the Frenchman’s coolness rather disconcerting.
Suddenly, he decided on a new plan of action, and resolved to let the man say what he chose. Dearly as he would have liked to wreak physical vengeance on him, he felt that such a proceeding offered the least satisfactory way out of a situation fraught with no small risk of publicity. Marigny must have had some all-powerful motive in sending for him; better learn that before his bitter and contemptuous words sealed an adversary’s lips.
“Won’t you sit down?” came the urbane request.
“I prefer standing, if you don’t mind,” said Medenham curtly; then he added, after a little pause:
“It may clear the atmosphere somewhat if I tell you that I threatened you at Bristol merely because a certain issue had to be determined within a few seconds. That consideration does not apply now. You are at liberty to say what you like without fear of consequences.”
The Frenchman elevated his eyebrows.
“Fear?” he said.
“Oh, don’t bandy words with me. You know what I mean. I suppose a man must possess courage of a sort even to become a blackmailer, which is what you threaten to develop into. At any rate, I promise to keep my hands off you, if that is what you want.”
“Not exactly,” was the quiet answer. “One may draw distinctions, even in that regard, but I do wish for an opportunity to discuss our quarrel without an appeal to brute force.”
“In other words,” said Medenham sternly, “you want to be free to say something which under ordinary conditions would earn you a thrashing. Well—say it!”
Marigny nodded, pulled a chair round so that he was straddled across it, facing Medenham, with his arms resting on the back. He lit a cigarette, and seemed to draw inspiration from the first dense cloud of smoke, for his eyes dwelt on it rather than sought the Englishman’s frown.
“In a dispute of this kind,” he said, “it is well to begin at the beginning, otherwise one’s motives are apt to be misunderstood. Even you, I suppose, will admit that I was first in the field.”
There was no answer. To his credit, Medenham thought, Marigny showed a curious unwillingness to mention Cynthia’s name, but, no matter what he had in mind, Medenham certainly did not intend to render his task easier.
“You see,” went on Count Edouard, after athoughtful puff or two, “I am quite as well-born a man in my country as you are in yours. I have not ascertained the date when the Fairholme Earldom was created, but there has been a Comte Marigny on the Loire since 1434. Of course, you understand that I do not mention this trivial fact in any ridiculous spirit of boasting. I only put it forward as constituting a claim to a certain equality. That is all. Unfortunately, recent events in my family have robbed me of those necessary appurtenances to rank and position which a happier fate has preserved to you. I am poor, you are rich; I must marry a wife with money, you can afford to marry for love. Why then, Viscount Medenham, should you step in and rob me of a rich wife?”
In spite of his loathing of the means adopted by this self-proclaimed rival to snatch an advantage, Medenham did not hesitate to reply:
“My answer to that is, of course, that I have done nothing of the sort. I simply intervened between a crew of adventurers and their possible, though most improbable, victim.”
“Unfortunately, our points of view are irreconcilable,” went on the Frenchman airily. “I might claim that the term adventurer, as applied to me, is a harsh one. You may inquire where and how you choose in Paris, and you will find no discredit attached to my name. But that phase of the difficulty is now of no consequence. Let us keep to the main issue. Some three months ago I made theacquaintance of a lady fitted in every respect to fill my ideal. I was on good terms with her father, and by no means distasteful to the lady herself. Given a fair opportunity, I thought I might win her, and I was puzzling my wits to know how best to attain that most desirable end when Fate apparently opened a way. But you have no doubt observed in life that while one can seldom misinterpret Fate’s frowns, her smiles can be damnably misleading. Sometimes they are little else than malicious leers; it was so now, and I quickly found that I had erred badly in thinking that I had been vouchsafed a goldenopportunity——”
“Can’t you spare me some of this theorizing?” broke in Medenham with a cold impatience. “You happened to send for me at a moment when I was exceedingly anxious to meet you. The fact that I am here in response to your request stops me from carrying out the special purpose I had in view. That can wait, though not very long. At any rate, you might save yourself some hair-splitting and me some exercise of self-restraint by telling me what it is that you want.”
“A thousand regrets if I am boring you,” said Marigny, leaning back in the chair and laying the cigarette on the mantelpiece. “Yet bear with me a little while, I pray you; these explanations are necessary. A sane man acts with motive, and it is only reasonable that you should understand my motive before you hear my project.”
“Ah, then, there is a project?”
“Yes. You have stepped in between me and the realization of my dearest wish, of my main object in life. You are, I take it, a soldier and a gentleman. There is a way by which men of honor settle these disputes—I invite you to follow it.”
The fantastic proposal was made with an air of dignity that robbed it of any inherent ludicrousness. Greatly as he despised this man, Medenham could not wholly conceal the wonder that leaped to his eyes.
“Are you suggesting that we should fight a duel?” he asked, smiling with incredulity, yet constrained to believe that Marigny was really speaking in cold blood.
“Yes—oh, yes. A duel—no make-believe!”
A curious change came into Marigny’s voice at that instant. He seemed to bark each staccato phrase; a vindictive fire gleamed in his black eyes, and the olive tint showed beneath the pink and white of his skin.
Medenham laughed, almost good-humoredly.
“The notion is worthy of you,” he said. “I might have expected it, but I fancied you were more sensible. Surely you know enough of my world to realize that such a thing is impossible.”
“It must be made possible,” said Marigny gravely.
“It cannot—I refuse.”
“I am partly prepared for some such answer, but I shall be just to you in my thoughts, Viscount Medenham. I know you are a brave man. It isnot cowardice, but your insular convention that restrains you from facing me on the field. Nevertheless, I insist.”
Medenham threw out an impatient hand.
“You are talking arrant nonsense, for what purpose I can hardly conceive,” he said, frowning with vexation at the tragi-comedy into which he had been drawn. “Frenchmen, it is true, regard these things from a different standpoint. That which seems rational to you is little else than buffoonery to me. If that is your object in seeking an interview, it has now been accomplished. I absolutely decline to entertain the proposition for a moment. You have certainly succeeded in lending an air of drivel to a controversy that I regard as serious. I came here filled with very bitter thoughts toward you, but your burlesque has disarmed me. It is only fair, however, that I should warn you not to cross my path again, since one’s sense of humor may become strained, and that will be bad for you.”
His attitude seemed to betoken an immediate departure, but Marigny looked at him so fixedly that he waited to hear what the other had to say. He was quite determined now to keep Cynthia out of the discussion. Even Vanrenen’s letter need not be mentioned until he had seen the millionaire in person and disabused his mind of the inept inventions with which the Frenchman had perplexed him.
“I don’t take your refusal as final,” said Count Edouard, speaking very slowly, and choosing eachsentence with evident care. “I was at pains to explain my position, and there now devolves upon me the disagreeable duty of telling you what will happen if you do not fight. You English may not care to defend your honor in the manner that appeals to a more sensitive nation like the French, but you are vulnerable in your womenfolk. I now tell you quite frankly, that if you do not abandon your pretensions to Miss Cynthia Vanrenen, I shall make it my special business in life to ruin her socially.”
Medenham listened more in amazement than indignation.
At first, the true significance of the threat left him unmoved. In his ears it was a mere repetition of the bogey raised by Vanrenen, and that was the wildest nonsense.
“I really do not think you are responsible for your words,” he began.
Marigny swept aside the protest with an emphatic gesture.
“Oh, yes, I am,” he said, his voice low, sibilant, menacing. “I have laid my plans, and shall pursue them with a complete detachment. Others may suffer—so shall I. I have practically reached the limit of my resources. In a month or less I shall be penniless. What money I could scrape together I devoted to the furtherance of this marriage-project, and I am well aware that when you meet Mr. Vanrenen, my poor little cobweb of intrigue will be blown into thin air. You are quite a desirableparti, ViscountMedenham—every condition points to your speedy and happy union to the lady of your choice. It is, however, a most unfortunate and lamentable fact that she also happens to be the lady ofmychoice, and I shall revenge myself on you, through her, in the way best calculated to pierce your thick British hide. The future Countess of Fairholme should be superior to Cæsar’s wife in being not only above suspicion, but altogether removed from its taint. I am afraid that it will be my task to tarnish her escutcheon.”
“You miserable rascal,” cried Medenham, stung beyond endurance by this extraordinary declaration of a vile purpose, “why should you imagine that I shall allow you to sit there and pour forth your venom unscathed? Stand up, you beast, or must I kick you up!”
“Ha! You are ready to fight me now, my worthy Viscount! But not in your costermonger fashion. You cannot, because I have your promise. You see I have taken your measure with some accuracy, and hard words will not move me. I mean you to understand the issue clearly. Either you meet me under conditions that will insure a clear field for the survivor, or I devote myself to spreading in every quarter most likely to prove damaging to Miss Vanrenen the full, though, perhaps, untrue, but none the less fascinating story of her boating excursion on the Wye at midnight.”
He did then spring to his feet, for Medenham wasadvancing on him with obvious intent to stifle the monstrous accusation by force.
“No! No! you will achieve nothing by violence,” he shouted. “You are not so much my physical superior that I cannot defend myself until assistance arrives, and I will ask you to consider what manner of gloss will be placed upon your actions if I drag you before a magistrate for an assault. Why, man, you are absolutely at my mercy. You yourself would be my best witness. Ah,touché! You felt the point that time.Que diable!I gave you credit for a quicker wit, but it is gratifying to learn that you are beginning at last to see that I am in deadly earnest. When I strike there is nothing half-hearted behind my blow; I swear to you that I shall neither relent nor draw back. If ruin overwhelm me, Cynthia Vanrenen shall be involved in my downfall. Picture to yourself the smiles, the whispers, the half-spoken scandal that will cling to her through life. Who will believe her when she says that she was ignorant of your rank when she started out from London? The incomparable Cynthia and the naughty Viscount, touring their thousand miles through England with Mrs. Devar as a shield of innocence!... Mrs. Devar!... Can’t you hear the long and loud guffaw that would convulse society as soon ashername cropped up? Ah, you are writhing under the lash now, I fancy! It is dawning on you that a peril greater than the sword or bullet may be near. Dozens of people in Paris and London know, orguess, at any rate, that I was Cynthia Vanrenen’s suitor, but as many hundreds as there were dozens shall be told that I cast her off because of the taint placed on her by your silly masquerading. You have no escape—you have no answer—your marriage will only serve to confirm my words. Do you hear? I shall say.... But you know what I shall say.... Now, will you fight me?”
“Yes,” said Medenham.
A spasm of hate and furious joy struggled for mastery in Marigny’s face, but he showed an iron resolution that almost equaled the coolness of the man whose scornful gaze might well have abashed him.
“I thought so,” he said—“under terms, of course?”
“Terms, you beast! The only terms I ask are that you shall stand before me with a sword in your hand.”
“A sword!—is that quite fair? You Englishmen are not proficient with the sword. Why not pistols?”
“I think you are right,” said Medenham, turning away as if the sight of him was loathsome. “You deserve the death of a dog; it would dishonor bright steel to touch you.”
“We shall see,” said Marigny, who having achieved his purpose, was now apparently unconcerned as to its outcome. “But it would be folly to fight without arriving at an understanding. I shall try to kill you, and I am sure you will admit that I have strivento force you into an active reciprocity in that respect. But one might only be wounded—that is the lottery of it—so I stipulate that if fortune should favor me, and you still live, you shall agree to leave me in undisturbed possession of the field for at least six months after our encounter.”
Medenham still refused to look at him.
“I agree to no terms or conditions whatsoever,” he answered. “I am meeting you solely because of the foul lie you have dared to utter against the reputation of the woman I love. If you breathe a word of it in any other ear I shall tear your tongue out by the roots, duel or no duel.”
“Ah, but that is a pity,” jeered the Frenchman. “Don’t you see that unless you accept my offer I shall be compelled to fall back on the sword, since it is absolutely an essential element of my probable success that you should be cleared out of my way? I have no chance against you in the matrimonial market, but I think the odds are in my favor when cold steel is the arbitrator. Now, could anyone be more frank than I in this matter? I mean either to win or lose. There must be no middle course. Unless you are willing to stand aside, if beaten, I can win only by stepping over your corpse. Why not avoid extremes? They may be unnecessary.”
“You have already convinced me that your ethics are drawn from the police court, but I see now, that you depend for your wit on the cheaper variety of melodrama,” said Medenham, with a quiet derisionthat at last brought a flush of passion to the Frenchman’s face. “I fail to see the need of more words. You have asked for deeds, and you shall have them. When and where do you propose that this encounter shall take place?”
“To-morrow morning—about four o’clock—on the sands between Calais and Wissant.”
In spite of all that had gone before, Medenham was unprepared for this categorical answer. Were he in full possession of his faculties he must have seen the trap into which he was being decoyed. Unhappily, Vanrenen’s letter had helped to complete the lure, and he was no longer amenable to the dictates of cold reason.
“That is hardly possible,” he said. “I do not propose to bring myself under the law as a murderer, Monsieur Marigny. I am ready to take the consequences of a fair fight, but to secure that, certain preliminaries are indispensable.”
“I was sure you would meet me,” said Marigny, smiling nonchalantly as he lighted the cigarette again. “I have arranged everything, even the attendance of witnesses and a doctor. We cross over to Calais by the night boat from Dover, pick up the others at the Hôtel de la Plage, at which they will arrive to-night, and drive straight to theterrain. There is no prospect of outside interference. This is not the sort of duel which either of the combatants is anxious to advertise broadcast. My friends will be discretion itself, and I need hardly express my convictionthat you will not make known in England the purpose of our journey. Of course, it is open to you to bring one of your own friends, if you think fit. But my notion is, that these affairs should be settled discreetly in the presence of the smallest possible number of onlookers. I shall, of course, satisfy you as to the standing of the gentlemen I have summoned from Paris. On the table there are their telegrams accepting my invitation to meet us at Calais. When you came in I was busy putting my wretched affairs in order. At least I have given you proof of my belief in your courage. I even go so far as to say that I regret most profoundly the necessity which has driven me to use threats against a charming lady in order to wring a challenge out of you. Of course, between ourselves, I know perfectly well that there is not a word of truth in the statements I have pledged myself to make, but that defect in nowise detracts from their efficiency. Indeed, it commends them the more to the real purveyor ofscandal——”
The door slammed behind Medenham. A dreadful doubt assailed him that if he did not hurry away from that taunting voice he might be tempted to forget himself—and what torture that would mean to Cynthia! He was indeed a prey to complex emotions that rendered him utterly incapable of forming a well-balanced judgment. Nothing more illogical, more ill-advised, more thoroughly unsuited to achieve its object than the proposed duel couldwell be mooted, yet the sheer malignity of Marigny’s ruffianly device to attain his ends had impelled him to that final madness. Notions of right and wrong were topsy-turvy in his brain. He was carried along on a current of passion that overturned every barrier imposed by sense and prudence. It seemed quite reasonable to one who had often risked life and limb for his country, who, from mere love of sport, had faced many an infuriated tiger and skulking lion, that he should be justified by the eternal law in striving to rid the world of this ultra-beast. He had not scrupled to kill a poisonous snake—why should he flinch from killing a man whose chief equipment was the poison-laden fang of slander? Happily, he could use a sword in a fashion that might surprise Marigny most wofully. If he did not succeed in killing the wretch, he would surely disable him, and the thought sent such a thrill of fierce pleasure through his veins that he resolutely closed his eyes to the lamentable results that must follow his own death.
Cynthia, at least, would not suffer; that was all he cared for. No matter what happened, he did not imagine for one moment that she would marry Marigny. But that eventuality hardly troubled him at all. The Frenchman had chosen the sword, and he must abide by its stern arbitrament.
“Home!” he said to Dale, finding his retainer’s eye bent inquiringly on him when he reached the street. The word had a curiously detached soundin his ears. “Home!” It savored of rank lunacy to think that within a few short hours he would be standing on foreign soil, striving desperately with naked steel to defend his own life and destroy another’s.
The fine weather which had endured so long gave way that night. Storm-clouds swept up from the Atlantic, and England was drenched in rain when Medenham quitted Charing Cross at 9 p.m. At the eleventh hour he determined to take Dale with him, but that belated display of wisdom arose more from the need he felt of human companionship than from any sense of the absurdity of going alone to fight a duel in a foreign land. He had given no thought during the fleeting hours to the necessity of communicating with his relatives in case he fell a victim to Marigny’s rancor, so he devoted himself now to writing a brief account to the Marquis of Scarland of the causes that led up to the duel. He concluded with an entreaty that his brother-in-law should use all means within his power to close down any inquiry that might result, and pointed out that in this connection Dale would prove a valuable ally, since his testimony would make clear the fact that the contest had taken place in France, where duels are looked on with a more lenient eye than in England.
It was difficult to write legibly in the fast-moving, ill-lighted train, so he completed the letter on board the steamer, but did not hand it to Dale until after Calais was reached.
While the steamer was drawing up to her berth, he saw Count Edouard Marigny among the few passengers on deck. He had turned his back on the Frenchman at Charing Cross, but the imperturbable Count, noticing Dale in the half-light of dawn, believed that Medenham had brought a fellow-countryman as a witness. He strolled up, and said affably:
“Is this gentleman your friend?”
“Yes,” said Medenham, “though not quite in the sense that you mean. He will accompany me to the hotel, and await my return there.”
The Frenchman was evidently mystified; he smiled, but passed no other comment. Dale, who heard what was said, now wondered more than ever what lay behind this sudden journey to France. He had already recognized Marigny as the owner of the Du Vallon, for he had seen him leaving the Metropole Hotel at Brighton not many days ago, and had the best of reasons for regarding him as Viscount Medenham’s implacable enemy. Why, then, were these two crossing the Channel in company, going together to some hotel, and leaving him, Dale, to kick his heels in the small hours of the morning till it pleased them to pick him up again?
In justice to the loyal-hearted chauffeur, plunged quite unknowingly into the crisis of his life, it mustbe said that the notion of a duel did not even occur to his puzzled brain.
Nor was he given much time for speculation. A carriage awaited the trio at the quay. They carried no luggage to entail a delay at the Customs, and they drove off at a rapid pace through silent streets in a drenched downpour of rain. When they reached the Hôtel de la Plage, neither Medenham nor the Frenchman alighted, but the former handed Dale a letter.
“I may be detained in France somewhat longer than I anticipated,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “If that is so, and you have to return to England without me, hand this letter to the Marquis of Scarland. Take great care of it, and keep it in your possession until you are positively assured that I am unable to go with you.”
These enigmatical instructions bothered their hearer far more than any of the strange proceedings of the night.
“How shall I know, my lord, whether I am to go back with you or not?” he asked.
“Oh, of course I shall make that quite clear,” laughed Medenham. “At present, all you have to do is to wait here a little while.”
His careless demeanor dispelled the first dim shadow of doubt that had arisen in Dale’s mind. The man was no stranger on the Continent, having traveled with his employer over the length and breadth of France and Northern Italy; but themanner of this visit to the Hôtel de la Plage at Calais was so perplexing that he essayed another question.
“When may I expect you, my lord?” he asked.
Medenham affected to consult his watch.
“Within an hour,” he said; “perhaps a few minutes more. At any rate, you can arrange to catch the afternoon boat. Meanwhile, make yourself comfortable.”
By this time, three men, whom he had never seen before, came out from the hotel. Apparently, they were fully prepared for the coming of the visitors from England. They greeted Count Marigny cordially, and were introduced to Medenham. Without more ado, two of them entered the vehicle; the third, hoisting an umbrella, climbed to the side of the driver, to whom no orders were given, and the cab rattled rapidly away over the paving-stones, leaving Dale to gaze disconsolately after it.
Then the vague suspicions in his mind awoke into activity. For one thing, he had heard one of the strangers alluded to as “Monsieur le Docteur.” For another, the newcomers carried a curious-looking parcel, or case, of an elongated shape that suggested unusual contents. Some trick of memory came to his aid. In an hotel at Lyons he had watched a valet packing just such an object with the remainder of his employer’s luggage, and was told, on inquiry, that it contained foils. But why foils? ... at four o’clock in the morning? ... in a country wheremen might still requite an outrage by an appeal to the law of the jungle?
Hastily drawing from his breast pocket the letter intrusted to him, he examined the superscription. It was addressed simply to the Marquis of Scarland, and must surely be a document of immense significance, or the young Viscount would not have brought him all the way from London to act as messenger rather than intrust it to the post. Each instant Dale’s ideas became clearer; each instant his heart throbbed with a deeper anxiety. At last, when the four-wheeler disappeared from sight round an angle of the rain-soaked boulevard, he yielded to impulse and ran into the hotel. French people are early risers, but the visitors to Calais that morning were astir at an hour when most of the hotel staff were still sound asleep. A night porter, however, was awaiting him at the entrance, and Dale forthwith engaged in a valiant struggle with the French language in the effort to ascertain, first, whether the man possessed a bicycle, and, secondly, whether he would lend it. The Frenchman, of course, broke into a voluble statement out of all proportion to the demand, but the production of a British sovereign seemed to interpret matters satisfactorily, because a bicycle was promptly produced from a shed in the rear of the building.
Dale handed the man the sovereign, jumped on the machine, and rode off rapidly in the direction taken by the cab. He had no difficulty in turning thecorner round which it had vanished, but a little farther on he erred in thinking that it had gone straight ahead, since the driver had really turned to the right again in order to keep clear of the fortifications. Dale traveled at such a pace that the first long stretch of straight road opening up before his eyes convinced him of his blunder when no cab was in sight. He raced back, dismounted at the crossing, examined the road for wheel-marks, and soon was in the saddle again. He was destined to be thus bothered three times in all, but, taught wisdom by his initial mistake, he never passed a crossroad without searching for the recent tracks of wheels.
The rain helped him wherever the roadway was macadamized, but the pavedroutes militaireswith which Calais abounds offered difficulties that caused many minutes of delay. At last, he found himself in the open country, scorching along a sandy road that traversed the low dunes lying between the town of Calais and Cape Gris Nez. It was not easy to see far ahead owing to the rain and mist, and he had covered a mile or more beyond the last of the scattered villas and cottages which form the eastern suburb of the port, when he saw the elusive cab drawn up by the roadside. The horse was steaming as though it had been driven at a great pace, and the driver stood near, smoking a cigarette, and protecting himself from the persistent downpour by an umbrella.
Dale soon reached the man, and said breathlessly, in his slow French:
“Where are the gentlemen?”
The cabman, who had evidently been paid to hold his tongue, merely shrugged. Dale, breathing hard, laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, whereupon the other answered: “I don’t know.”
This, of course, was a lie, and the fact that it was a lie alarmed Dale quite as much as any of the sinister incidents which had already befallen. For one thing, there was no house into which five men could have gone. On each side of the road were bleak sandhills; to the right was the sea, gray and lowering beneath a leaden-hued sky that seemed to weep above a dead earth. Here, undoubtedly, was the cab, since Dale could swear to both horse and man. Where, then, were its occupants?
Having to depend upon his wits, he gave no further heed to the Frenchman, but, fancying that he saw vestiges of recent footmarks on the right, or seaward, side of the road, and dragging the bicycle with him, he climbed to the top of the nearest dune, as he believed that a view of the sands could be obtained from that point. He was right. The sea was at a greater distance than he imagined would be the case, but a wide strip of firm sand, its wet patches glistening dully in the half-light, extended to the water’s edge almost from the base of the hillock on which he stood.
At first, his anxious eyes strained through thehaze in vain, until some circling seagulls caught his attention, and then he discerned some vague forms silhouetted against a brighter belt of the sea to the northeast.
Three of the figures were black and motionless, but two gave an eerie suggestion of whiteness and movement. Abandoning the bicycle, and hardly realizing why he should be so perturbed, Dale ran forward. Twice he stumbled and fell amidst the stringy heath grass, but he was up again in a frenzy of haste, and soon was near enough to the group of men to see that Medenham and Marigny, bare-headed and in their shirt sleeves, were fighting with swords.
Dale’s eyes were now half-blinded with perspiration, for he had ridden fast through the mud from Calais, and this final run through yielding sand and clinging sedge was exhausting to one who seldom walked as many furlongs as he had covered miles that morning. But even in his panic of distress he fancied that his master was pressing the Frenchman severely. It was no child’s play, this battle with cold steel. The slender, venomous-looking blades whirled and stabbed with a fearsome vehemence, and the sharp rasp of each riposte and parry rang out with a horrible suggestiveness in the moist air. And then, as he lumbered heavily on, Dale thought he saw something that turned him sick with terror. Almost halting, he swept a hasty hand across his eyes—then he was sure.
Medenham, with arm extended in a feint in tierce,was bearing so heavily on his opponent’s rapier that his right foot slipped, and he stumbled badly. At once Marigny struck with the deadly quickness and certainty of a cobra. His weapon pierced Medenham’s breast high up on the right side. The stroke was so true and furious that the Englishman, already unbalanced, was driven on to his back on the sand. Marigny wrenched the blade free, and stooped with obvious intent to plunge it again through his opponent’s body. A warning shout from each of the three spectators withheld him. He scowled vindictively, but dared not make that second mortal thrust. These French gentlemen whom he had summoned from Paris were bound by a rigid code of honor that would infallibly have caused him to be branded as a murderer had he completed matters to his satisfaction. Nevertheless, he bent and peered closely into Medenham’s face, gray now as the sand on which he was lying.
“I think it will serve,” he muttered to himself. “May the devil take him, but I thought he would get the better of me!”
He turned away with an affectation of coolness which he was far from feeling, while the doctor knelt to examine Medenham’s injury. He saw someone running towards him, but believed it must be one of the witnesses, and his eyes fell to the stained blade in his hand.
“I rather forgot myself——” he began.
But the excuse was stopped short by a blow onthe angle of the jaw that stretched him by Medenham’s side and apparently as lifeless.
Assuredly, Dale was not versed in the punctilio of the duel, but he knew how and where to hit with a fist that was hard as one of his own spanners. He put weight and passion into that punch, and scarcely understood how effective it was until he found himself struggling in the grasp of two excited Frenchmen. He cursed both them and Marigny fluently, and vowed the most horrible vengeance on all three, but soon calmed himself sufficiently to see that Count Edouard could not stir, and his perturbed wits then sought to learn the extent of his master’s injury. Still he swore at Marigny.
“Damn you!” he cried hoarsely, “you would have stabbed him as he was lying there if these pals of yours hadn’t stopped you!”
At last, recovering some degree of self-possession, he assisted the astounded and rather frightened Frenchmen to carry Medenham to the waiting carriage. One, who spoke English, asked him to help in rendering a like service to Marigny, but he refused with an oath, and the others dared not press him, he looked so fierce and threatening.
“Is he dead?” he asked the doctor brokenly.
There could be no mistaking the meaning of the words, for his red-shot eyes glared fixedly at the limp body of his master. The other shook his head, but pointed in the direction of Calais, as though to suggest that the sooner the injured man was taken tosome place where his wound could be properly attended to, the better would be the faint chance of life that remained. By this time the seconds were approaching, and Marigny had seemingly recovered to a slight extent from the knockout blow which he had received so unexpectedly.
The doctor, who was the only self-collected person present, pointed to the bicycle.
“Hotel,” he said emphatically. “Go hotel—quick!”
Dale was minded not to desert his master, but the anxiety in the doctor’s face warned him that the request ought to be obeyed. If the spark of vitality still flickering in Medenham’s body was to be preserved not a moment should be lost in preparing a room for his reception.
Gulping down his anguish, Dale mounted and made off. At a distant bend in the road he turned his head and looked back along that dismal heath. All five were packed in the cab, and the coachman was urging the unwilling horse into a trot.
And what of Cynthia?
The break in the weather was the one thing needed to put an abrupt end to all pretense of enjoyment so far as the Windermere tourists were concerned. Strained relations existed from the moment Vanrenen arrived at Chester. For the first time in her life, Cynthia thought that her father was not acting with the open-eyed justice which she expected from him,and for the first time in his life Peter Vanrenen harbored an uneasy suspicion that his daughter had not been quite candid with him. It was impossible, of course, in the close intimacy of long hours spent together in a touring car, that there should not be many references to Fitzroy and the Mercury. They were inevitable as the milestones, and Vanrenen, who was just as prone as other men to look at facts through his own spectacles, failed to understand how an intelligent girl like his daughter could remain in constant association with Viscount Medenham for five days, and yet not discover his identity.
More than once, indeed, notwithstanding the caution exercised by the others—engaged now in a tacit conspiracy to dispel memories of a foolish entanglement from the girl’s mind—the identification of Fitzroy with the young Viscount trembled on the very lip of discovery. Thus, on Friday, when they had motored to Grasmere, and had gathered before lunch in the lounge of the delightfully old-fashioned Rothay Hotel, Vanrenen happened to pick up an illustrated paper, containing a page of pictures of the Scarland short-horns.
Now, being a busy man, he gave little heed to the terminological convolutions of names among the British aristocracy. He had not the slightest notion that the Marquis of Scarland’s wife was Medenham’s sister, and, with the quick interest of the stock-breeder, he pointed out to Mrs. Leland an animal that resembled one of his own pedigree bulls, at presentwaxing fat on the Montana ranch. For the moment Mrs. Leland herself had forgotten the relationship between the two men.
“I met the Marquis last year at San Remo,” she said heedlessly. “Anyone more unlike a British peer you could not imagine. If I remember rightly, he is a blunt, farmer-like person, but his wife is very charming. By the way, who was she?”
Such a question could not pass Mrs. Devar unanswered.
“Lady Betty Fitzroy,” she chirped instantly.
Cynthia, who was looking through the window at the square-towered little church, throned midst the somber yews which shelter the graves of Wordsworth and his kin, caught the odd conjunction of names—“Betty” and “Fitzroy.”
“Who is that you are speaking of, father?” she asked, though with a listless air that Medenham had never seen during any minute of those five happy days.
“The Marquis of Scarland—the man from whom I bought some cattle a few years ago,” he said, trusting to the directness of the reply to carry it through unchallenged.
Cynthia’s brows puckered in a reflective frown.
“That is odd,” she murmured.
“What is odd?” asked her father, while Mrs. Leland bent over the periodical to hide a smile of embarrassment.
“Oh, just a curious way of running in grooves people have in this country. They call towns after men and men after towns.”
She was about to add that Fitzroy had told her of a sister Betty who was married to a man named Scarland, a breeder of pedigree stock, but checked the impulse. For some reason known best to her father, he did not seem to wish any mention to be made of the vanished chauffeur, but she did not gauge the true extent of his readiness to drop the subject on that occasion.
Mrs. Leland looked up, caught his eye with a smile, and asked how many miles it was to Thirlmere. Cynthia’s thoughts brooded again on poets and lonely graves, and the danger passed.
Mrs. Devar, in these days, had recovered her complacency. The letter she wrote from Symon’s Yat had reached Vanrenen from Paris, and its hearty disapproval of Fitzroy helped to re-establish his good opinion of her. She heard constantly, too, from Marigny and her son. Both agreed that the comet-like flight of Medenham across their horizon was rapidly losing its significance. Still, she was not quite happy. Mrs. Leland’s advent had thrust her into the background, for the American widow was rich, good-looking, and cultured, and the flow of small talk between the newcomer and Cynthia left her as hopelessly out of range as used to be the case when that domineering Medenham would lean back in the car and say thingsbeyond her comprehension, or murmur them to Cynthia if she happened to be sitting by his side.
Luncheon had ended, but the clouds which had been gathering over the lake country during the morning suddenly poured a deluge over a thirsty land. Thirlmere and Ullswater and the rest of the glories of Westmoreland that lay beyond the pass of Dunmail Raise were swallowed up in a fog of rain. Simmonds, questioned by the millionaire, admitted that a weather-beaten native had prophesied “a week of it,” more or less.
Four Britons might have sat down and played Bridge stolidly, but three of this quartette were Americans, and within two hours of the change in the elements, they were seated in the London-bound train at Windermere Station.
Not one of them was really displeased because of this rapid alteration in their plans. Cynthia was ill at ease; Mrs. Leland wished to rejoin her guests at Trouville; Vanrenen, who was anxious to complete certain business negotiations in Paris, believed that a complete change of scene and new interests in life would speedily bring Cynthia back to her own cheery self; while Mrs. Devar, though the abandonment of the tour meant reversion to a cheap boarding-house, was not sorry that it had come to an end. In London, she would be more in her element, and, at any rate, she was beginning to feel cramped through sitting three in a row in Simmonds’s car,after the luxurious comfort of two in the tonneau of the Mercury.
So it came to pass that on Friday evening, while Medenham was driving from Cavendish Square to Charing Cross, Cynthia was crossing London on a converging line from St. Pancras to the Savoy Hotel. Strange, indeed, was the play of Fate’s shuttle that it should have so nearly reunited the unseen threads of their destinies! Again, a trifling circumstance conspired to detain Vanrenen in London. One of his business associates in Paris, rendered impatient by the failure of the great man to return as quickly as he had promised, arrived in England by the afternoon service from the Gare du Nord, and was actually standing in the foyer of the hotel when Vanrenen entered with the others. As a result of this meeting, the journey to Paris arranged for Saturday was postponed till Sunday, and on this trivial base was destined to be built a very remarkable edifice.
It chanced that Mrs. Leland, too, decided to have a day in London, and she and Cynthia went out early. They returned to lunch at the hotel, and the girl, pleading lack of appetite, slipped out alone to buy a copy of Milton’s poems. From the book-seller’s she wandered into the Embankment Gardens.
She was a dutiful daughter, and had resolved to obey without question her father’s stern command not to enter again into communication with a man of whom he so strongly disapproved. But she wasnot content, for all that, and the dripping trees and rain-sodden flowers seemed now to accord with her distraught mood. The fine, though not bright, interval that had tempted her forth soon gave way to another shower, and she ran for shelter into the Charing Cross Station of the Metropolitan Railway. She stood in one of the doorways looking out disconsolately over the river, when a taxicab drove up and deposited its occupant at the station. Then some unbidden impulse led her to hail the driver.
“Take me to Cavendish Square,” she said.
“What number, miss?” he asked.
“No number. Just drive slowly round the square and return to the Savoy Hotel.”
He eyed her curiously, but made no comment. Soon she was speeding up Regent Street, bent on gratifying the truly curious whim of seeing what manner of residence it was that Fitzroy occupied in London. Fate had failed in her weaving during the previous evening, but on the present occasion she combined warp and weft without any error.
The cab was crawling past the Fairholme mansion, and Cynthia’s astonished eyes were regarding its style and general air of magnificence with some degree of heart-sinking—for it did then seem to be true that Mrs. Devar’s original estimate of Fitzroy was correct—when a man sprang out of another taxi in front of the door, and glanced at her while in the very act of running up the steps. Recognition was mutual. Dale muttered under his breath a whollyunjustifiable assumption as to his future state, halted dubiously, and then signaled to Cynthia’s driver to stop. He strode towards her across the road, and thrust his head through the open window.
“Of course, miss,” he said roughly, “you don’t know what has happened?”
“No,” she said, too greatly surprised to resent his strange manner.
“Well,” he growled, “somebody’s been nearly killed on your account, that’s all.”
“Somebody,” she repeated, and her lips went white.
“Yes, you ought to guess well enough who it is. He and that rotten Frenchman fought a duel this morning on the sands near Calais, and Marinny as good as murdered him.”
Dale’s heart was sore against her as the cause of his master’s plight, but even in his own distress he was quick to see the shrinking terror in the girl’s eyes.
“Are you speaking of Mr. Fitzroy?” she demanded. “Are you telling the truth? Oh, for Heaven’s sake, man, tell me what you mean.”
“I mean what I say, miss,” said he more softly. “I have left him almost at death’s door in an hotel at Calais. That damned Frenchman ... I beg your pardon, miss, but I can’t contain myself when I think of him—ran a sword through him this morning, and would have killed him outright if he hadn’t been stopped by some other gentlemen. And now, there he is, a-lying in the hotel, with a doctor anda nurse trying to coax the life back into him, while I had to scurry back here to tell his people.”
Some women might have shrieked and fainted—not so Cynthia. At that instant there was one thing to be done, and one only. She saw the open road, and took it without faltering or thought as to the future.
“When is the next train to Calais?” she asked.
“At nine o’clock to-night, miss.”
“Oh, God!” she wailed under her breath.
Dale’s voice grew even more sympathetic.
“Was you a-thinking of going to him, miss?” he asked.
“Would that I could fly there,” she moaned.
He scratched the back of his ear, for it was by such means that Dale sought inspiration.
“Dash it all!” he cried. “I wish I had seen you half an hour earlier. There is a train that leaves Charing Cross at twenty minutes past two. It goes by way of Folkestone and Boulogne, and from Boulogne one can get easy to Calais. Anyhow, what’s the use of talkin’—it is too late.”
Cynthia glanced at her watch. It was just twenty-five minutes to three.
“How far is Folkestone?” was the immediate demand generated by her practical American brain.
“Seventy-two miles,” said the chauffeur, who knew his roads out of London.
“And what time does the boat leave?”
A light irradiated his face, and he swore volubly.
“We can do it!” he shouted. “By the Lord, we can do it! Are you game?”
Game? The light that leaped to her eyes was sufficient answer. He tore open the door of the cab, roaring to the driver:
“Round that corner to the right—quick—then into the mews at the back!”
Within two minutes the Mercury was attracting the attention of the police as it whirled through the traffic towards Westminster Bridge. Dale’s face was set like a block of granite. He had risked a good deal in leaving his master at the point of death at Calais; he was now risking more, far more, in rushing back to Calais again without having discharged the duty which had dragged him from that master’s bedside. But he thought he had secured the best physician London could bring to the sufferer’s aid, and the belief sustained him in an action that was almost heroic. He was a simple-minded fellow, with a marked taste for speed in both animals and machinery, but he had hit on one well-defined trait in human nature when he decided that if a man is dying for the sake of a woman the presence of that woman may cure when all else will fail.
Cynthia found him lying in a darkened room. The nurse had just raised some of the blinds; a dismal day was drawing to its close, and more light was needed ere she could distinguish marked bottles, and doses, and the rest of the appurtenances of dangerous illness.
An English nurse would have forbidden the presence of a stranger; this French one acted with more discretion if less of strict science.
“Madam is his sister, perhaps?” she whispered.
“No.”
“A relative, then?”
“No; a woman who loves him.”
That heartbroken admission told the whole tale to the quick-witted Frenchwoman. There had been a duel; one man was seriously injured; the other, she had heard, was also receiving medical attention in another hotel—thetémoins, wistful to avoid the interrogation of the law, had so arranged—and here was the woman who had caused the quarrel.
Well, such was the will of Providence! These things had been since man and woman were expelledfrom Paradise—for the nurse, though a devout Catholic, suspected that Genesis had suppressed certain details of the first fratricide—and would continue, she supposed, until the Millennium.
She nodded cheerfully.
“There is every reason to hope, but he must not be disturbed—not excited, that is,” she added, seeing the wan agony in Cynthia’s face.
The girl tiptoed to the side of the bed. Medenham’s eyes were closed, but he was muttering something. She bent and kissed his forehead, and a strange smile broke through the tense lines of pain. Even in his semi-conscious state he felt the touch of those exquisite lips.
“My Lady Alice!” he said.
She choked back a sob. He was dreaming of “Comus”—standing with her in the ruined banqueting hall of Ludlow Castle.
“Yes, your Lady Alice,” she breathed.
A slight quiver shook him.
“Don’t tell Cynthia,” he said brokenly. “She must never know.... Ah, if I hadn’t slipped, I would have quieted his viperish tongue.... But Cynthia must not know!”
“Oh, my dear, my dear, Cynthia does know! It is you who know not. Kind Heaven, let him live! Grant that I may tell him all that I know!”
She could not help it; the words welled forth of their own accord; but the nurse touched her arm gently.
“It is a little fever,” she whispered with ready sympathy. “Soon it will pass. He will sleep, and, when he awakes, it is perhaps permissible that you should speak to him.”
Well, it was permissible. The age of miracles had not passed for those two. Even the experienced doctor marveled at the strength of a man who at four o’clock in the morning could have a sword driven through the tissues in perilous proximity to the right lung, and yet, at nine o’clock on that same night, was able to announce an unalterable resolution to get up and dress for breakfast next day. That, of course, was a pleasing fiction intended for Cynthia’s benefit. It served its purpose admirably. The kindly nurse displayed an unexpected firmness in leading her to her own room, there to eat and sleep.
For Cynthia had an ordeal to face. Many things had been said in the car during that mad rush to Folkestone, and on board the steamer which ferried Dale and herself to Boulogne she had wrung from the taciturn chauffeur a full, true, and particular account of Medenham, his family, and his doings throughout as much of his life as Dale either knew or guessed. By the time they reached Boulogne she had made up her mind with a characteristic decision. One long telegram to her father, another to Lord Fairholme, caused heart-burning and dismay not alone in certain apartments of the Savoy Hotel,but in the aristocratic aloofness of Cavendish Square and Curzon Street. As a result, two elderly men, a younger one, in the person of the Marquis of Scarland, and two tearful women—Lady St. Maur and Mrs. Leland—met at Charing Cross about one o’clock in the morning to travel by special train and steamer. Another woman telegraphed from Shropshire saying that baby was better, and that she would follow by the first steamer on Sunday. Mrs. Devar did not await developments. She fled, dinnerless, to some burrow in Bayswater.
These alarums and excursions were accompanied by the ringing of telephones and the flight of carriages back and forth through muddy London, and Cynthia was called on to deal with a whole sheaf of telegrams which demanded replies either to Dover or to Scarland Towers in Shropshire.
With a man like Vanrenen at one end, however, and a woman like his daughter at the other, it might be fairly assumed that even the most complex skein of circumstances might be resolved from its tangle. As a matter of curious coincidence, the vessel which carried Marigny to England passed in mid-Channel its sister ship conveying the grief-stricken party of relatives to France. It happened, too, that the clouds from the Atlantic elected to hover over Britain rather than France, and when Cynthia stood on the quay to meet the incoming steamer, a burst of sunshine from the east gave promise of a fine if somewhat blustery day.
Five pairs of eyes sought her face anxiously while the vessel was warping to the quay opposite the Gare Maritime. They looked there for tidings, and they were not disappointed.
“That’s all right,” said Vanrenen with an unwonted huskiness in his voice. “Cynthia wouldn’t smile if she hadn’t good news.”
“Thank God for that!” muttered the Earl, bending his head to examine a landing ticket, the clear type of which he was utterly unable to read.
“I never thought for a minute that any Frenchman could kill George,” cried Scarland cheerfully.
But the two women said nothing, could see nothing, and the white-faced but smiling Cynthia standing near the shoreward end of the gangway had vanished in a sudden mist.
Of course, Marigny was right when he foresaw that Vanrenen could not meet either Medenham or any of his relatives for five minutes without his “poor little cobweb of intrigue” being dissipated once and forever.
With the marvelous insight that every woman possesses when dealing with the affairs of the man she loves, Cynthia combined the eloquence of an orator with the practiced skill of a clever lawyer in revealing each turn and twist of the toils which had enveloped her since that day in Paris when her father happened to suggest in Marigny’s hearing that she might utilize his hired car for a tour in England, while he concluded the business that was detaining him in the French Capital. Nothing escaped her;she unraveled every knot; Medenham’s few broken words, supplemented by the letter to his brother-in-law which he told her to obtain from Dale, threw light on all the dark places.
But the gloom had fled. It was a keenly interested, almost light-hearted, little party that walked through the sunshine to the Hôtel de la Plage.
Dale, abashed, sheepish, yet oddly confident that all was for the best in a queer world, met the Earl of Fairholme later in the day; his lordship, who had been pining for someone to pitch into, addressed him sternly.
“This is a nice game you’ve been playing,” he said. “I always thought you were a man of steady habits, a little given to horse-racing perhaps, but otherwise a decent member of the community.”
“So I was before I met Viscount Medenham, my lord,” was the daring answer. For Dale was no fool, and he had long since seen how certain apparently hostile forces had adapted themselves to new conditions.
“Before you left him, you mean,” growled the Earl. “What sort of sense was there in letting him fight a duel?—it could have been stopped in fifty different ways.”
“Yes, my lord, but I never suspicioned a word of it till he went off in the cab with them——”
The Earl held up a warning finger.
“Hush,” he said, “this is France, remember, andyouare the foreigner here. Where is my son’s car?”
“In the garage at Folkestone, my lord.”
“Well, you had better cross by an early boat to-morrow and bring it here. You understand all the preliminaries, I suppose? Find out from the Customs people what deposit is necessary, and come to me for the money.”
So it happened that when Medenham was able to take his first drive in the open air, the Mercury awaited him and Cynthia at the door of the hotel. It positively sparkled in the sunlight; never was car more spick and span. The brasswork scintillated, each cylinder was rhythmical, and a microscope would not have revealed one speck of dust on body or upholstery.
On a day in July—for everybody agreed that not even a marriage should be allowed to interfere with the Scottish festival of St. Grouse—that same shining Mercury with the tonneau decorously cased in glass for the hour, drew up at the edge of a red carpet laid down from curb to stately porch of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and Dale turned a grinning face to the doorway when Viscount Medenham led his bride down the steps through a shower of rice and good wishes.
Wedding breakfasts and receptions are all “much of a muchness,” as the Mad Hatter said to another Alice, and it was not until the Mercury was speedingnorth by west to Scarland Towers, “lent to the happy pair for the honeymoon” while Betty took the children to recuperate at the seaside, that Cynthia felt she was really married.
“I have a bit of news for you,” said her husband, taking a letter from his pocket. “I received a letter by this morning’s post. A heap of others remain unopened till you and I have time to go through them; but this one caught my attention, and I read it while I was dressing.”
He had an excellent excuse for putting his arm round her waist while he held the open sheet so that both might peruse it at the same time. It ran: