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, are you here this morning?”
“I am acting for Simmonds.
If anything, my car is slightly superior to his, while
I may be regarded as 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 gentle handling ”
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 some part 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 between meum and tuum ”
“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 any
minute ”
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. Sacre 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 inform Miss 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 commonplace remark, 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
the savate,” 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 checking each mile by the map if you were at the
wheel.”
“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 how fully 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 say in 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 désoriente,
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 spirits to 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 wholly unforeseen 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 regard it 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
word here ”
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’
tete-a-tete 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 crisis was
rather 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
it is so 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 goddess of 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
from tete montee 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, who you are?”
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 from the
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 maid to 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 his card, 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 Chateau Marigny as a house of some importance.
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur
lé 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 are in 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.