When he came to think of it, Medenham
decided to return at once to Symon’s Yat.
It was advisable, however, to inform the proprietor
of the hotel that the Earl’s denunciation of
Dale as a pilferer of luggage was based on a complete
misunderstanding of the facts. With that object
in view he entered the office; another surprise awaited
him there.
A lady bookkeeper, casting an appraising
eye over his motoring garments, asked instantly:
“Are you Mr. Fitzroy, driver
of a Mercury car, Number X L 4000?”
“Yes,” said he, prepared
now to see his name and description blazoned across
the west front of the cathedral.
“You are wanted on the telephone.
Miss Vanrenen wishes you to ring her up.”
After a soul-chastening delay he heard Cynthia’s
voice:
“That you, Mr. Fitzroy?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so glad I caught
you before you hurried away again.... Er that
is I suppose you traveled rather fast, you
and Mercury?”
He laughed. That was all.
He did not intend to let her assume so readily that
he had missed the first thought which bubbled forth
in words. She well knew that he was not in Hereford
from personal choice, but she had not meant to tell
him that she knew.
“What are you sniggering at?” she demanded
imperiously.
“Only at your divination,”
he answered. “Indeed, if a tire had not
given out soon after I left Whitchurch I would now
be well on my way to the Yat.”
Suddenly he recollected the singular
outcome of the incident. There was some reasonable
probability that it might exercise a material effect
on the course of events during the next few days.
So, after a little pause, he added:
“That is one reason; there are others.”
“Is something detaining you, then?” she
asked.
“Yes, a trivial matter, but
I shall be at the hotel long before lunch.”
“Mrs. Devar is much better....
She is so sorry I remained indoors this morning.”
“Mrs. Devar is cultivating angelic
qualities,” he said, but he murmured under his
breath: “The old cat finds now that she
has made a mistake.”
“I want you to pay the hotel
people for the rooms I reserved but have not occupied.
Then, perhaps, they will hand you any mail that may
have been sent after me. And please give them
my address at Chester. Will you do all that?”
“Certainly. There should be no difficulty.”
“Is Hereford looking very lively?”
“It strikes me as peculiarly empty,” he
said with convincing candor.
“Shall we have time to see all the show places
to-morrow?”
“We shall make time.”
“Well, good-bye! Bring
my letters. I have not heard from my father since
we left Bournemouth.”
“Ah, there I have the better
of you. I heard of, if not from, my revered dad
since reaching Hereford.”
“Unexpectedly?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Nothing wrong, I hope?”
“The old gentleman’s temper
seems to be a trifle out of gear; the present attack
is not serious; he will survive it for many
years, I trust.”
“You must not be flippant where
your father is concerned. I believe he is annoyed
because you came away with me, and so failed to keep
the appointment fixed for Saturday in London.
Eh? What did you say?”
“I said ‘Well, I am surprised,’
or words to that effect. As my name is George
I cannot tell a lie, so I must admit regretfully that
you have guessed right. Indeed, Miss Vanrenen,
I may go so far as to suggest, by letter, that before
my father condemns me he should first meet you.
Of course, I shall warn him that you are irresistible.”
“Good-by again,” said
Cynthia severely. “You can tell me all about
it after oh, some time to-day, anyhow.”
The Green Dragon proved to be most
undragonish. No manner of doubt was cast on Medenham’s
good faith; he pocketed half a dozen letters for Cynthia,
and one, unstamped, bearing the crest of the Mitre,
for Mrs. Devar. By the merest chance he caught
sight of a note, addressed “Viscount Medenham,”
stuck in a rack among some telegrams. The handwriting
was his father’s. But how secure it without
arousing quite reasonable suspicion? He tried
the bold course.
“I may as well take that, too,” he said
offhandedly.
“Is Viscount Medenham also in your party?”
inquired the bookkeeper.
“Yes.”
Again no demur was raised, since the
Earl’s repeated demands for information as to
Miss Vanrenen’s whereabouts showed that some
sort of link must exist between him and the missing
tourists.
Medenham sat in his car outside and read:
MY DEAR GEORGE If this reaches
you, please oblige me by returning to town at
once. Your aunt is making a devil of a fuss,
and is most unpleasant. I say no more now, since
I am not sure that you will be in Hereford before
we meet.
Yours
ever,
F.
“I can see myself being very
angry with Aunt Susan,” he growled in the first
flush of resentment against the unfairness of her attitude.
But that phase soon passed. His
mind dwelt rather on Lady St. Maur’s bland amazement
when she encountered Cynthia. He could estimate
with some degree of precision her ladyship’s
views regarding the eighty millions of citizens of
the United States; had she not said in his hearing
that “American society was evidently quite English but
with the head cut off?”
That, and a sarcastic computation
as to the difference between Ten Thousand and Four
Hundred, constituted her knowledge of America.
Still, he made excuses for her. It was no new
thing for an aristocracy to be narrow-minded.
Horace, that fine gentleman, “hated the vulgar
crowd,” and Nicolo Machiavelli, fifteen centuries
later, denounced the nobles of Florence for their
“easy-going contempt of everything and everybody”;
so Lady St. Maur had plenty of historical precedent
for the coining of cheap epigrams.
The one person Medenham was really
bitter against was Millicent Porthcawl. She
had met Cynthia; she herself must have frowned
at the lying innuendoes written from Bournemouth; it
would give him some satisfaction to tell Cynthia that
the Porthcawl ménage ought not to figure on
her visiting list. But there! Cynthia was
too generous-minded even to avenge her wrongs, though
well able to deal with the Millicents and Mauds and
Susans if they dared be spiteful.
Then the coming of Dale with various
leather bags roused him from the reverie induced by
his father’s curt missive, and he laughed at
the discovery that he was fighting Cynthia’s
battles already.
The Mercury was raising a good deal
of dust in the neighborhood of Whitchurch when its
occupants noticed a pair of urchins perched on a gate,
signaling frantically. It pleased Medenham to
mystify Dale, who was, if possible, more taciturn
than ever since those heart-searching experiences
at Gloucester and Hereford.
He pulled up some fifty yards or more down the road.
“You saw those boys?” he said.
“Yes, my lord, but they’re only having
a game.”
“Nothing of the sort. Skip
along and ask them if they have found out the answer.
If they say ‘a day and five-sevenths,’
hand them a shilling each. Any other reply will
be wrong. Don’t talk. Just run there
and back, and pay only on a day and five-sevenths.”
Dale ran. Soon he was in his seat again.
“I gev’ ’em a bob each, my lord,”
he announced, grave as an owl.
While they were running slowly down the winding lane
that led to the
Yat Medenham determined to make sure of his ground
with reference to
Mrs. Devar.
“I suppose you left no room
for doubt as to my identity in the mind of the lady
to whom you spoke over the telephone last night?”
he inquired.
“None whatever, my lord. She wormed it
out of me.”
“Did you mention the Earl?”
“Like an ijjit, I began by giving
his lordship’s name. It was my only chanst,
I couldn’t get to the post-office nohow.
Why, I was ordered to bed at eight o’clock,
so’s his lordship could smoke in peace, as he
said.”
“Then my father was determined
to stop you from communicating with me, if possible?”
“If his lordship knew that I
crep’ down a back stairs to the telephone I
do believe he’d have set about me with a poker,”
said Dale grimly.
“Strange!” mused Medenham,
with eyes now more intent on the hotel than on the
road. “Influences other than Aunt Susan’s
must be at work. My father would never have rushed
off in a fever from town merely because of some ill-natured
gossip in a letter from Lady Porthcawl.”
His mind flew to the Earl’s
allusions to Marigny, and it occurred to him then
that the latter had used his father’s name at
Bristol. He turned to Dale again.
“Before this business is ended
I shall probably find it necessary to kick a Frenchman,”
he said.
“Make it two of ’em, my
lord, an’ let me take it out of the other one,”
growled Dale.
“Well, there is a bottle-holder,”
said Medenham, thinking of Devar, “a short,
fat fellow, an Englishman, but a most satisfactory
subject for a drop kick.”
“Say when, my lord, an’ I’ll score
a goal with him.”
Dale seemed to be speaking feelingly,
but his master paid slight heed to him then.
A girl in muslin, wearing a rather stylish hat now,
where did Cynthia get a hat? had just sauntered
to that end of the hotel’s veranda which gave
a glimpse of the road.
“Make yourself comfortable in
one of the cottages hereabouts,” was Medenham’s
parting instruction to his man. “I don’t
suppose the car will be needed again to-day, but you
might refill the petrol tank on the off
chance.”
“Yes my lord.”
Dale lifted his cap. The ostler
who had helped in the cleaning of the car overnight
was standing near the open doors of the coach-house.
He might not have heard the words, but he certainly
saw the respectful action. His eyes grew round,
and his lips pursed to give vent to an imaginary whistle.
“I knew,” he told
himself. “He’s a toff, that’s
wot he is. Mum’s the word, Willyum.
Say nothink, ’specially to wimmen!”
Bowing low before his smiling goddess,
Medenham produced the packet of letters. It happened
that the unstamped note for Mrs. Devar lay uppermost,
and Cynthia guessed some part, at least, of its contents.
“Poor Monsieur Marigny!”
she cried. “I fear he had a cheerless evening
in Hereford. This is from him. I know his
handwriting.... While father and I were in Paris
he often sent invitations for fixtures at the Velo once
for a coach-drive to Fontainebleau. I was rather
sorry I missed that.”
Medenham thanked her in his heart
for that little pause. No printed page could
be more legible than Cynthia’s thought-processes.
How delightful it was to feel that her unspoken words
were mirrored in his own brain!
But these lover-like beatitudes were
interrupted by a slight shriek. She had glanced
curiously at a postmark, ripped open an envelope, and
was reading something that surprised her greatly.
“Well, of all the queer things!”
she cried. “Here’s father in London.
He started from Paris yesterday afternoon, and found
he had just time to send me a line by paying a special
postal fee at Paddington.... What?... Mrs.
Leland going to join us at Chester!... Wire if
I get this!...”
She reread the letter with heightened
color. Medenham’s heart sank to his boots
while he watched her. Whosoever Mrs. Leland might
be and Cynthia’s first cry of the
name sent a shock of recognition through him it
was fully evident that the addition of another member
to the party would straightway shut him out of his
Paradise. Mrs. Devar, in the rôle of guardian,
had been disposed of satisfactorily, but “Mrs.
Leland” was more than a doubtful quantity.
For some kindred reason, perhaps, Cynthia chose to
turn and look at the sparkling Wye when next she spoke.
“I don’t see why Mrs.
Leland’s unexpected appearance should make any
real difference to our tour,” she said in the
colorless tone of one who seeks rather than imparts
conviction. “There is plenty of room in
the car. We must take the front seat in turn,
that is all.”
“May I ask who Mrs. Leland is?”
he asked, and, if his voice was ominously cold, it
may be urged in extenuation that in matters affecting
Cynthia he was no greater adept at concealing his thoughts
than the girl herself.
“An old friend of ours,”
she explained hurriedly. “In fact, her
husband was my father’s partner till he died,
some years ago. She is a charming woman, quite
a cosmopolitan. She lives in Paris ’most
all the time, but I fancied she was at Trouville for
the summer. I wonder....”
She read the letter a third time.
Drooping lids and a screen of heavy eyelashes veiled
her eyes, and when the fingers holding that disturbing
note rested on the rail of the veranda again, still
those radiant blue eyes remained invisible, and the
eloquent eyebrows were not arched in laughing bewilderment
but straightened in silent questioning.
“Mr. Vanrenen gives no details,”
she said at last, and seldom, indeed, did “Mr.
Vanrenen” replace “father” in her
speech. “Perhaps he was writing against
time, though he might have told me less about the post
and more of Mrs. Leland. Anyhow, he has a fine
Italian hand in some things, and may be this is one
of them.... But I must telegraph at once.”
Medenham roused himself to set forth
British idiosyncrasies on the question of Sunday labor.
He remembered the telephone, however, and Cynthia
went off to try and get in touch with the Savoy Hotel.
He withdrew a little way, and began to smoke a reflective
cigar, for he knew now who Mrs. Leland was. In
twenty minutes or less Cynthia came to him. It
was difficult to account for her obvious perplexity,
though he could have revealed some of its secret springs
readily enough.
“I’m sorry I shall not
be able to take that walk, Mr. Fitzroy,” she
said, frankly recognizing the tacit pact between them.
“We have a long day before us to-morrow, and
we must make Chester in good time, as Mrs. Leland
is coming alone from London. Meanwhile, I must
attend to my correspondence.”
“Ah. You have spoken to Mr. Vanrenen, then?”
“No. He was not in the
hotel, but he left a message for me, knowing that
I was more likely to ’phone than wire.”
She was troubled, disturbed, somewhat
resentful of this unforeseen change in the programme
arranged for the next few days. Medenham could
have chosen no more unhappy moment for what he had
to say, but during those twenty minutes of reflection
a definite line of action had been forced upon him,
and he meant to follow it to the only logical end.
“I am glad now that I mentioned
my own little difficulty at Hereford,” he said.
“Since alterations are to be the order of the
day at Chester, will you allow me to provide another
driver for the Mercury there? You will retain
the car, of course, but my place can be taken by a
trustworthy man who understands it quite as well as
I do.”
“You mean that you are dropping out of the tour,
then?”
“Yes.”
She shot one indignant glance at his
impassive face, for he held in rigid control the fire
that was consuming him.
“Rather a sudden resolve on
your part, isn’t it? What earthly difference
does the presence of another lady in our party make?”
“I have been thinking matters
over,” he said doggedly. “Would you
mind reading my father’s letter?”
He held out the note received at the
Green Dragon, but she ignored it.
“I take it for granted that
you have the best of reasons for wishing to go,”
she murmured.
“Please oblige me by reading it,” he persisted.
Perhaps, despite all his self-restraint,
some hint of the wild longing in his heart to tell
her once and for all that no power under that of the
Almighty should tear him from her side moved her to
relent. She took the letter, and began to read.
“Why,” she cried, “this was written
at Hereford?”
“Yes. My father waited
there all night. He left for town only a few
minutes before I entered the hotel this morning.”
She read with puzzled brows, smiled
a little at “Your aunt is making a devil of
a fuss,” and passed quite unheeded the solitary
“F.” in the signature.
“I think you ought to go to-day,” she
commented.
“Not because of any argument advanced there,”
he growled passionately.
“But your aunt ... she is making
a a fuss. One has to conciliate aunts
at times.”
“My aunt is really a most estimable
person. I promise myself some amusement when
she explains the origin of the ‘fuss’ to
you.”
“To me?”
“Yes. Have I not your permission to bring
her to see you in London?”
“Something was said about that.”
“May I add that I hope to make
Mr. Vanrenen’s acquaintance on Tuesday?”
She looked at him in rather a startled way.
“Are you going to call and see my father?”
she asked.
“Yes.”
“But why, exactly?”
“In the first place, to give
him news of your well-being. Letters are good,
but the living messenger is better. Secondly,
I want to find out just why he traveled from Paris
to London yesterday.”
The air was electric between them.
Each knew that the other was striving to cloak emotions
that threatened at any moment to throw off the last
vestige of concealment.
“My father is a very clever
man, Mr. Fitzroy,” she said slowly. “If
he did not choose to tell you why he did a thing,
you could no more extract the information from him
than from a bit of marble.”
“He has one weak point, I am
sure,” and Medenham smiled confidently into
her eyes.
“I do not know it,” she murmured.
“But I know it, though I have
never seen him. He is vulnerable through his
daughter.”
Her cheeks flamed into scarlet, and
her lips trembled, but she strove valiantly to govern
her voice.
“You must be very careful in
anything you say about me,” she said with a
praiseworthy attempt at light raillery.
“I shall be careful with the
care of a man who has discovered some rare jewel,
and fears lest each shadow should conceal an enemy
till he has reached a place of utmost security.”
She sighed, and her glance wandered
away into the sun-drowned valley.
“Such fortresses are rare and
hard to find,” she said. “Take my
own case. I was really enjoying this pleasant
tour of ours, yet it is broken in two, as it were,
by some force beyond our control, and the severance
makes itself felt here, in this secluded nook, a retreat
not even marked on our self-drawn map. Where
could one be more secure as you put it less
open to that surge of events that drives resistlessly
into new seas? I am something of a fatalist, Mr.
Fitzroy, though the phrase sounds strange on my lips.
Yet I feel that after to-morrow we shall not meet
again so soon or so easily as you imagine, and if
I may venture to advise one much more experienced
than myself the way that leads least hopefully
to my speedy introduction to your aunt is that you
should see my father, before I rejoin him. You
know, I am sure, that I look on you rather as a friend
than a mere a mere ”
“Slave,” he suggested,
trying to wrench some spark of humor out of the iron
in their souls.
“Don’t be stupid.
I mean that you and I have met on an equality that
I would deny to Simmonds or to any of the dozen chauffeurs
we have employed in various parts of the world.
And I want to warn you of this knowing
my father as well as I do I am certain he
has asked Mrs. Leland’s help for the undertaking
that others have failed in. I can’t
say more. I ”
“Cynthia, dear! I have
been looking for you everywhere,” cried a detested
voice. “Ah, there you are, Mr. Fitzroy!”
and Mrs. Devar bustled forward cheerfully. “You
have been to Hereford, I hear. How kind and thoughtful
of you! Were there any letters for me?”
“Sorry,” broke in Cynthia.
“I was so absorbed in my own news that I forget
yours. Here is your letter. It is only from
Monsieur Marigny, to blow both of us up, I suppose,
for leaving him desolate last night. But what
do you think of my budget? My father is
in London; Mrs. Leland, a friend of ours, joins us
at Chester to-morrow; and Fitzroy deserts us at the
same time.”
Mrs. Devar’s eyes bulged and
her lower jaw fell a little. She could hardly
have exhibited more significant tokens of alarm had
each of Cynthia’s unwelcome statements been
punctuated by the crash of artillery fired in the
garden beneath.
During a long night and a weary morning
she had labored hard at the building of a new castle
in Spain, and now it was dissipated at a breath.
Her sky had fallen; she was plunged into chaos; her
brain reeled under these successive shocks.
“I don’t understand,”
she gasped, panting as if she had run across vast
stretches of that vague “everywhere” during
her quest of Cynthia.
“None of us understands.
That is not the essence of the contract. Anyhow,
father is in England, Mrs. Leland will be in Chester,
and Fitzroy is for London. He is the only real
hustler in the crowd. Unless my eyes deceived
me, he brought his successor in the car from Hereford.
Really, Mr. Fitzroy, don’t you think you ought
to skate by the next train?”
“I prefer waiting till to-morrow
evening if you will permit it,” he said humbly.
Cynthia was lashing herself into a
very fair semblance of hot anger. She felt that
she was trammeled in a net of deception, and, like
the freedom-loving American that she was, she resented
the toils none the less because their strands remained
invisible. Seeing Medenham’s crestfallen
aspect at her unjust charge with reference to Dale’s
presence, she bit her lip with a laugh of annoyance
and turned on Mrs. Devar.
“It seems to me,” she
cried, “that Count Edouard Marigny has been
taking an interest in me that is certainly not warranted
by any encouragement on my part. Open your letter,
Mrs. Devar, and see if he, too, is on the London trail....
Ah, well perhaps I am mistaken. I was
so vexed for the moment that I thought he might have
telegraphed to father when we did not turn up at Hereford.
Of course, that is sheer nonsense. He couldn’t
have done it. Father was in England before Monsieur
Marigny was aware of our failure to connect with Hereford.
I’m sure I don’t know what is vexing me,
but something is, or somebody, and I want to quarrel
with it, or him, or her, real bad.”
Without waiting for any opening of
Marigny’s note she ran off to her room.
Medenham had turned to leave the hotel when he heard
a gurgling cry:
“Mr. Fitzroy Lord Medenham what
does it all mean?”
Mrs. Devar’s distress was pitiable.
Snatches of talk overheard in Paris and elsewhere
warned her that Mrs. Leland would prove an unconquerable
foe. She was miserably conscious that her own
letter, posted overnight, would rise up in judgment
against her, but already she had devised the plausible
excuse that the very qualities which were excellent
in a viscount were most dangerous in a chauffeur.
Nevertheless, the letter, ill-advised though it might
be, could not account for Peter Vanrenen’s sudden
visit to England. She might torture her wits
for a year without hitting on the truth, since the
summoning of the millionaire to the rescue appeared
to be the last thing Count Edouard Marigny would dream
of doing. She actually held in her hand a summary
of the telegrams he had dispatched from Bristol, but
her mind was too confused to work in its customary
grooves, and she blurted out Medenham’s title
in a frantic attempt to gain his support.
“It means this,” he said
coolly, resolved to clear the ground thoroughly for
Mrs. Devar’s benefit; “your French ally
is resorting to the methods of the blackmailer.
If you are wise you will cut yourself entirely adrift
from him, and warn your son to follow your example.
I shall deal with Monsieur Marigny have
no doubt on that score and if you wish
me to forget certain discreditable incidents that have
happened since we left London you will respect my earnest
request that Miss Vanrenen shall not be told anything
about me by you. I mean to choose my own time
and place for the necessary explanations. They
concern none but Miss Vanrenen and myself, in the first
instance, and her father and mine, in the second.
I have observed that you can be a shrewd woman when
it serves your interests, Mrs. Devar, and now you
have an opportunity of adding discretion to shrewdness.
I take it you are asking for my advice. It is
simple and to the point. Enjoy yourself, cease
acting as a matrimonial agent, and leave the rest to
me.”
The residents in the hotel were gathering
in the veranda, as the luncheon hour was approaching,
so Mrs. Devar could not press him to be more explicit.
In the privacy of her own room she read Marigny’s
letter. Then she learnt why Cynthia’s father
had hurried across the Channel, for the Frenchman
had not scrupled to warn him that his presence was
imperative if he would save his daughter from a rogue
who had replaced the confidential Simmonds as chauffeur.
Forthwith, Mrs. Devar became more
dazed than ever. She felt that she must confide
in someone, so she wrote a full account of events at
Symon’s Yat to her son. It was the worst
possible thing she could have done. Unconsciously for
she was now anxious to help instead of hindering Medenham’s
wooing some of the gall in her nature distilled
itself into words. She dwelt on the river episode
with all the sly rancor of the inveterate scandalmonger.
She was really striving to depict her own confusion
of ideas when stunned by the discovery of Medenham’s
position, but she only succeeded in stringing together
a series of ill-natured innuendoes. Sandwiched
between each paragraph of the story were the true
gossip’s catchwords thus: “What
was I to think?” “What would people say
if they knew?” “My dear, just picture
your mother’s predicament when midnight struck,
and there was no news!” “Of course, one
makes allowances for an American girl,” and the
rest.
Though this soured woman was a ready
letter-writer, she was no reader, or in days to come
she might have parodied Pope’s “Epistle
to Dr. Arbuthnot”:
Why did I write?
What sin to me unknown
Dipped me in ink? my
parents’, or my own?
Not content with her outpouring to
Devar she dashed off a warning to Marigny. She
imagined that the Frenchman would grin at his broken
fortunes, and look about for another heiress!
And so, abandoning a meal to the fever of scribbling,
she packed more mischief into an hour than any elderly
marriage-broker in Europe that day, and waddled off
to the letterbox with a sense of consolation, strong
in the belief that the morrow would bring telegrams
to guide her in the fray with Mrs. Leland.
Medenham sent a short note to his
father, saying that he would reach London about midnight
next day and asking him to invite Aunt Susan to lunch
on Tuesday. Then he waited in vain for sight of
Cynthia until, driven to extremes by tea-time, he
got one of the maids to take her a verbal message,
in which he stated that the climb to the summit of
the Yat could be made in half an hour.
The reply was deadening.
“Miss Vanrenen says she is busy.
She does not intend to leave the hotel to-day; and
will you please have the car ready at eight o’clock
to-morrow morning.”
Then Medenham smiled ferociously,
for he had just ascertained that the local telegraph
office opened at eight.
“Kindly tell Miss Vanrenen that
we had better make a start some few minutes earlier,
because we have a long day’s run before us,”
he said.
And he hummed a verse of “Young
Lochinvar” as he moved away, thereby provoking
the maid-servant to an expression of opinion that some
folk thought a lot of themselves but as
for London shuffers and their manners well
there!