Cynthia's Chauffeur Part 36

"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. s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 t.i.tle 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!

CHAPTER XII

MASQUES, ANCIENT AND MODERN

The clouds did not lift until Cynthia was standing in front of that remarkable Map of the World which reposes behind oaken doors in the south aisle of Hereford Cathedral. During the run from Symon's Yat, not even a glorious sun could dispel the vapors of that unfortunate Sunday. Cynthia had smiled a "Good-morning" when she entered the car, but beyond one quick glance around to see if the deputy chauffeur was in attendance--which Medenham took care he should not be--she gave no visible sign of yesterday's troubles, though her self-contained manner showed that they were present in her thoughts.

Mrs. Devar tried to be gracious, and only succeeded in being stilted, for the shadow of impending disaster lay black upon her. Medenham's only thrill came when Cynthia asked for letters or telegrams at the Green Dragon, and was told there were none. Evidently, Peter Vanrenen was not a man to create a mountain out of a molehill. Mrs. Leland might be trusted to smooth away difficulties; perhaps he meant to await her report confidently and in silence.

But that square of crinkled vellum on which Richard of Holdingham and Lafford had charted this strange old world of ours as it appeared during the thirteenth century helped to blow away the mists.

"I never knew before that the Garden of Eden was inside the Arctic Circle," said the girl, gazing awe-stricken at the symbolic drawings of the eating of the forbidden fruit and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.

"No later than yesterday I fancied it might have been situated in the Wye Valley," commented Medenham.

The cast was skillful, but the fish did not rise. Instead, Cynthia bent nearer to look at Lot's wife, placed _in situ_.

"Too bad there is no word about America," she said irrelevantly.

"Oh, even at that date the United States were on the other side. You see, Richard was a person of intelligence. He antic.i.p.ated Galileo by making the earth round, so he would surely get ahead of Columbus in guessing at a New World."

They were the only tourists in the cathedral at that early hour, so the attendant verger tolerated this flippancy.

"In the left-hand corner," he recited, "you see Augustus Caesar delivering orders for a survey of the world to the philosophers Nichodoxus, Theodotus, and Polict.i.tus. Near the center you have the Labyrinth of Crete, the Pyramids of Egypt, the House of Bondage, the Jews worshiping the Golden Calf----"

"Ah, what a pity we left Mrs. Devar at the post-office--how she would have appreciated this!" murmured Medenham.

Still Cynthia refused to take the fly.

"May we visit the library?" she asked, dazzling the verger with a smile in her best manner. "I have heard so much about the books in chains, and the Four Gospels in Anglo-Saxon characters. Is the volume really a thousand years old?"

From the Cathedral they wandered into the beautiful grounds of the Bishop's Palace, where a bra.s.s plate, set in a boundary wall, states in equivocal phrase that "Nell Gwynne, Founder of Chelsea Hospital, and Mother of the first Duke of St. Albans," was born near the spot thus marked. Each remembered the irresponsible chatter of Sat.u.r.day, but neither alluded to it, nor did Medenham offer to lead Cynthia to Garrick's birthplace. Not forty-eight hours, but long years, as measured by the seeming trivialities that go to make or mar existence, spanned the interval between Bristol and Hereford. They chafed against the bonds of steel that yet sundered them; they resented the silent edict that aimed at parting them; by a hundred little artifices each made clear to the other that the coming separation was distasteful, while an eager interest in the commonplace supplied sure index of their embarra.s.sment. And so, almost as a duty, the West Front, the North Porch, the Close, the Green, the Wye Bridge, were duly snap-shotted and recorded in a little book that Cynthia carried.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fitzroy poses as the first Earl of Chepstow.

_Page 263_]

Once, while she was making a note, Medenham held the camera, and happened to watch her as she wrote. At the top of a page he saw "Film 6, No. 5: Fitzroy poses as the first Earl of Chepstow." Cynthia's left hand hid the entry just a second too late.

"I couldn't help seeing that," he said innocently. "If you will give me a print, I shall have it framed and place it among the other family portraits."

"I really meant to present you with an alb.u.m containing all the pictures which turn out well," she said.

"You have not changed your mind, I hope?"

"N--no, but there will be so few. I was rather lazy during the first two days."

"You can trust me to fill in the gaps with exceeding accuracy."

"Oh, don't let us talk as if we would never meet again. The world is small--to motorists."