Cynthia's Chauffeur Part 40

This brief conversation had illumined at least one dubious page in the records of the past few days. Medenham realized now that his aunt had emptied the vials of her wrath on Mrs. Devar, but, that lady being absent in body, the Earl had received the full dose. It indicated somewhat the line he should follow when, breakfast ended, his father suggested that they should smoke a cigarette in the library.

Once there, and the door closed, the Earl established himself on the hearth-rug with his back to the fireplace. It was high summer, and the lazy London heat crept in through the open windows; but the hearth-rug const.i.tuted a throne, a seat of Solomon; had his lordship stood anywhere else he would have felt lacking in authority.

"Now, George, my boy, tell me all about it," he said, with a genially paternal air that lent itself admirably to the discussion of a youngster's transgressions.

Medenham had a sense of humor denied to his well-meaning sire. He recalled the last time he had heard those words. He and another sprig of n.o.bility had come up to London from Winchester without leave in order to attend a famous glove contest between heavyweights, and there had been wigs on the green before an irate head-master would even deign to flog them. That had happened twelve years ago, almost to a day. Since then he had fought through a great war, had circled the globe, had sought the wild places of earth and its monsters in their lairs. He knew men and matters as his father had never known them. A Prime Minister had urged him to adopt a political career, and had virtually promised him a colonial under-secretaryship as soon as he entered parliament. He held the D.S.O., had been thanked by the Royal Geographical Society for a paper on Kilimanjaro, and cordially invited by the Foreign Office to send in any further notes in his possession.

Months later, he heard that Sir Somebody Something was deeply interested in his comments on the activity of a certain Great Power in the neighborhood of Britain's chief coaling-stations in the Indian Ocean.

The absurdity of a family conclave in which he should again be treated as a small boy, and admonished to apologize and be flogged, while it brought a smile to his lips, banished any notion of angry remonstrance.

"By 'all about it' I suppose you mean that you wish to hear what I have been doing since last Wednesday," he said pleasantly. "Well, dad, I have obeyed your orders. You asked me to find a wife worthy to reign at Fairholme. I have succeeded."

"You don't mean to say you have _married_ her!" shouted the Earl, in a purple upheaval of rage whose lightning-like abruptness was not its least amazing feature. Certainly Medenham was taken aback by it.

Indeed, he was almost alarmed, though he had no knowledge of apoplexy in the family.

"I have not even asked the lady yet," he said quietly. "I hope--I think--that the idea will not be disagreeable to her; but a future Countess of Fairholme is not to be carried by storm in that fashion.

We must get to know her people----"

"D----n her people!" broke in the older man. "Have you taken leave of your wits, George, to stand there and talk such infernal nonsense?"

"Steady, dad, steady!" and the quiet voice grew still more calm, though the forehead wrinkled a little, and there was an ominous tightening of the lips. "You must take that back. Peter Vanrenen is quite as great a man in the United States as you are in England--may I even say, without disrespect, a man who has won a more commanding position?--and his daughter, Cynthia, is better fitted to adorn a coronet than a great many women now ent.i.tled to wear one."

The Earl laughed, with an immoderate display of an amus.e.m.e.nt he was far from feeling.

"Are these Wiggy Devar's credentials? By gad, that shabby little wretch is flying high when she tries to bag my son for her pretty protegee!"

"Don't you think it would be wiser, sir, if you allowed me to tell you exactly what has taken place since we met last?"

"What good purpose will that serve? I have heard the whole story from Lady Porthcawl, from Dale, from that Frenchman--and Heaven knows I have been well coached in Mrs. Devar's antecedents by your Aunt Susan.

George, I am surprised that a man of your sound commonsense should permit yourself to be humbugged so egregiously.... Yes, yes, I am aware that an accident led you to take Simmonds's place in the first instance, but can't you see that the Devar creature must have gone instantly on her bended knees--if she ever does pray, which I doubt--and thanked Providence for the chance that enabled her to dispose of an earldom?... At a pretty stiff price, too, I'll be bound, if the truth were told. Really, George, notwithstanding your very extensive travels and wide experiences, you are nothing but a kid in the hands of a managing woman of the Devar variety."

"I am not being given in marriage by Mrs. Devar, I a.s.sure you," began Medenham, smiling anxiously, for the fatherly "tell me all about it"

was not being borne out by the Earl's petulance.

"No. You can trust me to take care of that."

"But are you treating me quite fairly? Why should the distorted version of my affairs given by Lady Porthcawl, a woman whom Cynthia Vanrenen could not possibly receive in her house, and by Count Edouard Marigny, a disappointed fortune-hunter, be accepted without cavil, while my own story is not listened to? I leave Dale out of it. I am sure he told you the actual truth----"

"By the way, where is he now?"

"Somewhere in the neighborhood of Chester, I believe."

"Have you discharged him?"

"No--why should I?"

"Because I wish it."

"Why in the world are you so unreasonable, dad?"

"Unreasonable! By gad, I like that. Have _I_ been gallivanting round the country with some----"

"Stop! You are going too far. This conversation must cease here and now. If you have any respect for yourself, though not for me, you must adjourn the discussion till after you have met Miss Vanrenen and her father."

For the first time in his life, the Earl of Fairholme realized his limitations; he was actually cowed for a few fleeting seconds. But the arrogant training of the county bench, the seignory of a vast estate, the unquestioning deference accorded to his views by thousands of men who tacitly admitted that what he said must be right because he was a lord--these excellent stays of self-conceit came to his help, and he snorted indignantly:

"I absolutely refuse to meet either of them."

"That disposes of the whole difficulty for the hour," said Medenham, turning to leave the room.

"Wait, George.... I insist----"

Perhaps a clearer glimpse of a new and, to him, utterly unsuspected force in his son's character withheld the imperious command that trembled on the Earl's lips. Medenham halted. The two looked at each other, and the older man fidgeted with his collar, which seemed to have grown tight for his neck.

"Come, come, let us not leave a friendly argument in this unsettled state," he said after an awkward pause. "My only thought is for your interests, you know. Your lifelong happiness is at stake, to say nothing of the future of our house."

"I recognize those considerations so fully that I am going now in order to shirk even the semblance of a quarrel between us."

"Why not thresh things out? Your aunt will be here in a couple of hours----"

"You refuse to hear a word. You argue with a hammer, sir. I shall send a note to Lady St. Maur telling her that she has done mischief in plenty without adding fuel to the fire by coming here to-day--unless _you_ wish to consult her, that is?"

The Earl, already afraid of his sister, was rapidly learning to fear his son.

"Dash it all! don't tell me you are off on this d----d motoring trip once more?" he cried pa.s.sionately.

Medenham smiled, even in his anger.

"See how willfully you misunderstand me," he said. "I came away from Miss Vanrenen solely because matters had gone far enough under rather absurd conditions. She knows me only as Fitzroy, the chauffeur; it is time to drop masquerading. Romance is delightful in its way--perhaps there might well be more of it in this commonplace world of ours--but none of us can afford to play the knight errant too long, so when next I meet Cynthia it will be as a man who occupies a social position that renders our marriage at least possible."

Lord Fairholme threw out his hands in a gesture of sheer bewilderment.

"And do you honestly believe that?" he exclaimed.

"I am quite sure of it. I may have to jump a very big fence indeed when she learns the harmless deception I have practiced on her, but I do hope most devoutly that she will look at the facts more calmly than you have done."

The Earl took a turn or two on the hearth-rug, from which wisdom had temporarily taken flight. He thought now he could see a way to avoid open rupture, and he believed, quite rightly, that his son was in no mood to accept further disillusionment.

"At any rate," he grumbled, "you are cutting a discred--sorry, I didn't quite mean that--you are not rushing away from town again in pursuit of the young lady?"

"No."

"When is she due back in London?"

"On Sunday."

"And you will not see her before that day?"