Cynthia's Chauffeur

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 unknownDipped 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 anticipated 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 Cæsar delivering orders for a survey of the world to the philosophers Nichodoxus, Theodotus, and Polictitus. 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 brass 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 Saturday, 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 embarrassment. 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.

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 album 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.”

“I had the exact contrary in mind,” he said quickly. “If we parted to-day, and did not meet for twenty years, each of us might well be doubtful as to what did or did not happen last Friday or Saturday. But association strengthens and confirms such recollections. I often think that memories held in common are the most solid foundation of friendship.”

“You don’t believe, then, in love at first sight,” she ventured.

“Let me be dumb rather than so misunderstood!” he cried.

Cynthia breathed deeply. She was profoundly conscious of an escape wholly due to his forbearance, but she was terrified at finding that her thankfulness was of a very doubtful quality. She knew now that this man loved her, and the knowledge was at once an ecstasy and a torture. And how wise he was, how considerate, how worthy of the treasure that her overflowing heart would heap on him! But it could not be. She dared not face her father, her relatives, her host of friends, and confess with proud humility that she had found her mate in some unknown Englishman, the hired driver of a motor-car. At any rate, in that moment of exquisite agony, Cynthia did not know what she might dare when put to the test. Her lips parted, her eyes glistened, and she turned aside to gaze blindly at the distant Welsh hills.

“If we don’t hurry,” she said with the slowness of desperation, “we shall never complete our programme by nightfall… And we must not forget that Mrs. Leland awaits us at Chester.”

“To-night I shall realize the feelings of Charles the First when he witnessed the defeat of his troops at the battle of Rowton Moor,” was Medenham’s savage growl.

Hardly aware of her own words, Cynthia murmured:

“Though defeated, the poor king did not lose hope.”

“No: the Stuarts’ only virtue was their stubbornness. By the way, I am a Stuart.”

“Evidently that is why you are flying from Chester,” she contrived to say with a little laugh.

“I pin my faith in the Restoration,” he retorted. “It is a fair parallel. It took Charles twenty years to reach Rowton Moor, but the modern clock moves quicker, for I am there in five days.”

“I am no good at dates – ” she began, but Mrs. Devar discovered them from afar, and fluttered a telegram. They hastened to her – Cynthia flushed at the thought that she might be recalled to London – which she would not regret, since a visit to the dentist to-day is better than the toothache all next week – and Medenham steeled himself against imminent unmasking.

But Mrs. Devar’s main business in life was self.

“I have just heard from James,” she cooed. “He promised to run up to Shrewsbury to-day, but finds he cannot spare the time. Count Edouard told him that Mr. Vanrenen was in town, and he regrets he was unable to call before he left.”

“Before who left?” demanded Cynthia.