Cynthia's Chauffeur
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.