Cynthia's Chauffeur
right bank of the Wye when Cynthia suddenly leaped up, teacup in hand,
and looked down at the river.
"There are the duckiest little yachts I have ever seen skimming about
on that stretch of water," she cried over her shoulder. "The mere
sight of them makes me taste all the dust I have swallowed between
here and London. Don't you think it would be real cute to remain here
to-night and run into Hereford to-morrow after an early cup of tea?"
Cynthia need not have taken the trouble to avert her scarlet face from
Mrs. Devar's inquisitive eyes; indeed, Mrs. Devar herself was glad
that her quick-witted and perhaps quick-tempered young friend had not
surprised the wry smile that twisted her own lips.
"Just as you please, Cynthia," said she amiably.
Then the girl resolutely crushed the absurd emotion that led her to
shirk her companion's scrutiny: she was so taken aback by this
unexpected complaisance in a quarter where she was prepared for
opposition that she turned and laid a grateful hand on the other
woman's arm.
"Now that is perfectly sweet of you," she said softly. "I would just
love to see that river by moonlight, and--and--I fancied you were a
bit weary of the road. It wouldn't matter if the country were not so
wonderful, but when one has to screw one's head round quickly or one
misses a castle or a prize landscape, a hundred miles of that sort of
thing becomes a strain."
"This seems to be quite a restful place," agreed Mrs. Devar. "Have
you--er--told Fitzroy of the proposed alteration in our arrangements?"
Cynthia grew interested in the yachts again.
"No," she said, "I've not mentioned it to him--yet."
A maid-servant entered, and Cynthia inquired if the hotel could
provide three rooms for her party.
The girl, a pretty Celt of the fair-haired type, said she was sure
there was accommodation.
"Then," said Cynthia, with what she felt to be a thoroughly
self-possessed air, "please ask my chauffeur if he would like another
cup of tea, and tell him to house the car and have our boxes sent in,
as we shall stay here till half-past eight to-morrow morning."
Mrs. Devar's letter to Peter Vanrenen forthwith entered the category
of things that must be done at the earliest opportunity. She wrote it
before dinner, taking a full hour in the privacy of her room to
compose its few carefully considered sentences. She posted it, too,
and was confirmed in her estimate of its very real importance when she
saw a muslined Cynthia saunter out and join "Fitzroy," who happened to
be standing on a tiny landing-stage near a boathouse.
Yet, so strangely constituted is human nature of the Devar variety,
she would have given half the money she possessed if she could have
recalled that letter an hour later. But His Majesty's mails are
inexorable as fate. A twopence-ha'penny stamp had linked Symon's Yat
and Paris, and not all Mrs. Devar's world-worn ingenuity could sunder
that link.
CHAPTER IX
ON THE WYE
For this is what happened. To Mrs. Devar, gazing darkly at Cynthia's
too innocent discovery of Medenham standing on the tiny quay, came the
Welsh maid, saying:
"Beg pardon, mam, but iss your chauf-feur's name Fitz-roy?"
"Yes."
"Then he iss wan-ted on the tel-e-phone from Her-e-ford, mam."
"There he is, below there, near the river."
Mrs. Devar smiled sourly at the thought that the interruption was
well-timed, since Medenham was just raising his cap with a fine
assumption of surprise at finding Miss Vanrenen strolling by the
water's edge. The civil-spoken maid was about to trip off in pursuit
of him, when Mrs. Devar changed her mind. The notion suddenly occurred
to her that it would be well if she intervened in this telephonic
conversation, and Fitzroy could still be summoned a minute later if
desirable.
"Don't trouble," she cried, "I think that Miss Vanrenen wishes to go
boating, so I will attend to the call myself. Perhaps Fitzroy's
presence may be dispensed with."
The felt-lined telephone box was well screened off; as first
impressions might be valuable, she adjusted the receivers carefully
over both ears before she shouted "Hallo!"
"That you, my lord?" said a voice.
"Hallo!--who wants Fitzroy?" she asked in the gruffest tone she could
adopt.
"It's Dale, my---- But who is talking? Is that you, sir?"
"Go on. Can't you hear?"
"Not very well, my lord, but I'm that upset.... It wasn't my fault,
but your lordship's father dropped on to me at Bristol, an' he's here
now. What am I to do?"
"My lordship's father! What are you talking about? Who are you?"
"Isn't that Lord---- Oh, dash it, aren't you Miss Vanrenen's
chauffeur, Fitzroy?"
"No. This is the Symon's Yat Hotel. The party is out now, and Fitzroy
as well, but I can tell him anything you wish to say."
Mrs. Devar fancied that the speaker, whose words thus far had excited
her liveliest curiosity, would imagine that he was in communication
with the proprietors of the hotel. She was not mistaken. Dale fell
into the trap instantly, though, indeed, he was not to be blamed,
since he had asked most earnestly that "Mr. Fitzroy, Miss Vanrenen's
chauffeur" should be brought to the telephone.
"Well, mam," he said, "if I can't get hold of--of Fitzroy--I must
leave a message, as I don't suppose I'll have another chanst. I'm his
man, I'm Dale; have you got it?"
"Yes--Dale."
"Tell him the Earl of Fairholme turned up in Bristol an' forced me to
explain everything. I couldn't help it. The old gentleman fell from
the blooming sky, he did. Will you remember that name?"
"Oh, yes: the Earl of Fairholme."
"Well, his lordship will understand. I mean you must tell Fitzroy what
I said. Please tell him privately. I expect I'll get the sack anyhow
over this business, but I'm doin' me best in tryin' the telephone, so
you'll confer a favor, mam, if you call Fitzroy on one side before
tellin' him."
Though the telephone-box was stuffy when the door was closed, Mrs.
Devar felt a cold chill running down her spine.
"I don't quite understand," she said thickly. "You're Dale, somebody's
man; whose man?"
"His lordship's. Oh, d----n. Beg pardon, mam, but I'm Fitzroy's
chauffeur."
It was a glorious night of early summer, yet lightning struck in that
little shut-off section of the hotel.
"Do you mean that you are Viscount Medenham's chauffeur?" she gasped,
and her hands trembled so much that she could scarce hold the
receivers to her ears.
"Yes'm. Now you've got it. But, look here, I daren't stop another
minnit. Tell his lordship--tell Mr. Fitzroy--that I'll dodge the Earl
in some way an' remain here. He says he has been tricked, wot between
me an' the Frenchman, but he means to go back to London to-morrow.
Good-by, mam. You won't forget--strickly private?"
"Oh, no, I won't forget," said Mrs. Devar grimly; nevertheless, she
felt weak and sick, and in her anxiety to rush out into the fresh air
she did forget to hang up the receivers, and the Symon's Yat Hotel was
cut off from the world of telephones until someone entered the box
early next morning.
She was of a not uncommon type--a physical coward endowed with nerves
of steel, but, for once in her life, she came perilously near
fainting. It was bad enough that a money-making project of some value
should show signs of tumbling in ruins, but far worse that she, an
experienced tuft-hunter, should have lived in close companionship with
a viscount for four long days and snubbed him rancorously and without
cease. There was no escaping the net she had contrived for her own
entanglement. She had actually written to Peter Vanrenen that she
deemed it her duty as Cynthia's chaperon to acquaint him with
Simmonds's defection and the filling of his place by Fitzroy, "a most
unsuitable person to act as Miss Vanrenen's chauffeur"--indeed, a
young man who, she was sure, "would never have been chosen for such a
responsible position" by Mr. Vanrenen himself.
And Fitzroy was Viscount Medenham, heir to the Fairholme estates,
one of the most eligible young bachelors in the kingdom! Oh,
blind and crass that she had not guessed the truth! The car, the
luncheon-basket, the rare wine, the crest on the silver, the very
candor of the wretch in giving his real name, his instant recognition
of "Jimmy" Devar's mother, the hints of a childhood passed in
Sussex--why, even the aunt he spoke of on Derby Day must be Susan
St. Maur, while Millicent Porthcawl had actually met him in the
Bournemouth hotel!--these and many another vivid index pointed the
path of knowledge to one so well versed as she in the intricacies of
Debrett. The very attributes which she had taken for an impertinent
aping of the manners of society had shouted his identity into her deaf
ears time and again. Even an intelligent West-end housemaid would have
felt some suspicion of the facts when confronted by these piled-up
tokens. She remembered noticing his hands, the quality of his linen,
his astonishingly "good" appearance on the only occasion that she had
seen him in evening dress; she almost groaned aloud when she recalled
the manner of her son's departure from Bristol, and some imp in her
heart raked the burnt ashes of the fire that had devoured her when she
heard why Captain Devar was requested to resign his commission. Of
course, this proud young aristocrat recognized him at once, and had
brushed him out of his sight as one might brush a fly off a
windowpane.
But how was she to act in face of the threatened disaster? Why had not
her son warned her? Did Marigny know, and was that the explanation of
his sheepish demeanor when she and Cynthia were about to enter the car
that morning? Indeed, Marigny's quiet acceptance of the position was
quite as difficult to understand as her own failure to grasp the
significance of all that happened since noon on Wednesday. This very
day, before breakfast, he had come to her room with the cheering news
that information to hand from London would certainly procure the
dismissal of "Fitzroy" forthwith. The Mercury was registered in the
name of the Earl of Fairholme, the obvious deduction being that his
lordship's chauffeur was careering through England in a valuable car
without a shred of permission; the merest whisper to Cynthia of this
discovery, said the Frenchman, would send "Fitzroy" packing.
And again, what had Cynthia meant when she referred at Chepstow to the
"Norman baron scowl" with which "Fitzroy" had favored Marigny? Was
she, too, in the secret? Unhappy Mrs. Devar! She glowered at the
darkening Wye, and wriggled on her chair in torture.
"Wass it all right a-bout the tel-e-phone, mam?" said a soft voice at
her ear.
She started violently, and the maid was contrite.
"I'm ver-ry sor-ry, mam," she said, "but I see Mr. Fitz-roy down there
on the riv-er----"
"Where, where?" cried the other, rather to gain time to collect her
wits than to ascertain Medenham's whereabouts.
The girl pointed.
"In that lit-tle boat, all by its-self, mam," she said.
"Oh, it was of no importance. By the way," and Mrs. Devar produced her
purse, "you might tell the people in the office not to pay any
attention to the statements of a man named Dale, if he rings up from
Hereford. He is only a chauffeur, and we shall see him in the morning;
perhaps it will be best, if he asks for Fitzroy again to-night, to
tell him to await our arrival."
"Yess, mam," and the maid went off, the richer by half-a-crown. Mrs.
Devar's usual "tip" was a sixpence for a week's attentions, so it
would demand an abstruse arithmetical calculation to arrive at an
exact estimate of the degree of mental disturbance that led to the
present lack of proportion.
Left alone once more, her gaze followed a small skiff speeding
upstream over the placid surface of the silvery Wye; Medenham was