Cynthia's Chauffeur
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 Caesar
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.
"Your father, dear."
"Left for where?"
Mrs. Devar screwed her eyes at the pink slip.
"That is all it says. Just 'left'?"
"That doesn't sound right, anyhow," laughed Medenham.
"Oh, but this is too ridiculous!" and Cynthia's foot stamped. "I have
never before known my father behave in this Jack-in-the-Box fashion."
"Mrs. Leland will clear up the whole mystery," volunteered Medenham.
"But what mystery is there?" purred Mrs. Devar, blinking first at one,
then at the other. She bent over the telegram again.
"James sent this message from the West Strand at 9.30 a.m. Perhaps he
had just heard of Mr. Vanrenen's departure," she said.
Judging from Cynthia's occasional references to her father's character
and associates, Medenham fancied it was much more likely that the
American railway magnate had merely refused to meet Captain Devar. But
therein he was mistaken.
At the very hour that the three were settling themselves in the
Mercury before taking the road to Leominster, Mr. Vanrenen, driven by
a perturbed but silent Simmonds, stopped the car on the outskirts of
Whitchurch and asked an intelligent-looking boy if he had noticed the
passing of an automobile numbered X L 4000.
"I s'pose you mean a motor-car, sir?" said the boy.
Vanrenen, a tall man, thin, close-lipped, with high cheekbones, and
long nose, a man utterly unlike his daughter save for the wide-open,
all-seeing eyes, smiled at the naive correction; with that smile some
enchanter's wand mirrored Cynthia in her father's face. Even Simmonds,
who had seen no semblance of a smile in the features of the chilly,
skeptical man by whom he was dragged out of bed at an unearthly hour
in the morning at Bristol, witnessed the alchemy, and marveled.
"Yes, sir, rather," continued the boy, brimming over with enthusiasm.
"The gentleman went along the Hereford Road, he did, yesterday
mornin'. He kem back, too, wiv a shuffer, an' he's a-stayin' at the
Symon's Yat Hotel."
Peter Vanrenen frowned, and Cynthia vanished, to be replaced by the
Wall Street speculator who had "made a pyramid in Milwaukees." Whence,
then, had Cynthia telephoned? Of course, his alert mind hit on a
missed mail as the genesis of the run to Hereford early on Sunday, but
he asked himself why he had not been told of a changed address. He
could not guess that Cynthia would have mentioned the fact had she
spoken to him, but in the flurry and surprise of hearing that he was
not in the hotel she forgot to tell the attendant who took her message
that she was at Symon's Yat and not at Hereford.
"Are you sure about the car?" he said, rendered somewhat skeptical by
the boy's overfullness of knowledge.
"Yes, sir. Didn't me an' Dick Davies watch for it all chapel-time?"
"But why?--for that car in particular?"
"The gentleman bust his tire, an' we watched him mendin' it, an' he
set us a sum, an' promised us a bob each if we did it."
"Meanwhile he went to Hereford and back?"
"I s'pose so, sir."
Peter Vanrenen's attention was held by that guarded answer, and, being
an American, he was ever ready to absorb information, especially in
matters appertaining to figures.
"What was the sum?" he said.
To his very keen annoyance he found that he could not determine
straight off how long two men take to mow a field of grass, which one
of them could cut in four days and the other in three. Indeed, he
almost caught himself saying "three days and a half," but stopped
short of that folly.
"About a day and three-quarters," he essayed, before the silence grew
irksome.
"Wrong, sir. Is it worth a bob?" and the urchin grinned delightfully.
"Yes," he said.
"A day an' five-sevenths, 'coss one man can do one quarter in a day,
and t'other man a third, which is seven-twelfths, leavin'
five-twelfths to be done next day."
Though the millionaire financier was nettled, he did not show it, but
paid the shilling with apparent good grace.
"Did _you_ find that out--or was it Dick Davies?" he asked.
"Both of us, sir, wiv' a foot rule."
"And how far is the Symon's Yat Hotel, measured by that rule?"
"Half a mile, sir, down that there lane."
While traveling slowly in the narrow way, Simmonds turned his head.
"It doesn't follow that because the boy saw Viscount Medenham
yesterday his lordship is here now, sir," he said.
"You just do as you are told and pass no remarks," snapped Vanrenen.
If the head of the house of Vanrenen were judged merely by that
somewhat unworthy retort he would not be judged fairly. He was tired
physically, worried mentally; he had been brought from Paris at an
awkward moment; he was naturally devoted to his daughter; he believed
that Medenham was an unmitigated scamp and Simmonds his tool; and his
failure to solve Medenham's arithmetical problem still rankled. These
considerations, among others, may be pleaded in his behalf.
But, if Simmonds, who had stood on Spion Kop, refused to be browbeaten
by a British earl, he certainly would not grovel before an American
plutocrat. He had endured a good deal since five o'clock that morning.
He told his tale honestly and fully; he even sympathized with a
father's distress, though assured in his own mind that it was wholly
unwarranted; he was genuinely sorry on hearing that Mr. Vanrenen had
been searching the many hotels of Bristol for two hours before he came