Cynthia's Chauffeur
dared not make that second mortal thrust. These French gentlemen whom
he had summoned from Paris were bound by a rigid code of honor that
would infallibly have caused him to be branded as a murderer had he
completed matters to his satisfaction. Nevertheless, he bent and
peered closely into Medenham's face, gray now as the sand on which he
was lying.
"I think it will serve," he muttered to himself. "May the devil take
him, but I thought he would get the better of me!"
He turned away with an affectation of coolness which he was far from
feeling, while the doctor knelt to examine Medenham's injury. He saw
someone running towards him, but believed it must be one of the
witnesses, and his eyes fell to the stained blade in his hand.
"I rather forgot myself----" he began.
But the excuse was stopped short by a blow on the angle of the jaw
that stretched him by Medenham's side and apparently as lifeless.
Assuredly, Dale was not versed in the punctilio of the duel, but he
knew how and where to hit with a fist that was hard as one of his own
spanners. He put weight and passion into that punch, and scarcely
understood how effective it was until he found himself struggling in
the grasp of two excited Frenchmen. He cursed both them and Marigny
fluently, and vowed the most horrible vengeance on all three, but soon
calmed himself sufficiently to see that Count Edouard could not stir,
and his perturbed wits then sought to learn the extent of his master's
injury. Still he swore at Marigny.
"Damn you!" he cried hoarsely, "you would have stabbed him as he was
lying there if these pals of yours hadn't stopped you!"
At last, recovering some degree of self-possession, he assisted the
astounded and rather frightened Frenchmen to carry Medenham to the
waiting carriage. One, who spoke English, asked him to help in
rendering a like service to Marigny, but he refused with an oath, and
the others dared not press him, he looked so fierce and threatening.
"Is he dead?" he asked the doctor brokenly.
There could be no mistaking the meaning of the words, for his red-shot
eyes glared fixedly at the limp body of his master. The other shook
his head, but pointed in the direction of Calais, as though to
suggest that the sooner the injured man was taken to some place where
his wound could be properly attended to, the better would be the
faint chance of life that remained. By this time the seconds were
approaching, and Marigny had seemingly recovered to a slight extent
from the knockout blow which he had received so unexpectedly.
The doctor, who was the only self-collected person present, pointed to
the bicycle.
"Hotel," he said emphatically. "Go hotel--quick!"
Dale was minded not to desert his master, but the anxiety in the
doctor's face warned him that the request ought to be obeyed. If the
spark of vitality still flickering in Medenham's body was to be
preserved not a moment should be lost in preparing a room for his
reception.
Gulping down his anguish, Dale mounted and made off. At a distant bend
in the road he turned his head and looked back along that dismal
heath. All five were packed in the cab, and the coachman was urging
the unwilling horse into a trot.
* * * * *
And what of Cynthia?
The break in the weather was the one thing needed to put an abrupt end
to all pretense of enjoyment so far as the Windermere tourists were
concerned. Strained relations existed from the moment Vanrenen arrived
at Chester. For the first time in her life, Cynthia thought that her
father was not acting with the open-eyed justice which she expected
from him, and for the first time in his life Peter Vanrenen harbored
an uneasy suspicion that his daughter had not been quite candid with
him. It was impossible, of course, in the close intimacy of long hours
spent together in a touring car, that there should not be many
references to Fitzroy and the Mercury. They were inevitable as the
milestones, and Vanrenen, who was just as prone as other men to
look at facts through his own spectacles, failed to understand how
an intelligent girl like his daughter could remain in constant
association with Viscount Medenham for five days, and yet not discover
his identity.
More than once, indeed, notwithstanding the caution exercised by the
others--engaged now in a tacit conspiracy to dispel memories of a
foolish entanglement from the girl's mind--the identification of
Fitzroy with the young Viscount trembled on the very lip of discovery.
Thus, on Friday, when they had motored to Grasmere, and had gathered
before lunch in the lounge of the delightfully old-fashioned Rothay
Hotel, Vanrenen happened to pick up an illustrated paper, containing a
page of pictures of the Scarland short-horns.
Now, being a busy man, he gave little heed to the terminological
convolutions of names among the British aristocracy. He had not the
slightest notion that the Marquis of Scarland's wife was Medenham's
sister, and, with the quick interest of the stock-breeder, he pointed
out to Mrs. Leland an animal that resembled one of his own pedigree
bulls, at present waxing fat on the Montana ranch. For the moment
Mrs. Leland herself had forgotten the relationship between the two
men.
"I met the Marquis last year at San Remo," she said heedlessly.
"Anyone more unlike a British peer you could not imagine. If I
remember rightly, he is a blunt, farmer-like person, but his wife
is very charming. By the way, who was she?"
Such a question could not pass Mrs. Devar unanswered.
"Lady Betty Fitzroy," she chirped instantly.
Cynthia, who was looking through the window at the square-towered
little church, throned midst the somber yews which shelter the graves
of Wordsworth and his kin, caught the odd conjunction of
names--"Betty" and "Fitzroy."
"Who is that you are speaking of, father?" she asked, though with a
listless air that Medenham had never seen during any minute of those
five happy days.
"The Marquis of Scarland--the man from whom I bought some cattle a few
years ago," he said, trusting to the directness of the reply to carry
it through unchallenged.
Cynthia's brows puckered in a reflective frown.
"That is odd," she murmured.
"What is odd?" asked her father, while Mrs. Leland bent over the
periodical to hide a smile of embarrassment.
"Oh, just a curious way of running in grooves people have in this
country. They call towns after men and men after towns."
She was about to add that Fitzroy had told her of a sister Betty who
was married to a man named Scarland, a breeder of pedigree stock, but
checked the impulse. For some reason known best to her father, he did
not seem to wish any mention to be made of the vanished chauffeur, but
she did not gauge the true extent of his readiness to drop the subject
on that occasion.
Mrs. Leland looked up, caught his eye with a smile, and asked how many
miles it was to Thirlmere. Cynthia's thoughts brooded again on poets
and lonely graves, and the danger passed.
Mrs. Devar, in these days, had recovered her complacency. The letter
she wrote from Symon's Yat had reached Vanrenen from Paris, and its
hearty disapproval of Fitzroy helped to re-establish his good opinion
of her. She heard constantly, too, from Marigny and her son. Both
agreed that the comet-like flight of Medenham across their horizon was
rapidly losing its significance. Still, she was not quite happy. Mrs.
Leland's advent had thrust her into the background, for the American
widow was rich, good-looking, and cultured, and the flow of small talk
between the newcomer and Cynthia left her as hopelessly out of range
as used to be the case when that domineering Medenham would lean back
in the car and say things beyond her comprehension, or murmur them to
Cynthia if she happened to be sitting by his side.
Luncheon had ended, but the clouds which had been gathering over the
lake country during the morning suddenly poured a deluge over a
thirsty land. Thirlmere and Ullswater and the rest of the glories of
Westmoreland that lay beyond the pass of Dunmail Raise were swallowed
up in a fog of rain. Simmonds, questioned by the millionaire, admitted
that a weather-beaten native had prophesied "a week of it," more or
less.
Four Britons might have sat down and played Bridge stolidly, but three
of this quartette were Americans, and within two hours of the change
in the elements, they were seated in the London-bound train at
Windermere Station.
Not one of them was really displeased because of this rapid alteration
in their plans. Cynthia was ill at ease; Mrs. Leland wished to rejoin
her guests at Trouville; Vanrenen, who was anxious to complete certain
business negotiations in Paris, believed that a complete change of
scene and new interests in life would speedily bring Cynthia back to
her own cheery self; while Mrs. Devar, though the abandonment of the
tour meant reversion to a cheap boarding-house, was not sorry that it
had come to an end. In London, she would be more in her element, and,
at any rate, she was beginning to feel cramped through sitting three
in a row in Simmonds's car, after the luxurious comfort of two in the
tonneau of the Mercury.
So it came to pass that on Friday evening, while Medenham was driving
from Cavendish Square to Charing Cross, Cynthia was crossing London on
a converging line from St. Pancras to the Savoy Hotel. Strange,
indeed, was the play of Fate's shuttle that it should have so nearly
reunited the unseen threads of their destinies! Again, a trifling
circumstance conspired to detain Vanrenen in London. One of his
business associates in Paris, rendered impatient by the failure of the
great man to return as quickly as he had promised, arrived in England
by the afternoon service from the Gare du Nord, and was actually
standing in the foyer of the hotel when Vanrenen entered with the
others. As a result of this meeting, the journey to Paris arranged for
Saturday was postponed till Sunday, and on this trivial base was
destined to be built a very remarkable edifice.
It chanced that Mrs. Leland, too, decided to have a day in London, and
she and Cynthia went out early. They returned to lunch at the hotel,
and the girl, pleading lack of appetite, slipped out alone to buy a
copy of Milton's poems. From the book-seller's she wandered into the
Embankment Gardens.
She was a dutiful daughter, and had resolved to obey without question
her father's stern command not to enter again into communication with
a man of whom he so strongly disapproved. But she was not content,
for all that, and the dripping trees and rain-sodden flowers seemed
now to accord with her distraught mood. The fine, though not bright,
interval that had tempted her forth soon gave way to another shower,
and she ran for shelter into the Charing Cross Station of the
Metropolitan Railway. She stood in one of the doorways looking out
disconsolately over the river, when a taxicab drove up and deposited
its occupant at the station. Then some unbidden impulse led her to
hail the driver.
"Take me to Cavendish Square," she said.
"What number, miss?" he asked.
"No number. Just drive slowly round the square and return to the Savoy
Hotel."
He eyed her curiously, but made no comment. Soon she was speeding up
Regent Street, bent on gratifying the truly curious whim of seeing
what manner of residence it was that Fitzroy occupied in London. Fate
had failed in her weaving during the previous evening, but on the
present occasion she combined warp and weft without any error.
The cab was crawling past the Fairholme mansion, and Cynthia's
astonished eyes were regarding its style and general air of
magnificence with some degree of heart-sinking--for it did then
seem to be true that Mrs. Devar's original estimate of Fitzroy was