Cynthia's Chauffeur
correct--when a man sprang out of another taxi in front of the door,
and glanced at her while in the very act of running up the steps.
Recognition was mutual. Dale muttered under his breath a wholly
unjustifiable assumption as to his future state, halted dubiously,
and then signaled to Cynthia's driver to stop. He strode towards her
across the road, and thrust his head through the open window.
"Of course, miss," he said roughly, "you don't know what has
happened?"
"No," she said, too greatly surprised to resent his strange manner.
"Well," he growled, "somebody's been nearly killed on your account,
that's all."
"Somebody," she repeated, and her lips went white.
"Yes, you ought to guess well enough who it is. He and that rotten
Frenchman fought a duel this morning on the sands near Calais, and
Marinny as good as murdered him."
Dale's heart was sore against her as the cause of his master's plight,
but even in his own distress he was quick to see the shrinking terror
in the girl's eyes.
"Are you speaking of Mr. Fitzroy?" she demanded. "Are you telling the
truth? Oh, for Heaven's sake, man, tell me what you mean."
"I mean what I say, miss," said he more softly. "I have left him
almost at death's door in an hotel at Calais. That damned Frenchman
... I beg your pardon, miss, but I can't contain myself when I think
of him--ran a sword through him this morning, and would have killed
him outright if he hadn't been stopped by some other gentlemen. And
now, there he is, a-lying in the hotel, with a doctor and a nurse
trying to coax the life back into him, while I had to scurry back here
to tell his people."
Some women might have shrieked and fainted--not so Cynthia. At that
instant there was one thing to be done, and one only. She saw the open
road, and took it without faltering or thought as to the future.
"When is the next train to Calais?" she asked.
"At nine o'clock to-night, miss."
"Oh, God!" she wailed under her breath.
Dale's voice grew even more sympathetic.
"Was you a-thinking of going to him, miss?" he asked.
"Would that I could fly there," she moaned.
He scratched the back of his ear, for it was by such means that Dale
sought inspiration.
"Dash it all!" he cried. "I wish I had seen you half an hour earlier.
There is a train that leaves Charing Cross at twenty minutes past two.
It goes by way of Folkestone and Boulogne, and from Boulogne one can
get easy to Calais. Anyhow, what's the use of talkin'--it is too
late."
Cynthia glanced at her watch. It was just twenty-five minutes to
three.
"How far is Folkestone?" was the immediate demand generated by her
practical American brain.
"Seventy-two miles," said the chauffeur, who knew his roads out of
London.
"And what time does the boat leave?"
A light irradiated his face, and he swore volubly.
"We can do it!" he shouted. "By the Lord, we can do it! Are you game?"
Game? The light that leaped to her eyes was sufficient answer. He tore
open the door of the cab, roaring to the driver:
"Round that corner to the right--quick--then into the mews at the
back!"
Within two minutes the Mercury was attracting the attention of the
police as it whirled through the traffic towards Westminster Bridge.
Dale's face was set like a block of granite. He had risked a good deal
in leaving his master at the point of death at Calais; he was now
risking more, far more, in rushing back to Calais again without having
discharged the duty which had dragged him from that master's bedside.
But he thought he had secured the best physician London could bring to
the sufferer's aid, and the belief sustained him in an action that was
almost heroic. He was a simple-minded fellow, with a marked taste
for speed in both animals and machinery, but he had hit on one
well-defined trait in human nature when he decided that if a man is
dying for the sake of a woman the presence of that woman may cure when
all else will fail.
CHAPTER XVI
THE END OF ONE TOUR: THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER
Cynthia found him lying in a darkened room. The nurse had just raised
some of the blinds; a dismal day was drawing to its close, and more
light was needed ere she could distinguish marked bottles, and doses,
and the rest of the appurtenances of dangerous illness.
An English nurse would have forbidden the presence of a stranger; this
French one acted with more discretion if less of strict science.
"Madam is his sister, perhaps?" she whispered.
"No."
"A relative, then?"
"No; a woman who loves him."
That heartbroken admission told the whole tale to the quick-witted
Frenchwoman. There had been a duel; one man was seriously injured; the
other, she had heard, was also receiving medical attention in another
hotel--the _temoins_, wistful to avoid the interrogation of the law,
had so arranged--and here was the woman who had caused the quarrel.
Well, such was the will of Providence! These things had been since man
and woman were expelled from Paradise--for the nurse, though a devout
Catholic, suspected that Genesis had suppressed certain details of the
first fratricide--and would continue, she supposed, until the
Millennium.
She nodded cheerfully.
"There is every reason to hope, but he must not be disturbed--not
excited, that is," she added, seeing the wan agony in Cynthia's face.
The girl tiptoed to the side of the bed. Medenham's eyes were closed,
but he was muttering something. She bent and kissed his forehead, and
a strange smile broke through the tense lines of pain. Even in his
semi-conscious state he felt the touch of those exquisite lips.
"My Lady Alice!" he said.
She choked back a sob. He was dreaming of "Comus"--standing with her
in the ruined banqueting hall of Ludlow Castle.
"Yes, your Lady Alice," she breathed.
A slight quiver shook him.
"Don't tell Cynthia," he said brokenly. "She must never know.... Ah,
if I hadn't slipped, I would have quieted his viperish tongue.... But
Cynthia must not know!"
"Oh, my dear, my dear, Cynthia does know! It is you who know not. Kind
Heaven, let him live! Grant that I may tell him all that I know!"
She could not help it; the words welled forth of their own accord; but
the nurse touched her arm gently.
"It is a little fever," she whispered with ready sympathy. "Soon it
will pass. He will sleep, and, when he awakes, it is perhaps
permissible that you should speak to him."
* * * * *
Well, it was permissible. The age of miracles had not passed for those
two. Even the experienced doctor marveled at the strength of a man who
at four o'clock in the morning could have a sword driven through the
tissues in perilous proximity to the right lung, and yet, at nine
o'clock on that same night, was able to announce an unalterable
resolution to get up and dress for breakfast next day. That, of
course, was a pleasing fiction intended for Cynthia's benefit. It
served its purpose admirably. The kindly nurse displayed an unexpected
firmness in leading her to her own room, there to eat and sleep.
For Cynthia had an ordeal to face. Many things had been said in the
car during that mad rush to Folkestone, and on board the steamer which
ferried Dale and herself to Boulogne she had wrung from the taciturn
chauffeur a full, true, and particular account of Medenham, his
family, and his doings throughout as much of his life as Dale either
knew or guessed. By the time they reached Boulogne she had made up her
mind with a characteristic decision. One long telegram to her father,
another to Lord Fairholme, caused heart-burning and dismay not alone
in certain apartments of the Savoy Hotel, but in the aristocratic
aloofness of Cavendish Square and Curzon Street. As a result, two
elderly men, a younger one, in the person of the Marquis of Scarland,
and two tearful women--Lady St. Maur and Mrs. Leland--met at Charing
Cross about one o'clock in the morning to travel by special train and
steamer. Another woman telegraphed from Shropshire saying that baby
was better, and that she would follow by the first steamer on Sunday.
Mrs. Devar did not await developments. She fled, dinnerless, to some
burrow in Bayswater.
These alarums and excursions were accompanied by the ringing of
telephones and the flight of carriages back and forth through muddy
London, and Cynthia was called on to deal with a whole sheaf of
telegrams which demanded replies either to Dover or to Scarland Towers
in Shropshire.
With a man like Vanrenen at one end, however, and a woman like his
daughter at the other, it might be fairly assumed that even the most
complex skein of circumstances might be resolved from its tangle.
As a matter of curious coincidence, the vessel which carried Marigny
to England passed in mid-Channel its sister ship conveying the
grief-stricken party of relatives to France. It happened, too, that
the clouds from the Atlantic elected to hover over Britain rather
than France, and when Cynthia stood on the quay to meet the incoming
steamer, a burst of sunshine from the east gave promise of a fine if
somewhat blustery day.
Five pairs of eyes sought her face anxiously while the vessel was
warping to the quay opposite the Gare Maritime. They looked there for
tidings, and they were not disappointed.
"That's all right," said Vanrenen with an unwonted huskiness in his
voice. "Cynthia wouldn't smile if she hadn't good news."
"Thank God for that!" muttered the Earl, bending his head to examine a
landing ticket, the clear type of which he was utterly unable to read.
"I never thought for a minute that any Frenchman could kill George,"
cried Scarland cheerfully.
But the two women said nothing, could see nothing, and the white-faced
but smiling Cynthia standing near the shoreward end of the gangway had
vanished in a sudden mist.
Of course, Marigny was right when he foresaw that Vanrenen could not
meet either Medenham or any of his relatives for five minutes without
his "poor little cobweb of intrigue" being dissipated once and
forever.
With the marvelous insight that every woman possesses when dealing
with the affairs of the man she loves, Cynthia combined the eloquence
of an orator with the practiced skill of a clever lawyer in revealing
each turn and twist of the toils which had enveloped her since that
day in Paris when her father happened to suggest in Marigny's hearing
that she might utilize his hired car for a tour in England, while he
concluded the business that was detaining him in the French Capital.
Nothing escaped her; she unraveled every knot; Medenham's few broken
words, supplemented by the letter to his brother-in-law which he told
her to obtain from Dale, threw light on all the dark places.
But the gloom had fled. It was a keenly interested, almost
light-hearted, little party that walked through the sunshine to the
Hotel de la Plage.
* * * * *
Dale, abashed, sheepish, yet oddly confident that all was for the best
in a queer world, met the Earl of Fairholme later in the day; his
lordship, who had been pining for someone to pitch into, addressed him
sternly.
"This is a nice game you've been playing," he said. "I always thought
you were a man of steady habits, a little given to horse-racing
perhaps, but otherwise a decent member of the community."
"So I was before I met Viscount Medenham, my lord," was the daring
answer. For Dale was no fool, and he had long since seen how certain
apparently hostile forces had adapted themselves to new conditions.
"Before you left him, you mean," growled the Earl. "What sort of sense
was there in letting him fight a duel?--it could have been stopped in
fifty different ways."
"Yes, my lord, but I never suspicioned a word of it till he went off
in the cab with them----"