Cynthia's Chauffeur
demanded with a sudden lifting of eyebrows, for the hope was strong in
her that he might be induced to change his plans so far as the next
nine days were concerned.
"A man in my present position ought always to ascertain the
whereabouts of millionaires interested in motoring," he answered
promptly. "And now, pardon me for advising you not to walk towards the
pier alone."
"Gracious me! Why not?"
"There is a certain class of boisterous holiday-maker who might annoy
you--not by downright ill-behavior, but by exercising a crude humor
which is deemed peculiarly suitable to the seaside, though it would be
none the less distressing to you."
"In the States that sort of man gets shot," she said, and her cheeks
glowed with a rush of color.
"Here, on the contrary, he often takes the young lady's arm and walks
off with her," persisted Medenham.
"I'm going to that pier," she announced. "Guess you'd better escort
me, Mr. Fitzroy."
"Fate closes every door in my face," he said sadly. "I cannot go with
you--in that direction."
"Well, of all the odd people!--why not that way, if any other?"
"Because Count Edouard Marigny, the gentleman whose name I could not
help overhearing to-day, has just gone there--with another man."
"Have you a grudge against him, too?"
"I never set eyes on him before six o'clock this evening, but I
imagine you would not care to have him see you walking with your
chauffeur."
Cynthia looked up and down the broad sea front, with its thousands of
lamps and droves of promenaders.
"At last I am beginning to size up this dear little island," she said.
"I may go with you to a racetrack, I may sit by your side for days in
an automobile, I may even eat your luncheon and drink your aunt's St.
Galmier, but I may not ask you to accompany me a hundred yards from my
hotel to a pier. Very well, I'll quit. But before I go, do tell me one
thing. Did you really mean to bring your aunt to Epsom to-day?"
"Yes."
"A mother's sister sort of aunt--a nice old lady with white hair?"
"One would almost fancy you had met her, Miss Vanrenen."
"Perhaps I may, some day. Father and I are going to Scotland for a
month from the twelfth of August. After that we shall be in the Savoy
Hotel about six weeks. Bring her to see me."
Medenham almost jumped when he heard of the projected visit to the
Highlands, but some demon of mischief urged him to say:
"Let's reckon up. July, August, September--three months----"
He stopped with a jerk. Cynthia, already aware of some vague power she
possessed of stirring this man's emotions, did not fail to detect his
air of restraint.
"It isn't a proposition that calls for such a lot of calculation," she
said sharply. "Good-night, Mr. Fitzroy. I hope you are punctual
morning-time. When there is a date to be kept, I'm a regular alarm
clock, my father says."
She sped across the road, and into the hotel. Then Medenham noticed
how dark it had become--reminded him of the tropics, he thought--and
made for his own caravanserai, while his brain was busy with a number
of disturbing but nebulous problems that seemed to be pronounced in
character yet singularly devoid of a beginning, a middle, or an end.
Indeed, so puzzling and contradictory were they that he soon fell
asleep. When he rose at seven o'clock next morning the said problems
had vanished. They must have been part and parcel with the glamor of a
June night, and a starlit sky, and the blue depths of the sea and of a
girl's eyes, for the wizard sun had dispelled them long ere he awoke.
But he did not telegraph to Simmonds.
Dale brought the car to the Grand Hotel in good time, and Medenham ran
it some distance along the front before drawing up at the Metropole.
By that means he dissipated any undue curiosity that might be
experienced by some lounger on the pavement who happened to notice the
change of chauffeurs, while he avoided a prolonged scrutiny by the
visitors already packed in chairs on both sides of the porch. He kept
his face hidden during the luggage strapping process, and professed
not to be aware of Cynthia's presence until she bade him a cheery
"Good-morning."
Of course, Marigny was there, and Mrs. Devar gushed loudly for the
benefit of the other people while settling herself comfortably in the
tonneau.
"It was awfully devey of you, Count Edouard, to enliven our first
evening away from town. No such good fortune awaits us in Bournemouth,
I am afraid."
"If I am to accept that charming reference as applying to myself, I
can only say that _my_ good fortune has exhausted itself already,
madame," said the Frenchman. "When do you return to London?"
"About the end of next week," put in Cynthia.
"And your father--that delightful Monsieur Vanrenen," said the Count,
breaking into French, "he will join you there?"
"Oh, yes. My father and I are seldom separated a whole fortnight."
"Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you there. I go to-day to
Salisbury--after that, to Hereford and Liverpool."
"Why, we shall be in Hereford one day soon. What fun if we met again!"
Marigny looked to heaven, or as far in the direction popularly
assigned to heaven as the porch of the Metropole would permit. He was
framing a suitable speech, but the Mercury shot out into the open road
with a noiseless celerity that disconcerted him.
Medenham at once slackened speed and leaned back.
"I'm very sorry," he said, "but I clean forgot to ask if you were
quite ready to start."
Cynthia laughed.
"Go right ahead, Fitzroy," she cried. "Guess the Count is pretty mad,
anyhow. He was telling us last night that his Du Vallon is the only
car that can hit up twenty at the first buzz."
"Unpardonable rudeness," murmured Mrs. Devar.
"On the Count's part?" asked the girl demurely.
"No, of course not--on the part of this chauffeur person."
"Oh, I like him," was the candid answer. "He is a chauffeur of moods,
but he can make this car hum. He and I had quite a long chat last
night after dinner."
Mrs. Devar sat up quickly.
"After dinner--last night!" she gasped.
"Yes--I ran into him outside the hotel."
"At what time?"
"About ten o'clock. I came to the lounge, but you had vanished, and
the wonderful light on the sea drew me out of doors."
"My dear Cynthia!"
"Well, go on; that sounds like the beginning of a letter."
Mrs. Devar suddenly determined not to feel scandalized.
"Ah, well!" she sighed, "one must relax a little when touring, but you
Americans have such free and easy manners that we staid Britons are
apt to lose our breath occasionally when we hear of something out of
the common."
"From what Fitzroy said when I told him I was going as far as the pier
unaccompanied it seems to me that you staid Britons can be freer if
not easier," retorted Miss Vanrenen.
Her friend smiled sourly.
"If he disapproved he was right, I admit," she purred.
Cynthia withheld any further confidences.
"What a splendid morning!" she said. "England is marvelously
attractive on a day like this. And now, where is the map? I didn't
look up our route yesterday evening. But Fitzroy has it. We lunch at
Winchester, I know, and there I see my first English Cathedral. Father
advised me to leave St. Paul's until I visit it with him. He says it
is the most perfect building in the world architecturally, but that no
one would realize it unless the facts were pointed out. When we were
in Rome he said that St. Peter's, grand as it is, is all wrong in
construction. The thrust downwards from the dome is false, it seems."
"Really," said Mrs. Devar, who had just caught sight of Lady
Somebody-or-other at the window of a house in Hove, and hoped that her
ladyship's eyes were sufficiently good to distinguish at least one
occupant of the car.
"Yes; and Sir Christopher Wren mixed beams of oak with the stonework
of his pillars, too. It gave them strength, he believed, though
Michael Angelo had probably never heard of such a thing."
"You don't say so."
The other woman had traveled far on similar conversational counters.
They would have failed with Cynthia, but the girl had opened the map,
and talk lagged for the moment.
Leaving the coast at Shoreham, Medenham turned the car northward at
Bramber, with its stone-roofed cottages gilded with lichen, its tiny
gardens gay with flowers, and the ruins of its twelfth-century castle
frowning from the crest of an elm-clothed hill. Two miles to the
northwest they came upon ancient Steyning, now a sleepy country town,
but of greater importance than Bath or Birmingham or Southampton in
the days of the Confessor, and redolent of the past by reason of its
church, with an early Norman chancel, its houses bearing stone
moldings and window mullions of the Elizabethan period, and its quaint
street names, such as Dog Lane, Sheep-pen Street, and Chantry Green,
where two martyrs were burnt.
Thence the way lay through the leafy wonderland of West Sussex, when
the Mercury crept softly through Midhurst and Petersfield into
Hampshire, and so to Winchester, where Cynthia, enraptured with the
cathedral, used up a whole reel of films, and bought some curios
carved out of oak imbedded in the walls when the Conqueror held
England in his firm grip.
They lunched at a genuine old coaching-house in the main street, and
Medenham persuaded the girl to turn aside from Salisbury in order to
pass through the heart of the New Forest. She sat with him in front
then, and their talk dealt more with the magnificent scenery than with
personal matters until they reached Ringwood, where they halted for
tea.
Before alighting at the inn there she asked him where he meant to stay
in Bournemouth. He answered the one question by another.
"You put up at the Bath Hotel, I think?" he said.
"Yes. Someone told me it was more like a Florentine picture gallery
than a hotel. Is that true?"
"I have not been to Florence, but the picture gallery notion is all
right. When I was a youngster I came here often, and my--my people
always--well, you see----"
He nibbled his mustache in dismay, for it was hard to keep up a
pretense when Cynthia was so near. She ended the sentence for him.
"You came to the Bath Hotel. Why not stay there to-night?"
"I would like it very much, if you have no objection."
"Just the opposite. But--please forgive me for touching on money
matters--the charges may be rather dear. Won't you let me tell the
head waiter to--to include your bill with ours?"
"On the strict condition that you deduct twelve shillings from my
account," he said, stealing a glance at her.
"I shall be quite business-like, I promise."
She was smiling at the landscape, or at some fancy that took her,
perhaps. But it followed that a messenger was sent for Dale to the
hostelry where he had booked a room for his master, and that Mrs.
Devar, after one stony and indignant glare, whispered to Cynthia in
the dining-room:
"Can that man in evening dress, sitting alone near the window, by any
possibility be our chauffeur?"
"Yes," laughed the girl. "That is Fitzroy. Say, doesn't he look fine
and dandy? Don't you wish he was with us--to order the wine? And, by
the way, is there a pier at Bournemouth?"
CHAPTER IV
SHADOWS--WITH OCCASIONAL GLEAMS
Mrs. Devar ate her soup in petrified silence. Among the diners were at
least two peers and a countess, all of whom she knew slightly; at no
other time during the last twenty years would she have missed such an
opportunity of impressing the company in general and her companion in
particular by waddling from table to table and greeting these
acquaintances with shrill volubility.
But to-night she was beginning to be alarmed. Her youthful protegee
was carrying democratic training too far; it was quite possible that a