Cynthia's Chauffeur Part 22

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"Very little; he agreed."

"But he is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to the smiter."

"I didn't smite him," Medenham blurted out.

Cynthia fastened on to the hesitating denial with the hawklike pounce of some barrister famous for merciless cross-examination of a hostile witness.

"Did you offer to?" she asked.

"We dealt with possible eventualities," he said weakly.

"I knew it.... There was such a funny look in your eyes when I first saw you...."

"Funny is the right word. The crisis _was_ rather humorous."

"Poor man, he only wished to be civil, perhaps--I mean, that is, in lending his car; and he may really have thought you--you were not a chauffeur--like Simmonds, or Smith, for example. You wouldn't have hit him, of course?"

"I sincerely hope not."

She caught her breath and peered at him again, and there was a light in her eyes that would have infuriated Marigny had he seen it. It was well, too, that Medenham's head was averted, since he simply dared not meet her frankly inquisitive gaze.

"You know that such a thing would be horrid for me--for all of us,"

she persisted.

"Yes," he said, "I feel that very keenly. Thank goodness, the Frenchman felt it also."

Cynthia thought fit to skip to the third item in her list.

"Now as to Captain Devar?" she cried. "His mother is dreadfully annoyed. She hates dull evenings, and the four of us were to play bridge to-night at Hereford. Why was he sent away?"

"Sent away?" echoed Medenham in mock amazement.

"Oh, come, you knew him quite well. You said so in London. I am not exactly the silly young thing I look, Mr. Fitzroy, and Count Marigny's coincidences are a trifle far-fetched. Both he and Captain Devar fully understood what they were doing when they arranged to meet in Bristol, and somebody must have fired a very big gun quite close to the fat little man that he should be scared off the instant he set eyes on me."

Then Medenham resolved to end a catechism that opened up illimitable vistas, for he did not want to lose Cynthia just yet, and there was no knowing what she might do if she suspected the truth. Although, if the situation were strictly dissected, Mrs. Devar's chaperonage was as useful to him as the lady herself intended it to be to Marigny, there was a vital difference between the two sets of circ.u.mstances. He had been pitchforked by fate into the company of a charming girl whom he was learning to love as he had never loved woman before, whereas the members of the money-hunting gang whose scheme he had accidentally overheard at Brighton were engaged in a deliberate intrigue, outlined in Paris as soon as Mr. Vanrenen planned the motor tour for his daughter, and perfected during Cynthia's brief stay in London.

So he appealed for her forbearance on a plea that he imagined was sure to succeed.

"I don't wish to conceal from you that Captain Devar and I have fallen out in the past," he said. "But I am genuinely sorry for his mother, who certainly does not know what a rascal he is. Don't ask me for further details now, Miss Vanrenen. He will not cross your path in the near future, and I promise to tell you the whole story long before there is any chance of your meeting him again."

For some reason, deep hidden yet delicately distinct, Cynthia extracted a good deal more from that simple speech than the mere words implied. The air of the downs was peculiarly fresh and strong in the center of the bridge, a fact which probably accounted for the vivid color that lit her face and added l.u.s.ter to her bright eyes. At any rate, she dropped the conversation suddenly.

"Mrs. Devar will be growing quite impatient," she said, with an admirable a.s.sumption of ease, "and I want to buy some pictures of this pretty toy bridge of yours. What a pity the light is altogether wrong for a snapshot, and it _is_ so stupid to use films when one knows that the sun is in the camera!"

Whereat Medenham breathed freely again, while thanking the G.o.ds for the delightfully effective resources that every woman--even a candid, outspoken Cynthia--has at her fingers' ends.

The simplest means of reaching the Gloucester road was to run back past the hotel, but the G.o.ddess of happy chance elected, for her own purposes, that Medenham should ask a policeman to direct him to Cabot's Tower, and, the man having the brain of a surveyor, he was sent through by-streets that saved a few yards, perhaps, but cost him many minutes in stopping to inquire the way. Hence, he missed an amazing sight. The merest glimpse of Count Edouard Marigny's new acquaintance would surely have pulled him up, if it did not put an end to the tour forthwith. But that was not to be. Blissfully unconscious of the fact that the Frenchman was eagerly explaining to a dignified yet strangely perturbed old gentleman that the car Number X L 4000--containing a young American lady and her friend, and driven by a conceited puppy of a chauffeur who suffered badly from _tete montee_--had just gone up the hill to the left, Medenham at last reached the open road, and the Mercury leaped forward as if Gloucester would hardly wait till it arrived there.

The old gentleman had only that minute alighted from a station cab, and a question he addressed to the hall-porter led that civil functionary to refer him to Marigny "as a friend of the parties concerned."

But the newcomer drew himself up somewhat stiffly when the foreign personage spoke of Medenham as a "puppy."

"Before our conversation proceeds any farther I think I ought to tell you that I am the Earl of Fairholme and that Viscount Medenham is my son," he said.

Marigny looked so blank at this that the Earl's explanation took fresh shape.

"I mean," he went on, perceiving that his hearer was none the wiser, "I mean that the chauffeur you allude to is Viscount Medenham."

Marigny, though born on the banks of the Loire, was a Southern Frenchman by descent, and the hereditary tint of olive in his skin became prominent only when his emotions were aroused. Now the pink and white of his complexion was tinged with yellowish-green. Never before in his life had he been quite so surprised--never.

"He--he said his name was Fitzroy," was all he could gasp.

"So it is--the dog. Took the family name and dropped his t.i.tle in order to go gallivanting about the country with this young person....

An American, I am told--and with that detestable creature, Mrs. Devar!

Nice thing! No wonder Lady Porthcawl was shocked. May I ask, sir, who _you_ are?"

Lord Fairholme was very angry, and not without good reason. He had traveled from London at an absurdly early hour in response to the urgent representations of Susan, Lady St. Maur, to whom her intimate friend, Millicent Porthcawl, had written a thrilling account of the goings-on at Bournemouth. It happened that the Countess of Porthcawl's bedroom overlooked the carriage-way in front of the Royal Bath Hotel, and, when she recovered from the stupor of recognizing Medenham in the chauffeur of the Vanrenen equipage, she gratified her spite by sending a lively and wholly distorted version of the tour to his aunt.

The letter reached Curzon Street during the afternoon, and exercised a remarkably restorative effect on the now convalescent lover of forced strawberries. Lady St. Maur ordered her carriage, and was driven in a jiffy to the Fairholme mansion in Cavendish Square, where she and her brother indulged in the most lugubrious opinions as to the future of "poor George." They a.s.sumed that he would fall an easy prey to the wiles of a "designing American." Neither of them had met many citizens of the United States, and each shared to the fullest extent the common British dislike of every person and every thing that is new and strange, so they had visions of a Countess of Fairholme who would speak in the weird tongue of Chicago, whose name would be "Mamie," who would call the earl "poppa number two," and prefix every utterance with "Say," or "My land!"

Both brother and sister had laughed many a time at the stage version of a Briton as presented in Paris, but they forgot that the average Englishman's conception of the average American is equally ludicrous in its blunders. In devising means "to save George" they flew into a panic. Lady St. Maur telegraphed a frantic appeal to Lady Porthcawl for information, but "dear Millicent" took thought, saw that she was already sufficiently committed, and caused her maid to reply that she had left Bournemouth for the weekend.

A telegram to the hotel manager produced more definite news. Cynthia, providing against the receipt of any urgent message from her father, had given the College Green Hotel as her address for the night; but this intelligence arrived too late to permit of the Earl's departure till next morning. Lady Porthcawl's hint that the "devoted George was traveling incognito" prevented the use of wire or post. If the infatuated viscount were to be brought to reason there was nothing for it but that the Earl should hurry to Bristol by an early train next morning. He did hurry, and arrived five minutes too late.

Marigny, of course, saw that lightning had darted from a summer sky.

If the despised chauffeur had proved such a tough opponent, what would happen now that he turned out to be a sprig of the aristocracy? He guessed at once that the Earl of Fairholme appraised Cynthia Vanrenen by the Devar standard. He knew that five minutes in Cynthia's company would alter this doughty old gentleman's views so greatly that his present fury would give place to idolatry. No matter what the cost, they two must not meet, and it was very evident that if Hereford were mentioned as the night's rendezvous, the Earl would proceed there by the next train.

What was to be done? He decided promptly. Lifting his hat, and offering Lord Fairholme his card, he made up his mind to lie, and lie speciously, with circ.u.mstantial detail and convincing knowledge.

"I happened to meet the Vanrenens in Paris," he said. "Business brought me here, and I was surprised to see Miss Vanrenen without her father. You will pardon my reference to your son, I am sure. His att.i.tude is explicable now. He resented my offer of friendly a.s.sistance to the young lady. Perhaps he thought she might avail herself of it."

"a.s.sistance? What is the matter?"

"She had arranged for a car to meet her here. As it was not forthcoming, she altered her plans for a tour of Oxford, Kenilworth, and Warwick, and has gone in Viscount--Viscount----"

"Medenham's."

"Ah, yes--I did not catch the name precisely--in your son's car to London."

By this time Lord Fairholme had ascertained the Frenchman's description, and he was sufficiently well acquainted with the Valley of the Loire to recollect the Chateau Marigny as a house of some importance.

"I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Comte, if I seemed to speak brusquely at first," he said, "but we all appear to be mixed up in a comedy of errors. I remember now that my son telegraphed from Brighton to say that he would return to-day. Perhaps my journey from town was unnecessary, and he may be only engaged in some harmless escapade that is now nearing its end. I am very much obliged to you, and--er--I hope you will call when next you are in London. You know my name--my place is in Cavendish Square. Good-day."

So Marigny was left a second time on the steps of the hotel, while the cab which brought the Earl of Fairholme from the railway station took him back to it.