Cynthia's Chauffeur Part 37

"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 Sat.u.r.day. But a.s.sociation strengthens and confirms such recollections. I often think that memories held in common are the most solid foundation of friends.h.i.+p."

"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 fas.h.i.+on."

"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 a.s.sociates, 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 pa.s.sing 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 nave 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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' d.i.c.k 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 gra.s.s, 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 s.h.i.+lling with apparent good grace.

"Did _you_ find that out--or was it d.i.c.k 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.