Cynthia's Chauffeur 7Wherein Cynthia Takes Her Own Line
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Literature · Romance
Cynthia's Chauffeur 7
Wherein Cynthia Takes Her Own Line
TracyEnglish
When the Mercury, shining from Dale's attentions, halted noiselessly opposite the College Green Hotel on the Saturday morning, Count Edouard Marigny was standing there; the Du Vallon was not in evidence, and its owner's attire bespoke other aims than motoring, at any rate for the hour.
Evidently he was well content with himself. A straw hat was set on the back of his head, a cigarette stuck between his lips, his hands were thrust into his trousers pockets, and his feet were spread widely apart. Taken altogether, he had the air of a man without a care in the world.
He smiled, too, in the most friendly fashion, when Medenham's eyes met his.
"I hear that Simmonds is unable to carry out his contract," he said cheerfully.
"You are mistaken, a second time, monsieur," said Medenham.
"Why, then, are you here this morning?"
"I am acting for Simmonds. If anything, my car is slightly superior to his, while I may be regarded as an equally competent driver, so the contract is kept in all essentials."
Marigny still smiled. The Frenchman of mid-Victorian romance would have shelved this point by indulging in "an inimitable shrug"; but nowadays Parisians of the Count's type do not shrug--with John Bull's clothing they have adopted no small share of his stolidness.
"It is immaterial," he said. "I have sent my man to offer him my Du Vallon, and Smith will go with him to explain its humors. You, as a skilled motorist, understand that a car is of the feminine gender. Like any other charming demoiselle, it demands the exercise of tact--it yields willingly to gentle handling----"
Medenham cut short the Count's neatly turned phrases.
"Simmonds has no need to avail himself of your courtesy," he said. "As for the rest, give me your address in Paris, and when next I visit the French capital I shall be delighted to analyze these subtleties with you."
"Ah, most admirable! But the really vital question before us to-day is your address in London, Mr. Fitzroy."
Marigny dwelt on the surname as if it were a succulent oyster, and, in the undeniable surprise of the moment, Medenham was forced to believe that "Captain" Devar, formerly of Horton's Horse, had dared all by telling his confederate the truth, or some part of the truth. The two men looked squarely at each other, and Marigny did not fail to misinterpret the dubious frown on Medenham's face.
He descended a step or two, and crossed the pavement leisurely, dropping his voice so that it might not reach the ears of a porter, laden with the ladies' traveling boxes, who appeared in the doorway.
"Why should we quarrel?" he asked, with an engaging frankness well calculated to reassure a startled evildoer. "In this matter I am anxious to treat you as a gentleman. Allons, donc! Hurry off instantly, and tell Simmonds to bring the Du Vallon here. Leave me to explain everything to Miss Vanrenen. Surely you agree that she ought to be spared the unpleasantness of a wrangle--or, shall we say, an exposure? You see," he continued with a trifle more animation, and speaking in French, "the game is not worth the candle. In a few hours, at the least, you will be in the hands of the police, whereas, by reaching London to-night, you may be able to pacify the Earl of Fairholme. I can help, perhaps. I will say all that is possible, and my testimony ought to carry some weight."
Medenham was thoroughly mystified. That the Frenchman was not yet aware of his identity was now clear enough, though, with Devar's probable duplicity still running in his mind, he could not solve the puzzle presented by this vaunted half-knowledge.
Again the other attributed his perplexity to anything except its real cause.
"I am willing to befriend you," he urged emphatically. "You have acted foolishly, but not criminally, I hope. In your anxiety to help a colleague you forgot the fine distinction which the law draws between meum and tuum----"
"No," said Medenham, turning to the porter. "Put the larger box on the carrier, and strap the other on top of it--the locks outwards. Then you will find that they fit exactly."
"Don't be a headstrong idiot," muttered the Count, with a certain heat of annoyance making itself felt in his patronizing tone. "Miss Vanrenen will come out at any minute----"
Medenham glanced at the clock by the side of the speed indicator.
"Miss Vanrenen is due now unless she is being purposely detained by Mrs. Devar," he commented dryly.
"But why persist in this piece of folly?" growled Marigny, to whose reluctant consciousness the idea of failure suddenly presented itself. "You must realize by this time that I know who owns your car. A telegram from me will put the authorities on your track, your arrest will follow, and Miss Vanrenen will be subjected to the gravest inconvenience. Sacré nom d'un pipe! If you will not yield to fair means I must resort to foul. It comes to this--you either quit Bristol at once or I inform Miss Vanrenen of the trick you have played on her."
Medenham turned and picked up from the seat the pair of stout driving-gloves which had caught Smith's inquiring eye by reason of their quality and substance. He drew on the right-hand glove, and buttoned it. When he answered, he spoke with irritating slowness.
"Would it not be better for all concerned that the lady in whose behalf you profess to be so deeply moved should be permitted to continue her tour without further disturbance? You and I can meet in London, monsieur, and I shall then have much pleasure in convincing you that I am a most peaceable and law-abiding person."
"No," came the angry retort. "I have decided. I withdraw my offer to overlook your offense. At whatever cost, Miss Vanrenen must be protected until her father learns how his wishes have been disregarded by a couple of English bandits."
"Sorry," said Medenham coolly.
He alighted in the roadway, as the driving seat was near the curb. A glance into the vestibule of the hotel revealed Cynthia, in motor coat and veil, giving some instructions, probably with regard to letters, to a deferential hall-porter. Walking rapidly round the front of the car, he caught Marigny's shoulder with his left hand.
"If you dare to open your mouth in Miss Vanrenen's presence, other than by way of some commonplace remark, I shall forthwith smash your face to a jelly," he said.
A queer shiver ran through the Frenchman's body, but Medenham did not commit the error of imagining that his adversary was afraid. His grip on Marigny's shoulder tightened. The two were now not twelve inches apart, and the Englishman read that involuntary tension of the muscles aright, for there is a palsy of rage as of fear.
"I have some acquaintance with the savate," he said suavely. "Please take my word for it, and you will be spared an injury. A moment ago you offered to treat me like a gentleman. I reciprocate now by being willing to accept your promise to hold your tongue. Miss Vanrenen is coming.... What say you?"
"I agree," said Marigny, though his dark eyes blazed redly.
"Ah, thanks!" and Medenham's left hand busied itself once more with the fastening of the glove.
"You understand, of course?" he heard, in a soft snarl.
"Perfectly. The truce ends with my departure. Meanwhile, you are acting wisely. I don't suppose I shall ever respect you so much again."
"Now, you two--what are you discussing?" cried Cynthia from the porch. "I hope you are not trying to persuade my chauffeur to yield his place to you, Monsieur Marigny. Once bitten, twice shy, you know, and I would insist on checking each mile by the map if you were at the wheel."
"Your chauffeur is immovable, mademoiselle," was the ready answer, though the accompanying smile was not one of the Count's best efforts.
"He looks it. Why are you vexed, Fitzroy? Can't you forgive your friend Simmonds?"
Cynthia lifted those demure blue eyes of hers, and held Medenham's gaze steadfast.
"I trust you are not challenging contradiction, Miss Vanrenen?" he said, with deliberate resolve not to let her slip back thus easily into the rôle of gracious employer.
She did not flinch, but her eyebrows arched a little.
"Oh, no," she said offhandedly. "Simmonds told me his misfortunes last night, and I assumed that you and he had settled matters satisfactorily between you."
"As for that," broke in the Count, "I have just offered my car as a substitute, but Fitzroy prefers to take you as far as Hereford, at any cost."
"Hereford! I understood from Simmonds that Mr. Fitzroy would see us through the remainder of the tour?"
"Monsieur Marigny is somewhat vague in our island topography: you saw that last evening," said Medenham.
He smiled. Cynthia, too, glanced from one to the other with a frank merriment that showed how fully she appreciated their mutual dislike. As for Marigny, his white teeth gleamed now in a sarcastic grin.
"Adversity is a strict master," he said, lapsing into his own language again. "My blunder of yesterday has shown me the need of caution, so I go no farther than Hereford in my thoughts."
"It is more to the point to tell us how far you are going in your car," cried the girl lightly.
"I, too, hope to be in Hereford to-night. Mrs. Devar says you mean to spend Sunday there. If that is a fixed thing, and you can bear with me for a few hours, I shall meet you there without fail."
"Come, by all means, if your road lies that way; but don't let us make formal engagements. I love to think that I am drifting at will through this land of gardens and apple blossom. And, just think of it--three cathedrals in one day--a Minster for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with Tintern Abbey thrown in for afternoon tea. Such a wealth of medievalism makes my head reel.... I was in there for matins," and she nodded to the grave old pile rearing its massive Gothic within a few paces of the hotel. "At high noon we shall visit Gloucester, and to-night we shall see Hereford. All that within a short hundred miles, to say nothing of Chepstow, Monmouth, the Wye Valley! Ah, me! I shall never overtake my correspondence while there are so many glories to describe. See, I have bought some darling little guidebooks which tell you just what to say in a letter. What between judicious extracts and a sheaf of picture postcards scribbled at each place I'll try and keep my friends in good humor."
She produced from a pocket three of the red-covered volumes so familiar to Americans in Britain--and to Britons themselves, for that matter, when the belated discovery is made that it is not necessary to cross the Channel in order to enjoy a holiday--and showed them laughingly to Medenham.
"Now," she cried, "I am armed against you. No longer will you be able to paralyze me with your learning. If you say 1269 at Tintern I shall retort with 1387 at Monmouth. When you point out Nell Gwynne's birthplace in Hereford, I shall take you to the Haven Inn, where David Garrick was born, and, if you aren't very, very good, I shall tell you how much the New Town Hall cost, and who laid the foundation stone."
Medenham alone held the key to the girl's lively mood, and it was a novel and quite delightful sensation to be thus admitted to the inner shrine of her emotions, as it were. She was chattering at random in order to smooth away the awkwardness of meeting him after that whispered indiscretion at their parting overnight. Here, at least, Marigny was hopelessly at sea--désorienté, as he would have put it--because he could not possibly know that Cynthia herself had counseled the disappearance of Simmonds. Indeed, he attributed her high spirits to mere politeness--to her wish that he should believe she had forgotten the fiasco on the Mendips.
This imagined salving of his wounded vanity served only to inflame him the more against Medenham. He was still afire with resentment, since no Frenchman can understand the rude Saxon usage that enforces submission under a threat of physical violence. That a man should be ready to defend his honor--to convince an opponent by endeavoring to kill him--yes, he accepted without cavil those tenets of the French social code. But the brutal British fixity of purpose displayed by this truculent chauffeur left him gasping with indignation. He was quite sure that the man meant exactly what he had said. He felt that any real departure from the compact wrung from him by force would prove disastrous to his personal appearance, and he was sensible of a certain weighing underlook in the Englishman's eyes when his seemingly harmless chatter hinted at a change of existing plans as soon as Hereford was reached.
But that was a mere feint, a preliminary flourish, such as a practiced swordsman executes in empty air before saluting his opponent. He had not the slightest intention of testing Medenham's pugilistic powers just then. The reasonable probability of having his chief features beaten to a pulp was not inviting, while the crude efficacy of the notion, in its influence on Miss Vanrenen's affairs, was not the least stupefying element in a difficult and wholly unforeseen situation. He realized fully that anything in the nature of a scuffle would alienate the girl's sympathies forever, no matter how strong a case for interference he might present afterwards. The chauffeur would be dismissed on the spot, but with the offender would go his own prospect of winning the heiress to the Vanrenen millions.
So Count Edouard swallowed his spleen, though the requisite effort must have dissipated some of his natural shrewdness, or he could not have failed to read more correctly the tokens of embarrassment given by Cynthia's heightened color, by her eager vivacity, by her breathless anxiety not to discuss the substitution of one driver for the other.
Medenham was about to disclaim any intention of measuring his lore against that in the guidebooks when Mrs. Devar bustled out.
"Awfully sorry," she began, "but I had to wire James----"
Her eyes fell on Medenham and the Mercury. Momentarily rendered speechless, she rallied bravely.
"I thought, from what Count Edouard said----"
"Miss Vanrenen has lost faith in me, even in my beautiful automobile," broke in Marigny with a quickness that spoiled a pathetic glance meant for Cynthia.
The American girl, however, was weary of the fog of innuendo and hidden purpose that seemed to be an appanage of the Frenchman and his car.
"For goodness' sake," she cried, "let us regard it as a settled thing that Fitzroy takes Simmonds's place until we reach London again. Surely we have the best of the bargain. If the two men are satisfied why should we have anything to say against it?"
Cynthia was her father's daughter, and the attribute of personal dominance that in the man's case had proved so effective in dealing with Milwaukees now made itself felt in the minor question of "transportation" presented by Medenham and his motor. Her blue eyes hardened, and a firm note rang in her voice. Nor did Medenham help to smooth the path for Mrs. Devar by saying quietly:
"In the meantime, Miss Vanrenen, the information stored in those little red books is growing rusty."
She settled the dispute at once by asking her companion which side of the car she preferred, and the other woman was compelled to say graciously that she really had no choice in the matter, but, to avoid further delay, would take the left-hand seat. Cynthia followed, and Medenham, still ready to deal harshly with Marigny if necessary, adjusted their rugs, saw to the safe disposal of the camera, and closed the door.
At that instant, the hall-porter hurried down the steps.
"Beg pardon, mum," he said to Mrs. Devar, thrusting an open telegram between Medenham and Cynthia, "but there's one word here----"
She snatched the form angrily from his outstretched hand.
"Which one?" she asked.
"The word after----"
"Come round this side. You are incommoding Miss Vanrenen."
The man obeyed. With the curious fatality which attends such incidents, even among well-bred people, not a word was spoken by any of the others. To all seeming, Mrs. Devar's cramped handwriting might have concealed some secret of gravest import to each person present. It was not really so thrilling when heard.
"That is 'Raven,' plain enough I should think," she snapped.
"Thank you, mum. 'The Raven, Shrewsbury,'" read the hall-porter.
Medenham caught Marigny's eye. He was minded to laugh outright, but forebore. Then he sprang into his seat, and the car curled in quick semicircle and climbed the hill to the left, while the Frenchman, surprised by this rapid movement, signaled frantically to Mrs. Devar, nodding farewell, that they had taken the wrong road.
"Not at all," explained Medenham. "I want you to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which is a hundred feet higher in the air than the Brooklyn Bridge."
"I'm sure it isn't," cried Cynthia indignantly. "The next thing you will tell me is that the Thames is wider than the Hudson."
"So it is, at an equal distance from the sea."
"Well, trot out your bridge. Seeing is believing, all the time."
But Cynthia had yet to learn the exceeding wisdom of Ezekiel when he wrote of those "which have eyes to see, and see not," for never was optical delusion better contrived than the height above water level of the fairylike structure that spans the Avon below Bristol. The reason is not far to seek. The mind is not prepared for the imminence of the swaying roadway that leaps from side to side of that tremendous gorge. On either crest are pleasant gardens, pretty houses, tree-shaded paths, and the opposing precipices are so prompt in their sheer fall that the eye insensibly rests on the upper level and refuses to dwell on the river far beneath.
So Cynthia was charmed but not convinced, and Medenham himself could scarce believe his recollection that the tops of the towers of the far larger bridge at Brooklyn would be only twenty-six feet higher than the roadway at Clifton. Mrs. Devar, of course, showed an utter lack of interest in the debate. Indeed, she refused emphatically to walk to the middle of the bridge, on the plea of light-headedness, and Cynthia instantly availed herself of the few minutes' tête-à-tête thus vouchsafed.
"Now," said she, looking, not at Medenham, but at the Titanic cleft cut by a tiny river, "now, please, tell me all about it."
"Just as at Cheddar, the rocks are limestone----" he began.
"Oh, bother the rocks! How did you get rid of Simmonds? And why is Count Marigny mad? And are you mixed up in Captain Devar's mighty smart change of base? Tell me everything. I hate mysteries. If we go on at the present rate some of us will soon be wearing masks and cloaks, and stamping our feet, and saying 'Ha! Ha!' or 'Sdeath!' or something equally absurd."
"Simmonds is a victim of science. If the earth wire of a magneto makes a metallic contact there is trouble in the cylinders, so Simmonds is switched off until he can locate the fault."
"The work of a minute."
"It will take him five days at least."
Then Cynthia did flash an amused glance at him, but he was watching a small steamer puffing against the tide, and his face was adamant.
"Go on," she cried quizzically. "What's the matter with the Count's cylinders?"
"He professed to believe that I had stolen somebody's car, and graciously undertook to shield me if I would consent to run away at once, leaving you and Mrs. Devar to finish your tour in the Du Vallon."
"And you refused?"
"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 circumstances. 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 luster to her bright eyes. At any rate, she dropped the conversation suddenly.
"Mrs. Devar will be growing quite impatient," she said, with an admirable assumption 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 gods 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 goddess 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 tête montée--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 title 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 assumed 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 circumstantial 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 attitude is explicable now. He resented my offer of friendly assistance to the young lady. Perhaps he thought she might avail herself of it."
"Assistance? 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 Château 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.
The Du Vallon came panting from the garage, but the Frenchman sent it away again. Hereford was no great distance by the direct road, and he had already determined not to follow the tortuous route devised by Cynthia for the day's run. Moreover, he must now reconsider his schemes. The long telegrams which he had just dispatched to Devar in London and to Peter Vanrenen in Paris might demand supplements.
And to think of that accursed chauffeur being a viscount! His gorge rose at that. The thought almost choked him. It was well that the hall-porter did not understand French, or the words that were muttered by Marigny as he turned on his heel and re-entered the hotel might have shocked him. And, indeed, they were most unsuited for the ears of a hall-porter who dwelt next door to a cathedral.
