Cynthia's Chauffeur Part 38

"It doesn't follow that because the boy saw Viscount Medenham yesterday his lords.h.i.+p is here now, sir," he said.

"You just do as you are told and pa.s.s no remarks," snapped Vanrenen.

If the head of the house of Vanrenen were judged merely by that somewhat unworthy retort he would not be judged fairly. He was tired physically, worried mentally; he had been brought from Paris at an awkward moment; he was naturally devoted to his daughter; he believed that Medenham was an unmitigated scamp and Simmonds his tool; and his failure to solve Medenham's arithmetical problem still rankled. These considerations, among others, may be pleaded in his behalf.

But, if Simmonds, who had stood on Spion Kop, refused to be browbeaten by a British earl, he certainly would not grovel before an American plutocrat. He had endured a good deal since five o'clock that morning.

He told his tale honestly and fully; he even sympathized with a father's distress, though a.s.sured in his own mind that it was wholly unwarranted; he was genuinely sorry on hearing that Mr. Vanrenen had been searching the many hotels of Bristol for two hours before he came to the right one. But to be treated like a serf?--no, not if Simmonds knew it!

The car stopped with a jerk. Out leaped the driver.

"Now you can walk to the hotel," he said, though he distinguished the hotel by an utterly inappropriate adjective.

The more sudden the crisis the more prepared was Vanrenen--that was his noted characteristic, whether dealing with men or money.

"What has bitten _you_?" he demanded calmly.

"You must find somebody else to do your detective work, that is all,"

came the stolid answer.

"Don't be a mule."

"I'm not a mule. You're makin' a d----d row about nothing. Viscount Medenham is a gentleman to his finger tips, and if you were one you'd know that he wouldn't hurt a hair of Miss Vanrenen's head, or any lady's, for that matter."

"Where my daughter is concerned I am not a gentleman, or a viscount, or a person who makes d----d rows. I am just a father--a plain, simple father--who thinks more of his girl than of any other object in this wide world. If I have hurt your feelings I am sorry. If I am altogether mistaken I'll apologize and pay. I'm paying now. This trip will probably cost me fifty thousand dollars that I would have scooped in were I in Paris to-morrow. Your game is to attend to the benzine buzz part of the contract and leave the rest to me. Shove ahead, and step lively!"

To his lasting credit, Simmonds obeyed: but the row had cleared the air; Vanrenen liked the man, and felt now that his original estimate of his worth was justified.

At the hotel, of course, he had much more to learn than he expected.

Oddly enough, the praises showered on "Fitzroy" confirmed him in the opinion that Cynthia was the victim of a clever knave, be he t.i.tled aristocrat or mere adventurer. For the first time, too, he began to suspect Mrs. Devar of complicity in the plot!

A nice kind of chaperon she must be to let his girl go boating with a chauffeur on the Wye! And her Sunday's illness was a palpable pretense--an arranged affair, no doubt, to permit more boating and dallying in this fairyland of forest and river. What thanks he owed to that Frenchman, Marigny!

Indeed, it was easy to hoodwink this hard-headed man in aught that affected Cynthia. Count Edouard displayed a good deal of tact when he called at the Savoy Hotel late the previous night, but his obvious relief at finding Vanrenen in London had induced the latter to depart for Bristol by a midnight train rather than trust wholly to Mrs.

Leland's leisured strategy.

He did not go straight to Hereford for the best of reasons. He had told Cynthia of Mrs. Leland's coming, and had heard of if not from her in response to his letter. If he rushed off now to intercept the motorists at Hereford he would defeat the very purpose he had in view, which was to interpose an effectual s.h.i.+eld between the scoundrelly lordling and his prey, while avoiding any risk of hurting his daughter's feelings. Moreover, he was eminently a just man. Hearing from Marigny that Simmonds, the original cause of all the trouble, was skulking at Bristol, to Bristol he went. From that starting-point, with his knowledge of Cynthia's probable route, he could surely pick up traces of the predatory car at most towns through which it pa.s.sed.

Moreover, he could choose his own time for joining the party in front, which by this time he was fully resolved on, either at Chester or farther north.

Transcending these minor features of a disturbing affair was his self-confessed fear of Cynthia. In the unfathomed deeps of a father's love for such a daughter there is ever an element of fear. Not for all his wealth would Vanrenen cast a shadow on the unsullied intimacy of their affection. Therefore, he would be wary, circ.u.mspect, ready to accept as most credible theories which he would scout in any other conditions, quick to discern the truth, slow to point out wherein an inexperienced girl had erred, but merciless to the fortune-hunter who had so jeopardized Cynthia's happiness and his own.

Hence, his appearance at the Symon's Yat Hotel seemed to have no more serious import than a father's wish to delight his daughter by an unexpected partic.i.p.ation in her holiday. No secret had been made as to the Mercury's halting-place that day. Cynthia herself had written the address in the hotel register, adding a request that letters, if any, were to be forwarded to Windermere.

By chance, the smiling landlady's curiosity as to "Fitzroy" raised a new specter.

"He must be a gentleman," she said, "because he belongs to the Thames Rowing Club; he also spoke and acted like one. Why did he employ an a.s.sistant chauffeur? That is most unusual."

Vanrenen could only explain that arrangements for the tour were made during his absence in France, so he was not fully posted as to details.

"Oh, they did not intend to remain here on Sat.u.r.day, but Miss Vanrenen liked the place, and seemed to be rather taken with the hotel----"

whereat the millionaire nodded his complete agreement--"so Mr. Fitzroy telegraphed for a man named Dale to come to Hereford. There was some misunderstanding, however, and Dale only arrived yesterday in the car.

He left by an early train this morning, after doing the garage work."

Simmonds, candor itself about Medenham, had said no word of the Earl of Fairholme or of Dale. Marigny, of course, was silent as to the Earl, since it might have ruined his last faint hope of success had the two perplexed fathers met; Simmonds's recent outburst opposed an effectual bar to farther questioning; so Vanrenen was free to deduce all sorts of possibilities from the existence of yet another villainous chauffeur.

Unhappily, he availed himself of the opportunity to the full. The fair countryside and the good food of the March counties made little or no appeal to him thenceforth. He pined to be in Chester, yet restrained the impulse that urged a frenzied scurry to the Banks of the Dee, for he was adamant in his resolve not to seem to have pursued Cynthia, but rather to have joined her as the outcome of a mere whim after she had met Mrs. Leland.

The Mercury arrived at Ludlow long before Vanrenen crossed the Wye Bridge at Hereford. Medenham stopped the car at "The Feathers,"

that famous magpie among British Inns, where Cynthia admired and photographed some excellent woodcarving, and saw an iron-studded front door which has shut out revellers and the night on each alternate round of the clock since 1609, if not longer.

If they hurried over luncheon they were content to dawdle in the picturesque streets, and Cynthia was reluctant to leave the fine old castle, in which Milton's "Masque of Comus" was first played on Michaelmas night of 1634. At first, she yielded only to the flood of memories pent in every American brain when the citizen of the New World stands in one of these treasure-houses of history and feels the pa.s.sing of its dim pageants; when they stood together in the ruined banqueting hall, Medenham gave play to his imagination, and strove to reconstruct a scene once spread before the bright eyes of a maiden long since dead.

"You will please regard yourself," he said, "as the Lady Alice Egerton, daughter of the Earl of Bridgwater, Lord President of the Marches of Wales, who, with her two brothers, was benighted in the Forest of Heywood while riding to Ludlow to witness her father's installation in his high office. Milton was told of her adventures by Henry Lawes, the musician, and he wrote the 'Masque of Comus' to delight her and her friends. Have you read 'Comus'?"

"No," said Cynthia, almost timidly, for she was beginning to fear this masterful man whose enthusiasm caught her to his very soul at such moments.

"Ah, but you shall. It ranks high among the miracles of English poetry wrought by Milton. Many a mile from Ludlow have I called to mind one of its incomparable pa.s.sages:

A thousand phantasies Begin to throng into my memory-- Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands, and sh.o.r.es, and desert wildernesses.

And now you, the heroine of the masque, must try to imagine that you are lost in a wild wood represented by a carpet spread here, in the center of the hall. Seated there on a dais, is your father the Earl, surrounded by his officers and retainers. Near you are your brothers, Lord Brackley and Thomas Egerton, so blinded by sprites that they cannot see you, though keen enough to note the bright eyes and flushed cheeks of other ladies of high degree bidden to Ludlow from neighboring s.h.i.+res for the merry-making. And mark you, this is no rude gathering of unlettered squires and rough men-at-arms. How is it possible that an uncultured throng should listen rapturously to the n.o.blest performance of the kind that exists in any language, wherein each speech is a majestic soliloquy, eloquent, sublime, with an uncloying word-music acclaimed by three centuries?"

The sheer wonder in Cynthia's face warned him that this brief excursion into the pages of Macaulay had better cease, so he focused his thoughts on the actual representation of the masque in which he had taken part ten years ago at Fairholme.

"I must ask you to concede that the lords and ladies, the civic dignitaries and their wives, for whose amus.e.m.e.nt Milton spread the pinions of his genius, were far better equipped to understand his lyric flights than any similar a.s.semblage that could be collected haphazard in some modern castle. They did not pretend--they knew.

Even you, Lady Alice, could frame a neat verse in Latin and cap some pleasant jest with a line from Homer. When Milton dreamed aloud of bathing in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, of inhaling the scents of nard and ca.s.sia, 'which the musky wings of the Zepyhr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides,' they followed each turn and swoop of his fancy with an active sense of its truth and beauty. And what a brilliant company! How the red flare of torch and cresset would flicker on the sheen of silk, the l.u.s.ter of velvet, the polished brightness of morion and spear. I think I can see those gallant gentlemen and fine ladies grouped round the players who told of the strange pranks played by the G.o.d of Mirth. Perhaps that same fair Alice, who supplied the motive of the masque as well as its leading lady, may be linked with you by stronger ties than those of mere feminine grace----"

Cynthia did not blush: she grew white, but shook her head.

"You cannot tell," he said. "'Comus' was played in Ludlow only fourteen years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England, and I would remind you that we stocked the new nation in the west with some of the bluest blood in Britain. Even in this hall there were Puritans whose ascetic tastes disapproved of Milton's imageries, of children play-acting, of the brave show made by the gentry----"

"My mother's people lived in Pennsylvania for generations," she broke in with a strange wistfulness.

"I knew it," he cried in triumph. "Tell me the names of the first-nighters at the Milton Theater, Ludlow, on that autumn evening in 1634, and warrant me to find you an authentic ancestor."

Cynthia bent a puzzled brow at him.

"After this, I shall apply myself to 'Comus' with added comprehension," she said. "But--you take my breath away; have you, then, delved so deep in the mine of English history that you can people 'most every ruined pile in Britain with the men and women of the dead years?"

He laughed, and colored a little, with true British confusion at having been caught in an extravagant mood.

"There you lay bare the mummer," he said. "What clever fellows actors would be if they grasped the underlying realities of all the fine words they mouth! No; I quote 'Comus' only because on one half-forgotten occasion I played in it."

"Where?"

The prompt question took him unaware.

"At Fairholme," he said.

"Is that another castle?"