SOME EMOTIONS--WITHOUT A MORAL
Not until he was dressing, and the contents of his pockets were spread
on a table, did Medenham remember Dale's commission. It was quite
true, as he told Mrs. Devar, that he had backed Vendetta for a small
stake on his own account. But that was an afterthought, and the bet
was made with another bookmaker at reduced odds. Altogether, including
the few sovereigns in his possession at the beginning of the day, he
counted nearly fifty pounds in gold, an exceptionally large amount to
be carried in England, where considerations of weight alone render
banknotes preferable.
He slipped Dale's money into an envelope, and took thirty pounds to be
exchanged for notes by the hotel's cashier. At the same time he wrote
a telegram to his father, destroying two drafts before he evolved
something that left his story untold while quieting any scruples as to
lack of candor. It was not that the Earl would resent his unexpected
disappearance after nearly four years' absence from home, because
father and son had met in South Africa during the war, and were
together in Cannes and Paris subsequently. His difficulty was to
explain this freak journey satisfactorily. The Earl of Fairholme held
feudal views anent the place occupied in the world by the British
aristocracy. His own hot youth was crowded with episodes that Medenham
might regard with disdain, yet he would be shocked out of his well-fed
cynicism by the notion that his son was gallivanting round the country
as the chauffeur of an unconventional American girl and a middle-aged
harpy like Mrs. Devar.
So Medenham's message was non-committal.
Aunt Susan was unable to come Epsom to-day. Have taken car
to Brighton, and Bournemouth. Home Saturday, perhaps
earlier. GEORGE.
Of course, he meant to fill in details verbally. It was possible in
conversation to impart a jesting turn to an adventure which would be
unconvincing and ambiguous in the bald phrases of a telegram.
Then he dined, filled a cigarette case from the box of Salonikas which
Tomkinson had not omitted to pack with his clothes, and strolled out,
bare-headed, to enrich Dale. He could trust his man absolutely, and
was quite sure that the Mercury would then be in the drying stage
after a thorough cleaning. Thus far he was justified, but he had not
counted on the pride of the born mechanic. Though the car was housed
for the night, when he entered the garage the hood was off, and Dale
was annoying two brothers of the craft by explaining the superiority
of _his_ engine to every other type of engine.
All three were bent over the cylinders, and Dale was saying:
"Just take a squint at them valves, will you?--ever seen anything like
'em before? Of course you haven't. Don't look like valves, eh? Can
you break 'em, can you warp 'em, can you pit 'em? D'ye twig how the
mixture reaches the cylinder? None of your shoulders or kinks to choke
it up--is there?--and the same with the exhaust. Would you ever have a
mushroom valve again after you've once cast your peepers over this
arrangement? Now, if I took up areonotting--if _I_ wanted to fly the
Channel----"
He stopped abruptly, having seen his master standing in the open
doorway.
"By gad, Dale," cried Medenham, "I have never heard your tongue
wagging in that fashion before."
Dale was flustered.
"Beg pardon, my lord, but I was only----" he began.
"Only using the cut-out, I fancy. Come here, I want you a minute."
The other chauffeurs suddenly discovered that they had urgent business
elsewhere. They vanished. Dale thought it necessary to explain.
"One of them chaps has a new French car, my lord, and he was blowing
so loudly about it that I had to take him down a peg or two."
Medenham grew interested. Like every keen motorist, he could "talk
shop" at all times.
"What sort of car?"
"A 59 Du Vallon, my lord. It is the first of its class in England, and
I rather think his guv'nor is running it on show."
"Indeed. Who is _he_?"
"A count Somebody-or-other, my lord. I did hear his name----"
"Not Count Edouard Marigny?" said Medenham, with a sharp emphasis that
startled Dale.
"That's him, my lord. I hope I haven't done anything wrong."
Medenham, early in life, had formed the habit of not expressing his
feelings when really vexed, and it stood him in good stead now. Dale's
blunder was almost irreparable, yet he could not find it in his heart
to blame the man for being an enthusiast.
"You have put me in a deuce of a fix," he said at last. "This
Frenchman is acquainted with Miss Vanrenen. He knows she is here, and
will probably see her off in the morning. If his chauffeur recognizes
the car he will be sure to speak of it. That gives the whole show
away."
"I'm very sorry, my lord----"
"Dash it all, there you go again. But it is largely my own fault. I
ought to have warned you, though I little expected this sort of a
mix-up. In future, Dale, while this trip lasts, you must forget my
title. Look here, I have brought you your winnings over Eyot--can't
you rig up some sort of a yarn that I am a sporting friend of yours,
and that you were just trying to be funny when you addressed me as 'my
lord'? If you have an opportunity, tell Count Marigny's man that your
job is taken temporarily by a driver named Fitzroy. By the way, is the
chauffeur a Frenchman, too?"
"No, my l----." Dale caught Medenham's eye, a very cold eye at that
instant. "No, sir. He's just a fitter from the London agency."
"Well, we must trust to luck. He may not remember me in my chauffeur's
kit, which is beastly uncomfortable, by the way. I must get you a
summer rig. Here is your money--five to one I took. Don't lose sight
of those two fellows, and spend this half sovereign on them. If you
can fill that chap with beer to-night he may have a head in the
morning that will keep him in bed too late to cause any mischief. When
we meet in Bournemouth and Bristol, say nothing to anybody about
either the car or me."
Dale was a model of sobriety, but the excitement of "fives" when he
looked for "threes" was too much for him.
"I'll tank him all right, my l----, I mean, sir," he vowed cheerfully.
Medenham lit a new cigarette and strolled out of the yard.
From the corner of his eye he saw Marigny's helper looking at
him. Without undue exaggeration, he craned his neck, rounded his
shoulders, and carried himself with the listless air of a Piccadilly
idler. He reflected, too, that a bare-headed man in evening dress
would not readily be identified with a leather-coated chauffeur, and
Dale, he hoped, was sufficiently endowed with mother wit to frame a
story plausible enough to account for his unforeseen appearance. On
the whole, the position was not so bad as it seemed in that first
moment when the owner of the 59 Du Vallon was revealed in the handsome
Count. In any event, what did it matter if his harmless subterfuge
were revealed? The girl would surely laugh, while Mrs. Devar would
squirm. So now for a turn along the front, and then to bed.
It was a perfect June evening, the fitting sequel to a day of unbroken
sunshine. A marvelous amber light hovered beyond the level line of the
sea to the west; an exquisite blue suffused the horizon from south to
east, deepening from sapphire to ultramarine as it blended with the
soft shadows of a summer's night. He found himself comparing the sky's
southeasterly tint with the azure depths of Cynthia Vanrenen's eyes,
but he shook off that fantasy quickly, crossed the roadway and
promenade, and, propping himself against the railings, turned a
resolute back on romance. He did not gain a great deal by this
maneuver, since his next active thought was centered in a species of
quest for the particular window among all those storeyed rows through
which Cynthia Vanrenen might even then be gazing at the shining
ocean.
He looked at his watch. Half-past nine.
"I am behaving like a blithering idiot," he told himself. "Miss
Vanrenen and her friends are either on the pier listening to the band,
or sitting over their coffee in the glass cage behind there. I'll wire
Simmonds in the morning to hurry up."
A man descended the steps of the hotel and walked straight across
King's Road. A light gray overcoat, thrown wide on his shoulders, gave
a lavish display of frilled shirt, and a gray Homburg hat was set
rakishly on one side of his head. In the half light Medenham at once
discerned the regular, waxen-skinned features of Count Marigny, and
during the next few seconds it really seemed as if the Frenchman were
making directly for him. But another man, short, rotund, very erect of
figure, and strutting in gait, came from the interior of a "shelter"
that stood a little to the right of Medenham's position on the rails.
"Hello, Marigny," said he jauntily.
The Count looked back towards the hotel. His tubby acquaintance
chuckled. The effort squeezed an eyeglass out of his right eye.
"Aie pas peur, mon vieux!" cried he in very colloquial French. "My
mother sent a note to say that the fair Cynthia has retired to her
room to write letters. I have been waiting here ten minutes."
Now, it chanced that Medenham's widespread touring in France had
rubbed up his knowledge of the language. It is ever the ear that needs
training more than the tongue, and in all likelihood he would not have
caught the exact meaning of the words were it not for the hap of
recent familiarity with the accents of all sorts and conditions of
French-speaking folk.
"Jimmy Devar!" he breathed, and his amazement lost him Marigny's
muttered answer.
But he heard Devar's confident outburst as the two walked off together
in the direction of the West Pier.
"You are growing positively nervous, my dear Edouard. And why? The
affair arranges itself admirably. I shall be always on hand, ready to
turn up exactly at the right moment. What the deuce, this is the luck
of a lifetime...."
The squeaky, high-pitched voice--a masculine variant of Mrs. Devar's
ultra-fashionable intonation--died away midst the chatter and laughter
of other promenaders. Medenham's first impulse was to follow and
listen, since Devar had yielded to the common delusion of imagining
that none except his companion on the sea-front that night understood
a foreign language. But he swept the notion aside ere it had well
presented itself as a means of solving an astounding puzzle.
"No, dash it all, I'm not a private detective," he muttered angrily.
"Why should I interfere? Confound Simmonds, and d----n that railway
van! I have a good mind to hand the car over to Dale in the morning
and return to town by the first train."
If he really meant what he said he ought to have gone back to his
hotel, played billiards for an hour, and sought his bedroom with an
easy conscience. He was debating the point when the conceit intruded
itself that Cynthia's pretty head was at that moment bent over a
writing-table in a certain well-lighted corner apartment of the second
floor, so he compromised with his half-formed intent, whisked round to
face the sea again, and lighted another cigarette from the glowing end
of its predecessor. Some part of his unaccountable irritation took
wings with the cloud of smoke.
"Blessed if I can tell why I should worry," he communed. "Never saw
the girl before to-day ... shall never see her again if I put Dale
in charge.... Her father must be a special sort of fool, though, to
trust her to the care of the Devar woman.... What was it that rotter
said?--'The affair arranges itself admirably.' And he would be 'always
on hand.' What is arranging itself?... And why should Jimmy Devar be
ready, if need be, 'to turn up exactly at the right moment?' I suppose
the answer to the first bit of the acrostic is simple enough. Cynthia
Vanrenen is to become the Countess Marigny, and the Devar gang stands
in on the cash proceeds. Oh, a nice scheme! This Frenchman is posted
as to the tour. By the most curious of coincidences he will reappear
at Bournemouth, or Bristol, or in the Wye Valley. What more natural
than a day's run in company?... Ah, I've got it! Jimmy is to come
along when Marigny thinks that Cynthia will take a seat in the 59 Du
Vallon for a change--just to try the new French car.... By gad, I
shall have a word to say there.... Steady, now, George Augustus! Woa,
my boy; keep a tight hand on the reins. Why in thunder should you
concern yourself with the wretched business, anyhow?"
It was a marvelously still night. Beneath him, on an asphalted path
nearly level with the stone-strewed beach, passed a young couple. The
man's voice came up to him.
"Jones expects to be taken into partnership after this season, and I
am pretty certain to be given the management of the woolen department.
If that comes off, no more long hours in the shop for you, Lucy, but a
nice little house up there on the hill, just as quick as we can find
it."
"Oh, Charlie dear, I shall never be tired then...."
A black arm was suddenly silhouetted across the shoulders of a white
blouse, whose wearer received a reassuring hug.
"Let's reckon up," said the owner of the arm--"July, August,
September--three months, sweetheart...."
Medenham had never given a thought to marrying until his father hinted
at the notion during dinner the previous evening, and he had laughed
at it, being absolutely heart-whole. There was something irresistibly
comical then about the Earl's bland theory that Fairholme House needed
a sprightly viscountess, yet now, twenty-four hours later, he could
extract no shred of humor from the idyl of a draper's assistant. It
seemed to be a perfectly natural thing that these lovers should talk
of mating. Of what else should they whisper on this midsummer's night,
when the gloaming already bore the promise of dawn, and the glory of
the sea and sky spread quiet harmonies through the silent air?
Perhaps he sighed as he turned away, but his own evidence on that
point would be inconclusive, since the first object his wondering eyes
dwelt on was the graceful figure of Cynthia Vanrenen. There was no
possibility of error. An arc lamp blazed overhead, and, to make
assurance doubly sure, his recognition of Cynthia was obviously
duplicated by Cynthia's recognition of her deputy chauffeur.
In the girl's case some degree of surprise was justified. It is a
truism of social life that far more distinctiveness is attached to the
seemingly democratic severity of evening dress than to any other class
of masculine garniture. Medenham now looked exactly what he was--a man
born and bred in the purple. No one could possibly mistake this
well-groomed soldier for Dale or Simmonds. His clever, resourceful
face, his erect carriage, the very suggestion of mess uniform conveyed
by his clothing, told of lineage and a career. He might, in sober
earnest, have been compelled to earn a living by driving a motor-car,
but no freak of fortune could rob him of his birthright as an
aristocrat.
Of course, Cynthia was easily first in the effort to recover disturbed
wits.
"Like myself, you have been tempted out by this beautiful night, Mr.
Fitzroy," she said.
Then "Mr." was a concession to his attire; somehow she imagined it
would savor of presumption if she addressed him as an inferior.
She could not define her mental attitude in words, but her quick
intelligence responded to its subtle influence as a mirrored lake
records the passing of a breeze. Very dainty and self-possessed she
looked as she stood there smiling at him. Her motor dust-coat was
utilized as a wrap. Beneath it she wore a white muslin dress of a
studied simplicity that, to another woman's assessing gaze, would
reveal its expensiveness. She had tied a veil of delicate lace around
her hair and under her chin, and Medenham noted, with a species of
awe, that her eyes, so vividly blue in daylight, were now dark as the
sky at night.
And he was strangely tongue-tied. He found nothing to say until after
a pause that verged on awkwardness. Then he floundered badly.
"I am prepared to vouch for any explanation so long as it brings you
here, Miss Vanrenen," he said.
Cynthia wanted to laugh. It was sufficiently ridiculous to be
compelled, as it were, to treat a paid servant as an equal, but it
savored of madness to find him verging on the perilous borderland of a
flirtation.
"Do you wish, then, to consult me on any matter?" she asked, with
American directness.
"I was standing here and thinking of you," he said. "Perhaps that
accounts for your appearance. Since you have visited India you may
have heard that the higher Buddhists, when they are anxious that
another person shall act according to their desire, remain motionless
in front of that person's residence and concentrate ardent thought on
their fixed intent.... Sitting in _dhurma_ on a man, they call it. I
suppose the same principle applies to a woman."
"It follows that you are a higher Buddhist, and that you willed I
should come out. Your theory of sitting on the door-mat, is it?
wobbles a bit in practice, because I really ran downstairs to tell
Mrs. Devar something I had forgotten previously. Not finding her, I
decided on a stroll. Instead of crossing the road I walked up to the
left a couple of blocks. Then I noticed the pier, and meant to have a
look at it before returning to the hotel. Anyhow, you wanted me, Mr.
Fitzroy, and here I am. What can I do for you?"
Her tone of light raillery, supplemented by that truly daring
adaptation of the method of gaining a cause favored by the esoteric
philosophy of the East, went far to restore Medenham's wandering
faculties.
"I wanted to ask you a few questions, Miss Vanrenen," he explained.
"Pray do, as they say in Boston."
But he was not quite himself yet. He noticed that the lights were
extinguished in the corner of the second floor.
"Is that your room?" he asked, pointing to it.
"Yes."
Her air of blank amazement supplied a further tonic.
"Queer thing!" he said. "I thought so. More of the occult, I suppose.
But I really wished to speak to you about Mrs. Devar."
Cynthia was obviously relieved.
"Dear me!" she cried. "You two have taken a violent dislike to each
other. You see, Mr. Fitzroy, we Americans are rather pleased than
otherwise if a man acts and speaks like a gentleman even though he has
to earn a living by hustling an automobile, but your sure-enough
British dames exact a kind of servility from a chauffeur that doesn't
seem to fit in with your make-up. Servility is a hard word, but it is
the best I can throw on the screen at the moment, and I'm real sorry
if I have hurt your feelings by using it."
Medenham smiled. Each instant his calmer judgment showed more and more
clearly that he could not offer any valid excuse for interference in
the girl's affairs. For all he knew to the contrary, she might be
tremulous with delight at the prospect of becoming a French countess;
if that were so, the fact that he disapproved of Mrs. Devar's
matchmaking tactics would be received very coldly. Cynthia's natural
interpretation of his allusion to her chaperon offered a means of
escape from a difficult position.
"I am greatly obliged by your hint," he said. "Not that my lack of
good manners is of much account, seeing that I am only a stop gap for
the courtly Simmonds, but I shall endeavor to profit by it in my next
situation."
"Now you are getting at me," cried Cynthia, her eyes sparkling
somewhat. "Do you know, Mr. Fitzroy, I am inclined to think you are
not a chauffeur at all."
"I assure you there is not a man living who understands my special
type of car better," he protested.
"That isn't what I mean, so don't wriggle. You met Simmonds when he
was in trouble, and just offered to take his place for a day or so,
thereby doing him a good turn--isn't that the truth?"
"Yes."
"And you are not in the automobile business?"
"I am, for the time being."
"Well, I am glad to hear it. I was shy of telling you when we reached
the hotel, but you understand, of course, that I pay your expenses
during this trip. The arrangement with Simmonds was that my father
ante'd for petrol and allowed twelve shillings a day for the
chauffeur's meals and lodgings. Is that satisfactory?"
"Quite satisfactory, Miss Vanrenen," said Medenham, fully alive to the
girl's effective ruse for the re-establishment of matters on a proper
footing.
"So you don't need to worry about Mrs. Devar. In any event, since you
refused my offer to hire you for the tour, you will not see a great
deal of her," she went on, a trifle hurriedly.
"There only remains one other point," he said, trying to help her.
"Would you mind giving me Mr. Vanrenen's address in Paris?"
"He is staying at the Ritz--but why do you want to know that?" she
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?"