THE OUTCOME
The fine weather which had endured so long gave way that night.
Storm-clouds swept up from the Atlantic, and England was drenched in
rain when Medenham quitted Charing Cross at 9 p.m. At the eleventh
hour he determined to take Dale with him, but that belated display of
wisdom arose more from the need he felt of human companionship than
from any sense of the absurdity of going alone to fight a duel in a
foreign land. He had given no thought during the fleeting hours to the
necessity of communicating with his relatives in case he fell a victim
to Marigny's rancor, so he devoted himself now to writing a brief
account to the Marquis of Scarland of the causes that led up to the
duel. He concluded with an entreaty that his brother-in-law should use
all means within his power to close down any inquiry that might
result, and pointed out that in this connection Dale would prove a
valuable ally, since his testimony would make clear the fact that the
contest had taken place in France, where duels are looked on with a
more lenient eye than in England.
It was difficult to write legibly in the fast-moving, ill-lighted
train, so he completed the letter on board the steamer, but did not
hand it to Dale until after Calais was reached.
While the steamer was drawing up to her berth, he saw Count Edouard
Marigny among the few passengers on deck. He had turned his back on
the Frenchman at Charing Cross, but the imperturbable Count, noticing
Dale in the half-light of dawn, believed that Medenham had brought a
fellow-countryman as a witness. He strolled up, and said affably:
"Is this gentleman your friend?"
"Yes," said Medenham, "though not quite in the sense that you mean. He
will accompany me to the hotel, and await my return there."
The Frenchman was evidently mystified; he smiled, but passed no
other comment. Dale, who heard what was said, now wondered more than
ever what lay behind this sudden journey to France. He had already
recognized Marigny as the owner of the Du Vallon, for he had seen him
leaving the Metropole Hotel at Brighton not many days ago, and had the
best of reasons for regarding him as Viscount Medenham's implacable
enemy. Why, then, were these two crossing the Channel in company,
going together to some hotel, and leaving him, Dale, to kick his heels
in the small hours of the morning till it pleased them to pick him up
again?
In justice to the loyal-hearted chauffeur, plunged quite unknowingly
into the crisis of his life, it must be said that the notion of a
duel did not even occur to his puzzled brain.
Nor was he given much time for speculation. A carriage awaited the
trio at the quay. They carried no luggage to entail a delay at the
Customs, and they drove off at a rapid pace through silent streets in
a drenched downpour of rain. When they reached the Hotel de la Plage,
neither Medenham nor the Frenchman alighted, but the former handed
Dale a letter.
"I may be detained in France somewhat longer than I anticipated," he
said in a matter-of-fact tone. "If that is so, and you have to return
to England without me, hand this letter to the Marquis of Scarland.
Take great care of it, and keep it in your possession until you are
positively assured that I am unable to go with you."
These enigmatical instructions bothered their hearer far more than any
of the strange proceedings of the night.
"How shall I know, my lord, whether I am to go back with you or not?"
he asked.
"Oh, of course I shall make that quite clear," laughed Medenham. "At
present, all you have to do is to wait here a little while."
His careless demeanor dispelled the first dim shadow of doubt that had
arisen in Dale's mind. The man was no stranger on the Continent,
having traveled with his employer over the length and breadth of
France and Northern Italy; but the manner of this visit to the Hotel
de la Plage at Calais was so perplexing that he essayed another
question.
"When may I expect you, my lord?" he asked.
Medenham affected to consult his watch.
"Within an hour," he said; "perhaps a few minutes more. At any rate,
you can arrange to catch the afternoon boat. Meanwhile, make yourself
comfortable."
By this time, three men, whom he had never seen before, came out from
the hotel. Apparently, they were fully prepared for the coming of the
visitors from England. They greeted Count Marigny cordially, and were
introduced to Medenham. Without more ado, two of them entered the
vehicle; the third, hoisting an umbrella, climbed to the side of the
driver, to whom no orders were given, and the cab rattled rapidly away
over the paving-stones, leaving Dale to gaze disconsolately after it.
Then the vague suspicions in his mind awoke into activity. For one
thing, he had heard one of the strangers alluded to as "Monsieur le
Docteur." For another, the newcomers carried a curious-looking parcel,
or case, of an elongated shape that suggested unusual contents. Some
trick of memory came to his aid. In an hotel at Lyons he had watched a
valet packing just such an object with the remainder of his employer's
luggage, and was told, on inquiry, that it contained foils. But why
foils? ... at four o'clock in the morning? ... in a country where men
might still requite an outrage by an appeal to the law of the jungle?
Hastily drawing from his breast pocket the letter intrusted to him, he
examined the superscription. It was addressed simply to the Marquis of
Scarland, and must surely be a document of immense significance, or
the young Viscount would not have brought him all the way from London
to act as messenger rather than intrust it to the post. Each instant
Dale's ideas became clearer; each instant his heart throbbed with a
deeper anxiety. At last, when the four-wheeler disappeared from sight
round an angle of the rain-soaked boulevard, he yielded to impulse and
ran into the hotel. French people are early risers, but the visitors
to Calais that morning were astir at an hour when most of the hotel
staff were still sound asleep. A night porter, however, was awaiting
him at the entrance, and Dale forthwith engaged in a valiant struggle
with the French language in the effort to ascertain, first, whether
the man possessed a bicycle, and, secondly, whether he would lend it.
The Frenchman, of course, broke into a voluble statement out of all
proportion to the demand, but the production of a British sovereign
seemed to interpret matters satisfactorily, because a bicycle was
promptly produced from a shed in the rear of the building.
Dale handed the man the sovereign, jumped on the machine, and rode off
rapidly in the direction taken by the cab. He had no difficulty in
turning the corner round which it had vanished, but a little farther
on he erred in thinking that it had gone straight ahead, since the
driver had really turned to the right again in order to keep clear of
the fortifications. Dale traveled at such a pace that the first long
stretch of straight road opening up before his eyes convinced him of
his blunder when no cab was in sight. He raced back, dismounted at
the crossing, examined the road for wheel-marks, and soon was in the
saddle again. He was destined to be thus bothered three times in all,
but, taught wisdom by his initial mistake, he never passed a crossroad
without searching for the recent tracks of wheels.
The rain helped him wherever the roadway was macadamized, but
the paved _routes militaires_ with which Calais abounds offered
difficulties that caused many minutes of delay. At last, he found
himself in the open country, scorching along a sandy road that
traversed the low dunes lying between the town of Calais and Cape Gris
Nez. It was not easy to see far ahead owing to the rain and mist, and
he had covered a mile or more beyond the last of the scattered villas
and cottages which form the eastern suburb of the port, when he saw
the elusive cab drawn up by the roadside. The horse was steaming as
though it had been driven at a great pace, and the driver stood near,
smoking a cigarette, and protecting himself from the persistent
downpour by an umbrella.
Dale soon reached the man, and said breathlessly, in his slow French:
"Where are the gentlemen?"
The cabman, who had evidently been paid to hold his tongue, merely
shrugged. Dale, breathing hard, laid a heavy hand on his shoulder,
whereupon the other answered: "I don't know."
This, of course, was a lie, and the fact that it was a lie alarmed
Dale quite as much as any of the sinister incidents which had already
befallen. For one thing, there was no house into which five men could
have gone. On each side of the road were bleak sandhills; to the right
was the sea, gray and lowering beneath a leaden-hued sky that seemed
to weep above a dead earth. Here, undoubtedly, was the cab, since Dale
could swear to both horse and man. Where, then, were its occupants?
Having to depend upon his wits, he gave no further heed to the
Frenchman, but, fancying that he saw vestiges of recent footmarks on
the right, or seaward, side of the road, and dragging the bicycle with
him, he climbed to the top of the nearest dune, as he believed that a
view of the sands could be obtained from that point. He was right. The
sea was at a greater distance than he imagined would be the case, but
a wide strip of firm sand, its wet patches glistening dully in the
half-light, extended to the water's edge almost from the base of the
hillock on which he stood.
At first, his anxious eyes strained through the haze in vain, until
some circling seagulls caught his attention, and then he discerned
some vague forms silhouetted against a brighter belt of the sea to the
northeast.
Three of the figures were black and motionless, but two gave an eerie
suggestion of whiteness and movement. Abandoning the bicycle, and
hardly realizing why he should be so perturbed, Dale ran forward.
Twice he stumbled and fell amidst the stringy heath grass, but he was
up again in a frenzy of haste, and soon was near enough to the group
of men to see that Medenham and Marigny, bare-headed and in their
shirt sleeves, were fighting with swords.
Dale's eyes were now half-blinded with perspiration, for he had ridden
fast through the mud from Calais, and this final run through yielding
sand and clinging sedge was exhausting to one who seldom walked as
many furlongs as he had covered miles that morning. But even in
his panic of distress he fancied that his master was pressing the
Frenchman severely. It was no child's play, this battle with cold
steel. The slender, venomous-looking blades whirled and stabbed with a
fearsome vehemence, and the sharp rasp of each riposte and parry rang
out with a horrible suggestiveness in the moist air. And then, as he
lumbered heavily on, Dale thought he saw something that turned him
sick with terror. Almost halting, he swept a hasty hand across his
eyes--then he was sure.
Medenham, with arm extended in a feint in tierce, was bearing so
heavily on his opponent's rapier that his right foot slipped, and he
stumbled badly. At once Marigny struck with the deadly quickness and
certainty of a cobra. His weapon pierced Medenham's breast high up
on the right side. The stroke was so true and furious that the
Englishman, already unbalanced, was driven on to his back on the sand.
Marigny wrenched the blade free, and stooped with obvious intent to
plunge it again through his opponent's body. A warning shout from each
of the three spectators withheld him. He scowled vindictively, but
dared not make that second mortal thrust. These French gentlemen whom
he had summoned from Paris were bound by a rigid code of honor that
would infallibly have caused him to be branded as a murderer had he
completed matters to his satisfaction. Nevertheless, he bent and
peered closely into Medenham's face, gray now as the sand on which he
was lying.
"I think it will serve," he muttered to himself. "May the devil take
him, but I thought he would get the better of me!"
He turned away with an affectation of coolness which he was far from
feeling, while the doctor knelt to examine Medenham's injury. He saw
someone running towards him, but believed it must be one of the
witnesses, and his eyes fell to the stained blade in his hand.
"I rather forgot myself----" he began.
But the excuse was stopped short by a blow on the angle of the jaw
that stretched him by Medenham's side and apparently as lifeless.
Assuredly, Dale was not versed in the punctilio of the duel, but he
knew how and where to hit with a fist that was hard as one of his own
spanners. He put weight and passion into that punch, and scarcely
understood how effective it was until he found himself struggling in
the grasp of two excited Frenchmen. He cursed both them and Marigny
fluently, and vowed the most horrible vengeance on all three, but soon
calmed himself sufficiently to see that Count Edouard could not stir,
and his perturbed wits then sought to learn the extent of his master's
injury. Still he swore at Marigny.
"Damn you!" he cried hoarsely, "you would have stabbed him as he was
lying there if these pals of yours hadn't stopped you!"
At last, recovering some degree of self-possession, he assisted the
astounded and rather frightened Frenchmen to carry Medenham to the
waiting carriage. One, who spoke English, asked him to help in
rendering a like service to Marigny, but he refused with an oath, and
the others dared not press him, he looked so fierce and threatening.
"Is he dead?" he asked the doctor brokenly.
There could be no mistaking the meaning of the words, for his red-shot
eyes glared fixedly at the limp body of his master. The other shook
his head, but pointed in the direction of Calais, as though to
suggest that the sooner the injured man was taken to some place where
his wound could be properly attended to, the better would be the
faint chance of life that remained. By this time the seconds were
approaching, and Marigny had seemingly recovered to a slight extent
from the knockout blow which he had received so unexpectedly.
The doctor, who was the only self-collected person present, pointed to
the bicycle.
"Hotel," he said emphatically. "Go hotel--quick!"
Dale was minded not to desert his master, but the anxiety in the
doctor's face warned him that the request ought to be obeyed. If the
spark of vitality still flickering in Medenham's body was to be
preserved not a moment should be lost in preparing a room for his
reception.
Gulping down his anguish, Dale mounted and made off. At a distant bend
in the road he turned his head and looked back along that dismal
heath. All five were packed in the cab, and the coachman was urging
the unwilling horse into a trot.
* * * * *
And what of Cynthia?
The break in the weather was the one thing needed to put an abrupt end
to all pretense of enjoyment so far as the Windermere tourists were
concerned. Strained relations existed from the moment Vanrenen arrived
at Chester. For the first time in her life, Cynthia thought that her
father was not acting with the open-eyed justice which she expected
from him, and for the first time in his life Peter Vanrenen harbored
an uneasy suspicion that his daughter had not been quite candid with
him. It was impossible, of course, in the close intimacy of long hours
spent together in a touring car, that there should not be many
references to Fitzroy and the Mercury. They were inevitable as the
milestones, and Vanrenen, who was just as prone as other men to
look at facts through his own spectacles, failed to understand how
an intelligent girl like his daughter could remain in constant
association with Viscount Medenham for five days, and yet not discover
his identity.
More than once, indeed, notwithstanding the caution exercised by the
others--engaged now in a tacit conspiracy to dispel memories of a
foolish entanglement from the girl's mind--the identification of
Fitzroy with the young Viscount trembled on the very lip of discovery.
Thus, on Friday, when they had motored to Grasmere, and had gathered
before lunch in the lounge of the delightfully old-fashioned Rothay
Hotel, Vanrenen happened to pick up an illustrated paper, containing a
page of pictures of the Scarland short-horns.
Now, being a busy man, he gave little heed to the terminological
convolutions of names among the British aristocracy. He had not the
slightest notion that the Marquis of Scarland's wife was Medenham's
sister, and, with the quick interest of the stock-breeder, he pointed
out to Mrs. Leland an animal that resembled one of his own pedigree
bulls, at present waxing fat on the Montana ranch. For the moment
Mrs. Leland herself had forgotten the relationship between the two
men.
"I met the Marquis last year at San Remo," she said heedlessly.
"Anyone more unlike a British peer you could not imagine. If I
remember rightly, he is a blunt, farmer-like person, but his wife
is very charming. By the way, who was she?"
Such a question could not pass Mrs. Devar unanswered.
"Lady Betty Fitzroy," she chirped instantly.
Cynthia, who was looking through the window at the square-towered
little church, throned midst the somber yews which shelter the graves
of Wordsworth and his kin, caught the odd conjunction of
names--"Betty" and "Fitzroy."
"Who is that you are speaking of, father?" she asked, though with a
listless air that Medenham had never seen during any minute of those
five happy days.
"The Marquis of Scarland--the man from whom I bought some cattle a few
years ago," he said, trusting to the directness of the reply to carry
it through unchallenged.
Cynthia's brows puckered in a reflective frown.
"That is odd," she murmured.
"What is odd?" asked her father, while Mrs. Leland bent over the
periodical to hide a smile of embarrassment.
"Oh, just a curious way of running in grooves people have in this
country. They call towns after men and men after towns."
She was about to add that Fitzroy had told her of a sister Betty who
was married to a man named Scarland, a breeder of pedigree stock, but
checked the impulse. For some reason known best to her father, he did
not seem to wish any mention to be made of the vanished chauffeur, but
she did not gauge the true extent of his readiness to drop the subject
on that occasion.
Mrs. Leland looked up, caught his eye with a smile, and asked how many
miles it was to Thirlmere. Cynthia's thoughts brooded again on poets
and lonely graves, and the danger passed.
Mrs. Devar, in these days, had recovered her complacency. The letter
she wrote from Symon's Yat had reached Vanrenen from Paris, and its
hearty disapproval of Fitzroy helped to re-establish his good opinion
of her. She heard constantly, too, from Marigny and her son. Both
agreed that the comet-like flight of Medenham across their horizon was
rapidly losing its significance. Still, she was not quite happy. Mrs.
Leland's advent had thrust her into the background, for the American
widow was rich, good-looking, and cultured, and the flow of small talk
between the newcomer and Cynthia left her as hopelessly out of range
as used to be the case when that domineering Medenham would lean back
in the car and say things beyond her comprehension, or murmur them to
Cynthia if she happened to be sitting by his side.
Luncheon had ended, but the clouds which had been gathering over the
lake country during the morning suddenly poured a deluge over a
thirsty land. Thirlmere and Ullswater and the rest of the glories of
Westmoreland that lay beyond the pass of Dunmail Raise were swallowed
up in a fog of rain. Simmonds, questioned by the millionaire, admitted
that a weather-beaten native had prophesied "a week of it," more or
less.
Four Britons might have sat down and played Bridge stolidly, but three
of this quartette were Americans, and within two hours of the change
in the elements, they were seated in the London-bound train at
Windermere Station.
Not one of them was really displeased because of this rapid alteration
in their plans. Cynthia was ill at ease; Mrs. Leland wished to rejoin
her guests at Trouville; Vanrenen, who was anxious to complete certain
business negotiations in Paris, believed that a complete change of
scene and new interests in life would speedily bring Cynthia back to
her own cheery self; while Mrs. Devar, though the abandonment of the
tour meant reversion to a cheap boarding-house, was not sorry that it
had come to an end. In London, she would be more in her element, and,
at any rate, she was beginning to feel cramped through sitting three
in a row in Simmonds's car, after the luxurious comfort of two in the
tonneau of the Mercury.
So it came to pass that on Friday evening, while Medenham was driving
from Cavendish Square to Charing Cross, Cynthia was crossing London on
a converging line from St. Pancras to the Savoy Hotel. Strange,
indeed, was the play of Fate's shuttle that it should have so nearly
reunited the unseen threads of their destinies! Again, a trifling
circumstance conspired to detain Vanrenen in London. One of his
business associates in Paris, rendered impatient by the failure of the
great man to return as quickly as he had promised, arrived in England
by the afternoon service from the Gare du Nord, and was actually
standing in the foyer of the hotel when Vanrenen entered with the
others. As a result of this meeting, the journey to Paris arranged for
Saturday was postponed till Sunday, and on this trivial base was
destined to be built a very remarkable edifice.
It chanced that Mrs. Leland, too, decided to have a day in London, and
she and Cynthia went out early. They returned to lunch at the hotel,
and the girl, pleading lack of appetite, slipped out alone to buy a
copy of Milton's poems. From the book-seller's she wandered into the
Embankment Gardens.
She was a dutiful daughter, and had resolved to obey without question
her father's stern command not to enter again into communication with
a man of whom he so strongly disapproved. But she was not content,
for all that, and the dripping trees and rain-sodden flowers seemed
now to accord with her distraught mood. The fine, though not bright,
interval that had tempted her forth soon gave way to another shower,
and she ran for shelter into the Charing Cross Station of the
Metropolitan Railway. She stood in one of the doorways looking out
disconsolately over the river, when a taxicab drove up and deposited
its occupant at the station. Then some unbidden impulse led her to
hail the driver.
"Take me to Cavendish Square," she said.
"What number, miss?" he asked.
"No number. Just drive slowly round the square and return to the Savoy
Hotel."
He eyed her curiously, but made no comment. Soon she was speeding up
Regent Street, bent on gratifying the truly curious whim of seeing
what manner of residence it was that Fitzroy occupied in London. Fate
had failed in her weaving during the previous evening, but on the
present occasion she combined warp and weft without any error.
The cab was crawling past the Fairholme mansion, and Cynthia's
astonished eyes were regarding its style and general air of
magnificence with some degree of heart-sinking--for it did then
seem to be true that Mrs. Devar's original estimate of Fitzroy was
correct--when a man sprang out of another taxi in front of the door,
and glanced at her while in the very act of running up the steps.
Recognition was mutual. Dale muttered under his breath a wholly
unjustifiable assumption as to his future state, halted dubiously,
and then signaled to Cynthia's driver to stop. He strode towards her
across the road, and thrust his head through the open window.
"Of course, miss," he said roughly, "you don't know what has
happened?"
"No," she said, too greatly surprised to resent his strange manner.
"Well," he growled, "somebody's been nearly killed on your account,
that's all."
"Somebody," she repeated, and her lips went white.
"Yes, you ought to guess well enough who it is. He and that rotten
Frenchman fought a duel this morning on the sands near Calais, and
Marinny as good as murdered him."
Dale's heart was sore against her as the cause of his master's plight,
but even in his own distress he was quick to see the shrinking terror
in the girl's eyes.
"Are you speaking of Mr. Fitzroy?" she demanded. "Are you telling the
truth? Oh, for Heaven's sake, man, tell me what you mean."
"I mean what I say, miss," said he more softly. "I have left him
almost at death's door in an hotel at Calais. That damned Frenchman
... I beg your pardon, miss, but I can't contain myself when I think
of him--ran a sword through him this morning, and would have killed
him outright if he hadn't been stopped by some other gentlemen. And
now, there he is, a-lying in the hotel, with a doctor and a nurse
trying to coax the life back into him, while I had to scurry back here
to tell his people."
Some women might have shrieked and fainted--not so Cynthia. At that
instant there was one thing to be done, and one only. She saw the open
road, and took it without faltering or thought as to the future.
"When is the next train to Calais?" she asked.
"At nine o'clock to-night, miss."
"Oh, God!" she wailed under her breath.
Dale's voice grew even more sympathetic.
"Was you a-thinking of going to him, miss?" he asked.
"Would that I could fly there," she moaned.
He scratched the back of his ear, for it was by such means that Dale
sought inspiration.
"Dash it all!" he cried. "I wish I had seen you half an hour earlier.
There is a train that leaves Charing Cross at twenty minutes past two.
It goes by way of Folkestone and Boulogne, and from Boulogne one can
get easy to Calais. Anyhow, what's the use of talkin'--it is too
late."
Cynthia glanced at her watch. It was just twenty-five minutes to
three.
"How far is Folkestone?" was the immediate demand generated by her
practical American brain.
"Seventy-two miles," said the chauffeur, who knew his roads out of
London.
"And what time does the boat leave?"
A light irradiated his face, and he swore volubly.
"We can do it!" he shouted. "By the Lord, we can do it! Are you game?"
Game? The light that leaped to her eyes was sufficient answer. He tore
open the door of the cab, roaring to the driver:
"Round that corner to the right--quick--then into the mews at the
back!"
Within two minutes the Mercury was attracting the attention of the
police as it whirled through the traffic towards Westminster Bridge.
Dale's face was set like a block of granite. He had risked a good deal
in leaving his master at the point of death at Calais; he was now
risking more, far more, in rushing back to Calais again without having
discharged the duty which had dragged him from that master's bedside.
But he thought he had secured the best physician London could bring to
the sufferer's aid, and the belief sustained him in an action that was
almost heroic. He was a simple-minded fellow, with a marked taste
for speed in both animals and machinery, but he had hit on one
well-defined trait in human nature when he decided that if a man is
dying for the sake of a woman the presence of that woman may cure when
all else will fail.