The clouds did not lift until Cynthia was standing in front of that remarkable Map of the World which reposes behind oaken doors in the south aisle of Hereford Cathedral. During the run from Symon's Yat, not even a glorious sun could dispel the vapors of that unfortunate Sunday. Cynthia had smiled a "Good-morning" when she entered the car, but beyond one quick glance around to see if the deputy chauffeur was in attendance--which Medenham took care he should not be--she gave no visible sign of yesterday's troubles, though her self-contained manner showed that they were present in her thoughts.
Mrs. Devar tried to be gracious, and only succeeded in being stilted, for the shadow of impending disaster lay black upon her. Medenham's only thrill came when Cynthia asked for letters or telegrams at the Green Dragon, and was told there were none. Evidently, Peter Vanrenen was not a man to create a mountain out of a molehill. Mrs. Leland might be trusted to smooth away difficulties; perhaps he meant to await her report confidently and in silence.
But that square of crinkled vellum on which Richard of Holdingham and Lafford had charted this strange old world of ours as it appeared during the thirteenth century helped to blow away the mists.
"I never knew before that the Garden of Eden was inside the Arctic Circle," said the girl, gazing awe-stricken at the symbolic drawings of the eating of the forbidden fruit and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.
"No later than yesterday I fancied it might have been situated in the Wye Valley," commented Medenham.
The cast was skillful, but the fish did not rise. Instead, Cynthia bent nearer to look at Lot's wife, placed in situ.
"Too bad there is no word about America," she said irrelevantly.
"Oh, even at that date the United States were on the other side. You see, Richard was a person of intelligence. He anticipated Galileo by making the earth round, so he would surely get ahead of Columbus in guessing at a New World."
They were the only tourists in the cathedral at that early hour, so the attendant verger tolerated this flippancy.
"In the left-hand corner," he recited, "you see Augustus Cæsar delivering orders for a survey of the world to the philosophers Nichodoxus, Theodotus, and Polictitus. Near the center you have the Labyrinth of Crete, the Pyramids of Egypt, the House of Bondage, the Jews worshiping the Golden Calf----"
"Ah, what a pity we left Mrs. Devar at the post-office--how she would have appreciated this!" murmured Medenham.
Still Cynthia refused to take the fly.
"May we visit the library?" she asked, dazzling the verger with a smile in her best manner. "I have heard so much about the books in chains, and the Four Gospels in Anglo-Saxon characters. Is the volume really a thousand years old?"
From the Cathedral they wandered into the beautiful grounds of the Bishop's Palace, where a brass plate, set in a boundary wall, states in equivocal phrase that "Nell Gwynne, Founder of Chelsea Hospital, and Mother of the first Duke of St. Albans," was born near the spot thus marked. Each remembered the irresponsible chatter of Saturday, but neither alluded to it, nor did Medenham offer to lead Cynthia to Garrick's birthplace. Not forty-eight hours, but long years, as measured by the seeming trivialities that go to make or mar existence, spanned the interval between Bristol and Hereford. They chafed against the bonds of steel that yet sundered them; they resented the silent edict that aimed at parting them; by a hundred little artifices each made clear to the other that the coming separation was distasteful, while an eager interest in the commonplace supplied sure index of their embarrassment. And so, almost as a duty, the West Front, the North Porch, the Close, the Green, the Wye Bridge, were duly snap-shotted and recorded in a little book that Cynthia carried.
Once, while she was making a note, Medenham held the camera, and happened to watch her as she wrote. At the top of a page he saw "Film 6, No. 5: Fitzroy poses as the first Earl of Chepstow." Cynthia's left hand hid the entry just a second too late.
"I couldn't help seeing that," he said innocently. "If you will give me a print, I shall have it framed and place it among the other family portraits."
"I really meant to present you with an album containing all the pictures which turn out well," she said.
"You have not changed your mind, I hope?"
"N--no, but there will be so few. I was rather lazy during the first two days."
"You can trust me to fill in the gaps with exceeding accuracy."
"Oh, don't let us talk as if we would never meet again. The world is small--to motorists."
"I had the exact contrary in mind," he said quickly. "If we parted to-day, and did not meet for twenty years, each of us might well be doubtful as to what did or did not happen last Friday or Saturday. But association strengthens and confirms such recollections. I often think that memories held in common are the most solid foundation of friendship."
"You don't believe, then, in love at first sight," she ventured.
"Let me be dumb rather than so misunderstood!" he cried.
Cynthia breathed deeply. She was profoundly conscious of an escape wholly due to his forbearance, but she was terrified at finding that her thankfulness was of a very doubtful quality. She knew now that this man loved her, and the knowledge was at once an ecstasy and a torture. And how wise he was, how considerate, how worthy of the treasure that her overflowing heart would heap on him! But it could not be. She dared not face her father, her relatives, her host of friends, and confess with proud humility that she had found her mate in some unknown Englishman, the hired driver of a motor-car. At any rate, in that moment of exquisite agony, Cynthia did not know what she might dare when put to the test. Her lips parted, her eyes glistened, and she turned aside to gaze blindly at the distant Welsh hills.
"If we don't hurry," she said with the slowness of desperation, "we shall never complete our programme by nightfall.... And we must not forget that Mrs. Leland awaits us at Chester."
"To-night I shall realize the feelings of Charles the First when he witnessed the defeat of his troops at the battle of Rowton Moor," was Medenham's savage growl.
Hardly aware of her own words, Cynthia murmured:
"Though defeated, the poor king did not lose hope."
"No: the Stuarts' only virtue was their stubbornness. By the way, I am a Stuart."
"Evidently that is why you are flying from Chester," she contrived to say with a little laugh.
"I pin my faith in the Restoration," he retorted. "It is a fair parallel. It took Charles twenty years to reach Rowton Moor, but the modern clock moves quicker, for I am there in five days."
"I am no good at dates----" she began, but Mrs. Devar discovered them from afar, and fluttered a telegram. They hastened to her--Cynthia flushed at the thought that she might be recalled to London--which she would not regret, since a visit to the dentist to-day is better than the toothache all next week--and Medenham steeled himself against imminent unmasking.
But Mrs. Devar's main business in life was self.
"I have just heard from James," she cooed. "He promised to run up to Shrewsbury to-day, but finds he cannot spare the time. Count Edouard told him that Mr. Vanrenen was in town, and he regrets he was unable to call before he left."
"Oh, but this is too ridiculous!" and Cynthia's foot stamped. "I have never before known my father behave in this Jack-in-the-Box fashion."
"Mrs. Leland will clear up the whole mystery," volunteered Medenham.
"But what mystery is there?" purred Mrs. Devar, blinking first at one, then at the other. She bent over the telegram again.
"James sent this message from the West Strand at 9.30 a.m. Perhaps he had just heard of Mr. Vanrenen's departure," she said.
Judging from Cynthia's occasional references to her father's character and associates, Medenham fancied it was much more likely that the American railway magnate had merely refused to meet Captain Devar. But therein he was mistaken.
At the very hour that the three were settling themselves in the Mercury before taking the road to Leominster, Mr. Vanrenen, driven by a perturbed but silent Simmonds, stopped the car on the outskirts of Whitchurch and asked an intelligent-looking boy if he had noticed the passing of an automobile numbered X L 4000.
"I s'pose you mean a motor-car, sir?" said the boy.
Vanrenen, a tall man, thin, close-lipped, with high cheekbones, and long nose, a man utterly unlike his daughter save for the wide-open, all-seeing eyes, smiled at the naïve correction; with that smile some enchanter's wand mirrored Cynthia in her father's face. Even Simmonds, who had seen no semblance of a smile in the features of the chilly, skeptical man by whom he was dragged out of bed at an unearthly hour in the morning at Bristol, witnessed the alchemy, and marveled.
"Yes, sir, rather," continued the boy, brimming over with enthusiasm. "The gentleman went along the Hereford Road, he did, yesterday mornin'. He kem back, too, wiv a shuffer, an' he's a-stayin' at the Symon's Yat Hotel."
Peter Vanrenen frowned, and Cynthia vanished, to be replaced by the Wall Street speculator who had "made a pyramid in Milwaukees." Whence, then, had Cynthia telephoned? Of course, his alert mind hit on a missed mail as the genesis of the run to Hereford early on Sunday, but he asked himself why he had not been told of a changed address. He could not guess that Cynthia would have mentioned the fact had she spoken to him, but in the flurry and surprise of hearing that he was not in the hotel she forgot to tell the attendant who took her message that she was at Symon's Yat and not at Hereford.
"Are you sure about the car?" he said, rendered somewhat skeptical by the boy's overfullness of knowledge.
"Yes, sir. Didn't me an' Dick Davies watch for it all chapel-time?"
"But why?--for that car in particular?"
"The gentleman bust his tire, an' we watched him mendin' it, an' he set us a sum, an' promised us a bob each if we did it."
"Meanwhile he went to Hereford and back?"
"I s'pose so, sir."
Peter Vanrenen's attention was held by that guarded answer, and, being an American, he was ever ready to absorb information, especially in matters appertaining to figures.
"What was the sum?" he said.
To his very keen annoyance he found that he could not determine straight off how long two men take to mow a field of grass, which one of them could cut in four days and the other in three. Indeed, he almost caught himself saying "three days and a half," but stopped short of that folly.
"About a day and three-quarters," he essayed, before the silence grew irksome.
"Wrong, sir. Is it worth a bob?" and the urchin grinned delightfully.
"Yes," he said.
"A day an' five-sevenths, 'coss one man can do one quarter in a day, and t'other man a third, which is seven-twelfths, leavin' five-twelfths to be done next day."
Though the millionaire financier was nettled, he did not show it, but paid the shilling with apparent good grace.
"Did you find that out--or was it Dick Davies?" he asked.
"Both of us, sir, wiv' a foot rule."
"And how far is the Symon's Yat Hotel, measured by that rule?"
"Half a mile, sir, down that there lane."
While traveling slowly in the narrow way, Simmonds turned his head.
"It doesn't follow that because the boy saw Viscount Medenham yesterday his lordship is here now, sir," he said.
"You just do as you are told and pass 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 assured 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 titled 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 shield 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 passed. 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, circumspect, 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 participation 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 assistant 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 Saturday, 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 passing 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 passages:
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 shores, 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 shires 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 noblest 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 amusement Milton spread the pinions of his genius, were far better equipped to understand his lyric flights than any similar assemblage 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 cassia, '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 luster 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 God 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?"
"No--merely a Georgian residence."
"I seem to have heard of it--somewhere--I can't remember."
He remembered quite well--was not Mrs. Devar, student of Burke, sitting in the car at the castle gate?
"Oh, we must hurry," he said shamefacedly. "I have kept you here too long, for we have yet to
trace huge forests and unharbour'd heaths,
Infamous hills and sandy perilous wilds,
before we see Chester--and Mrs. Leland."
With that the bubble was pricked, and staid Ludlow became a busy market-town again, its streets blocked by the barrows of hucksters and farmers' carts, its converging roads thronged with cattle. At Shrewsbury Medenham was vouchsafed a gleam of frosty humor by Mrs. Devar's anxiety lest her son might have obeyed her earlier injunctions, and kept tryst at "The Raven" after all. That trivial diversion soon passed. He hoped that Cynthia would share the front seat with him in the final run to Chester; but she remained tucked up in the tonneau, and the dread that kept her there was bitter-sweet to him, since it betrayed her increasing lack of confidence in herself.
The rendezvous was at the Grosvenor Hotel, and Medenham had made up his mind how to act long before the red towers of Chester Cathedral glowed above the city's haze in the fire of a magnificent sunset. Dale was waiting on the pavement when the Mercury drew up at the galleried entrance to the hotel.
Medenham leaped down.
"Good-by, Miss Vanrenen," he said, holding out his hand. "I can catch an early train to town by hurrying away at once. This is Dale, who will take my place. He is thoroughly reliable, and an even more careful driver than I am."
"Are you really going--like that?" faltered Cynthia, and her face blanched at the suddenness of it.
"Yes. I shall have the pleasure of seeing you in London when you return."
Their hands met in a firm clasp. Mrs. Devar, too flustered at first to gasp more than an "Oh!" of astonishment, leaned forward and shook his hand with marked cordiality.
"You must tell Dale to take great care of us," she said, knowingly.
"I think he realizes the exceeding trust I repose in him," he said, but the accompanying smile was meant for Cynthia, and she read into it a farewell that presaged many things.
He disappeared without another word. When a slim, elegantly-gowned lady had hastened to the door from the drawing-room, whence she was summoned by a page, she found two dust-covered figures in the act of alighting from a well-appointed car. Her next glance was at the solemn jowl of the chauffeur.
"Cynthia, my darling girl!" she cried, with arms thrown wide.
There could be no doubting the heartiness of the greeting, and in that motherly embrace Cynthia felt a repose, a security, that she had been willfully skeptical of during many weary hours. But polite usage called for an introduction, and Mrs. Leland and Mrs. Devar eyed each other warily, with the smiles of convention.
Mrs. Leland glanced at Dale.
"And who is this?" she asked, seizing the opportunity to settle a point that was perplexing her strangely.
"Our chauffeur," said Cynthia, and a glint of fun showed through the wanness of her cheeks.
"But not--not----"
Even smooth-tongued Mrs. Leland was at a loss.
"Not Fitzroy, who left us a minute ago. This man's name is Dale. One wonders, though, how you knew--why you doubted," cried Cynthia in sharp discernment.
"Pray why did Fitzroy leave you a minute ago?" was all that the other woman could find to say.
"He had to return to London. But, there--it is I who ought to ask questions. Let us go inside. I want to get some of the grit out of my eyes and hair; then I shall become an absolute mark of interrogation--so I warn you. Of course, I am delighted to see you; but queer things have happened, and I am pining to have them cleared up. When did you see father last? Is he still in London?"
Mrs. Leland answered, with freer speech now, but in her heart she was saddened by Medenham's duplicity. Six months earlier he and the Earl had dined at the villa she was occupying at San Remo for the winter. She then took a great liking to him on account of his shy and reticent but singularly pleasing manners. She was prepared to laugh at the present escapade when she had discussed it with him that night. Now he had fled, doubtless through fear. That was bad. That looked ugly and mean. Most certainly Peter Vanrenen had acted rightly in bringing her post-haste from Trouville. She must use all her skill if mischief were to be avoided.
