A Midsummer Night’s Vagaries

Cynthia, notwithstanding that spirited pas seul, was rather pale when Medenham stopped the car close beside her. She had been on tenterhooks during the past quarter of an hour—there were silent moments when she measured her own slim figure against the natty Count’s in half-formed resolution to take to her heels along the Cheddar Road.

At first, she had enjoyed the run greatly. Although Dale spoke of Smith as a mechanic, the man was a first-rate driver, and he spun the Du Vallon along at its best speed. But the change from good macadam to none soon made itself felt, and Cynthia was more troubled than she cared to show when the French flier came to a standstill after panting and jolting alarmingly among the ruts. Marigny’s excited questions evoked only unintelligible grunts from Smith; for all that, the irritating truth could not be withheld—the petrol tank was empty; not only had the chauffeur forgotten to fill it that morning, but, by some strange mischance, the supply usually held in reserve had been left at Bristol!

The Frenchman was very angry with Smith, and Smith was humbly apologetic. The pair must have acted convincingly, because each knew to a nicety how soon a gallon of petrol would vaporize in the Du Vallon’s six cylinders. Having taken the precaution to measure that exact quantity into the tank before leaving Cheddar, they were prepared for a breakdown at any point within a few hundred yards of the precise locality where it occurred.

Cynthia, being generous-minded, tried to make little of the mishap. By taking that line she strove to reassure herself.

“Fitzroy is always prepared for emergencies,” she said. “He will soon catch up with us. But what a road! I didn’t really notice it before. Surely this cannot be the only highway between Bristol and Cheddar?—and in England, too, where the roads are so perfect!”

“There are two roads, but this is the nearest one,” explained the glib-tongued Count, seemingly much relieved by the prospect of Fitzroy’s early arrival. “You don’t deserve to be pulled out of a difficulty so promptly, Smith,” he went on, eying the chauffeur sternly.

“There’s a village not very far ahead, sir,” said the abashed Smith.

“Oh, never mind! We must wait for Miss Vanrenen’s car.”

“Wait?” inquired Cynthia. “What else can we do?”

“I take it he meant to walk to some village, and bring a stock of spirit.”

“Oh, dear! I hope no such thing will be necessary.”

From that half hint of latent and highly disagreeable developments dated Cynthia’s uneasiness. She accepted Marigny’s suggestion that they should stroll to the top of the slight hill just descended, whence they would be able to watch their rescuer’s approach from a considerable distance—she even remembered to tell him to smoke—but she answered his lively sallies at random, and agreed unreservedly with his voluble self-reproach.

The obvious disuse of the road, a mere lane providing access to sheep inclosures on the hills, caused her no small perplexity, though she saw fit not to add to her companion’s distress by commenting on it. In any other circumstances she would have been genuinely alarmed, but her well-established acquaintanceship with the Count, together with the apparently certain fact that Fitzroy and Mrs. Devar were coming nearer each second, forbade the tremors that any similar accident must have evoked if, say, they were marooned on some remote mountain range of the continent, and no friendly car was speeding to their aid.

The two halted on the rising ground, and one of them, at least, gazed anxiously into the purple shadows now mellowing the gray monotony of the plateau. The point where the Du Vallon left the main road was invisible from where they stood. Marigny had laid his plans with skill, so his humorous treatment of their plight was not marred by any lurking fear of the Mercury’s unwelcome appearance.

“What a terrible collapse this would be if I were running away with you, Miss Cynthia,” he said slyly. “Let us imagine a priest waiting in some ancient castle ten miles away, and an irate father, or a pair of them, starting from Cheddar in hot pursuit.”

“My imagination fails me there, Monsieur Marigny,” she replied, and the shade of emphasis on his surname showed that she was fully aware of the boundary crossed by the “Miss Cynthia,” an advance which surprised her more than the Frenchman counted on. “At present I am wholly absorbed in a vain effort to picture an automobile somewhere down there in the gathering mists; still, it must arrive soon.”

Then Marigny put forth a tentative claw.

“I hate to tell you,” he said, “mais il faut marcher quand le diable est aux trousses.[A] I am unwillingly forced to believe that your chauffeur has taken the other road.”

“The other road!” wailed Cynthia in sudden and most poignant foreboding. It was then that she first began to estimate her running powers.

“Yes, there are two, you know. The second one is not so direct——”

“If you think that, your man had better go at once to the village he spoke of. Is it certain that he will obtain petrol there?”

“Almost certain.”

“Really, Monsieur Marigny, I fail to understand you. Why should you express a doubt? He appeared to be confident enough five minutes ago. He was ready to start until we prevented him.”

That the girl should yield to slight panic was precisely what Count Edouard desired. True, Cynthia’s sparkling eyes and firm lips were eloquent of keen annoyance rather than fear, but Marigny was an adept in reading the danger signals of beauty in distress, and he saw in these symptoms the heralds of tears and fright. His experience did not lead him far astray, but he had not allowed for racial difference between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon. Cynthia might weep, she might even attempt to run, but in the last resource she would face him with dauntless courage.

“I assure you I would not have had this thing happen on any account,” he said in a voice that vibrated with sympathy. “Indeed, I pray your pity in my own behalf, Miss Vanrenen. After all, it is I who suffer the agony of failure when I meant only to please. You will reach Bristol this evening, a little late, perhaps, but quite safely, and I hope that you will laugh then at the predicament which now looks so ill-starred.”

His seeming sincerity appeased her to some extent. In rapid swing back to the commonplace, she affected to laugh.

“It is not so serious, after all,” she said, with more calmness than she felt. “Just for a moment you threw me off the rails by your lawyer-like vagueness.”

Drawing a little apart, she looked steadily back along the deserted road.

“I see nothing of my car,” she murmured at last. “It will soon be dusk. We must take no more chances. Please send for that benzine right away.”

Smith was dispatched forthwith on what he knew to be a fool’s errand, since both he and Marigny were practically sure of their ground. The nearest petrol was to be found at Langford, two miles along the Bristol road from the fork, and four miles in the opposite direction to that taken by Smith, who, when he returned empty-handed an hour later, must make another long journey to Langford. The Du Vallon was now anchored immovably until eleven o’clock, and it was well that the girl could not realize the true nature of the ordeal before her, or events might have taken an awkward twist.

The Frenchman meant no real harm by his rascally scheme, for Cynthia Vanrenen, daughter of a well-known American citizen, was not to be wooed and won in the fashion that commended itself to unscrupulous lovers in by-gone days. Yet his design blended subtlety and daring in a way that was worthy of ancestors who had ruffled it at Versailles with the cavaliers of old France. He trusted implicitly to the effect of a somewhat exciting adventure on the susceptible feminine heart. The phantom of distrust would soon vanish. She would yield to the spell of a night scented with the breath of summer, languorous with soft zephyrs, a night when the spirit of romance itself would emparadise the lonely waste, and a belated moon, “like to a silver bow new-bent in heaven,” would lend its glamor to a sky already spangled with glowing sapphires.

In such a night, all things were possible.