On the Wye

For this is what happened. To Mrs. Devar, gazing darkly at Cynthia’s too innocent discovery of Medenham standing on the tiny quay, came the Welsh maid, saying:

“Beg pardon, mam, but iss your chauf-feur’s name Fitz-roy?”

“Yes.”

“Then he iss wan-ted on the tel-e-phone from Her-e-ford, mam.”

“There he is, below there, near the river.”

Mrs. Devar smiled sourly at the thought that the interruption was well-timed, since Medenham was just raising his cap with a fine assumption of surprise at finding Miss Vanrenen strolling by the water’s edge. The civil-spoken maid was about to trip off in pursuit of him, when Mrs. Devar changed her mind. The notion suddenly occurred to her that it would be well if she intervened in this telephonic conversation, and Fitzroy could still be summoned a minute later if desirable.

“Don’t trouble,” she cried, “I think that Miss Vanrenen wishes to go boating, so I will attend to the call myself. Perhaps Fitzroy’s presence may be dispensed with.”

The felt-lined telephone box was well screened off; as first impressions might be valuable, she adjusted the receivers carefully over both ears before she shouted “Hallo!”

“That you, my lord?” said a voice.

“Hallo!—who wants Fitzroy?” she asked in the gruffest tone she could adopt.

“It’s Dale, my—— But who is talking? Is that you, sir?”

“Go on. Can’t you hear?”

“Not very well, my lord, but I’m that upset.... It wasn’t my fault, but your lordship’s father dropped on to me at Bristol, an’ he’s here now. What am I to do?”

“My lordship’s father! What are you talking about? Who are you?”

“Isn’t that Lord—— Oh, dash it, aren’t you Miss Vanrenen’s chauffeur, Fitzroy?”

“No. This is the Symon’s Yat Hotel. The party is out now, and Fitzroy as well, but I can tell him anything you wish to say.”

Mrs. Devar fancied that the speaker, whose words thus far had excited her liveliest curiosity, would imagine that he was in communication with the proprietors of the hotel. She was not mistaken. Dale fell into the trap instantly, though, indeed, he was not to be blamed, since he had asked most earnestly that “Mr. Fitzroy, Miss Vanrenen’s chauffeur” should be brought to the telephone.

“Well, mam,” he said, “if I can’t get hold of—of Fitzroy—I must leave a message, as I don’t suppose I’ll have another chanst. I’m his man, I’m Dale; have you got it?”

“Yes—Dale.”

“Tell him the Earl of Fairholme turned up in Bristol an’ forced me to explain everything. I couldn’t help it. The old gentleman fell from the blooming sky, he did. Will you remember that name?”

“Oh, yes: the Earl of Fairholme.”

“Well, his lordship will understand. I mean you must tell Fitzroy what I said. Please tell him privately. I expect I’ll get the sack anyhow over this business, but I’m doin’ me best in tryin’ the telephone, so you’ll confer a favor, mam, if you call Fitzroy on one side before tellin’ him.”

Though the telephone-box was stuffy when the door was closed, Mrs. Devar felt a cold chill running down her spine.

“I don’t quite understand,” she said thickly. “You’re Dale, somebody’s man; whose man?”

“His lordship’s. Oh, d—n. Beg pardon, mam, but I’m Fitzroy’s chauffeur.”

It was a glorious night of early summer, yet lightning struck in that little shut-off section of the hotel.

“Do you mean that you are Viscount Medenham’s chauffeur?” she gasped, and her hands trembled so much that she could scarce hold the receivers to her ears.

“Yes’m. Now you’ve got it. But, look here, I daren’t stop another minnit. Tell his lordship—tell Mr. Fitzroy—that I’ll dodge the Earl in some way an’ remain here. He says he has been tricked, wot between me an’ the Frenchman, but he means to go back to London to-morrow. Good-by, mam. You won’t forget—strickly private?”

“Oh, no, I won’t forget,” said Mrs. Devar grimly; nevertheless, she felt weak and sick, and in her anxiety to rush out into the fresh air she did forget to hang up the receivers, and the Symon’s Yat Hotel was cut off from the world of telephones until someone entered the box early next morning.

She was of a not uncommon type—a physical coward endowed with nerves of steel, but, for once in her life, she came perilously near fainting. It was bad enough that a money-making project of some value should show signs of tumbling in ruins, but far worse that she, an experienced tuft-hunter, should have lived in close companionship with a viscount for four long days and snubbed him rancorously and without cease. There was no escaping the net she had contrived for her own entanglement. She had actually written to Peter Vanrenen that she deemed it her duty as Cynthia’s chaperon to acquaint him with Simmonds’s defection and the filling of his place by Fitzroy, “a most unsuitable person to act as Miss Vanrenen’s chauffeur”—indeed, a young man who, she was sure, “would never have been chosen for such a responsible position” by Mr. Vanrenen himself.

And Fitzroy was Viscount Medenham, heir to the Fairholme estates, one of the most eligible young bachelors in the kingdom! Oh, blind and crass that she had not guessed the truth! The car, the luncheon-basket, the rare wine, the crest on the silver, the very candor of the wretch in giving his real name, his instant recognition of “Jimmy” Devar’s mother, the hints of a childhood passed in Sussex—why, even the aunt he spoke of on Derby Day must be Susan St. Maur, while Millicent Porthcawl had actually met him in the Bournemouth hotel!—these and many another vivid index pointed the path of knowledge to one so well versed as she in the intricacies of Debrett. The very attributes which she had taken for an impertinent aping of the manners of society had shouted his identity into her deaf ears time and again. Even an intelligent West-end housemaid would have felt some suspicion of the facts when confronted by these piled-up tokens. She remembered noticing his hands, the quality of his linen, his astonishingly “good” appearance on the only occasion that she had seen him in evening dress; she almost groaned aloud when she recalled the manner of her son’s departure from Bristol, and some imp in her heart raked the burnt ashes of the fire that had devoured her when she heard why Captain Devar was requested to resign his commission. Of course, this proud young aristocrat recognized him at once, and had brushed him out of his sight as one might brush a fly off a windowpane.

But how was she to act in face of the threatened disaster? Why had not her son warned her? Did Marigny know, and was that the explanation of his sheepish demeanor when she and Cynthia were about to enter the car that morning? Indeed, Marigny’s quiet acceptance of the position was quite as difficult to understand as her own failure to grasp the significance of all that happened since noon on Wednesday. This very day, before breakfast, he had come to her room with the cheering news that information to hand from London would certainly procure the dismissal of “Fitzroy” forthwith. The Mercury was registered in the name of the Earl of Fairholme, the obvious deduction being that his lordship’s chauffeur was careering through England in a valuable car without a shred of permission; the merest whisper to Cynthia of this discovery, said the Frenchman, would send “Fitzroy” packing.

And again, what had Cynthia meant when she referred at Chepstow to the “Norman baron scowl” with which “Fitzroy” had favored Marigny? Was she, too, in the secret? Unhappy Mrs. Devar! She glowered at the darkening Wye, and wriggled on her chair in torture.

“Wass it all right a-bout the tel-e-phone, mam?” said a soft voice at her ear.

She started violently, and the maid was contrite.

“I’m ver-ry sor-ry, mam,” she said, “but I see Mr. Fitz-roy down there on the riv-er——”

“Where, where?” cried the other, rather to gain time to collect her wits than to ascertain Medenham’s whereabouts.

The girl pointed.

“In that lit-tle boat, all by its-self, mam,” she said.

“Oh, it was of no importance. By the way,” and Mrs. Devar produced her purse, “you might tell the people in the office not to pay any attention to the statements of a man named Dale, if he rings up from Hereford. He is only a chauffeur, and we shall see him in the morning; perhaps it will be best, if he asks for Fitzroy again to-night, to tell him to await our arrival.”

“Yess, mam,” and the maid went off, the richer by half-a-crown. Mrs. Devar’s usual “tip” was a sixpence for a week’s attentions, so it would demand an abstruse arithmetical calculation to arrive at an exact estimate of the degree of mental disturbance that led to the present lack of proportion.

Left alone once more, her gaze followed a small skiff speeding upstream over the placid surface of the silvery Wye; Medenham was rowing, and Cynthia held the tiller ropes; but Mrs. Devar’s thoughts turned her mind’s eyes inward, and they surveyed a gray prospect. Dale, the unseen monster who had struck this paralyzing blow, spoke of “the Frenchman.” Lord Fairholme had charged both Dale and “the Frenchman” with tricking him. Therefore, the Earl and Marigny had met at Bristol. If so, and there could be little doubt of it, Marigny would hardly appear in Hereford, and if she attempted to telephone to the Green Dragon Hotel, where Cynthia had engaged rooms, she would not only fail to reach Marigny but probably reveal to a wrathful Earl the very fact which Dale seemed to have withheld from him, namely, his son’s address at the moment.

She assumed that Dale knew how to communicate with his master because Medenham had telegraphed the name of the hotel at Symon’s Yat. Therein she was right. Medenham wanted his baggage, and, having ascertained that there was a suitable train, sent instructions that Dale was to travel by it. This, of course, the man could not do. Lord Fairholme had carried off his son’s portmanteaux, and had actually hired a room in the Green Dragon next to that reserved for Cynthia.

Suddenly grown wise, Mrs. Devar decided against the telephone. But there remained the secrecy of the post-office. What harm if she sent a brief message to both the Green Dragon and the Mitre Hotels—Marigny would be sure to put up at one or the other if he were in Hereford—and demand his advice? She hurried to the drawing-room and wrote: