SYLVIAS CHAUFFEUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14688, 24 May 1911, Page 10

SYLVIAS CHAUFFEUR.

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

BY LOUIS TRACY, Author of Rainbow Island." " The Silent Barrier," "The Message, etc.

[COPrSIGHT.]

CHAPTER IX V. —(Continued.) Fovn Britons might have sat down and played bridge stolidly, but three, oi this quartette were Americans, and within t* hours of tho change in the elements, they Were seated in the London-bound tram a Windermere Station, ' . Not one of thorn was really displeased because of this rapid alteration m their "plans. Sylvia was ill at ease; Mrs. Lei and wished to rejoin her guests at Trouvillo; Vanrenen, who was anxious to ■complete certain business negotiate a n Paris, believed that a complete change> oi (scene and new interests in life would speed tilv bring Svlvia back to her own cheery pelf; while Mrs. Devar, though the abandonment of tho tour meant reversion to a cheap boarding-house, was not sony tha 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 ™ bim•jnonds's car, after tho luxurious comfort pf two in tho tonneau of the Mercury. : So it came to pass that on Friday evening, while Medenham was driving from Cavendish Square to Charing Gross, Sylvia was crossing London on a converging •line from St. Pan eras to the Savoy Hotel. .Strange, - indeed, was tho play of fate a shuttle that it should have so nearly reunited the unseen threads of their destines! Again, a trifling circumstance conspired to detain Vanrenen in London. 'Ono of his business associates m P«" s , rendered impatient by tho failure of the great man to return as quickly as ho had promised, arrived in England by the afternoon service from the Card cut rsord, ana was actually standing on the foyer of tho 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 verv remarkable edifice. It chanced that Mrs. Leland, too, decided to have a day in London, and sho and Sylvia went out early. They returned to lunch at the hotel _ and tho girl, pleading lack of appetite, slipped out alone, to buy ra. copy of Milton's poems. From the booksellers sho wandered into the' Embankment Gardens. ■ She wag 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 tho Charing Cross Station of the Metropolitan Railway. She stood in'one of the doorways looking out disconsolately over the river, when a taxi-cab 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 Baid. :■" What number, miss?" ho asked. ' "No number. Just drive slowly round the souare and return to the SaVoy 'Hotel."

He eyed her curiously, but made no comment. Soon she was speeding tip Regent-street, bent on gratifying the truly curious whim of seeing what manner of residence it was that lutzroy 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 Sylvia's astonished eyes-wero regarding ' its style and general air of magnificence" with some degree of heart-sinking—for, it did. then seem to be true that Mrs. TJevar'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 stops. Recognition was mutual. Dale muttered under his breath a wholly unjustifiable assumption as to his future state, halted dubiously, and then .signalled to Sylvia'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 pearly 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 Marigny 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 ho 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 eake, 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 d— Frenchman— 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 ho hadn't been stopped by Bomc other gentlemen. And now, thoro ho is a-lying in the hotel, with a doctor ' and a nurso 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— so Sylvia. At that instant there was one thing to be done, and one '.only. She saw tho open road, and took it without faltering or thought as to tho : future. - " When is the next train to Calais?" )ihe asked. " At nine" o'clock to-night, miss." 1 "Oh, God!" she wailod under her breath. - ; Dale's voice grew even more sympathetic. ' * ■■ "Was you a-tlunking of going to him, Iniss?" he asked.

"Would that I could fly there,"- she moaned. . He scratched the back of his car, for it was "by such means that Dale sought inGpiration. - ° "Dash it all J" 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 wav of Folkestone and Boulogne, and from ■ Boulogne one can get easy to Calais. Anyhow, what's the use of talkin'—it is too late." •

Sylvia glanced at her watch. It was just twenty-five minutes to three. "How far is Folkestone?" was tho 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 sworo Volubly. „ "Wo can do it?" ho shouted. "By the lord, wo can-do it! Are you gamp?" Game? The light that leaped into her eyes was sufficient answer. He tore open the door of the cab roaring to the driver: "Round that comer to the rio-ht—Quick —then into the mews at the back." Within two minutes tho 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 mora far more, in rushing back to Calais again without having discharged the duty which had dragged him from that master's bedfide. But lie 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 ho decided that ■ if a man is dying for the sake of a r- oman the presence of that woman may cure when • '•mil .else will faji»

CHAPTER XVI.

THE END OF ONE TOUIt: THE BEGINNING Of

another.

Sylvia found him lying in a darkened roam. The .nurse bad just raised eomo 01 the blinds; a dismal day was drawing to its close, and more light was needed 010 she could distinguish marked bottles, and doses, and the rest of the appurtenances of dangerous illness. ' . An English nurse would have forbidden the presence of a stranger this French one acted with more discretion if less of strict science. ■. "Madam is his,sister, perhaps! - sho whispered. '"No."

"A relative, then?" )( "No; a woman who loves him. That heart-broken admission told t tlia wholo tale to the quick-witted Frenchwoman. There had been a duel; one man was seriously" injured; the other, she had heard, was also receiving medical attention in another hotel—the temoins, wishful to avoid the interrogation of the .law, had ao arranged—and hero was tho woman who had caused the. quarrel. Well, such was the will of Providence! These things had been since man and woman from Paradisefor tho nurse, though a devout Catholic, suspected the Genesis had suppressed certain details of tho first fratricide would continue, she supposed, until the Millennium. She nodded cheerfully. "There is every reason to hope, but he must not be disturbednot excited, that is," she added, seeing the wan agony in Sylvia's face. The girl tip-toed to the side of the bed. Medenham's eyes were closed, but lie was muttering something. She bent and kissed his forehead, and a strange smile broke through the tense lines of pain. Even in his semi-conscious state he felt the touch of those exquisite lips. "My Lady Alice!' lie said. She choked back a sob. . Ho was dreaming of " Comus" — with her in the ruined banqueting hall of Ludlow Castle. "Yes, your Lady Alice," she breathed. A slight shiver shook him. _ " Don't tell Sylvia," ho said brokenly. " Sho must never know —ah, if I hadn't slipped, I would have quieted his viperish tonguebut Sylvia must not know!" "Oh, my dear, my dear, Sylvia does know! It is you who know not. Kind heaven, let him live! Grant that I may tell him all that I know!" She could not help it, the words welled forth of their own accord but the nurse touched her arm gently. " It is a little fever," she whispered with ready sympathy. " Soon it will pass. Ho will sleep, and, when he awakes, it is perhaps permissible that you speak to him.

Well, it was permissible. The age ,of miracles had not passed for those two. liven tbo experienced doctor marvelled at tho strength of a man who at font o clock in tho morning could have a sword driven through the tissues in perilous proximity to the right lung, and yet, at nine clock on that same night, was able to announce an unalterable resolution to get up and dress for breakfast next day. That, of course, was a pleasing fiction intended for Sylvia's benefit. It served its purpose admirably. The Ifindly nurse displayed an unexpected firmness in leading her to her own room, there to eat and sleep. For Sylvia had an ordeal to lace. Many things had been said in the car during that mad rush to Folkestone; and on board the' steamer which ferried Dale and herself- to Boulogne she had wrung from the taciturn chauffeur a full, true, and particular account of Medenham, his family, and liis doings throughout as much of his life as- Dale either knew or guessed. By the time they reached Boulogne she had made: tip her mind with a characteristic decision. One loiig telegram to her father, another to Lord Fairholme. caused heartburning and dismay not alone in certain apartments -of the Savoy Hotel, but in the aristocratic aloofness of Cavendish Square and Curzon-streot. As a rosult, two. elderly men, a younger one, in tho person of the Marquis of Scarland, and two tearful women Lady St. Maur and Mrs. Leland — at Charing- Cross to take the night mail. Another woman telegraphed from Shropshire saying that baby was better, and that she would follow by the first steamer on Sunday. Mrs. Devar did not await developments. She fled, dinnerless, to some burrow in Bayswator. These alarms and excursions were accompanied by the ringing of telephones; and tho flight of carriages back and forth through muddy London, and Sylvia was called on to deal with a whole sheaf of telegrams which demanded replies either to Dover or to Scarland Towers, in Shropshire.

With a man like Vanrenen at one end, lowever," and a woman like his daughter at, the other, it might bo fairly assumed that even the most complex skein of circumstances might be resolved upon from its tangle. As a matter of curious coincidence, the vessel which carried Marigny to England passed in mid-channel its sister ship conveying the" grief-stricken party of relatives to France.;, It happened, too, that the < clouds from the Atlantic elected to hover over Britain rather than France, and when—Sylvia stood on the quay to meet the incoming steamer,- a burst of sunshine from tho east gave promise of a fine, if somewhat blustery day. Five pairs of eyes sought her face anxiously while the vessel was warping to the quay opposite the Gare Maritime. They looked there for" tidings, and they were not disappointed. , • " That's all right," said Vanrenen with an unwonted huskiness in his voice. " Sylvia wouldn't smile if she hadn't good news." _ __ _

"Thank God for that muttered the earl, bending his head to examine a landing ticket, tho clear type of which he was utterly unable to read. " I never thought for a minute that any Frenchman could kill George," cried Scarland cheerfully. But the two women said nothing, could see nothing, and the white-faced but smiling Sylvia standing near tho shoreward end of the gangway had vanished in a sudden mist.

Of course, Marigny was right when he foresaw that Vanrenen could not meet either Medenham or any of his relatives for five minutes without his "poor little cobweb of intrigue" being dissipated once and for ever.

With the marvellous insight that every woman possesses when dealing with the affairs of the man she loves, Sylvia combined the, eloquence of an orator with the practised skill of a clover lawyer in revealing each turn and twist ox the toils which enveloped her since that day in Paris when her father happened to suggest in Marigny's hearing that she might utilise his hired car for a tour in England, while ho concluded tho business that was detaining him in the French capital. Nothing escaped her,- she unravelled every knot; Mederiham's few broken words, supplemented by the letter to his brother-in-law which ho told her to obtain from Dale, throw light on all the dark places. But the gloom had fled. It was a keenly interested, almost light-hearted, little party that walked through the sunshine to the Hotel du Plage.

Dale, abashed, sheepish, yet oddly confident that all was for the best in a queer world, met the Earl of Fairholme later in the day; his lordship, who had been pining for somebody to pitch into, addressed him sternly.

" This is a nice game you've been playing," ho said. " I always thought you were a man of steady habits, a little given to horse-racing perhaps, but otherwise a decent member of the community."

" So I was before I met Viscount Medenham, my lord," was tho daring answer. For Dale was no fool, and he had long since seen how certain apparently hostile forces had adapted themselves to new conditions.

" Before you left him you mean," growled tho earl. " What sort of sense was there in letting him fight a duel?— it could have been stopped in fifty different ways." " Yes, my lord, but I never suspicioncd a word of it till ho went off in the cab with them" The carl j held up a warning finger. "Hush," he said, " this is France remember, and you are the foreigner here. Where is my son's car?" In the garage at Folkestone, my lord."

" Well, you had better cross by an early boat to-morrow and bring it here. You understand all the preliminaries, I suppose? Find out from the Customs people what deposit is necessary, and come to mo for the money." '

So it happened that when Medonham was ablo to take his first drive in the open air, the Mercury awaited him and Sylvia at the door of the hotel. It positively sparkled in the sunlight; never was car more spick and span. The brass-work scintillated, each cylinder was rythmical, and a microscope would not have revealed one speck of dust on body or upholstery.

On a day in July—for everybody agreed that not even a marriage should bo allowed to interfere with tho Scottish festival of St. Grouse same shining Mercury with the tonneau decorously cased in glass for the hour, drew up at the edge of a red carpet laid from kerb to stately porch of St. George's, Hanover Square, and Dalo turned a grinning face to tho doorway when Viscount Medenham led his bride down tho steps through a shower of rice and good wishes. Wedding breakfasts and receptions aro all "much of a muchness," as the Mad Hatter said to another Alice, and it was not until tho Mercury was speeding north by west ,to Scarland Towers, " lent to the "happy pair for the honoymoon," while Betty took the children to recuperate at the seaside, that Sylvia felt that she was really married. "I have a bit of news for you," said her husband, taking a letter from his pocket. "I received a letter by this morning's post. A heap of others remain unopened till you and I have time to go through them; but this one caught my attention, and I read it while I was dressing." Ho had an excellent excuse for putting his arm round her waist while he held the open sheet so that both might peruse it at tho same time. It ran :

My dear Viscount,-Of course I meant to kill you, but fate decided otherwise. Indeed, with my usual candour, which by this time you may have learned to admire, I may add that only the special kind of dog's luck which attaches itself to members of my family saved me from being killed by you. But that is ancient "history now. " I am glad to hear that your wound was not really serious. Thero was no sense in merely crippling you—my only chance lay in procuring your untimely demise. Having failed, however, I want to tell you, with the utmost sincerity, that I never had the slightest intention of carrying out my abominable threat in regard to the fair lady who is now Viscountess Medenham. Were you othor "than a lieavy-witted and thick-skinned Briton, you would have known that I was goading you into issuing a challenge. "This piece of information is my wedding present; it is all I can give, because, metaphorically speaking, I haven't a sou! "I am, as you see, domiciled in Brussels, where my car is attached by an unsympathetic hotel proprietor. Still. I am devoid of rancour, and mean to keep- a sharp eye for a well-favoured and wellendowed wife; such a one, in fact, as you managed to snap up under my very nose.

" With a thousand compliments, I am, yours very sincerely, "Edouaed Marigny. S. —Devar went ' steerage' to the United States when ho heard of our affair. He thought it was all up with you, and with him." / " The wretch!" murmured Sylvia. *'Can he really believe even yet that I would have married him ? " "I don't care tuppence what ho believes," said Medenham, giving her a reassuring hug. " Indeed, I have a mind to write and fjsk him how much ho owes that hotel. Don't you see, my dear, that if it hadn't been for Marigny there was a chance that I might have loft you at Bristol."

"Never!" cooed Sylvia. "Well, now I have got you I am beginning to imagine all sorts of terrible possibilities which might have parted us. I ! remember thinking when my foot slipped— " Oh, don't!" she murmured ;" I can t bear to hear of that. Sometimes in Calais I awoke screaming, and then I knew I had seen it in my dreams. There, you have disarranged my hat! But I don't think much of your budget, anyhow ; mine is a great deal more to the -point. My father told me this morning that he is sure he will feel very lonely now.' He never meant, ho said, to put anyone in my dear mother's place, but ha will miss me so greatly —that, perhaps, Mrs. Leland — 7 By Jove," cried Medenham, "'that will be sDlendid! I like Mrs. Ireland. At one time, do you know, I rather fancied she might become my stepmother, now it seems I shall have to greet her as* a mother-in-law. She was bound to cohio into the family, way or another.- When is it to be?" .. "Father looked so confused when I asked him. Say, wouldn't it bo a joke if Simmonds brought tlicm to Seal-land Towers one day, and they were announced ov some solemn, footman as 'Mr. and Mrs. Yanrenen' ? " . \ "Sylvia, you know, he teased her. "I don't know, but I am a good guesser," she said. And she was. , > , [the EJTO.]

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.