“That is ‘Raven,’ plain enough I should think,” she snapped.
“Thank you, mum. ‘The Raven, Shrewsbury,’” read the hall-porter.
Medenham caught Marigny’s eye. He was minded to laugh outright, but forebore. Then he sprang into his seat, and the car curled in quick semicircle and climbed the hill to the left, while the Frenchman, surprised by this rapid movement, signaled frantically to Mrs. Devar, nodding farewell, that they had taken the wrong road.
“Not at all,” explained Medenham. “I want you to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which is a hundred feet higher in the air than the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” cried Cynthia indignantly. “The next thing you will tell me is that the Thames is wider than the Hudson.”
“So it is, at an equal distance from the sea.”
“Well, trot out your bridge. Seeing is believing, all the time.”
But Cynthia had yet to learn the exceeding wisdom of Ezekiel when he wrote of those “which have eyes to see, and see not,” for never was optical delusion better contrived than the height above water level of the fairylike structure that spans the Avon below Bristol. The reason is not far to seek. The mind is not prepared for the imminence of the swaying roadway that leaps from side to side of that tremendous gorge. On either crest are pleasant gardens, pretty houses, tree-shaded paths, and the opposing precipices are so prompt in their sheer fall that the eye insensibly rests on the upper level and refuses to dwell on the river far beneath.
So Cynthia was charmed but not convinced, and Medenham himself could scarce believe his recollection that the tops of the towers of the far larger bridge at Brooklyn would be only twenty-six feet higher than the roadway at Clifton. Mrs. Devar, of course, showed an utter lack of interest in the debate. Indeed, she refused emphatically to walk to the middle of the bridge, on the plea of light-headedness, and Cynthia instantly availed herself of the few minutes’ tête-à-tête thus vouchsafed.