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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Helena's Path, by Anthony Hope
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Helena's Path
+
+Author: Anthony Hope
+
+Release Date: July 27, 2011 [EBook #36876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HELENA'S PATH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Cathy Maxam, Juliet Sutherland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Helena's Path
+
+    _By_
+
+    ANTHONY HOPE
+
+    AUTHOR OF DOUBLE HARNESS
+    TRISTRAM OF BLENT
+    ETC.
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
+    DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+    1912
+
+
+    _Copyright, 1907, by Anthony Hope Hawkins_
+
+
+
+
+    CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+        I AMBROSE, LORD LYNBOROUGH                3
+
+       II LARGELY TOPOGRAPHICAL                  15
+
+      III OF LAW AND NATURAL RIGHTS              33
+
+       IV THE MESSAGE OF A PADLOCK               52
+
+        V THE BEGINNING OF WAR                   70
+
+       VI EXERCISE BEFORE BREAKFAST              90
+
+      VII ANOTHER WEDGE!                        110
+
+     VIII THE MARCHESA MOVES                    127
+
+       IX LYNBOROUGH DROPS A CATCH              148
+
+        X IN THE LAST RESORT                    171
+
+       XI AN ARMISTICE                          186
+
+      XII AN EMBASSAGE                          206
+
+     XIII THE FEAST OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST         223
+
+
+
+
+HELENA'S PATH
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter One_
+
+AMBROSE, LORD LYNBOROUGH
+
+
+Common opinion said that Lord Lynborough ought never to have had a
+peerage and forty thousand a year; he ought to have had a pound a week
+and a back bedroom in Bloomsbury. Then he would have become an eminent
+man; as it was, he turned out only a singularly erratic individual.
+
+So much for common opinion. Let no more be heard of its dull utilitarian
+judgements! There are plenty of eminent men--at the moment, it is
+believed, no less than seventy Cabinet and ex-Cabinet Ministers (or
+thereabouts)--to say nothing of Bishops, Judges, and the British
+Academy,--and all this in a nook of the world! (And the world too is a
+point!) Lynborough was something much more uncommon; it is not, however,
+quite easy to say what. Let the question be postponed; perhaps the story
+itself will answer it.
+
+He started life--or was started in it--in a series of surroundings of
+unimpeachable orthodoxy--Eton, Christ Church, the Grenadier Guards. He
+left each of these schools of mental culture and bodily discipline, not
+under a cloud--that metaphor would be ludicrously inept--but in an
+explosion. That, having been thus shot out of the first, he managed to
+enter the second--that, having been shot out of the second, he walked
+placidly into the third--that, having been shot out of the third, he
+suffered no apparent damage from his repeated propulsions--these are
+matters explicable only by a secret knowledge of British institutions.
+His father was strong, his mother came of stock even stronger; he
+himself--Ambrose Caverly as he then was--was very popular, and
+extraordinarily handsome in his unusual outlandish style.
+
+His father being still alive--and, though devoted to him, by now
+apprehensive of his doings--his means were for the next few years
+limited. Yet he contrived to employ himself. He took a soup-kitchen and
+ran it; he took a yacht and sank it; he took a public-house, ruined it,
+and got himself severely fined for watering the beer in the Temperance
+interest. This injustice rankled in him deeply, and seems to have
+permanently influenced his development. For a time he forsook
+the world and joined a sect of persons who called themselves
+"Theo-philanthropists"--and surely no man could call himself much more
+than that? Returning to mundane affairs, he refused to pay his rates,
+stood for Parliament in the Socialist interest, and, being defeated,
+declared himself a practical follower of Count Tolstoi. His father
+advising a short holiday, he went off and narrowly escaped being shot
+somewhere in the Balkans, owing to his having taken too keen an interest
+in local politics. (He ought to have been shot; he was clear--and even
+vehement--on that point in a letter which he wrote to _The Times_.) Then
+he sent for Leonard Stabb, disappeared in company with that gentleman,
+and was no more seen for some years.
+
+He could always send for Stabb, so faithful was that learned student's
+affection for him. A few years Ambrose Caverly's senior, Stabb had
+emerged late and painfully from a humble origin and a local grammar
+school, had gone up to Oxford as a non-collegiate man, had gained a
+first-class and a fellowship, and had settled down to a life of
+research. Early in his career he became known by the sobriquet of
+"Cromlech Stabb"--even his unlearned friends would call him "Cromlech"
+oftener than by any other name. His elaborate monograph on cromlechs had
+earned him the title; subsequently he extended his researches to other
+relics of ancient religions--or ancient forms of religion, as he always
+preferred to put it; "there being," he would add, with the simplicity of
+erudition beaming through his spectacles on any auditor, orthodox or
+other, "of course, only one religion." He was a very large stout man;
+his spectacles were large too. He was very strong, but by no means
+mobile. Ambrose's father regarded Stabb's companionship as a certain
+safeguard to his heir. The validity of this idea is doubtful. Students
+have so much curiosity--and so many diverse scenes and various types of
+humanity can minister to that appetite of the mind.
+
+Occasional rumors about Ambrose Caverly reached his native shores; he
+was heard of in Morocco, located in Spain, familiar in North and in
+South America. Once he was not heard of for a year; his father and
+friends concluded that he must be dead--or in prison. Happily the latter
+explanation proved correct. Once more he and the law had come to
+loggerheads; when he emerged from confinement he swore never to employ
+on his own account an instrument so hateful.
+
+"A gentleman should fight his own battles, Cromlech," he cried to his
+friend. "I did no more than put a bullet in his arm--in a fair
+encounter--and he let me go to prison!"
+
+"Monstrous!" Stabb agreed with a smile. He had passed the year in a
+dirty little inn by the prison gate--among scoundrels, but fortunately
+in the vicinity of some mounds distinctly prehistoric.
+
+Old Lord Lynborough's death occurred suddenly and unexpectedly, at a
+moment when Ambrose and his companion could not be found. They were
+somewhere in Peru--Stabb among the Incas, Ambrose probably in less
+ancient company. It was six months before the news reached them.
+
+"I must go home and take up my responsibilities, Cromlech," said the new
+Lord Lynborough.
+
+"You really think you'd better?" queried Stabb doubtfully.
+
+"It was my father's wish."
+
+"Oh, well--! But you'll be thought odd over there, Ambrose."
+
+"Odd? I odd? What the deuce is there odd about me, Cromlech?"
+
+"Everything." The investigator stuck his cheroot back in his mouth.
+
+Lynborough considered dispassionately--as he fain would hope. "I don't
+see it."
+
+That was the difficulty. Stabb was well aware of it. A man who is odd,
+and knows it, may be proud, but he will be careful; he may swagger, but
+he will take precautions. Lynborough had no idea that he was odd; he
+followed his nature--in all its impulses and in all its whims--with
+equal fidelity and simplicity. This is not to say that he was never
+amused at himself; every intelligent observer is amused at himself
+pretty often; but he did not doubt merely because he was amused. He took
+his entertainment over his own doings as a bonus life offered. A great
+sincerity of action and of feeling was his predominant characteristic.
+
+"Besides, if I'm odd," he went on with a laugh, "it won't be noticed.
+I'm going to bury myself at Scarsmoor for a couple of years at least.
+I'm thinking of writing an autobiography. You'll come with me,
+Cromlech?"
+
+"I must be totally undisturbed," Stabb stipulated. "I've a great deal of
+material to get into shape."
+
+"There'll be nobody there but myself--and a secretary, I daresay."
+
+"A secretary? What's that for?"
+
+"To write the book, of course."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Stabb, smiling in a slow fat fashion. "You won't write
+your autobiography yourself?"
+
+"Not unless I find it very engrossing."
+
+"Well, I'll come," said Stabb.
+
+So home they came--an unusual-looking pair--Stabb with his towering
+bulky frame, his big goggles, his huge head with its scanty black locks
+encircling a face like a harvest moon--Lynborough, tall, too, but lean
+as a lath, with tiny feet and hands, a rare elegance of carriage, a
+crown of chestnut hair, a long straight nose, a waving mustache, a chin
+pointed like a needle and scarcely thickened to the eye by the
+close-cropped, short, pointed beard he wore. His bright hazel eyes
+gleamed out from his face with an attractive restlessness that caught
+away a stranger's first attention even from the rare beauty of the lines
+of his head and face; it was regularity over-refined, sharpened almost
+to an outline of itself. But his appearance tempted him to no excesses
+of costume; he had always despised that facile path to a barren
+eccentricity. On every occasion he wore what all men of breeding were
+wearing, yet invested the prescribed costume with the individuality of
+his character: this, it seems, is as near as the secret of dressing well
+can be tracked.
+
+His manner was not always deemed so free from affectation; it was,
+perhaps, a little more self-conscious; it was touched with a foreign
+courtliness, and he employed, on occasions of any ceremony or in
+intercourse with ladies, a certain formality of speech; it was said of
+him by an observant woman that he seemed to be thinking in a language
+more ornate and picturesque than his tongue employed. He was content to
+say the apt thing, not striving after wit; he was more prone to hide a
+joke than to tell it; he would ignore a victory and laugh at a defeat;
+yet he followed up the one and never sat down under the other, unless it
+were inflicted by one he loved. He liked to puzzle, but took no
+conscious pains to amuse.
+
+Thus he returned to his "responsibilities." Cromlech Stabb was wondering
+what that dignified word would prove to describe.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Two_
+
+LARGELY TOPOGRAPHICAL
+
+
+Miss Gilletson had been studying the local paper, which appeared every
+Saturday and reached Nab Grange on the following morning. She uttered an
+exclamation, looked up from her small breakfast-table, and called over
+to the Marchesa's small breakfast-table.
+
+"Helena, I see that Lord Lynborough arrived at the Castle on Friday!"
+
+"Did he, Jennie?" returned the Marchesa, with no show of interest. "Have
+an egg, Colonel?" The latter words were addressed to her companion at
+table, Colonel Wenman, a handsome but bald-headed man of about forty.
+
+"'Lord Lynborough, accompanied by his friend Mr. Leonard Stabb, the
+well-known authority on prehistoric remains, and Mr. Roger Wilbraham,
+his private secretary. His lordship's household had preceded him to the
+Castle.'"
+
+Lady Norah Mountliffey--who sat with Miss Gilletson--was in the habit of
+saying what she thought. What she said now was: "Thank goodness!" and
+she said it rather loudly.
+
+"You gentlemen haven't been amusing Norah," observed the Marchesa to the
+Colonel.
+
+"I hoped that I, at least, was engaged on another task--though, alas, a
+harder one!" he answered in a low tone and with a glance of respectful
+homage.
+
+"If you refer to me, you've been admirably successful," the Marchesa
+assured him graciously--only with the graciousness there mingled that
+touch of mockery which always made the Colonel rather ill at ease.
+"Amuse" is, moreover, a word rich in shades of meaning.
+
+Miss Gilletson was frowning thoughtfully. "Helena can't call on him--and
+I don't suppose he'll call on her," she said to Norah.
+
+"He'll get to know her if he wants to."
+
+"I might call on him," suggested the Colonel. "He was in the service,
+you know, and that--er--makes a bond. Queer fellow he was, by Jove!"
+
+Captain Irons and Mr. Stillford came in from riding, late for breakfast.
+They completed the party at table, for Violet Dufaure always took the
+first meal of the day in bed. Irons was a fine young man, still in the
+twenties, very fair and very bronzed. He had seen fighting and was
+great at polo. Stillford, though a man of peace (if a solicitor may so
+be called), was by no means inferior in physique. A cadet of a good
+county family, he was noted in the hunting field and as a long-distance
+swimmer. He had come to Nab Grange to confer with the Marchesa on her
+affairs, but, proving himself an acquisition to the party, had been
+pressed to stay on as a guest.
+
+The men began to bandy stories of Lynborough from one table to the
+other. Wenman knew the London gossip, Stillford the local traditions:
+but neither had seen the hero of their tales for many years. The
+anecdotes delighted Norah Mountliffey, and caused Miss Gilletson's hands
+to fly up in horror. Nevertheless it was Miss Gilletson who said,
+"Perhaps we shall see him at church to-day."
+
+"Not likely!" Stillford opined. "And--er--is anybody going?"
+
+The pause which habitually follows this question ensued upon it now.
+Neither the Marchesa nor Lady Norah would go--they were both of the Old
+Church. Miss Dufaure was unlikely to go, by reason of fatigue. Miss
+Gilletson would, of course, go, so would Colonel Wenman--but that was so
+well known that they didn't speak.
+
+"Any ladies with Lynborough's party, I wonder!" Captain Irons hazarded.
+"I think I'll go! Stillford, you ought to go to church--family solicitor
+and all that, eh?"
+
+A message suddenly arrived from Miss Dufaure, to say that she felt
+better and proposed to attend church--could she be sent?
+
+"The carriage is going anyhow," said Miss Gilletson a trifle stiffly.
+
+"Yes, I suppose I ought," Stillford agreed. "We'll drive there and walk
+back?"
+
+"Right you are!" said the Captain.
+
+By following the party from Nab Grange to Fillby parish church, a
+partial idea of the locality would be gained; but perhaps it is better
+to face the complete task at once. Idle tales suit idle readers; a
+history such as this may legitimately demand from those who study it
+some degree of mental application.
+
+If, then, the traveler lands from the North Sea (which is the only sea
+he can land from) he will find himself on a sandy beach, dipping rapidly
+to deep water and well adapted for bathing. As he stands facing inland,
+the sands stretch in a long line southerly on his left; on his right
+rises the bold bluff of Sandy Nab with its swelling outline, its
+grass-covered dunes, and its sparse firs; directly in front of him,
+abutting on the beach, is the high wall inclosing the Grange property; a
+gate in the middle gives access to the grounds. The Grange faces south,
+and lies in the shelter of Sandy Nab. In front of it are
+pleasure-grounds, then a sunk fence, then spacious meadow-lands. The
+property is about a mile and a half (rather more than less) in length,
+to half-a-mile in breadth. Besides the Grange there is a small
+farmhouse, or bailiff's house, in the southwest corner of the estate. On
+the north the boundary consists of moorlands, to the east (as has been
+seen) of the beach, to the west and south of a public road. At the end
+of the Grange walls this road turns to the right, inland, and passes by
+Fillby village; it then develops into the highroad to Easthorpe with its
+market, shops, and station, ten miles away. Instead, however, of
+pursuing this longer route, the traveler from the Grange grounds may
+reach Fillby and Easthorpe sooner by crossing the road on the west, and
+traversing the Scarsmoor Castle property, across which runs a broad
+carriage road, open to the public. He will first--after entering Lord
+Lynborough's gates--pass over a bridge which spans a little river, often
+nearly dry, but liable to be suddenly flooded by a rainfall in the
+hills. Thus he enters a beautiful demesne, rich in wood and undergrowth,
+in hill and valley, in pleasant rides and winding drives. The Castle
+itself--an ancient gray building, square and massive, stands on an
+eminence in the northwest extremity of the property; the ground drops
+rapidly in front of it, and it commands a view of Nab Grange and the sea
+beyond, being in its turn easily visible from either of these points.
+The road above mentioned, on leaving Lynborough's park, runs across the
+moors in a southwesterly line to Fillby, a little village of some three
+hundred souls. All around and behind this, stretching to Easthorpe, are
+great rolling moors, rich in beauty as in opportunities for sport, yet
+cutting off the little settlement of village, Castle, and Grange from
+the outer world by an isolation more complete than the mere distance
+would in these days seem to entail. The church, two or three little
+shops, and one policeman, sum up Fillby's resources: anything more, for
+soul's comfort, for body's supply or protection, must come across the
+moors from Easthorpe.
+
+One point remains--reserved to the end by reason of its importance. A
+gate has been mentioned as opening on to the beach from the grounds of
+Nab Grange. He who enters at that gate and makes for the Grange follows
+the path for about two hundred yards in a straight line, and then takes
+a curving turn to the right, which in time brings him to the front door
+of the house. But the path goes on--growing indeed narrower, ultimately
+becoming a mere grass-grown track, yet persisting quite plain to
+see--straight across the meadows, about a hundred yards beyond the sunk
+fence which bounds the Grange gardens, and in full view from the Grange
+windows; and it desists not from its course till it reaches the rough
+stone wall which divides the Grange estate from the highroad on the
+west. This wall it reaches at a point directly opposite to the Scarsmoor
+lodge; in the wall there is a gate, through which the traveler must pass
+to gain the road.
+
+There is a gate--and there had always been a gate; that much at least is
+undisputed. It will, of course, be obvious that if the residents at the
+Castle desired to reach the beach for the purpose of bathing or other
+diversions, and proposed to go on their feet, incomparably their best,
+shortest, and most convenient access thereto lay through this gate and
+along the path which crossed the Grange property and issued through the
+Grange gate on to the seashore. To go round by the road would take at
+least three times as long. Now the season was the month of June; Lord
+Lynborough was a man tenacious of his rights--and uncommonly fond of
+bathing.
+
+On the other hand, it might well be that the Marchesa di San
+Servolo--the present owner of Nab Grange--would prefer that strangers
+should not pass across her property, in full view and hail of her
+windows, without her permission and consent. That this, indeed, was the
+lady's attitude might be gathered from the fact that, on this Sunday
+morning in June, Captain Irons and Mr. Stillford, walking back through
+the Scarsmoor grounds from Fillby church as they had proposed, found the
+gate leading from the road into the Grange meadows securely padlocked.
+Having ignored this possibility, they had to climb, incidentally
+displacing, but carefully replacing, a number of prickly furze branches
+which the zeal of the Marchesa's bailiff had arranged along the top rail
+of the gate.
+
+"Boys been coming in?" asked Irons.
+
+"It may be that," said Stillford, smiling as he arranged the prickly
+defenses to the best advantage.
+
+The Grange expedition to church had to confess to having seen nothing of
+the Castle party--and in so far it was dubbed a failure. There was
+indeed a decorous row of servants in the household seat, but the square
+oaken pew in the chancel, with its brass rods and red curtains in front,
+and its fireplace at the back, stood empty. The two men reported having
+met, as they walked home through Scarsmoor, a very large fat man with a
+face which they described variously, one likening it to the sinking sun
+on a misty day, the other to a copper saucepan.
+
+"Not Lord Lynborough, I do trust!" shuddered little Violet Dufaure. She
+and Miss Gilletson had driven home by the road, regaining the Grange by
+the south gate and the main drive.
+
+Stillford was by the Marchesa. He spoke to her softly, covered by the
+general conversation. "You might have told us to take a key!" he said
+reproachfully. "That gorse is very dangerous to a man's Sunday
+clothes."
+
+"It looks--businesslike, doesn't it?" she smiled.
+
+"Oh, uncommon! When did you have it done?"
+
+"The day before yesterday. I wanted there to be no mistake from the very
+first. That's the best way to prevent any unpleasantness."
+
+"Possibly." Stillford sounded doubtful. "Going to have a notice-board,
+Marchesa?"
+
+"He will hardly make that necessary, will he?"
+
+"Well, I told you that in my judgment your right to shut it against him
+is very doubtful."
+
+"You told me a lot of things I didn't understand," she retorted rather
+pettishly.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders with a laugh. No good lay in anticipating
+trouble. Lord Lynborough might take no notice.
+
+In the afternoon the Marchesa's guests played golf on a rather makeshift
+nine-hole course laid out in the meadows. Miss Gilletson slept. The
+Marchesa herself mounted the top of Sandy Nab, and reviewed her
+situation. The Colonel would doubtless have liked to accompany her, but
+he was not thereto invited.
+
+Helena Vittoria Maria Antonia, Marchesa di San Servolo, was now in her
+twenty-fourth year. Born of an Italian father and an English mother, she
+had bestowed her hand on her paternal country, but her heart remained in
+her mother's. The Marchese took her as his second wife and his last
+pecuniary resource; in both capacities she soothed his declining years.
+Happily for her--and not unhappily for the world at large--these were
+few. He had not time to absorb her youth or to spend more than a small
+portion of her inheritance. She was left a widow--stepmother of adult
+Italian offspring--owner for life of an Apennine fortress. She liked the
+fortress much, but disliked the stepchildren (the youngest was of her
+own age) more. England--her mother's home--presented itself in the light
+of a refuge. In short, she had grave doubts about ever returning to
+Italy.
+
+Nab Grange was in the market. Ancestrally a possession of the Caverlys
+(for centuries a noble but unennobled family in those parts), it had
+served for the family's dower-house, till a bad race-meeting had induced
+the squire of the day to sell it to a Mr. Cross of Leeds. The Crosses
+held it for seventy years. Then the executors of the last Cross sold it
+to the Marchesa. This final transaction happened a year before
+Lynborough came home. The "Beach Path" had, as above recorded, been
+closed only for two days.
+
+The path was not just now in the Marchesa's thoughts. Nothing very
+definite was. Rather, as her eyes ranged from moor to sea, from the
+splendid uniformity of the unclouded sky to the ravishing variety of
+many-tinted earth, from the green of the Grange meadows (the one spot of
+rich emerald on the near coast-line, owing its hues to Sandy Nab's
+kindly shelter) to the gray mass of Scarsmoor Castle--there was in her
+heart that great mixture of content and longing that youth and--(what
+put bluntly amounts to)--a fine day are apt to raise. And youth allied
+with beauty becomes self-assertive, a claimant against the world, a
+plaintiff against facts before High Heaven's tribunal. The Marchesa was
+infinitely delighted with Nab Grange--graciously content with
+Nature--not ill-pleased with herself--but, in fine, somewhat
+discontented with her company. That was herself? Not precisely, though,
+at the moment, objectively. She was wondering whether her house-party
+was all that her youth and her beauty--to say nothing of her past
+endurance of the Marchese--entitled her to claim and to enjoy.
+
+Then suddenly across her vision, cutting the sky-line, seeming to divide
+for a moment heaven above from earth beneath, passed a tall meager
+figure, and a head of lines clean as if etched by a master's needle. The
+profile stood as carved in fine ivory; glints of color flashed from hair
+and beard. The man softly sang a love song as he walked--but he never
+looked toward the Marchesa.
+
+She sat up suddenly. "Could that be Lord Lynborough?" she thought--and
+smiled.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Three_
+
+OF LAW AND NATURAL RIGHTS
+
+
+Lynborough sat on the terrace which ran along the front of the Castle
+and looked down, over Nab Grange, to the sea. With him were Leonard
+Stabb and Roger Wilbraham. The latter was a rather short, slight man of
+dark complexion; although a light-weight he was very wiry and a fine
+boxer. His intellectual gifts corresponded well with his physical
+equipment; an acute ready mind was apt to deal with every-day problems
+and pressing necessities; it had little turn either for speculation or
+for fancy. He had dreams neither about the past, like Stabb, nor about
+present things, like Lynborough. His was, in a word, the practical
+spirit, and Lynborough could not have chosen a better right-hand man.
+
+They were all smoking; a silence had rested long over the party. At last
+Lynborough spoke.
+
+"There's always," he said, "something seductive in looking at a house
+when you know nothing about the people who live in it."
+
+"But I know a good deal about them," Wilbraham interposed with a laugh.
+"Coltson's been pumping all the village, and I've had the benefit of
+it." Coltson was Lynborough's own man, an old soldier who had been with
+him nearly fifteen years and had accompanied him on all his travels and
+excursions.
+
+Lynborough paid no heed; he was not the man to be put off his
+reflections by intrusive facts.
+
+"The blank wall of a strange house is like the old green curtain at the
+theater. It may rise for you any moment and show you--what? Now what is
+there at Nab Grange?"
+
+"A lot of country bumpkins, I expect," growled Stabb.
+
+"No, no," Wilbraham protested. "I'll tell you, if you like----"
+
+"What's there?" Lynborough pursued. "I don't know. You don't know--no,
+you don't, Roger, and you probably wouldn't even if you were inside. But
+I like not knowing--I don't want to know. We won't visit at the Grange,
+I think. We will just idealize it, Cromlech." He cast his queer elusive
+smile at his friend.
+
+"Bosh!" said Stabb. "There's sure to be a woman there--and I'll be bound
+she'll call on you!"
+
+"She'll call on me? Why?"
+
+"Because you're a lord," said Stabb, scorning any more personal form of
+flattery.
+
+"That fortuitous circumstance should, in my judgment, rather afford me
+protection."
+
+"If you come to that, she's somebody herself." Wilbraham's knowledge
+would bubble out, for all the want of encouragement.
+
+"Everybody's somebody," murmured Lynborough--"and it is a very odd
+arrangement. Can't be regarded as permanent, eh, Cromlech? Immortality
+by merit seems a better idea. And by merit I mean originality. Well--I
+sha'n't know the Grange, but I like to look at it. The way I picture
+her----"
+
+"Picture whom?" asked Stabb.
+
+"Why, the Lady of the Grange, to be sure----"
+
+"Tut, tut, who's thinking of the woman?--if there is a woman at all."
+
+"I am thinking of the woman, Cromlech, and I've a perfect right to think
+of her. At least, if not of that woman, of a woman--whose like I've
+never met."
+
+"She must be of an unusual type," opined Stabb with a reflective smile.
+
+"She is, Cromlech. Shall I describe her?"
+
+"I expect you must."
+
+"Yes, at this moment--with the evening just this color--and the Grange
+down there--and the sea, Cromlech, so remarkably large, I'm afraid I
+must. She is, of course, tall and slender; she has, of course, a
+rippling laugh; her eyes are, of course, deep and dreamy, yet lighting
+to a sparkle when one challenges. All this may be presupposed. It's her
+tint, Cromlech, her color--that's what's in my mind to-night; that, you
+will find, is her most distinguishing, her most wonderful
+characteristic."
+
+"That's just what the Vicar told Coltson! At least he said that the
+Marchesa had a most extraordinary complexion." Wilbraham had got
+something out at last.
+
+"Roger, you bring me back to earth. You substitute the Vicar's
+impression for my imagination. Is that kind?"
+
+"It seems such a funny coincidence."
+
+"Supposing it to be a mere coincidence--no doubt! But I've always known
+that I had to meet that complexion somewhere. If here--so much the
+better!"
+
+"I have a great doubt about that," said Leonard Stabb.
+
+"I can get over it, Cromlech! At least consider that."
+
+"But you're not going to know her!" laughed Wilbraham.
+
+"I shall probably see her as we walk down to bathe by Beach Path."
+
+A deferential voice spoke from behind his chair. "I beg your pardon, my
+lord, but Beach Path is closed." Coltson had brought Lynborough his
+cigar-case and laid it down on a table by him as he communicated this
+intelligence.
+
+"Closed, Coltson?"
+
+"Yes, my lord. There's a padlock on the gate, and a--er--barricade of
+furze. And the gardeners tell me they were warned off yesterday."
+
+"My gardeners warned off Beach Path?"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"By whose orders?"
+
+"Her Excellency's, my lord."
+
+"That's the Marchesa--Marchesa di San Servolo," Wilbraham supplied.
+
+"Yes, that's the name, sir," said Coltson respectfully.
+
+"What about her complexion now, Ambrose?" chuckled Stabb.
+
+"The Marchesa di San Servolo? Is that right, Coltson?"
+
+"Perfectly correct, my lord. Italian, I understand, my lord."
+
+"Excellent, excellent! She has closed my Beach Path? I think I have
+reflected enough for to-night. I'll go in and write a letter." He rose,
+smiled upon Stabb, who himself was grinning broadly, and walked through
+an open window into the house.
+
+"Now you may see something happen," said Leonard Stabb.
+
+"What's the matter? Is it a public path?" asked Wilbraham.
+
+With a shrug Stabb denied all knowledge--and, probably, all interest.
+Coltson, who had lingered behind his master, undertook to reply.
+
+"Not exactly public, as I understand, sir. But the Castle has always
+used it. Green--that's the head-gardener--tells me so, at least."
+
+"By legal right, do you mean?" Wilbraham had been called to the Bar,
+although he had never practised. No situation gives rise to greater
+confidence on legal problems.
+
+"I don't think you'll find that his lordship will trouble much about
+that, sir," was Coltson's answer, as he picked up the cigar-case again
+and hurried into the library with it.
+
+"What does the man mean by that?" asked Wilbraham scornfully. "It's a
+purely legal question--Lynborough must trouble about it." He rose and
+addressed Stabb somewhat as though that gentleman were the Court. "Not a
+public right of way? We don't argue that? Then it's a case of dominant
+and servient tenement--a right of way by user as of right, or by a lost
+grant. That--or nothing!"
+
+"I daresay," muttered Stabb very absently.
+
+"Then what does Coltson mean----?"
+
+"Coltson knows Ambrose--you don't. Ambrose will never go to law--but
+he'll go to bathe."
+
+"But she'll go to law if he goes to bathe!" cried the lawyer.
+
+Stabb blinked lazily, and seemed to loom enormous over his cigar. "I
+daresay--if she's got a good case," said he. "Do you know, Wilbraham, I
+don't much care whether she does or not? But in regard to her
+complexion----"
+
+"What the devil does her complexion matter?" shouted Wilbraham.
+
+"The human side of a thing always matters," observed Leonard Stabb.
+"For instance--pray sit down, Wilbraham--standing up and talking loud
+prove nothing, if people would only believe it--the permanence of
+hierarchical systems may be historically observed to bear a direct
+relation to the emoluments."
+
+"Would you mind telling me your opinion on two points, Stabb? We can go
+on with that argument of yours afterward."
+
+"Say on, Wilbraham."
+
+"Is Lynborough in his right senses?"
+
+"The point is doubtful."
+
+"Are you in yours?"
+
+Stabb reflected. "I am sane--but very highly specialized," was his
+conclusion.
+
+Wilbraham wrinkled his brow. "All the same, right of way or no right of
+way is purely a legal question," he persisted.
+
+"I think you're highly specialized too," said Stabb. "But you'd better
+keep quiet and see it through, you know. There may be some fun--it will
+serve to amuse the Archdeacon when you write." Wilbraham's father was a
+highly esteemed dignitary of the order mentioned.
+
+Lynborough came out again, smoking a cigar. His manner was noticeably
+more alert: his brow was unclouded, his whole mien tranquil and placid.
+
+"I've put it all right," he observed. "I've written her a civil letter.
+Will you men bathe to-morrow?"
+
+They both assented to the proposition.
+
+"Very well. We'll start at eight. We may as well walk. By Beach Path
+it's only about half-a-mile."
+
+"But the path's stopped, Ambrose," Stabb objected.
+
+"I've asked her to have the obstruction removed before eight o'clock,"
+Lynborough explained.
+
+"If it isn't?" asked Roger Wilbraham.
+
+"We have hands," answered Lynborough, looking at his own very small
+ones.
+
+"Wilbraham wants to know why you don't go to law, Ambrose."
+
+Lord Lynborough never shrank from explaining his views and convictions.
+
+"The law disgusts me. So does my experience of it. You remember the
+beer, Cromlech? Nobody ever acted more wisely or from better motives.
+And if I made money--as I did, till the customers left off coming--why
+not? I was unobtrusively doing good. Then Juanita's affair! I acted as a
+gentleman is bound to act. Result--a year's imprisonment! I lay stress
+on these personal experiences, but not too great stress. The law, Roger,
+always considers what you have had and what you now have--never what
+you ought to have. Take that path! It happens to be a fact that my
+grandfather, and my father, and I have always used that path. That's
+important by law, I daresay----"
+
+"Certainly, Lord Lynborough."
+
+"Just what would be important by law!" commented Lynborough. "And I have
+made use of the fact in my letter to the Marchesa. But in my own mind I
+stand on reason and natural right. Is it reasonable that I, living
+half-a-mile from my bathing, should have to walk two miles to get to it?
+Plainly not. Isn't it the natural right of the owner of Scarsmoor to
+have that path open through Nab Grange? Plainly yes. That, Roger,
+although, as I say, not the shape in which I have put the matter before
+the Marchesa--because she, being a woman, would be unappreciative of
+pure reason--is really the way in which the question presents itself to
+my mind--and, I'm sure, to Cromlech's?"
+
+"Not the least in the world to mine," said Stabb. "However, Ambrose, the
+young man thinks us both mad."
+
+"You do, Roger?" His smile persuaded to an affirmative reply.
+
+"I'm afraid so, Lord Lynborough."
+
+"No 'Lord,' if you love me! Why do you think me mad? Cromlech, of
+course, is mad, so we needn't bother about him."
+
+"You're not--not practical," stammered Roger.
+
+"Oh, I don't know, really I don't know. You'll see that I shall get that
+path open. And in the end I did get that public-house closed. And
+Juanita's husband had to leave the country, owing to the heat of local
+feeling--aroused entirely by me. Juanita stayed behind and, after due
+formalities, married again most happily. I'm not altogether inclined to
+call myself unpractical. Roger!" He turned quickly to his secretary.
+"Your father's what they call a High Churchman, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes--and so am I," said Roger.
+
+"He has his Church. He puts that above the State, doesn't he? He
+wouldn't obey the State against the Church? He wouldn't do what the
+Church said was wrong because the State said it was right?"
+
+"How could he? Of course he wouldn't," answered Roger.
+
+"Well, I have my Church--inside here." He touched his breast. "I stand
+where your father does. Why am I more mad than the Archdeacon, Roger?"
+
+"But there's all the difference!"
+
+"Of course there is," said Stabb. "All the difference that there is
+between being able to do it and not being able to do it--and I know of
+none so profound."
+
+"There's no difference at all," declared Lynborough. "Therefore--as a
+good son, no less than as a good friend--you will come and bathe with me
+to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, I'll come and bathe, by all means, Lynborough."
+
+"By all means! Well said, young man. By all means, that is, which are
+becoming in opposing a lady. What precisely those may be we well
+consider when we see the strength of her opposition."
+
+"That doesn't sound so very unpractical, after all," Stabb suggested to
+Roger.
+
+Lynborough took his stand before Stabb, hands in pockets, smiling down
+at the bulk of his friend.
+
+"O Cromlech, Haunter of Tombs," he said, "Cromlech, Lover of Men long
+Dead, there is a possible--indeed a probable--chance--there is a divine
+hope--that Life may breathe here on this coast, that the blood may run
+quick, that the world may move, that our old friend Fortune may smile,
+and trick, and juggle, and favor us once more. This, Cromlech, to a man
+who had determined to reform, who came home to assume--what was it? Oh
+yes--responsibilities!--this is most extraordinary luck. Never shall it
+be said that Ambrose Caverly, being harnessed and carrying a bow, turned
+himself back in the day of battle!"
+
+He swayed himself to and fro on his heels, and broke into merry
+laughter.
+
+"She'll get the letter to-night, Cromlech. I've sent Coltson down with
+it--he proceeds decorously by the highroad and the main approach. But
+she'll get it. Cromlech, will she read it with a beating heart? Will she
+read it with a flushing cheek? And if so, Cromlech, what, I ask you,
+will be the particular shade of that particular flush?"
+
+"Oh, the sweetness of the game!" said he.
+
+Over Nab Grange the stars seemed to twinkle roguishly.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Four_
+
+THE MESSAGE OF A PADLOCK
+
+
+     Lord Lynborough presents his compliments to her Excellency the
+     Marchesa di San Servolo. Lord Lynborough has learnt, with
+     surprise and regret, that his servants have within the last two
+     days been warned off Beach Path, and that a padlock and other
+     obstacles have been placed on the gate leading to the path, by
+     her Excellency's orders. Lord Lynborough and his predecessors
+     have enjoyed the use of this path by themselves, their agents
+     and servants, for many years back--certainly for fifty, as Lord
+     Lynborough knows from his father and from old servants, and
+     Lord Lynborough is not disposed to acquiesce in any obstruction
+     being raised to his continued use of it. He must therefore
+     request her Excellency to have the kindness to order that the
+     padlock and other obstacles shall be removed, and he will be
+     obliged by this being done before eight o'clock to-morrow
+     morning--at which time Lord Lynborough intends to proceed by
+     Beach Path to the sea in order to bathe. Scarsmoor Castle; 13th
+     June.
+
+The reception of this letter proved an agreeable incident of an
+otherwise rather dull Sunday evening at Nab Grange. The Marchesa had
+been bored; the Colonel was sulky. Miss Gilletson had forbidden cards;
+her conscience would not allow herself, nor her feelings of envy permit
+other people, to play on the Sabbath. Lady Norah and Violet Dufaure were
+somewhat at cross-purposes, each preferring to talk to Stillford and
+endeavoring, under a false show of amity, to foist Captain Irons on to
+the other.
+
+"Listen to this!" cried the Marchesa vivaciously. She read it out. "He
+doesn't beat about the bush, does he? I'm to surrender before eight
+o'clock to-morrow morning!"
+
+"Sounds rather a peremptory sort of a chap!" observed Colonel Wenman.
+
+"I," remarked Lady Norah, "shouldn't so much as answer him, Helena."
+
+"I shall certainly answer him and tell him that he'll trespass on my
+property at his peril," said the Marchesa haughtily. "Isn't that the
+right way to put it, Mr. Stillford?"
+
+"If it would be a trespass, that might be one way to put it," was
+Stillford's professionally cautious advice. "But as I ventured to tell
+you when you determined to put on the padlock, the rights in the matter
+are not quite as clear as we could wish."
+
+"When I bought this place, I bought a private estate--a private estate,
+Mr. Stillford--for myself--not a short cut for Lord Lynborough! Am I to
+put up a notice for him, 'This Way to the Bathing-Machines'?"
+
+"I wouldn't stand it for a moment." Captain Irons sounded bellicose.
+
+Violet Dufaure was amicably inclined.
+
+"You might give him leave to walk through. It would be a bore for him to
+go round by the road every time."
+
+"Certainly I might give him leave if he asked for it," retorted the
+Marchesa rather sharply. "But he doesn't. He orders me to open my
+gate--and tells me he means to bathe! As if I cared whether he bathed or
+not! What is it to me, I ask you, Violet, whether the man bathes or
+not?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Marchesa, but aren't you getting a little off the
+point?" Stillford intervened deferentially.
+
+"No, I'm not. I never get off the point, Mr. Stillford. Do I, Colonel
+Wenman?"
+
+"I've never known you to do it in my life, Marchesa." There was, in
+fact, as Lynborough had ventured to anticipate, a flush on the
+Marchesa's cheek, and the Colonel knew his place.
+
+"There, Mr. Stillford!" she cried triumphantly. Then she swept--the
+expression is really applicable--across the room to her writing-table.
+"I shall be courteous, but quite decisive," she announced over her
+shoulder as she sat down.
+
+Stillford stood by the fire, smiling doubtfully. Evidently it was no use
+trying to stop the Marchesa; she had insisted on locking the gate, and
+she would persist in keeping it locked till she was forced, by process
+of law or otherwise, to open it again. But if the Lords of Scarsmoor
+Castle really had used it without interruption for fifty years (as Lord
+Lynborough asserted)--well, the Marchesa's rights were at least in a
+precarious position.
+
+The Marchesa came back with her letter in her hand.
+
+"'The Marchesa di San Servolo,'" she read out to an admiring audience,
+"'presents her compliments to Lord Lynborough. The Marchesa has no
+intention of removing the padlock and other obstacles which have been
+placed on the gate to prevent trespassing--either by Lord Lynborough or
+by anybody else. The Marchesa is not concerned to know Lord Lynborough's
+plans in regard to bathing or otherwise. Nab Grange; 13th June.'"
+
+The Marchesa looked round on her friends with a satisfied air.
+
+"I call that good," she remarked. "Don't you, Norah?"
+
+"I don't like the last sentence."
+
+"Oh yes! Why, that'll make him angrier than anything else! Please ring
+the bell for me, Mr. Stillford; it's just behind you."
+
+The butler came back.
+
+"Who brought Lord Lynborough's letter?" asked the Marchesa.
+
+"I don't know who it is, your Excellency--one of the upper servants at
+the Castle, I think."
+
+"How did he come to the house?"
+
+"By the drive--from the south gate--I believe, your Excellency."
+
+"I'm glad of that," she declared, looking positively dangerous. "Tell
+him to go back the same way, and not by the--by what Lord Lynborough
+chooses to call 'Beach Path.' Here's a letter for him to take."
+
+"Very good, your Excellency." The butler received the letter and
+withdrew.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Norah, "rather funny he should call it Beach Path,
+isn't it?"
+
+"I don't know whether it's funny or not, Norah, but I do know that I
+don't care what he calls it. He may call it Piccadilly if he likes, but
+it's my path all the same." As she spoke she looked, somewhat defiantly,
+at Mr. Stillford.
+
+Violet Dufaure, whose delicate frame held an indomitable and indeed
+pugnacious spirit, appealed to Stillford; "Can't Helena have him taken
+up if he trespasses?"
+
+"Well, hardly, Miss Dufaure. The remedy would lie in the civil courts."
+
+"Shall I bring an action against him? Is that it? Is that right?" cried
+the Marchesa.
+
+"That's the ticket, eh, Stillford?" asked the Colonel.
+
+Stillford's position was difficult; he had the greatest doubt about his
+client's case.
+
+"Suppose you leave him to bring the action?" he suggested. "When he
+does, we can fully consider our position."
+
+"But if he insists on using the path to-morrow?"
+
+"He'll hardly do that," Stillford persuaded her. "You'll probably get a
+letter from him, asking for the name of your solicitor. You will give
+him my name; I shall obtain the name of his solicitor, and we shall
+settle it between us--amicably, I hope, but in any case without further
+personal trouble to you, Marchesa."
+
+"Oh!" said the Marchesa blankly. "That's how it will be, will it?"
+
+"That's the usual course--the proper way of doing the thing."
+
+"It may be proper; it sounds very dull, Mr. Stillford. What if he does
+try to use the path to-morrow--'in order to bathe' as he's good enough
+to tell me?"
+
+"If you're right about the path, then you've the right to stop him,"
+Stillford answered rather reluctantly. "If you do stop him, that, of
+course, raises the question in a concrete form. You will offer a formal
+resistance. He will make a formal protest. Then the lawyers step in."
+
+"We always end with the lawyers--and my lawyer doesn't seem sure I'm
+right!"
+
+"Well, I'm not sure," said Stillford bluntly. "It's impossible to be
+sure at this stage of the case."
+
+"For all I see, he may use my path to-morrow!" The Marchesa was
+justifying her boast that she could stick to a point.
+
+"Now that you've lodged your objection, that won't matter much legally."
+
+"It will annoy me intensely," the Marchesa complained.
+
+"Then we'll stop him," declared Colonel Wenman valorously.
+
+"Politely--but firmly," added Captain Irons.
+
+"And what do you say, Mr. Stillford?"
+
+"I'll go with these fellows anyhow--and see that they don't overstep the
+law. No more than the strictly necessary force, Colonel!"
+
+"I begin to think that the law is rather stupid," said the Marchesa. She
+thought it stupid; Lynborough held it iniquitous; the law was at a
+discount, and its majesty little reverenced, that night.
+
+Ultimately, however, Stillford persuaded the angry lady to--as he
+tactfully put it--give Lynborough a chance. "See what he does first. If
+he crosses the path now, after warning, your case is clear. Write to him
+again then, and tell him that, if he persists in trespassing, your
+servants have orders to interfere."
+
+"That lets him bathe to-morrow!" Once more the Marchesa returned to her
+point--a very sore one.
+
+"Just for once, it really doesn't matter!" Stillford urged.
+
+Reluctantly she acquiesced; the others were rather relieved--not because
+they objected to a fight, but because eight in the morning was rather
+early to start one. Breakfast at the Grange was at nine-thirty, and,
+though the men generally went down for a dip, they went much later than
+Lord Lynborough proposed to go.
+
+"He shall have one chance of withdrawing gracefully," the Marchesa
+finally decided.
+
+Stillford was unfeignedly glad to hear her say so; he had, from a
+professional point of view, no desire for a conflict. Inquiries which he
+had made in Fillby--both from men in Scarsmoor Castle employ and from
+independent persons--had convinced him that Lynborough's case was
+strong. For many years--through the time of two Lynboroughs before the
+present at Scarsmoor, and through the time of three Crosses (the
+predecessors of the Marchesa) at Nab Grange, Scarsmoor Castle had
+without doubt asserted this dominant right over Nab Grange. It had been
+claimed and exercised openly--and, so far as he could discover, without
+protest or opposition. The period, as he reckoned it, would prove to be
+long enough to satisfy the law as to prescription; it was very unlikely
+that any document existed--or anyhow could be found--which would serve
+to explain away the presumption which uses such as this gave. In fine,
+the Marchesa's legal adviser was of opinion that in a legal fight the
+Marchesa would be beaten. His own hope lay in compromise; if friendly
+relations could be established, there would be a chance of a
+compromise. He was sure that the Marchesa would readily grant as a
+favor--and would possibly give in return for a nominal payment--all that
+Lynborough asked. That would be the best way out of the difficulty. "Let
+us temporize, and be conciliatory," thought the man of law.
+
+Alas, neither conciliation nor dilatoriness was in Lord Lynborough's
+line! He read the Marchesa's letter with appreciation and pleasure. He
+admired the curtness of its intimation, and the lofty haughtiness with
+which the writer dismissed the subject of his bathing. But he treated
+the document--it cannot be said that he did wrong--as a plain defiance.
+It appeared to him that no further declaration of war was necessary; he
+was not concerned to consider evidence nor to weigh his case, as
+Stillford wanted to weigh her case. This for two reasons: first,
+because he was entirely sure that he was right; secondly because he had
+no intention of bringing the question to trial. Lynborough knew but one
+tribunal; he had pointed out its local habitation to Roger Wilbraham.
+
+Accordingly it fell out that conciliatory counsels and Fabian tactics at
+Nab Grange received a very severe--perhaps indeed a fatal--shock the
+next morning.
+
+At about nine o'clock the Marchesa was sitting in her dressing-gown by
+the open window, reading her correspondence and sipping an early cup of
+tea--she had become quite English in her habits. Her maid reëntered the
+room, carrying in her hand a small parcel. "For your Excellency," she
+said. "A man has just left it at the door." She put the parcel down on
+the marble top of the dressing-table.
+
+"What is it?" asked the Marchesa indolently.
+
+"I don't know, your Excellency. It's hard, and very heavy for its size."
+
+Laying down the letter which she had been perusing, the Marchesa took up
+the parcel and cut the string which bound it. With a metallic clink
+there fell on her dressing-table--a padlock! To it was fastened a piece
+of paper, bearing these words: "Padlock found attached to gate leading
+to Beach Path. Detached by order of Lord Lynborough. With Lord
+Lynborough's compliments."
+
+Now, too, Lynborough might have got his flush--if he could have been
+there to see it!
+
+"Bring me my field-glasses!" she cried.
+
+The window commanded a view of the gardens, of the meadows beyond the
+sunk fence, of the path--Beach Path as that man was pleased to call
+it!--and of the gate. At the last-named object the enraged Marchesa
+directed her gaze. The barricade of furze branches was gone! The gate
+hung open upon its hinges!
+
+While she still looked, three figures came across the lens. A very large
+stout shape--a short spare form--a tall, lithe, very lean figure. They
+were just reaching the gate, coming from the direction of the sea. The
+two first were strangers to her; the third she had seen for a moment the
+afternoon before on Sandy Nab. It was Lynborough himself, beyond a
+doubt. The others must be friends--she cared not about them. But to sit
+here with the padlock before her, and see Lynborough pass through the
+gate--a meeker woman than she had surely been moved to wrath! He had
+bathed--as he had said he would. And he had sent her the padlock. That
+was what came of listening to conciliatory counsels, of letting herself
+give ear to dilatory persuasions!
+
+"War!" declared the Marchesa. "War--war--war! And if he's not careful, I
+won't confine it to the path either!" She seemed to dream of conquests,
+perhaps to reckon resources, whereof Mr. Stillford, her legal adviser,
+had taken no account.
+
+She carried the padlock down to breakfast with her; it was to her as a
+Fiery Cross; it summoned her and her array to battle. She exhibited it
+to her guests.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, I'm in your hands!" said she. "Is that man to walk over
+my property for his miserable bathing to-morrow?"
+
+He would have been a bold man who, at that moment, would have answered
+her with a "Yes."
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Five_
+
+THE BEGINNING OF WAR
+
+
+An enviable characteristic of Lord Lynborough's was that, when he had
+laid the fuse, he could wait patiently for the explosion. (That last
+word tends to recur in connection with him.) Provided he knew that his
+adventure and his joke were coming, he occupied the interval
+profitably--which is to say, as agreeably as he could. Having launched
+the padlock--his symbolical ultimatum--and asserted his right, he spent
+the morning in dictating to Roger Wilbraham a full, particular, and
+veracious account of his early differences with the Dean of Christ
+Church. Roger found his task entertaining, for Lynborough's mimicry of
+his distinguished opponent was excellent. Stabb meanwhile was among the
+tombs in an adjacent apartment.
+
+This studious tranquillity was disturbed by the announcement of a call
+from Mr. Stillford. Not without difficulty he had persuaded the Marchesa
+to let him reconnoiter the ground--to try, if it seemed desirable, the
+effect of a bit of "bluff"--at any rate to discover, if he could,
+something of the enemy's plan of campaign. Stillford was, in truth, not
+a little afraid of a lawsuit!
+
+Lynborough denied himself to no man, and received with courtesy every
+man who came. But his face grew grim and his manner distant when
+Stillford discounted the favorable effect produced by his appearance and
+manner--also by his name, well known in the county--by confessing that
+he called in the capacity of the Marchesa's solicitor.
+
+"A solicitor?" said Lynborough, slightly raising his brows.
+
+"Yes. The Marchesa does me the honor to place her confidence in me; and
+it occurs to me that, before this unfortunate dispute----"
+
+"Why unfortunate?" interrupted Lynborough with an air of some surprise.
+
+"Surely it is--between neighbors? The Castle and the Grange should be
+friends." His cunning suggestion elicited no response. "It occurred to
+me," he continued, somewhat less glibly, "that, before further annoyance
+or expense was caused, it might be well if I talked matters over with
+your lordship's solicitor."
+
+"Sir," said Lynborough, "saving your presence--which, I must beg you to
+remember, was not invited by me--I don't like solicitors. I have no
+solicitor. I shall never have a solicitor. You can't talk with a
+non-existent person."
+
+"But proceedings are the natural--the almost inevitable--result of such
+a situation as your action has created, Lord Lynborough. My client can't
+be flouted, she can't have her indubitable rights outraged----"
+
+"Do you think they're indubitable?" Lynborough put in, with a sudden
+quick flash of his eyes.
+
+For an instant Stillford hesitated. Then he made his orthodox reply. "As
+I am instructed, they certainly are."
+
+"Ah!" said Lynborough dryly.
+
+"No professional man could say more than that, Lord Lynborough."
+
+"And they all say just as much! If I say anything you don't like, again
+remember that this interview is not of my seeking, Mr. Stillford."
+
+Stillford waxed a trifle sarcastic. "You'll conduct your case in
+person?" he asked.
+
+"If you hale me to court, I shall. Otherwise there's no question of a
+case."
+
+This time Stillford's eyes brightened; yet still he doubted Lynborough's
+meaning.
+
+"We shouldn't hesitate to take our case into court."
+
+"Since you're wrong, you'd probably win," said Lynborough, with a smile.
+"But I'd make it cost you the devil of a lot of money. That, at least,
+the law can do--I'm not aware that it can do much else. But as far as
+I'm concerned, I should as soon appeal to the Pope of Rome in this
+matter as to a law-court--sooner in fact."
+
+Stillford grew more confidently happy--and more amazed at Lynborough.
+
+"But you've no right to--er--assert rights if you don't intend to
+support them."
+
+"I do intend to support them, Mr. Stillford. That you'll very soon find
+out."
+
+"By force?" Stillford himself was gratified by the shocked solemnity
+which he achieved in this question.
+
+"If so, your side has no prejudice against legal proceedings. Prisons
+are not strange to me----"
+
+"What?" Stillford was a little startled. He had not heard all the
+stories about Lord Lynborough.
+
+"I say, prisons are not strange to me. If necessary, I can do a month. I
+am, however, not altogether a novice in the somewhat degrading art of
+getting the other man to hit first. Then he goes to prison, doesn't he?
+Just like the law! As if that had anything to do with the merits!"
+
+Stillford kept his eye on the point valuable to him. "By supporting your
+claim I intended to convey supporting it by legal action."
+
+"Oh, the cunning of this world, the cunning of this world, Roger!" He
+flung himself into an arm-chair, laughing. Stillford was already seated.
+"Take a cigarette, Mr. Stillford. You want to know whether I'm going to
+law or not, don't you? Well, I'm not. Is there anything else you want to
+know? Oh, by the way, we don't abstain from the law because we don't
+know the law. Permit me--Mr. Stillford, solicitor--Mr. Roger Wilbraham,
+of the Middle Temple, Esquire, barrister-at-law. Had I known you were
+coming, Roger should have worn his wig. No, no, we know the law--but we
+hate it."
+
+Stillford was jubilant at a substantial gain--the appeal to law lay
+within the Marchesa's choice now; and that was in his view a great
+advantage. But he was legitimately irritated by Lynborough's sneers at
+his profession.
+
+"So do most of the people who belong to--the people to whom prisons are
+not strange, Lord Lynborough."
+
+"Apostles--and so on?" asked Lynborough airily.
+
+"I hardly recognize your lordship as belonging to
+that--er--er--category."
+
+"That's the worst of it--nobody will," Lynborough admitted candidly. A
+note of sincere, if whimsical, regret sounded in his voice. "I've been
+trying for fifteen years. Yet some day I may be known as St. Ambrose!"
+His tones fell to despondency again. "St. Ambrose the Less, though--yes,
+I'm afraid the Less. Apostles--even Saints--are much handicapped in
+these days, Mr. Stillford."
+
+Stillford rose to his feet. "You've no more to say to me, Lord
+Lynborough?"
+
+"I don't know that I ever had anything to say to you, Mr. Stillford. You
+must have gathered before now that I intend to use Beach Path."
+
+"My client intends to prevent you."
+
+"Yes?--Well, you're three able-bodied men down there--so my man tells
+me--you, and the Colonel, and the Captain. And we're three up here. It
+seems to me fair enough."
+
+"You don't really contemplate settling the matter by personal conflict?"
+He was half amused, yet genuinely stricken in his habits of thought.
+
+"Entirely a question for your side. We shall use the path." Lynborough
+cocked his head on one side, looking up at the sturdy lawyer with a
+mischievous amusement. "I shall harry you, Mr. Stillford--day and night
+I shall harry you. If you mean to keep me off that path, vigils will be
+your portion. And you won't succeed."
+
+"I make a last appeal to your lordship. The matter could, I believe, be
+adjusted on an amicable basis. The Marchesa could be prevailed upon to
+grant permission----"
+
+"I'd just as soon ask her permission to breathe," interrupted
+Lynborough.
+
+"Then my mission is at an end."
+
+"I congratulate you."
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"Well, you've found out the chief thing you wanted to know, haven't you?
+If you'd asked it point-blank, we should have saved a lot of time.
+Good-by, Mr. Stillford. Roger, the bell's in reach of your hand."
+
+"You're pleased to be amused at my expense?" Stillford had grown huffy.
+
+"No--only don't think you've been clever at mine," Lynborough retorted
+placidly.
+
+So they parted. Lynborough went back to his Dean, Stillford to the
+Marchesa. Still ruffled in his plumes, feeling that he had been chaffed
+and had made no adequate reply, yet still happy in the solid, the
+important fact which he had ascertained, he made his report to his
+client. He refrained from openly congratulating her on not being
+challenged to a legal fight; he contented himself with observing that it
+was convenient to be able to choose her own time to take proceedings.
+
+Lady Norah was with the Marchesa. They both listened attentively and
+questioned closely. Not the substantial points alone attracted their
+interest; Stillford was constantly asked--"How did he look when he said
+that?" He had no other answer than "Oh--well--er--rather queer." He left
+them, having received directions to rebarricade the gate as solidly and
+as offensively as possible; a board warning off trespassers was also to
+be erected.
+
+Although not apt at a description of his interlocutor, yet Stillford
+seemed to have conveyed an impression.
+
+"I think he must be delightful," said Norah thoughtfully, when the two
+ladies were left together. "I'm sure he's just the sort of a man I
+should fall in love with, Helena."
+
+As a rule the Marchesa admired and applauded Norah's candor, praising it
+for a certain patrician flavor--Norah spoke her mind, let the crowd
+think what it would! On this occasion she was somehow less pleased; she
+was even a little startled. She was conscious that any man with whom
+Norah was gracious enough to fall in love would be subjected to no
+ordinary assault; the Irish coloring is bad to beat, and Norah had it to
+perfection; moreover, the aforesaid candor makes matters move ahead.
+
+"After all, it's my path he's trespassing on, Norah," the Marchesa
+remonstrated.
+
+They both began to laugh. "The wretch is as handsome as--as a god,"
+sighed Helena.
+
+"You've seen him?" eagerly questioned Norah; and the glimpse--that
+tantalizing glimpse--on Sandy Nab was confessed to.
+
+The Marchesa sprang up, clenching her fist. "Norah, I should like to
+have that man at my feet, and then to trample on him! Oh, it's not only
+the path! I believe he's laughing at me all the time!"
+
+"He's never seen you. Perhaps if he did he wouldn't laugh. And perhaps
+you wouldn't trample on him either."
+
+"Ah, but I would!" She tossed her head impatiently. "Well, if you want
+to meet him. I expect you can do it--on my path to-morrow!"
+
+This talk left the Marchesa vaguely vexed. Her feeling could not be
+called jealousy; nothing can hardly be jealous of nothing, and even as
+her acquaintance with Lynborough amounted to nothing, Lady Norah's also
+was represented by a cipher. But why should Norah want to know him? It
+was the Marchesa's path--by consequence it was the Marchesa's quarrel.
+Where did Norah stand in the matter? The Marchesa had perhaps been
+constructing a little drama. Norah took leave to introduce a new
+character!
+
+And not Norah alone, as it appeared at dinner. Little Violet Dufaure,
+whose appealing ways were notoriously successful with the emotionally
+weaker sex, took her seat at table with a demurely triumphant air.
+Captain Irons reproached her, with polite gallantry, for having deserted
+the croquet lawn after tea.
+
+"Oh, I went for a walk to Fillby--through Scarsmoor, you know."
+
+"Through Scarsmoor, Violet?" The Marchesa sounded rather startled again.
+
+"It's a public road, you know, Helena. Isn't it, Mr. Stillford?"
+
+Stillford admitted that it was. "All the same, perhaps the less we go
+there at the present moment----"
+
+"Oh, but Lord Lynborough asked me to come again and to go wherever I
+liked--not to keep to the stupid road."
+
+Absolute silence reigned. Violet looked round with a smile which
+conveyed a general appeal for sympathy; there was, perhaps, special
+reference to Miss Gilletson as the guardian of propriety, and to the
+Marchesa as the owner of the disputed path.
+
+"You see, I took Nellie, and the dear always does run away. She ran
+after a rabbit. I ran after her, of course. The rabbit ran into a hole,
+and I ran into Lord Lynborough. Helena, he's charming!"
+
+"I'm thoroughly tired of Lord Lynborough," said the Marchesa icily.
+
+"He must have known I was staying with you, I think; but he never so
+much as mentioned you. He just ignored you--the whole thing, I mean.
+Wasn't it tactful?"
+
+Tactful it might have been; it did not appear to gratify the Marchesa.
+
+"What a wonderful air there is about a--a _grand seigneio_!" pursued
+Violet reflectively. "Such a difference it makes!"
+
+That remark did not gratify any of the gentlemen present; it implied a
+contrast, although it might not definitely assert one.
+
+"It is such a pity that you've quarreled about that silly path!"
+
+"Oh! oh! Miss Dufaure!"--"I say come, Miss Dufaure!"--"Er--really, Miss
+Dufaure!"--these three remonstrances may be distributed indifferently
+among the three men. They felt that there was a risk of treason in the
+camp.
+
+The Marchesa assumed her grandest manner; it was medieval--it was
+Titianesque.
+
+"Fortunately, as it seems, Violet, I do not rely on your help to
+maintain my fights in regard to the path. Pray meet Lord Lynborough as
+often as you please, but spare me any unnecessary mention of his name."
+
+"I didn't mean any harm. It was all Nellie's fault."
+
+The Marchesa's reply--if such it can be called--was delivered _sotto
+voce_, yet was distinctly audible. It was also brief. She said
+"_Nellie_!" Nellie was, of course, Miss Dufaure's dog.
+
+Night fell upon an apparently peaceful land. Yet Violet was an absentee
+from the Marchesa's dressing-room that night, and even between Norah and
+her hostess the conversation showed a tendency to flag. Norah, for all
+her courage, dared not mention the name of Lynborough, and Helena most
+plainly would not. Yet what else was there to talk about? It had come to
+that point even so early in the war!
+
+Meanwhile, up at Scarsmoor Castle, Lynborough, in exceedingly high
+spirits, talked to Leonard Stabb.
+
+"Yes, Cromlech," he said, "a pretty girl, a very pretty girl if you like
+that _petite_ insinuating style. For myself I prefer something a shade
+more--what shall we call it?"
+
+"Don't care a hang," muttered Stabb.
+
+"A trifle more in the grand manner, perhaps, Cromlech. And she hadn't
+anything like the complexion. I knew at once that it couldn't be the
+Marchesa. Do you bathe to-morrow morning?"
+
+"And get my head broken?"
+
+"Just stand still, and let them throw themselves against you, Cromlech.
+Roger!--Oh, he's gone to bed; stupid thing to do--that! Cromlech, old
+chap, I'm enjoying myself immensely."
+
+He just touched his old friend's shoulder as he passed by: the caress
+was almost imperceptible. Stabb turned his broad red face round to him
+and laughed ponderously.
+
+"Oh, and you understand!" cried Lynborough.
+
+"I have never myself objected to a bit of fun with the girls," said
+Stabb.
+
+Lynborough sank into a chair murmuring delightedly, "You're priceless,
+Cromlech!"
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Six_
+
+EXERCISE BEFORE BREAKFAST
+
+
+"Life--" (The extract is from Lynborough's diary, dated this same 14th
+of June)--"may be considered as a process (Cromlech's view, conducting
+to the tomb)--a program (as, I am persuaded, Roger conceives it, marking
+off each stage thereof with a duly guaranteed stamp of performance)--or
+as a progress--in which light I myself prefer to envisage it.
+Process--program--progress; the words, with my above-avowed preference,
+sound unimpeachably orthodox. Once I had a Bishop ancestor. He crops
+out.
+
+"Yet I don't mean what he does. I don't believe in growing better in
+the common sense--that is, in an increasing power to resist what tempts
+you, to refrain from doing what you want. That ideal seems to me, more
+and more, to start from the wrong end. No man refrains from doing what
+he wants to do. In the end the contradiction--the illogicality--is
+complete. You learn to want more wisely--that's all. Train desire, for
+you can never chain it.
+
+"I'm engaged here and now on what is to all appearance the most trivial
+of businesses. I play the spiteful boy--she is an obstinate peevish
+girl. There are other girls too--one an insinuating tiny minx, who would
+wheedle a backward glance out of Simon Stylites as he remounted his
+pillar--and, by the sun in heaven, will get little more from this child
+of Mother Earth! There's another, I hear--Irish!--And Irish is near my
+heart. But behind her--set in the uncertain radiance of my
+imagination--lies her Excellency. Heaven knows why! Save that it is
+gloriously paradoxical to meet a foreign Excellency in this spot, and to
+get to most justifiable, most delightful, loggerheads with her
+immediately. I have conceived Machiavellian devices. I will lure away
+her friends. I will isolate her, humiliate her, beat her in the fight.
+There may be some black eyes--some bruised hearts--but I shall do it.
+Why? I have always been gentle before. But so I feel toward her. And
+therefore I am afraid. This is the foeman for my steel, I think--I have
+my doubts but that she'll beat me in the end.
+
+"When I talk like this, Cromlech chuckles, loves me as a show, despises
+me as a mind. Roger--young Roger Fitz-Archdeacon--is all an incredulous
+amazement. I don't wonder. There is nothing so small and nothing so
+great--nothing so primitive and not a thing so complex--nothing so
+unimportant and so engrossing as this 'duel of the sexes.' A proves it a
+trifle, and is held great. B reckons it all-supreme, and becomes
+popular. C (a woman) describes the Hunter Man. D (a man) descants of the
+Pursuit by Woman. The oldest thing is the most canvassed and the least
+comprehended. But there's a reputation--and I suppose money--in it for
+anybody who can string phrases. There's blood-red excitement for
+everybody who can feel. Yet I've played my part in other affairs--not so
+much in dull old England, where you work five years to become a Member
+of Parliament, and five years more in order to get kicked out again--but
+in places where in a night you rise or fall--in five minutes order the
+shooting-squad or face it--boil the cook or are stuffed into the pot
+yourself. (Cromlech, this is not exact scientific statement!) Yet
+always--everywhere--the woman! And why? On my honor, I don't know. What
+in the end is she?
+
+"I adjourn the question--and put a broader one. What am I? The human
+being as such? If I'm a vegetable, am I not a mistake? If I'm an animal,
+am I not a cruelty? If I'm a soul, am I not misplaced? I'd say 'Yes' to
+all this, save that I enjoy myself so much. Because I have forty
+thousand a year? Hardly. I've had nothing, and been as completely out of
+reach of getting anything as the veriest pauper that ever existed--and
+yet I've had the deuce of a fine existence the while. I think there's
+only one solid blunder been made about man--he oughtn't to have been
+able to think. It wastes time. It makes many people unhappy. That's not
+my case. I like it. It just wastes time.
+
+"That insinuating minx, possessed of a convenient dog and an
+ingratiating manner, insinuated to-day that I was handsome. Well, she's
+pretty, and I suppose we're both better off for it. It is an
+introduction. But to myself I don't seem very handsome. I have my
+pride--I look a gentleman. But I look a queer foreign fish. I found
+myself envying the British robustness of that fine young chap who is so
+misguided as to be a lawyer.
+
+"Ah, why do I object to lawyers? Tolstoi!--I used to say--or, at the
+risk of advanced intellects not recognizing one's allusions, one could
+go further back. But that is, in the end, all gammon. Every real
+conviction springs from personal experience. I hate the law because it
+interfered with me. I'm not aware of any better reason. So I'm going on
+without it--unless somebody tries to steal my forty thousand, of course.
+Ambrose, thou art a humbug--or, more precisely, thou canst not avoid
+being a human individual!"
+
+Lord Lynborough completed the entry in his diary--he was tolerably well
+aware that he might just as well not have written it--and cast his eyes
+toward the window of the library. The stars were bright; a crescent moon
+decorated, without illuminating, the sky. The regular recurrent beat of
+the sea on the shore, traversing the interval in night's silence, struck
+on his ear. "If God knew Time, that might be His clock," said he.
+"Listen to its inexorable, peaceable, gentle, formidable stroke!"
+
+His sleep that night was short and broken. A fitful excitement was on
+his spirit: the glory of the summer morning wooed his restlessness. He
+would take his swim alone, and early. At six o'clock he slipped out of
+the house and made for Beach Path. The fortified gate was too strong for
+his unaided efforts. Roger Wilbraham had told him that, if the way were
+impeded, he had a right to "deviate." He deviated now, lightly vaulting
+over the four-foot-high stone wall. None was there to hinder him, and,
+with emotions appropriate to the occasion, he passed Nab Grange and
+gained the beach. When once he was in the water, the emotions went away.
+
+They were to return--or, at any rate, to be succeeded by their brethren.
+After he had dressed, he sat down and smoked a cigarette as he regarded
+the smiling sea. This situation was so agreeable that he prolonged it
+for full half-an-hour; then a sudden longing for Coltson's coffee came
+over him. He jumped up briskly and made for the Grange gate.
+
+He had left it open--it was shut now. None had been nigh when he passed
+through. Now a young woman in a white frock leant her elbows comfortably
+on its top rail and rested her pretty chin upon her hands. Lady Norah's
+blue eyes looked at him serenely from beneath black lashes of noticeable
+length--at any rate Lynborough noticed their length.
+
+Lynborough walked up to the gate. With one hand he removed his hat, with
+the other he laid a tentative hand on the latch. Norah did not move or
+even smile.
+
+"I beg your pardon, madam," said Lynborough, "but if it does not
+incommode you, would you have the great kindness to permit me to open
+the gate?"
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry; but this is a private path leading to Nab Grange. I
+suppose you're a stranger in these parts?"
+
+"My name is Lynborough. I live at Scarsmoor there."
+
+"Are you Lord Lynborough?" Norah sounded exceedingly interested. "_The_
+Lord Lynborough?"
+
+"There's only one, so far as I'm aware," the owner of the title
+answered.
+
+"I mean the one who has done all those--those--well, those funny
+things?"
+
+"I rejoice if the recital of them has caused you any amusement. And now,
+if you will permit me----"
+
+"Oh, but I can't! Helena would never forgive me. I'm a friend of hers,
+you know--of the Marchesa di San Servolo. Really you can't come through
+here."
+
+"Do you think you can stop me?"
+
+"There isn't room for you to get over as long as I stand here--and the
+wall's too high to climb, isn't it?"
+
+Lynborough studied the wall; it was twice the height of the wall on the
+other side; it might be possible to scale, but difficult and laborious;
+nor would he look imposing while struggling at the feat.
+
+"You'll have to go round by the road," remarked Norah, breaking into a
+smile.
+
+Lynborough was enjoying the conversation just as much as she was--but he
+wanted two things; one was victory, the other coffee.
+
+"Can't I persuade you to move?" he said imploringly. "I really don't
+want to have to resort to more startling measures."
+
+"You surely wouldn't use force against a girl, Lord Lynborough!"
+
+"I said startling measures--not violent ones," he reminded her. "Are
+your nerves good?"
+
+"Excellent, thank you."
+
+"You mean to stand where you are?"
+
+"Yes--till you've gone away." Now she laughed openly at him. Lynborough
+delighted in the merry sound and the flash of her white teeth.
+
+"It's a splendid morning, isn't it?" he asked. "I should think you stand
+about five feet five, don't you? By the way, whom have I the pleasure of
+conversing with?"
+
+"My name is Norah Mountliffey."
+
+"Ah, I knew your father very well." He drew back a few steps. "So you
+must excuse an old family friend for telling you that you make a
+charming picture at that gate. If I had a camera--Just as you are,
+please!" He held up his hand, as though to pose her.
+
+"Am I quite right?" she asked, humoring the joke, with her merry
+mischievous eyes set on Lynborough's face as she leaned over the top of
+the gate.
+
+"Quite right. Now, please! Don't move!"
+
+"Oh, I've no intention of moving," laughed Norah mockingly.
+
+She kept her word; perhaps she was too surprised to do anything else.
+For Lynborough, clapping his hat on firmly, with a dart and a spring
+flew over her head.
+
+Then she wheeled round--to see him standing two yards from her, his hat
+in his hand again, bowing apologetically.
+
+"Forgive me for getting between you and the sunshine for a moment," he
+said. "But I thought I could still do five feet five; and you weren't
+standing upright either. I've done within an inch of six feet, you know.
+And now I'm afraid I must reluctantly ask you to excuse me. I thank you
+for the pleasure of this conversation." He bowed, put on his hat,
+turned, and began to walk away along Beach Path.
+
+"You got the better of me that time, but you've not done with me yet,"
+she cried, starting after him.
+
+He turned and looked over his shoulder: save for his eyes his face was
+quite grave. He quickened his pace to a very rapid walk. Norah found
+that she must run, or fall behind. She began to run. Again that gravely
+derisory face turned upon her. She blushed, and fell suddenly to
+wondering whether in running she looked absurd. She fell to a walk.
+Lynborough seemed to know. Without looking round again, he abated his
+pace.
+
+"Oh, I can't catch you if you won't stop!" she cried.
+
+"My friend and secretary, Roger Wilbraham, tells me that I have no right
+to stop," Lynborough explained, looking round again, but not standing
+still. "I have only the right to pass and repass. I'm repassing now.
+He's a barrister, and he says that's the law. I daresay it is--but I
+regret that it prevents me from obliging you, Lady Norah."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to make a fool of myself by running after you,"
+said Norah crossly.
+
+Lynborough walked slowly on; Norah followed; they reached the turn of
+the path towards the Grange hall door. They reached it--and passed
+it--both of them. Lynborough turned once more--with a surprised lift of
+his brows.
+
+"At least I can see you safe off the premises!" laughed Norah, and with
+a quick dart forward she reduced the distance between them to
+half-a-yard. Lynborough seemed to have no objection; proximity made
+conversation easier; he moved slowly on.
+
+Norah seemed defeated--but suddenly she saw her chance, and hailed it
+with a cry. The Marchesa's bailiff--John Goodenough--was approaching the
+path from the house situated at the southwest corner of the meadow. Her
+cry of his name caught his attention--as well as Lynborough's. The
+latter walked a little quicker. John Goodenough hurried up. Lynborough
+walked steadily on.
+
+"Stop him, John!" cried Norah, her eyes sparkling with new excitement.
+"You know her Excellency's orders? This is Lord Lynborough!"
+
+"His lordship! Aye, it is. I beg your pardon, my lord, but--I'm very
+sorry to interfere with your lordship, but----"
+
+"You're in my way, Goodenough." For John had got across his path, and
+barred progress. "Of course I must stand still if you impede my steps,
+but I do it under protest. I only want to repass."
+
+"You can't come this way, my lord. I'm sorry, but it's her Excellency's
+strict orders. You must go back, my lord."
+
+"I am going back--or I was till you stopped me."
+
+"Back to where you came from, my lord."
+
+"I came from Scarsmoor and I'm going back there, Goodenough."
+
+"Where you came from last, my lord."
+
+"No, no, Goodenough. At all events, her Excellency has no right to drive
+me into the sea." Lynborough's tone was plaintively expostulatory.
+
+"Then if you won't go back, my lord, here we stay!" said John,
+bewildered but faithfully obstinate.
+
+"Just your tactics!" Lynborough observed to Norah, a keen spectator of
+the scene. "But I'm not so patient of them from Goodenough."
+
+"I don't know that you were very patient with me."
+
+"Goodenough, if you use sufficient force I shall, of course, be
+prevented from continuing on my way. Nothing short of that, however,
+will stop me. And pray take care that the force is sufficient--neither
+more nor less than sufficient, Goodenough."
+
+"I don't want to use no violence to your lordship. Well now, if I lay my
+hand on your lordship's shoulder, will that do to satisfy your
+lordship?"
+
+"I don't know until you try it."
+
+John's face brightened. "I reckon that's the way out. I reckon that's
+law, my lord. I puts my hand on your lordship's shoulder like that----"
+
+He suited the action to the word. In an instant Lynborough's long lithe
+arms were round him, Lynborough's supple lean leg twisted about his.
+Gently, as though he had been a little baby, Lynborough laid the sturdy
+fellow on the grass.
+
+For all she could do, Norah Mountliffey cried "Bravo!" and clapped her
+hands. Goodenough sat up, scratched his head, and laughed feebly.
+
+"Force not quite sufficient, Goodenough," cried Lynborough gaily. "Now I
+repass!"
+
+He lifted his hat to Norah, then waved his hand. In her open impulsive
+way she kissed hers back to him as he turned away.
+
+By one of those accidents peculiar to tragedy, the Marchesa's maid,
+performing her toilet at an upper window, saw this nefarious and
+traitorous deed!
+
+"Swimming--jumping--wrestling! A good morning's exercise! And all
+before those lazy chaps, Roger and Cromlech, are out of bed!"
+
+So saying, Lord Lynborough vaulted the wall again in high good humor.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Seven_
+
+ANOTHER WEDGE!
+
+
+Deprived of their leader's inspiration, the other two representatives of
+Scarsmoor did not brave the Passage Perilous to the sea that morning.
+Lynborough was well content to forego further aggression for the moment.
+His words declared his satisfaction----
+
+"I have driven a wedge--another wedge--into the Marchesa's phalanx. Yes,
+I think I may say a second wedge. Disaffection has made its entry into
+Nab Grange, Cromlech. The process of isolation has begun. Perhaps after
+lunch we will resume operations."
+
+But fortune was to give him an opportunity even before lunch. It
+appeared that Stabb had sniffed out the existence of two old brasses in
+Fillby Church; he was determined to inspect them at the earliest
+possible moment. Lynborough courteously offered to accompany him, and
+they set out together about eleven o'clock.
+
+No incident marked their way. Lynborough rang up the parish clerk at his
+house, presented Stabb to that important functionary, and bespoke for
+him every consideration. Then he leaned against the outside of the
+churchyard wall, peacefully smoking a cigarette.
+
+On the opposite side of the village street stood the Lynborough Arms.
+The inn was kept by a very superior man, who had retired to this
+comparative leisure after some years of service as butler with
+Lynborough's father. This excellent person, perceiving Lynborough,
+crossed the road and invited him to partake of a glass of ale in memory
+of old days. Readily acquiescing, Lynborough crossed the road, sat down
+with the landlord on a bench by the porch, and began to discuss local
+affairs over the beer.
+
+"I suppose you haven't kept up your cricket since you've been in foreign
+parts, my lord?" asked Dawson, the landlord, after some conversation
+which need not occupy this narrative. "We're playing a team from
+Easthorpe to-morrow, and we're very short."
+
+"Haven't played for nearly fifteen years, Dawson. But I tell you what--I
+daresay my friend Mr. Wilbraham will play. Mr. Stabb's no use."
+
+"Every one helps," said Dawson. "We've got two of the gentlemen from the
+Grange--Mr. Stillford, a good bat, and Captain Irons, who can bowl a
+bit--or so John Goodenough tells me."
+
+Lynborough's eyes had grown alert. "Well, I used to bowl a bit, too. If
+you're really hard up for a man, Dawson--really at a loss, you
+know--I'll play. It'll be better than going into the field short, won't
+it?"
+
+Dawson was profuse in his thanks. Lynborough listened patiently.
+
+"I tell you what I should like to do, Dawson," he said. "I should like
+to stand the lunch."
+
+It was the turn of Dawson's eyes to grow alert. They did. Dawson
+supplied the lunch. The club's finances were slender, and its ideas
+correspondingly modest. But if Lord Lynborough "stood" the lunch----!
+
+"And to do it really well," added that nobleman. "A sort of little feast
+to celebrate my homecoming. The two teams--and perhaps a dozen places
+for friends--ladies, the Vicar, and so on, eh, Dawson? Do you see the
+idea?"
+
+Dawson saw the idea much more clearly than he saw most ideas. Almost
+corporeally he beheld the groaning board.
+
+"On such an occasion, Dawson, we shouldn't quarrel about figures."
+
+"Your lordship's always most liberal," Dawson acknowledged in tones
+which showed some trace of emotion.
+
+"Put the matter in hand at once. But look here, I don't want it talked
+about. Just tell the secretary of the club--that's enough. Keep the tent
+empty till the moment comes. Then display your triumph! It'll be a
+pleasant little surprise for everybody, won't it?"
+
+Dawson thought it would; at any rate it was one for him.
+
+At this instant an elderly lady of demure appearance was observed, to
+walk up to the lych-gate and enter the churchyard. Lynborough inquired
+of his companion who she was.
+
+"That's Miss Gilletson from the Grange, my lord--the Marchesa's
+companion."
+
+"Is it?" said Lynborough softly. "Oh, is it indeed?" He rose from his
+seat. "Good-by, Dawson. Mind--a dead secret, and a rattling good lunch!"
+
+"I'll attend to it, my lord," Dawson assured him with the utmost
+cheerfulness. Never had Dawson invested a glass of beer to better
+profit!
+
+Lynborough threw away his cigar and entered the sacred precincts. His
+brain was very busy. "Another wedge!" he was saying to himself. "Another
+wedge!"
+
+The lady had gone into the church. Lynborough went in too. He came
+first on Stabb--on his hands and knees, examining one of the old brasses
+and making copious notes in a pocket-book.
+
+"Have you seen a lady come in, Cromlech?" asked Lord Lynborough.
+
+"No, I haven't," said Cromlech, now producing a yard measure and
+proceeding to ascertain the dimensions of the brass.
+
+"You wouldn't, if it were Venus herself," replied Lynborough pleasantly.
+"Well, I must look for her on my own account."
+
+He found her in the neighborhood of his family monuments which, with his
+family pew, crowded the little chancel of the church. She was not
+employed in devotions, but was arranging some flowers in a
+vase--doubtless a pious offering. Somewhat at a loss how to open the
+conversation, Lynborough dropped his hat--or rather gave it a dexterous
+jerk, so that it fell at the lady's feet. Miss Gilletson started
+violently, and Lord Lynborough humbly apologized. Thence he glided into
+conversation, first about the flowers, then about the tombs. On the
+latter subject he was exceedingly interesting and informing.
+
+"Dear, dear! Married the Duke of Dexminster's daughter, did he?" said
+Miss Gilletson, considerably thrilled. "She's not buried here, is she?"
+
+"No, she's not," said Lynborough, suppressing the fact that the lady had
+run away after six months of married life. "And my own father's not
+buried here, either; he chose my mother's family place in Devonshire. I
+thought it rather a pity."
+
+"Your own father?" Miss Gilletson gasped.
+
+"Oh, I forgot you didn't know me," he said, laughing. "I'm Lord
+Lynborough, you know. That's how I come to be so well up in all this.
+And I tell you what--I should like to show you some of our Scarsmoor
+roses on your way home."
+
+"Oh, but if you're Lord Lynborough, I--I really couldn't----"
+
+"Who's to know anything about it, unless you choose, Miss Gilletson?" he
+asked with his ingratiating smile and his merry twinkle. "There's
+nothing so pleasant as a secret shared with a lady!"
+
+It was a long time since a handsome man had shared a secret with Miss
+Gilletson. Who knows, indeed, whether such a thing had ever happened? Or
+whether Miss Gilletson had once just dreamed that some day it might--and
+had gone on dreaming for long, long days, till even the dream had slowly
+and sadly faded away? For sometimes it does happen like that.
+Lynborough meant nothing--but no possible effort (supposing he made it)
+could enable him to look as if he meant nothing. One thing at least he
+did mean--to make himself very pleasant to Miss Gilletson.
+
+Interested knave! It is impossible to avoid that reflection. Yet let
+ladies in their turn ask themselves if they are over-scrupulous in their
+treatment of one man when their affections are set upon another.
+
+He showed Miss Gilletson all the family tombs. He escorted her from the
+church. Under renewed vows of secrecy he induced her to enter Scarsmoor.
+Once in the gardens, the good lady was lost. They had no such roses at
+Nab Grange! Lynborough insisted on sending an enormous bouquet to the
+Vicar's wife in Miss Gilletson's name--and Miss Gilletson grew merry as
+she pictured the mystification of the Vicar's wife. For Miss Gilletson
+herself he superintended the selection of a nosegay of the choicest
+blooms; they laughed again together when she hid them in a large bag she
+carried--destined for the tea and tobacco which represented her little
+charities. Then--after pausing for one private word in his gardener's
+ear, which caused a boy to be sent off post-haste to the stables--he led
+her to the road, and in vain implored her to honor his house by setting
+foot in it. There the fear of the Marchesa or (it is pleasanter to
+think) some revival of the sense of youth, bred by Lynborough's
+deferential courtliness, prevailed. They came together through his lodge
+gates; and Miss Gilletson's face suddenly fell.
+
+"That wretched gate!" she cried. "It's locked--and I haven't got the
+key."
+
+"No more have I, I'm sorry to say," said Lynborough. He, on his part,
+had forgotten nothing.
+
+"It's nearly two miles round by the road--and so hot and dusty!--Really
+Helena does cut off her nose to spite her face!" Though, in truth, it
+appeared rather to be Miss Gilletson's nose the Marchesa had cut off.
+
+A commiserating gravity sat on Lord Lynborough's attentive countenance.
+
+"If I were younger, I'd climb that wall," declared Miss Gilletson. "As
+it is--well, but for your lovely flowers, I'd better have gone the other
+way after all."
+
+"I don't want you to feel that," said he, almost tenderly.
+
+"I must walk!"
+
+"Oh no, you needn't," said Lynborough.
+
+As he spoke, there issued from the gates behind them a luxurious
+victoria, drawn by two admirable horses. It came to a stand by
+Lynborough, the coachman touching his hat, the footman leaping to the
+ground.
+
+"Just take Miss Gilletson to the Grange, Williams. Stop a little way
+short of the house. She wants to walk through the garden."
+
+"Very good, my lord."
+
+"Put up the hood, Charles. The sun's very hot for Miss Gilletson."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"Nobody'll see you if you get out a hundred yards from the door--and
+it's really better than tramping the road on a day like this. Of course,
+if Beach Path were open--!" He shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly.
+
+Fear of the Marchesa struggled in Miss Gilletson's heart with the horror
+of the hot and tiring walk--with the seduction of the shady, softly
+rolling, speedy carriage.
+
+"If I met Helena!" she whispered; and the whisper was an admission of
+reciprocal confidence.
+
+"It's the chance of that against the certainty of the tramp!"
+
+"She didn't come down to breakfast this morning----"
+
+"Ah, didn't she?" Lynborough made a note for his Intelligence
+Department.
+
+"Perhaps she isn't up yet! I--I think I'll take the risk."
+
+Lynborough assisted her into the carriage.
+
+"I hope we shall meet again," he said, with no small _empressement_.
+
+"I'm afraid not," answered Miss Gilletson dolefully. "You see,
+Helena----"
+
+"Yes, yes; but ladies have their moods. Anyhow you won't think too
+hardly of me, will you? I'm not altogether an ogre."
+
+There was a pretty faint blush on Miss Gilletson's cheek as she gave him
+her hand. "An ogre! No, dear Lord Lynborough," she murmured.
+
+"A wedge!" said Lynborough, as he watched her drive away.
+
+He was triumphant with what he had achieved--he was full of hope for
+what he had planned. If he reckoned right, the loyalty of the ladies at
+Nab Grange to the mistress thereof was tottering, if it had not fallen.
+His relations with the men awaited the result of the cricket match. Yet
+neither his triumph nor his hope could in the nature of the case exist
+without an intermixture of remorse. He hurt--or tried to hurt--what he
+would please--and hoped to please. His mood was mixed, and his smile not
+altogether mirthful as he stood looking at the fast-receding carriage.
+
+Then suddenly, for the first time, he saw his enemy. Distantly--afar
+off! Yet without a doubt it was she. As he turned and cast his eyes over
+the forbidden path--the path whose seclusion he had violated, bold in
+his right--a white figure came to the sunk fence and stood there,
+looking not toward where he stood, but up to his castle on the hill.
+Lynborough edged near to the barricaded gate--a new padlock and new
+_chevaux-de-frise_ of prickly branches guarded it. The latter, high as
+his head, screened him completely; he peered through the interstices in
+absolute security.
+
+The white figure stood on the little bridge which led over the sunk
+fence into the meadow. He could see neither feature nor color; only the
+slender shape caught and chained his eye. Tall she was, and slender, as
+his mocking forecast had prophesied. More than that he could not see.
+
+Well, he did see one more thing. This beautiful shape, after a few
+minutes of what must be presumed to be meditation, raised its arm and
+shook its fist with decision at Scarsmoor Castle; then it turned and
+walked straight back to the Grange.
+
+There was no sort of possibility of mistaking the nature or the meaning
+of the gesture.
+
+It had the result of stifling Lynborough's softer mood, of reviving his
+pugnacity. "She must do more than that, if she's to win!" said he.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Eight_
+
+THE MARCHESA MOVES
+
+
+After her demonstration against Scarsmoor Castle, the Marchesa went in
+to lunch. But there were objects of her wrath nearer home also. She
+received Norah's salute--they had not met before, that morning--with icy
+coldness.
+
+"I'm better, thank you," she said, "but you must be feeling
+tired--having been up so very early in the morning! And
+you--Violet--have you been over to Scarsmoor again?"
+
+Violet had heard from Norah all about the latter's morning adventure.
+They exchanged uneasy glances. Yet they were prepared to back one
+another up. The men looked more frightened; men are frightened when
+women quarrel.
+
+"One of you," continued the Marchesa accusingly, "pursues Lord
+Lynborough to his own threshold--the other flirts with him in my own
+meadow! Rather peculiar signs of friendship for me under the present
+circumstances--don't you think so, Colonel Wenman?"
+
+The Colonel thought so--though he would have greatly preferred to be at
+liberty to entertain--or at least to express--no opinion on so thorny a
+point.
+
+"Flirt with him? What do you mean?" But Norah's protest lacked the ring
+of honest indignation.
+
+"Kissing one's hand to a mere stranger----"
+
+"How do you know that? You were in bed."
+
+"Carlotta saw you from her window. You don't deny it?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Norah, perceiving the uselessness of such a course.
+"In fact, I glory in it. I had a splendid time with Lord Lynborough. Oh,
+I did try to keep him out for you--but he jumped over my head."
+
+Sensation among the gentlemen! Increased scorn on the Marchesa's face!
+
+"And when I got John Goodenough to help me, he just laid John down on
+the grass as--as I lay that spoon on the table! He's splendid, Helena!"
+
+"He seems a good sort of chap," said Irons thoughtfully.
+
+The Marchesa looked at Wenman.
+
+"Nothing to be said for the fellow, nothing at all," declared the
+Colonel hastily.
+
+"Thank you, Colonel Wenman. I'm glad I have one friend left anyhow. Oh,
+besides you, Mr. Stillford, of course. Oh, and you, dear old Jennie, of
+course. You wouldn't forsake me, would you?"
+
+The tone of affection was calculated to gratify Miss Gilletson. But
+against it had to be set the curious and amused gaze of Norah and
+Violet. Seen by these two ladies in the act of descending from a stylish
+(and coroneted) victoria in the drive of Nab Grange, Miss Gilletson had,
+pardonably perhaps, broken down rather severely in cross-examination.
+She had been so very proud of the roses--so very full of Lord
+Lynborough's graces! She was conscious now that the pair held her in
+their hands and were demanding courage from her.
+
+"Forsake you, dearest Helena? Of course not! There's no question of that
+with any of us."
+
+"Yes--there is--with those of you who make friends with that wretch at
+Scarsmoor!"
+
+"Really, Helena, you shouldn't be so--so vehement. I'm not sure it's
+ladylike. It's absurd to call Lord Lynborough a wretch." The pale faint
+flush again adorned her fading cheeks. "I never met a man more
+thoroughly a gentleman."
+
+"You never met--" began the Marchesa in petrified tones. "Then you have
+met--?" Again her words died away.
+
+Miss Gilletson took her courage in both hands.
+
+"Circumstances threw us together. I behaved as a lady does under such
+circumstances, Helena. And Lord Lynborough was, under the circumstances,
+most charming, courteous, and considerate." She gathered more courage as
+she proceeded. "And really it's highly inconvenient having that gate
+locked, Helena. I had to come all the way round by the road."
+
+"I'm sorry if you find yourself fatigued," said the Marchesa with formal
+civility.
+
+"I'm not fatigued, thank you, Helena. I should have been terribly--but
+for Lord Lynborough's kindness in sending me home in his carriage."
+
+A pause followed. Then Norah and Violet began to giggle.
+
+"It was so funny this morning!" said Norah--and boldly launched on a
+full story of her adventure. She held the attention of the table. The
+Marchesa sat in gloomy silence. Violet chimed in with more reminiscences
+of her visit to Scarsmoor; Miss Gilletson contributed new items,
+including that matter of the roses. Norah ended triumphantly with a
+eulogy on Lynborough's extraordinary physical powers. Captain Irons
+listened with concealed interest. Even Colonel Wenman ventured to opine
+that the enemy was worth fighting. Stillford imitated his hostess's
+silence, but he was watching her closely. Would her courage--or her
+obstinacy--break down under these assaults, this lukewarmness, these
+desertions? In his heart, fearful of that lawsuit, he hoped so.
+
+"I shall prosecute him for assaulting Goodenough," the Marchesa
+announced.
+
+"Goodenough touched him first!" cried Norah.
+
+"That doesn't matter, since I'm in the right. He had no business to be
+there. That's the law, isn't it, Mr. Stillford? Will he be sent to
+prison or only heavily fined?"
+
+"Well--er--I'm rather afraid--neither, Marchesa. You see, he'll plead
+his right, and the Bench would refer us to our civil remedy and dismiss
+the summons. At least that's my opinion."
+
+"Of course that's right," pronounced Norah in an authoritative tone.
+
+"If that's the English law," observed the Marchesa, rising from the
+table, "I greatly regret that I ever settled in England."
+
+"What are you going to do this afternoon, Helena? Going to play
+tennis--or croquet?"
+
+"I'm going for a walk, thank you, Violet." She paused for a moment and
+then added, "By myself."
+
+"Oh, mayn't I have the privilege--?" began the Colonel.
+
+"Not to-day, thank you, Colonel Wenman. I--I have a great deal to think
+about. We shall meet again at tea--unless you're all going to tea at
+Scarsmoor Castle!" With this Parthian shot she left them.
+
+She had indeed much to think of--and her reflections were not cast in a
+cheerful mold. She had underrated her enemy. It had seemed sufficient to
+lock the gate and to forbid Lynborough's entry. These easy measures had
+appeared to leave him no resource save blank violence: in that
+confidence she had sat still and done nothing. He had been at work--not
+by blank violence, but by cunning devices and subtle machinations. He
+had made a base use of his personal fascinations, of his athletic gifts,
+even of his lordly domain, his garden of roses, and his carriage. She
+perceived his strategy; she saw now how he had driven in his wedges. Her
+ladies had already gone over to his side; even her men were shaken.
+Stillford had always been lukewarm; Irons was fluttering round
+Lynborough's flame; Wenman might still be hers--but an isolation
+mitigated only by Colonel Wenman seemed an isolation not mitigated in
+the least. When she had looked forward to a fight, it had not been to
+such a fight as this. An enthusiastic, hilarious, united Nab Grange was
+to have hurled laughing defiance at Scarsmoor Castle. Now more than half
+Nab Grange laughed--but its laughter was not at the Castle; its
+laughter, its pitying amusement, was directed at her; Lynborough's
+triumphant campaign drew all admiration. He had told Stillford that he
+would harry her; he was harrying her to his heart's content--and to a
+very soreness in hers.
+
+For the path--hateful Beach Path which her feet at this moment
+trod--became now no more than an occasion for battle, a symbol of
+strife. The greater issue stood out. It was that this man had
+peremptorily challenged her to a fight--and was beating her! And he won
+his victory, not by male violence in spite of male stupidity, but by
+just the arts and the cunning which should have been her own weapons. To
+her he left the blunt, the inept, the stupid and violent methods. He
+chose the more refined, and wielded them like a master. It was a
+position to which the Marchesa's experience had not accustomed her--one
+to which her spirit was by no means attuned.
+
+What was his end--that end whose approach seemed even now clearly
+indicated? It was to convict her at once of cowardice and of
+pig-headedness, to exhibit her as afraid to bring him to book by law,
+and yet too churlish to cede him his rights. He would get all her
+friends to think that about her. Then she would be left alone--to fight
+a lost battle all alone.
+
+Was he right in his charge? Did it truly describe her conduct? For any
+truth there might be in it, she declared that he was himself to blame.
+He had forced the fight on her by his audacious demand for instant
+surrender; he had given her no fair time for consideration, no
+opportunity for a dignified retreat. He had offered her no choice save
+between ignominy and defiance. If she chose defiance, his rather than
+hers was the blame.
+
+Suddenly--across these dismal broodings--there shot a new idea. _Fas est
+et ab hoste doceri_; she did not put it in Latin, but it came to the
+same thing--Couldn't she pay Lynborough back in his own coin? She had
+her resources--perhaps she had been letting them lie idle! Lord
+Lynborough did not live alone at Scarsmoor. If there were women open to
+his wiles at the Grange, were there no men open to hers at Scarsmoor?
+The idea was illuminating; she accorded it place in her thoughts.
+
+She was just by the gate. She took out her key, opened the padlock,
+closed the gate behind her, but did not lock it, walked on to the road,
+and surveyed the territory of Scarsmoor.
+
+Fate helps those who help themselves: her new courage of brain and heart
+had its reward. She had not been there above a minute when Roger
+Wilbraham came out from the Scarsmoor gates.
+
+Lynborough had, he considered, done enough for one day. He was awaiting
+the results of to-morrow's manoeuvers anent the cricket match. But he
+amused himself after lunch by proffering to Roger a wager that he would
+not succeed in traversing Beach Path from end to end, and back again,
+alone, by his own unassisted efforts, and without being driven to
+ignominious flight. Without a moment's hesitation Roger accepted. "I
+shall just wait till the coast's clear," he said.
+
+"Ah, but they'll see you from the windows! They will be on the lookout,"
+Lynborough retorted.
+
+The Marchesa had strolled a little way down the road. She was walking
+back toward the gate when Roger first came in sight. He did not see her
+until after he had reached the gate. There he stood a moment,
+considering at what point to attack it--for the barricade was
+formidable. He came to the same conclusion as Lynborough had reached
+earlier in the day. "Oh, I'll jump the wall," he said.
+
+"The gate isn't locked," remarked a charming voice just behind him.
+
+He turned round with a start and saw--he had no doubt whom she was. The
+Marchesa's tall slender figure stood before him--all in white, crowned
+by a large, yet simple, white hat; her pale olive cheeks were tinged
+with underlying red (the flush of which Lynborough had dreamed!); her
+dark eyes rested on the young man with a kindly languid interest; her
+very red lips showed no smile, yet seemed to have one in ready ambush.
+Roger was overcome; he blushed and stood silent before the vision.
+
+"I expect you're going to bathe? Of course this is the shortest way, and
+I shall be so glad if you'll use it. I'm going to the Grange myself, so
+I can put you on your way."
+
+Roger was honest. "I--I'm staying at the Castle."
+
+"I'll tell somebody to be on the lookout and open the gate for you when
+you come back," said she.
+
+If Norah was no match for Lynborough, Roger was none for the Marchesa's
+practised art.
+
+"You're--you're awfully kind. I--I shall be delighted, of course."
+
+The Marchesa passed through the gate. Roger followed. She handed him the
+key.
+
+"Will you please lock the padlock? It's not--safe--to leave the gate
+open."
+
+Her smile had come into the open--it was on the red lips now! For all
+his agitation Roger was not blind to its meaning. His hand was to lock
+the gate against his friend and chief! But the smile and the eyes
+commanded. He obeyed.
+
+It was the first really satisfactory moment which the contest had
+brought to the Marchesa--some small instalment of consolation for the
+treason of her friends.
+
+Roger had been honestly in love once with a guileless maiden--who had
+promptly and quite unguilefully refused him; his experience did not at
+all fit him to cope with the Marchesa. She, of course, was merciless:
+was he not of the hated house? As an individual, however, he appeared to
+be comely and agreeable.
+
+They walked on side by side--not very quickly. The Marchesa's eyes were
+now downcast. Roger was able to steal a glance at her profile; he could
+compare it to nothing less than a Roman Empress on an ancient silver
+coin.
+
+"I suppose you've been taught to think me a very rude and unneighborly
+person, haven't you, Mr. Wilbraham? At least I suppose you're Mr.
+Wilbraham? You don't look old enough to be that learned Mr. Stabb the
+Vicar told me about. Though he said Mr. Stabb was absolutely
+delightful--how I should love to know him, if only--!" She broke off,
+sighing deeply.
+
+"Yes, my name's Wilbraham. I'm Lynborough's secretary. But--er--I don't
+think anything of that sort about you. And--and I've never heard
+Lynborough say anything--er--unkind."
+
+"Oh, Lord Lynborough!" She gave a charming little shrug, accompanied
+with what Roger, from his novel-reading, conceived to be a _moue_.
+
+"Of course I--I know that you--you think you're right," he stammered.
+
+She stopped on the path. "Yes, I do think I'm right, Mr. Wilbraham. But
+that's not it. If it were merely a question of right, it would be
+unneighborly to insist. I'm not hurt by Lord Lynborough's using this
+path. But I'm hurt by Lord Lynborough's discourtesy. In my country women
+are treated with respect--even sometimes (she gave a bitter little
+laugh) with deference. That doesn't seem to occur to Lord Lynborough."
+
+"Well, you know----"
+
+"Oh, I can't let you say a word against him, whatever you may be obliged
+to think. In your position--as his friend--that would be disloyal; and
+the one thing I dislike is disloyalty. Only I was anxious"--she turned
+and faced him--"that you should understand my position--and that Mr.
+Stabb should too. I shall be very glad if you and Mr. Stabb will use the
+path whenever you like. If the gate's locked you can manage the wall!"
+
+"I'm--I'm most awfully obliged to you--er--Marchesa--but you see----"
+
+"No more need be said about that, Mr. Wilbraham. You're heartily
+welcome. Lord Lynborough would have been heartily welcome too, if he
+would have approached me properly. I was open to discussion. I received
+orders. I don't take orders--not even from Lord Lynborough."
+
+She looked splendid--so Roger thought. The underlying red dyed the olive
+to a brighter hue; her eyes were very proud; the red lips shut
+decisively. Just like a Roman Empress! Then her face underwent a rapid
+transformation; the lips parted, the eyes laughed, the cheeks faded to
+hues less stormy, yet not less beautiful. (These are recorded as Mr.
+Wilbraham's impressions.) Lightly she laid the tips of her fingers on
+his arm for just a moment.
+
+"There--don't let's talk any more about disagreeable things," she said.
+"It's too beautiful an afternoon. Can you spare just five minutes? The
+strawberries are splendid! I want some--and it's so hot to pick them for
+one's self!"
+
+Roger paused, twisting the towel round his neck.
+
+"Only five minutes!" pleaded--yes, pleaded--the beautiful Marchesa.
+"Then you can go and have your swim in peace."
+
+It was a question whether poor Roger was to do anything more in peace
+that day--but he went and picked the strawberries.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Nine_
+
+LYNBOROUGH DROPS A CATCH
+
+
+"Something has happened!" (So Lynborough records the same evening.) "I
+don't know precisely what--but I think that the enemy is at last in
+motion. I'm glad. I was being too successful. I had begun to laugh at
+her--and that only. I prefer the admixture of another element of
+emotion. All that ostensibly appears is that I have lost five shillings
+to Roger. 'You did it?' I asked. 'Certainly,' said Roger. 'I went at my
+ease and came back at my ease, and--' I interrupted, 'Nobody stopped
+you?' 'Nobody made any objection,' said Roger. 'You took your time,'
+says I. 'You were away three hours!' 'The water was very pleasant this
+afternoon,' says Roger. Hum! I hand over my two half-crowns, which Roger
+pockets with a most peculiar sort of smile. There that incident appears
+to end--with a comment from me that the Marchesa's garrison is not very
+alert. Another smile--not less peculiar--from Roger! _Hum!_
+
+"Then Cromlech! I trust Cromlech as myself--that is, as far as I can see
+him. He has no secrets from me--that I know of; I have none from
+him--which would be at all likely to interest him. Yet, soon after
+Roger's return, Cromlech goes out! And they had been alone together for
+some minutes, as I happen to have observed. Cromlech is away an hour and
+a half! If I were not a man of honor, I would have trained the telescope
+on to him. I refrained. Where was Cromlech? At the church, he told me.
+I accept his word--but the church has had a curious effect upon him.
+Sometimes he is silent, sulky, reflective, embarrassed--constantly
+rubbing the place where his hair ought to be--not altogether too civil
+to me either. Anon, sits with a fat happy smile on his face! Has he
+found a new tomb? No; he'd tell me about a new tomb. What has happened
+to Cromlech?
+
+"At first sight Violet--the insinuating one--would account for the
+phenomena. Or Norah's eyes and lashes? Yet I hesitate. Woman, of course,
+it is, with both of them. Violet might make men pleased with themselves;
+Norah could make them merry and happy. Yet these two are not so much
+pleased with themselves--rather they are pleased with events; they are
+not merry--they are thoughtful. And I think they are resentful. I
+believe the hostile squadron has weighed anchor. In these great results,
+achieved so quickly, demanding on my part such an effort in reply, I see
+the Marchesa's touch! I have my own opinion as to what has happened to
+Roger and to Cromlech. Well, we shall see--to-morrow is the cricket
+match!"
+
+"_Later._ I had closed this record; I was preparing to go to bed
+(wishing to bathe early to-morrow) when I found that I had forgotten to
+bring up my book. Coltson had gone to bed--or out--anyhow, away. I went
+down myself. The library door stood ajar; I had on my slippers; a light
+burned still; Cromlech and Roger were up. As I approached--with an
+involuntary noiselessness (I really couldn't be expected to think of
+coughing, in my own house and with no ladies about)--I overheard this
+remarkable, most significant, most important conversation:
+
+"_Cromlech_: 'On my soul, there were tears in her eyes!'
+
+"_Roger_: 'Stabb, can we as gentlemen--?'
+
+"Then, as I presume, the shuffle of my slippers became audible. I went
+in; both drank whisky-and-soda in a hurried fashion. I took my book from
+the table. Naught said I. Their confusion was obvious. I cast on them
+one of my looks; Roger blushed, Stabb shuffled his feet. I left them.
+
+"'Tears in her eyes!' 'Can we as gentlemen?'
+
+"The Marchesa moves slowly, but she moves in force!"
+
+It is unnecessary to pursue the diary further; for his
+lordship--forgetful apparently of the borne of bed, to which he had
+originally destined himself--launches into a variety of speculations as
+to the Nature of Love. Among other questions, he puts to himself the
+following concerning Love: (1) Is it Inevitable? (2) Is it Agreeable?
+(3) Is it Universal? (4) Is it Wise? (5) Is it Remunerative? (6) Is it
+Momentary? (7) Is it Sempiternal? (8) Is it Voluntary? (9) Is it
+Conditioned? (10) Is it Remediable? (11) Is it Religious? (There's a
+note here--"Consult Cromlech")--(12) May it be expected to survive the
+Advance of Civilization? (13) Why does it exist at all? (14) Is it
+Ridiculous?
+
+It is not to be inferred that Lord Lynborough answers these questions.
+He is, like a wise man, content to propound them. If, however, he had
+answered them, it might have been worth while to transcribe the diary.
+
+"Can we as gentlemen--?"--Roger had put the question. It waited
+unanswered till Lynborough had taken his book and returned to record
+its utterance--together with the speculations to which that utterance
+gave rise. Stabb weighed it carefully, rubbing his bald head, according
+to the habit which his friend had animadverted upon.
+
+"If such a glorious creature--" cried Roger.
+
+"If a thoroughly intelligent and most sympathetic woman--" said Stabb.
+
+"Thinks that she has a right, why, she probably has one!"
+
+"At any rate her view is entitled to respect--to a courteous hearing."
+
+"Lynborough does appear to have been a shade--er----"
+
+"Ambrose is a spoiled child, bless him! She took a wonderful interest in
+my brasses. I don't know what brought her to the church."
+
+"She waited herself to let me through that beastly gate again!"
+
+"She drove me round herself to our gates. Wouldn't come through
+Scarsmoor!"
+
+They both sighed. They both thought of telling the other something--but
+on second thoughts refrained.
+
+"I suppose we'd better go to bed. Shall you bathe to-morrow morning?"
+
+"With Ambrose? No, I sha'n't, Wilbraham."
+
+"No more shall I. Good-night, Stabb. You'll--think it over?"
+
+Stabb grunted inarticulately. Roger drew the blind aside for a moment,
+looked down on Nab Grange, saw a light in one window--and went to bed.
+The window was, in objective fact (if there be such a thing), Colonel
+Wenman's. No matter. There nothing is but thinking makes it so. The
+Colonel was sitting up, writing a persuasive letter to his tailor. He
+served emotions that he did not feel; it is a not uncommon lot.
+
+Lynborough's passing and repassing to and from his bathing were
+uninterrupted next morning. Nab Grange seemed wrapped in slumber; only
+Goodenough saw him, and Goodenough did not think it advisable to
+interrupt his ordinary avocations. But an air of constraint--even of
+mystery--marked both Stabb and Roger at breakfast. The cricket match was
+naturally the topic--though Stabb declared that he took little interest
+in it and should probably not be there.
+
+"There'll be some lunch, I suppose," said Lynborough carelessly. "You'd
+better have lunch there--it'd be dull for you all by yourself here,
+Cromlech."
+
+After apparent consideration Stabb conceded that he might take luncheon
+on the cricket ground; Roger, as a member of the Fillby team, would, of
+course, do likewise.
+
+The game was played in a large field, pleasantly surrounded by a belt of
+trees, and lying behind the Lynborough Arms. Besides Roger and
+Lynborough, Stillford and Irons represented Fillby. Easthorpe
+Polytechnic came in full force, save for an umpire. Colonel Wenman, who
+had walked up with his friends, was pressed into this honorable and
+responsible service, landlord Dawson officiating at the other end.
+Lynborough's second gardener, a noted fast bowler, was Fillby's captain;
+Easthorpe was under the command of a curate who had played several times
+for his University, although he had not actually achieved his "blue."
+Easthorpe won the toss and took first innings.
+
+The second gardener, aware of his employer's turn of speed, sent Lord
+Lynborough to field "in the country." That gentleman was well content;
+few balls came his way and he was at leisure to contemplate the exterior
+of the luncheon tent--he had already inspected the interior thereof with
+sedulous care and high contentment--and to speculate on the probable
+happenings of the luncheon hour. So engrossed was he that only a
+rapturous cheer, which rang out from the field and the spectators,
+apprised him of the fact that the second gardener had yorked the
+redoubtable curate with the first ball of his second over! Young
+Woodwell came in; he was known as a mighty hitter; Lynborough was
+signaled to take his position yet deeper in the field. Young Woodwell
+immediately got to business--but he kept the ball low. Lynborough had,
+however, the satisfaction of saving several "boundaries." Roger, keeping
+wicket, observed his chief's exertions with some satisfaction. Other
+wickets fell rapidly--but young Woodwell's score rapidly mounted up. If
+he could stay in, they would make a hundred--and Fillby looked with just
+apprehension on a score like that. The second gardener, who had given
+himself a brief rest, took the ball again with an air of determination.
+
+"Peters doesn't seem to remember that I also bowl," reflected Lord
+Lynborough.
+
+The next moment he was glad of this omission. Young Woodwell was playing
+for safety now--his fifty loomed ahead! Lynborough had time for a glance
+round. He saw Stabb saunter on to the field; then--just behind where he
+stood when the second gardener was bowling from the Lynborough Arms end
+of the field--a wagonette drove up. Four ladies descended. A bench was
+placed at their disposal, and the two menservants at once began to make
+preparations for lunch, aided therein by the ostler from the Lynborough
+Arms, who rigged up a table on trestles under a spreading tree.
+
+Lord Lynborough's reputation as a sportsman inevitably suffers from this
+portion of the narrative. Yet extenuating circumstances may fairly be
+pleaded. He was deeply interested in the four ladies who sat behind him
+on the bench; he was vitally concerned in the question of the lunch. As
+he walked back, between the overs, to his position, he could see that
+places were being set for some half-dozen people. Would there be
+half-a-dozen there? As he stood, watching, or trying to watch, young
+Woodwell's dangerous bat, he overheard fragments of conversation wafted
+from the bench. The ladies were too far from him to allow of their faces
+being clearly seen, but it was not hard to recognize their figures.
+
+The last man in had joined young Woodwell. That hero's score was
+forty-eight, the total ninety-three. The second gardener was tempting
+the Easthorpe champion with an occasional slow ball; up to now young
+Woodwell had declined to hit at these deceivers.
+
+Suddenly Lynborough heard the ladies' voices quite plainly. They--or
+some of them--had left the bench and come nearer to the boundary.
+Irresistibly drawn by curiosity, for an instant he turned his head. At
+the same instant the second gardener delivered a slow ball--a specious
+ball. This time young Woodwell fell into the snare. He jumped out and
+opened his shoulders to it. He hit it--but he hit it into the air. It
+soared over the bowler's head and came traveling through high heaven
+toward Lord Lynborough.
+
+"Look out!" cried the second gardener. Lynborough's head spun round
+again--but his nerves were shaken. His eyes seemed rather in the back of
+his head, trying to see the Marchesa's face, than fixed on the ball that
+was coming toward him. He was in no mood for bringing off a safe catch!
+
+Silence reigned, the ball began to drop. Lynborough had an instant to
+wait for it. He tried to think of the ball and the ball only.
+
+It fell--it fell into his hands; he caught it--fumbled it--caught
+it--fumbled it again--and at last dropped it on the grass! "Oh!" went in
+a long-drawn expostulation round the field; and Lynborough heard a voice
+say plainly:
+
+"Who is that stupid clumsy man?" The voice was the Marchesa's.
+
+He wheeled round sharply--but her back was turned. He had not seen her
+face after all!
+
+"Over!" was called. Lynborough apologized abjectly to the second
+gardener.
+
+"The sun was in my eyes, Peters, and dazzled me," he pleaded.
+
+"Looks to _me_ as if the sun was shining the other way, my lord," said
+Peters dryly. And so, in physical fact, it was.
+
+In Peters' next over Lynborough atoned--for young Woodwell had got his
+fifty and grown reckless. A one-handed catch, wide on his left side,
+made the welkin ring with applause. The luncheon bell rang too--for the
+innings was finished. Score 101. Last man out 52. Jim (office-boy at
+Polytechnic) not out 0. Young Woodwell received a merited ovation--and
+Lord Lynborough hurried to the luncheon tent. The Marchesa, with an
+exceedingly dignified mien, repaired to her table under the spreading
+oak.
+
+Mr. Dawson had done himself more than justice; the repast was
+magnificent. When Stillford and Irons saw it, they became more sure than
+ever what their duty was, more convinced still that the Marchesa would
+understand. Colonel Wenman became less sure what his duty
+was--previously it had appeared to him that it was to lunch with the
+Marchesa. But the Marchesa had spoken of a few sandwiches and perhaps a
+bottle of claret. Stillford told him that, as umpire, he ought to lunch
+with the teams. Irons declared it would look "deuced standoffish" if he
+didn't. Lynborough, who appeared to act as deputy-landlord to Mr.
+Dawson, pressed him into a chair with a friendly hand.
+
+"Well, she'll have the ladies with her, won't she?" said the Colonel,
+his last scruple vanishing before a large jug of hock-cup, artfully
+iced. The Nab Grange contingent fell to.
+
+Just then--when they were irrevocably committed to this feast--the flap
+of the tent was drawn back, and Lady Norah's face appeared. Behind her
+stood Violet and Miss Gilletson. Lynborough ran forward to meet them.
+
+"Here we are, Lord Lynborough," said Norah. "The Marchesa was so kind,
+she told us to do just as we liked, and we thought it would be such fun
+to lunch with the cricketers."
+
+"The cricketers are immensely honored. Let me introduce you to our
+captain, Mr. Peters. You must sit by him, you know. And, Miss Dufaure,
+will you sit by Mr. Jeffreys?--he's their captain--Miss Dufaure--Mr.
+Jeffreys. You, Miss Gilletson, must sit between Mr. Dawson and me. Now
+we're right--What, Colonel Wenman?--What's the matter?"
+
+Wenman had risen from his place. "The--the Marchesa!" he said. "We--we
+can't leave her to lunch alone!"
+
+Lady Norah broke in again. "Oh, Helena expressly said that she didn't
+expect the gentlemen. She knows what the custom is, you see."
+
+The Marchesa had, no doubt, made all these speeches. It may, however, be
+doubted whether Norah reproduced exactly the manner, and the spirit, in
+which she made them. But the iced hock-cup settled the Colonel. With a
+relieved sigh he resumed his place. The business of the moment went on
+briskly for a quarter of an hour.
+
+Mr. Dawson rose, glass in hand. "Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "I'm no
+hand at a speech, but I give you the health of our kind neighbor and
+good host to-day--Lord Lynborough. Here's to his lordship!"
+
+"I--I didn't know he was giving the lunch!" whispered Colonel Wenman.
+
+"Is it his lunch?" said Irons, nudging Stillford.
+
+Stillford laughed. "It looks like it. And we can hardly throw him over
+the hedge after this!"
+
+"Well, he seems to be a jolly good chap," said Captain Irons.
+
+Lynborough bowed his acknowledgments, and flirted with Miss Gilletson;
+his face wore a contented smile. Here they all were--and the Marchesa
+lunched alone on the other side of the field! Here indeed was a new
+wedge! Here was the isolation at which his diabolical schemes had aimed.
+He had captured Nab Grange! Bag and baggage they had come over--and left
+their chieftainess deserted.
+
+Then suddenly--in the midst of his triumph--in the midst too of a
+certain not ungenerous commiseration which he felt that he could extend
+to a defeated enemy and to beauty in distress--he became vaguely aware
+of a gap in his company. Stabb was not there! Yet Stabb had come upon
+the ground. He searched the company again. No, Stabb was not there.
+Moreover--a fact the second search revealed--Roger Wilbraham was not
+there. Roger was certainly not there; yet, whatever Stabb might do,
+Roger would never miss lunch!
+
+Lynborough's eyes grew thoughtful; he pursed up his lips. Miss
+Gilletson noticed that he became silent.
+
+He could bear the suspense no longer. On a pretext of looking for more
+bottled beer, he rose and walked to the door of the tent.
+
+Under the spreading tree the Marchesa lunched--not in isolation, not in
+gloom. She had company--and, even as he appeared, a merry peal of
+laughter was wafted by a favoring breeze across the field of battle.
+Stabb's ponderous figure, Roger Wilbraham's highly recognizable
+"blazer," told the truth plainly.
+
+Lord Lynborough was not the only expert in the art of driving wedges!
+
+"Well played, Helena!" he said under his breath.
+
+The rest of the cricket match interested him very little. Successful
+beyond their expectations, Fillby won by five runs (Wilbraham not out
+thirty-seven)--but Lynborough's score did not swell the victorious
+total. In Easthorpe's second innings--which could not affect the
+result--Peters let him bowl, and he got young Woodwell's wicket. That
+was a distinction; yet, looking at the day as a whole, he had scored
+less than he expected.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Ten_
+
+IN THE LAST RESORT!
+
+
+It will have been perceived by now that Lord Lynborough delighted in a
+fight. He revelled in being opposed; the man who withstood him to the
+face gave him such pleasure as to beget in his mind certainly gratitude,
+perhaps affection, or at least a predisposition thereto. There was
+nothing he liked so much as an even battle--unless, by chance, it were
+the scales seeming to incline a little against him. Then his spirits
+rose highest, his courage was most buoyant, his kindliness most sunny.
+
+The benefit of this disposition accrued to the Marchesa; for by her
+sudden counterattack she had at least redressed the balance of the
+campaign. He could not be sure that she had not done more. The ladies of
+her party were his--he reckoned confidently on that; but the men he
+could not count as more than neutral at the best; Wenman, anyhow, could
+easily be whistled back to the Marchesa's heel. But in his own house, he
+admitted at once, she had secured for him open hostility, for herself
+the warmest of partisanship. The meaning of her lunch was too plain to
+doubt. No wonder her opposition to her own deserters had been so faint;
+no wonder she had so readily, even if so scornfully, afforded them the
+pretext--the barren verbal permission--that they had required. She had
+not wanted them--no, not even the Colonel himself! She had wanted to be
+alone with Roger and with Stabb--and to complete the work of her
+blandishments on those guileless, tenderhearted, and susceptible
+persons. Lynborough admired, applauded, and promised himself
+considerable entertainment at dinner.
+
+How was the Marchesa, in her turn, bearing her domestic isolation, the
+internal disaffection at Nab Grange? He flattered himself that she would
+not be finding in it such pleasure as his whimsical temper reaped from
+the corresponding position of affairs at Scarsmoor.
+
+There he was right. At Nab Grange the atmosphere was not cheerful. Not
+to want a thing by no means implies an admission that you do not want
+it; that is elementary diplomacy. Rather do you insist that you want it
+very much; if you do not get it, there is a grievance--and a grievance
+is a mighty handy article of barter. The Marchesa knew all that.
+
+The deserters were severely lashed. The Marchesa had said that she did
+not expect Colonel Wenman; ought she to have sent a message to say that
+she was pining for him--must that be wrung from her before he would
+condescend to come? She had said that she knew the custom with regard to
+lunch at cricket matches; was that to say that she expected it to be
+observed to her manifest and public humiliation? She had told Miss
+Gilletson and the girls to please themselves; of course she wished them
+to do that always. Yet it might be a wound to find that their pleasure
+lay in abandoning their friend and hostess, in consorting with her
+arch-enemy, and giving him a triumph.
+
+"Well, what do you say about Wilbraham and Stabb?" cried the trampled
+Colonel.
+
+"I say that they're gentlemen," retorted the Marchesa. "They saw the
+position I was in--and they saved me from humiliation."
+
+That was enough for the men; men are, after all, poor fighters. It was
+not, however, enough for Lady Norah Mountliffey--a woman--and an
+Irishwoman to boot!
+
+"Are you really asking us to believe that you hadn't arranged it with
+them beforehand?" she inquired scornfully.
+
+"Oh, I don't ask you to believe anything I say," returned the Marchesa,
+dexterously avoiding saying anything on the point suggested.
+
+"The truth is, you're being very absurd, Helena," Norah pursued. "If
+you've got a right, go to law with Lord Lynborough and make him respect
+it. If you haven't got a right, why go on making yourself ridiculous and
+all the rest of us very uncomfortable?"
+
+It was obvious that the Marchesa might reply that any guest of hers who
+felt himself or herself uncomfortable at Nab Grange had, in his or her
+own hand, the easy remedy. She did not do that. She did a thing more
+disconcerting still. Though the mutton had only just been put on the
+table, she pushed back her chair, rose to her feet, and fled from the
+room very hastily.
+
+Miss Gilletson sprang up. But Norah was beforehand with her.
+
+"No! I said it. I'm the one to go. Who could think she'd take it like
+that?" Norah's own blue eyes were less bright than usual as she hurried
+after her wounded friend. The rest ate on in dreary conscience-stricken
+silence. At last Stillford spoke.
+
+"Don't urge her to go to law," he said. "I'm pretty sure she'd be
+beaten."
+
+"Then she ought to give in--and apologize to Lord Lynborough," said
+Miss Gilletson decisively. "That would be right--and, I will add,
+Christian."
+
+"Humble Pie ain't very good eating," commented Captain Irons.
+
+Neither the Marchesa nor Norah came back. The meal wended along its slow
+and melancholy course to a mirthless weary conclusion. Colonel Wenman
+began to look on the repose of bachelorhood with a kinder eye, on its
+loneliness with a more tolerant disposition. He went so far as to
+remember that, if the worst came to the worst, he had another invitation
+for the following week.
+
+The Spirit of Discord (The tragic atmosphere now gathering justifies
+these figures of speech--the chronicler must rise to the occasion of a
+heroine in tears), having wrought her fell work at Nab Grange, now
+winged her way to the towers of Scarsmoor Castle.
+
+Dinner had passed off quite as Lynborough anticipated; he had enjoyed
+himself exceedingly. Whenever the temporary absence of the servants
+allowed, he had rallied his friends on their susceptibility to beauty,
+on their readiness to fail him under its lures, on their clumsy attempts
+at concealment of their growing intimacy, and their confidential
+relations, with the fascinating mistress of Nab Grange. He too had been
+told to take his case into the Courts or to drop his claim--and had
+laughed triumphantly at the advice. He had laughed when Stabb said that
+he really could not pursue his work in the midst of such distractions,
+that his mind was too perturbed for scientific thought. He had laughed
+lightly and good-humoredly even when (as they were left alone over
+coffee) Roger Wilbraham, going suddenly a little white, said he thought
+that persecuting a lady was no fit amusement for a gentleman.
+Lynborough did not suppose that the Marchesa--with the battle of the day
+at least drawn, if not decided in her favor--could be regarded as the
+subject of persecution--and he did recognize that young fellows, under
+certain spells, spoke hotly and were not to be held to serious account.
+He was smiling still when, with a forced remark about the heat, the pair
+went out together to smoke on the terrace. He had some letters to read,
+and for the moment dismissed the matter from his mind.
+
+In ten minutes young Roger Wilbraham returned; his manner was quiet now,
+but his face still rather pale. He came up to the table by which
+Lynborough sat.
+
+"Holding the position I do in your house, Lord Lynborough," he said, "I
+had no right to use the words I used this evening at dinner. I
+apologize for them. But, on the other hand, I have no wish to hold a
+position which prevents me from using those words when they represent
+what I think. I beg you to accept my resignation, and I shall be greatly
+obliged if you can arrange to relieve me of my duties as soon as
+possible."
+
+Lynborough heard him without interruption; with grave impassive face,
+with surprise, pity, and a secret amusement. Even if he were right, he
+was so solemn over it!
+
+The young man waited for no answer. With the merest indication of a bow,
+he left Lynborough alone, and passed on into the house.
+
+"Well, now!" said Lord Lynborough, rising and lighting a cigar. "This
+Marchesa! Well, now!"
+
+Stabb's heavy form came lumbering in from the terrace; he seemed to move
+more heavily than ever, as though his bulk were even unusually inert.
+He plumped down into a chair and looked up at Lynborough's graceful
+figure.
+
+"I meant what I said at dinner, Ambrose. I wasn't joking, though I
+suppose you thought I was. All this affair may amuse you--it worries me.
+I can't settle to work. If you'll be so kind as to send me over to
+Easthorpe to-morrow, I'll be off--back to Oxford."
+
+"Cromlech, old boy!"
+
+"Yes, I know. But I--I don't want to stay, Ambrose. I'm
+not--comfortable." His great face set in a heavy, disconsolate, wrinkled
+frown.
+
+Lord Lynborough pursed his lips in a momentary whistle, then put his
+cigar back into his mouth, and walked out on to the terrace.
+
+"This Marchesa!" said he again. "This very remarkable Marchesa! Her
+_riposte_ is admirable. Really I venture to hope that I, in my turn,
+have very seriously disturbed her household!"
+
+He walked to the edge of the terrace, and stood there musing. Sandy Nab
+loomed up, dimly the sea rose and fell, twinkled and sank into darkness.
+It talked too--talked to Lynborough with a soft, low, quiet voice; it
+seemed (to his absurdly whimsical imagination) as though some lovely
+woman gently stroked his brow and whispered to him. He liked to
+encourage such freaks of fancy.
+
+Cromlech couldn't go. That was absurd.
+
+And the young fellow? So much a gentleman! Lynborough had liked the
+terms of his apology no less than the firmness of his protest. "It's the
+first time, I think, that I've been told that I'm no gentleman," he
+reflected with amusement. But Roger had been pale when he said it.
+Imaginatively Lynborough assumed his place. "A brave boy," he said. "And
+that dear old knight-errant of a Cromlech!"
+
+A space--room indeed and room enough--for the softer emotions--so much
+Lynborough was ever inclined to allow. But to acquiesce in this state of
+things as final--that was to admit defeat at the hands of the Marchesa.
+It was to concede that one day had changed the whole complexion of the
+fight.
+
+"Cromlech sha'n't go--the boy sha'n't go--and I'll still use the path,"
+he thought. "Not that I really care about the path, you know." He
+paused. "Well, yes, I do care about it--for bathing in the morning." He
+hardened his heart against the Marchesa. She chose to fight; the fortune
+of war must be hers. He turned his eyes down to Nab Grange. Lights
+burned there--were her guests demanding to be sent to Easthorpe? Why,
+no! As he looked, Lynborough came to the conclusion that she had reduced
+them all to order--that they would be whipped back to heel--that his
+manoeuvers (and his lunch!) had probably been wasted. He was beaten
+then?
+
+He scorned the conclusion. But if he were not--the result was deadlock!
+Then still he was beaten; for unless Helena (he called her that) owned
+his right, his right was to him as nothing.
+
+"I have made myself a champion of my sex," he said. "Shall I be beaten?"
+
+In that moment--with all the pang of forsaking an old conviction--of
+disowning that stronger tie, the loved embrace of an ancient and
+perversely championed prejudice--he declared that any price must be
+paid for victory.
+
+"Heaven forgive me, but, sooner than be beaten, I'll go to law with
+her!" he cried.
+
+A face appeared from between two bushes--a voice spoke from the edge of
+the terrace.
+
+"I thought you might be interested to hear----"
+
+"Lady Norah?"
+
+"Yes, it's me--to hear that you've made her cry--and very bitterly."
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Eleven_
+
+AN ARMISTICE
+
+
+Lord Lynborough walked down to the edge of the terrace; Lady Norah stood
+half hidden in the shrubbery.
+
+"And that, I suppose, ought to end the matter?" he asked. "I ought at
+once to abandon all my pretensions and to give up my path?"
+
+"I just thought you might like to know it," said Norah.
+
+"Actually I believe I do like to know it--though what Roger would say to
+me about that I really can't imagine. You're mistaking my character,
+Lady Norah. I'm not the hero of this piece. There are several gentlemen
+from among whom you can choose one for that effective part. Lots of
+candidates for it! But I'm the villain. Consequently you must be
+prepared for my receiving your news with devilish glee."
+
+"Well, you haven't seen it--and I have."
+
+"Well put!" he allowed. "How did it happen?"
+
+"Over something I said to her--something horrid."
+
+"Well, then, why am I--?" Lynborough's hands expostulated eloquently.
+
+"But you were the real reason, of course. She thinks you've turned us
+all against her; she says it's so mean to get her own friends to turn
+against her."
+
+"Does she now?" asked Lord Lynborough with a thoughtful smile.
+
+Norah too smiled faintly. "She says she's not angry with us--she's just
+sorry for us--because she understands----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I mean she says she--she can imagine--" Norah's smile grew a little
+more pronounced. "I'm not sure she'd like me to repeat that," said
+Norah. "And of course she doesn't know I'm here at all--and you must
+never tell her."
+
+"Of course it's all my fault. Still, as a matter of curiosity, what did
+you say to her?"
+
+"I said that, if she had a good case, she ought to go to law; and, if
+she hadn't, she ought to stop making herself ridiculous and the rest of
+us uncomfortable."
+
+"You spoke with the general assent of the company?"
+
+"I said what I thought--yes, I think they all agreed--but she took
+it--well, in the way I've told you, you know."
+
+Lady Norah had, in the course of conversation, insensibly advanced on to
+the terrace. She stood there now beside Lynborough.
+
+"How do you think I'm taking it?" he asked. "Doesn't my fortitude wring
+applause from you?"
+
+"Taking what?"
+
+"Exactly the same thing from my friends. They tell me to go to law if
+I've got a case--and at any rate to stop persecuting a lady. And they've
+both given me warning."
+
+"Mr. Stabb and Mr. Wilbraham? They're going away?"
+
+"So it appears. Carry back those tidings. Won't they dry the Marchesa's
+tears?"
+
+Norah looked at him with a smile. "Well, it is pretty clever of her,
+isn't it?" she said. "I didn't think she'd got along as quickly as
+that!" Norah's voice was full of an honest and undisguised admiration.
+
+"It's a little unreasonable of her to cry under the circumstances. I'm
+not crying, Lady Norah."
+
+"I expect you're rather disgusted, though, aren't you?" she suggested.
+
+"I'm a little vexed at having to surrender--for the moment--a principle
+which I've held dear--at having to give my enemies an occasion for
+mockery. But I must bow to my friends' wishes. I can't lose them under
+such painful circumstances. No, I must yield, Lady Norah."
+
+"You're going to give up the path?" she cried, not sure whether she were
+pleased or not with his determination.
+
+"Dear me, no! I'm going to law about it."
+
+Open dismay was betrayed in her exclamation: "Oh, but what will Mr.
+Stillford say to that?"
+
+Lynborough laughed. Norah saw her mistake--but she made no attempt to
+remedy it. She took up another line of tactics. "It would all come right
+if only you knew one another! She's the most wonderful woman in the
+world, Lord Lynborough. And you----"
+
+"Well, what of me?" he asked in deceitful gravity.
+
+Norah parried, with a hasty little laugh; "Just ask Miss Gilletson
+that!"
+
+Lynborough smiled for a moment, then took a turn along the terrace, and
+came back to her.
+
+"You must tell her that you've seen me----"
+
+"I couldn't do that!"
+
+"You must--or here the matter ends, and I shall be forced to go to
+law--ugh! Tell her you've seen me, and that I'm open to reason----"
+
+"Lord Lynborough! How can I tell her that?"
+
+"That I'm open to reason, and that I propose an armistice. Not
+peace--not yet, anyhow--but an armistice. I undertake not to exercise my
+right over Beach Path for a week from to-day, and before the end of that
+week I will submit a proposal to the Marchesa."
+
+Norah saw a gleam of hope. "Very well. I don't know what she'll say to
+me, but I'll tell her that. Thank you. You'll make it a--a pleasant
+proposal?"
+
+"I haven't had time to consider the proposal yet. She must inform me
+to-morrow morning whether she accepts the armistice."
+
+He suddenly turned to the house, and shouted up to a window above his
+head, "Roger!"
+
+The window was open. Roger Wilbraham put his head out.
+
+"Come down," said Lynborough. "Here's somebody wants to see you."
+
+"I never said I did, Lord Lynborough."
+
+"Let him take you home. He wants cheering up."
+
+"I like him very much. He won't really leave you, will he?"
+
+"I want you to persuade him to stay during the armistice. I'm too proud
+to ask him for myself. I shall think very little of you, however, if he
+doesn't."
+
+Roger appeared. Lynborough told him that Lady Norah required an escort
+back to Nab Grange; for obvious reasons he himself was obliged to
+relinquish the pleasure; Roger, he felt sure, would be charmed to take
+his place. Roger was somewhat puzzled by the turn of events, but
+delighted with his mission.
+
+Lynborough saw them off, went into the library, sat down at his
+writing-table, and laid paper before him. But he sat idle for many
+minutes. Stabb came in, his arms full of books.
+
+"I think I left some of my stuff here," he said, avoiding Lynborough's
+eye. "I'm just getting it together."
+
+"Drop that lot too. You're not going to-morrow, Cromlech, there's an
+armistice."
+
+Stabb put his books down on the table, and came up to him with
+outstretched hand. Lynborough leaned back, his hands clasped behind his
+head.
+
+"Wait for a week," he said. "We may, Cromlech, arrive at an
+accommodation. Meanwhile, for that week, I do not use the path."
+
+"I've been feeling pretty badly, Ambrose."
+
+"Yes, I don't think it's safe to expose you to the charms of beauty." He
+looked at his friend in good-natured mockery. "Return to your tombs in
+peace."
+
+The next morning he received a communication from Nab Grange. It ran as
+follows:
+
+"The Marchesa di San Servolo presents her compliments to Lord
+Lynborough. The Marchesa will be prepared to consider any proposal put
+forward by Lord Lynborough, and will place no hindrance in the way of
+Lord Lynborough's using the path across her property if it suits his
+convenience to do so in the meantime."
+
+"No, no!" said Lynborough, as he took a sheet of paper.
+
+"Lord Lynborough presents his compliments to her Excellency the Marchesa
+di San Servolo. Lord Lynborough will take an early opportunity of
+submitting his proposal to the Marchesa di San Servolo. He is obliged
+for the Marchesa di San Servolo's suggestion that he should in the
+meantime use Beach Path, but cannot consent to do so except in the
+exercise of his right. He will therefore not use Beach Path during the
+ensuing week."
+
+"And now to pave the way for my proposal!" he thought. For the proposal,
+which had assumed a position so important in the relations between the
+Marchesa and himself, was to be of such a nature that a grave question
+arose how best the way should be paved for it.
+
+The obvious course was to set his spies to work--he could command plenty
+of friendly help among the Nab Grange garrison--learn the Marchesa's
+probable movements, throw himself in her way, contrive an acquaintance,
+make himself as pleasant as he could, establish relations of amity, of
+cordiality, even of friendship and of intimacy. That might prepare the
+way, and incline her to accept the proposal--to take the jest--it was
+little more in hard reality--in the spirit in which he put it forward,
+and so to end her resistance.
+
+That seemed the reasonable method--the plain and rational line of
+advance. Accordingly Lynborough disliked and distrusted it. He saw
+another way--more full of risk, more hazardous in its result, making an
+even greater demand on his confidence in himself, perhaps also on the
+qualities with which his imagination credited the Marchesa. But, on the
+other hand, this alternative was far richer in surprise, in dash--as it
+seemed to him, in gallantry and a touch of romance. It was far more
+medieval, more picturesque, more in keeping with the actual proposal
+itself. For the actual proposal was one which, Lynborough flattered
+himself, might well have come from a powerful yet chivalrous baron of
+old days to a beautiful queen who claimed a suzerainty which not her
+power, but only her beauty, could command or enforce.
+
+"It suits my humor, and I'll do it!" he said. "She sha'n't see me, and I
+won't see her. The first she shall hear from me shall be the proposal;
+the first time we meet shall be on the twenty-fourth--or never! A week
+from to-day--the twenty-fourth."
+
+Now the twenty-fourth of June is, as all the world knows (or an almanac
+will inform the heathen), the Feast of St. John Baptist also called
+Midsummer Day.
+
+So he disappeared from the view of Nab Grange and the inhabitants
+thereof. He never left his own grounds; even within them he shunned the
+public road; his beloved sea-bathing he abandoned. Nay, more, he
+strictly charged Roger Wilbraham, who often during this week of
+armistice went to play golf or tennis at the Grange, to say nothing of
+him; the same instructions were laid on Stabb in case on his excursions
+amidst the tombs, he should meet any member of the Marchesa's party. So
+far as the thing could be done, Lord Lynborough obliterated himself.
+
+It was playing a high stake on a risky hand. Plainly it assumed an
+interest in himself on the part of the Marchesa--an interest so strong
+that absence and mystery (if perchance he achieved a flavor of that
+attraction!) would foster and nourish it more than presence and
+friendship could conduce to its increase. She might think nothing about
+him during the week! Impossible surely--with all that had gone before,
+and with his proposal to come at the end! But if it were so--why, so he
+was content. "In that case, she's a woman of no imagination, of no taste
+in the picturesque," he said.
+
+For five days the Marchesa gave no sign, no clue to her feelings which
+the anxious watchers could detect. She did indeed suffer Colonel Wenman
+to depart all forlorn, most unsuccessful and uncomforted--save by the
+company of his brother-in-arms, Captain Irons; and he was not cheerful
+either, having failed notably in certain designs on Miss Dufaure which
+he had been pursuing, but whereunto more pressing matters have not
+allowed of attention being given. But Lord Lynborough she never
+mentioned--not to Miss Gilletson, nor even to Norah. She seemed to have
+regained her tranquillity; her wrath at least was over; she was very
+friendly to all the ladies; she was markedly cordial to Roger Wilbraham
+on his visits. But she asked him nothing of Lord Lynborough--and, if she
+ever looked from the window toward Scarsmoor Castle, none--not even her
+observant maid--saw her do it.
+
+Yet Cupid was in the Grange--and very busy. There were signs, not to be
+misunderstood, that Violet had not for handsome Stillford the scorn she
+had bestowed on unfortunate Irons; and Roger, humbly and distantly
+worshiping the Marchesa, deeming her far as a queen beyond his reach,
+rested his eyes and solaced his spirit with the less awe-inspiring
+charms, the more accessible comradeship, of Norah Mountliffey. Norah, as
+her custom was, flirted hard, yet in her delicate fashion. Though she
+had not begun to ask herself about the end yet, she was well amused, and
+by no means insensible to Roger's attractions. Only she was preoccupied
+with Helena--and Lord Lynborough. Till that riddle was solved, she could
+not turn seriously to her own affairs.
+
+On the night of the twenty-second she walked with the Marchesa in the
+gardens of the Grange after dinner. Helena was very silent; yet to Norah
+the silence did not seem empty. Over against them, on its high hill,
+stood Scarsmoor Castle. Roger had dined with them, but had now gone
+back.
+
+Suddenly--and boldly--Norah spoke. "Do you see those three lighted
+windows on the ground floor at the left end of the house? That's his
+library, Helena. He sits there in the evening. Oh, I do wonder what he's
+been doing all this week!"
+
+"What does it matter?" asked the Marchesa coldly.
+
+"What will he propose, do you think?"
+
+"Mr. Stillford thinks he may offer to pay me some small rent--more or
+less nominal--for a perpetual right--and that, if he does, I'd better
+accept."
+
+"That'll be rather a dull ending to it all."
+
+"Mr. Stillford thinks it would be a favorable one for me."
+
+"I don't believe he means to pay you money. It'll be something"--she
+paused a moment--"something prettier than that."
+
+"What has prettiness to do with it, you child? With a right of way?"
+
+"Prettiness has to do with you, though, Helena. You don't suppose he
+thinks only of that wretched path?"
+
+The flush came on the Marchesa's cheek.
+
+"He can hardly be said to have seen me," she protested.
+
+"Then look your best when he does--for I'm sure he's dreamed of you."
+
+"Why do you say that?"
+
+Norah laughed. "Because he's a man who takes a lot of notice of pretty
+women--and he took so very little notice of me. That's why I think so,
+Helena."
+
+The Marchesa made no comment on the reason given. But now--at last and
+undoubtedly--she looked across at the windows of Scarsmoor.
+
+"We shall come to some business arrangement, I suppose--and then it'll
+all be over," she said.
+
+All over? The trouble and the enmity--the defiance and the fight--the
+excitement and the fun? The duel would be stayed, the combatants and
+their seconds would go their various ways across the diverging tracks of
+this great dissevering world. All would be over!
+
+"Then we shall have time to think of something else!" the Marchesa
+added.
+
+Norah smiled discreetly. Was not that something of an admission?
+
+In the library at Scarsmoor Lynborough was inditing the proposal which
+he intended to submit by his ambassadors on the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Twelve_
+
+AN EMBASSAGE
+
+
+The Marchesa's last words to Lady Norah betrayed the state of her mind.
+While the question of the path was pending, she had been unable to think
+of anything else; until it was settled she could think of nobody except
+of the man in whose hands the settlement lay. Whether Lynborough
+attracted or repelled, he at least occupied and filled her thoughts. She
+had come to recognize where she stood and to face the position.
+Stillford's steady pessimism left her no hope from an invocation of the
+law; Lynborough's dexterity and resource promised her no abiding
+victory--at best only precarious temporary successes--in a private
+continuance of the struggle. Worst of all--whilst she chafed or wept, he
+laughed! Certainly not to her critical friends, hardly even to her proud
+self, would she confess that she lay in her antagonist's mercy; but the
+feeling of that was in her heart. If so, he could humiliate her sorely.
+
+Could he spare her? Or would he? Try how she might, it was hard to
+perceive how he could spare her without abandoning his right. That she
+was sure he would not do; all she heard of him, every sharp intuition of
+him which she had, the mere glimpse of his face as he passed by on Sandy
+Nab, told her that.
+
+But if he consented to pay a small--a nominal--rent, would not her pride
+be spared? No. That would be victory for him; she would be compelled to
+surrender what she had haughtily refused, in return for something which
+she did not want and which was of no value. If that were a cloak for her
+pride, the fabric of it was terribly threadbare. Even such concession as
+lay in such an offer she had wrung from him by setting his friends
+against him; would that incline him to tenderness? The offer might leave
+his friends still unreconciled; what comfort was that to her when once
+the fight and the excitement of countering blow with blow were
+done--when all was over? And it was more likely that what seemed to her
+cruel would seem to Stabb and Roger reasonable--men had a terribly rigid
+sense of reason in business matters. They would return to their
+allegiance; her friends would be ranged on the same side; she would be
+alone--alone in humiliation and defeat. From that fate in the end only
+Lynborough himself could rescue her; only the man who threatened her
+with it could avert it. And how could even he, save by a surrender which
+he would not make? Yet if he found out a way?
+
+The thought of that possibility--though she could devise or imagine no
+means by which it might find accomplishment--carried her toward
+Lynborough in a rush of feeling. The idea--never wholly lost even in her
+moments of anger and dejection--came back--the idea that all the time he
+had been playing a game, that he did not want the wounds to be mortal,
+that in the end he did not hate. If he did not hate, he would not desire
+to hurt. But he desired to win. Could he win without hurting? Then there
+was a reward for him--applause for his cleverness, and gratitude for his
+chivalry.
+
+Stretching out her arms toward Scarsmoor Castle, she vowed that
+according to his deed she could hate or love Lord Lynborough. The next
+day was to decide that weighty question.
+
+The fateful morning arrived--the last day of the armistice--the
+twenty-third. The ladies were sitting on the lawn after breakfast when
+Stillford came out of the house with a quick step and an excited air.
+
+"Marchesa," he said, "the Embassy has arrived! Stabb and Wilbraham are
+at the front door, asking an audience of you. They bring the proposal!"
+
+The Marchesa laid down her book; Miss Gilletson made no effort to
+conceal her agitation.
+
+"Why didn't they come by the path?" cried Norah.
+
+"They couldn't very well; Lynborough's sent them in a carriage--with
+postilions and four horses," Stillford answered gravely. "The
+postilions appear to be amused, but the Ambassadors are exceedingly
+solemn."
+
+The Marchesa's spirits rose. If the piece were to be a comedy, she could
+play her part! The same idea was in Stillford's mind. "He can't mean to
+be very unpleasant if he plays the fool like this," he said, looking
+round on the company with a smile.
+
+"Admit the Ambassadors!" cried the Marchesa gaily.
+
+The Ambassadors were ushered on to the lawn. They advanced with a
+gravity befitting the occasion, and bowed low to the Marchesa. Roger
+carried a roll of paper of impressive dimensions. Stillford placed
+chairs for the Ambassadors and, at a sign from the Marchesa, they seated
+themselves.
+
+"What is your message?" asked the Marchesa. Suddenly nervousness and
+fear laid hold of her again; her voice shook a little.
+
+"We don't know," answered Stabb. "Give me the document, Roger."
+
+Roger Wilbraham handed him the scroll.
+
+"We are charged to deliver this to your Excellency's adviser, and to beg
+him to read it to you in our presence." He rose, delivered the scroll
+into Stillford's hands, and returned, majestic in his bulk, to his seat.
+
+"You neither of you know what's in it?" the Marchesa asked.
+
+They shook their heads.
+
+The Marchesa took hold of Norah's hand and said quietly, "Please read it
+to us, Mr. Stillford. I should like you all to hear."
+
+"That was also Lord Lynborough's desire," said Roger Wilbraham.
+
+Stillford unrolled the paper. It was all in Lynborough's own
+hand--written large and with fair flourishes. In mockery of the
+institution he hated, he had cast it in a form which at all events aimed
+at being legal; too close scrutiny on that score perhaps it would not
+abide successfully.
+
+"Silence while the document is read!" said Stillford; and he proceeded
+to read it in a clear and deliberate voice:
+
+"'Sir Ambrose Athelstan Caverly, Baronet, Baron Lynborough of Lynborough
+in the County of Dorset and of Scarsmoor in the County of Yorkshire,
+unto her Excellency Helena Vittoria Maria Antonia, Marchesa di San
+Servolo, and unto All to whom these Presents Come, Greeting. Whereas the
+said Lord Lynborough and his predecessors in title have been ever
+entitled as of right to pass and repass along the path called Beach Path
+leading across the lands of Nab Grange from the road bounding the same
+on the west to the seashore on the east thereof, and to use the said
+path by themselves, their agents and servants, at their pleasure,
+without let or interference from any person or persons whatsoever----'"
+
+Stillford paused and looked at the Marchesa. The document did not begin
+in a conciliatory manner. It asserted the right to use Beach Path in the
+most uncompromising way.
+
+"Go on," commanded the Marchesa, a little flushed, still holding Norah's
+hand.
+
+"'And Whereas the said Lord Lynborough is desirous that his rights as
+above defined shall receive the recognition of the said Marchesa, which
+recognition has hitherto been withheld and refused by the said Marchesa:
+And Whereas great and manifold troubles have arisen from such refusal:
+And Whereas the said Lord Lynborough is desirous of dwelling in peace
+and amity with the said Marchesa----'"
+
+"There, Helena, you see he is!" cried Norah triumphantly.
+
+"I really must not be interrupted," Stillford protested. "'Now Therefore
+the said Lord Lynborough, moved thereunto by divers considerations and
+in chief by his said desire to dwell in amity and good-will, doth engage
+and undertake that, in consideration of his receiving a full, gracious,
+and amicable recognition of his right from the said Marchesa, he shall
+and will, year by year and once a year, to wit on the Feast of St. John
+Baptist, also known as Midsummer Day----'"
+
+"Why, that's to-morrow!" exclaimed Violet Dufaure.
+
+Once more Stillford commanded silence. The Terms of Peace were not to be
+rudely interrupted just as they were reaching the most interesting
+point. For up to now nothing had come except a renewed assertion of
+Lynborough's right!
+
+"'That is to say the twenty-fourth day of June--repair in his own proper
+person, with or without attendants as shall seem to him good, to Nab
+Grange or such other place as may then and on each occasion be the abode
+and residence of the said Marchesa, and shall and will present himself
+in the presence of the said Marchesa at noon. And that he then shall and
+will do homage to the said Marchesa for such full, gracious, and
+amicable recognition as above mentioned by falling on his knee and
+kissing the hand of the said Marchesa. And if the said Lord Lynborough
+shall wilfully or by neglect omit so to present himself and so to pay
+his homage on any such Feast of St. John Baptist, then his said right
+shall be of no effect and shall be suspended (And he hereby engages not
+to exercise the same) until he shall have purged his contempt or neglect
+by performing his homage on the next succeeding Feast. Provided Always
+that the said Marchesa shall and will, a sufficient time before the said
+Feast in each year, apprise and inform the said Lord Lynborough of her
+intended place of residence, in default whereof the said Lord Lynborough
+shall not be bound to pay his homage and shall suffer no diminution of
+his right by reason of the omission thereof. Provided Further and
+Finally that whensoever the said Lord Lynborough shall duly and on the
+due date as in these Presents stipulated present himself at Nab Grange
+or elsewhere the residence for the time being of the said Marchesa, and
+claim to be admitted to the presence of the said Marchesa and to
+perform his homage as herein prescribed and ordered, the said Marchesa
+shall not and will not, on any pretext or for any cause whatsoever, deny
+or refuse to accept the said homage so duly proffered, but shall and
+will in all gracious condescension and neighborly friendship extend and
+give her hand to the said Lord Lynborough, to the end and purpose that,
+he rendering and she accepting his homage in all mutual trust and
+honorable confidence, Peace may reign between Nab Grange and Scarsmoor
+Castle so long as they both do stand. In Witness whereof the said Lord
+Lynborough has affixed his name on the Eve of the said Feast of St. John
+Baptist.
+
+    LYNBOROUGH.'"
+
+Stillford ended his reading, and handed the scroll to the Marchesa with
+a bow. She took it and looked at Lynborough's signature. Her cheeks
+were flushed, and her lips struggled not to smile. The rest were silent.
+She looked at Stillford, who smiled back at her and drew from his
+pocket--a stylographic pen.
+
+"Yes," she said, and took it.
+
+She wrote below Lynborough's name:
+
+"In Witness whereof, in a desire for peace and amity, in all mutual
+trust and honorable confidence, the said Marchesa has affixed her name
+on this same Eve of the said Feast of St. John Baptist.
+
+    HELENA DI SAN SERVOLO."
+
+She handed it back to Stillford. "Let it dry in the beautiful sunlight,"
+she said.
+
+The Ambassadors rose to their feet. She rose too and went over to Stabb
+with outstretched hands. A broad smile spread over Stabb's spacious
+face. "It's just like Ambrose," he said to her as he took her hands.
+"He gets what he wants--but in the prettiest way!"
+
+She answered him in a low voice: "A very knightly way of saving a
+foolish woman's pride." She raised her voice. "Bid Lord Lynborough--aye,
+Sir Ambrose Athelstan Caverly, Baron Lynborough, attend here at Nab
+Grange to pay his homage to-morrow at noon." She looked round on them
+all, smiling now openly, the red in her cheeks all triumphant over her
+olive hue. "Say I will give him private audience to receive his homage
+and to ask his friendship." With that the Marchesa departed, somewhat
+suddenly, into the house.
+
+Amid much merriment and reciprocal congratulations the Ambassadors were
+honorably escorted back to their coach and four.
+
+"Keep your eye on the Castle to-night," Roger Wilbraham whispered to
+Norah as he pressed her hand.
+
+They drove off, Stillford leading a gay "Hurrah!"
+
+At night indeed Scarsmoor Castle was a sight to see. Every window of its
+front blazed with light; rockets and all manner of amazing bright
+devices rose to heaven. All Fillby turned out to see the show; all Nab
+Grange was in the garden looking on.
+
+All save Helena herself. She had retreated to her own room; there she
+sat and watched alone. She was in a fever of feeling and could not rest.
+She twisted one hand round the other, she held up before her eyes the
+hand which was destined to receive homage on the morrow. Her eyes were
+bright, her cheeks flushed, her red lips trembled.
+
+"Alas, how this man knows his way to my heart!" she sighed.
+
+The blaze at Scarsmoor Castle died down. A kindly darkness fell. Under
+its friendly cover she kissed her hand to the Castle, murmuring
+"To-morrow!"
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter Thirteen_
+
+THE FEAST OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST
+
+
+"As there's a heaven above us," wrote Lynborough that same night--having
+been, one would fain hope, telepathically conscious of the hand-kissing
+by the red lips, of the softly breathed "To-morrow!" (for if he were
+not, what becomes of Love's Magic?)--"As there's a heaven above us, I
+have succeeded! Her answer is more than a consent--it's an appreciation.
+The rogue knew how she stood: she is haughtily, daintily grateful. Does
+she know how near she drove me to the abominable thing? Almost had I--I,
+Ambrose Caverly--issued a writ! I should never, in all my life, have got
+over the feeling of being a bailiff! She has saved me by the rightness
+of her taste. 'Knightly' she called it to old Cromlech. Well, that was
+in the blood--it had been my own fault if I had lost it, no credit of
+mine if to some measure I have it still. But to find the recognition! I
+have lit up the country-side to-night to celebrate that rare discovery.
+
+"Rare--yes--yet not doubted. I knew it of her. I believe that I have
+broken all records--since the Renaissance at least. Love at first sight!
+Where's the merit in that? Given the sight be fine enough (a thing that
+I pray may not admit of doubt in the case of Helena), it is no exploit;
+it is rather to suffer the inevitable than to achieve the great. But
+unless the sight of a figure a hundred yards away--and of a back
+fifty--is to count against me as a practical inspection, I am so
+supremely lucky as never to have seen her! I have made her for
+myself--a few tags of description, a noting of the effect on Roger and
+on Cromlech, mildly (and very unimaginatively) aided my work, I
+admit--but for the most part and in all essentials, she, as I love her
+(for of course I love her, or no amount of Feast of St. John Baptist
+should have moved me from my path--take that for literal or for
+metaphorical as ye will!)--is of my own craftsmanship--work of my heart
+and brain, wrought just as I would have her--as I knew, through all
+delightful wanderings, that some day she must come to me.
+
+"Think then of my mood for to-morrow! With what feelings do I ring the
+bell (unless perchance it be a knocker)! With what sensations accost the
+butler! With what emotions enter the presence! Because if by chance I am
+wrong--! Upon which awful doubt arises the question whether, if I be
+wrong, I can go back. I am plaguily the slave of putting the thing as
+prettily as it can be put (Thanks, Cromlech, for giving me the
+adverb--not so bad a touch for a Man of Tombs!), and, on my soul, I have
+put that homage of mine so prettily that one who was prudent would have
+addressed it to none other than a married lady--_vivente marito_, be it
+understood. But from my goddess her mortal mate is gone--and to
+explain--nay, not to explain (which would indeed tax every grace of
+style)--but to let it appear that the homage lingers, abides, and is
+confined within the letter of the bond--that would seem scarce
+'knightly.' Therefore, being (as all tell me) more of a fool than most
+men, and (as I soberly hope) not less of a gentleman, I stand thus. I
+love the Image I have made out of dim distant sight, prosaic shreds of
+catalogued description, a vividly creating mind, and--to be candid--the
+absolute necessity of amusing myself in the country. But the Woman I am
+to see to-morrow? Is she the Image? I shall know in the first moment of
+our encounter. If she is, all is well for me--for her it will be just a
+question of her dower of heavenly venturousness. If she is not--in my
+humble judgment, you, Ambrose Caverly, having put the thing with so
+excessive a prettiness, shall for your art's sake perish--you must, in
+short, if you would end this thing in the manner (creditable to
+yourself, Ambrose!) in which it has hitherto been conducted,
+willy-nilly, hot or cold, confirmed in divine dreams or slapped in the
+face by disenchanting fact--within a brief space of time, propose
+marriage to this lady. If there be any other course, the gods send me
+scent of it this night! But if she should refuse? Reckon not on that.
+For the more she fall short of her Image, the more will she grasp at an
+outward showing of triumph--and the greatest outward triumph would not
+be in refusal.
+
+"In my human weakness I wish that--just for once--I had seen her! But in
+the strong spirit of the wine of life--whereof I have been and am an
+inveterate and most incurable bibber--I rejoice in that wonderful moment
+of mine to-morrow--when the door of the shrine opens, and I see the
+goddess before whom my offering must be laid. Be she giant or dwarf, be
+she black or white, have she hair or none--by the powers, if she wears a
+sack only, and is well advised to stick close to that, lest casting it
+should be a change for the worse--in any event the offering must be
+made. Even so the Prince in the tales, making his vows to the Beast and
+not yet knowing if his spell shall transform it to the Beauty! In my
+stronger moments, so would I have it. Years of life shall I live in that
+moment to-morrow! If it end ill, no human being but myself shall know.
+If it end well, the world is not great enough to hold, nor the music of
+its spheres melodious enough to sound, my triumph!"
+
+It will be observed that Lord Lynborough, though indeed no novice in the
+cruel and tender passion, was appreciably excited on the Eve of the
+Feast of St. John Baptist. In view of so handsome a response, the
+Marchesa's kiss of the hand and her murmured "To-morrow" may pass
+excused of forwardness.
+
+It was, nevertheless, a gentleman to all seeming most cool and calm who
+presented himself at the doors of Nab Grange at eleven fifty-five the
+next morning. His Ambassadors had come in magnificence; humbly he
+walked--and not by Beach Path, since his homage was not yet paid--but
+round by the far-stretching road and up the main avenue most decorously.
+Stabb and Roger had cut across by the path--holding the Marchesa's leave
+and license so to do--and had joined an excited group which sat on
+chairs under sheltering trees.
+
+"I wish she hadn't made the audience private!" said Norah Mountliffey.
+
+"If ever a keyhole were justifiable--" sighed Violet Dufaure.
+
+"My dear, I'd box your ears myself," Miss Gilletson brusquely
+interrupted.
+
+The Marchesa sat in a high arm-chair, upholstered in tarnished fading
+gold. The sun from the window shone on her hair; her face was half in
+shadow. She rested her head on her left; hand the right lay on her knee.
+It was stripped of any ring--unadorned white. Her cheeks were pale--the
+olive reigned unchallenged; her lips were set tight, her eyes downcast.
+She made no movement when Lord Lynborough entered.
+
+He bowed low, but said nothing. He stood opposite to her some two yards
+away. The clock ticked. It wanted still a minute before noon struck.
+That was the minute of which Lynborough had raved and dreamed the night
+before. He had the fruit of it in full measure.
+
+The first stroke of twelve rang silvery from the clock. Lynborough
+advanced and fell upon his knee. She did not lift her eyes, but slowly
+raised her hand from her knee. He placed his hand under it, pressing it
+a little upward and bowing his head to meet it half-way in its ascent.
+She felt his lips lightly brush the skin. His homage for Beach Path and
+his right therein was duly paid.
+
+Slowly he rose to his feet; slowly her eyes turned upward to his face.
+It was ablaze with a great triumph; the fire seemed to spread to her
+cheeks.
+
+"It's better than I dreamed or hoped," he murmured.
+
+"What? To have peace between us? Yes, it's good."
+
+"I have never seen your face before." She made no answer. "Nor you
+mine?" he asked.
+
+"Once on Sandy Nab you passed by me. You didn't notice me--but, yes, I
+saw you." Her eyes were steadily on him now; the flush had ceased to
+deepen, nay, had receded, but abode still, tingeing the olive of her
+cheeks.
+
+"I have rendered my homage," he said.
+
+"It is accepted." Suddenly tears sprang to her eyes. "And you might have
+been so cruel to me!" she whispered.
+
+"To you? To you who carry the power of a world in your face?"
+
+The Marchesa was confused--as was, perhaps, hardly unnatural.
+
+"There are other things, besides gates and walls, and Norah's head, that
+you jump over, Lord Lynborough."
+
+"I lived a life while I stood waiting for the clock to strike. I have
+tried for life before--in that minute I found it." He seemed suddenly to
+awake as though from a dream. "But I beg your pardon. I have paid my
+dues. The bond gives me no right to linger."
+
+She rose with a light laugh--yet it sounded nervous. "Is it good-by
+till next St. John Baptist's day?"
+
+"You would see me walking on Beach Path day by day."
+
+"I never call it Beach Path."
+
+"May it now be called--Helena's?"
+
+"Or will you stay and lunch with me to-day? And you might even pay
+homage again--say to-morrow--or--or some day in the week."
+
+"Lunch, most certainly. That commits me to nothing. Homage, Marchesa, is
+quite another matter."
+
+"Your chivalry is turning to bargaining, Lord Lynborough."
+
+"It was never anything else," he answered. "Homage is rendered in
+payment--that's why one says 'Whereas.'" His keen eager eyes of hazel
+raised once more the flood of subdued crimson in her face. "For every
+recognition of a right of mine, I will pay you homage according to the
+form prescribed for St. John Baptist's Feast."
+
+"Of what other rights do you ask recognition?"
+
+"There might be the right of welcoming you at Scarsmoor to-morrow?"
+
+She made him a little curtsy. "It is accorded--on the prescribed terms,
+my lord."
+
+"That will do for the twenty-fifth. There might be the right of
+escorting you home from Scarsmoor by the path called--Helena's?"
+
+"On the prescribed terms it is your lordship's."
+
+"What then of the right to see you daily, and day by day?"
+
+"If your leisure serves, my lord, I will endeavor to adjust mine--so
+long as we both remain at Fillby. But so that the homage is paid!"
+
+"But if you go away?"
+
+"I'm bound to tell you of my whereabouts only on St. John Baptist's
+Feast."
+
+"The right to know it on other days--would that be recognized in return
+for a homage, Marchesa?"
+
+"One homage for so many letters?"
+
+"I had sooner there were no letters--and daily homages."
+
+"You take too many obligations--and too lightly."
+
+"For every one I gain the recognition of a right."
+
+"The richer you grow in rights then, the harder you must work!"
+
+"I would have so many rights accorded me as to be no better than a
+slave!" cried Lynborough. "Yet, if I have not one, still I have
+nothing."
+
+She spoke no word, but looked at him long and searchingly. She was not
+nervous now, but proud. Her look bade him weigh words; they had passed
+beyond the borders of merriment, beyond the bandying of challenges. Yet
+her eyes carried no prohibition; it was a warning only. She interposed
+no conventional check, no plea for time. She laid on him the
+responsibility for his speech; let him remember that he owed her homage.
+
+They grew curious and restless on the lawn; the private audience lasted
+long, the homage took much time in paying.
+
+"A marvelous thing has come to me," said Lynborough, speaking slower
+than his wont, "and with it a great courage. I have seen my dream. This
+morning I came here not knowing whether I should see it. I don't speak
+of the face of my dream-image only, though I could speak till next St.
+John's Day upon that. I speak to a soul. I think our souls have known
+one another longer, aye, and better than our faces."
+
+"Yes, I think it is so," she said quietly. "Yet who can tell so soon?"
+
+"There's a great gladness upon me because my dream came true."
+
+"Who can tell so soon?" she asked again. "It's strange to speak of it."
+
+"It may be that some day--yes, some day soon--in return for the homage
+of my lips on your hand, I would ask the recognition of my lip's right
+on your cheek."
+
+She came up to him and laid her hand on his arm. "Suffer me a little
+while, my lord," she said. "You've swept into my life like a whirlwind;
+you would carry me by assault as though I were a rebellious city. Am I
+to be won before ever I am wooed?"
+
+"You sha'n't lack wooing," he said quickly. "Yet haven't I wooed you
+already--as well in my quarrel as in my homage, in our strife as in the
+end of it?"
+
+"I think so, yes. Yet suffer me a little still."
+
+"If you doubt--" he cried.
+
+"I don't think I doubt. I linger." She gave her hand into his. "It's
+strange, but I cannot doubt."
+
+Lynborough sank again upon his knee and paid his homage. As he rose, she
+bent ever so slightly toward him; delicately he kissed her cheek.
+
+"I pray you," she whispered, "use gently what you took with that."
+
+"Here's a heart to my heart, and a spirit to my spirit--and a glad
+venture to us both!"
+
+"Come on to the lawn now, but tell them nothing."
+
+"Save that I have paid my homage, and received the recognition of my
+right?"
+
+"That, if you will--and that your path is to
+be--henceforward--Helena's."
+
+"I hope to have no need to travel far on the Feast of St. John!" cried
+Lynborough.
+
+They went out on the lawn. Nothing was asked, and nothing told, that
+day. In truth there appeared to be no need. For it seems as though Love
+were not always invisible, nor the twang of his bow so faint as to elude
+the ear. With joyous blood his glad wounds are red, and who will may
+tell the sufferers. Sympathy too lends insight; your fellow-sufferer
+knows your plight first. There were fellow-sufferers on the lawn that
+day--to whom, as to all good lovers, here's Godspeed.
+
+She went with him in the afternoon through the gardens, over the sunk
+fence, across the meadows, till they came to the path. On it they
+walked together.
+
+"So is your right recognized, my lord," she said.
+
+"We will walk together on Helena's Path," he answered, "until it leads
+us--still together--to the Boundless Sea."
+
+
+                               THE END
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+
+Italics are indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Minor typographical errors and inconsistencies have been silently
+corrected.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Helena's Path, by Anthony Hope
+
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