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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.