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.