Helena's Path

"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.