Helena's Path/Chapter 4

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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 endeavouring, 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."

"'Tell him to go back the same way, and not by the—by what Lord Lynborough chooses to call the Beach Path.'"

"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 favour—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 temporise, 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."

"'With Lord Lynborough's compliments.'"

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."