delightedly, “You’re priceless, Cromlech!”
CHAPTER VI
EXERCISE BEFORE BREAKFAST
“LIFE – ” (The extract is from Lynborough’s diary, dated this same fourteenth of June) – “may be considered as a process (Cromlech’s view, conducting to the tomb) – a programme (as, I am persuaded, Roger conceives it, marking off each stage thereof with a duly guaranteed stamp of performance) – or as a progress – in which light I myself prefer to envisage it. Process – programme – progress; the words, with my above-avowed preference, sound unimpeachably orthodox. Once I had a Bishop ancestor. He crops out.
“Yet I don’t mean what he does. I don’t believe in growing better in the common sense – that is, in an increasing power to resist what tempts you, to refrain from doing what you want. That ideal seems to me, more and more, to start from the wrong end. No man refrains from doing what he wants to do. In the end the contradiction – the illogicality – is complete. You learn to want more wisely – that’s all. Train desire, for you can never chain it.
“I’m engaged here and now on what is to all appearance the most trivial of businesses. I play the spiteful boy – she is an obstinate peevish girl. There are other girls too – one an insinuating tiny minx, who would wheedle a backward glance out of Simon Stylites as he remounted his pillar – and, by the sun in heaven, will get little more from this child of Mother Earth! There’s another, I hear – Irish! – And Irish is near my heart. But behind her – set in the uncertain radiance of my imagination – lies her Excellency. Heaven knows why! Save that it is gloriously paradoxical to meet a foreign Excellency in this spot, and to get to most justifiable, most delightful, loggerheads with her immediately. I have conceived Machiavellian devices. I will lure away her friends. I will isolate her, humiliate her, beat her in the fight. There may be some black eyes – some bruised hearts – but I shall do it. Why? I have always been gentle before. But so I feel towards her. And therefore I am afraid. This is the foeman for my steel, I think – I have my doubts but that she’ll beat me in the end.
“When I talk like this, Cromlech chuckles, loves me as a show, despises me as a mind. Roger – young Roger Fitz-Archdeacon – is all an incredulous amazement. I don’t wonder. There is nothing so small and nothing so great – nothing so primitive and not a thing so complex – nothing so unimportant and so engrossing as this ‘duel of the sexes.’ A proves it a trifle, and is held great. B reckons it all-supreme, and becomes popular. C (a woman) describes the Hunter Man. D (a man) descants of the Pursuit by Woman. The oldest thing is the most canvassed and the least comprehended. But there’s a reputation – and I suppose money – in it for anybody who can string phrases. There’s blood-red excitement for everybody who can feel. Yet I’ve played my part in other affairs – not so much in dull old England, where you work five years to become a Member of Parliament, and five years more in order to get kicked out again – but in places where in a night you rise or fall – in five minutes order the shooting squad or face it – boil the cook or are stuffed into the pot yourself. (Cromlech, this is not exact scientific statement!) Yet always – everywhere – the woman! And why? On my honour, I don’t know. What in the end is she?
“I adjourn the question – and put a broader one. What am I? The human being as such? If I’m a vegetable, am I not a mistake? If I’m an animal, am I not a cruelty? If I’m a soul, am I not misplaced? I’d say ‘Yes’ to all this, save that I enjoy myself so much. Because I have forty thousand a year? Hardly. I’ve had nothing, and been as completely out of reach of getting anything as the veriest pauper that ever existed – and yet I’ve had the deuce of a fine existence the while. I think there’s only one solid blunder been made about man – he oughtn’t to have been able to think. It wastes time. It makes many people unhappy. That’s not my case. I like it. It just wastes time.
“That insinuating minx, possessed of a convenient dog and an ingratiating manner, insinuated to-day that I was handsome. Well, she’s pretty, and I suppose we’re both better off for it. It is an introduction. But to myself I don’t seem very handsome. I have my pride – I look a gentleman. But I look a queer foreign fish. I found myself envying the British robustness of that fine young chap who is so misguided as to be a lawyer.
“Ah, why do I object to lawyers? Tolstoy! – I used to say – or, at the risk of advanced intellects not recognising one’s allusions, one could go farther back. But that is, in the end, all gammon. Every real conviction springs from personal experience. I hate the law because it interfered with me. I’m not aware of any better reason. So I’m going on without it – unless somebody tries to steal my forty thousand, of course. Ambrose, thou art a humbug – or, more precisely, thou canst not avoid being a human individual!”
Lord Lynborough completed the entry in his diary – he was tolerably well aware that he might just as well not have written it – and cast his eyes towards the window of the library. The stars were bright; a crescent moon decorated, without illuminating, the sky. The regular recurrent beat of the sea on the shore, traversing the interval in night’s silence, struck on his ear. “If God knew Time, that might be His clock,” said he. “Listen to its inexorable, peaceable, gentle, formidable stroke!”
His sleep that night was short and broken. A fitful excitement was on his spirit: the glory of the summer morning wooed his restlessness. He would take his swim alone, and early. At six o’clock he slipped out of the house and made for Beach Path. The fortified gate was too strong for his unaided efforts. Roger Wilbraham had told him that, if the way were impeded, he had a right to “deviate.” He deviated now, lightly vaulting over the four-foot-high stone wall. None was there to hinder him, and, with emotions appropriate to the occasion, he passed Nab Grange and gained the beach. When once he was in the water, the emotions went away.
They were to return – or, at any rate, to be succeeded by their brethren. After he had dressed, he sat down and smoked a cigarette as he regarded the smiling sea. This situation was so agreeable that he prolonged it for full half-an-hour; then a sudden longing for Coltson’s coffee came over him. He jumped up briskly and made for the Grange gate.
He had left it open – it was shut now. None had been nigh when he passed through. Now a young woman in a white frock leant her elbows comfortably on its top rail and rested her pretty chin upon her hands. Lady Norah’s blue eyes looked at him serenely from beneath black lashes of noticeable length – at anyrate Lynborough noticed their length.
Lynborough walked up to the gate. With one hand he removed his hat, with the other he laid a tentative hand on the latch. Norah did not move or even smile.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” said Lynborough, “but if it does not incommode you, would you have the great kindness to permit me to open the gate?”
“Oh, I’m sorry; but this is a private path leading to Nab Grange. I suppose you’re a stranger in these parts?”
“My name is Lynborough. I live at Scarsmoor there.”
“Are you Lord Lynborough?” Norah sounded exceedingly interested. “The Lord Lynborough?”
“There’s only one, so far as I’m aware,” the owner of the title answered.
“I mean the one who has done all those – those – well, those funny things?”
“I rejoice if the recital of them has caused you any amusement. And now, if you will permit me – ”
“Oh, but I can’t! Helena would never forgive me. I’m a friend of hers, you know – of the Marchesa di San Servolo. Really you can’t come through here.”
“Do you think you can stop me?”
“There
