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Updated: May 20, 2025
Treading the road built by Napoleon, I was enveloped in the gloom of the wondrous Gondo Schlucht, to come out into a broad valley, a green amphitheatre, above which a company of white, mountain gods sat grouped to watch a cloud-fight. If I had not been heart-broken by the cruelty of Helen Blantock, I should have been almost minded to thank her for sending me here.
Besides these, there was only myself, Montagu Lane; and I believed that the dinner had been arranged with a view to my claims as leading man in the love drama of which Helen Blantock was leading lady, the other characters in the scene merely being "on" as our "support." If this idea argued conceit, I was punished.
There were châteaux dotted here and there on the hillside, and I no longer peopled them with myself and Helen Blantock. I realised that if one had a palace on the Lake of Como or Bourget, or any other romantic sheet of water, one could be happy as an elderly bachelor, if one's days were occasionally enlivened by visits from congenial friends, such as the Winstons and the Boy.
"It was the night I proposed to Nell," I said, half to myself. "Sir Horace Jerveyson was at the ball, too." "Talking to Lady Blantock." "And looking at Miss Blantock. I noticed, and I put things together." "Who would ever have thought of putting those two together?" "I did. I said to myself and afterwards to Jack may I tell you what I said?" "Please do. If it hurts, it will be a counter-irritant."
Lady Blantock, a matron of comfortable rotundity of figure and a placid way of folding plump, white hands, had, however, a contradictorily cold and watchful eye, which I had feared at first; but it had softened for me, and I accepted the omen. In the spring, when my London tyrant had pronounced me "sound as a bell," I had proposed to Helen. Then came this bidding to dinner.
There was Jack Winston, who had lately married an American heiress, not because she was an heiress, but because she was adorable; there was the heiress herself, née Molly Randolph, whom I had known through Winston's letters before I saw her lovely, laughing face; there was Sir Horace Jerveyson, the richest grocer in the world, whom I suspected Lady Blantock of actually regarding as a human being, and a suitable successor to the late Sir James.
There were sweet villages where they made cheese, and where I could have been happy making it with Helen Blantock; there were châteaux with turret rooms where my book shelves would have fitted excellently; but always we fled on, on, until at last, after two bewildering, cinematographic days, we drove into the streets of that dignified and delightful city, Bern.
"Do you mind my saying what I think of Lady Blantock and her daughter?" inquired Molly, with the meek sweetness of a coaxing child. "Perhaps I oughtn't, but it would be a relief to my feelings." "I wonder if it would to mine?" I remarked impersonally, addressing the ancient tapestry on an opposite wall. "Let's try, and see," persisted Molly. "Calculating Cats! There, it's out.
Hardly did I even expect to hear his answer, for I was looking at Helen, and she was in great beauty. But the man's words jumped to my ears. "Miss Blantock and I are going to Scotland," answered the grocer, in his fat voice, which might have been oiled with his own bacon. I stared incredulously. "Together," he informatively added. Lady Blantock laughed nervously.
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