The Quiet Gentleman

Chapter 6

Miss Bolderwood’s name was not again mentioned between the half-brothers, Martin apparently being conscious of some awkwardness in adverting to the subject of his late quarrel with Gervase, and Gervase considering himself to be under no obligation to account to his brother for his visits to Whissenhurst Grange. These were more frequent than could be expected to meet with the approval either of Martin, or the numerous other gentlemen who paid court to the beautiful heiress; for the Earl, driving over to Whissenhurst on the day after his first encounter with Marianne to enquire politely after her well-being, after such a misadventure as had befallen her, was able to persuade her, without much difficulty, to accompany him on a drive round the neighbourhood. Informed by some chance observation that she had never yet handled a pair of highbred horses, he conceived the happy notion of offering to instruct her in this art. It took well; Sir Thomas, having early perceived, from his handling of his cattle, that the Earl was no mean whip, raised no objection; and on several mornings thereafter those of Miss Bolderwood’s admirers who happened, by some chance, to find themselves in the vicinity of Whissenhurst were revolted by the spectacle of their goddess bowling smartly along the lane under the tuition of her latest and most distinguished swain. On more than one occasion they had the doubtful pleasure of meeting him at a Whissenhurst tea-party. These informal entertainments, where tea, quadrille, and commerce were followed by an elegant supper, just suited the Earl’s humour, for his prolonged service in the Peninsula, with its generally happy-go-lucky way of life, had rendered him un appreciative of the formal tedium obtaining at Stanyon. Sir Thomas was a genial host, his lady was a notable housewife; and nothing delighted either of them more than to see a number of young persons enjoying themselves at their expense. As for Marianne, it would have been hard to have guessed which of her swains she was inclined to prefer, for she seemed equally pleased to see them all, and if one gentleman was the recipient of her particular favours one day, the next she would bestow these sunnily upon another. Nor did she neglect the members of her own sex: she had even been known to leave a hopeful and far from ineligible cavalier disconsolate merely because she had promised to go for a walk with another damsel, and would on no account break her engagement. The gentlemen said she was the most beautiful girl they had ever beheld; the ladies, for the most part, bestowed on her an even more striking testimonial: they were sure there could not anywhere be found a more good-natured girl. She had her detractors, of course; and it was not long after his arrival at Stanyon that the Earl learned from several mothers of pretty daughters that Miss Bolderwood, though well-enough, had too short an upper lip to be considered a Beauty, and was sadly deficient in accomplishments. Her performance upon the pianoforte was no more than moderate, and she had never learnt to play the harp. Nor had Lady Bolderwood ever called upon morning-visitors to admire her daughter’s latest watercolour sketch, from which it was to be apprehended that Miss Bolderwood’s talent did not lie in this direction either.

Martin was nearly always to be found at the Whissenhurst tea-parties; and once, having received a particular invitation from Lady Bolderwood, Theo drove over with the Earl to bear his part in an informal dance. Gervase, watching how Theo’s eyes followed Marianne, could only be sorry: it did not appear to him that she held him in greater regard than himself, or Martin, or the inarticulate Mr. Warboys.

Cards of invitation were sent out from Stanyon; Marianne was in transports, and if it did not quite suit Lady Bolderwood’s sense of propriety to permit her to appear at a regular ball before she had been brought out in London at a ball of her own parents’ contriving, Sir Thomas could not be brought to see that such niceties mattered a jot. Lady Bolderwood’s scruples were overborne, and Marianne could be happy, and had only to decide between the rival merits of her white satin dress with the Russian bodice, fastened in front with little pearls; and one of white crape, trimmed with blonde lace, and worn over a satin slip.

Her happiness, with that of every other lady who had been honoured with an invitation to the ball, very soon became alloyed by anxiety. The weather underwent a change, and in place of bright spring days, with the wind blowing constantly from the east, a stormy period threatened to set in. A gay little party of damsels, seeking violets in the woods about Whissenhurst, were caught in such a severe downpour that they were soaked almost to the skin; and when anxious questions were put to such weather-wise persons as gardeners and farmers, these worthies would only shake their heads, and say that it showed no sign of fairing-up. The date of the ball had been carefully chosen to coincide with the full moon, but not even so indulgent a parent as Sir Thomas would for a moment consider the possibility of driving some six miles to a party of pleasure if the moon were to be obscured by clouds, and the coachman’s vision still further impaired by driving rain.

“Do we despair, Miss Morville?” asked the Earl.

“No, but if the weather continues in this odious way, I fear you will find your rooms very thin of company,” she replied. “The people who are coming from a distance, and are to sleep here, will come, because they will set out in daylight, you know, and they will hope that the rain won’t come on, or that they may drive away from it. I should think you may be sure of the party from Belvoir, but I do feel that you should perhaps fortify your mind to the likelihood of your immediate neighbours not caring to set forth in wet, cloudy weather.”

“I will endeavour to do so,” promised the Earl gravely.

Three days before the ball, the weather, so far from showing signs of improvement, promised nothing but disaster. The prophets said gloomily that it was banking up for a storm, and they were right. The day was tempestuous; and when the Stanyon party assembled for dinner even Martin, who had hitherto refused to envisage the possibility of the inclement weather’s persisting, took his place at the table with a very discontented expression on his face, and announced that he thought the devil had got into the skies.

“Well, if it continues in this way, we must postpone the ball,” Gervase said cheerfully.

“Yes! And find everyone gone off to London!” retorted Martin.

He could talk of nothing but the probable ruin of their plans; and since no representation sufficed to make him think more hopefully of the prospects, not even his mother was sorry when, shortly after the party rose from the table, he said, after a series of cavernous yawns, that he rather thought he would go to bed, since he had the head-ache, and everything was a dead bore.

The usual whist set had been formed, and so fierce were the battles fought over the table that none of the four players noticed that the wind was no longer rattling the shutters, and moaning round the corners of the Castle, until Miss Morville, who sat quietly stitching by the fire, lifted her head, and said: “Listen! the wind has dropped!”

“I rather thought it would,” observed the Dowager, gathering up her trick. “Indeed, I said as much this morning. ‘Depend upon it,’ I said to Abney, ‘the wind will drop, and we shall have it fine for our party.’ I flatter myself I am seldom at fault in my calculations. Dear me, St. Erth, I am sure if I had known you had the King of Diamonds in your hand we might have taken a couple of tricks more!”

“I am very much afraid, ma’am, that this is the lull before a storm,” said Theo.

So indeed it proved. After a brief period of quiet, a distant but menacing rumble of thunder was heard; and the Dowager instantly said that she had suspected as much, since nothing so surely gave Martin the head-ache as a thunderstorm.

After half an hour, during which time thunder grumbled intermittently, Miss Morville announced that she too would go to bed. She said that she could wish that, if a storm there must be, it would lose no time in bursting into full force, and thus be the more quickly finished.

“Poor Drusilla!” Theo said, smiling. “Do you dislike it so very much?”

“I do dislike it,” she replied, with dignity, “but I am well aware that to be afraid of the thunder is unworthy of any person of the least intelligence. The noise is certainly disagreeable, but it cannot, after all, harm one!” With these stout words, she folded up her needlework, bade goodnight to the company, and went away to her bedchamber.

“I fear we must expect to spend a disturbed night,” said Mr. Clowne, shaking his head. “There has been a feeling of oppression in the atmosphere throughout the day which presages a very considerable storm. I trust your ladyship’s rest will not be impaired.”

“I have no apprehension of it,” she responded. “I do not fear the elements, I assure you. Indeed, I should think it a very remarkable circumstance if I were to lose my sleep on account of them. We have very severe storms at Stanyon: I have often observed as much. Ah, here is the tea-table being brought in at last! What a pity Drusilla should not have waited, for she might have dispensed the tea, you know, and now I shall be obliged to do so myself.”

As the evening wore on, the storm increased in violence, the reverberations of one crash of thunder hardly dying away before another, and even more severe clatter, seeming to roll round the sky above the Castle, succeeded it. Powerful gusts of wind buffeted the windows, and drove the smoke downwards in the chimneys; the howl of the gusts, sweeping round the many angles of the Castle, rose sometimes to a shriek which could be heard through the loudest peals of the thunder.

The Chaplain having meekly retired to bed when his patroness sought her own couch, the Earl and his cousin were left to amuse themselves as best they might. The Earl lit one of his cigarillos, but Theo declined joining him. “And I wish you may not repent your temerity, when my aunt detects — as I promise you she will! — the aroma of tobacco in this room tomorrow!” he added.

Gervase laughed. “Will she give me one of her tremendous scolds, do you think? I shall shake in my shoes: she is the most terrifying woman!”

His cousin smiled. “What a complete hand you are, St. Erth! Much you care for her scolds! All this mild compliance is nothing but a take-in: you engage her at every turn!”

“Military training, Theo: a show of strength to deceive the enemy!” said Gervase firmly. “But the room will reek of wood-smoke in the morning, and my iniquity may be undiscovered. It is a very bad habit, however: one that I learned in Spain, and have tried in vain to abandon. I don’t find that snuff answers the purpose at all. Good God, what a gust! You will be blown out of your turret!”

“Not I! The walls are so thick I shall spend the night very much more snugly than you will, I daresay.”

“Don’t think it! I became inured to this kind of thing in Spain, and very soon learned to sleep peacefully through a veritable tornado — in a draughty billet, too, with no glass in the windows, but only a few boards nailed across them to protect us from the worst of the weather. I have taken the precaution, too, of telling Turvey to let the fire die down in my room, and thus need not fear to be smothered by smoke. Like her ladyship, I guessed how it would be!”

“At all events, there is a very good chance that it will blow itself out, and we may expect better weather after it. You need not despair of your ball! But it is not, I fancy, so violent a storm as you might suppose from the way the wind screeches round us. I am accustomed to it, but, after so long an absence, you,I imagine, might well believe yourself to be listening to the screams of souls in torment.”

“No, I well recall the discomforts of Stanyon in inclement weather. I shall go to bed. I am sure I know not how it is, but an evening spent in the company of my stepmother fatigues me more than a dozen cavalry charges!”

“To that also I am accustomed,” Theo said gravely.

They left the Saloon together, the Earl’s hand tucked lightly into his cousin’s arm. The candles and the lamps were still burning in the galleries and on the Grand Staircase, the Earl having, in the gentlest manner possible, informed his household that, since it was not his habit to retire at ten o’clock, he did not wish to find the Castle plunged in darkness at this hour. A couple of footmen were hovering about in a disinterested way, their purpose being to extinguish the lights as soon as he should have shut his bedchamber-door. The Earl smiled faintly, and murmured: “My poor Turvey! He cannot reconcile himself to the rigours of life in the country, and wonders that he should be required to grope his way to bed by the light of a single candle. I wish he may not leave my service, as a result of all these discomforts! He understands my boots as no other valet has ever done.”

“And your neckcloths?” said Theo quizzically.

“No, no, how can you do me such an injustice? Mine is the only hand employed in their arrangement! But you have set my doubts at rest, Theo! This Oriental style, which you so rightly deprecate, is too high — by far too high! You shall see tomorrow how beautifully I am able to tie a trone d’amour!”

“Go to bed! It is by far too late for your funning!” Theo said, laughing at him. “Sleep well!”

“No fear I shall not: I have been yawning this hour past! Good-night!”

The Earl passed into his bedchamber, where “Purvey awaited him by the embers of a dying fire. “A rough night!” he remarked.

“Extremely so, my lord.”

“My cousin, however, believes that we may not indulge our optimism too far in expecting a period of better weather after the storm.”

“Indeed, my lord?”

“I daresay,” said the Earl, drawing the pin from the over-tall Oriental-tie, and laying it down on his dressing-table, “that if you were to step out into the open you would not find the storm to be so severe as you might suppose.”

“Unless your lordship particularly desires me to do so, I should prefer not to expose myself to the elements.”

“My unreasonable demands of you fall short of that,” said Gervase gravely.

Turvey bowed; it was plain that he was not to be won over, and his master abandoned the attempt, permitting himself to be undressed in silence. When he had been assisted to put on his dressing-gown, he told the man he might go, and sat down at his dressing-table to pare his nails. Turvey gathered up the discarded raiment, bade him a punctilious good-night, and withdrew into the adjoining dressing-room, where he could be heard moving about for some minutes, opening and shutting drawers, and brushing coats. Gervase, having critically regarded his slender fingertips, extinguished the candles in the brackets beside the mirror, forced a wedge of paper in the door on to the gallery, which showed a disagreeable tendency to rattle, and climbed into his formidable bed. It was hung with very heavy curtains of crimson velvet, fringed and tasselled with gold, but Gervase, in whom several years of campaigning had engendered a dislike of being shut in, would never permit his valet to draw these. He disposed himself on his pillows, shifted the position of his bedside candle, and, with some misgiving, opened the book which had been pressed on him by the Dowager, after he had very unwisely owned that it had never come in his way. It was entitled Self-Control,and since the Dowager had described it to him as a very pretty and improving book, and one which would do him a great deal of good to read, he had not much expectation of being amused. The thunder went on rumbling and crackling overhead, and the wind was now driving rain against the windows, but this continuous noise had as little power as Mrs. Branton’s moral tale to keep him awake. He very soon found that the printed words were running into one another, tossed the book aside, blew out his candle, and within ten minutes was soundly asleep.

He awoke very suddenly, he knew not how many hours later, as though some unusual sound, penetrating his dreams, had jerked him back to consciousness. The room was in dense darkness, the fire in the hearth having died quite away; and he could hear nothing but the rain beating against the windows, and the howl of the wind, more subdued now, round the corner of the building. Yet even as he wondered whether perhaps he had been awakened by the fall of a tile from the roof, or the slamming of a door left carelessly open, he received so decided an impression that he was not alone in the room, that he raised himself quickly on to one elbow, straining his eyes to see through the smothering darkness. He could hear nothing but the wind and the rain, but the impression that someone was in the room rather grew on him than abated, and he said sharply: “Who is there?”

There was no answer, nor was there any sound within the room to betray the presence of another, but he could not be satisfied. Grasping the bed-clothes, he flung them aside in one swift movement, and leaped up. As his feet touched the floor, something creaked, and his quickened ears caught a sound which might have been made by a softly-closing door. He reached the windows, grazing his shin against the leg of the dressing-table, and dragged one of the curtains back. A faint, gray light was admitted into the room. He could perceive no one, and strode back to the bedside, groping on the table for his tinder-box. His candle lit, he held it up, keenly looking about him. He noticed that his wedge was still firm in the door leading to the gallery; he glanced towards the door to his dressing-room, and saw that that too was shut. He set the candle down, thrust his feet into a pair of gay Morocco slippers, and shrugged himself into his dressing-gown, aware, as he did so, of the unlikelihood of anyone’s entering his room at such an advanced hour of the night, but still convinced that he had not imagined the whole.

A board cracked outside the room. He picked up the candlestick, and wrenched open his door, stepping out on to the gallery. He found himself staring at Martin, who, fully dressed, except for his shoes, and carrying a lantern, had halted in his tracks, just beyond his door, and was looking in a startled, defensive way over his shoulder. “Martin!” he exclaimed. “What the devil — ?”

“Don’t kick up such a dust!” Martin begged him, in a savage but a lowered voice. “Do you want to wake my mother?”

“What are you doing?” Gervase demanded, more softly, but with a good deal of sternness in his tone. “Where have you been?”

“What’s that to you?” Martin retorted. “I suppose I need not render you an account of my movements! I have been out!”

“Out?”Gervase repeated incredulously. “In this hurricane?”

“Why shouldn’t I go out? I’m not afraid of a paltry thunderstorm!”

“Be so good as to stop trying to humbug me!” Gervase said, with more acidity in his voice than his brother had ever heard. “You had the head-ache! you went early to bed!”

“Oh, well!” Martin muttered, reddening a little. “I — I recalled that — that I had an appointment in the village!”

“An appointment in the village! Pray, in which village?”

“Cheringham — but it’s no concern of yours!” said Martin sulkily.

“It appears to me to be raining, but I observe that you are not at all wet!” said Gervase sardonically.

“Of course I am not! I had my driving-coat on, and I left it, with my boots, downstairs! There is no need for you to blab to my mother that I was out tonight — though I daresay that is just what you mean to do!” He cast his brother a look of dislike, and said: “I suppose that curst door woke you! The wind blew it out of my hand.”

“Which door?”

“Oh, the one into the court, of course!” He jerked his head towards a door at the end of the gallery, which, as the Earl knew, led to a secondary flight of stairs. “I came in by that way: I often do!”

Gervase looked at him under slightly knit brows. “Very well, but what brought you to my room?”

“Well, I am bound to pass your room, if I come up by that stairway!”

“You are not bound to enter my room, however.”

“Enter your room! That’s a loud one! As though I should wish to!”

“Did you not, in fact, do so?”

“Of course I did not! Why should I? I wish you will be a little less busy, St. Erth! If I choose to go to Cheringham on affairs of my own — ”

“It is naturally no concern of mine,” interposed Gervase. “You choose wild nights for your intrigues!”

“My — ?” Martin gave a crack of laughter, hurriedly smothered. “Ay, that’s it! Old Scrooby’s daughter, I daresay!”

“I beg pardon. You will allow that if I am to be expected to swallow this story some explanation should be vouch-safed to me.”

“Well, I ain’t going to explain it to you,” said Martin, scowling at him.

A glimmer of light at the angle of the gallery in which they stood and that which ran along the north side of the court, caught the Earl’s eye. He took a quick step towards it, and Miss Morville, who, shrouded, lamp in hand, had been peeping cautiously round the corner of the wall, came forward, blushing in some confusion, but whispering: “Indeed, I beg your pardon, but I thought it must be housebreakers! I could not sleep for this horrid storm, and it seemed to me that I heard footsteps outside the house, and then a door slammed! I formed the intention of slipping upstairs to wake Abney, only then I heard voices, and thought I could recognize yours, my lord, so I crept along the gallery to see if it were indeed you.” She looked at Martin. “Was it you who let the door slam into the court? Have you been out in this rain and wind?”

“Yes, I have!” said Martin, in a furious undervoice. “I have been down to the village, and pray, what have either of you to say to that?”

“Only that I wish you will be more careful, and not give me such a fright!” said Miss Morville, drawing her shawl more securely about her. “And, if I were you, Martin, I would not stand talking here, for if you do so much longer you will be bound to wake Lady St. Erth.”

This common-sense reminder had the effect of sending him off on tiptoe. Miss Morville, conscious of her bare toes, which her nightdress very imperfectly concealed, and of the neat cap tied under her chin, would have followed him had she not happened to look into the Earl’s face. He was watching Martin’s retreat, and, after considering him for a moment, Miss Morville asked softly: “Pray, what has occurred, sir?”

He brought his eyes down to her face. “Occurred?”

“You seem to be a good deal put-out. Is it because Martin stole away to the village? Boys will do so, you know!”

“That! No! — if it was true!”

“Oh, I expect it was!” she said. “I thought, did not you? that he had been drinking what my brother Jack calls Old Tom.”

“I know of no reason why he must go to the village to do so.”

“Oh, no! I conjecture,” said Miss Morville, with the air of one versed in these matters, “that it was to see some cocking that he went.”

“Cocking!”

“At the Red Lion. To own the truth, that was what I thought he meant to do when he said he had the headache and would go to bed.”

“But, in God’s name, why could he not have told me so?”

“They never do,” she replied simply. “My brothers were just the same. In general, you know, one’s parents frown upon cocking, on account of the low company it takes a boy into. Depend upon it, that was why he would not tell you.”

“My dear ma’am, Martin can hardly regard me in the light of a parent!”

“No — at least, only in a disagreeable way,” she said. “You are so much older than he, and have so much more experience besides, that I daresay the poor boy feels you are a great distance removed from him. Moreover, he resents you very much at present. If I were you, I would not mention his having gone out tonight.”

“I shall certainly not do so. How deep is his resentment, Miss Morville? You seem to know so much that perhaps you know that too!”

“Dear me, no! I daresay he will recover from it when he is better acquainted with you. I never heeded him very much, and I expect it will be better if you do not either.”

“You are full of excellent advice, ma’am!”

“Well, I am not clever, but I am thought to have a great deal of common-sense, though I can see that you mean to be satirical,” she replied calmly. “Good-night! — I think the wind is less, and we may perhaps be able to sleep at last.”

She flitted away down the gallery, and the Earl returned to his bedchamber. Sleep was far from him, however, and after drawing the curtain across the window again he began to pace slowly about the room, thinking over all that had passed. The creak he had heard might, he supposed, have been caused merely by the settling of a chair; but he could not charge his nerves with having led him to imagine the closing of a door. He could have sworn that a latch had clicked very softly, and this sound was too distinctive to be confused with the many noises of the storm. He glanced towards the door into his dressing-room, and took a step towards it. Then he checked himself, reflecting that his silent visitor would scarcely return to his room that night. Instead of locking the door, he bent to pick up his handkerchief, which had fallen on the floor beside the bed, and stood for a moment, kneading it unconsciously between his hands, and wondering whether the click he had heard had not been in the room after all, but had been caused by Martin’s closing of the door leading to the stairway down the gallery. He could not think it, but it was useless to cudgel his brain any further at that hour. He tossed the handkerchief on to his pillow, and took off his dressing-gown. Suddenly his abstracted gaze became intent. He picked the handkerchief up again, and held it near the candle, to perceive more clearly the monogram which had caught his eye. Delicately embroidered on the fine lawn were the interlinked initials, M and F.