The Quiet Gentleman Read online

  Miss Morville said that she would be at Stanyon, and would take care of Marianne.

  ‘My dear,’ said Lady Bolderwood, pressing her hand, ‘if it were not for that circumstance I could not bring myself to consent to such an arrangement! I should not say it, but I have no great liking for Lady St Erth! Then, too, it has to be remembered that Marianne is an heiress, and if there is one thing above all others which I do not wish, it is to see her exposed to every gazetted fortune-hunter in England! She is too innocent to detect mere flattery; and even were Lady St Erth the best-natured woman alive, which I do not scruple to assert she is not, it would be unreasonable to expect her to guard a young girl as her own mother would!’

  Miss Morville, who had written all the invitations for the Dowager, said that she did not think that Marianne would encounter any fortune-hunters at Stanyon. She added that the ball would be quite a small one, and that the guests, for the most part, were already known to Lady Bolderwood. With this assurance the anxious mother had to be content.

  She sent a loving message of farewell to Marianne; and Marianne, who anticipated no attacks, either upon her expectations or upon her virtue, danced out to the landaulet, with her eyes and her cheeks aglow with happiness. She looked so pretty, in a swansdown-trimmed bonnet and pelisse, that Martin caught his breath at sight of her.

  So, too, a little later, did Lord Ulverston.

  After his first rapture at the thought of having Marianne to stay at Stanyon had abated a little, it had occurred to Martin that the visit would afford his half-brother many undesirable opportunities for flirtation. It had not occurred to him that he might find a rival in Lord Ulverston, for although his lordship certainly drove a magnificent team of horses, wore the coveted insignia of the Whip Club, and showed himself in all respects a man of fashion, he was not handsome, and his figure, seen beside any one of the three Frants, was not imposing. Martin, who stood over six foot in his bare feet, thought of him as a little on the squat. He was, in fact, of medium height and compact build; and if his features were not classical his smile was engaging, and his address considerable. It almost deserted him at the dazzling sight which met his eyes, but he made a quick recover, and sprang forward to hand Marianne out of the carriage before Martin had dismounted, and long before the Dowager had performed the proper introductions.

  Since the dinner-hour at Stanyon was at half-past six, Miss Morville lost no time in escorting Marianne to her bedchamber, a pleasant room next to her own, with a modern, barred grate, and a comfortable tent-bed. Marianne, looking about her at the flowered wallpaper, and all the evidences of up-to-date taste, seemed a little disappointed, and confided that she had expected to find herself in a panelled room, with a four-poster bed, and a powder-closet.

  ‘Well, it could be arranged for you to sleep in one of the panelled rooms,’ said Miss Morville. ‘Only it will set you at a little distance from me, and I had thought you would prefer to be near me.’

  Marianne assured her that she would not change her room for the world. ‘I thought all the rooms were panelled!’ she explained. ‘Is not the Castle of vast antiquity?’

  ‘Oh, not this part of it!’ said Miss Morville. ‘I think it was built at the time of Charles II. I fancy that not much of the original Castle still remains. If you are interested in antiquities, you should ask Theo Frant to take you over the whole building: he knows all about it.’

  ‘Is it haunted?’ breathed Marianne, in delightful trepidation.

  ‘Oh, no, nothing of that sort!’ Miss Morville said reassuringly. She then perceived that she had given the wrong answer, and added: ‘At least, it may be, but I am not at all fanciful, you know, and I daresay I might not be conscious of the supernatural.’

  ‘Oh, but, Drusilla, if a spectre without a head were to walk the corridors, or a female form in gray draperies, surely you would be conscious of it!’ cried Marianne, much shocked.

  ‘If I saw a female form in gray draperies I should take it for Lady St Erth,’ said Miss Morville apologetically. ‘She has a gray dressing-gown, you see. However, a headless spectre would certainly surprise me very much. Indeed, it would very likely give me a distaste for the Castle, so I hope I never shall see such an apparition.’

  ‘Give you a distaste for the Castle! Oh no, how can you be so unromantic?’ protested her youthful friend.

  ‘To own the truth,’ replied Miss Morville candidly, ‘I can perceive nothing romantic in a headless spectre. I should think it a very disagreeable sight, and if I did fancy I saw such a thing I should take one of Dr James’s powders immediately!’

  Marianne was obliged to laugh; but she shook her head as well, and was persuaded that her friend could not be serious.

  Miss Morville then went to her own room, to change her dress, promising to discover from Theo if they might reasonably expect to see a horrid apparition in any part of the Castle. She returned presently to escort Marianne to the Long Drawing-room, and, finding her charmingly attired in sprigged muslin, strongly recommended her to wrap a shawl round her shoulders. Though the Castle might lack a ghost, she said, it was well-provided with draughts.

  ‘Provoking creature!’ Marianne pouted. ‘You are determined to be prosaic, but I shan’t attend to you!’

  They found the rest of the party already assembled in the Long Drawing-room, gathered about a noble fire. The Earl came forward to draw the young ladies into the circle, and Marianne, with a droll look, complained of Drusilla’s insensibility. ‘But she says that I must ask you, Mr Frant, for the history of Stanyon, and you will tell it all to me – all about the secret dungeons, and the oubliette, and the ghost!’

  Theo smiled, but replied ruefully that he could offer her neither ghost nor oubliette. ‘And I hardly dare to tell you that the dungeons were converted many years ago into wine cellars!’ he confessed. ‘As for ghosts, I never heard of one here, did you, Gervase?’

  ‘None beyond the shade that flits across the Fountain Court, weeping, and wringing its hands,’ the Earl replied, with a composed countenance.

  Marianne clasped her own hands together, and fixed her eyes on his face. ‘Oh, no! Do you mean it? And is that the only ghost? Does it not enter the Castle?’

  ‘I have never known it to do so,’ he said truthfully. ‘Of course, we have not put you in the Haunted Room – that would never do! The noise of clanking chains would make it impossible for you to sleep, and the groans, you know, are dreadful to hear. You will not be disturbed by anything of that nature, I hope. And if you should happen to hear the sound of a coach-and-four under your window at midnight, pay no heed!’

  ‘For shame, Gervase!’ exclaimed Theo, laughing, as Marianne gave an involuntary shudder.

  ‘What is that you are saying, St Erth?’ called the Dowager, breaking off her conversation with Ulverston. ‘You are talking a great deal of nonsense! If any such thing were to happen I should be excessively displeased, for Calne has orders to lock the gates every night.’

  ‘Ah, ma’am, but what can locked gates avail against a phantom?’

  ‘Phantom! Let me assure you that we have nothing of that sort at Stanyon! I should not countenance it; I do not approve of the supernatural.’

  Her disapproval was without its effect, the gentlemen continuing to tease Marianne with accounts of spectres, and Martin achieving a decided success with a very horrid monkish apparition, which, when it raised its head, was seen to have only a skull under its cowl. ‘It is known as the Black Monk of Stanyon,’ he informed Marianne. ‘It – it appears only to the head of the house, and then as a death-warning!’

  She turned her eyes involuntarily towards Gervase. ‘Oh, no!’ she said imploringly, hardly knowing whether to be horrified or diverted. ‘You are not serious!’

  ‘Hush!’ he said, in an earnest tone. ‘Martin should not have disclosed to you the Secret of Stanyon: we never speak of it! It is a very dreadful sight.’

 
‘Well, I don’t know how you should know that,’ remarked Miss Morville, a good deal amused. ‘You cannot have seen it, after all!’

  ‘My dear Miss Morville, what makes you think so?’

  ‘You are not dead!’ she pointed out.

  ‘Not yet!’ struck in Ulverston, in sepulchral accents. ‘We cannot tell, however, when we may find him stiff in his bed, his fingers still clutching the bell-rope, and an expression on his face of the greatest terror!’

  ‘No, no! Oh, you are roasting me! I do not believe it!’ Marianne said faintly.

  Her cheeks were quite blanched, and she could not resist the impulse to look over her shoulder. The Earl judged it to be time to have done, and to assure her that the Black Monk existed only in Martin’s imagination. The Dowager set Lord Ulverston right on a little misapprehension, telling him that the bell-rope in the Earl’s bedchamber hung beside the fireplace, and was out of reach of the bed. This was an inconvenience which she continued to deplore until dinner was announced; and as Miss Morville, rallied on her lack of sensibility, said that she could not be terrified by tales of skeletons, since these could only be produced by human contrivance, Marianne’s alarms were soon sufficiently dispelled to enable her to eat her dinner with a good appetite, and not to suppose that if she glanced behind her at the footman about to present a syllabub to her she would discover him to be a fleshless monk.

  The Dowager’s benevolence had not led her to make any plans for the entertainment of her young guest, but when she discovered that the party numbered eight persons, she directed that a second card-table should be set up, so that those who did not play whist with herself might enjoy a rubber of Casino. ‘Mr Clowne, and my nephew, Mr Theo Frant, will make up our table,’ she informed Lord Ulverston. ‘You, I know, will prefer to play whist!’

  The grace with which the Viscount accepted this decree was only equalled by the dexterity with which he convinced her ladyship that she would be better amused by a game of speculation. To her objection that she had never played the game, he responded that it would afford him delight to teach her. He seated himself on her right hand; and not even Martin, whose jealous disposition made him at all times suspicious, could decide whether it was by chance, or deep stratagem, that Marianne was placed on his other side. To her he largely devoted himself, cheating himself to enable her to win fish, and keeping her in a ripple of laughter with his inconsequent chatter. Fortunately for the Dowager, Mr Clowne, who sat on her left, considered that it behoved him to direct her bids; and since she was acquisitive by nature it was not long before she grasped the principles of the game, and was making some pretty shrewd bids on her own account.

  Seldom had an evening at Stanyon passed more merrily. No one noticed the appearance of the tea-tray, and it was very nearly midnight before the party broke up.

  On the following morning, an exercise in manoeuvres was won by the Earl, not, as his indignant friend told him, so much by superior strategy as by inner knowledge. The Viscount, suggesting that a riding-party should be formed, was countered by the Earl, who said that there was no horse in the stables accustomed to carrying a lady, and followed up this advantage by offering to let Miss Bolderwood drive his famous grays. Martin, only deterred from pressing the claims of his Troubadour as a safe lady’s hack by the recollection that the only lady’s saddle at Stanyon was of an antiquated design, quite unsuitable for Marianne’s use, owned himself to be very much obliged to Miss Morville, who ventured to suggest that her own riding-horse could easily be brought to Stanyon from Gilbourne House for Miss Bolderwood’s use.

  It was of no avail. ‘Your horse shall of course be fetched, ma’am,’ said the Earl, ‘but it is you who must ride him! I know Miss Bolderwood too well to indulge myself with the thought that she will set forth on any expedition while you remain at home!’

  It was enough. Marianne declared that nothing would induce her to do so at the expense of her friend, and Miss Morville, who would have been happier to have attended to all the last-minute preparations for the evening’s ball, was obliged to form one of the party bound for Whissenhurst, to enquire after the progress of the invalids there.

  The expedition, after a vain attempt to persuade Theo into joining it, consisted of Marianne and the Earl, in the curricle, accompanied by Miss Morville, Lord Ulverston, and Martin, upon horseback. Martin’s infatuation led him to stay as close to the curricle as the narrowness of the lanes permitted, but Lord Ulverston’s manners were too well-bred to allow of his following this example. He devoted himself to Miss Morville, and, through the accident of his having once read one of her Mama’s excellent novels when he was confined to bed with a bad chill and could find nothing else to his hand, contrived to maintain an animated conversation with her all the way to Whissenhurst.

  Comfortable tidings having been received from old Nurse, every qualm was assuaged in Marianne’s breast. She need not think herself a renegade; she could be happy in the knowledge that her parents were much amended, and wished her well.

  ‘You show great aptitude as a whip, Miss Bolderwood,’ the Viscount told her, upon their leaving Whissenhurst Grange. ‘I have been observing you closely, and have derived no inconsiderable pleasure from the sight. But St Erth is not the man to teach you those niceties which you should know! Ger, dear boy, take my horse, and relinquish your place beside Miss Bolderwood to me! I will show her how to feather-edge a corner.’

  ‘Yes, pray do!’ Marianne said eagerly. ‘I collect that you are a member of the Four-Horse Club, and only think how I shall astonish Papa when I tell him that I have had a lesson from one of the first whips in the country!’

  ‘My trick, I fancy, Ger!’ murmured the Viscount, giving his bridle into St Erth’s hand.

  ‘The treachery of one’s friends affords food for much melancholy reflection,’ retorted St Erth. ‘I warn you, I shall come about, and my revenge may well terrify you!’

  ‘I would not have yielded so tamely!’ muttered Martin, as the Viscount mounted lightly into the curricle.

  ‘I can believe it, but I think myself very well-placed,’ replied his brother, swinging himself into the saddle. ‘That is a nice hack of yours, Miss Morville, and I fancy you have light hands. Do you hunt at all?’

  She could not but be pleased with the good-breeding which not only kept him at her side, but prevented his emulating Martin’s example in trying to ride as close to the curricle as possible. He continued to converse with her like a man satisfied with his company; and upon finding an open farm gate, suggested that they should leave the lane for the refreshment of a canter through the fields. The crops, which were so far forward that year as to have put an early end to the hunting season, made it necessary for them to skirt the fields rather than to cross them, but they enjoyed an agreeable ride, and reached Stanyon some time before the rest of their party. The Earl hoped that the exertion would not have made Miss Morville too tired to stand up for every dance that evening, a civility which amused her, since she meant to spend the afternoon, not, as he seemed to suppose, in recruiting her energies for the night’s festivity, but in attending to all the details attaching to the entertainment of a large number of guests with which her hostess was a great deal too indolent to concern herself. Neither she nor the late Earl had been fond of entertaining, and since the marriage of their daughter no ball had been held at Stanyon. The housekeeper and the steward were thrown into a fluster by so rare an event, and although they enjoyed all the consequence of being called upon to provide for the accommodation of the ducal party from Belvoir, besides catering for the refreshment of some twenty persons at dinner, and forty more at supper, they were unaccustomed to such grand doings, and depended on Miss Morville, in default of their mistress, to advise on the number of rout-cakes it would be proper to bake; the propriety of serving tea and coffee at supper, as well as lemonade and champagne; and what apartments ought to be allotted to the several guests who were to spend the night at Stanyon. Then
there were the musicians to be thought of: where they should be lodged, and whose duty it was to wait upon them; the arrangement of the flowers to superintend; the number of card-tables to be set up in the Italian Saloon to be decided on; and sufficient chairs to be disposed about the ballroom for those either desirous of watching the dancing, or unfortunate enough to have no partners.

  The Earl, finding Miss Morville in conference with Abney, was a little conscience-stricken. ‘My dear ma’am, had I dreamed that all the labour of the ball was to fall upon you I would not have suggested we should give a ball at all! I should think you must bear me a considerable grudge!’

  ‘No, indeed! I am happy to be of service, and this sort of contriving, you know, is exactly what I like.’

  ‘You do it very well,’ he said, looking about him at the flowers, and at the clean packs of cards laid ready on the several tables. ‘You remember all the details which I am very sure I must have forgotten.’

  ‘Very likely you might,’ she agreed. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I must leave you. Lady St Erth received an express from your sister this morning, informing her that she and Lord Grampound would be pleased to come to the party, and I find she has not told Mrs Marple of it. I daresay her ladyship would wish to be given her former apartments, and we had arranged, you know, to put the Ashbournes in them.’

  ‘Louisa coming!’ he exclaimed. ‘Good God, what folly! Who can have invited her to undertake a journey of eighty miles for a ball of no particular consequence?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone invited her,’ replied Miss Morville, ‘but I expect Lady St Erth may have mentioned that a ball was to be held here. That, if you will not mind my saying so, would be enough to bring her.’

  ‘More than enough! She is the most tiresome, inquisitive woman of my acquaintance, I believe!’

  ‘Her understanding is not powerful,’ said Miss Morville, ‘nor are her manners such as must universally please, but she is not, I think, ill-natured, and although she may regret your existence, I fancy she does not dislike you, or even hold you to blame for being older than her brother.’