The Quiet Gentleman Read online

  ‘And you call yourself a friend of mine!’ Martin said bitterly.

  ‘Dash it, Martin, it ain’t the part of a friend of yours to second your opponent! Told you I’d act for you, didn’t I? Stupid thing to do, but not the man to go back on my word.’

  ‘Barny, if he applies to you, will you act for him?’

  Mr Warboys scratched his chin. ‘Might have to,’ he conceded. ‘But if I act for him, who’s to act for you? Tell me that!’

  ‘Good God, anyone! Rockcliffe – Alston!’

  ‘Ay, that will be a capital go!’ said Mr Warboys scathingly. ‘Why don’t you ask out the town-crier from Grantham, and ask him to act for you? Lord, Martin, dashed if I don’t think you must be queer in your attic!’

  ‘Very well! I’ll have Caversham!’ said Martin, a little taken aback, but recovering. ‘He won’t talk!’

  ‘No, and he won’t hear either!’ retorted Mr Warboys, justly incensed. ‘You can’t choose a man to be your second who has to have everything written down on a slate!’

  ‘It makes no odds to me!’ Martin said, picking up his gloves and his whip.

  ‘I know it don’t make any odds to you: you won’t have to fix the arrangements with him! If you want to fight, get your cousin to act for you!’

  ‘He won’t do it,’ Martin said briefly. ‘The first thing is to tell Ulverston you are willing to stand his friend.’

  ‘If Theo Frant won’t second you, you are wrong!’ said Mr Warboys.

  But Martin had already stormed out of the house, leaving his long-suffering friend to search in his father’s library for a copy of the Code of Honour. Careful perusal of this invaluable work revealed the fact that the first duty of a second was to seek a reconciliation. Mr Warboys spent the rest of the evening endeavouring to compress into as few words as could conveniently be written on a small slate a moving appeal to his prospective colleague to assist him in promoting this excellent object.

  Martin rode back to Stanyon. That a meeting with Ulverston at the dinner-table must be attended by considerable embarrassment he knew, but his temper was too much chafed to permit of his caring for that. He did not even consider it; still less did he consider what must be the unpleasant consequences of killing the Viscount, which he was determined to do. In blackbrowed silence he allowed his valet to help him to change his riding-dress for his evening-coat and knee-breeches; in the same dangerous mood he left his room, and strode along the gallery in the direction of the Grand Stairway. He was checked by the Earl’s voice, speaking his name, and looked round to see that Gervase had come out of his own room. He said curtly: ‘Well?’

  ‘Come into my room! I want to speak to you.’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you, St Erth!’

  ‘But I have something to say to you. Here, if you wish, but I had rather it were in a less public place.’

  ‘I know what you mean to say, and you may spare your breath!’

  ‘You don’t know it.’

  Martin stared at him, hostility and suspicion in his eyes. He hesitated, then shrugged, and followed the Earl into his bedchamber. ‘You mean to try to make me cry off meeting Ulverston. Don’t tell me I can’t do it, for I can, and, by God, I will!’

  ‘No. It is quite impossible that you should.’

  ‘I know of only one circumstance that would make it so! If he were to cry off! Is that it? Hasn’t he the stomach for it?’

  ‘Ulverston will meet you where and when you will,’ the Earl replied. ‘If you are determined on it, he will delope, and so, I think, will you.’

  ‘You are wrong!’ Martin said, with an ugly little laugh. ‘If he chooses to do so, the more fool he! Warn him! I shan’t miss my mark!’

  ‘I have warned him,’ replied Gervase. ‘He will take his chance. It’s not for him to withdraw: the challenge was yours.’

  ‘It was mine, and you cannot force me to withdraw it!’

  ‘No, of course I cannot,’ said the Earl, his tranquil voice in odd contrast to Martin’s fiery tones. ‘But you acted under a misapprehension, Martin. He is betrothed to Miss Bolderwood.’

  ‘What?’ Martin thundered, the colour rushing into his cheeks, and fading almost as swiftly, to leave his face very white.

  ‘There is to be no announcement until after her presentation, but he has been accepted.’

  ‘It’s a lie!’ stammered Martin. ‘You say it so that I shan’t meet Ulverston! I’ll not believe it!’

  Gervase made him no answer. He was standing before the fire, and he neither looked at Martin nor seemed to attend to his words, but stirred one of the logs in the grate with his foot, and meditatively watched the shower of sparks fly up the chimney. A hasty movement on Martin’s part made him glance up, but Martin had only flung over to the curtained window, as though desirous of putting as much space as possible between himself and his half-brother, and the Earl lowered his eyes again to the fire.

  ‘She might have told me!’ burst from Martin.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She knew I – she knew – !’

  ‘She is young, and a little heedless.’

  ‘Heedless! Oh, no! Not that! A title – a great position! those were the things she wanted! She is very welcome to them! If you had offered she would have accepted you! If you were dead, and I stood in your shoes, she would take me, and Ulverston might go hang!’

  ‘You would scarcely want her upon such terms.’

  ‘On any terms!’ Martin declared wildly. ‘She is the only woman I shall ever love!’

  The Earl diplomatically refrained from commenting upon this assertion. If there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes, Martin did not see it.

  ‘Women!’ Martin ejaculated, with loathing. ‘Now I know what they are! I shall never again be taken in!’ He took a turn about the room, his restless hands picking up, and discarding, a book that lay on the table, twitching a fold of the curtains into place, tugging at one of the heavy tassels adorning the hangings of the great bed, and finally seizing on an ivory comb from the dressing-table, and bending it savagely until it snapped in two pieces. He cast them from him, saying defiantly: ‘I’ve broken your comb! I beg your pardon!’

  ‘It is of no consequence.’

  ‘I suppose you have a dozen combs!’ Martin said, as though this likelihood added to his hatred of his brother.

  A discreet knock on the door made the Earl turn his head. It heralded the entrance of a footman, who said apologetically that he was sent to inform his lordship that dinner awaited his pleasure.

  ‘Desire Abney to announce it in a quarter of an hour’s time, if you please.’

  ‘Yes, my lord. Her ladyship –’

  ‘Convey my excuses to her ladyship. I have been detained, and have not yet completed my toilet.’

  The footman cast a covert look from him to Martin, and bowed himself out.

  The door had hardly closed behind him before Martin exclaimed: ‘Do you expect me to continue to remain under the same roof as Ulverston?’

  ‘He has told me that he finds himself obliged to leave Stanyon. I believe it will give rise to less comment if he remains until Monday, but it shall be as you wish.’

  ‘If I must sit at table with him tonight, I may as well do so for ever!’ said Martin disagreeably. He took another turn about the room, and fetched up abruptly in front of the Earl, as a thought occurred to him. ‘After all, he knocked me down! He owes me satisfaction!’

  ‘Would you think so, had your positions been reversed?’

  Martin resumed his pacing, reminding his brother irresistibly of a caged wild creature. After a turn or two, he flung over his shoulder: ‘What should I do?’

  ‘You may meet him, if you choose, and acknowledge the justice of his action by deloping.’

  ‘Folly!’

  ‘So I think.’

  ‘I’ll not beg his
pardon! No, by God, that’s too much! How could I guess – ?’

  ‘I believe him to be sensible of the misapprehension under which you acted. He is not the man to demand an apology from you. If you wish it, I can settle it for you, so that it will be unnecessary for any mention of the matter to be made between you. If you charge me with this office, I shall tell him that I have disclosed to you the secret of his betrothal, upon which you have naturally withdrawn your challenge.’

  After a moment’s inward struggle, Martin said in a choked voice: ‘Very well!’ He cast one of his smouldering looks at Gervase, and said: ‘Obliging of you! You think I should be grateful, no doubt! I’m not grateful! If it had not been for you, that fellow would never have come here!’

  ‘Why, no! But if she had returned your affection, Martin, his coming would not have injured you,’ the Earl said gently.

  Martin seemed to brush aside these words. ‘All was right until you came here! You put the wish to become a Countess into Marianne’s head, trifling with her, flattering her with your balls and your distinguishing attentions – to cast my pretensions into the shade! Then you brought in Ulverston, encouraged him to remain here! You set everyone against me! Marianne, Theo, Louisa – even my mother! Yes, even my mother, bemoaning the fact that you are going away to London! She will miss you amazingly! Ay, that is what she says! But there is one person you haven’t cozened with your soft words, one person who will not miss you! I hate you, St Erth! From the bottom of my heart, I hate you!’

  ‘If that is what you think, I cannot wonder at it,’ the Earl said, a little sadly.

  ‘Tell my mother I have gone to dine with Warboys!’ Martin said fiercely, and flung out of the room.

  Fifteen

  Martin was too much in the habit of dining from home for his absence to be greatly felt by his mother. Beyond saying several times that she had had no notion he meant to go to the Warboys’ that day, and supposing that he would drink tea at Whissenhurst, she made no comment. Her mind was engrossed by one of the complicated relationships in which she delighted, for she had chanced to read in the Gazette that a son had been born to the wife of a Mr Henry Lamberhurst, which instantly reminded her that a third cousin of her own had married a Lamberhurst, who, in his turn, was linked by two other marriages with a branch of the Austell family. With the Viscount’s good-natured, if not very valuable, assistance, she beguiled the dinner-hour by pursuing through all their ramifications every offshoot of both families until she reached, with the dessert, the apparently satisfactory conclusion that the unknown Henry Lamberhurst could not be connected with the Lamberhursts she knew.

  The Viscount was spared her subsequent recollections of some people she had once met at Ramsgate, and whom she rather fancied to have been in some way related to the family, these being imparted only to Miss Morville, when the two ladies withdrew to one of the saloons. Miss Morville, who had contrived to evade giving an account of her discoveries at Whissenhurst, and who had no wish to be more closely interrogated on that subject, encouraged these tedious reminiscences, and by interpolating a question now and then managed to keep her ladyship’s mind occupied until the appearance of the gentlemen turned her thoughts towards whist.

  It was not until the party had broken up that Theo was able to exchange any private conversation with the Earl. He detained him then, as he was about to leave the library in the Viscount’s wake, and said in his blunt way: ‘One moment, St Erth! What happened at Whissenhurst today between Martin and Ulverston?’

  ‘A misunderstanding only.’

  ‘Gervase, Martin must not be allowed to call Ulverston out!’

  ‘He will not do so.’

  Theo looked shrewdly at him. ‘He seems to have had that intention. Did you scotch it?’

  ‘Not that precisely. He was not fully informed of the circumstances.’

  ‘I see. In short, Ulverston has offered for Miss Bolderwood, and has been accepted?’

  ‘The engagement is not to be made generally known yet,’ the Earl warned him.

  ‘You need not be afraid that I shall spread the news. Well! I guessed as much. I am sorry for Martin. He has not had time to grow accustomed to the knowledge that he is not of sufficient consequence to aspire to the hand of an heiress.’

  ‘Really, Theo, I think you wrong Miss Bolderwood!’

  ‘Never. This is her parents’ doing. I always knew they had set their ambition high. Oh, don’t think I blame them! it was inevitable.’ He forced a smile. ‘I fancy you raised expectations, trifler that you are!’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘My dear Gervase, you cannot be such an innocent as to suppose that Sir Thomas would not have jumped at the chance of seeing his daughter Countess of St Erth!’

  ‘You sound very like my mother-in-law,’ remarked the Earl. ‘He gave me no encouragement, nor do I think that his wishing not to announce this engagement immediately shows him to be jumping at the chance of seeing Miss Bolderwood the future Countess of Wrexham.’

  ‘I daresay not. He had hoped for better. The Frants were Earls of St Erth before ever the Austells rose to the dignity of a barony!’

  ‘Very like my mother-in-law!’ murmured Gervase.

  Theo was obliged to laugh, but he said: ‘However you may disregard the difference you may be sure the Bolderwoods do not! Offer for Marianne before her betrothal to Ulverston is announced, and see what Sir Thomas will say to you!’

  ‘My dear Theo, where have your wits gone begging? It was a case of love at first sight with them both! You must have seen that!’

  ‘Did Martin?’

  ‘Oh, Martin – ! Does he ever see beyond his nose?’

  ‘No, and for that reason I am more than ever sorry for him. I believe he had no suspicion, and the news must have come to him as a severe shock.’

  ‘I am afraid you are right, but he will very soon recover from it. He is at present forswearing women – an excellent sign!’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Unless he did indeed visit his friend Warboys, I don’t know.’

  ‘I hope he has done nothing foolish!’ Theo said, a crease appearing between his brows. ‘He almost knocked me over when he brushed past me on his way out of the house, and looked as though he would have willingly murdered me, had I dared to address him.’

  ‘Poor Theo!’ said the Earl lightly. ‘I’m afraid you were acting as my scapegoat – or possibly Lucy’s!’

  ‘Did you quarrel?’ Theo asked, the crease deepening.

  ‘It takes two to make a quarrel.’

  ‘Evasion, Gervase! Was he –’ He broke off, for a quick footstep was heard approaching the library across the Great Hall beyond it, and in another instant Martin had entered the room.

  He was looking tired, and pale, his face rather set, and his expressive eyes sombre. He checked on the threshold when he saw his cousin, and ejaculated: ‘Oh – ! You here!’

  ‘Do you wish to speak to Gervase? I am just off to bed.’

  ‘It doesn’t signify. I have no doubt you know the whole!’ He glanced at St Erth, and then lowered his eyes. ‘I only wished to say – I was in a rage!’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ the Earl replied quietly.

  Another fleeting glance was cast up at him. ‘I think I said – I don’t know: I do say things, in a rage, which – which I don’t mean!’

  ‘I did not regard it, and you need not either.’

  Martin seemed to force his rigid mouth to smile. ‘No. Well – mighty good of you to take it so! Of course I know it was not your fault. Good-night!’

  He went quickly away, and for a full minute there was silence in the library. The Earl snuffed a guttering candle, and said: ‘Do you mean to return to Stanyon when you have done all your business at Evesleigh, Theo, or do you go on immediately to Studham?’

  ‘I believe I may postpone my journey,’ Theo said slowly.

/>   ‘Indeed! May I know why?’

  Theo looked frowningly at him. ‘It might be best if I were to remain at Stanyon – for the present.’

  ‘Oh, are you at that again? I have told you already that I don’t need a watch-dog, my dear fellow!’

  ‘And still I should prefer to remain!’

  ‘Why? when you have heard Martin make me an apology?’

  Theo met the deep blue eyes full. ‘In all the years I have known Martin,’ he said deliberately, ‘I have never heard him utter an apology, or even acknowledge a fault!’

  ‘My regenerating influence!’ said Gervase flippantly.

  ‘I should be happy to think so.’

  ‘But you don’t?’

  ‘No,’ Theo said. ‘I don’t!’

  ‘Nevertheless, Theo, you will oblige me by going to Evesleigh tomorrow, as you have planned to do.’

  ‘Very well. But I wish this business of Ulverston’s had not been disclosed!’ Theo said.

  The breakfast-party on the following morning was attended, inevitably, by a certain measure of constraint. It was the first time Martin and the Viscount had met since their encounter at Whissenhurst, and even Mr Clowne seemed to be conscious of the tension. His nervous platitudes filled the gap between the exchange of cool greetings between these two and the entrance of the Earl, who made his appearance in a coat of such exquisite cut that the Viscount exclaimed at it, demanding to be told the name of the tailor who had made it. ‘Not Scott!’ he said.

  ‘No, Weston,’ responded the Earl. ‘Martin, what’s this I hear of kestrels in the West Wood?’

  He could have said nothing that would have made Martin more certainly forget, for the moment, his injuries. The dark eyes lit; Martin replied: ‘So Pleasley says! He swears there is a pair, and believes they may be nesting in one of the old magpies’ nests. I know the place.’

  ‘Too early in the year, isn’t it?’ asked the Viscount.

  ‘I have known them to start breeding as early as March,’ Martin said. ‘It is not usual, I own, but it is very possible.’ He turned his head to address his brother. ‘I have said I’ll ride to Roxmere this morning, to look at some likely young ’uns, but I mean to take a gun out this afternoon, and try for them.’