The Quiet Gentleman (21 page)

‘You shall be relieved of Chard. Before you go, tell me how that panel works!’

‘I wonder you should never have been shown! I remember when my father first showed it to me: I can’t have been more than ten years old.’

‘Very likely. I had not the felicity of standing upon such easy terms with him. How is it opened?’

‘Oh, it is quite a knacky thing! It has a queer latch upon the inside, with a stop on it, so that when it is down the panel cannot slide back. You may open it from this side by twisting one of the bosses at the head of that pillar.’ He stepped up to the wall, and laid his hand on the boss. ‘This one. It has a device which lifts the latch, if you turn it – like this!’

‘Ingenious! May I ask how the panel is secured from this room?’

‘It ain’t. You may only secure it from the inside. That’s very simply done: you have only to thrust a wedge between the latch and the guard, so that it can’t be raised. If that’s done, the boss won’t move, of course. I daresay that when they came spying out priests’ holes, in the old days, they used to try if any of the mouldings on the wainscots could be moved. This would have baffled them!’

‘No doubt. Is there no means of securing the entrance at the bottom of the stair?’

‘No, but the cupboard is kept locked. We don’t use it nowadays.’

The Earl held out his hand. ‘The key, if you please!’

‘I was going to lock the cupboard, and put the key back!’

‘Thank you, I prefer to keep it in my own possession. Where, in general, is it to be found?’

‘In the steward’s room. Perran has all the keys hanging in a cupboard there.’

‘It is not an arrangement which recommends itself to me.’

‘Oh, as you please!’ Martin said, and gave an old-fashioned key into his hand.

‘Thank you. Now go back to your own room, and tell Chard I wish to see him, if you please!’

‘Very well. And you don’t think – you don’t believe that –’

‘Forgive me! I am too tired to discuss this matter further tonight.’

‘Then I’ll say good-night!’ Martin said stiffly. ‘I beg your pardon for disturbing you!’

Gervase did not answer. Miss Morville waited until Martin had left the room before she said: ‘I hope, my lord, that you mean Chard to lock that door immediately!’

‘Why, yes!’

‘I trust I am not one to refine too much upon trifles, but I do
not
like the notion of having a secret stair leading to your room!’

‘Nor I,’ he said, regarding her in some amusement.

‘To own the truth,’ she confessed, ‘my blood ran cold when I saw that panel begin to slide open!’

‘Indeed, I was afraid that you would call Turvey in, which I particularly did not wish.’

‘No, I had made up my mind not to do that before you grasped my wrist. While I was present you were safe, I knew.’

‘You are a remarkable woman, Miss Morville.’

‘On the contrary, I am sadly commonplace,’ she replied. ‘I shall say no more to you tonight on what has occurred. I can see it has teased you very much, and I wish you will try to put it out of your mind until you are stronger.’ She straightened the quilt as she spoke, and after a moment’s hesitation said, in a colourless tone: ‘Your medicine I keep in my own charge, and you may like to know, my lord, that all the nourishment you partake of passes from the head-cook’s hands to Turvey’s only.’

‘Yes, I had not considered the chances of poison,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Thank you! This is your doing, I collect.’

‘By no means. I fancy it was concerted between Turvey, Abney, and the head-cook himself. Whatever may be the sentiments of certain members of your family, sir, you have trustworthy guards in your servants.’

‘It seems so indeed! I cannot conceive why they should concern themselves with my welfare!’

She said gravely: ‘There is no understanding it, to be sure, but so it is! And here, I think, comes Chard. I shall leave you now, my lord. Pray do not vex yourself more than you need! You have been frowning ever since you heard Martin’s story, you know!’

‘Have I? I beg your pardon! He has given me food for a good deal of thought.’

‘You will be able to think more clearly in a day or two,’ she said, and went to the door, and opened it. ‘You may come in, Chard: his lordship wishes to speak with you. You will not keep him wakeful overlong, I know. Good-night, my lord!’

She went out, and Chard approached the bed cautiously. He was welcomed with a smile. ‘Not dead yet, Chard. What a work you must have had, driving those grays, and preventing me from falling out of the curricle!’

‘Well, I did, me lord,’ Chard owned, grinning at him. ‘And very much
contra pelo
it went with me not to be able to stop to catch the villain red-handed! But by the time I had them grays under control you was gone off into a swound, and bleeding so that I durstn’t do anything but drive home hell-for-leather.’

‘I am very much obliged to you. You did right, and I doubt whether you would have caught my would-be assassin, even had you been able to stop.’

‘I would have liked to have got just one glimpse of him, me lord,’ Chard said. ‘I know what I know, but it ain’t enough. And I’m rare set-about that I let that young – let Mr Martin slip through my hands tonight, so to speak! What I
don’t
see is how he got into your lordship’s room without me seeing him at it!’

‘He got into it by way of that stair, which you may see, if you turn round.’

‘Ho!’ said Chard, having subjected the panel and the cavity beyond it to a close inspection. ‘So that’s the way it is, is it? Next thing we know we’ll be having an
embascado
inside this here Castle, as well as out of it! Well, me lord, that’s properly bowled me out, that has! Why, you might have been smothered in your bed, and no one the wiser!’

‘I fancy that very nearly did happen to me once,’ said the Earl reflectively. ‘I don’t mean to be approached by that stair again, so, if you will be so good, Chard, you may take a candle, and go out by the secret way, and when you come out of the cupboard, into which I understand it has access, lock it, and keep the key. Here it is!’

Chard took the key, but said: ‘Ay, me lord, but that ain’t enough! There’s someone as is desperate set on stashing your glim, and by what I’ve seen he won’t stop for much. Seems to me we’ll both of us be easier in our minds if I was to set here quiet during the night, while your lordship gets a bit of sleep!’

The Earl shook his head. ‘Thank you, no! I have something else for you to do. I fancy nothing will be attempted against me while I am confined to my bed, with Turvey in the dressing-room.’

‘Him!’ said Chard scornfully. ‘He
might
wake if you was to sound a trumpet outside his door – there’s no saying!’

‘He would wake if I called to him. But I have a better answer for a would-be assassin than Turvey. Open the top right-hand drawer of that chest, if you please! You will find my pistol there: bring it to me! Be careful! it is loaded and primed. Thank you!’ The Earl took the pistol, and laid it on the table beside his bed. ‘Now light a candle!’ He waited until Chard had obeyed him, and then said: ‘Don’t mount guard outside Mr Martin’s room!’

‘Me lord!’ Chard said explosively. ‘Mr Martin was caught by me the best part of the way to King’s Lynn this day!’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘Very good, me lord, but p’raps you don’t know what sort of a Canterbury tale he saw fit to tell me!’

‘I have heard it. But I do not wish him to know that he is watched. In the house, I think I stand in no danger. But in a day or two I shall be out of this bed, and when that happens, then I want you to watch Mr Martin, once he is outside these walls. You will not always find it possible to follow him, but discover where he goes, and if he takes a gun out, follow him as close as you may.’ He paused. ‘And if I too am outside these walls, Chard, don’t let him out of your sight!’ he said deliberately.

Martin’s return to Stanyon brought about two changes in the existing arrangements at the Castle: the Dowager emerged from the seclusion of her own apartments, and Lord Ulverston postponed his departure for London. No one was much surprised at this, and although the Earl murmured that Lucy’s presence was unlikely to preserve him from harm he raised no demur to it, events having largely banished from Martin’s mind other and less immediately important issues. Indeed, it was doubtful if Martin would now have offered for Marianne, had her affections been disengaged, for when she drove over to Stanyon with her parents, to enquire after the progress of its owner, her shocked gaze informed him tolerably clearly what were her sentiments upon the occasion. That the story he had told should have met with disbelief, first, and palpably, from his half-brother, and then from the lady whom he had intended to wed, struck Martin with stunning effect, and in some measure prepared him for his reception at Mr Warboys’s hands. ‘Doing it rather too brown, Martin!’ Mr Warboys said bluntly. ‘Always said that nasty temper of yours would land you in a fix one of these days!’ He added, with considerable courage: ‘Lesson to you! Have to live it down, old boy!’

Instead of issuing the challenge which Mr Warboys would have had no hesitation in declining, Martin had turned on his heel, and walked off without another word spoken.

The Dowager, resuming her place in the household at Stanyon, soon realized that Martin’s return had not, as she had felt sure it must, allayed all suspicion against him.

Nothing in her well-ordered existence had prepared her for such a situation as now confronted her. Her egotism happily preserved her from self-blame, but her agitation was, nevertheless, acute, and prompted her to pay her stepson a visit. Miss Morville was powerless to resist this incursion; she could only hope that the Earl’s constitution was strong enough to support him through the ordeal. She discovered, as others had done before her, that his apparent fragility and his gentleness were alike deceptive. He received his stepmother with equanimity, and although her visit wearied him it did not, as Miss Morville had feared it must, agitate his pulse. The Dowager harangued him for half an hour, ringing all the changes between scolding, dictating, and pleading. He heard her with patience, and answered her with such kindness that she left his room much tranquillized, and only realized some hours later that her intervention had achieved nothing. He did not banish Martin from Stanyon, but he would not again admit him to his bedchamber; he told her that he should adhere to his story of the man in homespuns, but he gave her no assurance that he believed Martin to be innocent of the attempt upon his life. It was not until Martin questioned her upon these points that the Earl’s omissions occurred to her. She had seldom suffered so severe a set-back, and its effect upon her was such that Miss Morville felt herself obliged to accede to her almost tearful request to her young friend not to leave her while her nerves were so much overset.

Thus it was that Mr and Mrs Morville, arriving in the middle of the following week at Gilbourne House, found that although their daughter was certainly there to welcome them she had no immediate intention of rejoining the family circle. Mr Morville, much astonished, was at once shocked and grieved. He feared that Drusilla had been led away by grandeur; and, had he received the least encouragement from his helpmate, he would have felt strongly inclined to have exerted his parental authority to compel his daughter to return to her own home. So far from receiving such encouragement, he was dissuaded, in unmistakable terms, from expressing even the mildest desire for Drusilla’s return.

‘It appears,’ said Mrs Morville fluently, ‘that they are in trouble at Stanyon. If Lady St Erth wishes Drusilla to remain with her for the present, I should not like to be disobliging, you know.’

Mr Morville conceded this point, but observed that he knew not why his daughter should be required to act as a sick-bed attendant in a household where as many as twenty – or, for anything he knew, thirty – servants were employed.

‘As to that,’ said Mrs Morville, ‘it is Lady St Erth rather than her son-in-law who depends just now upon Drusilla. These very shocking rumours have distressed her excessively. I am sure it is no wonder! And Drusilla, you know, feels that it would be a shabby thing to desert her, after her kindness. I own, I cannot but agree that we are very much obliged to her ladyship for entertaining our daughter during these weeks of our absence; and I should not, for my part, wish Drusilla to be backward in any attention.’

Mr Morville, while he assimilated these words, removed his spectacles, and thoroughly polished them with his handkerchief. He then replaced them, and through them regarded the wife of his bosom with some severity. ‘When we set forth upon our travels, my love,’ he said, ‘it was only at Lady St Erth’s earnest entreaty that we left our daughter in her charge. The obligation was upon her side; and had it been otherwise I should never have consented to the arrangement. I had thought that we were at one on this!’

‘Certainly! There can be no question!’ Mrs Morville said, showing a heightened colour. ‘The thing is – Mr Morville, I have been closeted with Drusilla this past hour! I will not conceal from you that what she said to me – and, even more, what she did
not
say to me! – has given me food for serious reflection!’

‘Indeed!’

‘Reserve,’ announced Mrs Morville nobly, ‘is at all times repugnant to me! My dear sir, I beg you will tell me anything you may know of this young man!’

‘What young man?’ asked her lord, in bewildered accents.

Mrs Morville had the greatest respect for her husband’s scholarly attainments, and for his grasp on imponderable subjects, but she had frequently been obliged to own that on more practical matters he was exasperatingly obtuse. She clicked her tongue impatiently, and responded: ‘Why, the new Earl, to be sure!’

‘St Erth?’ he said. ‘I have never met him. I believe my brother is acquainted with him, but I do not immediately perceive in what way this can be germane to the present issue.’

‘I daresay you might not,’ said Mrs Morville tolerantly, ‘for you never perceive what is under your nose, my love! What would you say to it if our daughter were to become the Countess of St Erth?’

‘
What?
’ exclaimed the gentleman, in anything but a gratified tone. ‘You cannot be in earnest!’

She nodded. ‘I assure you, I was never more so! I saw at a glance, of course, that Drusilla was changed, but until I had enjoyed an hour alone with her I had no more idea of the cause than you. Though, to be sure, I might have guessed, from the scant references in her letters to his lordship, how the wind blew! He seems to be a most amiable young man, my dear sir! And this accident, shocking though it may be, throwing them together in such a way – !’

‘Have I heard aright?’ interrupted Mr Morville. ‘Do I understand that you –
you
, Mrs Morville! – would welcome such an alliance?’

‘Pray, have you heard anything about the young man which would preclude my welcoming it?’ she demanded.

‘I know nothing of him. I daresay he is as idle and as expensive as any other of his order.’

‘I am astonished that a man of your mental attainment, my dear Mr Morville, should speak with such prejudice!’ said his wife. ‘From all I have heard from Drusilla, he is quite unexceptionable, and blessed with so sweet a temper that I am sure he must make any female a most delightful husband!’

‘He may be possessed of all the virtues!’ retorted Mr Morville, ‘but he must be held to stand for everything which you and I, ma’am, have dedicated our lives to combating! His very rank, I should have supposed, would have rendered him odious to you! Is it possible that I have been deceived? Were we not at one in cherishing the hope that our daughter and Henry Poundsbridge would make a match of it?’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Morville reasonably, ‘I have a great regard for Henry Poundsbridge, and I own I should not have opposed the connection; for Drusilla, you know, is not a Beauty, and when a girl has been out for three seasons it is not the time to be picking and choosing amongst her suitors. An excellent young man, but not, you will admit, to be compared with Lord St Erth!’

‘I cannot credit the evidence of my own ears!’ said Mr Morville. ‘How is it possible that you should talk in such a strain as this, Mrs Morville? Is this, I ask myself, the woman who wrote
The Distaff
? Is this the authoress of
Reflections on the Republican State
? Is this the companion with whom I have shared my every philosophic thought? I am appalled!’

‘So you might well be, my dear sir, if I were such a zany as to prefer Henry Poundsbridge to the Earl of St Erth for my daughter!’ responded the lady with some asperity. ‘It is an alliance it would not have entered my head to seek, but if the Earl – I say,
if
! – were to offer for dear Drusilla, and you were to refuse your permission, I should be strongly inclined to clap you into Bedlam! I marvel, my love, that a man of your intellect should so foolishly confuse
theory
with
practice
! I shall continue to hold by those opinions which I share with you, but when it comes to my only daughter’s creditable establishment in the world it is time to set aside Utopian dreams!’ She perceived that her husband was looking slightly stunned by this burst of eloquence, and at once drove him against the ropes by adding in quelling accents: ‘As Cordelia Consett, I must deplore the present state of society; but as a Mother I must deem myself unworthy of that title were I to spurn a connection so flattering to my Child!’

‘Am I to understand,’ asked Mr Morville, ‘that the Earl is about to make an offer for Drusilla?’

‘Good gracious, my dear, how you do run on!’ exclaimed his wife. ‘For anything I know, St Erth has no such notion in his head! You may be sure that I was careful not to seem to be in the least conscious when I was talking to Drusilla.
That
would never do! Merely, I suspect that her heart may not be untouched.’

‘If,’ said Mr Morville, asserting himself, ‘you have reason to suppose that St Erth has been trifling with Drusilla –’

‘Nothing of the sort! From what I have learnt today, I am persuaded that he is by far too great a gentleman to raise expectations he has no intention of fulfilling. Besides, men never do trifle with Drusilla,’ added Mrs Morville, in a voice not wholly free from regret.

‘It appears to me,’ said her spouse, pointedly opening his book, ‘that you are making a piece of work about nothing, my dear!’

‘We shall see! Only, if I am right, I do beg of you, my dear sir, that you will not allow a foolish scruple to stand in the way of your daughter’s happiness!’

‘It would be quite against my principles to coerce Drusilla in any way. Or, indeed, any of my children!’

‘Very true, and it exactly illustrates what I said to you about theory and practice! For when poor Jack fell into the clutches of that Female, and would have married her had it not been for –’

‘That,’ interrupted Mr Morville, ‘was a different matter!’

‘Of course it was, my love, and very properly you behaved, as Jack himself would
now
be the first to acknowledge!’

She waited for a moment, in case he should venture on a retort, but when he became to all appearances immersed in his book she withdrew, to indulge in several delightful day-dreams, not one of which could have been said to have been worthy of a lady of her intellectual distinction. She knew it, laughed at herself, and had even the grace to be ashamed of the most attractive of these dreams, in which she had the felicity of breaking the news of Drusilla’s triumph to her sister-in-law, not one of whose three pretty daughters was as yet engaged to be married.

Her flights into this realm of fancy would have surprised, and indeed horrified, her daughter, whose own view of her circumstances was decidedly unhopeful. Mrs Morville had not been deceived: Drusilla’s heart was not untouched. Impregnable to the advances of that promising young politician, Mr Henry Poundsbridge, it had crumbled under the assault of the Earl’s first smile. ‘In fact,’ Drusilla told her mirrored image severely, ‘you have fallen in love with a beautiful face, and you should be ashamed of yourself!’ She then reflected that she had several times been in company with Lord Byron without succumbing to the charms of a face generally held to be the most beautiful in England, and became more cheerful. However, a candid scrutiny of her own face in the mirror soon lowered her spirits again. She could perceive no merit either in the freshness of her complexion, or in her dark, well-opened eyes, and would willingly have sacrificed the natural curl in her brown hair for tresses of gold, or even of raven-black. As for her figure, though some men might admire little plump women, she could not bring herself to suppose that St Erth, himself so slim and graceful, could think her anything but a poor little dab of a girl.

‘It is a great piece of folly to suppose that because his manners are so
very
engaging he regards you with anything but tolerance!’ she told her image. She then blew her nose, sniffed, and added, with a glance of contempt at her rather flushed countenance: ‘Depend upon it, you are just the sort of girl a man would be glad to have for his sister! You don’t even know how to
swoon
, and I daresay if you tried you would make wretched work of it, for all you have is common-sense, and of what use is that, pray?’

This embittered thought brought to her mind the several occasions upon which she might, had she been the kind of female his lordship no doubt admired, have kindled his ardour by a display of sensibility, or even of heroism. This excursion into romance was not entirely successful, for while she did her best to conjure up an agreeable vision of a heroic Miss Morville, the Miss Morville who was the possessor not only of a practical mind but also of two outspoken brothers could not but interpose objections to the heroine’s actions. To have thrown herself between the foils, when she had surprised the Earl fencing with Martin, would certainly have been spectacular, but that it would have evoked anything but exasperation in the male breast she was quite unable to believe. She thought she need not blame herself for having refrained upon this occasion; but when she recalled her behaviour in the avenue, when the Earl had been thrown from his horse, she knew that nothing could excuse her. Here had been an opportunity for spasms, swoonings, and a display of sensibility, utterly neglected! How could his lordship have been expected to guess that her heart had been beating so hard and so fast that she had felt quite sick, when all she had done was to talk to him in a voice drained of all expression? Not even when his lifeless body had been carried into the Castle had she conducted herself like a heroine of romance! Had she fainted at the sight of his blood-soaked raiment? Had she screamed? No! All she had done had been to direct Ulverston to do one thing, Turvey another, Chard to ride for the doctor, while she herself had done what lay within her power to staunch the bleeding.