The Quiet Gentleman (24 page)

‘I will hide no secrets from you,’ he said lightly. ‘Indeed, I trust you implicitly, Miss Morville! I am going to see Theo.’

‘Going to see Theo!’ she echoed, staring at him. ‘Oh, pray do not! It – it is such a long way to Evesleigh!’

He took her hand, and held it. ‘No, it is not such a long way, nor shall I fall into any more ambushes. That is what you are afraid of, isn’t it? You need not be: Martin has gone to Grantham, and, although I trust he may not know it, Chard is watching him. He won’t let him out of his sight. Believe me, while Chard is with Martin I stand in no sort of danger.’

She swallowed, and managed to speak with very fair composure. ‘I believe you must be safe at Evesleigh. It is on the road! That is where it happened before!’

‘But this time only you and Chard know that I am out.’

She was silent for a moment. After staring unblinkingly at a clipped hedge, she brought her eyes back to his face, and said: ‘It is never of the least use to interfere! I daresay you know very well what you are about. I only wish you may not return to Stanyon in a high fever!’

He laughed, and raised her hand to his lips, and kissed it. ‘You are a woman in a million!’ he told her caressingly, gave her hand a pat, and let it go.

He found his under-groom, a zealous youth rigorously schooled by his senior, polishing a saddle in the harness-room. When he was bidden put-to the grays he looked surprised but pleased, and made all haste to obey the order. A couple of stableboys ran to draw the Earl’s curricle out of the coach-house; and while this was being done the Earl strolled away to look at his brother’s new hunter. Since he had not been expected to enter the wing of the stables devoted to Martin’s horses, Mr Leek had no time to remove himself from the building, but shrank back instead into an empty loose-box. His nephew, who had been leaning on a broom-handle, began briskly to sweep out one of the stalls.

‘Don’t be bashful, Leek!’ said the Earl. ‘You were just having a word with your nephew, were you not? Where is Mr Martin’s young ’un, Hickling? I haven’t seen him yet: fig him out!’

‘Yes, my lord!’ muttered Hickling, laying aside the broom, and casting a fulminating look in the direction of his uncle.

This gentleman, emerging from the loose-box, achieved a genteel cough behind his hand, and said that he hoped there was no offence.

‘None at all,’ replied the Earl, watching Hickling lead out a rather rawboned youngster, and following him into the yard.

‘Exercising them grays, me lord?’ enquired Mr Leek, with another cough.

‘A couple of inches too long behind the saddle,’ said the Earl, disregarding this question.

‘Very quick over his fences, my lord!’ said Hickling.

‘You run him down, Jem, and let his lordship see his paces!’ recommended his uncle. ‘Meself, I’d say his middle-piece was a shade light –
jest
a shade!’

The Earl glanced at him. ‘You seem to know something about horses.’

‘Brought up with them, in a manner of speaking, me lord!’ said Mr Leek promptly.

‘Do you think you could handle my grays?’

Mr Leek cast them a dubious look, but had no hesitation in asserting that he would back himself to the extent of a double finnup to do so.

‘Well,’ said the Earl, ‘Wickham cannot, so as I may need a little help you had better come with me in his stead.’

Hickling opened his mouth, and shut it again, as though thinking better of what he had been about to say. Mr Leek’s expressionless eyes met the Earl’s rather quizzical ones without a blink. ‘Very pleased to go along with your lordship!’ he said. ‘
And
to lend a hand with them grays, if and when so desired!’

Wickham had not been admitted into Chard’s confidence, but he had a shrewd idea that Chard would by no means approve of the new arrangement. Blushingly conscious that it formed no part of the second groom’s duties to expostulate with his master, he yet plucked up enough courage to make the attempt. He was silenced, though not unkindly; and was left, ten minutes later, uneasily wondering what Chard would have to say to him when he returned from Grantham.

The grays were very fresh, but the Earl gave no sign that the task of controlling them was imposing too great a strain upon his injured shoulder. As the curricle bowled along the avenue, Mr Leek ventured to enquire what was their destination.

‘I am going to Evesleigh, to visit my cousin,’ replied the Earl.

Mr Leek stroked his chin. ‘Well, now, is that so?’ he said. ‘Evesleigh! Ah! Unless I’m mistook, which don’t often happen, that’s all of ten miles, guv’nor. Done to a cow’s thumb, that’s what you’ll be!’

‘Oh, no!’ the Earl said calmly.

Mr Leek relapsed into silence, which remained unbroken until the grays turned into a narrow lane, when he was moved to point out to the Earl that this was not, according to his information, the road to Evesleigh.

‘Not the most direct road to Evesleigh,’ the Earl corrected.

‘O’ course I ain’t what you might call familiar with these parts,’ said Mr Leek. ‘I’m bound to say, however, that it queers me why a cove – why a gentleman as come as near to slipping his wind as what you done, me lord, should take and drive down a lane which is as rough as this here lane.’

‘Why, I have a reason for doing so!’ said the Earl amiably.

Mr Leek, himself far from enjoying the rough surface, said severely: ‘Nice set-out it’ll be if that hole you’ve got in you was to open again, me lord! Asking your pardon, it’ll be bellows to mend with you, if the claret starts to flow.’

But the Earl only smiled. Through what seemed to his companion a network of country lanes he drove his horses, never seeming to be at a loss for the way. Mr Leek said grudgingly that he must know the countryside very well to be able to take such a roundabout way to his destination. ‘I do,’ the Earl replied. ‘I have lately ridden over every inch of this ground. One never knows when familiarity with the country will stand one in good stead.’ He began to check his horses as he spoke, and as the curricle rounded a bend in what was little more than a cart-track Mr Leek perceived that a farm-gate blocked the way. Knowing well who would have to climb down from the curricle to open this gate (and possibly several more gates), he cast an unloving look at the Earl’s profile.

The grays came to a standstill. ‘If you please!’ said the Earl.

Mr Leek alighted ponderously. The gate was a heavy one, and he was obliged to lift the end before it would pass over the cart-ruts. The curricle moved forward, and stopped again a few yards beyond the gate. As Mr Leek, who, being country-bred, had no thought of leaving it open, was shutting it again, the Earl spoke to him over his shoulder. ‘You will have to forgive me, Leek,’ he said. ‘Really, I bear you no ill-will, and I am quite sure your interest in me is friendly, but, you see, I don’t like being followed. You are now midway between Evesleigh and Stanyon: if I were you I would walk back rather than forward.’

‘Hi!’ exclaimed Mr Leek, abandoning the gate, and starting towards the curricle. ‘
Hi
, guv’nor!’

The grays were already moving. Mr Leek broke into a run, but his years and his bulk were against him, and he very soon abandoned a hopeless chase, and stood with labouring chest and heated countenance, staring resentfully after the curricle until it vanished round a bend in the lane. ‘Grassed!’ he said bitterly. ‘Well, may I shove the tumbler if ever I been made to look blue by a mouth afore!’ He removed his hat, and mopped his face and head with a large handkerchief. After a moment’s reflection, he added, with reluctant respect: ‘Which he ain’t – not by a very long way he ain’t!’

Having by this time recovered his breath, he resettled the hat on his head, and turned to find his way back to Stanyon. The deeply rutted lane made walking far from pleasant; and since he was quite lost, and had little expectation of receiving succour, his only consolation lay in the hope that several more cattle-gates stood between the Earl and his goal.

But the luck favoured him. At the end of half a mile, the track joined a rather better road, which led, a few hundred yards farther on, to a choice of three ways. Mr Leek was doubtful which he should take, for none of them seemed to have a distinguishing feature by which he might have remembered it. A battered sign-post informed him that the ways led respectively to Climpton, Beaumarsh, and Forley, but as he was unacquainted with any of these villages this was not helpful. He stood under the post, considering, and just as he had decided to proceed down the lane which he fancied was the least unfamiliar to him the sound of an approaching vehicle suddenly came to his ears. Blessing himself for his good fortune, he waited; and in another few minutes a gig, drawn by a stout brown cob, came into sight. He hailed it, and it drew up beside him. The round-faced young farmer who was driving it looked down at him in some curiosity, and asked him what he wanted. Mr Leek, laying a detaining hand on the gig, countered by demanding to know whither the farmer was bound. After staring very hard at him for a moment, the farmer disclosed that he was going to Cheringham, at the mention of which known name Mr Leek brightened, and said: ‘If you’re going to Cheringham, young fellow, you wouldn’t be going so very far out of your way if you was to be so obliging as to set me down at Stanyon. Which I’ll thank you very kindly for.’

‘Stanyon?’ said the farmer. ‘Whatever would you be wanting to go there for?’

‘Stanyon Castle,’ said Mr Leek, with dignity, ‘is the place where I live – tempor’y!’

‘That’s a loud one!’ remarked the farmer, laughing heartily.

Affronted, Mr Leek retorted: ‘If you wasn’t half flash and half foolish, Master Hick, I wouldn’t have to tell you as I am a gentleman’s gentleman, because anyone as wasn’t a looby would know it the very instant he clapped his ogles on this toge of mine! The Honourable Martin Frant’s new valet, that’s what I am!’

‘Mr Martin!’ said the farmer, apparently impressed. ‘Oh, if you’re one o’ Mr Martin’s servants that’s diff’rent, o’ course! Up you get!’

Mr Leek clambered thankfully into the gig, and was gratified to observe that the farmer chose the very lane he had himself decided to explore. They had proceeded along it for nearly a quarter of a mile before the farmer, a slow thinker, suddenly demanded to know what Mr Martin’s valet was doing five miles from the Castle. By this time, Mr Leek, who had foreseen the question, had provided himself with a glib explanation of this circumstance. It was accepted, the farmer merely remarking that there was no telling what quirks Mr Martin would take into his noddle, notwithstanding that, give him his due, he was a rare one for The Land; and the rest of the drive passed in an amicable exchange of views on the eccentricities of the Quality, and the chances of a good harvest.

While Mr Leek was being driven back to Stanyon by a rather less circuitous route than that chosen by the Earl, his employer was also homeward-bound. He reached the Castle some twenty minutes later than his valet, escorted by Chard, who rode behind him, very correctly, and received with an unmoved countenance a command to stable his hack. Martin, swinging himself from the saddle at the foot of the terrace steps, handed over his bridle, saying with an unamiable smile, and a glittering look in his eye: ‘You may now, and for the first time today, make yourself useful, and take my horse to the stables!’

‘Yessir!’ said Chard woodenly, touching his hat.

He took the bridle, and led the horse off. Martin watched him go, gave a short laugh, and ran up the steps towards the open doors of the Castle.

Three minutes later, Miss Morville, passing along the gallery at the head of the Grand Stairway, on her way, through the Italian Saloon, to the Long Drawing-room, was checked by the sound of voices at the foot of the stair. She paused, for she recognized the unmistakably urban accents of Mr Leek, and could not imagine what circumstance should have brought him into this part of the Castle.

‘…
so
, thinking as this was the very thing for which I was, as you may say, brought in, I said as I would be happy to go with his lordship.’

‘Well?’

That was Martin’s voice, lowered, but quite as unmistakable as Mr Leek’s. Miss Morville caught up her demi-train, and stole softly down one branch of the stairway, to the broad half-landing, whence the stair led down, in one imposing flight, to the entrance-hall of the Castle.

‘He give me the bag!’ said Mr Leek succinctly.

‘What?’ Martin’s voice was sharpened. ‘Do you mean that you let him get away?’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Leek. ‘Loped off, he did! Bubbled me!
Me!
’

‘You fool! You blundering jackass!’ Martin said, such molten wrath vibrant in his voice that Miss Morville let her train fall, and tiptoed to the balustrade, and gripped it, peeping over to look down into the hall.

‘You knew I had gone to Grantham! You might have guessed that damned groom of his would follow me! You knew Lord Ulverston, even, was out of the way! And you let him escape you! God, how you have bungled it!’

Miss Morville, looking over the balustrade, saw him turn on his heel, and stride towards the vestibule. Her voice tore itself from her. ‘Martin, no! Stop!’ she called.

Either he did not hear her, or he did not choose to hear her. He had disappeared already from her sight, and only Mr Leek remained, gazing up the stairway in considerable discomfiture. Miss Morville disregarded him. Bent only upon detaining Martin, she darted to the head of the stairs, and began to hurry down them. Her foot caught in her short train, she lost her balance, clutched unavailingly at the massive, mahogany hand-rail, and pitched forward, tumbling and rolling down the stairs, to land in an inanimate heap at the feet of the dismayed Mr Leek.

Martin, unaware even of her presence on the scene, was already outside the Castle. He did indeed hear Mr Leek call to him, in agitated accents, but he paid no attention, making his way swiftly, yet with a certain caution, towards the stables.

The peace of the afternoon seemed to reign over them. There was no sign of Chard in the main yard, nor of any of the stablehands. Martin, after a quick look round, crossed the yard to the wing which housed his own cattle. At the door, he paused again, but he heard his groom’s voice say: ‘Get over now!’ and he at once entered the stable.