‘In fact,’ said Gervase, ‘had I broken my neck you would have been inconsolable.’
‘No, I shouldn’t,’ said Martin bluntly. ‘But to say that I tried to contrive that you should is the outside of enough! Break your neck indeed! In that paltry stream!’
‘Don’t lie to me, but own that you did hear me say I would ride to Hatherfield, and hoped that I might tumble into a very muddy river!’
‘Oh, well – !’ Martin said, reddening, but grinning in spite of himself. He found that Gervase was regarding him thoughtfully, and added, in a defensive tone: ‘It’s no concern of mine where you choose to ride! Of course, if you had asked me – ! However, you did not, and as for there being the least danger of your being drowned – pooh!’ He appeared to find some awkwardness in continuing the discussion, and said: ‘You won’t have forgot that we are to go to Whissenhurst this evening. I have ordered the carriage; for Drusilla goes too. Do you care to accompany me, or shall you drive yourself?’
‘No, I don’t go. Present my compliments and my excuses to Lady Bolderwood, if you please!’ Gervase turned from him, as he spoke, to address some remark to Miss Morville, who, never having visited Scarborough, had retired from the argument still being carried on by the other persons seated at the table.
When the ladies presently withdrew, Martin also left the table, saying that he must not keep Miss Morville waiting. Theo, suggesting that his cousin might wish to be alone with Lord Ulverston, engaged himself to keep the Dowager tolerably well amused with a few rubbers of piquet. This good-natured scheme for the Earl’s relief was rendered abortive, however, by her having previously extorted a promise from the Viscount to join her presently for a game of whist. This was kept up for some time after the appearance of the tea-table, the Dowager declaring that she scarcely knew how to tear herself away from the cards. ‘Twenty minutes to eleven!’ she said, consulting the clock on the mantelshelf. ‘I shall be worn-out with dissipation. In general, you must know, I do not care to play after ten o’clock: it does not suit me; but this evening I have so much enjoyed the rubbers that I am not conscious of the hour. You play a very creditable game, Ulverston. I am no flatterer, so you may believe me when I say that I have been very well entertained. My dear father was a notable card-player, and I believe I have inherited his aptitude. Dear me, it will be wonderful if I am asleep before midnight! I shall not wait for Miss Morville to return, for if they are engaged in dancing, or speculation, at Whissenhurst, you know, there is no saying when she and Martin will come back. We will go to prayers immediately.’
Before this programme could be enforced on the company, the door opened to admit the two absentees. Their early return was explained, composedly by Miss Morville, and with great discontent by Martin. They had arrived at Whissenhurst to find Sir Thomas indisposed; and although his lady apprehended no cause for serious anxiety, he had gone to bed with a sore throat and a feverish pulse, and she had sent a message to Dr Malpas, desiring him to call at the Grange in the morning. Her fear was that Sir Thomas had contracted influenza; and in these circumstances Miss Morville had not thought it proper to remain after tea had been drunk.
‘If only Marianne does not take it from him!’ Martin exclaimed. ‘One would have thought he need not have chosen this moment of all others to be ill! He might have caught influenza last month, and welcome – and, to be sure, I don’t know why he could not have done so, when half the countryside was abed with it! But no! Nothing will do but for him to be ill just when we are to hold our ball! I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the Bolderwoods do not come! It is all of a piece!’
‘Shabby fellow!’ said Ulverston, looking amused. ‘But so it is always with these crusty old men! They delight in plaguing the rest of us!’
‘Oh, well, as to that, I would not call him crusty!’ Martin owned.
‘Ah, now you are being over-generous, I feel!’
‘Sir Thomas is a very respectable man,’ pronounced the Dowager. ‘We will send to enquire at Whissenhurst tomorrow, and I have no doubt that we shall receive a comfortable account of him. He would be very sorry not to be able to come to Stanyon, I daresay.’
‘What,’ demanded the Viscount, a little later, when Gervase had borne him away to the library on the entrance floor of the Castle, ‘is the peculiar virtue of Sir Thomas, which makes his presence indispensable to the success of your ball?’
Gervase laughed. ‘A daughter!’
‘A daughter! Very well! I don’t need to ask, Is she beautiful?’
‘Very beautiful, very engaging!’
‘What a shocking thing it would be, then, for Sir Thomas to cry off! I shall certainly remain with you for a long visit, Ger!’
‘Nothing could please me more, but take care you don’t tread upon Martin’s corns!’
‘How can you, after watching my conciliatory manners this night, think such an event possible? What is the matter with that halfling?’
‘Indulgence!’
The Viscount stretched out his hand for the glass of wine Gervase had poured for him. ‘I see. And is he in love with Sir Thomas’s daughter?’
‘Calf-love. He is ready to murder me for –’ Gervase stopped, his hand arrested in the act of pouring a second glass of wine. ‘For flirting with her,’ he ended lightly.
The Viscount’s countenance was cherubic, but his eyes held a good deal of shrewdness. He said: ‘I perceive, of course, that he is ready to murder you, my Tulip. Tell me about the damaged bridge!’
‘Oh, so you heard that, did you? I had thought you absorbed in the attractions of the Steyne!’
‘Very sharp ears, dear boy!’ apologized the Viscount.
‘There is nothing to tell. The storm last night cracked one of the supports to a wooden bridge thrown over a stream here, and Martin neglected to warn me of it. He is jealous of me, you see, and I think he felt it would do me good to be ducked in muddy water.’
‘But what a delightful young man!’ commented the Viscount. ‘Were you ducked?’
‘No, my cousin was with me, and had some apprehension that the bridge might not be safe. In justice to Martin, he had already given instructions that the bridge should be barred. A schoolboy trick: no more.’
‘Your cousin gave him a fine dressing for it: I heard him,’ said Ulverston, sipping his wine.
‘Did he? A pity! It was not worth making a noise about it.’
‘Well, he seemed to think there was more to it than a schoolboy’s trick. Is there?’
‘Of course there is not! Now, Lucy, what’s all this?’
‘Beg pardon! It’s these ancestral walls of yours,’ explained the Viscount. ‘Too dashed mediæval, dear boy! They put the oddest notions into my head!’
Eight
It was Martin who offered to be the bearer, on the following morning, of polite messages of condolence from his mother to Lady Bolderwood. He returned to Stanyon with no very encouraging tidings. Dr Malpas had given it as his opinion that Sir Thomas’s disorder was indeed the influenza, and since Sir Thomas was of a bronchial habit he had strictly forbidden him to leave his bed for several days, much less his house. Marianne did not despair, however, of being able to attend the ball, for her Mama had promised that she would not scruple, unless Sir Thomas should become very much worse, to leave old Nurse in charge of the sick-room while she chaperoned her daughter to Stanyon.
But the following morning brought a servant from Whissenhurst to Stanyon, with a letter for the Dowager from Marianne. It was a primly-worded little note, but a blister on the sheet betrayed that tears had been shed over it. The writer regretted that, owing to the sudden indisposition of her Mama, it would be out of her power to come to Stanyon on the following evening. In fact, Lady Bolderwood had fallen a victim to the influenza.
The Dowager, in announcing these tidings, said that it was very shocking; but it was plain that she considered the Bolderwoods more to be c
ommiserated than the Stanyon party. They would no doubt soon recover from the influenza, but they would have missed being amongst the guests at Stanyon, which she thought a privation not so readily to be recovered from. ‘How sorry they will be!’ she said. ‘They would have liked it excessively.’
‘It is the most curst thing!’ Martin cried. ‘It ruins everything!’
‘Yes, indeed, my dear, I am extremely vexed,’ agreed the Dowager. ‘We shall now have two more gentlemen than ladies, and I daresay it will be quite uncomfortable. I warned your brother how it would be.’
It was not to be expected that this point of view would be much appreciated by either of her sons. Each felt that if Marianne were not to grace it the ball might as well be cancelled. Nothing but languor and insipidity could now lie before them.
‘I wonder,’ said Miss Morville, after glancing from Martin’s face to St Erth’s, ‘if the difficulty might not perhaps be overcome?’
‘I am sure, my dear Drusilla, I do not know whom we could prevail upon to come to the ball at such short notice,’ replied the Dowager. ‘No doubt the Dearhams would accept an invitation with alacrity, and bless themselves for their good fortune, but I consider them pushing and vulgar, and if St Erth expects me to entertain them I must say at once that it is out of the question that I should do so.’
‘I have not the slightest desire to invite the Dearhams, whoever they may be,’ said the Earl, rather impatiently.
‘I should think not indeed!’ Martin said. ‘The Dearhams in place of Miss Bolderwood! That would be coming it a little too strong, ma’am! Nobody cares if there are too many men: the thing is that if Marianne doesn’t come I for one would rather we postponed the ball!’
Miss Morville made herself heard again, speaking with a little diffidence, but with all her usual good sense. ‘I was going to suggest, ma’am, that, if you should not dislike it, Marianne might be invited to stay at Stanyon for a day or two, while her parents are confined to their beds. It must be sad work for her at Whissenhurst with no one to bear her company all day. You may depend upon it she is not even permitted the comfort of being able to attend to her Mama. They take such care of her, you know, that I am very sure she is not allowed to enter the sick-room.’
‘By Jupiter, the very thing!’ Martin exclaimed, his face lighting up.
‘Miss Morville, you are an excellent creature!’ Gervase said, smiling gratefully at her. ‘I don’t know where we should be without your sage counsel!’
The Dowager naturally saw a great many objections to a scheme not of her own devising, but after she had stated these several times, and had been talked to soothingly by Miss Morville and vehemently by her son, she began to think that it might not be so very bad after all. The Earl having the wisdom not to put forward any solicitations of his own, it was not long before she perceived a number of advantages to the plan. Martin would have the opportunity to enjoy Marianne’s society, Drusilla would have the benefit of her companionship, and the Bolderwoods would doubtless think themselves very much obliged to their kind neighbour. Such benevolent reflections put her ladyship into good-humour, and she needed little persuasion to induce her to say that she would drive to Whissenhurst that very day, and bring Marianne back with her.
It then became necessary to discuss exhaustively the rival merits of her ladyship’s chaise and her landaulet as a means of conveyance. From this debate the gentlemen withdrew in good order; and the Dowager, having weighed the chances of rain against the certainty of one of the passengers being obliged to sit forward, if she went to Whissenhurst in her chaise (‘For there will be the maid to be conveyed, you know, and I should not care to go without you to bear me company, my dear Drusilla!’), decided in favour of the landaulet. Martin then very nobly offered to escort the ladies on their perilous journey, riding beside the carriage; and all that remained to be done was to decide whether the Dowager should wrap herself in her sables, or in her ermine stole. Even this ticklish point was settled; and midway through the afternoon the party was ready to set out, the only delay being caused by the Dowager’s last-minute decision to carry a genteel basket of fruit from the succession-houses to the sufferers. ‘One would not wish to be backward in any attention,’ she explained. ‘To be sure, we have very little fruit at this period of the year, but I daresay St Erth will not miss one each of his peaches and apricots and nectarines. I have directed Calne to fill up the basket with some of our apples, which I daresay Lady Bolderwood will be very glad to have, for the Stanyon apples, you know, are particularly good.’
Miss Morville encouraging her to suppose that St Erth would be only too happy to sacrifice his fruit to the Bolderwoods, she was then ready to depart. The two ladies took their seats in the landaulet; a footman tenderly laid a rug about their knees; the basket of fruit was disposed upon the forward seat; Martin swung himself into the saddle of his good-looking bay hack; and the cavalcade set forth.
The way was beguiled by the Dowager in extolling her vicarious generosity in giving away her son-in-law’s fruit, in calling upon Miss Morville to admire her son’s admirable appearance on horseback, and in discovering that the bulbs in the various gardens which they passed on the road were not as far forward as those at Stanyon. They arrived at Whissenhurst in good time, without having been obliged to rely upon Martin’s gallantry to rescue them from footpads or highwaymen, and were received there by Marianne, who came running out of the house at sight of the landaulet, and expressed her sense of obligation for the condescension shown her in such warm terms as served to convince her ladyship that she was a very pretty-behaved young woman, worthy to match with her son. A brief explanation of her purpose in coming to Whissenhurst Grange was enough to throw Marianne into ecstasies. It was as Miss Morville had supposed: solicitude for her well-being had compelled Lady Bolderwood to forbid her most strictly to enter either sick-room. She had nothing to do but to regret the misfortune which prevented her from gracing the Stanyon ball.
The only difficulty was, how to obtain Lady Bolderwood’s consent to so delightful a scheme? Nurse was so cross she would be of no assistance: Marianne did not know what was to be done. Happily, Miss Morville was unafraid of the dangers attaching to sick-rooms, and she alighted from the landaulet with the express purpose of visiting Lady Bolderwood. The Dowager then permitted Marianne to escort her to the shrubbery, which she had the happiness of discovering to be not so extensive as that at Stanyon; and in a little while Miss Morville rejoined her with the welcome intelligence that Lady Bolderwood was most grateful to her for her kind thought, and would be pleased to allow her daughter to sojourn at Stanyon while she was confined to her chamber.
This was not strictly accurate. It did not quite suit Lady Bolderwood’s nice sense of propriety that Marianne should make her first appearance at a formal ball unattended by herself, but against the decree of her husband she was powerless to resist. He could perceive nothing in the invitation that was not agreeable. They might entrust their treasure to Lady St Erth’s care with quiet minds; and how shocking a thing it would be to deny her this pleasure from some nonsensical scruple! He did not like to think of her moping about the house in solitude; he would be happy to know that she was being so well entertained, and in such unexceptionable hands. To find herself amongst a company of exalted persons would put her into excellent training for her coming London Season: he could not imagine what his Maria could find amiss in such a scheme. Lady Bolderwood acquiesced, therefore, her maternal agitation finding its only expression in the urgent messages which she charged Nurse to deliver to Marianne. These ranged from reminders of the conduct to be expected of débutantes, to the sum of money it would be proper to bestow upon the maidservant who waited on her, and the ornaments which she should wear with her ball-dress. Marianne’s maid, overjoyed at such an enlargement to her horizon, began to pack a number of trunks and band-boxes, the only alloy to her delight being the gloomily expressed conviction of Sir Thomas’s second footman
that her pleasure had its root in the expectation of receiving the addresses of all the libertines employed at the Castle.
Marianne’s own happiness knew no other bounds than regret that her Mama could not make one of the party. Had she been permitted to do so, she would have rendered her parents’ malady still more hideous by smoothing their pillows, coaxing them to swallow bowls of gruel, and begging them to tell her, just as they were dropping into sleep, if there was anything she could do for them to make them more comfortable; but this solace had been denied her, so that she could not believe herself to be necessary to them. Her Papa bade her go to Stanyon and enjoy herself; her Mama, endorsing this command, only added a warning that she should conduct herself modestly; and as she had not the smallest inclination to go beyond the bounds of propriety she had nothing to do but to thank Lady St Erth again and again for her exceeding kindness, and to prepare for several days of unsullied amusement. Her transports led her to embrace the Dowager, an impulsive action which, though it startled that lady, by no means displeased her. ‘A very good-hearted girl,’ she told Miss Morville, when Marianne had run away to put on her hat and her pelisse. ‘I am glad that I had the happy notion of inviting her to stay at Stanyon.’
Miss Morville assented to it with great calmness. She did not feel it incumbent upon her to disclose to the Dowager the anxious qualms with which Lady Bolderwood parted from her daughter; but the truth was that the invitation was by no means welcome to Lady Bolderwood. While agreeing with Sir Thomas that her indisposition condemned Marianne to several days of solitary boredom, she still could not like her going alone to such a party as was contemplated at Stanyon. Sir Thomas said that their little puss could be trusted to keep the line; she could place no such dependence on the discretion of an eighteen-year-old girl, nor had she much faith in the Dowager’s capabilities as a chaperon. ‘Lady St Erth,’ she said, ‘is not the woman I should choose to entrust Marianne to!’
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