The Quiet Gentleman Read online

  As the evening wore on, the storm increased in violence, the reverberations of one crash of thunder hardly dying away before another, and even more severe clatter, seeming to roll round the sky above the Castle, succeeded it. Powerful gusts of wind buffeted the windows, and drove the smoke downwards in the chimneys; the howl of the gusts, sweeping round the many angles of the Castle, rose sometimes to a shriek which could be heard through the loudest peals of the thunder.

  The Chaplain having meekly retired to bed when his patroness sought her own couch, the Earl and his cousin were left to amuse themselves as best they might. The Earl lit one of his cigarillos, but Theo declined joining him. ‘And I wish you may not repent your temerity, when my aunt detects – as I promise you she will! – the aroma of tobacco in this room tomorrow!’ he added.

  Gervase laughed. ‘Will she give me one of her tremendous scolds, do you think? I shall shake in my shoes: she is the most terrifying woman!’

  His cousin smiled. ‘What a complete hand you are, St Erth! Much you care for her scolds! All this mild compliance is nothing but a take-in: you engage her at every turn!’

  ‘Military training, Theo: a show of strength to deceive the enemy!’ said Gervase firmly. ‘But the room will reek of woodsmoke in the morning, and my iniquity may be undiscovered. It is a very bad habit, however: one that I learned in Spain, and have tried in vain to abandon. I don’t find that snuff answers the purpose at all. Good God, what a gust! You will be blown out of your turret!’

  ‘Not I! The walls are so thick I shall spend the night very much more snugly than you will, I daresay.’

  ‘Don’t think it! I became inured to this kind of thing in Spain, and very soon learned to sleep peacefully through a veritable tornado – in a draughty billet, too, with no glass in the windows, but only a few boards nailed across them to protect us from the worst of the weather. I have taken the precaution, too, of telling Turvey to let the fire die down in my room, and thus need not fear to be smothered by smoke. Like her ladyship, I guessed how it would be!’

  ‘At all events, there is a very good chance that it will blow itself out, and we may expect better weather after it. You need not despair of your ball! But it is not, I fancy, so violent a storm as you might suppose from the way the wind screeches round us. I am accustomed to it, but, after so long an absence, you, I imagine, might well believe yourself to be listening to the screams of souls in torment.’

  ‘No, I well recall the discomforts of Stanyon in inclement weather. I shall go to bed. I am sure I know not how it is, but an evening spent in the company of my Mama-in-law fatigues me more than a dozen cavalry charges!’

  ‘To that also I am accustomed,’ Theo said gravely.

  They left the Saloon together, the Earl’s hand tucked lightly into his cousin’s arm. The candles and the lamps were still burning in the galleries and on the Grand Staircase, the Earl having, in the gentlest manner possible, informed his household that, since it was not his habit to retire at ten o’clock, he did not wish to find the Castle plunged in darkness at this hour. A couple of footmen were hovering about in a disinterested way, their purpose being to extinguish the lights as soon as he should have shut his bedchamber-door. The Earl smiled faintly, and murmured: ‘My poor Turvey! He cannot reconcile himself to the rigours of life in the country, and wonders that he should be required to grope his way to bed by the light of a single candle. I wish he may not leave my service, as a result of all these discomforts! He understands my boots as no other valet has ever done.’

  ‘And your neckcloths?’ said Theo quizzically.

  ‘No, no, how can you do me such an injustice? Mine is the only hand employed in their arrangement! But you have set my doubts at rest, Theo! This Oriental style, which you so rightly deprecate, is too high – by far too high! You shall see tomorrow how beautifully I am able to tie a trône d’amour!’

  ‘Go to bed! It is by far too late for your funning!’ Theo said, laughing at him. ‘Sleep well!’

  ‘No fear I shall not: I have been yawning this hour past! Good-night!’

  The Earl passed into his bedchamber, where Turvey awaited him by the embers of a dying fire. ‘A rough night!’ he remarked.

  ‘Extremely so, my lord.’

  ‘My cousin, however, believes that we may not indulge our optimism too far in expecting a period of better weather after the storm.’

  ‘Indeed, my lord?’

  ‘I daresay,’ said the Earl, drawing the pin from the over-tall Oriental tie, and laying it down on his dressing-table, ‘that if you were to step out into the open you would not find the storm to be so severe as you might suppose.’

  ‘Unless your lordship particularly desires me to do so, I should prefer not to expose myself to the elements.’

  ‘My unreasonable demands of you fall short of that,’ said Gervase gravely.

  Turvey bowed; it was plain that he was not to be won over, and his master abandoned the attempt, permitting himself to be undressed in silence. When he had been assisted to put on his dressing-gown, he told the man he might go, and sat down at his dressing-table to pare his nails. Turvey gathered up the discarded raiment, bade him a punctilious good-night, and withdrew into the adjoining dressing-room, where he could be heard moving about for some minutes, opening and shutting drawers, and brushing coats. Gervase, having critically regarded his slender fingertips, extinguished the candles in the brackets beside the mirror, forced a wedge of paper in the door on to the gallery, which showed a disagreeable tendency to rattle, and climbed into his formidable bed. It was hung with very heavy curtains of crimson velvet, fringed and tasselled with gold, but Gervase, in whom several years of campaigning had engendered a dislike of being shut in, would never permit his valet to draw these. He disposed himself on his pillows, shifted the position of his bedside candle, and, with some misgiving, opened the book which had been pressed on him by the Dowager, after he had very unwisely owned that it had never come in his way. It was entitled Self-Control, and since the Dowager had described it to him as a very pretty and improving book, and one which would do him a great deal of good to read, he had not much expectation of being amused. The thunder went on rumbling and crackling overhead, and the wind was now driving rain against the windows, but this continuous noise had as little power as Mrs Brunton’s moral tale to keep him awake. He very soon found that the printed words were running into one another, tossed the book aside, blew out his candle, and within ten minutes was soundly asleep.

  He awoke very suddenly, he knew not how many hours later, as though some unusual sound, penetrating his dreams, had jerked him back to consciousness. The room was in dense darkness, the fire in the hearth having died quite away; and he could hear nothing but the rain beating against the windows, and the howl of the wind, more subdued now, round the corner of the building. Yet even as he wondered whether perhaps he had been awakened by the fall of a tile from the roof, or the slamming of a door left carelessly open, he received so decided an impression that he was not alone in the room, that he raised himself quickly on to one elbow, straining his eyes to see through the smothering darkness. He could hear nothing but the wind and the rain, but the impression that someone was in the room rather grew on him than abated, and he said sharply: ‘Who is there?’

  There was no answer, nor was there any sound within the room to betray the presence of another, but he could not be satisfied. Grasping the bedclothes, he flung them aside in one swift movement, and leaped up. As his feet touched the floor, something creaked, and his quickened ears caught a sound which might have been made by a softly-closing door. He reached the windows, grazing his shin against the leg of the dressing-table, and dragged one of the curtains back. A faint, gray light was admitted into the room. He could perceive no one, and strode back to the bedside, groping on the table for his tinder-box. His candle lit, he held it up, keenly looking about him. He noticed that his wedge was still firm in the door lea