The Quiet Gentleman Read online

  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 M