It was some time before Martin returned to Stanyon, his friend having persuaded him, with the best intentions possible, to accompany him to his parental home. Mr. Warboys, inured by custom to Martin’s tantrums, formed the praiseworthy scheme of allowing that young gentleman’s wrath time to cool before he again encountered his half-brother. In itself, the scheme was excellent, but it was rendered abortive first by the encomiums bestowed by Mrs. Warboys, a fat and very nearly witless lady of forty summers, on the very pronounced degree of good-looks enjoyed by the Earl; and second by a less enthusiastic but by far more caustic remark uttered by Mr. Warboys, senior, to the effect that Martin, his own son, and almost every other young aspirant to the Beauty’s favours could be thought to stand no chance at all against a belted Earl.
“Unless Bolderwood is a bigger fool than I take him for,” he said, “he will lose no time in securing St. Erth for that chit of his!”
Shocked by such a display of tactlessness on the part of his progenitors, Mr. Warboys, junior, said: “Shouldn’t think St. Erth has any serious intentions, myself!”
It was perhaps not surprising that the cumulative effect of these remarks should have sent Martin Frant back to Stanyon in a mood of smouldering anger.
Although he could not have been said to have received any particular encouragement from Sir Thomas, or from Lady Bolderwood, he was generally acknowledged to have been, before the arrival of his half-brother at Stanyon, the most likely candidate for Marianne’s hand. He had first known her when she was a schoolroom miss, and he a freshman at Oxford, his thoughts far removed from matrimony. Long before he had thought more about her than that she was a very good sort of a girl, pluck to the backbone, even if lacking in judgment, he had captured her maiden fancy. He was a handsome young man, whose magnificent background lent his careless, imperious ways a romantic aura. He was a stylish cricketer, a good shot, and a bruising rider to hounds, and his patronage could not but give consequence to a schoolgirl. Lady St. Erth, whose discreet enquiries had early established the fact that the Beauty was heiress to something in the region of a hundred thousand pounds, from the outset smiled upon the friendship. Sir Thomas might have eaten his dinner at Stanyon every day of the week had he chosen to do so; and not only were his manners pronounced to be refreshingly natural, but he provided her ladyship with a subject for a pious lecture on the value of golden hearts that were hid under rough exteriors. Sir Thomas, cherishing no illusions on the substance of the Dowager’s heart, and unimpressed by her rank, visited Stanyon as seldom as common civility permitted, but was perfectly ready to extend his hospitality to Martin, whom he thought of as a wild colt, not vicious, but in need of breaking to bridle.
By the time Martin awoke to the realization that his little madcap friend had become the toast of the neighbourhood, Marianne, courted on all sides, was no longer hanging admiringly upon his lips, or gazing worshipfully up into his face. Instead, she was flirting in the prettiest, most unexceptionable way with several other young gentlemen. The knowledge, not only that he was in love with her, but that she unquestionably belonged to him, then burst upon Martin, and caused him to conduct himself in a style which made one poetically-minded damsel, who would not have objected to finding herself the object of his jealous regard, say that he reminded her of a black panther. Mr. Warboys, without putting himself to the trouble of deciding which of the more ferocious animals his friend resembled, stated the matter in simple, and courageously frank terms. “Y’know, old fellow,” he once told Martin, “if you had a tail, damme if you wouldn’t lash it!”
The tail, if not lashing, was certainly on the twitch when Martin reached Stanyon, but although some part of the time spent on his solitary ride home from Westerwood House had been occupied by him in dwelling upon his grievances, he also had time to reflect on the extreme unwisdom of quarrelling openly with his brother, and had no real intention of forcing an issue. Unfortunately, he had occasion to go into the Armoury, which was one of the broad galleries which flanked the Chapel Court, and was also used as a gunroom, and he found the Earl there.
Gervase was in his shirt-sleeves, trying the temper of a pair of foils. He seemed to have been engaged in oiling his pistols, for these lay in an open case on a table near him, with some rags and a bottle of oil standing beside them. He looked up as Martin entered through the door at one end of the gallery, and it occurred to Martin for the first time that he was indeed a damnably handsome man — if one had a taste for such delicate, almost womanish features.
“Oh! You here!” Martin said, in no very agreeable voice.
Gervase regarded him meditatively. “As you see. Is there any reason why I should not be here?”
“None that I know of!” Martin replied, shrugging, and walking over to a glass-fronted case which contained several sporting guns.
“I am so glad!” said Gervase. “So much that I do seems to anger you that I am quite alarmed lest I should quite unwittingly cause you offence.”
The gentle irony in his tone was not lost on Martin. He wheeled about, and said trenchantly: “If that is so, let me advise you to leave Marianne Bolderwood alone!”
Gervase said nothing, but kept his eyes on Martin’s face, their expression amused, yet watchful.
“I hope I make myself plain, brother!”
“Very plain.”
“You may think you can come into Lincolnshire, flaunting your title, and your damned dandy-airs, and amuse yourself by trifling with Miss Bolderwood, but I shall not permit it, and so I warn you!”
“Oh, tut-tut!” Gervase interrupted, laughing.
Martin took a hasty step towards him. “Understand, I’ll not have it!”
Gervase seemed to consider him for a moment. He still looked amused, and, instead of answering, he lifted the second foil from where he had laid it on the table, set both hilts across his forearm, and offered them to Martin.
Martin stared at him. “What’s this foolery?”
“Don’t you fence?”
“Fence? Of course I do!”
“Then choose a foil, and see what you can achieve with it! All these wild and whirling words don’t impress me, you know. Perhaps your sword-play may command my respect!” He paused, while Martin stood irresolute, and added softly: “No? Do you think you can’t creditably engage with such a dandified fellow as I am?”
Martin’s eyes flashed; he grasped one of the hilts, exclaiming furiously: “We’ll see that!”
“Gently! Don’t draw the blade through my hand!” Gervase said, allowing him to take the foil he had chosen. “How does the length suit you?”
“I have frequently fenced with this pair!”
“You have the advantage of me, then: I find them a trifle overlong, and not as light in hand as I could wish. However, that is a common fault.”
He moved away to the centre of the Armoury as he spoke, and waited there while Martin flung off his coat. Martin swiftly followed him, torn between annoyance and a desire to demonstrate his skill to one whom he suspected of mocking him. He knew himself to have been well-taught, and was, indeed, so much above the average at most forms of sport that he expected to give a very good account of himself. But after a few minutes he was brought to realize that he had met his master. The Earl fought with a pace and a dexterity which flustered him a little, and never did he seem to be able to break through that unwavering guard. Every attack was baffled by a close parade, and when he attempted a feint, Gervase smiled, his wrist in no way led astray, and said as he delivered a straight thrust: “Oh, no, no! If you must feint, you should oppose your forte, moving your point nearer to my forte, or you won’t very easily hit me.”
Martin returned no answer. He was panting, and the sweat was beginning to stain his shirt. Had his adversary been any other man he would have been delighted to have found himself matched with a swordsman so much superior to himself, and would not in the least have resented his inability to score a hit. But it galled him unspeakably to be unable to break through the guard of so effeminate a person as Gervase, who never seemed at any moment to be hard-pressed, or even to be exerting himself very much. He was obliged to acknowledge a number of hits, his choler steadily rising. A return from the wrist, which caught him in mid-thrust, destroyed the last rags of his temper; he parried a carte thrust half-circle, his weight thrown on to his left hip, and swiftly turned his wrist in tierce, inclining the point of the left, with the intention of crossing the Earl’s blade. But just as he was about to do so, Gervase disengaged, giving way with the point, so that it was Martin’s blade, meeting no opposition, which leaped from his hand, and not his brother’s.
“So your master taught you that trick!” Gervase said, a little out of breath. “Very few do so nowadays. But it’s dangerous, you know, unless you have very great swiftness and precision. Try again! Or have you had enough?”
“No!” Martin shot at him, snatching up his foil, and dragging his shirt-sleeve across his wet brow. “Damn you, I’m not so easily exhausted! I’ll hit you yet! I’m out of practice!”
“You might hit me out of practice; you won’t do it out of temper,” said Gervase dryly.
“Won’t I? Won’t I?” gasped Martin, stung to blind rage by this merited but decidedly provocative rebuke.
He closed the Earl’s blade, and on the instant saw that the button had become detached from his point. Gervase saw it too, and quickly retired his left foot, to get out of distance. “Take care!” he said sharply.
“ You may take care!” Martin panted, and delivered a rather wild thrust in prime. It was parried by the St. George Guard; and even as he became conscious of the enormity of what he had done, he found himself very hard-pressed indeed. He would have dropped his point at a word, but the word was not spoken. Gervase was no longer smiling, and his eyes had narrowed, their lazy good-humour quite vanished. Martin was forced to fight. A careless, almost mechanical thrust in carte over the arm was parried by a sharp beat of the Earl’s forte, traversing the line of his blade, and bearing his wrist irresistibly upwards. The Earl’s left foot came forward; his hand seized the shell of Martin’s sword, and forced it out to the right; he gripped it fast, and presented the button of his foil to Martin’s face.
“The Disarm!” he said, holding Martin’s eyes with his own.
Martin relinquished his foil. His chest was heaving; he seemed as though he would have said something, but before he could recover his breath enough to do so an interruption occurred. Theo, who, for the past few minutes, had been standing, with Miss Morville, rooted on the threshold, strode forward, ejaculating thunderously: “Martin! Are you mad? ”
Martin started, and looked round, a sulky, defensive expression on his flushed countenance. His brother laid down the foils. Miss Morville’s matter-of-fact voice broke into an uncomfortable silence. “How very careless of you, not to have observed that the button is off your point!” she said severely. “There might have been an accident, if your brother had not been sharper-eyed than you.”
“Oh, no, there might not!” Martin retorted. “I couldn’t touch him! There was no danger!”
He caught up his coat as he spoke, and, without looking at Gervase, went hastily out of the gallery.
“I expect,” said Miss Morville, with unruffled placidity, — “that swords are much like guns. My Papa was used to say, when they were boys, that he would not trust my brothers with guns unless he were there to keep an eye on them, for let a boy become only a little excited and he would forget the most commonplace precautions. I came to tell you, Lord St. Erth, that your stepmother wishes you will join her in the Amber Drawing-room. General Hawkhurst has come to pay his respects to you.”
“Thank you! I will come directly,” he replied.
“Drusilla, you will not mention to anyone — what you saw a moment ago!” Theo said.
She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. “Oh, no! Why should I, indeed? I am sure Martin would very much dislike it if anyone were to roast him for being so heedless.”
With this prosaic reply, she left the Armoury, closing the door behind her.
“Gervase, what happened?” Theo said. “How came Martin to be fencing with a naked point?”
“Oh, he tried to cross my blade, but since I am rather too old a hand to be caught by such a trick as that, it was his sword, not mine, which was lost,” Gervase said lightly. “The button was loosened, I daresay, by the fall.”
“Are you trying to tell me that he did not perceive it?”
Gervase smiled. “Why, no! But the thing was, you see, that he was so angry with me for being the better swordsman that his rage quite overthrew his judgment, and he tried to pink me. I was never in any danger, you know: he has not been so badly taught, but he lacks precision and pace.”
“So I saw! You had him clearly at your mercy, but that cannot excuse his conduct!”
“As to that, perhaps I was a little at fault,” Gervase confessed. “But, really, you know, Theo, he is such an unschooled colt that I thought he deserved a set-down! I own, I said what I knew must enrage him. No harm done: he is now very much ashamed of himself, and that must be counted as a gain.”
“I hope you may be found to be right. But — ” He broke off, his brows contracting.
“Well?”
“It happened as you have described, of course, but — he raised his eyes to his cousin’s face, and said bluntly: “Gervase, be a little more careful, I beg of you! You might not have noticed it, but I saw, in his face, such an expression of fury — I had almost said, of hatred — !”
“Yes, I did notice it,” Gervase said quietly. “He would have been happy to have murdered me, would he not?”
“No, no, don’t think it! He is, as you have said, an unschooled colt, and he has been used to being so much petted and praised — But he would not murder you!”
“It was certainly his intention, my dear Theo!”
“Not his intention!” Theo said swiftly. “His impulse, at that instant!”
“The distinction is too nice for his victim to appreciate. Come, Theo! Be plain with me, I beg of you! You tried to put me on my guard, I fancy, that first evening, when you came to my bedchamber, and drank a glass of brandy with me there. Was it against Martin that you were warning me?” He waited for a moment. “I am answered, I suppose!”
“I don’t know. I dare not say so! Only be a little wary, Gervase! If some accident were to befall you — why, I dare swear he himself would admit to being glad of it! But that he would contrive to bring about such an accident I have never believed, until I saw his face just now! The suspicion did then flash into my mind — but it must be nonsensical!”
“Theo, I do think you should have rushed in, and thrown yourself between us!” Gervase complained.
“Yes, and so I would have done had I wished to startle you into dropping your guard!” Theo retorted, laughing. “What I might have felt myself impelled to do had you appeared to me to be hard-pressed I know not! Something heroic, no doubt! But stop bamming, Gervase! What have you been doing to make Martin ready to murder you?”
“Why, I have been flaunting my title and my dandified airs in the eyes of his inamorata, and he fears she may be dazzled!”
“Oh! I collect that you have somehow contrived to meet Miss Bolderwood?”
“Yes, and I wish you will tell me why no one has ever told me of her existence! She is the sweetest sight my eyes have alighted upon since I came into Lincolnshire!”
Theo smiled, but perfunctorily, and turned a little aside, to lay the foils in their case. “She is very beautiful,” he agreed, in a colourless tone.
“An heiress too, if I have understood her father! Shall I try my fortune?”
“By all means.”
Gervase glanced quickly at his averted profile. “Theo! You too?”
Theo uttered a short laugh. “Don’t disturb yourself! I might as well aspire to the hand of a Royal Princess!” He shut the sword-case, and turned. “Come! If General Hawkhurst has honoured you with a visit, you had better make yourself a little more presentable.”
“Very true: I will do so at once!” Gervase said, rather glad to be relieved of the necessity of answering his cousin’s embittered words. From the little he had seen of both, he could not but feel that the staid Drusilla would make a more suitable bride for Theo than the livelier and by far more frivolous Marianne; he must, moreover, have been obliged to agree that there could be little hope that Sir Thomas would bestow his only child on a man in Theo’s circumstances.
He did not again see Martin until they met at the dinner-table. There was then a little constraint in Martin’s manner, but since he was so much a creature of moods this caused his mother no concern. Her mind was, in fact, preoccupied with the startling request made to her by her stepson, that she should send out cards of invitation for a ball at Stanyon. Since her disposition generally led her to dislike any scheme not of her own making, her first reaction was to announce with an air of majestic finality that it was not to be thought of; but when the Earl said apologetically that he was afraid some thought would have to be spent on the project, unless a party quite unworthy of the traditions of Stanyon were to be the result, she began to perceive that his mind was made up. An uneasy suspicion, which had every now and then flitted through her head since the episode of the Indian epergne, again made itself felt: her stepson, for all his gentle voice and sweet smile, was not easily to be intimidated. From her first flat veto, she passed to the enumeration of all the difficulties in the way of holding a ball at Stanyon at that season of the year. She was still expatiating on the subject when she took her place at the foot of the dinner-table. “Had it been Christmas, it might have been proper for us to have done something of that nature,” she said.
“Hardly, ma’am!” said Gervase, in a deprecating tone. “You had not then, I am persuaded, put off your blacks.”
This was unanswerable; and while she was thinking of some further objection, Martin, who had not been present when the scheme was first mooted, demanded to be told what was going forward. When it was made known to him, he could not dislike the project. His eyes brightened; he turned them towards Gervase, exclaiming: “I call that a famous notion! We have not had such an affair at Stanyon since I don’t know when! When is it to be?”
“I have been explaining to your brother,” said the Dowager, “that a ball held in the country at this season cannot be thought to be eligible.”
“Oh, fudge, Mama! No one removes to town until April — no one we need care for, at least! I daresay we could muster as many as fifty couples — well, twenty-five, at all events! and that don’t include all the old frights who will come only to play whist!”
“I fear that my state of health would be quite unequal to entertaining so many persons,” said the Dowager, making a determined bid for mastery.
As she had never been known to suffer even the most trifling indisposition, this announcement not unnaturally staggered her son. Before he could expostulate, however, Gervase said solicitously: “I would not for the world prejudice your health, ma’am! To be sure, to expect you to receive and to contrive for so many people would be an infamous thing for me to do! But I have been considering, you know, whether, if I sent my own chaise to convey her, my Aunt Dorothea might not be prevailed upon to drive over from Studham, to relieve you of those duties which might prove too much for your strength. I daresay, if we invited her to stay at Stanyon for a week or so, she would not altogether object to it.”
There was a pregnant silence. Theo’s firm lips twitched; the Chaplain gazed in deep absorption at the bowl of spring flowers which had replaced the epergne in the centre of the table; and Martin directed a glance of awe, not untinged with respect, at the Earl. Only Miss Morville continued to eat her dinner in complete unconcern.
“Lady Cinderfold,” said the Dowager, referring to her widowed sister-in-law in accents of loathing, “will act as hostess at Stanyon over my dead body!”
“That would be something quite out of the ordinary way,” murmured the Earl.
Miss Morville raised her eyes from the portion of fricandeau of beef on her plate, and directed a quelling look at him. She then turned her attention to her hostess, saying: “Should you find it too much for you, ma’am, if I were to write all the invitations for you, and, in general, undertake the arrangements?”
The Dowager, snatching at this straw, bestowed one of her most gracious smiles upon her, and gave the assembled company to understand that under these conditions she might be induced to sink her personal inclinations in a benevolent desire to oblige her stepson. After that, she entered in a very exhaustive way, which lent no colour to her previous assertion that she was in failing health, into all the preparations it would be necessary to make for the ball. Long before dinner was at an end, she had talked herself into good-humour; and by the time she rose from the table she had reached the felicitous stage of saying how happy she would be to welcome the dear Duchess of Rutland to Stanyon, and how happy a number of persons of quite inferior rank would be to find themselves at Stanyon.
While the inevitable card-table was being set up in the Italian Saloon, the Earl found himself standing beside Miss Morville, a little withdrawn from the rest of the party. He could not resist saying to her, with an arch lift of his brows: “I have incurred your censure, ma’am?”
She seemed surprised. “No, how should you? Oh, you mean that most ill-advised remark you made! Well, I must say, it was the outside of enough! However, it is not my business to be censuring you, my lord, and if I seemed to do so I have only to beg pardon.”
“Don’t, I entreat! I will own my fault. Shall you dislike my ball?”
“Dislike it! No, indeed! I daresay I shall enjoy it excessively.”
“I am afraid you will be put to a great deal of trouble over it.”
He expected a polite disclaimer, but she replied, candidly: “I shall, of course, because whatever I suggest Lady St. Erth will not like, until she has been brought to believe that she thought of it herself. I wish very much that she would let me contrive the whole, for there is nothing I should like better. But that would be rather too much to expect her to do, and one should never be unreasonable!”
“You would like nothing better than to order all the arrangements for a large party? I can conceive of nothing more tiresome!”
“Very likely you might not, for I think gentlemen do not excel at such things.” She looked across the room, to where Martin was discussing with his mother the various families it would be proper to invite to the ball. “I expect he will ask her particularly to send a card to the Bolderwoods,” she said sagely. “If I were you, I would not mention to her that you wish them to be invited, for it will only put up her back, if you do, and you may depend upon Martin’s good offices in that cause.”
“May I ask, ma’am,” he said, a trifle frigidly, “why you should suppose that I wish to invite the Bolderwoods?”
She raised her eyes to his face, in one of her clear, enquiring looks. “Don’t you? I quite thought that it must have been Marianne who had put the notion of a ball into your head, since you were visiting at Whissenhurst this morning.”
He hardly knew whether to be amused or angry. “Upon my word, Miss Morville! It seems that my movements are pretty closely watched!”
“I expect you will have to accustom yourself to that,” she returned. “Everything you do must be of interest to your people, you know. In this instance, you could not hope to keep your visit secret (though I cannot imagine why you should wish to do so!), for your coachman’s second granddaughter is employed at the Grange.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, and she has give such satisfaction that they mean to take her to London with them next month, which is a very gratifying circumstance.” She fixed her eyes on his face again, and asked disconcertingly: “Have you fallen in love with Miss Bolderwood?”
“Certainly not!” he replied, in a tone nicely calculated to depress pretension.
“Oh! Most gentlemen do — on sight! ” she remarked. “One cannot wonder at it, for I am sure she must be the prettiest girl imaginable. I have often reflected that it must be very agreeable to be beautiful. Mama considers that it is of more importance to have an informed mind, but I must own that I cannot agree with her.”
At this moment the Dowager called to Gervase to come to the card-table. He declined it, saying that he had letters which must be written, upon which Miss Morville was applied to. She went at once; and Martin, after fidgeting about the room for a few minutes, drew near to his brother, and said awkwardly: “You know, I didn’t mean it! That is — I beg your pardon, but — but it was you who made me fight on! And it would have been the sheerest good luck if I had pinked you!”
Gervase was in the act of raising a pinch of snuff to one nostril, but he paused. “You are very frank!” he remarked.
“Frank? Oh — ! Well, of course I didn’t mean — what I meant was that it would only be by some accident, or if you were careless, or — or something of that nature!”
“I see. I was evidently quite mistaken, for I formed the opinion that you had the very definite intention of running me through.”
“You made me as mad as fire!” Martin muttered, his eyes downcast, and his cheeks reddened.
“Yes, I do seem to have an unhappy trick of offending you, don’t I?” said the Earl.