The Quiet Gentleman

They had come by this time to the head of the Grand Stairway. Abney, emerging from the Italian Saloon, stared at them for an astonished moment, and then bowed, and said, with a good deal of feeling: “Your lordship! May I say how very happy I am to see your lordship restored to us?”

“Thank you; I am much obliged to you. Shall I find her ladyship in the Italian Saloon?”

“Indeed, yes, my lord!” Abney said, moving towards the door again. “Sir Thomas and Miss Bolderwood have called to enquire after your lordship, and are with my lady now.”

The Earl’s slender fingers closed on an arm that showed a tendency to withdraw itself. Martin said jerkily: “I’ll leave you! I have to go down to the stables!”

“In good time,” replied Gervase.

“If you think,” said Martin, in a savage undervoice, “that I want to watch Ulverston making sheep’s eyes at Marianne, you much mistake the matter!”

By this time, however, Abney had thrown open the door into the saloon, and the Earl, merely saying: “Never mind!” obliged his young relative to enter the room beside him.

Their arrival had the effect of cutting off various conversations in mid-air. Marianne, who had been exchanging sweet nothings with the Viscount in the window-embrasure, exclaimed, and ran forward, saying impulsively: “Oh, how glad I am! Everything is right again, and you are better!” She then blushed, cast a deprecating look at Martin, began to stammer something incoherent, and was rescued by Ulverston, who said cheerfully: “Hallo, Ger! How do you find yourself, dear boy?”

“St. Erth and Martin!” announced the Dowager, having verified this fact through her long-handled glasses. “I am excessively pleased to see you, St. Erth. I said it would not be long before you were upon your feet again. I had no apprehension that it could be otherwise. The Frant constitution is excellent. Someone should set a chair for St. Erth. Ah, Martin has done so! I knew I could depend upon him, for I am sure nothing could exceed his solicitude for his brother.”

Martin looked anything but grateful for this testimony, but said roughly: “You had better sit down, St. Erth, or you will go off into a swoon, or something, and I shall be blamed for it!”

Sir Thomas, who was cordially shaking hands with the Earl, said bluntly: “Now, that’s enough, young man! Least said is the soonest mended! Well, my lord, I came to see how you did, but little did I expect to find you out of your bed! Ay, you are a trifle pale, but that’s nothing! I am heartily glad to see you so stout! Such faradiddles as we have been hearing! Not that I believe a quarter of what is told me! No, no, I have been about the world a little too much for that!”

“St. Erth was shot by a poacher,” stated the Dowager. “I was not at all surprised. I thought that that was how it must have been. They should all of them be transported.”

“Well, well, if we could lay them by the heels, so they should be!” said Sir Thomas. “Do you sit down, my lord!”

While everyone was either endorsing this advice, or offering the Earl a cushion, or a stool for his feet, Martin escaped from the saloon, almost colliding in the doorway with Abney, who was on the point of ushering in two more visitors. He fell back, bowing perfunctorily, and Abney announced Mr. and Mrs. Morville.

Mrs. Morville acknowledged Martin’s bow with a nod, and a smile; Mr. Morville, who had been dragged unwillingly to render the observances of civility to his daughter’s hostess, said: “Ha, Martin!” and surveyed the rest of the company with a disillusioned eye, which the Viscount (as he informed his betrothed in a whisper) found singularly unnerving.

Mrs. Morville, meanwhile, having shaken hands with the Dowager, exchanged greetings with Sir Thomas and Marianne, smiled at her daughter, and wished that the Dowager would be a little more particular in her presentation of the two strange young gentlemen.

“My stepson, St. Erth, and Lord Ulverston!” said the Dowager generally.

Both gentlemen were bowing. Mr. Morville answered the question in his wife’s mind by staring very hard at the Viscount, and ejaculating: “Ulverston, eh? Well, well, that takes me back a good few years! How do you do? Your father and I were up at Cambridge together. You’re very like him!”