The Quiet Gentleman

“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. Branton’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 bed-clothes, 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 leading to the gallery; he glanced towards the door to his dressing-room, and saw that that too was shut. He set the candle down, thrust his feet into a pair of gay Morocco slippers, and shrugged himself into his dressing-gown, aware, as he did so, of the unlikelihood of anyone’s entering his room at such an advanced hour of the night, but still convinced that he had not imagined the whole.

A board cracked outside the room. He picked up the candlestick, and wrenched open his door, stepping out on to the gallery. He found himself staring at Martin, who, fully dressed, except for his shoes, and carrying a lantern, had halted in his tracks, just beyond his door, and was looking in a startled, defensive way over his shoulder. “Martin!” he exclaimed. “What the devil — ?”

“Don’t kick up such a dust!” Martin begged him, in a savage but a lowered voice. “Do you want to wake my mother?”

“What are you doing?” Gervase demanded, more softly, but with a good deal of sternness in his tone. “Where have you been?”

“What’s that to you?” Martin retorted. “I suppose I need not render you an account of my movements! I have been out!”