The Quiet Gentleman

But the luck favoured him. At the end of half a mile, the track joined a rather better road, which led, a few hundred yards farther on, to a choice of three ways. Mr. Leek was doubtful which he should take, for none of them seemed to have a distinguishing feature by which he might have remembered it. A battered sign-post informed him that the ways led respectively to Climpton, Beaumarsh, and Forley, but as he was unacquainted with any of these villages this was not helpful. He stood under the post, considering, and just as he had decided to proceed down the lane which he fancied was the least unfamiliar to him the sound of an approaching vehicle suddenly came to his ears. Blessing himself for his good fortune, he waited; and in another few minutes a gig, drawn by a stout brown cob, came into sight. He hailed it, and it drew up beside him. The round-faced young farmer who was driving it looked down at him in some curiosity, and asked him what he wanted. Mr. Leek, laying a detaining hand on the gig, countered by demanding to know whither the farmer was bound. After staring very hard at him for a moment, the farmer disclosed that he was going to Cheringham, at the mention of which known name Mr. Leek brightened, and said: "If you're going to Cheringham, young fellow, you wouldn't be going so very far out of your way if you was to be so obliging as to set me down at Stanyon. Which I'll thank you very kindly for."

"Stanyon?" said the farmer. "Whatever would you be wanting to go there for?"

"Stanyon Castle," said Mr. Leek, with dignity, "is the place where I live—tempor'y!"

"That's a loud one!" remarked the farmer, laughing heartily.

Affronted, Mr. Leek retorted: "If you wasn't half flash and half foolish, Master Hick, I wouldn't have to tell you as I am a gentleman's gentleman, because anyone as wasn't a looby would know it the very instant he clapped his ogles on this toge of mine! The Honourable Martin Frant's new valet, that's what I am!"

"Mr. Martin!" said the farmer, apparently impressed. "Oh, if you're one o' Mr. Martin's servants that's diff'rent, o'course! Up you get!"

Mr. Leek clambered thankfully into the gig, and was gratified to observe that the farmer chose the very lane he had himself decided to explore. They had proceeded along it for nearly a quarter of a mile before the farmer, a slow thinker, suddenly demanded to know what Mr. Martin's valet was doing five miles from the Castle. By this time, Mr. Leek, who had foreseen the question, had provided himself with a glib explanation of this circumstance. It was accepted, the fanner merely remarking that there was no telling what quirks Mr. Martin would take into his noddle, notwithstanding that, give him his due, he was a rare one for The Land; and the rest of the drive passed in an amicable exchange of views on the eccentricities of the Quality, and the chances of a good harvest.

While Mr. Leek was driving back to Stanyon by a rather less circuitous route than that chosen by the Earl, his employer was also homeward-bound. He reached the Castle some twenty minutes later than his valet, escorted by Chard, who rode behind him, very correctly, and received with an unmoved countenance a command to stable his hack. Martin, swinging himself from the saddle at the foot of the terrace-steps, handed over his bridle, saying with an unamiable smile, and a glittering look in his eye: "You may now, and for the first time today, make yourself useful, and take my horse to the stables!"

"Yessir!" said Chard woodenly, touching his hat.

He took the bridle, and led the horse off. Martin watched him go, gave a short laugh, and ran up the steps towards the open doors of the Castle.

Three minutes later, Miss Morville, passing along the gallery at the head of the Grand Stairway, on her way, through the Italian Saloon, to the Long Drawing-room, was checked by the sound of voices at the foot of the stair. She paused, for she recognized the unmistakably urban accents of Mr. Leek, and could not imagine what circumstance should have brought him into this part of the Castle.

" . . . so, thinking as this was the very thing for which I was, as you may say, brought in, I said as I would be happy to go with his lordship."

"Well?"

That was Martin's voice, lowered, but quite as unmistakable as Mr. Leek's. Miss Morville caught up her demi-train, and stole softly down one branch of the stairway, to the broad half-landing, whence the stair led down, in one imposing flight, to the entrance-hall of the Castle.

"He give me the bag!" said Mr. Leek succinctly.

"What?" Martin's voice was sharpened. "Do you mean that you let him get away?"

"Ah!" said Mr. Leek. "Loped off, he did! Bubbled me! Me!"

"You fool! You blundering jackass!" Martin said, such molten wrath vibrant in his voice that Miss Morville let her train fall, and tiptoed to the balustrade, and gripped it, peeping over to look down into the hall.