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 Cinderford,’ 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 given 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 writt
en, 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.
Six
Miss Bolderwood’s name was not again mentioned between the half-brothers, Martin apparently being conscious of some awkwardness in adverting to the subject of his late quarrel with Gervase, and Gervase considering himself to be under no obligation to account to his brother for his visits to Whissenhurst Grange. These were more frequent than could be expected to meet with the approval either of Martin, or of the numerous other gentlemen who paid court to the beautiful heiress; for the Earl, driving over to Whissenhurst on the day after his first encounter with Marianne to enquire politely after her well-being, after such a misadventure as had befallen her, was able to persuade her, without much difficulty, to accompany him on a drive round the neighbourhood. Informed by some chance observation that she had never yet handled a pair of high-bred horses, he conceived the happy notion of offering to instruct her in this art. It took well; Sir Thomas, having early perceived, from his handling of his cattle, that the Earl was no mean whip, raised no objection; and on several mornings thereafter those of Miss Bolderwood’s admirers who happened, by some chance, to find themselves in the vicinity of Whissenhurst were revolted by the spectacle of their goddess bowling smartly along the lane under the tuition of her latest and most distinguished swain. On more than one occasion they had the doubtful pleasure of meeting him at a Whissenhurst tea-party. These informal entertainments, where tea, quadrille, and commerce were followed by an elegant supper, just suited the Earl’s humour, for his prolonged service in the Peninsula, with its generally happy-go-lucky way of life, had rendered him unappreciative of the formal tedium obtaining at Stanyon. Sir Thomas was a genial host, his lady was a notable housewife; and nothing delighted either of them more than to see a number of young persons enjoying themselves at their expense. As for Marianne, it would have been hard to have guessed which of her swains she was inclined to prefer, for she seemed equally pleased to see them all, and if one gentleman was the recipient of her particular favours one day, the next she would bestow these sunnily upon another. Nor did she neglect the members of her own sex: she had even been known to leave a hopeful and far from ineligible cavalier disconsolate merely because she had promised to go for a walk with another damsel, and would on no account break her engagement. The gentlemen said she was the most beautiful girl they had ever beheld; the ladies, for the most part, bestowed on her an even more striking testimonial: they were sure there could not anywhere be found a more good-natured girl. She had her detractors, of course; and it was not long after his arrival at Stanyon that the Earl learned from several mothers of pretty daughters that Miss Bolderwood, though well-enough, had too short an upper lip to be considered a Beauty, and was sadly deficient in accomplishments. Her performance upon the pianoforte was no more than moderate, and she had never learnt to play the harp. Nor had Lady Bolderwood ever called upon morning-visitors to admire her daughter’s latest water-colour sketch, from which it was to be apprehended that Miss Bolderwood’s talent did not lie in this direction either.
Martin was nearly always to be found at the Whissenhurst tea-parties; and once, having received a particular invitation from Lady Bolderwood, Theo drove over with the Earl to bear his part in an informal dance. Gervase, watching how Theo’s eyes followed Marianne, could only be sorry: it did not appear to him that she held him in greater regard than himself, or Martin, or the inarticulate Mr Warboys.
Cards of invitation were sent out from Stanyon; Marianne was in transports, and if it did not quite suit Lady Bolderwood’s sense of propriety to permit her to appear at a regular ball before she had been brought out in London at a ball of her own parents’ contriving, Sir Thomas could not be brought to see that such niceties mattered a jot. Lady Bolderwood’s scruples were overborne, and Marianne could be happy, and had only to decide between the rival merits of her white satin dress with the Russian bodice, fastened in front with little pearls; and one of white crape, trimmed with blonde lace, and worn over a satin slip.
Her happiness, with that of every other lady who had been honoured with an invitation to the ball, very soon became alloyed by anxiety. The weather underwent a change, and in place of bright spring days, with the wind blowing constantly from the east, a stormy period threatened to set in. A gay little party of damsels, seeking violets in the woods about Whissenhurst, were caught in such a severe downpour that they were soaked almost to the skin; and when anxious questions were put to such weather-wise persons as gardeners and farmers, these worthies would only shake their heads, and say that it showed no sign of fairing-up. The date of the ball had been carefully chosen to coincide with the full moon, but not even so indulgent a parent as Sir Thomas would for a moment consider the possibility of driving some six miles to a party of pleasure if the moon were to be obscured by clouds, and the coachman’s vision still further impaired by driving rain.
‘Do we despair, Miss Morville?’ asked the Earl.
‘No, but if the weather continues in this odious way, I fear you will find your rooms very thin of company,’ she replied. ‘The people who are coming from a distance, and are to sleep here, will come, because they will set out in daylight, you know, and they will hope that the rain won’t come on, or that they may drive away from it. I should think you may be sure of the party from Belvoir, but I do feel that you should perhaps fortify your mind to the likelihood of your immediate neighbours not caring to set forth in wet, cloudy weather.’
‘I will endeavour to do so,’ promised the Earl gravely.
Three days before the ball, the weather, so far from showing signs of improvement, promised nothing but disaster. The prophets said gloomily that it was banking up for a storm, and they were right. The day was tempestuous; and when the Stanyon party assembled for dinner even Martin, who had hitherto refused to envisage the possibility of the inclement weather’s persisting, took his place at the table with a very discontented expression on his face, and announced that he thought the devil had got into the skies.
‘Well, if it continues in this way, we must postpone the ball,’ Gervase said cheerfully.
‘Yes! And find everyone gone off to London!’ retorted Martin.
He could talk of nothing but the probable ruin of their plans; and since no representation sufficed to make him think more hopefully of the prospects, not even his mother was sorry when, shortly after the party rose from the table, he said, after a series of cavernous yawns, that he rather thought he would go to bed, since he had the head-ache, and everything was a dead bore.
The usual whist set had been formed, and so fierce were the battles fought over the table that none of the four players noticed that the wind was no longer rattling the shutters, and moaning round the corners of the Castle, until Miss Morville, who sat quietly stitching by the fire, lifted her head, and said: ‘Listen! the wind has dropped!’
‘I rather thought it would,’ observed the Dowager, gathering up her trick. ‘Indeed, I said as much this morning. “Depend upon it,” I said to Abney, “the wind will drop, and we shall have it fine for our
party.” I flatter myself I am seldom at fault in my calculations. Dear me, St Erth, I am sure if I had known you had the King of Diamonds in your hand we might have taken a couple of tricks more!’
‘I am very much afraid, ma’am, that this is the lull before a storm,’ said Theo.
So indeed it proved. After a brief period of quiet, a distant but menacing rumble of thunder was heard; and the Dowager instantly said that she had suspected as much, since nothing so surely gave Martin the head-ache as a thunderstorm.
After half an hour, during which time thunder grumbled intermittently, Miss Morville announced that she too would go to bed. She said that she could wish that, if a storm there must be, it would lose no time in bursting into full force, and thus be the more quickly finished.
‘Poor Drusilla!’ Theo said, smiling. ‘Do you dislike it so very much?’
‘I do dislike it,’ she replied, with dignity, ‘but I am well aware that to be afraid of the thunder is unworthy of any person of the least intelligence. The noise is certainly disagreeable, but it cannot, after all, harm one!’ With these stout words, she folded up her needlework, bade good-night to the company, and went away to her bedchamber.
‘I fear we must expect to spend a disturbed night,’ said Mr Clowne, shaking his head. ‘There has been a feeling of oppression in the atmosphere throughout the day which presages a very considerable storm. I trust your ladyship’s rest will not be impaired.’
‘I have no apprehension of it,’ she responded. ‘I do not fear the elements, I assure you. Indeed, I should think it a very remarkable circumstance if I were to lose my sleep on account of them. We have very severe storms at Stanyon: I have often observed as much. Ah, here is the tea-table being brought in at last! What a pity Drusilla should not have waited, for she might have dispensed the tea, you know, and now I shall be obliged to do so myself.’