Джорджетт Хейер: The Quiet Gentleman

Theo held his slender hand an instant longer, pressing it slightly. “One year past! You are a villain!”

“Ah, yes, but you see I must have gone into black gloves, and really I could not bring myself to do so!” He drew his hand away, and advanced into the Hall, towards his stepmother’s chair.

She did not rise, but she extended her hand to him. “Well, and so you have come at last, St. Erth! I am happy to see you here, though, to be sure, I scarcely expected ever to do so! I do not know why you could not have come before, but you were always a strange, whimsical creature, and I daresay I shall not find that you have changed.”

“Dear ma’am, believe me, it is the greatest satisfaction to me to be able to perceive, at a glance, that you have not changed — not by so much as a hairsbreadth!” Gervase responded, bowing over her hand.

So sweetly were the words uttered, that everyone, except the Dowager, was left in doubt of their exact significance. The Dowager, who would have found it hard to believe that she could be the object of satire, was unmoved. “No, I fancy I do not alter,” she said complacently. “No doubt, however, you see a great change in your brother.”

“A great change,” agreed Gervase, holding out his hand to Martin, and scanning him out of his smiling, blue eyes. “Can you be my little brother? It seems so unlikely! I should not have recognized you.” He turned, offering hand and smile to the Chaplain. “But Mr. Clowne I must certainly have known anywhere! How do you do?”

The Chaplain, who, from the moment of the Earl’s handing his hat to Abney, had stood staring at him as though he could not drag his eyes from his face, seemed to be a trifle shaken, and answered with much less than his usual urbanity: “And I you, my lord! For one moment it was as though — Your lordship must forgive me! Memory serves one some strange tricks.”

“You mean, I think, that I am very like my mother,” said Gervase. “I am glad — though it is a resemblance which has brought upon me in the past much that I wish to forget.”

“It has frequently been remarked,” stated the Dowager, “that Martin is the very likeness of all the Frants.”

“You are too severe, ma’am,” said Gervase gently.

“Let me tell you, St. Erth, that if I favour the Frants I am devilish glad to hear it!” said Martin.

“Tell me anything you wish, my dear Martin!” said Gervase encouragingly.

His young relative was not unnaturally smitten to silence, and stood glaring at him. The Dowager said in a voice of displeasure: “I have the greatest dislike of such trifling talk as this. I shall make you known to Miss Morville, St. Erth.”

Bows were exchanged; the Earl murmured that he was happy to make Miss Morville’s acquaintance; and Miss Morville, accepting the civility with equanimity, pointed out to him, in a helpful spirit, that Abney was still waiting to relieve him of his driving-coat.

“Of course — yes!” said Gervase, allowing the butler to help him out of his coat, and standing revealed in all the fashionable elegance of dove-coloured pantaloons, and a silver-buttoned coat of blue superfine. A quizzing-glass hung on a black riband round his neck, and he raised this to one eye, seeming to observe, for the first time, the knee-breeches worn by his brother and his cousin, and the glory of his stepmother’s low-cut gown of purple satin. “Oh, I am afraid I have kept you waiting for me!” he said apologetically. “Now what is to be done? Will you permit me, ma’am, to sit down to dinner in all my dirt, or shall I change my clothes while your dinner spoils?”

“It would take you an hour, I daresay!” Martin remarked, with a curling lip.

“Oh, more than that!” replied Gervase gravely.

“I am not, in general, an advocate for a man’s sitting down to dine in his walking-dress,” announced the Dowager. “I consider such a practice slovenly, and slovenliness I abhor! In certain cases it may be thought, however, to be allowable. We will dine immediately, Abney.”

The Earl, taking up a position before the fire, beside his brother, drew a Sevres snuff-box from his pocket, and, opening it with a dexterous flick of his thumb, took a pinch of the mixture it contained, and raised it to one nostril. An unusual signet-ring, which he wore, and which seemed, at one moment, dull and dark, and at another, when he moved his hand so that the ring caught the light, to glow with green fire, attracted his stepmother’s attention. “What is that ring you have upon your finger, St. Erth?” she demanded. “It appears to me to be a signet!”

“Why, so it is, ma’am!” he replied, raising his brows in mild surprise.

“How comes this about? Your father’s ring was delivered to you by your cousin’s hand I do not know how many months ago! All the Earls of St. Erth have worn it, for five generations — I daresay more!”

“Yes, I prefer my own,” said the Earl tranquilly.

“Upon my word!” the Dowager ejaculated, her bosom swelling. “I have not misunderstood you, I suppose! You prefer a trumpery ring of your own to an heirloom!”

“I wonder,” mused the Earl, pensively regarding his ring, “whether some Earl of St. Erth as yet unborn — my great-great-grandson, perhaps — will be told the same, when he does not choose to wear this ring of mine?”

A high colour mounted to the Dowager’s cheeks; before she could speak, however, the matter-of-fact voice of Miss Morville made itself heard. “Very likely,” she said. “Modes change, you know, and what one generation may admire another will frequently despise. My Mama, for instance, has a set of garnets which I consider quite hideous, and shan’t know what to do with, when they belong to me.”

“Filial piety will not force you to wear them, Miss Morville?”

“I shouldn’t think it would,” she responded, giving the matter some consideration.

“Your Mama’s garnets, my dear Drusilla — no doubt very pretty in their way! — can scarcely be compared to the Frant ring!” said the Dowager. “I declare, when I hear St. Erth saying that he prefers some piece of trumpery — ”

“No, no, I never said so!” interrupted the Earl. “You really must not call it trumpery, my dear ma’am! A very fine emerald, cut to my order. I daresay you might never see just such another, for they are rare, you know. I am informed that there is considerable difficulty experienced in cutting them to form signets.”

“I know nothing of such matters, but I am shocked — excessively shocked! Your father would have been very glad to have left his ring to Martin, let me tell you, only he thought it not right to leave it away from the heir!”

“Was it indeed a personal bequest?” enquired Gervase, interested. “That certainly must be held to enhance its value. It becomes, in fact, a curio, for it must be quite the only piece of unentailed property which my father did bequeathe to me. I shall put it in a glass cabinet.”

Martin, reddening, said: “I see what you are at! I’m not to be blamed if my father preferred me to you!”

“No, you are to be felicitated,” said Gervase.

“My lord! Mr. Martin!” said the Chaplain imploringly.

Neither brother, hot brown eyes meeting cool blue ones, gave any sign of having heard him, but the uncomfortable interlude was brought to a close by the entrance of the butler, announcing that dinner was served.

There were two dining-rooms at Stanyon, one of which was only used when the family dined alone. Both were situated on the first floor of the Castle, at the end of the east wing, and were reached by way of the Grand Stairway, the Italian Saloon, and a broad gallery, known as the Long Drawing-room. Access to them was also to be had through two single doors, hidden by screens, but these led only to the precipitous stairs which descended to the kitchens. The family dining-room was rather smaller than the one used for formal occasions, but as its mahogany table was made to accommodate some twenty persons without crowding it seemed very much too large for the small party assembled in it. The Dowager established herself at the foot of the table, and directed her son and the Chaplain to the places laid on her either side. Martin, who had gone unthinkingly to the head of the table, recollected the change in his circumstances, muttered something indistinguishable, and moved away from it. The Dowager waved Miss Morville to the seat on the Earl’s right; and Theodore took the chair opposite to her. Since the centre of the table supported an enormous silver epergne, presented to the Earl’s grandfather by the East India Company, and composed of a temple, surrounded by palms, elephants, tigers, sepoys, and palanquins, tastefully if somewhat improbably arranged, the Earl and his stepmother were unable to see one another, and conversation between the two ends of the table was impossible. Nor did it flourish between neighbours, since the vast expanse of napery separating them gave them a sense of isolation it was difficult to overcome. The Dowager indeed, maintained, in her penetrating voice, a flow of very uninteresting small-talk, which consisted largely of exact explanations of the various relationships in which she stood to every one of the persons she mentioned; but conversation between St. Erth, his cousin and Miss Morville was of a desultory nature. By the time Martin had three times craned his neck to address some remark to Theo, obscured from his view by the epergne, the Earl had reached certain decisions which he lost no time in putting into force. No sooner had the Dowager borne Miss Morville away to the Italian Saloon than he said: “Abney!”