The Quiet Gentleman

‘I did not mean – I have the head-ache a little!’ Marianne faltered. ‘Indeed I did not mean to be unkind to Barny!’

‘No, my love, I am persuaded you would not mean to be unkind,’ Lady Bolderwood said, patting her cheek. ‘It is just that your mind is running a little too much on your pleasuring at Stanyon. There! don’t cry! I know I have only to give you a hint.’

Marianne kissed her, and promised amendment. She did indeed perform conscientiously such tasks as were given her, but her spirits were uneven. At one moment she would be her merry self, at the next she would be pensive, slipping away to walk by herself in the shrubbery, or sitting with her eyes bent on the pages of a book, and her thoughts far away. The various young gentlemen who paid morning-visits to Whissenhurst found her gay, but disinclined to flirt with them, a change which Lady Bolderwood at first saw with satisfaction, and which soon led her to suspect that Marianne might have got into a scrape at Stanyon. When Martin came to Whissenhurst, and was met by Marianne with unaccustomed formality, she was sure of it, and she begged her daughter to tell her what had occurred. Marianne, hanging down her head, admitted that Martin had tried to make love to her, but she hastened to add that it had not been so very bad, and Drusilla had thought it would be foolish to refine too much upon it.

‘Drusilla Morville is a very sensible girl,’ said Lady Bolderwood approvingly. ‘She is perfectly right, and perhaps I am not sorry that it happened, for it has made you see what flirting leads to, my dear, and in future you will take better care, I am sure.’

She believed that the want of tone in Marianne’s spirits was now accounted for, but when she confided the story to her husband he disconcerted her by saying in his bluff way: ‘Well, Mama, you should know your daughter best, but it’s the first time I ever heard of a girl’s moping about the house because a handsome young fellow shows himself to be head over ears in love with her!’

‘My dear Sir Thomas, I am persuaded she was much shocked by Martin’s behaviour –’

‘Shocked! Ay, so she might be, the naughty puss! But that’s no reason why she should peck at her dinner, and sit staring into the fire when she thinks we ain’t watching her. No, no, my lady, if it’s young Frant who has made her lose her appetite, you may call me a Dutchman!’

His wife smiled indulgently, and shook her head, but events proved Sir Thomas to have been right. On the very next morning, when Marianne sat in the window of the front parlour with her Mama, helping her to hem some handkerchiefs, a horseman was seen trotting up the drive. Lady Bolderwood did not immediately recognize him, and she was just wondering aloud who it could be when she became aware of an extraordinary change in her listless daughter. Marianne was blushing, her head bent over her stitchery, but the oddest little smile trembling on her lips. In great astonishment, Lady Bolderwood stared at her.

‘I think – I believe – it is Lord Ulverston, Mama!’ murmured Marianne.

Lord Ulverston it was, and in a very few moments he was shaking hands with them, fluently explaining that since his way led past their house he could not but call to enquire whether Sir Thomas and her ladyship were quite recovered from their indispositions. Lady Bolderwood’s astonishment grew, for as he turned from her to take Marianne’s hand in his she perceived such a glowing look in her daughter’s countenance, such a shy yet beaming smile in her eyes as made her seem almost a stranger to her own mother.

Sir Thomas, informed by a servant of his lordship’s arrival, then entered the room, and made the Viscount heartily welcome. To his lady’s considerable indignation, he bestowed on her a quizzing look which informed her how far more exactly he had read their daughter’s mind than she had.

The Viscount stayed chatting easily for perhaps half an hour, and if his eyes strayed rather often to Marianne’s face, and his voice underwent a subtle change when he had occasion to address her, his conduct was otherwise strictly decorous. When he rose to depart, Sir Thomas escorted him to the front-door. No sooner, however, was the parlour-door shut behind them than his lordship requested the favour of a few words with his host.

‘Ho! So that’s it, is it?’ said Sir Thomas. ‘Well, well, you had better come into my library, my lord, I suppose!’

When Sir Thomas presently rejoined his ladies, and they had watched the Viscount riding away, Marianne asked if he had been showing his Indian treasures to his lordship.

‘Ay, that was it,’ replied Sir Thomas, chuckling. But when Marianne had left the room, he said to his wife, with one of his cracks of mirth: ‘Indian treasures! It wasn’t any Indian treasure his lordship came after!’

‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘You cannot, surely, mean that he has made an offer for Marianne?’

‘That’s it. Came to ask my permission to pay his addresses to her, just as he ought.’

‘But he has only been acquainted with her a few days!’

‘What’s that got to say to anything? I knew my mind five minutes after I met you, my lady!’

‘She is too young! Why, she is not yet out!’

‘Ay, so I told him. I said we could not sanction any engagement until she

had seen a bit of the world.’

She regarded him with suspicion. ‘Sir Thomas, do you mean to tell me you gave him permission to pay his addresses?’

‘Why, I said if my girl loved him I would not say no,’ he confessed. ‘It would be no bad thing for her, you know, Maria. Setting aside the title, he’s just the cut of a man I fancy for my little puss. He ain’t after her fortune: from what he tells me, he’s a man of comfortable fortune himself. I can tell you this, I’d as lief her affections were engaged before we expose her to all the handsome young scamps with high-sounding titles and lean purses who are hanging out in London for rich wives!’

‘I am persuaded she would never –’

‘Maria, my dear, there’s no saying what she might do, for she’s not up to snuff, like some of the young ladies I’ve seen, and when a girl is heiress to a hundred thousand pounds every needy rascal will be paying court to her! A pretty thing it would be if she chose to set her heart on a man that only wants her fortune!’

‘Yes, yes, but – My dear Sir Thomas, you run on so fast! You do not consider! The Wrexhams might not care for the match, after all!’

He gave a dry chuckle. ‘There’s only one thing could make the Wrexhams, or any other high family, dislike it, Maria, and that’s for me to gamble my fortune away on ’Change!’ he said.

Thirteen

While the Viscount was pursuing his courtship of Marianne, Martin seemed to be making an effort to get upon better terms with his half-brother. His attempts at friendliness, which were sometimes rather too studied, were tranquilly received, the Earl neither encouraging nor repulsing him, but holding himself a little aloof, and meeting advances that were not unlike those of a half-savage puppy with a serenity which was as unruffled by present blandishments as it had been by past enmity.