The Quiet Gentleman

‘I haven’t hunted him yet. We shall see how he does. I brought him down to try his paces a little.’

‘You won’t hack him during the summer!’

‘No, I shan’t do that,’ said the Earl gravely.

‘My dear Martin, do you imagine that Gervase does not know a great deal more about horses than you?’ said Theo.

‘Oh, well, I daresay he may, but troopers are a different matter!’

That made Gervase laugh. ‘Very true! – as I know to my cost! But I have been more fortunate than many: I have only once been obliged to ride one.’

‘When was that?’ enquired Theo.

‘At Orthes. I had three horses shot under me that day, and very inconvenient I found it.’

‘You bear a charmed life, Gervase.’

‘I do, don’t I?’ agreed the Earl, seating himself at the table.

‘Were you never even wounded?’ asked Martin curiously.

‘Nothing but a sabre-cut or two, and a graze from a spent ball. Tell me what cattle you have in the stables here!’

No question could have been put to Martin that would more instantly have made him sink his hostility. He plunged, without further encouragement, into a technical and detailed description of all the proper high-bred ’uns, beautiful steppers, and gingers to be found in the Stanyon stables at that moment. Animation lightened the darkness of his eyes, and dispelled the sullen expression from about his mouth. The Earl, listening to him with a half-smile hovering on his lips, slipped in a leading question about the state of his coverts, and finished his breakfast to the accompaniment of an exposition of the advantages of close shot over one that scattered, the superiority of the guns supplied by Manton’s, and the superlative merits of percussion caps.

‘To tell you the truth,’ confessed Martin, ‘I am a good deal addicted to sport!’

The Earl preserved his countenance. ‘I perceive it. What do you find to do in the spring and the summer-time, Martin?’

‘Oh, well! Of course, there is nothing much to do,’ acknowledged Martin. ‘But one can always get a rabbit, or a brace of wood-pigeon!’

‘If you can get a wood-pigeon, you are a good shot,’ observed Gervase.

This remark could scarcely have failed to please. ‘Well, I can, and it is true, isn’t it, that a wood-pigeon is a testing shot?’ said Martin. ‘My father would always pooh-pooh it, but Glossop says – you remember Glossop, the head-keeper? – that your pigeon will afford you as good sport as any game-bird of them all!’

The Earl agreed to it; and Martin continued to talk very happily of all his sporting experiences, until an unlucky remark of Theo’s put him in mind of his grievances, when he relapsed into a fit of monosyllabic sulks, which lasted for the rest of the meal.

‘Really, Theo, that was not adroit!’ said the Earl, afterwards.

‘No: bacon-brained!’ owned Theo ruefully. ‘But if we are to guard our tongues every minute of every day – !’

‘Nonsense! The boy is merely spoilt. Is that my mother-in-law’s voice? I shall go down to the stables!’

Here he was received with much respect and curiosity, nearly every groom and stableboy finding an occasion to come into the yard, and to steal a look at him, where he stood chatting to the old coachman. On the whole, he was approved. He was plainly not a neck-or-nothing young blood of the Fancy, like his half-brother; he was a quiet gentleman, like his cousin, who was a very good rider to hounds; and if the team of lengthy, short-legged bits of blood-and-bone he had brought to Stanyon had been of his own choosing, he knew one end of a horse from another. He might take a rattling toss or two at the bullfinches of Ashby Pastures, but it seemed likely that he would turn out in prime style, and possible that he would prove himself to be a true cut of Leicestershire.

He found his head-groom, Sam Chard, late of the 7th Hussars, brushing the dried mud from the legs of his horse, Cloud. Chard straightened himself, and grinned at him, sketching a salute. ‘’Morning, me lord!’

‘You found your way here safely,’ commented the Earl, passing a hand down Cloud’s neck.

‘All right and tight, me lord. Racked up for the night at Grantham, according to orders.’

‘No trouble here?’

‘Not to say trouble, me lord, barring a bit of an escaramuza with the Honourable Martin’s man, him not seeming to understand his position, and passing a remark about redcoats, which I daresay he done by way of ignorance. Red-coats! The Saucy Seventh! But no bones broken, me lord, and I will say he didn’t display so bad.’

‘Chard, I will have no fighting here!’

‘Fighting, me lord?’ said his henchman, shocked. ‘Lor’, no. Nothing but a bit of cross-and-jostle work, with a muzzler to finish it! Everything very nice and abrigado now, me lord. You’re looking at that bay: a rum ’un to look at, but I daresay he’s the devil to go. One of this Honourable Martin’s, and by what they tell me he’s a regular dash: quite the out-and-outer! Would he be a relation of your lordship’s?’