Martin, who had sustained a painful interview with his cousin, sat down to dinner in a mood of offended hauteur. The table having been rearranged to accommodate the unexpected guest, he was seated on his half-brother’s left hand; and he took advantage of an animated discussion on the rival merits of Brighton and Scarborough as watering-places to say to Gervase in an angry undervoice: “I collect that you rode to Hatherfield this morning, and found the bridge unsafe! I daresay you may have said that you had that intention, but I was not attending! In any event, I had warned Hayle already that the bridge had been damaged!”

“In fact,” said Gervase, “had I broken my neck you would have been inconsolable.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” said Martin bluntly. “But to say that I tried to contrive that you should is the outside of enough! Break your neck indeed! In that paltry stream!”

“Don’t lie to me, but own that you did hear me say I would ride to Hatherfield, and hoped that I might tumble into a very muddy river!”

“Oh, well — !” Martin said, reddening, but grinning in spite of himself. He found that Gervase was regarding him thoughtfully, and added, in a defensive tone: “It’s no concern of mine where you choose to ride! Of course, if you had asked me — ! However, you did not, and as for there being the least danger of your being drowned — pooh!” He appeared to find some awkwardness in continuing the discussion, and said: “You won’t have forgot that we are to go to Whissenhurst this evening. I have ordered the carriage; for Drusilla goes too. Do you care to accompany me, or shall you drive yourself?”

“No, I don’t go. Present my compliments and my excuses to Lady Bolderwood, if you please!” Gervase turned from him, as he spoke, to address some remark to Miss Morville, who, never having visited Scarborough, had retired from the argument still being carried on by the other persons seated at the table.

When the ladies presently withdrew, Martin also left the table, saying that he must not keep Miss Morville waiting. Theo, suggesting that his cousin might wish to be alone with Lord Ulverston, engaged himself to keep the Dowager tolerably well amused with a few rubbers of piquet. This good-natured scheme for the Earl’s relief was rendered abortive, however, by her having previously extorted a promise from the Viscount to join her presently for a game of whist. This was kept up for some time after the appearance of the tea-table, the Dowager declaring that she scarcely knew how to tear herself away from the cards. “Twenty minutes to eleven!” she said, consulting the clock on the mantelshelf. “I shall be worn-out with dissipation. In general, you must know, I do not care to play after ten o’clock: it does not suit me; but this evening I have so much enjoyed the rubbers that I am not conscious of the hour. You play a very creditable game, Ulverston. I am no flatterer, so you may believe me when I say that I have been very well entertained. My dear father was a notable cardplayer, and I believe I have inherited his aptitude. Dear me, it will be wonderful if I am asleep before midnight! I shall not wait for Miss Morville to return, for if they are engaged in dancing, or speculation, at Whissenhurst, you know, there is no saying when she and Martin will come back. We will go to prayers immediately.”

Before this programme could be enforced on the company, the door opened to admit the two absentees. Their early return was explained, composedly by Miss Morville, and with great discontent by Martin. They had arrived at Whissenhurst to find Sir Thomas indisposed; and although his lady apprehended no cause for serious anxiety, he had gone to bed with a sore throat and a feverish pulse, and she had sent a message to Dr. Malpas, desiring him to call at the Grange in the morning. Her fear was that Sir Thomas had contracted influenza; and in these circumstances Miss Morville had not thought it proper to remain after tea had been drunk.

“If only Marianne does not take it from him!” Martin exclaimed. “One would have thought he need not have chosen this moment of all others to be ill! He might have caught influenza last month, and welcome — and, to be sure, I don’t know why he could not have done so, when half the countryside was abed with it! But no! Nothing will do but for him to be ill just when we are to hold our ball! I shouldn’t be at all surprised if the Bolderwoods do not come! It is all of a piece!”

“Shabby fellow!” said Ulverston, looking amused. “But so it is always with these crusty old men! They delight in plaguing the rest of us!”

“Oh, well, as to that, I would not call him crusty!”Martin owned.

“Ah, now you are being over-generous, I feel!”

“Sir Thomas is a very respectable man,” pronounced the Dowager. “We will send to enquire at Whissenhurst tomorrow, and I have no doubt that we shall receive a comfortable account of him. He would be very sorry not to be able to come to Stanyon, I daresay.”

“What,” demanded the Viscount, a little later, when Gervase had borne him away to the library on the entrance floor of the Castle, “is the peculiar virtue of Sir Thomas, which makes his presence indispensable to the success of your ball?”

Gervase laughed. “A daughter!”

“A daughter! Very well! I don’t need to ask, Is she beautiful?”

“Very beautiful, very engaging!”

“What a shocking thing it would be, then, for Sir Thomas to cry off! I shall certainly remain with you for a long visit, Ger!”

“Nothing could please me more, but take care you don’t tread upon Martin’s corns!”

“How can you, after watching my conciliatory manners this night, think such an event possible? What is the matter with that halfling?”

“Indulgence!”

The Viscount stretched out his hand for the glass of wine Gervase had poured for him. “I see. And is he in love with Sir Thomas’s daughter?”

“Calf-love. He is ready to murder me for — ” Gervase stopped, his hand arrested in the act of pouring a second glass of wine. “For flirting with her,” he ended lightly.

The Viscount’s countenance was cherubic, but his eyes held a good deal of shrewdness. He said: “I perceive, of course, that he is ready to murder you, my Tulip. Tell me about the damaged bridge!”

“Oh, so you heard that, did you? I had thought you absorbed in the attractions of the Steyne!”

“Very sharp ears, dear boy!” apologized the Viscount.

“There is nothing to tell. The storm last night cracked one of the supports to a wooden bridge thrown over a stream here, and Martin neglected to warn me of it. He is jealous of me, you see, and I think he felt it would do me good to be ducked in muddy water.”

“But what a delightful young man!” commented the Viscount. “Were you ducked?”

“No, my cousin was with me, and had some apprehension that the bridge might not be safe. In justice to Martin, he had already given instructions that the bridge should be barred. A schoolboy trick: no more.”

“Your cousin gave him a fine dressing for it: I heard him,” said Ulverston, sipping his wine.

“Did he? A pity! It was not worth making a noise about it.”

“Well, he seemed to think there was more to it than a schoolboy’s trick. Is there?”

“Of course there is not! Now, Lucy, what’s all this?”

“Beg pardon! It’s these ancestral walls of yours,” explained the Viscount. “Too dashed mediaeval, dear boy! They put the oddest notions into my head!”

Chapter 8

It was Martin who offered to be the bearer, on the following morning, of polite messages of condolence from his mother to Lady Bolderwood. He returned to Stanyon with no very encouraging tidings. Dr. Malpas had given it as his opinion that Sir Thomas’s disorder was indeed the influenza, and since Sir Thomas was of a bronchial habit he had strictly forbidden him to leave his bed for several days, much less his house. Marianne did not despair, however, of being able to attend the ball, for her Mama had promised that she would not scruple, unless Sir Thomas should become very much worse, to leave old Nurse in charge of the sick-room while she chaperoned her daughter to Stanyon.

But the following morning brought a servant from Whissenhurst to Stanyon, with a letter for the Dowager from Marianne. It was a primly-worded little note, but a blister on the sheet betrayed that tears had been shed over it. The writer regretted that, owing to the sudden indisposition of her Mama, it would be out of her power to come to Stanyon on the following evening. In fact, Lady Bolderwood had fallen a victim to the influenza.

The Dowager, in announcing these tidings, said that it was very shocking; but it was plain that she considered the Bolderwoods more to be commiserated than the Stanyon party. They would no doubt soon recover from the influenza, but they would have missed being amongst the guests at Stanyon, which she thought a privation not so readily to be recovered from. “How sorry they will be!” she said. “They would have liked it excessively.”

“It is the most curst thing!” Martin cried. “It ruins everything!”

“Yes, indeed, my dear, I am extremely vexed,” agreed the Dowager. “We shall now have two more gentlemen than ladies, and I daresay it will be quite uncomfortable. I warned your brother how it would be.”

It was not to be expected that this point of view would be much appreciated by either of her sons. Each felt that if Marianne were not to grace it the ball might as well be cancelled. Nothing but languor and insipidity could now lie before them.

“I wonder,” said Miss Morville, after glancing from Martin’s face to St. Erth’s, “if the difficulty might not perhaps be overcome?”

“I am sure, my dear Drusilla, I do not know whom we could prevail upon to come to the ball at such short notice,” replied the Dowager. “No doubt the Dearhams would accept an invitation with alacrity, and bless themselves for their good fortune, but I consider them pushing and vulgar, and if St. Erth expects me to entertain them I must say at once that it is out of the question that I should do so.”

“I have not the slightest desire to invite the Dearhams, whoever they may be,” said the Earl, rather impatiently.

“I should think not indeed!” Martin said. “The Dearhams in place of Miss Bolderwood! That would be coming it a little too strong, ma’am! Nobody cares if there are too many men: the thing is that if Marianne doesn’t come I for one would rather we postponed the ball!”

Miss Morville made herself heard again, speaking with a little diffidence, but with all her usual good sense. “I was going to suggest, ma’am, that, if you should not dislike it, Marianne might be invited to stay at Stanyon for a day or two, while her parents are confined to their beds. It must be sad work for her at Whissenhurst with no one to bear her company all day. You may depend upon it she is not even permitted the comfort of being able to attend to her Mama. They take such care of her, you know, that I am very sure she is not allowed to enter the sick-room.”

“By Jupiter, the very thing!” Martin exclaimed, his face lighting up.

“Miss Morville, you are an excellent creature!” Gervase said, smiling gratefully at her. “I don’t know where we should be without your sage counsel!”

The Dowager naturally saw a great many objections to a scheme not of her own devising, but after she had stated these several times, and had been talked to soothingly by Miss Morville and vehemently by her son, she began to think that it might not be so very bad after all. The Earl having the wisdom not to put forward any solicitations of his own, it was not long before she perceived a number of advantages to the plan. Martin would have the opportunity to enjoy Marianne’s society, Drusilla would have the benefit of her companionship, and the Bolderwoods would doubtless think themselves very much obliged to their kind neighbour. Such benevolent reflections put her ladyship into good-humour, and she needed little persuasion to induce her to say that she would drive to Whissenhurst that very day, and bring Marianne back with her.

It then became necessary to discuss exhaustively the rival merits of her ladyship’s chaise and her landaulet as a means of conveyance. From this debate the gentlemen withdrew in good order; and the Dowager, having weighed the chances of rain against the certainty of one of the passengers being obliged to sit forward, if she went to Whissenhurst in her chaise (“For there will be the maid to be conveyed, you know, and I should not care to go without you to bear me company, my dear Drusilla!”), decided in favour of the landaulet. Martin then very nobly offered to escort the ladies on their perilous journey, riding beside the carriage; and all that remained to be done was to decide whether the Dowager should wrap herself in her sables, or in her ermine stole. Even this ticklish point was settled; and midway through the afternoon the party was ready to set out, the only delay being caused by the Dowager’s last-minute decision to carry a genteel basket of fruit from the succession-houses to the sufferers. “One would not wish to be backward in any attention,” she explained. “To be sure, we have very little fruit at this period of the year, but I daresay St. Erth will not miss one each of his peaches and apricots and nectarines. I have directed Calne to fill up the basket with some of our apples, which I daresay Lady Bolderwood will be very glad to have, for the Stanyon apples, you know, are particularly good.”