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.’
As the evening wore on, the storm increased in violence, the reverberations of one crash of thunder hardly dying away before another, and even more severe clatter, seeming to roll round the sky above the Castle, succeeded it. Powerful gusts of wind buffeted the windows, and drove the smoke downwards in the chimneys; the howl of the gusts, sweeping round the many angles of the Castle, rose sometimes to a shriek which could be heard through the loudest peals of the thunder.
The Chaplain having meekly retired to bed when his patroness sought her own couch, the Earl and his cousin were left to amuse themselves as best they might. The Earl lit one of his cigarillos, but Theo declined joining him. ‘And I wish you may not repent your temerity, when my aunt detects – as I promise you she will! – the aroma of tobacco in this room tomorrow!’ he added.
Gervase laughed. ‘Will she give me one of her tremendous scolds, do you think? I shall shake in my shoes: she is the most terrifying woman!’
His cousin smiled. ‘What a complete hand you are, St Erth! Much you care for her scolds! All this mild compliance is nothing but a take-in: you engage her at every turn!’
‘Military training, Theo: a show of strength to deceive the enemy!’ said Gervase firmly. ‘But the room will reek of woodsmoke in the morning, and my iniquity may be undiscovered. It is a very bad habit, however: one that I learned in Spain, and have tried in vain to abandon. I don’t find that snuff answers the purpose at all. Good God, what a gust! You will be blown out of your turret!’
‘Not I! The walls are so thick I shall spend the night very much more snugly than you will, I daresay.’
‘Don’t think it! I became inured to this kind of thing in Spain, and very soon learned to sleep peacefully through a veritable tornado – in a draughty billet, too, with no glass in the windows, but only a few boards nailed across them to protect us from the worst of the weather. I have taken the precaution, too, of telling Turvey to let the fire die down in my room, and thus need not fear to be smothered by smoke. Like her ladyship, I guessed how it would be!’
‘At all events, there is a very good chance that it will blow itself out, and we may expect better weather after it. You need not despair of your ball! But it is not, I fancy, so violent a storm as you might suppose from the way the wind screeches round us. I am accustomed to it, but, after so long an absence, you, I imagine, might well believe yourself to be listening to the screams of souls in torment.’
‘No, I well recall the discomforts of Stanyon in inclement weather. I shall go to bed. I am sure I know not how it is, but an evening spent in the company of my Mama-in-law fatigues me more than a dozen cavalry charges!’
‘To that also I am accustomed,’ Theo said gravely.
They left the Saloon together, the Earl’s hand tucked lightly into his cousin’s arm. The candles and the lamps were still burning in the galleries and on the Grand Staircase, the Earl having, in the gentlest manner possible, informed his household that, since it was not his habit to retire at ten o’clock, he did not wish to find the Castle plunged in darkness at this hour. A couple of footmen were hovering about in a disinterested way, their purpose being to extinguish the lights as soon as he should have shut his bedchamber-door. The Earl smiled faintly, and murmured: ‘My poor Turvey! He cannot reconcile himself to the rigours of life in the country, and wonders that he should be required to grope his way to bed by the light of a single candle. I wish he may not leave my service, as a result of all these discomforts! He understands my boots as no other valet has ever done.’
‘And your neckcloths?’ said Theo quizzically.
‘No, no, how can you do me such an injustice? Mine is the only hand employed in their arrangement! But you have set my doubts at rest, Theo! This Oriental style, which you so rightly deprecate, is too high – by far too high! You shall see tomorrow how beautifully I am able to tie a trône d’amour!’
‘Go to bed! It is by far too late for your funning!’ Theo said, laughing at him. ‘Sleep well!’
‘No fear I shall not: I have been yawning this hour past! Good-night!’
The Earl passed into his bedchamber, where Turvey awaited him by the embers of a dying fire. ‘A rough night!’ he remarked.
‘Extremely so, my lord.’
‘My cousin, however, believes that we may not indulge our optimism too far in expecting a period of better weather after the storm.’
‘Indeed, my lord?’
‘I daresay,’ said the Earl, drawing the pin from the over-tall Oriental tie, and laying it down on his dressing-table, ‘that if you were to step out into the open you would not find the storm to be so severe as you might suppose.’
‘Unless your lordship particularly desires me to do so, I should prefer not to expose myself to the elements.’
‘My unreasonable demands of you fall short of that,’ said Gervase gravely.