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 mediæval, dear boy! They put the oddest notions into my head!’
Eight
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 c
ommiserated 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.’
Miss Morville encouraging her to suppose that St Erth would be only too happy to sacrifice his fruit to the Bolderwoods, she was then ready to depart. The two ladies took their seats in the landaulet; a footman tenderly laid a rug about their knees; the basket of fruit was disposed upon the forward seat; Martin swung himself into the saddle of his good-looking bay hack; and the cavalcade set forth.
The way was beguiled by the Dowager in extolling her vicarious generosity in giving away her son-in-law’s fruit, in calling upon Miss Morville to admire her son’s admirable appearance on horseback, and in discovering that the bulbs in the various gardens which they passed on the road were not as far forward as those at Stanyon. They arrived at Whissenhurst in good time, without having been obliged to rely upon Martin’s gallantry to rescue them from footpads or highwaymen, and were received there by Marianne, who came running out of the house at sight of the landaulet, and expressed her sense of obligation for the condescension shown her in such warm terms as served to convince her ladyship that she was a very pretty-behaved young woman, worthy to match with her son. A brief explanation of her purpose in coming to Whissenhurst Grange was enough to throw Marianne into ecstasies. It was as Miss Morville had supposed: solicitude for her well-being had compelled Lady Bolderwood to forbid her most strictly to enter either sick-room. She had nothing to do but to regret the misfortune which prevented her from gracing the Stanyon ball.