The Quiet Gentleman

The dress, if not the bearing, of the stranger proclaimed his avocation, but it scarcely needed this to inform the Earl that he was confronting his brother’s new valet. Ulverston’s description rose forcibly to his mind. Mr. Leek’s homely features were certainly unprepossessing, for besides being muffin-faced, he had small, quick-glancing eyes, and a nose which, having at some time in its owner’s career been broken, was now far from straight. Close-cropped, grizzled hair, and a gap in his upper jaw occasioned by the loss of two teeth added little to his charm, and his smile, which, while it stretched his mouth left his eyes mirthless, did nothing to improve his countenance.

“Ah!” said the Earl. “You, I fancy, must be Mr. Martin’s new man!”

“Valet to the Honourable Martin,” said Mr. Leek, on a reproving note. “Tempor’y! Being, as you may say, retired!” He added, as one tardily recollecting his instructions: “Me lord!”

“I see you know me.”

“Properly speaking,” replied Mr. Leek, “no! But the other flash — the other gentlemen being accounted for, which is the aforesaid Honourable Mr. Frant, and me Lord Ulverston, I reaches by deduction the concloosion that your lordship is this Earl.”

“Which Earl?” Gervase enquired.

“The one as owns this ken,” replied Mr. Leek, with a comprehensive gesture.

“I do own it, and as its owner I am a trifle curious to know what precise circumstance could take my brother’s valet to a stair that leads only to some storerooms, and to the Fountain Court?”

“Getting me bearings, me lord,” explained Mr. Leek. “Which ain’t as easy as anyone might think which was reared in this Castle! What I do say, and will stand to, is that I never in all my puff see a ken which I’d liefer mill! That is, if I was a mill-ken, which, o’course, I ain’t. But there are them as I know as would slum this ken — ah, quicker than wipe your eye!”

“Break into it?” asked the Earl.

“Ah!” said Mr. Leek. “Well, look at all them jiggers and glazes, me lord!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What I should say,” Mr. Leek corrected himself, with an embarrassed cough behind his hand, “is them doors and winders, me lord! Any prig could open ’em, and no one a ha’porth the wiser!”

“Could you?”

“I could,”admitted Mr. Leek frankly, “which ain’t, however, to say I would!”

“You need not, need you?” said Gervase, with flickering smile. “You, after all, are inside this ken!”

Mr. Leek, a little disconcerted, agreed to this, adding: “Besides which, milling kens ain’t my lay — properly speaking!”

“No, I fancy I have a shrewd suspicion of what your lay is,” said the Earl.

Mr. Leek eyed him a trifle askance. “That’s right, me lord: gentleman’s gentleman!”

“But only temporarily!” the Earl reminded him.

Mr. Leek was spared the necessity of answering by the sudden arrival of his employer upon the scene. Martin, rounding the angle of the gallery, halted in his tracks, exclaiming: “What the devil brings you here, Leek?” He glanced at the Earl, coloured, and said rather awkwardly: “I am glad to see you out of your room, St. Erth!”

The Earl, on whom the almost imperceptible jerk of the head which dismissed Mr. Leek was not lost, replied amiably: “Thank you, Martin.”

“You will find my mother in the Italian Saloon!” said Martin.

“Again I thank you. Add to your goodness by lending me your arm!”

Martin looked very much surprised, but after a moment’s hesitation he moved forward, and offered his arm. Striving after a natural manner, he said: “I daresay you feel pretty weak still.”

“Oh, no, but it will be well if we are seen to be on excellent terms,” Gervase replied, slipping a hand in his arm, and beginning to stroll with him down the gallery.

The arm stiffened. “Considering you would not allow me to set foot inside your room all these days — ”

“You must make allowances for the whims of an invalid,” said the Earl. “Do tell me what singular merit attaches to your new valet! I feel he must possess some extraordinary attribute, under his rough exterior, which induced you to hire him.”

“Oh — Leek!” Martin said, with a laugh. “You are as bad as Theo! There’s no mystery about it! Merely, Studley asked to be permitted to visit his old father, and I hate to have strangers about me.”

“Ah, he is an acquaintance of yours?”

“Why, no, not precisely! He’s Hickling’s uncle — my groom, you know! Of course, it wouldn’t do to keep him for ever, but he does well enough while Studley is away. Besides, he — he keeps my boots in good order!”

The Earl, whose Hessians shone with a mirror-like gloss, for an instant levelled his glass at Martin’s top-boots. He let it fall, and said politely: “That is certainly an advantage. Er — what does he use on them?”

“Blacking, I suppose! What does Turvey use on yours?”

“Ah, that is a secret into which I have not been admitted!”

“Champagne, perhaps?” said Martin sardonically.

“I should not be at all surprised.”