The Quiet Gentleman

He was looking tired, and pale, his face rather set, and his expressive eyes sombre. He checked on the threshold when he saw his cousin, and ejaculated: “Oh — ! You here!”

“Do you wish to speak to Gervase? I am just off to bed.”

“It doesn’t signify. I have no doubt you know the whole!” He glanced at St. Erth, and then lowered his eyes. “I only wished to say — I was in a rage!”

“Yes, I know,” the Earl replied quietly.

Another fleeting glance was cast up at him. “I think I said — I don’t know: I do say things, in a rage, which — which I don’t mean!”

“I did not regard it, and you need not either.”

Martin seemed to force his rigid mouth to smile. “No. Well — mighty good of you to take it so! Of course I know it was not your fault. Good-night!”

He went quickly away, and for a full minute there was silence in the library. The Earl snuffed a guttering candle, and said: “Do you mean to return to Stanyon when you have done all your business at Evesleigh, Theo, or do you go on immediately to Studham?”

“I believe I may postpone my journey,” Theo said slowly.

“Indeed! May I know why?”

Theo looked frowningly at him. “It might be best if I were to remain at Stanyon — for the present.”

“Oh, are you at that again? I have told you already that I don’t need a watch-dog, my dear fellow!”

“And still I should prefer to remain!”

“Why? when you have heard Martin make me an apology?”

Theo met the deep blue eyes full. “In all the years I have known Martin,” he said deliberately, “I have never heard him utter an apology, or even acknowledge a fault!”

“My regenerating influence!” said Gervase flippantly.

“I should be happy to think so.”

“But you don’t?”

“No,” Theo said. “I don’t!”

“Nevertheless, Theo, you will oblige me by going to Evesleigh tomorrow, as you have planned to do.”

“Very well. But I wish this business of Ulverston’s had not been disclosed!” Theo said.

The breakfast-party on the following morning was attended, inevitably, by a certain measure of constraint. It was the first time Martin and the Viscount had met since their encounter at Whissenhurst, and even Mr. Clowne seemed to be conscious of the tension. His nervous platitudes filled the gap between the exchange of cool greetings between these two and the entrance of the Earl, who made his appearance in a coat of such exquisite cut that the Viscount exclaimed at it, demanding to be told the name of the tailor who had made it. “Not Scott!” he said.

“No, Weston,” responded the Earl. “Martin, what’s this I hear of kestrels in the West Wood?”

He could have said nothing that would have made Martin more certainly forget, for the moment, his injuries. The dark eyes lit; Martin replied: “So Pleasley says! He swears there is a pair, and believes they may be nesting in one of the old magpies’ nests. I know the place.”

“Too early in the year, isn’t it?” asked the Viscount.

“I have known them to start breeding as early as March,” Martin said. “It is not usual, I own, but it is very possible.” He turned his head to address his brother. “I have said I’ll ride to Roxmere this morning, to look at some likely young ‘uns, but I mean to take a gun out this afternoon, and try for them.”

“It is sad that the kestrel, or as I like to call it, the windhover, should be so destructive,” said Mr. Clowne. “To see them hovering above, as though suspended, is a pretty sight.”

“I question whether they are so destructive as people suppose,” remarked Theo.

“Good God, if we were to have a pair of them breeding in the West Wood we should not have a pheasant or a partridge chick left!” Martin exclaimed.

“I fancy you would find, if you could observe them closely, that they subsist mostly on field-mice. Had you said sparrow-hawks,now — !”

In refuting this heresy, and in recalling to Theo’s memory various incidents which seemed to support his own theory, Martin for a little while forgot his care, and talked with an animation which would not have led anyone to suppose that he was suffering all the more severe pangs of unrequited love. He looked as though he had not slept well, but he ate a large breakfast, and only towards the end of it remembered that his affections had been blighted, and that his archenemy sat opposite to him, unconcernedly consuming cold beef. The cloud descended again on to his brow, and he relapsed into silence; but when he rose from the table, and the Earl called after him: “Keep your eyes open for anything that might suit me at Roxmere!” he paused in the doorway, and replied quite cordially: “If you wish it, but I don’t think Helston has much to show me but young ‘uns.”

“I don’t mind that. A good three-year-old, Martin, not too short in the back, and well ribbed-up! But you know the style of thing!”

Martin nodded. “I’ll see,” he said.