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 goodnight 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 wood-smoke 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!”