The Duke had listened rather absently to his valet's and his keeper's remarks, but this had the effect of claiming his attention. He appeared to abandon his intention of going to the gun-room, and asked in a slightly apprehensive tone if he were late for dinner.
The butler, who, although officially the steward's inferior, was a man of far more commanding personality, replied somewhat ambiguously to this question that my lord had gone upstairs to change his dress above half an hour ago.
The Duke looked startled, and said that he must make haste; whereupon the butler, relaxing his severity, assured him benignly that dinner would be held for him, and went in a stately way down the passage to open the door that led into the main hall of the house.
But the Duke again disappointed him, this time by electing to run up the secondary staircase at the end of the passage.
His bedroom was an immense apartment opening out of the upper hall, and as he crossed this to his door he encountered his uncle, a fine-looking gentleman in the early fifties, with an aristocratic cast of countenance, and rather fierce eyes set under strongly marked brows.
Lord Lionel Ware, who prided himself on belonging to the old school, had changed his customary country habit of buckskins and top-boots for the knee-breeches considered
de rigueur
in his younger days, and carried an enamelled snuffbox in one hand, and a lace handkerchief. When he saw his nephew, his brows shot up, and he enunciated, in a sort of bark: "Ha! So you are come in, are you, Gilly?"
The Duke smiled, and nodded. "I beg pardon, sir! Am I late? I shall not keep you waiting above twenty minutes, I promise you."
"No such thing!" said Lord Lionel testily. "Dinner will await your convenience, but you are a great fool to be staying out after dusk at this season. I daresay you will have taken one of your chills!"
"Oh, no!" replied the Duke, in the same sweet, absent tone he had used to his valet.
Lord Lionel ran a hand down the sleeve of that nankeen jacket, and appeared to be not dissatisfied. "Well!" he said. "I don't wish to be for ever coddling you, boy, but I desire you will make haste out of those clothes. You will have got your feet wet in those half-boots. You had better have worn gaiters. Nettlebed! Has his Grace no gaiters to wear out shooting?"
"His Grace will not wear his gaiters, my lord," said the valet, in condemnatory accents. "And his Grace did not send for me to lay out his clothes, nor apprise me of his intention to go shooting," he added, less in self-exculpation than in sorrowful blame of his young master's imprudence.
"I am glad you do not wish to be waited on hand and foot;" said Lord Lionel severely, "but this habit you have of slipping off without a word said is nonsensical, Gilly. One would suppose you were afraid someone might prevent you!"
A gleam of humour lit the Duke's eyes; he said meekly: "I think I must have a secretive disposition, sir."
"Nothing of the sort!" said his lordship. "It is high time you realized that you are of age, and may do as you please. Now, be off, and don't neglect to change your stockings! I hope you have been wearing flannel ones, and not—"
"Lamb's-wool," said the Duke, more meekly still.
"Very well, and now make haste, if you please! Unless you wish to keep town-hours at Sale?"
The Duke disclaimed any such desire, and vanished into his bedchamber, where Nettlebed had already laid out his evening dress. The room, although of vast size, was very warm, for a fire had been lit in the grate much earlier in the day, and the windows closed against any treacherous fresh air. Curtains of crimson damask shut out the fading daylight, and the great fourpost-bed was hung with the same stuff. Branches of candles stood on the dressing-table and the mantelpiece; and a silver ewer of hot water had been placed in the wash-basin, and covered with a clean towel. The room was furnished throughout in crimson damask, and mahogany, and hung with a Chinese paper of the style made fashionable some years previously by the Prince Regent, who used it extensively in his summer palace at Brighton. Everything in it seemed to be made on rather too large and opulent a scale for its occupant, but it was not an uncomfortable apartment, and, during the day, was generally flooded with sunshine, since it faced south, commanding a view of the avenue, the formal beds and lawns beyond it, the sheet of ornamental water which the Guide Book so highly commended, and, in the distance, the noble trees of the home park. The Duke had slept in it ever since the day when his uncle had decreed that he was too old for petticoat government, and had removed him from his more homely nurseries, and installed him, a small and quaking ten-year-old, in it, telling him that it was his father's room, and his grandfather's before him, and that only the head of the house might inhabit it. As his Grace had been further informed by various members of his household that the fifth Duke had breathed his last in the huge bed, he could only be thankful that his frailty made Lord Lionel deem it advisable to set up a truckle-bed for a reliable attendant in the adjoining dressing-room.
Nettlebed, who might have been considered by some to be rather too elderly a valet for such a young man, began to bustle about, scolding fondly as he divested his master of his coat, and shot-belt, and grey cloth waistcoat. Like nearly everyone else who waited upon the Duke, he had previously been employed by the Duke's father, and considered himself privileged to speak his mind to his master whenever he was out of earshot of other, less important, members of the household, before whom he invariably maintained the Duke's dignity in a manner that daunted the Duke far more than the affectionate bullying he employed in private.
He said now, as he laid aside the shot-belt: "I wonder that my lord should not have said something to your Grace, if he noticed you was wearing this nasty, low belt, more fit for a poacher, one would have thought, than for a Gentleman, let alone one that was born, as the saying is, in the Purple. But, there! tell your Grace till Domesday you'll never mend your ways! And why would you not take a loader, pray, not to mention Padbury? I can tell your Grace he was quite put about to think you should be off without him, and very likely needing a beater as well."
"No, I didn't need a beater," said the Duke, sitting down to allow Nettlebed to pull off his boots. "And as for my shot-belt, I daresay you may consider it a very vulgar appendage, but it spares my pockets, and is, I think, as quick a way of loading as any that I know."
"If you had taken a loader with you, as was befitting, your Grace would not have needed any such," said Nettlebed severely. "I could see his lordship was not best pleased."
"I am sure he was not displeased for any such cause," responded the Duke, walking towards the washstand, and lifting the towel from the ewer. "He is a great advocate for a man's being able to do everything for himself that may come in his way."
"That," said Nettlebed, frustrating the Duke's attempt to pick up the ewer, "is as may be, your Grace." He poured the water into the basin, and removed the towel from the Duke's hand. "But when his lordship takes a gun out, he has always his loader, and very likely a couple of beaters besides, for he is one as knows what is due to his position."
"Well, if I do not know what is due to mine I am sure it is not for want of being told," sighed the Duke. "I think it would have been very pleasant to have been born one of my own tenants, sometimes."
"Born one of your Grace's own tenants!" ejaculated Nettlebed, in an astonished tone.
The Duke took the towel, and began to wipe his wet face with it. "Not one of those who are obliged to live in Thatch End Cottages, of course," he said reflectively.
"Thatch End Cottages!"
"At Rufford."
"I do not know what your Grace can be meaning!"
"They are for ever complaining of them. I daresay they should all be pulled down. In fact, I am sure of it, for I have seen them."
"Seen them, your Grace?" said Nettlebed, quite shocked. "I am sure I do not know when you can have done so!"
"When we were in Yorkshire, I rode over," replied the Duke tranquilly.
"Now that," said Nettlebed, in a displeased way, "is just what your Grace should not be doing! It is Mr. Scriven who should attend to such matters, as I am sure he is willing and able to do, let alone he has his clerks to be running about the country for him!"
"Only he does not attend to it," said the Duke, sitting down before his dressing-table.
Nettlebed handed him his neckcloth. "Then your Grace may depend upon it there is nothing as needs attending to," he said.
"You remind me very much of uncle," remarked the Duke.
Nettlebed shook his head at him, but said: "Well, and I'll be bound his lordship has told your Grace there isn't a better agent than Mr. Scriven in the length and breadth of the land."
"Oh, yes!" said the Duke. "Nothing could exceed his care for my interests."
"Well, and what more could your Grace desire?"
"I think it would be very agreeable if he cared for my wishes."
A slightly weary note in his master's quiet voice made Nettlebed say with a roughness that imperfectly concealed his affection: "Now, your Grace, I see what it is! You have tired yourself out, carrying that heavy game-bag, and your gun, and you're in a fit of the dismals! If Mr. Scriven don't seem always to care for your wishes, it's because your Grace is young yet, and don't know the ways of tenants, nor what's best for the estate."
"Very true," said the Duke, in a colourless voice.
Nettlebed helped him to put on his coat. "Your Grace's honoured father had every confidence in Mr. Scriven, that I do know," he said.
"Oh, yes!" said the Duke.
Feeling that his master was still unconvinced, Nettlebed began to recite the numerous virtues of the agent-in-chief, but after a few moments the Duke interrupted him, saying: "Well, never mind! Have we company to-night?"
"No, your Grace, you will be quite alone."
"It sounds delightful, but I am afraid it is untrue."
"No, no, your Grace, it is just as I tell you! You will find no one below but my lord, and my lady, and Mr. Romsey, and Miss Scamblesby!" Nettlebed assured him.
The Duke smiled, but refrained from making any remark. He submitted to having his coat smoothed across his shoulders, accepted a clean handkerchief, and moved towards the door. Nettlebed opened this for him, and nodded to an individual hovering in the hall outside, who at once withdrew, apparently to spread the news of the Duke's coming. He was the Groom of the Chambers, and although more modern households might have abolished this office, at Sale Park a pomp belonging to the previous century was rigidly adhered to, and the groom continued to hold his post. During the long period of the Duke's minority he had had little scope for his talents, but he was now hopeful of seeing the great house once more full of distinguished guests, all with their exacting personal servants, and their quite incompatible fads and fancies, driving a lesser man to suicide, but affording Mr. Turvey an exquisite enjoyment.
The Duke walked down the stairs, and crossed a vast, marble-paved hall to the double doors that led into the gallery. Here it had been the custom of the Family to assemble before dinner since the Duke's grandfather had re-rebuilt the mansion. As the gallery was over a hundred foot long, it had sometimes seemed to the Duke that some smaller apartment might be a preferable assembly room on any but Public Days, but a mild suggestion made to this effect had been greeted by his uncle with such disapproval that with his usual docility he had abandoned any hope of making a change.
Two liveried footmen, who appeared to have been trying to impersonate wax effigies, suddenly sprang to life, and flung open the doors; the Duke, dwarfed by their height and magnificence, passed between them into the gallery.
Since September was drawing to an end, and the evenings were already a little chilly, a log-fire had been kindled in the grate at one end of the gallery. Lord Lionel Ware was standing before it, not precisely with his watch in his hand, but presenting the appearance of one who had but that moment restored the timepiece to his pocket. Beside him, and making a praiseworthy if not entirely successful attempt to divert his mind from the lateness of the hour, was the Reverend Oswald Romsey, once tutor to the Duke, now his Chaplain, and engaged in the intervals of his not very arduous duties in writing a learned commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. On a straw-coloured brocade sofa, wholly shielded from the fire's warmth by her husband's stalwart form, was disposed the Duke's aunt, a lady fashioned in a generous mould which the current mode of high waists and narrow, skirts could not have been said to have flattered; and sitting primly upright in a chair suitably withdrawn from the intimate circle was Miss Scamblesby, a spinster of uncertain age and nebulous relationship, who was always referred to by Lady Lionel as "my cousin," and had been an inmate of Sale Park for as long as the Duke could remember, performing the duties of a lady-in-waiting. As Lady Lionel was extremely kind-hearted, she was not in the least overworked, or browbeaten, the only ills she had to endure being her ladyship's very boring conversation, and his lordship's snubs, which last, however, were dealt out so impartially to every member of the household as to make her feel herself to be quite one of the family.
But the Duke, who had, his uncle frequently told him, too much sensibility, could not rid himself of the notion that Miss Scamblesby's position was an unhappy one, and he never neglected to bestow on her a distinguishing degree of attention, or to acknowledge a relationship which did not, in fact, exist, by addressing her as Cousin Amelia. When his uncle pointed out to him, not in a carping spirit, but as one who liked accuracy, that being only some kind of a third cousin to Lady Lionel her connection with the Ware family was of the most remote order, he merely smiled, and slid out of a possible argument in a manner rendered perfect by years of practice.
As he walked down the gallery, he smiled at her, and enquired after the headache she had complained of earlier in the day. While she blushed, thanked, and disclaimed, Lord Lionel crushingly remarked that he did not know why people should have headaches, since he himself had never suffered such an ill in his life; and Mr. Romsey pleased nobody by saying: "Ah, my lord Duke has a fellow-feeling, I daresay! I am sure no one has suffered more from an affliction we more hardy mortals are exempt from!"