The Foundling Read online

  ‘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 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!’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Lord Lionel, who very much disliked to have his nephew’s delicacy of constitution mentioned by anyone other than himself.

  Mr Romsey’s well-meaning if unfortunate remark had the effect of arousing Lady Lionel from her customary lethargy, and she began to enumerate, with a surprising degree of animation, all the more shocking headaches her nephew had endured during his sickly boyhood. The Duke bore this patiently, but Lord Lionel pshawed and fidgeted, and finally broke in on a discourse that threatened to be never-ending, saying crossly: ‘Very well, very well, ma’am, but this is all forgotten now, and we do not wish to be reminding Gilly of it! Were you hedgerow-shooting, my boy? Had you any sport?’

  ‘Three brace of partridges only, and some wood-pigeons, sir,’ responded the Duke.

  ‘Very well indeed!’ said his uncle approvingly. ‘I have frequently obser