The Foundling

by Georgette Heyer

  ‘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
ved that for all it may not be real game, as we understand it, the wood-pigeon gives some of the hardest shots of all. What shot did you use?’

  ‘Seven,’ said the Duke.

  This made Lord Lionel shake his head a little, and point out the advantages of a four or a five. His nephew, having listened politely, said that he would grant him an accidental shot at long distance with his heavier shot, but that a well-breeched and properly bored gun would shoot Number Seven better than any other. As the Duke was a very pretty shot, Lord Lionel allowed this to pass with no more than a glancing reference to newfangled fads, and asked him if he had taken one of his Purdeys out.

  ‘No, a Manton,’ said the Duke. ‘I have been trying Joseph Manton’s New Patent Shot.’

  ‘I have bought my shot from Walker and Maltby any time these thirty years,’ declared his lordship. ‘But the old ways will never do for you young men! I suppose you will tell me this New Patent has some particular virtue!’

  ‘I think the shot is more compact, and it is certainly cleaner to handle,’ replied the Duke.

  ‘I hope, Gilly, that you did not get your feet wet?’ said Lady Lionel. ‘You know, if you were to take a chill it will go straight to your throat, and I was thinking only the other day that I cannot recall the name of that very obliging physician who recommended electricity. You were only a child, so I daresay you might not remember, but it was very excellent, though your uncle disliked it very much.’

  ‘Does Borrowdale not know that you are ready for dinner?’ demanded Lord Lionel loudly. ‘It will be six o’clock before we sit down to it!’

  ‘There was quite a fashion for electricity at that time,’ pursued his wife placidly. ‘I am sure I know of a dozen persons who took the treatment.’

  ‘It was what the Captain calls all the crack,’ said Miss Scamblesby, prefixing her remark with the titter which never failed to irritate his lordship.

  Lord Lionel was both fond and proud of his son, but he did not propose to submit to having his words quoted to him, and he immediately said that he had the greatest dislike of cant expressions. Miss Scamblesby’s subsequent confusion was only relieved by the entrance of Borrowdale, who came in at that moment to announce that dinner was served. The Duke then assisted his aunt to rise from the sofa, Miss Scamblesby draped a Paisley shawl round her shoulders, Mr Romsey handed her her fan and her reticule, and the whole party filed out into the hall, and across it to the dining-saloon.

  Here the Duke took his place at the head of the table, in an immense carved oak chair, and Lord Lionel installed himself in a similar chair at the foot. Lady Lionel sat at her nephew’s right hand, and Miss Scamblesby and Mr Romsey established themselves opposite to her, with only one footman between the pair of them.

  Lord Lionel being an advocate of what he considered a neat, plain dinner, only two courses were served at Sale Park when the family dined alone. The first of these consisted of a tureen of turtle, removed with fish, which was in its turn removed with a haunch of venison. Several side-dishes, such as pork cutlets with Rober sauce, larded fillets of beef, tenderones of veal and truffles, and a braised ham, graced the board, but since his lordship was a moderate trencherman, and the Duke had a notoriously small appetite, the only person who did justice to the spread was Miss Scamblesby, who had (so his lordship had more than once remarked to his nephew) the inordinate appetite of all poor relations.

  While the first course dragged on its way, conversation was of a desultory nature. The Duke looked tired; his aunt rarely troubled herself to make conversation; and Lord Lionel seemed preoccupied. When the first course was carried out in procession, however, he roused himself to say: ‘Well! You are all very dull to-night!’ a remark which not unnaturally bereft the assembled company of any conversational ideas they might have had.

  ‘Well, Gilly!’ said his lordship, after a pause of which no one showed any sign of wishing to take advantage. ‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’

  A slightly apprehensive look came into the Duke’s eyes. Mr Romsey said kindly: ‘I fancy you are tired, my lord.’

  ‘No, no!’ Gilly disclaimed, almost shrinking from the imputation.

  It had the effect of softening Lord Lionel. ‘Tired? I am sure I do not know why you must all be for ever supposing him knocked up by the least exertion! Let me tell you, it is very irksome to a young man to have such nonsense talked of him! You are bored, Gilly! Yes, yes, you need not trouble to deny it, for I do not wonder at it! You should have invited some few of your Oxford friends to come down and shoot with you. It is dull work for you here alone.’

  ‘Thank you, I am very happy, sir!’ Gilly stammered. ‘You – I mean, we have invited several parties for the pheasant-shooting, I believe.’

  ‘Well, well, that is looking some way ahead!’ said his lordship indulgently. ‘You will scarcely wish for any large shooting parties until November!’

  The second course here made its appearance, and a fresh array of silver dishes was set out. Some pigeons and a hare constituted the main features, but there were besides a quantity of vegetables, and several creams, jellies, and cakes, including, as Miss Scamblesby was quick to perceive, a Gâteau Mellifleur, to which she was extremely partial.

  Lady Lionel helped herself from a dish of artichoke bottoms in sauce. ‘I have been thinking,’ she said. ‘If you should care for it, Gilly, we could get up a rubber of whist after dinner. I daresay we might prevail upon our good Mr Romsey to take a hand, and if he does not care to, Amelia does not play so very ill.’

  Her husband set his wineglass down rather hurriedly, and said with more haste than civility that she must know that Gilly disliked whist. Then, perceiving quadrille in her eye, he added: ‘Or any other game of cards. Besides, I have just recollected that Chigwell brought up the mails from the receiving-office this afternoon, and there is a letter for you from your Uncle Henry, Gilly. I will give it to you after dinner.’

  The Duke’s entertainment having been thus provided for, Lady Lionel was able to relapse into indolence, merely wondering in an idle fashion what Lord Henry could be writing to Gilly about. Miss Scamblesby said that it seemed a long time since they had had the felicity of seeing dear Lord and Lady Henry Ware at Sale; and Mr Romsey asked if Mr Matthew was not now a freshman up at Oxford.

  ‘No, he is entering on his third year,’ the Duke replied.

  ‘But not, I fancy, at our college, my lord?’ Mr Romsey said playfully.

  As Mr Romsey was a Balliol scholar, and the Duke had been at Christ Church, the possessive pronoun could only be taken to refer to the circumstance of his having accompanied his pupil to Oxford, to keep a watchful eye on his health and his associates. The Duke, who had suffered as only a sensitive youth could under such an arrangement, found the reminder so irritating that he was obliged to close his lips on an unkind retort.

  ‘My nephew is at Magdalen College,’ said Lord Lionel shortly. ‘As for not having seen my brother and his wife here, they spent six weeks with us in the summer, and brought all the children, as I for one am not likely to forget very readily! They cut up the south lawn with their cricket, and if they had been sons of mine –’

  ‘But they asked my permission, sir, and I gave it,’ Gilly said, in a soft voice.

  Lord Lionel opened his mouth to utter a blistering reproof, recollected himself, shut it again, and, after a slight pause, said: ‘Well, it is your lawn, and you may do as you wish with it, but I own I cannot conceive what you were about to give permission!’

  A rather mischievous smile lit the Duke’s eyes: he looked under his lashes at his uncle, and replied: ‘I think it was perhaps because I have wanted very often to play cricket there myself.’

  ‘Yes! and you would thank me for it to-day, I daresay, had I allowed you and Gideon to ruin one of the finest pieces of turf in the county!’ said his lordship.

  Miss Scamblesby having by thi
s time disposed of her portion of the Gâteau Mellifleur, Lady Lionel heaved herself up out of her chair. The Duke picked up such small articles as she dropped, the doors were held open, and both ladies withdrew to leave the gentlemen to their wine.

  The covers having been removed, the cloth swept away, the decanters set upon the table, the servants left the room, and Lord Lionel settled down to enjoy his port in what he termed comfort, and his nephew thought great discomfort. The fire behind him was beginning to be unpleasantly hot, the ornate carving of his chair made leaning back in it a penance, and he was not fond of port.

  Lord Lionel began to talk of some improvements to one of the Duke’s estates, which the agent-in-chief thought might be advantageous. ‘You should see Scriven yourself, Gilly,’ he said. ‘You know, you must not forget that in less than a year now you will have the management of everything in your own hands. I am very anxious you should acquaint yourself with all the business of your estates.’

  ‘Dear me, yes!’ said Mr Romsey, sipping his wine delicately. ‘It is very true, though I may scarcely credit it! My dear lord, you will indeed be twenty-five next year! Yet it seems only yesterday that I was so fortunate as to be chosen to be your chief guide and preceptor!’

  ‘I have never had the least doubt that I made a wise choice,’ said his lordship graciously, ‘but what I am saying is that my nephew must not look to be guided for many months more. You have a thousand amiable qualities, Gilly, but you lack decision of character!’

  The Duke did not deny the accusation. He felt it to be true, but he could scarcely repress a shudder at the thought of the painful scenes that must have taken place at Sale had he been endowed with the same forceful personality that distinguished his uncle. His cousin Gideon had it in some measure, and had certainly won his father’s respect with it; but Gideon had always been a robust and pugnacious boy, and was quite untroubled by sensitive nerves. He had cared for being thrashed as little as for being rated. The Duke had never known which of the two fates he dreaded most. Fortunately for him, Lord Lionel had used him with far more gentleness than he showed his son, so that he was not really at all afraid of him. But a naturally sweet disposition, a dislike of quarrelling, and of loud, angry voices, combined with a rueful appreciation of the very real devotion to his interests and welfare that inspired his uncle’s strict rule made him submit docilely where his cousin would have flamed into revolt.