He was a quiet, good-looking man a short thirty-six years old. As luck would have it, he looked an aristocrat and perhaps because of this, was seldom recognized. His features were fine and clean-cut, his shoulders square, his head well set on. He was tall, moved perfectly, rode as though he were part of his horse. His gentle brown eyes and pleasant voice, above all, his steady, grave smile, made many friends. In France, his men had reverenced him as a god. His tenantry did not reverence him, because reverence was not among their faculties, but the bluntest crofter would have died for him as a matter of course. Culloden understood this devotion and valued it as it deserved. He spent ten months of the year at Ruth Castle and full four-fifths of his income upon his estate. And since in this world much is expected of a duke, the remaining fifth had to be gingerly expended. Thanks to his loyalty to his own, Culloden was a comparatively poor man. He could not, for instance, afford to keep a car. . . .
At the present moment he was rather awkwardly placed.
His operation had been an expensive business. To judge by the surgeon’s fee-book, dukes’ appendices were twice as refractory as those of commoners. Again, his bill at the nursing-home had been worthy of his rank. More. He was to have convalesced upon an old friend’s steam-yacht: then at the last moment his host had fallen sick and the cruise had been cancelled.
Staying at his Club in St. James’s, Culloden, who was really hard up and had been medically forbidden to return to the isolation of Ruth for at least six weeks, did not know what to do.
It is not surprising that an invitation which in the ordinary way he would not have cared to accept seemed to have fallen from heaven. . . .
c/o Comte Boschetto,
Château Chiennile
Cannes.
Dear Nick,
I know it’s not your practice to batten on people you’ve never seen in your life, but I really think for once you’ll have to climb down. My dear fellow, you MUST. You’re going spare: to judge by your blasphemous incoherence, the weather in England is foul: the vacuum within you demands consolation in the shape of complete relaxation appropriately leavened with nice, gentle exercise. Very well, then. Join me.