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 isdue 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.