PART IV
CHAPTER XXII
On the morning of the funeral, six days later, Christian rose very early, and took coffee in his library shortly after seven. Then, lighting a cigarette, he resumed work upon several drawers full of papers, open on the big table, where it had been left off the previous evening. The details of the task seemed already familiar to him. He scanned one document after another with an informed eye, and put it in its proper pile without hesitation. He made notes suggested by the contents of each, on the pad before him, with a quill pen and corrected the vagaries of this unaccustomed implement, in the matter of blots and inadequate lines, with painstaking patience. There were steel nibs in abundance, and two gold stylographic pens, but he clung resolutely to the embarrassing feather.
After a time he rested from his labors, and rang the bell beside his desk; almost upon the instant Falkner appeared in the doorway.
“If Mr. Westland is up,” said Christian, “you may ask him to join me here.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the smooth-voiced, soft-mannered man replied, and vanished.
The young duke rose, yawned slightly and moved to the window nearest him. It opened, upon examination, and he stepped out on a narrow balcony of stone which skirted the front of the square tower he had quitted. The outlook seemed to be to the northeast, for a patch of sunshine lay upon the outer edge of the balcony at the right. Breathing in delightedly the fresh Maymorning air, he gazed upon the bold prospect of hills receding in lifted terraces high against the remote sky-line. He had not seen just this view from Caermere before—and he said to himself that it was finer than all the others. Above each lateral stretch of purplish-gray granite, to the farthest distance, there ran a band of cool green foliage—the inexpressibly tender green of young birch trees; their thin, chalk-white stems were revealed in delicate tracery against indefinable sylvan shadows.