The new Duke of Dorset was, at this hour, in Perthshire. He was not the son of the old Duke, but an only nephew, brought forth from some distant country to inherit his uncle's shoes. His father had married some Austrian, or Russian, or Italian—Janet was a bit uncertain on this trivial point. For the last half dozen years the young Duke had been knocking about the far-off edges of Asia. There had been fuss about his succession, and there might have been a kettle of trouble, but it came out that he had been of a lot of service to the government in effecting the Japanese alliance. He had somehow gotten at the inside of things in the East. So the foreign office was at his back. He had given up, too, some princely station in his mother's country; a station of which Janet was not entirely clear, but, in her mind, somehow, equal to a kingdom. But he gave it up to be a peer of England, as, in Janet's opinion, any reasonable person would. My Lady was rightly on her way, if she wished to see this new Duke.
The Doune Castle and the neighboring estate were shooting property of his father. This property, added to the vast holdings of the old Duke, made the new once perhaps the richest peer in England. He looked the part, too; more splendidly fit than any of his class coming under Janet's discriminating eye. She had gone with Christobel MacIntyre to see him pass through Stirling some weeks earlier. And he was one of the "nicest of them." Janet's pin had been sticking in Doune since August.
The Marchesa did not attempt to interrupt this pleasing flow of data. The innkeeper delivered it with a variety of bows, certain decorative, mincing steps, and illustrative gestures. It came forth, too, with that modicum of pride natural to one who housed, thus opportunely, so nice an observer as this Janet. He capped it at the end with a comment on this Japanese alliance. It did not please him. They were not white, these Japanese. And this alliance—it was against nature. His nephew, Donald MacKensie, had been with the army in China, when the powers marched on Pekin, and there the British Tommy had divided the nations of the earth into three grand divisions, namely, niggers, white men, and dagoes. There were two kinds of niggers—real niggers, and faded-out niggers; there were four kinds of dagoes—vodka dagoes, beer-drinking dagoes, frog-eating dagoes, and the macaroni dagoes; but there was only one kind of white men—"Us," he said, "and the Americans."
The Marchesa laughed, and the innkeeper rounded off his speech with a suggestion of convenient trains, in case my Lady was pleased to go to-morrow or the following day to Doune. A good express left the station here at ten o'clock, and one could return—he marked especially the word—at one's pleasure. The schedule of returning trains was beautifully appointed.
He had arranged, too, in the interval of absence, for the Marchesa's comfort in the morning visit to Stirling Castle. A carriage would take her up the long hill; a guide, whom he could unreservedly recommend, would be there for any period at her service—a pensioned sergeant who had gone into the Zulu rush at Rorke's Drift, and come out somewhat fragmentary. Then he stepped back with a larger bow, like an orator come finally to his closing sentence. Was my Lady pleased to go now?
The Marchesa was pleased to go, but not upon the way so delicately smoothed for her. She arose, went at once to her room, got her hand bag and coat, paid the good man his charges, and walked out of the door, past the cab driver, to her train, leaving that expectant public servant, like the young man who had great possessions, sorrowing.
CHAPTER II—THE HOUSE OF THE FIRST MEN
One, arriving over the Caledonian railway at Doune, will at once notice how that station exceeds any other of this line in point of nice construction. The framework of the building is of steel; the roof, glass; the platform of broad cement blocks lying like clean gray bands along the car tracks. There is here no dirt, no smoke, no creaky floor boards, no obtrusive glaring bookstalls, and no approach given over to the soiling usages of trade. One goes out from the spotless shed into a gravel court, inclosed with a high brick wall, stone capped, planted along its southern exposure with pear trees, trained flat after the manner of the northern gardener.