CHAPTER IX
n unusually tall man, and a big man, with a breadth of chest, and a pair of shoulders, which had made him conspicuous, in every assembly, from his youth up, the Duke still held himself erect, and moved in a big way. Now, as he advanced into the large and lofty room, the thought came to the King, that here was a man for whom the room was neither too large, nor too lofty. While he himself was apt to feel lost in the library, overpowered by its size, and oppressed by the weight of its inanimate objects, the Duke moved as if in his natural and fitting surroundings. The force, the vigour, of the wonderful old man at once relegated the huge room to its proper place in the background. The effect was very much as if the library had been a stage scene, in which the scenery had predominated, until this, the moment when a great actor entered, and drew all eyes.
It was characteristic of the Duke that he should be dressed with a carelessness bordering on deliberate eccentricity. The roomy, comfortable, sombre black office suit, which he was wearing, looked undeniably shabby, and hung loosely on his giant frame. His head was large. His hair, which he wore a little longer than most men, snow-white now but still abundant, was brushed back from his broad forehead in a crescent wave. His features were massive, and strongly moulded. His nose was salient, formidable, pugnacious. His mouth was wide. His lips had even more than the usual fulness common to most public speakers. But his eyes were the dominant feature of his face. His eyebrows were still black, thick, and aggressively bushy. Underneath them, his eyes shone out, luminous and a clear blue, with the peculiar, piercing, penetrative quality, which seems to endow its possessor with the power to read the secret, unspoken, thoughts of other men.
"Enter—the Duke!" the King exclaimed, with an engagingly boyish smile, as the veteran Prime Minister approached the writing table. "The Duke could not have entered at a more opportune moment. I was just taking an 'easy.' Shall we stay here, or go out into the garden, or up on to the roof?"
"We will stay here, I think, if the decision is to rest with me, sir," the Duke replied, in his sonorous, deep, and yet attractively mellow voice. "I bring news, sir. As usual, I have come to talk!"
"Good," the King exclaimed. "Allow me—"
Placing his own revolving chair in position for the Duke, a little way back from the writing table, as he spoke, he invited him to be seated, with a gesture.
Then he perched himself on the writing table, facing the old statesman.
The Duke settled himself, deliberately, in the revolving chair, swinging it round to the right, so that he could escape the brilliant, summer sunshine, which was streaming into the room, through the row of tall windows, on his left. His side face, as it was revealed now to the King, wrinkled and lined by age as it was, had the compelling, masterful appeal, the conspicuous, uncompromising strength, of an antique Roman bust.