Mr. Kyd’s honest countenance and frank geniality might have led to confidences on Alastair’s part, but at the moment Lord Cornbury rejoined them with word that dinner would be served in half an hour. As they entered the house, Alastair found himself beside his host and well behind the others.
“Who is this Mr. Kyd?” he whispered. “He mentioned Phaeacia, as if he knew my character.”
Lord Cornbury’s face wore an anxious look. “He is my brother Queensberry’s agent. But he is also one of you. You must know of him. He is ‘Menelaus.’ ”
Alastair shook his head. “I landed from France only three weeks back, and know little of Mr. Secretary Murray’s plans.”
“Well, you will hear more of him. He is now on his way to Badminton, for he is said to have Beaufort’s ear. His connection with my brother is a good shield. Lord! how I hate all this business of go-betweens and midnight conclaves!” He looked at his companion with a face so full of a quaint perplexity that Alastair could not forbear to laugh.
“We must creep before we can fly, my lord, in the most honest cause. But our wings are fledging well.”
A footman led him to his room, which was in the old part of the house called the Leicester Wing, allotted to him, he guessed, because of its remoteness. His baggage had been brought from the inn, and a porcelain bath filled with hot water stood on the floor. He shaved, but otherwise made no more than a traveller’s toilet, changing his boots for silk stockings and buckled shoes, and his bob for an ample tie-wig. The mirror showed a man not yet thirty, with small sharp features, high cheek bones, and a reddish tinge in skin and eyebrows. The eyes were of a clear, choleric blue, and the face, which was almost feminine in its contours, was made manly by a certain ruggedness and fire in its regard. His hands and feet were curiously small for one with so deep a chest and sinewy limbs. He was neat and precise in person and movement, a little finical at first sight, till the observer caught his quick ardent gaze. A passionate friend, that observer would have pronounced him, and a most mischievous and restless enemy.
His Highland boyhood and foreign journeyings had not prepared him for the suave perfection of an English house. The hall, paved with squares of black and white marble, was hung with full-length pictures of the Hyde and Danvers families, and the great figures of the Civil War. The party assembled beneath them was a motley of gay colours—the Duchess in a gown of sky-blue above rose-pink petticoats; the young girl, whose name was Lady Mary Capell, all in green like a dryad; Mr. Murray wore black velvet with a fuller wig than was the fashion of the moment; while Sir Christopher Lacy had donned the blue velvet and ermine collar of the Duke of Beaufort’s Hunt, a garb in which its members were popularly believed to sleep. Mr. Kyd had contented himself with a flowered waistcoat, a plum-coloured coat and saffron stockings. Only the host was in sad colours, and, as he alone wore his natural hair, he presented a meagre and dejected figure in the flamboyant company.
The Duchess talked like a brook.
“Harry must show you the Vandykes,” she told Mr. Murray. “He knows the age and tale of everyone as I know my boys’ birthdays. I wish he would sell them, for they make me feel small and dingy. Look at them! We are no better than valets-de-chambre in their presence.”
The majordomo conducted them to dinner, which was served in the new Indian Room. On the walls was a Chinese paper of birds and flowers and flower-hung pagodas; no pictures adorned them, but a number of delicately carved mirrors; and at intervals tall lacquer cabinets glowed on their gilt pedestals. The servants wore purple (“like bishops,” Mr. Kyd whispered), and, since the room looked west, the declining October sun brought out the colours of wall and fabric and set the glasses and decanters shimmering on the polished table. Through the open windows the green slopes of the park lay bathed in light, and a pool of water sparkled in the hollow.
To Alastair, absorbed in his errand, the scene was purely phantasmal. He looked on as at a pretty pageant, heard the ladies’ tinkling laughter, discussed the manège in France at long range with Lord Cornbury, who was a noted horsemaster, answered Lady Mary’s inquiries about French modes as best he could, took wine with the men, had the honour to toast the Duchess Kitty—but did it all in a kind of waking dream. This daintiness and ease were not of that grim world from which he had come, or of that grimmer world which was soon to be. … He noticed that no word of politics was breathed; even the Duchess’s chatter was discreet on that point. The ice was clearly too thin, and the most heedless felt the need of wary walking. Here sat the King’s Solicitor, and the wife of a Whig Duke cheek by jowl with two secret messengers bearing names out of Homer, and at the head of the table was one for whom both parties angled. The last seemed to feel the irony, for behind his hospitable gaiety was a sharp edge of care. He would sigh now and then, and pass a thin hand over his forehead. But the others—Mr. Solicitor was discussing Mr. Pope’s “Characters of Women” and quoting unpublished variants. No hint of embarrassment was to be detected in that mellow voice. Was he perhaps, thought Alastair,
