He walked through the store-closet to the landing above the staircase. At the half-opened door of the Brown Room stood a footman in the Queensberry colours, one who had been with his mistress at Cornbury and recognised Alastair. He bowed and let him pass; indeed he would have pushed the door wide for him had not the young man halted on the threshold. There were voices inside the room, and one of them had a familiar sound.
The sight which greeted his eyes made him shut the door firmly behind him. Duchess Kitty, still wearing the cloak of grey fur and the velvet mittens which had kept her warm in the coach, sat in the chair which Claudia had once sat in, one little foot on the hearthstone, the other tapping impatiently on the hearthrug. On a table lay the remains of a meal, and beside it, balancing himself with one large hand among the platters, stood Mr. Samuel Johnson. It was not the Mr. Johnson to whom he had bade farewell three weeks ago, but rather the distraught usher who had made the midnight raid on Cornbury. His dress was the extreme of shabbiness, his hair was in disorder, his rusty small clothes and coarse stockings were splashed with mud; and he seemed to be famished, too, for his cheeks were hollow, and for all his distress, he could not keep his eyes from straying towards the table.
“I beseech your Grace to remember your common womanhood,” he was saying when Alastair’s entrance diverted the Duchess’s attention.
She recognised him, and a look which was almost alarm crossed her face.
“Here enters the first of the conquerors,” she cried, and swept him a curtsey. “What is the latest news from the seat of war? My woman tells me that the Prince is already in Bedfordshire and that London is ablaze and King George fled to Holland. Your news, Captain Maclean?”
“I have none, madam. I have been no nearer the Prince’s camp than I am at this moment.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Faith, you have dallied long in the South. Have you been sick, or is Beaufort’s conscience a tender plant? Or did you return to Cornbury?” Her face had grown stern.
“I left Cornbury on the day you remember, and I have not since seen my lord, your brother.”
“That is well,” she said, with an air of relief. “I ask no further questions lest they embarrass you. But you are come opportunely, for you can give me counsel. This gentleman,” and she turned to Johnson, “has forced his company upon me, and, when you arrived, had embarked upon a monstrous tale. He bespeaks my pity, so I have composed myself to listen.”
“The gentleman and I are acquainted, and I can vouch for his honesty. Nay, madam, I have a fancy that his errand is also mine.”
She looked curiously from one to the other, as Johnson, rolling his head like a marionette, seized Alastair’s hand. “It is the mercy of God, sir, that you have returned,” the tutor cried. “I have missed you sorely, for that house of Brightwell is no better than a prison. Its master is aged and bedridden and demented, and it is governed by two malevolent spinsters. Brightwell! Bridewell is its true name. I myself have eaten little and slept bare, but that matters nothing. It is my poor lady I grieve for. ’Tis true, she has her husband, but he is little at home, and is much engrossed with affairs. Soon, too, he will ride south with his Prince, and Miss Claudia cannot travel with him nor can she be left behind in that ill-omened den. She must have a woman to befriend her in these rough days, and conduct her to Chastlecote or Weston, but she has few female friends of her rank and I knew not where to turn. But today, walking on the high road, I saw an equipage and learned that it was Her Grace travelling south, and that she would lie at this inn. So I ran hither like a Covent-garden porter, and have been admitted to her presence, though my appearance is not so polite as I could have desired.” He bowed to the Duchess, and in his clumsiness swept her travelling-mask from the table to the floor.
She looked at him for a little without speaking, and then fixed her eyes on Alastair, those large childlike eyes which were rarely without a spark of impish humour.
“Your friend,” she said, “has already opened his tale to me, but his manner of telling it is not of the clearest. Since you say that his errand may be yours, I pray you expound it. But be seated, gentlemen both. I have already a crick in my neck from looking up to such enormities.”
Mr. Johnson, as if glad of the permission, dropped into a chair, but Alastair remained standing. His legs no longer felt crazy, but they were amazingly stiff, and once in a chair he distrusted his ability to rise. He stood at the opposite side of the hearth to the Duchess, looking down on the elfin figure, as pretty as porcelain in the glow of firelight.
“I do not ask your politics,” he
