Chapter 7 #2
The word Chatsworth came into my head—family seat of the Dukes of Devonshire. For no earthly reason, this prompted the return of a steady stream of reassuring facts.
I was Lord Julian Caldicott—not because the card said so, but because I knew this to be my name.
I was visiting the family seat of the Earls of Dantry, because the present titleholder had gone missing without explanation from the home of his cousin, Sir Clive Arbuthnot, the previous week.
Lord Dantry had bitter political enemies living more or less on his doorstep, wealthy, powerful men who had taken him and his politics into dislike.
A tap on the door heralded the arrival of Older Brother. “Does my lord have a note for Wee Eddie to take over to Caldicott Hall?”
“Thank you, no. I will be leaving in the morning after all, and I apologize for the bother.”
He looked mildly disappointed. “Very good, sir. Ring if you need anything.”
I needed answers regarding Lord Dantry’s whereabouts, but I also needed a better system for managing my memory lapses.
Had I written a note to His Grace of Waltham, asking him to send a coach to the Dovecote to retrieve me, that correspondence would have sat unopened upon my desk, awaiting my return.
The duke’s personal correspondence was my sole responsibility, and the duke was showing no signs of abandoning the Continent for home shores any time soon.
I had had a narrow escape—a short lapse in friendly surrounds, no rescue needed. I could hardly expect such good luck to befall me twice in succession.
“I like young Dantry.” Lord Huffnagel limped along beside me as we traversed a sunny gallery, a pair of athletic beagles trotting behind us. “I can even respect that he has the courage of his convictions, but English politics is the art of the possible, my lord. I’m sure His Grace would agree.”
Arthur might well deem English politics the art of the tedious. “Dantry is impractical?”
Lord Huffnagel turned down a corridor lined with rural landscapes.
One painting depicted sheep in a grassy meadow flanked by heather-clad hills, another portrayed the Huffnagel seat in autumn colors.
A framed sketch caught a young couple in a smiling moment—the baron as a younger man with his baroness, perhaps—and a smaller painting in oils had for its subject green hills punctuated by two dark adits.
The title of the last—Pwll glo mawr Dafina—had to be Welsh.
“My late wife hailed from Neath, in Wales,” Huffnagel said, pausing in his progress. “Beautiful place, and growing quite wealthy with the coal trade. That mine on the left of the painting was named for my baroness.”
“My condolences on your loss.”
“Dafina went to her reward ages ago, and yet, I miss her.”
The art was unremarkable, predictable even.
In other regards, the baron’s abode was going seedy about the edges.
A cracked windowpane half obscured by drapery, the floorboards creaking beneath the carpet runners, wainscoting in need of a good coat of linseed oil.
A far cry from the opulence of the Dovecote.
For all that, the place had a comfortable air. The chilly corridor smelled faintly of peat, the dogs were in good weight, and I would bet my second favorite pair of riding gloves that every carpet had been soundly beaten within the last fortnight.
The baron paused outside a paneled door.
“I am old enough to have seen a great deal of political foolishness, my lord. In this sceptered isle, the same applies to anybody observing Parliament for a random quarter hour. England is run by a lot of greedy, prancing nincompoops, but we nincompoops well know the French example means we mustn’t be too greedy, nor too obvious about our larceny.
That said, if we let the rabble run the show, the aristocracy will look like models of patriotism and restraint by comparison. ”
Huffnagel had never seen the rabble standing resolute in their infantry squares as the French cuirassiers had galloped toward them, swords raised, a promise of bloody death filling the air.
“Does Dantry advocate rule by the rabble?” I asked.
The baron ushered me into a cozy study where the aroma of peat was stronger and edged with parfum de chien.
The hearth keeping the room tolerably warm was fieldstone likely excavated before the Flood, and the floor planks were a good fifteen inches across.
The beagles curled up, each to his assigned folded woolen saddle blanket, and the baron gestured me into a rocking chair by the fire.
“Rocking chairs are for old men,” he said, settling himself into a second of same.
“Easier to heft a sore foot onto a hassock if you’re in a rocking chair.
” He demonstrated, planting a boot straight out in front of him.
“Damned horse stepped on my foot ages ago, and now my hip protests the prolonged damage to my gait. Troubles me most in winter. A good horse, too, fortunately for him, eh, boys?”
The hounds raised doggy eyebrows, apparently concluded all was well, and resumed napping.
“Dantry advocates for every disruptive cause imaginable,” Huffnagel said.
“If you’re hungry or thirsty, tug the bell-pull.
I warn you plainly: My cook believes in emptying the larder at the least provocation.
My horse lectures me on the sin of gluttony regularly, though I am but a victim of domestic enthusiasm.
Disappoint my cook or housekeeper, and my life becomes most unpleasant. ”
“The abolition of enslavement was initially regarded as a disruptive cause,” I said, making use of the bell-pull before taking my seat. “Most of polite society no longer sees it that way.”
“You haven’t had the pleasure of Viscount Melbourne’s thoughts on the issue, my lord. Pray you never do. The primary offense Dantry commits, in my opinion, is waste.”
“He wastes Parliament’s time?”
“We all do, with our speechifying and polite insults and rules and protocol, but Dantry’s offense is…
He will accomplish nothing. He seems to think he was put on earth to give speeches and write pamphlets on every possible evil visited upon the poor and downtrodden of the land.
This accomplishes not one damned useful thing. ”
Lord Huffnagel echoed Miss Weatherby’s lament, oddly enough. “You’d like him to pick one or two issues and confine his objections to that one issue?”
“For a start.”
A tap on the door was followed by that door opening before his lordship had bid anybody enter. A pretty blond maid with a spotless white apron over her gray worsted dress, tray on her hip, came smiling into the study.
“Cook says mind you don’t spoil your luncheon, my lords.” She set the tray down, bobbed a curtsey, smirked at me, spun on her heel, and left.
“As if I could spoil my luncheon on these meager offerings,” Huffnagel muttered.
“Do pour out. I never knew your father to stand on ceremony unless the ladies were about. Regards to your mother, by the way. Fine woman. If she’s heckling you to get married, best heed her guidance.
Her Grace of Waltham only takes on battles she can win. ”
“I am engaged to be married, sir. The date is set for this spring.” I should have been proud to announce my impending nuptials, but mostly what I felt was worry.
The date was set. Dates could be moved. What would Hyperia make of my latest bout of forgetting? What did I make of it?
Nothing good.
I poured two cups of steaming China black and fixed the baron’s serving with cream—definitely cream—and honey. I took my own plain and abstained from the biscuits, tarts, and pastries on the tray.
“Congratulations to you, then,” Huffnagel said around a mouthful of macaron. “Marriage is the best thing. Perhaps Dantry needs to marry. He’s making a fool of himself, and that is difficult to watch, regardless of what I think of his politics.”
“Some would say he’s a hero, not a fool, advocating for the less fortunate when they cannot advocate for themselves.”
Huffnagel turned a gimlet eye on me, and I had the sense I was seeing the peer behind the avuncular hospitality. Shrewd, determined, highly self-interested, and proud of it.
“Reform is preferable to revolution, my lord. I know this. You know this. Every peer in the Lords knows it, and so does that bawling lot of imbeciles in the House of Commons. A little reform now and then is permissible, even desirable, for keeping the domestic peace. We in the Lords understand that Napoleon wrought havoc among our shopkeepers’ sons and made widows of the squires’ daughters.
We understand that we alone did not preserve the nation.
We are willing to make reasonable gestures that acknowledge the contributions of the lower orders to the good of England. ”
How extravagantly gracious of him. “Dantry isn’t content with reasonable gestures?”
“The earl does not appear capable of contentment in any guise. It’s as if the boy has a brain fever and must be a contrarian-at-large.
If he insisted that we appoint a committee to study the role of churches in caring for widows, we would probably accommodate him.
The churches would be a bit more conscientious, a few widows would testify for us as to their wretched situations, and Dantry could congratulate himself on having improved the nation’s standing on one issue. ”
And three months after their testimony, the widows would still be hungry, their children on the parish, and the churches just as incapable of doing much—or unwilling to do much—about either tragedy.
Miss Weatherby’s impassioned diatribes had not engendered in me a great deal of sympathy for Dantry’s proselytizing, but Huffnagel’s casual description of a farce where real caring ought to have been disgusted me.
“The widows need help,” I said. “Rather than being used as props in some Parliamentary stage play.”
“My dear fellow,” Huffnagel said gently, while looking over the remaining sweets on the tray, “Dantry’s approach will ensure they don’t even get the farce.
A pauper’s grave and nobody to attend the funeral.
Instead of choosing his battles—and we’d work with him on that if he’d let us—he has turned himself into the town crier for every tragedy known to Merry Olde. ”
Huffnagel bit into a petite éclair and kept speaking.
“Dantry thus annoys all and endears himself to none. He will not be content with the occasional concession a sensible Tory will make to progress or Christian duty, or whatever softhearted foolishness is being called these days. Dantry sabotages his own cause, and it’s about time he acknowledges the harm he’s doing to widows, crossing sweepers, and all those other victims of his impassioned rhetoric.
They will get no help from any quarter as long as Dantry and his ilk refuse to compromise. ”
The most irritating aspect of Lord Huffnagel’s diatribe was the reasonable, almost-regretful tone in which he delivered it.
He pitied Dantry’s victims. If only Dantry would settle for some window dressing.
Why didn’t Dantry see that the greater good was served by compromise, appeasement, and hollow gestures?
The problem was not starvation in London’s very streets, but rather, Dantry’s refusal to accept that Parliament had no real obligation to address the situation.
“Who might be so annoyed with Dantry that they put him on a ship bound for Cathay?”
“His fellow bleeding hearts, I suppose.” Lord Huffnagel patted gently at his lips with a lace-edged linen table napkin.
“They are tired of him and his rigid moralizing. They’ve confided as much to me.
We Tories adore Dantry. He has done more to cast us in the role of sensible, conscientious guardians of England’s future than we could ever do with bills, proclamations, and Acts of Parliament.
If Dantry has gone missing, you must look to his own kind to find him. ”
Not what I’d expected to hear, but plausible. “Will the Fletchers tell me much the same thing?”
Huffnagel smiled. “At very great length. Alphonse is ambitious, so he tends to amuse with his political barbs and criticisms, while the old man, James, does not suffer fools. For all that, they are commoners and always will be. They would not take the risk of anything approaching bodily assault of a peer. Dantry is a fool, but he’s a titled fool, and the Fletchers know the law. Pour me a drop more tea, won’t you?”
I obliged, though I knew full well that Huffnagel was exploiting my good manners for his petty gratification. I nevertheless understood why Sheldon found the baron likable. Huffnagel was affable, articulate, and rational, within the limits of his self-justifying conclusions.
But Huffnagel reminded me of an ambitious junior officer. He’d be so preoccupied with fostering his chances for advancement that the simplest means of gaining positive notice—making a good job of his command and exhibiting honorable character in all circumstances—would never occur to him.
And innocent men would die as a result, while scheming and trickery yielded the junior officer progress toward his prize.
“You must not suspect the Fletchers of bringing physical harm to Lord Dantry,” Huffnagel said, helping himself to another éclair. “They, too, benefit from pointing fingers at him and turning all his logical arguments into hyperbole. He serves their purposes as well as my own.”
“You keep Dantry around as a bad example?”
Huffnagel sent me another of those now-see-here-my-boy looks.
“Dantry has proposed taxing gin, my lord. Taxing tobacco and rum. To your average drover, that puts the earl in a class slightly below Beelzebub. Sir Clive soldiers on, welcoming Dantry under his roof as if the earl were still a boy grieving the loss of his mama. I respect Sir Clive a very great deal, as do the Fletchers. He has been a good neighbor for time out of mind and known more than enough sorrow in this life. For his sake, I do hope you find Dantry.”
On that, Huffnagel and I agreed. “And if I discover that the Fletchers have sent the earl to distant shores, or permanently put out his lights?”
“Then Alph Fletcher will deeply regret his foolishness. Dantry serves a rare, important purpose for the good of England—despite himself—and Sir Clive is a neighbor. That is all that need be said, and I have said it.”
That he’d needed to say it about Alph Fletcher intrigued me. Had Fletcher been indulging in late-night pontifications over port and cheroots, or had he been engaged in the sort of lethal scheming that had adorned Britain’s history with countless political murders and even a regicide?
I took my leave of Lord Huffnagel and made my way back toward the Dovecote on roads that were by turns as slick as ice, frozen to the hardness of bricks, or drifted into near impassibility.