Empire of Ivory Page 0,19
disagreed on certain of our occasions, I am sorry to say, so I am not often at home."
"Mine is dead," Ferris said. After a moment, he seemed to realize this was a rather abrupt period to the conversation, and added with an effort, "My brother Albert is a good sort, I suppose; he has ten years on me, so we have never really got to know one another."
"Ah," Laurence said, left no more the wiser as to the cause of Ferris's dismay.
There was certainly nothing lacking in their welcome. Laurence had braced himself for neglect: perhaps they would be shown directly to their rooms, out of sight of the rest of the company; he was tired enough to even hope to be so slighted. But nothing of the sort: a dozen footmen were out with their lights lining the drive, another two waiting with the step to hand them down, and a substantial body of the staff coming outside to greet them despite the cold and what must surely have been a full house within to manage, a wholly unnecessary ostentation.
Ferris blurted desperately, just as the horses were drawn up, "Sir - I hope you will not take it to heart, if my mother - she means well - " The footmen opened the door, and discretion stopped Ferris's mouth.
They were shown directly to the drawing room, to find all the company assembled to meet them, not very large, but decidedly elegant: the women all in clothing of unfamiliar style, the surest mark of the height of fashion to a man who was often from society a year at a time, and several of the gentlemen bordering on outright dandyism. Laurence noted it mechanically; he was himself in trousers and Hessians, and those stained with dust; but he could not be brought to care, very much, even when he saw the other gentlemen in the greater formality of knee-breeches. There were a couple of military men among their number, a colonel of Marines whose long, seamy, sun-leathered face had a certain vague familiarity that meant they had most likely dined together on one ship or another, and a tall army captain in his red coat, lantern-jawed and blue-eyed.
"Henry, my dear!" A tall woman rose from her seat to come and greet them with both her hands outstretched: too like Ferris to mistake her, with the same high forehead and reddish-brown hair, and the same trick of holding her head very straight, which made her neck look longer. "How happy we are you have come!"
"Mother," Ferris said woodenly, and bent to kiss her presented cheek. "May I present Captain Laurence? Sir, this is Lady Catherine Seymour, my mother."
"Captain Laurence, I am overjoyed to make your acquaintance," she said, offering him her hand.
"My lady," Laurence said, giving her a formal leg. "I am very sorry to intrude upon you; I beg you will forgive our coming in all our dirt."
"Any officer of His Majesty's Aerial Corps is welcome in this house, Captain," she declared, "at any moment of day or night, I assure you, and should he come with no introduction at all still he should be welcome."
Laurence did not know what to say to this; he himself would no more have descended upon a strange house without introduction than he would have robbed it. The hour was late, but not uncivilized, and he came with her own son, so in any case these reassurances were not much to the point; he could not have supposed it otherwise, having been invited and welcomed. He settled on a vague, "Very kind."
The company was not similarly effusive. Ferris's eldest brother Albert, the present Lord Seymour, was a little high in the instep, and made a point early on, when Laurence had made a compliment to his house, of conveying the intelligence that the house was Heytham Abbey, in the possession of the family since the reign of Charles II; the head of the family had risen from knight to baronet to baron in steady climb, and there remained.
"I congratulate you," Laurence said, and did not take the opening to puff off his own consequence; he was an aviator, and well knew that one evil outweighed any other considerations in the eyes of the world. He could not help but wonder that they should have sent a son to the Corps; there was no sign of the pressure of an encumbered estate, which might have made one reason: while appearances might be kept up on