If his mind was uneasy, oppressed by a
nightmarish burden of half-knowledge, guesses, and premonition, it was not
apparent to the general observer. His most eloquent gesture was when, from
time to time, he tamped an ancient wooden pipe with a fingertip that wasn't
as calloused as he could have wished, philosophically sucked in strangling
fumes of rankest shag and, ignoring his company in the carriage as became a
British-made manservant, returned jaded, gentle eyes to those darkling
vistas of autumnal landscape that were forever radiating away from the
window like spokes of a gigantic wheel.
Alighting in the first dark of evening at the station for Frampton Court,
he suffered himself to be herded, with a half-score more, into the omnibus
provided for other bodyservants to arriving guests. Even to these compeers
he found little to say: a loud lot, imbued with the rowdy spirit of the new
day; whereas Nogam was hopelessly of the old school--in the new word, he
dated--though his form was admittedly unimpeachable. And if because of this
he was made fun of more or less openly, to an extent that added shades of
resignation to his countenance, secretly he commanded considerable respect.
Neither was Victor, with all the ill-will in the world, able to find fault
with Nogam's services in his new office. The most finished of self-effacing
valets, he knew just what to do and did it without being told; and when he
spoke it was only because he had been spoken to or commissioned to convey
a message.
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