He had steeled every nerve. He was probably about to do entirely the wrong thing. But for once he was determined to do something that needed doing, even if like an idiot he must stand alone against the whole world and even if nothing of any significance could possibly be accomplished. Even if he was going to be merely tilting at windmills.
He had been raised, after all, to stand alone and always to do what he believed to be right. He had not fully realized that before now. He had not gone away to school, where, at an impressionable age, he would have learned to become just like every other boy of his social class. He had remained at home to be educated and trained—and loved—by a number of straight-thinking adults. He had remained under the influence of that upbringing through his university years and had stuck out from his fellows like a sore thumb while acquiring an excellent education in his chosen field. He had spent the past ten years more or less repudiating his past and making up for lost time—with interest. He was now like every other idle gentleman of his generation, but even more so.
But one’s upbringing could never be quite erased. If his could be, he would cheerfully do it, for then perhaps he would not be feeling this sudden dissatisfaction with his life, this onslaught of conscience, this urge to go crusading.
It was idiotic. It was nonsensical. He might—and probably would—regret it. But it was perhaps better to act from conscience and be sorry than to bury his head in the sand and sidle by his own life because he could not be bothered to live it.
Someone had organized the staff, Percy saw as soon as he entered the seldom-used visitors’ salon on the ground floor. They were standing to rigid attention in such straight lines that someone had surely used a long ruler. And they were arranged strictly according to rank. All eyes faced forward. Percy felt a bit like a general about to inspect his troops—the Duke of Wellington, perhaps.
“At ease,” he said, standing just inside the door with his hands clasped behind him.
There was an infinitesimal relaxing of posture. Very infinitesimal.
“I am declaring war,” he said, and at least twenty pairs of eyes swiveled his way though the heads belonging to the eyes did not follow suit, “against smuggling.”
The eyes went forward again. Every face remained blank. Ratchett, Percy saw, was having a hard time keeping his spine straight. In fact, he looked like a bow just waiting to be strung.
“Mr. Knorr,” Percy said, “will you set a chair for your superior, if you please. You may sit, Mr. Ratchett.”
The head steward’s head turned and he squinted at Percy’s left ear, but he made no protest when Paul Knorr set a chair behind him. He sat.
“I am not intending to gather together an army to sally forth for a fight against the forces of evil, you will no doubt be relieved to know,” Percy continued. “What goes on beyond the borders of my own land is, at least for the present, not my concern. And I am aware that it would take a very large army indeed to rid the land entirely of smuggling. But it will end within the borders of what is mine. That includes the house, the park, and the farm, and even the beach below my land, since the only landward route away from the beach is the path up the cliff face and across the park. Anyone who takes exception to my decision is welcome to collect what wages he is owed from Mr. Ratchett or Mr. Knorr, without any penalty, and leave here with his belongings. Everyone who stays is my employee and will live and work here according to my rules, whether he or she is on duty or off. Are there any questions?”
The pause that followed reminded Percy of the one in the nuptial service when the members of the congregation were invited to report any impediment to the marriage of which they were aware. He did not expect the silence to be broken, and it was not.
“If,” he said, “there are any smuggled goods anywhere on my land at present—in the cellar of this house, for example—I will allow two days, today and tomorrow, for them to be removed. After that, there will be no more, and I will expect Mr. Ratchett or Mr. Crutchley or Mrs. Attlee to be in possession of both keys to the locked room in the cellar—the inside and the outside keys. If they remain lost after the two days, then the locks will be forced and new locks installed—and I will myself retain one set of the new keys.”
One maid—the deaf-mute—had her head slightly turned and her eyes fixed to his lips, Percy noticed for the first time. He strolled down the center of the lines, looking first one way and then the other. He felt more martial than ever.
“Anyone who fears reprisal,” he said, stopping and looking steadily into the face of the stable hand beside Colin Bains, a ginger-haired lad with freckles half the size of farthings, “will speak either to Mr. Knorr or to me.”