The Unknown Ajax Page 10

  ‘I should say myself that the poor fellow suffered from a colicky disorder,’ replied Hugo. ‘He has the look of it. Sallow as a Nabob!’

  She laughed, and led him on into an antechamber. ‘Very likely! We are now approaching the Queen’s Bedchamber. You will notice her cipher over the bedstead. The hangings are all original, but pray don’t touch them! The silk is quite rotten.’

  The Major stood looking round at faded and tarnished magnificence. ‘Eh, but it’s a shame!’ he said. ‘Why has it all been let go to ruin? It queers me that a man as proud as his lordship shouldn’t keep his house in better order!’

  ‘Well, it won’t queer you when you are rather better acquainted with him,’ she replied. ‘His pride is of a peculiar order, and is not in the least diminished by debts or encumbered estates. Did you suppose yourself to be inheriting fortune as well as title? You will be sadly disappointed!’

  ‘I can see that. But that colt your brother has wasn’t bought for a song, and here’s the old gentleman wishing to make me an allowance!’

  She stared at him. ‘He must do that, of course. As for Richmond’s colt, there’s always money to pay for what he has set his heart on. Vincent is another who can in general get what he wants from Grandpapa. Next to Richmond, he is Grandpapa’s favourite. Have you looked your fill at our past grandeur? We have now only to go through the room allotted to the maids-of-honour – quite unremarkable, as you perceive – and we have reached the picture-gallery. There is a stairway at the far end which was originally the principal open. The present Grand Stairway is of later date.’

  ‘If ever I saw such a rabbit-warren!’ he remarked.

  ‘Exactly so, but I advise you not to say that within Grandpapa’s hearing.’ She walked over to the first of six large window-embrasures, and stood looking out through the latticed panes, with her back turned to the Major. ‘Before I show you our forebears, cousin, there is something I wish to say. No, not that: something I feel myself obliged to say! You may think it odd of me – even improper! – but I have a notion you are not quite as stupid as you would like us to believe. I daresay you may understand why it is that I find myself in the very awkward position of being forced to put myself, and you too, to the blush. I know Grandpapa well enough to be tolerably certain that he has ordered you to make me an offer.’ She turned her head as she spoke, her colour a little heightened, but her eyes meeting the Major’s squarely. ‘If he has not already done so, he will. But I think he has. Am I right?’

  ‘He didn’t precisely do that,’ replied Hugo cautiously.

  ‘He will. I hope you will summon up the courage to refuse to obey that particular command. Pray believe that nothing would induce me to obey it! If that seems to you uncivil, I beg your pardon, but –’

  ‘Nay, I’m reet glad to hear you say it!’ he responded ingenuously.

  Her eyes narrowed in sudden amusement. ‘I was persuaded you would be. I must warn you, however, that there will be – oh, the devil to pay, and every sort of pressure brought to bear on you – ! You don’t know! He has ways of forcing us all to knock under: you may find yourself in a fix over it!’

  ‘I may do that,’ he acknowledged, ‘but I’ll be far if I make you an offer at his or any other man’s bidding!’ He added hastily, as she broke into laughter, ‘The thing is, I’m by way of being promised already! Othergates, of course, it would be different.’

  ‘Good God! Did you tell Grandpapa so?’

  ‘I’ve not told him yet,’ owned Hugo sheepishly.

  ‘You were afraid to!’

  ‘Nay, it was just that it wasn’t, seemingly, the reet moment for telling him!’ he protested.

  She was looking scornful. ‘It never will be the right moment. You were afraid!’

  ‘Well, you weren’t so very brave yourself, not to tell him you wouldn’t marry me,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Yes, I was!’ she retorted. ‘I would have told him so the instant I knew what he meant to do! I didn’t do so because – oh, you don’t understand! For me the case is quite otherwise!’

  ‘Ay, it would be,’ he agreed.

  ‘Well, it is, so you need not speak in that detestable way! Whenever I come to cuffs with Grandpapa it’s Mama who suffers for it, and she has enough to bear without being blamed for my sins! That’s why I asked you not to offer for me, so that Grandpapa couldn’t say it was my fault, or bully Mama into urging me to accept you. Heaven knows your shoulders are big enough, but I see you are just like all the rest, and dare not square up to him!’

  The huge creature before her, looking the picture of guilt, said feebly: ‘It wasn’t that-a-way. The thing is, I’m in a bit of a hobble. It wouldn’t do for me to tell my grandfather I was promised, not before I was sure of it myself.’

  ‘But aren’t you sure of it?’ she asked, a good deal astonished.

  ‘Well,’ he temporized, once more rubbing his nose, ‘I am and I’m not. There’s been nothing official, as you might say. It’s – it’s been kept secret betwixt the pair of us. It was just before the last campaign, you see, and I was recalled in such a bang that there was no time to do aught but get my baggage together, and be off. What’s more there was no knowing but what I might have been killed, so it was thought best to keep it secret. And I haven’t been home since.’

  ‘Good God, have you been engaged for two years?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Better nor that,’ he said. ‘It was in the spring of ’15 that it happened, and now we’re in September. It seems to me I ought to make sure she hasn’t changed her mind before I speak to the old gentleman, and so far I haven’t been home.’

  ‘But she must have written to you!’

  ‘Er – no,’ said Hugo, much discomposed. ‘She – well, there were reasons why she couldn’t do that!’

  A dreadful suspicion occurred to Anthea. ‘Cousin, do you mean – is she a – a lady of Quality?’

  The Major shook a miserable head.

  ‘Can’t she write?’ Anthea asked, in a hushed voice.

  ‘No,’ confessed the Major.

  Feeling a trifle weak, Anthea sat down on the window-seat. ‘Cousin, this is – this is positively terrible! You can have no notion – ! What’s to be done?’

  ‘If you think I ought to tell the old gentleman –’

  ‘No, no!’ she said quickly. ‘On no account in the world! Of course, I see now why you didn’t say you wouldn’t offer for me! He would have been bound to have asked you why not, and – I beg your pardon for being so uncivil about that! No one could be brave enough to make that disclosure to him! But what are you going to do?’

  The Major had the grace to look a little conscience-stricken. He said vaguely that he hadn’t yet made up his mind.

  ‘I can’t think how you dared to come here at all,’ said Anthea, knitting her brows. ‘To be sure, you didn’t know what Grandpapa was like, but you must have known that he would never tolerate that sort of marriage! In fact, it was because he is afraid that you might wish to marry someone he would think unworthy that he made this odious scheme to marry you to me. Cousin, you’re not in a hobble! you’re in the suds!’

  The Major, who, by this time, had had the satisfaction of seeing that his judgment had not been at fault when he had decided that animation would greatly improve Miss Darracott, ventured to approach her, and to sit down. ‘I am and-all!’ he agreed ruefully.

  ‘He won’t receive her, you know,’ Anthea said. ‘It is useless to think he might come about. He never forgave your father, and he was his favourite son.’

  ‘Nay, I wouldn’t bring her here.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but you can’t expect the poor girl to wait for years and years to be married!’ objected Anthea. ‘Besides, surely you would not like that yourself! If you’re thinking that Grandpapa may die soon, I must tell you that I don’t think there’s the least chance of it: he’s old, but not at a
ll decrepit, you know!’

  ‘Oh, no, I should think he’s good for a piece yet!’ Hugo agreed. ‘But I’m not going to stay here for years and years.’

  ‘He thinks you are,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Ay, but that’s just one of the daft notions he takes into his head. There’s no sense in stirring coals, so I didn’t tell him he’d got the wrong sow by the ear. Happen he’ll think it a good shuttance when I do tell him I’m off.’

  ‘But how will you do?’ she asked. ‘It’s he who holds the purse-strings, remember! I assure you he wouldn’t hesitate to draw them tight.’

  He laughed. ‘Nay, he doesn’t hold my purse-strings!’

  ‘Ah, no! How stupid of me! You have your profession, and can afford to snap your fingers under his nose! Oh, how much I envy you!’ She heaved a short sigh, but smiled immediately after, and said: ‘Did you come to look us over only? How long do you mean to stay?’

  ‘Well, that depends,’ he said. ‘When I got the letter that told me the way things had fallen out, it fairly sent me to grass, for, not knowing anything about my family, I’d no notion how close to the succession I stood. Nothing will persuade my grandfather I wasn’t happy as a grig to be succeeding him – though why he should have thought anyone would want to inherit a house that’s falling to ruin, let alone encumbered estates, and a sackful of debts, has me fairly capped – but the truth is I wasn’t at all suited, and the first thing that came into my head was to see if there wasn’t a way out. That wouldn’t fadge, however, so –’ He paused, considering. ‘Well, I made up my mind to it that I’d have to come here, whether or no.’

  ‘I can understand that you didn’t wish to do that while Grandpapa was alive.’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But if I’ve to step into the old gentleman’s shoes, sooner or later, it’ll be as well I shouldn’t be strange to the place, or the people. So when Lissett wrote to tell me I was to come here I did come. I don’t say I wouldn’t as lief have sent word his lordship might go to hell – eh, that slipped out! I’m reet sorry!’

  ‘Don’t give it a thought!’ said Anthea cordially. ‘I never before heard such beautiful words, I promise you!’

  He smiled, but shook his head. ‘I’d have caught cold at that. What’s more, if his lordship and my father were at outs, that’s no concern of mine. My other grandfather had more rumgumption than any man I’ve ever known, and he always would have it that my father came by his deserts. He didn’t hold with a man’s marrying out of his own order, and, taking it by and large, I’d say he was in the reet of it. What with him on the one side, hammering it into me I was Quality-born, and Grandfather Darracott here looking at me as if I was a porriwiggle, I don’t know what I am!’

  She went into a peal of laughter. ‘Oh, what is it? Porriwiggle?’

  He grinned. ‘It’s what we call a tadpole.’

  That made her laugh more than ever. She said, wiping her eyes: ‘No, I don’t think anyone would liken you to a tadpole, cousin! Tell me about the girl you are going to marry! Is she pretty?’

  ‘I don’t know if you’d say she was pretty. She – she has golden hair – corn-gold, you know – and blue eyes, with long lashes that curl. She has a straight little nose, and a mouth like a bow, and – and a complexion like strawberries and cream!’ replied Hugo rhapsodically.

  ‘I should say she was a beauty!’ Anthea said, slightly taken aback.

  ‘She has a good figure too,’ added Hugo, dwelling with obvious pleasure on the vision he had conjured up.

  ‘In that case I think you should lose no time in posting north – though it is probably too late already. Such a paragon cannot be wearing the willow!’

  ‘I’m not afraid of that. I forgot to tell you that she’s not one to break her promise.’

  She eyed him suspiciously. ‘What is her name?’

  ‘Amelia,’ responded Hugo, adding after a reflective moment: ‘Melkinthorpe.’

  Anthea rose. ‘Well, I wish you very happy. Meanwhile, we haven’t yet looked at the ancestors. We must do so, you know, for Grandpapa is quite likely to ask you searching questions about them. Chiefly you must study the Van Dyck: here it is! Ralph Darracott, who was killed at Naseby; his wife, Penelope – she was pretty, wasn’t she? – holding Charles Darracott in her lap. There’s another one of Charles in later life, a Lely, over here.’

  The Major, having subjected Charles Darracott to a critical scrutiny, remarked that he knew what he thought of him.

  ‘Very likely,’ said Anthea. ‘His son, however, was extremely virtuous, as you may see for yourself. He was succeeded by his nephew, Ralph II. I daresay you may have been thinking that our ancestors were rather commonplace, but Ralph II, I assure you, made quite a noise in the world.’

  ‘He would,’ said Hugo, regarding Ralph with disfavour.

  ‘Yes, he was a beau of the first stare. His waistcoats were copied by all the smarts of his day; he had fought three duels, and killed his man, before he was five-and-twenty; and he is generally supposed to have murdered his first wife, either by throwing her out of the window, or by driving her to throw herself out of the window. Grandpapa, of course, holds by the latter theory, but the country-people know better. Her ghost walks, you know.’

  ‘What, here?’

  Anthea laughed. ‘No, don’t be alarmed! This stirring event took place before Ralph became Lord Darracott. When he came into the country, which was seldom, he resided at the Dower House. He is said to have incarcerated his wife there, and to have ridden all the way from London one stormy night, and murdered her. Then he galloped away again, and shortly afterwards married his second wife. There can really be no doubt of the truth of this legend, for the sound of his horse’s hooves are frequently heard in the dead of the night. He came to a violent end, like so many of our illustrious family.’

  ‘I should think he ended on the gallows, that road,’ observed the Major.

  ‘Nothing so vulgar!’ replied Anthea. ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘Who murdered him?’

  ‘They never discovered that. His body was found in the Home Wood, and from some cause or another he had so many enemies that it was thought the deed might have been committed by almost anyone.’

  ‘And does his ghost walk?’

  ‘No, happily it doesn’t: we are quite free of spectres here, at the Place! The portrait you are looking at now is of Lucinda Darracott. She married an Attlebridge, but that likeness was taken when she was eighteen. Several minor poets made her the subject of lyrics, but in later life she grew sadly stout. And here, cousin, we have my grandfather, surrounded by his progeny, his wife, and two dogs. The urchin leaning against his chair is your papa; mine is the infant being dandled by Grandmama. The coy damsel with the posy is Aunt Mary – Lady Chudleigh; beside her, Aunt Sarah, now Mrs Wenlock; and the pretty one admiring my papa is Aunt Caroline, Lady Haddon. Your uncle Granville is the youth with one hand on his hip, and his riding-whip in the other; and the chubby lad is my uncle Matthew.’

  Hugo dutifully gazed upon this conversation piece, but made no comment. His eye was attracted by a kit-kat hanging beside it, and he exclaimed: ‘That’s good!’

  ‘Richmond? Yes, it’s very like,’ she agreed. ‘Mr Lonsdale painted it a year ago. There’s a miniature of him also, but Grandpapa keeps that in his own room.’

  He stood looking up at the portrait. ‘Eh, he’s a handsome lad!’ he remarked. ‘Full of gig, too. What does the old gentleman mean to do with him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He glanced down at her, and saw that the amusement had faded from her face. ‘Seemingly, the lad’s army-mad?’

  ‘My grandfather will never permit him to join, however.’

  ‘That’s a pity. I never knew any good to come of setting a lad’s nose to the wrong grindstone.’

  ‘Oh, that won’t happen either!’ she answered. ‘The
likelihood is that he will be kept kicking his heels here. My grandfather dotes on him, you see.’

  ‘Nay, if he dotes on him he’ll let him have his way!’

  ‘How little you know Grandpapa! His affection for Richmond is perfectly selfish: he likes to have Richmond with him, and so it will be. The excuse is that Richmond’s constitution is sickly. He is as tough as whitleather, in fact, but his childhood was sickly, and that is enough for Grandpapa. Do you wish to look at any more portraits, or have you had your fill?’

  ‘I was forgetting that you’re throng this morning,’ he apologized. ‘I’ve had my fill, and I’m reet grateful to you.’

  ‘I’ll take you down the old stairway,’ she said, moving towards the door at the end of the gallery. ‘This end of the house is not used nowadays, but you might care to see it. It’s the original house, but when the third Granville Darracott started building he added so much that the earlier part became nothing more than a wing. Take care how you tread on these stairs! Much of the timber is rotten.’

  He came down cautiously behind her, but paused on the half-landing to look about him, at dampstained walls, dry wood, and crumbling plaster. ‘It’ll take some brass to put this in order!’ he remarked.

  ‘Money? Oh, it would cost a fortune, if it could be done at all! I daresay no one would think it worth it, for none of the rooms are handsome, and most of the panelling is sadly worm-eaten. It has been going to rack for nearly a hundred years.’ She showed him one or two of the parlours, bare save for lumber, and he shook his head, pursing his lips in a silent whistle. She smiled. ‘Does it throw you into gloom? The only time anyone gives it a thought is when the windows are all cleaned. We can get back to the main part of the house through this door, if you don’t object to going past the kitchens and the scullery.’

  When they reached the main hall of the house again their arrival coincided with that of Vincent and Richmond, who had just come in from the stables. Richmond was looking pleased, for although he had had to endure some stringent criticisms on his handling of the ribbons his Corinthian cousin had said that at least he had good, light hands. Vincent, wearing a blue Bird’s Eye neckcloth, and a coat with shoulder-capes past counting, rarely looked pleased, and just now looked bored. He was bored. He was quite fond of Richmond, but teaching a stripling how to drive a team in style was a task he found wearisome. He had offered the lesson of impulse, because it had nettled him to see Richmond so much inclined to take Hugo’s part against himself; and it annoyed him still more to know that he could be nettled by such a trivial matter. There was a pronounced crease between his brows as he set his hat down on a table, and began to draw off his gloves, and it deepened as he looked at Hugo and Anthea.