The Unknown Ajax (31 page)

She smiled, but drew her hands away, shaking her head at him. “My own belief is that you are a gazetted flirt!”

“Oh, is it?” he retorted. “If that’s so I’ll be off and ask my Aunt Elvira’s leave to pay my addresses to you without any more ado!”

“I shall warn her to hint you away—not that I have much hope that a mere hint will serve, because you are quite without conduct or delicacy, and altogether a most improper person!”

Cordially agreeing with this reading of his character, the Major ventured to remind her that it was her duty, as seen by her grandfather, to reclaim him.

“I am persuaded it would be a hopeless task,” she replied firmly, “What’s more, I know very well that all this nonsensical talk is what Richmond calls a fling, to lead me away from what I wish to say to you. Don’t joke me any more, but tell me—” She broke off, knitting her brows. “Tell you what, love?”

“I don’t know. That is, it is so hard to put it into words! Lately—before you came here—I have felt uneasy about Richmond. I can’t precisely tell why, except that he was in such flat despair when Grandpapa ordered him to put the thought of a military career out of his head. He wasn’t sullen, or rebellious—he never is, you know!—but dawdling, and languid, not caring for anything very much, his spirits low, and depressed—Mama was afraid he would fall into a lethargy! And then, all at once, and for no reason that I could perceive, he became alive again. He has a great deal of reserve, but one can always tell by his eyes: they are so very speaking! Mama says that when they are bright it is a sign that he is in good health, but it’s not so—not wholly! When he was a little boy, and in dangerous mischief, they used to look alight, just as I’ve seen them again and again fn these past months. Once, when I went for a sail with him and Jem in the Seamew, a gale blew up, and we had the narrowest of escapes from foundering. I was never so frightened in my life—well, it was the horridest thing!—but Richmond enjoyed it! He had that look: his eyes positively blazing—smiling, too, in the most inhuman way! It was as though he liked fighting the waves, and being in the greatest peril, which Jem afterwards told me we were!”

Hugo nodded, “Ay, he would: he’s that road. It’s excitement he likes, and it leads him into daredevilry, because he’s bored, and too full of energy for the loitering life he leads. I’ve met his like before. Don’t fret, lass! He’s only a colt yet—a resty, high-couraged colt that needs exercise, and breaking to bridle. He puts me in mind of a friend of mine: just such a wiry, craze care-for-nobody, but the best duty-officer I ever knew. By hedge or by stile we must bring his lordship round to the notion of a Hussar regiment for the lad.” “If one could!” she sighed. “He thinks Richmond will out-grow that ambition—has done so already, perhaps.”

“He’ll learn his mistake,” the Major said dryly. “If he won’t yield now, with a good grace, he’ll suffer a bad back-cast the moment the lad comes of age, and joins as a volunteer. You may lay your life that’s what he’ll do, and his lordship wouldn’t be very well suited with that!” “No, indeed! Or any of us!” she exclaimed. “But he’s not nineteen yet, and sometimes I feel such an apprehension that he may do something reckless, or even outrageous, because he’s not used to being crossed, besides never counting the cost before he plunges into the most hare-brained scrapes! You may say I’m indulging crotchets, but when he looked at you, today it flashed across my mind that he is in a scrape, and that you know what it is. Do you, Hugo?” “Nay, I’m not in his confidence,” he replied.

She scanned his face searchingly but to no avail. “When he shot that look at you I knew that he didn’t go to bed when he said goodnight to us, and it was plain that you knew that at least.”

He laughed. “Don’t fidget yourself, love! He took it into his head to try if he could play a prank on me, young varmint!”

She looked relieved, but not wholly convinced. After thinking it over for a moment, she said: “I think he does sometimes slip out of the house when we believe him to be in bed. I went to his room once, in the middle of the night, because Mama had the tooth-ache, and remembered that she had given her bottle of laudanum to him when he had a bad tic. I knocked and knocked on his door, and even called to him, but he didn’t answer me, and I thought then that he wasn’t there. But when I told him about it in the morning he said that he had taken a few drops of laudanum himself, which had made him sleep like the dead.” “Well, that’s very possible,” Hugo answered.

“Yes, only—one can’t but own that the Darracotts all have a—a certain unsteadiness of character—if you know what I mean!”

“I know just what you mean, and the Darracotts have not all that particular unsteadiness of character!”

She smiled. “Well, I hope not! But after Claud’s escapade—”

“So that’s what’s put you into the hips!” he interrupted. “You may be easy! I fancy we’ll receive no drunken invasion on our Richmond’s account. I’d a notion myself he might be in mischief, but he’s told me it’s not so. Think no more of it, love!”

She said gratefully: “If Richmond knows your eye is on him I shouldn’t think he’d dare plunge into a scrape. I am very much obliged to you!”

He had the satisfaction of seeing the worried look vanish from her face; but the reassurance he had conveyed to her was no reflection of his own state of mind. He found himself in a quandary; for while, on the one hand, the task of informing Lord Darracott of his discovery and his suspicion was naturally repugnant to him, and certainly fatal to his future relationship with Richmond, on the other, he was unable to persuade himself that Richmond’s word might be accepted without reservation. He had come away from his interview with the boy considerably disquieted, and at a loss to know what course to pursue. He was too much a stranger to be able to win Richmond’s confidence, and even doubted whether Richmond gave his confidence to anyone. He had thought from the outset that Richmond was oddly aloof. The reason had not been far to seek, but it had not been until he came to grips with him: that he realized how impenetrable was the barrier behind which Richmond dwelled. An impulse to encourage Anthea to question him herself had no sooner occurred to him than he had rejected it. Richmond, in his judgment, was neither young enough nor old enough to tolerate the interference of a sister. There seemed to be nothing for it (since his uneasy suspicion rested on no solid foundation) but to watch Richmond unobtrusively, and to hope that the knowledge that there was one member of the household at least who was on the alert would make him chary of pursuing any unlawful form of amusement. A third course swiftly presented itself. Vincent, encountering him on his way home from one of his tours of the estate with my lord’s bailiff, elected to ride back to the house with him, and said as soon as Glossop had parted company with the cousins: “I hear you’ve laid the Darracott ghost, coz. Poor Richmond! But I think he should have known better than to have entertained the least hope of shaking your stolidity.”

“So he told you, did he?” Hugo said slowly.

“But of course!” Vincent returned, his brows lifting in mockery. “He may have misjudged you, but he knows me well enough not to dream of withholding such an excellent story from me.” “I should have thought of that before,” said Hugo. He turned his head, the hint of his disarming grin on his countenance. “You were in the right of it: dull, brainless Ajax fairly hits me off! Happen you’re the only one amongst us with the power to bring that lad to his senses. Did he tell you all that passed between us last night?” “He didn’t withhold the cream of the jest from me, if that’s what you mean,” replied Vincent, with his glinting smile.

“Remember I’m blockish!” said Hugo. “What was the cream of it, by your reckoning?” “Do you know, dear cousin, there have been moments when I have wondered whether I was a trifle out in my first judgment of you? How comforting it is to meet with reassurance on this head! The cream of the jest was the conclusion you jumped to, in your somewhat ingenuous fashion—if I may be permitted so to describe it!”

Quite unmoved by the studied offensiveness of this answer, Hugo asked straitly: “Has it never occurred to you that there’s something devilish smoky about that halfling’s docility? He doesn’t want for spirit: he’s full of spunk, and as meedless as be-damned besides!” “I am afraid I have never given the matter a thought,” said Vincent, smothering a yawn. “Give it one now, then! You may be too well-accustomed to the state of affairs here to be struck by what must fairly stagger anyone coming, as I did, as a stranger amongst you. I told you once that I’ve had more experience of lads than you, and I’ll tell you now that I hadn’t been here above a sennight before I hadn’t a doubt but that our Richmond was playing some kind of double game, though what it might be I hadn’t a notion, until I got into conversation with that Riding-officer. I’d have had to be twice as blockish as I am not to have realized that there was more behind his hostility to Richmond than resentment at the treatment he’d met with at his lordship’s hands; I’m bound to own that the suspicion that gave me seemed too cock-brained to be entertained—until I’d added one thing to another, and, in particular, the sort of loose talk the lad had listened to all his life: not one of you, seemingly, having enough sense to see the daft risk you were running! The blame’s to be laid chiefly at his lordship’s door, but you’re no floss-head, and you’ve known the lad from his cradle! Nay then, Vincent! Did it never occur to you he was touchwood, needing no more than a spark to set him ablaze?”

“No,” said. Vincent, very gently. “But do, pray, continue! You mustn’t think I’m not enjoying it. I am, in fact, much rapt in this, and—er—apprehend immediately The unknown Ajax. The passage, which I

’ve mauled a little, continues: Heavens, what a man is there!—But perhaps it would be uncivil to complete the line, and for me to be uncivil to the future head of my family would not do at all.”

The Major regarded him with tolerant amusement, remarking placidly: “For one who doesn’t want for sense you waste a mort of time milking the pigeon! You’ll pick no quarrel with me, so you may as well stop trying to make me nab the rust, and attend to what’s of much more moment. Richmond wasn’t playing ghost last night for my benefit: he wanted to scare Ottershaw away from the Dower House, if he could do it. He knows now he can’t, and I believe him when he says he won’t cut the caper again. If I didn’t, I’d have no choice but to lay the whole matter before his lordship, which is the last thing I want to do. Ottershaw had his pistol in his hand when I halted him. Whether he’d have used it is another pair of shoes: I think not, but it won’t do to run the risk of it”

“If it comforts you, you may know that I have already told Richmond that, however amusing the repercussion of his exploit may have been, such pranks are really quite unworthy of him,” said Vincent languidly.

“It would comfort me much more if I felt I could leave the matter in your hands. Richmond won’t confide in me: it’s not to be expected he should.”

“But he has—unless I have misinformed—given you his assurance that he is not engaged in any such nefarious occupation as smuggling,” interpolated Vincent, in a voice of silk. “Ay, he’s done that,” admitted Hugo. He was silent for a moment, gazing meditatively ahead, between his horse’s ears. A rather rueful smile crept into his eyes. “I’ve no reason to doubt his word, and the Lord knows it goes against the pluck with me to do so, but I think he lied to me.”

“I cannot supply you with any reason for doubting him, but I can, and will, supply you with one—possibly incomprehensible to you, but nevertheless to be relied on—for accepting his word,” said Vincent, his eyes hard and contemptuous. “Richmond, my dear coz, was born into, and reared in, an order of society whose members do not commonly give lying assurances, or engage in criminal pursuits. However much you may have been misled by what you term the loose talk so reprehensibly indulged in by my grandfather, it is as inconceivable that Richmond should confuse sympathy with participation as that he, a Darracott, would entertain for one instant the thought that he might join a gang of such vulgar persons as freetraders. I trust I have made myself plain?”

“You’ve done that, right enough,” Hugo replied. “I don’t know if you believe what you say, or if you say it because you dislike me too much to think of aught else; and any road it doesn’t make a ha’porth of odds: you don’t mean to lift a finger to save a lad who thinks the world and-all of you from bringing himself to ruin! You’ve made me a fine, top-lofty speech about Richmond’s birth and rearing: his birth’s well-enough, but his rearing was as bad as it could be! Sithee, Vincent, you know that! I know it too. When you were at Eton, I was at Harrow, and what hadn’t been clouted into me by my granddad I learned there.” He paused, and the twinkle came back into his eyes. “And there wasn’t so very much to learn either!” he added. “Reet vulgar he was, my granddad, but worth a score of any Darracott I’ve yet laid eyes on!” “Harrow—!” murmured Vincent, in the grip of cold fury. “To be sure, our opinion of Harrow was never very high, but—ah, well!”

Hugo chuckled. “Nor ours of Eton, think on! Ee, if you haven’t got me talking as you do yourself! Sneck up, and ask yourself how much you’d have learnt if you’d been reared as Richmond was!”

They had ridden into the stable yard by this time, and as their grooms had already come out to take charge of the horses Vincent’s sense of ton prevented him from making any reply which he considered to be worthy of the occasion. He was silent therefore, but his groom, catching a glimpse of his face, would have given a month’s pay to have been privileged to know what the Major had said to put him in the devil’s own passion, He strode out of the yard without vouchsafing a word either to his cousin or to his servant; and after exchanging a few observations with John Joseph, and, to that severe critic’s disapproval and the grinning delight of several stableboys, admonishing Rufus in the broadest dialect for his want of manners in demanding with every sign of equine impatience the sugar he knew very well would be bestowed upon him, the Major followed him, in his leisurely way, to the house. The post had been brought up from the receiving-office during his absence, and a thick letter, addressed to himself, and stamped Post Paid, lay on the table by the door. He had just broken the wafer that sealed it, and spread open three closely written sheets, when Chollacombe came into the hall to tell him that my lord desired to see him in the library as soon as might be convenient to him. The Major, already perusing the lengthy communication sent him by one who subscribed himself as his attached friend and obedient servant, Jonas Henry Poulton, acknowledged this message with an abstracted grunt, neither looking up from the letter in his hand, nor evincing the smallest disposition to make all speed to his grandfather’s presence. Any one of his cousins would have recognized the civil form in which the message was phrased as the cloak spread by Chollacombe over a peremptory (and possibly explosive) command; but nothing would ever avail, thought Chollacombe despairingly, to teach Mr. Hugh the wisdom of obeying such summonses with all possible dispatch. He coughed deprecatingly, and said: “His lordship, sir, is anxious to see you, I fancy.”