The Unknown Ajax (8 page)

“Chaise overturn?” enquired Claud, not without sympathy. Hugo laughed. “No, it wasn’t as bad as that. I didn’t come by chaise.” “Then how did you come?” asked Matthew. “From the look of you one would say that you had ridden from town!”

“Ay, so I did,” nodded Hugo.

“Ridden?” gasped Claud. “Ridden all the way from London?” “Why not?” said Hugo.

“But—Dash it, you can’t do things like that!” Claud said, in a shocked tone. “I mean to say—no, really, coz! Your luggage!”

“Oh, that!” replied Hugo. “John Joseph had all I need, loaded on my spare horse—my groom, I mean—my private groom!”

“How very original!” drawled Vincent. “I rarely travel by chaise myself, but I confess it had never before occurred to me to turn any of my cattle into pack-horses.” “Nay, why should it?” returned the Major good-humouredly. “Maybe you’ve never been obliged to travel rough. I don’t think I’ve gone in a chaise above two or three times in my life.”

Lord Darracott stirred restlessly in his chair, gripping its arms momentarily. “No doubt! You are not obliged to travel rough, as you term it, now! My orders were that a chaise was to be hired for you, and I expect my orders to be obeyed!”

“Ay, I’m that road myself,” agreed Hugo cheerfully. “Your man of business was mighty set on arranging the journey for me. He said it was what you’d told him to do, so there’s no sense in blaming him. And not much sense in blaming me either,” he added, on a reflective note. He smiled down at his seething progenitor. “I’m much obliged to you, sir, but there’s no need for you to worry your head over me: I’ve looked after myself for a good few years now.” “Worry my head—? Richmond! Ring the bell! You, sir! Did you bring your valet, or haven’t you one?”

“Well, no,” confessed the Major apologetically. “I used to have a batman, of course, but, what with one thing and another, I haven’t had time to think about hiring a personal servant since I came home.”

“No valet?” repeated Claud, gazing at him incredulously. “But how do you manage? I mean to say, packing—your boots—your neckcloths—!”

“Hold your tongue!” said his father, in an undervoice.

“If you had been listening,” interpolated Vincent severely, “you would have heard our cousin say that he has been in the habit of looking after himself. Except when he had a batman, that is.”

“Ay, but I’m a poor hand at packing,” said Hugo, shaking his head over this shortcoming. “How much longer is dinner to be kept waiting?” demanded Lord Darracott. “Ring that damned bell again, Richmond! What the devil does Chollacombe mean by—Oh, you’re there, are you? Have Major Darracott taken up to his room, and tell someone to wait on him! We shall dine in twenty minutes from now!”

Claud was moved to protest, his sympathy roused by the plight of anyone who was expected to dress for dinner in twenty minutes. “Make it an hour, sir! Well, half an hour, though I must say it’s coming it a bit strong to ask the poor fellow to scramble into his clothes in that short time!”

“No, no, twenty minutes will be long enough for me!” said Hugo hastily, a wary eye on his lordship. “If I’m not down then, don’t wait for me!”

Chollacombe, ushering him out of the saloon, and softly closing the door behind him, said: “I will take you up myself, sir. I understand you haven’t brought your valet with you, so his lordship’s man has unpacked your valise!”

“Much obliged to him!” said Hugo, following him to the broad, uncarpeted oak staircase. “It seems as if Mr. Lissett ought to have warned me not to show my front here without a jack-a-dandy London valet at my heels.”

“Yes, sir. Being as his lordship is, as they say, rather a high stickler. Not but what Grooby—that’s his lordship’s man, sir—will be very happy to wait on you. We were very much attached to the Captain, if I may venture to say so.”

“My father? I never knew him: he was killed when I was just three years old. I’m afraid I don’t favour him much.”

“No, sir. Though you do remind me a little of him.”

The butler paused, and then said with great delicacy, as they reached the upper hall: “I hope you won’t think it a liberty, sir, but if there should be anything you might wish to know—his lordship being a trifle twitty at times, and not one to make allowances—I beg you won’t hesitate to ask me! Quite between ourselves, sir, of course.”

“I won’t,” promised Hugo, a twinkle in his eye. “It is sometimes hard to know the ways of a house when one is strange to it,” said Chollacombe. “Anybody might make a mistake! Indeed, I well remember that I was obliged to give my Lord Taplow a hint, when he stayed here on one occasion. He was a friend of Mr. Granville’s: quite in the first style of elegance, but he had a habit of unpunctuality which would have put his lordship out sadly. This way, if you please, sir. We have put you in the West Wing.”

“It’s to be hoped I don’t lose myself,” remarked Hugo, following him through an archway into a long gallery. “If ever I saw such a place!”

“It is rather large, sir, but I assure you there are many that are far larger.” “Nay!” said Hugo astonished.

“Oh, yes, indeed, sir! This is your bedchamber. I should perhaps tell you that Mr. Richmond sleeps at the end of the gallery, and must not on any account be disturbed.” “Why not?” enquired Hugo.

“Mr. Richmond suffers from insomnia, sir. The least sound brings him broad awake.” “What, a lad of his age?” exclaimed Hugo.

“Mr. Richmond’s constitution is not strong,” explained Chollacombe, opening the door into a large, wainscoted room, hung with faded blue damask, and commanding a distant view of the sea beyond the Marsh. “This is Grooby, sir. His lordship dines in fifteen minutes, Grooby.”

The valet, an elderly man of somewhat lugubrious mien, bowed to the Major, and said in a voice of settled gloom: “I have everything ready for you, sir. Allow me to assist you to take off your coat!”

“If you want to assist me, pull off my boots!” said Hugo. “And never mind handling them with gloves! If I’m to be ready in fifteen minutes, I shall have to be pretty wick, as we say in Yorkshire.”

Grooby, kneeling before him, as he sat with his legs stretched out, had already drawn one muddied boot half off, but he paused, and looked up, saying earnestly: “Don’t, Master Hugh!”

“Don’t what?” asked Hugo, ripping off his neckcloth, and tossing it aside. “Say what they do in Yorkshire, sir. Not if you can avoid it! I’m sure I ask your pardon, but you don’t know his lordship like I do, and you want to be careful, sir—very careful!” The blue eyes looked down at him for an inscrutable moment. “Ay,” Hugo drawled. “Happen you’re reet!”

The valet heaved a despairing sigh, and returned to his task. The boots off, he would have helped Hugo to remove his coat, but Hugo kindly but firmly put him out of the room, saying that he could dress himself more speedily if left alone. He shut the door on Grooby’s protest, let his breath go in a long Phew! and began, very speedily indeed, to strip off his coat and breeches.

When he presently emerged from his room, he found Grooby hovering in the gallery. Grooby said that he had waited to escort him back to the saloon, in case he should have forgotten his way; but it was evident, from the expert eye he ran over his protégé’s attire, that his real purpose was to assure himself that no sartorial solecism had been committed. It was a pity, but not a solecism, that the Major had not provided himself with knee-smalls, but his long-tailed coat was by Scott, and well-enough; his linen was decently starched; and his shoe-strings ironed. He favoured a more modest style than was fashionable, wearing no jewellery, sporting no inordinately high collar, and arranging his neckcloth neatly, but with none of the exquisite folds that, distinguished the tie of a dandy or a Corinthian. Grooby regretted the absence of a quizzing-glass and a fob, but on the whole he was inclined to think that so large a man was right to adopt a plain mode.

The Major entered the saloon one minute before the stipulated time, thereby winning a measure of approval from his grandfather. Lord Darracott’s brows shot up; he said: “Well, at all events you’re not a dawdler! I’ll say that for you. Make your bow to your aunts, and your cousin! Lady Aurelia, Mrs. Darracott, you ’ll allow me to present Hugh to you; Anthea, you’ll look after your cousin: show him the way about!”

The Major, receiving a formal bow from a Roman-nosed matron in a turban, and the smallest of stiff curtsies from a tall girl who looked at him with quelling indifference, turned his eyes apprehensively towards the third lady. Mrs. Darracott, her heart wrung (as she afterwards explained to her daughter), smiled at him, and gave him her hand. “How do you do?” she said. “I am so happy to meet you! So vexed, too, that I wasn’t dressed quite in time to welcome you when you arrived. Not but what that might have made it worse for you—I mean, so many strange new relations! I daresay you must be perfectly bewildered.” He did not kiss her hand, but he shook it warmly, and thanked her, smiling down at her so gratefully that she almost wished she had braved my lord’s displeasure, and placed Hugo instead of Matthew beside her at the dinner-table.

She and Chollacombe had arranged the table, and an arduous labour it had been, necessitating the use of a slate and much chalk. The result was not ideal, but, as Chollacombe very sensibly pointed out, the ideal was not to be achieved with a party of nine persons, all of them related, and too many of them brothers. In this unexceptionable way Chollacombe was able to convey to Mrs. Darracott the unwisdom of placing Claud within Vincent’s orbit. She perfectly understood him; and he perfectly understood that when she said that his lordship would certainly wish to have Vincent on his left hand she meant that she was not going to expose the hapless newcomer to the full force of his lordship’s trenchant conversation. In the end, though the table was necessarily uneven, with Lady Aurelia, Richmond, and Claud on one side, and Vincent, Anthea, Hugo, and Matthew on the other, Claud was as far removed as was possible from Vincent, Hugo from Lord Darracott, and Anthea had been placed between Hugo and Vincent, in which position she must willy-nilly shield Hugo from Vincent’s tongue.

The arrangement was not entirely happy, however, as Mrs. Darracott soon perceived; for although Vincent was keeping his grandfather amused, and Richmond was nobly trying to entertain his aunt, Matthew divided his attention equally between herself and his plate; and Anthea, determined to cold-shoulder her intended-suitor at the outset, replied to his tentative attempts to engage her interest with icy civility, and in a manner that did not encourage him to persevere. Mrs. Darracott, scandalized by such a display of gaucherie, tried several times to catch her daughter’s eye, but never once succeeded.

Hugo, with a hostile uncle on his left and a frozen damsel on his right, meekly ate his dinner, and took stock of as many of his relations as came within view. Of these the most attractive were Mrs. Darracott, and Richmond, who was not quite obscured from Hugo’s sight by the epergne in the centre of the table. Hugo thought he seemed a friendly boy: a trifle resty, perhaps; light at hand, like so many high-spirited but spoilt youngsters. He was talking to his aunt: a most alarming female, Hugo thought, eyeing her in awe, and admiring Richmond’s address. Then Richmond chanced to turn his head away from Lady Aurelia, and, seeing that his cousin was looking at him, he smiled shyly. Yes, a nice lad: worth a dozen of the Tulip beside him! Not that Hugo had the least objection to the fops of Society. Being blessed with a vast tolerance he was able to regard Claud with amusement, enjoying the extravagances and the affectations which exasperated Lord Darracott and Matthew. Claud was wearing a coat which represented the highest kick of fashion, and had come (he said) straight from the hands of Nugee. His father told him that it made him look ridiculous, which of course it did, with its wasp-waist, and its shoulders built up into absurd peaks, but there was no need to comb the lad’s hair in public; and certainly no need for that brother of his to have said that he couldn’t help but look ridiculous.

Hugo ventured to steal a glance at the unyielding profile on his right. Not a beauty, his cousin Anthea; but she was pretty enough, and not just in the common style. Her figure was tall and graceful, and she had remarkably fine eyes, with long, curling lashes; but she looked to be a disagreeable girl, every bit as contemptuous as the appalling old windsucker at the head of the table.

He was debating within himself how soon he would be able to escape from the home of his ancestors when he found that he was being addressed by his uncle, who told him, rather sharply, that Mrs. Darracott was speaking to him.

She had, in fact, seized the excuse afforded by Lord Darracott’s asking Richmond some question, across Lady Aurelia, to try to draw into conversation the poor young man who was being, she felt, shamefully neglected. She wanted to know if he had found all he needed in his bedchamber, and to tell him, with a motherly smile, that he had only to ask her, or the housekeeper, if there was anything he wished for. He thanked her, but assured her that there was nothing: he would be very comfortable.

Claud, satisfied that his grandfather’s attention was being engaged by Vincent, shook his head. “You won’t,” he said. “Couldn’t be. I don’t know where they’ve put you, but it don’t signify: there ain’t a comfortable room in the house.”

“Nonsense!” said Matthew impatiently.

“Why, you said so yourself, sir!” exclaimed Claud. “What’s more, you always say it. The last time you had to come down here you said—”

“Oh, be quiet!” interrupted his father. “It is a very old house, and naturally—” “Yes, and falling to bits,” corroborated Claud.