The Unknown Ajax Read online

  ‘How did you acquit yourself?’ Anthea asked her brother. ‘Was your teacher odious or kind?’

  ‘Oh, odious!’ replied Richmond, laughing. ‘I’m a mere whipster, with no more precision of eye than a farm-hand, but at least I didn’t overturn the phaeton!’

  Vincent, whose penetrating glance little escaped, put up his glass, and levelled it at the hem of Anthea’s dress. ‘It seems unlikely,’ he said, ‘but one might almost be led to infer that you had been sweeping the carpets, dear Anthea, or even clearing ash out of the grates.’

  She looked down, and gave an exclamation of annoyance. ‘How vexatious! I thought I had taken such pains to hold my skirt up, too! No, we have not yet been reduced quite to that: I have been showing the East Wing to our cousin here, and the floors are filthy.’

  ‘The East Wing?’ said Richmond. ‘What the devil for? There’s nothing to be seen there!’

  ‘Oh, Grandpapa desired me to take him to the picture-gallery, and when we had reached the end of it I thought it a good opportunity to show him the original part of the house. He certainly ought to see it, but I’m sorry I did take him there now, for I must change my dress again.’

  ‘You don’t mean to say you dragged poor Cousin Hugo all over that tumbledown barrack?’

  ‘No, of course not. I let him see the parlours, that’s all – and quite enough to bring on a fit of the dismals, wasn’t it, cousin?’

  ‘Well, it’s melancholy to see the place falling into ruin,’ Hugo admitted. ‘Still, I’d like to go all over it one day.’

  ‘You had better not,’ Richmond advised him. ‘The last time I went to rummage amongst the lumber for something I wanted I nearly put my leg through a rotten floor-board in one of the attics. At all events, don’t venture without me! I’ll show you over, if you’re set on it. Then, if you go through the floor, and break a limb, I can summon all the able-bodied men on the estate to come and carry you to your room!’

  ‘It ’ud take a tidy few,’ agreed Hugo, grinning.

  ‘Why this desire to inspect a ruin?’ enquired Vincent. ‘Pride of prospective possession, or do you perhaps mean to restore it, in due course?’

  ‘Nay, I don’t know,’ said Hugo vaguely.

  ‘Obviously you don’t. The cost of restoring it – a singularly useless thing to do, by the by! – would very soon run you off your legs.’

  ‘Happen you’re reet,’ said Hugo amicably. ‘I’m just by way of being interested in our first-ends. It’s early days to be making plans.’

  ‘Just so!’ said Vincent, with so much meaning in his voice that Richmond intervened quickly, asking Hugo if he had seen the Van Dyck.

  ‘He means the portrait of the first Ralph Darracott,’ explained Vincent smoothly.

  ‘An unnecessary piece of information, Vincent!’ said Anthea.

  ‘Ay, so it is,’ nodded Hugo. ‘Now, wait a piece, while I cast my mind back! Ay, I have it! That was the picture of the gentleman with the long curls. What’s more,’ he added, with naïve pride in this feat of memory, ‘it’s the one my cousin told me I must look at particularly. Van Dyck would be the man who painted it. I’ve heard of him before, think on.’

  Richmond hurried into speech. ‘I don’t know much about pictures myself, or care for them, but I like Ralph I. He was a great gun! Most of our ancestors were either ramshackle fellows, or dead bores. Did Anthea tell you about the second Ralph? Not that she knows the half of it! If ever there was a loose fish – ! A regular thatchgallows!’

  ‘Yes!’ Anthea interrupted. ‘And isn’t it mortifying to reflect on the number of Darracotts who look like him? You favour the first Ralph, and so did Oliver, a little; but Uncle Granville, and Papa, and Aunt Caroline, and Grandpapa himself are clearly descended from Ralph II, while as for Vincent –’

  ‘– you have only to place a powdered wig on his head and no one would know them apart,’ supplied Vincent. ‘Thank you, my love! I must derive what consolation I may from the knowledge that at least I resemble one of my forebears!’

  At this point a welcome interruption occurred. Claud, hearing voices in the hall, came out of one of the saloons, and, addressing himself to Hugo, said severely: ‘Been looking for you all over!’

  ‘What’s amiss?’ Hugo asked.

  ‘Just what I expected!’ said Claud. ‘Didn’t I tell you the odds were my grandfather would blame me if you was to vex him? Dash it if he hasn’t told me he shall hold me responsible for you!’

  ‘Ee, that’s bad!’ said Hugo, shaking his head. ‘If I were you, I’d make off back to London as fast as ever I could, lad.’

  Claud looked a little doubtful. ‘Well, I could do that,’ he admitted. ‘At least– No, it wouldn’t fadge. Don’t want my father to take a pet, and he would, because he don’t want to offend the old man. There’s another thing, too.’

  He paused, and it was evident from his darkling brow that he was brooding over a serious affront. His brother, halfway up the stairs, stood looking down at him contemptuously. ‘Don’t keep us in suspense!’ he begged. ‘What inducement has been held out to you?’

  ‘He didn’t hold out any inducement. No inducement he could hold out. I haven’t swallowed a spider! I don’t haunt Pontius Pilate’s doorstep! I don’t have to hang on my grandfather’s sleeve!’ He perceived that Vincent had turned, and was about to descend the stairs again, and temporized. ‘Well, what I mean is, I haven’t yet! No saying when I might have to, of course!’

  ‘Fighting shy, brother?’ said Vincent.

  ‘I’m not fighting at all,’ replied Claud frankly. ‘I don’t say I wouldn’t like to see someone plant you a facer, because I would, but I don’t care for boxing myself, never did! Besides, I’m not up to your weight.’

  ‘Remember that, and don’t crow so loudly, little dunghillcock!’ said Vincent, resuming his progress upstairs.

  ‘One of these days,’ said Claud, as soon as Vincent was out of earshot, ‘somebody will do Vincent a mischief!’

  ‘Gammon!’ retorted Richmond. ‘It was you who stirred the coals, not Vincent! Cutting at him like that!’

  ‘Well, I’ve been vexed to death!’ said Claud. ‘I don’t mind it when my grandfather comes the ugly. I don’t mind his cursing me. I don’t mind it when he says I’ve got no brains. I don’t mind his calling me a fribble, or a popinjay, or a Bartholomew baby. But when he tells me I look like a demi-beau – a demi-beau! –’

  ‘Claud!’ breathed Anthea, deeply shocked. ‘He did not say that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he did! To my face! Said he didn’t want Hugh tricked out to look like me, too. Said I could mend Hugh’s speech, but he wouldn’t have me teaching him to look like a counter-coxcomb! That to me! He must be queer in his attic!’

  ‘Depend upon it, that’s it!’ she said. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t stay another day where you have been so insulted!’

  ‘Well, I am going to stay!’ replied Claud. ‘I’ll make him eat it, dashed if I won’t! He wants Hugo to model himself on Vincent. A nice cake Hugo would make of himself if he started aping the Corinthian set!’

  ‘I would and-all,’ said Hugo, who was listening to this with his shoulders propped against the wall, his arms folded across his great chest, and an appreciative grin on his face.

  ‘Of course you would! You can’t wear a Bird’s Eye Wipe, and fifteen capes, and a Bit-of-Blood hat unless you’re a top-sawyer, and you ain’t! Told us you weren’t! What’s more, you couldn’t wear a coat like that one of Vincent’s even if you were, because you’re a dashed sight too big already. You’d have all the street-urchins clamouring to know where the Fair was going to be held. You put yourself in my hands! I’ll turn you out in new trim – show you the proper mode – all in print – no finery, but up to the nines!’

  Hugo shook his head. ‘Nay,’ he said mournfully, ‘you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, lad.’

&n