The Unknown Ajax Read online

  ‘Just blowing a cloud,’ replied Hugo, lifting his hand to show the butt of the cigar between his fingers.

  ‘A filthy habit – if you don’t object to my saying so?’

  ‘Nay, why should I?’

  Vincent mounted the steps leisurely. ‘Who am I to instruct you? I daresay you know why you should not, at all events.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know that!’ Hugo said serenely.

  ‘Your compliance is only equalled by your amiability – and I find both insupportable.’

  ‘There’s no need to tell me that. I’m sorry for it, but happen you’d find me insupportable whatever I did.’

  ‘Almost undoubtedly. I find virtue a dead bore. I have very little myself. I don’t know how it is, but the virtuous are invariably dull, which I can’t bring myself to pardon.’

  Hugo’s deep chuckle sounded. ‘Nay then! You’re trying to hoax me! To think of you calling me virtuous! You’ll have me blushing like a lass!’ He pitched the butt of his cigar into one of the flowerbeds below. When he turned again towards Vincent he spoke in a different tone, and with less than his usual drawl. ‘Sithee, Vincent! Squaring with me won’t help either of us. I’d be very well suited if you stood in my shoes, but there’s no way of bringing that about, and naught for either of us to do but make the best of it.’

  ‘Yes, you wrote as much to my grandfather, didn’t you?’ Vincent said. ‘A mistake! It didn’t turn him up sweet at all. He’s a hard man to gammon, and that, you know, was doing it much too brown.’

  Hugo heaved a despairing sigh. ‘You’re as daft as he is! I can understand that you should think it a grand thing to inherit all this, for you’ve known it your life long, and I don’t doubt it’s home to you. It’s not home to me, and why any of you should have got it stuck in your heads that I’d want to be saddled with a place that’s falling to ruin I’ll be damned if I know!’

  ‘To you, I feel sure, it must seem a sad, rubbishing place – almost a hovel, in fact!’

  ‘Nay, I didn’t mean to offend you! It’s a fine old house, but it’s like everything else I’ve seen: there’s been no brass spent on it for many a day, and it’ll take a mountain of brass to set it to rights. As for the land, I’ve a notion there’s something more than brass needed, and that’s better management. I can see I’ll have a hard job on, and one to which I wasn’t bred. Eh, it’s more like a millstone tied round my neck than a honey-fall!’

  ‘And the title, of course, means nothing to you!’

  ‘I’d as lief be without it,’ admitted Hugo.

  ‘Humdudgeon! Are you really such a Jack Adams as to think I’ll swallow that?’

  ‘Suit yourself!’ Hugo answered. ‘If that’s the way it is with you, there’s no good talking.’

  ‘None whatsoever – for you would certainly be unable to understand what it means to be Darracott of Darracott Place! You do not appear to me even to understand that I dislike you!’

  ‘Oh, I understand that!’ Hugo said, with another chuckle. ‘If there were any cliffs here you’d be ettling to push me over the edge, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘The temptation would be almost irresistible, but I hardly think I should go to those lengths. Let us say that if you tottered on the verge I shouldn’t pull you back from it!’ Vincent retorted.

  ‘It ’ud be a daft thing for you to do, think on,’ said Hugo reflectively. ‘You’d go over with me, choose how!’

  Ten

  Major Darracott spent the next week acquainting himself as best he might with his future inheritance. He received no assistance and very little encouragement from his grandfather, his tentative suggestion that my lord should enlighten his ignorance being met with a crushing snub. My lord had not enjoyed the novel experience of being left without a word to say, nor was he accustomed to meet with disagreement in the bosom of his family. His sons and his grandsons, and even his spirited granddaughter, had learnt the wisdom of refraining from argument, in general receiving his more dogmatic utterances in silence, and never forcing him into the position of being obliged to defend the indefensible. Such divergent opinions as they might have held remained unuttered, under which arrangement they were at liberty, for anything his lordship cared, to differ from him as much as they chose. It had come, therefore, as a shock to him when Hugo (an upstart, as near to being misbegotten as made no odds), instead of keeping to himself his shabby-genteel notions of morality had not only owned to them without hesitation when challenged, but had had the effrontery to maintain them in the teeth of his grandfather’s disapprobation. That he had taken little part in the resultant argument in no way alleviated my lord’s anger. What he had said had served to compel Matthew, uneasily conscious of his office, to support him. My lord was indifferent to Claud’s revolt, but Matthew’s defection had infuriated him. Forgetting that it was not Hugo, but Vincent, who had tossed the bone of dissension into their midst, he saw Hugo as an impudent make-bait, too full of north-country bumptiousness to realize that he had nothing to do but to hold his peace amongst the relatives who had magnanimously admitted him to a place within their ranks. Far from conducting himself with becoming humility he had, in his maddeningly simple way, exposed the weakness of his grandfather’s case; and, to crown his iniquity, he had recognized and laughed at the absurdity of an aphorism hastily uttered as a clincher to a losing argument.

  The hostility which the Major’s style in the saddle had done something to diminish flamed up again; and when he expressed a desire to be instructed in the extent and management of the estates he was seen as an encroaching mushroom, a burr, and an irreclaimable commoner, and was informed that his cousin Anthea would tell him as much as it was needful for him to know. My lord added that if he thought he would be allowed to put a finger in a pie not yet his own he would soon learn his mistake.

  It had not been Anthea’s intention to gratify her grandsire by devoting any appreciable part of her time to the entertainment or the education of Hugo Darracott. She had not disliked her one expedition in his company: indeed, she had enjoyed it, for she had discovered him to be likeable and amusing. But she had detected in him a certain audacity which set her on her guard, and made her determined to keep him (in a perfectly friendly way) at arm’s length. Had he tried to advance himself in her good graces, or to coax her to ride with him, she would have hardened her heart, and abandoned him to Claud; but the Major committed neither of these imprudences. When Mrs Darracott, her earlier scruples forgotten, suggested that Anthea should take him to see some view, or picturesque village, he said that he did not wish to be a nuisance to his cousin, who must not feel it to be her duty to entertain him when, no doubt, she had many more important tasks on hand.

  Unlike her mother, who thought the Major’s meekness very touching, Anthea regarded him with a good deal of suspicion. She could detect nothing but humble deference in his smile, but she was finding it increasingly difficult to believe that he was either meek or biddable. His countenance was certainly good-humoured, and his blue eyes guileless, but about his firm-lipped mouth and decided chin there was not a trace of weakness or of humility; and although he was unassertive, making no attempt to force his way into the family circle, or to take an uninvited part in any conversation, this modesty carried with it very little suggestion of bashfulness. It had more than once occurred to Anthea that he had a good deal of quiet assurance. He could scarcely be unaware of the hostility with which he was regarded by at least three members of the household; a shy man, she thought, must have been flustered by the knowledge that his every word and movement came under critical survey; but she had yet to see him betray any sign of nervousness. It was significant, too, that the servants, usually quick to take their tone from their betters, treated him with respect, and served him with every appearance of willingness. It might have been expected that he should have the habit of command, but Anthea could not discover that he did command: he merely requested.

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