The Nonesuch Read online

  ‘No, I suppose not. Oh, well! As long as he don’t start abusing you – !’

  ‘I don’t think he will. But if he should happen to pick out a grievance, oblige me by keeping two circumstances in mind! That he will not be doing so under any roof of yours, and that I am really quite capable of fighting my own battles!’

  ‘Don’t I know it!’ Julian retorted. ‘And of giving nasty set-downs! Very well! I’ll behave with all the propriety in the world – if I can!’ He opened the door, but looked over his shoulder, grinning, as a sudden thought assailed him. ‘Oh, by Jupiter! Won’t our Bond Street beau stagger the neighbourhood?’

  Eleven

  If Julian’s demeanour, when he met his cousin Laurence on the following morning, put Sir Waldo forcibly in mind of a stiff-legged terrier, not aggressively inclined but giving warning by his slightly raised bristles that he was prepared to repel any attack, this wary hostility soon vanished. Laurence greeted him in the friendliest manner, with apparently no memory of their last stormy encounter; so Julian, naturally sunny-tempered, immediately responded in kind. Laurence was very full of liveliness and wit, giving a droll account of his valet’s horror at the privations of life at Broom Hall, and describing the various hazards he had himself encountered. ‘Not that I mean to complain, coz!’ he assured Sir Waldo. ‘After all, I know where the rotten floor-board is now, and even if the ceiling does come down I daresay I may not be lying helpless in bed at the time. I don’t regard a few scraps of plaster descending on me as anything to make a dust about! To think that I should have been as cross as crabs because old Joseph left the place to you! You’re very welcome to it, Waldo!’

  This was clearly so well-intentioned that Julian instantly regaled him with a highly-coloured account of his own first night in the house, when he had put his foot through the sheet; and before very long they were both of them roasting Sir Waldo in lighthearted, if temporary, alliance.

  ‘Jackstraws!’ he remarked. ‘A little more, and you’ll find yourselves cast upon the world! Laurie, if you want to ride I can mount you, but if you prefer to drive the matter becomes more complicated. There’s my phaeton, and there’s a gig, and there’s a tub of a coach which I imagine old Joseph must have inherited from his grandfather. We rumble to balls and rout-parties in that: Julian thinks it’s just the thing. You won’t – and nor, for that matter, do I. You can have the phaeton when I’m not using it myself, but –’

  ‘Oh, lord, no!’ Laurence interrupted. ‘I shouldn’t think of taking your horses out! The gig will do well enough, if I should want to drive myself anywhere.’

  ‘No, I’ll tell you what, Waldo!’ said Julian. ‘The Buffer at the Crown has a whisky, which he lets out on hire: that’s the thing for Laurie! He won’t like the look of the gig.’

  ‘What you mean is that you’re afraid he will want it when you do,’ said Sir Waldo. ‘Take him into the village, and hire the whisky!’

  ‘I will. I mean to call at the Rectory, too, to see how Miss Chartley does after yesterday’s adventure. Are you using the phaeton this morning?’ Julian asked hopefully.

  ‘No, you may have it.’

  ‘Much obliged! Have you driven Waldo’s bays, Laurie?’

  ‘Oh, I shall leave driving them to you! I’m not a pupil of the great Nonesuch!’ said Laurence, with a titter.

  ‘I daresay you are a better fiddler than I am, however,’ replied Julian, with determined civility.

  ‘Waldo would not say so!’

  ‘Fudge! What do you think, Waldo?’

  Sir Waldo was reading one of his letters, and said, without looking up from it: ‘Think about what?’

  ‘Our handling of the reins. Which of us is the better whip? You are to decide!’

  ‘Impossible! Two halfpennies in a purse!’

  ‘Of all the knaggy things to say!’ Julian exclaimed indignantly. ‘If that’s what you think us I wonder at your letting either of us drive your precious bays!’

  ‘Yes, so do I,’ agreed Sir Waldo, getting up from the breakfast-table. ‘Have you a fancy to attend a ball, Laurie?’

  ‘Good God, coz, do you have balls in these rural parts? What do they dance? minuets?’

  ‘Country-dances and reels – but this one is to be a waltzing-ball, isn’t it, Julian?’

  Julian laughed. ‘Some waltzing, at all events. You’d be surprised if you knew how gay we’ve been, Laurie!’

  ‘I think you had better take him to visit Lady Colebatch,’ said Sir Waldo.

  ‘Puffing him off to the neighbourhood? Very well!’

  Laurence was by no means sure that he wished to become acquainted with his cousins’ new friends. He was much addicted to ton parties, where all the guests were of high fashion, but country entertainments he thought abominably dull. However, when he learned that his cousins were engaged for almost every evening for some time to come he realized that unless he joined them in these rural festivities he would be condemned to solitude, so he yielded, and went away to change the frogged and braided dressing-gown in which he had chosen to breakfast for raiment more suited to paying country morning-visits.

  Julian, who had been mischievously looking forward to the effect his dandified cousin’s usual costume was likely to have on the neighbourhood, was disappointed to see, when Laurence came strolling into the stable yard, that he was not wearing the town-dress of a Bond Street beau, but had exchanged his delicately hued pantaloons and his mirror-bright Hessian boots for breeches of pale yellow and white-topped riding-boots; and his exaggeratedly long-tailed coat of superfine for a redingote. However, this garment was raised above the ordinary by its stiffly wadded shoulders and its enormous breast flaps; and both the Mathematical Tie which Laurence wore, and the height of his shirt-points, left nothing to be desired. Furthermore, the driving-coat which he tossed negligently into the phaeton bore upwards of a dozen capes. Julian advised him earnestly to put it on, warning him that the roads were very dusty. ‘You’ll be smothered in it!’ he prophesied. ‘It would be too bad, for you look very dapper-dog!’

  ‘I regret I can’t return the compliment, coz!’ said Laurence, surveying him through his quizzing-glass. ‘If you don’t object to my saying so, your rig is more that of a hayseed than of a Nonesuch!’

  ‘Oh, I gave up aping Waldo’s fashions when I found I couldn’t ape his skill!’ retorted Julian, with the blandest of smiles.

  Fortunately for the harmony of the day, Laurence recollected that a quarrel with Julian would do nothing to advance his cause with Waldo; so he suppressed a pretty stinging answer, and merely laughed, and said: ‘How wise!’ He then languidly waved aside an offer to yield the reins up to him, and climbed into the phaeton. No conversation was exchanged for the first few minutes; but after critically watching Julian’s handling of the mettlesome pair harnessed to the carriage, Laurence said: ‘You’re growing to be a regular dash. Pretty lively, ain’t they? What’s keeping Waldo here for so long?’

  ‘Why, you know, don’t you? He’s turning Broom Hall into another orphanage.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know that! He did the same with that place he bought in Surrey, but if he ever spent as much as one night in it it’s the first I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘That was different!’ objected Julian. ‘There’s the estate to be thought of here, and I can tell you it’s in a shocking way! No bailiff, either. Waldo is determined to bring it into good order before he leaves, which means the devil of a lot of work, you know.’

  ‘Lord, he must have a dozen men he could employ on that!’ Laurence said impatiently.

  ‘Well, he don’t choose to. Hallo, here comes the Squire! A very good sort of a man: wife all pretension: one son and two daughters!’ explained Julian, in a hurried undervoice, as he pulled up his horses. ‘Good-morning, sir! Not so hot today, is it? May I present my cousin to you? Mr Calver – Mr Mickleby!’