The Unknown Ajax Read online

  ‘Yes, love,’ said Hugo, smiling very kindly at her. ‘I know right enough, but happen you’d better not say it!’

  ‘Oh, no! It sounds most improper! I wouldn’t say it to anyone but – Hugo, how dare you call me love?’

  ‘Did I do that?’ he asked incredulously.

  ‘You know very well you did! What is more, it is by far more improper than anything I said!’

  ‘It must have slipped out,’ said Hugo feebly. ‘It’s a common expression in the north!’

  ‘Like lass, no doubt! And if you think, sir, that just because I grew fagged to death with telling you not to call me that, you are at liberty to call me anything else that comes into your head –’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he intervened hastily. He shook his head in self-condemnation. ‘I wasn’t minding my tongue. The instant our Claud’s not by to give me a nudge it’s down with my apple-cart again! Eh, but it’s downright disheartening!’

  ‘And d-don’t call me m-ma’am either!’ said Anthea, in a hopelessly unsteady voice.

  He heaved a disconsolate sigh. ‘I thought it would please you – Cousin Anthea!’

  ‘You did not! You are an abominable person, Hugo! You’ve done nothing but make a May-game of us all ever since you set foot inside the house, while as for the whiskers you tell – !’

  ‘Not whiskers, Cousin Anthea!’ he pleaded.

  ‘Whiskers!’ she repeated firmly. ‘Besides acting the dunce –’

  ‘Nay, I was always a terrible gawky!’

  ‘– and talking broad Yorkshire on the least provocation!’

  ‘But I told you how it is with me!’

  ‘You did! You said you couldn’t help but do so whenever you are scared, and if that wasn’t a whisker I never heard one! Well! If you spent your time hoaxing them all in your regiment I shouldn’t wonder at it if you were compelled to sell out!’ said Anthea, nodding darkly.

  ‘Worse!’ said the woebegone sinner before her. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t discover it, but there! I might have known –’

  ‘Hugo – ! You – you –’

  He laughed. ‘Yes, Cousin Anthea?’

  ‘Where did you go to school?’ demanded Anthea sternly.

  ‘That’s a long time ago,’ he objected. ‘There’s so much has happened to me since then –’

  ‘More whiskers!’ said Anthea, casting up her eyes.

  ‘Well, it was – it was a school not so very far from London,’ he disclosed, looking sheepish.

  ‘Eton?’

  ‘Nay, lass!’ he exclaimed, shocked. ‘What would I have been doing at a place like that?’

  ‘Wearing your tutor to death, I should think. But now I come to think of it I know you can’t have been at Eton, for you must have met Vincent there. Harrow?’

  He looked at her for a moment, and then grinned, and nodded.

  ‘And why have you told no one that you were there?’

  ‘Well, no one asked me,’ he replied. ‘If it comes to that, Claud hasn’t told me he was at Eton!’

  ‘No, but he hasn’t done his best to make you think he was educated at a charity school!’

  ‘Now, what have I ever said –’

  ‘Hugo, you deliberately tried to talk like your groom! They cannot have allowed you to do so at Harrow!’

  He smiled. ‘No, but I was very broad in my speech before I went there, and I had it in my ears in the holidays, so that I’ve never really lost it. My grandfather – not this one! –’

  ‘I know!’ she interpolated. ‘T’gaffer!’

  There was an appreciative twinkle in his eye. ‘Ay, t’gaffer! Well, he spoke good Yorkshire all his life, but I got skelped for doing it – being Quality-make! But I do use Yorkshire expressions now-and-now – when the occasion calls for them! And in the regiment – cutting a joke, you know!’

  ‘Yes, I understand that! Like Richmond saying things in the broadest Sussex – he does it beautifully, and so did Oliver! Only Grandpapa disliked it, and made them stop doing it. He said it would get to be a habit, and I must own it became very tedious. But you, Hugo, talked Yorkshire to hoax us!’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly that,’ he said. ‘I’d no notion of hoaxing anybody when I came here, but when I saw the way you were all of you pretty well expecting me to eat with my knife – eh, lass, I couldn’t resist!’

  ‘How anyone who looks as you do can be so mad-brained – !’ she marvelled. ‘If ever I hear of you in Newgate I shall know you owed your downfall to a prank you couldn’t resist going into full-fling!’

  ‘I’ll be lucky if it’s no worse,’ he said pessimistically. ‘Granddad was used to say I’d end on the gallows, all for the sake of cutting a joke. Mind you, I didn’t think to find myself in the suds over this, because I hadn’t been in the house above an hour before I was wondering how soon I could escape! I’d no more notion of remaining here than of flying to the moon.’

  ‘What will you do?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ll bring myself home!’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘You do mean to remain, then?’

  ‘If I get what I want.’

  ‘The Dower House?’

  ‘Nay, that’s a small matter! I’ll tell you what it is one of these days, but I’m not so very sure I can get it yet, so happen I’ll do best to keep it to myself.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t tell anyone!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘The thing is you might say I’d no hope of getting it,’ he explained. An odd little smile came into his eyes as he saw her puzzled frown. ‘I’d be all dashed down in a minute,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That would never do!’

  Thirteen

  If the Major did not succeed in wholly reconciling Mrs Darracott to Richmond’s expedition, he did contrive, with the aid of much tact and patience, to convince her that to protest against it would only serve to make Richmond feel that he was tied to her apron-strings. Perceiving from her suddenly thoughtful expression that he had struck home, he enlarged gently upon this theme; but it soon became apparent that while she could be persuaded to agree (with a sigh) that Richmond must be allowed to spread his wings, any suggestion that she should support his ambition to enter upon a military career threw her instantly on the defensive. In a rush of volubility, she explained why this was not to be thought of, her reasons ranging over a wide field which began with the delicacy of Richmond’s constitution, and ended with the clinching statement that Lord Darracott would not hear of it. Not being one (as he himself phrased it) to fling his cap after lost causes, he let the matter rest, devoting his energies instead to the task of soothing her fear that Vincent was imbued with a sinister determination to corrupt the morals of his young cousin. To do this without setting up her back by the least hint that few things would bore Vincent more than to be obliged to sponsor Richmond into his own or any other social circle called for no little ingenuity; and it spoke volumes for Hugo’s adroit handling of the situation that Mrs Darracott should later have told her daughter that no one would ever know what a comfort dear Hugo was to her. She added that he was like a son to her; and, upon Anthea’s objecting that only fifteen years lay between them, replied, with great dignity, that in mediæval times it would not have been considered remarkable had she become a mother at an even earlier age.

  So Richmond was allowed to set forth for Sevenoaks with no other manifestation of maternal concern than a few injunctions to be sure that his bed at the Crown had been well aired before he got between possibly damp sheets; to wrap himself up while watching the fight (because however warm he might suppose himself to be nothing could be more depended upon to give him a chill than sitting about in the open air); to go to bed in good time; to remember that buttered crab and roast pork were alike fatal to his digestion; to resist any attempts made by persons unnamed to lead him into excess; to be careful always to have a clean handkerchief in his pocket; and, finally