The Unknown Ajax Read online

  ‘Tell you what, love?’

  ‘I don’t know. That is, it is so hard to put it into words! Lately – before you came here – I have felt uneasy about Richmond. I can’t precisely tell why, except that he was in such flat despair when Grandpapa ordered him to put the thought of a military career out of his head. He wasn’t sullen, or rebellious – he never is, you know! – but dawdling, and languid, not caring for anything very much, his spirits low, and depressed – Mama was afraid he would fall into a lethargy! And then, all at once, and for no reason that I could perceive, he became alive again. He has a great deal of reserve, but one can always tell by his eyes: they are so very speaking! Mama says that when they are bright it is a sign that he is in good health, but it’s not so – not wholly! When he was a little boy, and in dangerous mischief, they used to look alight, just as I’ve seen them again and again in these past months. Once, when I went for a sail with him and Jem in the Seamew, a gale blew up, and we had the narrowest of escapes from foundering. I was never so frightened in my life – well, it was the horridest thing! – but Richmond enjoyed it! He had that look: his eyes positively blazing – smiling, too, in the most inhuman way! It was as though he liked fighting the waves, and being in the greatest peril, which Jem afterwards told me we were!’

  Hugo nodded. ‘Ay, he would: he’s that road. It’s excitement he likes, and it leads him into dare-devilry, because he’s bored, and too full of energy for the loitering life he leads. I’ve met his like before. Don’t fret, lass! He’s only a colt yet – a resty, high-couraged colt that needs exercise, and breaking to bridle. He puts me in mind of a friend of mine: just such a wiry, crazy care-for-nobody, but the best duty-officer I ever knew. By hedge or by stile we must bring his lordship round to the notion of a Hussar regiment for the lad.’

  ‘If one could!’ she sighed. ‘He thinks Richmond will outgrow that ambition – has done so already, perhaps.’

  ‘He’ll learn his mistake,’ the Major said dryly. ‘If he won’t yield now, with a good grace, he’ll suffer a bad back-cast the moment the lad comes of age, and joins as a volunteer. You may lay your life that’s what he’ll do, and his lordship wouldn’t be very well suited with that!’

  ‘No, indeed! Or any of us!’ she exclaimed. ‘But he’s not nineteen yet, and sometimes I feel such an apprehension that he may do something reckless, or even outrageous, because he’s not used to being crossed, besides never counting the cost before he plunges into the most hare-brained scrapes! You may say I’m indulging crotchets, but when he looked at you today it flashed across my mind that he is in a scrape, and that you know what it is. Do you, Hugo?’

  ‘Nay, I’m not in his confidence,’ he replied.

  She scanned his face searchingly but to no avail. ‘When he shot that look at you I knew that he didn’t go to bed when he said goodnight to us, and it was plain that you knew that at least.’

  He laughed. ‘Don’t fidget yourself, love! He took it into his head to try if he could play a prank on me, young varmint!’

  She looked relieved, but not wholly convinced. After thinking it over for a moment, she said: ‘I think he does sometimes slip out of the house when we believe him to be in bed. I went to his room once, in the middle of the night, because Mama had the toothache, and remembered that she had given her bottle of laudanum to him when he had a bad tic. I knocked and knocked on his door, and even called to him, but he didn’t answer me, and I thought then that he wasn’t there. But when I told him about it in the morning he said that he had taken a few drops of laudanum himself, which had made him sleep like the dead.’

  ‘Well, that’s very possible,’ Hugo answered.

  ‘Yes, only – one can’t but own that the Darracotts all have a – a certain unsteadiness of character – if you know what I mean!’

  ‘I know just what you mean, and the Darracotts have not all that particular unsteadiness of character!’

  She smiled. ‘Well, I hope not! But after Claud’s escapade –’

  ‘So that’s what’s put you into the hips!’ he interrupted. ‘You may be easy! I fancy we’ll receive no drunken invasion on our Richmond’s account. I’d a notion myself he might be in mischief, but he’s told me it’s not so. Think no more of it, love!’

  She said gratefully: ‘If Richmond knows your eye is on him I shouldn’t think he’d dare plunge into a scrape. I am very much obliged to you!’

  He had the satisfaction of seeing the worried look vanish from her face; but the reassurance he had conveyed to her was no reflection of his own state of mind. He found himself in a quandary; for while, on the one hand, the task of informing Lord Darracott of his discovery and his suspicion was naturally repugnant to him, and certainly fatal to his future relationship with Richmond, on the other, he was unable to persuade himself that Richmond’s word might be accepted without reservation. He had come away from his interview with the boy considerably disquieted, and at a loss to know what course to pursue. He was too much a stranger to be able to win Richmond’s confidence, and even doubted whether Richmond gave his confidence to anyone. He had thought from the outside that Richmond was oddly aloof. The reason had not been far to seek, but it had not been until he came to grips with him that he realized how impenetrable was the barrier behind which Richmond dwelled. An impulse to encourage Anthea to question him herself had no sooner occurred to him than he had rejected it. Richmond, in his judgment, was neither young enough nor old enough to tolerate the interference of a sister. There seemed to be nothing for it (since his uneasy suspicion rested on no solid foundation) but to watch Richmond unobtrusively, and to hope that the knowledge that there was one member of the household at least who was on the alert would make him chary of pursuing any unlawful form of amusement.

  A third course swiftly presented itself. Vincent, encountering him on his way home from one of his tours of the estate with my lord’s bailiff, elected to ride back to the house with him, and said, as soon as Glossop had parted company with the cousins: ‘I hear you’ve laid the Darracott ghost, coz. Poor Richmond! But I think he should have known better than to have entertained the least hope of shaking your stolidity.’

  ‘So he told you, did he?’ Hugo said slowly.

  ‘But of course!’ Vincent returned, his brows lifting in mockery. ‘He may have misjudged you, but he knows me well enough not to dream of withholding such an excellent story from me.’

  ‘I should have thought of that before,’ said Hugo. He turned his head, the hint of his disarming grin on his countenance. ‘You were in the right of it: dull, brainless Ajax fairly hits me off! Happen you’re the only one amongst us with the power to bring that lad to his senses. Did he tell you all that passed between us last night?’

  ‘He didn’t withhold the cream of the jest from me, if that’s what you mean,’ replied Vincent, with his glinting smile.

  ‘Remember I’m blockish!’ said Hugo. ‘What was the cream of it, by your reckoning?’

  ‘Do you know, dear cousin, there have been moments when I have wondered whether I was a trifle out in my first judgment of you? How comforting it is to meet with reassurance on this head! The cream of the jest was the conclusion you jumped to, in your somewhat ingenuous fashion – if I may be permitted so to describe it!’

  Quite unmoved by the studied offensiveness of this answer, Hugo asked straitly: ‘Has it never occurred to you that there’s something devilish smoky about that halfling’s docility? He doesn’t want for spirit: he’s full of spunk, and as meedless as be-damned besides!’

  ‘I am afraid I have never given the matter a thought,’ said Vincent, smothering a yawn.

  ‘Give it one now, then! You may be too well-accustomed to the state of affairs here to be struck by what must fairly stagger anyone coming, as I did, as a stranger amongst you. I told you once that I’ve had more experience of lads than you, and I’ll tell you now that I hadn’t been here above a sennight before I ha