The Unknown Ajax Read online

  Richmond burst into a crow of joy. ‘Lord, what a famous lark! I wish I might have seen it! Hunting the squirrel!’

  ‘No, no, how can you say such a thing?’ protested Vincent, in a pained voice. ‘How often have I told you that such tricks as that are not at all the thing? I wonder if I can be losing my precision of eye?’

  ‘A stupid and ill-natured prank,’ pronounced Lady Aurelia, with measured severity. ‘If I find that Claud has sustained any injury I shall be excessively displeased.’

  ‘Then I do most sincerely trust he has escaped injury, Mama. Unfortunately, a sharp bend in the road almost immediately hid the scene from my view, so I can give you no very certain information on that head. But never mind! Crimplesham is following me, with my luggage, you know, and I am sure we may depend upon him to render my brother all the assistance in his power. What is the time? Should I, do you think, present myself to my grandfather at once, or– No, I perceive that it lacks only ten minutes to five. I have brought my evening-dress with me, but it will take me quite an hour to dress without Crimplesham’s aid. You do still dine at six, I daresay? Such a depressing habit I find it! And my anxiety about Claud to make it worse! Poor fellow! But he shouldn’t have urged his postboys to hold the road when I wished to give him the go-by: really, I think he almost deserves to sustain some injury for being so foolish!’

  When Mrs Darracott learned of this episode, which she very soon did, from Richmond, who could not keep such a good story to himself, she was much shocked. It all went to show, she told Anthea, that everything she had ever felt about Vincent had been correct: he showed an unsteadiness of character which she would be very sorry to see in any son of hers; his temper was jealous; he was idle and expensive; and, unless she much mistook the matter (which was not at all likely), he had such libertine propensities as must cause his poor father to suffer the gravest anxiety. Or, she amended, the penance she had undergone that afternoon still fresh in her memory, they would have done so if Matthew had the smallest regard for anything but his own troubles. As for the stoic calm with which Lady Aurelia had received the news of what might well prove to have been a serious accident, that, said Mrs Darracott, was something that quite passed her understanding. Had any son of hers been overturned into a ditch she would have had the horses put-to immediately, and dashed to his rescue. She was extremely attached to Lady Aurelia, but it was impossible to forbear the thought that if Claud were to be presently borne into the house with his neck broken it would be a judgment on her.

  But no judgment fell on Lady Aurelia. Claud, arriving at Darracott Place half-an-hour later, had sustained no injury, except to his temper. This, however, had been seriously impaired, and he complained so bitterly and at such length of the usage to which he had been subjected that his father lost patience, and said testily: ‘Oh, that’s enough, that’s enough! Vincent forced your near wheels into the ditch, and it cost you twenty minutes to haul the chaise back on to the road! Very vexing, but no harm done! If you’re at outs with Vincent, go and plant him a facer! Don’t come whining to me, like a sickly girl!’

  Even Richmond, who wholeheartedly despised Claud, felt that this advice was unkind. His dislike of all forms of violence apart, Claud was both slighter and shorter than his brother: no match for him under any circumstances. He said, with pardonable indignation: ‘Dash it, he’d throw me out of the window!’

  ‘Well, go away and change your dress!’ said Matthew. ‘It won’t be Vincent, but your grandfather, who will throw you out of the window if you keep him waiting for his dinner!’

  This dreadful warning had the effect of sending Claud out of the room with much the mien and speed of a coursing hare. His father and Richmond both laughed, but Mrs Darracott was moved to say that she thought the boy had been very unkindly treated.

  ‘Oh, pooh!’ replied Matthew impatiently. ‘If he had ever had one half the tricks played on him which I had to endure when I was a lad it would have been the better for him! Besides, it’s his own fault, with his silly daintification, and his finicking ways. I don’t blame Vincent for making game of him!’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say that making rough game of a younger brother was conduct quite unbecoming in a man of eight-and-twenty, but Matthew had begun to pout, and so she refrained, knowing as well as everyone else that the ill-will Vincent bore Claud was to some extent shared by him, and did not spring in either of them from any particular dislike of Claud’s dandyism.

  Five years separated the brothers. In appearance they were not unalike, each having the aquiline nose and rather sunken eye which made them unmistakeable Darracotts; but Claud was by far the better-looking, his features being more delicate, his complexion less swarthy, and his countenance unmarred by the deep, almost sneering lines that characterized both Vincent and Lord Darracott. In general, Claud’s expression was one of slightly vacuous amiability; Vincent’s was sardonic, and frequently unpleasant.

  In all but their features they were dissimilar. Vincent had a reckless intrepidity which drove him into all manner of dangerous exploits; Claud, though not (he hoped) hen-hearted, felt not the smallest impulse to ride straight at the worst oxer in the county, or to take the shine (at the risk of his neck) out of every other top-sawyer on the road; while as for putting on the gloves with Gentleman Jackson, there was almost nothing he less wished to do. But he was not without ambition. It was his ardent desire to become just such a leader of Fashion, such an arbiter of Taste, as Mr Brummell had been, until so short a time ago. He grudged Vincent none of his fame as a member of the Corinthian set; it would not have gratified him in the least to be hailed as an out-and-outer, a regular dash, or a right cool fish: his heart was set on becoming the chief Pink of the Ton.

  This ambition found no favour at all in the eyes of his parents, and would, indeed, have been impossible to realize had not a stroke of amazing good fortune befallen Claud. Hardly had he reached his majority when the maternal uncle after whom he had been named died, and left him the heir to a comfortable independence. Nothing then stood between him and the achievement of his goal but a want of genius. Try as he would he could neither create a new quirk of fashion, nor hit upon some original eccentricity which would make him instantly famous. He was obliged to exaggerate the prevailing mode, and to adopt as his own the tricks and mannerisms of other and more ingenious dandies, and somehow these expedients did not quite answer the purpose.

  Vincent, of course, recognized every one of these plagiarisms, but what would have amused him in a young brother no plumper in the pocket than he was himself became a matter for bitter contempt when Claud inherited an easy competence. Vincent, with nothing but his allowance and the erratic generosity of his grandfather to depend on, lived precariously on the edge of Dun Territory. He was a gamester, and his luck had more than once saved him from being run quite off his legs; but he had several times been out-of-town, as the saying was; and he was no stranger to an obliging individual known to every gentleman seeking to raise the wind as Old Tens-in-the-Hundred. Envy and resentment changed his indifference to Claud into rancorous dislike. He was irritated by everything Claud did, whether it was wasting his blunt on the reclining of his private chaise, or being such a muckworm as to travel behind job-horses. Nothing short of seeing Claud rolled-up would soften his dislike, and of that there was small likelihood: Claud’s fortune was genteel rather than handsome, but he had no taste for gaming or racing, and, like his mother, he knew how to hold household.

  It was an added source of exasperation in Vincent to know that his tongue had no power to wound Claud. Nothing short of being tipped into a ditch stirred Claud to resentment; and if he thought about Vincent at all it was with no other emotion than a sort of mild surprise. None of his brother’s hazardous exploits awoke in his breast a spark of envy or of emulation: he envied Vincent only his splendid shoulders, and the incomparable blacking which made his boots shine like mirrors. Unfortunately both these desirable possessio