The Unknown Ajax Read online

  Grooby, kneeling before him, as he sat with his legs stretched out, had already drawn one muddied boot half off, but he paused, and looked up, saying earnestly: ‘Don’t, Master Hugh!’

  ‘Don’t what?’ asked Hugo, ripping off his neckcloth, and tossing it aside.

  ‘Say what they do in Yorkshire, sir. Not if you can avoid it! I’m sure I ask your pardon, but you don’t know his lordship like I do, and you want to be careful, sir – very careful!’

  The blue eyes looked down at him for an inscrutable moment. ‘Ay,’ Hugo drawled. ‘Happen you’re reet!’

  The valet heaved a despairing sigh, and returned to his task. The boots off, he would have helped Hugo to remove his coat, but Hugo kindly but firmly put him out of the room, saying that he could dress himself more speedily if left alone. He shut the door on Grooby’s protests, let his breath go in a long Phew! and began, very speedily indeed, to strip off his coat and breeches. When he presently emerged from his room, he found Grooby hovering in the gallery. Grooby said that he had waited to escort him back to the saloon, in case he should have forgotten his way; but it was evident, from the expert eye he ran over his protégé’s attire, that his real purpose was to assure himself that no sartorial solecism had been committed. It was a pity, but not a solecism, that the Major had not provided himself with knee-smalls, but his long-tailed coat was by Scott, and well-enough; his linen was decently starched; and his shoe-strings ironed. He favoured a more modest style than was fashionable, wearing no jewellery, sporting no inordinately high collar, and arranging his neckcloth neatly, but with none of the exquisite folds that distinguished the tie of a dandy or a Corinthian. Grooby regretted the absence of a quizzing-glass and a fob, but on the whole he was inclined to think that so large a man was right to adopt a plain mode.

  The Major entered the saloon one minute before the stipulated time, thereby winning a measure of approval from his grandfather. Lord Darracott’s brows shot up; he said: ‘Well, at all events you’re not a dawdler! I’ll say that for you. Make your bow to your aunts, and your cousin! Lady Aurelia, Mrs Darracott, you’ll allow me to present Hugh to you; Anthea, you’ll look after your cousin: show him the way about!’

  The Major, receiving a formal bow from a Roman-nosed matron in a turban, and the smallest of stiff curtsies from a tall girl who looked at him with quelling indifference, turned his eyes apprehensively towards the third lady. Mrs Darracott, her heart wrung (as she afterwards explained to her daughter), smiled at him, and gave him her hand. ‘How do you do?’ she said. ‘I am so happy to meet you! So vexed, too, that I wasn’t dressed quite in time to welcome you when you arrived. Not but what that might have made it worse for you – I mean, so many strange new relations! I daresay you must be perfectly bewildered.’

  He did not kiss her hand, but he shook it warmly, and thanked her, smiling down at her so gratefully that she almost wished she had braved my lord’s displeasure, and placed Hugo instead of Matthew beside her at the dinner-table.

  She and Chollacombe had arranged the table, and an arduous labour it had been, necessitating the use of a slate and much chalk. The result was not ideal, but, as Chollacombe very sensibly pointed out, the ideal was not to be achieved with a party of nine persons, all of them related, and too many of them brothers. In this unexceptionable way Chollacombe was able to convey to Mrs Darracott the unwisdom of placing Claud within Vincent’s orbit. She perfectly understood him; and he perfectly understood that when she said that his lordship would certainly wish to have Vincent on his left hand she meant that she was not going to expose the hapless newcomer to the full force of his lordship’s trenchant conversation. In the end, though the table was necessarily uneven, with Lady Aurelia, Richmond, and Claud on one side, and Vincent, Anthea, Hugo, and Matthew on the other, Claud was as far removed as was possible from Vincent, Hugo from Lord Darracott, and Anthea had been placed between Hugo and Vincent, in which position she must willy-nilly shield Hugo from Vincent’s tongue.

  The arrangement was not entirely happy, however, as Mrs Darracott soon perceived; for although Vincent was keeping his grandfather amused, and Richmond was nobly trying to entertain his aunt, Matthew divided his attention equally between herself and his plate; and Anthea, determined to cold-shoulder her intended-suitor at the outset, replied to his tentative attempts to engage her interest with icy civility, and in a manner that did not encourage him to persevere. Mrs Darracott, scandalized by such a display of gaucherie, tried several times to catch her daughter’s eye, but never once succeeded.

  Hugo, with a hostile uncle on his left and a frozen damsel on his right, meekly ate his dinner, and took stock of as many of his relations as came within his view. Of these the most attractive were Mrs Darracott, and Richmond, who was not quite obscured from Hugo’s sight by the epergne in the centre of the table. Hugo thought he seemed a friendly boy: a trifle resty, perhaps; light at hand, like so many high-spirited but spoilt youngsters. He was talking to his aunt: a most alarming female, Hugo thought, eyeing her in awe, and admiring Richmond’s address. Then Richmond chanced to turn his head away from Lady Aurelia, and, seeing that his cousin was looking at him, he smiled shyly. Yes, a nice lad: worth a dozen of the Tulip beside him! Not that Hugo had the least objection to the fops of Society. Being blessed with a vast tolerance he was able to regard Claud with amusement, enjoying the extravagances and the affectations which exasperated Lord Darracott and Matthew. Claud was wearing a coat which represented the highest kick of fashion, and had come (he said) straight from the hands of Nugee. His father told him that it made him look ridiculous, which of course it did, with its wasp-waist, and its shoulders built up into absurd peaks, but there was no need to comb the lad’s hair in public; and certainly no need for that brother of his to have said that he couldn’t help but look ridiculous.

  Hugo ventured to steal a glance at the unyielding profile on his right. Not a beauty, his cousin Anthea, but she was pretty enough, and not just in the common style. Her figure was tall and graceful, and she had remarkably fine eyes, with long, curling lashes; but she looked to be a disagreeable girl, every bit as contemptuous as the appalling old windsucker at the head of the table.

  He was debating within himself how soon he would be able to escape from the home of his ancestors when he found that he was being addressed by his uncle, who told him, rather sharply, that Mrs Darracott was speaking to him.

  She had, in fact, seized the excuse afforded by Lord Darracott’s asking Richmond some question, across Lady Aurelia, to try to draw into conversation the poor young man who was being, she felt, shamefully neglected. She wanted to know if he had found all he needed in his bedchamber, and to tell him, with a motherly smile, that he had only to ask her, or the housekeeper, if there was anything he wished for. He thanked her, but assured her that there was nothing: he would be very comfortable.

  Claud, satisfied that his grandfather’s attention was being engaged by Vincent, shook his head. ‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t be. I don’t know where they’ve put you, but it don’t signify: there ain’t a comfortable room in the house.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Matthew impatiently.

  ‘Why, you said so yourself, sir!’ exclaimed Claud. ‘What’s more, you always say it. The last time you had to come down here you said –’

  ‘Oh, be quiet!’ interrupted his father. ‘It is a very old house, and naturally –’

  ‘Yes, and falling to bits,’ corroborated Claud.

  Matthew, eyeing him almost with dislike, said: ‘That remark, my good boy, is as false as it is foolish!’

  ‘Well, if it ain’t falling to bits you can’t deny it’s being eaten to bits,’ said Claud, quite unabashed. ‘The last time I had to come, here I was kept awake half the night by rats chewing the wainscoting.’

  ‘Oh, not rats, Claud!’ protested Mrs Darracott. ‘Only a mouse! Not but what it’s perfectly true that the house does need repairing, while as for t