The Unknown Ajax (12 page)

“Exactly so, but I advise you not to say that within Grandpapa’s hearing.” She walked over to the first of six large window-embrasures, and stood looking out through the latticed panes, with her back turned to the Major.

“Before I show you our forebears, cousin, there is something I wish to say. No, not that: something I feel myself obliged to say! You may think it odd of me—even improper!—but I have a notion you are not quite as stupid as you would like us to believe. I daresay you may understand why it is that I find myself in the very awkward position of being forced to put myself, and you too, to the blush. I know Grandpapa well enough to be tolerably certain that he has ordered you to make me an offer.” She turned her head as she spoke, her colour a little heightened, but her eyes meeting the Major’s squarely. “If he had not already done so, he will. But I think he has. Am I right?”

“He didn’t precisely do that,” replied Hugo cautiously.

“He will. I hope you will summon up the courage to refuse to obey that particular command. Pray believe that nothing would induce me to obey it! If that seems to you uncivil, I beg your pardon, but—”

“Nay, I’m reet glad to hear you say it!” he responded ingenuously.

Her eyes narrowed in sudden amusement. “I was persuaded you would be. I must warn you, however, of pressure brought to bear on you—! You don’t know! He has ways of forcing us all to knock under: you may find yourself in a fix over it!”

“I may do that,” he acknowledged, “but I’ll be far if I make you an offer at his or any other man’s bidding!” He added hastily, as she broke into laughter: “The thing is, I’m by way of being promised already! Othergates, of course, it would be different.” “Good God! Did you tell Grandpapa so?”

“I’ve not told him yet,” owned Hugo sheepishly. “You were afraid to!”

“Nay, it was just that it wasn’t, seemingly, the reet moment for telling him!” he protested. She was looking scornful. “It never will be the right moment. You were afraid!” “Well, you weren’t so brave yourself, not to tell him you wouldn’t marry me,” he pointed out. “Yes, I was!” she retorted. “I would have told him so that instant I knew what he meant to do! I didn’t do so because—oh, you don’t understand! For me the case is quite otherwise!” “Ay, it would be,” he agreed.

“Well, it is, so you need not speak in that detestable way! Whenever I come to cuffs with Grandpapa it’s Mama who suffers for it, and she has enough to bear without being blamed for my sins I That’s why I asked you not to offer for me, so that Grandpapa couldn’t say it was my fault, or bully Mama into urging me to accept you. Heaven knows your shoulders are big enough, but I see you are just like the rest, and dare not square up to him!” The huge creature before her, looking the picture of guilt, said feebly: “It wasn’t that-a-way. The thing is, I’m in a bit of a hobble. It wouldn’t do for me to tell my grandfather I was promised, not before I was sure of it myself.”

“But aren’t you sure of it?” she asked, a good deal astonished.

“Well,” he temporized, once more rubbing his nose, “I am and I’m not There’s been nothing official as you might say. It’s—it’s been kept secret betwixt the pair of us. It was just before the last campaign, you see, and I was recalled in such a bang that there was no time to do aught but get my baggage together, and be off. What’s more there was no knowing but what I might have been killed, so it was thought best to keep it secret. And I haven’t been home since.”

“Good God, have you been engaged for two years?” she exclaimed. “Better nor that,” he said. “It was in the spring of ’15 that it happened, and now we’re in September. It seems to me I ought to make sure she hasn’t changed her mind before I speak to the old gentleman, and so far I haven’t been home.”

“But she must have written to you!”

“Er—no,” said Hugo, much discomposed. “She—well, there were reasons why she couldn’t do that!”

A dreadful suspicion occurred to Anthea. “Cousin do you mean—is she a—a lady of Quality?”

The Major shook a miserable head.

“Can’t she write?” Anthea asked, in a husked voice. “No,” confessed the Major.

Feeling a trifle weak, Anthea sat down on the window-seat. “Cousin, this is—this is positively terrible! You can have no notion—! What’s to be done?” “If you think I ought to tell the old gentleman—”

“No, no!” she said quickly. “On no account in the world! Of course, I see now why you didn’t say you wouldn’t offer for me! He would have been bound to have asked you why not, and—I beg your pardon for being so uncivil about that! No one could be brave enough to make that disclosure to him! But what are you going to do?”

The Major had the grace to look a little conscience-stricken. He said vaguely that he hadn’t yet made up his mind.

“I can’t think how you dared to come here at all,” said Anthea, knitting her brows. “To be sure, you didn’t know what Grandpapa was like, but you must have known that he would never tolerate that sort of marriage! In fact, it was because he is afraid that you might wish to marry someone he would think unworthy that he made this odious scheme to marry you to me. Cousin, you’re not in a hobble! you’re in the suds!”

The Major, who, by this time, had had the satisfaction of seeing that his judgment had not been at fault when he had decided that animation would greatly improve Miss Darracott, ventured to approach her, and to sit down. “I am and-all!” he agreed ruefully. “He won’t receive her, you know,” Anthea said. “It is useless to think he might come about. He never forgave your father, and he was his favourite son.”

“Nay, I wouldn’t bring her here.”

“That’s all very well, but you can’t expect the poor girl to wait for years and years to be married!” objected Anthea. “Besides, surely you would not like that yourself! If you’re thinking that Grandpapa may die soon, I must tell you that I don’t think there’s the least chance of it: he’s old, but not at all decrepit, you know!”

“Oh, no, I should think he’s good for a piece yet!” Hugo agreed. “But I’m not going to stay here for years and years.”

“He thinks you are,” she said doubtfully.

“Ay, but that’s just one of the daft notions he takes into his head. There’s no sense in stirring coals, so I didn’t tell him he’d got the wrong sow by the ear. Happen he’ll think it a good shuttance when I do tell him I’m off.”

“But how will you do?” she asked. “It’s he who holds the purse-strings, remember! I assure you he wouldn’t hesitate to draw them tight.”

He laughed. “Nay, he doesn’t hold my purse-strings!” “Ah, no! How stupid of me! You have your profession, and can afford to snap your fingers under his nose! Oh, how much I envy you!” She heaved a short sigh, but smiled immediately after, and said: “Did you come to look us over only? How long do you mean to stay?” “Well, that depends,” he said. “When I got the letter that told me the way things had fallen out, it fairly sent me to grass, for, not knowing anything about my family, I’d no notion how close to the succession I stood. Nothing will persuade my grandfather I wasn’t happy an a grig to be succeeding him—though why he should have thought anyone would want to inherit a house that’s falling to ruin, let alone encumbered estates, and a sackful of debts, has me fairly capped—but the truth is I wasn’t at all suited, and the first thing that came into my head was to see if there wasn’t a way out. That wouldn’t fadge, however, so—” He paused, considering. “Well, I made up my mind to it that I’d have to come here, whether or no.” “I can understand that you didn’t wish to do that while Grandpapa was alive.” “No,” he admitted. “But if I’ve to step into the old gentleman’s shoes, soon or late, it’ll be as well I shouldn’t be strange to the place, or the people. So when Lissett wrote to tell me I was to come here I did come. I don’t say I wouldn’t as lief have sent word his lordship might go to hell—eh, that slipped out! I’m reet sorry!”

“Don’t give it a thought!” said Anthea cordially. “I never before heard such beautiful words, I promise you!”

He smiled, but shook his head. “I’d have caught cold at that. What’s more, if his lordship and my father were at outs, that’s no concern of mine. My other grandfather had more rumgumption than any man I’ve ever known, and he always would have it that my father came by his deserts. He didn’t hold with a man’s marrying out of his own order, and, taking it by and large, I’d say he was in the reet of it. What with him on the one side, hammering it into me I was Quality-born, and Grandfather Darracott here looking at me as if I was a porriwiggle, I don’t know what I am!”

She went into a peal of laughter. “Oh, what is it? Porriwiggle?” He grinned. “It’s what we call a tadpole.”

That made her laugh more than ever. She said, wiping her eyes: “No, I don’t think anyone would liken you to a tadpole, cousin! Tell me about the girl you are going to marry! Is she pretty?”

“I don’t know if you’d say she was pretty. She—she has golden hair—corn-gold, you know—and blue eyes, with long lashes that curl. She has a straight little nose, and a mouth like a bow, and—and a complexion like strawberries and cream!” replied Hugo rhapsodically.