The Unknown Ajax (14 page)

“Well, I am going to stay!” replied Claud. “I’ll make him eat it, dashed if I won’t! He wants Hugo to model himself on Vincent. A nice cake Hugo would make of himself if he started aping the Corinthian set!”

“I would and-all,” said Hugo, who was listening to this with his shoulders propped against the wall, his arms folded across his great chest, and an appreciative grin on his face. “Of course you would! You can’t wear a Bird’s Eye Wipe, and fifteen capes, and a Bit-of-Blood hat unless you’re a top-sawyer, and you ain’t! Told us you weren’t! What’s more, you couldn’t wear a coat like that one of Vincent’s even if you were, because you’re a dashed sight too big already. You’d have all the street-urchins clamouring to know where the Fair was going to be held. You put yourself in my hands! I’ll turn you out in new trim—show you the proper mode—all in print—no finery, but up to the nines!”

Hugo shook his head. “Nay,” he said mournfully, “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, lad.”

“Dashed if I don’t have a touch at it! Yes, and don’t say nay, or call me lad!” “Nay then!” expostulated Hugo, opening his innocent eyes wide.

Chapter 7

If the Major nursed a hope that his elegant cousin’s determination to give him a new touch would not survive his wrath, he was soon obliged to abandon it. A crusading spirit had entered Claud’s bosom, and before the day was out he had succeeded in cornering the Major, whom he found writing a letter in one of the smaller saloons. He had given much thought to a difficult problem, and he had decided that the first step must be a bolt to the village, where he would himself superintend the choice of hats, boots, gloves, knee-smalls, neckcloths, waistcoat, and shirts, and summon his own tailor to bring his pattern-card to his lodging in Duke Street. Gathering from this programme that a bolt to the village signified a visit to the Metropolis, the Major declined the threat. He was of the opinion that Lord Darracott would cup up extremely stiff if such a plan were even mooted. “Thought of that too,” countered Claud. “Say you have the toothache! I’ll offer to drive to London with you, and take you to a good tooth-drawer. No need to tell the old gentleman I’m going to rig you out in style.”

The Major said that he thought his lordship had too much know to be bamboozled, and Claud made the disheartening discovery that his pupil was as obstinate as he was amiable, and so woodheaded that although he listened to what was said to him he seemed to be incapable of taking it in. He agreed that to present a good appearance was of the first importance; when it was pointed out to him that the points of his shirt-collars were so moderate as to be positively dowdy he said he had been afraid that was so from the start; when told that Nugee or Stultz would turn him out in smarter style than Scott, he nodded; but whenever he had been worked up to the point (as Claud thought) of making the necessary alterations to his attire it became apparent that either he had not been attending, or had failed to grasp, the meaning of what had been said to him.

“Cast your ogles over me!” Claud adjured. “Don’t want to boast, but I assure you this rig of mine is precise to a pin!”

“Ay, you’re as fine as five pence,” said Hugo, obediently looking him over. “Well, I flatter myself this coat is an excellent fit. I don’t say it would do for you, because you haven’t the figure for it. Not but what you could wear a Cumberland corset, you know. Just to nip you in at the waist!”

“That ’ud be the thing,” agreed Hugo.

“No need to broaden the shoulders, but a bit of wadding at the top of the sleeve would give ’em a modish peak.”

“So it would!”

“The sleeves must be gathered at the shoulder, too.” “Ay, they’d have to be.”

“And the tails made longer. Then, with a set of silver buttons—basket-work, I think; a natty waistcoat, and pantaloons of stockinette—not nankeen, or Angola—well, you see what I mean, coz?”

“I’d look champion.”

“You look as neat as wax,” said Claud. “Or trim as a trencher. Not champion!” “I’d look as neat as wax,” said Hugo tractably.

“Take my advice, and let Nugee make your coats! Vincent goes to Schweitzer and Davidson for his sporting toggery, and I rather fancy Weston made the coat he wore last night, but Nugee is the man for my money. Or Stultz. I’ll tell you what! Have a coat from each of ’em!”

“Nay, I’ve enough coats already,” said Hugo.

“Dash it, haven’t I been telling you for ever that they won’t do?” demanded Claud, in pardonable exasperation.

“Ay, you have, and I’m fairly nappered I didn’t meet you before I let Scott take my measurements,” said Hugo sadly.

A worse set-back was in store for the Pink of the Ton. When he pointed out to the Major that two cloak-bags and a portmanteau could not, by any stretch of the imagination, provide adequate accommodation for the number of shirts any aspirant to fashion must carry with him, he was, in his own phrase, floored by his pupil’s simple rejoinder that he had been informed that when staying in the country he might with perfect propriety make good the deficiencies of bucolic launderers with a Tommy.

“A Tommy?” gasped Claud, his eyes starting from their sockets. “A false shirt-front?” “Ay, that’s it,” nodded Hugo. “Only in the country, of course!”

A shudder ran through Claud’s frame. “No, no! Well, what I mean is—Dash it, coz!—No!” Encountering only a blank stare from the Major, Claud was moved to order Richmond’s man, Wellow, who was looking after Hugo, to render up to him any Tommies he might have found. Wellow naturally repeated this extraordinary command to his own master, with the result that when Richmond rode out with Anthea and Hugo next morning he warmly congratulated Hugo on having successfully bubbled Claud.

“Bubbled Claud? How did I do that?” asked Hugo.

“No, no, cousin, you won’t bubble me! Telling him you meant to eke out your skirts with Tommies! The silly gudgeon bade Wellow hand ’em over to him. Wellow thought he must be touched, for of course you have none.”

“There, now, I knew there was something I’d forgotten to pack!” said Hugo. “Yes, and you have also forgotten that since Grooby unpacked your luggage, and Wellow is waiting on you, everyone in the house knows that the Major’s linen is of the finest,” remarked Anthea.

“Now, that I am glad to hear, because I took care to buy the best,” confided Hugo. She cast a somewhat amused glance at him, but said nothing. Riding on the other side of the big bay, Richmond said diffidently: “You don’t mean to let Claud rig you out, do you?” “Eh, but I’m sorely tempted!” said Hugo. “I’d look gradely! That is, I would if I wore some kind of a corset, and that’s where the water sticks, for I’m one who likes to be comfortable.” “A corset?” exclaimed both his companions in chorus.

“To nip me in round the waist,” he explained. “Of all the impudence!” said Richmond. “You’ve a better figure than Claud!” He hesitated, and then said, with a slight stammer: “As a matter of fact—if you won’t take it amiss!—my grandfather says you look more the gentleman then Claud does!”

The Major showed no signs of offence, but he did not seem to be much elated either. “Well, if he said our Claud looked like a counter-coxcomb that’s not praising me to the skies,” he observed.

“Praising one to the skies is not one of Grandpapa’s weaknesses,” said Anthea, “You look what you are, cousin: a soldier! I don’t know how it is, but there is always a certain neatness that distinguishes them.”

“That’s due to Scott,” he replied. “There wasn’t much neatness about me, or any of us, barring poor Cadoux, in my Peninsular days. You’ll hear people talk about our jack-a-dandy green uniforms, but, Lord, you should have seen ’em by the time we got to Madrid!” That was quite enough for Richmond, who at once began to ply his cousin with questions about his campaigns. The Major replied to them in his good-natured way, but either because he was not a loquacious person, or because he had been forbidden to encourage Richmond’s interest in military matters, he was not as forthcoming as his young cousin had hoped he might be. Sometimes he was even a little disappointing, for when he was begged to describe the march to Talavera, or the battle of Salamanca, the only things he seemed to remember about the march were one or two ludicrous incidents in which he cut a comical but unheroic figure; and all he had to say about the battle was that the Light Bobs had had very little to do in it. Richmond, persevering, asked him if it had always been his ambition to become a soldier. His own romantic ardour glared in his eyes, but the Major’s reply was again disappointing. “Nay, I never thought of it when I was a lad. All I ever wanted to do was to get under everyone’s feet in the mill, or to run off up to the moors instead of minding my book.”

“What made you join?” enquired Anthea. “Was it because your father had been a soldier, perhaps?”

“There wasn’t much else I could do,” he explained. “It was this road, you see: I never framed to be a scholar, so it was no use thinking of the Church, or the Law; and as for tewing in the mill, my grandfather wouldn’t hear of it, because I was a gentleman’s son. So, as I’d no fancy for the navy, it had to be the army.”

It was evident that this prosaic speech daunted Richmond. He said “Oh!” in a flattened tone, and relapsed for some time into silence.

He had accompanied the Major and his sister on their ride at Anthea’s request. Lord Darracott had told her at the breakfast-table that she might usefully employ herself in making her cousin acquainted with the Darracott land, an attempt to throw them together so blatant that she could only be thankful that she had had the resolution to declare herself to the Major. More from a desire to be revenged on her grandfather than from reluctance to be tête-à-tête with Hugo, she had instantly invited Richmond to accompany her. In this she had been supported by Mrs. Darracott, whose notions of propriety, though constantly outraged by the careless Darracotts, were too nice to allow her to regard with complaisance the spectacle of her daughter’s jauntering about the countryside with a strange man (be he never so much her cousin) for her only escort. Richmond, hoping to be regaled with stirring tales of war, had agreed willingly to go, and although the Major had disappointed him, he was too well-mannered a boy to make an excuse to leave the small party, or to betray that he thought talk about boundaries, enclosures, right-of-way, advowsons, leases, and crops a dead bore. He had never had much interest in such matters, and knew far less about them than his sister, so his contributions to the task of instructing the heir were largely confined to a description of the various forms of sport to be obtained in the neighbourhood. The northern boundary to the estates being considerably nearer to the house than any other, they had set out in that direction. A nursery joke had had to be explained to Hugo. “And after that, which?” Richmond had asked his sister. “Kent or Sussex?”

“Kent,” she had decided; and then, flashing a smile at Hugo: “We have a foot in each county, you know. Here, we are in Kent, and it was here that the first Darracott—well, the first that was ever in England!—settled. There’s nothing left of the old Saxon manor, but it was certainly on the site of the present house. Darracott tradition has it that he was a person of consequence, but we—Richmond, and Vincent, and I—take leave to doubt that, because the original manor was quite small. That’s why the house lies so close to the northern boundary. It was much later that the family crept over into Sussex. Today, that part of Grandpapa’s lands is the most important, because of the rents, you know; but although Darracott Place has been pulled down, and rebuilt, and enlarged a great many times, no reigning Darracott has ever had the temerity to remove the original site. That would be flying in the face of tradition!—an unpardonable crime!”

So they had ridden towards the Weald, into more wooded country, and then eastward, above the Rother levels, for a little way, before dropping down again to the Marsh, and crossing the Military Canal at Appledore. The Marsh stretched before them, smiling and lush in the September sunshine, yet with a suggestion of eerie loneliness about it which made the Major exclaim, under his breath: “Eh, it’s a queer place!”

Just beyond Fairford, a cluster of alleys round a church, they had reined in their horses, so that the few landmarks could be more easily pointed out. Anthea had directed Hugo’s attention to the tower of Lydd Church, visible some six miles to the south-east, but although he bestowed a cursory glance on it his interest was claimed by the expanse of reclaimed land that lay between Lydd and Rye. Seen from the slight elevation on which Darracott Place had been built, the Marsh had appeared to be quite flat, with nothing but intersecting dykes, and, here and there, a few willows and thornbushes to relieve its tame monotony. His eye had been attracted by Rye, perched so unexpectedly high above the Marsh, and reminding him, in the distance, of the Point of Cassilhas, near Lisbon, where there had been a military hospital (in which he had languished for several painful weeks); and on the top of just such another steep, isolated hill a convent had been built. Now, standing on the edge of the Marsh, he perceived that it was not quite flat, but sloped slightly upwards towards the dunes that hid the sea from his sight. A road meandered erratically across it, but there was no traffic to be seen, and not so much as a shepherd’s cot afforded any sign of human habitation. There seemed to be no living things on the Marsh but sheep, gulls, a moorhen seeking safety in the rushes, and somewhere, sounding its unmistakable note, a peewit. The scene was peaceful, but it was not tame. As Anthea looked enquiringly at Hugo, he spoke the thought that came into his mind: “Do you meet flay-boggards, if you venture out when the light goes?”

“I don’t think so,” replied Anthea cautiously.