The Unknown Ajax (32 page)

The Major nodded. “Yes, very well! I heard you. I’ll go to him as soon as I’ve changed my clothes. Send Ferring up to my room, will you, Chollacombe?”

Chollacombe sighed, but attempted no remonstrance. For his own part, the Major’s invariable custom of putting off his riding-habit as soon as he came in from the stables met with his fullest approval, but my lord, he knew well, had no particular objection to the aroma inseparable from the horses, and every objection to being kept waiting for as long as five minutes. He went away, knowing from experience how useless it would be to remind the Major of this circumstance, or to hint to him that my lord was sadly out of temper. The Major discovered this for himself when he walked into the library some twenty minutes later. When last seen by him my lord had been unusually amiable; his brow was now thunderous, and he showed, by the nervous twitch of his fingers, and the throb of the pulse beside his grim, thin-lipped mouth, that something had happened to cast him into the worst of ill-humours. He was standing with his back to the fireplace, and he greeted his huge grandson with a fierce scowl and a barked demand to know where the devil he had been. “Over into Sussex, sir,” replied the Major, shutting the door. “Was there something you wanted me to do? I’m sorry.”

Lord Darracott seemed to be exerting himself to curb his temper. He did not answer the Major, but said abruptly: “I sent for you because I’ve had a letter from your uncle Matthew. I don’t know what maggot’s in his head, or where he came by the information he has sent me. He’s a damned fool, and always was! Anyone could gull him!”

The Major, though of the opinion that Matthew had rather more common-sense than any other member of the family, allowed this unflattering estimate to pass without comment, and waited with patience and equanimity for my lord to reach the kernel of whatever piece of information had raised his ire.

Lord Darracott, hungry for legitimate prey, glared more menacingly than before; and, failing to unnerve his grandson into committing the imprudence of answering him, snapped, with bitter loathing: “Dummy!” The gambit eliciting no more than a twinkle in the Major’s guileless blue eyes, he expressed, not for the first time, his burning desire to be told why Fate had seen fit to afflict him with a gapeseed for his heir; and came, at last, to the meat of the matter. “My son writes to inform me that that fellow—your maternal grandfather!—was the head of some curst firm or other—I don’t know anything about such things!—that goes by the name of Bray & Poulton. Is that so?”

The Major nodded. “Ay, that’s so. He was its founder. Uncle Jonas Henry is the head of it now, but at the first-end, when he was a little lad, he was just one of the pieceners—they’re the children that keep the frames filled, or join the cardlings for the slubbers—” “Uncle?” interrupted his lordship. “You told me you had none!”

“Nay, he’s no kith of mine,” replied Hugo soothingly. “It was what I used to call him when I was a lad myself, and he the best weaver in the Valley. He was a prime favourite with my granddad, but it wasn’t until near the back-end of his life that Granddad took him into partnership—having no one but me to succeed him, who hadn’t been bred to the wool trade.”

“Are you telling me, sir, that your maternal grandfather was a mill owner?” thundered my lord.

“Why, yes!” replied Hugo, smiling. “That’s what he rose to be, though he started as a weaver, like his father before him. He was as shrewd as he could hold together, my granddad—a reet knowing one!”

Stunned by this disclosure, it was several moments before his lordship was able to command his voice enough to utter: “A man of substance?”

“Ay, he was well to pass,” replied the Major. “You might say that he addled a mort of brass in his day, tewing and toiling—which he did to the end, think on! It wasn’t often you wouldn’t have found him at the mill, wearing his brat, even when he’d got to be one of the stiffest men in the whole of the West Riding. His brass wasn’t come by easily, either,” he added. “It was make and scrape with him before he’d addled enough to get agate—not that he was what we call sneck-drawn, in the north. It was just that he knew how to hold household, like any good Yorkshireman.” He paused, perceiving that my lord was staring at him in mingled incredulity and wrath, and added, in a tone of kindly explanation: “That wasn’t the way he made his fortune, of course: it was only the start of it. He was flue-full of mother-wit: the longest-headed man I ever knew, and with a longsight to match it, what’s more! Fly shuttles were invented before he was born, of course, but it wasn’t until he was five years old that the first of the power-looms was put into use—and precious few liking it overly much! He saw it when he was a piecener himself: he told me once that that was the start of his life. Seemingly, he had never any other notion in his head from that time on but what was tied up with machines. He was one of the first to buy Cartwright’s loom—not the one they use now: that didn’t come till a matter of a dozen years later; but a queer old machine you’d think even-down antiquated today. All that was long before I was born or thought of: by the time I was out of short coats such things weren’t considered newfangled any more, and the mill, which the better part of Huddersfield said Granddad had run mad to build, was doing fine!” He smiled, and said apologetically: “Nay, I might as well talk Spanish to you, sir, mightn’t I?” His smile broadened to a grin. “And if any wool-man could hear me explaining the trade to you he’d laugh himself into stitches, think on! You could floor me with any one of a dozen questions, for all I know is little more than I picked up, running about the mill when my grandfather’s back was turned. The thing was that in the old days there was no such thing as a mill, where the packs went in at one door, as you might say, and came out of another as cloths—serges, kerseymeres, friezes, and the like. Cartwright set up a factory in Doncaster, where weaving and spinning both were done; but Granddad went one better nor that—levelling at the moon, they used to say—until they saw that old, ramshackle mill growing and growing! Today, the name of Bray is known to the trade the world over.” This intelligence did not appear to afford Lord Darracott the smallest gratification. He said, in the voice of one goaded to exasperation: “I know nothing about mills, and care less! Answer me this, sir! Is it true, what your uncle writes me—that you inherited a fortune from Bray?”

“Well,” replied the Major cautiously, “I don’t know just what you’d call a fortune, sir. I’d say myself I was pretty well-inlaid.”

“Don’t come any niffy-naffy, shabby-genteel airs over me!” barked his lordship. “Tell me without any damned roundaboutation how much you’re worth!”

The Major rubbed his nose. “Nay, that’s what I can’t do!” he confessed. “You can’t, eh? I guessed as much! Trust Matthew to exaggerate out of all recognition! Why can’t you?”

“I don’t know myself, sir,” said Hugo, making a clean breast of it.

“What the devil do you mean by that, idiot?” demanded his lordship. “Presumably you know what your grandfather left you!”

“Oh, I know what his private fortune was, reet enough!” said Hugo. “It’s invested mostly in the Funds, and brings in between fifteen and sixteen thousand pounds a year; but that’s not the whole of it. I’ve a sizeable share in the mill over and above that. I can’t tell you what they may be worth to me. Times have been bad lately, what with Luddite riots, and the depression that followed close on the Peace. The harvests were bad last year, too: my uncle Jonas Henry wrote me that in Yorkshire wheat rose to above a guinea the bushel. However, things seem to be on the mend now, so—”

“Are you telling me that Bray cut up to the tune of half a million?” said my lord, in a strange voice.

“It would be about that figure—apart from the mill,” Hugo agreed.

Lord Darracott was shaken by a sudden gust of rage: “How dared you, sir, deceive me?” he exclaimed.

“Nay then! I never did so,” Hugo reminded him. “It was in this very room that I told you I’d plenty of brass.”

“I remember! I supposed you to be referring to prize-money—as you knew!” Hugo smiled down at him. “And I told you that my other grandfather had left his brass to me. You said I might do what I pleased with my granddad’s savings, but that you wanted to hear no more of them or him. So I didn’t tell you any more, for, to own the truth, sir, I was better suited, at that time, to keep my tongue between my teeth until I’d had time to look about me. What’s more,” he added reminiscently, “I wasn’t ettling to remain here above a sennight—particularly when you told me you had it all settled I was to wed my cousin Anthea. Eh, it was a wonder I didn’t take to my heels there and then!” Lord Darracott stared at him, his lips tightly gripped together, and his eyes smouldering. He did not speak, but after a moment went to the wing-chair on one side of the fireplace, and sat down, his hands grasping its arms. The Major sat down too, saying: “Happen it’s as well my uncle wrote to you, for it’s time we reached an understanding. It chances that I’d a letter myself by today’s post, from Uncle Jonas Henry.” He chuckled. “Seemingly he’s as throng as he can be, and a trifle hackled with me for loitering here. I shall have to post off to Huddersfield next week, sir—and a bear-garden jaw I’ll get when I arrive there, if I know Jonas Henry!”

Lord Darracott said, with an effort: “Have the goodness to tell me whether you mean to return, or to stay there!”

“Nay, that’s for you to say, sir.”

The fierce old eyes flashed. “It appears I have no hold over you!”

The Major considered him, not unsympathetically. “Well, that’s true enough, of course, but don’t fatch yourself over it, sir! If you’re thinking of the brass, I’ll tell you to your head it makes no difference: you’d have had no hold over me any road. But all the brass in the world wouldn’t help me to cross this threshold if you didn’t choose to let me.” His lordship gave a contemptuous snort of unmirthful laughter, but said in a milder tone: “Well, what do you mean to do?”

“Unless you dislike it, I’d choose, once I’ve settled my affairs, and talked things over with Jonas Henry—I’m by way of being his sleeping partner, you see—to come back. I’d be very well suited if you’d let me have the Dower House. That’s assuming you wish me to take up my quarters here. If not—well, there’s my grandfather’s house above Huddersfield, or I might buy a house in the Shires, perhaps. Time enough to decide what I’ll do—and maybe it won’t be for me to decide, either.”

Lord Darracott looked intently at him. “Am I to understand you mean to marry Anthea?” “If she’ll have me,” said the Major simply.

“She should be flattered! In these hurly-burly times I don’t doubt your fortune will make you acceptable to any female. I dare swear every matchmaking mother in town will cast out lures to you: you have only to throw the handkerchief,” said my lord sardonically. “Well, as I’m doing no throwing of handkerchiefs we’ll never know if you’re right. Myself, I shouldn’t think it, but there’s no sense in breaking squares over what won’t come to pass. If my cousin won’t have me—eh, that doesn’t bear thinking about!”

“H’m! You seem to have become wondrous great with her!” remarked his lordship. “Does she know what your circumstances are?”

“Well, I told her, but she didn’t believe a word of it,” replied Hugo. “And what she’s going to say when she finds I wasn’t trying to bamboozle her has me in the devil of a quake!” he confessed.

His lordship returned no answer to this, but said presently, keeping his eyes fixed on the Major’s face: “What’s your purpose in wishing to live here while I’m above ground?” “Much what yours was, when you sent for me, sir. Since I must succeed you, it will be as well your people should know me, and I them. I’ve the devil of a lot to learn, too, about the management of estates, for that’s something that’s never come in my way.” He paused, returning my lord’s gaze very steadily. “All to one, they’re in bad shape, sir, so happen it’s a good thing I’ve plenty of brass.”

“Ah!” My lord’s hands clenched on the arms of his chair. “We come to it at last, do we? I don’t need you to tell me my land’s in bad heart! I know better by far than you what is crying out to be done, and what it would cost to do it! But if you think to make yourself master here in my time, you may take your brass, as you call it, to hell with you!”

“Nay, that’s foolishness, sir!” Hugo remonstrated. “I’ve no wish to be master here, for I’d make wretched work of it, as ignorant as I am. But soon or late it will be my fortune that sets matters to rights, and I’d liefer it was soon. If I put money into the place, I’ll not be kept in the dark about any question that properly concerns me, so it’s likely we’ll fratch now-and-now, but I’ll be no more master than Glossop is. I’d be the junior partner.” “I’ll brook no interference from you or anyone with what’s my own!” declared his lordship. “You’d like to make me your pensioner, wouldn’t you? I’ll see you damned first!” “There’s nothing I’d like less,” replied Hugo. “And what you do with your own is none of my business. But what’s done with settled estates you won’t deny is very much my business.” He saw his grandfather stiffen; and said, smiling a trifle wryly: “You bade me talk without roundaboutation, sir! I’m not such a dummy that I can’t see for myself that there have been things done the trustees never knew of, for they’d not have consented to what’s nothing more nor less than waste.”

“Are you threatening me?” demanded his lordship.

Hugo shook his head. “Lord, no, sir! I don’t doubt it was forced on you. I’m neither threatening, nor asking questions. I’ll set things to rights—and keep ’em so! That’s all.” “It is, is it?” said his lordship, eyeing him with grim humour. “I begin to think that you’re a damned, encroaching, managing fellow, Hugh!”