The Unknown Ajax (28 page)

“F-Fiddle!” uttered Anthea, shaken but staunch.

“I won’t deny the old gentleman threw me into a terrible quake when he told me the scheme he had in his mind,” pursued Hugo, making a clean breast of it. “It seemed to me there was only one thing for it: to shab off as fast I could before I found myself gapped! For of all the proud, disagreeable females—”

“Yes, but I—You know v-very well why I—”

“The way you sat there beside me at the dinner-table, never so much as looking at me!” he said reminiscently. “And not a word to be got from you but Yes, and No, except once, when you said Indeed! I thought you were reet cruel. There I was, scared out of my wits—” “You weren’t! You were not!”

“—scared out of my wits,” he repeated firmly, “and my heart in my shoes, and you weren’t even civil to me, let alone friendly!”

“You need not th-think I don’t know you are m-merely trying to overset me! You didn’t care a rush for any of us!”

“However, when you told me how it was,” he continued, still lost in reminiscence, “I saw I’d been mistaken in you. That was the first time you smiled at me. Ee, lass, you’ve got a lovely smile! Happen you don’t know the way it starts in your eyes, giving them such a mischievous look, as—”

“That will do!” interposed Anthea, rigorously suppressing a strong desire to encourage him to develop this agreeable theme.

“I was only trying to explain how I came to invent Amelia!” he said in an injured voice. “The thing was that when you smiled at me it set me cudgelling my brains to hit on some way I could get you to stop thinking you had to keep me at a distance, which I could see you’d be bound to do, the way his lordship was trying to throw us together, unless I could put it into your head that there was no reason why you should.”

“It is possible that you have the—the audacity to suppose that you can make me believe that I had only to smile to make you wish to marry me?” demanded Anthea, justly incensed. “Nay, I never said that!” he protested. “All I wanted was a friend! In fact,” he added, with the air of one brilliantly inspired, “it was Hobson’s Choice! I don’t say I wouldn’t liefer have made up to my Aunt Aurelia, mind, but—”

“Will you stop behaving in this odious fashion?” begged Anthea, in sore straits. “You are utterly without conduct, or—or propriety of taste! You would be very well-served if you did find yourself riveted to me! I promise you, you’d come home by weeping cross!” “Ay, I know I would,” he agreed. “A dog’s life I’d lead, with you riding rough-shod over me, as I don’t doubt you would, seeing that you’re such a shrew, but—”

“Exactly so! So why, pray, do you wish to be married to me?” said Anthea, pouncing on opportunity.

“Eh, lass, I thought you knew!” he answered, his eyes round with surprise. “To please his lordship, of course!”

Miss Darracott’s feelings threatened to overcome her. None of the rejoinders that rose to her lips seemed adequate to the occasion; she stared up in seething impotence at her tormentor; saw that he was watching her with an appreciative and extremely reprehensible twinkle in his eyes; and decided that the only way to deal with him was to pay him back in his own coin. So she said, with really very creditable calm: “I need scarcely tell you that that is an object with me too, but try as I will I can’t bring myself to the sticking-point.” “Come now, love, never say that!” he responded, in heartening accents. “To be sure, there’s a lot of me to swallow but you’re too game to be beaten on any suit!”

She shook her head. “There’s not enough of you to swallow,” she said. “I must tell you that my disposition, besides being shrewish, is mercenary. I am determined to marry a man of fortune. Large fortune!”

“Oh, I’ve plenty of brass!” he assured her.

“I am only interested in gold,” she said loftily. “Furthermore, I have no fancy for living in the Dower House.”

“Well, I can offer you a house in Yorkshire, if you think you could fancy that. I was meaning to see it, but—”

“Have you really a house in Yorkshire?” she asked suspiciously. “Of course I have!”

“There’s no of course about it!” she said, with asperity. “You tell such shocking whiskers that not the slightest dependence can be placed on anything you say! Where is this house?” “On the edge of the moor, by Huddersfield. That’s the trouble. When my grandfather gave up the old house, next to the mill, and we went to live at Axby House, it was right in the country, but the town’s been growing and growing, and it will grow still faster now the war’s over, and more and more machines are being invented, and put to use. I hardly recognized the place when I came home at the end of the war in the Peninsula. I don’t think you’d like it, love.” “No, not at all. I should want a house in London—in the best part, of course!” “Oh, we’ll have that!” he replied cheerfully.

“We shan’t have anything of the sort—I mean, we shouldn’t—because my Uncle Matthew has the town-house!”

“Well, there’s more than one house to be had in town!”

“Dear me, yes! How could I be so stupid? I might have known you meant to purchase a handsome establishment!”

“I was thinking of hiring one, myself.”

“No, no, only think how shabby! Next you will say that you don’t intend to have more than one house in the country!”

“Nay, I shan’t say that! I want one in Leicestershire.”

“Oh, in that case there’s no more to be said, for I’ve set my heart on one in the moon!” “You don’t mean that, love! Nay then, you can’t have thought!” he expostulated. “It’s much too far from town!”

An involuntary laugh escaped her, but she said: “I might have known you’d have an answer! Do you think we have now talked enough nonsense?”

“I’m not talking nonsense, lass. I’d give you the whole moon if I could, and throw in the stars for good measure,” he said, taking her hand, and kissing it. “You couldn’t be content with less?”

“You

—you are talking nonsense!” she said, feeling suddenly breathless, and more than a little startled. She was inexperienced in the art of flirtation, but it had certainly occurred to her on various occasions that in this her large cousin had the advantage of her. His methods (judged by such knowledge as she had acquired during one London Season) were original, but that he might be entertaining serious intentions she had not consciously considered. Nor had she looked into her own heart. She had accepted him, after her first mistrust, as a delightfully easy companion who had kept her in a ripple of amusement: not the hero of her vague imaginings, but a simple solid creature, wholly to be trusted. She now realized, with a sense of shock, that this enormous and apparently guileless intruder had taken the grossest advantage of her innocence, advancing by imperceptible but rapid stages from the position of a stranger to be treated with circumspection to that of the close friend in whom she could safely confide, and who was, for some obscure reason, indispensable to her comfort. Any belief she might have had in the existence of the beautiful Miss Melkinthorpe had admittedly been of short duration, but the thought of marrying the Major herself had not, until this moment, entered her head. It was clearly necessary to temporize. Withdrawing her hand from his, she said, in a rallying tone: “Recollect that we have been acquainted for less than a month! You cannot, cousin, have fallen—formed an attachment in so short a time!” “Nay, love, don’t be so daft!” he expostulated. “There’s no sense in saying I can’t do what I have done!”

Miss Darracott, an intelligent girl, now perceived that in harbouring for as much as an instant the notion of marrying a man who fell so lamentably short of the ideal lover she was an irreclaimable ninnyhammer. Ideal lovers might differ in certain respects, but in whatever mould were cast not one of them was so unhandsome as to make it extremely difficult for one not to giggle at their utterances. This hopelessly overgrown and unromantic idiot must be given a firm set-down. Resolutely lifting her eyes to his face, and summoning to her aid a smile which was (she hoped) satirical, but not so unkind as to wound him, she said: “You are being quite absurd, my dear cousin! Pray say no more!”

“Never?”

She transferred her gaze to the topmost button of his coat. If anything had been wanting to convince her that he was quite unworthy of her regard, he had supplied it by putting a pistol to her head in this unchivalrous way. She wished very much that she had not committed the imprudence of looking up into his face, but how, she wondered indignantly, could she have guessed that anyone so incurably frivolous would look so anxious? Any female of sensibility must shrink from inflicting pain upon a fellow-creature, but how did one depress pretension without hurting the sinner, or rendering him unnecessarily despondent? On the whole, she could only be thankful that the Major, apparently realizing that he had fallen into error, spared her the necessity of answering him. He said ruefully: “If ever there was a cod’s head, his name is Hugo Darracott! Don’t look so fatched, love! Forget I said it! I know it was too soon!”

Grateful to him for his quick understanding of her dilemma, Miss Darracott decided, with rare forbearance, to overlook the impropriety of his putting his arm round her, as she spoke, and giving her a hug. “Much too soon!” she answered.

His arm tightened momentarily; he dropped a kiss on the top of her head, but this she was also able to ignore, for he then said, in a thoughtful voice which conveyed to her the reassuring intelligence that he had reverted to his usual manner: “Now, where will I come by a book on etiquette! You wouldn’t know if his lordship’s got one in the library, would you, love?”

Her colour somewhat heightened, she disengaged herself from his embrace, saying: “No, but I shouldn’t think so. He has one about ranks and dignities and orders of precedency; is that what you mean?”

“Nay, that’s no use to me! I want one that’ll tell me how to behave correctly.” “I am well aware that you are trying to roast me,” said Anthea, resigned to this fate, “and also that you don’t stand in any need of a book on etiquette—though one on propriety wouldn’t come amiss!”

“I’m not trying to roast you!” declared Hugo. “I want to know how long you must be acquainted with a lass before it’s polite to propose to her!”

Chapter 14

Any fears lurking in Anthea’s mind that the Major’s premature declaration might be productive of some awkwardness between them were very swiftly put to rout. Except for a certain warmth in his eyes, when they rested on her, she could detect no change in his demeanour. She was devoutly thankful, for she knew that her grandfather was closely watching the progress of a courtship he had instigated.

It was perhaps fortunate that his lordship’s attention should have been diverted by the repercussions of quite another sort of courtship. The blacksmith, a brawny individual, imbued with what his lordship considered revolutionary notions, had not only taken exception to Claud’s elegant trifling with his daughter, but had seized the opportunity afforded by that rather too accommodating damsel to pay off an old score against his lordship. To Claud’s startled dismay, the elder Ackleton waylaid my lord when he was riding home through the village, and lodged an accusation against his least favourite grandson, referring to him darkly as a serpent, who had stung his daughter, and hinting (without, however, much conviction) at reprisals of an obscure but dreadful nature. My lord, whose native shrewdness had earned for him the reputation in the neighbourhood of being a deep old file, was neither credulous of the story, nor alarmed by the threats. He might be eighty years of age, and considered by his family to be verging on senility, but he was perfectly capable of dealing with far more determined efforts at blackmail, and he disposed of the blacksmith in a few forceful and well-chosen words, which included a recommendation to that disconcerted gentleman to take care the fair Eliza did not end her adventurous career in the nearest Magdelen. Since this interview took place in the middle of the village street it very soon became common property, and was the occasion of much merriment, and many exchanges, when neither the elder Ackleton nor his even more formidable son was damaging rumours about Eliza’s way of life. His lordship was not popular, but the Ackletons were cordially disliked by all but their few cronies, Eliza being thought by the respectable to be a disgrace to the community, and the two male members of the family not only scandalizing decent folk with their hazy but seditious political opinions, but alienating all sorts by their invariable pugnacity when they had had a cup too much. No one was hardy enough to betray the least knowledge of the encounter outside the forge, but the sudden silence that fell on the company in the taproom of the Blue Lion, when the father and son walked in that evening left neither of them in any doubt of what the subject of the interrupted discussion had been. The elder Ackleton, after vainly trying to pick out a quarrel with anyone willing to oblige him, was bowled out by a toothless and decrepit Ancient, who took infuriating advantage of his years and infirmity, and asked the raging blacksmith, with a shrill cackle of mirth, if he had had comely speech with his lordship that morning. Encouraged by a smothered guffaw, he wagged his hoary head and stated his readiness to back the old lord to make the smith and a dozen like him look lamentable blue.

The smith, realizing that the weight of public opinion was against him, stayed only to inform the Ancient what his fate would have been had he been some seventy years younger before slamming his tankard down and departing. It would have been as well if he had taken his son with him, instead of leaving him to drink himself into a potvaliant condition, in the company of a like-minded young man, whose reckless statements of what he would do if he stood in Ned’s shoes strengthened his resolve to draw Mr. Claud Darracott’s cork at the earliest opportunity. By the time an astonishing quantity of heavy wet and several glasses of jackey had been drunk, the propensity of the entire aristocracy and gentry for grinding the faces of the poor under their heels discussed, and the date of a revolution modelled after the French pattern settled, Ned Ackleton was determined to seek out Mr. Claud Darracott immediately, and Jim Booley, applauding this bold decision, announced his intention of accompanying him. The landlord, contemptuously watching the manner of their departure, gave it as his opinion that the courage of neither would be sufficient to carry him beyond the gates of Darracott Place. In uttering this prophecy, however, he failed to make allowance for the invigorating effect of companionship. The harbingers of the revolution reached the house itself before Booley realized that it would be improper for him to take any active part in a quarrel which was no concern of his. He began to feel that it might, perhaps, be wiser if Ned were to postpone drawing Mr. Claud Darracott’s cork until such time as he should meet him in some rather more suitable locality. But Ned was made of sterner stuff, and although the effects of liquor had to some extent worn off he had ranted himself into a state of mental intoxication which made him even more belligerent. Rejecting with scorn his friend’s uneasy suggestion that it might be wiser to seek an entrance at the scullery-door, he tugged violently at the bell hanging beside the main door, and followed this up by hammering the great iron knocker in a ferocious style that caused Mr. Booley to retreat several paces, urgently advising him to adone-do!