The Unknown Ajax (42 page)

“Going into the army!” exclaimed the Lieutenant, thunder-struck.

“Seventh Hussars,” said Hugo. “He’s been mad after a cavalry regiment pretty well since he was breeched, seemingly. Well, that’s no concern of yours, of course—except that if he gets a nay-say from his lordship now he’ll be so crazy with disappointment that happen he really will take to smuggling!”

As far as the Sergeant was concerned, that settled it. Descending the stairs behind his superiors, he had absorbed the Major’s ruminations with a steadily growing conviction that Mr. Ottershaw had allowed himself to be properly slumguzzled—which, now he came to think of it, was what he’d thought in the first place, because whoever heard of a high-up young gentleman leading a gang of smugglers? There was no sense to it; but these Riding-officers got so that they took to thinking anyone might be a smuggler. The Sergeant wondered uneasily what dire consequences would befall him, if the terrible old lord came the ugly. It wasn’t his blame that they’d been hunting an elephant in the moon; on the other hand, no one was going to blame Mr. Ottershaw for what was done by a bottleheaded, addlebrained recruit too raw to be trusted with a pop-gun, let alone a carbine. As far as Sergeant Hoole could see, the only hope of bringing themselves home lay in this lumping great Major, who was the only one of these Darracotts who seemed to be kindly disposed. And ten to one, thought the Sergeant bitterly, Mr. Ottershaw would set up his back next. Reaching the foot of the stairs, after setting a leisurely pace that gave Vincent time to put his grandfather in possession of enough of the truth to prevent his bringing all to ruin by some unwitting blunder, Hugo led the way across the great hall to the corridor that gave access to the morning-room, and to the servants’ quarters beyond it Here Vincent had overtaken his lordship, and rapidly explained the situation to him. As soon as the rest of the party appeared, he said: “Very well, sir: as you wish!” and, turning, grimaced, for the benefit of Lieutenant Ottershaw, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.

Hugo would have much preferred to be rid of Lord Darracott, but since his lordship was obviously determined to take part in the approaching scene he could only make the best of it, and hope Ottershaw was too slightly acquainted with him to think his silence remarkable, or to recognize the stricken look behind the fierceness in his eyes. He said cheerfully, his own eyes twinkling: “We’ve got him in here, this smuggler of yours. It’s a fortunate thing he’s too weak from loss of blood to be dangerous, for it would take a battalion to hold him othergates! He’s a terrible ruffian!”

With these encouraging words, he walked into the room, and held the door wide for his companions. Over his shoulder, he said, with his deep chuckle: “Pluck up, lad! It was all a mistake, and not Ned Ackleton who shot you. It was Excisemen—and here they are!”

Chapter 20

The scene which met the Lieutenant’s suspicious but startled gaze was lurid enough to astonish even Hugo, who had had no time to do more than sketch for his, players the nature of the rôles allotted to them, before he was obliged to leave them. The stage had then been by no means set; but one swift glance round the room now was enough to satisfy him that his subordinates had more than obeyed his rapid instructions: they had surpassed themselves. Not the most uninformed of observers could have failed to realize that something must have happened to interrupt two persons in the middle of a game of cards, even if the obvious cause of the interruption had been hidden from sight. Richmond was seated at the table in the middle of the room, with his cards stacked and laid face downwards before him; but opposite him a hand had been flung down in such careless haste that two of the cards which composed it had fallen on to the floor. A silver tray, with the stopper of the decanter lying in it, had been placed on the table; and beside Richmond a litter of bank-notes and scraps of paper bore eloquent testimony to the run of luck he must have been enjoying. The candles in the wall-sconces behind him had been lit, but since the branched candelabra, which must presumably have stood on the table, had been seized, and set down on a chair by the sofa, to provide Anthea and Polyphant with more light for their activities, no direct light fell upon his face. Nearly all the available light was, in fact, concentrated round the sofa, on which, supported by Polyphant, standing behind him, reclined Claud, the focal point of the scene. His aspect was ghastly. From the waist upward he was naked except for the bandages which Anthea, kneeling beside him, had apparently just finished winding round him; as much of his chest as could be seen was smeared with blood; his left arm, which dangled uselessly, its limply crooked fingers brushing the carpet, was horribly covered with bloodstains; his head lolled on his right shoulder; his countenance, thanks to the thoughtfulness of his valet, who had brandished before his eyes the gruesome dishcloth which had been used by John Joseph to stanch the flow of blood from Richmond’s wound, was of a sickly hue; and his breathing was accompanied by a series of faint but alarming moans. The chair which had been dragged up to serve as a stand for the candelabra also accommodated an empty glass, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a bowl containing a revolting reddened water, and the almost empty brandy-decanter stood on the floor within Anthea’s reach, together with a heap of lint and torn-up linen; and the final macabre touch was provided by the rent and blood-boltered garments which no one had apparently found time even to bundle out of sight.

Hugo, realizing that his accomplices, not content with such meagre tokens of bloodshed as his neat work on Richmond’s wound had afforded them, must have collected from the pantry every cloth and rag which had been used there, surveyed the scene with deep appreciation; but the Lieutenant brought up short on the threshold by the sight of so unexpected a shambles, was badly jolted; and the Sergeant, craning his neck to look over his shoulder, was perfectly appalled.

As soon as Hugo opened the door, Anthea exclaimed, without looking round, or pausing in her task of bandaging the sufferer: “At last! What on earth can have kept you so long?” but at his frivolously worded announcement, she cast an exasperated glance at him over her shoulder, saying in the voice of one perilously near the limit of her endurance: “For heaven’s sake, don’t start cutting idiotic jokes! I’ve had enough to bear from Richmond already! There’s nothing funny about what’s happened, and as for all your fine talk about it’s not being serious, either you know nothing whatsoever about it, or you’re as odiously drunk as Richmond—which wouldn’t surprise me in the least!—Do you think that’s tight enough, Polyphant?”

“Nay, I wasn’t joking you! Our Claud was shot by a dragoon, lass!”

“To be sure!” she snapped, inserting a pin carefully into the end of her bandage. “Nothing could be more likely! Don’t put yourself to the trouble of explaining what a dragoon was doing in our wood, for I’ve something better to do than to listen to quite unamusing, ill-timed nonsense!” She brought the point of her pin through several thicknesses of the bandage, and said: “I think that should hold it firmly, Polyphant. You can lay him down now. Oh, dear, how dreadfully white he is! Perhaps my aunt ought to be sent for. Hugo, did you find Vincent, is he com—” She broke off abruptly, for she had turned to ask this question, and now perceived Lieutenant Ottershaw. She stared at him, looked towards Hugo, looked again at the Lieutenant “But—Good God, what in heaven’s name—? Hugo, if this is your doing—” “Now, how could it be my doing?” he expostulated, helping her to rise to her feet. She pressed a hand to her temple. “Oh, I don’t know, but—No, I suppose it couldn’t be! But after that Banbury story about dragoons in the Home Wood—I beg your pardon, Mr. Ottershaw, but I am so much distracted—Oh, Vincent, thank God you’ve come.’” Vincent, firmly putting the Lieutenant out of the way, had managed to enter the room. “Now, what is all this about Claud having met with an accident?” he began, breaking off abruptly, however, as he allowed his eyes to travel past Anthea to the sofa. “Good God!” he ejaculated. “Claud—!”

Polyphant, zealously waving the vinaigrette under his master’s nose, said: “He will be better directly, sir, I promise you. He keeps swooning off, but if only we can keep him still and quiet—It’s the loss of blood, sir: I thought we should never be able to—That’s better, sir!—He’s coming round, Mr. Vincent! If someone would pour out a little brandy—just a drop or two!—and we could manage to make him swallow it—”

“Ay, that’ll pull him together!” agreed Hugo, “Eh, he does look poorly! Where’s the brandy?” For the next few minutes, no one paid the smallest heed either to Ottershaw, or to the Sergeant, except Lord Darracott, who frustrated the Sergeant’s instinctive attempt to retreat from this shocking scene, by thrusting him violently into the room, saying as he did so: “Will you make way for your betters, oaf?” which terrified him into edging his way along the wall to the corner of the room into which Ottershaw had already been manoeuvred. No one had asked the Lieutenant to move as far from the centre of the room as he could, but Claud’s revival spurred his anxious relatives into so much activity that he was obliged to retire into the corner to get out of the way. For all the notice that was bestowed upon him, while the rival merits of brandy and hartshorn were hotly argued, a sling was made to hold up Claud’s left arm, his temples were dabbed with lavender-water, his right hand chafed, his brow fanned, and brandy held to his unwilling lips, he might as well have been invisible: and if he had not been a very dogged young man he would have yielded to the Sergeant’s whispered suggestion that they should both of them slip away quiet-like without any loss of time. To the surprise and the relief of his fellow-conspirators, who had feared he might prove the weak link in their chain, Claud, perhaps because he found himself for the first time in his life the star round which the other members of the family revolved, came artistically to his senses, and, seizing the cue afforded by Lord Darracott’s demanding to be told how the devil he had come to be shot, at once took command of the scene, in a manner that won even his brother’s admiration. Punctuating his utterances with winces, stifled groans, and dramatic pauses during which he stiffened into rigidity, with his eyes closed, and his lower lip clenched between his teeth, he disclosed that he had been set upon by two Bedlamites, both of whom had jumped out from behind a bush, roaring at him like a couple of ferocious wild beasts, and one of whom had fired at him, “Knew at once!” he said, shuddering at the memory. “Ackletons!”

The Sergeant cast a doubtful glance at Lieutenant Ottershaw, for, in his opinion, this had a false ring. His men, as he frequently informed them, put him forcibly in mind of many things, ranging from gapeseeds, hedge-birds, slush-buckets, and sheep-biters, to beetles, tailless dogs, and dead herrings, but none of them, least of all the two raw dragoons in question, had ever reminded him of a ferocious wild beast. Field-mice, yes, he thought, remembering the sad loss of steel in those posted to watch the Dower House; but if the young gentleman had detected any resemblance to ferocious wild beasts in his assailants, the Sergeant was prepared to take his Bible oath they had not been the baconbrained knock-in-the-cradles he had posted (much against his will) within the grounds of Darracott Place. But Sergeant Hoole had never, until this disastrous evening, set eyes on Mr. Claud Darracott. Lieutenant Ottershaw had beheld that Pink of the Ton picking his delicate way across the cobbles in Rye, clad in astonishing but unquestionably modish raiment, and holding a quizzing-glass up to his eye with one fragile white hand, and it did not strike him as remarkable that this Bartholomew baby should liken two overzealous dragoons to wild beasts.

“Did you recognize them, Claud?” Vincent asked.

Claud feebly shook his head, as it rested on one of the sofa-cushions, and instantly contracted his features in an expression of acute anguish, drawing a hissing breath, and ejaculating: “O God!—No, how could I? Too dark to recognize anyone at that distance. Besides,—only saw them for a minute. Dash it!—you don’t suppose I stopped to ask ’em for their visiting-cards, do you? Knew it was the Ackletons. Couldn’t have been anyone else!” “As I apprehend the matter, it might well have been somebody else,” said Vincent. Claud opened his eyes, and regarded him with disfavour. “Well, it mightn’t!” he said. “I daresay half the county may want to murder you, but—” He broke off, recalling his injury, and groped with his right hand. “Vinaigrette!” he uttered, in failing accents. “Polyphant!” “Don’t agitate him, Vincent!” begged Anthea, as Polyphant hastened to his master’s side. “It must have been a terrible experience for him, poor Claud! And how he contrived to escape from those murderous bullies, and to struggle to the house, bleeding as dreadfully as he must have been, I can’t imagine! I think it shows the greatest determination!” “Yes, indeed, cousin: most creditable! But I think you have not exactly understood how the case stands. We have every reason to suppose that Claud was not attacked by the Ackletons, but by a couple of dragoons, precisely as Hugo told you.” “But that’s nonsensical!” she exclaimed.

Lord Darracott, who, after one glance at Richmond, had stalked over to the fireplace behind him, and taken up a position there, with his hands gripped behind his back, said in a voice of suppressed passion: “Is that what you call it, girl? Preventives posted in my grounds without my knowledge or consent, one of my grandsons accused of being a common felon, another fired upon—fired upon!—because he don’t choose to account for himself to a couple of loutish dragoons—”

“What?” interrupted Claud, once more opening his eyes. “Dragoons? Dragoons?” His lordship swept on remorselessly. “My house broken into at midnight, warrants thrust at me by a damned jack-at-warts with no more conduct than wit—”

“What’s a common felon?” suddenly demanded Richmond. He had been lounging in his chair, with his left arm on the table, an empty glass loosely held in his hand, his right hand dug into his pocket, and his gaze fixed on nothing in particular, but he now judged it to be time to demonstrate to Lieutenant Ottershaw that he was in no way incapacitated. His left arm was not entirely powerless: if the elbow was supported, he could make slight movements with his forearm, and he knew that he still had the use of that hand. He was in considerable discomfort, any strain on his hurt shoulder was exquisitely painful, and he had lost enough blood to weaken him to the point of hovering on the brink of collapse; but none of these ills had the power to daunt him, or to subdue the fearless spirit that responded with alacrity to the spur of danger, and found a strange enjoyment in flirting with disaster. It had flickered and sunk for an instant when a single, fleeting glance at his grandfather’s face has brought home to him the enormity of what he had done, but only for an instant. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, lurked shame, repentance, grief for an old man’s agony, but there would be time enough later to think of such things: no time now, when disaster, so often defeated, was grinning at him in triumph. Richmond Darracott, pluck to the backbone, grinned back at disaster, gaily accepting a grim challenge.