Hugo smiled at him. “Oh, then I was packed off home, on sick furlough, for there was nothing of me left but skin and bone!”
“Poor boy!” said Mrs. Darracott, her motherly instincts stirred. “How shocked your mama must have been! But I am persuaded she soon nursed you back to health.”
“Nay, my mother died a year before I joined,” he answered.
“Oh,
“I’d my grandfather,” he said. “Mother was all the children he had. Happen it was Yorkshire air and good Yorkshire food that plucked me up.”
“Were you at Corunna?” asked Richmond.
Hugo nodded; but before Richmond could beg for further information Lord Darracott intervened, saying harshly that he desired to hear no talk about the war at his dinner table. Hugo, accepting this snub with what appeared to be unshakeable placidity, then retired from the conversation, to discuss with an excellent appetite a large helping of apple pie.
The rest of the meal passed without incident. For perhaps the first time in all the years she had lived at Darracott Place it was with reluctance that Mrs. Darracott gave the signal for the departure of the ladies from the board. Her compassion had been roused, and it went to her heart to leave her enormous but hapless nephew to the mercy of his hostile male relations.
In the event, it was not Hugo but Claud who drew my lord’s fire. When the cloth had been removed, it was the custom of the house not only that decanters of port and madeira should be set before his lordship, but that three jars of snuff should be placed on the table. My lord was a connoisseur; he mixed his own sort, but provided for his guests Old Bureau, King’s Martinique, and Hardman’s ’37. He invited no one but Vincent to help himself from his gold box, and was amused rather than offended when that elegant young man, declining the honour, drew out a box of his own, and snapped it open with a flick of his thumb, saying: “Try some of mine, sir! I shall value your opinion.”
“Mixed it yourself, did you?” said his lordship. He helped himself to a pinch, and inhaled it critically. “Too much Brazil!” he said. “Why don’t you come to me for a recipe? All the same, you young—” He broke off suddenly, his gaze fixed in wrath and stupefaction on Claud, who had produced a small silver shovel and a haresfoot from his pocket, and was preparing, in happy unconsciousness of the baleful stare bent upon him, to scoop some snuff out of the jar in front of him. “What the devil—?” demanded his lordship, in such stridulous accents that Claud, startled, looked up, and promptly dropped his little shovel. “Well?” said his lordship. “Well, popinjay?”
“Put that thing away, you young fool!” said Matthew, in a vexed undervoice. “Making a figure of yourself —!”
“I ain’t making a figure of myself!” returned Claud indignantly. “Assure you, sir! Quite the go! You take the snuff in the shovel, to save dabbling your fingers, and if you spill any on your coat you brush it off in a trice with the haresfoot, like—”
“I’ll have no such infernal foppery in my house!” declared his lordship. “Good God, that any grandson of mine should find nothing better to do than to spend his time thinking what extravagant folly he can next commit!”
“My dear sir, you are blaming the innocent!” said Vincent. “The guilty person is Thingwall: the Trig-and-Trim dandy, you know. That’s one of his tricks. It is the tragedy of Claud’s life that he has never yet been able to hit upon a new quirk of fashion, but is always obliged to copy other men.”
“Well,
“Not at all, brother. Brading followed
“That’s enough, that’s enough!” interposed Matthew, removing the snuff-jar from Claud’s reach, and pushing it towards Hugo. “Help yourself, if you like this sort!”
“Nay, I don’t like it,” Hugo said. “I’d rather blow a cloud which is a habit I got into in Spain.”
“It is not a habit you will indulge in here!” said Lord Darracott. “Smoking is a filthy and a disgusting misuse of tobacco: intolerable!”
“Well, I was never one to beat squares,” said Hugo equably. “I’ll smoke my cigars in the garden, and that road we won’t fratch.”
“Won’t do what?” asked Claud, interested.
“Fratch—quarrel! It’s what we say in Yorkshire,” explained Hugo.
“Possibly not in the first circles, however, so don’t copy it, Claud,” said Vincent coldly. “Permit me to point out to you; cousin, that you are chased,”
Hugo, finding the port at his elbow, begged pardon, filled his glass, and passed the decanter on, his demeanour one of unruffled amiability.
Chapter 5
Breakfast at Darracott Place was not served until eleven o’clock, early risers being obliged to sustain nature until that hour on a cup of chocolate and a slice of bread-and-butter, brought to their bedchambers. The custom was not an unusual one; in many country houses of ton, noon was the appointed hour for the first meal of the day; but to a soldier, accustomed to much earlier hours, it was both strange and unacceptable. Major Darracott, awaking betimes from a night of untroubled repose, thrust back the curtains that shrouded the four-poster in which he lay, and pulled his watch from under the pillows. The tidings it conveyed were unwelcome enough to make him utter a despairing groan, and sink back, resolutely closing his eyes in an attempt to recapture sleep. After spending half- an-hour in this barren endeavour, he abandoned it, linked his hands under his head, and lay for a time with his eyes fixed abstractedly on the line of light seeping through the join of the curtains drawn across the windows, and his mind roving over the events of the previous evening. What he thought of them no spy could have guessed, for even in solitude his countenance afforded no clue to whatever thoughts might be revolving behind the blankness in his eyes. There was something rather bovine about its immobility: Vincent had already told his grandfather that he lived in momentary expectation of seeing his ox-like cousin chew the cud.
It had been a daunting evening, judging by any standards. When the gentlemen had risen from the dining- table, Vincent had challenged Richmond to a game of billiards, and Richmond, instantly accepting the challenge, had gone off with him, his quick flush betraying his gratification. The rest of the male company had gone upstairs to join the ladies in the long drawing-room, his lordship having apparently decided that even an evening spent amongst females was preferable to one spent alone, or closeted with his son in the library. Only two females were discovered in the drawing-room. Mrs. Darracott, inviting Hugo to a chair beside her own, explained, a little nervously, that Anthea had the headache, and had gone to bed. It seemed for an instant as though my lord would have uttered some blistering censure, but although his brow was black he refrained, with what was plainly an effort, from making any comment. Seating himself in a wing-chair, he fell into conversation with his son, while Lady Aurelia, who had abandoned her tatting for some tapestry-work, handed Claud a tangle of coloured wools, and desired him, with much the air of one providing a child with a simple puzzle, to unravel the various strands. He was perfectly ready to oblige her, and even, having subjected her work to a critical scrutiny, to offer her some very good advice on the accomplishment of the design.
Mrs. Darracott, meanwhile, was doing what lay within her power to make Hugo feel at home, considerably hampered by the knowledge that his lordship, lending only half an ear to Matthew, was listening to all that was said.
What my lord had learned by this means had not been very much, but one piece of information he had gleaned which had put him into a better temper: Hugo seemed to have no maternal relations living—or, at all events, none of whom he took account. His grandfather, he told Mrs. Darracott, in reply to her sympathetic question, had been dead for several years; he supposed, rather vaguely, that there were those who could call cousins with him, but the connection must of necessity be remote. No, he didn’t think he had ever met them; the only member of his mother’s family whom he remembered was Great-aunt Susan, who had been used to live with them when he was a child. She had been a spinster, but he thought Grandfather had had other sisters.
Lord Darracott was so much cheered by this that he had presently asked Hugo if he played chess. Upon
