The Major regarded him with tolerant amusement, remarking placidly: “For one who doesn’t want for sense you waste a mort of time milking the pigeon! You’ll pick no quarrel with me, so you may as well stop trying to make me nab the rust, and attend to what’s of much more moment. Richmond wasn’t playing ghost last night for my benefit: he wanted to scare Ottershaw away from the Dower House, if he could do it. He knows now he can’t, and I believe him when he says he won’t cut the caper again. If I didn’t, I’d have no choice but to lay the whole matter before his lordship, which is the last thing I want to do. Ottershaw had his pistol in his hand when I halted him. Whether he’d have used it is another pair of shoes: I think not, but it won’t do to run the risk of it”
“If it comforts you, you may know that I have already told Richmond that, however amusing the repercussion of his exploit may have been, such pranks are really quite unworthy of him,” said Vincent languidly.
“It would comfort me much more if I felt I could leave the matter in your hands. Richmond won’t confide in me: it’s not to be expected he should.”
“But he has—unless I have misinformed—given you his assurance that he is not engaged in any such nefarious occupation as smuggling,” interpolated Vincent, in a voice of silk.
“Ay, he’s done that,” admitted Hugo. He was silent for a moment, gazing meditatively ahead, between his horse’s ears. A rather rueful smile crept into his eyes. “I’ve no reason to doubt his word, and the Lord knows it goes against the pluck with me to do so, but I think he lied to me.”
“I cannot supply you with any reason for doubting him, but I can, and will, supply you with one—possibly incomprehensible to you, but nevertheless to be relied on—for accepting his word,” said Vincent, his eyes hard and contemptuous. “Richmond, my dear coz, was born into, and reared in, an order of society whose members do not commonly give lying assurances, or engage in criminal pursuits. However much
“You’ve done that, right enough,” Hugo replied. “I don’t know if you believe what you say, or if you say it because you dislike me too much to think of aught else; and any road it doesn’t make a ha’porth of odds: you don’t mean to lift a finger to save a lad who thinks the world and-all of you from bringing himself to ruin! You’ve made me a fine, top-lofty speech about Richmond’s birth and rearing: his birth’s well-enough, but his rearing was as bad as it could be! Sithee, Vincent, you know that! I know it too. When you were at Eton, I was at Harrow, and what hadn’t been clouted into me by my granddad I learned there.” He paused, and the twinkle came back into his eyes. “And there wasn’t so very much to learn either!” he added. “Reet vulgar he was, my granddad, but worth a score of any Darracott I’ve yet laid eyes on!”
“Harrow—!” murmured Vincent, in the grip of cold fury. “To be sure, our opinion of Harrow was never very high, but—ah, well!”
Hugo chuckled. “Nor ours of Eton, think on! Ee, if you haven’t got me talking as you do yourself! Sneck up, and ask yourself how much you’d have learnt if you’d been reared as Richmond was!”
They had ridden into the stable yard by this time, and as their grooms had already come out to take charge of the horses Vincent’s sense of ton prevented him from making any reply which he considered to be worthy of the occasion. He was silent therefore, but his groom, catching a glimpse of his face, would have given a month’s pay to have been privileged to know what the Major had said to put him in the devil’s own passion, He strode out of the yard without vouchsafing a word either to his cousin or to his servant; and after exchanging a few observations with John Joseph, and, to that severe critic’s disapproval and the grinning delight of several stableboys, admonishing Rufus in the broadest dialect for his want of manners in demanding with every sign of equine impatience the sugar he knew very well would be bestowed upon him, the Major followed him, in his leisurely way, to the house.
The post had been brought up from the receiving-office during his absence, and a thick letter, addressed to himself, and stamped Post Paid, lay on the table by the door. He had just broken the wafer that sealed it, and spread open three closely written sheets, when Chollacombe came into the hall to tell him that my lord desired to see him in the library as soon as might be convenient to him. The Major, already perusing the lengthy communication sent him by one who subscribed himself as his attached friend and obedient servant, Jonas Henry Poulton, acknowledged this message with an abstracted grunt, neither looking up from the letter in his hand, nor evincing the smallest disposition to make all speed to his grandfather’s presence. Any one of his cousins would have recognized the civil form in which the message was phrased as the cloak spread by Chollacombe over a peremptory (and possibly explosive) command; but nothing would ever avail, thought Chollacombe despairingly, to teach Mr. Hugh the wisdom of obeying such summonses with all possible dispatch. He coughed deprecatingly, and said: “His lordship, sir, is anxious to see you, I fancy.”
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—”
“
“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
“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!”
