He did not kiss her hand, but he shook it warmly, and thanked her, smiling down at her so gratefully that she almost wished she had braved my lord’s displeasure, and placed Hugo instead of Matthew beside her at the dinner-table.
She and Chollacombe had arranged the table, and an arduous labour it had been, necessitating the use of a slate and much chalk. The result was not ideal, but, as Chollacombe very sensibly pointed out, the ideal was not to be achieved with a party of nine persons, all of them related, and too many of them brothers. In this unexceptionable way Chollacombe was able to convey to Mrs. Darracott the unwisdom of placing Claud within Vincent’s orbit. She perfectly understood him; and he perfectly understood that when she said that his lordship would certainly wish to have Vincent on his left hand she meant that she was not going to expose the hapless newcomer to the full force of his lordship’s trenchant conversation. In the end, though the table was necessarily uneven, with Lady Aurelia, Richmond, and Claud on one side, and Vincent, Anthea, Hugo, and Matthew on the other, Claud was as far removed as was possible from Vincent, Hugo from Lord Darracott, and Anthea had been placed between Hugo and Vincent, in which position she must willy-nilly shield Hugo from Vincent’s tongue.
The arrangement was not entirely happy, however, as Mrs. Darracott soon perceived; for although Vincent was keeping his grandfather amused, and Richmond was nobly trying to entertain his aunt, Matthew divided his attention equally between herself and his plate; and Anthea, determined to cold-shoulder her intended-suitor at the outset, replied to his tentative attempts to engage her interest with icy civility, and in a manner that did not encourage him to persevere. Mrs. Darracott, scandalized by such a display of gaucherie, tried several times to catch her daughter’s eye, but never once succeeded.
Hugo, with a hostile uncle on his left and a frozen damsel on his right, meekly ate his dinner, and took stock of as many of his relations as came within view. Of these the most attractive were Mrs. Darracott, and Richmond, who was not quite obscured from Hugo’s sight by the epergne in the centre of the table. Hugo thought he seemed a friendly boy: a trifle resty, perhaps; light at hand, like so many high-spirited but spoilt youngsters. He was talking to his aunt: a most alarming female, Hugo thought, eyeing her in awe, and admiring Richmond’s address. Then Richmond chanced to turn his head away from Lady Aurelia, and, seeing that his cousin was looking at him, he smiled shyly. Yes, a nice lad: worth a dozen of the Tulip beside him! Not that Hugo had the least objection to the fops of Society. Being blessed with a vast tolerance he was able to regard Claud with amusement, enjoying the extravagances and the affectations which exasperated Lord Darracott and Matthew. Claud was wearing a coat which represented the highest kick of fashion, and had come (he said) straight from the hands of Nugee. His father told him that it made him look ridiculous, which of course it did, with its wasp-waist, and its shoulders built up into absurd peaks, but there was no need to comb the lad’s hair in public; and certainly no need for that brother of his to have said that he couldn’t help but look ridiculous.
Hugo ventured to steal a glance at the unyielding profile on his right. Not a beauty, his cousin Anthea; but she was pretty enough, and not just in the common style. Her figure was tall and graceful, and she had remarkably fine eyes, with long, curling lashes; but she looked to be a disagreeable girl, every bit as contemptuous as the appalling old windsucker at the head of the table.
He was debating within himself how soon he would be able to escape from the home of his ancestors when he found that he was being addressed by his uncle, who told him, rather sharply, that Mrs. Darracott was speaking to him.
She had, in fact, seized the excuse afforded by Lord Darracott’s asking Richmond some question, across Lady Aurelia, to try to draw into conversation the poor young man who was being, she felt, shamefully neglected. She wanted to know if he had found all he needed in his bedchamber, and to tell him, with a motherly smile, that he had only to ask her, or the housekeeper, if there was anything he wished for. He thanked her, but assured her that there was nothing: he would be very comfortable.
Claud, satisfied that his grandfather’s attention was being engaged by Vincent, shook his head. “You won’t,” he said. “Couldn’t be. I don’t know where they’ve put you, but it don’t signify: there ain’t a comfortable room in the house.”
“Nonsense!” said Matthew impatiently.
“Why, you said so yourself, sir!” exclaimed Claud. “What’s more, you always say it. The last time you had to come down here you said—”
“Oh, be quiet!” interrupted his father. “It is a very old house, and naturally—”
“Yes, and falling to bits,” corroborated Claud.
Matthew, eyeing him almost with dislike, said: “That remark, my good boy, is as false as it is foolish!”
“Well, if it ain’t falling to bits you can’t deny it’s being eaten to bits,” said Claud, quite unabashed. “The last time I had to come here, I was kept awake half the night by rats chewing the wainscoting.”
“Oh, not rats, Claud!” protested Mrs. Darracott. “Only a mouse! Not but what it’s perfectly true that the house does need repairing, while as for the linen, and some of the hangings, I declare I feel positively ashamed! Well, you know what it is, Matthew! Nothing I can say will induce your father—However, we won’t talk of that now! Though I do sometimes feel that if I have to spend another winter here, which, of course, I shall, I shall be crippled with rheumatism! None of the windows fits as it should, and the draught whistles through the house!”
“More like a hurricane,” said Claud. He nodded at Hugo. “You’ll find it out, coz. Of course, it’s summer now, so it ain’t so bad, but you wait for the winter! Take my advice, and don’t let ’em light a fire in your room: all the bedroom chimneys smoke, so you’re worse off than before.”
“Not all of them!” said Mrs. Darracott. “At least, not very much! Only when the wind is in the wrong quarter. I do hope—for it has begun to get so chilly in the evening now that Mrs. Flitwick is having a fire kindled in your room, Hugh! Oh, dear, I wonder if the wind is in the wrong quarter?”
“Nay, don’t fidget yourself on my account, ma’am!” Hugo said, laughing. “I’m not so nesh as my cousin! I’ve been used to sleep in a room that had a fire in the middle of the floor, and not so much as a vent to off the smoke, so it will need more than a puff or two blown down the chimney to make me uncomfortable.”
His voice, which was a deep one, had a carrying quality. His words were heard by everyone in the room, and were productive of a sudden, shocked silence. He glanced innocently round the table, and added: “A mud floor, of course.”
“How—how horrid for you!” said Mrs. Darracott faintly.
Chollacombe, with great presence of mind, refilled the Major’s glass at this moment, contriving, as he did so, to give him a warning nudge. The Major, not susceptible to hints, said cheerfully: “Oh, it was noan so bad! I was glad to have a roof over my head in those days!”
Mrs. Darracott looked wildly round for help, and received it from an unexpected quarter.
“Don’t look so dismayed, my dear aunt!” said Vincent. “The locality of this dismal dwelling-place was not, as I apprehend, Yorkshire, but Spain.”
“Portugal,” corrected Hugo, as impervious to insult as to hints.
“Most interesting!” pronounced Lady Aurelia majestically. “No doubt you have seen a great deal of the world during the course of your military service?”
“I have and-all!” agreed Hugo.
“The billeting arrangements in the Peninsula,” stated her ladyship, “left much to be desired.”
“Ay, sometimes they did, but at others, think on, they were better nor like,” said Hugo reflectively. “After Toulouse I shared quarters with the Smiths in a chateau, and lived like a prince. That was in France, of course. A chateau,” he explained, “is what the Frogs call a castle—though it wasn’t a castle, not by any means. You might call it a palace.”