The huge creature before her, looking the picture of guilt, said feebly: “It wasn’t that-a-way. The thing is, I’m in a bit of a hobble. It wouldn’t do for me to tell my grandfather I was promised, not before I was sure of it myself.”
“But aren’t you sure of it?” she asked, a good deal astonished.
“Well,” he temporized, once more rubbing his nose, “I am and I’m not There’s been nothing official as you might say. It’s—it’s been kept secret betwixt the pair of us. It was just before the last campaign, you see, and I was recalled in such a bang that there was no time to do aught but get my baggage together, and be off. What’s more there was no knowing but what I might have been killed, so it was thought best to keep it secret. And I haven’t been home since.”
“Good God, have you been engaged for two years?” she exclaimed.
“Better nor that,” he said. “It was in the spring of ’15 that it happened, and now we’re in September. It seems to me I ought to make sure she hasn’t changed her mind before I speak to the old gentleman, and so far I haven’t been home.”
“But she must have written to you!”
“Er—no,” said Hugo, much discomposed. “She—well, there were reasons why she couldn’t do that!”
A dreadful suspicion occurred to Anthea. “Cousin do you mean—is she a—a lady of Quality?”
The Major shook a miserable head.
“Can’t she write?” Anthea asked, in a husked voice.
“No,” confessed the Major.
Feeling a trifle weak, Anthea sat down on the window-seat. “Cousin, this is—this is positively terrible! You can have no notion—! What’s to be done?”
“If you think I ought to tell the old gentleman—”
“No, no!” she said quickly. “On no account in the world! Of course, I see now why you didn’t say you wouldn’t offer for me! He would have been bound to have asked you why not, and—I beg your pardon for being so uncivil about that! No onecould be brave enough to make that disclosure to him! But what are you going to do?”
The Major had the grace to look a little conscience-stricken. He said vaguely that he hadn’t yet made up his mind.
“I can’t think how you dared to come here at all,” said Anthea, knitting her brows. “To be sure, you didn’t know what Grandpapa was like, but you must have known that he would never tolerate that sort of marriage! In fact, it was because he is afraid that you might wish to marry someone he would think unworthy that he made this odious scheme to marry you to me. Cousin, you’re not in a hobble! you’re in the suds!”
The Major, who, by this time, had had the satisfaction of seeing that his judgment had not been at fault when he had decided that animation would greatly improve Miss Darracott, ventured to approach her, and to sit down. “I am and-all!” he agreed ruefully.
“He won’t receive her, you know,” Anthea said. “It is useless to think he might come about. He never forgave your father, and he was his favourite son.”
“Nay, I wouldn’t bring her here.”
“That’s all very well, but you can’t expect the poor girl to wait for years and years to be married!” objected Anthea. “Besides, surely you would not like that yourself! If you’re thinking that Grandpapa may die soon, I must tell you that I don’t think there’s the least chance of it: he’s old, but not at all decrepit, you know!”
“Oh, no, I should think he’s good for a piece yet!” Hugo agreed. “But I’m not going to stay here for years and years.”
“He thinks you are,” she said doubtfully.
“Ay, but that’s just one of the daft notions he takes into his head. There’s no sense in stirring coals, so I didn’t tell him he’d got the wrong sow by the ear. Happen he’ll think it a good shuttance when I do tell him I’m off.”
“But how will you do?” she asked. “It’s he who holds the purse-strings, remember! I assure you he wouldn’t hesitate to draw them tight.”
He laughed. “Nay, he doesn’t hold my purse-strings!”
“Ah, no! How stupid of me! You have your profession, and can afford to snap your fingers under his nose! Oh, how much I envy you!” She heaved a short sigh, but smiled immediately after, and said: “Did you come to look us over only? How long do you mean to stay?”
“Well, that depends,” he said. “When I got the letter that told me the way things had fallen out, it fairly sent me to grass, for, not knowing anything about my family, I’d no notion how close to the succession I stood. Nothing will persuade my grandfather I wasn’t happy an a grig to be succeeding him—though why he should have thought anyone would want to inherit a house that’s falling to ruin, let alone encumbered estates, and a sackful of debts, has me fairly capped—but the truth is I wasn’t at all suited, and the first thing that came into my head was to see if there wasn’t a way out. That wouldn’t fadge, however, so—” He paused, considering. “Well, I made up my mind to it that I’d have to come here, whether or no.”
“I can understand that you didn’t wish to do that while Grandpapa was alive.”
“No,” he admitted. “But if I’ve to step into the old gentleman’s shoes, soon or late, it’ll be as well I shouldn’t be strange to the place, or the people. So when Lissett wrote to tell me I was to come here I did come. I don’t say I wouldn’t as lief have sent word his lordship might go to hell—eh, that slipped out! I’m reet sorry!”
“Don’t give it a thought!” said Anthea cordially. “I never before heard such beautiful words, I promise you!”
He smiled, but shook his head. “I’d have caught cold at that. What’s more, if his lordship and my father were at outs, that’s no concern of mine. My other grandfather had more rumgumption than any man I’ve ever known, and he always would have it that my father came by his deserts. He didn’t hold with a man’s marrying out of his own order, and, taking it by and large, I’d say he was in the reet of it. What with him on the one side, hammering it into me I was Quality-born, and Grandfather Darracott here looking at me as if I was a porriwiggle, I don’t know what I am!”
She went into a peal of laughter. “Oh, what is it? Porriwiggle?”
He grinned. “It’s what we call a tadpole.”
That made her laugh more than ever. She said, wiping her eyes: “No, I don’t think anyone would liken you to a tadpole, cousin! Tell me about the girl you are going to marry! Is she pretty?”
“I don’t know if you’d say she was pretty. She—she has golden hair—corn-gold, you know—and blue eyes, with long lashes that curl. She has a straight little nose, and a mouth like a bow, and—and a complexion like strawberries and cream!” replied Hugo rhapsodically.
“I should say she was a beauty!” Anthea said, slightly taken-aback.
“She has a good figure too,” added Hugo, dwelling with obvious pleasure on the vision he had conjured up.
“In that case I think you should lose no time in posting north—though it is probably too late already. Such a paragon cannot be wearing the willow!”
“I’m not afraid of that. I forgot to tell you that she’s not one to break her promise.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “What is her name?”
“Amelia,” responded Hugo, adding after a reflective moment: “Melkinthorpe.”
Anthea rose. “Well, I wish you very happy. Meanwhile, we haven’t yet looked at the ancestors. We must do so, you know, for Grandpapa is quite likely to ask you searching questions about them. Chiefly you must study the Van Dyck: here it is! Ralph Darracott, who was killed at Naseby; his wife, Penelope—she was pretty, wasn’t she?—holding Charles Darracott in her lap. There’s another one of Charles in later life, a Lely, over here.”
The Major, having subjected Charles Darracott to a critical scrutiny, remarked that he knew what he thought of him.