That swift, challenging look had not, however, escaped his sister’s notice, and at the earliest opportunity she commanded Hugo to explain its meaning. Even less than Richmond was she beguiled by his air of childlike incomprehension. She said severely: “And pray don’t stare at me as though you were a moonling!”
“Nay, love, that’s not kind!” protested the Major, much hurt. “I know I’m not needle-witted, but I’m not a moonling!”
“You’re the slyest thing in nature!” his love informed him with great frankness. “But I myself am pretty well up to snuff, so don’t think to tip me a rise, if you please! You’ll make wretched work of it.”
Shocked by this forthright speech, he said: “Eh, you mustn’t talk like that, lass! You’ll be setting folks in a regular bustle! That’s a very ungenteel thing to say: even I know that!”
“Forgive me, cousin!” she begged, primming up her mouth. “I meant, of course, that it is useless to think you can deceive me!”
“That’s much more seemly,” he said approvingly.
“Yes, but I now find myself at a loss to know how to advise you, in polite language, not to draw herrings across the track in the vain hope that you’ll persuade me to run counter!” she retorted.
“Oh, I’d never be able to do that!”
“Well, I’m happy to know you’re awake upon that suit, at all events!” She looked up into his face, smiling a little wistfully. “Don’t quiz me, Hugo! Why did Richmond look at you like that? As if he was afraid of you—afraid you were going to say something he didn’t wish you to! Tell me what it was—pray tell me, Hugo!”
He possessed himself of her hands, and held them clasped together against his chest. Smiling reassuringly down at her, he said: “Now, what’s made you so hot in the spur, love? And just what sort of a queer nabs do you think I am?”
“Oh, no, no, I don’t think that!” she said quickly.
“Well, I’d be a very queer nabs if I’d a secret with Richmond, and blabbed it to you!” he replied. “Nay then! don’t look so fatched! All Richmond was afraid of was that I might say something, in my dumpish way, which he’d as lief wasn’t said before his mother and the old gentleman. And I can’t say I blame him,” he added reflectively. “To hear the pair of them talk you’d think he was eight years old instead of eighteen!”
She nodded. “Yes, I know that. Do I seem a dreadful pea-goose? I daresay I am!”
“You do and-all!” he told her lovingly.
“What a truly detestable creature you are!” she remarked. “I collect Richmond was not tossing restless in his bed, but was not, in fact, in his bed at all, but I promise you I don’t mean to enquire where he was, because from anything I have ever heard one should never, if one wishes to retain the least respect for them, enquire what gentlemen do when they have contrived to escape from their female relatives.”
Charmed by this large-mindedness, the Major said, with simple fervour: “I knew you’d make a champion wife, love!”
“On the contrary! My husband will live under the cat’s foot.”
“I’m very partial to cats,” offered the Major hopefully.
She smiled, but drew her hands away, shaking her head at him. “My own belief is that you are a gazetted flirt!”
“Oh, is it?” he retorted. “If that’s so I’ll be off and ask my Aunt Elvira’s leave to pay my addresses to you without any more ado!”
“I shall warn her to hint you away—not that I have much hope that a mere hint will serve, because you are quite without conduct or delicacy, and altogether a most improper person!”
Cordially agreeing with this reading of his character, the Major ventured to remind her that it was her duty, as seen by her grandfather, to reclaim him.
“I am persuaded it would be a hopeless task,” she replied firmly, “What’s more, I know very well that all this nonsensical talk is what Richmond calls a fling, to lead me away from what I wish to say to you. Don’t joke me any more, but tell me—” She broke off, knitting her brows.
“Tell you what, love?”
“I don’t know. That is, it is so hard to put it into words! Lately—before you came here—I have felt uneasy about Richmond. I can’t precisely tell why, except that he was in such flat despair when Grandpapa ordered him to put the thought of a military career out of his head. He wasn’t sullen, or rebellious—he never is, you know!—but dawdling, and languid, not caring for anything very much, his spirits low, and depressed—Mama was afraid he would fall into a lethargy! And then, all at once, and for no reason that I could perceive, he became alive again. He has a great deal of reserve, but one can always tell by his eyes: they are so very speaking! Mama says that when they are bright it is a sign that he is in good health, but it’s not so—not wholly! When he was a little boy, and in dangerous mischief, they used to look alight, just as I’ve seen them again and again fn these past months. Once, when I went for a sail with him and Jem in the Seamew, a gale blew up, and we had the narrowest of escapes from foundering. I was never so frightened in my life—well, it was the horridest thing!—but Richmond enjoyed it! He had that look: his eyes positively blazing—smiling, too, in the most inhuman way! It was as though he liked fighting the waves, and being in the greatest peril, which Jem afterwards told me we were!”
Hugo nodded, “Ay, he would: he’s that road. It’s excitement he likes, and it leads him into daredevilry, because he’s bored, and too full of energy for the loitering life he leads. I’ve met his like before. Don’t fret, lass! He’s only a colt yet—a resty, high-couraged colt that needs exercise, and breaking to bridle. He puts me in mind of a friend of mine: just such a wiry, craze care-for-nobody, but the best duty-officer I ever knew. By hedge or by stile we must bring his lordship round to the notion of a Hussar regiment for the lad.”
“If one could!” she sighed. “He thinks Richmond will out-grow that ambition—has done so already, perhaps.”
“He’ll learn his mistake,” the Major said dryly. “If he won’t yield now, with a good grace, he’ll suffer a bad back-cast the moment the lad comes of age, and joins as a volunteer. You may lay your life that’s what he’ll do, and his lordship wouldn’t be very well suited with that!”
“No, indeed! Or any of us!” she exclaimed. “But he’s not nineteen yet, and sometimes I feel such an apprehension that he may do something reckless, or even outrageous, because he’s not used to being crossed, besides never counting the cost before he plunges into the most hare-brained scrapes! You may say I’m indulging crotchets, but when he looked at you, today it flashed across my mind that he is in a scrape, and that you know what it is. Do you, Hugo?”
“Nay, I’m not in his confidence,” he replied.
She scanned his face searchingly but to no avail. “When he shot that look at you I knew that he didn’t go to bed when he said goodnight to us, and it was plain that you knew that at least.”
He laughed. “Don’t fidget yourself, love! He took it into his head to try if he could play a prank on me, young varmint!”
She looked relieved, but not wholly convinced. After thinking it over for a moment, she said: “I think he does sometimes slip out of the house when we believe him to be in bed. I went to his room once, in the middle of the night, because Mama had the tooth-ache, and remembered that she had given her bottle of laudanum to him when he had a bad tic. I knocked and knocked on his door, and even called to him, but he didn’t answer me, and I thought then that he wasn’t there. But when I told him about it in the morning he said that he had taken a few drops of laudanum himself, which had made him sleep like the dead.”