A Cousinly Connection

by Sheila Simonson

  Aunt Hervey threw up her hands in despair.

  Jane forced a smile. "If I stumbled on his lordship in the Park, I'd not cut him. I'm not bent on making myself wretched."

  Her aunt sighed. "Well, if that is your philosophy, I hope you will at least strive not to make me wretched."

  Jane said meekly, "Have I been uncivil? Dear Aunt, forgive me."

  "And when you are in that frame of mind, I know very well what to expect. I believe I shall retire to my room and recruit my strength against the coming storm."

  Jane gave her an impulsive kiss. "Poor Aunt, what a trial I am."

  Chapter XIV

  If Julian had enjoyed anything like a civil state of mind in that wretched, hectic summer, he would have made a push to earn Vincent's friendship. As it was, it took the last dregs of sociability he possessed to shove aside thoughts of Jane and help Felix come to terms with a strange house. With Miss Winchell gone and the new tutor not yet come, Felix had nothing but his music to occupy him, and at times the boy was very crotchety indeed. So Vincent was often left to his own devices.

  Vincent's attention to the details of farming shewed some steadiness of character, and his superior acquaintance with local people was a help, for Julian was still an unknown quantity to farmers accustomed to Peavey. Except when his devil drove him, Julian was glad to use his brother in the long, wearing rides from one farmhold to the next that had left him stiff and sometimes half sick with pain.

  If he did not spend time making Vincent's acquaintance, at least he knew enough not to keep his brother on a leash. He made sure Vincent felt free to go fishing or cubbing, or to watch a mill or carouse with the local gentry, or to run off to Bath whenever he wished. When Horrocks despatched Vincent's quarterly allowance and he was once more plump in the pocket, he might have gone in for whatever mild gaming the region afforded. He did not choose to do so. Julian felt relief and gratitude. He also appreciated Vincent's tact in accepting the leasing of Meriden without demur, but he thought that Vincent was lonely and, at least in the evenings he spent at Fern Hall, thoroughly bored.

  Julian wondered how long it would be before his brother's high spirits overcame his determined virtue. To listen to Felix play evening after evening or, worse, to watch Felix and Julian at chess, must drive even the most civil sprig of the ton wild. Julian foresaw disaster. He knew the eventual solution--Vincent must have his own establishment--but Julian was too weary and unhappy, and often too preoccupied with the books, to find a temporary solution.

  He and Vincent came closest to friendship when they talked over matters affecting the estate or Lady Meriden's peculiar household in Bath, but Vincent's reminiscences of the high life put Julian to sleep, and he knew he was not himself a scintillating conversationalist. At least he avoided lapsing into that most boring of roles, the old soldier reliving past campaigns.

  He would have been astonished to know Vincent's true feelings, for he believed his brother to be merely marking time.

  In fact, Vincent was not often bored that summer. He found the particulars of farming less dull than the fusty rot he had put up with at school, and he took pride in Julian's use of him as an auxiliary. As for missing London, he had been far more frightened by his brush with the bumbailies than he allowed anyone to know. He missed his friends, but he did not miss the sensation of being in over his head with no one to throw him a rope.

  Besides that unarticulated sense of relief, Vincent was attached to the neighbourhood as Julian could not yet be. It was no punishment to the younger man to rusticate at home. He renewed acquaintance with childhood cronies, enjoyed his prestige among the daughters of the local squirearchy, and generally had a pleasant time.

  True, Fern Hall was not yet fit to receive company--not with carpenters and sweeps and plasterers underfoot. He did find it a matter for wonder that Julian should bear with Felix every blessed evening, but his older brother no doubt enjoyed listening to a lot of crash-and-tinkle music. As for chess, it was a closed book to Vincent, but, de gustibus, he had never believed that everyone must enjoy the same pleasures.

  If Vincent felt tranquil languishing in Dorset, toward Julian his feelings were less clear. Harry's ghost stood between the two. Harry had been Childe Harold and Beau Brummel and a high-born Gentleman Jackson and every sort of social hero rolled into one. Eleven years Harry's junior, Vincent had never been his brother's intimate. One is not a crony of the gods. Distance had lent Harry glory, still lent him glory.

  If Julian had dared to rail against the dead heir, Vincent must have defended Harry. The hurt was still too raw for the lad to think clearly, but Julian--apart from his one reference to Harry's debts and his single bitter allusion to the duel--didn't speak of Harry at all. True, he had taken what would have been Harry's place, but after the first shock, Vincent could not envy that. He had never seen himself as head of the family, nor now that he knew how things were left, would he have wished for the honour, not for ten thousand pounds in Consols.

  Julian made no attempt to replace Harry, but in a few short months his presence had come to seem reasonable, even a good thing. Vincent no longer hesitated to talk over his troubles with his brother, and that was something that had not happened with either Harry or his father. He could confide in Julian--he trusted him so far--but they were not friends. If his mind had been of a military cast, Vincent would have said he felt like Julian's subaltern.

  It was his brother's reserve that baffled Vincent and sometimes hurt him. Julian did not talk about his wishes or tastes or troubles. There was no reciprocity. Vincent had been humiliated to find Jane's brother nattering about Julian's past with greater knowledge than he had himself. Though it had seemed to Vincent that Julian did not enjoy Jack's prying, Vincent had envied Jack the common experience. His pride was hurt, however, and he was too much afraid. of a snub to exercise his curiosity.

  So things went--Vincent half-confiding, half-hurt, Julian withdrawn.

  Toward the middle of July, Felix's new tutor arrived, and the company grew rather livelier. When the twins returned from their school, very lively indeed.

  The tutor came first. Vincent was delegated to fetch the man, whose name was Ned Winters, from Dorchester. The fourth son of a clergyman, he sounded dashed dull. Vincent wondered where Julian had found him.

  "I didn't."

  "Put a notice in the Times?"

  Julian looked up from a pile of correspondence he had been buried in and grinned. "Tutor required for gentleman's household. Must be musician, Latinist, chess master, arm wrestler. No. My cousin Georgy--Lady Herrington, that is--found the man for me. I trust her judgement."

  "Oh, I say, Lady Herrington "

  "D'you know Georgy? "

  "Not to say 'know'. Met her once. Famous beauty, ain't she?"

  Julian raised his brows, "When she doesn't forget to carry her sunshade she's tolerable. Freckles." He bent back to his work, adding, "She's your cousin, too, Vincent."

  "I say!" The revelation worked powerfully on Vincent's mind, and he formed the resolve, if ever he should find himself back in social grace, of pursuing the connexion. To be admitted to Lady Herrington's salon...He stared at his ink-daubed brother and tried to imagine Julian cutting a dashing figure in the elegant company that surrounded the Divine Georgianna. He failed. "Does she...er, did you...oh, lord..."

  Julian burst into laughter. "Don't look so stunned, Vincent. I grew up with Georgy, you know. She couldn't very well cut an old playmate."

  Vincent flushed and grinned. "Dash it, Julian, no one could accuse you of being tonnish. I was surprized, that's all."

  "Not half as surprized as Georgy' s friends. I'll make you known to her next time we're in Town. You can conspire with her in my reformation."

  Vincent smiled uncertainly. He was rather shocked at his brother's cavalier dismissal of a golden social opportunity. To remain outside the higher circles for want of means or connexions was forgivable. To have the choice and decline it? He wondered if he'd ever understand Jul
ian.

  "For now," Julian was saying obliviously, "find the right Ned Winters for me in Dorchester. Felix has mated me three times in a row. My self-esteem won't bear many more defeats."

  Winters turned out to be a good-natured young man, perhaps a year older than Vincent, who was trying to make up his mind to enter Holy Orders and meantime must support himself. His Greek was good, his Latin excellent, and he had a decided gift for mathematics. To Vincent's relief, he also had an excellent seat on a horse and good, even hands, nor did he seem averse to a day spent fishing.

  He played chess very well. That won Felix's grudging approval, for Winters' chief defect lay in a want of advanced musical training. However, Mr. Thomas still rattled over thrice weekly from Lyme Regis. Newly challenged and made aware for the first time of Julian's plan to send him to a university, Felix fairly hummed with activity. Not even the eruption of Horatio and Arthur into Fern Hall disturbed his bliss. All this and a new chessmaster. The twins might put frogs in his boots with impunity. Felix was lord of creation, and what were mere frogs to such a one?

  As it happened, the twins gave Fern Hall a cursory look-through, dropped their collections of shells, pebbles, newts' eyes, and bats' toes, and made for the stables. There they found their hero, Thorpe, and a pair of stocky moor ponies. No one had given the boys their own mounts before. Partly from kindness and mostly in self-defence, Julian had bought the ponies and directed Thorpe to instruct his young brothers in proper horsemanship. The twins did not object.

  In fact, they vanished into the hills for long stretches of time--Julian's fell design--and when they did reappear on their uncomplaining ponies, Thorpe wore them out currying and polishing, and posting round and round the home pasture. At night they crammed down dinner and collapsed into bed with no strength left to devil Felix or anyone else. Mrs. Pruitt was heard to remark that school had done they varmints a mort of good, and even Thorpe' s diminished staff no longer flinched at the sight of them.

  It was fortunate that things went well with the boys, for Julian found himself with little time to spare them. That summer, rumours of rick-burning and window-breaking spread throughout the countryside. The weather was bad--wet and dreary--and there was widespread fear for both the corn and hay harvests. Will Tarrant wrote of serious unrest in Yorkshire, though not near Whitethorn. In Dorset, the local gentry whispered about illegal conspiracies among farm labourers, and everyone seemed gloomy beyond reason.

  Julian found it hard to understand the roots of the discontent. He had seen far greater poverty in Portugal and Spain. In fact, he was looking at England through eyes accustomed to a wasteland, and the placid green countryside seemed to him almost paradise. But broken walls and leaking thatches he could understand and, thanks to the munificent Nabob at Meriden, mend.

  It did not occur to Julian that, by using local men to repair Fern Hall,. he had prevented some of the want experienced in other areas that year, or that the Nabob's careless liberality in Whitchurch redounded to Lord Meriden's credit. For whatever reason--perhaps because it was his habit to listen when people talked, perhaps because, unlike his father, he was there--the Meriden estates suffered little from the unrest.

  One notoriously mean farmer attached to Rosehaugh lost out-buildings to incendiaries, however. When Calvert, as MP, begged Julian to call on the lord lieutenant for troops, Julian refused. He wondered what Calvert imagined the temper of the countryside would be if it found an army quartered on it.

  Though nothing particularly dreadful happened, people required soothing and reasoning with, and that required time and a great deal of jauntering about from place to place. Julian was glad of Vincent's help. Unfortunately he neglected to say so. Vincent chafed. Through the early dog days, resentment roiled in him like a thunderhead. Finally the storm broke.

  Vincent came in late and a trifle bosky, having dined with the Calverts of Rosehaugh. Deciding it was his duty to apprise Julian at once of the latest rumours of revolution, he leapt up the stairs and scratched at the door to his brother's room. No response. The next door, the library, shewed a crack of light, so he turned the latch and went in.

  Julian looked up from he paper-strewn escritoire, frowning. "What is it? "

  As he did all too often in his brother's presence, Vincent flushed like a chidden schoolboy. He said sulkily, "Nothing. I dined at Rosehaugh."

  "And our esteemed MP persuaded you that the Jacobin uprising scheduled for last Tuesday commences tomorrow instead."

  "Something like that. Dash it, Julian, I ain't a fool. Didn't say I believed him."

  "Sorry." Julian dipped his pen in the inkwell.

  Ordinarily Vincent would then have withdrawn from the room and gone off somewhere to brood. Tonight, however, he was sufficiently foxed to allow his resentment to fly.

  "Thought you wished me t'do the pretty with Calvert, Meriden. No pleasure t'me. Devilish dull cove, Calvert. Prosy. What's more, y'can dash well sh-stop making up tasks for me. Think I can't see through you? Send old Vincent chousing after Calvert. Send ol' Vincent over to the home farm. Keep'm out of the way. Keep'm busy. Le' the l'il boy play. Jush like the dash twins."

  Vincent sat down abruptly. He was sober enough to hear his diction slip and angry enough not to care. "Y'can demned well stop p-patronising me, M-meriden. Not m'father." He eyed his silent brother through a haze of wrath and brandy. "Demned Puritan."

  Julian blinked.

  "'If I wasn' unner obligation t'you, wunt stay 'nuther day," Vincent concluded. He rose and added with dignity, "Tha's all."

  Next morning he woke early with an aching head and a hideously clear recollection of everything he had said.

  Whatever his faults, he was not a coward. He sat up resolutely and rang for his man. When the valet did not immediately appear, he dragged himself from the high bed and struggled into buckskins and boots. He was splashing his face with the remains of a pitcher of cold water when his unbelieving and very sleepy man appeared.

  "Shave," Vincent ordered.

  The stunned valet went into action.

  A quarter hour later, he stumbled into the empty breakfast parlour. There was no sign of Julian or anyone else, but an array of hot chafing dishes and urns reassured Vincent. He puzzled a moment over whether to go in search of his brother or to wait, and decided in favour of coffee.

  Just as he stirred his lagging will to action, everyone came in at once--Felix and Ned Winters from upstairs, and Julian and the twins from the direction of the stables.

  "...and if I hear of either of you riding through standing corn again, I'll have Thorpe nail your ears to the stable door," Julian was saying in dispassionate tones to one of the twins.

  When he saw Vincent, he stopped short but said merely, "Good morning. Headache?"

  Vincent did not respond as he should have liked, for a cackle of general chatter commenced. There was no way to edge in a private word. He addressed himself to beef and mustard.

  Presently the twins crammed their pockets with bread and dashed off shouting. Vincent waited. At last Felix concluded the lecture he had been giving Julian on the sappiness of the lesser Latin poets and left on his tutor's arm, not forgetting, as they squeezed through the door, to extract a promise from Julian to hear the splendid é grins. The door thudded to.

  Vincent cleared his throat. "I say, Julian."

  "We'd best have a talk, hadn't we?"

  "Er, no need. Just thought to apologise." He met Julian's eyes and said miserably, "I'm sorry. In my cups."

  "You're seven kinds of fool to apologise."

  "What ?"

  "You meant what you said, I collect."

  "Well..."

  Julian was not smiling, but there was no rancour in his voice. "We misunderstand each other from time to time, but the fault is not always mine. You don't often say what you think."

  Vincent stared. "After last night I should hope not."

  At that Julian did smile. "Come up to the library with me." When Vincent hesitated, he added drily, "Th
e breakfast room is not ideal for privacy. You may enjoy apologising before witnesses. I don't."

  The servants were clanking about in the hall, so, feeling blank and apprehensive, Vincent want on up to the library. His brother followed more slowly. Julian was limping again. Dashed unfair of him, Vincent reflected. Gloom and the residue of resentment stirred in him.

  "I did mean it," he blurted when they were seated. "What I said about patronising."

  "Yes, I know."

  "It's true."

  "I hadn't thought so," Julian said with evident wariness, "but I don't see things through your eyes. I know it's been dull as ditchwater."

  Vincent bridled. "You re wrong there. It's dashed interesting. Old Buford was telling me only last week I've an eye for the land. It was that matter of the Meriden water meadow." Finding Julian's gaze on him, he flushed. "He did say it."

  "It was what I'd have said. You needn't take to your high horse. I thought you were bored. The devil, Vincent, if you like the work, what's troubling you? You wanted to try your hand, and God knows I've needed your help."

  Vincent snorted.

  "Why is that so hard to believe? It's true."

  Vincent muttered ungraciously, "Good of you to say so, Meriden."

  Julian's shoulders sagged. "Oh, very well. I was afraid of this from the first." He took out a stiff sheet of paper. "This is a deed of conveyance. I'll give you your choice. Fern Hall or my Yorkshire property, Whitethorn. You've not seen it. It's small but clear--or will be when the rents come in. Fern Hall's still encumbered. I'll do what I can to help you clear it."

  Vincent stared at him. "Now?"

  "Yes, now." Julian began to mend his pen. He looked very tired and very serious.

  "Dash it, Julian, you can't do it."

  "Why not?"

  When Vincent didn't reply, Julian set the pen down and said gravely, "It's not good for you to be kicking your heels here at my convenience. In fact it's ludicrous. If I were fifteen or twenty years your senior, or if I were someone like Harry whose motives you could trust--"