Ampersand Papers Read Online Free PDF

intellectuals than had his cousin Lord Skillet; nevertheless it was perhaps surprising that he had thus sought out her company again. Charles had a profession. Indeed, he had nothing but a profession, since his father, the late Lord Rupert Digitt, had very successfully cantered and galloped and jumped and raced his patrimony into the English grass and English mud well before his untimely death. Charles did have before him, of course, the prospect of becoming Marquess of Ampersand one day. But he distrusted it. He had no reason to suppose Lord Skillet either incapable of, or indisposed towards, woman. And he judged him to be just the type that marries shortly before scrambling into his death bed, and there maliciously begets an heir when actually in articulo mortis . In addition to which, the business of becoming eighth marquess would probably prove to be nothing but a dead loss in the pecuniary way. So Charles had a profession. He was quite a busy young architect: too young, indeed, to be even up and coming, so far; but clearly of the kind that expeditiously achieves that reputation. It was to the credit of his family feeling, therefore, that he had thus found time to drink Mr Jackson’s Earl Grey tea with his obscure kinswoman.
    He was discovering – what he had perhaps glimpsed at their first meeting – that Miss Digitt was the family historian. She could have given Lord Ampersand points at thumbing over Burke and Debrett. She had a family tree hanging, not modestly in a wash-place, but prominently in the hall of her unremarkable villa. Her cats, which occupied most of the chairs in her drawing-room, were clearly pedigree cats. Even her aged maid-of-all-work was distinguishably of the pedigreed sort, wielding broom or carrying coal-scuttle in what might be termed an armigerous way.
    ‘Have you heard,’ Charles asked his hostess, ‘that there’s quite a to-do at Treskinnick over family papers?’
    ‘I hear very little from Treskinnick. It makes itself known to me chiefly as a smell.’
    ‘A smell, cousin?’ (Charles had decided that this somewhat archaic mode of address would gratify Miss Digitt. He had thoughts of presently abbreviating it to ‘coz’, which had a pleasant eighteenth-century ring.) ‘I don’t quite follow you.’
    ‘Pheasants. They don’t need to be hung. They have been – quite generously, and I presume by British Rail. Fortunately the cats are fond of pheasant. For venison they don’t greatly care. But I have persuaded Jane to cultivate a taste for it.’
    ‘I see. Well, the family papers don’t smell – except, perhaps, of mystery or mystification. Or even obfuscation.’ Charles had quickly discovered that Miss Digitt liked this sort of talk. ‘There are plenty of honest-to-God papers, as you can imagine. But the papers that my uncle and aunt have taken it into their heads to be busy about might be called notional ones. Nobody has glimpsed them, so far.’
    ‘It surprises me that they should care tuppence about them, whether notional or verifiably extant. Take a cress sandwich, Charles. I have been teaching Jane to grow cress on blotting-paper. My impression of the present Lord Ampersand is that he is well-meaning but scarcely well informed. He is thereby the less embarrassing to his wife, no doubt. Knowledge of any sort would readily confuse Lady Ampersand.’
    ‘It may well be so.’ Charles found that he was enjoying Miss Digitt – the more so because she was by no means all of a piece. Hidden beneath this acrid manner was something positively skittish. Or perhaps it should be called romantic. She was capable of being quite excited by the attentions of a personable young man. He wondered whether in her youth she had proved a worthy Digitt in some amorous way. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is true that my Aunt Lucy is no blue-stocking. But the woman has a bottom of good sense to her.’
    ‘I’m delighted to hear it.’ Miss Digitt had greeted this further eighteenth-century touch