Cousin Kate

Chapter IX

Kate was so much shaken by her gruesome experience that it was some time before she could compose herself; but after half an hour her limbs ceased to tremble, and she was able to drag her mind from the slain rabbit. She had felt at first that she could not bear to go down to dinner, but a period of calm reflection restored her to her usual good sense. Whatever excuses Dr Delabole might make for her, her absence from the dinner-table must inevitably bring Lady Broome to her room, and Lady Broome, she knew, would ask shrewd questions. She had little appetite, but still less did she want to talk about what she had seen.

She was agreeably surprised when she entered the Long Drawing—room to find that Torquil had apparently recovered from his sulks, and was in high good humour, talking with remarkable affability to his mother. Kate had expected to be told that he was laid low with a headache, for this was in general the sequel to one of his bursts of temper; but in the event it was Sir Timothy who was the absentee. After slamming the door on Dr Delabole, it seemed that Torquil had cast himself on his bed, and had fallen into a deep, natural sleep, which had wonderfully refreshed him. His brow was unclouded; his eyes were neither overbright, nor heavy with drowsiness; and there was a delicate colour in his cheeks. He looked to be in a state of purring content, and so well-disposed towards his fellow-men that instead of resenting the doctor’s intrusions into his conversation with Lady Broome he invited them, calling upon Delabole to support him on a disputed point. He seemed to have banished from his mind his quarrel with Kate; and when Pennymore came to announce that dinner was served, and Lady Broome rose from her chair, he exclaimed: “But where is Philip? Shall we not wait for him?”

“No, we are a sadly diminished party tonight,” responded Lady Broome, disposing her shawl about her shoulders. “Philip is dining at Freshford House.”

“Oh, no!” protested Torquil. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I wanted to have my revenge on him!”

“As Philip didn’t see fit to inform me of his intention until noon, and you have been sound asleep for hours, there was no opportunity to tell you of it,” said Lady Broome composedly. “You will be obliged to revenge yourself on Kate instead.”

“That would be no revenge, madam!” he objected. “I can give Kate thirty, and beat her every time!” He threw a challenging look at Kate, and laughed. “Can’t I, coz?”

“At billiards you can,” she agreed. “I notice, however, that you dare not challenge me to a rubber of piquet!”

“No, no, I hate cards! I’ll tell you what, though! I’ll challenge you to a game of Fox and Geese!”

“Why, what’s that?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s a famous game! Don’t you know it? I was used to play it with Philip, when I was in the schoolroom, but from some cause or another I gave it up—I daresay it got to be a bore. You have a board, with seventeen geese and one fox, and the game is for the geese to entrap the fox, and for the fox to seize as many geese as he can, so that he can’t be caught. Mama, where is the board. Don’t tell me it was thrown away!”

“My dear, I don’t know what became of it!”

Fortunately, since he showed signs of falling into a pet, Kate recollected that she had seen a board, marked in the shape of a cross, in the cabinet that contained the chess and the backgammon boards, and was able to unearth it. When she held it up for his inspection, inquiring: “Is this it?” he exclaimed delightedly: “Yes, that’s it! If you can’t find the pieces, we can use draughts—though it would be a pity not to play with the set Philip made for one of my birthdays! He carved them out of wood, and painted them: white geese, and a red fox, carrying his brush high! One of the geese had the most comical expression, and two of them were shockingly lop-sided. Let me look!”

He fell on his knees in front of the cabinet, and began to pull out the various boxes it contained; but Lady Broome intervened, saying: “After dinner, my son!”

“Yes, very well! but I must find the pieces first!” he said.

“No, you must not!” said Kate firmly, pulling him to his feet. “I know how it would be, if you did find them! You would begin to teach me how to play, and the end of it would be that I shouldn’t get any dinner at all! Come along!”

She smiled at him as she spoke, and gave his hand a coaxing squeeze. This had the effect of banishing the mutinous look from his face. He smiled back at her, a brilliant light in his eyes, and raised her hand to his lips, holding it in an uncomfortably strong grip, and said: “To please you, coz, anything!”

“I’m much obliged to you, Torquil,” she said, in a prosaic voice, and disengaging herself, “but there’s no need for these heroics! You should rather please your mama, who is being kept waiting for her dinner!”

He flushed, and for a moment looked as if he would fly into a miff; but after biting his lip, he cast her a sidelong glance, and burst out laughing. He was still giggling when they reached the dining-room, in a childish way which Kate found exasperating, but he stopped when Lady Broome spoke to Kate, asking her if she had seen how well the roses had stood up against the storm, and said suddenly: “I’m hungry! What’s in that tureen, Mama?”

“Calves’ feet and asparagus,” she replied.

“Oh, good! I like that!” he said.

Since it was seldom that he took any interest in what he ate, Kate was mildly surprised, and still more surprised when instead of eating a few mouthfuls, pushing the rest about on his plate, and complaining that it was unfit to eat, he ate his portion with avidity, and demanded some of the beef which Dr Delabole was carving. Kate, who was finding it difficult to swallow, and could only by the exercise of will-power subdue her nausea, was obliged to avert her eyes from the blood oozing from the sirloin; but Torquil pronounced it to be roasted to a turn, and—rather greedily, she thought—applied himself to it with zest.

“Your long sleep has given you an appetite!” said the doctor playfully.

“Did I sleep for a long time? I don’t remember.”

“Indeed you did! Badger was hard put to it to rouse you!”

“Oh, I remember thatl I woke up to find him shaking me, and very nearly came to cuffs with him for interrupting my dream!”

“What were you dreaming about?” asked Kate. “It must have been something very agreeable! I find that whenever I have a very vivid dream I am only too thankful to wake up from it!”

“I don’t know! The devil of it is that it slipped away! But I do know it was agreeable!” There was a general laugh, which made him look round challengingly, a spark of anger in his eyes.

“How can you know that, if it slipped away from you, my son?” asked his mother.

He considered this, and then laughed reluctantly. “Oh, it does seem absurd, doesn’t it? But I do know, though I can’t tell how, Kate! You understand, don’t you?”

“Perfectly!” she assured him. “I don’t even remember my bad dreams, but I know when I’ve had one!”

“Do you have bad dreams?” he said, turning his head to look searchingly at her.

“Uncomfortable ones, now and then,” she acknowledged.

“But not shocking nightmares? Things which haunt you—make you wake in a sweat of terror?”

“No, thank God! Only very occasionally!”

“I do,” he said earnestly. “Sometimes I dream that I’m running from a terrible monster. Running, running, with weights on my feet!—It hasn’t caught me yet, but I think that one day it will. And sometimes I dream that I’ve done something dreadful, and that’s—”

“For heaven’s sake, stop, Torquil!” exclaimed Lady Broome. “You are making my blood run cold!” She gave an exaggerated shudder, and added, in a tone of affectionate chiding:

“Detestable boy! Next you will be telling us ghost stories, and we shall none of us dare to go upstairs to bed! You know, Kate, a ghost is the one thing we lack at Staplewood! It was a sad disappointment to me when Sir Timothy brought me here as a bride, for in those days I was a romantic; but I understand that the owners of haunted houses find it impossible to induce their servants to remain with them, so I’ve learnt to be thankful that no ghost wanders about Staplewood, and no invisible coach drives up to our door in the middle of the night, as a warning that the head of the house is about to die!”

“Yes, indeed, my lady, and so you may be!” said the doctor. “That puts me in mind of a strange occurrence which befell me many years ago, when I was sojourning in Derbyshire.”

Torquil muttered: “O God!” but Lady Broome invited the doctor to continue, and cast a quelling look at her son, which made him give a smothered giggle.

By the time the doctor had come to the end of his anecdote, the second course had been set on the table, and Torquil was pressing Kate, in dumb show, to eat a cheesecake. She shook her head, whereupon he exclaimed, interrupting the doctor, that she must be ill, since she had eaten almost nothing; and she said in a hurry that she would have a little of the jelly. “But are you ill?” he asked anxiously.

“No, no! Just—just not hungry!” she assured him, touched by his solicitude.

He smiled engagingly upon her. “Oh, I’m so happy to hear you say so! I was afraid you meant to cry off from our game!” he said ingenuously.

She choked, but managed to gasp: “Not at all!”

Lady Broome came to her rescue, reproving Torquil for breaking in so rudely on the doctor’s story. “And let me tell you, my son, that to draw attention to Kate’s loss of appetite is even more uncivil! She is feeling the heat, as I am myself—but I notice you don’t remark on my loss of appetite! Dear child, if you have finished, shall we go upstairs?”

Kate had not finished, but she thankfully abandoned the jelly, and followed her ladyship from the room. On their way up the Grand Stairway, Lady Broome said: “Dr Delabole informs me that you had an unpleasant experience this afternoon, in the wood. Very disagreeable, and it is no wonder that it made you feel squeamish, but it doesn’t do to refine too much upon such things, my love. People who live in the country are for ever killing something! There is really very little difference between the unlettered yokel who sets snares for rabbits, and the gentleman who shoots pheasants, except that one is a poacher, of course. I must tell the head-keeper to be on the watch.”

Kate returned no answer. She could only suppose that Dr Delabole had not revealed the gruesome details to her aunt; and, recalling his advice to her not to mention the episode, she thought that this was very probable: Lady Broome could scarcely have dismissed the matter so coolly had she known the full sum of it, nor could she have expected Kate to banish it from her mind. But when they reached the Long Drawing—room again, she recommended Kate to prosecute a search for the missing fox and geese, saying, with an expressive smile: “We shall have no peace unless they are found! The game might quite as well be played with draughts, but you know what Torquil is, once he takes an idea into his head!”

Fortunately, Kate discovered the pieces in a box at the back of the cabinet; and by the time Torquil and Dr Delabole came into the room, she had set the board out on a small table, and was arranging the geese on it. Torquil cried delightedly: “Oh, you’ve found them! Capital! But that’s not the way to set them out, coz! I’ll show you!”

She was very willing to learn the game, but had it not been for Dr Delabole, who drew up a chair at her elbow, and quietly instructed her, she must have been hopelessly bewildered by Torquil’s exposition. The rules of the game were simple, but the play called for some skill. Having been beaten twice, in the least possible number of moves, she began to master the tactics, and was soon forcing Torquil to exercise his considerable ingenuity to win. When the tea-tray was brought in, and Lady Broome called a halt, she would have put the pieces away, but Torquil begged for just one more game, and she readily agreed—subject to Lady Broome’s approval. It was the gayest evening of any she had yet spent at Staplewood.

Lady Broome said: “Very well, but come and drink your tea first, both of you! I am persuaded that you at least must be in need of it, Kate! Such squeaks of dismay as you’ve been uttering, and such crows of triumph!”

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, ma’am. Have ,we been very noisy?” Kate said penitently. “It is the most ridiculous game, but excessively exciting! When I find the fox about to pounce on one of my geese, I can’t help but squeak! But as for crowing, that was Torquil, and very unhandsome it was of him! I had no occasion to crow!”

“Oh, what a bouncer!” mocked Torquil. “You cornered me once, and if that wasn’t a crow that you gave I never heard one!”

“Well, it’s my turn to be the fox this time,” said Kate merrily. “And your turn to squeak! See if I don’t snap up your geese!”

The final game was prolonged; Torquil won it, and said virtuously: “Observe that I’m not crowing, coz!”

She laughed. “That’s worse! Gracious, how exhausted I am!”

Dr Delabole took her wrist, and shook his head solemnly: “A tumultuous pulse!” he pronounced. “I shall prescribe warm tar-water—excellent for a fever!”

“Ugh!” shuddered Kate. “It sounds horrid!”

“All medicines are horrid!” stated Torquil.

“Very true,” agreed Lady Broome, casting a cloth over her embroidery frame, and rising to her feet. “However, I hardly think we shall have to dose Kate with tar-water, or anything else! My dear, if you are ready, shall we go up to bed? It is growing late.”

“Of course I am ready, ma’am! I wish I may not have been keeping you up: you should have told us to stop playing! Goodnight, sir—goodnight, cousin! If you hear a shriek in the night, you will know that I have had your nightmare, and have wakened just as I was about to be caught!”

She waved her hand to him, and went away with Lady Broome. She said, halfway along the gallery: “How well Torquil looks tonight! I shouldn’t wonder at it if that long, natural sleep did him all the good in the world. He had an appetite, too. Do you know, ma’am, it’s the first time since I came here that he has wanted his dinner? What a pity it is that he suffers so often from insomnia, and has to be given composers! Surely they must be very bad for him? I mean,” she added, remembering the snubs she had received, “that it is a pity he can’t sleep without them!”

“A great pity,” agreed her ladyship. “But I hope he may be in a way to be better.” She paused outside the door of Kate’s bedchamber, but instead of bidding her goodnight she said: “I shall come and tuck you up presently, so don’t fall asleep! I want to talk to you.”

She then went to her own room, leaving Kate considerably surprised, and quite at a loss to guess what they were going to talk about.

A very sleepy abigail was awaiting her. She had tried to dissuade Ellen from waiting to put her to bed, but without success. Ellen had looked shocked, and had said that she knew her duty. “It isn’t your duty if I don’t desire you to undress me,” had argued Kate. But Ellen had said that it was her duty, and that her ladyship would be very angry if she failed in it.

“Well, her ladyship won’t know!”

“Oh, yes, miss, she will—begging your pardon! Miss Sidlaw would tell her, and I’d be turned off! Oh, pray, miss, don’t say I must go to bed before you do!”

Since Ellen was plainly on the verge of tears, Kate was obliged to give way. She reflected that although no great hardship was suffered by Ellen or Sidlaw at Staplewood, where early hours were the rule, the life of a fashionable lady’s dresser must be arduous indeed. Perhaps a governess’ lot was preferable: she might have very much more to do during the day, but at least she was allowed to sleep at night.

She had just tied on her nightcap when Lady Broome tapped at the door. She jumped into bed, telling Ellen to admit her ladyship, and then go to bed, and sat up amongst the pillows, hugging her knees.

Lady Broome had taken off her dress, and was wearing an elegant dressing-gown of lavender satin, lavishly trimmed with lace and ribbons. Kate exclaimed involuntarily: “Oh, how pretty! How well it becomes you, ma’am! Ellen, set a chair for her ladyship before you go, if you please! I shan’t want you again tonight.”

“Yes, the purple shades do become me,” said Lady Broome, sitting down beside the bed. “Very few women can wear them. Now, you look your best in blue, and orange-blush. I wonder how yellow would become you? Not amber, or lemon, but primrose. Have you ever worn it?”

“Now and then, ma’am,” replied Kate.

“I must send for some patterns,” said Lady Broome, and went on to talk about silks and muslins and modes, until Kate said firmly that she had so many dresses already that she had no need of any more. She did not think that her aunt had come to her room to discuss fashions, and waited for the real object of her visit to be disclosed.

She had to wait several minutes, while Lady Broome continued to talk of furbelows, but at last Lady Broome said: “You looked particularly well in the dress you wore for our dinner-party; Torquil could scarcely take his eyes off you! My love, I must tell you that you have done Torquil a great deal of good! I am so grateful to you: you are precisely the kind of girl he needs!”

A little overcome, Kate stammered: “You are very good, Aunt! I hope you may be right, because it has seemed to me that—that by trying to keep Torquil out of the sullens I could—in some sort—repay you for your—your kindness to me!”

“Dear child!” Lady Broome said, in a voice of velvet, and stretching out a hand to clasp one of Kate’s. “If that was your aim, you have succeeded! He is in far better frame! Dr Delabole has been telling me that there has been a marked improvement since he had the benefit of your companionship.”

Kate swallowed, and said rather faintly: “Has there, ma’am?”

“Yes, indeed there has been!” Lady Broome assured her. “There is a want of disposition in him, and he still has odd humours, but I now have every hope that he will drive a better trade—because his ardent desire is to please you!”

Kate could only stare at her. It did not seem to her that Torquil had any desire to please anyone but himself; and she was unable to repress the thought that if his mother thought him improved since her arrival at Staplewood his previous state must have been parlous indeed.

Lady Broome smiled at her, pressing her hand. “He has a great regard for you, you know! I have come to believe that you would be just the wife for him!”

Kate gasped. “Are you joking me, ma’am?”

“No, indeed I am not! I should welcome such an alliance. Have you never thought of it?”

“Good God, no!”

“But why not?”

Utterly taken aback, Kate said, groping for words: “I’m too old—it would be quite unsuitable! Dear Aunt Minerva, forgive me, but—but you must be all about in your head!”

“Oh, no, I’m not, I promise you! I think it will be best for Torquil to marry a woman who is older than himself; and as for unsuitable, what, pray, do you mean, Kate?”

“I mean that I’m a penniless nobody!”

Lady Broome raised her brows. “You are certainly penniless, my dear, but scarcely a nobody! You are a Malvern, as I am myself, and if Sir Timothy thought me fit to be his wife you must surely be fit to become his son’s wife!”

“Yes, if I were younger, or he older! If we loved one another!”

“Oh, love!—” said Lady Broome, shrugging her shoulders. “It isn’t necessary for a successful marriage, my dear, but you may be sure that Torquil is in love with you!”

Fudge!” exclaimed Kate wrathfully. “Oh, I beg your pardon, ma’am, but it is fudge! Why, he was fancying himself in love with Miss Templecombe when I first came here!”

“I am thankful that you drove her out of his head! She would not have done for him!”

“No, very likely not, but the thing is that he is by far too young to be fixing his interest! Good God, ma’am, he hasn’t been granted the opportunity to meet any—any eligible girls! When he is older—when his health is established—and you permit him to leave Staplewood—”

“I shall not do so.” The words, granite-hard, fell heavily, and all at once, seeing the grim set to her aunt’s mouth, and the stern resolution in her eyes, Kate was afraid, and almost shrank from her. But the revealing moment was swiftly gone: Lady Broome laughed softly, and said: “He is too handsome, and too big a matrimonial prize! Every matchmaking mother in London would be on the scramble for him, and he would fall a victim to the first designing female who set her cap at him! No, no, I mean to see him safely riveted before I set him loose upon the town! Does that seem unfeeling? Believe me, I know him too well to run any risks! His constitution will always be delicate, I fear, and a few weeks racketing about London would knock him up, just as his father was knocked-up. That is why I wish him to marry a woman of sense, not a giddy girl.”

Kate said carefully: “Yes, ma’am, you must hope that he will do so, but not for some years yet, surely! He is only nineteen, and young for his years, I think. I have been acquainted with many boys of his age, and although some of them were what my father called callow halflings they were none of them so—so childish as Torquil!”

“Exactly so!” said Lady Broome. “Other boys are sent to school, and find their feet. It was not possible to expose Torquil to the rigours of school-life. He was the sickliest child, and at one time I despaired of rearing him. But I did rear him, thanks to Dr Delabole’s skill and understanding, and he is now going on prosperously. But he is excitable, and easily led. I don’t scruple to tell you, my dear, that I dread what might be the result if he were allowed to run free. I believe, however, that if he were married, it would give him the ballast he lacks. And that,” she said, with a smile, “would be a weight off my mind, Kate!”

“Aunt Minerva!” said Kate, drawing a long breath, “I collect that you think I should be able to give him ballast, but I do beg you to believe that you are mistaken!”

“Oh, no!” replied her ladyship. “I’m not mistaken!”

“But I don’t wish to marry him!” Kate blurted out. “Such a notion never entered my head!”

Lady Broome rose, and began to draw the curtains round the bed. “Well, dear child, now that I have put it into your head, consider it! You are four-and-twenty, and have no expectations. You may not be in love with Torquil—I do not require that you should be—but you don’t dislike him, I trust, and if you marry him your future will be assured. More than that: you will be a woman of consequence, for it is not a small thing to be the wife of Broome of Staplewood. Think it over, Kate!”

She bent and kissed Kate’s cheek, and then dosed the curtains, blew out the candle, and went away, leaving Kate in a state of considerable perturbation.

She had never been more thunderstruck, for she knew how large were her aunt’s ambitions, and had supposed that she had set her heart on Torquil’s contracting a brilliant alliance. It was not impossible. He had position, wealth, and an extraordinarily beautiful face; and when he was in a complaisant mood he could be charming. It was unfortunate that he was put out of humour so easily, and was subject to fits of dejection, but these were faults which he could overcome, and no doubt would, as his health improved. Shrewdly assessing Lady Broome, she had supposed that a love of power, rather than of persons, was the motive behind her refusal to countenance his fleeting infatuation for Dolly Templecombe, and her determination to keep him at Staplewood for as long as she could. She was far from being a doting parent: she showed her niece more affection that she showed her son; and although she took meticulous care of him there had been times when Kate could have believed that she held him in aversion. She certainly despised him. Perhaps that was to be expected in a woman who enjoyed excellent health, and had hoped to provide Staplewood with a worthy heir. Kate, herself warmhearted, could not enter into such feelings, but she could dimly perceive that they might exist, just as she could perceive that there might well be jealousy without love. Lady Broome wanted to keep Torquil under her thumb, and would strongly oppose the influence of a wife. Kate could understand that, and had supposed that she might expect to retain her influence for several years. Yet here she was, proposing for him a most ineligible marriage when he was no better than a schoolboy.

Then, as Kate lay cudgelling her brain to discover a solution to the problem, it flashed suddenly into her head that by marrying Torquil to her own niece she might hope to keep him in subjection, and to continue to reign at Staplewood after Sir Timothy’s death. It seemed fantastic, but the more Kate thought about it the more possible it became, except that Lady Broome, who was no fool, could hardly imagine that her niece was a bread-and-butter miss with no mind of her own. It then occurred to her that she was deeply indebted to her aunt, and she recalled that Mr Philip Broome had spoken to her of obligations, and sacrifices, and had assured her of his support. She sat up with a jerk, and sat frowning into the darkness. She wondered if this was what he had meant. Recollecting his sardonic manner, and the cold contempt in his eyes when he had looked at her upon his first coming to Staplewood, she realized that he must have assumed that she had lent herself to Lady Broome’s dark schemes. Angry tears started to her eyes,. and she was shaken by a sob of sheer rage, and a strong desire to slap his face. How dared he suppose her to be such an abandoned, mercenary creature? Admittedly, he had very soon changed his mind, but he apparently thought she might yield to the temptation of a title, riches, and security. Well, Mr Philip Broome should shortly be made to repent of having so basely misjudged her; while as for needing his help in the matter, she was very well able to help herself. She gave her pillow a savage thump, and was just about to lie down again when another thought occurred to her: why, if he did not hope to succeed his uncle, was he opposed to Torquil’s marriage? Sooner or later, Torquil was certain to marry, unless he died. He was unlikely to die of his various aches and ills, but he might meet with a fatal accident. Kate gave a shiver, and whispered fiercely: “No!” because the idea that Mr Philip Broome would do his young cousin a mischief was totally unacceptable to her. Torquil had talked in a very theatrical way about the fatal accidents which had so nearly befallen him, but it had not taken her long to realize that no reliance could be placed on what Torquil said. A very little reflection, moreover, had shown her how ridiculous his accusations were: even had Philip loosened a coping-stone, wired a fence, or sawn through the branch of a tree, it was improbable that any of these accidents would have killed him. He might have broken his neck at the wired fence, but, in fact, he had cleared it, and when he fell out of the elm tree he had come off with a few bruises. As for the coping-stone, although he said it had fallen in front of him, missing him by inches, Kate thought it had probably fallen nowhere near him. She had a comical vision of Mr Philip Broome inexpertly setting booby-traps, and claiming as his victims some quite unoffending persons, and chuckled.

She became serious again as she recalled the mysterious hints Lady Broome had several times dropped. She had not actually accused Philip of trying to kill his cousin, but she had said that he coveted Staplewood, and his uncle’s title. The only real charge she had brought against him was that he had a bad influence over Torquil. Kate thought that if he exercised any influence at all—which was doubtful—it was a good one; and was intelligent enough to guess that Lady Broome would consider any other influence than her own a bad one. She lay down again, grimacing. Whoever Torquil’s bride might be, she would find herself with the devil of a mother-in-law. “And it won’t be me!” she said, snuggling her cheek into the pillow.