Cousin Kate

She was silenced by having a kiss planted firmly on her mouth. Mr Philip Broome said, with menacing severity, that if she had any more bird-witted suggestions to make, he advised her to keep them under her tongue; and, when she showed a disposition to argue with him, added, in a very ineffable way, that it did not suit his consequence to permit his promised wife to travel on the common stage.

That made her laugh; and when he left her, striding off in the direction of the stables, she walked back to the house in much improved spirits, and was able to greet Pennymore, whom she encountered in the Great Hall, with something very like her customary cheerfulness; and even to say in an airy voice that she had been lured into the garden because it was such a beautiful day. To which he responded: “Yes, miss! Very understandable!” with such a twinkle in his eye that the unruly colour surged into her cheeks. He then said that as Mr Philip had done him the honour to admit him into his confidence he would like to take the liberty of wishing her happiness. “In which, miss,” he informed her, with a fatherly smile, “Tenby desires to be included, Sir Timothy having told him last night of your Approaching Nuptials. Not that it came as a surprise to either of us! You will find only Mr Torquil and the doctor in the breakfast-parlour, Miss Kate, and I shall bring your tea to you directly.”

Waiting only until the telltale blush had faded, Kate proceeded to the breakfast-parlour. The doctor rose at her entrance, and came forward to hand her to a seat at the table, full of forced joviality, but looking as though he too had passed a sleepless night. Torquil, who had apparently recovered from his fall, was in a boastful, defiant mood, ready to come to cuffs with anyone unwise enough to criticize his horsemanship. He instantly challenged Kate to do so, demanding belligerently if she had anything to say on the subject. When she answered calmly: “Oh, no! How should I?” he uttered a crack of laughter, and said: “Just as well!”

“Torquil, Torquil!” said the doctor reprovingly.

“Oh, stop gabbing!” snapped Torquil, casting at him a look of venomous dislike. “I’ll tell you what, coz! We’ll have a game of quoits after breakfast before it gets too hot!”

“I’m sorry, Torquil: I’m afraid I can’t,” she replied. “I am leaving Staplewood today, and I must pack my trunk.”

“Leaving?” he ejaculated. “But you can’t leave! I won’t let you! I’ll tell Mama— Kate, why?”

“But, Torquil, I didn’t come here to live, you know!” she said, smiling at him. “Indeed, I think I have remained for an unconscionable time! It’s very kind of you to wish me to stay, but I have been thinking for some weeks that it is high time I left Staplewood—only it has had me in a puzzle how to do so without putting your mama to the expense and inconvenience of providing me with an escort to London, which isn’t at all needful, but which I know she would insist on doing. But now that my nurse has come to visit me the difficulty is solved. I shall go back to London with her. I wasn’t expecting her, so I have been as much taken by surprise as you are.”

He startled her by thrusting his chair back, and almost flinging himself on his knees beside her, grasping her hands, and saying in an anguished voice: “Oh, Kate, don’t go! Don’t go! You’re the only friend I’ve ever had, and if you leave me I shall have no one!”

The doctor rose rather quickly, but, encountering a fiery look from Kate, remained by his chair. Torquil, his head bowed over Kate’s hands, had burst into sobs. She glanced pitifully down at him, but spoke to Delabole. “Please go away, sir!” she said quietly. “You are quite crushing my hands, Torquil: pray don’t hold them so tightly!”

He released them immediately, saying between his sobs: “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you! Kate, you know I wouldn’t hurt you! I like you! You’re so kindl’

He sank his head into her lap, hysterically weeping; and the doctor, sighing deeply, but apparently satisfied that his mood was not violent, unobtrusively withdrew from the room. Kate laid a hand on Torquil’s gleaming gold locks, gently stroking them. Her heart was wrung, but she said soothingly: “Of course I know you wouldn’t hurt me! Don’t cry! You will make me cry too if you don’t stop, and you wouldn’t wish that, would you?”

He raised his head, staring wildly up at her. “You are going because you think I tried to shoot you! But I didn’t, Kate, I swear to you I didn’t!”

“No, I know you didn’t,” she said, patting his hand. “To be sure, I was very cross with you at the time for being so careless, but that’s all forgotten!”

“It’s Mama!” he said suddenly. “She is sending you away! Because you won’t marry me! O God, how I hate her!”

His voice shook with passion, and she sent a swift glance towards the door, guessing that the doctor’s ear was glued to it, and afraid that he might precipitate a crisis by coming back into the room. He did not, however, and she said, preserving her calm: “You mustn’t say that, Torquil. Moreover, your mama is quite as anxious for me to remain at Staplewood as you are. Get up, my dear, and sit here, beside me!

That’s better! Now own that you don’t in the very least wish to be married to me!” Her smiling eyes quizzed him, and drew an answering gleam from his. Encouraged, she began to talk to him about things which were of interest to him. He seemed to be listening to her, but plunged her back into despondency by interrupting suddenly with the announcement that he wished he were dead. She tried to divert his thoughts, but unavailingly; a cloud had descended on his brow, his eyes brooded sombrely, and his beautiful mouth took on a tragic droop.

She left him presently, knowing that, however much he might like her, she had no power to raise his spirits. She had not dared to disclose to him that she was about to be married to his cousin, for she feared that this might fan into a flame the embers of his inculcated hatred of Philip, always smouldering beneath the surface of his affection. His mood was one of profound melancholy, but she thought that it needed only a touch to send him into one of his fits of ungovernable rage.

She was looking deeply troubled when she entered her bedchamber, a circumstance that prompted Sarah, expertly folding one of the evening-dresses Lady Broome had bestowed on her niece, to say briskly: “If Father was to see you, Miss Kate, he’d say you was looking like a strained hair in a can! You’ve got no call to be so down pin, love—not unless you’ve been breaking straws with Mr Philip, which I don’t think!”

“No, indeed!” Kate answered. “I don’t think I could!”

“Ah!” said Sarah darkly. “Time will show! Where has he gone off to?”

“Market Harborough, to hire a chaise to carry us to London. Don’t put that dress in my trunk! I am not taking it. Only the dresses I brought with me!”

“Well, Miss Kate, you know best, but it does seem a shame to let a beautiful silk like this go begging!” said Sarah, sighing regretfully. “It isn’t as if it could be of any use to her ladyship. Still, I daresay Mr Philip will purchase another for you, because the way he’s wasting the ready is downright sinful! Not but what I’m looking forward to traveling in a post-chaise, and I don’t deny it! It’s something I’ve never done before, though we did come up to London in the Mail coach when we landed at Portsmouth—and a rare set-out that was!”

Kate laughed. “When Papa sent the baggage by carrier, and it was a week before it reached us? What a long time ago it seems!”

“Well, it is a long time. And if my Joe had brought the baggage it wouldn’t have taken him a week! Where shall I put these dresses, Miss Kate? It won’t do to leave them hanging in the wardrobe, where, as like as not, they’ll be pulled out one by one of the housemaids. I wouldn’t put it past that saucy little minx, Phoebe, or whatever she calls herself, to try them on!”

After a little discussion, it was decided to pack them carefully in the chest-of-drawers, which was done, not without argument, Kate being determined to do her share of the work, and Sarah being equally determined that she should sit in a chair, and direct operations. But, as she paid no attention to anything Kate said, Kate soon abandoned the chair, and began to fold the dresses herself. This earned her a scold, Sarah exclaiming: “Good gracious, Miss Kate! that’s no way to pack muslin! Just look how you’ve creased it!”

She plucked the garment out of Kate’s hands as she spoke, and was shaking it vigorously when a piercing scream almost caused her to drop it. She and Kate stood staring at one another for a startled moment. The scream was not repeated, but just as Sarah began to say: “Well, whatever next!” an even more unnerving sound reached them: someone downstairs was uttering wail upon wail of despair.

Deathly pale, in the grip of fear, Kate tore open the door, and ran out into the gallery, listening, with dilating eyes and thudding heart. She gasped: “It’s Sidlaw! Oh, what can have happened? What can have happened?”

She picked up her skirts, and raced down the broad stairs, almost colliding in the hall with Pennymore, also