Cousin Kate

head to foot, she was obliged to sit down for a few moments to recover her composure; and when she left the room she was very pale, and her hands were trembling slightly. She removed the key from inside the door, and inserted it on the outside, and turned it. After a moment’s hesitation she removed it from the lock, for fear that some member of the household, impelled by morbid curiosity, might creep in, and draw back the sheet from that ghastly face.

She was about to go downstairs again when sounds of lamentation reached her. She had no difficulty in recognizing Mrs Thorne’s voice, and she had never been closer to turning tail. Mrs Thorne had succumbed to the vapours, and that seemed to add the final touch to the nightmare. Gathering her resolution, she went quietly to the housekeeper’s small parlour, where she found Mrs Thorne lying back in a chair, as rigid as a wooden doll, and two of the maids, one waving burnt feathers under her nose, and the other fanning her zealously but ineffectively with a tambour-frame. Restraining an impulse to box this foolish damsel’s ears, and to shake the housekeeper till the teeth rattled in her head, Kate set about the wearing task of restoring Mrs Thorne to some semblance of calm. This she did by first getting rid of the maids, and next by agreeing that Mrs Thorne undoubtedly possessed the gift of second sight, and expressing awe, admiration, and wonder. This had a beneficial effect; Mrs Thorne forgot to maintain her rigid pose, and recounted for Kate’s edification, and with a wealth of irrelevant detail, the various occasions when she had prophesied disaster. By the time she had reduced Kate almost to screaming point, she was herself so much recovered that it needed only a judicious amount of flattery, and the intelligence that Sidlaw had collapsed, and had had to be carried to bed in raging hysterics, to bring her to her feet, saying that she was sure, she was very sorry for Miss Sidlaw, but would have supposed she might have thought of something better to do than to add to all the commotion by kicking up such a dust. She herself, she said, for all she hadn’t been my lady’s nurse, was just as much attached to her, poor soul, and had much more sensibility than Miss Sidlaw, but would scorn to give way to her feelings in such a nasty, vulgar way, but would continue to perform her duties, even though it killed her. Kate thanked her, said she didn’t know what any of them would do without her, and escaped. And just as she was thinking that at least she had managed to avert the danger of Mrs Thorne’s taking to her bed, with an attack of her celebrated Spasms, she remembered another member of the household whose sensibilities were even more exquisite than Mrs Thorne’s. She felt a strong inclination to sit down on the nearest chair, and to relieve her overcharged emotions by bursting into tears; but instead of this, she turned towards the back stairs, and went resolutely to brave Gaston in his stronghold.

The big kitchen seemed to her to be crowded with persons whom she had never set eyes on before, all talking at once; but her unprecedented arrival on the scene struck even Gaston dumb with amazement. The menials who waited on him might stand open-mouthed and goggling, but Gallic address soon rescued him from his own astonishment, and he came forward, bowing deeply, and commanding the kitchen porter, whom he referred to in a very lofty style as a marmiton, to set a chair for mademoiselle. He begged her to inform him in what way he could serve her, for to serve her, he said gallantly, would be for him the greatest pleasure imaginable. So Kate, assuming the mien of a helpless innocent, said that she knew she could depend upon him to support her through this dreadful brouhaha, and what, she demanded of him, could he suggest in the guise of a dinner to set before a bereaved family, none of whose members, he would understand, would be able to support the sight of roast joints, or the raised pies which he cooked to such perfection. Gaston, even more susceptible than Mrs Thorne to flattery, rose magnificently to the challenge, bidding her to rest tranquil, and leave all to him: he would prepare a dinner—very small, but very choice—that would animate even the capricious appetite of Monsieur Torquil.

Kate got up rather quickly, managed to smile, and to thank Gaston, and hurried away, down the stone-paved passage to the Great Hall. In the need to prevent the disintegration of the household she had not had time to think of Torquil, but the chef’s words brought home to her the full horror of her aunt’s death, and filled her with icy dread. She went through the Gothic door into the Great Hall, and found Mrs Nidd there, about to mount the stairs.

Mrs Nidd exclaimed: “There you are, Miss Kate! I’ve been looking for you all over! Wherever have you been hiding yourself, dearie?”

“I’ve been in the kitchen. Sarah, where is Torquil?”

“Well, that’s more than I can tell you,” said Sarah. “It seems that man of his—Badger, is it?—is searching for him in the woods. By what Mr Pennymore tells me, one of the footmen caught sight of him, making for the woods like one demented, which, of course, the poor lad is! Now, don’t get into a fret! You’ve kept up wonderful till now, love, and acted just as you should, and like I knew you would, and you’ve got to remember that he won’t go to the gallows for strangling his ma, like he would if he was sane, but only be shut up safe somewhere, where he can’t harm himself, or anyone else. And it’s my belief, Miss Kate, that if ever a woman deserved to be strangled, she did! Now, you come into this room, which they call the Blue saloon, though why they do I’m sure I don’t know, for the only bit of blue in it is in the curtains, and not so very much of it there either! Mr Pennymore has this instant brought in a tea-tray, and a dish of little cakes so light you’ll never know you’re eating them. No, I know you don’t think you could swallow anything, dearie, but you’ll find you can, and you’ve got to keep up your strength, you know!”

Having propelled Kate gently but inexorably into the Blue saloon, she pushed her into a chair, and began to pour out the tea. Kate sank her head into her hands, and Mrs Nidd, observing how her fingers writhed amongst her soft curls, went on talking, in a comfortable way which Kate found vaguely soothing. She was able presently to drink a little tea, and even to nibble a small cake, but that her mind was preoccupied she showed by breaking into Sarah’s description of the fecklessness of Joe’s sister Polly, saying abruptly: “Sarah, why did he do it? Why? I know he hated her, but he was so much in awe of her that she had only to look at him to bring him into submission! Sarah, what did she say to him to goad him into strangling her? She can’t—oh, she can’t have told him that he was mad, and must be shut up!”

“It’s no use asking me what she said to him, Miss Kate, because I wasn’t there, but after what you told me last night I wouldn’t wonder at it if that’s what she did tell him. I got into a chat with Mrs Thorne when you was at dinner, and from the things she said—not that she meant to cry her ladyship down, mind!—it was as plain as a pack-saddle that her ladyship was so full of her own consequence, and so set on getting her own way, no matter what it cost her, that when she found she couldn’t, for all her plots and coaxings—like she did when you told her you wouldn’t marry Mr Torquil!—there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do, just for sheer, wicked spite! I can tell you this, love!—she was a regular bad one, and you don’t need to waste a crumb of sympathy on her! If you ask me, this precious Staplewood of hers will be a happier place now she’s dead! And don’t tell me she was kind to you! She wasn’t so very kind when she knew she couldn’t make you marry Mr Torquil! No, and it wasn’t kind of her to try to trap an innocent girl like you are into marrying a poor, mad boy that would strangle you as soon as look at you! Whenever I think of that it makes me fairly boil! Oh, well! they say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead—though why you shouldn’t I’m sure I don’t know!—so I’d best keep my lips buttoned, for speak good of her I could not! Drink up your tea, dearie!”

“Why did he go to her drawing-room?” Kate said, unheeding. “He never does so! Did she send for him? To scold him for trying to jump that wall yesterday? But she doesn’t scold him for the—the crazy things he does!”

“Well, according to what the doctor said, Mr Torquil found the carpenter nailing bars across the window of his bedchamber, which her ladyship had given him orders to do, without a word to anyone,” replied Sarah bluntly. “So Mr Torquil flew right up into the boughs, and rushed off in such a bang that the doctor couldn’t stop him, to ask his ma what she meant by it. It seems the doctor went after him, and he says he wouldn’t have left her ladyship alone with Mr Torquil if she hadn’t ordered him to do so, and if he hadn’t thought that she could handle Mr Torquil, like she always had done. He says that she told Mr Torquil to sit down, and that Mr Torquil obeyed her, so that he never thought she was in the least danger. He doesn’t know what happened after that, no more than anyone else does, but he did say, if you remember, Miss Kate, that she must have told him, but what she must have told him he did not say!”

Kate, who had been listening to this speech with a puzzled frown knitting her brows, said incredulously: “Good God! Did Dr Delabole tell you all this, Sarah?”

“Oh, no, he didn’t tell it to me!” said Sarah, refilling her cup. “He told it to Mr Philip, in this very room, but I was here, you see—just downstairs after getting that archwife into her bed, and seeing her drop off to sleep! Well, I’ve got no sort of fancy for the doctor, but I’m bound to own I couldn’t help compassionating him! Very rough Mr Philip was with him, raking him down till it was no wonder he had him quaking like a blancmange!”