Cousin Kate

Philip?”

He shook his head. “Tenby says he is resting: asleep, he thinks. I shall tell him when he wakes. If I can’t persuade you to leave Staplewood, Kate, I must pay off the post-boys: the chaise has been standing in the yard ever since my return. Wait for me: I shan’t be many minutes.”

He went away; and Kate, glancing at the bowl of pink roses on the table by the window, went to it, and drew out one half-opened bloom, and wiped its stalk with her handkerchief. It was in her hand when he came back, and she was holding it when she stood beside him, looking down at Torquil’s still form. Her other hand was clasping Philip’s, but as she gazed at that beautiful face, from which every trace of peevishness had vanished, she drew it out of his slackened hold, and brushed it across her brimming eyes, and said, under her breath: “Yes. He is just asleep, and dreaming so happily! so peacefully! Thank you for bringing me to see him: this is how I shall always remember him.”

She bent over the dead boy, and slid the stem of the rose under his folded hands, and gently kissed his cold brow. Then she turned back to Philip, and he took her out of the room, his arm round her waist.

Neither spoke, until they had left the West Wing, and were walking down the gallery that led from it, past Lady Broome’s bedchamber, past Kate’s, to the upper hall, when Kate said sadly: “No one could grieve over his death, but, oh, Philip, that is how he might have looked when he was alive, if his brain hadn’t been so dreadfully afflicted!”

He answered only by the tightening of his arm round her waist; but when they reached the head of one of the wings of the Grand Stairway, he paused, and kissed her, and said: “I must go down to my uncle. My poor darling, you’re looking so tired! Will you rest on your bed before dinner? I wish you will!”

She smiled, but with an effort. “You do think me a poor honey, don’t you? I’ll go to my room, but I don’t promise to rest on my bed: there’s too much to think of, and I don’t seem to have had time yet to—to regulate my mind. Philip, shall we be obliged to live here?”

“I don’t know,” he answered heavily. “Perhaps I shall be able to make some arrangement. If either of his sisters were alive—but they are both dead! Or if the mutton-head Minerva engaged as bailiff could be trusted to manage the estate—”

“But he can’t, can he? And—and even if he were the best bailiff imaginable he couldn’t bear Sir Timothy company, could he? Philip, if your uncle wishes you to remain here, don’t let the thought of me weigh with you! Do as you think you must! I don’t doubt I shall accustom myself!” She summoned up a gallant smile, and added: “I must accustom myself, for now that Torquil is dead Staplewood will one day belong to you, won’t it? I know you never wanted it, and I don’t mean to try to hoax you into thinking that I do: it has never been a home to me, and—and just at the moment it is horrible to me! But if you took me to your own home, leaving your uncle in this huge, awful house with only servants to take care of him, I don’t think I should ever be happy. I should be thinking all the time that I had failed quite miserably in my duty, and picturing Sir Timothy here, quite alone, with only his memories—and so many of them unhappy memories! And you would too, Philip! You might even regret that you had married me!”

“Never that!” he said. “I always hoped—but even if Torquil were alive, soon or late I must, I suppose, have been confronted with the same problem. O God, what a nightmare it is!”

She drew his head down, and tenderly kissed his cheek. “Yes, it is a nightmare, but Sarah says things are never quite as bad as one thinks they will be. And also she says it is a great mistake to cross bridges until one reaches them, so—so don’t let us look beyond tomorrow! Go down now to Sir Timothy, my dear one! I’d come with you if I didn’t know that he would liefer by far learn what has happened from you alone. I hope —oh, I pray that the shock may not cause him to suffer another, and fatal heart- attack!”

Not daring to trust herself to say more, she went quickly to her room, and entered it without looking back.

She found Sarah there, unpacking her portmanteau. After one shrewd glance at her, Sarah pushed her into a chair by the window, saying: “Now, you sit there, like a good girl, Miss Kate! I don’t want you under my feet!”

Kate smiled rather wanly, but attempted no argument. She was thankful to sink into the chair, and to lean back, closing her eyes. Sarah continued to bustle about, casting one or two measuring glances at Kate, but saying nothing until Kate presently opened her eyes, and straightened herself, sighing deeply. She then adjured her not to let herself fall into the doldrums. “For if you don’t show Mr Philip a cheerful face, Miss Kate, you’d have done as well, and better, to have left this place, like he wished you to do.” She went to Kate, and began to chafe one of her hands. “You want to look on the bright side, love!” she said. “I don’t say it’s easy, nor that it’s very bright, but things could have been worse! The poor young gentleman won’t ever be shut up now, and if the doctor can be trusted to tell the Coroner, frank and open, that he wasn’t in his right mind when he choked his mother to death, and flung himself into the lake—”

“Oh, if only I could be sure he wasn’t in his right mind!” Kate cried. “But I think he was, Sarah! That’s what has upset me so much. Oh, Delabole will say he wasn’t: I’m not afraid of that! Perhaps—if my aunt had told him he was mad, he lost his senses, but when he saw that he had killed her they came back to him. He wasn’t out of his mind when he drowned himself. Whether he was afraid of the consequences, or—or afraid that he was mad, I don’t know. But I can’t help remembering that he said once, when we were discussing dreams, that sometimes he dreamed he was being chased by a monster, and sometimes that he had done something dreadful. My aunt interrupted him, and I thought no more about it until today. And then I remembered it, and the look on his face—an uneasy, scared look, Sarah! Do you think—do you think he was secretly afraid that he had done something dreadful? When he saw the carpenter nailing bars across his window, did it confirm his fear? If that was so—oh, poor Torquil, poor Torquil, what agony of mind he must have suffered!”

“Now, that’s quite enough!” said Sarah, in a scolding tone. “You can’t know what he thought, nor what her ladyship said to him, and you never will, so there’s not a bit of good to be gained by dwelling on it! If he suffered, it wasn’t for very long—not if Mr Philip was speaking the truth when he said that he looked happy. Didn’t you think he looked happy, Miss Kate?”

Kate nodded, wiping her eyes. “Yes. He’s smiling—as though he had at last found something he had been trying to find for a long, long time.”

“Well, that’s all you’ve got to remember, love. There, you stay quiet till it’s time I made you tidy for dinner! You’re worn out, and no wonder.”

Kate sighed, and closed her eyes again. But presently she opened them, and said, rather drearily: “We shall have to live here, you know. We can’t leave Sir Timothy alone in this dreadful house. And when he dies, it will be Philip’s, and he doesn’t want it, Sarah! And I don’t want it either! It has never been home to me, and now it has become horrible! And everyone will think I married Philip because I was determined to become Lady Broome!”

“I shouldn’t wonder at it if you find you’re wrong,” said Sarah. “I was talking to Mr Pennymore last night, and by what he said it seems her ladyship wasn’t at all well-liked by Sir Timothy’s old friends. Well, it stands to reason they wouldn’t like her, when she kept them away from him! She said it was on account of his always being so poorly, but Mr Pennymore says that it’s his belief—and Tenby’s too!—that it would do Sir Timothy good to see a few people. Just dropping in to have a crack with him, not waiting to be invited to a party! And what’s more he told me that Staplewood hasn’t been a home to him ever since her ladyship made it into a show-place. It’ll be your task, Miss Kate, to make it a home again, and to make visitors welcome, what’s more! As for its being horrible to you, it’s only to be expected you should think so at first, but you can take it from me, dearie, that you’ll get over that. Well, goodness, if everyone felt they couldn’t bear to live in their houses, because something tragic had happened in them, half the big houses in the country would be standing empty!”

Kate smiled, and got up. “What should I do without you, Sarah?” she said. “You have so much sense! I beg your pardon for flying into alt: I’ll try not to be so stupid again. I think the—the things that have happened today have been rather too much for me. I shall be better tomorrow!”

Sarah gave her a resounding kiss. “That’s my good girl!” she said. She was interrupted by a knock at the door, and said: “If that’s Ellen, I’ll send her away!” She went to the door and opened it, saying as she did so: “I’ll attend to Miss—Oh, it’s you, sir! Yes, you can come in!”

“Philip?” Kate cried eagerly. “Come in, come in! How is Sir Timothy? Did you tell him what had