Cousin Kate

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “Oh, yes! There can be no doubt of that,” said Kate. “She has been giving me a sharp set-down for offering to lend her my assistance! I knew she would: so would my own old nurse if anyone offered to help her in the same situation!”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t go into her room, if I were you, Miss Kate. It is a very infectious complaint, and it would never do if you were to be ill!”

  “I don’t think it at all likely that I shall be,” answered Kate. “I know it’s fatal to say that, but I was lately in a house positively stricken with influenza, and between us the cook, and the second housemaid, and I nursed the mistress of the house, her three children, and two other servants, and the cook and I were the only ones who didn’t take the infection! So I’m not afraid.”

  He laughed heartily at that, and said that he now expected to be summoned to her bedside; advised her not to go to her aunt for a day or two; and archly warned Sir Timothy that he should warn my lady that she must not take ill again, if she did not want her lord to console himself by flirting with a pretty young lady.

  Sir Timothy accorded this witticism a faint, cold smile, and inclined his head courteously. Daunted, the doctor laughed again, not so heartily, and said that he must hurry away to seek his own dinner, or Torquil would be growing impatient.

  Sir Timothy smiled again, very sweetly, and the doctor bowed himself out of the room. Sir Timothy’s eyes travelled to Kate’s face of ill-concealed disgust, and amusement crept into them. “Just so, my dear! An intolerable mushroom! Or do I mean barnacle? He keeps me alive, for which I must be grateful—or ought to be! Will you drink a glass of sherry with me?”

  “Yes, if you please, sir. But if you mean to talk in that style you will be sorry you invited me to dine with you, because I shall sink into the dismals, and become a dead bore!”

  “Impossible!” he said, with his soft laugh. “You have a merry heart, my child, and I don’t think you could ever be a dead bore.” He poured out two glasses of sherry as he spoke, and came back to his chair, handing her one of them with a slight, courtly bow.

  “I don’t know that, sir: I do try not to be a bore, at all events! As for a merry heart—well, yes! I think I have a cheerful disposition, and—and I own I delight in absurdities! But that’s not at all to my credit! I always laugh at the wrong moment!”

  The door opened just then to admit Pennymore, followed by the first footman, carrying a tray of dishes. When these had been set out, Pennymore informed Sir Timothy that he was served, and Sir Timothy formally handed Kate to the table, saying, as he did so: “I had meant to invite Philip, to make it more amusing for you, but the silly cawker has gone off to dine with young Templecombe. He sent up a message from the stables. You must accept my apologies for him!”

  “Not at all, sir! Isn’t there a proverb that says one’s too few, and three’s too many?”

  “Very prettily said!” he approved. “You’ve a quick tongue and a ready wit: that’s what I like in you, Kate. If I had a daughter, I should wish her to be of your cut. But I daresay she would have been a simpering miss, so perhaps it’s as well I have no daughter. What are you offering me, Pennymore?”

  “Compote of pigeons, sir, with mushroom sauce. Or there is a breast of fowl, if you would prefer it.”

  “With a bechamel sauce!” said Kate. “I know all about that! It ought to have been sweetbreads, but I am very glad it’s not, because I don’t like them!”

  “Why, isn’t it sweetbreads?” he asked, rousing himself from the melancholy which had descended on him with the thought of the daughters who had died in early childhood.

  Very willing to divert him, she gave him a lively description of the effect Lady Broome’s fainting fit had had upon Mrs Thorne’s sensibilities, and the chef’s excitable temperament; and of the analogy Ellen had discovered in an attack of influenza, and the palsy-stroke which had laid one of her aunts low. He was a good deal amused, and the rest of dinner passed happily enough. When the covers were removed, and Pennymore set the port and brandy decanters before his master, he was moved to bestow an approving glance upon Kate, and, later, to inform Tenby that he hadn’t seen Sir Timothy so cheerful this many a day. To which Tenby replied: “He hasn’t much to make him cheerful, Mr Pennymore : as we know!”

  Pennymore shook his head sadly, and sighed, looking in a very speaking way at the valet, but not giving utterance to his thoughts. Tenby echoed the sigh, but maintained a similar silence.

  Left alone with his guest, Sir Timothy offered her a glass of port, which she declined, saying, however, that she was very content to nibble a fondant while he lingered over his wine. “Unless you would prefer me to withdraw, sir?” she said, her fingers poised over the silver dish in front of her. “Pray don’t say I must! It is so cosy here—quite the cosiest evening I’ve spent at Staplewood!”

  “You haven’t much taste for formal pomp, have you, Kate?”

  “No,” she said frankly. “Not every day of the week, at all events!”

  “Nor have I, which is why I prefer to dine in my own room. But I don’t permit Pennymore to wait on me in the general way. Only when Minerva is away from home, or indisposed. To deprive her of the butler would be rather too much!”

  She ventured to say: “I fancy Pennymore would prefer to wait on you, sir.”

  “Yes, he is very much attached to me. You see, we were boys together. He has been with me through some dark times: a true friend! He’s fond of Philip, too, and so am I. It’s a pity Philip and Minerva dislike one another, but I suppose it was bound to be so: Minerva doesn’t care for children, you know. And I’m bound to own that when they first met he wasn’t at all a taking boy! He was a sturdy little ruffian, tumbling in and out of mischief, and impatient of females.” He stared down into his wineglass, a reminiscent smile playing round his mouth. “Disobedient too. I never found him so, but I’m afraid he was very troublesome to Minerva. She resented my affection for him—very naturally, I daresay; and he resented her being in his aunt’s place. He was very fond of my first wife: the only woman he was fond of in those days, for he was barely acquainted with his mother. Anne was very fond of him, too, and never jealous, as God knows she might have been, when she saw him so stout and vigorous, and had the anguish of watching her own son die. We lost all our children; two were still-born; and only Julian lived to stagger about in leading-strings. Both my little girls died in their infancy—faded away! They were all so sickly—all of them, even Julian! But nothing ever ailed Philip! Some women might have hated him, but not Anne! She thought of him as a comfort to us.” He looked up at the portrait which hung above the fireplace. “That was my first wife,” he said. “You never knew her, of course.”

  Kate, who had already stolen several glances at the portrait, answered: “I wondered if it was. I wish I had known her.”

  “She was an angel,” he said simply.

  Knowing that his mind had drifted back into the past, Kate remained sympathetically silent. His eyes were still fixed on the portrait, fondly smiling; and Kate, also looking at it, thought that no greater contrast to the first Lady Broome than the second could have been found. Anne had been as fair as Minerva was dark, and nothing in her face, or her languid pose, suggested the vitality which characterized the second Lady Broome. It might have been the fault of the artist, but, although she had a sweet face it lacked decision. She was reasonably pretty, but not beautiful: the sort of woman, Kate thought, one might easily fail to recognize, unless one had been particularly well-acquainted with her. No one who had once met the second Lady Broome could fail to recognize her again.

  She was still gazing at the portrait when she discovered, to her discomfiture, that Sir Timothy had withdrawn his eyes from it, and was watching her instead. “No,” he said, as though he had read her thought, “she wasn’t like your aunt.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Kate, unable to think of anything else to say.

  He stretched out a frail hand to pick up the decanter, and refilled his glass. “Your aunt has man
y good qualities, Kate,” he said, with deliberation, “but you must not allow her to bullock you.”

  “No, I d-don’t mean to!” Kate replied, stammering a little. “But she hasn’t tried to—to bullock me, sir! She has been only too kind to me—far, far too kind!”

  “She is a woman of great determination,” continued Sir Timothy, as though Kate had not spoken. “Also, she is ruled, mistakenly, I think, by what she conceives to be her duty. I don’t know why she brought you here, or why she treats you with kindness, but I do know that it was not out of compassion. Some end she has in view. I don’t know what it may be: I have not cared enough to discover what it is.” He raised his eyes from their contemplation of the wine in his glass, and turned them towards Kate. She saw that they smiled in self-derision, and was shocked. He returned his gaze to his wineglass, and said cynically: “You will find, my child, that as you approach the end of your life you will no longer care greatly for anything, and will be too tired to take up arms against a superior force. One becomes detached.”

  “You still care for Staplewood!” Kate said, in an effort to raise his spirits.

  “Do I? I did once, but of late years I have grown aloof from it. I am beginning to realize that when I am dead it won’t matter to me any longer, for I shall know nothing about it.” He raised his glass to his lips, and sipped delicately. “Oh, don’t look so distressed! If I cared—” He stopped, and stared ahead into the shadows beyond the table, as though he were trying to see something hidden in them, and yet was afraid to see it. His lips twisted into a wry smile, and he brought his eyes slowly back to Kate’s face. “Perhaps it’s as well we can’t see into the future!” he said lightly. “I didn’t think I cared for the present either or for people, but I find myself fond of you, Kate—as if you were my daughter!—which is why I’ve roused myself from my deplorable lethargy to warn you not to let yourself be bullied or coaxed into doing anything your heart, and your good sense, tell you not to do.”

  Kate began to speak, but he checked her, with a thin hand upraised, and a shrinking expression in his eyes. “I don’t know what it is that Minerva has in mind, and I don’t wish to know,” he said, on a querulous note of old age. “I’m too old and too tired! I only want to be left in peace!”

  Kate said calmly: “Yes, sir. I shan’t do anything to disturb your peace. You may be sure of that!”

  He drank a little more wine, and seemed to regain his customary detachment, and, with it, his—tranquillity. He sat in silence for a minute or two, watching the play of the candlelight on the wine still remaining in his glass, but presently he sighed, and said: “Poor Minerva! She should have married a public man, not a man who had never an ambition to figure in the world, and was worn-out besides. She has many faults, but I cannot forget that when my health broke down she abandoned the life she loved without one word of complaint, and brought me home—for I was too ill then to decide anything for myself—and would never afterwards own that she wished to return to London. She has a strong—compelling—sense of duty, as I’ve told you: it is a virtue which she sometimes carries to excess. She has also unbounded energy, which I have not, I am ashamed to say. She’s ambitious, too: she wanted me to enter politics: couldn’t understand that I’d no interest—no wish to shine in that world! Or in any other,” he added reflectively. “It was my brother Julian who was ambitious—Philip’s father, you know. I never had but one ambition: to hand my inheritance on to my son! It seemed to me to be of the first importance that the line should not be broken. Well, no matter for that! When the doctors told Minerva that London life wouldn’t do for me, and she came to live with me here, from year’s end to year’s end, she knew she must find another interest, or mope herself to death. That was admirable: another woman, of less strength of character, would have repined, and dwindled into a decline!”

  “But instead,” Kate reminded him, “she interested herself in what she knew to be dear to you: Staplewood!”

  He was shaken by soft laughter. “Ironical, isn’t it? I taught her to love Staplewood; I taught her to be proud of the Broome tradition; I encouraged her to squander a fortune transforming the gardens, and replacing all the furniture in the house, which she declared to be too modern, with furniture of an antique date. I daresay she was right. Perhaps the mahogany chairs and tables which my father bought, and the carpets he laid down, were out of harmony with the house: I never thought so, but I grew up with them, and accepted them, without thinking much about them. But I think I haven’t much taste. I recall that Julian, when he came here once on a visit, said that Minerva had improved the place out of recognition. That was high praise, for he had excellent taste himself. But as Minerva’s interest in Staplewood grew, mine diminished. Unreasonable, wasn’t it?”

  “Perhaps,” said Kate diffidently, “you felt it had become more hers than yours, sir.”

  He considered this, slightly frowning. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t feel that to this day. I’ve always known that it was within my power to call a halt, but I’ve never done so. At first because I was glad that she was so eager to enter into my own feeling for Staplewood; and later—oh, later, because, in part, I knew I was to blame: it was I who had encouraged her to devote herself to the place, and how, when she had learnt to love it, could I discourage her? And, in part, because I felt myself to be unequal to a struggle with her.” The derisive smile touched his lips again. “I like to blame my declining health for that, but the truth is that Minerva has a stronger character than mine. She doesn’t shrink from battle as I do, and she is by far more ingenious than I am. All I wish for is peace! Very ignoble! Dear me, how I’ve rambled on! One of the infirmities of old age, my dear! But I have begun to be uneasy about you, and I know your aunt as you do not. I’ve told you what are her good qualities, so you won’t think I don’t recognize them when I tell you that you are deceiving yourself if you believe that her kindness and her caresses spring from affection. Poor Minerva! She is a stranger to the tender feelings which elevate your sex, and make us coarser creatures adore you!”

  She smiled at this, but said: “I am not deceived, sir. I must be grateful to my aunt for her exceeding kindness, but I know that she brought me here to serve—oh, a foolish end! I have told her that I shan’t do so, and I can assure you that I shan’t let myself be coaxed, or bullied. So pray don’t tease yourself any more! I am very well able to care for myself.”

  He looked relieved, and proposed a rubber of piquet. It was plain that whatever he might guess he shrank from having his suspicions confirmed, and would not willingly intervene in his wife’s schemes. Kate liked him too well to despise him, but she was forced to realize that there was a milkiness in his character which did indeed make him appear ignoble. It was possible that his health was responsible for his reluctance to face a difficult situation, but she could not help feeling that he had probably chosen, all his life, to look the other way when in danger of being faced with anything unpleasant. She made no attempt to embroil him with his wife, but received his invitation to play cards with every appearance of cordiality. In fact, she had hoped to have escaped one of these sessions, and to have had an opportunity to retire early to her bedchamber, not because she wished to go to bed, but because she had as yet had no opportunity to think over all that had occurred during the most eventful day of those she had spent at Staplewood. The extraordinary happenings had begun with Torquil’s disquieting behaviour in the park; this had been followed by the astonishing news that Mr Nidd was in Market Harborough; and the climax had been reached when she had received an offer of marriage from Mr Philip Broome. This, not unnaturally, had cast everything else into the background; and she was honest enough to admit to herself that very little of the period of reflection which she had so earnestly desired would be wasted in consideration of any other problem. She felt that her mind was in turmoil, making it impossible for her to concentrate on the play of her cards. And, strangely enough, it was not the chief problem which teased her: whether or not to accept Phi
lip’s offer: but a host of minor difficulties, which her experience of the male sex led her to think that Philip would dismiss as frivolities. But they were not frivolous, nor would the Broomes think them so. When she left Staplewood, she would leave also everything that Lady Broome had given her, and how, with barely enough in hei purse to bestow vails on Ellen, and on Pennymore, was she to purchase her bride-clothes? And from whose house was she to be married? And who would give her away, in her father’s place? These details might seem unimportant to Philip, but they would not seem unimportant to his relations; and although he might say that he didn’t care a pin for their opinions he would be a very odd man if he did not wish his bride to present a creditable appearance. A bride who was unattended by relations of her own, and came to Church from a carrier’s yard, would inevitably earn the contempt, and perhaps the pity, of the Broomes, and that would gall Philip past endurance.

  She wondered if this had occurred to him, and whether he might already be regretting his rash proposal; and, if so, whether he would find an excuse to cry off, or put a brave face on it. She felt that she could bear it best if he were to cry off, but she also felt that he was not the kind of man to play the jilt, and became so lost in these melancholy reflections that Sir Timothy asked her if she was tired.