Cousin Kate (26 page)

'So have I!' he said, hugely entertained. 'I see that we were made for one another! How soon will you marry me?'

'I don't know! I haven't had time to think! And should you not
consider
before you make me an offer?'

'I did consider, very profoundly, and I have already made you an offer.'

'Yes, but you haven't been acquainted with me for very long, and I don't think you did consider profoundly.'

'Well, you're beside the hedge, my sweet! You don't suppose that a man of my years, and settled habits, proposes marriage without consideration, do you?'

She answered seriously, wrinkling her brow: 'Yes, I think I do. There have been many cases of gentlemen, much older than you, proposing on the spur of the moment. And afterwards regretting it.'

'Very true!' he said, rather grimly. 'I know of one such case myself. But you are the only woman I've known with whom I wish to spend the rest of my life, Kate. I could never regret it, and I mean to see to it that you don't regret it either! When will you marry me?'

Before she could answer him, they were both startled by a stentorian shout behind them. Kate turned quickly, but Philip had no difficulty in recognizing Mr Templecombe's voice. 'The devil fly away with Gurney!' he said wrathfully. 'Am I never to enjoy a moment's privacy with you?'

'Well, you can't expect to be private with me in a curricle!' Kate pointed out.

'No, and I can't expect to be private with you at Staplewood either!' he said, checking his horses. 'Minerva takes good care of that!'

'There's always the shrubbery,' she reminded him demurely.

'Oh, no, there is not! Expecting every minute to see Minerva coming in search of you, and with two gardeners liable to look over the hedge at any minute! - Well, Gurney, what do you want?'

Mr Templecombe, who was riding a good-looking covert-hack, reined in alongside the curricle, pulled off his hat, and bowed to Kate. 'How do you do, ma'am? Happy to renew my acquaintance with you! Hoped I might have the pleasure of meeting you again, but you haven't been out riding lately, have you?'

'No, it has been rather too hot,' she explained, smiling at him. 'How is your sister? I hope you, and Lady Templecombe, are pleased with her engagement? I wished to send her my felicitations, but thought our acquaintance too slight to warrant my doing so.'

'I don't know that - never much of a one for the conventions, y'know!-but she'll be very much obliged to you, that I
can
vouch for! Took a great fancy to you! As for Amesbury, I should rather think I am pleased! He's a great gun: known him all my life! Wouldn't you agree that he's a great gun, Philip?'

'Yes, an excellent fellow,' said Philip. 'What do you want to say to me, Gurney? I can't stay: we are going to be late for dinner as it is!'

'I'll go along with you as far as to your gates,' said Mr Templecombe obligingly. 'Only wished to warn you that I'm going on a bolt to the Metropolis tomorrow, and don't know when I shall be back. So you can't come to stay with me, dear boy! A curst bore, but there's no getting out of it! M'mother's beginning to cut up a trifle stiff: says it's my duty to show my front! Says I ought to bear in mind that I'm the head of the family. Says it presents a very off appearance when I don't show. I daresay she's right. She's holding a dress-party, and says I positively must be there.'

'Undoubtedly you must!' said Philip. 'If only to see to it that the butler doesn't water the wine, or the cook spoil the ham!'

'Exactly so! Not that there's much fear of old Burley's watering the wine: he's a strict abstainer! Still, I do see that it wouldn't be the thing for me to stay away from m'mother's dress-party.'

'No,' agreed Kate. 'How uncomfortable it would be for her not to have you there to be the host!'

'Just what she says, ma'am! But the deuce of it is that once she gets me to London it's all Lombard Street to an eggshell I shall find myself regularly in for it! I can tell you this: I'm fond of Dolly, but I shall be glad when we've got her safely buckled!'

All this time he had been riding beside the curricle, but a cart was seen approaching, and he was forced to fall back. As he continued to rattle on, in his insouciant style, and Philip's eyes had naturally to be fixed on the road ahead, the burden of maintaining conversation fell on Kate, who slewed round into a most uncomfortable position, and was heartily glad when it was again possible for him to ride alongside the curricle. 'I say, dear boy, what happened to that groom of yours?' he asked, suddenly struck by the groom's absence.

'He - er - is suffering from an indisposition,' replied Philip, directing a quelling look at his tactless friend.

'Suffering from a—Oh-ah! Just so!' said Mr Templecombe hastily. 'What I wanted to say to you is that I'd be glad of a word with you before I go. Tell you what! You take Miss Malvern back to Staplewood, and come and eat your mutton with me! No need to change your dress! I want to ask your advice.'

'I'm sorry, Gurney: I believe I must not,' said Philip, looking anything but pleased.

'Humbug, dear boy! Her ladyship don't want you, and
you'll
excuse him, won't you, Miss Malvern?'

'Of course I will,' replied Kate, with a cordiality that earned her a fiery, sideways glance from Philip. She said, in a lowered voice: 'Please go! I must have time to think, and - and you must know there will be no opportunity for you to be private with me this evening!'

Apparently he did know this, for after hesitating for a moment he said curtly: 'Very well, Gurney: I'll come.'

'Capital!' said Mr Templecombe, undismayed by this ungracious acceptance. 'I'll be off then: must warn my people to lay an extra cover! 'Servant, Miss Malvern! Shall hope to see you again when I come back!'

The gates of Staplewood were within sight; Mr Templecombe waved his hat in farewell, and cantered off. Kate said reproachfully: 'How could you be so uncivil?'

'Easily! I felt uncivil!'

'But you can't be uncivil to people only because you
feel
uncivil!' Kate said austerely. ,

'I can, if it's to Gurney. He don't give a button! We've been friends all our lives - even went to school together!'

Since Kate knew, from her military experience, that young gentlemen who were fast friends greeted one another in general by opprobrious names, and never seemed to think it necessary to waste civility on a chosen intimate, she had long since abandoned any attempt to fathom masculine peculiarities, and now said no more, merely smiling to herself as she tried to picture the inevitable results, if any two females behaved to each other in a similar style.

Mr Philip Broome, having negotiated the entrance to Staplewood in impeccable style, glanced down at her, and instantly demanded: 'What makes you smile, Kate?'

'Oh, merely that gentlemen are always uncivil to their friends, and polite to those whom they dislike!'

'Well, naturally!' he said, making her giggle.

'I won't ask you to explain,' she said. 'Even if you could do so - which I take leave to doubt - I shouldn't understand!'

'I should have thought it must be obvious! However, I don't mean to waste the few minutes left to us in trying to explain what is quite unimportant. Kate, my darling, will you marry me?'

'I-I rather think I will,' she replied, 'but you must give me time to consider! I know it sounds missish to say so, but you
have
taken me by surprise, and - and though I would try to be a good wife to you I can't feel that I
ought
to accept your offer!'

'One thing at least you can tell me!' he said forcefully. 'Do you feel you could love me? I mean - on, deuce take it I -
do
you love me? I don't wish to sound like a coxcomb, but—'

'Oh, Philip, how
can
you be so absurd?' said Kate, stung into betraying herself. 'Of course I love you!'

'That,' he said, whipping up his horses, 'is all I want to know! Tomorrow, my darling, when you have considered, we will discuss when it will be most convenient for us to settle on a suitable date for the wedding! Yes, I know you are wondering how to break the news to Minerva, but you need not: I'll do that - and instantly remove you from her sphere of influence! O my God! there's the stable-clock striking six already! Why did you urge me to dine with Gurney? Shall I come in with you? Minerva is likely to be out of reason cross, you know!'

'Perhaps she will be, but not nearly as cross as she would be if you were to accompany me!' replied Kate, preparing to alight from the curricle. 'She dislikes you quite as much as you dislike her, Philip! I mean to come to points with her, and nothing could more surely bring us to dagger-drawing than
your
presence, believe me!'

'You are full of pluck, Kate!' he said admiringly. 'But if your courage fails you at the last moment, don't hesitate to tell me! I shall fully sympathize!'

She smiled, and took the hand he was holding out to her, to facilitate her descent from the curricle. Once on the ground, she looked up at him, with shyly twinkling eyes. 'I promise you it won't. I don't mean to tell her that you have been so obliging as to make me an offer, of course!' She pulled her hand out of his tightening clasp as she spoke, and went swiftly up the steps to the principal entrance to the house.

It stood open, as it always did in summertime, during the daylight hours, and the inner door, leading from the lobby into the hall, was on the latch. She let herself softly in, without, however, much hope of being able to run upstairs unobserved. Lady Broome insisted that one or other of the footmen should keep a watch on the door, and be at hand to bow her, or any visitor, in, and to relieve the gentlemen of their hats and coats. But on this occasion no one came into the hall, and Kate, who had more than half expected Pennymore to meet her, charged with a reproachful message from her aunt, thankfully darted up the stairs, to fling off her crumpled walking-dress, and,to hurry into the evening-gown she trusted Ellen would have laid out in readiness. She thought, fleetingly, that it was odd that neither of the footmen had been lying in wait for her; but she was not prepared to be greeted by the news, conveyed to her by Ellen, in awe-stricken accents, that the household was in an uproar, because my lady had fainted clean away an hour after Miss had left the house, and had been carried up to her bed in a state of total collapse.

'And they say, miss - Mrs Thorne, and Betty, and Martha - that her ladyship has never fainted in her life before, and Betty says as her aunty was just the same, never having a day's illness until she was struck down with a palsy-stroke, and never rose from her bed again!'

Without attaching much weight to this story, Kate was surprised, for it had not seemed to her that Lady Broome was on the brink of a palsy-stroke, although, looking back, she remembered thinking that her aunt was out of sorts when she had sent her on a useless errand. She said, in a disappointingly matter-of-fact way: 'Nonsense, Ellen! I expect she has contracted this horrid influenza, which is rife in the village. Quickly, now! Help me into my dress! I'm shockingly late already!'

Ellen obeyed this behest, but said that everything was at sixes and sevens, on account of her ladyship's being very ill, and Mrs Thorne's having given it as her opinion that it was a Warning: a pronouncement which had operated so powerfully on the cook's sensibilities that he had ruined the cutlets of sweetbread ordered for the Master's dinner, and had been forced to boil a fowl, which he proposed to serve with bechamel sauce, being as the Master couldn't seem to stomach rich meats.

While privately thinking that the chef had seized on Lady Broome's sudden indisposition as an excuse for having overcooked the cutlets, Kate realized that it must be a very rare occurence, for it had clearly disorganized the establishment.

She discouraged Ellen's ghoulish desire to cite all the examples of fatal collapse which had, apparently, carried off half her aunts and uncles and cousins, and repeated her belief that Lady Broome's disorder was merely a severe attack of influenza.

In the event, she was justified, greatly to Ellen's disappointment. Just as she was about to leave her room, and to go in search of Sidlaw, a perfunctory knock on the door was instantly succeeded by Sidlaw's entrance. She said immediately : 'Come in! I was just going to see if I could find you. What's this I'm hearing about her ladyship? Has she caught this horrid influenza that is going so much about?'

She was well aware that the dresser regarded her with mixed feelings, being torn between jealousy and a reluctant admiration of her sartorial taste; and had long since come to the conclusion that she owed the grudging civility paid to her by Sidlaw to her aunt, who must, she guessed, have laid stringent orders on her devoted attendant to treat her niece with respect. She was not, therefore, surprised when Sidlaw sniffed, and she was sure she was thankful Miss had come home at last.

'Yes, I'm late,' agreed Kate. 'I'm sorry for it, since I apprehend her ladyship was taken ill suddenly.'

'There was nothing you could have done, miss!' said Sidlaw, instantly showing hackle. 'Not but what—'

'I don't suppose there was, with you and the doctor to attend to her,' interrupted Kate. 'What's the matter? Is it the influenza?'

'Well, that's what the doctor says, miss,' Sidlaw replied, with another sniff which indicated her opinion of the doctor. 'What I say is that she carried a bowl of broth to that hurly-burly creature - for Female I will not call her! - that lives in the cottage all covered over with ivy, not two days ago, and, say what I would, I couldn't hinder her! She only laughed, and said that I should know she never caught infectious complaints.'