“Do you, ma’am?” he replied, measuring her.
She shrugged. “Oh, if you wish to stand upon points, no! It is not a matter of interest to me. Dr Delabole, I should like to have a word with you: will you come to my room, if you please? Kate, dear child, pray have the goodness to tell Mrs Thorne to bring her accounts to me presently!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Kate, slightly taken aback.
“That was really quite unworthy of her,” remarked Philip, when Lady Broome had swept from the parlour, followed by the doctor. “I can’t think that Mrs Thorne needs to be reminded—if this is Minerva’s day for settling the accounts! I can see, from your expressive countenance, that it isn’t—and also that you mean to give me a heavy set-down.”
“No: merely to go upon my errand—thus putting it out of your power to cut at my aunt behind her back!” flashed Kate.
She left the room as she spoke, but twenty minutes later she encountered him on the terrace, looking up at the roof. He said, as though nothing had occurred to provoke her: “That chimney must have been hit. It’s badly cracked.”
Her eyes followed the direction of his pointing finger. “Is it safe?” she asked.
“Probably not. I must warn my uncle to have it looked to.”
“Yes, pray do!” she said earnestly. “If it fell, it might kill someone! Then you would be blamed, wouldn’t you?”
He looked frowningly at her for a moment, then his brow cleared. “Oh, are you thinking of the coping-stone which once fell in front of Torquil? It gave him a sad fright, and since he was at outs with me at the time he set the accident at my door—though how he thought I could have contrived it God only knows! Or why I should have wished to do him an injury. Does he still remember it?”
“Yes. That is, when he is in one of his distempered moods he does. I daresay you must know how he loves to play-act! I believe it is not an uncommon fault in boys who are romantically inclined. In general, they are the heroes of their dreams. Torquil isn’t. At least, he is not a conquering hero! He likes to think that he is persecuted. And I must say,” she added frankly, “I think he is! I don’t scruple to tell you, sir, that I consider Dr Delabole a persecution in himself! You know, one can’t blame Torquil for holding him in abhorrence! He always says the wrong thing! You did me the honour to say that I seem to have the knack of managing Torquiclass="underline" well, I think I have! At all events, he is never as horridly rude to me as he is to everyone else! Naturally, I understand how anxious my aunt must be, because his health is so indifferent, but I do feel that he might be better if he were allowed more freedom, and—and more congenial companionship !”
“Your own, for instance?”
“Yes, in default of better. He seems to have no friends. No one to laugh him out of his crotchets! I told him once, joking him, that he studied the picturesque in his attire, and instead of laughing, he took offence! He looked as if he would have been happy to have murdered me, which showed clearly that he was unused to being roasted. Which he wouldn’t have been, had it been possible to have sent him to school, would he?”
“No, but it was not possible.”
“Oh, I know that! But although he may behave like a spoiled child he is now a man grown, and I can’t but feel that it is most unwise to keep him in leading-strings.” She recollected herself, and said: “But I shouldn’t say so!” She saw that he was frowning, and added cheerfully: “It is a mistake to refine too much on the odd humours of adolescents, particularly of those who don’t enjoy robust health. I daresay he will outgrow his aches and ails, and become perfectly stout.”
“I wish you may be right, but I fear you are not,” he replied rather harshly. “I think him worse than he was three months ago.” He glanced down at her, a satirical gleam in his eye. “And I don’t think, Cousin Kate, that you will be able to manage him for long!”
Chapter VIII
When Torquil emerged from seclusion, he looked jaded to death, and was in a mood of black depression. Kate was shocked, and needed no prompting from Lady Broome to try to raise him from his dejection. But she did venture to suggest that a change of scene would be of more benefit to him than her company.
Lady Broome vetoed this. She spoke in glib terms of his excitability, and the irritation of his nerves; she said that it suited him best to go on in a jog-trot way. Kate could not deny his excitability, or the imbalance of his spirits, but when she hinted that boredom and constant surveillance were at the root of the trouble, she received a crushing snub. “My dear Kate,” said her ladyship, “I’ve no doubt you mean well, but you must really allow me to understand Torquil’s constitution better than you do! You seem sometimes to forget that I am his mother.”
There was no more to be said. Kate begged pardon, rather stiffly, and went off to tell Torquil that she had failed in her mission. As she had approached Lady Broome at his instigation, and knew that he believed her to have considerable influence with his mother, she was not surprised that he should sink instantly into gloom.
“I see what it is!” he declared, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I shall be kept here all my life!”
“No, you won’t,” said Kate, in heartening accents. “You will come of age in another two years, and then you may do as you choose.”
“You don’t know my mother!” he said bitterly. “She’ll never let me go! Never!”
“Yes, she will. Even if she wished to keep you here, she couldn’t do so!”
“I hate her!” he whispered. “O God, how I hate her!”
Kate was horrified, but she managed to speak calmly. “You must not say so, Torquil. You know it is untrue! How could you hate your mother? She may be over-anxious, but you can’t doubt that she has your welfare at heart!”
“No, she hasn’t! She only cares for the Broome heritage!” he said savagely. “Well, I am a Broome, which she isn’t, and I don’t care a straw for it! Sometimes I think I’ll run away, but I haven’t any money! She’d get me back, as sure as check! She’ll drive me to put a period to my life!”
This was very much too melodramatic for Kate, and she nearly lost patience, and did, in fact, say, with some severity: “When you talk like that, Torquil, you make it hard for me to sympathize with you! And—which is perhaps more to the point!—it lends a great deal of weight to what your mother says of you!”
“What does she say of me?” he demanded, searching her face with hungry eyes.
“That you are too excitable. And it is true, you know! Either you are aux anges, or blue-devilled! If you wish for enlargement, keep a stricter guard on your temper! Don’t—don’t fly into a pelter for trifling reasons! Show your mother that you have overcome the—the inequality of your spirits, and I am persuaded she won’t keep you here against your will!” She laid a quietening hand over his clasped ones, which writhed together, and said coaxingly: “You know, Torquil, your constitution is not yet as robust as she could wish, and she knows, if you do not, that it needs very little to put you quite out of curl.”
He looked intently at her, and startled her by saying: “How pretty you are! How kind Ilike you so much, Kate!”
“Well, I’m very much obliged to you, but what has that to say to anything? I wish you won’t fly off at a tangent!”
“I thought I wanted to marry Dolly,” he said, disregarding her words. “Now I think I’d rather marry you.”
“Oh, do you, indeed? Well, you can’t marry me!”
“Why can’t I?”
“For a number of excellent reasons!” she replied tartly. “One is that I am much too old for you; another that it would be a most unsuitable alliance; and a third is that I don’t wish to marry you! Don’t take an affront into your head! I like you very well, but if you mean to fancy yourself in love with me I shall take you in strong aversion—for it is only fancy, Torquil!”