“No, we are a sadly diminished party tonight,” responded Lady Broome, disposing her shawl about her shoulders. “Philip is dining at Freshford House.”
“Oh, no!” protested Torquil. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I wanted to have my revenge on him!”
“As Philip didn’t see fit to inform me of his intention until noon, and you have been sound asleep for hours, there was no opportunity to tell you of it,” said Lady Broome composedly. “You will be obliged to revenge yourself on Kate instead.”
“That would be no revenge, madam!” he objected. “I can give Kate thirty, and beat her every time!” He threw a challenging look at Kate, and laughed. “Can’t I, coz?”
“At billiards you can,” she agreed. “I notice, however, that you dare not challenge me to a rubber of piquet!”
“No, no, I hate cards! I’ll tell you what, though! I’ll challenge you to a game of Fox and Geese!”
“Why, what’s that?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s a famous game! Don’t you know it? I was used to play it with Philip, when I was in the schoolroom, but from some cause or another I gave it up—I daresay it got to be a bore. You have a board, with seventeen geese and one fox, and the game is for the geese to entrap the fox, and for the fox to seize as many geese as he can, so that he can’t be caught. Mama, where is the board. Don’t tell me it was thrown away!”
“My dear, I don’t know what became of it!”
Fortunately, since he showed signs of falling into a pet, Kate recollected that she had seen a board, marked in the shape of a cross, in the cabinet that contained the chess and the backgammon boards, and was able to unearth it. When she held it up for his inspection, inquiring: “Is this it?” he exclaimed delightedly: “Yes, that’s it! If you can’t find the pieces, we can use draughts—though it would be a pity not to play with the set Philip made for one of my birthdays! He carved them out of wood, and painted them: white geese, and a red fox, carrying his brush high! One of the geese had the most comical expression, and two of them were shockingly lop-sided. Let me look!”
He fell on his knees in front of the cabinet, and began to pull out the various boxes it contained; but Lady Broome intervened, saying: “After dinner, my son!”
“Yes, very well! but I must find the pieces first!” he said.
“No, you must not!” said Kate firmly, pulling him to his feet. “I know how it would be, if you did find them! You would begin to teach me how to play, and the end of it would be that I shouldn’t get any dinner at all! Come along!”
She smiled at him as she spoke, and gave his hand a coaxing squeeze. This had the effect of banishing the mutinous look from his face. He smiled back at her, a brilliant light in his eyes, and raised her hand to his lips, holding it in an uncomfortably strong grip, and said: “To please you, coz, anything!”
“I’m much obliged to you, Torquil,” she said, in a prosaic voice, and disengaging herself, “but there’s no need for these heroics! You should rather please your mama, who is being kept waiting for her dinner!”
He flushed, and for a moment looked as if he would fly into a miff; but after biting his lip, he cast her a sidelong glance, and burst out laughing. He was still giggling when they reached the dining-room, in a childish way which Kate found exasperating, but he stopped when Lady Broome spoke to Kate, asking her if she had seen how well the roses had stood up against the storm, and said suddenly: “I’m hungry! What’s in that tureen, Mama?”
“Calves’ feet and asparagus,” she replied.
“Oh, good! I like that!” he said.
Since it was seldom that he took any interest in what he ate, Kate was mildly surprised, and still more surprised when instead of eating a few mouthfuls, pushing the rest about on his plate, and complaining that it was unfit to eat, he ate his portion with avidity, and demanded some of the beef which Dr Delabole was carving. Kate, who was finding it difficult to swallow, and could only by the exercise of will-power subdue her nausea, was obliged to avert her eyes from the blood oozing from the sirloin; but Torquil pronounced it to be roasted to a turn, and—rather greedily, she thought—applied himself to it with zest.
“Your long sleep has given you an appetite!” said the doctor playfully.
“Did I sleep for a long time? I don’t remember.”
“Indeed you did! Badger was hard put to it to rouse you!”
“Oh, I remember thatl I woke up to find him shaking me, and very nearly came to cuffs with him for interrupting my dream!”
“What were you dreaming about?” asked Kate. “It must have been something very agreeable! I find that whenever I have a very vivid dream I am only too thankful to wake up from it!”
“I don’t know! The devil of it is that it slipped away! But I do know it was agreeable!” There was a general laugh, which made him look round challengingly, a spark of anger in his eyes.
“How can you know that, if it slipped away from you, my son?” asked his mother.
He considered this, and then laughed reluctantly. “Oh, it does seem absurd, doesn’t it? But I do know, though I can’t tell how, Kate! You understand, don’t you?”
“Perfectly!” she assured him. “I don’t even remember my bad dreams, but I know when I’ve had one!”
“Do you have bad dreams?” he said, turning his head to look searchingly at her.
“Uncomfortable ones, now and then,” she acknowledged.
“But not shocking nightmares? Things which haunt you—make you wake in a sweat of terror?”
“No, thank God! Only very occasionally!”
“I do,” he said earnestly. “Sometimes I dream that I’m running from a terrible monster. Running, running, with weights on my feet!—It hasn’t caught me yet, but I think that one day it will. And sometimes I dream that I’ve done something dreadful, and that’s—”
“For heaven’s sake, stop, Torquil!” exclaimed Lady Broome. “You are making my blood run cold!” She gave an exaggerated shudder, and added, in a tone of affectionate chiding:
“Detestable boy! Next you will be telling us ghost stories, and we shall none of us dare to go upstairs to bed! You know, Kate, a ghost is the one thing we lack at Staplewood! It was a sad disappointment to me when Sir Timothy brought me here as a bride, for in those days I was a romantic; but I understand that the owners of haunted houses find it impossible to induce their servants to remain with them, so I’ve learnt to be thankful that no ghost wanders about Staplewood, and no invisible coach drives up to our door in the middle of the night, as a warning that the head of the house is about to die!”
“Yes, indeed, my lady, and so you may be!” said the doctor. “That puts me in mind of a strange occurrence which befell me many years ago, when I was sojourning in Derbyshire.”
Torquil muttered: “O God!” but Lady Broome invited the doctor to continue, and cast a quelling look at her son, which made him give a smothered giggle.
By the time the doctor had come to the end of his anecdote, the second course had been set on the table, and Torquil was pressing Kate, in dumb show, to eat a cheesecake. She shook her head, whereupon he exclaimed, interrupting the doctor, that she must be ill, since she had eaten almost nothing; and she said in a hurry that she would have a little of the jelly. “But are you ill?” he asked anxiously.
“No, no! Just—just not hungry!” she assured him, touched by his solicitude.
He smiled engagingly upon her. “Oh, I’m so happy to hear you say so! I was afraid you meant to cry off from our game!” he said ingenuously.