Cousin Kate Read online

  ‘No,’ agreed Kate. ‘He told me that I should find when I approached the end of my life that I should no longer care very much for anything. I thought it was the saddest thing I had ever heard said.’

  He did not answer for a moment or two, and when he did speak it was sombrely. ‘It may be best for him.’

  She hesitated before saying: ‘You think there is trouble coming to Staplewood, don’t you? Is it Torquil?’

  ‘I fear it.’

  ‘Philip, is – is Torquil deranged ?’ she asked, horror in her eyes. ‘Oh, I can’t think it!’

  ‘I tried for years not to think it, but lately I have realized that instead of outgrowing his strange humours he has become worse. I think him dangerous, Kate; and I know that he can be violent. If he is excited, or thwarted, it is as though his rage overpowers his brain, and he lets his instinct govern him. And his instinct is to kill. That is why –’

  ‘You are thinking of his having shot at that dog!’ she interrupted. ‘I too suspected for a dreadful moment that he was mad, but I promise you that he didn’t mean to shoot me! Even when I ripped up at him, which you may suppose I did – I was never more angry! – I know he had no thought of injuring me! He was – oh, like a sulky schoolboy! Saying that if I hadn’t moved I shouldn’t have been in danger, and that he wasn’t aiming his piece at me. It’s true that he threatened to shoot Badger, but, you know, Philip, he cannot have meant to do so, because he must have known he had fired both barrels! And, if you bear in mind that he is only a schoolboy, you will own – or you would, if you had been there! – that the temptation to hold Badger at bay must have been irresistible! He came running up in such a stew! And stood positively transfixed when Torquil pointed the gun at him, and warned him to keep off, in the most dramatic style! I must say, it put me quite out of patience with him, for nothing could encourage Torquil more than to stand trembling with fright! A man who has known Torquil since his childhood, and is, I fancy, devoted to him! How could he suppose that Torquil would shoot him?’

  Philip replied, with a curling lip: ‘He could not – if he believed Torquil to be sane! Or if, unless I am very much mistaken, Torquil had not tried to kill him on the night of the storm!’

  ‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’ she whispered, recoiling. ‘The scream I heard – Are you telling me it was Badger who screamed?’ He shrugged, and suddenly she remembered that she had not recognized the voice, and that Badger had been seen on the following morning with sticking-plaster on his face, and a bandage round his neck; and she buried her face in her hands, with an inarticulate moan of protest. ‘You must be mistaken! you must !’ she uttered, when she could command her voice. When he did not answer, she said urgently: ‘He must have woken up in a night-terror: my aunt told me that he is subject to them! And as for the dog, Dr Delabole told me that he was once, as a child, badly bitten by a retriever, and it left him with a dread of dogs!’

  He frowned. ‘Yes, it’s true that my uncle’s Nell did turn on him. Minerva insisted on having her shot, but from what I knew of Torquil it was my belief that he came by his deserts. He had a pet rabbit once, and strangled it. You’ve probably heard of brats who pull the legs off flies? Well, that wasn’t enough for Torquil! When he was nine he tried to wrench a kitten’s tail off. Have you forgotten that when I arrived here, and walked in on you, he had his hands about your neck?’

  She had turned very pale, and her eyes dilated in a look of sick dismay. She was obliged to swallow once or twice before she could speak, for her throat was suddenly dry. Shuddering convulsively, she at last managed to say, in a sort of croak: ‘Then – was it Torquil – ? That rabbit I found in the wood! But Dr Delabole said it was boys from the village – that Torquil had been in his room for an hour! Oh, no! Oh, no! it is too terrible, too appalling! Oh, poor boy – poor, unhappy boy!’

  She broke into tears, again covering her face with her shaking hands. Philip drew her gently to rest against his shoulders, patting her, and stroking the nape of her neck in a way that conveyed comfort and reassurance. He said, when she had mastered her emotion: ‘What rabbit was this, Kate?’

  A quiver of revulsion ran through her, and it was in a halting, scarcely audible voice that she recounted the episode. He listened to her in silence, but when she ended, asked her, rather sharply, if the doctor had been searching for Torquil.

  ‘I don’t know. I thought so, because I heard my aunt ask Pennymore if Torquil had not come in yet. That was why I was searching for him. He had left me in a rage, and I felt that the least I could do, having upset him, was to find him, and bring him back to the house. But when I told Dr Delabole that I was looking for Torquil he said that Torquil had been in his room for an hour past. I quite thought that he would be laid low by one of his migraines, for that is in general what happens after one of his fits of passion, but it seems that he fell asleep, and woke so much refreshed – Oh, no, Philip, he could not have done that dreadful thing! Why, he was in his most amiable mood! Indeed, he was gay, and he looked so much better, so much happier! I had expected him to be at outs with me, because I had lost my temper with him, and said some pretty cutting things to him, which made him dash off in a fury. He seemed to have forgotten about that, and you may be sure that I didn’t remind him that we had quarrelled!’ She broke off abruptly, as he interjected: ‘O God!’ as though the words had been wrenched out of him, and demanded, in bewilderment: ‘What do you mean? Why do you look like that?’

  He replied with deliberate calm: ‘I think that the whole affair was wiped from his mind as soon as he had satisfied his instinct to kill. I don’t pretend to understand the minds of madmen, but it has seemed to me on several occasions that he has no recollection of what he has done when temporarily out of his senses. I even think that to kill, in an inhuman, bestial way, that rabbit, or a bird caught in a net, or some other helpless creature, satisfies some terrible instinct in himself, and acts on him like a powerful narcotic. More than that! as a tonic! If he had the smallest remembrance of what he has done when possessed by his fiendish other self I daresay he would be as horrified as you are.’

  ‘He knew that he had tried to shoot that dog!’ she said swiftly. ‘He has just begged my pardon!’

  He said, his frown deepening: ‘I fancy his behaviour was due more to fright than to madness.’

  ‘But it was only a playful young dog – hardly more than a puppy!’ she protested. ‘Even a person who was afraid of dogs must have seen how friendly it was! Why, it –’ She stopped suddenly, remembering that the dog had bristled and growled and backed away from Torquil.

  ‘Friendly to Torquil?’

  ‘No. It – it seemed to fear him!’ she blurted out.

  ‘Animals do fear him,’ he replied. ‘That’s why there are no dogs at Staplewood, other than my uncle’s old spaniel bitch, who is too old and lazy to stray from his side. They say that animals know when one is afraid of them: it is certainly true of horses. Is it fantastic to suppose that instinct warns them to beware of madmen? Gurney spoke last night to me about what he called the “nervous chestnut” Torquil rides. I let it pass, but I’ve ridden that horse, Kate, and he went as sweetly as you please for me. Torquil has only to take the bridle in his hand to set him sidling, and bucking, and no sooner is Torquil in the saddle than he begins to sweat. And, make no mistake, Torquil isn’t afraid of any horse that was ever foaled! I don’t say I’ve never seen him unseated – the best of us take tosses! – but I have never seen him unseated by the efforts of his mount to get rid of him, or fail to win the mastery over the most headstrong brute in the stables! But horses don’t show their fear of one by growling, and bristling, and they rarely savage one. Certainly Torquil has never been savaged by a horse, but a dog did once turn on him, and that experience left him with a dread of dogs. I think he acted of impulse when he tried to shoot your friendly stray. He may have been hovering on the brink of one of his crazy fits, but you were not afraid of