Джорджетт Хейер - Cousin Kate

“Not at all. On the other hand, he didn’t truckle to me, and I liked that. I know he regarded me with a critical eye, and I suspect that he thinks me a mere stripling. Promising, but immature!”

“I perceive that he must have been very civil to you!” said Kate, with a twinkle. “You should hear what he says to his grandsons! And he even calls Joe—that’s his only son—a chaw-bacon ! Which,” she added, after a moment’s consideration, “is perfectly true, of course! But so kind, and good!”

“I should dearly love to hear what he calls his grandsons, and look forward to meeting them, and Joe, and Sarah,” he replied.

“But you aren’t at all likely to, are you?” Kate pointed out.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that! It depends on circumstances!” he responded.

On arrival at Market Harborough, Mr Philip Broome drove to the Angel, and left Kate in a private parlour there while he went off to the Cock, to fetch Mr Nidd. She would have gone with him, but he told her that Mr Nidd had forbidden him to bring her to what he had described as a mere sluicery. “He says it wouldn’t be fitting, and I daresay he’s right—even if he wrongs it in calling it a mere sluicery! As I recall, it is a respectable inn, situated not far from the post-road. However, it doesn’t cater for the gentry, so I think you will be more comfortable here.”

She agreed to it, and sat down by the window to await his return. Twenty minutes later, she saw him crossing the street, with Mr Nidd trotting along beside him, and realized, with deep appreciation, that Mr Nidd was indeed looking as spruce as an onion, in his Sunday coat and smalls, a natty waistcoat, and a rigidly starched collar, whose points, she guessed, were causing him considerable discomfort. She wished Sarah might have been present to have been gratified by the sight of him, for not all her efforts had hitherto prevailed upon him to wear a collar, except for Church-going, and great occasions. His favourite form of neckwear was a large, spotted silk handkerchief, which he knotted round his throat with great taste and artistry.

In another few minutes, she was welcoming him with out-stretched hands, and exclaiming: “Oh, Mr Nidd, how happy it makes me to see you again!”

Much gratified, he said: “That makes a pair of us, miss! And very kind I take it that you should say so! Now, wait a bit while I put me hat down careful somewhere! It’s a new ’un, and I don’t want it spoiled!”

Phlip took it out of his hand, and set it down with meticulous care upon a side table. Mr Nidd, watching this with a jealous eye, was pleased to approve, and said he was much obliged. He then received Kate’s hands in a reverent clasp, but reproved her for demeaning herself. “Because there ain’t no call for you to treat me as if I was a lord, missy, and, what’s more, you didn’t ought to!”

“I’m not acquainted with a lord,” countered Kate, “and I shouldn’t hold out my hands to him if I were! Dear Mr Nidd, if you knew how much I have yearned for news of you all!—How is Sarah? Could you not have brought her with you?”

“No, and nor I wasn’t wishful to, miss!” said Mr Nidd, with sudden malevolence. “Sarey’s cut her stick!”

“Cut her stick?” repeated Kate uncomprehendingly.

“Loped off!” pronounced Mr Nidd, in bitter accents. “Ah! For all she cares, I could be living on pig swill! Which I pretty well was!” he added, with a darkling look.

“Mr Nidd, she cannot have done so! Do you mean that she has quarrelled with Joe, and left him? Oh, no! Impossible!”

“Properly speaking, it was him as left her,” replied Mr Nidd, in a reluctantly fair-minded way. “Not but what it was only in the way of business, mind! Joe’s gone off with Young Ted to Swansea, with a wagon-load of furniture, which a gentleman as is moving house hired him to convey, being as a friend of his had highly recommended Josiah Nidd & Son, Carriers, to him.”

“What a stroke of good fortune!” said Kate. “Except, of course, that it means, I suppose, that he will be absent for several weeks. But I can’t believe that Sarah wished him to refuse such an advantageous engagement!”

“No,” admitted Mr Nidd. “All Sarey wished was for Joe to drive a harder bargain, which I’m bound to say he did do—though not as hard a one as I’d have driven, mind! So off he went, leaving Sarey to keep house for me and Will, which would have been all right and tight if she’d done it, but she didn’t, Miss Kate! What I say is, she ain’t got no call to go trapesing off to nurse them dratted brats of Polly’s!”

“Oh, dear! Are they ill, then? But you know you shouldn’t call your grandchildren dratted brats, Mr Nidd!”

“Nor I wouldn’t, if it wasn’t true!” he replied, with spirit. “I speaks of people as I find ’em miss, and why the good Lord see fit to saddle me with a set of grandchildren that ain’t worth two rows of gingerbread I don’t know, and never will! They’ve got the measles, Miss Kate—all six of ’em! And what must Polly do, clumsy fussock that she is, but tumble down the stairs with a tray of chiney, and break four plates, two bowls, and her leg! I got no patience with it!”

Kate could not help laughing, but she said: “What a disaster! No wonder Sarah went to the rescue! And you know very well you wouldn’t have wished her not to have done so! What’s more, you won’t make me believe she didn’t make provision for you and Will!”

“If you call it making provision for me to hire Old Tom’s Rib to cook me dinner for me, Miss Kate, all I’ve got to say is that you can’t have eaten anything that rabbit-pole woman ever spoiled! Which, of course, you haven’t. Meself, I’d as lief sit down to a dish of pig swill!”

At this point, Mr Philip Broome, who had been silently enjoying Mr Nidd’s embittered discourse, intervened with an offer of refreshment. “Forgive me, but before I leave you to be private with Miss Malvern, what would you wish me to order for you, Mr Nidd? Sherry, or beer? I’ve never sampled the sherry here, but I can vouch for the beer!”

“Thanking you kindly, sir, beer’s my tipple. Not that I ain’t partial to a glass of sherry in season,” he added grandly, if a trifle obscurely.

Philip lifted an eyebrow at Kate. “And you, cousin?”

“I should like some lemonade, if it might be had.”

He nodded, and left the room. “I’ve took a fancy to that young fellow,” said Mr Nidd decidedly. “He ain’t a buck of the first head, nor he ain’t as fine as a star, but to my way of thinking, Miss Kate, he’s true blue! He’ll never stain!”

To her annoyance, Kate felt herself blushing, and knew that Mr Nidd was watching her closely out of his aged but remarkably sharp eyes. With as much nonchalance as she could assume, she replied: “Yes, indeed: Mr Philip Broome is most truly the gentleman! But tell me, Mr Nidd—”

“Now, hold hard, miss!” begged Mr Nidd. “I’m one as likes to have everything made clear, and what I don’t know, and didn’t care to take the liberty of asking him, is what relation he is to the Bart? He ain’t the Bart’s son, that’s sure, because, according to what you wrote to Sarey, the Bart’s son has got an outlandish name, which I don’t hold with. And what’s more, Miss Kate, you said the Bart’s son was the most beautiful young man you’d ever clapped eyes on, and if you was meaning this young fellow, it don’t fit! Not but what he’s as good-looking as any man need to be—ah, and would strip to advantage, too!”

“He is Sir Timothy’s nephew,” answered Kate briefly. “It is my turn to ask questions now, Mr Nidd! Is it true that Sarah has received only one of my letters to her?”

“Gospel true, miss!” asseverated Mr Nidd. “That was the scratch of a note you wrote to her when you first arrived at this Staplewood, and it relieved Sarey’s mind considerable, because you told her how kind your aunt was, and the Bart, and what a beautiful place it was, and how happy you was to be here, which got up her spirits wonderful. Properly hipped she was, after you’d gone off! She took an unaccountable dislike to her ladyship, but I’m blessed if I know why! Happy as a grig she was when she read your letter, until she got into the dumps again because she never had no answer to the letter she wrote you, nor so much as a line from you from that day to this.”

“Mr Nidd,” said Kate, in a rigidly controlled voice, “I have never had a letter from Sarah. I have written to her repeatedly, begging her to reply, but never has she done so. When Mr Broome told me that you had come to Market Harborough the most terrible apprehension seized me that you had come to tell me Sarah was ill, or—or dead!”

The effect of this disclosure on the patriarch was profound. After hearing Kate out in great astonishment, he wrapped himself in a cloak of silence, and, when she started to speak again, raised a forbidding hand, and said: “I got to think!”

In the middle of his ruminations, the waiter came in with a tray, which he set down on the table. Having offered Kate, with a low bow, a glass of lemonade, he carried a tankard over to Mr Nidd, and gave it to him with a much lower bow, intended to convey condescension, contempt, and derision. Fully alive to the implications of this covert insolence, Mr Nidd, taking the tankard with a brief thank’ee, recommended him to wipe his nose on a handkerchief instead of on the knees of his smalls, and told him to take himself off. After thus routing the adversary, he refreshed himself with a copious draught from the tankard, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and said portentously: “It’s a good thing I’ve come, Miss Kate, that’s what it is! Yes, and so Sarey will have to own! If I’ve told her once she ought to come herself to see how you was going on, I’ve told her a dozen times! But would she do it? Oh, no! She took a maggot into her head that you wouldn’t want her to come here, poking her nose in, now that you was living with your grand relations, and nothing me nor Joe said made her think different!”