Palladian Read Online Free PDF Page B

turned to the window again.
    Cassandra knelt by the cat’s basket, took up one of the silky black legs. The unfocused, blurred gentian eyes were lifted towards her and all the time the tears ran on to its little pink tongue.
    ‘It means all the more to me, because my mother gave it to me – on the day I was confirmed,’ Sophy went on.
    ‘But your mother died many years ago,’ Cassandra said, as gently as she could, although she was determined to show herself not gullible. ‘When you were too little to remember.’
    ‘All the same she gave it me,’ the child said stubbornly, looking desperately affronted.
    ‘The point is,’ Cassandra said, ‘we need some help for him.’
    ‘She is a lady cat,’ said Sophy, with great dignity.
    ‘Your father, does he know?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then he must be told. These cats are often valuable.’
    ‘They have royal blood,’ Sophy agreed. ‘I must cure her, though,’ she went on, with a change of voice. ‘If my father did, she would stop being my cat – and she
is
mine – even if she dies, she is still mine.’
    ‘Mothers with ill children have doctors. That doesn’t make the children less their own. What about your Aunt Margaret?’
    ‘She is a human-being doctor, not a vet. And she is only a sort of half-cousin to me, anyhow. Not an aunt.’
    ‘She might help.’
    ‘
You
cure her,’ Sophy said all at once and, again, it seemed as if she had used her last little bit of energy.
    Cassandra was aware of all she had been asked to do and what it meant to the child to place the responsibility of life and death upon another’s shoulders.
    ‘Let’s coax her with some warm milk,’ she began at once. ‘And a little glucose, if there is any.’
    ‘Oh, glucose! My Aunt Tinty sprinkles that on everything. There is always a bowlful in the sideboard. It restores vitality.’
    ‘Then that seems to be just the thing we need.’
    At the door, Sophy turned and said: ‘Eight days is the longest a cat can go without food, and she has already been three.’
    ‘It will be all right.’ Cassandra felt pity, too, watching the cat’s tear-furrowed head turning so aloofly; for it is a sickening thing to bear, seeing the proud laid low, or elegance overthrown. She waited in the cold room, stroking the kitten’s suede-padded paw. Outside, the sky, above a cobbled courtyard, congealed into darkness. Once Sophy’s footsteps hadsped away, no sound came from the house, but still she could not let herself face her depression which, once indulged in, might not be put easily away should anybody come. Someone did come.
    A man with a trilby hat forgotten on the back of his head, like some American newspaper man in a film, slouched into the room and stopped. He did not remove his hat, but he said with an assumed Colonial accent: ‘Well, I guess it must be our Miss Dashwood.’
    She released the cat’s paw and stood up. ‘How do you do.’
    ‘
And
how do
you
do?’ As she put out her hand to be wrung, she met a powerful smell of alcohol.
    ‘Where’s Sophy?’
    ‘She’s gone to fetch some milk for the cat.’
    ‘Milk for the cat.’ He seemed to turn the idea over in his mind, then he nodded. ‘Well, we’ll be having some little talks,’ he said, rocking back and forth on his heels. ‘But I must be off now. Make yourself comfortable.’ He glanced round the cheerless room, his hopefulness faltered, and he said good-bye and disappeared.
    When Sophy came back, her head bent over the dish of swinging milk, Cassandra said, unsure of herself: ‘Your father looked in.’
    Sophy stopped, seeming puzzled. ‘I doubt it,’ she said.
    ‘Perhaps it wasn’t your father,’ Cassandra suggested hopefully.
    ‘Did he smell of wine?’
    ‘Of course not,’ Cassandra said truthfully, although she thought she was telling a necessary lie.
    Did he wear a hat, then?’
    ‘Yes, he wore a hat.’
    ‘Then that was Tom, my cousin Tom. He’s not the least bit like my father.’ She set the milk down on