The King's General Read Online Free Page B

Kit and Gartred took their departure to Radford, some five days later. Whether anyone else in the family knew of the incident I never discovered. I was too scared to ask, and since Gartred had come amongst us we had all lost our old manner of sharing troubles and had each one of us grown more polite and secretive.

 
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    Next year, in '23, the smallpox swept through Cornwall like a scourge, and few families were spared. In Liskeard the people closed their doors and the shopkeepers put up their shutters and would do no trade, for fear of the infection.
    In June my father was stricken, dying within a few days, and we had scarcely recovered from the blow before messages came to us from my uncle at Radford to say that Kit had been seized with the same dread disease, and there was no hope of his recovery.
    Father and son thus died within a few weeks of each other, and Jo, the scholar, became the head of the family. We were all too unhappy with our double loss to think of Gartred, who had fled to Stowe at the first sign of infection and so escaped a similar fate, but when the two wills came to be read, both Kit's and my father's, we learnt that although Lanrest, with Radford later, passed to Jo, the rich pasture lands of Lametton and the Mill were to remain in Gartred's keeping for her lifetime.
    She came down with her brother Bevil for the reading, and even Cecilia, the gentlest of my sisters, remarked afterwards with shocked surprise upon her composure, her icy confidence, and the niggardly manner with which she saw to the measuring of every acre down at Lametton. Bevil, married himself now and a near neighbour to us at Killigarth, did his utmost to smooth away the ill feeling that he sensed amongst us; and although I was still little more than a child, I remember feeling unhappy and embarrassed that he was put to so much awkwardness on our account. It was small wonder that he was loved by everyone, and I wondered to myself what opinion he held in his secret heart about his sister, or whether her beauty amazed him as it did every man.
    When affairs were settled and they went away I think we all of us breathed relief that no actual breach had come to pass, causing a feud between the families, and that Lanrest belonged to Jo was a weight off my mother's mind, although she said nothing.
    Robin remained from home during the whole period of the visit, and maybe no one but myself could guess the reason. The morning before she left some impulse prompted me to hesitate before her chamber, the door of which was open, and look at her within. She had claimed that the contents of the room belonged to Kit, and so to her, and the servants had been employed the day before in taking down the hangings and removing the pieces of furniture she most desired. At this last moment she was alone, turning out a little secrétaire that stood in one corner. Nor did she observe that I was watching her, and I saw the mask off her lovely face at last. The eyes were narrow, the lips protruding, and she wrenched at a little drawer with such force that the hinge came to pieces in her hands. There were some trinkets at the back of the drawer--none, I think, of great value--but she had remembered them. Suddenly she saw my face reflected in the mirror.
    "If you leave to us the bare walls we shall be well content," I said as her eyes met mine.
    My father would have whipped me for it had he been alive, and my brothers, too, but we were alone.
    "You always played the spy, from the first," she said softly, but because I was no man she did not smile.
    "I was born with eyes in my head," I said to her.
    Slowly she put the jewels in a little pouch she wore hanging from her waist.
    "Take comfort and be thankful, you are quit of me now," she said. "We are not likely to see each other again."
    "I hope not," I told her.
    Suddenly she laughed.
    "It were a pity," she said, "that your brother did not have a little of your spirit."
    "Which brother?" I asked.
    She