My Cousin Rachel (21 page)

I showed him the will that Ambrose had not signed, and I explained to him that it was only through sudden illness, followed by death, that Ambrose had omitted to sign it. I told him to incorporate, in the document, much of what Ambrose had written in the will, that on Rachel’s decease the property passed back again to me, and that I should have the running of it in her lifetime. Should I die first the property would go, as matter of course, to my second cousins in Kent, but only at her death, and not before. Tewin was quick to understand what it was I wanted, and I think, being no great friend to my godfather—which was partly the reason I had gone to him—he was gratified to have so important a business entrusted to his care.

“You wish,” he said, “to put in some clause safeguarding the land? As the draft stands at present, Mrs. Ashley could sell what acreage she pleased, which seems to me unwise if you desire to pass it onto your heirs in its entirety.”

“Yes,” I said slowly, “there had better be a clause forbidding sale. That goes, most naturally, for the house too.”

“There are family jewels, are there not,” he said, “and other personal possessions? What of them?”

“They,” I replied, “are hers, to do with as she pleases.”

He read the draft through to me, and I did not think it could be faulted.

“One thing,” he said. “We have no proviso should Mrs. Ashley marry again.”

“That,” I said, “is not likely to happen.”

“Possibly not,” he answered, “but the point should be covered just the same.”

He looked at me inquiringly, his pen poised in the air.

“Your cousin is still comparatively a young woman, is she not?” he said. “It should certainly be taken into account.”

I thought suddenly, most monstrously, of old St. Ives in the far end of the county, and the remarks that Rachel had made to me in jest.

“In the case of her remarriage,” I said quickly, “the property reverts again to me. That is most definite.”

He made a note upon the paper, and read the draft again.

“And you desire this ready and drawn up, in legal form, by the first of April, Mr. Ashley?” he said.

“Please. That is my birthday. On that day the property becomes mine, absolutely. No objection can be put forward from any quarter.”

He folded the paper, and smiled at me.

“You are doing a very generous thing,” he said, “giving everything away the moment it is yours.”

“It would never have been mine to begin with,” I said, “if my cousin Ambrose Ashley had put his signature to that will.”

“All the same,” he said, “I doubt if such a thing has ever been done before. Certainly not to my knowledge, or in my lifetime of experience. I gather you want nothing said of this until the day?”

“Nothing at all. The matter is most secret.”

“Very well, then, Mr. Ashley. And I thank you for entrusting me with your confidence. I am at your disposal at any time in the future should you wish to call upon me regarding any matter whatsoever.”

He bowed me from the building, promising that the full document should be delivered to me on the thirty-first day of March.

I rode home with a reckless feeling in my heart. I wondered if my godfather would have an attack of apoplexy when he heard the news. I did not care. I wished him no ill, once I was rid of his jurisdiction, but for all that I had turned the tables on him to perfection. As for Rachel, she could not go to London now and leave her property. Her argument of the preceding night would not hold good. If she objected to me in the house, very well, I would take myself to the lodge, and call upon her every day for orders. I would be with Wellington and Tamlyn and the rest, and wait upon her bidding, cap in hand. I think had I been a little lad, I would have cut a caper from sheer love of living. As it was, I set Gypsy at a bank, and nearly took a toss in doing so when I landed with a bump the other side. The March winds made a fool of me; I would have sung aloud, but I could not for the life of me keep to a single tune. The hedgerows were green, and the willows were in bud, and all the honeyed mass of golden gorse in bloom. It was a day for folly and high fever.

When I returned, mid-afternoon, and rode up the carriageway to the house, I saw a post chaise drawn up before the door. It was an unusual sight, for always, when people called upon Rachel, they came in their own carriage. The wheels and the coach were dusty, as if from a long journey on the road, and certainly neither the vehicle nor the driver was known to me. I turned back at sight of them, and rode round to the stables, but the lad who came to take Gypsy knew no more than I did of the visitors, and Wellington was absent.

I saw no one in the hall but when I advanced softly towards the drawing room I heard voices from within, behind the closed door. I decided not to mount the stairs, but to go up to my room by the servants’ stairway at the back. Just as I turned the drawing room door opened, and Rachel, laughing over her shoulder, came out into the hall. She looked well and happy, and wore that radiance about her that was so much part of her when her mood was gay.

“Philip, you are home,” she said. “Come into the drawing room—this visitor of mine you shall not escape. He has traveled very far to see us both.” Smiling, she took my arm, and drew me, most reluctantly, into the room. A man was seated there, who at sight of me rose from his chair, and came towards me with his hand outstretched.

“You did not expect me,” he said, “and I make my apology. But then neither did I expect you, when I saw you first.”

It was Rainaldi.

I do not know if I showed my feelings in my face as plainly as I felt them in my heart, but I think I must have done; for Rachel passed swiftly on in conversation, telling Rainaldi that I was always without doors, riding or walking, she never knew where, nor had I fixed hours for my return. “Philip works harder than his own laborers,” she said, “and knows every inch of his estate far more than they do.”

She still kept her hand upon my arm, as though to show me off before her visitor, much as a teacher would a sullen child.

“I congratulate you upon your fine property,” said Rainaldi. “I do not wonder that your cousin Rachel has become so much attached to it. I have never seen her look so well.”

His eyes, the eyes that I remembered clearly, heavy-lidded and expressionless, dwelled upon her for a moment, then turned again to me.

“The air here,” he said, “must be more conducive to repose of mind and body than our keener air in Florence.”

“My cousin,” I said, “has her origin in the west country. She has merely returned where she belonged.”

He smiled, if the slight movement of his face could be so called, and addressed himself to Rachel. “It depends what tie of blood is strongest, does it not?” he said. “Your young relative forgets your mother came from Rome. And, I may add, you grow more like her every day.”

“In face alone, I hope,” said Rachel, “not in her figure nor in her character. Philip, Rainaldi declares that he will put up in a hostelry, whatever we can recommend, he is not particular, but I have told him it is nonsense. Surely we can place a room at his disposal here?”

My heart sank at the suggestion but I could not refuse it.

“Of course,” I said. “I will give orders at once, and send away the post chaise too, as you won’t want it further.”

“It brought me from Exeter,” said Rainaldi. “I will pay the man, and then hire again when I return to London.”

“There is plenty of time to decide upon that,” said Rachel. “Now that you are here you must stay a few days at least, so that you can see everything. Besides, we have so much to discuss.”

I went from the drawing room to give orders for a room to be prepared—there was a large bare one on the west side of the house that would do him well—and went slowly upstairs to my own room to bath myself and change for dinner. From my window I saw Rainaldi come out and pay the fellow with the post chaise, and then with an air of appraisal he stood a moment in the carriageway, to look about him. I had the feeling that in one glance he priced the timber, reckoned the value of the trees and shrubs, and I saw him, too, examine the carving on the front door and run his hand over the scrolled figures. Rachel must have joined him, and I heard her laugh, and then the pair of them began talking in Italian. The front door closed. They came inside.

I had half a mind to stay up in my room and not descend, to send word to John to bring me my dinner on a tray. If they had so much to talk about they could do it better with me absent. Yet I was host, and could not show discourtesy. Slowly I bathed, reluctantly I dressed, and came downstairs to find Seecombe and John busy in the dining room, which we had not used since the men had cleaned the paneling and done some repairs about the ceiling. The best silver was laid upon the table, and all the paraphernalia for visitors displayed.

“No need for all this pother,” I said to Seecombe, “we could have eaten in the library very well.”

“The mistress gave orders, sir,” said Seecombe, on his dignity, and I heard him order John to fetch the lace-edged napery from the pantry, that we did not even use for Sunday dinner.

I lit my pipe, and went out into the grounds. The spring evening was still bright, and twilight would not come for an hour or more. The candles were lighted in the drawing room, though, and the curtains not yet drawn. The candles were lighted too in the blue bedroom, and I saw Rachel pass to and fro before the windows as she dressed. It would have been an evening for the boudoir had we been alone, I hugging to myself the knowledge of what I had done in Bodmin, and she in gentle mood, telling me of her day. Now there would be none of this. Brightness in the drawing room, animation in the dining room, talk between the two of them about things that concerned me not; and over and above this the instinctive feeling of revulsion that I had about the man, that he came on no idle errand, to pass the time of day, but for some other purpose. Had Rachel known that he had arrived in England and would visit her? All the pleasure of my jaunt to Bodmin had left me. The schoolboy prank was over. I went into the house in low spirits, full of misgiving. Rainaldi was alone in the drawing room, standing by the fire. He had changed from traveling clothes to dinner dress, and was examining the portrait of my grandmother which hung upon one of the panels.

“A charming face,” he said, commenting on it, “fine eyes, and complexion. You come of a handsome family. The portrait in itself of no great value.”

“Probably not,” I said, “the Lelys and the Knellers are on the stairs, if you care to look at them.”

“I noticed them as I came down,” he answered. “The Lely is well placed but not the Kneller. The latter, I would say, is not in his best style, but executed in one of his more florid moments. Possibly finished by a pupil.” I said nothing, I was listening for Rachel’s step upon the stair. “In Florence, before I came away,” he said, “I was able to sell an early Furini for your cousin, part of the Sangalletti collection, now unfortunately dispersed. An exquisite thing. It used to hang upon the stairs at the villa, where the light caught it to its greatest advantage. You possibly would not have noticed it when you went to the villa.”

“Very possibly not,” I answered him.

Rachel came into the room. She was wearing the gown she had worn on Christmas Eve, but I saw she had a shawl about her shoulders. I was glad of it. She glanced from one to the other of us, as though to glean from our expressions how we were doing in conversation.

“I was just telling your cousin Philip,” said Rainaldi, “how fortunate I was to sell the Furini madonna. But what a tragedy that it had to go.”

“We are used to that, though, aren’t we?” she answered him. “So many treasures that could not be saved.” I found myself resenting the use of the word “we” in such a connection.

“Have you succeeded in selling the villa?” I asked bluntly.

“Not as yet,” answered Rainaldi, “in fact—that is partly why I came here to see your cousin Rachel—we are practically decided upon letting it instead, for a term of some three or four years. It would be more advantageous, and to let it not so final as to sell. Your cousin may wish to return to Florence, one of these days. It was her home for so many years.”

“I have no intention of going back as yet,” said Rachel.

“No, possibly not,” he replied, “but we shall see.”

His eyes followed her as she moved about the room, and I wished to heaven she would sit down so that he could not do so. The chair where she always sat stood back a little distance from the candlelight, leaving her face in shadow. There was no reason for her to move about the room unless to show her gown. I pulled a chair forward, but she did not sit.

“Imagine, Rainaldi has been in London for over a week, and did not tell me of it,” she said. “I have never been more surprised in my life than when Seecombe announced that he was here. I think it was very remiss of him not to give me warning.” She smiled over her shoulder at him, and he shrugged his shoulders.

“I hoped the surprise of a sudden arrival would give you greater pleasure,” he said; “the unexpected can be delightful or the reverse, it all depends upon the circumstances. Do you remember that time you were in Rome, and Cosimo and I turned up just as you were dressing for a party at the Casteluccis? You were distinctly annoyed with both of us.”

“Ah, but I had a reason for that,” she laughed. “If you have forgotten, I won’t remind you of it.”

“I have not forgotten,” he said. “I remember too the color of your gown. It was like amber. Also Benito Castelucci had presented you with flowers. I saw his card, and Cosimo did not.”

Seecombe came in to announce dinner, and Rachel led the way across the hall into the dining room, still laughing and reminding Rainaldi of happenings in Rome. I had never felt more glum or out of place. They went on talking personalities, and places, and now and again Rachel would put out her hand to me across the table, as she would do to a child, and say, “You must forgive us, Philip dear. It is so long since I have seen Rainaldi,” while he watched me with those dark hooded eyes, and slowly smiled.

Once or twice they broke into Italian. He would be telling her something, and suddenly search for a word that would not come, and with a bow of apology to me speak in his own language. She would answer him, and as she spoke and I heard the unfamiliar words pour from her lips, so much faster surely than when we talked together in English, it was as though her whole cast of countenance was changed; she became more animated and more vivid, yet harder in a sense, and with a new brilliance that I did not like so well.

It seemed to me that the pair of them were ill-placed at my table, in the paneled dining room; they should have been elsewhere, in Florence or in Rome, with smooth dark servants waiting on them and all the glitter of a society foreign to me chattering and smiling in these phrases I did not know. They should not be here, with Seecombe padding round in his leather slippers and one of the young dogs scratching under the table. I sat hunched in my chair, damping, discouraging, a death’s head at my own dinner, and, reaching for the walnuts, cracked them between my hands to relieve my feelings. Rachel sat with us while we passed the port and brandy. Or rather I passed it, for I took neither, while he drank both.

He lit a cigar, taking one from a case he carried with him, and surveyed me, as I lit my pipe, with an air of tolerance.

“All young Englishmen smoke pipes, it seems to me,” he observed. “The idea is that it helps digestion, but I am told it fouls the breath.”

“Like drinking brandy,” I answered, “which can foul the judgment too.”

I was reminded suddenly of poor Don, dead now in the plantation, and how in his younger days, when he had come upon a dog he much disliked, his hackles rose, his tail stood stiff and straight, and with a bound he seized him by the throat. I knew now how he must have felt.

“If you will excuse us, Philip,” said Rachel, rising from her chair, “Rainaldi and I have much we must discuss, and he has papers with him that I have to sign. It will be best to do it upstairs, in the boudoir. Will you join us presently?”

“I think not,” I said. “I have been out all day and have letters in the office. I will wish you both good night.”

She went from the dining room, and he followed her. I heard them go upstairs. I was still sitting there when John came to clear the table.

I went out then, and walked about the grounds. I saw the light in the boudoir, but the curtains were drawn. Now they were together they would speak Italian. She would be sitting in the low chair by the fire, and he beside her. I wondered if she would tell him about our conversation of the preceding night, and how I had taken away the will and made a copy of it. I wondered what advice he gave to her, what words of counsel, and what papers he too brought from his file to show her that she must sign. When they had finished business, did they return again to personalities, to the discussing of people and of places they both knew? And would she brew tisana for him, as she did for me, and move about the room so that he could watch her? I wondered at what time he would take his leave of her and go to bed, and when he did so would she give him her hand? Would he stay awhile, lingering by the door, making an excuse to dally, as I did myself? Or knowing him so well, would she permit him to stay late?

I went on walking in the grounds, up to the new terrace walk, down the pathway nearly to the beach and back, up again along the walk where the young cedar trees were planted, and so round and back and round again, until I heard the clock in the belfry strike ten. That was my hour of dismissal: would it be his, as well? I went and stood at the edge of the lawn, and watched her window. The light was still burning in her boudoir. I watched, and waited. It continued burning. I had been warm from walking but now the air was chill, under the trees. My hands and feet grew cold. The night was dark and utterly without music. No frosty moon this evening topped the trees. At eleven, just after the clock struck, the light in the boudoir was extinguished and the light in the blue bedroom came instead. I paused a moment and then, on a sudden, walked round the back of the house and past the kitchens, and so to the west front, and looked up at the window of Rainaldi’s room. Relief came to me. A light burned there as well. I could see the chink of it, though he kept his shutters closed. The window was tight shut as well. I felt certain, with a sense of insular satisfaction, that he would open neither for the night.

I went into the house and up the staircase to my room. I had just taken off my coat and my cravat, and flung them on the chair, when I heard the rustle of her gown in the corridor, and then a soft tapping on the door. I went and opened it. She stood there, not yet undressed, with that same shawl about her shoulders still.

“I came to wish you good night,” she said.

“Thank you,” I answered, “I wish you the same.”

She looked down at me, and saw the mud upon my shoes.

“Where have you been all evening?” she asked.

“Out walking in the grounds,” I answered her.

“Why did you not come to the boudoir for your tisana?” she asked.

“I did not care to do so,” I replied.

“You are very ridiculous,” she said. “You behaved at dinner like a sulky schoolboy in need of a whipping.”

“I am sorry,” I said.

“Rainaldi is a very old friend, you know that well,” she said. “We had much to talk about, surely you understand?”

“Is it because he is such an older friend than I that you permit him to linger in the boudoir until eleven?” I asked.

“Was it eleven?” she said. “I really did not realize it.”