My Cousin Rachel (24 page)

I rode home, remembering my mood of high elation the last time I had done so, after visiting the attorney Trewin in Bodmin, only to find Rainaldi on arriving home. There would be no such visitor today. In three weeks full spring had come about the countryside and it was warm like May. Like all weather prophets, my farmers shook their heads and prophesied calamity. Late frost would come, and nip the buds in bloom and wither the growing corn beneath the surface of the drying soil. I think, on that last day of March, I would not have greatly cared if famine came, or flood, or earthquake.

The sun was sinking beyond the westward bay, flaming the quiet sky, darkening the water, and the rounded face of the near full moon showed plain over the eastern hills. This, I thought to myself, is how a man must feel when in a state of high intoxication, this complete abandon to the passing hour. I saw things, not in hazy fashion, but with the clarity of the very drunk. The park, as I entered it, had all the grace of fairy tale; even the cattle, plodding down to drink at their trough beside the pool, were beasts of enchantment, lending themselves to beauty. The jackdaws were building high, they flapped and straddled their untidy nests in the tall trees near to the avenue, and from the house and the stables I could see the blue smoke curling from the chimneys, and I could sense the clatter of pails about the yard, the whistling of the men, the barking of the puppies from their kennels. All this was old to me, long-known and loved, possessed from babyhood; yet now it held new magic.

I had eaten too fully at midday to be hungry, but I was thirsty, and drank deep of the cool clear water from the well in the courtyard.

I joked with the boys as they bolted the back doors and closed the shutters. They knew tomorrow was my birthday. They whispered to me how Seecombe had had his likeness painted for me, as a deadly secret, and that he had told them I was bound to hang it upon a panel in the hall with the ancestral portraits. I gave them a solemn promise that it was exactly what I would do. And then the three of them, with much head-nodding among themselves and muttering in corners, disappeared into the servants’ hall and then returned again, bearing a package. John, as spokesman, gave it me and said, “ ’Tis from us all, Mr. Philip, sir, we none of us can bear wait to give it you.”

It was a case of pipes. It must have cost them all of a month’s wages. I shook hands with them, and clapped them on the back, and vowed to each that I had been planning to get the very same myself next time I went to Bodmin or to Truro, and they gazed back at me in great delight, so that like an idiot I could have wept to see their pleasure. In truth, I never smoked any pipe but the one Ambrose had given me when I was seventeen, but in the future I must make a point of smoking all of theirs, for fear of disappointing them.

I bathed and changed, and Rachel was waiting for me in the dining room.

“I smell mischief,” she said at once. “You have not been home for the day. What have you been at?”

“That, Mrs. Ashley,” I said to her, “is no concern of yours.”

“No one has set eyes upon you since early morning,” she said. “I came home to luncheon, and had no companion.”

“You should have lunched with Tamlyn,” I told her. “His wife is a most excellent cook, and would have done you well.”

“Did you go to town?” she asked.

“Why, yes, I went to town.”

“And did you see anyone of our acquaintance?”

“Why, yes,” I answered, nearly bursting into laughter. “I saw Mrs. Pascoe and the girls, and they were greatly shocked at my appearance.”

“Why so?”

“Because I was carrying a basket on my shoulder, and told them I had been selling cabbages.”

“Were you telling them the truth, or had you been to the Rose and Crown and drunk too much cider?”

“I was not telling them the truth, nor had I been to the Rose and Crown for cider.”

“Then what was it all about?”

I would not answer her. I sat in my chair and smiled.

“I think,” I said, “that when the moon is fully risen I shall go swimming after dinner. I feel all the energy of the world in myself tonight, and all the folly.”

She looked at me over her glass of wine with solemn eyes.

“If,” she said, “you desire to spend your birthday in your bed with a poultice on your chest, drinking black currant every hour, nursed—not by me, I warn you, but by Seecombe—go swimming, if you please. I shall not stop you.”

I stretched my arms above my head, and sighed for pure enjoyment. I asked permission to smoke, which she granted.

I produced my case of pipes. “Look,” I said, “what the boys have given me. They could not wait till morning.”

“You are as great a baby as they,” she said, and then, in a half-whisper, “You do not know what Seecombe has in store for you.”

“But I do,” I whispered back, “the boys have told me. I am flattered beyond measure. Have you seen it?”

She nodded. “It is perfect,” she said; “his best coat, the green one, his underlip, and all. It was painted by his son-in-law, from Bath.”

When we had dined we went into the library, but I had not been telling her an untruth when I said I had all the energy of the world. I was in such a state of exultation that I could not rest in my chair, with longing for the night to pass and for the day to come.

“Philip,” she said at last, “for the sake of pity, go and take your walk. Run to the beacon and back again, if that will cure you. I think you have gone mad, in any case.”

“If this is madness,” I said, “then I would want to stay that way for always. I did not know lunacy could give such delight.”

I kissed her hand and went out into the grounds. It was a night for walking, still and clear. I did not run, as she had bidden me, but for all that I achieved the beacon hill. The moon, so nearly full, hovered, with swollen cheek, above the bay, and wore about his face the look of a wizard man who shared my secret. The bullocks, sheltering for the night in the lea of the stone wall in the valley’s dip, stumbled to their feet at my approach, and scattered.

I could see a light from the Barton, above the meadow, and when I reached the beacon head, and the bays stretched out on either side of me, there were the flickering lights of the little towns along the western coast, and our own harbor lights to the east as well. Yet presently they dimmed, as the candlelight did within the Barton, and there was nothing about me but that light from the pale moon, making a silver track across the sea. If it was a night for walking it was a night for swimming too. No threat of poultices or cordials would keep me from it. I climbed down, to my favorite point where the rocks jutted, and, laughing to myself at this folly most sublime, plunged into the water. God! It was icy cold. I shook myself like a dog, with chattering teeth, and struck out across the bay, returning, after a bare four minutes, back to the rocks to dress.

Madness. Worse than madness. But still I did not care, and still my mood of exultation held me in thrall.

I dried myself, as best I could, upon my shirt, and walked up through the woods, back to the house. The moonlight made a ghostly path for me, and shadows, eerie and fantastic, lurked behind the trees. Where my path divided into two, one taking me to the cedar walk and the other to the new terrace above, I heard a rustle where the trees grew thickest, and suddenly to my nostrils came that rank vixen smell about me in the air, tainting the very leaves under my feet; yet I saw nothing, and all the daffodils, leaning from the banks on either side of me, stayed poised and still, without a breath to stir them.

I came to the house at last, and looked up at her window. It was open wide, and I could not tell if her candle burned still or if she had blown it out. I looked at my watch. It wanted five minutes to midnight. I knew suddenly that if the boys had not been able to wait to give me my present, neither could I wait to give Rachel hers. I thought of Mrs. Pascoe, and the cabbages, and my mood of folly swept me in full force. I went and stood under the window of the blue bedroom, and called up to her. I called her name three times before I had an answer. She came to the open window, dressed in that white nun’s robe, with the full sleeves and the lace collar.

“What do you want?” she said. “I was three parts asleep, and you have woken me.”

“Will you wait there,” I said, “just a few moments? I want to give you something. The package that Mrs. Pascoe saw me carry.”

“I have not Mrs. Pascoe’s curiosity,” she said. “Let it wait until the morning.”

“It cannot wait until the morning,” I said, “it has to happen now.”

I let myself in by the side door, and went upstairs to my room and came down again, carrying the cabbage basket. Round the handles I knotted a great piece of string. I had with me, also, the document, which I placed in my jacket pocket. She was still waiting there, beside the window.

“What in the world,” she called softly, “have you got carried in that basket? Now, Philip, if this is one of your practical jokes, I will not share it. Have you got crabs hidden there, or lobsters?”

“Mrs. Pascoe believes they are cabbages,” I said. “At any rate, I give you my promise they won’t bite. Now, catch the string.”

I threw up the end of the long string to the window.

“Haul away,” I told her, “with both hands, mind. The basket is some weight.” She pulled, as she was bidden, and the basket bumped and crashed against the wall, and against the wire that was there to hold the creeper, and I stood below, watching her, shaking with silent laughter.

She pulled the basket onto her windowsill, and there was silence.

After a moment she looked out again. “I don’t trust you, Philip,” she said. “These packages have odd shapes. I know they are going to bite.”

For answer I began to climb up the creeper wire, hand over hand, until I reached her window.

“Be careful,” she called, “you will fall and break your neck.”

In a moment I was inside the room, one leg upon the floor, the other on the sill.

“Why is your head so wet?” she said. “It is not raining.”

“I’ve been swimming,” I answered. “I told you I would do so. Now, open up the packages, or shall I do it for you?”

One candle was burning in the room. She stood with bare feet upon the floor and shivered.

“For heaven’s sake,” I said, “put something round you.”

I seized the coverlet from the bed and threw it about her, then lifted her and put her among her blankets.

“I think,” she said, “that you have gone raving mad.”

“Not mad,” I said, “it’s only that I have become, at this minute, twenty-five. Listen.” I held up my hand. The clock struck midnight. I put my hand into my pocket. “This,” I said, laying the document upon the table, by the candlestick, “you can read at your leisure. But the rest I want to give you now.”

I emptied the packages upon the bed and cast the wicker basket on the floor. I tore away the paper, scattering the boxes, flinging the soft wrappings anywhere. Out fell the ruby headpiece and the ring. Out came the sapphires and the emeralds. Here were the pearl collar and the bracelets, all tumbling in mad confusion on the sheets. “This,” I said, “is yours. And this, and this…” And in an ecstasy of folly I heaped them all upon her, pressing them on her hands, her arms, her person.

“Philip,” she cried, “you are out of your mind, what have you done?”

I did not answer. I took the collar, and put it about her neck. “I’m twenty-five,” I said; “you heard the clock strike twelve. Nothing matters anymore. All this for you. If I possessed the world, you should have it also.”

I have never seen eyes more bewildered or amazed. She looked up at me, and down to the scattered necklaces and bracelets and back to me again, and then, I think because I was laughing, she put her arms suddenly about me and was laughing too. We held one another, and it was as though she caught my madness, shared my folly, and all the wild delight of lunacy belonged to both of us.

“Is this,” she said, “what you have been planning all these weeks?”

“Yes,” I said, “they should have come with your breakfast. But like the boys and the case of pipes, I could not wait.”

“And I have nothing for you,” she said, “but a gold pin for your cravat. Your birthday, and you shame me. Is there nothing else you want? Tell me, and you shall have it. Anything you ask.”

I looked down at her, with all the rubies and the emeralds spread about her, and the pearl collar around her neck, and all of a sudden I was serious and remembered what the collar meant.

“One thing, yes,” I said, “but it isn’t any use my asking it.”

“Why not?” she said.

“Because,” I answered, “you would box my ears, and send me straight to bed.”

She stared up at me, touching my cheek with her hand.

“Tell me,” she said. And her voice was gentle.

I did not know how a man asks a woman to become his wife. There is generally a parent, whose consent must first be given. Or if no parent, then there is courtship, there is all the give and take of some preceding conversation. None of this applied to her and me. And it was midnight, and talk of love and marriage had never passed between us. I could say to her, bluntly, plainly, “Rachel, I love you, will you be my wife?” I remembered that morning in the garden, when we had jested about my dislike of the whole business, and I had told her that I asked for nothing better than my own house to comfort me. I wondered if she could understand, and remember too.

“I told you once,” I said, “that I had all the warmth and the comfort that I needed within four walls. Have you forgotten?”

“No,” she said, “I have not forgotten.”

“I spoke in error,” I said, “I know now what I lack.”

She touched my head, and the tip of my ear, and the end of my chin.

“Do you?” she said. “Are you so very sure?”

“More sure,” I answered, “than of anything on earth.”

She looked at me. Her eyes seemed darker in the candlelight.

“You were very certain of yourself upon that morning,” she said, “and stubborn too. The warmth of houses…”

She put out her hand to snuff the candle, and she was laughing still.

When I stood upon the grass at sunrise, before the servants had wakened and come down to open the shutters and let in the day, I wondered if any man before me had been accepted in marriage in quite so straight a fashion. It would save many a weary courtship if it was always so. Love, and all its trappings, had not concerned me hitherto; men and women must do as best they pleased, I had not cared. I had been blind, and deaf, and sleeping; now, no longer.