My Cousin Rachel (25 page)

What happened on those first hours of my birthday will remain. If there was passion, I have forgotten it. If there was tenderness, it is with me still. Wonder is mine forever, that a woman, accepting love, has no defense. Perhaps this is the secret that they hold to bind us to them. Making reserve of it, until the last.

I would not know, having no other for comparison. She was my first, and last.

I remember the house waking to the sunlight, and seeing the round ball of it appear over the trees that fringed the lawn. The dew had been heavy, and the grass was silver, as though touched with frost. A blackbird started singing, and a chaffinch followed, and soon the whole spring chorus was in song. The weather vane was the first to catch the sun, and gleaming gold against the sky, poised above the belfry tower, it swung to the nor’west and there remained, while the gray walls of the house, dark and somber at first sight, mellowed to the morning light with a new radiance.

I went indoors and up to my room, and dragging a chair beside the open window sat down in it, and looked towards the sea. My mind was empty, without thought. My body calm and still. No problems came swimming to the surface, no anxieties itched their way through from the hidden depths to ruffle the blessed peace. It was as though everything in life was now resolved, and the way before me plain. The years behind me counted for nothing. The years to come were no more than a continuation of all I now knew and held, possessing; it would be so, forever and ever, like the amen to a litany. In the future only this; Rachel and I. A man and his wife living within themselves, the house containing us, the world outside our doors passing unheeded. Day after day, night after night, as long as we both should live. That much I remembered from the prayer book.

I shut my eyes, and she was with me still; and then I must have slept upon the instant, because when I woke the sun was streaming into the open window, and John had come in and laid out my clothes upon the chair and brought me my hot water and gone again, and I had not heard him. I shaved and dressed and went down to my breakfast, which was now cold upon the sideboard—Seecombe thinking I had long descended—but hard-boiled eggs and ham made easy fare. I could have eaten anything that day. Afterwards I whistled to the dogs and went out into the grounds, and, caring nothing for Tamlyn and his cherished blooms, I picked every budding camellia I set eyes upon and laid them in the carrier, the same that had done duty for the jewels the day before, and went back into the house and up the stairs and along the corridor to her room.

She was sitting up in bed, eating her breakfast, and before she had time to call out in protest and draw her curtains, I had showered the camellias down upon the sheets and covered her.

“Good morning once again,” I said, “and I would remind you that it is still my birthday.”

“Birthday or not,” she said, “it is customary to knock upon a door before you enter. Go away.”

Dignity was difficult, with the camellias in her hair, and on her shoulders, and falling into the teacup and the bread-and-butter, but I straightened my face and withdrew to the end of the room.

“I am sorry,” I said. “Since entering by window I have grown casual about doors. In fact, my manners have forsaken me.”

“You had better go,” she said, “before Seecombe comes up to take my tray. I think he would be shocked to see you here, for all your birthday.”

Her cool voice was a damper to my spirits, but I supposed there was logic in her remark. It was a trifle bold, perhaps, to burst in on a woman at her breakfast, even if she was to be my wife—which was something that Seecombe did not know as yet.

“I will go,” I said. “Forgive me. I only want to say one thing to you. I love you.”

I turned to the door and went, and I remember noticing that she no longer wore the collar of pearls. She must have taken it off after I left her in the early morning, and the jewels were not lying on the floor, all had been tidied away.

But on the breakfast tray, beside her, was the document that I had signed the day before.

Downstairs Seecombe awaited me, a package in his hand bound up in paper.

“Mr. Philip, sir,” he said, “this is a very great occasion. May I take the liberty of wishing you many, many happy returns of your birthday?”

“You may, Seecombe,” I answered, “and thank you.”

“This, sir,” he said, “is only a trifle. A small memento of many years of devoted service to the family. I hope you will not be offended, and that I have not taken any liberty in assuming you might be pleased to accept it as a gift.”

I unwrapped the paper and the visage of Seecombe himself, in profile, was before me; unflattering perhaps, but unmistakable.

“This,” I said gravely, “is very fine indeed. So fine, in fact, that it shall hang in place of honor near the stairs. Bring me a hammer and a nail.” He pulled the bell, with dignity, for John to do his errand.

Between us we fixed the portrait upon the panel outside the dining room. “Do you consider, sir,” said Seecombe, “that the likeness does me justice? Or has the artist given something of harshness to the features, especially the nose? I am not altogether satisfied.”

“Perfection in a portrait is impossible, Seecombe,” I answered. “This is as near to it as we shall get. Speaking for myself, I could not be more delighted.”

“Then that is all that matters,” he replied.

I wanted to tell him there and then that Rachel and I were to be married, I was so bursting with delight and happiness, but a certain hesitation held me back; the matter was too solemn and too delicate to thrust upon him unawares, and maybe we should tell him together.

I went round the back to the office, in pretense of work, but all I did when I got there was to sit before my desk and stare in front of me. I kept seeing her, in my mind’s eye, propped up against the pillows, eating her breakfast, with the camellia buds scattered on the tray. The peace of early morning had gone from me, and all the fever of last night was with me once again. When we were married, I mused, tilting back my chair and biting the end of my pen, she would not dismiss me from her presence with such ease. I would breakfast with her. No more descending to the dining room alone. We would start upon a new routine.

The clock struck ten, and I heard the men moving in the court and in the yard outside the office window, and I looked at a sheaf of bills, and put them back again, and started a letter to a fellow magistrate upon the bench and tore it up again. For no words came and nothing that I wrote made any sense, and it was still two hours to noon, when Rachel would come downstairs. Nat Bray, the farmer from Penhale, came in to see me, with a long tale about some cattle that had strayed into Trenant and how the fault was with his neighbor for not seeing to his fences, and I nodded and agreed, hearing little of his argument, for surely by now Rachel might be dressed, and out about the grounds, talking to Tamlyn.

I cut the luckless fellow short and bid him good day, and, seeing his look of hurt discomfiture, took him to seek the steward’s room and have a glass of ale with Seecombe. “Today, Nat,” I said, “I do no business, it’s my birthday, I am the happiest of men,” and clapping him on the shoulder left him openmouthed to make what he would of my remark.

Then I thrust my head out of the window, and called across the court to the kitchen, and asked them to pack a luncheon basket for a picnic, for suddenly I wanted to be alone with her under the sun, with no formality of house or dining room or silver upon a table, and this order given I walked to the stables to tell Wellington that I wished to have Solomon saddled for the mistress.

He was not there. The coach-house door was wide and the carriage gone. The stable lad was sweeping the cobbles. He looked blank at my inquiry.

“The mistress ordered the carriage soon after ten,” he said. “Where she has gone I cannot say. Perhaps to town.”

I went back to the house and rang for Seecombe, but he could tell me nothing, except that Wellington had brought the carriage to the door at a little after ten, and Rachel was ready waiting in the hall. She had never before gone driving in the morning. My spirits, pitched so high, flagged suddenly and dropped. The day was all before us and this was not what I had planned.

I sat about, and waited. Noon came and the bell clanged out for the servant’s dinner. The picnic basket was beside me, Solomon was saddled. But the carriage did not come. Finally, at two, I took Solomon round to the stable myself and bade the boy unsaddle him. I walked down the woods to the new avenue, and the excitement of the morning had turned to apathy. Even if she came now it would be too late to picnic. The warmth of an April sun would be gone by four o’clock.

I was nearly at the top of the avenue, at Four Turnings, when I saw the groom open the lodge gates and the carriage pass through. I stood waiting, in the middle of the drive, for the horses to approach, and at sight of me Wellington drew rein and halted them. The weight of disappointment, so heavy during the past hours, went at the glimpse of her, sitting in the carriage, and telling Wellington to drive on I climbed in and sat opposite her, on the hard narrow seat.

She was wrapped in her dark mantle, and she wore her veil down, so that I could not see her face.

“I have looked for you since eleven,” I said. “Where in the world have you been?”

“To Pelyn,” she said, “to see your godfather.”

All the worries and perplexities, safely buried in the depths, came rushing to the forefront of my mind, and with a sharp misgiving I wondered what they could do, between them, to make havoc of my plans.

“Why so?” I asked. “What need to go find him in such a hurry? Everything has been settled long since.”

“I am not sure,” she answered, “what you mean by everything.”

The carriage jolted in a rut beside the avenue, and she put out her hand in its dark glove to the strap for steadiness. How remote she seemed, sitting there in her mourning clothes, behind her veil, a world away from the Rachel who had held me against her heart.

“The document,” I said, “you are thinking of the document. You cannot go against it. I am legally of age. My godfather can do nothing. It is signed, and sealed, and witnessed. Everything is yours.”

“Yes,” she said, “I understand it now. The wording was a little obscure, that was all. So I wished to make certain what it meant.”

Still that distant voice, cool and unattached, while in my ears and in my memory was the other, that had whispered in my ear at midnight.

“Is it clear to you now?” I said.

“Quite clear,” she answered.

“Then there is nothing more to be said on the matter?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

Yet there was a kind of nagging at my heart, and a strange mistrust. All spontaneity was gone, the joy and laughter we had shared together when I gave her the jewels. God damn my godfather if he had said anything to hurt her.

“Put up your veil,” I said.

For a moment she did not move. Then she glanced up at Wellington’s broad back and the groom beside him on the box. He whipped the horses to a brisker pace as the twisting avenue turned into the straight.

She lifted her veil, and the eyes that looked into mine were not smiling as I had hoped, or tearful as I had feared, but steady and serene and quite unmoved, the eyes of someone who has been out upon a matter of business and settled it in satisfaction.

For no great reason I felt blank, and in some sense cheated. I wanted the eyes to be as I remembered them at sunrise. I had thought, foolishly perhaps, that it was because her eyes were still the same that she had hidden them behind her veil. Not so, however. She must have sat facing my godfather thus, across the desk in his study, purposeful and practical and cool, no whit dismayed, while I sat waiting for her, in torment, on the front door step at home.

“I would have been back before now,” she said, “but they pressed me to remain for luncheon, and I could not well refuse. Had you made a plan?” She turned her face to watch the passing scene, and I wondered how it was that she could sit there, as if we were two people of casual acquaintance, while it was as much as I could do not to put out my hands to her and hold her. Since yesterday, everything was changed. Yet she gave no sign of it.

“I had a plan,” I said, “but it does not matter now.”

“The Kendalls dine tonight in town,” she said, “but will look in upon us afterwards, before returning home. I fancy I made some progress with Louise. Her manner was not quite so frozen.”

“I am glad of that,” I said, “I would like you to be friends.”

“In fact,” she went on, “I am coming back again to my original way of thinking. She would suit you well.”

She laughed, but I did not laugh with her. It was unkind, I thought, to make a joke of poor Louise. Heaven only knew, I wished the girl no harm, and that she might find herself a husband.

“I think,” she said, “that your godfather disapproves of me, which he has a perfect right to do, but by the end of luncheon I think we understood one another very well. The tension eased, and conversation was not difficult. We made more plans to meet in London.”

“In London?” I asked. “You don’t still intend to go to London?”

“Why, yes,” she said, “why ever not?”

I said nothing. Certainly she had a right to go to London if she pleased. There might be shops she wished to visit, purchases to make, especially now that she had money to command, and yet… surely she could wait awhile, until we could go together? There were so many things we must discuss, but I was hesitant to do so. It struck me with full force, suddenly and sharply, what I had not thought of until now. Ambrose was but nine months dead. The world would think it wrong for us to marry before midsummer. Somehow there were problems to the day that had not been at midnight, and I wanted none of them.

“Don’t let’s go home immediately,” I said to her. “Walk with me in the woods.”

“Very well,” she answered.

We stopped by the keeper’s cottage in the valley, and descending from the carriage let Wellington drive on. We took one of the paths beside the stream, which twisted upward to the hill above, and here and there were primroses, in clumps, beneath the trees, which she must stoop and pick, returning again to the subject of Louise as she did so, saying the girl had quite an eye for gardens and with instruction would learn more, in time. Louise could go to the ends of the earth for all I cared, and garden there to her heart’s content; I had not brought Rachel in the woods to talk about Louise.