My Cousin Rachel (26 page)

I took the primroses from her hands and put them on the ground, and spreading my coat under a tree I asked her to sit down upon it.

“I am not tired,” she said. “I have been sitting in the carriage this past hour or more.”

“And I also,” I said, “these four hours, by the front door, waiting for you.”

I took off her gloves, and kissed her hands, and put the bonnet and the veil among the primroses, and kissed the rest of her as I had wanted to do for long hours past, and once again she was without defense. “This,” I said, “was my plan, which you have spoiled by lunching with the Kendalls.”

“I rather thought it might be,” she answered, “which was one of the reasons why I went.”

“You promised to deny me nothing on my birthday, Rachel.”

“There is,” she said, “a limit to indulgence.”

I could see none. I was happy once again, with all anxiety gone.

“If,” she remarked, “this is a path frequented by the keeper we would look a little foolish.”

“And he more foolish still,” I replied, “when I pay his wages on Saturday. Or will you take that over with the rest? I am your servant now, you know, another Seecombe, and await your further orders.”

I lay there, with my head in her lap, and she ran her fingers through my hair. I shut my eyes, and wished it might continue. To the end of time, nothing but that moment.

“You are wondering why I had not thanked you,” she said. “I saw your puzzled eyes in the carriage. There is nothing I can say. I always believed myself impulsive, but you are more so. It will take me a little time, you know, to grasp the full measure of your generosity.”

“I have not been generous,” I answered, “it was your due. Let me kiss you once again. I have to make up for those hours upon the doorstep.”

Presently she said, “I have learned one thing at least. Never to go walking with you in the woods again. Philip, let me rise.”

I helped her to her feet, and, with a bow, handed her the gloves and bonnet. She fumbled in her purse, and brought out a small package, which she unwrapped. “Here,” she said, “is your birthday present, which I should have given you before. Had I known that I was coming into a fortune, the pearl head would have been larger.” She took the pin and put it in my cravat.

“Now will you permit me to go home?” she said.

She gave me her hand, and I remembered that I had eaten no lunch that day and had now a prodigious appetite for dinner. We turned along the pathway, I thinking of boiled fowl and bacon and the night to come, and suddenly we were upon the granite stone above the valley, which I had forgotten awaited us at the termination of the path. I turned swiftly into the trees, so as to avoid it, but too late. She had already seen it, dark and square among the trees, and letting go my hand stood still and stared at it.

“What is it, Philip,” she asked, “that shape there, like a tombstone, rising so suddenly out of the ground?”

“It is nothing,” I said swiftly, “just a piece of granite. A sort of landmark. There is a path here, through the trees, where the walking is less steep. This way, to the left. Not past the stone.”

“Wait a moment,” she said, “I want to look at it. I have never been this way before.”

She went up to the slab and stood before it. I saw her lips move as she read the words, and I watched her in apprehension. Perhaps it was my fancy, yet it seemed to me that her body stiffened, and she paused there longer that she need have done. She must have read the words twice over. Then she came back and joined me, but this time she did not take my hand, she walked alone. She made no comment on the monument, nor did I, but somehow that great slab of granite was with us as we walked. I saw the lines of doggerel, and the date beneath, and his initials A.A. cut into the stone, and I saw also, which she could not, the pocketbook with the letter buried deep beneath the stone, in the dank earth. And I felt, in some vile fashion, that I had betrayed them both. Her very silence showed that she was moved. Unless, I thought to myself, I speak now, at this moment, the slab of granite will be a barrier between us, and will grow in magnitude.

“I meant to take you there before,” I said, my voice sounding loud and unnatural after so long an interval. “It was the view Ambrose liked best, on the whole estate. That is why the stone is there.”

“But it was not,” she answered, “part of your birthday plan to show it to me.” The words were clipped and hard, the words of a stranger.

“No,” I said quietly, “not part of the plan.” And we walked along the drive without further conversation, and on entering the house she went straight to her room.

I took my bath and changed my clothes, no longer light of heart but dull, despondent. What demon took us to that granite stone, what lapse of memory? She did not know, as I did, how often Ambrose had stood there, smiling and leaning on his stick, but the silly doggerel lines would conjure up the mood that prompted them, half jesting, half nostalgic, the tender thought behind his mocking eyes. The slab of granite, tall and proud, would have taken on the substance of the man himself, whom, through fault of circumstance, she had not permitted to return to die at home, but who lay many hundred miles away, in that Protestant cemetery in Florence.

Here was a shadow for my birthday night.

At least she knew nothing of the letter, nor would she ever know, and I wondered, as I dressed for dinner, what other demon had prompted me to bury it there, rather than burn it in the fire, as though I had the instinct of an animal, that would one day return to dig it up. I had forgotten all that it contained. His illness had been upon him as he wrote. Brooding, suspicious, with the hand of death so close, he had not reckoned on his words. And suddenly, as though it danced before me on the wall, I saw the sentence, “Money, God forgive me for saying so, is, at the present time, the one way to her heart.”

The words jumped onto the mirror, as I stood before it brushing my hair. They were there as I placed her pin in my cravat. They followed me down the stairs and into the drawing room, and they turned from the written words into his voice itself, the voice of Ambrose, deep, well-loved, long known, remembered always—“The one way to her heart.”

When she came down to dinner she wore the pearl collar round her neck, as though in forgiveness, as though in tribute to my birthday; yet somehow, to my mind, the fact that she wore it made her not closer to me, but more distant. Tonight, if only for tonight, I had rather that her neck had been left bare.

We sat down to dinner, with John and Seecombe waiting on us, and the full regalia of the candlesticks and the silver upon the table, and the lace napery too, in honor of my birthday, and there was boiled fowl and bacon as of long custom, from my schoolboy days, which Seecombe bore in with great pride, his eye upon me. We laughed, and smiled, and toasted them and ourselves, and the five-and-twenty years that lay behind me; but all the while I felt that we forced our spirits into jollity for the sake of Seecombe and for John, and left to ourselves would fall to silence.

A kind of desperation came upon me, that it was imperative to feast, imperative to make merry, and the solution therefore was to drink more wine, and fill her glass as well, so that the sharper edge of feeling could be dulled and both of us forget the granite slab and what it stood for in our inner selves. Last night I had walked to the beacon head under the full moon, in exultation, sleepwalking, in a dream. Tonight, though in the intervening hours I had woken to the wealth of the whole world, I had woken to shadows too.

Muzzy-eyed, I watched her across the table; she was laughing over her shoulder to Seecombe, and it seemed to me she had never looked more lovely. If I could recapture my mood of early morning, the stillness and the peace, and blend it with the folly of the afternoon among the primroses under the tall beech trees, then I would be happy once again. She would be happy too. And we would hold the mood forever, precious and sacred, carrying it into the future.

Seecombe filled my glass again and something of the shadow slipped away, the doubts were eased; when we are alone together, I thought, all will be well, and I shall ask her this very evening, this very night, if we can be married soon, but soon, in a few weeks perhaps, in a month, for I wanted everyone to know, Seecombe, John, the Kendalls, everyone, that Rachel would bear her name because of me.

She would be Mrs. Ashley; Philip Ashley’s wife.

We must have sat late, for we had not left the table when there came the sound of carriage wheels upon the drive. The bell pealed and the Kendalls were shown in to the dining room where we were still seated amid the confusion of crumbs and dessert and half-empty glasses, and all the aftermath of dinner. I rose, unsteadily I recollect, and dragged two chairs to the table, with my godfather protesting that they had already dined, and only came in for a moment to wish me good health.

Seecombe brought fresh glasses and I saw Louise, in a blue gown, look at me, a question in her eyes, thinking, I felt instinctively, that I had drunk too much. She was right, but it did not happen often, it was my birthday, and time she knew, once and for all, that she would never have the right to criticize me, except as a childhood friend. My godfather should know too. It would put an end to all his plans for her, and put an end to gossip also, and ease the mind of anyone who cared to worry on the subject.

We all sat down again, with buzz of conversation, my godfather, Rachel and Louise already eased to each other’s company through the hours spent at luncheon; while I sat silent at my end of the table, scarce taking in a word, but turning over in my mind the announcement I had resolved to make.

At length my godfather, leaning towards me glass in hand and smiling, said, “To your five-and-twenty years, Philip. Long life and happiness.”

The three of them looked at me, and whether it was the wine I had taken, or my own full heart within me, but I felt that both my godfather and Louise were dear and trusted friends, I liked them well, and Rachel, my love, with tears already in her eyes, was surely nodding her head and smiling her encouragement.

This was the moment then, opportune and fit. The servants were from the room, so the secret could be held among the four of us.

I stood up and thanked them, and then with my own glass filled I said, “I too have a toast I wish you to drink tonight. Since this morning I have been the happiest of men. I want you, godfather, and you Louise, to drink to Rachel, who is to be my wife.”

I drained my glass, and looked down upon them, smiling. No one answered, no one moved, I saw perplexity in my godfather’s expression and turning to Rachel I saw that her smile had gone, and that she was staring at me, her face a frozen mask.

“Have you quite lost your senses, Philip?” she said.

I put my glass down upon the table. I was uncertain of my hand, and placed it too near the edge. It toppled over, and shivered in fragments on the floor. My heart was thumping. I could not take my eyes away from her still white face.

“I am sorry,” I said, “if it was premature to break the news. Remember it is my birthday, and they are both my oldest friends.”

I gripped the table with my hands for steadiness, and there was a sound of drumming in my ears. She did not seem to understand. She looked away from me, back to my godfather and Louise.

“I think,” she said, “that the birthday and the wine have gone to Philip’s head. Forgive this piece of schoolboy folly, and forget it, if you can. He will apologize when he is himself again. Shall we go to the drawing room?”

She rose to her feet and led the way from the room. I went on standing there, staring at the debris of the dinner table, the crumbs of bread, the spilled wine on the napery, the chairs pushed back, and there was no feeling in me, none at all, but a kind of vacuum where my heart had been. I waited awhile, and then, stumbling from the dining room before John and Seecombe should come to clear the table, I went into the library, and sat there in the darkness, beside the empty grate. The candles had not been lighted, and the logs had fallen into ash. Through the half-open door I could hear the murmur of the voices in the drawing room. I pressed my hands to my reeling head, and the taste of the wine was sour on my tongue. Perhaps if I sat still there, in the darkness, I would recover my sense of balance, and the numb emptiness would go. It was the fault of the wine that I had blundered. Yet why should she mind so much what I had said? We could have sworn the pair of them to secrecy. They would have understood. I went on sitting there, waiting for them to go. Presently—the time seemed endless but it may not have been more than ten minutes or so—the voices grew louder and they passed into the hall, and I heard Seecombe opening the front door, bidding them good night, and the wheels drive away, and the clanging and bolting of the door.

My brain was clearer now. I sat and listened. I heard the rustle of her gown. It came near to the half-open door of the library, paused an instant, then passed away; and then her footstep on the stair. I got up from my chair and followed her. I came upon her at the turn of the corridor, where she had paused to snuff the candles at the stair-head. We stood staring at one another in the flickering light.

“I thought you were gone to bed,” she said. “You had better go, at once, before you do more damage.”

“Now that they are gone,” I said, “will you forgive me? Believe me, you can trust the Kendalls. They won’t give away our secret.”

“Good God, I should hope not, since they know nothing of it,” she replied. “You make me feel like a backstairs servant, creeping to some attic with a groom. I have known shame before, but this is the worst.”

Still the white frozen face that was not hers.

“You were not ashamed last night at midnight,” I said, “you gave your promise then, and were not angry. I would have gone at once if you had bidden me.”

“My promise?” she said. “What promise?”

“To marry me, Rachel,” I answered.

She had her candlestick in her hand. She raised it, so that the naked flame showed on my face. “You dare to stand there, Philip,” she said, “and bluster to me that I promised to marry you last night? I said at dinner, before the Kendalls, that you had lost your senses, and so you have. You know very well I gave you no such promise.”