My Cousin Rachel (33 page)

I saw my godfather glance at me, out of the corner of his eye; then, tugging his mustache, stare at his feet. I could imagine the thought that was passing through his head. “Once she has gone, he will be himself again.” The afternoon wore on. At four, we sat to dinner. Once more I was seated at the head of the table and Rachel at the foot, my godfather and the vicar on either hand. Once more there was talk and laughter, even poetry. I sat, much with the same silence that I had at first, and watched her face. Then, it had been with fascination, because unknown. The continuation of conversation, the change of topic, the inclusion of each person at the table, was something that I had never seen a woman do, so it was magic. Now, I knew all the tricks. The starting of a subject, the whisper behind her hand to the vicar, and the laughter of both followed at once by my godfather leaning forward asking, “Now what was that, Mrs. Ashley, what did you say?” and her immediate reply, quick and mocking, “The vicar will inform you,” with the vicar, blushing red and proud, thinking himself a wit, embarking on a story that his family had not heard. It was a little game that she enjoyed, and we were all of us, with our dull Cornish ways, so easy to handle, and to fool.

I wondered if in Italy her task was harder. I did not think so. Only her company there was more suited to her mettle. And with Rainaldi at her hand to help her, speaking the language she knew best, the talk would sparkle at the villa Sangalletti with greater brilliance than it had ever done at my dull table. Sometimes she gestured with her hands, as though to clarify her rapid speech. When she talked to Rainaldi in Italian, I had noticed she did it even more. Today, interrupting my godfather in some statement, she did it once again; both hands, so quick and deft, brushing aside the air. Then, waiting for his answer, her elbows resting lightly on the table, the hands folded themselves, were still. Her head was turned to him as she listened, so that from the head of the table, where I sat, I looked on her in profile. She was always a stranger, thus. Those neat clipped features on a coin. Dark and withdrawn, a foreign woman standing in a doorway, a shawl about her head, her hand outstretched. But full-face, when she smiled, a stranger never. The Rachel that I knew, that I had loved.

My godfather finished his story. There was a pause, and silence. Trained now to all her movements, I watched her eyes. They looked to Mrs. Pascoe, then to me. “Shall we go into the garden?” she said. We all rose from our chairs, and the vicar, pulling out his watch, sighed and observed, “Much as I regret it, I must tear myself away.”

“I too,” remarked my godfather. “I have a brother sick at Luxilyan, and promised to call and see him. But Louise may stay.”

“Surely you have time to drink your tea?” said Rachel; but it seemed the hour was later than they thought, and at length, after some pother, Nick Kendall and the Pascoes departed in the brougham. Louise alone remained.

“Since there are only the three of us,” said Rachel, “let us be informal. Come to the boudoir.” And smiling at Louise she led the way upstairs. “Louise shall drink tisana,” she called, over her shoulder. “I will show her my method. When her father suffers from insomnia, if ever, this is the remedy.”

We all came to the boudoir and sat down, I by the open window, Louise upon the stool. Rachel busied herself with her preparations.

“The English way,” said Rachel, “if there can be an English way, which I rather doubt, is to take peeled barley. I brought my own dried herbs from Florence. If you like the taste, I will leave some with you when I go.”

Louise rose from the stool, and stood beside her. “I heard from Mary Pascoe that you know the name of every herb,” she said, “and have doctored the tenants here on the estate for many ailments. In old days, the people knew more about these things than they do now. Yet some of the old folk can still charm away warts and rashes.”

“I can charm more than warts,” laughed Rachel. “Call in at their cottages, and ask them. Herb-lore is very ancient. I learned it from my mother. Thank you, John.” John had brought up the kettle of steaming water. “In Florence,” said Rachel, “I used to brew the tisana in my room, and let it stand. It is better thus. Then we would go out into the court, and sit, and I would turn on the fountain, and while we sipped our tisana the water dripped into the pool. Ambrose would sit there, watching it, for hours.” She poured the water that John had brought into the teapot. “I have a mind,” she said “to bring back from Florence, next time I come to Cornwall, a little statue, like the one above my pool. It will take some finding, but I shall be successful in the end. Then we can put him to stand in the middle of the new sunken garden we are building here, and make a fountain too. What do you think?” She turned to me, smiling, and she was stirring the tisana with a spoon in her left hand.

“If you like,” I answered.

“Philip lacks all enthusiasm,” she said to Louise; “either he agrees to all I say, or does not care. Sometimes I think my labors here are wasted, the terrace walk, the shrubs in the plantation. He would have been content with rough grass, and a muddied path. Here, take your cup.”

She gave the cup to Louise, who sat down on the stool. Then she brought me mine, where I was sitting on the windowsill.

I shook my head. “No tisana, Philip?” she said. “But it is good for you, and makes you sleep. You have never refused before. This is a special brew. I have made it double strength.”

“You drink it for me,” I replied.

She shrugged her shoulders, “Mine is already poured. I like it to stand longer. This must be wasted. What a pity.” She leaned over me, and poured it from the window. Drawing back, she put her hand on my shoulder, and from her came the scent I knew so well. No perfume, but the essence of her own person, the texture of her skin.

“Are you not well?” she whispered, so that Louise could not hear.

If all knowledge, and all feeling, could be blotted out, I would have asked it then, and that she should remain, her hand upon my shoulder. No letter torn to shreds, no secret packet locked in a little drawer, no evil, no duplicity. Her hand moved from my shoulder to my chin, and stayed there for a moment in a brief caress, which, because she stood between me and Louise, passed unseen. “My sullen one,” she said.

I looked above her head, and saw the portrait of Ambrose above the mantelpiece. His eyes stared straight into mine, in youth and innocence. I answered nothing; and moving from me she put back my empty cup onto the tray.

“What do you think of it?” she asked Louise.

“I am afraid,” apologized Louise, “that it would take me a little time to like it well.”

“Perhaps,” said Rachel; “the musty flavor does not suit all persons. Never mind. It is a sedative to unquiet minds. Tonight we shall all sleep well.” She smiled, and drank slowly from her own cup.

We chatted a little while, for perhaps half an hour or more, or rather she did with Louise; then rising, and putting back her cup upon the tray, she said, “Now it is cooler, who will walk with me in the garden?” I glanced across at Louise, who, looking at me, stayed silent.

“I have promised Louise,” I said, “to show her an old plan of the Pelyn estate that I came across the other day. The boundaries are strongly marked, and show the old hill fortress being part of it.”

“Very well,” said Rachel, “take her to the drawing room, or remain here, as you please. I shall take my walk alone.”

She went, humming a song, into the blue bedroom.

“Stay where you are,” I said softly, to Louise.

I went downstairs, and to the office, for in truth there was an old plan that I had somewhere, among my papers. I found it, in a file, and went back across the court. As I came to the side door, that led from near the drawing room to the garden, Rachel was setting forth upon her walk. She wore no hat, but had her sunshade, open, in her hand. “I shall not be long,” she said, “I’m going up to the terrace—I want to see if a little statue would look well in the sunken garden.”

“Have a care,” I said to her.

“Why, of what?” she asked.

She stood beside me, her sunshade resting on her shoulder. She wore a dark gown, of some thin muslin stuff, with white lace about the neck. She looked much as I had seen her first, ten months ago, except that it was summer. The scent of the new cut grass was in the air. A butterfly flew past in happy flight. The pigeons cooed from the great trees beyond the lawn.

“Have a care,” I said slowly, “of walking beneath the sun.”

She laughed, and went from me. I watched her cross the lawn and climb the steps towards the terrace.

I turned back into the house, and going swiftly up the stairs came to the boudoir. Louise was waiting there.

“I want your help,” I said briefly, “I have little time to lose.”

She rose from the stool, her eyes a question. “What is it?”

“You remember the conversation that we had those weeks ago, in the church?” I said to her. She nodded.

“Well, you were right, and I was wrong,” I answered, “but never mind that now. I have suspicious of worse beside, but I must have final proof. I think she has tried to poison me, and that she did the same to Ambrose.” Louise said nothing. Her eyes widened in horror.

“It does not matter now how I discovered it,” I said, “but the clue may lie in a letter from that man Rainaldi. I am going to search her bureau here, to find it. You learned a smattering of Italian, with your French. Between us, we can reach some translation.”

Already I was looking through the bureau, more thoroughly than I was able to do the night before by candlelight.

“Why did you not warn my father?” said Louise. “If she is guilty, he could accuse her with greater force than you?”

“I must have proof,” I answered her.

Here were papers, envelopes, stacked neatly in a pile. Here were receipts and bills that might have alarmed my godfather had he seen them but meant little to me, in my fever to discover what I sought. I tried again the little drawer that held the packet. This time it was not locked. I pulled it open, and the drawer was empty. The envelope had gone. This might be an added proof, but my tisana had been poured away. I went on opening the drawers, and Louise stood beside me, her brows knit with anxiety. “You should have waited,” she said. “It is not wise. You should have waited for my father, who could take legal action. What you are doing now is what anyone might do, a common thief.”

“Life and death,” I said, “do not wait for legal action. Here, what is this?” I tossed her a long paper, with names upon it. Some of them in English, some Latin, some Italian.

“I am not sure,” she answered, “but I think it is a list of plants, and herbs. The writing is not clear.”

She puzzled over it, as I turned out the drawers.

“Yes,” she said, “these must be her herbs and remedies. But the second sheet is in English, and would seem to be notes on the propagation of plants; species after species, dozens of them.”

“Look for laburnum,” I said.

Her eyes held mine an instant, in sudden understanding. Then she looked down once more to the page she held in her hands.

“Yes, it is here,” she said, “but it tells you nothing.”

I tore it from her hands and read, where her finger pointed. “Laburnum Cytisus. A native of south Europe. These plants are all capable of being increased by seeds, and many of them by cuttings and layers. In the first mode, the seeds should be sown, either in beds or where the plants are to remain. In spring, as about March, and when of sufficient growth, transplanted into nursery rows, to remain till of a proper size for being planted in the situations where they are to grow.” Beneath was an added note of the source from where she had taken the information:
The New Botanic Garden.
Printed for John Stockdale and Company, by T. Bousley, Bold Court. Fleet Street. 1812.

“There is nothing here about poison,” said Louise.

I continued searching the desk. I found a letter from the bank. I recognized the handwriting of Mr. Couch. Ruthless and careless now, I opened it. “Dear Madam, We thank you for the return of the Ashley collection of jewels, which, according to your instruction, as you are shortly to leave the country, will remain with us in custody until such time as your heir, Mr. Philip Ashley, may take possession of them. Yours faithfully, H
ERBERT
C
OUCH.
”

I put the letter back, in sudden anguish. Whatever Rainaldi’s influence, some impulse of her own directed this action.

There was nothing else of any matter. I had searched thoroughly each drawer, raked every pigeonhole. Either she had destroyed the letter, or carried it upon her. Baffled, frustrated, I turned again to Louise. “It is not here,” I said.

“Have you looked through the blotter?” she asked, in doubt.

Like a fool, I had laid it on the chair, never thinking that so obvious a place could hide a secret letter. I took it up, and there, in the center, between two clean white sheets, fell out the envelope from Plymouth. The letter was still inside. I pulled it from its cover, and gave it to Louise. “This is it,” I said, “see if you can decipher it.”

She looked down at the piece of paper, then gave it back to me. “But it isn’t in Italian,” she said to me. “Read it yourself.”

I read the note. There were only a few, brief lines. He had dispensed with formality, as I had thought he might; but not in the manner I had pictured. The time was eleven of the evening, but there was no beginning. “Since you have become more English than Italian, I write to you in your language of adoption. It is after eleven, and we weigh anchor at midnight. I will do all you ask of me in Florence, and perhaps more beside, though I am not sure you deserve any of it. At least, the villa will be waiting for you, and the servants, when you at last decide to tear yourself away. Do not delay too long. I have never had great faith in those impulses of your heart, and your emotions. If, in the end, you cannot bring yourself to leave that boy behind, then bring him with you. I warn you though, against my better judgment. Have a care to yourself, and believe me, your friend, Rainaldi.”

I read it once, then twice. I gave it to Louise.