My Cousin Rachel (6 page)

He turned to the table, and scribbled a note which he gave me.

“What will be written on the stone?” I said.

He paused a moment, as though reflecting, while the servant waiting by the open door handed me Ambrose’s hat.

“I believe,” he said, “that my instructions were to put ‘In Memory of Ambrose Ashley, beloved husband of Rachel Coryn Ashley,’ and then of course the date.”

I knew then that I did not want to go to the cemetery or visit the grave. That I had no wish to see the place where they had buried him. They could put up the stone, and later take flowers there if they wished, but Ambrose would never know, and never care. He would be with me in that west country, under his own soil, in his own land.

“When Mrs. Ashley returns,” I said slowly, “tell her that I came to Florence. That I went to the villa Sangalletti, and that I saw where Ambrose died. You can tell her too about the letters Ambrose wrote to me.”

He held out his hand to me, cold and hard like himself, and still he watched me with those veiled, deep-set eyes.

“Your cousin Rachel is a woman of impulse,” he said. “When she left Florence she took all her possessions with her. I very much fear that she will never return.”

I left the house and went out into the dark street. It was almost as if his eyes still followed me from behind his shuttered windows.

I walked back along the cobbled streets and crossed the bridge, and before turning into the hostelry to seek what sleep I could before the morning I went and stood once more beside the Arno.

The city slept. I was the only loiterer. Even the solemn bells were silent, and the only sound was the river, sucking its way under the bridge. It ran more swiftly now, it seemed, than in the day, as though the water had been pent up and idle during the long hours of heat and sun and now, because of night, because of silence, found release.

I stared down at the river, watching it surge and flow and lose itself in the darkness, and by the single flickering lantern light upon the bridge I saw the bubbles forming, frothy brown. Then borne upon the current, stiff and slowly turning, with its four legs in the air, came the body of a dog. It passed under the bridge and went its way.

I made a vow there, to myself, beside the Arno.

I swore that, whatever it had cost Ambrose in pain and suffering before he died, I would return it, in full measure, upon the woman who had caused it. Because I did not believe Rainaldi’s story. I believed in the truth of those two letters that I held in my right hand. The last Ambrose had ever written to me.

Someday, somehow, I would repay my cousin Rachel.

I arrived home the first week in September. The news had preceded me—the Italian had not lied when he told me he had written to Nick Kendall. My godfather had broken the news to the servants and to the tenants on the estate. Wellington was waiting for me at Bodmin with the carriage. The horses were decked in crepe, as were Wellington and the groom, their faces long and solemn.

My relief at being back in my own country was so great that for the moment grief was dormant, or possibly that long homeward trek across Europe had dulled all feeling; but I remember my first instinct was to smile at sight of Wellington and the boy, to pat the horses, to inquire if all was well. It was almost as though I were a lad again, returned from school. The old coachman’s manner was stiff, however, with a new formality, and the young groom opened the carriage door to me with deference. “A sad homecoming, Mr. Philip,” said Wellington, and when I asked after Seecombe and the household he shook his head and told me that they and all the tenants were sorely grieved. The whole neighborhood, he said, had talked of nothing else since the news became known. The church had been draped in black all Sunday, likewise the chapel on the estate, but the greatest blow of all, Wellington said, was when Mr. Kendall told them that the master had been buried in Italy and would not be brought home to lie in the vault among his family.

“It doesn’t seem right to any of us, Mr. Philip,” he said, “and we don’t think Mr. Ashley would have liked it either.”

There was nothing I could say in answer. I got into the carriage and let them drive me home.

It was strange how the emotion and the fatigue of the past weeks vanished at sight of the house. All sense of strain left me, and in spite of the long hours on the road I felt rested and at peace. It was afternoon, and the sun shone on the windows of the west wing, and on the gray walls, as the carriage passed through the second gate up the slope to the house. The dogs were there, waiting to greet me, and poor Seecombe, wearing a crepe band on his arm like the rest of the servants, broke down when I wrung him by the hand.

“It’s been so long, Mr. Philip,” he said, “so very long. And how were we to know that you might not take the fever too, like Mr. Ashley?”

He waited upon me while I dined, solicitous, anxious for my welfare, and I was thankful that he did not press me with questions about my journey or about his master’s illness and death, but was full of the effect upon himself and the household; how the bells had tolled for a whole day, how the vicar had spoken, how wreaths had been brought in offering. And all his words were punctuated with a new formality of address. I was “Mr.” Philip. No longer “Master” Philip. I had noticed the same with the coachman and the groom. It was unexpected, yet strangely warming to the heart.

When I had dined I went up to my room and looked about me, and then down into the library, and so out into the grounds, and I was filled with a queer feeling of happiness that I had not thought ever to possess with Ambrose dead; for when I left Florence I had reached the lowest ebb of loneliness, and hoped for nothing. Across Italy and France I was possessed with images which I could not drive away. I saw Ambrose sitting in that shaded court of the villa Sangalletti, beside the laburnum tree, watching the dripping fountain. I saw him in that bare monk’s cell above, propped on two pillows, struggling for breath. And always within earshot, always within sight, was the shadowy hated figure of that woman I had never seen. She had so many faces, so many guises, and that name contessa, used by the servant Giuseppe and by Rainaldi too, in preference for Mrs. Ashley, gave to her a kind of aura she had never had with me at first, when I had seen her as another Mrs. Pascoe.

Since my journey to the villa she had become a monster, larger than life itself. Her eyes were black as sloes, her features aquiline like Rainaldi’s, and she moved about those musty villa rooms sinuous and silent, like a snake. I saw her, when there was no longer breath left in his body, packing his clothes in trunks, reaching for his books, his last possessions, and then creeping away, thin-lipped, to Rome perhaps, to Naples, or even lying concealed in that house beside the Arno, smiling, behind the shutters. These images remained with me until I crossed the sea and came to Dover. And now, now that I had returned home, they vanished as nightmares do at break of day. My bitterness went too. Ambrose was with me once again and he was not tortured, he no longer suffered. He had never been to Florence or to Italy at all. It was as though he had died here, in his own home, and lay buried with his father and his mother and my own parents, and my grief was now something I could overcome; sorrow was with me still, but not tragedy. I too was back where I belonged, and the smell of home was all about me.

I went out across the fields, and the men were harvesting. The shocks of corn were being lifted into the wagons. They ceased work at the sight of me, and I went and spoke to all of them. Old Billy Rowe, who had been tenant of the Barton ever since I could remember and had never called me anything but Master Philip, touched his forehead when I came up to him, and his wife and daughter, helping with the rest of the men, dropped me a curtsey. “We’ve missed you, sir,” he said, “it hasn’t seemed right to start carrying the corn without you. We’re glad you’re home.” A year ago I would have rolled up my sleeves like the rest of the hinds, and seized a fork, but something stayed me now, a realization that they would not think it fit.

“I’m glad to be home,” I said. “Mr. Ashley’s death has been a great sadness to me, and to you too, but now we all have to carry on as he would have wished us to do.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and touched his forelock once again.

I stayed a few moments talking, then called to the dogs and went my way. He waited until I reached the hedge before telling the men to resume their work. When I came to the pony paddock, midway between the house and the sloping fields, I paused and looked back over the sunken fence. The wagons were silhouetted on the further hill, and the waiting horses and the moving figures black dots on the skyline. The shocks of corn were golden in the last rays of the sun. The sea was very blue, almost purple where it covered the rocks, and had that deep full look about it that always comes with the flood tide. The fishing fleet had put out, and were standing eastward to catch the shore breeze. Back at home the house was in shadow now, only the weather vane on the top of the clock tower catching a loose shaft of light. I walked slowly across the grass to the open door.

The windows were still unshuttered, for Seecombe had not yet sent the servants to close them down. There was something welcome in the sight of those raised sashes, with the curtains softly moving, and the thought of all the rooms behind the windows, known to me and loved. The smoke rose from the chimneys, tall and straight. Old Don, the retriever, too ancient and stiff to walk with me and the younger dogs, scratched on the gravel under the library windows, and then turning his head towards me slowly wagged his tail as I drew near.

It came upon me strongly and with force, and for the first time since I had learned of Ambrose’s death, that everything I now saw and looked upon belonged to me. I need never share it with anyone living. Those walls and windows, that roof, the bell that struck seven as I approached, the whole living entity of the house was mine, and mine alone. The grass beneath my feet, the trees surrounding me, the hills behind me, the meadows, the woods, even the men and women farming the land yonder, were all part of my inheritance; they all belonged.

I went indoors and stood in the library, my back to the open fireplace, my hands in my pockets. The dogs came in as was their custom, and lay down at my feet. Seecombe came to ask me if there were any orders for Wellington, for the morning. Did I want the horses and the carriage, or should he saddle Gypsy for me? No, I told him, I would give no orders tonight. I would see Wellington myself after breakfast. I wished to be called at my usual time. He answered, “Yes, sir,” and left the room. Master Philip had gone forever. Mr. Ashley had come home. It was a strange feeling. In a sense it made me humble, and at the same time oddly proud. I was aware of a sort of confidence and of a strength that I had not known before, and a new elation. It seemed to me that I felt as a soldier might feel on being given command of a battalion; this sense of ownership, of pride, and of possession too, came to me, as it might do to a senior major, after having deputized for many months and years in second place. But, unlike a soldier, I would never have to give up my command. It was mine for life. I believe that when I had this realization, standing there before the library fire, I knew a moment of happiness that I have never had in life, before or since. Like all such moments it came swiftly, and as swiftly passed again. Some sound of day by day broke the spell: perhaps a dog stirred, an ember fell from the fire, or a servant moved overhead as he went to close the windows—I don’t remember what it was. All I remember is the feeling of confidence which I had that night, as though something long sleeping had stirred inside me and now come to life. I went early to bed, and slept without once dreaming.

My godfather, Nick Kendall, came over the following day, bringing Louise with him. As there were no close relatives to summon, and only bequests to Seecombe and the other servants, with the customary donations to the poor in the parish, the widows, and the orphans, and the whole of his estate and property was left to me, Nick Kendall read the will alone to me, in the library. Louise took herself off for a walk in the grounds. In spite of the legal language, the business seemed simple and straightforward. Except for one thing. The Italian Rainaldi had been right. Nick Kendall
was
appointed my guardian, because the estate did not become virtually mine until I was twenty-five.

“It was a belief of Ambrose’s,” said my godfather, taking off his spectacles as he handed me the document to read for myself, “that no young man knows his own mind until he turns twenty-five. You might have grown up with a weakness for drink or gambling or women, and this twenty-five-year clause made a safeguard. I helped him to draw the will when you were still at Harrow, and though we both knew that none of these tendencies had developed yet Ambrose preferred to keep the clause. ‘It can’t hurt Philip,’ he always said, ‘and will teach him caution.’ Well, there we are, and there’s nothing to be done about it. In point of fact it won’t affect you, except that you will have to call upon me for money, as you always have done, for the estate accounts and for your personal use, for a further seven months. Your birthday is in April, isn’t it?”

“You should know,” I said, “you were my sponsor.”

“A funny little worm you were too,” he said with a smile, “staring with puzzled eyes at the parson. Ambrose was just down from Oxford. He pinched your nose to make you cry, shocking his aunt, your mother. Afterwards he challenged your poor father to a pulling race, and they rowed from the castle to Lostwithiel, getting drenched to the skin the pair of them. Ever felt the lack of parents, Philip? It’s been hard on you, I often think, without your mother.”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’ve never thought about it much. I never wanted anyone but Ambrose.”

“It was wrong, all the same,” he said. “I used to tell Ambrose so, but he never listened to me. There should have been someone in the house, a housekeeper, a distant relative, anyone. You have grown up ignorant of women, and if you ever marry it will be hard on your wife. I was saying so to Louise at breakfast.”

He broke off then, looking—if my godfather could look such a thing—a little uncomfortable, as if he said more than he meant.

“That’s all right,” I said, “my wife can take care of all the difficulties when the time comes. If it ever does come, which is unlikely. I think I am too much like Ambrose, and I know now what marriage must have done to him.”

My godfather was silent. Then I told him of my visit to the villa and of my meeting with Rainaldi, and he showed me in turn the letter that the Italian had written him. It was much as I expected, giving in cold stilted words his story of Ambrose’s illness and death, of his own personal regret, and of the shock and grief to the widow, who was, according to Rainaldi, inconsolable.

“So inconsolable,” I said to my godfather, “that the day after the funeral she goes off, like a thief, taking all Ambrose’s possessions with her, except his old hat, which she forgot. Because, no doubt, it was torn and had no value.”

My godfather coughed. His bushy eyebrows knitted.

“Surely,” he said, “you don’t begrudge her the books and clothes? Hang it all, Philip, it’s all she has.”

“How do you mean,” I asked, “it’s all she has?”

“Well, I’ve read the will to you,” he answered, “and there it is before you. It’s the same will that I drew up ten years ago. No codicil, you know, upon his marriage. There is no provision in it for a wife. All this past year I rather expected word from him, at some time or other, about a settlement at least. It’s usual. But I suppose his absence abroad made him neglectful of such a necessity, and he kept hoping to return. Then his illness put a stop to any business. I am a little surprised that this Italian, Signor Rainaldi, whom you seem so much to dislike, makes no mention of any sort of claim on the part of Mrs. Ashley. It shows great delicacy on his part.”

“Claim?” I said. “Good God, you talk of a claim when we know perfectly well she drove him to his death?”

“We don’t know anything of the sort,” returned my godfather, “and if that is the way you are going to talk about your cousin’s widow I don’t care to listen.” He got up and began to put his papers together.

“So you believe the story of the tumor?” I said.

“Naturally I believe it,” he replied. “Here is the letter from this Italian, Rainaldi, and the death certificate, signed by two doctors. I remember your uncle Philip’s death, which you do not. The symptoms were very similar. It is exactly what I feared, when the letter came from Ambrose and you left for Florence. The fact that you arrived too late to be of any assistance is one of those calamities that nobody can help. It is possible, now I think of it, that it was not a calamity after all, but a mercy. You would not have wished to see him suffer.”