My Cousin Rachel (14 page)

Feeling easier in mind I came back to the house, but I still had not forgotten the original blunder. Remarry, sell the rings… I came to the edge of the grass by the east front and whistled softly to Don, who was sniffing in the undergrowth. My footsteps crunched slightly on the gravel path. I heard a voice call down to me, “Do you often go walking in the woods at night?” It was my cousin Rachel. She was sitting, without a light, at the open window of the blue bedroom. My blunder came upon me with full force, and I thanked heaven she could not see my mind.

“At times,” I said, “when I have something on my mind.”

“Does that mean you have something on your mind tonight?”

“Why, yes,” I answered. “I came to a serious conclusion walking in the woods.”

“What was it?”

“I came to the conclusion that you were perfectly right to dislike the sound of me, before you saw me, and to consider me, as you did, conceited, pert and spoiled. I am all three, and worse than that besides.”

She learned forward, her arms upon the windowsill.

“Then walking in the woods is bad for you,” she said, “and your conclusions very stupid.”

“Cousin Rachel…”

“Yes?”

But I did not know how to make my apology. The words that had strung themselves so easily to make a blunder in the drawing room would not come now that I wished the blunder remedied. I stood there below her window, tongue-tied and ashamed. Suddenly I saw her turn and stretch behind her, and then she leaned forward once again and threw something at me from the window. It struck me on the cheek and fell to the ground. I stooped to pick it up. It was one of the flowers from her bowl, an autumn crocus.

“Don’t be so foolish, Philip; go to bed,” she said.

She closed her window and drew the curtains; and somehow my shame went from me, and the blunder too, and I felt light of heart.

It was not possible to ride over to Pelyn in the early part of the week, because of the program I had drawn up for visiting the tenants. Besides, I could hardly have made the excuse of seeing my godfather without taking my cousin Rachel to call upon Louise. On Thursday my opportunity arrived. The carrier came from Plymouth with all the shrubs and plants that she had brought with her from Italy, and as soon as Seecombe gave her the news of this—I was just finishing my breakfast at the time—my cousin Rachel was dressed and downstairs, her lace shawl wound about her head, prepared to go out into the garden. The door of the dining room was open to the hall and I saw her pass. I went out to say good morning.

“I understood,” I said, “that Ambrose told you no woman was fit to look upon before eleven. What are you doing downstairs at half-past eight?”

“The carrier has come,” she said, “and at half-past eight on the last morning of September I am not a woman; I am a gardener. Tamlyn and I have work to do.”

She looked gay and happy as a child might do at the prospect of a treat.

“Are you going to count the plants?” I asked her.

“Count them? No,” she answered, “I have to see how many have survived the journey and which are worth putting in the soil at once. Tamlyn will not know, but I shall. No hurry for the trees, we can do that at our leisure, but I would like to see the plants in right away.” I noticed that she wore upon her hands an old rough pair of gloves, most incongruous on her neat small person.

“You are not going to grub about the soil yourself?” I asked her.

“But of course I am. You’ll see. I shall work faster than Tamlyn and his men. Do not expect me home for any midday meal.”

“But this afternoon,” I protested. “We were expected at Lankelly and at Coombe. The farm kitchens will be scrubbed, and tea prepared.”

“You must send a note postponing the visit,” she said. “I commit myself to nothing when there is planting to be done. Good-bye.” And she waved her hand at me and passed through the front door onto the gravel drive.

“Cousin Rachel?” I called at her from the dining room window.

“What is it?” she said over her shoulder.

“Ambrose was wrong in what he said of women,” I shouted. “At half-past eight in the morning they look very well indeed.”

“Ambrose was not referring to half-past eight,” she called back to me; “he was referring to half-past six, and he did not mean downstairs.”

I turned back laughing into the dining room, and saw Seecombe standing at my elbow, his lips pursed. He moved, with disapproval, to the sideboard, and motioned to young John to remove the breakfast dishes. One thing at least about this day of planting, I should not be wanted. I altered my arrangements for the morning, and giving orders for Gypsy to be saddled I was away on the road to Pelyn by ten o’clock. I found my godfather at home and in his study, and without any preamble I broached the subject of my visit.

“So you understand,” I said to him, “something will have to be done, and right away. Why, if it should reach Mrs. Pascoe’s ears that Mrs. Ashley considers giving lessons in Italian it would be about the county in twenty-four hours.”

My godfather, as I had expected, looked most shocked and pained.

“Oh, disgraceful,” he agreed, “quite out of the question. It would never do at all. The matter is a delicate one, of course. I must have time to think this out, how to approach the business.”

I became impatient. I knew his cautious legal frame of mind. He would fiddle-faddle with the job for days.

“We have no time to waste,” I said. “You don’t know my cousin Rachel as well as I do. She is quite capable of saying to one of the tenants, in her easy way, “Do you know of anyone who would like to learn Italian?” And where should we be then? Besides, I have heard gossip already, through Seecombe. Everyone knows that she has been left nothing in the will. All that must be rectified, and at once.”

He looked thoughtful, and bit his pen.

“That Italian adviser said nothing of her circumstances,” he said. “It is unfortunate that I cannot discuss the matter with him. We have no means of knowing the extent of her private income, or what settlement was made upon her by her previous marriage.”

“I believe everything went to pay Sangalletti’s debts,” I said. “I remember Ambrose said as much in his letters to me. It was one of the reasons why they did not come home last year, her financial affairs were so involved. No doubt that is why she has to sell that villa. Why, she may scarcely have a penny to her name. We must do something for her, and today.”

My godfather sorted his papers spread upon the desk.

“I am very glad, Philip,” he said, glancing at me over his spectacles, “that you have changed your attitude. I was most uncomfortable before your cousin Rachel came. You were prepared to be very unpleasantly rude, and do absolutely nothing for her, which would have caused a scandal. At least you now see reason.”

“I was mistaken,” I said shortly; “we can forget all that.”

“Well then,” he answered, “I will write a letter to Mrs. Ashley, and to the bank. I will explain to her, and to the bank, what the estate is prepared to do. The best plan will be to pay a quarterly check, from the estate, into an account which I will open for her. When she moves to London, or elsewhere, the branch there will have instructions from us here. In six months’ time, when you become twenty-five, you will be able to handle the business yourself. Now, as to the sum of money every quarter. What do you suggest?”

I thought a moment, and named a figure.

“That is generous, Philip,” he said, “rather overgenerous. She will hardly need as much as that. Not at the moment, at least.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t let’s be niggardly,” I said. “If we do this thing, let us do it as Ambrose would have done it, or not at all.”

“H’m,” he said. He scribbled a figure or two on his blotter.

“Well, she should be pleased by this,” he said; “it should atone for any disappointment with the will.”

How hard and cold-blooded was the legal mind. Scratching away there with his pen at sums and figures, reckoning up shillings and pence, how much the estate could afford. Lord! how I hated money.

“Hurry, sir,” I said, “and write your letter. Then I can take it back with me. I can ride to the bank also, so that they have your letter too. My cousin Rachel can then draw from them at once.”

“My dear fellow, Mrs. Ashley will hardly be as pushed as that. You are going from one extreme to the other.”

He sighed, and drew a sheet of paper before him on the blotter.

“She was correct when she said you were like Ambrose,” he replied.

This time, when he wrote his letter, I stood over him, so that I could be certain what he said to her. He did not mention my name. He talked of the estate. It was the wish of the estate that provision should be made for her. The estate had decided upon the sum to be paid quarterly. I watched him like a hawk.

“If you do not wish to seem mixed up in the affair,” he said to me, “you had better not take the letter. Dobson has to go your way this afternoon. He can take the letter for me. It will look better.”

“Excellent,” I said, “and I will go to the bank. Thank you, uncle.”

“Don’t forget to see Louise before you go,” he said; “I think she is somewhere in the house.”

I could have done without Louise, in my impatience to be off, but I could not say so. She was in the parlor, as it happened, and I was obliged to pass the open door from my godfather’s study.

“I thought I heard your voice,” she said. “Have you come to spend the day? Let me give you some cake and fruit. You must be hungry.”

“I have to go at once,” I said, “thank you, Louise. I only rode over to see my godfather on a business matter.”

“Oh,” she said, “I see.” Her expression, that had been cheerful and natural at sight of me, turned back to the stiff look of Sunday. “And how is Mrs. Ashley?” she said.

“My cousin Rachel is well, and exceedingly busy,” I said. “All the shrubs she brought home from Italy have arrived this morning, and she is planting them out with Tamlyn in the forcing ground.”

“I should have thought you would have stayed at home to help her,” said Louise.

I don’t know what it was about the girl, but this new inflection in her voice was strangely irritating. I was reminded suddenly of her behavior in old days, when we would be running races in the garden, and just as I would be happily employed she would for no reason shake her curls and say to me, “I don’t think, after all, I want to play,” and would stand looking at me with this same stubborn face.

“You know perfectly well I am a fool at gardening,” I said, and then, from devilry, I added, “Haven’t you got over your ill-humor yet?”

She drew herself up, and flushed. “Ill-humor? I don’t know what you mean,” she said quickly.

“Oh yes, you do,” I answered. “You were in a vile humor the whole of Sunday. It was most noticeable. I wonder the Pascoe girls did not remark upon it.”

“The Pascoe girls,” she said, “like everyone else, were probably far too busy remarking something else.”

“And what was that?” I asked.

“How simple it must be for a woman of the world, like Mrs. Ashley, to twist a young man like yourself around her finger,” said Louise.

I turned on my heel and left the room. I could have struck her.

By the time I had ridden back along the high road from Pelyn, and across country down into town, and so home again, I must have covered near on twenty miles. I had paused for a draft of cider at the inn on the town quay, but had eaten nothing, and was well-nigh famished by four o’clock.

The clock struck the hour from the belfry on the house and I rode straight to the stables, where as ill luck had it Wellington was waiting instead of the groom.

He clucked his tongue at sight of Gypsy in a lather. “This won’t do at all, Mr. Philip, sir,” he said, as I dismounted, and I felt as guilty as I used to do when overheated, and here you’ve been and brought her back steaming. She’s in no condition to follow hounds, if that’s what you’ve been doing.”

“If I’d been following hounds I’d be away on Bodmin moor,” I said, “Don’t be an ass, Wellington. I’ve been over to see Mr. Kendall on business, and then went into town. I’m sorry about Gypsy, but it can’t be helped. I don’t think she’ll come to harm.”

“I hope not, sir,” said Wellington, and he began running his hands over poor Gypsy’s flanks as though I had put her to a steeplechase.

I walked back to the house, and went into the library. The fire was burning brightly, but there was no sign of my cousin Rachel. I rang the bell for Seecombe.

“Where is Mrs. Ashley?” I asked, as he entered the room.

“Madam came in a little after three, sir,” he said. “She and the gardeners have been working in the grounds ever since you left. Tamlyn is in the steward’s room with me now. He says he has never seen anything like it, the manner in which the mistress sets about it. He says she’s a wonder.”

“She must be exhausted,” I said.

“I was afraid of that, sir. I suggested she should go to bed, but she would not hear of it. ‘Tell the boys to bring me up cans of hot water. I’ll take a bath, Seecombe,’ she said to me, ‘and I’ll wash my hair as well.’ I was about to send for my niece, it seems hardly right for a lady to wash her own hair, but she would not hear of that either.”

“The boys had better do the same for me,” I told him; “I’ve had a hard day too. And I’m devilish hungry. I want my dinner early.”

“Very well, sir. At a quarter to five?”

“Please, Seecombe, if you can manage it.”

I went upstairs, whistling, to throw my clothes off and sit in the steaming tub before my bedroom fire. The dogs came along the corridor from my cousin Rachel’s room. They had become quite accustomed to the visitor, and followed her everywhere. Old Don thumped his tail at me from the top of the stairs.

“Hullo, old fellow,” I said; “you’re faithless, you know. You’ve left me for a lady.” He licked my hand with his long furry tongue, and made big eyes at me.

The boy came with the can and filled the bath, and it was pleasant to sit there in the tub, cross-legged, and scrub myself, whistling a tuneless song above the steam. As I rubbed myself dry with the towel I noticed that on the table beside my bed was a bowl of flowers. Sprigs from the woods, orchis and cyclamen among them. No one had ever put flowers in my room before. Seecombe would not have thought of it, or the boys either. It must have been my cousin Rachel. The sight of the flowers added to my mood of high good humor. She may have been messing with the plants and shrubs all day, but she had found the time to fill the bowl with flowers as well. I tied my cravat and put on my dinner coat, still humming my tuneless song. Then I went along the corridor, and knocked upon the door of the boudoir.

“Who is it?” she called from within.

“It is me, Philip,” I answered. “I have come to tell you that dinner will be early tonight. I’m starving, and so I should think are you, after the tales I’ve heard. What in the world have you and Tamlyn been up to, that you have to take a bath and wash your hair?”

That bubble of laughter, so infectious, was her answer.

“We’ve been burrowing underground, like moles,” she called.

“Have you earth up to your eyebrows?”

“Earth everywhere,” she answered. “I’ve had my bath, and now I am drying my hair. I am pinned up and presentable, and look exactly like aunt Phoebe. You may come in.”

I opened the door and went into the boudoir. She was sitting on the stool before the fire, and for a moment I scarcely recognized her, she looked so different out of mourning. She had a white dressing wrapper around her, tied at the throat and at the wrists with ribbon, and her hair was pinned on the top of her head, instead of parted smoothly in the center.

I had never seen anything less like aunt Phoebe, or aunt anyone. I stood blinking at her in the doorway.

“Come and sit down. Don’t look so startled,” she said to me. I shut the door behind me, and went and sat down on a chair.

“Forgive me,” I said, “but the point is that I have never seen a woman in undress before.”

“This isn’t undress,” she said, “it’s what I wear at breakfast. Ambrose used to call it my nun’s robe.”

She raised her arms, and began to jab pins into her hair.

“At twenty-four,” she said, “it is high time you saw a pleasant homely sight such as aunt Phoebe doing up her hair. Are you embarrassed?”

I folded my arms and crossed my legs, and continued to look at her. “Not in the slightest,” I said, “merely stunned.”

She laughed, and holding the pins in her mouth took them one by one, and winding her hair into a roll placed it the way it should go, in the low knot behind. The whole matter only took a few seconds, or so it seemed to me.

“Do you do that every day in so short a time?” I asked, amazed.

“Oh, Philip, what a lot you have to learn,” she said to me; “have you never seen your Louise pin up her hair?”

“No, and I wouldn’t want to,” I answered swiftly, with a sudden memory of Louise’s parting remark as I left Pelyn. My cousin Rachel laughed, and dropped a hairpin on my knee.

“A keepsake,” she said. “Put it under your pillow, and watch Seecombe’s face at breakfast in the morning.”

She passed from the boudoir into the bedroom opposite, leaving the door wide open.

“You can sit there and shout through to me while I dress,” she called.

I looked furtively at the little bureau to see if there was any sign of my godfather’s letter, but could see nothing. I wondered what had happened. Perhaps she had it with her in the bedroom. It might be that she would say nothing to me, that she would treat the matter as a private one between my godfather and herself. I hoped so.

“Where have you been all day?” she called to me.

“I had to go into town,” I said, “there were people there I was obliged to see.” I need not say a word about the bank.

“I was so happy with Tamlyn and the gardeners,” she called. “There were only very few of the plants to be thrown away. There is so much, Philip, you know, still to be done in that plantation; the undergrowth bordering the meadow should be cleared, and a walk laid down, and the whole ground there given up to camellias, so that in less than twenty years you could have a spring garden there that the whole of Cornwall would come to see.”

“I know,” I said; “that was what Ambrose intended.”

“It needs careful planning,” she said, “and not just left to chance and Tamlyn. He is a dear, but his knowledge is limited. Why do you not take more interest in it yourself?”

“I don’t know enough,” I said, “it was never my department anyway. Ambrose knew that.”

“There must be people who could help you,” she said. “You could have a designer down from London to lay it out.”

I did not answer. I did not want a designer down from London. I was pretty sure she knew more about it than any designer.

Just then Seecombe appeared and hovered in the passage.

“What is it, Seecombe, is dinner ready?” I asked.

“No, sir,” he replied. “Mr. Kendall’s man, Dobson, has ridden over with a note for madam.”

My heart sank. The wretched fellow must have stayed somewhere drinking on the road to be so late. Now I should be caught for the business of her reading it. How wretchedly ill-timed. I heard Seecombe knock on her open door, and give in the letter.

“I think I will go below and wait for you in the library,” I said.

“No, don’t go,” she called, “I’m ready dressed. We can go down together. Here is a letter from Mr. Kendall. Perhaps he invites us both to Pelyn.”

Seecombe disappeared along the corridor. I stood up and wished that I could follow him. Suddenly I felt uneasy, nervous. No sound came from the blue bedroom. She must be reading the letter. Ages seemed to pass. At last she came out of the bedroom, and she stood in the doorway, the letter open in her hand. She was dressed for dinner. Perhaps it was the contrast of her skin against the mourning that made her look so white.

“What have you been doing?” she said.

Her voice sounded quite different. Oddly strained.

“Doing?” I said. “Nothing. Why?”

“Don’t lie, Philip. You don’t know how.”

I stood most wretchedly before the fire, staring anywhere but in those searching accusing eyes.

“You have been to Pelyn,” she said; “you rode over there today to see your guardian.”

She was right. I was the most hopeless useless liar. At any rate, to her.

“I may have done,” I said. “What if I did?”

“You made him write this letter,” she said.

“No,” I said, swallowing, “I did nothing of the sort. He wrote it of his own accord. There was business to discuss, and it so happened that in talking various legal matters came to the fore, and…”

“And you told him your cousin Rachel proposed giving lessons in Italian, isn’t that the truth?” she said.

I felt hot and cold and miserably ill at ease.

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Surely you realized I was only joking when I told you that?” she said. If she was joking, I thought, why then must she be so angry with me now?

“You don’t realize what you have done,” she said; “you make me feel utterly ashamed.” She went and stood by the window, with her back to me. “If you wish to humiliate me,” she said, “by heaven you have gone the right way about it.”

“I don’t see,” I said, “why you have to be so proud.”

“Proud?” She turned round, her eyes very dark and large, and looked at me in fury. “How dare you call me proud?” she said. I stared back at her. I think I was amazed that anyone who a moment or two before had been laughing with me could suddenly become so angry. Then, to my own very great surprise, my nervousness went from me. I walked towards her, and stood beside her.

“I shall call you proud,” I said, “I shall go further, and I shall call you damnably proud. It is not you who is likely to be humiliated but me. It was not a joke, when you said that about giving lessons in Italian. Your answer came far too swiftly for it to be a joke. You said it, because you meant it.”

“And if I did mean it?” she said. “Is there anything shameful in giving lessons in Italian?”

“In the ordinary sense, no,” I said, “but in your case, yes. For Mrs. Ambrose Ashley to give lessons in Italian is shameful; it reflects upon the husband who neglected to make provision for her in his will. And I, Philip Ashley, his heir, won’t permit it. You will take that allowance every quarter, cousin Rachel, and when you draw the money from the bank, please remember that it does not come from the estate, nor from the heir to the estate, but from your husband, Ambrose Ashley.”

A wave of anger, as great as hers, had come over me as I spoke. I was damned if any creature, small and frail, should stand there and accuse me of humiliating her; and I was damned furthermore if she should refuse the money that belonged to her by right.

“Well? Do you understand what I have been saying to you?” I said.

For one moment I thought she was going to hit me. She stood quite still, staring up at me. Then her eyes filled with tears, and pushing past me she went into the bedroom and slammed the door. I walked downstairs. I went to the dining room and rang the bell and told Seecombe that I thought Mrs. Ashley would not be down for dinner. I poured myself out a glass of claret, and sat down alone at the head of the table. Christ! I thought, so that’s how women behave. I had never felt so angry, nor so spent. Long days in the open, working with the men at harvest time; arguments with tenants behindhand with their rent or involved in some quarrel with a neighbor which I had to settle; nothing of this could compare to five minutes with a woman whose mood of gaiety had turned in a single instant to hostility. And was the final weapon always tears? Because they knew full well the effect upon the watcher? I had another glass of claret. As to Seecombe, who hovered at my elbow, I could have wished him a world away.

“Is Madam indisposed, sir, do you think?” he asked me.

I might have told him that Madam was not so much indisposed as in a fury, and would probably ring her bell in a moment and demand Wellington and the carriage to take her back to Plymouth.

“No,” I said, “her hair is not yet dry. You had better tell John to take a tray up to the boudoir.”

This, I supposed, was what men faced when they were married. Slammed doors, and silence. Dinner alone. So that appetite, whipped up by the long day’s outing, and the relaxation of the bathtub, and the pleasure of a tranquil evening by the fire passed in intermittent conversation, watching with lazy ease hands that were white and small against embroidery, had to simmer down. With what cheerfulness had I dressed for dinner and walked along the corridor, knocked on the boudoir door and found her sitting on the stool in that white wrapper, with her hair pinned on top of her head. How easy the mood we shared, making a kind of intimacy that gave a glow to the whole prospect of the evening. And now, alone at the table, with a beefsteak that might have been shoe-leather for all I cared. And what was she doing? Lying on her bed? Were the candles snuffed, the curtains drawn, and the room in darkness? Or was the mood over now, and did she sit sedately in the boudoir, dry-eyed, eating her dinner off the tray, to make a show for Seecombe? I did not know. I did not care. Ambrose had been so right when he used to say that women were a race apart. One thing was certain now. I should never marry…

Dinner over, I went and sat in the library. I lit my pipe, and put my feet up on the fire-irons, and composed myself to that after dinner slumber that can be sweet and consoling upon occasion, but tonight lacked every charm. I had become used to the sight of her in the chair opposite my own, her shoulders turned so that the light fell upon her work, and Don at her feet; now the chair looked strangely empty. Well, to hell with it, that a woman could so disturb the close of day. I got up and found a book upon the shelves, and turned the pages. Then I must have dozed, because when I looked up again the hands of the clock in the corner were a little short of nine. To bed then, and to sleep. No sense in sitting on, with the fire gone out. I took the dogs round to the kennels—the weather had changed, it was blowing and spitting rain—and then bolted up and went to my room. I was just about to throw my coat off on the chair when I saw a note, placed beside the bowl of flowers on the table next to my bed. I went over to the table, and picked up the note and read it. It was from my cousin Rachel.