Part 12 (1/2)

”Talk if you stayed?” I said. ”What do you mean? Don't you realize that by rights you belong here, that if Ambrose had not been such a lunatic this would have been your home?”

”Oh, G.o.d,” she flared out at me in sudden anger, ”why else do you think I came?”

I had put my foot in it again. Blundering and tactless, I had said all the wrong things. I felt suddenly hopeless and inadequate. I went up to the bed, and pulled aside the curtains, and looked down at her. She was lying propped against her pillows, her hands clasped in front of her. She was wearing something white, frilled at the neck like a choirboy's surplice, and her hair was loose, tied behind with a piece of ribbon, as I remembered Louise's as a child. It shook me, and surprised me, that she should look so young.

”Listen,” I said, ”I don't know why you came, or what were your motives in doing all you have done. I don't know anything about you, or about any woman. All I know is that I like it now you are here. And I don't want you to go. Is that complicated?”

She had put her hands up to her face, almost in defense, as if she thought I meant to harm her.

”Yes,” she said, ”very.”

”Then it is you who make it so,” I said, ”not I.”

I folded my arms and looked at her, a.s.suming an ease of manner I was far from feeling. Yet in a sense by standing there, while she lay in bed, I had her at a disadvantage. I did not see how a woman with her hair loose, becoming a girl again without a woman's status, could be angry.

I saw her eyes waver. She was searching in her mind for some excuse, some new reason why she should be gone, and in a sudden flash I hit upon a master stroke of strategy.

”You told me this evening,” I said, ”that I should have a designer down from London, to lay out the gardens. I know that was what Ambrose always intended to do. The fact remains that I don't know of one, and should go mad with irritation anyway, if I had to have such a fellow about me. If you have any feeling for the place, knowing what it meant to Ambrose, you would remain here for a few months and do it for me.”

The shaft struck home. She stared in front of her, playing with her ring. I had remarked before that when preoccupied this was a trick of hers. I pushed on with my advantage.

”I never could follow the plans that Ambrose used to draw,” I said to her, ”nor Tamlyn either, for that matter. He works wonders, I know, but only under direction. Time and again he has come to me this past year and asked for advice which I have been quite at a loss to give him. If you remained here-just for the autumn, when so much planting needs to be done-it would help us all.”

She twisted the ring back and forth upon her finger. ”I think I should ask your G.o.dfather what he feels,” she said to me.

”It does not concern my G.o.dfather,” I said. ”What do you take me for, a schoolboy under age? There is only one consideration, whether you yourself desire to stay. If you really want to go, I cannot keep you.”

She said, surprisingly, in a still small voice, ”Why do you ask that? You know I want to stay.”

Sweet heaven, how could I know? She had intimated the exact opposite.

”Then you will remain, for a little while,” I said, ”to do the garden? That is settled, and you won't go back on your word?”

”I will remain,” she said, ”for a little while.”

I had difficulty in not smiling. Her eyes were serious, and I had the feeling that if I smiled she would change her mind. Inwardly, I triumphed.

”Very well, then,” I said, ”I will bid you good night and leave you. What about your letter to my G.o.dfather? Do you want me to put it in the postbag?”

”Seecombe has taken it,” she said.

”Then you will sleep now, and not be angry with me anymore?”

”I wasn't angry, Philip.”

”But you were. I thought you were going to hit me.”

She looked up at me. ”Sometimes you are so stupid,” she said, ”that I think one day I shall. Come here.”

I drew closer, my knee touched the coverlet.

”Bend down,” she said.

She took my face between her hands and kissed me.

”Now go to bed,” she said, ”like a good boy, and sleep well.” She pushed me away, and drew her curtains.

I stumbled out of the blue bedroom with my candlestick, light-headed and somehow dazed, as though I had drunk brandy, and it seemed to me that the advantage I had thought to have over her, as I stood above her and she lay on her pillows, was now completely lost. The last word, and the last gesture too, had been with her. The little girl look and the choirboy surplice had misled me. She was a woman all the time. For all that, I was happy. The misunderstanding was now over, and she had promised to remain. There had been no more tears.

Instead of going immediately to bed I went down to the library once again, to write a line to my G.o.dfather and to rea.s.sure him that all had gone off well. He need never know of the troublous evening spent by the pair of us. I scribbled my letter, and went into the hall to place it in the postbag for the morning.

Seecombe had left the bag for me, as was his custom, upon the table in the hall, with the key beside it. When I opened up the bag two other letters fell into my hand, both written by my cousin Rachel. One was addressed to my G.o.dfather Nick Kendall, as she had told me. The second letter was addressed to Signor Rainaldi in Florence. I stared at it a moment, then put it back with the other in the postbag. It was foolish of me, perhaps, senseless and absurd; the man was her friend, why should she not write a letter to him? Yet, as I went upstairs to bed, I felt exactly as if she had hit me after all.

14.

The following day when she came downstairs, and I joined her in the garden, my cousin Rachel was as happy and unconcerned as though there had never been a rift between us. The only difference in her manner to me was that she seemed more gentle, and more tender; she teased me less, laughed with me and not at me, and kept asking my opinion as to the planting of the shrubs, not for the sake of my knowledge but for my future pleasure when I should look upon them.

”Do what you want to do,” I told her; ”bid the men cut the hedgerows, fell the trees, heap up the banks yonder with shrubs, whatever you fancy will do well, I have no eye for line.”

”But I want the result to please you, Philip,” she said. ”All this belongs to you, and one day will belong to your children. What if I make changes in the grounds, and when it is done you are displeased?”

”I shan't be displeased,” I said; ”and stop talking about my children. I am quite resolved to remain a bachelor.”

”Which is essentially selfish,” she said, ”and very stupid of you.”

”I think not,” I answered. ”I think by remaining a bachelor I shall be spared much distress and anxiety of mind.”

”Have you ever thought what you would lose?”

”I have a shrewd guess,” I told her, ”that the blessings of married bliss are not all they are claimed to be. If it's warmth and comfort that a man wants, and something beautiful to look upon, he can get all that from his own house, if he loves it well.”

To my astonishment she laughed so much at my remark that Tamlyn and the gardeners, working at the far end of the plantation, raised their heads to look at us.

”One day,” she said to me, ”when you fall in love, I shall remind you of those words. Warmth and comfort from stone walls, at twenty-four. Oh, Philip!” And the bubble of laughter came from her again.

I could not see that it was so very funny.

”I know quite well what you mean,” I said; ”it just happens that I have never been moved that way.”

”That's very evident,” she said. ”You must be a heartbreak to the neighborhood. That poor Louise...”

But I was not going to be led into a discussion on Louise, nor again a dissertation upon love and matrimony. I was much more interested to watch her work upon the garden.

October set in fine and mild, and for the first three weeks of it we had barely no rain at all, so that Tamlyn and the men, under the supervision of my cousin Rachel, were able to go far ahead with the work in the plantation. We managed also to visit in succession all the tenants upon the estate, which gave great satisfaction, as I knew it would. I had known every one of them since boyhood, and had been used to calling in upon them every so often, for it was part of my work to do so. But it was a new experience for my cousin Rachel, brought up in Italy to a very different life. Her manner with the people could not have been more right or proper, and it was a fascination to watch her with them. The blend of graciousness and cameraderie made them immediately look up to her, yet put them at their ease. She asked all the right questions, replied with the right answers. Also-and this endeared her to many of them-there was the understanding she seemed to have of all their ailments, and the remedies she produced. ”With my love for gardening,” she told them, ”goes a knowledge of herbs. In Italy we always made a study of these things.” And she would produce balm, from some plant, to rub upon wheezing chests, and oil from another, as a measure against burns; and she would instruct them too how to make tisana, as a remedy for indigestion and for sleeplessness-the best nightcap in the world, she said to them-and tell them how the juice of certain fruits could cure almost any ill from a sore throat to a sty on the eyelid.

”You know what will happen,” I told her; ”you will take the place of midwife in the district. They will send for you in the night to deliver babies, and once that starts there will be no peace for you at all.”