Part 13 (1/2)

”Very well,” I said, ”if you are agreeable. Let us have the fire lit, and when the room is warm we'll go upstairs.”

I think that both of us tried to conceal our feelings from the other. We forced a sort of brightness into our behavior and into our conversation. For my sake, she was determined not to show distress. And I, wis.h.i.+ng to spare the same for her, a.s.sumed a heartiness utterly foreign to my nature. The rain was las.h.i.+ng at the windows of my old room, and a patch of damp had appeared upon the ceiling. The fire, that had not been lit since last winter, burned with a false crackle. The boxes stood in a line upon the floor, waiting to be opened; and on top of one was the well remembered travel rug of dark blue, with the yellow monogram ”A.A.” in large letters in one corner. I had the sudden recollection of putting it over his knees that last day, when he drove away.

My cousin Rachel broke the silence. ”Come,” she said, ”shall we open the clothes trunk first?”

Her voice was purposely hard and practical. I handed her the keys, which she had left in Seecombe's charge on her arrival.

”Just as you will,” I said.

She put the key in the lock, and turned it, and threw open the lid. His old dressing gown was on the top. I knew it well. It was of heavy silk in a dark red color. His slippers were there too, long and flat. I stood there staring at them, and it was like walking back into the past. I remembered him pa.s.sing into my room while he was shaving of a morning, the lather on his face. ”Look, boy, I've been thinking...” Into this room, where we were standing now. Wearing that dressing gown, wearing those slippers. My cousin Rachel took them from the trunk.

”What shall we do with them?” she said, and the voice that had been hard was lower now, subdued.

”I don't know,” I said; ”it's for you to say.”

”Would you wear them, if I gave them to you?” she asked.

It was strange. I had taken his hat. I had taken his stick. His old shooting coat with the leather at the elbows that he had left behind when he went upon his last journey, that I wore constantly. Yet these things, the dressing gown, the slippers-it was almost as though we had opened up his coffin and looked upon him dead.

”No,” I said, ”no, I don't think so.”

She said nothing. She put them on the bed. She came next to a suit of clothing. A lightweight suit-he must have worn it in hot weather. It was not familiar to me, but she must have known it well. It was creased from lying in the trunk. She took it out and placed it with the dressing gown upon the bed. ”It should be pressed,” she said. Suddenly she began lifting the things from the trunk very swiftly and putting them in a pile, one on top of the other, barely touching them.

”I think,” she said, ”that if you don't want them, Philip, the people on the estate here, who loved him, might like to have them. You will know best what to give, and to whom.”

I think she did not see what she was doing. She took them from the trunk in a sort of frenzy, while I stood by and watched her.

”The trunk?” she said. ”A trunk is always useful. You could do with the trunk?” She looked up at me, and her voice faltered.

Suddenly she was in my arms, her head against my chest.

”Oh, Philip,” she said, ”forgive me. I should have let you and Seecombe do it. I was a fool to come upstairs.”

It was queer. Like holding a child. Like holding a wounded animal. I touched her hair, and put my cheek against her head.

”It's all right,” I said, ”don't cry. Go back to the library. I can finish it alone.”

”No,” she said, ”it's so weak of me, so stupid. It's just as bad for you as it is for me. You loved him so...”

I kept moving my lips against her hair. It was a strange feeling. And she was very small, standing there against me.

”I don't mind,” I said; ”a man can do these things. It's not easy for a woman. Let me do it, Rachel, go downstairs.”

She stood a little way apart and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.

”No,” she said, ”I'm better now. It won't happen again. And I have unpacked the clothes. But if you will give them to the people on the estate, I shall be grateful. And anything you want for yourself, wear it. Never be afraid to wear it. I shan't mind, I shall be glad.”

The boxes of books were nearer to the fire. I brought a chair and placed it for her, close to the warmth, and knelt beside the other trunks and opened them, one by one.

I hoped she had not noticed-I had barely noticed it myself-that for the first time I had not called her cousin, but Rachel. I don't know how it happened. I think it must have been because standing there, with my arms about her, she had been so much smaller than myself.

The books did not have the personal touch about them that the clothes had done. There were old favorites that I knew, with which he always traveled, and these she gave to me to keep beside my bed. There were his cuff links, too, his studs, his watch, his pen-all these she pressed upon me, and I was glad of them. Some of the books I did not know at all. She explained them to me, picking up first one volume, then another, and now no longer was the task so sad; this book, she said, he had picked up in Rome, it was a bargain, he was pleased, and that one there, with the old binding, and the other beside it, came from Florence. She described the place where he had bought them, and the old man who had sold them to him, and it seemed, as she chatted to me, that the strain had lifted, it had gone with the tears she had wiped away. We laid the books, one after the other, upon the floor, and I fetched a duster for her and she dusted them. Sometimes she read a pa.s.sage out to me and told me how this paragraph had pleased Ambrose; or she showed me a picture, an engraving, and I saw her smiling at some well-remembered page.

She came upon a volume of drawings of the layout of gardens. ”This will be very useful to us,” she said, and rising from her chair took it to the window to see it better in the light.

I opened another book at random. A piece of paper fell from between the leaves. It had Ambrose's handwriting upon it. It seemed like the middle sc.r.a.p of a letter, torn from its context and forgotten. ”It's a disease, of course, I have often heard of it, like kleptomania or some other malady, and has no doubt been handed down to her from her spendthrift father, Alexander Coryn. How long she has been a victim of it I cannot say, perhaps always; certainly it explains much of what has disturbed me hitherto in all this business. This much I do know, dear boy, that I cannot any longer, nay I dare not, let her have command over my purse, or I shall be ruined, and the estate will suffer. It is imperative that you warn Kendall, if by any chance...” The sentence broke off. There was no end to it. The sc.r.a.p of paper was not dated. The handwriting was normal. Just then she came back from the window, and I crumpled the piece of paper in my hand.

”What have you there?” she said.

”Nothing,” I said.

I threw the piece of paper on the fire. She saw it burn. She saw the handwriting on the paper curl and flicker in the flame.

”That was Ambrose's writing,” she said. ”What was it? Was it a letter?”

”It was just some note he had made,” I said, ”on an old sc.r.a.p of paper.” I felt my face burn in the light of the fire.

Then I reached for another volume from the trunk. She did the same. We continued sorting the books, side by side, together; but the silence had come between us.

15.

We had finished sorting the books by midday. Seecombe sent John up to us, and young Arthur, to know if anything needed carrying downstairs before they went off to their dinner.

”Leave the clothes on the bed, John,” I said, ”and put a covering on top of them. I shall want Seecombe to help me make packages of them by and by. Take this pile of books down to the library.”

”And these to the boudoir, Arthur, please,” said my cousin Rachel.

It was her first utterance since I had burned the sc.r.a.p of paper.

”It will be all right, will it, Philip,” she asked, ”if I keep the books on gardens in my room?”

”Why, yes, of course,” I answered. ”All the books are yours, you know that.”

”No,” she said, ”no, Ambrose would have wanted the others in the library.” She stood up, and smoothed her dress, and gave John the duster.

”Some cold luncheon is laid below, madam,” he said.

”Thank you, John. I am not hungry.”

I hesitated, standing by the open door, after the boys had disappeared carrying the books.

”Will you not come down to the library,” I asked, ”and help me put away the books?”

”I think not,” she said, then paused a moment, as if to add something, but did not do so. Then she walked along the corridor to her room.

I ate my lunch alone, staring out of the dining room windows. It was still raining fast. No use attempting to go out of doors, there was nothing to be done. I had better finish the task of sorting the clothes, with Seecombe to help me. It would please him to be asked advice. What should go to the Barton, what to Trenant, what to the East Lodge; everything to be carefully chosen so that no one should take offense at what he had. It would employ the pair of us all afternoon. I tried to keep my mind upon the business; yet, nagging like a pain in the tooth that flares up suddenly and dies again, my thoughts would be wrenched back to the sc.r.a.p of paper. What had it been doing between the pages of that book, and how long had it lain there, torn, forgotten? Six months, a year, or longer? Had Ambrose started upon a letter to me which never reached its destination; or were there other bits of paper, part of the same letter, which for some unknown reason were still lying between the pages of a book? The letter must have been written before his illness. The writing was firm and clear. Therefore last winter, last autumn possibly... I was swept by a kind of shame. What business was it of mine to probe back into that past, to wonder about a letter that had never reached me? It was not my affair. I wished to heaven I had not come upon it.