Part 17 (1/2)

”How do you mean,” she asked, ”what would I have done?”

”Would you have lived here?” I said. ”Would you have turned me out?”

”Turned you out?” she exclaimed. ”From your own home? Why, Philip, how could you ask me such a thing?”

”You would have stayed then?” I replied. ”You would have lived here in the house, and, in a sense, employed me in your business? We should be living here together, just as we are doing now?”

”Yes,” she said, ”yes, I suppose so. I have never thought. It would be so different, though, you cannot make comparison.”

”How different?”

She gestured with her hands. ”How can I explain to you?” she said. ”Don't you understand that my position, as it is, is untenable, simply because I am a woman? Your G.o.dfather would be the first to agree with me. He has said nothing, but I am sure he feels that the time has come for me to go. It would have been quite otherwise, had the house been mine and you, in the sense you put it, in my employ. I should be Mrs. Ashley, you my heir. But now, as it has turned out, you are Philip Ashley, and I, a woman relative, living on your bounty. There is a world of difference, dear, between the two.”

”Exactly,” I replied.

”Well then,” she said, ”let's talk of it no further.”

”We will talk of it further,” I said, ”because the matter is of supreme importance. What happened to the will?”

”What will?”

”The will that Ambrose made, and never signed, in which he left the property to you?”

I saw the anxiety deepen in her eyes.

”How do you know of such a will? I never told you of it,” she said.

A lie would serve as an excuse, and I gave it her.

”I have always known there must be one,” I answered, ”but possibly it was left unsigned, and so invalid, from a legal point of view. I go even further, and suggest you have it here among your things.”

This was a shot at venture, but it told. Her eyes flashed instinctively towards the little bureau, against the wall, then back to me.

”What are you trying to make me say?” she asked.

”Only confirm that it exists,” I said.

She hesitated, then shrugged her shoulders.

”Very well, yes,” she replied, ”but it alters nothing. The will was never signed.”

”Can I see it?” I asked.

”For what purpose, Philip?”

”For a purpose of my own. I think you can trust me.”

She looked at me a long while. She was clearly bewildered, and I think anxious too. She rose from her chair and went towards the bureau, then, hesitant, glanced back at me again.

”Why suddenly all this?” she said. ”Why can't we leave the past alone? You promised we should do so, that evening in the library.”

”You promised you would stay,” I answered her.

To give it me or not, the choice was hers. I thought of the choice that I had made that afternoon beside the granite slab. I had chosen, for better or for worse, to read the letter. Now she must come to a decision too. She went to the bureau, and, taking a small key, opened up a drawer. Out of the drawer she took a piece of paper, and gave it to me.

”Read it, if you wish,” she said.

I took the paper to the candlelight. The writing was in Ambrose's hand, clear and firm, a stronger hand than in the letter I had read that afternoon. The date was November, of a year ago, when he and Rachel had been married seven months. The paper was headed ”Last Will and Testament of Ambrose Ashley.” The contents were just as he had told me. The property was left to Rachel, for her lifetime, pa.s.sing at her death to the eldest of any children that might be born to both of them, and failing the birth of children, then to me, with the proviso that I should have the running of the same while she should live.

”May I make a copy of this?” I said to her.

”Do what you want,” she said. She looked pale and listless, as if she did not care. ”It's over and done with, Philip, there is no sense in talking of it now.”

”I will keep it for the moment, and make a copy of it too,” I said, and sitting at the bureau I took pen and paper and did so, while she lay in her chair, her cheek resting in her hand.

I knew that I must have confirmation of everything that Ambrose had told me in his letter, and though I hated every word I had to say I forced myself to question her. I scratched away with the pen: copying the will was more a pretext than anything else, and served its purpose so that I did not have to look at her.

”I see that Ambrose dated this November,” I said. ”Have you any idea why he should choose that month to make a new will? You were married the preceding April.”

Her answer was slow in coming; and I thought suddenly how a surgeon must feel, when he probes about the scar of a wound but lately healed.

”I don't know why he wrote it in November,” she said. ”We were neither of us thinking of death at that time. Rather the reverse. It was the happiest time of all the eighteen months we were together.”

”Yes,” I said, seizing a fresh piece of paper, ”he wrote and told me of it.” I heard her move in her chair, and turn to look at me. But I went on writing at the bureau.

”Ambrose told you?” she said. ”But I asked him not to, I feared you might misunderstand and feel, in some way, slighted; it would be very natural if you had. He promised to keep it secret. And then, as it turned out, it made no odds.”

The voice was flat, without expression. Perhaps, after all, when a surgeon probed a scar the sufferer would say dully that he felt no pain. In the letter, buried beneath the granite, Ambrose had said, ”With a woman, these things go deeper.” As I scratched upon the piece of paper I saw that I had written the words, ”It made no odds... it made no odds.” I tore up the piece of paper, and began afresh.

”And finally,” I said, ”in the long run, the will was never signed.”

”No,” she said, ”Ambrose left it as you see it now.”

I had done with writing. I folded the will and the copy I had made, and put both of them in my breast pocket, where earlier in the afternoon I had carried his letter. Then I went and knelt beside her chair, and putting my arms about her held her fast; not as I would a woman, but as a child.

”Rachel,” I said, ”why did not Ambrose sign the will?”

She lay quite still, and did not move away. Only the hand that rested on my shoulder tightened suddenly.

”Tell me,” I said, ”tell me, Rachel.”

The voice that answered me was faint and far away, not more than a whisper in my ear.

”I never knew,” she said; ”we did not speak of it again. But I think when he realized that I could not, after all, have children, he lost belief in me. Some sort of faith went, though he never knew it.”

As I knelt there, with my arms about her, I thought of the letter in the pocketbook beneath the granite slab, with this same accusation said in other words, and I wondered how it could be that two people who had loved could yet have such a misconception of each other and, with a common grief, grow far apart. There must be something in the nature of love between a man and a woman that drove them to torment and suspicion. ”You were unhappy then?” I asked.

”Unhappy?” she said. ”What do you suppose? I was almost out of my mind.”

And I could see them sitting on the terrace of the villa, with this strange shadow between them, built out of nothing but their own doubts and fears, and it seemed to me that the seeds of this same shadow went back beyond all reckoning and could never more be traced. Perhaps, unconscious of his grudge, he brooded about her past with Sangalletti and before, blaming her for the life he had not shared, and she, with resentment likewise, feared loss of love must go with loss of child-bearing. How little she had understood of Ambrose after all. And what small knowledge he had had of her. I might tell her of the contents of the letter under the slab, but it would do no good. The misunderstanding went too deep.