My Cousin Rachel (22 page)

“How long is he going to stay?” I asked.

“That depends on you. If you are civil, and will invite him, he will stay for perhaps three days. More is not possible. He has to return to London.”

“Since you ask me to invite him, I must do so.”

“Thank you, Philip.” Suddenly she looked up at me, her eyes softened, and I saw the trace of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “What is the matter,” she said, “why are you so foolish? What were you thinking of, as you paced about the grounds?”

I might have answered her a hundred things. How I distrusted Rainaldi, how I hated his presence in my house, how I wanted it to be as it was before, and she alone with me. Instead, for no reason save that I loathed all that had been discussed that evening, I said to her, “Who was Benito Castelucci that he had to give you flowers?”

The bubble of laughter rose within her, and, reaching up, she put her arms about me. “He was old, and very fat, and his breath smelled of cigars—and I love you much too much,” she said, and went.

I have no doubt she was asleep within twenty minutes of leaving me, while I heard the clock in the belfry chime every hour until four; and falling into that uneasy morning slumber that becomes heaviest at seven was woken ruthlessly by John at my usual hour.

Rainaldi stayed, not for three days but for seven, and in those seven days I found no reason to alter my opinion of him. I think what I disliked most was his air of tolerance towards me. A kind of half-smile played upon his lips whenever he looked on me, as though I were a child to be humored, and whatever business I had been upon during the day was inquired about and treated like a schoolboy escapade. I made a point of not returning for any midday luncheon, and when I came home and entered the drawing room in the afternoon, a little after four, I would find the pair of them together, talking their inevitable Italian, which would be broken off at my entrance.

“Ah, the worker returns,” Rainaldi would say, seated, God damn him, in the chair I always used when we had been alone. “And while he has been tramping about his acres and seeing, no doubt, that his plows make the necessary furrows in the soil, you and I, Rachel, have been many hundred miles away in thought and fancy. We have not stirred for the day, except to wander on the new terrace walk. Middle age has many compensations.”

“You are bad for me, Rainaldi,” she would answer; “since you have been here I have neglected all my duties. Paid no visits, supervised no planting. Philip will scold me for idleness.”

“You have not been idle intellectually,” came his reply. “We have covered as much ground in that sense as your young cousin has in actual fact upon his feet. Or was it not upon feet today, but in the saddle? Young Englishmen are forever driving their bodies to fatigue.”

I could sense his mockery of me, a cart-horse with a turnip head, and the way Rachel came to my rescue, once more the teacher with her pupil, made me more angry still.

“Surely it is Wednesday,” she said, “and on Wednesday Philip does not ride or walk, he does his accounts, in the office. He has a good head for figures, and knows exactly what he spends, don’t you, Philip?”

“Not always,” I answered, “and in point of fact today I attended Petty Sessions for a neighbor, and sat in judgment upon a fellow accused of theft. He was let off with a fine, and not imprisoned.”

Rainaldi watched me, with his same air of tolerance.

“A young Solomon as well as a young farmer,” he said. “I am continually hearing of new talents. Rachel, does not your cousin remind you very much of Del Sarto’s portrait of the Baptist? He has much the same arrogance and innocence so charmingly blended.”

“Perhaps,” said Rachel, “I had not thought of it before. He resembles one person only, to my mind.”

“Ah, that of course,” answered Rainaldi, “but there is also quite definitely a Del Sarto touch about him. Some time you will have to wean him from his acres here, and show him our country. Travel broadens the mind, and I would like to see him wander in a gallery or a church.”

“Ambrose was bored by both,” said Rachel, “I doubt if Philip would be anymore impressed. Well, did you see your godfather at Petty Sessions? I would like to take Rainaldi to call upon him at Pelyn.”

“Yes, he was there,” I said, “and sent you his respects.”

“Mr. Kendall has a very charming daughter,” said Rachel to Rainaldi, “a little younger than Philip.”

“A daughter? H’m, indeed,” observed Rainaldi, “then your young cousin is not entirely cut off from youthful feminine society?”

“Far from it,” laughed Rachel. “Every mother has her eye upon him within a distance of forty miles.”

I remember glaring at her, and she laughed the more; and passing by me on her way to dress for dinner, she patted my shoulder in the infuriating habit that was hers—aunt Phoebe’s gesture, I had called it before now, which delighted her as though I told her so for compliment.

It was upon this occasion that Rainaldi said to me, when she had gone upstairs, “It was generous of you and your guardian to give your cousin Rachel the allowance. She wrote and told me of it. She was deeply touched.”

“It was the very least the estate owed to her,” I said, and hoped my tone of voice was discouraging to further conversation. I would not tell him what was going to happen in three weeks’ time.

“You perhaps know,” said Rainaldi, “that apart from the allowance she has no personal means whatsoever, except what I can sell for her from time to time. This change of air has done wonders for her, but I think before long she will feel the need of society, such as she has been used to in Florence. That is the real reason I do not get rid of the villa. The ties are very strong.”

I did not answer. If the ties were strong, it was only because he made them so. She had spoken of no ties until he came. I wondered what was the extent of his own personal wealth, and if he gave her money from his own possession, not only what he sold from Sangalletti’s estate. How right Ambrose had been to distrust him. But what weakness in Rachel made her keep him as her counselor and friend?

“Of course,” continued Rainaldi, “it would possibly be wiser to sell the villa eventually, and for Rachel to have a small apartment in Florence, or else to build something small, up in Fiesole. She has so many friends who have no wish to lose her, I among them.”

“You told me, when we first met,” I said, “that my cousin Rachel was a woman of impulse. No doubt she will continue to be so, and live where she pleases.”

“No doubt,” answered Rainaldi. “But the nature of her impulses has not always led her into happiness.”

I suppose by this he wanted to infer that her marriage with Ambrose had been on impulse, and unhappy likewise, and that her coming to England was also impulse, and he was uncertain of the outcome of it. He had power over her, because he had the management of her affairs, and it was this power that might take her back to Florence. I believed that was the purpose of his visit, so to drum it into her, and possibly to tell her also that the allowance the estate paid to her would not be sufficient to maintain her indefinitely. I had the trump card, and he did not know it. In three weeks’ time she would be independent of Rainaldi for the rest of her life. I could have smiled, but for the fact that I disliked him too intensely to do so in his presence.

“It must be very strange, with your upbringing, suddenly to entertain a woman in the house, and for many months, as you have done,” said Rainaldi, with his hooded eyes upon me. “Has it put you out at all?”

“On the contrary,” I said, “I find it very pleasant.”

“Strong medicine, all the same,” he answered, “for one young and inexperienced like yourself. Taken in so large a dose, it could do damage.”

“At nearly five-and-twenty,” I replied, “I think I know pretty well what medicine suits me.”

“Your cousin Ambrose thought so too, at forty-three,” answered Rainaldi, “but as it turned out he was wrong.”

“Is that a word of warning, or of advice?” I asked.

“Of both,” he said, “if you will take it the right way. And now, if you will excuse me, I must go dress for dinner.”

I suppose this was his method to drive a wedge between me and Rachel, to drop a word, hardly venomous in itself, yet with sufficient sting to foul the air. If he suggested I should beware of her, what did he hint of me? Did he dismiss me with a shrug, as they sat together in the drawing room when I was absent, saying how inevitable it was for young Englishmen to be long of limb and lacking in brain, or would that be too easy an approach? He certainly had a store of personal remarks, always ready to his tongue, to cast aspersion.

“The trouble with very tall men,” he said, on one occasion, “is the fatal tendency to stoop.” (I was standing under the lintel of the doorway when he said this, bending my head to say a word to Seecombe.) “Also, the more muscular among them turn to fat.”

“Ambrose was never fat,” said Rachel swiftly.

“He did not take the exercise that this lad takes. It is the violent walking, riding and swimming that develops the wrong portions of the body. I have noticed it very often, and nearly always among Englishmen. Now, in Italy we are smaller boned, and lead more sedentary lives. Therefore we keep our figures. Our diet, too, is easier on the liver and the blood. Not so much heavy beef and mutton. As to pastry…” He gestured with his hands in deprecation. “This boy is forever eating pastry. I saw him demolish a whole pie for dinner yesterday.”

“Do you hear that, Philip?” said Rachel. “Rainaldi considers that you eat too much. Seecombe, we shall have to cut down on Mr. Philip’s food.”

“Surely not, madam,” said Seecombe, greatly shocked. “To eat less than he does would be injurious to health. We have to remember, madam, that in all probability Mr. Philip is still growing.”

“Heaven forbid,” murmured Rainaldi. “If he is growing still at twenty-four one would fear some serious glandular disturbance.”

He sipped his brandy, which she permitted him to take into the drawing room, with a meditative air, his eyes upon me, until I felt for all the world that I was nearly seven foot, like poor dull-witted Jack Trevose who was hawked about Bodmin fair by his mother for the people to stare at him and give him pennies.

“I suppose,” said Rainaldi, “that you do enjoy good health? No serious illness as a child that would account for growth?”

“I don’t remember,” I answered, “ever having been ill in my life.”

“That in itself is bad,” he said; “those who have never suffered from disease are the first to be struck down, when nature attacks them. Am I not right in saying so, Seecombe?”

“Very possibly, sir. I hardly know,” said Seecombe; but as he went from the room I noticed him glance at me in doubt, as if I already sickened for the smallpox. “This brandy,” said Rainaldi, “should have been kept for at least another thirty years. It will be drinkable when young Philip’s children come of age. Do you remember, Rachel, that evening at the villa when you and Cosimo entertained the whole of Florence, or so it seemed, and he insisted that all of us should be in dominoes and masks, like a Venetian carnival? And your dear lamented mother behaved so badly with prince someone-or-other, I think it was Lorenzo Ammanati, wasn’t it?”

“It could have been with anyone,” said Rachel, “but it was not Lorenzo, he was too busy running after me.”

“What nights of folly,” mused Rainaldi. “We were all of us absurdly young, and entirely irresponsible. Far better to be staid and peaceful as we are today. I think they never give such parties here in England? The climate, of course, would be against it. But for that, young Philip here might find it amusing to dress himself up in mask and domino and search about the bushes for Miss Kendall.”

“I am sure Louise would ask for nothing better,” answered Rachel, and I saw her eye upon me and her mouth twitch.

I went out of the room and left them, and almost at once I heard them break into Italian, his voice interrogatory, and hers laughing in answer to his question, and I knew they were discussing me, and possibly Louise also, and the whole damned story of the rumors that were supposed to go about the countryside concerning some future betrothal between the pair of us. God! How much longer was he going to stay? How many more days and nights of this must I endure?

Eventually, on the last evening of his visit, my godfather, with Louise, came to dine. The evening passed off well, or so it seemed. I saw Rainaldi putting himself to infinite trouble to be courteous to my godfather, and the three of them, he, Rainaldi, and Rachel, somehow formed themselves into a group for conversation, leaving Louise and me to entertain ourselves. Now and again I noticed Rainaldi look towards us, smiling with a sort of amiable indulgence, and once I even heard him say,
sotto voce,
to my godfather, “All my compliments upon your daughter and your godson. They make a very charming couple.” Louise heard it too. The poor girl flushed crimson. And at once I began asking her when she was next due to visit London, which I hoped would ease her feelings, but for all I know it may have made it worse. After dinner the subject of London came up once again, and Rachel said, “I hope to visit London myself before very long. If we are there at the same time”—this to Louise—“you must show me all the sights, because I have never been there.”

My godfather pricked up his ears at her remark.

“So you are thinking of leaving the country?” he said. “Well, you have certainly endured the rigors of a winter visit to us in Cornwall very well. You will find London more amusing.” He turned to Rainaldi. “You will still be there?”

“I have business there for some weeks yet,” replied Rainaldi, “but if Rachel decides to come up I shall very naturally put myself at her disposal. I am no stranger to your capital. I know it very well. I hope that you and your daughter will give us the pleasure of dining with us, when you are there.”

“We shall be very happy to,” said my godfather. “London in the spring can be delightful.”

I could have hit the whole bunch of heads together for the calm assumption of their meeting, but Rainaldi’s use of the word “us” maddened me the most. I could see his plan. Lure her to London, entertain her there while he conducted his other business, and then prevail upon her to return to Italy. And my godfather, for his own reasons, would further such a plan.