My Cousin Rachel (27 page)

I stared back at her. It was not I who was out of my mind, but she. I felt the color flame into my face.

“You asked me what I wanted,” I said, “as a birthday wish. Then, and now, there was only one thing in the world I could ever ask, that you should marry me. What else could I mean?”

She did not answer. She went on looking at me, incredulous, baffled, like someone listening to words in a foreign language that cannot be translated or comprehended, and I realized suddenly, with anguish and despair, that so it was, in fact, between us both; all that had passed had been in error. She had not understood what it was I asked of her at midnight, nor I, in my blind wonder, what she had given, therefore what I had believed to be a pledge of love was something different, without meaning, on which she had put her own interpretation.

If she was ashamed then I was doubly so, that she could have been mistaken in me.

“Let me put it in plain language now,” I said. “When will you marry me?”

“But never, Philip,” she said, with a gesture of her hand, as if dismissing me. “Take that as final, and forever. If you hoped otherwise, I am sorry. I had no intention to mislead you. Now, good night.”

She turned to go, but I seized hold of her hand, and held it fast.

“Do you not love me then?” I asked. “Was it pretense? Why, for God’s sake, did you not tell me the truth last night and bid me go?”

Once again her eyes were baffled; she did not understand. We were strangers, with no link between us. She came from another land, another race.

“Do you dare to reproach me for what happened?” she said. “I wanted to thank you, that was all. You had given me the jewels.”

I think I knew, upon that instant, all that Ambrose had known too. I knew what he had seen in her, and longed for, but had never had. I knew the torment, and the pain, and the great gulf between them, ever widening. Her eyes, so dark and different from our own, stared at both of us, uncomprehending. Ambrose stood beside me in the shadows, under the flickering candlelight. We looked at her, tortured, without hope, while she looked back at us in accusation. Her face was foreign too, in the half light. Small and narrow, a face upon a coin. The hand I held was warm no longer. Cold and brittle, the fingers struggled for release, and the rings scratched, cutting at my palm. I let it go, and as I did so wanted it again.

“Why do you stare at me?” she whispered. “What have I done to you? Your face has changed.”

I tried to think what else I had to give. She had the property, the money, and the jewels. She had my mind, my body, and my heart. There was only my name, and that she bore already. Nothing remained. Unless it should be fear. I took the candle from her hand and placed it on the ledge, above the stairs. I put my hands about her throat, encircling it; and now she could not move, but watched me, her eyes wide. And it was as though I held a frightened bird in my two hands, which, with added pressure, would flutter awhile, and die, and with release would fly away to freedom.

“Never leave me,” I said, “swear it, never, never.”

She tried to move her lips in answer, but could not do so, because of the pressure of my hands. I loosened my grasp. She backed away from me, her fingers to her throat. There were two red weals where my hands had been, on either side of the pearl collar.

“Will you marry me now?” I said to her.

She gave no answer, but walked backwards from me, down the corridor, her eyes upon my face, her fingers still to her throat. I saw my own shadow on the wall, a monstrous thing, without shape or substance. I saw her disappear under the archway. I heard the door shut, and the key turn in the lock. I went to my room, and catching sight of my reflection in the mirror paused, and stared. Surely it was Ambrose who stood there, with the sweat upon his forehead, the face drained of all color? Then I moved and was myself again; with stooping shoulders, limbs that were clumsy and too long, hesitant, untutored, the Philip who had indulged in schoolboy folly. Rachel had told the Kendalls to forgive me, and forget.

I flung open the window, but there was no moon tonight and it was raining hard. The wind blew the curtain, and ruffling the almanac upon the mantelpiece brought it to the floor. I stooped to pick it up, and tearing off the page crumpled it, and flung it in the fire. The end of my birthday. All Fools Day was over.

In the morning when I sat to breakfast, looking out upon the blustering windy day with eyes that saw nothing, Seecombe came into the dining room with a note upon the salver. My heart jumped at the sight of it. It might be that she asked me to call upon her in her room. But it was not from Rachel. The handwriting was larger, rounder. The note was from Louise. “Mr. Kendall’s groom has just brought this, sir,” said Seecombe, “he is waiting for an answer.”

I read it through. “Dear Philip, I have been so much distressed by what occurred last night. I think I understand what you felt, more so than my father. Please remember I am your friend, and always will be. I have to go to town this morning. If you want someone to talk to, I could meet you outside the church a little before noon. Louise.”

I put the note in my pocket and asked Seecombe to bring me a piece of paper and a pen. My first instinct, as always at the suggestion of any encounter with no matter whom, but more especially upon this morning, was to scribble a word of thanks, and then refuse. When Seecombe brought the pen and paper, though, I had decided otherwise. A sleepless night, an agony of loneliness made me of a sudden yearn for company. Louise was better known to me than anyone. I wrote therefore, telling her I would be in the town that morning, and would look for her outside the church.

“Give this to Mr. Kendall’s groom,” I said, “and tell Wellington I shall want Gypsy saddled at eleven.”

After breakfast I went to the office, and cleared up the bills, and wrote the letter that I had started yesterday. Somehow it was simpler today. A part of my brain worked in a dull fashion, took note of facts and figures, and jotted them down as if compelled by force of habit. My work accomplished I walked round to the stable, in a haste to get away from the house and all it meant to me. I did not ride by the avenue through the woods, with its memories of yesterday, but straight across the park and to the high road. My mare was very fresh, and nervous as a fawn; starting at nothing she pricked and shied, and backed into the hedgerows, and the tearing wind did its worst to both of us.

The bluster that should have been in February and March had come at last. Gone was the mellow warmth of the past weeks, the smooth sea, and the sun. Great clouds with dragging tails, black-edged and filled with rain, came scudding from the west, and now and again with sudden bursting fury emptied themselves as hail. The sea was a turmoil in the western bay. In the fields on either side of the road the gulls screamed and dipped in the fresh plowed earth, seeking the green shoots fostered by the early spring. Nat Bray, whom I had dismissed so swiftly the preceding morning, stood by his gate as I passed it, a wet sack hanging about his shoulders to protect him from the hail, and he put up his hand and shouted me good morning, but the sound of his voice carried beyond me, and away.

Even from the high road I could hear the sea. To the west, where it ran shallow over the sands, it was short and steep, turned backwards on itself and curling into foam, but to the east, before the estuary, the great long rollers came, spending themselves upon the rocks at the harbor entrance, and the roar of the breakers mingled with the biting wind that swept the hedgerows and forced back the budding trees.

There were few people about as I descended the hill into the town, and those I saw went about their business bent sideways with the wind, their faces nipped with the sudden cold. I left Gypsy at the Rose and Crown, and walked up the path to the church. Louise was sheltering beneath the porch. I opened the heavy door and we went in together, to the church itself. It seemed dark and peaceful, after the bluster of the day without, yet with it too that chill so unmistakable, oppressive, heavy, and the moldering churchy smell. We went and sat by the marble recumbent figure of my ancestor, his sons and daughters weeping at his feet, and I thought how many Ashleys were scattered about the countryside, some here, others in my own parish, and how they had loved, and suffered, and then gone upon their way.

Instinct hushed us both, in the silent church, and we spoke in whispers.

“I have been unhappy about you for so long,” said Louise, “since Christmas, and before. But I could not tell you. You would not have listened.”

“There was no need,” I answered, “all had gone very well until last night. The fault was mine, in saying what I did.”

“You would not have said it,” she replied, “unless you had believed it to be the truth. There has been deception from the first, and you were prepared for it, in the beginning, before she came.”

“There was no deception,” I said, “until the last few hours. If I was mistaken there is no one but myself to blame.”

A sudden shower stung the church windows southward, and the long aisle with the tall pillars turned darker than before.

“Why did she come here last September?” said Louise. “Why did she travel all this way to seek you out? It was not sentiment that brought her here, or idle curiosity. She came to England, and to Cornwall, for a purpose, which she has now accomplished.”

I turned and looked at her. Her blue eyes were simple and direct.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She has the money,” said Louise. “That was the plan she had in mind before she took her journey.”

My tutor at Harrow, when teaching in Fifth Form, told us once that truth was something intangible, unseen, which sometimes we stumbled upon and did not recognize, but was found, and held, and understood only by old people near their death, or sometimes by the very pure, the very young.

“You are mistaken,” I said, “you know nothing about her. She is a woman of impulse and emotion, and her moods are unpredictable and strange, God knows, but it is not in her nature to be otherwise. Impulse drove her from Florence. Emotion brought her here. She stayed because she was happy, and because she had a right to stay.”

Louise looked at me in pity. She put her hand upon my knee.

“Had you been less vulnerable,” she said, “Mrs. Ashley would not have stayed. She would have called upon my father, struck a close fair bargain, and then departed. You have misunderstood her motives from the first.”

I could have stood it better, I thought, as I stumbled from the pew into the aisle, if Louise had struck Rachel with her hands, or spat upon her, torn her hair, her gown. That would be primitive and animal. That would be fighting fair. But this, in the quietude of the church, with Rachel absent, was slander, almost blasphemy.

“I can’t sit here and listen to you,” I said. “I wanted your comfort and your sympathy. If you have none to give, no matter.”

She stood up beside me, catching at my arm.

“Don’t you see I am trying to help you?” she pleaded. “But you are so blind to everything, it’s no use. If it’s not in Mrs. Ashley’s nature to plan the months ahead, why has she been sending her allowance out of the country week by week, month by month, throughout the winter?”

“How do you know,” I said, “that she has done that?”

“My father had means of knowing,” she answered. “These things could not be hidden, between Mr. Couch and my father, acting as your guardian.”

“Well, what if she did?” I said. “There were debts in Florence, I have known that all along. Creditors were pressing to be paid.”

“From one country to another?” she said. “Is it possible? I would not have thought so. Isn’t it more likely that Mrs. Ashley hoped to build up something for her return, and that she spent the winter here only because she knew you came legally into your money and your property on your twenty-fifth birthday, which was yesterday? Then, with my father no longer guardian, she could bleed you as she chose. But there was suddenly no need. You made her a present of everything you had.”

I could not believe it possible that a girl I knew and trusted could have so damnable a mind, and speak—that was the greatest hell—with so much logic and plain common sense, to tear apart another woman like herself.

“Is it your father’s legal mind speaking in you, or you yourself?” I said to her.

“Not my father,” she said; “you know his reserve. He has said little to me. I have a judgment of my own.”

“You set yourself against her from the day you met,” I said. “A Sunday, wasn’t it, in church? You came back to dinner and did not say a word, but sat there, at the table, with your face all stiff and proud. You had made up your mind to dislike her.”

“And you?” she said. “Do you remember what you said about her before she came? I can’t forget the enmity you had for her. And with good reason.” There was a creaking movement from the side door near to the choir stalls. It opened, and the cleaner, a little mousy woman, Alice Tabb, crept in with broom in hand to sweep the aisles. She glanced at us furtively, and went away behind the pulpit; but her presence was with us, and solitude had gone.

“It’s no use, Louise,” I said, “you can’t help me. I am fond of you, and you of me. If we continue talking we shall hate each other.”

Louise looked at me, her hand dropped from my arm.

“Do you love her, then, so much?” she said.

I turned away. She was younger than myself, a girl, and she could not understand. No one could ever understand, save Ambrose, who was dead.

“What does the future hold now for either of you?” asked Louise.

Our footsteps sounded hollow down the aisle. The shower, that had spat upon the windows, ceased. A gleam of fitful sun lit the halo on St. Peter’s head in the south window, then left it dim once more.

“I asked her to marry me,” I said; “I have asked her once, and twice. I shall continue asking her. That’s my future for you.”

We came to the church door. I opened it and we stood in the porch again. A blackbird, heedless of the rain, was singing from the tree by the church gate, and a butcher’s boy, his tray upon his shoulder, went past it whistling for company, his apron over his head.

“When was the first time that you asked her?” said Louise.

The warmth was with me once again, the candlelight, the laughter. And suddenly no light, and suddenly no laughter. Only Rachel and myself. Almost in mockery of midnight, the church clock struck twelve of noon.

“On the morning of my birthday,” I told Louise.

She waited for the final stroke of the bell that sounded so loud above our heads.

“What did she answer you?” she said.

“We spoke at cross purposes,” I answered; “I thought that she meant yes, when she meant no.”

“Had she read the document at that time?”

“No. She read that later. Later, the same morning.”

Below the church gate I saw the Kendall groom and the dogcart. He raised his whip, at sight of his master’s daughter, and climbed down from the trap. Louise fastened her mantle and pulled her hood over her hair. “She lost little time in reading it, then, and driving out to Pelyn to see my father,” said Louise.

“She did not understand it very well,” I said.

“She understood it when she drove away from Pelyn,” said Louise. “I remember perfectly, as the carriage waited and we stood upon the steps, my father said to her ‘The remarriage clause may strike a little hard. You must remain a widow if you wish to keep your fortune.’ And Mrs. Ashley smiled at him, and answered, ‘That suits me very well.’ ”

The groom came up the path, bearing the big umbrella. Louise fastened her gloves. A fresh black squall came scudding across the sky.

“The clause was inserted to safeguard the estate,” I said, “to prevent any squander by a stranger. If she were my wife it would not apply.”

“That is where you are wrong,” said Louise. “If she married you, the whole would revert to you again. You had not thought of that.”

“But even so?” I said. “I would share every penny of it with her. She would not refuse to marry me because of that one clause. Is that what you are trying to suggest?”

The hood concealed her face, but the blue eyes looked out at me, though the rest was hidden.

“A wife,” said Louise, “cannot send her husband’s money from the country, nor return to the place where she belongs. I suggest nothing.”

The groom touched his hat, and held the umbrella over her head. I followed her down the path and to the trap, and helped her to her seat.

“I have done you no good,” she said, “and you think me merciless and hard. Sometimes a woman sees more clearly than a man. Forgive me for hurting you. I only want you to be yourself again.” She leaned to the groom. “Very well, Thomas,” she said, “we will go back to Pelyn,” and he turned the horse and they went away up the hill to the high road.

I went and sat in the little parlor of the Rose and Crown. Louise had spoken true when she told me she had done me no good. I had come for comfort, and found none. Only cold hard facts, twisted to distortion. All of what she said would make sense to a lawyer’s mind. I knew how my godfather weighed things in the balance, without allowance for the human heart. Louise could not help it if she had inherited his shrewd strict outlook and reasoned accordingly.

I knew better than she did what had come between Rachel and myself. The granite slab, above the valley in the woods, and all the months that I had never shared. “Your cousin Rachel,” Rainaldi said, “is a woman of impulse.” Because of impulse she had let me love her. Because of impulse she had let me go again. Ambrose had known these things. Ambrose had understood. And neither for him, nor for me, could there ever be another woman, or another wife.

I sat a long while in the chill parlor of the Rose and Crown. The landlord brought me cold mutton and some ale, though I was not hungry. Later I went out and stood upon the quay and watched the high tide splashing on the steps. The fishing vessels rocked at their buoys, and one old fellow, seated across a thwart, baled out the water from the bottom boards of his boat, his back turned to the spray that filled it again with every breaking sea.

The clouds came lower than they had before, turning to mist, cloaking the trees on the opposite shore. If I wished to return home without a soaking, and Gypsy without a chill, I had best return before the weather worsened. No one remained now without doors. I mounted Gypsy and climbed the hill, and to spare myself the further mileage of the high road turned down where the four roads met, and into the avenue. We were more sheltered here, but scarce had gone a hundred yards before Gypsy suddenly hobbled and went lame, and rather than go into the lodge and have the business of removing the stone that had cut into her shoe, and having gossip there, I decided to dismount and lead her gently home. The gale had brought down branches that lay strewn across our path, and the trees that yesterday had been so still tossed now, and swayed, and shivered with the misty rain.