He would be telling her something, and suddenly search for a word that would not come, and with a bow of apology to me speak in his own language.
She would answer him, and as she spoke and I heard the unfamiliar words pour from her lips, so much faster surely than when we talked together in English, it was as though her whole cast of countenance was changed; she became more animated and more vivid, yet harder in a sense, and with a new brilliance that I did not like so well.
It seemed to me that the pair of them were ill-placed at my table, in the paneled dining room; they should have been elsewhere, in Florence or in Rome, with smooth dark servants waiting on them and all the glitter of a society foreign to me chattering and smiling in these phrases I did not know.
They should not be here, with Seecombe padding round in his leather slippers and one of the young dogs scratching under the table.
I sat hunched in my chair, damping, discouraging, a death’s head at my own dinner, and, reaching for the walnuts, cracked them between my hands to relieve my feelings.
Rachel sat with us while we passed the port and brandy.
Or rather I passed it, for I took neither, while he drank both.
He lit a cigar, taking one from a case he carried with him, and surveyed me, as I lit my pipe, with an air of tolerance.
“All young Englishmen smoke pipes, it seems to me,” he observed.
“The idea is that it helps digestion, but I am told it fouls the breath.”
“Like drinking brandy,” I answered, “which can foul the judgment too.”
I was reminded suddenly of poor Don, dead now in the plantation, and how in his younger days, when he had come upon a dog he much disliked, his hackles rose, his tail stood stiff and straight, and with a bound he seized him by the throat.
I knew now how he must have felt.
“If you will excuse us, Philip,” said Rachel, rising from her chair,
“Rainaldi and I have much we must discuss, and he has papers with him that I have to sign.
It will be best to do it upstairs, in the boudoir.
Will you join us presently?”
“I think not,” I said.
“I have been out all day and have letters in the office.
I will wish you both good night.”
She went from the dining room, and he followed her.
I heard them go upstairs.
I was still sitting there when John came to clear the table.
I went out then, and walked about the grounds.
I saw the light in the boudoir, but the curtains were drawn.
Now they were together they would speak Italian.
She would be sitting in the low chair by the fire, and he beside her.
I wondered if she would tell him about our conversation of the preceding night, and how I had taken away the will and made a copy of it.
I wondered what advice he gave to her, what words of counsel, and what papers he too brought from his file to show her that she must sign.
When they had finished business, did they return again to personalities, to the discussing of people and of places they both knew?
And would she brew tisana for him, as she did for me, and move about the room so that he could watch her?
I wondered at what time he would take his leave of her and go to bed, and when he did so would she give him her hand?
Would he stay awhile, lingering by the door, making an excuse to dally, as I did myself?
Or knowing him so well, would she permit him to stay late?
I went on walking in the grounds, up to the new terrace walk, down the pathway nearly to the beach and back, up again along the walk where the young cedar trees were planted, and so round and back and round again, until I heard the clock in the belfry strike ten.
That was my hour of dismissal: would it be his, as well?
I went and stood at the edge of the lawn, and watched her window.
The light was still burning in her boudoir.
I watched, and waited.
It continued burning.
I had been warm from walking but now the air was chill, under the trees.
My hands and feet grew cold.
The night was dark and utterly without music.
No frosty moon this evening topped the trees.
At eleven, just after the clock struck, the light in the boudoir was extinguished and the light in the blue bedroom came instead.
I paused a moment and then, on a sudden, walked round the back of the house and past the kitchens, and so to the west front, and looked up at the window of Rainaldi’s room.
Relief came to me.
A light burned there as well.
I could see the chink of it, though he kept his shutters closed.
The window was tight shut as well.