I felt certain, with a sense of insular satisfaction, that he would open neither for the night.
I went into the house and up the staircase to my room.
I had just taken off my coat and my cravat, and flung them on the chair, when I heard the rustle of her gown in the corridor, and then a soft tapping on the door.
I went and opened it.
She stood there, not yet undressed, with that same shawl about her shoulders still.
“I came to wish you good night,” she said.
“Thank you,” I answered,
“I wish you the same.”
She looked down at me, and saw the mud upon my shoes.
“Where have you been all evening?” she asked.
“Out walking in the grounds,” I answered her.
“Why did you not come to the boudoir for your tisana?” she asked.
“I did not care to do so,” I replied.
“You are very ridiculous,” she said.
“You behaved at dinner like a sulky schoolboy in need of a whipping.”
“I am sorry,” I said.
“Rainaldi is a very old friend, you know that well,” she said.
“We had much to talk about, surely you understand?”
“Is it because he is such an older friend than I that you permit him to linger in the boudoir until eleven?” I asked.
“Was it eleven?” she said.
“I really did not realize it.”
“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.