“Let them continue,” I said.
“After tomorrow they will have something else to discuss.
The transfer of property and fortune can hardly be kept secret.”
“If your cousin Rachel has any wisdom, and wishes to keep her self-respect,” he said, “she will either go to London, or ask you to live elsewhere.
The present situation is very wrong for you both.”
I was silent.
Only one thing mattered, that he should sign the paper.
“Of course,” he said, “there is, in the long run, only one way out of gossip.
And, according to this document, only one way out of the transfer of this property.
And that is, that she should marry again.”
“I believe it most unlikely,” I said.
“I suppose,” he said, “you have not thought of asking her yourself?”
Once again the color flamed in my face.
“I would not dare to do so,” I said; “she would not have me.”
“I am not happy about any of this, Philip,” he said.
“I wish now that she had never come to England.
However, it is too late to regret that.
Very well then, sign.
And take the consequences of your action.”
I seized a pen, and put my name to the deed. He watched me with his still, grave face.
“There are some women, Philip,” he observed, “good women very possibly, who through no fault of their own impel disaster.
Whatever they touch, somehow turns to tragedy.
I don’t know why I say this to you, but I feel I must.”
And then he witnessed my signature on the long scroll of paper.
“I suppose,” he said, “you will not wait to see Louise?”
“I think not,” I replied, and then relenting,
“If you are both at liberty tomorrow evening, why not come and dine, and drink my health upon my birthday?”
He paused.
“I am not certain if we are free,” he said.
“I will at any rate send word to you by noon.”
I could see plainly he had little wish to come and see us, and had some embarrassment in refusing my invitation.
He had taken the whole matter of the transfer better than I had expected, there had been no violent expostulation, no interminable lecture, but possibly he knew me too well by now to imagine anything of the sort would have had effect.
That he was greatly shaken and distressed I knew by his grave manner.
I was glad that no mention had been made of the family jewels.
The knowledge that they were concealed in the cabbage basket in my wardrobe might have proved the final straw.
I rode home, remembering my mood of high elation the last time I had done so, after visiting the attorney Trewin in Bodmin, only to find Rainaldi on arriving home.
There would be no such visitor today.
In three weeks full spring had come about the countryside and it was warm like May.
Like all weather prophets, my farmers shook their heads and prophesied calamity. Late frost would come, and nip the buds in bloom and wither the growing corn beneath the surface of the drying soil.
I think, on that last day of March, I would not have greatly cared if famine came, or flood, or earthquake.
The sun was sinking beyond the westward bay, flaming the quiet sky, darkening the water, and the rounded face of the near full moon showed plain over the eastern hills.
This, I thought to myself, is how a man must feel when in a state of high intoxication, this complete abandon to the passing hour.
I saw things, not in hazy fashion, but with the clarity of the very drunk.
The park, as I entered it, had all the grace of fairy tale; even the cattle, plodding down to drink at their trough beside the pool, were beasts of enchantment, lending themselves to beauty.
The jackdaws were building high, they flapped and straddled their untidy nests in the tall trees near to the avenue, and from the house and the stables I could see the blue smoke curling from the chimneys, and I could sense the clatter of pails about the yard, the whistling of the men, the barking of the puppies from their kennels. All this was old to me, long-known and loved, possessed from babyhood; yet now it held new magic.
I had eaten too fully at midday to be hungry, but I was thirsty, and drank deep of the cool clear water from the well in the courtyard.
I joked with the boys as they bolted the back doors and closed the shutters.
They knew tomorrow was my birthday. They whispered to me how Seecombe had had his likeness painted for me, as a deadly secret, and that he had told them I was bound to hang it upon a panel in the hall with the ancestral portraits.
I gave them a solemn promise that it was exactly what I would do.
And then the three of them, with much head-nodding among themselves and muttering in corners, disappeared into the servants’ hall and then returned again, bearing a package.