John, as spokesman, gave it me and said, “ ’Tis from us all, Mr. Philip, sir, we none of us can bear wait to give it you.”
It was a case of pipes.
It must have cost them all of a month’s wages.
I shook hands with them, and clapped them on the back, and vowed to each that I had been planning to get the very same myself next time I went to Bodmin or to Truro, and they gazed back at me in great delight, so that like an idiot I could have wept to see their pleasure.
In truth, I never smoked any pipe but the one Ambrose had given me when I was seventeen, but in the future I must make a point of smoking all of theirs, for fear of disappointing them.
I bathed and changed, and Rachel was waiting for me in the dining room.
“I smell mischief,” she said at once.
“You have not been home for the day.
What have you been at?”
“That, Mrs. Ashley,” I said to her, “is no concern of yours.”
“No one has set eyes upon you since early morning,” she said.
“I came home to luncheon, and had no companion.”
“You should have lunched with Tamlyn,” I told her.
“His wife is a most excellent cook, and would have done you well.”
“Did you go to town?” she asked.
“Why, yes, I went to town.”
“And did you see anyone of our acquaintance?”
“Why, yes,” I answered, nearly bursting into laughter.
“I saw Mrs. Pascoe and the girls, and they were greatly shocked at my appearance.”
“Why so?”
“Because I was carrying a basket on my shoulder, and told them I had been selling cabbages.”
“Were you telling them the truth, or had you been to the Rose and Crown and drunk too much cider?”
“I was not telling them the truth, nor had I been to the Rose and Crown for cider.”
“Then what was it all about?”
I would not answer her.
I sat in my chair and smiled.
“I think,” I said, “that when the moon is fully risen I shall go swimming after dinner.
I feel all the energy of the world in myself tonight, and all the folly.”
She looked at me over her glass of wine with solemn eyes.
“If,” she said, “you desire to spend your birthday in your bed with a poultice on your chest, drinking black currant every hour, nursed—not by me, I warn you, but by Seecombe—go swimming, if you please.
I shall not stop you.”
I stretched my arms above my head, and sighed for pure enjoyment. I asked permission to smoke, which she granted.
I produced my case of pipes. “Look,” I said, “what the boys have given me.
They could not wait till morning.”
“You are as great a baby as they,” she said, and then, in a half-whisper,
“You do not know what Seecombe has in store for you.”
“But I do,” I whispered back, “the boys have told me.
I am flattered beyond measure.
Have you seen it?”
She nodded.
“It is perfect,” she said; “his best coat, the green one, his underlip, and all.
It was painted by his son-in-law, from Bath.”
When we had dined we went into the library, but I had not been telling her an untruth when I said I had all the energy of the world.
I was in such a state of exultation that I could not rest in my chair, with longing for the night to pass and for the day to come.
“Philip,” she said at last, “for the sake of pity, go and take your walk.
Run to the beacon and back again, if that will cure you.
I think you have gone mad, in any case.”
“If this is madness,” I said, “then I would want to stay that way for always.
I did not know lunacy could give such delight.”
I kissed her hand and went out into the grounds.