We would start upon a new routine.
The clock struck ten, and I heard the men moving in the court and in the yard outside the office window, and I looked at a sheaf of bills, and put them back again, and started a letter to a fellow magistrate upon the bench and tore it up again.
For no words came and nothing that I wrote made any sense, and it was still two hours to noon, when Rachel would come downstairs.
Nat Bray, the farmer from Penhale, came in to see me, with a long tale about some cattle that had strayed into Trenant and how the fault was with his neighbor for not seeing to his fences, and I nodded and agreed, hearing little of his argument, for surely by now Rachel might be dressed, and out about the grounds, talking to Tamlyn.
I cut the luckless fellow short and bid him good day, and, seeing his look of hurt discomfiture, took him to seek the steward’s room and have a glass of ale with Seecombe.
“Today, Nat,” I said, “I do no business, it’s my birthday, I am the happiest of men,” and clapping him on the shoulder left him openmouthed to make what he would of my remark.
Then I thrust my head out of the window, and called across the court to the kitchen, and asked them to pack a luncheon basket for a picnic, for suddenly I wanted to be alone with her under the sun, with no formality of house or dining room or silver upon a table, and this order given I walked to the stables to tell Wellington that I wished to have Solomon saddled for the mistress.
He was not there.
The coach-house door was wide and the carriage gone.
The stable lad was sweeping the cobbles.
He looked blank at my inquiry.
“The mistress ordered the carriage soon after ten,” he said.
“Where she has gone I cannot say.
Perhaps to town.”
I went back to the house and rang for Seecombe, but he could tell me nothing, except that Wellington had brought the carriage to the door at a little after ten, and Rachel was ready waiting in the hall.
She had never before gone driving in the morning.
My spirits, pitched so high, flagged suddenly and dropped.
The day was all before us and this was not what I had planned.
I sat about, and waited.
Noon came and the bell clanged out for the servant’s dinner.
The picnic basket was beside me, Solomon was saddled.
But the carriage did not come.
Finally, at two, I took Solomon round to the stable myself and bade the boy unsaddle him.
I walked down the woods to the new avenue, and the excitement of the morning had turned to apathy.
Even if she came now it would be too late to picnic.
The warmth of an April sun would be gone by four o’clock.
I was nearly at the top of the avenue, at Four Turnings, when I saw the groom open the lodge gates and the carriage pass through.
I stood waiting, in the middle of the drive, for the horses to approach, and at sight of me Wellington drew rein and halted them.
The weight of disappointment, so heavy during the past hours, went at the glimpse of her, sitting in the carriage, and telling Wellington to drive on I climbed in and sat opposite her, on the hard narrow seat.
She was wrapped in her dark mantle, and she wore her veil down, so that I could not see her face.
“I have looked for you since eleven,” I said.
“Where in the world have you been?”
“To Pelyn,” she said, “to see your godfather.”
All the worries and perplexities, safely buried in the depths, came rushing to the forefront of my mind, and with a sharp misgiving I wondered what they could do, between them, to make havoc of my plans.
“Why so?” I asked.
“What need to go find him in such a hurry?
Everything has been settled long since.”
“I am not sure,” she answered, “what you mean by everything.”
The carriage jolted in a rut beside the avenue, and she put out her hand in its dark glove to the strap for steadiness.
How remote she seemed, sitting there in her mourning clothes, behind her veil, a world away from the Rachel who had held me against her heart.
“The document,” I said, “you are thinking of the document.
You cannot go against it.
I am legally of age.
My godfather can do nothing.
It is signed, and sealed, and witnessed.
Everything is yours.”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand it now.
The wording was a little obscure, that was all.
So I wished to make certain what it meant.”
Still that distant voice, cool and unattached, while in my ears and in my memory was the other, that had whispered in my ear at midnight.