I saw her lips move as she read the words, and I watched her in apprehension.
Perhaps it was my fancy, yet it seemed to me that her body stiffened, and she paused there longer that she need have done.
She must have read the words twice over.
Then she came back and joined me, but this time she did not take my hand, she walked alone.
She made no comment on the monument, nor did I, but somehow that great slab of granite was with us as we walked.
I saw the lines of doggerel, and the date beneath, and his initials A.A. cut into the stone, and I saw also, which she could not, the pocketbook with the letter buried deep beneath the stone, in the dank earth.
And I felt, in some vile fashion, that I had betrayed them both.
Her very silence showed that she was moved.
Unless, I thought to myself, I speak now, at this moment, the slab of granite will be a barrier between us, and will grow in magnitude.
“I meant to take you there before,” I said, my voice sounding loud and unnatural after so long an interval.
“It was the view Ambrose liked best, on the whole estate.
That is why the stone is there.”
“But it was not,” she answered, “part of your birthday plan to show it to me.”
The words were clipped and hard, the words of a stranger.
“No,” I said quietly, “not part of the plan.”
And we walked along the drive without further conversation, and on entering the house she went straight to her room.
I took my bath and changed my clothes, no longer light of heart but dull, despondent.
What demon took us to that granite stone, what lapse of memory?
She did not know, as I did, how often Ambrose had stood there, smiling and leaning on his stick, but the silly doggerel lines would conjure up the mood that prompted them, half jesting, half nostalgic, the tender thought behind his mocking eyes.
The slab of granite, tall and proud, would have taken on the substance of the man himself, whom, through fault of circumstance, she had not permitted to return to die at home, but who lay many hundred miles away, in that Protestant cemetery in Florence.
Here was a shadow for my birthday night.
At least she knew nothing of the letter, nor would she ever know, and I wondered, as I dressed for dinner, what other demon had prompted me to bury it there, rather than burn it in the fire, as though I had the instinct of an animal, that would one day return to dig it up.
I had forgotten all that it contained.
His illness had been upon him as he wrote.
Brooding, suspicious, with the hand of death so close, he had not reckoned on his words.
And suddenly, as though it danced before me on the wall, I saw the sentence,
“Money, God forgive me for saying so, is, at the present time, the one way to her heart.”
The words jumped onto the mirror, as I stood before it brushing my hair. They were there as I placed her pin in my cravat.
They followed me down the stairs and into the drawing room, and they turned from the written words into his voice itself, the voice of Ambrose, deep, well-loved, long known, remembered always—“The one way to her heart.”
When she came down to dinner she wore the pearl collar round her neck, as though in forgiveness, as though in tribute to my birthday; yet somehow, to my mind, the fact that she wore it made her not closer to me, but more distant.
Tonight, if only for tonight, I had rather that her neck had been left bare.
We sat down to dinner, with John and Seecombe waiting on us, and the full regalia of the candlesticks and the silver upon the table, and the lace napery too, in honor of my birthday, and there was boiled fowl and bacon as of long custom, from my schoolboy days, which Seecombe bore in with great pride, his eye upon me.
We laughed, and smiled, and toasted them and ourselves, and the five-and-twenty years that lay behind me; but all the while I felt that we forced our spirits into jollity for the sake of Seecombe and for John, and left to ourselves would fall to silence.
A kind of desperation came upon me, that it was imperative to feast, imperative to make merry, and the solution therefore was to drink more wine, and fill her glass as well, so that the sharper edge of feeling could be dulled and both of us forget the granite slab and what it stood for in our inner selves.
Last night I had walked to the beacon head under the full moon, in exultation, sleepwalking, in a dream.
Tonight, though in the intervening hours I had woken to the wealth of the whole world, I had woken to shadows too.
Muzzy-eyed, I watched her across the table; she was laughing over her shoulder to Seecombe, and it seemed to me she had never looked more lovely.
If I could recapture my mood of early morning, the stillness and the peace, and blend it with the folly of the afternoon among the primroses under the tall beech trees, then I would be happy once again.
She would be happy too.
And we would hold the mood forever, precious and sacred, carrying it into the future.
Seecombe filled my glass again and something of the shadow slipped away, the doubts were eased; when we are alone together, I thought, all will be well, and I shall ask her this very evening, this very night, if we can be married soon, but soon, in a few weeks perhaps, in a month, for I wanted everyone to know, Seecombe, John, the Kendalls, everyone, that Rachel would bear her name because of me.
She would be Mrs. Ashley; Philip Ashley’s wife.
We must have sat late, for we had not left the table when there came the sound of carriage wheels upon the drive.
The bell pealed and the Kendalls were shown in to the dining room where we were still seated amid the confusion of crumbs and dessert and half-empty glasses, and all the aftermath of dinner.
I rose, unsteadily I recollect, and dragged two chairs to the table, with my godfather protesting that they had already dined, and only came in for a moment to wish me good health.
Seecombe brought fresh glasses and I saw Louise, in a blue gown, look at me, a question in her eyes, thinking, I felt instinctively, that I had drunk too much.
She was right, but it did not happen often, it was my birthday, and time she knew, once and for all, that she would never have the right to criticize me, except as a childhood friend.
My godfather should know too.
It would put an end to all his plans for her, and put an end to gossip also, and ease the mind of anyone who cared to worry on the subject.
We all sat down again, with buzz of conversation, my godfather, Rachel and Louise already eased to each other’s company through the hours spent at luncheon; while I sat silent at my end of the table, scarce taking in a word, but turning over in my mind the announcement I had resolved to make.