“I want to talk to you, Louise,” I said to her.
“When your father leaves, after dinner, make some excuse to stay.”
She stared at me, a question in her eyes, but I said no more.
Wellington pulled up before the house.
I got out and gave Louise my hand.
We stood waiting for the others.
Yes, it might have been that other Sunday, in September.
Rachel was smiling now, as she smiled then.
She was looking up at my godfather, talking as she did so; and I believe they were at politics again.
That Sunday, though drawn towards her, she had been a stranger to me still.
And now?
Now, no part of her was strange.
I knew the best, I knew the worst.
Even the motives for all she did, baffling perhaps even to herself, I guessed them too.
She hid nothing for me now, Rachel my torment…
“This,” she said smiling, as we all assembled in the hall, “is like old times again.
I am so happy you have come.”
She embraced the party in a glance, and led the way to the drawing room.
The room, as always, looked its best in summer.
The windows were flung wide open, it was cool.
The Japanese hortensias, feathery blue, stood long and slender in the vases, and reflected in the mirrors on the walls.
Outside the sun beat down upon the lawns.
It was very warm.
A lazy bumblebee droned against one of the windows.
The visitors sat down, languid, and content to rest.
Seecombe brought cake and wine.
“You are all overcome because of a little sun,” laughed Rachel.
“To me, it is nothing.
In Italy we have it thus for nine months in the year.
I thrive upon it.
Here, I will wait upon you all.
Philip, remain seated.
You are still my patient.”
She poured the wine into the glasses and brought it to us.
My godfather and the vicar both stood up, protesting, but she waved them aside.
When she came last to me, I was the only one who did not drink.
“Not thirsty?” she said.
I shook my head.
I would take nothing from her hands again.
She put the glass back upon the tray, and with her own went and sat beside Mrs. Pascoe and Louise upon the sofa.
“I suppose,” said the vicar, “that in Florence now the heat is well-nigh unbearable, even to you?”
“I never found it so,” said Rachel.
“The shutters would be closed early in the morning, which kept the villa cool throughout the day.
We adapt ourselves to the climate.
Anyone who stirs without in the middle of the day asks for disaster; so we stay within, and sleep.
I am lucky, at the villa Sangalletti, in having a little court beside the house that faces north and never has the sun upon it.
There is a pool there, and a fountain; and when the air feels used I turn on the fountain; the water dripping has a soothing sound.
In spring and summer I never sit anywhere else.”
In spring, indeed, she could watch the buds upon the laburnum tree swell and turn to flower, and the flowers themselves, with drooping golden heads, make a canopy for the naked boy who stood above the pool, holding the shell between his hands.
In their turn the flowers would fade and fall, and when high summer came to the villa, as it had come here, in less intensity, the pods upon the branches of the tree would burst and scatter, and the green seeds tumble to the ground.