The whole neighborhood, he said, had talked of nothing else since the news became known.
The church had been draped in black all Sunday, likewise the chapel on the estate, but the greatest blow of all, Wellington said, was when Mr. Kendall told them that the master had been buried in Italy and would not be brought home to lie in the vault among his family.
“It doesn’t seem right to any of us, Mr. Philip,” he said, “and we don’t think Mr. Ashley would have liked it either.”
There was nothing I could say in answer.
I got into the carriage and let them drive me home.
It was strange how the emotion and the fatigue of the past weeks vanished at sight of the house.
All sense of strain left me, and in spite of the long hours on the road I felt rested and at peace.
It was afternoon, and the sun shone on the windows of the west wing, and on the gray walls, as the carriage passed through the second gate up the slope to the house.
The dogs were there, waiting to greet me, and poor Seecombe, wearing a crepe band on his arm like the rest of the servants, broke down when I wrung him by the hand.
“It’s been so long, Mr. Philip,” he said, “so very long.
And how were we to know that you might not take the fever too, like Mr. Ashley?”
He waited upon me while I dined, solicitous, anxious for my welfare, and I was thankful that he did not press me with questions about my journey or about his master’s illness and death, but was full of the effect upon himself and the household; how the bells had tolled for a whole day, how the vicar had spoken, how wreaths had been brought in offering.
And all his words were punctuated with a new formality of address.
I was “Mr.” Philip. No longer “Master” Philip.
I had noticed the same with the coachman and the groom.
It was unexpected, yet strangely warming to the heart.
When I had dined I went up to my room and looked about me, and then down into the library, and so out into the grounds, and I was filled with a queer feeling of happiness that I had not thought ever to possess with Ambrose dead; for when I left Florence I had reached the lowest ebb of loneliness, and hoped for nothing.
Across Italy and France I was possessed with images which I could not drive away.
I saw Ambrose sitting in that shaded court of the villa Sangalletti, beside the laburnum tree, watching the dripping fountain.
I saw him in that bare monk’s cell above, propped on two pillows, struggling for breath.
And always within earshot, always within sight, was the shadowy hated figure of that woman I had never seen.
She had so many faces, so many guises, and that name contessa, used by the servant Giuseppe and by Rainaldi too, in preference for Mrs. Ashley, gave to her a kind of aura she had never had with me at first, when I had seen her as another Mrs. Pascoe.
Since my journey to the villa she had become a monster, larger than life itself.
Her eyes were black as sloes, her features aquiline like Rainaldi’s, and she moved about those musty villa rooms sinuous and silent, like a snake.
I saw her, when there was no longer breath left in his body, packing his clothes in trunks, reaching for his books, his last possessions, and then creeping away, thin-lipped, to Rome perhaps, to Naples, or even lying concealed in that house beside the Arno, smiling, behind the shutters.
These images remained with me until I crossed the sea and came to Dover.
And now, now that I had returned home, they vanished as nightmares do at break of day.
My bitterness went too.
Ambrose was with me once again and he was not tortured, he no longer suffered. He had never been to Florence or to Italy at all. It was as though he had died here, in his own home, and lay buried with his father and his mother and my own parents, and my grief was now something I could overcome; sorrow was with me still, but not tragedy.
I too was back where I belonged, and the smell of home was all about me.
I went out across the fields, and the men were harvesting.
The shocks of corn were being lifted into the wagons.
They ceased work at the sight of me, and I went and spoke to all of them.
Old Billy Rowe, who had been tenant of the Barton ever since I could remember and had never called me anything but Master Philip, touched his forehead when I came up to him, and his wife and daughter, helping with the rest of the men, dropped me a curtsey.
“We’ve missed you, sir,” he said, “it hasn’t seemed right to start carrying the corn without you.
We’re glad you’re home.”
A year ago I would have rolled up my sleeves like the rest of the hinds, and seized a fork, but something stayed me now, a realization that they would not think it fit.
“I’m glad to be home,” I said.
“Mr. Ashley’s death has been a great sadness to me, and to you too, but now we all have to carry on as he would have wished us to do.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and touched his forelock once again.
I stayed a few moments talking, then called to the dogs and went my way.
He waited until I reached the hedge before telling the men to resume their work.
When I came to the pony paddock, midway between the house and the sloping fields, I paused and looked back over the sunken fence.
The wagons were silhouetted on the further hill, and the waiting horses and the moving figures black dots on the skyline.
The shocks of corn were golden in the last rays of the sun.
The sea was very blue, almost purple where it covered the rocks, and had that deep full look about it that always comes with the flood tide.
The fishing fleet had put out, and were standing eastward to catch the shore breeze.
Back at home the house was in shadow now, only the weather vane on the top of the clock tower catching a loose shaft of light.
I walked slowly across the grass to the open door.
The windows were still unshuttered, for Seecombe had not yet sent the servants to close them down.