“She won’t give them in my house.”
“Poor Seecombe!
What I would give to see his face.
She will throw things at him, if he fails to come when she pulls her bell.
Italians are very passionate, you know, very quick-tempered.
I have always heard so.”
“She’s only half Italian,” I reminded her, “and I think Seecombe is well able to take care of himself.
Perhaps it will rain for three days, and she will be confined to bed with rheumatism.”
We laughed together in the summerhouse, like a pair of children, but for all that I was not so light of heart as I pretended.
The invitation had been flung onto the air like a challenge, and already I think I had regretted it, though I did not say so to Louise.
I regretted it more when I went home and looked about me.
Dear heaven, it was a foolhardy thing to go and do, and had it not been for pride I think I would have ridden back to my godfather and told him to send no message from me, when he wrote to Plymouth.
What in the world was I to do with that woman in my house?
What indeed should I say to her, what action should I take?
If Rainaldi had been plausible, she would be ten times more so.
Direct attack might not succeed, and what was it the Italian had said anyway about tenacity, and women fighting battles?
If she should be loudmouthed, vulgar, I thought I knew how to shut her up.
A fellow from one of the farms became entangled with such a one, who would have sued him for breach of promise, and I soon had her packing back to Devon, where she belonged.
But sugary, insidious, with heaving bosom and sheep’s eyes, could I deal with that?
I believed so.
I had met with some of these in Oxford, and I always found extreme bluntness of speech, amounting to brutality, sent them back to their holes in the ground with no bones broken.
No, all things considered, I was pretty cocksure, pretty confident, that when I had actual speech with my cousin Rachel I should find my tongue.
But preparations for the visit, that was the deuce, the facade of courtesy before the salute to arms.
To my great surprise, Seecombe received the idea without dismay. It was almost as if he had expected it.
I told him briefly that Mrs. Ashley had arrived in England, bringing with her Mr. Ambrose’s effects, and that it was possible she would arrive for a short visit within the week.
His underlip did not just forward, as it usually did when faced with any problem, and he listened to me with gravity.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “very right and very proper.
We shall all be glad to welcome Mrs. Ashley.”
I glanced at him over my pipe, amused at his pomposity.
“I thought,” I said, “you were like me, and did not care for women in the house.
You sang a different tune when I told you Mr. Ambrose had been married, and she would be mistress here.”
He looked shocked.
This time the nether lip went forward.
“That was not the same, sir,” he said; “there has been tragedy since then.
The poor lady is widowed.
Mr. Ambrose would have wished us to do what we can for her, especially as it seems”—he coughed discreetly—“that Mrs. Ashley has not benefited in any way from the decease.”
I wondered how the devil he knew that, and asked him.
“It’s common talk, sir,” he said, “all around the place. Everything left to you, Mr. Philip, nothing to the widow.
It is not usual, you see.
In every family, big or small, there is always provision for the widow.”
“I’m surprised at you, Seecombe,” I said, “lending your ear to gossip.”
“Not gossip, sir,” he said with dignity; “what concerns the Ashley family concerns us all.
We, the servants, were not forgotten.”
I had a vision of him sitting out at the back there, in his room, the steward’s room as it was called from long custom, and coming in to chat and drink a glass of bitter with him would be Wellington, the old coachman, Tamlyn, the head gardener, and the first woodman—none of the young servants, of course, would be permitted to join them—and the affairs of the will, which I had thought most secret, would be discussed and puzzled over and discussed again with pursed lips and shaking heads.
“It was not a question of forgetfulness,” I said shortly.
“The fact that Mr. Ashley was abroad, and not at home, made matters of business out of the question.
He did not expect to die there.
Had he come home things would have been otherwise.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, “that is what we thought.”
Oh, well, they could cluck their tongues about the will, it made no odds.