There was a salty brightness in the air, lending a zest to walking, and you could hear the running swell of the sea as it broke upon the rocks fringing the bay.
We had these days often in the fall of the year.
Belonging to no season they had a freshness all their own, yet with a hint of cooler hours to come and tasting still the aftermath of summer.
Ours was a strange pilgrimage.
We started off by visiting the Barton, and it was as much as I could do to prevent Billy Rowe and his wife from inviting us inside the farmhouse to sit down to cakes and cream; in fact it was only by the promise of doing so on Monday that I got Solomon and my cousin Rachel past the byre and the midden and through the gates at all, up on the stubble of the west hills.
The Barton lands form a peninsula, the beacon fields forming the further end of it and the sea running into bays, east and west, on either side.
As I had told her, the corn had all been carried, and I could lead old Solomon wherever I pleased, for he could do no damage on the stubble.
The larger part of the Barton land is grazing land anyway, and to make a thorough tour of it all we kept close to the sea, and finally brought up by the beacon itself, so that looking back she could see the whole run of the estate, bounded on the western side by the great stretch of sandy bay and three miles to the eastward by the estuary.
The Barton farm, and the house itself—the mansion, as Seecombe always called it—lay in a sort of saucer, but already the trees planted by Ambrose and my uncle Philip grew thick and fast to give the house more shelter, and to the north the new avenue wound through the woods and up the rise to where the four roads met.
Remembering her talk of the night before, I tried to test my cousin Rachel on the names of the Barton fields, but could not fault her; she knew them all.
Her memory did not mislead her when she came to mention the various beaches, the headlands, and the other farms on the estate; she knew the names of the tenants, the size of their families, that Seecombe’s nephew lived in the fish house on the beach, and that his brother had the mill.
She did not throw her information at me, it was rather I, my curiosity piqued, who led her onto disclose it, and when she gave me the names, and spoke of the people, it was as a matter of course and with something of wonder that I should think it strange.
“What do you suppose we talked of, Ambrose and I?” she said to me at last, as we came down from the beacon hill to the eastward fields.
“His home was his passion, therefore I made it mine.
Would you not expect a wife of yours to do the same?”
“Not possessing a wife I cannot say,” I answered her, “but I should have thought that having lived on the continent all your life your interests would have been entirely different.”
“So they were,” she said, “until I met Ambrose.”
“Except for gardens, I gather.”
“Except for gardens,” she agreed, “which was how it started, as he must have told you.
My garden at the villa was very lovely, but this”—she paused a moment, reining in Solomon, and I stood with my hand on the bridle—“but this is what I have always wanted to see.
This is different.”
She said nothing for a moment or two, as she looked down on the bay.
“At the villa,” she went on, “when I was young and first married—I am not referring to Ambrose—I was not very happy, so I distracted myself by designing afresh the gardens there, replanting much of them and terracing the walls.
I sought advice, and shut myself up with books, and the results were very pleasing; at least I thought so, and was told so.
I wonder what you would think of them.”
I glanced up at her.
Her profile was turned towards the sea and she did not know that I was looking at her.
What did she mean?
Had not my godfather told her I had been to the villa?
A sudden misgiving came upon me.
I remembered her composure of the night before, after the first nervousness on meeting, and also the easiness of our conversation, which, on thinking it over at breakfast, I had put down to her own social sense and my dullness after drinking brandy.
It struck me now that it was odd she had said nothing last night about my visit to Florence, odder still that she had made no reference to the manner in which I had learned of Ambrose’s death.
Could it be that my godfather had shirked that issue and left it to me to break it to her?
I cursed him to myself for an old blunderer and a coward, and yet as I did so I knew that it was I myself who was the coward now.
Last night, had I only told her last night, when I had the brandy inside me; but now, now it was not so easy.
She would wonder why I had said nothing of it sooner.
This was the moment, of course. This was the moment to say,
“I have seen the gardens at your villa Sangalletti.
Didn’t you know?”
But she made a coaxing sound to Solomon and he moved on.
“Can we go past the mill, and up through the woods the other side?” she asked.
I had lost my opportunity, and we went on back towards home.
As we progressed through the woods she made remarks from time to time about the trees, or the set of the hills, or some other feature; but for me the ease of the afternoon had gone, for somehow or other I had got to tell her about my visit to Florence.
If I said nothing of it she would hear of it from Seecombe, or from my godfather himself when he came to dinner on Sunday.
I became more and more silent as we drew towards the house.
“I’ve exhausted you,” she said.
“Here I have been, riding like a queen on Solomon, and you walking all the while, pilgrim fashion.
Forgive me, Philip.
I’ve been so very happy. You can never guess how happy.”
“No, I’m not tired,” I said,