I wagered to myself that he, for his part, had probably not eased the horses by walking up the hill.
“Did you have a pleasant drive?” inquired my cousin Rachel, searching my eye, a tremor at her mouth, and I could swear she knew from our stiff faces how the drive had been.
“Thank you, yes,” said Louise, standing back, allowing her to pass first, in courtesy; but my cousin Rachel took her arm and said,
“Come with me to my room, and take off your coat and hat.
I want to thank you for the lovely flowers.”
My godfather and I had barely had time to wash our hands and exchange greetings before the entire family of Pascoe was upon us, and it devolved upon me to escort the vicar and his daughters round the gardens.
The vicar was harmless enough, but I could have dispensed with the daughters. As to the vicar’s wife, Mrs. Pascoe, she had gone upstairs to join the ladies like a hound after quarry.
She had never seen the blue room out of dustcovers… The daughters were loud in praise of my cousin Rachel, and like Louise professed to find her beautiful.
It delighted me to tell them that I found her small and entirely unremarkable, and they uttered little squeals of protestation.
“Not unremarkable,” said Mr. Pascoe, flipping the head of a hortensia with his cane, “certainly not unremarkable.
Nor would I say, as the girls do, beautiful.
But feminine, that is the word, most decidedly feminine.”
“But, Father,” said one of the daughters, “surely you would not expect Mrs. Ashley to be anything else?”
“My dear,” said the vicar, “you would be surprised how many women lack that very quality.”
I thought of Mrs. Pascoe and her horselike head, and swiftly pointed out the young palms that Ambrose had brought back from Egypt, which they must have seen a score of times before, thus turning, it seemed to me with tact, the conversation.
When we returned to the house, and entered the drawing room, we discovered Mrs. Pascoe telling my cousin Rachel in loud tones about her kitchen-maid, brought to trouble by the garden boy.
“What I cannot understand, Mrs. Ashley, is where it happened?
She shared a room with my cook, and as far as we know never left the house.”
“How about the cellar?” said my cousin Rachel.
The conversation was instantly stifled as we came into the room.
Not since Ambrose had been home two years before had I ever known a Sunday pass as swiftly.
And even when he was there it had dragged many times.
Disliking Mrs. Pascoe, indifferent to the daughters, and merely suffering Louise because she was the daughter of his oldest friend, he had always angled for the vicar’s company alone, with my godfather’s.
Then the four of us had been able to relax.
When the women came the hours had seemed like days.
This day was different. Dinner, when it was served, with the meats upon the table and the silver polished, seemed to spread itself before us like a banquet.
I sat at the head of the table, where Ambrose had always sat, and my cousin Rachel at the further end. It gave me Mrs. Pascoe as a neighbor, but for once she did not goad me to a fury.
Three-quarters of the time her large inquiring face was turned to the other end; she laughed, she ate, she forgot even to snap her jaws at her husband, the vicar, who, drawn out of his shell for possibly the first time in his life, flushed and with eyes afire, proceeded to quote poetry.
The entire Pascoe family blossomed like the rose, and I had never seen my godfather enjoy himself so much.
Only Louise seemed silent, and withdrawn.
I did my best with her, but she did not, or would not, respond.
She sat stiffly on my left hand, eating little and crumbling bits of bread, with a fixed expression on her face as if she had swallowed a marble.
Well, if she wanted to sulk, then sulk she must.
I was too much entertained myself to worry with her.
I sat hunched in my chair, resting my arms on the sides of it, laughing at my cousin Rachel, who kept encouraging the vicar with his verse.
This, I thought to myself, is the most fantastic Sunday dinner I have ever sat through, eaten, and enjoyed, and I would have given the whole world for Ambrose to be there, sharing it with us.
When we had finished dessert, and the port was put upon the table, I did not know whether I should rise, as I usually did, to open the door, or if, now I had a hostess opposite me, it would be her place to give some signal.
There was a pause in the conversation.
Suddenly she looked at me and smiled.
I smiled back at her in answer.
We seemed to hold each other for a moment.
It was queer, strange.
The feeling went right through me, never before known.
Then my godfather remarked in his gruff deep voice,
“Tell me, Mrs. Ashley, does not Philip remind you very much of Ambrose?”
There was a moment’s silence.
She put down her napkin on the table.
“So much so,” she said, “that I have wondered, sitting here at dinner, if there is any difference.”
She rose to her feet, the other women too, and I went across the dining room and opened the door.
But when they were gone, and I had returned to my chair, the feeling was with me still.