“With my love for gardening,” she told them, “goes a knowledge of herbs.
In Italy we always made a study of these things.”
And she would produce balm, from some plant, to rub upon wheezing chests, and oil from another, as a measure against burns; and she would instruct them too how to make tisana, as a remedy for indigestion and for sleeplessness—the best nightcap in the world, she said to them—and tell them how the juice of certain fruits could cure almost any ill from a sore throat to a sty on the eyelid.
“You know what will happen,” I told her; “you will take the place of midwife in the district.
They will send for you in the night to deliver babies, and once that starts there will be no peace for you at all.”
“There is a tisana for that too,” she said, “made from the leaves of raspberries and of nettles.
If a woman drinks that for six months before the birth, she has her baby without pain.”
“That’s witchcraft,” I said.
“They wouldn’t think it right to do so.”
“What nonsense!
Why should women suffer?” said my cousin Rachel.
Sometimes, in the afternoons, she would be called upon by the county, as I had warned her.
And she was as successful with the “gentry,” as Seecombe called them, as she was with the humbler folk.
Seecombe, I soon came to realize, now lived in a seventh heaven.
When the carriages drove up to the door upon a Tuesday or a Thursday, at three o’clock of an afternoon, he would be waiting in the hall.
He still wore mourning, but his coat was new, kept only for these occasions.
The luckless John would have the task of opening the front door to the visitors, then of passing them onto his superior, who with slow and stately step (I would have it all from John afterwards) preceded the visitors through the hall to the drawing room.
Throwing the door open with a flourish (this from my cousin Rachel) he would announce the names like the toastmaster at a banquet.
Beforehand, she told me, he would discuss with her the likelihood of this or that visitor appearing, and give her a brief resume of their family history up to date.
He was generally right in his prophecy of who would appear, and we wondered whether there was some method of sending messages from household to household through the servants’ hall to give due warning, even as savages beat tom-toms in a jungle.
For instance, Seecombe would tell my cousin Rachel that he had it for certain that Mrs. Tremayne had ordered her carriage for Thursday afternoon, and that she would bring with her the married daughter Mrs. Gough, and the unmarried daughter Miss Isobel; and that my cousin Rachel must beware when she talked to Miss Isobel, as the young lady suffered from an affliction of the speech.
Or again, that upon a Tuesday old Lady Penryn would be likely to appear, because she always visited her granddaughter upon that day, who lived only ten miles distant from us; and my cousin Rachel must remember on no account to mention foxes before her, as Lady Penryn had been frightened by a fox before her eldest son was born, and he carried the stigma as a birthmark upon his left shoulder to this day.
“And Philip,” said my cousin Rachel afterwards, “the whole time she was with me I had to head the conversation away from hunting.
It was no use, she came back to it like a mouse sniffing at cheese.
And finally, to keep her quiet, I had to invent a tale of chasing wild cats in the Alps, which is an impossibility, and something no one has done.”
There was always some story of the callers with which she greeted me when I returned home, slinking by the back way through the woods when the last carriage had bowled safely down the drive; and we would laugh together, and she would smooth her hair before the mirror and straighten the cushions, while I polished off the last of the sweet cakes that had been put before the visitors.
The whole thing would seem like a game, like a conspiracy; yet I think she was happy there, sitting in the drawing room making conversation.
People and their lives had interest for her, how they thought, and what they did; and she used to say to me,
“But you don’t understand, Philip, this is all so new after the very different society in Florence.
I have always wondered about life in England, in the country.
Now I am beginning to know. And I love every minute of it.”
I would take a lump out of the sugar bowl, and crunch it, and cut myself a slice from the seedcake.
“I can think of nothing more monotonous,” I told her, “than discussing generalities with anyone, in Florence or in Cornwall.”
“Ah, but you are hopeless,” she said, “and will end up very narrow-minded, thinking of nothing but turnips and of kale.”
I would fling myself down in the chair, and on purpose to try her put my muddy boots up on the stool, watching her with one eye.
She never reproved me, and if she had noticed did not appear to do so.
“Go on,” I would say, “tell me the latest scandal in the county.”
“But if you are not interested,” she would answer, “why should I do so?”
“Because I like to hear you talk.”
So before going upstairs to change for dinner she would regale me with county gossip, what there was of it—the latest betrothals, marriages, and deaths, the new babies on the way; she appeared to glean more from twenty minutes’ conversation with a stranger than I would from an acquaintance after a lifetime.
“As I suspected,” she told me, “you are the despair of every mother within fifty miles.”
“Why so?”
“Because you do not choose to look at any of their daughters.
So tall, so presentable, so eligible in every way.
Pray, Mrs. Ashley, do prevail upon your cousin to go out more.”
“And what is your answer?”
“That you find all the warmth and entertainment that you need within these four walls.
On second thoughts,” she added, “that might be misconstrued.
I must watch my tongue.”
“I don’t mind what you tell them,” I said, “as long as you do not involve me in an invitation.