What about those boxes down from London?
More gowns to sort, and try upon your person, and return again?”
“Not gowns,” she said, “but coverings for curtains.
I think Aunt Phoebe’s eye lacked luster.
The blue bedroom should live up to its name.
At present it is gray, not blue at all.
And the quilting to the bed has moth, but don’t tell Seecombe.
The moth of years.
I have chosen you new curtains and new quilting.”
It was then that Seecombe entered, and seeing us apparently without employment said,
“The weather being so inclement, sir, I had thought the boys might be put to extra cleaning within doors.
Your room needs attention.
But they cannot dust there while Mr. Ashley’s trunks and boxes cover the floor.”
I glanced at her, fearing this lack of tact might wound her, that she might turn away, but to my surprise she took it well.
“You are quite right, Seecombe,” she said; “the boys cannot clean the room until the boxes are unpacked.
We have left it far too long.
Well, Philip, what about it?”
“Very well,” I said, “if you are agreeable.
Let us have the fire lit, and when the room is warm we’ll go upstairs.”
I think that both of us tried to conceal our feelings from the other. We forced a sort of brightness into our behavior and into our conversation.
For my sake, she was determined not to show distress.
And I, wishing to spare the same for her, assumed a heartiness utterly foreign to my nature.
The rain was lashing at the windows of my old room, and a patch of damp had appeared upon the ceiling.
The fire, that had not been lit since last winter, burned with a false crackle.
The boxes stood in a line upon the floor, waiting to be opened; and on top of one was the well remembered travel rug of dark blue, with the yellow monogram “A.A.” in large letters in one corner.
I had the sudden recollection of putting it over his knees that last day, when he drove away.
My cousin Rachel broke the silence.
“Come,” she said, “shall we open the clothes trunk first?”
Her voice was purposely hard and practical.
I handed her the keys, which she had left in Seecombe’s charge on her arrival.
“Just as you will,” I said.
She put the key in the lock, and turned it, and threw open the lid.
His old dressing gown was on the top.
I knew it well.
It was of heavy silk in a dark red color.
His slippers were there too, long and flat.
I stood there staring at them, and it was like walking back into the past.
I remembered him passing into my room while he was shaving of a morning, the lather on his face.
“Look, boy, I’ve been thinking…” Into this room, where we were standing now.
Wearing that dressing gown, wearing those slippers.
My cousin Rachel took them from the trunk.
“What shall we do with them?” she said, and the voice that had been hard was lower now, subdued.
“I don’t know,” I said; “it’s for you to say.”
“Would you wear them, if I gave them to you?” she asked.
It was strange.
I had taken his hat.
I had taken his stick. His old shooting coat with the leather at the elbows that he had left behind when he went upon his last journey, that I wore constantly.
Yet these things, the dressing gown, the slippers—it was almost as though we had opened up his coffin and looked upon him dead.
“No,” I said, “no, I don’t think so.”
She said nothing.