She came across the room to me, and she put her hands in mine.
“There is no bitter feeling in this house,” I said to her.
“The house is mine.
Bitterness goes with people when they die.
Those clothes are all packed up and put away.
They have nothing anymore to do with either of us.
From now on you are going to remember Ambrose as I remember him.
We’ll keep his old hat there, on the settle in the hall.
And the stick, with the others, in the stand.
You belong here now, just as he did, just as I do.
We are all three of us part of the place together.
Do you understand?”
She looked up at me.
She did not take away her hands.
“Yes,” she said.
I felt strangely moved, as if all that I did and said was laid down for me and planned, while at the same time a small still voice whispered to me in some dark cell of matter,
“You can never go back upon this moment.
Never… never…” We stood, holding each other’s hands, and she said to me,
“Why are you so good to me, Philip?”
I remembered that in the morning, when she cried, she had rested her head against my heart. I had put my arms about her, for a moment, and laid my face against her hair.
I wanted it to happen again.
More than anything I had ever known.
But tonight she did not cry.
Tonight she did not come and rest her head against my heart.
She just stood there, holding my hands.
“I’m not good to you,” I said;
“I only want you to be happy.”
She moved away and picked up her candlestick to take to bed, and as she went from the room she said to me,
“Good night, Philip, and God bless you.
One day you may come to know some of the happiness that I knew once.”
I heard her go upstairs, and I sat down and stared into the library fire.
It seemed to me that if there was any bitterness left in the house it did not come from her, nor from Ambrose, but was a seed deep in my own heart, which I should never tell her of and she need never know.
The old sin of jealousy I thought buried and forgotten was with me once again.
But this time I was jealous, not of Rachel, but of Ambrose, whom hitherto I had known and loved best in the whole world.
16
November and December passed very swiftly, or so it seemed to me.
Usually, as the days shortened and the weather worsened, when there would be little to do outside and it grew dark by half-past four, I had found the long evenings in the house monotonous.
Never a great reader, and unsociable, so that I did not care to shoot with my neighbors or go out and dine with them, I used to be champing for the turn of the year, when with Christmas behind me and the shortest day gone I could look forward to the spring.
And spring comes early, in the west.
Even before New Year’s Day the first shrubs are in bloom.
Yet this autumn passed without monotony.
The leaves fell, and the trees were bare, and all the Barton acres lay brown and soggy with the rain, while a chill wind nipped the sea and turned it gray.
But I did not look upon it with despondency.
We settled down to a routine, my cousin Rachel and myself, which seldom varied, and it seemed to suit us well.
When the weather permitted it, she would spend the morning in the grounds directing Tamlyn and the gardeners about the planting, or watching the progress of the terraced walk we had decided upon, which had necessitated the employment of extra men, besides those who worked in the woods; while I did my usual business about the estate, riding to and fro among the farms, or visiting others in the outlying districts, where I held land also.
We met at half-past twelve for a brief meal, cold usually, a ham, or pie, with cake.
It was the servants’ dinner hour, and we waited on ourselves. It would be my first sight of her for the day, for she always took breakfast in her room.
When I was out and about on the estate, or in my office, and heard the clock on the belfry strike noon, followed almost at once by the great clanging bell that summoned the men to their dinner, I would be aware of a rising excitement within me, a quick lifting of the heart.
What I was employed upon would seem, all of a sudden, to lack interest.
If I was riding out of doors, in the park, say, or in the woods or the nearby acres, and the sound of the clock and the bell echoed through the air—for it traveled far, and I have heard it three miles distant when the wind was with it—I would turn Gypsy’s head for home with impatience, almost as if I feared, by delaying any longer without doors, I might miss one moment of the luncheon hour.