As to the gardens, I who had yawned and kicked my heels in the old days when Ambrose had tried to interest me, I now made a point of being present whenever there should be a consultation in the plantation or upon the terrace walk, and again after dinner, in the evenings, we would look through her Italian books together, compare the engravings and debate, with much argument, what could best be copied.
I think if she had suggested we should build a replica of the Roman Forum itself, above the Barton acres, I would have agreed with her.
I said yes, and no, and very fine indeed, and shook my head, but I never really listened.
It was watching her interest in the business that gave me pleasure, watching her consider thoughtfully between one picture and another, her brows knit, a pen in her hand to mark the page, and then to watch the hands themselves that turned from one volume to another.
We did not always sit below in the library.
Sometimes she would ask me to go with her upstairs, to aunt Phoebe’s boudoir, and we would spread out the books and plans of gardens upon the floor.
I was host in the library down below, but here, in her boudoir, she was hostess.
I am not sure I did not like it better.
We lost formality.
Seecombe did not bother us—by some great measure of tact she had got him to dispense with the solemnity of the silver tea tray—and she would brew tisana for us both instead, which she said was a continental custom and much better for the eyes and skin.
These after-dinner hours passed all too swiftly, and I would hope that she would forget to ask the time, but the wretched clock in the belfry, far too close to our heads to strike ten o’clock and not be noticed, always shattered the peace.
“I had no idea it was so late,” she used to say, rising to her feet and closing the books.
I knew this was the signal for dismissal.
Even the trick of lingering by the door in conversation did not pass with her.
Ten o’clock had struck, and I must go.
Sometimes she gave me her hand to kiss.
Sometimes she offered me a cheek.
Sometimes she patted me upon the shoulder, as she might have done a puppy.
Never again did she come close to me, or take my face between her hands as she had done that evening when she lay in bed.
I did not look for it, I did not hope for it; but when I had said good night and gone back along the corridor to my own room, opened up my shutters and stared out at the silent garden, and heard the distant murmur of the sea breaking in the little bay beneath the woods, I would feel oddly lonely, as a child does when holiday is done.
The evening, which had built itself up, hour by hour throughout the day in fevered fancy, was over now.
It would seem long before it came again.
And neither my mind nor my body was ready for repose.
In the old days, before she had come to the house, I used to doze before the fire in winter after dining, and then, stretching and yawning, clump my way upstairs, happy to roll into my bed and sleep till seven.
Now, it was otherwise.
I could have walked all night.
I could have talked till dawn.
To do the first was foolish. To do the second, an impossibility.
Therefore I flung myself down in a chair before the open window, and smoked, and stared out across the lawn; and sometimes it was one or two in the morning before I undressed and went to bed, and all I had done was to sit there brooding in my chair, thinking of nothing, wasting the silent hours.
In December the first frosts came with the full moon, and then my nights of vigil held a quality harder to bear.
There was a sort of beauty to them, cold and clear, that caught at the heart and made me stare in wonder.
From my windows the long lawns dipped to the meadows, and the meadows to the sea, and all of them were white with frost, and white too under the moon.
The trees that fringed the lawns were black and still.
Rabbits came out and pricked about the grass, then scattered to their burrows; and suddenly, from the hush and stillness, I heard that high sharp bark of a vixen, with the little sob that follows it, eerie, unmistakable, unlike any other call that comes by night, and out of the woods I saw the lean low body creep and run out upon the lawn, and hide again where the trees would cover it.
Later I heard the call again, away in the distance, in the open park, and now the full moon topped the trees and held the sky, and nothing stirred on the lawns beneath my window.
I wondered if Rachel slept, in the blue bedroom; or if, like me, she left her curtains wide.
The clock that had driven me to bed at ten struck one, struck two, and I thought that here about me was a wealth of beauty that we might have shared.
People who mattered not could take the humdrum world.
But this was not the world, it was enchantment; and all of it was mine. I did not want it for myself alone.
So like a weather-glass I swung, from moods of exultation and excitement to a low level sometimes of dullness and depression, when, remembering her promise to remain with me for a brief time only, I wondered how much longer she would stay.
If, after Christmas, she would turn to me and say,
“Well, Philip, next week I go to London.”
The spell of hard weather put a stop to all the planting, and little more could be done now till the spring.
The terrace might be completed, for this was better done when dry, but with the plan to follow the men could work without her very well.
Any day she might decide to go, and I would not be able to think of an excuse to hold her back.
In old days, at Christmas, when Ambrose had been home, he had given dinner to the tenants on Christmas Eve.
I had let it lapse, the last winters of his absence, because when he had returned from traveling he held the dinner on midsummer day.
Now I decided to give the dinner once again, as of long custom, if only for the reason that Rachel would be there.
When I was a child it had been the highlight of my Christmas.
The men used to bring in a tall fir tree about a week before Christmas Eve, and put it in the long room over the coach houses, where we held the dinner.