I said nothing.
She had told me, some weeks back, that I lacked perception.
Tonight, I might have said the same of her.
A few moments later, she patted me on the shoulder, and went upstairs to bed.
I felt in my pocket for the gold chain she had given me.
That, if nothing else, was mine alone.
18
Our Christmas was a happy one.
She saw to that.
We rode to the farms on the estate, and to the cottages and lodges, and distributed the clothes that had belonged to Ambrose.
And under each roof we were obliged to eat a pie, or taste a pudding, so that when evening came again we were too full to sit ourselves to dinner, but, surfeited, left the servants to finish all the remaining geese and turkey of the night before, while she and I roasted chestnuts before the drawing room fire.
Then, as though I had gone back in time some twenty years, she bade me shut my eyes, and, laughing, went up to her boudoir and came down again and put into my hands a little tree.
This she had dressed in gay fantastic fashion, with presents wrapped in brightly colored paper, each present an absurdity; and I knew she did this for me because she wanted me to forget the drama of Christmas Eve and the fiasco of the pearls.
I could not forget.
Nor could I forgive.
And from Christmas onwards a coolness came between my godfather and myself.
That he should have listened to petty lying gossip was bad enough, but even more I resented his sticking to the quibble in the will which left me under his jurisdiction for three more months.
What if Rachel had spent more than we had foreseen?
We had not known her needs.
Neither Ambrose nor my godfather had understood the way of life in Florence.
Extravagant she well might be, but was it so great a crime?
As to society there, we could not judge it.
My godfather had lived all his life in careful niggardly fashion, and, because Ambrose had never bothered to spend much upon himself, my godfather had taken it for granted that this state of things would continue once the property was mine.
My wants were few, and I had no more desire for personal spending than had Ambrose, in his time, but this cheeseparing on the part of my godfather induced in me a sort of fury that made me determined to have my way and use the money that was mine.
He had accused Rachel of frittering away her allowance.
Well, he could accuse me of wanton waste about my house.
I decided, after the New Year, that I wished to make improvements to the property that would be mine.
But not only to the gardens.
The terracing of the walk above the Barton fields proceeded, also the hollowing away and preparation of the ground beside it that was to become the sunken water-garden, copied from the engraving in Rachel’s book.
I was determined to repair the house as well.
Too long, I considered, we had made do with the monthly visitations of Nat Dunn, the estate mason, who crept from ladder to ladder upon the roof and replaced slates, swept off by a gale of wind, smoking his pipe up there the while, his back against a chimney.
Now was the time to set the whole roof in order, have new tiles, new slates, new guttering, strengthening also those walls damaged by long years of wind and rain.
Too little had been done about the place since the old days, two hundred years ago, when the men of Parliament had wrought such havoc, and my ancestors had been hard put to it to keep the house from falling into ruin.
I would make amends for past neglect, and if my godfather pulled a face and drew sums upon his blotter he could go hang himself.
So I went my own way about the business, and before January was out some fifteen to twenty men were working on my roof, or about the building, and inside the house as well, decorating ceilings and walls to my orders.
It gave me the greatest satisfaction to picture my godfather’s expression when the bills for the work should be submitted to him.
I made the repairs about the house serve as an excuse for not entertaining visitors, thereby putting an end, for the time being, to Sunday dinner.
Therefore I was spared the regular visit of the Pascoes and the Kendalls, and saw nothing of my godfather, which was part of my intention.
I also had Seecombe spread it, in his jungle fashion, below stairs, that Mrs. Ashley found it difficult to receive callers at the moment, owing to there being workmen in the drawing room.
We lived therefore, during those days of winter and early spring, in hermit fashion, greatly to my liking.
Aunt Phoebe’s boudoir, as Rachel would still insist in naming it, became our place of habitation.
There, at the close of day, Rachel would sit, and sew or read, and I would watch her.
A new gentleness had come to her manner, since the incident of the pearls on Christmas Eve, which, though warming beyond belief, was sometimes hard to bear.
I think she had no knowledge what it did to me.
Those hands, resting for a moment on my shoulder, or touching my head in a caress, as she passed by the chair where I was sitting, talking all the while about the garden or some practical matter, would set my heart beating so that it would not be stilled.
To watch her move was a delight, and sometimes I even wondered if she rose from her chair on purpose, to go to the window, to reach upwards to the curtain, to stand there with her hand upon it looking outwards onto the lawn, because she knew my eyes were watching her.
She said my name Philip in a manner quite her own.
To others, it had always been a short, clipped word, with some emphasis on the final letter, but she lingered on the “l” slowly, deliberately, in a way that somehow, to my ear, gave it a new sound I liked well.
As a lad I had always wished to be called Ambrose, and the wish had remained with me, I think, until the present.
Now I was glad that my name went back even farther into the past than his had done.