My Cousin Rachel Read Online Free PDF Page B

mention of a wedding. “When will they be coming home?” For this there was one answer. “I don’t know. Ambrose has not told me.”
    There would be much speculation upon the looks, the age, the general appearance of his bride, to which I would make reply, “She is a widow, and she shares his love for gardens.”
    Very suitable, the heads would nod, could not be better, the very thing for Ambrose. And then would follow jocularity, and jesting, and much amusement at the breaking in of a confirmed bachelor to wedlock. That shrew Mrs. Pascoe, the vicar’s lady, ground away upon this subject as if by doing so she won revenge for past insults upon the holy state.
    “What a change there will be now, Mr. Ashley,” she said on every possible occasion. “No more go-as-you-please for
your
household. And a very good thing too. Some organization will at last be brought to bear upon the servants, and I don’t imagine Seecombe being too well pleased. He has had things his own way long enough.”
    In this she spoke the truth. I think Seecombe was my one ally, but I was careful not to side with him, and stopped him when he tried to feel his way with me.
    “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Philip,” he murmured, gloomy and resigned. “A mistress in the house will have everything upside down, and we shan’t know where we are. There will first be one thing, then another, and probably no pleasing the lady whatever is done for her. I think the time has come for me to retire and give way to a younger man. Perhaps you had better mention the matter to Mr. Ambrose when you write.”
    I told him not to be foolish, and that Ambrose and I would be lost without him, but he shook his head and continued to go about the place with a long face, and never let an opportunity pass without making some sad allusion to the future, how the hours of the meals would no doubt be changed, the furniture altered, and an interminable cleaning be ordered from dawn till dusk with no repose for anybody, and, as a final thrust, even the poor dogs destroyed. This prophecy, uttered in sepulchral tones, brought back to me some measure of my own lost sense of humor, and I laughed for the first time since reading Ambrose’s letter.
    What a picture Seecombe painted! I had a vision of a regiment of serving girls with mops, sweeping the house free from cobwebs, and the old steward, his underlip jutting in the familiar way, watching them in stony disapproval. His gloom amused me, but when much the same thing was foretold by others—even by Louise Kendall, who knowing me well might have had perception enough to hold her tongue—the remarks brought irritation.
    “Thank goodness you will have fresh covers in the library,” she said gaily. “They have gone quite gray with age and wear, but I dare say you never noticed it. And flowers in the house, what an improvement! The drawing room will come into its own at last. I always thought it a waste that it was not used. Mrs. Ashley will furnish it, no doubt, with books and pictures from her Italian villa.”
    She ran on and on, going over in her mind a whole list of improvements, until I lost patience with her and said roughly, “For heaven’s sake, Louise, leave the subject alone. I’m sick and tired of it.”
    She stopped short then, and looked at me shrewdly.
    “You aren’t jealous, are you, by any chance?” she said.
    “Don’t be a fool,” I told her.
    It was an ugly thing to call her, but we knew each other so well that I thought of her as a younger sister, and had small respect for her.
    After that she was silent, and I noticed when the well-worn theme came up again in conversation she glanced across at me, and tried to change it. I was grateful, and liked her the more.
    It was my godfather and her father, Nick Kendall, who made the final thrust, unaware of course that he was doing so, and speaking bluntly in his plain straightforward way.
    “Have you made any plans for the future, Philip?” he said to me one