Read Online My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Daphne du Maurier
Tags: Fiction, Classics, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense, Fiction / Romance - Suspense, Fiction / Psychological
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remember nothing of the return drive to Florence except that the sun had set and it grew quickly dark. There was no twilight as we had at home. From the ditches by the wayside insects, crickets maybe, set up their monotonous chanting, and now and again barefooted peasants passed us, carrying baskets on their backs.
When we came into the city we lost the cooler cleaner air of the surrounding hills, and it was hot once more. Not like the daytime, burning and dusty white, but the flat stale heat of evening, buried too many hours in the walls and roofs of houses. The lassitude of noon, and the activity of those hours between siesta and sunset, had given place to a deeper animation, more alive, more tense. The men and women who thronged the piazzas and the narrow streets strolled with another purpose, as if all day they had lain hidden, sleeping, in their silent houses, and now came out like cats to prowl the town. The market-stalls were lit by flares and candles and besieged by customers, delving with questing hands among the proffered goods. Shawled women pressed one another, chattering, scolding, and vendors shouted their wares to make their voices heard. The clanging bells began again, and it seemed to me this time that their clamor was more personal. The doors of the churches were pushed open so that I could see the candlelight within, and the groups of people broke up a little, scattered, and pressed inside at the summons of the bells.
I paid off my driver in the piazza by the cathedral, and the sound of that great bell, compelling, insistent, rang like a challenge in the still and vapid air. Scarcely aware of what I did, I passed into the cathedral with the people, and straining my eyes into the gloom stood for a brief moment by a column. An old lame peasant stood beside me, leaning on a crutch. He turned one sightless eye towards the altar, his lips moving, his hands trembling, while about me and before me knelt women, shawled and secret, intoning with shrill voices after the priest, their gnarled hands busy with their beads.
I still held Ambrose’s hat in my left hand, and as I stood there in the great cathedral, dwarfed into insignificance, a stranger in that city of cold beauty and spilled blood, seeing the priest’s obeisance to the altar, hearing his lips intone words, centuries old and solemn, that I could not understand, I realized suddenly and sharply the full measure of my loss. Ambrose was dead. I would never see him again. He was gone from me forever. Never more that smile, that chuckle, those hands upon my shoulder. Never more his strength, his understanding. Never more that known figure, honored and loved, hunched in his library chair, or standing, leaning on his stick, looking down towards the sea. I thought of the bare room where he had died, in the villa Sangalletti, and of the madonna in her niche; and something told me that when he went he was not part of that room, or of that house, or of this country, but that his spirit went back where it belonged, to be among his own hills and his own woods, in the garden that he loved, within sound of the sea.
I turned and went out of the cathedral and onto the piazza, and looking up at that great dome and the tower beside me, remote and slender, carved against the sky, I remembered for the first time, with the sudden recollection that comes after great shock and stress, that I had not eaten for the day. I turned my thoughts away from the dead, back to the living; and having found a place to eat and drink, close to the cathedral, I went, with hunger satisfied, in search of Signor Rainaldi. The good servant at the villa had written down his address for me, and after one or two inquiries, pointing at the piece of paper and struggling lamely with the pronunciation, I found his house, over the bridge from my hostelry, on the left bank of the Arno. This side of the river was darker and more silent than in the heart of Florence. Few people wandered in the streets.
When we came into the city we lost the cooler cleaner air of the surrounding hills, and it was hot once more. Not like the daytime, burning and dusty white, but the flat stale heat of evening, buried too many hours in the walls and roofs of houses. The lassitude of noon, and the activity of those hours between siesta and sunset, had given place to a deeper animation, more alive, more tense. The men and women who thronged the piazzas and the narrow streets strolled with another purpose, as if all day they had lain hidden, sleeping, in their silent houses, and now came out like cats to prowl the town. The market-stalls were lit by flares and candles and besieged by customers, delving with questing hands among the proffered goods. Shawled women pressed one another, chattering, scolding, and vendors shouted their wares to make their voices heard. The clanging bells began again, and it seemed to me this time that their clamor was more personal. The doors of the churches were pushed open so that I could see the candlelight within, and the groups of people broke up a little, scattered, and pressed inside at the summons of the bells.
I paid off my driver in the piazza by the cathedral, and the sound of that great bell, compelling, insistent, rang like a challenge in the still and vapid air. Scarcely aware of what I did, I passed into the cathedral with the people, and straining my eyes into the gloom stood for a brief moment by a column. An old lame peasant stood beside me, leaning on a crutch. He turned one sightless eye towards the altar, his lips moving, his hands trembling, while about me and before me knelt women, shawled and secret, intoning with shrill voices after the priest, their gnarled hands busy with their beads.
I still held Ambrose’s hat in my left hand, and as I stood there in the great cathedral, dwarfed into insignificance, a stranger in that city of cold beauty and spilled blood, seeing the priest’s obeisance to the altar, hearing his lips intone words, centuries old and solemn, that I could not understand, I realized suddenly and sharply the full measure of my loss. Ambrose was dead. I would never see him again. He was gone from me forever. Never more that smile, that chuckle, those hands upon my shoulder. Never more his strength, his understanding. Never more that known figure, honored and loved, hunched in his library chair, or standing, leaning on his stick, looking down towards the sea. I thought of the bare room where he had died, in the villa Sangalletti, and of the madonna in her niche; and something told me that when he went he was not part of that room, or of that house, or of this country, but that his spirit went back where it belonged, to be among his own hills and his own woods, in the garden that he loved, within sound of the sea.
I turned and went out of the cathedral and onto the piazza, and looking up at that great dome and the tower beside me, remote and slender, carved against the sky, I remembered for the first time, with the sudden recollection that comes after great shock and stress, that I had not eaten for the day. I turned my thoughts away from the dead, back to the living; and having found a place to eat and drink, close to the cathedral, I went, with hunger satisfied, in search of Signor Rainaldi. The good servant at the villa had written down his address for me, and after one or two inquiries, pointing at the piece of paper and struggling lamely with the pronunciation, I found his house, over the bridge from my hostelry, on the left bank of the Arno. This side of the river was darker and more silent than in the heart of Florence. Few people wandered in the streets.
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