My Cousin Rachel

It is Sunday morning, and Philip and Rachel are going to church. Rachel is wearing a veiled hat that covers her face, and when Philip insists that “the people will want to see [her] face,” she replies, “Then they must want.” On the carriage ride to town, Philip and Rachel tease each other and reminisce about Philip’s childhood. Suddenly, Philip remembers that he forgot to call upon Louise the day before, as he had promised. Rachel scolds Philip for treating a woman so poorly, and he responds, “Louise isn’t’ a woman […] She’s younger than myself and I have know her since she ran around in petticoats.” Rachel replies, “That’s no answer. She has feelings just the same.”

Philip and Rachel arrive at church. Contrary to his expectations, Philip finds himself feeling “confident and proud, and oddly pleased” rather than out of character. Sitting beside Rachel in the Ashley pew, Philip finds himself wondering about his parents, and wishing in particular that he could remember his mother, who died when he was very young, five months after the death of Philip’s father. Soon, the sermon ends, and Philip realizes that he did not hear a word of it: “I had sat there dreaming, and watching my cousin Rachel.”

Outside the church, Rachel coyly suggests that she ride with Nick Kendall, while Philip rides with Louise. (It was always Ambrose’s custom to dine after church with the Kendalls, and the family of Mr. Pascoe, the vicar.) Philip apologizes to Louise for not visiting her, but quickly becomes irritated by all of Louise’s questions about Rachel. When Louise opines that Rachel is “very beautiful,” Philip replies that she “must be mad.” “Perhaps,” he says, “[Rachel] has fine eyes, but otherwise she is quite ordinary. The most ordinary person I have ever met.” Louise then comments that Rachel must be “quite thirty-five” and Philip snaps, “I am not interested in people’s ages. She could be ninety-nine for all I know.” “Women don’t have eyes like that at ninety-nine,” says Louise.

Back at the Ashley estate, Philip tours Mr. Pascoe and his daughters around the garden, while Mrs. Pascoe visits the blue room upstairs with Rachel. Philip enjoys professing that he finds Rachel “small and entirely unremarkable,” an opinion that is met by “little squeals of protestation” from the Pascoe girls. At dinner, where Rachel sits opposite Philip at the head of the table, “only Louise seem[s] silent, and withdrawn”; otherwise, Philip finds himself enjoying “the most fantastic Sunday dinner” of his life.” Not even Mrs. Pascoe, whom he loathes, can annoy him. When he meets Rachel’s eyes, he feels a “queer, strange” feeling that goes “right through [him].”

As dinner draws to a close, Nick Kendall asks whether Philip reminds Rachel of Ambrose, and she replies, “So much so […] that I have wondered […] if there is any difference.” Even after Rachel and the other women leave for the drawing room, Philip finds that “the feeling [is] with [him] still.”