“As to that I cannot say,” I answered.
“Ambrose mentioned in his letter that they had spent a week in Venice, and both of them came back with rheumatism.”
Her face fell.
“Rheumatism?
His wife also?” she said.
“How very unfortunate.”
And then, reflectively:
“She must be older than I thought.”
Vacuous woman, her mind running upon one single train of thought.
I had rheumatics in my knees at two years old.
Growing pains, my elders told me.
Sometimes, after rain, I have them still.
For all that, there was some similarity between my mind and Mrs. Pascoe’s.
My cousin Rachel aged some twenty years.
She had gray hair once more, she even leaned upon a stick, and I saw her, when she wasn’t planting roses in that Italian garden which I could not picture, seated at a table, thumping with her stick on the floor, surrounded by some half-dozen lawyers all jabbering Italian, while my poor Ambrose sat patient at her side.
Why did he not come home and leave her to it?
My spirits rose, though, as the simpering bride gave place to the aging matron, racked with lumbago where it catches most.
The nursery receded, and I saw the drawing room become a lady’s boudoir, hedged about with screens, huge fires burning even in midsummer, and someone calling to Seecombe in a testy voice to bring more coal, the draft was killing her.
I took to singing once again when I went riding, urged the dogs after young rabbits, swam before breakfast, sailed Ambrose’s little boat about the estuary when the wind favored, and teased Louise about the London fashions when she went to spend the season there.
At twenty-three it takes very little to make the spirits soar.
My home was still my home. No one had taken it from me.
Then, in the winter, the tone of his letters changed.
Imperceptible at first, I scarcely noticed it, yet on rereading his words I became aware of a sense of strain in all he said, some underlying note of anxiety creeping in upon him.
Nostalgia for home in part, I could see that. A longing for his own country and his own possessions, but above all a kind of loneliness that struck me as strange in a man but ten months married.
He admitted that the long summer and autumn had been very trying, and now the winter was unusually close.
Although the villa was high, there was no air in it; he said he used to move about from room to room like a dog before a thunderstorm, but no thunder came.
There was no clearing of the air, and he would have given his soul for drenching rain, even if it crippled him.
“I was never one for headaches,” he said, “but now I have them frequently.
Almost blinding at times.
I am sick of the sight of the sun.
I miss you more than I can say.
So much to talk about, difficult in a letter.
My wife is in town today, hence my opportunity to write.”
It was the first time that he had used the words “my wife.”
Always before he had said Rachel or “your cousin Rachel,” and the words “my wife” looked formal to me, and cold.
In these winter letters there was no talk of coming home, but always a passionate desire to know the news, and he would comment upon any little trifle I had told him in my letters, as though he held no other interest.
Nothing came at Easter, or at Whitsun, and I grew worried.
I told my godfather, who said no doubt the weather was holding up the mails.
Late snow was reported in Europe, and I could not expect to hear from Florence before the end of May.
It was over a year now since Ambrose had been married, eighteen months since he had been home.
My first relief at his absence, after his marriage, turned to anxiety that he would not return at all.
One summer had obviously tried his health.
What would a second do?
At last, in July, a letter came, short and incoherent, totally unlike himself.
Even his writing, usually so clear, sprawled across the page as if he had had difficulty in holding his pen.
“All is not well with me,” he said, “you must have seen that when I wrote you last.
Better keep silent though.
She watches me all the time.
I have written to you several times, but there is no one I can trust, and unless I can get out myself to mail the letters they may not reach you.
Since my illness I have not been able to go far.