As for the doctors, I have no belief in any of them.
They are liars, the whole bunch.
The new one, recommended by Rainaldi, is a cutthroat, but then he would be, coming from that quarter.
However, they have taken on a dangerous proposition with me, and I will beat them yet.”
Then there was a gap, and something scratched out which I could not decipher, followed by his signature.
I had the groom saddle my horse and rode over to my godfather to show him the letter.
He was as much concerned as I was myself.
“Sounds like a mental breakdown,” he said at once.
“I don’t like it at all.
That’s not the letter of a man in his right senses.
I hope to heaven…” He broke off, and pursed his lips.
“Hope what?” I asked.
“Your uncle Philip, Ambrose’s father, died of a tumor on the brain.
You know that, don’t you?” he said shortly.
I had never heard it before, and told him so.
“Before you were born, of course,” he said.
“It was never a matter much discussed in the family.
Whether these things are hereditary or not I can’t say, nor can the doctors.
Medical science isn’t far enough advanced.”
He read the letter again, putting on his spectacles to do so.
“There is, of course, another possibility, extremely unlikely, but which I would prefer,” he said.
“And that is?”
“That Ambrose was drunk when he wrote the letter.”
If he had not been over sixty years, and my godfather, I would have hit him for the bare suggestion.
“I have never seen Ambrose drunk in my life,” I told him.
“Nor I either,” he said drily.
“I am merely trying to choose the better of two evils.
I think you had better make up your mind to go to Italy.”
“That,” I remarked, “I had already decided upon before I came to see you,” and I rode home again, without the remotest idea how to set about the journey.
There was no vessel sailing from Plymouth that would help me.
I was obliged to travel up to London, and thence to Dover, catch the packet to Boulogne, and then cross France into Italy by the usual diligence.
Granted no delay, I should be in Florence within three weeks or so.
My French was poor, my Italian nonexistent, but none of this bothered me as long as I could get to Ambrose.
I bade a short farewell to Seecombe and the servants, telling them only that I intended paying a hurried visit to their master but saying nothing of his illness, and so set forth for London on a fine morning in July, with the prospect of nearly three weeks’ traveling in a strange country ahead of me.
As the carriage turned onto the Bodmin road I saw the groom riding towards us with the postbag.
I told Wellington to rein the horses, and the boy handed me the bag.
The chance was one in a thousand that there would be a further letter from Ambrose, but it so happened that the chance was there.
I took the envelope from the bag and sent the boy on home.
As Wellington whipped up the horses I drew out the scrap of paper and held it to the window for light.
The words were scrawled, almost illegible.
“For God’s sake come to me quickly.
She has done for me at last, Rachel my torment.
If you delay, it may be too late.
Ambrose.”
That was all.
There was no date upon the paper, no mark upon the envelope, which was sealed with his own ring.
I sat in the carriage, the scrap of paper in my hand, knowing that no power on heaven or earth could bring me to him before mid-August.
4
When the conveyance brought me and the other passengers to Florence and dumped us down at the hostelry beside the Arno, I felt I had been a lifetime upon the road.
It was now the fifteenth of August.