She had driven to Bodmin, to take the coach for London.
She had left Mary Pascoe in the house to watch me.
The servants, Seecombe, John, they had all departed; no one was left but Mary Pascoe.
“Please go,” I said,
“I need no one.”
A hand came out to touch my forehead.
Mary Pascoe’s hand.
I shook it off.
But it returned again, stealthy, cold, and I shouted loud to her to go, but it pressed down upon me, hard, gripping like ice, and so to ice it turned, on my forehead, on my neck, clamping me close, a prisoner.
Then I heard Rachel whisper in my ear,
“Dear, lie still.
This will help your head.
It will be better, by-and-by.”
I tried to turn, but could not.
Had she not gone to London after all?
I said,
“Don’t leave me.
Promise not to leave me.”
She said,
“I promise.
I will be with you all the time.”
I opened my eyes but I could not see her, the room was in darkness.
The shape of it was different, not the bedroom that I knew. It was long and narrow, like a cell.
The bedstead hard, like iron.
There was one candle burning somewhere, behind a screen.
In a niche, on the wall opposite, knelt a madonna.
I called loudly
“Rachel… Rachel…”
I heard footsteps running, and a door opening, and then her hand in mine and she was saying,
“I am with you.”
I closed my eyes again.
I was standing on a bridge, beside the Arno, making a vow to destroy a woman I had never seen.
The swollen water passed under the bridge, bubbling, brown, and Rachel, the beggar girl, came up to me with empty hands.
She was naked, save for the pearl collar round her throat.
Suddenly she pointed at the water and Ambrose went past us, under the bridge, his hands folded on his breast.
He floated away down the river out of sight, and slowly, majestically, his paws raised stiff and straight, went the body of the dead dog after him.
24
The first thing that I noticed was that the tree outside my window was in leaf.
I looked at it, puzzled.
When I had gone to bed the buds were barely formed.
It was very strange.
True, the curtains had been drawn, but I well remembered noticing how tight they were upon my birthday morning, when I leaned out of the window and looked out across the lawn.
There was no pain now in my head and the stiffness had all gone.
I must have slept for many hours, possibly a day or more.
There was no reckoning with time, when anyone fell ill.
Surely I had seen him many times, though, old Doctor Gilbert with his beard, and another man as well, a stranger.
The room in darkness always.
Now it was light.
My face felt scrubby—I must be in great need of a shave.
I put my hand up to my chin.