Now this was madness, for I too had a beard.
I stared at my hand.
It did not look like mine. It was white and thin, the nails grown to a fine length; too often I broke them, riding.
I turned my head and saw Rachel sitting in a chair, near to my bed—her own chair, from the boudoir.
She did not know I saw her.
She was working upon a piece of embroidery, and wore a gown I did not recognize. It was dark, like all her gowns, but the sleeves were short, above the elbow, and the stuff was light, as though for coolness’ sake.
Was the room so warm?
The windows were wide open.
There was no fire in the grate.
I put my hand up to my chin again and felt the beard.
It had a pleasant touch to it.
Suddenly I laughed, and at the sound she raised her head and looked at me.
“Philip,” she said, and smiled; and suddenly she was kneeling by my side, with her arms about me.
“I have grown a beard,” I said.
I could not stop myself from laughing, for the folly of it, and then, from laughing, turned to coughing, and at once she had a glass with some ill-tasting stuff inside it which she made me drink, holding it to my lips, then putting me back again upon the pillows.
This gesture struck a chord in memory.
Surely, for a long while, there had been a hand, with a glass, making me drink, that had come into my dreams, and gone again?
I had believed it to be Mary Pascoe, and kept pushing it away.
I lay staring at Rachel, and put out my hand to her.
She took it and held it fast.
I ran my thumb along the pale blue veins that showed always on the back of hers, and turned the rings.
I continued thus for quite a time, and did not talk. Presently I said,
“Did you send her away?”
“Send who?” she asked.
“Why, Mary Pascoe,” I replied.
I heard her catch her breath, and glancing up I saw that her smile had gone and a shadow had come to her eyes.
“She has been gone these five weeks,” she said.
“Never mind that now.
Are you thirsty?
I have made you a cool drink with fresh limes, sent down from London.”
I drank, and it tasted good after the bitter medicine she had given me.
“I think I must have been ill,” I said to her.
“You nearly died,” she answered.
She moved, as though to go, but I would not have it.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
I had all the curiosity of someone who has been asleep for years, like Rip van Winkle, to find the world had gone along without him.
“If you want to revive in me all those weeks of anxiety I will tell you,” she answered, “not otherwise.
You have been very ill.
Let that be enough.”
“What was the matter with me?”
“I have small regard for your English doctors,” she replied.
“On the continent we call that illness meningite, which here no one knew anything about.
That you are alive today is little short of a miracle.”
“What pulled me through?”
She smiled, and held my hand the tighter.
“I think your own horse strength,” she answered me, “and certain things I bade them do.
Making a puncture on your spine to take the fluid was but one.
Also letting into your blood stream a serum made from the juice of herbs.
They called it poison.
But you have survived.”