I must make up my mind, then, to the fact that she would want to divide her time between England and Italy, in which case I must do the same, and start looking about for a bailiff to put in charge of the estate. The idea of separation was of course preposterous.
“My godfather may know of someone,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud.
“Someone for what?” she asked.
“Why, to take over here, when we are absent,” I replied.
“I think it hardly necessary,” she said.
“You would not be in Florence more than a few weeks, if you came.
Though you might like it so much that you would decide to stay longer.
It is very lovely in the spring.”
“Spring be damned,” I said.
“Whatever date you decide upon to go, I shall go too.”
Again the shadow on her face, the apprehension in her eye.
“Never mind that now,” she said, “and look, past nine o’clock, later than you have been as yet.
Shall I ring for John, or can you manage alone?”
“Ring for no one,” I said.
I got up slowly from my chair, for my limbs were still most damnably weak, and I went and knelt beside her, and put my arms about her.
“I find it very hard,” I said, “the solitude of my own room, and you so close, along the corridor. Can we not tell them soon?”
“Tell them what?” she said.
“That we are married,” I replied.
She sat very still in my arms, and did not move.
It was almost as if she turned rigid, like something without life.
“Oh, God…” she whispered. Then she put her hands upon my shoulders, and looked into my face.
“What do you mean, Philip?” she said.
A pulse somewhere in my head began to beat, like an echo to the pain that had been there the past weeks.
It throbbed deeper, ever deeper, and with it came a sense of fear.
“Tell the servants,” I said.
“Then it will be right and natural for me to stay with you, because we are married…” But my voice sank away to nothing, because of the expression in her eyes.
“But we are not married, Philip dear,” she said.
Something seemed to burst inside my head.
“We are married,” I said, “of course we are married. It happened on my birthday.
Have you forgotten?”
But when had it happened?
Where was the church?
Who was the minister?
All the throbbing pain returned again, and the room swung round about me.
“Tell me it’s true?” I said to her.
Then suddenly I knew that all was fantasy, that the happiness which had been mine for the past weeks was imagination.
The dream was broken.
I buried my head against her, sobbing; tears had never come from me like this before, not even as a child.
She held me close, her hand stroking my hair, and never speaking.
Presently I won command over myself again, and lay down in the chair, exhausted.
She brought me something to drink, then sat down on the stool beside me.
The shadows of the summer evening played about the room.
The bats crept forth from their hiding places in the eaves, and circled in the twilight outside the window.
“It would have been better,” I said, “had you let me die.”
She sighed, and laid her hand against my cheek.
“If you say that,” she answered, “you destroy me too.
You are unhappy now because you are still weak.
But presently, when you are stronger, none of this will seem important.
You will go about your work again, on the estate—there will be so much to see to that, from your illness, has been allowed to lapse.
The full summer will be here.