You can swim again, go sailing in the bay.”
I knew from her voice that she was talking to convince herself, not me.
“What else?” I asked.
“You know very well that you are happy here,” she said; “it is your life, and will continue to be so.
You have given me the property, but I shall always look on it as yours.
It will be a sort of trust between us.”
“You mean,” I said, “that letters will pass between us, from Italy to England, month after month, throughout the year.
I shall say to you,
‘Dear Rachel, The camellias are in bloom.’ And you will reply to me,
‘Dear Philip, I am glad to hear it.
My rose-garden is doing very well.’
Is that to be our future?”
I could see myself hanging about the gravel sweep of a morning after breakfast, waiting for the boy to bring the postbag, knowing full well there would be no letter in it, except some bill from Bodmin.
“I would be back again each summer, very probably,” she said, “to see that all went well.”
“Like the swallows, who come only for the season,” I replied, “then take wing again the first week in September.”
“I have already suggested,” she said, “that you visit me in spring.
There is much that you would like in Italy.
You have not traveled, save the once.
You know very little of the world.”
She might have been a teacher, soothing a fractious child.
Perhaps it was thus she looked upon me.
“What I have seen,” I answered, “gives me a distaste for all the rest.
What would you have me do?
Potter about a church or a museum, guidebook in hand?
Converse with strangers, to broaden my ideas?
I would rather brood at home and watch the rain.”
My voice was harsh and bitter, but I could not help it.
She sighed again, and it was as though she searched about for some argument to prove to me that all was well.
“I tell you again,” she insisted, “that when you are better the whole of the future will seem different to you.
Nothing is so much changed from what it was.
As to the money…” she paused, looking at me.
“What money?” I said.
“The money for the property,” she went on.
“All that will be placed on a proper footing, and you shall have enough to run the estate without loss, while I take what I need out of the country.
It is all in process of arrangement now.”
She could take every farthing for all I cared.
What had any of this to do with what I felt for her?
But she went on talking.
“You must continue to make what improvements you feel justified in doing,” she said rapidly.
“You know I shall query nothing, you need not even send me the bills, I can trust your judgment.
Your godfather will always be near to give advice.
In a little while everything will seem to you just the same as it was before I came.”
The room was deep in twilight now.
I could not even see her face for the shadows all about us.
“Do you really believe that?” I said to her.
She did not answer at once.
She searched for some excuse for my existence, to pile upon those that she had given me already.
There were none, and she knew it well.
She turned towards me, giving me her hand.
“I must believe it,” she said, “or I would have no peace of mind.”