The Rose of Sebastopol Read Online Free Page A

parasol. Rather than rush ahead, I walked sedately alongside Nora, my eyes heavy with lack of sleep and my breathing rapid and shallow. When we reached the house I waited while Nora fetched Signora Critelli, who led us upstairs as before and knocked on Henry’s door.
    The room was altogether different: the shutters were open, the curtains tied back, the table tidied, and the floor swept. A chair had been placed in readiness for a visitor. Henry was dressed and seated in a position I knew well, with one leg crossed over the other, his arm thrown along the back of the chair and his head supported in his hand. Though he held a notebook, his eyes were fixed on the door.
    I said very clearly and slowly. “Henry, it is I, Mariella , come to visit you.”
    His back was to the light but something changed in his face and tension went out of his body. After a moment he gripped the table with both hands and stood up so that the sun shone through his shirt and I saw the skeletal outline of his body. “Mariella.” He kissed my cheek and pulled back the chair for me while Nora sat on the bed. I looked into his eyes, which were full of sympathy and warmth, and for a moment I could not detect, even by the merest glimmer of consciousness, whether he remembered what had happened yesterday and the awful mistake he had made.
    “Mariella, whatever are you doing so far from Clapham? ” he said.
    “I was disturbed by your letters. It seemed to me that someone should come out here and make sure you are being well looked after.”
    “How did you get here? Who is with you?”
    “Nora. That’s all. You remember her, don’t you, my aunt’s companion and nurse? She seemed the best choice because Aunt is so much better and Nora has experience of journeys.”
    “Of course I remember. But still I’m amazed that your parents would let you come so far without a male escort.”
    “Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle were traveling to Rome. We were not alone.”
    “I thought you found Mrs. Hardcastle a little overbearing.”
    “It was a sacrifice I was prepared to make for you, Henry.”
    As a reward for my feeble attempt at light-heartedness he leant forward and kissed my hand. “You are cold, Mariella. How can anyone be cold on such a hot day?”
    Throughout this conversation my spirits had been sinking, if possible, even further. Henry was completely changed. Aside from the extreme loss of weight there was an air of abstraction about him that made me recoil. It was as if he were behind a thick sheet of glass and every speech and gesture was a huge effort for him because his attention needed to be on something else. Altogether he was totally unlike the passionate being who had seized me in his arms yesterday, mistaking me for Rosa.
    Equally disturbing were the contents of the room. Half hidden behind a curtain was a huge, soiled sheepskin coat and piled on every available surface were dog-eared papers and ledgers. The only ornaments were the miniature of his mother, propped up beside his bed, and next to it, pressed flat by Henry’s two old volumes of poems by John Keats, Rosa’s unframed portrait of me.
    “You’ve been working,” I said, pointing to his notebook. “Surely you should rest.”
    “Impossible to rest, Mariella, when there is so much to do.”
    “What is there to do? ”
    “Army business. You know. I have become an expert on the proper preparation of the army medical services for war.”
    I picked up Rosa’s painting of me, in which she had given my mouth an elusive smile and put a gloss to my hair. When I saw an earlier version, I had complained that I looked much too shy, so she had adjusted the expression in my eyes until I was gazing more directly out of the canvas. It was signed with her usual vigorous initials: RB, September ’54.
    I said quietly: “In one of your letters you mentioned that you’d seen Rosa. We are worried because we haven’t heard from her for weeks, so I wonder, do you have any recent news of her?