The Rose of Sebastopol Read Online Free Page B

”
    His eyes had followed intently the passage of the portrait from its place on the bedside table to my lap. Otherwise he was utterly still. “Rosa? ”
    “Yes, you know. You said in a letter that you’d met her one day, unexpectedly.”
    “Unexpectedly. Yes, indeed. Very strange that was. You see I had no idea she was in Russia at all.”
    “Not all my letters reached you then?” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Did you spend much time with her? ”
    “There was never any time to spare, Mariella.”
    Nora said suddenly: “The truth is, sir, it’s been more than two months, and nothing.”
    “A letter from Mother was waiting for me when I got here but the news is that they still haven’t heard from her,” I said. “Mother writes that Aunt Isabella is beside herself with anxiety.”
    When he put his thumb and index finger to his forehead, I noticed a tremor in his hand. “Not heard from her? You should have done. Things are much improved, there’s a railroad, telegraph even.”
    “The mother will be worrying herself and everybody else to death,” put in Nora.
    “Not heard from her,” he said again. “Not heard. Someone should try to find out where she is. Your father could pull strings, surely.”
    “We tell ourselves that there must be so many people in unexpected places, in a war,” I said. “We tell ourselves that she is probably safe, but unable to write.”
    “And Rosa would be in an unexpected place, I suppose.”
    “She would, Henry.” I spoke without expression, because I could never have believed it possible to suffer so much and still go on breathing. There was no ignoring the precision with which he spoke, the pretense at disinterest when every inch of him was tuned to the name of Rosa.
    He loves her, I thought.
    “Mariella?” He leant forward, hands loosely clasped between his knees, apparently waiting for an answer to a question I had not heard.
    I tried to look away but he caught me in his affectionate gaze and spoke distinctly, as if to a sick child. “I said shall we go on an excursion tomorrow to see the ruins at Ocriculum? While you’re here you should see something of Italy.”
    “Are you really fit enough to be planning an outing?”
    “My doctor, my good friend Lyall, said I should take plenty of fresh air, so I’m sure he would approve. In fact he’d come with us if he was here, he’s a great one for antiquities. As we speak, he’s probably chipping off bits of the Forum in Rome.”
    “Rather than taking care of you.”
    “The poor man needed a holiday. I must weary him to death. And I don’t require much looking after.”
    He was looking at me in a travesty of the old Henry-like way: confident, smiling, arms folded, head thrown back. I stared at him for a moment, then pretended instead to be absorbed by the view of a shuttered window across the street.
    I will surely die of this pain, I thought.

PART TWO

One

    LONDON, 1854
     
     
     
    M y father’s reward for his unflagging support of Henry was to see his protégé rise rapidly to the heady rank of registrar, a role which involved supervising students and writing reports for the hospital board, and then to become an assistant surgeon on three hundred and fifty pounds a year. By the time he was thirty, Henry had a national reputation as a teacher and surgeon, exceptionally skilled with the knife. His lectures were so popular that his friends boasted of how students crowded in the doorway and even stood on chairs outside an open window to listen. Unlike many of his contemporaries, said Father proudly, Henry was never satisfied with relying on tradition, so he spent his hard-earned salary on trips to Europe to find out what was going on there. Henry wanted to be at the forefront of medicine; he wanted to be the best. Henry, in short, was a man after my father’s own heart.
    By the summer of 1853 Henry had bought a plot of land in Highgate and Father was advising him on architectural plans for a new house.