The Man Who Came Back by Pamela Kent

Author:Pamela Kent [Pamela Kent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: F
ISBN: 9788726564815
Publisher: Saga Egmont International
Published: 2021-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter VI

SHE went to bed about a couple of hours later, and he still hadn’t returned with the tablets.

The housekeeper tried to persuade her to drink some soup before she went to bed, but she refused. She wasn’t actually suffering from nausea, but she felt a little squeamish whenever she thought of putting on an act and facing dinner in the dining-room. Besides, it would be silly to dine alone when she wasn’t interested in food.

She managed to take a bath, and felt slightly more refreshed after it, then she crawled into bed with a bottle of aspirin tablets clutched in one hand, and some hot milk on her bedside table. She wasn’t afterwards quite clear how many aspirins she did take, but she wasn’t the type to be reckless, and they couldn’t have been very many. But she sank almost immediately into deep and dreamless sleep which must have lasted for several hours, for when she awakened the moon was high in the sky, and the house was very silent.

She stayed awake for only a few minutes, and then went off to sleep again, and this time she dreamed without cessation, and her dreams were curiously vivid. She thought she was up in the attics again, and had discovered the portrait that looked like Philip Drew. It was propped against the wall, as it was when she first saw it, and it seemed to have increased in size and was positively a mammoth picture taken together with its frame.

Then the frame disappeared, and it seemed to her that she and the portrait were actually face to face, and the man who looked so much like Philip Drew was talking to her, and the hard lines of his face were so hard that they frightened her. He had, as it were, stepped out of the portrait and was pacing up and down in her room and lecturing her … scolding her.

He wanted to know why she was so stupid, and why she hadn’t moved more warily and thus avoided bumping her head. … And then he came very close to her and his eyes looked deep into hers, and she felt as if she was drowning in deeps of absolute blackness. She could feel his fingers close round her wrist, and he shook her. He wasn’t accusing her of stupidity now, he was angry with her. She could feel his anger biting deep into her being, like a red-hot iron, and she wanted to cry because she felt she didn’t deserve it. And in any case, her wrist was being so badly bruised by his fingers that she couldn’t think. She only knew it was absolutely intolerable he should think so badly of her, and she could do nothing about it. Nothing—nothing at all!

“I didn’t do it, Philip! I didn’t mean it, Philip! Philip, Philip! …”

She made such a violent movement in the bed that the pain shot through her head again, and she opened her eyes to find the

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