The Shivering Sands Read Online Free PDF Page A

to.”
    “Really?”
    “Oh yes. Sir William’s all for music…now. Although there was a time when he wouldn’t have it in the house. And Edith’s got a pretty talent. Oh nothing great, but she plays well and it’s a shame to drop it.”
    I went back with Essie for a cup of tea and she talked about the young ladies at Lovat Stacy and their music…how Edith was good, Allegra lazy, and Alice painstaking.
    “Poor little Alice, she feels she has to be. You see, having so much given to her, she has to take advantage of it.”
    Roma agreed with Essie that I should go back to Paris and carry on with my music. “I can see,” she said, “that it’s the right thing for you to finish your studies. Though I’m not entirely sure of Paris. After all it was there…” She fingered her turquoises almost impatiently and decided not to mention my marriage. “If you feel it’s impossible…we could work out something else.”
    “Oh Roma,” I cried, “you are so good. I don’t know how to tell you what a help you’ve been.”
    “Nonsense!” she retorted gruffly.
    “I’m realizing how good it is to have a sister.”
    “But naturally we stick together in times like these. You must come here more often.”
    I smiled and kissed her. Then I went back to Paris. It was a foolish thing to have done. I should have known that I could not endure to be in a place which was so full of memories of Pietro. It only showed how different Paris was without him, and that it was stupid of me to think that I could start all over again. Nothing could be the same again because the foundations on which I must build my future would be the past.
    How right Pietro was when he had said that one did not beckon the Muse and expect her to return after one had deserted her.
    I had been in Paris some three months when news came that Roma had disappeared.

    It was extraordinary. The dig was finished. They were preparing to pack up and leave within a few days. Roma had been superintending the departure in the morning, and it was evening before she was missed. There was no sign of her. It was as though she had just walked out into nowhere.
    It was a great mystery. She had left no note but had simply disappeared. I came back to England feeling bewildered, melancholy and deeply depressed. I kept remembering how good she had been to me, how she had tried to help me over my grief. I had been telling myself during those difficult weeks in Paris that I would always have Roma and that, through my sorrow, I had discovered a new relationship with my sister.
    I was interviewed by the police. It was thought that Roma had lost her memory and might be wandering about the country; then it was suggested that she might have taken a swim and been drowned, for the coast was dangerous at that point. I clung to the first suggestion because it was more comforting, though I could not imagine Roma in a state of amnesia. Each day I waited for news. None came.
    Some of her friends volunteered the suggestion that she might have had sudden news of a secret project and gone off to Egypt or somewhere like that. I tried to force myself to accept this comforting theory, but I knew it was not like precise and practical Roma. Something had prevented her from letting me know what had happened. Something? What could have prevented her but death?
    I told myself that I was obsessed by death because I had lost my parents and Pietro in such a short time. I could not lose Roma too.
    I was wretchedly unhappy and after a while I went back to Paris to settle up there because I knew I couldn’t stay any longer. I returned to London, took rooms in a house in Kensington and advertised that I was a teacher of the pianoforte.
    Perhaps I was not a good teacher; perhaps I was impatient with the mediocre. After all I had had dreams for myself, and had been Pietro Verlaine’s wife. I was not earning my keep. My money was dwindling in an alarming way. Each day I hoped for news of Roma. I felt helpless