Eden was a hard school to learn so hard a lesson in; but there were teachers in the swamp and thicket, and the pestilential air, who had a searching method of their own.
He made a solemn resolution that when his strength returned he would not dispute the point or resist the conviction, but would look upon it as an established fact, that selfishness was in his breast, and must be rooted out. He was so doubtful (and with justice) of his own character, that he determined not to say one word of vain regret or good resolve to Mark, but steadily to keep his purpose before his own eyes solely; and there was not a jot of pride in this; nothing but humility and steadfastness; the best armour he could wear. So low had Eden brought him down. So high had Eden raised him up.
After a long and lingering illness (in certain forlorn stages of which, when too far gone to speak, he had feebly written ‘jolly!’ on a slate), Mark showed some symptoms of returning health. They came and went, and flickered for a time; but he began to mend at last decidedly; and after that continued to improve from day to day.
As soon as he was well enough to talk without fatigue, Martin consulted him upon a project he had in his mind, and which a few months back he would have carried into execution without troubling anybody’s head but his own.
‘Ours is a desperate case,’ said Martin. ‘Plainly. The place is deserted; its failure must have become known; and selling what we have bought to any one, for anything, is hopeless, even if it were honest. We left home on a mad enterprise, and have failed. The only hope left us, the only one end for which we have now to try, is to quit this settlement for ever, and get back to England. Anyhow! by any means! only to get back there, Mark.’
‘That’s all, sir,’ returned Mr Tapley, with a significant stress upon the words; ‘only that!’
‘Now, upon this side of the water,’ said Martin, ‘we have but one friend who can help us, and that is Mr Bevan.’
‘I thought of him when you was ill,’ said Mark.
‘But for the time that would be lost, I would even write to my grandfather,’ Martin went on to say, ‘and implore him for money to free us from this trap into which we were so cruelly decoyed. Shall I try Mr Bevan first?’
‘He’s a very pleasant sort of a gentleman,’ said Mark. ‘I think so.’