I wrote to my best friend in Paris, begging her to send her own doctor to our poor boy, and to let me know the whole truth immediately. The answer was reassuring—the crisis was past; there was nothing to fear now, only the patient would remain weak for some time, and would require great care. His friends—particularly one of them, a student of medicine—had nursed him intelligently and devotedly. As soon as he could take a little food my friend sent him delicacies and old wines, and when he could bear the railway he went to his grandmother's to await our return home.
We breathed again, and Aunt Susan and Annie left us comparatively quiet in mind.
My husband now went on with his work as fast as possible, for he longed to see his younger son again. When his notes for the "Graphic Arts" were completed, we made a round of visits to take leave of our friends, and after another short stay at Knapdale, where we had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Lockyer, and another very pleasant pilgrimage to Mr. and Mrs. Palmer's hermitage, we set off for Paris.
Mr. Seeley wrote shortly after our arrival in the French capital about several matters connected with the "Portfolio," and added: "How will you be able to settle down again in that little Autun? You will feel (as Robert Montgomery said of himself in Glasgow) like an oak in a flower-pot."
No, the oak liked to feel the pure air of the Morvan hills blowing about its head, and to spread its branches in unconfined space. It was in great crowded cities that it felt the pressure of the flower-pot.
On arriving at home we found Richard well again, and gifted with an extraordinary appetite—which was the restorative he most needed, having grown very thin and weak through his illness.
My husband had been very desirous to present me with a souvenir of the success of "Etching and Etchers," and pressed me to choose a trinket, either a bracelet or a brooch; but I thought what I possessed already quite sufficient, and though very sensible of his kind thoughtfulness, I said that if he liked to make me a present, I would choose something useful,—a silk dress, for instance. "But that would not be a present," he said; "when you want a dress you buy it. I should like to offer you some pretty object which would last."
I knew that he liked to see me—and ladies in general—wearing jewels; not in great quantity, but simply as a touch of finish to the toilette. When I was young, he would have liked me (had it been possible) to dress always in white, and the fashions not being then so elaborate as they have become, it was easy enough in summer-time and in the country to indulge his taste. So in warm days I often wore a white muslin dress, quite plain, relieved only by a colored sash. If the sash happened to be green, he liked it to be matched by a set of crystal beads of the same color, which he had brought me from Switzerland when he had gone there with his aunt and uncle. When the ribbon was red, I was to wear corals, and with a blue one lapis-lazuli.
At last he remembered that I had admired some plain dead-gold bracelets of English make that we had been looking at together, not far from the National Gallery, and said he would be glad if I would choose one of them. I had, however, taken the same resolution about jewels as his own about pictures, and that was, to admire what was beautiful, but never to buy, because it was beyond our means. The resolution, once taken, left no way open to temptation. Still, I did not mean to deny myself the pleasure of accepting his proffered present, only I did not want it to be expensive, and since I had a sufficiency of jewels, "would he give me a pretty casket to put them in?" "Yes," he readily assented. And when I opened the casket of fair olive-wood, with the delicately wrought nickel clasps and lock, I found a folded paper laid on the dark-blue velvet tray, and having opened it read what follows—I need not say with what emotions.
"Here in this empty casket, instead of a diamond or pearl,
Instead of a gem I leave but a little rhyme.
She remembers the brooch and the bracelet I gave her when she was a
girl.
Deep blue from beyond the sea, not paler from lapse of time.
She will put them here in the casket, the ultramarine and the gold;
And if such a thing might be, I would give them to her twice over;
Once in my youthful hope, and now again when I'm old,
But alike in youth or in age with the heart and the soul of a lover."