[CHAPTER XV.]
RICHARD AND I MEET AGAIN.
"For life, with all its yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear,
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love—
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."
——Robert Browning.
"Dying is easy; keep thou steadfast.
The greater part, to live and to endure."
——Mrs. Hamilton King, The Disciples.
"When Calumny's foul dart thy soul oppresses,
Think'st thou the venomed shaft could poison me?
No! the world's scorn, still more than its caresses,
Shall bind me closer, O my love, to thee.
"Should the days darken, and severe affliction
Close whelming o'er us like a stormy sea,
Love shall transform them into benedictions
Binding me closer, O my love, to thee."
* * * * *
"When truth or virtue an affront endures,
The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours;
Mine as a friend to every worthy mind,
And mine as man who feels for all mankind."
——Pope.
Just as I was getting into despair, and thinking whether I should go and be a Sister of Charity (May, 1859), as the appearance of Speke alone in London was giving me the keenest anxiety, and as I heard that Richard was staying on in Zanzibar, in the hopes of being allowed to return into Africa, I was very sore.[1]
On May 22nd, 1859, I chanced to call upon a friend. I was told she was gone out, but would be in to tea, and was asked if I would wait. I said, "Yes;" and in about five minutes another ring came to the door, and another visitor was also asked to wait. The door was opened, and I turned round, expecting to see my friend. Judge of my feelings when I beheld Richard. For an instant we both stood dazed, and I cannot attempt to describe the joy that followed. He had landed the day before, and came to London, and now he had come to call on this friend to know where I was living, where to find me. No one will wonder if I say that we forgot all about her and tea, and that we went downstairs and got into a cab, and took a long drive.
I felt like one stunned; I only knew that he put me in and told the cabman to drive. I felt like a person coming to after a fainting fit or in a dream. It was acute pain, and for the first half-hour I found no relief. I would have given worlds for tears or breath; neither came, but it was absolute content, which I fancy people must feel the first few moments after the soul is quit of the body. The first thing that happened was, that we mutually drew each other's pictures out from our respective pockets at the same moment, which, as we had not expected to meet, showed how carefully they had been kept.
After that, we met constantly, and he called upon my parents. I now put our marriage seriously before them, but without success as regards my mother.
I shall never forget Richard as he was then; he had had twenty-one attacks of fever, had been partially paralyzed and partially blind; he was a mere skeleton, with brown yellow skin hanging in bags, his eyes protruding, and his lips drawn away from his teeth. I used to give him my arm about the Botanical Gardens for fresh air, and sometimes convey him almost fainting to our house, or friends' houses, who allowed and encouraged our meeting, in a cab.
The Government and the Royal Geographical Society looked coldly on him; the Indian army brought him under the reduction; he was almost penniless, and he had only a few friends to greet him. Speke was the hero of the hour, the Stanley of 1859-1864. This was one of the martyrdoms of that uncrowned King's life, and I think but that for me he would have died.