On the morning after my arrival I had a long letter from Christine. It began ominously:
“I have a confession to make. Father has been far more indisposed than I would let you think. Do not blame me. I have acted under orders from him and from the doctor. Neither would hear of your recall. Not that this relapse is a dangerous matter. The ‘boils’ were a return of the old trouble. He has not left his bed for a fortnight. I thought it best to prepare you for seeing him there.”
An hour later I had a telegram from my brother:
“M. is decidedly worse. We apprehend heart-failure.”
Again I say, I would shorten the recital of how the clouds returned after the rain which we had believed would clear the atmosphere.
I was seated at the bedside of my husband, who aroused himself with difficulty to speak to me, as one shakes off a stupor, relapsing into slumber with the murmured welcome on his fevered lips, when a dispatch was brought to me from Richmond.
My sister-in-love had died that afternoon.
Five months to a day, from the beginning of my husband’s serious illness, he was brought down-stairs in the arms of a stalwart attendant, and lifted into a carriage for his first ride. We drove to the neighboring Central Park, and were threading the leafy avenues before the convalescent offered to speak. Then the tone was of one dazed into disbelief of what was before his eyes:
“The last time I was out of doors, the ground was covered with snow. I am like those that dream. I never knew until now what a beautiful place the world is!”
It was glorious in July verdure when we got him back to Sunnybank. There was no talk now of the saddle, and the briefest of drives fatigued him to faintness. Whatever the doctors might say as to the ultimate elimination of the hidden poison they had found so difficult to drive out, watchers, who had more at stake in the issue of his protracted illness, failed to see the proof that skill had effected what they claimed. After the glow of pleasure at getting home again subsided, he relapsed into the old lassitude and sad indifference to what was going on about him; his eyes were dull; his tone was lifeless; he seemed to have forgotten that he had ever had appetite for food.