But Fanny Franklyn, as she now lay helpless on the couch, knew well that for her was prepared a home in the skies, and that the dear friends for whose presence she longed could only expect to meet her there. She looked very lovely even now that Death had set his seal on those delicate features. The dark eyes, though sunken, were still large and bright; the pale face looked fairer by contrast to the dark pencilled eyebrows and eyelashes; and the hectic flush on the cheek would have reminded her brother Henry of some words of the great preacher Henry Melvill.
He had heard him once when quite a youth preach a sermon at a church in London on behalf of the Brompton Hospital for diseases of the lungs, in which the preacher, during one of his eloquent bursts of oratory, exclaimed, "And consumption, that flings its brilliant mockery in the mother's eyes."
Poor mother, she had indeed heard of her daughter's serious illness, and yearned with all a mother's love to be near her to tend to her slightest wish. But half the globe stretched between them, and Mrs. Halford consoled herself with the thought that Fanny had a kind husband and loving children, who must be able to supply the place of a mother. But Mrs. Halford did not know all. Fanny, while able to write, had concealed from her mother the real nature of the disease which left no hope of recovery. Yes, her husband was kind, gentle, loving, and earnest in his endeavours to provide for all her wants; yet, as we know, there was in his character a weakness of principle, and want of attention to steadiness of purpose, which made his position always precarious. At the birth of her youngest boy, eighteen months before the time of which we write, he had made a venture in the mercantile world which had failed, and for a time ruin stared them in the face.
The anxiety Fanny suffered in her then delicate state of health, added to a cold which attacked her at the time, was too much for a frame already weakened by the relaxing climate of Melbourne. For with all its bright skies and its clear atmosphere, Australian air is not suited to those who require a bracing climate. It has its periods of scorching heat, and the fair faces of Australian girls lack the roses which adorn the cheeks of their sisters in England.
Perhaps if Fanny Franklyn could have visited her home during the first appearance of failing health her life might have been spared, but this was not to be; and at last her husband had been aroused to the fact that, although he could not spare her to go alone to her home in England, he must spare her to God.
Now that it was too late, Arthur Franklyn, acting as usual on impulse, expressed to the doctor his eager anxiety to take his dying wife to England.
"Cannot I take her home before the autumn, doctor?" he said; "we should arrive in England about April or May, just as the summer is beginning. I could start next week even, if you think she is strong enough for the voyage."
"Too soon, my dear sir; Mrs. Franklyn must not be in England before May at the earliest, and it is now the commencement of November. We must try and help her through the Australian summer if we can, and then if all is well you can start for England in February or March."
But as the doctor left Mr. Franklyn, he said to himself, almost angrily—
"What is the use of talking about going to England now? she'll never live to see March again, or even February, it's too late. What's the man been about not to see his wife's danger? I'm afraid he's got too many irons in the fire to do much good."