“My little Ruth, my poor little wife, life even for us is hard!”
“But it is simpler, it is the complications which put barbs on our arrows, the vague yearnings quivering in us ignorantly, not with the knowledgeable, healthy hammer-strokes of men’s anguish; and our bodies are nearer our souls. Think of Gwen with her unborn child under that heartful of unnameable pain! John, it’s only three o’clock—will you drive me into the town, the market is full on—I must see some women who are too stolid for nerves—oh—the letters, and one from Humphrey! John, he’s down with fever, and Brydon’s only half way through!
“‘Not a man-jack of the blacks—being mostly christianized—is worth his salt, only for Tolly we’d cave in altogether, the fellow’s a brick, and seems like developing the beginnings of an intellect, just in the nick of time too; never in all my life was I so knocked into a cocked hat as by this fever.’
“Look at the writing, John, it’s shocking.
“‘As for Brydon, he had a narrow squeak, he’s out of the bush now, but as weak as a rat. On the whole the sand flies are worse than the fever. Don’t dwell on this touch of fever to Gwen, it’s really of no consequence, but it’s an awful nuisance on account of the delay. From here we go on to a place about a hundred miles off, to where we have traced Broad. Hitherto the blacks have been friendly but beyond the hills I hear we are to look out for squalls. Don’t expect many letters after this, as the modes of conveyance are very casual and untrustworthy, neither can I count upon receiving our letters safely. I will hurry there and back with all possible speed. I know you will always see Gwen at least once a day.’
“See, John, I can hardly read it, what is it? Oh, ‘love for you’ and something for the rector I can hardly read.”
“We will go in on our way to the market; the ponies are at the door.”
Gwen was in her boudoir when Mrs. Fellowes went to her. She was sitting with a bundle of papers in her hand. She thrust them into a drawer, and ran and as it were got into the other woman’s arms, and lay there with a short audible movement of pain.
“Tell me just how you think my husband is,” she said. Mrs. Fellowes started. “Ah, you’re afraid too!” cried Gwen.
“Gwen, I know really very little; those attacks are always very sharp, hardly ever dangerous except with bad constitutions, John says—he has been reading up a medical book about African fevers.”