He was back! He was safe! He was alive! Oh, the long, long night of silence through the black darkness of which she had miserably groped! The weary, weary weeks of waiting and wondering, hoping and fearing, longing and doubting! But her prayers had been answered—and she was about to see him. . . . And if he were shattered and broken? She could almost find it in her heart to hope he was—that she might spend her life in guarding, helping, comforting him. He would need her, and oh, how she yearned to be needed, she who had never yet been really needed by man, woman, or child. . . .
“Mother!” said Miss Stayne-Brooker, as she went in to lunch. “What a bright, gay girlie you look! . . . Here’s a note from that Mr. Greene of yours. He says:
‘Dear Miss Stayne-Brooker,
‘I am passing through Mombasa, and am now on board the Madras. I can’t come and see you—do you think you’d let your mother bring you to see me’—he’s crossed that out and put ‘see the Hospital Ship Madras’—‘it might interest you. I have written to ask if she’d care to come. Do—could you?
‘Always your grateful servant,
‘Bertram Greene.’
But I am playing golf with Reggie and having tea with him at the Club, you know.”
“All right, dear. I’ll go and see the poor boy.”
“That’s right, darling. You won’t mind if I don’t, will you? . . . He’s your friend, you know.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Stayne-Brooker, “he’s my friend,” and Miss Stayne-Brooker wondered at the tone of her mother’s voice. . . . (Poor old Mums; she made quite a silly of herself over this Mr. Greene!)
§5
Having blessed and rewarded the worthy Ali, returned dove-like to the Madras, Bertram possessed his soul with what patience he could, and sought distraction from the gnawing tooth of anxiety by watching the unfamiliar life of a hospital-ship. . . .
Suppose Eva Stayne-Brooker could not come! Suppose the ship sailed unexpectedly early! . . .