‘Oh! I have to like it, or be separated from my husband, which I could not endure. After all, the life up here is not unendurable. The winter is pleasant enough. And in the hottest part of the summer we get away to the coast for a month or two. It’s not so bad as one would think. We visit about among ourselves. There are a few nice families, and the young people have polo, racing, and an occasional ball. We see many English people of good family from time to time—more perhaps than in the older communities—and manage to exist very tolerably.’
. . . . . . . . .
So the day and the long night in the train passed not uncomfortably. At the stopping stages refreshments were procurable.
The wearied women slept soundly at intervals, and as the morning broke, and found them still speeding across the interminable waste, the cool breeze, after they had dressed and breakfasted, refreshed them considerably. Mrs. Banneret began to lose the haggard air as of one expectant of evil—of nameless dread, and responded to her companion’s efforts to induce a more cheerful frame of mind.
. . . . . . . . .
Pilot Hill was descried at last—the township reached; and then a journey had to be taken by coach, for of course the mail service had been contracted for by an American firm. Fast coaches, with well-fed horses, had succeeded to the slow [111] ]and toilsome waggonette-travelling. Short stages were alone thought of, and with only a minimum of discomfort Mrs. Banneret found herself at the Royal Palace Hotel, where a note written with a very shaky hand awaited her:—
My darling Wife—I tried my best to prevent your taking this unnecessary journey—you will own—but, as usual, you would have your own way. A week ago it looked as if you would arrive just in time to see my grave—in the cemetery, which is filling all too quickly. Now, thanks to Mrs. Lilburne and Dr. Horton, you will discover what is left of me. I must leave off, and lie down to gather strength to welcome you.—Always your fond husband, Arnold Banneret.
The woman knelt down in the queer little bedroom, where she and her luggage—dust-covered and travel-stained—had been deposited, and poured forth her thanks to that Great Being who had once again listened to her prayer, and restored him for whose love and companionship she chiefly lived. Only allowing the shortest interval for adjustment of dress and removal of dust, Marcia Banneret hardly waited for a guide to the hospital. That reached, she walked quietly into the convalescent ward, and kneeling by the bed which held a wasted, pallid, altered man, whom she hardly at first recognised as her husband, she flung herself on her knees, and sobbed out her love for him and gratitude to the Most High—almost in the same breath.
How changed from the strong man whom she last saw at their old home!—a man whom travel, toil, privation of any ordinary kind, in whatever weather it might be—winter storm or summer [112] ]heat—seemed but to refresh and invigorate. And now, how shrunken, nerveless, emaciated!—every trace of colour fled from his bronzed cheek, and supplanted by the saffron hue which confinement of any kind conjoined with disease brings even to the most robust.
Was this indeed Arnold Banneret? When he saw himself in the glass he hardly recognised his own features.