Page:Quartette - Kipling (1885).djvu/28

 The planter showed always towards me a certain rough kindness, though I believe in his heart he rather despised me that I did not sooner shake off the grip of illness, and bestir me like a man; and gave me a friendly greeting night and morning; but the whole long languid days belonged to Laura and to me as absolutely as though we had been the only created man and woman, and the cool shade of her room the lonely bowers of Eden.

Long, monotonous, delightful days grew to weeks. I had recovered my strength, and with health so much mastery of myself that I had thrust into the background the passion which, at one time, had threatened to overpower honour, truth, and all the good impulses of my nature. I know now, even better than I did then, with what devotion I worshipped the best and sweetest woman I have ever known. But this is not a love-story, and there came a time, all too quickly, when I found my only consolation under an overwhelming grief in the knowledge that no breath of mine had ever dimmed the pure mirror of her soul.

The moist unhealthy heat of the rainy season tried Laura's feeble strength to the utmost; and one attack of fever after another so far reduced her that in his alarm her husband promised to make arrangements for taking her to England early in the following spring. I would go with them, I declared; and we discussed our plans day after day with an eagerness that never failed, and Laura and I talked like happy children of the sights we would see together in the lovely garden-land of England. In the prospect of again seeing her old home, Laura revived and brightened wonderfully. Her step was lighter, her cheek less pale, and her constant reference to home showed how close the hope lay in her heart.

She whispered of it to her year-old baby, and declared that the little creature understood what was in store for it as well as we did. "Oh!" she said one day, with a little impetuous burst that startled me; "nothing shall keep me now! I would cross the land barefoot; I would swim the sea, rather than not go! You never knew," she went on, misreading the expression of my face, "that I cared so much about home? Why, when I hear of the poor creatures who make a vow to measure with their bodies the miles that lie between them and some shrine if only the goddess will give them their heart's desire, I feel that I could do the same if by so doing I could reach my England!"