Gone

I wonder if many married couples are quite as happy as we found
ourselves. Cynics, a growing class, declare that few illusions can
survive a honeymoon. Well, I do not know about it, for I only married
once, and can but speak from my limited experience. But certainly our
illusion, or rather the great truth of which it is the shadow, did
survive, as to this day it survives in my heart across all the years of
utter separation, and across the unanswering gulf of gloom.

But complete happiness is not allowed in this world even for an hour.
As our marriage day had been shadowed by the scene which has been
described, so our married life was shadowed by its own sorrow.

Three days after our wedding Mr. Carson had a stroke. It had been long
impending, now it fell. We came into the centre hut to dinner and found
him lying speechless on the couch. At first I thought that he was dying,
but this was not so. On the contrary, within four days he recovered his
speech and some power of movement. But he never recovered his memory,
though he still knew Stella, and sometimes myself. Curiously enough he
remembered little Tota best of all three, though occasionally he thought
that she was his own daughter in her childhood, and would ask her where
her mother was. This state of affairs lasted for some seven months.
The old man gradually grew weaker, but he did not die. Of course his
condition quite precluded the idea of our leaving Babyan Kraals till all
was over. This was the more distressing to me because I had a nervous
presentiment that Stella was incurring danger by staying there, and also
because the state of her health rendered it desirable that we should
reach a civilized region as soon as possible. However, it could not be
helped.