Perhaps nobody who had seen Denham Ivor only in society or on parade would have singled him out as likely to be a good nurse. A modern trained nurse would have found much to complain of in his methods, and not a little to arouse her laughter. Many of his arrangements were highly masculine: the room was never in order; and whatever he used he commonly plumped down in the most unlikely places.
But his patience and attention never failed; he never forgot essentials; he never seemed to think of himself or to require rest. Day after day he stayed in that upstairs room, only once in the twenty-four hours going out for a short walk, that he might report Roy's condition to Colonel Baron, meeting the latter, and standing a few yards from him. If Roy was able to get a short sleep, Denham used that opportunity to do the same; but in some mysterious way he always contrived to be awake before Roy. His handsome bronzed face grew less bronzed with the confinement and lack of exercise.
No one beside himself and the doctor entered the room, except a wizened old Frenchwoman, herself frightful from the same dire disease, who was hired to come in each morning, while Ivor was out, that she might put things straight.
Then tokens of improvement began, and Colonel Baron sent a letter home which cheered Molly's heart. But later violent inflammation of one ear set in. For days and nights the boy suffered tortures, and sleep was impossible for him or for his attendant. Roy in his weakness sometimes cried bitterly with the pain, always begging that Molly might never be told. "She'd think me so girlish," he said, while tears rolled down his thin cheeks, marked by half a dozen red pits.
In the midst of this trouble, a terrible blow fell upon Ivor, in the shape of a stern official notice, desiring him to consider himself a prisoner of war, and at once to render his parole.
Ivor was commonly a calm-mannered man, with that quietness which means the determined holding down of a far from placid nature. Some words of fierce wrath broke from him that day. He was compelled to go and give his parole, infection or no infection; and indignant utterances were exchanged between him and Colonel Baron, whom he chanced to meet on the same errand. Then he had to hasten back to the boy, with a heavy weight at his heart.
It meant to Ivor, not only indefinite separation from Polly, but also a complete deadlock in his military career.
He was passionately attached to Polly. He was not less ardently attached to his Chief. If one half of his spare thoughts was given to a future with Polly for his wife, the other half was given to a future of campaigning under Moore.
Had imprisonment come in the ordinary way, through reverse or capture in actual warfare, he would have borne it more easily. The sense of injustice rankled. He foresaw, too, the complications likely to arise, and the possibility of long delay in the exchange of prisoners. As he patiently tended the boy, his brain went round at the thought of his position, and that of Colonel Baron.
Three or four more days of strain, and then the abscess in the ear broke, causing speedy relief. The first thing Roy did was to fall into a profound sleep. When he woke up, feeling much better, his murmur was as usual for "Den!" No answer came.