De Blacquaire went stumping along on his crutches in the weak spring sunshine, and Polson and his father, by mere chance, were looking after him when he paused at the corner of the one important monument in the grounds, and raised his forage cap to some person as yet unseen.
There is a sort of legend often taught in verse and fiction to the effect that no one true lover can be near another without the presence being felt. But Polson had turned away when his father laid a hand upon his sleeve, and asked him, ‘Don’t you see who that is, Polly?’ And the lad, turning, saw the goddess of his dreams. It was Irene, and he recognised her face almost without surprise, for it flashed upon him instantly that her voice had sounded through all his fevered dreams since he had first laid his head upon the clean, sweet-smelling hospital pillow. The girl was dressed in black, and her slight figure looked the slighter for its garb. She came forward with a smile in her eyes, and with a quickened step.
‘I’ve kept my promise,’ said Jervase the elder, ‘and I haven’t spoke a word.’ And with that he exhibited a tact he had not shown before, and walked smartly away, leaving the boy and girl together.
‘I have wanted to see you,’ she said amply, ‘but I have kept away until I could be sure of bringing you good news. You know that my father is here?’
‘I saw him on Lord Raglan’s Staff at the Alma,’ said Polson, ‘and I have heard about him since from time to time.’
De Blacquaire was hobbling away on his crutches towards the hospital, and by this time was barely visible. Jervase in his black broadcloth and shining silk hat brandished his umbrella in the rear, and there was not another soul in sight.
‘I knew you, dear,’ said Polson. ‘I have had your voice and hand about me for a month past.’
‘I came out with my father,’ said Irene, ‘more than a year ago. Lord Raglan gave him some sort of work to do at the Embassy at Constantinople to begin with, and when the fighting began he was attached to the Staff and I was left behind. So I turned to the hospital and I have been at work here for a year and more.’
He forgot his wound, and stood upright with the crutch stick in one hand and held out both arms to her.
‘I haven’t the least little bit of a right, my dear,’ he said, but she laughed tenderly, and ran to the offered shelter. All around were the unlettered, turbaned memorials of the dead, and there was just this one bit of youth and love in the middle of that record of a thousand tragedies.