Volume Two—Chapter Fourteen.
Another Prisoner.
The awakening of the Reverend Arthur Rosebury was not very much unlike that of the other prisoners. He, too, seemed to have been carried a long distance blindfolded, both in boat and litter; and it all appeared like a continuation of the dream in which he had been plunged since he first met Helen Perowne.
The hours he had spent in her company; the giving up of his little English home; his journey abroad; and his wild Eastern life, had all seemed dreamlike and strange; and it was quite, to his mind, in keeping therewith, that he should have been seized, blindfolded, and carried off by slaves for some reason or another; probably, he argued, because a rival was jealous of the favour in which he stood with Helen, who had only that night appointed him her special personal attendant.
It was all quite consistent with Eastern life and romance, and did not strike him as being at all peculiar, for the fact remains that, while the Reverend Arthur Rosebury was exceedingly clever as a student, and quite a master in his own particular subjects, he was weak as water in worldly matters; and, as his sister too well knew, in many things little better than a child. Add to this that the Reverend Arthur was, for the first time in his life, and at middle age, hopelessly infatuated with Helen, and it is not surprising that his weakness was extreme.
It was all, then, to him a matter of no wonderment, and he would have taken his position coolly enough had he been satisfied that Helen was not in danger. But of this he could not feel assured; and he was troubled in his dull, mild way accordingly. For love blinded him effectually to all Helen’s failings. She was beautiful, and she had looked kindly, almost lovingly upon him, more than once, and those tender looks redeemed all else. She flirted, she coquetted with others; she treated him with marked indifference and contempt; but she had made him love her, and he was one of those who, without reward, would go on patiently loving until the end.
He was a good deal troubled, then, in his own mind about Helen’s fate, for he had seen that she was, like him, seized; but in the confusion that followed, what afterwards took place he could not tell.
When he was able to think a little more clearly, he began to ask himself what he should do to help his companion in distress; and of course, ignorant of the fact that he might prove in his humble way a greater safeguard than either of her other admirers, there he stuck fast. What was he to do to help Helen?