One or two results, however, were not so speedily disposed of. Harold Atherstone's good right arm was of very little use to him during the ensuing half-year, the broken bones being somewhat tardy in uniting; and Bertram Devereux, through carelessness on his own part, had a relapse, and after hovering between life and death for several weeks, lay deathlike and slowly recovering in his room, needing the most careful and constant attendance to 'bring him through,' as Dr. Ryan expressed it himself. In this labour of love both mother and daughter were closely engaged for many a day after the event. It was the first time that Pollie's feminine instincts had been called into play by the necessity for personal service which a wounded soldier generally imposes upon the nearest available maiden. No situation, as persons of experience will admit, is more favourable to the development of the tender passion. The touching helplessness of the sufferer, the sense of possession and ownership, so to speak—albeit temporary—the allowable exaggeration of gratitude, the implied devotion: all these circumstances in combination render the relative positions of maiden fair and helpless knight so extremely suitable for mutual attachment, that the blind archer rarely fails to score an inner gold.
So, during the patient hours when the heavy eyes were closed, when the pale brow required bathing with eau de Cologne, when the spasm of pain contracted the features, when the restless fever-tossed frame lay helpless, the heart of the maiden, unfolding flower-like, grew tender and loving. She persuaded herself that a fate mightier than themselves had decreed their union. She awaited but the avowal which his eyes had long made, but which his lips had not yet confirmed, to acknowledge herself his own for ever, in life or death, here in her native land or in the unknown regions beyond the sea.
After much consideration Miss Devereux had sagely concluded that Bertram was the only man she had ever met who inspired her with feelings of sufficiently romantic intensity, who aroused in her as yet untouched heart the longing and the dread, the joy and the mystery, the strange, inexplicable, subtly compounded essence which the poets in all ages have termed love.
Why it should be so she was unable to comprehend. She told herself that he was not so strong and true as this adorer, so clever as that, or so amusing as the other; but still, why was it? Who can tell? who explain the birth of fancy, the apparition of love? But she chose to make him her hero. And if she so willed it, who was there to gainsay her?
Among the other privileges which her nursing sisterhood permitted was that of receiving and bringing in the letters of her patient. About these he had always been reticent, never encouraging conversation thereon, or admitting that any patently feminine superscriptions were not those of his mother, sisters, or cousins.
Among those which arrived by the monthly mail-steamer was one, the peculiar handwriting of which Pollie remembered having noticed at an earlier period of his sojourn. The characters were delicately formed, but the abrupt terminal strokes indicated, as she thought, no ordinary degree of determination, even obstinacy of purpose.
'Ah! my cousin Eleanor,' he said with a faint smile, as she held up the letter; 'she is my most regular, most useful correspondent. Poor little Nellie, how she would stare to see me lying here! She was my best friend when I was a graceless schoolboy, and takes an interest in the poor exile now.' He opened the other letters one by one, but did not seem to avail himself of this one. 'It will keep,' he said carelessly. 'Country news, for which I am losing my relish, poachers and pheasants, hunting and coursing, quite a journal of village historiettes.'
'A good correspondent, evidently,' said Pollie. 'Judging from the thickness of the letters, she deserves some gratitude. But when we women harness ourselves to a man's chariot, that is the treatment we chiefly receive.'
'That we are always over-indulged,' he answered, with a faint smile and a meaning look, 'I am the last man living to deny. But what must we do? It is cruel to refuse kind offices, the mere acceptance of which so gratifies the donor.'
'It may be so,' assented the girl thoughtfully, 'but the bare suspicion that my offering was tolerated would madden me. "All or nothing" is the Devereux motto, and it seems to embody the family temperament.'