Our voyage was soon completed, and we entered the port of —— amid the salvos of the batteries and the merry peals of the various convent bells. The governor came off to our fleet, almost before we had dropped our anchors, and bestowed rewards on the spot on those of his troops who had peculiarly distinguished themselves. He came at once to my cot, and would have carried me home to the government-house, but Mr. Neville, the uncle of the fair girl whom I had saved from the desperadoes, having attended his excellency on board, insisted that I should accept the hospitalities of his home.
“Well,” said his excellency, with a meaning smile, “I must give him up, for, as you say, mine is but a bachelor establishment, and hired nurses, however good, do not equal those who are actuated by gratitude. But I must insist that my own physician shall attend him.”
I was still too weak to take any part in this controversy, and although I made at first a feeble objection to trespassing on Mr. Neville’s kindness, he only smiled in reply, and I found myself, in less than an hour, borne to his residence, without having an opportunity to expostulate.
What a relief it is, when suffering with illness, to be transported from a close, dirty cabin to a large room and tidy accommodations! How soothing to a sick man are those thousand little conveniencies and delicacies which only the hand of woman can supply, and from which the sufferer on shipboard is debarred! The well-aired bed linen; the clean and tidy apartment; the flowers placed on the stand opposite the bed; the green jalousies left half open to admit the cooling breeze; the delicious rose-water sprinkled around the room, and giving it an aromatic fragrance; and the orange, or tamarind, or other delicacy ever ready within reach to cool the fevered mouth, and remind you of the ceaseless care which thus anticipates your every want. All these, and even more, attested the kindness of my host’s family. Yet everything was done in so unobtrusive a manner that, for a long while, I was ignorant to whom I was indebted for this care. I saw no one but the nurse, the physician, and Mr. and Mrs. Neville. But I could not help fancying that there were others who sometimes visited my sick chamber, although as yet I had never been able to detect them, except by the fresh flowers which they left every morning as evidences of their presence. More than once, on suddenly awaking from sleep, I fancied I heard a light footstep retreating behind my bed, and once I distinguished the tone of a low sweet voice which sounded on my ear, tired as it was of the grating accents of the nurse, like music from Paradise. Often, too, I heard, through the half open blinds that concealed the entrance to a neighboring room, the sounds of a harp accompanied by a female voice; and, at such times, keeping my eyes closed lest I should be thought awake and the singer thus be induced to stop, I have listened until my soul seemed fairly “lapped into Elysium.” The memory of that ample apartment, with its spotless curtains and counterpanes, and the wind blowing freshly through its open jalousies, is as vivid in my memory to-day as it was in the hour when I lay there, listening to what seemed the seraphic music of that unseen performer. I hear yet that voice, so soft and yet so silvery, now rising clear as the note of a lark, and now sinking into a melody as liquid as that of flowing water, yet ever, in all its variations, sweet, and full, and enrapturing. Such a voice I used to dream of in childhood as belonging to the angels in heaven. Our dreams are not always wrong!
At length I was sufficiently recruited in strength to be able to sit up, and I shall ever remember the delicious emotions of the hour when I first took a seat by the casement and looked out into the garden, then fragrant with the dew of the early morning. I saw the blue sky smiling overhead, I heard the low plashing of a fountain in front of my window, I inhaled the delicate perfume wafted to me by the refreshing breeze, and as I sat there my soul ran over, as it were, with its exceeding gladness, and I almost joined my voice, from very ecstasy, with that of the birds who hopped from twig to twig, carolling their morning songs. As I sat thus looking out, I heard a light footstep on the gravel walk without, and directly the light, airy form of a young girl emerged from a secluded walk of the garden, full in my view. As she came opposite my window she looked up as if inadvertently, for, catching my eye, she blushed deeply and cast her gaze on the ground. In a moment, however, she recovered herself, and advanced in the direction she had been pursuing. The first glance at the face had revealed to me the countenance of her I had been instrumental in rescuing from the pirates. My apartment, like all those on the island, was on the ground floor, and when Miss Neville appeared she was already within a few feet of me. I rose and bowed, and noticing that she held a bunch of newly gathered flowers in her hands, I said,
“It is your taste, then, Miss Neville, which has filled the vase in my room every morning with its flowers. You cannot know how thankful I am. Ah! would that all knew with what delight a sick person gazes on flowers!”
She blushed again, and extending the bouquet to me, said with something of gaiety,
“I little thought you would be up to-day, much less at so early an hour, or perhaps I might not have gathered your flowers. Since you can gaze on them from your window they will be less attractive to you when severed, like these, from their parent stem.”
“No—never,” I answered warmly, “indeed your undeserved kindness, and that of your uncle and aunt, I can never forget.”
She looked at me in silence with her large, full eye a moment ere she replied, and I could see that they grew humid as she gazed. Her voice, too, softened and sank almost to a whisper when at length she spoke.