They were, however, not betrothed when the war burst upon Europe, and Henry, then one - and twenty, went from the Officers' Training Corps to the Fifth Devons, while his cousin became attached to the Red Cross and nursed at Plymouth.The accident terminated their shadowy romance and brought real love into the woman's life, while the man found his hopes at an end.He was drafted to Mesopotamia, speedily fell sick of jaundice, was invalided to India, and, on returning to the front, saw service against the Turks.But chance willed that he won no distinction.He did his duty under dreary circumstances, while to his hatred of war was added the weight of his loss when he heard that Mary had fallen in love.He was an ingenuous, kindly youth - a typical Lennox, who had developed an accomplishment at Harrow and suffered for it by getting his nose broken when winning the heavy - weight championship of the public schools inhis nineteenth year.In the East he still boxed, and after his love story was ended, the epidemic of poetry-making took Henry also, and he wrote a volume of harmless verse, to the undying amazement of his family.
For Mary Lennox the war had brought a sailor husband.Captain Thomas May, wounded rather severely at Jutland, lost his heart to the plain but attractive young woman with a fine figure who nursed him back to strength, and, as he vowed, had saved his life.He was an impulsive man of thirty, brown-bearded, black-eyed, and hot-tempered.He came from a little Somerset vicarage and was the only son of a clergyman, the Rev.Septimus May.Knowing the lady as "Nurse Mary" only, and falling passionately in love for the first time in his life, he proposed on the day he was allowed to sit up, and since Mary Lennox shared his emotions, also for the first time, he was accepted before he even knew her name.
It is impossible to describe the force of love's advent for Mary Lennox.She had come to believe herself as vaguely committed to her cousin, and imagined that her affection for Henry amounted to as much as she was ever likely to feel for a man.But reality awakened her, and its glory did not make her selfish, since her nature was not constructed so to be; it only taught her what love meant, and convinced her that she could never marry anybody on earth but the stricken sailor.And this she knew long before he was well enough to give a sign that he even appreciated her ministry.The very whisper of his voice sent a thrill through her before he had gained strength to speak aloud.And his deep tones, when she heard them, were like no voice that had fallen on her ear till then.The first thing that indicated restoring health was his request that his beard might be trimmed; and he was making love to her three days after he had been declared out of danger.Then did Mary begin to live, and looking back, she marvelled how horses and dogs and a fishing-rod had been her life till now.The revelation bewildered her and she wrote her emotions in many long pages to her cousin.The causes of such changes she did not indeed specify, but he read between the lines, and knew it was a man and not the war that had so altered and deepened her outlook.He had never done it, and he could not be angry with her now, for she had pretended no ardor of emotion to him.Young though he was, he always feared that she liked him not afterthe way of a lover.He had hoped to open her eyes some day, but it was given to another to do so.
He felt no surprise, therefore, when news of her engagement reached him from herself.He wrote the letter of his life in reply, and was at pains to laugh at their boy-and-girl attachment, and lessen any regret she might feel on his account.Her father took it somewhat hardly at first, for he held that more than sufficient misfortunes, to correct the balance of prosperity in his favor, had already befallen him.But he was deeply attached to his daughter, and her magical change under the new and radiant revelation convinced him that she had now awakened to an emotional fulness of life which could only be the outward sign of love.That she was in love for the first time also seemed clear; but he would not give his consent until he had seen her lover and heard all there was to know about him.That, however, did not alarm Mary, for she believed that Thomas May must prove a spirit after Sir Walter's heart.And so he did.The sailor was a gentleman; he had proposed without the faintest notion to whom he offered his penniless hand, and when he did find out, was so bewildered that Mary assured her father she thought he would change his mind.
"If I had not threatened him with disgrace and breach of promise, I do think he would have thrown me over," she said.
And now they had been wedded for six months, and Mary sat by the great log fire with her hand in Tom's.The sailor was on leave, but expected to return to his ship at Plymouth in a day or two.Then his father- in-law had promised to visit the great cruiser, for the Navy was a service of which he knew little.Lennoxes had all been soldiers or clergymen since a great lawyer founded the race.
The game of billiards proceeded, and Henry caught his uncle in the eighties and ran out with an unfinished fifteen.Then Ernest Travers and his wife - old and dear friends of Sir Walter - played a hundred up, the lady receiving half the game.Mr.Travers was a Suffolk man, and had fagged for Sir Walter at Eton.Their comradeship had lasted a lifetime, and no year passed without reciprocal visits.Travers also looked at life with the eyes of a wealthy man.He was sixty-five, pompous, large, andrubicund - a "backwoodsman" of a pattern obsolescent.His wife, ten years younger than himself, loved pleasure, but she had done more than her duty, in her opinion, and borne him two sons and a daughter.They were colorless, kind-hearted people who lived in a circle of others like themselves.The war had sobered them, and at an early stage robbed them of their younger boy.
