The chief obstruction to Nina’s journey she experienced in the Campo San Luca itself. But in spite of her mother, in spite of the not yet defunct Austrian mandates, she did make her way to Verona. “As I was true in giving him up,” she said to herself, “so will I be true in clinging to him.”
Even in Verona her task was not easy, but she did at last find all that she sought. Captain von Vincke had been in command of a battery at Custozza, and was now lying wounded in an Austrian hospital. Nina contrived to see an old gray-haired surgeon before she saw Hubert himself. Captain von Vincke had been terribly mauled; so the surgeon told her; his left arm had been amputated, and—and—and—
It seemed as though wounds had been showered on him. The surgeon did not think that his patient would die; but he did think that he must be left in Verona when the Austrians were marched out of the fortress. “Can he not be taken to Venice?” said Nina Pepé.
At last she found herself by her lover’s bedside; but with her there were two hospital attendants, both of them worn-out Austrian soldiers—and there was also there the gray-haired surgeon. How was she to tell her love, all that she had in her heart, before such witnesses? The surgeon was the first to speak. “Here is your friend, captain,” he said; but as he spoke in German Nina did not understand him.
“Is it really you, Nina?” said her lover. “I could hardly believe that you should be in Verona.”
“Of course it is I. Who could have so much business to be in Verona as I have? Of course I am here.”
“But—but—what has brought you here, Nina?”
“If you do not know I cannot tell you.”
“And Carlo?”
“Carlo is still with the general; but he is well.”
“And the Signora?”
“She also is well; well, but not easy in mind while I am here.”
“And when do you return?”
“Nay; I cannot tell you that. It may be today. It may be tomorrow. It depends not on myself at all.”
He spoke not a word of love to her then, nor she to him, unless there was love in such greeting as has been here repeated. Indeed, it was not till after that first interview that he fully understood that she had made her journey to Verona, solely in quest of him. The words between them for the first day or two were very tame, as though neither had full confidence in the other; and she had taken her place as nurse by his side, as a sister might have done by a brother, and was established in her work—nay, had nearly completed her work, before there came to be any full understanding between them. More than once she had told herself that she would go back to Venice and let there be an end of it. “The great work of the war,” she said to herself, “has so filled his mind, that the idleness of his days in Venice and all that he did then, are forgotten. If so, my presence here is surely a sore burden to him, and I will go.” But she could not now leave him without a word of farewell. “Hubert,” she said, for she had called him Hubert when she first came to his bedside, as though she had been his sister, “I think I must return now to Venice. My mother will be lonely without me.”
At that moment it appeared almost miraculous to her that she should be sitting there by his bedside, that she should have loved him, that she should have had the courage to leave her home and seek him after the war, that she should have found him, and that she should now be about to leave him, almost without a word between them.
“She must be very lonely,” said the wounded man.
“And you, I think, are stronger than you were?”
“For me, I am strong enough. I have lost my arm, and I shall carry this gaping scar athwart my face to the grave, as my cross of honour won in the Italian war; but otherwise I shall soon be well.”
“It is a fair cross of honour.”
“Yes; they cannot rob us of our wounds when our service is over. And so you will go, Signorina?”
“Yes; I will go. Why should I remain here? I will go, and Carlo will return, and I will tend upon him. Carlo also was wounded.”
“But you have told me that he is well again.”
“Nevertheless, he will value the comfort of a woman’s care after his sufferings. May I say farewell to you now, my friend?” And she put her hand down upon the bed so that he might reach it. She had been with him for days, and there had been no word of love. It had seemed as though he had understood nothing of what she had done in coming to him; that he had failed altogether in feeling that she had come as a wife goes to a husband. She had made a mistake in this journey, and must now rectify her error with as much of dignity as might be left to her.
He took her hand in his, and held it for a moment before he answered her. “Nina,” he said, “why did you come hither?”
“Why did I come?”
“Why are you here in Verona, while your mother is alone in
