Ominous hours had come and gone; waves of gloom had surged in and receded, but never receded far enough. It was as though the rising and falling of some primæval storm was the background of all thought and life and its pandemonium of sound foretold the far-off heaving of some vast tidal wave, gathering its unearthly power as it swelled.
Coombe talking to his close friend in her few quiet hours at Eaton Square, found a support in the very atmosphere surrounding her.
"The world at war creates a prehistoric uproar," he said. "The earth called out of chaos to take form may have produced some such tempestuous crash. But there is a far-off glow—"
"You believe—something—I believe too. But the prehistoric darkness and uproar are so appalling. One loses hold." The Duchess leaned forward her voice dropping. "What do you know that I do not?"
"The light usually breaks in the East," Coombe answered.
"It is breaking in the West to-day. It has always been there and it has been spreading from the first. At any moment it may set the sky aflame."
For as time had gone on the world had beheld the colossal spectacle of a huge nation in the melting pot. And, as it was as a nation the composite result of the fusion of all the countries of the earth, the breath-suspended lookers-on beheld it in effect, passionately commercial, passionately generous, passionately sordid, passionately romantic, chivalrous, cautious, limited, bounded. As American wealth and sympathy poured in where need was most dire, bitterness became silent through sheer discretion's sake, when for no more honest reason. As the commercial tendency expressed itself in readiness and efficiency, sneering condemnation had become less loud.
"It will happen. It is the result of the ideals really," Coombe said further. "And it will come to pass at the exact psychological moment. If they had come in at the beginning they would have faced the first full force of the monstrous tidal wave of the colossal German belief in its own omnipotence—and they would have faced it unawakened, unenraged by monstrosities and half incredulous of the truth. It was not even their fight then—and raw fighters need a flaming cause. But the tower of agonies has built itself to its tottering height before their blazing eyes. Now it is their fight because it is the fight of the whole world. Others have borne the first fierce heat and burden of the day, but they will rush in young and untouched by calamity—bounding, shouting and singing. They will come armed with all that long-borne horrors and maddening human fatigue most need. I repeat—it will occur at the exact psychological moment. They will bring red-hot blood and furious unbounded courage— And it will be the end."
In fact Coombe waited with a tense sensation of being too tightly strung. He had hours when he felt that something might snap. But nothing must snap yet. He was too inextricably entangled in the arduous work even to go to Darreuch for rest. He did not go for weeks. All was well there however—marvellously well it seemed, even when he held in mind a letter from Robin which had ended:—
"He has not come back. But I am not afraid. I promised him I would never be afraid again."
In dark and tired hours he steadied himself with a singular half-realised belief that she would not—that somehow some strange thing would be left to her, whatsoever was taken away. It was because he felt as if he were nearing the end of his tether. He had become hypersensitive to noises, to the sounds in the streets, to the strain and grief in faces he saw as he walked or drove.
After lying awake all one night without a moment of blank peace he came down pale and saw that his hand shook as he held his coffee cup. It was a livid sort of morning and when he went out for the sake of exercise he found he was looking at each of the strained faces as if it held some answer to an unformed question. He realised that the tenseness of both mind and body had increased. For no reason whatever he was restrung by a sense of waiting for something—as if something were going to happen.
He went back to Coombe House and when he crossed the threshold he confronted the elderly unliveried man who had stood at his place for years—and the usually unperturbed face was agitated so nearly to panic that he stopped and addressed him.
"Has anything happened?"
"My lord—a Red Cross nurse—has brought"—he was actually quite unsteady—too unsteady to finish, for the next moment the Red Cross nurse was at his side—looking very whitely fresh and clean and with a nice, serious youngish face.
"I need not prepare you for good news—even if it is a sort of shock," she said, watching him closely. "I have brought Captain Muir back to you."
"You have brought—?" he exclaimed.
"He has been in one of the worst German prisons. He was left for dead on the field and taken prisoner. We must not ask him questions. I don't know why he is alive. He escaped, God knows how. At this time he does not know himself. I saw him on the boat. He asked me to take charge of him," she spoke very quickly. "He is a skeleton, poor boy. Come."
She led the way to his own private room. She went on talking short hurried sentences, but he scarcely heard her. This, then, was what he had been waiting for. Why had he not known? This tremendous thing was really not so tremendous after all because it had happened in other cases before— Yet he had never once thought of it.
"He would not let his wife or his mother see him until he looked more like himself," he heard the Red Cross nurse say as he entered the room.
Donal was lying stretched at full length on a sofa. He looked abnormally long, because he was so thin that he was, as the nurse had said, a skeleton. His face was almost a death's head, but his blue eyes looked out of their great hollow sockets clear as tarn water, and with the smile which Coombe would not have forgotten howsoever long life had dragged out.
"Be very careful!" whispered the nurse.
He knew he must be careful. Only the eyes were alive. The body was a collapsed thing. He seemed scarcely breathing,his voice was a thread.
"Robin!" Coombe caught as he bent close to him. "Robin!"
"She is well, dear boy!" How his voice shook! "I have taken care of her."
The light leaped up into the blue for a second. The next the lids dropped and the nurse sprang forward because he had slipped into a faint so much like death that it might well have rent hope from a looker-on.
For the next hour, and indeed for many following, there was unflagging work to be done. The Red Cross Nurse was a capable, swiftly moving woman, with her resources at her finger's ends, and her quick wits about her. Almost immediately two doctors from the staff, in charge of the rooms upstairs were on the spot and at work with her. By what lightning-flashed sentences she conveyed to them, without pausing for a second, the facts it was necessary for them to know, was incomprehensible to Coombe, who could only stand afar off and wait, watching the dead face. Its sunken temples, cheeks and eyes, and the sharply carven bone outline were heart gripping.
It seemed hours before one of the doctors as he bent over the couch whispered,
"The breathing is a little better—"
It was not possible that he should be moved, but the couch was broad and deeply upholstered and could be used temporarily as a bed. Every resource of medical science was within reach. Nurse Jones, who had been on her way home to take a rest, was so far ensnared by unusual interest that she wished to be allowed to remain on duty. There were other nurses who could be called on at any moment of either night or day. There were doctors of indisputable skill who were also fired by the mere histrionic features of the case. The handsome, fortunate young fellow who had been supposed torn to fragments had by some incomprehensible luck been aided to drag himself home—perhaps to die of pure exhaustion.
Was it really hours before Coombe saw the closed eyes weakly open? But the smile was gone and they seemed to be looking at something not in the room.
"They will come—in," the words dragged out scarcely to be heard. "Jackson—said—said—they—would." The eyes dropped again and the breathing was a mere flutter.
Nurse Jones was in fact filled with much curiosity concerning and interest in the Marquis of Coombe. She was a clever and well trained person, but socially a simple creature, who in an inoffensive way "loved a lord." If her work had not absorbed her she could not have kept her eyes from this finely conventional and rather unbending-looking man who—keeping himself out of the way of all who were in charge of the seemingly almost dead boy—still would not leave the room, and watched him with a restrained passion of such feeling as it was not natural to see in the eyes of men. Marquis or not he had gone through frightful things in his life and this boy meant something tremendous to him. If he couldn't be brought back—! Despite the work her swift eye darted sideways at the Marquis.
When at length another nurse took her place and she was going out of the room, he moved quickly towards her and spoke.
"May I ask if I may speak to you alone for a few minutes? I have no right to keep you from your rest. I assure you Iwon't."
"I'll come," she answered. What she saw in the man's face was that, because she had brought the boy, he actually clung to her. She had been clung to many times before, but never by a man who looked quite like this. There wasmorethan you could see.
He led her to a smaller room near by. He made her sit down, but he did not sit himself. It was plain that he did not mean to keep her from her bed—though he was in hard case if ever man was. His very determination not to impose on her caused her to make up her mind to tell him all she could, though it wasn't much.
"Captain Muir's mother believes that he is dead," he said. "It is plain that no excitement must approach him—even another person's emotion. He was her idol. She is in London.MustI send for her—or would it be safe to wait?"
"There have been minutes to-day when if I'd known he had a mother I should have said she must be sent for," was her answer. "To-night I believe—yes, Ido—that it would be better to wait and watch. Of course the doctors must really decide."
"Thank you. I will speak to them. But I confess I wanted to askyou." How he did cling to her!
"Thank you," he said again. "I will not keep you."
He opened the door and waited for her to pass—as if she had been a marchioness herself, she thought. In spite of his desperate eyes he didn't forget a single thing. He so moved her that she actually turned back.
"You don't know anything yet— Some one you're fond of coming back from the grave must make you half mad to know how it happened," she said. "I don't know much myself, but I'll tell you all I was able to find out. He was light headed when I found him trying to get on the boat. When I spoke to him he just caught my hand and begged me to stay with him. He wanted to get to you. He'd been wandering about, starved and hiding. If he'd been himself he could have got help earlier. But he'd been ill treated and had seen things that made him lose his balance. He couldn't tell a clear story. He was too weak to talk clearly. But I asked questions now and then and listened to every word he said when he rambled because of his fever. Jackson was a fellow prisoner who died of hemorrhage brought on by brutality. Often I couldn't understand him, but he kept bringing in the name of Jackson. One thing puzzled me very much. He said several times 'Jackson taught me to dream of Robin. I should never have seen Robin if I hadn't known Jackson.' Now 'Robin' is a boy's name—but he said 'her' and 'she' two or three times as if it were a girl's."
"Robin is his wife," said Coombe. He really found the support of the door he still held open, useful for the moment.
An odd new interest sharpened in her eyes.
"Then he's been dreaming of her." She almost jerked it out—as if in sudden illumination almost relief. "He's been dreaming of her—! And it may have kept him alive." She paused as if she were asking questions of her own mind. "I wonder," dropped from her in slow speculation, "if she has been dreaming ofhim?"
"He was not dead—he was not an angel—he was Donal!" Robin had persisted from the first. He had not been dead. In some incredibly hideous German prison—in the midst of inhuman horrors and the blackness of what must have been despair—he had been alive, and had dreamed as she had.
Nurse Jones looked at him, waiting. Even if nurses had not been, presumably, under some such bond of honourable secrecy as constrained the medical profession, he knew she was to be trusted. Her very look told him.
"She did dream of him," he said. "She was slipping fast down the slope to death and he caught her back. He saved her life and her child's. She was going to have a child."
They were both quite silent for a few moments. The room was still. Then the woman drew her hand with a quick odd gesture across her forehead.
"Queer things happened in the last century, but queerer ones are going to happen in this—if people will let them. Doctors and nurses see and think a lot they can't talk about. They're always on the spot at what seems to be the beginning and the ending. These black times have opened up the ways. 'Queer things,' I said," with sudden forcefulness. "They're not queer. It's only laws we haven't known about. It's the writing on the scroll that we couldn't read. We're just learning the alphabet." Then after a minute more of thought, "Those two—were they particularly fond of each other—more to each other than most young couples?"
"They loved each other the hour they first met—when they were little children. It was an unnatural shock to them both when they were parted. They seemed to be born mated for life."
"That was the reason," she said quite relievedly. "I can understand that. It's as orderly as the stars." Then she added with a sudden, strong, quite normal conviction, and her tiredness seemed to drop from her, "He won't die—that beautiful boy," she said. "He can't. It's not meant. They're going on, those three. He's the most splendid human thing I ever handled—skeleton as he is. His very bones are magnificent as he lies there. And that smile of his that's deep in the blue his eyes are made of—it can only flicker up for a second now—but it can't go out. He's safe, even this minute, though you mayn't believe it."
"I do believe it," Coombe said.
And he stood there believing it, when she went through the open door and left him.
It was long before the dropped eyelids could lift and hold themselves open for more than a few seconds and long before the eyes wore their old clear look. The depths of the collapse after prolonged tortures of strain and fear was such as demanded a fierce and unceasing fight of skill and unswerving determination on the part of both doctors and nurses. There were hours when what seemed to be strange, deathly drops into abysses of space struck terror into most of those who stood by looking on. But Nurse Jones always believed and so did Coombe.
"You needn't send for his mother yet," she said without flinching. "You and I know something the others don't know, Lord Coombe. That child and her baby are holding him back though they don't know anything about it."
It revealed itself to him that her interest in things occult and apparently unexplained by material processes had during the last few years intensely absorbed her in private. Her feeling, though intense, was intelligent and her processes of argument were often convincing. He became willing to answer her questions because he felt sure of her. He lent her the books he had been reading and in her hard-earned hours of leisure she plunged deep into them.
"Perhaps I read sometimes when I ought to be sleeping, but it rests me—I tell you itrestsme. I'm finding out that there's strength outside of all this and you can draw on it. It's there waiting," she said. "Everybody will know about its being there—in course of time."
"But the time seems long," said Coombe.
Concerning the dream she had many interesting theories. She was at first disturbed and puzzled because it had stopped. She was anxious to find out whether it had come back again, but, like Lord Coombe, she realised that Robin's apparent calm must on no account be disturbed. If her health-giving serenity could be sustained for a certain length of time, the gates of Heaven would open to her. But at first Nurse Jones asked herself and Lord Coombe some troubled questions.
It came about at length that she appeared one night, in the room where their first private talk had taken place and she had presented herself on her way to bed, because she had something special to say.
"It came to me when I awakened this morning as if it had been told to me in the night. Things often seem to come that way. Do you remember, Lord Coombe, that she said they only talked about happy things?"
"Yes. She said it several times," Coombe answered.
"Do you remember that he never told her where he came from? And she knew that she must not ask questions? Howcouldhe have told her of that hell—how could he?"
"You are right—quite!"
"I feel sure I am. When he can talk he will tell you—if he remembers. I wonder how much they remember—except the relief and the blessed happiness of it? Lord Coombe, I believe as I believe I'm in this room, that when he knew he was going to face the awful risk of trying to escape, he knew he mustn't tell her. And he knew that in crawling through dangers and hiding in ditches he could never be sure of being able to lie down to sleep and concentrate on sending his soul to her. So he told her that he might not come for some time. Oh, lord! If he'd been caught and killed he could never— No! No!" obstinately, "even then he would have got back in some form—in some way. I've got to the point of believing as much as that. He was hers!"
"Yes. Yes. Yes," was all his slow answer. But there was deep thought in each detached word and when she went away he walked up and down the room with leisurely steps, looking down at the carpet.
As many hours of the day and night as those in authority would allow him Lord Coombe sat and watched by Donal's bed. He watched from well hidden anxiousness to see every subtle change recording itself on his being; he watched from throbbing affection and longing to see at once any tinge of growing natural colour, any unconscious movement perhaps a shade stronger than the last. It was his son who lay there, he told himself, it was the son he had remotely yearned for in his loneliness; if he had been his father watching his sunk lids with bated breath, he would have felt just these unmerciful pangs.
He also watched because in the boy's hours of fevered unconsciousness he could at times catch words—sometimes broken sentences, which threw ghastly light upon things past. Sometimes their significance was such as made him shudder. A condition the doctors most dreaded was one in which monstrous scenes seem lived again—scenes in which cruelties and maddening suffering and despairing death itself rose vividly from the depth of subconsciousness and cried aloud for vengeance. Sometimes Donal shuddered, tearing at his chest with both hands, more than once he lay sobbing until only skilled effort prevented his sobs from becoming choking danger.
"It may be years after he regains his strength," the chief physician said, "years before it will be safe to ask him for detail. On my own part I wouldneverbring such horrors back to a man. You may have noticed how the men who have borne most, absolutely refuse to talk."
"It's an accursed fool who tries to make them," broke in one of the younger men. "There was a fellow who had been pinned up against a barn door and left to hang there—and a coarse, loud-mouthed lunatic asked him to describe how it felt. The chap couldn't stand it. Do you know what he did? He sprang at him and knocked him down. He apologized afterwards and said it was his nerves. But there's not a man who was there who will ever speak to that other brute again."
The man whose name was Jackson seemed to be a clinging memory to the skeleton when its mind wandered in the past Hades. He had been in some way very close to the boy. He had died somehow—cruelly. There had been blood—blood—and no one would help. Some devil had even laughed. When that scene came back the doctors and nurses held their breath and silently worked hard. Nothing seemed quite as heart-rending as what had happened to Jackson. But there were endless other things to shudder at.
So the time passed and Nurse Jones found many times that she must stop at his door on her way to her rest to say, "Don't look like that, Lord Coombe. You need not sendfor his mother yet."
Then at last—and it had been like travelling for months waterless in a desert—she came in one day with a new and elate countenance. "Mrs. Muir is a quiet, self-controlled woman, isn't she?" she asked.
"Entirely self-controlled and very quiet," he answered.
"Then if you will speak to Dr. Beresford about it I know he will allow her to see Captain Muir for a few minutes. And, thank God, it's not because if she doesn't see him now she'll never see him alive again. He has all his life before him."
"Please sit down, Nurse," Coombe spoke hastily and placed a chair as he spoke. He did so because he had perceiving eyes.
She sat down and covered her face with her apron for a moment. She made no sound or movement, but caught a deep quick breath two or three times. The relaxed strain had temporarily overpowered her. She uncovered her face and got up almost immediately. She was not likely to give way openly to her emotions.
"Thank you, Lord Coombe," she said. "I've never had a case that gripped hold of me as this has. I've often felt as though that poor half-killed boy was more to me than he is. You might speak to Dr. Beresford now. He's just gone in."
Therefore Lord Coombe went that afternoon to the house before which grew the plane trees whose leaves had rustled in the dawn's first wind on the morning Donal had sat and talked with his mother after the night of the Dowager Duchess of Darte's dance.
On his way his thoughts were almost uncontrollable things and he knew the first demand of good sense was that he should control them. But he was like an unbelievable messenger from another world—a dark world unknown, because shadows hid it, and would not let themselves be pierced by streaming human eyes. Donal was dead. This was what would fill this woman's mind when he entered her house. Donal was dead. It was the thought that had excluded all else from life for her, though he knew she had gone on working as other broken women had done. What did people say to women whose sons had been dead and had come back to life? It had happened before. Whatcouldone say to prepare them for the transcendent shock of joy? What preparation could there be?
"God help me!" he said to himself with actual devoutness as he stood at the door.
He had seen Helen Muir once or twice since the news of her loss had reached her and she had looked like a most beautiful ghost and shadow of herself. When she came into her drawing-room to meet him she was more of a ghost and shadow than when they had last met and he saw her lips quiver at the mere sight of him, though she came forward very quietly.
Whatsoever helped him in response to his unconscious appeal brought to him suddenly a wave of comprehension of her and of himself as creatures unexpectedly near each other as they had never been before. The feeling was remotely akin to what had been awakened in him by the pure gravity and tenderness of Robin's baptismal good-bye kiss. He was human, she was human, they had both been forced to bear suffering. He was bringing joy to her.
He met her almost as she entered the door. He made several quick steps and he took both her hands in his and held them. It was a thing so unheard of that she stopped and stood quite still, looking up at him.
"Come and sit down here," he said, drawing her towards a sofa and he did not let her hands go, and sat down at her side while she stared at him and her breath began to come and go quickly.
"What—?" she began, "You are changed—quite different—"
"Yes, I am changed. Everything is changed—for us both!"
"For us—" She touched her breast weakly. "For me—as well as you?"
"Yes," he answered, and he still held her hands protectingly and kept his altered eyes—the eyes of a strangely new man—upon her. They were living, human, longing to help her—who had so long condemned him. His hands were even warm and held hers as if to give her support.
"You are a calm, well-balanced woman," he said. "And joy does not kill people—even hurt them."
There could be only one joy—only one! And she knew he knew there could be no other. She sprang from her seat.
"Donal!" she cried out so loud that the room rang. "Donal! Donal!"
He was on his feet also because he still wonderfully did not let her go.
"He is at my house. He has been there for weeks because we have had to fight for his life. We should have called you if he had been dying. Only an hour ago the doctor in charge gave me permission to come to you. You may see him—for a few minutes."
She began to tremble and sat down.
"I shall be quiet soon," she said. "Oh, dear God! God! God! Donal!"
Tears swept down her cheeks but he saw her begin to control herself even the next moment.
"May I speak to him at all?" she asked.
"Kiss him and tell him you are waiting in the next room and can come back any moment. What the hospital leaves free of Coombe House is at your disposal."
"God bless you! Oh,forgiveme!"
"He escaped from a German prison by some miracle. He must be made to forget. He must hear of nothing but happiness. There is happiness before him—enough to force him to forget. You will accept anything he tells you as if it were a natural thing?"
"Accept!" she cried. "What would Inotaccept, praising God! You are preparing me for something. Ah! don't, don't be afraid! But—is it maiming—darkness?"
"No! No! It is a perfect thing. You must know it before you see him—and be ready. Before he went to the Front he was married."
"Married!" in a mere breath.
Coombe went on in quick sentences. She must be prepared and she could bear anything in the rapture of her joy.
"He married in secret a lonely child whom the Dowager Duchess of Darte had taken into her household. We have both taken charge of her since we discovered she was his wife. We thought she was his widow. She has a son. Before her marriage she was Robin Gareth-Lawless."
"Ah!" she cried brokenly. "He would have told me—he wanted to tell me—but he could not—because I was so hard! Oh! poor motherless children!"
"You never were hard, I could swear," Coombe said. "But perhaps you have changed—as I have. If he had not thought I was hard he might have told me— Shall we go to him at once?"
Together they went without a moment's delay.
The dream had come back and Robin walked about the moor carrying her baby in her arms, even though Dowie followed her. She laid him on the heather and let him listen to the skylarks and there was in her face such a look, that, in times past if she had seen it, Dowie would have believed that it could only mean translation from earth.
But when Lord Coombe came for a brief visit he took Dowie to walk alone with him upon the moor. When they set out together she found herself involuntarily stealing furtive sidelong glances at him. There was that in his face which drew her eyes in spite of her. It was a look so intense and new that once she caught her breath, trembling. It was then that he turned to look at her and began to talk. He began—and went on—and as she listened there came to her sudden flooding tears and more than once a loud startled sob of joy.
"But he begs that she shall not see him until he is less ghastly to behold. He says the memory of such a face would tell her things she must never know. His one thought is that she must not know. Things happen to a man's nerves when he has seen and borne the ultimate horrors. Men have gone mad under the prolonged torture. He sometimes has moments of hideous collapse when he cannot shut out certain memories. He is more afraid of such times than of anything else. He feels he must get hold of himself."
Dowie's step slackened until it stopped. Her almost awed countenance told him what she felt she must know or perish. Hefelt that she had her rights and one of them was the right to be told. She had been a strong tower of honest faith and love.
"My lord, might I ask if you have told him—all about it?"
"Yes, Dowie," he answered. "All is well and no one but ourselves will ever know. The marriage in the dark old church is no longer a marriage. Only the first one—which he can prove—stands."
The telling of his story to Donal had been a marvellous thing because he had so controlled its drama that it had even been curiously undramatic. He had made it a mere catalogued statement of facts. As Donal had lain listening his heart had seemed to turn over in his breast.
"If I hadknownyou!" he panted low. "If we had known each other! We did not!"
Later, bit by bit, he told him of Jackson—only of Jackson. He never spoke of other things. When put together the "bit by bit" amounted to this:
"He was a queer, simple sort of American. He was full of ideals and a kind of unbounded belief in his country. He had enlisted in Canada at the beginning. He always believed America would come in. He was sure the Germans knew she would and that was why they hated Americans. The more they saw her stirred up, the more they hated the fellows they caught—and the worse they treated them. They were hellish to Jackson!"
He had stopped at this point and Coombe had noted a dreaded look dawning in his eyes.
"Don't go on, my boy. It's bad for you," he broke in.
Donal shook his head a little as if to shake something away.
"I won't go on with—that," he said. "But the dream—I must tell you about that. It saved me from going mad—and Jackson did. He believed in a lot of things I'd not heard of except as jokes. He called them New Thought and Theosophy and Christian Science. He wasn't clever, but hebelieved. And it helped him. When I'm stronger I'll try to tell you. Subconscious mind and astral body came into it. I had begun to see things—just through starvation and agony. I told him about Robin when I scarcely knew what I was saying. He tried to hold me quiet by saying her name to me over and over. He'd pull me up with it. He began to talk to me about dreaming. When your body's not fed—you begin to see clear—if your spirit is not held down."
He was getting tired and panting a little. Coombe bent nearer to him.
"I can guess the rest. I have been reading books on such subjects. He told you how to concentrate on dreaming and try to get near her. He helped you by suggestion himself—"
"He used to lie awake night after night and do it—and I began to dream— No, it was not a dream. I believe I got to her— He did it—and they killed him!"
"Hush! hush!" cried Coombe. "Of all men he would most ardently implore you to hold yourself still—"
Donal made some strange effort. He lay still.
"Yes, he would! Yes—of all the souls in the other world he'd be strongest. He saved me—he saved Robin—he saved the child—you—all of us! Perhaps he's here now! He said he'd come if he could. He believed he could."
He lay quiet for a few seconds and then the Donal smile they had all adored lighted up his face.
"Jackson, old chap!" he said. "I can't see you—but I'll do what you want me to do—I'll do it."
He fainted the next minute and the doctors came to him.
The facts which came later still were that Jackson had developed consumption, and exposure and brutality had done their worst. And Donal had seen his heart wringing end.
"But he knew America would come in. I believed it too, because he did. Just at the right time. 'All the rest have fought like mad till they're tired—though they'll die fighting,' he said. 'America's not tired. She's got everything and she sees red with frenzy at the bestiality. She'llburstin—just at the right time!' Jacksonknew!"
"I must not go trembling to her," Donal said on the morning when at last—long last, it seemed—he drove with Coombe up the moor road to Darreuch. "But," bravely, "what does it matter? I'm trembling because I'm going to her!"
He had been talking about her for weeks—for days he had been able to talk of nothing else— Coombe had listened as if he heard echoes from a past when he would have so talked and dared not utter a word. He had talked as a boy lover talks—as a young bridegroom might let himself pour his joy forth to his most sacredly trusted friend.
Her loveliness, the velvet of her lifting eyes—the wonder of her trusting soul—the wonder of her unearthly selflesssweetness!
"It was always the same kind of marvel every time you saw her," he said boyishly. "You couldn't believe there could be such sweetness on earth—until you saw her again. Even her eyes and her little mouth and her softness were like that. You had to tell yourself about them over and over again to make them real when she wasn't there!"
He was still thin, but the ghastly hollows had filled and his smile scarcely left his face—and he had waited as long as he could.
"And to see her with a little child in her arms!" he had murmured. "Robin! Holding it—and being careful! And showing it to me!"
After he first caught sight of the small old towers of Darreuch he could not drag his eyes from them.
"She's there! She's there! They're both there together!" he said over and over. Just before they left the carriage he wakened as it were and spoke to Coombe.
"She won't be frightened," he said. "I told her—last night."
Coombe had asked himself if he must go to her. But, marvellously even to him, there was no need.
When they stood in the dark little hall—as she had come down the stone stairway on the morning when she bade him her sacred little good-bye, so she came down again—like a white blossom drifting down from its branch—like a white feather from a dove's wing.—But she held her baby in her arms and to Donal her cheeks and lips and eyes were as he had first seen them in the Gardens.
He trembled as he watched her and even found himself spellbound—waiting.
"Donal! Donal!"
And they were in his arms—the soft warm things—and he sat down upon the lowest step and held them—rocking—and trembling still more—but with the gates of peace open and earth and war shut out.
Transcriber's note:The following non-standard features of the text have been carefully checked against the original, and retained as printed:Words appearing both hyphenated and joinedWords with alternate spellings also used in the textSome — dashes are spaced, others are joined to the nearest words both sides.