Part 10 (1/2)
It took him a long time to calm her terror and woe. When at last he had so far quieted her that her sobs came only at intervals she seemed to awaken to sudden childish awkwardness. She sat up and shyly moved. ”I didn't mean--I didn't know--!” she quavered. ”I am--I am sitting on your knee like a baby!” But he could not let her go.
”It is because I love you so,” he answered in his compelling boy voice, holding her gently. ”Don't move--don't move! There is no time to think and wait--or care for anything--if we love each other. We _do_ love each other, don't we?” He put his cheek against hers and pressed it there.
”Oh, say we do,” he begged. ”There is no time. And listen to the skylark singing!”
The b.u.t.terfly-wing flutter of her lashes against his cheek as she pressed the softness of her own closer, and the quick exquisite indrawing of her tender, half-sobbing childish breath were unspeakably lovely answering things--though he heard her whisper.
”Yes, Donal! Donal!” And again, ”Donal! Donal!”
And he held her closer and kissed her very gently again. And they sat and whispered that they loved each other and had always loved each other and would love each other forever and forever and forever. Poor enrapt children! It has been said before, but they said it again and yet again.
And the circling skylark seemed to sing at the very gates of G.o.d's heaven.
So the tide rose to its high flowing.
CHAPTER VII
The days of gold which linked themselves one to another with strange dawns of pearl and exquisite awakenings, each a miracle, the gemmed night whose blue darkness seemed studded with myriads of new stars, the noons whose heats or rains were all warm scents of flowers and fragrant mists, wrought themselves into a chain of earthly beauty. The hour in which the links must break and the chain end was always a faint spectre veiled by kindly mists which seemed to rise hour by hour to soften and hide it.
But often in those days did it occur that the hurrying and changing visitors to the house in Eaton Square, glancing at Robin as she sat writing letters, or as she pa.s.sed them in some hall or room, found themselves momentarily arrested in an almost startled fas.h.i.+on by the mere radiance of her.
”She is lovelier every time one turns one's head towards her,” the Starling said--the Starling having become a vigorous worker and the d.u.c.h.ess giving welcome to any man, woman or child who could be counted on for honest help. ”It almost frightens me to see her eyes when she looks up suddenly. It is like finding one's self too close to a star. A star in the sky is all very well--but a star only three feet away from one is a kind of shock. What has happened to the child?”
She said it to Gerald Vesey who between hours of military training was helping Harrowby to arrange a matinee for the benefit of the Red Cross.
Harrowby had been rejected by the military authorities on account of defective sight and weak chest but had with a promptness unexpected by his friends merged himself into unprominent, useful hard work which frequently consisted of doing disagreeable small jobs men of his type generally s.h.i.+ed away from.
”Something has happened to her,” answered Vesey. ”She has the flight of a skylark let out of a cage. Her moving is flight--not ordinary walking.
I hope her work has kept her away from--well, from young G.o.ds and things.”
”The streets are full of them,” said Harrowby, ”marching to defy death and springing to meet glory--marching not walking. Young Mars and Ajax and young Paris with Helen in his eyes. She might be some youngster's Helen! Why do you hope her work has kept her away?”
Vesey shook his Greek head with a tragic bitterness.
”Oh! I don't know,” he groaned. ”There's too much disaster piled high and staring in every one of their flus.h.i.+ng rash young faces. On they go with their heads in the air and their hearts thumping, and hoping and refusing to believe in the devil and h.e.l.l let loose--and the whole thing stares and gibbers at them.”
But each day her eyes looked larger and more rapturously full of heavenly glowing, and her light movements were more like bird flight, and her swiftness and sweet readiness to serve delighted and touched people more, and they spoke oftener to and of her, and felt actually a thought uplifted from the darkness because she was like pure light's self.
Lord Coombe met her in the street one evening at twilight and he stopped to speak to her.
”I have just come from Darte Norham,” he said to her. ”The d.u.c.h.ess asked me to see you personally and make sure that you do not miss Dowie too much--that you are not lonely.”
”I am very busy and am very well taken care of,” was her answer. ”The servants are very attentive and kind. I am not lonely at all, thank you.
The d.u.c.h.ess is very good to me.”
Donal evidently knew nothing of her reasons for disliking Lord Coombe.
She could not have told him of them. He did not dislike his relative himself and in fact rather liked him in spite of the frigidity he sometimes felt. He, at any rate, admired his cold brilliance of mind.
Robin could not therefore let herself detest the man and regard him as an enemy. But she did not like the still searching of the grey eyes which rested on her so steadily.