Part 14 (1/2)
Donal thought--the first night she came to him softly through the ferns--that her coming was like that of some fair thing not of earth--a vision out of some old legend or ancient poem of faery. But he marched towards her, soldierly--like a young Lohengrin whose silver mail had changed to khaki. There was no longer war in the world--there never had been.
”I brought it with me,” he said and took her close in his arms. For a few minutes the wood seemed more still than before.
”Do you hear my heart beat?” he said at last.
”I feel it. Do you hear mine?” she whispered.
”We love each other so!” he breathed. ”We love each other so!”
”Yes,” she answered. ”Yes.”
Did every one who saw him know how beautiful he was? Oh his smile that loved her so and made her feel there was no fear or loneliness left on earth! He was so tall and straight and strong--a young soldier statue!
When he laughed her heart always gave a strange little leap. It was such a lovely sound. His very hands were beautiful--with long, strong smooth fingers and smooth firm palms. Oh! Donal! Donal! And while she smiled as a little angel might smile, small sobs of joy filled her throat.
They sat together among the ferns, close side by side. He showed her the thing he had brought with him. It was a very slender chain of gold with a plain gold ring hung on it. He put the chain around her neck but slipped the ring on her finger and kissed it again and again.
”Wear it when we are together,” he whispered. ”I want to see it. It makes you mine as much as if I had put it on in a church with a huge organ playing.”
”I should be yours without it,” answered Robin. ”I _am_ yours.”
”Yes,” he whispered again. ”You are mine. And I am yours. It always was so--since the morning stars sang together.”
CHAPTER XI
”There are more women than those in Belgium who are being swept over by the chariots of war and trampled on by marching feet,” the d.u.c.h.ess of Darte said to a group of her women friends on a certain afternoon.
The group had met to work and some one had touched on a woeful little servant-maid drama which had painfully disclosed itself in her household. A small, plain kitchen maid had ”walked out” in triumphant ecstasy with a soldier who, a few weeks after bidding her good-bye, had been killed in Belgium. She had been brought home to her employer's house by a policeman who had dragged her out of the Serpentine. An old story had become a modern one. In her childish ignorance and terror of her plight she had seen no other way, but she had not had courage to face more than very shallow water, with the result of finding herself merely sticking in the mud and wailing aloud.
”The policeman was a kind-hearted, sensible fellow,” said the relator of the incident. ”He had a family of his own and what he said was 'She looked such a poor little drowned rat of a thing I couldn't make up my mind to run her in, ma'am. This 'ere war's responsible for a lot more than what the newspapers tell about. Young chaps in uniform having to brace up and perhaps lying awake in the night thinking over what the evening papers said--and young women they've been sweet-heartin'
with--they get wild, in a way, and cling to each other and feel desperate--and he talks and she cries--and he may have his head blown off in a week's time. And who wonders that there's trouble.' Do you know he actually told me that there were a number of girls he was keeping a watch on. He said he'd begun to recognise a certain look in their eyes when they walked alone in the park. He said it was a 'stark, frightened look.' I didn't know what he meant, but it gave me a shudder.”
”I think I know,” said the d.u.c.h.ess. ”Poor, wretched children! There ought to be a sort of moratorium in the matter of social laws. The old rules don't hold. We are facing new conditions. This is a thing for women to take in hand, practically, as they are taking in hand other work. It must be done absolutely without prejudice. There is no time to lecture or condemn or even deplore. There is only time to try to heal wounds and quiet maddening pain and save life.”
Lady Lothwell took the subject up.
”In the country places and villages, where the new army is swarming to be billeted, the clergymen and their wives are greatly agitated. Even in times of peace one's vicar's wife tells one stories in shocked whispers of 'immorality'--though the rustic mind does not seem to regard it as particularly immoral. An illegal baby is generally accepted with simple resignation or merely a little fretful complaint even in quite decent cottages. It is called--rather prettily, I think--'a love child' and the nicer the grandparents are, the better they treat it. Mrs. Gracey, the wife of our rector at Mowbray Wells told me a few days ago that she and her husband were quite in despair over the excited, almost lawless, holiday air of the village girls. There are so many young men about and uniforms have what she calls 'such a dreadful effect.' Giddy and unreliable young women are wandering about the lanes and fields with stranger sweethearts at all hours. Even girls who have been good Sunday-school scholars are becoming insubordinate. She did not in the least mean to be improperly humorous--in fact she was quite tragic when she said that the rector felt that he ought to marry, on the spot, every rambling couple he met. He had already performed the ceremony in a number of cases when he felt it was almost criminally rash and idiotic, or would have been in time of peace.”
”That was what I meant by speaking of the women who were being swept over by the chariot of war,” said the d.u.c.h.ess. ”It involves issues the women who can think must hold in their minds and treat judicially. One cannot moralise and be shocked before an advancing tidal wave. It has always been part of the unreason and frenzy of times of war. When Death is near, Life fights hard for itself. It does not care who or what it strikes.”
The tidal wave swept on and the uninitiated who formed the ma.s.s of humanity in every country in the world, reading with feverish anxiety almost hourly newspaper extras every day, tried to hide a secret fear that no one knew what was really happening or could trust to the absolute truth of any spoken or published statement. The exultant hope of to-day was dashed to-morrow. The despair of the morning was lightened by gleams of hope before night closed, and was darkened and lightened again and again. Great cities and towns aroused themselves from a half-somnolent belief in security. Village by village England awakened to what she faced in common with an amazed and half incredulous world.
The amazement and incredulity were founded upon a certain mistaken belief in a world predominance of the laws of decency and civilisation.
The statement of piety and morality that the world in question was a bad one, filled with crime, had somehow so far been accepted with a guileless reservation in the matter of a ruling majority whose lapses from virtue were at least not openly vaunted treachery, blows struck at any unprepared back presenting itself, merciless attacks on innocence and weakness, and savage gluttings of l.u.s.t, of fury, with exultant paeans of self-glorification and praise of a justly applauding G.o.d. Before such novelty of onslaught the British mind had breathless moments of feeling itself stupid and incapably aghast. But after its first deep draughts of the cup of staggering the nation braced up a really muscular back and stood upon hard, stout legs and firm feet, immovable and fixed on solid British earth.
Incompetent raw troops gathered from fields, shops and desks, half trained, half clad, half armed, according to pessimistic report, fared forth across the narrow Channel and did strangely competent things--this being man's way when in dire moments needs must be. Riff-raff exalted itself and also died competently enough. The apparently aimless male offspring of the so-called useless rich and great died competently enough with the rest. The Roll of Honour raked fore and aft. The youngsters who had tangoed best and had shone in _cabarets_ were swept away as gra.s.s by scythes.
”Will any one be left?” white Robin shuddered, clinging to Donal in the wood at night. ”Every day there are new ones. Almost every one who has gone! Kathryn says that no one--_no one_ will ever come back!”