Part 40 (1/2)

She came quite near him.

”I wanted to awake. Donal wanted me to.”

She had never been quite so near him before. She put out a hand and laid it on the rough tweed covering his breast.

”I wanted to see you. Will you come again--when you are tired? I shall always be here waiting.”

”Thank you, dear child,” he answered. ”I will come as often as I can leave London. This is a new planet.”

He was almost as afraid to move as if a bird had alighted near him.

But she was not afraid. Her eyes were clear pools of pure light.

”Before you go away--” she said as simply as she had said it to Dowie years before, ”--may I kiss you, Lord Coombe? I want to kiss you.”

His old friend had told him the story of Dowie and it had extraordinarily touched him though he had said but little. And now it repeated itself. He had never seen anything so movingly lovely in his life as her sweet gravity.

She lifted her slight arms and laid them around his neck as she kissed him gently, as if she had been his daughter--his own daughter and delight--whose mother might have been Alixe.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

”It was the strangest experience of my existence. It seemed suddenly to change me to another type of man.”

He said it to the d.u.c.h.ess as he sat with her in her private room at Eaton Square. He had told her the whole story of his week at Darreuch and she had listened with an interest at moments almost breathless.

”Do you feel that you shall remain the new type of man, or was it only a temporary phase?” she inquired.

”I told her that I felt I was living on a new planet. London is the old planet and I have returned to it. But not as I left it. Something has come back with me.”

”It must have seemed another planet,” the d.u.c.h.ess pondered. ”The stillness of huge unbroken moors--no war--no khaki in sight--utter peace and remoteness. A girl brought back to life by pure love, drawing a spirit out of the unknown to her side on earth.”

”She is like a spirit herself--but that she remains Robin--in an extraordinary new blooming.”

”Yes, she remains Robin.” The d.u.c.h.ess thought it out slowly. ”Not once did she disturb you or herself by remembering that you were her husband.”

”A girl who existed on the old planet would have remembered, and I should have detested her. To her, marriage means only Donal. The form we went through she sees only as a supreme sacrifice I made for the sake of Donal's child. If you could have heard her heart-wrung cry, 'There will be no one to defend you! Oh! What shall I do!'”

”The stainless little soul of her!” the d.u.c.h.ess exclaimed. ”Her world holds only love and tenderness. Her goodbye to you meant that in her penitence she wanted to take you into it in the one way she feels most sacred. She will not die. She will live to give you the child. If it is a son there will be a Head of the House of Coombe.”

”On the new planet one ceases to feel the vital importance of 'houses,'”

Coombe half reflected aloud.

”Even on the old planet,” the d.u.c.h.ess spoke as a woman very tired, ”one is beginning to contemplate changes in values.”

The slice of a house in Mayfair had never within the memory of man been so brilliant. The things done in it were called War Work and necessitated much active gaiety. Persons of both s.e.xes, the majority of them in becoming uniform, flashed in and out in high spirits. If you were a personable and feminine creature, it was necessary to look as much like an attractive boy as possible when you were doing War Work. If one could achieve something like leggings in addition to a masculine cut of coat, one could swagger about most alluringly. There were numbers of things to be done which did not involve frumpish utilitarian costumes, all caps and ap.r.o.ns. Very short skirts were the most utilitarian of garments because they were easy to get about in. Smart military little hats were utilitarian also--and could be worn at any inspiring angle which would most attract the pa.s.sing eye. Even before the War, shapely legs, feet and ankles had begun to play an increasingly interesting part in the scheme of the Universe--as a result of the brevity of skirts and the prevalence of cabaret dancing. During the War, as a consequence of the War Work done in such centres of activity as the slice of a house in Mayfair, these attractive members were allowed opportunities such as the world had not before contemplated.