The happy glow of her smiling, as she picked them up and laid them, one by one, on his open extended palm, was as the glow of the smiling of young Eve. The dimples playing round her mouth and the quiver of her lashes, as she lifted them to laugh into his eyes, were an actual peril.
"Must I give you the pin too?" she said.
"Yes--everything," he answered in a sort of helpless joy. "I would carry the wooden bench away with me if I could. But they would stop me at the gate." They were obliged to treat something a little lightly because everything seemed tensely tremulous.
"Here is the pin," she said, taking it from under the lapel of her coat.
"It is quite a long one." She looked at it a moment and then ended in a whisper. "I must have known why I was coming here--because, you see, I brought the pin." And her eyelashes lifted themselves and made their circling shadows again.
"Then I must have the pin. And it will be a talisman. I shall have a little flat case made for the leaves and the sacred pin shall hold it together. When I go into battle it will keep me safe. Bullets and bayonets will glance aside." He said it, as he laid the treasure away in his purse, and he did not see her face as he spoke of bullets and bayonets.
"I am a Highlander," he said next and for the moment he looked as if he saw things far away. "In the Highlands we believe more than most people do. Perhaps that"s why I feel as if we two are not quite like other people,--as if we had been something--I don"t know what--to each other from the beginning of time--since the "morning stars first sang together." I don"t know exactly what that means, or how stars sing--but I like the sound of it. It seems to mean something I mean though I don"t know how to say it." He was not in the least portentous or solemn, but he was the most strongly feeling and _real_ creature she had ever heard speaking to her and he swept her along with him, as if he had indeed been the Spring freshet and she a leaf. "I believe," here he began to speak slowly as if he were thinking it out, "that there was something--that meant something--in the way we two were happy together and could not bear to be parted--years ago when we were nothing but children. Do you know that, little chap as I was, I never stopped thinking of you day and night when we were not playing together. I _couldn"t_!"
"Neither could I stop thinking," said Robin. "I had dreams about seeing your eyes looking at me. They were blue like clear water in summer. They were always laughing. I always _wanted_ them to look at me! They--they are the same eyes now," in a little rush of words.
Their blueness was on hers--in the very deeps of their uplifted liquidity.
"G.o.d! I"m _glad_!" his voice was on a hushed note.
There has never been a limner through all the ages who has pictured--at such a moment--two pairs of eyes reaching, melting into, lost in each other in their human search for the longing soul drawing together human things. Hand and brush and colour cannot touch That which Is and Must Be--in its yearning search for the spirit which is its life on earth.
Yet a boy and girl were yearning towards it as they sat in mere mortal form on a bench in a London square. And neither of them knew more than that they wondered at and adored the beauty in each other"s eyes.
"I didn"t know what a little chap I was," he said next. "I"d had a splendid life for a youngster and I was big for my age and ramping with health and strength and happiness. You seemed almost a baby to me, but--it was the way you looked at me, I think--I wanted to talk to you, and please you and make you laugh. You had a red little mouth with deep dimples that came and went near the corners. I liked to see them twinkle."
"You told me," she laughed, remembering. "You put the point of your finger in them. But you didn"t hurt me," in quick lovely rea.s.suring.
"You were not a rough little boy."
"I wouldn"t have hurt you for worlds. I didn"t even know I was cheeky.
The dimples were so deep that it seemed quite natural to poke at them--like a sort of game."
"We laughed and laughed. It _was_ a sort of game. I sat quite still and let you make little darts at them," Robin a.s.sisted him. "We laughed like small crazy things. We almost had child hysterics."
The dimples showed themselves now and he held himself in leash.
"You did everything I wanted you to do," he said, "and I suppose that made me feel bigger and bigger."
"_I_ thought you were big. And I had never seen anything so wonderful before. You knew everything in the world and I knew nothing. Don"t you remember," with hesitation--as if she were almost reluctant to recall the memory of a shadow into the brightness of the moment--"I told you that I had nothing--and n.o.body?"
All rushed back to him in a warm flow.
"That was it," he said. "When you said that I felt as if some one had insulted and wronged something of my own. I remember I felt hot and furious. I wanted to give you things and fight for you. I--caught you in my arms and squeezed you."
"Yes," Robin answered.
"It was because of--that time when the morning stars first sang together," he answered smiling, but still as _real_ as before. "It wasn"t a stranger child I wanted to take care of. It was some one I had--belonged to--long--long and long. I"m a Highlander and I know it"s true. And there"s another thing I know," with a sudden change almost to boyish fierceness, "you are one of the things I"m going to face cannon and bayonets for. If there were nothing else and no one else in England, I should stand on the sh.o.r.e and fight until I dropped dead and the whole Hun ma.s.s surged over me before they should reach you."
"Yes," whispered Robin, "I know."
They both realised that the time had come when they must part, and when he lifted again the hand nearest to him, it was with the gesture of one who had reached the moment of farewell.
"It"s our garden," he said. "It"s the _same_ garden. Just because there is no time--may I see you here again? I can"t go away without knowing that."
"I will come," she answered, "whenever the d.u.c.h.ess does not need me. You see I belong to n.o.body but myself."
"I belong to people," he said, "but I belong to myself too." He paused a second or so and a strange half puzzled expression settled in his eyes.
"It"s only fair that a man who"s looking the end of things straight in the face should have something for himself--to himself. If it"s only a heavenly hour now and then. Before things stop. There"s such a lot of life--and such a lot to live for--forever if one could. And a smash--or a crash--or a thrust--and it"s over! Sometimes I can hardly get hold of it."
He shook his head as he rose and stood upright, drawing his splendid young body erect.
"It"s only fair," he said. "A chap"s so strong and--and ready for living. Everything"s surging through one"s mind and body. One can"t go out without having _something_--of one"s own. You"ll come, won"t you--just because there"s no time? I--I want to keep looking into your eyes."
"I want you to look into them," said Robin. "I"ll come."
He stood still a moment looking at her just as she wanted him to look.
Then after a few more words he bent low and kissed her hands and then stood straight again and saluted and went away.
CHAPTER IV
There was one facet of the great stone of War upon which many strange things were written. They were not the things most discussed or considered. They were results--not causes. But for the stress of mental, spiritual and physical tempest-of-being the colossal background of storm created, many of them might never have happened; but the consequences of their occurrence were to touch close, search deep, and reach far into the unknown picture of the World the great War might leave in fragments which could only be readjusted by centuries of time.
The interested habit of observation of, and reflection on, her kind which knew no indifferences, in the mind of the d.u.c.h.ess of Darte, awakened by stages to the existence of this facet and to the moment of the writings thereupon.
"It would seem almost as if Nature--Fate--had meant to give a new impulse to the race--to rouse human creatures to new moods, to thrust them into places where they see new things. Men and women are being dragged out of their self-absorbed corners and stirred up and shaken.
Emotions are being roused in people who haven"t known what a real emotion was. Middle-aged husbands and wives who had sunk into comfortable acceptance of each other and their boys and girls are being dragged out of bed, as it were, and wakened up and made to stand on their feet and face unbelievable possibilities. If you have boys old enough to be soldiers and girls old enough to be victims--your life makes a sort of _volte face_ and everyday, worldly comforts and successes or little failures drop out of your line of sight, and change their values. Mothers are beginning to clutch at their sons; and even self-centred fathers and selfish pretty sisters look at their male relatives with questioning, with a hint of respect or even awe in it.
Perhaps the women feel it more than the men. Good-looking, light-minded, love-making George has a.s.sumed a new aspect to his mother and to Kathryn. They"re secretly yearning over him. He has a.s.sumed a new aspect to me. I yearn over him myself. He has changed--he has suddenly grown up. Boys are doing it on every hand."
"The youngest youngster vibrates with the shock of cannon firing, even though the sound may not be near enough to be heard," answered Coombe.
"We"re all vibrating unconsciously. We are shuddering consciously at the things we hear and are mad to put a stop to, before they go further."
"Innocent little villages full of homes torn and trampled under foot and burned!" the d.u.c.h.ess almost cried out. "And worse things than that--worse things! And the whole monstrosity growing more huge and throwing out new and more awful tentacles every day."
"Every hour. No imagination has yet conceived what it may be."
"That is why the poor human things are clutching at each other, and finding values and attractions where they did not see them before.
Colonel Marion and his wife were here yesterday. He is a stout man over fifty and has a red face and prominent eyes. His wife has been so occupied with herself and her children that she had almost forgotten he existed. She looked at and listened to him as if she were a bride."
"I have seen changes of that sort myself," said Coombe. "He is more alive himself. He has begun to be of importance. And men like him have been killed already--though the young ones go first."
"The young ones know that, and they clutch the most frantically. That is what I am seeing in young eyes everywhere. Mere instinct makes it so--mere uncontrollable instinct which takes the form of a sort of desperateness at facing the thousand chances of death before they have lived. They don"t know it isn"t actual fear of bullets and shrapnel.
Sometimes they"re afraid it"s fear and it makes them sick at themselves and determined to grin and hide it. But it isn"t fear--it"s furious Nature protesting."
"There are hasty bridals and good-bye marriages being made in all ranks," Coombe put in. "They are inevitable."
"G.o.d help the young things--those of them who never meet again--and perhaps, also, some of those who do. The nation ought to take care of the children. If there is a nation left, G.o.d knows they will be needed,"
the d.u.c.h.ess said. "One of my footmen who "joined up" has revealed an unsuspected pa.s.sion for a housemaid he used to quarrel with, and who seemed to detest him. I have three women in my household who have soldier lovers in haste to marry them. I shall give them my blessing and take care of the wives when they are left behind. One can be served by old men and married women--and one can turn cottages into small orphanages if the worst happens."