was one of the things that are important. I don't know what—older people—or safe ones—would think about it, but—" He broke off and began again. "To us young ones who are facing—It's the only big thing that's left us—in our bit of the present. We can only be sure of to-day—"
"Yes—yes," Robin cried out low. "Only to-day—just to-day." She even panted a little and George, looking into her eyes, knew that he might say anything, because for a reason she was one of the girls who in this hour could understand.
"Perhaps you don't know where our house is," he said quite quickly. "It is one of those in the Square—facing the Gardens. I might have played with you there when I was a little chap—but I don't think I did."
"Nobody did but Donal," she said, quickly also. How did she know that he was going to say something to her about Donal?
"I gave him the key to the Gardens that day," he hurried on. "I was at the window with him when he saw you. I understood in a minute when I saw his face and he'd said half a dozen words to me. I gave him my key. He has got it now." He actually snatched at both her hands and gripped them. It was a grip and his eyes burned through a sort of sudden moisture. "We can't stay here and talk. But I couldn't not say it! Oh, I say, be good to him! You would, if he had only a day to live because some damned German bullet had struck him. You're life—you're youngness—you're to-day! Don't say 'No' to anything he asks of you—for God's sake, don't."
"I'd give him my heart in his two hands," gasped Robin. "I couldn't give him my soul because it was always his."
"God take care of the pair of you—and be good to the rest of us," whispered George, wringing her hands hard and dropping them.
That was how he went away.
A few weeks later he was lying, a mangled object, in a field in Flanders. One of thousands—living, laughing, good as honest bread is good; the possible passer-on of life and force and new thinking for new generations—one of hundreds of thousands—one of millions before the end came—nice, healthy, normal-minded George, son and heir of a house of decent nobles.
CHAPTER V
And still youth marched away, and England seemed to swarm with soldiers and, at times, to hear and see nothing but marching music and marching feet, though life went on in houses, shops, warehouses and offices, and new and immense activities evolved as events demanded them. Many of the new activities were preparations for the comfort and care of soldiers who were going away, and for those who would come back and would need more care than the others. Women were doing astonishing work and revealing astonishing power and determination. The sexes mingled with a businesslike informality unknown in times of peace. Lovely girls went in and out of their homes, and from one quarter of London to another without question. They walked with a brisk step and wore the steady expression of creatures with work in view. Slim young war-widows were to be seen in black dresses and veiled small hats with bits of white crape inside their brims. Sometimes their little faces were awful to behold, but sometimes they wore a strained look of exaltation.
The Dowager Duchess of Darte was often absent from Eaton Square. She was understood to be proving herself much stronger than her friends had supposed her to be. She proved it by doing an extraordinary amount of work. She did it in her house in Eaton Square—in other people's houses, in her various estates in the country, where she prepared her villagers and tenants for a future in which every farm house and cottage must be as ready for practical service as her own castle or manor house. Darte Norham was no longer a luxurious place of residence but a potential hospital for wounded soldiers; so was Barons Court and the beautiful old Dower House at Malworth.
Sometimes Robin was with her, but oftener she remained at Eaton Square and wrote letters and saw busy people and carried out lists of orders.
It was not every day or evening that she could easily find time to go out alone and make her way to the Square Gardens and in fact it was not often to the Gardens she went. There were so many dear places where trees grew and made quiet retreats—all the parks and heaths and green suburbs—and everywhere pairs walked or sat and talked, and were frankly so wholly absorbed in the throb of their own existences that they had no interest in, or curiosity concerning, any other human beings.
"Ought I to ask you to come and meet me—as if you were a little housemaid meeting her life-guardsman?" Donal had said feverishly the second time they met.
A sweet flush ran up to the roots of her hair and even showed itself on the bit of round throat where her dress was open.
"Yes, you ought," she answered. "There are no little housemaids and life-guardsmen now. It seems as if there were only—people."
The very sound of her voice thrilled him—everything about her thrilled him—the very stuff her plain frock was made of, the small hat she wore, her way of moving or quiet sitting down near him, but most of all the lift of her eyes to his—because there was no change in it and the eyes expressed what they had expressed when they had first looked at him. It was a thing which moved him to-day exactly as it had moved him when he was too young to explain its meaning and appeal. It was the lovely faith and yearning acceptance of him as a being whose perfection could not be questioned. There was in it no conscious beguiling flattery or appraisement—it was pure acceptance and sweet waiting for what he had to give. He sometimes found himself trembling with his sense of its simple unearthliness.
Few indeed were the people who at this time were wholly normal. The whole world seemed a great musical instrument, overstrung and giving out previously unknown harmonies and inharmonies. Amid the thunders of great crashing discords the individual note was almost unheard—but the individual note continued its vibrations.
The tone which expressed Donal Muir—in common with many others of his age and sex—was a novel and abnormal one. His being no longer sang the healthy human song of mere joy in life and living. A knowledge of cruelty and brutal force, of helplessness and despair, grew in him day by day. Causes for gay good cheer and laughter were swept away, leaving in their places black facts and needs to gaze at with hard eyes.
"Do you see how everything has stopped—how nothing can go on?" he said to Robin on their second meeting in the Gardens. "The things we used to fill our time and amuse ourselves with—dancing and tennis and polo and theatres and parties—how jolly and all right they were in their day, but how futile they seem just now. How could one even stand talk of them! There is only one thing."
The blue of his eyes grew dark.
"It is as if a gigantic wall were piling itself up between us and Life," he went on. "That is how I see it—a wall piling itself higher every hour. It's built of dead things and maimed and tortured ones. It's building itself of things you can't speak of. It stands between all the world and living—mere living. We can't go on till we've stormed it and beaten it down—or added our bodies to it. If it isn't beaten down it will rise to heaven itself and shut it out—and that will be the end of the world." He shook his head in sudden defiant bitterness. "If it can't be beaten down, better the world should come to an end."
Robin put out her hand and caught his sleeve.
"It will be beaten down," she cried. "You—you—and others like you—"
"It will be," he said. "And it's because, when men read the day's news, almost every single one of them feels something leaping up in him that seems
