CHAPTER XL
Ominous hours had come and gone; waves of gloom had surged in and receded, but never receded far enough. It was as though the rising and falling of some primæval storm was the background of all thought and life and its pandemonium of sound foretold the far-off heaving of some vast tidal wave, gathering its unearthly power as it swelled.
Coombe talking to his close friend in her few quiet hours at Eaton Square, found a support in the very atmosphere surrounding her.
"The world at war creates a prehistoric uproar," he said. "The earth called out of chaos to take form may have produced some such tempestuous crash. But there is a far-off glow—"
"You believe—something—I believe too. But the prehistoric darkness and uproar are so appalling. One loses hold." The Duchess leaned forward her voice dropping. "What do you know that I do not?"
"The light usually breaks in the East," Coombe answered.
"It is breaking in the West to-day. It has always been there and it has been spreading from the first. At any moment it may set the sky aflame."
For as time had gone on the world had beheld the colossal spectacle of a huge nation in the melting pot. And, as it was as a nation the composite result of the fusion of all the countries of the earth, the breath-suspended lookers-on beheld it in effect, passionately commercial, passionately generous, passionately sordid, passionately romantic, chivalrous, cautious, limited, bounded. As American wealth and sympathy poured in where need was most dire, bitterness became silent through sheer discretion's sake, when for no more honest reason. As the commercial tendency expressed itself in readiness and efficiency, sneering condemnation had become less loud.
"It will happen. It is the result of the ideals really," Coombe said further. "And it will come to pass at the exact psychological moment. If they had come in at the beginning they would have faced the first full force of the monstrous tidal wave of the colossal German belief in its own omnipotence—and they would have faced it unawakened, unenraged by monstrosities and half incredulous of the truth. It was not even their fight then—and raw fighters need a flaming cause. But the tower of agonies has built itself to its tottering height before their blazing eyes. Now it is their fight because it is the fight of the whole world. Others have borne the first fierce heat and burden of the day, but they will rush in young and untouched by calamity—bounding, shouting and singing. They will come armed with all that long-borne horrors and maddening human fatigue most need. I repeat—it will occur at the exact psychological moment. They will bring red-hot blood and furious unbounded courage— And it will be the end."
In fact Coombe waited with a tense sensation of being too tightly strung. He had hours when he felt that something might snap. But nothing must snap yet. He was too inextricably entangled in the arduous work even to go to Darreuch for rest. He did not go for weeks. All was well there however—marvellously well it seemed, even when he held in mind a letter from Robin which had ended:—