“There is time for him to speak and for them to hear, but whether they hear him or not, if he has spoken he has done his duty. Is it not better that if needs be he should die doing it than live and leave it undone?”
The weighty words, spoken as they were in a tone of blended affection and authority, found a fitting echo in his wife’s breast. She stood for a moment between her husband and her son, looking from the one to the other. Then she dried her tears, and replied in a tone of gentle dignity and resignation—
“Yes, I see. You are right and I was wrong. It is his duty to go, and he must go. But,” she continued, turning to Alan with the sudden light of a new hope in her eyes, “if I bid you ‘God-speed,’ my son, you will promise one thing, won’t you?”
“Yes, mother, I will—whatever it is.”
“Then promise me that if it shall be proved possible for you to live in happiness as well as in honour, you will come back.”
“Yes,” he replied, smiling gravely as he once more took her outstretched hands. “I will promise that as gladly as I would promise to enter Heaven if I saw the gates open before me.”
“Then you shall go, and God go with you and bring you back in safety to us!” she said. Then, turning abruptly, she went out of the room, leaving them both wondering at her words.
This took place early on the morning of the 21st of May. An hour later the President had applied in Alan’s name for the permission of the Council for him to select a crew of twenty volunteers and to take the Avenger to Europe on his mission to the warring peoples and to proclaim peace on earth and breathing space for humanity to prepare for its end. But then a new difficulty presented itself. Alexis, in spite of all Alan’s remonstrances to the contrary, declared that he should never leave Aeria without him.
“I have shared in your exile and your return,” he said, in answer to all arguments, “and, by the honour of the Golden Wings, I swear that I will either go with you now or you shall see me fall dead the moment that you leave the earth!”