"Dios! It is sweet to be young and to love!"
CHAPTER XIV
DRENNEN MAKES A DISCOVERY
For David Drennen, in whose mouth the husks of life were dry and harsh and bitter, a miracle had happened. Nor was that miracle any the less a golden wonder because to other men in other times it had been the same. Marshall Sothern had been right; the time had come when a woman's responsibilities were to be greater than those of the head of a monster corporation. Banked and covered as it was in the ashes of the after years, there was the old living spark of humanity in David Drennen. Ygerne Bellaire came in time to fan it into a warming glow. The fire which should come from it should be her affair. It would cheer with its warmth; or it should devastate with its flames. The spark, fanned into love's fire, had in an instant sent its flickering light throughout the darker places of a man's being.
A woman, accomplishing that which Ygerne Bellaire had done, is sometimes not unlike a child scattering coals in a dry forestland. The forest, the child itself, may be consumed.
Men who had not called him Drennen the Unlucky had named him Headlong Drennen. His is that type which, in another environment and taking the gamble of life from another angle, is termed a plunger. There was no room for half-heartedness in so positive a nature. Where he loved he worshipped. He had had an idol once before, his father. Now, after half a score of years, he made himself another idol. And it, in turn, made of him another man.
Worship must be unquestioning. It is builded upon utter faith. So Drennen, his slow words spoken to Ygerne, his love for her freed, as it were, from any restraint he had hitherto tried to put upon it, his whole being given over to it, came without question to believe in her. She was the woman meant to be his mate and he had called to her and she had come to him. His moment of doubt had fled with his declaration. Otherwise he would have been the paler personality which it was not in him to be, half-hearted. Of her passion and pride he made character. From the look which he had seen in her eyes he made tenderness and truth. Every attribute of that ideal which is somewhere in the heart of every man, until at last the one woman comes to occupy its place more sweetly and warmly and intimately, he brought forth from its dark recess to bestow upon Ygerne.
All night he did not sleep. The sun, rising, found him quite another man than that upon which it had set last night. In men like Drennen a few hours and a strong emotion can accomplish results which in other men would require the passing of years. And the same rising sun showed a new world to the eyes opened eagerly to see it, displayed a fresh universe to a heart starved for it. He had sought to see only the shadows yesterday; now he looked for the light and it was everywhere. It lay quivering upon the mountain tops, it flooded the valleys, it brightened his own heart, it touched the bosoms of other men, it shone in their eyes.
He had shaved and dressed himself neatly. On his way to his early breakfast he met Marshall Sothern on the street. Drennen came to him swiftly, putting out his hand.