Consoled and encouraged by her sympathetic and resolute words, Sarrasin fell into a sound and wholesome sleep.
CHAPTER XXVII
'SINCE IT IS SO!'
Helena had often before divined the Dictator. Now at last she realised him. She had divined him in spite of her own doubts at one time—or perhaps because of her own doubts, or the doubts put into her mind by other minds and other tongues. She had always felt assured that the Dictator was there—had felt certain that he must be there—and now at last she knew that he was there. She had faith in him as one may have faith in some sculptor whose masterpiece one has not yet seen. We believe in the work because we know the man, although we have not yet seen him in his work. We know that he has won fame, and we know that he is not a man likely to put up with a fame undeserved. So we wait composedly for the unveiling of his statue, and when it is unveiled we find in it simply the justification of our faith. It was so with Helena Langley. She felt sure that whenever her hero got the chance he would prove himself a hero—show himself endowed with the qualities of a commander-in-chief. Now she knew it. She had seen the living proof of it. She had seen him tried by the test of a thoroughly new situation, and she had seen that he had not wasted one moment on mere surprise. She had seen how quickly he had surveyed the whole scene of danger, and how in the flash of one moment's observation he had known what was to be done—and what alone was to be done. She had seen how he had taken command by virtue of his knowledge that at such a moment of confusion, bewilderment, and danger, the command came to him by right of the fittest.
The heart of the girl swelled with pride; and she felt a pride even in herself, because she had so instinctively recognised and appreciated him. She told herself that she must really be worth something when she had from the very beginning so thoroughly appreciated him. Of course, a romantic girl's wild enthusiasm might also have been a romantic girl's wild mistake. The Dictator had, after all, only shown the qualities of courage and coolness with which his enemies as well as his friends had always credited him. The elaborate and craftily got-up attack upon him would never have been concerted—would never have had occasion to be concerted—but that his enemies regarded him as a most dangerous and formidable opponent. Even in her hurried thoughts of the moment Helena took in all this. But the knowledge made her none the less proud.
'Of course,' she thought, 'they knew what a danger and a terror he was to them, and now I know it as well as they do; but I knew it all along, and now they—they themselves—have justified my appreciation of him.' All the time she had a shrinking, sickening terror in her heart about further plots and future dangers. Some of Ericson's own words lingered in her memory—words about the impossibility of finding any real protection against the attempt of the fanatic assassin who takes his own life in his hand, and is content to die the moment he has taken the life of his victim.
This was the all but absorbing thought in Helena's mind just then. His life was in danger; he had escaped this late attempt, and it had been a serious one, and had deluged a house in blood, and what chance was there that he might escape another? He would go out to Gloria, and even on the very voyage he might be assassinated, and she would not be there, perhaps to protect him—at all events, to be with him—and she did not know, even know whether he cared about her—whether he would miss her—whether she counted for anything in his thoughts and his plans and his life—whether he would remember or whether he would forget her. She was in a highly strung, and, if the expression may be used, an exalted frame of mind. She had not slept much. After all the wildness of the disturbance was over Sir Rupert had insisted on her going to bed and not getting up until luncheon-time, and she had quietly submitted, and had been undressed, and had slept a little in a fitful, upstarting sort of way; and at last noon came, and she soon got up again, and bathed, and prepared to be very heroic and enduring and self-composed. She was much in the habit of going into the conservatory before luncheon, and Ericson had often found her there; and perhaps she had in her own mind a lingering expectation that if he got back from the village, and the coroner, and the magistrates, and all the rest of it, in time, he would come to the conservatory and look for her. She wanted him to go to Gloria—oh, yes—of course, she wanted him to go—he was going perhaps that very day; but she did not want him to go before he had spoken to her—alone—alone. We have said that she did not know whether he cared about her or not. So she told herself. But did not an instinct the other way drive her into that conservatory where they had met before about the same hour of the day—on less fateful days?
The house looked quiet and peaceful enough now under the clear, poetic melancholy of an autumn sunlight. The musical Oriental bells—a set the same as those that Helena had established in the London house—rang out their announcement or warning that luncheon-time was coming as blithely as though the house were not a mournful hospital for the sick and for the dead. Helena was moving slowly, sadly, in the conservatory. She did not care to affront the glare of the open, and outer day. Suddenly Ericson came dreamily in, and he flushed at seeing her, and her cheek hung out involuntarily, unwillingly, its red flag in reply. There was a moment of embarrassment and silence.
'All these terrible things will not alter your plans?' she asked, in a voice curiously timid for her.