This then was it--the New World and the human creatures who were to
build it, the unborn as well as those now in their cradles or tottering
in their first step on the pathway leading to the place of building. Yet
he himself had no thought of there being any touch of heroic splendour
in his way of looking at it. He was not capable of drama. Behind his
shut doors of immovability and stiff coldness, behind his cynic habit of
treating all things with detached lightness, the generations and the
centuries had continued their work in spite of his modernity. His
British obstinacy would not relinquish the long past he and his had
seemed to _own_ in representing it. He had loved one woman, and one
only--with a love like a deep wound; he had longed for a son; he had
stubbornly undertaken to protect a creature he felt life had treated
unfairly. The shattering of the old world had stirred in him a powerful
interest in the future of the new one whose foundations were yet to be
laid. The combination of these things might lead to curious
developments.
They sat and talked long and the developments were perhaps more unusual
than she had imagined they might be.
"If I had been able to express the something which approached affection
which I felt for Donal, he would have found out that my limitations were
not deliberately evil proclivities," was one of the things he said. "One
day he would have ended by making a clean breast of it. He was afraid of
me. I suspect he was afraid of his mother--fond as they were of each
other. I should have taken the matter in hand and married the pair of
them at once--quietly if they preferred it, but safely and sanely. God
knows I should have comprehended their wish to keep a roaring world out
of their paradise. It _was_ paradise!"
"How you believe her!" she exclaimed.
"She is not a trivial thing, neither was he. If I did _not_ believe her
I should know that he _meant_ to marry her, even if fate played them
some ghastly trick and there was not time. Another girl's consciousness
of herself might have saved her, but she had no consciousness but his.
If--if a son is born he should be what his father would have been after
my death."
"The Head of the House," the Duchess said.
"It is a curious thing," he deliberated, "that now there remains no
possible head but what is left of myself--it ceases to seem the mere
pompous phrase one laughed at--the Head of the House of Coombe. Here I,
of all men, sit before you glaring into the empty future and demanding
one. There ought to have been more males in the family. Only four were
killed--and we are done for."
"If you had seen them married before he went away--" she began.
He rose to his feet as if involuntarily. He looked as she had never seen
him look before.
"Allow me to make a fantastic confession to you," he said. "It will open
doors. If all were as the law foolishly demands it should be--if she
were safe in the ordinary way--absurdly incredible or not as the
statement may seem--I should now be at her feet."
"At her feet!" she said slowly, because she felt herself facing actual
revelation.
"Her child would be to me the child of the son who ought to have been
born to me a life time ago. God, how I have wanted him! Robin would seem
to be what another Madonna-like young creature might have been if she
had been my wife. She would not know that she was a little saint on an
altar. She would be the shrine of the past and the future. In my
inexpressive way I should be worshipping before her. That her possible
son would rescue the House of Coombe from extinction would have meant
much, but it would be a mere detail. Now you understand."
Yes. She understood. Things she had never comprehended and had not
expected to comprehend explained themselves with comparative clearness.
He proceeded with a certain hard distinctness.
"The thing which grips me most strongly is that this one--who is one of
those who have work before them--shall not be handicapped. He shall not
begin life manacled and shamed by illegitimacy. He shall begin it with
the background of all his father meant to give him. The law of England
will not believe in his claims unless they can be proven. She can prove
nothing. I can prove nothing for her. If she had been a little female
costermonger she would have demanded her 'marriage lines' and clung to
them fiercely. She would have known that to be able to flaunt them in
the face of argument was indispensable."
"She probably did not know that there existed such documents," the
Duchess said. "Neither of the pair knew anything for the time but that
they were wild with love and were to be torn apart."
"Therefore," he said with distinctness even clearer and harder, "she
must possess indisputable documentary evidence of marriage before the
child is born--as soon as possible."
"Marriage!" she hesitated aghast. "But _who_ will--?"
"I," he answered with absolute rigidity. "It will be difficult. It must
be secret. But if it can be done--when his time comes the child can look
his new world in the face. He will be the Head of the House of Coombe
when it most needs a strong fellow who has no cause to fear anything and
who holds money and power in his hands."
"You propose to suggest that she shall marry _you_?" she put it to him.
"Yes. It will be the devil's own job," he answered. "She has not begun
to think of the child yet--and she has abhorred me all her life. To her
the world means nothing. She does not know what it can do to her and she
would not care if she did. Donal was her world and he is gone. But you
and I know what she does not."
"So this is what you have been thinking?" she said. It was indeed an
unarchaic point of view. But even as she heard him she realised that it
was the almost inevitable outcome--not only of what was at the moment
happening to the threatened and threatening world, but of his singularly
secretive past--of all the things he had hidden and also of all the
things he had professed not to hide but had baffled people with.
"Since the morning Redcliff dropped his bomb I have not been able to
think of much else," he said. "It was a bomb, I own. Neither you nor I
had reason for a shadow of suspicion. My mind has a trick of dragging
back to me a memory of a village girl who was left as--as she is. She
said her lover had married her--but he went away and never came back.
The village she lived in was a few miles from Coombe Keep and she gave
birth to a boy. His childhood must have been a sort of hell. When other
boys had rows with him they used to shout 'Bastard' after him in the
street. He had a shifty, sickened look and when he died of measles at
seven years old no doubt he was glad of it. He used to run crying to his
wretched mother and hide his miserable head in her apron."
"It sounds unendurable," the Duchess said sharply.
"I can defy the world as she cannot," he said with dangerous calm. "I
can provide money for her. She may be hidden away. But only one thing
will save her child--Donal's child--from being a sort of outcast and
losing all he should possess--a quick and quiet marriage which will put
all doubt out of the question."
"And you know perfectly well what the general opinion will be with
regard to yourself?"
"Damned well. A debauched old degenerate marrying the daughter of his
mistress because her eighteen years attracts his vicious decrepitude. My
absolute indifference to that, may I say, can not easily be formulated.
_She_ shall be spared as much as possible. The thing can be kept secret
for years. She can live in entire seclusion. No one need be told until I
am dead--or until it is necessary for the boy's sake. By that time
perhaps changes in opinion will have taken place. But now--as is the cry
of the hour--there is no time. She said that Donal said it too." He
stood still for a few moments and looked at the floor. "But as I said,"
he terminated, "it will be the devil's own job. When I first speak to
her about it--she will almost be driven mad."