Chapter 40

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.