Chapter 41 - Page 2

"You are right--quite!"

"I feel sure I am. When he can talk he will tell you--if he remembers. I
wonder how much they remember--except the relief and the blessed
happiness of it? Lord Coombe, I believe as I believe I'm in this room,
that when he knew he was going to face the awful risk of trying to
escape, he knew he mustn't tell her. And he knew that in crawling
through dangers and hiding in ditches he could never be sure of being
able to lie down to sleep and concentrate on sending his soul to her. So
he told her that he might not come for some time. Oh, lord! If he'd been
caught and killed he could never-- No! No!" obstinately, "even then he
would have got back in some form--in some way. I've got to the point of
believing as much as that. He was hers!"

"Yes. Yes. Yes," was all his slow answer. But there was deep thought in
each detached word and when she went away he walked up and down the room
with leisurely steps, looking down at the carpet.

* * * * *

As many hours of the day and night as those in authority would allow him
Lord Coombe sat and watched by Donal's bed. He watched from well hidden
anxiousness to see every subtle change recording itself on his being; he
watched from throbbing affection and longing to see at once any tinge of
growing natural colour, any unconscious movement perhaps a shade
stronger than the last. It was his son who lay there, he told himself,
it was the son he had remotely yearned for in his loneliness; if he had
been his father watching his sunk lids with bated breath, he would have
felt just these unmerciful pangs.

He also watched because in the boy's hours of fevered unconsciousness he
could at times catch words--sometimes broken sentences, which threw
ghastly light upon things past. Sometimes their significance was such as
made him shudder. A condition the doctors most dreaded was one in which
monstrous scenes seem lived again--scenes in which cruelties and
maddening suffering and despairing death itself rose vividly from the
depth of subconsciousness and cried aloud for vengeance. Sometimes Donal
shuddered, tearing at his chest with both hands, more than once he lay
sobbing until only skilled effort prevented his sobs from becoming
choking danger.

"It may be years after he regains his strength," the chief physician
said, "years before it will be safe to ask him for detail. On my own
part I would _never_ bring such horrors back to a man. You may have
noticed how the men who have borne most, absolutely refuse to talk."

"It's an accursed fool who tries to make them," broke in one of the
younger men. "There was a fellow who had been pinned up against a barn
door