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Title: The Head of the House of Coombe

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6491]
                Most recently updated: August 12, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE ***

[Illustration]




The Head of the House of Coombe

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

NEW YORK


Contents

 CHAPTER I
 CHAPTER II
 CHAPTER III
 CHAPTER IV
 CHAPTER V
 CHAPTER VI
 CHAPTER VII
 CHAPTER VIII
 CHAPTER IX
 CHAPTER X
 CHAPTER XI
 CHAPTER XII
 CHAPTER XIII
 CHAPTER XIV
 CHAPTER XV
 CHAPTER XVI
 CHAPTER XVII
 CHAPTER XVIII
 CHAPTER XIX
 CHAPTER XX
 CHAPTER XXI
 CHAPTER XXII
 CHAPTER XXIII
 CHAPTER XXIV
 CHAPTER XXV
 CHAPTER XXVI
 CHAPTER XXVII
 CHAPTER XXVIII
 CHAPTER XXIX
 CHAPTER XXX
 CHAPTER XXXI
 CHAPTER XXXII




CHAPTER I


The history of the circumstances about to be related began many years
ago—or so it seems in these days. It began, at least, years before the
world being rocked to and fro revealed in the pause between each of its
heavings some startling suggestion of a new arrangement of its
kaleidoscopic particles, and then immediately a re-arrangement, and
another and another until all belief in a permanency of design seemed
lost, and the inhabitants of the earth waited, helplessly gazing at
changing stars and colours in a degree of mental chaos.

Its opening incidents may be dated from a period when people still had
reason to believe in permanency and had indeed many of them—sometimes
through ingenuousness, sometimes through stupidity of type—acquired a
singular confidence in the importance and stability of their
possessions, desires, ambitions and forms of conviction.

London at the time, in common with other great capitals, felt itself
rather final though priding itself on being much more fluid and
adaptable than it had been fifty years previously. In speaking of
itself it at least dealt with fixed customs, and conditions and
established facts connected with them—which gave rise to brilliant—or
dull—witticisms.

One of these, heard not infrequently, was to the effect that—in
London—one might live under an umbrella if one lived under it in the
right neighbourhood and on the right side of the street, which axiom is
the reason that a certain child through the first six years of her life
sat on certain days staring out of a window in a small, dingy room on
the top floor of a slice of a house on a narrow but highly fashionable
London street and looked on at the passing of motors, carriages and
people in the dull afternoon grayness.

The room was exalted above its station by being called The Day Nursery
and another room equally dingy and uninviting was known as The Night
Nursery. The slice of a house was inhabited by the very pretty Mrs.
Gareth-Lawless, its inordinate rent being reluctantly paid by
her—apparently with the assistance of those “ravens” who are expected
to supply the truly deserving. The rent was inordinate only from the
standpoint of one regarding it soberly in connection with the character
of the house itself which was a gaudy little kennel crowded between two
comparatively stately mansions. On one side lived an inordinately rich
South African millionaire, and on the other an inordinately exalted
person of title, which facts combined to form sufficient grounds for a
certain inordinateness of rent.

Mrs. Gareth-Lawless was also, it may be stated, of the fibre which must
live on the right side of the street or dissolve into nothingness—since
as nearly nothingness as an embodied entity can achieve had Nature
seemingly created her at the outset. So light and airy was the fair,
slim, physical presentation of her being to the earthly vision, and so
almost impalpably diaphanous the texture and form of mind and character
to be observed by human perception, that among such friends—and
enemies—as so slight a thing could claim she was prettily known as
“Feather”. Her real name, “Amabel”, was not half as charming and
whimsical in its appropriateness. “Feather” she adored being called and
as it was the fashion among the amazing if amusing circle in which she
spent her life, to call its acquaintances fantastic pet names selected
from among the world of birds, beasts and fishes or inanimate
objects—“Feather” she floated through her curious existence. And it so
happened that she was the mother of the child who so often stared out
of the window of the dingy and comfortless Day Nursery, too much a
child to be more than vaguely conscious in a chaotic way that a certain
feeling which at times raged within her and made her little body hot
and restless was founded on something like actual hate for a special
man who had certainly taken no deliberate steps to cause her
detestation.

“Feather” had not been called by that delicious name when she married
Robert Gareth-Lawless who was a beautiful and irresponsibly rather than
deliberately bad young man. She was known as Amabel Darrel and the
loveliest girl in the lovely corner of the island of Jersey where her
father, a country doctor, had begotten a large family of lovely
creatures and brought them up on the appallingly inadequate proceeds of
his totally inadequate practice. Pretty female things must be disposed
of early lest their market value decline. Therefore a well-born young
man even without obvious resources represents a sail in the offing
which is naturally welcomed as possibly belonging to a bark which may
at least bear away a burden which the back carrying it as part of its
pack will willingly shuffle on to other shoulders. It is all very well
for a man with six lovely daughters to regard them as capital if he has
money or position or generous relations or if he has energy and an
ingenious unfatigued mind. But a man who is tired and neither clever
nor important in any degree and who has reared his brood in one of the
Channel Islands with a faded, silly, unattractive wife as his only aid
in any difficulty, is wise in leaving the whole hopeless situation to
chance and luck. Sometimes luck comes without assistance but—almost
invariably—it does not.

“Feather”—who was then “Amabel”—thought Robert Gareth-Lawless
incredible good luck. He only drifted into her summer by merest chance
because a friend’s yacht in which he was wandering about “came in” for
supplies. A girl Ariel in a thin white frock and with big larkspur blue
eyes yearning at you under her flapping hat as she answers your
questions about the best road to somewhere will not be too difficult
about showing the way herself. And there you are at a first-class
beginning.

The night after she met Gareth-Lawless in a lane whose banks were thick
with bluebells, Amabel and her sister Alice huddled close together in
bed and talked almost pantingly in whispers over the possibilities
which might reveal themselves—God willing—through a further
acquaintance with Mr. Gareth-Lawless. They were eager and breathlessly
anxious but they were young—_young_ in their eagerness and Amabel was
full of delight in his good looks.

“He is _so_ handsome, Alice,” she whispered actually hugging her, not
with affection but exultation. “And he can’t be more than twenty-six or
seven. And I’m _sure_ he liked me. You know that way a man has of
looking at you—one sees it even in a place like this where there are
only curates and things. He has brown eyes—like dark bright water in
pools. Oh, Alice, if he _should!_”

Alice was not perhaps as enthusiastic as her sister. Amabel had seen
him first and in the Darrel household there was a sort of unwritten,
not always observed code flimsily founded on “First come first served.”
Just at the outset of an acquaintance one might say “Hands off” as it
were. But not for long.

“It doesn’t matter how pretty one is they seldom do,” Alice grumbled.
“And he mayn’t have a farthing.”

“Alice,” whispered Amabel almost agonizingly, “I wouldn’t _care_ a
farthing—if only he _would!_ Have I a farthing—have you a farthing—has
anyone who ever comes here a farthing? He lives in London. He’d take me
away. To live even in a back street _in London_ would be Heaven! And
one _must_—as soon as one possibly can.—One _must!_ And Oh!” with
another hug which this time was a shudder, “think of what Doris Harmer
had to do! Think of his thick red old neck and his horrid fatness! And
the way he breathed through his nose. Doris said that at first it used
to make her ill to look at him.”

“She’s got over it,” whispered Alice. “She’s almost as fat as he is
now. And she’s loaded with pearls and things.”

“I shouldn’t have to ‘get over’ anything,” said Amabel, “if this one
_would_. I could fall in love with him in a minute.”

“Did you hear what Father said?” Alice brought out the words rather
slowly and reluctantly. She was not eager on the whole to yield up a
detail which after all added glow to possible prospects which from her
point of view were already irritatingly glowing. Yet she could not
resist the impulse of excitement. “No, you didn’t hear. You were out of
the room.”

“What about? Something about _him?_ I hope it wasn’t horrid. How could
it be?”

“He said,” Alice drawled with a touch of girlishly spiteful
indifference, “that if he was one of the poor Gareth-Lawlesses he
hadn’t much chance of succeeding to the title. His uncle—Lord Lawdor—is
only forty-five and he has four splendid healthy boys—perfect little
giants.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was a title. How splendid,” exclaimed Amabel
rapturously. Then after a few moments’ innocent maiden reflection she
breathed with sweet hopefulness from under the sheet, “Children so
often have scarlet fever or diphtheria, and you know they say those
very strong ones are more likely to die than the other kind. The Vicar
of Sheen lost _four_ all in a week. And the Vicar died too. The doctor
said the diphtheria wouldn’t have killed him if the shock hadn’t
helped.”

Alice—who had a teaspoonful more brain than her sister—burst into a fit
of giggling it was necessary to smother by stuffing the sheet in her
mouth.

“Oh! Amabel!” she gurgled. “You _are_ such a donkey! You would have
been silly enough to say that even if people could have heard you.
Suppose _he_ had!”

“Why should he care,” said Amabel simply. “One can’t help thinking
things. If it happened he would be the Earl of Lawdor and—”

She fell again into sweet reflection while Alice giggled a little more.
Then she herself stopped and thought also. After all perhaps—! One had
to be practical. The tenor of her thoughts was such that she did not
giggle again when Amabel broke the silence by whispering with
tremulous, soft devoutness.

“Alice—do you think that praying _really_ helps?”

“I’ve prayed for things but I never got them,” answered Alice. “But you
know what the Vicar said on Sunday in sermon about ‘Ask and ye shall
receive’.”

“Perhaps you haven’t prayed in the right spirit,” Amabel suggested with
true piety. “Shall we—shall we try? Let us get out of bed and kneel
down.”

“Get out of bed and kneel down yourself,” was Alice’s sympathetic
rejoinder. “You wouldn’t take that much trouble for _me_.”

Amabel sat up on the edge of the bed. In the faint moonlight and her
white night-gown she was almost angelic. She held the end of the long
fair soft plait hanging over her shoulder and her eyes were full of
reproach.

“I think you ought to take _some_ interest,” she said plaintively. “You
know there would be more chances for you and the others—if I were not
here.”

“I’ll wait until you are not here,” replied the unstirred Alice.

But Amabel felt there was no time for waiting in this particular case.
A yacht which “came in” might so soon “put out”. She knelt down,
clasping her slim young hands and bending her forehead upon them. In
effect she implored that Divine Wisdom might guide Mr. Robert
Gareth-Lawless in the much desired path. She also made divers promises
because nothing is so easy as to promise things. She ended with a
gently fervent appeal that—if her prayer were granted—something “might
happen” which would result in her becoming a Countess of Lawdor. One
could not have put the request with greater tentative delicacy.

She felt quite uplifted and a trifle saintly when she rose from her
knees. Alice had actually fallen asleep already and she sighed quite
tenderly as she slipped into the place beside her. Almost as her lovely
little head touched the pillow her own eyes closed. Then she was asleep
herself—and in the faintly moonlit room with the long soft plait
trailing over her shoulder looked even more like an angel than before.

Whether or not as a result of this touching appeal to the Throne of
Grace, Robert Gareth-Lawless _did_. In three months there was a wedding
at the very ancient village church and five flowerlike bridesmaids
followed a flower of a bride to the altar and later in the day to the
station from where Mr. and Mrs. Robert Gareth-Lawless went on their way
to London. Perhaps Alice and Olive also knelt by the side of their
white beds the night after the wedding, for on that propitious day two
friends of the bridegroom’s—one of them the owner of the yacht—decided
to return again to the place where there were to be found the most
nymphlike of pretty creatures a man had ever by any chance beheld. Such
delicate little fair crowned heads, such delicious little tip-tilted
noses and slim white throats, such ripples of gay chatter and nonsense!
When a man has fortune enough of his own why not take the prettiest
thing he sees? So Alice and Olive were borne away also and poor Mr. and
Mrs. Darrel breathed sighs of relief and there were not only more
chances but causes for bright hopefulness in the once crowded house
which now had rooms to spare.

A certain inattention on the part of the Deity was no doubt responsible
for the fact that “something” did not “happen” to the family of Lord
Lawdor. On the contrary his four little giants of sons throve
astonishingly and a few months after the Gareth-Lawless wedding Lady
Lawdor—a trifle effusively, as it were—presented her husband with twin
male infants so robust that they were humorously known for years
afterwards as the “Twin Herculeses.”

By that time Amabel had become “Feather” and despite Robert’s ingenious
and carefully detailed method of living upon nothing whatever, had many
reasons for knowing that “life in a back street in London” is not a
matter of beds of roses. Since the back street must be the “right
street” and its accompaniments must wear an aspect of at least seeming
to belong to the right order of detachment and fashionable ease, one
was always in debt and forced to keep out of the way of duns, and
obliged to pretend things and tell lies with aptness and outward
gaiety. Sometimes one actually was so far driven to the wall that one
could not keep most important engagements and the invention of
plausible excuses demanded absolute genius. The slice of a house
between the two big ones was a rash venture of the honeymoon but a year
of giving smart little dinners in it and going to smart big dinners
from it in a smart if small brougham ended in a condition somewhat akin
to the feat of balancing oneself on the edge of a sword.

Then Robin was born. She was an intruder and a calamity of course.
Nobody had contemplated her for a moment. Feather cried for a week when
she first announced the probability of her advent. Afterwards however
she managed to forget the approaching annoyance and went to parties and
danced to the last hour continuing to be a great success because her
prettiness was delicious and her diaphanous mentality was no strain
upon the minds of her admirers male and female.

That a Feather should become a parent gave rise to much wit of light
weight when Robin in the form of a bundle of lace was carried down by
her nurse to be exhibited in the gaudy crowded little drawing-room in
the slice of a house in the Mayfair street.

It was the Head of the House of Coombe who asked the first question
about her.

“What will you _do_ with her?” he inquired detachedly.

The frequently referred to “babe unborn” could not have presented a
gaze of purer innocence than did the lovely Feather. Her eyes of
larkspur blueness were clear of any thought or intention as spring
water is clear at its unclouded best.

Her ripple of a laugh was clear also—enchantingly clear.

“Do!” she repeated. “What is it people ‘do’ with babies? I suppose the
nurse knows. I don’t. I wouldn’t touch her for the world. She frightens
me.”

She floated a trifle nearer and bent to look at her.

“I shall call her Robin,” she said. “Her name is really Roberta as she
couldn’t be called Robert. People will turn round to look at a girl
when they hear her called Robin. Besides she has eyes like a robin. I
wish she’d open them and let you see.”

By chance she did open them at the moment—quite slowly. They were dark
liquid brown and seemed to be all lustrous iris which gazed unmovingly
at the object in line of focus. That object was the Head of the House of
Coombe.

“She is staring at me. There is antipathy in her gaze,” he said, and
stared back unmovingly also, but with a sort of cold interest.




CHAPTER II


The Head of the House of Coombe was not a title to be found in Burke or
Debrett. It was a fine irony of the Head’s own and having been accepted
by his acquaintances was not infrequently used by them in their light
moments in the same spirit. The peerage recorded him as a Marquis and
added several lesser attendant titles.

“When English society was respectable, even to stodginess at times,”
was his point of view, “to be born ‘the Head of the House’ was a
weighty and awe-inspiring thing. In fearful private denunciatory
interviews with one’s parents and governors it was brought up against
one as a final argument against immoral conduct such as debt and not
going to church. As the Head of the House one was called upon to be an
Example. In the country one appeared in one’s pew and announced oneself
a ‘miserable sinner’ in loud tones, one had to invite the rector to
dinner with regularity and ‘the ladies’ of one’s family gave tea and
flannel petticoats and baby clothes to cottagers. Men and women were
known as ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ in those halcyon days. One
Represented things—Parties in Parliament—Benevolent Societies, and
British Hospitality in the form of astounding long dinners at which one
drank healths and made speeches. In roseate youth one danced the
schottische and the polka and the round waltz which Lord Byron
denounced as indecent. To recall the vigour of his poem gives rise to a
smile—when one chances to sup at a cabaret.”

He was considered very amusing when he analyzed his own mental attitude
towards his world in general.

“I was born somewhat too late and somewhat too early,” he explained in
his light, rather cold and detached way. “I was born and educated at
the closing of one era and have to adjust myself to living in another.
I was as it were cradled among treasured relics of the ethics of the
Georges and Queen Charlotte, and Queen Victoria in her bloom. _I_ was
in my bloom in the days when ‘ladies’ were reproved for wearing dresses
cut too low at Drawing Rooms. Such training gives curious interest to
fashions in which bodices are unconsidered trifles and Greek nymphs who
dance with bare feet and beautiful bare legs may be one’s own
relations. I trust I do not seem even in the shadowiest way to comment
unfavourably. I merely look on at the rapidities of change with
unalloyed interest. As the Head of the House of Coombe I am not sure
_what_ I am an Example of—or to. Which is why I at times regard myself
in that capacity with a slightly ribald lightness.”

The detachment of his question with regard to the newborn infant of the
airily irresponsible Feather was in entire harmony with his attitude
towards the singular incident of Life as illustrated by the World, the
Flesh and the Devil by none of which he was—as far as could be
observed—either impressed, disturbed or prejudiced. His own experience
had been richly varied and practically unlimited in its opportunities
for pleasure, sinful or unsinful indulgence, mitigated or unmitigated
wickedness, the gathering of strange knowledge, and the possible
ignoring of all dull boundaries. This being the case a superhuman
charity alone could have forborne to believe that his opportunities had
been neglected in the heyday of his youth. Wealth and lack of
limitations in themselves would have been quite enough to cause the
Nonconformist Victorian mind to regard a young—or middle-aged—male as
likely to represent a fearsome moral example, but these three
temptations combined with good looks and a certain mental brilliance
were so inevitably the concomitants of elegant iniquity that the
results might be taken for granted.

That the various worlds in which he lived in various lands accepted him
joyfully as an interesting and desirable of more or less abominably
sinful personage, the Head of the House of Coombe—even many years
before he became its head—regarded with the detachment which he had,
even much earlier, begun to learn. Why should it be in the least matter
what people thought of one? Why should it in the least matter what one
thought of oneself—and therefore—why should one think at all? He had
begun at the outset a brilliantly happy young pagan with this simple
theory. After the passing of some years he had not been quite so happy
but had remained quite as pagan and retained the theory which had lost
its first fine careless rapture and gained a secret bitterness. He had
not married and innumerable stories were related to explain the reason
why. They were most of them quite false and none of them quite true.
When he ceased to be a young man his delinquency was much discussed,
more especially when his father died and he took his place as the head
of his family. He was old enough, rich enough, important enough for
marriage to be almost imperative. But he remained unmarried. In
addition he seemed to consider his abstinence entirely an affair of his
own.

“Are you as wicked as people say you are?” a reckless young woman once
asked him. She belonged to the younger set which was that season trying
recklessness, in a tentative way, as a new fashion.

“I really don’t know. It is so difficult to decide,” he answered. “I
could tell better if I knew exactly what wickedness is. When I find out
I will let you know. So good of you to take an interest.”

Thirty years earlier he knew that a young lady who had heard he was
wicked would have perished in flames before immodestly mentioning the
fact to him, but might have delicately attempted to offer “first aid”
to reformation, by approaching with sweetness the subject of going to
church.

The reckless young woman looked at him with an attention which he was
far from being blind enough not to see was increased by his answer.

“I never know what you mean,” she said almost wistfully.

“Neither do I,” was his amiable response. “And I am sure it would not
be worth while going into. Really, we neither of us know what we mean.
Perhaps I am as wicked as I know how to be. And I may have painful
limitations—or I may not.”

After his father’s death he spent rather more time in London and rather
less in wandering over the face of the globe. But by the time he was
forty he knew familiarly far countries and near and was intimate with
most of the peoples thereof. He could have found his way about
blind-folded in the most distinctive parts of most of the great cities.
He had seen and learned many things. The most absorbing to his mind had
been the ambitions and changes of nations, statesmen, rulers and those
they ruled or were ruled by. Courts and capitals knew him, and his
opportunities were such as gave him all ease as an onlooker. He was
outwardly of the type which does not arouse caution in talkers and he
heard much which was suggestive even to illumination, from those to
whom he remained unsuspected of being a man who remembered things long
and was astute in drawing conclusions. The fact remained however that
he possessed a remarkable memory and one which was not a rag-bag filled
with unassorted and parti-coloured remnants, but a large and orderly
space whose contents were catalogued and filed and well enclosed from
observation. He was also given to the mental argument which follows a
point to its conclusion as a mere habit of mind. He saw and knew well
those who sat and pondered with knit brows and cautiously hovering hand
at the great chess-board which is formed by the Map of Europe. He found
an enormous interest in watching their play. It was his fortune as a
result of his position to know persons who wore crowns and a natural
incident in whose lives it was to receive the homage expressed by the
uncovering of the head and the bending of the knee. At forty he looked
back at the time when the incongruousness, the abnormality and the
unsteadiness of the foundations on which such personages stood first
struck him. The realization had been in its almost sacrilegious novelty
and daring, a sort of thunderbolt passing through his mind. He had at
the time spoken of it only to one person.

“I have no moral or ethical views to offer,” he had said. “I only
_see_. The thing—as it is—will disintegrate. I am so at sea as to what
will take its place that I feel as if the prospect were rather
horrible. One has had the old landmarks and been impressed by the old
pomp and picturesqueness so many centuries, that one cannot see the
earth without them. There have been kings even in the Cannibal
Islands.”

As a statesman or a diplomat he would have seen far but he had been too
much occupied with Life as an entertainment, too self-indulgent for
work of any order. He freely admitted to himself that he was a
worthless person but the fact did not disturb him. Having been born
with a certain order of brain it observed and worked in spite of him,
thereby adding flavour and interest to existence. But that was all.

It cannot be said that as the years passed he quite enjoyed the fact
that he knew he was rarely spoken of to a stranger without its being
mentioned that he was the most perfectly dressed man in London. He
rather detested the idea though he was aware that the truth was
unimpeachable. The perfection of his accompaniments had arisen in his
youth from a secret feeling for fitness and harmony. Texture and colour
gave him almost abnormal pleasure. His expression of this as a
masculine creature had its limits which resulted in a concentration on
perfection. Even at five-and-twenty however he had never been called a
dandy and even at five-and-forty no one had as yet hinted at Beau
Brummel though by that time men as well as women frequently described
to each other the cut and colour of the garments he wore, and tailors
besought him to honour them with crumbs of his patronage in the
ambitious hope that they might mention him as a client. And the simple
fact that he appeared in a certain colour or cut set it at once on its
way to become a fashion to be seized upon, worn and exaggerated until
it was dropped suddenly by its originator and lost in the oblivion of
cheap imitations and cheap tailor shops. The first exaggeration of the
harmony he had created and the original was seen no more.

Feather herself had a marvellous trick in the collecting of her
garments. It was a trick which at times barely escaped assuming the
proportions of absolute creation. Her passion for self-adornment
expressed itself in ingenious combination and quite startling
uniqueness of line now and then. Her slim fairness and ash-gold
gossamer hair carried airily strange tilts and curves of little or
large hats or daring tints other women could not sustain but invariably
strove to imitate however disastrous the results. Beneath soft drooping
or oddly flopping brims hopelessly unbecoming to most faces hers looked
out quaintly lovely as a pictured child’s wearing its grandmother’s
bonnet. Everything draped itself about or clung to her in entrancing
folds which however whimsical were never grotesque.

“Things are always becoming to me,” she said quite simply. “But often I
stick a few pins into a dress to tuck it up here and there, or if I
give a hat a poke somewhere to make it crooked, they are much more
becoming. People are always asking me how I do it but I don’t know how.
I bought a hat from Cerise last week and I gave it two little thumps
with my fist—one in the crown and one in the brim and they made it
wonderful. The maid of the most grand kind of person tried to find out
from my maid where I bought it. I wouldn’t let her tell of course.”

She created fashions and was imitated as was the Head of the House of
Coombe but she was enraptured by the fact and the entire power of such
gray matter as was held by her small brain cells was concentrated upon
her desire to evolve new fantasies and amazements for her world.

Before he had been married for a year there began to creep into the
mind of Bob Gareth-Lawless a fearsome doubt remotely hinting that she
might end by becoming an awful bore in the course of time—particularly
if she also ended by being less pretty. She chattered so incessantly
about nothing and was such an empty-headed, extravagant little fool in
her insistence on clothes—clothes—clothes—as if they were the breath of
life. After watching her for about two hours one morning as she sat
before her mirror directing her maid to arrange and re-arrange her hair
in different styles—in delicate puffs and curls and straying rings—soft
bands and loops—in braids and coils—he broke forth into an uneasy short
laugh and expressed himself—though she did not know he was expressing
himself and would not have understood him if she had.

“If you have a soul—and I’m not at all certain you have—” he said,
“it’s divided into a dressmaker’s and a hairdresser’s and a milliner’s
shop. It’s full of tumbled piles of hats and frocks and diamond combs.
It’s an awful mess, Feather.”

“I hope it’s a shoe shop and a jeweller’s as well,” she laughed quite
gaily. “And a lace-maker’s. I need every one of them.”

“It’s a rag shop,” he said. “It has nothing but _chiffons_ in it.”

“If ever I _do_ think of souls I think of them as silly gauzy things
floating about like little balloons,” was her cheerful response.

“That’s an idea,” he answered with a rather louder laugh. “Yours might
be made of pink and blue gauze spangled with those things you call
_paillettes_.”

The fancy attracted her.

“If I had one like that”—with a pleased creative air, “it would look
rather ducky floating from my shoulder—or even my hat—or my hair in the
evenings, just held by a tiny sparkling chain fastened with a diamond
pin—and with lovely little pink and blue streamers.” With the touch of
genius she had at once relegated it to its place in the scheme of her
universe. And Robert laughed even louder than before.

“You mustn’t make me laugh,” she said holding up her hand. “I am having
my hair done to match that quakery thin pale mousey dress with the tiny
poke bonnet—and I want to try my face too. I must look sweet and
demure. You mustn’t really laugh when you wear a dress and hat like
that. You must only smile.”

Some months earlier Bob would have found it difficult to believe that
she said this entirely without any touch of humour but he realized now
that it was so said. He had some sense of humour of his own and one of
his reasons for vaguely feeling that she might become a bore was that
she had none whatever.

It was at the garden party where she wore the thin quakery mousey dress
and tiny poke bonnet that the Head of the House of Coombe first saw
her. It was at the place of a fashionable artist who lived at Hampstead
and had a garden and a few fine old trees. It had been Feather’s
special intention to strike this note of delicate dim colour. Every
other woman was blue or pink or yellow or white or flowered and she in
her filmy coolness of unusual hue stood out exquisitely among them.
Other heads wore hats broad or curved or flopping, hers looked like a
little nun’s or an imaginary portrait of a delicious young
great-grandmother. She was more arresting than any other female
creature on the emerald sward or under the spreading trees.

When Coombe’s eyes first fell upon her he was talking to a group of
people and he stopped speaking. Someone standing quite near him said
afterwards that he had for a second or so become pale—almost as if he
saw something which frightened him.

“Who is that under the copper beech—being talked to by Harlow?” he
inquired.

Feather was in fact listening with a gentle air and with her eyelids
down drooped to the exact line harmonious with the angelic little poke
bonnet.

“It is Mrs. Robert Gareth-Lawless—‘Feather’ we call her,” he was
answered. “Was there ever anything more artful than that startling
little smoky dress? If it was flame colour one wouldn’t see it as
quickly.”

“One wouldn’t look at it as long,” said Coombe. “One is in danger of
staring. And the little hat—or bonnet—which pokes and is fastened under
her pink ear by a satin bow held by a loose pale bud! Will someone
rescue me from staring by leading me to her. It won’t be staring if I
am talking to her. Please.”

The paleness appeared again as on being led across the grass he drew
nearer to the copper beech. He was still rather pale when Feather
lifted her eyes to him. Her eyes were so shaped by Nature that they
looked like an angel’s when they were lifted. There are eyes of that
particular cut. But he had not talked to her fifteen minutes before he
knew that there was no real reason why he should ever again lose his
colour at the sight of her. He had thought at first there was. With the
perception which invariably marked her sense of fitness of things she
had begun in the course of the fifteen minutes—almost before the colour
had quite returned to his face—the story of her husband’s idea of her
soul, as a balloon of pink and blue gauze spangled with _paillettes_.
And of her own inspiration of wearing it floating from her shoulder or
her hair by the light sparkling chain—and with delicate ribbon
streamers. She was much delighted with his laugh—though she thought it
had a rather cracked, harsh sound. She knew he was an important person
and she always felt she was being a success when people laughed.

“Exquisite!” he said. “I shall never see you in the future without it.
But wouldn’t it be necessary to vary the colour at times?”

“Oh! Yes—to match things,” seriously. “I couldn’t wear a pink and blue
one with this—” glancing over the smoky mousey thing “—or
_paillettes_.”

“Oh, no—not _paillettes_,” he agreed almost with gravity, the harsh
laugh having ended.

“One couldn’t imagine the exact colour in a moment. One would have to
think,” she reflected. “Perhaps a misty dim bluey thing—like the edge
of a rain-cloud—scarcely a colour at all.”

For an instant her eyes were softly shadowed as if looking into a
dream. He watched her fixedly then. A woman who was a sort of angel
might look like that when she was asking herself how much her pure soul
might dare to pray for. Then he laughed again and Feather laughed also.

Many practical thoughts had already begun to follow each other hastily
through her mind. It would be the best possible thing for them if he
really admired her. Bob was having all sorts of trouble with people
they owed money to. Bills were sent in again and again and disagreeable
letters were written. Her dressmaker and milliner had given her most
rude hints which could indeed be scarcely considered hints at all. She
scarcely dared speak to their smart young footman who she knew had only
taken the place in the slice of a house because he had been told that
it might be an opening to better things. She did not know the exact
summing up at the agency had been as follows:

“They’re a good looking pair and he’s Lord Lawdor’s nephew. They’re
bound to have their fling and smart people will come to their house
because she’s so pretty. They’ll last two or three years perhaps and
you’ll open the door to the kind of people who remember a well set-up
young fellow if he shows he knows his work above the usual.”

The more men of the class of the Head of the House of Coombe who came
in and out of the slice of a house the more likely the owners of it
were to get good invitations and continued credit, Feather was aware.
Besides which, she thought ingenuously, if he was rich he would no
doubt lend Bob money. She had already known that certain men who liked
her had done it. She did not mind it at all. One was obliged to have
money.

This was the beginning of an acquaintance which gave rise to much
argument over tea-cups and at dinner parties and in boudoirs—even in
corners of Feather’s own gaudy little drawing-room. The argument
regarded the degree of Coombe’s interest in her. There was always
curiosity as to the degree of his interest in any woman—especially and
privately on the part of the woman herself. Casual and shallow
observers said he was quite infatuated if such a thing were possible to
a man of his temperament; the more concentrated of mind said it was not
possible to a man of his temperament and that any attraction Feather
might have for him was of a kind special to himself and that he alone
could explain it—and he would not.

Remained however the fact that he managed to see a great deal of her.
It might be said that he even rather followed her about and more than
one among the specially concentrated of mind had seen him on occasion
stand apart a little and look at her—watch her—with an expression
suggesting equally profound thought and the profound intention to
betray his private meditations in no degree. There was no shadow of
profundity of thought in his treatment of her. He talked to her as she
best liked to be talked to about herself, her successes and her clothes
which were more successful than anything else. He went to the little
but exceedingly lively dinners the Gareth-Lawlesses gave and though he
was understood not to be fond of dancing now and then danced with her
at balls.

Feather was guilelessly doubtless concerning him. She was quite sure
that he was in love with her. Her idea of that universal emotion was
that it was a matter of clothes and propinquity and loveliness and that
if one were at all clever one got things one wanted as a result of it.
Her overwhelming affection for Bob and his for her had given her life
in London and its entertaining accompaniments. Her frankness in the
matter of this desirable capture when she talked to her husband was at
once light and friendly.

“Of course you will be able to get credit at his tailor’s as you know
him so well,” she said. “When I persuaded him to go with me to Madame
Hélène’s last week she was quite amiable. He helped me to choose six
dresses and I believe she would have let me choose six more.”

“Does she think he is going to pay for them?” asked Bob.

“It doesn’t matter what she thinks”; Feather laughed very prettily.

“Doesn’t it?”

“Not a bit. I shall have the dresses. What’s the matter, Rob? You look
quite red and cross.”

“I’ve had a headache for three days,” he answered, “and I feel hot and
cross. I don’t care about a lot of things you say, Feather.”

“Don’t be silly,” she retorted. “I don’t care about a lot of things you
say—and do, too, for the matter of that.”

Robert Gareth-Lawless who was sitting on a chair in her dressing-room
grunted slightly as he rubbed his red and flushed forehead.

“There’s a—sort of limit,” he commented. He hesitated a little before
he added sulkily “—to the things one—_says_.”

“That sounds like Alice,” was her undisturbed answer. “She used to
squabble at me because I _said_ things. But I believe one of the
reasons people like me is because I make them laugh by _saying_ things.
Lord Coombe laughs. He is a very good person to know,” she added
practically. “Somehow he _counts_. Don’t you recollect how before we
knew him—when he was abroad so long—people used to bring him into their
talk as if they couldn’t help remembering him and what he was like. I
knew quite a lot about him—about his cleverness and his manners and his
way of keeping women off without being rude—and the things he says
about royalties and the aristocracy going out of fashion. And about his
clothes. I adore his clothes. And I’m convinced he adores mine.”

She had in fact at once observed his clothes as he had crossed the
grass to her seat under the copper beech. She had seen that his fine
thinness was inimitably fitted and presented itself to the eye as that
final note of perfect line which ignores any possibility of comment. He
did not wear things—they were expressions of his mental subtleties.
Feather on her part knew that she wore her clothes—carried them about
with her—however beautifully.

“I like him,” she went on. “I don’t know anything about political
parties and the state of Europe so I don’t understand the things he
says which people think are so brilliant, but I like him. He isn’t
really as old as I thought he was the first day I saw him. He had a
haggard look about his mouth and eyes then. He looked as if a spangled
pink and blue gauze soul with little floating streamers was a relief to
him.”

The child Robin was a year old by that time and staggered about
uncertainly in the dingy little Day Nursery in which she passed her
existence except on such occasions as her nurse—who had promptly fallen
in love with the smart young footman—carried her down to the kitchen
and Servants’ Hall in the basement where there was an earthy smell and
an abundance of cockroaches. The Servants’ Hall had been given that
name in the catalogue of the fashionable agents who let the home and it
was as cramped and grimy as the two top-floor nurseries.

The next afternoon Robert Gareth-Lawless staggered into his wife’s
drawing-room and dropped on to a sofa staring at her and breathing
hard.

“Feather!” he gasped. “Don’t know what’s up with me. I believe
I’m—awfully ill! I can’t see straight. Can’t think.”

He fell over sidewise on to the cushions so helplessly that Feather
sprang at him.

“Don’t, Rob, don’t!” she cried in actual anguish. “Lord Coombe is
taking us to the opera and to supper afterwards. I’m going to wear—”
She stopped speaking to shake him and try to lift his head. “Oh! do try
to sit up,” she begged pathetically. “Just try. _Don’t_ give up till
afterwards.” But she could neither make him sit up nor make him hear.
He lay back heavily with his mouth open, breathing stertorously and
quite insensible.

It happened that the Head of the House of Coombe was announced at that
very moment even as she stood wringing her hands over the sofa.

He went to her side and looked at Gareth-Lawless.

“Have you sent for a doctor?” he inquired.

“He’s—only just done it!” she exclaimed. “It’s more than I can bear.
You said the Prince would be at the supper after the opera and—”

“Were you thinking of going?” he put it to her quietly.

“I shall have to send for a nurse of course—” she began. He went so far
as to interrupt her.

“You had better not go—if you’ll pardon my saying so,” he suggested.

“Not go? Not go at all?” she wailed.

“Not go at all,” was his answer. And there was such entire lack of
encouragement in it that Feather sat down and burst into sobs.

In few than two weeks Robert was dead and she was left a lovely
penniless widow with a child.




CHAPTER III


Two or three decades earlier the prevailing sentiment would have been
that “poor little Mrs. Gareth-Lawless” and her situation were pathetic.
Her acquaintances would sympathetically have discussed her helplessness
and absolute lack of all resource. So very pretty, so young, the mother
of a dear little girl—left with no income! How very sad! What _could_
she do? The elect would have paid her visits and sitting in her
darkened drawing-room earnestly besought her to trust to her Maker and
suggested “the Scriptures” as suitable reading. Some of them—rare and
strange souls even in their time—would have known what they meant and
meant what they said in a way they had as yet only the power to express
through the medium of a certain shibboleth, the rest would have used
the same forms merely because shibboleth is easy and always safe and
creditable.

But to Feather’s immediate circle a multiplicity of engagements, fevers
of eagerness in the attainment of pleasures and ambitions, anxieties,
small and large terrors, and a whirl of days left no time for the
regarding of pathetic aspects. The tiny house up whose staircase—tucked
against a wall—one had seemed to have the effect of crowding even when
one went alone to make a call, suddenly ceased to represent hilarious
little parties which were as entertaining as they were up to date and
noisy. The most daring things London gossiped about had been said and
done and worn there. Novel social ventures had been tried—dancing and
songs which seemed almost startling at first—but which were gradually
being generally adopted. There had always been a great deal of laughing
and talking of nonsense and the bandying of jokes and catch phrases.
And Feather fluttering about and saying delicious, silly things at
which her hearers shouted with glee. Such a place could not suddenly
become pathetic. It seemed almost indecent for Robert Gareth-Lawless to
have dragged Death nakedly into their midst—to have died in his bed in
one of the little bedrooms, to have been put in his coffin and carried
down the stairs scraping the wall, and sent away in a hearse. Nobody
could bear to think of it.

Feather could bear it less than anybody else. It seemed incredible that
such a trick could have been played her. She shut herself up in her
stuffy little bedroom with its shrimp pink frills and draperies and
cried lamentably. At first she cried as a child might who was suddenly
snatched away in the midst of a party. Then she began to cry because
she was frightened. Numbers of cards “with sympathy” had been left at
the front door during the first week after the funeral, they had
accumulated in a pile on the salver but very few people had really come
to see her and while she knew they had the excuse of her recent
bereavement she felt that it made the house ghastly. It had never been
silent and empty. Things had always been going on and now there was
actually not a sound to be heard—no one going up and down stairs—Rob’s
room cleared of all his belongings and left orderly and empty—the
drawing-room like a gay little tomb without an occupant. How long
_would_ it be before it would be full of people again—how long must she
wait before she could decently invite anyone?—It was really at this
point that fright seized upon her. Her brain was not given to
activities of reasoning and followed no thought far. She had not begun
to ask herself questions as to ways and means. Rob had been winning at
cards and had borrowed some money from a new acquaintance so no
immediate abyss had yawned at her feet. But when the thought of future
festivities rose before her a sudden check made her involuntarily
clutch at her throat. She had no money at all, bills were piled
everywhere, perhaps now Robert was dead none of the shops would give
her credit. She remembered hearing Rob come into the house swearing
only the day before he was taken ill and it had been because he had met
on the door-step a collector of the rent which was long over-due and
must be paid. She had no money to pay it, none to pay the servants’
wages, none to pay the household bills, none to pay for the monthly
hire of the brougham! Would they turn her into the street—would the
servants go away—would she be left without even a carriage? What could
she do about clothes! She could not wear anything but mourning now and
by the time she was out of mourning her old clothes would have gone out
of fashion. The morning on which this aspect of things occurred to her,
she was so terrified that she began to run up and down the room like a
frightened little cat seeing no escape from the trap it is caught in.

“It’s awful—it’s awful—it’s awful!” broke out between her sobs. “What
can I do? I can’t do anything! There’s nothing to do! It’s awful—it’s
awful—it’s awful!” She ended by throwing herself on the bed crying
until she was exhausted. She had no mental resources which would
suggest to her that there was anything but crying to be done. She had
cried very little in her life previously because even in her days of
limitation she had been able to get more or less what she wanted—though
of course it had generally been less. And crying made one’s nose and
eyes red. On this occasion she actually forgot her nose and eyes and
cried until she scarcely knew herself when she got up and looked in the
glass.

She rang the bell for her maid and sat down to wait her coming. Tonson
should bring her a cup of beef tea.

“It’s time for lunch,” she thought. “I’m faint with crying. And she
shall bathe my eyes with rose-water.”

It was not Tonson’s custom to keep her mistress waiting but today she
was not prompt. Feather rang a second time and an impatient third and
then sat in her chair and waited until she began to feel as she felt
always in these dreadful days the dead silence of the house. It was the
thing which most struck terror to her soul—that horrid stillness. The
servants whose place was in the basement were too much closed in their
gloomy little quarters to have made themselves heard upstairs even if
they had been inclined to. During the last few weeks Feather had even
found herself wishing that they were less well trained and would make a
little noise—do anything to break the silence.

The room she sat in—Rob’s awful little room adjoining—which was awful
because of what she had seen for a moment lying stiff and hard on the
bed before she was taken away in hysterics—were dread enclosures of
utter silence. The whole house was dumb—the very street had no sound in
it. She could not endure it. How dare Tonson? She sprang up and rang
the bell again and again until its sound came back to her pealing
through the place.

Then she waited again. It seemed to her that five minutes passed before
she heard the smart young footman mounting the stairs slowly. She did
not wait for his knock upon the door but opened it herself.

“How dare Tonson!” she began. “I have rung four or five times! How dare
she!”

The smart young footman’s manner had been formed in a good school. It
was attentive, impersonal.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” he answered.

“What do you mean? What does _she_ mean? Where is she?” Feather felt
almost breathless before his unperturbed good style.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” he answered as before. Then with the same
unbiassed bearing added, “None of us know. She has gone away.”

Feather clutched the door handle because she felt herself swaying.

“Away! Away!” the words were a faint gasp.

“She packed her trunk yesterday and carried it away with her on a
four-wheeler. About an hour ago, ma’am.” Feather dropped her hand from
the knob of the door and trailed back to the chair she had left,
sinking into it helplessly.

“Who—who will dress me?” she half wailed.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” replied the young footman, his excellent manner
presuming no suggestion or opinion whatever. He added however, “Cook,
ma’am, wishes to speak to you.”

“Tell her to come to me here,” Feather said. “And I—I want a cup of
beef tea.”

“Yes, ma’am,” with entire respect. And the door closed quietly behind
him.

It was not long before it was opened again. “Cook” had knocked and
Feather had told her to come in. Most cooks are stout, but this one was
not. She was a thin, tall woman with square shoulders and a square face
somewhat reddened by constant proximity to fires. She had been trained
at a cooking school. She carried a pile of small account books but she
brought nothing else.

“I wanted some beef tea, Cook,” said Feather protestingly.

“There is no beef tea, ma’am,” said Cook. “There is neither beef, nor
stock, nor Liebig in the house.”

“Why—why not?” stammered Feather and she stammered because even her
lack of perception saw something in the woman’s face which was new to
her. It was a sort of finality.

She held out the pile of small books.

“Here are the books, ma’am,” was her explanation. “Perhaps as you don’t
like to be troubled with such things, you don’t know how far behind
they are. Nothing has been paid for months. It’s been an every-day
fight to get the things that was wanted. It’s not an agreeable thing
for a cook to have to struggle and plead. I’ve had to do it because I
had my reputation to think of and I couldn’t send up rubbish when there
was company.”

Feather felt herself growing pale as she sat and stared at her. Cook
drew near and laid one little book after another on the small table
near her.

“That’s the butcher’s book,” she said. “He’s sent nothing in for three
days. We’ve been living on leavings. He’s sent his last, he says and he
means it. This is the baker’s. He’s not been for a week. I made up
rolls because I had some flour left. It’s done now—and _he’s_ done.
This is groceries and Mercom & Fees wrote to Mr. Gareth-Lawless when
the last month’s supply came, that it would BE the last until payment
was made. This is wines—and coal and wood—and laundry—and milk. And
here is wages, ma’am, which _can’t_ go on any longer.”

Feather threw up her hands and quite wildly.

“Oh, go away!—go away!” she cried. “If Mr. Lawless were here—”

“He isn’t, ma’am,” Cook interposed, not fiercely but in a way more
terrifying than any ferocity could have been—a way which pointed
steadily to the end of things. “As long as there’s a gentleman in a
house there’s generally a sort of a prospect that things _may_ be
settled some way. At any rate there’s someone to go and speak your mind
to even if you have to give up your place. But when there’s no
gentleman and nothing—and nobody—respectable people with their livings
to make have got to protect themselves.”

The woman had no intention of being insolent. Her simple statement that
her employer’s death had left “Nothing” and “Nobody” was prompted by no
consciously ironic realization of the diaphanousness of Feather. As for
the rest she had been professionally trained to take care of her
interests as well as to cook and the ethics of the days of her
grandmother when there had been servants with actual affections had not
reached her.

“Oh! go away! Go _awa-ay!_” Feather almost shrieked.

“I am going, ma’am. So are Edward and Emma and Louisa. It’s no use
waiting and giving the month’s notice. We shouldn’t save the month’s
wages and the trades-people wouldn’t feed us. We can’t stay here and
starve. And it’s a time of the year when places has to be looked for.
You can’t hold it against us, ma’am. It’s better for you to have us out
of the house tonight—which is when our boxes will be taken away.”

Then was Feather seized with a panic. For the first time in her life
she found herself facing mere common facts which rose before her like a
solid wall of stone—not to be leapt, or crept under, or bored through,
or slipped round. She was so overthrown and bewildered that she could
not even think of any clever and rapidly constructed lie which would
help her; indeed she was so aghast that she did not remember that there
were such things as lies.

“Do you mean,” she cried out, “that you are all going to _leave_ the
house—that there won’t be any servants to wait on me—that there’s
nothing to eat or drink—that I shall have to stay here _alone_—and
starve!”

“We should have to starve if we stayed,” answered Cook simply. “And of
course there are a few things left in the pantry and closets. And you
might get in a woman by the day. You won’t starve, ma’am. You’ve got
your family in Jersey. We waited because we thought Mr. and Mrs. Darrel
would be sure to come.”

“My father is ill. I think he’s dying. My mother could not leave him
for a moment. Perhaps he’s dead now,” Feather wailed.

“You’ve got your London friends, ma’am—”

Feather literally beat her hands together.

“My friends! Can I go to people’s houses and knock at their front door
and tell them I haven’t any servants or anything to eat! Can I do that?
Can I?” And she said it as if she were going crazy.

The woman had said what she had come to say as spokeswoman for the
rest. It had not been pleasant but she knew she had been quite within
her rights and dealt with plain facts. But she did not enjoy the
prospect of seeing her little fool of a mistress raving in hysterics.

“You mustn’t let yourself go, ma’am,” she said. “You’d better lie down
a bit and try to get quiet.” She hesitated a moment looking at the
pretty ruin who had risen from her seat and stood trembling.

“It’s not my place of course to—make suggestions,” she said quietly.
“But—had you ever thought of sending for Lord Coombe, ma’am?”

Feather actually found the torn film of her mind caught for a second by
something which wore a form of reality. Cook saw that her tremor
appeared to verge on steadying itself.

“Coombe,” she faintly breathed as if to herself and not to Cook.

“Coombe.”

“His lordship was very friendly with Mr. Lawless and he seemed fond
of—coming to the house,” was presented as a sort of added argument. “If
you’ll lie down I’ll bring you a cup of tea, ma’am—though it can’t be
beef.”

Feather staggered again to her bed and dropped flat upon it—flat as a
slim little pancake in folds of thin black stuff which hung and
floated.

“I can’t bring you cream,” said Cook as she went out of the room.
“Louisa has had nothing but condensed milk—since yesterday—to give Miss
Robin.”

“Oh-h!” groaned Feather, not in horror of the tea without cream though
that was awful enough in its significance, but because this was the
first time since the falling to pieces of her world that she had given
a thought to the added calamity of Robin.




CHAPTER IV


If one were to devote one’s mental energies to speculation as to what
is going on behind the noncommittal fronts of any row of houses in any
great city the imaginative mind might be led far. Bricks, mortar,
windows, doors, steps which lead up to the threshold, are what are to
be seen from the outside. Nothing particular may be transpiring within
the walls, or tragedies, crimes, hideous suffering may be enclosed. The
conclusion is obvious to banality—but as suggestive as banal—so
suggestive in fact that the hyper-sensitive and too imaginative had
better, for their own comfort’s sake, leave the matter alone. In most
cases the existing conditions would not be altered even if one knocked
at the door and insisted on entering with drawn sword in the form of
attendant policeman. The outside of the slice of a house in which
Feather lived was still rather fresh from its last decorative touching
up. It had been painted cream colour and had white doors and windows
and green window boxes with variegated vinca vines trailing from them
and pink geraniums, dark blue lobelia and ferns filling the earth
stuffed in by the florist who provided such adornments. Passers-by
frequently glanced at it and thought it a nice little house whose
amusing diminutiveness was a sort of attraction. It was rather like a
new doll’s house.

No one glancing at it in passing at the closing of this particular day
had reason to suspect that any unaccustomed event was taking place
behind the cream-coloured front. The front door “brasses” had been
polished, the window-boxes watered and no cries for aid issued from the
rooms behind them. The house was indeed quiet both inside and out.
Inside it was indeed even quieter than usual. The servants’ preparation
for departure had been made gradually and undisturbedly. There had been
exhaustive quiet discussion of the subject each night for weeks, even
before Robert Gareth-Lawless’ illness. The smart young footman Edward
who had means of gaining practical information had constituted himself
a sort of private detective. He had in time learned all that was to be
learned. This, it had made itself clear to him on investigation, was
not one of those cases when to wait for evolutionary family events
might be the part of discretion. There were no prospects ahead—none at
all. Matters would only get worse and the whole thing would end in
everybody not only losing their unpaid back wages but having to walk
out into the street through the door of a disgraced household whose
owners would be turned out into the street also when their belongings
were sold over their heads. Better get out before everything went to
pieces and there were unpleasantnesses. There would be unpleasantnesses
because there was no denying that the trades-people had been played
tricks with. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless was only one of a lot of pretty
daughters whose father was a poor country doctor in Jersey. He had had
“a stroke” himself and his widow would have nothing to live on when he
died. That was what Mrs. Lawless had to look to. As to Lord Lawdor
Edward had learned from those who _did_ know that he had never approved
of his nephew and that he’d said he was a fool for marrying and had
absolutely refused to have anything to do with him. He had six boys and
a girl now and big estates weren’t what they had been, everyone knew.
There was only one thing left for Cook and Edward and Emma and Louisa
to do and that was to “get out” without any talk or argument.

“She’s not one that won’t find someone to look after her,” ended
Edward. “Somebody or other will take her up because they’ll be sorry
for her. But us lot aren’t widows and orphans. No one’s going to be
sorry for us or care a hang what we’ve been let in for. The longer we
stay, the longer we won’t be paid.” He was not a particularly depraved
or cynical young footman but he laughed a little at the end of his
speech. “There’s the Marquis,” he added. “He’s been running in and out
long enough to make a good bit of talk. Now’s his time to turn up.”

After she had taken her cup of tea without cream Feather had fallen
asleep in reaction from her excited agitation. It was in accord with
the inevitable trend of her being that even before her eyes closed she
had ceased to believe that the servants were really going to leave the
house. It seemed too ridiculous a thing to happen. She was possessed of
no logic which could lead her to a realization of the indubitable fact
that there was no reason why servants who could neither be paid nor
provided with food should remain in a place. The mild stimulation of
the tea also gave rise to the happy thought that she would not give
them any references if they “behaved badly”. It did not present itself
to her that references from a house of cards which had ignominiously
fallen to pieces and which henceforth would represent only shady
failure, would be of no use. So she fell asleep.

When she awakened the lights were lighted in the streets and one
directly across the way threw its reflection into her bedroom. It lit
up the little table near which she had sat and the first thing she saw
was the pile of small account books. The next was that the light which
revealed them also fell brightly on the glass knob of the door which
led into Robert’s room.

She turned her eyes away quickly with a nervous shudder. She had a
horror of the nearness of Rob’s room. If there had been another part of
the house in which she could have slept she would have fled to it as
soon as he was taken ill. But the house was too small to have “parts”.
The tiny drawing-rooms piled themselves on top of the dining-room, the
“master’s bedrooms” on top of the drawing-rooms, and the nurseries and
attics where Robin and the servants slept one on the other at the top
of the house. So she had been obliged to stay and endure everything.
Rob’s cramped quarters had always been full of smart boots and the
smell of cigars and men’s clothes. He had moved about a good deal and
had whistled and laughed and sworn and grumbled. They had neither of
them had bad tempers so that they had not quarrelled with each other.
They had talked through the open door when they were dressing and they
had invented clever tricks which helped them to get out of money
scrapes and they had gossiped and made fun of people. And now the door
was locked and the room was a sort of horror. She could never think of
it without seeing the stiff hard figure on the bed, the straight close
line of the mouth and the white hard nose sharpened and narrowed as
Rob’s had never been. Somehow she particularly could not bear the
recollection of the sharp unnatural modeling of the hard, white nose.
She could not _bear_ it! She found herself recalling it the moment she
saw the light on the door handle and she got up to move about and try
to forget it.

It was then that she went to the window and looked down into the
street, probably attracted by some slight noise though she was not
exactly aware that she had heard anything.

She must have heard something however. Two four-wheeled cabs were
standing at the front door and the cabman assisted by Edward were
putting trunks on top of them. They were servants’ trunks and Cook was
already inside the first cab which was filled with paper parcels and
odds and ends. Even as her mistress watched Emma got in carrying a
sedate band-box. She was the house-parlourmaid and a sedate person. The
first cab drove away as soon as its door was closed and the cabman
mounted to his seat. Louisa looking wholly unprofessional without her
nurse’s cap and apron and wearing a tailor-made navy blue costume and a
hat with a wing in it, entered the second cab followed by Edward
intensely suggesting private life and possible connection with a Bank.
The second cab followed the first and Feather having lost her breath
looked after them as they turned the corner of the street.

When they were quite out of sight she turned back into the room. The
colour had left her skin, and her eyes were so wide stretched and her
face so drawn and pinched with abject terror that her prettiness itself
had left her.

“They’ve gone—all of them!” she gasped. She stopped a moment, her chest
rising and falling. Then she added even more breathlessly, “There’s no
one left in the house. It’s—empty!”

This was what was going on behind the cream-coloured front, the white
windows and green flower-boxes of the slice of a house as motors and
carriages passed it that evening on their way to dinner parties and
theatres, and later as the policeman walked up and down slowly upon his
beat.

Inside a dim light in the small hall showed a remote corner where on a
peg above a decorative seat hung a man’s hat of the highest gloss and
latest form; and on the next peg a smart evening overcoat. They had
belonged to Robert Gareth-Lawless who was dead and needed such things
no more. The same dim light showed the steep narrowness of the
white-railed staircase mounting into gruesome little corners of
shadows, while the miniature drawing-rooms illumined only from the
street seemed to await an explanation of dimness and chairs unfilled,
combined with unnatural silence.

It would have been the silence of the tomb but that it was now and then
broken by something like a half smothered shriek followed by a sort of
moaning which made their way through the ceiling from the room above.

Feather had at first run up and down the room like a frightened cat as
she had done in the afternoon. Afterwards she had had something like
hysterics, falling face downward upon the carpet and clutching her hair
until it fell down. She was not a person to be judged—she was one of
the unexplained incidents of existence. The hour has passed when the
clearly moral can sum up the responsibilities of a creature born
apparently without brain, or soul or courage. Those who aspire to such
morals as are expressed by fairness—mere fairness—are much given to
hesitation. Courage had never been demanded of Feather so far. She had
none whatever and now she only felt panic and resentment. She had no
time to be pathetic about Robert, being too much occupied with herself.
Robert was dead—she was alive—here—in an empty house with no money and
no servants. She suddenly and rather awfully realized that she did not
know a single person whom it would not be frantic to expect anything
from.

Nobody had money enough for themselves, however rich they were. The
richer they were the more they needed. It was when this thought came to
her that she clutched her hands in her hair. The pretty and smart women
and agreeable more or less good looking men who had chattered and
laughed and made love in her drawing-rooms were chattering, laughing
and making love in other houses at this very moment—or they were at the
theatre applauding some fashionable actor-manager. At this very
moment—while she lay on the carpet in the dark and every little room in
the house had horror shut inside its closed doors—particularly Robert’s
room which was so hideously close to her own, and where there seemed
still to lie moveless on the bed, the stiff hard figure. It was when
she recalled this that the unnatural silence of the drawing-rooms was
intruded upon by the brief half-stifled hysteric shriek, and the
moaning which made its way through the ceiling. She felt almost as if
the door handle might turn and something stiff and cold try to come in.

So the hours went on behind the cream-coloured outer walls and the
white windows and gay flower-boxes. And the street became more and more
silent—so silent at last that when the policeman walked past on his
beat his heavy regular footfall seemed loud and almost resounding.

To even vaguely put to herself any question involving action would not
have been within the scope of her mentality. Even when she began to
realize that she was beginning to feel faint for want of food she did
not dare to contemplate going downstairs to look for something to eat.
What did she know about downstairs? She had never there and had paid no
attention whatever to Louisa’s complaints that the kitchen and
Servants’ Hall were small and dark and inconvenient and that
cockroaches ran about. She had cheerfully accepted the simple
philosophy that London servants were used to these things and if they
did their work it did not really matter. But to go out of one’s room in
the horrible stillness and creep downstairs, having to turn up the gas
as one went, and to face the basement steps and cockroaches scuttling
away, would be even more impossible than to starve. She sat upon the
floor, her hair tumbling about her shoulders and her thin black dress
crushed.

“I’d give almost _anything_ for a cup of coffee,” she protested feebly.
“And there’s no _use_ in ringing the bell!”

Her mother ought to have come whether her father was ill or not. He
wasn’t dead. Robert was dead and her mother ought to have come so that
whatever happened she would not be quite alone and _something_ could be
done for her. It was probably this tender thought of her mother which
brought back the recollection of her wedding day and a certain wedding
present she had received. It was a pretty silver travelling flask and
she remembered that it must be in her dressing-bag now, and there was
some cognac left in it. She got up and went to the place where the bag
was kept. Cognac raised your spirits and made you go to sleep, and if
she could sleep until morning the house would not be so frightening by
daylight—and something might happen. The little flask was almost full.
Neither she nor Robert had cared much about cognac. She poured some
into a glass with water and drank it.

Because she was unaccustomed to stimulant it made her feel quite warm
and in a few minutes she forgot that she had been hungry and realized
that she was not so frightened. It was such a relief not to be
terrified; it was as if a pain had stopped. She actually picked up one
or two of the account books and glanced at the totals. If you couldn’t
pay bills you couldn’t and nobody was put in prison for debt in these
days. Besides she would not have been put in prison—Rob would—and Rob
was dead. Something would happen—something.

As she began to arrange her hair for the night she remembered what Cook
had said about Lord Coombe. She had cried until she did not look as
lovely as usual, but after she had bathed her eyes with cold rose-water
they began to seem only shadowy and faintly flushed. And her fine
ash-gold hair was wonderful when it hung over each shoulder in wide,
soft plaits. She might be a school-girl of fifteen. A delicate lacy
night-gown was one of the most becoming things one wore. It was a pity
one couldn’t wear them to parties. There was nothing the least indecent
about them. Millicent Hardwicke had been photographed in one of hers
and no one had suspected what it was. Yes; she would send a little note
to Coombe. She knew Madame Hélène had only let her have her beautiful
mourning because—. The things she had created were quite unique—thin,
gauzy, black, floating or clinging. She had been quite happy the
morning she gave Hélène her orders. Tomorrow when she had slept through
the night and it was broad daylight again she would be able to think of
things to say in her letter to Lord Coombe. She would have to be a
little careful because he did not like things to bore him.—Death and
widows might—a little—at first. She had heard him say once that he did
not wish to regard himself in the light of a charitable institution. It
wouldn’t do to frighten him away. Perhaps if he continued coming to the
house and seemed very intimate the trades-people might be managed.

She felt much less helpless and when she was ready for bed she took a
little more cognac. The flush had faded from her eye-lids and bloomed
in delicious rose on her cheeks. As she crept between the cool sheets
and nestled down on her pillow she had a delightful sense of increasing
comfort—comfort. What a beautiful thing it was to go to sleep!

And then she was disturbed—started out of the divine doze stealing upon
her—by a shrill prolonged wailing shriek!

It came from the Night Nursery and at the moment it seemed almost worse
than anything which had occurred all through the day. It brought
everything back so hideously. She had of course forgotten Robin
again—and it was Robin! And Louisa had gone away with Edward. She had
perhaps put the child to sleep discreetly before she went. And now she
had wakened and was screaming. Feather had heard that she was a child
with a temper but by fair means or foul Louisa had somehow managed to
prevent her from being a nuisance.

The shrieks shocked her into sitting upright in bed. Their shrillness
tearing through the utter soundlessness of the empty house brought back
all her terrors and set her heart beating at a gallop.

“I—I _won’t!_” she protested, fairly with chattering teeth. “I won’t! I
_won’t!_”

She had never done anything for the child since its birth, she did not
know how to do anything, she had not wanted to know. To reach her now
she would be obliged to go out in the dark—the gas-jet she would have
to light was actually close to the outer door of Robert’s bedroom—_the_
room! If she did not die of panic while she was trying to light it she
would have to make her way almost in the dark up the steep crooked
little staircase which led to the nurseries. And the awful little
creature’s screams would be going on all the time making the blackness
and dead silence of the house below more filled with horror by
contrast—more shut off and at the same time more likely to waken to
some horror which was new.

“I-I couldn’t—even if I wanted to!” she quaked. “I daren’t! I daren’t!
I wouldn’t do it—for _a million pounds?_” And she flung herself down
again shuddering and burrowing her head under the coverings and pillows
she dragged over her ears to shut out the sounds.

The screams had taken on a more determined note and a fiercer
shrillness which the still house heard well and made the most of, but
they were so far deadened for Feather that she began beneath her soft
barrier to protest pantingly.

“I shouldn’t know what to do if I went. If no one goes near her she’ll
cry herself to sleep. It’s—it’s only temper. Oh-h! what a horrible
wail! It—it sounds like a—a lost soul!”

But she did not stir from the bed. She burrowed deeper under the bed
clothes and held the pillow closer to her ears.

It did sound like a lost soul at times. What panic possesses a baby who
cries in the darkness alone no one will ever know and one may perhaps
give thanks to whatever gods there be that the baby itself does not
remember. What awful woe of sudden unprotectedness when life exists
only through protection—what piteous panic in the midst of black
unmercifulness, inarticulate sound howsoever wildly shrill can neither
explain nor express.

Robin knew only Louisa, warmth, food, sleep and waking. Or if she knew
more she was not yet aware that she did. She had reached the age when
she generally slept through the night. She might not have disturbed her
mother until daylight but Louisa had with forethought given her an
infant sleeping potion. It had disagreed with and awakened her. She was
uncomfortable and darkness enveloped her. A cry or so and Louisa would
ordinarily have come to her sleepy, and rather out of temper, but
knowing what to do. In this strange night the normal cry of warning and
demand produced no result.

No one came. The discomfort continued—the blackness remained black. The
cries became shrieks—but nothing followed; the shrieks developed into
prolonged screams. No Louisa, no light, no milk. The blackness drew in
closer and became a thing to be fought with wild little beating hands.
Not a glimmer—not a rustle—not a sound! Then came the cries of the lost
soul—alone—alone—in a black world of space in which there was not even
another lost soul. And then the panics of which there have been no
records and never will be, because if the panic stricken does not die
in mysterious convulsions he or she grows away from the memory of a
formless past—except that perhaps unexplained nightmares from which one
wakens quaking, with cold sweat, may vaguely repeat the long hidden
thing.

What the child Robin knew in the dark perhaps the silent house which
echoed her might curiously have known. But the shrieks wore themselves
out at last and sobs came—awful little sobs shuddering through the tiny
breast and shaking the baby body. A baby’s sobs are unspeakable
things—incredible things. Slower and slower Robin’s came—with small
deep gasps and chokings between—and when an uninfantile druglike sleep
came, the bitter, hopeless, beaten little sobs went on.

But Feather’s head was still burrowed under the soft protection of the
pillow.




CHAPTER V


The morning was a brighter one than London usually indulges in and the
sun made its way into Feather’s bedroom to the revealing of its coral
pink glow and comfort. She had always liked her bedroom and had usually
wakened in it to the sense of luxuriousness it is possible a pet cat
feels when it wakens to stretch itself on a cushion with its saucer of
cream awaiting it.

But she did not awaken either to a sense of brightness or luxury this
morning. She had slept it was true, but once or twice when the pillow
had slipped aside she had found herself disturbed by the far-off sound
of the wailing of some little animal which had caused her automatically
and really scarcely consciously to replace the pillow. It had only
happened at long intervals because it is Nature that an exhausted baby
falls asleep when it is worn out. Robin had probably slept almost as
much as her mother.

Feather staring at the pinkness around her reached at last, with the
assistance of a certain physical consciousness, a sort of spiritless
intention.

“She’s asleep now,” she murmured. “I hope she won’t waken for a long
time. I feel faint. I shall have to find something to eat—if it’s only
biscuits.” Then she lay and tried to remember what Cook had said about
her not starving. “She said there were a few things left in the pantry
and closets. Perhaps there’s some condensed milk. How do you mix it up?
If she cries I might go and give her some. It wouldn’t be so awful now
it’s daylight.”

She felt shaky when she got out of bed and stood on her feet. She had
not had a maid in her girlhood so she could dress herself, much as she
detested to do it. After she had begun however she could not help
becoming rather interested because the dress she had worn the day
before had become crushed and she put on a fresh one she had not worn
at all. It was thin and soft also, and black was quite startlingly
becoming to her. She would wear this one when Lord Coombe came, after
she wrote to him. It was silly of her not to have written before though
she knew he had left town after the funeral. Letters would be
forwarded.

“It will be quite bright in the dining-room now,” she said to encourage
herself. “And Tonson once said that the only places the sun came into
below stairs were the pantry and kitchen and it only stayed about an
hour early in the morning. I must get there as soon as I can.”

When she had so dressed herself that the reflection the mirror gave
back to her was of the nature of a slight physical stimulant she opened
her bedroom door and faced exploration of the deserted house below with
a quaking sense of the proportions of the inevitable. She got down the
narrow stairs casting a frightened glance at the emptiness of the
drawing-rooms which seemed to stare at her as she passed them. There
was sun in the dining-room and when she opened the sideboard she found
some wine in decanters and some biscuits and even a few nuts and some
raisins and oranges. She put them on the table and sat down and ate
some of them and began to feel a little less shaky.

If she had been allowed time to sit longer and digest and reflect she
might have reached the point of deciding on what she would write to
Lord Coombe. She had not the pen of a ready writer and it must be
thought over. But just when she was beginning to be conscious of the
pleasant warmth of the sun which shone on her shoulders from the
window, she was almost startled our of her chair by hearing again
stealing down the staircase from the upper regions that faint wail like
a little cat’s.

“Just the moment—the very _moment_ I begin to feel a little quieted—and
try to think—she begins again!” she cried out. “It’s worse then
_anything!_”

Large crystal tears ran down her face and upon the polished table.

“I suppose she would starve to death if I didn’t give her some food—and
then _I_ should be blamed! People would be horrid about it. I’ve got
nothing to eat myself.”

She must at any rate manage to stop the crying before she could write
to Coombe. She would be obliged to go down into the pantry and look for
some condensed milk. The creature had no teeth but perhaps she could
mumble a biscuit or a few raisins. If she could be made to swallow a
little port wine it might make her sleepy. The sun was paying its brief
morning visit to the kitchen and pantry when she reached there, but a
few cockroaches scuttled away before her and made her utter a
hysterical little scream. But there _was_ some condensed milk and there
was a little warm water in a kettle because the fire was not quite out.
She imperfectly mixed a decoction and filled a bottle which ought not
to have been downstairs but had been brought and left there by Louisa
as a result of tender moments with Edward.

When she put the bottle and some biscuits and scraps of cold ham on a
tray because she could not carry them all in her hands, her sense of
outrage and despair made her almost sob.

“I am just like a servant—carrying trays upstairs,” she wept. “I—I
might be Edward—or—or Louisa.” And her woe increased when she added in
the dining-room the port wine and nuts and raisins and macaroons as
viands which _might_ somehow add to infant diet and induce sleep. She
was not sure of course—but she knew they sucked things and liked
sweets.

A baby left unattended to scream itself to sleep and awakening to
scream itself to sleep again, does not present to a resentful observer
the flowerlike bloom and beauty of infancy. When Feather carried her
tray into the Night Nursery and found herself confronting the
disordered crib on which her offspring lay she felt the child horrible
to look at. Its face was disfigured and its eyes almost closed. She
trembled all over as she put the bottle to its mouth and saw the
fiercely hungry clutch of its hands. It was old enough to clutch, and
clutch it did, and suck furiously and starvingly—even though actually
forced to stop once or twice at first to give vent to a thwarted
remnant of a scream.

Feather had only seen it as downy whiteness and perfume in Louisa’s
arms or in its carriage. It had been a singularly vivid and
brilliant-eyed baby at whom people looked as they passed.

“Who will give her a bath?” wailed Feather. “Who will change her
clothes? Someone must! Could a woman by the day do it? Cook said I
could get a woman by the day.”

And then she remembered that one got servants from agencies. And where
were the agencies? And even a woman “by the day” would demand wages and
food to eat.

And then the front door bell rang.

What could she do—what could she do? Go downstairs and open the door
herself and let everyone know! Let the ringer go on ringing until he
was tired and went away? She was indeed hard driven, even though the
wail had ceased as Robin clutched her bottle to her breast and fed with
frenzy. Let them go away—let them! And then came the wild thought that
it might be Something—the Something which must happen when things were
at their worst! And if it had come and the house seemed to be empty!
She did not walk down the stairs, she ran. Her heart beat until she
reached the door out of breath and when she opened it stood their
panting.

The people who waited upon the steps were strangers. They were very
nice looking and quite young—a man and a woman very perfectly dressed.
The man took a piece of paper out of his pocketbook and handed it to
her with an agreeable apologetic courtesy.

“I hope we have not called early enough to disturb you,” he said. “We
waited until eleven but we are obliged to catch a train at half past.
It is an ‘order to view’ from Carson & Bayle.” He added this because
Feather was staring at the paper.

Carson & Bayle were the agents they had rented the house from. It was
Carson & Bayle’s collector Robert had met on the threshold and sworn at
two days before he had been taken ill. They were letting the house over
her head and she would be turned out into the street?

The young man and woman finding themselves gazing at this exquisitely
pretty creature in exquisite mourning, felt themselves appallingly
embarrassed. She was plainly the widow Carson had spoken of. But why
did she open the door herself? And why did she look as if she did not
understand? Indignation against Carson & Bayle began to stir the young
man.

“Beg pardon! So sorry! I am afraid we ought not to have come,” he
protested. “Agents ought to know better. They said you were giving up
the house at once and we were afraid someone might take it.”

Feather held the “order to view” in her hand and snared at them quite
helplessly.

“There—are no—no servants to show it to you,” she said. “If you could
wait—a few days—perhaps—”

She was so lovely and Madame Hélène’s filmy black creation was in
itself such an appeal, that the amiable young strangers gave up at
once.

“Oh, certainly—certainly! Do excuse us! Carson and Bayle ought not to
have—! We are so sorry. Good morning, _good_ morning,” they gave forth
in discomfited sympathy and politeness, and really quite scurried away.

Having shut the door on their retreat Feather stood shivering.

“I am going to be turned out of the house! I shall have to live in the
street!” she thought. “Where shall I keep my clothes if I live in the
street!”

Even she knew that she was thinking idiotically. Of course if
everything was taken from you and sold, you would have no clothes at
all, and wardrobes and drawers and closets would not matter. The
realization that scarcely anything in the house had been paid for came
home to her with a ghastly shock. She staggered upstairs to the first
drawing-room in which there was a silly pretty little buhl writing
table.

She felt even more senseless when she sank into a chair before it and
drew a sheet of note-paper towards her. Her thoughts would not connect
themselves with each other and she could not imagine what she ought to
say in her letter to Coombe. In fact she seemed to have no thoughts at
all. She could only remember the things which had happened, and she
actually found she could write nothing else. There seemed nothing else
in the world.

“Dear Lord Coombe,” trailed tremulously over the page—“The house is
quite empty. The servants have gone away. I have no money. And there is
not any food. And I am going to be turned out into the street—and the
baby is crying because it is hungry.”

She stopped there, knowing it was not what she ought to say. And as she
stopped and looked at the words she began herself to wail somewhat as
Robin had wailed in the dark when she would not listen or go to her. It
was like a beggar’s letter—a beggar’s! Telling him that she had no
money and no food—and would be turned out for unpaid rent. And that the
baby was crying because it was starving!

“It’s a beggar’s letter—just a beggar’s,” she cried out aloud to the
empty room. “And it’s tru-ue!” Robin’s wail itself had not been more
hopeless than hers was as she dropped her head and let it lie on the
buhl table.

She was not however even to be allowed to let it lie there, for the
next instant there fell on her startled ear quite echoing through the
house another ring at the doorbell and two steely raps on the smart
brass knocker. It was merely because she did not know what else to do,
having lost her wits entirely that she got up and trailed down the
staircase again.

When she opened the door, Lord Coombe—the apotheosis of exquisite
fitness in form and perfect appointment as also of perfect
expression—was standing on the threshold.




CHAPTER VI


If he had meant to speak he changed his mind after his first sight of
her. He merely came in and closed the door behind him. Curious
experiences with which life had provided him had added finish to an
innate aptness of observation, and a fine readiness in action.

If she had been of another type he would have saved both her and
himself a scene and steered ably through the difficulties of the
situation towards a point where they could have met upon a normal
plane. A very pretty woman with whose affairs one has nothing whatever
to do, and whose pretty home has been the perfection of modern
smartness of custom, suddenly opening her front door in the unexplained
absence of a footman and confronting a visitor, plainly upon the verge
of hysteria, suggests the necessity of promptness.

But Feather gave him not a breath’s space. She was in fact not merely
on the verge of her hysteria. She had gone farther. And here he was.
Oh, here he was! She fell down upon her knees and actually clasped his
immaculateness.

“Oh, Lord Coombe! Lord Coombe! Lord Coombe!” She said it three times
because he presented to her but the one idea.

He did not drag himself away from her embrace but he distinctly removed
himself from it.

“You must not fall upon your knees, Mrs. Lawless,” he said. “Shall we
go into the drawing-room?”

“I—was writing to you. I am starving—but it seemed too silly when I
wrote it. And it’s true!” Her broken words were as senseless in their
sound as she had thought them when she saw them written.

“Will you come up into the drawing-room and tell me exactly what you
mean,” he said and he made her release him and stand upon her feet.

As the years had passed he had detached himself from so many weaknesses
and their sequelae of emotion that he had felt himself a safely
unreachable person. He was not young and he knew enough of the
disagreeableness of consequences to be adroit in keeping out of the way
of apparently harmless things which might be annoying. Yet as he
followed Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and watched her stumbling up the stairs
like a punished child he was aware that he was abnormally in danger of
pitying her as he did not wish to pity people. The pity was also
something apart from the feeling that it was hideous that a creature so
lovely, so shallow and so fragile should have been caught in the great
wheels of Life.

He knew what he had come to talk to her about but he had really no
clear idea of what her circumstances actually were. Most people had of
course guessed that her husband had been living on the edge of his
resources and was accustomed to debt and duns, but a lovely being
greeting you by clasping your knees and talking about “starving”—in
this particular street in Mayfair, led one to ask oneself what one was
walking into. Feather herself had not known, in fact neither had any
other human being known, that there was a special reason why he had
drifted into seeming rather to allow her about—why he had finally been
counted among the frequenters of the narrow house—and why he had seemed
to watch her a good deal sometimes with an expression of serious
interest—sometimes with an air of irritation, and sometimes with no
expression at all. But there existed this reason and this it was and
this alone which had caused him to appear upon her threshold and it had
also been the power which had prevented his disengaging himself with
more incisive finality when he found himself ridiculously clasped about
the knees as one who played the part of an obdurate parent in a
melodrama.

Once in the familiar surroundings of her drawing-room her ash-gold
blondness and her black gauzy frock heightened all her effects so
extraordinarily that he frankly admitted to himself that she possessed
assets which would have modified most things to most men.

As for Feather, when she herself beheld him against the background of
the same intimate aspects, the effect of the sound of his voice, the
manner in which he sat down in a chair and a certain remotely dim hint
in the hue of his clothes and an almost concealed note of some touch of
colour which scarcely seemed to belong to anything worn—were so
reminiscent of the days which now seemed past forever that she began to
cry again.

He received this with discreet lack of melodrama of tone.

“You mustn’t do that, Mrs. Lawless,” he said, “or I shall burst into
tears myself. I am a sensitive creature.”

“Oh, _do_ say ‘Feather’ instead of Mrs. Lawless,” she implored.
“Sometimes you said ‘Feather’.”

“I will say it now,” he answered, “if you will not weep. It is an
adorable name.”

“I feel as if I should never hear it again,” she shuddered, trying to
dry her eyes. “It is all over!”

“What is all over?”

“This—!” turning a hopeless gaze upon the two tiny rooms crowded with
knick-knacks and nonsense. “The parties and the fun—and everything in
the world! I have only had some biscuits and raisins to eat today—and
the landlord is going to turn me out.”

It seemed almost too preposterous to quite credit that she was uttering
naked truth.—And yet—! After a second’s gaze at her he repeated what he
had said below stairs.

“Will you tell me exactly what you mean?”

Then he sat still and listened while she poured it all forth. And as he
listened he realized that it was the mere every day fact that they were
sitting in the slice of a house with the cream-coloured front and the
great lady in her mansion on one side and the millionaire and his
splendours on the other, which peculiarly added to a certain hint of
gruesomeness in the situation.

It was not necessary to add colour and desperation to the story. Any
effort Feather had made in that direction would only have detracted
from the nakedness of its stark facts. They were quite enough in
themselves in their normal inevitableness. Feather in her pale and
totally undignified panic presented the whole thing with clearness
which had—without being aided by her—an actual dramatic value. This in
spite of her mental dartings to and from and dragging in of points and
bits of scenes which were not connected with each other. Only a brain
whose processes of inclusion and exclusion were final and rapid could
have followed her. Coombe watched her closely as she talked. No
grief-stricken young widowed loneliness and heart-break were the
background of her anguish. She was her own background and also her own
foreground. The strength of the fine body laid prone on the bed of the
room she held in horror, the white rigid face whose good looks had
changed to something she could not bear to remember, had no pathos
which was not concerned with the fact that Robert had amazingly and
unnaturally failed her by dying and leaving her nothing but unpaid
bills. This truth indeed made the situation more poignantly and finally
squalid, as she brought forth one detail after another. There were
bills which had been accumulating ever since they began their life in
the narrow house, there had been trades-people who had been juggled
with, promises made and supported by adroit tricks and cleverly
invented misrepresentations and lies which neither of the pair had felt
any compunctions about and had indeed laughed over. Coombe saw it all
though he also saw that Feather did not know all she was telling him.
He could realize the gradually increasing pressure and anger at tricks
which betrayed themselves, and the gathering determination on the part
of the creditors to end the matter in the only way in which it could be
ended. It had come to this before Robert’s illness, and Feather herself
had heard of fierce interviews and had seen threatening letters, but
she had not believed they could mean all they implied. Since things had
been allowed to go on so long she felt that they would surely go on
longer in the same way. There had been some serious threatening about
the rent and the unpaid-for furniture. Robert’s supporting idea had
been that he might perhaps “get something out of Lawdor who wouldn’t
enjoy being the relation of a fellow who was turned into the street!”

“He ought to have done something,” Feather complained. “Robert would
have been Lord Lawdor himself if his uncle had died before he had all
those disgusting children.”

She was not aware that Coombe frequently refrained from saying things
to her—but occasionally allowed himself _not_ to refrain. He did not
refrain now from making a simple comment.

“But he is extremely robust and he has the children. Six stalwart boys
and a stalwart girl. Family feeling has apparently gone out of
fashion.”

As she wandered on with her story he mentally felt himself actually
dragged into the shrimp-pink bedroom and standing an onlooker when the
footman outside the door “did not know” where Tonson had gone. For a
moment he felt conscious of the presence of some scent which would have
been sure to exhale itself from draperies and wardrobe. He saw Cook put
the account books on the small table, he heard her, he also
comprehended her. And Feather at the window breathlessly watching the
two cabs with the servants’ trunks on top, and the servants respectably
unprofessional in attire and going away quietly without an unpractical
compunction—he saw these also and comprehended knowing exactly why
compunctions had no part in latter-day domestic arrangements. Why
should they?

When Feather reached the point where it became necessary to refer to
Robin some fortunate memory of Alice’s past warnings caused her to
feel—quite suddenly—that certain details might be eliminated.

“She cried a little at first,” she said, “but she fell asleep
afterwards. I was glad she did because I was afraid to go to her in the
dark.”

“Was she in the dark?”

“I think so. Perhaps Louisa taught her to sleep without a light. There
was none when I took her some condensed milk this morning. There was
only c-con-d-densed milk to give her.”

She shed tears and choked as she described her journey into the lower
regions and the cockroaches scuttling away before her into their
hiding-places.

“I _must_ have a nurse! I _must_ have one!” she almost sniffed.
“Someone must change her clothes and give her a bath!”

“You can’t?” Coombe said.

“I!” dropping her handkerchief. “How—how _can_ I?”

“I don’t know,” he answered and picked up the handkerchief with an
aloof grace of manner.

It was really Robin who was for Feather the breaking-point.

He thought she was in danger of flinging herself upon him again. She
caught at his arm and her eyes of larkspur blue were actually wild.

“Don’t you see where I am! How there is nothing and nobody—Don’t you
_see?_”

“Yes, I see,” he answered. “You are quite right. There is nothing _and_
nobody. I have been to Lawdor myself.”

“You have been to _talk_ to him?”

“Yesterday. That was my reason for coming here. He will not see you or
be written to. He says he knows better than to begin that sort of
thing. It may be that family feeling has not the vogue it once had, but
you may recall that your husband infuriated him years ago. Also England
is a less certain quantity than it once was—and the man has a family.
He will allow you a hundred a year but there he draws the line.”

“A hundred a year!” Feather breathed. From her delicate shoulders hung
floating scarf-like sleeves of black transparency and she lifted one of
them and held it out like a night moth’s wing—“This cost forty pounds,”
she said, her voice quite faint and low. “A good nurse would cost
forty! A cook—and a footman and a maid—and a coachman—and the
brougham—I don’t know how much they would cost. Oh-h!”

She drooped forward upon her sofa and laid face downward on a
cushion—slim, exquisite in line, lost in despair.

The effect produced was that she gave herself into his hands. He felt
as well as saw it and considered. She had no suggestion to offer, no
reserve. There she was.

“It is an incredible sort of situation,” he said in an even,
low-pitched tone rather as if he were thinking aloud, “but it is baldly
real. It is actually simple. In a street in Mayfair a woman and child
might—” He hesitated a second and a wailed word came forth from the
cushion.

“Starve!”

He moved slightly and continued.

“Since their bills have not been paid the trades-people will not send
in food. Servants will not stay in a house where they are not fed and
receive no wages. No landlord will allow a tenant to occupy his
property unless he pays rent. It may sound inhuman—but it is only
human.”

The cushion in which Feather’s face was buried retained a faint scent
of Robert’s cigar smoke and the fragrance brought back to her things
she had heard him say dispassionately about Lord Coombe as well as
about other men. He had not been a puritanic or condemnatory person.
She seemed to see herself groveling again on the floor of her bedroom
and to feel the darkness and silence through which she had not dared to
go to Robin.

Not another night like that! No! No!

“You must go to Jersey to your mother and father,” Coombe said. “A
hundred a year will help you there in your own home.”

Then she sat upright and there was something in her lovely little
countenance he had never seen before. It was actually determination.

“I have heard,” she said, “of poor girls who were driven—by starvation
to—to go on the streets. I—would go _anywhere_ before I would go back
there.”

“Anywhere!” he repeated, his own countenance expressing—or rather
refusing to express something as new as the thing he had seen in her
own.

“Anywhere!” she cried and then she did what he had thought her on the
verge of doing a few minutes earlier—she fell at his feet and embraced
his knees. She clung to him, she sobbed, her pretty hair loosened
itself and fell about her in wild but enchanting disorder.

“Oh, Lord Coombe! Oh, Lord Coombe! Oh, Lord Coombe!” she cried as she
had cried in the hall.

He rose and endeavoured to disengage himself as he had done before.
This time with less success because she would not let him go. He had
the greatest possible objection to scenes.

“Mrs. Lawless—Feather—I beg you will get up,” he said.

But she had reached the point of not caring what happened if she could
keep him. He was a gentleman—he had everything in the world. What did
it matter?

“I have no one but you and—and you always seemed to like me, I would do
anything—_anyone_ asked me, if they would take care of me. I have
always liked you very much—and I did amuse you—didn’t I? You liked to
come here.”

There was something poignant about her delicate distraught loveliness
and, in the remoteness of his being, a shuddering knowledge that it was
quite true that she would do anything for any man who would take care
of her, produced an effect on him nothing else would have produced.
Also a fantastic and finely ironic vision of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife
rose before him and the vision of himself as Joseph irked a certain
complexness of his mentality. Poignant as the thing was in its modern
way, it was also faintly ridiculous.

Then Robin awakened and shrieked again. The sound which had gained
strength through long sleep and also through added discomfort quite
rang through the house. What that sound added to the moment he himself
would not have been able to explain until long afterwards. But it
singularly and impellingly added.

“Listen!” panted Feather. “She has begun again. And there is no one to
go to her.”

“Get up, Mrs. Lawless,” he said. “Do I understand that you are willing
that _I_ should arrange this for you!”

He helped her to her feet.

“Do you mean—really!” she faltered. “Will you—will you—?”

Her uplifted eyes were like a young angel’s brimming with crystal drops
which slipped—as a child’s tears slip—down her cheeks. She clasped her
hands in exquisite appeal. He stood for a moment quite still, his mind
fled far away and he forgot where he was. And because of this the
little simpleton’s shallow discretion deserted her.

“If you were a—a marrying man—?” she said foolishly—almost in a
whisper.

He recovered himself.

“I am not,” with a finality which cut as cleanly as a surgical knife.

Something which was not the words was of a succinctness which filled
her with new terror.

“I—I know!” she whimpered, “I only said if you were!”

“If I were—in this instance—it would make no difference.” He saw the
kind of slippery silliness he was dealing with and what it might
transform itself into if allowed a loophole. “There must be no
mistakes.”

In her fright she saw him for a moment more distinctly than she had
ever seen him before and hideous dread beset her lest she had blundered
fatally.

“There shall be none,” she gasped. “I always knew. There shall be none
at all.”

“Do you know what you are asking me?” he inquired.

“Yes, yes—I’m not a girl, you know. I’ve been married. I won’t go home.
I can’t starve or live in awful lodgings. _Somebody_ must save me!”

“Do you know what people will say?” his steady voice was slightly
lower.

“It won’t be said to me.” Rather wildly. “Nobody minds—really.”

He ceased altogether to look serious. He smiled with the light detached
air his world was most familiar with.

“No—they don’t really,” he answered. “I had, however, a slight
preference for knowing whether you would or not. You flatter me by
intimating that you would not.”

He knew that if he had held out an arm she would have fallen upon his
breast and wept there, but he was not at the moment in the mood to hold
out an arm. He merely touched hers with a light pressure.

“Let us sit down and talk it over,” he suggested.

A hansom drove up to the door and stopped before he had time to seat
himself. Hearing it he went to the window and saw a stout businesslike
looking man get out, accompanied by an attendant. There followed a
loud, authoritative ringing of the bell and an equally authoritative
rap of the knocker. This repeated itself. Feather, who had run to the
window and caught sight of the stout man, clutched his sleeve.

“It’s the agent we took the house from. We always said we were out.
It’s either Carson or Bayle. I don’t know which.”

Coombe walked toward the staircase.

“You can’t open the door!” she shrilled.

“He has doubtless come prepared to open it himself.” he answered and
proceeded at leisure down the narrow stairway.

The caller had come prepared. By the time Coombe stood in the hall a
latchkey was put in the keyhole and, being turned, the door opened to
let in Carson—or Bayle—who entered with an air of angered
determination, followed by his young man.

The physical presence of the Head of the House of Coombe was always
described as a subtly impressive one. Several centuries of rather
careful breeding had resulted in his seeming to represent things by
silent implication. A man who has never found the necessity of
explaining or excusing himself inevitably presents a front wholly
unsuggestive of uncertainty. The front Coombe presented merely awaited
explanations from others.

Carson—or Bayle—had doubtless contemplated seeing a frightened servant
trying to prepare a stammering obvious lie. He confronted a tall, thin
man about whom—even if his clothes had been totally different—there
could be no mistake. He stood awaiting an apology so evidently that
Carson—or Bayle—began to stammer himself even before he had time to
dismiss from his voice the suggestion of bluster. It would have
irritated Coombe immensely if he had known that he—and a certain
overcoat—had been once pointed out to the man at Sandown and that—in
consequence of the overcoat—he vaguely recognized him.

“I—I beg pardon,” he began.

“Quite so,” said Coombe.

“Some tenants came to look at the house this morning. They had an order
to view from us. They were sent away, my lord—and decline to come back.
The rent has not been paid since the first half year. There is no one
now who can even _pretend_ it’s going to be paid. Some step had to be
taken.”

“Quite so,” said Coombe. “Suppose you step into the dining-room.”

He led the pair into the room and pointed to chairs, but neither the
agent nor his attendant was calm enough to sit down.

Coombe merely stood and explained himself.

“I quite understand,” he said. “You are entirely within your rights.
Mrs. Gareth-Lawless is, naturally, not able to attend to business. For
the present—as a friend of her late husband’s—I will arrange matters
for her. I am Lord Coombe. She does not wish to give up the house.
Don’t send any more possible tenants. Call at Coombe House in an hour
and I will give you a cheque.”

There were a few awkward apologetic moments and then the front door
opened and shut, the hansom jingled away and Coombe returned to the
drawing-room. Robin was still shrieking.

“She wants some more condensed milk,” he said. “Don’t be frightened. Go
and give her some. I know an elderly woman who understands children.
She was a nurse some years ago. I will send her here at once. Kindly
give me the account books. My housekeeper will send you some servants.
The trades-people will come for orders.”

Feather was staring at him.

“W-will they?” she stammered. “W-will everything—?”

“Yes—everything,” he answered. “Don’t be frightened. Go upstairs and
try to stop her. I must go now. I never heard a creature yell with such
fury.”

She turned away and went towards the second flight of stairs with a
rather dazed air. She had passed through a rather tremendous crisis and
she _was_ dazed. He made her feel so. She had never understood him for
a moment and she did not understand him now—but then she never did
understand people and the whole situation was a new one to her. If she
had not been driven to the wall she would have been quite as
respectable as she knew how to be.

Coombe called a hansom and drove home, thinking of many things and
looking even more than usually detached. He had remarked the facial
expression of the short and stout man as he had got into his cab and he
was turning over mentally his own exact knowledge of the views the
business mind would have held and what the business countenance would
have decently covered if he—Coombe—had explained in detail that he was
so far—in this particular case—an entirely blameless character.




CHAPTER VII


The slice of a house from that time forward presented the external
aspect to which the inhabitants of the narrow and fashionable street
and those who passed through it had been accustomed. Such individuals
as had anticipated beholding at some early day notices conspicuously
placed announcing “Sale by Auction. Elegant Modern Furniture” were
vaguely puzzled as well as surprised by the fact that no such notices
appeared even inconspicuously. Also there did not draw up before the
door—even as the weeks went on—huge and heavy removal vans with their
resultant litter, their final note of farewell a “To Let” in the front
windows.

On the contrary, the florist came and refilled the window boxes with an
admirable arrangement of fresh flowers; new and even more correct
servants were to be seen ascending and descending the area step; a
young footman quite as smart as the departed Edward opened the front
door and attended Mrs. Gareth-Lawless to her perfect little brougham.
The trades-people appeared promptly every day and were obsequiously
respectful in manner. Evidently the household had not disintegrated as
a result of the death of Mr. Gareth-Lawless.

As it became an established fact that the household had not fallen to
pieces its frequenters gradually returned to it, wearing indeed the air
of people who had never really remained away from it. There had been
natural reasons enough for considerate absence from a house of
bereavement and a desolate widow upon whose grief it would have been
indelicate to intrude. As Feather herself had realized, the circle of
her intimates was not formed of those who could readily adjust
themselves to entirely changed circumstances. If you dance on a tight
rope and the rope is unexpectedly withdrawn, where are you? You cannot
continue dancing until the rope is restrung.

The rope, however, being apparently made absolutely secure, it was not
long before the dancing began again. Feather’s mourning, wonderfully
shading itself from month to month, was the joy of all beholders.
Madame Hélène treated her as a star gleaming through gradually
dispersing clouds. Her circle watched her with secretly humorous
interest as each fine veil of dimness was withdrawn.

“The things she wears are priceless,” was said amiably in her own
drawing-room. “Where does she get them? Figure to yourself Lawdor
paying the bills.”

“She gets them from Hélène,” said a long thin young man with a rather
good-looking narrow face and dark eyes, peering through _pince nez_,
“But I couldn’t.”

In places where entertainment as a means of existence proceed so to
speak, fast and furiously, questions of taste are not dwelt upon at
leisure. You need not hesitate before saying anything you liked in any
one’s drawing-room so long as it was amusing enough to make somebody—if
not everybody—laugh. Feather had made people laugh in the same fashion
in the past. The persons she most admired were always making sly little
impudent comments and suggestions, and the thwarted years on the island
of Jersey had, in her case, resulted in an almost hectic desire to keep
pace. Her efforts had usually been successes because Nature’s self had
provided her with the manner of a silly pretty child who did not know
how far she went. Shouts of laughter had often greeted her, and the
first time she had for a moment doubted her prowess was on an occasion
when she had caught a glimpse of Coombe who stared at her with an
expression which she would—just for one second—have felt might be
horror, if she had not been so sure it couldn’t be, and must of course
be something else—one of the things nobody ever understood in him.

By the time the softly swathing veils of vaporous darkness were
withdrawn, and the tight rope assuring everyone of its permanent
security became a trusted support, Feather at her crowded little
parties and at other people’s bigger ones did not remain wholly unaware
of the probability that even people who rather liked her made, among
themselves, more or less witty comments upon her improved fortunes.
They were improved greatly. Bills were paid, trades-people were polite,
servants were respectful; she had no need to invent excuses and lies.
She and Robert had always kept out of the way of stodgy, critical
people, so they had been intimate with none of the punctilious who
might have withdrawn themselves from a condition of things they chose
to disapprove: accordingly, she found no gaps in her circle. Those who
had formed the habit of amusing themselves at her house were as ready
as before to amuse themselves again.

The fact remained, however,—curiously, perhaps, in connection with the
usual slightness of all impressions made on her—that there was a memory
which never wholly left her. Even when she tried to force it so far
into the background of her existence that it might almost be counted as
forgotten, it had a trick of rising before her. It was the memory of
the empty house as its emptiness had struck to the centre of her being
when she had turned from her bedroom window after watching the servants
drive away in their cabs. It was also the memory of the hours which had
followed—the night in which nobody had been in any of the rooms—no one
had gone up or down the stairs—when all had seemed dark and
hollow—except the Night Nursery where Robin screamed, and her own room
where she herself cowered under the bed clothes and pulled the pillow
over her head. But though the picture would not let itself be blotted
out, its effect was rather to intensify her sense of relief because she
had slipped so safely from under the wheels of destiny.

“Sometimes,” she revealed artlessly to Coombe, “while I am driving in
the park on a fine afternoon when every one is out and the dresses look
like the flower beds, I let myself remember it just to make myself
enjoy everything more by contrast.”

The elderly woman who had been a nurse in her youth and who had been
sent by Lord Coombe temporarily to replace Louisa had not remained long
in charge of Robin. She was not young and smart enough for a house on
the right side of the right street, and Feather found a young person
who looked exactly as she should when she pushed the child’s carriage
before her around the square.

The square—out of which the right street branches—and the “Gardens” in
the middle of the square to which only privileged persons were admitted
by private key, the basement kitchen and Servants’ Hall, and the two
top floor nurseries represented the world to the child Robin for some
years. When she was old enough to walk in the street she was led by the
hand over the ground she had travelled daily in her baby carriage. Her
first memory of things was a memory of standing on the gravel path in
the Square Gardens and watching some sparrows quarrel while Andrews,
her nurse, sat on a bench with another nurse and talked in low tones.
They were talking in a way Robin always connected with servants and
which she naturally accepted as being the method of expression of their
species—much as she accepted the mewing of cats and the barking of
dogs. As she grew older, she reached the stage of knowing that they
were generally saying things they did not wish her to hear.

She liked watching the sparrows in the Gardens because she liked
watching sparrows at all times. They were the only friends she had ever
known, though she was not old enough to call them friends, or to know
what friends meant. Andrews had taught her, by means of a system of her
own, to know better than to cry or to make any protesting noise when
she was left alone in her ugly small nursery. Andrews’ idea of her
duties did not involve boring herself to death by sitting in a room on
the top floor when livelier entertainment awaited her in the basement
where the cook was a woman of wide experience, the housemaid a young
person who had lived in gay country houses, and the footman at once a
young man of spirit and humour. So Robin spent many hours of the
day—taking them altogether—quite by herself. She might have more
potently resented her isolations if she had ever known any other
condition than that of a child in whom no one was in the least
interested and in whom “being good” could only mean being passive under
neglect and calling no one’s attention to the fact that she wanted
anything from anybody. As a bird born in captivity lives in its cage
and perhaps believes it to be the world, Robin lived in her nursery and
knew every square inch of it with a deadly if unconscious sense of
distaste and fatigue. She was put to bed and taken up, she was fed and
dressed in it, and once a day—twice perhaps if Andrews chose—she was
taken out of it downstairs and into the street. That was all. And that
was why she liked the sparrows so much.

And sparrows are worth watching if you live in a nursery where nothing
ever happens and where, when you look out, you are so high up that it
is not easy to see the people in the world below, in addition to which
it seems nearly always raining. Robin used to watch them hopping about
on the slate roofs of the homes on the other side of the street. They
fluttered their wings, they picked up straws and carried them away. She
thought they must have houses of their own among the chimneys—in places
she could not see. She fancied it would be nice to hop about on the top
of a roof oneself if one were not at all afraid of falling. She liked
the chippering and chirping sounds the birds made became it sounded
like talking and laughing—like the talking and laughing she sometimes
wakened out of her sleep to lie and listen to when the Lady Downstairs
had a party. She often wondered what the people were doing because it
sounded as if they liked doing it very much.

Sometimes when it had rained two or three days she had a feeling which
made her begin to cry to herself—but not aloud. She had once had a
little black and blue mark on her arm for a week where Andrews had
pinched her because she had cried loud enough to be heard. It had
seemed to her that Andrews twisted and pinched the bit of flesh for
five minutes without letting it go and she had held her large hand over
her mouth as she did it.

“Now you keep that in your mind,” she had said when she had finished
and Robin had almost choked in her awful little struggle to keep back
all sound.

The one thing Andrews was surest of was that nobody would come upstairs
to the Nursery to inquire the meaning of any cries which were not
unearthly enough to disturb the household. So it was easy to regulate
the existence of her charge in such a manner as best suited herself.

“Just give her food enough and keep her from making silly noises when
she wants what she doesn’t get,” said Andrews to her companions below
stairs. “That one in the drawing-room isn’t going to interfere with the
Nursery. Not her! I know my business and I know how to manage her kind.
I go to her politely now and then and ask her permission to buy things
from Best’s or Liberty’s or some other good place. She always stares a
minute when I begin, as if she scarcely understood what I was talking
about and then she says ‘Oh, yes, I suppose she must have them.’ And I
go and get them. I keep her as well dressed as any child in Mayfair.
And she’s been a beauty since she was a year old so she looks first
rate when I wheel her up and down the street, so the people can see
she’s well taken care of and not kept hidden away. No one can complain
of her looks and nobody is bothered with her. That’s all that’s wanted
of _me_. I get good wages and I get them regular. I don’t turn up my
nose at a place like this, whatever the outside talk is. Who cares in
these days anyway? Fashionable people’s broader minded than they used
to be. In Queen Victoria’s young days they tell me servants were no
class that didn’t live in families where they kept the commandments.”

“Fat lot the commandments give any one trouble in these times,” said
Jennings, the footman, who was a wit. “There’s one of ’em I could
mention that’s been broken till there’s no bits of it left to keep. If
I smashed that plate until it was powder it’d have to be swept into the
dust din. That’s what happened to one or two commandments in
particular.”

“Well,” remarked Mrs. Blayne, the cook, “she don’t interfere and he
pays the bills prompt. That’ll do _me_ instead of commandments. If
you’ll believe me, my mother told me that in them Queen Victoria days
ladies used to inquire about cold meat and ask what was done with the
dripping. Civilisation’s gone beyond that—commandments or no
commandments.”

“He’s precious particular about bills being paid,” volunteered
Jennings, with the air of a man of the world. “I heard him having a row
with her one day about some bills she hadn’t paid. She’d spent the
money for some nonsense and he was pretty stiff in that queer way of
his. Quite right he was too. I’d have been the same myself,” pulling up
his collar and stretching his neck in a manner indicating exact
knowledge of the natural sentiments of a Marquis when justly annoyed.
“What he intimated was that if them bills was not paid with the money
that was meant to pay them, the money wouldn’t be forthcoming the next
time.” Jennings was rather pleased by the word “forthcoming” and
therefore he repeated it with emphasis, “It wouldn’t be _forthcoming_.”

“That’d frighten her,” was Andrews’ succinct observation.

“It did!” said Jennings. “She’d have gone in hysterics if he hadn’t
kept her down. He’s got a way with him, Coombe has.”

Andrews laughed, a brief, dry laugh.

“Do you know what the child calls her?” she said. “She calls her the
Lady Downstairs. She’s got a sort of fancy for her and tries to get
peeps at her when we go out. I notice she always cranes her little neck
if we pass a room she might chance to be in. It’s her pretty clothes
and her laughing that does it. Children’s drawn by bright colours and
noise that sounds merry.”

“It’s my belief the child doesn’t know she _is_ her mother!” said Mrs.
Blayne as she opened an oven door to look at some rolls.

“It’s my belief that if I told her she was she wouldn’t know what the
word meant. It was me she got the name from,” Andrews still laughed as
she explained. “I used to tell her about the Lady Downstairs would hear
if she made a noise, or I’d say I’d let her have a peep at the Lady
Downstairs if she was very good. I saw she had a kind of awe of her
though she liked her so much, so it was a good way of managing her. You
mayn’t believe me but for a good bit I didn’t take in that she didn’t
know there was such things as mothers and, when I did take it in, I saw
there wasn’t any use in trying to explain. She wouldn’t have
understood.”

“How would you go about to explain a mother, anyway?” suggested
Jennings. “I’d have to say that she was the person that had the right
to slap your head if you didn’t do what she told you.”

“I’d have to say that she was the woman that could keep you slaving at
kitchen maid’s work fifteen hours a day,” said Mrs. Blayne; “My mother
was cook in a big house and trained me under her.”

“I never had one,” said Andrews stiffly. The truth was that she had
taken care of eight infant brothers and sisters, while her maternal
parent slept raucously under the influence of beer when she was not
quarrelling with her offspring.

Jane, the housemaid, had passed a not uncomfortable childhood in the
country and was perhaps of a soft nature.

“I’d say that a mother’s the one that you belong to and that’s fond of
you, even if she does keep you straight,” she put in.

“Her mother isn’t fond of her and doesn’t keep herself straight,” said
Jennings. “So that wouldn’t do.”

“And she doesn’t slap her head or teach her to do kitchen maid’s work,”
put in Mrs. Blayne, “so yours is no use, Mr. Jennings, and neither is
mine. Miss Andrews ’ll have to cook up an explanation of her own
herself when she finds she has to.”

“She can get it out of a Drury Lane melodrama,” said Jennings, with
great humour. “You’ll have to sit down some night, Miss Andrews, and
say, ‘The time has come, me chee-ild, when I must tell you All’.”

In this manner were Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and her maternal affections
discussed below stairs. The interesting fact remained that to Robin the
Lady Downstairs was merely a radiant and beautiful being who floated
through certain rooms laughing or chattering like a bird, and always
wearing pretty clothes, which were different each time one beheld her.
Sometimes one might catch a glimpse of her through a door, or, if one
pressed one’s face against the window pane at the right moment, she
might get into her bright little carnage in the street below and, after
Jennings had shut its door, she might be seen to give a lovely flutter
to her clothes as she settled back against the richly dark blue
cushions.

It is a somewhat portentous thing to realize that a newborn human
creature can only know what it is taught. The teaching may be conscious
or unconscious, intelligent or idiotic, exquisite or brutal. The images
presented by those surrounding it, as its perceptions awaken day by
day, are those which record themselves on its soul, its brain, its
physical being which is its sole means of expressing, during physical
life, all it has learned. That which automatically becomes the Law at
the dawning of newborn consciousness remains, to its understanding, the
Law of Being, the Law of the Universe. To the cautious of
responsibility this at times wears the aspect of an awesome thing,
suggesting, however remotely, that it might seem well, perhaps, to
remove the shoes from one’s feet, as it were, and tread with deliberate
and delicate considering of one’s steps, as do the reverently courteous
even on the approaching of an unknown altar.

This being acknowledged a scientific, as well as a spiritual truth,
there remains no mystery in the fact that Robin at six years old—when
she watched the sparrows in the Square Gardens—did not know the name of
the feeling which had grown within her as a result of her pleasure in
the chance glimpses of the Lady Downstairs. It was a feeling which made
her eager to see her or anything which belonged to her; it made her
strain her child ears to catch the sound of her voice; it made her long
to hear Andrews or the other servants speak of her, and yet much too
shy to dare to ask any questions. She had found a place on the
staircase leading to the Nursery, where, by squeezing against the
balustrade, she could sometimes see the Lady pass in and out of her
pink bedroom. She used to sit on a step and peer between the railing
with beating heart. Sometimes, after she had been put to bed for the
night and Andrews was safely entertained downstairs, Robin would be
awakened from her first sleep by sounds in the room below and would
creep out of bed and down to her special step and, crouching in a
hectic joy, would see the Lady come out with sparkling things in her
hair and round her lovely, very bare white neck and arms, all swathed
in tints and draperies which made her seem a vision of colour and
light. She was so radiant a thing that often the child drew in her
breath with a sound like a little sob of ecstasy, and her lip trembled
as if she were going to cry. But she did not know that what she felt
was the yearning of a thing called love—a quite simple and natural
common thing of which she had no reason for having any personal
knowledge. As she was unaware of mothers, so she was unaware of
affection, of which Andrews would have felt it to be superfluously
sentimental to talk to her.

On the very rare occasions when the Lady Downstairs appeared on the
threshold of the Day Nursery, Robin—always having been freshly dressed
in one of her nicest frocks—stood and stared with immense startled eyes
and answered in a whisper the banal little questions put to her. The
Lady appeared at such rare intervals and remained poised upon the
threshold like a tropic plumaged bird for moments so brief, that there
never was time to do more than lose breath and gaze as at a sudden
vision. Why she came—when she did come—Robin did not understand. She
evidently did not belong to the small, dingy nurseries which grew
shabbier every year as they grew steadily more grimy under the
persistent London soot and fogs.

Feather always held up her draperies when she came. She would not have
come at all but for the fact that she had once or twice been asked if
the child was growing pretty, and it would have seemed absurd to admit
that she never saw her at all.

“I think she’s rather pretty,” she said downstairs. “She’s round and
she has a bright colour—almost too bright, and her eyes are round too.
She’s either rather stupid or she’s shy—and one’s as bad as the other.
She’s a child that stares.”

If, when Andrews had taken her into the Gardens, she had played with
other children, Robin would no doubt have learned something of the
existence and normal attitude of mothers through the mere accident of
childish chatter, but it somehow happened that she never formed
relations with the charges of other nurses. She took it for granted for
some time that this was because Andrews had laid down some mysterious
law. Andrews did not seem to form acquaintances herself. Sometimes she
sat on a bench and talked a little to another nurse, but she seldom sat
twice with the same person. It was indeed generally her custom to sit
alone, crocheting or sewing, with a rather lofty and exclusive air and
to call Robin back to her side if she saw her slowly edging towards
some other child.

“My rule is to keep myself to myself,” she said in the kitchen. “And to
look as if I was the one that would turn up noses, if noses was to be
turned up. There’s those that would snatch away their children if I let
Robin begin to make up to them. Some wouldn’t, of course, but I’m not
going to run risks. I’m going to save my own pride.”

But one morning when Robin was watching her sparrows, a nurse, who was
an old acquaintance, surprised Andrews by appearing in the Gardens with
two little girls in her charge. They were children of nine and eleven
and quite sufficient for themselves, apart from the fact that they
regarded Robin as a baby and, therefore, took no notice of her. They
began playing with skipping ropes, which left their nurse free to
engage in delighted conversation with Andrews.

It was conversation so delightful that Robin was forgotten, even to the
extent of being allowed to follow her sparrows round a clump of
shrubbery and, therefore, out of Andrews’ sight, though she was only a
few yards away. The sparrows this morning were quarrelsome and suddenly
engaged in a fight, pecking each other furiously, beating their wings
and uttering shrill, protesting chipperings. Robin did not quite
understand what they were doing and stood watching them with spellbound
interest.

It was while she watched them that she heard footsteps on the gravel
walk which stopped near her and made her look up to see who was at her
side. A big boy in Highland kilts and bonnet and sporan was standing by
her, and she found herself staring into a pair of handsome deep blue
eyes, blue like the waters of a hillside tarn. They were wide, glowing,
friendly eyes and none like them had ever looked into hers before. He
seemed to her to be a very big boy indeed, and in fact, he was
unusually tall and broad for his age, but he was only eight years old
and a simple enough child pagan. Robin’s heart began to beat as it did
when she watched the Lady Downstairs, but there was something different
in the beating. It was something which made her red mouth spread and
curve itself into a smile which showed all her small teeth.

So they stood and stared at each other and for some strange, strange
reason—created, perhaps, with the creating of Man and still hidden
among the deep secrets of the Universe—they were drawn to each
other—wanted each other—knew each other. Their advances were, of
course, of the most primitive—as primitive and as much a matter of
instinct as the nosing and sniffing of young animals. He spread and
curved his red mouth and showed the healthy whiteness of his own
handsome teeth as she had shown her smaller ones. Then he began to run
and prance round in a circle, capering like a Shetland pony to exhibit
at once his friendliness and his prowess. He tossed his curled head and
laughed to make her laugh also, and she not only laughed but clapped
her hands. He was more beautiful than anything she had ever seen before
in her life, and he was plainly trying to please her. No child creature
had ever done anything like it before, because no child creature had
ever been allowed by Andrews to make friends with her. He, on his part,
was only doing what any other little boy animal would have
done—expressing his child masculinity by “showing off” before a little
female. But to this little female it had never happened before.

It was all beautifully elemental. As does not too often happen, two
souls as well as two bodies were drawn towards each other by the Magnet
of Being. When he had exhibited himself for a minute or two he came
back to her, breathing fast and glowing.

“My pony in Scotland does that. His name is Chieftain. He is a Shetland
pony and he is only that high,” he measured forty inches from the
ground. “I’m called Donal. What are you called?”

“Robin,” she answered, her lips and voice trembling with joy. He was so
beautiful. His hair was bright and curly. His broad forehead was clear
white where he had pushed back his bonnet with the eagle feather
standing upright on it. His strong legs and knees were white between
his tartan kilt and his rolled back stockings. The clasps which held
his feather and the plaid over his shoulder were set with fine stones
in rich silver. She did not know that he was perfectly equipped as a
little Highland chieftain, the head of his clan, should be.

They began to play together, and the unknown Fates, which do their work
as they choose, so wrought on this occasion as to cause Andrews’ friend
to set forth upon a journey through a story so exciting in its nature
that its hearer was held spellbound and oblivious to her surroundings
themselves. Once, it is true, she rose as in a dream and walked round
the group of shrubs, but the Fates had arranged for that moment also.
Robin was alone and was busily playing with some leaves she had plucked
and laid on the seat of a bench for some mysterious reason. She looked
good for an hour’s safe occupation, and Andrews returned to her
friend’s detailed and intimate version of a great country house
scandal, of which the papers were full because it had ended in the
divorce court.

Donal had, at that special moment, gone to pick some of the biggest
leaves from the lilac bush of which the Gardens contained numerous
sooty specimens. The leaves Robin was playing with were some he had
plucked first to show her a wonderful thing. If you laid a leaf flat on
the seat of the bench and were fortunate enough to possess a large pin
you could prick beautiful patterns on the leaf’s greenness—dots and
circles, and borders and tiny triangles of a most decorative order.
Neither Donal nor Robin had a pin but Donal had, in his rolled down
stocking, a little dirk the point of which could apparently be used for
any interesting purpose. It was really he who did the decoration, but
Robin leaned against the bench and looked on enthralled. She had never
been happy before in the entire course of her brief existence. She had
not known or expected any conditions other than those she was familiar
with—the conditions of being fed and clothed, kept clean and exercised,
but totally unloved and unentertained. She did not even know that this
nearness to another human creature, the exchange of companionable
looks, which were like flashes of sunlight, the mutual outbreaks of
child laughter and pleasure were happiness. To her, what she felt, the
glow and delight of it, had no name but she wanted it to go on and on,
never to be put an end to by Andrews or anyone else.

The boy Donal was not so unconscious. He had been happy all his life.
What he felt was that he had liked this little girl the minute he saw
her. She was pretty, though he thought her immensely younger than
himself, and, when she had looked up at him with her round, asking
eyes, he had wanted to talk to her and make friends. He had not played
much with boys and he had no haughty objection to girls who liked him.
This one did, he saw at once.

Through what means children so quickly convey to each other—while
seeming scarcely to do more than play—the entire history of their lives
and surroundings, is a sort of occult secret. It is not a matter of
prolonged conversation. Perhaps images created by the briefest of
unadorned statements produce on the unwritten tablets of the child mind
immediate and complete impressions. Safe as the locked garden was,
Andrews cannot have forgotten her charge for any very great length of
time and yet before Donal, hearing his attendant’s voice from her
corner, left Robin to join her and be taken home, the two children knew
each other intimately. Robin knew that Donal’s home was in
Scotland—where there are hills and moors with stags on them. He lived
there with “Mother” and he had been brought to London for a visit. The
person he called “Mother” was a woman who took care of him and he spoke
of her quite often. Robin did not think she was like Andrews, though
she did not in the least know why. On his part Donal knew about the
nurseries and the sparrows who hopped about on the slates of the houses
opposite. Robin did not describe the nurseries to him, but Donal knew
that they were ugly and that there were no toys in them and nothing to
do. Also, in some mystic fashion, he realized that Andrews would not
let Robin play with him if she saw them together, and that, therefore,
they must make the most of their time. Full of their joy in each other,
they actually embarked upon an ingenious infant intrigue, which
involved their trying to meet behind the shrubs if they were brought to
the Gardens the next day. Donal was sure he could come because his
nurse always did what he asked of her. He was so big now that she was
not a real nurse, but she had been his nurse when he was quite little
and “Mother” liked her to travel with them. He had a tutor but he had
stayed behind in Scotland at Braemarnie, which was their house. Donal
would come tomorrow and he would look for Robin and when she saw him
she must get away from Andrews and they would play together again.

“I will bring one of my picture books,” he said grandly. “Can you read
at all?”

“No,” answered Robin adoring him. “What are picture books?”

“Haven’t you any?” he blurted out.

“No,” said Robin. She looked at the gravel walk, reflecting a moment
thoughtfully on the Day Nursery and the Night Nursery. Then she lifted
her eyes to the glowing blueness of his and said quite simply, “I
haven’t anything.”

He suddenly remembered things his Mother had told him about poor
people. Perhaps she was poor. Could she be poor when her frock and hat
and coat were so pretty? It was not polite to ask. But the thought made
him love her more. He felt something warm rush all over his body. The
truth, if he had been old enough to be aware of it, was that the entire
simpleness of her acceptance of things as they were, and a something
which was unconsciousness of any cause for complaint, moved his child
masculinity enormously. His old nurse’s voice came from her corner
again.

“I must go to Nanny,” he said, feeling somehow as if he had been
running fast. “I’ll come tomorrow and bring two picture books.”

He was a loving, warm blooded child human thing, and the expression of
affection was, to him, a familiar natural impulse. He put his strong
little eight-year-old arms round her and kissed her full on her mouth,
as he embraced her with all his strength. He kissed her twice.

It was the first time for Robin. Andrews did not kiss. There was no one
else. It was the first time, and Nature had also made her a loving,
warm blooded, human thing. How beautiful he was—how big—how strong his
arms were—and how soft and warm his mouth felt. She stood and gazed at
him with wide asking eyes and laughed a little. She had no words
because she did not know what had happened.

“Don’t you like to be kissed?” said Donal, uncertain because she looked
so startled and had not kissed him back.

“Kissed,” she repeated, with a small, caught breath, “ye-es.” She knew
now what it was. It was being kissed. She drew nearer at once and
lifted up her face as sweetly and gladly, as a flower lifts itself to
the sun. “Kiss me again,” she said quite eagerly. As ingenuously and
heartily as before, he kissed her again and, this time, she kissed too.
When he ran quickly away, she stood looking after him with smiling,
trembling lips, uplifted, joyful—wondering and amazed.




CHAPTER VIII


When she went back to Andrews she carried the pricked leaves with her.
She could not have left them behind. From what source she had drawn a
characterizing passionate, though silent, strength of mind and body, it
would be difficult to explain. Her mind and her emotions had been left
utterly unfed, but they were not of the inert order which scarcely
needs feeding. Her feeling for the sparrows had held more than she
could have expressed; her secret adoration of the “Lady Downstairs” was
an intense thing. Her immediate surrender to the desire in the first
pair of human eyes—child eyes though they were—which had ever called to
her being for response, was simple and undiluted rapture. She had
passed over her little soul without a moment’s delay and without any
knowledge of the giving. It had flown from her as a bird might fly from
darkness into the sun. Eight-year-old Donal was the sun.

No special tendency to innate duplicity was denoted by the fact that
she had acquired, through her observation of Andrews, Jennings, Jane
and Mrs. Blayne, the knowledge that there were things it was best not
to let other people know. You were careful about them. From the occult
communications between herself and Donal, which had resulted in their
intrigue, there had of course evolved a realizing sense of the value of
discretion. She did not let Andrews see the decorated leaves, but put
them into a small pocket in her coat. Her Machiavellian intention was
to slip them out when she was taken up to the Nursery. Andrews was
always in a hurry to go downstairs to her lunch and she would be left
alone and could find a place where she could hide them.

Andrews’ friend started when Robin drew near to them. The child’s
cheeks and lips were the colour of Jacqueminot rose petals. Her eyes
glowed with actual rapture.

“My word! That’s a beauty if I ever saw one,” said the woman. “First
sight makes you jump. My word!”

Robin, however, did not know what she was talking about and in fact
scarcely heard her. She was thinking of Donal. She thought of him as
she was taken home, and she did not cease thinking of him during the
whole rest of the day and far into the night. When Andrews left her,
she found a place to hide the pricked leaves and before she put them
away she did what Donal had done to her—she kissed them. She kissed
them several times because they were Donal’s leaves and he had made the
stars and lines on them. It was almost like kissing Donal but not quite
so beautiful.

After she was put to bed at night and Andrews left her she lay awake
for a long time. She did not want to go to sleep because everything
seemed so warm and wonderful and she could think and think and think.
What she thought about was Donal’s face, his delightful eyes, his white
forehead with curly hair pushed back with his Highland bonnet. His
plaid swung about when he ran and jumped. When he held her tight the
buttons of his jacket hurt her a little because they pressed against
her body. What was “Mother” like? Did he kiss her? What pretty stones
there were in his clasps and buckles! How nice it was to hear him laugh
and how fond he was of laughing. Donal! Donal! Donal! He liked to play
with her though she was a girl and so little. He would play with her
tomorrow. His cheeks were bright pink, his hair was bright, his eyes
were bright. He was all bright. She tried to see into the blueness of
his eyes again as it seemed when they looked at each other close to. As
she began to see the clear colour she fell asleep.

The power which had on the first morning guided Robin to the seclusion
behind the clump of shrubs and had provided Andrews with an enthralling
companion, extended, the next day, an even more beneficient and
complete protection. Andrews was smitten with a cold so alarming as to
confine her to bed. Having no intention of running any risks,
whatsoever, she promptly sent for a younger sister who, temporarily
being “out of place”, came into the house as substitute. She was a
pretty young woman who assumed no special responsibilities and was fond
of reading novels.

“She’s been trained to be no trouble, Anne. She’ll amuse herself
without bothering you as long as you keep her out,” Andrews said of
Robin.

Anne took “Lady Audley’s Secret” with her to the Gardens and, having
led her charge to a shady and comfortable seat which exactly suited
her, she settled herself for a pleasant morning.

“Now, you can play while I read,” she said to Robin.

As they had entered the Gardens they had passed, not far from the gate,
a bench on which sat a highly respectable looking woman who was hemming
a delicate bit of cambric, and evidently in charge of two picture books
which lay on the seat beside her. A fine boy in Highland kilts was
playing a few yards away. Robin felt something like a warm flood rush
over her and her joy was so great and exquisite that she wondered if
Anne felt her hand trembling. Anne did not because she was looking at a
lady getting into a carriage across the street.

The marvel of that early summer morning in the gardens of a splendid
but dingy London square was not a thing for which human words could
find expression. It was not an earthly thing, or, at least, not a thing
belonging to an earth grown old. A child Adam and Eve might have known
something like it in the Garden of Eden. It was as clear and simple as
spring water and as warm as the sun.

Anne’s permission to “play” once given, Robin found her way behind the
group of lilacs and snowballs. Donal would come, not only because he
was so big that Nanny would let him do what he wanted to do, but
because he would do everything and anything in the world. Donal! Donal!
Her heart was a mere baby’s heart but it beat as if she were
seventeen—beat with pure rapture. He was all bright and he would laugh
and laugh.

The coming was easy enough for Donal. He had told his mother and Nanny
rejoicingly about the little girl he had made friends with and who had
no picture books. But he did not come straight to her. He took his
picture books under his arm, and showing all his white teeth in a
joyous grin, set out to begin their play properly with a surprise. He
did not let her see him coming but “stalked” her behind the trees and
bushes until he found where she was waiting, and then thrust his face
between the branches of a tall shrub near her and laughed the outright
laugh she loved. And when she turned she was looking straight into the
clear blue she had tried to see when she fell asleep. “Donal! Donal!”
she cried like a little bird with but one note.

The lilac and the snowball were in blossom and there was a big hawthorn
tree which smelt sweet and sweet. They could not see the drift of smuts
on the blossoms, they only smelled the sweetness and sat under the
hawthorn and sniffed and sniffed. The sun was deliciously warm and a
piano organ was playing beautifully not far away. They sat close to
each other, so close that the picture book could lie open on both pairs
of knees and the warmth of each young body penetrated the softness of
the other. Sometimes Donal threw an arm around her as she bent over the
page. Love and caresses were not amazements to him; he accepted them as
parts of the normal joy of life. To Robin they were absolute wonder.
The pictures were delight and amazement in one. Donal knew all about
them and told her stories. She felt that such splendour could have
emanated only from him. It could not occur to her that he had not
invented them and made the pictures. He showed her Robinson Crusoe and
Robin Hood. The scent of the hawthorn and lilac intoxicated them and
they laughed tremendously because Robin Hood’s name was like Robin’s
own and he was a man and she was a girl. They could scarcely stop
laughing and Donal rolled over and over on the grass, half from
unconquerable high spirits and half to make Robin laugh still more.

He had some beautiful coloured glass marbles in his pocket and he
showed her how to play with them, and gave her two of the prettiest. He
could shoot them over the ground in a way to thrill the beholder. He
could hop on one leg as far as he liked. He could read out of books.

“Do you like me?” he said once in a pause between displays of his
prowess.

Robin was kneeling upon the grass watching him and she clasped her
little hands as if she were uttering a prayer.

“Oh, yes, yes!” she yearned. “Yes! Yes!”

“I like you,” he answered; “I told my mother all about you.”

He came to her and knelt by her side.

“Have you a mother?” he asked.

“No,” shaking her head.

“Do you live with your aunt?”

“No, I don’t live with anybody.”

He looked puzzled.

“Isn’t there any lady in your house?” he put it to her. She brightened
a little, relieved to think she had something to tell him.

“There’s the Lady Downstairs,” she said. “She’s so pretty—so pretty.”

“Is she——” he stopped and shook his head. “She couldn’t be your
mother,” he corrected himself. “You’d know about _her_.”

“She wears pretty clothes. Sometimes they float about and sparkle and
she wears little crowns on her head—or flowers. She laughs,” Robin
described eagerly. “A great many people come to see her. They all
laugh. Sometimes they sing. I lie in bed and listen.”

“Does she ever come upstairs to the Nursery?” inquired Donal with a
somewhat reflective air.

“Yes. She comes and stands near the door and says, ‘Is she quite well,
Andrews?’ She does not laugh then. She—she _looks_ at me.”

She stopped there, feeling suddenly that she wished very much that she
had more to tell. What she was saying was evidently not very
satisfactory. He seemed to expect more—and she had no more to give. A
sense of emptiness crept upon her and for no reason she understood
there was a little click in her throat.

“Does she only stand near the door?” he suggested, as one putting the
situation to a sort of crucial test. “Does she never sit on a big chair
and take you on her knee?”

“No, no,” in a dropped voice. “She will not sit down. She says the
chairs are grubby.”

“Doesn’t she _love_ you at all?” persisted Donal. “Doesn’t she _kiss_
you?”

There was a thing she had known for what seemed to her a long time—God
knows in what mysterious fashion she had learned it, but learned it
well she had. That no human being but herself was aware of her
knowledge was inevitable. To whom could she have told it? But
Donal—Donal wanted to know all about her. The little click made itself
felt in her throat again.

“She—she doesn’t _like_ me!” Her dropped voice was the whisper of one
humbled to the dust by confession, “She—doesn’t _like_ me!” And the
click became another thing which made her put up her arm over her
eyes—her round, troubled child eyes, which, as she had looked into
Donal’s, had widened with sudden, bewildered tears.

Donal flung his arms round her and squeezed his buttons into her tender
chest. He hugged her close; he kissed her; there was a choking in his
throat. He was hot all over.

“She does like you. She must like you. I’ll make her!” he cried
passionately. “She’s not your mother. If she was, she’d _love_ you!
She’d _love_ you!”

“Do Mothers l-love you?” the small voice asked with a half sob.
“What’s—what’s _love_ you?” It was not vulgar curiosity. She only
wanted to find out.

He loosed his embrace, sitting back on his heels to stare.

“Don’t you _know?_”

She shook her head with soft meekness.

“N-no,” she answered.

Big boys like himself did not usually play with such little girls. But
something had drawn him to her at their first moment of encounter. She
wasn’t like any other little girls. He felt it all the time and that
was part of the thing which drew him. He was not, of course, aware that
the male thrill at being regarded as one who is a god had its power
over the emotions. She wasn’t making silly fun and pretending. She
really didn’t know—because she was different.

“It’s liking very much. It’s more,” he explained. “My mother loves
_me_. I—I _love_ you!” stoutly. “Yes, I _love_ you. That’s why I kissed
you when you cried.”

She was so uplifted, so overwhelmed with adoring gratitude that as she
knelt on the grass she worshipped him.

“I love _you_,” she answered him. “I _love_ you—_love_ you!” And she
looked at him with such actual prayerfulness that he caught at her and,
with manly promptness, kissed her again—this being mere Nature.

Because he was eight years old and she was six her tears flashed away
and they both laughed joyously as they sat down on the grass again to
talk it over.

He told her all the pleasant things he knew about Mothers. The world
was full of them it seemed—full. You belong to them from the time you
were a baby. He had not known many personally because he had always
lived at Braemarnie, which was in the country in Scotland. There were
no houses near his home. You had to drive miles and miles before you
came to a house or a castle. He had not seen much of other children
except a few who lived at the Manse and belonged to the minister.
Children had fathers as well as mothers. Fathers did not love you or
take care of you quite as much as Mothers—because they were men. But
they loved you too. His own father had died when he was a baby. His
mother loved him as much as he loved her. She was beautiful but—it
seemed to reveal itself—not like the Lady Downstairs. She did not laugh
very much, though she laughed when they played together. He was too big
now to sit on her knee, but squeezed into the big chair beside her when
she read or told him stories. He always did what his mother told him.
She knew everything in the world and so knew what he ought to do. Even
when he was a big man he should do what his mother told him.

Robin listened to every word with enraptured eyes and bated breath.
This was the story of Love and Life and it was the first time she had
ever heard it. It was as much a revelation as the Kiss. She had spent
her days in the grimy Nursery and her one close intimate had been a
bony woman who had taught her not to cry, employing the practical
method of terrifying her into silence by pinching her—knowing it was
quite safe to do it. It had not been necessary to do it often. She had
seen people on the streets, but she had only seen them in passing by.
She had not watched them as she had watched the sparrows. When she was
taken down for a few minutes into the basement, she vaguely knew that
she was in the way and that Mrs. Blayne’s and Andrews’ and Jennings’
low voices and occasional sidelong look meant that they were talking
about her and did not want her to hear.

“I have no mother and no father,” she explained quite simply to Donal.
“No one kisses me.”

“No one!” Donal said, feeling curious. “Has no one ever kissed you but
me?”

“No,” she answered.

Donal laughed—because children always laugh when they do not know what
else to do.

“Was that why you looked as if you were frightened when I said good-bye
to you yesterday?”

“I—I didn’t know,” said Robin, laughing a little too—but not very much,
“I wasn’t frightened. I liked you.”

“I’ll kiss you as often as you want me to,” he volunteered nobly. “I’m
used to it—because of my mother. I’ll kiss you again now.” And he did
it quite without embarrassment. It was a sort of manly gratuity.

Once Anne, with her book in her hand, came round the shrubs to see how
her charge was employing herself, and seeing her looking at pictures
with a handsomely dressed companion, she returned to “Lady Audley’s
Secret” feeling entirely safe.

The lilac and the hawthorn tree continued to breathe forth warmed
scents of paradise in the sunshine, the piano organ went on playing,
sometimes nearer, sometimes farther away, but evidently finding the
neighbourhood a desirable one. Sometimes the children laughed at each
other, sometimes at pictures Donal showed, or stories he told, or at
his own extreme wit. The boundaries were removed from Robin’s world.
She began to understand that there was another larger one containing
wonderful and delightful things she had known nothing about. Donal was
revealing it to her in everything he said even when he was not aware
that he was telling her anything. When Eve was formed from the rib of
Adam the information it was necessary for him to give her regarding her
surroundings must have filled her with enthralling interest and a
reverence which adored. The planted enclosure which was the central
feature of the soot sprinkled, stately London Square was as the Garden
of Eden.

The Garden of Eden it remained for two weeks. Andrews’ cold was serious
enough to require a doctor and her sister Anne continued to perform
their duties. The weather was exceptionally fine and, being a vain
young woman, she liked to dress Robin in her pretty clothes and take
her out because she was a beauty and attracted attention to her nurse
as well as to herself. Mornings spent under the trees reading were
entirely satisfactory. Each morning the children played together and
each night Robin lay awake and lived again the delights of the past
hours. Each day she learned more wonders and her young mind and soul
were fed. There began to stir in her brain new thoughts and the
beginning of questioning. Scotland, Braemarnie, Donal’s mother, even
the Manse and the children in it, combined to form a world of
enchantment. There were hills with stags living in them, there were
moors with purple heather and yellow brome and gorse; birds built their
nests under the bushes and Donal’s pony knew exactly where to step even
in the roughest places. There were two boys and two girls at the Manse
and they had a father and a mother. These things were enough for a new
heaven and a new earth to form themselves around. The centre of the
whole Universe was Donal with his strength and his laugh and his eyes
which were so alive and glowing that she seemed always to see them. She
knew nothing about the thing which was their somehow—not-to-be-denied
allure. They were _asking_ eyes—and eyes which gave. The boy was in
truth a splendid creature. His body and beauty were perfect life and
joyous perfect living. His eyes asked other eyes for everything. “Tell
me more,” they said. “Tell me more! Like me! Answer me! Let us give
each other everything in the world.” He had always been well, he had
always been happy, he had always been praised and loved. He had known
no other things.

During the first week in which the two children played together, his
mother, whose intense desire it was to understand him, observed in him
a certain absorption of mood when he was not talking or amusing himself
actively. He began to fall into a habit of standing at the windows,
often with his chin in his hand, looking out as if he were so full of
thought that he saw nothing. It was not an old habit, it was a new one.

“What are you thinking about, Donal?” she asked one afternoon.

He seemed to awaken, as it were, when he heard her. He turned about
with his alluring smile.

“I am thinking it is _funny_,” he said. “It is funny that I should like
such a little girl such a lot. She is years and years younger than I
am. But I like her so. It is such fun to tell her things.” He marched
over to his mother’s writing table and leaned against it. What his
mother saw was that he had an impassioned desire to talk about this
child. She felt it was a desire even a trifle abnormal in its
eagerness.

“She has such a queer house, I think,” he explained. “She has a nurse
and such pretty clothes and she is so pretty herself, but I don’t
believe she has any toys or books in her nursery.”

“Where is her mother?”

“She must be dead. There is no lady in her house but the Lady
Downstairs. She is very pretty and is always laughing. But she is not
her mother because she doesn’t like her and she never kisses her. I
think that’s the queerest thing of all. No one had _ever_ kissed her
till I did.”

His mother was a woman given to psychological analysis. Her eyes began
to dwell on his face with slightly anxious questioning.

“Did you kiss her?” she inquired.

“Yes. I kissed her when I said good morning the first day. I thought
she didn’t like me to do it but she did. It was only because no one had
ever done it before. She likes it very much.”

He leaned farther over the writing table and began to pour forth, his
smile growing and his eyes full of pleasure. His mother was a trifle
alarmedly struck by the feeling that he was talking like a young man in
love who cannot keep his tongue still, though in his case even the
youngest manhood was years away, and he made no effort to conceal his
sentiments which a young man would certainly have striven to do.

“She’s got such a pretty little face and such a pretty mouth and
cheeks,” he touched a Jacqueminot rose in a vase. “They are the colour
of that. Today a robin came with the sparrows and hopped about near us.
We laughed and laughed because her eyes are like the robin’s, and she
is called Robin. I wish you would come into the Gardens and see her,
mother. She likes everything I do.”

“I must come, dear,” she answered.

“Nanny thinks she is lovely,” he announced. “She says I am in love with
her. Am I, mother?”

“You are too young to be in love,” she said. “And even when you are
older you must not fall in love with people you know nothing about.”

It was an unconscious bit of Scotch cautiousness which she at once
realized was absurd and quite out of place. But—!

She realized it because he stood up and squared his shoulders in an odd
young-mannish way. He had not flushed even faintly before and now a
touch of colour crept under his fair skin.

“But I _do_ love her,” he said. “I _do_. I can’t stop.” And though he
was quite simple and obviously little boy-like, she actually felt
frightened for a moment.




CHAPTER IX


On the afternoon of the day upon which this occurred, Coombe was
standing in Feather’s drawing-room with a cup of tea in his hand and
wearing the look of a man who is given up to reflection.

“I saw Mrs. Muir today for the first time for several years,” he said
after a silence. “She is in London with the boy.”

“Is she as handsome as ever?”

“Quite. Hers is not the beauty that disappears. It is line and bearing
and a sort of splendid grace and harmony.”

“What is the boy like?”

Coombe reflected again before he answered.

“He is—amazing. One so seldom sees anything approaching physical
perfection that it strikes one a sort of blow when one comes upon it
suddenly face to face.”

“Is he as beautiful as all that?”

“The Greeks used to make statues of bodies like his. They often called
them gods—but not always. The Creative Intention plainly was that all
human beings should be beautiful and he is the expression of it.”

Feather was pretending to embroider a pink flower on a bit of gauze and
she smiled vaguely.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she admitted with no abasement of spirit,
“but if ever there was any Intention of that kind it has not been
carried out.” Her smile broke into a little laugh as she stuck her
needle into her work. “I’m thinking of Henry,” she let drop in
addition.

“So was I, it happened,” answered Coombe after a second or so of pause.

Henry was the next of kin who was—to Coombe’s great objection—his heir
presumptive, and was universally admitted to be a repulsive sort of
person both physically and morally. He had brought into the world a
weakly and rickety framework and had from mere boyhood devoted himself
to a life which would have undermined a Hercules. A relative may so
easily present the aspect of an unfortunate incident over which one has
no control. This was the case with Henry. His character and appearance
were such that even his connection with an important heritage was not
enough to induce respectable persons to accept him in any form. But if
Coombe remained without issue Henry would be the Head of the House.

“How is his cough?” inquired Feather.

“Frightful. He is an emaciated wreck and he has no physical cause for
remaining alive.”

Feather made three or four stitches.

“Does Mrs. Muir know?” she said.

“If Mrs. Muir is conscious of his miserable existence, that is all,” he
answered. “She is not the woman to inquire. Of course she cannot help
knowing that—when he is done with—her boy takes his place in the line
of succession.”

“Oh, yes, she’d know that,” put in Feather.

It was Coombe who smiled now—very faintly.

“You have a mistaken view of her,” he said.

“You admire her very much,” Feather bridled. The figure of this big
Scotch creature with her “line” and her “splendid grace and harmony”
was enough to make one bridle.

“She doesn’t admire me,” said Coombe. “She is not proud of me as a
connection. She doesn’t really want the position for the boy, in her
heart of hearts.”

“Doesn’t want it!” Feather’s exclamation was a little jeer only because
she would not have dared a big one.

“She is Scotch Early Victorian in some things and extremely advanced in
others,” he went on. “She has strong ideas of her own as to how he
shall be brought up. She’s rather Greek in her feeling for his being as
perfect physically and mentally as she can help him to be. She believes
things. It was she who said what you did not understand—about the
Creative Intention.”

“I suppose she is religious,” Feather said. “Scotch people often are
but their religion isn’t usually like that. Creative Intention’s a new
name for God, I suppose. I ought to know all about God. I’ve heard
enough about Him. My father was not a clergyman but he was very
miserable, and it made him so religious that he was _almost_ one. We
were every one of us christened and catechized and confirmed and all
that. So God’s rather an old story.”

“Queer how old—from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand,”
said Coombe. “It’s an ancient search—that for the Idea—whether it takes
form in metal or wood or stone.”

“Well,” said Feather, holding her bit of gauze away from her the better
to criticize the pink flower. “As _almost_ a clergyman’s daughter I
must say that if there is one thing God didn’t do, it was to fill the
world with beautiful people and things as if it was only to be happy
in. It was made to—to try us by suffering and—that sort of thing. It’s
a—a—what d’ye call it? Something beginning with P.”

“Probation,” suggested Coombe regarding her with an expression of
speculative interest. Her airy bringing forth of her glib time-worn
little scraps of orthodoxy—as one who fished them out of a bag of
long-discarded remnants of rubbish—was so true to type that it almost
fascinated him for a moment.

“Yes. That’s it—probation,” she answered. “I knew it began with a P. It
means ‘thorny paths’ and ‘seas of blood’ and, if you are religious, you
‘tread them with bleeding feet—’ or swim them as the people do in
hymns. And you praise and glorify all the time you’re doing it. Of
course, I’m not religious myself and I can’t say I think it’s
pleasant—but I do _know!_ Every body beautiful and perfect indeed!
That’s not religion—it’s being irreligious. Good gracious, think of the
cripples and lepers and hunchbacks!”

“And the idea is that God made them all—by way of entertaining
himself?” he put it to her quietly.

“Well, who else did?” said Feather cheerfully.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Certain things I heard Mrs. Muir say
suggested to one that it might be interesting to think it out.”

“Did she talk to you about God at afternoon tea?” said Feather. “It’s
the kind of thing a religious Scotch woman might do.”

“No, she did not talk to me. Perhaps that was her mistake. She might
have reformed me. She never says more to me than civility demands. And
it was not at tea. I accidentally dropped in on the Bethunes and found
an Oriental had been lecturing there. Mrs. Muir was talking to him and
I heard her. The man seemed to be a scholar and a deep thinker and as
they talked a group of us stood and listened or asked questions.”

“How funny!” said Feather.

“It was not funny at all. It was astonishingly calm and serious—and
logical. The logic was the new note. I had never thought of reason in
that connection.”

“Reason has nothing to do with it. You must have faith. You must just
believe what you’re told not think at all. Thinking is
wickedness—unless you think what you hear preached.” Feather was even a
trifle delicately smug as she rattled off her orthodoxy—but she laughed
after she had done with it. “But it _must_ have been funny—a Turk or a
Hindoo in a turban and a thing like a tea gown and Mrs. Muir in her
Edinburgh looking clothes talking about God.”

“You are quite out of it,” Coombe did not smile at all as he said it.
“The Oriental was as physically beautiful as Donal Muir is. And Mrs.
Muir—no other woman in the room compared with her. Perhaps people who
think grow beautiful.”

Feather was not often alluring or coquettish in her manner to Coombe
but she tilted her head prettily and looked down at her flower through
lovely lashes.

“_I_ don’t think,” she said. “And I am not so bad looking.”

“No,” he answered coldly. “You are not. At times you look like a young
angel.”

“If Mrs. Muir is like that,” she said after a brief pause, “I should
like to know what she thinks of me?”

“No, you would not—neither should I—if she thinks at all,” was his
answer. “But you remember you said you did not mind that sort of
thing.”

“I don’t. Why should I? It can’t harm me.” Her hint of a pout made her
mouth entrancing. “But, if she thinks good looks are the result of
religiousness I should like to let her see Robin—and compare her with
her boy. I saw Robin in the park last week and she’s a perfect beauty.”

“Last week?” said Coombe.

“She doesn’t need anyone but Andrews. I should bore her to death if I
went and sat in the Nursery and stared at her. No one does that sort of
thing in these days. But I should like to see Mrs. Muir to see the two
children together!”

“That could not easily be arranged, I am afraid,” he said.

“Why not?”

His answer was politely deliberate.

“She greatly disapproves of me, I have told you. She is not proud of
the relationship.”

“She does not like _me_ you mean?”

“Excuse me. I mean exactly what I said in telling you that she has her
own very strong views of the boy’s training and surroundings. They may
be ridiculous but that sort of thing need not trouble you.”

Feather held up her hand and actually laughed.

“If Robin meets him in ten years from now—_that_ for her very strong
views of his training and surroundings!”

And she snapped her fingers.

Mrs. Muir’s distaste for her son’s unavoidable connection with the man
he might succeed had a firm foundation. She had been brought up in a
Scottish Manse where her father dominated as an omnipotent and almost
divine authority. As a child of imagination she had not been happy but
she had been obedient. In her girlhood she had varied from type through
her marriage with a young man who was a dreamer, an advanced thinker,
an impassioned Greek scholar and a lover of beauty. After he had
released her from her terrors of damnation, they had been profoundly
happy. They were young and at ease and they read and thought together
ardently. They explored new creeds and cults and sometimes found
themselves talking nonsense and sometimes discovering untrodden paths
of wisdom. They were youthful enough to be solemn about things at
times, and clever enough to laugh at their solemnity when they awakened
to it. Helen Muir left the reverent gloom of the life at the Manse far
behind despite her respect for certain meanings they beclouded.

“I live in a new structure,” she said to her husband, “but it is built
on a foundation which is like a solid subterranean chamber. I don’t use
the subterranean chamber or go into it. I don’t want to. But now and
then echoes—almost noises—make themselves heard in it. Sometimes I find
I have listened in spite of myself.”

She had always been rather grave about her little son and when her
husband’s early death left him and his dignified but not large estate
in her care she realized that there lay in her hands the power to
direct a life as she chose, in as far as was humanly possible. The pure
blood and healthy tendencies of a long and fine ancestry expressing
themselves in the boy’s splendid body and unusual beauty had set the
minds of two imaginative people working from the first. One of Muir’s
deepest interests was the study of development of the race. It was he
who had planted in her mind that daringly fearless thought of a human
perfection as to the Intention of the Creative Cause. They used to look
at the child as he lay asleep and note the beauty of him—his hands, his
feet, his torso, the tint and texture and line of him.

“This is what was _meant_—in the plan for every human being—How could
there be scamping and inefficiency in Creation. It is we ourselves who
have scamped and been incomplete in our thought and life. Here he is.
Look at him. But he will only develop as he is—if living does not warp
him.” This was what his father said. His mother was at her gravest as
she looked down at the little god in the crib.

“It’s as if some power had thrust a casket of loose jewels into our
hands and said, ‘It is for you to see that not one is lost’,” she
murmured. Then the looked up and smiled.

“Are we being solemn—over a baby?” she said.

“Perhaps,” he was always even readier to smile than she was. “I’ve an
idea, however, that there’s enough to be solemn about—not too solemn,
but just solemn enough. You are a beautiful thing, Fair Helen! Why
shouldn’t he be like you? Neither of us will forget what we have just
said.”

Through her darkest hours of young bereavement she remembered the words
many times and felt as if they were a sort of light she might hold in
her hand as she trod the paths of the “Afterwards” which were in the
days before her. She lived with Donal at Braemarnie and lived _for_ him
without neglecting her duty of being the head of a household and an
estate and also a good and gracious neighbour to things and people. She
kept watch over every jewel in his casket, great and small. He was so
much a part of her religion that sometimes she realized that the echoes
from the subterranean chamber were perhaps making her a little strict
but she tried to keep guard over herself.

He was handsome and radiant with glowing health and vitality. He was a
friendly, rejoicing creature and as full of the joy of life as a
scampering moor pony. He was clever enough but not too clever and he
was friends with the world. Braemarnie was picturesquely ancient and
beautiful. It would be a home of sufficient ease and luxury to be a
pleasure but no burden. Life in it could be perfect and also supply
freedom. Coombe Court and Coombe Keep were huge and castellated and
demanded great things. Even if the Head of the House had been a man to
like and be proud of—the accession of a beautiful young Marquis would
rouse the hounds of war, so to speak, and set them racing upon his
track. Even the totally unalluring “Henry” had been beset with
temptations from his earliest years. That he promptly succumbed to the
first only brought forth others. It did not seem fair that a creature
so different, a splendid fearless thing, should be dragged from his
hills and moors and fair heather and made to breathe the foul scent of
things, of whose poison he could know nothing. She was not an ignorant
childish woman. In her fine aloof way she had learned much in her stays
in London with her husband and in their explorings of foreign cities.

This was the reason for her views of her boy’s training and
surroundings. She had not asked questions about Coombe himself, but it
had not been necessary. Once or twice she had seen Feather by chance.
In spite of herself she had heard about Henry. Now and then he was
furbished up and appeared briefly at Coombe Court or at The Keep. It
was always briefly because he inevitably began to verge on misbehaving
himself after twenty-four hours had passed. On his last visit to Coombe
House in town, where he had turned up without invitation, he had become
so frightfully drunk that he had been barely rescued from the trifling
_faux pas_ of attempting to kiss a very young royal princess. There
were quite definite objections to Henry.

Helen Muir was _not_ proud of the Coombe relationship and with unvaried
and resourceful good breeding kept herself and her boy from all chance
of being drawn into anything approaching an intimacy. Donal knew
nothing of his prospects. There would be time enough for that when he
was older, but, in the meantime, there should be no intercourse if it
could be avoided.

She had smiled at herself when the “echo” had prompted her to the hint
of a quaint caution in connection with his little boy flame of delight
in the strange child he had made friends with. But it _had_ been a
flame and, though she, had smiled, she sat very still by the window
later that night and she had felt a touch of weight on her heart as she
thought it over. There were wonderful years when one could give one’s
children all the things they wanted, she was saying to herself—the
desires of their child hearts, the joy of their child bodies, their
little raptures of delight. Those were divine years. They were so safe
then. Donal was living through those years now. He did not know that
any happiness could be taken from him. He was hers and she was his. It
would be horrible if there were anything one could not let him keep—in
this early unshadowed time!

She was looking out at the Spring night with all its stars lit and
gleaming over the Park which she could see from her window. Suddenly
she left her chair and rang for Nanny.

“Nanny,” she said when the old nurse came, “tell me something about the
little girl Donal plays with in the Square gardens.”

“She’s a bonny thing and finely dressed, ma’am,” was the woman’s
careful answer, “but I don’t make friends with strange nurses and I
don’t think much of hers. She’s a young dawdler who sits novel reading
and if Master Donal were a young pickpocket with the measles, the child
would be playing with him just the same as far as I can see. The young
woman sits under a tree and reads and the pretty little thing may do
what she likes. I keep my eye on them, however, and they’re in no
mischief. Master Donal reads out of his picture books and shows himself
off before her grandly and she laughs and looks up to him as if he were
a king. Every lad child likes a woman child to look up to him. It’s
pretty to see the pair of them. They’re daft about each other. Just wee
things in love at first sight.”

“Donal has known very few girls. Those plain little things at the Manse
are too dull for him,” his mother said slowly.

“This one’s not plain and she’s not dull,” Nanny answered. “My word!
but she’s like a bit of witch fire dancing—with her colour and her big
silk curls in a heap. Donal stares at her like a young man at a beauty.
I wish, ma’am, we knew more of her forbears.”

“I must see her,” Mrs. Muir said. “Tomorrow I’ll go with you both to
the Gardens.”

Therefore the following day Donal pranced proudly up the path to his
trysting place and with him walked a tall lady at whom people looked as
she passed. She was fair like Donal and had a small head softly swathed
with lovely folds of hair. Also her eyes were very clear and calm.
Donal was plainly proud and happy to be with her and was indeed
prancing though his prance was broken by walking steps at intervals.

Robin was waiting behind the lilac bushes and her nurse was already
deep in the mystery of Lady Audley.

“There she is!” cried Donal, and he ran to her. “My mother has come
with me. She wants to see you, too,” and he pulled her forward by her
hand. “This is Robin, Mother! This is Robin.” He panted with elation
and stood holding his prize as if she might get away before he had
displayed her; his eyes lifted to his tall mother’s were those of an
exultant owner.

Robin had no desire to run away. To adore anything which belonged to
Donal was only nature. And this tall, fair, wonderful person was a
Mother. No wonder Donal talked of her so much. The child could only
look up at her as Donal did. So they stood hand in hand like little
worshippers before a deity.

Andrews’ sister in her pride had attired the small creature like a
flower of Spring. Her exquisiteness and her physical brilliancy gave
Mrs. Muir something not unlike a slight shock. Oh! no wonder—since she
was like that. She stooped and kissed the round cheek delicately.

“Donal wanted me to see his little friend,” she said. “I always want to
see his playmates. Shall we walk round the Garden together and you
shall show me where you play and tell me all about it.”

She took the small hand and they walked slowly. Robin was at first too
much awed to talk but as Donal was not awed at all and continued his
prancing and the Mother lady said pretty things about the flowers and
the grass and the birds and even about the pony at Braemarnie, she
began now and then to break into a little hop herself and presently
into sudden ripples of laughter like a bird’s brief bubble of song. The
tall lady’s hand was not like Andrews, or the hand of Andrews’ sister.
It did not pull or jerk and it had a lovely feeling. The sensation she
did not know was happiness again welled up within her. Just one walk
round the Garden and then the tall lady sat down on a seat to watch
them play. It was wonderful. She did not read or work. She sat and
watched them as if she wanted to do that more than anything else. Donal
kept calling out to her and making her smile: he ran backwards and
forwards to her to ask questions and tell her what they were “making
up” to play. When they gathered leaves to prick stars and circles on,
they did them on the seat on which she sat and she helped them with new
designs. Several times, in the midst of her play, Robin stopped and
stood still a moment with a sort of puzzled expression. It was because
she did not feel like Robin. Two people—a big boy and a lady—letting
her play and talk to them as if they liked her and had time!

The truth was that Mrs. Muir’s eyes followed Robin more than they
followed Donal. Their clear deeps yearned over her. Such a glowing
vital little thing! No wonder! No wonder! And as she grew older she
would be more vivid and compelling with every year. And Donal was of
her kind. His strength, his beauty, his fearless happiness-claiming
temperament. How could one—with dignity and delicacy—find out why she
had this obvious air of belonging to nobody? Donal was an exact little
lad. He had had foundation for his curious scraps of her story. No
mother—no playthings or books—no one had ever kissed her! And she
dressed and _soignée_ like this! Who was the Lady Downstairs?

A victoria was driving past the Gardens. It was going slowly because
the two people in it wished to look at the spring budding out of
hyacinths and tulips. Suddenly one of the pair—a sweetly-hued figure
whose early season attire was hyacinth-like itself—spoke to the
coachman.

“Stop here!” she said. “I want to get out.”

As the victoria drew up near a gate she made a light gesture.

“What do you think, Starling,” she laughed. “The very woman we are
talking about is sitting in the Gardens there. I know her perfectly
though I only saw her portrait at the Academy years ago. Yes, there she
is. Mrs. Muir, you know.” She clapped her hands and her laugh became a
delighted giggle. “And my Robin is playing on the grass near her—with a
boy! What a joke! It must be _the_ boy! And I wanted to see the pair
together. Coombe said couldn’t be done. And more than anything I want
to speak to _her_. Let’s get out.”

They got out and this was why Helen Muir, turning her eyes a moment
from Robin whose hand she was holding, saw two women coming towards her
with evident intention. At least one of them had evident intention. She
was the one whose light attire produced the effect of being made of
hyacinth petals.

Because Mrs. Muir’s glance turned towards her, Robin’s turned also. She
started a little and leaned against Mrs. Muir’s knee, her eyes growing
very large and round indeed and filling with a sudden worshipping
light.

“It is—” she ecstatically sighed or rather gasped, “the Lady
Downstairs!”

Feather floated near to the seat and paused smiling.

“Where is your nurse, Robin?” she said.

Robin being always dazzled by the sight of her did not of course shine.

“She is reading under the tree,” she answered tremulously.

“She is only a few yards away,” said Mrs. Muir. “She knows Robin is
playing with my boy and that I am watching them. Robin is your little
girl?” amiably.

“Yes. So kind of you to let her play with your boy. Don’t let her bore
you. I am Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.”

There was a little silence—a delicate little silence.

“I recognized you as Mrs. Muir at once,” said Feather, unperturbed and
smiling brilliantly, “I saw your portrait at the Grosvenor.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Muir gently. She had risen and was beautifully
tall,—“the line” was perfect, and she looked with a gracious calm into
Feather’s eyes.

Donal, allured by the hyacinth petal colours, drew near. Robin made an
unconscious little catch at his plaid and whispered something.

“Is this Donal?” Feather said.

“_Are_ you the Lady Downstairs, please?” Donal put in politely, because
he wanted so to know.

Feather’s pretty smile ended in the prettiest of outright laughs. Her
maid had told her Andrews’ story of the name.

“Yes, I believe that’s what she calls me. It’s a nice name for a
mother, isn’t it?”

Donal took a quick step forward.

“_Are_ you her mother?” he asked eagerly.

“Of course I am.”

Donal quite flushed with excitement.

“She doesn’t _know_,” he said.

He turned on Robin.

“She’s your Mother! You thought you hadn’t one! She’s your Mother!”

“But I am the Lady Downstairs, too.” Feather was immensely amused. She
was not subtle enough to know why she felt a perverse kind of pleasure
in seeing the Scotch woman standing so still, and that it led her into
a touch of vulgarity. “I wanted very much to see your boy,” she said.

“Yes,” still gently from Mrs. Muir.

“Because of Coombe, you know. We are such old friends. How queer that
the two little things have made friends, too. I didn’t know. I am so
glad I caught a glimpse of you and that I had seen the portrait. _Good_
morning. Goodbye, children.”

While she strayed airily away they all watched her. She picked up her
friend, the Starling, who, not feeling concerned or needed, had paused
to look at daffodils. The children watched her until her victoria drove
away, the chiffon ruffles of her flowerlike parasol fluttering in the
air.

Mrs. Muir had sat down again and Donal and Robin leaned against her.
They saw she was not laughing any more but they did not know that her
eyes had something like grief in them.

“She’s her Mother!” Donal cried. “She’s lovely, too. But she’s—her
_Mother!_” and his voice and face were equally puzzled.

Robin’s little hand delicately touched Mrs. Muir.

“_Is_—she?” she faltered.

Helen Muir took her in her arms and held her quite close. She kissed
her.

“Yes, she is, my lamb,” she said. “She’s your mother.”

She was clear as to what she must do for Donal’s sake. It was the only
safe and sane course. But—at this age—the child _was_ a lamb and she
could not help holding her close for a moment. Her little body was
deliciously soft and warm and the big silk curls all in a heap were a
fragrance against her breast.




CHAPTER X


Donal talked a great deal as he pranced home. Feather had excited as
well as allured him. Why hadn’t she told Robin she was her mother? Why
did she never show her pictures in the Nursery and hold her on her
knee? She was little enough to be held on knees! Did some mothers never
tell their children and did the children never find out? This was what
he wanted to hear explained. He took the gloved hand near him and held
it close and a trifle authoritatively.

“I am glad I know you are my mother,” he said, “I always knew.”

He was not sure that the matter was explained very clearly. Not as
clearly as things usually were. But he was not really disturbed. He had
remembered a book he could show Robin tomorrow and he thought of that.
There was also a game in a little box which could be easily carried
under his arm. His mother was “thinking” and he was used to that. It
came on her sometimes and of his own volition he always, on such
occasion, kept as quiet as was humanly possible.

After he was asleep, Helen sent for Nanny.

“You’re tired, ma’am,” the woman said when she saw her, “I’m afraid
you’ve a headache.”

“I have had a good deal of thinking to do since this afternoon,” her
mistress answered, “You were right about the nurse. The little girl
might have been playing with any boy chance sent in her way—boys quite
unlike Donal.”

“Yes, ma’am.” And because she loved her and knew her face and voice
Nanny watched her closely.

“You will be as—startled—as I was. By some queer chance the child’s
mother was driving by and saw us and came in to speak to me. Nanny—she
is Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.”

Nanny did start; she also reddened and spoke sharply.

“And she came in and spoke to you, ma’am!”

“Things have altered and are altering every day,” Mrs. Muir said.
“Society is not at all inflexible. She has a smart set of her own—and
she is very pretty and evidently well provided for. Easy-going people
who choose to find explanations suggest that her husband was a relation
of Lord Lawdor’s.”

“And him a canny Scotchman with a new child a year. Yes, my certie,”
offered Nanny, with an acrid grimness. Mrs. Muir’s hands clasped
strongly as they lay on the table before her.

“That doesn’t come within my bailiewick,” she said in her quiet voice.
“Her life is her own and not mine. Words are the wind that blows.” She
stopped just a moment and began again. “We must leave for Scotland by
the earliest train.”

“What’ll he do?” the words escaped from the woman as if involuntarily.
She even drew a quick breath. “He’s a strong feeling bairn—strong!”

“He’ll be stronger when he is a young man, Nanny!” desperately. “That
is why I must act now. There is no half way. I don’t want to be hard.
Oh, am I hard—am I hard?” she cried out low as if she were pleading.

“No, ma’am. You are not. He’s your own flesh and blood.” Nanny had
never before seen her mistress as she saw her in the next curious
almost exaggerated moment.

Her hand flew to her side.

“He’s my heart and my soul—” she said, “—he is the very entrails of me!
And it will hurt him so and I cannot explain to him because he is too
young to understand. He is only a little boy who must go where he is
taken. And he cannot help himself. It’s—unfair!”

Nanny was prone to become more Scotch as she became moved. But she
still managed to look grim.

“He canna help himsel,” she said, “an waur still, _you_ canna.”

There was a moment of stillness and then she said:

“I must go and pack up.” And walked out of the room.

Donal always slept like a young roe in the bracken, and in deep and
rapturous ease he slept this night. Another perfectly joyful day had
passed and his Mother had liked Robin and kissed her. All was well with
the world. As long as he had remained awake—and it had not been long—he
had thought of delightful things unfeverishly. Of Robin, somehow at
Braemarnie, growing bigger very quickly—big enough for all sorts of
games—learning to ride Chieftain, even to gallop. His mother would buy
another pony and they could ride side by side. Robin would laugh and
her hair would fly behind her if they went fast. She would see how fast
he could go—she would see him make Chieftain jump. They would have
picnics—catch sight of deer and fawns delicately lifting their feet as
they stepped. She would always look at him with that nice look in her
eyes and the little smile which came and went in a second. She was
quite different from the minister’s little girls at the Manse. He liked
her—he liked her!

He was wakened by a light in his room and by the sound of moving about.
He sat up quickly and found his Mother standing by his bed and Nanny
putting things into a travelling bag. He felt as if his Mother looked
taller than she had looked yesterday—and almost thin—and her face was
anxious and—shy.

“We let you sleep as late as we could, Donal,” she said. “You must get
up quickly now and have breakfast. Something has happened. We are
obliged to go back to Scotland by very early train. There is not a
minute to waste.”

At first he only said:

“Back!”

“Yes, dear. Get up.”

“To Braemarnie?”

“Yes, dear laddie!”

He felt himself grow hot and cold.

“Away! Away!” he said again vaguely.

“Yes. Get up, dear.”

He was as she had said only a little boy and accustomed to do as he was
told. He was also a fine, sturdy little Scot with a pride of his own.
His breeding had been of the sort which did not include insubordinate
scenes, so he got out of bed and began to dress. But his mother saw
that his hands shook.

“I shall not see Robin,” he said in a queer voice. “She won’t find me
when she goes behind the lilac bushes. She won’t know why I don’t
come.”

He swallowed very hard and was dead still for a few minutes, though he
did not linger over his dressing. His mother felt that the whole thing
was horrible. He was acting almost like a young man even now. She did
not know how she could bear it. She spoke to him in a tone which was
actually rather humble.

“If we knew where she lived you—you could write a little letter and
tell her about it. But we do not where she lives.”

He answered her very low.

“That’s it. And she’s little—and she won’t understand. She’s very
little—really.” There was a harrowingly protective note in his voice.
“Perhaps—she’ll cry.”

Helen looking down at him with anguished eyes—he was buttoning his
shoes—made an unearthly effort to find words, but, as she said them,
she knew they were not the right ones.

“She will be disappointed, of course, but she is so little that she
will not feel it as much as if she were bigger. She will get over it,
darling. Very little girls do not remember things long.” Oh, how coarse
and crass and stupid it sounded—how coarse and crass and stupid to say
it to this small defiant scrap of what seemed the inevitable suffering
of the world!

The clear blue of the eyes Robin had dwelt in, lifted itself to her.
There was something almost fierce in it—almost like impotent hatred of
something.

“She won’t,” he said, and she actually heard him grind his little teeth
after it.

He did not look like Donal when he was dressed and sat at the breakfast
table. He did not eat much of his porridge, but she saw that he
determinedly ate some. She felt several times as if he actually did not
look like anybody she had ever seen. And at the same time his fair
hair, his fair cheeks, and the fair sturdy knees beneath his swinging
kilt made him seem as much a little boy as she had ever known him. It
was his hot blue eyes which were different.

He obeyed her every wish and followed where she led. When the train
laboured out of the big station he had taken a seat in a corner and sat
with his face turned to the window, so that his back was towards her.
He stared and stared at the passing country and she could only see part
of his cheek and the side of his neck. She could not help watching them
and presently she saw a hot red glow under the skin as if a flood had
risen. It subsided in a few moments, but presently she saw it rise
again. This happened several times and he was holding his lip with, his
teeth. Once she saw his shoulders move and he coughed obstinately two
or three times. She knew that he would die before he would let himself
cry, but she wished he would descend to it just this once, as the
fields and hedges raced past and he was carried “Away! Away!” It might
be that it was all his manhood she was saving for him.

He really made her heart stand still for a moment just as she was
thinking this and saying it to herself almost fiercely. He suddenly
turned on her; the blue of his eyes was flaming and the tide had risen
again in his cheeks and neck. It was a thing like rage she saw before
her—a child’s rage and impotently fierce. He cried out as if he were
ending a sentence he had not finished when he spoke as he sat on the
floor buttoning his shoes.

“She has no one but me to remember!” he said. “No one but me had ever
even kissed her. She didn’t know!”

To her amazement he clenched both his savage young fists and shook them
before him.

“It’ll kill me!” he raged.

She could not hold herself back. She caught at him with her arms and
meant to drag him to her breast. “No! No! Donal!” she cried. “Darling!
No—No!” But, as suddenly as the queer unchildish thing had broken out,
did he remember himself and boy shame at his fantastic emotion overtook
him. He had never spoken like that to anyone before! It was almost as
bad as bursting out crying! The red tide ebbed away and he withdrew
himself awkwardly from her embrace. He said not another word and sat
down in his corner with his back turned toward the world.

That the Lady Downstairs, who was so fond of laughing and who knew so
many persons who seemed to laugh nearly all the time, might have been
joking about being her mother presented itself to Robin as a vague
solution of the problem. The Lady had laughed when she said it, as
people so often laughed at children. Perhaps she had only been amusing
herself as grown-up persons were apparently entitled to do. Even Donal
had not seemed wholly convinced and though his mother had said the Lady
Downstairs _was_—somehow the subject had been changed at once. Mrs.
Muir had so soon begun to tell them a story. Robin was not in the least
aware that she had swiftly distracted their attention from a question,
any discussion of which would have involved explanations she could not
have produced. It would have been impossible to make it clear to any
child. She herself was helpless before the situation and therefore her
only refuge was to make the two think of other things. She had so well
done this that Robin had gone home later only remembering the brightly
transitory episode as she recalled others as brief and bright, when she
had stared at a light and lovely figure standing on the nursery
threshold and asking careless questions of Andrews, without coming in
and risking the freshness of her draperies by contact with London
top-floor grubbiness. The child was, in fact, too full of the reality
of her happiness with Donal and Donal’s mother to be more than faintly
bewildered by a sort of visionary conundrum.

Robin, like Donal, slept perfectly through the night. Her sleep was
perhaps made more perfect by fair dreams in which she played in the
Gardens and she and Donal ran to and from the knees of the Mother lady
to ask questions and explain their games. As the child had often, in
the past, looked up at the sky, so she had looked up into the clear
eyes of the Mother lady. There was something in them which she had
never seen before but which she kept wanting to see again. Then there
came a queer bit of a dream about the Lady Downstairs. She came dancing
towards them dressed in hyacinths and with her arms full of daffodils.
She danced before Donal’s Mother—danced and laughed as if she thought
they were all funny. She threw a few daffodils at them and then danced
away. The daffodils lay on the gravel walk and they all looked at them
but no one picked them up. Afterwards—in the dream—Mrs. Muir suddenly
caught her in her arms and kissed her and Robin was glad and felt warm
all over—inside and out.

She wakened smiling at the dingy ceiling of the dingy room. There was
but one tiny shadow in the world, which was the fear that Andrews would
get well too quickly. She was no longer in bed but was well enough to
sit up and sew a little before the tiny fire in the atom of a servant’s
room grate. The doctor would not let her go out yet; therefore, Anne
still remained in charge. Founding one’s hope on previous knowledge of
Anne’s habits, she might be trusted to sit and read and show no
untoward curiosity.

From her bed Robin could see the sky was blue. That meant that she
would be taken out. She lay as quiet as a mouse and thought of the joy
before her, until Anne came to dress her and give her her breakfast.

“We’ll put on your rose-coloured smock this morning,” the girl said,
when the dressing began. “I like the hat and socks that match.”

Anne was not quite like Andrews who was not talkative. She made a
conversational sort of remark after she had tied the white shoes.

“You’ve got pretty little aristocratic legs of your own,” she said
amiably. “I like my children to have nice legs.”

Robin was uplifted in spirit by the commendation, but she hoped Anne
would put on her own things quickly. Sometimes she was rather a long
time. The one course, however, towards which discretion pointed as
entirely safe was the continuance of being as quiet as a mouse—even
quieter, if such thing might be—so that nothing might interfere with
anything any one wanted to do. To interfere would have been to attract
attention and might lead to delay. So she stood and watched the
sparrows inoffensively until Anne called her.

When she found herself out on the street her step was so light on the
pavement that she was rather like a rose petal blown fluttering along
by soft vagrant puffs of spring air. Under her flopping hat her eyes
and lips and cheeks were so happy that more than one passer-by turned
head over shoulder to look after her.

“Your name ought to be Rose,” Anne giggled involuntarily as she glanced
down at her because someone had stared. She had not meant to speak but
the words said themselves.

Because the time was young June even London sky and air were wonderful.
Stray breaths of fragrance came and went. The green of the trees in the
Gardens was light and fresh and in the bedded-out curves and stars and
circles there were more flowers every hour, so that it seemed as if
blooming things with scents grew thick about one’s feet. It was no
wonder one felt light and smiled back at nurses and governesses who
looked up. Robin drew eyes became she was like a summer bloom suddenly
appearing in the Spring Garden.

Nanny was not sitting on the bench near the gate and Donal was not to
be seen amusing himself. But he was somewhere just out of sight, or, if
he had chanced to be late, he would come very soon even if his Mother
could not come with him—though Robin could not believe she would not.
To a child thing both happiness and despair cannot be conceived of
except as lasting forever.

Anne sat down and opened her book. She had reached an exciting part and
looked forward to a thoroughly enjoyable morning.

Robin hopped about for a few minutes. Donal had taught her to hop and
she felt it an accomplishment. Entangled in the meshes of the feathery,
golden, if criminal, ringlets of Lady Audley, Anne did not know when
she hopped round the curve of the walk behind the lilac and snowball
bushes.

Once safe in her bit of enchanted land, the child stood still and
looked about her. There was no kilted figure to be seen, but it would
come towards her soon with swinging plaid and eagle’s feather standing
up grandly in its Highland bonnet. He would come soon. Perhaps he would
come running—and the Mother lady would walk behind more slowly and
smile. Robin waited and looked—she waited and looked.

She was used to waiting but she had never watched for anyone before.
There had never been any one or anything to watch for. The newness of
the suspense gave it a sort of deep thrill at first. How long was “at
first”? She did not know. She stood—and stood—and stood—and looked at
every creature who entered the gate. She did not see any one who looked
in the least like Donal or his Mother or Nanny. There were nurses and
governesses and children and a loitering lady or two. There were never
many people in the Gardens—only those who had keys. She knew nothing
about time but at length she knew that on other mornings they had been
playing together before this.

The small rose-coloured figure stood so still for so long that it began
to look rigid and a nurse sitting at some distance said to another,

“What is that child waiting for?”

What length of time had passed before she found herself looking slowly
down at her feet because of something. The “something” which had drawn
her eyes downward was that she had stood so long without moving that
her tense feet had begun vaguely to hurt her and the ache attracted her
attention. She changed her position slightly and turned her eyes upon
the gate again. He was coming very soon. He would be sure to run fast
now and he would be laughing. Donal! Donal! She even laughed a little
low, quivering laugh herself.

“What is that child waiting for? I should really like to know,” the
distant nurse said again curiously.

If she had been eighteen years old she would have said to herself that
she was waiting hours and hours. She would have looked at a little
watch a thousand times; she would have walked up and down and round and
round the garden never losing sight of the gate—or any other point for
that matter—for more than a minute. Each sound of the church clock
striking a few streets away would have brought her young heart thumping
into her throat.

But a child has no watch, no words out of which to build hopes and
fears and reasons, arguments battling against anguish which
grows—palliations, excuses. Robin, could only wait in the midst of a
slow dark, rising tide of something she had no name for. This slow
rising of an engulfing flood she felt when pins and needles began to
take possession of her feet, when her legs ached, and her eyes felt as
if they had grown big and tightly strained. Donal! Donal! Donal!

Who knows but that some echo of the terror against which she had fought
and screamed on the night when she had lain alone in the dark in her
cradle and Feather had hid her head under the pillow—came back and
closed slowly around and over her, filling her inarticulate being with
panic which at last reached its unbearable height? She had not really
stood waiting the entire morning, but she was young enough to think
that she had and that at any moment Anne might come and take her away.
He had not come running—he had not come laughing—he had not come with
his plaid swinging and his feather standing high! There came a moment
when her strained eyes no longer seemed to see clearly! Something like
a big lump crawled up into her throat! Something of the same sort
happened the day she had burst into a wail of loneliness and Andrews
had pinched her. Panic seized her; she clutched the breast of her
rose-coloured frock and panic-driven turned and fled into a thick clump
of bushes where there was no path and where even Donal had never
pierced.

“That child has run away at last,” the distant nurse remarked, “I’d
like to find out what she _was_ waiting for.”

The shrubs were part of the enclosing planting of the Gardens. The
children who came to play on the grass and paths felt as if they formed
a sort of forest. Because of this, Robin had made her frantic dash to
their shelter. No one would come—no one would see her—no one would hear
her, beneath them it was almost dark. Bereft, broken and betrayed, a
little mad thing, she pushed her way into their shadow and threw
herself face downward, a small, writhing, rose-coloured heap, upon the
damp mould. She could not have explained what she was doing or why she
had given up all, as if some tidal wave had overwhelmed her. Suddenly
she knew that all her new world had gone—forever and ever. As it had
come so it had gone. As she had not doubted the permanence of its joy,
so she _knew_ that the end had come. Only the wisdom of the occult
would dare to suggest that from her child mate, squaring his sturdy
young shoulders against the world as the flying train sped on its way,
some wave of desperate, inchoate thinking rushed backward. There was
nothing more. He would not come back running. He was _gone!_

There was no Andrews to hear. Hidden in the shadow under the shrubs,
the rattle and roar of the street outside the railing drowned her mad
little cries. All she had never done before, she did then. Her hands
beat on the damp mould and tore at it—her small feet beat it and dug
into it. She cried, she sobbed; the big lump in her throat almost
strangled her—she writhed and did not know she was writhing. Her tears
pouring forth wet her hair, her face, her dress. She did not cry out,
“Donal! Donal!” because he was nowhere—nowhere. If Andrews had seen her
she would have said she was “in a tantrum,” But she was not. The world
had been torn away.

A long time afterwards, as it seemed to her, she crawled out from under
the shrubs, carrying her pretty flopping hat in her earth-stained hand.
It was not pretty any more. She had been lying on it and it was crushed
and flat. She crept slowly round the curve to Anne.

Seeing her, Anne sprang to her feet. The rose was a piteous thing
beaten to earth by a storm. The child’s face was swollen and stained,
her hair was tangled and damp there were dark marks of mould on her
dress, her hat, her hands, her white cheeks; her white shoes were
earth-stained also, and the feet in the rose-coloured socks dragged
themselves heavily—slowly.

“My gracious!” the young woman almost shrieked. “What’s happened! Where
have you been? Did you fall down? Ah, my good gracious! Mercy me!”

Robin caught her breath but did not say a word.

“You fell down on a flower bed where they’d been watering the plants!”
almost wept Anne. “You must have. There isn’t that much dirt anywhere
else in the Gardens.”

And when she took her charge home that was the story she told Andrews.
Out of Robin she could get nothing, and it was necessary to have an
explanation.

The truth, of which she knew nothing, was but the story of a child’s
awful dismay and a child’s woe at one of Life’s first betrayals. It
would be left behind by the days which came and went—it would pass—as
all things pass but the everlasting hills—but in this way it was that
it came and wrote itself upon the tablets of a child’s day.




CHAPTER XI


“The child’s always been well, ma’am,” Andrews was standing, the image
of exact correctness, in her mistress’ bedroom, while Feather lay in
bed with her breakfast on a convenient and decorative little table.
“It’s been a thing I’ve prided myself on. But I should say she isn’t
well now.”

“Well, I suppose it’s only natural that she should begin sometime,”
remarked Feather. “They always do, of course. I remember we all had
things when we were children. What does the doctor say? I hope it isn’t
the measles, or the beginning of anything worse?”

“No, ma’am, it isn’t. It’s nothing like a child’s disease. I could have
managed that. There’s good private nursing homes for them in these
days. Everything taken care of exactly as it should be and no trouble
of disinfecting and isolating for the family. I know what you’d have
wished to have done, ma’am.”

“You do know your business, Andrews,” was Feather’s amiable comment.

“Thank you, ma’am,” from Andrews. “Infectious things are easy managed
if they’re taken away quick. But the doctor said you must be spoken to
because perhaps a change was needed.”

“You could take her to Ramsgate or somewhere bracing.” said Feather.
“But what did he _say?_”

“He seemed puzzled, ma’am. That’s what struck me. When I told him about
her not eating—and lying awake crying all night—to judge from her looks
in the morning—and getting thin and pale—he examined her very careful
and he looked queer and he said, ‘This child hasn’t had a _shock_ of
any kind, has she? This looks like what we should call shock—if she
were older’.”

Feather laughed.

“How could a baby like that have a shock?”

“That’s what I thought myself, ma’am,” answered Andrews. “A child
that’s had her hours regular and is fed and bathed and sleeps by the
clock, and goes out and plays by herself in the Gardens, well watched
over, hasn’t any chance to get shocks. I told him so and he sat still
and watched her quite curious, and then he said very slow: ‘Sometimes
little children are a good deal shaken up by a fall when they are
playing. Do you remember any chance fall when she cried a good deal?’”

“But you didn’t, of course,” said Feather.

“No, ma’am, I didn’t. I keep my eye on her pretty strict and shouldn’t
encourage wild running or playing. I don’t let her play with other
children. And she’s not one of those stumbling, falling children. I
told him the only fall I ever knew of her having was a bit of a slip on
a soft flower bed that had just been watered—to judge from the state
her clothes were in. She had cried because she’s not used to such
things, and I think she was frightened. But there wasn’t a scratch or a
shadow of a bruise on her. Even that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been
with her. It was when I was ill and my sister Anne took my place. Anne
thought at first that she’d been playing with a little boy she had made
friends with—but she found out that the boy hadn’t come that morning—”

“A boy!” Andrews was sharp enough to detect a new and interested note.
“What boy?”

“She wouldn’t have played with any other child if I’d been there” said
Andrews, “I was pretty sharp with Anne about it. But she said he was an
aristocratic looking little fellow—”

“Was he in Highland costume?” Feather interrupted.

“Yes, ma’am. Anne excused herself by saying she thought you must know
something about him. She declares she saw you come into the Gardens and
speak to his Mother quite friendly. That was the day before Robin fell
and ruined her rose-coloured smock and things. But it wasn’t through
playing boisterous with the boy—because he didn’t come that morning, as
I said, and he never has since.”

Andrews, on this, found cause for being momentarily puzzled by the
change of expression in her mistress’ face. Was it an odd little gleam
of angry spite she saw?

“And never has since, has he?” Mrs. Gareth-Lawless said with a half
laugh.

“Not once, ma’am,” answered Andrews. “And Anne thinks it queer the
child never seemed to look for him. As if she’d lost interest. She just
droops and drags about and doesn’t try to play at all.”

“How much did she play with him?”

“Well, he was such a fine little fellow and had such a respectable,
elderly, Scotch looking woman in charge of him that Anne owned up that
she hadn’t thought there was any objections to them playing together.
She says they were as well behaved and quiet as children could be.”
Andrews thought proper to further justify herself by repeating, “She
didn’t think there could be any objection.”

“There couldn’t,” Mrs. Gareth-Lawless remarked. “I do know the boy. He
is a relation of Lord Coombe’s.”

“Indeed, ma’am,” with colourless civility, “Anne said he was a big
handsome child.”

Feather took a small bunch of hothouse grapes from her breakfast tray
and, after picking one off, suddenly began to laugh.

“Good gracious, Andrews!” she said. “He was the ‘shock’! How perfectly
ridiculous! Robin had never played with a boy before and she fell in
love with him. The little thing’s actually pining away for him.” She
dropped the grapes and gave herself up to delicate mirth. “He was taken
away and disappeared. Perhaps she fainted and fell into the wet flower
bed and spoiled her frock, when she first realized that he wasn’t
coming.”

“It did happen that morning,” admitted Andrews, smiling a little also.
“It does seem funny. But children take to each other in a queer way now
and then. I’ve seen it upset them dreadful when they were parted.”

“You must tell the doctor,” laughed Feather. “Then he’ll see there’s
nothing to be anxious about. She’ll get over it in a week.”

“It’s five weeks since it happened, ma’am,” remarked Andrews, with just
a touch of seriousness.

“Five! Why, so it must be! I remember the day I spoke to Mrs. Muir. If
she’s that sort of child you had better keep her away from boys. _How_
ridiculous! How Lord Coombe—how people will laugh when I tell them!”

She had paused a second because—for that second—she was not quite sure
that Coombe _would_ laugh. Frequently she was of the opinion that he
did not laugh at things when he should have done so. But she had had a
brief furious moment when she had realized that the boy had actually
been whisked away. She remembered the clearness of the fine eyes which
had looked directly into hers. The woman had been deciding then that
she would have nothing to do with her—or even with her child.

But the story of Robin worn by a bereft nursery passion for a little
boy, whose mamma snatched him away as a brand from the burning, was far
too edifying not to be related to those who would find it delicious.

It was on the occasion, a night or so later, of a gathering at dinner
of exactly the few elect ones, whose power to find it delicious was the
most highly developed, that she related it. It was a very little
dinner—only four people. One was the long thin young man, with the good
looking narrow face and dark eyes peering through a _pince nez_—the one
who had said that Mrs. Gareth-Lawless “got her wondrous clothes from
Hélène” but that he couldn’t. His name was Harrowby. Another was the
Starling who was a Miss March who had, some years earlier, led the van
of the girls who prostrated their relatives by becoming what was then
called “emancipated”; the sign thereof being the demanding of latchkeys
and the setting up of bachelor apartments. The relatives had
astonishingly settled down, with the unmoved passage of time, and more
modern emancipation had so far left latchkeys and bachelor apartments
behind it that they began to seem almost old-fogeyish. Clara March,
however, had progressed with her day. The third diner was an adored
young actor with a low, veiled voice which, combining itself with
almond eyes and a sentimental and emotional curve of cheek and chin,
made the most commonplace “lines” sound yearningly impassioned. He was
not impassioned at all—merely fond of his pleasures and comforts in a
way which would end by his becoming stout. At present his figure was
perfect—exactly the thing for the uniforms of royal persons of
Ruritania and places of that ilk—and the name by which programmes
presented him was Gerald Vesey.

Feather’s house pleased him and she herself liked being spoken to in
the veiled voice and gazed at by the almond eyes, as though insuperable
obstacles alone prevented soul-stirring things from being said. That
she knew this was not true did not interfere with her liking it.
Besides he adored and understood her clothes.

Over coffee in the drawing-room, Coombe joined them. He had not known
of the little dinner and arrived just as Feather was on the point of
beginning her story.

“You are just in time,” she greeted him, “I was going to tell them
something to make them laugh.”

“Will it make me laugh?” he inquired.

“It ought to. Robin is in love. She is five years old and she has been
deserted, and Andrews came to tell me that she can neither eat nor
sleep. The doctor says she has had a shock.”

Coombe did not join in the ripple of amused laughter but, as he took
his cup of coffee, he looked interested.

Harrowby was interested too. His dark eyes quite gleamed.

“I suppose she is in bed by now,” he said. “If it were not so late, I
should beg you to have her brought down so that we might have a look at
her. I’m by way of taking a psychological interest.”

“I’m psychological myself,” said the Starling. “But what do you mean,
Feather? Are you in earnest?”

“Andrews is,” Feather answered. “She could manage measles but she could
not be responsible for shock. But she didn’t find out about the love
affair. I found that out—by mere chance. Do you remember the day we got
out of the victoria and went into the Gardens, Starling?”

“The time you spoke to Mrs. Muir?”

Coombe turned slightly towards them.

Feather nodded, with a lightly significant air.

“It was her boy,” she said, and then she laughed and nodded at Coombe.

“He was quite as handsome as you said he was. No wonder poor Robin fell
prostrate. He ought to be chained and muzzled by law when he grows up.”

“But so ought Robin,” threw in the Starling in her brusque, young
mannish way.

“But Robin’s only a girl and she’s not a parti,” laughed Feather. Her
eyes, lifted to Coombe’s, held a sort of childlike malice. “After his
mother knew she was Miss Gareth-Lawless, he was not allowed to play in
the Gardens again. Did she take him back to Scotland?”

“They went back to Scotland,” answered Coombe, “and, of course, the boy
was not left behind.”

“Have _you_ a child five years old?” asked Vesey in his low voice of
Feather. “You?”

“It seems absurd to _me_,” said Feather, “I never quite believe in
her.”

“I don’t,” said Vesey. “She’s impossible.”

“Robin is a stimulating name,” put in Harrowby. “_Is_ it too late to
let us see her? If she’s such a beauty as Starling hints, she ought to
be looked at.”

Feather actually touched the bell by the fireplace. A sudden caprice
moved her. The love story had not gone off quite as well as she had
thought it would. And, after all, the child was pretty enough to show
off. She knew nothing in particular about her daughter’s hours, but, if
she was asleep, she could be wakened.

“Tell Andrews,” she said to the footman when he appeared, “I wish Miss
Robin to be brought downstairs.”

“They usually go to bed at seven, I believe,” remarked Coombe, “but, of
course, I am not an authority.”

Robin was not asleep though she had long been in bed. Because she kept
her eyes shut Andrews had been deceived into carrying on a conversation
with her sister Anne, who had come to see her. Robin had been lying
listening to it. She had begun to listen because they had been talking
about the day she had spoiled her rose-coloured smock and they had
ended by being very frank about other things.

“As sure as you saw her speak to the boy’s mother the day before, just
so sure she whisked him back to Scotland the next morning,” said
Andrews. “She’s one of the kind that’s particular. Lord Coombe’s the
reason. She does not want her boy to see or speak to him, if it can be
helped. She won’t have it—and when she found out—”

“Is Lord Coombe as bad as they say?” put in Anne with bated breath. “He
must be pretty bad if a boy that’s eight years old has to be kept out
of sight and sound of him.”

So it was Lord Coombe who had somehow done it. He had made Donal’s
mother take him away. It was Lord Coombe. Who was Lord Coombe? It was
because he was wicked that Donal’s mother would not let him play with
her—because he was wicked. All at once there came to her a memory of
having heard his name before. She had heard it several times in the
basement Servants’ Hall and, though she had not understood what was
said about him, she had felt the atmosphere of cynical disapproval of
something. They had said “him” and “her” as if he somehow belonged to
the house. On one occasion he had been “high” in the manner of some
reproof to Jennings, who, being enraged, freely expressed his opinions
of his lordship’s character and general reputation. The impression made
on Robin then had been that he was a person to be condemned severely.
That the condemnation was the mere outcome of the temper of an impudent
young footman had not conveyed itself to her, and it was the impression
which came back to her now with a new significance. He was the
cause—not Donal, not Donal’s Mother—but this man who was so bad that
servants were angry because he was somehow connected with the house.

“As to his badness,” she heard Andrews answer, “there’s some that can’t
say enough against him. Badness is smart these days. He’s bad enough
for the boy’s mother to take him away from. It’s what he is in this
house that does it. She won’t have her boy playing with a child like
Robin.”

Then—even as there flashed upon her bewilderment this strange
revelation of her own unfitness for association with boys whose mothers
took care of them—Jennings, the young footman, came to the door.

“Is she awake, Miss Andrews?” he said, looking greatly edified by
Andrews’ astonished countenance.

“What on earth—?” began Andrews.

“If she is,” Jennings winked humorously, “she’s to be dressed up and
taken down to the drawing-room to be shown off. I don’t know whether
it’s Coombe’s idea or not. He’s there.”

Robin’s eyes flew wide open. She forgot to keep them shut. She was to
go downstairs! Who wanted her—who?

Andrews had quite gasped.

“Here’s a new break out!” she exclaimed. “I never heard such a thing in
my life. She’s been in bed over two hours. I’d like to know—”

She paused here because her glance at the bed met the dark liquidity of
eyes wide open. She got up and walked across the room.

“You are awake!” she said. “You look as if you hadn’t been asleep at
all. You’re to get up and have your frock put on. The Lady Downstairs
wants you in the drawing-room.”

Two months earlier such a piece of information would have awakened in
the child a delirium of delight. But now her vitality was lowered
because her previously unawakened little soul had soared so high and
been so dashed down to cruel earth again. The brilliancy of the Lady
Downstairs had been dimmed as a candle is dimmed by the light of the
sun.

She felt only a vague wonder as she did as Andrews told her—wonder at
the strangeness of getting up to be dressed, as it seemed to her, in
the middle of the night.

“It’s just the kind of thing that would happen in a house like this,”
grumbled Andrews, as she put on her frock. “Just anything that comes
into their heads they think they’ve a right to do. I suppose they have,
too. If you’re rich and aristocratic enough to have your own way, why
not take it? I would myself.”

The big silk curls, all in a heap, fell almost to the child’s hips. The
frock Andrews chose for her was a fairy thing.

“She _is_ a bit thin, to be sure,” said the girl Anne. “But it points
her little face and makes her eyes look bigger.”

“If her mother’s got a Marquis, I wonder what she’ll get,” said
Andrews. “She’s got a lot before her: this one!”

When the child entered the drawing-room, Andrews made her go in alone,
while she held herself, properly, a few paces back like a lady in
waiting. The room was brilliantly lighted and seemed full of colour and
people who were laughing. There were pretty things crowding each other
everywhere, and there were flowers on all sides. The Lady Downstairs,
in a sheathlike sparkling dress, and only a glittering strap seeming to
hold it on over her fair undressed shoulders, was talking to a tall
thin man standing before the fireplace with a gold cup of coffee in his
hand.

As the little thing strayed in, with her rather rigid attendant behind
her, suddenly the laughing ceased and everybody involuntarily drew a
half startled breath—everybody but the tall thin man, who quietly
turned and set his coffee cup down on the mantel piece behind him.

“Is _this_ what you have been keeping up your sleeve!” said Harrowby,
settling his _pince nez_.

“I told you!” said the Starling.

“You couldn’t tell us,” Vesey’s veiled voice dropped in softly. “It
must be seen to be believed. But still—” aside to Feather, “I don’t
believe it.”

“Enter, my only child!” said Feather. “Come here, Robin. Come to your
mother.”

Now was the time! Robin went to her and took hold of a very small piece
of her sparkling dress.

“_Are_ you my Mother?” she said. And then everybody burst into a peal
of laughter, Feather with the rest.

“She calls me the Lady Downstairs,” she said. “I really believe she
doesn’t know. She’s rather a stupid little thing.”

“Amazing lack of filial affection,” said Lord Coombe.

He was not laughing like the rest and he was looking down at Robin. She
thought him ugly and wicked looking. Vesey and Harrowby were beautiful
by contrast. Before she knew who he was, she disliked him. She looked
at him askance under her eyelashes, and he saw her do it before her
mother spoke his name, taking her by the tips of her fingers and
leading her to him.

“Come and let Lord Coombe look at you,” she said. So it revealed itself
to her that it was he—this ugly one—who had done it, and hatred surged
up in her soul. It was actually in the eyes she raised to his face, and
Coombe saw it as he had seen the sidelong glance and he wondered what
it meant.

“Shake hands with Lord Coombe,” Feather instructed.

“If you can make a curtsey, make one.” She turned her head over her
shoulders, “Have you taught her to curtsey, Andrews?”

But Andrews had not and secretly lost temper at finding herself made to
figure as a nurse who had been capable of omission. Outwardly she
preserved rigid calm.

“I’m afraid not, ma’am. I will at once, if you wish it.”

Coombe was watching the inner abhorrence in the little face. Robin had
put her hand behind her back—she who had never disobeyed since she was
born! She had crossed a line of development when she had seen glimpses
of the new world through Donal’s eyes.

“What are you doing, you silly little thing,” Feather reproved her.
“Shake hands with Lord Coombe.”

Robin shook her head fiercely.

“No! No! No! No!” she protested.

Feather was disgusted. This was not the kind of child to display.

“Rude little thing! Andrews, come and make her do it—or take her
upstairs,” she said.

Coombe took his gold coffee cup from the mantel.

“She regards me with marked antipathy, as she did when she first saw
me,” he summed the matter up. “Children and animals don’t hate one
without reason. It is some remote iniquity in my character which the
rest of us have not yet detected.” To Robin he said, “I do not want to
shake hands with you if you object. I prefer to drink my coffee out of
this beautiful cup.”

But Andrews was seething. Having no conscience whatever, she had
instead the pride of a female devil in her perfection in her
professional duties. That the child she was responsible for should
stamp her with ignominious fourth-ratedness by conducting herself with
as small grace as an infant costermonger was more than her special
order of flesh and blood could bear—and yet she must outwardly control
the flesh and blood.

In obedience to her mistress’ command, she crossed the room and bent
down and whispered to Robin. She intended that her countenance should
remain non-committal, but, when she lifted her head, she met Coombe’s
eyes and realized that perhaps it had not. She added to her whisper
nursery instructions in a voice of sugar.

“Be pretty mannered, Miss Robin, my dear, and shake hands with his
lordship.”

Each person in the little drawing-room saw the queer flame in the
child-face—Coombe himself was fantastically struck by the sudden
thought that its expression might have been that of an obstinate young
martyr staring at the stake. Robin shrilled out her words:

“Andrews will pinch me—Andrews will pinch me! But—No!—No!” and she kept
her hand behind her back.

“Oh, Miss Robin, you naughty child!” cried Andrews, with pathos. “Your
poor Andrews that takes such care of you!”

“Horrid little thing!” Feather pettishly exclaimed. “Take her upstairs,
Andrews. She shall not come down again.”

Harrowby, settling his _pince nez_ a little excitedly in the spurred
novelty of his interest, murmured,

“If she doesn’t want to go, she will begin to shriek. This looks as if
she were a little termagant.”

But she did not shriek when Andrews led her towards the door. The ugly
one with the wicked face was the one who had done it. He filled her
with horror. To have touched him would have been like touching some
wild beast of prey. That was all. She went with Andrews quite quietly.

“Will you shake hands with me?” said the Starling, goodnaturedly, as
she passed, “I hope she won’t snub me,” she dropped aside to Harrowby.

Robin put out her hand prettily.

“Shake mine,” suggested Harrowby, and she obeyed him.

“And mine?” smiled Vesey, with his best allure. She gave him her hand,
and, as a result of the allure probably, a tiny smile flickered about
the corners of her mouth. He did not look wicked.

“I remain an outcast,” remarked Coombe, as the door closed behind the
little figure.

“I detest an ill-mannered child,” said Feather. “She ought to be
slapped. We used to be slapped if we were rude.”

“She said Andrews would pinch her. Is pinching the customary
discipline?”

“It ought to be. She deserves it.” Feather was quite out of temper.
“But Andrews is too good to her. She is a perfect creature and conducts
herself like a clock. There has never been the slightest trouble in the
Nursery. You see how the child looks—though her face _isn’t_ quite as
round as it was.” She laughed disagreeably and shrugged her white
undressed shoulders. “I think it’s a little horrid, myself—a child of
that age fretting herself thin about a boy.”




CHAPTER XII


But though she had made no protest on being taken out of the
drawing-room, Robin had known that what Andrews’ soft-sounding whisper
had promised would take place when she reached the Nursery. She was too
young to feel more than terror which had no defense whatever. She had
no more defense against Andrews than she had had against the man who
had robbed her of Donal. They were both big and powerful, and she was
nothing. But, out of the wonders she had begun to know, there had risen
in her before almost inert little being a certain stirring. For a brief
period she had learned happiness and love and woe, and, this evening,
inchoate rebellion against an enemy. Andrews led by the hand up the
narrow, top-story staircase something she had never led before. She was
quite unaware of this and, as she mounted each step, her temper mounted
also, and it was the temper of an incensed personal vanity abnormally
strong in this particular woman. When they were inside the Nursery and
the door was shut, she led Robin to the middle of the small and gloomy
room and released her hand.

“Now, my lady,” she said. “I’m going to pay you out for disgracing me
before everybody in the drawing-room.” She had taken the child below
stairs for a few minutes before bringing her up for the night. She had
stopped in the kitchen for something she wanted for herself. She laid
her belongings on a chest of drawers and turned about.

“I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t forget,” she said.

What happened next turned the woman quite sick with the shock of
amazement. The child had, in the past, been a soft puppet. She had been
automatic obedience and gentleness. Privately Andrews had somewhat
looked down on her lack of spirit, though it had been her own best
asset. The outbreak downstairs had been an abnormality.

And now she stood before her with hands clenched, her little face wild
with defiant rage.

“I’ll scream! I’ll scream! I’ll _scream!_” she shrieked. Andrews
actually heard herself gulp; but she sprang up and forward.

“You’ll _scream!_” she could scarcely believe her own feelings—not to
mention the evidence of her ears, “_you’ll_ scream!”

The next instant was more astonishing still. Robin threw herself on her
knees and scrambled like a cat. She was under the bed and in the
remotest corner against the wall. She was actually unreachable, and she
lay on her back kicking madly, hammering her heels against the floor
and uttering piercing shrieks. As something had seemed to let itself go
when she writhed under the bushes in the Gardens, so did something let
go now. In her overstrung little mind there ruled for this moment the
feeling that if she was to be pinched, she would be pinched for a
reason.

Andrews knelt by the side of the bed. She had a long, strong, thin arm
and it darted beneath and clutched. But it was not long enough to
attain the corner where the kicking and screaming was going on. Her
temper became fury before her impotence and her hideous realization of
being made ridiculous by this baby of six. Two floors below the
afterglow of the little dinner was going on. Suppose even far echoes of
the screams should be heard and make her more ridiculous still. She
knew how they would laugh and her mistress would make some silly joke
about Robin’s being too much for her. Her fury rose so high that she
had barely sense to realize that she must not let herself go too far
when she got hold of the child. Get hold of her she would and pay her
out—My word! She would pay her out!

“You little devil!” she said between her teeth, “Wait till I get hold
of you.” And Robin shrieked and hammered more insanely still.

The bed was rather a low one and it was difficult for any one larger
than a child to find room beneath it. The correct and naturally rigid
Andrews lay flat upon her stomach and wriggled herself partly under the
edge. Just far enough for her long and strong arm, and equally long and
strong clutching fingers to do their work. In her present state of
mind, Andrews would have broken her back rather than not have reached
the creature who so defied her. The strong fingers clenched a flying
petticoat and dragged at it fiercely—the next moment they clutched a
frantic foot, with a power which could not be broken away from. A jerk
and a remorseless dragging over the carpet and Robin was out of the
protecting darkness and in the gas light again, lying tumbled and in an
untidy, torn little heap on the nursery floor. Andrews was panting, but
she did not loose her hold as she scrambled, without a rag of
professional dignity, to her feet.

“My word!” she breathlessly gave forth. “I’ve got you now! I’ve got you
now.”

She so looked that to Robin she seemed—like the ugly man downstairs—a
sort of wicked wild beast, whose mere touch would have been horror even
if it did not hurt. And the child knew what was coming. She felt
herself dragged up from the floor and also dragged between Andrew’s
knees, which felt bony and hard as iron. There was no getting away from
them. Andrews had seated herself firmly on a chair.

Holding her between the iron knees, she put her large hand over her
mouth. It was a hand large enough to cover more than her mouth. Only
the panic-stricken eyes seemed to flare wide and lustrous above it.

“_You’ll_ scream!” she said, “_you’ll_ hammer on the floor with your
heels! _You’ll_ behave like a wildcat—you that’s been like a kitten!
You’ve never done it before and you’ll never do it again! If it takes
me three days, I’ll make you remember!”

And then her hand dropped—and her jaw dropped, and she sat staring with
a furious, sick, white face at the open door—which she had shut as she
came in. The top floor had always been so safe. The Nursery had been
her own autocratic domain. There had been no human creature to whom it
would have occurred to interfere. That was it. She had been actually
_safe_.

Unheard in the midst of the struggle, the door had been opened without
a knock. There on the threshold, as stiff as a ramrod, and with his
hateful eyes uncovering their gleam, Lord Coombe was standing—no other
than Lord Coombe.

Having a sharp working knowledge of her world, Andrews knew that it was
all up. He had come upstairs deliberately. She knew what he had come
for. He was as clever as he was bad, and he had seen something when he
glanced at her in the drawing-room. Now he had heard and seen her as
she dragged Robin from under the bed. He’d come up for that—for some
queer evil reason of his own. The promptings of a remote gutter
training made her feel a desire to use language such as she still had
wisdom enough to restrain.

“You are a very great fool, young woman,” he said. “You have nothing
but your character as a nurse to live on. A scene in a police court
would ruin you. There is a Society which interferes with nursery
torture.”

Robin, freed from the iron grasp, had slunk behind a chair. He was
there again.

Andrews’ body, automatically responsive to rule and habit, rose from
its seat and stood before this member of a class which required an
upright position. She knew better than to attempt to excuse or explain.
She had heard about the Society and she knew publicity would spell ruin
and starvation. She had got herself into an appalling mess. Being
caught—there you were. But that this evil-reputationed swell should
actually have been awakened by some whim to notice and follow her up
was “past her,” as she would have put it.

“You were going to pinch her—by instalments, I suppose,” he said. “You
inferred that it might last three days. When she said you would—in the
drawing-room—it occurred to me to look into it. What are your wages?”

“Thirty pounds a year, my lord.”

“Go tomorrow morning to Benby, who engaged you for Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.
He will be at his office by nine and will pay you what is owed to
you—and a month’s wages in lieu of notice.”

“The mistress—” began Andrews.

“I have spoken to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.” It was a lie, serenely told.
Feather was doing a new skirt dance in the drawing-room. “She is
engaged. Pack your box. Jennings will call a cab.”

It was the utter idiotic hopelessness of saying anything to him which
finished her. You might as well talk to a front door or a street lamp.
Any silly thing you might try wouldn’t even reach his ears. He had no
ears for you. You didn’t matter enough.

“Shall I leave her here—as she is?” she said, denoting Robin.

“Undress her and put her to bed before you pack your box,” absolutely
certain, fine cold modulations in the voice, which stood for his
special plane of breeding, had their effect on her grovelling though
raging soul. He was so exactly what he was and what she was not and
could never attain. “I will stay here while you do it. Then go.”

No vocabulary of the Servants’ Hall could have encompassed the fine
phrase _grand seigneur_, but, when Mrs. Blayne and the rest talked of
him in their least resentful and more amiable moods, they unconsciously
made efforts to express the quality in him which these two words
convey. He had ways of his own. Men that paid a pretty woman’s bills
and kept her going in luxury, Jennings and Mrs. Blayne and the others
knew something about. They sometimes began well enough but, as time
went on, they forgot themselves and got into the way of being familiar
and showing they realized that they paid for things and had their
rights. Most of them began to be almost like husbands—speak slighting
and sharp and be a bit stiff about accounts—even before servants. They
ran in and out or—after a while—began to stay away and not show up for
weeks. “He” was different—so different that it was queer. Queer it
certainly was that he really came to the place very seldom. Wherever
they met, it didn’t noticeably often happen in the slice of a house. He
came as if he were a visitor. He took no liberties. Everything was
punctiliously referred to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. Mr. Benby, who did
everything, conducted himself outwardly as if he were a sort of man of
business in Mrs. Gareth-Lawlesss’ employ. It was open to the lenient to
believe that she depended on some mysterious private income. There were
people who preferred to try to believe this, but there were those who,
in some occult way, knew exactly where her income came from. There
were, in fact, hypercritical persons who did not know or notice her,
but she had quite an entertaining, smart circle which neither
suspicions nor beliefs prevented from placing her in their visiting
lists. Coombe _did_ keep it up in the most perfect manner, some of them
said admiringly among themselves. He showed extraordinarily perfect
taste. Many fashionable open secrets, accepted by a brilliant world,
were not half so fastidiously managed. Andrews knew he had unswervingly
lied when he said he had “spoken to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.” But he never
failed to place her in the position of authority. That he should have
presented himself on the nursery floor was amazingly abnormal enough to
mean some state of mind unregulated by all natural rules. “Him,”
Andrews thought, “that never steps out of a visitor’s place in the
drawing-room turning up on the third floor without a word!” One thing
she knew, and that came first. Behind all the polite show he was the
head of everything. And he was one that you’d better not give back a
sound to if you knew what was good for yourself. Whatever people said
against his character, he was one of the grand and high ones. A word
from him—ever so quiet—and you’d be done for.

She was shaking with fear inwardly, but she undressed Robin and put her
in bed, laying everything away and making things tidy for the night.

“This is the Night Nursery, I suppose,” Coombe had said when she began.
He put up his glasses and looked the uninviting little room over. He
scrutinized it and she wondered what his opinion of it might be.

“Yes, my lord. The Day Nursery is through that door.” He walked through
the door in question and she could see that he moved slowly about it,
examining the few pieces of furniture curiously, still with his glass
in his eye. She had finished undressing Robin and had put her in her
bed before he came back into the sleeping apartment. By that time,
exhausted by the unknown tempest she had passed through, the child had
dropped asleep in spite of herself. She was too tired to remember that
her enemy was in the next room.

“I have seen the child with you several times when you have not been
aware of it,” Coombe said to her before he went downstairs. “She has
evidently been well taken care of as far as her body is concerned. If
you were not venomous—if you had merely struck her, when you lost your
temper, you might have had another trial. I know nothing about
children, but I know something about the devil, and if ever the devil
was in a woman’s face and voice the devil was in yours when you dragged
the little creature from under the bed. If you had dared, you would
have killed her. Look after that temper, young woman. Benby shall keep
an eye on you if you take another place as nurse, and I shall know
where you are.”

“My lord!” Andrews gasped. “You wouldn’t overlook a woman and take her
living from her and send her to starvation!”

“I would take her living from her and send her to starvation without a
shadow of compunction,” was the reply made in the fine gentleman’s
cultivated voice, “—if she were capable of what you were capable of
tonight. You are, I judge, about forty, and, though you are lean, you
are a powerful woman; the child is, I believe, barely six.” And then,
looking down at her through his glass, he added—to her quite shuddering
astonishment—in a tone whose very softness made it really awful to her,
“Damn you! Damn you!”

“I’ll—I swear I’ll never let myself go again, my lord!” the woman broke
out devoutly.

“I don’t think you will. It would cost you too much,” he said.

Then he went down the steep, crooked little staircase quite soundlessly
and Andrews, rather white and breathless, went and packed her trunk.
Robin—tired baby as she was—slept warm and deeply.




CHAPTER XIII


It was no custom of his to outstay other people; in fact, he usually
went away comparatively early. Feather could not imagine what his
reason could be, but she was sure there was a reason. She was often
disturbed by his reasons, and found it difficult to adjust herself to
them. How—even if one had a logically brilliant mind—could one
calculate on a male being, who seemed not exactly to belong to the race
of men.

As a result of the skirt dancing, the furniture of the empty
drawing-room was a little scattered and untidy, but Feather had found a
suitable corner among cushions on a sofa, after everyone had gone
leaving Coombe alone with her. She wished he would sit down, but he
preferred to stand in his still, uncomfortable way.

“I know you are going to tell me something,” she broke the silence.

“I am. When I went out of the room, I did not drive round to my club as
I said I found myself obliged to. I went upstairs to the third floor—to
the Nursery.”

Feather sat quite upright.

“_You_ went up to the Nursery!” If this was the reason for his staying,
what on earth had he come upon in the region of the third floor, and
how ridiculously unlike him to allow himself to interfere. Could it be
Andrews and Jennings? Surely Andrews was too old.—This passed across
her mind in a flash.

“You called Andrews to use her authority with the child when she would
not shake hands with me. The little creature, for some reason of her
own, evidently feels an antipathy to me. That interested me and I
watched her as Andrews whispered in her ear. The woman’s vanity was
stung. I realized that she whispered a threat. A hint of actual
ferocity showed in her eyes in spite of herself. Robin turned pale.”

“Andrews was quite right. Children must be punished when they are
rude.” Feather felt this at once silly and boring. What did he know
about such matters?

“The child said, ‘Andrews will pinch me!’ and I caught Andrews’ eye and
knew it was true—also that she had done it before. I looked at the
woman’s long, thin, strong fingers. They were cruel fingers. I do not
take liberties, as a rule, but I took a liberty. I excused myself and
climbed three flights of stairs.”

Never had Feather been so surprised in her life. She looked like a
bewildered child.

“But—what _could_ it matter to _you?_” she said in soft amaze.

“I don’t know,” his answer came after a moment’s pause. “I have
caprices of mood. Certain mental images made my temperature rise.
Momentarily it did matter. One is like that at times. Andrews’ feline
face and her muscular fingers—and the child’s extraordinarily exquisite
flesh—gave me a second’s furious shudder.”

Feather quite broke in upon him.

“Are you—are you _fond_ of children?”

“No,” he was really abrupt. “I never thought of such a thing in my
life—as being _fond_ of things.”

“That was what—I mean I thought so.” Feather faltered, as if in polite
acquiescence with a quite natural fact.

Coombe proceeded:

“As I went up the stairs I heard screams and I thought that the
pinching had begun. I got up quickly and opened the door and found the
woman lying flat on the floor by the bed, dragging out the child who
had hidden under it. The woman’s face was devilish, and so was her
voice. I heard her threats. She got on her feet and dragged the child
up and held her between her knees. She clapped her hand over mouth to
stifle her shrieks. There I stopped her. She had a fright at sight of
me which taught her something.” He ended rather slowly. “I took the
great liberty of ordering her to pack her box and leave the
house—course,” with a slight bow, “using you as my authority.”

“Andrews!” cried Feather, aghast. “Has she—gone?”

“Would you have kept her?” he inquired.

“It’s true that—that _pinching_” Feather’s voice almost held tears,
“—really _hard_ pinching is—is not proper. But Andrews has been
invaluable. Everyone says Robin is better dressed and better kept than
other children. And she is never allowed to make the least noise—”

“One wouldn’t if one were pinched by those devilish, sinewy fingers
every time one raised one’s voice. Yes. She has gone. I ordered her to
put her charge to bed before she packed. I did not leave her alone with
Robin. In fact, I walked about the two nurseries and looked them over.”

He had walked about the Night Nursery and the Day Nursery! He—the Head
of the House of Coombe, whose finely acrid summing up of things, they
were all secretly afraid of, if the truth were known. “They” stood for
her smart, feverishly pleasure-chasing set. In their way, they half
unconsciously tried to propitiate something in him, always without
producing the least effect. Her mental vision presented to her his
image as he had walked about the horrid little rooms, his somewhat
stiffly held head not much below the low ceilings. He had taken in
shabby carpets, furniture, faded walls, general dim dinginess.

“It’s an unholy den for anything to spend its days in—that third
floor,” he made the statement detachedly, in a way. “If she’s six, she
has lived six years there—and known nothing else.”

“All London top floors are like it,” said Feather, “and they are all
nurseries and school rooms—where there are children.”

His faintly smiling glance took in her girl-child slimness in its
glittering sheath—the zephyr scarf floating from the snow of her bared
loveliness—her delicate soft chin deliciously lifted as she looked up
at him.

“How would _you_ like it?” he asked.

“But I am not a child,” in pretty protest. “Children are—are
different!”

“You look like a child,” he suddenly said, queerly—as if the aspect of
her caught him for an instant and made him absent-minded. “Sometimes—a
woman does. Not often.”

She bloomed into a kind of delighted radiance.

“You don’t often pay me compliments,” she said. “That is a beautiful
one. Robin—makes it more beautiful.”

“It isn’t a compliment,” he answered, still watching her in the
slightly absent manner. “It is—a tragic truth.”

He passed his hand lightly across his eyes as if he swept something
away, and then both looked and spoke exactly as before.

“I have decided to buy the long lease of this house. It is for sale,”
he said, casually. “I shall buy it for the child.”

“For Robin!” said Feather, helplessly.

“Yes, for Robin.”

“It—it would be an income—whatever happened. It is in the very heart of
Mayfair,” she said, because, in her astonishment—almost
consternation—she could think of nothing else. He would not buy it for
her. He thought her too silly to trust. But, if it were Robin’s—it
would be hers also. A girl couldn’t turn her own mother into the
street. Amid the folds of her narrow being hid just one spark of
shrewdness which came to life where she herself was concerned.

“Two or three rooms—not large ones—can be added at the back,” he went
on. “I glanced out of a window to see if it could be done.”

Incomprehensible as he was, one might always be sure of a certain
princeliness in his inexplicable methods. He never was personal or
mean. An addition to the slice of a house! That really _was_ generous!
Entrancement filled her.

“That really is kind of you,” she murmured, gratefully. “It seems too
much to ask!”

“You did not ask it,” was his answer.

“But I shall benefit by it. Nothing _could be_ nicer. These rooms are
so much too small,” glancing about her in flushed rapture, “And my
bedroom is dreadful. I’m obliged to use Rob’s for a dressing-room.”

“The new rooms will be for Robin,” he said. An excellent method he had
discovered, of entirely detaching himself from the excitements and
emotions of other persons, removed the usual difficulties in the way of
disappointing—speaking truths to—or embarrassing people who deserved
it. It was this method which had utterly cast down the defences of
Andrews. Feather was so wholly left out of the situation that she was
actually almost saved from its awkwardness. “When one is six,” he
explained, “one will soon be seven—nine—twelve. Then the teens begin to
loom up and one cannot be concealed in cupboards on a top floor. Even
before that time a governess is necessary, and, even from the abyss of
my ignorance, I see that no respectable woman would stand either the
Night or the Day Nursery. Your daughter—”

“Oh, don’t call her _that!_” cried Feather. “My daughter! It sounds as
if she were eighteen!” She felt as if she had a sudden hideous little
shock. Six years _had_ passed since Bob died! A daughter! A school girl
with long hair and long legs to keep out of the way. A grown-up girl to
drag about with one. Never would she do it!

“Three sixes are eighteen,” Coombe continued, “as was impressed upon
one in early years by the multiplication table.”

“I never saw you so interested in anything before,” Feather faltered.
“Climbing steep, narrow, horrid stairs to her nursery! Dismissing her
nurse!” She paused a second, because a very ugly little idea had
clutched at her. It arose from and was complicated with many fantastic,
half formed, secret resentments of the past. It made her laugh a shade
hysterical.

“Are you going to see that she is properly brought up and educated, so
that if—anyone important falls in love with her she can make a good
match?”

Hers was quite a hideous little mind, he was telling himself—fearful in
its latter day casting aside of all such small matters as taste and
feeling. People stripped the garments from things in these days. He
laughed inwardly at himself and his unwitting “these days.” Senile
severity mouthed just such phrases. Were they not his own days and the
outcome of a past which had considered itself so much more decorous?
Had not boldly questionable attitudes been held in those other days?
How long was it since the Prince Regent himself had flourished? It was
only that these days brought it all close against one’s eyes. But this
exquisite creature had a hideous little mind of her own whatsoever her
day.

Later, he confessed to himself that he was unprepared to see her spring
to her feet and stand before him absurdly, fantastically near being
impassioned.

“You think I am too silly to _see_ anything,” she broke forth. “But I
do see—a long way sometimes. I can’t bear it but I do—I do! I shall
have a grown-up daughter. She will be the kind of girl everyone will
look at—and someone—important—may want to marry her. But, Oh!—” He was
reminded of the day when she had fallen at his feet, and clasped his
rigid and reluctant knees. This was something of the same feeble
desperation of mood. “Oh, _why_ couldn’t someone like that have wanted
to marry _me!_ See!” she was like a pathetic fairy as she spread her
nymphlike arms, “how _pretty_ I am!”

His gaze held her a moment in the singular fashion with which she had
become actually familiar, because—at long intervals—she kept seeing it
again. He quite gently took her fingers and returned her to her sofa.

“Please sit down again,” he requested. “It will be better.”

She sat down without another imbecile word to say. As for him, he
changed the subject.

“With your permission, Benby will undertake the business of the lease
and the building,” he explained. “The plans will be brought to you. We
will go over them together, if you wish. There will be decent rooms for
Robin and her governess. The two nurseries can be made fit for human
beings to live in and used for other purposes. The house will be
greatly improved.”

It was nearly three o’clock when Feather went upstairs to her dozing
maid, because, after he had left her, she sat some time in the empty,
untidy little drawing-room and gazed straight before her at a painted
screen on which shepherdesses and swains were dancing in a Watteau
glade infested by flocks of little Loves.




CHAPTER XIV


When, from Robin’s embarrassed young consciousness, there had welled up
the hesitating confession, “She—doesn’t like me,” she could not, of
course, have found words in which to make the reasons for her knowledge
clear, but they had for herself no obscurity. The fair being who, at
rare intervals, fluttered on the threshold of her world had a way of
looking at her with a shade of aloof distaste in her always transient
gaze.

The unadorned fact was that Feather did _not_ like her. She had been
outraged by her advent. A baby was absurdly “out of the picture.” So
far as her mind encompassed a future, she saw herself flitting from
flower to flower of “smart” pleasures and successes, somehow, with more
money and more exalted invitations—“something” vaguely—having happened
to the entire Lawdor progeny, and she, therefore, occupying a position
in which it was herself who could gracefully condescend to others.
There was nothing so “stodgy” as children in the vision. When the worst
came to the worst, she had been consoled by the thought that she had
really managed the whole thing very cleverly. It was easier, of course,
to so arrange such things in modern days and in town. The Day Nursery
and the Night Nursery on the third floor, a smart-looking young woman
who knew her business, who even knew what to buy for a child and where
to buy it, without troubling any one simplified the situation. Andrews
had been quite wonderful. Nobody can bother one about a healthy,
handsome child who is seen meticulously cared for and beautifully
dressed, being pushed or led or carried out in the open air every day.

But there had arrived the special morning when she had seen a child who
so stood out among a dozen children that she had been startled when she
recognized that it was Robin. Andrews had taken her charge to Hyde Park
that day and Feather was driving through the Row on her way to a
Knightsbridge shop. First her glance had been caught by the hair
hanging to the little hips—extraordinary hair in which Andrews herself
had a pride. Then she had seen the slender, exquisitely modeled legs,
and the dancing sway of the small body. A wonderfully cut, stitched,
and fagotted smock and hat she had, of course, taken in at a flash.
When the child suddenly turned to look at some little girls in a pony
cart, the amazing damask of her colour, and form and depth of eye had
given her another slight shock. She realized that what she had thrust
lightly away in a corner of her third floor produced an unmistakable
effect when turned out into the light of a gay world. The creature was
tall too—for six years old. Was she really six? It seemed incredible.
Ten more years and she would be sixteen.

Mrs. Heppel-Bevill had a girl of fifteen, who was a perfect
catastrophe. She read things and had begun to talk about her “right to
be a woman.” Emily Heppel-Bevill was only thirty-seven—three years from
forty. Feather had reached the stage of softening in her disdain of the
women in their thirties. She had found herself admitting that—in these
days—there were women of forty who had not wholly passed beyond the
pale into that outer darkness where there was weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth. But there was no denying that this six year old
baby, with the dancing step, gave one—almost hysterically—“to think.”
Her imagination could not—never had and never would she have allowed it
to—grasp any belief that she herself could change. A Feather, No! But a
creature of sixteen, eighteen—with eyes that shape—with lashes an inch
long—with yards of hair—standing by one’s side in ten years! It was
ghastly!

Coombe, in his cold perfunctory way, climbing the crooked, narrow
stairs, dismissing Andrews—looking over the rooms—dismissing them, so
to speak, and then remaining after the rest had gone to reveal to her a
new abnormal mood—that, in itself alone, was actually horrible. It was
abnormal and yet he had always been more or less like that in all
things. Despite everything—everything—he had never been in love with
her at all. At first she had believed he was—then she had tried to make
him care for her. He had never failed her, he had done everything in
his _grand seigneur_ fashion. Nobody dare make gross comment upon her,
but, while he saw her loveliness as only such a man could—she had
gradually realized that she had never had even a chance with him. She
could not even think that if she had not been so silly and frightened
that awful day six years ago, and had not lost her head, he might have
admired her more and more and in the end asked her to marry him. He had
said there must be no mistakes, and she had not been allowed to fall
into making one. The fact that she had not, had, finally, made her feel
the power of a certain fascination in him. She thought it was a result
of his special type of looks, his breeding, the wonderful clothes he
wore—but it was, in truth, his varieties of inaccessibility.

“A girl might like him,” she had said to herself that night—she sat up
late after he left her. “A girl who—who had up-to-date sense might.
Modern people don’t grow old as they used to. At fifty-five he won’t be
fat, or bald and he won’t have lost his teeth. People have found out
they needn’t. He will be as thin and straight as he is today—and
nothing can alter his nose. He will be ten years cleverer than he is
now. Buying the house for a child of that age—building additional rooms
for her!”

In the fevered, rapid, deep-dipping whirl of the life which was the
only one she knew, she had often seen rather trying things
happen—almost unnatural changes in situations. People had overcome the
folly of being afraid to alter their minds and their views about what
they had temporarily believed were permanent bonds and emotions. Bonds
had become old fogeyish. Marriages went to pieces, the parties in love
affairs engaged in a sort of “dance down the middle” and turn other
people’s partners. The rearrangement of figures sometimes made for
great witticism. Occasionally people laughed at themselves as at each
other. The admirers of engaging matrons had been known to renew their
youth at the coming-out balls of lovely daughters in their early teens,
and to end by assuming the flowery chains of a new allegiance. Time
had, of course, been when such a _volte face_ would have aroused
condemnation and indignant discussion, but a humorous leniency spent
but little time in selecting terms of severity. Feather had known of
several such _contretemps_ ending in quite brilliant matches. The
enchanting mothers usually consoled themselves with great ease, and, if
the party of each part was occasionally wittily pungent in her comments
on the other, everybody laughed and nobody had time to criticize. A man
who had had much to bestow and who preferred in youth to bestow it upon
himself was not infrequently more in the mood for the sharing of
marriage when years had revealed to him the distressing fact that he
was not, and had never been, the centre of the universe, which
distressing fact is one so unfairly concealed from youth in bloom.

It was, of course, but as a vaguely outlined vision that these
recognitions floated through what could only be alleged to be Feather’s
mind because there was no other name for it. The dark little staircase,
the rejected and despised third floor, and Coombe detachedly announcing
his plans for the house, had set the—so to speak—rather malarious mist
flowing around her. A trying thing was that it did not really dispel
itself altogether, but continued to hang about the atmosphere
surrounding other and more cheerful things. Almost impalpably it added
to the familiar feeling—or lack of feeling—with regard to Robin. She
had not at all hated the little thing; it had merely been quite true
that, in an inactive way, she had not _liked_ her. In the folds of the
vague mist quietly floated the truth that she now liked her less.

Benby came to see and talk to her on the business of the structural
changes to be made. He conducted himself precisely as though her views
on the matter were of value and could not, in fact, be dispensed with.
He brought the architect’s plans with him and explained them with care.
They were clever plans which made the most of a limited area. He did
not even faintly smile when it revealed itself to him, as it
unconsciously did, that Mrs. Gareth-Lawless regarded their adroit
arrangement as a singular misuse of space which could have been much
better employed for necessities of her own. She was much depressed by
the ground floor addition which might have enlarged her dining-room,
but which was made into a sitting-room for Robin and her future
governess.

“And that is in _addition_ to her schoolroom which might have been
thrown into the drawing-room—besides the new bedrooms which I needed so
much,” she said.

“The new nurse, who is a highly respectable person,” explained Benby,
“could not have been secured if she had not known that improvements
were being made. The reconstruction of the third floor will provide
suitable accommodations.”

The special forte of Dowson, the new nurse, was a sublimated
respectability far superior to smartness. She had been mystically
produced by Benby and her bonnets and jackets alone would have revealed
her selection from almost occult treasures. She wore bonnets and
“jackets,” not hats and coats.

“In the calm days of Her Majesty, nurses dressed as she does. I do not
mean in the riotous later years of her reign—but earlier—when England
dreamed in terms of Crystal Palaces and Great Exhibitions. She can only
be the result of excavation,” Coombe said of her.

She was as proud of her respectability as Andrews had been of her
smartness. This had, in fact, proved an almost insuperable obstacle to
her engagement. The slice of a house, with its flocking in and out of
chattering, smart people in marvellous clothes was not the place for
her, nor was Mrs. Gareth-Lawless the mistress of her dreams. But her
husband had met with an accident and must be kept in a hospital, and an
invalid daughter must live by the seaside—and suddenly, when things
were at their worst with her, had come Benby with a firm determination
to secure her with wages such as no other place would offer. Besides
which she had observed as she had lived.

“Things have changed,” she reflected soberly. “You’ve got to resign
yourself and not be too particular.”

She accepted the third floor, as Benby had said, because it was to be
rearranged and the Night and Day Nurseries, being thrown into one,
repainted and papered would make a decent place to live in. At the
beautiful little girl given into her charge she often looked in a
puzzled way, because she knew a good deal about children, and about
this one there was something odd. Her examination of opened drawers and
closets revealed piles of exquisite garments of all varieties, all
perfectly kept. In these dingy holes, which called themselves
nurseries, she found evidence that money had been spent like water so
that the child, when she was seen, might look like a small princess.
But she found no plaything—no dolls or toys, and only one picture book,
and that had “Donal” written on the fly leaf and evidently belonged to
someone else.

What exactly she would have done when she had had time to think the
matter over, she never knew, because, a few days after her arrival, a
tall, thin gentleman, coming up the front steps as she was going out
with Robin, stopped and spoke to her as if he knew who she was.

“You know the kind of things children like to play with, nurse?” he
said.

She respectfully replied that she had had long experience with young
desires. She did not know as yet who he was, but there was that about
him which made her feel that, while there was no knowing what height
his particular exaltation in the matter of rank might reach, one would
be safe in setting it high.

“Please go to one of the toy shops and choose for the child what she
will like best. Dolls—games—you will know what to select. Send the bill
to me at Coombe House. I am Lord Coombe.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Dowson answered, with a sketch of a curtsey,
“Miss Robin, you must hold out your little hand and say ‘thank you’ to
his lordship for being so kind. He’s told Dowson to buy you some
beautiful dolls and picture books as a present.”

Robin’s eyelashes curled against her under brows in her wide, still
glance upward at him. Here was “the one” again! She shut her hand
tightly into a fist behind her back.

Lord Coombe smiled a little—not much.

“She does not like me,” he said. “It is not necessary that she should
give me her hand. I prefer that she shouldn’t, if she doesn’t want to.
Good morning, Dowson.”

To the well-regulated mind of Dowson, this seemed treating too lightly
a matter as serious as juvenile incivility. She remonstrated gravely
and at length with Robin.

“Little girls must behave prettily to kind gentlemen who are friends of
their mammas. It is dreadful to be rude and not say ‘thank you’,” she
said.

But as she talked she was vaguely aware that her words passed by the
child’s ears as the summer wind passed. Perhaps it was all a bit of
temper and would disappear and leave no trace behind. At the same time,
there _was_ something queer about the little thing. She had a listless
way of sitting staring out of the window and seeming to have no desire
to amuse herself. She was too young to be listless and she did not care
for her food. Dowson asked permission to send for the doctor and, when
he came, he ordered sea air.

“Of course, you can take her away for a few weeks,” Mrs. Gareth-Lawless
said. Here she smiled satirically and added, “But I can tell you what
it is all about. The little minx actually fell in love with a small boy
she met in the Square Gardens and, when his mother took him from
London, she began to mope like a tiresome girl in her teens. It’s
ridiculous, but is the real trouble.”

“Oh!” said Dowson, the low and respectful interjection expressing a
shade of disapproval, “Children do have fancies, ma’am. She’ll get over
it if we give her something else to think of.”

The good woman went to one of the large toy shops and bought a
beautiful doll, a doll’s house, and some picture books. When they were
brought up to the Day Nursery, Robin was asleep after a rather long
walk, which Dowson had decided would be good for her. When she came
later into the room, after the things had been unpacked, she regarded
them with an expression of actual dislike.

“Isn’t that a beautiful doll?” said Dowson, good-humouredly. “And did
you ever see such a lovely house? It was kind Lord Coombe who gave them
to you. Just you look at the picture books.”

Robin put her hands behind her back and would not touch them. Dowson,
who was a motherly creature with a great deal of commonsense, was set
thinking. She began to make guesses, though she was not yet
sufficiently familiar with the household to guess from any firm
foundation of knowledge of small things.

“Come here, dear,” she said, and drew the small thing to her knee. “Is
it because you don’t love Lord Coombe?” she asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“But why?” said Dowson. “When he is such a kind gentleman?”

But Robin would not tell her why and never did. She never told any one,
until years had passed, how this had been the beginning of a hatred.
The toys were left behind when she was taken to the seaside. Dowson
tried to persuade her to play with them several times, but she would
not touch them, so they were put away. Feeling that she was dealing
with something unusual, and, being a kindly person, Dowson bought her
some playthings on her own account. They were simple things, but Robin
was ready enough to like them.

“Did _you_ give them to me?” she asked.

“Yes, I did, Miss Robin.”

The child drew near her after a full minute of hesitation.

“I will _kiss_ you!” she said solemnly, and performed the rite as
whole-souledly as Donal had done.

“Dear little mite!” exclaimed the surprised Dowson. “Dear me!” And
there was actual moisture in her eyes as she squeezed the small body in
her arms.

“She’s the strangest mite I ever nursed,” was her comment to Mrs.
Blayne below stairs. “It was so sudden, and she did it as if she’d
never done it before. I’d actually been thinking she hadn’t any feeling
at all.”

“No reason why she should have. She’s been taken care of by the clock
and dressed like a puppet, but she’s not been treated human!” broke
forth Mrs. Blayne.

Then the whole story was told—the “upstairs” story with much vivid
description, and the mentioning of many names and the dotting of many
“i’s”. Dowson had heard certain things only through vague rumour, but
now she knew and began to see her way. She had not heard names before,
and the definite inclusion of Lord Coombe’s suggested something to her.

“Do you think the child could be _jealous_ of his lordship?” she
suggested.

“She might if she knew anything about him—but she never saw him until
the night she was taken down into the drawing-room. She’s lived
upstairs like a little dog in its kennel.”

“Well,” Dowson reflected aloud, “it sounds almost silly to talk of a
child’s hating any one, but that bit of a thing’s eyes had fair hate in
them when she looked up at him where he stood. That was what puzzled
me.”




CHAPTER XV


Before Robin had been taken to the seaside to be helped by the bracing
air of the Norfolk coast to recover her lost appetite and forget her
small tragedy, she had observed that unaccustomed things were taking
place in the house. Workmen came in and out through the mews at the
back and brought ladders with them and tools in queer bags. She heard
hammerings which began very early in the morning and went on all day.
As Andrews had trained her not to ask tiresome questions, she only
crept now and then to a back window and peeped out. But in a few days
Dowson took her away.

When she came back to London, she was not taken up the steep dark
stairs to the third floor. Dowson led her into some rooms she had never
seen before. They were light and airy and had pretty walls and
furniture. A sitting-room on the ground floor had even a round window
with plants in it and a canary bird singing in a cage.

“May we stay here?” she asked Dowson in a whisper.

“We are going to live here,” was the answer.

And so they did.

At first Feather occasionally took her intimates to see the additional
apartments.

“In perfect splendour is the creature put up, and I with a bedroom like
a coalhole and such drawing-rooms as you see each time you enter the
house!” she broke forth spitefully one day when she forgot herself.

She said it to the Starling and Harrowby, who had been simply gazing
about them in fevered mystification, because the new development was a
thing which must invoke some more or less interesting explanation. At
her outbreak, all they could do was to gaze at her with impartial eyes,
which suggested question, and Feather shrugged pettish shoulders.

“You knew _I_ didn’t do it. How could I?” she said. “It is a queer whim
of Coombe’s. Of course, it is not the least like him. I call it
morbid.”

After which people knew about the matter and found it a subject for
edifying and quite stimulating discussion. There was something
fantastic in the situation. Coombe was the last man on earth to have
taken the slightest notice of the child’s existence! It was believed
that he had never seen her—except in long clothes—until she had glared
at him and put her hand behind her back the night she was brought into
the drawing-room. She had been adroitly kept tucked away in an attic
somewhere. And now behold an addition of several wonderful, small rooms
built, furnished and decorated for her alone, where she was to live as
in a miniature palace attended by servitors! Coombe, as a purveyor of
nursery appurtenances, was regarded with humour, the general opinion
being that the eruption of a volcano beneath his feet alone could have
awakened his somewhat chill self-absorption to the recognition of any
child’s existence.

“To be exact we none of us really know anything in particular about his
mental processes.” Harrowby pondered aloud. “He’s capable of any number
of things we might not understand, if he condescended to tell us about
them—which he would never attempt. He has a remote, brilliantly stored,
cynical mind. He owns that he is of an inhuman selfishness. I haven’t a
suggestion to make, but it sets one searching through the purlieus of
one’s mind for an approximately reasonable explanation.”

“Why ‘purlieus’?” was the Starling’s inquiry. Harrowby shrugged his
shoulders ever so lightly.

“Well, one isn’t searching for reasons founded on copy-book axioms,” he
shook his head. “Coombe? No.”

There was a silence given to occult thought.

“Feather is really in a rage and is too Feathery to be able to conceal
it,” said Starling.

“Feather would be—inevitably,” Harrowby lifted his near-sighted eyes to
her curiously. “Can you see Feather in the future—when Robin is ten
years older?”

“I can,” the Starling answered.

The years which followed were changing years—growing years. Life and
entertainment went on fast and furiously in all parts of London, and in
no part more rapidly than in the slice of a house whose front always
presented an air of having been freshly decorated, in spite of summer
rain and winter soot and fog. The plants in the window boxes seemed
always in bloom, being magically replaced in the early morning hours
when they dared to hint at flagging. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was said,
must be renewed in some such mysterious morning way, as she merely grew
prettier as she neared thirty and passed it. Women did in these days!
Which last phrase had always been a useful one, probably from the time
of the Flood. Old fogeys, male and female, had used it in the past as a
means of scathingly unfavourable comparison, growing flushed and almost
gobbling like turkey cocks in their indignation. Now, as a phrase, it
was a support and a mollifier. “In these days” one knew better how to
amuse oneself, was more free to snatch at agreeable opportunity, less
in bondage to old fancies which had called themselves beliefs;
everything whirled faster and more lightly—danced, two-stepped, instead
of marching.

Robin vaguely connected certain changes in her existence with the
changes which took place in the fashion of sleeves and skirts which
appeared to produce radical effects in the world she caught glimpses
of. Sometimes sleeves were closely fitted to people’s arms, then puffs
sprang from them and grew until they were enormous and required
delicate manipulation when coats were put on; then their lavishness of
material fell from the shoulder to the wrists and hung there swaying
until some sudden development of skirt seemed to distract their
attention from themselves and they shrank into unimportance and skirts
changed instead. Afterwards, sometimes figures were slim and encased in
sheathlike draperies, sometimes folds rippled about feet, “fullness”
crept here or there or disappeared altogether, trains grew longer or
shorter or wider or narrower, cashmeres, grosgrain silks and heavy
satins were suddenly gone and chiffon wreathed itself about the world
and took possession of it. Bonnets ceased to exist and hats were
immense or tiny, tall or flat, tilted at the back, at the side, at the
front, worn over the face or dashingly rolled back from it; feathers
drooped or stood upright at heights which rose and fell and changed
position with the changing seasons. No garment or individual wore the
same aspect for more than a month’s time. It was necessary to change
all things with a rapidity matching the change of moods and fancies
which altered at the rate of the automobiles which dashed here and
there and everywhere, through country roads, through town, through
remote places with an unsparing swiftness which set a new pace for the
world.

“I cannot hark back regretfully to stage coaches,” said Lord Coombe.
“Even I was not born early enough for that. But in the days of my youth
and innocence express trains seemed almost supernatural. One could
drive a pair of horses twenty miles to make a country visit, but one
could not drive back the same day. One’s circle had its limitations and
degrees of intimacy. Now it is possible motor fifty miles to lunch and
home to dine with guests from the remotest corners of the earth. Oceans
are crossed in six days, and the eager flit from continent to
continent. Engagements can be made by cable and the truly enterprising
can accept an invitation to dine in America on a fortnight’s notice.
Telephones communicate in a few seconds and no one is secure from
social intercourse for fifteen minutes. Acquaintances and
correspondence have no limitations because all the inhabitants of the
globe can reach one by motor or electricity. In moments of fatigue I
revert to the days of Queen Anne with pleasure.”

While these changes went on, Robin lived in her own world in her own
quarters at the rear of the slice of a house. During the early years
spent with Dowson, she learned gradually that life was a better thing
than she had known in the dreary gloom of the third floor Day and Night
Nurseries. She was no longer left to spend hours alone, nor was she
taken below stairs to listen blankly to servants talking to each other
of mysterious things with which she herself and the Lady Downstairs and
“him” were somehow connected, her discovery of this fact being based on
the dropping of voices and sidelong glances at her and sudden warning
sounds from Andrews. She realized that Dowson would never pinch her,
and the rooms she lived in were pretty and bright.

Gradually playthings and picture books appeared in them, which she
gathered Dowson presented her with. She gathered this from Dowson
herself.

She had never played with the doll, and, by chance a day arriving when
Lord Coombe encountered Dowson in the street without her charge, he
stopped her again and spoke as before.

“Is the little girl well and happy, Nurse?” he asked.

“Quite well, my lord, and much happier than she used to be.”

“Did she,” he hesitated slightly, “like the playthings you bought her?”

Dowson hesitated more than slightly but, being a sensible woman and at
the same time curious about the matter, she spoke the truth.

“She wouldn’t play with them at all, my lord. I couldn’t persuade her
to. What her child’s fancy was I don’t know.”

“Neither do I—except that it is founded on a distinct dislike,” said
Coombe. There was a brief pause. “Are you fond of toys yourself,
Dowson?” he inquired coldly.

“I am that—and I know how to choose them, your lordship,” replied
Dowson, with a large, shrewd intelligence.

“Then oblige me by throwing away the doll and its accompaniments and
buying some toys for yourself, at my expense. You can present them to
Miss Robin as a personal gift. She will accept them from you.”

He passed on his way and Dowson looked after him interestedly.

“If she was his,” she thought, “I shouldn’t be puzzled. But she’s
not—that I’ve ever heard of. He’s got some fancy of his own the same as
Robin has, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him. I’d like to
know what it is.”

It was a fancy—an old, old fancy—it harked back nearly thirty years—to
the dark days of youth and passion and unending tragedy whose anguish,
as it then seemed, could never pass—but which, nevertheless, had faded
with the years as they flowed by. And yet left him as he was and had
been. He was not sentimental about it, he smiled at himself
drearily—though never at the memory—when it rose again and, through its
vague power, led him to do strange things curiously verging on the
emotional and eccentric. But even the child—who quite loathed him for
some fantastic infant reason of her own—even the child had her part in
it. His soul oddly withdrew itself into a far remoteness as he walked
away and Piccadilly became a shadow and a dream.

Dowson went home and began to pack neatly in a box the neglected doll
and the toys which had accompanied her. Robin seeing her doing it,
asked a question.

“Are they going back to the shop?”

“No. Lord Coombe is letting me give them to a little girl who is very
poor and has to lie in bed because her back hurts her. His lordship is
so kind he does not want you to be troubled with them. He is not angry.
He is too good to be angry.”

That was not true, thought Robin. He had done _that thing_ she
remembered! Goodness could not have done it. Only badness.

When Dowson brought in a new doll and other wonderful things, a little
hand enclosed her wrist quite tightly as she was unpacking the boxes.
It was Robin’s and the small creature looked at her with a questioning,
half appealing, half fierce.

“Did he send them, Dowson?”

“They are a present from me,” Dowson answered comfortably, and Robin
said again,

“I want to kiss you. I like to kiss you. I do.”

To those given to psychical interests and speculations, it might have
suggested itself that, on the night when the creature who had seemed to
Andrews a soft tissued puppet had suddenly burst forth into defiance
and fearless shrillness, some cerebral change had taken place in her.
From that hour her softness had become a thing of the past. Dowson had
not found a baby, but a brooding, little, passionate being. She was
neither insubordinate nor irritable, but Dowson was conscious of a
certain intensity of temperament in her. She knew that she was always
thinking of things of which she said almost nothing. Only a sensible
motherly curiosity, such as Dowson’s could have made discoveries, but a
rare question put by the child at long intervals sometimes threw a
faint light. There were questions chiefly concerning mothers and their
habits and customs. They were such as, in their very unconsciousness,
revealed a strange past history. Lights were most unconsciously thrown
by Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself. Her quite amiable detachment from all
shadow of responsibility, her brilliantly unending occupations, her
goings in and out, the flocks of light, almost noisy, intimates who
came in and out with her revealed much to a respectable person who had
soberly watched the world.

“The Lady Downstairs is my mother, isn’t she?” Robin inquired gravely
once.

“Yes, my dear,” was Dowson’s answer.

A pause for consideration of the matter and then from Robin:

“All mothers are not alike, Dowson, are they?”

“No, my dear,” with wisdom.

Though she was not yet seven, life had so changed for her that it was a
far cry back to the Spring days in the Square Gardens. She went back,
however, back into that remote ecstatic past.

“The Lady Downstairs is not—alike,” she said at last, “Donal’s mother
loved him. She let him sit in the same chair with her and read in
picture books. She kissed him when he was in bed.”

Jennings, the young footman who was a humourist, had, of course, heard
witty references to Robin’s love affair while in attendance, and he had
equally, of course, repeated them below stairs. Therefore,

Dowson had heard vague rumours but had tactfully refrained from
mentioning the subject to her charge.

“Who was Donal?” she said now, but quite quietly. Robin did not know
that a confidante would have made her first agony easier to bear. She
was not really being confidential now, but, realizing Dowson’s
comfortable kindliness, she knew that it would be safe to speak to her.

“He was a big boy,” she answered keeping her eyes on Dowson’s face. “He
laughed and ran and jumped. His eyes—” she stopped there because she
could not explain what she had wanted to say about these joyous young
eyes, which were the first friendly human ones she had known.

“He lives in Scotland,” she began again. “His mother loved him. He
kissed me. He went away. Lord Coombe sent him.”

Dawson could not help her start.

“Lord Coombe!” she exclaimed.

Robin came close to her and ground her little fist into her knee, until
its plumpness felt almost bruised.

“He is bad—bad—bad!” and she looked like a little demon.

Being a wise woman, Dowson knew at once that she had come upon a hidden
child volcano, and it would be well to let it seethe into silence. She
was not a clever person, but long experience had taught her that there
were occasions when it was well to leave a child alone. This one would
not answer if she were questioned. She would only become stubborn and
furious, and no child should be goaded into fury. Dowson had, of
course, learned that the boy was a relative of his lordship’s and had a
strict Scottish mother who did not approve of the slice of a house. His
lordship might have been concerned in the matter—or he might not. But
at least Dowson had gained a side light. And how the little thing had
cared! Actually as if she had been a grown girl, Dowson found herself
thinking uneasily.

She was rendered even a trifle more uneasy a few days later when she
came upon Robin sitting in a corner on a footstool with a picture book
on her knee, and she recognized it as the one she had discovered during
her first exploitation of the resources of the third floor nursery. It
was inscribed “Donal” and Robin was not looking at it alone, but at
something she held in her hand—something folded in a crumpled, untidy
bit of paper.

Making a reason for nearing her corner, Dowson saw what the paper held.
The contents looked like the broken fragments of some dried leaves. The
child was gazing at them with a piteous, bewildered face—so piteous
that Dowson was sorry.

“Do you want to keep those?” she asked.

“Yes,” with a caught breath. “Yes.”

“I will make you a little silk bag to hold them in,” Dowson said,
actually feeling rather piteous herself. The poor, little lamb with her
picture book and her bits of broken dry leaves—almost like senna.

She sat down near her and Robin left her footstool and came to her. She
laid the picture book on her lap and the senna like fragments of leaves
on its open page.

“Donal brought it to show me,” she quavered. “He made pretty things on
the leaves—with his dirk.” She recalled too much—too much all at once.
Her eyes grew rounder and larger with inescapable woe; “Donal did!
Donal!” And suddenly she hid her face deep in Dowson’s skirts and the
tempest broke. She was so small a thing—so inarticulate—and these were
her dead! Dowson could only catch her in her arms, drag her up on her
knee, and rock her to and fro.

“Good Lord! Good Lord!” was her inward ejaculation. “And she not seven!
What’ll she do when she’s seventeen! She’s one of them there’s no help
for!”

It was the beginning of an affection. After this, when Dowson tucked
Robin in bed each night, she kissed her. She told her stories and
taught her to sew and to know her letters. Using some discretion she
found certain little playmates for her in the Gardens. But there were
occasions when all did not go well, and some pretty, friendly child,
who had played with Robin for a few days, suddenly seemed to be kept
strictly by her nurse’s side. Once, when she was about ten years old, a
newcomer, a dramatic and too richly dressed little person, after a day
of wonderful imaginative playing appeared in the Gardens the morning
following to turn an ostentatious cold shoulder.

“What is the matter?” asked Robin.

“Oh, we can’t play with you any more,” with quite a flounce
superiority.

“Why not?” said Robin, becoming haughty herself.

“We can’t. It’s because of Lord Coombe.” The little person had really
no definite knowledge of how Lord Coombe was concerned, but certain
servants’ whisperings of names and mysterious phrases had conveyed
quite an enjoyable effect of unknown iniquity connected with his
lordship.

Robin said nothing to Dowson, but walked up and down the paths
reflecting and building a slow fire which would continue to burn in her
young heart. She had by then passed the round, soft baby period and had
entered into that phase when bodies and legs grow long and slender and
small faces lose their first curves and begin to show sharper modeling.

Accepting the situation in its entirety, Dowson had seen that it was
well to first reach Lord Coombe with any need of the child’s.
Afterwards, the form of presenting it to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless must be
gone through, but if she were first spoken to any suggestion might be
forgotten or intentionally ignored.

Dowson became clever in her calculations as to when his lordship might
be encountered and where—as if by chance, and therefore, quite
respectfully. Sometimes she remotely wondered if he himself did not
make such encounters easy for her. But his manner never altered in its
somewhat stiff, expressionless chill of indifference. He never was
kindly in his manner to the child if he met her. Dowson felt him at
once casual and “lofty.” Robin might have been a bit of unconsidered
rubbish, the sight of which slightly bored him. Yet the singular fact
remained that it was to him one must carefully appeal.

One afternoon Feather swept him, with one or two others, into the
sitting-room with the round window in which flowers grew. Robin was
sitting at a low table making pothooks with a lead pencil on a piece of
paper Dowson had given her. Dowson had, in fact, set her at the task,
having heard from Jennings that his lordship and the other afternoon
tea drinkers were to be brought into the “Palace” as Feather ironically
chose to call it. Jennings rather liked Dowson, and often told her
little things she wanted to know. It was because Lord Coombe would
probably come in with the rest that Dowson had set the low, white table
in the round windows and suggested the pothooks.

In course of time there was a fluttering and a chatter in the corridor.
Feather was bringing some new guests, who had not seen the place
before.

“This is where my daughter lives. She is much grander than I am,” she
said.

“Stand up, Miss Robin, and make your curtsey,” whispered Dowson. Robin
did as she was told, and Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ pretty brows ran up.

“Look at her legs,” she said. “She’s growing like Jack and the Bean
Stalk—though, I suppose, it was only the Bean Stalk that grew. She’ll
stick through the top of the house soon. Look at her legs, I ask you.”

She always spoke as if the child were an inanimate object and she had,
by this time and by this means, managed to sweep from Robin’s mind all
the old, babyish worship of her loveliness and had planted in its place
another feeling. At this moment the other feeling surged and burned.

“They are beautiful legs,” remarked a laughing young man jocularly,
“but perhaps she does not particularly want us to look at them. Wait
until she begins skirt dancing.” And everybody laughed at once and the
child stood rigid—the object of their light ridicule—not herself
knowing that her whole little being was cursing them aloud.

Coombe stepped to the little table and bestowed a casual glance on the
pencil marks.

“What is she doing?” he asked as casually of Dowson.

“She is learning to make pothooks, my lord,” Dowson answered. “She’s a
child that wants to be learning things. I’ve taught her her letters and
to spell little words. She’s quick—and old enough, your lordship.”

“Learning to read and write!” exclaimed Feather.

“Presumption, I call it. I don’t know how to read and write—least I
don’t know how to spell. Do you know how to spell, Collie?” to the
young man, whose name was Colin. “Do you, Genevieve? Do you, Artie?”

“You can’t betray me into vulgar boasting,” said Collie. “Who does in
these days? Nobody but clerks at Peter Robinson’s.”

“Lord Coombe does—but that’s his tiresome superior way,” said Feather.

“He’s nearly forty years older than most of you. That is the reason,”
Coombe commented. “Don’t deplore your youth and innocence.”

They swept through the rooms and examined everything in them. The truth
was that the—by this time well known—fact that the unexplainable Coombe
had built them made them a curiosity, and a sort of secret source of
jokes. The party even mounted to the upper story to go through the
bedrooms, and, it was while they were doing this, that Coombe chose to
linger behind with Dowson.

He remained entirely expressionless for a few moments. Dowson did not
in the least gather whether he meant to speak to her or not. But he
did.

“You meant,” he scarcely glanced at her, “that she was old enough for a
governess.”

“Yes, my lord,” rather breathless in her hurry to speak before she
heard the high heels tapping on the staircase again. “And one that’s a
good woman as well as clever, if I may take the liberty. A good one
if—”

“If a good one would take the place?”

Dowson did not attempt refutation or apology. She knew better.

He said no more, but sauntered out of the room.

As he did so, Robin stood up and made the little “charity bob” of a
curtsey which had been part of her nursery education. She was too old
now to have refused him her hand, but he never made any advances to
her. He acknowledged her curtsey with the briefest nod.

Not three minutes later the high heels came tapping down the staircase
and the small gust of visitors swept away also.




CHAPTER XVI


The interview which took place between Feather and Lord Coombe a few
days later had its own special character.

“A governess will come here tomorrow at eleven o’clock,” he said. “She
is a Mademoiselle Vallé. She is accustomed to the educating of young
children. She will present herself for your approval. Benby has done
all the rest.”

Feather flushed to her fine-spun ash-gold hair.

“What on earth can it matter!” she cried.

“It does not matter to you,” he answered; “it chances—for the time
being—to matter to _me_.”

“Chances!” she flamed forth—it was really a queer little flame of
feeling. “That’s it. You don’t really care! It’s a caprice—just because
you see she is going to be pretty.”

“I’ll own,” he admitted, “that has a great deal to do with it.”

“It has everything to do with it,” she threw out. “If she had a snub
nose and thick legs you wouldn’t care for her at all.”

“I don’t say that I do care for her,” without emotion. “The situation
interests me. Here is an extraordinary little being thrown into the
world. She belongs to nobody. She will have to fight for her own hand.
And she will have to _fight_, by God! With that dewy lure in her eyes
and her curved pomegranate mouth! She will not know, but she will draw
disaster!”

“Then she had better not be taught anything at all,” said Feather. “It
would be an amusing thing to let her grow up without learning to read
or write at all. I know numbers of men who would like the novelty of
it. Girls who know so much are a bore.”

“There are a few minor chances she ought to have,” said Coombe. “A
governess is one. Mademoiselle Vallé will be here at eleven.”

“I can’t see that she promises to be such a beauty,” fretted Feather.
“She’s the kind of good looking child who might grow up into a fat girl
with staring black eyes like a barmaid.”

“Occasionally pretty women do abhor their growing up daughters,”
commented Coombe letting his eyes rest on her interestedly.

“I don’t abhor her,” with pathos touched with venom. “But a big,
lumping girl hanging about ogling and wanting to be ogled when she is
passing through that silly age! And sometimes you speak to me as a man
speaks to his wife when he is tired of her.”

“I beg your pardon,” Coombe said. “You make me feel like a person who
lives over a shop at Knightsbridge, or in bijou mansion off Regent’s
Park.”

But he was deeply aware that, as an outcome of the anomalous position
he occupied, he not infrequently felt exactly this.

That a governess chosen by Coombe—though he would seem not to appear in
the matter—would preside over the new rooms, Feather knew without a
shadow of doubt.

A certain almost silent and always high-bred dominance over her
existence she accepted as the inevitable, even while she fretted
helplessly. Without him, she would be tossed, a broken butterfly, into
the gutter. She knew her London. No one would pick her up unless to
break her into smaller atoms and toss her away again. The freedom he
allowed her after all was wonderful. It was because he disdained
interference.

But there was a line not to be crossed—there must not even be an
attempt at crossing it. Why he cared about that she did not know.

“You must be like Cæsar’s wife,” he said rather grimly, after an
interview in which he had given her a certain unsparing warning.

“And I am nobody’s wife. What did Cæsar’s wife do?” she asked.

“Nothing.” And he told her the story and, when she had heard him tell
it, she understood certain things clearly.

Mademoiselle Vallé was an intelligent, mature Frenchwoman. She
presented herself to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless for inspection and, in ten
minutes, realized that the power to inspect and sum up existed only on
her own side. This pretty woman neither knew what inquiries to make nor
cared for such replies as were given. Being swift to reason and
practical in deduction, Mademoiselle Vallé did not make the blunder of
deciding that this light presence argued that she would be under no
supervision more serious. The excellent Benby, one was made aware,
acted and the excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted under clearly
defined orders. Milord Coombe—among other things the best dressed and
perhaps the least comprehended man in London—was concerned in this,
though on what grounds practical persons could not explain to
themselves. His connection with the narrow house on the right side of
the right street was entirely comprehensible. The lenient felt nothing
blatant or objectionable about it. Mademoiselle Vallé herself was not
disturbed by mere rumour. The education, manner and morals of the
little girl she could account for. These alone were to be her affair,
and she was competent to undertake their superintendence.

Therefore, she sat and listened with respectful intelligence to the
birdlike chatter of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. (What a pretty woman! The
silhouette of a _jeune fille!_)

Mrs. Gareth-Lawless felt that, on her part, she had done all that was
required of her.

“I’m afraid she’s rather a dull child, Mademoiselle,” she said in
farewell. “You know children’s ways and you’ll understand what I mean.
She has a trick of staring and saying nothing. I confess I wish she
wasn’t dull.”

“It is impossible, madame, that she should be dull,” said Mademoiselle,
with an agreeably implicating smile. “Oh, but quite impossible! We
shall see.”

Not many days had passed before she had seen much. At the outset, she
recognized the effect of the little girl with the slender legs and feet
and the dozen or so of points which go to make a beauty. The intense
eyes first and the deeps of them. They gave one furiously to think
before making up one’s mind. Then she noted the perfection of the rooms
added to the smartly inconvenient little house. Where had the child
lived before the addition had been built? Thought and actual
architectural genius only could have done this. Light and even as much
sunshine as London will vouchsafe, had been arranged for. Comfort,
convenience, luxury, had been provided. Perfect colour and excellent
texture had evoked actual charm. Its utter unlikeness to the quarters
London usually gives to children, even of the fortunate class, struck
Mademoiselle Vallé at once. Madame Gareth-Lawless had not done this.
Who then, had?

The good Dowson she at once affiliated with. She knew the excellence of
her type as it had revealed itself to her in the best peasant class.
Trustworthy, simple, but of kindly, shrewd good sense and with the
power to observe. Dowson was not a chatterer or given to gossip, but,
as a silent observer, she would know many things and, in time, when
they had become friendly enough to be fully aware that each might trust
the other, gentle and careful talk would end in unconscious revelation
being made by Dowson.

That the little girl was almost singularly attached to her nurse, she
had marked early. There was something unusual in her manifestations of
her feeling. The intense eyes followed the woman often, as if making
sure of her presence and reality. The first day of Mademoiselle’s
residence in the place she saw the little thing suddenly stop playing
with her doll and look at Dowson earnestly for several moments. Then
she left her seat and went to the kind creature’s side.

“I want to _kiss_ you, Dowie,” she said.

“To be sure, my lamb,” answered Dowson, and, laying down her mending,
she gave her a motherly hug. After which Robin went back contentedly to
her play.

The Frenchwoman thought it a pretty bit of childish affectionateness.
But it happened more than once during the day, and at night
Mademoiselle commented upon it.

“She has an affectionate heart, the little one,” she remarked. “Madame,
her mother, is so pretty and full of gaieties and pleasures that I
should not have imagined she had much time for caresses and the
nursery.”

Even by this time Dowson had realized that with Mademoiselle she was
upon safe ground and was in no danger of betraying herself to a gossip.
She quietly laid down her sewing and looked at her companion with grave
eyes.

“Her mother has never kissed her in her life that I am aware of,” she
said.

“Has never—!” Mademoiselle ejaculated. “Never!”

“Just as you see her, she is, Mademoiselle,” Dowson said. “Any sensible
woman would know, when she heard her talk about her child. I found it
all out bit by bit when first I came here. I’m going to talk plain and
have done with it. Her first six years she spent in a sort of dog
kennel on the top floor of this house. No sun, no real fresh air. Two
little holes that were dingy and gloomy enough to dull a child’s
senses. Not a toy or a bit of colour or a picture, but clothes fine
enough for Buckingham Palace children—and enough for six. Fed and
washed and taken out every day to be shown off. And a bad nurse, Miss—a
bad one that kept her quiet by pinching her black and blue.”

“_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_ That little angel!” cried Mademoiselle, covering
her eyes.

Dowson hastily wiped her own eyes. She had shed many a motherly tear
over the child. It was a relief to her to open her heart to a
sympathizer.

“Black and blue!” she repeated. “And laughing and dancing and all sorts
of fast fun going on in the drawing-rooms.” She put out her hand and
touched Mademoiselle’s arm quite fiercely. “The little thing didn’t
know she _had_ a mother! She didn’t know what the word meant. I found
that out by her innocent talk. She used to call _her_ ‘The Lady
Downstairs’.”

“_Mon Dieu!_” cried the Frenchwoman again. “What a woman!”

“She first heard of mothers from a little boy she met in the Square
Gardens. He was the first child she had been allowed to play with. He
was a nice child and he had a good mother. I only got it bit by bit
when she didn’t know how much she was telling me. He told her about
mothers and he kissed her—for the first time in her life. She didn’t
understand but it warmed her little heart. She’s never forgotten.”

Mademoiselle even started slightly in her chair. Being a clever
Frenchwoman she felt drama and all its subtle accompaniments.

“Is that why——” she began.

“It is,” answered Dowson, stoutly. “A kiss isn’t an ordinary thing to
her. It means something wonderful. She’s got into the way of loving me,
bless her, and every now and then, it’s my opinion, she suddenly
remembers her lonely days when she didn’t know what love was. And it
just wells up in her little heart and she wants to kiss me. She always
says it that way, ‘Dowie, I want to _kiss_ you,’ as if it was something
strange and, so to say, _sacred_. She doesn’t know it means almost
nothing to most people. That’s why I always lay down my work and hug
her close.”

“You have a good heart—a _good_ one!” said Mademoiselle with strong
feeling.

Then she put a question:

“Who was the little boy?”

“He was a relation of—his lordship’s.”

“His lordship’s?” cautiously.

“The Marquis. Lord Coombe.”

There was a few minutes’ silence. Both women were thinking of a number
of things and each was asking herself how much it would be wise to say.

It was Dowson who made her decision first, and this time, as before,
she laid down her work. What she had to convey was the thing which,
above all others, the Frenchwoman must understand if she was to be able
to use her power to its best effect.

“A woman in my place hears enough talk,” was her beginning. “Servants
are given to it. The Servants’ Hall is their theatre. It doesn’t matter
whether tales are true or not, so that they’re spicy. But it’s been my
way to credit just as much as I see and know and to say little about
that. If a woman takes a place in a house, let her go or stay as suits
her best, but don’t let her stay and either complain or gossip. My
business here is Miss Robin, and I’ve found out for myself that there’s
just one person that, in a queer, unfeeling way of his own, has a fancy
for looking after her. I say ‘unfeeling’ because he never shows any
human signs of caring for the child himself. But if there’s a thing
that ought to be done for her and a body can contrive to let him know
it’s needed, it’ll be done. Downstairs’ talk that I’ve seemed to pay no
attention to has let out that it was him that walked quietly upstairs
to the Nursery, where he’d never set foot before, and opened the door
on Andrews pinching the child. She packed her box and left that night.
He inspected the nurseries and, in a few days, an architect was
planning these rooms,—for Miss Robin and for no one else, though there
was others wanted them. It was him that told me to order her books and
playthings—and not let her know it because she hates him. It was him I
told she needed a governess. And he found you.”

Mademoiselle Vallé had listened with profound attention. Here she
spoke.

“You say continually ‘he’ or ‘him’. He is—?”

“Lord Coombe. I’m not saying I’ve seen much of him. Considering—”
Dowson paused—“it’s queer how seldom he comes here. He goes abroad a
good deal. He’s mixed up with the highest and it’s said he’s in favour
because he’s satirical and clever. He’s one that’s gossiped about and
he cares nothing for what’s said. What business of mine is it whether
or not he has all sorts of dens on the Continent where he goes to
racket. He might be a bishop for all I see. And he’s the only creature
in this world of the Almighty’s that remembers that child’s a human
being. Just him—Lord Coombe. There, Mademoiselle,—I’ve said a good
deal.”

More and more interestedly had the Frenchwoman listened and with an
increasing hint of curiosity in her intelligent eyes. She pressed
Dowson’s needle-roughened fingers warmly.

“You have not said too much. It is well that I should know this of this
gentleman. As you say, he is a man who is much discussed. I myself have
heard much of him—but of things connected with another part of his
character. It is true that he is in favour with great personages. It is
because they are aware that he has observed much for many years. He is
light and ironic, but he tells truths which sometimes startle those who
hear them.”

“Jennings tells below stairs that he says things it’s queer for a lord
to say. Jennings is a sharp young snip and likes to pick up things to
repeat. He believes that his lordship’s idea is that there’s a time
coming when the high ones will lose their places and thrones and kings
will be done away with. I wouldn’t like to go that far myself,” said
Dowson, gravely, “but I must say that there’s not that serious respect
paid to Royalty that there was in my young days. My word! When Queen
Victoria was in her prime, with all her young family around her,—their
little Royal Highnesses that were princes in their Highland kilts and
the princesses in their crinolines and hats with drooping ostrich
feathers and broad satin streamers—the people just went wild when she
went to a place to unveil anything!”

“When the Empress Eugenie and the Prince Imperial appeared, it was the
same thing,” said Mademoiselle, a trifle sadly. “One recalls it now as
a dream passed away—the Champs Élysées in the afternoon sunlight—the
imperial carriage and the glittering escort trotting gaily—the
beautiful woman with the always beautiful costumes—her charming
smile—the Emperor, with his waxed moustache and saturnine face! It
meant so much and it went so quickly. One moment,” she made a little
gesture, “and it is gone—forever! An Empire and all the splendour of
it! Two centuries ago it could not have disappeared so quickly. But now
the world is older. It does not need toys so much. A Republic is the
people—and there are more people than kings.”

“It’s things like that his lordship says, according to Jennings,” said
Dowson. “Jennings is never quite sure he’s in earnest. He has a
satirical way—And the company always laugh.”

Mademoiselle had spoken thoughtfully and as if half to her inner self
instead of to Dowson. She added something even more thoughtfully now.

“The same kind of people laughed before the French Revolution,” she
murmured.

“I’m not scholar enough to know much about that—that was a long time
ago, wasn’t it?” Dowson remarked.

“A long time ago,” said Mademoiselle.

Dowson’s reply was quite free from tragic reminiscence.

“Well, I must say, I like a respectable Royal Family myself,” she
observed. “There’s something solid and comfortable about it—besides the
coronations and weddings and procession with all the pictures in the
_Illustrated London News_. Give me a nice, well-behaved Royal Family.”




CHAPTER XVII


“A nice, well-behaved Royal Family.” There had been several of them in
Europe for some time. An appreciable number of them had prided
themselves, even a shade ostentatiously, upon their domesticity. The
moral views of a few had been believed to border upon the high
principles inscribed in copy books. Some, however, had not. A more
important power or so had veered from the exact following of these
commendable axioms—had high-handedly behaved according to their royal
will and tastes. But what would you? With a nation making proper
obeisance before one from infancy; with trumpets blaring forth joyous
strains upon one’s mere appearance on any scene; with the proudest
necks bowed and the most superb curtseys swept on one’s mere passing
by, with all the splendour of the Opera on gala night rising to its
feet to salute one’s mere entry into the royal or imperial box, while
the national anthem bursts forth with adulatory and triumphant strains,
only a keen and subtle sense of humour, surely, could curb errors of
judgment arising from naturally mistaken views of one’s own importance
and value to the entire Universe. Still there remained the fact that a
number of them _were_ well-behaved and could not be complained of as
bearing any likeness to the bloodthirsty tyrants and oppressors of past
centuries.

The Head of the House of Coombe had attended the Court Functions and
been received at the palaces and castles of most of them. For in that
aspect of his character of which Mademoiselle Vallé had heard more than
Dowson, he was intimate with well-known and much-observed personages
and places. A man born among those whose daily life builds, as it
passes, at least a part of that which makes history and so records
itself, must needs find companions, acquaintances, enemies, friends of
varied character, and if he be, by chance, a keen observer of passing
panoramas, can lack no material for private reflection and the
accumulation of important facts.

That part of his existence which connected itself with the slice of a
house on the right side of the Mayfair street was but a small one. A
feature of the untranslatableness of his character was that he was seen
there but seldom. His early habit of crossing the Channel frequently
had gradually reestablished itself as years passed. Among his
acquaintances his “Saturday to Monday visits” to continental cities
remote or unremote were discussed with humour. Possibly, upon these
discussions, were finally founded the rumours of which Dowson had heard
but which she had impartially declined to “credit”. Lively conjecture
inevitably figured largely in their arguments and, when persons of
unrestrained wit devote their attention to airy persiflage, much may be
included in their points of view.

Of these conjectural discussions no one was more clearly aware than
Coombe himself, and the finished facility—even felicity—of his evasion
of any attempt at delicately valued cross examination was felt to be
inhumanly exasperating.

In one of the older Squares which still remained stately, though the
splendour of modern fashion had waned in its neighbourhood, there was
among the gloomy, though imposing, houses one in particular upon whose
broad doorsteps—years before the Gareth-Lawlesses had appeared in
London—Lord Coombe stood oftener than upon any other. At times his
brougham waited before it for hours, and, at others, he appeared on
foot and lifted the heavy knocker with a special accustomed knock
recognized at once by any footman in waiting in the hall, who, hearing
it, knew that his mistress—the old Dowager Duchess of Darte—would
receive this visitor, if no other.

The interior of the house was of the type which, having from the first
been massive and richly sombre, had mellowed into a darker sombreness
and richness as it had stood unmoved amid London years and fogs. The
grandeur of decoration and furnishing had been too solid to depreciate
through decay, and its owner had been of no fickle mind led to waver in
taste by whims of fashion. The rooms were huge and lofty, the halls and
stairways spacious, the fireplaces furnished with immense grates of
glittering steel, which held in winter beds of scarlet glowing coal,
kept scarlet glowing by a special footman whose being, so to speak,
depended on his fidelity to his task.

There were many rooms whose doors were kept closed because they were
apparently never used; there were others as little used but thrown
open, warmed and brightened with flowers each day, because the Duchess
chose to catch glimpses of their cheerfulness as she passed them on her
way up or downstairs. The house was her own property, and, after her
widowhood, when it was emptied of her children by their admirable
marriages, and she herself became Dowager and, later, a confirmed
rheumatic invalid, it became doubly her home and was governed by her
slightest whim. She was not indeed an old woman of caprices, but her
tastes, not being those of the later day in which she now lived, were
regarded as a shade eccentric being firmly defined.

“I will not have my house glaring with electricity as if it were a
shop. In my own rooms I will be lighted by wax candles. Large ones—as
many as you please,” she said. “I will not be ‘rung up’ by telephone.
My servants may if they like. It is not my affair to deprive them of
the modern inconveniences, if they find them convenient. My senility
does not take the form of insisting that the world shall cease to
revolve upon its axis. It formed that habit without my assistance, and
it is to be feared that it would continue it in the face of my
protests.”

It was, in fact, solely that portion of the world affecting herself
alone which she preferred to retain as it had been in the brilliant
early years of her life. She had been a great beauty and also a wit in
the Court over which Queen Victoria had reigned. She had possessed the
delicate high nose, the soft full eyes, the “polished forehead,” the
sloping white shoulders from which scarves floated or India shawls
gracefully drooped in the Books of Beauty of the day. Her carriage had
been noble, her bloom perfect, and, when she had driven through the
streets “in attendance” on her Royal Mistress, the populace had always
chosen her as “the pick of ’em all”. Young as she had then been,
elderly statesmen had found her worth talking to, not as a mere beauty
in her teens, but as a creature of singular brilliance and clarity of
outlook upon a world which might have dazzled her youth. The most
renowned among them had said of her, before she was twenty, that she
would live to be one of the cleverest women in Europe, and that she had
already the logical outlook of a just man of fifty.

She married early and was widowed in middle life. In her later years
rheumatic fever so far disabled her as to confine her to her chair
almost entirely. Her sons and daughter had homes and families of their
own to engage them. She would not allow them to sacrifice themselves to
her because her life had altered its aspect.

“I have money, friends, good servants and a house I particularly like,”
she summed the matter up; “I may be condemned to sit by the fire, but I
am not condemned to be a bore to my inoffensive family. I can still
talk and read, and I shall train myself to become a professional
listener. This will attract. I shall not only read myself, but I will
be read to. A strong young man with a nice voice shall bring magazines
and books to me every day, and shall read the best things aloud.
Delightful people will drop in to see me and will be amazed by my fund
of information.”

It was during the first years of her enforced seclusion that Coombe’s
intimacy with her began. He had known her during certain black days of
his youth, and she had comprehended things he did not tell her. She had
not spoken of them to him but she had silently given him of something
which vaguely drew him to her side when darkness seemed to overwhelm
him. The occupations of her life left her in those earlier days little
leisure for close intimacies, but, when she began to sit by her fire
letting the busy world pass by, he gradually became one of those who
“dropped in”.

In one of the huge rooms she had chosen for her own daily use, by the
well-tended fire in its shining grate, she had created an agreeable
corner where she sat in a chair marvellous for ease and comfort,
enclosed from draughts by a fire screen of antique Chinese lacquer, a
table by her side and all she required within her reach. Upon the table
stood a silver bell and, at its sound, her companion, her reader, her
maid or her personally trained footman, came and went quietly and
promptly as if summoned by magic. Her life itself was simple, but a
certain almost royal dignity surrounded her loneliness. Her companion,
Miss Brent, an intelligent, mature woman who had known a hard and
pinched life, found at once comfort and savour in it.

“It is not I who am expensive,”—this in one of her talks with Coombe,
“but to live in a house of this size, well kept by excellent servants
who are satisfied with their lot, is not a frugal thing. A cap of tea
for those of my friends who run in to warm themselves by my fire in the
afternoon; a dinner or so when I am well enough to sit at the head of
my table, represent almost all I now do for the world. Naturally, I
must see that my tea is good and that my dinners cannot be objected to.
Nevertheless, I sit here in my chair and save money—for what?”

Among those who “warmed themselves by her fire” this man had singularly
become her friend and intimate. When they had time to explore each
other’s minds, they came upon curious discoveries of hidden sympathies
and mutual comprehensions which were rich treasures. They talked of
absorbing things with frankness. He came to sit with her when others
were not admitted because she was in pain or fatigued. He added to
neither her fatigue nor her pain, but rather helped her to forget them.

“For what?” he answered on this day. “Why not for your grandchildren?”

“They will have too much money. There are only four of them. They will
make great marriages as their parents did,” she said. She paused a
second before she added, “Unless our World Revolution has broken into
flame by that time—And there are no longer any great marriages to
make.”

For among the many things they dwelt on in their talks along, was the
Chessboard, which was the Map of Europe, over which he had watched for
many years certain hands hover in tentative experimenting as to the
possibilities of the removal of the pieces from one square to another.
She, too, from her youth had watched the game with an interest which
had not waned in her maturity, and which, in her days of sitting by the
fire, had increased with every move the hovering hands made. She had
been familiar with political parties and their leaders, she had met
heroes and statesmen; she had seen an unimportant prince become an
emperor, who, from his green and boastful youth, aspired to rule the
world and whose theatrical obsession had been the sly jest of unwary
nations, too carelessly sure of the advance of civilization and too
indifferently self-indulgent to realize that a monomaniac, even if
treated as a source of humour, is a perilous thing to leave unwatched.
She had known France in all the glitter of its showy Empire, and had
seen its imperial glories dispersed as mist. Russia she had watched
with curiosity and dread. On the day when the ruler, who had bestowed
freedom on millions of his people, met his reward in the shattering
bomb which tore him to fragments, she had been in St. Petersburg. A
king, who had been assassinated, she had known well and had well liked;
an empress, whom a frenzied madman had stabbed to the heart, had been
her friend.

Her years had been richly full of varied events, giving a strong and
far-seeing mind reason for much unspoken thought of the kind which
leaps in advance of its day’s experience and exact knowledge. She had
learned when to speak and when to be silent, and she oftener chose
silence. But she had never ceased gazing on the world with keen eyes,
and reflecting upon its virtues and vagaries, its depths and its
shallows, with the help of a clear and temperate brain.

By her fire she sat, an attracting presence, though only fine, strong
lines remained of beauty ravaged by illness and years. The “polished
forehead” was furrowed by the chisel of suffering; the delicate high
nose springing from her waxen, sunken face seemed somewhat eaglelike,
but the face was still brilliant in its intensity of meaning and the
carriage of her head was still noble. Not able to walk except with the
assistance of a cane, her once exquisite hands stiffened almost to
uselessness, she held her court from her throne of mere power and
strong charm. On the afternoons when people “ran in to warm themselves”
by her fire, the talk was never dull and was often wonderful. There
were those who came quietly into the room fresh from important scenes
where subjects of weight to nations were being argued closely—perhaps
almost fiercely. Sometimes the argument was continued over cups of
perfect tea near the chair of the Duchess, and, howsoever far it led,
she was able brilliantly to follow. With the aid of books and pamphlets
and magazines, and the strong young man with the nice voice, who was
her reader, she kept pace with each step of the march of the world.

It was, however, the modern note in her recollections of her world’s
march in days long past, in which Coombe found mental food and fine
flavour. The phrase, “in these days” expressed in her utterance neither
disparagement nor regret. She who sat in state in a drawing-room
lighted by wax candles did so as an affair of personal preference, and
denied no claim of higher brilliance to electric illumination. Driving
slowly through Hyde Park on sunny days when she was able to go out, her
high-swung barouche hinted at no lofty disdain of petrol and motor
power. At the close of her youth’s century, she looked forward with
thrilled curiosity to the dawning wonders of the next.

“If the past had not held so much, one might not have learned to expect
more,” was her summing up on a certain afternoon, when he came to
report himself after one of his absences from England. “The most
important discovery of the last fifty years has been the revelation
that no man may any longer assume to speak the last word on any
subject. The next man—almost any next man—may evolve more. Before that
period all elderly persons were final in their dictum. They said to
each other—and particularly to the young—‘It has not been done in my
time—it was not done in my grandfather’s time. It has never been done.
It never can be done’.”

“The note of today is ‘Since it has never been done, it will surely be
done soon’,” said Coombe.

“Ah! we who began life in the most assured and respectable of reigns
and centuries,” she answered him, “have seen much. But these others
will see more. Crinolines, mushroom hats and large families seemed to
promise a decorum peaceful to dullness; but there have been battles,
murders and sudden deaths; there have been almost supernatural
inventions and discoveries—there have been marvels of new doubts and
faiths. When one sits and counts upon one’s fingers the amazements the
19th century has provided, one gasps and gazes with wide eyes into the
future. I, for one, feel rather as though I had seen a calm milch cow
sauntering—at first slowly—along a path, gradually evolve into a
tiger—a genie with a hundred heads containing all the marvels of the
world—a flying dragon with a thousand eyes! Oh, we have gone fast and
far!”

“And we shall go faster and farther,” Coombe added.

“That is it,” she answered. “Are we going too fast?”

“At least so fast that we forget things it would be well for us to
remember.” He had come in that day with a certain preoccupied grimness
of expression which was not unknown to her. It was generally after one
of his absences that he looked a shade grim.

“Such as—?” she inquired.

“Such as catastrophes in the history of the world, which forethought
and wisdom might have prevented. The French Revolution is the obvious
type of figure which lies close at hand so one picks it up. The French
Revolution—its Reign of Terror—the orgies of carnage—the cataclysms of
agony—need not have been, but they _were_. To put it in words of one
syllable.”

“What!” was her involuntary exclamation. “You are seeking such similes
as the French Revolution!”

“Who knows how far a madness may reach and what Reign of Terror may
take form?” He sat down and drew an atlas towards him. It always lay
upon the table on which all the Duchess desired was within reach. It
was fat, convenient of form, and agreeable to look at in its cover of
dull, green leather. Coombe’s gesture of drawing it towards him was a
familiar one. It was frequently used as reference.

“The atlas again?” she said.

“Yes. Just now I can think of little else. I have realized too much.”

The continental journey had lasted a month. He had visited more
countries than one in his pursuit of a study he was making of the way
in which the wind was blowing particular straws. For long he had found
much to give thought to in the trend of movement in one special portion
of the Chessboard. It was that portion of it dominated by the ruler of
whose obsession too careless nations made sly jest. This man he had
known from his arrogant and unendearing youth. He had looked on with
unbiassed curiosity at his development into arrogance so much greater
that its proportions touched the grotesque. The rest of the world had
looked on also, but apparently, merely in the casual way which
good-naturedly smiles and leaves to every man—even an emperor—the
privilege of his own eccentricities. Coombe had looked on with a
difference, so also had his friend by her fireside. This man’s square
of the Chessboard had long been the subject of their private talks and
a cause for the drawing towards them of the green atlas. The moves he
made, the methods of his ruling, the significance of these methods were
the evidence they collected in their frequent arguments. Coombe had
early begun to see the whole thing as a process—a life-long labour
which was a means to a monstrous end.

There was a certain thing he believed of which they often spoke as
“It”. He spoke of it now.

“Through three weeks I have been marking how It grows,” he said; “a
whole nation with the entire power of its commerce, its education, its
science, its religion, guided towards one aim is a curious study. The
very babes are born and bred and taught only that one thought may
become an integral part of their being. The most innocent and blue eyed
of them knows, without a shadow of doubt, that the world has but one
reason for existence—that it may be conquered and ravaged by the
country that gave them birth.”

“I have both heard and seen it,” she said. “One has smiled in spite of
oneself, in listening to their simple, everyday talk.”

“In little schools—in large ones—in little churches, and in imposing
ones, their Faith is taught and preached,” Coombe answered. “Sometimes
one cannot believe one’s hearing. It is all so ingenuously and frankly
unashamed—the mouthing, boasting, and threats of their piety. There
exists for them no God who is not the modest henchman of their emperor,
and whose attention is not rivetted on their prowess with admiration
and awe. Apparently, they are His business, and He is well paid by
being allowed to retain their confidence.”

“A lack of any sense of humour is a disastrous thing,” commented the
Duchess. “The people of other nations may be fools—doubtless we all
are—but there is no other which proclaims the fact abroad with such
guileless outbursts of raucous exultation.”

“And even we—you and I who have thought more than others” he said,
restlessly, “even we forget and half smile. There has been too much
smiling.”

She picked up an illustrated paper and opened it at a page filled by an
ornate picture.

“See!” she said. “It is because he himself has made it so easy, with
his amazing portraits of his big boots, and swords, and eruption of
dangling orders. How can one help but smile when one finds him glaring
at one from a newspaper in his superwarlike attitude, defying the
Universe, with his comic moustachios and their ferocious waxed and
bristling ends. No! One can scarcely believe that a man can be stupid
enough not to realize that he looks as if he had deliberately made
himself up to represent a sort of terrific military bogey intimating
that, at any moment, he may pounce and say ‘Boo!”

“There lies the peril. His pretensions seem too grotesque to be treated
seriously. And, while he should be watched as a madman is watched, he
is given a lifetime to prepare for attack on a world that has ceased to
believe in the sole thing which is real to himself.”

“You are fresh from observation.” There was new alertness in her eyes,
though she had listened before.

“I tell you it _grows!_” he gave back and lightly struck the table in
emphasis. “Do you remember Carlyle—?”

“The French Revolution again?”

“Yes. Do you recall this? ‘Do not fires, fevers, seeds, chemical
mixtures, _go on growing_. Observe, too, that _each grows_ with a
rapidity proportioned to the madness and unhealthiness there is in it.’
A ruler who, in an unaggressive age such as this, can concentrate his
life and his people’s on the one ambition of plunging the world in an
ocean of blood, in which his own monomania can bathe in triumph—Good
God! there is madness and unhealthiness to flourish in!”

“The world!” she said. “Yes—it will be the world.”

“See,” he said, with a curve of the finger which included most of the
Map of Europe. “Here are countries engaged—like the Bandarlog—in their
own affairs. Quarrelling, snatching things from each other, blustering
or amusing themselves with transitory pomps and displays of power. Here
is a huge empire whose immense, half-savage population has seethed for
centuries in its hidden, boiling cauldron of rebellion. Oh! it has
seethed! And only cruelties have repressed it. Now and then it has
boiled over in assassination in high places, and one has wondered how
long its autocratic splendour could hold its own. Here are small,
fierce, helpless nations overrun and outraged into a chronic state of
secret ever-ready hatred. Here are innocent, small countries,
defenceless through their position and size. Here is France rich,
careless, super-modern and cynic. Here is England comfortable to
stolidity, prosperous and secure to dullness in her own half belief in
a world civilization, which no longer argues in terms of blood and
steel. And here—in a well-entrenched position in the midst of it
all—within but a few hundreds of miles of weakness, complicity,
disastrous unreadiness and panic-stricken uncertainty of purpose, sits
this Man of One Dream—who believes God Himself his vassal. Here he
sits.”

“Yes his One Dream. He has had no other.” The Duchess was poring over
the map also. They were as people pondering over a strange and terrible
game.

“It is his monomania. It possessed him when he was a boy. What Napoleon
hoped to accomplish he has BELIEVED he could attain by concentrating
all the power of people upon preparation for it—and by not flinching
from pouring forth their blood as if it were the refuse water of his
gutters.”

“Yes—the blood—the blood!” the Duchess shuddered. “He would pour it
forth without a qualm.”

Coombe touched the map first at one point and then at another.

“See!” he said again, and this time savagely. “This empire flattered
and entangled by cunning, this country irritated, this deceived, this
drawn into argument, this and this and this treated with professed
friendship, these tricked and juggled with—And then, when his plans are
ripe and he is made drunk with belief in himself—just one sodden insult
or monstrous breach of faith, which all humanity must leap to
resent—And there is our World Revolution.”

The Duchess sat upright in her chair.

“Why did you let your youth pass?” she said. “If you had begun early
enough, you could hare made the country listen to you. Why did you do
it?”

“For the same reason that all selfish grief and pleasure and
indifference let the world go by. And I am not sure they would have
listened. I speak freely enough now in some quarters. They listen, but
they do nothing. There is a warning in the fact that, as he has seen
his youth leave him without giving him his opportunity, he has been a
disappointed man inflamed and made desperate. At the outset, he felt
that he must provide the world with some fiction of excuse. As his
obsession and arrogance have swollen, he sees himself and his ambition
as reason enough. No excuse is needed. Deutschland uber alles—is
sufficient.”

He pushed the map away and his fire died down. He spoke almost in his
usual manner.

“The conquest of the world,” he said. “He is a great fool. What would
he _do_ with his continents if he got them?”

“What, indeed,” pondered her grace. “Continents—even kingdoms are not
like kittens in a basket, or puppies to be trained to come to heel.”

“It is part of his monomania that he can persuade himself that they are
little more.” Coombe’s eye-glasses had been slowly swaying from the
ribbon in his fingers. He let them continue to sway a moment and then
closed them with a snap.

“He is a great fool,” he said. “But we,—oh, my friend—and by ‘we’ I
mean the rest of the Map of Europe—we are much greater fools. A mad dog
loose among us and we sit—and smile.”

And this was in the days before the house with the cream-coloured front
had put forth its first geraniums and lobelias in Feather’s window
boxes. Robin was not born.




CHAPTER XVIII


In the added suite of rooms at the back of the house, Robin grew
through the years in which It was growing also. On the occasion when
her mother saw her, she realized that she was not at least going to
look like a barmaid. At no period of her least refulgent moment did she
verge upon this type. Dowie took care of her and Mademoiselle Vallé
educated her with the assistance of certain masters who came to give
lessons in German and Italian.

“Why only German and Italian and French,” said Feather, “why not Latin
and Greek, as well, if she is to be so accomplished?”

“It is modern languages one needs at this period. They ought to be
taught in the Board Schools,” Coombe replied. “They are not
accomplishments but workman’s tools. Nationalities are not separated as
they once were. To be familiar with the language of one’s friends—and
one’s enemies—is a protective measure.”

“What country need one protect oneself against? When all the kings and
queens are either married to each other’s daughters or cousins or take
tea with each other every year or so. Just think of the friendliness of
Germany for instance——”

“I do,” said Coombe, “very often. That is one of the reasons I choose
German rather than Latin and Greek. Julius Cæsar and Nero are no longer
reasons for alarm.”

“Is the Kaiser with his seventeen children and his respectable Frau?”
giggled Feather. “All that he cares about is that women shall be made
to remember that they are born for nothing but to cook and go to church
and have babies. One doesn’t wonder at the clothes they wear.”

It was not a month after this, however, when Lord Coombe, again warming
himself at his old friend’s fire, gave her a piece of information.

“The German teacher, Herr Wiese, has hastily returned to his own
country,” he said.

She lifted her eyebrows inquiringly.

“He found himself suspected of being a spy,” was his answer. “With most
excellent reason. Some first-rate sketches of fortifications were found
in a box he left behind him in his haste. The country—all countries—are
sown with those like him. Mild spectacled students and clerks in
warehouses and manufactories are weighing and measuring resources;
round-faced, middle-aged governesses are making notes of conversation
and of any other thing which may be useful. In time of war—if they were
caught at what are now their simple daily occupations—they would be
placed against a wall and shot. As it is, they are allowed to play
about among us and slip away when some fellow worker’s hint suggests it
is time.”

“German young men are much given to spending a year or so here in
business positions,” the Duchess wore a thoughtful air. “That has been
going on for a decade or so. One recognizes their Teuton type in shops
and in the streets. They say they come to learn the language and
commercial methods.”

“Not long ago a pompous person, who is the owner of a big shop, pointed
out to me three of them among his salesmen,” Coombe said. “He plumed
himself on his astuteness in employing them. Said they worked for low
wages and cared for very little else but finding out how things were
done in England. It wasn’t only business knowledge they were after, he
said; they went about everywhere—into factories and dock yards, and
public buildings, and made funny little notes and sketches of things
they didn’t understand—so that they could explain them in Germany. In
his fatuous, insular way, it pleased him to regard them rather as a
species of aborigines benefiting by English civilization. The English
Ass and the German Ass are touchingly alike. The shade of difference is
that the English Ass’s sublime self-satisfaction is in the German Ass
self-glorification. The English Ass smirks and plumes himself; the
German Ass blusters and bullies and defies.”

“Do you think of engaging another German Master for the little girl?”
the Duchess asked the question casually.

“I have heard of a quiet young woman who has shown herself thorough and
well-behaved in a certain family for three years. Perhaps she also will
disappear some day, but, for the present, she will serve the purpose.”

As he had not put into words to others any explanation of the story of
the small, smart establishment in the Mayfair street, so he had put
into words no explanation to her. That she was aware of its existence
he knew, but what she thought of it, or imagined he himself thought of
it, he had not at any period inquired. Whatsoever her point of view
might be, he knew it would be unbiassed, clear minded and wholly just.
She had asked no question and made no comment. The rapid, whirligig
existence of the well-known fashionable groups, including in their
circles varieties of the Mrs. Gareth-Lawless type, were to be seen at
smart functions and to be read of in newspapers and fashion reports, if
one’s taste lay in the direction of a desire to follow their movements.
The time had passed when pretty women of her kind were cut off by
severities of opinion from the delights of a world they had thrown
their dice daringly to gain. The worldly old axiom, “Be virtuous and
you will be happy,” had been ironically paraphrased too often. “Please
yourself and you will be much happier than if you were virtuous,” was a
practical reading.

But for a certain secret which she alone knew and which no one would in
the least have believed, if she had proclaimed it from the housetops,
Feather would really have been entirely happy. And, after all, the fly
in her ointment was merely an odd sting a fantastic Fate had inflicted
on her vanity and did not in any degree affect her pleasures. So many
people lived in glass houses that the habit of throwing stones had
fallen out of fashion as an exercise. There were those, too, whose
houses of glass, adroitly given the air of being respectable
conservatories, engendered in the dwellers therein a leniency towards
other vitreous constructions. As a result of this last circumstance,
there were times when quite stately equipages drew up before Mrs.
Gareth-Lawless’ door and visiting cards bearing the names of
acquaintances much to be desired were left upon the salver presented by
Jennings. Again, as a result of this circumstance, Feather employed
some laudable effort in her desire to give her own glass house the
conservatory aspect. Her little parties became less noisy, if they
still remained lively. She gave an “afternoon” now and then to which
literary people and artists, and persons who “did things” were invited.
She was pretty enough to allure an occasional musician to “do
something”, some new poet to read or recite. Fashionable people were
asked to come and hear and talk to them, and, in this way, she threw
out delicate fishing lines here and there, and again and again drew up
a desirable fish of substantial size. Sometimes the vague rumour
connected with the name of the Head of the House of Coombe was quite
forgotten and she was referred to amiably as “That beautiful creature,
Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. She was left a widow when she was nothing but a
girl. If she hadn’t had a little money of her own, and if her husband’s
relatives hadn’t taken care of her, she would have had a hard time of
it. She is amazingly clever at managing her, small income,” they added.
“Her tiny house is one of the jolliest little places in London—always
full of good looking people and amusing things.”

But, before Robin was fourteen, she had found out that the house she
lived in was built of glass and that any chance stone would break its
panes, even if cast without particular skill in aiming. She found it
out in various ways, but the seed from which all things sprang to the
fruition of actual knowledge was the child tragedy through which she
had learned that Donal had been taken from her—because his mother would
not let him love and play with a little girl whose mother let Lord
Coombe come to her house—because Lord Coombe was so bad that even
servants whispered secrets about him. Her first interpretation of this
had been that of a mere baby, but it had filled her being with
detestation of him, and curious doubts of her mother. Donal’s mother,
who was good and beautiful, would not let him come to see her and kept
Donal away from him. If the Lady Downstairs was good, too, then why did
she laugh and talk to him and seem to like him? She had thought this
over for hours—sometimes wakening in the night to lie and puzzle over
it feverishly. Then, as time went by, she had begun to remember that
she had never played with any of the children in the Square Gardens. It
had seemed as though this had been because Andrews would not let her.
But, if she was not fit to play with Donal, perhaps the nurses and
governesses and mothers of the other children knew about it and would
not trust their little girls and boys to her damaging society. She did
not know what she could have done to harm them—and Oh! how _could_ she
have harmed Donal!—but there must be something dreadful about a child
whose mother knew bad people—something which other children could
“catch” like scarlet fever. From this seed other thoughts had grown.
She did not remain a baby long. A fervid little brain worked for her,
picked up hints and developed suggestions, set her to singularly alert
reasoning which quickly became too mature for her age. The quite horrid
little girl, who flouncingly announced that she could not be played
with any more “because of Lord Coombe” set a spark to a train. After
that time she used to ask occasional carefully considered questions of
Dowson and Mademoiselle Vallé, which puzzled them by their vagueness.
The two women were mutually troubled by a moody habit she developed of
sitting absorbed in her own thoughts, and with a concentrated little
frown drawing her brows together. They did not know that she was
silently planning a subtle cross examination of them both, whose form
would be such that neither of them could suspect it of being anything
but innocent. She felt that she was growing cunning and deceitful, but
she did not care very much. She possessed a clever and determined,
though very young brain. She loved both Dowson and Mademoiselle, but
she must find out about things for herself, and she was not going to
harm or trouble them. They would never know she had found out:
Whatsoever she discovered, she would keep to herself.

But one does not remain a baby long, and one is a little girl only a
few years, and, even during the few years, one is growing and hearing
and seeing all the time. After that, one is beginning to be a rather
big girl and one has seen books and newspapers, and overheard scraps of
things from servants. If one is brought up in a convent and allowed to
read nothing but literature selected by nuns, a degree of aloofness
from knowledge may be counted upon—though even convent schools, it is
said, encounter their difficulties in perfect discipline.

Robin, in her small “Palace” was well taken care of but her library was
not selected by nuns. It was chosen with thought, but it was the
library of modern youth. Mademoiselle Vallé’s theories of a girl’s
education were not founded on a belief that, until marriage, she should
be led about by a string blindfolded, and with ears stopped with wax.

“That results in a bleating lamb’s being turned out of its fold to make
its way through a jungle full of wild creatures and pitfalls it has
never heard of,” she said in discussing the point with Dowson. She had
learned that Lord Coombe agreed with her. He, as well as she, chose the
books and his taste was admirable. Its inclusion of an unobtrusive care
for girlhood did not preclude the exercise of the intellect. An early
developed passion for reading led the child far and wide. Fiction,
history, poetry, biography, opened up vistas to a naturally quick and
eager mind. Mademoiselle found her a clever pupil and an
affection-inspiring little being even from the first.

She always felt, however, that in the depths of her something held
itself hidden—something she did not speak of. It was some thought which
perhaps bewildered her, but which something prevented her making clear
to herself by the asking of questions. Mademoiselle Vallé finally
became convinced that she never would ask the questions.

Arrived a day when Feather swept into the Palace with some visitors.
They were two fair and handsome little girls of thirteen and fourteen,
whose mother, having taken them shopping, found it would suit her
extremely well to drop then somewhere for an hour while she went to her
dressmaker. Feather was quite willing that they should be left with
Robin and Mademoiselle until their own governess called for them.

“Here are Eileen and Winifred Erwyn, Robin,” she said, bringing them
in. “Talk to them and show them your books and things until the
governess comes. Dowson, give them some cakes and tea.”

Mrs. Erwyn was one of the most treasured of Feather’s circle. Her
little girls’ governess was a young Frenchwoman, entirely unlike
Mademoiselle Vallé. Eileen and Winifred saw Life from their schoolroom
windows as an open book. Why not, since their governess and their
mother’s French maid conversed freely, and had rather penetrating
voices even when they were under the impression that they lowered them
out of deference to blameless youth. Eileen and Winifred liked to
remain awake to listen as long as they could after they went to bed.
They themselves had large curious eyes and were given to whispering and
giggling.

They talked a good deal to Robin and assumed fashionable little grown
up airs. They felt themselves mature creatures as compared to her,
since she was not yet thirteen. They were so familiar with personages
and functions that Robin felt that they must have committed to memory
every morning the column in the _Daily Telegraph_ known as “London Day
by Day.” She sometimes read it herself, because it was amusing to her
to read about parties and weddings and engagements. But it did not seem
easy to remember. Winifred and Eileen were delighted to display
themselves in the character of instructresses. They entertained Robin
for a short time, but, after that, she began to dislike the shared
giggles which so often broke out after their introduction of a name or
an incident. It seemed to hint that they were full of amusing
information which they held back. Then they were curious and made
remarks and asked questions. She began to think them rather horrid.

“We saw Lord Coombe yesterday,” said Winifred at last, and the
unnecessary giggle followed.

“We think he wears the most beautiful clothes we ever saw! You remember
his overcoat, Winnie?” said Eileen. “He _matches_ so—and yet you don’t
know exactly how he matches,” and she giggled also.

“He is the best dressed man in London,” Winifred stated quite grandly.
“I think he is handsome. So do Mademoiselle and Florine.”

Robin said nothing at all. What Dowson privately called “her secret
look” made her face very still. Winifred saw the look and, not
understanding it or her, became curious.

“Don’t you?” she said.

“No,” Robin answered. “He has a wicked face. And he’s old, too.”

“You think he’s old because you’re only about twelve,” inserted Eileen.
“Children think everybody who is grown-up must be old. I used to. But
now people don’t talk and think about age as they used to. Mademoiselle
says that when a man has distinction he is always young—and nicer than
boys.”

Winifred, who was persistent, broke in.

“As to his looking wicked, I daresay he _is_ wicked in a sort of
interesting way. Of course, people say all sorts of things about him.
When he was quite young, he was in love with a beautiful little royal
Princess—or she was in love with him—and her husband either killed her
or she died of a broken heart—I don’t know which.”

Mademoiselle Vallé had left them for a short time feeling that they
were safe with their tea and cakes and would feel more at ease relieved
of her presence. She was not long absent, but Eileen and Winifred,
being avid of gossip and generally eliminated subjects, “got in their
work” with quite fevered haste. They liked the idea of astonishing
Robin.

Eileen bent forward and lowered her voice.

“They do say that once Captain Thorpe was fearfully jealous of him and
people wonder that he wasn’t among the co-respondents.” The word
“co-respondent” filled her with self-gratulation even though she only
whispered it.

“Co-respondents?” said Robin.

They both began to whisper at once—quite shrilly in their haste. They
knew Mademoiselle might return at any moment.

“The great divorce case, you know! The Thorpe divorce case the papers
are so full of. We get the under housemaid to bring it to us after
Mademoiselle has done with it. It’s so exciting! Haven’t you been
reading it? Oh!”

“No, I haven’t,” answered Robin. “And I don’t know about
co-respondents, but, if they are anything horrid, I daresay he _was_
one of them.”

And at that instant Mademoiselle returned and Dowson brought in fresh
cakes. The governess, who was to call for her charges, presented
herself not long afterwards and the two enterprising little persons
were taken away.

“I believe she’s _jealous_ of Lord Coombe,” Eileen whispered to
Winifred, after they reached home.

“So do I,” said Winifred wisely. “She can’t help but know how he
_adores_ Mrs. Gareth-Lawless because she’s so lovely. He pays for all
her pretty clothes. It’s silly of her to be jealous—like a baby.”

Robin sometimes read newspapers, though she liked books better.
Newspapers were not forbidden her. She been reading an enthralling book
and had not seen a paper for some days. She at once searched for one
and, finding it, sat down and found also the Thorpe Divorce Case. It
was not difficult of discovery, as it filled the principal pages with
dramatic evidence and amazing revelations.

Dowson saw her bending over the spread sheets, hot-eyed and intense in
her concentration.

“What are you reading, my love?” she asked.

The little flaming face lifted itself. It was unhappy, obstinate,
resenting. It wore no accustomed child look and Dowson felt rather
startled.

“I’m reading the Thorpe Divorce Case, Dowie,” she answered deliberately
and distinctly.

Dowie came close to her.

“It’s an ugly thing to read, my lamb,” she faltered. “Don’t you read
it. Such things oughtn’t to be allowed in newspapers. And you’re a
little girl, my own dear.” Robin’s elbow rested firmly on the table and
her chin firmly in her hand. Her eyes were not like a bird’s.

“I’m nearly thirteen,” she said. “I’m growing up. Nobody can stop
themselves when they begin to grow up. It makes them begin to find out
things. I want to ask you something, Dowie.”

“Now, lovey—!” Dowie began with tremor. Both she and Mademoiselle had
been watching the innocent “growing up” and fearing a time would come
when the widening gaze would see too much. Had it come as soon as this?

Robin suddenly caught the kind woman’s wrists in her hands and held
them while she fixed her eyes on her. The childish passion of dread and
shyness in them broke Dowson’s heart because it was so ignorant and
young.

“I’m growing up. There’s something—I _must_ know something! I never
knew how to ask about it before.” It was so plain to Dowson that she
did not know how to ask about it now. “Someone said that Lord Coombe
might have been a co-respondent in the Thorpe case——”

“These wicked children!” gasped Dowie. “They’re not children at all!”

“Everybody’s horrid but you and Mademoiselle,” cried Robin, brokenly.
She held the wrists harder and ended in a sort of outburst. “If my
father were alive—could he bring a divorce suit——And would Lord
Coombe——”

Dowson burst into open tears. And then, so did Robin. She dropped
Dowson’s wrists and threw her arms around her waist, clinging to it in
piteous repentance.

“No, I won’t!” she cried out. “I oughtn’t to try to make you tell me.
You can’t. I’m wicked to you. Poor Dowie—darling Dowie! I want to
_kiss_ you, Dowie! Let me—let me!”

She sobbed childishly on the comfortable breast and Dowie hugged her
close and murmured in a choked voice,

“My lamb! My pet lamb!”




CHAPTER XIX


Mademoiselle Vallé and Dowson together realized that after this the
growing up process was more rapid. It always seems incredibly rapid to
lookers on, after thirteen. But these two watchers felt that, in
Robin’s case, it seemed unusually so. Robin had always been interested
in her studies and clever at them, but, suddenly, she developed a new
concentration and it was of an order which her governess felt denoted
the secret holding of some object in view. She devoted herself to her
lessons with a quality of determination which was new. She had
previously been absorbed, but not determined. She made amazing strides
and seemed to aspire to a thoroughness and perfection girls did not
commonly aim at—especially at the frequently rather preoccupied hour of
blossoming. Mademoiselle encountered in her an eagerness that she—who
knew girls—would have felt it optimistic to expect in most cases. She
wanted to work over hours; she would have read too much if she had not
been watched and gently coerced.

She was not distracted by the society of young people of her own age.
She, indeed, showed a definite desire to avoid such companionship. What
she said to Mademoiselle Vallé one afternoon during a long walk they
took together, held its own revelation for the older woman.

They had come upon the two Erwyns walking with their attendant in
Kensington Gardens, and, seeing them at some distance, Robin asked her
companion to turn into another walk.

“I don’t want to meet them,” she said, hurriedly. “I don’t think I like
girls. Perhaps it’s horrid of me—but I don’t. I don’t like those two.”
A few minutes later, after they had walked in an opposite direction,
she said thoughtfully.

“Perhaps the kind of girls I should like to know would not like to know
me.”

From the earliest days of her knowledge of Lord Coombe, Mademoiselle
Vallé had seen that she had no cause to fear lack of comprehension on
his part. With a perfection of method, they searched each other’s
intelligence. It had become understood that on such occasions as there
was anything she wished to communicate or inquire concerning, Mr.
Benby, in his private room, was at Mademoiselle’s service, and there
his lordship could also be met personally by appointment.

“There have been no explanations,” Mademoiselle Vallé said to Dowson.
“He does not ask to know why I turn to him and I do not ask to know why
he cares about this particular child. It is taken for granted that is
his affair and not mine. I am paid well to take care of Robin, and he
knows that all I say and do is part of my taking care of her.”

After the visit of the Erwyn children, she had a brief interview with
Coombe, in which she made for him a clear sketch. It was a sketch of
unpleasant little minds, avid and curious on somewhat exotic subjects,
little minds, awake to rather common claptrap and gossipy pinchbeck
interests.

“Yes—unpleasant, luckless, little persons. I quite understand. They
never appeared before. They will not appear again. Thank you,
Mademoiselle,” he said.

The little girls did not appear again; neither did any others of their
type, and the fact that Feather knew little of other types was a
sufficient reason for Robin’s growing up without companions of her own
age.

“She’s a lonely child, after all,” Mademoiselle said.

“She always was,” answered Dowie. “But she’s fond of us, bless her
heart, and it isn’t loneliness like it was before we came.”

“She is not unhappy. She is too blooming and full of life,”
Mademoiselle reflected. “We adore her and she has many interests. It is
only that she does not know the companionship most young people enjoy.
Perhaps, as she has never known it, she does not miss it.”

The truth was that if the absence of intercourse with youth produced
its subtle effect on her, she was not aware of any lack, and a certain
uncompanioned habit of mind, which gave her much time for dreams and
thought, was accepted by her as a natural condition as simply as her
babyhood had accepted the limitations of the Day and Night Nurseries.

She was not a self-conscious creature, but the time came when she
became rather disturbed by the fact that people looked at her very
often, as she walked in the streets. Sometimes they turned their heads
to look after her; occasionally one person walking with another would
say something quietly to his or her companion, and they even paused a
moment to turn quite round and look. The first few times she noticed
this she flushed prettily and said nothing to Mademoiselle Vallé who
was generally with her. But, after her attention had been attracted by
the same thing on several different days, she said uneasily:

“Am I quite tidy, Mademoiselle?”

“Quite,” Mademoiselle answered—just a shade uneasy herself.

“I began to think that perhaps something had come undone or my hat was
crooked,” she explained. “Those two women stared so. Then two men in a
hansom leaned forward and one said something to the other, and they
both laughed a little, Mademoiselle!” hurriedly, “Now, there are three
young men!” quite indignantly. “Don’t let them see you notice them—but
I think it _rude!_”

They were carelessly joyous and not strictly well-bred youths, who were
taking a holiday together, and their rudeness was quite unintentional
and without guile. They merely stared and obviously muttered comments
to each other as they passed, each giving the hasty, unconscious touch
to his young moustache, which is the automatic sign of pleasurable
observation in the human male.

“If she had had companions of her own age she would have known all
about it long ago,” Mademoiselle was thinking.

Her intelligent view of such circumstances was that the simple fact
they arose from could—with perfect taste—only be treated simply. It was
a mere fact; therefore, why be prudish and affected about it.

“They did not intend any rudeness,” she said, after they had gone by.
“They are not much more than boys and not perfectly behaved. People
often stare when they see a very pretty girl. I am afraid I do it
myself. You are very pretty,” quite calmly, and as one speaking without
prejudice.

Robin turned and looked at her, and the colour, which was like a
Jacqueminot rose, flooded her face. She was at the flushing age. Her
gaze was interested, speculative, and a shade startled—merely a shade.

“Oh,” she said briefly—not in exclamation exactly, but in a sort of
acceptance. Then she looked straight before her and went on walking,
with the lovely, slightly swaying, buoyant step which in itself drew
attracted eyes after her.

“If I were a model governess, such as one read of long before you were
born,” Mademoiselle Vallé continued, “I should feel it my duty to tell
you that beauty counts for nothing. But that is nonsense. It counts a
great deal—with some women it counts for everything. Such women are not
lucky. One should thank Heaven for it and make the best of it, without
exaggerated anxiety. Both Dowie and I, who love you, are _grateful_ to
_le bon Dieu_ that you are pretty.”

“I have sometimes thought I was pretty, when I saw myself in the
glass,” said Robin, with unexcited interest. “It seemed to me that I
_looked_ pretty. But, at the same time, I couldn’t help knowing that
everything is a matter of taste and that it might be because I was
conceited.”

“You are not conceited,” answered the Frenchwoman.

“I don’t want to be,” said Robin. “I want to be—a serious person
with—with a strong character.”

Mademoiselle’s smile was touched with affectionate doubt. It had not
occurred to her to view this lovely thing in the light of a “strong”
character. Though, after all, what exactly was strength? She was a
warm, intensely loving, love compelling, tender being. Having seen much
of the world, and of humanity and inhumanity, Mademoiselle Vallé had
had moments of being afraid for her—particularly when, by chance, she
recalled the story Dowson had told her of the bits of crushed and
broken leaves.

“A serious person,” she said, “and strong?”

“Because I must earn my own living,” said Robin. “I must be strong
enough to take care of myself. I am going to be a governess—or
something.”

Here, it was revealed to Mademoiselle as in a flash, was the reason why
she had applied herself with determination to her studies. This had
been the object in view. For reasons of her own, she intended to earn
her living. With touched interest, Mademoiselle Vallé waited, wondering
if she would be frank about the reason. She merely said aloud:

“A governess?”

“Perhaps there may be something else I can do. I might be a secretary
or something like that. Girls and women are beginning to do so many new
things,” her charge explained herself. “I do not want to be—supported
and given money. I mean I do not want—other people—to buy my clothes
and food—and things. The newspapers are full of advertisements. I could
teach children. I could translate business letters. Very soon I shall
be old enough to begin. Girls in their teens do it.”

She had laid some of her cards on the table, but not all, poor child.
She was not going into the matter of her really impelling reasons. But
Mademoiselle Vallé was not dull, and her affection added keenness to
her mental observations. Also she had naturally heard the story of the
Thorpe lawsuit from Dowson. Inevitably several points suggested
themselves to her.

“Mrs. Gareth-Lawless——” she began, reasonably.

But Robin stopped her by turning her face full upon her once more, and
this time her eyes were full of clear significance.

“She will let me go,” she said. “You _know_ she will let me go,
Mademoiselle, darling. You _know_ she will.” There was a frank
comprehension and finality in the words which made a full revelation of
facts Mademoiselle herself had disliked even to allow to form
themselves into thoughts. The child knew all sorts of things and felt
all sorts of things. She would probably never go into details, but she
was extraordinarily, harrowingly, _aware_. She had been learning to be
aware for years. This had been the secret she had always kept to
herself.

“If you are planning this,” Mademoiselle said, as reasonably as before,
“we must work very seriously for the next few years.”

“How long do you think it will take?” asked Robin. She was nearing
sixteen—bursting into glowing blossom—a radiant, touching thing whom
one only could visualize in flowering gardens, in charming, enclosing
rooms, figuratively embraced by every mature and kind arm within reach
of her. This presented itself before Mademoiselle Vallé with such
vividness that it was necessary for her to control a sigh.

“When I feel that you are ready, I will tell you,” she answered. “And I
will do all I can to help you—before I leave you.”

“Oh!” Robin gasped, in an involuntarily childish way, “I—hadn’t thought
of that! How could I _live_ without you—and Dowie?”

“I know you had not thought of it,” said Mademoiselle, affectionately.
“You are only a dear child yet. But that will be part of it, you know.
A governess or a secretary, or a young lady in an office translating
letters cannot take her governess and maid with her.”

“Oh!” said Robin again, and her eyes became suddenly so dewy that the
person who passed her at the moment thought he had never seen such
wonderful eyes in his life. So much of her was still child that the
shock of this sudden practical realization thrust the mature and
determined part of her being momentarily into the background, and she
could scarcely bear her alarmed pain. It was true that she had been too
young to face her plan as she must.

But, after the long walk was over and she found herself in her bedroom
again, she was conscious of a sense of being relieved of a burden. She
had been wondering when she could tell Mademoiselle and Dowie of her
determination. She had not liked to keep it a secret from them as if
she did not love them, but it had been difficult to think of a way in
which to begin without seeming as if she thought she was quite grown
up—which would have been silly. She had not thought of speaking today,
but it had all come about quite naturally, as a result of
Mademoiselle’s having told her that she was really very pretty—so
pretty that it made people turn to look at her in the street. She had
heard of girls and women who were like that, but she had never thought
it possible that she——! She had, of course, been looked at when she was
very little, but she had heard Andrews say that people looked because
she had so much hair and it was like curled silk.

She went to the dressing table and looked at herself in the glass,
leaning forward that she might see herself closely. The face which drew
nearer and nearer had the effect of some tropic flower, because it was
so alive with colour which seemed to palpitate instead of standing
still. Her soft mouth was warm and brilliant with it, and the darkness
of her eyes was—as it had always been—like dew. Her brows were a slender
black velvet line, and her lashes made a thick, softening shadow. She
saw they were becoming. She cupped her round chin in her hands and
studied herself with a desire to be sure of the truth without prejudice
or self conceit. The whole effect of her was glowing, and she felt the
glow as others did. She put up a finger to touch the velvet petal
texture of her skin, and she saw how prettily pointed and slim her hand
was. Yes, that was pretty—and her hair—the way it grew about her
forehead and ears and the back of her neck. She gazed at her young
curve and colour and flame of life’s first beauty with deep curiosity,
singularly impersonal for her years.

She liked it; she began to be grateful as Mademoiselle had said she and
Dowie were. Yes, if other people liked it, there was no use in
pretending it would not count.

“If I am going to earn my living,” she thought, with entire gravity,
“it may be good for me. If I am a governess, it will be useful because
children like pretty people. And if I am a secretary and work in an
office, I daresay business men like one to be pretty because it is more
cheerful.”

She mentioned this to Mademoiselle Vallé, who was very kind about it,
though she looked thoughtful afterwards. When, a few days later,
Mademoiselle had an interview with Coombe in Benby’s comfortable room,
he appeared thoughtful also as he listened to her recital of the
incidents of the long walk during which her charge had revealed her
future plans.

“She is a nice child,” he said. “I wish she did not dislike me so much.
I understand her, villain as she thinks me. I am not a genuine
villain,” he added, with his cold smile. But he was saying it to
himself, not to Mademoiselle.

This, she saw, but—singularly, perhaps—she spoke as if in reply.

“Of that I am aware.”

He turned his head slightly, with a quick, unprepared movement.

“Yes?” he said.

“Would your lordship pardon me if I should say that otherwise I should
not ask your advice concerning a very young girl?”

He slightly waved his hand.

“I should have known that—if I had thought of it. I do know it.”

Mademoiselle Vallé bowed.

“The fact,” she said, “that she seriously thinks that perhaps beauty
may be an advantage to a young person who applies for work in the
office of a man of business because it may seem bright and cheerful to
him when he is tired and out of spirits—that gives one furiously to
think. Yes, to me she said it, milord—with the eyes of a little dove
brooding over her young. I could see her—lifting them like an angel to
some elderly _vaurien_, who would merely think her a born _cocotte_.”

Here Coombe’s rigid face showed thought indeed.

“Good God!” he muttered, quite to himself, “Good God!” in a low,
breathless voice. Villain or saint, he knew not one world but many.

“We must take care of her,” he said next. “She is not an insubordinate
child. She will do nothing yet?”

“I have told her she is not yet ready,” Mademoiselle Vallé answered. “I
have also promised to tell her when she is—And to help her.”

“God help her if we do not!” he said. “She is, on the whole, as
ignorant as a little sheep—and butchers are on the lookout for such as
she is. They suit them even better than the little things whose
tendencies are perverse from birth. An old man with an evil character
may be able to watch over her from a distance.”

Mademoiselle regarded him with grave eyes, which took in his tall, thin
erectness of figure, his bearing, the perfection of his attire with its
unfailing freshness, which was not newness.

“Do you call yourself an old man, milord?” she asked.

“I am not decrepit—years need not bring that,” was his answer. “But I
believe I became an old man before I was thirty. I have grown no
older—in that which is really age—since then.”

In the moment’s silence which followed, his glance met Mademoiselle
Vallé’s and fixed itself.

“I am not old enough—or young enough—to be enamoured of Mrs.
Gareth-Lawless’ little daughter,” he said. “_You_ need not be told
that. But you have heard that there are those who amuse themselves by
choosing to believe that I am.”

“A few light and not too clean-minded fools,” she admitted without
flinching.

“No man can do worse for himself than to explain and deny,” he
responded with a smile at once hard and fine. “Let them continue to
believe it.”




CHAPTER XX


Sixteen passed by with many other things much more disturbing and
important to the world than a girl’s birthday; seventeen was gone, with
passing events more complicated still and increasingly significant, but
even the owners of the hands hovering over the Chessboard, which was
the Map of Europe, did not keep a watch on all of them as close as
might have been kept with advantage. Girls in their teens are seldom
interested in political and diplomatic conditions, and Robin was not
fond of newspapers. She worked well and steadily under Mademoiselle’s
guidance, and her governess realized that she was not losing sight of
her plans for self support. She was made aware of this by an occasional
word or so, and also by a certain telepathic union between them. Little
as she cared for the papers, the child had a habit of closely examining
the advertisements every day. She read faithfully the columns devoted
to those who “Want” employment or are “Wanted” by employers.

“I look at all the paragraphs which begin ‘Wanted, a young lady’ or a
‘young woman’ or a ‘young person,’ and those which say that ‘A young
person’ or ‘a young woman’ or ‘a young lady’ desires a position. I want
to find out what is oftenest needed.”

She had ceased to be disturbed by the eyes which followed her, or
opened a little as she passed. She knew that nothing had come undone or
was crooked and that untidiness had nothing to do with the matter. She
accepted being looked at as a part of everyday life. A certain
friendliness and pleasure in most of the glances she liked and was glad
of. Sometimes men of the flushed, middle-aged or elderly type
displeased her by a sort of boldness of manner and gaze, but she
thought that they were only silly, giddy, old things who ought to go
home to their families and stay with them. Mademoiselle or Dowie was
nearly always with her, but, as she was not a French _jeune fille_,
this was not because it was supposed that she could not be trusted out
alone, but because she enjoyed their affectionate companionship.

There was one man, however, whom she greatly disliked, as young girls
will occasionally dislike a member of the opposite sex for no special
reason they can wholly explain to themselves.

He was an occasional visitor of her mother’s—a personable young
Prussian officer of high rank and title. He was blonde and military and
good-looking; he brought his bearing and manner from the Court at
Berlin, and the click of his heels as he brought them smartly together,
when he made his perfect automatic bow, was one of the things Robin
knew she was reasonless in feeling she detested in him.

“It makes me feel as if he was not merely bowing as a a man who is a
gentleman does,” she confided to Mademoiselle Vallé, “but as if he had
been taught to do it and to call attention to it as if no one had ever
known how to do it properly before. It is so flourishing in its stiff
way that it’s rather vulgar.”

“That is only personal fancy on your part,” commented Mademoiselle.

“I know it is,” admitted Robin. “But—” uneasily, “—but that isn’t what
I dislike in him most. It’s his eyes, I suppose they are handsome eyes.
They are blue and full—rather too full. They have a queer, swift
stare—as if they plunged into other people’s eyes and tried to hold
them and say something secret, all in one second. You find yourself
getting red and trying to look away.”

“I don’t,” said Mademoiselle astutely—because she wanted to hear the
rest, without asking too many questions.

Robin laughed just a little.

“You have not seen him do it. I have not seen him do it myself very
often. He comes to call on—Mamma”—she never said “Mother”—“when he is
in London. He has been coming for two or three seasons. The first time
I saw him I was going out with Dowie and he was just going upstairs.
Because the hall is so small, we almost knocked against each other, and
he jumped back and made his bow, and he stared so that I felt silly and
half frightened. I was only fifteen then.”

“And since then?” Mademoiselle Vallé inquired.

“When he is here it seems as if I always meet him somewhere. Twice,
when Fräulein Hirsch was with me in the Square Gardens, he came and
spoke to us. I think he must know her. He was very grand and
condescendingly polite to her, as if he did not forget she was only a
German teacher and I was only a little girl whose mamma he knew. But he
kept looking at me until I began to hate him.”

“You must not dislike people without reason. You dislike Lord Coombe.”

“They both make me creep. Lord Coombe doesn’t plunge his eyes into
mine, but he makes me creep with his fishy coldness. I feel as if he
were like Satan in his still way.”

“That is childish prejudice and nonsense.”

“Perhaps the other is, too,” said Robin. “But they both make me creep,
nevertheless. I would rather _die_ than be obliged to let one of them
touch me. That was why I would never shake hands with Lord Coombe when
I was a little child.”

“You think Fräulein Hirsch knows the Baron?” Mademoiselle inquired
further.

“I am sure she does. Several times, when she has gone out to walk with
me, we have met him. Sometimes he only passes us and salutes, but
sometimes he stops and says a few words in a stiff, magnificent way.
But he always bores his eyes into mine, as if he were finding out
things about me which I don’t know myself. He has passed several times
when you have been with me, but you may not remember.”

Mademoiselle Vallé chanced, however, to recall having observed the
salute of a somewhat haughty, masculine person, whose military bearing
in itself was sufficient to attract attention, so markedly did it
suggest the clanking of spurs and accoutrements, and the high lift of a
breast bearing orders.

“He is Count von Hillern, and I wish he would stay in Germany,” said
Robin.

Fräulein Hirsch had not been one of those who returned hastily to her
own country, giving no warning of her intention to her employers. She
had remained in London and given her lessons faithfully. She was a
plain young woman with a large nose and pimpled, colourless face and
shy eyes and manner. Robin had felt sure that she stood in awe of the
rank and military grandeur of her fellow countryman. She looked shyer
than ever when he condescended to halt and address her and her
charge—so shy, indeed, that her glances seemed furtive. Robin guessed
that she admired him but was too humble to be at ease when he was near
her. More than once she had started and turned red and pale when she
saw him approaching, which had caused Robin to wonder if she herself
would feel as timid and overpowered by her superiors, if she became a
governess. Clearly, a man like Count von Hillern would then be counted
among her superiors, and she must conduct herself becomingly, even if
it led to her looking almost stealthy. She had, on several occasions,
asked Fräulein certain questions about governesses. She had inquired as
to the age at which one could apply for a place as instructress to
children or young girls. Fräulein Hirsch had begun her career in
Germany at the age of eighteen. She had lived a serious life, full of
responsibilities at home as one of a large family, and she had perhaps
been rather mature for her age. In England young women who wished for
situations answered advertisements and went to see the people who had
inserted them in the newspapers, she explained. Sometimes, the results
were very satisfactory. Fräulein Hirsch was very amiable in her
readiness to supply information. Robin did not tell her of her
intention to find work of some sort—probably governessing—but the young
German woman was possessed of a mind “made in Germany” and was quite
well aware of innumerable things her charge did not suspect her of
knowing. One of the things she knew best was that the girl was a child.
She was not a child herself, and she was an abjectly bitter and
wretched creature who had no reason for hope. She lived in small
lodgings in a street off Abbey Road, and, in a drawer in her dressing
table, she kept hidden a photograph of a Prussian officer with cropped
blond head, and handsome prominent blue eyes, arrogantly gazing from
beneath heavy lids which drooped. He was of the type the German woman,
young and slim, or mature and stout, privately worships as a god whose
relation to any woman can only be that of a modern Jove stooping to
command service. In his teens he had become accustomed to the female
eye which lifts itself adoringly or casts the furtively excited glance
of admiration or appeal. It was the way of mere nature that it should
be so—the wise provision of a masculine God, whose world was created
for the supply and pleasure of males, especially males of the Prussian
Army, whose fixed intention it was to dominate the world and teach it
obedience.

To such a man, so thoroughly well trained in the comprehension of the
power of his own rank and values, a young woman such as Fräulein
Hirsch—subservient and without beauty—was an unconsidered object to be
as little regarded as the pavement upon which one walks. The pavement
had its uses, and such women had theirs. They could, at least, obey the
orders of those Heaven had placed above them, and, if they showed
docility and intelligence, might be re warded by a certain degree of
approval.

A presumption, which would have dared to acknowledge to the existence
of the hidden photograph, could not have been encompassed by the being
of Fräulein Hirsch. She was, in truth, secretly enslaved by a burning,
secret, heart-wringing passion which, sometimes, as she lay on her hard
bed at night, forced from her thin chest hopeless sobs which she
smothered under the bedclothes.

Figuratively, she would have licked the boots of her conquering god, if
he would have looked at her—just looked—as if she were human. But such
a thing could not have occurred to him. He did not even think of her as
she thought of herself, torturingly—as not young, not in any degree
good-looking, not _geboren_, not even female. He did not think of her
at all, except as one of those born to serve in such manner as their
superiors commanded. She was in England under orders, because she was
unobtrusive looking enough to be a safe person to carry on the work she
had been given to do. She was cleverer than she looked and could
accomplish certain things without attracting any attention whatsoever.

Von Hillern had given her instructions now and then, which had made it
necessary for him to see and talk to her in various places. The fact
that she had before her the remote chance of seeing him by some chance,
gave her an object in life. It was enough to be allowed to stand or sit
for a short time near enough to have been able to touch his sleeve, if
she had had the mad audacity to do it; to quail before his magnificent
glance, to hear his voice, to _almost_ touch his strong, white hand
when she gave him papers, to see that he deigned, sometimes, to approve
of what she had done, to assure him of her continued obedience, with
servile politeness.

She was not a nice woman, or a good one, and she had, from her birth,
accepted her place in her world with such finality that her desires
could not, at any time, have been of an elevated nature. If he had
raised a haughty hand and beckoned to her, she would have followed him
like a dog under any conditions he chose to impose. But he did not
raise his hand, and never would, because she had no attractions
whatsoever. And this she knew, so smothered her sobs in her bed at
night or lay awake, fevered with anticipation when there was a vague
chance that he might need her for some reason and command her presence
in some deserted park or country road or cheap hotel, where she could
take rooms for the night as if she were a passing visitor to London.

One night—she had taken cheap lodgings for a week in a side street, in
obedience to orders—he came in about nine o’clock dressed in a manner
whose object was to dull the effect of his grandeur and cause him to
look as much like an ordinary Englishman as possible.

But, when the door was closed and he stood alone in the room with her,
she saw, with the blissful pangs of an abjectly adoring woman, that he
automatically resumed his magnificence of bearing. His badly fitting
overcoat removed, he stood erect and drawn to his full height, so
dominating the small place and her idolatrously cringing being that her
heart quaked within her. Oh! to dare to cast her unloveliness at his
feet, if it were only to be trampled upon and die there! No small sense
of humour existed in her brain to save her from her pathetic idiocy.
Romantic humility and touching sacrifice to the worshipped one were the
ideals she had read of in verse and song all her life. Only through
such servitude and sacrifice could woman gain man’s love—and even then
only if she had beauty and the gifts worthy of her idol’s acceptance.

It was really his unmitigated arrogance she worshipped and crawled upon
her poor, large-jointed knees to adore. Her education, her very
religion itself had taught that it was the sign of his nobility and
martial high breeding. Even the women of his own class believed
something of the same sort—the more romantic and sentimental of them
rather enjoying being mastered by it. To Fräulein Hirsch’s mental
vision, he was a sublimated and more dazzling German Rochester, and she
herself a more worthy, because more submissive, Jane Eyre. Ach Gott!
His high-held, cropped head—his so beautiful white hands—his proud eyes
which deigned to look at her from their drooping lids! His presence
filled the shabby room with the atmosphere of a Palace.

He asked her a few questions; he required from her certain notes she
had made; without wasting a word or glance he gave her in detail
certain further orders.

He stood by the table, and it was, therefore, necessary that she should
approach him—should even stand quite near that she might see clearly a
sketch he made hastily—immediately afterwards tearing it into fragments
and burning it with a match. She was obliged to stand so near him that
her skirt brushed his trouser leg. His nearness, and a vague scent of
cigar smoke, mingled with the suggestion of some masculine soap or
essence, were so poignant in their effect that she trembled and water
rose in her eyes. In fact—and despite her terrified effort to control
it, a miserable tear fell on her cheek and stood there because she
dared not wipe it away.

Because he realized, with annoyance, that she was trembling, he cast a
cold, inquiring glance at her and saw the tear. Then he turned away and
resumed his examination of her notes. He was not here to make inquiries
as to whether a sheep of a woman was crying or had merely a cold in her
head. “Ach!” grovelled poor Hirsch in her secret soul,—his patrician
control of outward expression and his indifference to all small and
paltry things! It was part, not only of his aristocratic breeding, but
of the splendour of his military training.

It was his usual custom to leave her at once, when the necessary
formula had been gone through. Tonight—she scarcely dared to believe
it—he seemed to have some reason for slight delay. He did not sit down
or ask Fräulein Hirsch to do so—but he did not at once leave the room.
He lighted a quite marvellous cigar—deigning a slight wave of the
admired hand which held it, designating that he asked permission. Oh!
if she dared have darted to him with a match! He stood upon the hearth
and asked a casual-sounding question or so regarding her employer, her
household, her acquaintances, her habits.

The sole link between them was the asking of questions and the giving
of private information, and, therefore, the matter of taste in such
matters did not count as a factor. He might ask anything and she must
answer. Perhaps it was necessary for her to seek some special knowledge
among the guests Mrs. Gareth-Lawless received. But training, having
developed in her alertness of mind, led her presently to see that it
was not Mrs. Gareth-Lawless he was chiefly interested in—but a member
of her family—the very small family which consisted of herself and her
daughter.

It was Robin he was enclosing in his network of questions. And she had
seen him look at Robin when he had passed or spoken to them. An
illuminating flash brought back to her that he had cleverly found out
from her when they were to walk together, and where they were to go.
She had not been quick enough to detect this before, but she saw it
now. Girls who looked like that—yes! But it could not be—serious. An
English girl of such family—with such a mother! A momentary caprice,
such as all young men of his class amused themselves with and
forgot—but nothing permanent. It would not, indeed, be approved in
those High Places where obedience was the first commandment of the
Decalogue.

But he did not go. He even descended a shade from his inaccessible
plane. It was not difficult for him to obtain details of the odd
loneliness of the girl’s position. Fräulein Hirsch was quite ready to
explain that, in spite of the easy morals and leniency of rank and
fashion in England, she was a sort of little outcast from sacred inner
circles. There were points she burned to make clear to him, and she
made them so. She was in secret fiercely desirous that he should
realize to the utmost, that, whatsoever rashness this young flame of
loveliness inspired in him, it was _not_ possible that he could regard
it with any shadow of serious intention. She had always disliked the
girl, and now her weak mildness and humility suddenly transformed
themselves into something else—a sort of maternal wolfishness. It did
not matter what happened to the girl—and whatsoever befell or did not
befall her, she—Mathilde Hirsch—could neither gain nor lose hope
through it. But, if she did not displease him and yet saved him from
final disaster, he would, perhaps, be grateful to her—and perhaps,
speak with approval—or remember it—and his Noble Mother most certainly
would—if she ever knew. But behind and under and through all these
specious reasonings, was the hot choking burn of the mad jealousy only
her type of luckless woman can know—and of whose colour she dare not
show the palest hint.

“I have found out that, for some reason, she thinks of taking a place
as governess,” she said.

“Suggest that she go to Berlin. There are good places there,” was his
answer.

“If she should go, her mother will not feel any anxiety about her,”
returned Fräulein Hirsch.

“If, then, some young man she meets in the street makes love to her and
they run away together, she will not be pursued by her relatives.”

Fräulein Hirsch’s flat mouth looked rather malicious.

“Her mother is too busy to pursue her, and there is no one else—unless
it were Lord Coombe, who is said to want her himself.”

Von Hillern shrugged his fine shoulders.

“At his age! After the mother! That is like an Englishman!”

Upon this, Fräulein Hirsch drew a step nearer and fixed her eyes upon
his, as she had never had the joy of fixing them before in her life.
She dared it now because she had an interesting story to tell him which
he would like to hear. It _was_ like an Englishman. Lord Coombe had the
character of being one of the worst among them, but was too subtle and
clever to openly offend people. It was actually said that he was
educating the girl and keeping her in seclusion and that it was
probably his colossal intention to marry her when she was old enough.
He had no heir of his own—and he must have beauty and innocence.
Innocence and beauty his viciousness would have.

“Pah!” exclaimed von Hillern. “It is youth which requires such
things—and takes them. That is all imbecile London gossip. No, he would
not run after her if she ran away. He is a proud man and he knows he
would be laughed at. And he could not get her back from a young man—who
was her lover.”

Her lover! How it thrilled the burning heart her poor, flat chest
panted above. With what triumphant knowledge of such things he said it.

“No, he could not,” she answered, her eyes still on his. “No one
could.”

He laughed a little, confidently, but almost with light indifference.

“If she were missing, no particular search would be made then,” he
said. “She is pretty enough to suit Berlin.”

He seemed to think pleasantly of something as he stood still for a
moment, his eyes on the floor. When he lifted them, there was in their
blue a hint of ugly exulting, though Mathilde Hirsch did not think it
ugly. He spoke in a low voice.

“It will be an exciting—a colossal day when we come to London—as we
shall. It will be as if an ocean had collected itself into one huge
mountain of a wave and swept in and overwhelmed everything. There will
be confusion then and the rushing up of untrained soldiers—and
shouts—and yells——”

“And Zeppelins dropping bombs,” she so far forgot herself as to pant
out, “and buildings crashing and pavements and people smashed!
Westminster and the Palaces rocking, and fat fools running before
bayonets.”

He interrupted her with a short laugh uglier than the gleam in his
eyes. He was a trifle excited.

“And all the women running about screaming and trying to hide and being
pulled out. We can take any of their pretty, little, high nosed women
we choose—any of them.”

“Yes,” she answered, biting her lip. No one would take her, she knew.

He put on his overcoat and prepared to leave her. As he stood at the
door before opening it, he spoke in his usual tone of mere command.

“Take her to Kensington Gardens tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Sit in
one of the seats near the Round Pond and watch the children sailing
their boats. I shall not be there but you will find yourself near a
quiet, elegant woman in mourning who will speak to you. You are to
appear to recognize her as an old acquaintance. Follow her suggestions
in everything.”

After this he was gone and she sat down to think it over.




CHAPTER XXI


She saw him again during the following week and was obliged to tell him
that she had not been able to take her charge to Kensington Gardens on
the morning that he had appointed but that, as the girl was fond of the
place and took pleasure in watching the children sailing their boats on
the Round Pond, it would be easy to lead her there. He showed her a
photograph of the woman she would find sitting on a particular bench,
and he required she should look at it long enough to commit the face to
memory. It was that of a quietly elegant woman with gentle eyes.

“She will call herself Lady Etynge,” he said. “You are to remember that
you once taught her little girl in Paris. There must be no haste and no
mistakes. It be well for them to meet—by accident—several times.”

Later he aid to her:

“When Lady Etynge invites her to go to her house, you will, of course,
go with her. You will not stay. Lady Etynge will tell you what to do.”

In words, he did not involve himself by giving any hint of his
intentions. So far as expression went, he might have had none,
whatever. Her secret conclusion was that he knew, if he could see the
girl under propitious circumstances—at the house of a clever and
sympathetic acquaintance, he need have no shadow of a doubt as to the
result of his efforts to please her. He knew she was a lonely, romantic
creature, who had doubtless read sentimental books and been allured by
their heroes. She was, of course, just ripe for young peerings into the
land of love making. His had been no peerings, thought the pale Hirsch
sadly. What girl—or woman—could resist the alluring demand of his
drooping eyes, if he chose to allow warmth to fill them? Thinking of
it, she almost gnashed her teeth. Did she not see how he would look,
bending his high head and murmuring to a woman who shook with joy under
his gaze? Had she not seen it in her own forlorn, hopeless dreams?

What did it matter if what the world calls disaster befell the girl?
Fräulein Hirsch would not have called it disaster. Any woman would have
been paid a thousand times over. His fancy might last a few months.
Perhaps he would take her to Berlin—or to some lovely secret spot in
the mountains where he could visit her. What heaven—what heaven! She
wept, hiding her face on her hot, dry hands.

But it would not last long—and he would again think only of the immense
work—the august Machine, of which he was a mechanical part—and he would
be obliged to see and talk to her, Mathilde Hirsch, having forgotten
the rest. She could only hold herself decently in check by telling
herself again and again that it was only natural that such things
should come and go in his magnificent life, and that the sooner it
began the sooner it would end.

It was a lovely morning when her pupil walked with her in Kensington
Gardens, and, quite naturally, strolled towards the Round Pond. Robin
was happy because there were flutings of birds in the air, gardeners
were stuffing crocuses and hyacinths into the flower beds, there were
little sweet scents floating about and so it was Spring. She pulled a
bare looking branch of a lilac bush towards her and stooped and kissed
the tiny brown buttons upon it, half shyly.

“I can’t help it when I see the first ones swelling on the twigs. They
are working so hard to break out into green,” she said. “One loves
everything at this time—everything! Look at the children round the
pond. That fat, little boy in a reefer and brown leather leggings is
bursting with joy. Let us go and praise his boat, Fräulein.”

They went and Robin praised the boat until its owner was breathless
with rapture. Fräulein Hirsch, standing near her, looked furtively at
all the benches round the circle, giving no incautiously interested
glance to any one of them in particular. Presently, however, she said:

“I think that is Lady Etynge sitting on the third bench from here. I
said to you that I had heard she was in London. I wonder if her
daughter is still in the Convent at Tours?”

When Robin turned, she saw a quiet woman in perfect mourning
recognize Fräulein Hirsch with a a bow and smile which seemed to
require nearer approach.

“We must go and speak to her.” Fräulein Hirsch said. “I know she wil
wish me to present you. She is fond of young girls—because of Hélène.”

Robin went forward prettily. The woman was gentle looking and
attracting. She had a sweet manner and was very kind to Fräulein
Hirsch. She seemed to know her well and to like her. Her daughter,
Hélène, was still in the Convent at Tours but was expected home very
shortly. She would be glad to find that Fräulein Hirsch was in London.

“I have turned the entire top story of my big house into a pretty suite
for her. She has a fancy for living high above the street,” smiled Lady
Etynge, indulgently. Perhaps she was a “Mother” person, Robin thought.

Both her looks and talk were kind, and she was very nice in her
sympathetic interest in the boats and the children’s efforts to sail
them.

“I often bring my book here and forget to read, because I find I am
watching them,” she said. “They are so eager and so triumphant when a
boat gets across the Pond.”

She went away very soon and Robin watched her out of sight with
interest.

They saw her again a few days later and talked a little more. She was
not always near the Pond when they came, and they naturally did not go
there each time they walked together, though Fräulein Hirsch was fond
of sitting and watching the children.

She had been to take tea with her former employer, she told Robin one
day, and she was mildly excited by the preparations for Hélène, who had
been educated entirely in a French convent and was not like an English
girl at all. She had always been very delicate and the nuns seemed to
know how to take care of her and calm her nerves with their quiet ways.

“Her mother is rather anxious about her coming to London. She has, of
course, no young friends here and she is so used to the quiet of
convent life,” the Fräulein explained. “That is why the rooms at the
top of the house have been arranged for her. She will hear so little
sound. I confess I am anxious about her myself. Lady Etynge is
wondering if she can find a suitable young companion to live in the
house with her. She must be a young lady and perfectly educated—and
with brightness and charm. Not a person like myself, but one who can be
treated as an equal and a friend—almost a playmate.”

“It would be an agreeable position,” commented Robin, thoughtfully.

“Extremely so,” answered Fräulein Hirsch. “Hélène is a most lovable and
affectionate girl. And Lady Etynge is rich enough to pay a large
salary. Hélène is her idol. The suite of rooms is perfect. In Germany,
girls are not spoiled in that way. It is not considered good for them.”

It was quite natural, since she felt an interest in Hélène, that, on
their next meeting, Robin should find pleasure in sitting on the green
bench near the girl’s mother and hear her speak of her daughter. She
was not diffuse or intimate in her manner. Hélène first appeared in the
talk as a result of a polite inquiry made by Fräulein Hirsch. Robin
gathered, as she listened, that this particular girl was a tenderly
loved and cared for creature and was herself gentle and intelligent and
loving. She sounded like the kind of a girl one would be glad to have
for a friend. Robin wondered and wondered—if she would “do.” Perhaps,
out of tactful consideration for the feelings of Fräulein Hirsch who
would not “do”—because she was neither bright, nor pretty, nor a
girl—Lady Etynge touched but lightly on her idea that she might find a
sort of sublimated young companion for her daughter.

“It would be difficult to advertise for what one wants,” she said.

“Yes. To state that a girl must be clever and pretty and graceful, and
attractive, would make it difficult for a modest young lady to write a
suitable reply,” said Fräulein Hirsch grimly, and both Lady Etynge and
Robin smiled.

“Among your own friends,” Lady Etynge said to Robin, a little
pathetically in her yearning, “do you know of anyone—who might know of
anyone who would fit in? Sometimes there are poor little cousins, you
know?”

“Or girls who have an independent spirit and would like to support
themselves,” said the Fräulein. “There are such girls in these advanced
times.”

“I am afraid I don’t know anyone,” answered Robin. Modesty also
prevented her from saying that she thought she did. She herself was
well educated, she was good tempered and well bred, and she had known
for some time that she was pretty.

“Perhaps Fräulein Hirsch may bring you in to have tea with me some
afternoon when you are out,” Lady Etynge said kindly before she left
them. “I think you would like to see Hélène’s rooms. I should be glad
to hear what another girl thinks of them.”

Robin was delighted. Perhaps this was a way opening to her. She talked
to Mademoiselle Vallé about it and so glowed with hope that
Mademoiselle’s heart was moved.

“Do you think I might go?” she said. “Do you think there is any chance
that I might be the right person? _Am_ I nice enough—and well enough
educated, and _are_ my manners good?”

She did not know exactly where Lady Etynge lived, but believed it was
one of those big houses in a certain dignified “Place” they both knew—a
corner house, she was sure, because—by mere chance—she had one day seen
Lady Etynge go into such a house as if it were her own. She did not
know the number, but they could ask Fräulein.

Fräulein Hirsch was quite ready with detail concerning her former
patroness and her daughter. She obviously admired them very much. Her
manner held a touch of respectful reverence. She described Hélène’s
disposition and delicate nerves and the perfection of the nuns’
treatment of her.

She described the beauty of the interior of the house, its luxury and
convenience, and the charms of the suite of apartments prepared for
Hélène. She thought the number of the house was No. 97 A. Lady Etynge
was the kindest employer she had ever had. She believed that Miss
Gareth-Lawless and Hélène would be delighted with each other, if they
met, and her impression was that Lady Etynge privately hoped they would
become friends.

Her mild, flat face was so modestly amiable that Mademoiselle Vallé,
who always felt her unattractive femininity pathetic, was a little
moved by her evident pleasure in having been the humble means of
providing Robin with acquaintances of an advantageous kind.

No special day had been fixed upon for the visit and the cup of tea.
Robin was eager in secret and hoped Lady Etynge would not forget to
remind them of her invitation.

She did not forget. One afternoon—they had not seen her for several
days and had not really expected to meet her, because they took their
walk later than usual—they found her just rising from her seat to go
home as they appeared.

“Our little encounters almost assume the air of appointments,” she
said. “This is very nice, but I am just going away, I am sorry to say.
I wonder—” she paused a moment, and then looked at Fräulein Hirsch
pleasantly; “I wonder if, in about an hour, you would bring Miss
Gareth-Lawless to me to have tea and tell me if she thinks Hélène will
like her new rooms. You said you would like to see them,” brightly to
Robin.

“You are very kind. I should like it so much,” was Robin’s answer.

Fräulein Hirsch was correctly appreciative of the condescension shown
to her. Her manner was the perfection of the exact shade of unobtrusive
chaperonship. There was no improper suggestion of a mistaken idea that
she was herself a guest, or, indeed, anything, in fact, but a proper
appendage to her charge. Robin had never been fond of Fräulein as she
was fond of Mademoiselle and Dowie, still she was not only an efficient
teacher, but also a good walker and very fond of long tramps, which
Mademoiselle was really not strong enough for, but which Robin’s
slender young legs rejoiced in.

The two never took cabs or buses, but always walked everywhere. They
walked on this occasion, and, about an hour later, arrived at a large,
corner house in Berford Place. A tall and magnificently built footman
opened the door for them, and they were handed into a drawing room much
grander than the one Robin sometimes glanced into as she passed it,
when she was at home. A quite beautiful tea equipage awaited them on a
small table, but Lady Etynge was not in the room.

“What a beautiful house to live in,” said Robin, “but, do you know, the
number _isn’t_ 97 A. I looked as we came in, and it is No. 25.”

“Is it? I ought to have been more careful,” answered Fräulein Hirsch.
“It is wrong to be careless even in small matters.”

Almost immediately Lady Etynge came in and greeted them, with a sort of
gentle delight. She drew Robin down on to a sofa beside her and took
her hand and gave it a light pat which was a caress.

“Now you really _are_ here,” she said, “I have been so busy that I have
been afraid I should not have time to show you the rooms before it was
too late to make a change, if you thought anything might be improved.”

“I am sure nothing can improve them,” said Robin, more dewy-eyed than
usual and even a thought breathless, because this was really a sort of
adventure, and she longed to ask if, by any chance, she would “do.” And
she was so afraid that she might lose this amazingly good opportunity,
merely because she was too young and inexperienced to know how she
ought to broach the subject. She had not thought yet of asking
Mademoiselle Vallé how it should be done.

She was not aware that she looked at Lady Etynge with a heavenly,
little unconscious appeal, which made her enchanting. Lady Etynge
looked at her quite fixedly for an instant.

“What a child you are! And what a colour your cheeks and lips are!” she
said. “You are much—much prettier than Hélène, my dear.”

She got up and brought a picture from a side table to show it to her.

“I think she is lovely,” she said. “Is it became I am her mother?”

“Oh, no! Not because you are her mother!” exclaimed Robin. “She is
angelic!”

She was rather angelic, with her delicate uplifted face and her
communion veil framing it mistily.

The picture was placed near them and Robin looked at is many times as
they took their tea. To be a companion to a girl with a face like that
would be almost too much to ask of one’s luck. There was actual
yearning in Robin’s heart. Suddenly she realized that she had missed
something all her life, without knowing that she missed it. It was the
friendly nearness of youth like her own. How she hoped that she might
make Lady Etynge like her. After tea was over, Lady Etynge spoke
pleasantly to Fräulein Hirsch.

“I know that you wanted to register a letter. There is a post-office
just around the corner. Would you like to go and register it while I
take Miss Gareth-Lawless upstairs? You have seen the rooms. You will
only be away a few minutes.”

Fräulein Hirsch was respectfully appreciative again. The letter really
was important. It contained money which she sent monthly to her
parents. This month she was rather late, and she would be very glad to
be allowed to attend to the matter without losing a post.

So she went out of the drawing-room and down the stairs, and Robin
heard the front door close behind her with a slight thud. She had
evidently opened and closed it herself without waiting for the footman.

The upper rooms in London houses—even in the large ones—are usually
given up to servants’ bedrooms, nurseries, and school rooms. Stately
staircases become narrower as they mount, and the climber gets glimpses
of apartments which are frequently bare, whatsoever their use, and, if
not grubby in aspect, are dull and uninteresting.

But, in Lady Etynge’s house, it was plain that a good deal had been
done. Stairs had been altered and widened, walls had been given fresh
and delicate tints, and one laid one’s hand on cream white balustrades
and trod on soft carpets. A good architect had taken interest in the
problems presented to him, and the result was admirable. Partitions
must have been removed to make rooms larger and of better shape.

“Nothing could be altered without spoiling it!” exclaimed Robin,
standing in the middle of a sitting room, all freshness and exquisite
colour—the very pictures on the wall being part of the harmony.

All that a girl would want or love was there. There was nothing left
undone—unremembered. The soft Chesterfield lounge, which was not too
big and was placed near the fire, the writing table, the books, the
piano of satinwood inlaid with garlands; the lamp to sit and read by.

“How glad she must be to come back to anyone who loves her so,” said
Robin.

Here was a quilted basket with three Persian kittens purring in it, and
she knelt and stroked their fluffiness, bending her slim neck and
showing how prettily the dark hair grew up from it. It was, perhaps,
that at which Lady Etynge was looking as she stood behind her and
watched her. The girl-nymph slenderness and flexibility of her leaning
body was almost touchingly lovely.

There were several other rooms and each one was, in its way, more
charming than the other. A library in Dresden blue and white, and with
peculiarly pretty windows struck the last note of cosiness. All the
rooms had pretty windows with rather small square panes enclosed in
white frames.

It was when she was in this room that Robin took her courage in her
hands. She must not let her chance go by. Lady Etynge was so kind. She
wondered if it would seem _gauche_ and too informal to speak now.

She stood quite upright and still, though her voice was not quite
steady when she began.

“Lady Etynge,” she said, “you remember what Fräulein Hirsch said about
girls who wish to support themselves? I—I am one of them. I want very
much to earn my own living. I think I am well educated. I have been
allowed to read a good deal and my teachers, Mademoiselle Vallé and
Fräulein Hirsch, say I speak and write French and German well for an
English girl. If you thought I could be a suitable companion for Miss
Etynge, I—should be very happy.”

How curiously Lady Etynge watched her as she spoke. She did not look
displeased, but there was something in her face which made Robin afraid
that she was, perhaps, after all, not the girl who was fortunate enough
to quite “do.”

She felt her hopes raised a degree, however, when Lady Etynge smiled at
her.

“Do you know, I feel that is very pretty of you!” she said. “It quite
delights me—as I am an idolizing mother—that my mere talk of Hélène
should have made you like her well enough to think you might care to
live with her. And I confess I am modern enough to be pleased with your
wishing to earn your own living.”

“I must,” said Robin. “I _must!_ I could not bear not to earn it!” She
spoke a little suddenly, and a flag of new colour fluttered in her
cheek.

“When Hélène comes, you must meet. If you like each other, as I feel
sure you will, and if Mrs. Gareth-Lawless does not object—if it remains
only a matter of being suitable—you are suitable, my dear—you are
suitable.”

She touched Robin’s hand with the light pat which was a caress, and the
child was radiant.

“Oh, you are kind to me!” The words broke from her involuntarily. “And
it is such _good_ fortune! Thank you, thank you, Lady Etynge.”

The flush of her joy and relief had not died out before the footman,
who had opened the door, appeared on the threshold. He was a handsome
young fellow, whose eyes were not as professionally impassive as his
face. A footman had no right to dart a swift side look at one as people
did in the street. He did dart such a glance. Robin saw, and she was
momentarily struck by its being one of those she sometimes objected to.

Otherwise his manner was without flaw. He had only come to announce to
his mistress the arrival of a caller.

When Lady Etynge took the card from the salver, her expression changed.
She even looked slightly disturbed.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she murmured, “I must see her,” lifting her eyes to
Robin. “It is an old friend merely passing through London. How wicked
of me to forget that she wrote to say that she might dash in at any
hour.”

“Please!” pled Robin, prettily. “I can run away at once. Fräulein
Hirsch must have come back. Please—”

“The lady asked me particularly to say that she has only a few minutes
to stay, as she is catching a train,” the footman decorously ventured.

“If that is the case,” Lady Etynge said, even relievedly, “I will leave
you here to look at things until I come back. I really want to talk to
you a little more about yourself and Hélène. I can’t let you go.” She
looked back from the door before she passed through it. “Amuse
yourself, my dear,” and then she added hastily to the man.

“Have you remembered that there was something wrong with the latch,
William? See if it needs a locksmith.”

“Very good, my lady.”

She was gone and Robin stood by the sofa thrilled with happiness and
relief. How wonderful it was that, through mere lucky chance, she had
gone to watch the children sailing their boats! And that Fräulein
Hirsch had seen Lady Etynge! What good luck and how grateful she was!
The thought which passed through her mind was like a little prayer of
thanks. How strange it would be to be really intimate with a girl like
herself—or rather like Hélène. It made her heart beat to think of it.
How wonderful it would be if Hélène actually loved her, and she loved
Hélène. Something sprang out of some depths of her being where past
things were hidden. The something was a deadly little memory. Donal!
Donal! It would be—if she loved Hélène and Hélène loved her—as new a
revelation as Donal. Oh! she remembered.

She heard the footman doing something to the latch of the door, which
caused it to make a clicking sound. He was obeying orders and examining
it. As she involuntarily glanced at him, he—bending over the door
handle—raised his eyes sideways and glanced at her. It was an
inexcusable glance from a domestic, because it was actually as if he
were taking the liberty of privately summing her up—taking her points
in for his own entertainment. She so resented the unprofessional bad
manners of it, that she turned away and sauntered into the Dresden blue
and white library and sat down with a book.

She was quite relieved, when, only a few minutes later, he went away
having evidently done what he could.

The book she had picked up was a new novel and opened with an
attention-arresting agreeableness, which led her on. In fact it led her
on further and, for a longer time than she was aware of. It was her way
to become wholly absorbed in books when they allured her; she forgot
her surroundings and forgot the passing of time. This was a new book by
a strong man with the gift which makes alive people, places, things.
The ones whose lives had taken possession of his being in this story
were throbbing with vital truth.

She read on and on because, from the first page, she knew them as
actual pulsating human creatures. They looked into her face, they
laughed, she heard their voices, she _cared_ for every trivial thing
that happened to them—to any of them. If one of them picked a flower,
she saw how he or she held it and its scent was in the air.

Having been so drawn on into a sort of unconsciousness of all else, it
was inevitable that, when she suddenly became aware that she did not
see her page quite clearly, she should withdraw her eyes from her page
and look about her. As she did so, she started from her comfortable
chair in amazement and some alarm. The room had become so much darker
that it must be getting late. How careless and silly she had been.
Where was Fräulein Hirsch?

“I am only a strange girl and Lady Etynge might so easily have
forgotten me,” passed through her mind. “Her friend may have stayed and
they may have had so much to talk about, that, of coarse, I was
forgotten. But Fräulein Hirsch—how could she!”

Then, remembering the subservient humility of the Fräulein’s mind, she
wondered if it could have been possible that she had been too timid to
do more than sit waiting—in the hall, perhaps—afraid to allow the
footman to disturb Lady Etynge by asking her where her pupil was. The
poor, meek, silly thing.

“I must get away without disturbing anyone,” she thought, “I will slip
downstairs and snatch Fräulein Hirsch from her seat and we will go
quietly out. I can write a nice note to Lady Etynge tomorrow, and
explain. I HOPE she won’t mind having forgotten me. I must make her
feel sure that it did not matter in the least. I’ll tell her about the
book.”

She replaced the book on the shelf from which she had taken it and
passed through into the delightful sitting room. The kittens were
playing together on the hearth, having deserted their basket. One of
them gave a soft, airy pounce after her and caught at her dress with
tiny claws, rolling over and over after his ineffectual snatch.

She had not heard the footman close the door when he left the room, but
she found he must have done so, as it was now shut. When she turned the
handle it did not seem to work well, because the door did not open as
it ought to have done. She turned it again and gave it a little pull,
but it still remained tightly shut. She turned it again, still with no
result, and then she tried the small latch. Perhaps the man had done
some blundering thing when he had been examining it. She remembered
hearing several clicks. She turned the handle again and again. There
was no key in the keyhole, so he could not have bungled with the key.
She was quite aghast at the embarrassment of the situation.

“How _can_ I get out without disturbing anyone, if I cannot open the
door!” she said. “How stupid I shall seem to Lady Etynge! She won’t
like it. A girl who could forget where she was—and then not be able to
open a door and be obliged to bang until people come!”

Suddenly she remembered that there had been a door in the bedroom which
had seemed to lead out into the hall. She ran into the room in such a
hurry that all three kittens ran frisking after her. She saw she had
not been mistaken. There was a door. She went to it and turned the
handle, breathless with excitement and relief. But the handle of that
door also would not open it. Neither would the latch. And there was no
key.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Oh!”

Then she remembered the electric bell near the fireplace in the sitting
room. There was one by the fireplace here, also. No, she would ring the
one in the sitting room. She went to it and pressed the button. She
could not hear the ghost of a sound and one could generally hear
_something_ like one. She rang again and waited. The room was getting
darker. Oh, how _could_ Fräulein Hirsch—how could she?

She waited—she waited. Fifteen minutes by her little watch—twenty
minutes—and, in their passing, she rang again. She rang the bell in the
library and the one in the bedroom—even the one in the bathroom, lest
some might be out of order. She slowly ceased to be embarrassed and
self-reproachful and began to feel afraid, though she did not know
quite what she was afraid of. She went to one of the windows to look at
her watch again in the vanishing light, and saw that she had been
ringing the bells for an hour. She automatically put up a hand and
leaned against the white frame of one of the decorative small panes of
glass. As she touched it, she vaguely realized that it was of such a
solidity that it felt, not like wood but iron. She drew her hand away
quickly, feeling a sudden sweep of unexplainable fear—yes, it was FEAR.
And why should she so suddenly feel it? She went back to the door and
tried again to open it—as ineffectively as before. Then she began to
feel a little cold and sick. She returned to the Chesterfield and sat
down on it helplessly.

“It seems as if—I had been locked in!” she broke out, in a faint,
bewildered wail of a whisper. “Oh, _why_—did they lock the doors!”




CHAPTER XXII


She had known none of the absolute horrors of life which were possible
in that underworld which was not likely to touch her own existence in
any form.

“Why,” had argued Mademoiselle Vallé, “should one fill a white young
mind with ugly images which would deface with dark marks and smears,
and could only produce unhappiness and, perhaps, morbid broodings? One
does not feel it is wise to give a girl an education in crime. One
would not permit her to read the Newgate Calendar for choice. She will
be protected by those who love her and what she must discover she will
discover. That is Life.”

Which was why her first discovery that neither door could be opened,
did not at once fill her with horror. Her first arguments were merely
those of a girl who, though her brain was not inactive pulp, had still
a protected girl’s outlook. She had been overwhelmed by a sense of the
awkwardness of her position and by the dread that she would be obliged
to disturb and, almost inevitably, embarrass and annoy Lady Etynge. Of
course, there had been some bungling on the part of the impudent
footman—perhaps actually at the moment when he had given his sidelong
leer at herself instead of properly attending to what he was trying to
do. That the bedroom was locked might be the result of a dozen ordinary
reasons.

The first hint of an abnormality of conditions came after she had rung
the bells and had waited in vain for response to her summons. There
were servants whose business it was to answer bells at once. If _all_
the bells were out of order, why were they out of order when Hélène was
to return in a few days and her apartment was supposed to be complete?
Even to the kittens—even to the kittens!

“It seems as if I had been locked in,” she had whispered to the silence
of the room. “Why did they lock the doors?”

Then she said, and her heart began to thump and race in her side:

“It has been done on purpose. They don’t intend to let me out—for some
_horrible_ reason!”

Perhaps even her own growing panic was not so appalling as a sudden
rushing memory of Lady Etynge, which, at this moment, overthrew her.
Lady Etynge! Lady Etynge! She saw her gentle face and almost
affectionately watching eyes. She heard her voice as she spoke of
Hélène; she felt the light pat which was a caress.

“No! No!” she gasped it, because her breath had almost left her. “No!
No! She couldn’t! No one could! There is _nothing_ as wicked—as that!”

Bat, even as she cried out, the overthrow was utter, and she threw
herself forward on the arm of the couch and sobbed—sobbed with the
passion she had only known on the day long ago when she had crawled
into the shrubs and groveled in the earth. It was the same kind of
passion—the shaken and heart-riven woe of a creature who has trusted
and hoped joyously and has been forever betrayed. The face and eyes had
been so kind. The voice so friendly! Oh, how could even the wickedest
girl in the world have doubted their sincerity. Unfortunately—or
fortunately—she knew nothing whatever of the mental processes of the
wicked girls of the world, which was why she lay broken to pieces,
sobbing—sobbing, not at the moment because she was a trapped thing, but
because Lady Etynge had a face in whose gentleness her heart had
trusted and rejoiced.

When she sat upright again, her own face, as she lifted it, would have
struck a perceptive onlooker as being, as it were, the face of another
girl. It was tear-stained and wild, but this was not the cause of its
change. The soft, bird eyes were different—suddenly, amazingly older
than they had been when she had believed in Hélène.

She had no experience which could reveal to her in a moment the
monstrousness of her danger, but all she had ever read, or vaguely
gathered, of law breakers and marauders of society, collected itself
into an advancing tidal wave of horror.

She rose and went to the window and tried to open it, but it was not
intended to open. The decorative panes were of small size and of thick
glass. Her first startled impression that the white framework seemed to
be a painted metal was apparently founded on fact. A strong person
might have bent it with a hammer, but he could not have broken it. She
examined the windows in the other rooms and they were of the same
structure.

“They are made like that,” she said to herself stonily, “to prevent
people from getting OUT.”

She stood at the front one and looked down into the broad, stately
“Place.” It was a long way to look down, and, even if the window could
be opened, one’s voice would not be heard. The street lamps were
lighted and a few people were to be seen walking past unhurriedly.

“In the big house almost opposite they are going to give a party. There
is a red carpet rolled out. Carriages are beginning to drive up. And
here on the top floor, there is a girl locked up—And they don’t know!”

She said it aloud, and her voice sounded as though it were not her own.
It was a dreadful voice, and, as she heard it, panic seized her.

Nobody knew—nobody! Her mother never either knew or cared where she
was, but Dowie and Mademoiselle always knew. They would be terrified.
Fräulein Hirsch had, perhaps, been told that her pupil had taken a cab
and gone home and she would return to her lodgings thinking she was
safe.

Then—only at this moment, and with a suddenness which produced a sense
of shock—she recalled that it was Fräulein Hirsch who had presented her
to Lady Etynge. Fräulein Hirsch herself! It was she who had said she
had been in her employ and had taught Hélène—Hélène! It was she who had
related anecdotes about the Convent at Tours and the nuns who were so
wise and kind! Robin’s hand went up to her forehead with a
panic-stricken gesture. Fräulein Hirsch had made an excuse for leaving
her with Lady Etynge—to be brought up to the top of the house quite
alone—and locked in. Fräulein Hirsch had _known!_ And there came back
to her the memory of the furtive eyes whose sly, adoring sidelooks at
Count Von Hillern had always—though she had tried not to feel it—been,
somehow, glances she had disliked—yes, _disliked!_

It was here—by the thread of Fräulein Hirsch—that Count Von Hillern was
drawn into her mind. Once there, it was as if he stood near her—quite
close—looking down under his heavy, drooping lids with stealthy,
plunging eyes. It had always been when Fräulein Hirsch had walked with
her that they had met him—almost as if by arrangement.

There were only two people in the world who might—because she herself
had so hated them—dislike and choose in some way to punish her. One was
Count Von Hillern. The other was Lord Coombe. Lord Coombe, she knew,
was bad, vicious, did the things people only hinted at without speaking
of them plainly. A sense of instinctive revolt in the strength of her
antipathy to Von Hillern made her feel that he must be of the same
order.

“If either of them came into this room now and locked the door behind
him, I could not get out.”

She heard herself say it aloud in the strange girl’s dreadful voice, as
she had heard herself speak of the party in the big house opposite. She
put her soft, slim hand up to her soft, slim throat.

“I could not get out,” she repeated.

She ran to the door and began to beat on its panels. By this time, she
knew it would be no use and yet she beat with her hands until they were
bruised and then she snatched up a book and beat with that. She thought
she must have been beating half an hour when she realized that someone
was standing outside in the corridor, and the someone said, in a voice
she recognized as belonging to the leering footman,

“May as well keep still, Miss. You can’t hammer it down and no one’s
going to bother taking any notice,” and then his footsteps retired down
the stairs. She involuntarily clenched her hurt hands and the
shuddering began again though she stood in the middle of the room with
a rigid body and her head thrown fiercely back.

“If there are people in the world as hideous—and monstrous as
_this_—let them kill me if they want to. I would rather be killed than
live! They would _have_ to kill me!” and she said it in a frenzy of
defiance of all mad and base things on earth.

Her peril seemed to force her thought to delve into unknown dark places
in her memory and dig up horrors she had forgotten—newspaper stories of
crime, old melodramas and mystery romances, in which people disappeared
and were long afterwards found buried under floors or in cellars. It
was said that the Berford Place houses, winch were old ones, had
enormous cellars under them.

“Perhaps other girls have disappeared and now are buried in the
cellars,” she thought.

And the dreadful young voice added aloud.

“Because they would _have_ to kill me.”

One of the Persian kittens curled up in the basket wakened because he
heard it and stretched a sleepy paw and mewed at her.

Coombe House was one of the old ones, wearing somewhat the aspect of a
stately barrack with a fine entrance. Its court was enclosed at the
front by a stone wall, outside which passing London roared in low
tumult. The court was surrounded by a belt of shrubs strong enough to
defy the rain of soot which fell quietly upon them day and night.

The streets were already lighted for the evening when Mademoiselle
Vallé presented herself at the massive front door and asked for Lord
Coombe. The expression of her face, and a certain intensity of manner,
caused the serious-looking head servant, who wore no livery, to come
forward instead of leaving her to the footmen.

“His lordship engaged with—a business person—and must not be
disturbed,” he said. “He is also going out.”

“He will see me,” replied Mademoiselle Vallé. “If you give him this
card he will see me.”

She was a plainly dressed woman, but she had a manner which removed her
entirely from the class of those who merely came to importune. There
was absolute certainty in the eyes she fixed with steadiness on the
man’s face. He took her card, though he hesitated.

“If he does not see me,” she added, “he will be very much displeased.”

“Will you come in, ma’am, and take a seat for a moment?” he ventured.
“I will inquire.”

The great hall was one of London’s most celebrated. A magnificent
staircase swept up from it to landings whose walls were hung with
tapestries the world knew. In a gilded chair, like a throne,
Mademoiselle Vallé sat and waited.

But she did not wait long. The serious-looking man without livery
returned almost immediately. He led Mademoiselle into a room like a
sort of study or apartment given up to business matters. Mademoiselle
Vallé had never seen Lord Coombe’s ceremonial evening effect more
flawless. Tall, thin and finely straight, he waited in the centre of
the room. He was evidently on the point of going out, and the
light-textured satin-lined overcoat he had already thrown on revealed,
through a suggestion of being winged, that he wore in his lapel a
delicately fresh, cream-coloured carnation.

A respectable, middle-class looking man with a steady, blunt-featured
face, had been talking to him and stepped quietly aside as Mademoiselle
entered. There seemed to be no question of his leaving the room.

Coombe met his visitor half way:

“Something has alarmed you very much?” he said.

“Robin went out with Fräulein Hirsch this afternoon,” she said quickly.
“They went to Kensington Gardens. They have not come back—and it is
nine o’clock. They are always at home by six.”

“Will you sit down,” he said. The man with the steady face was
listening intently, and she realized he was doing so and that, somehow,
it was well that he should.

“I do not think there is time for any one to sit down,” she said,
speaking more quickly than before. “It is not only that she has not
come back. Fräulein Hirsch has presented her to one of her old
employers—a Lady Etynge. Robin was delighted with her. She has a
daughter who is in France—,”

“Marguerite staying with her aunt in Paris,” suddenly put in the voice
of the blunt-featured man from his side of the room.

“Hélène at a Covent in Tours,” corrected Mademoiselle, turning a paling
countenance towards him and then upon Coombe. “Lady Etynge spoke of
wanting to engage some nice girl as a companion to her daughter, who is
coming home. Robin thought she might have the good fortune to please
her. She was to go to Lady Etynge’s house to tea sine afternoon and be
shown the rooms prepared for Hélène. She thought the mother charming.”

“Did she mention the address?” Coombe asked at once.

“The house was in Berford Place—a large house at a corner. She chanced
to see Lady Etynge go into it one day or we should not have known. She
did not notice the number. Fräulein Hirsch thought it was 97A. I have
looked through the Blue Book, Lord Coombe—through the Peerage—through
the Directory! There is no Lady Etynge and there is no 97A in Berford
Place! That is why I came here.”

The man who had stood aside, stepped forward again. It was as if he
answered some sign, though Lord Coombe at the moment crossed the hearth
and rang the bell.

“Scotland Yard knows that, ma’am,” said the man. “We’ve had our eyes on
that house for two weeks, and this kind of thing is what we want.”

“The double brougham,” was Coombe’s order to the servant who answered
his ring. Then he came back to Mademoiselle.

“Mr. Barkstow is a detective,” he said. “Among the other things he has
done for me, he has, for some time, kept a casual eye on Robin. She is
too lovely a child and too friendless to be quite safe. There are
blackguards who know when a girl has not the usual family protection.
He came here to tell me that she had been seen sitting in Kensington
Gardens with a woman Scotland Yard has reason to suspect.”

“A black ’un!” said Barkstow savagely. “If she’s the one we think she
is—a black, poisonous, sly one with a face that no girl could suspect.”

Coombe’s still countenance was so deadly in the slow lividness, which
Mademoiselle saw began to manifest itself, that she caught his sleeve
with a shaking hand.

“She’s nothing but a baby!” she said. “She doesn’t know what a baby she
is. I can see her eyes frantic with terror! She’d go mad.”

“Good God!” he said, in a voice so low it was scarcely audible.

He almost dragged her out of the room, though, as they passed through
the hall, the servants only saw that he had given the lady his arm—and
two of the younger footmen exchanged glances with each other which
referred solely to the inimitableness of the cut of his evening
overcoat.

When they entered the carriage, Barkstow entered with them and
Mademoiselle Vallé leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and her
face clutched in her hands. She was trying to shut out from her mental
vision a memory of Robin’s eyes.

“If—if Fräulein Hirsch is—not true,” she broke out once. “Count von
Hillern is concerned. It has come upon me like a flash. Why did I not
see before?”

The party at the big house, where the red carpet was rolled across the
pavement, was at full height when they drove into the Place. Their
brougham did not stop at the corner but at the end of the line of
waiting carriages.

Coombe got out and looked up and down the thoroughfare.

“It must be done quietly. There must be no scandal,” he said. “The
policeman on the beat is an enormous fellow. You will attend to him,
Barkstow,” and Barkstow nodded and strolled away.

Coombe walked up the Place and down on the opposite side until he was
within a few yards of the corner house. When he reached this point, he
suddenly quickened his footsteps because he saw that someone else was
approaching it with an air of intention. It was a man, not quite as
tall as himself but of heavier build and with square held shoulders. As
the man set his foot upon the step, Coombe touched him on the arm and
said something in German.

The man started angrily and then suddenly stood quite still and erect.

“It will be better for us to walk up the Place together,” Lord Coombe
said, with perfect politeness.

If he could have been dashed down upon the pavement and his head
hammered in with the handle of a sword, or if he could have been run
through furiously again and again, either or both of these things would
have been done. But neither was possible. It also was not possible to
curse aloud in a fashionable London street. Such curses as one uttered
must be held in one’s foaming mouth between one’s teeth. Count von
Hillern knew this better than most men would have known it. Here was
one of those English swine with whom Germany would deal in her own way
later.

They walked back together as if they were acquaintances taking a casual
stroll.

“There is nothing which would so infuriate your—Master—as a disgraceful
scandal,” Lord Coombe’s highbred voice suggested undisturbedly. “The
high honour of a German officer—the knightly bearing of a wearer of the
uniform of the All Highest—that sort of thing you know. All that sort
of thing!”

Von Hillern ground out some low spoken and quite awful German words. If
he had not been trapped—if he had been in some quiet by-street!

“The man walking ahead of us is a detective from Scotland Yard. The
particularly heavy and rather martial tread behind us is that of a
policeman much more muscular than either of us. There is a ball going
on in the large house with the red carpet spread across the pavement. I
know the people who are giving it. There are a good many coachmen and
footmen about. Most of them would probably recognize me.”

It became necessary for Count von Hillern actually to wipe away certain
flecks of foam from his lips, as he ground forth again more varied and
awful sentiments in his native tongue.

“You are going back to Berlin,” said Coombe, coldly. “If we English
were not such fools, you would not be here. You are, of course, not
going into that house.”

Von Hillern burst into a derisive laugh.

“You are going yourself,” he said. “You are a worn-out old _roue_, but
you are mad about her yourself in your senile way.”

“You should respect my age and decrepitude,” answered Coombe. “A
certain pity for my gray hairs would become your youth. Shall we turn
here or will you return to your hotel by some other way?” He felt as if
the man might a burst a blood vessel if he were obliged to further
restrain himself.

Von Hillern wheeled at the corner and confronted him.

“There will come a day—” he almost choked.

“_Der Tag?_ Naturally,” the chill of Coombe’s voice was a sound to
drive this particular man at this particular, damnably-thwarted moment,
raving mad. And not to be able to go mad! Not to be able!

“Swine of a doddering Englishman! Who would envy you—trembling on your
lean shanks—whatsoever you can buy for yourself. I spit on you—spit!”

“Don’t,” said Coombe. “You are sputtering to such an extent that you
really _are_, you know.”

Von Hillern whirled round the corner.

Coombe, left alone, stood still a moment.

“I was in time,” he said to himself, feeling somewhat nauseated. “By
extraordinary luck, I was in time. In earlier days one would have said
something about ‘Provadence’.” And he at once walked back.




CHAPTER XXIII


It was not utterly dark in the room, though Robin, after passing her
hands carefully over the walls, had found no electric buttons within
reach nor any signs of candles or matches elsewhere. The night sky was
clear and brilliant with many stars, and this gave her an unshadowed
and lighted space to look at. She went to the window and sat down on
the floor, huddled against the wall with her hands clasped round her
knees, looking up. She did this in the effort to hold in check a rising
tide of frenzy which threatened her. Perhaps, if she could fix her eyes
on the vault full of stars, she could keep herself from going out of
her mind. Though, perhaps, it would be better if she _did_ go out of
her mind, she found herself thinking a few seconds later.

After her first entire acceptance of the hideous thing which had
happened to her, she had passed through nerve breaking phases of
terror-stricken imaginings. The old story of the drowning man across
whose brain rush all the images of life, came back to her. She did not
know where or when or how she had ever heard or read of the ghastly
incidents which came trooping up to her and staring at her with dead or
mad eyes and awful faces. Perhaps they were old nightmares—perhaps a
kind of delirium had seized her. She tried to stop their coming by
saying over and over again the prayers Dowie had taught her when she
was a child. And then she thought, with a sob which choked her, that
perhaps they were only prayers for a safe little creature kneeling by a
white bed—and did not apply to a girl locked up in a top room, which
nobody knew about. Only when she thought of Mademoiselle Vallé and
Dowie looking for her—with all London spread out before their
helplessness—did she cry. After that, tears seemed impossible. The
images trooped by too close to her. The passion hidden within her
being—which had broken out when she tore the earth under the shrubbery,
and which, with torture staring her in the face, had leaped in the
child’s soul and body and made her defy Andrews with shrieks—leaped up
within her now. She became a young Fury, to whom a mad fight with
monstrous death was nothing. She told herself that she was strong for a
girl—that she could tear with her nails, she could clench her teeth in
a flesh, she could shriek, she could battle like a young madwoman so
that they would be _forced_ to kill her. This was one of the images
which rose up before her again and yet again, A hideous—hideous thing,
which would not remain away.

She had not had any food since the afternoon cup of tea and she began
to feel the need of it. If she became faint—! She lifted her face
desperately as she said it, and saw the immense blue darkness, powdered
with millions of stars and curving over her—as it curved over the
hideous house and all the rest of the world. How high—how immense—how
fathomlessly still it was—how it seemed as if there could be nothing
else—that nothing else could be real! Her hands were clenched together
hard and fiercely, as she scrambled to her knees and uttered a of
prayer—not a child’s—rather the cry of a young Fury making a demand.

“Perhaps a girl is Nothing,” she cried, “—a girl locked up in a room!
But, perhaps, she is Something—she may be real too! Save me—save me!
But if you won’t save me, let me be killed!”

She knelt silent after it for a few minutes and then she sank down and
lay on the floor with her face on her arm.

How it was possible that even young and worn-out as she was, such peace
as sleep could overcome her at such a time, one cannot say. But in the
midst of her torment she was asleep.

But it was not for long. She wakened with a start and sprang to her
feet shivering. The carriages were still coming and going with guests
for the big house opposite. It could not be late, though she seemed to
have been in the place for years—long enough to feel that it was the
hideous centre of the whole earth and all sane and honest memories were
a dream. She thought she would begin to walk up and down the room.

But a sound she heard at this very instant made her stand stock still.
She had known there would be a sound at last—she had waited for it all
the time—she had known, of course, that it would come, but she had not
even tried to guess whether she would hear it early or late. It would
be the sound of the turning of the handle of the locked door. It had
come. There it was! The click of the lock first and then the creak of
the turned handle!

She went to the window again and stood with her back against it, so
that her body was outlined against the faint light. Would the person
come in the dark, or would he carry a light? Something began to whirl
in her brain. What was the low, pumping thump she seemed to hear and
feel at the same time? It was the awful thumping of her heart.

The door opened—not stealthily, but quite in the ordinary way. The
person who came in did not move stealthily either. He came in as though
he were making an evening call. How tall and straight his body was,
with a devilish elegance of line against the background of light in the
hall. She thought she saw a white flower on his lapel as his overcoat
fell back. The leering footman had opened the door for him.

“Turn on the lights.” A voice she knew gave the order, the leering
footman obeyed, touching a spot high on the wall.

She had vaguely and sickeningly felt almost sure that it would be
either Count von Hillern or Lord Coombe—and it was not Count von
Hillern! The cold wicked face—the ironic eyes which made her creep—the
absurd, elderly perfection of dress—even the flawless flower—made her
flash quake with repulsion. If Satan came into the room, he might look
like that and make one’s revolting being quake so.

“I thought—it might be you,” the strange girl’s voice said to him
aloud.

“Robin,” he said.

He was moving towards her and, as she threw out her madly clenched
little hands, he stopped and drew back.

“Why did you think I might come?” he asked.

“Because you are the kind of a man who would do the things only devils
would do. I have hated—hated—hated you since I was a baby. Come and
kill me if you like. Call the footman back to help you, if yon like. I
can’t get away. Kill me—kill me—kill me!”

She was lost in her frenzy and looked as if she were mad.

One moment he hesitated, and then he pointed politely to the sofa.

“Go and sit down, please,” he suggested. It was no more then a
courteous suggestion. “I shall remain here. I have no desire to
approach you—if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

But she would not leave the window.

“It is natural that you should be overwrought,” he said.

“This is a damnable thing. You are too young to know the worst of it.”

“You are the worst of it!” she cried. “You.”

“No” as the chill of his even voice struck her, she wondered if he were
really human. “Von Hillern would have been the worst of it. I stopped
him at the front door and knew how to send him away. Now, listen, my
good child. Hate me as ferociously as you like. That is a detail. You
are in the house of a woman whose name stands for shame and infamy and
crime.”

“What are _you_ doing in it—” she cried again, “—in a place where girls
are trapped—and locked up in top rooms—to be killed?”

“I came to take you away. I wish to do it quietly. It would be rather
horrible if the public discovered that you have spent some hours here.
If I had not slipped in when they were expecting von Hillern, and if
the servants were not accustomed to the quiet entrance of well dressed
men, I could not have got in without an open row and the calling of the
policemen,—which I wished to avoid. Also, the woman downstairs knows me
and realized that I was not lying when I said the house was surrounded
and she was on the point of being ‘run in’. She is a woman of broad
experience, and at once knew that she might as well keep quiet.”

Despite his cold eyes and the bad smile she hated, despite his almost
dandified meticulous attire and the festal note of his white flower,
which she hated with the rest—he was, perhaps, not lying to her.
Perhaps for the sake of her mother he had chosen to save her—and, being
the man he was, he had been able to make use of his past experiences.

She began to creep away from the window, and she felt her legs, all at
once, shaking under her. By the time she reached the Chesterfield sofa
she fell down by it and began to cry. A sort of hysteria seized her,
and she shook from head to foot and clutched at the upholstery with
weak hands which clawed. She was, indeed, an awful, piteous sight. He
was perhaps not lying, but she was afraid of him yet.

“I told the men who are waiting outside that if I did not bring you out
in half an hour, they were to break into the house. I do not wish them
to break in. We have not any time to spare. What you are doing is quite
natural, but you must try to get up.” He stood by her and said this
looking down at her slender, wrung body and lovely groveling head.

He took a flask out of his overcoat pocket—and it was a gem of
goldsmith’s art. He poured some wine into its cup and bent forward to
hold it out to her.

“Drink this and try to stand on your feet,” he said. He knew better
than to try to help her to rise—to touch her in any way. Seeing to what
the past hours had reduced her, he knew better. There was mad fear in
her eyes when she lifted her head and threw out her hand again.

“No! No!” she cried out. “No, I will drink nothing!” He understood at
once and threw the wine into the grate.

“I see,” he said. “You might think it might be drugged. You are right.
It might be. I ought to have thought of that.” He returned the flask to
his pocket. “Listen again. You must. The time will soon be up and we
must not let those fellows break in and make a row that will collect a
crowd We must go at once. Mademoiselle Vallé is waiting for you in my
carriage outside. You will not be afraid to drink wine she gives you.”

“Mademoiselle!” she stammered.

“Yes. In my carriage, which is not fifty yards from the house. Can you
stand on your feet?” She got up and stood but she was still shuddering
all over.

“Can you walk downstairs? If you cannot, will you let me carry you? I
am strong enough—in spite of my years.”

“I can walk,” she whispered.

“Will you take my arm?”

She looked at him for a moment with awful, broken-spirited eyes.

“Yes. I will take your arm.”

He offered it to her with rigid punctiliousness of manner. He did not
even look at her. He led her out of the room and down the three flights
of stairs. As they passed by the open drawing-room door, the lovely
woman who had called herself Lady Etynge stood near it and watched them
with eyes no longer gentle.

“I have something to say to you, Madam,” he said; “When I place this
young lady in the hands of her governess, I will come back and say it.”

“Is her governess Fräulein Hirsch?” asked the woman lightly.

“No. She is doubtless on her way back to Berlin—and von Hillern will
follow her.”

There was only the first floor flight of stairs now. Robin could
scarcely see her way. But Lord Coombe held her up firmly and, in a few
moments more, the leering footman, grown pale, opened the large door,
they crossed the pavement to the carriage, and she was helped in and
fell, almost insensible, across Mademoiselle Vallé’s lap, and was
caught in a strong arm which shook as she did.

“_Ma chèrie_,” she heard, “The Good God! Oh, the good—good God!—And
Lord Coombe! Lord Coombe!”

Coombe had gone back to the house. Four men returned with him, two in
plain clothes and two heavily-built policemen. They remained below, but
Coombe went up the staircase with the swift lightness of a man of
thirty.

He merely stood upon the threshold of the drawing-room. This was what
he said, and his face was entirely white and his eyes appalling.

“My coming back to speak to you is—superfluous—and the result of pure
fury. I allow it to myself as mere shameless indulgence. More is known
against you than this—things which have gone farther and fared worse.
You are not young and you are facing years of life in prison. Your head
will be shaved—your hands worn and blackened and your nails broken with
the picking of oakum. You will writhe in hopeless degradation until you
are done for. You will have time, in the night blackness if of your
cell, to remember—to see faces—to hear cries. Women such as you should
learn what hell on earth means. You will learn.”

When he ended, the woman hung with her back to the wall she had
staggered against, her mouth opening and shutting helplessly but
letting forth no sound.

He took out an exquisitely fresh handkerchief and touched his forehead
because it was damp. His eyes were still appalling, but his voice
suddenly dropped and changed.

“I have allowed myself to feel like a madman,” he said. “It has been a
rich experience—good for such soul as I own.”

He went downstairs and walked home because his carriage had taken Robin
and Mademoiselle back to the slice of a house.




CHAPTER XXIV


Von Hillern made no further calls on Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. His return to
Berlin was immediate and Fräulein Hirsch came no more to give lessons
in German. Later, Coombe learned from the man with the steady,
blunt-featured face, that she had crossed the Channel on a night boat
not many hours after Von Hillern had walked away from Berford Place.
The exact truth was that she had been miserably prowling about the
adjacent streets, held in the neighbourhood by some self-torturing
morbidness, half thwarted helpless passion, half triumphing hatred of
the young thing she had betrayed. Up and down the streets she had gone,
round and round, wringing her lean fingers together and tasting on her
lips the salt of tears which rolled down her cheeks—tears of torment
and rage.

There was the bitterness of death in what, by a mere trick of chance,
came about. As she turned a corner telling herself for the hundredth
time that she must go home, she found herself face to face with a
splendid figure swinging furiously along. She staggered at the sight of
the tigerish rage in the white face she recognized with a gasp. It was
enough merely to behold it. He had met with some disastrous
humiliation!

As for him, the direct intervention of that Heaven whose special care
he was, had sent him a woman to punish—which, so far, was at least one
thing arranged as it should be. He knew so well how he could punish her
with his mere contempt and displeasure—as he could lash a spaniel
crawling at his feet. He need not deign to tell her what had happened,
and he did not. He merely drew back and stood in stiff magnificence
looking down at her.

“It is through some folly of yours,” he dropped in a voice of vitriol.
“Women are always foolish. They cannot hold their tongues or think
clearly. Return to Berlin at once. You are not of those whose conduct I
can commend to be trusted in the future.”

He was gone before she could have spoken even if she had dared. Sobbing
gasps caught her breath as she stood and watched him striding
pitilessly and superbly away with, what seemed to her abject soul, the
swing and tread of a martial god. Her streaming tears tasted salt
indeed. She might never see him again—even from a distance. She would
be disgraced and flung aside as a blundering woman. She had obeyed his
every word and done her straining best, as she had licked the dust at
his feet—but he would never cast a glance at her in the future or utter
to her the remotest word of his high commands. She so reeled as she
went her wretched way that a good-natured policeman said to her as he
passed,

“Steady on, my girl. Best get home and go to bed.”

To Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was stated by Coombe that Fräulein Hirsch
had been called back to Germany by family complications. That august
orders should recall Count Von Hillern, was easily understood. Such
magnificent persons never shone upon society for any length of time.

That Feather had been making a country home visit when her daughter had
faced tragedy was considered by Lord Coombe as a fortunate thing.

“We will not alarm Mrs. Gareth-Lawless by telling her what has
occurred,” he said to Mademoiselle Vallé. “What we most desire is that
no one shall suspect that the hideous thing took place. A person who
was forgetful or careless might, unintentionally, let some word escape
which—”

What he meant, and what Mademoiselle Vallé knew he meant—also what he
knew she knew he meant—was that a woman, who was a heartless fool,
without sympathy or perception, would not have the delicacy to feel
that the girl must be shielded, and might actually see a sort of
ghastly joke in a story of Mademoiselle Vallé’s sacrosanct charge
simply walking out of her enshrining arms into such a “galere” as the
most rackety and adventurous of pupils could scarcely have been led
into. Such a point of view would have been quite possible for
Feather—even probable, in the slightly spiteful attitude of her light
mind.

“She was away from home. Only you and I and Dowie know,” answered
Mademoiselle.

“Let us remain the only persons who know,” said Coombe. “Robin will say
nothing.”

They both knew that. She had been feverish and ill for several days and
Dowie had kept her in bed saying that she had caught cold. Neither of
the two women had felt it possible to talk to her. She had lain staring
with a deadly quiet fixedness straight before her, saying next to
nothing. Now and then she shuddered, and once she broke into a mad,
heart-broken fit of crying which she seemed unable to control.

“Everything is changed,” she said to Dowie and Mademoiselle who sat on
either side of her bed, sometimes pressing her head down onto a kind
shoulder, sometimes holding her hand and patting it. “I shall be afraid
of everybody forever. People who have sweet faces and kind voices will
make me shake all over. Oh! She seemed so kind—so kind!”

It was Dowie whose warm shoulder her face hidden on this time, and
Dowie was choked with sobs she dared not let loose. She could only
squeeze hard and kiss the “silk curls all in a heap”—poor, tumbled
curls, no longer a child’s!

“Aye, my lamb!” she managed to say. “Dowie’s poor pet lamb!”

“It’s the knowing that kind eyes—kind ones—!” she broke off, panting.
“It’s the _knowing!_ I didn’t know before! I knew nothing. Now, it’s
all over. I’m afraid of all the world!”

“Not all, _chèrie_,” breathed Mademoiselle.

She sat upright against her pillows. The mirror on a dressing table
reflected her image—her blooming tear-wet youth, framed in the
wonderful hair falling a shadow about her. She stared at the reflection
hard and questioningly.

“I suppose,” her voice was pathos itself in its helplessness, “it is
because what you once told me about being pretty, is true. A girl who
looks like _that_,” pointing her finger at the glass, “need not think
she can earn her own living. I loathe it,” in fierce resentment at some
bitter injustice. “It is like being a person under a curse!”

At this Dowie broke down openly and let her tears run fast. “No, no!
You mustn’t say it or think it, my dearie!” she wept. “It might call
down a blight on it. You a young thing like a garden flower! And
someone—somewhere—God bless him—that some day’ll glory in it—and you’ll
glory too. Somewhere he is—somewhere!”

“Let none of them look at me!” cried Robin. “I loathe them, too. I hate
everything—and everybody—but you two—just you two.”

Mademoiselle took her in her arms this time when she sobbed again.
Mademoiselle knew how at this hour it seemed to her that all her world
was laid bare forever more. When the worst of the weeping was over and
she lay quiet, but for the deep catching breaths which lifted her
breast in slow, childish shudders at intervals, she held Mademoiselle
Vallé’s hand and looked at her with a faint, wry smile.

“You were too kind to tell me what a stupid little fool I was when I
talked to you about taking a place in an office!” she said. “I know now
that you would not have allowed me to do the things I was so sure I
could do. It was only my ignorance and conceit. I can’t answer
advertisements. Any bad person can say what they choose in an
advertisement. If that woman had advertised, she would have described
Hélène. And there was no Hélène.” One of the shuddering catches of her
breath broke in here. After it, she said, with a pitiful girlishness of
regret: “I—I could _see_ Hélène. I have known so few people well enough
to love them. No girls at all. I though—perhaps—we should begin to
_love_ each other. I can’t bear to think of that—that she never was
alive at all. It leaves a sort of empty place.”

When she had sufficiently recovered herself to be up again,
Mademoiselle Vallé said to her that she wished her to express her
gratitude to Lord Coombe.

“I will if you wish it,” she answered.

“Don’t you feel that it is proper that you should do it? Do you not
wish it yourself?” inquired Mademoiselle. Robin looked down at the
carpet for some seconds.

“I know,” she at last admitted, “that it is proper. But I don’t wish to
do it.”

“No?” said Mademoiselle Vallé.

Robin raised her eyes from the carpet and fixed them on her.

“It is because of—reasons,” she said. “It is part of the horror I want
to forget. Even you mayn’t know what it has done to me. Perhaps I am
turning into a girl with a bad mind. Bad thoughts keep swooping down on
me—like great black ravens. Lord Coombe saved me, but I think hideous
things about him. I heard Andrews say he was bad when I was too little
to know what it meant. Now, I _know_, I remember that _he_ knew because
he chose to know—of his own free will. He knew that woman and she knew
him. _How_ did he know her?” She took a forward step which brought her
nearer to Mademoiselle. “I never told you but I will tell you now,” she
confessed, “When the door opened and I saw him standing against the
light I—I did not think he had come to save me.”

“_Mon Dieu!_” breathed Mademoiselle in soft horror.

“He knows I am pretty. He is an old man but he knows. Fräulein Hirsch
once made me feel actually sick by telling me, in her meek, sly,
careful way, that he liked beautiful girls and the people said he
wanted a young wife and had his eye on me. I was rude to her because it
made me so furious. _How_ did he know that woman so well? You see how
bad I have been made!”

“He knows nearly all Europe. He has seen the dark corners as well as
the bright places. Perhaps he has saved other girls from her. He
brought her to punishment, and was able to do it because he has been on
her track for some time. You are not bad—but unjust. You have had too
great a shock to be able to reason sanely just yet.”

“I think he will always make me creep a little,” said Robin, “but I
will say anything you think I ought to say.”

On an occasion when Feather had gone again to make a visit in the
country, Mademoiselle came into the sitting room with the round window
in which plants grew, and Coombe followed her. Robin looked up from her
book with a little start and then stood up.

“I have told Lord Coombe that you wish—that I wish you to thank him,”
Mademoiselle Vallé said.

“I came on my own part to tell you that any expression of gratitude is
entirely unnecessary,” said Coombe.

“I _must_ be grateful. I _am_ grateful.” Robin’s colour slowly faded as
she said it. This was the first time she had seen him since he had
supported her down the staircase which mounted to a place of hell.

“There is nothing to which I should object so much as being regarded as
a benefactor,” he answered definitely, but with entire lack of warmth.
“The role does not suit me. Being an extremely bad man,” he said it as
one who speaks wholly without prejudice, “my experience is wide. I
chance to know things. The woman who called herself Lady Etynge is of a
class which—which does not count me among its clients. I had put
certain authorities on her track—which was how I discovered your
whereabouts when Mademoiselle Vallé told me that you had gone to take
tea with her. Mere chance you see. Don’t be grateful to me, I beg of
you, but to Mademoiselle Vallé.”

“Why,” faltered Robin, vaguely repelled as much as ever, “did it matter
to you?”

“Because,” he answered—Oh, the cold inhumanness of his gray eye!—“you
happened to live in—this house.”

“I thought that was perhaps the reason,” she said—and she felt that he
made her “creep” even a shade more.

“I beg your pardon,” she added, suddenly remembering, “Please sit
down.”

“Thank you,” as he sat. “I will because I have something more to say to
you.”

Robin and Mademoiselle seated themselves also and listened.

“There are hideous aspects of existence which are not considered
necessary portions of a girl’s education,” he began.

“They ought to be,” put in Robin, and her voice was as hard as it was
young.

It was a long and penetrating look he gave her.

“I am not an instructor of Youth. I have not been called upon to
decide. I do not feel it my duty to go even now into detail.”

“You need not,” broke in the hard young voice. “I know everything in
the world. I’m BLACK with knowing.”

“Mademoiselle Valle will discuss that point with you. What you have,
unfortunately, been forced to learn is that it is not safe for a
girl—even a girl without beauty—to act independently of older people,
unless she has found out how to guard herself against—devils.” The
words broke from him sharply, with a sudden incongruous hint of
ferocity which was almost startling. “You have been frightened,” he
said next, “and you have discovered that there are devils, but you have
not sufficient experience to guard yourself against them.”

“I have been so frightened that I shall be a coward—a coward all my
life. I shall be afraid of every face I see—the more to be trusted they
look, the more I shall fear them. I hate every one in the world!”

Her quite wonderful eyes—so they struck Lord Coombe—flamed with a
child’s outraged anguish. A thunder shower of tears broke and rushed
down her cheeks, and he rose and, walking quietly to the window full of
flowers, stood with his back to her for a few moments. She neither
cared nor knew whether it was because her hysteric emotion bored or
annoyed him, or because he had the taste to realize that she would not
wish to be looked at. Unhappy youth can feel no law but its own.

But all was over during the few moments, and he turned and walked back
to his chair.

“You want very much to do some work which will insure your entire
independence—to take some situation which will support you without aid
from others? You are not yet prepared to go out and take the first
place which offers. You have been—as you say—too hideously frightened,
and you know there are dangers in wandering about unguided.
Mademoiselle Vallé,” turning his head, “perhaps you will tell her what
you know of the Duchess of Darte?”

Upon which, Mademoiselle Vallé took hold of her hand and entered into a
careful explanation.

“She is a great personage of whom there can be no doubt. She was a lady
of the Court. She is of advanced years and an invalid and has a liking
for those who are pretty and young. She desires a companion who is well
educated and young and fresh of mind. The companion who had been with
her for many years recently died. If you took her place you would live
with her in her town house and go with her to the country after the
season. Your salary would be liberal and no position could be more
protected and dignified. I have seen and talked to her grace myself,
and she will allow me to take you to her, if you desire to go.”

“Do not permit the fact that she has known me for many years to
prejudice you against the proposal,” said Coombe. “You might perhaps
regard it rather as a sort of guarantee of my conduct in the matter.
She knows the worst of me and still allows me to retain her
acquaintance. She was brilliant and full of charm when she was a young
woman, and she is even more so now because she is—of a rarity! If I
were a girl and might earn my living in her service, I should feel that
fortune had been good to me—good.”

Robin’s eyes turned from one of them to the other—from Coombe to
Mademoiselle Vallé, and from Mademoiselle to Coombe pathetically.

“You—you see—what has been done to me,” she said. “A few weeks ago I
should have _known_ that God was providing for me—taking care of me.
And now—I am still afraid. I feel as if she would see that—that I am
not young and fresh any more but black with evil. I am afraid of her—I
am afraid of you,” to Coombe, “and of myself.”

Coombe rose, evidently to go away.

“But you are not afraid of Mademoiselle Vallé,” he put it to her. “She
will provide the necessary references for the Duchess. I will leave her
to help you to decide.”

Robin rose also. She wondered if she ought not to hold out her hand.
Perhaps he saw her slight movement. He himself made none.

“I remember you objected to shaking hands as a child,” he said, with an
impersonal civil smile, and the easy punctiliousness of his bow made it
impossible for her to go further.




CHAPTER XXV


Some days before this the Duchess of Darte had driven out in the
morning to make some purchases and as she had sat in her large landau
she had greatly missed Miss Brent who had always gone with her when she
had made necessary visits to the shops. She was not fond of shopping
and Miss Brent had privately found pleasure in it which had made her a
cheerful companion. To the quiet elderly woman whose life previous to
her service with this great lady had been spent in struggles with
poverty, the mere incident of entering shops and finding eager salesmen
springing forward to meet her with bows and amiable offers of
ministration, was to the end of her days an almost thrilling thing. The
Duchess bought splendidly though quietly. Knowing always what she
wanted, she merely required that it be produced, and after silently
examining it gave orders that it should be sent to her. There was a
dignity in her decision which was impressive. She never gave trouble or
hesitated. The staffs of employees in the large shops knew and reveled
in her while they figuratively bent the knee. Miss Brent had been a
happy satisfied woman while she had lived. She had died peacefully
after a brief and, as it seemed at first, unalarming illness at one of
her employer’s country houses to which she had been amiably sent down
for a holiday. Every kindness and attention had been bestowed upon her
and only a few moments before she fell into her last sleep she had been
talking pleasantly of her mistress.

“She is a very great lady, Miss Hallam,” she had said to her nurse.
“She’s the last of her kind I often think. Very great ladies seem to
have gone out—if you know what I mean. They’ve gone out.”

The Duchess had in fact said of Brent as she stood a few days later
beside her coffin and looked down at her contentedly serene face,
something not unlike what Brent had said of herself.

“You were a good friend, Brent, my dear,” she murmured. “I shall always
miss you. I am afraid there are no more like you left.”

She was thinking of her all the morning as she drove slowly down to
Bond Street and Piccadilly. As she got out of her carriage to go into a
shop she was attracted by some photographs of beauties in a window and
paused to glance at them. Many of them were beauties whom she knew, but
among them were some of society’s latest discoveries. The particular
photographs which caught her eye were two which had evidently been
purposely placed side by side for an interesting reason. The reason was
that the two women, while obviously belonging to periods of some twenty
years apart as the fashion of their dress proved, were in face and form
so singularly alike that they bewilderingly suggested that they were
the same person. Both were exquisitely nymphlike, fair and large eyed
and both had the fine light hair which is capable of forming itself
into a halo. The Duchess stood and looked at them for the moment
spell-bound. She slightly caught her breath. She was borne back so
swiftly and so far. Her errand in the next door shop was forgotten. She
went into the one which displayed the photographs.

“I wish to look at the two photographs which are so much alike,” she
said to the man behind the counter.

He knew her as most people did and brought forth the photographs at
once.

“Many people are interested in them, your grace,” he said. “It was the
amazing likeness which made me put them beside each other.”

“Yes,” she answered. “It is almost incredible.” She looked up from the
beautiful young being dressed in the mode of twenty years past.

“This is—_was_—?” she corrected herself and paused. The man replied in
a somewhat dropped voice. He evidently had his reasons for feeling it
discreet to do so.

“Yes—_was_. She died twenty years ago. The young Princess Alixe of X—”
he said. “There was a sad story, your grace no doubt remembers. It was
a good deal talked about.”

“Yes,” she replied and said no more, but took up the modern picture. It
displayed the same almost floating airiness of type, but in this case
the original wore diaphanous wisps of spangled tulle threatening to
take wings and fly away leaving the girl slimness of arms and shoulders
bereft of any covering whatsoever.

“This one is—?” she questioned.

“A Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. A widow with a daughter though she looks in her
teens. She’s older than the Princess was, but she’s kept her beauty as
ladies know how to in these days. It’s wonderful to see them side by
side. But it’s only a few that saw her Highness as she was the season
she came with the Prince to visit at Windsor in Queen Victoria’s day.
Did your grace—” he checked himself feeling that he was perhaps
somewhat exceeding Bond Street limits.

“Yes. I saw her,” said the Duchess. “If these are for sale I will take
them both.”

“I’m selling a good many of them. People buy them because the likeness
makes them a sort of curiosity. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless is a very modern
lady and she is quite amused.”

The Duchess took the two photographs home with her and looked at them a
great deal afterwards as she sat in her winged chair.

They were on her table when Coombe came to drink tea with her in the
afternoon.

When he saw them he stood still and studied the two faces silently for
several seconds.

“Did you ever before see a likeness so wonderful?” he said at last.

“Never,” she answered. “Or an unlikeness. That is the most wonderful of
all—the unlikeness. It is the same body inhabited by two souls from
different spheres.”

His next words were spoken very slowly.

“I should have been sure you would see that,” he commented.

“I lost my breath for a second when I saw them side by side in the shop
window—and the next moment I lost it again because I saw—what I speak
of—the utter world wide apartness. It is in their eyes. She—,” she
touched the silver frame enclosing the young Princess, “was a little
saint—a little spirit. There never was a young human thing so
transparently pure.”

The rigid modeling of his face expressed a thing which, himself
recognizing its presence, he chose to turn aside as he moved towards
the mantel and leaned on it. The same thing caused his voice to sound
hoarse and low as he spoke in answer, saying something she had not
expected him to say. Its unexpectedness in fact produced in her an
effect of shock.

“And she was the possession of a brute incarnate, mad with unbridled
lust and drink and abnormal furies. She was a child saint, and shook
with terror before him. He killed her.”

“I believe he did,” she said unsteadily after a breath space of pause.
“Many people believed so though great effort was made to silence the
stories. But there were too many stories and they were so unspeakable
that even those in high places were made furiously indignant. He was
not received here at Court afterwards. His own emperor could not
condone what he did. Public opinion was too strong.”

“The stories were true,” answered the hoarse low voice. “I myself, by
royal command, was a guest at the Schloss in the Bavarian Alps when it
was known that he struck her repeatedly with a dog whip. She was going
to have a child. One night I was wandering in the park in misery and I
heard shrieks which sent me in mad search. I do not know what I should
have done if I had succeeded, but I tried to force an entrance into the
wing from which the shrieks came. I was met and stopped almost by open
violence. The sounds ceased. She died a week later. But the most
experienced lying could not hide some things. Even royal menials may
have human blood in their veins. It was known that there were hideous
marks on her little dead body.”

“We heard. We heard,” whispered the Duchess.

“He killed her. But she would have died of horror if he had not struck
her a blow. She began to die from the hour the marriage was forced upon
her. I saw that when she was with him at Windsor.”

“You were in attendance on him,” the Duchess said after a little
silence. “That was when I first knew you.”

“Yes.” She had added the last sentence gravely and his reply was as
grave though his voice was still hoarse. “You were sublime goodness and
wisdom. When a woman through the sheer quality of her silence saves a
man from slipping over the verge of madness he does not forget. While I
was sane I dared scarcely utter her name. If I had gone mad I should
have raved as madmen do. For that reason I was afraid.”

“I knew. Speech was the greatest danger,” she answered him. “She was a
princess of a royal house—poor little angel—and she had a husband whose
vileness and violence all Europe knew. How _dared_ they give her to
him?”

“For reasons of their own and because she was too humbly innocent and
obedient to rebel.”

The Duchess did not ask questions. The sublime goodness of which he had
spoken had revealed its perfection through the fact that in the long
past days she had neither questioned nor commented. She had given her
strong soul’s secret support to him and in his unbearable hours he had
known that when he came to her for refuge, while she understood his
need to the uttermost, she would speak no word even to himself.

But today though she asked no question her eyes waited upon him as it
were. This was because she saw that for some unknown reason a heavy
veil had rolled back from the past he had chosen to keep hidden even
from himself, as it were, more than from others.

“Speech is always the most dangerous thing,” he said. “Only the silence
of years piled one upon the other will bury unendurable things. Even
thought must be silenced. I have lived a lifetime since—” his words
began to come very slowly—as she listened she felt as if he were
opening a grave and drawing from its depths long buried things, “—since
the night when I met her alone in a wood in the park of the Schloss
and—lost hold of myself—lost it utterly.”

The Duchess’ withered hands caught each other in a clasp which was
almost like a passionate exclamation.

“There was such a night. And I was young—young—not an iron bound
_vieillard_ then. When one is young one’s anguish is the Deluge which
ends the world forever. I had lain down and risen up and spent every
hour in growing torture for months. I had been forced to bind myself
down with bands of iron. When I found myself, without warning, face to
face with her, alone in the night stillness of the wood, the bands
broke. She had dared to creep out in secret to hide herself and her
heartbroken terror in the silence and darkness alone. I knew it without
being told. I knew and I went quite mad for the time. I was only a boy.
I threw myself face downward on the earth and sobbed, embracing her
young feet.”

Both of them were quite silent for a few moments before he went on.

“She was not afraid,” he said, even with something which was like a
curious smile of tender pity at the memory. “Afterwards—when I stood
near her, trembling—she even took my hand and held it. Once she kissed
it humbly like a little child while her tears rained down. Never before
was there anything as innocently heartbreaking. She was so piteously
grateful for love of any kind and so heart wrung by my misery.”

He paused again and looked down at the carpet, thinking. Then he looked
up at her directly.

“I need not explain to you. You will know. I was twenty-five. My heart
was pounding in my side, my blood thudded through my veins. Every atom
of natural generous manhood in my being was wild with fury at the
brutal wrong done her exquisiteness. And she—”

“She was a young novice fresh from a convent and very pious,” the
Duchess’ quiet voice put in.

“You understand,” he answered. “She knelt down and prayed for her own
soul as well as mine. She thanked God that I was kind and would forgive
her and go away—and only remember her in my prayers. She believed it
was possible. It was not, but I kissed the hem of her white dress and
left her standing alone—a little saint in a woodland shrine. That was
what I thought deliriously as I staggered off. It was the next night
that I heard her shrieks. Then she died.”

The Duchess knew what else had died—the high adventure of youth and joy
of life in him, the brilliant spirit which had been himself and whose
utter withdrawal from his being had left him as she had seen him on his
return to London in those days which now seemed a memory of a past life
in a world which had passed also. He had appeared before her late one
afternoon and she had for a moment been afraid to look at him because
she was struck to the depths of her being by a sense of seeing before
her a body which had broken the link holding it to life and walked the
earth, the crowded streets, the ordinary rooms where people gathered, a
dead thing. Even while it moved it gazed out of dead eyes. And the
years had passed and though they had been friends he had never spoken
until now.

“Such a thing must be buried in a tomb covered with a heavy stone and
with a seal set upon it. I am unsealing a tomb,” he said. Then after a
silence he added, “I have, of cause, a reason.” She bent her head
because she had known this must be the case.

“There is a thing I wish you to understand. Every woman could not.”

“I shall understand.”

“Because I know you will I need not enter into exact detail. You will
not find what I say abnormal.”

There had been several pauses during his relation. Once or twice he had
stopped in the middle of a sentence as if for calmer breath or to draw
himself back from a past which had suddenly become again a present of
torment too great to face with modern steadiness. He took breath so to
speak in this manner again.

“The years pass, the agony of being young passes. One slowly becomes
another man,” he resumed. “I am another man. I could not be called a
creature of sentiment. I have given myself interests in existence—many
of them. But the sealed tomb is under one’s feet. Not to allow oneself
to acknowledge its existence consciously is one’s affair. But—the devil
of chance sometimes chooses to play tricks. Such a trick was played on
me.”

He glanced down at the two pictures at which she herself was looking
with grave eyes. It was the photograph of Feather he took up and set a
strange questioning gaze upon.

“When I saw this,” he said, “this—exquisitely smiling at me under a
green tree in a sunny garden—the tomb opened under my feet, and I stood
on the brink of it—twenty-five again.”

“You cannot possibly put it into words,” the Duchess said. “You need
not. I know.” For he had become for the moment almost livid. Even to
her who so well knew him it was a singular thing to see him hastily set
down the picture and touch his forehead with his handkerchief.

She knew he was about to tell her his reason for this unsealing of the
tomb. When he sat down at her table he did so. He did not use many
phrases, but in making clear his reasons he also made clear to her
certain facts which most persons would have ironically disbelieved. But
no shadow of a doubt passed through her mind because she had through a
long life dwelt interestedly on the many variations in human type. She
was extraordinarily interested when he ended with the story of Robin.

“I do not know exactly why ‘it matters to me’—I am quoting her mother,”
he explained, “but it happens that I am determined to stand between the
child and what would otherwise be the inevitable. It is not that she
has the slightest resemblance to—to anyone—which might awaken memory.
It is not that. She and her mother are of totally different types. And
her detestation of me is unconquerable. She believes me to be the worst
of men. When I entered the room into which the woman had trapped her,
she thought that I came as one of the creature’s damnable clients. You
will acknowledge that my position presents difficulties in the way of
explanation to a girl—to most adults in fact. Her childish frenzy of
desire to support herself arises from her loathing of the position of
accepting support from me. I sympathize with her entirely.”

“Mademoiselle Vallé is an intelligent woman,” the Duchess said as
though thinking the matter out. “Send her to me and we will talk the
matter over. Then she can bring the child.”




CHAPTER XXVI


As a result of this, her grace saw Mademoiselle Vallé alone a few
mornings later and talked to her long and quietly. Their comprehension
of each other was complete. Before their interview was at an end the
Duchess’ interest in the adventure she was about to enter into had
become profound.

“The sooner she is surrounded by a new atmosphere, the better,” was one
of the things the Frenchwoman had said. “The prospect of an arrangement
so perfect and so secure fills me with the profoundest gratitude. It is
absolutely necessary that I return to my parents in Belgium. They are
old and failing in health and need me greatly. I have been sad and
anxious for months because I felt that it would be wickedness to desert
this poor child. I have been torn in two. Now I can be at peace—thank
the good God.”

“Bring her to me tomorrow if possible,” the Duchess said when they
parted. “I foresee that I may have something to overcome in the fact
that I am Lord Coombe’s old friend, but I hope to be able to overcome
it.”

“She is a baby—she is of great beauty—she has a passionate little soul
of which she knows nothing.” Mademoiselle Vallé said it with an anxious
reflectiveness. “I have been afraid. If I were her mother——” her eyes
sought those of the older woman.

“But she has no mother,” her grace answered. Her own eyes were serious.
She knew something of girls, of young things, of the rush and tumult of
young life in them and of the outlet it demanded. A baby who was of
great beauty and of a passionate soul was no trivial undertaking for a
rheumatic old duchess, but—“Bring her to me,” she said.

So was Robin brought to the tall Early Victorian mansion in the
belatedly stately square. And the chief thought in her mind was that
though mere good manners demanded under the circumstances that she
should come to see the Dowager Duchess of Darte and be seen by her, if
she found that she was like Lord Coombe, she would not be able to
endure the prospect of a future spent in her service howsoever
desirable such service might outwardly appear. This desirableness
Mademoiselle Vallé had made clear to her. She was to be the companion
of a personage of great and mature charm and grace who desired not mere
attendance, but something more, which something included the warmth and
fresh brightness of happy youth and bloom. She would do for her
employer the things a young relative might do. She would have a suite
of rooms of her own and a freedom as to hours and actions which greater
experience on her part would have taught was not the customary portion
meted out to a paid companion. But she knew nothing of paid service and
a preliminary talk of Coombe’s with Mademoiselle Vallé had warned her
against allowing any suspicion that this “earning a living” had been
too obviously ameliorated.

“Her life is unusual. She herself is unusual in a most dignified and
beautiful way. You will, it might almost be said, hold the position of
a young lady in waiting,” was Mademoiselle’s gracefully put
explanation.

When, after they had been ushered into the room where her grace sat in
her beautiful and mellow corner by the fire, Robin advanced towards the
highbacked chair, what the old woman was chiefly conscious of was the
eyes which seemed all lustrous iris. There was uncommon appeal and fear
in them. The blackness of their setting of up-curled lashes made them
look babyishly wide.

“Mademoiselle Vallé has told me of your wish to take a position as
companion,” the Duchess said after they were seated.

“I want very much,” said Robin, “to support myself and Mademoiselle
thinks that I might fill such a place if I am not considered too
young.”

“You are not too young—for me. I want something young to come and
befriend me. Am I too old for _you?_” Her smile had been celebrated
fifty years earlier and it had not changed. A smile does not. She was
not like Lord Coombe in any degree however remote. She did not belong
to his world, Robin thought.

“If I can do well enough the things you require done,” she answered
blushing her Jacqueminot rose blush, “I shall be grateful if you will
let me try to do them. Mademoiselle will tell you that I have no
experience, but that I am one who tries well.”

“Mademoiselle has answered all my questions concerning your
qualifications so satisfactorily that I need ask you very few.”

Such questions as she asked were not of the order Robin had expected.
She led her into talk and drew Mademoiselle Vallé into the
conversation. It was talk which included personal views of books, old
gardens and old houses, people, pictures and even—lightly—politics.
Robin found herself quite incidentally, as it were, reading aloud to
her an Italian poem. She ceased to be afraid and was at ease. She
forgot Lord Coombe. The Duchess listening and watching her warmed to
her task of delicate investigation and saw reason for anticipating
agreeably stimulating things. She was not taking upon herself a merely
benevolent duty which might assume weight and become a fatigue. In fact
she might trust Coombe for that. After all it was he who had virtually
educated the child—little as she was aware of the singular fact. It was
he who had dragged her forth from her dog kennel of a top floor nursery
and quaintly incongruous as it seemed, had found her a respectable
woman for a nurse and an intelligent person for a governess and
companion as if he had been a domesticated middle class widower with a
little girl to play mother to. She saw in the situation more than
others would have seen in it, but she saw also the ironic humour of it.
Coombe—with the renowned cut of his overcoat—the perfection of his line
and scarcely to be divined suggestions of hue—Coombe!

She did not avoid all mention of his name during the interview, but she
spoke of him only casually, and though the salary she offered was an
excellent one, it was not inordinate. Robin could not feel that she was
not being accepted as of the class of young persons who support
themselves self-respectingly, though even the most modest earned income
would have represented wealth to her ignorance.

Before they parted she had obtained the position so pleasantly
described by Mademoiselle Vallé as being something like that of a young
lady in waiting. “But I am really a companion and I will do
everything—everything I can so that I shall be worth keeping,” she
thought seriously. She felt that she should want to be kept. If Lord
Coombe was a friend of her employer’s it was because the Duchess did
not know what others knew. And her house was not his house—and the
hideous thing she had secretly loathed would be at an end. She would be
supporting herself as decently and honestly as Mademoiselle or Dowie
had supported themselves all their lives.

With an air of incidentally recalling a fact, the Duchess said after
they had risen to leave her:

“Mademoiselle Vallé tells me you have an elderly nurse you are very
fond of. She seems to belong to a class of servants almost extinct.”

“I love her,” Robin faltered—because the sudden reminder brought back a
pang to her. There was a look in her eyes which faltered also. “She
loves me. I don’t know how——” but there she stopped.

“Such women are very valuable to those who know the meaning of their
type. I myself am always in search of it. My dear Miss Brent was of it,
though of a different class.”

“But most people do not know,” said Robin. “It seems old-fashioned to
them—and it’s beautiful! Dowie is an angel.”

“I should like to secure your Dowie for my housekeeper and myself,”—one
of the greatest powers of the celebrated smile was its power to
convince. “A competent person is needed to take charge of the linen. If
we can secure an angel we shall be fortunate.”

A day or so later she said to Coombe in describing the visit.

“The child’s face is wonderful. If you could but have seen her eyes
when I said it. It is not the mere beauty of size and shape and colour
which affect one. It is something else. She is a little flame of
feeling.”

The “something else” was in the sound of her voice as she answered.

“She will be in the same house with me! Sometimes perhaps I may see her
and talk to her! Oh! how _grateful_ I am!” She might even see and talk
to her as often as she wished, it revealed itself and when she and
Mademoiselle got into their hansom cab to drive away, she caught at the
Frenchwoman’s hand and clung to it, her eyelashes wet,

“It is as if there _must_ be Goodness which takes care of one,” she
said. “I used to believe in it so—until I was afraid of all the world.
Dowie means most of all. I did not know how I could bear to let her go
away. And since her husband and her daughter died, she has no one but
me. I should have had no one but her if you had gone back to Belgium,
Mademoiselle. And now she will be safe in the same house with me.
Perhaps the Duchess will keep her until she dies. I hope she will keep
me until I die. I will be as good and faithful as Dowie and perhaps the
Duchess will live until I am quite old—and not pretty any more. And I
will make economies as you have made them, Mademoiselle, and save all
my salary—and I might be able to end my days in a little cottage in the
country.”

Mademoiselle was conscious of an actual physical drag at her
heartstrings. The pulsating glow of her young loveliness had never been
more moving and oh! the sublime certainty of her unconsciousness that
Life lay between this hour and that day when she was “quite old and not
pretty any more” and having made economies could die in a little
cottage in the country! She believed in her vision as she had believed
that Donal would come to her in the garden.

Upon Feather the revelation that her daughter had elected to join the
ranks of girls who were mysteriously determined to be responsible for
themselves produced a curious combination of effects. It was presented
to her by Lord Coombe in the form of a simple impersonal statement
which had its air of needing no explanation. She heard it with eyes
widening a little and a smile slowly growing. Having heard, she broke
into a laugh, a rather high-pitched treble laugh.

“Really?” she said. “She is really going to do it? To take a situation!
She wants to be independent and ‘live her own life!’ What a joke—for a
girl of mine!” She was either really amused or chose to seem so.

“What do _you_ think of it?” she asked when she stopped laughing. Her
eyes had curiosity in them.

“I like it,” he answered.

“Of course. I ought to have remembered that you helped her to an Early
Victorian duchess. She’s one without a flaw—the Dowager Duchess of
Darte. The most conscientiously careful mother couldn’t object. It’s
almost like entering into the kingdom of heaven—in a dull way.” She
began to laugh again as if amusing images rose suddenly before her.
“And what does the Duchess think of it?” she said after her laughter
had ceased again. “How does she reconcile herself to the idea of a
companion whose mother she wouldn’t have in her house?”

“We need not enter into that view of the case. You decided some years
ago that it did not matter to you whether Early Victorian duchesses
included you in their visiting lists or did not. More modern ones do I
believe—quite beautiful and amusing ones.”

“But for that reason I want this one and those like her. They would
bore me, but I want them. I want them to come to my house and be polite
to me in their stuffy way. I want to be invited to their hideous dinner
parties and see them sitting round their tables in their awful family
jewels ‘talking of the sad deaths of kings.’ That’s Shakespeare, you
know. I heard it last night at the theatre.”

“Why do you want it?” Coombe inquired.

“When I ask you why you show your morbid interest in Robin, you say you
don’t know. I don’t know—but I do want it.”

She suddenly flushed, she even showed her small teeth. For an
extraordinary moment she looked like a little cat.

“Robin will hare it,” she cried, grinding a delicate fist into the palm
on her knee. “She’s not eighteen and she’s a beauty and she’s taken up
by a perfectly decent old duchess. She’ll have _everything!_ The
Dowager will marry her to someone important. You’ll help,” she turned
on him in a flame of temper. “You are capable of marrying her
yourself!” There was a a brief but entire silence. It was broken by his
saying,

“She is not capable of marrying _me_.”

There was brief but entire silence again, and it was he who again broke
it, his manner at once cool and reasonable.

“It is better not to exhibit this kind of feeling. Let us be quite
frank. There are few things you feel more strongly than that you do not
want your daughter in the house. When she was a child you told me that
you detested the prospect of having her on your hands. She is being
disposed of in the most easily explained and enviable manner.”

“It’s true—it’s true,” Feather murmured. She began to see advantages
and the look of a little cat died out, or at least modified itself into
that of a little cat upon whom dawned prospects of cream. No mood ever
held her very long. “She won’t come back to stay,” she said. “The
Duchess won’t let her. I can use her rooms and I shall be very glad to
have them. There’s at least some advantage in figuring as a sort of
Dame Aux Camelias.”




CHAPTER XXVII


The night before Robin went away as she sat alone in the dimness of one
light, thinking as girls nearly always sit and think on the eve of a
change, because to youth any change seems to mean the final closing as
well as the opening of ways, the door of her room was opened and an
exquisite and nymphlike figure in pale green stood exactly where the
rays of the reading lamp seemed to concentrate themselves in an effort
to reveal most purely its delicately startling effect. It was her
mother in a dress whose spring-like tint made her a sort of slim dryad.
She looked so pretty and young that Robin caught her breath as she rose
and went forward.

“It is your aged parent come to give you her blessing,” said Feather.

“I was wondering if I might come to your room in the morning,” Robin
answered.

Feather seated herself lightly. She was not intelligent enough to have
any real comprehension of the mood which had impelled her to come. She
had merely given way to a secret sense of resentment of something which
annoyed her. She knew, however, why she had put on the spring-leaf
green dress which made her look like a girl. She was not going to let
Robin feel as if she were receiving a visit from her grandmother. She
had got that far.

“We don’t know each other at all, do we?” she said.

“No,” answered Robin. She could not remove her eyes from her
loveliness. She brought up such memories of the Lady Downstairs and the
desolate child in the shabby nursery.

“Mothers are not as intimate with their daughters as they used to be
when it was a sort of virtuous fashion to superintend their rice
pudding and lecture them about their lessons. We have not seen each
other often.”

“No,” said Robin.

Feather’s laugh had again the rather high note Coombe had noticed.

“You haven’t very much to say, have you?” she commented. “And you stare
at me as if you were trying to explain me. I dare say you know that you
have big eyes and that they’re a good colour, but I may as well hint to
you that men do not like to be stared at as if their deeps were being
searched. Drop your eyelids.”

Robin’s lids dropped in spite of herself because she was startled, but
immediately she was startled again by a note in her mother’s voice—a
note of added irritation.

“Don’t make a habit of dropping them too often,” it broke out, “or it
will look as if you did it to show your eyelashes. Girls with tricks of
that sort are always laughed at. Alison Carr _lives_ sideways became
she has a pretty profile.”

Coombe would have recognized the little cat look, if he had been
watching her as she leaned back in her chair and scrutinized her
daughter. The fact was that she took in her every point, being an
astute censor of other women’s charms.

“Stand up,” she said.

Robin stood up because she could not well refuse to do so, but she
coloured because she was suddenly ashamed.

“You’re not little, but you’re not tall,” her mother said. “That’s
against you. It’s the fashion for women to be immensely tall now. Du
Maurier’s pictures in Punch and his idiotic Trilby did it. Clothes are
made for giantesses. I don’t care about it myself, but a girl’s rather
out of it if she’s much less than six feet high. You can sit down.”

A more singular interview between mother and daughter had assuredly
rarely taken place. As she looked at the girl her resentment of her
increased each moment. She actually felt as if she were beginning to
lose her temper.

“You are what pious people call ‘going out into the world’,” she went
on. “In moral books mothers always give advice and warnings to their
girls when they’re leaving them. I can give you some warnings. You
think that because you have been taken up by a dowager duchess
everything will be plain sailing. You’re mistaken. You think because
you are eighteen and pretty, men will fall at your feet.”

“I would rather be hideous,” cried suddenly passionate Robin. “I _hate_
men!”

The silly pretty thing who was responsible for her being, grew sillier
as her irritation increased.

“That’s what girls always pretend, but the youngest little idiot knows
it isn’t true. It’s men who count. It makes me laugh when I think of
them—and of you. You know nothing about them and they know everything
about you. A clever man can do anything he pleases with a silly girl.”

“Are they _all_ bad?” Robin exclaimed furiously.

“They’re none of them bad. They’re only men. And that’s my warning.
Don’t imagine that when they make love to you they do it as if you were
the old Duchess’ granddaughter. You will only be her paid companion and
that’s a different matter.”

“I will not speak to one of them——” Robin actually began.

“You’ll be obliged to do what the Duchess tells you to do,” laughed
Feather, as she realized her obvious power to dull the glitter and glow
of things which she had felt the girl must be dazzled and uplifted
unduly by. She was rather like a spiteful schoolgirl entertaining
herself by spoiling an envied holiday for a companion. “Old men will
run after you and you will have to be nice to them whether you like it
or not.” A queer light came into her eyes. “Lord Coombe is fond of
girls just out of the schoolroom. But if he begins to make love to you
don’t allow yourself to feel too much flattered.”

Robin sprang toward her.

“Do you think I don’t _abhor_ Lord Coombe!” she cried out forgetting
herself in the desperate cruelty of the moment. “Haven’t I reason——”
but there she remembered and stopped.

But Feather was not shocked or alarmed. Years of looking things in the
face had provided her with a mental surface from which tilings
rebounded. On the whole it even amused her and “suited her book” that
Robin should take this tone.

“Oh! I suppose you mean you know he admires me and pays bills for me.
Where would you have been if he hadn’t done it? He’s been a sort of
benefactor.”

“I know nothing but that even when I was a little child I could not
bear to touch his hand!” cried Robin. Then Feather remembered several
things she had almost forgotten and she was still more entertained.

“I believe you’ve not forgotten through all these years that the boy
you fell so indecently in love with was taken away by his mother
because Lord Coombe was _your_ mother’s admirer and he was such a
sinner that even a baby was contaminated by him! Donal Muir is a young
man by this time. I wonder what his mother would do now if he turned up
at your mistress’ house—that’s what she is, you know, your mistress—and
began to make love to you.” She laughed outright. “You’ll get into all
sorts of messes, but that would be the nicest one!”

Robin could only stand and gaze at her. Her moment’s fire had died
down. Without warning, out of the past a wave rose and overwhelmed her
then and there. It bore with it the wild woe of the morning when a
child had waited in the spring sun and her world had fallen into
nothingness. It came back—the broken-hearted anguish, the utter
helpless desolation, as if she stood in the midst of it again, as if it
had never passed. It was a re-incarnation. She could not bear it.

“Do you hate me—as I hate Lord Coombe?” she cried out. “Do you _want_
unhappy things to happen to me? Oh! Mother, why!” She had never said
“Mother” before. Nature said it for her here. The piteous appeal of her
youth and lonely young rush of tears was almost intolerably sweet.
Through some subtle cause it added to the thing in her which Feather
resented and longed to trouble and to hurt.

“You are a spiteful little cat!” she sprang up to exclaim, standing
close and face to face with her. “You think I am an old thing and that
I’m jealous of you! Because you’re pretty and a girl you think women
past thirty don’t count. You’ll find out. Mrs. Muir will count and
she’s forty if she’s a day. Her son’s such a beauty that people go mad
over him. And he worships her—and he’s her slave. I wish you _would_
get into some mess you couldn’t get out of! Don’t come to me if you
do.”

The wide beauty of Robin’s gaze and her tear wet bloom were too much.
Feather was quite close to her. The spiteful schoolgirl impulse got the
better of her.

“Don’t make eyes at me like that,” she cried, and she actually gave the
rose cheek nearest her a sounding little slap, “There!” she exclaimed
hysterically and she turned about and ran out of the room crying
herself.

Robin had parted from Mademoiselle Vallé at Charing Cross Station on
the afternoon of the same day, but the night before they had sat up
late together and talked a long time. In effect Mademoiselle had said
also, “You are going out into the world,” but she had not approached
the matter in Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ mood. One may have charge of a girl
and be her daily companion for years, but there are certain things the
very years themselves make it increasingly difficult to say to her. And
after all why should one state difficult things in exact phrases unless
one lacks breeding and is curious. Anxious she had been at times, but
not curious. So it was that even on this night of their parting it was
not she who spoke.

It was after a few minutes of sitting in silence and looking at the
fire that Robin broke in upon the quiet which had seemed to hold them
both.

“I must learn to remember always that I am a sort of servant. I must be
very careful. It will be easier for me to realize that I am not in my
own house than it would be for other girls. I have not allowed Dowie to
dress me for a good many weeks. I have learned how to do everything for
myself quite well.”

“But Dowie will be in the house with you and the Duchess is very kind.”

“Every night I have begun my prayers by thanking God for leaving me
Dowie,” the girl said. “I have begun them and ended them with the same
words.” She looked about her and then broke out as if involuntarily. “I
shall be away from here. I shall not wear anything or eat anything or
sleep on any bed I have not paid for myself.”

“These rooms are very pretty. We have been very comfortable here,”
Mademoiselle said. Suddenly she felt that if she waited a few moments
she would know definitely things she had previously only guessed at.
“Have you no little regrets?”

“No,” answered Robin, “No.”

She stood upon the hearth with her hands behind her. Mademoiselle felt
as if her fingers were twisting themselves together and the Frenchwoman
was peculiarly moved by the fact that she looked like a slim _jeune
fille_ of a creature saying a lesson. The lesson opened in this wise.

“I don’t know when I first began to know that I was different from all
other children,” she said in a soft, hot voice—if a voice can express
heat. “Perhaps a child who has nothing—nothing—is obliged to begin to
_think_ before it knows what thoughts are. If they play and are loved
and amused they have no time for anything but growing and being happy.
You never saw the dreadful little rooms upstairs——”

“Dowie has told me of them,” said Mademoiselle.

“Another child might have forgotten them. I never shall. I—I was so
little and they were full of something awful. It was loneliness. The
first time Andrews pinched me was one day when the thing frightened me
and I suddenly began to cry quite loud. I used to stare out of the
window and—I don’t know when I noticed it first—I could see the
children being taken out by their nurses. And there were always two or
three of them and they laughed and talked and skipped. The nurses used
to laugh and talk too. Andrews never did. When she took me to the
gardens the other nurses sat together and chattered and their children
played games with other children. Once a little girl began to talk to
me and her nurse called her away. Andrews was very angry and jerked me
by my arm and told me that if ever I spoke to a child again she would
pinch me.”

“Devil!” exclaimed the Frenchwoman.

“I used to think and think, but I could never understand. How could I?”

“A baby!” cried Mademoiselle Vallé and she got up and took her in her
arms and kissed her. “_Chère petite ange!_” she murmured. When she sat
down again her cheeks were wet. Robin’s were wet also, but she touched
them with her handkerchief quickly and dried them. It was as if she had
faltered for a moment in her lesson.

“Did Dowie ever tell you anything about Donal?” she asked hesitatingly.

“Something. He was the little boy you played with?”

“Yes. He was the first human creature,” she said it very slowly as if
trying to find the right words to express what she meant, “—the first
_human_ creature I had ever known. You see Mademoiselle, he—he knew
everything. He had always been happy, he _belonged_ to people and
things. I belonged to nobody and nothing. If I had been like him he
would not have seemed so wonderful to me. I was in a kind of delirium
of joy. If a creature who had been deaf dumb and blind had suddenly
awakened, and seeing on a summer day in a world full of flowers and
sun—it might have seemed to them as it seemed to me.”

“You have remembered it through all the years,” said Mademoiselle,
“like that?”

“It was the first time I became alive. One could not forget it. We only
played as children play but—it _was_ a delirium of joy. I could not
bear to go to sleep at night and forget it for a moment. Yes, I
remember it—like that. There is a dream I have every now and then and
it is more real than—than this is—” with a wave of her hand about her.
“I am always in a real garden playing with a real Donal. And his
eyes—his eyes—” she paused and thought, “There is a look in them that
is like—it is just like—that first morning.”

The change which passed over her face the next moment might have been
said to seem to obliterate all trace of the childish memory.

“He was taken away by his mother. That was the beginning of my finding
out,” she said. “I heard Andrews talking to her sister and in a baby
way I gathered that Lord Coombe had sent him. I hated Lord Coombe for
years before I found out that he hadn’t—and that there was another
reason. After that it took time to puzzle things out and piece them
together. But at last I found out what the reason had been. Then I
began to make plans. These are not my rooms,” glancing about her again,
“—these are not my clothes,” with a little pull at her dress. “I’m not
‘a strong character’, Mademoiselle, as I wanted to be, but I haven’t
one little regret—not one.” She kneeled down and put her arms round her
old friend’s waist, lifting her face. “I’m like a leaf blown about by
the wind. I don’t know what it will do with me. Where do leaves go? One
never knows really.”

She put her face down on Mademoiselle’s knee then and cried with soft
bitterness.

When she bade her good-bye at Charing Cross Station and stood and
watched the train until it was quite out of sight, afterwards she went
back to the rooms for which she felt no regrets. And before she went to
bed that night Feather came and gave her farewell maternal advice and
warning.




CHAPTER XXVIII


That a previously scarcely suspected daughter of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless
had become a member of the household of the Dowager Duchess of Darte
stirred but a passing wave of interest in a circle which was not that
of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself and which upon the whole but casually
acknowledged its curious existence as a modern abnormality. Also the
attitude of the Duchess herself was composedly free from any admission
of necessity for comment.

“I have no pretty young relative who can be spared to come and live
with me. I am fond of things pretty and young and I am greatly pleased
with what a kind chance put in my way,” she said. In her discussion of
the situation with Coombe she measured it with her customary fine
acumen.

“Forty years ago it could not have been done. The girl would have been
made uncomfortable and outside things could not have been prevented
from dragging themselves in. Filial piety in the mass would have
demanded that the mother should be accounted for. Now a genial
knowledge of a variety in mothers leaves Mrs. Gareth-Lawless to play
about with her own probably quite amusing set. Once poor Robin would
have been held responsible for her and so should I. My position would
have seemed to defy serious moral issues. But we have reached a sane
habit of detaching people from their relations. A nice condition we
should be in if we had not.”

“You, of course, know that Henry died suddenly in some sort of fit at
Ostend.” Coombe said it as if in a form of reply. She had naturally
become aware of it when the rest of the world did, but had not seen him
since the event.

“One did not suppose his constitution would have lasted so long,” she
answered. “You are more fortunate in young Donal Muir. Have you seen
him and his mother?”

“I made a special journey to Braemarnie and had a curious interview
with Mrs. Muir. When I say ‘curious’ I don’t mean to imply that it was
not entirely dignified. It was curious only because I realize that
secretly she regards with horror and dread the fact that her boy is the
prospective Head of the House of Coombe. She does not make a jest of it
as I have had the temerity to do. It’s a cheap defense, this trick of
making an eternal jest of things, but it _is_ a defense and one has
formed the habit.”

“She has never done it—Helen Muir,” his friend said. “On the whole I
believe she at times knows that she has been too grave. She was a
beautiful creature passionately in love with her husband. When such a
husband is taken away from such a woman and his child is left it often
happens that the flood of her love is turned into one current and that
it is almost overwhelming. She is too sane to have coddled the boy and
made him effeminate—what has she done instead?”

“He is a splendid young Highlander. He would be too good-looking if he
were not as strong and active as a young stag. All she has done is to
so fill him with the power and sense of her charm that he has not seen
enough of the world or learned to care for it. She is the one woman on
earth for him and life with her at Braemarnie is all he asks for.”

“Your difficulty will be that she will not be willing to trust him to
your instructions.”

“I have not as much personal vanity as I may seem to have,” Coombe
said. “I put all egotism modestly aside when I talked to her and tried
to explain that I would endeavour to see that he came to no harm in my
society. My heir presumptive and I must see something of each other and
he must become intimate with the prospect of his responsibilities. More
will be demanded of the next Marquis of Coombe than has been demanded
of me. And it will be _demanded_ not merely hoped for or expected. And
it will be the overwhelming forces of Fate which will demand it—not
mere tenants or constituents or the general public.”

“Have you any views as to _what_ will be demanded?” was her interested
question.

“None. Neither has anyone else who shares my opinion. No one will have
any until the readjustment comes. But before the readjustment there
will be the pouring forth of blood—the blood of magnificent lads like
Donal Muir—perhaps his own blood,—my God!”

“And there may be left no head of the house of Coombe,” from the
Duchess.

“There will be many a house left without its head—houses great and
small. And if the peril of it were more generally foreseen at this date
it would be less perilous than it is.”

“Lads like that!” said the old Duchess bitterly. “Lads in their
strength and joy and bloom! It is hideous.”

“In all their young virility and promise for a next generation—the
strong young fathers of forever unborn millions! It’s damnable! And it
will be so not only in England, but all over a blood drenched world.”

It was in this way they talked to each other of the black tragedy for
which they believed the world’s stage was already being set in secret,
and though there were here and there others who felt the ominous
inevitability of the raising of the curtain, the rest of the world
looked on in careless indifference to the significance of the open
training of its actors and even the resounding hammerings of its stage
carpenters and builders. In these days the two discussed the matter
more frequently and even in the tone of those who waited for the
approach of a thing drawing nearer every day.

Each time the Head of the House of Coombe made one of his so-called
“week end” visits to the parts an Englishman can reach only by crossing
the Channel, he returned with new knowledge of the special direction in
which the wind veered in the blowing of those straws he had so long
observed with absorbed interest.

“Above all the common sounds of daily human life one hears in that one
land the rattle and clash of arms and the unending thudding tread of
marching feet,” he said after one such visit. “Two generations of men
creatures bred and born and trained to live as parts of a huge death
dealing machine have resulted in a monstrous construction. Each man is
a part of it and each part’s greatest ambition is to respond to the
shouted word of command as a mechanical puppet responds to the touch of
a spring. To each unit of the millions, love of his own country means
only hatred of all others and the belief that no other should be
allowed existence. The sacred creed of each is that the immensity of
Germany is such that there can be no room on the earth for another than
itself. Blood and iron will clear the world of the inferior peoples. To
the masses that is their God’s will. Their God is an understudy of
their Kaiser.”

“You are not saying that as part of the trick of making a jest of
things?”

“I wish to God I were. The poor huge inhuman thing he has built does
not know that when he was a boy he did not play at war and battles as
other boys do, but as a creature obsessed. He has played at soldiers
with his people as his toys throughout all his morbid life—and he has
hungered and thirsted as he has done it.”

A Bible lay upon the table and the Duchess drew it towards her.

“There is a verse here—” she said “—I will find it.” She turned the
pages and found it. “Listen! ‘Know this and lay it to thy heart this
day. Jehovah is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is
none else.’ That is a power which does not confine itself to Germany or
to England or France or to the Map of Europe. It is the Law of the
Universe—and even Wilhelm the Second cannot bend it to his almighty
will. ‘There is none else.’”

“‘There is none else’,” repeated Coombe slowly. “If there existed a
human being with the power to drive that home as a truth into his
delirious brain, I believe he would die raving mad. To him there is no
First Cause which was not ‘made in Germany.’ And it is one of his most
valuable theatrical assets. It is part of his paraphernalia—like the
jangling of his sword and the glitter of his orders. He shakes it
before his people to arrest the attention of the simple and honest ones
as one jingles a rattle before a child. There are those among them who
are not so readily attracted by terms of blood and iron.”

“But they will be called upon to shed blood and to pour forth their
own. There will be young things like Donal Muir—lads with ruddy cheeks
and with white bodies to be torn to fragments.” She shuddered as she
said it. “I am afraid!” she said. “I am afraid!”

“So am I,” Coombe answered. “Of what is coming. What a _fool_ I have
been!”

“How long will it be before other men awaken to say the same thing?”

“Each man’s folly is his own shame.” He drew himself stiffly upright as
a man might who stood before a firing squad. “I had a life to live or
to throw away. Because I was hideously wounded at the outset I threw it
aside as done for. I said ‘there is neither God nor devil, vice nor
virtue, love nor hate. I will do and leave undone what I choose.’ I had
power and brain and money. A man who could see clearly and who had
words to choose from might have stood firmly in the place to which he
was born and have spoken in a voice which might have been listened to.
He might have fought against folly and blindness and lassitude. I
deliberately chose privately to sneer at the thought of lifting a hand
to serve any thing but the cold fool who was myself. Life passes
quickly. It does not turn back.” He ended with a short harsh laugh.
“This is Fear,” he said. “Fear clears a man’s mind of rubbish and
non-essentials. It is because I am AFRAID that I accuse myself. And it
is not for myself or you but for the whole world which before the end
comes will seem to fall into fragments.”

“You have been seeing ominous signs?” the Duchess said leaning forward
and speaking low.

“There have been affectionate visits to Vienna. There is a certain
thing in the air—in the arrogance of the bearing of men clanking their
sabres as they stride through the streets. There is an exultant
eagerness in their eyes. Things are said which hold scarcely concealed
braggart threats. They have always been given to that sort of thing—but
now it strikes one as a thing unleashed—or barely leashed at all. The
background of the sound of clashing arms and the thudding of marching
feet is more unendingly present. One cannot get away from it. The great
munition factories are working night and day. In the streets, in
private houses, in the shops, one hears and recognizes signs. They are
signs which might not be clear to one who has not spent years in
looking on with interested eyes. But I have watched too long to see
only the surface of things. The nation is waiting for
something—waiting.”

“What will be the pretext—what,” the Duchess pondered.

“Any pretext will do—or none—except that Germany must have what she
wants and that she is strong enough to take it—after forty years of
building her machine.”

“And we others have built none. We almost deserve whatever comes to
us.” The old woman’s face was darkly grave.

“In three villages where I chance to be lord of the manor I have, by
means of my own, set lads drilling and training. It is supposed to be a
form of amusement and an eccentric whim of mine and it is a change from
eternal cricket. I have given prizes and made an occasional speech on
the ground that English brawn is so enviable a possession that it ought
to develop itself to the utmost. When I once went to the length of
adding that each Englishman should be muscle fit and ready in case of
England’s sudden need, I saw the lads grin cheerfully at the thought of
England in any such un-English plight. Their innocent swaggering belief
that the country is always ready for everything moved my heart of
stone. And it is men like myself who are to blame—not merely men of my
class, but men of my _kind_. Those who have chosen to detach themselves
from everything but the living of life as it best pleased their tastes
or served their personal ambitions.”

“Are we going to be taught that man cannot argue without including his
fellow man? Are we going to be forced to learn it?” she said.

“Yes—forced. Nothing but force could reach us. The race is an
undeveloped thing. A few centuries later it will have evolved another
sense. This century may see the first huge step—because the power of a
cataclysm sweeps it forward.”

He turned his glance towards the opening door. Robin came in with some
letters in her hand. He was vaguely aware that she wore an aspect he
was unfamiliar with. The girl of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless had in the past,
as it went without saying, expressed the final note of priceless
simplicity and mode. The more finely simple she looked, the more
priceless. The unfamiliarity in her outward seeming lay in the fact
that her quiet dun tweed dress with its lines of white at neck and
wrists was not priceless though it was well made. It, in fact,
unobtrusively suggested that it was meant for service rather than for
adornment. Her hair was dressed closely and her movements were very
quiet. Coombe realized that her greeting of him was delicately
respectful.

“I have finished the letters,” she said to the Duchess. “I hope they
are what you want. Sometimes I am afraid——”

“Don’t be afraid,” said the Duchess kindly. “You write very correct and
graceful little letters. They are always what I want. Have you been out
today?”

“Not yet.” Robin hesitated a little. “Have I your permission to ask
Mrs. James if it will be convenient to her to let Dowie go with me for
an hour?”

“Yes,” as kindly as before. “For two hours if you like. I shall not
drive this afternoon.”

“Thank you,” said Robin and went out of the room as quietly as she had
entered it.

When the door closed the Duchess was smiling at Lord Coombe.

“I understand her,” she said. “She is sustained and comforted by her
pretty air of servitude. She might use Dowie as her personal maid and
do next to nothing, but she waits upon herself and punctiliously asks
my permission to approach Mrs. James the housekeeper with any request
for a favour. Her one desire is to be sure that she is earning her
living as other young women do when they are paid for their work. I
should really like to pet and indulge her, but it would only make her
unhappy. I invent tasks for her which are quite unnecessary. For years
the little shut-up soul has been yearning and praying for this
opportunity to stand honestly on her own feet and she can scarcely
persuade herself that it has been given to her. It must not be spoiled
for her. I send her on errands my maid could perform. I have given her
a little room with a serious business air. It is full of files and
papers and she sits in it and copies things for me and even looks over
accounts. She is clever at looking up references. I have let her sit up
quite late once or twice searching for detail and dates for my use. It
made her bloom with joy.”

“You are quite the most delightful woman in the world,” said Coombe.
“Quite.”




CHAPTER XXIX


In the serious little room the Duchess had given to her Robin built for
herself a condition she called happiness. She drew the spiritual
substance from which it was made from her pleasure in the books of
reference closely fitted into their shelves, in the files for letters
and more imposing documents, in the varieties of letter paper and
envelopes of different sizes and materials which had been provided for
her use in case of necessity.

“You may not use the more substantial ones often, but you must be
prepared for any unexpected contingency,” the Duchess had explained,
thereby smoothing her pathway by the suggestion of responsibilities.

The girl did not know the extent of her employer’s consideration for
her, but she knew that she was kind with a special grace and
comprehension. A subtle truth she also did not recognize was that the
remote flame of her own being was fiercely alert in its readiness to
leap upward at any suspicion that her duties were not worth the payment
made for them and that for any reason which might include Lord Coombe
she was occupying a position which was a sinecure. She kept her serious
little room in order herself, dusting and almost polishing the
reference books, arranging and re-arranging the files with such
exactness of system that she could—as is the vaunt of the model of
orderly perfection—lay her hand upon any document “in the dark.” She
was punctuality’s self and held herself in readiness at any moment to
appear at the Duchess’ side as if a magician had instantaneously
transported her there before the softly melodious private bell
connected with her room had ceased to vibrate. The correctness of her
deference to the convenience of Mrs. James the housekeeper in her
simplest communication with Dowie quite touched that respectable
person’s heart.

“She’s a young lady,” Mrs. James remarked to Dowie. “And a credit to
you and her governess, Mrs. Dowson. Young ladies have gone almost out
of fashion.”

“Mademoiselle Vallé had spent her governessing days among the highest.
My own places were always with gentle-people. Nothing ever came near
her that could spoil her manners. A good heart she was born with,” was
the civil reply of Dowie.

“Nothing ever came _near_ her—?” Mrs. James politely checked what she
became conscious was a sort of unconscious exclamation.

“Nothing,” said Dowie going on with her sheet hemming steadily.

Robin wrote letters and copied various documents for the Duchess, she
went shopping with her and executed commissions to order. She was
allowed to enter into correspondence with the village schoolmistress
and the wife of the Vicar at Darte Norham and to buy prizes for notable
decorum and scholarship in the school, and baby linen and blankets for
the Maternity Bag and other benevolences. She liked buying prizes and
the baby clothes very much because—though she was unaware of the
fact—her youth delighted in youngness and the fulfilling of young
desires. Even oftener and more significantly than ever did eyes turn
towards her—try to hold hers—look after her eagerly when she walked in
the streets or drove with the Duchess in the high-swung barouche. More
and more she became used to it and gradually she ceased to be afraid of
it and began to feel it nearly always—there were sometimes exceptions—a
friendly thing.

She saw friendliness in it because when she caught sight as she so
often did of young things like herself passing in pairs, laughing and
talking and turning to look into each other’s eyes, her being told her
that it was sweet and human and inevitable. They always turned and
looked at each other—these pairs—and then they smiled or laughed or
flushed a little. As she had not known when first she recognized, as
she looked down into the street from her nursery window, that the
children nearly always passed in twos or threes and laughed and skipped
and talked, so she did not know when she first began to notice these
joyous young pairs and a certain touch of exultation in them and feel
that it was sweet and quite a simple common natural thing. Her noting
and being sometimes moved by it was as natural as her pleasure in the
opening of spring flowers or the new thrill of spring birds—but she did
not know that either.

The brain which has worked through many years in unison with the soul
to which it was apportioned has evolved a knowledge which has deep
cognizance of the universal law. The brain of the old Duchess had so
worked, keeping pace always with its guide, never visualizing the
possibility of working alone, also never falling into the abyss of that
human folly whose conviction is that all that one sees and gives a
special name to is all that exists—or that the names accepted by the
world justly and clearly describe qualities, yearnings, moods, as they
are. This had developed within her wide perception and a wisdom which
was sane and kind to tenderness.

As she drove through the streets with Robin beside her she saw the
following eyes, she saw the girl’s soft friendly look at the young
creatures who passed her glowing and uplifted by the joy of life, and
she was moved and even disturbed.

After her return from one particular morning’s outing she sent for
Dowie.

“You have taken care of Miss Robin since she was a little child?” she
began.

“She was not quite six when I first went to her, your grace.”

“You are not of the women who only feed and bathe a child and keep her
well dressed. You have been a sort of mother to her.”

“I’ve tried to, your grace. I’ve loved her and watched over her and
she’s loved me, I do believe.”

“That is why I want to talk to you about her, Dowie. If you were the
woman who merely comes and goes in a child’s life, I could not. She
is—a very beautiful young thing, Dowie.”

“From her little head to her slim bits of feet, your grace. No one
knows better than I do.”

The Duchess’ renowned smile revealed itself.

“A beautiful young thing ought to see and know other beautiful young
things and make friends with them. That is one of the reasons for their
being put in the world. Since she has been with me she has spoken to no
one under forty. Has she never had young friends?”

“Never, your grace. Once two—young baggages—were left to have tea with
her and they talked to her about divorce scandals and corespondents.
She never wanted to see them again.” Dowie’s face set itself in lines
of perfectly correct inexpressiveness and she added, “They set her
asking me questions I couldn’t answer. And she broke down because she
suddenly understood why. No, your grace, she’s not known those of her
own age.”

“She is—of the ignorance of a child,” the Duchess thought it out
slowly.

“She thinks not, poor lamb, but she is,” Dowie answered. The Duchess’
eyes met hers and they looked at each other for a moment. Dowie tried
to retain a non-committal steadiness and the Duchess observing the
intention knew that she was free to speak.

“Lord Coombe confided to me that she had passed through a hideous
danger which had made a lasting impression on her,” she said in a low
voice. “He told me because he felt it would explain certain reserves
and fears in her.”

“Sometimes she wakes up out of nightmares about it,” said Dowie. “And
she creeps into my room shivering and I take her into my bed and hold
her in my arms until she’s over the panic. She says the worst of it is
that she keeps thinking that there may have been other girls trapped
like her—and that they did not get away.”

The Duchess was very thoughtful. She saw the complications in which
such a horror would involve a girl’s mind.

“If she consorted with other young things and talked nonsense with them
and shared their pleasures she would forget it,” she said.

“Ah!” exclaimed Dowie. “That’s it.”

The question in the Duchess’ eyes when she lifted them required an
answer and she gave it respectfully.

“The thing that happened was only the last touch put to what she’d
gradually been finding out as she grew from child to young girl. The
ones she would like to know—she said it in plain words once to
Mademoiselle—might not want to know her. I must take the liberty of
speaking plain, your grace, or it’s no use me speaking at all. She
holds it deep in her mind that she’s a sort of young outcast.”

“I must convince her that she is not—.” It was the beginning of what
the Duchess had meant to say, but she actually found herself pausing,
held for the moment by Dowie’s quiet, civil eye.

“Was your grace in your kindness thinking—?” was what the excellent
woman said.

“Yes. That I would invite young people to meet her—help them to know
each other and to make friends.” And even as she said it she was
conscious of being slightly under the influence of Dowie’s wise gaze.

“Your grace only knows those young people she would like to know.” It
was a mere simple statement.

“People are not as censorious as they once were.” Her grace’s tone was
intended to reply to the suggestion lying in the words which had worn
the air of statement without comment.

“Some are not, but some are,” Dowie answered. “There’s two worlds in
London now, your grace. One is your grace’s and one is Mrs.
Gareth-Lawless’. I _have_ heard say there are others between, but I
only know those two.”

The Duchess pondered again.

“You are thinking that what Miss Robin said to Mademoiselle Vallé might
be true—in mine. And perhaps you are not altogether wrong even if you
are not altogether right.”

“Until I went to take care of Miss Robin I had only had places in
families Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ set didn’t touch anywhere. What I’m
remembering is that there was a—strictness—shown sometimes even when it
seemed a bit harsh. Among the servants the older ones said that is was
_because_ of the new sets and their fast wicked ways. One of my young
ladies once met another young lady about her own age—she was just
fifteen—at a charity bazaar and they made friends and liked each other
very much. The young lady’s mother was one there was a lot of talk
about in connection with a person of very high station—the highest,
your grace—and everyone knew. The girl was a lovely little creature and
beautifully behaved. It was said her mother wanted to push her into the
world she couldn’t get into herself. The acquaintance was stopped, your
grace—it was put a stop to at once. And my poor little young lady quite
broke her heart over it, and I heard it was much worse for the other.”

“I will think this over,” the Duchess said. “It needs thinking over. I
wished to talk to you because I have seen that she has fixed little
ideas regarding what she thinks is suited to her position as a paid
companion and she might not be prepared. I wish you to see that she has
a pretty little frock or so which she could wear if she required them.”

“She has two, your grace,” Dowie smiled affectionately as she said it.
“One for evening and one for special afternoon wear in case your grace
needed her to attend you for some reason. They are as plain as she dare
make them, but when she puts one on she can’t help giving it _a look_.”

“Yes—she would give it all it needed,” her grace said. “Thank you,
Dowie. You may go.”

With her sketch of a respectful curtsey Dowie went towards the door. As
she approached it her step became slower; before she reached it she had
stopped and there was a remarkable look on her face—a suddenly heroic
look. She turned and made several steps backward and paused again which
unexpected action caused the Duchess to turn to glance at her. When she
glanced her grace recognized the heroic look and waited, with a
consciousness of some slight new emotion within herself, for its
explanation.

“Your grace,” Dowie began, asking God himself to give courage if she
was doing right and to check her if she was making a mistake, “When
your grace was thinking of the parents of other young ladies and
gentlemen—did it come to you to put it to yourself whether you’d be
willing—” she caught her breath, but ended quite clearly, respectfully,
reasonably. “Lady Kathryn—Lord Halwyn—” Lady Kathryn was the Duchess’
young granddaughter, Lord Halwyn was her extremely good-looking
grandson who was in the army.

The Duchess understood what the heroic look had meant, and her respect
for it was great. Its intention had not been to suggest inclusion of
George and Kathryn in her plan, it had only with pure justice put it to
her to ask herself what her own personal decision in such a matter
would be.

“You do feel as if you were her mother,” she said. “And you are a
practical, clear-minded woman. It is only if I myself am willing to
take such a step that I have a right to ask it of other people. Lady
Lothwell is the mother I must speak to first. Her children are mine
though I am a mere grandmother.”

Lady Lothwell was her daughter and though she was not regarded as
Victorian either of the Early or the Middle periods, Dowie as she
returned to her own comfortable quarters wondered what would happen.




CHAPTER XXX


What did occur was not at all complicated. It would not have been
possible for a woman to have spent her girlhood with the cleverest
mother of her day and have emerged from her training either obstinate
or illogical. Lady Lothwell listened to as much of the history of Robin
as her mother chose to tell her and plainly felt an amiable interest in
it. She knew much more detail and gossip concerning Mrs. Gareth-Lawless
than the Duchess herself did. She had heard of the child who was kept
out of sight, and she had been somewhat disgusted by a vague story of
Lord Coombe’s abnormal interest in it and the ugly hint that he had an
object in view. It was too unpleasantly morbid to be true of a man her
mother had known for years.

“Of course you were not thinking of anything large or formal?” she said
after a moment of smiling hesitation.

“No. I am not launching a girl into society. I only want to help her to
know a few nice young people who are good-natured and well-mannered.
She is not the ordinary old lady’s companion and if she were not so
strict with herself and with me, I confess I should behave towards her
very much as I should behave to Kathryn if you could spare her to live
with me. She is a heart-warming young thing. Because I am known to have
one of my eccentric fancies for her and because after all her father
_was_ well connected, her present position will not be the obstacle.
She is not the first modern girl who has chosen to support herself.”

“But isn’t she much too pretty?”

“Much. But she doesn’t flaunt it.”

“But heart-warming—and too pretty! Dearest mamma!” Lady Lothwell
laughed again. “She can do no harm to Kathryn, but I own that if George
were not at present quite madly in love with a darling being at least
fifteen years older than himself I should pause to reflect. Mrs. Stacy
will keep him steady—Mrs. Alan Stacy, you know—the one with the
magnificent henna hair, and the eyes that droop. No boy of twenty-two
can resist her. They call her adorers ‘The Infant School’.”

“A small dinner and a small dance—and George and Kathryn may be the
beginning of an interesting experiment. It would be pretty and kind of
you to drop in during the course of the evening.”

“Are you hoping to—perhaps—make a marriage for her?” Lady Lothwell
asked the question a shade disturbedly. “You are so amazing, mamma
darling, that I know you will do it, if you believe in it. You seem to
be able to cause the things you really want, to evolve from the
universe.”

“She is the kind of girl whose place in the universe is in the home of
some young man whose own place in the universe is in the heart and soul
and life of her kind of girl. They ought to carry out the will of God
by falling passionately in love with each other. They ought to marry
each other and have a large number of children as beautiful and
rapturously happy as themselves. They would assist in the evolution of
the race.”

“Oh! Mamma! how delightful you always are! For a really brilliant woman
you are the most adorable dreamer in the world.”

“Dreams are the only things which are true. The rest are nothing but
visions.”

“Angel!” her daughter laughed a little adoringly as she kissed her. “I
will do whatever you want me to do. I always did, didn’t I? It’s your
way of making one see what you see when you are talking that does it.”

It was understood before they parted that Kathryn and George would be
present at the small dinner and the small dance, and that a few other
agreeable young persons might be trusted to join them, and that Lady
Lothwell and perhaps her husband would drop in.

“It’s your being almost Early Victorian, mamma, which makes it easy for
you to initiate things. You will initiate little Miss Lawless. It was
rather neat of her to prefer to drop the ‘Gareth.’ There has been less
talk in late years of the different classes ‘keeping their
places’—‘upper’ and ‘lower’ classes really strikes one as vulgar.”

“We may ‘keep our places’,” the Duchess said. “We may hold on to them
as firmly as we please. It is the places themselves which are moving,
my dear. It is not unlike the beginning of a landslide.”

Robin went to Dowie’s room the next evening and stood a moment in
silence watching her sewing before she spoke. She looked anxious and
even pale.

“Her grace is going to give a party to some young people, Dowie,” she
said. “She wishes me to be present. I—I don’t know what to do.”

“What you must do, my dear, is to put on your best evening frock and go
downstairs and enjoy yourself as the other young people will. Her grace
wants you to see someone your own age,” was Dowie’s answer.

“But I am not like the others. I am only a girl earning her living as a
companion. How do I know—”

“Her grace knows,” Dowie said. “And what she asks you to do it is your
duty to do—and do it prettily.”

Robin lost even a shade more colour.

“Do you realize that I have never been to a party in my life—not even
to a children’s party, Dowie? I shall not know how to behave myself.”

“You know how to talk nicely to people, and you know how to sit down
and rise from your chair and move about a room like a quiet young lady.
You dance like a fairy. You won’t be asked to do anything more.”

“The Duchess,” reflected Robin aloud slowly, “would not let me come
downstairs if she did not know that people would—be kind.”

“Lady Kathryn and Lord Halwyn are coming. They are her own
grandchildren,” Dowie said.

“How did you know that?” Robin inquired.

“Because her grace was kind enough to say to me that she was thinking
of something like this. It was your being a girl among those so much
older that brought it to her mind——and her being what she is.”

Robin’s colour began to come back.

“It’s not what usually happens to girls in situations,” she said.

“Her grace herself isn’t what usually happens,” said Dowie. “There is
no one like her for high wisdom and kindness.”

Having herself awakened to the truth of this confidence-inspiring fact,
Robin felt herself supported by it. One knew what far-sighted
perception and clarity of experienced vision this one woman had gained
during her many years of life. If she had elected to do this thing she
had seen her path clear before her and was not offering a gift which
awkward chance might spoil or snatch away from the hand held out to
receive it. A curious slow warmth began to creep about Robin’s heart
and in its mounting gradually fill her being. It was true she had been
taught to dance, to move about and speak prettily. She had been taught
a great many things which seemed to be very carefully instilled into
her mind and body without any special reason. She had not been aware
that Lord Coombe and Mademoiselle Vallé had directed and discussed her
training as if it had been that of a young royal person whose equipment
must be a flawless thing. If the Dowager Duchess of Darte had wished to
present her at Court some fair morning she would have known the length
of the train she must wear, where she must make her curtseys and to
whom and to what depth, how to kiss the royal hand, and how to manage
her train when she retired from the presence. When she had been taught
this she had asked Mademoiselle Vallé if the training was part of every
girl’s education and Mademoiselle had answered,

“It is best to know everything—even ceremonials which may or may not
prove of use. It all forms part of a background and prevents one from
feeling unfamiliar with customs.”

When she had passed the young pairs in the streets she had found an
added interest in them because of this background. She could imagine
them dancing together in fairy ball rooms whose lights and colours her
imagination was obliged to construct for her out of its own fabric; she
knew what the girls would look like if they went to a Drawing Room and
she often wondered if they would feel shy when the page spread out
their lovely peacock tails for them and left them to their own devices.
It was mere Nature that she should have pondered and pondered and
sometimes unconsciously longed to feel herself part of the flood of
being sweeping past her as she stood apart on the brink of the river.

The warmth about her heart made it beat a little faster. She opened the
door of her wardrobe when she found herself in her bedroom. The dress
hung modestly in its corner shrouded from the penetration of London
fogs by clean sheeting. It was only white and as simple as she knew how
to order it, but Mademoiselle had taken her to a young French person
who knew exactly what she was doing in all cases, and because the girl
had the supple lines of a wood nymph and the eyes of young antelope she
had evolved that which expressed her as a petal expresses its rose.
Robin locked her door and took the dress down and found the silk
stockings and slippers which belonged to it. She put them all on
standing before her long mirror and having left no ungiven last touch
she fell a few steps backward and looked at herself, turning and
balancing herself as a bird might have done. She turned lightly round
and round.

“Yes. I _am_—” she said. “I am—very!”

The next instant she laughed at herself outright.

“How silly! How silly!” she said. “Almost _everybody_ is—more or less!
I wonder if I remember the new steps.” For she had been taught the new
steps—the new walking and swayings and pauses and sudden swirls and
swoops. And her new dress was as short as other fashionable girls’
dresses were, but in her case revealed a haunting delicacy of contour
and line.

So before her mirror she danced alone and as she danced her lips parted
and her breast rose and fell charmingly, and her eyes lighted and
glowed as any girl’s might have done or as a joyous girl nymph’s might
have lighted as she danced by a pool in her forest seeing her
loveliness mirrored there.

Something was awakening as something had awakened when Donal had kissed
a child under the soot sprinkled London trees.




CHAPTER XXXI


The whole day before the party was secretly exciting to Robin. She knew
how much more important it seemed to her than it really was. If she had
been six years old she might have felt the same kind of uncertain
thrills and tremulous wonders. She hid herself behind the window
curtains in her room that she might see the men putting up the crimson
and white awning from the door to the carriage step. The roll of red
carpet they took from their van had a magic air. The ringing of the
door bell which meant that things were being delivered, the extra
moving about of servants, the florists’ men who went into the
drawing-rooms and brought flowers and big tropical plants to re-arrange
the conservatory and fill corners which were not always decorated—each
and every one of them quickened the beating of her pulses. If she had
belonged in her past to the ordinary cheerful world of children, she
would have felt by this time no such elation. But she had only known of
the existence of such festivities as children’s parties because once a
juvenile ball had been given in a house opposite her mother’s and she
had crouched in an almost delirious little heap by the nursery window
watching carriages drive up and deposit fluffy pink and white and blue
children upon the strip of red carpet, and had seen them led or running
into the house. She had caught sounds of strains of music and had
shivered with rapture—but Oh! what worlds away from her the party had
been.

She found her way into the drawing-rooms which were not usually thrown
open. They were lofty and stately and seemed to her immense. There were
splendid crystal-dropping chandeliers and side lights which she thought
looked as if they would hold a thousand wax candles. There was a
delightfully embowered corner for the musicians. It was all spacious
and wonderful in its beautiful completeness—its preparedness for
pleasure. She realized that all of it had always been waiting to be
used for the happiness of people who knew each other and were young and
ready for delight. When the young Lothwells had been children they had
had dances and frolicking games with other children in the huge rooms
and had kicked up their young heels on the polished floors at Christmas
parties and on birthdays. How wonderful it must have been. But they had
not known it was wonderful.

As Dowie dressed her the reflection she saw in the mirror gave back to
her an intensified Robin whose curved lips almost quivered as they
smiled. The soft silk of her hair looked like the night and the small
rings on the back of her very slim white neck were things to ensnare
the eye and hold it helpless.

“You look your best, my dear,” Dowie said as she clasped her little
necklace. “And it is a good best.” Dowie was feeling tremulous herself
though she could not have explained why. She thought that perhaps it
was because she wished that Mademoiselle could have been with her.

Robin kissed her when the last touch had been given.

“I’m going to run down the staircase,” she said. “If I let myself walk
slowly I shall have time to feel queer and shy and I might seem to
_creep_ into the drawing-room. I mustn’t creep in. I must walk in as if
I had been to parties all my life.”

She ran down and as she did so she looked like a white bird flying, but
she was obliged to stop upon the landing before the drawing-room door
to quiet a moment of excited breathing. Still when she entered the room
she moved as she should and held her head poised with a delicately
fearless air. The Duchess—who herself looked her best in her fine old
ivory profiled way—gave her a pleased smile of welcome which was almost
affectionate.

“What a perfect little frock!” she said. “You are delightfully pretty
in it.”

“Is it quite right?” said Robin. “Mademoiselle chose it for me.”

“It is quite right. ‘Frightfully right,’ George would say. George will
sit near you at dinner. He is my grandson—Lord Halwyn you know, and you
will no doubt frequently hear him say things are ‘frightfully’
something or other during the evening. Kathryn will say things are
‘deevy’ or ‘exquig‘. I mention it because you may not know that she
means ‘exquisite’ and ‘divine.’ Don’t let it frighten you if you don’t
quite understand their language. They are dear handsome things sweeping
along in the rush of their bit of century. I don’t let it frighten me
that their world seems to me an entirely new planet.”

Robin drew a little nearer her. She felt something as she had felt
years ago when she had said to Dowie. “I want to kiss you, Dowie.” Her
eyes were pools of childish tenderness because she so well understood
the infinitude of the friendly tact which drew her within its own
circle with the light humour of its “I don’t let them frighten _me_.”

“You are kind—kind to me,” she said. “And I am grateful—_grateful_.”

The extremely good-looking young people who began very soon to drift
into the brilliant big room—singly or in pairs of brother and
sister—filled her with innocent delight. They were so well built and
gaily at ease with each other and their surroundings, so perfectly
dressed and finished. The filmy narrowness of delicate frocks, the
shortness of skirts accentuated the youth and girlhood and added to it
a sort of child fairy-likeness. Kathryn in exquisite wisps of
silver-embroidered gauze looked fourteen instead of nearly twenty—aided
by a dimple in her cheek and a small tilted nose. A girl in scarlet
tulle was like a child out of a nursery ready to dance about a
Christmas tree. Everyone seemed so young and so suggested supple
dancing, perhaps because dancing was going on everywhere and all the
world whether fashionable or unfashionable was driven by a passion for
whirling, swooping and inventing new postures and fantastic steps. The
young men had slim straight bodies and light movements. Their clothes
fitted their suppleness to perfection. Robin thought they all looked as
if they had had a great deal of delightful exercise and plenty of
pleasure all their lives.

They were of that stream which had always seemed to be rushing past her
in bright pursuit of alluring things which belonged to them as part of
their existence, but which had had nothing to do with her own youth.
Now the stream had paused as if she had for the moment some connection
with it. The swift light she was used to seeing illuminate glancing
eyes as she passed people in the street, she saw again and again as new
arrivals appeared. Kathryn was quite excited by her eyes and eyelashes
and George hovered about. There was a great deal of hovering. At the
dinner table sleek young heads held themselves at an angle which
allowed of their owners seeing through or around, or under floral
decorations and alert young eyes showed an eager gleam. After dinner
was over and dancing began the Duchess smiled shrewdly as she saw the
gravitating masculine movement towards a certain point. It was the
point where Robin stood with a small growing circle about her.

It was George who danced with her first. He was tall and slender and
flexible and his good shoulders had a military squareness of build. He
had also a nice square face, and a warmly blue eye and knew all the
latest steps and curves and unexpected swirls. Robin was an ozier wand
and there was no swoop or dart or sudden sway and change she was not
alert at. The swing and lure of the music, the swift movement, the
fluttering of airy draperies as slim sister nymphs flew past her, set
her pulses beating with sweet young joy. A brief, uncontrollable ripple
of laughter broke from her before she had circled the room twice.

“How heavenly it is!” she exclaimed and lifted her eyes to Halwyn’s.
“How heavenly!”

They were not safe eyes to lift in such a way to those of a very young
man. They gave George a sudden enjoyable shock. He had heard of the
girl who was a sort of sublimated companion to his grandmother. The
Duchess herself had talked to him a little about her and he had come to
the party intending to behave very amiably and help the little thing
enjoy herself. He had also encountered before in houses where there
were no daughters the smart well-born, young companion who was allowed
all sorts of privileges because she knew how to assume tiresome little
responsibilities and how to be entertaining enough to add cheer and
spice to the life of the elderly and lonely. Sometimes she was a subtly
appealing sort of girl and given to being sympathetic and to liking
sympathy and quiet corners in conservatories or libraries, and
sometimes she was capable of scientific flirtation and required
scientific management. A man had to have his wits about him. This one
as she flew like a blown leaf across the floor and laughed up into his
face with wide eyes, produced a new effect and was a new kind.

“It’s you who are heavenly,” he answered with a boy’s laugh. “You are
like a feather—and a willow wand.”

“You are light too,” she laughed back, “and you are like steel as
well.”

Mrs. Alan Stacy, the lady with the magnificent henna hair, had recently
given less time to him, being engaged in the preliminary instruction of
a new member of the Infant Class. Such things will, of course, happen
and though George had quite ingenuously raged in secret, the
circumstances left him free to “hover” and hovering was a pastime he
enjoyed.

“Let us go on like this forever and ever,” he said sweeping half the
length of the room with her and whirling her as if she were indeed a
leaf in the wind, “Forever and ever.”

“I wish we could. But the music will stop,” she gave back.

“Music ought never to stop—never,” he answered.

But the music did stop and when it began again almost immediately
another tall, flexible young man made a lightning claim on her and
carried her away only to hand her to another and he in his turn to
another. She was not allowed more than a moment’s rest and borne on the
crest of the wave of young delight, she did not need more. Young eyes
were always laughing into hers and elating her by a special look of
pleasure in everything she did or said or inspired in themselves. How
was she informed without phrases that for this exciting evening she was
a creature without a flaw, that the loveliness of her eyes startled
those who looked into them, that it was a thrilling experience to dance
with her, that somehow she was new and apart and wonderful? No
sleek-haired, slim and straight-backed youth said exactly any of these
things to her, but somehow they were conveyed and filled her with a
wondering realization of the fact that if they were true, they were no
longer dreadful and maddening, since they only made people like and
want to dance with one. To dance, to like people and be liked seemed so
heavenly natural and right—to be only like air and sky and free, happy
breathing. There was, it was true, a blissful little uplifted look
about her which she herself was not aware of, but which was singularly
stimulating to the masculine beholder. It only meant indeed that as she
whirled and swayed and swooped laughing she was saying to herself at
intervals,

“This is what other girls feel like. They are happy like this. I am
laughing and talking to people just as other girls do. I am Robin
Gareth-Lawless, but I am enjoying a party like this—a _young_ party.”

Lady Lothwell sitting near her mother watched the trend of affairs with
an occasional queer interested smile.

“Well, mamma darling,” she said at last as youth and beauty whirled by
in a maelstrom of modern Terpsichorean liveliness, “she is a great
success. I don’t know whether it is quite what you intended or not.”

The Duchess did not explain what she had intended. She was watching the
trend also and thinking a good deal. On the whole Lady Lothwell had
scarcely expected that she would explain. She rarely did. She seldom
made mistakes, however.

Kathryn in her scant gauzy strips of white and silver having drifted
towards them at the moment stood looking on with a funny little
disturbed expression on her small, tip-tilted face.

“There’s something _about_ her, grandmamma,” she said.

“All the girls see it and no one knows what it is. She’s sitting out
for a few minutes and just look at George—and Hal Brunton—and Captain
Willys. They are all laughing, of course, and pretending to joke, but
they would like to eat each other up. Perhaps it’s her eyelashes. She
looks out from under them as if they were a curtain.”

Lady Lothwell’s queer little smile became a queer little laugh.

“Yes. It gives her a look of being ecstatically happy and yet almost
shy and appealing at the same time. Men can’t stand it of course.”

“None of them are trying to stand it,” answered little Lady Kathryn
somewhat in the tone of a retort.

“I don’t believe she knows she does it,” Lady Lothwell said quite
reflectively.

“She does not know at all. That is the worst of it,” commented the
Duchess.

“Then you see that there _is_ a worst,” said her daughter.

The Duchess glanced towards Kathryn, but fortunately the puzzled fret
of the girl’s forehead was even at the moment melting into a smile as a
young man of much attraction descended upon her with smiles of his own
and carried her into the Tango or Fox Trot or Antelope Galop,
whichsoever it chanced to be.

“If she were really aware of it that would be ‘the worst’ for other
people—for us probably. She could look out from under her lashes to
sufficient purpose to call what she wanted and take and keep it. As she
is not aware, it will make things less easy for herself—under the
circumstances.”

“The circumstance of being Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ daughter is not an
agreeable one,” said Lady Lothwell.

“It might give some adventurous boys ideas when they had time to
realize all it means. Do you know I am rather sorry for her myself. I
shouldn’t be surprised if she were rather a dear little thing. She
looks tender and cuddle-some. Perhaps she is like the heroine of a
sentimental novel I read the other day. Her chief slave said of her
‘She walks into a man’s heart through his eyes and sits down there and
makes a warm place which will never get cold again.‘ Rather nice, I
thought.”

The Duchess thought it rather nice also.

“‘Never get cold again,‘” she repeated. “What a heavenly thing to
happen to a pair of creatures—if—” she paused and regarded Robin, who
at the other side of the room was trying to decide some parlous
question of dances to which there was more than one claimant. She was
sweetly puckering her brow over her card and round her were youthful
male faces looking eager and even a trifle tense with repressed anxiety
for the victory of the moment.

“Oh!” Lady Lothwell laughed. “As Kitty says ‘There’s something about
her’ and it’s not mere eyelashes. You have let loose a germ among us,
mamma my sweet, and you can’t do anything with a germ when you have let
it loose. To quote Kitty again, ‘Look at George!’”

The music which came from the bower behind which the musicians were
hidden seemed to gain thrill and wildness as the hours went on. As the
rooms grew warmer the flowers breathed out more reaching scent. Now and
again Robin paused for a moment to listen to strange delightful chords
and to inhale passing waves of something like mignonette and lilies,
and apple blossoms in the sun. She thought there must be some flower
which was like all three in one. The rushing stream was carrying her
with it as it went—one of the happy petals on its surface. Could it
ever cast her aside and leave her on the shore again? While the violins
went singing on and the thousand wax candles shone on the faint or
vivid colours which mingled into a sort of lovely haze, it did not seem
possible that a thing so enchanting and so real could have an end at
all. All the other things in her life seemed less real tonight.

In the conservatory there was a marble fountain which had long years
ago been brought from a palace garden in Rome. It was not as large as
it was beautiful and it had been placed among palms and tropic ferns
whose leaves and fronds it splashed merrily among and kept deliciously
cool and wet-looking. There was a quite intoxicating hot-house perfume
of warm damp moss and massed flowers and it was the kind of corner any
young man would feel it necessary to gravitate towards with a partner.

George led Robin to it and she naturally sat upon the edge of the
marble basin and as naturally drew off a glove and dipped her hand into
the water, splashing it a little because it felt deliciously cool.
George stood near at first and looked down at her bent head. It was
impossible not also to take in her small fine ear and the warm velvet
white of the lovely little nape of her slim neck. He took them in with
elated appreciation. He was not subtle minded enough to be aware that
her reply to a casual remark he had made to her at dinner had had a
remote effect upon him.

“One of the loveliest creatures I ever saw was a Mrs. Gareth-Lawless,”
he had said. “Are you related to her?”

“I am her daughter,” Robin had answered and with a slightly startled
sensation he had managed to slip into amiably deft generalities while
he had secretly wondered how much his grandmother knew or did not know.

An involuntary thought of Feather had crossed his mind once or twice
during the evening. This was the girl who, it was said, had actually
been saved up for old Coombe. Ugly morbid sort of idea if it was true.
How had the Duchess got hold of her and why and what was Coombe really
up to? Could he have some elderly idea of wanting a youngster for a
wife? Occasionally an old chap did. Serve him right if some young chap
took the wind out of his sails. He was not a desperate character, but
he had been very intimate with Mrs. Alan Stacy and her friends and it
had made him careless. Also Robin had drawn him—drawn him more than he
knew.

“Is it still heavenly?” he asked. (How pointed her fingers were and how
soft and crushable her hand looked as it splashed like a child’s.)

“More heavenly every minute,” she answered. He laughed outright.

“The heavenly thing is the way you are enjoying it yourself. I never
saw a girl light up a whole room before. You throw out stars as you
dance.”

“That’s like a skyrocket,” Robin laughed back. “And it’s because in all
my life I never went to a dance before.”

“Never! You mean except to children’s parties?”

“There were no children’s parties. This is the first—first—first.”

“Well, I don’t see how that happened, but I am glad it did because it’s
been a great thing for me to see you at your first—first—first.”

He sat down on the fountain’s edge near her.

“I shall not forget it,” he said.

“I shall remember it as long as I live,” said Robin and she lifted her
unsafe eyes again and smiled into his which made them still more
unsafe.

Perhaps it was because he was extremely young, perhaps it was because
he was immoral, perhaps because he had never held a tight rein on his
fleeting emotions, even the next moment he felt that it was because he
was an idiot—but suddenly he found he had let himself go and was
kissing the warm velvet of the slim little nape—had kissed it twice.

He had not given himself time to think what would happen as a result,
but what did happen was humiliating and ridiculous. One furious splash
of the curled hand flung water into his face and eyes and mouth while
Robin tore herself free from him and stood blazing with fury and
woe—for it was not only fury he saw.

“You—You—!” she cried and actually would have swooped to the fountain
again if he had not caught her arm.

He was furious himself—at himself and at her.

“You—little fool!” he gasped. “What did you do that for even if I _was_
a jackass? There was nothing in it. You’re so pretty——”

“You’ve spoiled everything!” she flamed, “everything—everything!”

“I’ve spoiled nothing. I’ve only been a fool—and it’s your own fault
for being so pretty.”

“You’ve spoiled everything in the world! Now—” with a desolate horrible
little sob, “now I can only go back—_back!_”

He had a queer idea that she spoke as if she were Cinderella and he had
made the clock strike twelve. Her voice had such absolute grief in it
that he involuntarily drew near her.

“I say,” he was really breathless, “don’t speak like that. I beg
pardon. I’ll grovel! Don’t—Oh! Kathryn—_come_ here.”

This last because at this difficult moment from between the banks of
hot-house bloom and round the big palms his sister Kathryn suddenly
appeared. She immediately stopped short and stared at them both—looking
from one to the other.

“What is the matter?” she asked in a low voice.

“Oh! _come_ and talk to her,” George broke forth. “I feel as if she
might scream in a minute and call everybody in. I’ve been a lunatic and
she has apparently never been kissed before. Tell her—tell her you’ve
been kissed yourself.”

A queer little look revealed itself in Kathryn’s face. A delicate vein
of her grandmother’s wisdom made part of her outlook upon a rapidly
moving and exciting world. She had never been hide-bound or dull and
for a slight gauzy white and silver thing she was astute.

“Don’t be impudent,” she said to George as she walked up to Robin and
put a cool hand on her arm. “He’s only been silly. You’d better let him
off,” she said. She turned a glance on George who was wiping his sleeve
with a handkerchief and she broke into a small laugh, “Did she push you
into the fountain?” she asked cheerfully.

“She threw the fountain at me,” grumbled George. “I shall have to dash
off home and change.”

“I would,” replied Kathryn still cheerful. “You can apologize better
when you’re dry.”

He slid through the palms like a snake and the two girls stood and
gazed at each other. Robin’s flame had died down and her face had
settled itself into a sort of hardness. Kathryn did not know that she
herself looked at her as the Duchess might have looked at another girl
in the quite different days of her youth.

“I’ll tell you something now he’s gone,” she said. “I _have_ been
kissed myself and so have other girls I know. Boys like George don’t
really matter, though of course it’s bad manners. But who has got good
manners? Things rush so that there’s scarcely time for manners at all.
When an older man makes a snatch at you it’s sometimes detestable. But
to push him into the fountain was a good idea,” and she laughed again.

“I didn’t push him in.”

“I wish you had,” with a gleeful mischief. The next moment, however,
the hint of a worried frown showed itself on her forehead. “You see,”
she said protestingly, “you are so _frightfully_ pretty.”

“I’d rather be a leper,” Robin shot forth.

But Kathryn did not of course understand.

“What nonsense!” she answered. “What utter rubbish! You know you
wouldn’t. Come back to the ball room. I came here because my mother was
asking for George.”

She turned to lead the way through the banked flowers and as she did so
added something.

“By the way, somebody important has been assassinated in one of the
Balkan countries. They are always assassinating people. They like it.
Lord Coombe has just come in and is talking it over with grandmamma. I
can see they are quite excited in their quiet way.”

As they neared the entrance to the ball room she paused a moment with a
new kind of impish smile.

“Every girl in the room is absolutely shaky with thrills at this
particular moment,” she said. “And every man feels himself bristling a
little. The very best looking boy in all England is dancing with Sara
Studleigh. He dropped in by chance to call and the Duchess made him
stay. He is a kind of miracle of good looks and takingness.”

Robin said nothing. She had plainly not been interested in the Balkan
tragedy and she as obviously did not care for the miracle.

“You don’t ask who he is?” said Kathryn.

“I don’t want to know.”

“Oh! Come! You mustn’t feel as sulky as that. You’ll want to ask
questions the moment you see him. I did. Everyone does. His name is
Donal Muir. He’s Lord Coombe’s heir. He’ll be the Head of the House of
Coombe some day. Here he comes,” quite excitedly, “Look!”

It was one of the tricks of Chance—or Fate—or whatever you will. The
dance brought him within a few feet of them at that very moment and the
slow walking steps he was taking held him—they were some of the queer
stealthy almost stationary steps of the Argentine Tango. He was finely
and smoothly fitted as the other youngsters were, his blond glossed
head was set high on a heroic column of neck, he was broad of shoulder,
but not too broad, slim of waist, but not too slim, long and strong of
leg, but light and supple and firm. He had a fair open brow and a
curved mouth laughing to show white teeth. Robin felt he ought to wear
a kilt and plaid and that an eagle’s feather ought to be standing up
from a chieftain’s bonnet on the fair hair which would have waved if it
had been allowed length enough. He was scarcely two yards from her now
and suddenly—almost as if he had been called—he turned his eyes away
from Sara Studleigh who was the little thing in Christmas tree scarlet.
They were blue like the clear water in a tarn when the sun shines on it
and they were still laughing as his mouth was. Straight into hers they
laughed—straight into hers.




CHAPTER XXXII


Through all aeons since all the worlds were made it is at least not
unthinkable that in all the worlds of which our own atom is one, there
has ruled a Force illimitable, unconquerable and inexplicable and
whichsoever its world and whatsoever the sign denoting or the name
given it, the Force—the Thing has been the same. Upon our own atom of
the universe it is given the generic name of Love and its existence is
that which the boldest need not defy, the most profound need not
attempt to explain with clarity, the most brilliantly sophistical to
argue away. Its forms of beauty, triviality, magnificence, imbecility,
loveliness, stupidity, holiness, purity and bestiality neither detract
from nor add to its unalterable power. As the earth revolves upon its
axis and reveals night and day, Spring, Summer and Winter, so it
reveals this ceaselessly working Force. Men who were as gods have been
uplifted or broken by it, fools have trifled with it, brutes have
sullied it, saints have worshipped, poets sung and wits derided it. As
electricity is a force death dealing, or illuminating and power
bestowing, so is this Great Impeller, and it is fatuous—howsoever
worldly wise or moderately sardonic one would choose to be—to hint
ironically that its proportions are less than the ages have proved
them. Whether a world formed without a necessity for the presence and
assistance of this psychological factor would have been a better or a
worse one, it is—by good fortune—not here imperative that one should
attempt to decide. What is—exists. None of us created it. Each one will
deal with the Impeller as he himself either sanely or madly elects. He
will also bear the consequences—and so also may others.

Of this force the Head of the House of Coombe and his old friend knew
much and had often spoken to each other. They had both been accustomed
to recognizing its signs subtle or crude, and watching their
development. They had seen it in the eyes of creatures young enough to
be called boys and girls, they had heard it in musical laughter and in
silly giggles, they had seen it express itself in tragedy and comedy
and watched it end in union or in a nothingness which melted away like
a wisp of fog. But they knew it was a thing omnipresent and that no one
passed through life untouched by it in some degree.

Years before this evening two children playing in a garden had not know
that the Power—the Thing—drew them with its greatest strength because
among myriads of atoms they two were created for oneness. Enraptured
and unaware they played together, their souls and bodies drawn nearer
each other every hour.

So it was that—without being portentous—one may say that when an
unusually beautiful and unusually well dressed and perfectly fitted
young man turned involuntarily in the particular London ball room in
which Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ daughter watched the dancers, and looked
unintentionally into the eyes of a girl standing for a moment near the
wide entrance doors, the inexplicable and unconquerable Force
reconnected its currents again.

Donal Muir’s eyes only widened a little for a second’s time. He had not
known why he had suddenly looked around and he did not know why he was
conscious of something which startled him a little. You could not
actually stare at a girl because your eyes chanced to get entangled in
hers for a second as you danced past her. It was true she was of a
startling prettiness and there was something—. Yes, there was
_something_ which drew the eye and—. He did not know what it was. It
had actually given him a sort of electric shock. He laughed at himself
a little and then his open brow looked puzzled for a moment.

“You saw Miss Lawless,” said Sara Studleigh who was at the moment
dancing prettily with him. She was guilty of something which might have
been called a slight giggle, but it was good-natured. “I know, you saw
Miss Lawless—the pretty one near the door.”

“There are so many pretty ones near everything. You can’t lift your
eyes without seeing one,” Donal answered. “What a lot of them!” (The
sense of having received a slight electric shock made you feel that you
must look again and find out what had caused it, he was thinking.)

“She is the one with the eyelashes.”

“I have eyelashes—so have you,” looking down at hers with a very taking
expression. Hers were in fact nice ones.

“But ours are not two inches long and they don’t make a big soft circle
round our eyes when we look at anyone.”

“Please look up and let me see,” said Donal. “When I asked you to dance
with me I thought—”

What a “way” he had, Sara Studleigh was thinking. But “perhaps it _was_
the eyelashes” was passing through Donal’s mind. Very noticeable
eyelashes were rather arresting.

“I knew you saw her,” said Sara Studleigh, “because I have happened to
be near two or three people this evening when they caught their first
sight of her.”

“What happens to them?” asked Donal Muir.

“They forget where they are,” she laughed, “and don’t say anything for
a few seconds.”

“I should not want to forget where I am. It wouldn’t be possible
either,” answered Donal. (“But that was it,” he thought. “For a minute
I forgot.”)

One should not dance with one girl and talk to her about another.
Wisely he led her to other subjects. The music was swinging through the
air performing its everlasting miracle of swinging young souls and
pulses with it, the warmed flowers breathed more perceptible scent,
sweet chatter and laughter, swaying colour and glowing eyes
concentrated in making magic. This beautiful young man’s pulses only
beat with the rest—as one with the pulse of the Universe. Lady Lothwell
acting for the Duchess was very kind to him finding him another partner
as soon as a new dance began—this time her own daughter, Lady Kathryn.

Even while he had been tangoing with Sara Studleigh he had seen the
girl with the eyelashes, whirling about with someone, and when he began
his dance with Kathryn, he caught a glimpse of her at the other end of
the room. And almost immediately Kathryn spoke of her.

“I don’t know when you will get a dance with Miss Lawless,” she said.
“She is obliged to work out mathematical problems on her programme.”

“I have a setter who fixes his eyes on you and waits without moving
until you look at him and then he makes a dart and you’re obliged to
pat him,” he said. “Perhaps if I go and stand near her and do that she
will take notice of me.”

“Take notice of him, the enslaving thing!” thought Kathryn. “She’d
jump—for all her talk about lepers—any girl would. He’s TOO nice!
There’s something about _him_ too.”

Robin did not jump. She had no time to do it because one dance followed
another so quickly and some of them were even divided in two or three
pieces. But the thrill of the singing sound of the violins behind the
greenery, the perfume and stately spaces and thousand candlelights had
suddenly been lifted on to another plane though she had thought they
could reach no higher one. Her whole being was a keen fine awareness.
Every moment she was _aware_. After all the years—from the far away
days—he had come back. No one had dreamed of the queer half abnormal
secret she had always kept to herself as a child—as a little girl—as a
bigger one when she would have died rather than divulge that in her
loneliness there had been something she had remembered—something she
had held on to—a memory which she had actually made a companion of,
making pictures, telling herself stories in the dark, even inventing
conversations which not for one moment had she thought would or could
ever take place. But they had been living things to her and her one
near warm comfort—closer, oh, so weirdly closer than kind, kind Dowie
and dearly beloved Mademoiselle. She had wondered if the two would have
disapproved if they had known—if Mademoiselle would have been shocked
if she had realized that sometimes when they walked together there
walked with them a growing, laughing boy in a swinging kilt and plaid
and that he had a voice and eyes that drew the heart out of your breast
for joy. At first he had only been a child like herself, but as she had
grown he had grown with her—but always taller, grander, marvellously
masculine and beyond compare. Yet never once had she dared to believe
or hope that he could take form before her eyes—a living thing. He had
only been the shadow she had loved and which could not be taken away
from her because he was her secret and no one could ever know.

The music went swinging and singing with notes which were almost a
pain. And he was in the very room with her! Donal! Donal! He had not
known and did not know. He had laughed into her eyes without
knowing—but he had come back. A young man now like all the rest, but
more beautiful. What a laugh, what wonderful shoulders, what wonderful
dancing, how long and strongly smooth and supple he was in the line
fabric of his clothes! Though her mind did not form these things in
words for her, it was only that her eyes saw all the charm of him from
head to foot, and told her that he was only more than ever what he had
been in the miraculous first days.

“Perhaps he will not find out at all,” she thought, dancing all the
while and trying to talk as well as think. “I was too little for him to
remember. I only remembered because I had nothing else. Oh, if he
should not find out!” She could not go and tell him. Even if a girl
could do such a thing, perhaps he could not recall a childish incident
of so long ago—such a small, small thing. It had only been immense to
her and so much water had flowed under his bridge bearing so many
flotillas. She had only stood and looked down at a thin trickling
stream which carried no ships at all. It was very difficult to keep her
eyes from stealing—even darting—about in search of him. His high fair
head with the clipped wave in its hair could be followed if one dared
be alert. He danced with an auburn haired girl, he spun down the room
with a brown one, he paused for a moment to show the trick of a new
step to a tall one with black coils. He was at the end of the room, he
was tangoing towards her and she felt her heart beat and beat. He
passed close by and his eyes turned upon her and after he had passed a
queer little inner trembling would not cease. Oh! if he had looked a
little longer—if her partner would only carry her past him! And how
dreadful she was to let herself feel so excited when he could not be
_expected_ to remember such a little thing—just a baby playing with him
in a garden. Oh!—her heart giving a leap—if he would look—if he would
_look!_

When did she first awaken to a realization—after what seemed years and
years of waiting and not being able to conquer the inwardly trembling
feeling—that he was _beginning_ to look—that somehow he had become
aware of her presence and that it drew his eyes though there was no
special recognition in them? Down the full length of the room they met
hers first, and again as he passed with yet another partner. Then when
he was resting between dances and being very gay indeed—though somehow
he always seemed gay. He had been gay when they played in the Gardens.
Yes, his eyes cane and found her. She thought he spoke of her to
someone near him. Of course Robin looked away and tried not to look
again too soon. But when in spite of intention and even determination,
something forced her glance and made it a creeping, following
glance—there were his eyes again. She was frightened each time it
happened, but he was not. She began to know with new beatings of the
pulse that he no longer looked by chance, but because he wanted to see
her—and wished her to see him, as if he had begun to call to her with a
gay Donal challenge. It was like that, though his demeanour was
faultlessly correct.

The incident of their meeting was faultlessly correct, also, when after
one of those endless lapses of time Lady Lothwell appeared and
presented him as if the brief ceremony were one of the most ordinary in
existence. The conventional grace of his bow said no more than George’s
had said to those looking on, but when he put his arm round her and
they began to sway together in the dance, Robin wondered in terror if
he could not feel the beating of her heart under his hand. If he could
it would be horrible—but it would not stop. To be so near—to try to
believe it—to try to make herself remember that she could mean nothing
to him and that it was only she who was shaking—for nothing! But she
could not help it. This was the disjointed kind of thing that flew past
her mental vision. She was not a shy girl, but she could not speak.
Curiously enough he also was quite silent for several moments. They
danced for a space without a word and they did not notice that people
began to watch them because they were an attracting pair to watch. And
the truth was that neither of the two knew in the least what the other
thought.

“That—is a beautiful waltz,” he said at last. He said it in a low
meaning voice as if it were a sort of emotional confidence. He had not
actually meant to speak in such a tone, but when he realized what its
sound had been he did not care in the least. What was the matter with
him?

“Yes,” Robin answered. (Only “Yes.”)

He had not known when he glanced at her first, he was saying mentally.
He could not, of course, swear to her now. But what an extraordinary
thing that—! She was like a swallow—she was like any swift flying thing
on a man’s arm. One could go on to the end of time. Once round the
great ball room, twice, and as the third round began he gave a little
laugh and spoke again.

“I am going to ask you a question. May I?”

“Yes.”

“Is your name Robin?”

“Yes,” she could scarcely breathe it.

“I thought it was,” in the voice in which he had spoken of the music.
“I hoped it was—after I first began to suspect. I _hoped_ it was.”

“It is—it is.”

“Did we—” he had not indeed meant that his arm should hold her a shade
closer, but—in spite of himself—it did because he was after all so
little more than a boy, “—did we play together in a garden?”

“Yes—yes,” breathed Robin. “We did.” Surely she heard a sound as if he
had caught a quick breath. But after it there were a few more steps and
another brief space of silence.

“I knew,” he said next, very low. “I _knew_ that we played together in
a garden.”

“You did not know when you first looked at me tonight.” Innocently
revealing that even his first glance had been no casual thing to her.

But his answer revealed something too.

“You were near the door—just coming into the room. I didn’t know why
you startled me. I kept looking for you afterwards in the crowd.”

“I didn’t see you look,” said Robin softly, revealing still more in her
utter inexperience.

“No, because you wouldn’t look at me—you were too much engaged. Do you
like this step?”

“I like them all.”

“Do you always dance like this? Do you always make your partner feel as
if he had danced with you all his life?”

“It is—because we played together in the garden,” said Robin and then
was quite terrified at herself. Because after all—after all they were
only two conventional young people meeting for the first time at a
dance, not knowing each other in the least. It was really the first
time. The meeting of two children could not count. But the beating and
strange elated inward tremor would not stop.

As for him he felt abnormal also and he was usually a very normal
creature. It was abnormal to be so excited that he found himself, as it
were, upon another plane, because he had recognized and was dancing
with a girl he had not seen since she was five or six. It was not
normal that he should be possessed by a desire to keep near to her,
overwhelmed by an impelling wish to talk to her—to ask her questions.
About what—about herself—themselves—the years between—about the garden.

“It began to come back bit by bit after I had two fair looks. You
passed me several times though you didn’t know.” (Oh! had she not
known!) “I had been promised some dances by other people. But I went to
Lady Lothwell. She’s very kind.”

Back swept the years and it had all begun again, the wonderful
happiness—just as the anguish had swept back on the night her mother
had come to talk to her. As he had brought it into her dreary little
world then, he brought it now. He had the power. She was so happy that
she seemed to be only waiting to hear what he would say—as if that were
enough. There are phases like this—rare ones—and it was her fate that
through such a phase she was passing.

It was indeed true that much more water had passed under his bridge
than under hers, but now—! Memory reproduced for him with an acuteness
like actual pain, a childish torment he thought he had forgotten. And
it was as if it had been endured only yesterday—and as if the urge to
speak and explain was as intense as it had been on the first day.

“She’s very little and she won’t understand,” he had said to his
mother. “She’s very little, really—perhaps she’ll cry.”

How monstrous it had seemed! Had she cried—poor little soul! He looked
down at her eyelashes. Her cheek had been of the same colour and
texture then. That came back to him too. The impulse to tighten his
arms was infernally powerful—almost automatic.

“She has no one but me to remember!” he heard his own child voice
saying fiercely. Good Lord, it _was_ as if it had been yesterday. He
actually gulped something down in his throat.

“You haven’t rested much,” he said aloud. “There’s a conservatory with
marble seats and corners and a fountain going. Will you let me take you
there when we stop dancing? I want to apologize to you.”

The eyelashes lifted themselves and made round her eyes the big soft
shadow of which Sara Studleigh had spoken. A strong and healthy
valvular organ in his breast lifted itself curiously at the same time.

“To apologize?”

Was he speaking to her almost as if she were still four or five? It was
to the helplessness of those years he was about to explain—and yet he
did not feel as though he were still eight.

“I want to tell you why I never came back to the garden. It was a
broken promise, wasn’t it?”

The music had not ceased, but they stopped dancing.

“Will you come?” he said and she went with him like a child—just as she
had followed in her babyhood. It seemed only natural to do what he
asked.

The conservatory was like an inner Paradise now. The tropically scented
warmth—the tiers on tiers of bloom above bloom—the softened swing of
music—the splash of the fountain on water and leaves. Their plane had
lifted itself too. They could hear the splashing water and sometimes
feel it in the corner seat of marble he took her to. A crystal drop
fell on her hand when she sat down. The blue of his eyes was vaguely
troubled and he spoke as if he were not certain of himself.

“I was wakened up in what seemed to me the middle of the night,” he
said, as if indeed the thing had happened only the day before. “My
mother was obliged to go back suddenly to Scotland. I was only a little
chap, but it nearly finished me. Parents and guardians don’t understand
how gigantic such a thing can be. I had promised you—we had promised
each other—hadn’t we?”

“Yes,” said Robin. Her eyes were fixed upon his face—open and unmoving.
Such eyes! Such eyes! All the touchingness of the past was in their
waiting on his words.

“Children—little boys especially—are taught that they must not cry out
when they are hurt. As I sat in the train through the journey that day
I thought my heart would burst in my small breast. I turned my back and
stared out of the window for fear my mother would see my face. I’d
always loved her. Do you know I think that just then I _hated_ her. I
had never hated anything before. Good Lord! What a thing for a little
chap to go through! My mother was an angel, but she didn’t _know_.”

“No,” said Robin in a small strange voice and without moving her gaze.
“She didn’t _know_.”

He had seated himself on a sort of low marble stool near her and he
held a knee with clasped hands. They were hands which held each other
for the moment with a sort of emotional clinch. His position made him
look upward at her instead of down.

“It was _you_ I was wild about,” he said. “You see it was _you_. I
could have stood it for myself. The trouble was that I felt I was such
a big little chap. I thought I was years—ages older than you—and
mountains bigger,” his faint laugh was touched with pity for the
smallness of the big little chap. “You seemed so tiny and pretty—and
lonely.”

“I was as lonely as a new-born bird fallen out of its nest.”

“You had told me you had ‘nothing.’ You said no one had ever kissed
you. I’d been loved all my life. You had a wondering way of fixing your
eyes on me as if I could give you everything—perhaps it was a coxy
little chap’s conceit that made me love you for it—but perhaps it
wasn’t.”

“You _were_ everything,” Robin said—and the mere simpleness of the way
in which she said it brought the garden so near that he smelt the warm
hawthorn and heard the distant piano organ and it quickened his breath.

“It was because I kept seeing your eyes and hearing your laugh that I
thought my heart was bursting. I knew you’d go and wait for me—and
gradually your little face would begin to look different. I knew you’d
believe I’d come. ‘She’s little’—that was what I kept saying to myself
again and again. ‘And she’ll cry—awfully—and she’ll think I did it.
She’ll never know.’ There,”—he hesitated a moment—“there was a kind of
mad shame in it. As if I’d _betrayed_ your littleness and your belief,
though I was too young to know what betraying was.”

Just as she had looked at him before, “as if he could give her
everything,” she was looking at him now. In what other way could she
look while he gave her this wonderful soothing, binding softly all the
old wounds with unconscious, natural touch because he had really been
all her child being had been irradiated and warmed by. There was no
pose in his manner—no sentimental or flirtatious youth’s affecting of a
picturesque attitude. It was real and he told her this thing because he
must for his own relief.

“Did you cry?” he said. “Did my little chap’s conceit make too much of
it? I suppose I ought to hope it did.”

Robin put her hand softly against her heart.

“No,” she answered. “I was only a baby, but I think it _killed_
something—here.”

He caught a big hard breath.

“Oh!” he said and for a few seconds simply sat and gazed at her.

“But it came to life again?” he said afterwards.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. Perhaps it could only live in
a very little creature. But it was killed.”

“I say!” broke from him. “It was like wringing a canary’s neck when it
was singing in the sun!”

A sudden swelling of the music of a new dance swept in to them and he
rose and stood up before her.

“Thank you for giving me my chance to tell you,” he said. “This was the
apology. You have been kind to listen.”

“I wanted to listen,” Robin said. “I am glad I didn’t live a long time
and grow old and die without your telling me. When I saw you tonight I
almost said aloud, ‘He’s come back!’”

“I’m glad I came. It’s queer how one can live a thing over again. There
have been all the years between for us both. For me there’s been all a
lad’s life—tutors and Eton and Oxford and people and lots of travel and
amusement. But the minute I set eyes on you near the door something
must have begun to drag me back. I’ll own I’ve never liked to let
myself dwell on that memory. It wasn’t a good thing because it had a
trick of taking me back in a fiendish way to the little chap with his
heart bursting in the railway carriage—and the betrayal feeling. It’s
morbid to let yourself grouse over what can’t be undone. So you faded
away. But when I danced past you somehow I knew I’d come on
_something_. It made me restless. I couldn’t keep my eyes away
decently. Then all at once I _knew!_ I couldn’t tell you what the
effect was. There you were again—I was as much obliged to tell you as I
should have been if I’d found you at Braemarnie when I got there that
night. Conventions had nothing to do with it. It would not have
mattered even if you’d obviously thought I was a fool. You might have
thought so, you know.”

“No, I mightn’t,” answered Robin. “There have been no Eton and Oxford
and amusements for me. This is my first party.”

She rose as he had done and they stood for a second or so with their
eyes resting on each other’s—each with a young smile quivering into
life which neither was conscious of. It was she who first wakened and
came back. He saw a tiny pulse flutter in her throat and she lifted her
hand with a delicate gesture.

“This dance was Lord Halwyn’s and we’ve sat it out. We must go back to
the ball room.”

“I—suppose—we must,” he answered with slow reluctance—but he could
scarcely drag his eyes away from hers—even though he obeyed, and they
turned and went.

In the shining ball room the music rose and fell and swelled again into
ecstasy as he took her white young lightness in his arm and they swayed
and darted and swooped like things of the air—while the old Duchess and
Lord Coombe looked on almost unseeing and talked in murmurs of
Sarajevo.




THE END




PUBLISHERS’ NOTE


The inflexible limitations of magazine space necessitated the
omission—in its serial form—of so large a portion of _The Head of the
House of Coombe_ as to eliminate much of the charm of characterization
and the creation of atmosphere and background which add so greatly to
the power and picturesqueness of the author’s work.

These values having been unavoidably lost in a greatly compressed
version, it is the publishers’ desire to produce the story in its
entirety, and, as during its writing it developed into what might be
regarded as two novels—so distinctly does it deal with two epochs—it
has been decided to present it to its public as two separate books. The
first, _The Head of the House of Coombe_, deals with social life in
London during the evolutionary period between the late Victorian years
and the reign of Edward VII and that of his successor, previous to the
Great War. It brings Lord Coombe and Donal, Feather and her girl Robin
to the summer of 1914. It ends with the ending of a world which can
never again be the same. The second novel, _Robin_, to be published
later continues the story of the same characters, facing existence,
however, in a world transformed by tragedy, and in which new aspects of
character, new social, economic, and spiritual possibilities are to be
confronted, rising to the surface of life as from the depths of unknown
seas. Readers of _The Head of the House of Coombe_ will follow the
story of Robin with intensified interest.




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