But there were no letters. And she was obliged to sit at her desk in the corner and listen to what people said about what was happening, and now and then to Lord Coombe speaking in low tones to the Duchess of his anxiety and uncertainty about Donal. Anxiety was increasing on every side and such of the unthinking multitude as had at last ceased to believe that one magnificent English blow would rid the earth of Germany, had begun to lean towards belief in a vision of German millions adding themselves each day to other millions advancing upon France, Belgium, England itself, a grey encroaching mass rolling forward and ever forward, overwhelming even neutral countries until not only Europe but the whole world was covered, and the mailed fist beat its fragments into such dust as it chose. Even those who had not lost their heads and who knew more than the general public, wore grave faces because they felt they knew too little and could not know more. Coombe's face was hard and grey many days.
"It seems as if one lost them in the flood sometimes," Robin heard him say to the Duchess. "I saw his mother yesterday and could give her no definite news. She believes that he is where the worst fighting is going on. I could not tell her he was not."
As, when they had been together, the two had not thought of any future, so, now Robin was alone, she could not think of any to-morrow—perhaps she would not. She lived only in the day which was passing. She rose, dressed and presented herself to the Duchess for orders; she did the work given her to do, she saw the day gradually die and the lights lighted; she worked as long as she was allowed to do so—and then the day was over and she climbed the staircase to her room.
Sometimes she sat and wrote letters to Donal—long yearning letters, but when they were written she tore them into pieces or burned them. If they were to keep their secret she could not send such letters because there were so many chances that they would be lost. Still there was a hopeless comfort in writing them, in pouring out what she would not have written even if she had been sure that it would reach him safely. No girl who loved a man who was at the Front would let him know that it seemed as if her heart were slowly breaking. She must be brave—brave! But she was not brave, that she knew. The news from the Front was worse every day; there were more women with awful faces; some workers had dropped out and came no more. One of them who had lost three sons in one battle had died a few days after the news arrived because the shock had been too great for her strength to endure. There were new phases of anguish on all sides. She did all she was called on to do with a secret passion of eagerness; each smallest detail was the sacred thing. She begged the Duchess to allow her to visit and help the mothers of sons who were fighting—or wounded or missing. That made her feel nearer to things she wanted to feel near to. When they cried or told her stories, she could understand. When she worked she might be doing things which might somehow reach Donal or boys like Donal.
Howsoever long her life was she knew one thing would never be blotted out by time—the day she went down to MershamWood to see Mrs. Bennett, whose three grandsons had been killed within a few days of each other. She had received the news in one telegram. There was no fairy wood any longer, there were only bare branched trees standing holding out naked arms to the greyness of the world. They looked as if they were protesting against something. The grass and ferns were brown and sodden with late rains and there were no hollyhocks and snapdragons in the cottage garden—only on either side of the brick path dead brown stalks, some of them broken by the wind. Things had not been neatly cut down and burned and swept away. The grandsons had made the garden autumn-tidy every year before this one.
The old fairy woman sat on a clean print-covered arm chair by a very small fire. She had a black print dress on and a black shawl and a black ribbon round her cap. Her Bible lay on a little table near her but it was closed.
"Don't get up, please, Mrs. Bennett," Robin said when she lifted the latch and entered.
The old fairy woman looked at her in a dazed way.
"I'm so eye-dimmed with crying that I can scarcely see," she said.
Robin came to her and knelt down on the hearth.
"I'm your lodger," she faltered, "who—who used to love the fairy wood so."
She had not known what she would say when she spoke first but she had certainly not thought of saying anything like this. And she certainly had not known that she would suddenly find herself overwhelmed by a rising tidal wave of unbearable woe and drop her face on to the old woman's lap with wild sobbing. She had not come downfrom London to do this—but away from the world—in the clean, still little cottage room which seemed to hold only grief and silence and death the wave rose and broke and swept her with it.
Mrs. Bennett only gave herself up to the small clutching hands and sat and shivered.
"No one—will come in—will they?" Robin was gasping. "There is no one to hear, is there?"
"No one on earth," said the old fairy woman. "Quiet and loneliness are left if there's naught else."
What she thought it would be hard to say. The blow which had come to her at the end of a long life had, as it were, felled her as a tree might have been felled in Mersham Wood. As the tree might have lain for a short time with its leaves still seeming alive on its branches so she seemed living. But she had been severed from her root. She listened to the girl's sobbing and stroked her hair.
"Don't be afraid. There's no one left to hear but the walls and the bare trees in the wood," she said.
Robin sobbed on.
"You've a kind heart, but you're not crying for me," she said next. "You've a black trouble of your own. There's few that hasn't these days. And it's worse for the young that's got to live through it and after it. When Mary Ann comes to see after me to-morrow morning I may be lying dead, thank God. But you're a child." The small clutching hands clutched more piteously because it was so true—so true. Whatsoever befell there were all the long, long years to come—with only the secret left and the awful fear that sometime she might begin to be afraid that it was not a real thing—since no one had ever known or ever would know and since she could never speak of it or hear it spoken of.
"I'm so afraid," she shuddered at last in a small low voice. "I'm solonely!" The old fairy woman's stroking hand stopped short.
"Is there—anything—you'd like to tell me—anything in the world?" she asked tremulously. "There's nothing I'd mind."
The pretty head on her lap shook itself to and fro.
"No! No! No! No!" the small choked voice gave out. "Nothing—nothing! Nothing. That's why it's so lonely."
As she had waited alone through the night in her cradle, as she had watched the sparrows on the roofs above her in the nursery, as she had played alone until Donal came, so it was her fate to be alone now.
"But you came away from London because there were too many people there and you wanted to be in a place where there was nothing but an empty cottage and an old woman. Some would call it lonelier here."
"The wood is here—the fairy wood!" she cried and her sobbing broke forth tenfold more bitterly.
Mrs. Bennett had seen in her day much of the troubles of others and many of the things she had seen had been the troubles of women who were young. Sometimes it had been possible to help them, sometimes it had not, but in any case she had always known that help could be given only if one asked careful questions. The old established rules with regard to one's behaviour in connection with duchesses and their belongings had strangely faded away since the severing of her root as all things on earth had faded and lost consequence. She remembered no rules as she bent her head over the girl and almost whispered to her.
"I won't ask no questions after this one, Miss dear," she said quaking. "But was there ever—a young gentleman—in the wood?"
"No! No! No! No!" four times again Robin cried it. "Never! Never!" And she lifted her face and let her see it white and streaming and with eyes which desperately defied and as they defied implored for love and aid and mercy.
The old fairy woman's nutcracker mouth trembled. It mumbled pathetically before she was able to control it. She knew she had heard this kind of thing before though in cases with which great ladies had nothing whatever to do. And at the same time there was something in this case that was somehow different.
"I don't know what to say or do," she faltered helplessly. "With the world like this—we've got to try to comfort each other—and we don't know how."
"Let me come into your arms," said Robin like a child. "Hold me and let me hold you." She crept near and folding soft arms about the old figure laid her cheek against the black shawl. "Let us cry. There's nothing for either of us to do but cry until our hearts break in two. We are all alone and no one can hear us."
"There's naught but the wood outside," moaned the old fairy woman.
The voice against the shawl was a moan also.
"Perhaps the wood hears us—perhaps it hears. Oh! me! Oh! me!"
When she reached London she saw that there were excited groups of people talking together in the streets. Among them were women who were crying, or protesting angrily or comforting others. But she had seen the same thing before and would not let herself look at people or hear anything she could shut her ears against. Some new thing had happened, perhaps the Germans had taken some important town and wreaked their vengeance on the inhabitants, perhaps some new alarming move had been made and disaster stared the Allies in the face. She staggered through the crowds in the station and did not really know how she reached Eaton Square.
Half an hour later she was sitting at her desk quiet and neat in her house dress. She had told the Duchess all she could tell her of her visit to old Mrs. Bennett.
"We both cried a good deal," she explained when she saw her employer look at her stained eyes. "She keeps remembering what they were like when they were babies—how rosy and fat they were and how they learned to walk and tumbled about on her little kitchen floor. And then how big they grew and how fine they looked in their khaki. She says the worst thing is wondering how they look now. I told her she mustn't wonder. She mustn't think at all. She is quite well taken care of. A girl called Mary Ann comes in three times a day to wait on her—and her daughter comes when she can but her trouble has made her almost wander in her mind. It's because they areallgone. When she comes in she forgets everything and sits and says over and over again, 'If it had only been Tom—or only Tom and Will—or if it had been Jem—or only Jem and Tom—but it's Will—and Jem—and Tom,'—over and over again. I am not at all sure I know how to comfort people. But she was glad I came."
When Lord Coombe came in to make his daily visit he looked rigid indeed—as if he were stiff and cold though it was not a cold night.
He sat down by the Duchess and took a telegram from his pocket. Glancing up at him, Robin was struck by a whiteness about his mouth. He did not speak at once. It was as though even his lips were stiff.
"It has come," he said at last. "Killed. A shell." The Duchess repeated his words after him. Her lips seemed stiff also.
"Killed. A shell."
He handed the telegram to her. It was the customary officially sympathetic announcement. She read it more than once. Her hands began to tremble. But Coombe sat with face hidden. He was bowed like an old man.
"A shell," he said slowly as if thinking the awful thing out. "That I heard unofficially." Then he added a strange thing, dragging the words out. "How could that—be blown to atoms?"
The Duchess scarcely breathed her answer which was as strange as his questioning.
"Oh! Howcouldit!"
She put out her shaking hand and touched his sleeve, watching his face as if something in it awed her.
"Youlovedhim?" She whispered it. But Robin heard.
"I did not know I had loved anything—but I suppose that has been it. His physical perfection attracted me at first—his extraordinary contrast to Henry. It was mere pride in him as an heir and successor. Afterwards it was abeautifullook his young blue eyes had. Beautiful seems an unmasculine word for such a masculine lad, but no other word expresses it. It was a sort of valiant brightness and joy in living and being friends with the world. I saw it every time he came to talk to me. I wished he were my son. I even tried to think of him as my son." He uttered a curious low sound like a sudden groan, "My son has been killed."
When he was about to leave the house and stood in the candle-lighted hall he was thinking of many dark things which passed unformedly through his mind and made him move slowly. He was slow in his movements as the elderly maid servant assisted him to put on his overcoat, and he was as slowly drawing on his gloves when his eyes—slow also—travelled up the staircase and stopped at the first landing, where he seemed to see an indefinite heap of something lying.
"Am I mistaken or is—something—lying on the landing?" he said to the woman.
The fact that he was impelled to make the inquiry seemed to him part of his abnormal state of mind. What affair of his after all were curiously dropped bundles upon his hostess' staircase? But—
"Please go and look at it," he added, and the woman gave him a troubled look and went up the stairs.
He himself was only a moment behind her. He actually found himself following her as if he were guessing something. When the maid cried out, he vaguely knew what he had been guessing.
"Oh!" the woman gasped, bending down. "It's poor little Miss Lawless! Oh, my lord," wildly after a nearer glance, "She looks as if she was dead!"
"Now no one will ever know."
Robin waking from long unconsciousness found her mind saying this before consciousness which was clear had actually brought her back to the world.
"Now no one will ever know—ever."
She seemed to have been away somewhere in the dark for a very long time. She was too tired to try to remember what had happened before she began to climb the staircase, which grew steeper and longer as she dragged herself from step to step. But in the back of her mind there was one particular fact she knew without trying to remember how she learned it. A shell had fallen somewhere and when it had burst Donal was "blown to atoms." How big were atoms—how small were they? Several times when she reached this point she descended into the abyss of blackness and fainted again, though people were doing things to her and trying to keep her awake in ways which troubled her greatly. Why should they disturb her so when sinking into blackness was better?
"Now no one will ever know."
She was lying in her bed in her own room. Some one had undressed her. It was a nice room and very quiet and there was only a dim light burning. It was a long time before she came back, after one of the descents into the black abyss, and became slowly aware that Something was near her bed. She did not actually see it because at first she could not have lifted or turned her eyes. She could only lie still. But she knew that it was near her and she wished it were not. At last—by degrees it ceased to be a merethingand evolved into a person. It was a man who was holding her wrist and watching her quietly and steadily—as if he had been doing it for some time. No one else was in the room. The people who had been disturbing her by doing things had gone away.
"Now," she whispered dragging out word after word, "no one will—ever—ever know." But she was not conscious she had said it even in a whisper which could be heard. She thought the thing had only passed again through her mind.
"Donal! Blown—to—atoms," she said in the same way. "How small is—an atom?" She was sinking into the blackness again when the man dropped her wrist quickly and did something to her which brought her back.
"Don't!" she moaned. "Please—don't."
But he would not let her go.
Perhaps days and nights passed—or perhaps only one day and night before she found herself still lying in her bed but feeling somehow more awake when she opened her eyes and found the same man sitting close to her holding her wrist again.
"I am Dr. Redcliff," he said in a quiet voice. "You are much better. I want to ask you some questions. I will not tire you."
He began to ask her questions very gently as if he did not wish to alarm or disturb her. She had been found in a dead faint lying on the landing. She had remained unconscious for an abnormally long time. When she had been brought out of one faint she had fallen into another and this had happened again and again. The indication was that she had been struck down by some shock. In examining her he had found that she was underweight. He wished to discover if she had been secretly working too late at night in her deep interest in what she was doing. What exactly had her diet been? Had she taken enough exercise in the open air? How had she slept? The Duchess was seriously anxious.
They were the questions doctors always asked people except that he seemed more desirous of being sure of the amount of exercise she had taken than about anything else. He was specially interested in the times when she had been in the country. She was obliged to tell him she had always been alone. He thought it would have been better if she had had some companion. Once when he was asking her about her visits to Mrs. Bennett's cottage the blackness almost engulfed her again. But he was watching her very closely and perhaps seeing her turn white—gave her some stimulant in time. He had a clever face which was not unkind, but she wished that it had not had such a keenly watchful look. More than once the watchfulness tired her and she closed her eyes because she did not want him to look into them—as if he were asking questions which were not altogether doctors' questions.
When he left her and went downstairs to talk to the Duchess he asked a good many quiet questions again. He was a man whose intense interest in his profession did not confine itself wholly to its scientific aspect. An extraordinarily beautiful child swooning into death was not a mere pathological incident to him. And he knew many strange things brought about by the abnormal conditions ofwar. He himself was conscious of being overstrung with the rest of a tormented world.
He knew of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and he had heard more stories of her household, her loveliness and Lord Coombe than he had time to remember. He had, of course, heard the unsavoury rumours of the child who was being brought up for some nefarious object. As he knew Lord Coombe rather well he did not believe stories about him which went beyond a certain limit. Not until he had talked to the Duchess for some time did he discover that the hard-smitten child lying half-lifeless in her bed was the very young heroine of the quite favourite scandal. The knowledge gave him furiously to think. It was Coombe who had interested the Duchess in her. The Duchess had no doubt taken her under her protection for generously benign reasons. He pursued his questioning delicately.
"Has she had any young friends? She seems to have taken her walks alone and even to have gone into the country by herself."
"The life of the young people in its ordinary sense of companionship and amusement has been stopped by the War. There may be some who go on in the old way but she has not been one of them," the Duchess said.
"Visits to old women in remote country places are not stimulating enough. Has she hadnocompanions?"
"I tried—" said the Duchess wearily. She was rather pale herself. "The news of the Sarajevo tragedy arrived on the day I gave a small dance for her—to bring some young people together." Her waxen pallor became even more manifest. "How they danced!" she said woefully. "What living things they were! Oh!" the exclamation broke forth at a suddenly overwhelming memory. "The beautiful boy—the splendid lad who was blown to atoms—the news came only yesterday—was there dancing with the rest!"
Dr. Redcliff leaned forward slightly.
"To hear thatanyboy has been blown to atoms is a hideous thing," he said. "Who brought the news? Was Miss Lawless in the room when it was brought?"
"I think so though I am not sure. She comes in and goes out very quietly. I am afraid I forgot everything else. The shock was a great one. My old friend Lord Coombe brought the news. The boy would have succeeded him. We hear again and again of great families becoming extinct. The house of Coombe has not been prolific. The War has taken its toll. Donal Muir was the last of them. One has felt as though it was of great importance that—that a thing like that should be carried on." She began to speak in a half-numbed introspective way. "What does it matter really? Only one boy of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands before it is over? But—but it's the youngness—the power—the potential meaning—wasted—torn—scattered in fragments." She stopped and sat quite still, gazing before her as though into space.
"She is very young. She has been absorbed in war work and living in a highly charged atmosphere for some time." Dr. Redcliff said presently, "If she knew the poor lad—"
"She did not really know him well, though they had met as children. They danced together that night and sat and talked in the conservatory. But she never saw him again," the Duchess explained.
"It might have been too much, even if she did not know him well. We must keep her quiet," said Dr. Redcliff.
Very shortly afterwards he rose and went away.
An hour later he was sitting in a room at Coombe House alone with Lord Coombe. It was the room in which Mademoiselle Vallé had found his lordship on the night of Robin's disappearance. No one knew now where Mademoiselle was or if she were still alive. She had been living with her old parents in a serene Belgian village which had been destroyed by the Germans. Black tales had been told of which Robin had been allowed to hear nothing. She had been protected in many ways.
Though they had not been intimates the two men knew each other well. To each individually the type of the other was one he could understand. It was plain to Lord Coombe that Redcliff found his case of rather special interest, which he felt was scarcely to be wondered at. As he himself had seen the too slender prostrate figure and the bloodless small face with its curtain of lashes lying too heavily close to the cold cheek, he had realised that their helpless beauty alone was enough to arrest more than ordinary attention. She had, as the woman had cried out, looked as if she were dead, and dead loveliness is a reaching power.
Dr. Redcliff spoke of her thoughtfully and with a certain gentleness. He at first included her with many other girls, the changes in whose methods of life he had been observing.
"The closed gates in their paths are suddenly thrown open for them because no one has to lock and unlock them," he said. "It produces curious effects. The light-minded ones take advantage of the fact and find dangerous amusement in it sometimes. The serious ones go about the work they have taken in hand. Miss Lawless is, I gather, one of the thinking and feeling ones and has gone about a great deal."
"Yes. The Duchess has tried to save her from her own ardour, but perhaps she has worked too steadily."
"Has the Duchess always known where she has gone and what people she has seen?"
"That would have been impossible. She wished her to feel free and if we had not wished it, one can see that it would not have been possible to stand guard over her. Neither was it necessary."
But he began to listen with special attention. There awakened in his mind the consciousness that he was being asked questions which suggested an object. The next one added to his awakening sense of the thing.
"Her exercise and holidays were always taken alone?" Redcliff said.
"The Duchess believed so."
"She has evidently been living under a poignant strain and some ghastly shock has struck her down. I think she must have been in the room when you brought the news of young Muir's terrible death."
"She was," said Coombe. "I saw her and then forgot."
"I thought so," Redcliff went on. "She cried out several times, 'Blown to atoms—atoms! Donal!' She was not conscious of the cries."
"Are you sure she said 'Donal'?" Coombe asked.
"Quite sure. It was that which set me thinking. I have thought a great deal. She has touched me horribly. The mere sight of her was enough. There is desolation in her childlikeness."
Lord Coombe sat extremely still. The room was very silent till Redcliff went on in dropped voice.
"There was another thing she said. She whispered it brokenly word by word. She did not know that, either. She whispered, 'Now—no one—will ever—know—ever.'"
Lord Coombe still sat silent. What he was thinking could not be read in his face but being a man of astute perception and used to the study of faces Dr. Redcliff knew that suddenly some startling thought had leaped within him.
"You were right to come to me," he said. "What is it you—suspect?"
That Dr. Redcliff was almost unbearably moved was manifest. He was not a man of surface emotions but his face actually twitched and he hastily gulped something down.
"She is a heartbreakingly beautiful thing," he said. "She has been left—through sheer kindness—in her own young hands. They were too young—and these are hours of cataclysm. She knows nothing. She does not know that—she will probably have a child."
The swiftness of the process by which the glowing little Miss Lawless, at whom people had found themselves involuntarily looking so often, changed from a rose of a girl into something strangely like a small waxen image which walked, called forth frequent startled comment. She was glanced at even oftener than ever.
"Is she going into galloping consumption? Her little chin has grown quite pointed and her eyes are actually frightening," was an early observation. But girls who are going into galloping consumption cough and look hectic and are weaker day by day and she had no cough, nor was she hectic and, though it was known that Dr. Redcliff saw her frequently, she insisted that she was not ill and begged the Duchess to let her go on with her work.
"But thedone-forwoe in her face is inexplicable—in a girl who has had no love affairs and has not even known any one who could have flirted with her and ridden away. The little thing'sdone for. It cries out aloud. I can't bear to look at her," one woman protested.
"I shall send her away if she does not improve," the Duchess said. "She shall go to some remote place in the Highlands and she shall not be allowed to remember that there is a war in the world. If I can manage to send her old nurse Dowie with her she will stand guard over her like an old shepherd."
She also had been struck by the look which had been spoken of as "done-for." Girls did not look like that for any common reason. She asked herself questions and with great care sat on foot a gradual and delicate cross-examination of Robin herself. But she discovered no reason common or uncommon for the thing she recognised each time she looked at her. It was inevitable that she should talk to Lord Coombe but she met in him a sort of barrier. She could not avoid seeing that he was preoccupied. She remotely felt that he was turning over in his mind something which precluded the possibility of his giving attention to other questions.
"I almost feel as if your interest in her had lapsed," she said at last.
"No. It has taken a—an entirely new form," was his answer.
It was when his glance encountered hers after he said this that each regarded the other with a slow growing anxiousness. Something came to life in each pair of eyes and it was something disturbed and reluctant. The Duchess spoke first.
"She has had no companions," she said painfully. "The War put an end to what I thought I might do for her. There has beennobody."
"At present it is a curious fact that in one sense we know very little of each other's lives," he answered. "The old leisurely habit of observing details no longer exists. As Redcliff said in speaking of her—and girls generally—all the gates are thrown wide open."
The Duchess was very silent for a space before she made her reply.
"Yes."
"You do not know her mother?"
"No."
"Two weeks ago she gave me something to reflect on. Her feeling for her daughter is that of a pretty cat-like woman for something enragingly younger than herself. She always resented her. She was infuriated by your interest in her. She said to me one afternoon, 'I hope the Duchess is still pleased with her companion. I saw her to-day in Bond Street and she looked like a housemaid I once had to dismiss rather suddenly. I am glad she is in her grace's house and not in mine.'"
After a few seconds—
"Iam glad she is in my house and not in hers," the Duchess said.
"After I had spoken to her at some length and she had quite lost her temper, she added 'You evidently don't know that she has been meeting Donal Muir. He told me so himself at the Erwyn's. I asked him if he had seen her since the dance and he owned that he had—and then was cross at himself for making the slip. I did not ask him howoftenhe had met her. He would not have told me. But if he met her once he met her as often as he chose.' She was not lying when she said it. I know her. I have been thinking constantly ever since." There was a brief silence between them; then he proceeded. "Robin worshipped him when she was a mere baby. They were very beautiful together on the night of the dance. She fainted on the stairway after hearing of his death. She had been crawling up to hide herself in her room, poor child! It is one of the tragedies. Perhaps you and I together—"
The Duchess was seeing again the two who had come forth shining from the conservatory. She continued to see them as Lord Coombe went on speaking, telling her what Dr. Redcliff had told him.
On her part Robin scarcely understood anything which was happening because nothing seemed to matter. On the morning when the Duchess told her that Dr. Redcliff wished to see her alone that fact mattered as little as the rest. She was indifferently conscious that the Duchess regarded her in an anxious kind way, but if she had been unkind instead of kind that would have meant nothing. There was only room for one thing in the world. She wondered sometimes if she were really dead—as Donal was—and did not know she was so. Perhaps after people died they walked about as she did and did not understand that others could not see them and they were not alive. But if she were dead she would surely see Donal.
Before she went to Dr. Redcliff the Duchess took her hand and held it closely in both her own. She looked at her with a curious sort of pitifulness—as if she were sorry.
"My poor child," she said. "Whatsoever he tells you don't be frightened. Don't think you are without friends. I will take care of you."
"Thank you," she said. "I don't think anything would frighten me. Nothing seems frightening—now." After which she went into the room where Dr. Redcliff was waiting for her.
The Duchess sat alone and thought deeply. What she thought of chiefly was the Head of the House of Coombe. She had always known that more than probably his attitude towards a circumstance of this sort would not evenremotely approach in likeness that of other people. His point of view would detach itself from ordinary theories of moralities and immoralities. He would see with singular clearness all sides of the incident. He would not be indignant, or annoyed or embarrassed. He had had an interest in Robin as a creature representing peculiar loveliness and undefended potentialities. Sometimes she had felt that this had even verged on a tenderness of which he was himself remotely, if at all, conscious. Concerning the boy Donal she had realised that he felt something stronger and deeper than any words of his own had at any time expressed. He had believed fine things of him and had watched him silently. He had wished he had been his own flesh and blood. Perhaps he had always felt a longing for a son who might have been his companion as well as his successor. Who knew whether a thwarted paternal instinct might not now be giving him such thinking to do as he might have done if Donal Muir had been the son of his body—dead on the battlefield but leaving behind him something to be gravely considered? What would a man think—what would a mandounder such circumstances?
"One might imagine what some men would do—but it would depend entirely upon the type," she thought. "What he will do will be different. It might seem cold; it might be merely judicial—but it might be surprising."
She was quite haunted by the haggard look of his face as he had exclaimed:
"I wish to God I had known him better! I wish to God I had talked to him more!"
What he had done this morning was to go to Mersham Wood to see Mrs. Bennett. There were things it might be possible tolearn by amiable and carefully considered expression of interest in her loss and loneliness. Concerning such things as she did not already know she would learn nothing from his conversation, but concerning such things as she had become aware of he would learn everything without alarming her.
"If those unhappy children met at her cottage and wandered about in Mersham Wood together the tragedy is understandable."
The Duchess' thinking ended pityingly because just at this time it was that Robin opened the door and stood looking at her.
It seemed as though Dr. Redcliff must have talked to her for a long time. But she had on her small hat and coat and what the Duchess seemed chiefly to see was the wide darkness of her eyes set in a face suddenly pinched, small and snow white. She looked like a starved baby.
"Please," she said with her hands clasped against her chest, "please—may I go to Mersham Wood?"
"To—Mersham Wood," the Duchess felt aghast—and then suddenly a flood of thought rushed upon her.
"It is not very far," the little gasping voice uttered. "I must go, please! Oh! I must! Just—to Mersham Wood!"
Something almost uncontrollable rose in the Duchess' throat.
"Child," she said. "Come here!"
Robin went to her—oh, poor little soul!—in utter obedience. As she drew close to her she went down upon her knees holding up her hands like a little nun at prayer.
"Pleaselet me go," she said again. "Only to Mersham Wood."
"Stay here, my poor child and talk to me," the Duchess said. "The time has come when you must talk to some one."
"When I come back—I will try. I—I want to ask—the Wood," said Robin. She caught at a fold of the Duchess' dress and went on rapidly.
"It is not far. Dr. Redcliff said I might go. Mrs. Bennett is there. She loves me."
"Are you going to talk to Mrs. Bennett?"
"No! No! No! No! Not to any one in the world."
Hapless young creatures in her plight must always be touching, but her touchingness was indescribable—almost unendurable to the ripe aged woman of the world who watched and heard her. It was as if she knew nothing of the meaning of things—as if some little spirit had been torn from heaven and flung down upon the dark earth. One felt that one must weep aloud over the exquisite incomprehensible remoteness of her. And it was so awfully plain that there was some tragic connection with the Wood and that her whole soul cried out to it. And she would not speak to any one in the world. Such things had been known. Was the child's brain wavering? Why not? All the world was mad was the older woman's thought, and she herself after all the years, had for this moment no sense of balance and felt as if all old reasons for things had been swept away.
"If you will come back," she said. "I will let you go."
After the poor child had gone there formulated itself in her mind the thought that if Lord Coombe and Mrs. Bennett met her together some clarity might be reached. But then again she said to herself, "Oh why, after all, should she be asked questions? What can it matter to the rest of the woeful world if she hides it forever in her heart?"
And she sat with drooped head knowing that she was tired of living because some things were so helpless.
The Wood was gradually growing darker. It had been almost brilliant during a part of the afternoon because the bareness of the branches let in the wintry sun. There were no leaves to keep it out and there had been a rare, chill blue sky. All seemed cold blue sky where it was not brown or sodden yellow fern and moss. The trunks of the trees looked stark and the tall, slender white stems of the birches stood out here and there among the darker growth like ghosts who were sentinels. It was always a silent place and now its stillness seemed even added to by the one sound which broke it—the sound of sobbing—sobbing—sobbing.
It had been going on for some time. There had stolen through the narrow trodden pathway a dark slight figure and this had dropped upon the ground under a large tree which was one of a group whose branches had made a few months ago a canopy of green where birds had built nests and where one nightingale had sung night after night to the moon.
Later—Robin had said to herself—she would go to the cottage, and she would sit upon the hearth and lay her head on Mrs. Bennett's knee and they would cling together and sob and talk of the battlefields and the boys lying dead there. But she had no thought of saying any other thing to her, because there was nothing left to say. She had said nothing to Dr. Redcliff; she had only sat listening to him and feeling her eyes widening as she tried to follow and understand what he was saying insuch a grave, low-toned cautious way—as if he himself were almost afraid as he went on. What he said would once have been strange and wonderful, but now it was not, because wonder had gone out of the world. She only seemed to sit stunned before the feeling that now the dream was not a sacred secret any longer and there grew within her, as she heard, a wild longing to fly to the Wood as if it were a living human thing who would hear her and understand—as if it would be like arms enclosing her. Something would be there listening and she could talk to it and ask it what to do.
She had spoken to it as she staggered down the path—she had cried out to it with wild broken words, and then when she heard nothing she had fallen down upon the earth and the sobbing—sobbing—had begun.
"Donal!" she said. "Donal!" And again, "Donal!" over and over. But nothing answered, for even that which had been Donal—with the heavenly laugh and the blue in his gay eyes and the fine, long smooth hands—had been blown to fragments in a field somewhere—and there was nothing anywhere.
She had heard no footsteps and she was sobbing still when a voice spoke at her side—the voice of some one standing near.
"It is Donal you want, poor child—no one else," it said.
That it should be this voice—Lord Coombe's! And that amazing as it was to hear it, she was not amazed and did not care! Her sobbing ceased so far as sobbing can cease on full flow. She lay still but for low shuddering breaths.
"I have come because it is Donal," he said. "You told me once that you had always hated me. Hatred is useless now. Don't feel it."
But she did not answer.
"You probably will not believe anything I say. Well I must speak to you whether you believe me or not."
She lay still and he himself was silent. His voice seemed to be a sudden thing when he spoke.
"I loved him too. I found it out the morning I saw him march away."
He had seen him! Since she had looked at his beautiful face this man had looked at it!
"You!" She sat up on the earth and gazed, swaying. So he knew he could go on.
"I wanted a son. I once lay on the moss in a wood and sobbed as you have sobbed.Shewas killed too."
But Robin was thinking only of Donal.
"What—was his face like? Did you—see him near?"
"Quite near. I stood on the street. I followed. He did not see me. He saw nothing."
The sobbing broke forth again.
"Did—did his eyes look as if he had been crying? He did cry—he did!"
The Head of the House of Coombe showed no muscular facial sign of emotion and stood stiffly still. But what was this which leaped scalding to his glazed eyes and felt hot?
"Yes," he answered huskily. "I saw—even as he marched past—that his eyes were heavy and had circles round them. There were other eyes like his—some were boys' eyes and some were the eyes of men. They held their heads up—but they had all said 'Good-bye'—as he had."
The Wood echoed to a sound which was a heart-wrung wail and she dropped forward on the moss again and lay there.
"He said, 'Oh, let us cry—together—together! Oh little—lovely love'!"
She who would have borne torment rather than betray the secret of the dream, now that it could no longer be a secret lay reft of all but memories and the wild longing to hold to her breast some shred which was her own. He let her wail, but when her wailing ceased helplessly he bent over her.
"Listen to me," he said. "If Donal were here he would tell you to listen. You are a child. You are too young to know what has come upon you—both."
She did not speak.
"You were both too young—and you were driven by fate. If he had been more than a boy—and if he had not been in a frenzy—he would have remembered. He would have thought—"
Yes—yes! She knew how young! But oh, what mattered youth—or thought—or remembering! Her small hand beat in soft impatience on the ground.
He was—strangely—on one knee beside her, his head bent close, and in his voice there was a new strong insistence—as if he would not let her alone— Oh! Donal! Donal!
"He would have remembered—that he might leave a child!"
His voice was almost hard. She did not know that in his mind was a memory which now in secret broke him—a memory of a belief which was a thing he had held as a gift—a certain faith in a clear young highness and strength of body and soul in this one scion of his house, which even in youth's madness would haveremembered. If the lad had been his own son he might have felt something of the same pang.
His words brought back what she had heard Redcliff say to her earlier in the day—the thing which had only struck her again to the earth.
"It—will have—no father," she shuddered. "There is not even a grave."
He put his hand on her shoulder—he even tried to force her to lift her head.
"Itmusthave a father," he said, harshly. "Look at me. Itmust."
Stupefied and lost to all things as she was, she heard something in his harshness she could not understand and was startled by. Her small starved face stared at him piteously. There was no one but herself left in the world.
"There is no time—" he broke forth.
"He said so too," she cried out. "There was no time!"
"But he should have remembered," the harsh voice revealed more than he knew. "He could have given his child all that life holds that men call happiness. How could even a lad forget! He loved you—you loved him. If he had married you—"
He stopped in the midst of the words. The little starved face stared at him with a kind of awfulness of woe. She spoke as if she scarcely knew the words she uttered, and not, he saw, in the least as if she were defending herself—or as if she cared whether he believed her or not—or as if it mattered.
"Did you—think we were—not married?" the words dragged out.
Something turned over in his side. He had heard it said that hearts did such things. It turned—because she did not care. She knew what love and death were—what theywere—not merely what they were called—and life and shame and loss meant nothing.
"Do you know what you are saying?" he heard the harshness of his voice break. "For God's sake, child, let me hear the truth."
She did not even care then and only put her childish elbows on her knees and her face in her hands and wept and wept.
"There was—no time," she said. "Every day he said it. He knew—heknew. Before he was killed he wantedsomethingthat was his own. It was our secret. I wanted to keep it his secret till I died."
"Where," he spoke low and tensely, "were you married?"
"I do not know. It was a little house in a poor crowded street. Donal took me. Suddenly we were frightened because we thought he was to go away in three days. A young chaplain who was going away too was his friend. He had just been married himself. He did it because he was sorry for us. There was no time. His wife lent me a ring. They were young too and they were sorry."
"What was the man's name?"
"I can't remember. I was trembling all the time. I knew nothing. That was like a dream too. It was all a dream."
"You do not remember?" he persisted. "You were married—and have no proof."
"We came away so quickly. Donal held me in his arm in the cab because I trembled. Donal knew. Donal knew everything."
He was a man who had lived through tragedy but that had been long ago. Since then he had only known the things of the world. He had seen struggles and tricks and paltry craftiness. He had known of women caught in traps of folly and passion and weakness and had learned how terror taught them to lie and shift and even show abnormal cleverness. Above all he knew exactly what the world would say if a poor wretch of a girl told a story like this of a youngster like Donal—when he was no longer on earth to refute it.
And yet if these wild things were true, here in a wintry wood she sat a desolate and undefended thing—with but one thought. And in that which was most remote in his being he was conscious that he was for the moment relieved because even worldly wisdom was not strong enough to overcome his desire to believe in a certain thing which was—that the boy would have played fair even when his brain whirled and all his fierce youth beset him.
As he regarded her he saw that it would be difficult to reach her mind which was so torn and stunned. But by some method he must reach it.
"You must answer all the questions I ask," he said. "It is for Donal's sake."
She did not lift her face and made no protest.
He began to ask such questions as a sane man would know must be answered clearly and as he heard her reply to each he gradually reached the realisation of what her empty-handed, naked helplessness confronted. That he himself comprehended what no outsider would, was due to his memories of heart-wrung hours, of days and nights when he too had been unable to think quite sanely or to reason with a normal brain. Youth is a remorseless master. He could see the tempest of it all—the hours of heaven—and the glimpses of hell's self—on whose brink the two had stood clinging breast to breast. With subtle carefulness he slowly gleaned it all. He followed the rising of the tide which at first had borne them along unquestioning. They had not even asked where they were going because the way led through young paradise. Then terror had awakened them. There had come to them the news of death day after day—lads they knew and had seen laughing a few weeks before—Halwyn, Meredith, Jack or Harry or Phil. A false rumour of a sudden order to the Front and they had stood and gazed into each other's eyes in a fateful hour. Robin did not know of the picture her disjointed, sobbed-forth sentences and words made clear. Coombe could see the lad as he stood before her in this very Wood and then went slowly down upon his knees and kissed her small feet in the moss as he made his prayer. There had been something rarely beautiful in the ecstasy of his tenderness—and she had given herself as a flower gives itself to be gathered. She seemed to have seen nothing, noted nothing, on the morning of the mad marriage, but Donal, who held her trembling in his arms as they drove through the crowded streets in the shabby neighbourhood she had never seen before, to the house crowded between others all like itself. She had actually not heard the young chaplain's name in her shyness and tremor. He would scarcely have been an entity but for the one moving fact that he himself had just hastily married a girl he adored and must leave, and so sympathised and understood the stress of their hour. On their way home they had been afraid of chance recognition and had tried to shield themselves by sitting as far back as possible in the cab.
"I could not think. I could not see. It was all frightening—and unreal."
She had not dreamed of asking questions. Donal had taken care of her and tried to help her to be less afraid of seeing people who might recognise her. She had tilted her hat over her face and worn a veil. She had gone home to Eaton Square—and then in the afternoon to the cottage at Mersham Wood.
They had not written letters to each other. Robin had been afraid and they had met almost every day. Once Lord Coombe thought himself on the track of some clue when she touched vaguely on some paper Donal had meant to send her and had perhaps forgotten in the haste and pressure of the last few hours because his orders had been so sudden. But there was no trace. There had been something he wished her to have. But if this had meant that his brain had by chance cleared to sane reasoning and he had, for a few moments touched earth and intended to send her some proof which would be protection if she needed it—the moment had been too late and, at the last, action had proved impossible. And Death had come so soon. It was as though a tornado had swept him out of her arms and dashed him broken to earth. And she was left with nothing because she asked nothing—wanted nothing.
The obviousness of this, when he had ended his questioning and exhausted his resources, was a staggering thing.
"Do you know," he said grimly, after it was all over, "—that no one will believe you?"
"Donal knew," she said. "There is no one—no one else."
"You mean that there is no one whose belief or disbelief would affect you?"
The Wood was growing darker still and she had ceased crying and sat still like a small ghost in the dim light.
"There neverwasany one but Donal, you know," she said. To all the rest of the world she was as a creature utterly unawake and to a man who was of the world and who had lived a long life in it the contemplation of her was a strange and baffling thing.
"You do not ask whetherIbelieve you?" he spoke quite low.
The silence of the darkening wood was unearthly and her dropped word scarcely stirred it.
"No." She had never even thought of it.
He himself was inwardly shaken by his own feeling.
"I will believe you if—you will believe me," was what he said, a singular sharp new desire impelling him.
She merely lifted her face a little so that her eyes rested upon him.
"Because of this tragic thing you must believe me. It will be necessary that you should. What you have thought of me with regard to your mother is not true. You believed it because the world did. Denial on my part would merely have called forth laughter. Why not? When a man who has money and power takes charge of a pretty, penniless woman and pays her bills, the pose of Joseph or Galahad is not a good one for him. My statement would no more have been believed than yours will be believed if you can produce no proof. What you say is what any girl might say in your dilemma, what I should have said would have been what any man might have said. But—I believe you. Do you believeme?"
She did not understand why suddenly—though languidly—she knew that he was telling her a thing which was true. It was no longer of consequence but she knew it. And if it was true all she had hated him for so long had been founded on nothing. He had not been bad—he had onlylookedbad and that he could not help. But what did that matter, either? She could not feel even sorry.
"I will—try," she answered.
It was no use as yet, he saw. What he was trying to deal with was in a new Dimension.
He held out his hands and helped her to her feet.
"The Wood is growing very dark," he said. "We must go. I will take you to Mrs. Bennett's and you can spend the night with her."
The Wood was growing dark indeed. He was obliged to guide her through the closeness of the undergrowth. They threaded their way along the narrow path and the shadows seemed to close in behind them. Before they reached the end which would have led them out into the open he put his hand on her shoulder and held her back.
"In this Wood—even now—there is Something which must be saved from suffering. It is helpless—it is blameless. It is not you—it is not Donal. God help it."
He spoke steadily but strangely and his voice was so low that it was almost a whisper—though it was not one. For the first time she felt something stir in her stunned mind—as if thought were wakening—fear—a vague quaking. Her wan small face began to wonder and in the dark roundness of her eyes a question was to be seen like a drowned thing slowly rising from the deeps of a pool. But she asked no question. She only waited a few moments and let him look at her until she said at last in a voice as near a whisper as his own.
"I—will believe you."
He was alone with the Duchess. The doors were closed, and the world shut out by her own order. She leaned against the high back of her chair, watching him intently as she listened. He walked slowly up and down the room with long paces. He had been doing it for some time and he had told her from beginning to end the singular story of what had happened when he found Robin lying face downward on the moss in Mersham Wood.
This is what he was saying in a low, steady voice.
"She had not once thought of what most women would have thought of before anything else. If I were speaking to another person than yourself I should say that she was too ignorant of the world. To you I will say that she is not merely a girl—she is the unearthly luckless embodiment of the pure spirit of Love. She knew only worship and the rapt giving of gifts. Her unearthliness made him forget earth himself. Folly and madness of course! Incredible madness—it would seem to most people—a decently intelligent lad losing his head wholly and not regaining his senses until it was too late to act sanely. But perhaps not quite incredible to you and me. There must have been days which seemed to him—and lads like him—like the last hours of a condemned man. In the midst of love and terror and the agony of farewells—what time was there for sanity?"
"Youbelieveher?" the Duchess said.
"Yes," impersonally. "In spite of the world, the flesh and the devil. I also know that no one else will. To most people her story will seem a thing trumped up out of a fourth rate novel. The law will not listen to it. You will—when you see her unawakened face."
"I have seen it," was the Duchess' interpolation. "I saw it when she went upon her knees and prayed that I would let her go to Mersham Wood. There was something inexplicable in her remoteness from fear and shame. She was only woe's self. I did not comprehend. I was merely a baffled old woman of the world. Now I begin to see. I believe her as you do. The world and the law will laugh at us because we have none of the accepted reasons for our belief. But I believe her as you do—absurd as it will seem to others."
"Yes, it will seem absurd," Coombe said slowly pacing. "But here she is—and hereweare!"
"What do you see before us?" she asked of his deep thought.
"I see a helpless girl in a dark plight. As far as knowledge of how to defend herself goes, she is as powerless as a child fresh from a nursery. She lives among people with observing eyes already noting the change in her piteous face. Her place in your house makes her a centre of attention. The observation of her beauty and happiness has been good-natured so far. The observation will continue, but in time its character will change. I see that before anything else."
"It is the first thing to be considered," she answered.
"The next—" she paused and thought seriously, "is her mother. Perhaps Mrs. Gareth-Lawless has sharp eyes. She said to you something rather vulgarly hideous about being glad her daughter was in my house and not in hers."
"Her last words to Robin were to warn her not to come to her for refuge 'if she got herself into a mess.' She is in what Mrs. Gareth-Lawless would call 'a mess.'"
"It is what a good many people would call it," the Duchess said. "And she does not even know that her tragedy would express itself in a mere vulgar colloquialism with a modern snigger in it. Presently, poor child, when she awakens a little more she will begin to go about looking like a little saint. Do you see that—as I do?"
She thought he did and that he was moved by it though he did not say so.
"I am thinking first of her mother. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless must see and hear nothing. She is not a criminal or malignant creature, but her light malice is capable of playing flimsily with any atrocity. She has not brain enough to know that she can be atrocious. Robin can be protected only if she is shut out of the whole affair. She was simply speaking the truth when she warned the girl not to come to her in case of need."
"For a little longer I can keep her here," the Duchess said. "As she looks ill it will not be unnatural that the doctor should advise me to send her away from London. It is not possible to remember anything long in the life we live now. She will be forgotten in a week. That part of it will be simple."
"Yes," he answered. "Yes."
He paced the length of the room twice—three times and said nothing. She watched him as he walked and she knew he was going to say more. She also wondered what curious thing it might be. She had said to herself that what hesaid and did would be entirely detached from ordinary or archaic views. Also she had guessed that it might be extraordinary—perhaps as extraordinary as his long intimacy with Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. Was there a possibility that he was going to express himself now?
"But that is not all," he said at last and he ended his pondering walk by coming nearer to her. He sat down and touched the newspapers lying on the table.
"You have been poring over these," he said, "and I have been doing the same thing. I have also been talking to the people who know things and to those who ought to know them but don't. Just now the news is worse each day. In the midst of the roar and thunder of cataclysms to talk about a mere girl 'in trouble' appears disproportionate. But because our world seems crumbling to pieces about us she assumes proportions of her own. I was born of the old obstinate passions of belief in certain established things and in their way they have had their will of me. Lately it has forced itself upon me that I am not as modern as I have professed to be. The new life has gripped me, but the old has not let me go. There are things I cannot bear to see lost forever without a struggle."
"Such as—" she said it very low.
"I conceal things from myself," he answered, "but they rise and confront me. There were days when we at least believed—quite obstinately—in a number of things."
"Sometimes quite heroically," she admitted. "'God Save the Queen' in its long day had actual glow and passion. I have thrilled and glowed myself at the shouting song of it."
"Yes," he drew a little nearer to her and his cold face gained a slight colour. "In those days when a son—or a grandson—was born to the head of a house it was a serious and impressive affair."
"Yes." And he knew she at once recalled her own son—and George in Flanders.
"It meant new generations, and generations counted for decent dignity as well as power. A farmer would say with huge pride, 'Me and mine have worked the place for four generations,' as he would say of the owner of the land, 'Him and his have held it for six centuries.' Centuries and generations are in danger of no longer inspiring special reverence. It is the future and the things to be which count."
"The things to be—yes," the Duchess said and knew that he was drawing near the thing he had to say.
"I suppose I was born a dogged sort of devil," he went on almost in a monotone. "The fact did not manifest itself to me until I came to the time when—all the rest of me dropped into a bottomless gulf. That perhaps describes it. I found myself suddenly standing on the edge of it. And youth, and future, and belief in the use of hoping and real enjoyment of things dropped into the blackness and were gone while I looked on. If I had not been born a dogged devil I should have blown my brains out. If I had been born gentler or kinder or more patient I should perhaps have lived it down and found there was something left. A man's way of facing things depends upon the kind of thing he was born. I went on livingwithout—the rest of myself. I closed my mouth and not only my mouth but my life—as far as other men and women were concerned. When I found an interest stirring in me I shut another door—that was all. Whatsoever went on did it behind a shut door."
"But there were things which went on?" the Duchess gently suggested.
"In a hidden way—yes. That is what I am coming to. When I first saw Mrs. Gareth-Lawless sitting under her tree—" He suddenly stopped. "No," harshly, "I need not put it into words toyou." Then a pause as if for breath. "She had a way of lifting her eyes as a very young angel might—she had a quivering spirit of a smile—and soft, deep curled corners to her mouth. You saw the same things in the old photograph you bought. The likeness was—Oh! it was hellish that such a resemblance could be! In less than half an hour after she spoke to me I had shut another door. But I was obliged to go andlookat her again and again. The resemblance drew me. By the time her husband died I knew her well enough to be sure what would happen. Some man would pick her up and throw her aside—and then some one else. She could have held nothing long. She would have passed from one hand to another until she was tossed into the gutter and swept away—quivering spirit of a smile and all of it. I could not have shut any door on that. I prevented it—and kept her clean—by shutting doors right and left. I have watched over her. At times it has bored me frightfully. But after a year or so—behind another door I had shut the child."
"Robin? I had sometimes thought so," said the Duchess.
"I did not know why exactly. It was not affection or attraction. It was a sort of resentment of the beastly unfairness of things. The bottomless gulf seemed to yawn in her path when she was nothing but a baby. Everything was being tossed into it before she had takena step. I began to keep an eye on her and prevent things—or assist them. It was more fury than benevolence, but it has gone on for years—behind the shut door."