"Are you quite sure you have been entirely free from all affection for her?" The Duchess asked the question impersonally though with a degree of interest.
"I think so. I am less sure that I have the power to feel what is called 'affection' for any one. I think that I have felt something nearer it for Donal—and for you—than for any one else. But when the child talked to me in the wood I felt for the first time that I wished her to know that my relation to her mother was not the reason for her hating me which she had believed."
"She shall be made to understand," said the Duchess.
"She must," he said, "because of the rest."
The last four words were, as it were, italicised. Now, she felt, she was probably about to hear the chief thing he had been approaching. So she waited attentively.
"Behind a door has been shut another thing," he said and he endeavoured to say it with his usual detached rigidity of calm, but did not wholly succeed. "It is the outcome of the generations and the centuries at present diminishing in value and dignity. The past having had its will of me and the present and future having gripped me—if I had had a son—"
As if in a flash she saw as he lingered on the words that he was speaking of a thing of which he had secretly thought often and much, though he had allowed no human being to suspect it. She had not suspected it herself. In a secretive, intense way he had passionately desired a son.
"If you had had a son—" she repeated.
"He would have stood for both—the past and the future—at the beginning of a New World," he ended.
He said it with such deliberate meaning that the magnitude of his possible significance caused her to draw a sudden breath.
"Is it going to be a New World?" she said.
"It cannot be the old one. I don't take it upon myself to describe the kind of world it will be. That will depend upon the men and women who build it. Those who were born during the last few years—those who are about to be born now."
Then she knew what he was thinking of.
"Donal's child will be one of them," she said.
"The Head of the House of Coombe—if there is a Head who starts fair—ought to have quite a lot to say—and do. Howsoever black things look," obstinately fierce, "England is not done for. At the worst no real Englishman believes she can be. Shecan't! You know the old saying, 'In all wars England loses battles, but she always wins one—the last one.' She always will. Afterwards she must do her bit for the New World."
This then was it—the New World and the human creatures who were to build it, the unborn as well as those now in their cradles or tottering in their first step on the pathway leading to the place of building. Yet he himself had no thought of there being any touch of heroic splendour in his way of looking at it. He was not capable of drama. Behind his shut doors of immovability and stiff coldness, behind his cynic habit of treating all things with detached lightness, the generations and the centuries had continued their work in spite of his modernity. His British obstinacy would not relinquish the long past he and his had seemed toownin representing it. He had loved one woman, and one only—with a love like a deep wound; he had longed for a son; he had stubbornly undertaken to protect a creature he felt life had treated unfairly. The shattering of the old world had stirred in him a powerful interest in the future of the new one whose foundations were yet to be laid. The combination of these things might lead to curious developments.
They sat and talked long and the developments were perhaps more unusual than she had imagined they might be.
"If I had been able to express the something which approached affection which I felt for Donal, he would have found out that my limitations were not deliberately evil proclivities," was one of the things he said. "One day he would have ended by making a clean breast of it. He was afraid of me. I suspect he was afraid of his mother—fond as they were of each other. I should have taken the matter in hand and married the pair of them at once—quietly if they preferred it, but safely and sanely. God knows I should have comprehended their wish to keep a roaring world out of their paradise. Itwasparadise!"
"How you believe her!" she exclaimed.
"She is not a trivial thing, neither was he. If I didnotbelieve her I should know that hemeantto marry her, even if fate played them some ghastly trick and there was not time. Another girl's consciousness of herself might have saved her, but she had no consciousness but his. If—if a son is born he should be what his father would have been after my death."
"The Head of the House," the Duchess said.
"It is a curious thing," he deliberated, "that now there remains no possible head but what is left of myself—it ceases to seem the mere pompous phrase one laughed at—the Head of the House of Coombe. Here I, of all men, sit before you glaring into the empty future and demanding one. There ought to have been more males in the family. Only four were killed—and we are done for."
"If you had seen them married before he went away—" she began.
He rose to his feet as if involuntarily. He looked as she had never seen him look before.
"Allow me to make a fantastic confession to you," he said. "It will open doors. If all were as the law foolishly demands it should be—if she were safe in the ordinary way—absurdly incredible or not as the statement may seem—I should now be at her feet."
"At her feet!" she said slowly, because she felt herself facing actual revelation.
"Her child would be to me the child of the son who ought to have been born to me a life time ago. God, how I have wanted him! Robin would seem to be what another Madonna-like young creature might have been if she had been my wife. She would not know that she was a little saint on an altar. She would be the shrine of the past and the future. In my inexpressive way I should be worshipping before her. That her possible son would rescue the House of Coombe from extinction would have meant much, but it would be a mere detail. Now you understand."
Yes. She understood. Things she had never comprehended and had not expected to comprehend explained themselves with comparative clearness. He proceeded with a certain hard distinctness.
"The thing which grips me most strongly is that this one—who is one of those who have work before them—shall not be handicapped. He shall not begin life manacled and shamed by illegitimacy. He shall begin it with the background of all his father meant to give him. The law of England will not believe in his claims unless they can be proven. She can prove nothing. I can prove nothing for her. If she had been a little female costermonger she would have demanded her 'marriage lines' and clung to them fiercely. She would have known that to be able to flaunt them in the face of argument was indispensable."
"She probably did not know that there existed such documents," the Duchess said. "Neither of the pair knew anything for the time but that they were wild with love and were to be torn apart."
"Therefore," he said with distinctness even clearer and harder, "she must possess indisputable documentary evidence of marriage before the child is born—as soon as possible."
"Marriage!" she hesitated aghast. "Butwhowill—?"
"I," he answered with absolute rigidity. "It will be difficult. It must be secret. But if it can be done—when his time comes the child can look his new world in the face. He will be the Head of the House of Coombe when it most needs a strong fellow who has no cause to fear anything and who holds money and power in his hands."
"You propose to suggest that she shall marryyou?" she put it to him.
"Yes. It will be the devil's own job," he answered. "She has not begun to think of the child yet—and she has abhorred me all her life. To her the world means nothing. She does not know what it can do to her and she would not care if she did. Donal was her world and he is gone. But you and I know what she does not."
"So this is what you have been thinking?" she said. It was indeed an unarchaic point of view. But even as she heard him she realised that it was the almost inevitable outcome—not only of what was at the moment happening to the threatened and threatening world, but of his singularly secretive past—of all the things he had hidden and also of all the things he had professed not to hide but had baffled people with.
"Since the morning Redcliff dropped his bomb I have not been able to think of much else," he said. "It was a bomb, I own. Neither you nor I had reason for a shadow of suspicion. My mind has a trick of dragging back to me a memory of a village girl who was left as—as she is. She said her lover had married her—but he went away andnever came back. The village she lived in was a few miles from Coombe Keep and she gave birth to a boy. His childhood must have been a sort of hell. When other boys had rows with him they used to shout 'Bastard' after him in the street. He had a shifty, sickened look and when he died of measles at seven years old no doubt he was glad of it. He used to run crying to his wretched mother and hide his miserable head in her apron."
"It sounds unendurable," the Duchess said sharply.
"I can defy the world as she cannot," he said with dangerous calm. "I can provide money for her. She may be hidden away. But only one thing will save her child—Donal's child—from being a sort of outcast and losing all he should possess—a quick and quiet marriage which will put all doubt out of the question."
"And you know perfectly well what the general opinion will be with regard to yourself?"
"Damned well. A debauched old degenerate marrying the daughter of his mistress because her eighteen years attracts his vicious decrepitude. My absolute indifference to that, may I say, can not easily be formulated.Sheshall be spared as much as possible. The thing can be kept secret for years. She can live in entire seclusion. No one need be told until I am dead—or until it is necessary for the boy's sake. By that time perhaps changes in opinion will have taken place. But now—as is the cry of the hour—there is no time. She said that Donal said it too." He stood still for a few moments and looked at the floor. "But as I said," he terminated, "it will be the devil's own job. When I first speak to her about it—she will almost be driven mad."
Robin had spent the night at the cottage and Mrs. Bennett had been very good to her. They had sat by the fire together for a long time and had talked of the dead boys on the battlefield, while Robin's head had rested against the old fairy woman's knee and the shrivelled hand had stroked and patted her tremulously. It had been nearing dawn when the girl went to bed and at the last Mrs. Bennett had held on to her dress and asked her a pleading question.
"Isn't there anything you'd like me to do for you—anything on earth, Miss, dear? Sometimes there's things an old woman can do that young ones can't. If there was anything you'd like to tell me about—that I could keep private—? It'd be as safe with me as if I was a dumb woman. And it might just happen that—me being so old—I might be a help some way." She was giving her her chance, as in the course of her long life she had given it to other poor girls she loved less. One had to make ways and open gates for them.
But Robin only kissed her as lovingly as a child.
"I don't know what is going to happen to me," she said. "I can't think yet. I may want to ask you to let me come here—if—if I am frightened and don't know what to do. I know you would let me come and—talk to you—?"
The old fairy woman almost clutched her in enfolding arms. Her answer was a hoarse and trembling whisper.
"You come to me, my poor pretty," she said. "You come to me day or night—whatsoever. I'm not so old but what I can do anything—you want done."
The railroad journey back to London seemed unnaturally long because her brain began to work when she found herself half blindly gazing at the country swiftly flying past the carriage window. Perhaps the anxiousness in Mrs. Bennett's face had wakened thought in connecting itself with Lord Coombe's words and looks in the wood.
When the door of the house in Eaton Square opened for her she was conscious of shrinking from the sympathetic eyes of the war-substituted woman-servant who was the one who had found her lying on the landing. She knew that her face was white and that her eyelids were stained and heavy and that the woman saw them and was sorry for her.
The mountain climb of the stairs seemed long and steep but she reached her room at last and took off her hat and coat and put on her house dress. She did it automatically as if she were going downstairs to her work, as though there had been no break in the order of her living.
But as she was fastening the little hooks and buttons her stunned brain went on with the thought to which it had begun to awaken in the train. Since the hour when she had fallen unconscious on the landing she had not seemed to think at all. She had onlyfeltthings which had nothing to do with the real world.
There was a fire in the grate and when the last button was fastened she sat down on a seat before it and looked into the redness of the coals, her hands loosely clasped on her knee. She sat there for several minutes and then she turned her head and looked slowly round the room. She did it because she was impelled by a sense of its emptiness—by the fact that she was quite alone in it. There was only herself—only Robin in it.
That was her first feeling—the aloneness—and then she thought of something else. She seemed to feel again the hand of Lord Coombe on her shoulder when he held her back in the darkened wood and she could hear his almost whispered words.
"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."
Then she was not alone—even as she sat in the emptiness of the room. She put up her hands and covered her face with them.
"What—will happen?" she murmured. But she did not cry.
The deadliness of the blow which had stupefied her still left her barely conscious of earthly significances. But something of the dark mistiness was beginning to lift slowly and reveal to her vague shadows and shapes, as it were. If no one would believe that she was married to Donal, then people would think that she had been the kind of girl who is sent away from decent houses, if she is a servant, and cut off in awful disgrace from her family and never spoken to again, if she belongs to the upper classes. Books and Benevolent Societies speak of her as "fallen" and "lost." Her vision of such things was at once vague and primitive. It took the form of pathetic fictional figures or memories of some hushed rumour heard by mere chance, rather than of anything more realistic. She dropped her hands upon her lap and looked at the fire again.
"Now I shall be like that," she said listlessly. "And it does not matter. Donal knew. And I do not care—I do not care."
"The Duchess will send me away," she whispered next. "Perhaps she will send me away to-day. Where shall I go!" The hands on her lap began to tremble and she suddenly felt cold in spite of the fire. The sound of a knock on the door made her start to her feet. The woman who had looked sorry for her when she came in had brought a message.
"Her grace wishes to see you, Miss," she said.
"Thank you," Robin answered.
After the servant had gone away she stood still a moment or so.
"Perhaps she is going to tell me now," she said to the empty room.
Two aspects of her face rose before the Duchess as the girl entered the room where she waited for her with Lord Coombe. One was that which had met her glance when Mademoiselle Vallé had brought her charge on her first visit. She recalled her impression of the childlikeness which seemed all the dark dew of appealing eyes, which were like a young doe's or a bird's rather than a girl's. The other was the star-like radiance of joy which had swept down the ballroom in Donal's arms with dancing whirls and swayings and pretty swoops. About them had laughed and swirled the boys now lying dead under the heavy earth of Flemish fields. And Donal—!
This face looked small and almost thin and younger than ever. The eyes were like those of a doe who was lost and frightened—as if it heard quite near it the baying of hounds, but knew it could not get away.
She hesitated a moment at the door.
"Come here, my dear," the Duchess said.
Lord Coombe stood by a chair he had evidently placed for her, but she did not sit down when she reached it. She hesitated again and looked from one to the other.
"Did you send for me to tell me I must go away?" she said.
"What do you mean, child?" said the Duchess.
"Sit down," Lord Coombe said and spoke in an undertone rapidly. "She thinks you mean to turn her out of the house as if she were a kitchen-maid."
Robin sat down with her listless small hands clasped in her lap.
"Nothing matters at all," she said, "but I don't know what to do."
"There is a great deal to do," the Duchess said to her and she did not speak as if she were angry. Her expression was not an angry one. She looked as if she were wondering at something and the wondering was almost tender.
"We know what to do. But it must be done without delay," said Lord Coombe and his voice reminded her of Mersham Wood.
"Come nearer to me. Come quite close. I want—" the Duchess did not explain what she wanted but she pointed to a small square ottoman which would place Robin almost at her knee. Her own early training had been of the statelier Victorian type and it was not easy for her to deal freely with outward expression of emotion. And here emotion sprang at her throat, so to speak, as she watched this childish thing with the frightened doe's eyes. The girl had been an inmate of her house for months; she had been kind to her and had become fond of her, but they had never reached even the borders of intimacy.
And yet emotion had seized upon her and they were in the midst of strange and powerful drama.
Robin did as she was told. It struck the Duchess that she always did as she was told and she spoke to her hoping that her voice was not ungentle.
"Don't look at me as if you were afraid. We are going to take care of you," she said.
But the doe's eyes were still great with hopeless fearfulness.
"Lord Coombe said—that no one would believe me," Robin faltered. "He thought I was not married to Donal. But I was—I was. Iwantedto be married to him. I wanted to do everything he wanted me to do. We loved each other so much. And we were afraid every one would be angry. And so many were killed every day—and before he was killed—Oh!" with a sharp little cry, "I am glad—I am glad! Whatever happens to me I amgladI was married to him before he was killed!"
"You poor children!" broke from the Duchess. "You poor—poor mad young things!" and she put an arm about Robin because the barrier built by lack of intimacy was wholly overthrown.
Robin trembled all over and looked up in her face.
"I may begin to cry," she quavered. "I do not want to trouble you by beginning to cry. I must not."
"Cry if you want to cry," the Duchess answered.
"It will be better," said Lord Coombe, "if you can keep calm. It is necessary that you should be calm enough to think—and understand. Will you try? It is for Donal's sake."
"I will try," she answered, but her amazed eyes still yearningly wondered at the Duchess. Her arm had felt almost like Dowie's.
"Which of us shall begin to explain to her?" the Duchess questioned.
"Will you? It may be better."
They were going to take care of her. She was not to be turned into the street—though perhaps if she were turned into the street without money she would die somewhere—and that would not matter because she would be thankful.
The Duchess took one of her hands and held it on her knee. She looked kind still but she was grave.
"Do not be frightened when I tell you that most people willnotbelieve what you say about your marriage," she said. "That is because it is too much like the stories other girls have told when they were in trouble. It is an easy story to tell when a man is dead. And in Donal's case so much is involved that the law would demand proofs which could not be denied. Donal not only owned the estate of Braemarnie, but he would have been the next Marquis of Coombe. You have not remembered this and—" more slowly and with a certain watchful care—"you have been too unhappy and ill—you have not had time to realise that if Donal has a son—"
She heard Robin's caught breath.
"What his father would have inherited he would inherit also. Braemarnie would be his and in his turn he would be the Marquis of Coombe. It is because of these important things that it would be said that it would be immensely to your interest to insist that you were married to Donal Muir and the law would not allow of any shade of doubt."
"People would think I wanted the money and the castles—for myself?" Robin said blankly.
"They would think that if you were a dishonest woman—you wanted all you could get. Even if you were not actually dishonest they would see you would want it for your son. You might think it ought to be his—whether his father had married you or not. Most women love their children."
Robin sat very still. The stunned brain was slowly working for itself.
"A child whose mother seems bad—is very lonely," she said.
"It is not likely to have many friends."
"It seems to belong to no one. Itmustbe unhappy. If—Donal's mother had not been married—even he would have been unhappy."
No one made any reply.
"If he had been poor it would have made it even worse. If he had belonged to nobody and had been poor too—! How could he have borne it!"
Lord Coombe took the matter up gently, as it were removing it from the Duchess' hands.
"But he had everything he wished for from his birth," he said. "He was always happy. I like to remember the look in his eyes. Thank God for it!"
"That beautiful look!" she cried. "That beautiful laughing look—as if all the world were joyful!"
"Thank God for it," Coombe said again. "I once knew a wretched village boy who had no legal father though his mother swore she had been married. His eyes looked like a hunted ferret's. It was through being shamed and flouted and bullied. The village lads used to shout 'Bastard' after him."
It was then that the baying of the hounds suddenly seemed at hand. The large eyes quailed before the stark emptiness of the space they gazed into.
"What shall I do—what shall I do?" Robin said and having said it she did not know that she turned to Lord Coombe.
"You must try to do what we tell you to do—even if you do not wish to do it," he said. "It shall be made as little difficult for you as is possible."
The expression of the Duchess as she looked on and heard was a changing one because her mind included so many aspects of the singular situation. She had thought it not unlikely that he would do something unusual. Could anything much more unusual have been provided than that a man, who had absolute splendour of rank and wealth to offer, should for strange reasons of his own use the tact of courts and the fine astuteness of diplomatists in preparing the way to offer marriage to a penniless, friendless and disgraced young "companion" in what is known as "trouble"? It was because he was himself that he understood what he was dealing with—that splendour and safety would hold no lure, that protection from disgrace counted as nothing, that only one thing had existence and meaning for her. And even as this passed through her mind, Robin's answer repeated it.
"I will do it whether it is difficult or not," she said, "but—" she actually got up from her ottoman with a quiet soft movement and stood before them—not a defiant young figure, only simple and elementally sweet— "I am not ashamed," she said. "I am not ashamed andIdo not matter at all."
There was that instant written upon Coombe's face—so far at least as his old friend was concerned—his response to the significance of this. It was the elemental thing which that which moved him required; it was what the generations and centuries of the house of Coombe required—a primitive creature unashamed and with no cowardice or weak vanity lurking in its being. The Duchess recognised it in the brief moment of almost breathless silence which followed.
"You are very splendid, child," he said after it, "though you are not at all conscious of it."
"Sit down again." The Duchess put out a hand which drew Robin still nearer to her. "Explain to her now," she said.
Robin's light soft body rested against her when it obeyed. It responded to more than the mere touch of her hand; its yielding was to something which promised kindness and even comfort—that something which Dowie and Mademoiselle had given in those days which now seemed to have belonged to another world. But though she leaned against the Duchess' knee she still lifted her eyes to Lord Coombe.
"This is what I must ask you to listen to," he said. "We believe what you have told us but we know that no one else will—without legal proof. We also know that some form may have been neglected because all was done in haste and ignorance of formalities. You can give no clue—the ordinary methods of investigation are in confusion as the whole country is. This is what remains for us to face.Youare not ashamed, but if you cannot prove legal marriage Donal's son will know bitter humiliation; he will be robbed of all he should possess—his life will be ruined. Do you understand?"
"Yes," she answered without moving her eyes from his face. She seemed to him again as he stood before her in the upper room of Lady Etynge's house when, in his clear aloof voice, he had told her that he had come to save her. He had saved her then, but now it was not she who needed saving.
"There is only one man who can give Donal's child what his father would have given him," he went on.
"Who is he?" she asked.
"I am the man," he answered, and he stood quite still.
"How—can you do it?" she asked again.
"I can marry you," his clear, aloof voice replied.
"You!—You!—You!" she only breathed it out—but it was a cry.
Then he held up his hand as if to calm her.
"I told you in the wood that hatred was useless now and that your reason for hating me had no foundation. I know how you will abhor what I suggest. But it will not be as bad as it seems. You need not even endure the ignominy of being known as the Marchioness of Coombe. But when I am dead Donal's son will be my successor. It will not be held against him that I married his beautiful young mother and chose to keep the matter a secret. I have long been known as a peculiar person given to arranging my affairs according to my own liking. The Head of the House of Coombe"—with an ironic twitch of the mouth—"will have the law on his side and will not be asked for explanations. A romantic story will add to public interest in him. If your child is a daughter she will be protected. She will not be lonely, she will have friends. She will have all the chances of happiness a girl naturally longs for—all of them. Because you are her mother."
Robin rose and stood before him as involuntarily as she had risen before, but now she looked different. Her hands were wrung together and she was the blanched embodiment of terror. She remembered things Fräulein Hirsh had said.
"I could not marry you—if I were to be killed because I didn't," was all she could say. Because marriage had meant only Donal and the dream, and being saved from the world this one man had represented to her girl mind.
"You say that because you have no doubt heard that it has been rumoured that I have a depraved old man's fancy for you and that I have always hoped to marry you. That is as false as the other story I denied. I am not in love with you even in an antediluvian way. You would not marry me for your own sake. That goes without saying. But I will repeat what I said in the Wood when you told me you would believe me. There is Something—not you—not Donal—to be saved from suffering."
"That is true," the Duchess said and put out her hand as before. "And there is something longer drawn out and more miserable than mere dying—a dreary outcast sort of life. We know more about such things than you do."
"You may better comprehend my action if I add a purely selfish reason for it," Coombe went on. "I will give you one. I do not wish to be the last Marquis of Coombe."
He took from the table a piece of paper. He had actually made notes upon it.
"Do not be alarmed by this formality," he said. "I wish to spare words. If you consent to the performance of a private ceremony you will not be required to see me again unless you yourself request it. I have a quiet place in a remote part of Scotland where you can live with Dowie to take care of you. Dowie can be trusted and will understand what I tell her. You will be safe. You will be left alone. You will be known as a young widow. There are young widows everywhere."
Her eyes had not for a moment left his. By the time he had ended they looked immense in her thin and white small face. Her old horror of him had been founded on a false belief in things which had not existed, but a feeling which has lasted almost a lifetime has formed for itself an atmosphere from whose influence it is not easy to escape. And he stood now before her looking as he had always looked when she had felt him to be the finely finished embodiment of evil. But—
"You are—doing it—for Donal," she faltered.
"You yourself would be doing it for Donal," he answered.
"Yes. And—I do not matter."
"Donal's wife and the mother of Donal's boy or girl matters very much," he gave back to her. He did not alter the impassive aloofness of his manner, knowing that it was better not to do so. An astute nerve specialist might have used the same method with a patient.
There was a moment or so of silence in which the immense eyes gazed before her almostthroughhim—piteously.
"I will do anything I am told to do," she said at last. After she had said it she turned and looked at the Duchess.
The Duchess held out both her hands. They were held so far apart that it seemed almost as if they were her arms. Robin swept towards the broad footstool but reaching it she pushed it aside and knelt down laying her face upon thesilken lap sobbing soft and low.
"All the world is covered with dead—beautiful boys!" her sobbing said. "All alone and dead—dead!"
No immediate change was made in her life during the days that followed. She sat at her desk, writing letters, referring to notes and lists and answering questions as sweetly and faithfully as she had always done from the first. She tried to remember every detail and she also tried to keep before her mind that she must not let people guess that she was thinking of other things—or rather trying not to think of them. It was as though she stood guard over a dark background of thought, of which others must know nothing. It was a background which belonged to herself and which would always be there. Sometimes when she lifted her eyes she found the Duchess looking at her and then she realised that the Duchess knew it was there too.
She began to notice that almost everybody looked at her in a kindly slightly troubled way. Very important matrons and busy excited girls who ran in and out on errands had the same order of rather evasive glance.
"You have no cough, my dear, have you?" more than one amiable grand lady asked her.
"No, thank you—none at all," Robin answered and she was nearly always patted on the shoulder as her questioner left her.
Kathryn sitting by her desk one morning, watching her as she wrote a note, suddenly put her hand out and stopped her.
"Let me look at your wrist, Robin," she said and she took it between her fingers.
"Oh! What a little wrist!" she exclaimed. "I—I am sure Grandmamma has not seen it. Grandmamma—" aloud to the Duchess, "Haveyou seen Robin's wrist? It looks as if it would snap in two."
There were only three or four people in the room and they were all intimates and looked interested.
"It is only that I am a little thin," said Robin. "Everybody is thinner than usual. It is nothing."
The Duchess' kind look somehow took in those about her in her answer.
"You are too thin, my dear," she said. "I must tell you frankly, Kathryn, that you will be called upon to take her place. I am going to send her away into the wilds. The War only ceases for people who are sent into wild places. Dr. Redcliff is quite fixed in that opinion. People who need taking care of must be literally hidden away in corners where war vibrations cannot reach them. He has sent Emily Clare away and even her friends do not know where she is."
Later in the day Lady Lothwell came and in the course of a few minutes drew near to her mother and sat by her chair rather closely. She spoke in a lowered voice.
"I am so glad, mamma darling, that you are going to send poor little Miss Lawless into retreat for a rest cure," she began. "It's so tactless to continually chivy people about their health, but I own that I can scarcely resist saying to the child every time I see her, 'Are you any better today?' or, 'Have you any cough?' or, 'How is your appetite?' I have not wanted to trouble you about her but the truth is we all find ourselves talking her over. The point of her chin is growing actually sharp. What is Mrs. Gareth-Lawless doing?" curtly.
"Giving dinners and bridge parties to officers on leave. Robin never sees her."
"Of course the woman does not want her about. She is too lovely for officers' bridge parties," rather sharply again.
"Mrs. Gareth-Lawless is not the person one would naturally turn to for sympathy in trouble. Illness would present itself to her mind as a sort of outrage." The Duchess herself spoke in a low tone and her eyes wandered for a moment or so to the corner where Robin sat among her papers.
"She is a sensitive child," she said, "and I have not wanted to alarm her by telling her she must give up the work her heart is in. I have seen for some time that she must have an entire holiday and that she must leave London behind her utterly for a while. Dr. Redcliff knows of the right remote sort of place for her. It is really quite settled. She will do as I advise her. She is very obedient."
"Mamma," murmured Lady Lothwell who was furtively regarding Robin also—and it must be confessed with a dewy eye—"I suppose it is because I have Kathryn—but I feel a sort of pull at my heart when I remember how the little thingbloomedonly a few months ago! She was radiant with life and joy and youngness. It's the contrast that almost frightens one. Something has actually gone. Does Doctor Redcliff think—Couldshe be going to die? Somehow," with a tremulous breath, "one always thinks of death now."
"No! No!" the Duchess answered. "Dr. Redcliff says she is not in real danger. Nourishment and relaxed strain and quiet will supply what she needs. But I will ask you, Millicent, to explain to people. I am too tiredto answer questions. I realise that I have actually begun to love the child and I don't want to hear amiable people continuously suggesting the probability that she is in galloping consumption—and proposing remedies."
"Will she go soon?" Lady Lothwell asked.
"As soon as Dr. Redcliff has decided between two heavenly little places—one in Scotland and one in Wales. Perhaps next week or a week later. Things must be prepared for her comfort."
Lady Lothwell went home and talked a little to Kathryn who listened with sympathetic intelligence.
"It would have been better not to have noticed her poor little wrists," she said. "Years ago I believe that telling people that they looked ill and asking anxiously about their symptoms was regarded as a form of affection and politeness, but it isn't done at all now."
"I know, mamma!" Kathryn returned remorsefully. "But somehow there was something so pathetic in her little thin hand writing so fast—and the way her eyelashes lay on a sort of hollow of shadow instead of a soft cheek— I took it in suddenly all at once— And I almost burst out crying without intending to do it. Oh, mamma!" throwing out her hand to clutch her mother's, "Since—since George—! I seem to cry so suddenly! Don't—don't you?"
"Yes—yes!" as they slipped into each other's arms. "We all do—everybody—everybody!"
Their weeping was not loud but soft. Kathryn's girl voice had a low violin-string wail in it and was infinitely touching in its innocent love and pity.
"It's because one feels as if itcouldn'tbe true—as if hemustbe somewhere! George—good nice George. So good looking and happy and silly and dear! And we played and fought together when we were children. Oh! TokillGeorge—George!"
When they sat upright again with wet eyes and faces Kathryn added,
"And he was onlyone! And that beautiful Donal Muir who danced with Robin at Grandmamma's party! And people actuallystaredat them, they looked so happy and beautiful." She paused and thought a moment. "Do you know, mamma, I couldn't help believing he would fall in love with her if he saw her often—and I wondered what Lord Coombe would think. But he never did see her again. And now—! You know what they said about—not evenfindinghim!"
"It is better that they did not meet again. If they had it would be easy to understand why the poor girl looks so ill."
"Yes, I'm glad for her that it isn't that. That would have been much worse. Being sent away to quiet places to rest might have been no good."
"But even as it is, mamma is more anxious I am sure than she likes to own to herself. You and I must manage to convey to people that it is better not even to verge on making fussy inquiries. Mamma has too many burdens on her mind to be as calm as she used to be."
It was an entirely uncomplicated situation. It became understood that the Duchess had become much attached to her companion as a result of her sweet faithfulness to her work. She and Dr. Redcliff had taken her in charge and prepared for her comfort and well-being in the most complete manner. A few months would probably end in a complete recovery. There were really no special questions even for the curious to ask and no one was curious. There was no time for curiosity.So Robin disappeared from her place at the small desk in the corner of the Duchess' sitting room and Kathryn took her place and used her pen.
In the front window of one of the row of little flat-faced brick houses on a narrow street in Manchester, Dowie sat holding Henrietta's new baby upon her lap. They were what is known as "weekly" houses, their rent being paid by the week and they were very small. There was a parlour about the size of a compartment in a workbox, there was a still smaller room behind it which was called a dining room and there was a diminutive kitchen in which all the meals were eaten unless there was "company to tea" which in these days was almost unknown. Dowie had felt it very small when she first came to it from the fine spaces and heights of the house in Eaton Square and found it seemingly full of very small children and a hysterically weeping girl awaiting the impending arrival of one who would be smaller than the rest.
"You'll never stay here," said Henrietta, crying and clutching the untidy half-buttoned front of her blouse. "You come straight from duchesses and grandeur and you don't know how people like us live. How can you stand us and our dirt, Aunt Sarah Ann?"
"There needn't be dirt, Henrietta, my girl," said Dowie with quite uncritical courage. "There wouldn't be if you were yourself, poor lass. I'm not a duchess, you know. I've only been a respectable servant. And I'm going to see you through your trouble."
Her sober, kindly capableness evolved from the slovenly little house and the untended children, from the dusty rooms and neglected kitchen the kind of order and neatnesswhich had been plain to see in Robin's more fortune-favoured apartment. The children became as fresh and neat as Robin's nursery self. They wore clean pinafores and began to behave tidily at table.
"I don't know how you do it, Aunt Sarah Ann," sighed Henrietta. But she washed her blouse and put buttons on it.
"It's just seeing things and picking up and giving a touch here and there," said Dowie. She bought little comforts almost every day and Henrietta was cheered by cups of hot tea in the afternoon and found herself helping to prepare decent meals and sitting down to them with appetite before a clean tablecloth. She began to look better and recovered her pleasure in sitting at the front window to watch the people passing by and notice how many new black dresses and bonnets went to church each Sunday.
When the new baby was born there was neither turmoil nor terror.
"Somehow it was different from the other times. It seemed sort of natural," Henrietta said. "And it's so quiet to lie like this in a comfortable clean bed, with everything in its place and nothing upset in the room. And a bright bit of fire in the grate—and a tidy, swept-up hearth—and the baby breathing so soft in his flannels."
She was a pretty thing and quite unfit to take care of herself even if she had had no children. Dowie knew that she was not beset by sentimental views of life and that all she wanted was a warm and comfortable corner to settle down into. Some masculine creature would be sure to begin to want her very soon. It was only to be hoped that youth and flightiness would notdescend upon her—though three children might be supposed to form a barrier. But she had a girlish figure and her hair was reddish gold and curly and her full and not too small mouth was red and curly also. The first time she went to church in her little widow's bonnet with the reddish gold showing itself under the pathetic little white crêpe border, she was looked at a good deal. Especially was she looked at by an extremely respectable middle-aged widower who had been a friend of her dead husband's. His wife had been dead six years, he had a comfortable house and a comfortable shop which had thriven greatly through a connection with army supplies.
He came to see Henrietta and he had the good sense to treat Dowie as if she were her mother. He explained himself and his circumstances to her and his previous friendship for her nephew. He asked Dowie if she objected to his coming to see her niece and bringing toys to the children.
"I'm fond of young ones. I wanted 'em myself. I never had any," he said bluntly. "There's plenty of room in my house. It's a cheerful place with good solid furniture in it from top to bottom. There's one room we used to call 'the Nursery' sometimes just for a joke—not often. I choked up one day when I said it and Mary Jane burst out crying. I could do with six."
He was stout about the waist but his small blue eyes sparkled in his red face and Henrietta's slimness unromantically but practically approved of him.
One evening Dowie came into the little parlour to find her sitting upon his knee and he restrained her when she tried to rise hastily.
"Don't get up, Hetty," he said. "Your Aunt Sarah Ann'll understand. We've had a talk and she's a sensible woman. She says she'll marry me, Mrs. Dowson—as soon as it's right and proper."
"Yes, we've had a talk," Dowie replied in her nice steady voice. "He'll be a good husband to you, Henrietta—kind to the children."
"I'd be kind to them even if she wouldn't marry me," the stout lover answered. "I want 'em. I've told myself sometimes that I ought to have been the mother of six—not the father but the mother. And I'm not joking."
"I don't believe you are, Mr. Jenkinson," said Dowie.
As she sat before the window in the scrap of a parlour and held the sleeping new baby on her comfortable lap, she was thinking of this and feeling glad that poor Jem's widow and children were so well provided for. It would be highly respectable and proper. The ardour of Mr. Jenkinson would not interfere with his waiting until Henrietta's weeds could be decorously laid aside and then the family would be joyfully established in his well-furnished and decent house. During his probation he would visit Henrietta and bring presents to the children and unostentatiously protect them all and "do" for them.
"They won't really need me now that Henrietta's well and cheerful and has got some one to make much of her and look after her," Dowie reflected, trotting the baby gently. "I can't help believing her grace would take me on again if I wrote and asked her. And I should be near Miss Robin, thank God. It seems a long time since—"
She suddenly leaned forward and looked up the narrow street where the wind was blowing the dust about and whirling some scraps of paper. She watched a moment and then lifted the baby and stood up so that she might make more sure of the identity of a tall gentleman she saw approaching. She only looked at him for a few seconds and then she left the parlour quickly and went to the back room where she had been aware of Mr. Jenkinson's voice rumbling amiably along as a background to her thoughts.
"Henrietta," she said, "his lordship's coming down the street and he's coming here. I'm afraid something's happened to Miss Robin or her grace. Perhaps I'm needed at Eaton Square. Please take the baby."
"Give him to me," said Jenkinson and it was he who took him with quite an experienced air.
Henrietta was agitated.
"Oh, my goodness! Aunt Sarah Ann! I feel all shaky. I never saw a lord—and he's a marquis, isn't it? I shan't know what to do."
"You won't have to do anything," answered Dowie. "He'll only say what he's come to say and go away."
She went out of the room as quickly as she had come into it because she heard the sound of the cheap little door knocker. She was pale with anxiety when she opened the door and Lord Coombe saw her troubled look and understood its reason.
"I am afraid I have rather alarmed you, Dowie," he said as he stepped into the narrow lobby and shook hands with her.
"It's not bad news of her grace or Miss Robin?" she faltered.
"I have come to ask you to come back to London. Her grace is well but Miss Robin needs you," was what he said.
But Dowie knew the words did not tell her everything she was to hear. She took him into the parlour for which she realised he was much too tall. When she discreetly closed the door after he had entered, he said seriously, "Thank you," before he seated himself. And she knew that this meant that they must be undisturbed.
"Will you sit down too," he said as she stood a moment waiting respectfully. "We must talk together."
She took a chair opposite to him and waited respectfully again. Yes, he had something grave on his mind. He had come to tell her something—to ask her questions perhaps—to require something of her. Her superiors had often required things of her in the course of her experience—such things as they would not have asked of a less sensible and reliable woman. And she had always been ready.
When he began to talk to her he spoke as he always did, in a tone which sounded unemotional but held one's attention. But his face had changed since she had last seen it. It had aged and there was something different in the eyes. That was the War. Since the War began so many faces had altered.
During the years in the slice of a house he had never talked to her very much. It was with Mademoiselle he had talked and his interviews with her had not taken place in the nursery. How was it then that he seemed to know her so well. Had Mademoiselle told him that she was a woman to be trusted safely with any serious and intimate confidence—that being given any grave secret to shield, she would guard it as silently and discreetly as a great lady might guard such a thing if it were personal to her own family—as her grace herself might guard it. That he knew this fact without a shadow of doubt was subtly manifest in every word he spoke, in each tone of his voice. There was strange dark trouble to face—and keep secret—and he had come straight to her—Sarah Ann Dowson—because he was sure of her and knew her ways. It was herwayshe knew and understood—her steadiness and that she had the kind of manners that keep a woman from talking about things and teach her how to keep other people from being too familiar and asking questions. And he knew what that kind of manners was built on—just decent faithfulness and honest feeling. He didn't say it in so many words, of course, but as Dowie listened it was exactly as if he said it in gentleman's language.
England was full of strange and cruel tragedies. And they were not all tragedies of battle and sudden death. Many of them were near enough to seem even worse—if worse could be. Dowie had heard some hints of them and had wondered what the world was coming to. As her visitor talked her heart began to thump in her side. Whatsoever had happened was no secret from her grace. And together she and his lordship were going to keep it a secret from the world. Dowie could scarcely have told what phrase or word at last suddenly brought up before her a picture of the nursery in the house in Mayfair—the feeling of a warm soft childish body pressed close to her knee, the look of a tender, dewy-eyed small face and the sound of a small yearning voice saying:
"I want tokissyou, Dowie." And so hearing it, Dowie's heart cried out to itself, "Oh! Dear Lord!"
"It's Miss Robin that trouble's come to," involuntarily broke from her.
"A trouble she must be protected in. She cannot protect herself." For a few seconds he sat and looked at her very steadily. It was as though he were asking a question. Dowie did not know she was going to rise from her chair. But for some reason she got up and stood quite firmly before him. And her good heart went thump-thump-thump.
"Your lordship," she said and in spite of the thumping her voice actually did not shake. "It was one of those War weddings. And perhaps he's dead."
Then it was Lord Coombe who left his chair.
"Thank you, Dowie," he said and before he began to walk up and down the tiny room she felt as if he made a slight bow to her.
She had said something that he had wished her to say. She had removed some trying barrier for him instead of obliging him to help her to cross it and perhaps stumbling on her way. She had neither stumbled nor clambered, she had swept it away out of his path and hers. That was because she knew Miss Robin and had known her from her babyhood.
Though for some time he walked to and fro slowly as he talked she saw that it was easier for him to complete the relation of his story. But as it proceeded it was necessary for her to make an effort to recall herself to a realisation of the atmosphere of the parlour and the narrow street outside the window—and she was glad to be assisted by the amiable rumble of Mr. Jenkinson's voice as heard from the back room when she found herself involuntarily leaning forward in her chair, vaguely conscious that she was drawing short breaths, as she listened to what he was telling her. The things she was listening to stood out from a background of unreality so startling. She was even faintly tormented by shadowy memories of a play she had seen years ago at Drury Lane. And Drury Lane incidents were of a world so incongruously remote from the house in Eaton Square and her grace's clever aquiline ivory face—and his lordship with his quiet bearing and his unromantic and elderly, tired fineness. And yet he was going to undertake to do a thing which was of the order of deed the sober everyday mind could only expect from the race of persons known as "heroes" in theatres and in books. And he was noticeably and wholly untheatrical about it. His plans were those of a farseeing and practical man in every detail. To Dowie the working perfection of his preparations was amazing. They included every contingency and seemed to forget nothing and ignore no possibility. He had thought of things the cleverest woman might have thought of, he had achieved effects as only a sensible man accustomed to power and obedience could have achieved them. And from first to last he kept before Dowie the one thing which held the strongest appeal. In her helpless heartbreak and tragedy Robin needed her as she needed no one else in the world.
"She is so broken and weakened that she may not live," he said in the end. "No one can care for her as you can."
"I can care for her, poor lamb. I'll come when your lordship's ready for me, be it soon or late."
"Thank you, Dowie," he said again. "It will be soon."
And when he shook hands with her and she opened the front door for him, she stood and watched him, thinking very deeply as he walked down the street with the wind-blown dust and scraps of paper whirling about him.
In little more than two weeks Dowie descended from her train in the London station and took a hansom cab which carried her through the familiar streets to Eaton Square. She was comforted somewhat by the mere familiarity of things—even by the grade of smoke which seemed in some way to be different from the smoke of Manchester's cotton factory chimneys—by the order of rattle and roar and rumble, which had a homelike sound. She had not felt at home in Manchester and she had not felt quite at home with Henrietta though she had done her duty by her. Their worlds had been far apart and daily adjustment to circumstances is not easy though it may be accomplished without the betrayal of any outward sign. His lordship's summons had come soon, as he had said it would, but he had made it possible for her to leave in the little house a steady and decent woman to take her place when she gave it up.
She had made her journey from the North with an anxiously heavy heart in her breast. She was going to "take on" a responsibility which included elements previously quite unknown to her. She was going to help to hide something, to live with a strange secret trouble and while she did so must wear her accustomed, respectable and decorous manner and aspect. Whatsoever alarmed or startled her, she must not seem to be startled or alarmed. As his lordship had carried himself with his usual bearing, spoken in his high-bred calm voice and not once failed in the naturalness of his expression—even when he had told her the whole strange plan—so she must in any circumstances which arose and in any difficult situation wear always the aspect of a well-bred and trained servant who knew nothing which did not concern her and did nothing which ordinary domestic service did not require that she should do. She must always seem to be only Sarah Ann Dowson and never forget. But delicate and unusual as this problem was, it was not the thing which made her heart heavy. Several times during her journey she had been obliged to turn her face towards the window of the railway carriage and away from her fellow passengers so that she might very quickly and furtively touch her eyes with her handkerchief because she did not want any one to see the tear which obstinately welled up in spite of her efforts to keep it back.
She had heard of "trouble" in good families, had even been related to it. She knew how awful it was and what desperate efforts were made, what desperate means resorted to, in the concealment of it. And how difficult and almost impossible it was to cope with it and how it seemed sometimes as if the whole fabric of society and custom combined to draw attention to mere trifles which in the end proved damning evidence.
And it was Miss Robin she was going to—her own Miss Robin who had never known a child of her own age or had a girl friend—who had been cut off from innocent youth and youth's happiness and intimacies.
"It's been one of those poor mad young war weddings," she kept saying to herself, "though no one will believe her. If she hadn't been so ignorant of life and so lonely! But just as she fell down worshipping that dear little chap in the Gardens because he was the first she'd ever seen—it's only nature that the first beautiful young thing her own age that looked at her with love rising up in him should set it rising in her—where God had surely put it if ever He put love as part of life in any girl creature His hand made. But Oh! I canseeno one will believe her! The world's heart's so wicked. I know, poor lamb. Her Dowie knows. And her left like this!"
It was when her thoughts reached this point that the tear would gather in the corner of her eye and would have trickled down her cheek if she had not turned away towards the window.
But above all things she told herself she must present only Dowie's face when she reached Eaton Square. There were the servants who knew nothing and must know nothing but that Mrs. Dowson had come to take care of poor Miss Lawless who had worked too hard and was looking ill and was to be sent into the country to some retreat her grace had chosen because it was far enough away to allow of her being cut off from war news and work, if her attendants were faithful and firm. Every one knew Mrs. Dowson would be firm and faithful. Then there were the ladies who went in and out of the house in these days. If they saw her by any chance they might ask kind interested questions about the pretty creature they had liked. They might inquire as to symptoms, they might ask where she was to be taken to be nursed. Dowie knew that after she had seen Robin herself she could provide suitable symptoms and she knew, as she knew how to breathe and walk, exactly the respectful voice and manner in which she could make her replies and how natural she could cause it to appear that she had not yet been told their destination—her grace being still undecided. Dowie's decent intelligence knew the methods of her class and their value when perfectly applied. A nurse or a young lady's maid knew only what she was told and did not ask questions.
But what she thought of most anxiously was Robin herself. His lordship had given her no instructions. Part of his seeming to understand her was that he had seemed to be sure that she would know what to say and what to leave unsaid. She was glad of that because it left her free to think the thing over and make her own quiet plans. She drew more than one tremulous sigh as she thought it out. In the first place—little Miss Robin seemed like a baby to her yet! Oh, shewasa baby! Little Miss Robin just in her teens and with her childish asking eyes and her soft childish mouth! Her a young married lady and needing to be taken care of! She was too young to be married—if it was ever so! And if everything had been done all right and proper with wedding cake and veil, orange blossoms and St. George's, Hanover Square, she still would have been too young and would have looked almost cruelly like a child. And at a time such as this Dowie would have known she was one to be treated with great delicacy and tender reserve. But as it was—a little shamed thing to be hidden away—to be saved from the worst of fates for any girl—with nothing in her hand to help her—how would it be wisest to face her, how could one best be a comfort and a help?
How the sensible and tender creature gave her heart and brain to her reflections! How she balanced one chance and one emotion against another! Her conclusion was, as Coombe had known it would be, drawn from the experience of practical wisdom and an affection as deep as the experience was broad.
"She won't be afraid of Dowie," she thought, "if it's just Dowie that looks at her exactly as she always did. In her little soul she may be frightened to death but if it's only Dowie she sees—not asking questions or looking curious and unnatural, she'll get over it and know she's got something to hold on to. What she needs is something she can hold on to—something that won't tremble when she does—and that looks at her in the way she was used to when she was happy and safe. What I must do with her is what I must do with the others—just look and talk and act as Dowie always did, however hard it is. Perhaps when we get away to the quiet place we're going to hide in, she may begin to want to talk to me. But not a question do I ask or look until she's ready to open her poor heart to me."
She had herself well under control when she reached her destination. She had bathed her face and freshened herself with a cup of hot tea at the station. She entered the house quite with her usual manner and was greeted with obvious welcome by her fellow servants. They had missed her and were glad to see her again. She reported herself respectfully to Mrs. James in the housekeeper's sitting room and they had tea again and a confidential talk.
"I'm glad you could leave your niece, Mrs. Dowson," the housekeeper said. "It's high time poor little Miss Lawless was sent away from London. She's not fit for war work now or for anything but lying in bed in a quiet place where she can get fresh country air and plenty of fresh eggs, and good milk and chicken broth. And she needs a motherly woman like you to watch her carefully."
"Does she look as delicate as all that?" said Dowie concernedly.
"She'll lie in the graveyard in a few months if something's not done. I've seen girls look like her before this." And Mrs. James said it almost sharply.
But even with this preparation and though Lord Coombe had spoken seriously of the state of the girl's health, Dowie was not ready to encounter without a fearful sense of shock what she confronted a little later when she went to Robin's sitting room as she was asked to.
When she tapped upon the door and in response to a faint sounding "Come in" entered the pretty place, Robin rose from her seat by the fire and came towards her holding out her arms.
"I'm so glad you came, Dowie dear," she said, "I'msoglad." She put the arms close round Dowie's neck and kissed her and held her cheek against the comfortable warm one a moment before she let go. "I'm soglad, dear," she murmured and it was even as she felt the arms close about her neck and the cheek press hers that Dowie caught her breath and held it so that she might not seem to gasp. They were such thin frail arms, the young body on which the dress hung loose was only a shadow of the round slimness which had been so sweet.
But it was when the arm released her and they stood apart and looked at each other that she felt the shock in full force while Robin continued her greetings.
"Did you leave Henrietta and the children quite well?" she was saying. "Is the new baby a pretty one?"
Dowie had not been one of those who had seen the gradual development of the physical change in her.It came upon her suddenly. She had left a young creature all softly rounded girlhood, sweet curves and life glow and bloom. She found herself holding a thin hand and looking into a transparent, sharpened small face whose eyes were hollowed. The silk of the curls on the forehead had a dankness and lifelessness which almost made her catch her breath again. Like Mrs. James she herself had more than once had the experience of watching young creatures slip into what the nurses of her day called "rapid decline" and she knew all the piteous portents of the early stages—the waxen transparency of sharpened features and the damp clinging hair. These two last were to her mind the most significant of the early terrors.
And in less than five minutes she knew that the child was not going to talk about herself and that she had been right in making up her own mind to wait. Whatsoever the strain of silence, there would be no speech now. The piteous darkness of her eye held a stillness that was heart-breaking. It was a stillness of such touching endurance of something inevitable. Whatsoever had happened to her, whatsoever was going to happen to her, she would make no sound. She would outwardly be affectionate, pretty-mannered Miss Robin just as Dowie herself would give all her strength to trying to seem to be nothing and nobody but Dowie. And what it would cost of effort to do it well!