Two or three decades earlier the prevailing sentiment would have
been that "poor little Mrs. Gareth-Lawless" and her situation were
pathetic. Her acquaintances would sympathetically have discussed
her helplessness and absolute lack of all resource. So very pretty,
so young, the mother of a dear little girl--left with no income!
How very sad! What COULD she do? The elect would have paid her visits
and sitting in her darkened drawing-room earnestly besought her
to trust to her Maker and suggested "the Scriptures" as suitable
reading. Some of them--rare and strange souls even in their
time--would have known what they meant and meant what they said in
a way they had as yet only the power to express through the medium
of a certain shibboleth, the rest would have used the same forms
merely because shibboleth is easy and always safe and creditable.
But to Feather's immediate circle a multiplicity of engagements,
fevers of eagerness in the attainment of pleasures and ambitions,
anxieties, small and large terrors, and a whirl of days left no time
for the regarding of pathetic aspects. The tiny house up whose
staircase--tucked against a wall--one had seemed to have the effect of
crowding even when one went alone to make a call, suddenly ceased
to represent hilarious little parties which were as entertaining
as they were up to date and noisy. The most daring things London
gossiped about had been said and done and worn there. Novel social
ventures had been tried--dancing and songs which seemed almost
startling at first--but which were gradually being generally adopted.
There had always been a great deal of laughing and talking of
nonsense and the bandying of jokes and catch phrases. And Feather
fluttering about and saying delicious, silly things at which her
hearers shouted with glee. Such a place could not suddenly become
pathetic. It seemed almost indecent for Robert Gareth-Lawless to
have dragged Death nakedly into their midst--to have died in his
bed in one of the little bedrooms, to have been put in his coffin
and carried down the stairs scraping the wall, and sent away in a
hearse. Nobody could bear to think of it.
Feather could bear it less than anybody else. It seemed incredible
that such a trick could have been played her. She shut herself
up in her stuffy little bedroom with its shrimp pink frills and
draperies and cried lamentably. At first she cried as a child might
who was suddenly snatched away in the midst of a party. Then she
began to cry because she was frightened. Numbers of cards "with
sympathy" had been left at the front door during the first week
after the funeral, they had accumulated in a pile on the salver
but very few people had really come to see her and while she knew
they had the excuse of her recent bereavement she felt that it made
the house ghastly. It had never been silent and empty. Things had
always been going on and now there was actually not a sound to be
heard--no one going up and down stairs--Rob's room cleared of all
his belongings and left orderly and empty--the drawing-room like a
gay little tomb without an occupant. How long WOULD it be before
it would be full of people again--how long must she wait before
she could decently invite anyone?--It was really at this point that
fright seized upon her. Her brain was not given to activities of
reasoning and followed no thought far. She had not begun to ask
herself questions as to ways and means. Rob had been winning at
cards and had borrowed some money from a new acquaintance so no
immediate abyss had yawned at her feet. But when the thought of
future festivities rose before her a sudden check made her involuntarily
clutch at her throat. She had no money at all, bills were piled
everywhere, perhaps now Robert was dead none of the shops would
give her credit. She remembered hearing Rob come into the house
swearing only the day before he was taken ill and it had been
because he had met on the door-step a collector of the rent which
was long over-due and must be paid. She had no money to pay it,
none to pay the servants' wages, none to pay the household bills,
none to pay for the monthly hire of the brougham! Would they turn
her into the street--would the servants go away--would she be left
without even a carriage? What could she do about clothes! She
could not wear anything but mourning now and by the time she was
out of mourning her old clothes would have gone out of fashion.
The morning on which this aspect of things occurred to her, she
was so terrified that she began to run up and down the room like a
frightened little cat seeing no escape from the trap it is caught
in.
"It's awful--it's awful--it's awful!" broke out between her sobs.
"What can I do? I can't do anything! There's nothing to do! It's
awful--it's awful--it's awful!" She ended by throwing herself on
the bed crying until she was exhausted. She had no mental resources
which would suggest to her that there was anything but crying to
be done. She had cried very little in her life previously because
even in her days of limitation she had been able to get more or
less what she wanted--though of course it had generally been less.
And crying made one's nose and eyes red. On this occasion she
actually forgot her nose and eyes and cried until she scarcely
knew herself when she got up and looked in the glass.
She rang the bell for her maid and sat down to wait her coming.
Tonson should bring her a cup of beef tea.
"It's time for lunch," she thought. "I'm faint with crying. And
she shall bathe my eyes with rose-water."
It was not Tonson's custom to keep her mistress waiting but today
she was not prompt. Feather rang a second time and an impatient
third and then sat in her chair and waited until she began to feel
as she felt always in these dreadful days the dead silence of the
house. It was the thing which most struck terror to her soul--that
horrid stillness. The servants whose place was in the basement
were too much closed in their gloomy little quarters to have
made themselves heard upstairs even if they had been inclined to.
During the last few weeks feather had even found herself wishing
that they were less well trained and would make a little noise--do
anything to break the silence.
The room she sat in--Rob's awful little room adjoining--which was
awful because of what she had seen for a moment lying stiff and
hard on the bed before she was taken away in hysterics--were dread
enclosures of utter silence. The whole house was dumb--the very
street had no sound in it. She could not endure it. How dare
Tonson? She sprang up and rang the bell again and again until its
sound came back to her pealing through the place.
Then she waited again. It seemed to her that five minutes passed
before she heard the smart young footman mounting the stairs slowly.
She did not wait for his knock upon the door but opened it herself.
"How dare Tonson!" she began. "I have rung four or five times!
How dare she!"
The smart young footman's manner had been formed in a good school.
It was attentive, impersonal.
"I don't know, ma'am," he answered.
"What do you mean? What does SHE mean? Where is she?" Feather felt
almost breathless before his unperturbed good style.
"I don't know, ma'am," he answered as before. Then with the same
unbiassed bearing added, "None of us know. She has gone away."
Feather clutched the door handle because she felt herself swaying.
"Away! Away!" the words were a faint gasp.
"She packed her trunk yesterday and carried it away with her on a
four-wheeler. About an hour ago, ma'am." Feather dropped her hand
from the knob of the door and trailed back to the chair she had
left, sinking into it helplessly.
"Who--who will dress me?" she half wailed.
"I don't know, ma'am," replied the young footman, his excellent
manner presuming no suggestion or opinion whatever. He added
however, "Cook, ma'am, wishes to speak to you."
"Tell her to come to me here," Feather said. "And I--I want a cup
of beef tea."
"Yes, ma'am," with entire respect. And the door closed quietly
behind him.
It was not long before it was opened again. "Cook" had knocked and
Feather had told her to come in. Most cooks are stout, but this
one was not. She was a thin, tall woman with square shoulders and
a square face somewhat reddened by constant proximity to fires.
She had been trained at a cooking school. She carried a pile of
small account books but she brought nothing else.
"I wanted some beef tea, Cook," said Feather protestingly.
"There is no beef tea, ma'am," said Cook. "There is neither beef,
nor stock, nor Liebig in the house."
"Why--why not?" stammered Feather and she stammered because even
her lack of perception saw something in the woman's face which
was new to her. It was a sort of finality.
She held out the pile of small books.
"Here are the books, ma'am," was her explanation. "Perhaps as you
don't like to be troubled with such things, you don't know how
far behind they are. Nothing has been paid for months. It's been
an every-day fight to get the things that was wanted. It's not
an agreeable thing for a cook to have to struggle and plead. I've
had to do it because I had my reputation to think of and I couldn't
send up rubbish when there was company."
Feather felt herself growing pale as she sat and stared at her.
Cook drew near and laid one little book after another on the small
table near her.
"That's the butcher's book," she said. "He's sent nothing in for
three days. We've been living on leavings. He's sent his last,
he says and he means it. This is the baker's. He's not been for
a week. I made up rolls because I had some flour left. It's done
now--and HE'S done. This is groceries and Mercom & Fees wrote
to Mr. Gareth-Lawless when the last month's supply came, that it
would BE the last until payment was made. This is wines--and coal
and wood--and laundry--and milk. And here is wages, ma'am, which
CAN'T go on any longer."
Feather threw up her hands and quite wildly.
"Oh, go away!--go away!" she cried. "If Mr. Lawless were here--"
"He isn't, ma'am," Cook interposed, not fiercely but in a way more
terrifying than any ferocity could have been--a way which pointed
steadily to the end of things. "As long as there's a gentleman
in a house there's generally a sort of a prospect that things MAY
be settled some way. At any rate there's someone to go and speak
your mind to even if you have to give up your place. But when
there's no gentleman and nothing--and nobody--respectable people
with their livings to make have got to protect themselves."
The woman had no intention of being insolent. Her simple statement
that her employer's death had left "Nothing" and "Nobody" was
prompted by no consciously ironic realization of the diaphanousness
of Feather. As for the rest she had been professionally trained
to take care of her interests as well as to cook and the ethics
of the days of her grandmother when there had been servants with
actual affections had not reached her.
"Oh! go away! Go AWA-AY!" Feather almost shrieked.
"I am going, ma'am. So are Edward and Emma and Louisa. It's no
use waiting and giving the month's notice. We shouldn't save the
month's wages and the trades-people wouldn't feed us. We can't stay
here and starve. And it's a time of the year when places has to
be looked for. You can't hold it against us, ma'am. It's better
for you to have us out of the house tonight--which is when our
boxes will be taken away."
Then was Feather seized with a panic. For the first time in her
life she found herself facing mere common facts which rose before
her like a solid wall of stone--not to be leapt, or crept under,
or bored through, or slipped round. She was so overthrown and
bewildered that she could not even think of any clever and rapidly
constructed lie which would help her; indeed she was so aghast
that she did not remember that there were such things as lies.
"Do you mean," she cried out, "that you are all going to LEAVE
the house--that there won't be any servants to wait on me--that
there's nothing to eat or drink--that I shall have to stay here
ALONE--and starve!"
"We should have to starve if we stayed," answered Cook simply. "And
of course there are a few things left in the pantry and closets.
And you might get in a woman by the day. You won't starve, ma'am.
You've got your family in Jersey. We waited because we thought
Mr. and Mrs. Darrel would be sure to come."
"My father is ill. I think he's dying. My mother could not leave
him for a moment. Perhaps he's dead now," Feather wailed.
"You've got your London friends, ma'am--"
Feather literally beat her hands together.
"My friends! Can I go to people's houses and knock at their front
door and tell them I haven't any servants or anything to eat! Can
I do that? Can I?" And she said it as if she were going crazy.
The woman had said what she had come to say as spokeswoman for the
rest. It had not been pleasant but she knew she had been quite
within her rights and dealt with plain facts. But she did not
enjoy the prospect of seeing her little fool of a mistress raving
in hysterics.
"You mustn't let yourself go, ma'am," she said. "You'd better lie
down a bit and try to get quiet." She hesitated a moment looking
at the pretty ruin who had risen from her seat and stood trembling.
"It's not my place of course to--make suggestions," she said quietly.
"But--had you ever thought of sending for Lord Coombe, ma'am?"
Feather actually found the torn film of her mind caught for a
second by something which wore a form of reality. Cook saw that
her tremor appeared to verge on steadying itself.
"Coombe," she faintly breathed as if to herself and not to Cook.
"Coombe."
"His lordship was very friendly with Mr. Lawless and he seemed fond
of--coming to the house," was presented as a sort of added argument.
"If you'll lie down I'll bring you a cup of tea, ma'am--though it
can't be beef."
Feather staggered again to her bed and dropped flat upon it--flat
as a slim little pancake in folds of thin black stuff which hung
and floated.
"I can't bring you cream," said Cook as she went out of the room.
"Louisa has had nothing but condensed milk--since yesterday--to
give Miss Robin."
"Oh-h!" groaned Feather, not in horror of the tea without cream
though that was awful enough in its significance, but because this
was the first time since the falling to pieces of her world that
she had given a thought to the added calamity of Robin.