The morning was a brighter one than London usually indulges in
and the sun made its way into Feather's bedroom to the revealing
of its coral pink glow and comfort. She had always liked her bedroom
and had usually wakened in it to the sense of luxuriousness it
is possible a pet cat feels when it wakens to stretch itself on
a cushion with its saucer of cream awaiting it.
But she did not awaken either to a sense of brightness or luxury
this morning. She had slept it was true, but once or twice when
the pillow had slipped aside she had found herself disturbed by
the far-off sound of the wailing of some little animal which had
caused her automatically and really scarcely consciously to replace
the pillow. It had only happened at long intervals because it is
Nature that an exhausted baby falls asleep when it is worn out.
Robin had probably slept almost as much as her mother.
Feather staring at the pinkness around her reached at last, with
the assistance of a certain physical consciousness, a sort of
spiritless intention.
"She's asleep now," she murmured. "I hope she won't waken for a
long time. I feel faint. I shall have to find something to eat--if
it's only biscuits." Then she lay and tried to remember what Cook
had said about her not starving. "She said there were a few things
left in the pantry and closets. Perhaps there's some condensed
milk. How do you mix it up? If she cries I might go and give her
some. It wouldn't be so awful now it's daylight."
She felt shaky when she got out of bed and stood on her feet. She
had not had a maid in her girlhood so she could dress herself,
much as she detested to do it. After she had begun however she
could not help becoming rather interested because the dress she
had worn the day before had become crushed and she put on a fresh
one she had not worn at all. It was thin and soft also, and black
was quite startlingly becoming to her. She would wear this one
when Lord Coombe came, after she wrote to him. It was silly of
her not to have written before though she knew he had left town
after the funeral. Letters would be forwarded.
"It will be quite bright in the dining-room now," she said
to encourage herself. "And Tonson once said that the only places
the sun came into below stairs were the pantry and kitchen and it
only stayed about an hour early in the morning. I must get there
as soon as I can."
When she had so dressed herself that the reflection the mirror
gave back to her was of the nature of a slight physical stimulant
she opened her bedroom door and faced exploration of the deserted
house below with a quaking sense of the proportions of the
inevitable. She got down the narrow stairs casting a frightened
glance at the emptiness of the drawing-rooms which seemed to stare
at her as she passed them. There was sun in the dining-room and
when she opened the sideboard she found some wine in decanters and
some biscuits and even a few nuts and some raisins and oranges.
She put them on the table and sat down and ate some of them and
began to feel a little less shaky.
If she had been allowed time to sit longer and digest and reflect
she might have reached the point of deciding on what she would write
to Lord Coombe. She had not the pen of a ready writer and it must
be thought over. But just when she was beginning to be conscious
of the pleasant warmth of the sun which shone on her shoulders from
the window, she was almost startled our of her chair by hearing
again stealing down the staircase from the upper regions that faint
wail like a little cat's.
"Just the moment--the very MOMENT I begin to feel a little
quieted--and try to think--she begins again!" she cried out. "It's
worse then ANYTHING!"
Large crystal tears ran down her face and upon the polished table.
"I suppose she would starve to death if I didn't give her some
food--and then _I_ should be blamed! People would be horrid about
it. I've got nothing to eat myself."
She must at any rate manage to stop the crying before she could
write to Coombe. She would be obliged to go down into the pantry
and look for some condensed milk. The creature had no teeth but
perhaps she could mumble a biscuit or a few raisins. If she could
be made to swallow a little port wine it might make her sleepy. The
sun was paying its brief morning visit to the kitchen and pantry
when she reached there, but a few cockroaches scuttled away before
her and made her utter a hysterical little scream. But there WAS
some condensed milk and there was a little warm water in a kettle
became the fire was not quite out. She imperfectly mixed a decoction
and filled a bottle which ought not to have been downstairs but
had been brought and left there by Louisa as a result of tender
moments with Edward.
When she put the bottle and some biscuits and scraps of cold ham
on a tray because she could not carry them all in her hands, her
sense of outrage and despair made her almost sob.
"I am just like a servant--carrying trays upstairs," she wept.
"I--I might be Edward--or--or Louisa." And her woe increased when
she added in the dining-room the port wine and nuts and raisins
and macaroons as viands which MIGHT somehow add to infant diet
and induce sleep. She was not sure of course--but she knew they
sucked things and liked sweets.
A baby left unattended to scream itself to sleep and awakening
to scream itself to sleep again, does not present to a resentful
observer the flowerlike bloom and beauty of infancy. When Feather
carried her tray into the Night Nursery and found herself confronting
the disordered crib on which her offspring lay she felt the child
horrible to look at. Its face was disfigured and its eyes almost
closed. She trembled all over as she put the bottle to its mouth
and saw the fiercely hungry clutch of its hands. It was old enough
to clutch, and clutch it did, and suck furiously and starvingly--even
though actually forced to stop once or twice at first to give vent
to a thwarted remnant of a scream.
Feather had only seen it as downy whiteness and perfume in
Louisa's arms or in its carriage. It had been a singularly vivid
and brilliant-eyed baby at whom people looked as they passed.
"Who will give her a bath?" wailed Feather. "Who will change her
clothes? Someone must! Could a woman by the day do it? Cook said
I could get a woman by the day."
And then she remembered that one got servants from agencies. And
where were the agencies? And even a woman "by the day" would demand
wages and food to eat.
And then the front door bell rang.
What could she do--what could she do? Go downstairs and open the
door herself and let everyone know! Let the ringer go on ringing
until he was tired and went away? She was indeed hard driven,
even though the wail had ceased as Robin clutched her bottle to
her breast and fed with frenzy. Let them go away--let them! And
then came the wild thought that it might be Something--the Something
which must happen when things were at their worst! And if it had
come and the house seemed to be empty! She did not walk down the
stairs, she ran. Her heart beat until she reached the door out of
breath and when she opened it stood their panting.
The people who waited upon the steps were strangers. They were
very nice looking and quite young--a man and a woman very perfectly
dressed. The man took a piece of paper out of his pocketbook and
handed it to her with an agreeable apologetic courtesy.
"I hope we have not called early enough to disturb you," he said.
"We waited until eleven but we are obliged to catch a train at
half past. It is an 'order to view' from Carson & Bayle." He added
this because Feather was staring at the paper.
Carson & Bayle were the agents they had rented the house from.
It was Carson & Bayle's collector Robert had met on the threshold
and sworn at two days before he had been taken ill. They were
letting the house over her head and she would be turned out into
the street?
The young man and woman finding themselves gazing at this exquisitely
pretty creature in exquisite mourning, felt themselves appallingly
embarrassed. She was plainly the widow Carson had spoken of. But
why did she open the door herself? And why did she look as if she
did not understand? Indignation against Carson & Bayle began to
stir the young man.
"Beg pardon! So sorry! I am afraid we ought not to have come," he
protested. "Agents ought to know better. They said you were giving
up the house at once and we were afraid someone might take it."
Feather held the "order to view" in her hand and snared at them
quite helplessly.
"There--are no--no servants to show it to you," she said. "If you
could wait--a few days--perhaps--"
She was so lovely and Madame Helene's filmy black creation was in
itself such an appeal, that the amiable young strangers gave up
at once.
"Oh, certainly--certainly! Do excuse us! Carson and Bayle ought
not to have--! We are so sorry. Good morning, GOOD morning," they
gave forth in discomfited sympathy and politeness, and really
quite scurried away.
Having shut the door on their retreat Feather stood shivering.
"I am going to be turned out of the house! I shall have to live
in the street!" she thought. "Where shall I keep my clothes if I
live in the street!"
Even she knew that she was thinking idiotically. Of course if
everything was taken from you and sold, you would have no clothes
at all, and wardrobes and drawers and closets would not matter.
The realization that scarcely anything in the house had been paid
for came home to her with a ghastly shock. She staggered upstairs
to the first drawing-room in which there was a silly pretty little
buhl writing table.
She felt even more senseless when she sank into a chair before
it and drew a sheet of note-paper towards her. Her thoughts would
not connect themselves with each other and she could not imagine
what she ought to say in her letter to Coombe. In fact she seemed
to have no thoughts at all. She could only remember the things
which had happened, and she actually found she could write nothing
else. There seemed nothing else in the world.
"Dear Lord Coombe," trailed tremulously over the page--"The house
is quite empty. The servants have gone away. I have no money. And
there is not any food. And I am going to be turned out into the
street--and the baby is crying because it is hungry."
She stopped there, knowing it was not what she ought to say. And
as she stopped and looked at the words she began herself to wail
somewhat as Robin had wailed in the dark when she would not listen
or go to her. It was like a beggar's letter--a beggar's! Telling
him that she had no money and no food--and would be turned out for
unpaid rent. And that the baby was crying because it was starving!
"It's a beggar's letter--just a beggar's," she cried out aloud
to the empty room. "And it's tru-ue!" Robin's wail itself had not
been more hopeless than hers was as she dropped her head and let
it lie on the buhl table.
She was not however even to be allowed to let it lie there, for
the next instant there fell on her startled ear quite echoing
through the house another ring at the doorbell and two steely raps
on the smart brass knocker. It was merely because she did not know
what else to do, having just lost her wits entirely that she got
up and trailed down the staircase again.
When she opened the door, Lord Coombe--the apotheosis of exquisite
fitness in form and perfect appointment as also of perfect
expression--was standing on the threshold.