When she went back to Andrews she carried the pricked leaves with
her. She could not have left them behind. From what source she
had drawn a characterizing passionate, though silent, strength of
mind and body, it would be difficult to explain. Her mind and her
emotions had been left utterly unfed, but they were not of the inert
order which scarcely needs feeding. Her feeling for the sparrows
had held more than she could have expressed; her secret adoration
of the "Lady Downstairs" was an intense thing. Her immediate
surrender to the desire in the first pair of human eyes--child eyes
though they were--which had ever called to her being for response,
was simple and undiluted rapture. She had passed over her little
soul without a moment's delay and without any knowledge of the
giving. It had flown from her as a bird might fly from darkness
into the sun. Eight-year-old Donal was the sun.
No special tendency to innate duplicity was denoted by the fact
that she had acquired, through her observation of Andrews, Jennings,
Jane and Mrs. Blayne, the knowledge that there were things it was
best not to let other people know. You were careful about them.
From the occult communications between herself and Donal, which
had resulted in their intrigue, there had of course evolved a
realizing sense of the value of discretion. She did not let Andrews
see the decorated leaves, but put them into a small pocket in her
coat. Her Machiavellian intention was to slip them out when she
was taken up to the Nursery. Andrews was always in a hurry to go
downstairs to her lunch and she would be left alone and could find
a place where she could hide them.
Andrews' friend started when Robin drew near to them. The child's
cheeks and lips were the colour of Jacqueminot rose petals. Her
eyes glowed with actual rapture.
"My word! That's a beauty if I ever saw one," said the woman.
"First sight makes you jump. My word!"
Robin, however, did not know what she was talking about and in
fact scarcely heard her. She was thinking of Donal. She thought
of him as she was taken home, and she did not cease thinking of
him during the whole rest of the day and far into the night. When
Andrews left her, she found a place to hide the pricked leaves and
before she put them away she did what Donal had done to her--she
kissed them. She kissed them several times because they were Donal's
leaves and he had made the stars and lines on them. It was almost
like kissing Donal but not quite so beautiful.
After she was put to bed at night and Andrews left her she lay
awake for a long time. She did not want to go to sleep because
everything seemed so warm and wonderful and she could think and
think and think. What she thought about was Donal's face, his
delightful eyes, his white forehead with curly hair pushed back
with his Highland bonnet. His plaid swung about when he ran and
jumped. When he held her tight the buttons of his jacket hurt her
a little because they pressed against her body. What was "Mother"
like? Did he kiss her? What pretty stones there were in his clasps
and buckles! How nice it was to hear him laugh and how fond he
was of laughing. Donal! Donal! Donal! He liked to play with her
though she was a girl and so little. He would play with her tomorrow.
His cheeks were bright pink, his hair was bright, his eyes were
bright. He was all bright. She tried to see into the blueness of
his eyes again as it seemed when they looked at each other close
to. As she began to see the clear colour she fell asleep.
The power which had on the first morning guided Robin to the
seclusion behind the clump of shrubs and had provided Andrews with
an enthralling companion, extended, the next day, an even more
beneficient and complete protection. Andrews was smitten with a
cold so alarming as to confine her to bed. Having no intention of
running any risks, whatsoever, she promptly sent for a younger
sister who, temporarily being "out of place", came into the house
as substitute. She was a pretty young woman who assumed no special
responsibilities and was fond of reading novels.
"She's been trained to be no trouble, Anne. She'll amuse herself
without bothering you as long as you keep her out," Andrews said
of Robin.
Anne took "Lady Audley's Secret" with her to the Gardens and,
having led her charge to a shady and comfortable seat which exactly
suited her, she settled herself for a pleasant morning.
"Now, you can play while I read," she said to Robin.
As they had entered the Gardens they had passed, not far from the
gate, a bench on which sat a highly respectable looking woman who
was hemming a delicate bit of cambric, and evidently in charge of
two picture books which lay on the seat beside her. A fine boy in
Highland kilts was playing a few yards away. Robin felt something
like a warm flood rush over her and her joy was so great and
exquisite that she wondered if Anne felt her hand trembling. Anne
did not because she was looking at a lady getting into a carriage
across the street.
The marvel of that early summer morning in the gardens of a
splendid but dingy London square thing was not a thing for which
human words could find expression. It was not an earthly thing,
or, at least, not a thing belonging to an earth grown old. A child
Adam and Eve might have known something like it in the Garden of
Eden. It was as clear and simple as spring water and as warm as
the sun.
Anne's permission to "play" once given, Robin found her way behind
the group of lilacs and snowballs. Donal would come, not only
because he was so big that Nanny would let him do what he wanted
to do, but because he would do everything and anything in the
world. Donal! Donal! Her heart was a mere baby's heart but it
beat as if she were seventeen--beat with pure rapture. He was all
bright and he would laugh and laugh.
The coming was easy enough for Donal. He had told his mother and
Nanny rejoicingly about the little girl he had made friends with
and who had no picture books. But he did not come straight to
her. He took his picture books under his arm, and showing all his
white teeth in a joyous grin, set out to begin their play properly
with a surprise. He did not let her see him coming but "stalked"
her behind the trees and bushes until he found where she was
waiting, and then thrust his face between the branches of a tall
shrub near her and laughed the outright laugh she loved. And when
she turned she was looking straight into the clear blue she had
tried to see when she fell asleep. "Donal! Donal!" she cried like
a little bird with but one note.
The lilac and the snowball were in blossom and there was a big
hawthorn tree which smelt sweet and sweet. They could not see the
drift of smuts on the blossoms, they only smelled the sweetness
and sat under the hawthorn and sniffed and sniffed. The sun was
deliciously warm and a piano organ was playing beautifully not
far away. They sat close to each other, so close that the picture
book could lie open on both pairs of knees and the warmth of each
young body penetrated the softness of the other. Sometimes Donal
threw an arm around her as she bent over the page. Love and
caresses were not amazements to him; he accepted them as parts of
the normal joy of life. To Robin they were absolute wonder. The
pictures were delight and amazement in one. Donal knew all about
them and told her stories. She felt that such splendour could have
emanated only from him. It could not occur to her that he had not
invented them and made the pictures. He showed her Robinson Crusoe
and Robin Hood. The scent of the hawthorn and lilac intoxicated
them and they laughed tremendously because Robin Hood's name was
like Robin's own and he was a man and she was a girl. They could
scarcely stop laughing and Donal rolled over and over on the grass,
half from unconquerable high spirits and half to make Robin laugh
still more.
He had some beautiful coloured glass marbles in his pocket
and he showed her how to play with them, and gave her two of the
prettiest. He could shoot them over the ground in a way to thrill
the beholder. He could hop on one leg as far as he liked. He could
read out of books.
"Do you like me?" he said once in a pause between displays of his
prowess.
Robin was kneeling upon the grass watching him and she clasped
her little hands as if she were uttering a prayer.
"Oh, yes, yes!" she yearned. "Yes! Yes!"
"I like you," he answered; "I told my mother all about you."
He came to her and knelt by her side.
"Have you a mother?" he asked.
"No," shaking her head.
"Do you live with your aunt?"
"No, I don't live with anybody."
He looked puzzled.
"Isn't there any lady in your house?" he put it to her. She
brightened a little, relieved to think she had something to tell
him.
"There's the Lady Downstairs," she said. "She's so pretty--so
pretty."
"Is she----" he stopped and shook his head. "She couldn't be your
mother," he corrected himself. "You'd know about HER."
"She wears pretty clothes. Sometimes they float about and sparkle
and she wears little crowns on her head--or flowers. She laughs,"
Robin described eagerly. "A great many people come to see her.
They all laugh. Sometimes they sing. I lie in bed and listen."
"Does she ever come upstairs to the Nursery?" inquired Donal with
a somewhat reflective air.
"Yes. She comes and stands near the door and says, 'Is she quite
well, Andrews?' She does not laugh then. She--she LOOKS at me."
She stopped there, feeling suddenly that she wished very much that
she had more to tell. What she was saying was evidently not very
satisfactory. He seemed to expect more--and she had no more to
give. A sense of emptiness crept upon her and for no reason she
understood there was a little click in her throat.
"Does she only stand near the door?" he suggested, as one putting
the situation to a sort of crucial test. "Does she never sit on a
big chair and take you on her knee?"
"No, no," in a dropped voice. "She will not sit down. She says
the chairs are grubby."
"Doesn't she LOVE you at all?" persisted Donal. "Doesn't she KISS
you?"
There was a thing she had known for what seemed to her a long
time--God knows in what mysterious fashion she had learned it,
but learned it well she had. That no human being but herself was
aware of her knowledge was inevitable. To whom could she have
told it? But Donal--Donal wanted to know all about her. The little
click made itself felt in her throat again.
"She--she doesn't LIKE me!" Her dropped voice was the whisper of
one humbled to the dust by confession, "She--doesn't LIKE me!"
And the click became another thing which made her put up her arm
over her eyes--her round, troubled child eyes, which, as she had
looked into Donal's, had widened with sudden, bewildered tears.
Donal flung his arms round her and squeezed his buttons into her
tender chest. He hugged her close; he kissed her; there was a
choking in his throat. He was hot all over.
"She does like you. She must like you. I'll make her!" he cried
passionately. "She's not your mother. If she was, she'd LOVE you!
She'd LOVE you!"
"Do Mothers l-love you?" the small voice asked with a half sob.
"What's--what's LOVE you?" It was not vulgar curiosity. She only
wanted to find out.
He loosed his embrace, sitting back on his heels to stare.
"Don't you KNOW?"
She shook her head with soft meekness.
"N-no," she answered.
Big boys like himself did not usually play with such little
girls. But something had drawn him to her at their first moment
of encounter. She wasn't like any other little girls. He felt it
all the time and that was part of the thing which drew him. He
was not, of course, aware that the male thrill at being regarded
as one who is a god had its power over the emotions. She wasn't
making silly fun and pretending. She really didn't know--because
she was different.
"It's liking very much. It's more," he explained. "My mother loves
ME. I--I LOVE you!" stoutly. "Yes, I LOVE you. That's why I kissed
you when you cried."
She was so uplifted, so overwhelmed with adoring gratitude that as
she knelt on the grass she worshipped him.
"I love YOU," she answered him. "I LOVE you--LOVE you!" And she
looked at him with such actual prayerfulness that he caught at her
and, with manly promptness, kissed her again-this being mere Nature.
Because he was eight years old and she was six her tears flashed
away and they both laughed joyously as they sat down on the grass
again to talk it over.
He told her all the pleasant things he knew about Mothers. The
world was full of them it seemed--full. You belong to them from
the time you were a baby. He had not known many personally because
he had always lived at Braemarnie, which was in the country in
Scotland. There were no houses near his home. You had to drive
miles and miles before you came to a house or a castle. He had not
seen much of other children except a few who lived at the Manse
and belonged to the minister. Children had fathers as well as
mothers. Fathers did not love you or take care of you quite as
much as Mothers--because they were men. But they loved you too.
His own father had died when he was a baby. His mother loved him
as much as he loved her. She was beautiful but--it seemed to reveal
itself--not like the Lady Downstairs. She did not laugh very much,
though she laughed when they played together. He was too big now
to sit on her knee, but squeezed into the big chair beside her when
she read or told him stories. He always did what his mother told
him. She knew everything in the world and so knew what he ought to
do. Even when he was a big man he should do what his mother told
him.
Robin listened to every word with enraptured eyes and bated breath.
This was the story of Love and Life and it was the first time she
had ever heard it. It was as much a revelation as the Kiss. She
had spent her days in the grimy Nursery and her one close intimate
had been a bony woman who had taught her not to cry, employing
the practical method of terrifying her into silence by pinching
her--knowing it was quite safe to do it. It had not been necessary
to do it often. She had seen people on the streets, but she had
only seen them in passing by. She had not watched them as she had
watched the sparrows. When she was taken down for a few minutes
into the basement, she vaguely knew that she was in the way and that
Mrs. Blayne's and Andrews' and Jennings' low voices and occasional
sidelong look meant that they were talking about her and did not
want her to hear.
"I have no mother and no father," she explained quite simply to
Donal. "No one kisses me."
"No one!" Donal said, feeling curious. "Has no one ever kissed you
but me?"
"No," she answered.
Donal laughed--because children always laugh when they do not know
what else to do.
"Was that why you looked as if you were frightened when I said
good-bye to you yesterday?"
"I-I didn't know," said Robin, laughing a little too--but not very
much, "I wasn't frightened. I liked you."
"I'll kiss you as often as you want me to," he volunteered nobly.
"I'm used to it--because of my mother. I'll kiss you again now."
And he did it quite without embarrassment. It was a sort of manly
gratuity.
Once Anne, with her book in her hand, came round the shrubs to
see how her charge was employing herself, and seeing her looking
at pictures with a handsomely dressed companion, she returned to
"Lady Audley's Secret" feeling entirely safe.
The lilac and the hawthorn tree continued to breathe forth warmed
scents of paradise in the sunshine, the piano organ went on playing,
sometimes nearer, sometimes farther away, but evidently finding
the neighbourhood a desirable one. Sometimes the children laughed
at each other, sometimes at pictures Donal showed, or stories he
told, or at his own extreme wit. The boundaries were removed from
Robin's world. She began to understand that there was another
larger one containing wonderful and delightful things she had
known nothing about. Donal was revealing it to her in everything
he said even when he was not aware that he was telling her anything.
When Eve was formed from the rib of Adam the information it was
necessary for him to give her regarding her surroundings must have
filled her with enthralling interest and a reverence which adored.
The planted enclosure which was the central feature of the soot
sprinkled, stately London Square was as the Garden of Eden.
* * * * *
The Garden of Eden it remained for two weeks. Andrews' cold was
serious enough to require a doctor and her sister Anne continued
to perform their duties. The weather was exceptionally fine and,
being a vain young woman, she liked to dress Robin in her pretty
clothes and take her out because she was a beauty and attracted
attention to her nurse as well as to herself. Mornings spent
under the trees reading were entirely satisfactory. Each morning
the children played together and each night Robin lay awake and
lived again the delights of the past hours. Each day she learned
more wonders and her young mind and soul were fed. There began to
stir in her brain new thoughts and the beginning of questioning.
Scotland, Braemarnie, Donal's mother, even the Manse and the children
in it, combined to form a world of enchantment. There were hills
with stags living in them, there were moors with purple heather and
yellow brome and gorse; birds built their nests under the bushes
and Donal's pony knew exactly where to step even in the roughest
places. There were two boys and two girls at the Manse and they
had a father and a mother. These things were enough for a new heaven
and a new earth to form themselves around. The centre of the whole
Universe was Donal with his strength and his laugh and his eyes
which were so alive and glowing that she seemed always to see them.
She knew nothing about the thing which was their somehow--not-to-be-denied
allure. They were ASKING eyes--and eyes which gave. The boy was
in truth a splendid creature. His body and beauty were perfect life
and joyous perfect living. His eyes asked other eyes for everything.
"Tell me more," they said. "Tell me more! Like me! Answer me! Let
us give each other everything in the world." He had always been
well, he had always been happy, he had always been praised and
loved. He had known no other things.
During the first week in which the two children played together,
his mother, whose intense desire it was to understand him, observed
in him a certain absorption of mood when he was not talking or
amusing himself actively. He began to fall into a habit of standing
at the windows, often with his chin in his hand, looking out as if
he were so full of thought that he saw nothing. It was not an old
habit, it was a new one.
"What are you thinking about, Donal?" she asked one afternoon.
He seemed to awaken, as it were, when he heard her. He turned
about with his alluring smile.
"I am thinking it is FUNNY," he said. "It is funny that I should
like such a little girl such a lot. She is years and years younger
than I am. But I like her so. It is such fun to tell her things."
He marched over to his mother's writing table and leaned against
it. What his mother saw was that he had an impassioned desire
to talk about this child. She felt it was a desire even a trifle
abnormal in its eagerness.
"She has such a queer house, I think," he explained. "She has a
nurse and such pretty clothes and she is so pretty herself, but
I don't believe she has any toys or books in her nursery."
"Where is her mother?"
"She must be dead. There is no lady in her house but the Lady
Downstairs. She is very pretty and is always laughing. But she is
not her mother because she doesn't like her and she never kisses
her. I think that's the queerest thing of all. No one had EVER
kissed her till I did."
His mother was a woman given to psychological analysis. Her eyes
began to dwell on his face with slightly anxious questioning.
"Did you kiss her?" she inquired.
"Yes. I kissed her when I said good morning the first day. I thought
she didn't like me to do it but she did. It was only because no
one had ever done it before. She likes it very much."
He leaned farther over the writing table and began to pour forth,
his smile growing and his eyes full of pleasure. His mother was
a trifle alarmedly struck by the feeling that he was talking like
a young man in love who cannot keep his tongue still, though in
his case even the youngest manhood was years away, and he made no
effort to conceal his sentiments which a young man would certainly
have striven to do.
"She's got such a pretty little face and such a pretty mouth and
cheeks," he touched a Jacqueminot rose in a vase. "They are the
colour of that. Today a robin came with the sparrows and hopped
about near us. We laughed and laughed because her eyes are like
the robin's, and she is called Robin. I wish you would come into
the Gardens and see her, mother. She likes everything I do."
"I must come, dear," she answered.
"Nanny thinks she is lovely," he announced. "She says I am in love
with her. Am I, mother?"
"You are too young to be in love," she said. "And even when you
are older you must not fall in love with people you know nothing
about."
It was an unconscious bit of Scotch cautiousness which she at once
realized was absurd and quite out of place. But--!
She realized it because he stood up and squared his shoulders in
an odd young-mannish way. He had not flushed even faintly before
and now a touch of colour crept under his fair skin.
"But I DO love her," he said. "I DO. I can't stop." And though he
was quite simple and obviously little boy-like, she actually felt
frightened for a moment.