Before Robin had been taken to the seaside to be helped by the
bracing air of the Norfolk coast to recover her lost appetite
and forget her small tragedy, she had observed that unaccustomed
things were taking place in the house. Workmen came in and out
through the mews at the back and brought ladders with them and
tools in queer bags. She heard hammerings which began very early
in the morning and went on all day. As Andrews had trained her not
to ask tiresome questions, she only crept now and then to a back
window and peeped out. But in a few days Dowson took her away.
When she came back to London, she was not taken up the steep dark
stairs to the third floor. Dowson led her into some rooms she had
never seen before. They were light and airy and had pretty walls
and furniture. A sitting-room on the ground floor had even a round
window with plants in it and a canary bird singing in a cage.
"May we stay here?" she asked Dowson in a whisper.
"We are going to live here," was the answer.
And so they did.
At first Feather occasionally took her intimates to see the
additional apartments.
"In perfect splendour is the creature put up, and I with a bedroom
like a coalhole and such drawing-rooms as you see each time you
enter the house!" she broke forth spitefully one day when she
forgot herself.
She said it to the Starling and Harrowby, who had been simply gazing
about them in fevered mystification, because the new development
was a thing which must invoke some more or less interesting
explanation. At her outbreak, all they could do was to gaze at her
with impartial eyes, which suggested question, and Feather shrugged
pettish shoulders.
"You knew _I_ didn't do it. How could I?" she said. "It is a queer
whim of Coombe's. Of course, it is not the least like him. I call
it morbid."
After which people knew about the matter and found it a subject
for edifying and quite stimulating discussion. There was something
fantastic in the situation. Coombe was the last man on earth to
have taken the slightest notice of the child's existence! It was
believed that he had never seen her--except in long clothes--until
she had glared at him and put her hand behind her back the night
she was brought into the drawing-room. She had been adroitly kept
tucked away in an attic somewhere. And now behold an addition of
several wonderful, small rooms built, furnished and decorated for
her alone, where she was to live as in a miniature palace attended
by servitors! Coombe, as a purveyor of nursery appurtenances, was
regarded with humour, the general opinion being that the eruption
of a volcano beneath his feet alone could have awakened his somewhat
chill self-absorption to the recognition of any child's existence.
"To be exact we none of us really know anything in particular about
his mental processes." Harrowby pondered aloud. "He's capable of
any number of things we might not understand, if he condescended
to tell us about them--which he would never attempt. He has a
remote, brilliantly stored, cynical mind. He owns that he is of an
inhuman selfishness. I haven't a suggestion to make, but it sets one
searching through the purlieus of one's mind for an approximately
reasonable explanation."
"Why 'purlieus'?" was the Starling's inquiry. Harrowby shrugged
his shoulders ever so lightly.
"Well, one isn't searching for reasons founded on copy-book axioms,"
he shook his head. "Coombe? No."
There was a silence given to occult thought.
"Feather is really in a rage and is too Feathery to be able to
conceal it," said Starling.
"Feather would be--inevitably," Harrowby lifted his near-sighted
eyes to her curiously. "Can you see Feather in the future--when
Robin is ten years older?"
"I can," the Starling answered.
* * * * *
The years which followed were changing years--growing years. Life
and entertainment went on fast and furiously in all parts of London,
and in no part more rapidly than in the slice of a house whose
front always presented an air of having been freshly decorated,
in spite of summer rain and winter soot and fog. The plants in
the window boxes seemed always in bloom, being magically replaced
in the early morning hours when they dared to hint at flagging.
Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was said, must be renewed in some such
mysterious morning way, as she merely grew prettier as she neared
thirty and passed it. Women did in these days! Which last phrase
had always been a useful one, probably from the time of the Flood.
Old fogeys, male and female, had used it in the past as a means of
scathingly unfavourable comparison, growing flushed and almost
gobbling like turkey cocks in their indignation. Now, as a phrase, it
was a support and a mollifier. "In these days" one knew better how
to amuse oneself, was more free to snatch at agreeable opportunity,
less in bondage to old fancies which had called themselves beliefs;
everything whirled faster and more lightly--danced, two-stepped,
instead of marching.
Robin vaguely connected certain changes in her existence with the
changes which took place in the fashion of sleeves and skirts
which appeared to produce radical effects in the world she caught
glimpses of. Sometimes sleeves were closely fitted to people's
arms, then puffs sprang from them and grew until they were enormous
and required delicate manipulation when coats were put on; then
their lavishness of material fell from the shoulder to the wrists
and hung there swaying until some sudden development of skirt seemed
to distract their attention from themselves and they shrank into
unimportance and skirts changed instead. Afterwards, sometimes
figures were slim and encased in sheathlike draperies, sometimes
folds rippled about feet, "fullness" crept here or there or
disappeared altogether, trains grew longer or shorter or wider or
narrower, cashmeres, grosgrain silks and heavy satins were suddenly
gone and chiffon wreathed itself about the world and took possession
of it. Bonnets ceased to exist and hats were immense or tiny, tall
or flat, tilted at the back, at the side, at the front, worn over
the face or dashingly rolled back from it; feathers drooped or
stood upright at heights which rose and fell and changed position
with the changing seasons. No garment or individual wore the same
aspect for more than a month's time. It was necessary to change
all things with a rapidity matching the change of moods and fancies
which altered at the rate of the automobiles which dashed here
and there and everywhere, through country roads, through town,
through remote places with an unsparing swiftness which set a new
pace for the world.
"I cannot hark back regretfully to stage coaches," said Lord Coombe.
"Even I was not born early enough for that. But in the days of
my youth and innocence express trains seemed almost supernatural.
One could drive a pair of horses twenty miles to make a country
visit, but one could not drive back the same day. One's circle
had its limitations and degrees of intimacy. Now it is possible
motor fifty miles to lunch and home to dine with guests from the
remotest corners of the earth. Oceans are crossed in six days,
and the eager flit from continent to continent. Engagements can be
made by cable and the truly enterprising can accept an invitation
to dine in America on a fortnight's notice. Telephones communicate
in a few seconds and no one is secure from social intercourse for
fifteen minutes. Acquaintances and correspondence have no limitations
because all the inhabitants of the globe can reach one by motor or
electricity. In moments of fatigue I revert to the days of Queen
Anne with pleasure."
While these changes went on, Robin lived in her own world in her
own quarters at the rear of the slice of a house. During the early
years spent with Dowson, she learned gradually that life was a
better thing than she had known in the dreary gloom of the third
floor Day and Night Nurseries. She was no longer left to spend
hours alone, nor was she taken below stairs to listen blankly to
servants talking to each other of mysterious things with which she
herself and the Lady Downstairs and "him" were somehow connected,
her discovery of this fact being based on the dropping of voices
and sidelong glances at her and sudden warning sounds from Andrews.
She realized that Dowson would never pinch her, and the rooms she
lived in were pretty and bright.
Gradually playthings and picture books appeared in them, which she
gathered Dowson presented her with. She gathered this from Dowson
herself.
She had never played with the doll, and, by chance a day arriving
when Lord Coombe encountered Dowson in the street without her
charge, he stopped her again and spoke as before.
"Is the little girl well and happy, Nurse?" he asked.
"Quite well, my lord, and much happier than she used to be."
"Did she," he hesitated slightly, "like the playthings you bought
her?"
Dowson hesitated more than slightly but, being a sensible woman
and at the same time curious about the matter, she spoke the truth.
"She wouldn't play with them at all, my lord. I couldn't persuade
her to. What her child's fancy was I don't know."
"Neither do I--except that it is founded on a distinct dislike,"
said Coombe. There was a brief pause. "Are you fond of toys
yourself, Dowson?" he inquired coldly.
"I am that--and I know how to choose them, your lordship," replied
Dowson, with a large, shrewd intelligence.
"Then oblige me by throwing away the doll and its accompaniments
and buying some toys for yourself, at my expense. You can present
them to Miss Robin as a personal gift. She will accept them from
you."
He passed on his way and Dowson looked after him interestedly.
"If she was his," she thought, "I shouldn't be puzzled. But she's
not--that I've ever heard of. He's got some fancy of his own the
same as Robin has, though you wouldn't think it to look at him.
I'd like to know what it is."
It was a fancy--an old, old fancy--it harked back nearly thirty
years--to the dark days of youth and passion and unending tragedy
whose anguish, as it then seemed, could never pass--but which,
nevertheless, had faded with the years as they flowed by. And yet
left him as he was and had been. He was not sentimental about it,
he smiled at himself drearily--though never at the memory--when
it rose again and, through its vague power, led him to do strange
things curiously verging on the emotional and eccentric. But even
the child--who quite loathed him for some fantastic infant reason
of her own--even the child had her part in it. His soul oddly
withdrew itself into a far remoteness as he walked away and
Piccadilly became a shadow and a dream.
Dowson went home and began to pack neatly in a box the neglected
doll and the toys which had accompanied her. Robin seeing her
doing it, asked a question.
"Are they going back to the shop?"
"No. Lord Coombe is letting me give them to a little girl who is
very poor and has to lie in bed because her back hurts her. His
lordship is so kind he does not want you to be troubled with them.
He is not angry. He is too good to be angry."
That was not true, thought Robin. He had done THAT THING she
remembered! Goodness could not have done it. Only badness.
When Dowson brought in a new doll and other wonderful things, a
little hand enclosed her wrist quite tightly as she was unpacking
the boxes. It was Robin's and the small creature looked at her
with a questioning, half appealing, half fierce.
"Did he send them, Dowson?"
"They are a present from me," Dowson answered comfortably, and
Robin said again,
"I want to kiss you. I like to kiss you. I do."
To those given to psychical interests and speculations, it might
have suggested itself that, on the night when the creature who had
seemed to Andrews a soft tissued puppet had suddenly burst forth
into defiance and fearless shrillness, some cerebral change had
taken place in her. From that hour her softness had become a thing
of the past. Dowson had not found a baby, but a brooding, little,
passionate being. She was neither insubordinate nor irritable,
but Dowson was conscious of a certain intensity of temperament
in her. She knew that she was always thinking of things of which
she said almost nothing. Only a sensible motherly curiosity, such
as Dowson's could have made discoveries, but a rare question put
by the child at long intervals sometimes threw a faint light.
There were questions chiefly concerning mothers and their habits
and customs. They were such as, in their very unconsciousness,
revealed a strange past history. Lights were most unconsciously
thrown by Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself. Her quite amiable detachment
from all shadow of responsibility, her brilliantly unending
occupations, her goings in and out, the flocks of light, almost
noisy, intimates who came in and out with her revealed much to a
respectable person who had soberly watched the world.
"The Lady Downstairs is my mother, isn't she?" Robin inquired
gravely once.
"Yes, my dear," was Dowson's answer.
A pause for consideration of the matter and then from Robin:
"All mothers are not alike, Dowson, are they?"
"No, my dear," with wisdom.
Though she was not yet seven, life had so changed for her that it
was a far cry back to the Spring days in the Square Gardens. She
went back, however, back into that remote ecstatic past.
"The Lady Downstairs is not--alike," she said at last, "Donal's
mother loved him. She let him sit in the same chair with her and
read in picture books. She kissed him when he was in bed."
Jennings, the young footman who was a humourist, had, of course,
heard witty references to Robin's love affair while in attendance,
and he had equally, of course, repeated them below stairs. Therefore,
Dowson had heard vague rumours but had tactfully refrained from
mentioning the subject to her charge.
"Who was Donal?" she said now, but quite quietly. Robin did not
know that a confidante would have made her first agony easier to
bear. She was not really being confidential now, but, realizing
Dowson's comfortable kindliness, she knew that it would be safe
to speak to her.
"He was a big boy," she answered keeping her eyes on Dowson's
face. "He laughed and ran and jumped. His eyes--" she stopped
there because she could not explain what she had wanted to say about
these joyous young eyes, which were the first friendly human ones
she had known.
"He lives in Scotland," she began again. "His mother loved him.
He kissed me. He went away. Lord Coombe sent him."
Dawson could not help her start.
"Lord Coombe!" she exclaimed.
Robin came close to her and ground her little fist into her knee,
until its plumpness felt almost bruised.
"He is bad--bad--bad!" and she looked like a little demon.
Being a wise woman, Dowson knew at once that she had come upon a
hidden child volcano, and it would be well to let it seethe into
silence. She was not a clever person, but long experience had
taught her that there were occasions when it was well to leave
a child alone. This one would not answer if she were questioned.
She would only become stubborn and furious, and no child should
be goaded into fury. Dowson had, of course, learned that the boy
was a relative of his lordship's and had a strict Scottish mother
who did not approve of the slice of a house. His lordship might
have been concerned in the matter--or he might not. But at least
Dowson had gained a side light. And how the little thing had cared!
Actually as if she had been a grown girl, Dowson found herself
thinking uneasily.
She was rendered even a trifle more uneasy a few days later
when she came upon Robin sitting in a corner on a footstool with
a picture book on her knee, and she recognized it as the one she
had discovered during her first exploitation of the resources
of the third floor nursery. It was inscribed "Donal" and Robin
was not looking at it alone, but at something she held in her
hand--something folded in a crumpled, untidy bit of paper.
Making a reason for nearing her corner, Dowson saw what the paper
held. The contents looked like the broken fragments of some dried
leaves. The child was gazing at them with a piteous, bewildered
face--so piteous that Dowson was sorry.
"Do you want to keep those?" she asked.
"Yes," with a caught breath. "Yes."
"I will make you a little silk bag to hold them in," Dowson said,
actually feeling rather piteous herself. The poor, little lamb
with her picture book and her bits of broken dry leaves--almost
like senna.
She sat down near her and Robin left her footstool and came to her.
She laid the picture book on her lap and the senna like fragments
of leaves on its open page.
"Donal brought it to show me," she quavered. "He made pretty things
on the leaves--with his dirk." She recalled too much--too much all
at once. Her eyes grew rounder and larger with inescapable woe;
"Donal did! Donal!" And suddenly she hid her face deep in Dowson's
skirts and the tempest broke. She was so small a thing--so
inarticulate--and these were her dead! Dowson could only catch
her in her arms, drag her up on her knee, and rock her to and fro.
"Good Lord! Good Lord!" was her inward ejaculation. "And she not
seven! What'll she do when she's seventeen! She's one of them
there's no help for!"
It was the beginning of an affection. After this, when Dowson tucked
Robin in bed each night, she kissed her. She told her stories and
taught her to sew and to know her letters. Using some discretion
she found certain little playmates for her in the Gardens. But there
were occasions when all did not go well, and some pretty, friendly
child, who had played with Robin for a few days, suddenly seemed
to be kept strictly by her nurse's side. Once, when she was about
ten years old, a newcomer, a dramatic and too richly dressed little
person, after a day of wonderful imaginative playing appeared in the
Gardens the morning following to turn an ostentatious cold shoulder.
"What is the matter?" asked Robin.
"Oh, we can't play with you any more," with quite a flounce
superiority.
"Why not?" said Robin, becoming haughty herself.
"We can't. It's because of Lord Coombe." The little person had
really no definite knowledge of how Lord Coombe was concerned,
but certain servants' whisperings of names and mysterious phrases
had conveyed quite an enjoyable effect of unknown iniquity connected
with his lordship.
Robin said nothing to Dowson, but walked up and down the paths
reflecting and building a slow fire which would continue to burn
in her young heart. She had by then passed the round, soft baby
period and had entered into that phase when bodies and legs grow
long and slender and small faces lose their first curves and begin
to show sharper modeling.
Accepting the situation in its entirety, Dowson had seen that it
was well to first reach Lord Coombe with any need of the child's.
Afterwards, the form of presenting it to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless must
be gone through, but if she were first spoken to any suggestion
might be forgotten or intentionally ignored.
Dowson became clever in her calculations as to when his lordship
might be encountered and where--as if by chance, and therefore,
quite respectfully. Sometimes she remotely wondered if he himself
did not make such encounters easy for her. But his manner never
altered in its somewhat stiff, expressionless chill of indifference.
He never was kindly in his manner to the child if he met her.
Dowson felt him at once casual and "lofty." Robin might have been
a bit of unconsidered rubbish, the sight of which slightly bored
him. Yet the singular fact remained that it was to him one must
carefully appeal.
One afternoon Feather swept him, with one or two others, into the
sitting-room with the round window in which flowers grew. Robin
was sitting at a low table making pothooks with a lead pencil on
a piece of paper Dowson had given her. Dowson had, in fact, set
her at the task, having heard from Jennings that his lordship
and the other afternoon tea drinkers were to be brought into the
"Palace" as Feather ironically chose to call it. Jennings rather
liked Dowson, and often told her little things she wanted to know.
It was because Lord Coombe would probably come in with the rest
that Dowson had set the low, white table in the round windows and
suggested the pothooks.
In course of time there was a fluttering and a chatter in the
corridor. Feather was bringing some new guests, who had not seen
the place before.
"This is where my daughter lives. She is much grander than I am,"
she said.
"Stand up, Miss Robin, and make your curtsey," whispered Dowson.
Robin did as she was told, and Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' pretty brows
ran up.
"Look at her legs," she said. "She's growing like Jack and the
Bean Stalk--though, I suppose, it was only the Bean Stalk that
grew. She'll stick through the top of the house soon. Look at her
legs, I ask you."
She always spoke as if the child were an inanimate object and she
had, by this time and by this means, managed to sweep from Robin's
mind all the old, babyish worship of her loveliness and had planted
in its place another feeling. At this moment the other feeling
surged and burned.
"They are beautiful legs," remarked a laughing young man jocularly,
"but perhaps she does not particularly want us to look at them.
Wait until she begins skirt dancing." And everybody laughed at once
and the child stood rigid--the object of their light ridicule--not
herself knowing that her whole little being was cursing them aloud.
Coombe stepped to the little table and bestowed a casual glance
on the pencil marks.
"What is she doing?" he asked as casually of Dowson.
"She is learning to make pothooks, my lord," Dowson answered.
"She's a child that wants to be learning things. I've taught her
her letters and to spell little words. She's quick--and old enough,
your lordship."
"Learning to read and write!" exclaimed Feather.
"Presumption, I call it. I don't know how to read and write--least
I don't know how to spell. Do you know how to spell, Collie?" to
the young man, whose name was Colin. "Do you, Genevieve? Do you,
Artie?"
"You can't betray me into vulgar boasting," said Collie. "Who does
in these days? Nobody but clerks at Peter Robinson's."
"Lord Coombe does--but that's his tiresome superior way," said
Feather.
"He's nearly forty years older than most of you. That is the
reason," Coombe commented. "Don't deplore your youth and innocence."
They swept through the rooms and examined everything in them.
The truth was that the--by this time well known--fact that the
unexplainable Coombe had built them made them a curiosity, and
a sort of secret source of jokes. The party even mounted to the
upper story to go through the bedrooms, and, it was while they
were doing this, that Coombe chose to linger behind with Dowson.
He remained entirely expressionless for a few moments. Dowson did
not in the least gather whether he meant to speak to her or not.
But he did.
"You meant," he scarcely glanced at her, "that she was old enough
for a governess."
"Yes, my lord," rather breathless in her hurry to speak before
she heard the high heels tapping on the staircase again. "And one
that's a good woman as well as clever, if I may take the liberty.
A good one if--"
"If a good one would take the place?"
Dowson did not attempt refutation or apology. She knew better.
He said no more, but sauntered out of the room.
As he did so, Robin stood up and made the little "charity bob" of
a curtsey which had been part of her nursery education. She was
too old now to have refused him her hand, but he never made any
advances to her. He acknowledged her curtsey with the briefest
nod.
Not three minutes later the high heels came tapping down the
staircase and the small gust of visitors swept away also.