What did occur was not at all complicated. It would not have been
possible for a woman to have spent her girlhood with the cleverest
mother of her day and have emerged from her training either
obstinate or illogical. Lady Lothwell listened to as much of the
history of Robin as her mother chose to tell her and plainly felt
an amiable interest in it. She knew much more detail and gossip
concerning Mrs. Gareth-Lawless than the Duchess herself did. She
had heard of the child who was kept out of sight, and she had
been somewhat disgusted by a vague story of Lord Coombe's abnormal
interest in it and the ugly hint that he had an object in view.
It was too unpleasantly morbid to be true of a man her mother had
known for years.
"Of course you were not thinking of anything large or formal?"
she said after a moment of smiling hesitation.
"No. I am not launching a girl into society. I only want to help
her to know a few nice young people who are good-natured and
well-mannered. She is not the ordinary old lady's companion and
if she were not so strict with herself and with me, I confess I
should behave towards her very much as I should behave to Kathryn
if you could spare her to live with me. She is a heart-warming
young thing. Because I am known to have one of my eccentric fancies
for her and because after all her father WAS well connected, her
present position will not be the obstacle. She is not the first
modern girl who has chosen to support herself."
"But isn't she much too pretty?"
"Much. But she doesn't flaunt it."
"But heart-warming--and too pretty! Dearest mamma!" Lady Lothwell
laughed again. "She can do no harm to Kathryn, but I own that
if George were not at present quite madly in love with a darling
being at least fifteen years older than himself I should pause
to reflect. Mrs. Stacy will keep him steady--Mrs. Alan Stacy, you
know--the one with the magnificent henna hair, and the eyes that
droop. No boy of twenty-two can resist her. They call her adorers
'The Infant School'."
"A small dinner and a small dance--and George and Kathryn may be
the beginning of an interesting experiment. It would be pretty
and kind of you to drop in during the course of the evening."
"Are you hoping to--perhaps--make a marriage for her?" Lady Lothwell
asked the question a shade disturbedly. "You are so amazing,
mamma darling, that I know you will do it, if you believe in it.
You seem to be able to cause the things you really want, to evolve
from the universe."
"She is the kind of girl whose place in the universe is in the
home of some young man whose own place in the universe is in the
heart and soul and life of her kind of girl. They ought to carry
out the will of God by falling passionately in love with each
other. They ought to marry each other and have a large number of
children as beautiful and rapturously happy as themselves. They
would assist in the evolution of the race."
"Oh! Mamma! how delightful you always are! For a really brilliant
woman you are the most adorable dreamer in the world."
"Dreams are the only things which are true. The rest are nothing
but visions."
"Angel!" her daughter laughed a little adoringly as she kissed
her. "I will do whatever you want me to do. I always did, didn't
I? It's your way of making one see what you see when you are
talking that does it."
It was understood before they parted that Kathryn and George would
be present at the small dinner and the small dance, and that a
few other agreeable young persons might be trusted to join them,
and that Lady Lothwell and perhaps her husband would drop in.
"It's your being almost Early Victorian, mamma, which makes it
easy for you to initiate things. You will initiate little Miss
Lawless. It was rather neat of her to prefer to drop the 'Gareth.'
There has been less talk in late years of the different classes
'keeping their places'--'upper' and 'lower' classes really strikes
one as vulgar."
"We may 'keep our places'," the Duchess said. "We may hold on to
them as firmly as we please. It is the places themselves which
are moving, my dear. It is not unlike the beginning of a landslide."
Robin went to Dowie's room the next evening and stood a moment in
silence watching her sewing before she spoke. She looked anxious
and even pale.
"Her grace is going to give a party to some young people, Dowie,"
she said. "She wishes me to be present. I--I don't know what to
do."
"What you must do, my dear, is to put on your best evening frock
and go downstairs and enjoy yourself as the other young people
will. Her grace wants you to see someone your own age," was Dowie's
answer.
"But I am not like the others. I am only a girl earning her living
as a companion. How do I know--"
"Her grace knows," Dowie said. "And what she asks you to do it is
your duty to do--and do it prettily."
Robin lost even a shade more colour.
"Do you realize that I have never been to a party in my life--not
even to a children's party, Dowie? I shall not know how to behave
myself."
"You know how to talk nicely to people, and you know how to sit
down and rise from your chair and move about a room like a quiet
young lady. You dance like a fairy. You won't be asked to do
anything more."
"The Duchess," reflected Robin aloud slowly, "would not let me
come downstairs if she did not know that people would--be kind."
"Lady Kathryn and Lord Halwyn are coming. They are her own
grandchildren," Dowie said.
"How did you know that?" Robin inquired.
Robin's colour began to come back.
"It's not what usually happens to girls in situations," she said.
"Her grace herself isn't what usually happens," said Dowie. "There
is no one like her for high wisdom and kindness."
Having herself awakened to the truth of this confidence-inspiring
fact, Robin felt herself supported by it. One knew what
far-sighted perception and clarity of experienced vision this one
woman had gained during her many years of life. If she had elected
to do this thing she had seen her path clear before her and was not
offering a gift which awkward chance might spoil or snatch away
from the hand held out to receive it. A curious slow warmth began
to creep about Robin's heart and in its mounting gradually fill
her being. It was true she had been taught to dance, to move about
and speak prettily. She had been taught a great many things which
seemed to be very carefully instilled into her mind and body without
any special reason. She had not been aware that Lord Coombe and
Mademoiselle Valle had directed and discussed her training as if
it had been that of a young royal person whose equipment must be
a flawless thing. If the Dowager Duchess of Darte had wished to
present her at Court some fair morning she would have known the
length of the train she must wear, where she must make her curtseys
and to whom and to what depth, how to kiss the royal hand, and
how to manage her train when she retired from the presence. When
she had been taught this she had asked Mademoiselle Valle if the
training was part of every girl's education and Mademoiselle had
answered,
"It is best to know everything--even ceremonials which may or may
not prove of use. It all forms part of a background and prevents
one from feeling unfamiliar with customs."
When she had passed the young pairs in the streets she had found
an added interest in them because of this background. She could
imagine them dancing together in fairy ball rooms whose lights
and colours her imagination was obliged to construct for her out
of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they
went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel
shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them
and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she
should have pondered and pondered and sometimes unconsciously
longed to feel herself part of the flood of being sweeping past
her as she stood apart on the brink of the river.
The warmth about her heart made it beat a little faster. She opened
the door of her wardrobe when she found herself in her bedroom. The
dress hung modestly in its corner shrouded from the penetration of
London fogs by clean sheeting. It was only white and as simple as
she knew how to order it, but Mademoiselle had taken her to a young
French person who knew exactly what she was doing in all cases,
and because the girl had the supple lines of a wood nymph and the
eyes of young antelope she had evolved that which expressed her
as a petal expresses its rose. Robin locked her door and took the
dress down and found the silk stockings and slippers which belonged
to it. She put them all on standing before her long mirror and
having left no ungiven last touch she fell a few steps backward and
looked at herself, turning and balancing herself as a bird might
have done. She turned lightly round and round.
"Yes. I AM--" she said. "I am--very!"
The next instant she laughed at herself outright.
"How silly! How silly!" she said. "Almost EVERYBODY is--more
or less! I wonder if I remember the new steps." For she had been
taught the new steps--the new walking and swayings and pauses and
sudden swirls and swoops. And her new dress was as short as other
fashionable girls' dresses were, but in her case revealed a haunting
delicacy of contour and line.
So before her mirror she danced alone and as she danced her lips
parted and her breast rose and fell charmingly, and her eyes
lighted and glowed as any girl's might have done or as a joyous
girl nymph's might have lighted as she danced by a pool in her
forest seeing her loveliness mirrored there.
Something was awakening as something had awakened when Donal had
kissed a child under the soot sprinkled London trees.