Robin rose and stood before him as involuntarily as she had risen before, but now she looked different. Her hands were wrung together and she was the blanched embodiment of terror. She remembered things Fraeulein Hirsh had said.

"I could not marry you—if I were to be killed because I didn't," was all she could say. Because marriage had meant only Donal and the dream, and being saved from the world this one man had represented to her girl mind.

"You say that because you have no doubt heard that it has been rumoured that I have a depraved old man's fancy for you and that I have always hoped to marry you. That is as false as the other story I denied. I am not in love with you even in an antediluvian way. You would not marry me for your own sake. That goes without saying. But I will repeat what I said in the Wood when you told me you would believe me. There is Something—not you—not Donal—to be saved from suffering."

"That is true," the Duchess said and put out her hand as before. "And there is something longer drawn out and more miserable than mere dying—a dreary outcast sort of life. We know more about such things than you do."

"You may better comprehend my action if I add a purely selfish reason for it," Coombe went on. "I will give you one. I do not wish to be the last Marquis of Coombe."

He took from the table a piece of paper. He had actually made notes upon it.

"Do not be alarmed by this formality," he said. "I wish to spare words. If you consent to the performance of a private ceremony you will not be required to see me again unless you yourself request it. I have a quiet place in a remote part of Scotland where you can live with Dowie to take care of you. Dowie can be trusted and will understand what I tell her. You will be safe. You will be left alone. You will be known as a young widow. There are young widows everywhere."

Her eyes had not for a moment left his. By the time he had ended they looked immense in her thin and white small face. Her old horror of him had been founded on a false belief in things which had not existed, but a feeling which has lasted almost a lifetime has formed for itself an atmosphere from whose influence it is not easy to escape. And he stood now before her looking as he had always looked when she had felt him to be the finely finished embodiment of evil. But—

"You are—doing it—for Donal," she faltered.

"You yourself would be doing it for Donal," he answered.

"Yes. And—I do not matter."

"Donal's wife and the mother of Donal's boy or girl matters very much," he gave back to her. He did not alter the impassive aloofness of his manner, knowing that it was better not to do so. An astute nerve specialist might have used the same method with a patient.

There was a moment or so of silence in which the immense eyes gazed before her almost through him—piteously.

"I will do anything I am told to do," she said at last. After she had said it she turned and looked at the Duchess.

The Duchess held out both her hands. They were held so far apart that it seemed almost as if they were her arms. Robin swept towards the broad footstool but reaching it she pushed it aside and knelt down laying her face upon the silken lap sobbing soft and low.

"All the world is covered with dead—beautiful boys!" her sobbing said. "All alone and dead—dead!"



CHAPTER XX

No immediate change was made in her life during the days that followed. She sat at her desk, writing letters, referring to notes and lists and answering questions as sweetly and faithfully as she had always done from the first. She tried to remember every detail and she also tried to keep before her mind that she must not let people guess that she was thinking of other things—or rather trying not to think of them. It was as though she stood guard over a dark background of thought, of which others must know nothing. It was a background which belonged to herself and which would always be there. Sometimes when she lifted her eyes she found the Duchess looking at her and then she realised that the Duchess knew it was there too.

She began to notice that almost everybody looked at her in a kindly slightly troubled way. Very important matrons and busy excited girls who ran in and out on errands had the same order of rather evasive glance.

"You have no cough, my dear, have you?" more than one amiable grand lady asked her.

"No, thank you—none at all," Robin answered and she was nearly always patted on the shoulder as her questioner left her.

Kathryn sitting by her desk one morning, watching her as she wrote a note, suddenly put her hand out and stopped her.

"Let me look at your wrist, Robin," she said and she took it between her fingers.

"Oh! What a little wrist!" she exclaimed. "I—I am sure Grandmamma has not seen it. Grandmamma—" aloud to the Duchess, "Have you seen Robin's wrist? It looks as if it would snap in two."

There were only three or four people in the room and they were all intimates and looked interested.

"It is only that I am a little thin," said Robin. "Everybody is thinner than usual. It is nothing."

The Duchess' kind look somehow took in those about her in her answer.

"You are too thin, my dear," she said. "I must tell you frankly, Kathryn, that you will be called upon to take her place. I am going to send her away into the wilds. The War only ceases for people who are sent into wild places. Dr. Redcliff is quite fixed in that opinion. People who need taking care of must be literally hidden away in corners where war vibrations cannot reach them. He has sent Emily Clare away and even her friends do not know where she is."

Later in the day Lady Lothwell came and in the course of a few minutes drew near to her mother and sat by her chair rather closely. She spoke in a lowered voice.

"I am so glad, mamma darling, that you are going to send poor little Miss Lawless into retreat for a rest cure," she began. "It's so tactless to continually chivy people about their health, but I own that I can scarcely resist saying to the child every time I see her, 'Are you any better today?' or, 'Have you any cough?' or, 'How is your appetite?' I have not wanted to trouble you about her but the truth is we all find ourselves talking her over. The point of her chin is growing actually sharp. What is Mrs. Gareth-Lawless doing?" curtly.

"Giving dinners and bridge parties to officers on leave. Robin never sees her."

"Of course the woman does not want her about. She is too lovely for officers' bridge parties," rather sharply again.

"Mrs. Gareth-Lawless is not the person one would naturally turn to for sympathy in trouble. Illness would present itself to her mind as a sort of outrage." The Duchess herself spoke in a low tone and her eyes wandered for a moment or so to the corner where Robin sat among her papers.

"She is a sensitive child," she said, "and I have not wanted to alarm her by telling her she must give up the work her heart is in. I have seen for some time that she must have an entire holiday and that she must leave London behind her utterly for a while. Dr. Redcliff knows of the right remote sort of place for her. It is really quite settled. She will do as I advise her. She is very obedient."

"Mamma," murmured Lady Lothwell who was furtively regarding Robin also—and it must be confessed with a dewy eye—"I suppose it is because I have Kathryn—but I feel a sort of pull at my heart when I remember how the little thing bloomed only a few months ago! She was radiant with life and joy and youngness. It's the contrast that almost frightens one. Something has actually gone. Does Doctor Redcliff think—Could she be going to die? Somehow," with a tremulous breath, "one always thinks of death now."

"No! No!" the Duchess answered. "Dr. Redcliff says she is not in real danger. Nourishment and relaxed strain and quiet will supply what she needs. But I will ask you, Millicent, to explain to people. I am too tired to answer questions. I realise that I have actually begun to love the child and I don't want to hear amiable people continuously suggesting the probability that she is in galloping consumption—and proposing remedies."

"Will she go soon?" Lady Lothwell asked.

"As soon as Dr. Redcliff has decided between two heavenly little places—one in Scotland and one in Wales. Perhaps next week or a week later. Things must be prepared for her comfort."

Lady Lothwell went home and talked a little to Kathryn who listened with sympathetic intelligence.

"It would have been better not to have noticed her poor little wrists," she said. "Years ago I believe that telling people that they looked ill and asking anxiously about their symptoms was regarded as a form of affection and politeness, but it isn't done at all now."

"I know, mamma!" Kathryn returned remorsefully. "But somehow there was something so pathetic in her little thin hand writing so fast—and the way her eyelashes lay on a sort of hollow of shadow instead of a soft cheek— I took it in suddenly all at once— And I almost burst out crying without intending to do it. Oh, mamma!" throwing out her hand to clutch her mother's, "Since—since George—! I seem to cry so suddenly! Don't—don't you?"

"Yes—yes!" as they slipped into each other's arms. "We all do—everybody—everybody!"

Their weeping was not loud but soft. Kathryn's girl voice had a low violin-string wail in it and was infinitely touching in its innocent love and pity.

"It's because one feels as if it couldn't be true—as if he must be somewhere! George—good nice George. So good looking and happy and silly and dear! And we played and fought together when we were children. Oh! To kill George—George!"

When they sat upright again with wet eyes and faces Kathryn added,

"And he was only one! And that beautiful Donal Muir who danced with Robin at Grandmamma's party! And people actually stared at them, they looked so happy and beautiful." She paused and thought a moment. "Do you know, mamma, I couldn't help believing he would fall in love with her if he saw her often—and I wondered what Lord Coombe would think. But he never did see her again. And now—! You know what they said about—not even finding him!"

"It is better that they did not meet again. If they had it would be easy to understand why the poor girl looks so ill."

"Yes, I'm glad for her that it isn't that. That would have been much worse. Being sent away to quiet places to rest might have been no good."

"But even as it is, mamma is more anxious I am sure than she likes to own to herself. You and I must manage to convey to people that it is better not even to verge on making fussy inquiries. Mamma has too many burdens on her mind to be as calm as she used to be."

It was an entirely uncomplicated situation. It became understood that the Duchess had become much attached to her companion as a result of her sweet faithfulness to her work. She and Dr. Redcliff had taken her in charge and prepared for her comfort and well-being in the most complete manner. A few months would probably end in a complete recovery. There were really no special questions even for the curious to ask and no one was curious. There was no time for curiosity. So Robin disappeared from her place at the small desk in the corner of the Duchess' sitting room and Kathryn took her place and used her pen.



CHAPTER XXI

In the front window of one of the row of little flat-faced brick houses on a narrow street in Manchester, Dowie sat holding Henrietta's new baby upon her lap. They were what is known as "weekly" houses, their rent being paid by the week and they were very small. There was a parlour about the size of a compartment in a workbox, there was a still smaller room behind it which was called a dining room and there was a diminutive kitchen in which all the meals were eaten unless there was "company to tea" which in these days was almost unknown. Dowie had felt it very small when she first came to it from the fine spaces and heights of the house in Eaton Square and found it seemingly full of very small children and a hysterically weeping girl awaiting the impending arrival of one who would be smaller than the rest.

"You'll never stay here," said Henrietta, crying and clutching the untidy half-buttoned front of her blouse. "You come straight from duchesses and grandeur and you don't know how people like us live. How can you stand us and our dirt, Aunt Sarah Ann?"

"There needn't be dirt, Henrietta, my girl," said Dowie with quite uncritical courage. "There wouldn't be if you were yourself, poor lass. I'm not a duchess, you know. I've only been a respectable servant. And I'm going to see you through your trouble."

Her sober, kindly capableness evolved from the slovenly little house and the untended children, from the dusty rooms and neglected kitchen the kind of order and neatness which had been plain to see in Robin's more fortune-favoured apartment. The children became as fresh and neat as Robin's nursery self. They wore clean pinafores and began to behave tidily at table.

"I don't know how you do it, Aunt Sarah Ann," sighed Henrietta. But she washed her blouse and put buttons on it.

"It's just seeing things and picking up and giving a touch here and there," said Dowie. She bought little comforts almost every day and Henrietta was cheered by cups of hot tea in the afternoon and found herself helping to prepare decent meals and sitting down to them with appetite before a clean tablecloth. She began to look better and recovered her pleasure in sitting at the front window to watch the people passing by and notice how many new black dresses and bonnets went to church each Sunday.

When the new baby was born there was neither turmoil nor terror.

"Somehow it was different from the other times. It seemed sort of natural," Henrietta said. "And it's so quiet to lie like this in a comfortable clean bed, with everything in its place and nothing upset in the room. And a bright bit of fire in the grate—and a tidy, swept-up hearth—and the baby breathing so soft in his flannels."

She was a pretty thing and quite unfit to take care of herself even if she had had no children. Dowie knew that she was not beset by sentimental views of life and that all she wanted was a warm and comfortable corner to settle down into. Some masculine creature would be sure to begin to want her very soon. It was only to be hoped that youth and flightiness would not descend upon her—though three children might be supposed to form a barrier. But she had a girlish figure and her hair was reddish gold and curly and her full and not too small mouth was red and curly also. The first time she went to church in her little widow's bonnet with the reddish gold showing itself under the pathetic little white crepe border, she was looked at a good deal. Especially was she looked at by an extremely respectable middle-aged widower who had been a friend of her dead husband's. His wife had been dead six years, he had a comfortable house and a comfortable shop which had thriven greatly through a connection with army supplies.

He came to see Henrietta and he had the good sense to treat Dowie as if she were her mother. He explained himself and his circumstances to her and his previous friendship for her nephew. He asked Dowie if she objected to his coming to see her niece and bringing toys to the children.

"I'm fond of young ones. I wanted 'em myself. I never had any," he said bluntly. "There's plenty of room in my house. It's a cheerful place with good solid furniture in it from top to bottom. There's one room we used to call 'the Nursery' sometimes just for a joke—not often. I choked up one day when I said it and Mary Jane burst out crying. I could do with six."

He was stout about the waist but his small blue eyes sparkled in his red face and Henrietta's slimness unromantically but practically approved of him.

One evening Dowie came into the little parlour to find her sitting upon his knee and he restrained her when she tried to rise hastily.

"Don't get up, Hetty," he said. "Your Aunt Sarah Ann'll understand. We've had a talk and she's a sensible woman. She says she'll marry me, Mrs. Dowson—as soon as it's right and proper."

"Yes, we've had a talk," Dowie replied in her nice steady voice. "He'll be a good husband to you, Henrietta—kind to the children."

"I'd be kind to them even if she wouldn't marry me," the stout lover answered. "I want 'em. I've told myself sometimes that I ought to have been the mother of six—not the father but the mother. And I'm not joking."

"I don't believe you are, Mr. Jenkinson," said Dowie.

* * * * *

As she sat before the window in the scrap of a parlour and held the sleeping new baby on her comfortable lap, she was thinking of this and feeling glad that poor Jem's widow and children were so well provided for. It would be highly respectable and proper. The ardour of Mr. Jenkinson would not interfere with his waiting until Henrietta's weeds could be decorously laid aside and then the family would be joyfully established in his well-furnished and decent house. During his probation he would visit Henrietta and bring presents to the children and unostentatiously protect them all and "do" for them.

"They won't really need me now that Henrietta's well and cheerful and has got some one to make much of her and look after her," Dowie reflected, trotting the baby gently. "I can't help believing her grace would take me on again if I wrote and asked her. And I should be near Miss Robin, thank God. It seems a long time since—"

She suddenly leaned forward and looked up the narrow street where the wind was blowing the dust about and whirling some scraps of paper. She watched a moment and then lifted the baby and stood up so that she might make more sure of the identity of a tall gentleman she saw approaching. She only looked at him for a few seconds and then she left the parlour quickly and went to the back room where she had been aware of Mr. Jenkinson's voice rumbling amiably along as a background to her thoughts.

"Henrietta," she said, "his lordship's coming down the street and he's coming here. I'm afraid something's happened to Miss Robin or her grace. Perhaps I'm needed at Eaton Square. Please take the baby."

"Give him to me," said Jenkinson and it was he who took him with quite an experienced air.

Henrietta was agitated.

"Oh, my goodness! Aunt Sarah Ann! I feel all shaky. I never saw a lord—and he's a marquis, isn't it? I shan't know what to do."

"You won't have to do anything," answered Dowie. "He'll only say what he's come to say and go away."

She went out of the room as quickly as she had come into it because she heard the sound of the cheap little door knocker. She was pale with anxiety when she opened the door and Lord Coombe saw her troubled look and understood its reason.

"I am afraid I have rather alarmed you, Dowie," he said as he stepped into the narrow lobby and shook hands with her.

"It's not bad news of her grace or Miss Robin?" she faltered.

"I have come to ask you to come back to London. Her grace is well but Miss Robin needs you," was what he said.

But Dowie knew the words did not tell her everything she was to hear. She took him into the parlour for which she realised he was much too tall. When she discreetly closed the door after he had entered, he said seriously, "Thank you," before he seated himself. And she knew that this meant that they must be undisturbed.

"Will you sit down too," he said as she stood a moment waiting respectfully. "We must talk together."

She took a chair opposite to him and waited respectfully again. Yes, he had something grave on his mind. He had come to tell her something—to ask her questions perhaps—to require something of her. Her superiors had often required things of her in the course of her experience—such things as they would not have asked of a less sensible and reliable woman. And she had always been ready.

When he began to talk to her he spoke as he always did, in a tone which sounded unemotional but held one's attention. But his face had changed since she had last seen it. It had aged and there was something different in the eyes. That was the War. Since the War began so many faces had altered.

During the years in the slice of a house he had never talked to her very much. It was with Mademoiselle he had talked and his interviews with her had not taken place in the nursery. How was it then that he seemed to know her so well. Had Mademoiselle told him that she was a woman to be trusted safely with any serious and intimate confidence—that being given any grave secret to shield, she would guard it as silently and discreetly as a great lady might guard such a thing if it were personal to her own family—as her grace herself might guard it. That he knew this fact without a shadow of doubt was subtly manifest in every word he spoke, in each tone of his voice. There was strange dark trouble to face—and keep secret—and he had come straight to her—Sarah Ann Dowson—because he was sure of her and knew her ways. It was her ways he knew and understood—her steadiness and that she had the kind of manners that keep a woman from talking about things and teach her how to keep other people from being too familiar and asking questions. And he knew what that kind of manners was built on—just decent faithfulness and honest feeling. He didn't say it in so many words, of course, but as Dowie listened it was exactly as if he said it in gentleman's language.

England was full of strange and cruel tragedies. And they were not all tragedies of battle and sudden death. Many of them were near enough to seem even worse—if worse could be. Dowie had heard some hints of them and had wondered what the world was coming to. As her visitor talked her heart began to thump in her side. Whatsoever had happened was no secret from her grace. And together she and his lordship were going to keep it a secret from the world. Dowie could scarcely have told what phrase or word at last suddenly brought up before her a picture of the nursery in the house in Mayfair—the feeling of a warm soft childish body pressed close to her knee, the look of a tender, dewy-eyed small face and the sound of a small yearning voice saying:

"I want to kiss you, Dowie." And so hearing it, Dowie's heart cried out to itself, "Oh! Dear Lord!"

"It's Miss Robin that trouble's come to," involuntarily broke from her.

"A trouble she must be protected in. She cannot protect herself." For a few seconds he sat and looked at her very steadily. It was as though he were asking a question. Dowie did not know she was going to rise from her chair. But for some reason she got up and stood quite firmly before him. And her good heart went thump-thump-thump.

"Your lordship," she said and in spite of the thumping her voice actually did not shake. "It was one of those War weddings. And perhaps he's dead."

Then it was Lord Coombe who left his chair.

"Thank you, Dowie," he said and before he began to walk up and down the tiny room she felt as if he made a slight bow to her.

She had said something that he had wished her to say. She had removed some trying barrier for him instead of obliging him to help her to cross it and perhaps stumbling on her way. She had neither stumbled nor clambered, she had swept it away out of his path and hers. That was because she knew Miss Robin and had known her from her babyhood.

Though for some time he walked to and fro slowly as he talked she saw that it was easier for him to complete the relation of his story. But as it proceeded it was necessary for her to make an effort to recall herself to a realisation of the atmosphere of the parlour and the narrow street outside the window—and she was glad to be assisted by the amiable rumble of Mr. Jenkinson's voice as heard from the back room when she found herself involuntarily leaning forward in her chair, vaguely conscious that she was drawing short breaths, as she listened to what he was telling her. The things she was listening to stood out from a background of unreality so startling. She was even faintly tormented by shadowy memories of a play she had seen years ago at Drury Lane. And Drury Lane incidents were of a world so incongruously remote from the house in Eaton Square and her grace's clever aquiline ivory face—and his lordship with his quiet bearing and his unromantic and elderly, tired fineness. And yet he was going to undertake to do a thing which was of the order of deed the sober everyday mind could only expect from the race of persons known as "heroes" in theatres and in books. And he was noticeably and wholly untheatrical about it. His plans were those of a farseeing and practical man in every detail. To Dowie the working perfection of his preparations was amazing. They included every contingency and seemed to forget nothing and ignore no possibility. He had thought of things the cleverest woman might have thought of, he had achieved effects as only a sensible man accustomed to power and obedience could have achieved them. And from first to last he kept before Dowie the one thing which held the strongest appeal. In her helpless heartbreak and tragedy Robin needed her as she needed no one else in the world.

"She is so broken and weakened that she may not live," he said in the end. "No one can care for her as you can."

"I can care for her, poor lamb. I'll come when your lordship's ready for me, be it soon or late."

"Thank you, Dowie," he said again. "It will be soon."

And when he shook hands with her and she opened the front door for him, she stood and watched him, thinking very deeply as he walked down the street with the wind-blown dust and scraps of paper whirling about him.



CHAPTER XXII

In little more than two weeks Dowie descended from her train in the London station and took a hansom cab which carried her through the familiar streets to Eaton Square. She was comforted somewhat by the mere familiarity of things—even by the grade of smoke which seemed in some way to be different from the smoke of Manchester's cotton factory chimneys—by the order of rattle and roar and rumble, which had a homelike sound. She had not felt at home in Manchester and she had not felt quite at home with Henrietta though she had done her duty by her. Their worlds had been far apart and daily adjustment to circumstances is not easy though it may be accomplished without the betrayal of any outward sign. His lordship's summons had come soon, as he had said it would, but he had made it possible for her to leave in the little house a steady and decent woman to take her place when she gave it up.

She had made her journey from the North with an anxiously heavy heart in her breast. She was going to "take on" a responsibility which included elements previously quite unknown to her. She was going to help to hide something, to live with a strange secret trouble and while she did so must wear her accustomed, respectable and decorous manner and aspect. Whatsoever alarmed or startled her, she must not seem to be startled or alarmed. As his lordship had carried himself with his usual bearing, spoken in his high-bred calm voice and not once failed in the naturalness of his expression—even when he had told her the whole strange plan—so she must in any circumstances which arose and in any difficult situation wear always the aspect of a well-bred and trained servant who knew nothing which did not concern her and did nothing which ordinary domestic service did not require that she should do. She must always seem to be only Sarah Ann Dowson and never forget. But delicate and unusual as this problem was, it was not the thing which made her heart heavy. Several times during her journey she had been obliged to turn her face towards the window of the railway carriage and away from her fellow passengers so that she might very quickly and furtively touch her eyes with her handkerchief because she did not want any one to see the tear which obstinately welled up in spite of her efforts to keep it back.

She had heard of "trouble" in good families, had even been related to it. She knew how awful it was and what desperate efforts were made, what desperate means resorted to, in the concealment of it. And how difficult and almost impossible it was to cope with it and how it seemed sometimes as if the whole fabric of society and custom combined to draw attention to mere trifles which in the end proved damning evidence.

And it was Miss Robin she was going to—her own Miss Robin who had never known a child of her own age or had a girl friend—who had been cut off from innocent youth and youth's happiness and intimacies.

"It's been one of those poor mad young war weddings," she kept saying to herself, "though no one will believe her. If she hadn't been so ignorant of life and so lonely! But just as she fell down worshipping that dear little chap in the Gardens because he was the first she'd ever seen—it's only nature that the first beautiful young thing her own age that looked at her with love rising up in him should set it rising in her—where God had surely put it if ever He put love as part of life in any girl creature His hand made. But Oh! I can see no one will believe her! The world's heart's so wicked. I know, poor lamb. Her Dowie knows. And her left like this!"

It was when her thoughts reached this point that the tear would gather in the corner of her eye and would have trickled down her cheek if she had not turned away towards the window.

But above all things she told herself she must present only Dowie's face when she reached Eaton Square. There were the servants who knew nothing and must know nothing but that Mrs. Dowson had come to take care of poor Miss Lawless who had worked too hard and was looking ill and was to be sent into the country to some retreat her grace had chosen because it was far enough away to allow of her being cut off from war news and work, if her attendants were faithful and firm. Every one knew Mrs. Dowson would be firm and faithful. Then there were the ladies who went in and out of the house in these days. If they saw her by any chance they might ask kind interested questions about the pretty creature they had liked. They might inquire as to symptoms, they might ask where she was to be taken to be nursed. Dowie knew that after she had seen Robin herself she could provide suitable symptoms and she knew, as she knew how to breathe and walk, exactly the respectful voice and manner in which she could make her replies and how natural she could cause it to appear that she had not yet been told their destination—her grace being still undecided. Dowie's decent intelligence knew the methods of her class and their value when perfectly applied. A nurse or a young lady's maid knew only what she was told and did not ask questions.

But what she thought of most anxiously was Robin herself. His lordship had given her no instructions. Part of his seeming to understand her was that he had seemed to be sure that she would know what to say and what to leave unsaid. She was glad of that because it left her free to think the thing over and make her own quiet plans. She drew more than one tremulous sigh as she thought it out. In the first place—little Miss Robin seemed like a baby to her yet! Oh, she was a baby! Little Miss Robin just in her teens and with her childish asking eyes and her soft childish mouth! Her a young married lady and needing to be taken care of! She was too young to be married—if it was ever so! And if everything had been done all right and proper with wedding cake and veil, orange blossoms and St. George's, Hanover Square, she still would have been too young and would have looked almost cruelly like a child. And at a time such as this Dowie would have known she was one to be treated with great delicacy and tender reserve. But as it was—a little shamed thing to be hidden away—to be saved from the worst of fates for any girl—with nothing in her hand to help her—how would it be wisest to face her, how could one best be a comfort and a help?

How the sensible and tender creature gave her heart and brain to her reflections! How she balanced one chance and one emotion against another! Her conclusion was, as Coombe had known it would be, drawn from the experience of practical wisdom and an affection as deep as the experience was broad.

"She won't be afraid of Dowie," she thought, "if it's just Dowie that looks at her exactly as she always did. In her little soul she may be frightened to death but if it's only Dowie she sees—not asking questions or looking curious and unnatural, she'll get over it and know she's got something to hold on to. What she needs is something she can hold on to—something that won't tremble when she does—and that looks at her in the way she was used to when she was happy and safe. What I must do with her is what I must do with the others—just look and talk and act as Dowie always did, however hard it is. Perhaps when we get away to the quiet place we're going to hide in, she may begin to want to talk to me. But not a question do I ask or look until she's ready to open her poor heart to me."

* * * * *

She had herself well under control when she reached her destination. She had bathed her face and freshened herself with a cup of hot tea at the station. She entered the house quite with her usual manner and was greeted with obvious welcome by her fellow servants. They had missed her and were glad to see her again. She reported herself respectfully to Mrs. James in the housekeeper's sitting room and they had tea again and a confidential talk.

"I'm glad you could leave your niece, Mrs. Dowson," the housekeeper said. "It's high time poor little Miss Lawless was sent away from London. She's not fit for war work now or for anything but lying in bed in a quiet place where she can get fresh country air and plenty of fresh eggs, and good milk and chicken broth. And she needs a motherly woman like you to watch her carefully."

"Does she look as delicate as all that?" said Dowie concernedly.

"She'll lie in the graveyard in a few months if something's not done. I've seen girls look like her before this." And Mrs. James said it almost sharply.

But even with this preparation and though Lord Coombe had spoken seriously of the state of the girl's health, Dowie was not ready to encounter without a fearful sense of shock what she confronted a little later when she went to Robin's sitting room as she was asked to.

When she tapped upon the door and in response to a faint sounding "Come in" entered the pretty place, Robin rose from her seat by the fire and came towards her holding out her arms.

"I'm so glad you came, Dowie dear," she said, "I'm so glad." She put the arms close round Dowie's neck and kissed her and held her cheek against the comfortable warm one a moment before she let go. "I'm so glad, dear," she murmured and it was even as she felt the arms close about her neck and the cheek press hers that Dowie caught her breath and held it so that she might not seem to gasp. They were such thin frail arms, the young body on which the dress hung loose was only a shadow of the round slimness which had been so sweet.

But it was when the arm released her and they stood apart and looked at each other that she felt the shock in full force while Robin continued her greetings.

"Did you leave Henrietta and the children quite well?" she was saying. "Is the new baby a pretty one?"

Dowie had not been one of those who had seen the gradual development of the physical change in her. It came upon her suddenly. She had left a young creature all softly rounded girlhood, sweet curves and life glow and bloom. She found herself holding a thin hand and looking into a transparent, sharpened small face whose eyes were hollowed. The silk of the curls on the forehead had a dankness and lifelessness which almost made her catch her breath again. Like Mrs. James she herself had more than once had the experience of watching young creatures slip into what the nurses of her day called "rapid decline" and she knew all the piteous portents of the early stages—the waxen transparency of sharpened features and the damp clinging hair. These two last were to her mind the most significant of the early terrors.

And in less than five minutes she knew that the child was not going to talk about herself and that she had been right in making up her own mind to wait. Whatsoever the strain of silence, there would be no speech now. The piteous darkness of her eye held a stillness that was heart-breaking. It was a stillness of such touching endurance of something inevitable. Whatsoever had happened to her, whatsoever was going to happen to her, she would make no sound. She would outwardly be affectionate, pretty-mannered Miss Robin just as Dowie herself would give all her strength to trying to seem to be nothing and nobody but Dowie. And what it would cost of effort to do it well!

When they sat down together it was because she drew Robin by the thin little hand to an easy chair and she still held the thin hand when she sat near her.

"Henrietta's quite well, I'm glad to say," she answered. "And the baby's a nice plump little fellow. I left them very comfortable—and I think in time Henrietta will be married again."

"Married again!" said Robin. "Again!"

"He's a nice well-to-do man and he's fond of her and he's fond of children. He's never had any and he's always wanted them."

"Has he?" Robin murmured. "That's very nice for Henrietta." But there was a shadow in her eyes which was rather like frightened bewilderment.

Dowie still holding the mere nothing of a hand, stroked and patted it now and then as she described Mr. Jenkinson and the children and the life in the house in Manchester. She wanted to gain time and commonplace talk helped her.

"She won't be married again until her year's up," she explained. "And it's the best thing she could do—being left a young widow with children and nothing to live on. Mr. Jenkinson can give her more than she's ever had in the way of comforts."

"Did she love poor Jem very much?" Robin asked.

"She was very much taken with him in her way when she married him," Dowie said. "He was a cheerful, joking sort of young man and girls like Henrietta like jokes and fun. But they were neither of them romantic and it had begun to be a bit hard when the children came. She'll be very comfortable with Mr. Jenkinson and being comfortable means being happy—to Henrietta."

Then Robin smiled a strange little ghost of a smile—but there were no dimples near it.

"You haven't told me that I am thin, Dowie," she said. "I know I am thin, but it doesn't matter. And I am glad you kissed me first. That made me sure that you were Dowie and not only a dream. Everything has been seeming as if it were a dream—everything—myself—everybody—even you—you!" And the small hand clutched her hard.

A large lump climbed into Dowie's throat but she managed it bravely.

"It's no use telling people they're thin," she answered with stout good cheer. "It doesn't help to put flesh on them. And there are a good many young ladies working themselves thin in these days. You're just one of them that's going to be taken care of. I'm not a dream, Miss Robin, my dear. I'm just your own Dowie and I'm going to take care of you as I did when you were six."

She actually felt the bones of the small hand as it held her own still closer. It began to tremble because Robin had begun to tremble. But though she was trembling and her eyes looked very large and frightened, the silence was still deep within them.

"Yes," the low voice faltered, "you will take care of me. Thank you, Dowie dear. I—must let people take care of me. I know that. I am like Henrietta."

And that was all.

* * * * *

"She's very much changed, your grace," Dowie said breathlessly when she went to the Duchess afterwards. There had been no explanation or going into detail but she knew that she might allow herself to be breathless when she stood face to face with her grace. "Does she cough? Has she night sweats? Has she any appetite?"

"She does not cough yet," the Duchess answered, but her grave eyes were as troubled as Dowie's own. "Doctor Redcliff will tell you everything. He will see you alone. We are sending her away with you because you love her and will know how to take care of her. We are very anxious."

"Your grace," Dowie faltered and one of the tears she had forced back when she was in the railway carriage rose insubordinately and rolled down her cheek, "just once I nursed a young lady who—looked as she does now. I did my best with all my heart, the doctors did their best, everybody that loved her did their best—and there were a good many. We watched over her for six months."

"Six months?" the Duchess' voice was an unsteady thing.

"At the end of six months we laid her away in a pretty country churchyard, with flowers heaped all over her—and her white little hands full of them. And she hadn't—as much to contend with—as Miss Robin has."

And in the minute of dead silence which followed more tears fell. No one tried to hold them back and some of them were the tears of the old Duchess.



CHAPTER XXIII

There are old and forgotten churches in overgrown corners of London whose neglected remoteness suggests the possibility of any ecclesiastical ceremony being performed quite unobserved except by the parties concerned in it. If entries and departures were discreetly arranged, a baptismal or a marriage ceremony might take place almost as in a tomb. A dark wet day in which few pass by and such as pass are absorbed in their own discomforts beneath their umbrellas, offers a curiously entire aloofness of seclusion. In the neglected graveyards about them there is no longer any room to bury any one in the damp black earth where the ancient tombs are dark with mossy growth and mould, heavy broken slabs slant sidewise perilously, sad and thin cats prowl, and from a soot-blackened tree or so the rain drops with hollow, plashing sounds.

The rain was so plashing and streaming in rivulets among the mounds and stones of the burial ground of one of the most ancient and forgotten looking of such churches, when on a certain afternoon there came to the narrow soot-darkened Vicarage attached to it a tall, elderly man who wished to see and talk to the Vicar.

The Vicar in question was an old clergyman who had spent nearly fifty years in the silent, ecclesiastical-atmosphered small house. He was an unmarried man whose few relatives living in the far North of England were too poor and unenterprising to travel to London. His days were spent in unsatisfactory work among crowded and poverty-stricken human creatures before whom he felt helpless because he was an unpractical old Oxford bookworm. He read such services as he held in his dim church, to empty pews and echoing hollowness. He was nevertheless a deeply thinking man who was a gentleman of a scarcely remembered school; he was a peculiarly silent man and of dignified understanding. Through the long years he had existed in detached seclusion in his corner of his world around which great London roared and swept almost unheard by him in his remoteness.

When the visitor's card was brought to him where he sat in his dingy, book-packed study, he stood—after he had told his servant to announce the caller—gazing dreamily at the name upon the white surface. It was a stately name and brought back vague memories. Long ago—very long ago, he seemed to recall that he had slightly known the then bearer of it. He himself had been young then—quite young. The man he had known was dead and this one, his successor, must by this time have left youth behind him. What had led him to come?

Then the visitor was shown into the study. The Vicar felt that he was a man of singular suggestions. His straight build, his height, his carriage arrested the attention and the clear cut of his cold face held it. One of his marked suggestions was that there was unusual lack of revelation in his rather fine almond eye. It might have revealed much but its intention was to reveal nothing but courteous detachment from all but well-bred approach to the demand of the present moment.

"I think I remember seeing you when you were a boy, Lord Coombe," the Vicar said. "My father was rector of St. Andrews." St. Andrews was the Norman-towered church on the edge of the park enclosing Coombe Keep.

"I came to you because I also remembered that," was Coombe's reply.

Their meeting was a very quiet one. But every incident of life was quiet in the Vicarage. Only low sounds were ever heard, only almost soundless movements made. The two men seated themselves and talked calmly while the rain pattered on the window panes and streaming down them seemed to shut out the world.

What the Vicar realised was that, since his visitor had announced that he had come because he remembered their old though slight acquaintance, he had obviously come for some purpose to which the connection formed a sort of support or background. This man, whose modernity of bearing and externals seemed to separate them by a lifetime of experience, clearly belonged to the London which surrounded and enclosed his own silences with civilised roar and the tumult of swift passings. On the surface the small, dingy book-crammed study obviously held nothing this outer world could require. The Vicar said as much courteously and he glanced round the room as he spoke, gently smiling.

"But it is exactly this which brings me," Lord Coombe answered.

With great clearness and never raising the note of quiet to which the walls were accustomed, he made his explanation. He related no incidents and entered into no detail. When he had at length concluded the presentation of his desires, his hearer knew nothing whatever, save what was absolutely necessary, of those concerned in the matter. Utterly detached from all curiosities as he was, this crossed the Vicar's mind. There was a marriage ceremony to be performed. That only the contracting parties should be aware of its performance was absolutely necessary. That there should be no chance of opportunity given for question or comment was imperative. Apart from this the legality of the contract was all that concerned those entering into it; and that must be assured beyond shadow of possible doubt.

In the half-hidden and forgotten old church to which the Vicarage was attached such a ceremony could obviously be performed, and to an incumbent detached from the outer world, as it were, and one who was capable of comprehending the occasional gravity of reasons for silence, it could remain so long as was necessary a confidence securely guarded.

"It is possible," the Vicar said at the end of the explanation. "I have performed the ceremony before under somewhat similar circumstances."

A man of less breeding and with even normal curiosities might have made the mistake of asking innocent questions. He asked none except such as related to the customary form of procedure in such matters. He did not, in fact, ask questions of himself. He was also fully aware that Lord Coombe would have given no answer to any form of inquiry. The marriage was purely his own singular affair. It was he himself who chose in this way to be married—in a forgotten church in whose shadowy emptiness the event would be as a thing brought to be buried unseen and unmarked by any stone, but would yet be a contract binding in the face and courts of the world if it should for any reason be exhumed.

When he rose to go and the Vicar rose with him, there was a moment of pause which was rather curious. The men's eyes met and for a few moments rested upon each other. The Vicar's were still and grave, but there was a growth of deep feeling in them. This suggested a sort of profound human reflection.

Lord Coombe's expression itself changed a shade. It might perhaps be said that his eyes had before this moment scarcely seemed to hold expression.

"She is very young," he said in an unusual voice. "In this—holocaust—she needs protection. I can protect her."

"It is a holocaust," the Vicar said, "—a holocaust." And singularly the words seemed an answer.

* * * * *

On a morning of one of London's dark days when the rain was again splashing and streaming in rivulets among the mounds and leaning and tumbling stones of the forgotten churchyard, there came to the church three persons who if they had appeared in more frequented edifices would have attracted some attention without doubt, unnoticeably as they were dressed and inconspicuous as was their manner and bearing.

They did not all three present themselves at the same time. First there appeared the tall elderly man who had visited and conferred with the Vicar. He went at once to the vestry where he spent some time with the incumbent who awaited him.

Somewhat later there stepped through the little arched doorway a respectable looking elderly woman and a childlike white-faced girl in a close black frock. That the church looked to them so dark as to be almost black with shadows was manifest when they found themselves inside peering into the dimness. The outer darkness seemed to have crowded itself through the low doorway to fill the groined arches with gloom.

"Where must we go to, Dowie?" Robin whispered holding to the warm, stout arm.

"Don't be timid, my dearie," Dowie whispered back. "His lordship will be ready for us now we've come."

His lordship was ready. He came forward to meet them and when he did so, Robin knew—though he seemed to be part of the dimness and to come out of a dream—that she need feel no further uncertainties or fears. That which was to take place would move forward without let or hindrance to its end. That was what one always felt in his presence.

In a few minutes they were standing in a part of the church which would have seemed darker than any other shadow-filled corner but that a dim light burned on a small altar and a clergyman whose white vestments made him look wraithlike and very tall waited before it and after a few moments of solemn silence began to read from the prayer book he held in his hand.

There were strange passings and repassings through Robin's mind as she made her low responses—memories of the hours when she had asked herself if she were still alive—if she were not dead as Donal was, but walking about without having found it out. It was as though this must be true now and her own voice and Lord Coombe's and the clergyman's only ghosts' voices. They were so low and unlike real voices and when they floated away among the shadows, low ghastly echoes seemed to float with them.

"I will," she heard herself say, and also other things the clergyman told her to repeat after him and when Lord Coombe spoke she could scarcely understand because it was all like a dream and did not matter.

Once she turned so cold and white and trembled so that Dowie made an involuntary movement towards her, but Lord Coombe's quiet firmness held her swaying body and though the clergyman paused a moment the trembling passed away and the ceremony went on. She had begun to tremble because she remembered that the other marriage had seemed like a dream in another world than this—a world which was so alive that she had trembled and thrilled with exquisite living. And because Donal knew how frightened she was he had stood so close to her that she had felt the dear warmness of his body. And he had held her hand quite tight when he took it and his "I will" had been beautiful and clear. And when he had put on the borrowed ring he had drawn her eyes up to the blue tarn of his own. Donal was killed! Perhaps the young chaplain had been killed too. And she was being married to Lord Coombe who was an old man and did not stand close to her, whose hand scarcely held hers at all—but who was putting on a ring.

Her eyes—her hunted young doe's eyes—lifted themselves. Lord Coombe met them and understood. Strangely she knew he understood—that he knew what she was thinking about. For that one moment there came into his eyes a look which might not have been his own, and vaguely she knew that it held strange understanding and he was sorry for her—and for Donal and for everything in the world.



CHAPTER XXIV

The little feudal fastness in the Highlands which was called Darreuch Castle—when it was mentioned by any one, which was rarely—had been little more than a small ruin when Lord Coombe inherited it as an unconsidered trifle among more imposing and available property. It had indeed presented the aspect not so much of an asset as of an entirely useless relic. The remote and—as far as record dwelt on him—obviously unnotable ancestor who had built it as a stronghold in an almost unreachable spot upon the highest moors had doubtlessly had picturesque reasons for the structure, but these were lost in the dim past and appeared on the surface, unexplainable to a modern mind. Lord Coombe himself had not explained an interest he chose to feel in it, or his own reasons for repairing it a few years after it came into his possession. He rebuilt certain breaches in the walls and made certain rooms sufficiently comfortable to allow of his spending a few nights or weeks in it at rare intervals. He always went alone, taking no servant with him, and made his retreat after his own mood, served only by the farmer and his wife who lived in charge from year's end to year's end, herding a few sheep and cultivating a few acres for their own needs.

They were a silent pair without children and plainly not feeling the lack of them. They had lived in remote moorland places since their birth. They had so little to say to each other that Lord Coombe sometimes felt a slight curiosity as to why they had married instead of remaining silent singly. There was however neither sullenness nor resentment in their lack of expression. Coombe thought they liked each other but found words unnecessary. Jock Macaur driving his sheep to fold in the westering sun wore the look of a man not unpleased with life and at least undisturbed by it. Maggy Macaur doing her housework, churning or clucking to her hens, was peacefully cheerful and seemed to ask no more of life than food and sleep and comfortable work which could be done without haste. There were no signs of knowledge on her part or Jock's of the fact that they were surrounded by wonders of moorland and hillside colour and beauty. Sunrise which leaped in delicate flames of dawn meant only that they must leave their bed; sunset which lighted the moorland world with splendour meant that a good night's sleep was coming.

Jock had heard from a roaming shepherd or so that the world was at war and that lads were being killed in their thousands. One good man had said that the sons of the great gentry were being killed with the rest. Jock did not say that he did not believe it and in fact expressed no opinion at all. If he and Maggy gave credit to the story, they were little disturbed by any sense of its reality. They had no neighbours and their few stray kinfolk lived at remote distances and were not given to visits or communications. There had been vague rumours of far away wars in the years past, but they had assumed no more reality than legends. This war was a shadow too and after Jock came home one night and mentioned it as he might have mentioned the death of a cow or the buying of a moor pony the subject was forgotten by both.

"His lordship" it was who reminded them of it. He even bestowed upon the rumour a certain reality. He appeared at the stout little old castle one day without having sent them warning, which was unusual. He came to give some detailed orders and to instruct them in the matter of changes. He had shown forethought in bringing with him a selection of illustrated newspapers. This saved time and trouble in the matter of making the situation clear. The knowledge which conveyed itself to Maggy and Jock produced the effect of making them even more silent than usual if such a condition were possible. They stared fixedly and listened with respect but beyond a rare "Hech!" they had no opinion to express. It became plain that the war was more than a mere rumour— The lads who had been blown to bits or bayoneted! The widows and orphans that were left! Some of the youngest of the lads had lost their senses and married young things only to go off to the ill place folk called "The Front" and leave them widows in a few days' or weeks' time. There were hundreds of bits of girls left lonely waiting for their bairns to come into the world—Some with scarce a penny unless friends took care of them. There was a bit widow in her teens who was a distant kinswoman of his lordship's, and her poor lad was among those who were killed. He had been a fine lad and he would never see his bairn. The poor young widow had been ill with grief and the doctors said she must be hidden away in some quiet place where she would never hear of battles or see a newspaper. She must be kept in peace and taken great care of if she was to gain strength to live through her time. She had no family to watch over her and his lordship and an old lady who was fond of her had taken her trouble in hand. The well-trained woman who had nursed her as a child would bring her to Darreuch Castle and there would stay.

His lordship had been plainly much interested in the long time past when he had put the place in order for his own convenience. Now he seemed even more interested and more serious. He went from room to room with a grave face and looked things over carefully. He had provided himself with comforts and even luxuries before his first coming and they had been of the solid baronial kind which does not deteriorate. It was a little castle and a forgotten one, but his rooms had beauty and had not been allowed to be as gloomy as they might have been if stone walls and black oak had not been warmed by the rich colours of tapestry and pictures which held light and glow. But other things were coming from London. He himself would wait to see them arrive and installed. The Macaurs wondered what more the "young leddy" and her woman could want but took their orders obediently. Her woman's name was Mrs. Dowson and she was a quiet decent body who would manage the household. That the young widow was to be well taken care of was evident. A doctor was to ride up the moorland road each day to see her, which seemed a great precaution even though the Macaurs did not know that he had consented to live temporarily in the locality because he had been well paid to do so. Lord Coombe had chosen him with as discreet selection as he had used in his choice of the vicar of the ancient and forsaken church. A rather young specialist who was an enthusiast in his work and as ambitious as he was poor, could contemplate selling some months of his time for value received if the terms offered were high enough. That silence and discretion were required formed no objections.

* * * * *

The rain poured down on the steep moorland road when the carriage slowly climbed it to the castle. Robin, seeming to gaze out at the sodden heath, did not really see it because she was thinking of Dowie who sat silently by her side. Dowie had taken her from the church to the station and they had made the long journey together. They had talked very little in the train though Dowie had been tenderly careful and kind. Robin knew she would ask no questions and she dully felt that the blows which were falling on everybody every day must have stunned her also. What she herself was thinking as she seemed to gaze at the sodden heather was a thing of piteous and helpless pain. She was achingly wondering what Dowie was thinking—what she knew and what she thought of the girl she had taken such care of and who was being sent away to be hidden in a ruined castle whose existence was a forgotten thing. The good respectable face told nothing but it seemed to be trying to keep itself from looking too serious; and once Robin had thought that it looked as if Dowie might suddenly have broken down if she would have allowed herself but she would not allow herself.

The truth was that the two or three days at Eaton Square had been very hard for Dowie to manage perfectly. To play her accepted part before her fellow servants required much steady strength. They were all fond of "poor little Miss Lawless" and had the tendency of their class to discuss and dwell upon symptoms with sympathetic harrowingness of detail. It seemed that all of them had had some friend or relative who had "gone off in a quick decline. It's strange how many young people do!" A head housemaid actually brought her heart into her throat one afternoon by saying at the servants' hall tea:

"If she was one of the war brides, I should say she was just like my cousin Lucy—poor girl. She and her husband were that fond of each other that it was a pleasure to see them. He was killed in an accident. She was expecting. And they'd been that happy. She went off in three months. She couldn't live without him. She wasn't as pretty as Miss Lawless, of course, but she had big brown eyes and it was the way they looked that reminded me. Quick decline always makes people's eyes look big and—just as poor little Miss Lawless does."

To sit and eat buttered toast quietly and only look normally sad and slowly shake one's head and say, "Yes indeed. I know what you mean, Miss Tompkins," was an achievement entitled to much respect.

The first night Dowie had put her charge to bed and had seen the faint outline under the bedclothes and the sunken eyes under the pale closed lids whose heaviness was so plain because it was a heaviness which had no will to lift itself again and look at the morning, she could scarcely bear her woe. As she dressed the child when morning came and saw the delicate bones sharply denoting themselves, and the hollows in neck and throat where smooth fairness had been, her hands almost shook as she touched. And hardest of all to bear was the still, patient look in the enduring eyes. She was being patient—patient, poor lamb, and only God himself knew how she cried when she was left alone in her white bed, the door closed between her and all the house.

"Does she think I am wicked?" was what was passing through Robin's mind as the carriage climbed the moor through the rain. "It would break my heart if Dowie thought I was wicked. But even that does not matter. It is only my heart."

In memory she was looking again into Donal's eyes as he had looked into hers when he knelt before her in the wood. Afterwards he had kissed her dress and her feet when she said she would go with him to be married so that he could have her for his own before he went away to be killed.

It would have been his heart that would have been broken if she had said "No" instead of whispering the soft "Yes" of a little mating bird, which had always been her answer when he had asked anything of her.

When the carriage drew up at last before the entrance to the castle, the Macaurs awaited them with patient respectful faces. They saw the "decent body" assist with care the descent of a young thing the mere lift of whose eyes almost caused both of them to move a trifle backward.

"You and Dowie are going to take care of me," she said quiet and low and with a childish kindness. "Thank you."

She was taken to a room in whose thick wall Lord Coombe had opened a window for sunlight and the sight of hill and heather. It was a room warm and full of comfort—a strange room to find in a little feudal stronghold hidden from the world. Other rooms were near it, as comfortable and well prepared. One in a tower adjoining was hung with tapestry and filled with wonderful old things, uncrowded and harmonious and so arranged as to produce the effect of a small retreat for rest, the reading of books or refuge in stillness.

When Robin went into it she stood for a few moments looking about her—looking and wondering.

"Lord Coombe remembers everything," she said very slowly at last, "—everything. He remembers."

"He always did remember," said Dowie watching her. "That's it."

"I did not know—at first," Robin said as slowly as before. "I do—now."

In the evening she sat long before the fire and Dowie, sewing near her, looked askance now and then at her white face with the lost eyes. It was Dowie's own thought that they were "lost." She had never before seen anything like them. She could not help glancing sideways at them as they gazed into the red glow of the coal. What was her mind dwelling on? Was she thinking of words to say? Would she begin to feel that they were far enough from all the world—remote and all alone enough for words not to be sounds too terrible to hear even as they were spoken?

"Oh! dear Lord," Dowie prayed, "help her to ease her poor, timid young heart that's so crushed with cruel weight."

"You must go to bed early, my dear," she said at length. "But why don't you get a book and read?"

The lost eyes left the fire and met hers.

"I want to talk," Robin said. "I want to ask you things."

"I'll tell you anything you want to know," answered Dowie. "You're only a child and you need an older woman to talk to."

"I want to talk to you about—me," said Robin. She sat straight in her chair, her hands clasped on her knee. "Do you know about—me, Dowie?" she asked.

"Yes, my dear," Dowie answered.

"Tell me what Lord Coombe told you."

Dowie put down her sewing because she was afraid her hands would tremble when she tried to find the proper phrase in which to tell as briefly as she could the extraordinary story.

"He said that you were married to a young gentleman who was killed at the Front—and that because you were both so young and hurried and upset you perhaps hadn't done things as regular as you thought. And that you hadn't the papers you ought to have for proof. And it might take too much time to search for them now. And—and—Oh, my love, he's a good man, for all you've hated him so! He won't let a child be born with shame to blight it. And he's given you and it—poor helpless innocent—his own name, God bless him!"

Robin sat still and straight, with clasped hands on her knee, and her eyes more lost than before, as she questioned Dowie remorselessly. There was something she must know.

"He said—and the Duchess said—that no one would believe me if I told them I was married. Do you believe me, Dowie? Would Mademoiselle believe me—if she is alive—for Oh! I believe she is dead! Would you both believe me?"

Dowie's work fell upon the rug and she held out both her comfortable nursing arms, choking:

"Come here, my lamb," she cried out, with suddenly streaming eyes. "Come and sit on your old Dowie's knee like you used to do in the nursery."

"You do believe me—you do!" As she had looked in the nursery days—the Robin who left her chair and was swept into the well known embrace—looked now. She hid her face on Dowie's shoulder and clung to her with shaking hands.

"I prayed to Jesus Christ that you would believe me, Dowie!" she cried. "And that Mademoiselle would come if she is not killed. I wanted you to know that it was true—I wanted you to know!"

"That was it, my pet lamb!" Dowie kept hugging her to her breast "We'd both of us know! We know you—we do! No one need prove things to us. We know!"

"It frightened me so to think of asking you," shivered Robin. "When you came to Eaton Square I could not bear it. If your dear face had looked different I should have died. But I couldn't go to bed to-night without finding out. The Duchess and Lord Coombe are very kind and sorry for me and they say they believe me—but I can't feel sure they really do. And nobody else would. But you and Mademoiselle. You loved me always and I loved you. And I prayed you would."

Dowie knew how Mademoiselle had died—of the heap of innocent village people on which she had fallen bullet-riddled. But she said nothing of her knowledge.

"Mademoiselle would say what I do and she would stay and take care of you as I'm going to do," she faltered. "God bless you for asking me straight out, my dear! I was waiting for you to speak and praying you'd do it before I went to bed myself. I couldn't have slept a wink if you hadn't."

For a space they sat silent—Robin on her knee like a child drooping against her warm breast. Outside was the night stillness of the moor, inside the night stillness held within the thick walls of stone rooms and passages, in their hearts the stillness of something which yet waited—unsaid.

At last—

"Did Lord Coombe tell you who—he was, Dowie?"

"He said perhaps you would tell me yourself—if you felt you'd like me to know. He said it was to be as you chose."

Robin fumbled with a thin hand at the neck of her dress. She drew from it a chain with a silk bag attached. Out of the bag she took first a small folded package.

"Do you remember the dry leaves I wanted to keep when I was so little?" she whispered woefully. "I was too little to know how to save them. And you made me this tiny silk bag."

Dowie's face was almost frightened as she drew back to look. There was in her motherly soul the sudden sense of panic she had felt in the nursery so long ago.

"My blessed child!" she breathed. "Not that one—after all that time!"

"Yes," said Robin. "Look, Dowie—look."

She had taken a locket out of the silk bag and she opened it and Dowie looked.

Perhaps any woman would have felt what she felt when she saw the face which seemed to laugh rejoicing into hers, as if Life were such a supernal thing—as if it were literally the blessed gift of God as all the ages have preached to us even while they have railed at the burden of living and called it cruel nothingness. The radiance in the eyes' clearness, the splendid strength and joy in being, could have built themselves into nothing less than such beauty as this.

Dowie looked at it in dead silence, her breast heaving fast.

"Oh! blessed God!" she broke out with a gasp. "Did they kill—that!"

"Yes," said Robin, her voice scarcely more than a breath, "Donal."



CHAPTER XXV

Dowie put her to bed as she had done when she was a child, feeling as if the days in the nursery had come back again. She saw gradually die out of the white face the unnatural restraint which she had grieved over. It had suggested the look of a girl who was not only desolate but afraid and she wondered how long she had worn it and what she had been most afraid of.

In the depths of her comfortable being there lay hidden a maternal pleasure in the nature of her responsibility. She had cared for young mothers before, and that she should be called to watch over Robin, whose child forlornness she had rescued, filled her heart with a glowing. As she moved about the room quietly preparing for the comfort of the night she knew that the soft dark of the lost eyes followed her and that it was not quite so lost as it had looked in the church and on their singularly silent journey.

When her work was done and she turned to the bed again Robin's arms were held out to her.

"I want to kiss you, Dowie—I want to kiss you," she said with just the yearning dwelling on the one word, which had so moved the good soul long ago with its innocent suggestion of tender reverence for some sacred rite.

Dowie hurriedly knelt by the bedside.

"Never you be frightened, my lamb—because you're so young and don't know things," she whispered, holding her as if she were a baby. "Never you let yourself be frightened for a moment. Your own Dowie's here and always will be—and Dowie knows all about it."

"Until you took me on your knee to-night," very low and in broken phrases, "I was so lonely. I was as lonely as I used to be in the old nursery before you and Mademoiselle came. Afterwards—" with a shudder, "there were so many long, long nights. There—always—will be so many. One after every day. I lie in my bed in the dark. And there is Nothing! Oh! Dowie, let me tell you!" her voice was a sweet longing wail. "When Donal came back all the world was full and shining and warm! It was full. There was no loneliness anywhere. We wanted nothing but each other. And when he was gone there was only emptiness! And I was not alive and I could not think. I can scarcely think now."

"You'll begin to think soon, my lamb," Dowie whispered. "You've got something to think of. After a while the emptiness won't be so big and black."

She ventured it very carefully. Her wise soul knew that the Emptiness must come first—the awful world-old Emptiness which for an endless-seeming time nothing can fill— And all smug preachers of the claims of life and duty must be chary of approaching those who stand desolate gazing into it.

"I could only remember," the broken heart-wringing voice went on. "And it seemed as if the remembering was killing me over and over again— It is like that now. But in the Wood Lord Coombe said something strange—which seemed to make me begin to think a little. Only it was like beginning to try to write with a broken arm. I can't go on—I can only think of Donal— And be lonely—lonely—lonely."

The very words—the mere sound of them in her own ears made her voice trail away into bitter helpless crying—which would not stop. It was the awful weeping of utter woe and weakness whose convulsive sobs go on and on until they almost cease to seem human sounds. Dowie's practical knowledge told her what she had to face. This was what she had guessed at when she had known that there had been crying in the night. Mere soothing of the tenderest would not check it.

"I had been lonely—always— And then the loneliness was gone. And then—! If it had never gone—!"

"I know, my dear, I know," said Dowie watching her with practised, anxious eye. And she went away for a few moments and came back with an unobtrusive calming draught and coaxed her into taking it and sat down and prayed as she held the little hands which unknowingly beat upon the pillow. Something of her steadiness and love flowed from her through her own warm restraining palms and something in her tender steady voice spoke for and helped her—though it seemed long and long before the cruelty of the storm had lessened and the shadow of a body under the bed-clothes lay deadly still and the heavy eyelids closed as if they would never lift again.

Dowie did not leave her for an hour or more but sat by her bedside and watched. Like this had been the crying in the night. And she had been alone.

* * * * *

As she sat and watched she thought deeply after her lights. She did not think only of the sweet shattered thing she so well loved. She thought much of Lord Coombe. Being a relic of a class which may be regarded as forever extinct, her views on the subject of the rights and responsibilities of rank were of an unswerving reverence verging on the feudal. Even in early days her perfection of type was rare. To her unwavering mind the remarkable story she had become a part of was almost august in its subjection of ordinary views to the future of a great house and its noble name. With the world falling to pieces and great houses crumbling into nothingness, that this one should be rescued from the general holocaust was a deed worthy of its head. But where was there another man who would have done this thing as he had done it—remaining totally indifferent to the ignominy which would fall upon his memory in the years to come when the marriage was revealed. That the explanation of his action would always be believed to be an unseemly and shameful one was to her respectable serving-class mind a bitter thing. That it would always be contemptuously said that a vicious elderly man had educated the daughter of his mistress, that he might marry her and leave an heir of her blooming youth, was almost worse than if he had been known to have committed some decent crime like honest murder. Even the servants' hall in the slice of a house, discussing the ugly whisper had somewhat revolted at it and thought it "a bit too steep even for these times." But he had plainly looked the whole situation in the face and had made up his mind to do what he had done. He hadn't cared for himself; he had only cared that the child who was to be born should be his legitimatised successor and that there should remain after him a Head of the House of Coombe. That such houses should have heads to succeed to their dignities was a simple reverential belief of Dowie's and—apart from all other feeling—the charge she had undertaken wore to her somewhat the aspect of a religious duty. His lordship was as one who had a place on a sort of altar.

"It's because he's so high in his way that he can bear it," was her thought. "He's so high that nothing upsets him. He's above things—that's what he is." And there was something else too—something she did not quite follow but felt vaguely moved by. What was happening to England came into it—and something else that was connected with himself in some way that was his own affair. In his long talk with her he had said some strange things—though all in his own way.

"Howsoever the tide of war turns, men and women will be needed as the world never needed them before," was one of them. "This one small unknown thing I want. It will be the child of my old age. I want it. Her whole being has been torn to pieces. Dr. Redcliff says that she might have died before this if her delicate body had not been stronger than it looks."

"She has never been ill, my lord," Dowie had answered, "—but she is ill now."

"Save her—save it for me," he broke out in a voice she had never heard and with a face she had never seen.

That in this plainly overwrought hour he should allow himself a moment of forgetfulness drew him touchingly near to her.

"My lord," she said, "I've watched over her since she was five. I know the ways young things in her state need to have about them to give them strength and help. Thank the Lord she's one of the loving ones and if we can hold her until she—wakes up to natural feelings she'll begin to try to live for the sake of what'll need her—and what's his as well as hers."

Of this she thought almost religiously as she sat by the bedside and watched.



CHAPTER XXVI

The doctor rode up the climbing moorland road the next morning and paid a long visit to his patient. He was not portentous in manner and he did not confine his conversation to the subject of symptoms. He however included something of subtle cross examination in his friendly talk. The girl's thinness, her sometimes panting breath and the hollow eyes made larger by the black ring of her lashes startled him on first sight of her. He found that the smallness of her appetite presented to Dowie a grave problem.

"I'm trying to coax good milk into her by degrees. She does her best. But she can't eat." When they were alone she said, "I shall keep her windows open and make her rest on her sofa near them. I shall try to get her to walk out with me if her strength will let her. We can go slowly and she'll like the moor. If we could stop the awful crying in the night— It's been shaking her to pieces for weeks and weeks— It's the kind that there's no checking when it once begins. It's beyond her poor bit of strength to hold it back. I saw how hard she tried—for my sake. It's the crying that's most dangerous of all."

"Nothing could be worse," the doctor said and he went away with a grave face, a deeply troubled man.

When Dowie went back to the Tower room she found Robin standing at a window looking out on the moorside. She turned and spoke and Dowie saw that intuition had told her what had been talked about.

"I will try to be good, Dowie," she said. "But it comes—it comes because—suddenly I know all over again that I can never see him any more. If I could only see him—even a long way off! But suddenly it all comes back that I can never see him again—Never!"

Later she begged Dowie not to come to her in the night if she heard sounds in her room.

"It will not hurt you so much if you don't see me," she said. "I'm used to being by myself. When I was at Eaton Square I used to hide my face deep in the pillow and press it against my mouth. No one heard. But no one was listening as you will be. Don't come in, Dowie darling. Please don't!"

All she wanted, Dowie found out as the days went by, was to be quiet and to give no trouble. No other desires on earth had been left to her. Her life had not taught her to want many things. And now—:

"Oh! please don't be unhappy! If I could only keep you from being unhappy—until it is over!" she broke out all unconsciously one day. And then was smitten to the heart by the grief in Dowie's face.

That was the worst of it all and sometimes caused Dowie's desperate hope and courage to tremble on the brink of collapse. The child was thinking that before her lay the time when it would be "all over."

A patient who held to such thoughts as her hidden comfort did not give herself much chance.

Sometimes she lay for long hours on the sofa by the open window but sometimes a restlessness came upon her and she wandered about the empty rooms of the little castle as though she were vaguely searching for something which was not there. Dowie furtively followed her at a distance knowing that she wanted to be alone. The wide stretches of the moor seemed to draw her. At times she stood gazing at them out of a window, sometimes she sat in a deep window seat with her hands lying listlessly upon her lap but with her eyes always resting on the farthest line of the heather. Once she sat thus so long that Dowie crept out of the empty stone chamber where she had been waiting and went and stood behind her. At first Robin did not seem conscious of her presence but presently she turned her head. There was a faintly bewildered look in her eyes.

"I don't know why—when I look at the edge where the hill seems to end—it always seems as if there might be something coming from the place we can't see—" she said in a helpless-sounding voice. "We can only see the sky behind as if the world ended there. But I feel as if something might be coming from the other side. The horizon always looks like that—now. There must be so much—where there seems to be nothing more. I want to go."

She tried to smile a little as though at her own childish fancifulness but suddenly a heavy shining tear fell on her hand. And her head dropped and she murmured, "I'm sorry, Dowie," as if it were a fault.