But there had arrived the special morning when she had seen a child who so stood out among a dozen children that she had been startled when she recognized that it was Robin. Andrews had taken her charge to Hyde Park that day and Feather was driving through the Row on her way to a Knightsbridge shop. First her glance had been caught by the hair hanging to the little hips—extraordinary hair in which Andrews herself had a pride. Then she had seen the slender, exquisitely modeled legs, and the dancing sway of the small body. A wonderfully cut, stitched, and fagotted smock and hat she had, of course, taken in at a flash. When the child suddenly turned to look at some little girls in a pony cart, the amazing damask of her colour, and form and depth of eye had given her another slight shock. She realized that what she had thrust lightly away in a corner of her third floor produced an unmistakable effect when turned out into the light of a gay world. The creature was tall too—for six years old. Was she really six? It seemed incredible. Ten more years and she would be sixteen.

Mrs. Heppel-Bevill had a girl of fifteen, who was a perfect catastrophe. She read things and had begun to talk about her "right to be a woman." Emily Heppel-Bevill was only thirty-seven—three years from forty. Feather had reached the stage of softening in her disdain of the women in their thirties. She had found herself admitting that—in these days—there were women of forty who had not wholly passed beyond the pale into that outer darkness where there was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But there was no denying that this six year old baby, with the dancing step, gave one—almost hysterically—"to think." Her imagination could not—never had and never would she have allowed it to—grasp any belief that she herself could change. A Feather, No! But a creature of sixteen, eighteen—with eyes that shape—with lashes an inch long—with yards of hair—standing by one's side in ten years! It was ghastly!

Coombe, in his cold perfunctory way, climbing the crooked, narrow stairs, dismissing Andrews—looking over the rooms—dismissing them, so to speak, and then remaining after the rest had gone to reveal to her a new abnormal mood—that, in itself alone, was actually horrible. It was abnormal and yet he had always been more or less like that in all things. Despite everything—everything—he had never been in love with her at all. At first she had believed he was—then she had tried to make him care for her. He had never failed her, he had done everything in his grand seigneur fashion. Nobody dare make gross comment upon her, but, while he saw her loveliness as only such a man could—she had gradually realized that she had never had even a chance with him. She could not even think that if she had not been so silly and frightened that awful day six years ago, and had not lost her head, he might have admired her more and more and in the end asked her to marry him. He had said there must be no mistakes, and she had not been allowed to fall into making one. The fact that she had not, had, finally, made her feel the power of a certain fascination in him. She thought it was a result of his special type of looks, his breeding, the wonderful clothes he wore—but it was, in truth, his varieties of inaccessibility.

"A girl might like him," she had said to herself that night—she sat up late after he left her. "A girl who—who had up-to-date sense might. Modern people don't grow old as they used to. At fifty-five he won't be fat, or bald and he won't have lost his teeth. People have found out they needn't. He will be as thin and straight as he is today—and nothing can alter his nose. He will be ten years cleverer than he is now. Buying the house for a child of that age—building additional rooms for her!"

In the fevered, rapid, deep-dipping whirl of the life which was the only one she knew, she had often seen rather trying things happen—almost unnatural changes in situations. People had overcome the folly of being afraid to alter their minds and their views about what they had temporarily believed were permanent bonds and emotions. Bonds had become old fogeyish. Marriages went to pieces, the parties in love affairs engaged in a sort of "dance down the middle" and turn other people's partners. The rearrangement of figures sometimes made for great witticism. Occasionally people laughed at themselves as at each other. The admirers of engaging matrons had been known to renew their youth at the coming-out balls of lovely daughters in their early teens, and to end by assuming the flowery chains of a new allegiance. Time had, of course, been when such a volte face would have aroused condemnation and indignant discussion, but a humorous leniency spent but little time in selecting terms of severity. Feather had known of several such contretemps ending in quite brilliant matches. The enchanting mothers usually consoled themselves with great ease, and, if the party of each part was occasionally wittily pungent in her comments on the other, everybody laughed and nobody had time to criticize. A man who had had much to bestow and who preferred in youth to bestow it upon himself was not infrequently more in the mood for the sharing of marriage when years had revealed to him the distressing fact that he was not, and had never been, the centre of the universe, which distressing fact is one so unfairly concealed from youth in bloom.

It was, of course, but as a vaguely outlined vision that these recognitions floated through what could only be alleged to be Feather's mind because there was no other name for it. The dark little staircase, the rejected and despised third floor, and Coombe detachedly announcing his plans for the house, had set the—so to speak—rather malarious mist flowing around her. A trying thing was that it did not really dispel itself altogether, but continued to hang about the atmosphere surrounding other and more cheerful things. Almost impalpably it added to the familiar feeling—or lack of feeling—with regard to Robin. She had not at all hated the little thing; it had merely been quite true that, in an inactive way, she had not LIKED her. In the folds of the vague mist quietly floated the truth that she now liked her less.

Benby came to see and talk to her on the business of the structural changes to be made. He conducted himself precisely as though her views on the matter were of value and could not, in fact, be dispensed with. He brought the architect's plans with him and explained them with care. They were clever plans which made the most of a limited area. He did not even faintly smile when it revealed itself to him, as it unconsciously did, that Mrs. Gareth-Lawless regarded their adroit arrangement as a singular misuse of space which could have been much better employed for necessities of her own. She was much depressed by the ground floor addition which might have enlarged her dining-room, but which was made into a sitting-room for Robin and her future governess.

"And that is in ADDITION to her schoolroom which might have been thrown into the drawing-room—besides the new bedrooms which I needed so much," she said.

"The new nurse, who is a highly respectable person," explained Benby, "could not have been secured if she had not known that improvements were being made. The reconstruction of the third floor will provide suitable accommodations."

The special forte of Dowson, the new nurse, was a sublimated respectability far superior to smartness. She had been mystically produced by Benby and her bonnets and jackets alone would have revealed her selection from almost occult treasures. She wore bonnets and "jackets," not hats and coats.

"In the calm days of Her Majesty, nurses dressed as she does. I do not mean in the riotous later years of her reign—but earlier—when England dreamed in terms of Crystal Palaces and Great Exhibitions. She can only be the result of excavation," Coombe said of her.

She was as proud of her respectability as Andrews had been of her smartness. This had, in fact, proved an almost insuperable obstacle to her engagement. The slice of a house, with its flocking in and out of chattering, smart people in marvellous clothes was not the place for her, nor was Mrs. Gareth-Lawless the mistress of her dreams. But her husband had met with an accident and must be kept in a hospital, and an invalid daughter must live by the seaside—and suddenly, when things were at their worst with her, had come Benby with a firm determination to secure her with wages such as no other place would offer. Besides which she had observed as she had lived.

"Things have changed," she reflected soberly. "You've got to resign yourself and not be too particular."

She accepted the third floor, as Benby had said, because it was to be rearranged and the Night and Day Nurseries, being thrown into one, repainted and papered would make a decent place to live in. At the beautiful little girl given into her charge she often looked in a puzzled way, because she knew a good deal about children, and about this one there was something odd. Her examination of opened drawers and closets revealed piles of exquisite garments of all varieties, all perfectly kept. In these dingy holes, which called themselves nurseries, she found evidence that money had been spent like water so that the child, when she was seen, might look like a small princess. But she found no plaything—no dolls or toys, and only one picture book, and that had "Donal" written on the fly leaf and evidently belonged to someone else.

What exactly she would have done when she had had time to think the matter over, she never knew, because, a few days after her arrival, a tall, thin gentleman, coming up the front steps as she was going out with Robin, stopped and spoke to her as if he knew who she was.

"You know the kind of things children like to play with, nurse?" he said.

She respectfully replied that she had had long experience with young desires. She did not know as yet who he was, but there was that about him which made her feel that, while there was no knowing what height his particular exaltation in the matter of rank might reach, one would be safe in setting it high.

"Please go to one of the toy shops and choose for the child what she will like best. Dolls—games—you will know what to select. Send the bill to me at Coombe House. I am Lord Coombe."

"Thank you, my lord," Dowson answered, with a sketch of a curtsey, "Miss Robin, you must hold out your little hand and say 'thank you' to his lordship for being so kind. He's told Dowson to buy you some beautiful dolls and picture books as a present."

Robin's eyelashes curled against her under brows in her wide, still glance upward at him. Here was "the one" again! She shut her hand tightly into a fist behind her back.

Lord Coombe smiled a little—not much.

"She does not like me," he said. "It is not necessary that she should give me her hand. I prefer that she shouldn't, if she doesn't want to. Good morning, Dowson."

To the well-regulated mind of Dowson, this seemed treating too lightly a matter as serious as juvenile incivility. She remonstrated gravely and at length with Robin.

"Little girls must behave prettily to kind gentlemen who are friends of their mammas. It is dreadful to be rude and not say 'thank you'," she said.

But as she talked she was vaguely aware that her words passed by the child's ears as the summer wind passed. Perhaps it was all a bit of temper and would disappear and leave no trace behind. At the same time, there WAS something queer about the little thing. She had a listless way of sitting staring out of the window and seeming to have no desire to amuse herself. She was too young to be listless and she did not care for her food. Dowson asked permission to send for the doctor and, when he came, he ordered sea air.

"Of course, you can take her away for a few weeks," Mrs. Gareth-Lawless said. Here she smiled satirically and added, "But I can tell you what it is all about. The little minx actually fell in love with a small boy she met in the Square Gardens and, when his mother took him from London, she began to mope like a tiresome girl in her teens. It's ridiculous, but is the real trouble."

"Oh!" said Dowson, the low and respectful interjection expressing a shade of disapproval, "Children do have fancies, ma'am. She'll get over it if we give her something else to think of."

The good woman went to one of the large toy shops and bought a beautiful doll, a doll's house, and some picture books. When they were brought up to the Day Nursery, Robin was asleep after a rather long walk, which Dowson had decided would be good for her. When she came later into the room, after the things had been unpacked, she regarded them with an expression of actual dislike.

"Isn't that a beautiful doll?" said Dowson, good-humouredly. "And did you ever see such a lovely house? It was kind Lord Coombe who gave them to you. Just you look at the picture books."

Robin put her hands behind her back and would not touch them. Dowson, who was a motherly creature with a great deal of commonsense, was set thinking. She began to make guesses, though she was not yet sufficiently familiar with the household to guess from any firm foundation of knowledge of small things.

"Come here, dear," she said, and drew the small thing to her knee. "Is it because you don't love Lord Coombe?" she asked.

"Yes," she answered.

"But why?" said Dowson. "When he is such a kind gentleman?"

But Robin would not tell her why and never did. She never told any one, until years had passed, how this had been the beginning of a hatred. The toys were left behind when she was taken to the seaside. Dowson tried to persuade her to play with them several times, but she would not touch them, so they were put away. Feeling that she was dealing with something unusual, and, being a kindly person, Dowson bought her some playthings on her own account. They were simple things, but Robin was ready enough to like them.

"Did YOU give them to me?" she asked.

"Yes, I did, Miss Robin."

The child drew near her after a full minute of hesitation.

"I will KISS you!" she said solemnly, and performed the rite as whole-souledly as Donal had done.

"Dear little mite!" exclaimed the surprised Dowson. "Dear me!" And there was actual moisture in her eyes as she squeezed the small body in her arms.

"She's the strangest mite I ever nursed," was her comment to Mrs. Blayne below stairs. "It was so sudden, and she did it as if she'd never done it before. I'd actually been thinking she hadn't any feeling at all."

"No reason why she should have. She's been taken care of by the clock and dressed like a puppet, but she's not been treated human!" broke forth Mrs. Blayne.

Then the whole story was told—the "upstairs" story with much vivid description, and the mentioning of many names and the dotting of many "i's". Dowson had heard certain things only through vague rumour, but now she knew and began to see her way. She had not heard names before, and the definite inclusion of Lord Coombe's suggested something to her.

"Do you think the child could be JEALOUS of his lordship?" she suggested.

"She might if she knew anything about him—but she never saw him until the night she was taken down into the drawing-room. She's lived upstairs like a little dog in its kennel."

"Well," Dowson reflected aloud, "it sounds almost silly to talk of a child's hating any one, but that bit of a thing's eyes had fair hate in them when she looked up at him where he stood. That was what puzzled me."



CHAPTER XV



Before Robin had been taken to the seaside to be helped by the bracing air of the Norfolk coast to recover her lost appetite and forget her small tragedy, she had observed that unaccustomed things were taking place in the house. Workmen came in and out through the mews at the back and brought ladders with them and tools in queer bags. She heard hammerings which began very early in the morning and went on all day. As Andrews had trained her not to ask tiresome questions, she only crept now and then to a back window and peeped out. But in a few days Dowson took her away.

When she came back to London, she was not taken up the steep dark stairs to the third floor. Dowson led her into some rooms she had never seen before. They were light and airy and had pretty walls and furniture. A sitting-room on the ground floor had even a round window with plants in it and a canary bird singing in a cage.

"May we stay here?" she asked Dowson in a whisper.

"We are going to live here," was the answer.

And so they did.

At first Feather occasionally took her intimates to see the additional apartments.

"In perfect splendour is the creature put up, and I with a bedroom like a coalhole and such drawing-rooms as you see each time you enter the house!" she broke forth spitefully one day when she forgot herself.

She said it to the Starling and Harrowby, who had been simply gazing about them in fevered mystification, because the new development was a thing which must invoke some more or less interesting explanation. At her outbreak, all they could do was to gaze at her with impartial eyes, which suggested question, and Feather shrugged pettish shoulders.

"You knew I didn't do it. How could I?" she said. "It is a queer whim of Coombe's. Of course, it is not the least like him. I call it morbid."

After which people knew about the matter and found it a subject for edifying and quite stimulating discussion. There was something fantastic in the situation. Coombe was the last man on earth to have taken the slightest notice of the child's existence! It was believed that he had never seen her—except in long clothes—until she had glared at him and put her hand behind her back the night she was brought into the drawing-room. She had been adroitly kept tucked away in an attic somewhere. And now behold an addition of several wonderful, small rooms built, furnished and decorated for her alone, where she was to live as in a miniature palace attended by servitors! Coombe, as a purveyor of nursery appurtenances, was regarded with humour, the general opinion being that the eruption of a volcano beneath his feet alone could have awakened his somewhat chill self-absorption to the recognition of any child's existence.

"To be exact we none of us really know anything in particular about his mental processes." Harrowby pondered aloud. "He's capable of any number of things we might not understand, if he condescended to tell us about them—which he would never attempt. He has a remote, brilliantly stored, cynical mind. He owns that he is of an inhuman selfishness. I haven't a suggestion to make, but it sets one searching through the purlieus of one's mind for an approximately reasonable explanation."

"Why 'purlieus'?" was the Starling's inquiry. Harrowby shrugged his shoulders ever so lightly.

"Well, one isn't searching for reasons founded on copy-book axioms," he shook his head. "Coombe? No."

There was a silence given to occult thought.

"Feather is really in a rage and is too Feathery to be able to conceal it," said Starling.

"Feather would be—inevitably," Harrowby lifted his near-sighted eyes to her curiously. "Can you see Feather in the future—when Robin is ten years older?"

"I can," the Starling answered.

* * * * *

The years which followed were changing years—growing years. Life and entertainment went on fast and furiously in all parts of London, and in no part more rapidly than in the slice of a house whose front always presented an air of having been freshly decorated, in spite of summer rain and winter soot and fog. The plants in the window boxes seemed always in bloom, being magically replaced in the early morning hours when they dared to hint at flagging. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was said, must be renewed in some such mysterious morning way, as she merely grew prettier as she neared thirty and passed it. Women did in these days! Which last phrase had always been a useful one, probably from the time of the Flood. Old fogeys, male and female, had used it in the past as a means of scathingly unfavourable comparison, growing flushed and almost gobbling like turkey cocks in their indignation. Now, as a phrase, it was a support and a mollifier. "In these days" one knew better how to amuse oneself, was more free to snatch at agreeable opportunity, less in bondage to old fancies which had called themselves beliefs; everything whirled faster and more lightly—danced, two-stepped, instead of marching.

Robin vaguely connected certain changes in her existence with the changes which took place in the fashion of sleeves and skirts which appeared to produce radical effects in the world she caught glimpses of. Sometimes sleeves were closely fitted to people's arms, then puffs sprang from them and grew until they were enormous and required delicate manipulation when coats were put on; then their lavishness of material fell from the shoulder to the wrists and hung there swaying until some sudden development of skirt seemed to distract their attention from themselves and they shrank into unimportance and skirts changed instead. Afterwards, sometimes figures were slim and encased in sheathlike draperies, sometimes folds rippled about feet, "fullness" crept here or there or disappeared altogether, trains grew longer or shorter or wider or narrower, cashmeres, grosgrain silks and heavy satins were suddenly gone and chiffon wreathed itself about the world and took possession of it. Bonnets ceased to exist and hats were immense or tiny, tall or flat, tilted at the back, at the side, at the front, worn over the face or dashingly rolled back from it; feathers drooped or stood upright at heights which rose and fell and changed position with the changing seasons. No garment or individual wore the same aspect for more than a month's time. It was necessary to change all things with a rapidity matching the change of moods and fancies which altered at the rate of the automobiles which dashed here and there and everywhere, through country roads, through town, through remote places with an unsparing swiftness which set a new pace for the world.

"I cannot hark back regretfully to stage coaches," said Lord Coombe. "Even I was not born early enough for that. But in the days of my youth and innocence express trains seemed almost supernatural. One could drive a pair of horses twenty miles to make a country visit, but one could not drive back the same day. One's circle had its limitations and degrees of intimacy. Now it is possible motor fifty miles to lunch and home to dine with guests from the remotest corners of the earth. Oceans are crossed in six days, and the eager flit from continent to continent. Engagements can be made by cable and the truly enterprising can accept an invitation to dine in America on a fortnight's notice. Telephones communicate in a few seconds and no one is secure from social intercourse for fifteen minutes. Acquaintances and correspondence have no limitations because all the inhabitants of the globe can reach one by motor or electricity. In moments of fatigue I revert to the days of Queen Anne with pleasure."

While these changes went on, Robin lived in her own world in her own quarters at the rear of the slice of a house. During the early years spent with Dowson, she learned gradually that life was a better thing than she had known in the dreary gloom of the third floor Day and Night Nurseries. She was no longer left to spend hours alone, nor was she taken below stairs to listen blankly to servants talking to each other of mysterious things with which she herself and the Lady Downstairs and "him" were somehow connected, her discovery of this fact being based on the dropping of voices and sidelong glances at her and sudden warning sounds from Andrews. She realized that Dowson would never pinch her, and the rooms she lived in were pretty and bright.

Gradually playthings and picture books appeared in them, which she gathered Dowson presented her with. She gathered this from Dowson herself.

She had never played with the doll, and, by chance a day arriving when Lord Coombe encountered Dowson in the street without her charge, he stopped her again and spoke as before.

"Is the little girl well and happy, Nurse?" he asked.

"Quite well, my lord, and much happier than she used to be."

"Did she," he hesitated slightly, "like the playthings you bought her?"

Dowson hesitated more than slightly but, being a sensible woman and at the same time curious about the matter, she spoke the truth.

"She wouldn't play with them at all, my lord. I couldn't persuade her to. What her child's fancy was I don't know."

"Neither do I—except that it is founded on a distinct dislike," said Coombe. There was a brief pause. "Are you fond of toys yourself, Dowson?" he inquired coldly.

"I am that—and I know how to choose them, your lordship," replied Dowson, with a large, shrewd intelligence.

"Then oblige me by throwing away the doll and its accompaniments and buying some toys for yourself, at my expense. You can present them to Miss Robin as a personal gift. She will accept them from you."

He passed on his way and Dowson looked after him interestedly.

"If she was his," she thought, "I shouldn't be puzzled. But she's not—that I've ever heard of. He's got some fancy of his own the same as Robin has, though you wouldn't think it to look at him. I'd like to know what it is."

It was a fancy—an old, old fancy—it harked back nearly thirty years—to the dark days of youth and passion and unending tragedy whose anguish, as it then seemed, could never pass—but which, nevertheless, had faded with the years as they flowed by. And yet left him as he was and had been. He was not sentimental about it, he smiled at himself drearily—though never at the memory—when it rose again and, through its vague power, led him to do strange things curiously verging on the emotional and eccentric. But even the child—who quite loathed him for some fantastic infant reason of her own—even the child had her part in it. His soul oddly withdrew itself into a far remoteness as he walked away and Piccadilly became a shadow and a dream.

Dowson went home and began to pack neatly in a box the neglected doll and the toys which had accompanied her. Robin seeing her doing it, asked a question.

"Are they going back to the shop?"

"No. Lord Coombe is letting me give them to a little girl who is very poor and has to lie in bed because her back hurts her. His lordship is so kind he does not want you to be troubled with them. He is not angry. He is too good to be angry."

That was not true, thought Robin. He had done THAT THING she remembered! Goodness could not have done it. Only badness.

When Dowson brought in a new doll and other wonderful things, a little hand enclosed her wrist quite tightly as she was unpacking the boxes. It was Robin's and the small creature looked at her with a questioning, half appealing, half fierce.

"Did he send them, Dowson?"

"They are a present from me," Dowson answered comfortably, and Robin said again,

"I want to kiss you. I like to kiss you. I do."

To those given to psychical interests and speculations, it might have suggested itself that, on the night when the creature who had seemed to Andrews a soft tissued puppet had suddenly burst forth into defiance and fearless shrillness, some cerebral change had taken place in her. From that hour her softness had become a thing of the past. Dowson had not found a baby, but a brooding, little, passionate being. She was neither insubordinate nor irritable, but Dowson was conscious of a certain intensity of temperament in her. She knew that she was always thinking of things of which she said almost nothing. Only a sensible motherly curiosity, such as Dowson's could have made discoveries, but a rare question put by the child at long intervals sometimes threw a faint light. There were questions chiefly concerning mothers and their habits and customs. They were such as, in their very unconsciousness, revealed a strange past history. Lights were most unconsciously thrown by Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself. Her quite amiable detachment from all shadow of responsibility, her brilliantly unending occupations, her goings in and out, the flocks of light, almost noisy, intimates who came in and out with her revealed much to a respectable person who had soberly watched the world.

"The Lady Downstairs is my mother, isn't she?" Robin inquired gravely once.

"Yes, my dear," was Dowson's answer.

A pause for consideration of the matter and then from Robin:

"All mothers are not alike, Dowson, are they?"

"No, my dear," with wisdom.

Though she was not yet seven, life had so changed for her that it was a far cry back to the Spring days in the Square Gardens. She went back, however, back into that remote ecstatic past.

"The Lady Downstairs is not—alike," she said at last, "Donal's mother loved him. She let him sit in the same chair with her and read in picture books. She kissed him when he was in bed."

Jennings, the young footman who was a humourist, had, of course, heard witty references to Robin's love affair while in attendance, and he had equally, of course, repeated them below stairs. Therefore,

Dowson had heard vague rumours but had tactfully refrained from mentioning the subject to her charge.

"Who was Donal?" she said now, but quite quietly. Robin did not know that a confidante would have made her first agony easier to bear. She was not really being confidential now, but, realizing Dowson's comfortable kindliness, she knew that it would be safe to speak to her.

"He was a big boy," she answered keeping her eyes on Dowson's face. "He laughed and ran and jumped. His eyes—" she stopped there because she could not explain what she had wanted to say about these joyous young eyes, which were the first friendly human ones she had known.

"He lives in Scotland," she began again. "His mother loved him. He kissed me. He went away. Lord Coombe sent him."

Dawson could not help her start.

"Lord Coombe!" she exclaimed.

Robin came close to her and ground her little fist into her knee, until its plumpness felt almost bruised.

"He is bad—bad—bad!" and she looked like a little demon.

Being a wise woman, Dowson knew at once that she had come upon a hidden child volcano, and it would be well to let it seethe into silence. She was not a clever person, but long experience had taught her that there were occasions when it was well to leave a child alone. This one would not answer if she were questioned. She would only become stubborn and furious, and no child should be goaded into fury. Dowson had, of course, learned that the boy was a relative of his lordship's and had a strict Scottish mother who did not approve of the slice of a house. His lordship might have been concerned in the matter—or he might not. But at least Dowson had gained a side light. And how the little thing had cared! Actually as if she had been a grown girl, Dowson found herself thinking uneasily.

She was rendered even a trifle more uneasy a few days later when she came upon Robin sitting in a corner on a footstool with a picture book on her knee, and she recognized it as the one she had discovered during her first exploitation of the resources of the third floor nursery. It was inscribed "Donal" and Robin was not looking at it alone, but at something she held in her hand—something folded in a crumpled, untidy bit of paper.

Making a reason for nearing her corner, Dowson saw what the paper held. The contents looked like the broken fragments of some dried leaves. The child was gazing at them with a piteous, bewildered face—so piteous that Dowson was sorry.

"Do you want to keep those?" she asked.

"Yes," with a caught breath. "Yes."

"I will make you a little silk bag to hold them in," Dowson said, actually feeling rather piteous herself. The poor, little lamb with her picture book and her bits of broken dry leaves—almost like senna.

She sat down near her and Robin left her footstool and came to her. She laid the picture book on her lap and the senna like fragments of leaves on its open page.

"Donal brought it to show me," she quavered. "He made pretty things on the leaves—with his dirk." She recalled too much—too much all at once. Her eyes grew rounder and larger with inescapable woe; "Donal did! Donal!" And suddenly she hid her face deep in Dowson's skirts and the tempest broke. She was so small a thing—so inarticulate—and these were her dead! Dowson could only catch her in her arms, drag her up on her knee, and rock her to and fro.

"Good Lord! Good Lord!" was her inward ejaculation. "And she not seven! What'll she do when she's seventeen! She's one of them there's no help for!"

It was the beginning of an affection. After this, when Dowson tucked Robin in bed each night, she kissed her. She told her stories and taught her to sew and to know her letters. Using some discretion she found certain little playmates for her in the Gardens. But there were occasions when all did not go well, and some pretty, friendly child, who had played with Robin for a few days, suddenly seemed to be kept strictly by her nurse's side. Once, when she was about ten years old, a newcomer, a dramatic and too richly dressed little person, after a day of wonderful imaginative playing appeared in the Gardens the morning following to turn an ostentatious cold shoulder.

"What is the matter?" asked Robin.

"Oh, we can't play with you any more," with quite a flounce superiority.

"Why not?" said Robin, becoming haughty herself.

"We can't. It's because of Lord Coombe." The little person had really no definite knowledge of how Lord Coombe was concerned, but certain servants' whisperings of names and mysterious phrases had conveyed quite an enjoyable effect of unknown iniquity connected with his lordship.

Robin said nothing to Dowson, but walked up and down the paths reflecting and building a slow fire which would continue to burn in her young heart. She had by then passed the round, soft baby period and had entered into that phase when bodies and legs grow long and slender and small faces lose their first curves and begin to show sharper modeling.

Accepting the situation in its entirety, Dowson had seen that it was well to first reach Lord Coombe with any need of the child's. Afterwards, the form of presenting it to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless must be gone through, but if she were first spoken to any suggestion might be forgotten or intentionally ignored.

Dowson became clever in her calculations as to when his lordship might be encountered and where—as if by chance, and therefore, quite respectfully. Sometimes she remotely wondered if he himself did not make such encounters easy for her. But his manner never altered in its somewhat stiff, expressionless chill of indifference. He never was kindly in his manner to the child if he met her. Dowson felt him at once casual and "lofty." Robin might have been a bit of unconsidered rubbish, the sight of which slightly bored him. Yet the singular fact remained that it was to him one must carefully appeal.

One afternoon Feather swept him, with one or two others, into the sitting-room with the round window in which flowers grew. Robin was sitting at a low table making pothooks with a lead pencil on a piece of paper Dowson had given her. Dowson had, in fact, set her at the task, having heard from Jennings that his lordship and the other afternoon tea drinkers were to be brought into the "Palace" as Feather ironically chose to call it. Jennings rather liked Dowson, and often told her little things she wanted to know. It was because Lord Coombe would probably come in with the rest that Dowson had set the low, white table in the round windows and suggested the pothooks.

In course of time there was a fluttering and a chatter in the corridor. Feather was bringing some new guests, who had not seen the place before.

"This is where my daughter lives. She is much grander than I am," she said.

"Stand up, Miss Robin, and make your curtsey," whispered Dowson. Robin did as she was told, and Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' pretty brows ran up.

"Look at her legs," she said. "She's growing like Jack and the Bean Stalk—though, I suppose, it was only the Bean Stalk that grew. She'll stick through the top of the house soon. Look at her legs, I ask you."

She always spoke as if the child were an inanimate object and she had, by this time and by this means, managed to sweep from Robin's mind all the old, babyish worship of her loveliness and had planted in its place another feeling. At this moment the other feeling surged and burned.

"They are beautiful legs," remarked a laughing young man jocularly, "but perhaps she does not particularly want us to look at them. Wait until she begins skirt dancing." And everybody laughed at once and the child stood rigid—the object of their light ridicule—not herself knowing that her whole little being was cursing them aloud.

Coombe stepped to the little table and bestowed a casual glance on the pencil marks.

"What is she doing?" he asked as casually of Dowson.

"She is learning to make pothooks, my lord," Dowson answered. "She's a child that wants to be learning things. I've taught her her letters and to spell little words. She's quick—and old enough, your lordship."

"Learning to read and write!" exclaimed Feather.

"Presumption, I call it. I don't know how to read and write—least I don't know how to spell. Do you know how to spell, Collie?" to the young man, whose name was Colin. "Do you, Genevieve? Do you, Artie?"

"You can't betray me into vulgar boasting," said Collie. "Who does in these days? Nobody but clerks at Peter Robinson's."

"Lord Coombe does—but that's his tiresome superior way," said Feather.

"He's nearly forty years older than most of you. That is the reason," Coombe commented. "Don't deplore your youth and innocence."

They swept through the rooms and examined everything in them. The truth was that the—by this time well known—fact that the unexplainable Coombe had built them made them a curiosity, and a sort of secret source of jokes. The party even mounted to the upper story to go through the bedrooms, and, it was while they were doing this, that Coombe chose to linger behind with Dowson.

He remained entirely expressionless for a few moments. Dowson did not in the least gather whether he meant to speak to her or not. But he did.

"You meant," he scarcely glanced at her, "that she was old enough for a governess."

"Yes, my lord," rather breathless in her hurry to speak before she heard the high heels tapping on the staircase again. "And one that's a good woman as well as clever, if I may take the liberty. A good one if—"

"If a good one would take the place?"

Dowson did not attempt refutation or apology. She knew better.

He said no more, but sauntered out of the room.

As he did so, Robin stood up and made the little "charity bob" of a curtsey which had been part of her nursery education. She was too old now to have refused him her hand, but he never made any advances to her. He acknowledged her curtsey with the briefest nod.

Not three minutes later the high heels came tapping down the staircase and the small gust of visitors swept away also.



CHAPTER XVI



The interview which took place between Feather and Lord Coombe a few days later had its own special character.

"A governess will come here tomorrow at eleven o'clock," he said. "She is a Mademoiselle Valle. She is accustomed to the educating of young children. She will present herself for your approval. Benby has done all the rest."

Feather flushed to her fine-spun ash-gold hair.

"What on earth can it matter!" she cried.

"It does not matter to you," he answered; "it chances—for the time being—to matter to ME."

"Chances!" she flamed forth—it was really a queer little flame of feeling. "That's it. You don't really care! It's a caprice—just because you see she is going to be pretty."

"I'll own," he admitted, "that has a great deal to do with it."

"It has everything to do with it," she threw out. "If she had a snub nose and thick legs you wouldn't care for her at all."

"I don't say that I do care for her," without emotion. "The situation interests me. Here is an extraordinary little being thrown into the world. She belongs to nobody. She will have to fight for her own hand. And she will have to FIGHT, by God! With that dewy lure in her eyes and her curved pomegranate mouth! She will not know, but she will draw disaster!"

"Then she had better not be taught anything at all," said Feather. "It would be an amusing thing to let her grow up without learning to read or write at all. I know numbers of men who would like the novelty of it. Girls who know so much are a bore."

"There are a few minor chances she ought to have," said Coombe. "A governess is one. Mademoiselle Valle will be here at eleven."

"I can't see that she promises to be such a beauty," fretted Feather. "She's the kind of good looking child who might grow up into a fat girl with staring black eyes like a barmaid."

"Occasionally pretty women do abhor their growing up daughters," commented Coombe letting his eyes rest on her interestedly.

"I don't abhor her," with pathos touched with venom. "But a big, lumping girl hanging about ogling and wanting to be ogled when she is passing through that silly age! And sometimes you speak to me as a man speaks to his wife when he is tired of her."

"I beg your pardon," Coombe said. "You make me feel like a person who lives over a shop at Knightsbridge, or in bijou mansion off Regent's Park."

But he was deeply aware that, as an outcome of the anomalous position he occupied, he not infrequently felt exactly this.

That a governess chosen by Coombe—though he would seem not to appear in the matter—would preside over the new rooms, Feather knew without a shadow of doubt.

A certain almost silent and always high-bred dominance over her existence she accepted as the inevitable, even while she fretted helplessly. Without him, she would be tossed, a broken butterfly, into the gutter. She knew her London. No one would pick her up unless to break her into smaller atoms and toss her away again. The freedom he allowed her after all was wonderful. It was because he disdained interference.

But there was a line not to be crossed—there must not even be an attempt at crossing it. Why he cared about that she did not know.

"You must be like Caesar's wife," he said rather grimly, after an interview in which he had given her a certain unsparing warning.

"And I am nobody's wife. What did Caesar's wife do?" she asked.

"Nothing." And he told her the story and, when she had heard him tell it, she understood certain things clearly.

Mademoiselle Valle was an intelligent, mature Frenchwoman. She presented herself to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless for inspection and, in ten minutes, realized that the power to inspect and sum up existed only on her own side. This pretty woman neither knew what inquiries to make nor cared for such replies as were given. Being swift to reason and practical in deduction, Mademoiselle Valle did not make the blunder of deciding that this light presence argued that she would be under no supervision more serious. The excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted and the excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted under clearly defined orders. Milord Coombe—among other things the best dressed and perhaps the least comprehended man in London—was concerned in this, though on what grounds practical persons could not explain to themselves. His connection with the narrow house on the right side of the right street was entirely comprehensible. The lenient felt nothing blatant or objectionable about it. Mademoiselle Valle herself was not disturbed by mere rumour. The education, manner and morals of the little girl she could account for. These alone were to be her affair, and she was competent to undertake their superintendence.

Therefore, she sat and listened with respectful intelligence to the birdlike chatter of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. (What a pretty woman! The silhouette of a jeune fille!)

Mrs. Gareth-Lawless felt that, on her part, she had done all that was required of her.

"I'm afraid she's rather a dull child, Mademoiselle," she said in farewell. "You know children's ways and you'll understand what I mean. She has a trick of staring and saying nothing. I confess I wish she wasn't dull."

"It is impossible, madame, that she should be dull," said Mademoiselle, with an agreeably implicating smile. "Oh, but quite impossible! We shall see."

Not many days had passed before she had seen much. At the outset, she recognized the effect of the little girl with the slender legs and feet and the dozen or so of points which go to make a beauty. The intense eyes first and the deeps of them. They gave one furiously to think before making up one's mind. Then she noted the perfection of the rooms added to the smartly inconvenient little house. Where had the child lived before the addition had been built? Thought and actual architectural genius only could have done this. Light and even as much sunshine as London will vouchsafe, had been arranged for. Comfort, convenience, luxury, had been provided. Perfect colour and excellent texture had evoked actual charm. Its utter unlikeness to the quarters London usually gives to children, even of the fortunate class, struck Mademoiselle Valle at once. Madame Gareth-Lawless had not done this. Who then, had?

The good Dowson she at once affiliated with. She knew the excellence of her type as it had revealed itself to her in the best peasant class. Trustworthy, simple, but of kindly, shrewd good sense and with the power to observe. Dowson was not a chatterer or given to gossip, but, as a silent observer, she would know many things and, in time, when they had become friendly enough to be fully aware that each might trust the other, gentle and careful talk would end in unconscious revelation being made by Dowson.

That the little girl was almost singularly attached to her nurse, she had marked early. There was something unusual in her manifestations of her feeling. The intense eyes followed the woman often, as if making sure of her presence and reality. The first day of Mademoiselle's residence in the place she saw the little thing suddenly stop playing with her doll and look at Dowson earnestly for several moments. Then she left her seat and went to the kind creature's side.

"I want to KISS you, Dowie," she said.

"To be sure, my lamb," answered Dowson, and, laying down her mending, she gave her a motherly hug. After which Robin went back contentedly to her play.

The Frenchwoman thought it a pretty bit of childish affectionateness. But it happened more than once during the day, and at night Mademoiselle commented upon it.

"She has an affectionate heart, the little one," she remarked. "Madame, her mother, is so pretty and full of gaieties and pleasures that I should not have imagined she had much time for caresses and the nursery."

Even by this time Dowson had realized that with Mademoiselle she was upon safe ground and was in no danger of betraying herself to a gossip. She quietly laid down her sewing and looked at her companion with grave eyes.

"Her mother has never kissed her in her life that I am aware of," she said.

"Has never—!" Mademoiselle ejaculated. "Never!"

"Just as you see her, she is, Mademoiselle," Dowson said. "Any sensible woman would know, when she heard her talk about her child. I found it all out bit by bit when first I came here. I'm going to talk plain and have done with it. Her first six years she spent in a sort of dog kennel on the top floor of this house. No sun, no real fresh air. Two little holes that were dingy and gloomy to dull a child's senses. Not a toy or a bit of colour or a picture, but clothes fine enough for Buckingham Palace children—and enough for six. Fed and washed and taken out every day to be shown off. And a bad nurse, Miss—a bad one that kept her quiet by pinching her black and blue."

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! That little angel!" cried Mademoiselle, covering her eyes.

Dowson hastily wiped her own eyes. She had shed many a motherly tear over the child. It was a relief to her to open her heart to a sympathizer.

"Black and blue!" she repeated. "And laughing and dancing and all sorts of fast fun going on in the drawing-rooms." She put out her hand and touched Mademoiselle's arm quite fiercely. "The little thing didn't know she HAD a mother! She didn't know what the word meant. I found that out by her innocent talk. She used to call HER 'The Lady Downstairs'."

"Mon Dieu!" cried the Frenchwoman again. "What a woman!"

"She first heard of mothers from a little boy she met in the Square Gardens. He was the first child she had been allowed to play with. He was a nice child and he had a good mother. I only got it bit by bit when she didn't know how much she was telling me. He told her about mothers and he kissed her—for the first time in her life. She didn't understand but it warmed her little heart. She's never forgotten."

Mademoiselle even started slightly in her chair. Being a clever Frenchwoman she felt drama and all its subtle accompaniments.

"Is that why——" she began.

"It is," answered Dowson, stoutly. "A kiss isn't an ordinary thing to her. It means something wonderful. She's got into the way of loving me, bless her, and every now and then, it's my opinion, she suddenly remembers her lonely days when she didn't know what love was. And it just wells up in her little heart and she wants to kiss me. She always says it that way, 'Dowie, I want to KISS you,' as if it was something strange and, so to say, sacred. She doesn't know it means almost nothing to most people. That's why I always lay down my work and hug her close."

"You have a good heart—a GOOD one!" said Mademoiselle with strong feeling.

Then she put a question:

"Who was the little boy?"

"He was a relation of—his lordship's."

"His lordship's?" cautiously.

"The Marquis. Lord Coombe."

There was a few minutes' silence. Both women were thinking of a number of things and each was asking herself how much it would be wise to say.

It was Dowson who made her decision first, and this time, as before, she laid down her work. What she had to convey was the thing which, above all others, the Frenchwoman must understand if she was to be able to use her power to its best effect.

"A woman in my place hears enough talk," was her beginning. "Servants are given to it. The Servants' Hall is their theatre. It doesn't matter whether tales are true or not, so that they're spicy. But it's been my way to credit just as much as I see and know and to say little about that. If a woman takes a place in a house, let her go or stay as suits her best, but don't let her stay and either complain or gossip. My business here is Miss Robin, and I've found out for myself that there's just one person that, in a queer, unfeeling way of his own, has a fancy for looking after her. I say 'unfeeling' because he never shows any human signs of caring for the child himself. But if there's a thing that ought to be done for her and a body can contrive to let him know it's needed, it'll be done. Downstairs' talk that I've seemed to pay no attention to has let out that it was him that walked quietly upstairs to the Nursery, where he'd never set foot before, and opened the door on Andrews pinching the child. She packed her box and left that night. He inspected the nurseries and, in a few days, an architect was planning these rooms,—for Miss Robin and for no one else, though there was others wanted them. It was him that told me to order her books and playthings—and not let her know it because she hates him. It was him I told she needed a governess. And he found you."

Mademoiselle Valle had listened with profound attention. Here she spoke.

"You say continually 'he' or 'him'. He is—?"

"Lord Coombe. I'm not saying I've seen much of him. Considering—" Dowson paused—"it's queer how seldom he comes here. He goes abroad a good deal. He's mixed up with the highest and it's said he's in favour because he's satirical and clever. He's one that's gossiped about and he cares nothing for what's said. What business of mine is it whether or not he has all sorts of dens on the Continent where he goes to racket. He might be a bishop for all I see. And he's the only creature in this world of the Almighty's that remembers that child's a human being. Just him—Lord Coombe. There, Mademoiselle,—I've said a good deal."

More and more interestedly had the Frenchwoman listened and with an increasing hint of curiosity in her intelligent eyes. She pressed Dowson's needle-roughened fingers warmly.

"You have not said too much. It is well that I should know this of this gentleman. As you say, he is a man who is much discussed. I myself have heard much of him—but of things connected with another part of his character. It is true that he is in favour with great personages. It is because they are aware that he has observed much for many years. He is light and ironic, but he tells truths which sometimes startle those who hear them."

"Jennings tells below stairs that he says things it's queer for a lord to say. Jennings is a sharp young snip and likes to pick up things to repeat. He believes that his lordship's idea is that there's a time coming when the high ones will lose their places and thrones and kings will be done away with. I wouldn't like to go that far myself," said Dowson, gravely, "but I must say that there's not that serious respect paid to Royalty that there was in my young days. My word! When Queen Victoria was in her prime, with all her young family around her,—their little Royal Highnesses that were princes in their Highland kilts and the princesses in their crinolines and hats with drooping ostrich feathers and broad satin streamers—the people just went wild when she went to a place to unveil anything!"

"When the Empress Eugenie and the Prince Imperial appeared, it was the same thing," said Mademoiselle, a trifle sadly. "One recalls it now as a dream passed away—the Champs Elysees in the afternoon sunlight—the imperial carriage and the glittering escort trotting gaily—the beautiful woman with the always beautiful costumes—her charming smile—the Emperor, with his waxed moustache and saturnine face! It meant so much and it went so quickly. One moment," she made a little gesture, "and it is gone—forever! An Empire and all the splendour of it! Two centuries ago it could not have disappeared so quickly. But now the world is older. It does not need toys so much. A Republic is the people—and there are more people than kings."

"It's things like that his lordship says, according to Jennings," said Dowson. "Jennings is never quite sure he's in earnest. He has a satirical way—And the company always laugh."

Mademoiselle had spoken thoughtfully and as if half to her inner self instead of to Dowson. She added something even more thoughtfully now.

"The same kind of people laughed before the French Revolution," she murmured.

"I'm not scholar enough to know much about that—that was a long time ago, wasn't it?" Dowson remarked.

"A long time ago," said Mademoiselle.

Dowson's reply was quite free from tragic reminiscence.

"Well, I must say, I like a respectable Royal Family myself," she observed. "There's something solid and comfortable about it—besides the coronations and weddings and procession with all the pictures in the Illustrated London News. Give me a nice, well-behaved Royal Family."



CHAPTER XVII



"A nice, well-behaved Royal Family." There had been several of them in Europe for some time. An appreciable number of them had prided themselves, even a shade ostentatiously, upon their domesticity. The moral views of a few had been believed to border upon the high principles inscribed in copy books. Some, however, had not. A more important power or so had veered from the exact following of these commendable axioms—had high-handedly behaved according to their royal will and tastes. But what would you? With a nation making proper obeisance before one from infancy; with trumpets blaring forth joyous strains upon one's mere appearance on any scene; with the proudest necks bowed and the most superb curtseys swept on one's mere passing by, with all the splendour of the Opera on gala night rising to its feet to salute one's mere entry into the royal or imperial box, while the national anthem bursts forth with adulatory and triumphant strains, only a keen and subtle sense of humour, surely, could curb errors of judgment arising from naturally mistaken views of one's own importance and value to the entire Universe. Still there remained the fact that a number of them WERE well-behaved and could not be complained of as bearing any likeness to the bloodthirsty tyrants and oppressors of past centuries.

The Head of the House of Coombe had attended the Court Functions and been received at the palaces and castles of most of them. For in that aspect of his character of which Mademoiselle Valle had heard more than Dowson, he was intimate with well-known and much-observed personages and places. A man born among those whose daily life builds, as it passes, at least a part of that which makes history and so records itself, must needs find companions, acquaintances, enemies, friends of varied character, and if he be, by chance, a keen observer of passing panoramas, can lack no material for private reflection and the accumulation of important facts.

That part of his existence which connected itself with the slice of a house on the right side of the Mayfair street was but a small one. A feature of the untranslatableness of his character was that he was seen there but seldom. His early habit of crossing the Channel frequently had gradually reestablished itself as years passed. Among his acquaintances his "Saturday to Monday visits" to continental cities remote or unremote were discussed with humour. Possibly, upon these discussions, were finally founded the rumours of which Dowson had heard but which she had impartially declined to "credit". Lively conjecture inevitably figured largely in their arguments and, when persons of unrestrained wit devote their attention to airy persiflage, much may be included in their points of view.

Of these conjectural discussions no one was more clearly aware than Coombe himself, and the finished facility—even felicity—of his evasion of any attempt at delicately valued cross examination was felt to be inhumanly exasperating.

In one of the older Squares which still remained stately, through the splendour of modern fashion had waned in its neighbourhood, there was among the gloomy, though imposing, houses one in particular upon whose broad doorsteps—years before the Gareth-Lawlesses had appeared in London—Lord Coombe stood oftener than upon any other. At times his brougham waited before it for hours, and, at others, he appeared on foot and lifted the heavy knocker with a special accustomed knock recognized at once by any footman in waiting in the hall, who, hearing it, knew that his mistress—the old Dowager Duchess of Darte—would receive this visitor, if no other.

The interior of the house was of the type which, having from the first been massive and richly sombre, had mellowed into a darker sombreness and richness as it had stood unmoved amid London years and fogs. The grandeur of decoration and furnishing had been too solid to depreciate through decay, and its owner had been of no fickle mind led to waver in taste by whims of fashion. The rooms were huge and lofty, the halls and stairways spacious, the fireplaces furnished with immense grates of glittering steel, which held in winter beds of scarlet glowing coal, kept scarlet glowing by a special footman whose being, so to speak, depended on his fidelity to his task.

There were many rooms whose doors were kept closed because they were apparently never used; there were others as little used but thrown open, warmed and brightened with flowers each day, because the Duchess chose to catch glimpses of their cheerfulness as she passed them on her way up or downstairs. The house was her own property, and, after her widowhood, when it was emptied of her children by their admirable marriages, and she herself became Dowager and, later, a confirmed rheumatic invalid, it became doubly her home and was governed by her slightest whim. She was not indeed an old woman of caprices, but her tastes, not being those of the later day in which she now lived, were regarded as a shade eccentric being firmly defined.

"I will not have my house glaring with electricity as if it were a shop. In my own rooms I will be lighted by wax candles. Large ones—as many as you please," she said. "I will not be 'rung up' by telephone. My servants may if they like. It is not my affair to deprive them of the modern inconveniences, if they find them convenient. My senility does not take the form of insisting that the world shall cease to revolve upon its axis. It formed that habit without my assistance, and it is to be feared that it would continue it in the face of my protests."

It was, in fact, solely that portion of the world affecting herself alone which she preferred to retain as it had been in the brilliant early years of her life. She had been a great beauty and also a wit in the Court over which Queen Victoria had reigned. She had possessed the delicate high nose, the soft full eyes, the "polished forehead," the sloping white shoulders from which scarves floated or India shawls gracefully drooped in the Books of Beauty of the day. Her carriage had been noble, her bloom perfect, and, when she had driven through the streets "in attendance" on her Royal Mistress, the populace had always chosen her as "the pick of 'em all". Young as she had then been, elderly statesmen had found her worth talking to, not as a mere beauty in her teens, but as a creature of singular brilliance and clarity of outlook upon a world which might have dazzled her youth. The most renowned among them had said of her, before she was twenty, that she would live to be one of the cleverest women in Europe, and that she had already the logical outlook of a just man of fifty.

She married early and was widowed in middle life. In her later years rheumatic fever so far disabled her as to confine her to her chair almost entirely. Her sons and daughter had homes and families of their own to engage them. She would not allow them to sacrifice themselves to her because her life had altered its aspect.

"I have money, friends, good servants and a house I particularly like," she summed the matter up; "I may be condemned to sit by the fire, but I am not condemned to be a bore to my inoffensive family. I can still talk and read, and I shall train myself to become a professional listener. This will attract. I shall not only read myself, but I will be read to. A strong young man with a nice voice shall bring magazines and books to me every day, and shall read the best things aloud. Delightful people will drop in to see me and will be amazed by my fund of information."

It was during the first years of her enforced seclusion that Coombe's intimacy with her began. He had known her during certain black days of his youth, and she had comprehended things he did not tell her. She had not spoken of them to him but she had silently given him of something which vaguely drew him to her side when darkness seemed to overwhelm him. The occupations of her life left her in those earlier days little leisure for close intimacies, but, when she began to sit by her fire letting the busy world pass by, he gradually became one of those who "dropped in".

In one of the huge rooms she had chosen for her own daily use, by the well-tended fire in its shining grate, she had created an agreeable corner where she sat in a chair marvellous for ease and comfort, enclosed from draughts by a fire screen of antique Chinese lacquer, a table by her side and all she required within her reach. Upon the table stood a silver bell and, at its sound, her companion, her reader, her maid or her personally trained footman, came and went quietly and promptly as if summoned by magic. Her life itself was simple, but a certain almost royal dignity surrounded her loneliness. Her companion, Miss Brent, an intelligent, mature woman who had known a hard and pinched life, found at once comfort and savour in it.

"It is not I who am expensive,"—this in one of her talks with Coombe, "but to live in a house of this size, well kept by excellent servants who are satisfied with their lot, is not a frugal thing. A cap of tea for those of my friends who run in to warm themselves by my fire in the afternoon; a dinner or so when I am well enough to sit at the head of my table, represent almost all I now do for the world. Naturally, I must see that my tea is good and that my dinners cannot be objected to. Nevertheless, I sit here in my chair and save money—for what?"

Among those who "warmed themselves by her fire" this man had singularly become her friend and intimate. When they had time to explore each other's minds, they came upon curious discoveries of hidden sympathies and mutual comprehensions which were rich treasures. They talked of absorbing things with frankness. He came to sit with her when others were not admitted because she was in pain or fatigued. He added to neither her fatigue nor her pain, but rather helped her to forget them.

"For what?" he answered on this day. "Why not for your grandchildren?"

"They will have too much money. There are only four of them. They will make great marriages as their parents did," she said. She paused a second before she added, "Unless our World Revolution has broken into flame by that time—And there are no longer any great marriages to make."

For among the many things they dwelt on in their talks along, was the Chessboard, which was the Map of Europe, over which he had watched for many years certain hands hover in tentative experimenting as to the possibilities of the removal of the pieces from one square to another. She, too, from her youth had watched the game with an interest which had not waned in her maturity, and which, in her days of sitting by the fire, had increased with every move the hovering hands made. She had been familiar with political parties and their leaders, she had met heroes and statesmen; she had seen an unimportant prince become an emperor, who, from his green and boastful youth, aspired to rule the world and whose theatrical obsession had been the sly jest of unwary nations, too carelessly sure of the advance of civilization and too indifferently self-indulgent to realize that a monomaniac, even if treated as a source of humour, is a perilous thing to leave unwatched. She had known France in all the glitter of its showy Empire, and had seen its imperial glories dispersed as mist. Russia she had watched with curiosity and dread. On the day when the ruler, who had bestowed freedom on millions of his people, met his reward in the shattering bomb which tore him to fragments, she had been in St. Petersburg. A king, who had been assassinated, she had known well and had well liked; an empress, whom a frenzied madman had stabbed to the heart, had been her friend.

Her years had been richly full of varied events, giving a strong and far-seeing mind reason for much unspoken thought of the kind which leaps in advance of its day's experience and exact knowledge. She had learned when to speak and when to be silent, and she oftener chose silence. But she had never ceased gazing on the world with keen eyes, and reflecting upon its virtues and vagaries, its depths and its shallows, with the help of a clear and temperate brain.

By her fire she sat, an attracting presence, though only fine, strong lines remained of beauty ravaged by illness and years. The "polished forehead" was furrowed by the chisel of suffering; the delicate high nose springing from her waxen, sunken face seemed somewhat eaglelike, but the face was still brilliant in its intensity of meaning and the carriage of her head was still noble. Not able to walk except with the assistance of a cane, her once exquisite hands stiffened almost to uselessness, she held her court from her throne of mere power and strong charm. On the afternoons when people "ran in to warm themselves" by her fire, the talk was never dull and was often wonderful. There were those who came quietly into the room fresh from important scenes where subjects of weight to nations were being argued closely—perhaps almost fiercely. Sometimes the argument was continued over cups of perfect tea near the chair of the Duchess, and, howsoever far it led, she was able brilliantly to follow. With the aid of books and pamphlets and magazines, and the strong young man with the nice voice, who was her reader, she kept pace with each step of the march of the world.

It was, however, the modern note in her recollections of her world's march in days long past, in which Coombe found mental food and fine flavour. The phrase, "in these days" expressed in her utterance neither disparagement nor regret. She who sat in state in a drawing-room lighted by wax candles did so as an affair of personal preference, and denied no claim of higher brilliance to electric illumination. Driving slowly through Hyde Park on sunny days when she was able to go out, her high-swung barouche hinted at no lofty disdain of petrol and motor power. At the close of her youth's century, she looked forward with thrilled curiosity to the dawning wonders of the next.

"If the past had not held so much, one might not have learned to expect more," was her summing up on a certain afternoon, when he came to report himself after one of his absences from England. "The most important discovery of the last fifty years has been the revelation that no man may any longer assume to speak the last word on any subject. The next man—almost any next man—may evolve more. Before that period all elderly persons were final in their dictum. They said to each other—and particularly to the young—'It has not been done in my time—it was not done in my grandfather's time. It has never been done. It never can be done'."

"The note of today is 'Since it has never been done, it will surely be done soon'," said Coombe.

"Ah! we who began life in the most assured and respectable of reigns and centuries," she answered him, "have seen much. But these others will see more. Crinolines, mushroom hats and large families seemed to promise a decorum peaceful to dullness; but there have been battles, murders and sudden deaths; there have been almost supernatural inventions and discoveries—there have been marvels of new doubts and faiths. When one sits and counts upon one's fingers the amazements the 19th century has provided, one gasps and gazes with wide eyes into the future. I, for one, feel rather as though I had seen a calm milch cow sauntering—at first slowly—along a path, gradually evolve into a tiger—a genie with a hundred heads containing all the marvels of the world—a flying dragon with a thousand eyes! Oh, we have gone fast and far!"

"And we shall go faster and farther," Coombe added.

"That is it," she answered. "Are we going too fast?"

"At least so fast that we forget things it would be well for us to remember." He had come in that day with a certain preoccupied grimness of expression which was not unknown to her. It was generally after one of his absences that he looked a shade grim.

"Such as—?" she inquired.

"Such as catastrophes in the history of the world, which forethought and wisdom might have prevented. The French Revolution is the obvious type of figure which lies close at hand so one picks it up. The French Revolution—its Reign of Terror—the orgies of carnage—the cataclysms of agony—need not have been, but they WERE. To put it in words of one syllable."

"What!" was her involuntary exclamation. "You are seeking such similes as the French Revolution!"

"Who knows how far a madness may reach and what Reign of Terror may take form?" He sat down and drew an atlas towards him. It always lay upon the table on which all the Duchess desired was within reach. It was fat, convenient of form, and agreeable to look at in its cover of dull, green leather. Coombe's gesture of drawing it towards him was a familiar one. It was frequently used as reference.

"The atlas again?" she said.

"Yes. Just now I can think of little else. I have realized too much."

The continental journey had lasted a month. He had visited more countries than one in his pursuit of a study he was making of the way in which the wind was blowing particular straws. For long he had found much to give thought to in the trend of movement in one special portion of the Chessboard. It was that portion of it dominated by the ruler of whose obsession too careless nations made sly jest. This man he had known from his arrogant and unendearing youth. He had looked on with unbiassed curiosity at his development into arrogance so much greater than its proportions touched the grotesque. The rest of the world had looked on also, but apparently, merely in the casual way which good-naturedly smiles and leaves to every man—even an emperor—the privilege of his own eccentricities. Coombe had looked on with a difference, so also had his friend by her fireside. This man's square of the Chessboard had long been the subject of their private talks and a cause for the drawing towards them of the green atlas. The moves he made, the methods of his ruling, the significance of these methods were the evidence they collected in their frequent arguments. Coombe had early begun to see the whole thing as a process—a life-long labour which was a means to a monstrous end.

There was a certain thing he believed of which they often spoke as "It". He spoke of it now.

"Through three weeks I have been marking how It grows," he said; "a whole nation with the entire power of its commerce, its education, its science, its religion, guided towards one aim is a curious study. The very babes are born and bred and taught only that one thought may become an integral part of their being. The most innocent and blue eyed of them knows, without a shadow of doubt, that the world has but one reason for existence—that it may be conquered and ravaged by the country that gave them birth."

"I have both heard and seen it," she said. "One has smiled in spite of oneself, in listening to their simple, everyday talk."

"In little schools—in large ones—in little churches, and in imposing ones, their Faith is taught and preached," Coombe answered. "Sometimes one cannot believe one's hearing. It is all so ingenuously and frankly unashamed—the mouthing, boasting, and threats of their piety. There exists for them no God who is not the modest henchman of their emperor, and whose attention is not rivetted on their prowess with admiration and awe. Apparently, they are His business, and He is well paid by being allowed to retain their confidence."

"A lack of any sense of humour is a disastrous thing," commented the Duchess. "The people of other nations may be fools—doubtless we all are—but there is no other which proclaims the fact abroad with such guileless outbursts of raucous exultation."

"And even we—you and I who have thought more than others" he said, restlessly, "even we forget and half smile. There been too much smiling."

She picked up an illustrated paper and opened it at a page filled by an ornate picture.

"See!" she said. "It is because he himself has made it so easy, with his amazing portraits of his big boots, and swords, and eruption of dangling orders. How can one help but smile when one finds him glaring at one from a newspaper in his superwarlike attitude, defying the Universe, with his comic moustachios and their ferocious waxed and bristling ends. No! One can scarcely believe that a man can be stupid enough not to realize that he looks as if he had deliberately made himself up to represent a sort of terrific military bogey intimating that, at he may pounce and say 'Boo?"

"There lies the peril. His pretensions seem too grotesque to be treated seriously. And, while he should be watched as a madman is watched, he is given a lifetime to we attack on a world that has ceased to believe in the sole thing which is real to himself."

"You are fresh from observation." There was new alertness in her eyes, though she had listened before.

"I tell you it GROWS!" he gave back and lightly struck the table in emphasis. "Do you remember Carlyle—?"

"The French Revolution again?"

"Yes. Do you recall this? 'Do not fires, fevers, seeds, chemical mixtures, GO ON GROWING. Observe, too, that EACH GROWS with a rapidity proportioned to the madness and unhealthiness there is in it.' A ruler who, in an unaggressive age such as this, can concentrate his life and his people's on the one ambition of plunging the world in an ocean of blood, in which his own monomania can bathe in triumph—Good God! there is madness and unhealthiness to flourish in!"

"The world!" she said. "Yes—it will be the world."

"See," he said, with a curve of the finger which included most of the Map of Europe. "Here are countries engaged—like the Bandarlog—in their own affairs. Quarrelling, snatching things from each other, blustering or amusing themselves with transitory pomps and displays of power. Here is a huge empire whose immense, half-savage population has seethed for centuries in its hidden, boiling cauldron of rebellion. Oh! it has seethed! And only cruelties have repressed it. Now and then it has boiled over in assassination in high places, and one has wondered how long its autocratic splendour could hold its own. Here are small, fierce, helpless nations overrun and outraged into a chronic state of secret ever-ready hatred. Here are innocent, small countries, defenceless through their position and size. Here is France rich, careless, super-modern and cynic. Here is England comfortable to stolidity, prosperous and secure to dullness in her own half belief in a world civilization, which no longer argues in terms of blood and steel. And here—in a well-entrenched position in the midst of it all—within but a few hundreds of miles of weakness, complicity, disastrous unreadiness and panic-stricken uncertainty of purpose, sits this Man of One Dream—who believes God Himself his vassal. Here he sits."

"Yes his One Dream. He has had no other." The Duchess was poring over the map also. They were as people pondering over a strange and terrible game.

"It is his monomania. It possessed him when he was a boy. What Napoleon hoped to accomplish he has BELIEVED he could attain by concentrating all the power of people upon preparation for it—and by not flinching from pouring forth their blood as if it were the refuse water of his gutters."

"Yes—the blood—the blood!" the Duchess shuddered. "He would pour it forth without a qualm."

Coombe touched the map first at one point and then at another.

"See!" he said again, and this time savagely. "This empire flattered and entangled by cunning, this country irritated, this deceived, this drawn into argument, this and this and this treated with professed friendship, these tricked and juggled with—And then, when his plans are ripe and he is made drunk with belief in himself—just one sodden insult or monstrous breach of faith, which all humanity must leap to resent—And there is our World Revolution."

The Duchess sat upright in her chair.

"Why did you let your youth pass?" she said. "If you had begun early enough, you could hare made the country listen to you. Why did you do it?"

"For the same reason that all selfish grief and pleasure and indifference let the world go by. And I am not sure they would have listened. I speak freely enough now in some quarters. They listen, but they do nothing. There is a warning in the fact that, as he has seen his youth leave him without giving him his opportunity, he has been a disappointed man inflamed and made desperate. At the outset, he felt that he must provide the world with some fiction of excuse. As his obsession and arrogance have swollen, he sees himself and his ambition as reason enough. No excuse is needed. Deutschland uber alles—is sufficient."

He pushed the map away and his fire died down. He spoke almost in his usual manner.

"The conquest of the world," he said. "He is a great fool. What would he DO with his continents if he got them?"

"What, indeed," pondered her grace. "Continents—even kingdoms are not like kittens in a basket, or puppies to be trained to come to heel."

"It is part of his monomania that he can persuade himself that they are little more." Coombe's eye-glasses had been slowly swaying from the ribbon in his fingers. He let them continue to sway a moment and then closed them with a snap.

"He is a great fool," he said. "But we,—oh, my friend—and by 'we' I mean the rest of the Map of Europe—we are much greater fools. A mad dog loose among us and we sit—and smile."

And this was in the days before the house with the cream-coloured front had put forth its first geraniums and lobelias in Feather's window boxes. Robin was not born.



CHAPTER XVIII



In the added suite of rooms at the back of the house, Robin grew through the years in which It was growing also. On the occasion when her mother saw her, she realized that she was not at least going to look like a barmaid. At no period of her least refulgent moment did she verge upon this type. Dowie took care of her and Mademoiselle Valle educated her with the assistance of certain masters who came to give lessons in German and Italian.

"Why only German and Italian and French," said Feather, "why not Latin and Greek, as well, if she is to be so accomplished?"

"It is modern languages one needs at this period. They ought to be taught in the Board Schools," Coombe replied. "They are not accomplishments but workman's tools. Nationalities are not separated as they once were. To be familiar with the language of one's friends—and one's enemies—is a protective measure."

"What country need one protect oneself against? When all the kings and queens are either married to each other's daughters or cousins or take tea with each other every year or so. Just think of the friendliness of Germany for instance——"

"I do," said Coombe, "very often. That is one of the reasons I choose German rather than Latin and Greek. Julius Caesar and Nero are no longer reasons for alarm."

"Is the Kaiser with his seventeen children and his respectable Frau?" giggled Feather. "All that he cares about is that women shall be made to remember that they are born for nothing but to cook and go to church and have babies. One doesn't wonder at the clothes they wear."

It was not a month after this, however, when Lord Coombe, again warming himself at his old friend's fire, gave her a piece of information.

"The German teacher, Herr Wiese, has hastily returned to his own country," he said.

She lifted her eyebrows inquiringly.

"He found himself suspected of being a spy," was his answer. "With most excellent reason. Some first-rate sketches of fortifications were found in a box he left behind him in his haste. The country—all countries—are sown with those like him. Mild spectacled students and clerks in warehouses and manufactories are weighing and measuring resources; round-faced, middle-aged governesses are making notes of conversation and of any other thing which may be useful. In time of war—if they were caught at what are now their simple daily occupations—they would be placed against a wall and shot. As it is, they are allowed to play about among us and slip away when some fellow worker's hint suggests it is time."

"German young men are much given to spending a year or so here in business positions," the Duchess wore a thoughtful air. "That has been going on for a decade or so. One recognizes their Teuton type in shops and in the streets. They say they come to learn the language and commercial methods."

"Not long ago a pompous person, who is the owner of a big shop, pointed out to me three of them among his salesmen," Coombe said. "He plumed himself on his astuteness in employing them. Said they worked for low wages and cared for very little else but finding out how things were done in England. It wasn't only business knowledge they were after, he said; they went about everywhere—into factories and dock yards, and public buildings, and made funny little notes and sketches of things they didn't understand—so that they could explain them in Germany. In his fatuous, insular way, it pleased him to regard them rather as a species of aborigines benefiting by English civilization. The English Ass and the German Ass are touchingly alike. The shade of difference is that the English Ass's sublime self-satisfaction is in the German Ass self-glorification. The English Ass smirks and plumes himself; the German Ass blusters and bullies and defies."

"Do you think of engaging another German Master for the little girl?" the Duchess asked the question casually.

"I have heard of a quiet young woman who has shown herself thorough and well-behaved in a certain family for three years. Perhaps she also will disappear some day, but, for the present, she will serve the purpose."

As he had not put into words to others any explanation of the story of the small, smart establishment in the Mayfair street, so he had put into words no explanation to her. That she was aware of its existence he knew, but what she thought of it, or imagined he himself thought of it, he had not at any period inquired. Whatsoever her point of view might be, he knew it would be unbiassed, clear minded and wholly just. She had asked no question and made no comment. The rapid, whirligig existence of the well-known fashionable groups, including in their circles varieties of the Mrs. Gareth-Lawless type, were to be seen at smart functions and to be read of in newspapers and fashion reports, if one's taste lay in the direction of a desire to follow their movements. The time had passed when pretty women of her kind were cut off by severities of opinion from the delights of a world they had thrown their dice daringly to gain. The worldly old axiom, "Be virtuous and you will be happy," had been ironically paraphrased too often. "Please yourself and you will be much happier than if you were virtuous," was a practical reading.

But for a certain secret which she alone knew and which no one would in the least have believed, if she had proclaimed it from the housetops, Feather would really have been entirely happy. And, after all, the fly in her ointment was merely an odd sting a fantastic Fate had inflicted on her vanity and did not in any degree affect her pleasures. So many people lived in glass houses that the habit of throwing stones had fallen out of fashion as an exercise. There were those, too, whose houses of glass, adroitly given the air of being respectable conservatories, engendered in the dwellers therein a leniency towards other vitreous constructions. As a result of this last circumstance, there were times when quite stately equipages drew up before Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' door and visiting cards bearing the names of acquaintances much to be desired were left upon the salver presented by Jennings. Again, as a result of this circumstance, Feather employed some laudable effort in her desire to give her own glass house the conservatory aspect. Her little parties became less noisy, if they still remained lively. She gave an "afternoon" now and then to which literary people and artists, and persons who "did things" were invited. She was pretty enough to allure an occasional musician to "do something", some new poet to read or recite. Fashionable people were asked to come and hear and talk to them, and, in this way, she threw out delicate fishing lines here and there, and again and again drew up a desirable fish of substantial size. Sometimes the vague rumour connected with the name of the Head of the House of Coombe was quite forgotten and she was referred to amiably as "That beautiful creature, Mrs. Gareth-Lawless." She was left a widow when she was nothing but a girl. If she hadn't had a little money of her own, and if her husband's relatives hadn't taken care of her, she would have had a hard time of it. She is amazingly clever at managing her, small income, they added. Her tiny house is one of the jolliest little places in London—always full of good looking people and amusing things.

But, before Robin was fourteen, she had found out that the house she lived in was built of glass and that any chance stone would break its panes, even if cast without particular skill in aiming. She found it out in various ways, but the seed from which all things sprang to the fruition of actual knowledge was the child tragedy through which she had learned that Donal had been taken from her—because his mother would not let him love and play with a little girl whose mother let Lord Coombe come to her house—because Lord Coombe was so bad that even servants whispered secrets about him. Her first interpretation of this had been that of a mere baby, but it had filled her being with detestation of him, and curious doubts of her mother. Donal's mother, who was good and beautiful, would not let him come to see her and kept Donal away from him. If the Lady Downstairs was good, too, then why did laugh and talk to him and seem to like him? She had thought this over for hours—sometimes wakening in the night to lie and puzzle over it feverishly. Then, as time went by, she had begun to remember that she had never played with any of the children in the Square Gardens. It had seemed as though this had been because Andrews would not let her. But, if she was not fit to play with Donal, perhaps the nurses and governesses and mothers of the other children knew about it and would not trust their little girls and boys to her damaging society. She did not know what she could have done to harm them—and Oh! how COULD she have harmed Donal!—but there must be something dreadful about a child whose mother knew bad people—something which other children could "catch" like scarlet fever. From this seed other thoughts had grown. She did not remain a baby long. A fervid little brain worked for her, picked up hints and developed suggestions, set her to singularly alert reasoning which quickly became too mature for her age. The quite horrid little girl, who flouncingly announced that she could not be played with any more "because of Lord Coombe" set a spark to a train. After that time she used to ask occasional carefully considered questions of Dowson and Mademoiselle Valle, which puzzled them by their vagueness. The two women were mutually troubled by a moody habit she developed of sitting absorbed in her own thoughts, and with a concentrated little frown drawing her brows together. They did not know that she was silently planning a subtle cross examination of them both, whose form would be such that neither of them could suspect it of being anything but innocent. She felt that she was growing cunning and deceitful, but she did not care very much. She possessed a clever and determined, though very young brain. She loved both Dowson and Mademoiselle, but she must find out about things for herself, and she was not going to harm or trouble them. They would never know she had found out: Whatsoever she discovered, she would keep to herself.

But one does not remain a baby long, and one is a little girl only a few years, and, even during the few years, one is growing and hearing and seeing all the time. After that, one is beginning to be a rather big girl and one has seen books and newspapers, and overheard scraps of things from servants. If one is brought up in a convent and allowed to read nothing but literature selected by nuns, a degree of aloofness from knowledge may be counted upon—though even convent schools, it is said, encounter their difficulties in perfect discipline.

Robin, in her small "Palace" was well taken care of but her library was not selected by nuns. It was chosen with thought, but it was the library of modern youth. Mademoiselle Valle's theories of a girl's education were not founded on a belief that, until marriage, she should be led about by a string blindfolded, and with ears stopped with wax.

"That results in a bleating lamb's being turned out of its fold to make its way through a jungle full of wild creatures and pitfalls it has never heard of," she said in discussing the point with Dowson. She had learned that Lord Coombe agreed with her. He, as well as she, chose the books and his taste was admirable. Its inclusion of an unobtrusive care for girlhood did not preclude the exercise of the intellect. An early developed passion for reading led the child far and wide. Fiction, history, poetry, biography, opened up vistas to a naturally quick and eager mind. Mademoiselle found her a clever pupil and an affection-inspiring little being even from the first.

She always felt, however, that in the depths of her something held itself hidden—something she did not speak of. It was some thought which perhaps bewildered her, but which something prevented her making clear to herself by the asking of questions. Mademoiselle Valle finally became convinced that she never would ask the questions.

Arrived a day when Feather swept into the Palace with some visitors. They were two fair and handsome little girls of thirteen and fourteen, whose mother, having taken them shopping, found it would suit her extremely well to drop then somewhere for an hour while she went to her dressmaker. Feather was quite willing that they should be left with Robin and Mademoiselle until their own governess called for them.

"Here are Eileen and Winifred Erwyn, Robin," she said, bringing them in. "Talk to them and show them your books and things until the governess comes. Dowson, give them some cakes and tea."

Mrs. Erwyn was one of the most treasured of Feather's circle. Her little girls' governess was a young Frenchwoman, entirely unlike Mademoiselle Valle. Eileen and Winifred saw Life from their schoolroom windows as an open book. Why not, since their governess and their mother's French maid conversed freely, and had rather penetrating voices even when they were under the impression that they lowered them out of deference to blameless youth. Eileen and Winifred liked to remain awake to listen as long as they could after they went to bed. They themselves had large curious eyes and were given to whispering and giggling.