The days of gold which linked themselves one to another with strange
dawns of pearl and exquisite awakenings, each a miracle, the gemmed
night whose blue darkness seemed studded with myriads of new stars, the
noons whose heats or rains were all warm scents of flowers and fragrant
mists, wrought themselves into a chain of earthly beauty. The hour in
which the links must break and the chain end was always a faint spectre
veiled by kindly mists which seemed to rise hour by hour to soften and
hide it.
But often in those days did it occur that the hurrying and changing
visitors to the house in Eaton Square, glancing at Robin as she sat
writing letters, or as she passed them in some hall or room, found
themselves momentarily arrested in an almost startled fashion by the
mere radiance of her.
"She is lovelier every time one turns one's head towards her," the
Starling said--the Starling having become a vigorous worker and the
Duchess giving welcome to any man, woman or child who could be counted
on for honest help. "It almost frightens me to see her eyes when she
looks up suddenly. It is like finding one's self too close to a star. A
star in the sky is all very well--but a star only three feet away from
one is a kind of shock. What has happened to the child?"
She said it to Gerald Vesey who between hours of military training was
helping Harrowby to arrange a matinee for the benefit of the Red Cross.
Harrowby had been rejected by the military authorities on account of
defective sight and weak chest but had with a promptness unexpected by
his friends merged himself into unprominent, useful hard work which
frequently consisted of doing disagreeable small jobs men of his type
generally shied away from.
"Something has happened to her," answered Vesey. "She has the flight of
a skylark let out of a cage. Her moving is flight--not ordinary walking.
I hope her work has kept her away from--well, from young gods and
things."
"The streets are full of them," said Harrowby, "marching to defy death
and springing to meet glory--marching not walking. Young Mars and Ajax
and young Paris with Helen in his eyes. She might be some youngster's
Helen! Why do you hope her work has kept her away?"
Vesey shook his Greek head with a tragic bitterness.
"Oh! I don't know," he groaned. "There's too much disaster piled high
and staring in every one of their flushing rash young faces. On they go
with their heads in the air and their hearts thumping, and hoping and
refusing to believe in the devil and hell let loose--and the whole thing
stares and gibbers at them."
But each day her eyes looked larger and more rapturously full of
heavenly glowing, and her light movements were more like bird flight,
and her swiftness and sweet readiness to serve delighted and touched
people more, and they spoke oftener to and of her, and felt actually a
thought uplifted from the darkness because she was like pure light's
self.
Lord Coombe met her in the street one evening at twilight and he stopped
to speak to her.
"I have just come from Darte Norham," he said to her. "The Duchess
asked me to see you personally and make sure that you do not miss Dowie
too much--that you are not lonely."
"I am very busy and am very well taken care of," was her answer. "The
servants are very attentive and kind. I am not lonely at all, thank you.
The Duchess is very good to me."
Donal evidently knew nothing of her reasons for disliking Lord Coombe.
She could not have told him of them. He did not dislike his relative
himself and in fact rather liked him in spite of the frigidity he
sometimes felt. He, at any rate, admired his cold brilliance of mind.
Robin could not therefore let herself detest the man and regard him as
an enemy. But she did not like the still searching of the grey eyes
which rested on her so steadily.
"The Duchess wished me to make sure that you did not work too
enthusiastically. She desires you to take plenty of exercise and if you
are tired to go into the country for a day or two of fresh air and rest.
She recommends old Mrs. Bennett's cottage at Mersham Wood. The place is
quite rustic though it is near enough to London to be convenient. You
might come and go."
"She is too kind--too kind," said Robin. "Oh! _how_ kind to think of me
like that. I will write and thank her."
The sweet gratitude in her eyes and voice were touching. She could not
speak steadily.
"I may tell her then that you are well taken care of and that you are
happy," the grey eyes were a shade less cold but still searching and
steady. "You look--happy."
"I never was so happy before. Please--please tell her that when you
thank her for me," was Robin's quite yearning little appeal. She held
out her hand to him for the first time in her life. "Thank you, Lord
Coombe, for so kindly delivering her beautiful message."
His perfect manner did not record any recognition on his part of the
fact that she had done an unexpected thing. But as he went on his way he
was thinking of it.
"She is very happy for some reason," he thought. "Perhaps the rush and
excitement of her new work exalts her. She has the ecstasied air of a
lovely child on her birthday--with all her world filled with petting and
birthday gifts."
The Duchess evidently extended her care to the extent of sending special
messages to Mrs. James, the housekeeper, who began to exercise a
motherly surveillance over Robin's health and diet and warmly to
advocate long walks and country visits to the cottage at Mersham Wood.
"Her grace will be really pleased if you take a day or two while she's
away. She's always been just that interested in those about her, Miss,"
Mrs. James argued. "She wouldn't like to come back and find you looking
tired or pale. Not that there's much danger of that," quite beamingly.
"For all your hard work, I must say you look--well, you look as I've
never seen you. And you always had a colour like a new-picked rose."
The colour like a new-picked rose ran up to the rings of hair on the
girl's forehead as if she were made a little shy.
"It is because her grace has been so good--and because every one is so
kind to me," she said. "Kindness makes me happy."
She was so happy that she was never tired and was regarded as a young
wonder in the matter of work and readiness and exactitude. Her accounts,
her correspondence, her information were always in order. When she took
the prescribed walks and in some aloof path or corner met the strong,
slim khaki-clad figure, they walked or stood or sat closely side by side
and talked of many things--though most of all they dwelt on one. She
could ask Donal questions and he could throw light on such things as
young soldiers knew better than most people. She came into close
touch--a shuddering touch sometimes it was--with needs and facts
concerning marchings and trenches and attacks and was therefore able to
visualise and to speak definitely of necessities not always understood.
"How did you find that out?" little black-clad Lady Kathryn asked her
one day. "I wish I had known it before George went away."
"A soldier told me," was her answer. "Soldiers know things we don't."
"The world is made of soldiers now," said Kathryn. "And one is always
talking to them. I shall begin to ask them questions about small things
like that."
It was the same morning that as they stood alone together for a few
minutes Kathryn suddenly put her hand upon Robin's shoulder.
"You never--_never_ feel the least angry--when you remember about
George--the night of the dance," she pleaded shakily. "Do you, Robin?
You couldn't _now_! Could you?"
Tears rushed into Robin's eyes.
"Never--never!" she said. "I always remember him--oh, quite differently!
He----" she hesitated a second and began again. "He did something--so
wonderfully kind--before he went away--something for me. That is what I
remember. And his nice voice--and his good eyes."
"Oh! he _was_ good! He was!" exclaimed Kathryn in a sort of despairing
impatience. "So many of them are! It's awful!" And she sat down in the
nearest chair and cried hopelessly into her crushed handkerchief while
Robin tried to soothe--not to comfort her. There was no comfort to
offer. And behind the rose tinted mists her own spectre merely pretended
to veil itself.
* * * * *
When she lay in bed at night in her quiet room she often lay awake long
and long for pure bliss. The world in which people were near--_near_--to
one another and loved each other, the world Donal had always belonged to
even when he was a little boy, she now knew and lived in. There was no
loneliness in it. If there was pain or trouble some one who loved you
was part of it and you, and so you could bear it. All the radiant
mornings and heavenly nights, all the summer scents of flowers or hay or
hedges in bloom, or new rain on the earth, were things felt just as that
other one felt them and drew in their delights--exactly in the same way.
Once in the night stillness of a sweet dark country lane she had stood
in the circle of Donal's arm, her joyous, warm young breast against his
and they had heard together the singing of a nightingale in a thicket.
"Let us stand still," he had whispered close to her ear. "Let us not
speak a word--not a word. Oh! little lovely love! Let us only
_listen_--and be happy!"
Almost every day there were marvels like this. And when they were apart
she could not forget them but walked like a spirit strayed on to earth
and unknowing of its radiance. This was why people glanced at her
curiously and were sometimes vaguely troubled.