The effect of something like unreality produced in the mind of the
mature and experienced by a girl creature, can only be equaled by the
intensity of the sense of realness in the girl herself. That centre of
the world in which each human being exists is in her case more
poignantly a centre than any other. She passes smiling or serious, a
thing of untried eyes and fair unmarked smoothness of texture, and
onlookers who have lived longer than she know that the unmarked
untriedness is a sign that so far "nothing" has happened in her life and
in most cases believe that "nothing" is happening. They are quite sure
they know--long after the thing has ceased to be true. The surface of
her is so soft and fair, and its lack of any suggestion of abysses or
chasms seems to make them incredible things. But the centre of the world
contains all things and when one is at the beginning of life and sees
them for the first time they assume strange proportions. It enters a
room, it talks lightly or sweetly, it whirls about in an airy dance,
this pretty untested thing; and, among those for whom the belief in the
reality of strange proportions has modified itself through long
experience, only those of the thinking habit realise that at any moment
the testing--the marking with deep scores may begin or has perhaps begun
already. At eighteen or twenty a fluctuation of flower-petal tint which
may mean an imperfect night can signify no really important cause. What
could eighteen or twenty have found to think about in night watches? But
in its centre of the world as it stands on the stage with the curtain
rolling up, those who have lived longer--so very long--are only the dim
audience sitting in the shadowy auditorium looking on at passionately
real life with which they have really nothing whatever to do, because
what they have seen is past and what they have learned has lost its
importance and meaning with the changing of the years. The lying awake
and tossing on pillows--if lying awake there is--has its cause in _real_
joys--or griefs--not in things atrophied by time. So it seems on the
stage, in the first act. If the curtain goes down on anguish and despair
it seems equally the pitiless truth that it can never rise again; the
play is ended; the lights go out forever; the theatre crumbles to dust;
the world comes to an end. But the dim audience sitting in the shadow do
not generally know this.
To those who came in and out of the house in Eaton Square the figure
sitting at the desk writing letters or taking orders from the Duchess
was that of the unconsidered and unreal girl. Among the changing groups
of women with intensely absorbed and often strained faces the
kind-hearted observing ones were given to noticing Robin and speaking to
her almost affectionately because she was so attractive an object as
well as so industriously faithful to her work. Girls who were
Jacqueminot-rose flushed and who looked up to answer people with eyes
like an antelope's were not customarily capable of concentrating their
attention entirely upon brief letters of request and lists of
necessaries for hospitals and comfort kits. This type was admitted to be
frequently found readier for service in the preparation of
entertainments "for the benefit of"--more especially when such benefits
took the form of dancing. But the Duchess' little Miss Lawless came and
went on errands, wasting no time. She never forgot things or was slack
in any way. Her antelope eyes expressed a kind of yearning eagerness to
do all she could without a moment's delay.
"She works as if it were a personal thing with her," Lady Lothwell once
said thoughtfully. "I have seen girls wear that look when they are war
brides or have lovers or brothers at the front."
But she remained to the world generally only a rather specially lovely
specimen of the somewhat unreal young being with whom great agonies and
terrors had but little to do.
On a day when the Duchess had a cold and was obliged to remain in her
room Robin was with her, writing and making notes of instruction at her
bedside. In the afternoon a cold and watery sun making its way through
the window threw a chill light on her as she drew near with some papers
in her hand. It was the revealing of this light which made the Duchess
look at her curiously.
"You are not quite as blooming as you were, my child," she said. "About
two months ago you were particularly blooming. Lady Lothwell and Lord
Coombe and several other people noticed it. You have not been taking
your walks as regularly as you did. Let me look at you." She took her
hand and drew her nearer. "No. This will not do."
Robin stood very still.
"How could _any_ one be blooming!" broke from her.
"You are thinking about things in the night again," said the Duchess.
"Yes," said Robin. "Every night. Sometimes all night."
The Duchess watched her anxiously.
"It's so--lonely!" There was a hint of hysteric breakdown in the
exclamation. "How can I--_bear_ it!" She turned and went back to her
writing table and there she sat down and hid her face, trembling in an
extraordinary way.
"You are as unhappy as that?" said the Duchess. "And you are _lonely_?"
"All the world is lonely," Robin cried--not weeping, only shaking.
"Everything is left to itself to suffer. God has gone away."
The Duchess trembled a little herself. She too had hideously felt
something like the same thing at times of late. But this soft shaking
thing--! There shot into her mind like a bolt a sudden thought. Was this
something less inevitable--something more personal? She wondered what
would be best to say.
"Even older people lose their nerve sometimes," she decided on at last.
"When you said that work was the greatest help you were right. Work--and
as much sleep as one can get, and walking and fresh air. And we must
help each other--old and young. I want you to help _me_, child. I need
you."
Robin stood up and steadied herself somehow. She took up a letter in a
hand not yet quite still.
"Please need me," she said. "Please let me do everything--anything--and
never stop. If I never stop in the day time perhaps I shall sleep better
at night."
As there came surging in day by day bitter and cruel waves of war
news--stories of slaughter by land and sea, of massacre in simple
places, of savagery wrought on wounded men and prisoners in a
hydrophobia of hate let loose, it was ill lying awake in the dark
remembering loved beings surrounded by the worst of all the world has
ever known. Robin was afraid to look at the newspapers which her very
duties themselves obliged her to familiarise herself with, and she could
not close her ears. With battleship raids on harmless coast towns,
planned merely to the end of the wanton killing of such unconsidered
trifles of humanity as little children and women and men at their
every-day work, the circle of horror seemed to draw itself in closely.
Zeppelin raids leaving fragments of bodies on pavements and broken
things under fallen walls, were not so near as the women who dragged
themselves back to their work with death in their faces written
large--the death of husband or son or lover. These brought realities
close indeed.
"I don't know how he died," one of them said to the Duchess. "I don't
know how long it took him to die. I don't want to be told. I am glad he
is dead. Yes, I am glad. I wish the other two were dead too. I'm not
splendid and heroic. I thought I was at first, but I couldn't keep it
up--after I heard about Mrs. Foster's boy. If I believed there was
anything to thank, I should say 'Thank God I have no more sons.'"
That night Robin lay in the dark thinking of the dream. Had there been a
dream--or had it only been like the other things one dreamed about?
Sometimes an eerie fearfulness beset her vaguely. If there were letters
each day! But letters belonged to a time when rivers of blood did not
run through the world. She sat up in bed and clasped her hands round her
knees gazing into the blackness which seemed to enclose and shut her in.
It _had_ been true! She could see the wood and the foxglove spires
piercing the ferns. She could hear the ferns rustle and the little bird
sounds and stirrings. And oh! she could hear Donal whispering. "Can you
hear my heart beat?"
He had said it over and over again. His heart seemed to be so big and to
beat so strongly. She had thought it was because he was so big and
marvellous himself. It had been rapture to lay her cheek and ear against
his breast and listen. Everything had been so still. They had been so
still--so still themselves for pure joy in their close, close nearness.
Yes, the dream had been true. But here she sat in the dark and
Donal--where was Donal? Where millions of men were marching,
marching--only to kill each other--thinking of nothing but killing.
Donal too. He must kill. If he were a brave soldier he must only think
of killing and not be afraid because at any moment he might be killed
too. She clutched her knees and shuddered, feeling her forehead grow
damp. Donal killing a man--perhaps a boy like himself--a boy who might
have a dream of his own! How would his blue eyes look while he was
killing a man? Oh! No! No! No! Not Donal!
With her forehead still damp and her hands damp also she found herself
getting out of bed and walking up and down in the dark. She was wringing
her hands and sobbing. She must not think of things like these. She must
shut them out of her mind and think only of the dream. It had been
true--it had! And then the strange thought came to her that out of all
the world only he and she had known of their dreaming. And if he never
came back--! (Oh! please, God, let him come back!) no one need ever
know. It was their own, own dream and how could she bear to speak of it
to any one and why should she? He had said he wanted to have this one
thing of his very own before his life ended--if it was going to end. If
it ended it would be his sacred secret and hers forever. She might live
to be an old woman with white hair and no one would ever guess that
since the morning stars sang together they two had belonged to each
other.
Night after night she lay awake with thoughts like these. Through the
waiting days she began to find an anguished comfort in the feeling that
she was keeping their secret for him and that no one need ever know.
More than once she went on quietly with her writing when people stood
near her and spoke of him and his regiment, which every one was
interested in because he was so handsome and so young and new to the
leading of men. There were rumours that he must have been plunged into
fierce fighting though definite news did not come through without delay.
"Boys like that," she heard. "They ought to be kept at home. All the
greatest names will be extinct. And they are the splendid, silly ones
who expose themselves most. Young Lord Elphinstowe a week ago--the last
of his line! Scarcely a fragment of him to put together." There were
women who had a hysterical desire to talk about such things and make
gruesome pictures even of slightly founded stories. But when she heard
them she did not even lift her eyes from her work.
One marked feature of their meetings--though they themselves had not
marked it--had been that they had never talked of the future. It had
been as though there were no future. To live perfectly through the few
hours--even for the one hour or half hour they could snatch--was all
that they could plan and hope for. Could they meet to-morrow in this
place or that? When they met were they quite safe and blissfully alone?
The spectre had always been waiting and they had always been trying to
forget it. Each meeting had seemed so brief and crowded and breathlessly
sweet.
Only a boy and a girl could have so lost sight of all but their hour and
perhaps also only this boy and girl, because their hour had struck at a
time when all futures seemed to hold only chances that at any moment
might come to an end.
"Do you hear my heart beat? There is no time--no time!" these two things
had been the beginning, the middle and the end.
Sometimes Robin went and sat in the Gardens and one day in coming out
she met her mother whom she had not seen for months. Feather had been
exultingly gay and fashionably patriotic and she was walking round the
corner to a meeting to be held at her club. The khaki colouring of her
coat and brief skirt and cap added to their military air with pipings
and cords and a small upright feather of scarlet. She wore a badge and a
jewelled pin or so. She was about to pass Robin unrecognised but took a
second glance at her and stopped.
"I didn't know you," she exclaimed. "What is the matter?"
"Nothing--thank you," Robin answered pausing.
"Something _is_! You are losing your looks. Is your mistress working you
to death?"
"The Duchess is very kind indeed. She is most careful that I don't do
too much. I like my work more every day."
Feather took her in with a sharp scrutinising. She seemed to look her
over from her hat to her shoes before she broke into her queer little
critical laugh.
"Well, I can't congratulate her on the result. You are thin. You've lost
your colour and your mouth is beginning to drag at the corners." And she
nodded and marched away, the high heels of her beautiful small brown
boots striking the pavement with a military click.
As she had dressed in the morning Robin had wondered if she was mistaken
in thinking that the awful nights had made her look different.
If there had been letters to read--even a few lines such as are all a
soldier may write--to read over and over again, to hide in her breast
all day, to kiss and cry over and lay her cheek upon at night. Such a
small letter would have been such a huge comfort and would have made the
dream seem less far away. But everybody waited for letters--and waited
and waited. And sometimes they went astray or were lost forever and
people were left waiting.