But there were no letters. And she was obliged to sit at her desk in the
corner and listen to what people said about what was happening, and now
and then to Lord Coombe speaking in low tones to the Duchess of his
anxiety and uncertainty about Donal. Anxiety was increasing on every
side and such of the unthinking multitude as had at last ceased to
believe that one magnificent English blow would rid the earth of
Germany, had begun to lean towards belief in a vision of German millions
adding themselves each day to other millions advancing upon France,
Belgium, England itself, a grey encroaching mass rolling forward and
ever forward, overwhelming even neutral countries until not only Europe
but the whole world was covered, and the mailed fist beat its fragments
into such dust as it chose. Even those who had not lost their heads and
who knew more than the general public, wore grave faces because they
felt they knew too little and could not know more. Coombe's face was
hard and grey many days.
"It seems as if one lost them in the flood sometimes," Robin heard him
say to the Duchess. "I saw his mother yesterday and could give her no
definite news. She believes that he is where the worst fighting is going
on. I could not tell her he was not."
As, when they had been together, the two had not thought of any future,
so, now Robin was alone, she could not think of any to-morrow--perhaps
she would not. She lived only in the day which was passing. She rose,
dressed and presented herself to the Duchess for orders; she did the
work given her to do, she saw the day gradually die and the lights
lighted; she worked as long as she was allowed to do so--and then the
day was over and she climbed the staircase to her room.
Sometimes she sat and wrote letters to Donal--long yearning letters, but
when they were written she tore them into pieces or burned them. If they
were to keep their secret she could not send such letters because there
were so many chances that they would be lost. Still there was a hopeless
comfort in writing them, in pouring out what she would not have written
even if she had been sure that it would reach him safely. No girl who
loved a man who was at the Front would let him know that it seemed as if
her heart were slowly breaking. She must be brave--brave! But she was
not brave, that she knew. The news from the Front was worse every day;
there were more women with awful faces; some workers had dropped out and
came no more. One of them who had lost three sons in one battle had died
a few days after the news arrived because the shock had been too great
for her strength to endure. There were new phases of anguish on all
sides. She did all she was called on to do with a secret passion of
eagerness; each smallest detail was the sacred thing. She begged the
Duchess to allow her to visit and help the mothers of sons who were
fighting--or wounded or missing. That made her feel nearer to things she
wanted to feel near to. When they cried or told her stories, she could
understand. When she worked she might be doing things which might
somehow reach Donal or boys like Donal.
Howsoever long her life was she knew one thing would never be blotted
out by time--the day she went down to Mersham Wood to see Mrs. Bennett,
whose three grandsons had been killed within a few days of each other.
She had received the news in one telegram. There was no fairy wood any
longer, there were only bare branched trees standing holding out naked
arms to the greyness of the world. They looked as if they were
protesting against something. The grass and ferns were brown and sodden
with late rains and there were no hollyhocks and snapdragons in the
cottage garden--only on either side of the brick path dead brown stalks,
some of them broken by the wind. Things had not been neatly cut down and
burned and swept away. The grandsons had made the garden autumn-tidy
every year before this one.
The old fairy woman sat on a clean print-covered arm chair by a very
small fire. She had a black print dress on and a black shawl and a black
ribbon round her cap. Her Bible lay on a little table near her but it
was closed.
"Don't get up, please, Mrs. Bennett," Robin said when she lifted the
latch and entered.
The old fairy woman looked at her in a dazed way.
"I'm so eye-dimmed with crying that I can scarcely see," she said.
Robin came to her and knelt down on the hearth.
"I'm your lodger," she faltered, "who--who used to love the fairy wood
so."
She had not known what she would say when she spoke first but she had
certainly not thought of saying anything like this. And she certainly
had not known that she would suddenly find herself overwhelmed by a
rising tidal wave of unbearable woe and drop her face on to the old
woman's lap with wild sobbing. She had not come down from London to do
this--but away from the world--in the clean, still little cottage room
which seemed to hold only grief and silence and death the wave rose and
broke and swept her with it.
Mrs. Bennett only gave herself up to the small clutching hands and sat
and shivered.
"No one--will come in--will they?" Robin was gasping. "There is no one
to hear, is there?"
"No one on earth," said the old fairy woman. "Quiet and loneliness are
left if there's naught else."
What she thought it would be hard to say. The blow which had come to her
at the end of a long life had, as it were, felled her as a tree might
have been felled in Mersham Wood. As the tree might have lain for a
short time with its leaves still seeming alive on its branches so she
seemed living. But she had been severed from her root. She listened to
the girl's sobbing and stroked her hair.
"Don't be afraid. There's no one left to hear but the walls and the bare
trees in the wood," she said.
Robin sobbed on.
"You've a kind heart, but you're not crying for me," she said next.
"You've a black trouble of your own. There's few that hasn't these days.
And it's worse for the young that's got to live through it and after it.
When Mary Ann comes to see after me to-morrow morning I may be lying
dead, thank God. But you're a child." The small clutching hands clutched
more piteously because it was so true--so true. Whatsoever befell there
were all the long, long years to come--with only the secret left and the
awful fear that sometime she might begin to be afraid that it was not a
real thing--since no one had ever known or ever would know and since she
could never speak of it or hear it spoken of.
"I'm so afraid," she shuddered at last in a small low voice. "I'm so
_lonely_!" The old fairy woman's stroking hand stopped short.
"Is there--anything--you'd like to tell me--anything in the world?" she
asked tremulously. "There's nothing I'd mind."
The pretty head on her lap shook itself to and fro.
"No! No! No! No!" the small choked voice gave out. "Nothing--nothing!
Nothing. That's why it's so lonely."
As she had waited alone through the night in her cradle, as she had
watched the sparrows on the roofs above her in the nursery, as she had
played alone until Donal came, so it was her fate to be alone now.
"But you came away from London because there were too many people there
and you wanted to be in a place where there was nothing but an empty
cottage and an old woman. Some would call it lonelier here."
"The wood is here--the fairy wood!" she cried and her sobbing broke
forth tenfold more bitterly.
Mrs. Bennett had seen in her day much of the troubles of others and many
of the things she had seen had been the troubles of women who were
young. Sometimes it had been possible to help them, sometimes it had
not, but in any case she had always known that help could be given only
if one asked careful questions. The old established rules with regard to
one's behaviour in connection with duchesses and their belongings had
strangely faded away since the severing of her root as all things on
earth had faded and lost consequence. She remembered no rules as she
bent her head over the girl and almost whispered to her.
"I won't ask no questions after this one, Miss dear," she said quaking.
"But was there ever--a young gentleman--in the wood?"
"No! No! No! No!" four times again Robin cried it. "Never! Never!" And
she lifted her face and let her see it white and streaming and with eyes
which desperately defied and as they defied implored for love and aid
and mercy.
The old fairy woman's nutcracker mouth trembled. It mumbled pathetically
before she was able to control it. She knew she had heard this kind of
thing before though in cases with which great ladies had nothing
whatever to do. And at the same time there was something in this case
that was somehow different.
"I don't know what to say or do," she faltered helplessly. "With the
world like this--we've got to try to comfort each other--and we don't
know how."
"Let me come into your arms," said Robin like a child. "Hold me and let
me hold you." She crept near and folding soft arms about the old figure
laid her cheek against the black shawl. "Let us cry. There's nothing for
either of us to do but cry until our hearts break in two. We are all
alone and no one can hear us."
"There's naught but the wood outside," moaned the old fairy woman.
The voice against the shawl was a moan also.
"Perhaps the wood hears us--perhaps it hears. Oh! me! Oh! me!"
* * * * *
When she reached London she saw that there were excited groups of people
talking together in the streets. Among them were women who were crying,
or protesting angrily or comforting others. But she had seen the same
thing before and would not let herself look at people or hear anything
she could shut her ears against. Some new thing had happened, perhaps
the Germans had taken some important town and wreaked their vengeance on
the inhabitants, perhaps some new alarming move had been made and
disaster stared the Allies in the face. She staggered through the crowds
in the station and did not really know how she reached Eaton Square.
Half an hour later she was sitting at her desk quiet and neat in her
house dress. She had told the Duchess all she could tell her of her
visit to old Mrs. Bennett.
"We both cried a good deal," she explained when she saw her employer
look at her stained eyes. "She keeps remembering what they were like
when they were babies--how rosy and fat they were and how they learned
to walk and tumbled about on her little kitchen floor. And then how big
they grew and how fine they looked in their khaki. She says the worst
thing is wondering how they look now. I told her she mustn't wonder. She
mustn't think at all. She is quite well taken care of. A girl called
Mary Ann comes in three times a day to wait on her--and her daughter
comes when she can but her trouble has made her almost wander in her
mind. It's because they are _all_ gone. When she comes in she forgets
everything and sits and says over and over again, 'If it had only been
Tom--or only Tom and Will--or if it had been Jem--or only Jem and
Tom--but it's Will--and Jem--and Tom,'--over and over again. I am not at
all sure I know how to comfort people. But she was glad I came."
When Lord Coombe came in to make his daily visit he looked rigid
indeed--as if he were stiff and cold though it was not a cold night.
He sat down by the Duchess and took a telegram from his pocket. Glancing
up at him, Robin was struck by a whiteness about his mouth. He did not
speak at once. It was as though even his lips were stiff.
"It has come," he said at last. "Killed. A shell." The Duchess repeated
his words after him. Her lips seemed stiff also.
"Killed. A shell."
He handed the telegram to her. It was the customary officially
sympathetic announcement. She read it more than once. Her hands began to
tremble. But Coombe sat with face hidden. He was bowed like an old man.
"A shell," he said slowly as if thinking the awful thing out. "That I
heard unofficially." Then he added a strange thing, dragging the words
out. "How could that--be blown to atoms?"
The Duchess scarcely breathed her answer which was as strange as his
questioning.
"Oh! How _could_ it!"
She put out her shaking hand and touched his sleeve, watching his face
as if something in it awed her.
"You _loved_ him?" She whispered it. But Robin heard.
"I did not know I had loved anything--but I suppose that has been it.
His physical perfection attracted me at first--his extraordinary
contrast to Henry. It was mere pride in him as an heir and successor.
Afterwards it was a _beautiful_ look his young blue eyes had. Beautiful
seems an unmasculine word for such a masculine lad, but no other word
expresses it. It was a sort of valiant brightness and joy in living and
being friends with the world. I saw it every time he came to talk to me.
I wished he were my son. I even tried to think of him as my son." He
uttered a curious low sound like a sudden groan, "My son has been
killed."
* * * * *
When he was about to leave the house and stood in the candle-lighted
hall he was thinking of many dark things which passed unformedly through
his mind and made him move slowly. He was slow in his movements as the
elderly maid servant assisted him to put on his overcoat, and he was as
slowly drawing on his gloves when his eyes--slow also--travelled up the
staircase and stopped at the first landing, where he seemed to see an
indefinite heap of something lying.
"Am I mistaken or is--something--lying on the landing?" he said to the
woman.
The fact that he was impelled to make the inquiry seemed to him part of
his abnormal state of mind. What affair of his after all were curiously
dropped bundles upon his hostess' staircase? But--
"Please go and look at it," he added, and the woman gave him a troubled
look and went up the stairs.
He himself was only a moment behind her. He actually found himself
following her as if he were guessing something. When the maid cried out,
he vaguely knew what he had been guessing.
"Oh!" the woman gasped, bending down. "It's poor little Miss Lawless!
Oh, my lord," wildly after a nearer glance, "She looks as if she was
dead!"