"Now no one will ever know."
Robin waking from long unconsciousness found her mind saying this before
consciousness which was clear had actually brought her back to the
world.
"Now no one will ever know--ever."
She seemed to have been away somewhere in the dark for a very long time.
She was too tired to try to remember what had happened before she began
to climb the staircase, which grew steeper and longer as she dragged
herself from step to step. But in the back of her mind there was one
particular fact she knew without trying to remember how she learned it.
A shell had fallen somewhere and when it had burst Donal was "blown to
atoms." How big were atoms--how small were they? Several times when she
reached this point she descended into the abyss of blackness and fainted
again, though people were doing things to her and trying to keep her
awake in ways which troubled her greatly. Why should they disturb her so
when sinking into blackness was better?
"Now no one will ever know."
She was lying in her bed in her own room. Some one had undressed her. It
was a nice room and very quiet and there was only a dim light burning.
It was a long time before she came back, after one of the descents into
the black abyss, and became slowly aware that Something was near her
bed. She did not actually see it because at first she could not have
lifted or turned her eyes. She could only lie still. But she knew that
it was near her and she wished it were not. At last--by degrees it
ceased to be a mere _thing_ and evolved into a person. It was a man who
was holding her wrist and watching her quietly and steadily--as if he
had been doing it for some time. No one else was in the room. The people
who had been disturbing her by doing things had gone away.
"Now," she whispered dragging out word after word, "no one
will--ever--ever know." But she was not conscious she had said it even
in a whisper which could be heard. She thought the thing had only passed
again through her mind.
"Donal! Blown--to--atoms," she said in the same way. "How small is--an
atom?" She was sinking into the blackness again when the man dropped her
wrist quickly and did something to her which brought her back.
"Don't!" she moaned. "Please--don't."
But he would not let her go.
* * * * *
Perhaps days and nights passed--or perhaps only one day and night before
she found herself still lying in her bed but feeling somehow more awake
when she opened her eyes and found the same man sitting close to her
holding her wrist again.
"I am Dr. Redcliff," he said in a quiet voice. "You are much better. I
want to ask you some questions. I will not tire you."
He began to ask her questions very gently as if he did not wish to alarm
or disturb her. She had been found in a dead faint lying on the landing.
She had remained unconscious for an abnormally long time. When she had
been brought out of one faint she had fallen into another and this had
happened again and again. The indication was that she had been struck
down by some shock. In examining her he had found that she was
underweight. He wished to discover if she had been secretly working too
late at night in her deep interest in what she was doing. What exactly
had her diet been? Had she taken enough exercise in the open air? How
had she slept? The Duchess was seriously anxious.
They were the questions doctors always asked people except that he
seemed more desirous of being sure of the amount of exercise she had
taken than about anything else. He was specially interested in the times
when she had been in the country. She was obliged to tell him she had
always been alone. He thought it would have been better if she had had
some companion. Once when he was asking her about her visits to Mrs.
Bennett's cottage the blackness almost engulfed her again. But he was
watching her very closely and perhaps seeing her turn white--gave her
some stimulant in time. He had a clever face which was not unkind, but
she wished that it had not had such a keenly watchful look. More than
once the watchfulness tired her and she closed her eyes because she did
not want him to look into them--as if he were asking questions which
were not altogether doctors' questions.
When he left her and went downstairs to talk to the Duchess he asked a
good many quiet questions again. He was a man whose intense interest in
his profession did not confine itself wholly to its scientific aspect.
An extraordinarily beautiful child swooning into death was not a mere
pathological incident to him. And he knew many strange things brought
about by the abnormal conditions of war. He himself was conscious of
being overstrung with the rest of a tormented world.
He knew of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and he had heard more stories of her
household, her loveliness and Lord Coombe than he had time to remember.
He had, of course, heard the unsavoury rumours of the child who was
being brought up for some nefarious object. As he knew Lord Coombe
rather well he did not believe stories about him which went beyond a
certain limit. Not until he had talked to the Duchess for some time did
he discover that the hard-smitten child lying half-lifeless in her bed
was the very young heroine of the quite favourite scandal. The knowledge
gave him furiously to think. It was Coombe who had interested the
Duchess in her. The Duchess had no doubt taken her under her protection
for generously benign reasons. He pursued his questioning delicately.
"Has she had any young friends? She seems to have taken her walks alone
and even to have gone into the country by herself."
"The life of the young people in its ordinary sense of companionship and
amusement has been stopped by the War. There may be some who go on in
the old way but she has not been one of them," the Duchess said.
"Visits to old women in remote country places are not stimulating
enough. Has she had _no_ companions?"
"I tried--" said the Duchess wearily. She was rather pale herself. "The
news of the Sarajevo tragedy arrived on the day I gave a small dance for
her--to bring some young people together." Her waxen pallor became even
more manifest. "How they danced!" she said woefully. "What living things
they were! Oh!" the exclamation broke forth at a suddenly overwhelming
memory. "The beautiful boy--the splendid lad who was blown to atoms--the
news came only yesterday--was there dancing with the rest!"
Dr. Redcliff leaned forward slightly.
"To hear that _any_ boy has been blown to atoms is a hideous thing," he
said. "Who brought the news? Was Miss Lawless in the room when it was
brought?"
"I think so though I am not sure. She comes in and goes out very
quietly. I am afraid I forgot everything else. The shock was a great
one. My old friend Lord Coombe brought the news. The boy would have
succeeded him. We hear again and again of great families becoming
extinct. The house of Coombe has not been prolific. The War has taken
its toll. Donal Muir was the last of them. One has felt as though it was
of great importance that--that a thing like that should be carried on."
She began to speak in a half-numbed introspective way. "What does it
matter really? Only one boy of thousands--perhaps hundreds of thousands
before it is over? But--but it's the youngness--the power--the potential
meaning--wasted--torn--scattered in fragments." She stopped and sat
quite still, gazing before her as though into space.
"She is very young. She has been absorbed in war work and living in a
highly charged atmosphere for some time." Dr. Redcliff said presently,
"If she knew the poor lad--"
"She did not really know him well, though they had met as children. They
danced together that night and sat and talked in the conservatory. But
she never saw him again," the Duchess explained.
"It might have been too much, even if she did not know him well. We must
keep her quiet," said Dr. Redcliff.
Very shortly afterwards he rose and went away.
An hour later he was sitting in a room at Coombe House alone with Lord
Coombe. It was the room in which Mademoiselle Vallé had found his
lordship on the night of Robin's disappearance. No one knew now where
Mademoiselle was or if she were still alive. She had been living with
her old parents in a serene Belgian village which had been destroyed by
the Germans. Black tales had been told of which Robin had been allowed
to hear nothing. She had been protected in many ways.
Though they had not been intimates the two men knew each other well. To
each individually the type of the other was one he could understand. It
was plain to Lord Coombe that Redcliff found his case of rather special
interest, which he felt was scarcely to be wondered at. As he himself
had seen the too slender prostrate figure and the bloodless small face
with its curtain of lashes lying too heavily close to the cold cheek, he
had realised that their helpless beauty alone was enough to arrest more
than ordinary attention. She had, as the woman had cried out, looked as
if she were dead, and dead loveliness is a reaching power.
Dr. Redcliff spoke of her thoughtfully and with a certain gentleness. He
at first included her with many other girls, the changes in whose
methods of life he had been observing.
"The closed gates in their paths are suddenly thrown open for them
because no one has to lock and unlock them," he said. "It produces
curious effects. The light-minded ones take advantage of the fact and
find dangerous amusement in it sometimes. The serious ones go about the
work they have taken in hand. Miss Lawless is, I gather, one of the
thinking and feeling ones and has gone about a great deal."
"Yes. The Duchess has tried to save her from her own ardour, but perhaps
she has worked too steadily."
"Has the Duchess always known where she has gone and what people she has
seen?"
"That would have been impossible. She wished her to feel free and if we
had not wished it, one can see that it would not have been possible to
stand guard over her. Neither was it necessary."
But he began to listen with special attention. There awakened in his
mind the consciousness that he was being asked questions which suggested
an object. The next one added to his awakening sense of the thing.
"Her exercise and holidays were always taken alone?" Redcliff said.
"The Duchess believed so."
"She has evidently been living under a poignant strain and some ghastly
shock has struck her down. I think she must have been in the room when
you brought the news of young Muir's terrible death."
"She was," said Coombe. "I saw her and then forgot."
"I thought so," Redcliff went on. "She cried out several times, 'Blown
to atoms--atoms! Donal!' She was not conscious of the cries."
"Are you sure she said 'Donal'?" Coombe asked.
"Quite sure. It was that which set me thinking. I have thought a great
deal. She has touched me horribly. The mere sight of her was enough.
There is desolation in her childlikeness."
Lord Coombe sat extremely still. The room was very silent till Redcliff
went on in dropped voice.
"There was another thing she said. She whispered it brokenly word by
word. She did not know that, either. She whispered, 'Now--no one--will
ever--know--ever.'"
Lord Coombe still sat silent. What he was thinking could not be read in
his face but being a man of astute perception and used to the study of
faces Dr. Redcliff knew that suddenly some startling thought had leaped
within him.
"You were right to come to me," he said. "What is it you--suspect?"
That Dr. Redcliff was almost unbearably moved was manifest. He was not a
man of surface emotions but his face actually twitched and he hastily
gulped something down.
"She is a heartbreakingly beautiful thing," he said. "She has been
left--through sheer kindness--in her own young hands. They were too
young--and these are hours of cataclysm. She knows nothing. She does not
know that--she will probably have a child."