In the front window of one of the row of little flat-faced brick houses
on a narrow street in Manchester, Dowie sat holding Henrietta's new baby
upon her lap. They were what is known as "weekly" houses, their rent
being paid by the week and they were very small. There was a parlour
about the size of a compartment in a workbox, there was a still smaller
room behind it which was called a dining room and there was a diminutive
kitchen in which all the meals were eaten unless there was "company to
tea" which in these days was almost unknown. Dowie had felt it very
small when she first came to it from the fine spaces and heights of the
house in Eaton Square and found it seemingly full of very small children
and a hysterically weeping girl awaiting the impending arrival of one
who would be smaller than the rest.
"You'll never stay here," said Henrietta, crying and clutching the
untidy half-buttoned front of her blouse. "You come straight from
duchesses and grandeur and you don't know how people like us live. How
can you stand us and our dirt, Aunt Sarah Ann?"
"There needn't be dirt, Henrietta, my girl," said Dowie with quite
uncritical courage. "There wouldn't be if you were yourself, poor lass.
I'm not a duchess, you know. I've only been a respectable servant. And
I'm going to see you through your trouble."
Her sober, kindly capableness evolved from the slovenly little house and
the untended children, from the dusty rooms and neglected kitchen the
kind of order and neatness which had been plain to see in Robin's more
fortune-favoured apartment. The children became as fresh and neat as
Robin's nursery self. They wore clean pinafores and began to behave
tidily at table.
"I don't know how you do it, Aunt Sarah Ann," sighed Henrietta. But she
washed her blouse and put buttons on it.
"It's just seeing things and picking up and giving a touch here and
there," said Dowie. She bought little comforts almost every day and
Henrietta was cheered by cups of hot tea in the afternoon and found
herself helping to prepare decent meals and sitting down to them with
appetite before a clean tablecloth. She began to look better and
recovered her pleasure in sitting at the front window to watch the
people passing by and notice how many new black dresses and bonnets went
to church each Sunday.
When the new baby was born there was neither turmoil nor terror.
"Somehow it was different from the other times. It seemed sort of
natural," Henrietta said. "And it's so quiet to lie like this in a
comfortable clean bed, with everything in its place and nothing upset in
the room. And a bright bit of fire in the grate--and a tidy, swept-up
hearth--and the baby breathing so soft in his flannels."
She was a pretty thing and quite unfit to take care of herself even if
she had had no children. Dowie knew that she was not beset by
sentimental views of life and that all she wanted was a warm and
comfortable corner to settle down into. Some masculine creature would be
sure to begin to want her very soon. It was only to be hoped that youth
and flightiness would not descend upon her--though three children might
be supposed to form a barrier. But she had a girlish figure and her hair
was reddish gold and curly and her full and not too small mouth was red
and curly also. The first time she went to church in her little widow's
bonnet with the reddish gold showing itself under the pathetic little
white crêpe border, she was looked at a good deal. Especially was she
looked at by an extremely respectable middle-aged widower who had been a
friend of her dead husband's. His wife had been dead six years, he had a
comfortable house and a comfortable shop which had thriven greatly
through a connection with army supplies.
He came to see Henrietta and he had the good sense to treat Dowie as if
she were her mother. He explained himself and his circumstances to her
and his previous friendship for her nephew. He asked Dowie if she
objected to his coming to see her niece and bringing toys to the
children.
"I'm fond of young ones. I wanted 'em myself. I never had any," he said
bluntly. "There's plenty of room in my house. It's a cheerful place with
good solid furniture in it from top to bottom. There's one room we used
to call 'the Nursery' sometimes just for a joke--not often. I choked up
one day when I said it and Mary Jane burst out crying. I could do with
six."
He was stout about the waist but his small blue eyes sparkled in his red
face and Henrietta's slimness unromantically but practically approved of
him.
One evening Dowie came into the little parlour to find her sitting upon
his knee and he restrained her when she tried to rise hastily.
"Don't get up, Hetty," he said. "Your Aunt Sarah Ann'll understand.
We've had a talk and she's a sensible woman. She says she'll marry me,
Mrs. Dowson--as soon as it's right and proper."
"Yes, we've had a talk," Dowie replied in her nice steady voice. "He'll
be a good husband to you, Henrietta--kind to the children."
"I'd be kind to them even if she wouldn't marry me," the stout lover
answered. "I want 'em. I've told myself sometimes that I ought to have
been the mother of six--not the father but the mother. And I'm not
joking."
"I don't believe you are, Mr. Jenkinson," said Dowie.
* * * * *
As she sat before the window in the scrap of a parlour and held the
sleeping new baby on her comfortable lap, she was thinking of this and
feeling glad that poor Jem's widow and children were so well provided
for. It would be highly respectable and proper. The ardour of Mr.
Jenkinson would not interfere with his waiting until Henrietta's weeds
could be decorously laid aside and then the family would be joyfully
established in his well-furnished and decent house. During his probation
he would visit Henrietta and bring presents to the children and
unostentatiously protect them all and "do" for them.
"They won't really need me now that Henrietta's well and cheerful and
has got some one to make much of her and look after her," Dowie
reflected, trotting the baby gently. "I can't help believing her grace
would take me on again if I wrote and asked her. And I should be near
Miss Robin, thank God. It seems a long time since--"
She suddenly leaned forward and looked up the narrow street where the
wind was blowing the dust about and whirling some scraps of paper. She
watched a moment and then lifted the baby and stood up so that she
might make more sure of the identity of a tall gentleman she saw
approaching. She only looked at him for a few seconds and then she left
the parlour quickly and went to the back room where she had been aware
of Mr. Jenkinson's voice rumbling amiably along as a background to her
thoughts.
"Henrietta," she said, "his lordship's coming down the street and he's
coming here. I'm afraid something's happened to Miss Robin or her grace.
Perhaps I'm needed at Eaton Square. Please take the baby."
"Give him to me," said Jenkinson and it was he who took him with quite
an experienced air.
Henrietta was agitated.
"Oh, my goodness! Aunt Sarah Ann! I feel all shaky. I never saw a
lord--and he's a marquis, isn't it? I shan't know what to do."
"You won't have to do anything," answered Dowie. "He'll only say what
he's come to say and go away."
She went out of the room as quickly as she had come into it because she
heard the sound of the cheap little door knocker. She was pale with
anxiety when she opened the door and Lord Coombe saw her troubled look
and understood its reason.
"I am afraid I have rather alarmed you, Dowie," he said as he stepped
into the narrow lobby and shook hands with her.
"It's not bad news of her grace or Miss Robin?" she faltered.
"I have come to ask you to come back to London. Her grace is well but
Miss Robin needs you," was what he said.
But Dowie knew the words did not tell her everything she was to hear.
She took him into the parlour for which she realised he was much too
tall. When she discreetly closed the door after he had entered, he said
seriously, "Thank you," before he seated himself. And she knew that this
meant that they must be undisturbed.
"Will you sit down too," he said as she stood a moment waiting
respectfully. "We must talk together."
She took a chair opposite to him and waited respectfully again. Yes, he
had something grave on his mind. He had come to tell her something--to
ask her questions perhaps--to require something of her. Her superiors
had often required things of her in the course of her experience--such
things as they would not have asked of a less sensible and reliable
woman. And she had always been ready.
When he began to talk to her he spoke as he always did, in a tone which
sounded unemotional but held one's attention. But his face had changed
since she had last seen it. It had aged and there was something
different in the eyes. That was the War. Since the War began so many
faces had altered.
During the years in the slice of a house he had never talked to her very
much. It was with Mademoiselle he had talked and his interviews with her
had not taken place in the nursery. How was it then that he seemed to
know her so well. Had Mademoiselle told him that she was a woman to be
trusted safely with any serious and intimate confidence--that being
given any grave secret to shield, she would guard it as silently and
discreetly as a great lady might guard such a thing if it were personal
to her own family--as her grace herself might guard it. That he knew
this fact without a shadow of doubt was subtly manifest in every word he
spoke, in each tone of his voice. There was strange dark trouble to
face--and keep secret--and he had come straight to her--Sarah Ann
Dowson--because he was sure of her and knew her ways. It was her _ways_
he knew and understood--her steadiness and that she had the kind of
manners that keep a woman from talking about things and teach her how to
keep other people from being too familiar and asking questions. And he
knew what that kind of manners was built on--just decent faithfulness
and honest feeling. He didn't say it in so many words, of course, but as
Dowie listened it was exactly as if he said it in gentleman's language.
England was full of strange and cruel tragedies. And they were not all
tragedies of battle and sudden death. Many of them were near enough to
seem even worse--if worse could be. Dowie had heard some hints of them
and had wondered what the world was coming to. As her visitor talked her
heart began to thump in her side. Whatsoever had happened was no secret
from her grace. And together she and his lordship were going to keep it
a secret from the world. Dowie could scarcely have told what phrase or
word at last suddenly brought up before her a picture of the nursery in
the house in Mayfair--the feeling of a warm soft childish body pressed
close to her knee, the look of a tender, dewy-eyed small face and the
sound of a small yearning voice saying:
"I want to _kiss_ you, Dowie." And so hearing it, Dowie's heart cried
out to itself, "Oh! Dear Lord!"
"It's Miss Robin that trouble's come to," involuntarily broke from her.
"A trouble she must be protected in. She cannot protect herself." For a
few seconds he sat and looked at her very steadily. It was as though he
were asking a question. Dowie did not know she was going to rise from
her chair. But for some reason she got up and stood quite firmly before
him. And her good heart went thump-thump-thump.
"Your lordship," she said and in spite of the thumping her voice
actually did not shake. "It was one of those War weddings. And perhaps
he's dead."
Then it was Lord Coombe who left his chair.
"Thank you, Dowie," he said and before he began to walk up and down the
tiny room she felt as if he made a slight bow to her.
She had said something that he had wished her to say. She had removed
some trying barrier for him instead of obliging him to help her to cross
it and perhaps stumbling on her way. She had neither stumbled nor
clambered, she had swept it away out of his path and hers. That was
because she knew Miss Robin and had known her from her babyhood.
Though for some time he walked to and fro slowly as he talked she saw
that it was easier for him to complete the relation of his story. But as
it proceeded it was necessary for her to make an effort to recall
herself to a realisation of the atmosphere of the parlour and the narrow
street outside the window--and she was glad to be assisted by the
amiable rumble of Mr. Jenkinson's voice as heard from the back room when
she found herself involuntarily leaning forward in her chair, vaguely
conscious that she was drawing short breaths, as she listened to what he
was telling her. The things she was listening to stood out from a
background of unreality so startling. She was even faintly tormented by
shadowy memories of a play she had seen years ago at Drury Lane. And
Drury Lane incidents were of a world so incongruously remote from the
house in Eaton Square and her grace's clever aquiline ivory face--and
his lordship with his quiet bearing and his unromantic and elderly,
tired fineness. And yet he was going to undertake to do a thing which
was of the order of deed the sober everyday mind could only expect from
the race of persons known as "heroes" in theatres and in books. And he
was noticeably and wholly untheatrical about it. His plans were those of
a farseeing and practical man in every detail. To Dowie the working
perfection of his preparations was amazing. They included every
contingency and seemed to forget nothing and ignore no possibility. He
had thought of things the cleverest woman might have thought of, he had
achieved effects as only a sensible man accustomed to power and
obedience could have achieved them. And from first to last he kept
before Dowie the one thing which held the strongest appeal. In her
helpless heartbreak and tragedy Robin needed her as she needed no one
else in the world.
"She is so broken and weakened that she may not live," he said in the
end. "No one can care for her as you can."
"I can care for her, poor lamb. I'll come when your lordship's ready for
me, be it soon or late."
"Thank you, Dowie," he said again. "It will be soon."
And when he shook hands with her and she opened the front door for him,
she stood and watched him, thinking very deeply as he walked down the
street with the wind-blown dust and scraps of paper whirling about him.