Many other thoughts filled his mind on his railroad journey to Scotland.
He questioned himself as to how deeply he still felt the importance of
there coming into the racked world a Head of the House of Coombe, how
strongly he was still inspired by the centuries old instinct that a
House of Coombe must continue to exist as part of the bulwarks of
England. The ancient instinct still had its power, but he was curiously
awakening to a slackening of the bonds which caused a man to specialise.
It was a reluctant awakening--he himself had no part in the slackening.
The upheaval of the whole world had done it and of the world England
herself was a huge part--small, huge, obstinate, fighting England.
Bereft of her old stately beauties, her picturesque splendours of habit
and custom, he could not see a vision of her, and owned himself desolate
and homesick. He was tired. So many men and women were tired--worn out
with thinking, fearing, holding their heads up while their hearts were
lead. When all was said and done, when all was over, what would the new
England want--what would she need? And England was only a part. What
would the ravaged world need as it lay--quiet at last--in ruins
physical, moral and mental? He had no answer. Wiser men than he had no
answer. Only time would tell. But the commonest brain cells in the
thickest skull could argue to the end which proved that only men and
women could do the work to be done. The task would be one for gods, or
demigods, or supermen--but there remained so far only men and women to
face it--to rebuild, to reinspire with life, to heal unearthly gaping
wounds of mind and soul. Each man or woman born strong and given the
chance to increase in vigour which would build belief in life and
living, in a future, was needed as breath and air are needed--even such
an one as in the past would have wielded a sort of unearned sceptre as a
Head of the House of Coombe. A man born a blacksmith, if he were of
like quality, would meet equally the world's needs, but each would be
doing in his way his part of that work which it seemed to-day only
demigod and superman could fairly confront.
There was time for much thinking in long hours spent shut in a railroad
carriage and his mind was, in these days, not given to letting him rest.
He had talked with many men back from the Front on leave and he had
always noted the marvel of both minds and bodies at the relief from
strain--from maddening noise, from sights of death and horror, from the
needs of decency and common comfort and cleanliness which had become
unheard of luxury. London, which to the Londoner seemed caught in the
tumult and turmoil of war, was to these men rest and peace.
Coombe felt, when he descended at the small isolated station and stood
looking at the climbing moor, that he was like one of those who had left
the roar of battle behind and reached utter quiet. London was a world's
width away and here the War did not exist. In Flanders and in France it
filled the skies with thunders and drenched the soil with blood. But
here it was not.
The partly rebuilt ruin of Darreuch rose at last before his view high on
the moor as he drove up the winding road. The space and the blue sky
above and behind it made it seem the embodiment of remote stillness.
Nothing had reached nor could touch it. It did not know that green
fields and deep woods were strewn with dead and mangled youth and all it
had meant of the world's future. Its crumbled walls and remaining grey
towers stood calm in the clear air and birds' nests were hidden safely
in their thick ivy.
Robin was there and each night she believed that a dead man came to her
a seeming living being. He was not like Dowie, but his realisation of
the mystery of this thing touched his nerves as a wild unexplainable
sound heard in the darkness at midnight might have done. He wondered if
he should see some look which was not quite normal in her eyes and hear
some unearthly note in her voice. Physically the effect upon her had
been good, but might he not be aware of the presence of some mental
sign?
"I think you'll be amazed when you see her, my lord," said Dowie, who
met him. "I am myself, every day."
She led him up to the Tower room and when he entered it Robin was
sitting by a window sewing with her eyelids dropped as he had pictured
them. The truth was that Dowie had not previously announced him because
she had wanted him to come upon just this.
Robin rose from her chair and laid her bit of sewing aside. For a moment
he almost expected her to make the little curtsey Mademoiselle had
taught her to make when older people came into the schoolroom. She
looked so exactly as she had looked before life had touched her. There
was very little change in her girlish figure; the child curve of her
cheek had returned; the Jacqueminot rose glowed on it and her eyes were
liquid wonders of trust. She came to him holding out both hands.
"Thank you for coming," she said in her pretty way. "Thank you, Lord
Coombe, for coming."
"Thank you, my child, for asking me to come," he answered and he feared
that his voice was not wholly steady.
There was no mystic sign to be seen about her. The only mystery was in
her absolutely blooming health and naturalness and in the gentle and
clear happiness of her voice and eyes. She was not tired; she was not
dragged or anxious looking as he had seen even fortunate young wives and
mothers at times. There actually flashed back upon him the morning,
months ago, when he had met her in the street and said to himself that
she was like a lovely child on her birthday with all her gifts about
her. Her radiance had been quiet even then because she was always quiet.
She led him to a seat near her window and she sat by him.
"I put this chair here for you because it is so lovely to look out at
the moor," she said.
That moved him to begin with. She had been thinking simply and kindly of
him even before he came. He had always been prepared for, waited upon
either with flattering attentions or ceremonial service, but the quiet
pretty things mothers and sisters and wives did had not been part of his
life and he had always noticed and liked them and sometimes wondered
that most men received them with a casual air. This small thing alone
caused the roar he had left behind to recede still farther.
"I was afraid that you might be too busy to come," she went on. "You
see, I remembered how important the work was and that there are things
which cannot wait for an hour. I could have waited as long as you told
me to wait. But I am so _glad_ you could come!"
"I will always come," was his answer. "I have helpers who could be
wholly trusted if I died to-night. I have thought of that. One must."
She hesitated a moment and then said, "I am quite away here as you
wanted me to be. I see it was the only thing. I read nothing, hear
nothing. London--the War--" her voice fell a little.
"They go on. Will you be kind to me and help me to forget them for a
while?" He looked through the window at the sky and the moor. "They are
not here--they never have been. The men who come back will do anything
to make themselves forget for a little while. This place makes me feel
that I am a man who has come back."
"I will do anything--everything--you wish me to do," she said eagerly.
"Dowie wondered if you would not want to be very quiet and not be
reminded. I--wondered too."
"You were both right. I want to feel that I am in another world. This
seems like a new planet."
"Would you--" she spoke rather shyly, "would you be able to stay a few
days?"
"I can stay a week," he answered. "Thank you, Robin."
"I am so glad," she said. "I am so glad."
So they did not talk about the War or about London, though she inquired
about the Duchess and Lady Lothwell and Kathryn.
"Would you like to go out and walk over the moor?" she asked after a
short time. "It's so scented and sweet, and darling things scurry about.
I don't think they are really frightened, because I try to walk softly.
Sometimes there are nests with eggs or soft little things in them."
They went out together and walked side by side, sometimes on the winding
road and sometimes through the heather. He found himself watching every
step she made and keeping his eye on the path ahead of them to make
sure she would avoid roughness or irregularities. In some inner part of
his being there remotely worked the thought that this was the way in
which he might have walked side by side with Alixe, watching over each
step taken by her sacred little feet.
The day was a wonder of peace and relaxation to him. Farther and
farther, until lost in nothingness, receded the roar and the tensely
strung sense of waiting for news of unbearable things. As they went on
he realised that he need not even watch the path before her because she
knew it so well and her step was as light and firm as a young roe's. Her
very movements seemed to express the natural physical enjoyment of
exercise.
He knew nothing of her mind but that Mademoiselle had told him that she
was intelligent. They had never talked together and so her mentality was
an unexplored field to him. She did not chatter. She said fresh
picturesque things about life on the moor, about the faithful silent
Macaurs, about Dowie, and now and then about something she had read. She
showed him beauties and small curious things she plainly loved. It
struck him that the whole trend of her being lay in the direction of
being fond of people and things--of loving and being happy,--and even
merry if life had been kind to her. Her soft laugh had a naturally merry
note. He heard it first when she held him quite still at her side as
they watched the frisking of some baby rabbits.
There was a curious relief in realising, as the hours passed, that her
old dislike and dread of him had melted into nothingness like a mist
blown away in the night. She was thinking of him as if he were some
mature and wise friend who had always been kind to her. He need not
rigidly watch his words and hers. She was not afraid of him at all;
there was no shrinking in her eyes when they met his. If Alixe had had a
daughter who was his own, she might have lifted such lovely eyes to him.
They lunched together and Dowie served them with deft ability and an
expression which Coombe was able to comprehend the at once watchful and
directing meaning of. It directed him to observation of Robin's appetite
and watched for his encouraged realisation of it as a supporting fact.
He went to his own rooms in the afternoon that she might be alone and
rest. He read an old book for an hour and then talked with the Macaurs
about the place and their work and their new charge. He wanted to hear
what they were thinking of her.
"It's wonderful, my lord!" was Mrs. Macaur's repeated contribution. "She
came here a wee ghost. She frighted me. I couldna see how she could go
through what's before her. I lay awake in my bed expectin' Mrs. Dowie to
ca' me any hour. An' betwixt one night and anither the change cam. She's
a well bairn--for woman she isna, puir wee thing! It's a wonder--a
wonder--a wonder, my lord!"
When he saw Dowie alone he asked her a question.
"Does she know that you have told me of the dream?"
"No, my lord. The dream's a thing we don't talk about. She's only
mentioned it three times. It's in my mind that she feels it's too sacred
to be made common by words."
He had wondered if Robin had been aware of his knowledge. After Dowie's
answer he wondered if she would speak to him about the dream herself.
Perhaps she would not. It might be that she had asked him to come to
Darreuch because her thought of him had so changed that she had
realised something of his grave anxiety for her health and a gentle
consideration had made her wish to give him the opportunity to see her
face to face. Perhaps she had intended only this.
"I want to see her," he had said to himself. The relief of the mere
seeing had been curiously great. He had the relief of sinking, as it
were, into the deep waters of pure peace on this new planet. In this
realisation every look at the child's face, every movement she made,
every tone of her voice, aided. Did she know that she soothed him? Did
she intend to try to soothe? When they were together she gave him a
feeling that she was strangely near and soft and warm. He had felt it on
the moor. It was actually as if she wanted to be quieting to him--almost
as if she had realised that he had been stretched upon a mental rack
with maddening tumult all around him. It was part of her pretty thought
of him in the matter of the waiting chair and he felt it very sweet.
But she had had other things in her mind when she had asked him to come.
This he knew later.