Two or three decades earlier the prevailing sentiment would have been
that “poor little Mrs. Gareth-Lawless” and her situation were pathetic.
Her acquaintances would sympathetically have discussed her helplessness
and absolute lack of all resource. So very pretty, so young, the mother
of a dear little girl—left with no income! How very sad! What _could_
she do? The elect would have paid her visits and sitting in her
darkened drawing-room earnestly besought her to trust to her Maker and
suggested “the Scriptures” as suitable reading. Some of them—rare and
strange souls even in their time—would have known what they meant and
meant what they said in a way they had as yet only the power to express
through the medium of a certain shibboleth, the rest would have used
the same forms merely because shibboleth is easy and always safe and
creditable.
But to Feather’s immediate circle a multiplicity of engagements, fevers
of eagerness in the attainment of pleasures and ambitions, anxieties,
small and large terrors, and a whirl of days left no time for the
regarding of pathetic aspects. The tiny house up whose staircase—tucked
against a wall—one had seemed to have the effect of crowding even when
one went alone to make a call, suddenly ceased to represent hilarious
little parties which were as entertaining as they were up to date and
noisy. The most daring things London gossiped about had been said and
done and worn there. Novel social ventures had been tried—dancing and
songs which seemed almost startling at first—but which were gradually
being generally adopted. There had always been a great deal of laughing
and talking of nonsense and the bandying of jokes and catch phrases.
And Feather fluttering about and saying delicious, silly things at
which her hearers shouted with glee. Such a place could not suddenly
become pathetic. It seemed almost indecent for Robert Gareth-Lawless to
have dragged Death nakedly into their midst—to have died in his bed in
one of the little bedrooms, to have been put in his coffin and carried
down the stairs scraping the wall, and sent away in a hearse. Nobody
could bear to think of it.
Feather could bear it less than anybody else. It seemed incredible that
such a trick could have been played her. She shut herself up in her
stuffy little bedroom with its shrimp pink frills and draperies and
cried lamentably. At first she cried as a child might who was suddenly
snatched away in the midst of a party. Then she began to cry because
she was frightened. Numbers of cards “with sympathy” had been left at
the front door during the first week after the funeral, they had
accumulated in a pile on the salver but very few people had really come
to see her and while she knew they had the excuse of her recent
bereavement she felt that it made the house ghastly. It had never been
silent and empty. Things had always been going on and now there was
actually not a sound to be heard—no one going up and down stairs—Rob’s
room cleared of all his belongings and left orderly and empty—the
drawing-room like a gay little tomb without an occupant. How long
_would_ it be before it would be full of people again—how long must she
wait before she could decently invite anyone?—It was really at this
point that fright seized upon her. Her brain was not given to
activities of reasoning and followed no thought far. She had not begun
to ask herself questions as to ways and means. Rob had been winning at
cards and had borrowed some money from a new acquaintance so no
immediate abyss had yawned at her feet. But when the thought of future
festivities rose before her a sudden check made her involuntarily
clutch at her throat. She had no money at all, bills were piled
everywhere, perhaps now Robert was dead none of the shops would give
her credit. She remembered hearing Rob come into the house swearing
only the day before he was taken ill and it had been because he had met
on the door-step a collector of the rent which was long over-due and
must be paid. She had no money to pay it, none to pay the servants’
wages, none to pay the household bills, none to pay for the monthly
hire of the brougham! Would they turn her into the street—would the
servants go away—would she be left without even a carriage? What could
she do about clothes! She could not wear anything but mourning now and
by the time she was out of mourning her old clothes would have gone out
of fashion. The morning on which this aspect of things occurred to her,
she was so terrified that she began to run up and down the room like a
frightened little cat seeing no escape from the trap it is caught in.
“It’s awful—it’s awful—it’s awful!” broke out between her sobs. “What
can I do? I can’t do anything! There’s nothing to do! It’s awful—it’s
awful—it’s awful!” She ended by throwing herself on the bed crying
until she was exhausted. She had no mental resources which would
suggest to her that there was anything but crying to be done. She had
cried very little in her life previously because even in her days of
limitation she had been able to get more or less what she wanted—though
of course it had generally been less. And crying made one’s nose and
eyes red. On this occasion she actually forgot her nose and eyes and
cried until she scarcely knew herself when she got up and looked in the
glass.
She rang the bell for her maid and sat down to wait her coming. Tonson
should bring her a cup of beef tea.
“It’s time for lunch,” she thought. “I’m faint with crying. And she
shall bathe my eyes with rose-water.”
It was not Tonson’s custom to keep her mistress waiting but today she
was not prompt. Feather rang a second time and an impatient third and
then sat in her chair and waited until she began to feel as she felt
always in these dreadful days the dead silence of the house. It was the
thing which most struck terror to her soul—that horrid stillness. The
servants whose place was in the basement were too much closed in their
gloomy little quarters to have made themselves heard upstairs even if
they had been inclined to. During the last few weeks Feather had even
found herself wishing that they were less well trained and would make a
little noise—do anything to break the silence.
The room she sat in—Rob’s awful little room adjoining—which was awful
because of what she had seen for a moment lying stiff and hard on the
bed before she was taken away in hysterics—were dread enclosures of
utter silence. The whole house was dumb—the very street had no sound in
it. She could not endure it. How dare Tonson? She sprang up and rang
the bell again and again until its sound came back to her pealing
through the place.
Then she waited again. It seemed to her that five minutes passed before
she heard the smart young footman mounting the stairs slowly. She did
not wait for his knock upon the door but opened it herself.
“How dare Tonson!” she began. “I have rung four or five times! How dare
she!”
The smart young footman’s manner had been formed in a good school. It
was attentive, impersonal.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” he answered.
“What do you mean? What does _she_ mean? Where is she?” Feather felt
almost breathless before his unperturbed good style.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” he answered as before. Then with the same
unbiassed bearing added, “None of us know. She has gone away.”
Feather clutched the door handle because she felt herself swaying.
“Away! Away!” the words were a faint gasp.
“She packed her trunk yesterday and carried it away with her on a
four-wheeler. About an hour ago, ma’am.” Feather dropped her hand from
the knob of the door and trailed back to the chair she had left,
sinking into it helplessly.
“Who—who will dress me?” she half wailed.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” replied the young footman, his excellent manner
presuming no suggestion or opinion whatever. He added however, “Cook,
ma’am, wishes to speak to you.”
“Tell her to come to me here,” Feather said. “And I—I want a cup of
beef tea.”
“Yes, ma’am,” with entire respect. And the door closed quietly behind
him.
It was not long before it was opened again. “Cook” had knocked and
Feather had told her to come in. Most cooks are stout, but this one was
not. She was a thin, tall woman with square shoulders and a square face
somewhat reddened by constant proximity to fires. She had been trained
at a cooking school. She carried a pile of small account books but she
brought nothing else.
“I wanted some beef tea, Cook,” said Feather protestingly.
“There is no beef tea, ma’am,” said Cook. “There is neither beef, nor
stock, nor Liebig in the house.”
“Why—why not?” stammered Feather and she stammered because even her
lack of perception saw something in the woman’s face which was new to
her. It was a sort of finality.
She held out the pile of small books.
“Here are the books, ma’am,” was her explanation. “Perhaps as you don’t
like to be troubled with such things, you don’t know how far behind
they are. Nothing has been paid for months. It’s been an every-day
fight to get the things that was wanted. It’s not an agreeable thing
for a cook to have to struggle and plead. I’ve had to do it because I
had my reputation to think of and I couldn’t send up rubbish when there
was company.”
Feather felt herself growing pale as she sat and stared at her. Cook
drew near and laid one little book after another on the small table
near her.
“That’s the butcher’s book,” she said. “He’s sent nothing in for three
days. We’ve been living on leavings. He’s sent his last, he says and he
means it. This is the baker’s. He’s not been for a week. I made up
rolls because I had some flour left. It’s done now—and _he’s_ done.
This is groceries and Mercom & Fees wrote to Mr. Gareth-Lawless when
the last month’s supply came, that it would BE the last until payment
was made. This is wines—and coal and wood—and laundry—and milk. And
here is wages, ma’am, which _can’t_ go on any longer.”
Feather threw up her hands and quite wildly.
“Oh, go away!—go away!” she cried. “If Mr. Lawless were here—”
“He isn’t, ma’am,” Cook interposed, not fiercely but in a way more
terrifying than any ferocity could have been—a way which pointed
steadily to the end of things. “As long as there’s a gentleman in a
house there’s generally a sort of a prospect that things _may_ be
settled some way. At any rate there’s someone to go and speak your mind
to even if you have to give up your place. But when there’s no
gentleman and nothing—and nobody—respectable people with their livings
to make have got to protect themselves.”
The woman had no intention of being insolent. Her simple statement that
her employer’s death had left “Nothing” and “Nobody” was prompted by no
consciously ironic realization of the diaphanousness of Feather. As for
the rest she had been professionally trained to take care of her
interests as well as to cook and the ethics of the days of her
grandmother when there had been servants with actual affections had not
reached her.
“Oh! go away! Go _awa-ay!_” Feather almost shrieked.
“I am going, ma’am. So are Edward and Emma and Louisa. It’s no use
waiting and giving the month’s notice. We shouldn’t save the month’s
wages and the trades-people wouldn’t feed us. We can’t stay here and
starve. And it’s a time of the year when places has to be looked for.
You can’t hold it against us, ma’am. It’s better for you to have us out
of the house tonight—which is when our boxes will be taken away.”
Then was Feather seized with a panic. For the first time in her life
she found herself facing mere common facts which rose before her like a
solid wall of stone—not to be leapt, or crept under, or bored through,
or slipped round. She was so overthrown and bewildered that she could
not even think of any clever and rapidly constructed lie which would
help her; indeed she was so aghast that she did not remember that there
were such things as lies.
“Do you mean,” she cried out, “that you are all going to _leave_ the
house—that there won’t be any servants to wait on me—that there’s
nothing to eat or drink—that I shall have to stay here _alone_—and
starve!”
“We should have to starve if we stayed,” answered Cook simply. “And of
course there are a few things left in the pantry and closets. And you
might get in a woman by the day. You won’t starve, ma’am. You’ve got
your family in Jersey. We waited because we thought Mr. and Mrs. Darrel
would be sure to come.”
“My father is ill. I think he’s dying. My mother could not leave him
for a moment. Perhaps he’s dead now,” Feather wailed.
“You’ve got your London friends, ma’am—”
Feather literally beat her hands together.
“My friends! Can I go to people’s houses and knock at their front door
and tell them I haven’t any servants or anything to eat! Can I do that?
Can I?” And she said it as if she were going crazy.
The woman had said what she had come to say as spokeswoman for the
rest. It had not been pleasant but she knew she had been quite within
her rights and dealt with plain facts. But she did not enjoy the
prospect of seeing her little fool of a mistress raving in hysterics.
“You mustn’t let yourself go, ma’am,” she said. “You’d better lie down
a bit and try to get quiet.” She hesitated a moment looking at the
pretty ruin who had risen from her seat and stood trembling.
“It’s not my place of course to—make suggestions,” she said quietly.
“But—had you ever thought of sending for Lord Coombe, ma’am?”
Feather actually found the torn film of her mind caught for a second by
something which wore a form of reality. Cook saw that her tremor
appeared to verge on steadying itself.
“Coombe,” she faintly breathed as if to herself and not to Cook.
“Coombe.”
“His lordship was very friendly with Mr. Lawless and he seemed fond
of—coming to the house,” was presented as a sort of added argument. “If
you’ll lie down I’ll bring you a cup of tea, ma’am—though it can’t be
beef.”
Feather staggered again to her bed and dropped flat upon it—flat as a
slim little pancake in folds of thin black stuff which hung and
floated.
“I can’t bring you cream,” said Cook as she went out of the room.
“Louisa has had nothing but condensed milk—since yesterday—to give Miss
Robin.”
“Oh-h!” groaned Feather, not in horror of the tea without cream though
that was awful enough in its significance, but because this was the
first time since the falling to pieces of her world that she had given
a thought to the added calamity of Robin.