The slice of a house from that time forward presented the external
aspect to which the inhabitants of the narrow and fashionable street
and those who passed through it had been accustomed. Such individuals
as had anticipated beholding at some early day notices conspicuously
placed announcing “Sale by Auction. Elegant Modern Furniture” were
vaguely puzzled as well as surprised by the fact that no such notices
appeared even inconspicuously. Also there did not draw up before the
door—even as the weeks went on—huge and heavy removal vans with their
resultant litter, their final note of farewell a “To Let” in the front
windows.
On the contrary, the florist came and refilled the window boxes with an
admirable arrangement of fresh flowers; new and even more correct
servants were to be seen ascending and descending the area step; a
young footman quite as smart as the departed Edward opened the front
door and attended Mrs. Gareth-Lawless to her perfect little brougham.
The trades-people appeared promptly every day and were obsequiously
respectful in manner. Evidently the household had not disintegrated as
a result of the death of Mr. Gareth-Lawless.
As it became an established fact that the household had not fallen to
pieces its frequenters gradually returned to it, wearing indeed the air
of people who had never really remained away from it. There had been
natural reasons enough for considerate absence from a house of
bereavement and a desolate widow upon whose grief it would have been
indelicate to intrude. As Feather herself had realized, the circle of
her intimates was not formed of those who could readily adjust
themselves to entirely changed circumstances. If you dance on a tight
rope and the rope is unexpectedly withdrawn, where are you? You cannot
continue dancing until the rope is restrung.
The rope, however, being apparently made absolutely secure, it was not
long before the dancing began again. Feather’s mourning, wonderfully
shading itself from month to month, was the joy of all beholders.
Madame Hélène treated her as a star gleaming through gradually
dispersing clouds. Her circle watched her with secretly humorous
interest as each fine veil of dimness was withdrawn.
“The things she wears are priceless,” was said amiably in her own
drawing-room. “Where does she get them? Figure to yourself Lawdor
paying the bills.”
“She gets them from Hélène,” said a long thin young man with a rather
good-looking narrow face and dark eyes, peering through _pince nez_,
“But I couldn’t.”
In places where entertainment as a means of existence proceed so to
speak, fast and furiously, questions of taste are not dwelt upon at
leisure. You need not hesitate before saying anything you liked in any
one’s drawing-room so long as it was amusing enough to make somebody—if
not everybody—laugh. Feather had made people laugh in the same fashion
in the past. The persons she most admired were always making sly little
impudent comments and suggestions, and the thwarted years on the island
of Jersey had, in her case, resulted in an almost hectic desire to keep
pace. Her efforts had usually been successes because Nature’s self had
provided her with the manner of a silly pretty child who did not know
how far she went. Shouts of laughter had often greeted her, and the
first time she had for a moment doubted her prowess was on an occasion
when she had caught a glimpse of Coombe who stared at her with an
expression which she would—just for one second—have felt might be
horror, if she had not been so sure it couldn’t be, and must of course
be something else—one of the things nobody ever understood in him.
By the time the softly swathing veils of vaporous darkness were
withdrawn, and the tight rope assuring everyone of its permanent
security became a trusted support, Feather at her crowded little
parties and at other people’s bigger ones did not remain wholly unaware
of the probability that even people who rather liked her made, among
themselves, more or less witty comments upon her improved fortunes.
They were improved greatly. Bills were paid, trades-people were polite,
servants were respectful; she had no need to invent excuses and lies.
She and Robert had always kept out of the way of stodgy, critical
people, so they had been intimate with none of the punctilious who
might have withdrawn themselves from a condition of things they chose
to disapprove: accordingly, she found no gaps in her circle. Those who
had formed the habit of amusing themselves at her house were as ready
as before to amuse themselves again.
The fact remained, however,—curiously, perhaps, in connection with the
usual slightness of all impressions made on her—that there was a memory
which never wholly left her. Even when she tried to force it so far
into the background of her existence that it might almost be counted as
forgotten, it had a trick of rising before her. It was the memory of
the empty house as its emptiness had struck to the centre of her being
when she had turned from her bedroom window after watching the servants
drive away in their cabs. It was also the memory of the hours which had
followed—the night in which nobody had been in any of the rooms—no one
had gone up or down the stairs—when all had seemed dark and
hollow—except the Night Nursery where Robin screamed, and her own room
where she herself cowered under the bed clothes and pulled the pillow
over her head. But though the picture would not let itself be blotted
out, its effect was rather to intensify her sense of relief because she
had slipped so safely from under the wheels of destiny.
“Sometimes,” she revealed artlessly to Coombe, “while I am driving in
the park on a fine afternoon when every one is out and the dresses look
like the flower beds, I let myself remember it just to make myself
enjoy everything more by contrast.”
The elderly woman who had been a nurse in her youth and who had been
sent by Lord Coombe temporarily to replace Louisa had not remained long
in charge of Robin. She was not young and smart enough for a house on
the right side of the right street, and Feather found a young person
who looked exactly as she should when she pushed the child’s carriage
before her around the square.
The square—out of which the right street branches—and the “Gardens” in
the middle of the square to which only privileged persons were admitted
by private key, the basement kitchen and Servants’ Hall, and the two
top floor nurseries represented the world to the child Robin for some
years. When she was old enough to walk in the street she was led by the
hand over the ground she had travelled daily in her baby carriage. Her
first memory of things was a memory of standing on the gravel path in
the Square Gardens and watching some sparrows quarrel while Andrews,
her nurse, sat on a bench with another nurse and talked in low tones.
They were talking in a way Robin always connected with servants and
which she naturally accepted as being the method of expression of their
species—much as she accepted the mewing of cats and the barking of
dogs. As she grew older, she reached the stage of knowing that they
were generally saying things they did not wish her to hear.
She liked watching the sparrows in the Gardens because she liked
watching sparrows at all times. They were the only friends she had ever
known, though she was not old enough to call them friends, or to know
what friends meant. Andrews had taught her, by means of a system of her
own, to know better than to cry or to make any protesting noise when
she was left alone in her ugly small nursery. Andrews’ idea of her
duties did not involve boring herself to death by sitting in a room on
the top floor when livelier entertainment awaited her in the basement
where the cook was a woman of wide experience, the housemaid a young
person who had lived in gay country houses, and the footman at once a
young man of spirit and humour. So Robin spent many hours of the
day—taking them altogether—quite by herself. She might have more
potently resented her isolations if she had ever known any other
condition than that of a child in whom no one was in the least
interested and in whom “being good” could only mean being passive under
neglect and calling no one’s attention to the fact that she wanted
anything from anybody. As a bird born in captivity lives in its cage
and perhaps believes it to be the world, Robin lived in her nursery and
knew every square inch of it with a deadly if unconscious sense of
distaste and fatigue. She was put to bed and taken up, she was fed and
dressed in it, and once a day—twice perhaps if Andrews chose—she was
taken out of it downstairs and into the street. That was all. And that
was why she liked the sparrows so much.
And sparrows are worth watching if you live in a nursery where nothing
ever happens and where, when you look out, you are so high up that it
is not easy to see the people in the world below, in addition to which
it seems nearly always raining. Robin used to watch them hopping about
on the slate roofs of the homes on the other side of the street. They
fluttered their wings, they picked up straws and carried them away. She
thought they must have houses of their own among the chimneys—in places
she could not see. She fancied it would be nice to hop about on the top
of a roof oneself if one were not at all afraid of falling. She liked
the chippering and chirping sounds the birds made became it sounded
like talking and laughing—like the talking and laughing she sometimes
wakened out of her sleep to lie and listen to when the Lady Downstairs
had a party. She often wondered what the people were doing because it
sounded as if they liked doing it very much.
Sometimes when it had rained two or three days she had a feeling which
made her begin to cry to herself—but not aloud. She had once had a
little black and blue mark on her arm for a week where Andrews had
pinched her because she had cried loud enough to be heard. It had
seemed to her that Andrews twisted and pinched the bit of flesh for
five minutes without letting it go and she had held her large hand over
her mouth as she did it.
“Now you keep that in your mind,” she had said when she had finished
and Robin had almost choked in her awful little struggle to keep back
all sound.
The one thing Andrews was surest of was that nobody would come upstairs
to the Nursery to inquire the meaning of any cries which were not
unearthly enough to disturb the household. So it was easy to regulate
the existence of her charge in such a manner as best suited herself.
“Just give her food enough and keep her from making silly noises when
she wants what she doesn’t get,” said Andrews to her companions below
stairs. “That one in the drawing-room isn’t going to interfere with the
Nursery. Not her! I know my business and I know how to manage her kind.
I go to her politely now and then and ask her permission to buy things
from Best’s or Liberty’s or some other good place. She always stares a
minute when I begin, as if she scarcely understood what I was talking
about and then she says ‘Oh, yes, I suppose she must have them.’ And I
go and get them. I keep her as well dressed as any child in Mayfair.
And she’s been a beauty since she was a year old so she looks first
rate when I wheel her up and down the street, so the people can see
she’s well taken care of and not kept hidden away. No one can complain
of her looks and nobody is bothered with her. That’s all that’s wanted
of _me_. I get good wages and I get them regular. I don’t turn up my
nose at a place like this, whatever the outside talk is. Who cares in
these days anyway? Fashionable people’s broader minded than they used
to be. In Queen Victoria’s young days they tell me servants were no
class that didn’t live in families where they kept the commandments.”
“Fat lot the commandments give any one trouble in these times,” said
Jennings, the footman, who was a wit. “There’s one of ’em I could
mention that’s been broken till there’s no bits of it left to keep. If
I smashed that plate until it was powder it’d have to be swept into the
dust din. That’s what happened to one or two commandments in
particular.”
“Well,” remarked Mrs. Blayne, the cook, “she don’t interfere and he
pays the bills prompt. That’ll do _me_ instead of commandments. If
you’ll believe me, my mother told me that in them Queen Victoria days
ladies used to inquire about cold meat and ask what was done with the
dripping. Civilisation’s gone beyond that—commandments or no
commandments.”
“He’s precious particular about bills being paid,” volunteered
Jennings, with the air of a man of the world. “I heard him having a row
with her one day about some bills she hadn’t paid. She’d spent the
money for some nonsense and he was pretty stiff in that queer way of
his. Quite right he was too. I’d have been the same myself,” pulling up
his collar and stretching his neck in a manner indicating exact
knowledge of the natural sentiments of a Marquis when justly annoyed.
“What he intimated was that if them bills was not paid with the money
that was meant to pay them, the money wouldn’t be forthcoming the next
time.” Jennings was rather pleased by the word “forthcoming” and
therefore he repeated it with emphasis, “It wouldn’t be _forthcoming_.”
“That’d frighten her,” was Andrews’ succinct observation.
“It did!” said Jennings. “She’d have gone in hysterics if he hadn’t
kept her down. He’s got a way with him, Coombe has.”
Andrews laughed, a brief, dry laugh.
“Do you know what the child calls her?” she said. “She calls her the
Lady Downstairs. She’s got a sort of fancy for her and tries to get
peeps at her when we go out. I notice she always cranes her little neck
if we pass a room she might chance to be in. It’s her pretty clothes
and her laughing that does it. Children’s drawn by bright colours and
noise that sounds merry.”
“It’s my belief the child doesn’t know she _is_ her mother!” said Mrs.
Blayne as she opened an oven door to look at some rolls.
“It’s my belief that if I told her she was she wouldn’t know what the
word meant. It was me she got the name from,” Andrews still laughed as
she explained. “I used to tell her about the Lady Downstairs would hear
if she made a noise, or I’d say I’d let her have a peep at the Lady
Downstairs if she was very good. I saw she had a kind of awe of her
though she liked her so much, so it was a good way of managing her. You
mayn’t believe me but for a good bit I didn’t take in that she didn’t
know there was such things as mothers and, when I did take it in, I saw
there wasn’t any use in trying to explain. She wouldn’t have
understood.”
“How would you go about to explain a mother, anyway?” suggested
Jennings. “I’d have to say that she was the person that had the right
to slap your head if you didn’t do what she told you.”
“I’d have to say that she was the woman that could keep you slaving at
kitchen maid’s work fifteen hours a day,” said Mrs. Blayne; “My mother
was cook in a big house and trained me under her.”
“I never had one,” said Andrews stiffly. The truth was that she had
taken care of eight infant brothers and sisters, while her maternal
parent slept raucously under the influence of beer when she was not
quarrelling with her offspring.
Jane, the housemaid, had passed a not uncomfortable childhood in the
country and was perhaps of a soft nature.
“I’d say that a mother’s the one that you belong to and that’s fond of
you, even if she does keep you straight,” she put in.
“Her mother isn’t fond of her and doesn’t keep herself straight,” said
Jennings. “So that wouldn’t do.”
“And she doesn’t slap her head or teach her to do kitchen maid’s work,”
put in Mrs. Blayne, “so yours is no use, Mr. Jennings, and neither is
mine. Miss Andrews ’ll have to cook up an explanation of her own
herself when she finds she has to.”
“She can get it out of a Drury Lane melodrama,” said Jennings, with
great humour. “You’ll have to sit down some night, Miss Andrews, and
say, ‘The time has come, me chee-ild, when I must tell you All’.”
In this manner were Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and her maternal affections
discussed below stairs. The interesting fact remained that to Robin the
Lady Downstairs was merely a radiant and beautiful being who floated
through certain rooms laughing or chattering like a bird, and always
wearing pretty clothes, which were different each time one beheld her.
Sometimes one might catch a glimpse of her through a door, or, if one
pressed one’s face against the window pane at the right moment, she
might get into her bright little carnage in the street below and, after
Jennings had shut its door, she might be seen to give a lovely flutter
to her clothes as she settled back against the richly dark blue
cushions.
It is a somewhat portentous thing to realize that a newborn human
creature can only know what it is taught. The teaching may be conscious
or unconscious, intelligent or idiotic, exquisite or brutal. The images
presented by those surrounding it, as its perceptions awaken day by
day, are those which record themselves on its soul, its brain, its
physical being which is its sole means of expressing, during physical
life, all it has learned. That which automatically becomes the Law at
the dawning of newborn consciousness remains, to its understanding, the
Law of Being, the Law of the Universe. To the cautious of
responsibility this at times wears the aspect of an awesome thing,
suggesting, however remotely, that it might seem well, perhaps, to
remove the shoes from one’s feet, as it were, and tread with deliberate
and delicate considering of one’s steps, as do the reverently courteous
even on the approaching of an unknown altar.
This being acknowledged a scientific, as well as a spiritual truth,
there remains no mystery in the fact that Robin at six years old—when
she watched the sparrows in the Square Gardens—did not know the name of
the feeling which had grown within her as a result of her pleasure in
the chance glimpses of the Lady Downstairs. It was a feeling which made
her eager to see her or anything which belonged to her; it made her
strain her child ears to catch the sound of her voice; it made her long
to hear Andrews or the other servants speak of her, and yet much too
shy to dare to ask any questions. She had found a place on the
staircase leading to the Nursery, where, by squeezing against the
balustrade, she could sometimes see the Lady pass in and out of her
pink bedroom. She used to sit on a step and peer between the railing
with beating heart. Sometimes, after she had been put to bed for the
night and Andrews was safely entertained downstairs, Robin would be
awakened from her first sleep by sounds in the room below and would
creep out of bed and down to her special step and, crouching in a
hectic joy, would see the Lady come out with sparkling things in her
hair and round her lovely, very bare white neck and arms, all swathed
in tints and draperies which made her seem a vision of colour and
light. She was so radiant a thing that often the child drew in her
breath with a sound like a little sob of ecstasy, and her lip trembled
as if she were going to cry. But she did not know that what she felt
was the yearning of a thing called love—a quite simple and natural
common thing of which she had no reason for having any personal
knowledge. As she was unaware of mothers, so she was unaware of
affection, of which Andrews would have felt it to be superfluously
sentimental to talk to her.
On the very rare occasions when the Lady Downstairs appeared on the
threshold of the Day Nursery, Robin—always having been freshly dressed
in one of her nicest frocks—stood and stared with immense startled eyes
and answered in a whisper the banal little questions put to her. The
Lady appeared at such rare intervals and remained poised upon the
threshold like a tropic plumaged bird for moments so brief, that there
never was time to do more than lose breath and gaze as at a sudden
vision. Why she came—when she did come—Robin did not understand. She
evidently did not belong to the small, dingy nurseries which grew
shabbier every year as they grew steadily more grimy under the
persistent London soot and fogs.
Feather always held up her draperies when she came. She would not have
come at all but for the fact that she had once or twice been asked if
the child was growing pretty, and it would have seemed absurd to admit
that she never saw her at all.
“I think she’s rather pretty,” she said downstairs. “She’s round and
she has a bright colour—almost too bright, and her eyes are round too.
She’s either rather stupid or she’s shy—and one’s as bad as the other.
She’s a child that stares.”
If, when Andrews had taken her into the Gardens, she had played with
other children, Robin would no doubt have learned something of the
existence and normal attitude of mothers through the mere accident of
childish chatter, but it somehow happened that she never formed
relations with the charges of other nurses. She took it for granted for
some time that this was because Andrews had laid down some mysterious
law. Andrews did not seem to form acquaintances herself. Sometimes she
sat on a bench and talked a little to another nurse, but she seldom sat
twice with the same person. It was indeed generally her custom to sit
alone, crocheting or sewing, with a rather lofty and exclusive air and
to call Robin back to her side if she saw her slowly edging towards
some other child.
“My rule is to keep myself to myself,” she said in the kitchen. “And to
look as if I was the one that would turn up noses, if noses was to be
turned up. There’s those that would snatch away their children if I let
Robin begin to make up to them. Some wouldn’t, of course, but I’m not
going to run risks. I’m going to save my own pride.”
But one morning when Robin was watching her sparrows, a nurse, who was
an old acquaintance, surprised Andrews by appearing in the Gardens with
two little girls in her charge. They were children of nine and eleven
and quite sufficient for themselves, apart from the fact that they
regarded Robin as a baby and, therefore, took no notice of her. They
began playing with skipping ropes, which left their nurse free to
engage in delighted conversation with Andrews.
It was conversation so delightful that Robin was forgotten, even to the
extent of being allowed to follow her sparrows round a clump of
shrubbery and, therefore, out of Andrews’ sight, though she was only a
few yards away. The sparrows this morning were quarrelsome and suddenly
engaged in a fight, pecking each other furiously, beating their wings
and uttering shrill, protesting chipperings. Robin did not quite
understand what they were doing and stood watching them with spellbound
interest.
It was while she watched them that she heard footsteps on the gravel
walk which stopped near her and made her look up to see who was at her
side. A big boy in Highland kilts and bonnet and sporan was standing by
her, and she found herself staring into a pair of handsome deep blue
eyes, blue like the waters of a hillside tarn. They were wide, glowing,
friendly eyes and none like them had ever looked into hers before. He
seemed to her to be a very big boy indeed, and in fact, he was
unusually tall and broad for his age, but he was only eight years old
and a simple enough child pagan. Robin’s heart began to beat as it did
when she watched the Lady Downstairs, but there was something different
in the beating. It was something which made her red mouth spread and
curve itself into a smile which showed all her small teeth.
So they stood and stared at each other and for some strange, strange
reason—created, perhaps, with the creating of Man and still hidden
among the deep secrets of the Universe—they were drawn to each
other—wanted each other—knew each other. Their advances were, of
course, of the most primitive—as primitive and as much a matter of
instinct as the nosing and sniffing of young animals. He spread and
curved his red mouth and showed the healthy whiteness of his own
handsome teeth as she had shown her smaller ones. Then he began to run
and prance round in a circle, capering like a Shetland pony to exhibit
at once his friendliness and his prowess. He tossed his curled head and
laughed to make her laugh also, and she not only laughed but clapped
her hands. He was more beautiful than anything she had ever seen before
in her life, and he was plainly trying to please her. No child creature
had ever done anything like it before, because no child creature had
ever been allowed by Andrews to make friends with her. He, on his part,
was only doing what any other little boy animal would have
done—expressing his child masculinity by “showing off” before a little
female. But to this little female it had never happened before.
It was all beautifully elemental. As does not too often happen, two
souls as well as two bodies were drawn towards each other by the Magnet
of Being. When he had exhibited himself for a minute or two he came
back to her, breathing fast and glowing.
“My pony in Scotland does that. His name is Chieftain. He is a Shetland
pony and he is only that high,” he measured forty inches from the
ground. “I’m called Donal. What are you called?”
“Robin,” she answered, her lips and voice trembling with joy. He was so
beautiful. His hair was bright and curly. His broad forehead was clear
white where he had pushed back his bonnet with the eagle feather
standing upright on it. His strong legs and knees were white between
his tartan kilt and his rolled back stockings. The clasps which held
his feather and the plaid over his shoulder were set with fine stones
in rich silver. She did not know that he was perfectly equipped as a
little Highland chieftain, the head of his clan, should be.
They began to play together, and the unknown Fates, which do their work
as they choose, so wrought on this occasion as to cause Andrews’ friend
to set forth upon a journey through a story so exciting in its nature
that its hearer was held spellbound and oblivious to her surroundings
themselves. Once, it is true, she rose as in a dream and walked round
the group of shrubs, but the Fates had arranged for that moment also.
Robin was alone and was busily playing with some leaves she had plucked
and laid on the seat of a bench for some mysterious reason. She looked
good for an hour’s safe occupation, and Andrews returned to her
friend’s detailed and intimate version of a great country house
scandal, of which the papers were full because it had ended in the
divorce court.
Donal had, at that special moment, gone to pick some of the biggest
leaves from the lilac bush of which the Gardens contained numerous
sooty specimens. The leaves Robin was playing with were some he had
plucked first to show her a wonderful thing. If you laid a leaf flat on
the seat of the bench and were fortunate enough to possess a large pin
you could prick beautiful patterns on the leaf’s greenness—dots and
circles, and borders and tiny triangles of a most decorative order.
Neither Donal nor Robin had a pin but Donal had, in his rolled down
stocking, a little dirk the point of which could apparently be used for
any interesting purpose. It was really he who did the decoration, but
Robin leaned against the bench and looked on enthralled. She had never
been happy before in the entire course of her brief existence. She had
not known or expected any conditions other than those she was familiar
with—the conditions of being fed and clothed, kept clean and exercised,
but totally unloved and unentertained. She did not even know that this
nearness to another human creature, the exchange of companionable
looks, which were like flashes of sunlight, the mutual outbreaks of
child laughter and pleasure were happiness. To her, what she felt, the
glow and delight of it, had no name but she wanted it to go on and on,
never to be put an end to by Andrews or anyone else.
The boy Donal was not so unconscious. He had been happy all his life.
What he felt was that he had liked this little girl the minute he saw
her. She was pretty, though he thought her immensely younger than
himself, and, when she had looked up at him with her round, asking
eyes, he had wanted to talk to her and make friends. He had not played
much with boys and he had no haughty objection to girls who liked him.
This one did, he saw at once.
Through what means children so quickly convey to each other—while
seeming scarcely to do more than play—the entire history of their lives
and surroundings, is a sort of occult secret. It is not a matter of
prolonged conversation. Perhaps images created by the briefest of
unadorned statements produce on the unwritten tablets of the child mind
immediate and complete impressions. Safe as the locked garden was,
Andrews cannot have forgotten her charge for any very great length of
time and yet before Donal, hearing his attendant’s voice from her
corner, left Robin to join her and be taken home, the two children knew
each other intimately. Robin knew that Donal’s home was in
Scotland—where there are hills and moors with stags on them. He lived
there with “Mother” and he had been brought to London for a visit. The
person he called “Mother” was a woman who took care of him and he spoke
of her quite often. Robin did not think she was like Andrews, though
she did not in the least know why. On his part Donal knew about the
nurseries and the sparrows who hopped about on the slates of the houses
opposite. Robin did not describe the nurseries to him, but Donal knew
that they were ugly and that there were no toys in them and nothing to
do. Also, in some mystic fashion, he realized that Andrews would not
let Robin play with him if she saw them together, and that, therefore,
they must make the most of their time. Full of their joy in each other,
they actually embarked upon an ingenious infant intrigue, which
involved their trying to meet behind the shrubs if they were brought to
the Gardens the next day. Donal was sure he could come because his
nurse always did what he asked of her. He was so big now that she was
not a real nurse, but she had been his nurse when he was quite little
and “Mother” liked her to travel with them. He had a tutor but he had
stayed behind in Scotland at Braemarnie, which was their house. Donal
would come tomorrow and he would look for Robin and when she saw him
she must get away from Andrews and they would play together again.
“I will bring one of my picture books,” he said grandly. “Can you read
at all?”
“No,” answered Robin adoring him. “What are picture books?”
“Haven’t you any?” he blurted out.
“No,” said Robin. She looked at the gravel walk, reflecting a moment
thoughtfully on the Day Nursery and the Night Nursery. Then she lifted
her eyes to the glowing blueness of his and said quite simply, “I
haven’t anything.”
He suddenly remembered things his Mother had told him about poor
people. Perhaps she was poor. Could she be poor when her frock and hat
and coat were so pretty? It was not polite to ask. But the thought made
him love her more. He felt something warm rush all over his body. The
truth, if he had been old enough to be aware of it, was that the entire
simpleness of her acceptance of things as they were, and a something
which was unconsciousness of any cause for complaint, moved his child
masculinity enormously. His old nurse’s voice came from her corner
again.
“I must go to Nanny,” he said, feeling somehow as if he had been
running fast. “I’ll come tomorrow and bring two picture books.”
He was a loving, warm blooded child human thing, and the expression of
affection was, to him, a familiar natural impulse. He put his strong
little eight-year-old arms round her and kissed her full on her mouth,
as he embraced her with all his strength. He kissed her twice.
It was the first time for Robin. Andrews did not kiss. There was no one
else. It was the first time, and Nature had also made her a loving,
warm blooded, human thing. How beautiful he was—how big—how strong his
arms were—and how soft and warm his mouth felt. She stood and gazed at
him with wide asking eyes and laughed a little. She had no words
because she did not know what had happened.
“Don’t you like to be kissed?” said Donal, uncertain because she looked
so startled and had not kissed him back.
“Kissed,” she repeated, with a small, caught breath, “ye-es.” She knew
now what it was. It was being kissed. She drew nearer at once and
lifted up her face as sweetly and gladly, as a flower lifts itself to
the sun. “Kiss me again,” she said quite eagerly. As ingenuously and
heartily as before, he kissed her again and, this time, she kissed too.
When he ran quickly away, she stood looking after him with smiling,
trembling lips, uplifted, joyful—wondering and amazed.