“The child’s always been well, ma’am,” Andrews was standing, the image
of exact correctness, in her mistress’ bedroom, while Feather lay in
bed with her breakfast on a convenient and decorative little table.
“It’s been a thing I’ve prided myself on. But I should say she isn’t
well now.”
“Well, I suppose it’s only natural that she should begin sometime,”
remarked Feather. “They always do, of course. I remember we all had
things when we were children. What does the doctor say? I hope it isn’t
the measles, or the beginning of anything worse?”
“No, ma’am, it isn’t. It’s nothing like a child’s disease. I could have
managed that. There’s good private nursing homes for them in these
days. Everything taken care of exactly as it should be and no trouble
of disinfecting and isolating for the family. I know what you’d have
wished to have done, ma’am.”
“You do know your business, Andrews,” was Feather’s amiable comment.
“Thank you, ma’am,” from Andrews. “Infectious things are easy managed
if they’re taken away quick. But the doctor said you must be spoken to
because perhaps a change was needed.”
“You could take her to Ramsgate or somewhere bracing.” said Feather.
“But what did he _say?_”
“He seemed puzzled, ma’am. That’s what struck me. When I told him about
her not eating—and lying awake crying all night—to judge from her looks
in the morning—and getting thin and pale—he examined her very careful
and he looked queer and he said, ‘This child hasn’t had a _shock_ of
any kind, has she? This looks like what we should call shock—if she
were older’.”
Feather laughed.
“How could a baby like that have a shock?”
“That’s what I thought myself, ma’am,” answered Andrews. “A child
that’s had her hours regular and is fed and bathed and sleeps by the
clock, and goes out and plays by herself in the Gardens, well watched
over, hasn’t any chance to get shocks. I told him so and he sat still
and watched her quite curious, and then he said very slow: ‘Sometimes
little children are a good deal shaken up by a fall when they are
playing. Do you remember any chance fall when she cried a good deal?’”
“But you didn’t, of course,” said Feather.
“No, ma’am, I didn’t. I keep my eye on her pretty strict and shouldn’t
encourage wild running or playing. I don’t let her play with other
children. And she’s not one of those stumbling, falling children. I
told him the only fall I ever knew of her having was a bit of a slip on
a soft flower bed that had just been watered—to judge from the state
her clothes were in. She had cried because she’s not used to such
things, and I think she was frightened. But there wasn’t a scratch or a
shadow of a bruise on her. Even that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been
with her. It was when I was ill and my sister Anne took my place. Anne
thought at first that she’d been playing with a little boy she had made
friends with—but she found out that the boy hadn’t come that morning—”
“A boy!” Andrews was sharp enough to detect a new and interested note.
“What boy?”
“She wouldn’t have played with any other child if I’d been there” said
Andrews, “I was pretty sharp with Anne about it. But she said he was an
aristocratic looking little fellow—”
“Was he in Highland costume?” Feather interrupted.
“Yes, ma’am. Anne excused herself by saying she thought you must know
something about him. She declares she saw you come into the Gardens and
speak to his Mother quite friendly. That was the day before Robin fell
and ruined her rose-coloured smock and things. But it wasn’t through
playing boisterous with the boy—because he didn’t come that morning, as
I said, and he never has since.”
Andrews, on this, found cause for being momentarily puzzled by the
change of expression in her mistress’ face. Was it an odd little gleam
of angry spite she saw?
“And never has since, has he?” Mrs. Gareth-Lawless said with a half
laugh.
“Not once, ma’am,” answered Andrews. “And Anne thinks it queer the
child never seemed to look for him. As if she’d lost interest. She just
droops and drags about and doesn’t try to play at all.”
“How much did she play with him?”
“Well, he was such a fine little fellow and had such a respectable,
elderly, Scotch looking woman in charge of him that Anne owned up that
she hadn’t thought there was any objections to them playing together.
She says they were as well behaved and quiet as children could be.”
Andrews thought proper to further justify herself by repeating, “She
didn’t think there could be any objection.”
“There couldn’t,” Mrs. Gareth-Lawless remarked. “I do know the boy. He
is a relation of Lord Coombe’s.”
“Indeed, ma’am,” with colourless civility, “Anne said he was a big
handsome child.”
Feather took a small bunch of hothouse grapes from her breakfast tray
and, after picking one off, suddenly began to laugh.
“Good gracious, Andrews!” she said. “He was the ‘shock’! How perfectly
ridiculous! Robin had never played with a boy before and she fell in
love with him. The little thing’s actually pining away for him.” She
dropped the grapes and gave herself up to delicate mirth. “He was taken
away and disappeared. Perhaps she fainted and fell into the wet flower
bed and spoiled her frock, when she first realized that he wasn’t
coming.”
“It did happen that morning,” admitted Andrews, smiling a little also.
“It does seem funny. But children take to each other in a queer way now
and then. I’ve seen it upset them dreadful when they were parted.”
“You must tell the doctor,” laughed Feather. “Then he’ll see there’s
nothing to be anxious about. She’ll get over it in a week.”
“It’s five weeks since it happened, ma’am,” remarked Andrews, with just
a touch of seriousness.
“Five! Why, so it must be! I remember the day I spoke to Mrs. Muir. If
she’s that sort of child you had better keep her away from boys. _How_
ridiculous! How Lord Coombe—how people will laugh when I tell them!”
She had paused a second because—for that second—she was not quite sure
that Coombe _would_ laugh. Frequently she was of the opinion that he
did not laugh at things when he should have done so. But she had had a
brief furious moment when she had realized that the boy had actually
been whisked away. She remembered the clearness of the fine eyes which
had looked directly into hers. The woman had been deciding then that
she would have nothing to do with her—or even with her child.
But the story of Robin worn by a bereft nursery passion for a little
boy, whose mamma snatched him away as a brand from the burning, was far
too edifying not to be related to those who would find it delicious.
It was on the occasion, a night or so later, of a gathering at dinner
of exactly the few elect ones, whose power to find it delicious was the
most highly developed, that she related it. It was a very little
dinner—only four people. One was the long thin young man, with the good
looking narrow face and dark eyes peering through a _pince nez_—the one
who had said that Mrs. Gareth-Lawless “got her wondrous clothes from
Hélène” but that he couldn’t. His name was Harrowby. Another was the
Starling who was a Miss March who had, some years earlier, led the van
of the girls who prostrated their relatives by becoming what was then
called “emancipated”; the sign thereof being the demanding of latchkeys
and the setting up of bachelor apartments. The relatives had
astonishingly settled down, with the unmoved passage of time, and more
modern emancipation had so far left latchkeys and bachelor apartments
behind it that they began to seem almost old-fogeyish. Clara March,
however, had progressed with her day. The third diner was an adored
young actor with a low, veiled voice which, combining itself with
almond eyes and a sentimental and emotional curve of cheek and chin,
made the most commonplace “lines” sound yearningly impassioned. He was
not impassioned at all—merely fond of his pleasures and comforts in a
way which would end by his becoming stout. At present his figure was
perfect—exactly the thing for the uniforms of royal persons of
Ruritania and places of that ilk—and the name by which programmes
presented him was Gerald Vesey.
Feather’s house pleased him and she herself liked being spoken to in
the veiled voice and gazed at by the almond eyes, as though insuperable
obstacles alone prevented soul-stirring things from being said. That
she knew this was not true did not interfere with her liking it.
Besides he adored and understood her clothes.
Over coffee in the drawing-room, Coombe joined them. He had not known
of the little dinner and arrived just as Feather was on the point of
beginning her story.
“You are just in time,” she greeted him, “I was going to tell them
something to make them laugh.”
“Will it make me laugh?” he inquired.
“It ought to. Robin is in love. She is five years old and she has been
deserted, and Andrews came to tell me that she can neither eat nor
sleep. The doctor says she has had a shock.”
Coombe did not join in the ripple of amused laughter but, as he took
his cup of coffee, he looked interested.
Harrowby was interested too. His dark eyes quite gleamed.
“I suppose she is in bed by now,” he said. “If it were not so late, I
should beg you to have her brought down so that we might have a look at
her. I’m by way of taking a psychological interest.”
“I’m psychological myself,” said the Starling. “But what do you mean,
Feather? Are you in earnest?”
“Andrews is,” Feather answered. “She could manage measles but she could
not be responsible for shock. But she didn’t find out about the love
affair. I found that out—by mere chance. Do you remember the day we got
out of the victoria and went into the Gardens, Starling?”
“The time you spoke to Mrs. Muir?”
Coombe turned slightly towards them.
Feather nodded, with a lightly significant air.
“It was her boy,” she said, and then she laughed and nodded at Coombe.
“He was quite as handsome as you said he was. No wonder poor Robin fell
prostrate. He ought to be chained and muzzled by law when he grows up.”
“But so ought Robin,” threw in the Starling in her brusque, young
mannish way.
“But Robin’s only a girl and she’s not a parti,” laughed Feather. Her
eyes, lifted to Coombe’s, held a sort of childlike malice. “After his
mother knew she was Miss Gareth-Lawless, he was not allowed to play in
the Gardens again. Did she take him back to Scotland?”
“They went back to Scotland,” answered Coombe, “and, of course, the boy
was not left behind.”
“Have _you_ a child five years old?” asked Vesey in his low voice of
Feather. “You?”
“It seems absurd to _me_,” said Feather, “I never quite believe in
her.”
“I don’t,” said Vesey. “She’s impossible.”
“Robin is a stimulating name,” put in Harrowby. “_Is_ it too late to
let us see her? If she’s such a beauty as Starling hints, she ought to
be looked at.”
Feather actually touched the bell by the fireplace. A sudden caprice
moved her. The love story had not gone off quite as well as she had
thought it would. And, after all, the child was pretty enough to show
off. She knew nothing in particular about her daughter’s hours, but, if
she was asleep, she could be wakened.
“Tell Andrews,” she said to the footman when he appeared, “I wish Miss
Robin to be brought downstairs.”
“They usually go to bed at seven, I believe,” remarked Coombe, “but, of
course, I am not an authority.”
Robin was not asleep though she had long been in bed. Because she kept
her eyes shut Andrews had been deceived into carrying on a conversation
with her sister Anne, who had come to see her. Robin had been lying
listening to it. She had begun to listen because they had been talking
about the day she had spoiled her rose-coloured smock and they had
ended by being very frank about other things.
“As sure as you saw her speak to the boy’s mother the day before, just
so sure she whisked him back to Scotland the next morning,” said
Andrews. “She’s one of the kind that’s particular. Lord Coombe’s the
reason. She does not want her boy to see or speak to him, if it can be
helped. She won’t have it—and when she found out—”
“Is Lord Coombe as bad as they say?” put in Anne with bated breath. “He
must be pretty bad if a boy that’s eight years old has to be kept out
of sight and sound of him.”
So it was Lord Coombe who had somehow done it. He had made Donal’s
mother take him away. It was Lord Coombe. Who was Lord Coombe? It was
because he was wicked that Donal’s mother would not let him play with
her—because he was wicked. All at once there came to her a memory of
having heard his name before. She had heard it several times in the
basement Servants’ Hall and, though she had not understood what was
said about him, she had felt the atmosphere of cynical disapproval of
something. They had said “him” and “her” as if he somehow belonged to
the house. On one occasion he had been “high” in the manner of some
reproof to Jennings, who, being enraged, freely expressed his opinions
of his lordship’s character and general reputation. The impression made
on Robin then had been that he was a person to be condemned severely.
That the condemnation was the mere outcome of the temper of an impudent
young footman had not conveyed itself to her, and it was the impression
which came back to her now with a new significance. He was the
cause—not Donal, not Donal’s Mother—but this man who was so bad that
servants were angry because he was somehow connected with the house.
“As to his badness,” she heard Andrews answer, “there’s some that can’t
say enough against him. Badness is smart these days. He’s bad enough
for the boy’s mother to take him away from. It’s what he is in this
house that does it. She won’t have her boy playing with a child like
Robin.”
Then—even as there flashed upon her bewilderment this strange
revelation of her own unfitness for association with boys whose mothers
took care of them—Jennings, the young footman, came to the door.
“Is she awake, Miss Andrews?” he said, looking greatly edified by
Andrews’ astonished countenance.
“What on earth—?” began Andrews.
“If she is,” Jennings winked humorously, “she’s to be dressed up and
taken down to the drawing-room to be shown off. I don’t know whether
it’s Coombe’s idea or not. He’s there.”
Robin’s eyes flew wide open. She forgot to keep them shut. She was to
go downstairs! Who wanted her—who?
Andrews had quite gasped.
“Here’s a new break out!” she exclaimed. “I never heard such a thing in
my life. She’s been in bed over two hours. I’d like to know—”
She paused here because her glance at the bed met the dark liquidity of
eyes wide open. She got up and walked across the room.
“You are awake!” she said. “You look as if you hadn’t been asleep at
all. You’re to get up and have your frock put on. The Lady Downstairs
wants you in the drawing-room.”
Two months earlier such a piece of information would have awakened in
the child a delirium of delight. But now her vitality was lowered
because her previously unawakened little soul had soared so high and
been so dashed down to cruel earth again. The brilliancy of the Lady
Downstairs had been dimmed as a candle is dimmed by the light of the
sun.
She felt only a vague wonder as she did as Andrews told her—wonder at
the strangeness of getting up to be dressed, as it seemed to her, in
the middle of the night.
“It’s just the kind of thing that would happen in a house like this,”
grumbled Andrews, as she put on her frock. “Just anything that comes
into their heads they think they’ve a right to do. I suppose they have,
too. If you’re rich and aristocratic enough to have your own way, why
not take it? I would myself.”
The big silk curls, all in a heap, fell almost to the child’s hips. The
frock Andrews chose for her was a fairy thing.
“She _is_ a bit thin, to be sure,” said the girl Anne. “But it points
her little face and makes her eyes look bigger.”
“If her mother’s got a Marquis, I wonder what she’ll get,” said
Andrews. “She’s got a lot before her: this one!”
When the child entered the drawing-room, Andrews made her go in alone,
while she held herself, properly, a few paces back like a lady in
waiting. The room was brilliantly lighted and seemed full of colour and
people who were laughing. There were pretty things crowding each other
everywhere, and there were flowers on all sides. The Lady Downstairs,
in a sheathlike sparkling dress, and only a glittering strap seeming to
hold it on over her fair undressed shoulders, was talking to a tall
thin man standing before the fireplace with a gold cup of coffee in his
hand.
As the little thing strayed in, with her rather rigid attendant behind
her, suddenly the laughing ceased and everybody involuntarily drew a
half startled breath—everybody but the tall thin man, who quietly
turned and set his coffee cup down on the mantel piece behind him.
“Is _this_ what you have been keeping up your sleeve!” said Harrowby,
settling his _pince nez_.
“I told you!” said the Starling.
“You couldn’t tell us,” Vesey’s veiled voice dropped in softly. “It
must be seen to be believed. But still—” aside to Feather, “I don’t
believe it.”
“Enter, my only child!” said Feather. “Come here, Robin. Come to your
mother.”
Now was the time! Robin went to her and took hold of a very small piece
of her sparkling dress.
“_Are_ you my Mother?” she said. And then everybody burst into a peal
of laughter, Feather with the rest.
“She calls me the Lady Downstairs,” she said. “I really believe she
doesn’t know. She’s rather a stupid little thing.”
“Amazing lack of filial affection,” said Lord Coombe.
He was not laughing like the rest and he was looking down at Robin. She
thought him ugly and wicked looking. Vesey and Harrowby were beautiful
by contrast. Before she knew who he was, she disliked him. She looked
at him askance under her eyelashes, and he saw her do it before her
mother spoke his name, taking her by the tips of her fingers and
leading her to him.
“Come and let Lord Coombe look at you,” she said. So it revealed itself
to her that it was he—this ugly one—who had done it, and hatred surged
up in her soul. It was actually in the eyes she raised to his face, and
Coombe saw it as he had seen the sidelong glance and he wondered what
it meant.
“Shake hands with Lord Coombe,” Feather instructed.
“If you can make a curtsey, make one.” She turned her head over her
shoulders, “Have you taught her to curtsey, Andrews?”
But Andrews had not and secretly lost temper at finding herself made to
figure as a nurse who had been capable of omission. Outwardly she
preserved rigid calm.
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. I will at once, if you wish it.”
Coombe was watching the inner abhorrence in the little face. Robin had
put her hand behind her back—she who had never disobeyed since she was
born! She had crossed a line of development when she had seen glimpses
of the new world through Donal’s eyes.
“What are you doing, you silly little thing,” Feather reproved her.
“Shake hands with Lord Coombe.”
Robin shook her head fiercely.
“No! No! No! No!” she protested.
Feather was disgusted. This was not the kind of child to display.
“Rude little thing! Andrews, come and make her do it—or take her
upstairs,” she said.
Coombe took his gold coffee cup from the mantel.
“She regards me with marked antipathy, as she did when she first saw
me,” he summed the matter up. “Children and animals don’t hate one
without reason. It is some remote iniquity in my character which the
rest of us have not yet detected.” To Robin he said, “I do not want to
shake hands with you if you object. I prefer to drink my coffee out of
this beautiful cup.”
But Andrews was seething. Having no conscience whatever, she had
instead the pride of a female devil in her perfection in her
professional duties. That the child she was responsible for should
stamp her with ignominious fourth-ratedness by conducting herself with
as small grace as an infant costermonger was more than her special
order of flesh and blood could bear—and yet she must outwardly control
the flesh and blood.
In obedience to her mistress’ command, she crossed the room and bent
down and whispered to Robin. She intended that her countenance should
remain non-committal, but, when she lifted her head, she met Coombe’s
eyes and realized that perhaps it had not. She added to her whisper
nursery instructions in a voice of sugar.
“Be pretty mannered, Miss Robin, my dear, and shake hands with his
lordship.”
Each person in the little drawing-room saw the queer flame in the
child-face—Coombe himself was fantastically struck by the sudden
thought that its expression might have been that of an obstinate young
martyr staring at the stake. Robin shrilled out her words:
“Andrews will pinch me—Andrews will pinch me! But—No!—No!” and she kept
her hand behind her back.
“Oh, Miss Robin, you naughty child!” cried Andrews, with pathos. “Your
poor Andrews that takes such care of you!”
“Horrid little thing!” Feather pettishly exclaimed. “Take her upstairs,
Andrews. She shall not come down again.”
Harrowby, settling his _pince nez_ a little excitedly in the spurred
novelty of his interest, murmured,
“If she doesn’t want to go, she will begin to shriek. This looks as if
she were a little termagant.”
But she did not shriek when Andrews led her towards the door. The ugly
one with the wicked face was the one who had done it. He filled her
with horror. To have touched him would have been like touching some
wild beast of prey. That was all. She went with Andrews quite quietly.
“Will you shake hands with me?” said the Starling, goodnaturedly, as
she passed, “I hope she won’t snub me,” she dropped aside to Harrowby.
Robin put out her hand prettily.
“Shake mine,” suggested Harrowby, and she obeyed him.
“And mine?” smiled Vesey, with his best allure. She gave him her hand,
and, as a result of the allure probably, a tiny smile flickered about
the corners of her mouth. He did not look wicked.
“I remain an outcast,” remarked Coombe, as the door closed behind the
little figure.
“I detest an ill-mannered child,” said Feather. “She ought to be
slapped. We used to be slapped if we were rude.”
“She said Andrews would pinch her. Is pinching the customary
discipline?”
“It ought to be. She deserves it.” Feather was quite out of temper.
“But Andrews is too good to her. She is a perfect creature and conducts
herself like a clock. There has never been the slightest trouble in the
Nursery. You see how the child looks—though her face _isn’t_ quite as
round as it was.” She laughed disagreeably and shrugged her white
undressed shoulders. “I think it’s a little horrid, myself—a child of
that age fretting herself thin about a boy.”