But though she had made no protest on being taken out of the
drawing-room, Robin had known that what Andrews’ soft-sounding whisper
had promised would take place when she reached the Nursery. She was too
young to feel more than terror which had no defense whatever. She had
no more defense against Andrews than she had had against the man who
had robbed her of Donal. They were both big and powerful, and she was
nothing. But, out of the wonders she had begun to know, there had risen
in her before almost inert little being a certain stirring. For a brief
period she had learned happiness and love and woe, and, this evening,
inchoate rebellion against an enemy. Andrews led by the hand up the
narrow, top-story staircase something she had never led before. She was
quite unaware of this and, as she mounted each step, her temper mounted
also, and it was the temper of an incensed personal vanity abnormally
strong in this particular woman. When they were inside the Nursery and
the door was shut, she led Robin to the middle of the small and gloomy
room and released her hand.
“Now, my lady,” she said. “I’m going to pay you out for disgracing me
before everybody in the drawing-room.” She had taken the child below
stairs for a few minutes before bringing her up for the night. She had
stopped in the kitchen for something she wanted for herself. She laid
her belongings on a chest of drawers and turned about.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t forget,” she said.
What happened next turned the woman quite sick with the shock of
amazement. The child had, in the past, been a soft puppet. She had been
automatic obedience and gentleness. Privately Andrews had somewhat
looked down on her lack of spirit, though it had been her own best
asset. The outbreak downstairs had been an abnormality.
And now she stood before her with hands clenched, her little face wild
with defiant rage.
“I’ll scream! I’ll scream! I’ll _scream!_” she shrieked. Andrews
actually heard herself gulp; but she sprang up and forward.
“You’ll _scream!_” she could scarcely believe her own feelings—not to
mention the evidence of her ears, “_you’ll_ scream!”
The next instant was more astonishing still. Robin threw herself on her
knees and scrambled like a cat. She was under the bed and in the
remotest corner against the wall. She was actually unreachable, and she
lay on her back kicking madly, hammering her heels against the floor
and uttering piercing shrieks. As something had seemed to let itself go
when she writhed under the bushes in the Gardens, so did something let
go now. In her overstrung little mind there ruled for this moment the
feeling that if she was to be pinched, she would be pinched for a
reason.
Andrews knelt by the side of the bed. She had a long, strong, thin arm
and it darted beneath and clutched. But it was not long enough to
attain the corner where the kicking and screaming was going on. Her
temper became fury before her impotence and her hideous realization of
being made ridiculous by this baby of six. Two floors below the
afterglow of the little dinner was going on. Suppose even far echoes of
the screams should be heard and make her more ridiculous still. She
knew how they would laugh and her mistress would make some silly joke
about Robin’s being too much for her. Her fury rose so high that she
had barely sense to realize that she must not let herself go too far
when she got hold of the child. Get hold of her she would and pay her
out—My word! She would pay her out!
“You little devil!” she said between her teeth, “Wait till I get hold
of you.” And Robin shrieked and hammered more insanely still.
The bed was rather a low one and it was difficult for any one larger
than a child to find room beneath it. The correct and naturally rigid
Andrews lay flat upon her stomach and wriggled herself partly under the
edge. Just far enough for her long and strong arm, and equally long and
strong clutching fingers to do their work. In her present state of
mind, Andrews would have broken her back rather than not have reached
the creature who so defied her. The strong fingers clenched a flying
petticoat and dragged at it fiercely—the next moment they clutched a
frantic foot, with a power which could not be broken away from. A jerk
and a remorseless dragging over the carpet and Robin was out of the
protecting darkness and in the gas light again, lying tumbled and in an
untidy, torn little heap on the nursery floor. Andrews was panting, but
she did not loose her hold as she scrambled, without a rag of
professional dignity, to her feet.
“My word!” she breathlessly gave forth. “I’ve got you now! I’ve got you
now.”
She so looked that to Robin she seemed—like the ugly man downstairs—a
sort of wicked wild beast, whose mere touch would have been horror even
if it did not hurt. And the child knew what was coming. She felt
herself dragged up from the floor and also dragged between Andrew’s
knees, which felt bony and hard as iron. There was no getting away from
them. Andrews had seated herself firmly on a chair.
Holding her between the iron knees, she put her large hand over her
mouth. It was a hand large enough to cover more than her mouth. Only
the panic-stricken eyes seemed to flare wide and lustrous above it.
“_You’ll_ scream!” she said, “_you’ll_ hammer on the floor with your
heels! _You’ll_ behave like a wildcat—you that’s been like a kitten!
You’ve never done it before and you’ll never do it again! If it takes
me three days, I’ll make you remember!”
And then her hand dropped—and her jaw dropped, and she sat staring with
a furious, sick, white face at the open door—which she had shut as she
came in. The top floor had always been so safe. The Nursery had been
her own autocratic domain. There had been no human creature to whom it
would have occurred to interfere. That was it. She had been actually
_safe_.
Unheard in the midst of the struggle, the door had been opened without
a knock. There on the threshold, as stiff as a ramrod, and with his
hateful eyes uncovering their gleam, Lord Coombe was standing—no other
than Lord Coombe.
Having a sharp working knowledge of her world, Andrews knew that it was
all up. He had come upstairs deliberately. She knew what he had come
for. He was as clever as he was bad, and he had seen something when he
glanced at her in the drawing-room. Now he had heard and seen her as
she dragged Robin from under the bed. He’d come up for that—for some
queer evil reason of his own. The promptings of a remote gutter
training made her feel a desire to use language such as she still had
wisdom enough to restrain.
“You are a very great fool, young woman,” he said. “You have nothing
but your character as a nurse to live on. A scene in a police court
would ruin you. There is a Society which interferes with nursery
torture.”
Robin, freed from the iron grasp, had slunk behind a chair. He was
there again.
Andrews’ body, automatically responsive to rule and habit, rose from
its seat and stood before this member of a class which required an
upright position. She knew better than to attempt to excuse or explain.
She had heard about the Society and she knew publicity would spell ruin
and starvation. She had got herself into an appalling mess. Being
caught—there you were. But that this evil-reputationed swell should
actually have been awakened by some whim to notice and follow her up
was “past her,” as she would have put it.
“You were going to pinch her—by instalments, I suppose,” he said. “You
inferred that it might last three days. When she said you would—in the
drawing-room—it occurred to me to look into it. What are your wages?”
“Thirty pounds a year, my lord.”
“Go tomorrow morning to Benby, who engaged you for Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.
He will be at his office by nine and will pay you what is owed to
you—and a month’s wages in lieu of notice.”
“The mistress—” began Andrews.
“I have spoken to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.” It was a lie, serenely told.
Feather was doing a new skirt dance in the drawing-room. “She is
engaged. Pack your box. Jennings will call a cab.”
It was the utter idiotic hopelessness of saying anything to him which
finished her. You might as well talk to a front door or a street lamp.
Any silly thing you might try wouldn’t even reach his ears. He had no
ears for you. You didn’t matter enough.
“Shall I leave her here—as she is?” she said, denoting Robin.
“Undress her and put her to bed before you pack your box,” absolutely
certain, fine cold modulations in the voice, which stood for his
special plane of breeding, had their effect on her grovelling though
raging soul. He was so exactly what he was and what she was not and
could never attain. “I will stay here while you do it. Then go.”
No vocabulary of the Servants’ Hall could have encompassed the fine
phrase _grand seigneur_, but, when Mrs. Blayne and the rest talked of
him in their least resentful and more amiable moods, they unconsciously
made efforts to express the quality in him which these two words
convey. He had ways of his own. Men that paid a pretty woman’s bills
and kept her going in luxury, Jennings and Mrs. Blayne and the others
knew something about. They sometimes began well enough but, as time
went on, they forgot themselves and got into the way of being familiar
and showing they realized that they paid for things and had their
rights. Most of them began to be almost like husbands—speak slighting
and sharp and be a bit stiff about accounts—even before servants. They
ran in and out or—after a while—began to stay away and not show up for
weeks. “He” was different—so different that it was queer. Queer it
certainly was that he really came to the place very seldom. Wherever
they met, it didn’t noticeably often happen in the slice of a house. He
came as if he were a visitor. He took no liberties. Everything was
punctiliously referred to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. Mr. Benby, who did
everything, conducted himself outwardly as if he were a sort of man of
business in Mrs. Gareth-Lawlesss’ employ. It was open to the lenient to
believe that she depended on some mysterious private income. There were
people who preferred to try to believe this, but there were those who,
in some occult way, knew exactly where her income came from. There
were, in fact, hypercritical persons who did not know or notice her,
but she had quite an entertaining, smart circle which neither
suspicions nor beliefs prevented from placing her in their visiting
lists. Coombe _did_ keep it up in the most perfect manner, some of them
said admiringly among themselves. He showed extraordinarily perfect
taste. Many fashionable open secrets, accepted by a brilliant world,
were not half so fastidiously managed. Andrews knew he had unswervingly
lied when he said he had “spoken to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.” But he never
failed to place her in the position of authority. That he should have
presented himself on the nursery floor was amazingly abnormal enough to
mean some state of mind unregulated by all natural rules. “Him,”
Andrews thought, “that never steps out of a visitor’s place in the
drawing-room turning up on the third floor without a word!” One thing
she knew, and that came first. Behind all the polite show he was the
head of everything. And he was one that you’d better not give back a
sound to if you knew what was good for yourself. Whatever people said
against his character, he was one of the grand and high ones. A word
from him—ever so quiet—and you’d be done for.
She was shaking with fear inwardly, but she undressed Robin and put her
in bed, laying everything away and making things tidy for the night.
“This is the Night Nursery, I suppose,” Coombe had said when she began.
He put up his glasses and looked the uninviting little room over. He
scrutinized it and she wondered what his opinion of it might be.
“Yes, my lord. The Day Nursery is through that door.” He walked through
the door in question and she could see that he moved slowly about it,
examining the few pieces of furniture curiously, still with his glass
in his eye. She had finished undressing Robin and had put her in her
bed before he came back into the sleeping apartment. By that time,
exhausted by the unknown tempest she had passed through, the child had
dropped asleep in spite of herself. She was too tired to remember that
her enemy was in the next room.
“I have seen the child with you several times when you have not been
aware of it,” Coombe said to her before he went downstairs. “She has
evidently been well taken care of as far as her body is concerned. If
you were not venomous—if you had merely struck her, when you lost your
temper, you might have had another trial. I know nothing about
children, but I know something about the devil, and if ever the devil
was in a woman’s face and voice the devil was in yours when you dragged
the little creature from under the bed. If you had dared, you would
have killed her. Look after that temper, young woman. Benby shall keep
an eye on you if you take another place as nurse, and I shall know
where you are.”
“My lord!” Andrews gasped. “You wouldn’t overlook a woman and take her
living from her and send her to starvation!”
“I would take her living from her and send her to starvation without a
shadow of compunction,” was the reply made in the fine gentleman’s
cultivated voice, “—if she were capable of what you were capable of
tonight. You are, I judge, about forty, and, though you are lean, you
are a powerful woman; the child is, I believe, barely six.” And then,
looking down at her through his glass, he added—to her quite shuddering
astonishment—in a tone whose very softness made it really awful to her,
“Damn you! Damn you!”
“I’ll—I swear I’ll never let myself go again, my lord!” the woman broke
out devoutly.
“I don’t think you will. It would cost you too much,” he said.
Then he went down the steep, crooked little staircase quite soundlessly
and Andrews, rather white and breathless, went and packed her trunk.
Robin—tired baby as she was—slept warm and deeply.