The night before Robin went away as she sat alone in the dimness of one
light, thinking as girls nearly always sit and think on the eve of a
change, because to youth any change seems to mean the final closing as
well as the opening of ways, the door of her room was opened and an
exquisite and nymphlike figure in pale green stood exactly where the
rays of the reading lamp seemed to concentrate themselves in an effort
to reveal most purely its delicately startling effect. It was her
mother in a dress whose spring-like tint made her a sort of slim dryad.
She looked so pretty and young that Robin caught her breath as she rose
and went forward.
“It is your aged parent come to give you her blessing,” said Feather.
“I was wondering if I might come to your room in the morning,” Robin
answered.
Feather seated herself lightly. She was not intelligent enough to have
any real comprehension of the mood which had impelled her to come. She
had merely given way to a secret sense of resentment of something which
annoyed her. She knew, however, why she had put on the spring-leaf
green dress which made her look like a girl. She was not going to let
Robin feel as if she were receiving a visit from her grandmother. She
had got that far.
“We don’t know each other at all, do we?” she said.
“No,” answered Robin. She could not remove her eyes from her
loveliness. She brought up such memories of the Lady Downstairs and the
desolate child in the shabby nursery.
“Mothers are not as intimate with their daughters as they used to be
when it was a sort of virtuous fashion to superintend their rice
pudding and lecture them about their lessons. We have not seen each
other often.”
“No,” said Robin.
Feather’s laugh had again the rather high note Coombe had noticed.
“You haven’t very much to say, have you?” she commented. “And you stare
at me as if you were trying to explain me. I dare say you know that you
have big eyes and that they’re a good colour, but I may as well hint to
you that men do not like to be stared at as if their deeps were being
searched. Drop your eyelids.”
Robin’s lids dropped in spite of herself because she was startled, but
immediately she was startled again by a note in her mother’s voice—a
note of added irritation.
“Don’t make a habit of dropping them too often,” it broke out, “or it
will look as if you did it to show your eyelashes. Girls with tricks of
that sort are always laughed at. Alison Carr _lives_ sideways became
she has a pretty profile.”
Coombe would have recognized the little cat look, if he had been
watching her as she leaned back in her chair and scrutinized her
daughter. The fact was that she took in her every point, being an
astute censor of other women’s charms.
“Stand up,” she said.
Robin stood up because she could not well refuse to do so, but she
coloured because she was suddenly ashamed.
“You’re not little, but you’re not tall,” her mother said. “That’s
against you. It’s the fashion for women to be immensely tall now. Du
Maurier’s pictures in Punch and his idiotic Trilby did it. Clothes are
made for giantesses. I don’t care about it myself, but a girl’s rather
out of it if she’s much less than six feet high. You can sit down.”
A more singular interview between mother and daughter had assuredly
rarely taken place. As she looked at the girl her resentment of her
increased each moment. She actually felt as if she were beginning to
lose her temper.
“You are what pious people call ‘going out into the world’,” she went
on. “In moral books mothers always give advice and warnings to their
girls when they’re leaving them. I can give you some warnings. You
think that because you have been taken up by a dowager duchess
everything will be plain sailing. You’re mistaken. You think because
you are eighteen and pretty, men will fall at your feet.”
“I would rather be hideous,” cried suddenly passionate Robin. “I _hate_
men!”
The silly pretty thing who was responsible for her being, grew sillier
as her irritation increased.
“That’s what girls always pretend, but the youngest little idiot knows
it isn’t true. It’s men who count. It makes me laugh when I think of
them—and of you. You know nothing about them and they know everything
about you. A clever man can do anything he pleases with a silly girl.”
“Are they _all_ bad?” Robin exclaimed furiously.
“They’re none of them bad. They’re only men. And that’s my warning.
Don’t imagine that when they make love to you they do it as if you were
the old Duchess’ granddaughter. You will only be her paid companion and
that’s a different matter.”
“I will not speak to one of them——” Robin actually began.
“You’ll be obliged to do what the Duchess tells you to do,” laughed
Feather, as she realized her obvious power to dull the glitter and glow
of things which she had felt the girl must be dazzled and uplifted
unduly by. She was rather like a spiteful schoolgirl entertaining
herself by spoiling an envied holiday for a companion. “Old men will
run after you and you will have to be nice to them whether you like it
or not.” A queer light came into her eyes. “Lord Coombe is fond of
girls just out of the schoolroom. But if he begins to make love to you
don’t allow yourself to feel too much flattered.”
Robin sprang toward her.
“Do you think I don’t _abhor_ Lord Coombe!” she cried out forgetting
herself in the desperate cruelty of the moment. “Haven’t I reason——”
but there she remembered and stopped.
But Feather was not shocked or alarmed. Years of looking things in the
face had provided her with a mental surface from which tilings
rebounded. On the whole it even amused her and “suited her book” that
Robin should take this tone.
“Oh! I suppose you mean you know he admires me and pays bills for me.
Where would you have been if he hadn’t done it? He’s been a sort of
benefactor.”
“I know nothing but that even when I was a little child I could not
bear to touch his hand!” cried Robin. Then Feather remembered several
things she had almost forgotten and she was still more entertained.
“I believe you’ve not forgotten through all these years that the boy
you fell so indecently in love with was taken away by his mother
because Lord Coombe was _your_ mother’s admirer and he was such a
sinner that even a baby was contaminated by him! Donal Muir is a young
man by this time. I wonder what his mother would do now if he turned up
at your mistress’ house—that’s what she is, you know, your mistress—and
began to make love to you.” She laughed outright. “You’ll get into all
sorts of messes, but that would be the nicest one!”
Robin could only stand and gaze at her. Her moment’s fire had died
down. Without warning, out of the past a wave rose and overwhelmed her
then and there. It bore with it the wild woe of the morning when a
child had waited in the spring sun and her world had fallen into
nothingness. It came back—the broken-hearted anguish, the utter
helpless desolation, as if she stood in the midst of it again, as if it
had never passed. It was a re-incarnation. She could not bear it.
“Do you hate me—as I hate Lord Coombe?” she cried out. “Do you _want_
unhappy things to happen to me? Oh! Mother, why!” She had never said
“Mother” before. Nature said it for her here. The piteous appeal of her
youth and lonely young rush of tears was almost intolerably sweet.
Through some subtle cause it added to the thing in her which Feather
resented and longed to trouble and to hurt.
“You are a spiteful little cat!” she sprang up to exclaim, standing
close and face to face with her. “You think I am an old thing and that
I’m jealous of you! Because you’re pretty and a girl you think women
past thirty don’t count. You’ll find out. Mrs. Muir will count and
she’s forty if she’s a day. Her son’s such a beauty that people go mad
over him. And he worships her—and he’s her slave. I wish you _would_
get into some mess you couldn’t get out of! Don’t come to me if you
do.”
The wide beauty of Robin’s gaze and her tear wet bloom were too much.
Feather was quite close to her. The spiteful schoolgirl impulse got the
better of her.
“Don’t make eyes at me like that,” she cried, and she actually gave the
rose cheek nearest her a sounding little slap, “There!” she exclaimed
hysterically and she turned about and ran out of the room crying
herself.
Robin had parted from Mademoiselle Vallé at Charing Cross Station on
the afternoon of the same day, but the night before they had sat up
late together and talked a long time. In effect Mademoiselle had said
also, “You are going out into the world,” but she had not approached
the matter in Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ mood. One may have charge of a girl
and be her daily companion for years, but there are certain things the
very years themselves make it increasingly difficult to say to her. And
after all why should one state difficult things in exact phrases unless
one lacks breeding and is curious. Anxious she had been at times, but
not curious. So it was that even on this night of their parting it was
not she who spoke.
It was after a few minutes of sitting in silence and looking at the
fire that Robin broke in upon the quiet which had seemed to hold them
both.
“I must learn to remember always that I am a sort of servant. I must be
very careful. It will be easier for me to realize that I am not in my
own house than it would be for other girls. I have not allowed Dowie to
dress me for a good many weeks. I have learned how to do everything for
myself quite well.”
“But Dowie will be in the house with you and the Duchess is very kind.”
“Every night I have begun my prayers by thanking God for leaving me
Dowie,” the girl said. “I have begun them and ended them with the same
words.” She looked about her and then broke out as if involuntarily. “I
shall be away from here. I shall not wear anything or eat anything or
sleep on any bed I have not paid for myself.”
“These rooms are very pretty. We have been very comfortable here,”
Mademoiselle said. Suddenly she felt that if she waited a few moments
she would know definitely things she had previously only guessed at.
“Have you no little regrets?”
“No,” answered Robin, “No.”
She stood upon the hearth with her hands behind her. Mademoiselle felt
as if her fingers were twisting themselves together and the Frenchwoman
was peculiarly moved by the fact that she looked like a slim _jeune
fille_ of a creature saying a lesson. The lesson opened in this wise.
“I don’t know when I first began to know that I was different from all
other children,” she said in a soft, hot voice—if a voice can express
heat. “Perhaps a child who has nothing—nothing—is obliged to begin to
_think_ before it knows what thoughts are. If they play and are loved
and amused they have no time for anything but growing and being happy.
You never saw the dreadful little rooms upstairs——”
“Dowie has told me of them,” said Mademoiselle.
“Another child might have forgotten them. I never shall. I—I was so
little and they were full of something awful. It was loneliness. The
first time Andrews pinched me was one day when the thing frightened me
and I suddenly began to cry quite loud. I used to stare out of the
window and—I don’t know when I noticed it first—I could see the
children being taken out by their nurses. And there were always two or
three of them and they laughed and talked and skipped. The nurses used
to laugh and talk too. Andrews never did. When she took me to the
gardens the other nurses sat together and chattered and their children
played games with other children. Once a little girl began to talk to
me and her nurse called her away. Andrews was very angry and jerked me
by my arm and told me that if ever I spoke to a child again she would
pinch me.”
“Devil!” exclaimed the Frenchwoman.
“I used to think and think, but I could never understand. How could I?”
“A baby!” cried Mademoiselle Vallé and she got up and took her in her
arms and kissed her. “_Chère petite ange!_” she murmured. When she sat
down again her cheeks were wet. Robin’s were wet also, but she touched
them with her handkerchief quickly and dried them. It was as if she had
faltered for a moment in her lesson.
“Did Dowie ever tell you anything about Donal?” she asked hesitatingly.
“Something. He was the little boy you played with?”
“Yes. He was the first human creature,” she said it very slowly as if
trying to find the right words to express what she meant, “—the first
_human_ creature I had ever known. You see Mademoiselle, he—he knew
everything. He had always been happy, he _belonged_ to people and
things. I belonged to nobody and nothing. If I had been like him he
would not have seemed so wonderful to me. I was in a kind of delirium
of joy. If a creature who had been deaf dumb and blind had suddenly
awakened, and seeing on a summer day in a world full of flowers and
sun—it might have seemed to them as it seemed to me.”
“You have remembered it through all the years,” said Mademoiselle,
“like that?”
“It was the first time I became alive. One could not forget it. We only
played as children play but—it _was_ a delirium of joy. I could not
bear to go to sleep at night and forget it for a moment. Yes, I
remember it—like that. There is a dream I have every now and then and
it is more real than—than this is—” with a wave of her hand about her.
“I am always in a real garden playing with a real Donal. And his
eyes—his eyes—” she paused and thought, “There is a look in them that
is like—it is just like—that first morning.”
The change which passed over her face the next moment might have been
said to seem to obliterate all trace of the childish memory.
“He was taken away by his mother. That was the beginning of my finding
out,” she said. “I heard Andrews talking to her sister and in a baby
way I gathered that Lord Coombe had sent him. I hated Lord Coombe for
years before I found out that he hadn’t—and that there was another
reason. After that it took time to puzzle things out and piece them
together. But at last I found out what the reason had been. Then I
began to make plans. These are not my rooms,” glancing about her again,
“—these are not my clothes,” with a little pull at her dress. “I’m not
‘a strong character’, Mademoiselle, as I wanted to be, but I haven’t
one little regret—not one.” She kneeled down and put her arms round her
old friend’s waist, lifting her face. “I’m like a leaf blown about by
the wind. I don’t know what it will do with me. Where do leaves go? One
never knows really.”
She put her face down on Mademoiselle’s knee then and cried with soft
bitterness.
When she bade her good-bye at Charing Cross Station and stood and
watched the train until it was quite out of sight, afterwards she went
back to the rooms for which she felt no regrets. And before she went to
bed that night Feather came and gave her farewell maternal advice and
warning.