The whole day before the party was secretly exciting to Robin. She knew
how much more important it seemed to her than it really was. If she had
been six years old she might have felt the same kind of uncertain
thrills and tremulous wonders. She hid herself behind the window
curtains in her room that she might see the men putting up the crimson
and white awning from the door to the carriage step. The roll of red
carpet they took from their van had a magic air. The ringing of the
door bell which meant that things were being delivered, the extra
moving about of servants, the florists’ men who went into the
drawing-rooms and brought flowers and big tropical plants to re-arrange
the conservatory and fill corners which were not always decorated—each
and every one of them quickened the beating of her pulses. If she had
belonged in her past to the ordinary cheerful world of children, she
would have felt by this time no such elation. But she had only known of
the existence of such festivities as children’s parties because once a
juvenile ball had been given in a house opposite her mother’s and she
had crouched in an almost delirious little heap by the nursery window
watching carriages drive up and deposit fluffy pink and white and blue
children upon the strip of red carpet, and had seen them led or running
into the house. She had caught sounds of strains of music and had
shivered with rapture—but Oh! what worlds away from her the party had
been.
She found her way into the drawing-rooms which were not usually thrown
open. They were lofty and stately and seemed to her immense. There were
splendid crystal-dropping chandeliers and side lights which she thought
looked as if they would hold a thousand wax candles. There was a
delightfully embowered corner for the musicians. It was all spacious
and wonderful in its beautiful completeness—its preparedness for
pleasure. She realized that all of it had always been waiting to be
used for the happiness of people who knew each other and were young and
ready for delight. When the young Lothwells had been children they had
had dances and frolicking games with other children in the huge rooms
and had kicked up their young heels on the polished floors at Christmas
parties and on birthdays. How wonderful it must have been. But they had
not known it was wonderful.
As Dowie dressed her the reflection she saw in the mirror gave back to
her an intensified Robin whose curved lips almost quivered as they
smiled. The soft silk of her hair looked like the night and the small
rings on the back of her very slim white neck were things to ensnare
the eye and hold it helpless.
“You look your best, my dear,” Dowie said as she clasped her little
necklace. “And it is a good best.” Dowie was feeling tremulous herself
though she could not have explained why. She thought that perhaps it
was because she wished that Mademoiselle could have been with her.
Robin kissed her when the last touch had been given.
“I’m going to run down the staircase,” she said. “If I let myself walk
slowly I shall have time to feel queer and shy and I might seem to
_creep_ into the drawing-room. I mustn’t creep in. I must walk in as if
I had been to parties all my life.”
She ran down and as she did so she looked like a white bird flying, but
she was obliged to stop upon the landing before the drawing-room door
to quiet a moment of excited breathing. Still when she entered the room
she moved as she should and held her head poised with a delicately
fearless air. The Duchess—who herself looked her best in her fine old
ivory profiled way—gave her a pleased smile of welcome which was almost
affectionate.
“What a perfect little frock!” she said. “You are delightfully pretty
in it.”
“Is it quite right?” said Robin. “Mademoiselle chose it for me.”
“It is quite right. ‘Frightfully right,’ George would say. George will
sit near you at dinner. He is my grandson—Lord Halwyn you know, and you
will no doubt frequently hear him say things are ‘frightfully’
something or other during the evening. Kathryn will say things are
‘deevy’ or ‘exquig‘. I mention it because you may not know that she
means ‘exquisite’ and ‘divine.’ Don’t let it frighten you if you don’t
quite understand their language. They are dear handsome things sweeping
along in the rush of their bit of century. I don’t let it frighten me
that their world seems to me an entirely new planet.”
Robin drew a little nearer her. She felt something as she had felt
years ago when she had said to Dowie. “I want to kiss you, Dowie.” Her
eyes were pools of childish tenderness because she so well understood
the infinitude of the friendly tact which drew her within its own
circle with the light humour of its “I don’t let them frighten _me_.”
“You are kind—kind to me,” she said. “And I am grateful—_grateful_.”
The extremely good-looking young people who began very soon to drift
into the brilliant big room—singly or in pairs of brother and
sister—filled her with innocent delight. They were so well built and
gaily at ease with each other and their surroundings, so perfectly
dressed and finished. The filmy narrowness of delicate frocks, the
shortness of skirts accentuated the youth and girlhood and added to it
a sort of child fairy-likeness. Kathryn in exquisite wisps of
silver-embroidered gauze looked fourteen instead of nearly twenty—aided
by a dimple in her cheek and a small tilted nose. A girl in scarlet
tulle was like a child out of a nursery ready to dance about a
Christmas tree. Everyone seemed so young and so suggested supple
dancing, perhaps because dancing was going on everywhere and all the
world whether fashionable or unfashionable was driven by a passion for
whirling, swooping and inventing new postures and fantastic steps. The
young men had slim straight bodies and light movements. Their clothes
fitted their suppleness to perfection. Robin thought they all looked as
if they had had a great deal of delightful exercise and plenty of
pleasure all their lives.
They were of that stream which had always seemed to be rushing past her
in bright pursuit of alluring things which belonged to them as part of
their existence, but which had had nothing to do with her own youth.
Now the stream had paused as if she had for the moment some connection
with it. The swift light she was used to seeing illuminate glancing
eyes as she passed people in the street, she saw again and again as new
arrivals appeared. Kathryn was quite excited by her eyes and eyelashes
and George hovered about. There was a great deal of hovering. At the
dinner table sleek young heads held themselves at an angle which
allowed of their owners seeing through or around, or under floral
decorations and alert young eyes showed an eager gleam. After dinner
was over and dancing began the Duchess smiled shrewdly as she saw the
gravitating masculine movement towards a certain point. It was the
point where Robin stood with a small growing circle about her.
It was George who danced with her first. He was tall and slender and
flexible and his good shoulders had a military squareness of build. He
had also a nice square face, and a warmly blue eye and knew all the
latest steps and curves and unexpected swirls. Robin was an ozier wand
and there was no swoop or dart or sudden sway and change she was not
alert at. The swing and lure of the music, the swift movement, the
fluttering of airy draperies as slim sister nymphs flew past her, set
her pulses beating with sweet young joy. A brief, uncontrollable ripple
of laughter broke from her before she had circled the room twice.
“How heavenly it is!” she exclaimed and lifted her eyes to Halwyn’s.
“How heavenly!”
They were not safe eyes to lift in such a way to those of a very young
man. They gave George a sudden enjoyable shock. He had heard of the
girl who was a sort of sublimated companion to his grandmother. The
Duchess herself had talked to him a little about her and he had come to
the party intending to behave very amiably and help the little thing
enjoy herself. He had also encountered before in houses where there
were no daughters the smart well-born, young companion who was allowed
all sorts of privileges because she knew how to assume tiresome little
responsibilities and how to be entertaining enough to add cheer and
spice to the life of the elderly and lonely. Sometimes she was a subtly
appealing sort of girl and given to being sympathetic and to liking
sympathy and quiet corners in conservatories or libraries, and
sometimes she was capable of scientific flirtation and required
scientific management. A man had to have his wits about him. This one
as she flew like a blown leaf across the floor and laughed up into his
face with wide eyes, produced a new effect and was a new kind.
“It’s you who are heavenly,” he answered with a boy’s laugh. “You are
like a feather—and a willow wand.”
“You are light too,” she laughed back, “and you are like steel as
well.”
Mrs. Alan Stacy, the lady with the magnificent henna hair, had recently
given less time to him, being engaged in the preliminary instruction of
a new member of the Infant Class. Such things will, of course, happen
and though George had quite ingenuously raged in secret, the
circumstances left him free to “hover” and hovering was a pastime he
enjoyed.
“Let us go on like this forever and ever,” he said sweeping half the
length of the room with her and whirling her as if she were indeed a
leaf in the wind, “Forever and ever.”
“I wish we could. But the music will stop,” she gave back.
“Music ought never to stop—never,” he answered.
But the music did stop and when it began again almost immediately
another tall, flexible young man made a lightning claim on her and
carried her away only to hand her to another and he in his turn to
another. She was not allowed more than a moment’s rest and borne on the
crest of the wave of young delight, she did not need more. Young eyes
were always laughing into hers and elating her by a special look of
pleasure in everything she did or said or inspired in themselves. How
was she informed without phrases that for this exciting evening she was
a creature without a flaw, that the loveliness of her eyes startled
those who looked into them, that it was a thrilling experience to dance
with her, that somehow she was new and apart and wonderful? No
sleek-haired, slim and straight-backed youth said exactly any of these
things to her, but somehow they were conveyed and filled her with a
wondering realization of the fact that if they were true, they were no
longer dreadful and maddening, since they only made people like and
want to dance with one. To dance, to like people and be liked seemed so
heavenly natural and right—to be only like air and sky and free, happy
breathing. There was, it was true, a blissful little uplifted look
about her which she herself was not aware of, but which was singularly
stimulating to the masculine beholder. It only meant indeed that as she
whirled and swayed and swooped laughing she was saying to herself at
intervals,
“This is what other girls feel like. They are happy like this. I am
laughing and talking to people just as other girls do. I am Robin
Gareth-Lawless, but I am enjoying a party like this—a _young_ party.”
Lady Lothwell sitting near her mother watched the trend of affairs with
an occasional queer interested smile.
“Well, mamma darling,” she said at last as youth and beauty whirled by
in a maelstrom of modern Terpsichorean liveliness, “she is a great
success. I don’t know whether it is quite what you intended or not.”
The Duchess did not explain what she had intended. She was watching the
trend also and thinking a good deal. On the whole Lady Lothwell had
scarcely expected that she would explain. She rarely did. She seldom
made mistakes, however.
Kathryn in her scant gauzy strips of white and silver having drifted
towards them at the moment stood looking on with a funny little
disturbed expression on her small, tip-tilted face.
“There’s something _about_ her, grandmamma,” she said.
“All the girls see it and no one knows what it is. She’s sitting out
for a few minutes and just look at George—and Hal Brunton—and Captain
Willys. They are all laughing, of course, and pretending to joke, but
they would like to eat each other up. Perhaps it’s her eyelashes. She
looks out from under them as if they were a curtain.”
Lady Lothwell’s queer little smile became a queer little laugh.
“Yes. It gives her a look of being ecstatically happy and yet almost
shy and appealing at the same time. Men can’t stand it of course.”
“None of them are trying to stand it,” answered little Lady Kathryn
somewhat in the tone of a retort.
“I don’t believe she knows she does it,” Lady Lothwell said quite
reflectively.
“She does not know at all. That is the worst of it,” commented the
Duchess.
“Then you see that there _is_ a worst,” said her daughter.
The Duchess glanced towards Kathryn, but fortunately the puzzled fret
of the girl’s forehead was even at the moment melting into a smile as a
young man of much attraction descended upon her with smiles of his own
and carried her into the Tango or Fox Trot or Antelope Galop,
whichsoever it chanced to be.
“If she were really aware of it that would be ‘the worst’ for other
people—for us probably. She could look out from under her lashes to
sufficient purpose to call what she wanted and take and keep it. As she
is not aware, it will make things less easy for herself—under the
circumstances.”
“The circumstance of being Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ daughter is not an
agreeable one,” said Lady Lothwell.
“It might give some adventurous boys ideas when they had time to
realize all it means. Do you know I am rather sorry for her myself. I
shouldn’t be surprised if she were rather a dear little thing. She
looks tender and cuddle-some. Perhaps she is like the heroine of a
sentimental novel I read the other day. Her chief slave said of her
‘She walks into a man’s heart through his eyes and sits down there and
makes a warm place which will never get cold again.‘ Rather nice, I
thought.”
The Duchess thought it rather nice also.
“‘Never get cold again,‘” she repeated. “What a heavenly thing to
happen to a pair of creatures—if—” she paused and regarded Robin, who
at the other side of the room was trying to decide some parlous
question of dances to which there was more than one claimant. She was
sweetly puckering her brow over her card and round her were youthful
male faces looking eager and even a trifle tense with repressed anxiety
for the victory of the moment.
“Oh!” Lady Lothwell laughed. “As Kitty says ‘There’s something about
her’ and it’s not mere eyelashes. You have let loose a germ among us,
mamma my sweet, and you can’t do anything with a germ when you have let
it loose. To quote Kitty again, ‘Look at George!’”
The music which came from the bower behind which the musicians were
hidden seemed to gain thrill and wildness as the hours went on. As the
rooms grew warmer the flowers breathed out more reaching scent. Now and
again Robin paused for a moment to listen to strange delightful chords
and to inhale passing waves of something like mignonette and lilies,
and apple blossoms in the sun. She thought there must be some flower
which was like all three in one. The rushing stream was carrying her
with it as it went—one of the happy petals on its surface. Could it
ever cast her aside and leave her on the shore again? While the violins
went singing on and the thousand wax candles shone on the faint or
vivid colours which mingled into a sort of lovely haze, it did not seem
possible that a thing so enchanting and so real could have an end at
all. All the other things in her life seemed less real tonight.
In the conservatory there was a marble fountain which had long years
ago been brought from a palace garden in Rome. It was not as large as
it was beautiful and it had been placed among palms and tropic ferns
whose leaves and fronds it splashed merrily among and kept deliciously
cool and wet-looking. There was a quite intoxicating hot-house perfume
of warm damp moss and massed flowers and it was the kind of corner any
young man would feel it necessary to gravitate towards with a partner.
George led Robin to it and she naturally sat upon the edge of the
marble basin and as naturally drew off a glove and dipped her hand into
the water, splashing it a little because it felt deliciously cool.
George stood near at first and looked down at her bent head. It was
impossible not also to take in her small fine ear and the warm velvet
white of the lovely little nape of her slim neck. He took them in with
elated appreciation. He was not subtle minded enough to be aware that
her reply to a casual remark he had made to her at dinner had had a
remote effect upon him.
“One of the loveliest creatures I ever saw was a Mrs. Gareth-Lawless,”
he had said. “Are you related to her?”
“I am her daughter,” Robin had answered and with a slightly startled
sensation he had managed to slip into amiably deft generalities while
he had secretly wondered how much his grandmother knew or did not know.
An involuntary thought of Feather had crossed his mind once or twice
during the evening. This was the girl who, it was said, had actually
been saved up for old Coombe. Ugly morbid sort of idea if it was true.
How had the Duchess got hold of her and why and what was Coombe really
up to? Could he have some elderly idea of wanting a youngster for a
wife? Occasionally an old chap did. Serve him right if some young chap
took the wind out of his sails. He was not a desperate character, but
he had been very intimate with Mrs. Alan Stacy and her friends and it
had made him careless. Also Robin had drawn him—drawn him more than he
knew.
“Is it still heavenly?” he asked. (How pointed her fingers were and how
soft and crushable her hand looked as it splashed like a child’s.)
“More heavenly every minute,” she answered. He laughed outright.
“The heavenly thing is the way you are enjoying it yourself. I never
saw a girl light up a whole room before. You throw out stars as you
dance.”
“That’s like a skyrocket,” Robin laughed back. “And it’s because in all
my life I never went to a dance before.”
“Never! You mean except to children’s parties?”
“There were no children’s parties. This is the first—first—first.”
“Well, I don’t see how that happened, but I am glad it did because it’s
been a great thing for me to see you at your first—first—first.”
He sat down on the fountain’s edge near her.
“I shall not forget it,” he said.
“I shall remember it as long as I live,” said Robin and she lifted her
unsafe eyes again and smiled into his which made them still more
unsafe.
Perhaps it was because he was extremely young, perhaps it was because
he was immoral, perhaps because he had never held a tight rein on his
fleeting emotions, even the next moment he felt that it was because he
was an idiot—but suddenly he found he had let himself go and was
kissing the warm velvet of the slim little nape—had kissed it twice.
He had not given himself time to think what would happen as a result,
but what did happen was humiliating and ridiculous. One furious splash
of the curled hand flung water into his face and eyes and mouth while
Robin tore herself free from him and stood blazing with fury and
woe—for it was not only fury he saw.
“You—You—!” she cried and actually would have swooped to the fountain
again if he had not caught her arm.
He was furious himself—at himself and at her.
“You—little fool!” he gasped. “What did you do that for even if I _was_
a jackass? There was nothing in it. You’re so pretty——”
“You’ve spoiled everything!” she flamed, “everything—everything!”
“I’ve spoiled nothing. I’ve only been a fool—and it’s your own fault
for being so pretty.”
“You’ve spoiled everything in the world! Now—” with a desolate horrible
little sob, “now I can only go back—_back!_”
He had a queer idea that she spoke as if she were Cinderella and he had
made the clock strike twelve. Her voice had such absolute grief in it
that he involuntarily drew near her.
“I say,” he was really breathless, “don’t speak like that. I beg
pardon. I’ll grovel! Don’t—Oh! Kathryn—_come_ here.”
This last because at this difficult moment from between the banks of
hot-house bloom and round the big palms his sister Kathryn suddenly
appeared. She immediately stopped short and stared at them both—looking
from one to the other.
“What is the matter?” she asked in a low voice.
“Oh! _come_ and talk to her,” George broke forth. “I feel as if she
might scream in a minute and call everybody in. I’ve been a lunatic and
she has apparently never been kissed before. Tell her—tell her you’ve
been kissed yourself.”
A queer little look revealed itself in Kathryn’s face. A delicate vein
of her grandmother’s wisdom made part of her outlook upon a rapidly
moving and exciting world. She had never been hide-bound or dull and
for a slight gauzy white and silver thing she was astute.
“Don’t be impudent,” she said to George as she walked up to Robin and
put a cool hand on her arm. “He’s only been silly. You’d better let him
off,” she said. She turned a glance on George who was wiping his sleeve
with a handkerchief and she broke into a small laugh, “Did she push you
into the fountain?” she asked cheerfully.
“She threw the fountain at me,” grumbled George. “I shall have to dash
off home and change.”
“I would,” replied Kathryn still cheerful. “You can apologize better
when you’re dry.”
He slid through the palms like a snake and the two girls stood and
gazed at each other. Robin’s flame had died down and her face had
settled itself into a sort of hardness. Kathryn did not know that she
herself looked at her as the Duchess might have looked at another girl
in the quite different days of her youth.
“I’ll tell you something now he’s gone,” she said. “I _have_ been
kissed myself and so have other girls I know. Boys like George don’t
really matter, though of course it’s bad manners. But who has got good
manners? Things rush so that there’s scarcely time for manners at all.
When an older man makes a snatch at you it’s sometimes detestable. But
to push him into the fountain was a good idea,” and she laughed again.
“I didn’t push him in.”
“I wish you had,” with a gleeful mischief. The next moment, however,
the hint of a worried frown showed itself on her forehead. “You see,”
she said protestingly, “you are so _frightfully_ pretty.”
“I’d rather be a leper,” Robin shot forth.
But Kathryn did not of course understand.
“What nonsense!” she answered. “What utter rubbish! You know you
wouldn’t. Come back to the ball room. I came here because my mother was
asking for George.”
She turned to lead the way through the banked flowers and as she did so
added something.
“By the way, somebody important has been assassinated in one of the
Balkan countries. They are always assassinating people. They like it.
Lord Coombe has just come in and is talking it over with grandmamma. I
can see they are quite excited in their quiet way.”
As they neared the entrance to the ball room she paused a moment with a
new kind of impish smile.
“Every girl in the room is absolutely shaky with thrills at this
particular moment,” she said. “And every man feels himself bristling a
little. The very best looking boy in all England is dancing with Sara
Studleigh. He dropped in by chance to call and the Duchess made him
stay. He is a kind of miracle of good looks and takingness.”
Robin said nothing. She had plainly not been interested in the Balkan
tragedy and she as obviously did not care for the miracle.
“You don’t ask who he is?” said Kathryn.
“I don’t want to know.”
“Oh! Come! You mustn’t feel as sulky as that. You’ll want to ask
questions the moment you see him. I did. Everyone does. His name is
Donal Muir. He’s Lord Coombe’s heir. He’ll be the Head of the House of
Coombe some day. Here he comes,” quite excitedly, “Look!”
It was one of the tricks of Chance—or Fate—or whatever you will. The
dance brought him within a few feet of them at that very moment and the
slow walking steps he was taking held him—they were some of the queer
stealthy almost stationary steps of the Argentine Tango. He was finely
and smoothly fitted as the other youngsters were, his blond glossed
head was set high on a heroic column of neck, he was broad of shoulder,
but not too broad, slim of waist, but not too slim, long and strong of
leg, but light and supple and firm. He had a fair open brow and a
curved mouth laughing to show white teeth. Robin felt he ought to wear
a kilt and plaid and that an eagle’s feather ought to be standing up
from a chieftain’s bonnet on the fair hair which would have waved if it
had been allowed length enough. He was scarcely two yards from her now
and suddenly—almost as if he had been called—he turned his eyes away
from Sara Studleigh who was the little thing in Christmas tree scarlet.
They were blue like the clear water in a tarn when the sun shines on it
and they were still laughing as his mouth was. Straight into hers they
laughed—straight into hers.