The Head of the House of Coombe Part 30

Robin sometimes read newspapers, though she liked books better.

Newspapers were not forbidden her. She been reading an enthralling book and had not seen a paper for some days. She at once searched for one and, finding it, sat down and found also the Thorpe Divorce Case. It was not difficult of discovery, as it filled the princ.i.p.al pages with dramatic evidence and amazing revelations.

Dowson saw her bending over the spread sheets, hot-eyed and intense in her concentration.

"What are you reading, my love?" she asked.

The little flaming face lifted itself. It was unhappy, obstinate, resenting. It wore no accustomed child look and Dowson felt rather startled.

"I'm reading the Thorpe Divorce Case, Dowie," she answered deliberately and distinctly.

Dowie came close to her.

"It's an ugly thing to read, my lamb," she faltered. "Don't you read it. Such things oughtn't to be allowed in newspapers. And you're a little girl, my own dear." Robin's elbow rested firmly on the table and her chin firmly in her hand. Her eyes were not like a bird's.

"I'm nearly thirteen," she said. "I'm growing up. n.o.body can stop themselves when they begin to grow up. It makes them begin to find out things. I want to ask you something, Dowie."

"Now, lovey--!" Dowie began with tremor. Both she and Mademoiselle had been watching the innocent "growing up" and fearing a time would come when the widening gaze would see too much. Had it come as soon as this?

Robin suddenly caught the kind woman's wrists in her hands and held them while she fixed her eyes on her. The childish pa.s.sion of dread and shyness in them broke Dowson's heart because it was so ignorant and young.

"I'm growing up. There's something--I MUST know something! I never knew how to ask about it before." It was so plain to Dowson that she did not know how to ask about it now. "Someone said that Lord Coombe might have been a co-respondent in the Thorpe case----"

"These wicked children!" gasped Dowie. "They're not children at all!"

"Everybody's horrid but you and Mademoiselle," cried Robin, brokenly.

She held the wrists harder and ended in a sort of outburst. "If my father were alive--could he bring a divorce suit----And would Lord Coombe----"

Dowson burst into open tears. And then, so did Robin. She dropped Dowson's wrists and threw her arms around her waist, clinging to it in piteous repentance.

"No, I won't!" she cried out. "I oughtn't to try to make you tell me. You can't. I'm wicked to you. Poor Dowie--darling Dowie! I want to KISS you, Dowie! Let me--let me!"

She sobbed childishly on the comfortable breast and Dowie hugged her close and murmured in a choked voice,

"My lamb! My pet lamb!"

CHAPTER XIX

Mademoiselle Valle and Dowson together realized that after this the growing up process was more rapid. It always seems incredibly rapid to lookers on, after thirteen. But these two watchers felt that, in Robin's case, it seemed unusually so. Robin had always been interested in her studies and clever at them, but, suddenly, she developed a new concentration and it was of an order which her governess felt denoted the secret holding of some object in view.

She devoted herself to her lessons with a quality of determination which was new. She had previously been absorbed, but not determined.

She made amazing strides and seemed to aspire to a thoroughness and perfection girls did not commonly aim at--especially at the frequently rather preoccupied hour of blossoming. Mademoiselle encountered in her an eagerness that she--who knew girls--would have felt it optimistic to expect in most cases. She wanted to work over hours; she would have read too much if she had not been watched and gently coerced.

She was not distracted by the society of young people of her own age.

She, indeed, showed a definite desire to avoid such companionship.

What she said to Mademoiselle Valle one afternoon during a long walk they took together, held its own revelation for the older woman.

They had come upon the two Erwyns walking with their attendant in Kensington Gardens, and, seeing them at some distance, Robin asked her companion to turn into another walk.

"I don't want to meet them," she said, hurriedly. "I don't think I like girls. Perhaps it's horrid of me--but I don't. I don't like those two." A few minutes later, after they had walked in an opposite direction, she said thoughtfully.

"Perhaps the kind of girls I should like to know would not like to know me."

From the earliest days of her knowledge of Lord Coombe, Mademoiselle Valle had seen that she had no cause to fear lack of comprehension on his part. With a perfection of method, they searched each other's intelligence. It had become understood that on such occasions as there was anything she wished to communicate or inquire concerning, Mr. Benby, in his private room, was at Mademoiselle's service, and there his lordship could also be met personally by appointment.

"There have been no explanations," Mademoiselle Valle said to Dowson. "He does not ask to know why I turn to him and I do not ask to know why he cares about this particular child. It is taken for granted that is his affair and not mine. I am paid well to take care of Robin, and he knows that all I say and do is part of my taking care of her."

After the visit of the Erwyn children, she had a brief interview with Coombe, in which she made for him a clear sketch. It was a sketch of unpleasant little minds, avid and curious on somewhat exotic subjects, little minds, awake to rather common claptrap and gossipy pinchbeck interests.

"Yes--unpleasant, luckless, little persons. I quite understand.

They never appeared before. They will not appear again. Thank you, Mademoiselle," he said.

The little girls did not appear again; neither did any others of their type, and the fact that Feather knew little of other types was a sufficient reason for Robin's growing up without companions of her own age.

"She's a lonely child, after all," Mademoiselle said.

"She always was," answered Dowie. "But she's fond of us, bless her heart, and it isn't loneliness like it was before we came."

"She is not unhappy. She is too blooming and full of life,"

Mademoiselle reflected. "We adore her and she has many interests.

It is only that she does not know the companionship most young people enjoy. Perhaps, as she has never known it, she does not miss it."

The truth was that if the absence of intercourse with youth produced its subtle effect on her, she was not aware of any lack, and a certain uncompanioned habit of mind, which gave her much time for dreams and thought, was accepted by her as a natural condition as simply as her babyhood had accepted the limitations of the Day and Night Nurseries.

She was not a self-conscious creature, but the time came when she became rather disturbed by the fact that people looked at her very often, as she walked in the streets. Sometimes they turned their heads to look after her; occasionally one person walking with another would say something quietly to his or her companion, and they even paused a moment to turn quite round and look. The first few times she noticed this she flushed prettily and said nothing to Mademoiselle Valle who was generally with her. But, after her attention had been attracted by the same thing on several different days, she said uneasily:

"Am I quite tidy, Mademoiselle?"

"Quite," Mademoiselle answered--just a shade uneasy herself.

"I began to think that perhaps something had come undone or my hat was crooked," she explained. "Those two women stared so. Then two men in a hansom leaned forward and one said something to the other, and they both laughed a little, Mademoiselle!" hurriedly, "Now, there are three young men!" quite indignantly. "Don't let them see you notice them--but I think it RUDE!"

They were carelessly joyous and not strictly well-bred youths, who were taking a holiday together, and their rudeness was quite unintentional and without guile. They merely stared and obviously muttered comments to each other as they pa.s.sed, each giving the hasty, unconscious touch to his young moustache, which is the automatic sign of pleasurable observation in the human male.

"If she had had companions of her own age she would have known all about it long ago," Mademoiselle was thinking.

Her intelligent view of such circ.u.mstances was that the simple fact they arose from could--with perfect taste--only be treated simply. It was a mere fact; therefore, why be prudish and affected about it.

"They did not intend any rudeness," she said, after they had gone by. "They are not much more than boys and not perfectly behaved.

People often stare when they see a very pretty girl. I am afraid I do it myself. You are very pretty," quite calmly, and as one speaking without prejudice.

Robin turned and looked at her, and the colour, which was like a Jacqueminot rose, flooded her face. She was at the flushing age.