The Head of the House of Coombe Part 40

"MON DIEU!" breathed Mademoiselle in soft horror.

"He knows I am pretty. He is an old man but he knows. Fraulein Hirsch once made me feel actually sick by telling me, in her meek, sly, careful way, that he liked beautiful girls and the people said he wanted a young wife and had his eye on me. I was rude to her because it made me so furious. HOW did he know that woman so well? You see how bad I have been made!"

"He knows nearly all Europe. He has seen the dark corners as well as the bright places. Perhaps he has saved other girls from her.

He brought her to punishment, and was able to do it because he has been on her track for some time. You are not bad--but unjust.

You have had too great a shock to be able to reason sanely just yet."

"I think he will always make me creep a little," said Robin, "but I will say anything you think I ought to say."

On an occasion when Feather had gone again to make a visit in the country, Mademoiselle came into the sitting room with the round window in which plants grew, and Coombe followed her. Robin looked up from her book with a little start and then stood up.

"I have told Lord Coombe that you wish--that I wish you to thank him," Mademoiselle Valle said.

"I came on my own part to tell you that any expression of grat.i.tude is entirely unnecessary," said Coombe.

"I MUST be grateful. I AM grateful." Robin's colour slowly faded as she said it. This was the first time she had seen him since he had supported her down the staircase which mounted to a place of h.e.l.l.

"There is nothing to which I should object so much as being regarded as a benefactor," he answered definitely, but with entire lack of warmth. "The role does not suit me. Being an extremely bad man," he said it as one who speaks wholly without prejudice, "my experience is wide. I chance to know things. The woman who called herself Lady Etynge is of a cla.s.s which--which does not count me among its clients. I had put certain authorities on her track--which was how I discovered your whereabouts when Mademoiselle Valle told me that you had gone to take tea with her. Mere chance you see. Don't be grateful to me, I beg of you, but to Mademoiselle Valle."

"Why," faltered Robin, vaguely repelled as much as ever, "did it matter to you?"

"Because," he answered--Oh, the cold inhumanness of his gray eye!--"you happened to live in--this house."

"I thought that was perhaps the reason," she said--and she felt that he made her "creep" even a shade more.

"I beg your pardon," she added, suddenly remembering, "Please sit down."

"Thank you," as he sat. "I will because I have something more to say to you."

Robin and Mademoiselle seated themselves also and listened.

"There are many hideous aspects of existence which are not considered necessary portions of a girl's education," he began.

"They ought to be," put in Robin, and her voice was as hard as it was young.

It was a long and penetrating look he gave her.

"I am not an instructor of Youth. I have not been called upon to decide. I do not feel it my duty to go even now into detail."

"You need not," broke in the hard young voice. "I know everything in the world. I'm BLACK with knowing."

"Mademoiselle will discuss that point with you. What you have, unfortunately, been forced to learn is that it is not safe for a girl--even a girl without beauty--to act independently of older people, unless she has found out how to guard herself against--devils."

The words broke from him sharply, with a sudden incongruous hint of ferocity which was almost startling. "You have been frightened,"

he said next, "and you have discovered that there are devils, but you have not sufficient experience to guard yourself against them."

"I have been so frightened that I shall be a coward--a coward all my life. I shall be afraid of every face I see--the more to be trusted they look, the more I shall fear them. I hate every one in the world!"

Her quite wonderful eyes--so they struck Lord Coombe--flamed with a child's outraged anguish. A thunder shower of tears broke and rushed down her cheeks, and he rose and, walking quietly to the window full of flowers, stood with his back to her for a few moments. She neither cared nor knew whether it was because her hysteric emotion bored or annoyed him, or because he had the taste to realize that she would not wish to be looked at. Unhappy youth can feel no law but its own.

But all was over during the few moments, and he turned and walked back to his chair.

"You want very much to do some work which will insure your entire independence--to take some situation which will support you without aid from others? You are not yet prepared to go out and take the first place which offers. You have been--as you say--too hideously frightened, and you know there are dangers in wandering about unguided. Mademoiselle Valle," turning his head, "perhaps you will tell her what you know of the d.u.c.h.ess of Darte?"

Upon which, Mademoiselle Valle took hold of her hand and entered into a careful explanation.

"She is a great personage of whom there can be no doubt. She was a lady of the Court. She is of advanced years and an invalid and has a liking for those who are pretty and young. She desires a companion who is well educated and young and fresh of mind. The companion who had been with her for many years recently died. If you took her place you would live with her in her town house and go with her to the country after the season. Your salary would be liberal and no position could be more protected and dignified.

I have seen and talked to her grace myself, and she will allow me to take you to her, if you desire to go."

"Do not permit the fact that she has known me for many years to prejudice you against the proposal," said Coombe. "You might perhaps regard it rather as a sort of guarantee of my conduct in the matter. She knows the worst of me and still allows me to retain her acquaintance. She was brilliant and full of charm when she was a young woman, and she is even more so now because she is--of a rarity! If I were a girl and might earn my living in her service, I should feel that fortune had been good to me--good."

Robin's eyes turned from one of them to the other--from Coombe to Mademoiselle Valle, and from Mademoiselle to Coombe pathetically.

"You--you see--what has been done to me," she said. "A few weeks ago I should have KNOWN that G.o.d was providing for me--taking care of me. And now--I am still afraid. I feel as if she would see that--that I am not young and fresh any more but black with evil.

I am afraid of her--I am afraid of you," to Coombe, "and of myself."

Coombe rose, evidently to go away.

"But you are not afraid of Mademoiselle Valle," he put it to her.

"She will provide the necessary references for the d.u.c.h.ess. I will leave her to help you to decide."

Robin rose also. She wondered if she ought not to hold out her hand. Perhaps he saw her slight movement. He himself made none.

"I remember you objected to shaking hands as a child," he said, with an impersonal civil smile, and the easy punctiliousness of his bow made it impossible for her to go further.

CHAPTER XXV

Some days before this the d.u.c.h.ess of Darte had driven out in the morning to make some purchases and as she had sat in her large landau she had greatly missed Miss Brent who had always gone with her when she had made necessary visits to the shops. She was not fond of shopping and Miss Brent had privately found pleasure in it which had made her a cheerful companion. To the quiet elderly woman whose life previous to her service with this great lady had been spent in struggles with poverty, the mere incident of entering shops and finding eager salesmen springing forward to meet her with bows and amiable offers of ministration, was to the end of her days an almost thrilling thing. The d.u.c.h.ess bought splendidly though quietly. Knowing always what she wanted, she merely required that it be produced, and after silently examining it gave orders that it should be sent to her. There was a dignity in her decision which was impressive. She never gave trouble or hesitated. The staffs of employees in the large shops knew and reveled in her while they figuratively bent the knee. Miss Brent had been a happy satisfied woman while she had lived. She had died peacefully after a brief and, as it seemed at first, unalarming illness at one of her employer's country houses to which she had been amiably sent down for a holiday. Every kindness and attention had been bestowed upon her and only a few moments before she fell into her last sleep she had been talking pleasantly of her mistress.

"She is a very great lady, Miss Hallam," she had said to her nurse.

"She's the last of her kind I often think. Very great ladies seem to have gone out--if you know what I mean. They've gone out."

The d.u.c.h.ess had in fact said of Brent as she stood a few days later beside her coffin and looked down at her contentedly serene face, something not unlike what Brent had said of herself.

"You were a good friend, Brent, my dear," she murmured. "I shall always miss you. I am afraid there are no more like you left."

She was thinking of her all the morning as she drove slowly down to Bond Street and Piccadilly. As she got out of her carriage to go into a shop she was attracted by some photographs of beauties in a window and paused to glance at them. Many of them were beauties whom she knew, but among them were some of society's latest discoveries. The particular photographs which caught her eye were two which had evidently been purposely placed side by side for an interesting reason. The reason was that the two women, while obviously belonging to periods of some twenty years apart as the fashion of their dress proved, were in face and form so singularly alike that they bewilderingly suggested that they were the same person. Both were exquisitely nymphlike, fair and large eyed and both had the fine light hair which is capable of forming itself into a halo. The d.u.c.h.ess stood and looked at them for the moment spell-bound. She slightly caught her breath. She was borne back so swiftly and so far. Her errand in the next door shop was forgotten.

She went into the one which displayed the photographs.

"I wish to look at the two photographs which are so much alike,"