The Head of the House of Coombe Part 42

"The years pa.s.s, the agony of being young pa.s.ses. One slowly becomes another man," he resumed. "I am another man. I could not be called a creature of sentiment. I have given myself interests in existence--many of them. But the sealed tomb is under one's feet.

Not to allow oneself to acknowledge its existence consciously is one's affair. But--the devil of chance sometimes chooses to play tricks. Such a trick was played on me."

He glanced down at the two pictures at which she herself was looking with grave eyes. It was the photograph of Feather he took up and set a strange questioning gaze upon.

"When I saw this," he said, "this--exquisitely smiling at me under a green tree in a sunny garden--the tomb opened under my feet, and I stood on the brink of it--twenty-five again."

"You cannot possibly put it into words," the d.u.c.h.ess said. "You need not. I know." For he had become for the moment almost livid.

Even to her who so well knew him it was a singular thing to see him hastily set down the picture and touch his forehead with his handkerchief.

She knew he was about to tell her his reason for this unsealing of the tomb. When he sat down at her table he did so. He did not use many phrases, but in making clear his reasons he also made clear to her certain facts which most persons would have ironically disbelieved. But no shadow of a doubt pa.s.sed through her mind because she had through a long life dwelt interestedly on the many variations in human type. She was extraordinarily interested when he ended with the story of Robin.

"I do not know exactly why 'it matters to me'--I am quoting her mother," he explained, "but it happens that I am determined to stand between the child and what would otherwise be the inevitable.

It is not that she has the slightest resemblance to--to anyone--which might awaken memory. It is not that. She and her mother are of totally different types. And her detestation of me is unconquerable.

She believes me to be the worst of men. When I entered the room into which the woman had trapped her, she thought that I came as one of the creature's d.a.m.nable clients. You will acknowledge that my position presents difficulties in the way of explanation to a girl--to most adults in fact. Her childish frenzy of desire to support herself arises from her loathing of the position of accepting support from me. I sympathize with her entirely."

"Mademoiselle Valle is an intelligent woman," the d.u.c.h.ess said as though thinking the matter out. "Send her to me and we will talk the matter over. Then she can bring the child."

CHAPTER XXVI

As a result of this, her grace saw Mademoiselle Valle alone a few mornings later and talked to her long and quietly. Their comprehension of each other was complete. Before their interview was at an end the d.u.c.h.ess' interest in the adventure she was about to enter into had become profound.

"The sooner she is surrounded by a new atmosphere, the better,"

was one of the things the Frenchwoman had said. "The prospect of an arrangement so perfect and so secure fills me with the profoundest grat.i.tude. It is absolutely necessary that I return to my parents in Belgium. They are old and failing in health and need me greatly.

I have been sad and anxious for months because I felt that it would be wickedness to desert this poor child. I have been torn in two. Now I can be at peace--thank the good G.o.d."

"Bring her to me tomorrow if possible," the d.u.c.h.ess said when they parted. "I foresee that I may have something to overcome in the fact that I am Lord Coombe's old friend, but I hope to be able to overcome it."

"She is a baby--she is of great beauty--she has a pa.s.sionate little soul of which she knows nothing." Mademoiselle Valle said it with an anxious reflectiveness. "I have been afraid. If I were her mother----" her eyes sought those of the older woman.

"But she has no mother," her grace answered. Her own eyes were serious. She knew something of girls, of young things, of the rush and tumult of young life in them and of the outlet it demanded. A baby who was of great beauty and of a pa.s.sionate soul was no trivial undertaking for a rheumatic old d.u.c.h.ess, but--"Bring her to me,"

she said.

So was Robin brought to the tall Early Victorian mansion in the belatedly stately square. And the chief thought in her mind was that though mere good manners demanded under the circ.u.mstances that she should come to see the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Darte and be seen by her, if she found that she was like Lord Coombe, she would not be able to endure the prospect of a future spent in her service howsoever desirable such service might outwardly appear. This desirableness Mademoiselle Valle had made clear to her. She was to be the companion of a personage of great and mature charm and grace who desired not mere attendance, but something more, which something included the warmth and fresh brightness of happy youth and bloom. She would do for her employer the things a young relative might do. She would have a suite of rooms of her own and a freedom as to hours and actions which greater experience on her part would have taught was not the customary portion meted out to a paid companion. But she knew nothing of paid service and a preliminary talk of Coombe's with Mademoiselle Valle had warned her against allowing any suspicion that this "earning a living"

had been too obviously ameliorated.

"Her life is unusual. She herself is unusual in a most dignified and beautiful way. You will, it might almost be said, hold the position of a young lady in waiting," was Mademoiselle's gracefully put explanation.

When, after they had been ushered into the room where her grace sat in her beautiful and mellow corner by the fire, Robin advanced towards the highbacked chair, what the old woman was chiefly conscious of was the eyes which seemed all l.u.s.trous iris. There was uncommon appeal and fear in them. The blackness of their setting of up-curled lashes made them look babyishly wide.

"Mademoiselle Valle has told me of your wish to take a position as companion," the d.u.c.h.ess said after they were seated.

"I want very much," said Robin, "to support myself and Mademoiselle thinks that I might fill such a place if I am not considered too young."

"You are not too young--for me. I want something young to come and befriend me. Am I too old for YOU?" Her smile had been celebrated fifty years earlier and it had not changed. A smile does not. She was not like Lord Coombe in any degree however remote. She did not belong to his world, Robin thought.

"If I can do well enough the things you require done," she answered blushing her Jacqueminot rose blush, "I shall be grateful if you will let me try to do them. Mademoiselle will tell you that I have no experience, but that I am one who tries well."

"Mademoiselle has answered all my questions concerning your qualifications so satisfactorily that I need ask you very few."

Such questions as she asked were not of the order Robin had expected. She led her into talk and drew Mademoiselle Valle into the conversation. It was talk which included personal views of books, old gardens and old houses, people, pictures and even--lightly--politics.

Robin found herself quite incidentally, as it were, reading aloud to her an Italian poem. She ceased to be afraid and was at ease.

She forgot Lord Coombe. The d.u.c.h.ess listening and watching her warmed to her task of delicate investigation and saw reason for antic.i.p.ating agreeably stimulating things. She was not taking upon herself a merely benevolent duty which might a.s.sume weight and become a fatigue. In fact she might trust Coombe for that. After all it was he who had virtually educated the child--little as she was aware of the singular fact. It was he who had dragged her forth from her dog kennel of a top floor nursery and quaintly incongruous as it seemed, had found her a respectable woman for a nurse and an intelligent person for a governess and companion as if he had been a domesticated middle cla.s.s widower with a little girl to play mother to. She saw in the situation more than others would have seen in it, but she saw also the ironic humour of it.

Coombe--with the renowned cut of his overcoat--the perfection of his line and scarcely to be divined suggestions of hue--Coombe!

She did not avoid all mention of his name during the interview, but she spoke of him only casually, and though the salary she offered was an excellent one, it was not inordinate. Robin could not feel that she was not being accepted as of the cla.s.s of young persons who support themselves self-respectingly, though even the most modest earned income would have represented wealth to her ignorance.

Before they parted she had obtained the position so pleasantly described by Mademoiselle Valle as being something like that of a young lady in waiting. "But I am really a companion and I will do everything--everything I can so that I shall be worth keeping,"

she thought seriously. She felt that she should want to be kept.

If Lord Coombe was a friend of her employer's it was because the d.u.c.h.ess did not know what others knew. And her house was not his house--and the hideous thing she had secretly loathed would be at an end. She would be supporting herself as decently and honestly as Mademoiselle or Dowie had supported themselves all their lives.

With an air of incidentally recalling a fact, the d.u.c.h.ess said after they had risen to leave her:

"Mademoiselle Valle tells me you have an elderly nurse you are very fond of. She seems to belong to a cla.s.s of servants almost extinct."

"I love her," Robin faltered--because the sudden reminder brought back a pang to her. There was a look in her eyes which faltered also. "She loves me. I don't know how----" but there she stopped.

"Such women are very valuable to those who know the meaning of their type. I myself am always in search of it. My dear Miss Brent was of it, though of a different cla.s.s."

"But most people do not know," said Robin. "It seems old-fashioned to them--and it's beautiful! Dowie is an angel."

"I should like to secure your Dowie for my housekeeper and myself,"--one of the greatest powers of the celebrated smile was its power to convince. "A competent person is needed to take charge of the linen. If we can secure an angel we shall be fortunate."

A day or so later she said to Coombe in describing the visit.

"The child's face is wonderful. If you could but have seen her eyes when I said it. It is not the mere beauty of size and shape and colour which affect one. It is something else. She is a little flame of feeling."

The "something else" was in the sound of her voice as she answered.

"She will be in the same house with me! Sometimes perhaps I may see her and talk to her! Oh! how GRATEFUL I am!" She might even see and talk to her as often as she wished, it revealed itself and when she and Mademoiselle got into their hansom cab to drive away, she caught at the Frenchwoman's hand and clung to it, her eyelashes wet,

"It is as if there MUST be Goodness which takes care of one," she said. "I used to believe in it so--until I was afraid of all the world. Dowie means most of all. I did now know how I could bear to let her go away. And since her husband and her daughter died, she has no one but me. I should have had no one but her if you had gone back to Belgium, Mademoiselle. And now she will be safe in the same house with me. Perhaps the d.u.c.h.ess will keep her until she dies. I hope she will keep me until I die. I will be as good and faithful as Dowie and perhaps the d.u.c.h.ess will live until I am quite old--and not pretty any more. And I will make economies as you have made them, Mademoiselle, and save all my salary--and I might be able to end my days in a little cottage in the country."

Mademoiselle was conscious of an actual physical drag at her heartstrings. The pulsating glow of her young loveliness had never been more moving and oh! the sublime certainty of her unconsciousness that Life lay between this hour and that day when she was "quite old and not pretty any more" and having made economies could die in a little cottage in the country! She believed in her vision as she had believed that Donal would come to her in the garden.

Upon Feather the revelation that her daughter had elected to join the ranks of girls who were mysteriously determined to be responsible for themselves produced a curious combination of effects.

It was presented to her by Lord Coombe in the form of a simple impersonal statement which had its air of needing no explanation.

She heard it with eyes widening a little and a smile slowly growing.

Having heard, she broke into a laugh, a rather high-pitched treble laugh.