"d.a.m.ned well. A debauched old degenerate marrying the daughter of his mistress because her eighteen years attracts his vicious decrepitude. My absolute indifference to that, may I say, can not easily be formulated.

_She_ shall be spared as much as possible. The thing can be kept secret for years. She can live in entire seclusion. No one need be told until I am dead--or until it is necessary for the boy's sake. By that time perhaps changes in opinion will have taken place. But now--as is the cry of the hour--there is no time. She said that Donal said it too." He stood still for a few moments and looked at the floor. "But as I said,"

he terminated, "it will be the devil's own job. When I first speak to her about it--she will almost be driven mad."

CHAPTER XIX

Robin had spent the night at the cottage and Mrs. Bennett had been very good to her. They had sat by the fire together for a long time and had talked of the dead boys on the battlefield, while Robin's head had rested against the old fairy woman's knee and the shrivelled hand had stroked and patted her tremulously. It had been nearing dawn when the girl went to bed and at the last Mrs. Bennett had held on to her dress and asked her a pleading question.

"Isn't there anything you'd like me to do for you--anything on earth, Miss, dear? Sometimes there's things an old woman can do that young ones can't. If there was anything you'd like to tell me about--that I could keep private--? It'd be as safe with me as if I was a dumb woman. And it might just happen that--me being so old--I might be a help some way."

She was giving her her chance, as in the course of her long life she had given it to other poor girls she loved less. One had to make ways and open gates for them.

But Robin only kissed her as lovingly as a child.

"I don't know what is going to happen to me," she said. "I can't think yet. I may want to ask you to let me come here--if--if I am frightened and don't know what to do. I know you would let me come and--talk to you--?"

The old fairy woman almost clutched her in enfolding arms. Her answer was a hoa.r.s.e and trembling whisper.

"You come to me, my poor pretty," she said. "You come to me day or night--_whatsoever_. I'm not so old but what I can do anything--you want done."

The railroad journey back to London seemed unnaturally long because her brain began to work when she found herself half blindly gazing at the country swiftly flying past the carriage window. Perhaps the anxiousness in Mrs. Bennett's face had wakened thought in connecting itself with Lord Coombe's words and looks in the wood.

When the door of the house in Eaton Square opened for her she was conscious of shrinking from the sympathetic eyes of the war-subst.i.tuted woman-servant who was the one who had found her lying on the landing.

She knew that her face was white and that her eyelids were stained and heavy and that the woman saw them and was sorry for her.

The mountain climb of the stairs seemed long and steep but she reached her room at last and took off her hat and coat and put on her house dress. She did it automatically as if she were going downstairs to her work, as though there had been no break in the order of her living.

But as she was fastening the little hooks and b.u.t.tons her stunned brain went on with the thought to which it had begun to awaken in the train.

Since the hour when she had fallen unconscious on the landing she had not seemed to think at all. She had only _felt_ things which had nothing to do with the real world.

There was a fire in the grate and when the last b.u.t.ton was fastened she sat down on a seat before it and looked into the redness of the coals, her hands loosely clasped on her knee. She sat there for several minutes and then she turned her head and looked slowly round the room. She did it because she was impelled by a sense of its emptiness--by the fact that she was quite alone in it. There was only herself--only Robin in it.

That was her first feeling--the aloneness--and then she thought of something else. She seemed to feel again the hand of Lord Coombe on her shoulder when he held her back in the darkened wood and she could hear his almost whispered words.

"In this Wood--even now--there is Something which must be saved from suffering. It is helpless--it is blameless. It is not you--it is not Donal--G.o.d help it."

Then she was not alone--even as she sat in the emptiness of the room.

She put up her hands and covered her face with them.

"What--will happen?" she murmured. But she did not cry.

The deadliness of the blow which had stupefied her still left her barely conscious of earthly significances. But something of the dark mistiness was beginning to lift slowly and reveal to her vague shadows and shapes, as it were. If no one would believe that she was married to Donal, then people would think that she had been the kind of girl who is sent away from decent houses, if she is a servant, and cut off in awful disgrace from her family and never spoken to again, if she belongs to the upper cla.s.ses. Books and Benevolent Societies speak of her as "fallen" and "lost." Her vision of such things was at once vague and primitive. It took the form of pathetic fictional figures or memories of some hushed rumour heard by mere chance, rather than of anything more realistic. She dropped her hands upon her lap and looked at the fire again.

"Now I shall be like that," she said listlessly. "And it does not matter. Donal knew. And I do not care--I do not care."

"The d.u.c.h.ess will send me away," she whispered next. "Perhaps she will send me away to-day. Where shall I go!" The hands on her lap began to tremble and she suddenly felt cold in spite of the fire. The sound of a knock on the door made her start to her feet. The woman who had looked sorry for her when she came in had brought a message.

"Her grace wishes to see you, Miss," she said.

"Thank you," Robin answered.

After the servant had gone away she stood still a moment or so.

"Perhaps she is going to tell me now," she said to the empty room.

Two aspects of her face rose before the d.u.c.h.ess as the girl entered the room where she waited for her with Lord Coombe. One was that which had met her glance when Mademoiselle Valle had brought her charge on her first visit. She recalled her impression of the childlikeness which seemed all the dark dew of appealing eyes, which were like a young doe's or a bird's rather than a girl's. The other was the star-like radiance of joy which had swept down the ballroom in Donal's arms with dancing whirls and swayings and pretty swoops. About them had laughed and swirled the boys now lying dead under the heavy earth of Flemish fields.

And Donal--!

This face looked small and almost thin and younger than ever. The eyes were like those of a doe who was lost and frightened--as if it heard quite near it the baying of hounds, but knew it could not get away.

She hesitated a moment at the door.

"Come here, my dear," the d.u.c.h.ess said.

Lord Coombe stood by a chair he had evidently placed for her, but she did not sit down when she reached it. She hesitated again and looked from one to the other.

"Did you send for me to tell me I must go away?" she said.

"What do you mean, child?" said the d.u.c.h.ess.

"Sit down," Lord Coombe said and spoke in an undertone rapidly. "She thinks you mean to turn her out of the house as if she were a kitchen-maid."

Robin sat down with her listless small hands clasped in her lap.

"Nothing matters at all," she said, "but I don't know what to do."

"There is a great deal to do," the d.u.c.h.ess said to her and she did not speak as if she were angry. Her expression was not an angry one. She looked as if she were wondering at something and the wondering was almost tender.

"We know what to do. But it must be done without delay," said Lord Coombe and his voice reminded her of Mersham Wood.

"Come nearer to me. Come quite close. I want--" the d.u.c.h.ess did not explain what she wanted but she pointed to a small square ottoman which would place Robin almost at her knee. Her own early training had been of the statelier Victorian type and it was not easy for her to deal freely with outward expression of emotion. And here emotion sprang at her throat, so to speak, as she watched this childish thing with the frightened doe's eyes. The girl had been an inmate of her house for months; she had been kind to her and had become fond of her, but they had never reached even the borders of intimacy.

And yet emotion had seized upon her and they were in the midst of strange and powerful drama.

Robin did as she was told. It struck the d.u.c.h.ess that she always did as she was told and she spoke to her hoping that her voice was not ungentle.

"Don't look at me as if you were afraid. We are going to take care of you," she said.

But the doe's eyes were still great with hopeless fearfulness.

"Lord Coombe said--that no one would believe me," Robin faltered. "He thought I was not married to Donal. But I was--I was. I _wanted_ to be married to him. I wanted to do everything he wanted me to do. We loved each other so much. And we were afraid every one would be angry. And so many were killed every day--and before he was killed--Oh!" with a sharp little cry, "I am glad--I am glad! Whatever happens to me I am _glad_ I was married to him before he was killed!"

"You poor children!" broke from the d.u.c.h.ess. "You poor--poor mad young things!" and she put an arm about Robin because the barrier built by lack of intimacy was wholly overthrown.