She hesitated a moment and then said, "I am quite away here as you wanted me to be. I see it was the only thing. I read nothing, hear nothing. London--the War--" her voice fell a little.

"They go on. Will you be kind to me and help me to forget them for a while?" He looked through the window at the sky and the moor. "They are not here--they never have been. The men who come back will do anything to make themselves forget for a little while. This place makes me feel that I am a man who has come back."

"I will do anything--everything--you wish me to do," she said eagerly.

"Dowie wondered if you would not want to be very quiet and not be reminded. I--wondered too."

"You were both right. I want to feel that I am in another world. This seems like a new planet."

"Would you--" she spoke rather shyly, "would you be able to stay a few days?"

"I can stay a week," he answered. "Thank you, Robin."

"I am so glad," she said. "I am so glad."

So they did not talk about the War or about London, though she inquired about the d.u.c.h.ess and Lady Lothwell and Kathryn.

"Would you like to go out and walk over the moor?" she asked after a short time. "It's so scented and sweet, and darling things scurry about.

I don't think they are really frightened, because I try to walk softly.

Sometimes there are nests with eggs or soft little things in them."

They went out together and walked side by side, sometimes on the winding road and sometimes through the heather. He found himself watching every step she made and keeping his eye on the path ahead of them to make sure she would avoid roughness or irregularities. In some inner part of his being there remotely worked the thought that this was the way in which he might have walked side by side with Alixe, watching over each step taken by her sacred little feet.

The day was a wonder of peace and relaxation to him. Farther and farther, until lost in nothingness, receded the roar and the tensely strung sense of waiting for news of unbearable things. As they went on he realised that he need not even watch the path before her because she knew it so well and her step was as light and firm as a young roe's. Her very movements seemed to express the natural physical enjoyment of exercise.

He knew nothing of her mind but that Mademoiselle had told him that she was intelligent. They had never talked together and so her mentality was an unexplored field to him. She did not chatter. She said fresh picturesque things about life on the moor, about the faithful silent Macaurs, about Dowie, and now and then about something she had read. She showed him beauties and small curious things she plainly loved. It struck him that the whole trend of her being lay in the direction of being fond of people and things--of loving and being happy,--and even merry if life had been kind to her. Her soft laugh had a naturally merry note. He heard it first when she held him quite still at her side as they watched the frisking of some baby rabbits.

There was a curious relief in realising, as the hours pa.s.sed, that her old dislike and dread of him had melted into nothingness like a mist blown away in the night. She was thinking of him as if he were some mature and wise friend who had always been kind to her. He need not rigidly watch his words and hers. She was not afraid of him at all; there was no shrinking in her eyes when they met his. If Alixe had had a daughter who was his own, she might have lifted such lovely eyes to him.

They lunched together and Dowie served them with deft ability and an expression which Coombe was able to comprehend the at once watchful and directing meaning of. It directed him to observation of Robin's appet.i.te and watched for his encouraged realisation of it as a supporting fact.

He went to his own rooms in the afternoon that she might be alone and rest. He read an old book for an hour and then talked with the Macaurs about the place and their work and their new charge. He wanted to hear what they were thinking of her.

"It's wonderful, my lord!" was Mrs. Macaur's repeated contribution. "She came here a wee ghost. She frighted me. I couldna see how she could go through what's before her. I lay awake in my bed expectin' Mrs. Dowie to ca' me any hour. An' betwixt one night and anither the change cam. She's a well bairn--for woman she isna, puir wee thing! It's a wonder--a wonder--a wonder, my lord!"

When he saw Dowie alone he asked her a question.

"Does she know that you have told me of the dream?"

"No, my lord. The dream's a thing we don't talk about. She's only mentioned it three times. It's in my mind that she feels it's too sacred to be made common by words."

He had wondered if Robin had been aware of his knowledge. After Dowie's answer he wondered if she would speak to him about the dream herself.

Perhaps she would not. It might be that she had asked him to come to Darreuch because her thought of him had so changed that she had realised something of his grave anxiety for her health and a gentle consideration had made her wish to give him the opportunity to see her face to face. Perhaps she had intended only this.

"I want to see her," he had said to himself. The relief of the mere seeing had been curiously great. He had the relief of sinking, as it were, into the deep waters of pure peace on this new planet. In this realisation every look at the child's face, every movement she made, every tone of her voice, aided. Did she know that she soothed him? Did she intend to try to soothe? When they were together she gave him a feeling that she was strangely near and soft and warm. He had felt it on the moor. It was actually as if she wanted to be quieting to him--almost as if she had realised that he had been stretched upon a mental rack with maddening tumult all around him. It was part of her pretty thought of him in the matter of the waiting chair and he felt it very sweet.

But she had had other things in her mind when she had asked him to come.

This he knew later.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

After they had dined they sat together in the long Highland twilight before her window in the Tower room where he had found her sitting when he arrived. Her work basket was near her and she took a piece of sheer lawn from it and began to embroider. And he sat and watched her draw delicate threads through the tiny leaves and flowers she was making. So he might have watched Alixe if she had been some unroyal girl given to him in one of life's kinder hours. She seemed to draw near out of the land of lost shadows as he sat in the clear twilight stillness and looked on. As he might have watched Alixe.

The silence, the paling daffodil tints of the sky, the non-existence of any other things than calm and stillness seemed to fill his whole being as a cup might be filled by pure water falling slowly. She said nothing and did not even seem to be waiting for anything. It was he who first broke the rather long silence and his voice was quite low.

"Do you know you are very good to me?" he said. "How did you learn to be so kind to a man--with your quietness?"

He saw the hand holding her work tremble a very little. She let it fall upon her knee, still holding the embroidery. She leaned forward slightly and in her look there was actually something rather like a sort of timid prayer.

"Please let me," she said. "Please let me--if you can!"

"Let you!" was all that he could say.

"Let me try to help you to rest--to feel quiet and forget for just a little while. It's such a small thing. And it's all I can ever _try_ to do."

"You do it very perfectly," he answered, touched and wondering.

"You have been kind to me ever since I was a child--and I did not know,"

she said. "Now I know, because I understand. Oh! _will_ you forgive me?

_Please_--will you?"

"Don't, my dear," he said. "You were a baby. _I_ understood. That prevented there being anything to forgive--anything."

"I ought to have loved you as I loved Mademoiselle and Dowie." Her eyes filled with tears. "And I think I hated you. It began with Donal," in a soft wail. "I heard Andrews say that his mother wouldn't let him know me because you were my mother's friend. And then as I grew older--"

"Even if I had known what you thought I could not have defended myself,"

he answered, faintly smiling. "You must not let yourself think of it. It is nothing now."

The hand holding the embroidery lifted itself to touch her breast. There was even a shade of awe of him in her eyes.

"It is something to me--and to Donal. You have never defended yourself.

You endure things and endure them. You watched for years over an ignorant child who loathed you. It was not that a child's hatred is of importance--but if I had died and never asked you to forgive me, how could I have looked into Donal's eyes? I want to go down on my knees to you!"

He rose from his chair, and took in his own the unsteady hand holding the embroidery. He even bent and lightly touched it with his lips, with his finished air.

"You will not die," he said. "And you will not go upon your knees. Thank you for being a warm hearted child, Robin."

But still her eyes held the touch of awe of him.

"But what I have spoken of is the least." Her voice almost broke. "In the Wood--in the dark you said there was something that must be saved from suffering. I could not think then--I could scarcely care. But you cared, and you made me come awake. To save a poor little child who was not born, you have done something which will make people believe you were vicious and hideous--even when all this is over forever and ever.

And there will be no one to defend you. Oh! What shall I do!"

"There are myriads of worlds," was his answer. "And this is only one of them. And I am only one man among the myriads on it. Let us be very quiet again and watch the coming out of the stars."