The Head of the House of Coombe Part 17

"The child's always been well, ma'am," Andrews was standing, the image of exact correctness, in her mistress' bedroom, while Feather lay in bed with her breakfast on a convenient and decorative little table. "It's been a thing I've prided myself on. But I should say she isn't well now."

"Well, I suppose it's only natural that she should begin sometime,"

remarked Feather. "They always do, of course. I remember we all had things when we were children. What does the doctor say? I hope it isn't the measles, or the beginning of anything worse?"

"No, ma'am, it isn't. It's nothing like a child's disease. I could have managed that. There's good private nursing homes for them in these days. Everything taken care of exactly as it should be and no trouble of disinfecting and isolating for the family. I know what you'd have wished to have done, ma'am."

"You do know your business, Andrews," was Feather's amiable comment.

"Thank you, ma'am," from Andrews. "Infectious things are easy managed if they're taken away quick. But the doctor said you must be spoken to because perhaps a change was needed."

"You could take her to Ramsgate or somewhere bracing." said Feather.

"But what did he SAY?"

"He seemed puzzled, ma'am. That's what struck me. When I told him about her not eating--and lying awake crying all night--to judge from her looks in the morning--and getting thin and pale--he examined her very careful and he looked queer and he said, 'This child hasn't had a SHOCK of any kind, has she? This looks like what we should call shock--if she were older'."

Feather laughed.

"How could a baby like that have a shock?"

"That's what I thought myself, ma'am," answered Andrews. "A child that's had her hours regular and is fed and bathed and sleeps by the clock, and goes out and plays by herself in the Gardens, well watched over, hasn't any chance to get shocks. I told him so and he sat still and watched her quite curious, and then he said very slow: 'Sometimes little children are a good deal shaken up by a fall when they are playing. Do you remember any chance fall when she cried a good deal?'"

"But you didn't, of course," said Feather.

"No, ma'am, I didn't. I keep my eye on her pretty strict and shouldn't encourage wild running or playing. I don't let her play with other children. And she's not one of those stumbling, falling children. I told him the only fall I ever knew of her having was a bit of a slip on a soft flower bed that had just been watered--to judge from the state her clothes were in. She had cried because she's not used to such things, and I think she was frightened. But there wasn't a scratch or a shadow of a bruise on her. Even that wouldn't have happened if I'd been with her. It was when I was ill and my sister Anne took my place. Ann thought at first that she'd been playing with a little boy she had made friends with--but she found out that the boy hadn't come that morning--"

"A boy!" Andrews was sharp enough to detect a new and interested note. "What boy?"

"She wouldn't have played with any other child if I'd been there"

said Andrews, "I was pretty sharp with Anne about it. But she said he was an aristocratic looking little fellow--"

"Was he in Highland costume?" Feather interrupted.

"Yes, ma'am. Anne excused herself by saying she thought you must know something about him. She declares she saw you come into the Gardens and speak to his Mother quite friendly. That was the day before Robin fell and ruined her rose-coloured smock and things.

But it wasn't through playing boisterous with the boy--because he didn't come that morning, as I said, and he never has since."

Andrews, on this, found cause for being momentarily puzzled by the change of expression in her mistress' face. Was it an odd little gleam of angry spite she saw?

"And never has since, has he?" Mrs. Gareth-Lawless said with a half laugh.

"Not once, ma'am," answered Andrews. "And Anne thinks it queer the child never seemed to look for him. As if she'd lost interest.

She just droops and drags about and doesn't try to play at all."

"How much did she play with him?"

"Well, he was such a fine little fellow and had such a respectable, elderly, Scotch looking woman in charge of him that Anne owned up that she hadn't thought there was any objections to them playing together. She says they were as well behaved and quiet as children could be." Andrews thought proper to further justify herself by repeating, "She didn't think there could be any objection."

"There couldn't," Mrs. Gareth-Lawless remarked. "I do know the boy. He is a relation of Lord Coombe's."

"Indeed, ma'am," with colourless civility, "Anne said he was a big handsome child."

Feather took a small bunch of hothouse grapes from her breakfast tray and, after picking one off, suddenly began to laugh.

"Good gracious, Andrews!" she said. "He was the 'shock'! How perfectly ridiculous! Robin had never played with a boy before and she fell in love with him. The little thing's actually pining away for him." She dropped the grapes and gave herself up to delicate mirth. "He was taken away and disappeared. Perhaps she fainted and fell into the wet flower bed and spoiled her frock, when she first realized that he wasn't coming."

"It did happen that morning," admitted Andrews, smiling a little also. "It does seem funny. But children take to each other in a queer way now and then. I've seen it upset them dreadful when they were parted."

"You must tell the doctor," laughed Feather. "Then he'll see there's nothing to be anxious about. She'll get over it in a week."

"It's five weeks since it happened, ma'am," remarked Andrews, with just a touch of seriousness.

"Five! Why, so it must be! I remember the day I spoke to Mrs.

Muir. If she's that sort of child you had better keep her away from boys. HOW ridiculous! How Lord Coombe--how people will laugh when I tell them!"

She had paused a second because--for that second--she was not quite sure that Coombe WOULD laugh. Frequently she was of the opinion that he did not laugh at things when he should have done so. But she had had a brief furious moment when she had realized that the boy had actually been whisked away. She remembered the clearness of the fine eyes which had looked directly into hers. The woman had been deciding then that she would have nothing to do with her--or even with her child.

But the story of Robin worn by a bereft nursery pa.s.sion for a little boy, whose mamma s.n.a.t.c.hed him away as a brand from the burning, was far too edifying not to be related to those who would find it delicious.

It was on the occasion, a night or so later, of a gathering at dinner of exactly the few elect ones, whose power to find it delicious was the most highly developed, that she related it. It was a very little dinner--only four people. One was the long thin young man, with the good looking narrow face and dark eyes peering through a pince nez--the one who had said that Mrs. Gareth-Lawless "got her wondrous clothes from Helene" but that he couldn't. His name was Harrowby. Another was the Starling who was a Miss March who had, some years earlier, led the van of the girls who prostrated their relatives by becoming what was then called "emanc.i.p.ated"; the sign thereof being the demanding of latchkeys and the setting up of bachelor apartments. The relatives had astonis.h.i.+ngly settled down, with the unmoved pa.s.sage of time, and more modern emanc.i.p.ation had so far left latchkeys and bachelor apartments behind it that they began to seem almost old-fogeyish. Clara March, however, had progressed with her day. The third diner was an adored young actor with a low, veiled voice which, combining itself with almond eyes and a sentimental and emotional curve of cheek and chin, made the most commonplace "lines" sound yearningly impa.s.sioned. He was not impa.s.sioned at all--merely fond of his pleasures and comforts in a way which would end by his becoming stout. At present his figure was perfect--exactly the thing for the uniforms of royal persons of Ruritania and places of that ilk--and the name by which programmes presented him was Gerald Vesey.

Feather's house pleased him and she herself liked being spoken to in the veiled voice and gazed at by the almond eyes, as though insuperable obstacles alone prevented soul-stirring things from being said. That she knew this was not true did not interfere with her liking it. Besides he adored and understood her clothes.

Over coffee in the drawing-room, Coombe joined them. He had not known of the little dinner and arrived just as Feather was on the point of beginning her story.

"You are just in time," she greeted him, "I was going to tell them something to make them laugh."

"Will it make me laugh?" he inquired.

"It ought to. Robin is in love. She is five years old and she has been deserted, and Andrews came to tell me that she can neither eat nor sleep. The doctor says she has had a shock."

Coombe did not join in the ripple of amused laughter but, as he took his cup of coffee, he looked interested.

Harrowby was interested too. His dark eyes quite gleamed.

"I suppose she is in bed by now," he said. "If it were not so late, I should beg you to have her brought down so that we might have a look at her. I'm by way of taking a psychological interest."

"I'm psychological myself," said the Starling. "But what do you mean, Feather? Are you in earnest?"

"Andrews is," Feather answered. "She could manage measles but she could not be responsible for shock. But she didn't find out about the love affair. I found that out--by mere chance. Do you remember the day we got out of the victoria and went into the Gardens, Starling?"

"The time you spoke to Mrs. Muir?"

Coombe turned slightly towards them.

Feather nodded, with a lightly significant air.