The Head of the House of Coombe Part 9

The elderly woman who had been a nurse in her youth and who had been sent by Lord Coombe temporarily to replace Louisa had not remained long in charge of Robin. She was not young and smart enough for a house on the right side of the right street, and Feather found a young person who looked exactly as she should when she pushed the child's carriage before her around the square.

The square--out of which the right street branches--and the "Gardens"

in the middle of the square to which only privileged persons were admitted by private key, the bas.e.m.e.nt kitchen and Servants' Hall, and the two top floor nurseries represented the world to the child Robin for some years. When she was old enough to walk in the street she was led by the hand over the ground she had travelled daily in her baby carriage. Her first memory of things was a memory of standing on the gravel path in the Square Gardens and watching some sparrows quarrel while Andrews, her nurse, sat on a bench with another nurse and talked in low tones. They were talking in a way Robin always connected with servants and which she naturally accepted as being the method of expression of their species--much as she accepted the mewing of cats and the barking of dogs. As she grew older, she reached the stage of knowing that they were generally saying things they did not wish her to hear.

She liked watching the sparrows in the Gardens because she liked watching sparrows at all times. They were the only friends she had ever known, though she was not old enough to call them friends, or to know what friends meant. Andrews had taught her, by means of a system of her own, to know better than to cry or to make any protesting noise when she was left alone in her ugly small nursery.

Andrews' idea of her duties did not involve boring herself to death by sitting in a room on the top floor when livelier entertainment awaited her in the bas.e.m.e.nt where the cook was a woman of wide experience, the housemaid a young person who had lived in gay country houses, and the footman at once a young man of spirit and humour. So Robin spent many hours of the day--taking them altogether--quite by herself. She might have more potently resented her isolations if she had ever known any other condition than that of a child in whom no one was in the least interested and in whom "being good" could only mean being pa.s.sive under neglect and calling no one's attention to the fact that she wanted anything from anybody. As a bird born in captivity lives in its cage and perhaps believes it to be the world, Robin lived in her nursery and knew every square inch of it with a deadly if unconscious sense of distaste and fatigue. She was put to bed and taken up, she was fed and dressed in it, and once a day--twice perhaps if Andrews chose--she was taken out of it downstairs and into the street. That was all. And that was why she liked the sparrows so much.

And sparrows are worth watching if you live in a nursery where nothing ever happens and where, when you look out, you are so high up that it is not easy to see the people in the world below, in addition to which it seems nearly always raining. Robin used to watch them hopping about on the slate roofs of the homes on the other side of the street. They fluttered their wings, they picked up straws and carried them away. She thought they must have houses of their own among the chimneys--in places she could not see. She fancied it would be nice to hop about on the top of a roof oneself if one were not at all afraid of falling. She liked the chippering and chirping sounds the birds made became it sounded like talking and laughing--like the talking and laughing she sometimes wakened out of her sleep to lie and listen to when the Lady Downstairs had a party. She often wondered what the people were doing because it sounded as if they liked doing it very much.

Sometimes when it had rained two or three days she had a feeling which made her begin to cry to herself--but not aloud. She had once had a little black and blue mark on her arm for a week where Andrews had pinched her because she had cried loud enough to be heard. It had seemed to her that Andrews twisted and pinched the bit of flesh for five minutes without letting it go and she had held her large hand over her mouth as she did it.

"Now you keep that in your mind," she had said when she had finished and Robin had almost choked in her awful little struggle to keep back all sound.

The one thing Andrews was surest of was that n.o.body would come upstairs to the Nursery to inquire the meaning of any cries which were not unearthly enough to disturb the household. So it was easy to regulate the existence of her charge in such a manner as best suited herself.

"Just give her food enough and keep her from making silly noises when she wants what she doesn't get," said Andrews to her companions below stairs. "That one in the drawing-room isn't going to interfere with the Nursery. Not her! I know my business and I know how to manage her kind. I go to her politely now and then and ask her permission to buy things from Best's or Liberty's or some other good place. She always stares a minute when I begin, as if she scarcely understood what I was talking about and then she says 'Oh, yes, I suppose she must have them.' And I go and get them. I keep her as well dressed as any child in Mayfair. And she's been a beauty since she was a year old so she looks first rate when I wheel her up and down the street, so the people can see she's well taken care of and not kept hidden away. No one can complain of her looks and n.o.body is bothered with her. That's all that's wanted of ME. I get good wages and I get them regular. I don't turn up my nose at a place like this, whatever the outside talk is. Who cares in these days anyway? Fas.h.i.+onable people's broader minded than they used to be. In Queen Victoria's young days they tell me servants were no cla.s.s that didn't live in families where they kept the commandments."

"Fat lot the commandments give any one trouble in these times,"

said Jennings, the footman, who was a wit. "There's one of 'em I could mention that's been broken till there's no bits of it left to keep. If I smashed that plate until it was powder it'd have to be swept into the dust din. That's what happened to one or two commandments in particular."

"Well," remarked Mrs. Blayne, the cook, "she don't interfere and he pays the bills prompt. That'll do ME instead of commandments.

If you'll believe me, my mother told me that in them Queen Victoria days ladies used to inquire about cold meat and ask what was done with the dripping. Civilisation's gone beyond that--commandments or no commandments."

"He's precious particular about bills being paid," volunteered Jennings, with the air of a man of the world. "I heard him having a row with her one day about some bills she hadn't paid. She'd spent the money for some nonsense and he was pretty stiff in that queer way of his. Quite right he was too. I'd have been the same myself," pulling up his collar and stretching his neck in a manner indicating exact knowledge of the natural sentiments of a Marquis when justly annoyed. "What he intimated was that if them bills was not paid with the money that was meant to pay them, the money wouldn't be forthcoming the next time." Jennings was rather pleased by the word "forthcoming" and therefore he repeated it with emphasis, "It wouldn't be FORTHCOMING."

"That'd frighten her," was Andrews' succinct observation.

"It did!" said Jennings. "She'd have gone in hysterics if he hadn't kept her down. He's got a way with him, Coombe has."

Andrews laughed, a brief, dry laugh.

"Do you know what the child calls her?" she said. "She calls her the Lady Downstairs. She's got a sort of fancy for her and tries to get peeps at her when we go out. I notice she always cranes her little neck if we pa.s.s a room she might chance to be in. It's her pretty clothes and her laughing that does it. Children's drawn by bright colours and noise that sounds merry."

"It's my belief the child doesn't know she IS her mother!" said Mrs. Blayne as she opened an oven door to look at some rolls.

"It's my belief that if I told her she was she wouldn't know what the word meant. It was me she got the name from," Andrews still laughed as she explained. "I used to tell her about the Lady Downstairs would hear if she made a noise, or I'd say I'd let her have a peep at the Lady Downstairs if she was very good. I saw she had a kind of awe of her though she liked her so much, so it was a good way of managing her. You mayn't believe me but for a good bit I didn't take in that she didn't know there was such things as mothers and, when I did take it in, I saw there wasn't any use in trying to explain. She wouldn't have understood."

"How would you go about to explain a mother, anyway?" suggested Jennings. "I'd have to say that she was the person that had the right to slap your head if you didn't do what she told you."

"I'd have to say that she was the woman that could keep you slaving at kitchen maid's work fifteen hours a day," said Mrs. Blayne; "My mother was cook in a big house and trained me under her."

"I never had one," said Andrews stiffly. The truth was that she had taken care of eight infant brothers and sisters, while her maternal parent slept raucously under the influence of beer when she was not quarrelling with her offspring.

Jane, the housemaid, had pa.s.sed a not uncomfortable childhood in the country and was perhaps of a soft nature.

"I'd say that a mother's the one that you belong to and that's fond of you, even if she does keep you straight," she put in.

"Her mother isn't fond of her and doesn't keep herself straight,"

said Jennings. "So that wouldn't do."

"And she doesn't slap her head or teach her to do kitchen maid's work," put in Mrs. Blayne, "so yours is no use, Mr. Jennings, and neither is mine. Miss Andrews 'll have to cook up an explanation of her own herself when she finds she has to."

"She can get it out of a Drury Lane melodrama," said Jennings, with great humour. "You'll have to sit down some night, Miss Andrews, and say, 'The time has come, me chee-ild, when I must tell you All'."

In this manner were Mrs. Gareth-Lawless and her maternal affections discussed below stairs. The interesting fact remained that to Robin the Lady Downstairs was merely a radiant and beautiful being who floated through certain rooms laughing or chattering like a bird, and always wearing pretty clothes, which were different each time one beheld her. Sometimes one might catch a glimpse of her through a door, or, if one pressed one's face against the window pane at the right moment, she might get into her bright little carnage in the street below and, after Jennings had shut its door, she might be seen to give a lovely flutter to her clothes as she settled back against the richly dark blue cus.h.i.+ons.

It is a somewhat portentous thing to realize that a newborn human creature can only know what it is taught. The teaching may be conscious or unconscious, intelligent or idiotic, exquisite or brutal. The images presented by those surrounding it, as its perceptions awaken day by day, are those which record themselves on its soul, its brain, its physical being which is its sole means of expressing, during physical life, all it has learned. That which automatically becomes the Law at the dawning of newborn consciousness remains, to its understanding, the Law of Being, the Law of the Universe. To the cautious of responsibility this at times wears the aspect of an awesome thing, suggesting, however remotely, that it might seem well, perhaps, to remove the shoes from one's feet, as it were, and tread with deliberate and delicate considering of one's steps, as do the reverently courteous even on the approaching of an unknown altar.

This being acknowledged a scientific, as well as a spiritual truth, there remains no mystery in the fact that Robin at six years old--when she watched the sparrows in the Square Gardens--did not know the name of the feeling which had grown within her as a result of her pleasure in the chance glimpses of the Lady Downstairs. It was a feeling which made her eager to see her or anything which belonged to her; it made her strain her child ears to catch the sound of her voice; it made her long to hear Andrews or the other servants speak of her, and yet much too shy to dare to ask any questions. She had found a place on the staircase leading to the Nursery, where, by squeezing against the bal.u.s.trade, she could sometimes see the Lady pa.s.s in and out of her pink bedroom. She used to sit on a step and peer between the railing with beating heart. Sometimes, after she had been put to bed for the night and Andrews was safely entertained downstairs, Robin would be awakened from her first sleep by sounds in the room below and would creep out of bed and down to her special step and, crouching in a hectic joy, would see the Lady come out with sparkling things in her hair and round her lovely, very bare white neck and arms, all swathed in tints and draperies which made her seem a vision of colour and light. She was so radiant a thing that often the child drew in her breath with a sound like a little sob of ecstasy, and her lip trembled as if she were going to cry. But she did not know that what she felt was the yearning of a thing called love--a quite simple and natural common thing of which she had no reason for having any personal knowledge. As she was unaware of mothers, so she was unaware of affection, of which Andrews would have felt it to be superfluously sentimental to talk to her.

On the very rare occasions when the Lady Downstairs appeared on the threshold of the Day Nursery, Robin--always having been freshly dressed in one of her nicest frocks--stood and stared with immense startled eyes and answered in a whisper the ba.n.a.l little questions put to her. The Lady appeared at such rare intervals and remained poised upon the threshold like a tropic plumaged bird for moments so brief, that there never was time to do more than lose breath and gaze as at a sudden vision. Why she came--when she did come--Robin did not understand. She evidently did not belong to the small, dingy nurseries which grew shabbier every year as they grew steadily more grimy under the persistent London soot and fogs.

Feather always held up her draperies when she came. She would not have come at all but for the fact that she had once or twice been asked if the child was growing pretty, and it would have seemed absurd to admit that she never saw her at all.

"I think she's rather pretty," she said downstairs. "She's round and she has a bright colour--almost too bright, and her eyes are round too. She's either rather stupid or she's shy--and one's as bad as the other. She's a child that stares."

If, when Andrews had taken her into the Gardens, she had played with other children, Robin would no doubt have learned something of the existence and normal att.i.tude of mothers through the mere accident of childish chatter, but it somehow happened that she never formed relations with the charges of other nurses. She took it for granted for some time that this was because Andrews had laid down some mysterious law. Andrews did not seem to form acquaintances herself. Sometimes she sat on a bench and talked a little to another nurse, but she seldom sat twice with the same person. It was indeed generally her custom to sit alone, crocheting or sewing, with a rather lofty and exclusive air and to call Robin back to her side if she saw her slowly edging towards some other child.

"My rule is to keep myself to myself," she said in the kitchen.

"And to look as if I was the one that would turn up noses, if noses was to be turned up. There's those that would s.n.a.t.c.h away their children if I let Robin begin to make up to them. Some wouldn't, of course, but I'm not going to run risks. I'm going to save my own pride."

But one morning when Robin was watching her sparrows, a nurse, who was an old acquaintance, surprised Andrews by appearing in the Gardens with two little girls in her charge. They were children of nine and eleven and quite sufficient for themselves, apart from the fact that they regarded Robin as a baby and, therefore, took no notice of her. They began playing with skipping ropes, which left their nurse free to engage in delighted conversation with Andrews.

It was conversation so delightful that Robin was forgotten, even to the extent of being allowed to follow her sparrows round a clump of shrubbery and, therefore, out of Andrews' sight, though she was only a few yards away. The sparrows this morning were quarrelsome and suddenly engaged in a fight, pecking each other furiously, beating their wings and uttering shrill, protesting chipperings. Robin did not quite understand what they were doing and stood watching them with spellbound interest.

It was while she watched them that she heard footsteps on the gravel walk which stopped near her and made her look up to see who was at her side. A big boy in Highland kilts and bonnet and sporan was standing by her, and she found herself staring into a pair of handsome deep blue eyes, blue like the waters of a hillside tarn.

They were wide, glowing, friendly eyes and none like them had ever looked into hers before. He seemed to her to be a very big boy indeed, and in fact, he was unusually tall and broad for his age, but he was only eight years old and a simple enough child pagan.

Robin's heart began to beat as it did when she watched the Lady Downstairs, but there was something different in the beating. It was something which made her red mouth spread and curve itself into a smile which showed all her small teeth.

So they stood and stared at each other and for some strange, strange reason--created, perhaps, with the creating of Man and still hidden among the deep secrets of the Universe--they were drawn to each other--wanted each other--knew each other. Their advances were, of course, of the most primitive--as primitive and as much a matter of instinct as the nosing and sniffing of young animals. He spread and curved his red mouth and showed the healthy whiteness of his own handsome teeth as she had shown her smaller ones. Then he began to run and prance round in a circle, capering like a Shetland pony to exhibit at once his friendliness and his prowess. He tossed his curled head and laughed to make her laugh also, and she not only laughed but clapped her hands. He was more beautiful than anything she had ever seen before in her life, and he was plainly trying to please her. No child creature had ever done anything like it before, because no child creature had ever been allowed by Andrews to make friends with her. He, on his part, was only doing what any other little boy animal would have done--expressing his child masculinity by "showing off" before a little female. But to this little female it had never happened before.

It was all beautifully elemental. As does not too often happen, two souls as well as two bodies were drawn towards each other by the Magnet of Being. When he had exhibited himself for a minute or two he came back to her, breathing fast and glowing.

"My pony in Scotland does that. His name is Chieftain. He is a Shetland pony and he is only that high," he measured forty inches from the ground. "I'm called Donal. What are you called?"

"Robin," she answered, her lips and voice trembling with joy. He was so beautiful. His hair was bright and curly. His broad forehead was clear white where he had pushed back his bonnet with the eagle feather standing upright on it. His strong legs and knees were white between his tartan kilt and his rolled back stockings. The clasps which held his feather and the plaid over his shoulder were set with fine stones in rich silver. She did not know that he was perfectly equipped as a little Highland chieftain, the head of his clan, should be.

They began to play together, and the unknown Fates, which do their work as they choose, so wrought on this occasion as to cause Andrews' friend to set forth upon a journey through a story so exciting in its nature that its hearer was held spellbound and oblivious to her surroundings themselves. Once, it is true, she rose as in a dream and walked round the group of shrubs, but the Fates had arranged for that moment also. Robin was alone and was busily playing with some leaves she had plucked and laid on the seat of a bench for some mysterious reason. She looked good for an hour's safe occupation, and Andrews returned to her friend's detailed and intimate version of a great country house scandal, of which the papers were full because it had ended in the divorce court.

Donal had, at that special moment, gone to pick some of the biggest leaves from the lilac bush of which the Gardens contained numerous sooty specimens. The leaves Robin was playing with were some he had plucked first to show her a wonderful thing. If you laid a leaf flat on the seat of the bench and were fortunate enough to possess a large pin you could p.r.i.c.k beautiful patterns on the leaf's greenness--dots and circles, and borders and tiny triangles of a most decorative order. Neither Donal nor Robin had a pin but Donal had, in his rolled down stocking, a little dirk the point of which could apparently be used for any interesting purpose. It was really he who did the decoration, but Robin leaned against the bench and looked on enthralled. She had never been happy before in the entire course of her brief existence. She had not known or expected and conditions other than those she was familiar with--the conditions of being fed and clothed, kept clean and exercised, but totally unloved and unentertained. She did not even know that this nearness to another human creature, the exchange of companionable looks, which were like flashes of sunlight, the mutual outbreaks of child laughter and pleasure were happiness. To her, what she felt, the glow and delight of it, had no name but she wanted it to go on and on, never to be put an end to by Andrews or anyone else.

The boy Donal was not so unconscious. He had been happy all his life. What he felt was that he had liked this little girl the minute he saw her. She was pretty, though he thought her immensely younger than himself, and, when she had looked up at him with her round, asking eyes, he had wanted to talk to her and make friends.

He had not played much with boys and he had no haughty objection to girls who liked him. This one did, he saw at once.

Through what means children so quickly convey to each other--while seeming scarcely to do more than play--the entire history of their lives and surroundings, is a sort of occult secret. It is not a matter of prolonged conversation. Perhaps images created by the briefest of unadorned statements produce on the unwritten tablets of the child mind immediate and complete impressions. Safe as the locked garden was, Andrews cannot have forgotten her charge for any very great length of time and yet before Donal, hearing his attendant's voice from her corner, left Robin to join her and be taken home, the two children knew each other intimately. Robin knew that Donal's home was in Scotland--where there are hills and moors with stags on them. He lived there with "Mother" and he had been brought to London for a visit. The person he called "Mother"

was a woman who took care of him and he spoke of her quite often.

Robin did not think she was like Andrews, though she did not in the least know why. On his part Donal knew about the nurseries and the sparrows who hopped about on the slates of the houses opposite. Robin did not describe the nurseries to him, but Donal knew that they were ugly and that there were no toys in them and nothing to do. Also, in some mystic fas.h.i.+on, he realized that Andrews would not let Robin play with him if she saw them together, and that, therefore, they must make the most of their time. Full of their joy in each other, they actually embarked upon an ingenious infant intrigue, which involved their trying to meet behind the shrubs if they were brought to the Gardens the next day. Donal was sure he could come because his nurse always did what he asked of her. He was so big now that she was not a real nurse, but she had been his nurse when he was quite little and "Mother" liked her to travel with them. He had a tutor but he had stayed behind in Scotland at Braemarnie, which was their house. Donal would come tomorrow and he would look for Robin and when she saw him she must get away from Andrews and they would play together again.