Part 7 (1/2)

”Was she in the dark?”

”I think so. Perhaps Louisa taught her to sleep without a light.

There was none when I took her some condensed milk this morning.

There was only c-con-d-densed milk to give her.”

She shed tears and choked as she described her journey into the lower regions and the c.o.c.kroaches scuttling away before her into their hiding-places.

”I MUST have a nurse! I MUST have one!” she almost sniffed. ”Someone must change her clothes and give her a bath!”

”You can't?” Coombe said.

”I!” dropping her handkerchief. ”How--how CAN I?”

”I don't know,” he answered and picked up the handkerchief with an aloof grace of manner.

It was really Robin who was for Feather the breaking-point.

He thought she was in danger of flinging herself upon him again.

She caught at his arm and her eyes of larkspur blue were actually wild.

”Don't you see where I am! How there is nothing and n.o.body--Don't you SEE?”

”Yes, I see,” he answered. ”You are quite right. There is nothing AND n.o.body. I have been to Lawdor myself.”

”You have been to TALK to him?”

”Yesterday. That was my reason for coming here. He will not see you or be written to. He says he knows better to begin that sort of thing. It may be that family feeling has not the vogue it once had, but you may recall that your husband infuriated him years ago. Also England is a less certain quant.i.ty than it once was--and the man has a family. He will allow you a hundred a year but there he draws the line.”

”A hundred a year!” Feather breathed. From her delicate shoulders hung floating scarf-like sleeves of black transparency and she lifted one of them and held it out like a night moth's wing--”This cost forty pounds,” she said, her voice quite faint and low. ”A good nurse would cost forty! A cook--and a footman and a maid--and a coachman--and the brougham--I don't know how much they would cost.

Oh-h!”

She drooped forward upon her sofa and laid face downward on a cus.h.i.+on--slim, exquisite in line, lost in despair.

The effect produced was that she gave herself into his hands. He felt as well as saw it and considered. She had no suggestion to offer, no reserve. There she was.

”It is an incredible sort of situation,” he said in an even, low-pitched tone rather as if he were thinking aloud, ”but it is baldly real. It is actually simple. In a street in Mayfair a woman and child might--” He hesitated a second and a wailed word came forth from the cus.h.i.+on.

”Starve!”

He moved slightly and continued.

”Since their bills have not been paid the trades-people will not send in food. Servants will not stay in a house where they are not fed and receive no wages. No landlord will allow a tenant to occupy his property unless he pays rent. It may sound inhuman--but it is only human.”

The cus.h.i.+on in which Feather's face was buried retained a faint scent of Robert's cigar smoke and the fragrance brought back to her things she had heard him say dispa.s.sionately about Lord Coombe as well as about other men. He had not been a puritanic or condemnatory person. She seemed to see herself groveling again on the floor of her bedroom and to feel the darkness and silence through which she had not dared to go to Robin.

Not another night like that! No! No!

”You must go to Jersey to your mother and father,” Coombe said.

”A hundred a year will help you there in your own home.”

Then she sat upright and there was something in her lovely little countenance he had never seen before. It was actually determination.