Part 15 (1/2)
”It was such a short time,” she said, shaking. ”And he is gone. And the fairy wood is there still--and the ferns!--All the nights--always!”
And what happened next was not a thing to be written about--though at the time the same thing was perhaps at that very hour happening in houses all over England.
CHAPTER XII
The effect of something like unreality produced in the mind of the mature and experienced by a girl creature, can only be equaled by the intensity of the sense of realness in the girl herself. That centre of the world in which each human being exists is in her case more poignantly a centre than any other. She pa.s.ses smiling or serious, a thing of untried eyes and fair unmarked smoothness of texture, and onlookers who have lived longer than she know that the unmarked untriedness is a sign that so far ”nothing” has happened in her life and in most cases believe that ”nothing” is happening. They are quite sure they know--long after the thing has ceased to be true. The surface of her is so soft and fair, and its lack of any suggestion of abysses or chasms seems to make them incredible things. But the centre of the world contains all things and when one is at the beginning of life and sees them for the first time they a.s.sume strange proportions. It enters a room, it talks lightly or sweetly, it whirls about in an airy dance, this pretty untested thing; and, among those for whom the belief in the reality of strange proportions has modified itself through long experience, only those of the thinking habit realise that at any moment the testing--the marking with deep scores may begin or has perhaps begun already. At eighteen or twenty a fluctuation of flower-petal tint which may mean an imperfect night can signify no really important cause. What could eighteen or twenty have found to think about in night watches? But in its centre of the world as it stands on the stage with the curtain rolling up, those who have lived longer--so very long--are only the dim audience sitting in the shadowy auditorium looking on at pa.s.sionately real life with which they have really nothing whatever to do, because what they have seen is past and what they have learned has lost its importance and meaning with the changing of the years. The lying awake and tossing on pillows--if lying awake there is--has its cause in _real_ joys--or griefs--not in things atrophied by time. So it seems on the stage, in the first act. If the curtain goes down on anguish and despair it seems equally the pitiless truth that it can never rise again; the play is ended; the lights go out forever; the theatre crumbles to dust; the world comes to an end. But the dim audience sitting in the shadow do not generally know this.
To those who came in and out of the house in Eaton Square the figure sitting at the desk writing letters or taking orders from the d.u.c.h.ess was that of the unconsidered and unreal girl. Among the changing groups of women with intensely absorbed and often strained faces the kind-hearted observing ones were given to noticing Robin and speaking to her almost affectionately because she was so attractive an object as well as so industriously faithful to her work. Girls who were Jacqueminot-rose flushed and who looked up to answer people with eyes like an antelope's were not customarily capable of concentrating their attention entirely upon brief letters of request and lists of necessaries for hospitals and comfort kits. This type was admitted to be frequently found readier for service in the preparation of entertainments ”for the benefit of”--more especially when such benefits took the form of dancing. But the d.u.c.h.ess' little Miss Lawless came and went on errands, wasting no time. She never forgot things or was slack in any way. Her antelope eyes expressed a kind of yearning eagerness to do all she could without a moment's delay.
”She works as if it were a personal thing with her,” Lady Lothwell once said thoughtfully. ”I have seen girls wear that look when they are war brides or have lovers or brothers at the front.”
But she remained to the world generally only a rather specially lovely specimen of the somewhat unreal young being with whom great agonies and terrors had but little to do.
On a day when the d.u.c.h.ess had a cold and was obliged to remain in her room Robin was with her, writing and making notes of instruction at her bedside. In the afternoon a cold and watery sun making its way through the window threw a chill light on her as she drew near with some papers in her hand. It was the revealing of this light which made the d.u.c.h.ess look at her curiously.
”You are not quite as blooming as you were, my child,” she said. ”About two months ago you were particularly blooming. Lady Lothwell and Lord Coombe and several other people noticed it. You have not been taking your walks as regularly as you did. Let me look at you.” She took her hand and drew her nearer. ”No. This will not do.”
Robin stood very still.
”How could _any_ one be blooming!” broke from her.
”You are thinking about things in the night again,” said the d.u.c.h.ess.
”Yes,” said Robin. ”Every night. Sometimes all night.”
The d.u.c.h.ess watched her anxiously.
”It's so--lonely!” There was a hint of hysteric breakdown in the exclamation. ”How can I--_bear_ it!” She turned and went back to her writing table and there she sat down and hid her face, trembling in an extraordinary way.
”You are as unhappy as that?” said the d.u.c.h.ess. ”And you are _lonely_?”
”All the world is lonely,” Robin cried--not weeping, only shaking.
”Everything is left to itself to suffer. G.o.d has gone away.”
The d.u.c.h.ess trembled a little herself. She too had hideously felt something like the same thing at times of late. But this soft shaking thing--! There shot into her mind like a bolt a sudden thought. Was this something less inevitable--something more personal? She wondered what would be best to say.
”Even older people lose their nerve sometimes,” she decided on at last.
”When you said that work was the greatest help you were right. Work--and as much sleep as one can get, and walking and fresh air. And we must help each other--old and young. I want you to help _me_, child. I need you.”
Robin stood up and steadied herself somehow. She took up a letter in a hand not yet quite still.
”Please need me,” she said. ”Please let me do everything--anything--and never stop. If I never stop in the day time perhaps I shall sleep better at night.”
As there came surging in day by day bitter and cruel waves of war news--stories of slaughter by land and sea, of ma.s.sacre in simple places, of savagery wrought on wounded men and prisoners in a hydrophobia of hate let loose, it was ill lying awake in the dark remembering loved beings surrounded by the worst of all the world has ever known. Robin was afraid to look at the newspapers which her very duties themselves obliged her to familiarise herself with, and she could not close her ears. With battles.h.i.+p raids on harmless coast towns, planned merely to the end of the wanton killing of such unconsidered trifles of humanity as little children and women and men at their every-day work, the circle of horror seemed to draw itself in closely.
Zeppelin raids leaving fragments of bodies on pavements and broken things under fallen walls, were not so near as the women who dragged themselves back to their work with death in their faces written large--the death of husband or son or lover. These brought realities close indeed.