Part 35 (1/2)

Dowie studied it with care.

”Yes,” she said. ”You could copy it and make as many more as you liked.

They need a good many.”

”I am glad of that,” said Robin. ”I should like to make a great many.”

The slim fingers slid over the page. ”I should like to make that one--and that--and that.” Her face, bent over the picture, wore its touching _young_ look thrilled with something new. ”They are so _pretty_--they are so pretty,” she murmured like a dove.

”They're the prettiest things in the world,” Dowie said. ”There never was anything prettier.”

”It must be wonderful to make them and to know all the time you are putting in the tiny st.i.tches, that they are for something little--and warm--and alive!”

”Those that have done it never forget it,” said Dowie. Robin lifted her face, but her hands still held the book with the touch which clung.

”I am beginning to realise what a strange life mine has been,” she said.

”Don't you think it has, Dowie? I haven't known things. I didn't know what mothers were. I never knew another child until I met Donal in the Gardens. No one had ever kissed me until he did. When I was older I didn't know anything about love and marrying--really. It seemed only something one read about in books until Donal came. You and Mademoiselle made me happy, but I was like a little nun.” She paused a moment and then said thoughtfully, ”Do you know, Dowie, I have never touched a baby?”

”I never thought of it before,” Dowie answered with a slightly caught breath, ”but I believe you never have.”

The girl leaned forward and her own light breath came a shade more quickly, and the faint colour on her cheek flickered into a sweeter warm tone.

”Are they very soft, Dowie?” she asked--and the asking was actually a wistful thing. ”When you hold them do they feel very light--and soft--and warm? When you kiss them isn't it something like kissing a little flower?”

”That's what it is,” said Dowie firmly as one who knows. ”A baby that's loved and taken care of is just nothing but fine soft lawns and white downiness with the scent of fresh violets under leaves in the rain.”

A vaguely dreamy smile touched Robin's face and she bent over the pictures again.

”I felt as if they must be like that though I had never held one,” she murmured. ”And Donal--told me.” She did not say when he had told her but Dowie knew. And unearthly as the thing was, regarded from her standpoint, she was not frightened, because she said mentally to herself, what was happening was downright healthy and no harm could come of it. She felt safe and her mind was at ease even when Robin shut the little book and placed it on the table again.

”I'll go to bed again,” she said. ”I shall sleep now.”

”To be sure you will,” Dowie said.

And they went out of the Tower room together, but before she followed her Dowie slipped aside and quietly opened the window.

CHAPTER XXIX

Coombe House had been transformed into one of the most practical nursing homes in London. The celebrated ballroom and picture gallery were filled with cots; a s.p.a.cious bedroom had become a perfectly equipped operating room; nurses and doctors moved everywhere with quiet swiftness. Things were said to be marvellously well done because Lord Coombe himself held reins which diplomatically guided and restrained amateurishness and emotional infelicities.

He spent most of his time, when he was in the house, in the room on the entrance floor where Mademoiselle had found him when she had come to him in her search for Robin.

He had faced ghastly hours there as the war news struck its hideous variant note from day to day. Every sound which rolled through the street had its meaning for him, and there were few which were not terrible. They all meant inhuman struggle, inhuman suffering, inhuman pa.s.sions, and wounds or death. He carried an unmoved face and a well-held head through the crowded thoroughfares. The men in the cots in his picture gallery and his ballroom were the better for the outward calm he brought when he sat and talked to them, but he often hid a mad fury in his breast or a heavy and sick fatigue.

Even in London a man saw and heard and was able, if he had an imagination, to visualise too much to remain quite normal. He had seen what was left of strong men brought back from the Front, men who could scarcely longer be counted as really living human beings; he had talked to men on leave who had a hideous hardness in their haggard eyes and who did not know that they gnawed at their lips sometimes as they told the things they had seen. He saw the people going into the churches and chapels. He sometimes went into such places himself and he always found there huddled forms kneeling in the pews, even when no service was being held. Sometimes they were men, sometimes women, and often they writhed and sobbed horribly. He did not know why he went in; his going seemed only part of some surging misery.

He heard weird stories again and again of occult happenings. He had been told all the details of Lady Maureen's case and of a number of other cases somewhat resembling it. He was of those who have advanced through experience to the point where entire disbelief in anything is not easy.