“A small dinner and a small dance—and George and Kathryn may be the beginning of an interesting experiment. It would be pretty and kind of you to drop in during the course of the evening.”
“Are you hoping to—perhaps—make a marriage for her?” Lady Lothwell asked the question a shade disturbedly. “You are so amazing, mamma darling, that I know you will do it, if you believe in it. You seem to be able to cause the things you really want, to evolve from the universe.”
“She is the kind of girl whose place in the universe is in the home of some young man whose own place in the universe is in the heart and soul and life of her kind of girl. They ought to carry out the will of God by falling passionately in love with each other. They ought to marry each other and have a large number of children as beautiful and rapturously happy as themselves. They would assist in the evolution of the race.”
“Oh! Mamma! how delightful you always are! For a really brilliant woman you are the most adorable dreamer in the world.”
“Dreams are the only things which are true. The rest are nothing but visions.”
“Angel!” her daughter laughed a little adoringly as she kissed her. “I will do whatever you want me to do. I always did, didn’t I? It’s your way of making one see what you see when you are talking that does it.”
It was understood before they parted that Kathryn and George would be present at the small dinner and the small dance, and that a few other agreeable young persons might be trusted to join them, and that Lady Lothwell and perhaps her husband would drop in.
“It’s your being almost Early Victorian, mamma, which makes it easy for you to initiate things. You will initiate little Miss Lawless. It was rather neat of her to prefer to drop the ‘Gareth.’ There has been less talk in late years of the different classes ‘keeping their places’—‘upper’ and ‘lower’ classes really strikes one as vulgar.”
“We may ‘keep our places’,” the Duchess said. “We may hold on to them as firmly as we please. It is the places themselves which are moving, my dear. It is not unlike the beginning of a landslide.”
Robin went to Dowie’s room the next evening and stood a moment in silence watching her sewing before she spoke. She looked anxious and even pale.
“Her grace is going to give a party to some young people, Dowie,” she said. “She wishes me to be present. I—I don’t know what to do.”
“What you must do, my dear, is to put on your best evening frock and go downstairs and enjoy yourself as the other young people will. Her grace wants you to see someone your own age,” was Dowie’s answer.
“But I am not like the others. I am only a girl earning her living as a companion. How do I know—”
“Her grace knows,” Dowie said. “And what she asks you to do it is your duty to do—and do it prettily.”
Robin lost even a shade more colour.
“Do you realize that I have never been to a party in my life—not even to a children’s party, Dowie? I shall not know how to behave myself.”
“You know how to talk nicely to people, and you know how to sit down and rise from your chair and move about a room like a quiet young lady. You dance like a fairy. You won’t be asked to do anything more.”
“The Duchess,” reflected Robin aloud slowly, “would not let me come downstairs if she did not know that people would—be kind.”
“Lady Kathryn and Lord Halwyn are coming. They are her own grandchildren,” Dowie said.
“How did you know that?” Robin inquired.
Robin’s colour began to come back.
“It’s not what usually happens to girls in situations,” she said.
“Her grace herself isn’t what usually happens,” said Dowie. “There is no one like her for high wisdom and kindness.”
Having herself awakened to the truth of this confidence-inspiring fact, Robin felt herself supported by it. One knew what far-sighted perception and clarity of experienced vision this one woman had gained during her many years of life. If she had elected to do this thing she had seen her path clear before her and was not offering a gift which awkward chance might spoil or snatch away from the hand held out to receive it. A curious slow warmth began to creep about Robin’s heart and in its mounting gradually fill her being. It was true she had been taught to dance, to move about and speak prettily. She had been taught a great many things which seemed to be very carefully instilled into her mind and body without any special reason. She had not been aware that Lord Coombe and Mademoiselle Valle had directed and discussed her training as if it had been that of a young royal person whose equipment must be a flawless thing. If the Dowager Duchess of Darte had wished to present her at Court some fair morning she would have known the length of the train she must wear, where she must make her curtseys and to whom and to what depth, how to kiss the royal hand, and how to manage her train when she retired from the presence. When she had been taught this she had asked Mademoiselle Valle if the training was part of every girl’s education and Mademoiselle had answered,
“It is best to know everything—even ceremonials which may or may not prove of use. It all forms part of a background and prevents one from feeling unfamiliar with customs.”
When she had passed the young pairs in the streets she had found an added interest in them because of this background. She could imagine them dancing together in fairy ball rooms whose lights and colours her imagination was obliged to construct for her out of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she should have pondered and pondered and sometimes unconsciously longed to feel herself part of the flood of being sweeping past her as she stood apart on the brink of the river.
The warmth about her heart made it beat a little faster. She opened the door of her wardrobe when she found herself in her bedroom. The dress hung modestly in its corner shrouded from the penetration of London fogs by clean sheeting. It was only white and as simple as she knew how to order it, but Mademoiselle had taken her to a young French person who knew exactly what she was doing in all cases, and because the girl had the supple lines of a wood nymph and the eyes of young antelope she had evolved that which expressed her as a petal expresses its rose. Robin locked her door and took the dress down and found the silk stockings and slippers which belonged to it. She put them all on standing before her long mirror and having left no ungiven last touch she fell a few steps backward and looked at herself, turning and balancing herself as a bird might have done. She turned lightly round and round.
“Yes. I am—” she said. “I am—very!”
The next instant she laughed at herself outright.
“How silly! How silly!” she said. “Almost everybody is—more or less! I wonder if I remember the new steps.” For she had been taught the new steps—the new walking and swayings and pauses and sudden swirls and swoops. And her new dress was as short as other fashionable girls’ dresses were, but in her case revealed a haunting delicacy of contour and line.
So before her mirror she danced alone and as she danced her lips parted and her breast rose and fell charmingly, and her eyes lighted and glowed as any girl’s might have done or as a joyous girl nymph’s might have lighted as she danced by a pool in her forest seeing her loveliness mirrored there.
Something was awakening as something had awakened when Donal had kissed a child under the soot sprinkled London trees.
Chapter 31
The whole day before the party was secretly exciting to Robin. She knew how much more important it seemed to her than it really was. If she had been six years old she might have felt the same kind of uncertain thrills and tremulous wonders. She hid herself behind the window curtains in her room that she might see the men putting up the crimson and white awning from the door to the carriage step. The roll of red carpet they took from their van had a magic air. The ringing of the d
oor bell which meant that things were being delivered, the extra moving about of servants, the florists’ men who went into the drawing-rooms and brought flowers and big tropical plants to re-arrange the conservatory and fill corners which were not always decorated—each and every one of them quickened the beating of her pulses. If she had belonged in her past to the ordinary cheerful world of children, she would have felt by this time no such elation. But she had only known of the existence of such festivities as children’s parties because once a juvenile ball had been given in a house opposite her mother’s and she had crouched in an almost delirious little heap by the nursery window watching carriages drive up and deposit fluffy pink and white and blue children upon the strip of red carpet, and had seen them led or running into the house. She had caught sounds of strains of music and had shivered with rapture—but Oh! What worlds away from her the party had been.
She found her way into the drawing-rooms which were not usually thrown open. They were lofty and stately and seemed to her immense. There were splendid crystal-dropping chandeliers and side lights which she thought looked as if they would hold a thousand wax candles. There was a delightfully embowered corner for the musicians. It was all spacious and wonderful in its beautiful completeness—its preparedness for pleasure. She realized that all of it had always been waiting to be used for the happiness of people who knew each other and were young and ready for delight. When the young Lothwells had been children they had had dances and frolicking games with other children in the huge rooms and had kicked up their young heels on the polished floors at Christmas parties and on birthdays. How wonderful it must have been. But they had not known it was wonderful.
As Dowie dressed her the reflection she saw in the mirror gave back to her an intensified Robin whose curved lips almost quivered as they smiled. The soft silk of her hair looked like the night and the small rings on the back of her very slim white neck were things to ensnare the eye and hold it helpless.
“You look your best, my dear,” Dowie said as she clasped her little necklace. “And it is a good best.” Dowie was feeling tremulous herself though she could not have explained why. She thought that perhaps it was because she wished that Mademoiselle could have been with her.
Robin kissed her when the last touch had been given.
“I’m going to run down the staircase,” she said. “If I let myself walk slowly I shall have time to feel queer and shy and I might seem to creep into the drawing-room. I mustn’t creep in. I must walk in as if I had been to parties all my life.”
She ran down and as she did so she looked like a white bird flying, but she was obliged to stop upon the landing before the drawing-room door to quiet a moment of excited breathing. Still when she entered the room she moved as she should and held her head poised with a delicately fearless air. The Duchess—who herself looked her best in her fine old ivory profiled way—gave her a pleased smile of welcome which was almost affectionate.
“What a perfect little frock!” she said. “You are delightfully pretty in it.”
“Is it quite right?” said Robin. “Mademoiselle chose it for me.”
“It is quite right. ‘ Frightfully right,’ George would say. George will sit near you at dinner. He is my grandson—Lord Halwyn you know, and you will no doubt frequently hear him say things are ‘frightfully’ something or other during the evening. Kathryn will say things are ‘deevy’ or ‘exquig’. I mention it because you may not know that she means ‘exquisite’ and ‘divine.’ Don’t let it frighten you if you don’t quite understand their language. They are dear handsome things sweeping along in the rush of their bit of century. I don’t let it frighten me that their world seems to me an entirely new planet.”
Robin drew a little nearer her. She felt something as she had felt years ago when she had said to Dowie. “I want to kiss you, Dowie.” Her eyes were pools of childish tenderness because she so well understood the infinitude of the friendly tact which drew her within its own circle with the light humour of its “I don’t let them frighten me.”
“You are kind—kind to me,” she said. “And I am grateful—grateful.”
The extremely good-looking young people who began very soon to drift into the brilliant big room—singly or in pairs of brother and sister—filled her with innocent delight. They were so well built and gaily at ease with each other and their surroundings, so perfectly dressed and finished. The filmy narrowness of delicate frocks, the shortness of skirts accentuated the youth and girlhood and added to it a sort of child fairy-likeness. Kathryn in exquisite wisps of silver-embroidered gauze looked fourteen instead of nearly twenty—aided by a dimple in her cheek and a small tilted nose. A girl in scarlet tulle was like a child out of a nursery ready to dance about a Christmas tree. Everyone seemed so young and so suggested supple dancing, perhaps because dancing was going on everywhere and all the world whether fashionable or unfashionable was driven by a passion for whirling, swooping and inventing new postures and fantastic steps. The young men had slim straight bodies and light movements. Their clothes fitted their suppleness to perfection. Robin thought they all looked as if they had had a great deal of delightful exercise and plenty of pleasure all their lives.
They were of that stream which had always seemed to be rushing past her in bright pursuit of alluring things which belonged to them as part of their existence, but which had had nothing to do with her own youth. Now the stream had paused as if she had for the moment some connection with it. The swift light she was used to seeing illuminate glancing eyes as she passed people in the street, she saw again and again as new arrivals appeared. Kathryn was quite excited by her eyes and eyelashes and George hovered about. There was a great deal of hovering. At the dinner table sleek young heads held themselves at an angle which allowed of their owners seeing through or around, or under floral decorations and alert young eyes showed an eager gleam. After dinner was over and dancing began the Duchess smiled shrewdly as she saw the gravitating masculine movement towards a certain point. It was the point where Robin stood with a small growing circle about her.
It was George who danced with her first. He was tall and slender and flexible and his good shoulders had a military squareness of build. He had also a nice square face, and a warmly blue eye and knew all the latest steps and curves and unexpected swirls. Robin was an ozier wand and there was no swoop or dart or sudden sway and change she was not alert at. The swing and lure of the music, the swift movement, the fluttering of airy draperies as slim sister nymphs flew past her, set her pulses beating with sweet young joy. A brief, uncontrollable ripple of laughter broke from her before she had circled the room twice.
“How heavenly it is!” she exclaimed and lifted her eyes to Halwyn’s. “How heavenly!”
They were not safe eyes to lift in such a way to those of a very young man. They gave George a sudden enjoyable shock. He had heard of the girl who was a sort of sublimated companion to his grandmother. The Duchess herself had talked to him a little about her and he had come to the party intending to behave very amiably and help the little thing enjoy herself. He had also encountered before in houses where there were no daughters the smart well-born, young companion who was allowed all sorts of privileges because she knew how to assume tiresome little responsibilities and how to be entertaining enough to add cheer and spice to the life of the elderly and lonely. Sometimes she was a subtly appealing sort of girl and given to being sympathetic and to liking sympathy and quiet corners in conservatories or libraries, and sometimes she was capable of scientific flirtation and required scientific management. A man had to have his wits about him. This one as she flew like a blown leaf across the floor and laughed up into his face with wide eyes, produced a new effect and was a new kind.
“It’s you who are heavenly,” he answered with a boy’s laugh. “You are like a feather—and a willow wand.”
“You are light too,” she laughed back, “and you are like steel as well.”
Mrs. Alan Stacy, the lady with the magnifice
nt henna hair, had recently given less time to him, being engaged in the preliminary instruction of a new member of the Infant Class. Such things will, of course, happen and though George had quite ingenuously raged in secret, the circumstances left him free to “hover” and hovering was a pastime he enjoyed.
“Let us go on like this forever and ever,” he said sweeping half the length of the room with her and whirling her as if she were indeed a leaf in the wind, “Forever and ever.”
“I wish we could. But the music will stop,” she gave back.
“Music ought never to stop—never,” he answered.
But the music did stop and when it began again almost immediately another tall, flexible young man made a lightning claim on her and carried her away only to hand her to another and he in his turn to another. She was not allowed more than a moment’s rest and borne on the crest of the wave of young delight, she did not need more. Young eyes were always laughing into hers and elating her by a special look of pleasure in everything she did or said or inspired in themselves. How was she informed without phrases that for this exciting evening she was a creature without a flaw, that the loveliness of her eyes startled those who looked into them, that it was a thrilling experience to dance with her, that somehow she was new and apart and wonderful? No sleek-haired, slim and straight-backed youth said exactly any of these things to her, but somehow they were conveyed and filled her with a wondering realization of the fact that if they were true, they were no longer dreadful and maddening, since they only made people like and want to dance with one. To dance, to like people and be liked seemed so heavenly natural and right—to be only like air and sky and free, happy breathing. There was, it was true, a blissful little uplifted look about her which she herself was not aware of, but which was singularly stimulating to the masculine beholder. It only meant indeed that as she whirled and swayed and swooped laughing she was saying to herself at intervals,