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which would help her; indeed she was so aghast that she did not remember that there were such things as lies.

ā€œDo you mean,ā€ she cried out, ā€œthat you are all going to LEAVE the houseā€”that there wonā€™t be any servants to wait on meā€”that thereā€™s nothing to eat or drinkā€”that I shall have to stay here ALONEā€”and starve!ā€

ā€œWe should have to starve if we stayed,ā€ answered Cook simply. ā€œAnd of course there are a few things left in the pantry and closets. And you might get in a woman by the day. You wonā€™t starve, maā€™am. Youā€™ve got your family in Jersey. We waited because we thought Mr. and Mrs. Darrel would be sure to come.ā€

ā€œMy father is ill. I think heā€™s dying. My mother could not leave him for a moment. Perhaps heā€™s dead now,ā€ Feather wailed.

ā€œYouā€™ve got your London friends, maā€™amā€”ā€

Feather literally beat her hands together.

ā€œMy friends! Can I go to peopleā€™s houses and knock at their front door and tell them I havenā€™t any servants or anything to eat! Can I do that? Can I?ā€ And she said it as if she were going crazy.

The woman had said what she had come to say as spokeswoman for the rest. It had not been pleasant but she knew she had been quite within her rights and dealt with plain facts. But she did not enjoy the prospect of seeing her little fool of a mistress raving in hysterics.

ā€œYou mustnā€™t let yourself go, maā€™am,ā€ she said. ā€œYouā€™d better lie down a bit and try to get quiet.ā€ She hesitated a moment looking at the pretty ruin who had risen from her seat and stood trembling.

ā€œItā€™s not my place of course toā€”make suggestions,ā€ she said quietly. ā€œButā€”had you ever thought of sending for Lord Coombe, maā€™am?ā€

Feather actually found the torn film of her mind caught for a second by something which wore a form of reality. Cook saw that her tremor appeared to verge on steadying itself.

ā€œCoombe,ā€ she faintly breathed as if to herself and not to Cook.

ā€œCoombe.ā€

ā€œHis lordship was very friendly with Mr. Lawless and he seemed fond ofā€”coming to the house,ā€ was presented as a sort of added argument. ā€œIf youā€™ll lie down Iā€™ll bring you a cup of tea, maā€™amā€”though it canā€™t be beef.ā€

Feather staggered again to her bed and dropped flat upon itā€”flat as a slim little pancake in folds of thin black stuff which hung and floated.

ā€œI canā€™t bring you cream,ā€ said Cook as she went out of the room. ā€œLouisa has had nothing but condensed milkā€”since yesterdayā€”to give Miss Robin.ā€

ā€œOh-h!ā€ groaned Feather, not in horror of the tea without cream though that was awful enough in its significance, but because this was the first time since the falling to pieces of her world that she had given a thought to the added calamity of Robin.

CHAPTER IV

If one were to devote oneā€™s mental energies to speculation as to what is going on behind the noncommittal fronts of any row of houses in any great city the imaginative mind might be led far.

Bricks, mortar, windows, doors, steps which lead up to the threshold, are what are to be seen from the outside. Nothing particular may be transpiring within the walls, or tragedies, crimes, hideous suffering may be enclosed. The conclusion is obvious to banalityā€”but as suggestive as banalā€”so suggestive in fact that the hyper-sensitive and too imaginative had better, for their own comfortā€™s sake, leave the matter alone. In most cases the existing conditions would not be altered even if one knocked at the door and insisted on entering with drawn sword in the form of attendant policeman The outside of the slice of a house in which Feather lived was still rather fresh from its last decorative touching up. It had been painted cream colour and had white and windows and green window boxes with variegated vinca vines trailing from them and pink geraniums, dark blue lobelia and ferns filling the earth stuffed in by the florist who provided such adornments. Passers-by frequently glanced at it and thought it a nice little house whose amusing diminutiveness was a sort of attraction. It was rather like a new dollā€™s house.

No one glancing at it in passing at the closing of this particular day had reason to suspect that any unaccustomed event was taking place behind the cream-coloured front. The front door ā€œbrassesā€ had been polished, the window-boxes watered and no cries for aid issued from the rooms behind them. The house was indeed quiet both inside and out. Inside it was indeed even quieter than usual. The servantsā€™ preparation for departure had been made gradually and undisturbedly. There had been exhaustive quiet discussion of the subject each night for weeks, even before Robert Gareth-Lawlessā€™ illness. The smart young footman Edward who had means of gaining practical information had constituted himself a sort of private detective. He had in time learned all that was to be learned. This, it had made itself clear to him on investigation, was not one of those cases when to wait for evolutionary family events might be the part of discretion. There were no prospects aheadā€”none at all. Matters would only get worse and the whole thing would end in everybody not only losing their unpaid back wages but having to walk out into the street through the door of a disgraced household whose owners would be turned out into the street also when their belongings were sold over their heads. Better get out before everything went to pieces and there were unpleasantnesses. There would be unpleasantnesses because there was no denying that the trades-people had been played tricks with. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless was only one of a lot of pretty daughters whose father was a poor country doctor in Jersey. He had had ā€œa strokeā€ himself and his widow would have nothing to live on when he died. That was what Mrs. Lawless had to look to. As to Lord Lawdor Edward had learned from those who DID know that he had never approved of his nephew and that heā€™d said he was a fool for marrying and had absolutely refused to have anything to do with him. He had six boys and a girl now and big estates werenā€™t what they had been, everyone knew. There was only one thing left for Cook and Edward and Emma and Louisa to do and that was to ā€œget outā€ without any talk or argument.

ā€œSheā€™s not one that wonā€™t find someone to look after her,ā€ ended Edward. ā€œSomebody or other will take her up because theyā€™ll be sorry for her. But us lot arenā€™t widows and orphans. No oneā€™s going to be sorry for us or care a hang what weā€™ve been let in for. The longer we stay, the longer we wonā€™t be paid.ā€ He was not a particularly depraved or cynical young footman but he laughed a little at the end of his speech. ā€œThereā€™s the Marquis,ā€ he added. ā€œHeā€™s been running in and out long enough to make a good bit of talk. Nowā€™s his time to turn up.ā€

After she had taken her cup of tea without cream Feather had fallen asleep in reaction from her excited agitation. It was in accord with the inevitable trend of her being that even before her eyes closed she had ceased to believe that the servants were really going to leave the house. It seemed too ridiculous a thing to happen. She was possessed of no logic which could lead her to a realization of the indubitable fact that there was no reason why servants who could neither be paid nor provided with food should remain in a place. The mild stimulation of the tea also gave rise to the happy thought that she would not give them any references if they ā€œbehaved badlyā€. It did not present itself to her that references from a house of cards which had ignominiously fallen to pieces and which henceforth would represent only shady failure, would be of no use. So she fell asleep.

 

*

 

When she awakened the lights were lighted in the streets and one directly across the way threw its reflection into her bedroom. It lit up the little table near which she had sat and the first thing she saw was the pile of small account books. The next was that the light which revealed them also fell brightly on the glass knob of the door which led into Robertā€™s room.

She turned her eyes away quickly with a nervous shudder. She had a horror of the nearness of Robā€™s room. If there had been another part of the house in which she could have slept she would have fled to it as soon as he was taken ill. But the house was too small to have ā€œpartsā€. The tiny drawing-rooms piled themselves on top of the dining-room, the ā€œmasterā€™s bedroomsā€ on top of the drawing-rooms, and the nurseries and attics where Robin and the servants slept one on the other at the top of the house. So she had been obliged to stay and endure everything. Robā€™s cramped quarters had always been full of smart boots and the smell of cigars and menā€™s clothes. He had moved about a good deal and had whistled and laughed and sworn and grumbled. They had neither of them had bad tempers so that they had not quarrelled with each other. They had talked through the open door when they were dressing and they had invented clever tricks which helped them to get out of money scrapes and they had gossiped and made fun of people. And now the door was locked and the room was a sort of horror. She could never think of it without seeing the stiff hard figure on the bed, the straight close line of the mouth and the white hard nose sharpened and narrowed as Robā€™s had never been. Somehow she particularly could not bear the recollection of the sharp unnatural modeling of the hard, white nose. She could not BEAR it! She found herself recalling it the moment she saw the light on the door handle and she got up to move about and try to forget it.

It was then that she went to the window and looked down into the street, probably attracted by some slight noise though she was not exactly aware that she had heard anything.

She must have heard something however. Two four-wheeled cabs were standing at the front door and the cabman assisted by Edward were putting trunks on top of them. They were servantsā€™ trunks and Cook was already inside the first cab which was filled with paper parcels and odds and ends. Even as her mistress watched Emma got in carrying a sedate band-box. She was the house-parlourmaid and a sedate person. The first cab drove away as soon as its door was closed and the cabman mounted to his seat. Louisa looking wholly unprofessional without her nurseā€™s cap and apron and wearing a tailor-made navy blue costume and a hat with a wing in it, entered the second cab followed by Edward intensely suggesting private life and possible connection with a Bank. The second cab followed the first and Feather having lost her breath looked after them as they turned the corner of the street.

When they were quite out of sight she turned back into the room. The colour had left her skin, and her eyes were so wide stretched and her face so drawn and pinched with abject terror that her prettiness itself had left her.

ā€œTheyā€™ve goneā€”all of them!ā€ she gasped. She stopped a moment, her chest rising and falling. Then she added even more breathlessly, ā€œThereā€™s no one left in the house. Itā€™sā€”empty!ā€

This was what was going on behind the cream-coloured front,

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