Robin | Page 8

to the girl was a simple fact. He had exaggerated
nothing. If, in what now seemed that long-ago past, he had not been a
sturdy, normal little lad surrounded by love and friendliness, with his
days full of healthy play and pleasure, the child tragedy of their being
torn apart might have left ugly marks upon his mind, and lurked there,
a morbid memory. And though, in time, rebellion and suffering had

died away, he had never really forgotten. Even to the cricket-playing,
larking boy at Eton there had now and then returned, with queer
suddenness, recollections which gave him odd moments of resurrected
misery. They passed away, but at long intervals they came back and
always with absolute reality. At Oxford the intervals had been longer
but a certain picture was one whose haunting never lost its clearness. It
was a vision of a colour-warm child kneeling on the grass, her eyes
uplifted, expressing only a lonely patience, and he could actually hear
her humble little voice as she said:
"I--I haven't anything." And it always roused him to rage.
Then there was the piteous break in her voice when she hid her eyes
with her arm and said of her beast of a mother:
"She--doesn't like me!"
"Damn! Damn!" he used to say every time the thing came back. "Oh!
damn!--damn!" And the expletive never varied in its spontaneity.
* * * * *
As he walked under the primrose sky and breathed in the faint fragrant
stir of the freshening morning air, he who had always felt joyously the
sense of life knew more than ever before the keen rapture of living. The
springing lightness of his own step as it rang on the pavement was part
of it. It was as though he were still dancing and he almost felt
something warm and light in his arm and saw a little head of dark silk
near his breast.
Throughout his life he had taken all his joys to his closest companion
and nearest intimate--his mother. Theirs had not been a common life
together. He had not even tried to explain to himself the harmony and
gaiety of their nearness in which there seemed no separation of years.
She had drawn and held him to the wonder of her charm and had been
the fine flavour of his existence. It was actually true that he had so far
had no boyish love affairs because he had all unconsciously been in
love with the beautiful completeness of her.

Always when he returned home after festivities, he paused for a
moment outside her bedroom door because he so often found her awake
and waiting to talk to him if he were inclined to talk--to listen--to laugh
softly--or perhaps only to say good-night in her marvel of a voice--a
marvel because its mellow note held such love.
This time when, after entering the house and mounting the stairs he
reached her door, he found it partly open.
"Come in," he heard her say. "I went to sleep very early and awakened
half an hour ago. It is really morning."
She was sitting up in a deep chair by the window.
"Let me look at you," she said with a little laugh. "And then kiss me
and go to bed."
But even the lovely, faint early light revealed something to her.
"You walk like a young stag on the hillside," she said. "You don't want
to go to sleep at all. What is it?"
He sat on a low ottoman near her and laughed a little also.
"I don't know," he answered, "but I'm wide awake."
The English summer dawn is of a magical clear light and she could see
him well. She had a thrilled feeling that she had never quite known
before what a beautiful thing he was--how perfect and shining fair in
his boy manhood.
"Mother," he said, "you won't remember perhaps--it's a queer thing that
I should myself--but I have never really forgotten. There was a child I
played with in some garden when I was a little chap. She was a
beautiful little thing who seemed to belong to nobody--"
"She belonged to a Mrs. Gareth-Lawless," Helen interpolated.
"Then you do remember?"

"Yes, dear. You asked me to go to the Gardens with you to see her.
And Mrs. Gareth-Lawless came in by chance and spoke to me."
"And then we had suddenly to go back to Scotland. I remember you
wakened me quite early in the morning--I thought it was the middle of
the night." He began to speak rather slowly as if he were thinking it
over. "You didn't know that, when you took me away, it was a tragedy.
I had promised to play with her again and I felt as if I had deserted her