On the contrary, the florist came and refilled the window boxes with an admirable arrangement of fresh flowers; new and even more correct servants were to be seen ascending and descending the area step; a young footman quite as smart as the departed Edward opened the front door and attended Mrs. Gareth-Lawless to her perfect little brougham. The trades-people appeared promptly every day and were obsequiously respectful in manner. Evidently the household had not disintegrated as a result of the death of Mr. Gareth-Lawless.
As it became an established fact that the household had not fallen to pieces its frequenters gradually returned to it, wearing indeed the air of people who had never really remained away from it. There had been natural reasons enough for considerate absence from a house of bereavement and a desolate widow upon whose grief it would have been indelicate to intrude. As Feather herself had realized, the circle of her intimates was not formed of those who could readily adjust themselves to entirely changed circumstances. If you dance on a tight rope and the rope is unexpectedly withdrawn, where are you? You cannot continue dancing until the rope is restrung.
The rope, however, being apparently made absolutely secure, it was not long before the dancing began again. Feather’s mourning, wonderfully shading itself from month to month, was the joy of all beholders. Madame Hélène treated her as a star gleaming through gradually dispersing clouds. Her circle watched her with secretly humorous interest as each fine veil of dimness was withdrawn.
“The things she wears are priceless,” was said amiably in her own drawing-room. “Where does she get them? Figure to yourself Lawdor paying the bills.”
“She gets them from Hélène,” said a long thin young man with a rather good-looking narrow face and dark eyes, peering through pince nez, “But I couldn’t.”
In places where entertainment as a means of existence proceed so to speak, fast and furiously, questions of taste are not dwelt upon at leisure. You need not hesitate before saying anything you liked in any one’s drawing-room so long as it was amusing enough to make somebody—if not everybody—laugh. Feather had made people laugh in the same fashion in the past. The persons she most admired were always making sly little impudent comments and suggestions, and the thwarted years on the island of Jersey had, in her case, resulted in an almost hectic desire to keep pace. Her efforts had usually been successes because Nature’s self had provided her with the manner of a silly pretty child who did not know how far she went. Shouts of laughter had often greeted her, and the first time she had for a moment doubted her prowess was on an occasion when she had caught a glimpse of Coombe who stared at her with an expression which she would—just for one second—have felt might be horror, if she had not been so sure it couldn’t be, and must of course be something else—one of the things nobody ever understood in him.
By the time the softly swathing veils of vaporous darkness were withdrawn, and the tight rope assuring everyone of its permanent security became a trusted support, Feather at her crowded little parties and at other people’s bigger ones did not remain wholly unaware of the probability that even people who rather liked her made, among themselves, more or less witty comments upon her improved fortunes. They were improved greatly. Bills were paid, trades-people were polite, servants were respectful; she had no need to invent excuses and lies. She and Robert had always kept out of the way of stodgy, critical people, so they had been intimate with none of the punctilious who might have withdrawn themselves from a condition of things they chose to disapprove: accordingly, she found no gaps in her circle. Those who had formed the habit of amusing themselves at her house were as ready as before to amuse themselves again.
The fact remained, however,—curiously, perhaps, in connection with the usual slightness of all impressions made on her—that there was a memory which never wholly left her. Even when she tried to force it so far into the background of her existence that it might almost be counted as forgotten, it had a trick of rising before her. It was the memory of the empty house as its emptiness had struck to the centre of her being when she had turned from her bedroom window after watching the servants drive away in their cabs. It was also the memory of the hours which had followed—the night in which nobody had been in any of the rooms—no one had gone up or down the stairs—when all had seemed dark and hollow—except the Night Nursery where Robin screamed, and her own room where she herself cowered under the bed clothes and pulled the pillow over her head. But though the picture would not let itself be blotted out, its effect was rather to intensify her sense of relief because she had slipped so safely from under the wheels of destiny.
“Sometimes,” she revealed artlessly to Coombe, “while I am driving in the park on a fine afternoon when every one is out and the dresses look like the flower beds, I let myself remember it just to make myself enjoy everything more by contrast.”
The elderly woman who had been a nurse in her youth and who had been sent by Lord Coombe temporarily to replace Louisa had not remained long in charge of Robin. She was not young and smart enough for a house on the right side of the right street, and Feather found a young person who looked exactly as she should when she pushed the child’s carriage before her around the square.