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Updated: June 25, 2025
One day in the month of May she was preparing for a large reception which was being held in honour of young Booth-Clibborn, grandson of General Booth of the Salvation Army. The event was an important one, for it was hoped that this meeting would bring about an understanding between the Salvationists and the Sionists, and Miss Dowie wished to give the visitor the most gracious welcome possible.
"It's his lordship's way to think of things," the discreet answer came impersonally. Robin looked slowly round the small and really quite wonderful room. "You know I said that, the first night we came here." "Yes?" Dowie answered. Robin turned her eyes upon her. They were no longer hollowed, but they still looked much too large. "Dowie," she said. "He knows things." "He always did," said Dowie.
They saw the "decent body" assist with care the descent of a young thing the mere lift of whose eyes almost caused both of them to move a trifle backward. "You and Dowie are going to take care of me," she said quiet and low and with a childish kindness. "Thank you." She was taken to a room in whose thick wall Lord Coombe had opened a window for sunlight and the sight of hill and heather.
"I must learn to remember always that I am a sort of servant. I must be very careful. It will be easier for me to realize that I am not in my own house than it would be for other girls. I have not allowed Dowie to dress me for a good many weeks. I have learned how to do everything for myself quite well." "But Dowie will be in the house with you and the Duchess is very kind."
If she had been ten years old she could scarcely have presented herself to the mature vision as a more touching thing. It seemed incredible to Dowie that she should have so much of life and suffering behind and before her and yet look like that. It was not only the soft curve and droop of her mouth and the lift of her eyes there was added to these something as indescribable as it was heart-moving.
Sometimes she lay for long hours on the sofa by the open window but sometimes a restlessness came upon her and she wandered about the empty rooms of the little castle as though she were vaguely searching for something which was not there. Dowie furtively followed her at a distance knowing that she wanted to be alone. The wide stretches of the moor seemed to draw her.
Once she turned so cold and white and trembled so that Dowie made an involuntary movement towards her, but Lord Coombe's quiet firmness held her swaying body and though the clergyman paused a moment the trembling passed away and the ceremony went on.
He didn't say it in so many words, of course, but as Dowie listened it was exactly as if he said it in gentleman's language. England was full of strange and cruel tragedies. And they were not all tragedies of battle and sudden death. Many of them were near enough to seem even worse if worse could be. Dowie had heard some hints of them and had wondered what the world was coming to.
"They have not been able to bring about the wholesale disaster Germany hoped for and when nothing serious happens there is a relieved feeling that the things are futile after all," said Coombe. "When the results are tragic they must be hushed up as far as is possible to prevent panic." Dowie faithfully sent him her private bulletin.
Dowie carried her home in his arms, and on the way she told him all about the kindness of Alec and his mother. He asked her many questions about the Bruces; but her patient nature, and the instinctive feeling that it would make Dowie unhappy, withheld her from representing the discomforts of her position in strong colours. Dowie, however, had his own thoughts on the matter.
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