The Head of the House of Coombe by Frances Hodgson Burnett (cool books to read .txt) 📕

>“It did happen that morning,” admitted Andrews, smiling a little also. “It does seem funny. But children take to each other in a queer way now and then. I’ve seen it upset them dreadful when they were parted.”

“You must tell the doctor,” laughed Feather. “Then he’ll see there’s nothing to be anxious about. She’ll get over it in a week.”

“It’s five weeks since it happened, ma’am,” remarked Andrews, with just a touch of seriousness.

“Five! Why, so it must be! I remember the day I spoke to Mrs. Muir. If she’s that sort of child you had better keep her away from boys. HOW ridiculous! How Lord Coombe—how people will laugh when I tell them!”

She had paused a second because—for that second—she was not quite sure that Coombe WOULD laugh. Frequently she was of the opinion that he did not laugh at things when he should have done so. But she had had a brief furious moment when she had realized that the boy had actually been whisked away. She remembered the clearness of the fine eyes which had looked directly into hers. The woman had been deciding then that she would have nothing to do with her—or even with her child.

But the story of Robin worn by a bereft nursery passion for a little boy, whose mamma snatched him away as a brand from the burning, was far too edifying not to be related to those who would find it delicious.

It was on the occasion, a night or so later, of a gathering at dinner of exactly the few elect ones, whose power to find it delicious was the most highly developed, that she related it. It was a very little dinner—only four people. One was the long thin young man, with the good looking narrow face and dark eyes peering through a pince nez—the one who had said that Mrs. Gareth-Lawless “got her wondrous clothes from Helene” but that he couldn’t. His name was Harrowby. Another was the Starling who was a Miss March who had, some years earlier, led the van of the girls who prostrated their relatives by becoming what was then called “emancipated”; the sign thereof being the demanding of latchkeys and the setting up of bachelor apartments. The relatives had astonishingly settled down, with the unmoved passage of time, and more modern emancipation had so far left latchkeys and bachelor apartments behind it that they began to seem almost old-fogeyish. Clara March, however, had progressed with her day. The third diner was an adored young actor with a low, veiled voice which, combining itself with almond eyes and a sentimental and emotional curve of cheek and chin, made the most commonplace “lines” sound yearningly impassioned. He was not impassioned at all—merely fond of his pleasures and comforts in a way which would end by his becoming stout. At present his figure was perfect—exactly the thing for the uniforms of royal persons of Ruritania and places of that ilk—and the name by which programmes presented him was Gerald Vesey.

Feather’s house pleased him and she herself liked being spoken to in the veiled voice and gazed at by the almond eyes, as though insuperable obstacles alone prevented soul-stirring things from being said. That she knew this was not true did not interfere with her liking it. Besides he adored and understood her clothes.

Over coffee in the drawing-room, Coombe joined them. He had not known of the little dinner and arrived just as Feather was on the point of beginning her story.

“You are just in time,” she greeted him, “I was going to tell them something to make them laugh.”

“Will it make me laugh?” he inquired.

“It ought to. Robin is in love. She is five years old and she has been deserted, and Andrews came to tell me that she can neither eat nor sleep. The doctor says she has had a shock.”

Coombe did not join in the ripple of amused laughter but, as he took his cup of coffee, he looked interested.

Harrowby was interested too. His dark eyes quite gleamed.

“I suppose she is in bed by now,” he said. “If it were not so late, I should beg you to have her brought down so that we might have a look at her. I’m by way of taking a psychological interest.”

“I’m psychological myself,” said the Starling. “But what do you mean, Feather? Are you in earnest?”

“Andrews is,” Feather answered. “She could manage measles but she could not be responsible for shock. But she didn’t find out about the love affair. I found that out—by mere chance. Do you remember the day we got out of the victoria and went into the Gardens, Starling?”

“The time you spoke to Mrs. Muir?”

Coombe turned slightly towards them.

Feather nodded, with a lightly significant air.

“It was her boy,” she said, and then she laughed and nodded at Coombe.

“He was quite as handsome as you said he was. No wonder poor Robin fell prostrate. He ought to be chained and muzzled by law when he grows up.”

“But so ought Robin,” threw in the Starling in her brusque, young mannish way.

“But Robin’s only a girl and she’s not a parti,” laughed Feather. Her eyes, lifted to Coombe’s, held a sort of childlike malice. “After his mother knew she was Miss Gareth-Lawless, he was not allowed to play in the Gardens again. Did she take him back to Scotland?”

“They went back to Scotland,” answered Coombe, “and, of course, the boy was not left behind.”

“Have YOU a child five years old?” asked Vesey in his low voice of Feather. “You?”

“It seems absurd to ME,” said Feather, “I never quite believe in her.”

“I don’t,” said Vesey. “She’s impossible.”

“Robin is a stimulating name,” put in Harrowby. “IS it too late to let us see her? If she’s such a beauty as Starling hints, she ought to be looked at.”

Feather actually touched the bell by the fireplace. A sudden caprice moved her. The love story had not gone off quite as well as she had thought it would. And, after all, the child was pretty enough to show off. She knew nothing in particular about her daughter’s hours, but, if she was asleep, she could be wakened.

“Tell Andrews,” she said to the footman when he appeared, “I wish Miss Robin to be brought downstairs.”

“They usually go to bed at seven, I believe,” remarked Coombe, “but, of course, I am not an authority.”

Robin was not asleep though she had long been in bed. Because she kept her eyes shut Andrews had been deceived into carrying on a conversation with her sister Anne, who had come to see her. Robin had been lying listening to it. She had begun to listen because they had been talking about the day she had spoiled her rose-coloured smock and they had ended by being very frank about other things.

“As sure as you saw her speak to the boy’s mother the day before, just so sure she whisked him back to Scotland the next morning,” said Andrews. “She’s one of the kind that’s particular. Lord Coombe’s the reason. She does not want her boy to see or speak to him, if it can be helped. She won’t have it—and when she found out—”

“Is Lord Coombe as bad as they say?” put in Anne with bated breath. “He must be pretty bad if a boy that’s eight years old has to be kept out of sight and sound of him.”

So it was Lord Coombe who had somehow done it. He had made Donal’s mother take him away. It was Lord Coombe. Who was Lord Coombe? It was because he was wicked that Donal’s mother would not let him play with her—because he was wicked. All at once there came to her a memory of having heard his name before. She had heard it several times in the basement Servants’ Hall and, though she had not understood what was said about him, she had felt the atmosphere of cynical disapproval of something. They had said “him” and “her” as if he somehow belonged to the house. On one occasion he had been “high” in the manner of some reproof to Jennings, who, being enraged, freely expressed his opinions of his lordship’s character and general reputation. The impression made on Robin then had been that he was a person to be condemned severely. That the condemnation was the mere outcome of the temper of an impudent young footman had not conveyed itself to her, and it was the impression which came back to her now with a new significance. He was the cause—not Donal, not Donal’s Mother—but this man who was so bad that servants were angry because he was somehow connected with the house.

“As to his badness,” she heard Andrews answer, “there’s some that can’t say enough against him. Badness is smart these days. He’s bad enough for the boy’s mother to take him away from. It’s what he is in this house that does it. She won’t have her boy playing with a child like Robin.”

Then—even as there flashed upon her bewilderment this strange revelation of her own unfitness for association with boys whose mothers took care of them—Jennings, the young footman, came to the door.

“Is she awake, Miss Andrews?” he said, looking greatly edified by Andrews’ astonished countenance.

“What on earth—?” began Andrews.

“If she is,” Jennings winked humorously, “she’s to be dressed up and taken down to the drawing-room to be shown off. I don’t know whether it’s Coombe’s idea or not. He’s there.”

Robin’s eyes flew wide open. She forgot to keep them shut. She was to go downstairs! Who wanted her—who?

Andrews had quite gasped.

“Here’s a new break out!” she exclaimed. “I never heard such a thing in my life. She’s been in bed over two hours. I’d like to know—”

She paused here because her glance at the bed met the dark liquidity of eyes wide open. She got up and walked across the room.

“You are awake!” she said. “You look as if you hadn’t been asleep at all. You’re to get up and have your frock put on. The Lady Downstairs wants you in the drawing-room.”

Two months earlier such a piece of information would have awakened in the child a delirium of delight. But now her vitality was lowered because her previously unawakened little soul had soared so high and been so dashed down to cruel earth again. The brilliancy of the Lady Downstairs had been dimmed as a candle is dimmed by the light of the sun.

She felt only a vague wonder as she did as Andrews told her—wonder at the strangeness of getting up to be dressed, as it seemed to her, in the middle of the night.

“It’s just the kind of thing that would happen in a house like this,” grumbled Andrews, as she put on her frock. “Just anything that comes into their heads they think they’ve a right to do. I suppose they have, too. If you’re rich and aristocratic enough to have your own way, why not take it? I would myself.”

The big silk curls, all in a heap, fell almost to the child’s hips. The frock Andrews chose for her was a fairy thing.

“She IS a bit thin, to be sure,” said the girl Anne. “But it points her little face and makes her eyes look bigger.”

“If her mother’s got a Marquis, I wonder what she’ll get,” said Andrews. “She’s got a lot before her: this one!”

When the child entered the drawing-room, Andrews made her go in alone, while she held herself, properly, a few paces back like a lady in waiting. The room was brilliantly lighted and seemed full of colour and people who were laughing. There were pretty things crowding each other everywhere, and there