The Head of the House of Coombe by Frances Hodgson Burnett (cool books to read .txt) đź“•
"What will you DO with her?" he inquired detachedly.
The frequently referred to "babe unborn" could not have presented a gaze of purer innocence than did the lovely Feather. Her eyes of larkspur blueness were clear of any thought or intention as spring water is clear at its unclouded best.
Her ripple of a laugh was clear also--enchantingly clear.
"Do!" repeated. "What is it people 'do' with babies? I suppose the nurse knows. I don't. I wouldn't touch her for the world. She frightens me."
She floated a trifle nearer and bent to look at her.
"I shall call her Robin," she said. "Her name is really Roberta as she couldn't be called Robert. People will turn round to look at a girl when they hear her called Robin. Besides she has eyes like a robin. I wish she'd open them and let you see."
By chance she did open them at the moment--quite slowly. They were dark liquid brown and seemed to be all lustrous iris which
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As the little thing strayed in, with her rather rigid attendant behind her, suddenly the laughing ceased and everybody involuntarily drew a half startled breath—everybody but the tall thin man, who quietly turned and set his coffee cup down on the mantel piece behind him.
“Is THIS what you have been keeping up your sleeve!” said Harrowby, settling his pince nez.
“I told you!” said the Starling.
“You couldn’t tell us,” Vesey’s veiled voice dropped in softly. “It must be seen to be believed. But still—” aside to Feather, “I don’t believe it.”
“Enter, my only child!” said Feather. “Come here, Robin. Come to your mother.”
Now was the time! Robin went to her and took hold of a very small piece of her sparkling dress.
“ARE you my Mother?” she said. And then everybody burst into a peal of laughter, Feather with the rest.
“She calls me the Lady Downstairs,” she said. “I really believe she doesn’t know. She’s rather a stupid little thing.”
“Amazing lack of filial affection,” said Lord Coombe.
He was not laughing like the rest and he was looking down at Robin. She thought him ugly and wicked looking. Vesey and Harrowby were beautiful by contrast. Before she knew who he was, she disliked him. She looked at him askance under her eyelashes, and he saw her do it before her mother spoke his name, taking her by the tips of her fingers and leading her to him.
“Come and let Lord Coombe look at you,” she said. So it revealed itself to her that it was he—this ugly one—who had done it, and hatred surged up in her soul. It was actually in the eyes she raised to his face, and Coombe saw it as he had seen the sidelong glance and he wondered what it meant.
“Shake hands with Lord Coombe,” Feather instructed.
“If you can make a curtsey, make one.” She turned her head over her shoulders, “Have you taught her to curtsey, Andrews?”
But Andrews had not and secretly lost temper at finding herself made to figure as a nurse who had been capable of omission. Outwardly she preserved rigid calm.
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. I will at once, if you wish it.”
Coombe was watching the inner abhorrence in the little face. Robin had put her hand behind her back—she who had never disobeyed since she was born! She had crossed a line of development when she had seen glimpses of the new world through Donal’s eyes.
“What are you doing, you silly little thing,” Feather reproved her. “Shake hands with Lord Coombe.”
Robin shook her head fiercely.
“No! No! No! No!” she protested.
Feather was disgusted. This was not the kind of child to display.
“Rude little thing! Andrews, come and make her do it—or take her upstairs,” she said.
Coombe took his gold coffee cup from the mantel.
“She regards me with marked antipathy, as she did when she first saw me,” he summed the matter up. “Children and animals don’t hate one without reason. It is some remote iniquity in my character which the rest of us have not yet detected.” To Robin he said, “I do not want to shake hands with you if you object. I prefer to drink my coffee out of this beautiful cup.”
But Andrews was seething. Having no conscience whatever, she had instead the pride of a female devil in her perfection in her professional duties. That the child she was responsible for should stamp her with ignominious fourth-ratedness by conducting herself with as small grace as an infant costermonger was more than her special order of flesh and blood could bear-and yet she must outwardly control the flesh and blood.
In obedience to her mistress’ command, she crossed the room and bent down and whispered to Robin. She intended that her countenance should remain noncommittal, but, when she lifted her head, she met Coombe’s eyes and realized that perhaps it had not. She added to her whisper nursery instructions in a voice of sugar.
“Be pretty mannered, Miss Robin, my dear, and shake hands with his lordship.”
Each person in the little drawing-room saw the queer flame in the child-face—Coombe himself was fantastically struck by the sudden thought that its expression might have been that of an obstinate young martyr staring at the stake. Robin shrilled out her words:
“Andrews will pinch me—Andrews will pinch me! But—No!—No!” and she kept her hand behind her back.
“Oh, Miss Robin, you naughty child!” cried Andrews, with pathos. “Your poor Andrews that takes such care of you!”
“Horrid little thing!” Feather pettishly exclaimed. “Take her upstairs, Andrews. She shall not come down again.”
Harrowby, settling his pince nez a little excitedly in the spurred novelty of his interest, murmured,
“If she doesn’t want to go, she will begin to shriek. This looks as if she were a little termagant.”
But she did not shriek when Andrews led her towards the door. The ugly one with the wicked face was the one who had done it. He filled her with horror. To have touched him would have been like touching some wild beast of prey. That was all. She went with Andrews quite quietly.
“Will you shake hands with me?” said the Starling, goodnaturedly, as she passed, “I hope she won’t snub me,” she dropped aside to Harrowby.
Robin put out her hand prettily.
“Shake mine,” suggested Harrowby, and she obeyed him.
“And mine?” smiled Vesey, with his best allure. She gave him her hand, and, as a result of the allure probably, a tiny smile flickered about the corners of her mouth. He did not look wicked.
“I remain an outcast,” remarked Coombe, as the door closed behind the little figure.
“I detest an ill-mannered child,” said Feather. “She ought to be slapped. We used to be slapped if we were rude.”
“She said Andrews would pinch her. Is pinching the customary discipline?”
“It ought to be. She deserves it.” Feather was quite out of temper. “But Andrews is too good to her. She is a perfect creature and conducts herself like a clock. There has never been the slightest trouble in the Nursery. You see how the child looks—though her face ISN’T quite as round as it was.” She laughed disagreeably and shrugged her white undressed shoulders. “I think it’s a little horrid, myself—a child of that age fretting herself thin about a boy.”
But though she had made no protest on being taken out of the drawing-room, Robin had known that what Andrews’ soft-sounding whisper had promised would take place when she reached the Nursery. She was too young to feel more than terror which had no defense whatever. She had no more defense against Andrews than she had had against the man who had robbed her of Donal. They were both big and powerful, and she was nothing. But, out of the wonders she had begun to know, there had risen in her before almost inert little being a certain stirring. For a brief period she had learned happiness and love and woe, and, this evening, inchoate rebellion against an enemy. Andrews led by the hand up the narrow, top-story staircase something she had never led before. She was quite unaware of this and, as she mounted each step, her temper mounted also, and it was the temper of an incensed personal vanity abnormally strong in this particular woman. When they were inside the Nursery and the door was shut, she led Robin to the middle of the small and gloomy room and released her hand.
“Now, my lady,” she said. “I’m going to pay you out for disgracing me before everybody in the drawing-room.” She had taken the child below stairs for a few minutes before bringing her up for the night. She had stopped in the kitchen for something she wanted for herself. She laid her belongings on a chest of drawers and turned about.
“I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t forget,” she said.
What happened next turned the woman quite sick with the shock of amazement. The child had, in the past, been a soft puppet. She had been automatic obedience and gentleness. Privately Andrews had somewhat looked down on her lack of spirit, though it had been her own best asset. The outbreak downstairs had been an abnormality.
And now she stood before her with hands clenched, her little face wild with defiant rage.
“I’ll scream! I’ll scream! I’ll SCREAM!” she shrieked. Andrews actually heard herself gulp; but she sprang up and forward.
“You’ll SCREAM!” she could scarcely believe her own feelings—not to mention the evidence of her ears, “YOU’LL scream!”
The next instant was more astonishing still. Robin threw herself on her knees and scrambled like a cat. She was under the bed and in the remotest corner against the wall. She was actually unreachable, and she lay on her back kicking madly, hammering her heels against the floor and uttering piercing shrieks. As something had seemed to let itself go when she writhed under the bushes in the Gardens, so did something let go now. In her overstrung little mind there ruled for this moment the feeling that if she was to be pinched, she would be pinched for a reason.
Andrews knelt by the side of the bed. She had a long, strong, thin arm and it darted beneath and clutched. But it was not long enough to attain the corner where the kicking and screaming was going on. Her temper became fury before her impotence and her hideous realization of being made ridiculous by this baby of six. Two floors below the afterglow of the little dinner was going on. Suppose even far echoes of the screams should be heard and make her more ridiculous still. She knew how they would laugh and her mistress would make some silly joke about Robin’s being too much for her. Her fury rose so high that she had barely sense to realize that she must not let herself go too far when she got hold of the child. Get hold of her she would and pay her out—My word! She would pay her out!
“You little devil!” she said between her teeth, “Wait till I get hold of you.” And Robin shrieked and hammered more insanely still.
The bed was rather a low one and it was difficult for any one larger than a child to find room beneath it. The correct and naturally rigid Andrews lay flat upon her stomach and wriggled herself partly under the edge. Just far enough for her long and strong arm, and equally long and strong clutching fingers to do their work. In her present state of mind, Andrews would have broken her back rather than not have reached the creature who so defied her. The strong fingers clenched a flying petticoat and dragged at it fiercely—the next moment they clutched a frantic foot, with a power which could not be broken away from. A jerk and a remorseless dragging over the carpet and Robin was out of the protecting darkness and in the gas light again, lying tumbled and in an untidy, torn little heap on the nursery floor. Andrews was panting, but she did not loose her hold as she scrambled, without a rag of professional dignity, to her feet.
“My word!” she breathlessly gave forth. “I’ve got you now! I’ve got you now.”
She so looked that to Robin she seemed—like the ugly man downstairs—a sort of wicked wild beast, whose mere touch would have been horror even if it did not hurt. And the child knew what was coming.
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