The Head of the House of Coombe by Frances Hodgson Burnett (cool books to read .txt) š
"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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āYou WERE everything,ā Robin saidāand the mere simpleness of the way in which she said it brought the garden so near that he smelt the warm hawthorn and heard the distant piano organ and it quickened his breath.
āIt was because I kept seeing your eyes and hearing your laugh that I thought my heart was bursting. I knew youād go and wait for meāand gradually your little face would begin to look different. I knew youād believe Iād come. āSheās littleāāthat was what I kept saying to myself again and again. āAnd sheāll cryāawfullyāand sheāll think I did it. Sheāll never know.ā There,āāhe hesitated a momentāāthere was a kind of mad shame in it. As if Iād BETRAYED your littleness and your belief, though I was too young to know what betraying was.ā
Just as she had looked at him before, āas if he could give her everything,ā she was looking at him now. In what other way could she look while he gave her this wonderful soothing, binding softly all the old wounds with unconscious, natural touch because he had really been all her child being had been irradiated and warmed by. There was no pose in his mannerāno sentimental or flirtatious youthās affecting of a picturesque attitude. It was real and he told her this thing because he must for his own relief.
āDid you cry?ā he said. āDid my little chapās conceit make too much of it? I suppose I ought to hope it did.ā
Robin put her hand softly against her heart.
āNo,ā she answered. āI was only a baby, but I think it KILLED somethingāhere.ā
He caught a big hard breath.
āOh!ā he said and for a few seconds simply sat and gazed at her.
āBut it came to life again?ā he said afterwards.
āI donāt know. I donāt know what it was. Perhaps it could only live in a very little creature. But it was killed.ā
āI say!ā broke from him. āIt was like wringing a canaryās neck when it was singing in the sun!ā
A sudden swelling of the music of a new dance swept in to them and he rose and stood up before her.
āThank you for giving me my chance to tell you,ā he said. āThis was the apology. You have been kind to listen.ā
āI wanted to listen,ā Robin said. āI am glad I didnāt live a long time and grow old and die without your telling me. When I saw you tonight I almost said aloud, āHeās come back!āā
āIām glad I came. Itās queer how one can live a thing over again. There have been all the years between for us both. For me thereās been all a ladās lifeātutors and Eton and Oxford and people and lots of travel and amusement. But the minute I set eyes on you near the door something must have begun to drag me back. Iāll own Iāve never liked to let myself dwell on that memory. It wasnāt a good thing because it had a trick of taking me back in a fiendish way to the little chap with his heart bursting in the railway carriageāand the betrayal feeling. Itās morbid to let yourself grouse over what canāt be undone. So you faded away. But when I danced past you somehow I knew Iād come on SOMETHING. It made me restless. I couldnāt keep my eyes away decently. Then all at once I KNEW! I couldnāt tell you what the effect was. There you were againāI was as much obliged to tell you as I should have been if Iād found you at Braemarnie when I got there that night. Conventions had nothing to do with it. It would not have mattered even if youād obviously thought I was a fool. You might have thought so, you know.ā
āNo, I mightnāt,ā answered Robin. āThere have been no Eton and Oxford and amusements for me. This is my first party.ā
She rose as he had done and they stood for a second or so with their eyes resting on each otherāsāeach with a young smile quivering into life which neither was conscious of. It was she who first wakened and came back. He saw a tiny pulse flutter in her throat and she lifted her hand with a delicate gesture.
āThis dance was Lord Halwynās and weāve sat it out. We must go back to the ball room.ā
āIāsupposeāwe must,ā he answered with slow reluctanceābut he could scarcely drag his eyes away from hersāeven though he obeyed, and they turned and went.
In the shining ball room the music rose and fell and swelled again into ecstasy as he took her white young lightness in his arm and they swayed and darted and swooped like things of the airāwhile the old Duchess and Lord Coombe looked on almost unseeing and talked in murmurs of Sarajevo.
THE END
PUBLISHERSā NOTE
The inflexible limitations of magazine space necessitated the omissionāin its serial formāof so large a portion of THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE as to eliminate much of the charm of characterization and the creation of atmosphere and background which add so greatly to the power and picturesqueness of the authorās work.
These values having been unavoidably lost in a greatly compressed version, it is the publishersā desire to produce the story in its entirety, and, as during its writing it developed into what might be regarded as two novelsāso distinctly does it deal with two epochsāit has been decided to present it to its public as two separate books. The first, THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE, deals with social life in London during the evolutionary period between the late Victorian years and the reign of Edward VII and that of his successor, previous to the Great War. It brings Lord Coombe and Donal, Feather and her girl Robin to the summer of 1914. It ends with the ending of a world which can never again be the same. The second novel, ROBIN, to be published later continues the story of the same characters, facing existence, however, in a world transformed by tragedy, and in which new aspects of character, new social, economic, and spiritual possibilities are to be confronted, rising to the surface of life as from the depths of unknown seas. Readers of THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE will follow the story of Robin with intensified interest.
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