Books: The Head of the House of Coombe

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"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 were flowers on all sides.
The Lady Downstairs, in a sheathlike sparkling dress, and only
a glittering strap seeming to hold it on over her fair undressed
shoulders, was talking to a tall thin man standing before the
fireplace with a gold cup of coffee in his hand.

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 non-committal, 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."

CHAPTER XII

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. She felt herself dragged up from the floor and also
dragged between Andrew's knees, which felt bony and hard as iron.
There was no getting away from them. Andrews had seated herself
firmly on a chair.

Holding her between the iron knees, she put her large hand over
her mouth. It was a hand large enough to cover more than her mouth.
Only the panic-stricken eyes seemed to flare wide and lustrous
above it.

"YOU'LL scream!" she said, "YOU'LL hammer on the floor with your
heels! YOU'LL behave like a wildcat--you that's been like a kitten!
You've never done it before and you'll never do it again! If it
takes me three days, I'll make you remember!"

And then her hand dropped--and her jaw dropped, and she sat staring
with a furious, sick, white face at the open door--which she had
shut as she came in. The top floor had always been so safe. The
Nursery had been her own autocratic domain. There had been no
human creature to whom it would have occurred to interfere. That
was it. She had been actually SAFE.

Unheard in the midst of the struggle, the door had been opened
without a knock. There on the threshold, as stiff as a ramrod,
and with his hateful eyes uncovering their gleam, Lord Coombe was
standing--no other than Lord Coombe.

Having a sharp working knowledge of her world, Andrews knew that
it was all up. He had come upstairs deliberately. She knew what
he had come for. He was as clever as he was bad, and he had seen
something when he glanced at her in the drawing-room. Now he had
heard and seen her as she dragged Robin from under the bed. He'd
come up for that--for some queer evil reason of his own. The
promptings of a remote gutter training made her feel a desire to
use language such as she still had wisdom enough to restrain.

"You are a very great fool, young woman," he said. "You have
nothing but your character as a nurse to live on. A scene in a
police court would ruin you. There is a Society which interferes
with nursery torture."

Robin, freed from the iron grasp, had slunk behind a chair. He
was there again.

Andrews' body, automatically responsive to rule and habit, rose from
its seat and stood before this member of a class which required
an upright position. She knew better than to attempt to excuse or
explain. She had heard about the Society and she knew publicity would
spell ruin and starvation. She had got herself into an appalling
mess. Being caught--there you were. But that this evil-reputationed
swell should actually have been awakened by some whim to notice
and follow her up was "past her," as she would have put it.

"You were going to pinch her--by instalments, I suppose," he
said. "You inferred that it might last three days. When she said
you would--in the drawing-room--it occurred to me to look into it.
What are your wages?"

"Thirty pounds a year, my lord."

"Go tomorrow morning to Benby, who engaged you for Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.
He will be at his office by nine and will pay you what is owed to
you--and a month's wages in lieu of notice."

"The mistress--" began Andrews.

"I have spoken to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless." It was a lie, serenely
told. Feather was doing a new skirt dance in the drawing-room.
"She is engaged. Pack your box. Jennings will call a cab."

It was the utter idiotic hopelessness of saying anything to
him which finished her. You might as well talk to a front door or
a street lamp. Any silly thing you might try wouldn't even reach
his ears. He had no ears for you. You didn't matter enough.

"Shall I leave her here--as she is?" she said, denoting Robin.

"Undress her and put her to bed before you pack your box," absolutely
certain, fine cold modulations in the voice, which stood for his
special plane of breeding, had their effect on her grovelling
though raging soul. He was so exactly what he was and what she
was not and could never attain. "I will stay here while you do
it. Then go."

No vocabulary of the Servants' Hall could have encompassed the fine
phrase grand seigneur, but, when Mrs. Blayne and the rest talked
of him in their least resentful and more amiable moods, they
unconsciously made efforts to express the quality in him which
these two words convey. He had ways of his own. Men that paid a
pretty woman's bills and kept her going in luxury, Jennings and
Mrs. Blayne and the others knew something about. They sometimes
began well enough but, as time went on, they forgot themselves
and got into the way of being familiar and showing they realized
that they paid for things and had their rights. Most of them began
to be almost like husbands--speak slighting and sharp and be a bit
stiff about accounts--even before servants. They ran in and out
or--after a while--began to stay away and not show up for weeks.
"He" was different--so different that it was queer. Queer it certainly
was that he really came to the place very seldom. Wherever they
met, it didn't noticeably often happen in the slice of a house.
He came as if he were a visitor. He took no liberties. Everything
was punctiliously referred to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. Mr. Benby, who
did everything, conducted himself outwardly as if he were a sort
of man of business in Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' employ. It was open to
the lenient to believe that she depended on some mysterious private
income. There were people who preferred to try to believe this,
but there were those who, in some occult way, knew exactly where
her income came from. There were, in fact, hypercritical persons
who did not know or notice her, but she had quite an entertaining,
smart circle which neither suspicions nor beliefs prevented from
placing her in their visiting lists. Coombe DID keep it up in the
most perfect manner, some of them said admiringly among themselves.
He showed extraordinarily perfect taste. Many fashionable open
secrets, accepted by a brilliant world, were not half so fastidiously
managed. Andrews knew he had unswervingly lied when he said he
had "spoken to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless." But he never failed to place
her in the position of authority. That he should have presented
himself on the nursery floor was amazingly abnormal enough to
mean some state of mind unregulated by all natural rules. "Him,"
Andrews thought, "that never steps out of a visitor's place in
the drawing-room turning up on the third floor without a word!"
One thing she knew, and that came first. Behind all the polite show
he was the head of everything. And he was one that you'd better
not give back a sound to if you knew what was good for yourself.
Whatever people said against his character, he was one of the
grand and high ones. A word from him--ever so quiet--and you'd be
done for.

She was shaking with fear inwardly, but she undressed Robin and
put her in bed, laying everything away and making things tidy for
the night.

"This is the Night Nursery, I suppose," Coombe had said when she
began. He put up his glasses and looked the uninviting little room
over. He scrutinized it and she wondered what his opinion of it
might be.

"Yes, my lord. The Day Nursery is through that door." He walked
through the door in question and she could see that he moved slowly
about it, examining the few pieces of furniture curiously, still
with his glass in his eye. She had finished undressing Robin
and had put her in her bed before he came back into the sleeping
apartment. By that time, exhausted by the unknown tempest she had
passed through, the child had dropped asleep in spite of herself.
She was too tired to remember that her enemy was in the next room.

"I have seen the child with you several times when you have not
been aware of it," Coombe said to her before he went downstairs.
"She has evidently been well taken care of as far as her body
is concerned. If you were not venomous--if you had merely struck
her, when you lost your temper, you might have had another trial.
I know nothing about children, but I know something about the
devil, and if ever the devil was in a woman's face and voice the
devil was in yours when you dragged the little creature from under
the bed. If you had dared, you would have killed her. Look after
that temper, young woman. Benby shall keep an eye on you if you
take another place as nurse, and I shall know where you are."

"My lord!" Andrews gasped. "You wouldn't overlook a woman and take
her living from her and send her to starvation!"

"I would take her living from her and send her to starvation
without a shadow of compunction," was the reply made in the fine
gentleman's cultivated voice, "--if she were capable of what you
were capable of tonight. You are, I judge, about forty, and, though
you are lean, you are a powerful woman; the child is, I believe,
barely six." And then, looking down at her through his glass, he
added--to her quite shuddering astonishment--in a tone whose very
softness made it really awful to her, "Damn you! Damn you!"

"I'll--I swear I'll never let myself go again, my lord!" the woman
broke out devoutly.

"I don't think you will. It would cost you too much," he said.

Then he went down the steep, crooked little staircase quite
soundlessly and Andrews, rather white and breathless, went and
packed her trunk. Robin--tired baby as she was--slept warm and
deeply.

CHAPTER XIII

It was no custom of his to outstay other people; in fact, he
usually went away comparatively early. Feather could not imagine
what his reason could be, but she was sure there was a reason.
She was often disturbed by his reasons, and found it difficult to
adjust herself to them. How--even if one had a logically brilliant
mind--could one calculate on a male being, who seemed not exactly
to belong to the race of men.

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