Books: The Head of the House of Coombe

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"What is she doing?" he asked as casually of Dowson.

"She is learning to make pothooks, my lord," Dowson answered.
"She's a child that wants to be learning things. I've taught her
her letters and to spell little words. She's quick--and old enough,
your lordship."

"Learning to read and write!" exclaimed Feather.

"Presumption, I call it. I don't know how to read and write--least
I don't know how to spell. Do you know how to spell, Collie?" to
the young man, whose name was Colin. "Do you, Genevieve? Do you,
Artie?"

"You can't betray me into vulgar boasting," said Collie. "Who does
in these days? Nobody but clerks at Peter Robinson's."

"Lord Coombe does--but that's his tiresome superior way," said
Feather.

"He's nearly forty years older than most of you. That is the
reason," Coombe commented. "Don't deplore your youth and innocence."

They swept through the rooms and examined everything in them.
The truth was that the--by this time well known--fact that the
unexplainable Coombe had built them made them a curiosity, and
a sort of secret source of jokes. The party even mounted to the
upper story to go through the bedrooms, and, it was while they
were doing this, that Coombe chose to linger behind with Dowson.

He remained entirely expressionless for a few moments. Dowson did
not in the least gather whether he meant to speak to her or not.
But he did.

"You meant," he scarcely glanced at her, "that she was old enough
for a governess."

"Yes, my lord," rather breathless in her hurry to speak before
she heard the high heels tapping on the staircase again. "And one
that's a good woman as well as clever, if I may take the liberty.
A good one if--"

"If a good one would take the place?"

Dowson did not attempt refutation or apology. She knew better.

He said no more, but sauntered out of the room.

As he did so, Robin stood up and made the little "charity bob" of
a curtsey which had been part of her nursery education. She was
too old now to have refused him her hand, but he never made any
advances to her. He acknowledged her curtsey with the briefest
nod.

Not three minutes later the high heels came tapping down the
staircase and the small gust of visitors swept away also.

CHAPTER XVI

The interview which took place between Feather and Lord Coombe a
few days later had its own special character.

"A governess will come here tomorrow at eleven o'clock," he said.
"She is a Mademoiselle Valle. She is accustomed to the educating
of young children. She will present herself for your approval.
Benby has done all the rest."

Feather flushed to her fine-spun ash-gold hair.

"What on earth can it matter!" she cried.

"It does not matter to you," he answered; "it chances--for the
time being--to matter to ME."

"Chances!" she flamed forth--it was really a queer little flame of
feeling. "That's it. You don't really care! It's a caprice--just
because you see she is going to be pretty."

"I'll own," he admitted, "that has a great deal to do with it."

"It has everything to do with it," she threw out. "If she had a
snub nose and thick legs you wouldn't care for her at all."

"I don't say that I do care for her," without emotion. "The situation
interests me. Here is an extraordinary little being thrown into
the world. She belongs to nobody. She will have to fight for her
own hand. And she will have to FIGHT, by God! With that dewy lure
in her eyes and her curved pomegranate mouth! She will not know,
but she will draw disaster!"

"Then she had better not be taught anything at all," said Feather.
"It would be an amusing thing to let her grow up without learning
to read or write at all. I know numbers of men who would like the
novelty of it. Girls who know so much are a bore."

"There are a few minor chances she ought to have," said Coombe.
"A governess is one. Mademoiselle Valle will be here at eleven."

"I can't see that she promises to be such a beauty," fretted
Feather. "She's the kind of good looking child who might grow up
into a fat girl with staring black eyes like a barmaid."

"Occasionally pretty women do abhor their growing up daughters,"
commented Coombe letting his eyes rest on her interestedly.

"I don't abhor her," with pathos touched with venom. "But a big,
lumping girl hanging about ogling and wanting to be ogled when she
is passing through that silly age! And sometimes you speak to me
as a man speaks to his wife when he is tired of her."

"I beg your pardon," Coombe said. "You make me feel like a person
who lives over a shop at Knightsbridge, or in bijou mansion off
Regent's Park."

But he was deeply aware that, as an outcome of the anomalous
position he occupied, he not infrequently felt exactly this.

That a governess chosen by Coombe--though he would seem not to
appear in the matter--would preside over the new rooms, Feather
knew without a shadow of doubt.

A certain almost silent and always high-bred dominance over her
existence she accepted as the inevitable, even while she fretted
helplessly. Without him, she would be tossed, a broken butterfly,
into the gutter. She knew her London. No one would pick her up
unless to break her into smaller atoms and toss her away again.
The freedom he allowed her after all was wonderful. It was because
he disdained interference.

But there was a line not to be crossed--there must not even be an
attempt at crossing it. Why he cared about that she did not know.

"You must be like Caesar's wife," he said rather grimly, after an
interview in which he had given her a certain unsparing warning.

"And I am nobody's wife. What did Caesar's wife do?" she asked.

"Nothing." And he told her the story and, when she had heard him
tell it, she understood certain things clearly.

Mademoiselle Valle was an intelligent, mature Frenchwoman. She
presented herself to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless for inspection and, in
ten minutes, realized that the power to inspect and sum up existed
only on her own side. This pretty woman neither knew what inquiries
to make nor cared for such replies as were given. Being swift to
reason and practical in deduction, Mademoiselle Valle did not make
the blunder of deciding that this light presence argued that she
would be under no supervision more serious. The excellent Benby,
one was made aware, acted and the excellent Benby, one was made
aware, acted under clearly defined orders. Milord Coombe--among
other things the best dressed and perhaps the least comprehended
man in London--was concerned in this, though on what grounds
practical persons could not explain to themselves. His connection
with the narrow house on the right side of the right street
was entirely comprehensible. The lenient felt nothing blatant or
objectionable about it. Mademoiselle Valle herself was not disturbed
by mere rumour. The education, manner and morals of the little
girl she could account for. These alone were to be her affair, and
she was competent to undertake their superintendence.

Therefore, she sat and listened with respectful intelligence to
the birdlike chatter of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. (What a pretty woman!
The silhouette of a jeune fille!)

Mrs. Gareth-Lawless felt that, on her part, she had done all that
was required of her.

"I'm afraid she's rather a dull child, Mademoiselle," she said in
farewell. "You know children's ways and you'll understand what I
mean. She has a trick of staring and saying nothing. I confess I
wish she wasn't dull."

"It is impossible, madame, that she should be dull," said
Mademoiselle, with an agreeably implicating smile. "Oh, but quite
impossible! We shall see."

Not many days had passed before she had seen much. At the outset,
she recognized the effect of the little girl with the slender legs
and feet and the dozen or so of points which go to make a beauty.
The intense eyes first and the deeps of them. They gave one
furiously to think before making up one's mind. Then she noted the
perfection of the rooms added to the smartly inconvenient little
house. Where had the child lived before the addition had been
built? Thought and actual architectural genius only could have done
this. Light and even as much sunshine as London will vouchsafe,
had been arranged for. Comfort, convenience, luxury, had been
provided. Perfect colour and excellent texture had evoked actual
charm. Its utter unlikeness to the quarters London usually gives
to children, even of the fortunate class, struck Mademoiselle Valle
at once. Madame Gareth-Lawless had not done this. Who then, had?

The good Dowson she at once affiliated with. She knew the excellence
of her type as it had revealed itself to her in the best peasant
class. Trustworthy, simple, but of kindly, shrewd good sense and
with the power to observe. Dowson was not a chatterer or given
to gossip, but, as a silent observer, she would know many things
and, in time, when they had become friendly enough to be fully
aware that each might trust the other, gentle and careful talk
would end in unconscious revelation being made by Dowson.

That the little girl was almost singularly attached to her
nurse, she had marked early. There was something unusual in her
manifestations of her feeling. The intense eyes followed the woman
often, as if making sure of her presence and reality. The first
day of Mademoiselle's residence in the place she saw the little
thing suddenly stop playing with her doll and look at Dowson
earnestly for several moments. Then she left her seat and went to
the kind creature's side.

"I want to KISS you, Dowie," she said.

"To be sure, my lamb," answered Dowson, and, laying down her
mending, she gave her a motherly hug. After which Robin went back
contentedly to her play.

The Frenchwoman thought it a pretty bit of childish affectionateness.
But it happened more than once during the day, and at night
Mademoiselle commented upon it.

"She has an affectionate heart, the little one," she remarked. "Madame,
her mother, is so pretty and full of gaieties and pleasures that
I should not have imagined she had much time for caresses and the
nursery."

Even by this time Dowson had realized that with Mademoiselle she
was upon safe ground and was in no danger of betraying herself
to a gossip. She quietly laid down her sewing and looked at her
companion with grave eyes.

"Her mother has never kissed her in her life that I am aware of,"
she said.

"Has never--!" Mademoiselle ejaculated. "Never!"

"Just as you see her, she is, Mademoiselle," Dowson said. "Any
sensible woman would know, when she heard her talk about her
child. I found it all out bit by bit when first I came here. I'm
going to talk plain and have done with it. Her first six years
she spent in a sort of dog kennel on the top floor of this house.
No sun, no real fresh air. Two little holes that were dingy and
gloomy to dull a child's senses. Not a toy or a bit of colour
or a picture, but clothes fine enough for Buckingham Palace
children--and enough for six. Fed and washed and taken out every
day to be shown off. And a bad nurse, Miss--a bad one that kept
her quiet by pinching her black and blue."

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! That little angel!" cried Mademoiselle,
covering her eyes.

Dowson hastily wiped her own eyes. She had shed many a motherly
tear over the child. It was a relief to her to open her heart to
a sympathizer.

"Black and blue!" she repeated. "And laughing and dancing and all
sorts of fast fun going on in the drawing-rooms." She put out her
hand and touched Mademoiselle's arm quite fiercely. "The little
thing didn't know she HAD a mother! She didn't know what the word
meant. I found that out by her innocent talk. She used to call
HER 'The Lady Downstairs'."

"Mon Dieu!" cried the Frenchwoman again. "What a woman!"

"She first heard of mothers from a little boy she met in the Square
Gardens. He was the first child she had been allowed to play with.
He was a nice child and he had a good mother. I only got it bit
by bit when she didn't know how much she was telling me. He told
her about mothers and he kissed her--for the first time in her
life. She didn't understand but it warmed her little heart. She's
never forgotten."

Mademoiselle even started slightly in her chair. Being a clever
Frenchwoman she felt drama and all its subtle accompaniments.

"Is that why----" she began.

"It is," answered Dowson, stoutly. "A kiss isn't an ordinary thing
to her. It means something wonderful. She's got into the way of
loving me, bless her, and every now and then, it's my opinion,
she suddenly remembers her lonely days when she didn't know what
love was. And it just wells up in her little heart and she wants
to kiss me. She always says it that way, 'Dowie, I want to KISS
you,' as if it was something strange and, so to say, sacred. She
doesn't know it means almost nothing to most people. That's why
I always lay down my work and hug her close."

"You have a good heart--a GOOD one!" said Mademoiselle with strong
feeling.

Then she put a question:

"Who was the little boy?"

"He was a relation of--his lordship's."

"His lordship's?" cautiously.

"The Marquis. Lord Coombe."

There was a few minutes' silence. Both women were thinking of a
number of things and each was asking herself how much it would be
wise to say.

It was Dowson who made her decision first, and this time, as
before, she laid down her work. What she had to convey was the
thing which, above all others, the Frenchwoman must understand if
she was to be able to use her power to its best effect.

"A woman in my place hears enough talk," was her beginning. "Servants
are given to it. The Servants' Hall is their theatre. It doesn't
matter whether tales are true or not, so that they're spicy. But
it's been my way to credit just as much as I see and know and to
say little about that. If a woman takes a place in a house, let her
go or stay as suits her best, but don't let her stay and either
complain or gossip. My business here is Miss Robin, and I've found
out for myself that there's just one person that, in a queer,
unfeeling way of his own, has a fancy for looking after her. I
say 'unfeeling' because he never shows any human signs of caring
for the child himself. But if there's a thing that ought to be
done for her and a body can contrive to let him know it's needed,
it'll be done. Downstairs' talk that I've seemed to pay no attention
to has let out that it was him that walked quietly upstairs to
the Nursery, where he'd never set foot before, and opened the door
on Andrews pinching the child. She packed her box and left that
night. He inspected the nurseries and, in a few days, an architect
was planning these rooms,--for Miss Robin and for no one else,
though there was others wanted them. It was him that told me to
order her books and playthings--and not let her know it because
she hates him. It was him I told she needed a governess. And he
found you."

Mademoiselle Valle had listened with profound attention. Here she
spoke.

"You say continually 'he' or 'him'. He is--?"

"Lord Coombe. I'm not saying I've seen much of him. Considering--"
Dowson paused--"it's queer how seldom he comes here. He goes
abroad a good deal. He's mixed up with the highest and it's said
he's in favour because he's satirical and clever. He's one that's
gossiped about and he cares nothing for what's said. What business
of mine is it whether or not he has all sorts of dens on the
Continent where he goes to racket. He might be a bishop for all I
see. And he's the only creature in this world of the Almighty's
that remembers that child's a human being. Just him--Lord Coombe.
There, Mademoiselle,--I've said a good deal."

More and more interestedly had the Frenchwoman listened and with
an increasing hint of curiosity in her intelligent eyes. She
pressed Dowson's needle-roughened fingers warmly.

"You have not said too much. It is well that I should know this
of this gentleman. As you say, he is a man who is much discussed.
I myself have heard much of him--but of things connected with
another part of his character. It is true that he is in favour
with great personages. It is because they are aware that he has
observed much for many years. He is light and ironic, but he tells
truths which sometimes startle those who hear them."

"Jennings tells below stairs that he says things it's queer for a
lord to say. Jennings is a sharp young snip and likes to pick up
things to repeat. He believes that his lordship's idea is that
there's a time coming when the high ones will lose their places
and thrones and kings will be done away with. I wouldn't like to
go that far myself," said Dowson, gravely, "but I must say that
there's not that serious respect paid to Royalty that there was
in my young days. My word! When Queen Victoria was in her prime,
with all her young family around her,--their little Royal Highnesses
that were princes in their Highland kilts and the princesses
in their crinolines and hats with drooping ostrich feathers and
broad satin streamers--the people just went wild when she went to
a place to unveil anything!"

"When the Empress Eugenie and the Prince Imperial appeared, it was
the same thing," said Mademoiselle, a trifle sadly. "One recalls
it now as a dream passed away--the Champs Elysees in the afternoon
sunlight--the imperial carriage and the glittering escort trotting
gaily--the beautiful woman with the always beautiful costumes--her
charming smile--the Emperor, with his waxed moustache and saturnine
face! It meant so much and it went so quickly. One moment," she made
a little gesture, "and it is gone--forever! An Empire and all the
splendour of it! Two centuries ago it could not have disappeared
so quickly. But now the world is older. It does not need toys
so much. A Republic is the people--and there are more people than
kings."

"It's things like that his lordship says, according to Jennings,"
said Dowson. "Jennings is never quite sure he's in earnest. He
has a satirical way--And the company always laugh."

Mademoiselle had spoken thoughtfully and as if half to her inner
self instead of to Dowson. She added something even more thoughtfully
now.

"The same kind of people laughed before the French Revolution,"
she murmured.

"I'm not scholar enough to know much about that--that was a long
time ago, wasn't it?" Dowson remarked.

"A long time ago," said Mademoiselle.

Dowson's reply was quite free from tragic reminiscence.

"Well, I must say, I like a respectable Royal Family myself," she
observed. "There's something solid and comfortable about it--besides
the coronations and weddings and procession with all the pictures
in the Illustrated London News. Give me a nice, well-behaved Royal
Family."

CHAPTER XVII

"A nice, well-behaved Royal Family." There had been several of them
in Europe for some time. An appreciable number of them had prided
themselves, even a shade ostentatiously, upon their domesticity.
The moral views of a few had been believed to border upon the
high principles inscribed in copy books. Some, however, had not.
A more important power or so had veered from the exact following
of these commendable axioms--had high-handedly behaved according
to their royal will and tastes. But what would you? With a nation
making proper obeisance before one from infancy; with trumpets
blaring forth joyous strains upon one's mere appearance on any
scene; with the proudest necks bowed and the most superb curtseys
swept on one's mere passing by, with all the splendour of the Opera
on gala night rising to its feet to salute one's mere entry into
the royal or imperial box, while the national anthem bursts forth
with adulatory and triumphant strains, only a keen and subtle
sense of humour, surely, could curb errors of judgment arising
from naturally mistaken views of one's own importance and value to
the entire Universe. Still there remained the fact that a number
of them WERE well-behaved and could not be complained of as bearing
any likeness to the bloodthirsty tyrants and oppressors of past
centuries.

The Head of the House of Coombe had attended the Court Functions
and been received at the palaces and castles of most of them.
For in that aspect of his character of which Mademoiselle Valle
had heard more than Dowson, he was intimate with well-known and
much-observed personages and places. A man born among those whose
daily life builds, as it passes, at least a part of that which
makes history and so records itself, must needs find companions,
acquaintances, enemies, friends of varied character, and if he
be, by chance, a keen observer of passing panoramas, can lack no
material for private reflection and the accumulation of important
facts.

That part of his existence which connected itself with the slice
of a house on the right side of the Mayfair street was but a
small one. A feature of the untranslatableness of his character
was that he was seen there but seldom. His early habit of crossing
the Channel frequently had gradually reestablished itself as years
passed. Among his acquaintances his "Saturday to Monday visits" to
continental cities remote or unremote were discussed with humour.
Possibly, upon these discussions, were finally founded the rumours
of which Dowson had heard but which she had impartially declined
to "credit". Lively conjecture inevitably figured largely in their
arguments and, when persons of unrestrained wit devote their
attention to airy persiflage, much may be included in their points
of view.

Of these conjectural discussions no one was more clearly aware
than Coombe himself, and the finished facility--even felicity--of
his evasion of any attempt at delicately valued cross examination
was felt to be inhumanly exasperating.

In one of the older Squares which still remained stately, through
the splendour of modern fashion had waned in its neighbourhood,
there was among the gloomy, though imposing, houses one in particular
upon whose broad doorsteps--years before the Gareth-Lawlesses had
appeared in London--Lord Coombe stood oftener than upon any other.
At times his brougham waited before it for hours, and, at others,
he appeared on foot and lifted the heavy knocker with a special
accustomed knock recognized at once by any footman in waiting in
the hall, who, hearing it, knew that his mistress--the old Dowager
Duchess of Darte--would receive this visitor, if no other.

The interior of the house was of the type which, having from the
first been massive and richly sombre, had mellowed into a darker
sombreness and richness as it had stood unmoved amid London years
and fogs. The grandeur of decoration and furnishing had been too
solid to depreciate through decay, and its owner had been of no
fickle mind led to waver in taste by whims of fashion. The rooms
were huge and lofty, the halls and stairways spacious, the fireplaces
furnished with immense grates of glittering steel, which held in
winter beds of scarlet glowing coal, kept scarlet glowing by a
special footman whose being, so to speak, depended on his fidelity
to his task.

There were many rooms whose doors were kept closed because they
were apparently never used; there were others as little used but
thrown open, warmed and brightened with flowers each day, because
the Duchess chose to catch glimpses of their cheerfulness as she
passed them on her way up or downstairs. The house was her own
property, and, after her widowhood, when it was emptied of her
children by their admirable marriages, and she herself became Dowager
and, later, a confirmed rheumatic invalid, it became doubly her
home and was governed by her slightest whim. She was not indeed
an old woman of caprices, but her tastes, not being those of the
later day in which she now lived, were regarded as a shade eccentric
being firmly defined.

"I will not have my house glaring with electricity as if it were
a shop. In my own rooms I will be lighted by wax candles. Large
ones--as many as you please," she said. "I will not be 'rung up'
by telephone. My servants may if they like. It is not my affair
to deprive them of the modern inconveniences, if they find them
convenient. My senility does not take the form of insisting that
the world shall cease to revolve upon its axis. It formed that
habit without my assistance, and it is to be feared that it would
continue it in the face of my protests."

It was, in fact, solely that portion of the world affecting herself
alone which she preferred to retain as it had been in the brilliant
early years of her life. She had been a great beauty and also
a wit in the Court over which Queen Victoria had reigned. She had
possessed the delicate high nose, the soft full eyes, the "polished
forehead," the sloping white shoulders from which scarves floated
or India shawls gracefully drooped in the Books of Beauty of the
day. Her carriage had been noble, her bloom perfect, and, when
she had driven through the streets "in attendance" on her Royal
Mistress, the populace had always chosen her as "the pick of
'em all". Young as she had then been, elderly statesmen had found
her worth talking to, not as a mere beauty in her teens, but as a
creature of singular brilliance and clarity of outlook upon a world
which might have dazzled her youth. The most renowned among them
had said of her, before she was twenty, that she would live to be
one of the cleverest women in Europe, and that she had already the
logical outlook of a just man of fifty.

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