Anthony Trollope - "The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box"

Catherine Helen Spence(1825 1910) - "Mr. Hogarth's Will"

Samuel P. Orth - "The Armies of Labor"

Anatole France - "The Red Lily, v3"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Head of the House of Coombe

F >> Frances Hodgson Burnett >> The Head of the House of Coombe




She had not had any food since the afternoon cap of tea and she
began to feel the need of it. If she became faint-! She lifted
her face desperately as she said it, and saw the immense blue
darkness, powdered with millions of stars and curving over her--as
it curved over the hideous house and all the rest of the world.
How high--how immense--how fathomlessly still it was--how it seemed
as if there could be nothing else--that nothing else could be
real! Her hands were clenched together hard and fiercely, as she
scrambled to her knees and uttered a of prayer--not a child's--rather
the cry of a young Fury making a demand.

"Perhaps a girl is Nothing," she cried, "-a girl locked up in a
room! But, perhaps, she is Something--she may he real too! Save
me-save me! But if you won't save me, let me be killed!"

She knelt silent after it for a few minutes and then she sank down
and lay on the floor with her face on her arm.

How it was possible that even young and worn-out as she was, such
peace as sleep could overcome her at such a time, one cannot say.
But in the midst of her torment she was asleep.

But it was not for long. She wakened with a start and sprang to
her feet shivering. The carriages were still coming and going with
guests for the big house opposite. It could not be late, though
she seemed to have been in the place for years--long enough to feel
that it was the hideous centre of the whole earth and all sane and
honest memories were a dream. She thought she would begin to walk
up and down the room.

But a sound she heard at this very instant made her stand stock
still. She had known there would be a sound at last--she had
waited for it all the time--she had known, of course, that it would
come, but she had not even tried to guess whether she would hear
it early or late. It would be the sound of the turning of the
handle of the locked door. It had come. There it was! The click
of the lock first and then the creak of the turned handle!

She went to the window again and stood with her back against it,
so that her body was outlined against the faint light. Would the
person come in the dark, or would he carry a light? Something
began to whirl in her brain. What was the low, pumping thump she
seemed to hear and feel at the same time? It was the awful thumping
of her heart.

The door opened--not stealthily, but quite in the ordinary way.
The person who came in did not move stealthily either. He came
in as though he were making an evening call. How tall and straight
his body was, with a devilish elegance of line against the background
of light in the hall. She thought she saw a white flower on his
lapel as his overcoat fell back. The leering footman had opened
the for him.

"Turn on the lights." A voice she knew gave the order, the leering
footman obeyed, touching a spot high on the wall.

She had vaguely and sickeningly felt almost sure that it would
be either Count von Hillern or Lord Coombe--and it was not Count
von Hillern! The cold wicked face--the ironic eyes which made her
creep--the absurd, elderly perfection of dress--even the flawless
flower-made her flash quake with repulsion. If Satan came into
the room, he might look like that and make one's revolting being
quake so.

"I thought--it might be you," the strange girl's voice said to
him aloud.

"Robin," he said.

He was moving towards her and, as she threw out her madly clenched
little hands, he stopped and drew back.

"Why did you think I might come?" he asked.

"Because you are the kind of a man who would do the things only
devils would do. I have hated-hated-hated you since I was a baby.
Come and kill me if you like. Call the footman back to help you,
if yon like. I can't get away. Kill me--kill me--kill me!"

She was lost in her frenzy and looked as if she were mad.

One moment he hesitated, and then he pointed politely to the sofa.

"Go and sit down, please," he suggested. It was no more then a
courteous suggestion. "I shall remain here. I have no desire to
approach you--if you'll pardon my saying so."

But she would not leave the window.

"It is natural that you should be overwrought," he said.

"This is a damnable thing. You are too young to know the worst of
it."

"You are the worst of it!" she cried. "You."

"No" as the chill of his even voice struck her, she wondered if
he were really human. "Von Hillern would have been the worst of
it. I stopped him at the front door and knew how to send him away.
Now, listen, my good child. Hate me as ferociously as you like.
That is a detail. You are in the house of a woman whose name
stands for shame and infamy and crime."

"What are YOU doing in it--" she cried again, "--in a place where
girls are trapped-and locked up in top rooms--to be killed?"

"I came to take you away. I wish to do it quietly. It would be
rather horrible if the public discovered that you have spent some
hours here. If I had not slipped in when they were expecting von
Hillern, and if the servants were not accustomed to the quiet
entrance of well dressed men, I could not have got in without an
open row and the calling of the policemen,--which I wished to avoid.
Also, the woman downstairs knows me and realized that I was not
lying when I said the house was surrounded and she was on the
point of being 'run in'. She is a woman of broad experience, and
at once knew that she might as well keep quiet."

Despite his cold eyes and the bad smile she hated, despite his
almost dandified meticulous attire and the festal note of his
white flower, which she hated with the rest--he was, perhaps, not
lying to her. Perhaps for the sake of her mother he had chosen
to save her--and, being the man he was, he had been able to make
use of his past experiences.

She began to creep away from the window, and she felt her legs,
all at once, shaking under her. By the time she reached the
Chesterfield sofa she fell down by it and began to cry. A sort of
hysteria seized her, and she shook from head to foot and clutched
at the upholstery with weak hands which clawed. She was, indeed,
an awful, piteous sight. He was perhaps not lying, but she was
afraid of him yet.

"I told the men who are waiting outside that if I did not bring
you out in half an hour, they were to break into the house. I do
not wish them to break in. We have not any time to spare. What
you are doing is quite natural, but you must try and get up." He
stood by her and said this looking down at her slender, wrung body
and lovely groveling head.

He took a flask out of his overcoat pocket--and it was a gem of
goldsmith's art. He poured some wine into its cup and bent forward
to hold it out to her.

"Drink this and try to stand on your feet," he said. He knew better
than to try to help her to rise--to touch her in any way. Seeing
to what the past hours had reduced her, he knew better. There was
mad fear in her eyes when she lifted her head and threw out her
hand again.

"No! No!" she cried out. "No, I will drink nothing!" He understood
at once and threw the wine into the grate.

"I see," he said. "You might think it might be drugged. You are
right. It might be. I ought to have thought of that." He returned
the flask to his pocket. "Listen again. You must. The time will
soon be up and we must not let those fellows break in and make
a row that will collect a crowd We must go at once. Mademoiselle
Valle is waiting for you in my carriage outside. You will not be
afraid to drink wine she gives you."

"Mademoiselle!" she stammered.

"Yes. In my carriage, which is not fifty yards from the house. Can
you stand on your feet?" She got up and stood but she was still
shuddering all over.

"Can you walk downstairs? If you cannot, will you let me carry
you? I am strong enough-in spite of my years."

"I can walk," she whispered.

"Will you take my arm?"

She looked at him for a moment with awful, broken-spirited eyes.

"Yes. I will take your arm."

He offered it to her with rigid punctiliousness of manner. He
did not even look at her. He led her out of the room and down the
three flights of stairs. As they passed by the open drawing-room
door, the lovely woman who had called herself Lady Etynge stood
near it and watched them with eyes no longer gentle.

"I have something to say to you, Madam," he said; "When I place
this young lady in the hands of her governess, I will come back
and say it."

"Is her governess Fraulein Hirsch?" asked the woman lightly.

"No. She is doubtless on her way back to Berlin--and von Hillern
will follow her."

There was only the first floor flight of stairs now. Robin could
scarcely see her way. But Lord Coombe held her up firmly and, in
a few moments more, the leering footman, grown pale, opened the
large door, they crossed the pavement to the carriage, and she
was helped in and fell, almost insensible, across Mademoiselle
Valle's lap, and was caught in a strong arm which shook as she
did.

"Ma cherie," she heard, "The Good God! Oh, the good--good God!--And
Lord Coombe! Lord Coombe!"

Coombe had gone back to the house. Four men returned with him, two
in plain clothes and two heavily-built policemen. They remained
below, but Coombe went up the staircase with the swift lightness
of a man of thirty.

He merely stood upon the threshold of the drawing-room. This was
what he said, and his face was entirely white his eyes appalling.

"My coming back to speak to you is--superfluous--and the result of
pure fury. I allow it to myself as mere shameless indulgence. More
is known against you than this--things which have gone farther and
fared worse. You are not young and you are facing years of life
in prison. Your head will be shaved--your hands worn and blackened
and your nails broken with the picking of oakum. You will writhe
in hopeless degradation until you are done for. You will have
time, in the night blackness if of your cell, to remember--to see
faces--to hear cries. Women such as you should learn what hell on
earth means. You will learn."

When he ended, the woman hung with her back to the wall she had
staggered against, her mouth opening and shutting helplessly but
letting forth no sound.

He took out an exquisitely fresh handkerchief and touched his
forehead because it was damp. His eyes were still appalling, but
his voice suddenly dropped and changed.

"I have allowed myself to feel like a madman," he said. "It has
been a rich experience--good for such a soul as I own."

He went downstairs and walked home because his carriage had taken
Robin and Mademoiselle back to the slice of a house.






CHAPTER XXIV





Von Hillern made no further calls on Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. His return
to Berlin was immediate and Fraulein Hirsch came no more to give
lessons in German. Later, Coombe learned from the mam with the
steady, blunt-featured face, that she had crossed the Channel on
a night boat not many hours after Von Hillern had walked away from
Berford Place. The exact truth was that she had been miserably
prowling about the adjacent streets, held in the neighbourhood
by some self-torturing morbidness, half thwarted helpless passion,
half triumphing hatred of the young thing she had betrayed. Up
and down the streets she had gone, round and round, wringing her
lean fingers together and tasting on her lips the salt of tears
which rolled down her cheeks--tears of torment and rage.

There was the bitterness of death in what, by a mere trick of
chance, came about. As she turned a corner telling herself for
the hundredth time that she must go home, she found herself face
to face with a splendid figure swinging furiously along. She
staggered at the sight of the tigerish rage in the white face she
recognized with a gasp. It was enough merely to behold it. He had
met with some disastrous humiliation!

As for him, the direct intervention of that Heaven whose special
care he was, had sent him a woman to punish--which, so far, was at
least one thing arranged as it should be. He knew so well how he
could punish her with his mere contempt and displeasure--as he
could lash a spaniel crawling at his feet. He need not deign to
tell her what had happened, and he did not. He merely drew back
and stood in stiff magnificence looking down at her.

"It is through some folly of yours," he dropped in a voice of
vitriol. "Women are always foolish. They cannot hold their tongues
or think clearly. Return to Berlin at once. You are not of those
whose conduct I can commend to be trusted in the future."

He was gone before she could have spoken even if she had dared.
Sobbing gasps caught her breath as she stood and watched him
striding pitilessly and superbly away with, what seemed to her
abject soul, the swing and tread of a martial god. Her streaming
tears tasted salt indeed. She might never see him again--even from
a distance. She would be disgraced and flung aside as a blundering
woman. She had obeyed his every word and done her straining best,
as she had licked the dust at his feet--but he would never cast a
glance at her in the future or utter to her the remotest word of
his high commands. She so reeled as she went her wretched way that
a good-natured policeman said to her as he passed,

"Steady on, my girl. Best get home and go to bed."

To Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was stated by Coombe that Fraulein
Hirsch had been called back to Germany by family complications.
That august orders should recall Count Von Hillern, was easily
understood. Such magnificent persons never shone upon society for
any length of time.

That Feather had been making a country home visit when her daughter
had faced tragedy was considered by Lord Coombe as a fortunate
thing.

"We will not alarm Mrs. Gareth-Lawless by telling her what has
occurred," he said to Mademoiselle Valle. "What we most desire
is that no one shall suspect that the hideous thing took place. A
person who was forgetful or careless might, unintentionally, let
some word escape which--"

What he meant, and what Mademoiselle Valle knew he meant--also what
he knew she knew he meant--was that a woman, who was a heartless
fool, without sympathy or perception, would not have the delicacy
to feel that the girl must be shielded, and might actually see a
sort of ghastly joke in a story of Mademoiselle Valle's sacrosanct
charge simply walking out of her enshrining arms into such a "galere"
as the most rackety and adventurous of pupils could scarcely have
been led into. Such a point of view would have been quite possible
for Feather--even probable, in the slightly spiteful attitude of
her light mind.

"She was away from home. Only you and I and Dowie know," answered
Mademoiselle.

"Let us remain the only persons who know," said Coombe. "Robin
will say nothing."

They both knew that. She had been feverish and ill for several
days and Dowie had kept her in bed saying that she had caught cold.
Neither of the two women had felt it possible to talk to her. She
had lain staring with a deadly quiet fixedness straight before
her, saying next to nothing. Now and then she shuddered, and once
she broke into a mad, heart-broken fit of crying which she seemed
unable to control.

"Everything is changed," she said to Dowie and Mademoiselle who
sat on either side of her bed, sometimes pressing her head down
onto a kind shoulder, sometimes holding her hand and patting it.
"I shall be afraid of everybody forever. People who have sweet
faces and kind voices will make me shake all over. Oh! She seemed
so kind--so kind!"

It was Dowie whose warm shoulder her face hidden on this time,
and Dowie was choked with sobs she dared not let loose. She could
only squeeze hard and kiss the "silk curls all in a heap"--poor,
tumbled curls, no longer a child's!

"Aye, my lamb!" she managed to say. "Dowie's poor pet lamb!"

"It's the knowing that kind eyes--kind ones--!" she broke off,
panting. "It's the KNOWING! I didn't know before! I knew nothing.
Now, it's all over. I'm afraid of all the world!"

"Not all, cherie," breathed Mademoiselle.

She sat upright against her pillows. The mirror on a dressing
table reflected her image--her blooming tear-wet youth, framed in
the wonderful hair falling a shadow about her. She stared at the
reflection hard and questioningly.

"I suppose," her voice was pathos itself in its helplessness, "it
is because what you once told me about being pretty, is true. A
girl who looks like THAT," pointing her finger at the glass, "need
not think she can earn her own living. I loathe it," in fierce
resentment at some bitter injustice. "It is like being a person
under a curse!"

At this Dowie broke down openly and let her tears run fast. "No,
no! You mustn't say it or think it, my dearie!" she wept. "It
might call down a blight on it. You a young thing like a garden
flower! And someone--somewhere--God bless him--that some day'll
glory in it--and you'll glory too. Somewhere he is--somewhere!"

"Let none of them look at me!" cried Robin. "I loather them, too.
I hate everything--and everybody--but you two--just you two."

Mademoiselle took her in her arms this time when she sobbed again.
Mademoiselle knew how at this hour it seemed to her that all her
world was laid bare forever more. When the worst of the weeping
was over and she lay quiet, but for the deep catching breaths
which lifted her breast in slow, childish shudders at intervals,
she held Mademoiselle Valle's hand and looked at her with a faint,
wry smile.

"You were too kind to tell me what a stupid little fool I was when
I talked to you about taking a place in an office!" she said. "I
know now that you would not have allowed me to do the things I
was so sure I could do. It was only my ignorance and conceit. I
can't answer advertisements. Any bad person can say what they choose
in an advertisement. If that woman had advertised, she would have
described Helene. And there was no Helene." One of the shuddering
catches of her breath broke in here. After it, she said, with
a pitiful girlishness of regret: "I--I could SEE Helene. I have
known so few people well enough to love them. No girls at all. I
though--perhaps--we should begin to LOVE each other. I can't bear
to think of that--that she never was alive at all. It leaves a
sort of empty place."

When she had sufficiently recovered herself to be up again,
Mademoiselle Valle said to her that she wished her to express her
gratitude to Lord Coombe.

"I will if you wish it," she answered.

"Don't you feel that it is proper that you should do it? Do you
not wish it yourself?" inquired Mademoiselle. Robin looked down
at the carpet for some seconds.

"I know," she at last admitted, "that it is proper. But I don't
wish to do it."

"No?" said Mademoiselle Valle.

Robin raised her eyes from the carpet and fixed them on her.

"It is because of--reasons," she said. "It is part of the horror
I want to forget. Even you mayn't know what it has done to me.
Perhaps I am turning into a girl with a bad mind. Bad thoughts keep
swooping down on me--like great black ravens. Lord Coombe saved
me, but I think hideous things about him. I heard Andrews say he
was bad when I was too little to know what it meant. Now, I KNOW,
I remember that HE knew because he chose to know--of his own free
will. He knew that woman and she knew him. HOW did he know her?"
She took a forward step which brought her nearer to Mademoiselle.
"I never told you but I will tell you now," she confessed, "When
the door opened and I saw him standing against the light I--I did
not think he had come to save me."

"MON DIEU!" breathed Mademoiselle in soft horror.

"He knows I am pretty. He is an old man but he knows. Fraulein
Hirsch once made me feel actually sick by telling me, in her meek,
sly, careful way, that he liked beautiful girls and the people
said he wanted a young wife and had his eye on me. I was rude to
her because it made me so furious. HOW did he know that woman so
well? You see how bad I have been made!"

"He knows nearly all Europe. He has seen the dark corners as well
as the bright places. Perhaps he has saved other girls from her.
He brought her to punishment, and was able to do it because he
has been on her track for some time. You are not bad--but unjust.
You have had too great a shock to be able to reason sanely just
yet."

"I think he will always make me creep a little," said Robin, "but
I will say anything you think I ought to say."

On an occasion when Feather had gone again to make a visit in the
country, Mademoiselle came into the sitting room with the round
window in which plants grew, and Coombe followed her. Robin looked
up from her book with a little start and then stood up.

"I have told Lord Coombe that you wish--that I wish you to thank
him," Mademoiselle Valle said.

"I came on my own part to tell you that any expression of gratitude
is entirely unnecessary," said Coombe.

"I MUST be grateful. I AM grateful." Robin's colour slowly faded
as she said it. This was the first time she had seen him since he
had supported her down the staircase which mounted to a place of
hell.

"There is nothing to which I should object so much as being regarded
as a benefactor," he answered definitely, but with entire lack of
warmth. "The role does not suit me. Being an extremely bad man," he
said it as one who speaks wholly without prejudice, "my experience
is wide. I chance to know things. The woman who called herself
Lady Etynge is of a class which--which does not count me among its
clients. I had put certain authorities on her track--which was how
I discovered your whereabouts when Mademoiselle Valle told me that
you had gone to take tea with her. Mere chance you see. Don't be
grateful to me, I beg of you, but to Mademoiselle Valle."

"Why," faltered Robin, vaguely repelled as much as ever, "did it
matter to you?"

"Because," he answered--Oh, the cold inhumanness of his gray
eye!--"you happened to live in--this house."

"I thought that was perhaps the reason," she said--and she felt
that he made her "creep" even a shade more.

"I beg your pardon," she added, suddenly remembering, "Please sit
down."

"Thank you," as he sat. "I will because I have something more to
say to you."

Robin and Mademoiselle seated themselves also and listened.

"There are many hideous aspects of existence which are not considered
necessary portions of a girl's education," he began.

"They ought to be," put in Robin, and her voice was as hard as it
was young.

It was a long and penetrating look he gave her.

"I am not an instructor of Youth. I have not been called upon to
decide. I do not feel it my duty to go even now into detail."

"You need not," broke in the hard young voice. "I know everything
in the world. I'm BLACK with knowing."

"Mademoiselle will discuss that point with you. What you have,
unfortunately, been forced to learn is that it is not safe for a
girl--even a girl without beauty--to act independently of older
people, unless she has found out how to guard herself against--devils."
The words broke from him sharply, with a sudden incongruous hint
of ferocity which was almost startling. "You have been frightened,"
he said next, "and you have discovered that there are devils, but
you have not sufficient experience to guard yourself against them."

"I have been so frightened that I shall be a coward--a coward all
my life. I shall be afraid of every face I see--the more to be
trusted they look, the more I shall fear them. I hate every one
in the world!"

Her quite wonderful eyes--so they struck Lord Coombe--flamed with
a child's outraged anguish. A thunder shower of tears broke and
rushed down her cheeks, and he rose and, walking quietly to the window
full of flowers, stood with his back to her for a few moments. She
neither cared nor knew whether it was because her hysteric emotion
bored or annoyed him, or because he had the taste to realize that
she would not wish to be looked at. Unhappy youth can feel no law
but its own.

But all was over during the few moments, and he turned and walked
back to his chair.

"You want very much to do some work which will insure your entire
independence--to take some situation which will support you without
aid from others? You are not yet prepared to go out and take the
first place which offers. You have been--as you say--too hideously
frightened, and you know there are dangers in wandering about
unguided. Mademoiselle Valle," turning his head, "perhaps you
will tell her what you know of the Duchess of Darte?"

Upon which, Mademoiselle Valle took hold of her hand and entered
into a careful explanation.

"She is a great personage of whom there can be no doubt. She
was a lady of the Court. She is of advanced years and an invalid
and has a liking for those who are pretty and young. She desires
a companion who is well educated and young and fresh of mind. The
companion who had been with her for many years recently died. If
you took her place you would live with her in her town house and
go with her to the country after the season. Your salary would
be liberal and no position could be more protected and dignified.
I have seen and talked to her grace myself, and she will allow me
to take you to her, if you desire to go."