Books: The Head of the House of Coombe

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

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It cannot be said that as the years passed he quite enjoyed the
fact that he knew he was rarely spoken of to a stranger without
its being mentioned that he was the most perfectly dressed man in
London. He rather detested the idea though he was aware that the
truth was unimpeachable. The perfection of his accompaniments had
arisen in his youth from a secret feeling for fitness and harmony.
Texture and colour gave him almost abnormal pleasure. His expression
of this as a masculine creature had its limits which resulted in
a concentration on perfection. Even at five-and-twenty however he
had never been called a dandy and even at five-and-forty no one
had as yet hinted at Beau Brummel though by that time men as well
as women frequently described to each other the cut and colour
of the garments he wore, and tailors besought him to honour them
with crumbs of his patronage in the ambitious hope that they might
mention him as a client. And the simple fact that he appeared in
a certain colour or cut set it at once on its way to become a
fashion to be seized upon, worn and exaggerated until it was
dropped suddenly by its originator and lost in the oblivion of
cheap imitations and cheap tailor shops. The first exaggeration
of the harmony he had created and the original was seen no more.

Feather herself had a marvellous trick in the collecting of her
garments. It was a trick which at times barely escaped assuming the
proportions of absolute creation. Her passion for self-adornment
expressed itself in ingenious combination and quite startling
uniqueness of line now and then. Her slim fairness and ash-gold
gossamer hair carried airily strange tilts and curves of little
or large hats or daring tints other women could not sustain
but invariably strove to imitate however disastrous the results.
Beneath soft drooping or oddly flopping brims hopelessly unbecoming
to most faces hers looked out quaintly lovely as a pictured child's
wearing its grandmother's bonnet. Everything draped itself about
or clung to her in entrancing folds which however whimsical were
never grotesque.

"Things are always becoming to me," she said quite simply. "But
often I stick a few pins into a dress to tuck it up here and there,
or if I give a hat a poke somewhere to make it crooked, they are
much more becoming. People are always asking me how I do it but
I don't know how. I bought a hat from Cerise last week and I gave
it two little thumps with my fist--one in the crown and one in
the brim and they made it wonderful. The maid of the most grand
kind of person tried to find out from my maid where I bought it.
I wouldn't let her tell of course."

She created fashions and was imitated as was the Head of the House
of Coombe but she was enraptured by the fact and the entire power
of such gray matter as was held by her small brain cells was
concentrated upon her desire to evolve new fantasies and amazements
for her world.

Before he had been married for a year there began to creep into the
mind of Bob Gareth-Lawless a fearsome doubt remotely hinting that
she might end by becoming an awful bore in the course of
time--particularly if she also ended by being less pretty. She
chattered so incessantly about nothing and was such an empty-headed,
extravagant little fool in her insistence on clothes--clothes--clothes--as
if they were the breath of life. After watching her for about two
hours one morning as she sat before her mirror directing her maid
to arrange and re-arrange her hair in different styles--in delicate
puffs and curls and straying rings--soft bands and loops--in braids
and coils--he broke forth into an uneasy short laugh and expressed
himself--though she did not know he was expressing himself and
would not have understood him if she had.

"If you have a soul--and I'm not at all certain you have--" he
said, "it's divided into a dressmaker's and a hairdresser's and
a milliner's shop. It's full of tumbled piles of hats and frocks
and diamond combs. It's an awful mess, Feather."

"I hope it's a shoe shop and a jeweller's as well," she laughed
quite gaily. "And a lace-maker's. I need every one of them."

"It's a rag shop," he said. "It has nothing but CHIFFONS in it."

"If ever I DO think of souls I think of them as silly gauzy things
floating about like little balloons," was her cheerful response.

"That's an idea," he answered with a rather louder laugh. "Yours
might be made of pink and blue gauze spangled with those things
you call paillettes."

The fancy attracted her.

"If I had one like that"--with a pleased creative air, "it would
look rather ducky floating from my shoulder--or even my hat--or my
hair in the evenings, just held by a tiny sparkling chain fastened
with a diamond pin--and with lovely little pink and blue streamers."
With the touch of genius she had at once relegated it to its place
in the scheme of her universe. And Robert laughed even louder than
before.

"You mustn't make me laugh," she said holding up her hand. "I am
having my hair done to match that quakery thin pale mousey dress
with the tiny poke bonnet--and I want to try my face too. I must
look sweet and demure. You mustn't really laugh when you wear a
dress and hat like that. You must only smile."

Some months earlier Bob would have found it difficult to believe
that she said this entirely without any touch of humour but he
realized now that it was so said. He had some sense of humour of
his own and one of his reasons for vaguely feeling that she might
become a bore was that she had none whatever.

It was at the garden party where she wore the thin quakery mousey
dress and tiny poke bonnet that the Head of the House of Coombe
first saw her. It was at the place of a fashionable artist who
lived at Hampstead and had a garden and a few fine old trees. It
had been Feather's special intention to strike this note of delicate
dim colour. Every other woman was blue or pink or yellow or white
or flowered and she in her filmy coolness of unusual hue stood out
exquisitely among them. Other heads wore hats broad or curved or
flopping, hers looked like a little nun's or an imaginary portrait
of a delicious young great-grandmother. She was more arresting
than any other female creature on the emerald sward or under the
spreading trees.

When Coombe's eyes first fell upon her he was talking to a group
of people and he stopped speaking. Someone standing quite near him
said afterwards that he had for a second or so become pale--almost
as if he saw something which frightened him.

"Who is that under the copper beech--being talked to by Harlow?"
he inquired.

Feather was in fact listening with a gentle air and with her eyelids
down drooped to the exact line harmonious with the angelic little
poke bonnet.

"It is Mrs. Robert Gareth-Lawless--'Feather' we call her," he was
answered. "Was there ever anything more artful than that startling
little smoky dress? If it was flame colour one wouldn't see it as
quickly."

"One wouldn't look at it as long," said Coombe. "One is in danger
of staring. And the little hat--or bonnet--which pokes and is
fastened under her pink ear by a satin bow held by a loose pale
bud! Will someone rescue me from staring by leading me to her. It
won't be staring if I am talking to her. Please."

The paleness appeared again as on being led across the grass he
drew nearer to the copper beech. He was still rather pale when
Feather lifted her eyes to him. Her eyes were so shaped by Nature
that they looked like an angel's when they were lifted. There are
eyes of that particular cut. But he had not talked to her fifteen
minutes before he knew that there was no real reason why he should
ever again lose his colour at the sight of her. He had thought at
first there was. With the perception which invariably marked her
sense of fitness of things she had begun in the course of the
fifteen minutes--almost before the colour had quite returned to
his face--the story of her husband's idea of her soul, as a balloon
of pink and blue gauze spangled with paillettes. And of her own
inspiration of wearing it floating from her shoulder or her hair
by the light sparkling chain--and with delicate ribbon streamers.
She was much delighted with his laugh--though she thought it had a
rather cracked, harsh sound. She knew he was an important person
and she always felt she was being a success when people laughed.

"Exquisite!" he said. "I shall never see you in the future without
it. But wouldn't it be necessary to vary the colour at times?"

"Oh! Yes--to match things," seriously. "I couldn't wear a pink and
blue one with this--" glancing over the smoky mousey thing "--or
paillettes."

"Oh, no--not paillettes," he agreed almost with gravity, the harsh
laugh having ended.

"One couldn't imagine the exact colour in a moment. One would have
to think," she reflected. "Perhaps a misty dim bluey thing--like
the edge of a rain-cloud--scarcely a colour at all."

For an instant her eyes were softly shadowed as if looking into
a dream. He watched her fixedly then. A woman who was a sort of
angel might look like that when she was asking herself how much
her pure soul might dare to pray for. Then he laughed again and
Feather laughed also.

Many practical thoughts had already begun to follow each other
hastily through her mind. It would be the best possible thing
for them if he really admired her. Bob was having all sorts of
trouble with people they owed money to. Bills were sent in again
and again and disagreeable letters were written. Her dressmaker
and milliner had given her most rude hints which could indeed
be scarcely considered hints at all. She scarcely dared speak to
their smart young footman who she knew had only taken the place
in the slice of a house because he had been told that it might be
an opening to better things. She did not know the exact summing
up at the agency had been as follows:

"They're a good looking pair and he's Lord Lawdor's nephew.
They're bound to have their fling and smart people will come to
their house because she's so pretty. They'll last two or three
years perhaps and you'll open the door to the kind of people who
remember a well set-up young fellow if he shows he knows his work
above the usual."

The more men of the class of the Head of the House of Coombe who
came in and out of the slice of a house the more likely the owners
of it were to get good invitations and continued credit, Feather
was aware. Besides which, she thought ingenuously, if he was rich
he would no doubt lend Bob money. She had already known that certain
men who liked her had done it. She did not mind it at all. One
was obliged to have money.

This was the beginning of an acquaintance which gave rise to much
argument over tea-cups and at dinner parties and in boudoirs--even
in corners of Feather's own gaudy little drawing-room. The argument
regarded the degree of Coombe's interest in her. There was always
curiosity as to the degree of his interest in any woman--especially
and privately on the part of the woman herself. Casual and shallow
observers said he was quite infatuated if such a thing were possible
to a man of his temperament; the more concentrated of mind said it
was not possible to a man of his temperament and that any attraction
Feather might have for him was of a kind special to himself and
that he alone could explain it--and he would not.

Remained however the fact that he managed to see a great deal of
her. It might be said that he even rather followed her about and
more than one among the specially concentrated of mind had seen him
on occasion stand apart a little and look at her--watch her--with
an expression suggesting equally profound thought and the profound
intention to betray his private meditations in no degree. There
was no shadow of profundity of thought in his treatment of her.
He talked to her as she best liked to be talked to about herself,
her successes and her clothes which were more successful than
anything else. He went to the little but exceedingly lively dinners
the Gareth-Lawlesses gave and though he was understood not to be
fond of dancing now and then danced with her at balls.

Feather was guilelessly doubtless concerning him. She was quite sure
that he was in love with her. Her idea of that universal emotion
was that it was a matter of clothes and propinquity and loveliness
and that if one were at all clever one got things one wanted as a
result of it. Her overwhelming affection for Bob and his for her
had given her life in London and its entertaining accompaniments.
Her frankness in the matter of this desirable capture when she
talked to her husband was at once light and friendly.

"Of course you will be able to get credit at his tailor's as you
know him so well," she said. "When I persuaded him to go with me
to Madame Helene's last week she was quite amiable. He helped me
to choose six dresses and I believe she would have let me choose
six more."

"Does she think he is going to pay for them?" asked Bob.

"It doesn't matter what she thinks"; Feather laughed very prettily.

"Doesn't it?"

"Not a bit. I shall have the dresses. What's the matter, Rob? You
look quite red and cross."

"I've had a headache for three days," he answered, "and I feel
hot and cross. I don't care about a lot of things you say, Feather."

"Don't be silly," she retorted. "I don't care about a lot of things
you say--and do, too, for the matter of that."

Robert Gareth-Lawless who was sitting on a chair in her dressing-room
grunted slightly as he rubbed his red and flushed forehead.

"There's a--sort of limit," he commented. He hesitated a little
before he added sulkily "--to the things one--SAYS."

"That sounds like Alice," was her undisturbed answer. "She used
to squabble at me because I SAID things. But I believe one of
the reasons people like me is because I make them laugh by SAYING
things. Lord Coombe laughs. He is a very good person to know,"
she added practically. "Somehow he COUNTS. Don't you recollect
how before we knew him--when he was abroad so long--people used
to bring him into their talk as if they couldn't help remembering
him and what he was like. I knew quite a lot about him--about
his cleverness and his manners and his way of keeping women off
without being rude--and the things he says about royalties and the
aristocracy going out of fashion. And about his clothes. I adore
his clothes. And I'm convinced he adores mine."

She had in fact at once observed his clothes as he had crossed the
grass to her seat under the copper beech. She had seen that his
fine thinness was inimitably fitted and presented itself to the
eye as that final note of perfect line which ignores any possibility
of comment. He did not wear things--they were expressions of his
mental subtleties. Feather on her part knew that she wore her
clothes--carried them about with her--however beautifully.

"I like him," she went on. "I don't know anything about political
parties and the state of Europe so I don't understand the things
he says which people think are so brilliant, but I like him. He
isn't really as old as I thought he was the first day I saw him.
He had a haggard look about his mouth and eyes then. He looked
as if a spangled pink and blue gauze soul with little floating
streamers was a relief to him."

The child Robin was a year old by that time and staggered about
uncertainly in the dingy little Day Nursery in which she passed her
existence except on such occasions as her nurse--who had promptly
fallen in love with the smart young footman--carried her down to
the kitchen and Servants' Hall in the basement where there was an
earthy smell and an abundance of cockroaches. The Servants' Hall
had been given that name in the catalogue of the fashionable
agents who let the home and it was as cramped and grimy as the
two top-floor nurseries.

The next afternoon Robert Gareth-Lawless staggered into his wife's
drawing-room and dropped on to a sofa staring at her and breathing
hard.

"Feather!" he gasped. "Don't know what's up with me. I believe
I'm--awfully ill! I can't see straight. Can't think."

He fell over sidewise on to the cushions so helplessly that Feather
sprang at him.

"Don't, Rob, don't!" she cried in actual anguish. "Lord Coombe
is taking us to the opera and to supper afterwards. I'm going to
wear--" She stopped speaking to shake him and try to lift his head.
"Oh! do try to sit up," she begged pathetically. "Just try. DON'T
give up till afterwards." But she could neither make him sit up nor
make him hear. He lay back heavily with his mouth open, breathing
stertorously and quite insensible.

It happened that the Head of the House of Coombe was announced
at that very moment even as she stood wringing her hands over the
sofa.

He went to her side and looked at Gareth-Lawless.

"Have you sent for a doctor?" he inquired.

"He's--only just done it!" she exclaimed. "It's more than I can
bear. You said the Prince would be at the supper after the opera
and--"

"Were you thinking of going?" he put it to her quietly.

"I shall have to send for a nurse of course--" she began. He went
so far as to interrupt her.

"You had better not go--if you'll pardon my saying so," he suggested.

"Not go? Not go at all?" she wailed.

"Not go at all," was his answer. And there was such entire lack
of encouragement in it that Feather sat down and burst into sobs.

In few than two weeks Robert was dead and she was left a lovely
penniless widow with a child.

CHAPTER III

Two or three decades earlier the prevailing sentiment would have
been that "poor little Mrs. Gareth-Lawless" and her situation were
pathetic. Her acquaintances would sympathetically have discussed
her helplessness and absolute lack of all resource. So very pretty,
so young, the mother of a dear little girl--left with no income!
How very sad! What COULD she do? The elect would have paid her visits
and sitting in her darkened drawing-room earnestly besought her
to trust to her Maker and suggested "the Scriptures" as suitable
reading. Some of them--rare and strange souls even in their
time--would have known what they meant and meant what they said in
a way they had as yet only the power to express through the medium
of a certain shibboleth, the rest would have used the same forms
merely because shibboleth is easy and always safe and creditable.

But to Feather's immediate circle a multiplicity of engagements,
fevers of eagerness in the attainment of pleasures and ambitions,
anxieties, small and large terrors, and a whirl of days left no time
for the regarding of pathetic aspects. The tiny house up whose
staircase--tucked against a wall--one had seemed to have the effect of
crowding even when one went alone to make a call, suddenly ceased
to represent hilarious little parties which were as entertaining
as they were up to date and noisy. The most daring things London
gossiped about had been said and done and worn there. Novel social
ventures had been tried--dancing and songs which seemed almost
startling at first--but which were gradually being generally adopted.
There had always been a great deal of laughing and talking of
nonsense and the bandying of jokes and catch phrases. And Feather
fluttering about and saying delicious, silly things at which her
hearers shouted with glee. Such a place could not suddenly become
pathetic. It seemed almost indecent for Robert Gareth-Lawless to
have dragged Death nakedly into their midst--to have died in his
bed in one of the little bedrooms, to have been put in his coffin
and carried down the stairs scraping the wall, and sent away in a
hearse. Nobody could bear to think of it.

Feather could bear it less than anybody else. It seemed incredible
that such a trick could have been played her. She shut herself
up in her stuffy little bedroom with its shrimp pink frills and
draperies and cried lamentably. At first she cried as a child might
who was suddenly snatched away in the midst of a party. Then she
began to cry because she was frightened. Numbers of cards "with
sympathy" had been left at the front door during the first week
after the funeral, they had accumulated in a pile on the salver
but very few people had really come to see her and while she knew
they had the excuse of her recent bereavement she felt that it made
the house ghastly. It had never been silent and empty. Things had
always been going on and now there was actually not a sound to be
heard--no one going up and down stairs--Rob's room cleared of all
his belongings and left orderly and empty--the drawing-room like a
gay little tomb without an occupant. How long WOULD it be before
it would be full of people again--how long must she wait before
she could decently invite anyone?--It was really at this point that
fright seized upon her. Her brain was not given to activities of
reasoning and followed no thought far. She had not begun to ask
herself questions as to ways and means. Rob had been winning at
cards and had borrowed some money from a new acquaintance so no
immediate abyss had yawned at her feet. But when the thought of
future festivities rose before her a sudden check made her involuntarily
clutch at her throat. She had no money at all, bills were piled
everywhere, perhaps now Robert was dead none of the shops would
give her credit. She remembered hearing Rob come into the house
swearing only the day before he was taken ill and it had been
because he had met on the door-step a collector of the rent which
was long over-due and must be paid. She had no money to pay it,
none to pay the servants' wages, none to pay the household bills,
none to pay for the monthly hire of the brougham! Would they turn
her into the street--would the servants go away--would she be left
without even a carriage? What could she do about clothes! She
could not wear anything but mourning now and by the time she was
out of mourning her old clothes would have gone out of fashion.
The morning on which this aspect of things occurred to her, she
was so terrified that she began to run up and down the room like a
frightened little cat seeing no escape from the trap it is caught
in.

"It's awful--it's awful--it's awful!" broke out between her sobs.
"What can I do? I can't do anything! There's nothing to do! It's
awful--it's awful--it's awful!" She ended by throwing herself on
the bed crying until she was exhausted. She had no mental resources
which would suggest to her that there was anything but crying to
be done. She had cried very little in her life previously because
even in her days of limitation she had been able to get more or
less what she wanted--though of course it had generally been less.
And crying made one's nose and eyes red. On this occasion she
actually forgot her nose and eyes and cried until she scarcely
knew herself when she got up and looked in the glass.

She rang the bell for her maid and sat down to wait her coming.
Tonson should bring her a cup of beef tea.

"It's time for lunch," she thought. "I'm faint with crying. And
she shall bathe my eyes with rose-water."

It was not Tonson's custom to keep her mistress waiting but today
she was not prompt. Feather rang a second time and an impatient
third and then sat in her chair and waited until she began to feel
as she felt always in these dreadful days the dead silence of the
house. It was the thing which most struck terror to her soul--that
horrid stillness. The servants whose place was in the basement
were too much closed in their gloomy little quarters to have
made themselves heard upstairs even if they had been inclined to.
During the last few weeks feather had even found herself wishing
that they were less well trained and would make a little noise--do
anything to break the silence.

The room she sat in--Rob's awful little room adjoining--which was
awful because of what she had seen for a moment lying stiff and
hard on the bed before she was taken away in hysterics--were dread
enclosures of utter silence. The whole house was dumb--the very
street had no sound in it. She could not endure it. How dare
Tonson? She sprang up and rang the bell again and again until its
sound came back to her pealing through the place.

Then she waited again. It seemed to her that five minutes passed
before she heard the smart young footman mounting the stairs slowly.
She did not wait for his knock upon the door but opened it herself.

"How dare Tonson!" she began. "I have rung four or five times!
How dare she!"

The smart young footman's manner had been formed in a good school.
It was attentive, impersonal.

"I don't know, ma'am," he answered.

"What do you mean? What does SHE mean? Where is she?" Feather felt
almost breathless before his unperturbed good style.

"I don't know, ma'am," he answered as before. Then with the same
unbiassed bearing added, "None of us know. She has gone away."

Feather clutched the door handle because she felt herself swaying.

"Away! Away!" the words were a faint gasp.

"She packed her trunk yesterday and carried it away with her on a
four-wheeler. About an hour ago, ma'am." Feather dropped her hand
from the knob of the door and trailed back to the chair she had
left, sinking into it helplessly.

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