Books: The Head of the House of Coombe
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Frances Hodgson Burnett >> The Head of the House of Coombe
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"But isn't she much too pretty?"
"Much. But she doesn't flaunt it."
"But heart-warming--and too pretty! Dearest mamma!" Lady Lothwell
laughed again. "She can do no harm to Kathryn, but I own that
if George were not at present quite madly in love with a darling
being at least fifteen years older than himself I should pause
to reflect. Mrs. Stacy will keep him steady--Mrs. Alan Stacy, you
know--the one with the magnificent henna hair, and the eyes that
droop. No boy of twenty-two can resist her. They call her adorers
'The Infant School'."
"A small dinner and a small dance--and George and Kathryn may be
the beginning of an interesting experiment. It would be pretty
and kind of you to drop in during the course of the evening."
"Are you hoping to--perhaps--make a marriage for her?" Lady Lothwell
asked the question a shade disturbedly. "You are so amazing,
mamma darling, that I know you will do it, if you believe in it.
You seem to be able to cause the things you really want, to evolve
from the universe."
"She is the kind of girl whose place in the universe is in the
home of some young man whose own place in the universe is in the
heart and soul and life of her kind of girl. They ought to carry
out the will of God by falling passionately in love with each
other. They ought to marry each other and have a large number of
children as beautiful and rapturously happy as themselves. They
would assist in the evolution of the race."
"Oh! Mamma! how delightful you always are! For a really brilliant
woman you are the most adorable dreamer in the world."
"Dreams are the only things which are true. The rest are nothing
but visions."
"Angel!" her daughter laughed a little adoringly as she kissed
her. "I will do whatever you want me to do. I always did, didn't
I? It's your way of making one see what you see when you are
talking that does it."
It was understood before they parted that Kathryn and George would
be present at the small dinner and the small dance, and that a
few other agreeable young persons might be trusted to join them,
and that Lady Lothwell and perhaps her husband would drop in.
"It's your being almost Early Victorian, mamma, which makes it
easy for you to initiate things. You will initiate little Miss
Lawless. It was rather neat of her to prefer to drop the 'Gareth.'
There has been less talk in late years of the different classes
'keeping their places'--'upper' and 'lower' classes really strikes
one as vulgar."
"We may 'keep our places'," the Duchess said. "We may hold on to
them as firmly as we please. It is the places themselves which
are moving, my dear. It is not unlike the beginning of a landslide."
Robin went to Dowie's room the next evening and stood a moment in
silence watching her sewing before she spoke. She looked anxious
and even pale.
"Her grace is going to give a party to some young people, Dowie,"
she said. "She wishes me to be present. I--I don't know what to
do."
"What you must do, my dear, is to put on your best evening frock
and go downstairs and enjoy yourself as the other young people
will. Her grace wants you to see someone your own age," was Dowie's
answer.
"But I am not like the others. I am only a girl earning her living
as a companion. How do I know--"
"Her grace knows," Dowie said. "And what she asks you to do it is
your duty to do--and do it prettily."
Robin lost even a shade more colour.
"Do you realize that I have never been to a party in my life--not
even to a children's party, Dowie? I shall not know how to behave
myself."
"You know how to talk nicely to people, and you know how to sit
down and rise from your chair and move about a room like a quiet
young lady. You dance like a fairy. You won't be asked to do
anything more."
"The Duchess," reflected Robin aloud slowly, "would not let me
come downstairs if she did not know that people would--be kind."
"Lady Kathryn and Lord Halwyn are coming. They are her own
grandchildren," Dowie said.
"How did you know that?" Robin inquired.
Robin's colour began to come back.
"It's not what usually happens to girls in situations," she said.
"Her grace herself isn't what usually happens," said Dowie. "There
is no one like her for high wisdom and kindness."
Having herself awakened to the truth of this confidence-inspiring
fact, Robin felt herself supported by it. One knew what
far-sighted perception and clarity of experienced vision this one
woman had gained during her many years of life. If she had elected
to do this thing she had seen her path clear before her and was not
offering a gift which awkward chance might spoil or snatch away
from the hand held out to receive it. A curious slow warmth began
to creep about Robin's heart and in its mounting gradually fill
her being. It was true she had been taught to dance, to move about
and speak prettily. She had been taught a great many things which
seemed to be very carefully instilled into her mind and body without
any special reason. She had not been aware that Lord Coombe and
Mademoiselle Valle had directed and discussed her training as if
it had been that of a young royal person whose equipment must be
a flawless thing. If the Dowager Duchess of Darte had wished to
present her at Court some fair morning she would have known the
length of the train she must wear, where she must make her curtseys
and to whom and to what depth, how to kiss the royal hand, and
how to manage her train when she retired from the presence. When
she had been taught this she had asked Mademoiselle Valle if the
training was part of every girl's education and Mademoiselle had
answered,
"It is best to know everything--even ceremonials which may or may
not prove of use. It all forms part of a background and prevents
one from feeling unfamiliar with customs."
When she had passed the young pairs in the streets she had found
an added interest in them because of this background. She could
imagine them dancing together in fairy ball rooms whose lights
and colours her imagination was obliged to construct for her out
of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they
went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel
shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them
and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she
should have pondered and pondered and sometimes unconsciously
longed to feel herself part of the flood of being sweeping past
her as she stood apart on the brink of the river.
The warmth about her heart made it beat a little faster. She opened
the door of her wardrobe when she found herself in her bedroom. The
dress hung modestly in its corner shrouded from the penetration of
London fogs by clean sheeting. It was only white and as simple as
she knew how to order it, but Mademoiselle had taken her to a young
French person who knew exactly what she was doing in all cases,
and because the girl had the supple lines of a wood nymph and the
eyes of young antelope she had evolved that which expressed her
as a petal expresses its rose. Robin locked her door and took the
dress down and found the silk stockings and slippers which belonged
to it. She put them all on standing before her long mirror and
having left no ungiven last touch she fell a few steps backward and
looked at herself, turning and balancing herself as a bird might
have done. She turned lightly round and round.
"Yes. I AM--" she said. "I am--very!"
The next instant she laughed at herself outright.
"How silly! How silly!" she said. "Almost EVERYBODY is--more
or less! I wonder if I remember the new steps." For she had been
taught the new steps--the new walking and swayings and pauses and
sudden swirls and swoops. And her new dress was as short as other
fashionable girls' dresses were, but in her case revealed a haunting
delicacy of contour and line.
So before her mirror she danced alone and as she danced her lips
parted and her breast rose and fell charmingly, and her eyes
lighted and glowed as any girl's might have done or as a joyous
girl nymph's might have lighted as she danced by a pool in her
forest seeing her loveliness mirrored there.
Something was awakening as something had awakened when Donal had
kissed a child under the soot sprinkled London trees.
CHAPTER XXXI
The whole day before the party was secretly exciting to Robin.
She knew how much more important it seemed to her than it really
was. If she had been six years old she might have felt the same
kind of uncertain thrills and tremulous wonders. She hid herself
behind the window curtains in her room that she might see the
men putting up the crimson and white awning from the door to the
carriage step. The roll of red carpet they took from their van had
a magic air. The ringing of the door bell which meant that things
were being delivered, the extra moving about of servants, the
florists' men who went into the drawing-rooms and brought flowers
and big tropical plants to re-arrange the conservatory and fill
corners which were not always decorated--each and every one of
them quickened the beating of her pulses. If she had belonged in
her past to the ordinary cheerful world of children, she would
have felt by this time no such elation. But she had only known of
the existence of such festivities as children's parties because once
a juvenile ball had been given in a house opposite her mother's
and she had crouched in an almost delirious little heap by the
nursery window watching carriages drive up and deposit fluffy pink
and white and blue children upon the strip of red carpet, and had
seen them led or running into the house. She had caught sounds
of strains of music and had shivered with rapture--but Oh! what
worlds away from her the party had been.
She found her way into the drawing-rooms which were not usually thrown
open. They were lofty and stately and seemed to her immense. There
were splendid crystal-dropping chandeliers and side lights which
she thought looked as if they would hold a thousand wax candles.
There was a delightfully embowered corner for the musicians. It
was all spacious and wonderful in its beautiful completeness--its
preparedness for pleasure. She realized that all of it had always
been waiting to be used for the happiness of people who knew
each other and were young and ready for delight. When the young
Lothwells had been children they had had dances and frolicking
games with other children in the huge rooms and had kicked up
their young heels on the polished floors at Christmas parties and
on birthdays. How wonderful it must have been. But they had not
known it was wonderful.
As Dowie dressed her the reflection she saw in the mirror gave back
to her an intensified Robin whose curved lips almost quivered as
they smiled. The soft silk of her hair looked like the night and
the small rings on the back of her very slim white neck were things
to ensnare the eye and hold it helpless.
"You look your best, my dear," Dowie said as she clasped her little
necklace. "And it is a good best." Dowie was feeling tremulous
herself though she could not have explained why. She thought that
perhaps it was because she wished that Mademoiselle could have
been with her.
Robin kissed her when the last touch had been given.
"I'm going to run down the staircase," she said. "If I let myself
walk slowly I shall have time to feel queer and shy and I might
seem to CREEP into the drawing-room. I mustn't creep in. I must
walk in as if I had been to parties all my life."
She ran down and as she did so she looked like a white bird
flying, but she was obliged to stop upon the landing before the
drawing-room door to quiet a moment of excited breathing. Still
when she entered the room she moved as she should and held her head
poised with a delicately fearless air. The Duchess--who herself
looked her best in her fine old ivory profiled way--gave her a
pleased smile of welcome which was almost affectionate.
"What a perfect little frock!" she said. "You are delightfully
pretty in it."
"Is it quite right?" said Robin. "Mademoiselle chose it for me."
"It is quite right. 'Frightfully right,' George would say. George
will sit near you at dinner. He is my grandson--Lord Halwyn you
know, and you will no doubt frequently hear him say things are
'frightfully' something or other during the evening. Kathryn will
say things are 'deevy' or 'exquig'. I mention it because you may
not know that she means 'exquisite' and 'divine.' Don't let it
frighten you if you don't quite understand their language. They
are dear handsome things sweeping along in the rush of their bit
of century. I don't let it frighten me that their world seems to
me an entirely new planet."
Robin drew a little nearer her. She felt something as she had
felt years ago when she had said to Dowie. "I want to kiss you,
Dowie." Her eyes were pools of childish tenderness because she
so well understood the infinitude of the friendly tact which drew
her within its own circle with the light humour of its "I don't
let them frighten ME."
"You are kind--kind to me," she said. "And I am grateful--GRATEFUL."
The extremely good-looking young people who began very soon to
drift into the brilliant big room--singly or in pairs of brother
and sister--filled her with innocent delight. They were so well
built and gaily at ease with each other and their surroundings, so
perfectly dressed and finished. The filmy narrowness of delicate
frocks, the shortness of skirts accentuated the youth and girlhood and
added to it a sort of child fairy-likeness. Kathryn in exquisite
wisps of silver-embroidered gauze looked fourteen instead of
nearly twenty--aided by a dimple in her cheek and a small tilted
nose. A girl in scarlet tulle was like a child out of a nursery
ready to dance about a Christmas tree. Everyone seemed so young
and so suggested supple dancing, perhaps because dancing was going
on everywhere and all the world whether fashionable or unfashionable
was driven by a passion for whirling, swooping and inventing new
postures and fantastic steps. The young men had slim straight
bodies and light movements. Their clothes fitted their suppleness
to perfection. Robin thought they all looked as if they had had
a great deal of delightful exercise and plenty of pleasure all
their lives.
They were of that stream which had always seemed to be rushing
past her in bright pursuit of alluring things which belonged to
them as part of their existence, but which had had nothing to do
with her own youth. Now the stream had paused as if she had for
the moment some connection with it. The swift light she was used
to seeing illuminate glancing eyes as she passed people in the
street, she saw again and again as new arrivals appeared. Kathryn
was quite excited by her eyes and eyelashes and George hovered
about. There was a great deal of hovering. At the dinner table
sleek young heads held themselves at an angle which allowed of
their owners seeing through or around, or under floral decorations
and alert young eyes showed an eager gleam. After dinner was
over and dancing began the Duchess smiled shrewdly as she saw the
gravitating masculine movement towards a certain point. It was
the point where Robin stood with a small growing circle about her.
It was George who danced with her first. He was tall and slender
and flexible and his good shoulders had a military squareness of
build. He had also a nice square face, and a warmly blue eye and
knew all the latest steps and curves and unexpected swirls. Robin
was an ozier wand and there was no swoop or dart or sudden sway
and change she was not alert at. The swing and lure of the music,
the swift movement, the fluttering of airy draperies as slim sister
nymphs flew past her, set her pulses beating with sweet young joy.
A brief, uncontrollable ripple of laughter broke from her before
she had circled the room twice.
"How heavenly it is!" she exclaimed and lifted her eyes to Halwyn's.
"How heavenly!"
They were not safe eyes to lift in such a way to those of a very
young man. They gave George a sudden enjoyable shock. He had
heard of the girl who was a sort of sublimated companion to his
grandmother. The Duchess herself had talked to him a little about
her and he had come to the party intending to behave very amiably
and help the little thing enjoy herself. He had also encountered
before in houses where there were no daughters the smart well-born,
young companion who was allowed all sorts of privileges because
she knew how to assume tiresome little responsibilities and how
to be entertaining enough to add cheer and spice to the life of
the elderly and lonely. Sometimes she was a subtly appealing sort
of girl and given to being sympathetic and to liking sympathy and
quiet corners in conservatories or libraries, and sometimes she
was capable of scientific flirtation and required scientific
management. A man had to have his wits about him. This one as she
flew like a blown leaf across the floor and laughed up into his
face with wide eyes, produced a new effect and was a new kind.
"It's you who are heavenly," he answered with a boy's laugh. "You
are like a feather--and a willow wand."
"You are light too," she laughed back, "and you are like steel as
well."
Mrs. Alan Stacy, the lady with the magnificent henna hair, had
recently given less time to him, being engaged in the preliminary
instruction of a new member of the Infant Class. Such things will,
of course, happen and though George had quite ingenuously raged
in secret, the circumstances left him free to "hover" and hovering
was a pastime he enjoyed.
"Let us go on like this forever and ever," he said sweeping half
the length of the room with her and whirling her as if she were
indeed a leaf in the wind, "Forever and ever."
"I wish we could. But the music will stop," she gave back.
"Music ought never to stop--never," he answered.
But the music did stop and when it began again almost immediately
another tall, flexible young man made a lightning claim on her
and carried her away only to hand her to another and he in his
turn to another. She was not allowed more than a moment's rest
and borne on the crest of the wave of young delight, she did not
need more. Young eyes were always laughing into hers and elating
her by a special look of pleasure in everything she did or said
or inspired in themselves. How was she informed without phrases
that for this exciting evening she was a creature without a flaw,
that the loveliness of her eyes startled those who looked into
them, that it was a thrilling experience to dance with her, that
somehow she was new and apart and wonderful? No sleek-haired, slim
and straight-backed youth said exactly any of these things to her,
but somehow they were conveyed and filled her with a wondering
realization of the fact that if they were true, they were no longer
dreadful and maddening, since they only made people like and want
to dance with one. To dance, to like people and be liked seemed
so heavenly natural and right--to be only like air and sky and
free, happy breathing. There was, it was true, a blissful little
uplifted look about her which she herself was not aware of, but
which was singularly stimulating to the masculine beholder. It only
meant indeed that as she whirled and swayed and swooped laughing
she was saying to herself at intervals,
"This is what other girls feel like. They are happy like this.
I am laughing and talking to people just as other girls do. I am
Robin Gareth-Lawless, but I am enjoying a party like this--a YOUNG
party."
Lady Lothwell sitting near her mother watched the trend of affairs
with an occasional queer interested smile.
"Well, mamma darling," she said at last as youth and beauty whirled
by in a maelstrom of modern Terpsichorean liveliness, "she is a
great success. I don't know whether it is quite what you intended
or not."
The Duchess did not explain what she had intended. She was watching
the trend also and thinking a good deal. On the whole Lady Lothwell
had scarcely expected that she would explain. She rarely did. She
seldom made mistakes, however.
Kathryn in her scant gauzy strips of white and silver having
drifted towards them at the moment stood looking on with a funny
little disturbed expression on her small, tip-tilted face.
"There's something ABOUT her, grandmamma," she said.
"All the girls see it and no one knows what it is. She's sitting
out for a few minutes and just look at George--and Hal Brunton--and
Captain Willys. They are all laughing, of course, and pretending
to joke, but they would like to eat each other up. Perhaps it's
her eyelashes. She looks out from under them as if they were a
curtain."
Lady Lothwell's queer little smile became a queer little laugh.
"Yes. It gives her a look of being ecstatically happy and yet
almost shy and appealing at the same time. Men can't stand it of
course."
"None of them are trying to stand it," answered little Lady Kathryn
somewhat in the tone of a retort.
"I don't believe she knows she does it," Lady Lothwell said quite
reflectively.
"She does not know at all. That is the worst of it," commented the
Duchess.
"Then you see that there IS a worst," said her daughter.
The Duchess glanced towards Kathryn, but fortunately the puzzled
fret of the girl's forehead was even at the moment melting into
a smile as a young man of much attraction descended upon her with
smiles of his own and carried her into the Tango or Fox Trot or
Antelope Galop, whichsoever it chanced to be.
"If she were really aware of it that would be 'the worst' for
other people--for us probably. She could look out from under her
lashes to sufficient purpose to call what she wanted and take and
keep it. As she is not aware, it will make things less easy for
herself--under the circumstances."
"The circumstance of being Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' daughter is not
an agreeable one," said Lady Lothwell.
"It might give some adventurous boys ideas when they had time to
realize all it means. Do you know I am rather sorry for her myself.
I shouldn't be surprised if she were rather a dear little thing.
She looks tender and cuddle-some. Perhaps she is like the heroine
of a sentimental novel I read the other day. Her chief slave said
of her 'She walks into a man's heart through his eyes and sits
down there and makes a warm place which will never get cold again.'
Rather nice, I thought."
The Duchess thought it rather nice also.
"'Never get cold again,'" she repeated. "What a heavenly thing
to happen to a pair of creatures--if--" she paused and regarded
Robin, who at the other side of the room was trying to decide
some parlous question of dances to which there was more than one
claimant. She was sweetly puckering her brow over her card and
round her were youthful male faces looking eager and even a trifle
tense with repressed anxiety for the victory of the moment.
"Oh!" Lady Lothwell laughed. "As Kitty says 'There's something
about her' and it's not mere eyelashes. You have let loose a germ
among us, mamma my sweet, and you can't do anything with a germ
when you have let it loose. To quote Kitty again, 'Look at George!'"
The music which came from the bower behind which the musicians
were hidden seemed to gain thrill and wildness as the hours went
on. As the rooms grew warmer the flowers breathed out more reaching
scent. Now and again Robin paused for a moment to listen to strange
delightful chords and to inhale passing waves of something like
mignonette and lilies, and apple blossoms in the sun. She thought
there must be some flower which was like all three in one. The
rushing stream was carrying her with it as it went--one of the
happy petals on its surface. Could it ever cast her aside and
leave her on the shore again? While the violins went singing on
and the thousand wax candles shone on the faint or vivid colours
which mingled into a sort of lovely haze, it did not seem possible
that a thing so enchanting and so real could have an end at all.
All the other things in her life seemed less real tonight.
In the conservatory there was a marble fountain which had long
years ago been brought from a palace garden in Rome. It was not
as large as it was beautiful and it had been placed among palms
and tropic ferns whose leaves and fronds it splashed merrily among
and kept deliciously cool and wet-looking. There was a quite
intoxicating hot-house perfume of warm damp moss and massed flowers
and it was the kind of corner any young man would feel it necessary
to gravitate towards with a partner.
George led Robin to it and she naturally sat upon the edge of the
marble basin and as naturally drew off a glove and dipped her hand
into the water, splashing it a little because it felt deliciously
cool. George stood near at first and looked down at her bent head.
It was impossible not also to take in her small fine ear and the
warm velvet white of the lovely little nape of her slim neck. He
took them in with elated appreciation. He was not subtle minded
enough to be aware that her reply to a casual remark he had made
to her at dinner had had a remote effect upon him.
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