Books: The Head of the House of Coombe

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

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The lilac and the snowball were in blossom and there was a big
hawthorn tree which smelt sweet and sweet. They could not see the
drift of smuts on the blossoms, they only smelled the sweetness
and sat under the hawthorn and sniffed and sniffed. The sun was
deliciously warm and a piano organ was playing beautifully not
far away. They sat close to each other, so close that the picture
book could lie open on both pairs of knees and the warmth of each
young body penetrated the softness of the other. Sometimes Donal
threw an arm around her as she bent over the page. Love and
caresses were not amazements to him; he accepted them as parts of
the normal joy of life. To Robin they were absolute wonder. The
pictures were delight and amazement in one. Donal knew all about
them and told her stories. She felt that such splendour could have
emanated only from him. It could not occur to her that he had not
invented them and made the pictures. He showed her Robinson Crusoe
and Robin Hood. The scent of the hawthorn and lilac intoxicated
them and they laughed tremendously because Robin Hood's name was
like Robin's own and he was a man and she was a girl. They could
scarcely stop laughing and Donal rolled over and over on the grass,
half from unconquerable high spirits and half to make Robin laugh
still more.

He had some beautiful coloured glass marbles in his pocket
and he showed her how to play with them, and gave her two of the
prettiest. He could shoot them over the ground in a way to thrill
the beholder. He could hop on one leg as far as he liked. He could
read out of books.

"Do you like me?" he said once in a pause between displays of his
prowess.

Robin was kneeling upon the grass watching him and she clasped
her little hands as if she were uttering a prayer.

"Oh, yes, yes!" she yearned. "Yes! Yes!"

"I like you," he answered; "I told my mother all about you."

He came to her and knelt by her side.

"Have you a mother?" he asked.

"No," shaking her head.

"Do you live with your aunt?"

"No, I don't live with anybody."

He looked puzzled.

"Isn't there any lady in your house?" he put it to her. She
brightened a little, relieved to think she had something to tell
him.

"There's the Lady Downstairs," she said. "She's so pretty--so
pretty."

"Is she----" he stopped and shook his head. "She couldn't be your
mother," he corrected himself. "You'd know about HER."

"She wears pretty clothes. Sometimes they float about and sparkle
and she wears little crowns on her head--or flowers. She laughs,"
Robin described eagerly. "A great many people come to see her.
They all laugh. Sometimes they sing. I lie in bed and listen."

"Does she ever come upstairs to the Nursery?" inquired Donal with
a somewhat reflective air.

"Yes. She comes and stands near the door and says, 'Is she quite
well, Andrews?' She does not laugh then. She--she LOOKS at me."

She stopped there, feeling suddenly that she wished very much that
she had more to tell. What she was saying was evidently not very
satisfactory. He seemed to expect more--and she had no more to
give. A sense of emptiness crept upon her and for no reason she
understood there was a little click in her throat.

"Does she only stand near the door?" he suggested, as one putting
the situation to a sort of crucial test. "Does she never sit on a
big chair and take you on her knee?"

"No, no," in a dropped voice. "She will not sit down. She says
the chairs are grubby."

"Doesn't she LOVE you at all?" persisted Donal. "Doesn't she KISS
you?"

There was a thing she had known for what seemed to her a long
time--God knows in what mysterious fashion she had learned it,
but learned it well she had. That no human being but herself was
aware of her knowledge was inevitable. To whom could she have
told it? But Donal--Donal wanted to know all about her. The little
click made itself felt in her throat again.

"She--she doesn't LIKE me!" Her dropped voice was the whisper of
one humbled to the dust by confession, "She--doesn't LIKE me!"
And the click became another thing which made her put up her arm
over her eyes--her round, troubled child eyes, which, as she had
looked into Donal's, had widened with sudden, bewildered tears.

Donal flung his arms round her and squeezed his buttons into her
tender chest. He hugged her close; he kissed her; there was a
choking in his throat. He was hot all over.

"She does like you. She must like you. I'll make her!" he cried
passionately. "She's not your mother. If she was, she'd LOVE you!
She'd LOVE you!"

"Do Mothers l-love you?" the small voice asked with a half sob.
"What's--what's LOVE you?" It was not vulgar curiosity. She only
wanted to find out.

He loosed his embrace, sitting back on his heels to stare.

"Don't you KNOW?"

She shook her head with soft meekness.

"N-no," she answered.

Big boys like himself did not usually play with such little
girls. But something had drawn him to her at their first moment
of encounter. She wasn't like any other little girls. He felt it
all the time and that was part of the thing which drew him. He
was not, of course, aware that the male thrill at being regarded
as one who is a god had its power over the emotions. She wasn't
making silly fun and pretending. She really didn't know--because
she was different.

"It's liking very much. It's more," he explained. "My mother loves
ME. I--I LOVE you!" stoutly. "Yes, I LOVE you. That's why I kissed
you when you cried."

She was so uplifted, so overwhelmed with adoring gratitude that as
she knelt on the grass she worshipped him.

"I love YOU," she answered him. "I LOVE you--LOVE you!" And she
looked at him with such actual prayerfulness that he caught at her
and, with manly promptness, kissed her again-this being mere Nature.

Because he was eight years old and she was six her tears flashed
away and they both laughed joyously as they sat down on the grass
again to talk it over.

He told her all the pleasant things he knew about Mothers. The
world was full of them it seemed--full. You belong to them from
the time you were a baby. He had not known many personally because
he had always lived at Braemarnie, which was in the country in
Scotland. There were no houses near his home. You had to drive
miles and miles before you came to a house or a castle. He had not
seen much of other children except a few who lived at the Manse
and belonged to the minister. Children had fathers as well as
mothers. Fathers did not love you or take care of you quite as
much as Mothers--because they were men. But they loved you too.
His own father had died when he was a baby. His mother loved him
as much as he loved her. She was beautiful but--it seemed to reveal
itself--not like the Lady Downstairs. She did not laugh very much,
though she laughed when they played together. He was too big now
to sit on her knee, but squeezed into the big chair beside her when
she read or told him stories. He always did what his mother told
him. She knew everything in the world and so knew what he ought to
do. Even when he was a big man he should do what his mother told
him.

Robin listened to every word with enraptured eyes and bated breath.
This was the story of Love and Life and it was the first time she
had ever heard it. It was as much a revelation as the Kiss. She
had spent her days in the grimy Nursery and her one close intimate
had been a bony woman who had taught her not to cry, employing
the practical method of terrifying her into silence by pinching
her--knowing it was quite safe to do it. It had not been necessary
to do it often. She had seen people on the streets, but she had
only seen them in passing by. She had not watched them as she had
watched the sparrows. When she was taken down for a few minutes
into the basement, she vaguely knew that she was in the way and that
Mrs. Blayne's and Andrews' and Jennings' low voices and occasional
sidelong look meant that they were talking about her and did not
want her to hear.

"I have no mother and no father," she explained quite simply to
Donal. "No one kisses me."

"No one!" Donal said, feeling curious. "Has no one ever kissed you
but me?"

"No," she answered.

Donal laughed--because children always laugh when they do not know
what else to do.

"Was that why you looked as if you were frightened when I said
good-bye to you yesterday?"

"I-I didn't know," said Robin, laughing a little too--but not very
much, "I wasn't frightened. I liked you."

"I'll kiss you as often as you want me to," he volunteered nobly.
"I'm used to it--because of my mother. I'll kiss you again now."
And he did it quite without embarrassment. It was a sort of manly
gratuity.

Once Anne, with her book in her hand, came round the shrubs to
see how her charge was employing herself, and seeing her looking
at pictures with a handsomely dressed companion, she returned to
"Lady Audley's Secret" feeling entirely safe.

The lilac and the hawthorn tree continued to breathe forth warmed
scents of paradise in the sunshine, the piano organ went on playing,
sometimes nearer, sometimes farther away, but evidently finding
the neighbourhood a desirable one. Sometimes the children laughed
at each other, sometimes at pictures Donal showed, or stories he
told, or at his own extreme wit. The boundaries were removed from
Robin's world. She began to understand that there was another
larger one containing wonderful and delightful things she had
known nothing about. Donal was revealing it to her in everything
he said even when he was not aware that he was telling her anything.
When Eve was formed from the rib of Adam the information it was
necessary for him to give her regarding her surroundings must have
filled her with enthralling interest and a reverence which adored.
The planted enclosure which was the central feature of the soot
sprinkled, stately London Square was as the Garden of Eden.

* * * * *

The Garden of Eden it remained for two weeks. Andrews' cold was
serious enough to require a doctor and her sister Anne continued
to perform their duties. The weather was exceptionally fine and,
being a vain young woman, she liked to dress Robin in her pretty
clothes and take her out because she was a beauty and attracted
attention to her nurse as well as to herself. Mornings spent
under the trees reading were entirely satisfactory. Each morning
the children played together and each night Robin lay awake and
lived again the delights of the past hours. Each day she learned
more wonders and her young mind and soul were fed. There began to
stir in her brain new thoughts and the beginning of questioning.
Scotland, Braemarnie, Donal's mother, even the Manse and the children
in it, combined to form a world of enchantment. There were hills
with stags living in them, there were moors with purple heather and
yellow brome and gorse; birds built their nests under the bushes
and Donal's pony knew exactly where to step even in the roughest
places. There were two boys and two girls at the Manse and they
had a father and a mother. These things were enough for a new heaven
and a new earth to form themselves around. The centre of the whole
Universe was Donal with his strength and his laugh and his eyes
which were so alive and glowing that she seemed always to see them.
She knew nothing about the thing which was their somehow--not-to-be-denied
allure. They were ASKING eyes--and eyes which gave. The boy was
in truth a splendid creature. His body and beauty were perfect life
and joyous perfect living. His eyes asked other eyes for everything.
"Tell me more," they said. "Tell me more! Like me! Answer me! Let
us give each other everything in the world." He had always been
well, he had always been happy, he had always been praised and
loved. He had known no other things.

During the first week in which the two children played together,
his mother, whose intense desire it was to understand him, observed
in him a certain absorption of mood when he was not talking or
amusing himself actively. He began to fall into a habit of standing
at the windows, often with his chin in his hand, looking out as if
he were so full of thought that he saw nothing. It was not an old
habit, it was a new one.

"What are you thinking about, Donal?" she asked one afternoon.

He seemed to awaken, as it were, when he heard her. He turned
about with his alluring smile.

"I am thinking it is FUNNY," he said. "It is funny that I should
like such a little girl such a lot. She is years and years younger
than I am. But I like her so. It is such fun to tell her things."
He marched over to his mother's writing table and leaned against
it. What his mother saw was that he had an impassioned desire
to talk about this child. She felt it was a desire even a trifle
abnormal in its eagerness.

"She has such a queer house, I think," he explained. "She has a
nurse and such pretty clothes and she is so pretty herself, but
I don't believe she has any toys or books in her nursery."

"Where is her mother?"

"She must be dead. There is no lady in her house but the Lady
Downstairs. She is very pretty and is always laughing. But she is
not her mother because she doesn't like her and she never kisses
her. I think that's the queerest thing of all. No one had EVER
kissed her till I did."

His mother was a woman given to psychological analysis. Her eyes
began to dwell on his face with slightly anxious questioning.

"Did you kiss her?" she inquired.

"Yes. I kissed her when I said good morning the first day. I thought
she didn't like me to do it but she did. It was only because no
one had ever done it before. She likes it very much."

He leaned farther over the writing table and began to pour forth,
his smile growing and his eyes full of pleasure. His mother was
a trifle alarmedly struck by the feeling that he was talking like
a young man in love who cannot keep his tongue still, though in
his case even the youngest manhood was years away, and he made no
effort to conceal his sentiments which a young man would certainly
have striven to do.

"She's got such a pretty little face and such a pretty mouth and
cheeks," he touched a Jacqueminot rose in a vase. "They are the
colour of that. Today a robin came with the sparrows and hopped
about near us. We laughed and laughed because her eyes are like
the robin's, and she is called Robin. I wish you would come into
the Gardens and see her, mother. She likes everything I do."

"I must come, dear," she answered.

"Nanny thinks she is lovely," he announced. "She says I am in love
with her. Am I, mother?"

"You are too young to be in love," she said. "And even when you
are older you must not fall in love with people you know nothing
about."

It was an unconscious bit of Scotch cautiousness which she at once
realized was absurd and quite out of place. But--!

She realized it because he stood up and squared his shoulders in
an odd young-mannish way. He had not flushed even faintly before
and now a touch of colour crept under his fair skin.

"But I DO love her," he said. "I DO. I can't stop." And though he
was quite simple and obviously little boy-like, she actually felt
frightened for a moment.

CHAPTER IX

On the afternoon of the day upon which this occurred, Coombe was
standing in Feather's drawing-room with a cup of tea in his hand
and wearing the look of a man who is given up to reflection.

"I saw Mrs. Muir today for the first time for several years," he
said after a silence. "She is in London with the boy."

"Is she as handsome as ever?"

"Quite. Hers is not the beauty that disappears. It is line and
bearing and a sort of splendid grace and harmony."

"What is the boy like?"

Coombe reflected again before he answered.

"He is--amazing. One so seldom sees anything approaching physical
perfection that it strikes one a sort of blow when one comes upon
it suddenly face to face."

"Is he as beautiful as all that?"

"The Greeks used to make statues of bodies like his. They often
called them gods--but not always. The Creative Intention plainly
was that all human beings should be beautiful and he is the
expression of it."

Feather was pretending to embroider a pink flower on a bit of
gauze and she smiled vaguely.

"I don't know what you mean," she admitted with no abasement of
spirit, "but if ever there was any Intention of that kind it has
not been carried out." Her smile broke into a little laugh as she
stuck her needle into her work. "I'm thinking of Henry," she let
drop in addition.

"So was I, it happened," answered Coombe after a second or so of
pause.

Henry was the next of kin who was--to Coombe's great objection--his
heir presumptive, and was universally admitted to be a repulsive
sort of person both physically and morally. He had brought into
the world a weakly and rickety framework and had from mere boyhood
devoted himself to a life which would have undermined a Hercules.
A relative may so easily present the aspect of an unfortunate incident
over which one has no control. This was the case with Henry. His
character and appearance were such that even his connection with
an important heritage was not enough to induce respectable persons
to accept him in any form. But if Coombe remained without issue
Henry would be the Head of the House.

"How is his cough?" inquired Feather.

"Frightful. He is an emaciated wreck and he has no physical cause
for remaining alive."

Feather made three or four stitches.

"Does Mrs. Muir know?" she said.

"If Mrs. Muir is conscious of his miserable existence, that is
all," he answered. "She is not the woman to inquire. Of course
she cannot help knowing that--when he is done with--her boy takes
his place in the line of succession."

"Oh, yes, she'd know that," put in Feather.

It was Coombe who smiled now--very faintly.

"You have a mistaken view of her," he said.

"You admire her very much," Feather bridled. The figure of this
big Scotch creature with her "line" and her "splendid grace and
harmony" was enough to make one bridle.

"She doesn't admire me," said Coombe. "She is not proud of me as
a connection. She doesn't really want the position for the boy,
in her heart of hearts."

"Doesn't want it!" Feather's exclamation was a little jeer only
because she would not have dared a big one.

"She is Scotch Early Victorian in some things and extremely advanced
in others," he went on. "She has strong ideas of her own as to
how he shall be brought up. She's rather Greek in her feeling for
his being as perfect physically and mentally as she can help him
to be. She believes things. It was she who said what you did not
understand--about the Creative Intention."

"I suppose she is religious," Feather said. "Scotch people often
are but their religion isn't usually like that. Creative Intention's
a new name for God, I suppose. I ought to know all about God. I've
heard enough about Him. My father was not a clergyman but he was
very miserable, and it made him so religious that he was ALMOST
one. We were every one of us christened and catechized and confirmed
and all that. So God's rather an old story."

"Queer how old--from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral
strand," said Coombe. "It's an ancient search--that for the
Idea--whether it takes form in metal or wood or stone."

"Well," said Feather, holding her bit of gauze away from her
the better to criticize the pink flower. "As ALMOST a clergyman's
daughter I must say that if there is one tiling God didn't do, it
was to fill the world with beautiful people and things as if it
was only to be happy in. It was made to-to try us by suffering
and-that sort of thing. It's a-a-what d'ye call it? Something
beginning with P."

"Probation," suggested Coombe regarding her with an expression of
speculative interest. Her airy bringing forth of her glib time-worn
little scraps of orthodoxy--as one who fished them out of a bag of
long-discarded remnants of rubbish--was so true to type that it
almost fascinated him for a moment.

"Yes. That's it--probation," she answered. "I knew it began with
a P. It means 'thorny paths' and 'seas of blood' and, if you are
religious, you 'tread them with bleeding feet--' or swim them as
the people do in hymns. And you praise and glorify all the time
you're doing it. Of course, I'm not religious myself and I can't
say I think it's pleasant--but I do KNOW! Every body beautiful
and perfect indeed! That's not religion--it's being irreligious.
Good gracious, think of the cripples and lepers and hunchbacks!"

"And the idea is that God made them all--by way of entertaining
himself?" he put it to her quietly.

"Well, who else did?" said Feather cheerfully.

"I don't know," he said. "Certain things I heard Mrs. Muir say
suggested to one that it might be interesting to think it out."

"Did she talk to you about God at afternoon tea?" said Feather.
"It's the kind of thing a religious Scotch woman might do."

"No, she did not talk to me. Perhaps that was her mistake. She
might have reformed me. She never says more to me than civility
demands. And it was not at tea. I accidentally dropped in on the
Bethunes and found an Oriental had been lecturing there. Mrs.
Muir was talking to him and I heard her. The man seemed to be a
scholar and a deep thinker and as they talked a group of us stood
and listened or asked questions."

"How funny!" said Feather.

"It was not funny at all. It was astonishingly calm and serious--and
logical. The logic was the new note. I had never thought of reason
in that connection."

"Reason has nothing to do with it. You must have faith. You
must just believe what you're told not think at all. Thinking is
wickedness--unless you think what you hear preached." Feather was
even a trifle delicately smug as she rattled off her orthodoxy--but
she laughed after she had done with it. "But it MUST have been
funny--a Turk or a Hindoo in a turban and a thing like a tea gown
and Mrs. Muir in her Edinburgh looking clothes talking about God."

"You are quite out of it," Coombe did not smile at all as he
said it. "The Oriental was as physically beautiful as Donal Muir
is. And Mrs. Muir--no other woman in the room compared with her.
Perhaps people who think grow beautiful."

Feather was not often alluring or coquettish in her manner to
Coombe but she tilted her head prettily and looked down at her
flower through lovely lashes.

"_I_ don't think," she said. "And I am not so bad looking."

"No," he answered coldly. "You are not. At times you look like a
young angel."

"If Mrs. Muir is like that," she said after a brief pause, "I
should like to know what she thinks of me?"

"No, you would not--neither should I--if she thinks at all," was
his answer. "But you remember you said you did not mind that sort
of thing."

"I don't. Why should I? It can't harm me." Her hint of a pout
made her mouth entrancing. "But, if she thinks good looks are the
result of religiousness I should like to let her see Robin--and
compare her with her boy. I saw Robin in the park last week and
she's a perfect beauty."

"Last week?" said Coombe.

"She doesn't need anyone but Andrews. I should bore her to death if
I went and sat in the Nursery and stared at her. No one does that
sort of thing in these days. But I should like to see Mrs. Muir to
see the two children together!" "That could not easily be arranged,
I am afraid," he said.

"Why not?"

His answer was politely deliberate.

"She greatly disapproves of me, I have told you. She is not proud
of the relationship."

"She does not like ME you mean?"

"Excuse me. I mean exactly what I said in telling you that she has
her own very strong views of the boy's training and surroundings.
They may be ridiculous but that sort of thing need not trouble
you."

Feather held up her hand and actually laughed.

"If Robin meets him in ten years from now-THAT for her very strong
views of his training and surroundings!"

And she snapped her fingers.

Mrs. Muir's distaste for her son's unavoidable connection the man
he might succeed had a firm foundation. She had been brought up in
a Scottish Manse where her father dominated as an omnipotent and
almost divine authority. As a child of imagination she had not been
happy but she had been obedient. In her girlhood she had varied
from type through her marriage with a young man who was a dreamer,
an advanced thinker, an impassioned Greek scholar and a lover
of beauty. After he had from her terrors of damnation, they had
been profoundly happy. They were young and at ease and they read
and thought together ardently. They explored new creeds and cults
and sometimes found themselves talking nonsense and sometimes
discovering untrodden paths of wisdom. They were youthful enough
to be solemn about things at times, and clever enough to laugh
at their solemnity when they awakened to it. Helen Muir left the
reverent gloom of the life at the Manse far behind despite her
respect for certain meanings they beclouded.

"I live in a new structure," she said to her husband, "but it is
built on a foundation which is like a solid subterranean chamber.
I don't use the subterranean chamber or go into it. I don't want
to. But now and then echoes--almost noises--make themselves heard
in it. Sometimes I find I have listened in spite of myself."

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