Books: The Head of the House of Coombe

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

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That the Lady Downstairs, who was so fond of laughing and who knew
so many persons who seemed to laugh nearly all the time, might
have been joking about being her mother presented itself to Robin
as a vague solution of the problem. The Lady had laughed when she
said it, as people so often laughed at children. Perhaps she had
only been amusing herself as grown-up persons were apparently
entitled to do. Even Donal had not seemed wholly convinced and
though his mother had said the Lady Downstairs WAS--somehow the
subject had been changed at once. Mrs. Muir had so soon begun to
tell them a story. Robin was not in the least aware that she had
swiftly distracted their attention from a question, any discussion
of which would have involved explanations she could not have
produced. It would have been impossible to make it clear to any
child. She herself was helpless before the situation and therefore
her only refuge was to make the two think of other things. She had
so well done this that Robin had gone home later only remembering
the brightly transitory episode as she recalled others as brief and
bright, when she had stared at a light and lovely figure standing
on the nursery threshold and asking careless questions of Andrews,
without coming in and risking the freshness of her draperies by
contact with London top-floor grubbiness. The child was, in fact,
too full of the reality of her happiness with Donal and Donal's
mother to be more than faintly bewildered by a sort of visionary
conundrum.

Robin, like Donal, slept perfectly through the night. Her sleep
was perhaps made more perfect by fair dreams in which she played
in the Gardens and she and Donal ran to and from the knees of
the Mother lady to ask questions and explain their games. As the
child had often, in the past, looked up at the sky, so she had looked
up into the clear eyes of the Mother lady. There was something in
them which she had never seen before but which she kept wanting to
see again. Then there came a queer bit of a dream about the Lady
Downstairs. She came dancing towards them dressed in hyacinths
and with her arms full of daffodils. She danced before Donal's
Mother--danced and laughed as if she thought they were all funny.
She threw a few daffodils at them and then danced away. The
daffodils lay on the gravel walk and they all looked at them but
no one picked them up. Afterwards--in the dream--Mrs. Muir suddenly
caught her in her arms and kissed her and Robin was glad and felt
warm all over--inside and out.

She wakened smiling at the dingy ceiling of the dingy room. There
was but one tiny shadow in the world, which was the fear that
Andrews would get well too quickly. She was no longer in bed but
was well enough to sit up and sew a little before the tiny fire
in the atom of a servant's room grate. The doctor would not let
her go out yet; therefore, Anne still remained in charge. Founding
one's hope on previous knowledge of Anne's habits, she might be
trusted to sit and read and show no untoward curiosity.

From her bed Robin could see the sky was blue. That meant that
she would be taken out. She lay as quiet as a mouse and thought
of the joy before her, until Anne came to dress her and give her
her breakfast.

"We'll put on your rose-coloured smock this morning," the girl said,
when the dressing began. "I like the hat and socks that match."

Anne was not quite like Andrews who was not talkative. She made
a conversational sort of remark after she had tied the white shoes.

"You've got pretty little aristocratic legs of your own," she said
amiably. "I like my children to have nice legs."

Robin was uplifted in spirit by the commendation, but she hoped
Anne would put on her own things quickly. Sometimes she was rather
a long time. The one course, however, towards which discretion
pointed as entirely safe was the continuance of being as quiet
as a mouse--even quieter, if such thing might be--so that nothing
might interfere with anything any one wanted to do. To interfere
would have been to attract attention and might lead to delay. So
she stood and watched the sparrows inoffensively until Anne called
her.

When she found herself out on the street her step was so light on
the pavement that she was rather like a rose petal blown fluttering
along by soft vagrant puffs of spring air. Under her flopping
hat her eyes and lips and cheeks were so happy that more than one
passer-by turned head over shoulder to look after her.

"Your name ought to be Rose," Anne giggled involuntarily as she
glanced down at her because someone had stared. She had not meant
to speak but the words said themselves.

Because the time was young June even London sky and air were
wonderful. Stray breaths of fragrance came and went. The green of
the trees in the Gardens was light and fresh and in the bedded-out
curves and stars and circles there were more flowers every hour,
so that it seemed as if blooming things with scents grew thick
about one's feet. It was no wonder one felt light and smiled back
at nurses and governesses who looked up. Robin drew eyes became she
was like a summer bloom suddenly appearing in the Spring Garden.

Nanny was not sitting on the bench near the gate and Donal was
not to be seen amusing himself. But he was somewhere just out of
sight, or, if he had chanced to be late, he would come very soon
even if his Mother could not come with him--though Robin could
not believe she would not. To a child thing both happiness and
despair cannot be conceived of except as lasting forever.

Anne sat down and opened her book. She had reached an exciting
part and looked forward to a thoroughly enjoyable morning.

Robin hopped about for a few minutes. Donal had taught her to hop
and she felt it an accomplishment. Entangled in the meshes of the
feathery, golden, if criminal, ringlets of Lady Audley, Anne did
not know when she hopped round the curve of the walk behind the
lilac and snowball bushes.

Once safe in her bit of enchanted land, the child stood still and
looked about her. There was no kilted figure to be seen, but it
would come towards her soon with swinging plaid and eagle's feather
standing up grandly in its Highland bonnet. He would come soon.
Perhaps he would come running--and the Mother lady would walk
behind more slowly and smile. Robin waited and looked--she waited
and looked.

She was used to waiting but she had never watched for anyone
before. There had never been any one or anything to watch for. The
newness of the suspense gave it a sort of deep thrill at first. How
long was "at first"? She did not know. She stood--and stood--and
stood--and looked at every creature who entered the gate. She did
not see any one who looked in the least like Donal or his Mother or
Nanny. There were nurses and governesses and children and a loitering
lady or two. There were never many people in the Gardens--only
those who had keys. She knew nothing about time but at length she
knew that on other mornings they had been playing together before
this.

The small rose-coloured figure stood so still for so long that it
began to look rigid and a nurse sitting at some distance said to
another,

"What is that child waiting for?"

What length of time had passed before she found herself looking
slowly down at her feet because of something. The "something"
which had drawn her eyes downward was that she had stood so long
without moving that her tense feet had begun vaguely to hurt her
and the ache attracted her attention. She changed her position
slightly and turned her eyes upon the gate again. He was coming very
soon. He would be sure to run fast now and he would be laughing.
Donal! Donal! She even laughed a little low, quivering laugh
herself.

"What is that child waiting for? I should really like to know,"
the distant nurse said again curiously.

If she had been eighteen years old she would have said to herself
that she was waiting hours and hours. She would have looked at a
little watch a thousand times; she would have walked up and down
and round and round the garden never losing sight of the gate--or
any other point for that matter--for more than a minute. Each
sound of the church clock striking a few streets away would have
brought her young heart thumping into her throat.

But a child has no watch, no words out of which to build hopes
and fears and reasons, arguments battling against anguish which
grows--palliations, excuses. Robin, could only wait in the midst
of a slow dark, rising tide of something she had no name for. This
slow rising of an engulfing flood she felt when pins and needles
began to take possession of her feet, when her legs ached, and her
eyes felt as if they had grown big and tightly strained. Donal!
Donal! Donal!

Who knows but that some echo of the terror against which she had
fought and screamed on the night when she had lain alone in the dark
in her cradle and Feather had hid her head under the pillow--came
back and closed slowly around and over her, filling her inarticulate
being with panic which at last reached its unbearable height?
She had not really stood waiting the entire morning, but she was
young enough to think that she had and that at any moment Anne
might come and take her away. He had not come running--he had not
come laughing--he had not come with his plaid swinging and his
feather standing high! There came a moment when her strained eyes
no longer seemed to see clearly! Something like a big lump crawled
up into her throat! Something of the same sort happened the day
she had burst into a wail of loneliness and Andrews had pinched
her. Panic seized her; she clutched the breast of her rose-coloured
frock and panic-driven turned and fled into a thick clump of bushes
where there was no path and where even Donal had never pierced.

"That child has run away at last," the distant nurse remarked,
"I'd like to find out what she WAS waiting for."

The shrubs were part of the enclosing planting of the Gardens. The
children who came to play on the grass and paths felt as if they
formed a sort of forest. Because of this, Robin had made her
frantic dash to their shelter. No one would come--no one would
see her--no one would hear her, beneath them it was almost dark.
Bereft, broken and betrayed, a little mad thing, she pushed her
way into their shadow and threw herself face downward, a small,
writhing, rose-coloured heap, upon the damp mould. She could not
have explained what she was doing or why she had given up all,
as if some tidal wave had overwhelmed her. Suddenly she knew that
all her new world had gone--forever and ever. As it had come so
it had gone. As she had not doubted the permanence of its joy,
so she KNEW that the end had come. Only the wisdom of the occult
would dare to suggest that from her child mate, squaring his sturdy
young shoulders against the world as the flying train sped on its
way, some wave of desperate, inchoate thinking rushed backward.
There was nothing more. He would not come back running. He was
GONE!

There was no Andrews to hear. Hidden in the shadow under the shrubs,
the rattle and roar of the street outside the railing drowned her
mad little cries. All she had never done before, she did then. Her
hands beat on the damp mould and tore at it--her small feet beat
it and dug into it. She cried, she sobbed; the big lump in her
throat almost strangled her--she writhed and did not know she was
writhing. Her tears pouring forth wet her hair, her face, her dress.
She did not cry out, "Donal! Donal!" because he was nowhere--nowhere.
If Andrews had seen her she would have said she was "in a tantrum,"
But she was not. The world had been torn away.

A long time afterwards, as it seemed to her, she crawled out from
under the shrubs, carrying her pretty flopping hat in her earth-stained
hand. It was not pretty any more. She had been lying on it and it
was crushed and flat. She crept slowly round the curve to Anne.

Seeing her, Anne sprang to her feet. The rose was a piteous thing
beaten to earth by a storm. The child's face was swollen and stained,
her hair was tangled and damp there were dark marks of mould on
her dress, her hat, her hands, her white cheeks; her white shoes
were earth-stained also, and the feet in the rose-coloured socks
dragged themselves heavily--slowly.

"My gracious!" the young woman almost shrieked. "What's happened!
Where have you been? Did you fall down? Ah, my good gracious! Mercy
me!"

Robin caught her breath but did not say a word.

"You fell down on a flower bed where they'd been watering the
plants!" almost wept Anne. "You must have. There isn't that much
dirt anywhere else in the Gardens."

And when she took her charge home that was the story she told
Andrews. Out of Robin she could get nothing, and it was necessary
to have an explanation.

The truth, of which she knew nothing, was but the story of a child's
awful dismay and a child's woe at one of Life's first betrayals.
It would be left behind by the days which came and went--it would
pass--as all things pass but the everlasting hills--but in this way
it was that it came and wrote itself upon the tablets of a child's
day.

CHAPTER XI

"The child's always been well, ma'am," Andrews was standing, the
image of exact correctness, in her mistress' bedroom, while Feather
lay in bed with her breakfast on a convenient and decorative little
table. "It's been a thing I've prided myself on. But I should say
she isn't well now."

"Well, I suppose it's only natural that she should begin sometime,"
remarked Feather. "They always do, of course. I remember we all had
things when we were children. What does the doctor say? I hope it
isn't the measles, or the beginning of anything worse?"

"No, ma'am, it isn't. It's nothing like a child's disease. I could
have managed that. There's good private nursing homes for them in
these days. Everything taken care of exactly as it should be and no
trouble of disinfecting and isolating for the family. I know what
you'd have wished to have done, ma'am."

"You do know your business, Andrews," was Feather's amiable comment.

"Thank you, ma'am," from Andrews. "Infectious things are easy
managed if they're taken away quick. But the doctor said you must
be spoken to because perhaps a change was needed."

"You could take her to Ramsgate or somewhere bracing." said Feather.
"But what did he SAY?"

"He seemed puzzled, ma'am. That's what struck me. When I told him
about her not eating--and lying awake crying all night--to judge from
her looks in the morning--and getting thin and pale--he examined
her very careful and he looked queer and he said, 'This child hasn't
had a SHOCK of any kind, has she? This looks like what we should
call shock--if she were older'."

Feather laughed.

"How could a baby like that have a shock?"

"That's what I thought myself, ma'am," answered Andrews. "A child
that's had her hours regular and is fed and bathed and sleeps by
the clock, and goes out and plays by herself in the Gardens, well
watched over, hasn't any chance to get shocks. I told him so and
he sat still and watched her quite curious, and then he said very
slow: 'Sometimes little children are a good deal shaken up by a
fall when they are playing. Do you remember any chance fall when
she cried a good deal?'"

"But you didn't, of course," said Feather.

"No, ma'am, I didn't. I keep my eye on her pretty strict and
shouldn't encourage wild running or playing. I don't let her play
with other children. And she's not one of those stumbling, falling
children. I told him the only fall I ever knew of her having was a
bit of a slip on a soft flower bed that had just been watered--to
judge from the state her clothes were in. She had cried because
she's not used to such things, and I think she was frightened. But
there wasn't a scratch or a shadow of a bruise on her. Even that
wouldn't have happened if I'd been with her. It was when I was
ill and my sister Anne took my place. Ann thought at first that
she'd been playing with a little boy she had made friends with--but
she found out that the boy hadn't come that morning--"

"A boy!" Andrews was sharp enough to detect a new and interested
note. "What boy?"

"She wouldn't have played with any other child if I'd been there"
said Andrews, "I was pretty sharp with Anne about it. But she said
he was an aristocratic looking little fellow--"

"Was he in Highland costume?" Feather interrupted.

"Yes, ma'am. Anne excused herself by saying she thought you must
know something about him. She declares she saw you come into the
Gardens and speak to his Mother quite friendly. That was the day
before Robin fell and ruined her rose-coloured smock and things.
But it wasn't through playing boisterous with the boy--because
he didn't come that morning, as I said, and he never has since."

Andrews, on this, found cause for being momentarily puzzled by the
change of expression in her mistress' face. Was it an odd little
gleam of angry spite she saw?

"And never has since, has he?" Mrs. Gareth-Lawless said with a
half laugh.

"Not once, ma'am," answered Andrews. "And Anne thinks it queer
the child never seemed to look for him. As if she'd lost interest.
She just droops and drags about and doesn't try to play at all."

"How much did she play with him?"

"Well, he was such a fine little fellow and had such a respectable,
elderly, Scotch looking woman in charge of him that Anne owned up
that she hadn't thought there was any objections to them playing
together. She says they were as well behaved and quiet as children
could be." Andrews thought proper to further justify herself by
repeating, "She didn't think there could be any objection."

"There couldn't," Mrs. Gareth-Lawless remarked. "I do know the
boy. He is a relation of Lord Coombe's."

"Indeed, ma'am," with colourless civility, "Anne said he was a
big handsome child."

Feather took a small bunch of hothouse grapes from her breakfast
tray and, after picking one off, suddenly began to laugh.

"Good gracious, Andrews!" she said. "He was the 'shock'! How
perfectly ridiculous! Robin had never played with a boy before
and she fell in love with him. The little thing's actually pining
away for him." She dropped the grapes and gave herself up to
delicate mirth. "He was taken away and disappeared. Perhaps she
fainted and fell into the wet flower bed and spoiled her frock,
when she first realized that he wasn't coming."

"It did happen that morning," admitted Andrews, smiling a little
also. "It does seem funny. But children take to each other in a
queer way now and then. I've seen it upset them dreadful when they
were parted."

"You must tell the doctor," laughed Feather. "Then he'll see
there's nothing to be anxious about. She'll get over it in a week."

"It's five weeks since it happened, ma'am," remarked Andrews, with
just a touch of seriousness.

"Five! Why, so it must be! I remember the day I spoke to Mrs.
Muir. If she's that sort of child you had better keep her away from
boys. HOW ridiculous! How Lord Coombe--how people will laugh when
I tell them!"

She had paused a second because--for that second--she was not quite
sure that Coombe WOULD laugh. Frequently she was of the opinion
that he did not laugh at things when he should have done so. But
she had had a brief furious moment when she had realized that the
boy had actually been whisked away. She remembered the clearness of
the fine eyes which had looked directly into hers. The woman had
been deciding then that she would have nothing to do with her--or
even with her child.

But the story of Robin worn by a bereft nursery passion for a little
boy, whose mamma snatched him away as a brand from the burning,
was far too edifying not to be related to those who would find it
delicious.

It was on the occasion, a night or so later, of a gathering at
dinner of exactly the few elect ones, whose power to find it
delicious was the most highly developed, that she related it. It
was a very little dinner--only four people. One was the long thin
young man, with the good looking narrow face and dark eyes peering
through a pince nez--the one who had said that Mrs. Gareth-Lawless
"got her wondrous clothes from Helene" but that he couldn't. His
name was Harrowby. Another was the Starling who was a Miss March
who had, some years earlier, led the van of the girls who prostrated
their relatives by becoming what was then called "emancipated"; the
sign thereof being the demanding of latchkeys and the setting up
of bachelor apartments. The relatives had astonishingly settled
down, with the unmoved passage of time, and more modern emancipation
had so far left latchkeys and bachelor apartments behind it that
they began to seem almost old-fogeyish. Clara March, however,
had progressed with her day. The third diner was an adored young
actor with a low, veiled voice which, combining itself with almond
eyes and a sentimental and emotional curve of cheek and chin, made
the most commonplace "lines" sound yearningly impassioned. He was
not impassioned at all--merely fond of his pleasures and comforts
in a way which would end by his becoming stout. At present his
figure was perfect--exactly the thing for the uniforms of royal
persons of Ruritania and places of that ilk--and the name by which
programmes presented him was Gerald Vesey.

Feather's house pleased him and she herself liked being spoken
to in the veiled voice and gazed at by the almond eyes, as though
insuperable obstacles alone prevented soul-stirring things from
being said. That she knew this was not true did not interfere with
her liking it. Besides he adored and understood her clothes.

Over coffee in the drawing-room, Coombe joined them. He had not
known of the little dinner and arrived just as Feather was on the
point of beginning her story.

"You are just in time," she greeted him, "I was going to tell them
something to make them laugh."

"Will it make me laugh?" he inquired.

"It ought to. Robin is in love. She is five years old and she has
been deserted, and Andrews came to tell me that she can neither
eat nor sleep. The doctor says she has had a shock."

Coombe did not join in the ripple of amused laughter but, as he
took his cup of coffee, he looked interested.

Harrowby was interested too. His dark eyes quite gleamed.

"I suppose she is in bed by now," he said. "If it were not so late,
I should beg you to have her brought down so that we might have a
look at her. I'm by way of taking a psychological interest."

"I'm psychological myself," said the Starling. "But what do you
mean, Feather? Are you in earnest?"

"Andrews is," Feather answered. "She could manage measles but she
could not be responsible for shock. But she didn't find out about
the love affair. I found that out--by mere chance. Do you remember
the day we got out of the victoria and went into the Gardens,
Starling?"

"The time you spoke to Mrs. Muir?"

Coombe turned slightly towards them.

Feather nodded, with a lightly significant air.

"It was her boy," she said, and then she laughed and nodded at
Coombe.

"He was quite as handsome as you said he was. No wonder poor Robin
fell prostrate. He ought to be chained and muzzled by law when he
grows up."

"But so ought Robin," threw in the Starling in her brusque, young
mannish way.

"But Robin's only a girl and she's not a parti," laughed Feather.
Her eyes, lifted to Coombe's, held a sort of childlike malice.
"After his mother knew she was Miss Gareth-Lawless, he was not
allowed to play in the Gardens again. Did she take him back to
Scotland?"

"They went back to Scotland," answered Coombe, "and, of course,
the boy was not left behind."

"Have YOU a child five years old?" asked Vesey in his low voice
of Feather. "You?"

"It seems absurd to ME," said Feather, "I never quite believe in
her."

"I don't," said Vesey. "She's impossible."

"Robin is a stimulating name," put in Harrowby. "IS it too late
to let us see her? If she's such a beauty as Starling hints, she
ought to be looked at."

Feather actually touched the bell by the fireplace. A sudden
caprice moved her. The love story had not gone off quite as well
as she had thought it would. And, after all, the child was pretty
enough to show off. She knew nothing in particular about her
daughter's hours, but, if she was asleep, she could be wakened.

"Tell Andrews," she said to the footman when he appeared, "I wish
Miss Robin to be brought downstairs."

"They usually go to bed at seven, I believe," remarked Coombe,
"but, of course, I am not an authority."

Robin was not asleep though she had long been in bed. Because she
kept her eyes shut Andrews had been deceived into carrying on a
conversation with her sister Anne, who had come to see her. Robin
had been lying listening to it. She had begun to listen because
they had been talking about the day she had spoiled her rose-coloured
smock and they had ended by being very frank about other things.

"As sure as you saw her speak to the boy's mother the day before,
just so sure she whisked him back to Scotland the next morning,"
said Andrews. "She's one of the kind that's particular. Lord
Coombe's the reason. She does not want her boy to see or speak to
him, if it can be helped. She won't have it--and when she found
out--"

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