The Head of the House of Coombe, Frances Hodgson Burnett [adult books to read txt] 📗

days, and the eager flit from continent to continent. Engagements can be made by cable and the truly enterprising can accept an invitation to dine in America on a fortnight’s notice. Telephones communicate in a few seconds and no one is secure from social intercourse for fifteen minutes. Acquaintances and correspondence have no limitations because all the inhabitants of the globe can reach one by motor or electricity. In moments of fatigue I revert to the days of Queen Anne with pleasure.”

While these changes went on, Robin lived in her own world in her own quarters at the rear of the slice of a house. During the early years spent with Dowson, she learned gradually that life was a better thing than she had known in the dreary gloom of the third floor Day and Night Nurseries. She was no longer left to spend hours alone, nor was she taken below stairs to listen blankly to servants talking to each other of mysterious things with which she herself and the Lady Downstairs and “him” were somehow connected, her discovery of this fact being based on the dropping of voices and sidelong glances at her and sudden warning sounds from Andrews. She realized that Dowson would never pinch her, and the rooms she lived in were pretty and bright.

Gradually playthings and picture books appeared in them, which she gathered Dowson presented her with. She gathered this from Dowson herself.

She had never played with the doll, and, by chance a day arriving when Lord Coombe encountered Dowson in the street without her charge, he stopped her again and spoke as before.

“Is the little girl well and happy, Nurse?” he asked.

“Quite well, my lord, and much happier than she used to be.”

“Did she,” he hesitated slightly, “like the playthings you bought her?”

Dowson hesitated more than slightly but, being a sensible woman and at the same time curious about the matter, she spoke the truth.

“She wouldn’t play with them at all, my lord. I couldn’t persuade her to. What her child’s fancy was I don’t know.”

“Neither do I—except that it is founded on a distinct dislike,” said Coombe. There was a brief pause. “Are you fond of toys yourself, Dowson?” he inquired coldly.

“I am that—and I know how to choose them, your lordship,” replied Dowson, with a large, shrewd intelligence.

“Then oblige me by throwing away the doll and its accompaniments and buying some toys for yourself, at my expense. You can present them to Miss Robin as a personal gift. She will accept them from you.”

He passed on his way and Dowson looked after him interestedly.

“If she was his,” she thought, “I shouldn’t be puzzled. But she’s not—that I’ve ever heard of. He’s got some fancy of his own the same as Robin has, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him. I’d like to know what it is.”

It was a fancy—an old, old fancy—it harked back nearly thirty years—to the dark days of youth and passion and unending tragedy whose anguish, as it then seemed, could never pass—but which, nevertheless, had faded with the years as they flowed by. And yet left him as he was and had been. He was not sentimental about it, he smiled at himself drearily—though never at the memory—when it rose again and, through its vague power, led him to do strange things curiously verging on the emotional and eccentric. But even the child—who quite loathed him for some fantastic infant reason of her own—even the child had her part in it. His soul oddly withdrew itself into a far remoteness as he walked away and Piccadilly became a shadow and a dream.

Dowson went home and began to pack neatly in a box the neglected doll and the toys which had accompanied her. Robin seeing her doing it, asked a question.

“Are they going back to the shop?”

“No. Lord Coombe is letting me give them to a little girl who is very poor and has to lie in bed because her back hurts her. His lordship is so kind he does not want you to be troubled with them. He is not angry. He is too good to be angry.”

That was not true, thought Robin. He had done THAT THING she remembered! Goodness could not have done it. Only badness.

When Dowson brought in a new doll and other wonderful things, a little hand enclosed her wrist quite tightly as she was unpacking the boxes. It was Robin’s and the small creature looked at her with a questioning, half appealing, half fierce.

“Did he send them, Dowson?”

“They are a present from me,” Dowson answered comfortably, and Robin said again,

“I want to kiss you. I like to kiss you. I do.”

To those given to psychical interests and speculations, it might have suggested itself that, on the night when the creature who had seemed to Andrews a soft tissued puppet had suddenly burst forth into defiance and fearless shrillness, some cerebral change had taken place in her. From that hour her softness had become a thing of the past. Dowson had not found a baby, but a brooding, little, passionate being. She was neither insubordinate nor irritable, but Dowson was conscious of a certain intensity of temperament in her. She knew that she was always thinking of things of which she said almost nothing. Only a sensible motherly curiosity, such as Dowson’s could have made discoveries, but a rare question put by the child at long intervals sometimes threw a faint light. There were questions chiefly concerning mothers and their habits and customs. They were such as, in their very unconsciousness, revealed a strange past history. Lights were most unconsciously thrown by Mrs. Gareth-Lawless herself. Her quite amiable detachment from all shadow of responsibility, her brilliantly unending occupations, her goings in and out, the flocks of light, almost noisy, intimates who came in and out with her revealed much to a respectable person who had soberly watched the world.

“The Lady Downstairs is my mother, isn’t she?” Robin inquired gravely once.

“Yes, my dear,” was Dowson’s answer.

A pause for consideration of the matter and then from Robin:

“All mothers are not alike, Dowson, are they?”

“No, my dear,” with wisdom.

Though she was not yet seven, life had so changed for her that it was a far cry back to the Spring days in the Square Gardens. She went back, however, back into that remote ecstatic past.

“The Lady Downstairs is not—alike,” she said at last, “Donal’s mother loved him. She let him sit in the same chair with her and read in picture books. She kissed him when he was in bed.”

Jennings, the young footman who was a humourist, had, of course, heard witty references to Robin’s love affair while in attendance, and he had equally, of course, repeated them below stairs. Therefore,

Dowson had heard vague rumours but had tactfully refrained from mentioning the subject to her charge.

“Who was Donal?” she said now, but quite quietly. Robin did not know that a confidante would have made her first agony easier to bear. She was not really being confidential now, but, realizing Dowson’s comfortable kindliness, she knew that it would be safe to speak to her.

“He was a big boy,” she answered keeping her eyes on Dowson’s face. “He laughed and ran and jumped. His eyes—” she stopped there because she could not explain what she had wanted to say about these joyous young eyes, which were the first friendly human ones she had known.

“He lives in Scotland,” she began again. “His mother loved him. He kissed me. He went away. Lord Coombe sent him.”

Dawson could not help her start.

“Lord Coombe!” she exclaimed.

Robin came close to her and ground her little fist into her knee, until its plumpness felt almost bruised.

“He is bad—bad—bad!” and she looked like a little demon.

Being a wise woman, Dowson knew at once that she had come upon a hidden child volcano, and it would be well to let it seethe into silence. She was not a clever person, but long experience had taught her that there were occasions when it was well to leave a child alone. This one would not answer if she were questioned. She would only become stubborn and furious, and no child should be goaded into fury. Dowson had, of course, learned that the boy was a relative of his lordship’s and had a strict Scottish mother who did not approve of the slice of a house. His lordship might have been concerned in the matter—or he might not. But at least Dowson had gained a side light. And how the little thing had cared! Actually as if she had been a grown girl, Dowson found herself thinking uneasily.

She was rendered even a trifle more uneasy a few days later when she came upon Robin sitting in a corner on a footstool with a picture book on her knee, and she recognized it as the one she had discovered during her first exploitation of the resources of the third floor nursery. It was inscribed “Donal” and Robin was not looking at it alone, but at something she held in her hand—something folded in a crumpled, untidy bit of paper.

Making a reason for nearing her corner, Dowson saw what the paper held. The contents looked like the broken fragments of some dried leaves. The child was gazing at them with a piteous, bewildered face—so piteous that Dowson was sorry.

“Do you want to keep those?” she asked.

“Yes,” with a caught breath. “Yes.”

“I will make you a little silk bag to hold them in,” Dowson said, actually feeling rather piteous herself. The poor, little lamb with her picture book and her bits of broken dry leaves—almost like senna.

She sat down near her and Robin left her footstool and came to her. She laid the picture book on her lap and the senna like fragments of leaves on its open page.

“Donal brought it to show me,” she quavered. “He made pretty things on the leaves—with his dirk.” She recalled too much—too much all at once. Her eyes grew rounder and larger with inescapable woe; “Donal did! Donal!” And suddenly she hid her face deep in Dowson’s skirts and the tempest broke. She was so small a thing—so inarticulate—and these were her dead! Dowson could only catch her in her arms, drag her up on her knee, and rock her to and fro.

“Good Lord! Good Lord!” was her inward ejaculation. “And she not seven! What’ll she do when she’s seventeen! She’s one of them there’s no help for!”

It was the beginning of an affection. After this, when Dowson tucked Robin in bed each night, she kissed her. She told her stories and taught her to sew and to know her letters. Using some discretion she found certain little playmates for her in the Gardens. But there were occasions when all did not go well, and some pretty, friendly child, who had played with Robin for a few days, suddenly seemed to be kept strictly by her nurse’s side. Once, when she was about ten years old, a newcomer, a dramatic and too richly dressed little person, after a day of wonderful imaginative playing appeared in the Gardens the morning following to turn an ostentatious cold shoulder.

“What is the matter?” asked Robin.

“Oh, we can’t play with you any more,” with quite a flounce superiority.

“Why not?” said Robin, becoming haughty herself.

“We can’t. It’s because of Lord Coombe.” The little person had really no definite knowledge of how Lord Coombe was concerned, but certain servants’ whisperings of names and mysterious phrases had conveyed quite an enjoyable effect of unknown iniquity connected with his lordship.

Robin said nothing to Dowson, but walked up and down the paths reflecting and building a slow fire which would