The Head of the House of Coombe, Frances Hodgson Burnett [adult books to read txt] 📗
- Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
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She went to the dressing table and looked at herself in the glass, leaning forward that she might see herself closely. The face which drew nearer and nearer had the effect of some tropic flower, because it was so alive with colour which seemed to palpitate instead of standing still. Her soft mouth was warm and brilliant with it, and the darkness of her eyes was—as it had always been—like dew. Her brow were a slender black velvet line, and her lashes made a thick, softening shadow. She saw they were becoming. She cupped her round chin in her hands and studied herself with a desire to be sure of the truth without prejudice or self conceit. The whole effect of her was glowing, and she felt the glow as others did. She put up a finger to touch the velvet petal texture of her skin, and she saw how prettily pointed and slim her hand was. Yes, that was pretty—and her hair—the way it grew about her forehead and ears and the back of her neck. She gazed at her young curve and colour and flame of life’s first beauty with deep curiosity, singularly impersonal for her years.
She liked it; she began to be grateful as Mademoiselle had said she and Dowie were. Yes, if other people liked it, there was no use in pretending it would not count.
“If I am going to earn my living,” she thought, with entire gravity, “it may be good for me. If I am a governess, it will be useful because children like pretty people. And if I am a secretary and work in an office, I daresay men like one to be pretty because it is more cheerful.”
She mentioned this to Mademoiselle Valle, who was very kind about it, though she looked thoughtful afterwards. When, a few days later, Mademoiselle had an interview with Coombe in Benby’s comfortable room, he appeared thoughtful also as he listened to her recital of the incidents of the long walk during which her charge had revealed her future plans.
“She is a nice child,” he said. “I wish she did not dislike me so much. I understand her, villain as she thinks me. I am not a genuine villain,” he added, with his cold smile. But he was saying it to himself, not to Mademoiselle.
This, she saw, but—singularly, perhaps—she spoke as if in reply.
“Of that I am aware.”
He turned his head slightly, with a quick, unprepared movement.
“Yes?” he said.
“Would your lordship pardon me if I should say that otherwise I should not ask your advice concerning a very young girl?”
He slightly waved his hand.
“I should have known that—if I had thought of it. I do know it.”
Mademoiselle Valle bowed.
“The fact,” she said, “that she seriously thinks that perhaps beauty may be an advantage to a young person who applies for work in the office of a man of business because it may seem bright and cheerful to him when he is tired and out of spirits—that gives one furiously to think. Yes, to me she said it, milord—with the eyes of a little dove brooding over her young. I could see her—lifting them like an angel to some elderly vaurien, who would merely think her a born cocotte.”
Here Coombe’s rigid face showed thought indeed.
“Good God!” he muttered, quite to himself, “Good God!” in a low, breathless voice. Villain or saint, he knew not one world but many.
“We must take care of her,” he said next. “She is not an insubordinate child. She will do nothing yet?”
“I have told her she is not yet ready,” Mademoiselle Valle answered. “I have also promised to tell her when she is—And to help her.”
“God help her if we do not!” he said. “She is, on the whole, as ignorant as a little sheep—and butchers are on the lookout for such as she is. They suit them even better than the little things whose tendencies are perverse from birth. An old man with an evil character may be able to watch over her from a distance.”
Mademoiselle regarded him with grave eyes, which took in his tall, thin erectness of figure, his bearing, the perfection of his attire with its unfailing freshness, which was not newness.
“Do you call yourself an old man, milord?” she asked.
“I am not decrepit—years need not bring that,” was his answer. “But I believe I became an old man before I was thirty. I have grown no older—in that which is really age—since then.”
In the moment’s silence which followed, his glance met Mademoiselle Valle’s and fixed itself.
“I am not old enough—or young enough—to be enamoured of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ little daughter,” he said. “YOU need not be told that. But you have heard that there are those who amuse themselves by choosing to believe that I am.”
“A few light and not too clean-minded fools,” she admitted without flinching.
“No man can do worse for himself than to explain and deny,” he responded with a smile at once hard and fine. “Let them continue to believe it.”
Sixteen passed by with many other things much more disturbing and important to the world than a girl’s birthday; seventeen was gone, with passing events more complicated still and increasingly significant, but even the owners of the hands hovering over the Chessboard, which was the Map of Europe, did not keep a watch on all of them as close as might have been kept with advantage. Girls in their teens are seldom interested in political and diplomatic conditions, and Robin was not fond of newspapers. She worked well and steadily under Mademoiselle’s guidance, and her governess realized that she was not losing sight of her plans for self support. She was made aware of this by an occasional word or so, and also by a certain telepathic union between them. Little as she cared for the papers, the child had a habit of closely examining the advertisements every day. She read faithfully the columns devoted to those who “Want” employment or are “Wanted” by employers.
“I look at all the paragraphs which begin ‘Wanted, a young lady’ or a ‘young woman’ or a ‘young person,’ and those which say that ‘A young person’ or ‘a young woman’ or ‘a young lady’ desires a position. I want to find out what is oftenest needed.”
She had ceased to be disturbed by the eyes which followed her, or opened a little as she passed. She knew that nothing had come undone or was crooked and that untidiness had nothing to do with the matter. She accepted being looked at as a part of everyday life. A certain friendliness and pleasure in most of the glances she liked and was glad of. Sometimes men of the flushed, middle-aged or elderly type displeased her by a sort of boldness of manner and gaze, bet she thought that they were only silly, giddy, old things who ought to go home to their families and stay with than. Mademoiselle or Dowie was nearly always with her, but, as she was not a French jemme fille, this was not because it was supposed that she could not be trusted out alone, but because she enjoyed their affectionate companionship.
There was one man, however, whom she greatly disliked, as young girls will occasionally dislike a member of the opposite sex for no special reason they can wholly explain to themselves.
He was an occasional visitor of her mother’s—a personable young Prussian officer of high rank and title. He was blonde and military and good-looking; he brought his bearing and manner from the Court at Berlin, and the click of his heels as he brought them smartly together, when he made his perfect automatic bow, was one of the things Robin knew she was reasonless in feeling she detested in him.
“It makes me feel as if he was not merely bowing as a a man who is a gentleman does,” she confided to Mademoiselle Valle, “but as if he had been taught to do it and to call attention to it as if no one had ever known how to do it properly before. It is so flourishing in its stiff way that it’s rather vulgar.”
“That is only personal fancy on your part,” commented Mademoiselle.
“I know it is,” admitted Robin. “But—” uneasily, “—but that isn’t what I dislike in him most. It’s his eyes, I suppose they are handsome eyes. They are blue and full—rather too full. They have a queer, swift stare—as if they plunged into other people’s eyes and tried to hold them and say something secret, all in one second. You find yourself getting red and trying to look away.”
“I don’t,” said Mademoiselle astutely—because she wanted to hear the rest, without asking too many questions.
Robin laughed just a little.
“You have not seen him do it. I have not seen him do it myself very often. He comes to call on—Mamma”—she never said “Mother”—“when he is in London. He has been coming for two or three seasons. The first time I saw him I was going out with Dowie and he was just going upstairs. Because the hall is so small, we almost knocked against each other, and he jumped back and made his bow, and he stared so that I felt silly and half frightened. I was only fifteen then.”
“And since then?” Mademoiselle Valle inquired.
“When he is here it seems as if I always meet him somewhere. Twice, when Fraulein Hirsch was with me in the Square Gardens, he came and spoke to us. I think he must know her. He was very grand and condescendingly polite to her, as if he did not forget she was only a German teacher and I was only a little girl whose mamma he knew. But he kept looking at me until I began to hate him.”
“You must not dislike people without reason. You dislike Lord Coombe.”
“They both make me creep. Lord Coombe doesn’t plunge his eyes into mine, but he makes me creep with his fishy coldness. I feel as if he were like Satan in his still way.”
“That is childish prejudice and nonsense.”
“Perhaps the other is, too,” said Robin. “But they both make me creep, nevertheless. I would rather DIE than be obliged to let one of them touch me. That was why I would never shake hands with Lord Coombe when I was a little child.”
“You think Fraulein Hirsch knows the Baron?” Mademoiselle inquired further.
“I am sure she does. Several times, when she has gone out to walk with me, we have met him. Sometimes he only passes us and salutes, but sometimes he stops and says a few words in a stiff, magnificent way. But he always bores his eyes into mine, as if he were finding out things about me which I don’t know myself. He has passed several times when you have been with me, but you may not remember.”
Mademoiselle Valle chanced, however, to recall having observed the salute of a somewhat haughty, masculine person, whose military bearing in itself was sufficient to attract attention, so markedly did it suggest the clanking of spurs and accoutrements, and the high lift of a breast bearing orders.
“He is Count von Hillern, and I wish he would stay in Germany,” said Robin.
Fraulein Hirsch had not been one of those who returned hastily to her own country, giving no warning of her intention to her employers. She had remained in London and given her lessons faithfully. She was a plain young woman with a large nose and pimpled, colourless face and shy eyes and manner. Robin had felt sure that she stood in awe of the rank and military grandeur of her fellow
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