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

who wish to support themselves? I—I am one of them. I want very much to earn my own living. I think I am well educated. I have been allowed to read a good deal and my teachers, Mademoiselle Valle and Fraulein Hirsch, say I speak and write French and German well for an English girl. If you thought I could be a suitable companion for Miss Etynge, I—should be very happy.”

How curiously Lady Etynge watched her as she spoke. She did not look displeased, but there was something in her face which made Robin afraid that she was, perhaps, after all, not the girl who was fortunate enough to quite “do.”

She felt her hopes raised a degree, however, when Lady Etynge smiled at her.

“Do you know, I feel that is very pretty of you!” she said. “It quite delights me—as I am an idolizing mother—that my mere talk of Helene should have made you like her well enough to think you might care to live with her. And I confess I am modern enough to be pleased with your wishing to earn your own living.”

“I must,” said Robin. “I MUST! I could not bear not to earn it!” She spoke a little suddenly, and a flag of new colour fluttered in her cheek.

“When Helene comes, you must meet. If you like each other, as I feel sure you will, and if Mrs. Gareth-Lawless does not object—if it remains only a matter of being suitable—you are suitable, my dear—you are suitable.”

She touched Robin’s hand with the light pat which was a caress, and the child was radiant.

“Oh, you are kind to me!” The words broke from her involuntarily. “And it is such GOOD fortune! Thank you, thank you, Lady Etynge.”

The flush of her joy and relief had not died out before the footman, who had opened the door, appeared on the threshold. He was a handsome young fellow, whose eyes were not as professionally impassive as his face. A footman had no right to dart a swift side look at one as people did in the street. He did dart such a glance. Robin saw, and she was momentarily struck by its being one of those she sometimes objected to.

Otherwise his manner was without flaw. He had only come to announce to his mistress the arrival of a caller.

When Lady Etynge took the card from the salver, her expression changed. She even looked slightly disturbed.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she murmured, “I must see her,” lifting her eyes to Robin. “It is an old friend merely passing through London. How wicked of me to forget that she wrote to say that she might dash in at any hour.”

“Please!” pled Robin, prettily. “I can run away at once. Fraulein Hirsch must have come back. Please—”

“The lady asked me particularly to say that she has only a few minutes to stay, as she is catching a train,” the footman decorously ventured.

“If that is the case,” Lady Etynge said, even relievedly, “I will leave you here to look at things until I come back. I really want to talk to you a little more about yourself and Helene. I can’t let you go.” She looked back from the door before she passed through it. “Amuse yourself, my dear,” and then she added hastily to the man.

“Have you remembered that there was something wrong with the latch, William? See if it needs a locksmith.”

“Very good, my lady.”

She was gone and Robin stood by the sofa thrilled with happiness and relief. How wonderful it was that, through mere lucky chance, she had gone to watch the children sailing their boats! And that Fraulein Hirsch had seen Lady Etynge! What good luck and how grateful she was! The thought which passed through her mind was like a little prayer of thanks. How strange it would be to be really intimate with a girl like herself—or rather like Helene. It made her heart beat to think of it. How wonderful it would be if Helene actually loved her, and she loved Helene. Something sprang out of some depths of her being where past things were hidden. The something was a deadly little memory. Donal! Donal! It would be—if she loved Helene and Helene loved her—as new a revelation as Donal. Oh! she remembered.

She heard the footman doing something to the latch of the door, which caused it to make a clicking sound. He was obeying orders and examining it. As she involuntarily glanced at him, he—bending over the door handle—raised his eyes sideways and glanced at her. It was an inexcusable glance from a domestic, because it was actually as if he were taking the liberty of privately summing her up—taking her points in for his own entertainment. She so resented the unprofessional bad manners of it, that she turned away and sauntered into the Dresden blue and white library and sat down with a book.

She was quite relieved, when, only a few minutes later, he went away having evidently done what he could.

The book she had picked up was a new novel and opened with an attention-arresting agreeableness, which led her on. In fact it led her on further and, for a longer time than she was aware of. It was her way to become wholly absorbed in books when they allured her; she forgot her surroundings and forgot the passing of time. This was a new book by a strong man with the gift which makes alive people, places, things. The ones whose lives had taken possession of his being in this story were throbbing with vital truth.

She read on and on because, from the first page, she knew them as actual pulsating human creatures. They looked into her face, they laughed, she heard their voices, she CARED for every trivial thing that happened to them—to any of them. If one of them picked a flower, she saw how he or she held it and its scent was in the air.

Having been so drawn on into a sort of unconsciousness of all else, it was inevitable that, when she suddenly became aware that she did not see her page quite clearly, she should withdraw her eyes from her page and look about her. As she did so, she started from her comfortable chair in amazement and some alarm. The room had become so much darker that it must be getting late. How careless and silly she had been. Where was Fraulein Hirsch?

“I am only a strange girl and Lady Etynge might so easily have forgotten me,” passed through her mind. “Her friend may have stayed and they may have had so much to talk about, that, of coarse, I was forgotten. But Fraulein Hirsch—how could she!”

Then, remembering the subservient humility of the Fraulein’s mind, she wondered if it could have been possible that she had been too timid to do more than sit waiting—in the hall, perhaps—afraid to allow the footman to disturb Lady Etynge by asking her where her pupil was. The poor, meek, silly thing.

“I must get away without disturbing anyone,” she thought, “I will slip downstairs and snatch Fraulein Hirsch from her seat and we will go quietly out. I can write a nice note to Lady Etynge tomorrow, and explain. I HOPE she won’t mind having forgotten me. I must make her feel sure that it did not matter in the least. I’ll tell her about the book.”

She replaced the book on the shelf from which she had taken it and passed through into the delightful sitting room. The kittens were playing together on the hearth, having deserted their basket. One of them gave a soft, airy pounce after her and caught at her dress with tiny claws, rolling over and over after his ineffectual snatch.

She had not heard the footman close the door when he left the room, but she found he must have done so, as it was now shut. When she turned the handle it did not seem to work well, because the door did not open as it ought to have done. She turned it again and gave it a little pull, but it still remained tightly shut. She turned it again, still with no result, and then she tried the small latch. Perhaps the man had done some blundering thing when he had been examining it. She remembered hearing several clicks. She turned the handle again and again. There was no key in the keyhole, so he could not have bungled with the key. She was quite aghast at the embarrassment of the situation.

“How CAN I get out without disturbing anyone, if I cannot open the door!” she said. “How stupid I shall seem to Lady Etynge! She won’t like it. A girl who could forget where she was—and then not be able to open a door and be obliged to bang until people come!”

Suddenly she remembered that there had been a door in the bedroom which had seemed to lead out into the hall. She ran into the room in such a hurry that all three kittens ran frisking after her. She saw she had not been mistaken. There was a door. She went to it and turned the handle, breathless with excitement and relief. But the handle of that door also would not open it. Neither would the latch. And there was no key.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Oh!”

Then she remembered the electric bell near the fireplace in the sitting room. There was one by the fireplace here, also. No, she would ring the one in the sitting room. She went to it and pressed the button. She could not hear the ghost of a sound and one could generally hear SOMETHING like one. She rang again and waited. The room was getting darker. Oh, how COULD Fraulein Hirsch—how could she?

She waited—she waited. Fifteen minutes by her little watch—twenty minutes—and, in their passing, she rang again. She rang the bell in the library and the one in the bedroom—even the one in the bathroom, lest some might be out of order. She slowly ceased to be embarrassed and self-reproachful and began to feel afraid, though she did not know quite what she was afraid of. She went to one of the windows to look at her watch again in the vanishing light, and saw that she had been ringing the bells for an hour. She automatically put up a hand and leaned against the white frame of one of the decorative small panes of glass. As she touched it, she vaguely realized that it was of such a solidity that it felt, not like wood but iron. She drew her hand away quickly, feeling a sweep of unexplainable fear—yes, it was FEAR. And why should she so suddenly feel it? She went back to the door and tried again to open it—as ineffectively as before. Then she began to feel a little cold and sick. She returned to the Chesterfield and sat down on it helplessly.

“It seems as if—I had been locked in!” she broke out, in a faint, bewildered wail of a whisper. “Oh, WHY—did they lock the doors!”