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

Through all aeons since all the worlds were made it is at least not unthinkable that in all the worlds of which our own atom is one, there has ruled a Force illimitable, unconquerable and inexplicable and whichsoever its world and whatsoever the sign denoting or the name given it, the Force—the Thing has been the same. Upon our own atom of the universe it is given the generic name of Love and its existence is that which the boldest need not defy, the most profound need not attempt to explain with clarity, the most brilliantly sophistical to argue away. Its forms of beauty, triviality, magnificence, imbecility, loveliness, stupidity, holiness, purity and bestiality neither detract from nor add to its unalterable power. As the earth revolves upon its axis and reveals night and day, Spring, Summer and Winter, so it reveals this ceaselessly working Force. Men who were as gods have been uplifted or broken by it, fools have trifled with it, brutes have sullied it, saints have worshipped, poets sung and wits derided it. As electricity is a force death dealing, or illuminating and power bestowing, so is this Great Impeller, and it is fatuous—howsoever worldly wise or moderately sardonic one would choose to be—to hint ironically that its proportions are less than the ages have proved them. Whether a world formed without a necessity for the presence and assistance of this psychological factor would have been a better or a worse one, it is—by good fortune—not here imperative that one should attempt to decide. What is—exists. None of us created it. Each one will deal with the Impeller as he himself either sanely or madly elects. He will also bear the consequences—and so also may others.

Of this force the Head of the House of Coombe and his old friend knew much and had often spoken to each other. They had both been accustomed to recognizing its signs subtle or crude, and watching their development. They had seen it in the eyes of creatures young enough to be called boys and girls, they had heard it in musical laughter and in silly giggles, they had seen it express itself in tragedy and comedy and watched it end in union or in a nothingness which melted away like a wisp of fog. But they knew it was a thing omnipresent and that no one passed through life untouched by it in some degree.

Years before this evening two children playing in a garden had not know that the Power—the Thing—drew them with its greatest strength because among myriads of atoms they two were created for oneness. Enraptured and unaware they played together, their souls and bodies drawn nearer each other every hour.

So it was that—without being portentous—one may say that when an unusually beautiful and unusually well dressed and perfectly fitted young man turned involuntarily in the particular London ball room in which Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ daughter watched the dancers, and looked unintentionally into the eyes of a girl standing for a moment near the wide entrance doors, the inexplicable and unconquerable Force reconnected its currents again.

Donal Muir’s eyes only widened a little for a second’s time. He had not known why he had suddenly looked around and he did not know why he was conscious of something which startled him a little. You could not actually stare at a girl because your eyes chanced to get entangled in hers for a second as you danced past her. It was true she was of a startling prettiness and there was something—. Yes, there was SOMETHING which drew the eye and—. He did not know what it was. It had actually given him a sort of electric shock. He laughed at himself a little and then his open brow looked puzzled for a moment.

“You saw Miss Lawless,” said Sara Studleigh who was at the moment dancing prettily with him. She was guilty of something which might have been called a slight giggle, but it was goodnatured. “I know, you saw Miss Lawless—the pretty one near the door.”

“There are so many pretty ones near everything. You can’t lift your eyes without seeing one,” Donal answered. “What a lot of them!” (The sense of having received a slight electric shock made you feel that you must look again and find out what had caused it, he was thinking.)

“She is the one with the eyelashes.”

“I have eyelashes—so have you,” looking down at hers with a very taking expression. Hers were in fact nice ones.

“But ours are not two inches long and they don’t make a big soft circle round our eyes when we look at anyone.”

“Please look up and let me see,” said Donal. “When I asked you to dance with me I thought—”

What a “way” he had, Sara Studleigh was thinking. But “perhaps it WAS the eyelashes” was passing through Donal’s mind. Very noticeable eyelashes were rather arresting.

“I knew you saw her,” said Sara Studleigh, “because I have happened to be near two or three people this evening when they caught their first sight of her.”

“What happens to them?” asked Donal Muir.

“They forget where they are,” she laughed, “and don’t say anything for a few seconds.”

“I should not want to forget where I am. It wouldn’t be possible either,” answered Donal. (“But that was it,” he thought. “For a minute I forgot.”)

One should not dance with one girl and talk to her about another. Wisely he led her to other subjects. The music was swinging through the air performing its everlasting miracle of swinging young souls and pulses with it, the warmed flowers breathed more perceptible scent, sweet chatter and laughter, swaying colour and glowing eyes concentrated in making magic. This beautiful young man’s pulses only beat with the rest—as one with the pulse of the Universe. Lady Lothwell acting for the Duchess was very kind to him finding him another partner as soon as a new dance began—this time her own daughter, Lady Kathryn.

Even while he had been tangoing with Sara Studleigh he had seen the girl with the eyelashes, whirling about with someone, and when he began his dance with Kathryn, he caught a glimpse of her at the other end of the room. And almost immediately Kathryn spoke of her.

“I don’t know when you will get a dance with Miss Lawless,” she said. “She is obliged to work out mathematical problems on her programme.”

“I have a setter who fixes his eyes on you and waits without moving until you look at him and then he makes a dart and you’re obliged to pat him,” he said. “Perhaps if I go and stand near her and do that she will take notice of me.”

“Take notice of him, the enslaving thing!” thought Kathryn. “She’d jump—for all her talk about lepers—any girl would. He’s TOO nice! There’s something about HIM too.”

Robin did not jump. She had no time to do it because one dance followed another so quickly and some of them were even divided in two or three pieces. But the thrill of the singing sound of the violins behind the greenery, the perfume and stately spaces and thousand candlelights had suddenly been lifted on to another plane though she had thought they could reach no higher one. Her whole being was a keen fine awareness. Every moment she was AWARE. After all the years—from the far away days—he had come back. No one had dreamed of the queer half abnormal secret she had always kept to herself as a child—as a little girl—as a bigger one when she would have died rather than divulge that in her loneliness there had been something she had remembered—something she had held on to—a memory which she had actually made a companion of, making pictures, telling herself stories in the dark, even inventing conversations which not for one moment had she thought would or could ever take place. But they had been living things to her and her one near warm comfort—closer, oh, so weirdly closer than kind, kind Dowie and dearly beloved Mademoiselle. She had wondered if the two would have disapproved if they had known—if Mademoiselle would have been shocked if she had realized that sometimes when they walked together there walked with them a growing, laughing boy in a swinging kilt and plaid and that he had a voice and eyes that drew the heart out of your breast for joy. At first he had only been a child like herself, but as she had grown he had grown with her—but always taller, grander, marvellously masculine and beyond compare. Yet never once had she dared to believe or hope that he could take form before her eyes—a living thing. He had only been the shadow she had loved and which could not be taken away from her because he was her secret and no one could ever know.

The music went swinging and singing with notes which were almost a pain. And he was in the very room with her! Donal! Donal! He had not known and did not know. He had laughed into her eyes without knowing—but he had come back. A young man now like all the rest, but more beautiful. What a laugh, what wonderful shoulders, what wonderful dancing, how long and strongly smooth and supple he was in the line fabric of his clothes! Though her mind did not form these things in words for her, it was only that her eyes saw all the charm of him from head to foot, and told her that he was only more than ever what he had been in the miraculous first days.

“Perhaps he will not find out at all,” she thought, dancing all the while and trying to talk as well as think. “I was too little for him to remember. I only remembered because I had nothing else. Oh, if he should not find out!” She could not go and tell him. Even if a girl could do such a thing, perhaps he could not recall a childish incident of so long ago—such a small, small thing. It had only been immense to her and so much water had flowed under his bridge bearing so many flotillas. She had only stood and looked down at a thin trickling stream which carried no ships at all. It was very difficult to keep her eyes from stealing—even darting—about in search of him. His high fair head with the clipped wave in its hair could be followed if one dared be alert. He danced with an auburn haired girl, he spun down the room with a brown one, he paused for a moment to show the trick of a new