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

step to a tall one with black coils. He was at the end of the room, he was tangoing towards her and she felt her heart beat and beat. He passed close by and his eyes turned upon her and after he had passed a queer little inner trembling would not cease. Oh! if he had looked a little longer—if her partner would only carry her past him! And how dreadful she was to let herself feel so excited when he could not be EXPECTED to remember such a little thing—just a baby playing with him in a garden. Oh!—her heart giving a leap—if he would look—if he would LOOK!

When did she first awaken to a realization—after what seemed years and years of waiting and not being able to conquer the inwardly trembling feeling—that he was BEGINNING to look—that somehow he had become aware of her presence and that it drew his eyes though there was no special recognition in them? Down the full length of the room they met hers first, and again as he passed with yet another partner. Then when he was resting between danced and being very gay indeed—though somehow he always seemed gay. He had been gay when they played in the Gardens. Yes, his eyes cane and found her. She thought he spoke of her to someone near him. Of course Robin looked away and tried not to look again too soon. But when in spite of intention and even determination, something forced her glance and made it a creeping, following glance—there were his eyes again. She was frightened each time it happened, but he was not. She began to know with new beatings of the pulse that he no longer looked by chance, but because he wanted to see her—and wished her to see him, as if he had begun to call to her with a gay Donal challenge. It was like that, though his demeanour was faultlessly correct.

The incident of their meeting was faultlessly correct, also, when after one of those endless lapses of time Lady Lothwell appeared and presented him as if the brief ceremony were one of the most ordinary in existence. The conventional grace of his bow said no more than George’s had said to those looking on, but when he put his arm round her and they began to sway together in the dance, Robin wondered in terror if he could not feel the beating of her heart under his hand. If he could it would be horrible—but it would not stop. To be so near—to try to believe it—to try to make herself remember that she could mean nothing to him and that it was only she who was shaking—for nothing! But she could not help it. This was the disjointed kind of thing that flew past her mental vision. She was not a shy girl, but she could not speak. Curiously enough he also was quite silent for several moments. They danced for a space without a word and they did not notice that people began to watch them because they were an attracting pair to watch. And the truth was that neither of the two knew in the least what the other thought.

“That—is a beautiful waltz,” he said at last. He said it in a low meaning voice as if it were a sort of emotional confidence. He had not actually meant to speak in such a tone, but when he realized what its sound had been he did not care in the least. What was the matter with him?

“Yes,” Robin answered. (Only “Yes.”)

He had not known when he glanced at her first, he was saying mentally. He could not, of course, swear to her now. But what an extraordinary thing that—! She was like a swallow—she was like any swift flying thing on a man’s arm. One could go on to the end of time. Once round the great ball room, twice, and as the third round began he gave a little laugh and spoke again.

“I am going to ask you a question. May I?”

“Yes.”

“Is your name Robin?”

“Yes,” she could scarcely breathe it.

“I thought it was,” in the voice in which he had spoken of the music. “I hoped it was—after I first began to suspect. I HOPED it was.”

“It is—it is.”

“Did we—” he had not indeed meant that his arm should hold her a shade closer, but—in spite of himself—it did because he was after all so little more than a boy, “—did we play together in a garden?”

“Yes—yes,” breathed Robin. “We did.” Surely she heard a sound as if he had caught a quick breath. But after it there were a few more steps and another brief space of silence.

“I knew,” he said next, very low. “I KNEW that we played together in a garden.”

“You did not know when you first looked at me tonight.” Innocently revealing that even his first glance had been no casual thing to her.

But his answer revealed something too.

“You were near the door—just coming into the room. I didn’t know why you startled me. I kept looking for you afterwards in the crowd.”

“I didn’t see you look,” said Robin softly, revealing still more in her utter inexperience.

“No, because you wouldn’t look at me—you were too much engaged. Do you like this step?”

“I like them all.”

“Do you always dance like this? Do you always make your partner feel as if he had danced with you all his life?”

“It is—because we played together in the garden,” said Robin and then was quite terrified at herself. Because after all—after all they were only two conventional young people meeting for the first time at a dance, not knowing each other in the least. It was really the first time. The meeting of two children could not count. But the beating and strange elated inward tremor would not stop.

As for him he felt abnormal also and he was usually a very normal creature. It was abnormal to be so excited that he found himself, as it were, upon another plane, because he had recognized and was dancing with a girl he had not seen since she was five or six. It was not normal that he should be possessed by a desire to keep near to her, overwhelmed by an impelling wish to talk to her—to ask her questions. About what—about herself—themselves—the years between—about the garden.

“It began to come back bit by bit after I had two fair looks. You passed me several times though you didn’t know.” (Oh! had she not known!) “I had been promised some dances by other people. But I went to Lady Lothwell. She’s very kind.”

Back swept the years and it had all begun again, the wonderful happiness—just as the anguish had swept back on the night her mother had come to talk to her. As he had brought it into her dreary little world then, he brought it now. He had the power. She was so happy that she seemed to be only waiting to hear what he would say—as if that were enough. There are phases like this—rare ones—and it was her fate that through such a phase she was passing.

It was indeed true that much more water had passed under his bridge than under hers, but now—! Memory reproduced for him with an acuteness like actual pain, a childish torment he thought he had forgotten. And it was as if it had been endured only yesterday—and as if the urge to speak and explain was as intense as it had been on the first day.

“She’s very little and she won’t understand,” he had said to his mother. “She’s very little, really—perhaps she’ll cry.”

How monstrous it had seemed! Had she cried—poor little soul! He looked down at her eyelashes. Her cheek had been of the same colour and texture then. That came back to him too. The impulse to tighten his arms was infernally powerful—almost automatic.

“She has no one but me to remember!” he heard his own child voice saying fiercely. Good Lord, it WAS as if it had been yesterday. He actually gulped something down in his throat.

“You haven’t rested much,” he said aloud. “There’s a conservatory with marble seats and corners and a fountain going. Will you let me take you there when we stop dancing? I want to apologize to you.”

The eyelashes lifted themselves and made round her eyes the big soft shadow of which Sara Studleigh had spoken. A strong and healthy valvular organ in his breast lifted itself curiously at the same time.

“To apologize?”

Was he speaking to her almost as if she were still four or five? It was to the helplessness of those years he was about to explain—and yet he did not feel as though he were still eight.

“I want to tell you why I never came back to the garden. It was a broken promise, wasn’t it?”

The music had not ceased, but they stopped dancing.

“Will you come?” he said and she went with him like a child—just as she had followed in her babyhood. It seemed only natural to do what he asked.

The conservatory was like an inner Paradise now. The tropically scented warmth—the tiers on tiers of bloom above bloom—the softened swing of music—the splash of the fountain on water and leaves. Their plane had lifted itself too. They could hear the splashing water and sometimes feel it in the corner seat of marble he took her to. A crystal drop fell on her hand when she sat down. The blue of his eyes was vaguely troubled and he spoke as if he were not certain of himself.

“I was wakened up in what seemed to me the middle of the night,” he said, as if indeed the thing had happened only the day before. “My mother was obliged to go back suddenly to Scotland. I was only a little chap, but it nearly finished me. Parents and guardians don’t understand how gigantic such a thing can be. I had promised you—we had promised each other—hadn’t we?”

“Yes,” said Robin. Her eyes were fixed upon his face—open and unmoving. Such eyes! Such eyes! All the touchingness of the past was in their waiting on his words.

“Children—little boys especially—are taught that they must not cry out when they are hurt. As I sat in the train through the journey that day I thought my heart would burst in my small breast. I turned my back and stared out of the window for fear my mother would see my face. I’d always loved her. Do you know I think that just then I HATED her. I had never hated anything before. Good Lord! What a thing for a little chap to go through! My mother was an angel, but she didn’t KNOW.”

“No,” said Robin in a small strange voice and without moving her gaze. “She didn’t KNOW.”

He had seated himself on a sort of low marble stool near her and he held a knee with clasped hands. They were hands which held each other for the moment with a sort of emotional clinch. His position made him look upward at her instead of down.

“It was YOU I was wild about,” he said. “You see it was YOU. I could have stood it for myself. The trouble was that I felt I was such a big little chap. I thought I was years—ages older than you—and mountains bigger,” his faint laugh was touched with pity for the smallness of the big little chap. “You seemed so tiny and pretty—and lonely.”

“I was as lonely as a newborn bird fallen out of its nest.”

“You had told me you had ‘nothing.’ You said no one had ever kissed you. I’d been loved all my life. You had a wondering