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

the white windows and green flower-boxes of the slice of a house as motors and carriages passed it that evening on their way to dinner parties and theatres, and later as the policeman walked up and down slowly upon his beat.

Inside a dim light in the small hall showed a remote corner where on a peg above a decorative seat hung a man’s hat of the highest gloss and latest form; and on the next peg a smart evening overcoat. They had belonged to Robert Gareth-Lawless who was dead and needed such things no more. The same dim light showed the steep narrowness of the white-railed staircase mounting into gruesome little corners of shadows, while the miniature drawing-rooms illumined only from the street seemed to await an explanation of dimness and chairs unfilled, combined with unnatural silence.

It would have been the silence of the tomb but that it was now and then broken by something like a half smothered shriek followed by a sort of moaning which made their way through the ceiling from the room above.

Feather had at first run up and down the room like a frightened cat as she had done in the afternoon. Afterwards she had had something like hysterics, falling face downward upon the carpet and clutching her hair until it fell down. She was not a person to be judged—she was one of the unexplained incidents of existence. The hour has passed when the clearly moral can sum up the responsibilities of a creature born apparently without brain, or soul or courage. Those who aspire to such morals as are expressed by fairness—mere fairness—are much given to hesitation. Courage had never been demanded of Feather so far. She had none whatever and now she only felt panic and resentment. She had no time to be pathetic about Robert, being too much occupied with herself. Robert was dead—she was alive—here—in an empty house with no money and no servants. She suddenly and rather awfully realized that she did not know a single person whom it would not be frantic to expect anything from.

Nobody had money enough for themselves, however rich they were. The richer they were the more they needed. It was when this thought came to her that she clutched her hands in her hair. The pretty and smart women and agreeable more or less good looking men who had chattered and laughed and made love in her drawing-rooms were chattering, laughing and making love in other houses at this very moment—or they were at the theatre applauding some fashionable actor-manager. At this very moment—while she lay on the carpet in the dark and every little room in the house had horror shut inside its closed doors—particularly Robert’s room which was so hideously close to her own, and where there seemed still to lie moveless on the bed, the stiff hard figure. It was when she recalled this that the unnatural silence of the drawing-rooms was intruded upon by the brief half-stifled hysteric shriek, and the moaning which made its way through the ceiling. She felt almost as if the door handle might turn and something stiff and cold try to come in.

So the hours went on behind the cream-coloured outer walls and the white windows and gay flower-boxes. And the street became more and more silent—so silent at last that when the policeman walked past on his beat his heavy regular footfall seemed loud and almost resounding.

To even vaguely put to herself any question involving would not have been within the scope of her mentality. Even when she began to realize that she was beginning to feel faint for want of food she did not dare to contemplate going downstairs to look for something to eat. What did she know about downstairs? She had never there and had paid no attention whatever to Louisa’s complaints that the kitchen and Servants’ Hall were small and dark and inconvenient and that cockroaches ran about. She had cheerfully accepted the simple philosophy that London servants were used to these things and if they did their work it did not really matter. But to go out of one’s room in the horrible stillness and creep downstairs, having to turn up the gas as one went, and to face the basement steps and cockroaches scuttling away, would be even more impossible than to starve. She sat upon the floor, her hair tumbling about her shoulders and her thin black dress crushed.

“I’d give almost ANYTHING for a cup of coffee,” she protested feebly. “And there’s no USE in ringing the bell!”

Her mother ought to have come whether her father was ill or not. He wasn’t dead. Robert was dead and her mother ought to have come so that whatever happened she would not be quite alone and SOMETHING could be done for her. It was probably this tender thought of her mother which brought back the recollection of her wedding day and a certain wedding present she had received. It was a pretty silver travelling flask and she remembered that it must be in her dressing-bag now, and there was some cognac left in it. She got up and went to the place where the bag was kept. Cognac raised your spirits and made you go to sleep, and if she could sleep until morning the house would not be so frightening by daylight—and something might happen. The little flask was almost full. Neither she nor Robert had cared much about cognac. She poured some into a glass with water and drank it.

Because she was unaccustomed to stimulant it made her feel quite warm and in a few minutes she forgot that she had been hungry and realized that she was not so frightened. It was such a relief not to be terrified; it was as if a pain had stopped. She actually picked up one or two of the account books and glanced at the totals. If you couldn’t pay bills you couldn’t and nobody was put in prison for debt in these days. Besides she would not have been put in prison—Rob would—and Rob was dead. Something would happen—something.

As she began to arrange her hair for the night she remembered what Cook had said about Lord Coombe. She has cried until she did not look as lovely as usual, but after she had bathed her eyes with cold rose-water they began to seem only shadowy and faintly flushed. And her fine ash-gold hair was wonderful when it hung over each shoulder in wide, soft plaits. She might be a schoolgirl of fifteen. A delicate lacy night-gown was one of the most becoming things one wore. It was a pity one couldn’t wear them to parties. There was nothing the least indecent about them. Millicent Hardwicke had been photographed in one of hers and no one had suspected what it was. Yes; she would send a little note to Coombe. She knew Madame Helene had only let her have her beautiful mourning because—. The things she had created were quite unique—thin, gauzy, black, floating or clinging. She had been quite happy the morning she gave Helene her orders. Tomorrow when she had slept through the night and it was broad daylight again she would be able to think of things to say in her letter to Lord Coombe. She would have to be a little careful because he did not like things to bore him.—Death and widows might—a little—at first. She had heard him say once that he did not wish to regard himself in the light of a charitable institution. It wouldn’t do to frighten him away. Perhaps if he continued coming to the house and seemed very intimate the trades-people might be managed.

She felt much less helpless and when she was ready for bed she took a little more cognac. The flush had faded from her eyelids and bloomed in delicious rose on her cheeks. As she crept between the cool sheets and nestled down on her pillow she had a delightful sense of increasing comfort—comfort. What a beautiful thing it was to go to sleep!

And then she was disturbed-started out of the divine doze stealing upon her-by a shrill prolonged wailing shriek!

It came from the Night Nursery and at the moment it seemed almost worse than anything which had occurred all through the day. It brought everything back so hideously. She had of course forgotten Robin again-and it was Robin! And Louisa had gone away with Edward. She had perhaps put the child to sleep discreetly before she went. And now she had wakened and was screaming. Feather had heard that she was a child with a temper but by fair means or foul Louisa had somehow managed to prevent her from being a nuisance.

The shrieks shocked her into sitting upright in bed. Their shrillness tearing through the utter soundlessness of the empty house brought back all her terrors and set her heart beating at a gallop.

“I—I WON’T!” she protested, fairly with chattering teeth. “I won’t! I WON’T!”

She had never done anything for the child since its birth, she did not know how to do anything, she had not wanted to know. To reach her now she would be obliged to go out in the dark-the gas-jet she would have to light was actually close to the outer door of Robert’s bedroom—THE room! If she did not die of panic while she was trying to light it she would have to make her way almost in the dark up the steep crooked little staircase which led to the nurseries. And the awful little creature’s screams would be going on all the time making the blackness and dead silence of the house below more filled with horror by contrast-more shut off and at the same time more likely to waken to some horror which was new.

“I-I couldn’t-even if I wanted to!” she quaked. “I daren’t! I daren’t! I wouldn’t do it—for A MILLION POUNDS?” And she flung herself down again shuddering and burrowing her head under the coverings and pillows she dragged over her ears to shut out the sounds.

The screams had taken on a more determined note and a fiercer shrillness which the still house heard well and made the most of, but they were so far deadened for Feather that she began beneath her soft barrier to protest pantingly.

“I shouldn’t know what to do if I went. If no one goes near her she’ll cry herself to sleep. It’s—it’s only temper. Oh-h! what a horrible wail! It—it sounds like a—a lost soul!”

But she did not stir from the bed. She burrowed deeper under the bed clothes and held the pillow closer to her ears.

 

*

 

It did sound like a lost soul at times. What panic possesses a baby who cries in the darkness alone no one will ever know and one may perhaps give thanks to whatever gods there be that the baby itself does not remember. What awful woe of sudden unprotectedness when life exists only through protection—what piteous panic in the midst of black unmercifulness, inarticulate sound howsoever wildly shrill can neither explain nor express.

Robin knew only Louisa, warmth, food, sleep and waking. Or if she knew more she was not yet aware that she did. She had reached the age when she generally slept through the night. She might not have disturbed her mother until daylight but Louisa had with forethought given her an infant sleeping potion. It had disagreed with and awakened her. She was uncomfortable and darkness enveloped her. A cry or so and Louisa would ordinarily have come to her sleepy, and rather out of temper, but knowing what to do. In this strange night the normal cry of warning and demand produced no result.

No one came. The discomfort continued—the blackness remained black. The cries became shrieks—but