The Head of the House of Coombe

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  “They’re a good looking pair and he’s Lord Lawdor’s nephew. They’re bound to have their fling and smart people will come to their house because she’s so pretty. They’ll last two or three years perhaps and you’ll open the door to the kind of people who remember a well set-up young fellow if he shows he knows his work above the usual.”

  The more men of the class of the Head of the House of Coombe who came in and out of the slice of a house the more likely the owners of it were to get good invitations and continued credit, Feather was aware. Besides which, she thought ingenuously, if he was rich he would no doubt lend Bob money. She had already known that certain men who liked her had done it. She did not mind it at all. One was obliged to have money.

  This was the beginning of an acquaintance which gave rise to much argument over tea-cups and at dinner parties and in boudoirs—even in corners of Feather’s own gaudy little drawing-room. The argument regarded the degree of Coombe’s interest in her. There was always curiosity as to the degree of his interest in any woman—especially and privately on the part of the woman herself. Casual and shallow observers said he was quite infatuated if such a thing were possible to a man of his temperament; the more concentrated of mind said it was not possible to a man of his temperament and that any attraction Feather might have for him was of a kind special to himself and that he alone could explain it—and he would not.

  Remained however the fact that he managed to see a great deal of her. It might be said that he even rather followed her about and more than one among the specially concentrated of mind had seen him on occasion stand apart a little and look at her—watch her—with an expression suggesting equally profound thought and the profound intention to betray his private meditations in no degree. There was no shadow of profundity of thought in his treatment of her. He talked to her as she best liked to be talked to about herself, her successes and her clothes which were more successful than anything else. He went to the little but exceedingly lively dinners the Gareth-Lawlesses gave and though he was understood not to be fond of dancing now and then danced with her at balls.

  Feather was guilelessly doubtless concerning him. She was quite sure that he was in love with her. Her idea of that universal emotion was that it was a matter of clothes and propinquity and loveliness and that if one were at all clever one got things one wanted as a result of it. Her overwhelming affection for Bob and his for her had given her life in London and its entertaining accompaniments. Her frankness in the matter of this desirable capture when she talked to her husband was at once light and friendly.

  “Of course you will be able to get credit at his tailor’s as you know him so well,” she said. “When I persuaded him to go with me to Madame Helene’s last week she was quite amiable. He helped me to choose six dresses and I believe she would have let me choose six more.”

  “Does she think he is going to pay for them?” asked Bob.

  “It doesn’t matter what she thinks”; Feather laughed very prettily.

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Not a bit. I shall have the dresses. What’s the matter, Rob? You look quite red and cross.”

  “I’ve had a headache for three days,” he answered, “and I feel hot and cross. I don’t care about a lot of things you say, Feather.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she retorted. “I don’t care about a lot of things you say—and do, too, for the matter of that.”

  Robert Gareth-Lawless who was sitting on a chair in her dressing-room grunted slightly as he rubbed his red and flushed forehead.

  “There’s a—sort of limit,” he commented. He hesitated a little before he added sulkily “—to the things one—says.”

  “That sounds like Alice,” was her undisturbed answer. “She used to squabble at me because I said things. But I believe one of the reasons people like me is because I make them laugh by saying things. Lord Coombe laughs. He is a very good person to know,” she added practically. “Somehow he counts. Don’t you recollect how before we knew him—when he was abroad so long—people used to bring him into their talk as if they couldn’t help remembering him and what he was like. I knew quite a lot about him—about his cleverness and his manners and his way of keeping women off without being rude—and the things he says about royalties and the aristocracy going out of fashion. And about his clothes. I adore his clothes. And I’m convinced he adores mine.”

  She had in fact at once observed his clothes as he had crossed the grass to her seat under the copper beech. She had seen that his fine thinness was inimitably fitted and presented itself to the eye as that final note of perfect line which ignores any possibility of comment. He did not wear things—they were expressions of his mental subtleties. Feather on her part knew that she wore her clothes—carried them about with her—however beautifully.

  “I like him,” she went on. “I don’t know anything about political parties and the state of Europe so I don’t understand the things he says which people think are so brilliant, but I like him. He isn’t really as old as I thought he was the first day I saw him. He had a haggard look about his mouth and eyes then. He looked as if a spangled pink and blue gauze soul with little floating streamers was a relief to him.”

  The child Robin was a year old by that time and staggered about uncertainly in the dingy little Day Nursery in which she passed her existence except on such occasions as her nurse—who had promptly fallen in love with the smart young footman—carried her down to the kitchen and Servants’ Hall in the basement where there was an earthy smell and an abundance of cockroaches. The Servants’ Hall had been given that name in the catalogue of the fashionable agents who let the home and it was as cramped and grimy as the two top-floor nurseries.

  The next afternoon Robert Gareth-Lawless staggered into his wife’s drawing-room and dropped on to a sofa staring at her and breathing hard.

  “Feather!” he gasped. “ Don’t know what’s up with me. I believe I’m—awfully ill! I can’t see straight. Can’t think.”

  He fell over sidewise on to the cushions so helplessly that Feather sprang at him.

  “Don’t, Rob, don’t!” she cried in actual anguish. “Lord Coombe is taking us to the opera and to supper afterwards. I’m going to wear—” She stopped speaking to shake him and try to lift his head. “Oh! do try to sit up,” she begged pathetically. “Just try. don’t give up till afterwards.” But she could neither make him sit up nor make him hear. He lay back heavily with his mouth open, breathing stertorously and quite insensible.

  It happened that the Head of the House of Coombe was announced at that very moment even as she stood wringing her hands over the sofa.

  He went to her side and looked at Gareth-Lawless.

  “Have you sent for a doctor?” he inquired.

  “He’s—only just done it!” she exclaimed. “It’s more than I can bear. You said the Prince would be at the supper after the opera and—”

  “Were you thinking of going?” he put it to her quietly.

  “I shall have to send for a nurse of course—” she began. He went so far as to interrupt her.

  “You had better not go—if you’ll pardon my saying so,” he suggested.

  “Not go? Not go at all?” she wailed.

  “Not go at all,” was his answer. And there was such entire lack of encouragement in it that Feather sat down and burst into sobs.

  In few than two weeks Robert was dead and she was left a lovely penniless widow with a child.

  Chapter 3

  Two or three decades earlier the prevailing sentiment would have been that “poor little Mrs. Gareth-Lawless” and her situation were pathetic. Her acquaintances would sympathetically have discussed her helplessness and absolute lack of all resource. So very pretty, so young, the mother of a dear little girl—left with no income! How very sad! What could she do? The elect would have paid her visits and sitting in her darkened drawing-room earnestly besought her to trust to her Maker and suggested “the Scriptures” as suitable reading. Some of them—r
are and strange souls even in their time—would have known what they meant and meant what they said in a way they had as yet only the power to express through the medium of a certain shibboleth, the rest would have used the same forms merely because shibboleth is easy and always safe and creditable.

  But to Feather’s immediate circle a multiplicity of engagements, fevers of eagerness in the attainment of pleasures and ambitions, anxieties, small and large terrors, and a whirl of days left no time for the regarding of pathetic aspects. The tiny house up whose staircase—tucked against a wall—one had seemed to have the effect of crowding even when one went alone to make a call, suddenly ceased to represent hilarious little parties which were as entertaining as they were up to date and noisy. The most daring things London gossiped about had been said and done and worn there. Novel social ventures had been tried—dancing and songs which seemed almost startling at first—but which were gradually being generally adopted. There had always been a great deal of laughing and talking of nonsense and the bandying of jokes and catch phrases. And Feather fluttering about and saying delicious, silly things at which her hearers shouted with glee. Such a place could not suddenly become pathetic. It seemed almost indecent for Robert Gareth-Lawless to have dragged Death nakedly into their midst—to have died in his bed in one of the little bedrooms, to have been put in his coffin and carried down the stairs scraping the wall, and sent away in a hearse. Nobody could bear to think of it.

  Feather could bear it less than anybody else. It seemed incredible that such a trick could have been played her. She shut herself up in her stuffy little bedroom with its shrimp pink frills and draperies and cried lamentably. At first she cried as a child might who was suddenly snatched away in the midst of a party. Then she began to cry because she was frightened. Numbers of cards “with sympathy” had been left at the front door during the first week after the funeral, they had accumulated in a pile on the salver but very few people had really come to see her and while she knew they had the excuse of her recent bereavement she felt that it made the house ghastly. It had never been silent and empty. Things had always been going on and now there was actually not a sound to be heard—no one going up and down stairs—Rob’s room cleared of all his belongings and left orderly and empty—the drawing-room like a gay little tomb without an occupant. How long would it be before it would be full of people again—how long must she wait before she could decently invite anyone?—It was really at this point that fright seized upon her. Her brain was not given to activities of reasoning and followed no thought far. She had not begun to ask herself questions as to ways and means. Rob had been winning at cards and had borrowed some money from a new acquaintance so no immediate abyss had yawned at her feet. But when the thought of future festivities rose before her a sudden check made her involuntarily clutch at her throat. She had no money at all, bills were piled everywhere, perhaps now Robert was dead none of the shops would give her credit. She remembered hearing Rob come into the house swearing only the day before he was taken ill and it had been because he had met on the door-step a collector of the rent which was long over-due and must be paid. She had no money to pay it, none to pay the servants’ wages, none to pay the household bills, none to pay for the monthly hire of the brougham! Would they turn her into the street—would the servants go away—would she be left without even a carriage? What could she do about clothes! She could not wear anything but mourning now and by the time she was out of mourning her old clothes would have gone out of fashion. The morning on which this aspect of things occurred to her, she was so terrified that she began to run up and down the room like a frightened little cat seeing no escape from the trap it is caught in.

  “It’s awful—it’s awful—it’s awful!” broke out between her sobs. “What can I do? I can’t do anything! There’s nothing to do! It’s awful—it’s awful—it’s awful!” She ended by throwing herself on the bed crying until she was exhausted. She had no mental resources which would suggest to her that there was anything but crying to be done. She had cried very little in her life previously because even in her days of limitation she had been able to get more or less what she wanted—though of course it had generally been less. And crying made one’s nose and eyes red. On this occasion she actually forgot her nose and eyes and cried until she scarcely knew herself when she got up and looked in the glass.

  She rang the bell for her maid and sat down to wait her coming. Tonson should bring her a cup of beef tea.

  “It’s time for lunch,” she thought. “I’m faint with crying. And she shall bathe my eyes with rose-water.”

  It was not Tonson’s custom to keep her mistress waiting but today she was not prompt. Feather rang a second time and an impatient third and then sat in her chair and waited until she began to feel as she felt always in these dreadful days the dead silence of the house. It was the thing which most struck terror to her soul—that horrid stillness. The servants whose place was in the basement were too much closed in their gloomy little quarters to have made themselves heard upstairs even if they had been inclined to. During the last few weeks Feather had even found herself wishing that they were less well trained and would make a little noise—do anything to break the silence.

  The room she sat in—Rob’s awful little room adjoining—which was awful because of what she had seen for a moment lying stiff and hard on the bed before she was taken away in hysterics—were dread enclosures of utter silence. The whole house was dumb—the very street had no sound in it. She could not endure it. How dare Tonson? She sprang up and rang the bell again and again until its sound came back to her pealing through the place.

  Then she waited again. It seemed to her that five minutes passed before she heard the smart young footman mounting the stairs slowly. She did not wait for his knock upon the door but opened it herself.

  “How dare Tonson!” she began. “I have rung four or five times! How dare she!”

  The smart young footman’s manner had been formed in a good school. It was attentive, impersonal.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” he answered.

  “What do you mean? What does she mean? Where is she?” Feather felt almost breathless before his unperturbed good style.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” he answered as before. Then with the same unbiassed bearing added, “None of us know. She has gone away.”

  Feather clutched the door handle because she felt herself swaying.

  “Away! Away!” the words were a faint gasp.

  “She packed her trunk yesterday and carried it away with her on a four-wheeler. About an hour ago, ma’am.” Feather dropped her hand from the knob of the door and trailed back to the chair she had left, sinking into it helplessly.

  “Who—who will dress me?” she half wailed.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” replied the young footman, his excellent manner presuming no suggestion or opinion whatever. He added however, “Cook, ma’am, wishes to speak to you.”

  “Tell her to come to me here,” Feather said. “And I—I want a cup of beef tea.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” with entire respect. And the door closed quietly behind him.

  It was not long before it was opened again. “Cook” had knocked and Feather had told her to come in. Most cooks are stout, but this one was not. She was a thin, tall woman with square shoulders and a square face somewhat reddened by constant proximity to fires. She had been trained at a cooking school. She carried a pile of small account books but she brought nothing else.

  “I wanted some beef tea, Cook,” said Feather protestingly.

  “There is no beef tea, ma’am,” said Cook. “There is neither beef, nor stock, nor Liebig in the house.”

  “Why—why not?” stammered Feather and she stammered because even her lack of perception saw something in the woman’s face which was new to her. It was a sort of finality.

  She held out the pile of small books.

  “Here are the books, ma’am,” was her explanation. “Perhaps as you don’t like to be
troubled with such things, you don’t know how far behind they are. Nothing has been paid for months. It’s been an every-day fight to get the things that was wanted. It’s not an agreeable thing for a cook to have to struggle and plead. I’ve had to do it because I had my reputation to think of and I couldn’t send up rubbish when there was company.”

  Feather felt herself growing pale as she sat and stared at her. Cook drew near and laid one little book after another on the small table near her.

  “That’s the butcher’s book,” she said. “He’s sent nothing in for three days. We’ve been living on leavings. He’s sent his last, he says and he means it. This is the baker’s. He’s not been for a week. I made up rolls because I had some flour left. It’s done now—and he’s done. This is groceries and Mercom & Fees wrote to Mr. Gareth-Lawless when the last month’s supply came, that it would be the last until payment was made. This is wines—and coal and wood—and laundry—and milk. And here is wages, ma’am, which can’t go on any longer.”

  Feather threw up her hands quite wildly.

  “Oh, go away!—go away!” she cried. “ If Mr. Lawless were here—”

  “He isn’t, ma’am,” Cook interposed, not fiercely but in a way more terrifying than any ferocity could have been—a way which pointed steadily to the end of things. “As long as there’s a gentleman in a house there’s generally a sort of a prospect that things may be settled some way. At any rate there’s someone to go and speak your mind to even if you have to give up your place. But when there’s no gentleman and nothing—and nobody—respectable people with their livings to make have got to protect themselves.”

  The woman had no intention of being insolent. Her simple statement that her employer’s death had left “Nothing” and “Nobody” was prompted by no consciously ironic realization of the diaphanousness of Feather. As for the rest she had been professionally trained to take care of her interests as well as to cook and the ethics of the days of her grandmother when there had been servants with actual affections had not reached her.