The Head of the House of Coombe

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  “He is bad—bad—bad!” and she looked like a little demon.

  Being a wise woman, Dowson knew at once that she had come upon a hidden child volcano, and it would be well to let it seethe into silence. She was not a clever person, but long experience had taught her that there were occasions when it was well to leave a child alone. This one would not answer if she were questioned. She would only become stubborn and furious, and no child should be goaded into fury. Dowson had, of course, learned that the boy was a relative of his lordship’s and had a strict Scottish mother who did not approve of the slice of a house. His lordship might have been concerned in the matter—or he might not. But at least Dowson had gained a side light. And how the little thing had cared! Actually as if she had been a grown girl, Dowson found herself thinking uneasily.

  She was rendered even a trifle more uneasy a few days later when she came upon Robin sitting in a corner on a footstool with a picture book on her knee, and she recognized it as the one she had discovered during her first exploitation of the resources of the third floor nursery. It was inscribed “Donal” and Robin was not looking at it alone, but at something she held in her hand—something folded in a crumpled, untidy bit of paper.

  Making a reason for nearing her corner, Dowson saw what the paper held. The contents looked like the broken fragments of some dried leaves. The child was gazing at them with a piteous, bewildered face—so piteous that Dowson was sorry.

  “Do you want to keep those?” she asked.

  “Yes,” with a caught breath. “Yes.”

  “I will make you a little silk bag to hold them in,” Dowson said, actually feeling rather piteous herself. The poor, little lamb with her picture book and her bits of broken dry leaves—almost like senna.

  She sat down near her and Robin left her footstool and came to her. She laid the picture book on her lap and the senna like fragments of leaves on its open page.

  “Donal brought it to show me,” she quavered. “He made pretty things on the leaves—with his dirk.” She recalled too much—too much all at once. Her eyes grew rounder and larger with inescapable woe; “Donal did! Donal!” And suddenly she hid her face deep in Dowson’s skirts and the tempest broke. She was so small a thing—so inarticulate—and these were her dead! Dowson could only catch her in her arms, drag her up on her knee, and rock her to and fro.

  “Good Lord! Good Lord!” was her inward ejaculation. “And she not seven! What’ll she do when she’s seventeen! She’s one of them there’s no help for!”

  It was the beginning of an affection. After this, when Dowson tucked Robin in bed each night, she kissed her. She told her stories and taught her to sew and to know her letters. Using some discretion she found certain little playmates for her in the Gardens. But there were occasions when all did not go well, and some pretty, friendly child, who had played with Robin for a few days, suddenly seemed to be kept strictly by her nurse’s side. Once, when she was about ten years old, a newcomer, a dramatic and too richly dressed little person, after a day of wonderful imaginative playing appeared in the Gardens the morning following to turn an ostentatious cold shoulder.

  “What is the matter?” asked Robin.

  “Oh, we can’t play with you any more,” with quite a flounce superiority.

  “Why not?” said Robin, becoming haughty herself.

  “We can’t. It’s because of Lord Coombe.” The little person had really no definite knowledge of how Lord Coombe was concerned, but certain servants’ whisperings of names and mysterious phrases had conveyed quite an enjoyable effect of unknown iniquity connected with his lordship.

  Robin said nothing to Dowson, but walked up and down the paths reflecting and building a slow fire which would continue to burn in her young heart. She had by then passed the round, soft baby period and had entered into that phase when bodies and legs grow long and slender and small faces lose their first curves and begin to show sharper modeling.

  Accepting the situation in its entirety, Dowson had seen that it was well to first reach Lord Coombe with any need of the child’s. Afterwards, the form of presenting it to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless must be gone through, but if she were first spoken to any suggestion might be forgotten or intentionally ignored.

  Dowson became clever in her calculations as to when his lordship might be encountered and where—as if by chance, and therefore, quite respectfully. Sometimes she remotely wondered if he himself did not make such encounters easy for her. But his manner never altered in its somewhat stiff, expressionless chill of indifference. He never was kindly in his manner to the child if he met her. Dowson felt him at once casual and “lofty.” Robin might have been a bit of unconsidered rubbish, the sight of which slightly bored him. Yet the singular fact remained that it was to him one must carefully appeal.

  One afternoon Feather swept him, with one or two others, into the sitting-room with the round window in which flowers grew. Robin was sitting at a low table making pothooks with a lead pencil on a piece of paper Dowson had given her. Dowson had, in fact, set her at the task, having heard from Jennings that his lordship and the other afternoon tea drinkers were to be brought into the “Palace” as Feather ironically chose to call it. Jennings rather liked Dowson, and often told her little things she wanted to know. It was because Lord Coombe would probably come in with the rest that Dowson had set the low, white table in the round windows and suggested the pothooks.

  In course of time there was a fluttering and a chatter in the corridor. Feather was bringing some new guests, who had not seen the place before.

  “This is where my daughter lives. She is much grander than I am,” she said.

  “Stand up, Miss Robin, and make your curtsey,” whispered Dowson. Robin did as she was told, and Mrs. Gareth-Lawless’ pretty brows ran up.

  “Look at her legs,” she said. “She’s growing like Jack and the Bean Stalk—though, I suppose, it was only the Bean Stalk that grew. She’ll stick through the top of the house soon. Look at her legs, I ask you.”

  She always spoke as if the child were an inanimate object and she had, by this time and by this means, managed to sweep from Robin’s mind all the old, babyish worship of her loveliness and had planted in its place another feeling. At this moment the other feeling surged and burned.

  “They are beautiful legs,” remarked a laughing young man jocularly, “but perhaps she does not particularly want us to look at them. Wait until she begins skirt dancing.” And everybody laughed at once and the child stood rigid—the object of their light ridicule—not herself knowing that her whole little being was cursing them aloud.

  Coombe stepped to the little table and bestowed a casual glance on the pencil marks.

  “What is she doing?” he asked as casually of Dowson.

  “She is learning to make pothooks, my lord,” Dowson answered. “She’s a child that wants to be learning things. I’ve taught her her letters and to spell little words. She’s quick—and old enough, your lordship.”

  “Learning to read and write!” exclaimed Feather.

  “Presumption, I call it. I don’t know how to read and write—least I don’t know how to spell. Do you know how to spell, Collie?” to the young man, whose name was Colin. “Do you, Genevieve? Do you, Artie?”

  “You can’t betray me into vulgar boasting,” said Collie. “Who does in these days? Nobody but clerks at Peter Robinson’s.”

  “Lord Coombe does—but that’s his tiresome superior way,” said Feather.

  “He’s nearly forty years older than most of you. That is the reason,” Coombe commented. “Don’t deplore your youth and innocence.”

  They swept through the rooms and examined everything in them. The truth was that the—by this time well known—fact that the unexplainable Coombe had built them made them a curiosity, and a sort of secret source of jokes. The party even mounted to the upper story to go through the bedrooms, and, it was while they were doing this, that Coombe chose to linger behind with Dowson.

  He remained entirely
expressionless for a few moments. Dowson did not in the least gather whether he meant to speak to her or not. But he did.

  “You meant,” he scarcely glanced at her, “that she was old enough for a governess.”

  “Yes, my lord,” rather breathless in her hurry to speak before she heard the high heels tapping on the staircase again. “And one that’s a good woman as well as clever, if I may take the liberty. A good one if—”

  “If a good one would take the place?”

  Dowson did not attempt refutation or apology. She knew better.

  He said no more, but sauntered out of the room.

  As he did so, Robin stood up and made the little “charity bob” of a curtsey which had been part of her nursery education. She was too old now to have refused him her hand, but he never made any advances to her. He acknowledged her curtsey with the briefest nod.

  Not three minutes later the high heels came tapping down the staircase and the small gust of visitors swept away also.

  Chapter 16

  The interview which took place between Feather and Lord Coombe a few days later had its own special character.

  “A governess will come here tomorrow at eleven o’clock,” he said. “She is a Mademoiselle Valle. She is accustomed to the educating of young children. She will present herself for your approval. Benby has done all the rest.”

  Feather flushed to her fine-spun ash-gold hair.

  “What on earth can it matter!” she cried.

  “It does not matter to you,” he answered; “it chances—for the time being—to matter to me.”

  “Chances!” she flamed forth—it was really a queer little flame of feeling. “That’s it. You don’t really care! It’s a caprice—just because you see she is going to be pretty.”

  “I’ll own,” he admitted, “that has a great deal to do with it.”

  “It has everything to do with it,” she threw out. “If she had a snub nose and thick legs you wouldn’t care for her at all.”

  “I don’t say that I do care for her,” without emotion. “The situation interests me. Here is an extraordinary little being thrown into the world. She belongs to nobody. She will have to fight for her own hand. And she will have to fight, by God! With that dewy lure in her eyes and her curved pomegranate mouth! She will not know, but she will draw disaster!”

  “Then she had better not be taught anything at all,” said Feather. “It would be an amusing thing to let her grow up without learning to read or write at all. I know numbers of men who would like the novelty of it. Girls who know so much are a bore.”

  “There are a few minor chances she ought to have,” said Coombe. “A governess is one. Mademoiselle Valle will be here at eleven.”

  “I can’t see that she promises to be such a beauty,” fretted Feather. “She’s the kind of good looking child who might grow up into a fat girl with staring black eyes like a barmaid.”

  “Occasionally pretty women do abhor their growing up daughters,” commented Coombe letting his eyes rest on her interestedly.

  “I don’t abhor her,” with pathos touched with venom. “ But a big, lumping girl hanging about ogling and wanting to be ogled when she is passing through that silly age! And sometimes you speak to me as a man speaks to his wife when he is tired of her.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Coombe said. “You make me feel like a person who lives over a shop at Knightsbridge, or in bijou mansion off Regent’s Park.”

  But he was deeply aware that, as an outcome of the anomalous position he occupied, he not infrequently felt exactly this.

  That a governess chosen by Coombe—though he would seem not to appear in the matter—would preside over the new rooms, Feather knew without a shadow of doubt.

  A certain almost silent and always high-bred dominance over her existence she accepted as the inevitable, even while she fretted helplessly. Without him, she would be tossed, a broken butterfly, into the gutter. She knew her London. No one would pick her up unless to break her into smaller atoms and toss her away again. The freedom he allowed her after all was wonderful. It was because he disdained interference.

  But there was a line not to be crossed—there must not even be an attempt at crossing it. Why he cared about that she did not know.

  “You must be like Caesar’s wife,” he said rather grimly, after an interview in which he had given her a certain unsparing warning.

  “And I am nobody’s wife. What did Caesar’s wife do?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” And he told her the story and, when she had heard him tell it, she understood certain things clearly.

  Mademoiselle Valle was an intelligent, mature Frenchwoman. She presented herself to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless for inspection and, in ten minutes, realized that the power to inspect and sum up existed only on her own side. This pretty woman neither knew what inquiries to make nor cared for such replies as were given. Being swift to reason and practical in deduction, Mademoiselle Valle did not make the blunder of deciding that this light presence argued that she would be under no supervision more serious. The excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted and the excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted under clearly defined orders. Milord Coombe—among other things the best dressed and perhaps the least comprehended man in London—was concerned in this, though on what grounds practical persons could not explain to themselves. His connection with the narrow house on the right side of the right street was entirely comprehensible. The lenient felt nothing blatant or objectionable about it. Mademoiselle Valle herself was not disturbed by mere rumour. The education, manner and morals of the little girl she could account for. These alone were to be her affair, and she was competent to undertake their superintendence.

  Therefore, she sat and listened with respectful intelligence to the birdlike chatter of Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. (What a pretty woman! The silhouette of a jeune fille!)

  Mrs. Gareth-Lawless felt that, on her part, she had done all that was required of her.

  “I’m afraid she’s rather a dull child, Mademoiselle,” she said in farewell. “You know children’s ways and you’ll understand what I mean. She has a trick of staring and saying nothing. I confess I wish she wasn’t dull.”

  “It is impossible, madame, that she should be dull,” said Mademoiselle, with an agreeably implicating smile. “Oh, but quite impossible! We shall see.”

  Not many days had passed before she had seen much. At the outset, she recognized the effect of the little girl with the slender legs and feet and the dozen or so of points which go to make a beauty. The intense eyes first and the deeps of them. They gave one furiously to think before making up one’s mind. Then she noted the perfection of the rooms added to the smartly inconvenient little house. Where had the child lived before the addition had been built? Thought and actual architectural genius only could have done this. Light and even as much sunshine as London will vouchsafe, had been arranged for. Comfort, convenience, luxury, had been provided. Perfect colour and excellent texture had evoked actual charm. Its utter unlikeness to the quarters London usually gives to children, even of the fortunate class, struck Mademoiselle Valle at once. Madame Gareth-Lawless had not done this. Who then, had?

  The good Dowson she at once affiliated with. She knew the excellence of her type as it had revealed itself to her in the best peasant class. Trustworthy, simple, but of kindly, shrewd good sense and with the power to observe. Dowson was not a chatterer or given to gossip, but, as a silent observer, she would know many things and, in time, when they had become friendly enough to be fully aware that each might trust the other, gentle and careful talk would end in unconscious revelation being made by Dowson.

  That the little girl was almost singularly attached to her nurse, she had marked early. There was something unusual in her manifestations of her feeling. The intense eyes followed the woman often, as if making sure of her presence and reality. The first day of Mademoiselle’s residence in the place she saw the little thing suddenly stop playing with her doll and look at Dowson earnestly
for several moments. Then she left her seat and went to the kind creature’s side.

  “I want to kiss you, Dowie,” she said.

  “To be sure, my lamb,” answered Dowson, and, laying down her mending, she gave her a motherly hug. After which Robin went back contentedly to her play.

  The Frenchwoman thought it a pretty bit of childish affectionateness. But it happened more than once during the day, and at night Mademoiselle commented upon it.

  “She has an affectionate heart, the little one,” she remarked. “Madame, her mother, is so pretty and full of gaieties and pleasures that I should not have imagined she had much time for caresses and the nursery.”

  Even by this time Dowson had realized that with Mademoiselle she was upon safe ground and was in no danger of betraying herself to a gossip. She quietly laid down her sewing and looked at her companion with grave eyes.

  “Her mother has never kissed her in her life that I am aware of,” she said.

  “Has never—!” Mademoiselle ejaculated. “Never!”

  “Just as you see her, she is, Mademoiselle,” Dowson said. “Any sensible woman would know, when she heard her talk about her child. I found it all out bit by bit when first I came here. I’m going to talk plain and have done with it. Her first six years she spent in a sort of dog kennel on the top floor of this house. No sun, no real fresh air. Two little holes that were dingy and gloomy to dull a child’s senses. Not a toy or a bit of colour or a picture, but clothes fine enough for Buckingham Palace children—and enough for six. Fed and washed and taken out every day to be shown off. And a bad nurse, Miss—a bad one that kept her quiet by pinching her black and blue.”

  “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! That little angel!” cried Mademoiselle, covering her eyes.

  Dowson hastily wiped her own eyes. She had shed many a motherly tear over the child. It was a relief to her to open her heart to a sympathizer.

  “Black and blue!” she repeated. “And laughing and dancing and all sorts of fast fun going on in the drawing-rooms.” She put out her hand and touched Mademoiselle’s arm quite fiercely. “The little thing didn’t know she had a mother! She didn’t know what the word meant. I found that out by her innocent talk. She used to call her ‘The Lady Downstairs’.”