The Head of the House of Coombe

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  “Please!” pled Robin, prettily. “I can run away at once. Fraulein Hirsch must have come back. Please—”

  “The lady asked me particularly to say that she has only a few minutes to stay, as she is catching a train,” the footman decorously ventured.

  “If that is the case,” Lady Etynge said, even relievedly, “I will leave you here to look at things until I come back. I really want to talk to you a little more about yourself and Helene. I can’t let you go.” She looked back from the door before she passed through it. “Amuse yourself, my dear,” and then she added hastily to the man.

  “Have you remembered that there was something wrong with the latch, William? See if it needs a locksmith.”

  “Very good, my lady.”

  She was gone and Robin stood by the sofa thrilled with happiness and relief. How wonderful it was that, through mere lucky chance, she had gone to watch the children sailing their boats! And that Fraulein Hirsch had seen Lady Etynge! What good luck and how grateful she was! The thought which passed through her mind was like a little prayer of thanks. How strange it would be to be really intimate with a girl like herself—or rather like Helene. It made her heart beat to think of it. How wonderful it would be if Helene actually loved her, and she loved Helene. Something sprang out of some depths of her being where past things were hidden. The something was a deadly little memory. Donal! Donal! It would be—if she loved Helene and Helene loved her—as new a revelation as Donal. Oh! she remembered.

  She heard the footman doing something to the latch of the door, which caused it to make a clicking sound. He was obeying orders and examining it. As she involuntarily glanced at him, he—bending over the door handle—raised his eyes sideways and glanced at her. It was an inexcusable glance from a domestic, because it was actually as if he were taking the liberty of privately summing her up—taking her points in for his own entertainment. She so resented the unprofessional bad manners of it, that she turned away and sauntered into the Dresden blue and white library and sat down with a book.

  She was quite relieved, when, only a few minutes later, he went away having evidently done what he could.

  The book she had picked up was a new novel and opened with an attention-arresting agreeableness, which led her on. In fact it led her on further and, for a longer time than she was aware of. It was her way to become wholly absorbed in books when they allured her; she forgot her surroundings and forgot the passing of time. This was a new book by a strong man with the gift which makes alive people, places, things. The ones whose lives had taken possession of his being in this story were throbbing with vital truth.

  She read on and on because, from the first page, she knew them as actual pulsating human creatures. They looked into her face, they laughed, she heard their voices, she CARED for every trivial thing that happened to them—to any of them. If one of them picked a flower, she saw how he or she held it and its scent was in the air.

  Having been so drawn on into a sort of unconsciousness of all else, it was inevitable that, when she suddenly became aware that she did not see her page quite clearly, she should withdraw her eyes from her page and look about her. As she did so, she started from her comfortable chair in amazement and some alarm. The room had become so much darker that it must be getting late. How careless and silly she had been. Where was Fraulein Hirsch?

  “I am only a strange girl and Lady Etynge might so easily have forgotten me,” passed through her mind. “Her friend may have stayed and they may have had so much to talk about, that, of coarse, I was forgotten. But Fraulein Hirsch—how could she!”

  Then, remembering the subservient humility of the Fraulein’s mind, she wondered if it could have been possible that she had been too timid to do more than sit waiting—in the hall, perhaps—afraid to allow the footman to disturb Lady Etynge by asking her where her pupil was. The poor, meek, silly thing.

  “I must get away without disturbing anyone,” she thought, “I will slip downstairs and snatch Fraulein Hirsch from her seat and we will go quietly out. I can write a nice note to Lady Etynge tomorrow, and explain. I hope she won’t mind having forgotten me. I must make her feel sure that it did not matter in the least. I’ll tell her about the book.”

  She replaced the book on the shelf from which she had taken it and passed through into the delightful sitting room. The kittens were playing together on the hearth, having deserted their basket. One of them gave a soft, airy pounce after her and caught at her dress with tiny claws, rolling over and over after his ineffectual snatch.

  She had not heard the footman close the door when he left the room, but she found he must have done so, as it was now shut. When she turned the handle it did not seem to work well, because the door did not open as it ought to have done. She turned it again and gave it a little pull, but it still remained tightly shut. She turned it again, still with no result, and then she tried the small latch. Perhaps the man had done some blundering thing when he had been examining it. She remembered hearing several clicks. She turned the handle again and again. There was no key in the keyhole, so he could not have bungled with the key. She was quite aghast at the embarrassment of the situation.

  “How can I get out without disturbing anyone, if I cannot open the door!” she said. “ How stupid I shall seem to Lady Etynge! She won’t like it. A girl who could forget where she was—and then not be able to open a door and be obliged to bang until people come!”

  Suddenly she remembered that there had been a door in the bedroom which had seemed to lead out into the hall. She ran into the room in such a hurry that all three kittens ran frisking after her. She saw she had not been mistaken. There was a door. She went to it and turned the handle, breathless with excitement and relief. But the handle of that door also would not open it. Neither would the latch. And there was no key.

  “Oh!” she gasped. “Oh!”

  Then she remembered the electric bell near the fireplace in the sitting room. There was one by the fireplace here, also. No, she would ring the one in the sitting room. She went to it and pressed the button. She could not hear the ghost of a sound and one could generally hear something like one. She rang again and waited. The room was getting darker. Oh, how could Fraulein Hirsch—how could she?

  She waited—she waited. Fifteen minutes by her little watch—twenty minutes—and, in their passing, she rang again. She rang the bell in the library and the one in the bedroom—even the one in the bathroom, lest some might be out of order. She slowly ceased to be embarrassed and self-reproachful and began to feel afraid, though she did not know quite what she was afraid of. She went to one of the windows to look at her watch again in the vanishing light, and saw that she had been ringing the bells for an hour. She automatically put up a hand and leaned against the white frame of one of the decorative small panes of glass. As she touched it, she vaguely realized that it was of such a solidity that it felt, not like wood but iron. She drew her hand away quickly, feeling a sweep of unexplainable fear—yes, it was fear. And why should she so suddenly feel it? She went back to the door and tried again to open it—as ineffectively as before. Then she began to feel a little cold and sick. She returned to the Chesterfield and sat down on it helplessly.

  “It seems as if—I had been locked in!” she broke out, in a faint, bewildered wail of a whisper. “ Oh, why—did they lock the doors!”

  Chapter 22

  She had known none of the absolute horrors of life which were possible in that underworld which was not likely to touch her own existence in any form.

  “Why,” had argued Mademoiselle Valle, “ should one fill a white young mind with ugly images which would deface with dark marks and smears, and could only produce unhappiness and, perhaps, morbid broodings? One does not feel it is wise to give a girl an education in crime. One would not permit her to read the Newgate Calendar for choice. She will be protected by those who love her and what she must discover she will discover. That is Life.”

  Which was why her first discovery that neithe
r door could be opened, did not at once fill her with horror. Her first arguments were merely those of a girl who, though her brain was not inactive pulp, had still a protected girl’s outlook. She had been overwhelmed by a sense of the awkwardness of her position and by the dread that she would be obliged to disturb and, almost inevitably, embarrass and annoy Lady Etynge. Of course, there had been some bungling on the part of the impudent footman—perhaps actually at the moment when he had given his sidelong leer at herself instead of properly attending to what he was trying to do. That the bedroom was locked might be the result of a dozen ordinary reasons.

  The first hint of an abnormality of conditions came after she had rung the bells and had waited in vain for response to her summons. There were servants whose business it was to answer bells at once. If all the bells were out of order, why were they out of order when Helene was to return in a few days and her apartment was supposed to be complete? Even to the kittens—even to the kittens!

  “It seems as if I had been locked in,” she had whispered to the silence of the room. “Why did they lock the doors?”

  Then she said, and her heart began to thump and race in her side:

  “It has been done on purpose. They don’t intend to let me out—for some horrible reason!”

  Perhaps even her own growing panic was not so appalling as a sudden rushing memory of Lady Etynge, which, at this moment, overthrew her. Lady Etynge! Lady Etynge! She saw her gentle face and almost affectionately watching eyes. She heard her voice as she spoke of Helene; she felt the light pat which was a caress.

  “No! No!” she gasped it, because her breath had almost left her. “No! No! She couldn’t! No one could! There is nothing as wicked—as that!”

  Bat, even as she cried out, the overthrow was utter, and she threw herself forward on the arm of the couch and sobbed—sobbed with the passion she had only known on the day long ago when she had crawled into the shrubs and groveled in the earth. It was the same kind of passion—the shaken and heart-riven woe of a creature who has trusted and hoped joyously and has been forever betrayed. The face and eyes had been so kind. The voice so friendly! Oh, how could even the wickedest girl in the world have doubted their sincerity. Unfortunately—or fortunately—she knew nothing whatever of the mental processes of the wicked girls of the world, which was why she lay broken to pieces, sobbing—sobbing, not at the moment because she was a trapped thing, but because Lady Etynge had a face in whose gentleness her heart had trusted and rejoiced.

  When she sat upright again, her own face, as she lifted it, would have struck a perceptive onlooker as being, as it were, the face of another girl. It was tear-stained and wild, but this was not the cause of its change. The soft, bird eyes were different—suddenly, amazingly older than they had been when she had believed in Helene.

  She had no experience which could reveal to her in a moment the monstrousness of her danger, but all she had ever read, or vaguely gathered, of law breakers and marauders of society, collected itself into an advancing tidal wave of horror.

  She rose and went to the window and tried to open it, but it was not intended to open. The decorative panes were of small size and of thick glass. Her first startled impression that the white framework seemed to be a painted metal was apparently founded on fact. A strong person might have bent it with a hammer, but he could not have broken it. She examined the windows in the other rooms and they were of the same structure.

  “They are made like that,” she said to herself stonily, “to prevent people from getting out.”

  She stood at the front one and looked down into the broad, stately “Place.” It was a long way to look down, and, even if the window could be opened, one’s voice would not be heard. The street lamps were lighted and a few people were to be seen walking past unhurriedly.

  “In the big house almost opposite they are going to give a party. There is a red carpet rolled out. Carriages are beginning to drive up. And here on the top floor, there is a girl locked up—And they don’t know!”

  She said it aloud, and her voice sounded as though it were not her own. It was a dreadful voice, and, as she heard it, panic seized her.

  Nobody knew—nobody! Her mother never either knew or cared where she was, but Dowie and Mademoiselle always knew. They would be terrified. Fraulein Hirsch had, perhaps, been told that her pupil had taken a cab and gone home and she would return to her lodgings thinking she was safe.

  Then—only at this moment, and with a suddenness which produced a sense of shock—she recalled that it was Fraulein Hirsch who had presented her to Lady Etynge. Fraulein Hirsch herself! It was she who had said she had been in her employ and had taught Helene—Helene! It was she who had related anecdotes about the Convent at Tours and the nuns who were so wise and kind! Robin’s hand went up to her forehead with a panic-stricken gesture. Fraulein Hirsch had made an excuse for leaving her with Lady Etynge—to be brought up to the top of the house quite alone—and locked in. Fraulein Hirsch had known! And there came back to her the memory of the furtive eyes whose sly, adoring sidelooks at Count Von Hillern had always—though she had tried not to feel it—been, somehow, glances she had disliked—yes, disliked!

  It was here—by the thread of Fraulein Hirsch—that Count Von Hillern was drawn into her mind. Once there, it was as if he stood near her—quite close—looking down under his heavy, drooping lids with stealthy, plunging eyes. It had always been when Fraulein Hirsch had walked with her that they had met him—almost as if by arrangement.

  There were only two people in the world who might—because she herself had so hated them—dislike and choose in some way to punish her. One was Count Von Hillern. The other was Lord Coombe. Lord Coombe, she knew, was bad, vicious, did the things people only hinted at without speaking of them plainly. A sense of instinctive revolt in the strength of her antipathy to Von Hillern made her feel that he must be of the same order.

  “If either of them came into this room now and locked the door behind him, I could not get out.”

  She heard herself say it aloud in the strange girl’s dreadful voice, as she had heard herself speak of the party in the big house opposite. She put her soft, slim hand up to her soft, slim throat.

  “I could not get out,” she repeated.

  She ran to the door and began to beat on its panels. By this time, she knew it would be no use and yet she beat with her hands until they were bruised and then she snatched up a book and beat with that. She thought she must have been beating half an hour when she realized that someone was standing outside in the corridor, and the someone said, in a voice she recognized as belonging to the leering footman,

  “May as well keep still, Miss. You can’t hammer it down and no one’s going to bother taking any notice,” and then his footsteps retired down the stairs. She involuntarily clenched her hurt hands and the shuddering began again though she stood in the middle of the room with a rigid body and her head thrown fiercely back.

  “If there are people in the world as hideous—and monstrous as this—let them kill me if they want to. I would rather be killed than live! They would have to kill me!” and she said it in a frenzy of defiance of all mad and base things on earth.

  Her peril seemed to force her thought to delve into unknown dark places in her memory and dig up horrors she had forgotten—newspaper stories of crime, old melodramas and mystery romances, in which people disappeared and were long afterwards found buried under floors or in cellars. It was said that the Berford Place houses, winch were old ones, had enormous cellars under them.

  “Perhaps other girls have disappeared and now are buried in the cellars,” she thought.

  And the dreadful young voice added aloud.

  “Because they would have to kill me.”

  One of the Persian kittens curled up in the basket wakened because he heard it and stretched a sleepy paw and mewed at her.

  Coombe House was one of the old ones, wearing somewhat the aspect of a stately barrack with a fine entrance. Its court was enclose
d at the front by a stone wall, outside which passing London roared in low tumult. The court was surrounded by a belt of shrubs strong enough to defy the rain of soot which fell quietly upon them day and night.

  The streets were already lighted for the evening when Mademoiselle Valle presented herself at the massive front door and asked for Lord Coombe. The expression of her face, and a certain intensity of manner, caused the serious-looking head servant, who wore no livery, to come forward instead of leaving her to the footmen.

  “His lordship engaged with—a business person—and must not be disturbed,” he said. “He is also going out.”

  “He will see me,” replied Mademoiselle Valle. “ If you give him this card he will see me.”

  She was a plainly dressed woman, but she had a manner which removed her entirely from the class of those who merely came to importune. There was absolute certainty in the eyes she fixed with steadiness on the man’s face. He took her card, though he hesitated.

  “If he does not see me,” she added, “he will be very much displeased.”

  “Will you come in, ma’am, and take a seat for a moment?” he ventured. “I will inquire.”

  The great hall was one of London’s most celebrated. A magnificent staircase swept up from it to landings whose walls were hung with tapestries the world knew. In a gilded chair, like a throne, Mademoiselle Valle sat and waited.

  But she did not wait long. The serious-looking man without livery returned almost immediately. He led Mademoiselle into a room like a sort of study or apartment given up to business matters. Mademoiselle Valle had never seen Lord Coombe’s ceremonial evening effect more flawless. Tall, thin and finely straight, he waited in the centre of the room. He was evidently on the point of going out, and the light-textured satin-lined overcoat he had already thrown on revealed, through a suggestion of being winged, that he wore in his lapel a delicately fresh, cream-coloured carnation.