The Head of the House of Coombe Part 8

"If I were--in this instance--it would make no difference." He saw the kind of slippery silliness he was dealing with and what it might transform itself into if allowed a loophole. "There must be no mistakes."

In her fright she saw him for a moment more distinctly than she had ever seen him before and hideous dread beset her lest she had blundered fatally.

"There shall be none," she gasped. "I always knew. There shall be none at all."

"Do you know what you are asking me?" he inquired.

"Yes, yes--I'm not a girl, you know. I've been married. I won't go home. I can't starve or live in awful lodgings. SOMEBODY must save me!"

"Do you know what people will say?" his steady voice was slightly lower.

"It won't be said to me." Rather wildly. "n.o.body minds--really."

He ceased altogether to look serious. He smiled with the light detached air his world was most familiar with.

"No--they don't really," he answered. "I had, however, a slight preference for knowing whether you would or not. You flatter me by intimating that you would not."

He knew that if he had held out an arm she would have fallen upon his breast and wept there, but he was not at the moment in the mood to hold out an arm. He merely touched hers with a light pressure.

"Let us sit down and talk it over," he suggested.

A hansom drove up to the door and stopped before he had time to seat himself. Hearing it he went to the window and saw a stout businesslike looking man get out, accompanied by an attendant.

There followed a loud, authoritative ringing of the bell and an equally authoritative rap of the knocker. This repeated itself.

Feather, who had run to the window and caught sight of the stout man, clutched his sleeve.

"It's the agent we took the house from. We always said we were out. It's either Carson or Bayle. I don't know which."

Coombe walked toward the staircase.

"You can't open the door!" she shrilled.

"He has doubtless come prepared to open it himself." he answered and proceeded at leisure down the narrow stairway.

The caller had come prepared. By the time Coombe stood in the hall a latchkey was put in the keyhole and, being turned, the door opened to let in Carson--or Bayle--who entered with an air of angered determination, followed by his young man.

The physical presence of the Head of the House of Coombe was always described as a subtly impressive one. Several centuries of rather careful breeding had resulted in his seeming to represent things by silent implication. A man who has never found the necessity of explaining or excusing himself inevitably presents a front wholly unsuggestive of uncertainty. The front Coombe presented merely awaited explanations from others.

Carson--or Bayle--had doubtless contemplated seeing a frightened servant trying to prepare a stammering obvious lie. He confronted a tall, thin man about whom--even if his clothes had been totally different--there could be no mistake. He stood awaiting an apology so evidently that Carson--or Bayle--began to stammer himself even before he had time to dismiss from his voice the suggestion of bl.u.s.ter. It would have irritated Coombe immensely if he had known that he--and a certain overcoat--had been once pointed out to the man at Sandown and that--in consequence of the overcoat--he vaguely recognized him.

"I--I beg pardon," he began.

"Quite so," said Coombe.

"Some tenants came to look at the house this morning. They had an order to view from us. They were sent away, my lord--and decline to come back. The rent has not been paid since the first half year. There is no one now who can even PRETEND it's going to be paid. Some step had to be taken."

"Quite so," said Coombe. "Suppose you step into the dining-room."

He led the pair into the room and pointed to chairs, but neither the agent nor his attendant was calm enough to sit down.

Coombe merely stood and explained himself.

"I quite understand," he said. "You are entirely within your rights. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless is, naturally, not able to attend to business. For the present--as a friend of her late husband's--I will arrange matters for her. I am Lord Coombe. She does not wish to give up the house. Don't send any more possible tenants. Call at Coombe House in an hour and I will give you a cheque."

There were a few awkward apologetic moments and then the front door opened and shut, the hansom jingled away and Coombe returned to the drawing-room. Robin was still shrieking.

"She wants some more condensed milk," he said. "Don't be frightened.

Go and give her some. I know an elderly woman who understands children. She was a nurse some years ago. I will send her here at once. Kindly give me the account books. My housekeeper will send you some servants. The trades-people will come for orders."

Feather was staring at him.

"W-will they?" she stammered. "W-will everything--?"

"Yes--everything," he answered. "Don't be frightened. Go upstairs and try to stop her. I must go now. I never heard a creature yell with such fury."

She turned away and went towards the second flight of stairs with a rather dazed air. She had pa.s.sed through a rather tremendous crisis and she WAS dazed. He made her feel so. She had never understood him for a moment and she did not understand him now--but then she never did understand people and the whole situation was a new one to her. If she had not been driven to the wall she would have been quite as respectable as she knew how to be.

Coombe called a hansom and drove home, thinking of many things and looking even more than usually detached. He had remarked the facial expression of the short and stout man as he had got into his cab and he was turning over mentally his own exact knowledge of the views the business mind would have held and what the business countenance would have decently covered if he--Coombe--had explained in detail that he was so far--in this particular case--an entirely blameless character.

CHAPTER VII

The slice of a house from that time forward presented the external aspect to which the inhabitants of the narrow and fas.h.i.+onable street and those who pa.s.sed through it had been accustomed. Such individuals as had antic.i.p.ated beholding at some early day notices conspicuously placed announcing "Sale by Auction. Elegant Modern Furniture" were vaguely puzzled as well as surprised by the fact that no such notices appeared even inconspicuously. Also there did not draw up before the door--even as the weeks went on--huge and heavy removal vans with their resultant litter, their final note of farewell a "To Let" in the front windows.

On the contrary, the florist came and refilled the window boxes with an admirable arrangement of fresh flowers; new and even more correct servants were to be seen ascending and descending the area step; a young footman quite as smart as the departed Edward opened the front door and attended Mrs. Gareth-Lawless to her perfect little brougham. The trades-people appeared promptly every day and were obsequiously respectful in manner. Evidently the household had not disintegrated as a result of the death of Mr. Gareth-Lawless.

As it became an established fact that the household had not fallen to pieces its frequenters gradually returned to it, wearing indeed the air of people who had never really remained away from it. There had been natural reasons enough for considerate absence from a house of bereavement and a desolate widow upon whose grief it would have been indelicate to intrude. As Feather herself had realized, the circle of her intimates was not formed of those who could readily adjust themselves to entirely changed circ.u.mstances. If you dance on a tight rope and the rope is unexpectedly withdrawn, where are you? You cannot continue dancing until the rope is restrung.

The rope, however, being apparently made absolutely secure, it was not long before the dancing began again. Feather's mourning, wonderfully shading itself from month to month, was the joy of all beholders. Madame Helene treated her as a star gleaming through gradually dispersing clouds. Her circle watched her with secretly humorous interest as each fine veil of dimness was withdrawn.

"The things she wears are priceless," was said amiably in her own drawing-room. "Where does she get them? Figure to yourself Lawdor paying the bills."

"She gets them from Helene," said a long thin young man with a rather good-looking narrow face and dark eyes, peering through pince nez, "But I couldn't."

In places where entertainment as a means of existence proceed so to speak, fast and furiously, questions of taste are not dwelt upon at leisure. You need not hesitate before saying anything you liked in any one's drawing-room so long as it was amusing enough to make somebody--if not everybody--laugh. Feather had made people laugh in the same fas.h.i.+on in the past. The persons she most admired were always making sly little impudent comments and suggestions, and the thwarted years on the island of Jersey had, in her case, resulted in an almost hectic desire to keep pace. Her efforts had usually been successes because Nature's self had provided her with the manner of a silly pretty child who did not know how far she went. Shouts of laughter had often greeted her, and the first time she had for a moment doubted her prowess was on an occasion when she had caught a glimpse of Coombe who stared at her with an expression which she would--just for one second--have felt might be horror, if she had not been so sure it couldn't be, and must of course be something else--one of the things n.o.body ever understood in him.

By the time the softly swathing veils of vaporous darkness were withdrawn, and the tight rope a.s.suring everyone of its permanent security became a trusted support, Feather at her crowded little parties and at other people's bigger ones did not remain wholly unaware of the probability that even people who rather liked her made, among themselves, more or less witty comments upon her improved fortunes. They were improved greatly. Bills were paid, trades-people were polite, servants were respectful; she had no need to invent excuses and lies. She and Robert had always kept out of the way of stodgy, critical people, so they had been intimate with none of the punctilious who might have withdrawn themselves from a condition of things they chose to disapprove: accordingly, she found no gaps in her circle. Those who had formed the habit of amusing themselves at her house were as ready as before to amuse themselves again.

The fact remained, however,--curiously, perhaps, in connection with the usual slightness of all impressions made on her--that there was a memory which never wholly left her. Even when she tried to force it so far into the background of her existence that it might almost be counted as forgotten, it had a trick of rising before her. It was the memory of the empty house as its emptiness had struck to the centre of her being when she had turned from her bedroom window after watching the servants drive away in their cabs. It was also the memory of the hours which had followed--the night in which n.o.body had been in any of the rooms--no one had gone up or down the stairs--when all had seemed dark and hollow--except the Night Nursery where Robin screamed, and her own room where she herself cowered under the bed clothes and pulled the pillow over her head. But though the picture would not let itself be blotted out, its effect was rather to intensify her sense of relief because she had slipped so safely from under the wheels of destiny.

"Sometimes," she revealed artlessly to Coombe, "while I am driving in the park on a fine afternoon when every one is out and the dresses look like the flower beds, I let myself remember it just to make myself enjoy everything more by contrast."