The Head of the House of Coombe - Frances Hodgson Burnett (best books to read for teens txt) 📗

When she went back to Andrews she carried the pricked leaves with her. She could not have left them behind. From what source she had drawn a characterizing passionate, though silent, strength of mind and body, it would be difficult to explain. Her mind and her emotions had been left utterly unfed, but they were not of the inert order which scarcely needs feeding. Her feeling for the sparrows had held more than she could have expressed; her secret adoration of the “Lady Downstairs” was an intense thing. Her immediate surrender to the desire in the first pair of human eyes—child eyes though they were—which had ever called to her being for response, was simple and undiluted rapture. She had passed over her little soul without a moment’s delay and without any knowledge of the giving. It had flown from her as a bird might fly from darkness into the sun. Eight-year-old Donal was the sun.

No special tendency to innate duplicity was denoted by the fact that she had acquired, through her observation of Andrews, Jennings, Jane and Mrs. Blayne, the knowledge that there were things it was best not to let other people know. You were careful about them. From the occult communications between herself and Donal, which had resulted in their intrigue, there had of course evolved a realizing sense of the value of discretion. She did not let Andrews see the decorated leaves, but put them into a small pocket in her coat. Her Machiavellian intention was to slip them out when she was taken up to the Nursery. Andrews was always in a hurry to go downstairs to her lunch and she would be left alone and could find a place where she could hide them.

Andrews’ friend started when Robin drew near to them. The child’s cheeks and lips were the colour of Jacqueminot rose petals. Her eyes glowed with actual rapture.

“My word! That’s a beauty if I ever saw one,” said the woman. “First sight makes you jump. My word!”

Robin, however, did not know what she was talking about and in fact scarcely heard her. She was thinking of Donal. She thought of him as she was taken home, and she did not cease thinking of him during the whole rest of the day and far into the night. When Andrews left her, she found a place to hide the pricked leaves and before she put them away she did what Donal had done to her—she kissed them. She kissed them several times because they were Donal’s leaves and he had made the stars and lines on them. It was almost like kissing Donal but not quite so beautiful.

After she was put to bed at night and Andrews left her she lay awake for a long time. She did not want to go to sleep because everything seemed so warm and wonderful and she could think and think and think. What she thought about was Donal’s face, his delightful eyes, his white forehead with curly hair pushed back with his Highland bonnet. His plaid swung about when he ran and jumped. When he held her tight the buttons of his jacket hurt her a little because they pressed against her body. What was “Mother” like? Did he kiss her? What pretty stones there were in his clasps and buckles! How nice it was to hear him laugh and how fond he was of laughing. Donal! Donal! Donal! He liked to play with her though she was a girl and so little. He would play with her tomorrow. His cheeks were bright pink, his hair was bright, his eyes were bright. He was all bright. She tried to see into the blueness of his eyes again as it seemed when they looked at each other close to. As she began to see the clear colour she fell asleep.

The power which had on the first morning guided Robin to the seclusion behind the clump of shrubs and had provided Andrews with an enthralling companion, extended, the next day, an even more beneficient and complete protection. Andrews was smitten with a cold so alarming as to confine her to bed. Having no intention of running any risks, whatsoever, she promptly sent for a younger sister who, temporarily being “out of place”, came into the house as substitute. She was a pretty young woman who assumed no special responsibilities and was fond of reading novels.

“She’s been trained to be no trouble, Anne. She’ll amuse herself without bothering you as long as you keep her out,” Andrews said of Robin.

Anne took “Lady Audley’s Secret” with her to the Gardens and, having led her charge to a shady and comfortable seat which exactly suited her, she settled herself for a pleasant morning.

“Now, you can play while I read,” she said to Robin.

As they had entered the Gardens they had passed, not far from the gate, a bench on which sat a highly respectable looking woman who was hemming a delicate bit of cambric, and evidently in charge of two picture books which lay on the seat beside her. A fine boy in Highland kilts was playing a few yards away. Robin felt something like a warm flood rush over her and her joy was so great and exquisite that she wondered if Anne felt her hand trembling. Anne did not because she was looking at a lady getting into a carriage across the street.

The marvel of that early summer morning in the gardens of a splendid but dingy London square thing was not a thing for which human words could find expression. It was not an earthly thing, or, at least, not a thing belonging to an earth grown old. A child Adam and Eve might have known something like it in the Garden of Eden. It was as clear and simple as spring water and as warm as the sun.

Anne’s permission to “play” once given, Robin found her way behind the group of lilacs and snowballs. Donal would come, not only because he was so big that Nanny would let him do what he wanted to do, but because he would do everything and anything in the world. Donal! Donal! Her heart was a mere baby’s heart but it beat as if she were seventeen—beat with pure rapture. He was all bright and he would laugh and laugh.

The coming was easy enough for Donal. He had told his mother and Nanny rejoicingly about the little girl he had made friends with and who had no picture books. But he did not come straight to her. He took his picture books under his arm, and showing all his white teeth in a joyous grin, set out to begin their play properly with a surprise. He did not let her see him coming but “stalked” her behind the trees and bushes until he found where she was waiting, and then thrust his face between the branches of a tall shrub near her and laughed the outright laugh she loved. And when she turned she was looking straight into the clear blue she had tried to see when she fell asleep. “Donal! Donal!” she cried like a little bird with but one note.

The lilac and the snowball were in blossom and there was a big hawthorn tree which smelt sweet and sweet. They could not see the drift of smuts on the blossoms, they only smelled the sweetness and sat under the hawthorn and sniffed and sniffed. The sun was deliciously warm and a piano organ was playing beautifully not far away. They sat close to each other, so close that the picture book could lie open on both pairs of knees and the warmth of each young body penetrated the softness of the other. Sometimes Donal threw an arm around her as she bent over the page. Love and caresses were not amazements to him; he accepted them as parts of the normal joy of life. To Robin they were absolute wonder. The pictures were delight and amazement in one. Donal knew all about them and told her stories. She felt that such splendour could have emanated only from him. It could not occur to her that he had not invented them and made the pictures. He showed her Robinson Crusoe and Robin Hood. The scent of the hawthorn and lilac intoxicated them and they laughed tremendously because Robin Hood’s name was like Robin’s own and he was a man and she was a girl. They could scarcely stop laughing and Donal rolled over and over on the grass, half from unconquerable high spirits and half to make Robin laugh still more.

He had some beautiful coloured glass marbles in his pocket and he showed her how to play with them, and gave her two of the prettiest. He could shoot them over the ground in a way to thrill the beholder. He could hop on one leg as far as he liked. He could read out of books.

“Do you like me?” he said once in a pause between displays of his prowess.

Robin was kneeling upon the grass watching him and she clasped her little hands as if she were uttering a prayer.

“Oh, yes, yes!” she yearned. “Yes! Yes!”

“I like you,” he answered; “I told my mother all about you.”

He came to her and knelt by her side.

“Have you a mother?” he asked.

“No,” shaking her head.

“Do you live with your aunt?”

“No, I don’t live with anybody.”

He looked puzzled.

“Isn’t there any lady in your house?” he put it to her. She brightened a little, relieved to think she had something to tell him.

“There’s the Lady Downstairs,” she said. “She’s so pretty—so pretty.”

“Is she–-” he stopped and shook his head. “She couldn’t be your mother,” he corrected himself. “You’d know about HER.”

“She wears pretty clothes. Sometimes they float about and sparkle and she wears little crowns on her head—or flowers. She laughs,” Robin described eagerly. “A great many people come to see her. They all laugh. Sometimes they sing. I lie in bed and listen.”

“Does she ever come upstairs to the Nursery?” inquired Donal with a somewhat reflective air.

“Yes. She comes and stands near the door and says, ‘Is she quite well, Andrews?’ She does not laugh then. She—she LOOKS at me.”

She stopped there, feeling suddenly that she wished very much that she had more to tell. What she was saying was evidently not very satisfactory. He seemed to expect more—and she had no more to give. A sense of emptiness crept upon her and for no reason she understood there was a little click in her throat.

“Does she only stand near the door?” he suggested, as one putting the situation to a sort of crucial test. “Does she never sit on a big chair and take you on her knee?”

“No, no,” in