The Head of the House of CoombeBurnett, Frances Hodgson
General
The Head of the House of Coombe
Burnett, Frances Hodgson
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
The bed was rather a low one and it was difficult for any one larger
than a child to find room beneath it. The correct and naturally rigid
Andrews lay flat upon her stomach and wriggled herself partly under the
edge. Just far enough for her long and strong arm, and equally long and
strong clutching fingers to do their work. In her present state of
mind, Andrews would have broken her back rather than not have reached
the creature who so defied her. The strong fingers clenched a flying
petticoat and dragged at it fiercely—the next moment they clutched a
frantic foot, with a power which could not be broken away from. A jerk
and a remorseless dragging over the carpet and Robin was out of the
protecting darkness and in the gas light again, lying tumbled and in an
untidy, torn little heap on the nursery floor. Andrews was panting, but
she did not loose her hold as she scrambled, without a rag of
professional dignity, to her feet.
“My word!” she breathlessly gave forth. “I’ve got you now! I’ve got you
now.”
She so looked that to Robin she seemed—like the ugly man downstairs—a
sort of wicked wild beast, whose mere touch would have been horror even
if it did not hurt. And the child knew what was coming. She felt
herself dragged up from the floor and also dragged between Andrew’s
knees, which felt bony and hard as iron. There was no getting away from
them. Andrews had seated herself firmly on a chair.
Holding her between the iron knees, she put her large hand over her
mouth. It was a hand large enough to cover more than her mouth. Only
the panic-stricken eyes seemed to flare wide and lustrous above it.
“_You’ll_ scream!” she said, “_you’ll_ hammer on the floor with your
heels! _You’ll_ behave like a wildcat—you that’s been like a kitten!
You’ve never done it before and you’ll never do it again! If it takes
me three days, I’ll make you remember!”
And then her hand dropped—and her jaw dropped, and she sat staring with
a furious, sick, white face at the open door—which she had shut as she
came in. The top floor had always been so safe. The Nursery had been
her own autocratic domain. There had been no human creature to whom it
would have occurred to interfere. That was it. She had been actually
_safe_.
Unheard in the midst of the struggle, the door had been opened without
a knock. There on the threshold, as stiff as a ramrod, and with his
hateful eyes uncovering their gleam, Lord Coombe was standing—no other
than Lord Coombe.
Having a sharp working knowledge of her world, Andrews knew that it was
all up. He had come upstairs deliberately. She knew what he had come
for. He was as clever as he was bad, and he had seen something when he
glanced at her in the drawing-room. Now he had heard and seen her as
she dragged Robin from under the bed. He’d come up for that—for some
queer evil reason of his own. The promptings of a remote gutter
training made her feel a desire to use language such as she still had
wisdom enough to restrain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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