The Years Before

THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE

In the years when Victorian standards and ideals began to dance an
increasingly rapid jig before amazed lookers-on, who presently found
themselves dancing as madly as the rest--in these years, there lived in
Mayfair, in a slice of a house, Robert Gareth-Lawless and his lovely
young wife. So light and airy was she to earthly vision and so
diaphanous the texture of her mentality that she was known as "Feather."

The slice of a house between two comparatively stately mansions in the
"right street" was a rash venture of the honeymoon.

Robert--well born, irresponsible, without resources--evolved a carefully
detailed method of living upon nothing whatever, of keeping out of the
way of duns, and telling lies with aptness and outward gaiety. But a
year of giving smart little dinners and going to smart big dinners ended
in a condition somewhat akin to the feat of balancing oneself on the
edge of a sword.

Then Robin was born. She was an intruder and a calamity, of course. That
a Feather should become a parent gave rise to much wit of light weight
when Robin was exhibited in the form of a bundle of lace.

It was the Head of the House of Coombe who asked:

"What will you do with her?"

"Do?" Feather repeated. "What is it people 'do' with babies? I don't
know. I wouldn't touch her for the world. She frightens me."

Coombe said:

"She is staring at me. There is antipathy in her gaze." He stared back
unwaveringly also, but with a sort of cold interest.

"The Head of the House of Coombe" was not a title to be found in Burke
or Debrett. It was a fine irony of the Head's own. The peerage recorded
him as a marquis and added several lesser attendant titles.

To be born the Head of the House is a weighty and awe-inspiring
thing--one is called upon to be an example.

"I am not sure what I am an example of--or to," he said, on one
occasion, in his light, rather cold and detached way, "which is why I at
times regard myself in that capacity with a slightly ribald lightness."

A reckless young woman once asked him:

"Are you as wicked as people say you are?"

"I really don't know. It is so difficult to decide," he answered.
"Perhaps I am as wicked as I know how to be. And I may have painful
limitations or I may not."

He had reached the age when it was safe to apply to him that vague term
"elderly," and marriage might have been regarded as imperative. But he
had remained unmarried and seemed to consider his abstinence entirely
his own affair.

Courts and capitals knew him, and his opportunities