On the afternoon of the day upon which this occurred, Coombe was
standing in Feather’s drawing-room with a cup of tea in his hand and
wearing the look of a man who is given up to reflection.
“I saw Mrs. Muir today for the first time for several years,” he said
after a silence. “She is in London with the boy.”
“Is she as handsome as ever?”
“Quite. Hers is not the beauty that disappears. It is line and bearing
and a sort of splendid grace and harmony.”
“What is the boy like?”
Coombe reflected again before he answered.
“He is—amazing. One so seldom sees anything approaching physical
perfection that it strikes one a sort of blow when one comes upon it
suddenly face to face.”
“Is he as beautiful as all that?”
“The Greeks used to make statues of bodies like his. They often called
them gods—but not always. The Creative Intention plainly was that all
human beings should be beautiful and he is the expression of it.”
Feather was pretending to embroider a pink flower on a bit of gauze and
she smiled vaguely.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she admitted with no abasement of spirit,
“but if ever there was any Intention of that kind it has not been
carried out.” Her smile broke into a little laugh as she stuck her
needle into her work. “I’m thinking of Henry,” she let drop in
addition.
“So was I, it happened,” answered Coombe after a second or so of pause.
Henry was the next of kin who was—to Coombe’s great objection—his heir
presumptive, and was universally admitted to be a repulsive sort of
person both physically and morally. He had brought into the world a
weakly and rickety framework and had from mere boyhood devoted himself
to a life which would have undermined a Hercules. A relative may so
easily present the aspect of an unfortunate incident over which one has
no control. This was the case with Henry. His character and appearance
were such that even his connection with an important heritage was not
enough to induce respectable persons to accept him in any form. But if
Coombe remained without issue Henry would be the Head of the House.
“How is his cough?” inquired Feather.
“Frightful. He is an emaciated wreck and he has no physical cause for
remaining alive.”
Feather made three or four stitches.
“Does Mrs. Muir know?” she said.
“If Mrs. Muir is conscious of his miserable existence, that is all,” he
answered. “She is not the woman to inquire. Of course she cannot help
knowing that—when he is done with—her boy takes his place in the line
of succession.”
“Oh, yes, she’d know that,” put in Feather.
It was Coombe who smiled now—very faintly.
“You have a mistaken view of her,” he said.
“You admire her very much,” Feather bridled. The figure of this big
Scotch creature with her “line” and her “splendid grace and harmony”
was enough to make one bridle.
“She doesn’t admire me,” said Coombe. “She is not proud of me as a
connection. She doesn’t really want the position for the boy, in her
heart of hearts.”
“Doesn’t want it!” Feather’s exclamation was a little jeer only because
she would not have dared a big one.
“She is Scotch Early Victorian in some things and extremely advanced in
others,” he went on. “She has strong ideas of her own as to how he
shall be brought up. She’s rather Greek in her feeling for his being as
perfect physically and mentally as she can help him to be. She believes
things. It was she who said what you did not understand—about the
Creative Intention.”
“I suppose she is religious,” Feather said. “Scotch people often are
but their religion isn’t usually like that. Creative Intention’s a new
name for God, I suppose. I ought to know all about God. I’ve heard
enough about Him. My father was not a clergyman but he was very
miserable, and it made him so religious that he was _almost_ one. We
were every one of us christened and catechized and confirmed and all
that. So God’s rather an old story.”
“Queer how old—from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand,”
said Coombe. “It’s an ancient search—that for the Idea—whether it takes
form in metal or wood or stone.”
“Well,” said Feather, holding her bit of gauze away from her the better
to criticize the pink flower. “As _almost_ a clergyman’s daughter I
must say that if there is one thing God didn’t do, it was to fill the
world with beautiful people and things as if it was only to be happy
in. It was made to—to try us by suffering and—that sort of thing. It’s
a—a—what d’ye call it? Something beginning with P.”
“Probation,” suggested Coombe regarding her with an expression of
speculative interest. Her airy bringing forth of her glib time-worn
little scraps of orthodoxy—as one who fished them out of a bag of
long-discarded remnants of rubbish—was so true to type that it almost
fascinated him for a moment.
“Yes. That’s it—probation,” she answered. “I knew it began with a P. It
means ‘thorny paths’ and ‘seas of blood’ and, if you are religious, you
‘tread them with bleeding feet—’ or swim them as the people do in
hymns. And you praise and glorify all the time you’re doing it. Of
course, I’m not religious myself and I can’t say I think it’s
pleasant—but I do _know!_ Every body beautiful and perfect indeed!
That’s not religion—it’s being irreligious. Good gracious, think of the
cripples and lepers and hunchbacks!”
“And the idea is that God made them all—by way of entertaining
himself?” he put it to her quietly.
“Well, who else did?” said Feather cheerfully.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Certain things I heard Mrs. Muir say
suggested to one that it might be interesting to think it out.”
“Did she talk to you about God at afternoon tea?” said Feather. “It’s
the kind of thing a religious Scotch woman might do.”
“No, she did not talk to me. Perhaps that was her mistake. She might
have reformed me. She never says more to me than civility demands. And
it was not at tea. I accidentally dropped in on the Bethunes and found
an Oriental had been lecturing there. Mrs. Muir was talking to him and
I heard her. The man seemed to be a scholar and a deep thinker and as
they talked a group of us stood and listened or asked questions.”
“How funny!” said Feather.
“It was not funny at all. It was astonishingly calm and serious—and
logical. The logic was the new note. I had never thought of reason in
that connection.”
“Reason has nothing to do with it. You must have faith. You must just
believe what you’re told not think at all. Thinking is
wickedness—unless you think what you hear preached.” Feather was even a
trifle delicately smug as she rattled off her orthodoxy—but she laughed
after she had done with it. “But it _must_ have been funny—a Turk or a
Hindoo in a turban and a thing like a tea gown and Mrs. Muir in her
Edinburgh looking clothes talking about God.”
“You are quite out of it,” Coombe did not smile at all as he said it.
“The Oriental was as physically beautiful as Donal Muir is. And Mrs.
Muir—no other woman in the room compared with her. Perhaps people who
think grow beautiful.”
Feather was not often alluring or coquettish in her manner to Coombe
but she tilted her head prettily and looked down at her flower through
lovely lashes.
“_I_ don’t think,” she said. “And I am not so bad looking.”
“No,” he answered coldly. “You are not. At times you look like a young
angel.”
“If Mrs. Muir is like that,” she said after a brief pause, “I should
like to know what she thinks of me?”
“No, you would not—neither should I—if she thinks at all,” was his
answer. “But you remember you said you did not mind that sort of
thing.”
“I don’t. Why should I? It can’t harm me.” Her hint of a pout made her
mouth entrancing. “But, if she thinks good looks are the result of
religiousness I should like to let her see Robin—and compare her with
her boy. I saw Robin in the park last week and she’s a perfect beauty.”
“Last week?” said Coombe.
“She doesn’t need anyone but Andrews. I should bore her to death if I
went and sat in the Nursery and stared at her. No one does that sort of
thing in these days. But I should like to see Mrs. Muir to see the two
children together!”
“That could not easily be arranged, I am afraid,” he said.
“Why not?”
His answer was politely deliberate.
“She greatly disapproves of me, I have told you. She is not proud of
the relationship.”
“She does not like _me_ you mean?”
“Excuse me. I mean exactly what I said in telling you that she has her
own very strong views of the boy’s training and surroundings. They may
be ridiculous but that sort of thing need not trouble you.”
Feather held up her hand and actually laughed.
“If Robin meets him in ten years from now—_that_ for her very strong
views of his training and surroundings!”
And she snapped her fingers.
Mrs. Muir’s distaste for her son’s unavoidable connection with the man
he might succeed had a firm foundation. She had been brought up in a
Scottish Manse where her father dominated as an omnipotent and almost
divine authority. As a child of imagination she had not been happy but
she had been obedient. In her girlhood she had varied from type through
her marriage with a young man who was a dreamer, an advanced thinker,
an impassioned Greek scholar and a lover of beauty. After he had
released her from her terrors of damnation, they had been profoundly
happy. They were young and at ease and they read and thought together
ardently. They explored new creeds and cults and sometimes found
themselves talking nonsense and sometimes discovering untrodden paths
of wisdom. They were youthful enough to be solemn about things at
times, and clever enough to laugh at their solemnity when they awakened
to it. Helen Muir left the reverent gloom of the life at the Manse far
behind despite her respect for certain meanings they beclouded.
“I live in a new structure,” she said to her husband, “but it is built
on a foundation which is like a solid subterranean chamber. I don’t use
the subterranean chamber or go into it. I don’t want to. But now and
then echoes—almost noises—make themselves heard in it. Sometimes I find
I have listened in spite of myself.”
She had always been rather grave about her little son and when her
husband’s early death left him and his dignified but not large estate
in her care she realized that there lay in her hands the power to
direct a life as she chose, in as far as was humanly possible. The pure
blood and healthy tendencies of a long and fine ancestry expressing
themselves in the boy’s splendid body and unusual beauty had set the
minds of two imaginative people working from the first. One of Muir’s
deepest interests was the study of development of the race. It was he
who had planted in her mind that daringly fearless thought of a human
perfection as to the Intention of the Creative Cause. They used to look
at the child as he lay asleep and note the beauty of him—his hands, his
feet, his torso, the tint and texture and line of him.
“This is what was _meant_—in the plan for every human being—How could
there be scamping and inefficiency in Creation. It is we ourselves who
have scamped and been incomplete in our thought and life. Here he is.
Look at him. But he will only develop as he is—if living does not warp
him.” This was what his father said. His mother was at her gravest as
she looked down at the little god in the crib.
“It’s as if some power had thrust a casket of loose jewels into our
hands and said, ‘It is for you to see that not one is lost’,” she
murmured. Then the looked up and smiled.
“Are we being solemn—over a baby?” she said.
“Perhaps,” he was always even readier to smile than she was. “I’ve an
idea, however, that there’s enough to be solemn about—not too solemn,
but just solemn enough. You are a beautiful thing, Fair Helen! Why
shouldn’t he be like you? Neither of us will forget what we have just
said.”
Through her darkest hours of young bereavement she remembered the words
many times and felt as if they were a sort of light she might hold in
her hand as she trod the paths of the “Afterwards” which were in the
days before her. She lived with Donal at Braemarnie and lived _for_ him
without neglecting her duty of being the head of a household and an
estate and also a good and gracious neighbour to things and people. She
kept watch over every jewel in his casket, great and small. He was so
much a part of her religion that sometimes she realized that the echoes
from the subterranean chamber were perhaps making her a little strict
but she tried to keep guard over herself.
He was handsome and radiant with glowing health and vitality. He was a
friendly, rejoicing creature and as full of the joy of life as a
scampering moor pony. He was clever enough but not too clever and he
was friends with the world. Braemarnie was picturesquely ancient and
beautiful. It would be a home of sufficient ease and luxury to be a
pleasure but no burden. Life in it could be perfect and also supply
freedom. Coombe Court and Coombe Keep were huge and castellated and
demanded great things. Even if the Head of the House had been a man to
like and be proud of—the accession of a beautiful young Marquis would
rouse the hounds of war, so to speak, and set them racing upon his
track. Even the totally unalluring “Henry” had been beset with
temptations from his earliest years. That he promptly succumbed to the
first only brought forth others. It did not seem fair that a creature
so different, a splendid fearless thing, should be dragged from his
hills and moors and fair heather and made to breathe the foul scent of
things, of whose poison he could know nothing. She was not an ignorant
childish woman. In her fine aloof way she had learned much in her stays
in London with her husband and in their explorings of foreign cities.
This was the reason for her views of her boy’s training and
surroundings. She had not asked questions about Coombe himself, but it
had not been necessary. Once or twice she had seen Feather by chance.
In spite of herself she had heard about Henry. Now and then he was
furbished up and appeared briefly at Coombe Court or at The Keep. It
was always briefly because he inevitably began to verge on misbehaving
himself after twenty-four hours had passed. On his last visit to Coombe
House in town, where he had turned up without invitation, he had become
so frightfully drunk that he had been barely rescued from the trifling
_faux pas_ of attempting to kiss a very young royal princess. There
were quite definite objections to Henry.
Helen Muir was _not_ proud of the Coombe relationship and with unvaried
and resourceful good breeding kept herself and her boy from all chance
of being drawn into anything approaching an intimacy. Donal knew
nothing of his prospects. There would be time enough for that when he
was older, but, in the meantime, there should be no intercourse if it
could be avoided.
She had smiled at herself when the “echo” had prompted her to the hint
of a quaint caution in connection with his little boy flame of delight
in the strange child he had made friends with. But it _had_ been a
flame and, though she, had smiled, she sat very still by the window
later that night and she had felt a touch of weight on her heart as she
thought it over. There were wonderful years when one could give one’s
children all the things they wanted, she was saying to herself—the
desires of their child hearts, the joy of their child bodies, their
little raptures of delight. Those were divine years. They were so safe
then. Donal was living through those years now. He did not know that
any happiness could be taken from him. He was hers and she was his. It
would be horrible if there were anything one could not let him keep—in
this early unshadowed time!
She was looking out at the Spring night with all its stars lit and
gleaming over the Park which she could see from her window. Suddenly
she left her chair and rang for Nanny.
“Nanny,” she said when the old nurse came, “tell me something about the
little girl Donal plays with in the Square gardens.”
“She’s a bonny thing and finely dressed, ma’am,” was the woman’s
careful answer, “but I don’t make friends with strange nurses and I
don’t think much of hers. She’s a young dawdler who sits novel reading
and if Master Donal were a young pickpocket with the measles, the child
would be playing with him just the same as far as I can see. The young
woman sits under a tree and reads and the pretty little thing may do
what she likes. I keep my eye on them, however, and they’re in no
mischief. Master Donal reads out of his picture books and shows himself
off before her grandly and she laughs and looks up to him as if he were
a king. Every lad child likes a woman child to look up to him. It’s
pretty to see the pair of them. They’re daft about each other. Just wee
things in love at first sight.”
“Donal has known very few girls. Those plain little things at the Manse
are too dull for him,” his mother said slowly.
“This one’s not plain and she’s not dull,” Nanny answered. “My word!
but she’s like a bit of witch fire dancing—with her colour and her big
silk curls in a heap. Donal stares at her like a young man at a beauty.
I wish, ma’am, we knew more of her forbears.”
“I must see her,” Mrs. Muir said. “Tomorrow I’ll go with you both to
the Gardens.”
Therefore the following day Donal pranced proudly up the path to his
trysting place and with him walked a tall lady at whom people looked as
she passed. She was fair like Donal and had a small head softly swathed
with lovely folds of hair. Also her eyes were very clear and calm.
Donal was plainly proud and happy to be with her and was indeed
prancing though his prance was broken by walking steps at intervals.
Robin was waiting behind the lilac bushes and her nurse was already
deep in the mystery of Lady Audley.
“There she is!” cried Donal, and he ran to her. “My mother has come
with me. She wants to see you, too,” and he pulled her forward by her
hand. “This is Robin, Mother! This is Robin.” He panted with elation
and stood holding his prize as if she might get away before he had
displayed her; his eyes lifted to his tall mother’s were those of an
exultant owner.
Robin had no desire to run away. To adore anything which belonged to
Donal was only nature. And this tall, fair, wonderful person was a
Mother. No wonder Donal talked of her so much. The child could only
look up at her as Donal did. So they stood hand in hand like little
worshippers before a deity.
Andrews’ sister in her pride had attired the small creature like a
flower of Spring. Her exquisiteness and her physical brilliancy gave
Mrs. Muir something not unlike a slight shock. Oh! no wonder—since she
was like that. She stooped and kissed the round cheek delicately.
“Donal wanted me to see his little friend,” she said. “I always want to
see his playmates. Shall we walk round the Garden together and you
shall show me where you play and tell me all about it.”
She took the small hand and they walked slowly. Robin was at first too
much awed to talk but as Donal was not awed at all and continued his
prancing and the Mother lady said pretty things about the flowers and
the grass and the birds and even about the pony at Braemarnie, she
began now and then to break into a little hop herself and presently
into sudden ripples of laughter like a bird’s brief bubble of song. The
tall lady’s hand was not like Andrews, or the hand of Andrews’ sister.
It did not pull or jerk and it had a lovely feeling. The sensation she
did not know was happiness again welled up within her. Just one walk
round the Garden and then the tall lady sat down on a seat to watch
them play. It was wonderful. She did not read or work. She sat and
watched them as if she wanted to do that more than anything else. Donal
kept calling out to her and making her smile: he ran backwards and
forwards to her to ask questions and tell her what they were “making
up” to play. When they gathered leaves to prick stars and circles on,
they did them on the seat on which she sat and she helped them with new
designs. Several times, in the midst of her play, Robin stopped and
stood still a moment with a sort of puzzled expression. It was because
she did not feel like Robin. Two people—a big boy and a lady—letting
her play and talk to them as if they liked her and had time!
The truth was that Mrs. Muir’s eyes followed Robin more than they
followed Donal. Their clear deeps yearned over her. Such a glowing
vital little thing! No wonder! No wonder! And as she grew older she
would be more vivid and compelling with every year. And Donal was of
her kind. His strength, his beauty, his fearless happiness-claiming
temperament. How could one—with dignity and delicacy—find out why she
had this obvious air of belonging to nobody? Donal was an exact little
lad. He had had foundation for his curious scraps of her story. No
mother—no playthings or books—no one had ever kissed her! And she
dressed and _soignée_ like this! Who was the Lady Downstairs?
A victoria was driving past the Gardens. It was going slowly because
the two people in it wished to look at the spring budding out of
hyacinths and tulips. Suddenly one of the pair—a sweetly-hued figure
whose early season attire was hyacinth-like itself—spoke to the
coachman.
“Stop here!” she said. “I want to get out.”
As the victoria drew up near a gate she made a light gesture.
“What do you think, Starling,” she laughed. “The very woman we are
talking about is sitting in the Gardens there. I know her perfectly
though I only saw her portrait at the Academy years ago. Yes, there she
is. Mrs. Muir, you know.” She clapped her hands and her laugh became a
delighted giggle. “And my Robin is playing on the grass near her—with a
boy! What a joke! It must be _the_ boy! And I wanted to see the pair
together. Coombe said couldn’t be done. And more than anything I want
to speak to _her_. Let’s get out.”
They got out and this was why Helen Muir, turning her eyes a moment
from Robin whose hand she was holding, saw two women coming towards her
with evident intention. At least one of them had evident intention. She
was the one whose light attire produced the effect of being made of
hyacinth petals.
Because Mrs. Muir’s glance turned towards her, Robin’s turned also. She
started a little and leaned against Mrs. Muir’s knee, her eyes growing
very large and round indeed and filling with a sudden worshipping
light.
“It is—” she ecstatically sighed or rather gasped, “the Lady
Downstairs!”
Feather floated near to the seat and paused smiling.
“Where is your nurse, Robin?” she said.
Robin being always dazzled by the sight of her did not of course shine.
“She is reading under the tree,” she answered tremulously.
“She is only a few yards away,” said Mrs. Muir. “She knows Robin is
playing with my boy and that I am watching them. Robin is your little
girl?” amiably.
“Yes. So kind of you to let her play with your boy. Don’t let her bore
you. I am Mrs. Gareth-Lawless.”
There was a little silence—a delicate little silence.
“I recognized you as Mrs. Muir at once,” said Feather, unperturbed and
smiling brilliantly, “I saw your portrait at the Grosvenor.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Muir gently. She had risen and was beautifully
tall,—“the line” was perfect, and she looked with a gracious calm into
Feather’s eyes.
Donal, allured by the hyacinth petal colours, drew near. Robin made an
unconscious little catch at his plaid and whispered something.
“Is this Donal?” Feather said.
“_Are_ you the Lady Downstairs, please?” Donal put in politely, because
he wanted so to know.
Feather’s pretty smile ended in the prettiest of outright laughs. Her
maid had told her Andrews’ story of the name.
“Yes, I believe that’s what she calls me. It’s a nice name for a
mother, isn’t it?”
Donal took a quick step forward.
“_Are_ you her mother?” he asked eagerly.
“Of course I am.”
Donal quite flushed with excitement.
“She doesn’t _know_,” he said.
He turned on Robin.
“She’s your Mother! You thought you hadn’t one! She’s your Mother!”
“But I am the Lady Downstairs, too.” Feather was immensely amused. She
was not subtle enough to know why she felt a perverse kind of pleasure
in seeing the Scotch woman standing so still, and that it led her into
a touch of vulgarity. “I wanted very much to see your boy,” she said.
“Yes,” still gently from Mrs. Muir.
“Because of Coombe, you know. We are such old friends. How queer that
the two little things have made friends, too. I didn’t know. I am so
glad I caught a glimpse of you and that I had seen the portrait. _Good_
morning. Goodbye, children.”
While she strayed airily away they all watched her. She picked up her
friend, the Starling, who, not feeling concerned or needed, had paused
to look at daffodils. The children watched her until her victoria drove
away, the chiffon ruffles of her flowerlike parasol fluttering in the
air.
Mrs. Muir had sat down again and Donal and Robin leaned against her.
They saw she was not laughing any more but they did not know that her
eyes had something like grief in them.
“She’s her Mother!” Donal cried. “She’s lovely, too. But she’s—her
_Mother!_” and his voice and face were equally puzzled.
Robin’s little hand delicately touched Mrs. Muir.
“_Is_—she?” she faltered.
Helen Muir took her in her arms and held her quite close. She kissed
her.
“Yes, she is, my lamb,” she said. “She’s your mother.”
She was clear as to what she must do for Donal’s sake. It was the only
safe and sane course. But—at this age—the child _was_ a lamb and she
could not help holding her close for a moment. Her little body was
deliciously soft and warm and the big silk curls all in a heap were a
fragrance against her breast.