Part 12 (1/2)
”I must come, dear,” she answered.
”Nanny thinks she is lovely,” he announced. ”She says I am in love with her. Am I, mother?”
”You are too young to be in love,” she said. ”And even when you are older you must not fall in love with people you know nothing about.”
It was an unconscious bit of Scotch cautiousness which she at once realized was absurd and quite out of place. But--!
She realized it because he stood up and squared his shoulders in an odd young-mannish way. He had not flushed even faintly before and now a touch of colour crept under his fair skin.
”But I DO love her,” he said. ”I DO. I can't stop.” And though he was quite simple and obviously little boy-like, she actually felt frightened for a moment.
CHAPTER IX
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 G.o.ds--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 abas.e.m.e.nt 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 st.i.tches.