Part 13 (1/2)

”It was not funny at all. It was astonis.h.i.+ngly 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 G.o.d.”

”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 relations.h.i.+p.”

”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 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 impa.s.sioned Greek scholar and a lover of beauty. After he had from her terrors of d.a.m.nation, 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 G.o.d 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.