She would be unable to bear more children, but that did not trouble them. Little Jim and Norah grew and waxed strong and healthy. Norah promised to be the living image of her mother. She had her mother’s faults and failings that Anthony so loved: her mother’s wilfulness with just that look of regal displeasure when any one offended or opposed her. But also with suggestion of her mother’s graciousness and kindness.
Jim, likewise, took after the Coomber family. He had his uncle’s laughing eyes and all his obstinacy, so Eleanor declared. He was full of mischief, but had coaxing ways and was the idol of the servants’ hall.
John was more of the dreamer. Lady Coomber had taught him to read. She had grown strangely fond of the child. In summertime they would take their books into the garden. They had green hiding-places known only to themselves. And in winter they had their “cave” behind the great carved screen in the library.
As time went by, Eleanor inclined more towards the two younger children. They were full of life and frolic, and were always wanting to do things. But Anthony’s heart yearned more towards John, his first-born.
CHAPTER XV
A God needing man’s help, unable without it to accomplish His purpose. A God calling to man as Christ beckoned to His disciples to follow him, forsaking all, to suffer and to labour with Him. The thought had taken hold of him from the beginning: that summer’s night when he and Landripp had talked together, until the dawn had drawn a long thin line of light between the window curtains.
And then had come Eleanor’s sudden recovery, when he had almost given up hope, on the very day of the laying of the foundation-stone of the new model dwellings; and it had seemed to him that God had chosen this means of revealing Himself. The God he had been taught. The God of his fathers. Who answered prayers, accepted the burnt offering, rewarded the faithful and believing. What need to seek further? The world was right. Its wise men and its prophets had discovered the true God. A God who made covenants and bargains with man. Why not? Why should not God take advantage of Anthony’s love for Eleanor to make a fair businesslike contract with him? “Help me with these schemes of yours for the happiness of my people and I will give you back your wife.” But the reflection would come: Why should an omnipotent God trouble Himself to bargain with His creatures, take round-about ways for accomplishing what could be done at once by a movement of His will? A God who could have made all things perfect from the beginning, beyond the need of either growth or change. Who had chosen instead to write the history of the human race in blood and tears. Surely such a God would need man’s forgiveness, not his worship. The unknown God was yet to seek.
Landripp had been killed during the building of the model dwellings. It had been his own fault. For a stout, elderly gentleman to run up and down swaying ladders, to scramble round chimney stacks, and balance himself on bending planks a hundred feet above the ground was absurd. There were younger men who could have done all that, who warned Mr. Landripp of the risks that he was running. He had insisted on supervising everything himself. The work from its commencement had been to him a labour of love. He was fearful lest a brick should be ill-laid.