The Avesham family manner of attending Cathedral was characteristic.
Miss Fortescue was always the first to start, and she reached her seat
in the choir five minutes before service began. She took with her a
Bible, a prayer-book, and a large tune hymn-book, and frowned
abstractedly at them all. Jeannie started about seven minutes after her,
and was almost invariably just late, so that she had to sit in the nave
close to the choir. Arthur considered it sufficient to arrive during the
first lesson, and he sat at the far end of the nave, where he could hear
nothing but the singing. It followed, therefore, as a corollary that he
left before the sermon. Jack on this particular morning proposed to stay
at home and go to the afternoon service. Thus, when Arthur came through
the garden on his way to the first lesson, he found him in a large
chair underneath the mulberry-tree. He paused a moment.
“Would it seem more hospitable if I didn’t go to Cathedral?” he asked.
“Remember, I rank hospitality very high among the cardinal virtues.”
“Be honest,” said Jack.
“Then perhaps I had better go to Cathedral,” he said. “But you might
have made it easier for me to stop. Well, good-bye; I shall come out
before the sermon.”
“I shall devote the time to silent meditation,” said Jack. “Where shall
I find cigarettes? I’ve run out.”
“In the smoking-room. But it’s distinctly bad manners to talk about
cigarettes to a fellow on his way to church. Have a novel and an iced
drink, too, won’t you? Don’t mind me.”
Arthur made his reluctant way across the lawn and disappeared. If Jack
had been obliged to be perfectly honest too he would have had to confess
that he bore the prospect of a solitary hour with perfect equanimity. He
had several things to think about, and he could do it best alone. In the
first place, he had received that morning a note from his mother asking
him to tear up the letter she had written him, when he received it,
unread. Also she would like to see him again before he left Wroxton.
This note occupied Jack’s thoughts not a little. When Jeannie had broken
in upon his meditations on the bridge the evening before he was doing
his best not to draw conclusions, not to formulate in his own mind what
his relations with his mother were. He had not known how their talk had
moved her, and it was only natural that he should not. For Mrs.
Collingwood’s deepest emotions were founded on the cardinal virtues, and
the more she was moved the more passionately she felt and expressed
horror of what was wrong, and to Jack, with his antipodal nature, this
had appeared like hardness. He had wronged her, but his mistake was
excusable. For with him, the more his emotions were touched the more
human and indulgent he became--a dangerous development, no doubt, but,
luckily for the kindliness of the world, a common one, and certainly one
that is lovable if we are not too censoriously moral. That Frank should
so have failed to act up to the proper reasonable code made him feel
the more tenderly toward him, though he regretted it. It was otherwise
with his mother. A lapse of this kind blotted tenderness from her mind;
had it happened to one she loved, the more complete would have been her
horror. The attitude of neither mother nor son is ideal, but the
resultant leaves nothing wanting.
This request, then, to tear up the letter unread seemed to him of good
omen. His mother, he knew, had felt strongly about this picture of
Jeannie, and her letter would not have been pleasant reading. But he did
her the justice not even to question whether it had not been written
with the most utter obedience to her notion of duty. She was never
unkind from carelessness or anger; or, rather, if she was unkind from
anger, the anger was never of a brutish or selfish sort. Thus he hoped
that their interview would develop her idea that the letter should be
unread.
But this was not the sum of the task of meditation. More intricate even
and more absorbing was the remainder. He assured himself, and believed
his own assurance, that he was not falling in love; but when a man has
to tell himself that it is doubtful whether he is any longer a fit
person to decide. That radiant presence he had first met on the plank
bridge was no longer a subject for sketches. She had stepped down (or
up) from the platform of “subjects,” and had taken him by the hand. She
had become, in fact, that ever agitating thing, a woman. Jack had been
often agitated before, and took it as a doubtful boon. He had never
indulged in those maudlin sentiments which place our human emotions on a
pedestal, as it were, in an otherwise empty room. To be married ideally
did not, according to him, mean an ideal life, if all else was to be
sacrificed for that; and the man who gave up the whole world for a woman
he loved was as incomplete as a man who gave up the woman he loved for
the whole world. Still less was love a plaything to him. If it was not
all-absorbing, it was not therefore nothing more than a pleasant
amusement. More hopeless still was the common case of men who seem to
regard it as a mere amusement, and yet devote their whole life to it.
Never did extremes meet more deplorably.
The truth lay beyond and between all these things. Every man had his
work to do in the world; Jack at any rate made no question about that.
To certain men and women came a great gift, a gift no less than the
completion of their nature by fusion with another. It did not come to
all, and whether it came or not there remained the stubborn fact that
one had still one’s work to do. It was no use saying that love is the
greatest thing in the world, or that it is stronger than death. For so,
if we look at it aright, is the steam-engine. It must not be supposed
that these chill reflections were rehearsed in Jack’s mind as he sat
under the mulberry-tree that morning. They are given here merely to show
the outcome of his previous thoughts on the subject, that the reader may
be enabled to realize the starting-point from which his meditations
began racing, the ground-colour of the piece on which perhaps the gold
thread would be traced, the nature of the soil from which the mysterious
seed would draw its nourishment. In intellectual and artistic matters he
was vivid, quick, fastidious, but sympathetic and, above all, almost
incapable of accepting a thing as proved unless he had practical
experience of it. And just as he would have denied with his utmost
cheerfulness the claim of Raphael to be a great painter, unless he so
considered him after looking at his pictures, so he would take no ideal
of love as his own because it had been the ideal of great and good men.
He got up from his chair and looked out over the shining garden. The
quiet peacefulness of a Sunday morning was in the air; hardly a breath
of wind swayed the tall single dahlias, and the heavy heads of the
sunflowers drooped. The great, quiet trees of the close, old but unaged,
seemed a guarantee for the safety of the world, and the gray Cathedral
numbered centuries to their decades. Yet, in spite of the suggestion of
secure tranquility which the whole view offered, Jack felt excited and
almost frightened.
“Who knows, who knows?” he said, half aloud. He paused a moment, and
then walked forward, half laughing at himself.
“Falling in love is a common enough experience,” he thought, “and it is
not to be treated as a tragedy. But I cannot think of it as a comedy.”
Miss Fortescue, it appeared at lunch, had thought deeply on questions of
ritual, or if she had not previously thought deeply, it apparently did
not stand in the way of her speaking strongly. A reredos, it seemed, was
a synonym for idolatry, and the absence of an extra candle on the altar
was the only plank, so to speak, which saved the English Church from
being immerged in the bottomless sea of Romanism. She proposed, as an
experiment, to make an offer to the chapter that she would present to
the Cathedral a small chapel in honour of St. Joseph, to be erected at
her expense, if they would build a corresponding one to the Virgin, and
felt no doubt that the thanks and acquiescence of the Cathedral body
would be accorded to her and her proposal. The ingenuity with which she
twisted the arguments of the other side to tell in her favour was truly
remarkable, and when, at the end of a hot half-hour, she raised her eyes
to the ceiling, she was not the only person present who was grateful for
a respite. She had already reduced Jack to such confusion of mind that
he had founded some theory on the seven veils of the Jewish sanctuary,
and though he had not the slightest idea what he was talking about, Miss
Fortescue had, and convinced him out of his own mouth of being a friend
to the detestable enormities of the Pope of Rome.
“You say you are going to see your mother at tea-time,” she said. “Very
well, tell her what I have said.”
Jack was discreet, but not provident.
“I am sure she will agree with you,” he admitted, eagerly.
“In that case,” said Miss Fortescue, “it is her duty to use her
influence with your father to get these things remedied.”
Jeannie laughed.
“Give it up, Mr. Collingwood,” she advised. “It’s no use. We always give
it up when Aunt Em feels strongly at church on Sundays. You will, too,
when you know her better.”
There were several people at tea when Jack came into his mother’s
drawing-room, and when he entered he saw that they had been talking on
some point which concerned him, for there was a lull in the
conversation, and yet every one looked interested and rather eager,
which showed that the conversation had been suddenly broken off. Mrs.
Vernon, the gushing wife of another canon, more distinguished for a
vague æsthetic loquacity than for tact, appealed to him at once.
“We were talking about your picture of Miss Avesham,” she said. “I
maintain--and do agree with me, Mr. Collingwood--that it is not the
function of art to be photographic. You have seized, it is true, a
moment (oh, such a dear, delicious moment!), but you have given us, have
you not, what I called the story of the moment?”
Jack looked a little puzzled.
“I don’t quite understand,” he said.
“Oh, Mr. Collingwood, you are laughing at me!” she cried. (This was very
unjust, and not appreciative of Jack’s gravity, which was creditable to
him.) “You are laughing at me. You want me to involve myself. I mean
that you could never have given us such a wonderful moment if you had
not known the ancestry, if I may say so, of it. You must have studied
Miss Avesham’s face till it was your own. To know and to show us exactly
how she looked when that dear little puppy was shaking (In Danger,
too--what a delightful title!)--you must have made a thousand sketches
of her. For surely it is impossible to paint a portrait--a real
portrait, I mean--without knowing the face _and_ the character!”
Jack stirred his tea.
“Your theories are admirable, Mrs. Vernon,” he said, “and I agree with
them entirely. But I must confess that my portrait in this instance was
a rank contradiction of them. Until the moment that I saw Miss Avesham
standing as I represented her I never saw her before. And I finished the
sketch before I ever saw her again. I can only say that I am luckier
than I deserve in having done something which you are kind enough to
consider as being like her.”
Something of the interest died out of Mrs. Vernon’s face, and it
occurred to Jack for the moment that she had a theory at stake more
interesting to her than her theory about the true method of painting
portraits. He flushed a little, and was annoyed at himself for doing
so.
“I am afraid it may seem to you that I did a very rude thing,” he said;
“but the facts are these: I was walking down by the river, about three
weeks ago, and suddenly saw what I tried to paint. I had no idea that it
was Miss Avesham, for, as I have told you, I had never seen her before.
And without sufficiently considering, I confess, whether the girl,
whoever she was, would see the picture, and whether if she did she would
object to it, I painted it. I saw Miss Avesham again yesterday for the
second time. I am staying with her brother and her for the Sunday.”
“I am sure she would be charmed and flattered at your picture,” said
Mrs. Vernon.
“I don’t know about her being charmed and flattered,” said Jack. “But
certainly she was very kind about it, considering what a liberty I had
taken.”
“Rather what a compliment you had paid her,” exclaimed Mrs. Vernon,
effusively. “What a sweet girl she is! So simple and kindly. You are
staying there, are you not?”
“Yes, for the Sunday,” said Jack, with all his teeth on edge. “I knew
Arthur well at Oxford.”
“And did Miss Avesham talk to you about the portrait?” continued Mrs.
Vernon. “I am told she is so artistic.”
“Oh, yes, she spoke about it,” said Jack. “Indeed, it was a curious
coincidence, for just as I arrived she was out in the garden, and again
the puppy was shaking himself, having fallen into the fountain.”
Mrs. Vernon gave a titter of laughter, like a chromatic scale.
“There seems to be a fate in such things,” she exclaimed. “How exciting,
and how romantic! Thank you, _one_ more cup of this delicious tea.”
Before long the others left, and shortly after Canon Collingwood retired
to the garden. Jack and his mother spoke of indifferent things till the
tea-table was cleared; and after the servant had gone:
“I wanted to talk to you, Jack, before you went. You received my
letter?”
“Yes, this morning. I tore it up, as you asked me to, without reading
it.”
Mrs. Collingwood was silent a moment.
“Thank you,” she said at length, simply. “My reason was this--I wrote
hastily. I could not but think that Miss Avesham would consider your
painting of that portrait as a great liberty. It appears she did not,
and that you are excellent friends. So I was wrong about her attitude.”
Mrs. Collingwood took a chair closer to Jack.
“Jack, you were right in what you said yesterday,” she went on. “You and
I are made very differently. We must accept it. I have been too much
given to judging you, to disapproving, and disapproval does no good. But
you must not judge me either. You have your own life to live. You can
not grasp my point of view, and if I am tempted to disapprove of you, I
will be careful in the future not to do that, but to simply say that I
do not understand.”
Jack looked up; his mother’s voice was trembling.
“Ah, my dear,” she went on, “in the Father’s house are many mansions,
and it is likely there are many mansions of His on earth. And if the
windows of some look out on to beautiful things and others on to
austere surroundings, suffering perhaps, and sin, those in the different
chambers must not judge each other. That is what I wanted to say to you.
But I have to go on in my own way. We can only do what we think right.
There, that is all. But tell me, what do you intend to do about this
baby?”
“I shall have it to live with me, I think,” said Jack; “that is, unless
something else turns up. Mother, you don’t know how you have touched me,
and how glad you have made me that you have spoken, and how ashamed.”
“No, Jack, not ashamed,” she said. “But I had to talk to you about it. I
have thought of nothing else since I saw you yesterday. You go back
to-morrow, do you not?”
“Yes.”
“Then say good-bye to your father before you go. I must leave you; I
have an evening class. Good-bye, my dear.”
She kissed him with a tenderness that was new to her, and left him.
But it is not in the nature of those who have lived in a groove lightly
to get out of it. Habit becomes nature, and to look permanently at one
view would, no doubt, if continued for forty years, tend to make the
observer believe that the world contained no other.
This was the case with Mrs. Collingwood. Her humanized interview with
Jack had jolted her as a stone on the line may jolt a train for a moment
without causing it to leave the metals. The direction in which it had
been running, its speed, and its weight have all to be overcome, and
with her long-continued convictions had given her great momentum, and an
address she delivered three days afterward at a Mothers’ Union showed no
speck of apostasy.