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.