“Good gracious, how many more?”
“No one else,” said Miss Clifford.
Jeannie rose.
“Well, I must go,” she said. “And if you won’t promise me never to blame yourself, I sha’n’t forgive you. So promise.”
“I will try,” said Miss Clifford.
Jeannie nodded and smiled at her, and went quickly down the stairs after Miss Fortescue.
TheAveshams always had coffee, when it was fine, under the mulberry-tree, the fruits of which were destined to make the g—n, as Mrs. Collingwood would have preferred to express it. During lunch on this particular day Miss Fortescue had, in deference to Jeannie’s wish, kept silence about the picture, though when the exhibition was mentioned she had cast her eyes up to the ceiling with a gesture of passionate despair. Arthur had mentioned casually that Jack Collingwood had telegraphed to him to say that he would come to them next day for the Sunday, at which news Jeannie had laughed in a loud and meaningless manner, and Miss Fortescue’s eyes had been so glued to the ceiling that it seemed doubtful if she would ever detach them.
“It is such good manners to telegraph,” said Arthur, “much more business-like. Don’t you think so, Aunt Em?”
“Extraordinary lapses—” began Miss Fortescue.
“Aunt Em,” said Jeannie, “you said you wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t what?” asked Arthur.
“Nothing. I’m glad he is coming, Arthur; I’ve got several things to say after lunch. Wroxton is waking up.”
“Is it?” asked he, dubiously.
“Yes. Aunt Em, do have some pâté.”
“Innocent birds,” said Miss Fortescue.
“Quite innocent. I’ll give you some.”
Miss Fortescue watched Jeannie helping her with an absent eye, which suddenly became attentive.
“No truffles, Jeannie,” she said; “I can’t bear truffles. Why they put them in pâté I can’t think. It entirely spoils it.”
Jeannie laughed.
“The plot thickens,” she said. “As soon as you’ve finished eating the liver of diseased game, Aunt Em, we’ll go out.”
“Not diseased, dear,” said Miss Fortescue, earnestly, with her mouth full, “onlyunwisely fed. They feed them on figs. How delicious! And how unwise!”
“How clever and how immoral!” said Jeannie, who had gone as a guest to the Ladies’ Literary Union.
“That woman,” said Miss Fortescue, incisively, “thinks everything that doesn’t live in a close is immoral.”
“I’ve got a letter from ‘that woman,’ which I shall read you after lunch,” said Jeannie. “Poor Mrs. Collingwood is in a terrible state of mind.”
“She always is,” said Miss Fortescue. “She is always either deploring something or condemning something. Which does she do in your letter, Jeannie? A shade more pâté, please.”
“She does both,” said Jeannie.
“I would give a hundred pounds,” said Arthur, “if I had it, to see Mrs. Collingwood tipsy.”
“It would do her a world of good,” said Miss Fortescue. “Her only chance of learning to forgive any one for drinking lies in drinking too much herself. I can not stand people who think that the miracle at Canaconsisted in water being turned into fruit syrup.”
“Don’t be profane, Aunt Em,” said Jeannie.
Aunt Em cast her eyes to the ceiling. She had finished her pâté.
“I don’t know whom we are waiting for,” she observed.
“No one, dear, if you have finished,” said Jeannie. “Come out, Arthur. The revelations shall begin.”
Aunt Em had a horror of damp grass, even when only the soles of her strong boots rested on it, and she always had a rug spread by her chair, on which she could put her feet. Ripe mulberries from the tree not infrequently fell on it, and when Aunt Em got up she usually trod on them with her strong boots, and made an indelible stain. But her silence had been so thundery when Jeannie suggested that a piece of matting would do as well that no one had ventured again to propose any substitute for her valuable Persian rug.
“Now, Arthur,” said Jeannie, as soon as coffee had come, “I’m going to tell you andAunt Em all that has happened. Aunt Em, dear, don’t toss your head; you only know the less important piece of it.”
“Go on,” said Arthur.
“Well, it all began this morning. Aunt Em and I went to the Art Exhibition, and saw there a picture of me and Toby by Mr. Collingwood.”
Arthur stared.
“I thought you had never seen him,” he said.
“I didn’t think I had. But, apparently, he had seen me. Oh, there was no mistaking it. It was a picture of Toby shaking himself, and me keeping him off with a parasol. I remember it happening perfectly. I had on a new dress, as Aunt Em and I had been calling, and afterward we had tea down by the mill.”
“That’s not so terrible,” said Arthur.
“I know it isn’t; but that is not all. On the way out of the exhibition I met Miss Clifford carrying catalogues. When I told her I was surprised at seeing the picture, she was filled with such dismay that she dropped them all, and we picked them up together.But before she dropped them she said, ‘But Colonel Raymond told me——’”
Jeannie suddenly burst into a peal of laughter.
“I know that man,” remarked Arthur. “He is like a person out of a book about the army by a lady. What did Colonel Raymond say?”
“You see, as I was picking up the catalogues,” continued Jeannie, “I could not help concluding that Miss Clifford was surprised that I was surprised because of something Colonel Raymond had said. So when we had finished I asked her what it was. And she told me.”
“Well?” said Arthur.
“Oh, Arthur, how dull you are!” said Jeannie. “He had said or hinted that I knew all about it—in fact, that I was engaged to Mr. Collingwood. He was kind enough to add that it was to be kept private for the present.”
There was silence for a moment. At last Miss Fortescue spoke.
“It was an ill day for the Aveshams,” she said, “when Colonel Raymond’s wife’s sister’s husband’s sister married your mother’s brother’s cousin.”
“So that is what that infernal man meant,” said Arthur. “Yesterday evening, in the smoking-room of the club, I heard him say we were all very much excited about it. Then he stopped, and said he had nearly let it out.”
“Well, then, there is some hope yet,” said Jeannie. “Arthur, I want you to go there this afternoon, and tell him he is under a delusion. Mrs. Raymond was with him, so Miss Clifford said, when he announced it.”
“And may I tell him exactly what I think about him?” asked Arthur.
“Tell him what I think,” said Miss Fortescue; “I feel more strongly than you.”
“Oh, no,” said Jeannie. “What is the use of quarrelling with people? Just say he is mistaken. Oh, you might ask who told him. Of course he made it up.”
“Yes, that would be awkward,” said Arthur, appreciatively. “But read me Mrs. Collingwood’s letter.”
Jeannie took it from her pocket, and read:
“The Close, Wroxton.“Dear Miss Avesham: I can not express to you how shocked and horrified I am at what my son has done. I hurried home directly after I saw that terrible picture in order to write to you and assure you how entirely ignorant I was of the subject of the work which I knew Jack was going to send to the exhibition, and how entirely ignorant, I may add, I have been of him. I passed you and Miss Fortescue, I know, in the gallery, but I could not speak—I was too indignant. I am quite upset, and can neither think nor work.“With much sympathy,“Believe me,“Yours truly,“Margaret Collingwood.“P.S.—I have written to my son expressing my views.”
“The Close, Wroxton.
“Dear Miss Avesham: I can not express to you how shocked and horrified I am at what my son has done. I hurried home directly after I saw that terrible picture in order to write to you and assure you how entirely ignorant I was of the subject of the work which I knew Jack was going to send to the exhibition, and how entirely ignorant, I may add, I have been of him. I passed you and Miss Fortescue, I know, in the gallery, but I could not speak—I was too indignant. I am quite upset, and can neither think nor work.
“With much sympathy,“Believe me,“Yours truly,“Margaret Collingwood.
“P.S.—I have written to my son expressing my views.”
“I should like to see her letter to her son,” said Miss Fortescue, grimly. “An awful woman. Why, you would think that he had committed an assault with violence on Jeannie, or had been garroting her.”
Arthur took a telegram out of his pocket.
“He says he will be here before lunch,” he said, “as I want to play golf with him in the afternoon. I hope he won’t get the letter before he starts. Also I should like to see him open it.”
“I don’t suppose he would come if he got it first,” said Miss Fortescue. “It would make matters rather simpler if he didn’t.”
“Why?” asked Jeannie.
“Won’t it be rather awkward when he meets you?” asked Aunt Em.
“Not in the least, unless he makes it so for himself. But men are so stupid. Of course, if he stares like an owl, and then turns red in the face, it will be. But if he has a grain of tact he will do neither. Now, if he was a woman, he wouldn’t mind in the least.”
“Oh, he’s not a woman,” said Arthur, with conviction.
“Then he probably has no tact. In any case, it is his own doing if it is awkward for him. He has done nothing wrong. He saw a strange girl and a strange dog, and painted them. He painted them well, too; if he hadpainted them badly it would have been different.”
Arthur got up.
“Well, I must get back to the brewery,” he said. “Afterward I shall go to the club, and get there in time to catch the Colonel before his whist. Oh, he told me he was a relation. Is that so?”
“He explained it to me at some length,” said Miss Fortescue. “I think his wife is your mother’s sister’s husband’s wife’s brother’s sister’s sister-in-law. I followed him so far, I know.”
“What a man!” said Arthur. “I must be off. Are you going to answer Mrs. Collingwood’s note, Jeannie?”
“Yes; she will think I have no delicacy of feeling, but I shall answer it. Also it would be better to let her know that Mr. Collingwood is coming here to-morrow.”
“You’d better send her a quart of mulberry gin at once,” remarked Miss Fortescue.
“Yes, my character is gone,” said Jeannie. “Good-bye, Arthur. Be gentle with our cousin, but be firm.”
“Be what you like, as long as you’refirm,” said Aunt Em. “It will end in a duel in the asparagus-bed, I expect.”
“He and I, Jeannie and Mr. Collingwood,” said Arthur.
Miss Fortescue followed him indoors, leaving Jeannie alone under the trees. She was much annoyed at all that had happened, but she was a little amused, and had a sense of being somewhat ill-used. Though she had defended him, she thought Mr. Collingwood had behaved rather badly, the Colonel had behaved very badly indeed, and Mrs. Collingwood was absurd. However, she was going to deal with that lady, and Arthur was going to deal with the Colonel, and there only remained Mr. Collingwood himself. Jeannie devoutly hoped he would have some glimmerings of tact about him. If he looked awkward and uncomfortable, she would feel so, too, and really there was nothing to be awkward about. If she had done such a picture she would have snapped her fingers at any possible consequences, for she had the greatest respect for achievement of any kind. Certainly the picture was an achievement, and in her secret heart she had a pang of exultation at the thought that she was like that. Jeannie was singularly free from self-consciousness, and in her nature there was hardly a touch of egotism. But she wondered whether her sight of the picture had not given her some. In a way it had been a piece of self-revelation to her. She had no idea that people saw her like that. Very possibly they did not, but here was a man who did. How could she see him, she wondered?
She had only given him one glance at their one meeting, and she remembered nothing more than a straight, rather tall figure, and a kindled eye. Very likely she would not have known him again if they had met casually. He looked clean and alert, that is all she would have sworn to. But she looked forward with a good deal of interest to his coming next day.
Thus far had run her meditations when they were interrupted by the butler. Miss Clifford was waiting outside to know if she could see Jeannie for a moment, and only if she was disengaged. Jeannie sat up.
“Yes, ask her to come out here,” she said.
It would be hardly possible to conceive amore agonized and embarrassed face than that which Miss Clifford turned to Jeannie, and the latter could not conceive what was the matter.
“I am quite free,” she said, “and delighted to see you. Did you come down on your bicycle?”
“No,” said Miss Clara, “I did not feel up to my bicycle,” and Jeannie noticed that her hands were trembling.
“Do sit down,” she said, gently. “And there is no hurry. Have some coffee? No? Tell me what it is then, just when you feel inclined.”
There was a bitter tension about the corners of poor Miss Clara’s mouth, and twice she tried to speak, but was unable.
“Phœbe,” she began at length, “Phœbe has been very unkind to me, Miss Avesham. And I felt—I felt I could not rest without telling you about it. It was my fault, she said, that—Oh, dear me, dear me!”
And Miss Clifford gasped once or twice, like a person coming up after a long dive, and burst into tears.
In a moment Jeannie was by her.
“Oh, my poor, dear thing!” she said; “please don’t cry. You are upset about something, and speaking makes it worse. Let’s get up and walk quietly to and fro a little, and then if you feel better and still want to tell me, you shall, and if not—why, just don’t tell me. I am sure it is nothing bad, and, whatever it is, remember I forgive you, if it in any way concerns me.”
Miss Clifford tied her face into a series of hard knots, and put on a series of expressions so widely different from each other that she could have made her fortune as an impersonator at a music-hall if any of them had resembled any one else, but they were all of them unique.
In a few minutes, however, she recovered.
“No, I want to tell you, dear Miss Avesham,” she said, “if you will excuse the liberty of my calling you that, and Phœbe was so unkind that I felt I should never be happy again, if she was right, and I never told you. She said I drew Colonel Raymond on to say what he did.”
Jeannie’s companion struggled a moment with a wild spasm of internal laughter atthe thought of Miss Clara drawing Colonel Raymond on, and conquered it.
“I don’t quite understand,” she said, “Tell me all about it from the beginning.”
“Well, it was this way,” said Miss Clara, “that picture came to our house, and of course Phœbe and I both recognised it, and Phœbe said it would be very awkward if we exhibited it if it so happened that it had been done without your knowledge. And she suggested—it was she who suggested it—that there might be some understanding between you and Mr. Collingwood.”
“I see,” said Jeannie. “Well?”
“At that moment there came a ring at the door, and it was Colonel and Mrs. Raymond. And Phœbe said how lucky, because Colonel Raymond, being your cousin, would be sure to know if there was anything. So in they came, and I showed the picture to the Colonel. Then there came in what Phœbe blames me for, and she was so unkind I hardly ate a bit of lunch. I can hardly tell you about it.”
“There is no hurry,” said Jeannie again,seeing that Miss Clifford’s face was growing contorted. But after a moment she went on.
“Colonel Raymond recognised it at once,” she said, “and looked up at me. And Phœbe says I looked slyly at him, and prompted him to say what he did. You know, Miss Avesham, Colonel Raymond is rather an odd man in some ways. He can’t bear that any one should hear anything before he knows it himself, and naturally he would feel it more if I knew something about you particularly before he did. He did catch my eye, it is true, and— Oh, yes, I must tell you all; Phœbe was right—I meant that he should. And then he broke out with, ‘How news travels, but of course you must say nothing about it!’ And, oh, dear me, Miss Avesham, if it has all been my fault I shall never, never forgive myself.”
Jeannie got up from her chair, took both Miss Clara’s hands in hers, and kissed her.
“You are a dear, good woman,” she said, “and I love you for telling me. Now we won’t say a single word more about it, unless your sister is unkind again, in which case I shall come flying to the rescue. There is noharm done at all, and as Mr. Collingwood is coming to stay here to-morrow every one will think it perfectly natural that he should have done a picture of me. Give me a kiss.”
Miss Clara’s face had been a perfect study during this last speech of Jeannie’s, and at the close she heaved herself out of her chair, and raised her face to hers like a child, and the joy and honour of kissing and being kissed by an Honourable was entirely submerged in her natural and human affection for the beautiful girl.
Jack Collingwoodstarted from London next morning, before the arrival of his mother’s letter, and travelled with only a Saturday-till-Monday bag as representing the necessaries of life, but with a bicycle and a great number of golf clubs for its luxuries. Arthur had been away when he was at Wroxton only a fortnight before, and he had been delighted to accept the invitation, for he not only very much wished to see Arthur, but he had an affair of some importance to talk over with his mother. His last visit home had been, with the exception of that sultry conversation about Lady Hamilton and the sunset, unusually harmonious, and he was, for his own peace of mind, at present unconscious of the squall which had struck the close on the occasion of the opening of the picture exhibition. He was a person of simple, boyish pleasures, and he found entertainment enough in the express to make him abstainfrom any search for excitement in the daily papers. He timed the speed of the train with the quarter-of-a-mile posts by the side of the line; he leaned out of the window as they swept through flying stations, and he had the prodigious luck of being stopped by signal just opposite the golf-links, when he saw an angry man in a red coat play an absurdly bad shot into a bunker, and his low, furious exclamation flecked the beauty of the morning. Still unconscious of all that lay before him, he arrived at Bolton Street, and was told that Arthur was not in yet, but that Miss Avesham was out in the garden. He followed the butler through the hall and the little conservatory that lay beyond, and as the door was opened he stopped a moment, with a dizzy, bewildered feeling that all this had happened before.
For there in the middle of the lawn was standing a girl opposite him, with a face full of laughter and anxiety, and with her parasol she kept at bay a small retriever puppy which had just left the water, and, still dripping, was evidently coming to his mistress to shake himself and receive her congratulations.
The whole scene was in brilliant sunlight, and Arthur found himself saying:
“The dog is just going to shake!”
The words were not out of his mouth when the puppy’s head was shaken, and down to his shoulders he was black and curly, set in a shower of spray, but the shake had not yet reached his back and tail, the hair of which was still strong and close.
Next moment he stepped out on to the lawn, and Jeannie, seeing him, came a step forward to meet him.
“How do you do, Mr. Collingwood?” she said. “Arthur will be in in a moment. Toby had just fallen into the fountain in trying to catch a bird. Oh, dear, how extraordinary!”
And as the coincidence struck her she laughed.
Now laughter is certainly the best beginning of a friendship, and Jack hailed the omen.
“It seems fated that I should see you keeping off a wet dog,” he said. “Is not the subject forced on me?”
“Indeed it is,” said Jeannie, who had notmeant to allude to it at all, and hoped that he would not. But her first exclamation had been quite voluntary, not in her power to check.
“If I had known it was you,” he went on, not even explaining that he alluded to the picture, “of course I should never have done it. And if any one had told me before I came here to-day that it was you, I doubt if I should have come. Anyhow, I should be apologizing now. But twice! It is beyond my control. I think I won’t even apologize.”
“It would be an impertinence to apologize for so clear a dealing of Providence,” said Jeannie. “I, too, was rather uneasy about this moment; I was afraid you might be awkward, and make me so. But certainly you are not. Am I?”
Jack laughed.
“I had not noticed it,” he said. “And here’s the author of it all come to dry himself against me.”
“Toby, come here at once,” said Jeannie.
“You said that before, too,” remarked Jack.
Jeannie’s eyes grew round.
“I believe I did,” she said. “Then we had tea. What a pity! The chain of coincidence is broken. We are only going to have lunch. Of course you know this place well.”
“I have never been in this house before,” said Jack. “It used to belong to a queer old lady who kept forty cats, when I lived here as a boy. My only connection was that I used to catapult the cats when they came over into our garden.”
“Yes, forty is a considerable number,” said Jeannie. “Oh, here are Arthur and my aunt, Miss Fortescue. Anyhow, you haven’t met her before.”
“Excuse me, she was sitting by your hat,” said Jack.
“On it,” said Jeannie; “it was crushed flat.”
Arthur came back alone toward tea-time; Jack, he said, had gone to see his mother.
“It was kinder,” he remarked, “to let him know that a letter had been written, as he had not received it yet, and I did so. He is remarkably brave. He is as bold as a dragoon. He will talk it out, he says.”
“Mrs. Collingwood will rub it in,” saidMiss Fortescue. “I am sorry for that young man. Oh, did he behave decently when he met you, Jeannie?”
Jeannie looked up, absently.
“Oh, quite decently,” she said. “It was not at all awkward. He has tact, I think; or, if he hasn’t, I have. Anyhow there was enough tact about for two.”
“No one person has tact for two,” said Miss Fortescue, decidedly. “He must have had some.”
Whatever he looked, Jack Collingwood did not feel nearly as brave as a dragoon, unless dragoons are timid things, when he entered the house in the close. But it was not in anticipation of a cool reception due to the picture which made him distrustful of what the next hour would bring. He hardly gave that a thought, for he had seen Jeannie, and it mattered but little what the rest of the world thought, as long as she had an uninjured mind on the subject. Her frank welcome of him, her utterinsoucianceon the subject—above all, though he scarcely knew it yet himself, the fact that he had met again that vision by the river, combined to makehim almost exultantly happy on that score. His errand to his mother, however, was far different, and full of difficulty.
She met him with a kind, Christian expression. He had received, so she supposed, her note, and the desire to see her after that was filial and laudable, for the note had been strongly expressed. Not that Mrs. Collingwood regretted that: the occasion demanded strong speaking, and her duty dictated to her.
“I am staying with the Aveshams,” he said, “and I remain over the Sunday. Mother, Arthur tells me you have written to me about that picture. I have not received the letter yet, as I started early this morning, but no doubt it will be forwarded to me. Shall we, then, dismiss that for the present, until I have read your note?”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” said Mrs. Collingwood, freezing a little. “But if you came here to talk about that, it is better you should know at once what I think.”
“I didn’t come to talk about that,” said Jack. “I came to ask your advice and your help about a very different matter.”
“I shall be delighted to give it you,” said Mrs. Collingwood, sitting very upright
“It is a very sad story I have to tell you,” he said, “and I want experienced advice about it. You can give it me.”
Mrs. Collingwood relaxed a little. One of the chief businesses of her life was directing and advising, and she enjoyed it.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Do you remember a fellow who stayed here once with me from Oxford,” he asked, “called Frank Bennett?”
Mrs. Collingwood unbent a little more. She had approved of the young man in question.
“Yes, I remember him perfectly,” she said. “He had a beautiful voice, and sang Nazareth after dinner. He sang with great feeling, I remember, and we talked about the aims and career of an oratorio singer.”
Jack could not help smiling. Frank had a unique talent, he had always considered, of adaptability. It was exactly like him to sing Nazareth. He sang other things as well, if not better.
“Yes,” he said, “I see you remember him.He was one of my closest friends. He is dead.”
“Oh, Jack,” she said, “I am so sorry! I liked him so much for himself. Does the advice you want concern him in any way?”
“Yes, very closely.”
Jack paused. His mother had been sympathetic, the thing had touched her, and it was with less apprehension that he went on.
“It concerns him very closely,” he said. “He had a child. No, he was not married——”
He looked steadily at his mother as he said this, and saw the sympathy and warmth die out of her face.
“The girl is also dead,” he continued. “The baby is about ten days old.”
“I should recommend an orphanage,” said Mrs. Collingwood. “I can give you a letter to one.”
“He was an awfully good fellow,” said Jack.
Mrs. Collingwood drew her mouth very tight. There was no reply necessary. Jack rose.
“The girl died suddenly a few days ago,” he said, “only a week after the birth of the baby. Frank died in May last. He appointed me executor of his will, and I see by it that he leaves all he has to his—to this girl in trust for the child. He meant to marry her, he had told me that; of course he ought to have.”
“Of course he ought to have!” said Mrs. Collingwood.
If you can imagine such a thing as a malignant echo, you will know how she spoke.
“You suggest nothing else?” asked Jack, still lingering. “I have already a promise of a place in an orphanage. Of course the child does not want that. There is plenty of money.”
“There is nothing else to suggest,” said Mrs. Collingwood, in a perfectly business-like manner. “I cannot see why you wanted my advice if you already have a place for the child.”
“No; I was wrong,” said Jack.
There was a moment’s silence. All that was righteous and hard in Mrs. Collingwood surged to the surface; all that was human inJack struggled for utterance. She was the first to speak.
“Jack, how can you come to me with such a story?” she said. “You knew already all that I could possibly say, and that without examining into the merits of the case I could not even recommend it. Do you realize what the case is? There are hundreds such, less fortunate, because for them there is no money. It is a bad case, this. The father was rich. If, then, for these hundreds there is no excuse, what excuse is there here? I do not say that the sin is less, if there has been no marriage, because there was no means of supporting possible children, but, if we can weigh anything against that, that is the more excusable. You spoke of him as a ‘very good fellow.’ Have you thought?”
Jack stood quite still during his mother’s speech. A little heightened colour appeared on his face, and his big brown eyes opened a little.
“I have thought,” he said. “Frank was honest, kindly, generous, and he had hot blood. He would always help a friend in trouble: once he helped me. I should alwayshave gone to him if I was in a difficulty. Thus I owe him a debt. Please God, I will repay it. He committed a fault, or sin, what you will. I have made it my business, as far as I humanly can, to repair that. I do not wish that the sins of the father should be visited on the child. I beg your pardon, mother, I have put that in a way that will offend you. Let me put it like this: I want the child to have as good a chance as possible. I thought perhaps you might help me.”
“How could I help you?” said Mrs. Collingwood.
Jack paused. Then:
“I meant to bring up the child myself,” he said. “I should have told you that earlier if you had encouraged me at all. I thought even that you might suggest—no, I scarcely thought it—that the child should live here. I was wrong. I ought never to have come.”
Again there was a silence. Again all that was best and most human in the man burst out:
“Mother,” he said, “do not blame me. There was a bad business—I knew it. I only thought to repair it as far as I could. Youdo not agree with me. Very well, let us forget it. Why should this, too, come between us?”
His eyes had the glimmer of tears in them, and he took an unresisting hand.
“I said ‘this too,’”he went on. “I know that there is much in me that you do not approve. You would have had me choose a different way of life. That, I am afraid, cannot be remedied. Shall we not accept it? And, such as I am, I have tried to be a good son to you and father.”
The hand that lay unresistingly in his tightened its grasp. He looked up, but his mother only shook her head.
“Go, Jack,” she said; “kiss me, then go.”
He kissed her, and left the room without another word. Mrs. Collingwood sat quite still for a moment. Then her wide mouth widened, and she burst into tears.
Jack had been more moved by his interview with his mother than was convenient for social purposes, and he did not go straight back to the Aveshams, but took a stroll through the town first. He had not expected that his mother would suggest any arrangement other than an orphanage for the child, but he had thought it possible. What had moved him was the sudden deepening of their talk; in a moment they had gone from the instance to the great eternal principles of things, to sin and love and death. From that the talk had veered as suddenly to personal relations, the relations between his mother and himself. Deep down in him he knew what an empty place there was in his heart, a place empty and garnished, but ready and with the door open for the entering in of that exquisite presence, not less sacred and entrancing than any, the sympathetic, comprehending love between mother and son. All his life long he had missed that. His mother would never have committed a reckless, unconsidered act for his sake; the mere fact of motherhood, as in so many women, was not to her enough for that. For the glory of motherhood lies in this: that the child will instinctively take from her without question, and without question she gives. The joy of self-surrender must be made without question. And he, on his side, had missed the son’s part. His joys and troubles were notself-despatched presents to her; she would not have known what to do with them, they would have been to her like strange, savage implements of which she did not know the use. She might indeed have tried to find a use for them, and thus missed their significance. To use them at all was their abuse. They were her son’s; that to the mother is enough.
Jack wandered down the High Street and hung on the parapet of the stone bridge that crosses the river. This strange unrest was new to him. He had never been of the nature that toils in the soil of other human souls, or even of his own, and delves thereout so much that is worthless, and sometimes an unconjectured jewel. He had not ever been in the habit of considering life as a serious business. He got through his day’s work with cheerfulness and honesty, and the day’s work brought its own raptures. He was not carnal, but emphatically he was not spiritual. To him the tastes and the rewards of life lay in artistic and intellectual achievement; about them he had a store-house of kaleidoscopic theories and much sober practice; but as forproblems of life and being, all such were an algebra to him. Being of a clean mind, and holding—a low gospel it may be, but an excellent working hypothesis—that sensuality means the death of the intellect, he had never troubled his head to make out moral codes. The tragedy of Frank Bennett’s life and death did not make him shudder and wince. He called him a fool, but with tenderness, and whether he was a knave or not did not concern him.
He was roused from his meditations by a short, staccato bark at his heels, and found the round retriever pup staggering up to him. Toby had an inability to walk straight; he rolled along like a drunken man with a jovial boisterousness. He had a large wire muzzle on, and the tip of his pink tongue hung through it.
“Oh, are you looking at the water?” said Jeannie, sympathetically. “That’s so nice of you. I have to look at running water every day. It clears one’s brain out, I think. Toby is shortly to have his bath.”
“It is a shame making him wear a muzzle while he has still his milk-teeth,” said Jack.
“It isn’t a muzzle,” said Jeannie, “it is his hat. Toby is rather proud of it. But don’t you agree with me about water?”
“Yes; I was having a wash myself. I have had rather an agitating talk.”
Jeannie knew that he had been to see his mother, and did not see her way to any reply. She supposed that the picture was at the bottom of it.
“It was about a friend of mine,” continued Jack, “who got into great trouble. We disagreed hopelessly, my mother and I. It is a bore. Oh, I want washing!” he cried, and turned to look at the water again.
Jeannie had a sort of fleeting idea that she had only seen this young man for the first time that morning, and that convention would call confidences premature. But convention meant little to her; she did not wilfully neglect it, but she simply forgot its existence.
“Oh, but we must expect to disagree with people,” she said. “Think how extraordinarily tame the world would be if we didn’t! We should spend our whole lives in admiring the views of other people which tallied so exactly with our own.”
“But do you like disagreeing with people who are very near you?” he asked.
Jeannie considered a moment.
“I don’t suppose I have agreed with Aunt Em about anything for five years,” she said.
Jack laughed.
“But you have not disagreed—not radically, I mean.”
Jeannie turned half round and looked at him. But before she could reply there swept by Colonel Raymond, followed by a string of straggling children, returning from their “good, brisk walk.” He saw her, stared, stared also at her companion, and passed on.
“Oh, dear me,” thought Jeannie, “Arthur has evidently seen him. That was one of the most complete cuts I ever received.”
She paused a moment to bring her thoughts back to the point from which they had strayed.
“No, you are right; not radically,” she said. “And if your disagreement has been radical, and it is not impertinent of me, do let me offer you my sympathy. It is rather a common word, but sincerity makes common things real.”
She looked divinely beautiful. The soft, wistful expression of her face was altogether womanly, the brightness and vivacity belonged to girlhood. Spring trembled on the verge of summer, an entrancing moment. Admirable as his sketch had been, like her as it was, Jack found it but a pale parody of the deeper beauty which shone on him. Sympathy like an electric spark had passed from her, and the face he had thought only so admirable in its amused anxiety became a face which showed a beautiful soul. The lamp within had been lit, and the light showed through the fair carving of the lantern.
“Thank you for that,” he said at length, gravely. “Tattered banners of words are hung in sacred places.”
She turned and looked at the water again.
“Are our brains cleaner?” she said. “If so, let us go and give Toby his bath. Won’t you come with me, Mr. Collingwood? We can stroll along the river and go back home round through the close.”
It was at that divine hour when day and evening meet. The sun was low and level, and its light, instead of coming from onespot and dazzling the eyes, was diffused through a golden haze. The heat and stress of summer, one would have said, was over or not yet come, and it might have been a day from early May or from late September. The fulness of the stream argued the former, but a certain mellowness of colour showed the other. Jack, inclined as an artist is to be very indolent except when he is very industrious, was under the spell of the evening, under the spell, too, of the sympathy which had floated to him across the airy bridge by which soul spans the otherwise inaccessible gulf which divides it from any other soul. He was a man, lovable; she was a lovable woman; heaven is there, and all is said.
Toby staggered round them, occasionally dashing away after interesting smells, and barking hoarsely and rudely at passers-by in a state of self-importance not unmixed with nervousness. He enjoyed his bath when once he was in the water, but he was a little distrustful of it; the self-importance was due to the fact that he considered this daily walk by the river to be taken entirely on hisaccount. He had something, in fact, of the air of Colonel Raymond about him, and Jeannie wondered what he would make of this sight of herself and Jack together lounging on the bridge.
Thatprodigious observer had not failed to notice them, and though Arthur’s interview with him had been quite remarkably frank and outspoken, the Colonel was not to be taken in that way. Indeed, the fact that Arthur had denied with such directness the truth of that brilliant conjecture the Colonel had made when he saw the picture of Jeannie rather tended to confirm his belief in his own acuteness. “Meant to put me off the scent, sir, meant to put me off the scent!” he said, angrily, as he waited to let his three daughters catch him up at the Guildhall. And he added, savagely, looking at Maria, who was near collapse: “But he doesn’t take me in that way!”
But our strategist was not quite certain how to act. The secret joy of knowing he was right, and had seen through all these flimsy attempts to baffle him, was gratifying,but it was like money locked up, which he could not use. On the other hand, he had not enjoyed that moment when, in the presence of his wife, Arthur had spoken of the absurd and foolish report which some busybody had invented, and which, so he had heard, had reached Colonel Raymond. People, so thought the Colonel bitterly, talked so, and let things get about, and if he again alluded to what he knew so well about Arthur and Jack Collingwood another interview might occur between Arthur and himself. It was bad enough when only Mrs. Raymond was present, but the Colonel turned quite cold at the thought that the next rendezvous might be at the club, in the presence of all his old cronies. It was only a timely and unhesitating retreat which had perhaps saved him the other day on the question of cousinship, and even then he was far from certain that the others had not suspected some awkwardness.
Colonel Raymond began to feel ill-used. Why should these Aveshams, particularly that insolent Arthur, come and settle in Wroxton and render precarious the Colonel’s immemorial position as cousin and friend of noble families? Why, if they must come, could they not have treated him more like a cousin, and have told him the truth about this affair, rather than try to hoodwink him with denials? “Why, the thing was as plain as the nose on my face!” stormed the Colonel as he ascended the club steps (and indeed his nose was not beautiful), “and to go and tell me that Jeannie had never seen young Collingwood, when the very next day I see them with my own eyes lounging in the public street together, is an insult to me and a disgrace to them!”
The party at Bolton Street were happily ignorant of these thunderings, and their tranquility was undisturbed. Jeannie had, indeed, told Arthur that the Colonel had seen herself and Jack together that afternoon, and they wondered with some amusement what he would make of it.
“I made myself pretty clear to him yesterday,” said Arthur, thoughtfully; “but he is a poisonous sort of animal. He is given, I notice, to repeating himself. I hope he won’t do so, Jeannie, on this occasion; otherwise I shall have to repeat myself to him. Yet you say he cut you. That makes the question simpler.”
“Why a gossip is a gossip is more than I can understand,” said Jeannie. “And where the pleasure of repeating as true what you made up yourself comes in is altogether beyond me.”
“It is one of the pleasures of the imagination,” said Arthur, taking off his coat. “Go away and dress, Jeannie, and leave me to do the same. We shall be late.”
“We always are,” said Jeannie, still lingering. “Isn’t it odd—” and she paused.
Arthur began unlacing his boots.
“Well?”
“Isn’t it odd that Mrs. Collingwood should be Mr. Collingwood’s mother?”
“It would be odder if she wasn’t,” remarked Arthur.
Miss Fortescue had taken rather a fancy to Jack, and she showed it by treating him as she treated her nephew and niece—that is to say, she was rude to him. It was a bad sign for Miss Fortescue to be polite to any one; it implied she did not like him. Butno one could have called her polite to Jack. She had asked him several questions on very different subjects during dinner, and to each he had returned an answer showing he knew something of the various questions. That was Miss Fortescue’s test.
“Yes, you seem to know,” she said; “in fact, I think you know too much, Mr. Collingwood. The mind of a well-informed man is a horrible thing. It is like a curiosity-shop, full of odds and ends which are of no use to anybody.”
Jeannie and Arthur burst out laughing.
“Answer her back,” said Arthur; “she won’t mind.”
Jack was sensible enough to know that Miss Fortescue could not be so rude, if her object was to be rude.
“If I had not been able to tell you about pearl-oysters and Cayenne-pepper,” he said, “you would only have said, ‘The mind of an ignorant man is a horrible thing. It is like a new jerry-built villa unfurnished.’”
“Just so,” said Miss Fortescue, “and the owner calls it a desirable mansion.”
“But what is one to do?” said Jack.“Either one knows about a thing or one does not. It is a choice between being a jerry-built villa or a curiosity-shop.”
“Some people,” said Miss Fortescue, “fill their villa with curiosities. It is possible to be well informed and completely uneducated.”
“Go it, Jack,” said Arthur; “she’s beginning to hit wildly.”
“Am I to apply that to myself?” asked Jack, turning to Miss Fortescue.
“Oh, that is so like an Englishman,” said she. “Whenever you suggest an idea to an Englishman he cannot consider it in the abstract; he has to think whether it applies to him.”
“Aunt Em never does that,” observed Jeannie; “she goes on the opposite tack. If you tell her she is being offensive, quite personally, she considers offensiveness in the abstract, and makes remarks about true courtesy.”
“Have some hare, Aunt Em?” said Arthur. “I shot it two days ago.”
“Did you kill it at once?” asked Miss Fortescue.
“No, I wounded it,” said Arthur, quite regardless of truth. “It screamed.”
“Butcher!” said Aunt Em.
“Shall I give you some?” repeated Arthur.
Miss Fortescue glanced at the menu-card.
“Only a very little,” she said.
“But where is the proper mean, Miss Fortescue?” resumed Jack. “How can one avoid both being well informed and being ignorant?”
“Well-informed people are those who know about the wrong things,” she said.
“I and the pearl-oysters, for instance?”
Aunt Em groaned.
“The Englishman again,” she said. “The Englishman abroad! How well that expresses the Englishman’s attitude toward ideas.”
“And the Englishman at home is the Englishman slaughtering innocent beasts, I suppose,” said Arthur. “I’ve only given you a very small piece, Aunt Em.”
“Yes, dear, you have taken me at my word,” said Miss Fortescue, inspecting her plate. “That is very English, too. We arethe heaviest, most literal nation that ever disgraced this planet.”
“Poor planet!” said Jeannie. “How the people in Mars must look down on us.”
“And rightly,” sighed Miss Fortescue. “How many Philistines one sees.”
“I’m one,” said Arthur, cheerfully. “Philistia, be thou glad of me!”
Miss Fortescue shook her head.
“Tell me any one you know who is not a Philistine,” said Jack.
Miss Fortescue raised her eyes to the ceiling, but Jack did not understand the signal.
“Can’t you think of one?” he repeated.
“When Aunt Em raises her eyes,” said Jeannie, “we talk of something else. Don’t apologize, Mr. Collingwood; you couldn’t have known.”
“A little more hare, Arthur,” said Aunt Em; “about as much as you gave me before.”
Frank Bennett, Jack, and Arthur had all been up at Magdalen together, and when the two were left in the smoking-room together Arthur, who only knew vaguely the story, asked Jack about it.
“You wrote to me, I remember, after hisdeath in May, and told me about the woman he had lived with. What happened further?”
Jack got up.
“It is all very terrible,” he said. “The girl died only about ten days ago, in giving birth to a baby. The baby is living. It was about that that I went to see my mother this afternoon.”
“What did she suggest?”
“An orphanage,” said Jack. “It had been suggested before, and I think it is quite out of the question. The case is not an orphanage case. There is plenty of money. I hoped—no, I hardly hoped—that my mother would suggest that the baby should be brought up in her house, for I owe a great deal to Frank, and as he is dead without my being able to pay it, I owe it to his memory. But she did not suggest it. So I think I shall take the child and bring it up myself.”
He paused.
“Yes, I know there are objections,” he said. “To begin with, people will talk. Luckily, however, there is nothing in the world which matters so little as what suchpeople say. The other objections are more important. It would be better for the child not to be in London. But I dare say things will work out somehow. For the present, at any rate, I shall certainly do that. It is bad enough for a child to be fatherless and nameless. What an ass poor Frank was! And what a good one!”
“What was the girl like?” asked Arthur. “Did you know her?”
“Yes, but very slightly. Oh, I can’t talk about it. She was nice. Frank meant to marry her—that I know.”
“One means so much,” said Arthur.
“My dear fellow, don’t attempt to be cynical. You make a poor hand of it; and really I know that he did mean to. But, as my mother pointed out, that is no excuse.”
Arthur was silent a moment.
“I apologize,” he said; “I am sure you are right. I have an idea—no, never mind. Have some whisky.”
They sat smoking for a spell without speech.
“You ought to be awfully happy here,” said Jack, at length. “You have a charminghouse, and nothing particular to do. How I wish I had been born a loafer. I have great inclinations that way, but no gift at all. The real loafer is born, not made. I am always wanting to settle down, or finish up, or get to work.”
“I want none of these things,” said Arthur, with conviction. “Settling down, I suppose, means marrying. Are you going to marry, by the way?”
“I am going to do everything that there is to be done,” said Jack, “and after that I shall find more things to do.”
“And all this in the near future?” he asked.
“You ask as many questions as Miss Fortescue,” said Jack. “I am in dread of appearing well informed, so I shall not answer them.”
“Don’t. As soon as I know the answer to a question I lose all interest in it.”
“It’s lucky, then, that you have still so many questions,” observed Jack. “By the way, your sister did not mind about the picture, did she? She set me so thoroughly at my ease about it that until this evening itreally never occurred to me that she easily might.”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t,” said Arthur.
“Good. I shall go to bed. When is breakfast?”
Arthur got up and lit a couple of candles.
“Breakfast is when you come down,” he said. “We bind ourselves to nothing.”
TheAvesham 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 himin 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, hehad 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 havefailed 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 assuredhimself, 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 wholelife 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 wasvivid, 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 arespite. 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 hadbeen 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 musthave 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 faceandthe 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. Heflushed 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.”