“I met Miss Avesham a day or two ago at the Lindsays’,” he said. “She seemed to me a nice, pleasant girl, and very full of life.”
Mrs. Collingwood folded her napkin up in silence. Her husband’s remark seemed to her fatuous. Either a person was earnest and helpful or not. Any other quality, particularly that very dangerous quality known as “life,” was only trimming, and a possible temptation. Earnestness and helpfulness were to be rated by the desire to aid in good works. But as she rose she made a great concession.
“If you mean energy by life, William,” she said, “I agree with you that it is admirable as an instrument if properly used. You have not said grace.”
To do her justice, Mrs. Collingwood’s time was spent in good works, and her thoughts (when not thus occupied) in passing judgments on other people. Her favourite text, the text by which her life was conducted, was, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” In her youth she must have been remarkably handsome, but she had got over that, which was lucky, since she now tended to consider that good looks, if not actually the invention of the evil one, were an open door by which he entered, bringing with him pride, vanity, and self-esteem. Like alcohol and tobacco, she regarded them as almost more than dangerous, as something in themselves not right. But with what might be hastily considered as inconsistent, she thought it her duty to admire the beauties of nature when not exhibited in human beings. The green of forest trees, the level lines of the sunset, the Gothic architecture, particularly when seen from a Cathedral close, and thus, as it were, chastely framed, she thought were meant to lead one’s aspirations heavenward. These things (the trees and light, at any rate) had been at the Creation pronounced good, and that was enough for Mrs. Collingwood, who, if she could pin a text on to any conclusion, put it away in a drawer as proved. Her drawers were full of such. Similarly, man had fallen, and his face was the face of a fallen thing.
Thus this evening, when she and her husband left the dining-room, and he retired to his study to finish his sermon for the next day, she stood a full minute at the open window of the drawing-room looking at the view. Then she sat down at her davenport to finish writing a paper on the Downward Tendency of Modern Fiction, which she was to read at a meeting of the Wroxton Ladies’ Literary Union next week. She proposed to deal more particularly with novels which discuss theological problems, and were so upsetting to the faith of the weaker, for what is known as the Higher Criticism seemed to Mrs. Collingwood to be synonymous with the temptation of the devil. But she was a just woman, and one of her sentences began, “What a very clever book we all feel this to be, but how immoral!” Mrs. Collingwood found literary composition presented no difficulties, and she looked upon it, provided the motive of it was earnest and helpful, as an agreeable relaxation. Her style was conversational, and there was a good deal of “dear friends” in it.