There is a great deal of truth in this, and it is manfully put. Where

it fails is, I think, in assuming an amount of will-power and

resolution in human character, which I suspect is not there. The system

the writer recommends is a system that a strong character instinctively

practises, moving through sentiment to emotion, naturally, and by a

sturdy growth. But to tell a man to feel more in a thing, is like

telling a man to be intelligent, benevolent, wise. It is just what no

one can do. The various grades of emotion are not things like

examinations, in which one can successively graduate. They are

expressions of temperament. The sentimental man is the man who can go

thus far and no farther. How shall one acquire vigour and generosity?

By behaving as if one was vigorous and generous, when one is neither? I

do not think it can be done in that way. One can do something to check

a tendency, very little to deepen it. What the writer calls false

asceticism is the only brave and wholesome refuge of people, who know

themselves well enough to know that they cannot trust themselves. Take

the case of one's relations with other people. If a man drifts into

sentimental relations with other people, attracted by charm of any

kind, and knowing quite well that the relation is built on charm, and

that he will not be able to follow it into truer regions, I think he

had probably better try to keep himself in check, not embrace a

sentimental relation with a mild hope that it may develop into a real

devotion. The strong man may try experiments, even though he burns his

fingers. The weak man had better not meddle with the instruments and

fiery fluids at all.

I am myself just strong enough to dislike sentiment, to turn faint in

the sickly, mawkish air. But I am not strong enough to charge it with

vivid life. Moreover, the danger of a strong character taking up the

anti-ascetic position is that he is apt to degenerate into a man like

Goethe, who plucked the fragrant blooms on every side, and threw them

relentlessly away when he had inhaled their sweetness. That is a cruel

business, unless there is a very wise and tender heart behind.

Yet again, reconsidering the whole problem, I am not sure that the

whole suggestion, taken as advice, is not at fault. I think it is

making a melancholy, casuistical, ethical business out of what ought to

be a natural process. I think it is vitiated by a principle which

vitiates so much of the advice of moralists, the principle that one

ought to aim at completeness and perfection. I don't believe that is

the secret of life--indeed I think it is all the other way. One must of

course do one's best to resist immoral, low, sensuous tendencies; but

otherwise I believe that one ought to drink as much as one's glass can

hold of pure and beautiful influences. If sentiment is the nearest that

a man can come to emotion, I think he had better take it thankfully. It

is this ethical prudence which is always weighing issues, and pulling

up the plant to see how it grows, which is the weakening and the

stunting thing. Of course any principle can be used sophistically; but

I think that many people commit a kind of idolatry by worshipping their

rules and principles rather than by trusting God. It develops a larger

and freer life, if one is not too cautious, too precise. Of course one

must follow what light one has, and all lights are lit from God; but if

one watches the lanterns of moralists too anxiously, one may forget the

stars.

July 8, 1889.

I lose myself sometimes in a dream of misery in thinking of the

baseness and meanness and squalor that condition the lives of so many

of the poor. Not that it is not possible under those conditions to live

lives of simplicity and dignity and beauty. It is perfectly possible,

but only, I think, for strong natures possessing a combination of

qualities--virtue, industry, sense, prudence, and above all good

physical health. There must still be thousands of lives which could be

happy and simple and virtuous under more secure conditions, which are

marred and degraded by the influences under which they are nurtured.

Yet what can the more fortunate individual do in the matter? If all the

rich men in England were to resign to-morrow all the wealth they

possessed, reserving only a bare modicum of subsistence, the matter

could not be amended. Even that wealth could not be wisely applied;

and, if equally divided, it would hardly make any appreciable

difference. What is worse, it would not alter the baneful influences in

the least; it would give no increased security of material conditions,

and it would not affect the point at issue, namely, the tone and

quality of thought and feeling, where the only hope of real

amelioration lies, and which is really the source and root of our

social evils.

Moreover, the real difficulty is not to see what the classes on whom

the problem presses most grimly NEED, but what they WANT. It is no use

theorising about it, and providing elegant remedies which will not

touch the evil. What one requires to know is what those natures, who

lie buried in this weltering tide, and are dissatisfied and tormented

by it, really desire. It is no use trying to provide a paradise on the

farther bank of the river, till we have constructed bridges to cross

the gulf. What one wants is that some one from the darkness of the

other side should speak articulately and boldly what they claim, what

they could use. It is not enough to have a wistful cry for help ringing

in our ears; one wants a philosophical or statesmanlike demand--just

the very thing which from the nature of the case we cannot get. It may

be that education will make this possible; but at present education

seems merely to be a ladder let down into the abyss, by which a few

stronger natures can climb out of it, with horror and contempt in their

hearts of what they have left behind. The question that stares one in

the face is, is there honest work for all to do, if all were strong and

virtuous? The answer at present seems to be in the negative; and the

problem seems to be solved only by the fact that all are not capable of

honest work, and that the weaklings give the strong their opportunity.

What, again, one asks oneself, is the use of contriving more leisure

for those who could not use it well? Then, too, under present

conditions, the survival of the unfittest seems to be assured. Those

breed most freely and recklessly of whom it may be said that, for the

interests of civilisation, it is least desirable that they should

perpetuate their kind. The problem too is so complicated, that it

requires a gigantic faith in a reformer to suggest the sowing of seed

of which he can never hope to see the fruit. The situation is one which

tends to develop vehement and passionate prophets, dealing in vague and

remote generalisations, when what one needs is practical prudence, and

the effective power of foreseeing contingencies. One who like myself

loves security, leisure, beauty and peace, and is actuated by a vague

and benevolent wish that all should have the same opportunities as

myself, feels himself a mere sentimentalist in the matter, without a

single effective quality. I can see the problem, I can grieve over it,

I can feel my faith in God totter under the weight of it, but that is

all.

July 15, 1889.

One of the hardest things to face in the world is the grim fact that

our power of self-improvement is limited. Of some qualities we do not

even possess the germs. Some qualities we have in minute quantities,

but hardly capable of development; some few qualities we possess in

fuller measure, and they are capable of development; but even so, our

total capacity of growth is limited, conditioned by our vital energy,

and we have to face the fact that if we develop one set of qualities we

must neglect another set.

I think of it in a whimsical and fantastic image, the best I can find.

Imagine a box in which there are a number of objects like puff-balls,

each with a certain life of its own, half-filling the box. Some of the

puff-balls are small, hard, sterile; others are soft and expansive;

some grow quickly in warmth and light, others fare better in cold and

darkness. The process of growth begins: some of them increase in size

and press themselves into every crevice, enclosing and enfolding the

others; even so the growth of the whole mass is conditioned by the size

of the box, and when the box is full, the power of increase is at an

end.

The box, to interpret the fable, is our character with its

possibilities. The conditions which develop the various qualities are

the conditions of our lives, our health, our income, our education, the

people who surround us; but even the qualities themselves have their

limitations. Two people may grow up under almost precisely similar

influences, and yet remain different to the end; two characters may be

placed in difficult and bracing circumstances; the effect upon one

character is to train the quality of self-reliance, on the other to

produce a moral collapse. Some people do their growing early and then

stop altogether, becoming impervious to new opinions and new

influences. Some people go on growing to the end.

If one develops one side of one's nature, as the intellectual or

artistic, one probably suffers on the emotional or moral side. The pain

which the perceptive man feels in surveying this process is apt to be

very acute. He may see that he lacks certain qualities altogether and

yet be unable to develop them. He may find in himself some patent and

even gross fault, and be unable to cure it. The only hope for any of us

is that we do not know the expansive force of our qualities, nor the

size of the box; and therefore it is reasonable to go on trying and

desiring; and as long as one can do that, it is clear that there is

still room for growth. The worst shadow of all is to find, as one goes

on, a certain indifference creeping over one. One accepts a fault as a

part of one's nature; one ceases to care about what appears

unattainable.

It may be said that this is a fatalistic theory, and leads to a mild

inactivity; but the question rather is whether it is true, whether it

is attested by experience. One improves, not by overlooking facts, in

however generous and enthusiastic a spirit, but by facing facts, and

making the best use one can of them. One must resolutely try to submit

oneself to favourable conditions, fertilising influences. And much more

must one do that in the case of those for whom one is responsible. In

the case of my own two children, for instance, my one desire is to

surround them with the best influences I can. Even there one makes

mistakes, no doubt, because one cannot test the expansive power of

their qualities; but one can observe the conditions under which they

seem to develop best, and apply them. To lavish love and tenderness on

some children serves to concentrate their thoughts upon themselves, and

makes them expect to find all difficulties smoothed away; on other more

generous natures, it produces a glow of responsive gratitude and

affection, a desire to fulfil the hopes formed of them by those who

love them. The most difficult cases of all are the cases of

temperaments without loyal affection, but with much natural charm.

Those are the people who get what is called 'spoilt,' because it is so

much easier to believe in the existence of qualities which are

superficially displayed than in qualities which lie too deep for facile

expression. One comes across cases of children of intense emotional

natures, and very little power of expressing their feelings, or of

showing their affection. Of course, too, example is far more potent

than precept, and it is very difficult for parents to simulate a

high-mindedness and an affectionateness that they do not themselves

possess, even if they are sincerely anxious that their children should

grow up high-minded and affectionate. One of the darkest shadows of my

present condition is the fear that any revelation of my own weakness

and emptiness may discourage and distort my children's characters; and

the watchfulness which this requires increases the strain under which I

suffer, because it is a hard fact that an example set for a noble and

an unselfish motive is not nearly so potent as an example set

naturally, sweetly, and generously, with no particular consciousness of

motive behind it at all.

July 18, 1889.

I have just heard of the sudden death of an old friend. Francis Willett

was a writer of some distinction, whose acquaintance I made in my first

years in London. He was a tall, slim man, dark of complexion, who would

have been called very handsome, if it had not been for a rather

burdened air that he wore. As it was, people tended rather to pity him,

and to speak of him as somewhat of a mystery. I never knew anything

about the background of his life. He must have had some small means of

his own, and he lived in rooms, in rather an out-of-the-way street near

Regent's Park. One used to see him occasionally in London, walking

rapidly, almost always alone, and very rarely I encountered him at

parties, always wearing a slightly regretful air, as though he were

wishing himself away. He wrote a good deal, reviewed books, and, I

suppose, contrived to make enough to live on by his pen. He once spoke

of himself as being in the happy position of being able to exist

without writing, but forced to purchase all small luxuries by work. He

published two or three books of short stories and sketches of travel,

delicate pieces of work, which had no great sale, but gave him a

recognised position among men of letters. I drifted into a kind of

friendship with him; we were members of the same club, and he sometimes

used to flutter shyly into my rooms like a great moth; but he never

asked me to his quarters.

I discovered that he had done well at Oxford, and also that he had

once, at all events, had considerable ambitions; but his health was not

strong, he was extremely sensitive, and very fastidious about the

quality of his work. I realised this on an occasion when he once

entrusted me with a MS., and asked me if I would give him an opinion,

as it was an experiment, and he did not feel sure of his ground; he

added that there was no hurry about it. I put the MS. away in a

despatch-box, and having at the time a press of work, I forgot about

it. He never asked me for it, and I did not happen to open the box

where it lay. Some months after I came upon it. I read it through, and

thought it a fine and delicate piece of work. I wrote to him,

apologising for my delay and speaking warmly of the piece, which was

one of those rather uncomfortable stories, which is not quite long

enough to make a book, and yet rather too long to put in a volume with

other pieces. He wrote at once, thanking me for my opinion, and it was

only by accident at a later date, when I happened to ask him what he

was doing with the story, that he told me he had destroyed it. I

expressed deep regret that he had done so; and he said with a smile

that it was probably rather a foolish impulse that had decided him to

make away with it. "The fact is," he said, "that you wrote very kindly

about it, but you had had it in your hands so long, that I felt somehow

that it could not have interested you--it really doesn't matter," he

added, "I don't think it was at all successful." I apologised very

humbly, and explained the circumstances. "Oh, please don't blame

yourself in any way," he said, "I have not the least shadow of

resentment in my mind about it. There is something wrong about my work;

it doesn't interest people. I suppose it is that I can't let myself

go." An interesting conversation followed, and he told me more than he

ever told me before or since about himself. He confessed to being so

critical of his own work, that his table-drawers were full of

unfinished MSS. His usual experience was to begin a piece of work

enthusiastically; to plan it all out, and to work at first with zest.

"Then it begins to get all out of shape," he said, "there is no go

about it; it all loses itself in subtleties and complexities of motive;

one thing trips up another, and at last it all gets so tangled that I

put it aside; if I could follow the track of one strong and definite

emotion, it would be all right--but I am like the man in the story who

changes the cow for the horse, and the horse for the pig, and the pig

for the grindstone; and then the grindstone rolls into the river." He

seemed to take it all very philosophically, and I ventured to say so.

"Yes," he said, "I have learnt at last that that is how I am made; but

I have been through a good many agonies of disgust and discouragement

about it in old days--it is the same with everything I have touched.

The bits of work that I have completed have all been done in a rush--if

the mood lasts long enough, I am all right--and once or twice it has

just lasted. I am like a swimmer," he went on, "who can only swim a

certain distance; and if I judge the distance rightly, I can reach the

point I desire to reach; but I generally judge the distance wrong; and

half-way across I am seized with a sudden fright, and struggle back in

terror."

By one of the strange coincidences that sometimes happen in this world,

I took an unknown lady in to dinner a few days afterwards, and happened

to mention Willett's name. "Do you know him?" she said. "Oh yes, of

course you do!" she went on; "you are the Mr. S---- of whom he has

spoken to me." I found that my neighbour was a distant relation of

Willett's, and she told me a good deal about him. He was absolutely

alone in the world; he had been left an orphan at an early age, and had

spent his holidays with guardians and relations, with any one who would

take pity on him. "He was a clever kind of boy," she said, "melancholy

and diffident, always thinking that people disliked him. He used to

give me the air of a person who was trying to find something, and who

did not quite know where to look for it. He had a time of expansion at

Oxford, where he made friends and did well; and then he came to London,

and began to write. But the real tragedy of his life is this," she

said. "He really fell in love, or as nearly as he could, with a very

pretty and high-spirited girl, who took a great fancy to him, and

pitied him from the bottom of her heart. For five years the thing went

on. She would have married him at any time if he had asked her. But he

did not. I suppose he could not face the idea of being married. He

always seemed to be on the point of proposing to her, and then he would

lose heart at the last minute. At last she got tired of waiting, and, I

suppose, began to care for some one else; but she was very good to

Francis, and never lost patience with him. At last she told him one day

quietly that she was engaged, and hoped that they would always remain

friends. I think, do you know, that it was almost more a relief to him

than otherwise. I did my best to help him--marriage was the one thing

he wanted; if he could only have been pushed into it, he would have

made a perfect husband, because not only is he very much of a

gentleman, but he could never bear to fail any one who depended on him;

but he has got the unhappiest mind I know; the moment that he has

formed a plan, and sees his way clear, he at once begins to think of

all the reasons against it--not the selfish reasons, by any means; in

this case he reflected, I am sure, how little he had to offer; he could

not bring himself to feel that any one could really care for him; and

then, too, he never really cared for anything quite enough himself. Or

if he did, he found all sorts of refined reasons why he ought not to do

so. If only he had been a little more selfish, it would have been all

right. Indeed," said Mrs. T----, with a smile, "he is the only person

of whom I could truthfully say that if he had only been a little more

vulgar, he would have been a much happier person."

I saw a good deal of Willett after that, and he interested me

increasingly. I verified Mrs. T----'s judgment about him, and found it

true in every particular. I suppose there was some lack of vitality

about him, because the more I knew of him the more I found to admire.

He was an exquisitely delicate person, affectionate, responsive, with a

fine sense of humour--indeed, the most disconcerting thing was that he

saw to the full the humour of his own position. But none of the robust

motives that spur men to action affected him. He was ambitious, but he

would not make any sacrifices to gain the objects of his ambition. He

could not use his powers on conventional lines. He was, I think, deeply

desirous of confidence and affection, but he could never believe that

he deserved either, or that it was possible for him to be interesting

to others. He was laborious, pure-minded, transparently honest, and had

a shrewd and penetrating judgment of other people; but he seemed to

labour under a sense of shame at his deficiencies, and to feel that he

had no claims or rights in the world. He existed on sufferance. The

smallest shadow of disapproval caused him to abandon any design, not

resentfully but eagerly, as though he was fully aware of his own

incompetence.

I grew to feel a strong affection for him, and tried in many ways to

help and encourage him. But he always discounted encouragement, and it

is a clumsy business trying to help a man who does not demand or desire

help.

He seemed to me to have schooled himself into a kind of tender

patience; and this attitude, I am ashamed to say, used to irritate me

considerably, because it seemed to me to be so much power wasted on

accepting defeat, which might have ensured victory.

He was with me a few weeks ago. I was up in town, and he dined with me

by appointment. He told me, with a gentle philosophy, a story which

made my blood boil. He had been asked to write a book by a publisher,

and the lines had been laid down for him. "It was such a comfort to

me," he said, "because it supplied just the stimulus I could not myself

originate. My book was really rather a good piece of work; but a week

ago I sent it to the publisher, and he returned it, saying it was not

the least what he wanted--he suggested my retaining about a third of

it, and rewriting the rest. Of course I could do nothing of the kind."

"What have you done with it?" I asked. "Oh, I have destroyed it." "But

didn't you see him," I said, "or do something--or at all events insist

on payment?" "Oh no," he said, "I could not do that--the man was

probably right--he wanted a particular kind of book, and mine was not

what he wanted. I did say that I wished he had explained to me more

clearly what he wanted--but after all it doesn't very much matter. I

can get along all right, if I am careful."

"Well," I said, "you are really a very aggravating person. If I could

not have got my book published elsewhere, I would certainly have had a

row--I would have taken out my money's worth in vituperation."

Willett smiled; "I dare say you would have had some fun," he said, "but

that is not my line. I have told you before that I can't interest

people--I don't think it is wholly my fault."

We sate late, talking; and for the only time in his life he spoke to

me, with a depth of emotion of which I should hardly have suspected

him, of the value he set upon my friendship, and his gratitude for my

sympathy.

And now this morning I have heard of his sudden death. He was found

dead in his room, bent over his papers. He must have been writing late

at night, as his custom was; and it proved on examination that he must

have long suffered from an unsuspected disease of the heart. Perhaps

that may explain his failure, if it can be called a failure. There is

something to me almost insupportably pathetic to think of his lonely

and uncomforted life, his isolation, his sensitiveness. And yet I do

not feel sure that it is pathetic, because his life somehow seems to me

to have been one of the most beautiful I have ever known. He did

nothing much for others, he achieved nothing for himself; but it is

only our miserable habit of weighing every one's life, in a hard way,

by a standard of performance and success, which makes one sigh over

Francis Willett's life. It is very difficult at times to see what it is

that life is exactly meant to do for us. Most of the men and women I

know--I say this sadly but frankly--seem to me to leave the world

worse, in essential respects, than they entered it. There is generally

something ingenuous, responsive, eager, sweet, hopeful about a

child--but though I admit that one does encounter beautiful natures

that seem to flower very generously in the light of experience, yet

most people grow dull, dreary, conventional, grasping,

commonplace--they grow to think rather contemptuously of emotion and

generosity--they think it weak to be amiable, unselfish, kind. They

become fond of comfort and position and respect and money. They think

such things the serious concerns of life, and sentiment a kind of

relaxation. But with Willett it was the precise reverse. He claimed

nothing for himself, he never profited at the expense of another; he

was utterly humble, gentle, unpretentious, kind, sincere. An hour ago I

should have called him "poor fellow," and wished that he had had a more

robust kind of fibre; now that I know he is dead, I cannot find it in

my heart to wish him any such qualities. His life appears to me utterly

beautiful and fragrant. He never incurred any taint of grossness from

prosperity or success; he never grew indifferent or hard; and in the

light of his last passage, such a failure seems the one thing worth

achieving, and to carry with it a hope all alive and rich with

possibilities of blessing and glory. He would hardly have called

himself a Christian, I think; he would have said that he could not have

attained to anything like a vital faith or a hopeful certainty; but the

only words and thoughts that haunt my mind about him, echoing sweetly

and softly through the ages, are the words in which Christ described

the tender spirits of those who were nearest to the Father's heart, and

to whom it is given to see God.

July 28, 1889.

Health of body and mind return to me, slowly but surely. I have given

up all attempt at writing; I rack my brain no longer for plots or

situations. I keep, it is true, my note-book for subjects beside me,

and occasionally jot down a point; but I feel entirely indifferent to

the whole thing. Meanwhile the flood of letters about my book,

invitations from editors, offers from publishers, continues to flow. I

reply to these benignantly and courteously, but undertake nothing,

promise nothing. I seem to have recovered my balance. I think no more

about my bodily complaints, and my nerves no longer sting and thrill.

The day is hardly long enough for all I have to do. It may be that when

the novelty of the experiment in education wears off, I shall begin to

hanker after authorship again. Alec will have to go to school in a year

or two, I suppose; but it shall be a day-school at first, if I can find

one. As to the question of a public school, I am much exercised. Of

course there are nightmare terrors about tone and morals; but I am not

really very anxious about the boy, because he is sensible and

independent, and has no lack of moral courage. The vigorous

barrack-life is good for a boy, the give-and-take, the splendid

equality, the manly code, the absence of affectation. But the

intellectual tone of schools is low, and the conventionality is great.

I don't want Alec to be a conventional man, and yet I want him to

accept current conventions instinctively about matters of indifference.

I have a horror of the sporting public-school type, the good-humoured,

robust fellow, who does his work and fills his spare time with games,

and thinks intellectual things, and artistic interests, and emotion,

and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such people live a wholesome enough

life; they make good soldiers, good officials, good men of business.

But they are woefully complacent and self-satisfied. The schools

develop a Spartan type, and I want Alec to be an Athenian. But the

experiment will have to be made, because a man is at a disadvantage in

ordinary life if he has not the public school bonhomie, courtesy, and

common sense. I must try to keep the other side alive, and I don't

despair of doing it.

Meantime we are a very contented household, in spite of the fact that

now, if ever, is the time for me to make my mark as a writer, and I

have to pass all the opportunities that offer. On the other hand, this

is the point at which one sees, in the history of letters, so many

writers go to pieces. They suddenly find, after their first great

success, that they have arrived, by a tortuous and secret path, at

being a sort of public man. They are dazzled by contact with the world.

They go into society, they make speeches, they write twaddle, they

drain their energy, already depleted by creation, in fifty different

ways. Now I am strongly of Ruskin's opinion that the duty of the artist

is to make himself fit for the best society, and then to abstain from

it. Very fortunately I have no sort of taste for these things, beyond

the simple human satisfaction in enjoying consideration. That is

natural and inevitable. But I don't value it unduly, and I dislike its

penalties more than I love its rewards.

And then, too, I reflect that it is, after all, life that we are here

to taste, and life that so many of us pass by. Work is a part of life,

perhaps the essence of life; but to be absorbed in work is to be like a

man who is absorbed in collecting specimens, and never has time to sort

them. I knew of a man who determined, early in life, to write the

history of political institutions. He had a great library, and he

devoted himself to study. He put in his books, as he read them, slips

of paper to indicate passages and chapters that he would have to

consult, and as he finished with a book, he put it in a certain place

on a certain shelf. He made no other notes or references--he was a man

with a colossal memory, and he knew exactly what his markers meant. In

the middle of this life of acquisition, while he bored like a worm in a

cheese, he died. His library was sold. The markers meant nothing to any

one else; and the book-buyers merely took the markers out and threw

them away, and that was the end of the history of political

institutions.

I feel that, apart from our work, we ought to try and arrive at some

solution, to draw some sort of conclusions--to reflect, to theorise; we

may not draw nearer to the secret, but our only hope of doing so, the

only hope that humanity will do so, is for some at least to try. And

thus I think that I have perhaps been saved from a great delusion. I

was spending my time in spinning romances, in elaborating plots, in

manoeuvring life as I would; and it is not like that! Life is not run

on physical lines, nor on emotional, nor social, nor even moral lines.

It is not managed in the least as we should manage it; it is a

resultant of innumerable forces, or perhaps the same force running in

intricate currents. Of course the strange thing is that we men should

find ourselves thrust into it, with strong intuitions, vehement

preconceptions, as to how it ought to be directed; our happiness seems

to depend upon our being, or learning to be, in harmony with it, but it

baffles us, it resists us, it contradicts us, it opposes us to the end;

sometimes it crushes us; and yet we believe that it means good; and

even if we do not so believe, we have to acquiesce, we have to endure;

and one thing is certain, we cannot learn the lesson of life by

practising indifference or stoical fortitude, or by abandoning

ourselves to despair; only by believing that our sufferings are

fruitful, our mistakes educative, our sins significant, our sorrows

gracious, can we hope to triumph. We go on, many of us, relying on

useless defences, beguiling ourselves with fantastic diversions,

overlooking, as far as we can, stern realities; stopping our ears,

turning away our gaze, shrinking and crying out like children at the

prospect of experiences to which we are led by loving presences, that

smile as they draw us to the wholesome and bracing incidents that we so

weakly dread. We pray for courage, but we know in our souls that

courage can only be won by enduring what we fear; and thus preoccupied

by hopes and plans and fears, we miss the wholesome sweet and simple

stuff of life, its quiet relationships, its tranquil occupations, its

beautiful and tender surprises.

And then perhaps, at long intervals, we have a deep and splendid flash

of insight, when we can thank God that things have not been as we

should have willed and ordered them. We should have lingered, perhaps,

in the low rich meadows, the sheltered woodlands of our desire; we

should never have set our feet to the hill. In terror and reluctance we

have wandered upwards among the steep mountain tracks, by high green

slopes, by grim crag-buttresses, through fields of desolate stones. Yet

we are aware of a finer, purer air, of wide prospects of hill and

plain; we feel that we have gained in strength and vigour, that our

perceptions are keener, our very enjoyment nobler; and at last, it may

be, we have sight, from some Pisgah-top of hope, of fairer lands yet to

which we are surely bound. And then, too, though we have fared on in

loneliness and isolation, we see moving forms of friends and comrades

converging on our track. It is no dream; it is but a parable of what

has happened to many a soul, what is daily happening. What does the

sad, stained, weary, fitful past concern us at such a moment as this?

It concerns us nothing, save that only through its pains and shadows

was it possible for us to climb where we have climbed.

To-day it seems that I have been blessed with such a vision. The mist

will close in again, doubtless, wild with wind, chill with rain, sad

with the cry of hoarse streams. But I have seen! I shall be weary and

regretful and despairing many times; but I shall never wholly doubt

again.

August 8, 1889.

Alec is ill to-day. He was restless, flushed, feverish, yesterday

evening, and I thought he must have caught cold; we put him to bed, and

this morning we sent for the doctor. He says there is no need for

anxiety, but he does not know as yet what is the matter; his

temperature is high, and we must just keep him quietly in bed, and

wait. I tell myself that it is foolish to be anxious, but I cannot keep

a certain dread out of my mind; there is a weight upon my heart, which

seems unduly heavy. Perhaps it is only that it seems unusual, for he

has never had an illness of any kind. He is not to be disturbed, and

Maggie is not allowed to see him. Maud sate with him this morning, and

he slept most of the time. I looked in once or twice, but people coming

and going tend to make him restless. Maud herself is a marvel to me.

She must be even more anxious than I am, but she is serene, smiling,

strong, with a cheerfulness that has no effort about it. She laughed

tenderly at my fears, and sent me out for a walk with Maggie. I fear I

was a gloomy companion. In the evening I went to sit with Alec a

little. He was wakeful, large-eyed, and restless. He lay with a book of

stories from Homer, of which he is very fond, in one hand, the other

clasping his black kitten, which slept peacefully on the counterpane.

He wanted to talk, but to keep him quiet I told him a long trivial

story, full of unexciting incidents. He lay musing, his head on his

hand; then he seemed inclined to sleep, so I sate beside him, watching

and wondering at the nearness and the dearness of the child to me,

almost amazed at the revelation which this shadow of fear gives me of

the place which he fills in my heart and life. He tossed about for some

time, and when I asked him if he wanted anything, he only put his hand

in mine; a gesture not quite like him, as he is a boy who is averse to

personal caresses or signs of emotion. So I drew my chair up to the

bed, and sate there with the little hot hand in my own. Maud came up

presently; but as he now seemed sound asleep, we left him in the care

of the old nurse, and went down to dinner. If we only knew what was the

matter! I argue with myself how much unnecessary misery I give myself

by anticipating evil; but I cannot help it; and the weight on my mind

grew heavier; half the night I lay awake, till at last, from sheer

weariness, I fell into a sort of stupor of the senses, which fled from

me in the dismal dawn, and the unmanning hideous fear leapt on me out

of the dark, like a beast leaping upon its prey.

August 11, 1889.

I cannot and dare not write of these days. The child is very ill; it is

some obscure inflammation of the brain-tissue. I had an insupportable

fear that it might have resulted in some way from being over-pressed in

the matter of work, over-stimulated. I asked the doctor. If he lied to

me, and I do not think he did, he lied like a man, or an angel. "Not in

the least," he said, "it is a constitutional thing; in fact, I may say

that the rational and healthy life the child has lived will help more

than anything to pull him through."

But I can't write of the days. I sleep, half-conscious of my misery. I

suppose I eat, walk, read. But waking is like the waking of a prisoner

who awakes up to be put on the rack, who hears doors open and feet

approach, and sickens with dread as he lies. God's hand is heavy upon

me day and night. Surely nothing, in the world or out of it, can

obliterate the memory of this suffering; perhaps, if Alec is given back

to us, I shall smile at this time of suffering. But, if not--

August 12, 1889.

He is losing ground, he is hardly ever conscious now; he sleeps a good

deal, but often he talks quietly to himself of all that we have done

and said; he often supposes himself to be with me, and, thank God, he

never says a word to show that he has ever feared or misunderstood me.

I could not bear that. Yesterday when I was with him, he opened his

eyes on me; I could see that he knew me, and that he was frightened. I

could not speak, but Maud, who was with me, just took his hand and with

her own tranquil smile, said, "It is all right, Alec; there is nothing

to be frightened about; we are here, and you will soon be well again."

The child closed his eyes and lay smiling to himself. I could not have

done that.

August 13, 1889.

He died this morning, just at the dawn. I knew last night that all hope

was over. I was with him half the night, and prayed, knowing my prayers

were in vain. That I could save him no suffering, could not keep him,

could not draw him back. Maud took my place at midnight; I slept, and

in the grey dawn, I woke to find her standing with a candle by my bed;

I knew in a moment, by a glance, that the end was near. No word passed

between us; I found Maggie by the bed; and we three together waited for

the end. I had never seen any one die. He was quite unconscious,

breathing slowly, looking just like himself, as though flushed with

slumber. At last he stirred, gave a long sigh, and seemed to settle

himself for the last sleep. I do not know when he died, but I became

aware that life had passed, and that the little spirit that we loved

had fled, God knows whither. Maggie sate with her hand in mine; and in

my dumb and frozen grief, almost without a thought of anything but a

deep and cold resentment, a hatred of death and the maker of love and

death alike, I became aware that both she and Maud had me in their

thoughts, that my sorrow was even more to them than their own--while I

was cut off from them; from life and hope alike, in a place of darkness

and in the deep.

August 19, 1889.

I saw Alec no more; I would remember him as he was in life, not the

stiffened waxen mask of my beloved. The days passed in a dull stupor of

grief, mechanically, grimly, in a sort of ghastly greyness. And I who

thought that I had sounded the depths of pain! I could not realise it,

could not believe that all would not somehow be as before. Maud and

Maggie speak of him to each other and to me . . . it is inconceivable.

With a dull heartache I have collected and put away all the child's

things--his books, his toys, his little possessions. I followed the

little coffin to the grave. The uncontrollable throb of emotion came

over me at the words, "I am the resurrection and the life." It was a

grey, gusty day; a silent crowd waited to see us pass. The great

churchyard elms roared and swayed, and I found myself watching idly how

the clergyman's hood was blown sideways by the wind. I looked into the

deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin lying there, all in a dumb

dream. The holy words fell vacuously on my ears. "Man walketh in a vain

shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain"--that was all I felt. I seem

to believe nothing, to hope nothing. I do not believe I shall ever see

or draw near to the child again, and yet the thought of him alone,

apart, uncomforted, lies cold on my heart. Maud is wonderful to me; her

love does not seem to suffer eclipse; she does everything, she smiles,

she speaks; she feels, she says, the presence of the child near her and

about her; that means nothing to me; the soul appears to me to have

gone out utterly like a blown flame, mingling with the unseen life, as

the little body we loved will be mingled with the dust.

I cannot say that I endure agony; it is rather as if I had received a

blow so fierce that it drove sensation away; I seem to see the bruise,

watch the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer. The suffering

will come, I doubt not; but meanwhile I am only mutely grateful that I

do not feel more, suffer more. It does not even seem to me to have

drawn me nearer to Maud, to Maggie; my power of loving seems

extinguished, like my power of suffering. I do not know why I write in

this book, why I record my blank apathy. It is a habit, it passes the

time; the only thing that gives me any comfort is the thought that I

shall die, too, and close my eyes at last upon this terrible world,

made so sweet and beautiful, and then slashed and scored across with

such cruel stripes, where we pay so grievous a penalty for feeling and

loving. Tennyson found consolation "when he sorrowed most." But I say

deliberately that I would rather not have loved my child, than lose him

thus.

August 28, 1889.

We are to go away. Maggie droops like a faded flower, and for the first

time I realise, in trying to comfort and distract her, that I have not

lost everything. We are much together, and seeing her thus pine and

fade stirs a dread, in the heart that had been so cold, that I may lose

her too. At last we are drawn together. She came to say good-night to

me last night, and a gush of love passed through me, like the wind

stirring the strings of a harp to music. "My precious darling, my

comfort," I said; the words put, it seemed, on my lips, by some deeper

power. She clung to me, crying softly. Yet, is it strange to say it,

that simple utterance seems almost to have revived her, to have given

her pride and courage? But Maud is still almost a mystery to me. Who

can tell how she suffers--I cannot--it seems to have quickened and

enriched her love and tenderness; she seems to have a secret that I

cannot come near to sharing; she does not repine, rebel, resist; she

lives in some region of unapproachable patience and love. She goes

daily to the grave, but I cannot visit it or think of it. The sight of

the church-tower on my walks gives me a throb of dismay. But now we are

going away. We have been lent a little house in a quiet seaside place;

I suppose I am ill--at least, I am aware of a deep and unutterable

fatigue at times, when I can rouse myself to nothing, but sit

unoccupied, musing, glad to be alone, and only dreading the slightest

interruption, the smallest duty. I know by some subtle sense that I am

seldom absent from Maud's thoughts; but, with her incredible courage

and patience, she betrays nothing by word or glance. She is absolutely

patient, entirely self-forgetful; she quietly relieves me of anything I

have to do; she alters arrangements a dozen times a day, with a ready

smile; and yet it almost seems to me as if I had lost her too.

August 30, 1889.

Our route lay through Cambridge; we had to change there and wait; so we

drove down to the town to look at my old college. There it lay, the

charming, pretty, quiet place, blinking lazily out of its deep-set

barred windows in the bright sun, just the same, it seemed, as ever,

though perhaps a touch more mellow and more settled; every corner and

staircase haunted with old ghosts for me. I could put a name to every

set of rooms, flash an incident to every door and window. In my heavy,

apathetic mood the memory of my life there seemed like a memory of some

one else, moving in golden light, talking and laughing in firelit

rooms, lingering in moonlit nights by the bridge, wondering what life

was going to bring. It seemed like turning the pages of some old

illuminated book with bright pictures, where the very sunlight is the

purest and stiffest gold. The men I knew, the friends I lived with,

admired, loved--where are they? scattered to all parts of the earth,

parted utterly from me, some of them dead, alas! and silent. It came

over me with a thrill of sharpest pain to think how I had pictured Alec

here, living the same free and beautiful life, tasting the same

innocent pleasures, with the bright, sweet world opening upon him. In

that calm, sunny afternoon, life seemed a strange phantasmal business,

and I myself a revenant from some thin, unsubstantial world. A door

opened, and an old Don, well known to me in those days, hardly altered,

it seemed, came out and trotted across the court, looking suspiciously

to left and right as he used to do. Had he been doing the same thing

ever since, reading the same books, talking the same innocent gossip? I

had not the heart to greet him, and he passed me by unrecognising. We

peeped into the hall through the screen. I could see where I used to

sit, the same dark pictures looking down. We went to the chapel, with

its noble classical woodwork, the great carved panels, the angels'

heads, the huge, stately reredos. Some one, thank God, was playing

softly on the organ, and we sate to listen. The sweet music flowed over

my sad heart in a healing tide. Yes, it was not meaningless, after all,

this strange life, with the good years shining in their rainbow halo,

even though the path led into darkness and formless shadow. I seemed to

look back on it all, as the traveller on the hill looks out from the

skirts of the cloud upon the sunny valley beneath him. It all worked

together, said the delicate rising strain, outlining itself above the

soft thunder of the pedals, into something high and grave and

beautiful; it all ended in the peace of God. I sate there, with wife

and child, a pilgrim faring onwards, tasting of love and life and

sorrow, weary of the way, but still--yes, I could say that--still

hopeful. In that moment even my bitter loss had something beautiful

about it. It was THERE, the bright episode of my dear Alec's life, the

memory of the beloved years together. Maggie, seeing something in my

face that she was glad to see, put her hand in mine, and the tears rose

to my eyes, while I smiled at Maud; the burden fell off my shoulder for

a moment, and something seemed as it were to touch me and point

onwards. The music with a dying fall came to a soft close; the rich

light fell on desk and canopy; the old tombs glimmered in the dusty

air. We went out in silence; and then there came back to me, in the old

dark court, with its ivied corners, its trim grass plots, the sense

that I was still a part of it all, that the old life was not dead, but

stored up like a garnered treasure in the rich and guarded past. Not by

detachment or aloofness from happiness and warmth and life are our

victories won. That had been the dark temptation, the shadow of my

loss, to believe that in so sad and strange an existence the only hope

was to stand apart from it all, not to care too much, not to love too

closely. That was false, utterly false; a bare and grim philosophy, a

timid sauntering. Rather it was better to clasp all things close, to

love passionately, to desire infinitely, to yield oneself gladly and

joyfully to every deep and true emotion; not greedily and luxuriously,

flinging aside the crumpled husk that had given up its sweetness; but

tenderly and gently, holding out one's arms to everything pure and

noble, trusting that behind all there did indeed beat a great and

fatherly heart, that loved one better than one dreamed.

That was a strange experience, that sunlit afternoon, a mingling of

deepest pain and softest hope, a touch of fire from the very altar of

faith, linking the beautiful past with the dark present, and showing me

that the future held a promise of perfect graciousness and radiant

strength. Did other lives hold the same rich secrets? I felt that they

did; for that day, at least, all mankind, young and old alike, seemed

indeed my brothers and sisters. In the young men that went lightly in

and out, finding life so full of zest, thinking each other so

interesting and wonderful; in the tired face of the old Professor,

limping along the street; in the prosperous, comfortable contentment of

robust men, full of little affairs and schemes--I saw in all of them

the same hope, the same unity of purpose, the same significance; and we

three in the midst, united by love and loss alike, we were at the

centre, as it were, of a great drama of life and love, in which even

death could only shift the scene and enrich the intensity of the secret

hope.

September 5, 1889.

The rapt and exalted mood that I carried away from Cambridge could not

last; I did not hope that it could. We have had a dark and sad time,

yet with gleams of sweetness in it, because we have realised how

closely we are drawn together, how much we depend on each other. Maud's

brave spirit has seemed for a time broken utterly; and this has done

more than anything to bring us nearer, because I have felt the

stronger, realising how much she leant upon me. She has been filled

with self-reproach, I know not for what shadowy causes. She blames

herself for a thousand things, for not having been more to Alec, for

having followed her own interests and activities, for not having

understood him better. It is all unreal, morbid, overstrained, of

course, but none the less terribly there. I have tried to persuade her

that it is but weariness and grief trying to attach itself to definite

causes, but she cannot be comforted. Meanwhile we walk, stroll, drive,

read, and talk together--mostly of him, for I can do that now; we can

even smile together over little memories, though it is perilous

walking, and a step brings us to the verge of tears. But, thank God,

there is not a single painful memory, not a thing we would have had

otherwise in the whole of that little beautiful life; and I wonder now

wretchedly, whether its very beauty and brightness ought not to have

prepared me more to lose him; it was too good to be true, too perfectly

pure and brave. Yet I never even dreamed that he would leave us; I

should have treasured the bright days better if I had. There are times

of sharpest sorrow, days when I wake and have forgotten; when I think

of him as with us, and then the horror of my loss comes curdling and

weltering back upon me; when I thrill from head to foot with hopeless

agony, rebelling, desiring, hating the death that parts us.

Maggie seems to feel it differently. A child accepts a changed

condition with perhaps a sharper pang, but with a swift accustoming to

what irreparably IS. She weeps at the thought of him sometimes, but

without the bitter resistance, the futile despair which makes me

agonise. That she can be interested, distracted, amused, is a great

help to me; but nothing seems to minister to my dear Maud, except the

impassioned revival, for it is so, of our earliest first love. It has

come back to bless us, that deep and intimate absorption that had moved

into a gentler comradeship. The old mysterious yearning to mingle life

and dreams, and almost identities, has returned in fullest force; the

years have rolled away, and in the loss of her calm strength and

patience, we are as lovers again. The touch of her hand, the glance of

her eye, thrill through me as of old. It is a devout service, an eager

anticipation of her lightest wish that possesses me. I am no longer

tended; I tend and serve. There is something soft, appealing, wistful

about her that seems to give her back an almost childlike dependence,

till my grief almost goes from me in joy that I can sustain and aid her.

September 7, 1889.

Another trouble has fallen upon us. I have had a very grievous letter

from my cousin, who succeeded by arrangement, on my father's death, to

the business. He has been unfortunate in his affairs; he has thrown

money away in speculation. The greater part of my income came from the

business. I suppose the arrangement was a bad one, but the practice was

so sound and secure in my father's life that it never occurred to me to

doubt its stability. The chief part of my income, some nine hundred a

year, came to me from this source. Apart from that, I have some three

or four hundreds from invested money of my own, and Maud has upwards of

two hundred a year. I am going off to-morrow to L---- to meet my

cousin, and go into the matter. I don't at present understand how

things are. His letter is full of protestations and self-recrimination.

We can live, I suppose, if the worst comes to the worst, but in a very

different way. Perhaps we may even have to sell our pleasant house. The

strange thing is that I don't feel this all more acutely, but I seem to

have lost the power of suffering for any other reason than because Alec

is dead.

September 12, 1889.

I have come back to-night from some weary nightmare days with my poor

cousin. The thing is as bad as it can be. The business will be acquired

by Messrs. F----, the next most leading solicitors. With the price they

will give, and with the sacrifice of my cousin's savings, and the

assets of the firm, the money can just be paid. We shall have some six

hundred a year to live upon; my cousin is to enter the office of the

F---- firm as an ordinary clerk. The origin of the disaster is a

melancholy one; it was not that he himself might profit, but to

increase the income of some clients who had lost money and desired a

higher rate of interest for funds left in the hands of the firm. If my

cousin had resisted the demand, there would have been some

unpleasantness, because the money lost had been invested on his advice;

he could not face this, and proceeded to speculate with other money, of

which he was trustee, to fill the gap. Good-nature, imprudence,

credulousness, a faulty grasp of the conditions, and not any deliberate

dishonesty, have been the cause of his ruin. It is a fearful blow to

him, but he is fortunate, perhaps, in being unmarried; I have urged him

to try and get employment elsewhere, but he insists upon facing the

situation in the place where he is known, with a fantastic idea, which

is at the same time noble and chivalrous, of doing penance. Of course

he has no prospects whatever; but I am sure of this, that he grieves

over my lost inheritance far more than he grieves over his own ruin.

His great misery is that some years ago he refused an offer from

Messrs. F---- to amalgamate the two firms.

I feared at first that I might have to sacrifice the rest of my money

as well--money slowly accumulated out of my own labours. And the relief

of finding that this will not be necessary is immense. We must sell our

house at once, and find a smaller one. At present I am not afraid of

the changed circumstances; indeed, if I could only recover my power of

writing, we need not leave our home. The temptation is to get a book

written somehow, because I could make money by any stuff just now. On

the other hand, it will almost be to me a relief to part from the home

so haunted with the memory of Alec--though that will be a dreadful pain

to Maud and Maggie. As far as living more simply goes, that does not

trouble me in the least. I have always been slightly uncomfortable

about the ease and luxury in which we lived. I only wish we had lived

more simply all along, so that I could have put by a little more. I

have told Maud exactly how matters stand, and she acquiesces, though I

can see that, just at this time, the thought of handing over to

strangers the house where we have lived all our married life, the rooms

where Alec and the baby died, is a deep grief to her. To me that is

almost a relief. I have dreaded going back there. To-night I told

Maggie, and she broke out into long weeping. But even so there is

something about the idea of being poor, strange to say, which touches a

sense of romance in the child. She does not realise the poky

restrictions of the new life.

And still stranger to me is the way in which this solid, tangible

trouble seems to have restored my energy and calm. I found myself

clear-headed, able to grasp the business questions which arose, gifted

with a hard lucidity of mind that I did not know I possessed. It is a

relief to get one's teeth into something, to have hard, definite

occupation to distract one; indeed, it hardly seems to me in the light

of a misfortune at present, so much as a blessed tangible problem to be

grappled with and solved. What I should have felt if all had been lost,

and if I had had to resign my liberty, and take up some practical

occupation, I hardly know. I do not think I should even have dreaded

that in my present frame of mind.

September 15, 1889.

I have been thinking all day long of my last walk with Alec, the day

before he was taken ill. Maud had gone out with Maggie; and the little

sturdy figure came to my room to ask if I was going out. I was

finishing a book that I was reading for the evening's work; I had been

out in the morning, and I had not intended to go out again, as it was

cold and drizzling. I very nearly said that I could not go, and I had a

shadow of vexation at being interrupted. But I looked up at him, as he

stood by the door, and there was a tiny shadow of loneliness upon his

face; and I thank God now that I put my book down at once, and

consented cheerfully. He brightened up at this; he fetched my cap and

stick, and we went off together. I am glad to think that I had him to

myself that day. He was in a more confidential mood than usual.

Perhaps--who knows?--there was some shadow of death upon him, some

instinct to clasp hands closer before the end. He asked me to tell him

some stories of my schooldays, and what I used to do as a boy--but he

was full of alertness and life, breaking into my narratives to point

out a nest that we had seen in the spring, and that now hung,

wind-dried and ruinous, among the boughs. Coming back, he flagged a

little, and did what he seldom did, put his arm in my own; how tenderly

the touch of the little hand, the restless fingers on my arm thrilled

me--the hand that lies cold and folded and shrivelled in the dark

ground! He was proud that evening of having had me all to himself, and

said to Maggie that we had talked secrets, "such as MEN talk when there

are no women to ask questions." But thinking that this had wounded

Maggie a little, he went and put his arm round her, and I heard him say

something about its being all nonsense, and that we had wished for her

all the time. . . .

Ah, how can I endure it, the silence, the absence, the lost smile, the

child of my own whom I loved from head to foot, body soul and spirit

all alike! I keep coming across signs of his presence everywhere, his

books, his garden tools in the summerhouse, the little presents he gave

me, on my study chimney-piece, his cap and coat hanging in the

cupboard--it is these little trifling things, signs of life and joyful

days, that sting the heart and pierce the brain with sorrow. If I could

but have one sight of him, one word with him, one smile, to show that

he is, that he remembers, that he waits for us, I could endure it; but

I look into the dark and no answer comes; I send my wild entreaties

pulsating through the worlds of space, crying, "Are you there, my

child?" That his life is there, hidden with God, I do not doubt; but is

it he himself, or has he fallen back, like the drop of water in the

fountain, into the great tide of life? That is no comfort to me; it is

he that I want, that union of body and mind, of life and love, that was

called my child and is mine no more.

September 20, 1889.

Such a loss as mine passes over the soul like a plough cleaving a

pasture line by line. The true stuff of the spirit is revealed and laid

out in all its bareness. That customary outline, that surface growth of

herb and blade, is all pared away. I have been accustomed to think

myself a religious man--I have never been without the sense of God over

and about me. But when an experience like this comes, it shows me what

my religion is worth. I do not turn to God in love and hope; I do not

know Him, I do not understand Him. I feel that He must have forgotten

me, or that He is indifferent to me, or that He is incapable of love,

and works blindly and sternly. My reason in vain says that the great

and beautiful gift itself of the child's life and the child's love came

from Him. I do not question His power or His right to take my child

from me. But I endure only because I must, not willingly or loyally or

lovingly. It is not that I feel the injustice of His taking the boy

away; it is a far deeper sense of injustice than that. The injustice

lies in the fact that He made the child so utterly dear and desired;

that He set him so firmly in my heart; this on the one hand; and on the

other, that He does not, if He must rend the little life away and leave

the bleeding gap, send at the same time some love, some strength, some

patience to make the pain bearable. I cannot believe that the love I

bore my boy was anything but a sweet and holy influence. It gave me the

one thing of which I am in hourly need--something outside of myself and

my own interests, to love better than I loved even myself. It seems

indeed a pure and simple loss, unless the lesson God would have us

learn is the stoical lesson of detachment, indifference, cold

self-sufficiency. It is like taking the crutches away from a lame man,

knocking the props away from a tottering building. An optimistic

moralist would say that I loved Alec too selfishly, and even that the

love of the child turned away my heart from the jealous Heart of God,

who demands a perfect surrender, a perfect love. But how can one love

that which one does not know or understand, a Power that walks in

darkness and that gives us on the one hand sweet, beautiful, and

desirable things, and on the other strikes them from us when we need

them most? It is not as if I did not desire to trust and love God

utterly. I should think even this sorrow a light price to pay, if it

gave me a pure and deep trust in the mercy and goodness of God. But

instead of that it fills me with dismay, blank suspicion, fretful

resistance. I do not feel that there is anything which God could send

me or reveal to me, which would enable me to acquit Him of hardness or

injustice. I will not, though He slay me, say that I trust Him and love

Him when I do not. He may crush me with repeated blows of His hand, but

He has given me the divine power of judging, of testing, of balancing;

and I must use it even in His despite. He does not require, I think, a

dull and broken submissiveness, the submissiveness of the creature that

is ready to admit anything, if only he can be spared another blow. What

He requires, so my spirit tells me, is an eager co-operation, a brave

approval, a generous belief in His goodness and His justice; and this I

cannot give, and it is He that has made me unable to give it. The wound

may heal, the dull pain may die away, I may forget, the child may

become a golden memory--but I cannot again believe that this is the

surrender God desires. What I think He must desire, is that I should

love the child, miss him as bitterly as ever, feel my day darkened by

his loss, and yet turn to Him gratefully and bravely in perfect love

and trust. It may be that I may be drawn closer to those whom I love,

but the loss must still remain irreparable, because I might have

learned to love my dear ones better through Alec's presence, and not

through his absence. It is His will, I do not doubt it; but I cannot

see the goodness or the justice of the act, and I will not pretend to

myself that I acquiesce.

September 25, 1889.

Yesterday was a warm, delicious, soft day, full of a gentle languor,

the air balmy and sweet, the sunshine like the purest gold; we sate out

all the morning under the cliff, in the warm dry sand. To the right and

left of us lay the blue bay, the waves breaking with short, crisp

sparkles on the shore. We saw headland after headland sinking into the

haze; a few fishing-boats moved slowly about, and far down on the

horizon we watched the smoke of a great ocean-steamer. We talked, Maud

and I, for the first time, I think, without reserve, without

bitterness, almost without grief, of Alec. What sustains her is the

certainty that he is as he was, somewhere, far off, as brave and loving

as ever, waiting for us, but waiting with a perfect understanding and

knowledge of why we are separated. She dreams of him thus, looking down

upon her, and seeming, in her dream, to wonder what there can be to

grieve about. I suppose that a mother has a sense of oneness with a

child that a father cannot have. It is a deep and marvellous faith, an

intuition that transcends all reason, a radiant certainty. I cannot

attain to it. But in the warmth and light of her belief, I grew to feel

that at least there was some explanation of it all. Not by chance is

the dear gift sent us, not by chance do we learn to love it, not by

chance is it rent from us. Lying thus, talking softly, in so gracious a

world, a world that satisfied every craving of the senses, I came to

realise that the Father must wish us well, and that if the shadow fell

upon our path, it was not to make us cold and bitter-hearted. Infinite

Love! it came near to me in that hour, and clasped me to a sorrowful,

tender, beating Heart. I read Maud, at her request, "Evelyn Hope," and

the strong and patient love, that dwells so serenely and softly upon

the incidents of death, yet without the least touch of morbidity and

gloom, treating death itself as a quiet slumber of the soul, taught me

for a moment how to be brave.

"You will wake and remember, and understand,"--my voice broke and tears

came, unbidden tears which I did not even desire to conceal--and in

that moment the spirit of my wife came near to me, and soul looked into

the eyes of soul, with a perfect and bewildering joy, the very joy of

God.

October 10, 1889.

We have had the kindest, dearest letters from our neighbours about our

last misfortune. But no one seems to anticipate that we shall be

obliged to leave the place. They naturally suppose that I shall be able

to make as large an income as I want by writing. And so I suppose I

could. I talked the whole matter over with Maud, and said I would abide

by her decision. I confessed that I had an extreme repugnance to the

thought of turning out books for money, books which I knew to be

inferior; but I also said that if she could not bear to leave the

place, I had little doubt that I could, for the present at all events,

make enough money to render it possible for us to continue to live

there. I said frankly that it would be a relief to me to leave a house

so sadly haunted by memory, and that I should myself prefer to live

elsewhere, framing our household on very simple lines--and to let the

power of writing come back if it would, not to try and force it. It

would be a dreadful prospect to me to live thus, overshadowed by

recollection, working dismally for money; but I suppose it would be

possible, even bracing. Maud did not hesitate: she spoke quite frankly;

on the one hand the very associations, which I dread most, were

evidently to her a source of sad delight; and the thought of strangers

living in rooms so hallowed by grief was like a profanation. Then there

was the fact of all her relations with our friends and neighbours; but

she said quite simply that my feeling outweighed it all, and that she

would far rather begin life afresh somewhere else, than put me in the

position I described. We determined to try and find a small house in

the neighbourhood of her own old home in Gloucestershire; and this

thought, I am sure, gave her real happiness. We determined at once what

we would do; we would let our house for a term of years, take what

furniture we needed, and dispose of the rest; we arranged to go off to

Gloucestershire, as soon as possible, to look for a house. We both

realise that we must learn to retrench at once. We shall have less than

half our former income, counting in what we hope to get from the old

house. I am not at all afraid of that. I always vaguely disliked living

as comfortably as we did--but it will not be agreeable to have to

calculate all our expenses--that may perhaps mend itself, if I can but

begin my writing again.

All this helps me--I am ashamed to say how much--though sometimes the

thought of all the necessary arrangements weighs on me like a leaden

weight, on days when I fall back into a sad, idle, hopeless repining.

Sometimes it seems as if the old happy life was all broken up and gone

for ever; and, so strange a thing is memory and imagination, that even

the months overshadowed by the loss of my faculty of work seem to me

now impossibly fragrant and beautiful, my sufferings unreal and

unsubstantial. Real trouble, real grief, have at least the bracing

force of actuality, and sweep aside with a strong hand all artificial

self-made miseries and glooms.

December 15, 1889.

I have kept no record of these weeks. They have been full of business,

sadness, and yet of hope. We went back home for a time; we made our

farewells, and it moved me strangely to see that our departure was

viewed almost with consternation. It is Maud's loss that will be felt.

I have lived very selfishly and dully myself, but even so I was

half-glad to find that even I should be missed. At such a time

everything is forgotten and forgiven, and such grudging, peaceful

neighbourliness as even I have shown seems appreciated and valued. It

was a heartrending business reviving our sorrow, and it plunged me for

a time into my old dry bitterness of spirit. But I hardened my heart as

best I could, and felt more deeply than ever, how far beyond my powers

of endurance it would have been to have taken up the old life, and Alec

not there. Again and again it was like a knife plunged into my heart

with an almost physical pain. Not so with Maud and Maggie--it was to

them a treasure of precious memories, and they could dare to indulge

their grief. I can't write of it, I can't think of it. Wherever I

turned, I saw him in a hundred guises--as a tiny child, as a small,

sturdy boy, as the son we lost.

We have let the house to some very kind and reasonable people, who have

made things very easy to us; and to me at least it was a sort of heavy

joy to take the last meal in the old home, to drive away, to see the

landscape fade from sight. I shall never willingly return. It would

seem to me like a wilful rolling among the thorns of life, a

gathering-in of spears into one's breast. I seemed like a naked

creature that had lost its skin, that shrank and bled at every touch.

February 10, 1890.

I have been house-hunting, and I do not pretend to dislike it. The

sight of unknown houses, high garden walls, windows looking into blind

courts, staircases leading to lofts, dark cupboards, old lumber, has a

very stimulating effect on my imagination. Perhaps, too, I sometimes

think, these old places are full of haunting spiritual presences,

clinging, half tearfully, half joyfully to the familiar scenes, half

sad, perhaps, that they did not make a finer thing of the little

confined life; half glad to be free--as a man, strong and well, might

look with a sense of security into a room where he had borne an

operation. But I have never believed much in haunted rooms. The

Father's many mansions can be hardly worth deserting for the little,

dark houses of our tiny life.

I disliked some of the houses intensely--so ugly and pretentious, so

inconvenient and dull; but even so it is pleasant in fancy to plan the

life one would live there, the rooms one would use. One house touched

me inexpressibly. It was a house I knew from the outside in a little

town where I used to go and spend a few weeks every year with an old

aunt of mine. The name of the little town--I saw it in an agent's

list--had a sort of enchantment for me, a golden haze of memory. I was

allowed a freedom there I was allowed nowhere else, I was petted and

made much of, and I used to spend most of my time in sauntering about,

just looking, watching, scrutinising things, with the hard and

uncritical observation of childhood. When I got to the place, I was

surprised to find that I knew well the look of the house I went to see,

though I had not ever entered it. Two neat, contented, slightly absurd

old maiden ladies had lived there, who used to walk out together,

dressed exactly alike in some faded fashion. The laurels and yews still

grew thickly in the shrubbery, and shaded the windows of the ugly

little parlours. An old, quiet, respectable maid showed me round; she

had been in service there for twenty years, and she was tearfully

lamenting over the break-up of the home. The old ladies had lived there

for sixty years. One of them had died ten years before, the other had

lingered on to extreme old age. The house was like a museum, a specimen

of a house of the thirties, in which nothing had ever been touched or

changed. The strange wall-papers and chintzes, the crewel-work chairs,

the mirrors, the light maple furniture, the case of moth-eaten

humming-birds, the dull engravings of historical pictures, the old

books--the drawing-room table was covered with annuals and keepsakes,

Moore's poems, Mrs. Barbauld's works--all had a pathetic ugliness,

redeemed by a certain consistency of quality. And then the poky,

comfortable arrangements, the bath-chair in the coach-house, the

four-post bedsteads, the hand-rail on the stairs, the sandbags for the

doors, all spoke of a timid, invalid life, a dim backwater in the tide

of things. There had been children there at some time, for there were

broken toys, collections of dried plants, curious stones, in an attic.

The little drama of the house shaped itself for me, as I walked through

the frowsy, faded rooms, with a touching insistence. This bedroom had

never been used since Miss Eleanor died--and I could fancy the poor,

little, timid, precise life flitting away among the well-known

surroundings. This had been Miss Jackson's favourite room--it was so

quiet--she had died there, sitting in her chair, a few weeks before.

The leisurely, harmless routine of the quiet household rose before me.

I could imagine Miss Jackson writing her letters, reading her book,

eating her small meals, making the same humble and grateful remarks,

entertaining her old friends. Year after year it had gone on, just the

same, the clock ticking loud in the hall, the sun creeping round the

old rooms, the birds singing in the garden, the faint footsteps in the

road. It had begun, that gentle routine, long before I had been born

into the world; and it was strange to me to think that, as I passed

through the most stirring experiences of my life, nothing ever stirred

or moved or altered here. Miss Jackson had felt Miss Eleanor's death

very much; she had hardly ever left the house since, and they had had

no company. Yes, what a woefully bewildering thing death swooping down

into that quiet household, with all its tranquil security, must have

been! One wondered what Miss Eleanor had felt, when she knew she had to

die, to pass out into the unknown dark out of a world so tender, so

familiar, so peaceful; and what had poor Miss Jackson made of it, when

she was left alone? She must have found it all very puzzling, very

dreary. And yet, in the dim past, perhaps one or both of them, had had

dreams of a fuller life, had fancied that something more than

tenderness had looked out of the eyes of a man; well, it had come to

nothing, whatever it might have been; and the two old ladies had

settled down, perhaps with some natural repining, to their unexciting,

contented life, the day filled with little duties and pleasures, the

nights with innocent sleep. It had not been a selfish life--they had

been good to the poor, the maid told me; and in old days they had often

had their nephews and nieces to stay with them. But those children had

grown up and gone out into the world, and no longer cared to return to

the dull little house with its precise ways, and the fidgety love that

had once embraced them.

The whole thing seemed a mysterious mixture of purposelessness and

contentment. Rumours of wars, social convulsions, patriotic hopes,

great ideas, had swept on their course outside, and had never stirred

the drowsy current of life behind the garden walls. The sisters had

lived, sweetly, perhaps, and softly, like trees in some sequestered

woodland, hardly recognising their own gentle lapse of strength and

activity.

And now the whole thing was over for good. Curious and indifferent

people came, tramped about the house, pronounced it old-fashioned and

inconvenient. I could not do that myself; the place was brimful of the

pathetic evidences of what had been. Soon, no doubt, the old house

would wear a different guise--it would be renovated and restored, the

furniture would drift away to second-hand shops, the litter would be

thrown out upon the rubbish-heap. New lives, new relationships would

spring up; children would be born, boys would play, lovers would

embrace, sufferers would lie musing, men and women would die in those

refurbished rooms. Everything would drift onwards, and the lives to

whom each corner, each stair, each piece of furniture had meant so

much, would become a memory first, and then fade into nothingness.

Where and what were the two old ladies now? Were they gone out utterly,

like an extinguished flame? were they in some new home of tranquil

peace? Were they adjusting themselves with a sense of timid

impotence--those slender, tired spirits--to new and bewildering

conditions?

The old, dull house called to me that day with a hundred faint voices

and tremulous echoes. I could make nothing of it; for though it swept

the strings of my heart with a ghostly music, it seemed to have no

certain message for me, but the message of oblivion and silence.

I was sorry, as I went away, to leave the poor maidservant to her

lonely and desolate memories. She had to leave her comfortable kitchen

and her easy routine, for new duties and new faces, and I could see

that she anticipated the change with sad dismay.

It seemed to me in that hour as though the cruelty and the tenderness

of the world were very mysteriously blended--there was no lack of

tenderness in the old house with its innumerable small associations,

its sheltered calm. And then suddenly the stroke must fall, and fall

upon lives whose very security and gentleness seemed to have been so

ill a preparation for sterner and darker things. It would have been

more loving, one thought, either to have made the whole fabric more

austere, more precarious from the first; or else to have bestowed a

deep courage and a fertile hope, a firmer endurance, rather than to

have confronted lives so frail and delicate with the terrors of the

vast unknown.

April 8, 1890.

Our new house is charming, beautiful, homelike. It is an old stone

building, formerly a farm; it has a quaint garden and orchard, and the

wooded hill runs up steeply behind, with a stream in front. It is on

the outskirts of a village, and we are within three miles of Maud's old

home, so that she knows all the country round. We have got two of our

old servants, and a solid comfortable gardener, a native of the place.

The house within is quaint and comfortable. We have a spare bedroom; I

have no study, but shall use the little panelled dining-room. We have

had much to do in settling in, and I have done a great deal of hard

physical work myself, in the way of moving furniture and hanging

pictures, inducing much wholesome fatigue. Maggie, who broke down

dreadfully on leaving the old home, with the wonderful spring that

children have, is full of excitement and even delight in the new house.

I rather dread the time when all our occupations shall be over, and

when we shall settle down to the routine of life. I begin to wonder how

I shall occupy myself. I mean to do a good many odd jobs--we have no

trap, and there will be a good deal of fetching and carrying to be

done. We shall resume our lessons, Maggie and I; there will be reading,

gardening, walking. One ought to be able to live philosophically

enough. What would I not give to be able to write now! but the instinct

seems wholly and utterly dead and gone. I cannot even conceive that I

ever used, solemnly and gravely, to write about imaginary people, their

jests and epigrams, their sorrows and cares. Life and Art! I used to

suppose that it was all a softly moulded, rhythmic, sonorous affair,

strophe and antistrophe; but the griefs and sorrows of art are so much

nearer each other, like major and minor keys, than the griefs and

sorrows of life. In art, the musician smiles and sighs alternately, but

his sighing is a balanced, an ordered mood; the inner heart is content,

as the pool is content, whether it mirrors the sunlight or the lonely

star; but in life, joy is to grief what music is to aching silence,

dumbness, inarticulate pain--though perhaps in that silence one hears a

deeper, stranger sound, the buzz of the whirring atom, the soft thunder

of worlds plunging through the void, joyless, gigantic, oblivious

forces.

Is it good thus to have the veils of life rent asunder? If life, the

world's life, activity, work, be the end of existence, then it is not

good. It breaks the spring of energy, so that one goes heavily and

sorely. But what if that be not the end? What then?

May 16, 1890.

At present the new countryside is a great resource. I walk far among

the wolds; I find exquisite villages, where every stone-built house

seems to have style and quality; I come down upon green water-meadows,

with clear streams flowing by banks set with thorn-bushes and alders.

The churches, the manor-houses, of grey rubble smeared with plaster,

with stone roof-tiles, are a feast for eye and heart. Long days in the

open air bring me a dull equable health of body, a pleasant weariness,

a good-humoured indifference. My mind becomes grass-grown, full of

weeds, ruinous; but I welcome it as at least a respite from suffering.

It is strange to think of myself at what ought, I suppose, to be the

busiest and fullest time of my life, living here like a tree in lonely

fields. What would be the normal life? A little house in a London

street, I suppose, with a lot of white paint and bookshelves.

Luncheons, dinners, plays, music, clubs, week-end visits to lively

houses, a rush abroad, a few country visits in the winter. Very

harmless and pleasant if one enjoyed it, but to me inconceivable and

insupportable. Perhaps I should be happier and brisker, perhaps the

time would go quicker. Ought one to make up one's mind that this would

be the normal life, and that therefore one had better learn to

accommodate oneself to it? Does one pay penalties for not submitting

oneself to the ordinary laws of human intercourse? Doubtless one does.

But then, made as I am, I should have to pay penalties which would seem

to be even heavier for the submission. It is there that the puzzle

lies; that a man should be created with the strong instinct that I feel

for liberty and independence and solitude and the quiet of the country,

and then that he should discover that the life he so desires should be

the one that develops all the worst side of him--morbidity,

fastidiousness, gloom, discontent. This is the shadow of civilisation;

that it makes people intellectual, alert, craving for stimulus, and yet

sucks their nerves dry of the strength that makes such things enjoyable.

And still, as I go in and out, the death of Alec seems the one

absolutely unintelligible and inexplicable thing, a gloom penetrated by

no star. It was the one thing that might have made me unselfish,

tender-hearted, the anxious care of some other than myself. "Perhaps,"

says an old friend writing to me with a clumsy attempt at comfort,

"perhaps he was taken mercifully away from some evil to come." A good

many people say that, and feel it quite honestly. But what an

insupportable idea of the ways of Providence, that God had planned a

prospect for the child so dreadful that even his swift removal should

be tolerable by comparison! What a helpless, hopeless confession of

failure! No; either the whole short life, closed by the premature

death, must have been designed, planned, executed deliberately; or else

God is at the mercy of blank cross-currents, opposing forces,

tendencies even stronger than Himself; and then the very idea of God

crumbles away, and God becomes the blank and inscrutable force working

behind a gentle, good-humoured will, which would be kind and gracious

if it could, but is trammelled and bound by something stronger; that

was the Greek view, of course--God above man, and Fate above God. The

worst of it is that it has a horrible vraisemblance, and seems to lie

even nearer to the facts of life than our own tender-hearted and

sentimental theories and schemes of religion.

But whether it be God or fate, the burden has to be borne. And my one

endeavour must be to bear it myself, consciously and courageously, and

to shift it so far as I can from the gentler and tenderer shoulders of

those whose life is so strangely linked with mine.

May 25, 1890.

One sees a house, like the house we now live in, from a road as one

passes, from the windows of a train. It seems to be set at the end of

the world, with the earth's sunset distance behind it--it seems a

fortress of quiet, a place of infinite peace; and then one lives in it,

and behold, it is a centre of a little active life, with all sorts of

cross-currents darting to and fro, over it, past it.

Or again one thinks, as one sees such a house in passing, that there at

least one could live in meditation and cloistered calm; that there

would be neither cares nor anxieties; that one would be content to sit,

just looking out at the quiet fields, pacing to and fro, receiving

impressions, musing, selecting, apprehending--and then one lives there,

and the stream of life is as turbid, as fretful as ever. The strange

thing is that such delusions survive any amount of experience; that one

cannot read into other lives the things that trouble one's own.

A little definite scheme opens before us here; old friends of Maud's

find us out, simple, kindly, tiresome people. There is an exchange of

small civilities, there are duties, activities, relationships. To Maud

these things come by the light of nature; to her the simplest

interchange of definite thoughts is as natural as to breathe. I hear

her calm, sweet, full voice answering, asking. To me these things are

utterly wearisome and profitless. I want only to speak of the things

for which I care, and to people attuned to the same key of thought; a

basis of sympathy and temperamental differences--that is the perfect

union of qualities for a friend. But these stolid, kindly parsons, with

brisk, active wives, ingenuous daughters, heavy sons--I want either to

know them better, or not to know them at all. I want to enter the

house, the furnished chambers of people's minds; and I am willing

enough to throw my own open to a cordial guest; but I do not want to

stand and chatter in some debatable land of social conventionality. I

have no store of simple geniality. The other night we went to dine

quietly with a parson near here, a worthy fellow, happy and useful.

Afterwards, in the drawing-room, I sate beside my host. I saw Maud

listening, with rapt interest, to the chronicles of all the village

families, robustly and unimaginatively told by the parson's wife;

meanwhile I, tortured by intolerable ennui, pumped up questions, tried

a hundred subjects with my worthy host. He told me long and prolix

stories, he discoursed on rural needs. At last I said that we must be

going; he replied with genuine disappointment that the night was still

young, and that it was a pity to break up our pleasant confabulation. I

saw with a shock of wonder that he had evidently been enjoying himself

hugely; that it was a pleasure to him, for some unaccountable reason,

not to hear a new person talk, but to say the same things that he had

said for years, to a new person. It is not ideas that most people want;

they are satisfied with mere gregariousness, the sight and sound of

other figures. They like to produce the same stock of ideas, the same

conclusions. "As I always say," was a phrase that was for ever on my

entertainer's lips. I suppose that probably my own range is just as

limited, but I have an Athenian hankering after novelty of thought, the

new mintage of the mind. I loathe the old obliterated coinage, with the

stamp all rounded and faint. Dulness, sameness, triteness, are they

essential parts of life? I suppose it is really that my nervous energy

is low, and requires stimulus: if it were strong and full, the current

would flow into the trivial things. I derive a certain pleasure from

the sight of other people's rooms, the familiar, uncomfortable, shabby

furniture, the drift of pictures, the debris of ornament--all that

stands for difference and individuality. But one can't get inside most

people's minds; they only admit one to the public rooms. A crushing

fatigue and depression settles down upon me in such hours, and then the

old blank sense of grief and loss comes flowing back--it is old

already, because it seems to have stained all the backward pages of

life; then follows the weary, restless night; and the breaking of the

grey, pitiless dawn.

June 3, 1890.

I do not want, even in my thoughts, to put the contemplative life above

the practical life. Highest of all I would put a combination of the

two--a man of high and clear ideals, in a position where he was able to

give them shape--a great constructive statesman, a great educator, a

great man of business, who was also keenly alive to social problems, a

great philanthropist. Next to these I would put great thinkers,

moralists, poets--all who inspire. Then I would put the absolutely

effective instruments of great designs--legislators, lawyers, teachers,

priests, doctors, writers--men without originality, but with a firm

conception of civic and human duty. And then I would put all those who,

in a small sphere, exercise a direct, quiet, simple influence--and then

come the large mass of mankind; people who work faithfully, from

instinct and necessity, but without any particular design or desire,

except to live honestly, honourably, and respectably, with no urgent

sense of the duty of serving others, taking life as it comes, practical

individualists, in fact. No higher than these, but certainly no lower,

I should put quiet, contemplative, reflective people, who are

theoretical individualists. They are not very effective people

generally, and they have a certain poetical quality; they cannot

originate, but they can appreciate. I look upon all these

individualists, whether practical or theoretical, as the average mass

of humanity, the common soldiers, so to speak, as distinguished from

the officers. Life is for them a discipline, and their raison d'etre is

that of the learner, as opposed to that of the teacher. To all of them,

experience is the main point; they are all in the school of God; they

are being prepared for something. The object is that they should

apprehend something, and the channel through which it comes matters

little. They do the necessary work of the world; they support

themselves, and they support those who from infirmity, weakness, age,

or youth cannot support themselves. There is room, I think, in the

world for both kinds of individualist, though the contemplative

individualists are in the minority; and perhaps it must be so, because

a certain lassitude is characteristic of them. If they were in the

majority in any nation, one would have a simple, patient, unambitious

race, who would tend to become the subjects of other more vigorous

nations: our Indian empire is a case in point. Probably China is a

similar nation, preserved from conquest by its inaccessibility and its

numerical force. Japan is an instance of the strange process of a

contemplative nation becoming a practical one. The curious thing is

that Christianity, which is essentially a contemplative, unmilitant,

unpatriotic, unambitious force, decidedly oriental in type, should have

become, by a mysterious transmutation, the religion of active,

inventive, conquering nations. I have no doubt that the essence of

Christianity lies in a contemplative simplicity, and that it is in

strong opposition to what is commonly called civilisation. It aims at

improving society through the uplifting of the individual, not at

uplifting the individual through social agencies. We have improved upon

that in our latter-day wisdom, for the Christian ought to be inherently

unpatriotic, or rather his patriotism ought to be of an all-embracing

rather than of an antagonistic kind. I do not want to make lofty

excuses for myself; my own unworldliness is not an abnegation at all,

but a deliberate preference for obscurity. Still I should maintain that

the vital and spiritual strength of a nation is measured, not by the

activity of its organisations, but by the number of quiet, simple,

virtuous, and high-minded persons that it contains. And thus, in my own

case, though the choice is made for me by temperament and

circumstances, I have no pricking of conscience on the subject of my

scanty activities. It is not mere activity that makes the difference.

The danger of mere activity is that it tends to make men complacent, to

lead them to think that they are following the paths of virtue, when

they are only enmeshed in conventionality. The dangers of the quiet

life are indolence, morbidity, sloth, depression, unmanliness; but I

think that it develops humility, and allows the daily and hourly

message of God to sink into the soul. After all, the one supreme peril

is that of self-satisfaction and finality. If a man is content with

what he is, there is nothing to make him long for what is higher. Any

one who looks around him with a candid gaze, becomes aware that our

life is and must be a provisional one, that it has somehow fallen short

of its possibilities. To better it is the best of all courses; but next

to that it is more desirable that men should hope for and desire a

greater harmony of things, than that they should acquiesce in what is

so strangely and sadly amiss.

June 18, 1890.

I have made a new friend, whose contact and example help me so

strangely and mysteriously, that it seems to me almost as though I had

been led hither that I might know him. He is an old and lonely man, a

great invalid, who lives at a little manor-house a mile or two away.

Maud knew him by name, but had never seen him. He wrote me a courtly

kind of note, apologising for being unable to call, and expressing a

hope that we might be able to go and see him. The house stands on the

edge of the village, looking out on the churchyard, a many-gabled

building of grey stone, a long flagged terrace in front of it,

terminated by posts with big stone balls; a garden behind, and a wood

behind that--the whole scene unutterably peaceful and beautiful. We

entered by a little hall, and a kindly, plain, middle-aged woman, with

a Quaker-like precision of mien and dress, came out to greet us, with a

fresh kindliness that had nothing conventional about it. She said that

her uncle was not very well, but she thought he would be able to see

us. She left us for a moment. There was a cleanness and a fragrance

about the old house that was very characteristic. It was most simply,

even barely furnished, but with a settled, ancient look about it, that

gave one a sense of long association. She presently returned, and said,

smiling, that her uncle would like to see us, but separately, as he was

very far from strong. She took Maud away, and returning, walked with me

round the garden, which had the same dainty and simple perfection about

it. I could see that my hostess had the poetical passion for flowers;

she knew the names of all, and spoke of them almost as one might of

children. This was very wilful and impatient, and had to be kept in

good order; that one required coaxing and tender usage. We went on to

the wood, in all its summer foliage, and she showed us a little arbour

where her uncle loved to sit, and where the birds would come at his

whistle. "They are looking at us out of the trees everywhere," she

said, "but they are shy of strangers"--and indeed we heard soft

chirping and rustling everywhere. An old dog and a cat accompanied us.

She drew my attention to the latter. "Look at Pippa," she said, "she is

determined to walk with us, and equally determined not to seem to need

our company, as if she had come out of her own accord, and was

surprised to find us in her garden." Pippa, hearing her name mentioned,

stalked off with an air of mystery and dignity into the bushes, and we

could see her looking out at us; but when we continued our stroll, she

flew out past us, and walked on stiffly ahead. "She gets a great deal

of fun out of her little dramas," said Miss ----. "Now poor old Rufus

has no sense of drama or mystery--he is frankly glad of our company in

a very low and common way--there is nothing aristocratic about him."

Old Rufus looked up and wagged his tail humbly. Presently she went on

to talk about her uncle, and contrived to tell me a great deal in a

very few words. I learnt that he was the last male representative of an

old family, who had long held the small estate here; that after a

distinguished Oxford career, he had met with a serious accident that

had made him a permanent invalid. That he had settled down here, not

expecting to live more than a few years, and that he was now over

seventy; it had been the quietest of lives, she said, and a very happy

one, too, in spite of his disabilities. He read a great deal, and

interested himself in local affairs, but sometimes for weeks together

could do nothing. I gathered that she was his only surviving relation,

and had lived with him from her childhood. "You will think," she added,

laughing, "that he is the kind of person who is shown by his friends as

a wonderful old man, and who turns out to be a person like the

patriarch Casby, in Little Dorrit, whose sanctity, like Samson's,

depended entirely upon the length of his hair. But he is not in the

least like that, and I will leave you to find out for yourself whether

he is wonderful or not."