I was walking with Father Payne in the garden one day of spring. I think I
liked him better when I was alone with him than I did when we were all
together. His mind expanded more tenderly and simply--less
epigrammatically. He spoke of this once to me, saying: "I am at my best
when alone; even one companion deflects me. I find myself wishing to please
him, pinching off roughnesses, perfuming truth, diplomatising. This ought
not to be, of course; and if one was not thorny, self-assertive, stupid, it
would not be so; and every companion added makes me worse, because the
strain of accommodation grows--I become vulgar and rough and boisterous in
a large circle. I often feel: 'How these young men must be hating this
gibbering and giggling ape, which after all is not really me!'" I tried to
reassure him, but he shook his head, though with a smiling air. "Barthrop
is not like that," he said, "the wise Barthrop! He is never suspicious or
hasty--he does not think it necessary to affirm; yet you are never in any
doubt what he thinks! He moves along like water, never anxious if he is
held up or divided, creeping on as the land lies--that is the right way."
Presently he stopped, and looked long at some daffodil blades which were
thrusting up in a sheltered place. "Look at the gray bloom on those
blades," he said; "isn't that perfect? Fancy thinking of that--each of them
so obviously the same thought taking shape, yet each of them different. Do
not you see in them something calm, continuous, active--happy, in fact--at
work; often tripped up and imprisoned, and thwarted--but moving on?" He was
silent a little, and then he said: "This force of _life_--what a
fascinating mystery it is--never dying, never ceasing, always coming back
to shape itself into matter. I wonder sometimes it is not content to exist
alone; but no, it is always back again, arranging matter, manipulating it
into beautiful shapes and creatures, never discouraged; even when the plant
falls ill and begins to pine away, the happy life is within it--languid
perhaps, but just waiting for the release, till the cage in which it has
imprisoned itself is opened, and then--so I believe--back again in an
instant somewhere else.
"I am inclined to believe," he went on, "that that is what we are all
about; it seems to me the only explanation for the fact that we care so
much about the past and the future. If we are creatures of a day, why
should we be interested? The only reason we care about the past is because
we ourselves were there in it; and we care about the future because we
shall be there in it again."
"You mean a sort of re-incarnation," I said.
"That's an ugly word for a beautiful thing," he said. "But this love of
life, this impulse to live, to protect ourselves, to keep ourselves alive,
must surely mean that we have always lived and shall always live. Some
people think that dreadful. They think it is taking liberties with them. If
they are rich and comfortable and dignified, they cannot bear to think that
they may have to begin again, perhaps as a baby in a slum--or they grow
tired, and think they want rest; but we can't rest--we must live again, we
must be back at work; and of course the real hope in it all is that, when
we do anything to make the world happier, it is our own future that we are
working for. Who could care about the future of the world, if he was to be
banished from it for ever? I was reading a book the other day, in which a
wise and a good man said that he felt about the future progress of the
world as Moses did about the promised land, 'not as of something we want to
have for ourselves, but as of something which we want to exist, whether we
exist or no,' I can't take so impersonal a view! If one really believed
that one was going to be extinguished in death, one would care no more
about the world's future than one cares where the passengers in a train are
going to, when we get out at a station. Who, on arriving at home, can lose
himself in wondering where his fellow-travellers have got to? We have
better things to do than that! That is the sham altruism. It is as if a boy
at school, instead of learning his own lesson, spent his time in imploring
the other boys to learn theirs. That is what we are whipped for--for not
learning our own lesson."
"But if all this is so," I said, "why don't we _know_ that we shall
live again? Why is the one thing which is important for us to know hidden
from us?"
"I think we do know it," said Father Payne, "deep down in ourselves. It is
why it is worth while to go on living. If we believed our reason, which
tells us that we come to an end and sink into silence, we could not care to
live, to suffer, to form passionate ties which must all be severed, only to
sink into nothingness ourselves. If we will listen to our instincts, they
assure us that it _is_ all worth doing, because it all has a
significance for us in the life that comes next."
"But if we are to go on living," I said, "are we to forget all the love and
interest and delight of life? There seems no continuance of identity
without memory."
"Oh," said Father Payne, "that is another delusion of reason. Our qualities
remain--our power of being interested, of loving, of caring, of suffering.
We practise them a little in one life, we practise them again in the
next--that is why we improve. I forget who it was who said it, but it is
quite true, that there are numberless people now alive, who, because of
their orderliness, their patience, their kindness, their sweetness, would
have been adored as saints if they had lived in mediaeval times. And that
is the best reason we have for suppressing as far as we can our evil
dispositions, and for living bravely and freely in happy energy, that we
shall make a little better start next time. It is not the particular people
we love who matter--it is the power of loving other people--and if we meet
the same people as those we loved again, we shall love them again; and if
we do not, why, there will be others to love. One of the worst limitations
I feel is the fact that there are so many thousand people on earth whom I
could love, if I could but meet them--and I am not going to believe that
this wretched span of days is my only chance of meeting them. We need not
be in a hurry--and yet we have no time to waste!"
He stopped for a moment, and then added: "When I lived in London, and was
very poor, and had either too much or not enough to do, and was altogether
very unhappy, I used to wander about the streets and wonder how I could be
so much alone when there were so many possible friends. Just above Ludgate
Railway Viaduct, as you go to St. Paul's, there is a church on your left, a
Wren church, very plain, of white and blackened stone, and an odd lead
spire at the top. It has hardly any ornament, but just over the central
doorway, under a sort of pediment, there is a little childish angel's head,
a beautiful little baby face, with such an expression of stifled
bewilderment. It seems to say, 'Why should I hang here, covered with soot,
with this mob of people jostling along below, in all this noise and dirt?'
The child looks as if it was just about to burst into tears. I used to feel
like that. I used to feel that I was meant to be happy, and even to make
people happy, and that I had been caught and pinned down in a sort of
pillory. It's a grievous mistake to feel like that. Self-pity is the worst
of all luxuries! But I think I owe all my happiness to that bad time.
Coming here was like a resurrection; and I never grudged the time when I
was face to face with a nasty, poky, useless life. And if that can happen
inside a single existence, I am not going to despair about the possibility
of its happening in many existences. I dreamed the other night that I saw a
party of little angels singing a song together, all absorbed in making
music, and I recognised the little child of Ludgate Hill in the middle of
them singing loud and clear. He gave me a little smile and something like a
wink, and I knew that he had got his promotion. We ought all of us, and
always, to be expecting that. But we have got to earn it, of course. It
does not come if we wait with folded hands."