One day, to my surprise and delight, Father Payne indulged in some personal
reminiscences about his early life. He did not as a rule do this. He used
to say that it was the surest sign of decadence to think much about the
past. "Sometimes when I wake early," he said, "I find myself going back to
my childhood, and living through scene after scene. It's not wholesome--I
always know I am a little out of sorts when I do that--it is only one
degree better than making plans about the future!"
However, on this occasion he was very communicative. He had been talking
about Ruskin, and he said: "Do you remember in _Praeterita_ how
Ruskin, writing about his sheltered and complacent childhood, describes how
entirely he lived in the pleasure of _sight_? He noticed everything,
the shapes and colours of things, the almond blossom, the ants that made
nests in the garden walk, the things they saw in their travels. He was
entirely absorbed in sense-impressions. Well, that threw a light on my own
life, because it was exactly what happened to me as a child. I lived wholly
in observation. I had no mind and very little heart. I suppose that I had
so much to do looking at everything, getting the shapes and the textures
and the qualities of everything by heart, that I had no time to think about
ideas and emotions. I had a very lonely childhood, you know, brought up in
the country by my mother, who was rather an invalid, my father being dead.
I had no companions to speak of, and I didn't care about anyone or need
anyone--it was all simply a collecting of impressions. The result is that I
can visualise anything and everything--speak of a larch-bud or a fir-cone,
and there it is before me--the little rosy fragrant tuft, or the glossy
rectangular squares of the cone. Then I went to Marlborough, and I was
dreadfully unhappy, I hated everything and everybody--the ugliness and
slovenliness of it all, the noise, the fuss, the stink. I did not feel I
had anything in common with those little brutes, as I thought them. I lived
the life of a blind creature in a fright, groping aimlessly about. I joined
in nothing--but I was always strong, and so I was left alone. No one dared
to interfere with me; and I have sometimes wished I hadn't been so strong,
that I had had the experience of being weak. I dare say that nasty things
might have happened--but I should have known more what the world was like,
I should have depended more upon other people, I should have made friends.
As it was, I left school entirely innocent, very solitary, very modest,
thinking myself a complete duffer, and everyone else a beast. It got a
little better at the end of my time, and I had a companion or two--but I
never dreamed of telling anyone what I was really thinking about."
He broke off suddenly. "This is awful twaddle!" he said. "Why should you
care to hear about all this? I was thinking aloud."
"Do go on thinking aloud a little," I said; "it is most interesting!"
"Ah," he said, "with the flatterers were busy mockers! You enjoy staring
and looking upon me."
"No, no," I said, rather nettled. "Father Payne, don't you understand? I
want to hear more about you. I want to know how you came to be what you
are: it interests me more than I can say. You asked me about myself when I
came here, and I told you. Why shouldn't I ask you, for a change?"
He smiled, obviously pleased at this. "Why, then," he said, "I'll go on.
I'm not above liking to tell my tale, like the Ancient Mariner. You can
beat your breast when you are tired of it." He was intent for a moment, and
then went on. "Well, I went up to Oxford--to Corpus. A funny little place,
I now think--rather intellectual. I could hardly believe my senses when I
found how different it was from school, and how independent. Heavens, how
happy I was! I made some friends--I found I could make friends after all--I
could say what I liked, I could argue, I could even amuse them. I really
couldn't make you realise how I adored some of those men. I used to go to
sleep after a long evening of chatter, simply hating the darkness which
separated me from life and company. There were two in particular, very
ordinary young men, I expect. But they were fond of me, and liked being
with me, and I thought them the most wonderful and enchanting persons, with
a wide knowledge of the great mysterious world. The world! It wasn't, I
saw, a nasty, jostling place, as I had thought at school, but a great
beautiful affair, full of love and delight, of interest and ideas. I read,
I talked, I flew about--it was simply a new birth! I felt like a prisoner
suddenly released. Of course, the mischief was that I neglected my work.
There wasn't time for that: and I fell in love, too, or thought I did, with
the sister of one of those friends, with whom I went to stay. I wonder if
anyone was ever in love like that! I daresay it's common enough. But I
won't go into that; these raptures are for private consumption. I was
roughly jerked up. I took a bad degree. My mother died--I had very little
in common with her: she was an invalid without any hold on life, and I took
no trouble to be kind to her--I was perfectly selfish and wilful. Then I
had to earn my living. I would have given anything to stay at Oxford: and
you know, even now, when I think of Oxford, a sort of electric shock goes
through me, I love it so much. I daren't even set foot there, I'm so afraid
of finding it altered. But when I think of those dark courts and bowery
gardens, and the men moving about, and the fronts of blistered stone, and
the little quaint streets, and the meadows and elms, and the country all
about, I have a physical yearning that is almost a pain--a sort of
home-sickness--"
He broke off, and was silent for a moment, and I saw that his eyes were
full of tears.
"Then it was London, that accursed place! I had a tiny income: I got a job
at a coaching establishment, I worked like the devil. That was a cruel
time. I couldn't dream of marriage--that all vanished, and she married
pretty soon, I couldn't get a holiday--I was too poor. I tried writing, but
I made a hash of that. I simply went down into hell. One of my great
friends died, and the other--well, it was awkward to meet, when I had had
to break it off with his sister. I simply can't describe to you how utterly
horrible it all was. I used to teach all the terms, and in the vacations I
simply mooned about. I hadn't a club, and I used to read at the
Museum--read just to keep my senses. Then, I suppose I got used to it. Of
course, if I had had any adventurousness in me, I should have gone off and
become a day-labourer or anything--but I am not that sort of person.
"That went on till I was about thirty-three--and then quite suddenly, and
without any warning, I had my experience. I suppose that something was
going on inside me all the time, something being burnt out of me in those
fires. It was a mixture of selfishness and stupidity and perverseness that
was the matter with me. I didn't see that I could do anything. I was simply
furious with the world for being such a hole, and with God for sticking me
in the middle of it. The occasion of the change was simply too ridiculous.
It was nothing else but coming back to my rooms and finding a big bowl of
daffodils there. They had been left, my landlady told me, by a young
gentleman. It sounds foolish enough--but it suddenly occurred to me to
think that someone was interested in me, pitied me, cared for me. A sort of
mist cleared away from my eyes, and I saw in a flash, what was the
mischief--that I had walled myself in by my misery and bad temper, and by
my expectation that something must be done for me. The next day I had to
take a lot of pupils, one after another, for composition. One of them had a
daffodil in his hand, which he put down carelessly on the table. I stared
at it and at him, and he blushed. He wasn't an interesting young man to
look at or to talk to--but it was just a bit of simple humanity. It all
came out. I had been good to him--I looked as if I were having a bad time.
It was just a little human, signal, and a beautiful one. It was there,
then, all the time, I saw--human affection--if I cared to put out my hand
for it. I can't describe to you how it all developed, but my heart had
melted somehow--thawed like a lump of ice. I saw that there was no specific
ill-will to me in the world. I saw that everything was there, if I only
chose to take it. That was my second awakening--a glimmer of light through
a chink--and suddenly, it was day! I had been growling over bones and straw
in a filthy kennel, and I was not really tied up at all. Life was running
past me, a crystal river. I was dying of thirst: and all because it was not
given me in a clean glass on a silver tray, I would not drink it--and God
smiling at me all the time."
Father Payne walked on in silence.
"The truth is, my boy," he said a minute later, "that I'm a converted man,
and it isn't everyone who can say that--nor do I wish everyone to be
converted, because it's a ghastly business preparing for the operation. It
isn't everyone who needs it--only those self-willed, devilish, stand-off,
proud people, who have to be braised in a mortar and pulverised to atoms.
Then, when you are all to bits, you can be built up. Do you remember that
stone we broke the other day? Well, I was a melted blob of stone, and then
I was crystallised--now I'm full of eyes within! And the best of it is that
they are little living eyes, and not sparkling flints--they see, they don't
reflect! At least I think so; and I don't think trouble is brewing for me
again--though that is always the danger!"