"I'm feeling low to-night," said Father Payne in answer to a question about
his prolonged silence. "I'm not myself: virtue has gone out of me--I'm in
the clutches of a bloodsucker."
"Old debts with compound interest?" said Rose cheerfully.
"Yes," said Father Payne with a frown; "old emotional I.O.U.'s. I didn't
know what I was putting my name to."
"A man or a woman?" said Rose.
"Thank God, it's a man!" said Father Payne. "Female bloodsuckers are worse
still. A man, at all events, only wants the blood; a woman wants the
pleasure of seeing you wince as well!"
"It sounds very tragic," said Kaye.
"No, it's not tragic," said Father Payne; "there would be something
dignified about that! It's only unutterably low and degrading. Come, I'll
tell you about it. It will do me good to get it off my chest.
"It is one of my old pupils," Father Payne went on. "He once got into
trouble about money, and I paid his debts--he can't forgive me that!"
"Does he want you to pay some more?" said Rose.
"Yes, he does," said Father Payne, "but he wants to be high-minded too. He
wants me to press him to take the money, to prevail upon him to accept it
as a favour. He implies that if I hadn't begun by paying his debts
originally, he would not have ever acquired what he calls 'the unhappy
habit of dependence.' Of course he doesn't think that really: he wants the
money, but he also wants to feel dignified. 'If I thought it would make you
happier if I accepted it,' he says, 'of course I should view the matter
differently. It would give me a reason for accepting what I must confess
would be a humiliation,' Isn't that infernal? Then he says that I may
perhaps think that his troubles have coarsened him, but that he unhappily
retains all his old sensitiveness. Then he goes on to say that it was I who
encouraged him to preserve a high standard of delicacy in these matters."
"He must be a precious rascal," said Vincent.
"No, he isn't," said Father Payne, "that's the worst of it--but he is a
frantic poseur. He has got so used to talking and thinking about his
feelings, that he doesn't know what he really does feel. That's the part of
it which bothers me: because if he was a mere hypocrite, I would say so
plainly. One must not be taken in by apparent hypocrisy. It often
represents what a man did once really think, but which has become a mere
memory. One must not be hard on people's reminiscences. Don't you know how
the mildest people are often disposed to make out that they were reckless
and daring scapegraces at school? That isn't a lie; it is imagination
working on very slender materials."
We laughed at this, and then Barthrop said, "Let me write to him, Father. I
won't be offensive."
"I know you wouldn't," said Father Payne; "but no one can help me. It's not
my fault, but my misfortune. It all comes of acting for the best. I ought
to have paid his debts, and made myself thoroughly unpleasant about it.
What I did was to be indulgent and sympathetic. It's all that accursed
sentimentality that does it. I have been trying to write a letter to him
all the morning, showing him up to himself without being brutal. But he
will only write back and say that I have made him miserable, and that I
have wholly misunderstood him: and then I shall explain and apologise; and
then he will take the money to show that he forgives me. I see a horrible
vista of correspondence ahead. After four or five letters, I shall not have
the remotest idea what it is all about, and he will be full of reproaches.
He will say that it isn't the first time that he has found how the increase
of wealth makes people ungenerous. Oh, don't I know every step of the way!
He is going to have the money, and he is going to put me in the wrong: that
is his plan, and it is going to come off. I shall be in the wrong: I feel
in the wrong already!"
"Then in that case there is certainly no necessity for losing the money
too!" said Rose.
"It's all very well for you to talk in that impersonal way, Rose," said
Father Payne. "Of course I know very well that you would handle the
situation kindly and decisively; but you don't know what it is to suffer
from politeness like a disease. I have done nothing wrong except that I
have been polite when I might have been dry. I see right through the man,
but he is absolutely impervious; and it is my accursed politeness that
makes it impossible for me to say bluntly what I know he will dislike and
what he genuinely will not understand. I know what you are thinking, every
one of you--that I say lots of things that you dislike--but then you
_do_ understand! I could no more tell this wretch the truth than I
could trample on a blind old man."
"What will you really do?" said Barthrop.
"I shall send him the money," said Father Payne firmly, "and I shall
compliment him on his delicacy; and then, thank God, I shall forget, until
it all begins again. I am a wretched old opportunist, of course; a sort of
Ally Sloper--not fit company for strong and concise young men!"