It was one of those perfectly fine and radiant days of early summer, with a
touch of easterly about the breeze, which means perhaps a drier air, and
always seems to bring out the true colours of our countryside, as with a
touch of ethereal golden-tinged varnish. The humid rain-washed days, so
common in England, are beautiful enough, with their rolling cloud-ranges
and their soft mistiness: but the clear sparkle of this brighter weather,
summer without its haze, intensifying each tone of colour and sharply
defining each several tint, has a special beauty of form as well as of hue.
I walked with Father Payne far among the fields. He was at first in a
silent mood, observing and enjoying. We passed a field carpeted with
buttercups, and he said, "That's a beautiful touch, 'the flower-enamelled
field'--it isn't just washed with colour, it is like hammered work of
beaten gold, like the letters in old missals!" Presently he burst out into
talk: "I don't want to say anything affected," he began, "but a day like
this, out in the country, gives me a stronger feeling of what I can only
describe as _worship_ than anything else in the world, because the
scene holds the beauty of life so firmly up before you. Worship means the
sense of the unmistakable presence of beauty, I am sure--a beauty great and
overwhelming, which one has had no part in making--'The sea is His, and He
made it, and His hands prepared the dry land. O come, let us worship and
fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker'--it's that exactly--a sense
of joyful abasement in the presence of something great and infinitely
beautiful. I do wish that were more clearly stated and understood and
believed. Religion, as we know it in its technical sense, is so
faint-hearted about it all! It has limited worship to things beautiful
enough, arches and music and ceremony: and it is so afraid of vagueness, so
considerate of man's feeble grasp and small outlook, that it is afraid of
recognising all the channels by which that sense is communicated, for fear
of weakening a special effect. I'll tell you two or three of the
experiences I mean. You know old Mrs. Chetwynd, who is fading away in that
little cottage beyond the churchyard. She is poor, old, ill. She can hardly
be said to have a single pleasure, as you and I reckon pleasures. She just
lies there in that poky room waiting for death, always absolutely patient
and affectionate and sweet-tempered, grateful for everything, never saying
a hard or cross word. Well, I go to see her sometimes--not as often as I
ought. She shakes hands with that old knotted-looking hand of hers which
has grown soft enough now after its endless labours. She talks a
little--she is interested in all the news, she doesn't regret things, or
complain, or think it hard that she can't be out and about. After I have
been with her for two minutes, with her bright old eyes looking at me out
of such a thicket, so to speak, of wrinkles,--her face simply hacked and
seamed by life,--I feel myself in the presence of something very divine
indeed,--a perfectly pure, tender, joyful, human spirit, suffering the last
extremity of discomfort and infirmity, and yet entirely radiant and
undimmed. It is then that I feel inclined to kneel down before God, and
thank Him humbly for having made and shown me so utterly beautiful a thing
as that poor old woman's courage and sweetness. I feel as I suppose the
devout Catholic feels before the reserved Sacrament in the shrine--in the
presence of a divine mystery; and I rejoice silently that God is what He
is, and that I see Him for once unveiled.
"And then the sight of a happy and contented child, kind and spirited and
affectionate, like little Molly Akers, never making a fuss, or seeming to
want things for herself, or cross, or tiresome--that gives me the same
feeling! Then flowers often give me the same feeling, with their cleanness
and fresh beauty and pure outline and sweet scent--so useless in a way,
often so unregarded, and yet so content just to be what they are, so apart
from every stain and evil passion.
"And then in the middle of that you see a man like Barlow stumbling home
tipsy to his frightened wife and children, or you read a bad case in the
papers, or a letter from a man of virtue finding fault with everybody and
slinging pious Billingsgate about: or I lose my own temper about something,
and feel I have made a hash of my life--and then I wonder what is the foul
poison that has got into things, and what is the dismal ugliness that seems
smeared all over life, so that the soul seems like a beautiful bird caught
in a slime-pit, and trying to struggle out, with its pinions fouled and
dabbled, wondering miserably what it has done to be so filthily hampered."
He stopped for a minute, and I could see that his eyes were full of tears.
"It is no good giving up the game!" he said. "We are in the devil of a
mess, no doubt: and even if we try our best to avoid it, we dip into the
slime sometimes! But we must hold fast to the beautiful things, and be on
the look-out for them everywhere. Not shut our eyes in a rapture of
sentiment, and think that we can:
"'Walk all day, like the Sultan of old, in a garden
of spice!'
"That won't do, of course! We can't get out of it like that! But we must
never allow ourselves to doubt the beauty and goodness of God, or make any
mistake about which side He is on. The marvel of dear old Mrs. Chetwynd is
just that beauty has triumphed, in spite of everything. With every kind of
trouble, every temptation to be dispirited and spiteful and wretched, that
fine spirit has got through--and, by George, I envy her the awakening, when
that sweet old soul slips away from the cage where she is caught, and goes
straight to the arms of God!"
He turned away from me as he said this, and I could see that he struggled
with a sob. Then he looked at me with a smile, and put his arm in mine.
"Old man," he said, "I oughtn't to behave like this--but a day like this,
when the world looks as it was meant to look, and as, please God, it
_will_ look more and more, goes to my heart! I seem to see what God
desires, and what He can't bring about yet, for all His pains. And I want
to help Him, if I can!
"'We too! We ask no pledge of grace,
No rain of fire, no heaven-hung sign.
Thy need is written on Thy face--
Take Thou our help, as we take Thine!'
"That's what I mean by worship--the desire to be _used_ in the service
of a Power that longs to make things pure and happy, with groanings that
cannot be uttered. The worst of some kinds of worship is that they drug you
with a sort of lust for beauty, which makes you afraid to go back and pick
up your spade. We mustn't swoon in happiness or delight, but if we say
'Take me, use me, let me help!' it is different, because we want to share
whatever is given us, to hand it on, not to pile it up. Of course it's
little enough that we can do: but think of old Mrs. Chetwynd again--what
has she to give? Yet it is more than Solomon in all his beauty had to
offer. We must be simple, we mustn't be ambitious. Do you remember the old
statesman who, praising a disinterested man, said that he was that rare and
singular type of man who did public work for the sake of the public? That's
what I want you to do--that is what a writer can do. He can remind the
world of beauty and simplicity and purity. He can be 'a messenger, an
interpreter, one among a thousand, _to show unto man his
uprightness_!' That's what you have got to do, old boy! Don't show unto
man his nastiness--don't show him up! Keep on reminding him of what he
really is or can be."
He went on after a moment. "I ought not to talk like this," he said,
"because I have failed all along the line. 'I put in my thumb and pull out
a plum,' like Jack Homer. I try a little to hand it on, but it is awfully
nice, you know, that plum! I don't pretend it isn't."
"Why, Father," I said, much moved at his kind sincerity, "I don't know
anyone in the world who eats fewer of his plums than you!"
"Ah, that's a friendly word!" said Father Payne. "But you can't count the
plum-stones on my plate."
We did not say much after this. We walked back in the summer twilight, and
my mind began to stir and soar, as indeed it often did when Father Payne
showed me his heart in all its strength and cleanness. No one whom I ever
met had his power of lighting a flame of pure desire and beautiful
hopefulness, in the fire of which all that was base and mean seemed to
shrivel away.