Father Payne, on our walks, invariably stopped and spoke to animals. I will
not say that animals were always fond of him, because that is a privilege
confined to saints, and heroes of romantic legends. But they generally
responded to his advances. It used to amuse me to hear the way he used to
talk to animals. He would stop to whistle to a caged bird: "You like your
little prison, don't you, sweet?" he would say. Or he would apostrophise a
cat, "Well, Ma'am, you must find it wearing to carry on your expeditions
all night, and to live the life of a domestic saint all day?" I asked him
once why he did not keep a dog, when he was so fond of animals. "Oh, I
couldn't," he said; "it is so dreadful when dogs get old and ill, and when
they die! It's sentiment, too; and I can't afford to multiply
emotions--there are too many as it is! Besides, there is something rather
terrible to me about the affection of a dog--it's so unreasonable a
devotion, and I like more critical affections--I prefer to earn affection!
I read somewhere the other day," he went on, "that it might easily be
argued that the dog was a higher flight of nature even than man; that man
has gone ahead in mind and inventiveness; but that the dog is on the whole
the better Christian, because he does by instinct what man fails to do by
intention--he is so sympathetic, so unresentful, so trustful! It is really
amazing, if you come to think of it, the dog's power of attachment to
another species. We must seem very mysterious to dogs, and yet they never
question our right to use them as we will, while nothing shakes their love.
And then there is something wonderful in the way in which the dog, however
old he is, always wants to play. Most animals part with that after their
first youth; but a dog plays, partly for the fun of it, and partly to make
sure that you like his company and are happy. And yet it is a little
undignified to care for people like that, you know!"
"How ought one to care for people?" I said.
"Ah, that's a large question," said Father Payne, "the duty of loving--it's
a contradiction in terms! To love people seems the one thing in the world
you cannot do because you ought to do it; and yet to love your neighbour as
yourself can't _only_ mean to behave _as if_ you loved him. And
then, what does caring about people mean? It seems impossible to say. It
isn't that you want anything which they can give you--it isn't that they
need anything you can give them; it isn't always even that you want to see
them. There are people for whom I care who rather bore me; there are people
who care for me who bore me to extinction; and again there are people whose
company I like for whom I don't care. It isn't always by any means that I
admire the people for whom I care. I see their faults, I don't want to
resemble them. Then, too, there have been people for whom I have cared very
much, and wanted to please, who have not cared in the least for me. Some of
the best-loved people in the world seem to have had very little love to
give away! I have a sort of feeling that the people who evoke most
affection are the people who have something of the child always in
them--something petulant, wilful, self-absorbed, claiming sympathy and
attention. It is a certain innocence and freshness that we love, I think;
the quality that seems to say, 'Oh, do make me happy'; and I think that
caring for people generally means just that you would like to make them
happy, or that they have it in their power to make you happy. I think it is
a kind of conspiracy to be happy together, if possible. Probably the
mistake we make is to think it is one definite thing, when a good many
things go to make it up. I have been interested in a very large number of
people--in fact, I am generally interested in people; but I haven't cared
for all of them, while I have cared for a good many people in whom I have
not been at all interested. But it is easier to say what the qualities are
that repel affection, than what the qualities are which attract it. I don't
think any faults prevent it, if people are sorry for their faults and are
sorry to have hurt you. It seems to me impossible to care for spiteful
people, or for the people who turn on you in a sudden anger, and don't want
to be forgiven, but are glad to have made you fear them. I don't care for
people who claim affection as a right, or who bargain for sacrifices. The
bargaining element must be wholly absent from affection. The feeling 'it is
your turn to be nice' is fatal to it. No, I think that it is a feeling that
you can live at peace with the particular person that is the basis of
friendship. The element of reproach must be wholly absent: I don't mean the
element of criticism--that can be impersonal--but the feeling 'you ought
not to behave like this to me.'"
Father Payne relapsed into silence. "But," I said, "surely the people who
make claims for affection are very often most beloved, even when they are
unjust, inconsiderate, ill-tempered?"
"By women," said Father Payne, "but not by men--and there's another
difficulty. Men and women mean such utterly different things by affection,
that they can't even discuss it together. Women will do anything for you,
if you claim their help, and make it clear that you need them; they will
love you if you do that. A man, on the other hand, will often do his very
best to help you, if you appeal to him, but he won't care for you, as a
rule, in consequence. Women like emotional surprises, men do not. A man
wants to get done with excitement, and to enter on an easy
partnership--women like the excitement more than the ease. And then it is
all complicated by the admixture of the masculine and feminine
temperaments. As a rule, however, women are interested in moody
temperaments, and men are bored by them. Personally, my own pleasure in
meeting a real friend, or in hearing from a friend, is the pleasure of
feeling 'Yes, you are there, just the same,'--it's the tranquillity that
one values. The possibility of finding a man angry or pettish is unpleasant
to me. I feel 'so all this nonsense has to be cleared away again!' I don't
want to be questioned and scrutinised, with a sense that I am on my trial.
I don't mind an ironical letter, which shows that a friend is fully aware
of my faults and foibles; but it's an end of all friendship with me if I
feel a man is bent on improving me, especially if it is for his own
convenience. I'm sure that the fault-finding element is fatal to affection.
That may sound weak, but I can't be made to feel that I am responsible to
other people. I don't recognise anyone's right to censure me. A man may
criticise me if he likes, but he mustn't impose upon me the duty of living
up to his ideal. I don't believe that even God does that!"
"I don't understand," I said.
"Well," said Father Payne, "I don't believe that God says, 'This is my law,
and you must obey it because I choose," I believe He says, 'This is the
law, for Me as well as for you, and you will not be happy till you obey
it,'--Yes, I have got it, I believe--the essence of affection is
_equality_. I don't mean that you may not recognise superiorities in
your friend, and he in you; but they must not come into the question of
affection. Love makes equal, and when there is a real sense of equality,
love can begin."
"But," I said, "the passion of lovers--isn't that all based on the worship
of something infinitely superior to oneself?"
"Yes," said Father Payne, "but that means a sight of something beyond--of
the thing which we all love--beauty. I don't say that equality is the thing
we love--it's only the condition of loving. The lover can't love, if he
feels himself _really_ unworthy of love. He must believe that at worst
he _can_ be loved, though he may be astonished at being loved; it is
in love that it is possible to meet; it is love that brings beauty within
your reach, or down, to your level. It is beauty that you love in your
friend, not his right to improve you. He is what you want to be; and the
comfort of being loved is the comfort of feeling that there is some touch
of the same beauty in yourself. It is so easy to feel dreary, stupid,
commonplace--and then someone appears, and you see in his glance and talk
that there is, after all, some touch of the same thing in yourself which
you love in him, some touch of the beauty which you love in God. But the
glory of beauty is that it is concerned with being beautiful and becoming
beautiful--not in mocking or despising or finding fault or improving. Love
is the finding your friend beautiful in mind and heart, and the joy of
being loved is the sense that you are beautiful to him--that you are equal
in that! When you once know that, little quarrels and frictions do not
matter--what _does_ matter is the recognising of some ugly thing which
the man whom you thought was your friend really clings to and worships.
Faults do not matter if only the friend is aware of them, and ashamed of
them: it is the self-conscious fault, proud of its power to wound, and
using affection as the channel along which the envenomed stream may flow,
which destroys affection and trust."
"Then it comes to this," I said, "that affection is a mutual recognition of
beauty and a sense of equality?"
"It _is_ that, more or less, I believe," said Father Payne. "I don't
mean that friends need be aware of that--you need not philosophise about
your friendships--but if you ask me, as an analyst, what it all consists
in, I believe that those are the essential elements of it--and I believe
that it holds good of the dog-and-man friendship as well!"