Someone had been telling a curious story about a contested peerage. It was
a sensational affair, involving the alteration of registers, the burning
down of a vestry, and the flight of a clergyman.
"I like that story," said Father Payne, "and I like heraldry and rank and
all that. It's decidedly picturesque. I enjoy the zigzagging of a title
through generations. But the worst of it is that the most picturesque of
all distinctions, like being the twentieth baron, let us say, in direct
descent, is really of the nature of a stigma; a man whose twentieth
ancestor was a baron has no excuse for not being a duke."
"But what I don't like," said Rose, "is the awful sense of sanctity which
some people have about it. I read a book the other day where the hero
sacrificed everything in turn, a career, a fortune, an engagement to a
charming girl, a reputation, and last of all an undoubted claim to an
ancient barony. I don't remember exactly why he did all these things--it
was noble, undoubtedly it was noble! But there was something which made me
vaguely uncomfortable about the order in which he spun his various
advantages."
"It's only a sense of beauty slightly awry," said Father Payne; "names are
curiously sacred things--they often seem to be part of the innermost
essence of a man. I confess I would rather change most things than change
my name. I would rather shave my head, for instance."
"But my hero would have had to change his name if he had claimed the
peerage," said Rose.
"Yes, but you see the title was his _right_ name," said Father Payne;
"he was only masquerading as a commoner, you must remember. Why I should
value an ancient peerage is because I think it might improve my manners."
"Impossible!" said Vincent.
"Thank you," said Father Payne. "Yes, my manners are very good for a
commoner--but I should like to be a little more in the grand style. I
should like to be able to look long at a person, who said something of
which I disapproved, and then change the subject. That would be fine! But I
daren't do that now. Now I have to argue. Do you remember in _Daniel
Deronda_, Grandcourt's habit of looking stonily at smiling persons. I
have often envied that! Whereas my chief function in life is looking
smilingly at stony persons, and that's very bourgeois."
"We must show more animation," said Barthrop to his neighbour.
"I mean it!" said Father Payne, "but come, I won't be personal! Seriously,
you know, the one thing I have admired in the very few great people I have
ever met is the absence of embarrassment. They don't need to explain who
they are, they haven't got to preface their statements of opinion by
fragments of autobiography, to show their right to speak. It is convenient
to feel that if people don't know who you are, they will feel slightly
foolish afterwards when they discover, like the man who shook hands warmly
with Queen Victoria, and said, "I know the face quite well, but I can't put
a name to it." It did not show any pride of birth in the Queen to be
extremely amused by the incident. But even more than that I admire the case
which people of that sort get by having had, from childhood onwards, to
meet all sorts of persons, and to behave themselves, and to see that people
do not feel shy or uncomfortable. I sometimes go about the village simply
teeming with benevolence, and I pass some one, and can't think of anything
to say. If I had the great manner, I should say, "Why, Tommy, is that you?"
or some such human signal, which would not mean anything in particular, but
would after all express exactly what is in my mind. But I can't just do
that. I rack my brains for an _appropriate_ remark, because I am
bourgeois, and have not the point of honour, as the French say. And by the
time I have elaborated it, Tommy is gone, and Jack is passing, and I begin
elaborating again; whereas I should simply add, if I were aristocratic,
'And that's you, Jack, isn't it?' That's the way to talk."
We all laughed; and Barthrop said, "Well, I must say, Father, that I have
often envied you your power of saying something to everyone."
"I have spent more trouble on it than it is worth," said Father Payne; "and
that's my point, that if I were only a great man, I should have learnt it
all in childhood, and should not have to waste time over it at all. That's
the best of rank; it's a device for saving trouble; it saves introduction
and explanation and autobiography and elaborate civility, and makes people
willing to be pleased by the smallest sign of affability. You may depend
upon it that it was a very true instinct which made the Scotch minister
pray that all might have honourable ancestors. It isn't a sacred thing,
rank, and it isn't a magnificent thing--but it's a pleasant human sort of
thing in the right hands. What is more, in these democratic days, it tends
to make people of rank additionally anxious not to parade the fact--and I
doubt if there is anything on the whole happier than having advantages
which you don't want to parade--it gives a tranquil sort of contentment,
and it removes all futile ambitions. To be, by descent, what a desperately
industrious lawyer or a successful general feels himself amply rewarded for
his toil by becoming, isn't nothing. I'm always rather suspicious of the
people who try to pretend that it is nothing at all. The rank is but the
guinea stamp, of course. But after all the stamp is what makes it a guinea
instead of an unnegotiable disc of metal!"