I was walking with Father Payne one hot summer day upon a field-path he was
very fond of. There was a copse, through the middle of which the little
river, the Fyllot, ran. It was the boundary of the Aveley estate, and it
here joined another stream, the Rode, which came in from the south. The
path went through the copse, dense with hazels, and there was always a
musical sound of lapsing waters hidden in the wood. The birds sang shrill
in the thicket, and Father Payne said, "This is the juncture of Pison and
Hiddekel, you know, rivers of Paradise. Aveley is Havilah, where the gold
is good, and where there is bdellium, if we only knew where to look for it.
I fancy it is rich in bdellium. I came down here, I remember, the first day
I took possession. It was wonderful, after being so long among the tents of
Kedar, to plant my flag in Havilah; I made a vow that day--I don't know if
I have kept it!"
"What was that?" I said.
"Only that I would not get too fond of it all," said Father Payne, smiling,
"and that I would share it with other people. But I have got very fond of
it, and I haven't shared it. Asking people to stay with you, that they may
see what a nice place you have to live in, is hardly sharing it. It is
rather the other way--the last refinement of possession, in fact!"
"It's very odd," he went on, "that I should love this little bit of the
world so much as I do. It's called mine--that's a curious idea. I have got
very little power over it. I can't prevent the trees and flowers from
growing here, or the birds from nesting here, if they have a mind to do so.
I can only keep human beings out of it, more or less. And yet I love it
with a sort of passion, so that I want other people to love it too. I
should like to think that after I am gone, some one should come here and
see how exquisitely beautiful it is, and wish to keep it and tend it.
That's what lies behind the principle of inheritance; it isn't the money or
the position only that we desire to hand on to our children--it's the love
of the earth and all that grows out of it; and possession means the desire
of keeping it unspoiled and beautiful, I could weep at the idea of this all
being swept away, and a bdellium-mine being started here, with a
factory-chimney and rows of little houses; and yet I suppose that if the
population increased, and the land was all nationalised, a great deal of
the beauty of England would go. I hope, however, that the sense of beauty
might increase too--I don't think the country people here have much notion
of beauty. They only like things to remain as they know them. It's a
fearful luxury really for a man like myself to live in a land like this, so
full of old woodland and pasture, which is only possible under rich
proprietors. I'm an abuse, of course. I have got a much larger slice of my
native soil than any one man ought to have; but I don't see the way out.
The individual can't dispossess himself--it's the system which is wrong."
He stopped in the middle of the copse, and said: "Did you ever see anything
so perfectly lovely as this place? And yet it is all living in a state of
war and anarchy. The trees and plants against each other, all fighting for
a place in the sun. The rabbit against the grass, the bird against the
worm, the cat against the bird. There's no peace here really--it's full of
terrors! Only the stream is taking it easy. It hasn't to live by taking
life, and the very sound of it is innocent."
Presently he said: "This is all cut down every five years. It's all made
into charcoal and bobbins. Then the flowers all come up in a rush; then the
copse begins to grow again--I never can make up my mind which is most
beautiful. I come and help the woodmen when they cut the copse. That's
pleasant work, you know, cutting and binding. I sometimes wonder if the
hazels hate being slashed about. I expect they do; but it can't hurt them
much, for up they come again. It's the right way to live, of course, to
begin again the minute you are cut down to the roots, to struggle out to
the air and sun again, and to give thanks for life. Don't you feel yourself
as if you were good for centuries of living?"
"I'm not sure that I do," I said, "I don't feel as if I had quite got my
hand in."
"Yes, that's all right for you, old boy," said Father Payne. "You are
learning to live, and you are living. But an old fellow like me, who has
got in the way of it, and has found out at last how good it is to be alive,
has to realise that he has only got a fag-end left. I don't at all want to
die; I've got my hands as full as they can hold of pretty and delightful
things; and I don't at all want to be cut down like the copse, and to have
to build up my branches again. Yes," he added, pondering, "I used to think
I should not live long, and I didn't much want to, I believe! But now--it's
almost disgraceful to think how much I prize life, and how interesting I
find it. Depend upon it, on we go! The only thing that is mysterious to me
is why I love a place like this so much. I don't suppose it loves me. I
suppose there isn't a beast or a bird, perhaps not a tree or a flower, in
the place that won't be rather relieved when I go back home without having
killed something. I expect, in fact, that I have left a track of death
behind me in the grass--little beetles and things that weren't doing any
harm, and that liked being alive. That's pretty beastly, you know, but how
is one to help it? Then my affection for it is very futile. I can't
establish a civilised system here; I can't prevent the creatures from
eating each other, or the trees from crowding out the flowers. I can't eat
or use the things myself, I can't take them away with me; I can only stand
and yearn with cheap sentiment.
"And yet," he said after a moment, "there's something here in this bit of
copse that whispers to me beautiful secrets--the sunshine among the stems,
the rustle of leaves, the wandering breeze, the scent and coolness of it
all! It is crammed with beauty; it is all trying to live, and glad to live.
You may say, of course, that you don't see all that in it, and it is I that
am abnormal. But that doesn't explain it away. The fact that I feel it is a
better proof that it is there than the fact that you don't feel it is a
proof that it isn't there! The only thing about it that isn't beautiful to
me is the fact that life can't live except by taking life--that there is no
right to live; and that, I admit, is disconcerting. You may say to me, 'You
old bully, crammed with the corpses of sheep and potatoes, which you
haven't even had the honesty to kill for yourself, you dare to come here,
and talk this stuff about the beauty of it all, and the joy of living. If
all the bodies of the things you have consumed in your bloated life were
piled together, it would make a thing as big as a whole row of ricks!' If
you say that, I admit that you take the sentiment out of my sails!"
"But I don't say it," said I: "Who dies if Father Payne live?"
He laughed at this, and clapped me on the back. "You're in the same case as
I, old man," he said, "only you haven't got such a pile of blood and bones
to your credit! Here, we must stow this talk, or we shall become both
humbugs and materialists. It's a puzzling business, talking! It leads you
into some very ugly places!"