It was the first warm and sunny day, after a cold and cloudy spring: I took
a long and leisurely walk with Father Payne down a valley among woods, of
which Father Payne was very fond. "Almost precipitous for Northamptonshire,
eh?" he used to say. I was very full of a book I had been reading, but I
could not get him to talk. He made vague and foolish replies, and said
several times, "I shall have to think that over, you know," which was, I
well knew, a polite intimation that he was not in a mood for talk. But I
persisted, and at last he said, "Hang it, you know, I'm not attending--I'm
very sorry--it isn't your fault--but there's such a lot going on
everywhere." He quoted a verse of _The Shropshire Lad_, of which he
was very fond:
"'Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more'";
adding, "That's the only instance I know of a subtraction sum made into
perfect poetry--but it's the other way round, worse luck!
"And _add_ to seventy springs a score,
_That_ only leaves me forty more!"
The birds were singing very sweetly in the copses as we passed--"That isn't
art, I believe," said Father Payne. "It's only the reproductive instinct, I
am told! I wish it took such an artistic form in my beloved brothers in the
Lord! There," he added, stopping and speaking in a low tone; "don't
move--there's a cock-wren singing his love-song--you can see his wings
quivering." There followed a little tremolo, with four or five emphatic
notes for a finish. "Now, if you listen, you'll hear the next wren answer
him!" said Father Payne. In a moment the same little song came like an echo
from a bush a few yards away. "The wren sings in stricter time than any
bird but the cuckoo," said Father Payne--"four quavers to a bar. That's
very important! Those two ridiculous creatures will go on doing that half
the morning. They are so excited that they build sham nests, you know,
about now--quite useless piles of twigs and moss, not intended for eggs,
just to show what they can do. But that little song! It has all the passion
of the old chivalry in it--it is only to say, 'My Dulcinea is prettier,
sweeter, brighter-eyed than yours!' and the other says, 'You wait till I
can get at you, and then we will see!' If they were two old knights, they
would fight to the death over it, till the world had lost a brave man, and
one of the Dulcineas was a hapless widow, and nothing proved. That's the
sort of thing that men admire, full of fine sentiment. Why can't we leave
each other alone? Why does loving one person make you want to fight
another? Just look at that wren: he's as full of joy and pride as he can
hold: look at the angle at which he holds his tail: he feels the lord of
the world, sure enough!"
We walked on, and I asked no more questions. "There's a bit of colour,"
said Father Payne, pointing to a bare wood, all carpeted with green blades.
"That's pure emerald, like the seventh foundation of the city. Now, if I
ask you, who are a bit of a poet, what those leaves are, what do you say?
You say hyacinth or daffodil, or perhaps lily-of-the-valley. But what does
the simple botanist--that's me--say? Garlic, my boy, and nothing else! and
you had better not walk musing there, or you will come in smelling of
spring onions, like a greengrocer's shop. So much for poetry! It's the
loveliest green in creation, and it has a pretty flower too--but it's never
once mentioned in English poetry, so far as I know. And yet Keats had the
face to say that Beauty was Truth and Truth Beauty! That's the way we play
the game."
We rambled on, and passed a pleasant old stone-built cottage in the wood,
with a tiny garden. "It's a curious thing," said Father Payne, "but in the
spring I always want to live in all the houses I see. It's the nesting
instinct, no doubt. I think I could be very happy here, for instance--much
happier than in my absurd big house, with all you fellows about. Why did I
ever start it? I ought to have had more sense. I want a cottage like this,
and a little garden to work in, and a few books. I would live on bread and
cold bacon and cheese and cabbages, with a hive of my own honey. I should
get wise and silent, and not run on like this."
A dog came out of the cottage garden, and followed us a little way. "Do we
belong to your party, sir, or do you belong to ours?" said Father Payne.
The dog put his head on one side, and wagged his tail. "It appears I have
the pleasure of your acquaintance!" said Father Payne to him. "Very well,
you can set us on our way if you like!" The dog gave a short shrill bark,
and trotted along with us. When we got to the end of the lane, where it
turned into the high road, Father Payne said to the dog, "Now, sir, I
expect that's all the time you can spare this morning? You must go back and
guard the house, and be a faithful dog. Duty first!" The dog looked
mournfully at us, and wagged his tail, but did not attempt to come farther.
He watched us for a little longer, but as we did not invite him to come on,
he presently turned round and trotted off home. "Now, that's the sort of
case where I feel sentimental," said Father Payne. "It's the sham sort of
pathos. I hate to see anyone disappointed. A person offering flowers in the
street for sale, and people not buying them--the men in London showing off
little toys by the pavement, which nobody wants--I can't bear that. It
makes me feel absurdly wretched to see anyone hoping to please, and not
pleasing. And if the people who do it look old and frail and unhappy, I'm
capable of buying the whole stock. The great uncomforted! It's silly, of
course, and there is nothing in the world so silly as useless emotion! It
is so easy to overflow with cheap benevolence, but the first step towards
the joyful wisdom is to be afraid of the emotion that costs you nothing:
but we won't be metaphysical to-day!"
Presently Father Payne insisted on sitting down in a sheltered place. He
flung his hat off, and sate there, looking round him with a smile, his arms
clasped round his big knees. "Well," he said, "it's a jolly place, the old
world, to be sure! Plenty of nasty and ugly things, I suppose, going on in
corners; but if you look round, they are only a small percentage of the
happy things. They don't force themselves upon the eye and ear, the beastly
things: and it's a stupid and faithless mistake to fix the imagination and
the reason too much upon them. We are all of us in a tight place
occasionally, and we have to meet it as best we can. But I don't think we
do it any better by anticipating it beforehand. What is more, no one can
really help us or deliver us: we can be made a little more comfortable, and
that's all, by what they call cooling drinks, and flowers in a vase by the
bedside. And it's a bad thing to get the misery of the world in a vague way
on our nerves. That's the useless emotion. We have got certain quite
definite things to do for other people in our own circle, and we are bound
to do them; we mustn't shirk them, and we mustn't shirk our own troubles,
though the less we bother about them the better. I am not at all sure that
the curse of the newspapers is not that they collect all the evils of the
world into a hideous posy, and thrust it under our nose. They don't collect
the fine, simple, wholesome things. Now you and I are better employed
to-day in being agreeable to each other--at least you are being kind to me,
even though I can't talk about that book--and in looking at the delightful
things going on everywhere--just think of all the happiness in the world
to-day, symbolised by that ridiculous wren!--we are better employed, I say,
than if we were extending the commerce of England, or planning how to make
war, or scolding people in sermons about their fatal indifference to the
things that belong to their peace. Men and women must find and make their
own peace, and we are doing both to-day. That awful vague sense of
responsibility, that desire to interfere, that wish that everyone else
should do uncomplaining what we think to be their duty--that's all my eye!
It is the kindly, eager, wholesome life which affects the world, wherever
it is lived: and that is the best which most of us can do. We can't be
always fighting. Even the toughest old veteran soldier--how many hours of
his life has he spent actually under fire? No, I'm not forgetting the
workers either: but you need not tell me that they are all sick at heart
because they are not dawdling in a country lane. It would bore them to
death, and they can live a very happy life without it. That's the false
pathos again--to think that everyone who can't do as _we_ like must be
miserable. And anyhow, I have done my twenty-five years on the treadmill,
and I am not going to pretend it was noble work, because it wasn't. It was
useless and disgraceful drudgery, most of it!"
"Ah," I said, "but that doesn't help me. You may have earned a holiday, but
I have never done any real drudgery--I haven't earned anything."
"Be content," said Father Payne; "take two changes of raiment! You have got
your furrow to plough--all in good time! You are working hard now, and
don't let me hear any stuff about being ashamed because you enjoy it! The
reward of labour is life: to enjoy our work is the secret. If you could
persuade people that the spring of life lies there, you would do more for
the happiness of man than by attending fifty thousand committees. But I
won't talk any more. I want to consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow. They don't do it every day!"