One evening, when I was sitting with Barthrop in the smoking-room and the
others had gone away, he said to me suddenly, "There's something I want to
speak to you about: I have been worrying about it for some little time, and
it's a bad thing to do that. I daresay it is all nonsense, but I am
bothered about the Father. I don't think he is well, and I don't think he
thinks he is well. He is much thinner, you know, and he isn't in good
spirits. I don't mean that he isn't cheerful in a way, but it's an effort
to him. Now, have you noticed anything?"
I thought for a minute, and then I said, "No, I don't think I have! He's
thinner, of course, but he joked to me about that--he said he had turned
the corner, as people do, and he wasn't going to be a pursy old party when
he got older. Now that you mention it, I think he has been rather silent
and abstracted lately. But then he often is that, you know, when we are all
together. And in his private talks with me--and I have had several
lately--he has seemed to me more tender and affectionate than usual even;
not so amusing, perhaps, not bubbling over with talk, and a little more
serious. If I have thought anything at all, it simply is that he is getting
older."
"It may simply be that, of course," said Barthrop, looking relieved. "I
suppose he is about fifty-eight or so? But I'll tell you something else. I
went in to speak to him two or three days ago. Well you know how he always
seems to be doing something? He is never unoccupied indoors, though he has
certainly seen less of everyone's work of late--but that morning I found
him sitting in his chair, looking out of the window, doing nothing at all;
and I didn't like his look. How can I put it? He looked like a man who was
going off on a long journey--and he was tired and worn-looking--I have
never seen him looking _worn_ before--as if there was a strain of some
kind. There were lines about his face I hadn't noticed before, and his eyes
seemed larger and brighter. He said to me, half apologetically, 'Look here,
this won't do! I'm getting lazy,' Then he went on, 'I was thinking, you
know, about this place: it has been an experiment, and a good and happy
experiment. But it hasn't founded itself, as I hoped,' I asked him what
exactly he meant, and he laughed, and said: 'You know I don't believe in
founding things! A place like this has got to grow up of itself, and have a
life of its own. I don't think the place has got that. I put a seed or two
into the ground, but I'm not sure that they have quickened to life.' Then
he went on in a minute: 'You will know I don't say this conceitedly, but I
think it has all depended too much on me, and I know I'm only a tiller of
the ground. I don't believe I can give life to a society--I can keep it
lively, but that's not the same thing. Something has come of my plan, to be
sure, but it isn't going to spread like a tree--and I hoped it might! But
it's no good being disappointed--that's childish--you can't do what you
mean to do in this world, only what you are meant to do. I expect the
weakness has been that I meddle too much--I don't leave things alone
enough. I trust too much to myself, and not enough to God. It's been too
much a case of "See me do it!"--as the children say.'"
"What did you say?" I said.
"Nothing at all," said Barthrop; "that's where I fail. I can't rise to an
emergency. I murmured something about our all being very grateful to
him--it was awfully flat! If I could but have told him how I cared for him,
and how splendid he had always been! But those perfectly true, sincere,
fine things are just what one can't say, unless one has it all written down
on paper. I wish he would see a doctor, or go away for a bit; but I can't
advise him to do that--he hates a fuss about anything, and most of all
about health. He says you ought never to tell people how you are feeling,
because they have to pretend to be interested!"
I smiled at this, and said, "I don't think there really is much the matter!
People can't be always at the top of their game, and he takes a lot out of
himself, of course. He's always giving out!"
"He is indeed," said Barthrop; "but I won't say more now. I feel better for
having told you. Just you keep your eyes open--but, for Heaven's sake,
don't watch him--you know how sharp he is."
I went off a little depressed by the talk, because it seemed so impossible
to connect anything but buoyant health with Father Payne. I did not see him
at breakfast, but he came in to lunch; and I saw at once that there was
something amiss with him. He ate little, and he looked tired. However, as I
rose to go--we did not, as I have said, talk at lunch--he just beckoned to
me, and pointed with his finger in the direction of his room. It was a
well-known gesture if he wanted to speak to one. I went there, and stood
before the fire surveying the room, which looked unwontedly tidy, the table
being almost free from books and papers. But there lay a long folded folio
sheet on the table, a legal document, and it gave me a chill to see the
word _Will_ on the top of it. Father Payne came in a moment later with
a smile. Then somehow divining, as he so often did, exactly what had
happened, he said, as if answering an unspoken question, "Yes, that's my
will! I have been, in fact, making it. It's a wholesome occupation for an
elderly man. But I only wanted to know if you would come for a stroll? Yes?
That's all right! You are sure I'm not interfering with any arrangement?"
It was a late autumn day in November: the air was cold and damp, the roads
wet, the hedges hung with moisture and the leaves were almost gone from the
trees. "Most people don't like this sort of day," said Father Payne, as we
went out of the gate; "but I like it even better than spring. Everything
seems going contentedly to sleep, like a tired child. All the plants are
withdrawing into themselves, into the inner life. They have had a pleasant
time, waving their banners about--but they have no use for them any more.
They are all going to be alone for a bit. Do you remember that epithet of
Keats, about the 'cool-rooted' flowers? That's a bit of genius. That's what
makes the difference between people, I think--whether they are cool-rooted
or not."
He walked more slowly than was his wont to-day, but he seemed in equable
spirits, and made many exclamations of delight. He said suddenly, "Do you
know one of the advantages of growing old? It is that if you have an
unpleasant thing ahead of you, instead of shadowing the mind, as it does
when you are young, it gives a sort of relish to the intervening time. I
can even imagine a man in the condemned cell, till the end gets close,
being able to look ahead to the day, when he wakes in the morning--the
square meals, the pipe--I believe they allow them to smoke--the talk with
the chaplain. It's always nice to feel it is your duty to talk about
yourself, and to explain how it all came about, and why you couldn't do
otherwise. Now I have got to go up to town on some tiresome business at the
end of this week, and I'm going to enjoy the days in between."
He stopped and spoke with all his accustomed good humour to half a dozen
people whom we met. Then he said to me: "Do you know, my boy, I want to
tell you that you have been one of my successes! I did not honestly think
you would buckle to as you have done, and I don't think you are quite as
sympathetic as I once feared!" He gave me a smile as he said it, and went
on: "You know what I mean--I thought you would reflect people too much, and
be too responsive to your companions. And you have been a great comfort to
me, I don't deny it. But I thankfully discern a good hard stone in the
middle of all the juiciness, with a tight little kernel inside it--I'll
quote Keats again, and say 'a sweet-hearted kernel,' Mind, I don't say you
will do great things. You are facile, and you see things very quickly and
accurately, and you have a style. But I don't think you have got the tragic
quality or the passionate gift. You are too placid and contented--but you
spin along, and I think you see something of the reality of things. You
will be led forth beside the waters of comfort--you will lack nothing--your
cup will be full. But the great work is done by people with large empty
cups that take some filling--the people who are given the plenteousness of
tears to drink. It's a bitter draught--you won't have to drink it. But I
think you are on right and happy lines, and you must be content with good
work. Anyhow, you will always write like a gentleman, and that's a good
deal to say."
This pleased and touched me very deeply. I began to murmur something. "Oh
no," said Father Payne, "you needn't! A boy at a prize-giving isn't
required to enter into easy talk with the presiding buffer! I have just
handed you your prize."
He talked after this lightly of many small things--about Barthrop in
particular, and asked me many questions about him. "I am afraid I haven't
allowed him enough initiative," said Father Payne; "that's a bad habit of
mine. But if he had really had it, we should have squabbled--he's not quite
fiery enough, the beloved Barthrop! He's awfully judicious, but he must
have a lead. He's a submissioner, I'm afraid, as a witty prelate once said!
You know the two sides of the choir, _Decani_ and _Cantoris_ as
they are called. _Decani_ always begin the psalms and say the
versicles, _Cantoris_ always respond. People are always one or the
other, and Barthrop is a born _Cantoris_."
We did not go very far, and he soon proposed to return. But just as we were
nearing home, he said, "I think the hardest thing in life to
understand--the very hardest of all--is our pleasure in the sense of
permanence! It's the supreme and constant illusion. I can't think where it
comes from, or why it is there, or what it is supposed to do for us. Do you
remember," he said with a smile, "how Shelley, the most hopelessly restless
of mortals, whenever he settled anywhere, always wrote to his friends that
he had established himself _for ever_? It's the instinct which is most
contrary to reason. Everything contradicts it--we are not the same people
for five minutes together, nothing that we see or hear or taste
continues--and yet we feel eternally and immutably fixed; and instead of
living each day as if it was our last--which is a thoroughly bad piece of
advice--we live each day as if it was one of an endlessly revolving chain
of days, and as if we were going to live to all eternity--as indeed I
believe we are! Probably the reason for it is to give us a hint that we
_are_ immortal, after all, though we are tempted to think that all
things come to an end. It is strange to think that nothing on which our
eyes rest at this moment is the same as it was when we started our
walk--the very stones of the wall are altered. It ought to make us ashamed
of pretending that we are anything but ourselves; and yet we do change a
little, thank God, and for the better. I've a fancy--though I can't say
more than that of that we aren't meant to _know_ anything: and I think
that the times when we know, or think we know, are the times when we stand
still. That seems hard!"--he broke off with an unusual emotion: but he was
himself again in a moment, and said, "I don't know why--it's the weather,
perhaps: but I feel inclined to do nothing but thank people all day, like
the man in _Happy Thoughts_ you know, who came down late for breakfast
and could say nothing but 'Thanks, thanks, awfully thanks--thanks (to the
butler), thanks (to the hostess)--thanks, thanks!' but it means
something--a real emotion, though grotesquely phrased!--I've enjoyed this
bit of a walk, my boy!"