unceasingly, in joy and trouble alike, in the smallest matters, to the
Eternal will; until he grew to feel that if there were anything true in
the world, it was the power of that perpetual surrender. It was
surprising to him to find how anxiety melted into tranquillity, if one
could but do that. Not only, he learnt, must great decisions be laid
before God, but the smallest acts of daily life. How often one felt
the harassing weight of small duties, the distasteful business, the
anxious conversation, the dreary occasion; fatigue, disappointment,
care, uncertainty, timidity! If one could but put the matter into the
hands of God, instead of rehearsing and calculating and anticipating,
what a peace flowed into one's spirit! Difficulties melted away like
mist before it. The business was tranquilly accomplished; the
interview that one dreaded provided its own obvious solution, vexations
were healed, troubles were suddenly revealed as marvellously
unimportant. One blundered still, went perversely wrong, yielded
falteringly to an impulse knowing it to be evil; but even such events
had a wholesome humiliation about them which brought healing with it.
The essence of the whole situation was to have in one's heart the
romance of pilgrimage, to expect experience, both sweet and bitter, to
desire the goal rather than the prize; and to find the jewels of
patience, hopefulness, and wisdom by the way, where one had least
expected them.
XVI
Humanity--Individuality--The Average
Hugh, one Sunday, in walking alone outside Cambridge, went for some
considerable time behind a party of young men and boys, who were out
for a stroll. He observed them with a disgustful curiosity. They were
over-dressed; they talked loudly and rudely, and, so far as Hugh could
hear, both coarsely and unamusingly. They laughed boisterously, they
made offensive remarks about humble people who passed them. It was the
height of humour to push each other unexpectedly into the ditch at the
side of the road, and then their laughter became uproarious. It was
harmless enough, but it was all so ugly and insolent, that Hugh thought
that he had seldom seen anything which was so singularly and supremely
unattractive. The performance seemed to have no merit in it from any
point of view. These youths were no doubt exulting in the pride of
their strength, but the only thing that they really enjoyed was that
the people who met them should be disconcerted and distressed. Making
every allowance for thoughtlessness and high spirits, it seemed
unnecessary that these qualities should manifest themselves so
unpleasingly. Hugh wondered whether, as democracy learned its
strength, humanity was indeed becoming more vulgar, more inconsiderate,
more odious. Singly, perhaps, these very boys might be sensible and
good-humoured people enough, but association seemed only to develop all
that was worst in them. And yet they were specimens of humanity at its
strongest and cheerfullest. They were the hope of the race--for the
same thing was probably going on all over England--and they would no
doubt develop into respectable and virtuous citizens; but the spectacle
of their joy was one that had no single agreeable feature. These
loutish, rowdy, loud-talking, intolerable young men were a blot upon
the sweet day, the pleasant countryside. Probably, Hugh thought, there
was something sexual beneath it all, and the insolence of the group was
in some dim way concerned with the instinct for impressing and
captivating the female heart. Perhaps the more demure village maidens
who met them felt that there was something dashing and even chivalrous
about these young squires.
There came into Hugh's mind the talk of a friend who had been staying
with him, a man of lofty socialistic ideals, who spoke much and
eloquently of the worship of humanity. Reflecting upon the phrase,
Hugh felt that he could attach no sort of meaning to it. What was the
humanity that one was to worship? Was it the glory of the average man?
was it the memory of the past? was it the possibility of the future?
It seemed to Hugh to be an impossible abstraction. He had said as much
to his friend, who had replied that it was like the worship of Nature,
which Hugh himself practised. But Hugh replied that he did not worship
Nature at all. There was much in Nature that he did not understand,
much that he feared and disliked. There was an abundance of beautiful
things in Nature, beautiful objects, beautiful moments; but it was the
beautiful in Nature that he worshipped, not Nature as a whole; there
was enough, he said, in Nature that was desirable, to give him a kind
of hope that there was some high and beautiful thought behind it; at
which his friend became eloquent, veiling, Hugh thought, a great
confusion of mind behind a liberal use of rhetoric, and spoke of
suffering, toiling, sorrowing, onward-looking humanity, its impassioned
relations, its great wistful heart. Hugh again, could not understand
him; he thought that his friend had formed some exotic and fanciful
conception, arrived at by subtracting from humanity all that was not
pathetic and solemn and dignified, and then fusing the residue into a
sort of corporeal entity. He did not see any truth or reality about
the conception. It seemed to him as unreal as though one had
personified the Great Western Railway into a sort of gigantic form,
striding westward, covered with packages of merchandise, and carrying a
typical human being, as St. Christopher carried the sacred child across
the flood. It was pure Anthropomorphism.
Hugh could understand a personal relation, even the passionate
idealisation of an individual. He could conceive of the latter as
giving one a higher idea of the possibilities of the human race: but to
lump a vast and complex system together, to concentrate unknown races,
dead and living, negroes, Chinamen, Homeric heroes and palaeolithic
men, into one definite conception, and to worship it, seemed to Hugh an
almost grotesque thought. He could conceive of a species of Pantheism,
in which the object of one's awe and worship was the vast force
underlying all existing things; but even so it seemed necessary to Hugh
to focus it all into one personal force. The essence of worship seemed
to Hugh to be that the thing worshipped should have unity and
individuality. It seemed to him as impossible to worship a thing of
which he himself was a part, as to demand that a cat should adore the
principle of felinity.
The essence of the world, of life, to Hugh lay in the sense of his own
individuality. He was instinctively conscious of his own existence, he
was experimentally conscious of the existence of a complicated world
outside of him. But it was to him rather a depressing than an
ennobling thought, that he was one of a class, fettered by the same
disabilities, the same weaknesses, as millions of similar objects.
Perhaps it was a wholesome humiliation, but it was none the less
humiliating. On the one hand he was conscious of the vast power of
imagination, the power of standing, as it were, side by side with God
upon the rampart of heaven, and surveying the whole scheme of created
things. Yet on the other hand there fell the sense of a baffling and
miserable impotence, a despairing knowledge that one's consciousness of
the right to live, and to live happily, was conditioned by one's utter
frailty, the sense that one was surrounded by a thousand dangers, any
one of which might at any moment deprive one of the only thing of which
one was sure. How, and by what subtle process of faith and
imagination, could the two thoughts be reconciled?
The best that Hugh could make of the ardent love of life and joy which
inspired him, was the belief that it was implanted in man, that he
might have, for some inscrutable reason, a motive for experiencing, and
for desiring to continue to experience, the strange discipline of the
world. If men did not love life and ease so intensely, at the first
discouragement, at the first touch of pain, they would languidly and
despairingly cease to be. Hugh seemed to discern that men were put
into the world that they might apprehend something that it was worth
their while to apprehend; that for some reason which he had no means of
divining, life could not be a wholly easy or pleasurable thing; but
that in order to inspire men to bear pain and unhappiness, they were
permeated with an intense desire to continue to live, and to regain
some measure of contentment, if that contentment were for a time
forfeited. Of course there were many things which that did not
explain, but it was a working theory that seemed to contain a large
element of truth. Sometimes a technically religious person would say
that the world was created for the glory of God, a phrase which filled
Hugh with a sense of bewildered disgust. It either implied that God
demanded recognition, or that it was all done in a species of
intolerable pride of heart, as a mere exhibition of power. That God
should yield to a desire for display seemed to Hugh entirely
inconsistent with a belief in His awful supremacy.
It seemed to him rather that God must have abundant cause to be
dissatisfied with the world as it was, but that at the same time He
must have some overpoweringly just reason for acquiescing for a time in
its imperfection. How else could one pray, or aspire, or hope at all?
But the sight of human beings, such as Hugh had before his eyes that
day, filled him with perplexity. One was only possessed by an intense
desire that they might be different from what they were. Hugh indeed
knew that he himself had sore need to be different from what he was.
But the qualities that lay behind the motions and speech of these
lads--inconsiderateness, indifference to others, vanity,
grossness--were the things that he had always been endeavouring to
suppress and eradicate in himself; they were the things that were
detested by poets, saints, and all chivalrous and generous souls.
Sometimes indeed one was confronted, in the world of men, by a
perfectly sincere, noble, quiet, gentle, loving personality; and then
one perceived, as in a gracious portrait, what humanity could hope to
aspire to. But on the other hand Hugh had seen, in the pages of a
periodical, an attempt to arrive at a typical human face, by
photographing a number of individuals upon the same plate; and what a
blurred, dim, uncomfortable personality seemed to peer forth! To
worship humanity seemed to Hugh like trying to worship this
concentrated average; and he had little hope that, if an absolutely
average man were constructed, every single living individual
contributing his characteristics to the result, the result would be
edifying, encouraging, or inspiring. Hugh feared that the type would
but sink the most tolerant philosopher in a sense of irreclaimable
depression. And yet if, guided by prejudice and preference, one made
up a figure that one could wholly admire, how untrue to nature it would
be, how different from the figure that other human beings would consent
to admire!
The problem was insoluble; the only way was to set one's self
courageously at one's own little corner of the gigantic scheme, to
attack it as faithfully as one could, by humble aspirations, quiet
ministries, and tender-hearted sympathy; to take as simply as possible
whatever message of beauty and hope fell to one's share; not to be
absorbed in one's own dreams and imaginings, but to interpret
faithfully every syllabic of the great Gospel; and, above all, to
remember that work was inevitable, necessary, and even beautiful; but
that it only had the noble quality, when it was undertaken for the love
of others, and not for love of oneself.
XVII
Spring--Wonder
The return of the sweet spring days, with the balmy breath of warm
winds, soft sunshine on the pastures, the songs of contented birds in
thicket and holt, brought to Hugh an astonishing richness of sensation,
a waft of joy that was yet not light-hearted, joy that was on the one
hand touched with a fine rapture, yet on the other hand overshadowed by
a wistful melancholy. The frame, braced by wintry cold, revelled in
the outburst of warmth, of light, of life; and yet the very
luxuriousness of the sensation brought with it a languor and a
weariness that was akin rather to death than life. He rode alone far
into the shining countryside, and found, in the middle of wide fields
with softly swelling outlines, where the dry ploughlands were dappled
with faint fawn-coloured tints, a little wood, in the centre of which
was a reed-fringed pool. The new rushes were beginning to fringe the
edges of the tiny lake, but the winter sedge stood pale and sere, and
filled the air with a dry rustling. The water was as clear as a
translucent gem, and Hugh saw that life was at work on the floor of the
pool, sending up rich tresses of green-haired water-weed. The copse
was green under foot, full of fresh, uncrumpling leaves. He sat down
beside the pool; the silence of the wide fields was broken only by the
faint rustling of sedge and tree, and the piping of a bird, hid in some
darkling bush hard by. Never had Hugh been more conscious of the
genial outburst of life all about him, yet never more aware of his
isolation from it all. His body seemed to belong to it all, swayed and
governed by the same laws that prompted their gentle motions to tree
and herb; but his soul seemed to him to-day like a bright creature
caught in the meshes of a net, beating its wings in vain against the
constraining threads. From what other free and spacious country was it
exiled? What other place did it turn to with desire and love? It
seemed to him to-day that he was a captive in a strange land,
remembering some distant home, some heavenly Zion, even in his mirth.
It seemed to him as if the memory of some gracious place dwelt in his
mind, separated only from his earthly memory by a thin yet impenetrable
veil. His spirit held out listless hands of entreaty to some unseen
power, desiring he knew not what. To-day on earth the desire of all
created things seemed to be directed to each other. The tiny creeping
sprays of delicate plants that carpeted the wood seemed to interlace
with one another in tender embraces. In loneliness they had slept
beneath the dark ground, and now that they had risen to the light, they
seemed to thrill with joy to find themselves alone no longer. He saw
in the leafless branches of a tree near him two doves, with white rings
upon their necks, that turned to each other with looks of desire and
love. Was it for some kindred spirit, for the sweet consent of some
desirous heart that Hugh hankered? No! it was not that! It was rather
for some unimagined freedom, some perfect tranquillity that he yearned.
It was like the desire of the stranded boat for the motion and dip of
the blue sea-billows. He would have hoisted the sail of his thought,
have left the world behind, steering out across the hissing, leaping
seas, till he should see at last the shadowy summits, the green coves
of some remote land, draw near across the azure sea-line. To-day the
fretful and poisonous ambitions of the world seemed alien and
intolerable to him. As the dweller in wide fields sees the smoke of
the distant town rise in a shadowy arc upon the horizon, and thinks
with pity of the toilers there in the hot streets, so Hugh thought of
the intricate movement of life as of a thing that was both remote and
insupportable. That world where one jostled and strove, where one made
so many unwilling mistakes, where one laboured so unprofitably, was it
not, after all, an ugly place? What seemed so strange to him was that
one should be set so unerringly in the middle of it, while at the same
time one was given the sense of its unreality, its distastefulness. So
marvellously was one made that one sickened at its contact, and yet, if
one separated oneself from it, one drooped and languished in a morbid
gloom. The burden of the flesh! The frailty of the spirit! The two
things seemed irreconcilable, and yet one endured them both. The world
so full of beauty and joy, and yet the one gift withheld that would
make one content.
And yet it was undeniable that the very sadness that he felt had a
sweet fragrance about it. It was not the sadness of despair, but of
hope unfulfilled. The soul clasped hands with the unknown, with tears
of joy, and leaned out of the world as from a casement, on perilous
seas. Indeed the very wealth of loveliness on every hand, and the
mysterious yearning to take hold of it, to make it one's own, to draw
it into the spirit, the hope that seemed at once so possible and yet so
baffling, gave the key of the mystery. There _was_ a beauty, there
_was_ a truth that was waiting for one, and the sweetness here was a
type of the unseen. It was only the narrow soul that grudged if it was
not satisfied. The brave heart went quietly and simply about its task,
welcoming every delicate sight, every whisper of soft airs, every touch
of loving hands, every glance of gentle eyes, rejoicing in the mystery
of it all; thanking the Lord of life for the speechless wonder of it,
and even daring to thank Him that the end was not yet; and that the
bird must still speed onwards to the home of its heart, dipping its
feet in the crest of the wandering wave, till the land, whither it was
bound, should rise like a soft shadow over the horizon; till the shadow
became a shape, and at last the tall cliffs, with the green downs
above, the glittering plain, the sombre forest, loomed out above one,
just beyond where the waves whitened on the loud sea-beaches, and the
sound of the breakers came harmoniously over the waste of waters, like
the soft tolling of a muffled bell.
XVIII
His Father's Death--Illness--A New Home--The New Light
Up to this time it may be said that Hugh had never felt the pressure of
sordid anxieties, or experienced any sorrows but the sorrows of pure
emotion. But now all at once there fell on him a series of heavy
afflictions. His father died after a very short illness; so little had
a fatal result been expected, that Hugh only reached home after his
death. It happened that the last sight he had had of his father had
been one of peculiar brightness. He had been staying at home, and, on
the morning of his return to Cambridge, had gone into the study for a
parting talk. He had found his father in a mood, not common with him,
but which was growing commoner as he grew older, of serene
cheerfulness. He had talked to Hugh very eagerly about a little book
of poems that Hugh had lately published. Hugh had hardly mentioned it
to his father beforehand, but he had dedicated the book to him, though
he imagined that his father must consider poetry a dilettante kind of
occupation. He was amazed to find, when he discussed the book with his
father, that he was met with so vivid and personal a sympathy, that he
discerned that the writing of poetry must have been a preoccupation of
his father's in early days, one of those delicate ambitions on which he
had sharply turned the key. His mother and sister were away for the
day, so that when it was time to go, and the carriage was announced,
there was no one but his father in the house. He had, as his custom
was, laid his hand on his son's head, and blessed him with a deep
emotion, adding a few words of love and confidence that had filled
Hugh's eyes with tears; and his father had then put his arm through his
son's, walked to the door with him, and had stood there in the bright
morning, with his grey hair stirred by the wind, waving his hand till
the carriage had turned the corner of the shrubbery.
Hugh often suffered from a certain apprehensiveness of mind on leaving
home; he had sometimes wondered, as he said farewell to the group,
whether he would see them thus again. But that morning it had never
occurred to him that there was any such possibility in store for him;
so that now, when he returned to the darkened house, and presently saw
that pale, still form, with a quiet smile on the face, as of one
satisfied beyond his dearest wish, he plunged into a depth of
ineffectual sorrow such as he had never known before. The one thought
that sustained him was that he and his father had loved, understood,
and trusted each other. It was a horror to Hugh to think what his
feelings might have been in the old days, if his father had died when
his own predominant emotion had been a respectful fear of him.
It seemed impossible to believe that all the activities of that long
life were over; and as Hugh went through his father's papers, with
incessant little heart-broken griefs at the arrangements and precisions
that had stood for so much devoted faithfulness and loyal
responsibility, it seemed to him as though the door must open, and the
well-known figure, with the smile that Hugh knew so well, stand before
him.
The first disaster that was revealed to him was the smallness of his
father's fortune; his father, though often talking about business to
his son, had a curious reticence about money affairs, and had never
prepared him for the scantiness of the provision that he had
accumulated. Hugh saw at once that the utmost care would have for the
future to be exercised, and that their whole scale of life must be
altered. The fact was that his father's professional income had been
ample, and that he had had a strong dislike to saving money from
ecclesiastical sources. The home must evidently be broken up at once,
and a small house taken for his mother. But fortunately both his
mother and sister were entirely undismayed by this; their tastes were
simple enough; but Hugh saw that he would have himself to contribute to
their assistance. With his own small fortune, his literary work, and a
little academical work that he was doing, he had been able to live
comfortably enough without taking thought; but now he saw that all this
must be curtailed. He had an intense dislike of thinking about money;
and he therefore determined that there should be no small economies on
his part, but that he would simply, if necessary, alter his easy scale
of living.
It was a terrible process disestablishing the old home; the sale of
furniture and books, the displacing of the old pictures, seemed to tear
and rend all sorts of delicate fibres; but at last the house was
dismantled, and it became a bitter sort of joy to leave a place that
had become like a sad skeleton of one that he had loved. The trees,
the flowers, the church-tower over the elms--as they drove away on that
last morning, these seemed to regard him with mournful and hollow eyes;
the parting was indeed so intensely sad, that Hugh experienced a grim
relief in completing it; and there fell on him a deep dreariness of
spirit, which seemed at last to benumb him, until he felt that he could
no longer care for anything.