_Theory and Practice_
It is as a rule (though not always) when men are not under the
observation of others, that they most surely reveal themselves. Word
and face and gesture are not then the concealment which at other times
they may become; and though when a man talks or gesticulates to himself
he is often very far from telling the truth, he is generally near to
revealing it.
And that, I suppose, is why writers of fiction have so generally taken
the impossible liberty of following their characters into places of
solitude and the privacy of their own thoughts; and from this godlike
vantage-ground have pulled the strings of their puppets, imposing upon
the reader a shoddy romanticism which pretends to be science.
But the gods can very seldom gaze into the secrecy of the things they
have made, with so omniscient and cocksure a spirit. Between mortal
man and his maker there is a remove which sometimes baffles each
alike. Free-will, inside a fixed radius of determined environment,
creates an obscurity. The outer integument, the limited viewpoint, the
competing interests and motives, which go to make up one of those small
self-centred individualities called man, are often obstructive to the
larger and more serene intelligence which accompanies the spiritual
standpoint; and I confess that in his privacy Mr. Trimblerigg used
often to puzzle me.
It was seeing the puzzle at work--putting itself elaborately together,
then pulling itself to pieces again--which gave me the clearer view;
though it remained a puzzle still. But it was something to discover,
suddenly and unexpectedly, that Mr. Trimblerigg had a passion for
sincerity--towards himself at any rate--which took him to strange
lengths; and though I recount what came under my observation, I do not
pretend that I am able to explain it.
It was my privilege, more frequently at this particular point of his
career than ever before, to see Mr. Trimblerigg take his bath; a
function which, so far as his wife and the outside world knew, took
place every morning of his life. It is more accurate to say that he
went to the bathroom every morning, and that every morning, to anyone
who cared to listen, the sounds of a bath being taken came through the
door.
Mr. Trimblerigg had committed himself to the bath-habit with
characteristic enthusiasm from the day when, with enlarged means, he
found himself in a house containing a bathroom. But the house did
not--in the first instance at any rate--contain a hot-water system;
except on occasions of special preparation the baths remained cold.
But Mr. Trimblerigg’s tenancy began in the summer quarter, when cold
baths are almost as much a pleasure as a virtue. He was young, robust,
vigorous, a preacher of the strenuous life; and facilities for the
daily cold bath having come his way, he first boldly proclaimed his
faith, and then got into it.
His faith carried him on, even when colder weather made it a trial;
and often it was beautiful to see, after a timid bird-like hovering on
the brink, how boldly he would plunge in, and with pantings and rapid
spongings cross the rubicon of agony which leads to the healthy glow of
a stimulated circulation.
On these occasions he would be very proud of himself, and standing
before the glass gaze with approval on the ruddy blush which suffused
his body and limbs under the hard rubbings of the towel. But a day came
when he quailed and could not bring himself to get in at all; for the
bath-habit was not in his blood as it is in the blood of those who have
had a public-school training. The hill-side-chapel clan from which he
sprang bathed only on the day of its baptism, or medicinally at the
order of a doctor; and early habit, or the lack of it, counts with
people as they grow older. So now there was controversy between Mr.
Trimblerigg and his bath.
He tried it first with his hand, then with his foot: then he drew a
breath and said ‘Brrrr!’ loudly and resolutely, and continued saying it
as he drove the water up and down the bath with his sponge. He splashed
it artfully across the wooden splash-board, and down on to the floor;
he dipped his feet and made wet marks on the bath-mat, and all the
while he spluttered and panted, and at intervals stirred the bath-water
to and fro, and round and round with his sponge. Then he stood in front
of the glass and rubbed himself hard with his towel until he felt quite
warm, until his body glowed with a similar glow to that which followed
an actual bathing. And, as he did so, he looked at himself roguishly in
the glass; and shaking his head at himself--‘Naughty boy!’ he said.
He was quite frank about it--to himself; and when he had done the same
trick several times, as the mornings remained cold, he gave himself
what he called ‘a good talking to.’
‘You are getting fat!’ he said, ‘you are getting self-indulgent; you
want whipping!’ And so saying he let out at himself two or three quite
hard flicks with the towel--flicks that hurt.
It was a new invention for the establishment of pleasant relations
between his comic and his moral sense; and when occasion required he
repeated it. That little bit of self-discipline always restored his
self-esteem, leaving his conscience without a wound; and he would come
out of the bathroom feeling as good as gold, and sometimes would even
remark to his wife how fresh a really cold bath on a frosty morning
made one feel. And she would assent quite pleasantly, only begging him
not to overdo it; whereupon he would explain how constant habit hardens
a man even to the extremities of water from an iced cistern. And who,
to look at her, would have any suspicion that she did not entirely
believe him?
But on more than one occasion on very cold mornings, when Mr.
Trimblerigg was safely downstairs, I have seen her go into the bathroom
and inspect, with a woman’s eye for details: appraise the amount of
moisture left in the towel, and various other minute points for the
confirmation of her hope that he was not overdoing it. And when she
has quite satisfied herself, I have seen her smile and go on down to
breakfast, a good contented soul, full of the comfortable assurances
wives often have, that though husbands may be clever in their way, to
see through them domestically is not difficult.
Later on, when Mr. Trimblerigg moved to a house efficiently supplied
with a hot-water system, his baths were taken daily, but they were not
always cold ones; and though he still pretended that they were, the
modifications were so various and so habitual, that he left off saying
‘naughty boy!’ when he looked at himself in the glass. Also, when he
really did begin to become chubby he left off telling himself that he
was getting fat. Sometimes he would look at himself a little sadly,
and in order to avoid the moral conclusion that you cannot have the fat
things of life without the adipose tissue, preferred to reflect that
he was ‘getting middle-aged,’ which was still ten years away from the
truth.
But the sadness was only momentary; he had so good an opinion of
himself that he was almost always cheerful, and easy to get on with.
And if after he had turned thirty he did begin to become a little ball
of a man, he kept the ball rolling with energy. The amount of work he
could do, and do happily, was phenomenal; and under his stimulus the
foreign mission work of the Free Evangelicals grew and flourished.