"Yes, of course," I said, "there is nothing I should like better."

He read a pa.s.sage. It was very bad indeed, I couldn"t have imagined that an able man could have written such stuff. I had an awful feeling that I had heard every word before.

"There," he said at last, "that"s rather a favourable specimen. What do you think of it? Come, out with it."

"I"m afraid I"m not very much of a judge," I said.

His face fell. "That"s what everyone says," he said. "I know what you mean.

But I"ll publish it--I"ll be d----d if I won"t! Oh, dash it, that"s five minutes more. No--I wasn"t working, was I? Just conversing."

"But why do you write it, if you are so dissatisfied with it?" I said feebly.

"Why?" he said in a loud voice. "Why? Because I love it. I"m besotted by it. It"s like strong drink to me. I doubt if there"s a man in England who enjoys himself more than I do when I"m writing. The worst of it is, that it won"t come out--it"s beautiful enough when I think of it, but I can"t get it down. It"s my second novel, mind you, and I have got plans for three more. Do you suppose I"m going to sit here, with all you fellows enjoying yourselves, and not have my bit of fun? But it"s hopeless, and I ought to be ashamed of myself. There simply isn"t anything in the world that I should not be better employed in doing than in scribbling this stuff. I know that; but all the authors I know say that writing a book is the part they enjoy--they don"t care about correcting proofs, or publishing, or seeing reviews, or being paid for it. Very disinterested and n.o.ble, of course! Now I should enjoy it all through, but I simply daren"t publish my last one--I should be hooted in the village when the reviews appeared. But I am going to have my fun--the act of creation, you know! But it"s too late to begin, and I have had no training. The beastly thing is as sticky as treacle. It"s a sort of vomit of all the novels I have ever read, and that"s the truth!"

"I simply don"t understand," I said. "I have heard you criticise books, I have heard you criticise some of our work--you have criticised mine. I think you one of the best critics I ever heard. You seem to know exactly how it ought to be done."

"Yes," he said, frowning, "I believe I do. That"s just it! I"m a critic, pure and simple. I can"t look at anything, from a pigstye to a cathedral, or listen to anything, from a bird singing to an orchestra, or read anything, from Bradshaw to Shakespeare, without seeing when it is out of shape and how it ought to be done. I"m like the man in Ezekiel, whose appearance was like the appearance of bra.s.s, with a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed. He goes on measuring everything for about five chapters, and nothing comes of it, as far as I can remember! I suppose I ought to be content with that, but I can"t bear it. I hate fault-finding. I want to make beautiful things. I spent months over my last novel, and, as Aaron said to Moses, "There came out this calf!" I"m a very unfortunate man. If I had not had to work so hard for many years for a bare living, I could have done something with writing, I think. But now I"m a sort of plumber, mending holes in other people"s work. Never mind. I _will_ waste my time!"

All this while he was eyeing the little clock on his table. "Now be off!"

he said suddenly, "My penance is over, and I won"t be disturbed!" He caught up his pen. "You had better tell the others not to come near me, or I"m blessed if I won"t read the whole thing aloud after dinner!" And he was immersed in his work again.

Two or three days later I found Father Payne strolling in the garden, on a bright morning. It was just on the verge of spring. There were catkins in the shrubbery. The lilacs were all k.n.o.bbed with green. The aconite was in full bloom under the trees, and the soil was all p.r.i.c.ked with little green blades. He was drinking it all in with delighted glances. I said something about his book.

"Oh, the fit"s off!" said he; "I"m sober again! I finished the chapter, and, by Jove, I think it"s the worst thing I have done yet. It"s simply infamous! I read it with strong sensations of nausea! I really don"t know how I can get such deplorable rubbish down on paper. No matter, I get all the rapture of creation, and that"s the best part of it. I simply couldn"t live without it. It clears off some perilous stuff or other, and now I feel like a convalescent. Did you ever see anything so enchanting as that aconite? The colour of it, and the way the little round head is tucked down on the leaves! I could improve on it a trifle, but not much. G.o.d must have had a delicious time designing flowers--I wonder why He gave up doing it, and left it to the market-gardeners. I can"t make out why new flowers don"t keep appearing. I could offer a few suggestions. I dream of flowers sometimes--great banks of bloom rising up out of crystal rivers, in deep gorges, full of sunshine and scent. How nice it is to be idle! I"m sure I"ve earned it, after that deplorable chapter. It really is a miracle of flatness! You go back to your work, my boy, and thank G.o.d you can say what you mean! And then you can bring it to me, and I"ll tell you to an inch what it is worth!"

XVI

OF MARRIAGE

We were all at dinner one day, and Father Payne came in, in an excited mood, with a letter in his hand. "Here"s a bit of nonsense," he said.

"Here"s my old friend Davenport giving me what he calls a piece of his mind--he can"t have much left--about my "celibate brotherhood," as he calls it. It"s all the other way! I am rather relieved when I hear that any of you people are happily engaged to be married. Celibacy is the danger of my experiment, not the object of it."

"Do you wish us to be married?" said Kaye. "That"s new to me. I thought this was a little fortress against the eternal feminine."

"What rubbish!" said Father Payne. "The worst of using ridiculous words like feminine is that it blinds people to the truth. Masculine and feminine have nothing to do with s.e.x. In the first place, intellectual people are all rather apt to be s.e.xless; in the next place, all sensible people, men and women alike, are what is meant by masculine--that is to say, spirited, generous, tolerant, good-natured, frank. Thirdly, all suspicious, scheming, sensitive, theatrical, irritable, vain people are what is meant by feminine. And artistic natures are all p.r.o.ne to those failings, because they desire dignity and influence--they want to be felt. The real difference between people is whether they want to live, or whether they want to be known to exist. The worst of feminine people is that they are probably the people who ought not to marry, unless they marry a masculine person; and they are not, as a rule, attracted by masculinity."

"But one can"t get married in cold blood," said Vincent. "I often wish that marriages could just be arranged, as they do it in France. I think I should be a very good husband, but I shall never have the courage or the time to go in search of a wife."

"That"s why I send you all out into the world," said Father Payne. "Most people ought to be married. It"s a normal thing--it isn"t a transcendental thing. In my experience most marriages are successful. It does everyone good to be obliged to live at close quarters with other people, and to be unable to get away from them."

"I didn"t know you were interested in such matters," said someone.

"I have gone into it pretty considerably, sir," said Father Payne, "The one thing that does interest me is human admixtures. It does no one any good to get too much attached to his own point of view."

"But surely," said Rose, "there are some marriages which are obviously bad for all concerned--real incompatibilities? People who can"t understand each other or their children--children who can"t understand their parents? It always seems to me rather horrible that people should be shut up together like rats in a cage."

"I expect we shall have legislation before long," said Father Payne, "for breaking up homes where some definite evil like drunkenness is at work--but I don"t want industrial schools for children; that is even more inhuman than a bad home. We want more boarding out, but that"s expensive. Someone has to pay, if children are to be planted out, and to pay well. There"s no motive of duty so strong for an Englishman as good wages. People are honest about giving fair money"s worth. But it is no good talking about these things, because they are all so far ahead of us. The question is whether anyone can suggest any practical means of filing away any of the roughnesses of marriage. I do not believe that the problem is very serious among workers. It is the marriage of idle people that is apt to be disastrous."

"The thing that damages many marriages," said Rose, "is the fact that people have got to see so much of each other. What people really want is a holiday from each other."

"Yes, but that is impossible financially," said Father Payne. "Apart from love and children, marriage is a small joint-stock company for cheap comfort. But it is of no use to go vapouring on about these big schemes, because in a democracy people won"t do what philosophers wish, but what they want. Let"s take a notorious case, known to everyone. Can anyone say what practical advice he could have given to either Carlyle or to Mrs.

Carlyle, which would have improved that witches" cauldron? There were two high-principled Puritanical people, which is the same thing as saying that they both were disposed to consider that anyone who disagreed with them did so for a bad motive, and exalted their own whims and prejudices into moral principles; both of them irritable and sensitive, both able to give instantaneous and elaborate expression to their vaguest thoughts,--Carlyle himself with eloquence which he wielded like a bludgeon, and Mrs. Carlyle with incisiveness which she used like a sharp knife--Carlyle with too much to do, and Mrs. Carlyle with less than nothing to do--each pa.s.sionately attached to the other as soon as they were separated, and both capable of saying the sweetest and most affectionate things by letter, which they could not for the life of them utter in talk. They did, as a matter of fact, spend an immense amount of time apart; and when they were together, Carlyle, having been trained as a peasant and one of a large family, roughly neglected Mrs. Carlyle, while Mrs. Carlyle, with a middle-cla.s.s training, and moreover indulged as an only daughter, was too proud to complain, but not proud enough not to resent the neglect deeply. What could have been done for them? Were they impossible people to live with? Was it true, as Tennyson bluntly said, that it was as well that they married, because two people were unhappy instead of four?"

"They wanted a child as a go-between!" said Barthrop.

"Of course they did!" said Father Payne. "That would have pulled the whole menage together. And don"t tell me that it was a wise dispensation that they were childless! Cleansing fires? The fires in which they lived, with Carlyle raging about porridge and milk and crowing c.o.c.ks, working alone, walking alone, flying off to see Lady Ashburton, sleeping alone; and Mrs.

Carlyle, whom everyone else admired and adored, eating her heart out because she could not get him to value her company;--there was not much that was cleansing about all that! The cleansing came when she was dead, and when he saw what he had done."

"I expect they have made it up by now," said Kaye.

"You"re quite right!" said Father Payne. "It matters less with those great vivid people. They can afford to remember. But the little people, who simply end further back than they began, what is to be done for them?"

XVII

OF LOVING G.o.d

Father Payne suddenly said to me once in a loud voice, after a long silence--we were walking together--"Writers, preachers, moralists, sentimentalists, are much to blame for not explaining more what they mean by loving G.o.d--perhaps they do not know! Love is so large a word, and covers so great a range of feelings. What sort of love are we to give G.o.d--the love of the lover, or the son, or the daughter, or the friend, or the patriot, or the dog? Is it to be pa.s.sion, or admiration, or reverence, or fidelity, or pity? All of these enter into love."

"What do you think yourself?" I said.

"How am I to tell?" said Father Payne. "I am in many minds about it--it cannot be pa.s.sion, because, whatever one may say, something of physical satisfaction is mingled with that. It cannot be a dumb fidelity--that is irrational. It cannot be an equal friendship, because there is no equality possible. It cannot be that of the child for the mother, because the mind is hardly concerned in that. Can one indeed love the Unknown? Again, it cannot be all receiving and no giving. We must have something to give G.o.d which He desires to have and which we can withhold. To say that the answer is, "My son, give Me thy heart," begs the question, because the one thing certain about love is that we _cannot_ give it to whom we will--it must be evoked; and even if it is wanted, we cannot always give it. We may respect and reverence a person very much, but, as Charlotte Bronte said, "our veins may run ice whenever we are near him."

"And then, too, can we love any one who knows us perfectly, through and through? Is it not of the essence of love to be blind? Is it possible for us to feel that we are worthy of the love of anyone who really knows us?

"And then, too, if disaster and suffering and cruel usage and terror come from G.o.d, without reference to the sensitiveness of the soul and body on which they fall, can we possibly love the Power which behaves so? What child could love a father who might at any time strike him? I cannot believe that G.o.d wants an unquestioning and fatuous trust, and still less the sort of deference we pay to one who may do us a mischief if we do not cringe before him. All that is utterly unworthy of the mind and soul."

"Is it not possible to believe," I said, "that all experience may be good for us, however harsh it seems?"

"No rational man can think that," said Father Payne. "Suffering is not good for people if it is severe and protracted. I have seen many natures go utterly to pieces under it."

"What do you believe, then?" I said.

"Of course the only obvious explanation," said Father Payne, "is that suffering, misery, evil, disaster, disease do not come from G.o.d at all; that He is the giver of health and joy and light and happiness; that He gives us all He can, and spares us all He can; but that there is a great enemy in the world, whom He cannot instantly conquer; that He is doing all He can to shield us, and to repair the harm that befalls us--that we can make common cause with Him, and pity Him for His thwarted plans, His endless disappointments, His innumerable failures, His grievous sufferings.

It would be easy to love G.o.d if He were like that--yet who dares to say it or to teach it? It is the dreadful doctrine of His Omnipotence that ruins everything. I cannot hold any communication with Omnipotence--it is a consuming fire; but if I could know that G.o.d was strong and patient and diligent, but not all-powerful or all-knowing, then I could commune with Him. If, when some evil mishap overtakes me, I could say to Him, "Come, help me, console me, show me how to mend this, give me all the comfort you can," then I could turn to Him in love and trust, so long as I could feel that He did not wish the disaster to happen to me but could not ward it off, and was as miserable as myself that it had happened. Not _so_ miserable, of course, because He has waited so long, suffered so much, and can discern so bright and distant a hope. Then, too, I might feel that death was perhaps our escape from many kinds of evil, and that I should be clasped to His heart for awhile, even though He sent me out again to fight His battles. That would evoke all my love and energy and courage, because I could feel that I could give Him my help; but if He is Almighty, and could have avoided all the sorrow and pain, then I am simply bewildered and frightened, because I can predicate nothing about Him."

"Is not that the idea which Christianity aims at?" I said.

"Yes," he said; "the suffering Saviour, who can resist evil and amend it, but cannot instantly subdue it; but, even so, it seems to set up two G.o.ds for one. The mind cannot really _identify_ the Saviour with the Almighty Designer of the Universe. But the thought of the Saviour _does_ interpret the sense of G.o.d"s failure and suffering, does bring it all nearer to the heart. But if there is Omnipotence behind, it all falls to the ground again--at least it does for me. I cannot pray to Omnipotence and Omniscience, because it is useless to do so. The limited and the unlimited cannot join hands. I must, if I am to believe in G.o.d, believe in Him as a warrior arriving on a scene of disorder, and trying to make all well. He must not have permitted the disorder to grow up, and then try to subdue it. It must be there first. It is a battle obviously--but it must be a real battle against a real foe, not a sham fight between hosts created by G.o.d. In that case, "to think of oneself as an instrument of G.o.d"s designs is a privilege one shares with the devil," as someone said. I will not believe that He is so little in earnest as that. No, He is the great invader, who desires to turn darkness to light, rage to peace, misery to happiness. Then, and only then, can I enlist under His banner, fight for Him, honour Him, worship Him, compa.s.sionate Him, and even love Him; but if He is in any way responsible for evil, by design or by neglect, then I am lost indeed!"

XVIII