"And I an elegant trifler, it appears," I said.

V

THE SYSTEM

We went off together on the Sat.u.r.day, and I think we were both decidedly nervous. What were we in for? I had a feeling that I had plunged headlong into rather a foolish adventure.

We did not talk much on the way down; it was all rather solemn. We were going to put the bit in our mouths again, and Father Payne was an unknown quant.i.ty. We both felt that there was something decidedly big and strong there to be reckoned with.

We arrived, as before, at tea-time, and we both received a cordial greeting. After tea Father Payne took us away, and told us the rules of the house. They were simple enough; he described the day. Breakfast was from 8.30 to 9.15, and was a silent meal. "It"s a bad thing to begin the day by chattering and arguing," said Father Payne. Then we were supposed to work in our own rooms or the library till one. We might stroll about, if we wished, but there was to be no talking to anyone else, unless he himself gave leave for any special reason. Luncheon was a cold meal, quite informal, and was on the table for an hour. There was to be no talk then either. From two to five we could do as we liked, and it was expected that we should take at least an hour"s exercise, and if possible two. Tea at five, and work afterwards. At 8.15, dinner, and we could do as we wished afterwards, but we were not to congregate in anyone"s room, and it was understood that no one was to go to another man"s bedroom, which was also his study, at any time, unless he was definitely invited, or just to ask a question. The smoking-room was always free for general talk, but Father Payne said that on the whole he discouraged any gatherings or cliques. The point of the whole was solitary work, with enough company to keep things fresh and comfortable.

He said that we were expected to valet ourselves entirely, and that if we wanted a fire, we must lay it and clean it up afterwards. If we wanted to get anything, or have anything done, we could ask him or the butler. "But I rather expect everyone to look after himself," he said. We were not to absent ourselves without his leave, and we were to go away if he told us to do so. "Sometimes a man wants a little change and does not know it," he said.

Then he also said that he would ask us, from time to time, what we were doing--hear it read, and criticise it; and that one of the most definite conditions of our remaining was that he must be satisfied that we really were at work. If we wanted any special books, he said, we might ask him, and he could generally get them from the London Library; but that we should find a good many books of reference and standard works in the library.

He told us, too, of certain conditions of which we had not heard--that we were to be away, either at home, or travelling wherever he chose to send us, for three months in the year, and that he supplied the funds if necessary. Moreover, for one month in the summer he kept open house. Half of us were to go away for the first fortnight in July, and the other half were to stay and entertain his guests, or even our own, if we wished to invite them; then the other half of the men returned, and had their guests to entertain, while the first half went away; and that during that time there was to be very little work done. We were not to be always writing, but there was to be reading, about which he would advise. Once a week there was a meeting, on Sat.u.r.day evening, when one of the men had to read something aloud, and be generally criticised. "You see the idea?" he said.

"It sounds complicated now, but it really is very simple. It is just to get solid work done regularly, with a certain amount of supervision and criticism, and, what is more important still, real intervals of travelling.

I shall send you to a particular place for a particular purpose, and you will have to write about it on lines which I shall indicate. The danger of this sort of life is that of getting stale. That"s why I don"t want you to see too much of each other. And last of all," he said, rather gravely, "you must do what I tell you to do. There must be no mistake about that--but with all the apparent discipline of it, I believe you will find it worth while."

Then he saw us each separately. He inquired into our finances. Vincent had a small allowance from his parents, about 50, which he was told to keep for pocket-money, but Father Payne said he would pay his travelling expenses. I gathered that he gave an allowance to men who had nothing of their own. He told me that I should have to travel at my own expense, but he was careful first to inquire whether my mother was in any way dependent on me. Then he said to me with a smile: "I am glad you decided to come--I thought my letter would have offended you. No? That"s all right. Now, I don"t expect heroic exertions--just hard work. Mind," he said, "I will add one thing to my letter, and that is that I think you _may_ make a success of this--if you _do_ take to it, you will do well; but you will have to be patient, and you may have a dreary time; but I want you to tell me exactly at any time how you are feeling about it. You won"t be driven, and I think your danger is that you may try to make the pace too much."

He further asked me exactly what I was writing. It happened to be some essays on literary subjects. He mentioned a few books, and told me it would do very well to start with. He was very kind and fatherly in his manner, and when I rose to go, he put his arm through mine and said: "Come, it will be strange if we can"t hit it off together. I like your presence and talk, and am glad to think you are in the house. Don"t be anxious! The difficulty with you is that you will foresee all your troubles beforehand, and try to bolt them in a lump, instead of swallowing them one by one as they come.

Live for the day!" There was something magnetic about him, for by these few words he established a little special relation with me which was never broken.

When he dismissed me, I went and changed my things, and then came down. I found that it was the custom for the men to go down to the hall about eight. Father Payne said that it was a great mistake to work to the last minute, and then to rush in to dinner. He said it made people nervous and dyspeptic. He generally strolled in himself a few minutes before, and sate silent by the fire.

Just as it struck eight, and the hum of the clock in the hall died away, a little tune in harmony, like a gavotte, was played by softly-tingling tiny bells. I could not tell where the music came from; it seemed to me like the Ariel music in _The Tempest_, between earth and heaven, or the "chiming shower of rare device" in _The Beryl Stone_.

Father Payne smiled at the little gesture I involuntarily made. "You"re right!" he said, when it was over. "How _can_ people talk through that? It"s the clock in the gallery that does it--they say it belonged to George III. I hope, if so, that it gave him a few happier moments! It is an ingenious little thing, with silver bells and hammers; I"ll show it you some day. It rings every four hours."

"I think I had rather not see the machinery," I said. "I never heard anything so delicious."

"You"re right again," said Father Payne;

""The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not."

Let it stay at that!"

I little thought how much I should grow to connect that fairy gavotte with Aveley. It always seemed to me like a choir of spirits. I would awake sometimes on summer nights and hear it chiming in the silent house, or at noon it would come faintly through the pa.s.sages. That, and the songs of the birds in the shrubberies, always flash into my mind when I think of the place; because it was essentially a silent house, more noiseless than any I have ever lived in; and I love the thought of its silence; and of its fragrance--for that was another note of the place. In the hall stood great china jars with pierced covers, which were always full of pot-pourri; there was another in the library, and another in Father Payne"s study, and two more in the pa.s.sage above which looked out by the little gallery upon the hall. Silence and fragrance always, in the background of all we did; and outlining itself upon the stillness, the little melody, jetting out like a fountain of silver sound.

VI

FATHER PAYNE

That evening after dinner we two were left with Barthrop in the smoking-room, and we talked freely about Father Payne. Barthrop said that his past was a little mysterious. "He was at Marlborough, you know, and Oxford; and after that, he lived in town, took pupils, and tried to write--but he was not successful, and had much difficulty in getting along." "What is his line exactly?" said Vincent. "That"s just it," said Barthrop, "he hasn"t any line. He has a wide knowledge of things, and is quicker at picking up the drift of a subject than anyone I know; and he has a rare power of criticism. But he isn"t anything in particular. He can"t write a bit, he is not a speaker, he isn"t learned, he can teach able people, but he couldn"t teach stupid men--he hasn"t enough patience. I can"t imagine any line of life for which he would be exactly fitted: and yet he"s the biggest person I have ever met; he carries us all along with him, like a river. You can"t resist him, you can"t contradict him. That is the one danger, that he exerts more influence than he knows, so that when you are with him, it is hard to be quite yourself. But he puts the wind into your sails; and, my word, he can take it out of your sails, if he likes! I have only seen him really angry about twice, and then it was really appalling. Once was when a man lied to him, and once was when a man was impertinent to him. He simply blasted them with his displeasure--that is the only word. He hates getting angry--I expect he had a bad temper once--and he apologises afterwards; but it"s no use--it"s like a thunderstorm apologising to a tree which has been struck. I don"t think he knows his strength. He believes himself to be sensitive and weak-willed--I have heard him say so. The fact is that he dislikes doing an unpleasant thing or speaking severely; and he will take a lot of trouble to avoid a scene, or to keep an irritable man in a good temper. But if he lets himself loose! I can"t express to you the sort of terror I have in thinking of those two occasions. He didn"t say very much, but he looked as if he were possessed by any number of devils."

"He was never married, I suppose?" I said.

"No," said Barthrop, "and yet he seems to make friends with women very easily--in fact, they tend to fall in love with him, if I may say so. He has got a beautiful manner with them, and he is simply devoted to children.

You will see that they really rather worship him in the village. He knows everyone in the place, and never forgets a fact about them."

"What does he _do_ mostly?" I said.

"I really don"t know," said Barthrop. "He is rather a solitary man. He very often has one of us in for an hour in the evening or morning--but we don"t see much of him in the afternoon; he gardens or walks about. He has a quick eye for things, birds and plants, and so on; and he can find more nests in an hour than any man I ever saw. Sometimes he will go and shut himself up in the church--he is rather fond of going to church; he always goes to the Communion."

"Does he expect us to go?" I said.

"No," said Barthrop. "He rather likes us to go, but he doesn"t at all like us going to please him. "I want you to want to go," I heard him say once, "but I don"t want you to go _because_ I want you." And he has no particular views, I think, about the whole thing--at least not for other people."

"Tell me some more about him," I said.

"What is there to say?" said Barthrop. "He is just there--the biggest fact on the horizon. Oh yes, there is one thing; he is tremendously devoted to music. We have some music in the evenings very often. You saw the organ in the gallery--it is rather a fine one, and he generally has someone here who can play. Lestrange is a first-rate musician. Father Payne can"t play himself, but he knows all about it, and composes sometimes. But I think he looks on music as rather a dangerous indulgence, and does not allow himself very much of it. You can see how it affects him. And you mustn"t be taken in by his manner. You might think him heavy and unperceptive, with that quiet and rather secret eye of his; yet he notices everything, always, and far quicker than anyone else. But it is hard to describe him, because he can"t do anything much, and you might think he was indolent; and yet he is the biggest person I have ever seen, the one drawback being that he credits other people with being big too."

"I notice that you call him "Father Payne,"" said Vincent. "Does that mean anything in particular?"

"No," said Barthrop, smiling. "It began as a sort of joke, I believe--but it seemed to fit him; and it"s rather convenient. We can"t begin by calling him "Payne," and "Mr. Payne" is a little formal. Some of the men call him "sir," but I think he likes "Father Payne" best, or simply "Father," You will find it exactly expresses him."

"Yes," I said, "I am sure it does!"

I did not sleep much that night. The great change in my life had all taken place with such rapidity and ease that I felt bewildered, and the thought of the time ahead was full of a vague excitement. But most of all the thought of Father Payne ran in my mind, I regarded him with a singular mixture of interest, liking, admiration, and dread. Yet he had contrived to kindle a curious flame in my mind. It was not that I fully understood what he was working for, but I was conscious of a great desire to prove to him that I could do something, exhibit some tenacity, approve myself to him. I wanted to make him retract what he had said about me; and, further on, I had a dim sense of an initiation into ideas, familiar enough, but which had only been words to me hitherto--power, purpose, seriousness. They had been ideas which before this had just vaguely troubled my peace, clouds hanging in a bright sky. I had the sense that there were some duties which I ought to perform, efforts to be made, ends to fulfil; but they had seemed to me expressed in rather priggish phrases, words which oppressed me, and ruffled the surface of my easy joy. Now they loomed up before me as big realities which could not be escaped, hills to climb, with no pleasant path round about their bases. I seemed in sight of some inspiring secret. I could not tell what it was, but Father Payne knew it, might show it me?

Thus I drowsed and woke, a dozen times, till in the glimmer of the early light I rose and drew back my curtains. The dawn was struggling up fitfully in the east, among cloudy bars, tipping and edging them with smouldering flashes of light, and there was a l.u.s.trous radiance in the air. Then, to my surprise, looking down at the silent garden, pale with dew, I saw the great figure of Father Payne, bare-headed, wrapt in a cloak, pacing solidly and, I thought, happily among the shrubberies, stopping every now and then to watch the fiery light and to breathe the invigorating air--and I felt then that, whatever he might be doing, he at all events _was_ something, in a sense which applied to but few people I knew. He was not hard, unimaginative, fenced in by stupidity and self-righteousness from unhappiness and doubt, as were some of the men accounted successful whom I knew. No, it was something positive, some self-created light, some stirring of hidden force, that emanated from him, such as I had never encountered before.

VII

THE MEN

I can attempt no sort of chronicle of our days, which indeed were quiet and simple enough. I have only preserved in my diary the record of a few scenes and talks and incidents. I will, however, first indicate how our party, as I knew it, was const.i.tuted, so that the record may be intelligible.

First of us came Leonard Barthrop, who was, partly by his seniority and partly by his temperament, a sort of second-in-command in the house, much consulted and trusted by Father Payne. He was a man of about thirty-five, grave, humorous, pleasant. If one was in a minor difficulty, too trivial to take to Father Payne, it was natural to consult Barthrop; and he sometimes, too, would say a word of warning to a man, if a storm seemed to be brewing.

It must not be denied that men occasionally got on Father Payne"s nerves, quite unconsciously, through tactlessness or stupid mannerisms--and Barthrop was able to smooth the situation out by a word in season. He had a power of doing this without giving offence, from the obvious goodwill which permeated all he did. Barthrop was not very sociable or talkative, and he was occupied, I think, in some sort of historical research--I believe he has since made his name as a judicious and interesting historian; but I knew little of what he was doing, and indeed was hardly intimate with him, though always at ease in his company. He was not a man with strong preferences or prejudices, nor was he in any sense a brilliant or suggestive writer, I think he had merged himself very much in the life of our little society, and kept things together more than I was at first aware.

Then came Kaye, one of the least conspicuous of the whole group, though he has since become perhaps the best known, by his poems and his beautiful critical studies in both art and literature. Kaye is known as one of those rare figures in literature, a creative critic. His rich and elaborate style, his exquisite sidelights, his poetical faculty of interpretation, make his work famous, though hardly popular. But I found that he worked very slowly and even painfully, deliberately secreting his honey, and depositing it cell by cell. He had a peculiar intimacy with Father Payne, who treated him with a marked respect. Kaye was by far the most absorbed of the party, went and came like a great moth, was the first to disappear, and generally the last to arrive. Neither did he make any attempt at friendship. He was a handsome and graceful fellow, now about thirty, with a worn sort of beauty in his striking features, curling hair, long languid frame, and fine hands. His hands, I used to think, were the most eloquent things about him, and he was ever making silent little gestures with them, as though they were accompanying unuttered trains of thought; but he had, too, a strained and impatient air, as if he found the pursuit of phrases a wearing and hazardous occupation. I used to feel Kaye the most attractive and impressive of our society; but he neither made nor noticed any signals of goodwill, though always courteous and kindly.

Pollard was a totally different man: he was about twenty-eight, and he was writing some work of fiction. He was a small, st.u.r.dy, rubicund creature, with beady eyes and pink cheeks, cherubic in aspect, entirely good-natured and lively, full of not very exalted humour, and with a tendency to wild and even hysterical giggling. I used to think that Father Payne did not like him very much; but he was a quick and regular worker, and it was impossible to find fault with him. He was extremely sociable and appreciative, and I used to find his company a relief from the strain which at times made itself felt. Pollard had a way of getting involved in absurd adventures, which he related with immense gusto; and he had a really wonderful power of description--more so in conversation than in writing--and of humorous exaggeration, which made him a delightful companion. But he was never able to put the best of himself into his books, which tended to be sentimental and even conventional.

Then there was Lestrange; and I think he was the least congenial of the lot. He was a handsome, rather clerical-looking man of about twenty-eight, who had been brought up to take orders, and had decided against doing so.

He was very much in earnest, in rather a tiresome way, and his phrases were conventional and pietistic. I used to feel that he jarred a good deal on Father Payne, but much was forgiven him because of his musical talents, which were really remarkable. His organ-playing, with its verve, its delicacy, and its quiet mastery, was delicious to hear, he was engaged in writing music mainly, and had a piano all to himself in a little remote room beyond the dining-room, which looked out to the stable-yard and had formerly been an estate-office. We used to hear faint sounds wafted down the garden when the wind was in the west. He was friendly, but he had the absorption of the musician in his art, which is unlike all other artistic absorptions, because it seems literally to check the growth of other qualities and interests. In fact, in many ways Lestrange was like a pious child. He was apt to be snubbed by Father Payne, but he was wholly indifferent to all irony. I used to listen to him playing the organ in the evenings, and a language of emotions and visions certainly streamed from his fingers which he was never able to put into words. Father Payne treated him as one might treat an inspired fool, with a mixture of respect and sharpness.

Then there was Rose, a man of twenty-five, a curious mixture of knowledge, cynicism, energy, and affectionateness. I found Rose a very congenial companion, though I never felt sure what he thought, and never aired my enthusiasms in his presence. He had great aplomb, and was troubled by no shyness nor hesitation. There was a touch of frostiness at times between him and Father Payne. Rose was paradoxical and whimsical, and was apt to support fantastic positions with apparent earnestness. But he was an extremely capable and sensible man, and had a knack of dropping his contentiousness the moment it began to give offence. He was by far the most mundane of us, and had some command of money. I used to fancy that Father Payne was a little afraid of him, when he displayed his very considerable knowledge of the world. His father was a wealthy man, a member of Parliament, and Rose really knew social personages of the day. I doubt if he was ever quite in sympathy with the idea of the place, but I used to feel that his presence was a wholesome sort of corrective, like the vinegar in the salad. I believe he was writing a play, but he has done nothing since in literature, and was in many ways more like a visitor than an inmate.