Chapter 2

"You thought all that?" said he. "Well, that's more hopeful! Have you ever done any essay work?"

"Yes," I said, "and that was the worst of all--no one ever showed me how to do it in my own way, but always in some one else's way."

He sate a little in silence. Then he said: "But mind you, that's not all! I don't think writing is the end of life. The real point is to feel the things, to understand the business, to have ideas about life. I don't want people to learn how to write interestingly about things in which they are not interested--but to be interested first, and then to write if they can. I like to turn out a good writer, who can say what he feels and believes. But I'm just as pleased when a man tells me that writing is rubbish, and that he is going away to do something real. The real--that's what I care about! I don't want men to come and pick up grains of truth and reality, and work them into their stuff. I have turned out a few men like that, and those are my worst failures. You have got to care about ideas, if you come here, and to get the ideas into shape. You have got to learn what is beautiful and what is not, because the only business of a real writer is with beauty--not a sickly exotic sort of beauty, but the beauty of health and strength and generous feeling. I can't have any humbugs here, though I have sent out some humbugs. It's a hard life this, and a tiring life; though if you are the right sort of fellow, you will get plenty of fun out of it. But we don't waste time here; and if a man wastes time, out he goes."

"I believe I can work as hard as anyone," I said, "though I have shown no signs of it--and anyhow, I should like to try. And I do really want to learn how to distinguish between things, how to know what matters. No one has ever shown me how to do that!"

"That's all right!" he said, "But are you sure you don't want simply to make a bit of a name--to be known as a clever man? It's very convenient, you know, in England, to have a label. Because I want you clearly to understand that this place of mine has nothing whatever to do with that. I take no stock in what is called success. This is a sort of monastery, you know; and the worst of some monasteries is that they cultivate dreams. That's a beautiful thing in its way, but it isn't what I aim at. I don't want men to drug themselves with dreams. The great dreamers don't do that. Shelley, for instance--his dreams were all made out of real feeling, real beauty. He wanted to put things right in his own way. He was enraged with life because he was fine, while Byron was enraged with life because he was vulgar. Vulgarity--that's the one fatal complaint; it goes down deep to the bottom of the mind. And I may as well say plainly that that is what I fight against here."

"I don't honestly think I am vulgar," I said.

"Not on the surface, perhaps," he said, "but present-day education is a snare. We are a vulgar nation, you know. That is what is really the matter with us--our ambitions are vulgar, our pride is vulgar. We want to fit into the world and get the most we can out of it; we don't, most of us, just want to give it our best. That's what I mean by vulgarity, wanting to take and not wanting to give."

He was silent for a minute, and then he said: "Do you believe in God?"

"I hardly know," I said. "Not very much, I am afraid, in the kind of God that I have heard preached about."

"What do you mean?" he said.

"Well," I said, "it's rather a large question--but I used to think, both at school and at Oxford, that many of the men who were rather disapproved of, that did quite bad things, and tried experiments, and knocked up against nastiness of various kinds, but who were brave in their way and kind, and not mean or spiteful or fault-finding, were more the sort of people that the force--or whatever it is, behind the world--was trying to produce than many of the virtuous people. What was called virtue and piety had something stifling and choking about it, I used to think. I had a tutor at school who was a parson, and he was a good sort of man, too, in a way. But I used to feel suddenly dreary with him, as if there were a whole lot of real things and interesting things which he was afraid of. I couldn't say what I thought to him--only what I felt he wanted me to think. That's a bad answer," I went on, "but I haven't really considered it."

"No, it isn't a bad answer," he said, "It's all right! The moment you feel stifled with anyone, whatever the subject is--art, books, religion, life--there is something wrong. Do you say any prayers?"

"No," I said, "to be honest, I don't."

"You must take to it again," he said. "You can't get on without prayer. And if you come here," he said, "you may expect to hear about God. I talk a good deal about God. I don't believe in things being too sacred to talk about--it's the bad things that ought not to be mentioned. I am interested in God, more than I am interested in anything else. I can't make Him out--and yet I believe that He needs me, in a way, as much as I need Him. Does that sound profane to you?"

"No," I said, "it's new to me. No one ever spoke about God to me like that before."

"We have to suffer with Him!" he said in a curious tone, his face lighting up. "That is the point of Christianity, that God suffers, because He wants to remake the world, and cannot do it all at once. That is the secret of all life and hope, that if we believe in God, we must suffer with Him. It's a fight, a hard fight; and He needs us on His side: But I won't talk about that now; yet if you don't want to believe in God, and to be friends with Him, and to fight and suffer with Him, you needn't think of coming here. That's behind all I do. And to come here is simply that you may find out where He needs you. Why writing is important is, because the world needs freer and plainer talk about God--about beauty and health and happiness and energy, and all the things which He stands for. Half the evil comes from silence, and the end of all my experiments is the word in the New Testament, Ephphatha--Be opened! That is what I try for, to give men the power of opening their hearts and minds to others, without fear and yet without offence. I don't want men to attack things or to criticise things, but just to speak plainly about what is beautiful and wholesome and true. So you see this isn't a place for lazy and fanciful people--not a fortress of quiet, and still less a place for asses to slake their thirst! We don't set out to amuse ourselves, but to perceive things, and to say them if we can. My men must be sound and serious, and they must be civil and amusing too. They have got to learn how to get on with each other, and with me, and with the village people--and with God! If you want just to dangle about, this isn't the place for you; but if you want to work hard and be knocked into shape, I'll consider it."

There was something tremendous about Father Payne! I looked at him with a sense of terror. His face dissolved in a smile. "You needn't look at me like that!" he said. "I only want you to know exactly what you are in for!"

"I would like to try," I said.

"Well, we'll see!" he said. "And now you must be off!" he added. "We shall dine in an hour--you needn't dress. Here, you don't know which your room is, I suppose?"

He rang the bell, and I went off with the old butler, who was amiable and communicative. "So, you think of becoming one of the gentlemen, sir?" he said. "If you'll have me," I replied. "Oh, that will be all right, sir," he said. "I could see that the Father took to you at first sight!"

He showed me my room--a big bare place. It had a small bed and accessories, but it was also fitted as a sitting-room, with a writing-table, an armchair, and a bookcase full of books. The house was warmed, I saw, with hot water to a comfortable temperature. "Would you like a fire?" he said. I declined, and he went on: "Now if you lived here, sir, you would have to do that yourself!" He gave a little laugh. "Anyone may have a fire, but they have to lay it, and fetch the coal, and clean the grate. Very few of the gentlemen do it. Anything else, sir? I have put out your things, and you will find hot water laid on."

He left me, and I flung myself into the chair. I had a good deal to think about.

III

THE SOCIETY

A very quiet evening followed. A bell rang out above the roof at 8.15. I went down to the hall, where the men assembled. Father Payne came in. He had changed his clothes, and was wearing a dark, loose-fitting suit, which became him well--he always looked at home in his clothes. The others wore similar suits or smoking jackets. Father Payne appeared abstracted, and only gave me a nod. A gong sounded, and he marched straight out through a door by the fireplace into the dining-room.

The dining-room was a rather grand place, panelled in dark wood, and with a few portraits. At each end of the room was a section cut off from the central portion by an oak column on each side. Three windows on one side looked into the garden. It was lighted by candles only. We were seven in all, and I sate by Father Payne. Dinner was very plain. There was soup, a joint with vegetables, and a great apple-tart. The things were mostly passed about from hand to hand, but the old butler kept a benignant eye upon the proceedings, and saw that I was well supplied. There was a good and simple claret in large flat-bottomed decanters, which most of the men drank. There was a good deal of talk of a lively kind. Father Payne was rather silent, though he struck in now and then, but his silence imposed no constraint on the party. He was pressed to tell a story for my benefit, which he did with much relish, but briefly. I was pleased at the simplicity of it all. There was only one man who seemed a little out of tune--a clerical-looking, handsome fellow of about thirty, called Lestrange, with an air of some solemnity. He made remarks of rather an earnest type, and was ironically assailed once or twice. Father Payne intervened once, and said: "Lestrange is perfectly right, and you would think so too, if only he could give what he said a more secular twist. 'Be soople in things immaterial,' Lestrange, as the minister says in _Kidnapped_." "But who is to judge if it _is_ immaterial?" said Lestrange rather pertinaciously. "It mostly is," said Father Payne. "Anything is better than being shocked! It's better to be ashamed afterwards of not speaking up than to feel you have made a circle uncomfortable. You must not rebuke people unless you really hate doing it. If you like doing it, you may be pretty sure that it is vanity; a Christian ought not to feel out of place in a smoking-room!"

The whole thing did not take more than three-quarters of an hour. Coffee was brought in, very strong and good. Some of the party went off, and Father Payne disappeared. I went to the smoking-room with two of the men, and we talked a little. Finally I went away to my room, and tried to commit my impressions of the whole thing to my diary before I went to bed. It certainly seemed a happy life, and I was struck with the curious mixture of freedom, frankness, and yet courtesy about the whole. There was no roughness or wrangling or stupidity, nor had I any sense either of exclusion, or of being elaborately included in the life of the circle. I would call the atmosphere brotherly, if brotherliness did not often mean the sort of frankness which is so unpleasant to strangers. There certainly was an atmosphere about it, and I felt too that Father Payne, for all his easiness, had somehow got the reins in his hands.

The next morning I went down to breakfast, which was, I found, like breakfast at a club, as Vincent had said. It was a plain meal--cold bacon, a vast dish of scrambled eggs kept hot by a spirit lamp and a hot-water arrangement. You could make toast for yourself if you wished, and there was a big fresh loaf, with excellent butter, marmalade, and jam--not an ascetic breakfast at all. There were daily papers on the table, and no one talked. I did not see Father Payne, who must have come in later.

After breakfast, Barthrop showed me the rooms of the house. The library was fitted up with bookshelves and easy-chairs for reading, with a big round oak table in the centre. The floor was of stained oak boards and covered with rugs. There was also a capacious smoking-room, and I learned that smoking was not allowed elsewhere. It was, in fact, a solid old family mansion of some dignity. There were three or four oil paintings in all the rooms, portraits and landscapes. The general tone of decoration was dark--red wall-papers and fittings stained brown. It was all clean and simple, and there was a total absence of ornament, I went and walked in the garden, which was of the same very straightforward kind--plain grass, shrubberies, winding paths, with comfortable wooden seats in sheltered places; one or two big beds, evidently of old-fashioned perennials, and some trellises for ramblers. The garden was adjoined by a sort of wilderness, with big trees and ground-ivy, and open spaces in which aconites and snowdrops were beginning to show themselves. Father Payne, I gathered, was fond of the garden and often worked there; but there were no curiosities--it was all very simple. Beyond that were pasture-fields, with a good many clumps and hedgerow trees, running down to a stream, which had been enlarged into a deep pool at one place, where there was a timbered bathing-shed. The stream fed, through little sluices, a big, square pond, full, I was told, in summer of bulrushes and water-lilies. I noticed a couple of lawn-tennis courts, and there was a bowling-green by the house. Then there was a large kitchen-garden, with standards and espaliers, and box-edged beds. The stables, which were spacious, contained only a pony and the little cart I had driven up in, and a few bicycles. I liked the solid air of the big house, which had two wings at the back, corresponding to the wings in front; the long row of stone pedimented windows, with heavy white casements, was plain and stately, and there were some fine magnolias and wisterias trained upon the walls. It all looked stately, and yet home-like; there was nothing neglected about it, and yet it looked wholesomely left alone; everything was neat, but nothing was smart.

I was strolling about, enjoying the gleams of bright sunshine and the cold air, when I saw Father Payne coming down the garden towards me. He gave me a pleasant nod: I said something about the beauty of the place; he smiled, and said "Yes, it is the kind of thing I like--but I am so used to it that I can hardly even see it! That's the worst of habit; but there is nothing about the place to get on your nerves. It's a well-bred old house, I think, and knows how to hold its tongue, without making you uncomfortable," Then he went on presently: "You know how I came by it? It's an odd story. It had been in my family, till my grandfather left it to his second wife, and cut my father out. There was a son by the second wife, who was meant to have it; but he died, and it went to a brother of the second wife, and his widow left it back to me. It was an entire surprise, because I did not know her, and the only time I had ever seen the house was once when I came down on the sly, just to look at the old place, little thinking I should ever come here. She had some superstition about it, I fancy! Anyhow, while I was grubbing away in town, fifteen years ago, and hardly able to make two ends meet, I suddenly found myself put in possession of it; and though I am poor, as squires go, the farms and cottages bring me in quite enough to rub along. At any rate it enabled me to try some experiments, and I have been doing so ever since. Leisure and solitude! Those are the only two things worth having that money can buy. Perhaps you don't think there's much solitude about our life? But solitude only means the power to think your own thoughts, without having other people's thoughts trailed across the track. Loneliness is quite a different thing, and that's not wholesome."

He strolled on, looking about him. "Do you ever garden?" he said. "It's the best fun in the world--making plants do as _you_ like, while all the time they think they are doing as _they_ like. That's the secret of it! You can't bully these wild things, but they are very obedient, as long as they believe they are free. They are like children; they will take any amount of trouble as long as you don't call it work."

Presently we heard the clatter of hoofs in the stable-yard. "That's for you!" he said. "Will you go and see that they have brought your things down? I'll meet you at the door." I went up and found my things had been packed by the old butler. I gave him a little tip, and he said confidentially: "I daresay we shall be seeing you back here, sir, one of these days." "I hope so," I said, to which he replied with a mysterious wink and nod.

Father Payne shook hands. "Well, good-bye!" he said. "It's good of you to have come down, and I'm glad to have made acquaintance, whatever happens--I'll drop you a line." I drove away, and he stood at the door looking after me, till the little cart drove out of the gate.

IV

THE SUMMONS

I must confess that I was much excited about my visit; the whole thing seemed to me to be almost too good to be true, and I hardly dared hope that I should be allowed to return. I went back to town and rejoined Vincent, and we talked much about the delights of Aveley.

The following morning we each received a letter in Father Payne's firm hand. That to Vincent was very short. It ran as follows:

DEAR VINCENT,--_I shall be glad to take you in if you wish to join us, for three months. At the end of that time, we shall both be entirely free to choose. I hope you will be happy here. You can come as soon as you like; and if Duncan, after reading my letter, decides to come too, you had better arrange to arrive together. It will save me the trouble of describing our way of life to each separately. Please let me have a line, and I will see that your room is ready for you.--Sincerely yours,_

C. PAYNE.

"That's all right!" said Vincent, with an air of relief. "Now what does he say to you?" My letter was a longer one. It ran:

MY DEAR YOUNG MAN,--_I am going to be very frank with you, and to say that, though I liked you very much, I nearly decided that I could not ask you to join us. I will tell you why. I am not sure that you are not too easy-going and impulsive. We should all find you agreeable, and I am sure you would find the whole thing great fun at first; but I rather think you would get bored. It does not seem to me as if you had ever had the smallest discipline, and I doubt if you have ever disciplined yourself; and discipline is a tiresome thing, unless you like it. I think you are quick, receptive, and polite--all that is to the good. But are you serious? I found in you a very quick perception, and you held up a flattering mirror with great spontaneity to my mind and heart--that was probably why I liked you so much. But I don't want people here to reflect me or anyone else. The whole point of my scheme is independence, with just enough discipline to keep things together, like the hem on a handkerchief._

_But you may have a try, if you wish; and in any case, I think you will have a pleasant three months here, and make us all sorry to lose you if you do not return. I have told your friend Vincent he can come, and I think he is more likely to stay than you are, because he is more himself. I don't suppose that he took in the whole place and the idea of it as quickly as you did. I expect you could write a very interesting description of it, and I don't expect he could._

_Still, I will say that I shall be truly sorry if, after this letter, you decide not to come to us. I like your company; and I shall not get tired of it. But to be more frank still, I think you are one of those charming and sympathetic people who is tough inside, with a toughness which is based on the determination to find things amusing and interesting--and that is not the sort of toughness I can do anything with. People like yourself are incapable as a rule of suffering, whatever happens to them. It's a very happy disposition, but it does not grow. You are sensitive enough, but I don't want sensitiveness, I want men who are not sensitive, and who yet can suffer at not getting nearer and more quickly than they can to the purpose ahead of them, whatever that may be. It is a stiff sort of thing that I want. I can help to make a stiff nature pliable; I'm not very good at making a pliable nature stiff. That's the truth._

_So I shall be delighted--more than you think--if you say "Yes." but in a way more hopeful about you if you say "No."_

_Come with Vincent, if you come; and as soon as you like.--Ever yours truly,_

C. PAYNE.

"Does he want me to go, or does he not?" I said. "Is he letting me down with a compliment?"

"Oh no," said Vincent, "it's all right. He only thinks that you are a butterfly which will flutter by, and he would rather like you to do a little fluttering down there."

"But I'm not going to go there," I said, "to wear a cap and bells for a bit, and then to be spun when I have left my golden store, like the radiant morn; he puts me on my mettle. I _will_ go, and he _shall_ keep me! I don't want to fool about any more."

"All right!" said Vincent. "It's a bargain, then! Will you be ready to go the day after to-morrow? There are some things I want to buy, now that I'm going to school again. But I'm awfully relieved--it's just what I want. I was getting into a mess with all my work, and becoming a muddled loafer."

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

V

THE SYSTEM

We went off together on the Saturday, 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 quantity. 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.