Chapter 24

Presently Father Payne insisted on sitting down in a sheltered place. He flung his hat off, and sate there, looking round him with a smile, his arms clasped round his big knees. "Well," he said, "it's a jolly place, the old world, to be sure! Plenty of nasty and ugly things, I suppose, going on in corners; but if you look round, they are only a small percentage of the happy things. They don't force themselves upon the eye and ear, the beastly things: and it's a stupid and faithless mistake to fix the imagination and the reason too much upon them. We are all of us in a tight place occasionally, and we have to meet it as best we can. But I don't think we do it any better by anticipating it beforehand. What is more, no one can really help us or deliver us: we can be made a little more comfortable, and that's all, by what they call cooling drinks, and flowers in a vase by the bedside. And it's a bad thing to get the misery of the world in a vague way on our nerves. That's the useless emotion. We have got certain quite definite things to do for other people in our own circle, and we are bound to do them; we mustn't shirk them, and we mustn't shirk our own troubles, though the less we bother about them the better. I am not at all sure that the curse of the newspapers is not that they collect all the evils of the world into a hideous posy, and thrust it under our nose. They don't collect the fine, simple, wholesome things. Now you and I are better employed to-day in being agreeable to each other--at least you are being kind to me, even though I can't talk about that book--and in looking at the delightful things going on everywhere--just think of all the happiness in the world to-day, symbolised by that ridiculous wren!--we are better employed, I say, than if we were extending the commerce of England, or planning how to make war, or scolding people in sermons about their fatal indifference to the things that belong to their peace. Men and women must find and make their own peace, and we are doing both to-day. That awful vague sense of responsibility, that desire to interfere, that wish that everyone else should do uncomplaining what we think to be their duty--that's all my eye! It is the kindly, eager, wholesome life which affects the world, wherever it is lived: and that is the best which most of us can do. We can't be always fighting. Even the toughest old veteran soldier--how many hours of his life has he spent actually under fire? No, I'm not forgetting the workers either: but you need not tell me that they are all sick at heart because they are not dawdling in a country lane. It would bore them to death, and they can live a very happy life without it. That's the false pathos again--to think that everyone who can't do as _we_ like must be miserable. And anyhow, I have done my twenty-five years on the treadmill, and I am not going to pretend it was noble work, because it wasn't. It was useless and disgraceful drudgery, most of it!"

"Ah," I said, "but that doesn't help me. You may have earned a holiday, but I have never done any real drudgery--I haven't earned anything."

"Be content," said Father Payne; "take two changes of raiment! You have got your furrow to plough--all in good time! You are working hard now, and don't let me hear any stuff about being ashamed because you enjoy it! The reward of labour is life: to enjoy our work is the secret. If you could persuade people that the spring of life lies there, you would do more for the happiness of man than by attending fifty thousand committees. But I won't talk any more. I want to consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't do it every day!"

LXIV

OF POSE

Someone said rashly, after dinner to-night, that the one detestable and unpardonable thing in a man was pose. A generalisation of this kind acted on Father Payne very often like a ferret on a rabbit. He had been mournfully abstracted during dinner, shaking his head slowly, and turning his eyes to heaven when he was asked leading questions. But now he said: "I don't think that is reasonable--you might as well say that you always disliked length in a book. A book has got to be some length--it is as short as it's long. Of course, the moment you begin to say, 'How long this book is!' you mean that it is too long, and excess is a fault. Do you remember the subject proposed in a school debating society, 'That too much athletics is worthy of our admiration'? Pose is like that--when you become conscious of pose it is generally disagreeable--that is, if it is meant to deceive: but it is often amusing too, like the pose of the unjust judge in the parable, who prefaces his remarks by saying, 'Though I fear not God, neither regard man.'"

"Oh, but you know what I mean, Father," said the speaker, "the pose of knowing when you don't know, and being well-bred when you are snobbish, and being kind when you are mean, and so on."

"I think you mean humbug rather than pose," said Father Payne; "but even so, I don't agree with you. I have a friend who would be intolerable, but for his pose of being agreeable. He isn't agreeable, and he doesn't feel agreeable; but he behaves as if he was, and it is the only thing that makes him bearable. What you really mean is the pose of superiority--the man whose motives are always just ahead of your own, and whose taste is always slightly finer, and who knows the world a little better. But there is a lot of pose that isn't that. What _is_ pose, after all? Can anyone define it?"

"It's an artist's phrase, I think," said Barthrop; "it means a position in which you look your best."

"Like the Archbishop who was always painted in a gibbous attitude--first quarter, you know--with his back turned to you, and his face just visible over his lawn sleeve," said Father Payne, "but that was in order to hide an excrescence on his left cheek. Do you remember what Lamb said of Barry Cornwall's wen on the nape of his neck? Some one said that Barry Cornwall was thinking of having it cut off. 'I hope he won't do that,' said Lamb, 'I rather like it--it's redundant, like his poetry!' I rather agree with Lamb. I like people to be a little redundant, and a harmless pose is pure redundancy: it only means that a man is up to some innocent game or other, some sort of mystification, and is enjoying himself. It's like a summer haze over the landscape. Now, there's another friend of mine who was once complimented on his 'uplifted' look. Whenever he thinks of it, and that's pretty often, he looks uplifted, like a bird drinking, with his eyes fixed on some far-off vision. I don't mind that! It's only a wish to look his best. It's partly a wish to give pleasure, you know. It's the same thing that makes people wear their hair long, or dress in a flamboyant way. I'll tell you a little story. You know Bertie Nash, the artist. I met him once in a Post Office, and he was buying a sheet of halfpenny stamps. I asked him if he was going to send out some circulars. He looked at me sadly, and said, 'No, I always use these--I can't use the penny stamps--such a crude red!' Now, he didn't do that to impress me: but it was a pose in a way, and he liked feeling so sensitive to colour."

"But oughtn't one to avoid all that sort of nonsense?" said some one; "it's better surely to be just what you are."

"Yes, but what _are_ you, after all?" said Father Payne; "your moods vary. It would be hopeless if everyone tried to keep themselves down to their worst level for the sake of sincerity. The point is that you ought to try to keep at your best level, even if you don't feel so. Hang it, good manners are a pose, if it comes to that. The essence of good manners is sometimes to conceal what you are feeling. Is it a pose to behave amiably when you are tired or cross?"

"No, but that is in order not to make other people uncomfortable," said Vincent.

"Well, it's very hard to draw the line," said Father Payne: "but what we really mean by pose is, I imagine, the attempt to appear to be something which you frankly are not--and that is where the word has changed its sense, Barthrop. An artist's pose is something characteristic, which makes a man look his best. What we generally mean by pose is the affecting a best which one never reaches. Come, tell a story, some one! That's the best way to get at a quality. Won't some one quote an illustration?"

"What about my friend Pearce, the schoolmaster?" said Vincent. "He read a book about schoolmastering, and he said he didn't think much of it. He added that the author seemed only to be giving elegant reasons for doing things which the born schoolmaster did by instinct."

"Well, that's not a bad criticism," said Father Payne; "but it was pose if he meant to convey that _he_ was a born schoolmaster. Is he one, by the way?"

"No," said Vincent, "he is not: he is much ragged by the boys; but he comforts himself by thinking that all schoolmasters are ragged, but that he is rather more successful than most in dealing with it. He has a great deal of moral dignity, has Pearce! I don't know where he would be without it!"

"Well, there's an instance," said Father Payne, "of a pose being of some use. I think a real genuine pose often makes a man do better work in the world than if he was drearily conscious of failure. It's a game, you know--a dramatic game: and I think it's a sign of vitality and interest to want to have a game. It's like the lawyer's clerk in _Our Mutual Friend_, when Mr. Boffin calls to keep an appointment, being the lawyer's only client; but the boy makes a show of looking it all up in a ledger, runs his finger down a list of imaginary consultants, and says to himself, 'Mr. Aggs, Mr. Baggs, Mr. Caggs, Mr. Daggs, Mr. Boffin--Yes, sir, that is right!' Now there's no harm in that sort of thing--it's only a bit of moral dignity, as Vincent says. It's no good acquiescing in being a humble average person--we must do better than that! Most people believe in themselves in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary--but it's better than disbelieving in yourself. That's abject, you know."

"But if you accept the principle of pose," said Lestrange, "I don't see that you can find fault with any pose."

"You might as well say," said Father Payne, "that if I accept the principle of drinking alcohol, it doesn't matter how much I drink! Almost all morality is relative--in fact, it is doubtful if it is ever absolute. The mischief of pose is not when it makes a man try to be or to appear at his best: but when a man lives a thoroughly unreal life, taking a high line in theory and never troubling about practice, then it's incredible to what lengths self-deception can go. Dr. Johnson said that he looked upon himself as a polite man! It is quite easy to get to believe yourself impeccable in certain points: and as one gets older, and less assailable, and less liable to be pulled up and told the hard truth, it is astonishing how serenely you can sail along. But that isn't pose exactly. It generally begins by a pose, and becomes simple imperviousness; and that is, after all, the danger of pose,--that it makes people blind to the truth about themselves."

"I'm getting muddled," said Vincent.

"It _is_ rather muddling," said Father Payne, "but, in a general way, the point is this. When pose is a deliberate attempt to deceive other people for your own credit, it is detestable. But when it is merely harmless drama, to add to the interest of life and to retain your own self-respect, it's an amiable foible, and need not be discouraged. The real question is whether it is assumed seriously, or whether it is all a sort of joke. We all like to play our little games, and I find it very easy to forgive a person who enjoys dressing up, so to speak, and making remarks in character. Come, I'll confess my sins in public. If I meet a stranger in the roads, I rather like to be thought a bluff and hearty English squire, striding about my broad acres. I prefer that to being thought a retired crammer, a dominie who keeps a school and calls it an academy, as Lord Auchinleck said of Johnson. But if I pretended in this house to be a kind of abbot, and glided about in a cassock with a gold cross round my neck, conferring a benediction on everyone, and then retired to my room to read a French novel and to drink whisky-and-soda, that would be a very unpleasant pose indeed!"

We all implored Father Payne to adopt it, and he said he would give it his serious consideration.

LXV

OF REVENANTS

I was sitting in the garden one evening in summer with Father Payne and Barthrop. Barthrop was going off next day to Oxford, and was trying to persuade Father Payne to come too.

"No," he said, "I simply couldn't! Oxford is the city east of the sun and west of the moon--like as a dream when one awaketh! I don't hold with indulging fruitless sentiment, particularly about the past."

"But isn't it rather a pity?" said Barthrop. "After all, most emotions are useless, if you come to that! Why should you cut yourself off from a place you are so fond of, and which is quite the most beautiful place in England too? Isn't it rather--well,--weak?"

"Yes," said Father Payne, "it's weak, no doubt! That is to say, if I were differently made, more hard-hearted, more sure of myself, I should go, and I should enjoy myself, and moon about, and bore you to death with old stories about the chimes at midnight--everybody would be a dear old boy or a good old soul, and I should hand out tips, and get perfectly maudlin in the evenings over a glass of claret. That's the normal thing, no doubt--that's what a noble-minded man in a novel of Thackeray's would do!"

"Well," said Barthrop, "you know best--but I expect that if you did take the plunge and go there, you would find yourself quite at ease."

"I might," said Father Payne; "but then I also might not--and I prefer not to risk it. You see, it would be merely wallowing in sentiment--and I don't approve of sentiment. I want my emotions to live with, not to bathe in!"

"But you don't mind going back to London," said Barthrop.

"No," said Father Payne, "but that bucks me up. I was infernally unhappy in London, and it puts me in a thoroughly sensible and cheerful mood to go and look at the outside of my old lodgings, and the place where I used to teach, and to say to myself, 'Thank God, that's all over!' Then I go on my way rejoicing, and make no end of plans. But if I went to Oxford, I should just remember how happy and young I was; and I might even commit the folly of regretting the lapse of time, and of wishing I could have it back again. I don't think it is wholesome to do anything which makes one discontented, or anything which forces one to dwell on what one has lost. That doesn't matter. Nothing really is ever lost, and it only takes the starch out of one to think about it from that angle. I don't believe in the past. It seems unalterable, and I suppose in a sense it is so. But if you begin to dwell on unalterable things, you become a fatalist, and I'm always trying to get away from that. The point is that no one is unalterable, and, thank God, we are always altering. To potter about in the past is like grubbing in an ash-heap, and shedding tears over broken bits of china. The plate, or whatever it is, was pretty enough, and it had its place and its use; and when the stuff of which it is made is wanted again, it will be used again. It is simply fatuous to waste time over the broken pieces of old dreams and visions; and I mean to use my emotions and my imagination to see new dreams and finer visions. Perhaps the time will come when I can dream no more--the brain gets tired and languid, no doubt. But even then I shall try to be interested in what is going on."

"I see your point," said Barthrop; "but, for the life of me, I can't see why the old place should not take its part in the new visions! When I go down to Oxford I don't regret it. I go gratefully and happily about, and I like to see the young men as jolly as I was, and as unaware what a good time they are having. An old pal of mine is a Don, and he puts me up in College, and it amuses me to go into Hall, and to see some of the young lions at close quarters. It's all pure and simple refreshment."

"I've no doubt of it, old man," said Father Payne; "and it's an excellent thing for you to go, and to draw fresh life from the ancient earth, like Antaeus. But I'm not made that way. I'm not loyal--that is to say, I am not faithful to things simply because I once admired and loved them. If you are loyal in the right way, as you are, it's different. But these old attachments are a kind of idolatry to me--a false worship. I'm naturally full of unreasonable devotion to the old and beautiful things; but they get round my neck like a mill-stone, and it is all so much more weight that I have to carry. I sometimes go to see an old cousin of mine, a widow in the country, who lives entirely in the past, never allows anything to be changed in the house, never talks about anyone who isn't dead or ill. The woman's life is simply buried under old memories, mountains of old china, family plate, receipts for jam and marmalade--everything has got to be done as it was in the beginning. Now most of her friends think that very beautiful and tender, and talk of the old-world atmosphere of the place; but I think it simply a stuffy waste of time. I don't tell her so--God forbid! But I feel that she is lolling in an arbour by the roadside instead of getting on. It's innocent enough, but it does not seem to me beautiful."

"But I still don't see why you give way to the feeling," said Barthrop. "I'm sure that if I felt as you do about Oxford, or any other place, you would tell me it was my duty to conquer it."

"Very likely!" said Father Payne. "But doctors don't feel bound to take their own prescriptions! Everyone must decide for himself, and I know that I should fall under the luxurious enchantment. I should go into cheap raptures, I should talk about 'the tender grace of a day that is dead'--it's no use putting your head in a noose to see what being strangled feels like."

"But do you apply that to everything," I said, "old friendships, old affections, old memories? They seem to me beautiful, and harmlessly beautiful."

"Well, if you can use them up quite freshly, and make a poetical dish out of them, for present consumption, I don't mind," said Father Payne. "But that isn't my way--I'm not robust enough. It's all I can do to take things in as they come along. Of course an old memory sometimes goes through one like a sword, but I pull it out as quick as I can, and cast it away. I am not going to dance with Death if I can help it! I have got my job cut out for me, and I am not going to be hampered by old rubbish. Mind you, I don't say that it was rubbish at the time; but I have no use for anything that I can't use. Sentiment seems to me like letting valuable steam off. The people I have loved are all there still, whether they are dead or alive. They did a bit of the journey with me, and I enjoyed their company, and I shall enjoy it again, if it so comes about. But we have to live our life, and we can't keep more than a certain number of things in mind--that is an obvious limitation. Do you remember the old fairy story of the man who carried a magic goose, and everyone who touched it, or touched anyone who touched it, could not leave go, with the result that there was a long train of helpless people trotting about behind the man. I don't want to live like that, with a long train of old memories and traditions and friendships and furniture trailing helplessly behind me. My business is with my present circle, my present work, and I can't waste my strength in drawing about vehicles full of goods. If anyone wants me, here I am, and I will do my best to meet his wishes; but I am not going to be frightened by words like loyalty into pretending that I am going to stagger along carrying the whole of my past. No, my boy," said Father Payne, turning to Barthrop, "you go to Oxford, and enjoy yourself! But the old place is too tight about my heart for me to put my nose into it. I'm a free man, and I am not going to be in bondage to my old fancies. You may give my love to Corpus and to Wadham Garden--it's all dreadfully bewitching--but I'm not going to run the risk of falling in love with the phantom of the past--that's _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ for me, and I'm riding on--I'm riding on. I won't have the hussy on my horse.

"I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sideways would she lean, and sing A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna dew. And sure in language strange she said, 'I love thee true,'"

He stopped a moment, as he often did when he made a quotation, overcome with feeling. Then he smiled, and added half to himself, "No; I should say, as Dr. Johnson said to the lady in Fleet Street; 'No, no; it won't do, my girl!'"

LXVI

OF DISCIPLINE

"Well, anyhow," said Vincent at dinner, commenting on something that had been said, "you may not get anything else out of a disagreeable affair like that, but you get a sort of discipline."

"Come, hold on," said Father Payne; "that won't do, you know! Discipline, in my belief, is in itself a bad thing, unless you not only get something out of it, but, what is more, know what you get out of it. You can't discipline anyone, unless he desires it! Discipline means the repressing of something--you must be quite sure that it is worth repressing."

"What I mean," said Vincent, "is that it makes you tougher and harder."

"Yes," said Father Payne, "but that is not a good thing in itself, unless there is something soft and weak in you. Discipline may easily knock the good things out of you. There's a general kind of belief that, because the world is a rough place, where you may get tumbles and shocks without any fault of your own, therefore it is as well to have something rough about you. I don't believe in that. The reason why a man gets roughly handled, in nine cases out of ten, is not because he is obnoxious or offensive, but because other people are harsh and indifferent. I want to apply discipline to the brutal, not to brutalise the sensitive. If discipline simply made people brave and patient, it would be different, but it often makes them callous and unpleasant."

"But doesn't everyone want discipline of some kind?" said Vincent.

"Of the right kind, yes," said Father Payne. "Some people want a good deal more than they get, and some a certain amount less than they get. It's a delicate business. It is not always fortifying. Take a simple case. A bold, brazen sort of boy who is untruthful may want a whipping; but a timid and imaginative boy who is untruthful doesn't necessarily want a whipping at all--it makes him more, and not less, timid. One of the most ridiculous and persistent blunders in human life is to believe that a certain penalty is divinely appointed for a certain offence. Our theory of punishment is all wrong; we inflict punishment, as a rule, not to improve an offender, but out of revenge, or because it gives us a comfortable sense of our own justice. And the whole difficulty of discipline is that it is apt to be applied in lumps, and distributed wholesale to people who don't all want the same amount. We haven't really got very far away from the Squeers theory of giving all the boys brimstone and treacle alike."

"Yes, but in a school," said Vincent, "would not the boys themselves resent it, if they were punished differently for the same offence?"