CHAPTER X

"THE BLIND BEGGAR"

The only strength for me is to be found in the sense of a personal presence everywhere, it scarcely matters whether it be called human or divine; a presence which only makes itself felt at first in this and that particular form and feature.... Into this presence we come, not by leaving behind what are usually called earthly things, or by loving them less, but by living more intensely in them, and loving more what is really lovable in them; for it is literally true that this world is everything to us, if only we choose to make it so, if only we "live in the present" because it is eternity....--RICHARD LEWIS NETTLESHIP: _Lectures and Memories_, Vol. I., p. 72.

He hath made everything beautiful in its time; He hath also set the world in their heart, and yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath wrought from the beginning even unto the end....--ECCLES. iii.

"Fool," said my muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."--SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

(1)

August drew to its sunny close, and Manning and Tressor departed, leaving Paul to superintend the reroofing of old Morley's Mill cottage, the building of an extra poultry house, the laying-out of a new flower bed, the cutting down of a few trees and the letting of an empty cottage. They also left him to write poetry; and whereas, without assistance, he would have cut a poor figure at any of the practical jobs, he felt that he was doing even worse as a poet. September found him, then, alone and perturbed; but October came, heralded with the gleam of crimson and gold banners among the beeches of Chanctonbury, and found him alone and desperate.

He was the more overwhelmed by it all as he was totally unprepared. Hitherto his days had been more full than he could manage, for, besides talk and friends and all the incidents of life at Cambridge, he had had his degree for which to work. Hitherto verse had been a refuge, a joy which he had allowed himself with a kind of grim deliberation. He would want to write, feeling that strange, deep, indefinite hunger within him that all who have in any degree the gift of a creative art know so well, and he would permit himself to leave his books and sit by the fire or in the window-seat with a pencil for an hour, a measured hour only. Or hitherto there had been other difficulties in the way, from Donaldson's tramp on the stairs to the disturbing furniture at Claxted--little things, things over which one ought to be able to triumph, but things which ordinarily triumph over us all.

There, then, lay the sting of it. He had now time and to spare. He had now both loneliness, and, on the other hand, the company of beauty both within and without doors. He had, in the well-trained servants of the house and estate, the very best of human help towards that respect and leisure and comfort that our rather pitiable souls do need. He had Prideaux at the Vicarage, the best of fellows, for a companionable pipe and chat, and he had Mrs. Manning and Miss Netterly, her sister, only too ready to give him tea in their drawing-room and be kind. The disturbing element was wholly withdrawn. Ursula had gone to London on a whim of her own in August, and on an ill-defined visit thereafter, and had at last returned so absorbed in a picture perhaps, so possibly deliberately remote, that, if he saw her, it was only to pass the time of day, or watch her face immobile as he rested in the evening in her mother's drawing-room.

In despair, he had abandoned the attempt to write for one to read. The possibility of reading had been one of the attractions of Fordham. At Claxted he had done but little more than learn the names of classical English authors, at Cambridge but snatched odd moments for them. He was peculiarly unfamiliar with the work of the great poets and he had soaked himself in none of the moderns. He had longed so eagerly for the chance really to read Swinburne, Francis Thompson and the like, and now that it had come he could not. The malignancy of his own particular devil followed him even in this. He would walk to Storrington and tramp back over the Downs to curl himself up in the lounge with the _Hound of Heaven_ in his hands, only to find his eyes wandering from the page and his feet stirring restlessly towards the gardens where old Timothy would be pottering about. Not, of course, that old Timothy helped at all, and he would perhaps take a hand with a spade or listen to a discourse on manners for half an hour or so, and then turn unsatisfied to the towering strength of the animophilous lime-trees in the avenue and the quiet assurance of the sleeping water in the lake. Old Timothy would look after him and shake his head. He had small opinion of strapping young men who could not dig for a morning and be thankful.

(2)

Half-way through October Paul came near to the climax. A morning unusually wretched had led to an afternoon's honest endeavour with the foresters in the park, and he had returned to bath and change with a more comfortable feeling in his heart and pleasurably tired muscles. But even as he dressed, the shadows crept in again. He came down the wide stairs to the hall slowly, a haunted man. Its very quiet and peace and air of waiting kindly readiness to help, exasperated him. A friendly touch, where one looks for love, is worse than indifference to a lover. And brooding there, he had determined to write to Tressor and tell him that the experiment was a failure and that he must leave.

After dinner, the company of his thoughts intolerable, he told Rider that he was going out and walked across the park to the cottage below the Downs. Mrs. Manning was always glad to see him, and he knew he would like to sit in an arm-chair and listen to her placid chat. She understood just nothing at all, that was the best of her. Prideaux would understand sufficient to irritate but not enough to help; the Manor had an air of understanding but of keeping its own placid secret. Mrs. Manning would talk about her fowls and ask him if he did not think Mr. Lloyd George too terrible. And in the morning he would write to Tressor.

Ursula was there. It appeared that her picture was nearing completion, and that she was, as it were, standing aside for a day or two to be quite sure of the necessary final touches. She sat idly, watching her mother at work. He studied her profile as she sat, deliberately telling himself that this and that might have been improved, deliberately conscious that he would not have altered a line. Sure strength lingered on her face in some subtle way. She was oddly remote, splendidly active, he felt,--the other side of a veil. Of that veil she was in supreme command. Not that it mattered; he did not want her to lift it. He was too preoccupied, too much on the rack to care.

When he had gone, the girl sat on silent for a little. Then, without moving, she asked a question or two of her mother.

"Mother, did you see much of Mr. Kestern while I was away?"

"Yes, dear, a good deal. He and Arnold came several times, and when Arnold went, he kept up the habit of dropping in."

"Does he ever talk much?"

"No, not much. He's a quiet man, I think."

Certain vivid little scenes formed themselves in Ursula's mind. She had seen him walking and talking with Manning, had heard him with Tressor. And she remembered his face by the lake and in her room. A quiet man? Eager, ardent, she had thought him. And there was his verse, too.

"He's absorbed in his work, I expect," went on her mother, her head on one side as she touched her embroidery deftly. "Mr. Tressor said he thought he would do a great deal. He said he was very prolific, I remember. They use such odd words."

"He's all alone up there now, isn't he?"

"Yes, dear. But Mr. Prideaux calls, and he goes to see him."

"Mr. Prideaux? Does he like him?"

"Very much, dear, I believe. But the Vicar is not at all gossipy, you know."

"Do you like him, Ursula?" asked Miss Netterly curiously.

The girl smiled. "I scarcely know him, auntie," she said.

"Well, dear," said her mother, folding her work, "I think it's bedtime. You must be tired, too."

Mrs. Manning always thought one must be tired. Curiously enough, she was so nice about it that one forgot to be irritated.

In her own room Ursula uncovered her picture and had a look at it. She read a little. Then she sat on awhile, staring out of the window. Then she got up, fetched her portfolio and looked through its contents. When she reached the little water-colour she had done to illustrate Paul's poem, she put it on one side--thereafter by itself on her mantelpiece. Then she went to bed.

In the morning she announced the intention of taking a walk. Everyone placidly agreed, as they did from force of habit where Ursula was concerned, and her mother came to the gate with her and watched her away in her yellow jumper, with a green scarf and skirt. Mrs. Manning was very proud of her daughter. She did not ask where she was going, however.

Paul, after a late breakfast, strolled out on to the terrace. He was turning over the phrases of his letter to Tressor when he saw the girl coming up the drive. He went to meet her. It crossed his mind that she might be bringing a message from her mother.

"Hullo," he said, when he was within speaking distance. "Good morning. How are you?"

"Very well," she said. "Busy?"

"Not particularly," replied Paul ruefully. "I was just about to write a beastly letter."

She looked him frankly in the face. "How's the poetry going?" she asked.

He did not think to be surprised. "It's not going at all," he said.

She nodded. They were standing still there, on the drive. She looked away from him, as if she had seen all she wanted, looking out over the park alive in the sun.

"I've written nothing for ages," he went on impulsively. "I can't. And I can't read either."

"Come for a walk," she said.

"Now? With you? Where?" It was only afterwards that he realised that this was not the politest reply.

"At once, with me, on the Downs," she replied smiling.

His face lit up. He saw in a flash how good a walk with her would be. "Oh, good," he cried, "I'd love to. May I get a stick and a hat? Will you come in a moment?"

"I'll wait here," she said. "Don't be long."

"I won't be two minutes," he replied, and ran up the steps.

She led the way, down the drive, past the lodge, up to the right, up a little path that skirted the hedges and ran through the woods at the foot of the great hill, and then up still more, by a winding track that serpentined out into the open downland at the top. The ring of Chanctonbury was away on their right; a dew-pond ringed with a stony beach just in front, its waters reflecting the blue of the autumn sky and ruffled with a wind from the sea. Before them they could see Cissbury in the distance and follow the coast line past Worthing, hid behind a down, to Shoreham, with Lancing Chapel set up above it, and Brighton. It was so clear to-day that the gleam of white on the cliffs beyond Rottingdean was distinctly visible.

They had said little as they climbed, as one does, for it is a climb, but now they turned to the left and walked slowly along the close-cropped ride through the tufted hummocky grass, skirting that ridge below which Fordham and Steyning nestle and a down winds to the sea.

"Now," she said, "what's the matter? Don't you think you'd like to tell me?"

"I would," cried Paul eagerly, "I'd love to. Besides----" He broke off, puzzling at her as they walked.

"Well?"

"I say, how did you know anything was the matter?"

"I saw last night," she said imperturbably. "It struck me that you were down and out, and hadn't a soul to speak to."

"You're right. But why do you bother with me?"

She walked on deliberately. "I'm not bothering. You see, I like you, and I like your verse, and you're the sort of person it's worth while talking to in life."

"That's very good of you," said Paul. "But I don't deserve all that. I'm an awful fool, and I've floundered about till I've got fairly well bogged."

"I thought so. Tell me."

"I don't know where to begin. Yes, I do though. After all, it's you who bogged me really."

He smiled at her ruefully, but she took no notice, her eyes on the landscape below. "You said there was no God," went on Paul, "and I couldn't forget it, and spoke to Arnold about it at last. Then he rubbed it in. For three years, now, I've been seeking to get at the truth about God. You don't know how I've tried. I've tried to hear His voice, to know what He wants, and I've got no nearer. Or I think I haven't. It hadn't struck me till you spoke and Arnold pushed it home that perhaps the reason is that--that--there isn't a God at all."

"Do you honestly feel that three years is a long time?"

"Well--it's three years, anyway."

"It is. Three years."

Her tone arrested him. He knew what she meant. They walked a hundred yards while he turned it over. He had a sudden vision of the generations of seekers that had gone before him seeking. He saw vividly that where the mystics, saints and doctors had spent lifetimes, three years was not much. But as he saw, he flamed out. The floodgates were loosened. At last, like the psalmist, he spake with his tongue.

"Yes. Three years. Oh, I know it's a drop in the bucket. But they're the three best years up to now of my life, and they are my life. They're all I've had to give. And if God is a Father to us, if He cares at all, He must be big enough to be interested even in my three years."

"And instead of that----?"

"He doesn't care at all. He is silent, always silent. You were right: He must be asleep. There's never any voice nor any that answers. And so all the light's gone out of life. What's the good of anything? What's the meaning of anything? Before, everything in the world seemed to have a secret joy behind it, and it was wonderful to feel part of a great plan, to be able to lend oneself to it and work for it. It was wonderful to feel that Christ knew and was our Master and Friend. Oh, I loved Him so! And He's gone, He's hidden. And with Him has gone all the light and joy in living."

She said nothing. "I tell you it's gone!" he cried again, and it was an exceeding bitter cry.

They were walking on the edge of a beech spinney. The tall dainty trunks towered up towards the sun and their wide crown of leaves moved together with smooth billowy swaying motions. And where their spreading branches reached out towards the slope of the Down, a rich wreath of colour was growing among them. Ursula stretched up her hand as they walked and broke off a spray of golden glory. She held it out to Paul without a word.

He took it mechanically. "Lovely," he said, unthinkingly.

"Oh, no," she replied calmly. "It's dull and ugly and useless and a combination of so many chemical elements that you can read all about in the books. It's perfectly plain. What is more, the leaves are already in decay."

Paul heard her at first in blank amazement. He glanced from her face to the bough in his hand, and from the bough to her face. He could read nothing there. He looked up at the spinney from which she had broken it, and as he looked anew its brown and green and grey and gold cleared before his eyes. It was as sudden as a song. Some little hidden chain snapped inside him. "Please go on," he said, like a child.

"You're not worth it. You're as blind as a bat. And you, with your verse and your talk, you pretended to see!"

The scorn of her voice lashed him. She humbled him pitifully. And yet she said so little. It was the tone of the biting words that did it, and the fact that she was so seemingly unmoved.

"I've tried to," he said, "you don't know how I've tried."

"Tried! That's exactly what you would do. Tried! One has to try so very hard to see the sunlight."

They walked on in silence. It was very odd; as they walked Paul began to study the short green grass and the delicate curving tendrils of moss as if he had never seen them before.

"Paul," she said at last, and he was past thinking it strange, "if one is blind one cannot see. If one has eyes, one can't help seeing."

He made an effort to recover his position. "But it's God that matters," he said, "it's not the things themselves. And if God is not there, why, then----"

"Why, then, the rose is still red to-day as it was yesterday, and still sweet, sweet in its life and sweet in its death. And a new one is on the way. Who are you to talk about God Whom you do not and cannot understand? Talk about the things that you see, that is your business. Smell the scent of the rose, pick it, love it, worship it. Are you mad?"

"God is silent," he reiterated sullenly.

"You see," she flashed instantly back.

"But the mind matters. It's the first principle of philosophy. You can't get away from that."

She stopped and lay a hand upon his arm. "Listen," she said in a new voice. A lark was singing somewhere in the far blue empyrean. "Look," she said. The wide open country of field and coppice and lane lay spread before them. And so they stood awhile.

"Paul," she went on presently, "it's too lovely for you and me to spoil. Let the priest and the philosopher go their own ways. It's their vocation; perhaps they must, poor souls. Meanwhile, the beauty of the world is beyond argument. God!" (She spoke softly and rather wonderingly.) "God! Oh, I know nothing of God. Perhaps He is not, perhaps He is. The God they talk about, anyway, is not here. But the earth is here, light and colour are here, beauty is here, and beauty is enough for you to sing and for me to paint, all our days."

Paul looked about him with eyes that had grown wider with a new amazement as she spoke. "Oh," he said as softly as she, "I see, I see."

"I knew you would," she said, and dropped her hand.

"But why did I never see it before?" he asked softly.

She shrugged her shoulders, smiling at him. "Let's go," she said.

They walked down to Steyning by the steep path that drops over the hill and skirts the big bosom of the Down. Paul plucked sprays of leaves, laughed, swung his stick, sang. She laughed back at him. "Madcap," she said.

"Oh, I know. I'm mad. No, I'm not. But I have been mad, you know. But, I say, you must teach me more. We must talk about this. Will you?"

"Yes. But you don't need teaching, you know. You're a poet. You'll teach."

"I know what I am," he cried, stopping suddenly, "I know what I am!"

"What?" she queried, amused.

"I'm the blind beggar-man. 'One thing I know: once I was blind, but now I see.' Remember?"

She nodded at him, sensing something of the old evangelical years in his quotation.

"Oh, it's wonderful! Heavens, what a poem! No: I'll write a play about it. You see it, don't you? How was he made to see, eh, how?"

She laughed outright. "There you are! I don't know. How?"

"Why, clay touched his eyes, common clay--and he saw! You understand: it was just common clay that he had been walking upon, blind as a bat, for all his days. And he saw!"

She saw the parable, grave all at once. "Paul," she said, "I told you a moment ago that you would teach."

"Come on," he shouted, plunging down the hill, "I want to write. Heavens, how I want to write! Ursula, I shall read it to you bit by bit. And you shall paint a picture of it. We'll do it together. 'The Beggar-Man.' Shall we?"

"Rather. Begin to-day. Come and read to me to-night."

"You don't mind?" He stopped again abruptly.

"Mind? Of course not. What a boy!"

"Then we're real friends, are we?"

"Of course," said Ursula. "I saw that last night."

(3)

Thus, veritably, was born "The Beggar-Man." The general public knew nothing of it till the play was staged, more than twelve months later, after the usual intolerable delays and the appearance of the author's second book of verse, and then, for all the interest it aroused in this new author, and for all the heavy bookings, few ever knew the details of its origin and working out. It was, as staged, a children's mystery. They loved the Beggar-Man, and shouted with glee at his gay sallies and his new-born wonderment in wooden stools, his rickety hut and the weeds about his door. They loved his adventure with the King, the stupid old King who was as blind as--as a beggar-man. But grown-up people went, too, and they smiled a little wistfully when the children laughed, and looked a little sadly at glittering Herod. It was not a biblical play in a sense, and yet, as a critic said, it was a chapter or two of St. John's gospel that had not previously been written.

As to Paul, in these days, that Beggar-Man moved into Fordham Manor and lived with him. He and the boy became inseparables. He inspired a thousand songs that did not mention his name, but he related incidents and preached parables that Paul would retail as wholly his own. Ursula was their confidante. Mrs. Manning, at first bewildered, at length perforce tolerant, got used to the arrival of Paul on a morning breathless from a race across the park. "Good-morning, Mrs. Manning," he would shout, "where's Ursula?"

"Good-morning," she would say. "In the studio, painting."

"I'll go up, if I may," he would reply, and dash up the stairs.

Ursula, at her easel, would smile gravely and call "Come in" almost before he knocked.

"Oh, I say," Paul would cry gaily, "what do you think the Beggar-Man told me last night? He says that, after the cure, he went off to his house without his stick. Without his stick. He could hardly believe so simple a thing as that as he went, but it was true. For the first time, then, he saw his home--a poor enough shanty, but his own home, that he saw for the first time. He was still rubbing the tears out of his eyes, when there came a knock at the door.

"He opened it.

"'Excuse me,' said the man without, trembling with eagerness, 'but is there any more of that clay? I don't want all yours, of course, only just a little.... Or if you could tell me where to get it....'

"'Good heavens!' roared the blind man (asserting himself for the first time in history, Ursula), 'it was clay, man, good honest clay! Look at it! Turn round and look at it! There's miles of the holy precious stuff. Go down on your miserable knees, as I did, and thank God for it. _I_ didn't make it. _I_ can't give it to you. God thrusts it at you. Were you born blind?'"

Or Paul would ascend the stairs more quietly, and knock.

"May I come in?" he would say, opening the door gently.

"Yes, you old silly. What is it now?"

Paul would throw himself into the window-seat and look gravely at her. "I say, do you know, in the long run, they all said that he was still blind!"

"What?"

"They all said he was still blind. The people, you know, and the Pharisees. The people said: 'But, look here, how could clay open a man's eyes? The thing's ridiculous. There must be more in it than that. Come now, He said a magic word, didn't He, that Jesus? He had some secret medicine, eh? You're hiding something, you know you are! What was it?'

"'It was clay out of the street,' said the Beggar-Man, 'just clay.'

"'Rubbish,' said the people, 'you're as blind as a bat to believe that twaddle.'"

Ursula would lean back thoughtfully, studying him. "And the Pharisees?" she asked softly.

"Ah, the Pharisees!" Paul jumped up and began to walk restlessly about. "You see, Ursula, when he was blind they were rather satisfied with him. He saw so plainly what good, wise, holy men they were. He saw plainly that they were meant to be masters in Israel, and it is right and proper for beggars to see that. But when they were up against his sight, and showed plainly that ultimately they knew no more than he did, and, indeed, not so much, about God or Jesus or miracles or clay or anything, he began to think that they, too, must have been born blind."

"I see," said the girl, "I see, Paul. And what then?"

"Oh, they turned the Beggar-Man out of the temple," said Paul.

"Ah, and what then?"

"He tells me, he went, Ursula, he just went. And--and he's never gone back."

Silence between them. He was staring out of the window now, and she leaning back in her chair, playing with her brushes.

"Ursula."

"Yes?"

"Do you know, the disciples thought him blind, too."

"Why?"

"Well, they were so sure about Jesus. They made a whole religion up about him. And the Beggar-Man never could do that. 'He took the clay that he and I were standing on,' he would say, 'and I saw. That's all I have to tell. One thing I know: whereas I was blind, now I see.'"

"'Love him, then,' said the disciples.

"'Good heavens, do you think I don't?' cried the Beggar-Man.

"'Worship him, then,' said the disciples.

"'Of course,' said the Beggar-Man, 'as I worship my mother and my wife and the little blue spring lilies on the hills of Galilee.'

"'No,' they said. 'He's the Second Person of the Trinity. He's the Logos. He's Eternal, Invisible, the Only Wise----'

"And the Beggar-Man used to interrupt them. 'Stop,' he used to say, 'that's beyond me. I can't follow that. One thing I know: whereas----'

"'We've heard all that,' said the disciples, 'that's not enough.'

"'I'm sorry,' said the Beggar-Man. 'It is for me.'"

"Well?" queried Ursula.

And Paul turned round from the window, his eyes meeting hers. "They turned the Beggar-Man out of the Church," he said gravely.

And she would nod back at him, with a little smile. "He went on seeing, though," she would say.

"You're a dear, Ursula," cried Paul.

Despite his eagerness that October morning, Paul did not then, all at once, write his play. He said that he and the Beggar had got to get to know each other. And before he got to the actual draft, he wrote down a few definite incidents in the later life of the Beggar-Man. He brought the manuscript round to Ursula one day the following Spring when the new flowers were out on Chanctonbury very much as they had been when they sprang into vivid flames of being before the newly-opened eyes of the blind Beggar on the hills of Galilee that he had loved so much. He brought it round to her very early, while the family at the cottage were still at breakfast, which did not perturb him at all.

After greetings, he looked across at Ursula. "Can you come for a long walk this morning?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"At least, not a very long walk. I want you to come to that little wood on the crest of the Downs above Steyning--you know--and let me read this to you."

Mrs. Manning's eyes travelled from one to the other a little anxiously. Really, these two ... But perhaps this time ... Well, if the girl knew her own mind....

"All right," said Ursula. "I'll get a coat."

"Don't forget it's only Spring," said Mrs. Manning at the door. "Don't catch cold."

"We'll remember, mother," said Ursula, and they set out.

At the remembered spot, Paul spread a mackintosh on the ground. "There," he said, "sit down. I'm going to read to you. Do you mind?"

She smiled her own silent slow smile at him, and drew her knees up, and clasped her hands round them, and stared down at the sleepy little town nestling far below.

Paul read. It was the last stage before the actual and now famous play. He had written without introduction as if he were about a short story, and, in main, it was this that was dramatised.

(4)

Paul finished. Ursula, who had hardly moved, put out a hand and laid it gently on his arm.

Paul drew a breath of relieved content, being satisfied now that he knew her so well.

"Now," he said, "I shall begin that play."

"God is silent," said Ursula quizzically.

"But I see," cried Paul eagerly.

"What do you see?"

"I see the wonder and beauty of things as they are. I see that they satisfy. I see that that's enough, that--that they're a kind of avenue down which a man can go forward. And at the end, perhaps, he will find, not all the secret, but a still living lovely lake of water into which he will plunge, content."

"Water?"

Paul nodded, with bright eyes. "The water of life," he said.

"And what is that, do you think?"

"I don't know. It's sure to be beautiful, though."

"Very, Paul, I think," replied Ursula, speaking very quietly as she often did.

Paul studied her face. "I would like you to be there," he said, a little restlessly.

"Would you?" she said. "Well, we shall see."

Next morning, Ursula went up to town and took up residence again in her flat. Mrs. Manning had fluttered about her all the afternoon, and learned nothing. Her daughter seemed wholly unaware that she might have any question to ask, and Mrs. Manning did not dare ask her anything directly. But she thought she might learn more from Paul. So, when her daughter's car had driven off, she and her sister walked round to the Manor with a note Ursula had left for Paul.

They found him at work. He got up, pen in hand, and a look in the back of his eyes that Mrs. Manning saw in her daughter's when she was very busily painting.

"Ursula's gone to town," said her mother, "and she's left you this note."

"Has she?" queried Paul. "She didn't tell me she was going." He tore it open, and read it quickly. It only took him a few seconds to read and he smiled as he finished.

"That's all right," he said. "It's nothing much, Mrs. Manning, only about my work."

"Well, we won't interrupt you now," she said politely. "Come in when you can."

At the end of a long morning's work, Paul picked up the note as if he had not seen it before, and re-read it. "I'm off to town," she had written. "I've had a sudden notion. Give my love to the Beggar-Man. You and he have got your work to do together just now, and I should only interrupt, but call me in at the finish and I want a box the first night. URSULA." Having read it, Paul smiled again. He was still preoccupied with the beauty of the budding limes that arched the avenue of Sight.