Part 11 (1/2)

”What are you going to do with them?” I said

”That's a secret!” he said, and made as if he were going in. Then he said, ”Come, you shall hear it--you shall share my secret, and be a partner in my dreams, as the fisherman says in Theocritus.” But he did not tell me what he was going to do, and seemed half shy of doing so.

”It's like Dr. Johnson and the orange-peel,” I said. ”'Nay, Sir, you shall know their fate no further.'”

”Well, the truth is,” he said at last, ”that I'm a perfect baby. I never can resist looking into a hole in the ground, and I happened to look into the pit where we dig gravel. I can't tell you how long I spent there.”

”What were you doing?” I said.

”Looking for fossils,” he said; ”I had a great gift for finding them when I was a child. I didn't find any fossils to-day, but I found these stones, and I think they contain crystals. I am going to break them and see.”

I took one in my hand. ”I think they are only fossil sponges,” I said; ”there will only be a rusty sort of core inside.”

”You know that!” he said, brightening up; ”you know about stones too? But these are not sponges--they would rattle if they were--no, they contain crystals--I am sure of it. Come and see!”

We went into the stable-yard. Father Payne fetched a hammer, and then selected a convenient place in the cobbled yard to break the stones. He put one of them in position, and aimed a blow at it, but it glanced off, and the stone flew off with the impact to some distance. ”Lie still, can't you?” said Father Payne, apostrophising the stone, and adding, ”This is for my pleasure, not for yours.” I recovered the stone, and brought it back, and Father Payne broke it with a well-directed blow. He gathered up the pieces eagerly. ”Yes,” he said, ”it's all right--they are blue crystals: better than I had hoped.”

He handed a fragment to me to look at. The inside of the stone was hollow.

It had a coagulated appearance, and was thickly coated with minute bluish crystals, very beautiful.

”I don't know that I ever saw a stone I liked as well as this,” said Father Payne, musing over another piece. ”Think what millions of years this has been like that,--before Abraham was! It has never seen the light of day before--it's a splash of some molten stone, which fell plop into a cool sea-current, I suppose. I wish I knew all about it. The question, is, why is it so beautiful? It couldn't help it, I suppose! But for whose delight?”

Then he said, ”I suppose this was a vacuum in here till it was broken? That is why it is so clear and fresh. Good Heavens, what would I not give to know why this thing cooled into these lovely little shapes. It's no use talking about the laws of matter--why are the laws of matter what they are, and not different? And odder still, why do I like the look of it?”

”Perhaps that is a law of matter too,” I said.

”Oh, shut up!” said Father Payne to me. ”But I understand--and of course the temptation is to believe that this was all done on your account and mine. That is as odd a thing as the stone itself, if you come to think of it, that we should be made so that we refer everything to ourselves, and to believe that G.o.d prepared this pretty show for us.”

”I suppose we come in somewhere?” I said.

”Yes, we are allowed to see it,” said Father Payne. ”But it wasn't arranged for the benefit of a silly old man like me. That is the worst of our religious theories--that we believe that G.o.d is for ever making personal appeals to us. It is that sort of self-importance which spoils everything.”

”But I can hardly believe that we have this sense of self-importance only to get rid of it,” I said. ”It all seems to me a dreadful muddle--to shut up these lovely little things inside millions of stones, and then to give us the wish to break a couple, only that we may reflect that they were not meant for us to see at all.”

Father Payne gave a groan. ”Yes, it is a muddle!” he said. ”But one thing I feel clear about--that a beautiful thing like this means a sense of joy somewhere: some happiness went to the making of things which in a sense are quite useless, but are unutterably lovely all the same. Beauty implies consciousness--but come, we are neglecting our business. Give me the other stone at once!”

I gave it him, and he cracked it. ”Very disappointing!” he said. ”I made sure there was a beautiful stone, but it is all solid--only a flaky sort of jelly--it's no use at all!”

He threw it aside, but carefully gathered up the fragments of the crystalline stone. ”Don't tell of me!” he said, looking at me whimsically.

”This is the sort of nonsense which our sensible friends won't understand.

But now that I know that you care about stones, we will have a rare hunt together one of these days. But mind--no stuff about geology! It's beauty that we are in search of, you and I.”

XXIX

EARLY LIFE

One day, to my surprise and delight, Father Payne indulged in some personal reminiscences about his early life. He did not as a rule do this. He used to say that it was the surest sign of decadence to think much about the past. ”Sometimes when I wake early,” he said, ”I find myself going back to my childhood, and living through scene after scene. It's not wholesome--I always know I am a little out of sorts when I do that--it is only one degree better than making plans about the future!”

However, on this occasion he was very communicative. He had been talking about Ruskin, and he said: ”Do you remember in _Praeterita_ how Ruskin, writing about his sheltered and complacent childhood, describes how entirely he lived in the pleasure of _sight_? He noticed everything, the shapes and colours of things, the almond blossom, the ants that made nests in the garden walk, the things they saw in their travels. He was entirely absorbed in sense-impressions. Well, that threw a light on my own life, because it was exactly what happened to me as a child. I lived wholly in observation. I had no mind and very little heart. I suppose that I had so much to do looking at everything, getting the shapes and the textures and the qualities of everything by heart, that I had no time to think about ideas and emotions. I had a very lonely childhood, you know, brought up in the country by my mother, who was rather an invalid, my father being dead.