A motley
Galsworthy, John, 1867-1933
^rfWiiii^iK'Hi'Kf ;;-;!:■ fW-r'< it':*' i A MOTLEY B^ THE SAME AUTHOR Issued by Williavi Heinemann THE ISLAND PHARISEES THE MAN,OF PROPERTY THE COUNTRY HOUSE FRATERNITY Issued by Other Publishers VILLA RUBEIN & OTHER STORIES PLAYS A COMMENTARY A MOTLEY BY JOHN GALSWORTHY LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1910 Copyright, London, 1910, by William Heinemann TO E. V. LUCAS AUTHOR'S NOTE The stories, studies, and impressions, which make up this volume, bear dates ranging from 1899 to 1910. " A Portrait " and " The Japanese Quince" appear for the first time. For per- mission to reprint others I thank the Editors of the English Review, Englishwoman, Nation, Speaker, Outlook, Sketch, T.P.'s Weekly, and Westminster Gazette, London : Afril 15, 19 10. CONTENTS A PORTRAIT PAGE I A FISHER OF MEN 31 THE PRISONER 49 COURAGE 59 THE MEETING 71 THE PACK 77 COMPENSATION 85 JOY OF LIFE 97 BEL COLORE lOI A PILGRIMAGE 103 THE KINGS 105 APOTHEOSIS 107 THE WORKERS 113 A MILLER OF DEE 121 A PARTING 133 A BEAST OF BURDEN 141 THE LIME TREE 145 THE NEIGHBOURS 153 CONTENTS PAGE THE RUNAGATES 163 A REVERSION TO TYPE 171 A WOMAN 181 THE "CODGER" 189 FOR EVER 19s THE CONSUMMATION 207 THE CHOICE 219 THE JAPANESE QUINCE 231 ONCE MORE 237 DELIGHT 253 A PORTRAIT IT is at the age of eighty that I picture him, without the vestige of a stoop, rather above middle height, of very well-proportioned figure, whose flatness of back and easy move- ments were the admiration of all who saw them. His iron-grey eyes had lost none of their colour, they were set-in deep, so that their upper lids were invisible, and had a peculiar questioning directness, apt to change suddenly into twinkles. His head was of fine shape — one did not suspect that it required a specially made hat, being a size larger than almost any other head ; it was framed in very silky silvery hair, brushed in an arch across his forehead, and falling in becoming curves over the tips of his ears ; and he wore always a full white beard and moustaches, which concealed a jaw and chin of great deter- mination cleft by a dimple. His nose had been broken in his early boyhood ; it was the nose of a thinker, broad and of noticeable shape. The colour of his cheeks was a fine dry brown ; his brow very capacious, both wide 2 A MOTLEY and high, and endowed with a singular serenity. But it was the balance and poise of his head which commanded so much attention. In a theatre, church, concert-hall, there was never any head so fine as his, for the silvery hair and beard lent to its massiveness a curious grace and delicacy. The owner of that head could not but be endowed with force, sagacity, humour, and the sense of justice. It expressed, indeed, his essential quality — equanimity; for there were two men in him — he of the chin and jaw, a man of action and tenacity, and he of the nose and brow, the man of speculation and imper- sonality ; yet these two were so curiously balanced and blended that there was no harsh ungraceful conflict. And what made this equanimity so memorable was the fact that both his power of action and his power of specu- lation were of high quality. He was not a commonplace person content with a little of both. He wanted and had wanted through- out life, if one may judge by records, a good deal of both, ever demanding with one half of him strong and continuous action, and with the other half, high and clean thought and A PORTRAIT 3 behaviour. The desire for the best both in material and spiritual things remained with him through life. He felt things deeply; and but for his strange balance, and a yearn- ing for inward peace which never seems to have deserted him, his ship might well have gone down in tragedy. To those who had watched that journey, his voyage through life seemed favourable, always on the top of the weather. He had worked hard, and he had played hard, but never too hard. And though one might often see him irritated, I think no one ever saw him bored. He perceived a joke quicker than most of us ; he was never eccentric, yet fundamentally independent of other people's opinions, and perhaps a little unconscious that there were better men than he. Not that he was con- ceited, for of this quality, so closely allied to stupidity and humbug, he had about as much as the babe unborn. He was, indeed, a natural foe to anaemia in any of its forms, just as he was instinctively hostile to gross bull-beef men and women. The words, " a bullying chap," were used by him as crushing dispraise. I can recall him now in his chair after dinner, 4 A MOTLEY listening to one, who, puffing his cigarette, is letting himself go on a stream of robustious, rather swaggering complacencies ; with what a comprehending straight look he regards the speaker, not scornful, not sarcastic, but simply, as it were, saying : " No, my young buck, for all your fine full-blooded talk, and all your red face, you are what I see you to be, and you will do what I tell you to do ! " Such men had no chance with him when it came to the tug of war ; he laid his will on them as if they had been children. He was that rather rare thing, a pure-blooded Englishman ; having no strain of Scotch, Welsh, Irish, or foreign blood in his pedigree for four hundred years at least. He sprang from a long line of farmers intermarrying with their kind in the most southern corner of Devon- shire, and it is probable that Norse and British blood were combined in him in a high state of equality. Even in the actual situation of his place of origin, the principle of balance had been maintained, for the old farmhouse from which his grandfather had emerged had been perched close to the cliff. Thus, to the making of him had gone land and sea, the Norseman and the Celt, A PORTRAIT 5 Articled to the Law at the age of sixteen by his father, a Plymouth merchant, whose small ancient ships traded to the Mediterranean in fruits, leather, and wines, he had come to London, and at the earliest possible date (as was the habit with men in those times) had been entered on the rolls as a solicitor. Often has he told me of the dinner he gave in honour of that event. " I was a thread-paper, then," he would say (indeed, he never became fat), — "We began with a barrel of oysters." About that and other festivities of his youth, there was all the rich and rollicking flavour of the days of Pickwick. He was practically dependent on his own exertions from the time he began to practise his profession, and it was characteristic of him that he never seems to have been hard pressed for money. The inherent sanity and moderation of his instincts preserved him, one imagines, from the financial ups and downs of most young men, for there was no niggardliness in him, and a certain breadth of conception characterised his money affairs throughout life. It was rather by the laws of gravity, therefore, whereby money judiciously employed attracts money, and the fact that he 6 A MOTLEY lived in that moneymaker's Golden Age, the nineteenth century, that he had long been (at the age of eighty) a wealthy man. Money was to him the symbol of a well-spent, well- ordered life, provocative of warmth in his heart because he loved his children, and was careful of them to a fault. A PORTRAIT 7 Everything was at hand, from home-baked bread, to mushrooms wild and tame ; from the stables with their squat clock-tower, to pigsties ; from roses that won all the local prizes, to bluebells ; but nothing redundant or pretentious. The place was an endless pleasure to him, who to the last preserved his power of taking interest, not only in great, but in little things. Each small triumph over difficulty — the securing of hot water in such a quarter, the better lighting of another, the rescue of the nectarines from wasps, the quality of his Alderney cows, the encouragement of rooks — afforded him as much simple and sincere satis- faction as every little victory he achieved in his profession, or in the life of the Companies which he directed. But with all his shrewd practical sense, and almost naive pleasure in material advantage, he combined a very real spiritual life of his own. Nor was there anything ascetic in that inner life. It was mellow as the music of Mozart, his most beloved composer ; Art and Nature, both had their part in it. He was, for instance, very fond of opera, but only when it could be called ' grand ' ; 8 A MOTLEY and it grieved him that opera was no longer what it had been, yet was it secretly a grave satisfaction that he had known those classical glories denied to the present generation. He loved indeed almost all classical music, but (besides Mozart) especially Beethoven, Gluck, and Meyerbeer, whom he insisted (no less than Herbert Spencer) on considering a great com- poser. Wagner he tried very hard to appreciate and, after visiting Bayreuth, even persuaded himself that he had succeeded, though he never ceased to point out the great difference that existed between this person and Mozart. He loved the Old Masters of painting, having for favourites amongst the Italians : Rafael, Correggio, Titian, Tintoretto ; and amongst Englishmen Reynolds and Romney. On the other hand, he regarded Hogarth and Rubens as coarse, but Vandyke he very much admired, because of his beautiful painting of hands, the hall-mark, he would maintain, of an artist's quality. I cannot remember his feeling about Rembrandt, but Turner he certainly distrusted as extravagant. Botticelli and the earlier masters he had not as yet quite learned to relish ; and Impressionism, including Whistler, A PORTRAIT 9 never really made conquest of his taste, though he always resolutely kept his mind open to what was modern — feeling himself young at heart. Once on a spring day, getting over a stile, I remember him saying : " Eighty ! I can't believe it. Seems very queer. I don't feel it. Eighty ! " And, pointing to a blackbird that was singing, he added : " That takes the years off you ! " His love of Nature was very intimate, simple, and unconscious. I can see him standing by the pond of a summer evening watching the great flocks of starlings that visited those fields ; or, with his head a little to one side, listening rapturously to a skylark. He would contem- plate, too, with a sort of serene passion, sunset effects, and every kind of view. But his greatest joy in life had been his long summer holidays, in Italy or among the Alps, and his memory was a perfect storehouse of peaks, passes, and arrivals at Italian inns. He had been a great walker, and, as an old man, was still very active. I can remember him on horse- back at the age of sixty, though he had never been a sportsman — not being in the way of lo A MOTLEY hunting, having insufficient patience for fishing, and preferring to spend such time as he might have had for shooting, in communing with his beloved mountains. His love for all kinds of beauty, indeed, was strangely potent ; and perhaps the more natural and deep for its inno- cence of all tradition and formal culture. He got it, I think, from his mother, of whom he always spoke with reverence as " the most beautiful woman in the Three Towns." Yes, his love of beauty was a sensuous, warm glow pervading the whole of him, secretly separating him from the majority of his associates. A pretty face, a beautiful figure, a mellow tune, the sight of dancing, a blackbird's song, the moon behind a poplar tree, starry nights, sweet scents, and the language of Shakespeare — all these moved him deeply, the more perhaps because he had never learned to express his feelings. His attempts at literature indeed were strangely naive and stilted ; his verse, in the comic vein, rather good ; but all, as it were, like his period, ashamed to ex- press any intimate feeling except in classical language. Yet his literary tastes were catho- lic ; Milton was his favourite poet, Byron he A PORTRAIT II also admired ; Browning he did not care for ; his favourite novelist was George Eliot, and, curiously enough — in later life — Turgenev. I well remember when the translated volumes of that author were coming out, how he would ask for another of those yellow books. He did not know why he liked them, with all those " crack- jaw " Russian names ; but assuredly it was because they were written by one who wor- shipped beauty. The works of Dickens and Thackeray he read with appreciation, on the whole, finding the first perhaps a little too grotesque, and the second a little too satiric. Scott, Trollope, Marryatt, Blackmore, Hardy, and Mark Twain also pleased him ; but Meredith he thought too "misty." A great theatre-goer all his life, he was very lukewarm towards modern actors, comparing them adversely with those constellations of the past, Edmund and Charles Kean, Charlie Mathews, Farren, Power, " little Robson," and Helen Faucit. He was, however, a great lover of Kate Vaughan's dancing ; an illus- tration of the equanimity of one who had formed his taste on Taglioni. 12 A MOTLEY Irving he would only accept in Louis XI. ^ The Bells, and, I think, Charles /., and for his mannerisms he had a great aversion. There was something of the old grand manner about his theatre habits. He attended with the very best and thinnest lavender kid gloves on his hands, which he would hold up rather high and clap together at the end of an act which pleased him ; even, on memorable occasions, adding the word " Bravo." He never went out before the end of a play, however vehemently he might call it " poor stuff," which, to be quite honest, he did about nine times out of ten. And he was ever ready to try again, having a sort of touching confidence in an art which had betrayed him so often. His opera hats were notable, usually of such age as to have lost shape, and surely the largest in London. Indeed, his dress was less varied than that of any man I have ever seen ; but always neat and well-cut, for he went habitually to the best shops, and without eccentricity of any kind. He carried a repeating gold watch and thin round gold chain which passed, smooth and sinuous as a little snake, through a small black seal with a bird on it ; and he A PORTRAIT 13 never abandoned very well made side-spring boots with cork soles, greatly resenting the way other boots dirtied his hands, which were thin and brown with long polished nails, and blue veins outstanding. For reading only, he wore tortoise-shell eyeglasses, which he would perch low down on the bridge of his nose, so that he could look over them, for his eyes were very long-sighted. He was extremely fastidious in his linen, and all personal matters, yet im- patient of being mollycoddled, or in any way over-valeted. Even on the finest days, he carried an umbrella, the ferrule of which, from his habit of stumping it on the pavement, had a worn and harassed look, and was rarely more than half present. Having been a Conservative Liberal in politics till well past sixty, it was not until Disraeli's time that he became a Liberal Con- servative. This was curious, for he always spoke doubtfully of "Dizzy," and even breathed the word " humbug " in connection with him. Probably he was offended by what he termed " the extravagance " in Dizzy's rival. For the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Salisbury he had respect without enthusiasm ; and 14 A MOTLEY conceived for John Bright a great admiration as soon as he was dead. But on the whole the politician who had most attracted him had been Palmerston, because — if memory serves — he had in such admirable degree the faculty of " astonishing their weak nerves." For, though never a Jingo, and in later days both cautious and sane in his Imperialism, he had all a Briton's essential deep-rooted distrust of the foreigner. He felt that they were not quite safe, not quite sound, and must from time to time be made to feel this. Born two years after the battle of Waterloo, he had inherited a certain high pride of island birth. And yet in one case, where he was for years in close contact with a foreigner he conceived for him so grave a respect, that it was quite amusing to watch the discom- fiture of his traditional distrust. It was often a matter of wonder amongst those who knew him that a man of his ability and judgment had never even sought to make his mark in public affairs. Of the several reasons for this, the chief was, undoubtedly, the extraordinary balance of his temperament. To attain pre- eminence in any definite department of life would have warped and stunted too many of his A PORTRAIT 15 instincts, removed too many of his interests ; and so he never specialised in anything. He was quite unambitious, always taking the lead in whatever field he happened to be, by virtue of his great capacity and will- power, but never pushing himself, and appa- rently without any life -aim, but that of leading a sane, moderate, and harmonious existence. And it is for this that he remains written on the national page, as the type of a lost and golden time, when life to each man seemed worth living for its own sake, without thought of its meaning as a whole, or much speculation as to its end. There was something classical, measured, and mellow in his march adown the years, as if he had been god-mothered by Har- mony. And yet, though he said his prayers and went to church, he could not fairly have been called a religious man ; for at the time when he formed his religious habits, " religion " had as yet received no shocks, and reigned trium- phant over an unconscious nation whose spirit was sleeping ; and when " religion," disturbed to its foundations, began to die, and people all round him were just becoming religious enough i6 A MOTLEY to renounce the beliefs they no longer held, he was too old to change, and continued to employ the mechanism of a creed which had never really been vital to him. He was in essence pagan : All was right with his world ! His love was absorbed by Nature, and his wonder by the Great Starry Scheme he felt all around. This was God to him ; for it was ever in the presence of the stars that he was most moved to a sense of divine order. Looking up at those tremulous cold companions he seemed more reverent, and awed, than ever he was in the face of creeds or his fellow man. Whether stirred by the sheer beauty of Night, or by its dark immensity swarming with those glittering worlds, he would stand silent, and then, perhaps, say wistfully : " What little bits of things we are ! Poor little wretches ! " Yes, it was then that he really worshipped, adoring the great wonders of Eternity. No one ever heard him talk with conviction of a future life. He was far too self-reliant to accept what he was told, save by his own inner voice ; and that did not speak to him with certainty. In fact, as he grew old, to be un- certain of all such high things was part of his A PORTRAIT 17 real religion ; it seemed to him, I think, im- pertinent to pretend to intimate knowledge of what was so much bigger than himself. But neither his conventional creed, nor that awed uncertainty which was his real religion were ever out of hand ; they jogged smoothly on in double harness, driven and guided by a supremer power — his reverence for Life. He abhorred fanaticism. In this he truly mirrored the spirit of that great peacefully expanding river, the Victorian Era, which began when he came of age. And yet, in speaking before him of deep or abstract things, it was not safe to reckon without his criticism, which would sometimes make powerfully shrewd deductions out of the sheer logical insight of a nature neither fundamentally concerned with other worlds, nor brought up to the ways of dis- cussion. He was pre-eminently the son of a time between two ages — a past age of old, unquestioning faith in Authority ; a future age of new faith, already born but not yet grown. Still sheltering in the shade of the old tree which was severed at the roots and toppling, he never, I think, clearly saw — though he may have had glimpses — that men, 6 1 8 A MOTLEY like children whose mother has departed from their home, were slowly being forced to trust in, and be good to, themselves and to one another, and so to form out of their necessity, desperately, unconsciously, their new great belief in Humanity. His attitude towards the poor, for instance, was essentially that of man to man. Save that he could not tolerate impostors, (one of his favourite words), and saw through them with almost startling rapidity, he was com- passionate to any who had fallen on evil for- tune, and especially to those who had been in any way connected with him. But in these almonary transactions he was always particu- larly secretive, as if rather doubting their sagacity, and the wisdom of allowing them to become known — himself making up and des- patching the parcels of old clothes, and rather surreptitiously producing such coins and writing such cheques as were necessary. But " the poor," in bulk, were always to him the concern of the Poor Law pure and simple, and in no A PORTRAIT 19 sense of the individual citizen. It was the same with malefactors, he might pity as well as condemn them, but the idea that the society to which he and they belonged was in any way responsible for them, would never have occurred to him. His sense of justice, like that of his period, was fundamentally based on the notion that every man had started with equal, or at all events, with quite sufficient opportunities, and must be judged as if he had. But, indeed, it was not the custom in his day to concern one- self with problems outside one's own class. Within that class, and in all matters domestic, no man was ever born with a nicer sense of justice. It was never overridden by his affec- tions ; very seldom, and that with a certain charming naivete^ by his interests. This sense of justice, however, in no way prevented him from being loved ; for, in spite of a temper apt to take fire, flare up, and quickly die down again, he was one of the most loveable of men. There was not an ounce of dourness or asperity in his composition. His laughter was of a most infectious kind, singularly spontaneous and delightful, resemb- ling the laughter of a child. The change 20 A MOTLEY which a joke wrought in the aspect of his large, dignified, and rather noble face, was discon- certing. It became wrinkled, or, as it were, crumpled ; and such a twinkling overcame his eyes as was frequently only to be extinguished by moisture. " That's rich ! " was his favourite expression to describe what had tickled him ; for he had preserved the use of Devonshire expressions, bringing them forth, from an intimate pet drawer of memory, and lingering over them with real gusto. He still loved, too, such Devonshire dishes of his boy- hood, as " junket " and " toad in the hole " ; and one of his favourite memories was that of the meals snatched at the old coaching Inn at Exeter, while they changed the horses of the Plymouth to the London coach. Twenty- four hours at ten miles an hour, without ever a break ! Glorious drive ! Glorious the joints of beef, the cherry brandy ! Glorious the old stage coachman, a " monstrous fat chap " who at that time ruled the road ! In the City, where his office was situate, he was wont, though at all times a very mode- rate eater, to frequent substantial, old- fashioned hostelries such as Roche's, Pirn's, or A PORTRAIT 21 Birch's, in preference to newer and more pretentious places of refreshment. He had a remarkable palate too, and though he drank very little, was, in his prime, considered as fine a judge of wine as any in London. Of tea he was particularly fond, and always consumed the very best Indian, made with extreme care, maintaining that the Chinese variety was only fit for persons of no taste. He had little liking for his profession, believing it to be beneath him, and that Heaven had intended him for an advocate ; in which he was probably right, for his masterful acumen could not have failed to assure him a foremost position at the Bar. And in him, I think, it is certain that a great Judge was lost to the State. Despite this contempt for what he called the " pettifogging " character of his occupation, he always inspired profound respect in his clients ; and among the shareholders of his Companies, of which he directed several, his integrity and judgment stood so high that he was enabled to pursue successfully a line of policy often too comprehensive, and far - seeing for the temper of the times. The reposeful dig- nity, and courage, of his head and figure when 22 A MOTLEY facing an awkward General Meeting could hardly have been exceeded. He sat, as it were, remote from its gusty temper, quietly deter- mining its course. Truly memorable were his conflicts with the only other man of his calibre on those Boards, and I cannot remember that he was ever beaten. He was at once the quicker tempered and more cautious. And if he had not the other's stoicism and iron nerve, he saw further into the matter in hand, was more unremitting in his effort, equally tenacious of purpose, and more magnetic. In fact, he had a way with him. But, after all said, it was in his dealings with children that the best and sweetest side of his personality was manifested. With them he became completely tender, inexhaustibly in- terested in their interests, absurdly patient, and as careful as a mother. No child ever resisted him, or even dreamed of doing so. From the first moment they loved his white hair and beard, his " feathers " as one little thing called them. They liked the touch of his thin hand, which was never wet or cold ; and, holding to it, were always ready to walk with A PORTRAIT 23 him — wandering with complete unanimity, not knowing quite where or for what reason. How often have I not watched him starting out on that high adventure with his grandson, his face turned gravely down towards a smaller face turned not quite so gravely up ; and heard their voices tremendously concerned with all the things they might be going to do together ! How often have I not seen them coming back, tired as cats, but still concerned about what was next going to happen ! And children were always willing to play cricket with him because he bowled to them very slowly, pitch- ing up what he called " three-quarter " balls, and himself always getting " out " almost before he went in. For, though he became in his later years a great connoisseur of cricket, spending many days at Lord's or the Oval, choosing out play of the very highest class, and quite impatient of the Eton and Harrow Match, he still performed in a somewhat rococo fashion, as of a man taught in the late twenties of the last century, and having occa- sion to revive that knowledge about 1895. He bent his back knee, and played with a perfectly crooked bat, to the end that when he did hit 24 A MOTLEY the ball, which was not too often, it invariably climbed the air. There was, too, about his batting, a certain vein of recklessness or bravado, somewhat out of keeping with his general character, so that, as has been said, he was never in too long. And when he got out he would pitch the bat down as if he were annoyed, which would hugely please his grand- son, showing of course that he had been trying his very best, as indeed, he generally had. But his bowling was extremely impressive, being effected with very bent knees, and a general air of first putting the ball to the eye, as if he were playing bowls ; in this way he would go on and on giving the boy " an innings," and getting much too hot. In fielding he never could remember on the spur of the mo- ment whether it was his knees or his feet that he ought to close ; and this, in combination with a habit of bending rather cautiously, because he was liable to lumbago, detracted somewhat from his brilliance ; but when the ball was once in his hands, it was most exciting — impossible to tell whether he would throw it at the running batsman, the wicket, or the bowler, according as the game appeared to him A PORTRAIT 25 at the moment to be double wicket, single wicket, or rounders. He had lived in days when games were not the be-all and end-all of existence, and had never acquired a proper seriousness in such matters. Those who passed from cricket with him to cricket in the cold wide world found a change for which at first they were unable to account. But even more fascinating to children than his way of playing cricket was his perfect identification with whatever might be the matter in hand. The examination of a shell, the listening to the voice of the sea imprisoned in it, the making of a cocked hat out of the ^imes newspaper, the doing up of little buttons, the feeding of pigeons with crumbs, the holding fast of a tiny leg while walking beside a pony, all these things absorbed him completely, so that no visible trace was left of the man whose judgment on affairs was admirable and profound. Nor, whatever the provocation, could he ever bring himself to point the moral of anything to a child, having that utter toleration of their foibles which only comes from a natural and perfectly unconscious love of being with them. His face, habitually tranquil, wore in their 26 A MOTLEY presence a mellow look of almost devil-may- care serenity. Their sayings, too, he treasured, as though they were pearls. First poems, such as : I son a worm, It was half-ly dead; I took a great spud. And speared through his head were to him of singular fair promise. Their diagnoses of character, moreover, especially after visiting a circus, filled him with pure rapture, and he would frequently repeat this one : " Father, is Uncle a clever man ? " " H'm ! well — yes, certainly." " I never seen no specimens. He can't balance a pole on his nose, for instance." To the declining benison of their prayers, from their " darling father and mother," to " all poor people who are in distress," he loved to listen, not so much for the sentiments expressed, as because, in their little night- gowns, they looked so sweet, and were so round- about in their way of getting to work. Yes, children were of all living things his chosen friends, and they knew it. But in his long life he made singularly few A PORTRAIT 27 fast friendships with grown-up people, and, as far as I know, no enemies. For there was in him, despite his geniality, a very strong vein of fastidiousness, and such essential deep love of domination, that he found, perhaps, few men of his own age and standing to whom he did not feel natively superior. His most real and lifelong friendship was for a certain very big man with a profound hatred of humbug and a streak of " the desperate character " in him. They held each other in the highest esteem, or, as they would probably have put it, swore by one another ; the one grumbling at, but reverencing, the other's high and resolute equanimity ; the other deploring and admiring the one's deep and generous recklessness. The expressions : "Just like John, the careful fellow ! " " Just like Sil, reckless beggar ! " were always on their lips ; for like all their generation they were sparing of encomium ; and great, indeed, must have been their emotion before they would show their feelings. Dear as they were to each other's hearts, they never talked together of spiritual things, they never spoke in generalities, but gravely smoking their cigars, discussed their acquaintances, invest- 28 A MOTLEY merits, wine, their nephews and grandchildren, and the affairs of the State — condemning the advertising fashion in which everything was now done. Once in a way they would tell a story — but they knew each other's stories too well ; once in a way quote a line of Byron, Shakespeare, or Milton ; or whistle to each other, inharmoniously, a bar or two from some song that Grisi, Mario, or Jenny Lind had sung. Once in a way memories of the heyday of their youth, those far-off golden hours, stealing over them, they would sit silent, with their grave steady eyes following the little rings of bluish smoke. . . . Yes, for all their lack of demon- stration, they loved each other well. I seem still to see the subject of this portrait standing at his friend's funeral one bleak November day, the pale autumn sunlight falling on the silver of his uncovered head a little bowed, and on his grave face, for once so sad. I hear the tones of his voice, still full and steady ; and from the soul in his eyes, looking, as it were, through and through those forms of death to some deep conclusion of his own, I know how big and sane and sweet he was. A PORTRAIT 29 His breed is dying now, it has nearly gone. But as I remember him with that great quiet forehead, with his tenderness, and his glance which travelled to the heart of what it rested on, I despair of seeing his like again. For, with him there seems to me to have passed away a principle, a golden rule of life, nay, more, a spirit — the soul of Balance. It has stolen away, as in the early morning the stars steal out of the sky. He knew its tranquil secret, and where he is, there must it still be hovering. 1910. A FISHER OF MEN LONG ago it is, now, that I used to see him issue from the rectory, followed by his dogs, an Irish and a fox terrier. He would cross to the churchyard, and, at the gate, stand looking over the Cornish upland of his cure of souls, toward the sea, distant nearly a mile. About his black thin figure there was one bright spot, a little gold cross, dangling on his vest. His eyes at such mo- ments were like the eyes of fishermen watching from the cliffs for pilchards to come by ; but as this fisher of men marked the grey roofs covered with yellow lichen where his human fishes dwelt, red stains would come into his meagre cheeks. His lips would move, and he would turn abruptly in at the gate over which was written : " This is the Gate of Heaven." A certain green spot within that church- yard was kept clear of grave-stones, which thickly covered all the rest of the ground. He never — I believe — failed to look at it, and think : "I will keep that corner free. I will 31 32 A MOTLEY not be buried amongst men who refuse their God ! " For this was his misfortune, which, like a creeping fate, had come on him year by year throughout his twenty years of rectorship. It had eaten into his heart, as is the way with troubles which a man cannot understand. In plain words, his catch of souls had dwindled season by season till, from three hundred when he was first presented to the living, it barely numbered forty. Sunday after Sunday he had conducted his three services. Twice a week from the old pulpit, scanning through the church twilight that ever scantier flock of faces, he had in his dry, spasmodic voice — whose harsh tones, no doubt, were music to himself — pronounced this conduct blessed, and that accursed, in accordance with his creed. Week after week he had told us all the sinfulness of not attending God's House, of not observing the Lord's Day. He had respected every proper ritual and ceremony ; never refusing baptism even to the illegitimate, nor burial to any but such as took their own lives ; joining in marriage with a certain exceptional alacrity those whose conduct had caused scandal in the A FISHER OF MEN 33 village. His face had been set, too, against irreverence ; no one, I remember, might come to his church in flannel trousers. Yet his flock had slowly diminished ! Liv- ing, unmarried, in the neglected rectory, with his dogs, an old housekeeper, and a canary, he seemed to have no interests, such as shooting, or fishing, to take him away from his parish duties ; he asked nothing better than to enter the houses and lives of his parishioners ; and as he passed their doors — spare, black, and clean-shaven — ^he could often be seen to stop, make, as it were, a minatory gesture, and walk on with his hungry eyes fixed straight before him. Year by year, to encourage them, he printed privately and distributed documents containing phrases such as these : " It were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." " But the fearful and unbelieving shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." When he wrote them, his eyes — I fancy — flared, as though watching such penalties in process of infliction. Had not his parishioners in justice merited those fates ? If, in his walks, he came across a truant, some c 34 A MOTLEY fisherman or farmer, he would always stop, with his eyes fastened on the culprit's face : " You don't come to church now ; how's that ? » Like true Cornishmen, hoping to avoid unpleasantness, they would offer some polite excuse : They didn't knaw ezactly, zur — the missus 'ad been ailin' ; there was always some- thin' — ^like — that ! This temporising with the devil never failed to make the rector's eyes blaze, or to elicit from him a short dry laugh : " You don't know what you're saying, man ! You must be mad to think you can save your soul that way ! This is a Christian country ! " Yet never after one of these encounters did he see the face of that parishioner in his church again. " Let un wait ! " they would murmur, " tidden likely we'm gwine to his church t'be spoke to like dogs ! " But, indeed, had they been dogs, the rector would not have spoken to them like that. To dogs his conduct was invariably gentle. For the view he took of life was very simple, undisturbed by any sense of irony, unspoiled by curiosity, or desire to link effect with cause, or indeed, to admit the necessity of cause at all. At some fixed date God had made the earth of matter ; this matter He had divided into the inanimate and the animate, unconnected with each other ; animate matter He had again divided into men, and animals ; in men He had placed souls, making them in His own image. Men again He had divided into the Church and other men ; and for the govern- ment and improvement of these other men God had passed Himself into His Church. A FISHER OF MEN 37 That Church again had passed herself into her ministers. Thus, on the Church's minister — placed by Providence beyond the fear of being in the wrong — there had been enjoined the bounden duty of instructing, ruling, and saving at all costs, the souls of men. This was why, I think, when he encountered in the simple folk committed to his charge a strange dumb democratic spirit, a wayward feeling that the Universe was indivisible, that power had not devolved, but had evolved, that things were relative, not absolute, and so forth — expressed in their simple way, he had experienced from the first a gnawing irritation which, like a worm, seemed to have cankered his heart. Gradually one had seen this canker stealing out into his face and body, into his eyes and voice, into the very gestures of his lean arms and hands. His whole form gave the impression of a dark tree withered and eaten by some desiccating wind, like the stiff oaks of his Cornish upland, gnarled and riven by the Atlantic gales. Night and day in the worn old rectory^ with its red conservatory, he must have brooded over the wrong done him by his people, in 38 A MOTLEY depriving him of his just due, the power to save their souls. It was as though an officer, gagged and bound at the head of his company, should have been forced to watch them manoeuvring without him. He was like a school-master tied to his desk amongst the pandemonium of his scholars. His failure was a fact strange and intolerable to him, inexplicable, tragic — a fact mured up in the mystery which each man's blindness to the nature of his own spirit wraps round his relations with his fellow beings. He could not doubt that, bereaved by their own wilful conduct of his ministrations, of the Church in fact, and, through the Church, of God, his parishioners were given up to dam- nation. If they were thus given up to damna- tion, he, their proper pastor — their rightful leader, the symbol of the Church, that is of God — was but a barren, withered thing. This thought he could not bear. Unable to see him- self as others saw him, he searched to find excuses for them. He found none ; for he knew that he had preached no narrow doctrines cursed with the bigotry which he recognised in the Romish or Nonconformist faiths. The doctrines and dogmas he was appointed to A FISHER OF MEN 39 administer were of the due and necessary breadth, no more, no less. He was scrupulous, even against his own personal feeling, to observe the letter of the encyclicals. Thus, nothing in the matter of his teaching could account for the gradual defection of his flock. Nor in the manner of it could he detect anything that seemed to himself unjustified. Yet, as the tide ebbed from the base of the grey cliffs, so, without haste, with deadly certainty, the tide ebbed from his church. What could he, then, believe but that his parishioners meant to be personally offensive to himself ? In the school-house, at the post office, on the green, at choir practice, or on the way to service, wherever he met them, one could see that he was perpetually detecting small slights or incivilities. One could find him any evening in his study, his chin resting on his hand, the oil-lamp flaring slightly, his dogs curled up beside him, and the cloth cover drawn over the cage of his canary so that the little creature should not suffer from the light. Almost the first words he spoke would show how ceaselessly he brooded. " Nothing," he would say, " ever prospers in this village ; I've started this and that ! Look at the football club, look at the Bible class — all no good ! With people such as these, wanting in all reverence, humility, and love of discipline ! You have not had the dealings with them that I have ! " In truth his dealings with them had become notorious throughout the district. A peti- tion, privately subscribed, and presented to the bishop for his removal had, of course, met with failure. A rector could not be removed from his living for any reason — it had been purchased for him by his father. Nor could his position as minister be interfered with on any such excuse as that of the mere personal dislike of his parishioners — as well, indeed, seek by petition A FISHER OF MEN 41 to remove the Church herself. The knowledge of his unassailable position found expression among his parishioners in dogged looks, and the words : " Well, we don' trouble ! " It was in the twentieth year of his rectorship that a slight collision with the parish council drew from him this letter : " It is my duty to record my intention to attend no more meetings, for I cannot, as a Christian, continue to meet those who obstinately refuse to come to church." It was then late September, and the harvest festival had been appointed for the following Sunday. The week passed, but the farmers had provided no offerings for the decoration of the church ; the fishermen too, accustomed by an old tradition in that parish to supply some purchased fruit in lieu of their shining fishes, sent nothing. The boycott had ob- viously been preconcerted. 