Hugh half understood that the weakness of his case was that he could argue about it at all. Others went blindly and ardently into loves and friendships, because an irresistible impulse carried them away – with Hugh the impulse was not irresistible. Meanwhile he would give what he could, offer rather than claim; he would reject no proffer of friendship, but he would not, or perhaps he could not, fetter himself with the heavy chains of emotion. But even so he was aware that this temperance, this balance of nature, was not a wholly beautiful or desirable thing.
The perception of this came home to Hugh with peculiar force on a bright fresh day of early spring, when he walked with a friend in the broad green fields beside the Cam. They had been strolling first in the college gardens, where the snowdrops were pushing up, some of them bearing on their heads the crust of earth that had sheltered them; crocuses rose in the borders, like little bursts of flame. A thrush was singing on a high bough, and seemed to be telling, in an eager mystery, the very hopes and dreams of Hugh's heart. He said something that implied as much to his friend, who replied that he did not understand that.
This friend of Hugh's was much younger than himself, a fastidious and somewhat secluded nature, but possessing for Hugh the deep attraction of a peculiar type of character. He had great critical and literary gifts, and seemed to Hugh to bring to the judgment of artistic work an extraordinarily clear and fine criterion of values. But beside this, he seemed to Hugh to have the power of entering into a very close and emotional relationship with people; and out in the meadows where the sun shone bright, the breeze blew soft, and the first daisies showed their heads among the grass, Hugh asked him to explain what he felt about his relationship with others. His friend said that it came to this, that it was the only real and vital thing in the world; and when Hugh pressed him further, and asked him what he felt about the artistic life, his friend said that it was a great mystery, because art also seemed to him a strong, entrancing, fascinating thing; but that it ran counter to and cut across his relations with others, and seemed almost like a violent and distracting temptation, that tore him away from the more vital impulse. He added that the problem as to whether individuality endured (of which they had spoken earlier) seemed to him not to affect the question at all, any more than it affected one's sleep or appetite. At this, for a moment, a mist seemed to roll away from Hugh's eyes, though he knew that it would close in again, and for an instant he understood; to himself relations with others were but one class of beautiful experiences, like art, and music, and nature, and hints of the unseen; not differing in quality, but only in kind, from other experiences. Hugh saw too, in the same flash of insight, that what kept him from emotional relationships was a certain timidity – a dislike of anything painful or disturbing; and that the mistake he made, if that can be called a mistake which was so purely instinctive, was his desire to obliterate and annihilate all the unpleasing, painful, and disagreeable elements from all circumstances and situations. The reason why Hugh did not hunger and thirst after friendship was, he saw, that inconveniences, humours, misunderstandings, mannerisms, entourage, were all so many disagreeable incidents which interfered with his tranquillity of enjoyment. If he had really loved, these things would have weighed as nothing in comparison with the need of satisfying the desire of relationship; as it was, they weighed so much with Hugh that they overpowered the other instinct. It was really a sort of luxuriousness of temperament that intervened; and Hugh felt that for a man to say that he loved his friends, and yet to allow this fastidious sense of discomfort to prevent his seeing them, was as if a man said that he was devoted to music, and yet allowed the tumult of concert-rooms to prevent his ever going to hear music. And yet the language of friendship was so familiar, and the power of multiplying relations with others was so facile a thing with Hugh, that he saw that his failure in the matter was a deplorable and a miserable thing. He was singularly and even richly equipped for the pursuit of friendship; while his very sensitiveness, his inherent epicureanism, which made advance so easy, made progress impossible.
And yet he realised that it was useless to deplore this; that no amount of desire for the larger and deeper experience would make him capable of sustaining its pains and penalties. He saw that he was condemned to pass through life, a smiling and courteous spectator of beauty and delight; but that, through a real and vital deficiency of soul, he could have no share in the inner and holier mysteries.
XX
Limitations – Sympathy – A Quiet Choice – The Mind of God – Intuition
Hitherto it had seemed to Hugh that life was a struggle to escape from himself, from that haunting personality which, like a shadow, dogged and imitated his movements, but all with a sombre blackness, a species of business-like sadness of gesture, doing heavily and mechanically what he himself did with such blitheness and joy. Again and again that self seemed to thwart, to hinder, to check him. There were days, it seemed to him, when a conflict was waged, an unequal conflict, between that outer and that inner self. Days when the inner spirit was intense, alert, eager, and when the outer self was languid, dreary, mockingly sedate and indolent. Again there were days, and these were the saddest of all, when the inner spirit seemed to Hugh to be tranquil, high-minded, and strong; when that outer self was malign, turbulent, and headstrong, and when all the resolution and vigour he possessed, appeared to be wasted, not in following the higher aims and imaginings with a patient purpose, but in curbing and reining the rough and coltish nature that seemed so sadly yoked with his own. He felt on those days like a wearied and fretful charioteer, driving through a scene of rich and moving beauty, on which he would fain feast his eyes and heart, but compelled to an incessant watchfulness, a despairing strain, in watching and guiding his refractory, his spiteful steeds. The control he had never forfeited wholly. Perhaps his sensitiveness, his solitariness, his fastidiousness, had tended to keep his sensuous nature within bounds.
But he went through strange moods, when he could almost wish that he had not been so cautious, so prudent; he felt that he had travelled through life as a spectator merely; and the element of passionate feeling, of confessed devotion, of uncalculating love, had passed him by. He used, in these moods, to wish that he had some soul-stirring experience to look back upon, some passionate affection, some overpowering emotion, which might have constrained him to open and unashamed utterance. How had he missed, he used to ask himself, the experience of a deep and whole-hearted love? There was nothing easier in the world than to establish a certain intimacy of relation. He had, he was aware, a friendly air and a certain simple charm of manner, which made it an easy thing for him to say what was in his mind. A single interview was often enough for him to make a friendship. He had an acute superficial sensibility, which made it very easy for him to divine another's tastes and emotions; and his own emotional experiences, his freedom of expression, gave him the power of interpreting and entering into the feelings of others. But his experience was always the same. He could clasp hands with another soul, he could step pleasantly and congenially through the ante-rooms and corridors of friendship; but as soon as the great door that led to the inner rooms of the house came in sight, a certain coldness, a shamefacedness held him back; the hand was dropped, the expected word unspoken.
Thus Hugh found himself with a great number of close friends, and without a single intimate one. He had never bared his heart to another, he had never seen another heart bare before his eyes. He had never let himself go. Thus he was a master, so to speak, of the emotional elements up to a certain point; but he had never made a surrender of himself, and had always with a certain coldness checked any signs of a surrender in others. A close friendship had once been abruptly ended by the bestowal of certain deep confidences by his friend, sad and touching confidences. This incident had drawn a veil between him and his friend, a veil that he could not withdraw. His evident coldness, on the day following, to the friend who had trusted him, disconcerted and repelled the other. Hugh could remember a mute and appealing look that he gave him; but though he felt that he was acting ungenerously and even basely, he could only meet it with a blank and repellent gaze, and the friendship had been broken off, never to be renewed. He had made, too, friends with women both of his own age and older; but the moment that the friendship seemed cemented, the emotion on Hugh's part cooled into a camaraderie which was both misunderstood and blamed. Why go so far if you did not mean to go further? appeared to be the unuttered question which met him; to which his own temperament seemed always to reply, why shake our easy and comfortable friendship by distracting and bewildering emotions? It was, Hugh grew to discern, a real blot in his character; it was a prudence, a caution in emotional things, a terror, no doubt, in a sensitive spirit, of giving pledges, of making vows, of surrendering the will and the spirit. It did not indeed bring him unhappiness – that was the saddest part of it; but it left him involved in a kind of selfish isolation. His soul, he felt, was like a smiling island, which with its green glades and soft turf invites the wayfarer to set foot therein, with a smiling welcome from the spirit of the place. But the wood once penetrated, then at the back of the paradise ran a cliff-front of sad-coloured crags, preventing further ingress. If indeed the shrine of the island had stood guarded within a temple which, in its deep columned and shadowed recesses, had shielded a holy presence, it would have been different; but the land beyond was bare and desolate. That was, Hugh thought, the solution. The bright foreshore, the waving trees, the shelter and fountains, seemed to promise a place of delicate delights; and there were some of those who landed there, who, on seeing the pale cliff behind, believed, with a deep curiosity, that some very sacred and beautiful thing must there be enshrined. But it was the emptiness of the further land, Hugh thought, that made it imperative to guard the mystery. In that bare land indeed he himself seemed to pace, bitterly pondering; he would even kneel on the bare rocks, and hold out his hands in intense entreaty to the God who had made him, and who withdrew Himself so relentlessly within the blank sky, that a blessing might tall upon the stony wilderness. But this blessing was withheld; whether by his own fault, or through the just will of the Father, Hugh could not wholly discern. The hard fact remained that the inner fortress was blank and bare, and that no friend or lover could be invited thither.
But as Hugh's manhood melted into his middle age, the conflict between the outer and inner spirit decreased. He was still, as ever, conscious of the coldness of his inner heart; but he grew to believe that a compromise was possible, and that his work was to cheer and welcome, with all the outer resources at his command, any pilgrims who sought his aid. He became patiently and unwearyingly kind. There was no trouble he would not take for any one who appealed to him. He gave a simple affection, a quiet sympathy, with eager readiness; and learned that, if he lacked that fiery and impetuous core of emotion, which can make the whole world different to those who can light their torches at its glow, yet he could smoothe the path and comfort the steps of less ardent, less impulsive spirits. He could add something of light and warmth to the cold world. If sometimes those who were attracted by his genial bearing and sympathetic kindness were disappointed and troubled at finding how slender a stream it was, well, that was inevitable. He realised himself that his was a shallow nature, full of motion and foam, wide but not deep, and that its bright force and swift curves hid from others, though not from himself, its lack of force and energy. And so when it came to him to lay aside his public work, and to enter a life which seemed an almost disappointingly meagre field to those who had formed high hopes of him, believing that he had a rich and prodigal nature, a depth of insight and force, he made the change himself with a fervent and abundant gratitude; feeling that he was unequal to the larger claims, and would but have attempted to hide his lack of force under a certain brisk liveliness and paradoxical display; while that in the narrow channel which his life now entered, he would at least be employing all the force of which he was capable.
He was not free from misgivings; but he felt that what appeared to be a shrinking and cowardly diffidence to others, was the inevitable result of the richness of his outer nature, the exuberance of which they held to issue from a reservoir of secret force; but, though he sighed at their disappointment, he felt that he was estimating himself more truly; and that he lacked that inner fulness of spirit, that patient unselfishness, which could alone have sustained him. He remained indeed a child, with the charm, the gaiety, the simplicity of a child, but with the wilfulness, the faint-heartedness, the desultoriness of a child. And he felt that in making his choice he was indeed following the will of his Father, making the most of his single talent, instead of juggling with it to make it appear to be two or even ten.
He had his reward in an immediate and simple tranquillity of spirit. He never doubted nor looked back. Those who saw him, and thought regretfully what he might have been, what he might have done, would sometimes give utterance to their disappointment, and even peevishly blame him. But here again his coldness of temperament assisted him. He submitted to such criticisms and censures with a regretful air, as though he were half convinced of their truth. But the severer and sterner spirit within was never touched or affected. Ambitious and fond of display as he had been, the loss of dignity and influence weighed nothing with him; he was even surprised to find how little it touched him with any sense of regret or yearning. His fear had been once that perhaps he was great, and that indolence and luxuriousness alone held him back from exercising that greatness. But God had been good to him in neither humiliating nor exposing him, and now that he himself had lifted the lid of the ark in the innermost shrine, and had seen how bare and unfurnished it was, he saw in a flash of humble insight how wisely he was held back.
Truth, however painful, has always something bracing and sustaining about it; and the days in which Hugh learnt the truth about himself had nothing of gloom or sadness about them. The discovery indeed surprised him with a certain lightness and freshness of spirit. He smiled to think that he had entered the vale of humiliation, and had found it full of greenness and musical with fountains. A great flood of peace flowed in upon him; and all the delicate love of nature, of trees and skies, of flowers and moving water, came back to him with an increased and deep significance. Before, he had seen their outward appearance; now he looked into their spirit; and so he passed along the dreary valley light of foot and singing to himself. Mr. Fearing, in the Pilgrim's Progress, went down from the House Beautiful into the valley, said Mr. Greatheart, "as well as ever I saw man in my life. I never saw him better in all his pilgrimage than when he was in that valley. Here he would lie down, embrace the ground, and kiss the very flowers that grew in the valley. He would now be up every morning by break of day tracing and walking to and fro in this valley."
Even so was it with Hugh. The place that he had feared was revealed to him in a moment as his native air. Men do not lose all of a sudden their temptations, and least of all those who have desired the prize rather than the labour. But Hugh saw that the place where he set his feet was holy. And as for his poor desires, he put them in the hands of his Father, and rejoiced to find that they were faithfully and serenely purged away.
He began to learn, but with what infinite difficulty, what entanglement of delay, that the great mistake that he had made in his religious life, was the limiting the direct influence of God to the pietistic, the devotional region. All the tender and remote associations of childhood had to be broken off and drawn away one by one, as one snaps and pulls ivy down from a wall, before he could reach the thought he was approaching; and how often, too, did the old conception surprise him, interrupt him, entangle him again unawares! It seemed to Hugh, reflecting on the problem, how strange a thing was the pageant of life all about him, the march of invisible winds, the sweeping up of cloudy vapours, the slow ruin of rocky places, the spilling of sweet streams; and then, in a nearer region, the quaint arbitrary forms of living creatures, their innate instincts, their intelligence, so profoundly and delicately organised in one direction, so weak in another; and then again the horrible threads of cruelty, of suffering, of death, inwoven so relentlessly in the fabric of the world, the pitiless preying of beast upon beast; and, further still, the subtle and pathetic wisdom of the human spirit, sadly marking what is amiss, and setting itself so feebly, so pitifully, to amend it; the shaping of communities, the social moralities, so distinct from, so adverse to the morality of nature – reflecting, as I say, on these things, Hugh became aware, with a growing astonishment, that though mankind attributed, in an easy and perfunctory way, all these phenomena to the creative hand of God, yet instead of trying to form a conception of Him and His dark thoughts from this legible and gigantic handwriting, which revealed so impenetrable, so imperturbable a will, they sought to trace His influence only in some bewildered region of the human spirit, the struggles of inherited conscience, the patient charity of men, that would seek to knot up the loose ends which, in their pathetic belief in self-developed principles, they could not help imagining that the Maker of all had left unravelled and untied.
To believe in God and yet to seek to improve upon His ways! what a strange and incredible contradiction! And yet what made the position a more bewildering one still was the certainty that these very inner impulses to amend, to improve, came from God as clearly as the very evils that He permitted and indeed originated. What was the exit from this intolerable tangle of thought? Law indeed seemed absolute, law on a scale at once so colossal and so minute, law that sent the planets whirling through space round the central sun – and yet dwelt, cell within cell, in the heart of the smallest pebble that rolled upon the sea-beach. And side by side with this law ran a thwarting force, an impulse to make man do blindly the very things that led inevitably to destruction, to endow him with an intense desire of life, and yet to leave him ignorant of the laws that hurried him, reluctant and amazed, to death. Hugh grew to feel that some compromise was necessary; that to live in the natural impulses alone, or in the developed impulses alone, was an impossibility. A hundred voices called him, a hundred hands beckoned or waved him back; nature prompted one thing, reason another, association another, piety another; and yet each was in a sense the calling of God. The saddest thing was that to obey any of the voices brought no peace or tranquillity; he obeyed piety, and nature continued fiercely to prompt the opposite; he obeyed association, and reason mocked his choice. He became aware that in order to triumph over these manifold and uneasy contradictions, a certain tranquillity of mind must be acquired; he found that to a large extent he must trust intuition, which could at all events settle, if it could not reconcile, conflicting claims; even when reason indicated a choice of paths, the voice of the soul cried out clearly the way that he must choose; the obedience to intuition was generally approved by experience, until Hugh began to see, at last, that it was the safest guide of all, and that thus we came nearest to the heart of God. He found, indeed, very often, that even when prudence and reason afforded excellent reasons for abstaining from action, to yield to intuition turned out to be the wisest and the kindest course; until, in practical matters, he learnt to trust it unhesitatingly, even if it led him, as the light led the pilgrim, to stumble for a time in a field full of dark mountains.