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Updated: April 30, 2025
"But why doesn't it improve?" said Barthrop. "You always say that the public finds out what it wants, and will have it." "In books, yes!" said Father Payne; "but in daily life we are all so damnably afraid of the truth that's what is the matter with us, and it is that which journalism caters for.
"Do you remember," said Barthrop, "the lines in Tennyson's Guinevere, which sum up the knightly attributes? "'High thought, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man." "That's very interesting and curious!" said Father Payne. "Dear me, I had forgotten that did Tennyson say that? Come let's have it again!"
"Well, it's very hard to draw the line," said Father Payne: "but what we really mean by pose is, I imagine, the attempt to appear to be something which you frankly are not and that is where the word has changed its sense, Barthrop. An artist's pose is something characteristic, which makes a man look his best. What we generally mean by pose is the affecting a best which one never reaches.
Barthrop repeated the lines again. "Now, that's the gentlemanly ideal of the sixties," said Father Payne, "and, good heavens, how offensive it sounds! The most curious part of it really is 'the desire of fame' of course, a hundred years ago, no one made any secret of that!
Come, someone else must talk I must get on with my dinner," Father Payne addressed himself to his plate with obvious appetite. "It is all my fault," said Vincent, "but I am not going to tell you whom I meant, and Barthrop must not. But I will tell you how it was. I was with this man, who is an old acquaintance of mine. I used to know him when I was living in London.
That was a moment of true and certain joy; so that when I went back to the house and joined Barthrop, I felt no longer the uneasy quivering of the spirit which had long overmastered me. He too was calm and brave; we sat together for the last time, we talked with an unaffected cheerfulness of the future.
That is to be our loyalty to Father Payne, that we are to believe in life, and not only to believe in memory." It was soon over. Barthrop was to go later, and he came out to see me go. Just before I started, the old clock played its sweet tune; we stood in silence listening. "That is the best of omens," I said, "to depart with thanksgiving and the voice of melody."
The next morning the Wetheralls went off. Barthrop and I, with Father Payne, saw them go. The Wetheralls were serenely enjoying the prospect of returning home after a successful visit, but Miss Phyllis looked mournful, and as if she were struggling with concealed emotions. She kissed her hand to Father Payne as the carriage drove away.
Father Payne did not move, but extended a hand, which I advanced and shook, and said: "Very glad to see you, Mr. Duncan you are just in time for tea." He mentioned the names of the men present, who came and shook hands very cordially. Barthrop gave me some tea, and I was inducted into a chair by the fire.
Then the men mostly disappeared, and Barthrop carried me off for a talk, and told me a lot about everything. Then I went to my room, a big, ugly, comfortable bedroom; and in the morning there was breakfast, where people dropped in, read papers or letters, did not talk, and went off when they had done. Then I walked about in a nice, rather wild garden.
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