Beside Still Waters

by Arthur Christopher Benson

In this he acted according to the dictates of a kind of intuition. It was useless, he felt, to analyse motives; it was impossible to discover how much was disinterestedness, how much unworldliness, how much the pursuit of truth, how much the avoidance of anxious responsibility, how much pure indolence. He was quite ready to believe that a certain amount of the latter came in, though Hugh was not indolent in the ordinary sense of the word. He was incapable of pure idling; but he was also incapable of carrying out prolonged and patient labour, unless he was keenly interested in an object; and the fact that he found the renunciation of ambitions so easy and simple a thing, was a sufficient proof to him that his interest in mundane things was not very vital. But Hugh above all things desired to have no illusions about himself; and he was saved from personal vanity, not so much by humility of nature, as from a deep sense of the utter dependence of all created things on their Creator. He did not look upon his own powers, his own good qualities, as redounding in any way to his credit, but as the gift of God. He never fell into the error of imagining himself to have achieved anything by his own ability or originality, but only as the outcome of a desire implanted in him by God, Who had also furnished him with the requisite perseverance to carry them out. He could not lay his finger on any single quality, and say that he had of his own effort improved it. And, in studying the lives and temperaments of others, he did not think of their achievements as things which they had accomplished; but rather as a sign of the fuller greatness of glory which had been revealed to them. Life thus became to him a following of light; he desired to know his own limitations, not because of the interest of them, but as indicating to him more clearly what he might undertake. It was a curious proof to him of the appropriateness of each man's conditions and environment to his own particular nature, when he reflected that no one whom he had ever known, however unhappy, however faulty, would ever willingly have exchanged identities with any one else. People desired to be rid of definite afflictions, definite faults; they desired and envied particular qualities, particular advantages that others possessed, but he could not imagine that any one in the world would exchange any one else's identity for his own; one would like perhaps to be in another's place, and this was generally accompanied by a feeling that one would be able to make a much better thing of another's sources of happiness and enjoyment, than the person whose prosperity or ability one envied seemed to make. But he could hardly conceive of any extremity of despair so great as to make a human being willing to accept the lot of another in its entirety. Even one's own faults and limitations were dear to one; the whole thing—character, circumstances, relations with others, position—made up to each person the most interesting problem in the world; and this immense consciousness of separateness, even of essential superiority, was perhaps the strongest argument that Hugh knew in favour of the preservation of a personal identity after death.

Hugh then found himself in this position; he was no longer young, but he seemed to himself to have retained the best part of youth, its openness to new impressions, its zest, its sense of the momentousness of occasions, its hopefulness; he found himself with duties which he felt himself capable of discharging; with a trained literary instinct and a real power of expression; even it he had not hitherto produced any memorable work, he felt that he was equipped for the task, if only some great and congenial theme presented itself to his mind. He found himself with a small circle of friends, with a competence sufficient for his simple needs; day by day there opened upon his mind ideas, thoughts, and prospects of ever-increasing mystery and beauty; as to his character and temperament, he found himself desiring to empty himself of all extraneous elements, all conventional traditions, all adopted ideas; his idea of life indeed was that it was an educative process, and that the further that the soul could advance upon the path of self-knowledge and sincerity, the more that it could cast away all the things that were not of its essence, the better prepared one was to be filled with the divine wisdom. The deeper that he plunged into the consideration of the mysterious conditions and laws which surrounded him, the greater the mystery became; but instead of becoming more hopeless, it seemed to him that the dawn appeared to brighten every moment, as one came closer to the appreciation of one's own ignorance, weakness, and humility. Instead of drawing nearer to despair, he drew every day nearer to a tender simplicity, a larger if more distant hope, an intenser desire to be at one with the vast Will that had set him where he was, and that denied him as yet a knowledge of the secret. As he ascended with slow steps into the dark mountain of life, the kingdoms of the world became more remote, the noise of their shouting more faint. He thought, with no compassion, but with a wondering tenderness, of the busy throng beneath; but he saw that, one by one, spirits smitten with the divine hope, slipped from that noisy world, and like himself, began to climb the solitary hills. What lay on the other side? That he could not even guess; but he had a belief in the richness, the largeness of the mind of God; and he saw as in a vision the day breaking on a purer and sweeter world, full of great surprises, mighty thoughts, pure joys; he knew not whether it was near or far, but something in his heart told him that it was assuredly there!

XLII

Aconite—The Dropping Veil

How swiftly the summer melted into the autumn! the old lime-trees in the college court were soon all gold—how bravely that gold seemed to enrich the heart, on the still, clear, fresh mornings of St. Luke's summer! that wise physician of souls has indeed had set aside for him the most inspiriting, the most healing days of the year, days of tonic coolness, of invigorating colour, of bracing sun; and then the winter closes in, when light is short, and the sun is low and cold; when the eye is grateful for the rich brown of naked fields, leafless woods, and misty distances. Yet there is a solemn charm about the darkening day, when the sun sets over the wide plain rolled in smoky vapours, and gilded banks of cloud; and then there is the long firelit evening to follow, when books give up their secrets and talk is easiest.

The summer, for all its enervating heat, its piercing light, was the time, so Hugh thought, for reflection. In winter the mind is often sunk in a sort of comfortable drowsiness, and hybernates within its secure cell. Hugh found the activities of work very absorbing in those darker days: his thoughts took on a more placid, more contented tinge. Early in the year he walked alone along the Backs at Cambridge. He passed the great romantic gateposts of St. John's, with the elms of the high garden towering over them, his mind occupied with a hundred small designs. It was with a shock of inexpressible surprise, as he passed by the clear stream that runs over its sandy shallows, and feeds the garden moats, to see that in the Wilderness the ground was bright with the round heads of the yellow aconite, the first flower to hear the message of spring. The appearance of that brave and hardy flower in that particular place had a peculiar and moving association for Hugh. More than twenty years before, in his undergraduate days, in a time of deep perplexity of mind, he had walked that way on a bright Sunday morning, his young heart burdened with sorrowful preoccupation. How hard those youthful griefs had been to bear! they were so unfamiliar, they seemed so irreparably overwhelming; one had not learned to look over them or through them; they darkened the present, they hung like a black cloud over the future. How fantastic, how exaggerated those woes had been, and yet how unbearably real! He had stood, he remembered, to watch the mild sunlight strike in soft shafts among the trees. The hardy blossoms, cold and scentless, but so unmistakably alive, had given him a deep message of hope, a thrill of expectation. He had gone back, he remembered, and in a glow of impassioned emotion had written a little poem on the theme, in a locked notebook, to which he confided his inmost thoughts. He could recall some of the poor stanzas still, so worthless in expression, yet with so fiery a heart.

The thought of the long intervening years came back to Hugh with a sense of wonder and gratitude. He had half expected then, he remembered, that some great experience would perhaps come to him, and lift him out of his shadowed thoughts, his vague regrets. That great experience had not befallen him, but how far more wisely and tenderly he had been dealt with instead! Experience had been lavished upon him; he had gained interest, he had practised activity, and he had found patience and hope by the way. He knew no more than he knew then of the great and dim design that lay behind the world, and now he hardly desired to know. He had been led, he had been guided, with a perfect tenderness, a deliberate love. The only lost hours, after all, had been the hours which he had given to anxiety and doubt, to ambition and desire. When the moment had come, which he had heavily anticipated, there had never been any question as to how he should act; and yet he had not been a mere puppet moved by forces outside his control. He could not harmonise the sense of guidance with the sense of freedom, and yet both had undoubtedly been there. He had been dealt with both frankly and tenderly; not saved from fruitful mistakes, not forbidden to wander; and yet his mistakes had never been permitted to be irreparable, his wanderings had taught him to desire the road rather than to dread the desert.

A great sense of tranquillity and peace settled down upon his spirit. He cast himself in an utter dependence upon the mighty will of the Father; and in that calm of thought his little cares, and they were many, faded like wreaths of steam cast abroad upon the air. To be sincere and loving and quiet, that was the ineffable secret; not to scheme for fame, or influence, or even for usefulness; to receive as in a channel the strength and sweetness of God.

A bird hidden in a dark yew-tree began softly to flute, in that still afternoon, a little song that seemed like a prayer for bright days and leafy trees and embowered greenness; a prayer that should be certainly answered, and the fulfilment of which should be dearer for the delay. Hugh knew in that moment that the life he had lived and would live was, in its bareness and bleakness, its veiling cloud, its chilly airs, but the preface to some vast and glorious springtime of the spirit, when hill and valley should break together into sunlit bloom, when the trees should be clothed with leaf, when birds should sing clear for joy, and the soul should be utterly satisfied. The old poet had said that the saddest thing was to remember happy days in hours of sorrow; but to remember the dreary days in a season of calm content, what joy could be compared to that? His heart was slowly filled, as a cup with wine, with an unutterable hope; but he desired no longer that some great thing should come to him, which should exalt him above his fellows and make him envied and admired. Rather should the humblest and the lowest place suffice, some corner of life which he should deck, and tend, and keep bright and sweet; a few hands to grasp, a few hearts to encourage; and even so to do that with no set purpose, but by merely letting the gentle joy of the soul overflow, like a spring of brimming waters, fed from high hills of faith.