"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 God 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 God 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!"