The Thread of Gold

by Arthur Christopher Benson

"I have no answer ready," I said, "though there is one, I am sure, if you will only give me time; but let that come later: more questions first, and then I will deliver judgment. Now, attend to this seriously," I said. "How do you justify it that you are alone in the world, not mated, not a good husband and father? The dove has not got that on his conscience."

"Ah!" said my friend, "I have often asked myself that. But for many years I had not the time to fall in love; if I had been an idle man it would have been different, and now that I am free—well, I regard it as, on the whole, a wise dispensation. I have no domestic virtues; I am a pretty commonplace person, and I think there is no reason why I should perpetuate my own feeble qualities, bind my dull qualities up closer with the life of the world. Besides, I have a theory that the world is made now very much as it was in the Middle Ages. There was but one choice then—a soldier or a monk. Now, I have no combative blood in me; I hate a row; I am a monk to the marrow of my bones, and the monks are the failures from the point of view of race. No monk should breed monks; there are enough of his kind in the hive already."

"You a monk?" said I, laughing. "Why, you are nothing of the kind; you are just the sort of man for an adoring wife and a handful of big children. I must have a better answer."

"Well, then," said he, rather seriously, "I will give you a better answer. There are some people whose affections are made to run, strong and straight, in a narrow channel. The world holds but one woman for a man of that type, and it is his business to find her; but there are others, and I am one, who dribble away their love in a hundred channels—in art, in nature, among friends. To speak frankly, I have had a hundred such passions. I made friends as a boy, quickly and romantically, with all kinds of people—some old, some young. Then I have loved books, and music, and, above all, the earth and the things of the earth. To the wholesome, normal man these things are but an agreeable background, and the real business of life lies with wife and child and work. But to me the real things have been the beautiful things—sunrise and sunset, streams and woods, old houses, talk, poetry, pictures, ideas. And I always liked my work, too."

"And you did it well?" I said.

"Oh, yes, well enough," he replied. "I have a clear head, and I am conscientious; and then there was some fun to be got out of it at times. But it was never a part of myself for all that. And the reason why I gave it up was not because I was tired of it, but because I was getting to depend too much upon it. I should very soon have been unable to do without it."

"But what is your programme?" I said, rather urgently. "Don't you want to be of some use in the world? To make other people better and happier, for instance."

"My dear boy," said my companion, with a smile, "do you know that you are talking in a very conventional way? Of course, I desire that people should be better and happier, myself among the number; but how am I to set about it? Most people's idea of being better and happier is to make other people subscribe to make them richer. They want more things to eat and drink and wear; they want success and respectability, to be sidesmen and town councillors, and even Members of Parliament. Nothing is more hopelessly unimaginative than ordinary people's aims and ideas, and the aims and ideas, too, that are propounded from pulpits. I don't want people to be richer and more prosperous; I want them to be poorer and simpler. Which is the better man, the shepherd there on the down, out all day in the air, seeing a thousand pretty things, or the grocer behind his counter, living in an odour of lard and cheese, bowing and fussing, and drinking spirits in the evening? Of course, a wholesome-minded man may be wholesome-minded everywhere and anywhere; but prosperity, which is the Englishman's idea of righteousness, is a very dangerous thing, and has very little of what is divine about it. If I had stuck to my work, as all my friends advised me, what would have been the result? I should have had more money than I want, and nothing in the world to live for but my work. Of course, I know that I run the risk of being thought indolent and unpractical. If I were a prophet, I should find it easy enough to scold everybody, and find fault with the poor, peaceful world. But as I am not, I can only follow my own line of life, and try to see and love as many as I can of the beautiful things that God flings down all round us. I am not a philanthropist, I suppose; but most of the philanthropists I have known have seemed to me tiresome, self-seeking people, with a taste for trying to take everything out of God's hands. I am an individualist, I imagine. I think that most of us have to find our way, and to find it alone. I do try to help a few quiet people at the right moment; but I believe that every one has his own circle—some larger, some smaller—and that one does little good outside it. If every one would be content with that, the world would be mended in a trice."

"I am glad that you, at least, admit that there is something to be mended," I said.

"Oh, yes," said he, "the general conditions seem to me to want mending; but that, I humbly think, is God's matter, and not mine. The world is slowly broadening and improving, I believe. In these days, when we shoot our enemies and then nurse them, we are coming, I believe, to see even the gigantic absurdity of war; but all that side of it is too big for me. I am no philosopher! What I believe we ought to do is to be patient, kind, and courageous in a corner. Now, I will give you an instance. I had a friend who was a good, hard-working clergyman; a brave, genial, courageous creature; he had a town parish not far from here; he liked his work, and he did it well. He was the friend of all the boys and girls in the parish; he worked a hundred useful, humble institutions. He was nothing of a preacher, and a poor speaker; but something generous, honest, happy seemed to radiate from the man. Of course, they could not let him alone. They offered him a Bishopric. All his friends said he was bound to take it; the poor fellow wrote to me, and said that he dared not refuse a sphere of wider influence, and all that. I wrote and told him my mind—namely, that he was doing a splendid piece of quiet, sober work, and that he had better stick to it. But, of course, he didn't. Well, what is the result? He is worried to death. He has a big house and a big household; he is a welcome guest in country-houses and vicarages; he opens churches, he confirms; he makes endless poor speeches, and preaches weak sermons. His time is all frittered away in directing the elaborate machinery of a diocese; and all his personal work is gone. I don't say he doesn't impress people. But his strength lay in his personal work, his work as a neighbour and a friend. He is not a clever man; he never says a suggestive thing—he is not a sower of thoughts, but a simple pastor. Well, I regard it as a huge and lamentable mistake that he should ever have changed his course; and the motive that made him do it was a bad one, only disguised as an angel of light. Instead of being the stoker of the train, he is now a distinguished passenger in a first-class carriage."