picture of
perfect naturalness: and I thought that Father Payne's demeanour, like that
of Socrates, showed clearly enough that the idea of death was not an
overshadowing dread dispelled by an effort of the will, but that it was not
present as a fear in his mind at all, and rather regarded with a reverent
curiosity: and I was reminded of a saying of Father Payne's which I have
elsewhere recorded, that the virtues to which we give our most unhesitating
admiration are the instinctive virtues rather than the reasoned virtues. If
Father Payne had appeared to be keeping a firm hold on himself, and to be
obliging himself to speak things timely and fitting, I should have admired
him deeply: but I admired him all the more because of his unaffected
tranquillity and unuttered affection. He had just enveloped us in his own
calmness, and gone straight forward.

We made our journey almost in silence: Barthrop was too much moved to
speak: and my own mind was dim with trouble, at all that we were to lose,
and yet drawn away into an infinite loyalty and tenderness for one who had
been more than a father to me.

LXXII

THE CROSSING

The end is soon told. On the following day, we thought it best to tell our
two companions and the Vicar what was happening, and we also told the old
butler that Father Payne was ill. It was a day of infinite dreariness to
me, with outbursts of sharp emotion at the sight of everything so closely
connected with Father Payne, and with the thought that he would see them no
more.

I was sitting in my room on the Friday morning, after a sleepless night,
when Barthrop came in and handed me a telegram from the doctor. "Mr. Payne
never recovered consciousness, and died an hour after the operation. All
details arranged. Please await letter." I raised my eyes to Barthrop's
face, but saw that he could not speak. I could say nothing either: my mind
and heart seemed to crumble suddenly into a hopeless despair.

A letter reached us the same evening by train. It was to the effect that
Father Payne had written down some exact directions the day before and
given them to the matron. He did not wish, in case of his death, that
anyone should see his body: he wished to be placed in the simplest of
coffins, as soon as possible, and that the coffin should be sent down by
train to Aveley, be taken from the station straight to the church, and if
possible to be buried at once. But even so, that was only his wish, and he
pa