“I’m feeling low to-night,” said Father Payne in answer to a question about his prolonged silence.  “I’m not myself:  virtue has gone out of me - I’m in the clutches of a bloodsucker.”

“Old debts with compound interest?” said Rose cheerfully.

“Yes,” said Father Payne with a frown; “old emotional I.O.U.’s.  I didn’t know what I was putting my name to.”

“A man or a woman?” said Rose.

“Thank God, it’s a man!” said Father Payne.  “Female bloodsuckers are worse still.  A man, at all events, only wants the blood; a woman wants the pleasure of seeing you wince as well!”

“It sounds very tragic,” said Kaye.

“No, it’s not tragic,” said Father Payne; “there would be something dignified about that!  It’s only unutterably low and degrading.  Come, I’ll tell you about it.  It will do me good to get it off my chest.

“It is one of my old pupils,” Father Payne went on.  “He once got into trouble about money, and I paid his debts - he can’t forgive me that!”

“Does he want you to pay some more?” said Rose.

“Yes, he does,” said Father Payne, “but he wants to be high-minded too.  He wants me to press him to take the money, to prevail upon him to accept it as a favour.  He implies that if I hadn’t begun by paying his debts originally, he would not have ever acquired what he calls ’the unhappy habit of dependence.’  Of course he doesn’t think that really:  he wants the money, but he also wants to feel dignified.  ’If I thought it would make you happier if I accepted it,’ he says, ’of course I should view the matter differently.  It would give me a reason for accepting what I must confess would be a humiliation,’ Isn’t that infernal?  Then he says that I may perhaps think that his troubles have coarsened him, but that he unhappily retains all his old sensitiveness.  Then he goes on to say that it was I who encouraged him to preserve a high standard of delicacy in these matters.”

“He must be a precious rascal,” said Vincent.

“No, he isn’t,” said Father Payne, “that’s the worst of it - but he is a frantic poseur.  He has got so used to talking and thinking about his feelings, that he doesn’t know what he really does feel.  That’s the part of it which bothers me:  because if he was a mere hypocrite, I would say so plainly.  One must not be taken in by apparent hypocrisy.  It often represents what a man did once really think, but which has become a mere memory.  One must not be hard on people’s reminiscences.  Don’t you know how the mildest people are often disposed to make out that they were reckless and daring scapegraces at school?  That isn’t a lie; it is imagination working on very slender materials.”

We laughed at this, and then Barthrop said, “Let me write to him, Father.  I won’t be offensive.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” said Father Payne; “but no one can help me.  It’s not my fault, but my misfortune.  It all comes of acting for the best.  I ought to have paid his debts, and made myself thoroughly unpleasant about it.  What I did was to be indulgent and sympathetic.  It’s all that accursed sentimentality that does it.  I have been trying to write a letter to him all the morning, showing him up to himself without being brutal.  But he will only write back and say that I have made him miserable, and that I have wholly misunderstood him:  and then I shall explain and apologise; and then he will take the money to show that he forgives me.  I see a horrible vista of correspondence ahead.  After four or five letters, I shall not have the remotest idea what it is all about, and he will be full of reproaches.  He will say that it isn’t the first time that he has found how the increase of wealth makes people ungenerous.  Oh, don’t I know every step of the way!  He is going to have the money, and he is going to put me in the wrong:  that is his plan, and it is going to come off.  I shall be in the wrong:  I feel in the wrong already!”

“Then in that case there is certainly no necessity for losing the money too!” said Rose.

“It’s all very well for you to talk in that impersonal way, Rose,” said Father Payne.  “Of course I know very well that you would handle the situation kindly and decisively; but you don’t know what it is to suffer from politeness like a disease.  I have done nothing wrong except that I have been polite when I might have been dry.  I see right through the man, but he is absolutely impervious; and it is my accursed politeness that makes it impossible for me to say bluntly what I know he will dislike and what he genuinely will not understand.  I know what you are thinking, every one of you - that I say lots of things that you dislike - but then you do understand!  I could no more tell this wretch the truth than I could trample on a blind old man.”

“What will you really do?” said Barthrop.

“I shall send him the money,” said Father Payne firmly, “and I shall compliment him on his delicacy; and then, thank God, I shall forget, until it all begins again.  I am a wretched old opportunist, of course; a sort of Ally Sloper - not fit company for strong and concise young men!”