THE PARDONER

With him ther rood a gentil PardonerOf Rouncival, his freend and his compeer,That streight was comen fro the Court of Rome.· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·A vernicle hadde he sowed on his cappeHis walet lay biforn him in his lappeBretful of pardoun.

With him ther rood a gentil Pardoner

Of Rouncival, his freend and his compeer,

That streight was comen fro the Court of Rome.

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

A vernicle hadde he sowed on his cappe

His walet lay biforn him in his lappe

Bretful of pardoun.

IHAVE no plea to make for this fourteenth-century pardoner. He was an impudent vagabond, trafficking in damaged goods. One did not need to be a Lollard in order to see that he was a reprehensible character. Discerning persons in need of relics would go to responsible dealers where they could be assured of getting their money’s worth. This glib-tongued fellow peddling religious articles from door to door lived on the credulity of untraveled country people. He took advantage of their weaknesses. Many a good wife would purchase a pardon she had no need of, simply because he offered it as abargain. This was all wrong. We all know how the business of indulgence-selling was overdone. There was a general loss of confidence on the part of the purchasing public; and at last in the days of the too enterprising Tetzel there came a disastrous slump. There was no market for pardons, even of the gilt-edged varieties. Since then very little has been doing in this line, at least among the northern nations.

The pardoner richly deserved his fate. And yet there are times when one would give something to see the merry knave coming down the road.

I suppose that the nature of each individual has its point of moral saturation. When this point is reached, it is of no use to continue exhortation or rebuke or any kind of didactic effort. Even the finest quality of righteous indignation will no longer soak in. With me the point of moral saturation comes when I attend successively more meetings of a reformatory and denunciatory character than nature intended me to profit by. If they are well distributed in point of time, I can take in a considerable number of good causes and earnestly reprobate an equal number of crying evils. But there is a certainmonotony of rebuke which I am sure is not beneficial to persons of my disposition. That some things are wrong I admit, but when I am peremptorily ordered to believe that everything is wrong, it arouses in me a certain obstinacy of contradiction. I might be led to such a belief, but I will not be driven to it. I rebel against those censors of manners and morals who treat all human imperfectnesses with equal rigor. To relax even for an instant the righteous frown over the things that are going wrong, into an indulgent smile at the things that are not nearly so bad as they seem, is in their eyes nothing less than compounding a felony. If they would allow proper intervals between protests, so that the conscience could cool down, all would be well. But this is just what they will not allow. The wheels must go round without intermission until progress is stopped by the disagreeable accident of “a hot box.”

You remember after Mrs. Proudie had given her guests a severe lesson in social ethics, the Signora asked in her hearing,—

“‘Is she always like this?’

“‘Yes—always—madam,’ said Mrs. Proudie,returning; ‘always the same—always equally adverse to impropriety of conduct of every description.’”

Mrs. Proudie was an excellent woman according to her light, yet Barchester would have been a happier place to live in had her light been less constant. A little flicker now and then, a momentary relief from the glare, would have been appreciated.

It is when the note of personal responsibility has been forced beyond my ability that I feel beneath my inherited Puritanism the stirring of a vague Papistry. Instead of joining another protesting society beginning with that feverish particle “anti,” how delightful it would be to go out and dicker with a well-conditioned pardoner

Streight comen fro the Court of Rome!

Wearied with diatribes and resolutions, one falls back upon the guileless bargainings of Simple Simon.

“Let me taste your ware,” say I.

“Show me first your penny,” says the pardoner.

There is a renewal of one’s youth in this immortal repartee.

There is no greater relief than to go out andbuy something, especially if one can buy it cheap. A great part of the attractiveness of the mediæval indulgences lay in the fact that you could buy them. They would not have seemed the same if they had been given away, or if you had to work them out like a road tax. To go out and buy a little heart’s ease was an enticement.

Then again, the natural man, when he has to do with an institution, is in a passive rather than in an active mood. If it is instituted for his betterment, he says, “Let it better me.” It seems too bad that in the end it should throw all the responsibility back upon himself.

A delightful old English traveler criticises the methods of transportation he found in vogue in parts of Germany. He says that on the Rhine it was customary to make the passengers do the rowing. “Their custome is that the passengers must exercise themselves with oares and rowing,alternis vicibus, a couple together. So that the master of the boate (who methinks in honestie ought either to do it himself or to procure some others to do it for him) never roweth but when his turne commeth. This exercise both for recreation and health sake is I confesse very convenientfor man. But to be tied unto it by way of strict necessitie when one payeth well for his passage was a thing that did not a little distaste my humour.”

This is the trouble which many of us find in the modern methods of doing good. There are all sorts of organizations which promise well. But no sooner have we embarked on a worthy undertaking than we find that we are expected to work our passage. The officers of the boat disclaim all further responsibility, leaving that to private judgment. It is the true Protestant way and it works excellently well, when it works at all. It offers a fine challenge to disinterested virtue. But there are occasions when the natural man rebels. To have so much put upon him doth “not a little distaste his humour.” He longs for the good old times when there were thinkers who were not above their business, and who when he was at his wit’s end would do his thinking for him. It’s the same way with being excused for his shortcomings. Of course on a pinch he can excuse himself, but he generally makes a pretty poor job of it. It would be much more satisfactory to have a duly authorized person who, for aconsideration, would assume the whole responsibility. Of course if he had done something that was really unpardonable, that would be another matter. The law would have to take its course. But there are a great many venial transgressions. What he wants is some one who can assure him that they are venial.

Let no good Protestant take offense at the finding of a Pardoner’s Wallet in this twentieth century. It is only a wallet containing tentative suggestions concerning things pardonable. Nothing is authoritatively signed and sealed.

Of one thing let the good Protestant take notice. I would have my pardoner know his place. He must not meddle with things too high for him. He has no right to deal with the graver sins or to speak for a higher power. He must not speak even in the name of the Church, which has worthier spokesmen than he. In a book on indulgences the author says, “On the subject of elongated, centenary, and millenary pardons, it would take too much space to enlarge.” I should rule out all such ambitious plans, not only from lack of space but on conscientious grounds.

My pardoner should confine himself to a moremodest task. He should be the spokesman not of any ecclesiastical power, but only of ordinary and errant human nature. There are sins against eternal law that must at all times be taken seriously. The trouble with us poor mortals is that, even in our remorse, we do not take very long views. The judgment that seems most terrible to us is that of the people who live next door. The transgressions which loom largest are offenses against social conventions and against our own sensitive vanity. The pangs of remorse for an act of remembered awkwardness are likely to be more poignant than those which come as retribution for an acknowledged crime.

Here is ample room for a present-day pardoner. I should like to hear him make the cheery proclamation of his trade.

“Good friends: You are not what you would like to be. You are not what you think you are. You are not what your neighbors think you are,—or rather, you are not what you think your neighbors think you are. Your foibles, your peccadillos, your fallacies, and your prejudices are more numerous than you imagine. But take heart of grace, good people. These things are not unpardonable.We indulgencers have learned to make allowances for human nature. Let’s see what’s in my wallet! No crowding! Each will be served in his turn.”

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If I were a duly licensed pardoner, I should have a number of nicely engraved indulgences for what are called sins of omission. Not that I should attempt to extenuate the graver sort. I should not hold out false hopes to thankless sons or indifferent husbands. To be followed by such riff-raff would spoil my trade with the better classes. I should not have anything in my wallet for the acrimonious critic, who brings a railing accusation against his neighbor, and omits to sign his name. Some omissions are unpardonable.

I should, at the beginning, confine my traffic to those sins which easily beset conscientious persons about half past two in the morning. We have warrant for thinking that the sleep of the just is refreshing. This is doubtless true of the completely just; but with the just man in the making it is frequently otherwise. There is a stage in his strenuous moral career which is conducive to insomnia.

Having gone to sleep because he was tired, he presently awakes for the same reason. He is, however, only half awake. Those kindly comforters, Common-sense, Humor, and Self-esteem, whose function it is to keep him on reasonably good terms with himself while he is doing his necessary work, are still dozing.

Then Conscience appears,—a terrible apparition. There is a vague menace in her glance. The poor wretch cowers beneath it. Then is unrolled the lengthening list of the things left undone which ought to have been done. Every unwritten letter and uncalled call and unattended committee meeting and unread report emerges from the vasty deep and adds its burden of unutterable guilt. The Thing That Was Not Worth Doing arises and demands with insatiate energy that it be done at once. The Thing Half-done, because there was no time to finish it, appears with wan face accusing him of its untimely taking off. The Stitch not Taken in Time appears with its pitiful ninefold progeny all doomed because of a moment’s inattention. It seems that his moral raiment, instead of being put together with an eye to permanency, has beenstitched on a single-thread machine and the end of the seam never properly fastened. Now he is pulling at the thread, and he sees the whole fabric unraveling before his eyes.

His past existence looms before him as a battlefield with a perpetual conflict of duties,—each duty cruelly slain by its brother duty. While the wailing of these poor ghosts is in his ears he cannot rest. And yet he knows full well that at half past two in the morning the one inexorable duty is that he should go to sleep. Conscience points to this as another duty left undone. Then begins a new cycle of self-reproach.

At such times the sight of an indulgence neatly framed hanging upon the bedroom wall would be worth more than it would cost. It would save doctor’s bills.

Even in our waking hours there is a tendency for the sins of omission and the sorrows of omission to pile up in monstrous fashion. There is a curious ingenuity which some persons have in loading themselves with burdens which do not belong to them, and in extracting melancholy reflections out of their good fortune. They will not frankly accept a blessing in its own proper form,—itmust come to them in a mournful disguise. Poets seem particularly subject to these inversions of feeling. Here are some lines entitled “Two Sorrows:”—

Before Love came my eyes were dim with tearsBecause I had not known her gentle face.Softly I said, “But when across the yearsHer smile illumes the darkness of my place,All grief from my poor heart she will efface.”Now Love is mine—she walks with me for ayeDown paths of primrose and blue violet,But on my heart at every close of dayA grief more keen than my old grief is set.I weep for those who have not found Love yet.

Before Love came my eyes were dim with tears

Because I had not known her gentle face.

Softly I said, “But when across the years

Her smile illumes the darkness of my place,

All grief from my poor heart she will efface.”

Now Love is mine—she walks with me for ayeDown paths of primrose and blue violet,But on my heart at every close of dayA grief more keen than my old grief is set.I weep for those who have not found Love yet.

Now Love is mine—she walks with me for aye

Down paths of primrose and blue violet,

But on my heart at every close of day

A grief more keen than my old grief is set.

I weep for those who have not found Love yet.

There is a fine altruism about this sentiment that one cannot but respect; yet I should hate to live with a person who felt that way. One would not venture on any little kindness for fear of opening a new floodgate of tears.

I should feel like urging another point of view. It is true that you are happy, happier than you deserve. But don’t get morbid about it; take it cheerfully. It’s not your fault. It seems selfish, you say, to enjoy your blessings when there aren’t enough to go round among all your fellow beings.Why, my dear fellow, that’s the only way to make them go around. What if, theoretically, it is a little selfish? We will readily pardon that for the sake of the satisfaction we get out of seeing you have a good time. We much prefer that you should allow us to sympathize with you in your happiness, rather than that you should inflict upon us too much sympathy for our deprivations.

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There is opportunity for a thriving trade in indulgences for necessarily slighted work. I emphasize the idea of necessity, for I am aware of the danger of gross abuse if poets and painters should get the notion that they may find easy absolution for the sin of offering to the public something less than their best. Their best is none too good. We must not, through misdirected charity, lower the standards of self-respecting artists.

But some of us are not artists. The ordinary man is compelled to spend most of his time on pot-boilers of one kind or another. When the pot is merrily boiling, and all the odds and ends are being mingled in a savory stew, I would allowthe ordinary man some satisfaction. As fingers were made before forks, so mediocrity was made before genius. Has mediocrity no right to enjoy its own work, just because it is not the very best?

We of the commonalty who are fitted to live happily in the comparative degree, allow ourselves to be bullied by the superlative. There are uneasy spirits who trouble Israel. They continually quote the maxim that whatever is worth doing is worth doing well. It is a good maxim in its way, and causes no particular hardship until our eyes are opened and we see what it means to do anything superlatively well. When we are shown by example the technical excellence which is possible in the simplest forms of activity, and the extent to which we fall short, we are appalled. It is a wonder that we keep going at all when we consider the slovenly way we breathe. And yet breathing, though it well might engage all our attention, is only one of the things we have to do.

I attribute a good deal of the sense of stress in modern life to the new standards of excellence that are set in regard to the multifarious activitieswhich make up our daily lives. We have to do a hundred different things. This is not particularly trying so long as it is merely touch and go. In our amateurish way we rather enjoy the variety. But when a hundred experts beset us, each one of whom has made a life study of a particular act, we are bowed in contrition. There is no good in us but good intentions, and they cannot save us. Our life story is summed up like that of the unfortunate sparrow in the tragical history of Cock Robin:

His aim then he tookBut he took it not right.

His aim then he took

But he took it not right.

Our capacity for imperfectness seems absolutely unlimited. The effort taken to achieve success in one direction is from another point of view a dissipation of energy. It is so much power withdrawn from another possible achievement. The most versatile men do not do all things equally well, and while the world calls them successful they are inwardly conscious of their manifold failures. Mr. Balfour as Prime Minister of the British Empire has had much to gratify his ambition, but he takes the public into his confidence and confesses that he is a bitterly disappointed man.For, in addition to other accomplishments, he plays golf, a game that develops a conscience of its own. He plays well, but his conscience tells him that he does not play as well as he might. “I belong,” he says, “to that unhappy class of beings forever pursued by remorse, who are conscious that they threw away in youth opportunities that were open to them of beginning golf at a time of life when alone the muscles can be attuned to the full perfection required by the most difficult game that perhaps exists.”

Surely there must be a way by which such vain regrets may be stilled. Life has its inevitable compromises. We cannot always be at our best. Take such a simple matter as that of masticating our food. Before I had given much thought to it, I should have said that it was something worth doing and worth doing well. When I learned that Mr. Gladstone was accustomed to chew each morsel of food thirty-two times, I thought it greatly to his credit. For a man who had so many other things to do, that seemed enough.

But when I read a book of some three hundred pages containing the whole duty of man in regard to chewing, I was disheartened. Mr. Gladstoneappeared to be a mere tyro guilty of bolting his food. “The author has found that one fifth of the midway section of the garden young onion, sometimes called shallot, has required seven hundred and twenty-two mastications before disappearing through involuntary swallowing.”

The author evidently did his whole duty by that young onion, and yet I should have pardoned him if he had done something less. That doctrine of his about involuntary swallowing being the only kind that is morally justifiable, seems to me to be too austere. If we have to swallow in the end, why not show a cheerful willingness?

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Not only do those need comfort who do less than is expected of them, those who do more are often in an equally sorry plight. Their excellences make them obnoxious to their neighbors, and are treated as unpardonable offenses. I would have a special line of indulgences for that class of people known as the “unco guid.” I know no persons more in need of charity, and who get so little of it. Every man’s hand is against them, especially every hand that wields the pen of a ready writer. They seem predestinated to literaryreprobation, and that without regard to their genuinely good works or to their continuance in the same. And yet the whole extent of their crime is that, being in some respects better than their neighbors, they are painfully aware of the fact. It is because they have tasted of the forbidden knowledge of their own moral superiority that their fall is deemed irremediable.

I confess that, in spite of all that has been said against them, I have a tender feeling for them. They are persecuted for self-righteousness without the benefit of any beatitude. Why should we consider it unpardonable to be fully cognizant of one’s undoubted virtues? Of course unconscious virtue is the more paradisiacal, while conscious virtue often rubs one the wrong way. But while there are so many worse things in the world, why should we mind a little thing like that?

We listen to Dumas’ swashbuckling heroes recounting their transgressions. We know that they are not so bad as they would have us believe, but we think no worse of them for that. But let a thoroughly respectable man draw attention to his own fine qualities, and we treat every deviation from exact fact as a crime. When he indulges insome exaggeration and pictures himself as rather better than he is, we cry, “Hypocrite!” If he claims possession of some single virtue which does not, in our judgment, harmonize with some of his other characteristics, we treat him as if he had stolen it. And yet, poor fellow! he may have come honestly by this bit of finery, though he has not been able to get other things to match it. All this is unkind.

Whatever one may think of the “unco guid,” every right-minded person must agree with me that something ought to be done for the peace of mind of the quiet, respectable, good people who bear the heat and burden of the day. I have in mind the people who pay taxes, and build homes, and support churches and schools and hospitals, and now and then go to the theatre. They are as likely as not to be moderately well to do, and if they are not, nobody knows it. When times are hard with them, they keep their own counsels and go about with head erect and the best foot forward. You may see multitudes of these people every day.

As a class, these people are sadly put upon. They are criticised not only for their own shortcomings,but for those of all their irresponsible fellow citizens. If anything goes wrong they are sure to hear about it, for they listen to sermons, and read the newspapers, and attend meetings. No reformer can be truly eloquent who does not point his finger at his hearer, and say, “Thou art the man!” Now, unfortunately, the real delinquents are usually absent, and the right-minded, conscientious hearer of the word, who is doing all he can for social regeneration, even to the verge of nervous prostration, has to act as substitute. He has been so often assured that he is the guilty man that, by and by, he comes to believe it.

He walks to church with his family only to be told that it is his fault, and the fault of those like him, that other people have gone off in their automobiles. Perhaps, if he had walked differently, he might have made church-going more attractive to them. The evils of intemperance are laid at his door. It is not worth while to blame the drunkard or the saloon-keeper; they are not within ear-shot. As to pauperism and vice, every one knows that they arise from social conditions; and pray who is responsible for these conditions unless it be the meek man who sits in the pew,—atleast, he is the only one who can readily be made to assume the responsibility.

There is something wholesome in all this if it be not overdone. I, myself, like to have my fling at the man who is trying to do his duty, and to twit him occasionally for not doing more. It keeps him from self-righteousness. But sometimes it is carried too far, and the poor man staggers under a load of vicarious guilt.

I especially hate to see the man who is trying to do his duty given over to the censures of those who do not try. There is something very harsh in the judgment of the ne’er-do-well upon his well-to-do brother. His attitude is the extreme of phariseeism, as he contrasts his own generous and care-free nature with the pickayunish prudence which he scorns. To be sure, his brother in the end pays his debts for him, but he does it with a narrow scrutiny which robs the act of its natural charm. His acts of helpfulness are marred by a tendency to didacticism. All these things are laid up against him.

But allowance should be made for the difference in condition. Ne’er-do-wellness is an expansive state. There are no natural limits to it. Itdevelops broad views, and its peculiar virtues have a free field. It is different with well-to-doness, which is a precarious condition with a very narrow margin of safety. The ne’er-do-well can afford to be generous, seeing that his generosity costs him nothing. He is free from all belittling calculations necessary to those who are compelled to adjust means to ends,—he is indifferent to ends and he has no means.

When the morally responsible person finds himself too much put upon, I would grant him a generous indulgence. After all, I would tell him, the prudential virtues are not so bad. It is a good deal of an achievement to make both ends meet. I am not disposed to be too hard on those who accomplish this, even though I may think a little fullness in their moral garments might be more becoming.

I should also make provision for the pardon of those good people who are harshly judged because their virtues are unseasonable. But their case involves delicate considerations that can best be treated in another chapter.

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