Three Peach Stones
Observe a child; any one will do. You will see that not a day passes in which he does not find something or other to make him happy, though he may be in tears the next moment. Then look at a man; any one of us will do. You will notice that weeks and months can pass in which every day is greeted with nothing more than resignation, and endured with polite indifference. Indeed, most men are as miserable as sinners, though they are too bored to sin? —perhaps their sin is their indifference. But it is true that they so seldom smile that when they do we do not recognise their face, so distorted it is from the fixed mask we take for granted. And even then a man can not smile like a child, for a child smiles with his eyes, whereas a man smiles with his lips alone. It is not a smile, but a grin; something to do with humour, but little to do with happiness. And then, as anyone can see, there is a point (but who can define that point?) when a man becomes an old man, and then he will smile again.
It would seem that happiness is something to do with simplicity, and that it is the ability to extract pleasure from the simplest things—such as a peach stone, for instance.
It is obvious that it is nothing to do with success. For Sir Henry Stewart was certainly successful. It is twenty years ago since he came down to our village from London, and bought a couple of old cottages, which he had knocked into one. He used his house as a weekend refuge. He was a barrister. And the village followed his brilliant career with something almost amounting to paternals pride.
I remember some ten years ago when he was made a King’s Counsel, Amos and I, seeing him get off the London train, went to congratulate him. We grinned with pleasure; he merely looked as miserable as though he’d received a penal sentence. It was the same when he was knighted; he never smiled a bit, he didn’t even bother to celebrate with a round of drinks at the “Blue Fox”. He took his success as a child does his medicine. And not one of his achievements brought even a ghost of a smile to his tired eyes.
I asked him one day, soon after he’d retired to potter about his garden, what it was like to achieve all one’s ambitions. He looked down at his roses and went on watering them. Then he said, “The only value in achieving one’s ambition is that you then realise that they are not worth achieving.” Quickly he moved the conversation on to a more practical level, and within a moment we were back to a safe discussion on the weather. That was two years ago.
I recall this incident, for yesterday, I was passing his house, and had drawn up my cart just outside his garden wall. I had pulled in from the road for no other reason than to let a bus pass me. As I sat there filling my pipe, I suddenly heard a shout of sheer joy come from the other side of the wall.
I peered over. There stood Sir Henry doing nothing less than a tribal war dance of sheer unashamed ecstasy. Even when he observed my bewildered face staring over the wall he did not seem put out or embarrassed, but shouted for me to climb over.