The Way of All Flesh
Samuel Butler

from the 1912 A. C. Fifield edition.





THE WAY OF ALL FLESH

by Samuel Butler




CHAPTER I



When I was a small boy at the beginning of the century I remember an
old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings, and who used
to hobble about the street of our village with the help of a stick.
He must have been getting on for eighty in the year 1807, earlier
than which date I suppose I can hardly remember him, for I was born
in 1802.  A few white locks hung about his ears, his shoulders were
bent and his knees feeble, but he was still hale, and was much
respected in our little world of Paleham.  His name was Pontifex.

His wife was said to be his master; I have been told she brought him
a little money, but it cannot have been much.  She was a tall,
square-shouldered person (I have heard my father call her a Gothic
woman) who had insisted on being married to Mr Pontifex when he was
young and too good-natured to say nay to any woman who wooed him.
The pair had lived not unhappily together, for Mr Pontifex's temper
was easy and he soon learned to bow before his wife's more stormy
moods.

Mr Pontifex was a carpenter by trade; he was also at one time parish
clerk; when I remember him, however, he had so far risen in life as
to be no longer compelled to work with his own hands.  In his
earlier days he had taught himself to draw.  I do not say he drew
well, but it was surprising he should draw as well as he did.  My
father, who took the living of Paleham about the year 1797, became
possessed of a good many of old Mr Pontifex's drawings, which were
always of local subjects, and so unaffectedly painstaking that they
might have passed for the work of some good early master.  I
remember them as hanging up framed and glazed in the study at the
Rectory, and tinted, as all else in the room was tinted, with the
green reflected from the fringe of ivy leaves that grew around the
windows.  I wonder how they will actually cease and come to an end
as drawings, and into what new phases of being they will then enter.

Not content with being an artist, Mr Pontifex must needs also be a
musician.  He built the organ in the church with his own hands, and
made a smaller one which he kept in his own house.  He could play as
much as he could draw, not very well according to professional
standards, but much better than could have been expected.  I myself
showed a taste for music at an early age, and old Mr Pontifex on
finding it out, as he soon did, became partial to me in consequence.

It may be thought that with so many irons in the fire he could
hardly be a very thriving man, but this was not the case.  His
father had been a day labourer, and he had himself begun life with
no other capital than his good sense and good constitution; now,
however, there was a goodly show of timber about his yard, and a
look of solid comfort over his whole establishment.  Towards the
close of the eighteenth century and not long before my father came
to Paleham, he had taken a farm of about ninety acres, thus making a
considerable rise in life.  Along with the farm there went an old-
fashioned but comfortable house with a charming garden and an
orchard.  The carpenter's business was now carried on in one of the
outhouses that had once been part of some conventual buildings, the
remains of which could be seen in what was called the Abbey Close.
The house itself, embosomed in honeysuckles and creeping roses, was
an ornament to the whole village, nor were its internal arrangements
less exemplary than its outside was ornamental.  Report said that
Mrs Pontifex starched the sheets for her best bed, and I can well
believe it.

How well do I remember her parlour half filled with the organ which
her husband had built, and scented with a withered apple or two from
the pyrus japonica that grew outside the house; the picture of the
prize ox over the chimney-piece, which Mr Pontifex himself had
painted; the transparency of the man coming to show light to a coach
upon a snowy night, also by Mr Pontifex; the little old man and
little old woman who told the weather; the china shepherd and
shepherdess; the jars of feathery flowering grasses with a peacock's
feather or two among them to set them off, and the china bowls full
of dead rose leaves dried with bay salt.  All has long since
vanished and become a memory, faded but still fragrant to myself.

Nay, but her kitchen--and the glimpses into a cavernous cellar
beyond it, wherefrom came gleams from the pale surfaces of milk
cans, or it may be of the arms and face of a milkmaid skimming the
cream; or again her storeroom, where among other treasures she kept
the famous lipsalve which was one of her especial glories, and of
which she would present a shape yearly to those whom she delighted
to honour.  She wrote out the recipe for this and gave it to my
mother a year or two before she died, but we could never make it as
she did.  When we were children she used sometimes to send her
respects to my mother, and ask leave for us to come and take tea
with her.  Right well she used to ply us.  As for her temper, we
never met such a delightful old lady in our lives; whatever Mr
Pontifex may have had to put up with, we had no cause for complaint,
and then Mr Pontifex would play to us upon the organ, and we would
stand round him open-mouthed and think him the most wonderfully
clever man that ever was born, except of course our papa.

Mrs Pontifex had no sense of humour, at least I can call to mind no
signs of this, but her husband had plenty of fun in him, though few
would have guessed it from his appearance.  I remember my father
once sent me down to his workship to get some glue, and I happened
to come when old Pontifex was in the act of scolding his boy.  He
had got the lad--a pudding-headed fellow--by the ear and was saying,
"What?  Lost again--smothered o' wit."  (I believe it was the boy
who was himself supposed to be a wandering soul, and who was thus
addressed as lost.)  "Now, look here, my lad," he continued, "some
boys are born stupid, and thou art one of them; some achieve
stupidity--that's thee again, Jim--thou wast both born stupid and
hast greatly increased thy birthright--and some" (and here came a
climax during which the boy's head and ear were swayed from side to
side) "have stupidity thrust upon them, which, if it please the
Lord, shall not be thy case, my lad, for I will thrust stupidity
from thee, though I have to box thine ears in doing so," but I did
not see that the old man really did box Jim's ears, or do more than
pretend to frighten him, for the two understood one another
perfectly well.  Another time I remember hearing him call the
village rat-catcher by saying, "Come hither, thou three-days-and-
three-nights, thou," alluding, as I afterwards learned, to the rat-
catcher's periods of intoxication; but I will tell no more of such
trifles.  My father's face would always brighten when old Pontifex's
name was mentioned.  "I tell you, Edward," he would say to me, "old
Pontifex was not only an able man, but he was one of the very ablest
men that ever I knew."

This was more than I as a young man was prepared to stand.  "My dear
father," I answered, "what did he do?  He could draw a little, but
could he to save his life have got a picture into the Royal Academy
exhibition?  He built two organs and could play the Minuet in Samson
on one and the March in Scipio on the other; he was a good carpenter
and a bit of a wag; he was a good old fellow enough, but why make
him out so much abler than he was?"

"My boy," returned my father, "you must not judge by the work, but
by the work in connection with the surroundings.  Could Giotto or
Filippo Lippi, think you, have got a picture into the Exhibition?
Would a single one of those frescoes we went to see when we were at
Padua have the remotest chance of being hung, if it were sent in for
exhibition now?  Why, the Academy people would be so outraged that
they would not even write to poor Giotto to tell him to come and
take his fresco away.  Phew!" continued he, waxing warm, "if old
Pontifex had had Cromwell's chances he would have done all that
Cromwell did, and have done it better; if he had had Giotto's
chances he would have done all that Giotto did, and done it no
worse; as it was, he was a village carpenter, and I will undertake
to say he never scamped a job in the whole course of his life."

"But," said I, "we cannot judge people with so many 'ifs.'  If old
Pontifex had lived in Giotto's time he might have been another
Giotto, but he did not live in Giotto's time."

"I tell you, Edward," said my father with some severity, "we must
judge men not so much by what they do, as by what they make us feel
that they have it in them to do.  If a man has done enough either in
painting, music or the affairs of life, to make me feel that I might
trust him in an emergency he has done enough.  It is not by what a
man has actually put upon his canvas, nor yet by the acts which he
has set down, so to speak, upon the canvas of his life that I will
judge him, but by what he makes me feel that he felt and aimed at.
If he has made me feel that he felt those things to be loveable
which I hold loveable myself I ask no more; his grammar may have
been imperfect, but still I have understood him; he and I are en
rapport; and I say again, Edward, that old Pontifex was not only an
able man, but one of the very ablest men I ever knew.

Against this there was no more to be said, and my sisters eyed me to
silence.  Somehow or other my sisters always did eye me to silence
when I differed from my father.

"Talk of his successful son," snorted my father, whom I had fairly
roused.  "He is not fit to black his father's boots.  He has his
thousands of pounds a year, while his father had perhaps three
thousand shillings a year towards the end of his life.  He IS a
successful man; but his father, hobbling about Paleham Street in his
grey worsted stockings, broad brimmed hat and brown swallow-tailed
coat was worth a hundred of George Pontifexes, for all his carriages
and horses and the airs he gives himself."

"But yet," he added, "George Pontifex is no fool either."  And this
brings us to the second generation of the Pontifex family with whom
we need concern ourselves.



CHAPTER II



Old Mr Pontifex had married in the year 1750, but for fifteen years
his wife bore no children.  At the end of that time Mrs Pontifex
astonished the whole village by showing unmistakable signs of a
disposition to present her husband with an heir or heiress.  Hers
had long ago been considered a hopeless case, and when on consulting
the doctor concerning the meaning of certain symptoms she was
informed of their significance, she became very angry and abused the
doctor roundly for talking nonsense.  She refused to put so much as
a piece of thread into a needle in anticipation of her confinement
and would have been absolutely unprepared, if her neighbours had not
been better judges of her condition than she was, and got things
ready without telling her anything about it.  Perhaps she feared
Nemesis, though assuredly she knew not who or what Nemesis was;
perhaps she feared the doctor had made a mistake and she should be
laughed at; from whatever cause, however, her refusal to recognise
the obvious arose, she certainly refused to recognise it, until one
snowy night in January the doctor was sent for with all urgent speed
across the rough country roads.  When he arrived he found two
patients, not one, in need of his assistance, for a boy had been
born who was in due time christened George, in honour of his then
reigning majesty.

To the best of my belief George Pontifex got the greater part of his
nature from this obstinate old lady, his mother--a mother who though
she loved no one else in the world except her husband (and him only
after a fashion) was most tenderly attached to the unexpected child
of her old age; nevertheless she showed it little.

The boy grew up into a sturdy bright-eyed little fellow, with plenty
of intelligence, and perhaps a trifle too great readiness at book
learning.  Being kindly treated at home, he was as fond of his
father and mother as it was in his nature to be of anyone, but he
was fond of no one else.  He had a good healthy sense of meum, and
as little of tuum as he could help.  Brought up much in the open air
in one of the best situated and healthiest villages in England, his
little limbs had fair play, and in those days children's brains were
not overtasked as they now are; perhaps it was for this very reason
that the boy showed an avidity to learn.  At seven or eight years
old he could read, write and sum better than any other boy of his
age in the village.  My father was not yet rector of Paleham, and
did not remember George Pontifex's childhood, but I have heard
neighbours tell him that the boy was looked upon as unusually quick
and forward.  His father and mother were naturally proud of their
offspring, and his mother was determined that he should one day
become one of the kings and councillors of the earth.

It is one thing however to resolve that one's son shall win some of
life's larger prizes, and another to square matters with fortune in
this respect.  George Pontifex might have been brought up as a
carpenter and succeeded in no other way than as succeeding his
father as one of the minor magnates of Paleham, and yet have been a
more truly successful man than he actually was--for I take it there
is not much more solid success in this world than what fell to the
lot of old Mr and Mrs Pontifex; it happened, however, that about the
year 1780, when George was a boy of fifteen, a sister of Mrs
Pontifex's, who had married a Mr Fairlie, came to pay a few days'
visit at Paleham.  Mr Fairlie was a publisher, chiefly of religious
works, and had an establishment in Paternoster Row; he had risen in
life, and his wife had risen with him.  No very close relations had
been maintained between the sisters for some years, and I forget
exactly how it came about that Mr and Mrs Fairlie were guests in the
quiet but exceedingly comfortable house of their sister and brother-
in-law; but for some reason or other the visit was paid, and little
George soon succeeded in making his way into his uncle and aunt's
good graces.  A quick, intelligent boy with a good address, a sound
constitution, and coming of respectable parents, has a potential
value which a practised business man who has need of many
subordinates is little likely to overlook.  Before his visit was
over Mr Fairlie proposed to the lad's father and mother that he
should put him into his own business, at the same time promising
that if the boy did well he should not want some one to bring him
forward.  Mrs Pontifex had her son's interest too much at heart to
refuse such an offer, so the matter was soon arranged, and about a
fortnight after the Fairlies had left, George was sent up by coach
to London, where he was met by his uncle and aunt, with whom it was
arranged that he should live.

This was George's great start in life.  He now wore more fashionable
clothes than he had yet been accustomed to, and any little rusticity
of gait or pronunciation which he had brought from Paleham, was so
quickly and completely lost that it was ere long impossible to
detect that he had not been born and bred among people of what is
commonly called education.  The boy paid great attention to his
work, and more than justified the favourable opinion which Mr
Fairlie had formed concerning him.  Sometimes Mr Fairlie would send
him down to Paleham for a few days' holiday, and ere long his
parents perceived that he had acquired an air and manner of talking
different from any that he had taken with him from Paleham.  They
were proud of him, and soon fell into their proper places, resigning
all appearance of a parental control, for which indeed there was no
kind of necessity.  In return, George was always kindly to them, and
to the end of his life retained a more affectionate feeling towards
his father and mother than I imagine him ever to have felt again for
man, woman, or child.

George's visits to Paleham were never long, for the distance from
London was under fifty miles and there was a direct coach, so that
the journey was easy; there was not time, therefore, for the novelty
to wear off either on the part of the young man or of his parents.
George liked the fresh country air and green fields after the
darkness to which he had been so long accustomed in Paternoster Row,
which then, as now, was a narrow gloomy lane rather than a street.
Independently of the pleasure of seeing the familiar faces of the
farmers and villagers, he liked also being seen and being
congratulated on growing up such a fine-looking and fortunate young
fellow, for he was not the youth to hide his light under a bushel.
His uncle had had him taught Latin and Greek of an evening; he had
taken kindly to these languages and had rapidly and easily mastered
what many boys take years in acquiring.  I suppose his knowledge
gave him a self-confidence which made itself felt whether he
intended it or not; at any rate, he soon began to pose as a judge of
literature, and from this to being a judge of art, architecture,
music and everything else, the path was easy.  Like his father, he
knew the value of money, but he was at once more ostentatious and
less liberal than his father; while yet a boy he was a thorough
little man of the world, and did well rather upon principles which
he had tested by personal experiment, and recognised as principles,
than from those profounder convictions which in his father were so
instinctive that he could give no account concerning them.

His father, as I have said, wondered at him and let him alone.  His
son had fairly distanced him, and in an inarticulate way the father
knew it perfectly well.  After a few years he took to wearing his
best clothes whenever his son came to stay with him, nor would he
discard them for his ordinary ones till the young man had returned
to London.  I believe old Mr Pontifex, along with his pride and
affection, felt also a certain fear of his son, as though of
something which he could not thoroughly understand, and whose ways,
notwithstanding outward agreement, were nevertheless not as his
ways.  Mrs Pontifex felt nothing of this; to her George was pure and
absolute perfection, and she saw, or thought she saw, with pleasure,
that he resembled her and her family in feature as well as in
disposition rather than her husband and his.

When George was about twenty-five years old his uncle took him into
partnership on very liberal terms.  He had little cause to regret
this step.  The young man infused fresh vigour into a concern that
was already vigorous, and by the time he was thirty found himself in
the receipt of not less than 1500 pounds a year as his share of the
profits.  Two years later he married a lady about seven years
younger than himself, who brought him a handsome dowry.  She died in
1805, when her youngest child Alethea was born, and her husband did
not marry again.



CHAPTER III



In the early years of the century five little children and a couple
of nurses began to make periodical visits to Paleham.  It is
needless to say they were a rising generation of Pontifexes, towards
whom the old couple, their grandparents, were as tenderly
deferential as they would have been to the children of the Lord
Lieutenant of the County.  Their names were Eliza, Maria, John,
Theobald (who like myself was born in 1802), and Alethea.  Mr
Pontifex always put the prefix "master" or "miss" before the names
of his grandchildren, except in the case of Alethea, who was his
favourite.  To have resisted his grandchildren would have been as
impossible for him as to have resisted his wife; even old Mrs
Pontifex yielded before her son's children, and gave them all manner
of licence which she would never have allowed even to my sisters and
myself, who stood next in her regard.  Two regulations only they
must attend to; they must wipe their shoes well on coming into the
house, and they must not overfeed Mr Pontifex's organ with wind, nor
take the pipes out.

By us at the Rectory there was no time so much looked forward to as
the annual visit of the little Pontifexes to Paleham.  We came in
for some of the prevailing licence; we went to tea with Mrs Pontifex
to meet her grandchildren, and then our young friends were asked to
the Rectory to have tea with us, and we had what we considered great
times.  I fell desperately in love with Alethea, indeed we all fell
in love with each other, plurality and exchange whether of wives or
husbands being openly and unblushingly advocated in the very
presence of our nurses.  We were very merry, but it is so long ago
that I have forgotten nearly everything save that we WERE very
merry.  Almost the only thing that remains with me as a permanent
impression was the fact that Theobald one day beat his nurse and
teased her, and when she said she should go away cried out, "You
shan't go away--I'll keep you on purpose to torment you."

One winter's morning, however, in the year 1811, we heard the church
bell tolling while we were dressing in the back nursery and were
told it was for old Mrs Pontifex.  Our manservant John told us and
added with grim levity that they were ringing the bell to come and
take her away.  She had had a fit of paralysis which had carried her
off quite suddenly.  It was very shocking, the more so because our
nurse assured us that if God chose we might all have fits of
paralysis ourselves that very day and be taken straight off to the
Day of Judgement.  The Day of Judgement indeed, according to the
opinion of those who were most likely to know, would not under any
circumstances be delayed more than a few years longer, and then the
whole world would be burned, and we ourselves be consigned to an
eternity of torture, unless we mended our ways more than we at
present seemed at all likely to do.  All this was so alarming that
we fell to screaming and made such a hullabaloo that the nurse was
obliged for her own peace to reassure us.  Then we wept, but more
composedly, as we remembered that there would be no more tea and
cakes for us now at old Mrs Pontifex's.

On the day of the funeral, however, we had a great excitement; old
Mr Pontifex sent round a penny loaf to every inhabitant of the
village according to a custom still not uncommon at the beginning of
the century; the loaf was called a dole.  We had never heard of this
custom before, besides, though we had often heard of penny loaves,
we had never before seen one; moreover, they were presents to us as
inhabitants of the village, and we were treated as grown up people,
for our father and mother and the servants had each one loaf sent
them, but only one.  We had never yet suspected that we were
inhabitants at all; finally, the little loaves were new, and we were
passionately fond of new bread, which we were seldom or never
allowed to have, as it was supposed not to be good for us.  Our
affection, therefore, for our old friend had to stand against the
combined attacks of archaeological interest, the rights of
citizenship and property, the pleasantness to the eye and goodness
for food of the little loaves themselves, and the sense of
importance which was given us by our having been intimate with
someone who had actually died.  It seemed upon further inquiry that
there was little reason to anticipate an early death for anyone of
ourselves, and this being so, we rather liked the idea of someone
else's being put away into the churchyard; we passed, therefore, in
a short time from extreme depression to a no less extreme
exultation; a new heaven and a new earth had been revealed to us in
our perception of the possibility of benefiting by the death of our
friends, and I fear that for some time we took an interest in the
health of everyone in the village whose position rendered a
repetition of the dole in the least likely.

Those were the days in which all great things seemed far off, and we
were astonished to find that Napoleon Buonaparte was an actually
living person.  We had thought such a great man could only have
lived a very long time ago, and here he was after all almost as it
were at our own doors.  This lent colour to the view that the Day of
Judgement might indeed be nearer than we had thought, but nurse said
that was all right now, and she knew.  In those days the snow lay
longer and drifted deeper in the lanes than it does now, and the
milk was sometimes brought in frozen in winter, and we were taken
down into the back kitchen to see it.  I suppose there are rectories
up and down the country now where the milk comes in frozen sometimes
in winter, and the children go down to wonder at it, but I never see
any frozen milk in London, so I suppose the winters are warmer than
they used to be.

About one year after his wife's death Mr Pontifex also was gathered
to his fathers.  My father saw him the day before he died.  The old
man had a theory about sunsets, and had had two steps built up
against a wall in the kitchen garden on which he used to stand and
watch the sun go down whenever it was clear.  My father came on him
in the afternoon, just as the sun was setting, and saw him with his
arms resting on the top of the wall looking towards the sun over a
field through which there was a path on which my father was.  My
father heard him say "Good-bye, sun; good-bye, sun," as the sun
sank, and saw by his tone and manner that he was feeling very
feeble.  Before the next sunset he was gone.

There was no dole.  Some of his grandchildren were brought to the
funeral and we remonstrated with them, but did not take much by
doing so.  John Pontifex, who was a year older than I was, sneered
at penny loaves, and intimated that if I wanted one it must be
because my papa and mamma could not afford to buy me one, whereon I
believe we did something like fighting, and I rather think John
Pontifex got the worst of it, but it may have been the other way.  I
remember my sister's nurse, for I was just outgrowing nurses myself,
reported the matter to higher quarters, and we were all of us put to
some ignominy, but we had been thoroughly awakened from our dream,
and it was long enough before we could hear the words "penny loaf"
mentioned without our ears tingling with shame.  If there had been a
dozen doles afterwards we should not have deigned to touch one of
them.

George Pontifex put up a monument to his parents, a plain slab in
Paleham church, inscribed with the following epitaph:-

SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
JOHN PONTIFEX
WHO WAS BORN AUGUST 16TH,
1727, AND DIED FEBRUARY 8, 1812,
IN HIS 85TH YEAR,
AND OF
RUTH PONTIFEX, HIS WIFE,
WHO WAS BORN OCTOBER 13, 1727, AND DIED JANUARY 10, 1811,
IN HER 84TH YEAR.
THEY WERE UNOSTENTATIOUS BUT EXEMPLARY
IN THE DISCHARGE OF THEIR
RELIGIOUS, MORAL, AND SOCIAL DUTIES.
THIS MONUMENT WAS PLACED
BY THEIR ONLY SON.



CHAPTER IV



In a year or two more came Waterloo and the European peace.  Then Mr
George Pontifex went abroad more than once.  I remember seeing at
Battersby in after years the diary which he kept on the first of
these occasions.  It is a characteristic document.  I felt as I read
it that the author before starting had made up his mind to admire
only what he thought it would be creditable in him to admire, to
look at nature and art only through the spectacles that had been
handed down to him by generation after generation of prigs and
impostors.  The first glimpse of Mont Blanc threw Mr Pontifex into a
conventional ecstasy.  "My feelings I cannot express.  I gasped, yet
hardly dared to breathe, as I viewed for the first time the monarch
of the mountains.  I seemed to fancy the genius seated on his
stupendous throne far above his aspiring brethren and in his
solitary might defying the universe.  I was so overcome by my
feelings that I was almost bereft of my faculties, and would not for
worlds have spoken after my first exclamation till I found some
relief in a gush of tears.  With pain I tore myself from
contemplating for the first time 'at distance dimly seen' (though I
felt as if I had sent my soul and eyes after it), this sublime
spectacle."  After a nearer view of the Alps from above Geneva he
walked nine out of the twelve miles of the descent:  "My mind and
heart were too full to sit still, and I found some relief by
exhausting my feelings through exercise."  In the course of time he
reached Chamonix and went on a Sunday to the Montanvert to see the
Mer de Glace.  There he wrote the following verses for the visitors'
book, which he considered, so he says, "suitable to the day and
scene":-


Lord, while these wonders of thy hand I see,
My soul in holy reverence bends to thee.
These awful solitudes, this dread repose,
Yon pyramid sublime of spotless snows,
These spiry pinnacles, those smiling plains,
This sea where one eternal winter reigns,
These are thy works, and while on them I gaze
I hear a silent tongue that speaks thy praise.


Some poets always begin to get groggy about the knees after running
for seven or eight lines.  Mr Pontifex's last couplet gave him a lot
of trouble, and nearly every word has been erased and rewritten once
at least.  In the visitors' book at the Montanvert, however, he must
have been obliged to commit himself definitely to one reading or
another.  Taking the verses all round, I should say that Mr Pontifex
was right in considering them suitable to the day; I don't like
being too hard even on the Mer de Glace, so will give no opinion as
to whether they are suitable to the scene also.

Mr Pontifex went on to the Great St Bernard and there he wrote some
more verses, this time I am afraid in Latin.  He also took good care
to be properly impressed by the Hospice and its situation.  "The
whole of this most extraordinary journey seemed like a dream, its
conclusion especially, in gentlemanly society, with every comfort
and accommodation amidst the rudest rocks and in the region of
perpetual snow.  The thought that I was sleeping in a convent and
occupied the bed of no less a person than Napoleon, that I was in
the highest inhabited spot in the old world and in a place
celebrated in every part of it, kept me awake some time."  As a
contrast to this, I may quote here an extract from a letter written
to me last year by his grandson Ernest, of whom the reader will hear
more presently.  The passage runs:  "I went up to the Great St
Bernard and saw the dogs."  In due course Mr Pontifex found his way
into Italy, where the pictures and other works of art--those, at
least, which were fashionable at that time--threw him into genteel
paroxysms of admiration.  Of the Uffizi Gallery at Florence he
writes:  "I have spent three hours this morning in the gallery and I
have made up my mind that if of all the treasures I have seen in
Italy I were to choose one room it would be the Tribune of this
gallery.  It contains the Venus de' Medici, the Explorator, the
Pancratist, the Dancing Faun and a fine Apollo.  These more than
outweigh the Laocoon and the Belvedere Apollo at Rome.  It contains,
besides, the St John of Raphael and many other chefs-d'oeuvre of the
greatest masters in the world."  It is interesting to compare Mr
Pontifex's effusions with the rhapsodies of critics in our own
times.  Not long ago a much esteemed writer informed the world that
he felt "disposed to cry out with delight" before a figure by
Michael Angelo.  I wonder whether he would feel disposed to cry out
before a real Michael Angelo, if the critics had decided that it was
not genuine, or before a reputed Michael Angelo which was really by
someone else.  But I suppose that a prig with more money than brains
was much the same sixty or seventy years ago as he is now.

Look at Mendelssohn again about this same Tribune on which Mr
Pontifex felt so safe in staking his reputation as a man of taste
and culture.  He feels no less safe and writes, "I then went to the
Tribune.  This room is so delightfully small you can traverse it in
fifteen paces, yet it contains a world of art.  I again sought out
my favourite arm chair which stands under the statue of the 'Slave
whetting his knife' (L'Arrotino), and taking possession of it I
enjoyed myself for a couple of hours; for here at one glance I had
the 'Madonna del Cardellino,' Pope Julius II., a female portrait by
Raphael, and above it a lovely Holy Family by Perugino; and so close
to me that I could have touched it with my hand the Venus de'
Medici; beyond, that of Titian . . . The space between is occupied
by other pictures of Raphael's, a portrait by Titian, a Domenichino,
etc., etc., all these within the circumference of a small semi-
circle no larger than one of your own rooms.  This is a spot where a
man feels his own insignificance and may well learn to be humble."
The Tribune is a slippery place for people like Mendelssohn to study
humility in.  They generally take two steps away from it for one
they take towards it.  I wonder how many chalks Mendelssohn gave
himself for having sat two hours on that chair.  I wonder how often
he looked at his watch to see if his two hours were up.  I wonder
how often he told himself that he was quite as big a gun, if the
truth were known, as any of the men whose works he saw before him,
how often he wondered whether any of the visitors were recognizing
him and admiring him for sitting such a long time in the same chair,
and how often he was vexed at seeing them pass him by and take no
notice of him.  But perhaps if the truth were known his two hours
was not quite two hours.

Returning to Mr Pontifex, whether he liked what he believed to be
the masterpieces of Greek and Italian art or no he brought back some
copies by Italian artists, which I have no doubt he satisfied
himself would bear the strictest examination with the originals.
Two of these copies fell to Theobald's share on the division of his
father's furniture, and I have often seen them at Battersby on my
visits to Theobald and his wife.  The one was a Madonna by
Sassoferrato with a blue hood over her head which threw it half into
shadow.  The other was a Magdalen by Carlo Dolci with a very fine
head of hair and a marble vase in her hands.  When I was a young man
I used to think these pictures were beautiful, but with each
successive visit to Battersby I got to dislike them more and more
and to see "George Pontifex" written all over both of them.  In the
end I ventured after a tentative fashion to blow on them a little,
but Theobald and his wife were up in arms at once.  They did not
like their father and father-in-law, but there could be no question
about his power and general ability, nor about his having been a man
of consummate taste both in literature and art--indeed the diary he
kept during his foreign tour was enough to prove this.  With one
more short extract I will leave this diary and proceed with my
story.  During his stay in Florence Mr Pontifex wrote:  "I have just
seen the Grand Duke and his family pass by in two carriages and six,
but little more notice is taken of them than if I, who am utterly
unknown here, were to pass by."  I don't think that he half believed
in his being utterly unknown in Florence or anywhere else!



CHAPTER V



Fortune, we are told, is a blind and fickle foster-mother, who
showers her gifts at random upon her nurslings.  But we do her a
grave injustice if we believe such an accusation.  Trace a man's
career from his cradle to his grave and mark how Fortune has treated
him.  You will find that when he is once dead she can for the most
part be vindicated from the charge of any but very superficial
fickleness.  Her blindness is the merest fable; she can espy her
favourites long before they are born.  We are as days and have had
our parents for our yesterdays, but through all the fair weather of
a clear parental sky the eye of Fortune can discern the coming
storm, and she laughs as she places her favourites it may be in a
London alley or those whom she is resolved to ruin in kings'
palaces.  Seldom does she relent towards those whom she has suckled
unkindly and seldom does she completely fail a favoured nursling.

Was George Pontifex one of Fortune's favoured nurslings or not?  On
the whole I should say that he was not, for he did not consider
himself so; he was too religious to consider Fortune a deity at all;
he took whatever she gave and never thanked her, being firmly
convinced that whatever he got to his own advantage was of his own
getting.  And so it was, after Fortune had made him able to get it.

"Nos te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam," exclaimed the poet.  "It is we
who make thee, Fortune, a goddess"; and so it is, after Fortune has
made us able to make her.  The poet says nothing as to the making of
the "nos."  Perhaps some men are independent of antecedents and
surroundings and have an initial force within themselves which is in
no way due to causation; but this is supposed to be a difficult
question and it may be as well to avoid it.  Let it suffice that
George Pontifex did not consider himself fortunate, and he who does
not consider himself fortunate is unfortunate.

True, he was rich, universally respected and of an excellent natural
constitution.  If he had eaten and drunk less he would never have
known a day's indisposition.  Perhaps his main strength lay in the
fact that though his capacity was a little above the average, it was
not too much so.  It is on this rock that so many clever people
split.  The successful man will see just so much more than his
neighbours as they will be able to see too when it is shown them,
but not enough to puzzle them.  It is far safer to know too little
than too much.  People will condemn the one, though they will resent
being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other.

The best example of Mr Pontifex's good sense in matters connected
with his business which I can think of at this moment is the
revolution which he effected in the style of advertising works
published by the firm.  When he first became a partner one of the
firm's advertisements ran thus:-


"Books proper to be given away at this Season. -

"The Pious Country Parishioner, being directions how a Christian may
manage every day in the course of his whole life with safety and
success; how to spend the Sabbath Day; what books of the Holy
Scripture ought to be read first; the whole method of education;
collects for the most important virtues that adorn the soul; a
discourse on the Lord's Supper; rules to set the soul right in
sickness; so that in this treatise are contained all the rules
requisite for salvation.  The 8th edition with additions.  Price
10d.

*** An allowance will be made to those who give them away."


Before he had been many years a partner the advertisement stood as
follows:-


"The Pious Country Parishioner.  A complete manual of Christian
Devotion.  Price 10d.

A reduction will be made to purchasers for gratuitous distribution."


What a stride is made in the foregoing towards the modern standard,
and what intelligence is involved in the perception of the
unseemliness of the old style, when others did not perceive it!

Where then was the weak place in George Pontifex's armour?  I
suppose in the fact that he had risen too rapidly.  It would almost
seem as if a transmitted education of some generations is necessary
for the due enjoyment of great wealth.  Adversity, if a man is set
down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most
people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.
Nevertheless a certain kind of good fortune generally attends self-
made men to the last.  It is their children of the first, or first
and second, generation who are in greater danger, for the race can
no more repeat its most successful performances suddenly and without
its ebbings and flowings of success than the individual can do so,
and the more brilliant the success in any one generation, the
greater as a general rule the subsequent exhaustion until time has
been allowed for recovery.  Hence it oftens happens that the
grandson of a successful man will be more successful than the son--
the spirit that actuated the grandfather having lain fallow in the
son and being refreshed by repose so as to be ready for fresh
exertion in the grandson.  A very successful man, moreover, has
something of the hybrid in him; he is a new animal, arising from the
coming together of many unfamiliar elements and it is well known
that the reproduction of abnormal growths, whether animal or
vegetable, is irregular and not to be depended upon, even when they
are not absolutely sterile.

And certainly Mr Pontifex's success was exceedingly rapid.  Only a
few years after he had become a partner his uncle and aunt both died
within a few months of one another.  It was then found that they had
made him their heir.  He was thus not only sole partner in the
business but found himself with a fortune of some 30,000 pounds into
the bargain, and this was a large sum in those days.  Money came
pouring in upon him, and the faster it came the fonder he became of
it, though, as he frequently said, he valued it not for its own
sake, but only as a means of providing for his dear children.

Yet when a man is very fond of his money it is not easy for him at
all times to be very fond of his children also.  The two are like
God and Mammon.  Lord Macaulay has a passage in which he contrasts
the pleasures which a man may derive from books with the
inconveniences to which he may be put by his acquaintances.
"Plato," he says, "is never sullen.  Cervantes is never petulant.
Demosthenes never comes unseasonably.  Dante never stays too long.
No difference of political opinion can alienate Cicero.  No heresy
can excite the horror of Bossuet."  I dare say I might differ from
Lord Macaulay in my estimate of some of the writers he has named,
but there can be no disputing his main proposition, namely, that we
need have no more trouble from any of them than we have a mind to,
whereas our friends are not always so easily disposed of.  George
Pontifex felt this as regards his children and his money.  His money
was never naughty; his money never made noise or litter, and did not
spill things on the tablecloth at meal times, or leave the door open
when it went out.  His dividends did not quarrel among themselves,
nor was he under any uneasiness lest his mortgages should become
extravagant on reaching manhood and run him up debts which sooner or
later he should have to pay.  There were tendencies in John which
made him very uneasy, and Theobald, his second son, was idle and at
times far from truthful.  His children might, perhaps, have
answered, had they known what was in their father's mind, that he
did not knock his money about as he not infrequently knocked his
children.  He never dealt hastily or pettishly with his money, and
that was perhaps why he and it got on so well together.

It must be remembered that at the beginning of the nineteenth
century the relations between parents and children were still far
from satisfactory.  The violent type of father, as described by
Fielding, Richardson, Smollett and Sheridan, is now hardly more
likely to find a place in literature than the original advertisement
of Messrs. Fairlie & Pontifex's "Pious Country Parishioner," but the
type was much too persistent not to have been drawn from nature
closely.  The parents in Miss Austen's novels are less like savage
wild beasts than those of her predecessors, but she evidently looks
upon them with suspicion, and an uneasy feeling that le pere de
famille est capable de tout makes itself sufficiently apparent
throughout the greater part of her writings.  In the Elizabethan
time the relations between parents and children seem on the whole to
have been more kindly.  The fathers and the sons are for the most
part friends in Shakespeare, nor does the evil appear to have
reached its full abomination till a long course of Puritanism had
familiarised men's minds with Jewish ideals as those which we should
endeavour to reproduce in our everyday life.  What precedents did
not Abraham, Jephthah and Jonadab the son of Rechab offer?  How easy
was it to quote and follow them in an age when few reasonable men or
women doubted that every syllable of the Old Testament was taken
down verbatim from the mouth of God.  Moreover, Puritanism
restricted natural pleasures; it substituted the Jeremiad for the
Paean, and it forgot that the poor abuses of all times want
countenance.

Mr Pontifex may have been a little sterner with his children than
some of his neighbours, but not much.  He thrashed his boys two or
three times a week and some weeks a good deal oftener, but in those
days fathers were always thrashing their boys.  It is easy to have
juster views when everyone else has them, but fortunately or
unfortunately results have nothing whatever to do with the moral
guilt or blamelessness of him who brings them about; they depend
solely upon the thing done, whatever it may happen to be.  The moral
guilt or blamelessness in like manner has nothing to do with the
result; it turns upon the question whether a sufficient number of
reasonable people placed as the actor was placed would have done as
the actor has done.  At that time it was universally admitted that
to spare the rod was to spoil the child, and St Paul had placed
disobedience to parents in very ugly company.  If his children did
anything which Mr Pontifex disliked they were clearly disobedient to
their father.  In this case there was obviously only one course for
a sensible man to take.  It consisted in checking the first signs of
self-will while his children were too young to offer serious
resistance.  If their wills were "well broken" in childhood, to use
an expression then much in vogue, they would acquire habits of
obedience which they would not venture to break through till they
were over twenty-one years old.  Then they might please themselves;
he should know how to protect himself; till then he and his money
were more at their mercy than he liked.

How little do we know our thoughts--our reflex actions indeed, yes;
but our reflex reflections!  Man, forsooth, prides himself on his
consciousness!  We boast that we differ from the winds and waves and
falling stones and plants, which grow they know not why, and from
the wandering creatures which go up and down after their prey, as we
are pleased to say without the help of reason.  We know so well what
we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not?  I fancy that
there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays,
that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious
actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who
spring from us.



CHAPTER VI



Mr Pontifex was not the man to trouble himself much about his
motives.  People were not so introspective then as we are now; they
lived more according to a rule of thumb.  Dr Arnold had not yet sown
that crop of earnest thinkers which we are now harvesting, and men
did not see why they should not have their own way if no evil
consequences to themselves seemed likely to follow upon their doing
so.  Then as now, however, they sometimes let themselves in for more
evil consequences than they had bargained for.

Like other rich men at the beginning of this century he ate and
drank a good deal more than was enough to keep him in health.  Even
his excellent constitution was not proof against a prolonged course
of overfeeding and what we should now consider overdrinking.  His
liver would not unfrequently get out of order, and he would come
down to breakfast looking yellow about the eyes.  Then the young
people knew that they had better look out.  It is not as a general
rule the eating of sour grapes that causes the children's teeth to
be set on edge.  Well-to-do parents seldom eat many sour grapes; the
danger to the children lies in the parents eating too many sweet
ones.

I grant that at first sight it seems very unjust, that the parents
should have the fun and the children be punished for it, but young
people should remember that for many years they were part and parcel
of their parents and therefore had a good deal of the fun in the
person of their parents.  If they have forgotten the fun now, that
is no more than people do who have a headache after having been
tipsy overnight.  The man with a headache does not pretend to be a
different person from the man who got drunk, and claim that it is
his self of the preceding night and not his self of this morning who
should be punished; no more should offspring complain of the
headache which it has earned when in the person of its parents, for
the continuation of identity, though not so immediately apparent, is
just as real in one case as in the other.  What is really hard is
when the parents have the fun after the children have been born, and
the children are punished for this.

On these, his black days, he would take very gloomy views of things
and say to himself that in spite of all his goodness to them his
children did not love him.  But who can love any man whose liver is
out of order?  How base, he would exclaim to himself, was such
ingratitude!  How especially hard upon himself, who had been such a
model son, and always honoured and obeyed his parents though they
had not spent one hundredth part of the money upon him which he had
lavished upon his own children.  "It is always the same story," he
would say to himself, "the more young people have the more they
want, and the less thanks one gets; I have made a great mistake; I
have been far too lenient with my children; never mind, I have done
my duty by them, and more; if they fail in theirs to me it is a
matter between God and them.  I, at any rate, am guiltless.  Why, I
might have married again and become the father of a second and
perhaps more affectionate family, etc., etc."  He pitied himself for
the expensive education which he was giving his children; he did not
see that the education cost the children far more than it cost him,
inasmuch as it cost them the power of earning their living easily
rather than helped them towards it, and ensured their being at the
mercy of their father for years after they had come to an age when
they should be independent.  A public school education cuts off a
boy's retreat; he can no longer become a labourer or a mechanic, and
these are the only people whose tenure of independence is not
precarious--with the exception of course of those who are born
inheritors of money or who are placed young in some safe and deep
groove.  Mr Pontifex saw nothing of this; all he saw was that he was
spending much more money upon his children than the law would have
compelled him to do, and what more could you have?  Might he not
have apprenticed both his sons to greengrocers?  Might he not even
yet do so to-morrow morning if he were so minded?  The possibility
of this course being adopted was a favourite topic with him when he
was out of temper; true, he never did apprentice either of his sons
to greengrocers, but his boys comparing notes together had sometimes
come to the conclusion that they wished he would.

At other times when not quite well he would have them in for the fun
of shaking his will at them.  He would in his imagination cut them
all out one after another and leave his money to found almshouses,
till at last he was obliged to put them back, so that he might have
the pleasure of cutting them out again the next time he was in a
passion.

Of course if young people allow their conduct to be in any way
influenced by regard to the wills of living persons they are doing
very wrong and must expect to be sufferers in the end, nevertheless
the powers of will-dangling and will-shaking are so liable to abuse
and are continually made so great an engine of torture that I would
pass a law, if I could, to incapacitate any man from making a will
for three months from the date of each offence in either of the
above respects and let the bench of magistrates or judge, before
whom he has been convicted, dispose of his property as they shall
think right and reasonable if he dies during the time that his will-
making power is suspended.

Mr Pontifex would have the boys into the dining-room.  "My dear
John, my dear Theobald," he would say, "look at me.  I began life
with nothing but the clothes with which my father and mother sent me
up to London.  My father gave me ten shillings and my mother five
for pocket money and I thought them munificent.  I never asked my
father for a shilling in the whole course of my life, nor took aught
from him beyond the small sum he used to allow me monthly till I was
in receipt of a salary.  I made my own way and I shall expect my
sons to do the same.  Pray don't take it into your heads that I am
going to wear my life out making money that my sons may spend it for
me.  If you want money you must make it for yourselves as I did, for
I give you my word I will not leave a penny to either of you unless
you show that you deserve it.  Young people seem nowadays to expect
all kinds of luxuries and indulgences which were never heard of when
I was a boy.  Why, my father was a common carpenter, and here you
are both of you at public schools, costing me ever so many hundreds
a year, while I at your age was plodding away behind a desk in my
Uncle Fairlie's counting house.  What should I not have done if I
had had one half of your advantages?  You should become dukes or
found new empires in undiscovered countries, and even then I doubt
whether you would have done proportionately so much as I have done.
No, no, I shall see you through school and college and then, if you
please, you will make your own way in the world."

In this manner he would work himself up into such a state of
virtuous indignation that he would sometimes thrash the boys then

And yet, as children went, the young Pontifexes were fortunate;
there would be ten families of young people worse off for one
better; they ate and drank good wholesome food, slept in comfortable
beds, had the best doctors to attend them when they were ill and the
best education that could be had for money.  The want of fresh air
does not seem much to affect the happiness of children in a London
alley:  the greater part of them sing and play as though they were
on a moor in Scotland.  So the absence of a genial mental atmosphere
is not commonly recognised by children who have never known it.
Young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting
themselves to circumstances.  Even if they are unhappy--very
unhappy--it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from
finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other
cause than their own sinfulness.

To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say:  Tell your
children that they are very naughty--much naughtier than most
children.  Point to the young people of some acquaintances as models
of perfection and impress your own children with a deep sense of
their own inferiority.  You carry so many more guns than they do
that they cannot fight you.  This is called moral influence, and it
will enable you to bounce them as much as you please.  They think
you know and they will not have yet caught you lying often enough to
suspect that you are not the unworldly and scrupulously truthful
person which you represent yourself to be; nor yet will they know
how great a coward you are, nor how soon you will run away, if they
fight you with persistency and judgement.  You keep the dice and
throw them both for your children and yourself.  Load them then, for
you can easily manage to stop your children from examining them.
Tell them how singularly indulgent you are; insist on the
incalculable benefit you conferred upon them, firstly in bringing
them into the world at all, but more particularly in bringing them
into it as your own children rather than anyone else's.  Say that
you have their highest interests at stake whenever you are out of
temper and wish to make yourself unpleasant by way of balm to your
soul.  Harp much upon these highest interests.  Feed them
spiritually upon such brimstone and treacle as the late Bishop of
Winchester's Sunday stories.  You hold all the trump cards, or if
you do not you can filch them; if you play them with anything like
judgement you will find yourselves heads of happy, united, God-
fearing families, even as did my old friend Mr Pontifex.  True, your
children will probably find out all about it some day, but not until
too late to be of much service to them or inconvenience to yourself.

Some satirists have complained of life inasmuch as all the pleasures
belong to the fore part of it and we must see them dwindle till we
are left, it may be, with the miseries of a decrepit old age.

To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season--
delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice very
rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting
east winds than genial breezes.  Autumn is the mellower season, and
what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.  Fontenelle at
the age of ninety, being asked what was the happiest time of his
life, said he did not know that he had ever been much happier than
he then was, but that perhaps his best years had been those when he
was between fifty-five and seventy-five, and Dr Johnson placed the
pleasures of old age far higher than those of youth.  True, in old
age we live under the shadow of Death, which, like a sword of
Damocles, may descend at any moment, but we have so long found life
to be an affair of being rather frightened than hurt that we have
become like the people who live under Vesuvius, and chance it
without much misgiving.



CHAPTER VII



A few words may suffice for the greater number of the young people
to whom I have been alluding in the foregoing chapter.  Eliza and
Maria, the two elder girls, were neither exactly pretty nor exactly
plain, and were in all respects model young ladies, but Alethea was
exceedingly pretty and of a lively, affectionate disposition, which
was in sharp contrast with those of her brothers and sisters.  There
was a trace of her grandfather, not only in her face, but in her
love of fun, of which her father had none, though not without a
certain boisterous and rather coarse quasi-humour which passed for
wit with many.

John grew up to be a good-looking, gentlemanly fellow, with features
a trifle too regular and finely chiselled.  He dressed himself so
nicely, had such good address, and stuck so steadily to his books
that he became a favourite with his masters; he had, however, an
instinct for diplomacy, and was less popular with the boys.  His
father, in spite of the lectures he would at times read him, was in
a way proud of him as he grew older; he saw in him, moreover, one
who would probably develop into a good man of business, and in whose
hands the prospects of his house would not be likely to decline.
John knew how to humour his father, and was at a comparatively early
age admitted to as much of his confidence as it was in his nature to
bestow on anyone.

His brother Theobald was no match for him, knew it, and accepted his
fate.  He was not so good-looking as his brother, nor was his
address so good; as a child he had been violently passionate; now,
however, he was reserved and shy, and, I should say, indolent in
mind and body.  He was less tidy than John, less well able to assert
himself, and less skilful in humouring the caprices of his father.
I do not think he could have loved anyone heartily, but there was no
one in his family circle who did not repress, rather than invite his
affection, with the exception of his sister Alethea, and she was too
quick and lively for his somewhat morose temper.  He was always the
scapegoat, and I have sometimes thought he had two fathers to
contend against--his father and his brother John; a third and fourth
also might almost be added in his sisters Eliza and Maria.  Perhaps
if he had felt his bondage very acutely he would not have put up
with it, but he was constitutionally timid, and the strong hand of
his father knitted him into the closest outward harmony with his
brother and sisters.

The boys were of use to their father in one respect.  I mean that he
played them off against each other.  He kept them but poorly
supplied with pocket money, and to Theobald would urge that the
claims of his elder brother were naturally paramount, while he
insisted to John upon the fact that he had a numerous family, and
would affirm solemnly that his expenses were so heavy that at his
death there would be very little to divide.  He did not care whether
they compared notes or no, provided they did not do so in his
presence.  Theobald did not complain even behind his father's back.
I knew him as intimately as anyone was likely to know him as a
child, at school, and again at Cambridge, but he very rarely
mentioned his father's name even while his father was alive, and
never once in my hearing afterwards.  At school he was not actively
disliked as his brother was, but he was too dull and deficient in
animal spirits to be popular.

Before he was well out of his frocks it was settled that he was to
be a clergyman.  It was seemly that Mr Pontifex, the well-known
publisher of religious books, should devote at least one of his sons
to the Church; this might tend to bring business, or at any rate to
keep it in the firm; besides, Mr Pontifex had more or less interest
with bishops and Church dignitaries and might hope that some
preferment would be offered to his son through his influence.  The
boy's future destiny was kept well before his eyes from his earliest
childhood and was treated as a matter which he had already virtually
settled by his acquiescence.  Nevertheless a certain show of freedom
was allowed him.  Mr Pontifex would say it was only right to give a
boy his option, and was much too equitable to grudge his son
whatever benefit he could derive from this.  He had the greatest
horror, he would exclaim, of driving any young man into a profession
which he did not like.  Far be it from him to put pressure upon a
son of his as regards any profession and much less when so sacred a
calling as the ministry was concerned.  He would talk in this way
when there were visitors in the house and when his son was in the
room.  He spoke so wisely and so well that his listening guests
considered him a paragon of right-mindedness.  He spoke, too, with
such emphasis and his rosy gills and bald head looked so benevolent
that it was difficult not to be carried away by his discourse.  I
believe two or three heads of families in the neighbourhood gave
their sons absolute liberty of choice in the matter of their
professions--and am not sure that they had not afterwards
considerable cause to regret having done so.  The visitors, seeing
Theobald look shy and wholly unmoved by the exhibition of so much
consideration for his wishes, would remark to themselves that the
boy seemed hardly likely to be equal to his father and would set him
down as an unenthusiastic youth, who ought to have more life in him
and be more sensible of his advantages than he appeared to be.

No one believed in the righteousness of the whole transaction more
firmly than the boy himself; a sense of being ill at ease kept him
silent, but it was too profound and too much without break for him
to become fully alive to it, and come to an understanding with
himself.  He feared the dark scowl which would come over his
father's face upon the slightest opposition.  His father's violent
threats, or coarse sneers, would not have been taken au serieux by a
stronger boy, but Theobald was not a strong boy, and rightly or
wrongly, gave his father credit for being quite ready to carry his
threats into execution.  Opposition had never got him anything he
wanted yet, nor indeed had yielding, for the matter of that, unless
he happened to want exactly what his father wanted for him.  If he
had ever entertained thoughts of resistance, he had none now, and
the power to oppose was so completely lost for want of exercise that
hardly did the wish remain; there was nothing left save dull
acquiescence as of an ass crouched between two burdens.  He may have
had an ill-defined sense of ideals that were not his actuals; he
might occasionally dream of himself as a soldier or a sailor far
away in foreign lands, or even as a farmer's boy upon the wolds, but
there was not enough in him for there to be any chance of his
turning his dreams into realities, and he drifted on with his
stream, which was a slow, and, I am afraid, a muddy one.

I think the Church Catechism has a good deal to do with the unhappy
relations which commonly even now exist between parents and
children.  That work was written too exclusively from the parental
point of view; the person who composed it did not get a few children
to come in and help him; he was clearly not young himself, nor
should I say it was the work of one who liked children--in spite of
the words "my good child" which, if I remember rightly, are once put
into the mouth of the catechist and, after all, carry a harsh sound
with them.  The general impression it leaves upon the mind of the
young is that their wickedness at birth was but very imperfectly
wiped out at baptism, and that the mere fact of being young at all
has something with it that savours more or less distinctly of the
nature of sin.

If a new edition of the work is ever required I should like to
introduce a few words insisting on the duty of seeking all
reasonable pleasure and avoiding all pain that can be honourably
avoided.  I should like to see children taught that they should not
say they like things which they do not like, merely because certain
other people say they like them, and how foolish it is to say they
believe this or that when they understand nothing about it.  If it
be urged that these additions would make the Catechism too long I
would curtail the remarks upon our duty towards our neighbour and
upon the sacraments.  In the place of the paragraph beginning "I
desire my Lord God our Heavenly Father" I would--but perhaps I had
better return to Theobald, and leave the recasting of the Catechism
to abler hands.



CHAPTER VIII



Mr Pontifex had set his heart on his son's becoming a fellow of a
college before he became a clergyman.  This would provide for him at
once and would ensure his getting a living if none of his father's
ecclesiastical friends gave him one.  The boy had done just well
enough at school to render this possible, so he was sent to one of
the smaller colleges at Cambridge and was at once set to read with
the best private tutors that could be found.  A system of
examination had been adopted a year or so before Theobald took his
degree which had improved his chances of a fellowship, for whatever
ability he had was classical rather than mathematical, and this
system gave more encouragement to classical studies than had been
given hitherto.

Theobald had the sense to see that he had a chance of independence
if he worked hard, and he liked the notion of becoming a fellow.  He
therefore applied himself, and in the end took a degree which made
his getting a fellowship in all probability a mere question of time.
For a while Mr Pontifex senior was really pleased, and told his son
he would present him with the works of any standard writer whom he
might select.  The young man chose the works of Bacon, and Bacon
accordingly made his appearance in ten nicely bound volumes.  A
little inspection, however, showed that the copy was a second hand
one.

Now that he had taken his degree the next thing to look forward to
was ordination--about which Theobald had thought little hitherto
beyond acquiescing in it as something that would come as a matter of
course some day.  Now, however, it had actually come and was
asserting itself as a thing which should be only a few months off,
and this rather frightened him inasmuch as there would be no way out
of it when he was once in it.  He did not like the near view of
ordination as well as the distant one, and even made some feeble
efforts to escape, as may be perceived by the following
correspondence which his son Ernest found among his father's papers
written on gilt-edged paper, in faded ink and tied neatly round with
a piece of tape, but without any note or comment.  I have altered
nothing.  The letters are as follows:-


"My dear Father,--I do not like opening up a question which has been
considered settled, but as the time approaches I begin to be very
doubtful how far I am fitted to be a clergyman.  Not, I am thankful
to say, that I have the faintest doubts about the Church of England,
and I could subscribe cordially to every one of the thirty-nine
articles which do indeed appear to me to be the ne plus ultra of
human wisdom, and Paley, too, leaves no loop-hole for an opponent;
but I am sure I should be running counter to your wishes if I were
to conceal from you that I do not feel the inward call to be a
minister of the gospel that I shall have to say I have felt when the
Bishop ordains me.  I try to get this feeling, I pray for it
earnestly, and sometimes half think that I have got it, but in a
little time it wears off, and though I have no absolute repugnance
to being a clergyman and trust that if I am one I shall endeavour to
live to the Glory of God and to advance His interests upon earth,
yet I feel that something more than this is wanted before I am fully
justified in going into the Church.  I am aware that I have been a
great expense to you in spite of my scholarships, but you have ever
taught me that I should obey my conscience, and my conscience tells
me I should do wrong if I became a clergyman.  God may yet give me
the spirit for which I assure you I have been and am continually
praying, but He may not, and in that case would it not be better for
me to try and look out for something else?  I know that neither you
nor John wish me to go into your business, nor do I understand
anything about money matters, but is there nothing else that I can
do?  I do not like to ask you to maintain me while I go in for
medicine or the bar; but when I get my fellowship, which should not
be long first, I will endeavour to cost you nothing further, and I
might make a little money by writing or taking pupils.  I trust you
will not think this letter improper; nothing is further from my wish
than to cause you any uneasiness.  I hope you will make allowance
for my present feelings which, indeed, spring from nothing but from
that respect for my conscience which no one has so often instilled
into me as yourself.  Pray let me have a few lines shortly.  I hope
your cold is better.  With love to Eliza and Maria, I am, your
affectionate son,

"THEOBALD PONTIFEX."


"Dear Theobald,--I can enter into your feelings and have no wish to
quarrel with your expression of them.  It is quite right and natural
that you should feel as you do except as regards one passage, the
impropriety of which you will yourself doubtless feel upon
reflection, and to which I will not further allude than to say that
it has wounded me.  You should not have said 'in spite of my
scholarships.'  It was only proper that if you could do anything to
assist me in bearing the heavy burden of your education, the money
should be, as it was, made over to myself.  Every line in your
letter convinces me that you are under the influence of a morbid
sensitiveness which is one of the devil's favourite devices for
luring people to their destruction.  I have, as you say, been at
great expense with your education.  Nothing has been spared by me to
give you the advantages, which, as an English gentleman, I was
anxious to afford my son, but I am not prepared to see that expense
thrown away and to have to begin again from the beginning, merely
because you have taken some foolish scruples into your head, which
you should resist as no less unjust to yourself than to me.

"Don't give way to that restless desire for change which is the bane
of so many persons of both sexes at the present day.

"Of course you needn't be ordained:  nobody will compel you; you are
perfectly free; you are twenty-three years of age, and should know
your own mind; but why not have known it sooner, instead of never so
much as breathing a hint of opposition until I have had all the
expense of sending you to the University, which I should never have
done unless I had believed you to have made up your mind about
taking orders?  I have letters from you in which you express the
most perfect willingness to be ordained, and your brother and
sisters will bear me out in saying that no pressure of any sort has
been put upon you.  You mistake your own mind, and are suffering
from a nervous timidity which may be very natural but may not the
less be pregnant with serious consequences to yourself.  I am not at
all well, and the anxiety occasioned by your letter is naturally
preying upon me.  May God guide you to a better judgement.--Your
affectionate father, G. PONTIFEX."


On the receipt of this letter Theobald plucked up his spirits.  "My
father," he said to himself, "tells me I need not be ordained if I
do not like.  I do not like, and therefore I will not be ordained.
But what was the meaning of the words 'pregnant with serious
consequences to yourself'?  Did there lurk a threat under these
words--though it was impossible to lay hold of it or of them?  Were
they not intended to produce all the effect of a threat without
being actually threatening?"

Theobald knew his father well enough to be little likely to
misapprehend his meaning, but having ventured so far on the path of
opposition, and being really anxious to get out of being ordained if
he could, he determined to venture farther.  He accordingly wrote
the following:


"My dear father,--You tell me--and I heartily thank you--that no one
will compel me to be ordained.  I knew you would not press
ordination upon me if my conscience was seriously opposed to it; I
have therefore resolved on giving up the idea, and believe that if
you will continue to allow me what you do at present, until I get my
fellowship, which should not be long, I will then cease putting you
to further expense.  I will make up my mind as soon as possible what
profession I will adopt, and will let you know at once.--Your
affectionate son, THEOBALD PONTIFEX."


The remaining letter, written by return of post, must now be given.
It has the merit of brevity.


"Dear Theobald,--I have received yours.  I am at a loss to conceive
its motive, but am very clear as to its effect.  You shall not
receive a single sixpence from me till you come to your senses.
Should you persist in your folly and wickedness, I am happy to
remember that I have yet other children whose conduct I can depend
upon to be a source of credit and happiness to me.--Your
affectionate but troubled father, G. PONTIFEX."


I do not know the immediate sequel to the foregoing correspondence,
but it all came perfectly right in the end.  Either Theobald's heart
failed him, or he interpreted the outward shove which his father
gave him, as the inward call for which I have no doubt he prayed
with great earnestness--for he was a firm believer in the efficacy
of prayer.  And so am I under certain circumstances.  Tennyson has
said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams
of, but he has wisely refrained from saying whether they are good
things or bad things.  It might perhaps be as well if the world were
to dream of, or even become wide awake to, some of the things that
are being wrought by prayer.  But the question is avowedly
difficult.  In the end Theobald got his fellowship by a stroke of
luck very soon after taking his degree, and was ordained in the
autumn of the same year, 1825.



CHAPTER IX



Mr Allaby was rector of Crampsford, a village a few miles from
Cambridge.  He, too, had taken a good degree, had got a fellowship,
and in the course of time had accepted a college living of about 400
pounds a year and a house.  His private income did not exceed 200
pounds a year.  On resigning his fellowship he married a woman a
good deal younger than himself who bore him eleven children, nine of
whom--two sons and seven daughters--were living.  The two eldest
daughters had married fairly well, but at the time of which I am now
writing there were still five unmarried, of ages varying between
thirty and twenty-two--and the sons were neither of them yet off
their father's hands.  It was plain that if anything were to happen
to Mr Allaby the family would be left poorly off, and this made both
Mr and Mrs Allaby as unhappy as it ought to have made them.

Reader, did you ever have an income at best none too large, which
died with you all except 200 pounds a year?  Did you ever at the
same time have two sons who must be started in life somehow, and
five daughters still unmarried for whom you would only be too
thankful to find husbands--if you knew how to find them?  If
morality is that which, on the whole, brings a man peace in his
declining years--if, that is to say, it is not an utter swindle, can
you under these circumstances flatter yourself that you have led a
moral life?

And this, even though your wife has been so good a woman that you
have not grown tired of her, and has not fallen into such ill-health
as lowers your own health in sympathy; and though your family has
grown up vigorous, amiable, and blessed with common sense.  I know
many old men and women who are reputed moral, but who are living
with partners whom they have long ceased to love, or who have ugly
disagreeable maiden daughters for whom they have never been able to
find husbands--daughters whom they loathe and by whom they are
loathed in secret, or sons whose folly or extravagance is a
perpetual wear and worry to them.  Is it moral for a man to have
brought such things upon himself?  Someone should do for morals what
that old Pecksniff Bacon has obtained the credit of having done for
science.

But to return to Mr and Mrs Allaby.  Mrs Allaby talked about having
married two of her daughters as though it had been the easiest thing
in the world.  She talked in this way because she heard other
mothers do so, but in her heart of hearts she did not know how she
had done it, nor indeed, if it had been her doing at all.  First
there had been a young man in connection with whom she had tried to
practise certain manoeuvres which she had rehearsed in imagination
over and over again, but which she found impossible to apply in
practice.  Then there had been weeks of a wurra wurra of hopes and
fears and little stratagems which as often as not proved
injudicious, and then somehow or other in the end, there lay the
young man bound and with an arrow through his heart at her
daughter's feet.  It seemed to her to be all a fluke which she could
have little or no hope of repeating.  She had indeed repeated it
once, and might perhaps with good luck repeat it yet once again--but
five times over!  It was awful:  why she would rather have three
confinements than go through the wear and tear of marrying a single
daughter.

Nevertheless it had got to be done, and poor Mrs Allaby never looked
at a young man without an eye to his being a future son-in-law.
Papas and mammas sometimes ask young men whether their intentions
are honourable towards their daughters.  I think young men might
occasionally ask papas and mammas whether their intentions are
honourable before they accept invitations to houses where there are
still unmarried daughters.

"I can't afford a curate, my dear," said Mr Allaby to his wife when
the pair were discussing what was next to be done.  "It will be
better to get some young man to come and help me for a time upon a
Sunday.  A guinea a Sunday will do this, and we can chop and change
till we get someone who suits."  So it was settled that Mr Allaby's
health was not so strong as it had been, and that he stood in need
of help in the performance of his Sunday duty.

Mrs Allaby had a great friend--a certain Mrs Cowey, wife of the
celebrated Professor Cowey.  She was what was called a truly
spiritually minded woman, a trifle portly, with an incipient beard,
and an extensive connection among undergraduates, more especially
among those who were inclined to take part in the great evangelical
movement which was then at its height.  She gave evening parties
once a fortnight at which prayer was part of the entertainment.  She
was not only spiritually minded, but, as enthusiastic Mrs Allaby
used to exclaim, she was a thorough woman of the world at the same
time and had such a fund of strong masculine good sense.  She too
had daughters, but, as she used to say to Mrs Allaby, she had been
less fortunate than Mrs Allaby herself, for one by one they had
married and left her so that her old age would have been desolate
indeed if her Professor had not been spared to her.

Mrs Cowey, of course, knew the run of all the bachelor clergy in the
University, and was the very person to assist Mrs Allaby in finding
an eligible assistant for her husband, so this last named lady drove
over one morning in the November of 1825, by arrangement, to take an
early dinner with Mrs Cowey and spend the afternoon.  After dinner
the two ladies retired together, and the business of the day began.
How they fenced, how they saw through one another, with what loyalty
they pretended not to see through one another, with what gentle
dalliance they prolonged the conversation discussing the spiritual
fitness of this or that deacon, and the other pros and cons
connected with him after his spiritual fitness had been disposed of,
all this must be left to the imagination of the reader.  Mrs Cowey
had been so accustomed to scheming on her own account that she would
scheme for anyone rather than not scheme at all.  Many mothers
turned to her in their hour of need and, provided they were
spiritually minded, Mrs Cowey never failed to do her best for them;
if the marriage of a young Bachelor of Arts was not made in Heaven,
it was probably made, or at any rate attempted, in Mrs Cowey's
drawing-room.  On the present occasion all the deacons of the
University in whom there lurked any spark of promise were
exhaustively discussed, and the upshot was that our friend Theobald
was declared by Mrs Cowey to be about the best thing she could do
that afternoon.

"I don't know that he's a particularly fascinating young man, my
dear," said Mrs Cowey, "and he's only a second son, but then he's
got his fellowship, and even the second son of such a man as Mr
Pontifex the publisher should have something very comfortable."

"Why yes, my dear," rejoined Mrs Allaby complacently, "that's what
one rather feels."



CHAPTER X



The interview, like all other good things had to come to an end; the
days were short, and Mrs Allaby had a six miles' drive to
Crampsford.  When she was muffled up and had taken her seat, Mr
Allaby's factotum, James, could perceive no change in her
appearance, and little knew what a series of delightful visions he
was driving home along with his mistress.

Professor Cowey had published works through Theobald's father, and
Theobald had on this account been taken in tow by Mrs Cowey from the
beginning of his University career.  She had had her eye upon him
for some time past, and almost as much felt it her duty to get him
off her list of young men for whom wives had to be provided, as poor
Mrs Allaby did to try and get a husband for one of her daughters.
She now wrote and asked him to come and see her, in terms that
awakened his curiosity.  When he came she broached the subject of Mr
Allaby's failing health, and after the smoothing away of such
difficulties as were only Mrs Cowey's due, considering the interest
she had taken, it was allowed to come to pass that Theobald should
go to Crampsford for six successive Sundays and take the half of Mr
Allaby's duty at half a guinea a Sunday, for Mrs Cowey cut down the
usual stipend mercilessly, and Theobald was not strong enough to
resist.

Ignorant of the plots which were being prepared for his peace of
mind and with no idea beyond that of earning his three guineas, and
perhaps of astonishing the inhabitants of Crampsford by his academic
learning, Theobald walked over to the Rectory one Sunday morning
early in December--a few weeks only after he had been ordained.  He
had taken a great deal of pains with his sermon, which was on the
subject of geology--then coming to the fore as a theological
bugbear.  He showed that so far as geology was worth anything at
all--and he was too liberal entirely to pooh-pooh it--it confirmed
the absolutely historical character of the Mosaic account of the
Creation as given in Genesis.  Any phenomena which at first sight
appeared to make against this view were only partial phenomena and
broke down upon investigation.  Nothing could be in more excellent
taste, and when Theobald adjourned to the rectory, where he was to
dine between the services, Mr Allaby complimented him warmly upon
his debut, while the ladies of the family could hardly find words
with which to express their admiration.

Theobald knew nothing about women.  The only women he had been
thrown in contact with were his sisters, two of whom were always
correcting him, and a few school friends whom these had got their
father to ask to Elmhurst.  These young ladies had either been so
shy that they and Theobald had never amalgamated, or they had been
supposed to be clever and had said smart things to him.  He did not
say smart things himself and did not want other people to say them.
Besides, they talked about music--and he hated music--or pictures--
and he hated pictures--or books--and except the classics he hated
books.  And then sometimes he was wanted to dance with them, and he
did not know how to dance, and did not want to know.

At Mrs Cowey's parties again he had seen some young ladies and had
been introduced to them.  He had tried to make himself agreeable,
but was always left with the impression that he had not been
successful.  The young ladies of Mrs Cowey's set were by no means
the most attractive that might have been found in the University,
and Theobald may be excused for not losing his heart to the greater
number of them, while if for a minute or two he was thrown in with
one of the prettier and more agreeable girls he was almost
immediately cut out by someone less bashful than himself, and
sneaked off, feeling as far as the fair sex was concerned, like the
impotent man at the pool of Bethesda.

What a really nice girl might have done with him I cannot tell, but
fate had thrown none such in his way except his youngest sister
Alethea, whom he might perhaps have liked if she had not been his
sister.  The result of his experience was that women had never done
him any good and he was not accustomed to associate them with any
pleasure; if there was a part of Hamlet in connection with them it
had been so completely cut out in the edition of the play in which
he was required to act that he had come to disbelieve in its
existence.  As for kissing, he had never kissed a woman in his life
except his sister--and my own sisters when we were all small
children together.  Over and above these kisses, he had until quite
lately been required to imprint a solemn flabby kiss night and
morning upon his father's cheek, and this, to the best of my belief,
was the extent of Theobald's knowledge in the matter of kissing, at
the time of which I am now writing.  The result of the foregoing was
that he had come to dislike women, as mysterious beings whose ways
were not as his ways, nor their thoughts as his thoughts.

With these antecedents Theobald naturally felt rather bashful on
finding himself the admired of five strange young ladies.  I
remember when I was a boy myself I was once asked to take tea at a
girls' school where one of my sisters was boarding.  I was then
about twelve years old.  Everything went off well during tea-time,
for the Lady Principal of the establishment was present.  But there
came a time when she went away and I was left alone with the girls.
The moment the mistress's back was turned the head girl, who was
about my own age, came up, pointed her finger at me, made a face and
said solemnly, "A na-a-sty bo-o-y!"  All the girls followed her in
rotation making the same gesture and the same reproach upon my being
a boy.  It gave me a great scare.  I believe I cried, and I know it
was a long time before I could again face a girl without a strong
desire to run away.

Theobald felt at first much as I had myself done at the girls'
school, but the Miss Allabys did not tell him he was a nasty bo-o-
oy.  Their papa and mamma were so cordial and they themselves lifted
him so deftly over conversational stiles that before dinner was over
Theobald thought the family to be a really very charming one, and
felt as though he were being appreciated in a way to which he had
not hitherto been accustomed.

With dinner his shyness wore off.  He was by no means plain, his
academic prestige was very fair.  There was nothing about him to lay
hold of as unconventional or ridiculous; the impression he created
upon the young ladies was quite as favourable as that which they had
created upon himself; for they knew not much more about men than he
about women.

As soon as he was gone, the harmony of the establishment was broken
by a storm which arose upon the question which of them it should be
who should become Mrs Pontifex.  "My dears," said their father, when
he saw that they did not seem likely to settle the matter among
themselves, "Wait till to-morrow, and then play at cards for him."
Having said which he retired to his study, where he took a nightly
glass of whisky and a pipe of tobacco.



CHAPTER XI



The next morning saw Theobald in his rooms coaching a pupil, and the
Miss Allabys in the eldest Miss Allaby's bedroom playing at cards
with Theobald for the stakes.

The winner was Christina, the second unmarried daughter, then just
twenty-seven years old and therefore four years older than Theobald.
The younger sisters complained that it was throwing a husband away
to let Christina try and catch him, for she was so much older that
she had no chance; but Christina showed fight in a way not usual
with her, for she was by nature yielding and good tempered.  Her
mother thought it better to back her up, so the two dangerous ones
were packed off then and there on visits to friends some way off,
and those alone allowed to remain at home whose loyalty could be
depended upon.  The brothers did not even suspect what was going on
and believed their father's getting assistance was because he really
wanted it.

The sisters who remained at home kept their words and gave Christina
all the help they could, for over and above their sense of fair play
they reflected that the sooner Theobald was landed, the sooner
another deacon might be sent for who might be won by themselves.  So
quickly was all managed that the two unreliable sisters were
actually out of the house before Theobald's next visit--which was on
the Sunday following his first.

This time Theobald felt quite at home in the house of his new
friends--for so Mrs Allaby insisted that he should call them.  She
took, she said, such a motherly interest in young men, especially in
clergymen.  Theobald believed every word she said, as he had
believed his father and all his elders from his youth up.  Christina
sat next him at dinner and played her cards no less judiciously than
she had played them in her sister's bed-room.  She smiled (and her
smile was one of her strong points) whenever he spoke to her; she
went through all her little artlessnesses and set forth all her
little wares in what she believed to be their most taking aspect.
Who can blame her?  Theobald was not the ideal she had dreamed of
when reading Byron upstairs with her sisters, but he was an actual
within the bounds of possibility, and after all not a bad actual as
actuals went.  What else could she do?  Run away?  She dared not.
Marry beneath her and be considered a disgrace to her family?  She
dared not.  Remain at home and become an old maid and be laughed at?
Not if she could help it.  She did the only thing that could
reasonably be expected.  She was drowning; Theobald might be only a
straw, but she could catch at him and catch at him she accordingly
did.

If the course of true love never runs smooth, the course of true
match-making sometimes does so.  The only ground for complaint in
the present case was that it was rather slow.  Theobald fell into
the part assigned to him more easily than Mrs Cowey and Mrs Allaby
had dared to hope.  He was softened by Christina's winning manners:
he admired the high moral tone of everything she said; her sweetness
towards her sisters and her father and mother, her readiness to
undertake any small burden which no one else seemed willing to
undertake, her sprightly manners, all were fascinating to one who,
though unused to woman's society, was still a human being.  He was
flattered by her unobtrusive but obviously sincere admiration for
himself; she seemed to see him in a more favourable light, and to
understand him better than anyone outside of this charming family
had ever done.  Instead of snubbing him as his father, brother and
sisters did, she drew him out, listened attentively to all he chose
to say, and evidently wanted him to say still more.  He told a
college friend that he knew he was in love now; he really was, for
he liked Miss Allaby's society much better than that of his sisters.

Over and above the recommendations already enumerated, she had
another in the possession of what was supposed to be a very
beautiful contralto voice.  Her voice was certainly contralto, for
she could not reach higher than D in the treble; its only defect was
that it did not go correspondingly low in the bass:  in those days,
however, a contralto voice was understood to include even a soprano
if the soprano could not reach soprano notes, and it was not
necessary that it should have the quality which we now assign to
contralto.  What her voice wanted in range and power was made up in
the feeling with which she sang.  She had transposed "Angels ever
bright and fair" into a lower key, so as to make it suit her voice,
thus proving, as her mamma said, that she had a thorough knowledge
of the laws of harmony; not only did she do this, but at every pause
added an embellishment of arpeggios from one end to the other of the
keyboard, on a principle which her governess had taught her; she
thus added life and interest to an air which everyone--so she said--
must feel to be rather heavy in the form in which Handel left it.
As for her governess, she indeed had been a rarely accomplished
musician:  she was a pupil of the famous Dr Clarke of Cambridge, and
used to play the overture to Atalanta, arranged by Mazzinghi.
Nevertheless, it was some time before Theobald could bring his
courage to the sticking point of actually proposing.  He made it
quite clear that he believed himself to be much smitten, but month
after month went by, during which there was still so much hope in
Theobald that Mr Allaby dared not discover that he was able to do
his duty for himself, and was getting impatient at the number of
half-guineas he was disbursing--and yet there was no proposal.
Christina's mother assured him that she was the best daughter in the
whole world, and would be a priceless treasure to the man who
married her.  Theobald echoed Mrs Allaby's sentiments with warmth,
but still, though he visited the Rectory two or three times a week,
besides coming over on Sundays--he did not propose.  "She is heart-
whole yet, dear Mr Pontifex," said Mrs Allaby, one day, "at least I
believe she is.  It is not for want of admirers--oh! no--she has had
her full share of these, but she is too, too difficult to please.  I
think, however, she would fall before a GREAT AND GOOD man."  And
she looked hard at Theobald, who blushed; but the days went by and
still he did not propose.

Another time Theobald actually took Mrs Cowey into his confidence,
and the reader may guess what account of Christina he got from her.
Mrs Cowey tried the jealousy manoeuvre and hinted at a possible
rival.  Theobald was, or pretended to be, very much alarmed; a
little rudimentary pang of jealousy shot across his bosom and he
began to believe with pride that he was not only in love, but
desperately in love or he would never feel so jealous.
Nevertheless, day after day still went by and he did not propose.

The Allabys behaved with great judgement.  They humoured him till
his retreat was practically cut off, though he still flattered
himself that it was open.  One day about six months after Theobald
had become an almost daily visitor at the Rectory the conversation
happened to turn upon long engagements.  "I don't like long
engagements, Mr Allaby, do you?" said Theobald imprudently.  "No,"
said Mr Allaby in a pointed tone, "nor long courtships," and he gave
Theobald a look which he could not pretend to misunderstand.  He
went back to Cambridge as fast as he could go, and in dread of the
conversation with Mr Allaby which he felt to be impending, composed
the following letter which he despatched that same afternoon by a
private messenger to Crampsford.  The letter was as follows:-


"Dearest Miss Christina,--I do not know whether you have guessed the
feelings that I have long entertained for you--feelings which I have
concealed as much as I could through fear of drawing you into an
engagement which, if you enter into it, must be prolonged for a
considerable time, but, however this may be, it is out of my power
to conceal them longer; I love you, ardently, devotedly, and send
these few lines asking you to be my wife, because I dare not trust
my tongue to give adequate expression to the magnitude of my
affection for you.

"I cannot pretend to offer you a heart which has never known either
love or disappointment.  I have loved already, and my heart was
years in recovering from the grief I felt at seeing her become
another's.  That, however, is over, and having seen yourself I
rejoice over a disappointment which I thought at one time would have
been fatal to me.  It has left me a less ardent lover than I should
perhaps otherwise have been, but it has increased tenfold my power
of appreciating your many charms and my desire that you should
become my wife.  Please let me have a few lines of answer by the
bearer to let me know whether or not my suit is accepted.  If you
accept me I will at once come and talk the matter over with Mr and
Mrs Allaby, whom I shall hope one day to be allowed to call father
and mother.

"I ought to warn you that in the event of your consenting to be my
wife it may be years before our union can be consummated, for I
cannot marry till a college living is offered me.  If, therefore,
you see fit to reject me, I shall be grieved rather than surprised.-
-Ever most devotedly yours,

"THEOBALD PONTIFEX."


And this was all that his public school and University education had
been able to do for Theobald!  Nevertheless for his own part he
thought his letter rather a good one, and congratulated himself in
particular upon his cleverness in inventing the story of a previous
attachment, behind which he intended to shelter himself if Christina
should complain of any lack of fervour in his behaviour to her.

I need not give Christina's answer, which of course was to accept.
Much as Theobald feared old Mr Allaby I do not think he would have
wrought up his courage to the point of actually proposing but for
the fact of the engagement being necessarily a long one, during
which a dozen things might turn up to break it off.  However much he
may have disapproved of long engagements for other people, I doubt
whether he had any particular objection to them in his own case.  A
pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise:  there are such things
every day but we very seldom see them.  Theobald posed as the most
ardent lover imaginable, but, to use the vulgarism for the moment in
fashion, it was all "side."  Christina was in love, as indeed she
had been twenty times already.  But then Christina was
impressionable and could not even hear the name "Missolonghi"
mentioned without bursting into tears.  When Theobald accidentally
left his sermon case behind him one Sunday, she slept with it in her
bosom and was forlorn when she had as it were to disgorge it on the
following Sunday; but I do not think Theobald ever took so much as
an old toothbrush of Christina's to bed with him.  Why, I knew a
young man once who got hold of his mistress's skates and slept with
them for a fortnight and cried when he had to give them up.



CHAPTER XII



Theobald's engagement was all very well as far as it went, but there
was an old gentleman with a bald head and rosy cheeks in a counting-
house in Paternoster Row who must sooner or later be told of what
his son had in view, and Theobald's heart fluttered when he asked
himself what view this old gentleman was likely to take of the
situation.  The murder, however, had to come out, and Theobald and
his intended, perhaps imprudently, resolved on making a clean breast
of it at once.  He wrote what he and Christina, who helped him to
draft the letter, thought to be everything that was filial, and
expressed himself as anxious to be married with the least possible
delay.  He could not help saying this, as Christina was at his
shoulder, and he knew it was safe, for his father might be trusted
not to help him.  He wound up by asking his father to use any
influence that might be at his command to help him to get a living,
inasmuch as it might be years before a college living fell vacant,
and he saw no other chance of being able to marry, for neither he
nor his intended had any money except Theobald's fellowship, which
would, of course, lapse on his taking a wife.

Any step of Theobald's was sure to be objectionable in his father's
eyes, but that at three-and-twenty he should want to marry a
penniless girl who was four years older than himself, afforded a
golden opportunity which the old gentleman--for so I may now call
him, as he was at least sixty--embraced with characteristic
eagerness.

"The ineffable folly," he wrote, on receiving his son's letter, "of
your fancied passion for Miss Allaby fills me with the gravest
apprehensions.  Making every allowance for a lover's blindness, I
still have no doubt that the lady herself is a well-conducted and
amiable young person, who would not disgrace our family, but were
she ten times more desirable as a daughter-in-law than I can allow
myself to hope, your joint poverty is an insuperable objection to
your marriage.  I have four other children besides yourself, and my
expenses do not permit me to save money.  This year they have been
especially heavy, indeed I have had to purchase two not
inconsiderable pieces of land which happened to come into the market
and were necessary to complete a property which I have long wanted
to round off in this way.  I gave you an education regardless of
expense, which has put you in possession of a comfortable income, at
an age when many young men are dependent.  I have thus started you
fairly in life, and may claim that you should cease to be a drag
upon me further.  Long engagements are proverbially unsatisfactory,
and in the present case the prospect seems interminable.  What
interest, pray, do you suppose I have that I could get a living for
you?  Can I go up and down the country begging people to provide for
my son because he has taken it into his head to want to get married
without sufficient means?

"I do not wish to write unkindly, nothing can be farther from my
real feelings towards you, but there is often more kindness in plain
speaking than in any amount of soft words which can end in no
substantial performance.  Of course, I bear in mind that you are of
age, and can therefore please yourself, but if you choose to claim
the strict letter of the law, and act without consideration for your
father's feelings, you must not be surprised if you one day find
that I have claimed a like liberty for myself.--Believe me, your
affectionate father,  G. PONTIFEX."


I found this letter along with those already given and a few more
which I need not give, but throughout which the same tone prevails,
and in all of which there is the more or less obvious shake of the
will near the end of the letter.  Remembering Theobald's general
dumbness concerning his father for the many years I knew him after
his father's death, there was an eloquence in the preservation of
the letters and in their endorsement "Letters from my father," which
seemed to have with it some faint odour of health and nature.

Theobald did not show his father's letter to Christina, nor, indeed,
I believe to anyone.  He was by nature secretive, and had been
repressed too much and too early to be capable of railing or blowing
off steam where his father was concerned.  His sense of wrong was
still inarticulate, felt as a dull dead weight ever present day by
day, and if he woke at night-time still continually present, but he
hardly knew what it was.  I was about the closest friend he had, and
I saw but little of him, for I could not get on with him for long
together.  He said I had no reverence; whereas I thought that I had
plenty of reverence for what deserved to be revered, but that the
gods which he deemed golden were in reality made of baser metal.  He
never, as I have said, complained of his father to me, and his only
other friends were, like himself, staid and prim, of evangelical
tendencies, and deeply imbued with a sense of the sinfulness of any
act of insubordination to parents--good young men, in fact--and one
cannot blow off steam to a good young man.

When Christina was informed by her lover of his father's opposition,
and of the time which must probably elapse before they could be
married, she offered--with how much sincerity I know not--to set him
free from his engagement; but Theobald declined to be released--"not
at least," as he said, "at present."  Christina and Mrs Allaby knew
they could manage him, and on this not very satisfactory footing the
engagement was continued.

His engagement and his refusal to be released at once raised
Theobald in his own good opinion.  Dull as he was, he had no small
share of quiet self-approbation.  He admired himself for his
University distinction, for the purity of his life (I said of him
once that if he had only a better temper he would be as innocent as
a new-laid egg) and for his unimpeachable integrity in money
matters.  He did not despair of advancement in the Church when he
had once got a living, and of course it was within the bounds of
possibility that he might one day become a Bishop, and Christina
said she felt convinced that this would ultimately be the case.

As was natural for the daughter and intended wife of a clergyman,
Christina's thoughts ran much upon religion, and she was resolved
that even though an exalted position in this world were denied to
her and Theobald, their virtues should be fully appreciated in the
next.  Her religious opinions coincided absolutely with Theobald's
own, and many a conversation did she have with him about the glory
of God, and the completeness with which they would devote themselves
to it, as soon as Theobald had got his living and they were married.
So certain was she of the great results which would then ensue that
she wondered at times at the blindness shown by Providence towards
its own truest interests in not killing off the rectors who stood
between Theobald and his living a little faster.

In those days people believed with a simple downrightness which I do
not observe among educated men and women now.  It had never so much
as crossed Theobald's mind to doubt the literal accuracy of any
syllable in the Bible.  He had never seen any book in which this was
disputed, nor met with anyone who doubted it.  True, there was just
a little scare about geology, but there was nothing in it.  If it
was said that God made the world in six days, why He did make it in
six days, neither in more nor less; if it was said that He put Adam
to sleep, took out one of his ribs and made a woman of it, why it
was so as a matter of course.  He, Adam, went to sleep as it might
be himself, Theobald Pontifex, in a garden, as it might be the
garden at Crampsford Rectory during the summer months when it was so
pretty, only that it was larger, and had some tame wild animals in
it.  Then God came up to him, as it might be Mr Allaby or his
father, dexterously took out one of his ribs without waking him, and
miraculously healed the wound so that no trace of the operation
remained.  Finally, God had taken the rib perhaps into the
greenhouse, and had turned it into just such another young woman as
Christina.  That was how it was done; there was neither difficulty
nor shadow of difficulty about the matter.  Could not God do
anything He liked, and had He not in His own inspired Book told us
that He had done this?

This was the average attitude of fairly educated young men and women
towards the Mosaic cosmogony fifty, forty, or even twenty years ago.
The combating of infidelity, therefore, offered little scope for
enterprising young clergymen, nor had the Church awakened to the
activity which she has since displayed among the poor in our large
towns.  These were then left almost without an effort at resistance
or co-operation to the labours of those who had succeeded Wesley.
Missionary work indeed in heathen countries was being carried on
with some energy, but Theobald did not feel any call to be a
missionary.  Christina suggested this to him more than once, and
assured him of the unspeakable happiness it would be to her to be
the wife of a missionary, and to share his dangers; she and Theobald
might even be martyred; of course they would be martyred
simultaneously, and martyrdom many years hence as regarded from the
arbour in the Rectory garden was not painful, it would ensure them a
glorious future in the next world, and at any rate posthumous renown
in this--even if they were not miraculously restored to life again--
and such things had happened ere now in the case of martyrs.
Theobald, however, had not been kindled by Christina's enthusiasm,
so she fell back upon the Church of Rome--an enemy more dangerous,
if possible, than paganism itself.  A combat with Romanism might
even yet win for her and Theobald the crown of martyrdom.  True, the
Church of Rome was tolerably quiet just then, but it was the calm
before the storm, of this she was assured, with a conviction deeper
than she could have attained by any argument founded upon mere
reason.

"We, dearest Theobald," she exclaimed, "will be ever faithful.  We
will stand firm and support one another even in the hour of death
itself.  God in his mercy may spare us from being burnt alive.  He
may or may not do so.  Oh Lord" (and she turned her eyes prayerfully
to Heaven), "spare my Theobald, or grant that he may be beheaded."

"My dearest," said Theobald gravely, "do not let us agitate
ourselves unduly.  If the hour of trial comes we shall be best
prepared to meet it by having led a quiet unobtrusive life of self-
denial and devotion to God's glory.  Such a life let us pray God
that it may please Him to enable us to pray that we may lead."

"Dearest Theobald," exclaimed Christina, drying the tears that had
gathered in her eyes, "you are always, always right.  Let us be
self-denying, pure, upright, truthful in word and deed."  She
clasped her hands and looked up to Heaven as she spoke.

"Dearest," rejoined her lover, "we have ever hitherto endeavoured to
be all of these things; we have not been worldly people; let us
watch and pray that we may so continue to the end."

The moon had risen and the arbour was getting damp, so they
adjourned further aspirations for a more convenient season.  At
other times Christina pictured herself and Theobald as braving the
scorn of almost every human being in the achievement of some mighty
task which should redound to the honour of her Redeemer.  She could
face anything for this.  But always towards the end of her vision
there came a little coronation scene high up in the golden regions
of the Heavens, and a diadem was set upon her head by the Son of Man
Himself, amid a host of angels and archangels who looked on with
envy and admiration--and here even Theobald himself was out of it.
If there could be such a thing as the Mammon of Righteousness
Christina would have assuredly made friends with it.  Her papa and
mamma were very estimable people and would in the course of time
receive Heavenly Mansions in which they would be exceedingly
comfortable; so doubtless would her sisters; so perhaps, even might
her brothers; but for herself she felt that a higher destiny was
preparing, which it was her duty never to lose sight of.  The first
step towards it would be her marriage with Theobald.  In spite,
however, of these flights of religious romanticism, Christina was a
good-tempered kindly-natured girl enough, who, if she had married a
sensible layman--we will say a hotel-keeper--would have developed
into a good landlady and been deservedly popular with her guests.

Such was Theobald's engaged life.  Many a little present passed
between the pair, and many a small surprise did they prepare
pleasantly for one another.  They never quarrelled, and neither of
them ever flirted with anyone else.  Mrs Allaby and his future
sisters-in-law idolised Theobald in spite of its being impossible to
get another deacon to come and be played for as long as Theobald was
able to help Mr Allaby, which now of course he did free gratis and
for nothing; two of the sisters, however, did manage to find
husbands before Christina was actually married, and on each occasion
Theobald played the part of decoy elephant.  In the end only two out
of the seven daughters remained single.

After three or four years, old Mr Pontifex became accustomed to his
son's engagement and looked upon it as among the things which had
now a prescriptive right to toleration.  In the spring of 1831, more
than five years after Theobald had first walked over to Crampsford,
one of the best livings in the gift of the College unexpectedly fell
vacant, and was for various reasons declined by the two fellows
senior to Theobald, who might each have been expected to take it.
The living was then offered to and of course accepted by Theobald,
being in value not less than 500 pounds a year with a suitable house
and garden.  Old Mr Pontifex then came down more handsomely than was
expected and settled 10,000 pounds on his son and daughter-in-law
for life with remainder to such of their issue as they might
appoint.  In the month of July, 1831 Theobald and Christina became
man and wife.



CHAPTER XIII



A due number of old shoes had been thrown at the carriage in which
the happy pair departed from the Rectory, and it had turned the
corner at the bottom of the village.  It could then be seen for two
or three hundred yards creeping past a fir coppice, and after this
was lost to view.

"John," said Mr Allaby to his man-servant, "shut the gate;" and he
went indoors with a sigh of relief which seemed to say:  "I have
done it, and I am alive."  This was the reaction after a burst of
enthusiastic merriment during which the old gentleman had run twenty
yards after the carriage to fling a slipper at it--which he had duly
flung.

But what were the feelings of Theobald and Christina when the
village was passed and they were rolling quietly by the fir
plantation?  It is at this point that even the stoutest heart must
fail, unless it beat in the breast of one who is over head and ears
in love.  If a young man is in a small boat on a choppy sea, along
with his affianced bride and both are sea-sick, and if the sick
swain can forget his own anguish in the happiness of holding the
fair one's head when she is at her worst--then he is in love, and
his heart will be in no danger of failing him as he passes his fir
plantation.  Other people, and unfortunately by far the greater
number of those who get married must be classed among the "other
people," will inevitably go through a quarter or half an hour of
greater or less badness as the case may be.  Taking numbers into
account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in
the streets leading from St George's, Hanover Square, than in the
condemned cells of Newgate.  There is no time at which what the
Italians call la figlia della Morte lays her cold hand upon a man
more awfully than during the first half hour that he is alone with a
woman whom he has married but never genuinely loved.

Death's daughter did not spare Theobald.  He had behaved very well
hitherto.  When Christina had offered to let him go, he had stuck to
his post with a magnanimity on which he had plumed himself ever
since.  From that time forward he had said to himself:  "I, at any
rate, am the very soul of honour; I am not," etc., etc.  True, at
the moment of magnanimity the actual cash payment, so to speak, was
still distant; when his father gave formal consent to his marriage
things began to look more serious; when the college living had
fallen vacant and been accepted they looked more serious still; but
when Christina actually named the day, then Theobald's heart fainted
within him.

The engagement had gone on so long that he had got into a groove,
and the prospect of change was disconcerting.  Christina and he had
got on, he thought to himself, very nicely for a great number of
years; why--why--why should they not continue to go on as they were
doing now for the rest of their lives?  But there was no more chance
of escape for him than for the sheep which is being driven to the
butcher's back premises, and like the sheep he felt that there was
nothing to be gained by resistance, so he made none.  He behaved, in
fact, with decency, and was declared on all hands to be one of the
happiest men imaginable.

Now, however, to change the metaphor, the drop had actually fallen,
and the poor wretch was hanging in mid air along with the creature
of his affections.  This creature was now thirty-three years old,
and looked it:  she had been weeping, and her eyes and nose were
reddish; if "I have done it and I am alive," was written on Mr
Allaby's face after he had thrown the shoe, "I have done it, and I
do not see how I can possibly live much longer" was upon the face of
Theobald as he was being driven along by the fir Plantation.  This,
however, was not apparent at the Rectory.  All that could be seen
there was the bobbing up and down of the postilion's head, which
just over-topped the hedge by the road-side as he rose in his
stirrups, and the black and yellow body of the carriage.

For some time the pair said nothing:  what they must have felt
during their first half hour, the reader must guess, for it is
beyond my power to tell him; at the end of that time, however,
Theobald had rummaged up a conclusion from some odd corner of his
soul to the effect that now he and Christina were married the sooner
they fell into their future mutual relations the better.  If people
who are in a difficulty will only do the first little reasonable
thing which they can clearly recognise as reasonable, they will
always find the next step more easy both to see and take.  What,
then, thought Theobald, was here at this moment the first and most
obvious matter to be considered, and what would be an equitable view
of his and Christina's relative positions in respect to it?  Clearly
their first dinner was their first joint entry into the duties and
pleasures of married life.  No less clearly it was Christina's duty
to order it, and his own to eat it and pay for it.

The arguments leading to this conclusion, and the conclusion itself,
flashed upon Theobald about three and a half miles after he had left
Crampsford on the road to Newmarket.  He had breakfasted early, but
his usual appetite had failed him.  They had left the vicarage at
noon without staying for the wedding breakfast.  Theobald liked an
early dinner; it dawned upon him that he was beginning to be hungry;
from this to the conclusion stated in the preceding paragraph the
steps had been easy.  After a few minutes' further reflection he
broached the matter to his bride, and thus the ice was broken.

Mrs Theobald was not prepared for so sudden an assumption of
importance.  Her nerves, never of the strongest, had been strung to
their highest tension by the event of the morning.  She wanted to
escape observation; she was conscious of looking a little older than
she quite liked to look as a bride who had been married that
morning; she feared the landlady, the chamber-maid, the waiter--
everybody and everything; her heart beat so fast that she could
hardly speak, much less go through the ordeal of ordering dinner in
a strange hotel with a strange landlady.  She begged and prayed to
be let off.  If Theobald would only order dinner this once, she
would order it any day and every day in future.

But the inexorable Theobald was not to be put off with such absurd
excuses.  He was master now.  Had not Christina less than two hours
ago promised solemnly to honour and obey him, and was she turning
restive over such a trifle as this?  The loving smile departed from
his face, and was succeeded by a scowl which that old Turk, his
father, might have envied.  "Stuff and nonsense, my dearest
Christina," he exclaimed mildly, and stamped his foot upon the floor
of the carriage.  "It is a wife's duty to order her husband's
dinner; you are my wife, and I shall expect you to order mine."  For
Theobald was nothing if he was not logical.

The bride began to cry, and said he was unkind; whereon he said
nothing, but revolved unutterable things in his heart.  Was this,
then, the end of his six years of unflagging devotion?  Was it for
this that when Christina had offered to let him off, he had stuck to
his engagement?  Was this the outcome of her talks about duty and
spiritual mindedness--that now upon the very day of her marriage she
should fail to see that the first step in obedience to God lay in
obedience to himself?  He would drive back to Crampsford; he would
complain to Mr and Mrs Allaby; he didn't mean to have married
Christina; he hadn't married her; it was all a hideous dream; he
would-- But a voice kept ringing in his ears which said:  "YOU
CAN'T, CAN'T, CAN'T."

"CAN'T I?" screamed the unhappy creature to himself.

"No," said the remorseless voice, "YOU CAN'T.  YOU ARE A MARRIED
MAN."

He rolled back in his corner of the carriage and for the first time
felt how iniquitous were the marriage laws of England.  But he would
buy Milton's prose works and read his pamphlet on divorce.  He might
perhaps be able to get them at Newmarket.

So the bride sat crying in one corner of the carriage; and the
bridegroom sulked in the other, and he feared her as only a
bridegroom can fear.

Presently, however, a feeble voice was heard from the bride's corner
saying:

"Dearest Theobald--dearest Theobald, forgive me; I have been very,
very wrong.  Please do not be angry with me.  I will order the--the-
-" but the word "dinner" was checked by rising sobs.

When Theobald heard these words a load began to be lifted from his
heart, but he only looked towards her, and that not too pleasantly.

"Please tell me," continued the voice, "what you think you would
like, and I will tell the landlady when we get to Newmar--" but
another burst of sobs checked the completion of the word.

The load on Theobald's heart grew lighter and lighter.  Was it
possible that she might not be going to henpeck him after all?
Besides, had she not diverted his attention from herself to his
approaching dinner?

He swallowed down more of his apprehensions and said, but still
gloomily, "I think we might have a roast fowl with bread sauce, new
potatoes and green peas, and then we will see if they could let us
have a cherry tart and some cream."

After a few minutes more he drew her towards him, kissed away her
tears, and assured her that he knew she would be a good wife to him.

"Dearest Theobald," she exclaimed in answer, "you are an angel."

Theobald believed her, and in ten minutes more the happy couple
alighted at the inn at Newmarket.

Bravely did Christina go through her arduous task.  Eagerly did she
beseech the landlady, in secret, not to keep her Theobald waiting
longer than was absolutely necessary.

"If you have any soup ready, you know, Mrs Barber, it might save ten
minutes, for we might have it while the fowl was browning."

See how necessity had nerved her!  But in truth she had a splitting
headache, and would have given anything to have been alone.

The dinner was a success.  A pint of sherry had warmed Theobald's
heart, and he began to hope that, after all, matters might still go
well with him.  He had conquered in the first battle, and this gives
great prestige.  How easy it had been too!  Why had he never treated
his sisters in this way?  He would do so next time he saw them; he
might in time be able to stand up to his brother John, or even his
father.  Thus do we build castles in air when flushed with wine and
conquest.

The end of the honeymoon saw Mrs Theobald the most devotedly
obsequious wife in all England.  According to the old saying,
Theobald had killed the cat at the beginning.  It had been a very
little cat, a mere kitten in fact, or he might have been afraid to
face it, but such as it had been he had challenged it to mortal
combat, and had held up its dripping head defiantly before his
wife's face.  The rest had been easy.

Strange that one whom I have described hitherto as so timid and
easily put upon should prove such a Tartar all of a sudden on the
day of his marriage.  Perhaps I have passed over his years of
courtship too rapidly.  During these he had become a tutor of his
college, and had at last been Junior Dean.  I never yet knew a man
whose sense of his own importance did not become adequately
developed after he had held a resident fellowship for five or six
years.  True--immediately on arriving within a ten mile radius of
his father's house, an enchantment fell upon him, so that his knees
waxed weak, his greatness departed, and he again felt himself like
an overgrown baby under a perpetual cloud; but then he was not often
at Elmhurst, and as soon as he left it the spell was taken off
again; once more he became the fellow and tutor of his college, the
Junior Dean, the betrothed of Christina, the idol of the Allaby
womankind.  From all which it may be gathered that if Christina had
been a Barbary hen, and had ruffled her feathers in any show of
resistance Theobald would not have ventured to swagger with her, but
she was not a Barbary hen, she was only a common hen, and that too
with rather a smaller share of personal bravery than hens generally
have.



CHAPTER XIV



Battersby-On-The-Hill was the name of the village of which Theobald
was now Rector.  It contained 400 or 500 inhabitants, scattered over
a rather large area, and consisting entirely of farmers and
agricultural labourers.  The Rectory was commodious, and placed on
the brow of a hill which gave it a delightful prospect.  There was a
fair sprinkling of neighbours within visiting range, but with one or
two exceptions they were the clergymen and clergymen's families of
the surrounding villages.

By these the Pontifexes were welcomed as great acquisitions to the
neighbourhood.  Mr Pontifex, they said was so clever; he had been
senior classic and senior wrangler; a perfect genius in fact, and
yet with so much sound practical common sense as well.  As son of
such a distinguished man as the great Mr Pontifex the publisher he
would come into a large property by-and-by.  Was there not an elder
brother?  Yes, but there would be so much that Theobald would
probably get something very considerable.  Of course they would give
dinner parties.  And Mrs Pontifex, what a charming woman she was;
she was certainly not exactly pretty perhaps, but then she had such
a sweet smile and her manner was so bright and winning.  She was so
devoted too to her husband and her husband to her; they really did
come up to one's ideas of what lovers used to be in days of old; it
was rare to meet with such a pair in these degenerate times; it was
quite beautiful, etc., etc.  Such were the comments of the
neighbours on the new arrivals.

As for Theobald's own parishioners, the farmers were civil and the
labourers and their wives obsequious.  There was a little dissent,
the legacy of a careless predecessor, but as Mrs Theobald said
proudly, "I think Theobald may be trusted to deal with THAT."  The
church was then an interesting specimen of late Norman, with some
early English additions.  It was what in these days would be called
in a very bad state of repair, but forty or fifty years ago few
churches were in good repair.  If there is one feature more
characteristic of the present generation than another it is that it
has been a great restorer of churches.

Horace preached church restoration in his ode:-


Delicta majorum immeritus lues,
Romane, donec templa refeceris
Aedesque labentes deorum et
Foeda nigro simulacra fumo.


Nothing went right with Rome for long together after the Augustan
age, but whether it was because she did restore the temples or
because she did not restore them I know not.  They certainly went
all wrong after Constantine's time and yet Rome is still a city of
some importance.

I may say here that before Theobald had been many years at Battersby
he found scope for useful work in the rebuilding of Battersby
church, which he carried out at considerable cost, towards which he
subscribed liberally himself.  He was his own architect, and this
saved expense; but architecture was not very well understood about
the year 1834, when Theobald commenced operations, and the result is
not as satisfactory as it would have been if he had waited a few
years longer.

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or
architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and
the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his
character appear in spite of him.  I may very likely be condemning
myself, all the time that I am writing this book, for I know that
whether I like it or no I am portraying myself more surely than I am
portraying any of the characters whom I set before the reader.  I am
sorry that it is so, but I cannot help it--after which sop to
Nemesis I will say that Battersby church in its amended form has
always struck me as a better portrait of Theobald than any sculptor
or painter short of a great master would be able to produce.

I remember staying with Theobald some six or seven months after he
was married, and while the old church was still standing.  I went to
church, and felt as Naaman must have felt on certain occasions when
he had to accompany his master on his return after having been cured
of his leprosy.  I have carried away a more vivid recollection of
this and of the people, than of Theobald's sermon.  Even now I can
see the men in blue smock frocks reaching to their heels, and more
than one old woman in a scarlet cloak; the row of stolid, dull,
vacant plough-boys, ungainly in build, uncomely in face, lifeless,
apathetic, a race a good deal more like the pre-revolution French
peasant as described by Carlyle than is pleasant to reflect upon--a
race now supplanted by a smarter, comelier and more hopeful
generation, which has discovered that it too has a right to as much
happiness as it can get, and with clearer ideas about the best means
of getting it.

They shamble in one after another, with steaming breath, for it is
winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots; they beat the snow
from off them as they enter, and through the opened door I catch a
momentary glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and snow-clad tombstones.
Somehow or other I find the strain which Handel has wedded to the
words "There the ploughman near at hand," has got into my head and
there is no getting it out again.  How marvellously old Handel
understood these people!

They bob to Theobald as they passed the reading desk ("The people
hereabouts are truly respectful," whispered Christina to me, "they
know their betters."), and take their seats in a long row against
the wall.  The choir clamber up into the gallery with their
instruments--a violoncello, a clarinet and a trombone.  I see them
and soon I hear them, for there is a hymn before the service, a wild
strain, a remnant, if I mistake not, of some pre-Reformation litany.
I have heard what I believe was its remote musical progenitor in the
church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice not five years since; and
again I have heard it far away in mid-Atlantic upon a grey sea-
Sabbath in June, when neither winds nor waves are stirring, so that
the emigrants gather on deck, and their plaintive psalm goes forth
upon the silver haze of the sky, and on the wilderness of a sea that
has sighed till it can sigh no longer.  Or it may be heard at some
Methodist Camp Meeting upon a Welsh hillside, but in the churches it
is gone for ever.  If I were a musician I would take it as the
subject for the adagio in a Wesleyan symphony.

Gone now are the clarinet, the violoncello and the trombone, wild
minstrelsy as of the doleful creatures in Ezekiel, discordant, but
infinitely pathetic.  Gone is that scarebabe stentor, that bellowing
bull of Bashan the village blacksmith, gone is the melodious
carpenter, gone the brawny shepherd with the red hair, who roared
more lustily than all, until they came to the words, "Shepherds with
your flocks abiding," when modesty covered him with confusion, and
compelled him to be silent, as though his own health were being
drunk.  They were doomed and had a presentiment of evil, even when
first I saw them, but they had still a little lease of choir life
remaining, and they roared out


[wick-ed hands have pierced and nailed him, pierced and nailed him
to a tree.]


but no description can give a proper idea of the effect.  When I was
last in Battersby church there was a harmonium played by a sweet-
looking girl with a choir of school children around her, and they
chanted the canticles to the most correct of chants, and they sang
Hymns Ancient and Modern; the high pews were gone, nay, the very
gallery in which the old choir had sung was removed as an accursed
thing which might remind the people of the high places, and Theobald
was old, and Christina was lying under the yew trees in the
churchyard.

But in the evening later on I saw three very old men come chuckling
out of a dissenting chapel, and surely enough they were my old
friends the blacksmith, the carpenter and the shepherd.  There was a
look of content upon their faces which made me feel certain they had
been singing; not doubtless with the old glory of the violoncello,
the clarinet and the trombone, but still songs of Sion and no new
fangled papistry.



CHAPTER XV



The hymn had engaged my attention; when it was over I had time to
take stock of the congregation.  They were chiefly farmers--fat,
very well-to-do folk, who had come some of them with their wives and
children from outlying farms two and three miles away; haters of
popery and of anything which any one might choose to say was popish;
good, sensible fellows who detested theory of any kind, whose ideal
was the maintenance of the status quo with perhaps a loving
reminiscence of old war times, and a sense of wrong that the weather
was not more completely under their control, who desired higher
prices and cheaper wages, but otherwise were most contented when
things were changing least; tolerators, if not lovers, of all that
was familiar, haters of all that was unfamiliar; they would have
been equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted,
and at seeing it practised.

"What can there be in common between Theobald and his parishioners?"
said Christina to me, in the course of the evening, when her husband
was for a few moments absent.  "Of course one must not complain, but
I assure you it grieves me to see a man of Theobald's ability thrown
away upon such a place as this.  If we had only been at Gaysbury,
where there are the A's, the B's, the C's, and Lord D's place, as
you know, quite close, I should not then have felt that we were
living in such a desert; but I suppose it is for the best," she
added more cheerfully; "and then of course the Bishop will come to
us whenever he is in the neighbourhood, and if we were at Gaysbury
he might have gone to Lord D's."

Perhaps I have now said enough to indicate the kind of place in
which Theobald's lines were cast, and the sort of woman he had
married.  As for his own habits, I see him trudging through muddy
lanes and over long sweeps of plover-haunted pastures to visit a
dying cottager's wife.  He takes her meat and wine from his own
table, and that not a little only but liberally.  According to his
lights also, he administers what he is pleased to call spiritual
consolation.

"I am afraid I'm going to Hell, Sir," says the sick woman with a
whine.  "Oh, Sir, save me, save me, don't let me go there.  I
couldn't stand it, Sir, I should die with fear, the very thought of
it drives me into a cold sweat all over."

"Mrs Thompson," says Theobald gravely, "you must have faith in the
precious blood of your Redeemer; it is He alone who can save you."

"But are you sure, Sir," says she, looking wistfully at him, "that
He will forgive me--for I've not been a very good woman, indeed I
haven't--and if God would only say 'Yes' outright with His mouth
when I ask whether my sins are forgiven me--"

"But they ARE forgiven you, Mrs Thompson," says Theobald with some
sternness, for the same ground has been gone over a good many times
already, and he has borne the unhappy woman's misgivings now for a
full quarter of an hour.  Then he puts a stop to the conversation by
repeating prayers taken from the "Visitation of the Sick," and
overawes the poor wretch from expressing further anxiety as to her
condition.

"Can't you tell me, Sir," she exclaims piteously, as she sees that
he is preparing to go away, "can't you tell me that there is no Day
of Judgement, and that there is no such place as Hell?  I can do
without the Heaven, Sir, but I cannot do with the Hell."  Theobald
is much shocked.

"Mrs Thompson," he rejoins impressively, "let me implore you to
suffer no doubt concerning these two cornerstones of our religion to
cross your mind at a moment like the present.  If there is one thing
more certain than another it is that we shall all appear before the
Judgement Seat of Christ, and that the wicked will be consumed in a
lake of everlasting fire.  Doubt this, Mrs Thompson, and you are
lost."

The poor woman buries her fevered head in the coverlet in a paroxysm
of fear which at last finds relief in tears.

"Mrs Thompson," says Theobald, with his hand on the door, "compose
yourself, be calm; you must please to take my word for it that at
the Day of Judgement your sins will be all washed white in the blood
of the Lamb, Mrs Thompson.  Yea," he exclaims frantically, "though
they be as scarlet, yet shall they be as white as wool," and he
makes off as fast as he can from the fetid atmosphere of the cottage
to the pure air outside.  Oh, how thankful he is when the interview
is over!

He returns home, conscious that he has done his duty, and
administered the comforts of religion to a dying sinner.  His
admiring wife awaits him at the Rectory, and assures him that never
yet was clergyman so devoted to the welfare of his flock.  He
believes her; he has a natural tendency to believe everything that
is told him, and who should know the facts of the case better than
his wife?  Poor fellow!  He has done his best, but what does a
fish's best come to when the fish is out of water?  He has left meat
and wine--that he can do; he will call again and will leave more
meat and wine; day after day he trudges over the same plover-haunted
fields, and listens at the end of his walk to the same agony of
forebodings, which day after day he silences, but does not remove,
till at last a merciful weakness renders the sufferer careless of
her future, and Theobald is satisfied that her mind is now
peacefully at rest in Jesus.



CHAPTER XVI



He does not like this branch of his profession--indeed he hates it--
but will not admit it to himself.  The habit of not admitting things
to himself has become a confirmed one with him.  Nevertheless there
haunts him an ill defined sense that life would be pleasanter if
there were no sick sinners, or if they would at any rate face an
eternity of torture with more indifference.  He does not feel that
he is in his element.  The farmers look as if they were in their
element.  They are full-bodied, healthy and contented; but between
him and them there is a great gulf fixed.  A hard and drawn look
begins to settle about the corners of his mouth, so that even if he
were not in a black coat and white tie a child might know him for a
parson.

He knows that he is doing his duty.  Every day convinces him of this
more firmly; but then there is not much duty for him to do.  He is
sadly in want of occupation.  He has no taste for any of those field
sports which were not considered unbecoming for a clergyman forty
years ago.  He does not ride, nor shoot, nor fish, nor course, nor
play cricket.  Study, to do him justice, he had never really liked,
and what inducement was there for him to study at Battersby?  He
reads neither old books nor new ones.  He does not interest himself
in art or science or politics, but he sets his back up with some
promptness if any of them show any development unfamiliar to
himself.  True, he writes his own sermons, but even his wife
considers that his forte lies rather in the example of his life
(which is one long act of self-devotion) than in his utterances from
the pulpit.  After breakfast he retires to his study; he cuts little
bits out of the Bible and gums them with exquisite neatness by the
side of other little bits; this he calls making a Harmony of the Old
and New Testaments.  Alongside the extracts he copies in the very
perfection of hand-writing extracts from Mede (the only man,
according to Theobald, who really understood the Book of
Revelation), Patrick, and other old divines.  He works steadily at
this for half an hour every morning during many years, and the
result is doubtless valuable.  After some years have gone by he
hears his children their lessons, and the daily oft-repeated screams
that issue from the study during the lesson hours tell their own
horrible story over the house.  He has also taken to collecting a
hortus siccus, and through the interest of his father was once
mentioned in the Saturday Magazine as having been the first to find
a plant, whose name I have forgotten, in the neighbourhood of
Battersby.  This number of the Saturday Magazine has been bound in
red morocco, and is kept upon the drawing-room table.  He potters
about his garden; if he hears a hen cackling he runs and tells
Christina, and straightway goes hunting for the egg.

When the two Miss Allabys came, as they sometimes did, to stay with
Christina, they said the life led by their sister and brother-in-law
was an idyll.  Happy indeed was Christina in her choice, for that
she had had a choice was a fiction which soon took root among them--
and happy Theobald in his Christina.  Somehow or other Christina was
always a little shy of cards when her sisters were staying with her,
though at other times she enjoyed a game of cribbage or a rubber of
whist heartily enough, but her sisters knew they would never be
asked to Battersby again if they were to refer to that little
matter, and on the whole it was worth their while to be asked to
Battersby.  If Theobald's temper was rather irritable he did not
vent it upon them.

By nature reserved, if he could have found someone to cook his
dinner for him, he would rather have lived in a desert island than
not.  In his heart of hearts he held with Pope that "the greatest
nuisance to mankind is man" or words to that effect--only that
women, with the exception perhaps of Christina, were worse.  Yet for
all this when visitors called he put a better face on it than anyone
who was behind the scenes would have expected.

He was quick too at introducing the names of any literary
celebrities whom he had met at his father's house, and soon
established an all-round reputation which satisfied even Christina
herself.

Who so integer vitae scelerisque purus, it was asked, as Mr Pontifex
of Battersby?  Who so fit to be consulted if any difficulty about
parish management should arise?  Who such a happy mixture of the
sincere uninquiring Christian and of the man of the world?  For so
people actually called him.  They said he was such an admirable man
of business.  Certainly if he had said he would pay a sum of money
at a certain time, the money would be forthcoming on the appointed
day, and this is saying a good deal for any man.  His constitutional
timidity rendered him incapable of an attempt to overreach when
there was the remotest chance of opposition or publicity, and his
correct bearing and somewhat stern expression were a great
protection to him against being overreached.  He never talked of
money, and invariably changed the subject whenever money was
introduced.  His expression of unutterable horror at all kinds of
meanness was a sufficient guarantee that he was not mean himself.
Besides he had no business transactions save of the most ordinary
butcher's book and baker's book description.  His tastes--if he had
any--were, as we have seen, simple; he had 900 pounds a year and a
house; the neighbourhood was cheap, and for some time he had no
children to be a drag upon him.  Who was not to be envied, and if
envied why then respected, if Theobald was not enviable?

Yet I imagine that Christina was on the whole happier than her
husband.  She had not to go and visit sick parishioners, and the
management of her house and the keeping of her accounts afforded as
much occupation as she desired.  Her principal duty was, as she well
said, to her husband--to love him, honour him, and keep him in a
good temper.  To do her justice she fulfilled this duty to the
uttermost of her power.  It would have been better perhaps if she
had not so frequently assured her husband that he was the best and
wisest of mankind, for no one in his little world ever dreamed of
telling him anything else, and it was not long before he ceased to
have any doubt upon the matter.  As for his temper, which had become
very violent at times, she took care to humour it on the slightest
sign of an approaching outbreak.  She had early found that this was
much the easiest plan.  The thunder was seldom for herself.  Long
before her marriage even she had studied his little ways, and knew
how to add fuel to the fire as long as the fire seemed to want it,
and then to damp it judiciously down, making as little smoke as
possible.

In money matters she was scrupulousness itself.  Theobald made her a
quarterly allowance for her dress, pocket money and little charities
and presents.  In these last items she was liberal in proportion to
her income; indeed she dressed with great economy and gave away
whatever was over in presents or charity.  Oh, what a comfort it was
to Theobald to reflect that he had a wife on whom he could rely
never to cost him a sixpence of unauthorised expenditure!  Letting
alone her absolute submission, the perfect coincidence of her
opinion with his own upon every subject and her constant assurances
to him that he was right in everything which he took it into his
head to say or do, what a tower of strength to him was her exactness
in money matters!  As years went by he became as fond of his wife as
it was in his nature to be of any living thing, and applauded
himself for having stuck to his engagement--a piece of virtue of
which he was now reaping the reward.  Even when Christina did outrun
her quarterly stipend by some thirty shillings or a couple of
pounds, it was always made perfectly clear to Theobald how the
deficiency had arisen--there had been an unusually costly evening
dress bought which was to last a long time, or somebody's unexpected
wedding had necessitated a more handsome present than the quarter's
balance would quite allow:  the excess of expenditure was always
repaid in the following quarter or quarters even though it were only
ten shillings at a time.

I believe, however, that after they had been married some twenty
years, Christina had somewhat fallen from her original perfection as
regards money.  She had got gradually in arrear during many
successive quarters, till she had contracted a chronic loan a sort
of domestic national debt, amounting to between seven and eight
pounds.  Theobald at length felt that a remonstrance had become
imperative, and took advantage of his silver wedding day to inform
Christina that her indebtedness was cancelled, and at the same time
to beg that she would endeavour henceforth to equalise her
expenditure and her income.  She burst into tears of love and
gratitude, assured him that he was the best and most generous of
men, and never during the remainder of her married life was she a
single shilling behind hand.

Christina hated change of all sorts no less cordially than her
husband.  She and Theobald had nearly everything in this world that
they could wish for; why, then, should people desire to introduce
all sorts of changes of which no one could foresee the end?
Religion, she was deeply convinced, had long since attained its
final development, nor could it enter into the heart of reasonable
man to conceive any faith more perfect than was inculcated by the
Church of England.  She could imagine no position more honourable
than that of a clergyman's wife unless indeed it were a bishop's.
Considering his father's influence it was not at all impossible that
Theobald might be a bishop some day--and then--then would occur to
her that one little flaw in the practice of the Church of England--a
flaw not indeed in its doctrine, but in its policy, which she
believed on the whole to be a mistaken one in this respect.  I mean
the fact that a bishop's wife does not take the rank of her husband.

This had been the doing of Elizabeth, who had been a bad woman, of
exceeding doubtful moral character, and at heart a Papist to the
last.  Perhaps people ought to have been above mere considerations
of worldly dignity, but the world was as it was, and such things
carried weight with them, whether they ought to do so or no.  Her
influence as plain Mrs Pontifex, wife, we will say, of the Bishop of
Winchester, would no doubt be considerable.  Such a character as
hers could not fail to carry weight if she were ever in a
sufficiently conspicuous sphere for its influence to be widely felt;
but as Lady Winchester--or the Bishopess--which would sound quite
nicely--who could doubt that her power for good would be enhanced?
And it would be all the nicer because if she had a daughter the
daughter would not be a Bishopess unless indeed she were to marry a
Bishop too, which would not be likely.

These were her thoughts upon her good days; at other times she
would, to do her justice, have doubts whether she was in all
respects as spiritually minded as she ought to be.  She must press
on, press on, till every enemy to her salvation was surmounted and
Satan himself lay bruised under her feet.  It occurred to her on one
of these occasions that she might steal a march over some of her
contemporaries if she were to leave off eating black puddings, of
which whenever they had killed a pig she had hitherto partaken
freely; and if she were also careful that no fowls were served at
her table which had had their necks wrung, but only such as had had
their throats cut and been allowed to bleed.  St Paul and the Church
of Jerusalem had insisted upon it as necessary that even Gentile
converts should abstain from things strangled and from blood, and
they had joined this prohibition with that of a vice about the
abominable nature of which there could be no question; it would be
well therefore to abstain in future and see whether any noteworthy
spiritual result ensued.  She did abstain, and was certain that from
the day of her resolve she had felt stronger, purer in heart, and in
all respects more spiritually minded than she had ever felt
hitherto.  Theobald did not lay so much stress on this as she did,
but as she settled what he should have at dinner she could take care
that he got no strangled fowls; as for black puddings, happily, he
had seen them made when he was a boy, and had never got over his
aversion for them.  She wished the matter were one of more general
observance than it was; this was just a case in which as Lady
Winchester she might have been able to do what as plain Mrs Pontifex
it was hopeless even to attempt.

And thus this worthy couple jogged on from month to month and from
year to year.  The reader, if he has passed middle life and has a
clerical connection, will probably remember scores and scores of
rectors and rectors' wives who differed in no material respect from
Theobald and Christina.  Speaking from a recollection and experience
extending over nearly eighty years from the time when I was myself a
child in the nursery of a vicarage, I should say I had drawn the
better rather than the worse side of the life of an English country
parson of some fifty years ago.  I admit, however, that there are no
such people to be found nowadays.  A more united or, on the whole,
happier, couple could not have been found in England.  One grief
only overshadowed the early years of their married life:  I mean the
fact that no living children were born to them.



CHAPTER XVII



In the course of time this sorrow was removed.  At the beginning of
the fifth year of her married life Christina was safely delivered of
a boy.  This was on the sixth of September 1835.

Word was immediately sent to old Mr Pontifex, who received the news
with real pleasure.  His son John's wife had borne daughters only,
and he was seriously uneasy lest there should be a failure in the
male line of his descendants.  The good news, therefore, was doubly
welcome, and caused as much delight at Elmhurst as dismay in Woburn
Square, where the John Pontifexes were then living.

Here, indeed, this freak of fortune was felt to be all the more
cruel on account of the impossibility of resenting it openly; but
the delighted grandfather cared nothing for what the John Pontifexes
might feel or not feel; he had wanted a grandson and he had got a
grandson, and this should be enough for everybody; and, now that Mrs
Theobald had taken to good ways, she might bring him more grandsons,
which would be desirable, for he should not feel safe with fewer
than three.

He rang the bell for the butler.

"Gelstrap," he said solemnly, "I want to go down into the cellar."

Then Gelstrap preceded him with a candle, and he went into the inner
vault where he kept his choicest wines.

He passed many bins:  there was 1803 Port, 1792 Imperial Tokay, 1800
Claret, 1812 Sherry, these and many others were passed, but it was
not for them that the head of the Pontifex family had gone down into
his inner cellar.  A bin, which had appeared empty until the full
light of the candle had been brought to bear upon it, was now found
to contain a single pint bottle.  This was the object of Mr
Pontifex's search.

Gelstrap had often pondered over this bottle.  It had been placed
there by Mr Pontifex himself about a dozen years previously, on his
return from a visit to his friend the celebrated traveller Dr Jones-
-but there was no tablet above the bin which might give a clue to
the nature of its contents.  On more than one occasion when his
master had gone out and left his keys accidentally behind him, as he
sometimes did, Gelstrap had submitted the bottle to all the tests he
could venture upon, but it was so carefully sealed that wisdom
remained quite shut out from that entrance at which he would have
welcomed her most gladly--and indeed from all other entrances, for
he could make out nothing at all.

And now the mystery was to be solved.  But alas! it seemed as though
the last chance of securing even a sip of the contents was to be
removed for ever, for Mr Pontifex took the bottle into his own hands
and held it up to the light after carefully examining the seal.  He
smiled and left the bin with the bottle in his hands.

Then came a catastrophe.  He stumbled over an empty hamper; there
was the sound of a fall--a smash of broken glass, and in an instant
the cellar floor was covered with the liquid that had been preserved
so carefully for so many years.

With his usual presence of mind Mr Pontifex gasped out a month's
warning to Gelstrap.  Then he got up, and stamped as Theobald had
done when Christina had wanted not to order his dinner.

"It's water from the Jordan," he exclaimed furiously, "which I have
been saving for the baptism of my eldest grandson.  Damn you,
Gelstrap, how dare you be so infernally careless as to leave that
hamper littering about the cellar?"

I wonder the water of the sacred stream did not stand upright as an
heap upon the cellar floor and rebuke him.  Gelstrap told the other
servants afterwards that his master's language had made his backbone
curdle.

The moment, however, that he heard the word "water," he saw his way
again, and flew to the pantry.  Before his master had well noted his
absence he returned with a little sponge and a basin, and had begun
sopping up the waters of the Jordan as though they had been a common
slop.

"I'll filter it, Sir," said Gelstrap meekly.  "It'll come quite
clean."

Mr Pontifex saw hope in this suggestion, which was shortly carried
out by the help of a piece of blotting paper and a funnel, under his
own eyes.  Eventually it was found that half a pint was saved, and
this was held to be sufficient.

Then he made preparations for a visit to Battersby.  He ordered
goodly hampers of the choicest eatables, he selected a goodly hamper
of choice drinkables.  I say choice and not choicest, for although
in his first exaltation he had selected some of his very best wine,
yet on reflection he had felt that there was moderation in all
things, and as he was parting with his best water from the Jordan,
he would only send some of his second best wine.

Before he went to Battersby he stayed a day or two in London, which
he now seldom did, being over seventy years old, and having
practically retired from business.  The John Pontifexes, who kept a
sharp eye on him, discovered to their dismay that he had had an
interview with his solicitors.



CHAPTER XVIII



For the first time in his life Theobald felt that he had done
something right, and could look forward to meeting his father
without alarm.  The old gentleman, indeed, had written him a most
cordial letter, announcing his intention of standing godfather to
the boy--nay, I may as well give it in full, as it shows the writer
at his best.  It runs:


"Dear Theobald,--Your letter gave me very sincere pleasure, the more
so because I had made up my mind for the worst; pray accept my most
hearty congratulations for my daughter-in-law and for yourself.

"I have long preserved a phial of water from the Jordan for the
christening of my first grandson, should it please God to grant me
one.  It was given me by my old friend Dr Jones.  You will agree
with me that though the efficacy of the sacrament does not depend
upon the source of the baptismal waters, yet, ceteris paribus, there
is a sentiment attaching to the waters of the Jordan which should
not be despised.  Small matters like this sometimes influence a
child's whole future career.

"I shall bring my own cook, and have told him to get everything
ready for the christening dinner.  Ask as many of your best
neighbours as your table will hold.  By the way, I have told Lesueur
NOT TO GET A LOBSTER--you had better drive over yourself and get one
from Saltness (for Battersby was only fourteen or fifteen miles from
the sea coast); they are better there, at least I think so, than
anywhere else in England.

"I have put your boy down for something in the event of his
attaining the age of twenty-one years.  If your brother John
continues to have nothing but girls I may do more later on, but I
have many claims upon me, and am not as well off as you may
imagine.--Your affectionate father,

"G.  PONTIFEX."


A few days afterwards the writer of the above letter made his
appearance in a fly which had brought him from Gildenham to
Battersby, a distance of fourteen miles.  There was Lesueur, the
cook, on the box with the driver, and as many hampers as the fly
could carry were disposed upon the roof and elsewhere.  Next day the
John Pontifexes had to come, and Eliza and Maria, as well as
Alethea, who, by her own special request, was godmother to the boy,
for Mr Pontifex had decided that they were to form a happy family
party; so come they all must, and be happy they all must, or it
would be the worse for them.  Next day the author of all this hubbub
was actually christened.  Theobald had proposed to call him George
after old Mr Pontifex, but strange to say, Mr Pontifex over-ruled
him in favour of the name Ernest.  The word "earnest" was just
beginning to come into fashion, and he thought the possession of
such a name might, like his having been baptised in water from the
Jordan, have a permanent effect upon the boy's character, and
influence him for good during the more critical periods of his life.

I was asked to be his second godfather, and was rejoiced to have an
opportunity of meeting Alethea, whom I had not seen for some few
years, but with whom I had been in constant correspondence.  She and
I had always been friends from the time we had played together as
children onwards.  When the death of her grandfather and grandmother
severed her connection with Paleham my intimacy with the Pontifexes
was kept up by my having been at school and college with Theobald,
and each time I saw her I admired her more and more as the best,
kindest, wittiest, most lovable, and, to my mind, handsomest woman
whom I had ever seen.  None of the Pontifexes were deficient in good
looks; they were a well-grown shapely family enough, but Alethea was
the flower of the flock even as regards good looks, while in respect
of all other qualities that make a woman lovable, it seemed as
though the stock that had been intended for the three daughters, and
would have been about sufficient for them, had all been allotted to
herself, her sisters getting none, and she all.

It is impossible for me to explain how it was that she and I never
married.  We two knew exceedingly well, and that must suffice for
the reader.  There was the most perfect sympathy and understanding
between us; we knew that neither of us would marry anyone else.  I
had asked her to marry me a dozen times over; having said this much
I will say no more upon a point which is in no way necessary for the
development of my story.  For the last few years there had been
difficulties in the way of our meeting, and I had not seen her,
though, as I have said, keeping up a close correspondence with her.
Naturally I was overjoyed to meet her again; she was now just thirty
years old, but I thought she looked handsomer than ever.

Her father, of course, was the lion of the party, but seeing that we
were all meek and quite willing to be eaten, he roared to us rather
than at us.  It was a fine sight to see him tucking his napkin under
his rosy old gills, and letting it fall over his capacious waistcoat
while the high light from the chandelier danced about the bump of
benevolence on his bald old head like a star of Bethlehem.

The soup was real turtle; the old gentleman was evidently well
pleased and he was beginning to come out.  Gelstrap stood behind his
master's chair.  I sat next Mrs Theobald on her left hand, and was
thus just opposite her father-in-law, whom I had every opportunity
of observing.

During the first ten minutes or so, which were taken up with the
soup and the bringing in of the fish, I should probably have
thought, if I had not long since made up my mind about him, what a
fine old man he was and how proud his children should be of him; but
suddenly as he was helping himself to lobster sauce, he flushed
crimson, a look of extreme vexation suffused his face, and he darted
two furtive but fiery glances to the two ends of the table, one for
Theobald and one for Christina.  They, poor simple souls, of course
saw that something was exceedingly wrong, and so did I, but I
couldn't guess what it was till I heard the old man hiss in
Christina's ear:  "It was not made with a hen lobster.  What's the
use," he continued, "of my calling the boy Ernest, and getting him
christened in water from the Jordan, if his own father does not know
a cock from a hen lobster?"

This cut me too, for I felt that till that moment I had not so much
as known that there were cocks and hens among lobsters, but had
vaguely thought that in the matter of matrimony they were even as
the angels in heaven, and grew up almost spontaneously from rocks
and sea-weed.

Before the next course was over Mr Pontifex had recovered his
temper, and from that time to the end of the evening he was at his
best.  He told us all about the water from the Jordan; how it had
been brought by Dr Jones along with some stone jars of water from
the Rhine, the Rhone, the Elbe and the Danube, and what trouble he
had had with them at the Custom Houses, and how the intention had
been to make punch with waters from all the greatest rivers in
Europe; and how he, Mr Pontifex, had saved the Jordan water from
going into the bowl, etc., etc.  "No, no, no," he continued, "it
wouldn't have done at all, you know; very profane idea; so we each
took a pint bottle of it home with us, and the punch was much better
without it.  I had a narrow escape with mine, though, the other day;
I fell over a hamper in the cellar, when I was getting it up to
bring to Battersby, and if I had not taken the greatest care the
bottle would certainly have been broken, but I saved it."  And
Gelstrap was standing behind his chair all the time!

Nothing more happened to ruffle Mr Pontifex, so we had a delightful
evening, which has often recurred to me while watching the after
career of my godson.

I called a day or two afterwards and found Mr Pontifex still at
Battersby, laid up with one of those attacks of liver and depression
to which he was becoming more and more subject.  I stayed to
luncheon.  The old gentleman was cross and very difficult; he could
eat nothing--had no appetite at all.  Christina tried to coax him
with a little bit of the fleshy part of a mutton chop.  "How in the
name of reason can I be asked to eat a mutton chop?" he exclaimed
angrily; "you forget, my dear Christina, that you have to deal with
a stomach that is totally disorganised," and he pushed the plate
from him, pouting and frowning like a naughty old child.  Writing as
I do by the light of a later knowledge, I suppose I should have seen
nothing in this but the world's growing pains, the disturbance
inseparable from transition in human things.  I suppose in reality
not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without ceasing to care about its
sap and making the parent tree very uncomfortable by long growling
and grumbling--but surely nature might find some less irritating way
of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it.  Why
should the generations overlap one another at all?  Why cannot we be
buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand
pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up,
as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not
only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by
sparrows some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own
account?

About a year and a half afterwards the tables were turned on
Battersby--for Mrs John Pontifex was safely delivered of a boy.  A
year or so later still, George Pontifex was himself struck down
suddenly by a fit of paralysis, much as his mother had been, but he
did not see the years of his mother.  When his will was opened, it
was found that an original bequest of 20,000 pounds to Theobald
himself (over and above the sum that had been settled upon him and
Christina at the time of his marriage) had been cut down to 17,500
pounds when Mr Pontifex left "something" to Ernest.  The "something"
proved to be 2500 pounds, which was to accumulate in the hands of
trustees.  The rest of the property went to John Pontifex, except
that each of the daughters was left with about 15,000 pounds over
and above 5000 pounds a piece which they inherited from their
mother.

Theobald's father then had told him the truth but not the whole
truth.  Nevertheless, what right had Theobald to complain?
Certainly it was rather hard to make him think that he and his were
to be gainers, and get the honour and glory of the bequest, when all
the time the money was virtually being taken out of Theobald's own
pocket.  On the other hand the father doubtless argued that he had
never told Theobald he was to have anything at all; he had a full
right to do what he liked with his own money; if Theobald chose to
indulge in unwarrantable expectations that was no affair of his; as
it was he was providing for him liberally; and if he did take 2500
pounds of Theobald's share he was still leaving it to Theobald's
son, which, of course, was much the same thing in the end.

No one can deny that the testator had strict right upon his side;
nevertheless the reader will agree with me that Theobald and
Christina might not have considered the christening dinner so great
a success if all the facts had been before them.  Mr Pontifex had
during his own life-time set up a monument in Elmhurst Church to the
memory of his wife (a slab with urns and cherubs like illegitimate
children of King George the Fourth, and all the rest of it), and had
left space for his own epitaph underneath that of his wife.  I do
not know whether it was written by one of his children, or whether
they got some friend to write it for them.  I do not believe that
any satire was intended.  I believe that it was the intention to
convey that nothing short of the Day of Judgement could give anyone
an idea how good a man Mr Pontifex had been, but at first I found it
hard to think that it was free from guile.

The epitaph begins by giving dates of birth and death; then sets out
that the deceased was for many years head of the firm of Fairlie and
Pontifex, and also resident in the parish of Elmhurst.  There is not
a syllable of either praise or dispraise.  The last lines run as
follows:-


HE NOW LIES AWAITING A JOYFUL RESURRECTION
AT THE LAST DAY.
WHAT MANNER OF MAN HE WAS
THAT DAY WILL DISCOVER.



CHAPTER XIX



This much, however, we may say in the meantime, that having lived to
be nearly seventy-three years old and died rich he must have been in
very fair harmony with his surroundings.  I have heard it said
sometimes that such and such a person's life was a lie:  but no
man's life can be a very bad lie; as long as it continues at all it
is at worst nine-tenths of it true.

Mr Pontifex's life not only continued a long time, but was
prosperous right up to the end.  Is not this enough?  Being in this
world is it not our most obvious business to make the most of it--to
observe what things do bona fide tend to long life and comfort, and
to act accordingly?  All animals, except man, know that the
principal business of life is to enjoy it--and they do enjoy it as
much as man and other circumstances will allow.  He has spent his
life best who has enjoyed it most; God will take care that we do not
enjoy it any more than is good for us.  If Mr Pontifex is to be
blamed it is for not having eaten and drunk less and thus suffered
less from his liver, and lived perhaps a year or two longer.

Goodness is naught unless it tends towards old age and sufficiency
of means.  I speak broadly and exceptis excipiendis.  So the
psalmist says, "The righteous shall not lack anything that is good."
Either this is mere poetical license, or it follows that he who
lacks anything that is good is not righteous; there is a presumption
also that he who has passed a long life without lacking anything
that is good has himself also been good enough for practical
purposes.

Mr Pontifex never lacked anything he much cared about.  True, he
might have been happier than he was if he had cared about things
which he did not care for, but the gist of this lies in the "if he
had cared."  We have all sinned and come short of the glory of
making ourselves as comfortable as we easily might have done, but in
this particular case Mr Pontifex did not care, and would not have
gained much by getting what he did not want.

There is no casting of swine's meat before men worse than that which
would flatter virtue as though her true origin were not good enough
for her, but she must have a lineage, deduced as it were by
spiritual heralds, from some stock with which she has nothing to do.
Virtue's true lineage is older and more respectable than any that
can be invented for her.  She springs from man's experience
concerning his own well-being--and this, though not infallible, is
still the least fallible thing we have.  A system which cannot stand
without a better foundation than this must have something so
unstable within itself that it will topple over on whatever pedestal
we place it.

The world has long ago settled that morality and virtue are what
bring men peace at the last.  "Be virtuous," says the copy-book,
"and you will be happy."  Surely if a reputed virtue fails often in
this respect it is only an insidious form of vice, and if a reputed
vice brings no very serious mischief on a man's later years it is
not so bad a vice as it is said to be.  Unfortunately though we are
all of a mind about the main opinion that virtue is what tends to
happiness, and vice what ends in sorrow, we are not so unanimous
about details--that is to say as to whether any given course, such,
we will say, as smoking, has a tendency to happiness or the reverse.

I submit it as the result of my own poor observation, that a good
deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part of parents towards
children is not generally followed by ill consequences to the
parents themselves.  They may cast a gloom over their children's
lives for many years without having to suffer anything that will
hurt them.  I should say, then, that it shows no great moral
obliquity on the part of parents if within certain limits they make
their children's lives a burden to them.

Granted that Mr Pontifex's was not a very exalted character,
ordinary men are not required to have very exalted characters.  It
is enough if we are of the same moral and mental stature as the
"main" or "mean" part of men--that is to say as the average.

It is involved in the very essence of things that rich men who die
old shall have been mean.  The greatest and wisest of mankind will
be almost always found to be the meanest--the ones who have kept the
"mean" best between excess either of virtue or vice.  They hardly
ever have been prosperous if they have not done this, and,
considering how many miscarry altogether, it is no small feather in
a man's cap if he has been no worse than his neighbours.  Homer
tells us about some one who made it his business [Greek text]--
always to excel and to stand higher than other people.  What an
uncompanionable disagreeable person he must have been!  Homer's
heroes generally came to a bad end, and I doubt not that this
gentleman, whoever he was, did so sooner or later.

A very high standard, again, involves the possession of rare
virtues, and rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things
that have not been able to hold their own in the world.  A virtue to
be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but
more durable metal.

People divide off vice and virtue as though they were two things,
neither of which had with it anything of the other.  This is not so.
There is no useful virtue which has not some alloy of vice, and
hardly any vice, if any, which carries not with it a little dash of
virtue; virtue and vice are like life and death, or mind and matter-
-things which cannot exist without being qualified by their
opposite.  The most absolute life contains death, and the corpse is
still in many respects living; so also it has been said, "If thou,
Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss," which shows that
even the highest ideal we can conceive will yet admit so much
compromise with vice as shall countenance the poor abuses of the
time, if they are not too outrageous.  That vice pays homage to
virtue is notorious; we call this hypocrisy; there should be a word
found for the homage which virtue not unfrequently pays, or at any
rate would be wise in paying, to vice.

I grant that some men will find happiness in having what we all feel
to be a higher moral standard than others.  If they go in for this,
however, they must be content with virtue as her own reward, and not
grumble if they find lofty Quixotism an expensive luxury, whose
rewards belong to a kingdom that is not of this world.  They must
not wonder if they cut a poor figure in trying to make the most of
both worlds.  Disbelieve as we may the details of the accounts which
record the growth of the Christian religion, yet a great part of
Christian teaching will remain as true as though we accepted the
details.  We cannot serve God and Mammon; strait is the way and
narrow is the gate which leads to what those who live by faith hold
to be best worth having, and there is no way of saying this better
than the Bible has done.  It is well there should be some who think
thus, as it is well there should be speculators in commerce, who
will often burn their fingers--but it is not well that the majority
should leave the "mean" and beaten path.

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure--tangible material
prosperity in this world--is the safest test of virtue.  Progress
has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme
sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather
than to asceticism.  To use a commercial metaphor, competition is so
keen, and the margin of profits has been cut down so closely that
virtue cannot afford to throw any bona fide chance away, and must
base her action rather on the actual moneying out of conduct than on
a flattering prospectus.  She will not therefore neglect--as some do
who are prudent and economical enough in other matters--the
important factor of our chance of escaping detection, or at any rate
of our dying first.  A reasonable virtue will give this chance its
due value, neither more nor less.

Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or duty.
For hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, right and duty are
often still harder to distinguish and, if we go wrong with them,
will lead us into just as sorry a plight as a mistaken opinion
concerning pleasure.  When men burn their fingers through following
after pleasure they find out their mistake and get to see where they
have gone wrong more easily than when they have burnt them through
following after a fancied duty, or a fancied idea concerning right
virtue.  The devil, in fact, when he dresses himself in angel's
clothes, can only be detected by experts of exceptional skill, and
so often does he adopt this disguise that it is hardly safe to be
seen talking to an angel at all, and prudent people will follow
after pleasure as a more homely but more respectable and on the
whole much more trustworthy guide.

Returning to Mr Pontifex, over and above his having lived long and
prosperously, he left numerous offspring, to all of whom he
communicated not only his physical and mental characteristics, with
no more than the usual amount of modification, but also no small
share of characteristics which are less easily transmitted--I mean
his pecuniary characteristics.  It may be said that he acquired
these by sitting still and letting money run, as it were, right up
against him, but against how many does not money run who do not take
it when it does, or who, even if they hold it for a little while,
cannot so incorporate it with themselves that it shall descend
through them to their offspring?  Mr Pontifex did this.  He kept
what he may be said to have made, and money is like a reputation for
ability--more easily made than kept.

Take him, then, for all in all, I am not inclined to be so severe
upon him as my father was.  Judge him according to any very lofty
standard, and he is nowhere.  Judge him according to a fair average
standard, and there is not much fault to be found with him.  I have
said what I have said in the foregoing chapter once for all, and
shall not break my thread to repeat it.  It should go without saying
in modification of the verdict which the reader may be inclined to
pass too hastily, not only upon Mr George Pontifex, but also upon
Theobald and Christina.  And now I will continue my story.



CHAPTER XX



The birth of his son opened Theobald's eyes to a good deal which he
had but faintly realised hitherto.  He had had no idea how great a
nuisance a baby was.  Babies come into the world so suddenly at the
end, and upset everything so terribly when they do come:  why cannot
they steal in upon us with less of a shock to the domestic system?
His wife, too, did not recover rapidly from her confinement; she
remained an invalid for months; here was another nuisance and an
expensive one, which interfered with the amount which Theobald liked
to put by out of his income against, as he said, a rainy day, or to
make provision for his family if he should have one.  Now he was
getting a family, so that it became all the more necessary to put
money by, and here was the baby hindering him.  Theorists may say
what they like about a man's children being a continuation of his
own identity, but it will generally be found that those who talk in
this way have no children of their own.  Practical family men know
better.

About twelve months after the birth of Ernest there came a second,
also a boy, who was christened Joseph, and in less than twelve
months afterwards, a girl, to whom was given the name of Charlotte.
A few months before this girl was born Christina paid a visit to the
John Pontifexes in London, and, knowing her condition, passed a good
deal of time at the Royal Academy exhibition looking at the types of
female beauty portrayed by the Academicians, for she had made up her
mind that the child this time was to be a girl.  Alethea warned her
not to do this, but she persisted, and certainly the child turned
out plain, but whether the pictures caused this or no I cannot say.

Theobald had never liked children.  He had always got away from them
as soon as he could, and so had they from him; oh, why, he was
inclined to ask himself, could not children be born into the world
grown up?  If Christina could have given birth to a few full-grown
clergymen in priest's orders--of moderate views, but inclining
rather to Evangelicalism, with comfortable livings and in all
respects facsimiles of Theobald himself--why, there might have been
more sense in it; or if people could buy ready-made children at a
shop of whatever age and sex they liked, instead of always having to
make them at home and to begin at the beginning with them--that
might do better, but as it was he did not like it.  He felt as he
had felt when he had been required to come and be married to
Christina--that he had been going on for a long time quite nicely,
and would much rather continue things on their present footing.  In
the matter of getting married he had been obliged to pretend he
liked it; but times were changed, and if he did not like a thing
now, he could find a hundred unexceptionable ways of making his
dislike apparent.

It might have been better if Theobald in his younger days had kicked
more against his father:  the fact that he had not done so
encouraged him to expect the most implicit obedience from his own
children.  He could trust himself, he said (and so did Christina),
to be more lenient than perhaps his father had been to himself; his
danger, he said (and so again did Christina), would be rather in the
direction of being too indulgent; he must be on his guard against
this, for no duty could be more important than that of teaching a
child to obey its parents in all things.

He had read not long since of an Eastern traveller, who, while
exploring somewhere in the more remote parts of Arabia and Asia
Minor, had come upon a remarkably hardy, sober, industrious little
Christian community--all of them in the best of health--who had
turned out to be the actual living descendants of Jonadab, the son
of Rechab; and two men in European costume, indeed, but speaking
English with a broken accent, and by their colour evidently
Oriental, had come begging to Battersby soon afterwards, and
represented themselves as belonging to this people; they had said
they were collecting funds to promote the conversion of their fellow
tribesmen to the English branch of the Christian religion.  True,
they turned out to be impostors, for when he gave them a pound and
Christina five shillings from her private purse, they went and got
drunk with it in the next village but one to Battersby; still, this
did not invalidate the story of the Eastern traveller.  Then there
were the Romans--whose greatness was probably due to the wholesome
authority exercised by the head of a family over all its members.
Some Romans had even killed their children; this was going too far,
but then the Romans were not Christians, and knew no better.

The practical outcome of the foregoing was a conviction in
Theobald's mind, and if in his, then in Christina's, that it was
their duty to begin training up their children in the way they
should go, even from their earliest infancy.  The first signs of
self-will must be carefully looked for, and plucked up by the roots
at once before they had time to grow.  Theobald picked up this numb
serpent of a metaphor and cherished it in his bosom.

Before Ernest could well crawl he was taught to kneel; before he
could well speak he was taught to lisp the Lord's prayer, and the
general confession.  How was it possible that these things could be
taught too early?  If his attention flagged or his memory failed
him, here was an ill weed which would grow apace, unless it were
plucked out immediately, and the only way to pluck it out was to
whip him, or shut him up in a cupboard, or dock him of some of the
small pleasures of childhood.  Before he was three years old he
could read and, after a fashion, write.  Before he was four he was
learning Latin, and could do rule of three sums.

As for the child himself, he was naturally of an even temper, he
doted upon his nurse, on kittens and puppies, and on all things that
would do him the kindness of allowing him to be fond of them.  He
was fond of his mother, too, but as regards his father, he has told
me in later life he could remember no feeling but fear and
shrinking.  Christina did not remonstrate with Theobald concerning
the severity of the tasks imposed upon their boy, nor yet as to the
continual whippings that were found necessary at lesson times.
Indeed, when during any absence of Theobald's the lessons were
entrusted to her, she found to her sorrow that it was the only thing
to do, and she did it no less effectually than Theobald himself,
nevertheless she was fond of her boy, which Theobald never was, and
it was long before she could destroy all affection for herself in
the mind of her first-born.  But she persevered.



CHAPTER XXI



Strange! for she believed she doted upon him, and certainly she
loved him better than either of her other children.  Her version of
the matter was that there had never yet been two parents so self-
denying and devoted to the highest welfare of their children as
Theobald and herself.  For Ernest, a very great future--she was
certain of it--was in store.  This made severity all the more
necessary, so that from the first he might have been kept pure from
every taint of evil.  She could not allow herself the scope for
castle building which, we read, was indulged in by every Jewish
matron before the appearance of the Messiah, for the Messiah had now
come, but there was to be a millennium shortly, certainly not later
than 1866, when Ernest would be just about the right age for it, and
a modern Elias would be wanted to herald its approach.  Heaven would
bear her witness that she had never shrunk from the idea of
martyrdom for herself and Theobald, nor would she avoid it for her
boy, if his life was required of her in her Redeemer's service.  Oh,
no!  If God told her to offer up her first-born, as He had told
Abraham, she would take him up to Pigbury Beacon and plunge the--no,
that she could not do, but it would be unnecessary--some one else
might do that.  It was not for nothing that Ernest had been baptised
in water from the Jordan.  It had not been her doing, nor yet
Theobald's.  They had not sought it.  When water from the sacred
stream was wanted for a sacred infant, the channel had been found
through which it was to flow from far Palestine over land and sea to
the door of the house where the child was lying.  Why, it was a
miracle!  It was!  It was!  She saw it all now.  The Jordan had left
its bed and flowed into her own house.  It was idle to say that this
was not a miracle.  No miracle was effected without means of some
kind; the difference between the faithful and the unbeliever
consisted in the very fact that the former could see a miracle where
the latter could not.  The Jews could see no miracle even in the
raising of Lazarus and the feeding of the five thousand.  The John
Pontifexes would see no miracle in this matter of the water from the
Jordan.  The essence of a miracle lay not in the fact that means had
been dispensed with, but in the adoption of means to a great end
that had not been available without interference; and no one would
suppose that Dr Jones would have brought the water unless he had
been directed.  She would tell this to Theobald, and get him to see
it in the . . . and yet perhaps it would be better not.  The insight
of women upon matters of this sort was deeper and more unerring than
that of men.  It was a woman and not a man who had been filled most
completely with the whole fulness of the Deity.  But why had they
not treasured up the water after it was used?  It ought never, never
to have been thrown away, but it had been.  Perhaps, however, this
was for the best too--they might have been tempted to set too much
store by it, and it might have become a source of spiritual danger
to them--perhaps even of spiritual pride, the very sin of all others
which she most abhorred.  As for the channel through which the
Jordan had flowed to Battersby, that mattered not more than the
earth through which the river ran in Palestine itself.  Dr Jones was
certainly worldly--very worldly; so, she regretted to feel, had been
her father-in-law, though in a less degree; spiritual, at heart,
doubtless, and becoming more and more spiritual continually as he
grew older, still he was tainted with the world, till a very few
hours, probably, before his death, whereas she and Theobald had
given up all for Christ's sake.  THEY were not worldly.  At least
Theobald was not.  She had been, but she was sure she had grown in
grace since she had left off eating things strangled and blood--this
was as the washing in Jordan as against Abana and Pharpar, rivers of
Damascus.  Her boy should never touch a strangled fowl nor a black
pudding--that, at any rate, she could see to.  He should have a
coral from the neighbourhood of Joppa--there were coral insects on
those coasts, so that the thing could easily be done with a little
energy; she would write to Dr Jones about it, etc.  And so on for
hours together day after day for years.  Truly, Mrs Theobald loved
her child according to her lights with an exceeding great fondness,
but the dreams she had dreamed in sleep were sober realities in
comparison with those she indulged in while awake.

When Ernest was in his second year, Theobald, as I have already
said, began to teach him to read.  He began to whip him two days
after he had begun to teach him.

"It was painful," as he said to Christina, but it was the only thing
to do and it was done.  The child was puny, white and sickly, so
they sent continually for the doctor who dosed him with calomel and
James's powder.  All was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity,
and impatience.  They were stupid in little things; and he that is
stupid in little will be stupid also in much.

Presently old Mr Pontifex died, and then came the revelation of the
little alteration he had made in his will simultaneously with his
bequest to Ernest.  It was rather hard to bear, especially as there
was no way of conveying a bit of their minds to the testator now
that he could no longer hurt them.  As regards the boy himself
anyone must see that the bequest would be an unmitigated misfortune
to him.  To leave him a small independence was perhaps the greatest
injury which one could inflict upon a young man.  It would cripple
his energies, and deaden his desire for active employment.  Many a
youth was led into evil courses by the knowledge that on arriving at
majority he would come into a few thousands.  They might surely have
been trusted to have their boy's interests at heart, and must be
better judges of those interests than he, at twenty-one, could be
expected to be:  besides if Jonadab, the son of Rechab's father--or
perhaps it might be simpler under the circumstances to say Rechab at
once--if Rechab, then, had left handsome legacies to his
grandchildren--why Jonadab might not have found those children so
easy to deal with, etc.  "My dear," said Theobald, after having
discussed the matter with Christina for the twentieth time, "my
dear, the only thing to guide and console us under misfortunes of
this kind is to take refuge in practical work.  I will go and pay a
visit to Mrs Thompson."

On those days Mrs Thompson would be told that her sins were all
washed white, etc., a little sooner and a little more peremptorily
than on others.



CHAPTER XXII



I used to stay at Battersby for a day or two sometimes, while my
godson and his brother and sister were children.  I hardly know why
I went, for Theobald and I grew more and more apart, but one gets
into grooves sometimes, and the supposed friendship between myself
and the Pontifexes continued to exist, though it was now little more
than rudimentary.  My godson pleased me more than either of the
other children, but he had not much of the buoyancy of childhood,
and was more like a puny, sallow little old man than I liked.  The
young people, however, were very ready to be friendly.

I remember Ernest and his brother hovered round me on the first day
of one of these visits with their hands full of fading flowers,
which they at length proffered me.  On this I did what I suppose was
expected:  I inquired if there was a shop near where they could buy
sweeties.  They said there was, so I felt in my pockets, but only
succeeded in finding two pence halfpenny in small money.  This I
gave them, and the youngsters, aged four and three, toddled off
alone.  Ere long they returned, and Ernest said, "We can't get
sweeties for all this money" (I felt rebuked, but no rebuke was
intended); "we can get sweeties for this" (showing a penny), "and
for this" (showing another penny), "but we cannot get them for all
this," and he added the halfpenny to the two pence.  I suppose they
had wanted a twopenny cake, or something like that.  I was amused,
and left them to solve the difficulty their own way, being anxious
to see what they would do.

Presently Ernest said, "May we give you back this" (showing the
halfpenny) "and not give you back this and this?" (showing the
pence).  I assented, and they gave a sigh of relief and went on
their way rejoicing.  A few more presents of pence and small toys
completed the conquest, and they began to take me into their
confidence.

They told me a good deal which I am afraid I ought not to have
listened to.  They said that if grandpapa had lived longer he would
most likely have been made a Lord, and that then papa would have
been the Honourable and Reverend, but that grandpapa was now in
heaven singing beautiful hymns with grandmamma Allaby to Jesus
Christ, who was very fond of them; and that when Ernest was ill, his
mamma had told him he need not be afraid of dying for he would go
straight to heaven, if he would only be sorry for having done his
lessons so badly and vexed his dear papa, and if he would promise
never, never to vex him any more; and that when he got to heaven
grandpapa and grandmamma Allaby would meet him, and he would be
always with them, and they would be very good to him and teach him
to sing ever such beautiful hymns, more beautiful by far than those
which he was now so fond of, etc., etc.; but he did not wish to die,
and was glad when he got better, for there were no kittens in
heaven, and he did not think there were cowslips to make cowslip tea
with.

Their mother was plainly disappointed in them.  "My children are
none of them geniuses, Mr Overton," she said to me at breakfast one
morning.  "They have fair abilities, and, thanks to Theobald's
tuition, they are forward for their years, but they have nothing
like genius:  genius is a thing apart from this, is it not?"

Of course I said it was "a thing quite apart from this," but if my
thoughts had been laid bare, they would have appeared as "Give me my
coffee immediately, ma'am, and don't talk nonsense."  I have no idea
what genius is, but so far as I can form any conception about it, I
should say it was a stupid word which cannot be too soon abandoned
to scientific and literary claqueurs.

I do not know exactly what Christina expected, but I should imagine
it was something like this:  "My children ought to be all geniuses,
because they are mine and Theobald's, and it is naughty of them not
to be; but, of course, they cannot be so good and clever as Theobald
and I were, and if they show signs of being so it will be naughty of
them.  Happily, however, they are not this, and yet it is very
dreadful that they are not.  As for genius--hoity-toity, indeed--
why, a genius should turn intellectual summersaults as soon as it is
born, and none of my children have yet been able to get into the
newspapers.  I will not have children of mine give themselves airs--
it is enough for them that Theobald and I should do so."

She did not know, poor woman, that the true greatness wears an
invisible cloak, under cover of which it goes in and out among men
without being suspected; if its cloak does not conceal it from
itself always, and from all others for many years, its greatness
will ere long shrink to very ordinary dimensions.  What, then, it
may be asked, is the good of being great?  The answer is that you
may understand greatness better in others, whether alive or dead,
and choose better company from these and enjoy and understand that
company better when you have chosen it--also that you may be able to
give pleasure to the best people and live in the lives of those who
are yet unborn.  This, one would think, was substantial gain enough
for greatness without its wanting to ride rough-shod over us, even
when disguised as humility.

I was there on a Sunday, and observed the rigour with which the
young people were taught to observe the Sabbath; they might not cut
out things, nor use their paintbox on a Sunday, and this they
thought rather hard, because their cousins the John Pontifexes might
do these things.  Their cousins might play with their toy train on
Sunday, but though they had promised that they would run none but
Sunday trains, all traffic had been prohibited.  One treat only was
allowed them--on Sunday evenings they might choose their own hymns.

In the course of the evening they came into the drawing-room, and,
as an especial treat, were to sing some of their hymns to me,
instead of saying them, so that I might hear how nicely they sang.
Ernest was to choose the first hymn, and he chose one about some
people who were to come to the sunset tree.  I am no botanist, and
do not know what kind of tree a sunset tree is, but the words began,
"Come, come, come; come to the sunset tree for the day is past and
gone."  The tune was rather pretty and had taken Ernest's fancy, for
he was unusually fond of music and had a sweet little child's voice
which he liked using.

He was, however, very late in being able to sound a hard it "c" or
"k," and, instead of saying "Come," he said "Tum tum, tum."

"Ernest," said Theobald, from the arm-chair in front of the fire,
where he was sitting with his hands folded before him, "don't you
think it would be very nice if you were to say 'come' like other
people, instead of 'tum'?"

"I do say tum," replied Ernest, meaning that he had said "come."

Theobald was always in a bad temper on Sunday evening.  Whether it
is that they are as much bored with the day as their neighbours, or
whether they are tired, or whatever the cause may be, clergymen are
seldom at their best on Sunday evening; I had already seen signs
that evening that my host was cross, and was a little nervous at
hearing Ernest say so promptly "I do say tum," when his papa had
said he did not say it as he should.

Theobald noticed the fact that he was being contradicted in a
moment.  He got up from his arm-chair and went to the piano.

"No, Ernest, you don't," he said, "you say nothing of the kind, you
say 'tum,' not 'come.'  Now say 'come' after me, as I do."

"Tum," said Ernest, at once; "is that better?"  I have no doubt he
thought it was, but it was not.

"Now, Ernest, you are not taking pains:  you are not trying as you
ought to do.  It is high time you learned to say 'come,' why, Joey
can say 'come,' can't you, Joey?"

"Yeth, I can," replied Joey, and he said something which was not far
off "come."

"There, Ernest, do you hear that?  There's no difficulty about it,
nor shadow of difficulty.  Now, take your own time, think about it,
and say 'come' after me."

The boy remained silent a few seconds and then said "tum" again.

I laughed, but Theobald turned to me impatiently and said, "Please
do not laugh, Overton; it will make the boy think it does not
matter, and it matters a great deal;" then turning to Ernest he
said, "Now, Ernest, I will give you one more chance, and if you
don't say 'come,' I shall know that you are self-willed and
naughty."

He looked very angry, and a shade came over Ernest's face, like that
which comes upon the face of a puppy when it is being scolded
without understanding why.  The child saw well what was coming now,
was frightened, and, of course, said "tum" once more.

"Very well, Ernest," said his father, catching him angrily by the
shoulder.  "I have done my best to save you, but if you will have it
so, you will," and he lugged the little wretch, crying by
anticipation, out of the room.  A few minutes more and we could hear
screams coming from the dining-room, across the hall which separated
the drawing-room from the dining-room, and knew that poor Ernest was
being beaten.

"I have sent him up to bed," said Theobald, as he returned to the
drawing-room, "and now, Christina, I think we will have the servants
in to prayers," and he rang the bell for them, red-handed as he was.



CHAPTER XXIII



The man-servant William came and set the chairs for the maids, and
presently they filed in.  First Christina's maid, then the cook,
then the housemaid, then William, and then the coachman.  I sat
opposite them, and watched their faces as Theobald read a chapter
from the Bible.  They were nice people, but more absolute vacancy I
never saw upon the countenances of human beings.

Theobald began by reading a few verses from the Old Testament,
according to some system of his own.  On this occasion the passage
came from the fifteenth chapter of Numbers:  it had no particular
bearing that I could see upon anything which was going on just then,
but the spirit which breathed throughout the whole seemed to me to
be so like that of Theobald himself, that I could understand better
after hearing it, how he came to think as he thought, and act as he
acted.

The verses are as follows -


"But the soul that doeth aught presumptuously, whether he be born in
the land or a stranger, the same reproacheth the Lord; and that soul
shall be cut off from among his people.

"Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken His
commandments, that soul shall be utterly cut off; his iniquity shall
be upon him.

"And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness they found
a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day.

"And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and
Aaron, and unto all the congregation.

"And they put him in ward because it was not declared what should be
done to him.

"And the Lord said unto Moses, the man shall be surely put to death;
all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.

"And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned
him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded Moses.

"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

"Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them
fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their
generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a
ribband of blue.

"And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it and
remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them, and that ye
seek not after your own heart and your own eyes.

"That ye may remember and do all my commandments and be holy unto
your God.

"I am the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt,
to be your God:  I am the Lord your God."


My thoughts wandered while Theobald was reading the above, and
reverted to a little matter which I had observed in the course of
the afternoon.

It happened that some years previously, a swarm of bees had taken up
their abode in the roof of the house under the slates, and had
multiplied so that the drawing-room was a good deal frequented by
these bees during the summer, when the windows were open.  The
drawing-room paper was of a pattern which consisted of bunches of
red and white roses, and I saw several bees at different times fly
up to these bunches and try them, under the impression that they
were real flowers; having tried one bunch, they tried the next, and
the next, and the next, till they reached the one that was nearest
the ceiling, then they went down bunch by bunch as they had
ascended, till they were stopped by the back of the sofa; on this
they ascended bunch by bunch to the ceiling again; and so on, and so
on till I was tired of watching them.  As I thought of the family
prayers being repeated night and morning, week by week, month by
month, and year by year, I could nor help thinking how like it was
to the way in which the bees went up the wall and down the wall,
bunch by bunch, without ever suspecting that so many of the
associated ideas could be present, and yet the main idea be wanting
hopelessly, and for ever.

When Theobald had finished reading we all knelt down and the Carlo
Dolci and the Sassoferrato looked down upon a sea of upturned backs,
as we buried our faces in our chairs.  I noted that Theobald prayed
that we might be made "truly honest and conscientious" in all our
dealings, and smiled at the introduction of the "truly."  Then my
thoughts ran back to the bees and I reflected that after all it was
perhaps as well at any rate for Theobald that our prayers were
seldom marked by any very encouraging degree of response, for if I
had thought there was the slightest chance of my being heard I
should have prayed that some one might ere long treat him as he had
treated Ernest.

Then my thoughts wandered on to those calculations which people make
about waste of time and how much one can get done if one gives ten
minutes a day to it, and I was thinking what improper suggestion I
could make in connection with this and the time spent on family
prayers which should at the same time be just tolerable, when I
heard Theobald beginning "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" and in
a few seconds the ceremony was over, and the servants filed out
again as they had filed in.

As soon as they had left the drawing-room, Christina, who was a
little ashamed of the transaction to which I had been a witness,
imprudently returned to it, and began to justify it, saying that it
cut her to the heart, and that it cut Theobald to the heart and a
good deal more, but that "it was the only thing to be done."

I received this as coldly as I decently could, and by my silence
during the rest of the evening showed that I disapproved of what I
had seen.

Next day I was to go back to London, but before I went I said I
should like to take some new-laid eggs back with me, so Theobald
took me to the house of a labourer in the village who lived a
stone's throw from the Rectory as being likely to supply me with
them.  Ernest, for some reason or other, was allowed to come too.  I
think the hens had begun to sit, but at any rate eggs were scarce,
and the cottager's wife could not find me more than seven or eight,
which we proceeded to wrap up in separate pieces of paper so that I
might take them to town safely.

This operation was carried on upon the ground in front of the
cottage door, and while we were in the midst of it the cottager's
little boy, a lad much about Ernest's age, trod upon one of the eggs
that was wrapped up in paper and broke it.

"There now, Jack," said his mother, "see what you've done, you've
broken a nice egg and cost me a penny--Here, Emma," she added,
calling her daughter, "take the child away, there's a dear."

Emma came at once, and walked off with the youngster, taking him out
of harm's way.

"Papa," said Ernest, after we had left the house, "Why didn't Mrs
Heaton whip Jack when he trod on the egg?"

I was spiteful enough to give Theobald a grim smile which said as
plainly as words could have done that I thought Ernest had hit him
rather hard.

Theobald coloured and looked angry.  "I dare say," he said quickly,
"that his mother will whip him now that we are gone."

I was not going to have this and said I did not believe it, and so
the matter dropped, but Theobald did not forget it and my visits to
Battersby were henceforth less frequent.

On our return to the house we found the postman had arrived and had
brought a letter appointing Theobald to a rural deanery which had
lately fallen vacant by the death of one of the neighbouring clergy
who had held the office for many years.  The bishop wrote to
Theobald most warmly, and assured him that he valued him as among
the most hard-working and devoted of his parochial clergy.
Christina of course was delighted, and gave me to understand that it
was only an instalment of the much higher dignities which were in
store for Theobald when his merits were more widely known.

I did not then foresee how closely my godson's life and mine were in
after years to be bound up together; if I had, I should doubtless
have looked upon him with different eyes and noted much to which I
paid no attention at the time.  As it was, I was glad to get away
from him, for I could do nothing for him, or chose to say that I
could not, and the sight of so much suffering was painful to me.  A
man should not only have his own way as far as possible, but he
should only consort with things that are getting their own way so
far that they are at any rate comfortable.  Unless for short times
under exceptional circumstances, he should not even see things that
have been stunted or starved, much less should he eat meat that has
been vexed by having been over-driven or underfed, or afflicted with
any disease; nor should he touch vegetables that have not been well
grown.  For all these things cross a man; whatever a man comes in
contact with in any way forms a cross with him which will leave him
better or worse, and the better things he is crossed with the more
likely he is to live long and happily.  All things must be crossed a
little or they would cease to live--but holy things, such for
example as Giovanni Bellini's saints, have been crossed with nothing
but what is good of its kind,



CHAPTER XXIV



The storm which I have described in the previous chapter was a
sample of those that occurred daily for many years.  No matter how
clear the sky, it was always liable to cloud over now in one quarter
now in another, and the thunder and lightning were upon the young
people before they knew where they were.

"And then, you know," said Ernest to me, when I asked him not long
since to give me more of his childish reminiscences for the benefit
of my story, "we used to learn Mrs Barbauld's hymns; they were in
prose, and there was one about the lion which began, 'Come, and I
will show you what is strong.  The lion is strong; when he raiseth
himself from his lair, when he shaketh his mane, when the voice of
his roaring is heard the cattle of the field fly, and the beasts of
the desert hide themselves, for he is very terrible.'  I used to say
this to Joey and Charlotte about my father himself when I got a
little older, but they were always didactic, and said it was naughty
of me.

"One great reason why clergymen's households are generally unhappy
is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the
house.  The doctor is out visiting patients half his time:  the
lawyer and the merchant have offices away from home, but the
clergyman has no official place of business which shall ensure his
being away from home for many hours together at stated times.  Our
great days were when my father went for a day's shopping to
Gildenham.  We were some miles from this place, and commissions used
to accumulate on my father's list till he would make a day of it and
go and do the lot.  As soon as his back was turned the air felt
lighter; as soon as the hall door opened to let him in again, the
law with its all-reaching 'touch not, taste not, handle not' was
upon us again.  The worst of it was that I could never trust Joey
and Charlotte; they would go a good way with me and then turn back,
or even the whole way and then their consciences would compel them
to tell papa and mamma.  They liked running with the hare up to a
certain point, but their instinct was towards the hounds.

"It seems to me," he continued, "that the family is a survival of
the principle which is more logically embodied in the compound
animal--and the compound animal is a form of life which has been
found incompatible with high development.  I would do with the
family among mankind what nature has done with the compound animal,
and confine it to the lower and less progressive races.  Certainly
there is no inherent love for the family system on the part of
nature herself.  Poll the forms of life and you will find it in a
ridiculously small minority.  The fishes know it not, and they get
along quite nicely.  The ants and the bees, who far outnumber man,
sting their fathers to death as a matter of course, and are given to
the atrocious mutilation of nine-tenths of the offspring committed
to their charge, yet where shall we find communities more
universally respected?  Take the cuckoo again--is there any bird
which we like better?"

I saw he was running off from his own reminiscences and tried to
bring him back to them, but it was no use.

"What a fool," he said, "a man is to remember anything that happened
more than a week ago unless it was pleasant, or unless he wants to
make some use of it.

"Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during
their own lifetime.  A man at five and thirty should no more regret
not having had a happier childhood than he should regret not having
been born a prince of the blood.  He might be happier if he had been
more fortunate in childhood, but, for aught he knows, if he had,
something else might have happened which might have killed him long
ago.  If I had to be born again I would be born at Battersby of the
same father and mother as before, and I would not alter anything
that has ever happened to me."

The most amusing incident that I can remember about his childhood
was that when he was about seven years old he told me he was going
to have a natural child.  I asked him his reasons for thinking this,
and he explained that papa and mamma had always told him that nobody
had children till they were married, and as long as he had believed
this of course he had had no idea of having a child, till he was
grown up; but not long since he had been reading Mrs Markham's
history of England and had come upon the words "John of Gaunt had
several natural children" he had therefore asked his governess what
a natural child was--were not all children natural?

"Oh, my dear," said she, "a natural child is a child a person has
before he is married."  On this it seemed to follow logically that
if John of Gaunt had had children before he was married, he, Ernest
Pontifex, might have them also, and he would be obliged to me if I
would tell him what he had better do under the circumstances.

I enquired how long ago he had made this discovery.  He said about a
fortnight, and he did not know where to look for the child, for it
might come at any moment.  "You know," he said, "babies come so
suddenly; one goes to bed one night and next morning there is a
baby.  Why, it might die of cold if we are not on the look-out for
it.  I hope it will be a boy."

"And you have told your governess about this?"

"Yes, but she puts me off and does not help me:  she says it will
not come for many years, and she hopes not then."

"Are you quite sure that you have not made any mistake in all this?"

"Oh, no; because Mrs Burne, you know, called here a few days ago,
and I was sent for to be looked at.  And mamma held me out at arm's
length and said, 'Is he Mr Pontifex's child, Mrs Burne, or is he
mine?'  Of course, she couldn't have said this if papa had not had
some of the children himself.  I did think the gentleman had all the
boys and the lady all the girls; but it can't be like this, or else
mamma would not have asked Mrs Burne to guess; but then Mrs Burne
said, 'Oh, he's Mr Pontifex's child OF COURSE,' and I didn't quite
know what she meant by saying 'of course':  it seemed as though I
was right in thinking that the husband has all the boys and the wife
all the girls; I wish you would explain to me all about it."

This I could hardly do, so I changed the conversation, after
reassuring him as best I could.



CHAPTER XXV



Three or four years after the birth of her daughter, Christina had
had one more child.  She had never been strong since she married,
and had a presentiment that she should not survive this last
confinement.  She accordingly wrote the following letter, which was
to be given, as she endorsed upon it, to her sons when Ernest was
sixteen years old.  It reached him on his mother's death many years
later, for it was the baby who died now, and not Christina.  It was
found among papers which she had repeatedly and carefully arranged,
with the seal already broken.  This, I am afraid, shows that
Christina had read it and thought it too creditable to be destroyed
when the occasion that had called it forth had gone by.  It is as
follows -


"BATTERSBY, March 15th, 1841.

"My Two Dear Boys,--When this is put into your hands will you try to
bring to mind the mother whom you lost in your childhood, and whom,
I fear, you will almost have forgotten?  You, Ernest, will remember
her best, for you are past five years old, and the many, many times
that she has taught you your prayers and hymns and sums and told you
stories, and our happy Sunday evenings will not quite have passed
from your mind, and you, Joey, though only four, will perhaps
recollect some of these things.  My dear, dear boys, for the sake of
that mother who loved you very dearly--and for the sake of your own
happiness for ever and ever--attend to and try to remember, and from
time to time read over again the last words she can ever speak to
you.  When I think about leaving you all, two things press heavily
upon me:  one, your father's sorrow (for you, my darlings, after
missing me a little while, will soon forget your loss), the other,
the everlasting welfare of my children.  I know how long and deep
the former will be, and I know that he will look to his children to
be almost his only earthly comfort.  You know (for I am certain that
it will have been so), how he has devoted his life to you and taught
you and laboured to lead you to all that is right and good.  Oh,
then, be sure that you ARE his comforts.  Let him find you obedient,
affectionate and attentive to his wishes, upright, self-denying and
diligent; let him never blush for or grieve over the sins and
follies of those who owe him such a debt of gratitude, and whose
first duty it is to study his happiness.  You have both of you a
name which must not be disgraced, a father and a grandfather of whom
to show yourselves worthy; your respectability and well-doing in
life rest mainly with yourselves, but far, far beyond earthly
respectability and well-doing, and compared with which they are as
nothing, your eternal happiness rests with yourselves.  You know
your duty, but snares and temptations from without beset you, and
the nearer you approach to manhood the more strongly will you feel
this.  With God's help, with God's word, and with humble hearts you
will stand in spite of everything, but should you leave off seeking
in earnest for the first, and applying to the second, should you
learn to trust in yourselves, or to the advice and example of too
many around you, you will, you must fall.  Oh, 'let God be true and
every man a liar.'  He says you cannot serve Him and Mammon.  He
says that strait is the gate that leads to eternal life.  Many there
are who seek to widen it; they will tell you that such and such
self-indulgences are but venial offences--that this and that worldly
compliance is excusable and even necessary.  The thing CANNOT BE;
for in a hundred and a hundred places He tells you so--look to your
Bibles and seek there whether such counsel is true--and if not, oh,
'halt not between two opinions,' if God is the Lord follow Him; only
be strong and of a good courage, and He will never leave you nor
forsake you.  Remember, there is not in the Bible one law for the
rich, and one for the poor--one for the educated and one for the
ignorant.  To ALL there is but one thing needful.  ALL are to be
living to God and their fellow-creatures, and not to themselves.
ALL must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness--must
DENY THEMSELVES, be pure and chaste and charitable in the fullest
and widest sense--all, 'forgetting those things that are behind,'
must 'press forward towards the mark, for the prize of the high
calling of God.'

"And now I will add but two things more.  Be true through life to
each other, love as only brothers should do, strengthen, warn,
encourage one another, and let who will be against you, let each
feel that in his brother he has a firm and faithful friend who will
be so to the end; and, oh! be kind and watchful over your dear
sister; without mother or sisters she will doubly need her brothers'
love and tenderness and confidence.  I am certain she will seek
them, and will love you and try to make you happy; be sure then that
you do not fail her, and remember, that were she to lose her father
and remain unmarried, she would doubly need protectors.  To you,
then, I especially commend her.  Oh! my three darling children, be
true to each other, your Father, and your God.  May He guide and
bless you, and grant that in a better and happier world I and mine
may meet again.--Your most affectionate mother,

CHRISTINA PONTIFEX."


From enquiries I have made, I have satisfied myself that most
mothers write letters like this shortly before their confinements,
and that fifty per cent. keep them afterwards, as Christina did.



CHAPTER XXVI



The foregoing letter shows how much greater was Christina's anxiety
for the eternal than for the temporal welfare of her sons.  One
would have thought she had sowed enough of such religious wild oats
by this time, but she had plenty still to sow.  To me it seems that
those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people
than those who are not, and that thus in the event of a Resurrection
and Day of Judgement, they will be the most likely to be deemed
worthy of a heavenly mansion.  Perhaps a dim unconscious perception
of this was the reason why Christina was so anxious for Theobald's
earthly happiness, or was it merely due to a conviction that his
eternal welfare was so much a matter of course, that it only
remained to secure his earthly happiness?  He was to "find his sons
obedient, affectionate, attentive to his wishes, self-denying and
diligent," a goodly string forsooth of all the virtues most
convenient to parents; he was never to have to blush for the follies
of those "who owed him such a debt of gratitude," and "whose first
duty it was to study his happiness."  How like maternal solicitude
is this!  Solicitude for the most part lest the offspring should
come to have wishes and feelings of its own, which may occasion many
difficulties, fancied or real.  It is this that is at the bottom of
the whole mischief; but whether this last proposition is granted or
no, at any rate we observe that Christina had a sufficiently keen
appreciation of the duties of children towards their parents, and
felt the task of fulfilling them adequately to be so difficult that
she was very doubtful how far Ernest and Joey would succeed in
mastering it.  It is plain in fact that her supposed parting glance
upon them was one of suspicion.  But there was no suspicion of
Theobald; that he should have devoted his life to his children--why
this was such a mere platitude, as almost to go without saying.

How, let me ask, was it possible that a child only a little past
five years old, trained in such an atmosphere of prayers and hymns
and sums and happy Sunday evenings--to say nothing of daily repeated
beatings over the said prayers and hymns, etc., about which our
authoress is silent--how was it possible that a lad so trained
should grow up in any healthy or vigorous development, even though
in her own way his mother was undoubtedly very fond of him, and
sometimes told him stories?  Can the eye of any reader fail to
detect the coming wrath of God as about to descend upon the head of
him who should be nurtured under the shadow of such a letter as the
foregoing?

I have often thought that the Church of Rome does wisely in not
allowing her priests to marry.  Certainly it is a matter of common
observation in England that the sons of clergymen are frequently
unsatisfactory.  The explanation is very simple, but is so often
lost sight of that I may perhaps be pardoned for giving it here.

The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday.  Things must
not be done in him which are venial in the week-day classes.  He is
paid for this business of leading a stricter life than other people.
It is his raison d'etre.  If his parishioners feel that he does
this, they approve of him, for they look upon him as their own
contribution towards what they deem a holy life.  This is why the
clergyman is so often called a vicar--he being the person whose
vicarious goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his
charge.  But his home is his castle as much as that of any other
Englishman, and with him, as with others, unnatural tension in
public is followed by exhaustion when tension is no longer
necessary.  His children are the most defenceless things he can
reach, and it is on them in nine cases out of ten that he will
relieve his mind.

A clergyman, again, can hardly ever allow himself to look facts
fairly in the face.  It is his profession to support one side; it is
impossible, therefore, for him to make an unbiassed examination of
the other.

We forget that every clergyman with a living or curacy, is as much a
paid advocate as the barrister who is trying to persuade a jury to
acquit a prisoner.  We should listen to him with the same suspense
of judgment, the same full consideration of the arguments of the
opposing counsel, as a judge does when he is trying a case.  Unless
we know these, and can state them in a way that our opponents would
admit to be a fair representation of their views, we have no right
to claim that we have formed an opinion at all.  The misfortune is
that by the law of the land one side only can be heard.

Theobald and Christina were no exceptions to the general rule.  When
they came to Battersby they had every desire to fulfil the duties of
their position, and to devote themselves to the honour and glory of
God.  But it was Theobald's duty to see the honour and glory of God
through the eyes of a Church which had lived three hundred years
without finding reason to change a single one of its opinions.

I should doubt whether he ever got as far as doubting the wisdom of
his Church upon any single matter.  His scent for possible mischief
was tolerably keen; so was Christina's, and it is likely that if
either of them detected in him or herself the first faint symptoms
of a want of faith they were nipped no less peremptorily in the bud,
than signs of self-will in Ernest were--and I should imagine more
successfully.  Yet Theobald considered himself, and was generally
considered to be, and indeed perhaps was, an exceptionally truthful
person; indeed he was generally looked upon as an embodiment of all
those virtues which make the poor respectable and the rich
respected.  In the course of time he and his wife became persuaded
even to unconsciousness, that no one could even dwell under their
roof without deep cause for thankfulness.  Their children, their
servants, their parishioners must be fortunate ipso facto that they
were theirs.  There was no road to happiness here or hereafter, but
the road that they had themselves travelled, no good people who did
not think as they did upon every subject, and no reasonable person
who had wants the gratification of which would be inconvenient to
them--Theobald and Christina.

This was how it came to pass that their children were white and
puny; they were suffering from HOME-SICKNESS.  They were starving,
through being over-crammed with the wrong things.  Nature came down
upon them, but she did not come down on Theobald and Christina.  Why
should she?  They were not leading a starved existence.  There are
two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who
are sinned against; if a man must belong to either, he had better
belong to the first than to the second.



CHAPTER XXVII



I will give no more of the details of my hero's earlier years.
Enough that he struggled through them, and at twelve years old knew
every page of his Latin and Greek Grammars by heart.  He had read
the greater part of Virgil, Horace and Livy, and I do not know how
many Greek plays:  he was proficient in arithmetic, knew the first
four books of Euclid thoroughly, and had a fair knowledge of French.
It was now time he went to school, and to school he was accordingly
to go, under the famous Dr Skinner of Roughborough.

Theobald had known Dr Skinner slightly at Cambridge.  He had been a
burning and a shining light in every position he had filled from his
boyhood upwards.  He was a very great genius.  Everyone knew this;
they said, indeed, that he was one of the few people to whom the
word genius could be applied without exaggeration.  Had he not taken
I don't know how many University Scholarships in his freshman's
year?  Had he not been afterwards Senior Wrangler, First
Chancellor's Medallist and I do not know how many more things
besides?  And then, he was such a wonderful speaker; at the Union
Debating Club he had been without a rival, and had, of course, been
president; his moral character,--a point on which so many geniuses
were weak--was absolutely irreproachable; foremost of all, however,
among his many great qualities, and perhaps more remarkable even
than his genius was what biographers have called "the simple-minded
and child-like earnestness of his character," an earnestness which
might be perceived by the solemnity with which he spoke even about
trifles.  It is hardly necessary to say he was on the Liberal side
in politics.

His personal appearance was not particularly prepossessing.  He was
about the middle height, portly, and had a couple of fierce grey
eyes, that flashed fire from beneath a pair of great bushy beetling
eyebrows and overawed all who came near him.  It was in respect of
his personal appearance, however, that, if he was vulnerable at all,
his weak place was to be found.  His hair when he was a young man
was red, but after he had taken his degree he had a brain fever
which caused him to have his head shaved; when he reappeared, he did
so wearing a wig, and one which was a good deal further off red than
his own hair had been.  He not only had never discarded his wig, but
year by year it had edged itself a little more and a little more off
red, till by the time he was forty, there was not a trace of red
remaining, and his wig was brown.

When Dr Skinner was a very young man, hardly more than five-and-
twenty, the head-mastership of Roughborough Grammar School had
fallen vacant, and he had been unhesitatingly appointed.  The result
justified the selection.  Dr Skinner's pupils distinguished
themselves at whichever University they went to.  He moulded their
minds after the model of his own, and stamped an impression upon
them which was indelible in after-life; whatever else a Roughborough
man might be, he was sure to make everyone feel that he was a God-
fearing earnest Christian and a Liberal, if not a Radical, in
politics.  Some boys, of course, were incapable of appreciating the
beauty and loftiness of Dr Skinner's nature.  Some such boys, alas!
there will be in every school; upon them Dr Skinner's hand was very
properly a heavy one.  His hand was against them, and theirs against
him during the whole time of the connection between them.  They not
only disliked him, but they hated all that he more especially
embodied, and throughout their lives disliked all that reminded them
of him.  Such boys, however, were in a minority, the spirit of the
place being decidedly Skinnerian.

I once had the honour of playing a game of chess with this great
man.  It was during the Christmas holidays, and I had come down to
Roughborough for a few days to see Alethea Pontifex (who was then
living there) on business.  It was very gracious of him to take
notice of me, for if I was a light of literature at all it was of
the very lightest kind.

It is true that in the intervals of business I had written a good
deal, but my works had been almost exclusively for the stage, and
for those theatres that devoted themselves to extravaganza and
burlesque.  I had written many pieces of this description, full of
puns and comic songs, and they had had a fair success, but my best
piece had been a treatment of English history during the Reformation
period, in the course of which I had introduced Cranmer, Sir Thomas
More, Henry the Eighth, Catherine of Arragon, and Thomas Cromwell
(in his youth better known as the Malleus Monachorum), and had made
them dance a break-down.  I had also dramatised "The Pilgrim's
Progress" for a Christmas Pantomime, and made an important scene of
Vanity Fair, with Mr Greatheart, Apollyon, Christiana, Mercy, and
Hopeful as the principal characters.  The orchestra played music
taken from Handel's best known works, but the time was a good deal
altered, and altogether the tunes were not exactly as Handel left
them.  Mr Greatheart was very stout and he had a red nose; he wore a
capacious waistcoat, and a shirt with a huge frill down the middle
of the front.  Hopeful was up to as much mischief as I could give
him; he wore the costume of a young swell of the period, and had a
cigar in his mouth which was continually going out.

Christiana did not wear much of anything:  indeed it was said that
the dress which the Stage Manager had originally proposed for her
had been considered inadequate even by the Lord Chamberlain, but
this is not the case.  With all these delinquencies upon my mind it
was natural that I should feel convinced of sin while playing chess
(which I hate) with the great Dr Skinner of Roughborough--the
historian of Athens and editor of Demosthenes.  Dr Skinner,
moreover, was one of those who pride themselves on being able to set
people at their ease at once, and I had been sitting on the edge of
my chair all the evening.  But I have always been very easily
overawed by a schoolmaster.

The game had been a long one, and at half-past nine, when supper
came in, we had each of us a few pieces remaining.  "What will you
take for supper, Dr Skinner?" said Mrs Skinner in a silvery voice.

He made no answer for some time, but at last in a tone of almost
superhuman solemnity, he said, first, "Nothing," and then "Nothing
whatever."

By and by, however, I had a sense come over me as though I were
nearer the consummation of all things than I had ever yet been.  The
room seemed to grow dark, as an expression came over Dr Skinner's
face, which showed that he was about to speak.  The expression
gathered force, the room grew darker and darker.  "Stay," he at
length added, and I felt that here at any rate was an end to a
suspense which was rapidly becoming unbearable.  "Stay--I may
presently take a glass of cold water--and a small piece of bread and
butter."

As he said the word "butter" his voice sank to a hardly audible
whisper; then there was a sigh as though of relief when the sentence
was concluded, and the universe this time was safe.

Another ten minutes of solemn silence finished the game.  The Doctor
rose briskly from his seat and placed himself at the supper table.
"Mrs Skinner," he exclaimed jauntily, "what are those mysterious-
looking objects surrounded by potatoes?"

"Those are oysters, Dr Skinner."

"Give me some, and give Overton some."

And so on till he had eaten a good plate of oysters, a scallop shell
of minced veal nicely browned, some apple tart, and a hunk of bread
and cheese.  This was the small piece of bread and butter.

The cloth was now removed and tumblers with teaspoons in them, a
lemon or two and a jug of boiling water were placed upon the table.
Then the great man unbent.  His face beamed.

"And what shall it be to drink?" he exclaimed persuasively.  "Shall
it be brandy and water?  No.  It shall be gin and water.  Gin is the
more wholesome liquor."

So gin it was, hot and stiff too.

Who can wonder at him or do anything but pity him?  Was he not head-
master of Roughborough School?  To whom had he owed money at any
time?  Whose ox had he taken, whose ass had he taken, or whom had he
defrauded?  What whisper had ever been breathed against his moral
character?  If he had become rich it was by the most honourable of
all means--his literary attainments; over and above his great works
of scholarship, his "Meditations upon the Epistle and Character of
St Jude" had placed him among the most popular of English
theologians; it was so exhaustive that no one who bought it need
ever meditate upon the subject again--indeed it exhausted all who
had anything to do with it.  He had made 5000 pounds by this work
alone, and would very likely make another 5000 pounds before he
died.  A man who had done all this and wanted a piece of bread and
butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp and
circumstance.  Nor should his words be taken without searching for
what he used to call a "deeper and more hidden meaning."  Those who
searched for this even in his lightest utterances would not be
without their reward.  They would find that "bread and butter" was
Skinnerese for oyster-patties and apple tart, and "gin hot" the true
translation of water.

But independently of their money value, his works had made him a
lasting name in literature.  So probably Gallio was under the
impression that his fame would rest upon the treatises on natural
history which we gather from Seneca that he compiled, and which for
aught we know may have contained a complete theory of evolution; but
the treatises are all gone and Gallio has become immortal for the
very last reason in the world that he expected, and for the very
last reason that would have flattered his vanity.  He has become
immortal because he cared nothing about the most important movement
with which he was ever brought into connection (I wish people who
are in search of immortality would lay the lesson to heart and not
make so much noise about important movements), and so, if Dr Skinner
becomes immortal, it will probably be for some reason very different
from the one which he so fondly imagined.

Could it be expected to enter into the head of such a man as this
that in reality he was making his money by corrupting youth; that it
was his paid profession to make the worse appear the better reason
in the eyes of those who were too young and inexperienced to be able
to find him out; that he kept out of the sight of those whom he
professed to teach material points of the argument, for the
production of which they had a right to rely upon the honour of
anyone who made professions of sincerity; that he was a passionate
half-turkey-cock half-gander of a man whose sallow, bilious face and
hobble-gobble voice could scare the timid, but who would take to his
heels readily enough if he were met firmly; that his "Meditations on
St Jude," such as they were, were cribbed without acknowledgment,
and would have been beneath contempt if so many people did not
believe them to have been written honestly?  Mrs Skinner might have
perhaps kept him a little more in his proper place if she had
thought it worth while to try, but she had enough to attend to in
looking after her household and seeing that the boys were well fed
and, if they were ill, properly looked after--which she took good
care they were.



CHAPTER XXVIII



Ernest had heard awful accounts of Dr Skinner's temper, and of the
bullying which the younger boys at Roughborough had to put up with
at the hands of the bigger ones.  He had now got about as much as he
could stand, and felt as though it must go hard with him if his
burdens of whatever kind were to be increased.  He did not cry on
leaving home, but I am afraid he did on being told that he was
getting near Roughborough.  His father and mother were with him,
having posted from home in their own carriage; Roughborough had as
yet no railway, and as it was only some forty miles from Battersby,
this was the easiest way of getting there.

On seeing him cry, his mother felt flattered and caressed him.  She
said she knew he must feel very sad at leaving such a happy home,
and going among people who, though they would be very good to him,
could never, never be as good as his dear papa and she had been;
still, she was herself, if he only knew it, much more deserving of
pity than he was, for the parting was more painful to her than it
could possibly be to him, etc., and Ernest, on being told that his
tears were for grief at leaving home, took it all on trust, and did
not trouble to investigate the real cause of his tears.  As they
approached Roughborough he pulled himself together, and was fairly
calm by the time he reached Dr Skinner's.

On their arrival they had luncheon with the Doctor and his wife, and
then Mrs Skinner took Christina over the bedrooms, and showed her
where her dear little boy was to sleep.

Whatever men may think about the study of man, women do really
believe the noblest study for womankind to be woman, and Christina
was too much engrossed with Mrs Skinner to pay much attention to
anything else; I daresay Mrs Skinner, too, was taking pretty
accurate stock of Christina.  Christina was charmed, as indeed she
generally was with any new acquaintance, for she found in them (and
so must we all) something of the nature of a cross; as for Mrs
Skinner, I imagine she had seen too many Christinas to find much
regeneration in the sample now before her; I believe her private
opinion echoed the dictum of a well-known head-master who declared
that all parents were fools, but more especially mothers; she was,
however, all smiles and sweetness, and Christina devoured these
graciously as tributes paid more particularly to herself, and such
as no other mother would have been at all likely to have won.

In the meantime Theobald and Ernest were with Dr Skinner in his
library--the room where new boys were examined and old ones had up
for rebuke or chastisement.  If the walls of that room could speak,
what an amount of blundering and capricious cruelty would they not
bear witness to!

Like all houses, Dr Skinner's had its peculiar smell.  In this case
the prevailing odour was one of Russia leather, but along with it
there was a subordinate savour as of a chemist's shop.  This came
from a small laboratory in one corner of the room--the possession of
which, together with the free chattery and smattery use of such
words as "carbonate," "hyposulphite," "phosphate," and "affinity,"
were enough to convince even the most sceptical that Dr Skinner had
a profound knowledge of chemistry.

I may say in passing that Dr Skinner had dabbled in a great many
other things as well as chemistry.  He was a man of many small
knowledges, and each of them dangerous.  I remember Alethea Pontifex
once said in her wicked way to me, that Dr Skinner put her in mind
of the Bourbon princes on their return from exile after the battle
of Waterloo, only that he was their exact converse; for whereas they
had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, Dr Skinner had learned
everything and forgotten everything.  And this puts me in mind of
another of her wicked sayings about Dr Skinner.  She told me one day
that he had the harmlessness of the serpent and the wisdom of the
dove.

But to return to Dr Skinner's library; over the chimney-piece there
was a Bishop's half length portrait of Dr Skinner himself, painted
by the elder Pickersgill, whose merit Dr Skinner had been among the
first to discern and foster.  There were no other pictures in the
library, but in the dining-room there was a fine collection, which
the doctor had got together with his usual consummate taste.  He
added to it largely in later life, and when it came to the hammer at
Christie's, as it did not long since, it was found to comprise many
of the latest and most matured works of Solomon Hart, O'Neil,
Charles Landseer, and more of our recent Academicians than I can at
the moment remember.  There were thus brought together and exhibited
at one view many works which had attracted attention at the Academy
Exhibitions, and as to whose ultimate destiny there had been some
curiosity.  The prices realised were disappointing to the executors,
but, then, these things are so much a matter of chance.  An
unscrupulous writer in a well-known weekly paper had written the
collection down.  Moreover there had been one or two large sales a
short time before Dr Skinner's, so that at this last there was
rather a panic, and a reaction against the high prices that had
ruled lately.

The table of the library was loaded with books many deep; MSS. of
all kinds were confusedly mixed up with them,--boys' exercises,
probably, and examination papers--but all littering untidily about.
The room in fact was as depressing from its slatternliness as from
its atmosphere of erudition.  Theobald and Ernest as they entered
it, stumbled over a large hole in the Turkey carpet, and the dust
that rose showed how long it was since it had been taken up and
beaten.  This, I should say, was no fault of Mrs Skinner's but was
due to the Doctor himself, who declared that if his papers were once
disturbed it would be the death of him.  Near the window was a green
cage containing a pair of turtle doves, whose plaintive cooing added
to the melancholy of the place.  The walls were covered with book
shelves from floor to ceiling, and on every shelf the books stood in
double rows.  It was horrible.  Prominent among the most prominent
upon the most prominent shelf were a series of splendidly bound
volumes entitled "Skinner's Works."

Boys are sadly apt to rush to conclusions, and Ernest believed that
Dr Skinner knew all the books in this terrible library, and that he,
if he were to be any good, should have to learn them too.  His heart
fainted within him.

He was told to sit on a chair against the wall and did so, while Dr
Skinner talked to Theobald upon the topics of the day.  He talked
about the Hampden Controversy then raging, and discoursed learnedly
about "Praemunire"; then he talked about the revolution which had
just broken out in Sicily, and rejoiced that the Pope had refused to
allow foreign troops to pass through his dominions in order to crush
it.  Dr Skinner and the other masters took in the Times among them,
and Dr Skinner echoed the Times' leaders.  In those days there were
no penny papers and Theobald only took in the Spectator--for he was
at that time on the Whig side in politics; besides this he used to
receive the Ecclesiastical Gazette once a month, but he saw no other
papers, and was amazed at the ease and fluency with which Dr Skinner
ran from subject to subject.

The Pope's action in the matter of the Sicilian revolution naturally
led the Doctor to the reforms which his Holiness had introduced into
his dominions, and he laughed consumedly over the joke which had not
long since appeared in Punch, to the effect that Pio "No, No,"
should rather have been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, as the doctor
explained, he granted everything his subjects asked for.  Anything
like a pun went straight to Dr Skinner's heart.

Then he went on to the matter of these reforms themselves.  They
opened up a new era in the history of Christendom, and would have
such momentous and far-reaching consequences, that they might even
lead to a reconciliation between the Churches of England and Rome.
Dr Skinner had lately published a pamphlet upon this subject, which
had shown great learning, and had attacked the Church of Rome in a
way which did not promise much hope of reconciliation.  He had
grounded his attack upon the letters A.M.D.G., which he had seen
outside a Roman Catholic chapel, and which of course stood for Ad
Mariam Dei Genetricem.  Could anything be more idolatrous?

I am told, by the way, that I must have let my memory play me one of
the tricks it often does play me, when I said the Doctor proposed Ad
Mariam Dei Genetricem as the full harmonies, so to speak, which
should be constructed upon the bass A.M.D.G., for that this is bad
Latin, and that the doctor really harmonised the letters thus:  Ave
Maria Dei Genetrix.  No doubt the doctor did what was right in the
matter of Latinity--I have forgotten the little Latin I ever knew,
and am not going to look the matter up, but I believe the doctor
said Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem, and if so we may be sure that Ad
Mariam Dei Genetricem, is good enough Latin at any rate for
ecclesiastical purposes.

The reply of the local priest had not yet appeared, and Dr Skinner
was jubilant, but when the answer appeared, and it was solemnly
declared that A.M.D.G. stood for nothing more dangerous than Ad
Majorem Dei Gloriam, it was felt that though this subterfuge would
not succeed with any intelligent Englishman, still it was a pity Dr
Skinner had selected this particular point for his attack, for he
had to leave his enemy in possession of the field.  When people are
left in possession of the field, spectators have an awkward habit of
thinking that their adversary does not dare to come to the scratch.

Dr Skinner was telling Theobald all about his pamphlet, and I doubt
whether this gentleman was much more comfortable than Ernest
himself.  He was bored, for in his heart he hated Liberalism, though
he was ashamed to say so, and, as I have said, professed to be on
the Whig side.  He did not want to be reconciled to the Church of
Rome; he wanted to make all Roman Catholics turn Protestants, and
could never understand why they would not do so; but the Doctor
talked in such a truly liberal spirit, and shut him up so sharply
when he tried to edge in a word or two, that he had to let him have
it all his own way, and this was not what he was accustomed to.  He
was wondering how he could bring it to an end, when a diversion was
created by the discovery that Ernest had begun to cry--doubtless
through an intense but inarticulate sense of a boredom greater than
he could bear.  He was evidently in a highly nervous state, and a
good deal upset by the excitement of the morning, Mrs Skinner
therefore, who came in with Christina at this juncture, proposed
that he should spend the afternoon with Mrs Jay, the matron, and not
be introduced to his young companions until the following morning.
His father and mother now bade him an affectionate farewell, and the
lad was handed over to Mrs Jay.

O schoolmasters--if any of you read this book--bear in mind when any
particularly timid drivelling urchin is brought by his papa into
your study, and you treat him with the contempt which he deserves,
and afterwards make his life a burden to him for years--bear in mind
that it is exactly in the disguise of such a boy as this that your
future chronicler will appear.  Never see a wretched little heavy-
eyed mite sitting on the edge of a chair against your study wall
without saying to yourselves, "perhaps this boy is he who, if I am
not careful, will one day tell the world what manner of man I was."
If even two or three schoolmasters learn this lesson and remember
it, the preceding chapters will not have been written in vain.



CHAPTER XXIX



Soon after his father and mother had left him Ernest dropped asleep
over a book which Mrs Jay had given him, and he did not awake till
dusk.  Then he sat down on a stool in front of the fire, which
showed pleasantly in the late January twilight, and began to muse.
He felt weak, feeble, ill at ease and unable to see his way out of
the innumerable troubles that were before him.  Perhaps, he said to
himself, he might even die, but this, far from being an end of his
troubles, would prove the beginning of new ones; for at the best he
would only go to Grandpapa Pontifex and Grandmamma Allaby, and
though they would perhaps be more easy to get on with than Papa and
Mamma, yet they were undoubtedly not so really good, and were more
worldly; moreover they were grown-up people--especially Grandpapa
Pontifex, who so far as he could understand had been very much
grown-up, and he did not know why, but there was always something
that kept him from loving any grown-up people very much--except one
or two of the servants, who had indeed been as nice as anything that
he could imagine.  Besides even if he were to die and go to Heaven
he supposed he should have to complete his education somewhere.

In the meantime his father and mother were rolling along the muddy
roads, each in his or her own corner of the carriage, and each
revolving many things which were and were not to come to pass.
Times have changed since I last showed them to the reader as sitting
together silently in a carriage, but except as regards their mutual
relations, they have altered singularly little.  When I was younger
I used to think the Prayer Book was wrong in requiring us to say the
General Confession twice a week from childhood to old age, without
making provision for our not being quite such great sinners at
seventy as we had been at seven; granted that we should go to the
wash like table-cloths at least once a week, still I used to think a
day ought to come when we should want rather less rubbing and
scrubbing at.  Now that I have grown older myself I have seen that
the Church has estimated probabilities better than I had done.

The pair said not a word to one another, but watched the fading
light and naked trees, the brown fields with here and there a
melancholy cottage by the road side, and the rain that fell fast
upon the carriage windows.  It was a kind of afternoon on which nice
people for the most part like to be snug at home, and Theobald was a
little snappish at reflecting how many miles he had to post before
he could be at his own fireside again.  However there was nothing
for it, so the pair sat quietly and watched the roadside objects
flit by them, and get greyer and grimmer as the light faded.

Though they spoke not to one another, there was one nearer to each
of them with whom they could converse freely.  "I hope," said
Theobald to himself, "I hope he'll work--or else that Skinner will
make him.  I don't like Skinner, I never did like him, but he is
unquestionably a man of genius, and no one turns out so many pupils
who succeed at Oxford and Cambridge, and that is the best test.  I
have done my share towards starting him well.  Skinner said he had
been well grounded and was very forward.  I suppose he will presume
upon it now and do nothing, for his nature is an idle one.  He is
not fond of me, I'm sure he is not.  He ought to be after all the
trouble I have taken with him, but he is ungrateful and selfish.  It
is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be fond of his own father.
If he was fond of me I should be fond of him, but I cannot like a
son who, I am sure, dislikes me.  He shrinks out of my way whenever
he sees me coming near him.  He will not stay five minutes in the
same room with me if he can help it.  He is deceitful.  He would not
want to hide himself away so much if he were not deceitful.  That is
a bad sign and one which makes me fear he will grow up extravagant.
I am sure he will grow up extravagant.  I should have given him more
pocket-money if I had not known this--but what is the good of giving
him pocket-money?  It is all gone directly.  If he doesn't buy
something with it he gives it away to the first little boy or girl
he sees who takes his fancy.  He forgets that it's my money he is
giving away.  I give him money that he may have money and learn to
know its uses, not that he may go and squander it immediately.  I
wish he was not so fond of music, it will interfere with his Latin
and Greek.  I will stop it as much as I can.  Why, when he was
translating Livy the other day he slipped out Handel's name in
mistake for Hannibal's, and his mother tells me he knows half the
tunes in the 'Messiah' by heart.  What should a boy of his age know
about the 'Messiah'?  If I had shown half as many dangerous
tendencies when I was a boy, my father would have apprenticed me to
a greengrocer, of that I'm very sure," etc., etc.

Then his thoughts turned to Egypt and the tenth plague.  It seemed
to him that if the little Egyptians had been anything like Ernest,
the plague must have been something very like a blessing in
disguise.  If the Israelites were to come to England now he should
be greatly tempted not to let them go.

Mrs Theobald's thoughts ran in a different current.  "Lord
Lonsford's grandson--it's a pity his name is Figgins; however, blood
is blood as much through the female line as the male, indeed,
perhaps even more so if the truth were known.  I wonder who Mr
Figgins was.  I think Mrs Skinner said he was dead, however, I must
find out all about him.  It would be delightful if young Figgins
were to ask Ernest home for the holidays.  Who knows but he might
meet Lord Lonsford himself, or at any rate some of Lord Lonsford's
other descendants?"

Meanwhile the boy himself was still sitting moodily before the fire
in Mrs Jay's room.  "Papa and Mamma," he was saying to himself, "are
much better and cleverer than anyone else, but, I, alas! shall never
be either good or clever."

Mrs Pontifex continued -

"Perhaps it would be best to get young Figgins on a visit to
ourselves first.  That would be charming.  Theobald would not like
it, for he does not like children; I must see how I can manage it,
for it would be so nice to have young Figgins--or stay!  Ernest
shall go and stay with Figgins and meet the future Lord Lonsford,
who I should think must be about Ernest's age, and then if he and
Ernest were to become friends Ernest might ask him to Battersby, and
he might fall in love with Charlotte.  I think we have done MOST
WISELY in sending Ernest to Dr Skinner's.  Dr Skinner's piety is no
less remarkable than his genius.  One can tell these things at a
glance, and he must have felt it about me no less strongly than I
about him.  I think he seemed much struck with Theobald and myself--
indeed, Theobald's intellectual power must impress any one, and I
was showing, I do believe, to my best advantage.  When I smiled at
him and said I left my boy in his hands with the most entire
confidence that he would be as well cared for as if he were at my
own house, I am sure he was greatly pleased.  I should not think
many of the mothers who bring him boys can impress him so
favourably, or say such nice things to him as I did.  My smile is
sweet when I desire to make it so.  I never was perhaps exactly
pretty, but I was always admitted to be fascinating.  Dr Skinner is
a very handsome man--too good on the whole I should say for Mrs
Skinner.  Theobald says he is not handsome, but men are no judges,
and he has such a pleasant bright face.  I think my bonnet became
me.  As soon as I get home I will tell Chambers to trim my blue and
yellow merino with--" etc., etc.

All this time the letter which has been given above was lying in
Christina's private little Japanese cabinet, read and re-read and
approved of many times over, not to say, if the truth were known,
rewritten more than once, though dated as in the first instance--and
this, too, though Christina was fond enough of a joke in a small
way.

Ernest, still in Mrs Jay's room mused onward.  "Grown-up people," he
said to himself, "when they were ladies and gentlemen, never did
naughty things, but he was always doing them.  He had heard that
some grown-up people were worldly, which of course was wrong, still
this was quite distinct from being naughty, and did not get them
punished or scolded.  His own Papa and Mamma were not even worldly;
they had often explained to him that they were exceptionally
unworldly; he well knew that they had never done anything naughty
since they had been children, and that even as children they had
been nearly faultless.  Oh! how different from himself!  When should
he learn to love his Papa and Mamma as they had loved theirs?  How
could he hope ever to grow up to be as good and wise as they, or
even tolerably good and wise?  Alas! never.  It could not be.  He
did not love his Papa and Mamma, in spite of all their goodness both
in themselves and to him.  He hated Papa, and did not like Mamma,
and this was what none but a bad and ungrateful boy would do after
all that had been done for him.  Besides he did not like Sunday; he
did not like anything that was really good; his tastes were low and
such as he was ashamed of.  He liked people best if they sometimes
swore a little, so long as it was not at him.  As for his Catechism
and Bible readings he had no heart in them.  He had never attended
to a sermon in his life.  Even when he had been taken to hear Mr
Vaughan at Brighton, who, as everyone knew, preached such beautiful
sermons for children, he had been very glad when it was all over,
nor did he believe he could get through church at all if it was not
for the voluntary upon the organ and the hymns and chanting.  The
Catechism was awful.  He had never been able to understand what it
was that he desired of his Lord God and Heavenly Father, nor had he
yet got hold of a single idea in connection with the word Sacrament.
His duty towards his neighbour was another bugbear.  It seemed to
him that he had duties towards everybody, lying in wait for him upon
every side, but that nobody had any duties towards him.  Then there
was that awful and mysterious word 'business.'  What did it all
mean?  What was 'business'?  His Papa was a wonderfully good man of
business, his Mamma had often told him so--but he should never be
one.  It was hopeless, and very awful, for people were continually
telling him that he would have to earn his own living.  No doubt,
but how--considering how stupid, idle, ignorant, self-indulgent, and
physically puny he was?  All grown-up people were clever, except
servants--and even these were cleverer than ever he should be.  Oh,
why, why, why, could not people be born into the world as grown-up
persons?  Then he thought of Casabianca.  He had been examined in
that poem by his father not long before.  'When only would he leave
his position?  To whom did he call?  Did he get an answer?  Why?
How many times did he call upon his father?  What happened to him?
What was the noblest life that perished there?  Do you think so?
Why do you think so?'  And all the rest of it.  Of course he thought
Casabianca's was the noblest life that perished there; there could
be no two opinions about that; it never occurred to him that the
moral of the poem was that young people cannot begin too soon to
exercise discretion in the obedience they pay to their Papa and
Mamma.  Oh, no! the only thought in his mind was that he should
never, never have been like Casabianca, and that Casabianca would
have despised him so much, if he could have known him, that he would
not have condescended to speak to him.  There was nobody else in the
ship worth reckoning at all:  it did not matter how much they were
blown up.  Mrs Hemans knew them all and they were a very indifferent
lot.  Besides Casabianca was so good-looking and came of such a good
family."

And thus his small mind kept wandering on till he could follow it no
longer, and again went off into a doze.



CHAPTER XXX



Next morning Theobald and Christina arose feeling a little tired
from their journey, but happy in that best of all happiness, the
approbation of their consciences.  It would be their boy's fault
henceforth if he were not good, and as prosperous as it was at all
desirable that he should be.  What more could parents do than they
had done?  The answer "Nothing" will rise as readily to the lips of
the reader as to those of Theobald and Christina themselves.

A few days later the parents were gratified at receiving the
following letter from their son -


"My Dear Mamma,--I am very well.  Dr Skinner made me do about the
horse free and exulting roaming in the wide fields in Latin verse,
but as I had done it with Papa I knew how to do it, and it was
nearly all right, and he put me in the fourth form under Mr Templer,
and I have to begin a new Latin grammar not like the old, but much
harder.  I know you wish me to work, and I will try very hard.  With
best love to Joey and Charlotte, and to Papa, I remain, your
affectionate son,  ERNEST."


Nothing could be nicer or more proper.  It really did seem as though
he were inclined to turn over a new leaf.  The boys had all come
back, the examinations were over, and the routine of the half year
began; Ernest found that his fears about being kicked about and
bullied were exaggerated.  Nobody did anything very dreadful to him.
He had to run errands between certain hours for the elder boys, and
to take his turn at greasing the footballs, and so forth, but there
was an excellent spirit in the school as regards bullying.

Nevertheless, he was far from happy.  Dr Skinner was much too like
his father.  True, Ernest was not thrown in with him much yet, but
he was always there; there was no knowing at what moment he might
not put in an appearance, and whenever he did show, it was to storm
about something.  He was like the lion in the Bishop of Oxford's
Sunday story--always liable to rush out from behind some bush and
devour some one when he was least expected.  He called Ernest "an
audacious reptile" and said he wondered the earth did not open and
swallow him up because he pronounced Thalia with a short i.  "And
this to me," he thundered, "who never made a false quantity in my
life."  Surely he would have been a much nicer person if he had made
false quantities in his youth like other people.  Ernest could not
imagine how the boys in Dr Skinner's form continued to live; but yet
they did, and even throve, and, strange as it may seem, idolised
him, or professed to do so in after life.  To Ernest it seemed like
living on the crater of Vesuvius.

He was himself, as has been said, in Mr Templer's form, who was
snappish, but not downright wicked, and was very easy to crib under.
Ernest used to wonder how Mr Templer could be so blind, for he
supposed Mr Templer must have cribbed when he was at school, and
would ask himself whether he should forget his youth when he got
old, as Mr Templer had forgotten his.  He used to think he never
could possibly forget any part of it.

Then there was Mrs Jay, who was sometimes very alarming.  A few days
after the half year had commenced, there being some little extra
noise in the hall, she rushed in with her spectacles on her forehead
and her cap strings flying, and called the boy whom Ernest had
selected as his hero the "rampingest--scampingest--rackety--tackety-
-tow -row-roaringest boy in the whole school."  But she used to say
things that Ernest liked.  If the Doctor went out to dinner, and
there were no prayers, she would come in and say, "Young gentlemen,
prayers are excused this evening"; and, take her for all in all, she
was a kindly old soul enough.

Most boys soon discover the difference between noise and actual
danger, but to others it is so unnatural to menace, unless they mean
mischief, that they are long before they leave off taking turkey-
cocks and ganders au serieux.  Ernest was one of the latter sort,
and found the atmosphere of Roughborough so gusty that he was glad
to shrink out of sight and out of mind whenever he could.  He
disliked the games worse even than the squalls of the class-room and
hall, for he was still feeble, not filling out and attaining his
full strength till a much later age than most boys.  This was
perhaps due to the closeness with which his father had kept him to
his books in childhood, but I think in part also to a tendency
towards lateness in attaining maturity, hereditary in the Pontifex
family, which was one also of unusual longevity.  At thirteen or
fourteen he was a mere bag of bones, with upper arms about as thick
as the wrists of other boys of his age; his little chest was pigeon-
breasted; he appeared to have no strength or stamina whatever, and
finding he always went to the wall in physical encounters, whether
undertaken in jest or earnest, even with boys shorter than himself,
the timidity natural to childhood increased upon him to an extent
that I am afraid amounted to cowardice.  This rendered him even less
capable than he might otherwise have been, for as confidence
increases power, so want of confidence increases impotence.  After
he had had the breath knocked out of him and been well shinned half
a dozen times in scrimmages at football--scrimmages in which he had
become involved sorely against his will--he ceased to see any
further fun in football, and shirked that noble game in a way that
got him into trouble with the elder boys, who would stand no
shirking on the part of the younger ones.

He was as useless and ill at ease with cricket as with football, nor
in spite of all his efforts could he ever throw a ball or a stone.
It soon became plain, therefore, to everyone that Pontifex was a
young muff, a mollycoddle, not to be tortured, but still not to be
rated highly.  He was not however, actively unpopular, for it was
seen that he was quite square inter pares, not at all vindictive,
easily pleased, perfectly free with whatever little money he had, no
greater lover of his school work than of the games, and generally
more inclinable to moderate vice than to immoderate virtue.

These qualities will prevent any boy from sinking very low in the
opinion of his school-fellows; but Ernest thought he had fallen
lower than he probably had, and hated and despised himself for what
he, as much as anyone else, believed to be his cowardice.  He did
not like the boys whom he thought like himself.  His heroes were
strong and vigorous, and the less they inclined towards him the more
he worshipped them.  All this made him very unhappy, for it never
occurred to him that the instinct which made him keep out of games
for which he was ill adapted, was more reasonable than the reason
which would have driven him into them.  Nevertheless he followed his
instinct for the most part, rather than his reason.  Sapiens suam si
sapientiam norit.



CHAPTER XXXI



With the masters Ernest was ere long in absolute disgrace.  He had
more liberty now than he had known heretofore.  The heavy hand and
watchful eye of Theobald were no longer about his path and about his
bed and spying out all his ways; and punishment by way of copying
out lines of Virgil was a very different thing from the savage
beatings of his father.  The copying out in fact was often less
trouble than the lesson.  Latin and Greek had nothing in them which
commended them to his instinct as likely to bring him peace even at
the last; still less did they hold out any hope of doing so within
some more reasonable time.  The deadness inherent in these defunct
languages themselves had never been artificially counteracted by a
system of bona fide rewards for application.  There had been any
amount of punishments for want of application, but no good
comfortable bribes had baited the hook which was to allure him to
his good.

Indeed, the more pleasant side of learning to do this or that had
always been treated as something with which Ernest had no concern.
We had no business with pleasant things at all, at any rate very
little business, at any rate not he, Ernest.  We were put into this
world not for pleasure but duty, and pleasure had in it something
more or less sinful in its very essence.  If we were doing anything
we liked, we, or at any rate he, Ernest, should apologise and think
he was being very mercifully dealt with, if not at once told to go
and do something else.  With what he did not like, however, it was
different; the more he disliked a thing the greater the presumption
that it was right.  It never occurred to him that the presumption
was in favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant, and that
the onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who
disputed its being so.  I have said more than once that he believed
in his own depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready to
accept without cavil whatever he was told by those who were in
authority over him:  he thought, at least, that he believed it, for
as yet he knew nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him,
and was so much stronger and more real than the Ernest of which he
was conscious.  The dumb Ernest persuaded with inarticulate feelings
too swift and sure to be translated into such debateable things as
words, but practically insisted as follows -


"Growing is not the easy plain sailing business that it is commonly
supposed to be:  it is hard work--harder than any but a growing boy
can understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough
to attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too.  Besides,
Latin and Greek are great humbug; the more people know of them the
more odious they generally are; the nice people whom you delight in
either never knew any at all or forgot what they had learned as soon
as they could; they never turned to the classics after they were no
longer forced to read them; therefore they are nonsense, all very
well in their own time and country, but out of place here.  Never
learn anything until you find you have been made uncomfortable for a
good long while by not knowing it; when you find that you have
occasion for this or that knowledge, or foresee that you will have
occasion for it shortly, the sooner you learn it the better, but
till then spend your time in growing bone and muscle; these will be
much more useful to you than Latin and Greek, nor will you ever be
able to make them if you do not do so now, whereas Latin and Greek
can be acquired at any time by those who want them.

"You are surrounded on every side by lies which would deceive even
the elect, if the elect were not generally so uncommonly wide awake;
the self of which you are conscious, your reasoning and reflecting
self, will believe these lies and bid you act in accordance with
them.  This conscious self of yours, Ernest, is a prig begotten of
prigs and trained in priggishness; I will not allow it to shape your
actions, though it will doubtless shape your words for many a year
to come.  Your papa is not here to beat you now; this is a change in
the conditions of your existence, and should be followed by changed
actions.  Obey me, your true self, and things will go tolerably well
with you, but only listen to that outward and visible old husk of
yours which is called your father, and I will rend you in pieces
even unto the third and fourth generation as one who has hated God;
for I, Ernest, am the God who made you."


How shocked Ernest would have been if he could have heard the advice
he was receiving; what consternation too there would have been at
Battersby; but the matter did not end here, for this same wicked
inner self gave him bad advice about his pocket money, the choice of
his companions and on the whole Ernest was attentive and obedient to
its behests, more so than Theobald had been.  The consequence was
that he learned little, his mind growing more slowly and his body
rather faster than heretofore:  and when by and by his inner self
urged him in directions where he met obstacles beyond his strength
to combat, he took--though with passionate compunctions of
conscience--the nearest course to the one from which he was debarred
which circumstances would allow.

It may be guessed that Ernest was not the chosen friend of the more
sedate and well-conducted youths then studying at Roughborough.
Some of the less desirable boys used to go to public-houses and
drink more beer than was good for them; Ernest's inner self can
hardly have told him to ally himself to these young gentlemen, but
he did so at an early age, and was sometimes made pitiably sick by
an amount of beer which would have produced no effect upon a
stronger boy.  Ernest's inner self must have interposed at this
point and told him that there was not much fun in this, for he
dropped the habit ere it had taken firm hold of him, and never
resumed it; but he contracted another at the disgracefully early age
of between thirteen and fourteen which he did not relinquish, though
to the present day his conscious self keeps dinging it into him that
the less he smokes the better.

And so matters went on till my hero was nearly fourteen years old.
If by that time he was not actually a young blackguard, he belonged
to a debateable class between the sub-reputable and the upper
disreputable, with perhaps rather more leaning to the latter except
so far as vices of meanness were concerned, from which he was fairly
free.  I gather this partly from what Ernest has told me, and partly
from his school bills which I remember Theobald showed me with much
complaining.  There was an institution at Roughborough called the
monthly merit money; the maximum sum which a boy of Ernest's age
could get was four shillings and sixpence; several boys got four
shillings and few less than sixpence, but Ernest never got more than
half-a-crown and seldom more than eighteen pence; his average would,
I should think, be about one and nine pence, which was just too much
for him to rank among the downright bad boys, but too little to put
him among the good ones.



CHAPTER XXXII



I must now return to Miss Alethea Pontifex, of whom I have said
perhaps too little hitherto, considering how great her influence
upon my hero's destiny proved to be.

On the death of her father, which happened when she was about
thirty-two years old, she parted company with her sisters, between
whom and herself there had been little sympathy, and came up to
London.  She was determined, so she said, to make the rest of her
life as happy as she could, and she had clearer ideas about the best
way of setting to work to do this than women, or indeed men,
generally have.

Her fortune consisted, as I have said, of 5000 pounds, which had
come to her by her mother's marriage settlements, and 15,000 pounds
left her by her father, over both which sums she had now absolute
control.  These brought her in about 900 pounds a year, and the
money being invested in none but the soundest securities, she had no
anxiety about her income.  She meant to be rich, so she formed a
scheme of expenditure which involved an annual outlay of about 500
pounds, and determined to put the rest by.  "If I do this," she said
laughingly, "I shall probably just succeed in living comfortably
within my income."  In accordance with this scheme she took
unfurnished apartments in a house in Gower Street, of which the
lower floors were let out as offices.  John Pontifex tried to get
her to take a house to herself, but Alethea told him to mind his own
business so plainly that he had to beat a retreat.  She had never
liked him, and from that time dropped him almost entirely.

Without going much into society she yet became acquainted with most
of the men and women who had attained a position in the literary,
artistic and scientific worlds, and it was singular how highly her
opinion was valued in spite of her never having attempted in any way
to distinguish herself.  She could have written if she had chosen,
but she enjoyed seeing others write and encouraging them better than
taking a more active part herself.  Perhaps literary people liked
her all the better because she did not write.

I, as she very well knew, had always been devoted to her, and she
might have had a score of other admirers if she had liked, but she
had discouraged them all, and railed at matrimony as women seldom do
unless they have a comfortable income of their own.  She by no
means, however, railed at man as she railed at matrimony, and though
living after a fashion in which even the most censorious could find
nothing to complain of, as far as she properly could she defended
those of her own sex whom the world condemned most severely.

In religion she was, I should think, as nearly a free-thinker as
anyone could be whose mind seldom turned upon the subject.  She went
to church, but disliked equally those who aired either religion or
irreligion.  I remember once hearing her press a late well-known
philosopher to write a novel instead of pursuing his attacks upon
religion.  The philosopher did not much like this, and dilated upon
the importance of showing people the folly of much that they
pretended to believe.  She smiled and said demurely, "Have they not
Moses and the prophets?  Let them hear them."  But she would say a
wicked thing quietly on her own account sometimes, and called my
attention once to a note in her prayer-book which gave account of
the walk to Emmaus with the two disciples, and how Christ had said
to them "O fools and slow of heart to believe ALL that the prophets
have spoken"--the "all" being printed in small capitals.

Though scarcely on terms with her brother John, she had kept up
closer relations with Theobald and his family, and had paid a few
days' visit to Battersby once in every two years or so.  Alethea had
always tried to like Theobald and join forces with him as much as
she could (for they two were the hares of the family, the rest being
all hounds), but it was no use.  I believe her chief reason for
maintaining relations with her brother was that she might keep an
eye on his children and give them a lift if they proved nice.

When Miss Pontifex had come down to Battersby in old times the
children had not been beaten, and their lessons had been made
lighter.  She easily saw that they were overworked and unhappy, but
she could hardly guess how all-reaching was the regime under which
they lived.  She knew she could not interfere effectually then, and
wisely forbore to make too many enquiries.  Her time, if ever it was
to come, would be when the children were no longer living under the
same roof as their parents.  It ended in her making up her mind to
have nothing to do with either Joey or Charlotte, but to see so much
of Ernest as should enable her to form an opinion about his
disposition and abilities.

He had now been a year and a half at Roughborough and was nearly
fourteen years old, so that his character had begun to shape.  His
aunt had not seen him for some little time and, thinking that if she
was to exploit him she could do so now perhaps better than at any
which should be good enough for Theobald, and to take stock of her
nephew under circumstances in which she could get him for some few
hours to herself.  Accordingly in August 1849, when Ernest was just
entering on his fourth half year a cab drove up to Dr Skinner's door
with Miss Pontifex, who asked and obtained leave for Ernest to come
and dine with her at the Swan Hotel.  She had written to Ernest to
say she was coming and he was of course on the look-out for her.  He
had not seen her for so long that he was rather shy at first, but
her good nature soon set him at his ease.  She was so strongly
biassed in favour of anything young that her heart warmed towards
him at once, though his appearance was less prepossessing than she
had hoped.  She took him to a cake shop and gave him whatever he
liked as soon as she had got him off the school premises; and Ernest
felt at once that she contrasted favourably even with his aunts the
Misses Allaby, who were so very sweet and good.  The Misses Allaby
were very poor; sixpence was to them what five shillings was to
Alethea.  What chance had they against one who, if she had a mind,
could put by out of her income twice as much as they, poor women,
could spend?

The boy had plenty of prattle in him when he was not snubbed, and
Alethea encouraged him to chatter about whatever came uppermost.  He
was always ready to trust anyone who was kind to him; it took many
years to make him reasonably wary in this respect--if indeed, as I
sometimes doubt, he ever will be as wary as he ought to be--and in a
short time he had quite dissociated his aunt from his papa and mamma
and the rest, with whom his instinct told him he should be on his
guard.  Little did he know how great, as far as he was concerned,
were the issues that depended upon his behaviour.  If he had known,
he would perhaps have played his part less successfully.

His aunt drew from him more details of his home and school life than
his papa and mamma would have approved of, but he had no idea that
he was being pumped.  She got out of him all about the happy Sunday
evenings, and how he and Joey and Charlotte quarrelled sometimes,
but she took no side and treated everything as though it were a
matter of course.  Like all the boys, he could mimic Dr Skinner, and
when warmed with dinner, and two glasses of sherry which made him
nearly tipsy, he favoured his aunt with samples of the Doctor's
manner and spoke of him familiarly as "Sam."

"Sam," he said, "is an awful old humbug."  It was the sherry that
brought out this piece of swagger, for whatever else he was Dr
Skinner was a reality to Master Ernest, before which, indeed, he
sank into his boots in no time.  Alethea smiled and said, "I must
not say anything to that, must I?"  Ernest said, "I suppose not,"
and was checked.  By-and-by he vented a number of small second-hand
priggishnesses which he had caught up believing them to be the
correct thing, and made it plain that even at that early age Ernest
believed in Ernest with a belief which was amusing from its
absurdity.  His aunt judged him charitably as she was sure to do;
she knew very well where the priggishness came from, and seeing that
the string of his tongue had been loosened sufficiently gave him no
more sherry.

It was after dinner, however, that he completed the conquest of his
aunt.  She then discovered that, like herself, he was passionately
fond of music, and that, too, of the highest class.  He knew, and
hummed or whistled to her all sorts of pieces out of the works of
the great masters, which a boy of his age could hardly be expected
to know, and it was evident that this was purely instinctive,
inasmuch as music received no kind of encouragement at Roughborough.
There was no boy in the school as fond of music as he was.  He
picked up his knowledge, he said, from the organist of St Michael's
Church who used to practise sometimes on a week-day afternoon.
Ernest had heard the organ booming away as he was passing outside
the church and had sneaked inside and up into the organ loft.  In
the course of time the organist became accustomed to him as a
familiar visitant, and the pair became friends.

It was this which decided Alethea that the boy was worth taking
pains with.  "He likes the best music," she thought, "and he hates
Dr Skinner.  This is a very fair beginning."  When she sent him away
at night with a sovereign in his pocket (and he had only hoped to
get five shillings) she felt as though she had had a good deal more
than her money's worth for her money.



CHAPTER XXXIII



Next day Miss Pontifex returned to town, with her thoughts full of
her nephew and how she could best be of use to him.

It appeared to her that to do him any real service she must devote
herself almost entirely to him; she must in fact give up living in
London, at any rate for a long time, and live at Roughborough where
she could see him continually.  This was a serious undertaking; she
had lived in London for the last twelve years, and naturally
disliked the prospect of a small country town such as Roughborough.
Was it a prudent thing to attempt so much?  Must not people take
their chances in this world?  Can anyone do much for anyone else
unless by making a will in his favour and dying then and there?
Should not each look after his own happiness, and will not the world
be best carried on if everyone minds his own business and leaves
other people to mind theirs?  Life is not a donkey race in which
everyone is to ride his neighbour's donkey and the last is to win,
and the psalmist long since formulated a common experience when he
declared that no man may deliver his brother nor make agreement unto
God for him, for it cost more to redeem their souls, so that he must
let that alone for ever.

All these excellent reasons for letting her nephew alone occurred to
her, and many more, but against them there pleaded a woman's love
for children, and her desire to find someone among the younger
branches of her own family to whom she could become warmly attached,
and whom she could attach warmly to herself.

Over and above this she wanted someone to leave her money to; she
was not going to leave it to people about whom she knew very little,
merely because they happened to be sons and daughters of brothers
and sisters whom she had never liked.  She knew the power and value
of money exceedingly well, and how many lovable people suffer and
die yearly for the want of it; she was little likely to leave it
without being satisfied that her legatees were square, lovable, and
more or less hard up.  She wanted those to have it who would be most
likely to use it genially and sensibly, and whom it would thus be
likely to make most happy; if she could find one such among her
nephews and nieces, so much the better; it was worth taking a great
deal of pains to see whether she could or could not; but if she
failed, she must find an heir who was not related to her by blood.

"Of course," she had said to me, more than once, "I shall make a
mess of it.  I shall choose some nice-looking, well-dressed screw,
with gentlemanly manners which will take me in, and he will go and
paint Academy pictures, or write for the Times, or do something just
as horrid the moment the breath is out of my body."

As yet, however, she had made no will at all, and this was one of
the few things that troubled her.  I believe she would have left
most of her money to me if I had not stopped her.  My father left me
abundantly well off, and my mode of life has been always simple, so
that I have never known uneasiness about money; moreover I was
especially anxious that there should be no occasion given for ill-
natured talk; she knew well, therefore, that her leaving her money
to me would be of all things the most likely to weaken the ties that
existed between us, provided that I was aware of it, but I did not
mind her talking about whom she should make her heir, so long as it
was well understood that I was not to be the person.

Ernest had satisfied her as having enough in him to tempt her
strongly to take him up, but it was not till after many days'
reflection that she gravitated towards actually doing so, with all
the break in her daily ways that this would entail.  At least, she
said it took her some days, and certainly it appeared to do so, but
from the moment she had begun to broach the subject, I had guessed
how things were going to end.

It was now arranged she should take a house at Roughborough, and go
and live there for a couple of years.  As a compromise, however, to
meet some of my objections, it was also arranged that she should
keep her rooms in Gower Street, and come to town for a week once in
each month; of course, also, she would leave Roughborough for the
greater part of the holidays.  After two years, the thing was to
come to an end, unless it proved a great success.  She should by
that time, at any rate, have made up her mind what the boy's
character was, and would then act as circumstances might determine.

ought to be a year or two in the country after so many years of
London life, and had recommended Roughborough on account of the
purity of its air, and its easy access to and from London--for by
this time the railway had reached it.  She was anxious not to give
her brother and sister any right to complain, if on seeing more of
her nephew she found she could not get on with him, and she was also
anxious not to raise false hopes of any kind in the boy's own mind.

Having settled how everything was to be, she wrote to Theobald and
said she meant to take a house in Roughborough from the Michaelmas
then approaching, and mentioned, as though casually, that one of the
attractions of the place would be that her nephew was at school
there and she should hope to see more of him than she had done
hitherto.

Theobald and Christina knew how dearly Alethea loved London, and
thought it very odd that she should want to go and live at
Roughborough, but they did not suspect that she was going there
solely on her nephew's account, much less that she had thought of
making Ernest her heir.  If they had guessed this, they would have
been so jealous that I half believe they would have asked her to go
and live somewhere else.  Alethea however, was two or three years
younger than Theobald; she was still some years short of fifty, and
might very well live to eighty-five or ninety; her money, therefore,
was not worth taking much trouble about, and her brother and sister-
in-law had dismissed it, so to speak, from their minds with costs,
assuming, however, that if anything did happen to her while they
were still alive, the money would, as a matter of course, come to
them.

The prospect of Alethea seeing much of Ernest was a serious matter.
Christina smelt mischief from afar, as indeed she often did.
Alethea was worldly--as worldly, that is to say, as a sister of
Theobald's could be.  In her letter to Theobald she had said she
knew how much of his and Christina's thoughts were taken up with
anxiety for the boy's welfare.  Alethea had thought this handsome
enough, but Christina had wanted something better and stronger.
"How can she know how much we think of our darling?" she had
exclaimed, when Theobald showed her his sister's letter.  "I think,
my dear, Alethea would understand these things better if she had
children of her own."  The least that would have satisfied Christina
was to have been told that there never yet had been any parents
comparable to Theobald and herself.  She did not feel easy that an
alliance of some kind would not grow up between aunt and nephew, and
neither she nor Theobald wanted Ernest to have any allies.  Joey and
Charlotte were quite as many allies as were good for him.  After
all, however, if Alethea chose to go and live at Roughborough, they
could not well stop her, and must make the best of it.

In a few weeks' time Alethea did choose to go and live at
Roughborough.  A house was found with a field and a nice little
garden which suited her very well.  "At any rate," she said to
herself, "I will have fresh eggs and flowers."  She even considered
the question of keeping a cow, but in the end decided not to do so.
She furnished her house throughout anew, taking nothing whatever
from her establishment in Gower Street, and by Michaelmas--for the
house was empty when she took it--she was settled comfortably, and
had begun to make herself at home.

One of Miss Pontifex's first moves was to ask a dozen of the
smartest and most gentlemanly boys to breakfast with her.  From her
seat in church she could see the faces of the upper-form boys, and
soon made up her mind which of them it would be best to cultivate.
Miss Pontifex, sitting opposite the boys in church, and reckoning
them up with her keen eyes from under her veil by all a woman's
criteria, came to a truer conclusion about the greater number of
those she scrutinized than even Dr Skinner had done.  She fell in
love with one boy from seeing him put on his gloves.

Miss Pontifex, as I have said, got hold of some of these youngsters
through Ernest, and fed them well.  No boy can resist being fed well
by a good-natured and still handsome woman.  Boys are very like nice
dogs in this respect--give them a bone and they will like you at
once.  Alethea employed every other little artifice which she
thought likely to win their allegiance to herself, and through this
their countenance for her nephew.  She found the football club in a
slight money difficulty and at once gave half a sovereign towards
its removal.  The boys had no chance against her, she shot them down
one after another as easily as though they had been roosting
pheasants.  Nor did she escape scathless herself, for, as she wrote
to me, she quite lost her heart to half a dozen of them.  "How much
nicer they are," she said, "and how much more they know than those
who profess to teach them!"

I believe it has been lately maintained that it is the young and
fair who are the truly old and truly experienced, inasmuch as it is
they who alone have a living memory to guide them; "the whole
charm," it has been said, "of youth lies in its advantage over age
in respect of experience, and when this has for some reason failed
or been misapplied, the charm is broken.  When we say that we are
getting old, we should say rather that we are getting new or young,
and are suffering from inexperience; trying to do things which we
have never done before, and failing worse and worse, till in the end
we are landed in the utter impotence of death."

Miss Pontifex died many a long year before the above passage was
written, but she had arrived independently at much the same
conclusion.

She first, therefore, squared the boys.  Dr Skinner was even more
easily dealt with.  He and Mrs Skinner called, as a matter of
course, as soon as Miss Pontifex was settled.  She fooled him to the
top of his bent, and obtained the promise of a MS. copy of one of
his minor poems (for Dr Skinner had the reputation of being quite
one of our most facile and elegant minor poets) on the occasion of
his first visit.  The other masters and masters' wives were not
forgotten.  Alethea laid herself out to please, as indeed she did
wherever she went, and if any woman lays herself out to do this, she
generally succeeds.



CHAPTER XXXIV



Miss Pontifex soon found out that Ernest did not like games, but she
saw also that he could hardly be expected to like them.  He was
perfectly well shaped but unusually devoid of physical strength.  He
got a fair share of this in after life, but it came much later with
him than with other boys, and at the time of which I am writing he
was a mere little skeleton.  He wanted something to develop his arms
and chest without knocking him about as much as the school games
did.  To supply this want by some means which should add also to his
pleasure was Alethea's first anxiety.  Rowing would have answered
every purpose, but unfortunately there was no river at Roughborough.

Whatever it was to be, it must be something which he should like as
much as other boys liked cricket or football, and he must think the
wish for it to have come originally from himself; it was not very
easy to find anything that would do, but ere long it occurred to her
that she might enlist his love of music on her side, and asked him
one day when he was spending a half-holiday at her house whether he
would like her to buy an organ for him to play on.  Of course, the
boy said yes; then she told him about her grandfather and the organs
he had built.  It had never entered into his head that he could make
one, but when he gathered from what his aunt had said that this was
not out of the question, he rose as eagerly to the bait as she could
have desired, and wanted to begin learning to saw and plane so that
he might make the wooden pipes at once.

Miss Pontifex did not see how she could have hit upon anything more
suitable, and she liked the idea that he would incidentally get a
knowledge of carpentering, for she was impressed, perhaps foolishly,
with the wisdom of the German custom which gives every boy a
handicraft of some sort.

Writing to me on this matter, she said "Professions are all very
well for those who have connection and interest as well as capital,
but otherwise they are white elephants.  How many men do not you and
I know who have talent, assiduity, excellent good sense,
straightforwardness, every quality in fact which should command
success, and who yet go on from year to year waiting and hoping
against hope for the work which never comes?  How, indeed, is it
likely to come unless to those who either are born with interest, or
who marry in order to get it?  Ernest's father and mother have no
interest, and if they had they would not use it.  I suppose they
will make him a clergyman, or try to do so--perhaps it is the best
thing to do with him, for he could buy a living with the money his
grandfather left him, but there is no knowing what the boy will
think of it when the time comes, and for aught we know he may insist
on going to the backwoods of America, as so many other young men are
doing now."  . . . But, anyway, he would like making an organ, and
this could do him no harm, so the sooner he began the better.

Alethea thought it would save trouble in the end if she told her
brother and sister-in-law of this scheme.  "I do not suppose," she
wrote, "that Dr Skinner will approve very cordially of my attempt to
introduce organ-building into the curriculum of Roughborough, but I
will see what I can do with him, for I have set my heart on owning
an organ built by Ernest's own hands, which he may play on as much
as he likes while it remains in my house and which I will lend him
permanently as soon as he gets one of his own, but which is to be my
property for the present, inasmuch as I mean to pay for it."  This
was put in to make it plain to Theobald and Christina that they
should not be out of pocket in the matter.

If Alethea had been as poor as the Misses Allaby, the reader may
guess what Ernest's papa and mamma would have said to this proposal;
but then, if she had been as poor as they, she would never have made
it.  They did not like Ernest's getting more and more into his
aunt's good books, still it was perhaps better that he should do so
than that she should be driven back upon the John Pontifexes.  The
only thing, said Theobald, which made him hesitate, was that the boy
might be thrown with low associates later on if he were to be
encouraged in his taste for music--a taste which Theobald had always
disliked.  He had observed with regret that Ernest had ere now shown
rather a hankering after low company, and he might make acquaintance
with those who would corrupt his innocence.  Christina shuddered at
this, but when they had aired their scruples sufficiently they felt
(and when people begin to "feel," they are invariably going to take
what they believe to be the more worldly course) that to oppose
Alethea's proposal would be injuring their son's prospects more than
was right, so they consented, but not too graciously.

After a time, however, Christina got used to the idea, and then
considerations occurred to her which made her throw herself into it
with characteristic ardour.  If Miss Pontifex had been a railway
stock she might have been said to have been buoyant in the Battersby
market for some few days; buoyant for long together she could never
be, still for a time there really was an upward movement.
Christina's mind wandered to the organ itself; she seemed to have
made it with her own hands; there would be no other in England to
compare with it for combined sweetness and power.  She already heard
the famous Dr Walmisley of Cambridge mistaking it for a Father
Smith.  It would come, no doubt, in reality to Battersby Church,
which wanted an organ, for it must be all nonsense about Alethea's
wishing to keep it, and Ernest would not have a house of his own for
ever so many years, and they could never have it at the Rectory.
Oh, no!  Battersby Church was the only proper place for it.

Of course, they would have a grand opening, and the Bishop would
come down, and perhaps young Figgins might be on a visit to them--
she must ask Ernest if young Figgins had yet left Roughborough--he
might even persuade his grandfather Lord Lonsford to be present.
Lord Lonsford and the Bishop and everyone else would then compliment
her, and Dr Wesley or Dr Walmisley, who should preside (it did not
much matter which), would say to her, "My dear Mrs Pontifex, I never
yet played upon so remarkable an instrument."  Then she would give
him one of her very sweetest smiles and say she feared he was
flattering her, on which he would rejoin with some pleasant little
trifle about remarkable men (the remarkable man being for the moment
Ernest) having invariably had remarkable women for their mothers--
and so on and so on.  The advantage of doing one's praising for
oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right
places.

Theobald wrote Ernest a short and surly letter a propos of his
aunt's intentions in this matter.

"I will not commit myself," he said, "to an opinion whether anything
will come of it; this will depend entirely upon your own exertions;
you have had singular advantages hitherto, and your kind aunt is
showing every desire to befriend you, but you must give greater
proof of stability and steadiness of character than you have given
yet if this organ matter is not to prove in the end to be only one
disappointment the more.

"I must insist on two things:  firstly that this new iron in the
fire does not distract your attention from your Latin and Greek"--
("They aren't mine," thought Ernest, "and never have been")--"and
secondly, that you bring no smell of glue or shavings into the house
here, if you make any part of the organ during your holidays."

Ernest was still too young to know how unpleasant a letter he was
receiving.  He believed the innuendoes contained in it to be
perfectly just.  He knew he was sadly deficient in perseverance.  He
liked some things for a little while, and then found he did not like
them any more--and this was as bad as anything well could be.  His
father's letter gave him one of his many fits of melancholy over his
own worthlessness, but the thought of the organ consoled him, and he
felt sure that here at any rate was something to which he could
apply himself steadily without growing tired of it.

It was settled that the organ was not to be begun before the
Christmas holidays were over, and that till then Ernest should do a
little plain carpentering, so as to get to know how to use his
tools.  Miss Pontifex had a carpenter's bench set up in an outhouse
upon her own premises, and made terms with the most respectable
carpenter in Roughborough, by which one of his men was to come for a
couple of hours twice a week and set Ernest on the right way; then
she discovered she wanted this or that simple piece of work done,
and gave the boy a commission to do it, paying him handsomely as
well as finding him in tools and materials.  She never gave him a
syllable of good advice, or talked to him about everything's
depending upon his own exertions, but she kissed him often, and
would come into the workshop and act the part of one who took an
interest in what was being done so cleverly as ere long to become
really interested.

What boy would not take kindly to almost anything with such
assistance?  All boys like making things; the exercise of sawing,
planing and hammering, proved exactly what his aunt had wanted to
find--something that should exercise, but not too much, and at the
same time amuse him; when Ernest's sallow face was flushed with his
work, and his eyes were sparkling with pleasure, he looked quite a
different boy from the one his aunt had taken in hand only a few
months earlier.  His inner self never told him that this was humbug,
as it did about Latin and Greek.  Making stools and drawers was
worth living for, and after Christmas there loomed the organ, which
was scarcely ever absent from his mind.

His aunt let him invite his friends, encouraging him to bring those
whom her quick sense told her were the most desirable.  She
smartened him up also in his personal appearance, always without
preaching to him.  Indeed she worked wonders during the short time
that was allowed her, and if her life had been spared I cannot think
that my hero would have come under the shadow of that cloud which
cast so heavy a gloom over his younger manhood; but unfortunately
for him his gleam of sunshine was too hot and too brilliant to last,
and he had many a storm yet to weather, before he became fairly
happy.  For the present, however, he was supremely so, and his aunt
was happy and grateful for his happiness, the improvement she saw in
him, and his unrepressed affection for herself.  She became fonder
of him from day to day in spite of his many faults and almost
incredible foolishnesses.  It was perhaps on account of these very
things that she saw how much he had need of her; but at any rate,
from whatever cause, she became strengthened in her determination to
be to him in the place of parents, and to find in him a son rather
than a nephew.  But still she made no will.



CHAPTER XXXV



All went well for the first part of the following half year.  Miss
Pontifex spent the greater part of her holidays in London, and I
also saw her at Roughborough, where I spent a few days, staying at
the "Swan."  I heard all about my godson in whom, however, I took
less interest than I said I did.  I took more interest in the stage
at that time than in anything else, and as for Ernest, I found him a
nuisance for engrossing so much of his aunt's attention, and taking
her so much from London.  The organ was begun, and made fair
progress during the first two months of the half year.  Ernest was
happier than he had ever been before, and was struggling upwards.
The best boys took more notice of him for his aunt's sake, and he
consorted less with those who led him into mischief.

But much as Miss Pontifex had done, she could not all at once undo
the effect of such surroundings as the boy had had at Battersby.
Much as he feared and disliked his father (though he still knew not
how much this was), he had caught much from him; if Theobald had
been kinder Ernest would have modelled himself upon him entirely,
and ere long would probably have become as thorough a little prig as
could have easily been found.

Fortunately his temper had come to him from his mother, who, when
not frightened, and when there was nothing on the horizon which
might cross the slightest whim of her husband, was an amiable, good-
natured woman.  If it was not such an awful thing to say of anyone,
I should say that she meant well.

Ernest had also inherited his mother's love of building castles in
the air, and--so I suppose it must be called--her vanity.  He was
very fond of showing off, and, provided he could attract attention,
cared little from whom it came, nor what it was for.  He caught up,
parrot-like, whatever jargon he heard from his elders, which he
thought was the correct thing, and aired it in season and out of
season, as though it were his own.

Miss Pontifex was old enough and wise enough to know that this is
the way in which even the greatest men as a general rule begin to
develop, and was more pleased with his receptiveness and
reproductiveness than alarmed at the things he caught and
reproduced.

She saw that he was much attached to herself, and trusted to this
rather than to anything else.  She saw also that his conceit was not
very profound, and that his fits of self-abasement were as extreme
as his exaltation had been.  His impulsiveness and sanguine
trustfulness in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was
not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious about him than
any other point in his character; she saw clearly that he would have
to find himself rudely undeceived many a time and oft, before he
would learn to distinguish friend from foe within reasonable time.
It was her perception of this which led her to take the action which
she was so soon called upon to take.

Her health was for the most part excellent, and she had never had a
serious illness in her life.  One morning, however, soon after
Easter 1850, she awoke feeling seriously unwell.  For some little
time there had been a talk of fever in the neighbourhood, but in
those days the precautions that ought to be taken against the spread
of infection were not so well understood as now, and nobody did
anything.  In a day or two it became plain that Miss Pontifex had
got an attack of typhoid fever and was dangerously ill.  On this she
sent off a messenger to town, and desired him not to return without
her lawyer and myself.

We arrived on the afternoon of the day on which we had been
summoned, and found her still free from delirium:  indeed, the
cheery way in which she received us made it difficult to think she
could be in danger.  She at once explained her wishes, which had
reference, as I expected, to her nephew, and repeated the substance
of what I have already referred to as her main source of uneasiness
concerning him.  Then she begged me by our long and close intimacy,
by the suddenness of the danger that had fallen on her and her
powerlessness to avert it, to undertake what she said she well knew,
if she died, would be an unpleasant and invidious trust.

She wanted to leave the bulk of her money ostensibly to me, but in
reality to her nephew, so that I should hold it in trust for him
till he was twenty-eight years old, but neither he nor anyone else,
except her lawyer and myself, was to know anything about it.  She
would leave 5000 pounds in other legacies, and 15,000 pounds to
Ernest--which by the time he was twenty-eight would have accumulated
to, say, 30,000 pounds.  "Sell out the debentures," she said, "where
the money now is--and put it into Midland Ordinary."

"Let him make his mistakes," she said, "upon the money his
grandfather left him.  I am no prophet, but even I can see that it
will take that boy many years to see things as his neighbours see
them.  He will get no help from his father and mother, who would
never forgive him for his good luck if I left him the money
outright; I daresay I am wrong, but I think he will have to lose the
greater part or all of what he has, before he will know how to keep
what he will get from me."

Supposing he went bankrupt before he was twenty-eight years old, the
money was to be mine absolutely, but she could trust me, she said,
to hand it over to Ernest in due time.

"If," she continued, "I am mistaken, the worst that can happen is
that he will come into a larger sum at twenty-eight instead of a
smaller sum at, say, twenty-three, for I would never trust him with
it earlier, and--if he knows nothing about it he will not be unhappy
for the want of it."

She begged me to take 2000 pounds in return for the trouble I should
have in taking charge of the boy's estate, and as a sign of the
testatrix's hope that I would now and again look after him while he
was still young.  The remaining 3000 pounds I was to pay in legacies
and annuities to friends and servants.

In vain both her lawyer and myself remonstrated with her on the
unusual and hazardous nature of this arrangement.  We told her that
sensible people will not take a more sanguine view concerning human
nature than the Courts of Chancery do.  We said, in fact, everything
that anyone else would say.  She admitted everything, but urged that
her time was short, that nothing would induce her to leave her money
to her nephew in the usual way.  "It is an unusually foolish will,"
she said, "but he is an unusually foolish boy;" and she smiled quite
merrily at her little sally.  Like all the rest of her family, she
was very stubborn when her mind was made up.  So the thing was done
as she wished it.

No provision was made for either my death or Ernest's--Miss Pontifex
had settled it that we were neither of us going to die, and was too
ill to go into details; she was so anxious, moreover, to sign her
will while still able to do so that we had practically no
alternative but to do as she told us.  If she recovered we could see
things put on a more satisfactory footing, and further discussion
would evidently impair her chances of recovery; it seemed then only
too likely that it was a case of this will or no will at all.

When the will was signed I wrote a letter in duplicate, saying that
I held all Miss Pontifex had left me in trust for Ernest except as
regards 5000 pounds, but that he was not to come into the bequest,
and was to know nothing whatever about it directly or indirectly,
till he was twenty-eight years old, and if he was bankrupt before he
came into it the money was to be mine absolutely.  At the foot of
each letter Miss Pontifex wrote, "The above was my understanding
when I made my will," and then signed her name.  The solicitor and
his clerk witnessed; I kept one copy myself and handed the other to
Miss Pontifex's solicitor.

When all this had been done she became more easy in her mind.  She
talked principally about her nephew.  "Don't scold him," she said,
"if he is volatile, and continually takes things up only to throw
them down again.  How can he find out his strength or weakness
otherwise?  A man's profession," she said, and here she gave one of
her wicked little laughs, "is not like his wife, which he must take
once for all, for better for worse, without proof beforehand.  Let
him go here and there, and learn his truest liking by finding out
what, after all, he catches himself turning to most habitually--then
let him stick to this; but I daresay Ernest will be forty or five
and forty before he settles down.  Then all his previous
infidelities will work together to him for good if he is the boy I
hope he is.

"Above all," she continued, "do not let him work up to his full
strength, except once or twice in his lifetime; nothing is well done
nor worth doing unless, take it all round, it has come pretty
easily.  Theobald and Christina would give him a pinch of salt and
tell him to put it on the tails of the seven deadly virtues;"--here
she laughed again in her old manner at once so mocking and so sweet-
-"I think if he likes pancakes he had perhaps better eat them on
Shrove Tuesday, but this is enough."  These were the last coherent
words she spoke.  From that time she grew continually worse, and was
never free from delirium till her death--which took place less than
a fortnight afterwards, to the inexpressible grief of those who knew
and loved her.



CHAPTER XXXVI



Letters had been written to Miss Pontifex's brothers and sisters,
and one and all came post-haste to Roughborough.  Before they
arrived the poor lady was already delirious, and for the sake of her
own peace at the last I am half glad she never recovered
consciousness.

I had known these people all their lives, as none can know each
other but those who have played together as children; I knew how
they had all of them--perhaps Theobald least, but all of them more
or less--made her life a burden to her until the death of her father
had made her her own mistress, and I was displeased at their coming
one after the other to Roughborough, and inquiring whether their
sister had recovered consciousness sufficiently to be able to see
them.  It was known that she had sent for me on being taken ill, and
that I remained at Roughborough, and I own I was angered by the
mingled air of suspicion, defiance and inquisitiveness, with which
they regarded me.  They would all, except Theobald, I believe have
cut me downright if they had not believed me to know something they
wanted to know themselves, and might have some chance of learning
from me--for it was plain I had been in some way concerned with the
making of their sister's will.  None of them suspected what the
ostensible nature of this would be, but I think they feared Miss
Pontifex was about to leave money for public uses.  John said to me
in his blandest manner that he fancied he remembered to have heard
his sister say that she thought of leaving money to found a college
for the relief of dramatic authors in distress; to this I made no
rejoinder, and I have no doubt his suspicions were deepened.

When the end came, I got Miss Pontifex's solicitor to write and tell
her brothers and sisters how she had left her money:  they were not
unnaturally furious, and went each to his or her separate home
without attending the funeral, and without paying any attention to
myself.  This was perhaps the kindest thing they could have done by
me, for their behaviour made me so angry that I became almost
reconciled to Alethea's will out of pleasure at the anger it had
aroused.  But for this I should have felt the will keenly, as having
been placed by it in the position which of all others I had been
most anxious to avoid, and as having saddled me with a very heavy
responsibility.  Still it was impossible for me to escape, and I
could only let things take their course.

Miss Pontifex had expressed a wish to be buried at Paleham; in the
course of the next few days I therefore took the body thither.  I
had not been to Paleham since the death of my father some six years
earlier.  I had often wished to go there, but had shrunk from doing
so though my sister had been two or three times.  I could not bear
to see the house which had been my home for so many years of my life
in the hands of strangers; to ring ceremoniously at a bell which I
had never yet pulled except as a boy in jest; to feel that I had
nothing to do with a garden in which I had in childhood gathered so
many a nosegay, and which had seemed my own for many years after I
had reached man's estate; to see the rooms bereft of every familiar
feature, and made so unfamiliar in spite of their familiarity.  Had
there been any sufficient reason, I should have taken these things
as a matter of course, and should no doubt have found them much
worse in anticipation than in reality, but as there had been no
special reason why I should go to Paleham I had hitherto avoided
doing so.  Now, however, my going was a necessity, and I confess I
never felt more subdued than I did on arriving there with the dead
playmate of my childhood.

I found the village more changed than I had expected.  The railway
had come there, and a brand new yellow brick station was on the site
of old Mr and Mrs Pontifex's cottage.  Nothing but the carpenter's
shop was now standing.  I saw many faces I knew, but even in six
years they seemed to have grown wonderfully older.  Some of the very
old were dead, and the old were getting very old in their stead.  I
felt like the changeling in the fairy story who came back after a
seven years' sleep.  Everyone seemed glad to see me, though I had
never given them particular cause to be so, and everyone who
remembered old Mr and Mrs Pontifex spoke warmly of them and were
pleased at their granddaughter's wishing to be laid near them.
Entering the churchyard and standing in the twilight of a gusty
cloudy evening on the spot close beside old Mrs Pontifex's grave
which I had chosen for Alethea's, I thought of the many times that
she, who would lie there henceforth, and I, who must surely lie one
day in some such another place though when and where I knew not, had
romped over this very spot as childish lovers together.  Next
morning I followed her to the grave, and in due course set up a
plain upright slab to her memory as like as might be to those over
the graves of her grandmother and grandfather.  I gave the dates and
places of her birth and death, but added nothing except that this
stone was set up by one who had known and loved her.  Knowing how
fond she had been of music I had been half inclined at one time to
inscribe a few bars of music, if I could find any which seemed
suitable to her character, but I knew how much she would have
disliked anything singular in connection with her tombstone and did
not do it.

Before, however, I had come to this conclusion, I had thought that
Ernest might be able to help me to the right thing, and had written
to him upon the subject.  The following is the answer I received -


"Dear Godpapa,--I send you the best bit I can think of; it is the
subject of the last of Handel's six grand fugues and goes thus:-

[Music score]

It would do better for a man, especially for an old man who was very
sorry for things, than for a woman, but I cannot think of anything
better; if you do not like it for Aunt Alethea I shall keep it for
myself.--Your affectionate Godson,  ERNEST PONTIFEX."


Was this the little lad who could get sweeties for two-pence but not
for two-pence-halfpenny?  Dear, dear me, I thought to myself, how
these babes and sucklings do give us the go-by surely.  Choosing his
own epitaph at fifteen as for a man who "had been very sorry for
things," and such a strain as that--why it might have done for
Leonardo da Vinci himself.  Then I set the boy down as a conceited
young jackanapes, which no doubt he was,--but so are a great many
other young people of Ernest's age.



CHAPTER XXXVII



If Theobald and Christina had not been too well pleased when Miss
Pontifex first took Ernest in hand, they were still less so when the
connection between the two was interrupted so prematurely.  They
said they had made sure from what their sister had said that she was
going to make Ernest her heir.  I do not think she had given them so
much as a hint to this effect.  Theobald indeed gave Ernest to
understand that she had done so in a letter which will be given
shortly, but if Theobald wanted to make himself disagreeable, a
trifle light as air would forthwith assume in his imagination
whatever form was most convenient to him.  I do not think they had
even made up their minds what Alethea was to do with her money
before they knew of her being at the point of death, and as I have
said already, if they had thought it likely that Ernest would be
made heir over their own heads without their having at any rate a
life interest in the bequest, they would have soon thrown obstacles
in the way of further intimacy between aunt and nephew.

This, however, did not bar their right to feeling aggrieved now that
neither they nor Ernest had taken anything at all, and they could
profess disappointment on their boy's behalf which they would have
been too proud to admit upon their own.  In fact, it was only
amiable of them to be disappointed under these circumstances.

Christina said that the will was simply fraudulent, and was
convinced that it could be upset if she and Theobald went the right
way to work.  Theobald, she said, should go before the Lord
Chancellor, not in full court but in chambers, where he could
explain the whole matter; or, perhaps it would be even better if she
were to go herself--and I dare not trust myself to describe the
reverie to which this last idea gave rise.  I believe in the end
Theobald died, and the Lord Chancellor (who had become a widower a
few weeks earlier) made her an offer, which, however, she firmly but
not ungratefully declined; she should ever, she said, continue to
think of him as a friend--at this point the cook came in, saying the
butcher had called, and what would she please to order.

I think Theobald must have had an idea that there was something
behind the bequest to me, but he said nothing about it to Christina.
He was angry and felt wronged, because he could not get at Alethea
to give her a piece of his mind any more than he had been able to
get at his father.  "It is so mean of people," he exclaimed to
himself, "to inflict an injury of this sort, and then shirk facing
those whom they have injured; let us hope that, at any rate, they
and I may meet in Heaven."  But of this he was doubtful, for when
people had done so great a wrong as this, it was hardly to be
supposed that they would go to Heaven at all--and as for his meeting
them in another place, the idea never so much as entered his mind.

One so angry and, of late, so little used to contradiction might be
trusted, however, to avenge himself upon someone, and Theobald had
long since developed the organ, by means of which he might vent
spleen with least risk and greatest satisfaction to himself.  This
organ, it may be guessed, was nothing else than Ernest; to Ernest
therefore he proceeded to unburden himself, not personally, but by
letter.

"You ought to know," he wrote, "that your Aunt Alethea had given
your mother and me to understand that it was her wish to make you
her heir--in the event, of course, of your conducting yourself in
such a manner as to give her confidence in you; as a matter of fact,
however, she has left you nothing, and the whole of her property has
gone to your godfather, Mr Overton.  Your mother and I are willing
to hope that if she had lived longer you would yet have succeeded in
winning her good opinion, but it is too late to think of this now.

"The carpentering and organ-building must at once be discontinued.
I never believed in the project, and have seen no reason to alter my
original opinion.  I am not sorry for your own sake, that it is to
be at an end, nor, I am sure, will you regret it yourself in after
years.

"A few words more as regards your own prospects.  You have, as I
believe you know, a small inheritance, which is yours legally under
your grandfather's will.  This bequest was made inadvertently, and,
I believe, entirely through a misunderstanding on the lawyer's part.
The bequest was probably intended not to take effect till after the
death of your mother and myself; nevertheless, as the will is
actually worded, it will now be at your command if you live to be
twenty-one years old.  From this, however, large deductions must be
made.  There will be legacy duty, and I do not know whether I am not
entitled to deduct the expenses of your education and maintenance
from birth to your coming of age; I shall not in all likelihood
insist on this right to the full, if you conduct yourself properly,
but a considerable sum should certainly be deducted, there will
therefore remain very little--say 1000 pounds or 2000 pounds at the
outside, as what will be actually yours--but the strictest account
shall be rendered you in due time.

"This, let me warn you most seriously, is all that you must expect
from me (even Ernest saw that it was not from Theobald at all) at
any rate till after my death, which for aught any of us know may be
yet many years distant.  It is not a large sum, but it is sufficient
if supplemented by steadiness and earnestness of purpose.  Your
mother and I gave you the name Ernest, hoping that it would remind
you continually of--" but I really cannot copy more of this
effusion.  It was all the same old will-shaking game and came
practically to this, that Ernest was no good, and that if he went on
as he was going on now, he would probably have to go about the
streets begging without any shoes or stockings soon after he had
left school, or at any rate, college; and that he, Theobald, and
Christina were almost too good for this world altogether.

After he had written this Theobald felt quite good-natured, and sent
to the Mrs Thompson of the moment even more soup and wine than her
usual not illiberal allowance.

Ernest was deeply, passionately upset by his father's letter; to
think that even his dear aunt, the one person of his relations whom
he really loved, should have turned against him and thought badly of
him after all.  This was the unkindest cut of all.  In the hurry of
her illness Miss Pontifex, while thinking only of his welfare, had
omitted to make such small present mention of him as would have made
his father's innuendoes stingless; and her illness being infectious,
she had not seen him after its nature was known.  I myself did not
know of Theobald's letter, nor think enough about my godson to guess
what might easily be his state.  It was not till many years
afterwards that I found Theobald's letter in the pocket of an old
portfolio which Ernest had used at school, and in which other old
letters and school documents were collected which I have used in
this book.  He had forgotten that he had it, but told me when he saw
it that he remembered it as the first thing that made him begin to
rise against his father in a rebellion which he recognised as
righteous, though he dared not openly avow it.  Not the least
serious thing was that it would, he feared, be his duty to give up
the legacy his grandfather had left him; for if it was his only
through a mistake, how could he keep it?

During the rest of the half year Ernest was listless and unhappy.
He was very fond of some of his schoolfellows, but afraid of those
whom he believed to be better than himself, and prone to idealise
everyone into being his superior except those who were obviously a
good deal beneath him.  He held himself much too cheap, and because
he was without that physical strength and vigour which he so much
coveted, and also because he knew he shirked his lessons, he
believed that he was without anything which could deserve the name
of a good quality; he was naturally bad, and one of those for whom
there was no place for repentance, though he sought it even with
tears.  So he shrank out of sight of those whom in his boyish way he
idolised, never for a moment suspecting that he might have
capacities to the full as high as theirs though of a different kind,
and fell in more with those who were reputed of the baser sort, with
whom he could at any rate be upon equal terms.  Before the end of
the half year he had dropped from the estate to which he had been
raised during his aunt's stay at Roughborough, and his old
dejection, varied, however, with bursts of conceit rivalling those
of his mother, resumed its sway over him.  "Pontifex," said Dr
Skinner, who had fallen upon him in hall one day like a moral
landslip, before he had time to escape, "do you never laugh?  Do you
always look so preternaturally grave?"  The doctor had not meant to
be unkind, but the boy turned crimson, and escaped.

There was one place only where he was happy, and that was in the old
church of St Michael, when his friend the organist was practising.
About this time cheap editions of the great oratorios began to
appear, and Ernest got them all as soon as they were published; he
would sometimes sell a school-book to a second-hand dealer, and buy
a number or two of the "Messiah," or the "Creation," or "Elijah,"
with the proceeds.  This was simply cheating his papa and mamma, but
Ernest was falling low again--or thought he was--and he wanted the
music much, and the Sallust, or whatever it was, little.  Sometimes
the organist would go home, leaving his keys with Ernest, so that he
could play by himself and lock up the organ and the church in time
to get back for calling over.  At other times, while his friend was
playing, he would wander round the church, looking at the monuments
and the old stained glass windows, enchanted as regards both ears
and eyes, at once.  Once the old rector got hold of him as he was
watching a new window being put in, which the rector had bought in
Germany--the work, it was supposed, of Albert Durer.  He questioned
Ernest, and finding that he was fond of music, he said in his old
trembling voice (for he was over eighty), "Then you should have
known Dr Burney who wrote the history of music.  I knew him
exceedingly well when I was a young man."  That made Ernest's heart
beat, for he knew that Dr Burney, when a boy at school at Chester,
used to break bounds that he might watch Handel smoking his pipe in
the Exchange coffee house--and now he was in the presence of one
who, if he had not seen Handel himself, had at least seen those who
had seen him.

These were oases in his desert, but, as a general rule, the boy
looked thin and pale, and as though he had a secret which depressed
him, which no doubt he had, but for which I cannot blame him.  He
rose, in spite of himself, higher in the school, but fell ever into
deeper and deeper disgrace with the masters, and did not gain in the
opinion of those boys about whom he was persuaded that they could
assuredly never know what it was to have a secret weighing upon
their minds.  This was what Ernest felt so keenly; he did not much
care about the boys who liked him, and idolised some who kept him as
far as possible at a distance, but this is pretty much the case with
all boys everywhere.

At last things reached a crisis, below which they could not very
well go, for at the end of the half year but one after his aunt's
death, Ernest brought back a document in his portmanteau, which
Theobald stigmatised as "infamous and outrageous."  I need hardly
say I am alluding to his school bill.

This document was always a source of anxiety to Ernest, for it was
gone into with scrupulous care, and he was a good deal cross-
examined about it.  He would sometimes "write in" for articles
necessary for his education, such as a portfolio, or a dictionary,
and sell the same, as I have explained, in order to eke out his
pocket money, probably to buy either music or tobacco.  These frauds
were sometimes, as Ernest thought, in imminent danger of being
discovered, and it was a load off his breast when the cross-
examination was safely over.  This time Theobald had made a great
fuss about the extras, but had grudgingly passed them; it was
another matter, however, with the character and the moral
statistics, with which the bill concluded.

The page on which these details were to be found was as follows:


REPORT OF THE CONDUCT AND PROGRESS OF ERNEST PONTIFEX.
UPPER FIFTH FORM, HALF YEAR ENDING MIDSUMMER 1851

Classics--Idle, listless and unimproving.
Mathematics " " "
Divinity " " "
Conduct in house.--Orderly.
General Conduct--Not satisfactory, on account of his great
unpunctuality and inattention to duties.
Monthly merit money 1s. 6d. 6d. 0d. 6d.  Total 2s. 6d.
Number of merit marks 2 0 1 1 0 Total 4
Number of penal marks 26 20 25 30 25 Total 126
Number of extra penals 9 6 10 12 11 Total 48
I recommend that his pocket money be made to depend upon his merit
money.
S. SKINNER, Headmaster.



CHAPTER XXXVIII



Ernest was thus in disgrace from the beginning of the holidays, but
an incident soon occurred which led him into delinquencies compared
with which all his previous sins were venial.

Among the servants at the Rectory was a remarkably pretty girl named
Ellen.  She came from Devonshire, and was the daughter of a
fisherman who had been drowned when she was a child.  Her mother set
up a small shop in the village where her husband had lived, and just
managed to make a living.  Ellen remained with her till she was
fourteen, when she first went out to service.  Four years later,
when she was about eighteen, but so well grown that she might have
passed for twenty, she had been strongly recommended to Christina,
who was then in want of a housemaid, and had now been at Battersby
about twelve months.

As I have said the girl was remarkably pretty; she looked the
perfection of health and good temper, indeed there was a serene
expression upon her face which captivated almost all who saw her;
she looked as if matters had always gone well with her and were
always going to do so, and as if no conceivable combination of
circumstances could put her for long together out of temper either
with herself or with anyone else.  Her complexion was clear, but
high; her eyes were grey and beautifully shaped; her lips were full
and restful, with something of an Egyptian Sphinx-like character
about them.  When I learned that she came from Devonshire I fancied
I saw a strain of far away Egyptian blood in her, for I had heard,
though I know not what foundation there was for the story, that the
Egyptians made settlements on the coast of Devonshire and Cornwall
long before the Romans conquered Britain.  Her hair was a rich
brown, and her figure--of about the middle height--perfect, but
erring if at all on the side of robustness.  Altogether she was one
of those girls about whom one is inclined to wonder how they can
remain unmarried a week or a day longer.

Her face (as indeed faces generally are, though I grant they lie
sometimes) was a fair index to her disposition.  She was good nature
itself, and everyone in the house, not excluding I believe even
Theobald himself after a fashion, was fond of her.  As for Christina
she took the very warmest interest in her, and used to have her into
the dining-room twice a week, and prepare her for confirmation (for
by some accident she had never been confirmed) by explaining to her
the geography of Palestine and the routes taken by St Paul on his
various journeys in Asia Minor.

When Bishop Treadwell did actually come down to Battersby and hold a
confirmation there (Christina had her wish, he slept at Battersby,
and she had a grand dinner party for him, and called him "My lord"
several times), he was so much struck with her pretty face and
modest demeanour when he laid his hands upon her that he asked
Christina about her.  When she replied that Ellen was one of her own
servants, the bishop seemed, so she thought or chose to think, quite
pleased that so pretty a girl should have found so exceptionally
good a situation.

Ernest used to get up early during the holidays so that he might
play the piano before breakfast without disturbing his papa and
mamma--or rather, perhaps, without being disturbed by them.  Ellen
would generally be there sweeping the drawing-room floor and dusting
while he was playing, and the boy, who was ready to make friends
with most people, soon became very fond of her.  He was not as a
general rule sensitive to the charms of the fair sex, indeed he had
hardly been thrown in with any women except his Aunts Allaby, and
his Aunt Alethea, his mother, his sister Charlotte and Mrs Jay;
sometimes also he had had to take off his hat to the Miss Skinners,
and had felt as if he should sink into the earth on doing so, but
his shyness had worn off with Ellen, and the pair had become fast
friends.

Perhaps it was well that Ernest was not at home for very long
together, but as yet his affection though hearty was quite Platonic.
He was not only innocent, but deplorably--I might even say guiltily-
-innocent.  His preference was based upon the fact that Ellen never
scolded him, but was always smiling and good tempered; besides she
used to like to hear him play, and this gave him additional zest in
playing.  The morning access to the piano was indeed the one
distinct advantage which the holidays had in Ernest's eyes, for at
school he could not get at a piano except quasi-surreptitiously at
the shop of Mr Pearsall, the music-seller.

On returning this midsummer he was shocked to find his favourite
looking pale and ill.  All her good spirits had left her, the roses
had fled from her cheek, and she seemed on the point of going into a
decline.  She said she was unhappy about her mother, whose health
was failing, and was afraid she was herself not long for this world.
Christina, of course, noticed the change.  "I have often remarked,"
she said, "that those very fresh-coloured, healthy-looking girls are
the first to break up.  I have given her calomel and James's powders
repeatedly, and though she does not like it, I think I must show her
to Dr Martin when he next comes here."

"Very well, my dear," said Theobald, and so next time Dr Martin came
Ellen was sent for.  Dr Martin soon discovered what would probably
have been apparent to Christina herself if she had been able to
conceive of such an ailment in connection with a servant who lived
under the same roof as Theobald and herself--the purity of whose
married life should have preserved all unmarried people who came
near them from any taint of mischief.

When it was discovered that in three or four months more Ellen would
become a mother, Christina's natural good nature would have prompted
her to deal as leniently with the case as she could, if she had not
been panic-stricken lest any mercy on her and Theobald's part should
be construed into toleration, however partial, of so great a sin;
hereon she dashed off into the conviction that the only thing to do
was to pay Ellen her wages, and pack her off on the instant bag and
baggage out of the house which purity had more especially and
particularly singled out for its abiding city.  When she thought of
the fearful contamination which Ellen's continued presence even for
a week would occasion, she could not hesitate.

Then came the question--horrid thought!--as to who was the partner
of Ellen's guilt?  Was it, could it be, her own son, her darling
Ernest?  Ernest was getting a big boy now.  She could excuse any
young woman for taking a fancy to him; as for himself, why she was
sure he was behind no young man of his age in appreciation of the
charms of a nice-looking young woman.  So long as he was innocent
she did not mind this, but oh, if he were guilty!

She could not bear to think of it, and yet it would be mere
cowardice not to look such a matter in the face--her hope was in the
Lord, and she was ready to bear cheerfully and make the best of any
suffering He might think fit to lay upon her.  That the baby must be
either a boy or girl--this much, at any rate, was clear.  No less
clear was it that the child, if a boy, would resemble Theobald, and
if a girl, herself.  Resemblance, whether of body or mind, generally
leaped over a generation.  The guilt of the parents must not be
shared by the innocent offspring of shame--oh! no--and such a child
as this would be . . . She was off in one of her reveries at once.

The child was in the act of being consecrated Archbishop of
Canterbury when Theobald came in from a visit in the parish, and was
told of the shocking discovery.

Christina said nothing about Ernest, and I believe was more than
half angry when the blame was laid upon other shoulders.  She was
easily consoled, however, and fell back on the double reflection,
firstly, that her son was pure, and secondly, that she was quite
sure he would not have been so had it not been for his religious
convictions which had held him back--as, of course, it was only to
be expected they would.

Theobald agreed that no time must be lost in paying Ellen her wages
and packing her off.  So this was done, and less than two hours
after Dr Martin had entered the house Ellen was sitting beside John
the coachman, with her face muffled up so that it could not be seen,
weeping bitterly as she was being driven to the station.



CHAPTER XXXIX



Ernest had been out all the morning, but came in to the yard of the
Rectory from the spinney behind the house just as Ellen's things
were being put into the carriage.  He thought it was Ellen whom he
then saw get into the carriage, but as her face had been hidden by
her handkerchief he had not been able to see plainly who it was, and
dismissed the idea as improbable.

He went to the back-kitchen window, at which the cook was standing
peeling the potatoes for dinner, and found her crying bitterly.
Ernest was much distressed, for he liked the cook, and, of course,
wanted to know what all the matter was, who it was that had just
gone off in the pony carriage, and why?  The cook told him it was
Ellen, but said that no earthly power should make it cross her lips
why it was she was going away; when, however, Ernest took her au
pied de la lettre and asked no further questions, she told him all
about it after extorting the most solemn promises of secrecy.

It took Ernest some minutes to arrive at the facts of the case, but
when he understood them he leaned against the pump, which stood near
the back-kitchen window, and mingled his tears with the cook's.

Then his blood began to boil within him.  He did not see that after
all his father and mother could have done much otherwise than they
actually did.  They might perhaps have been less precipitate, and
tried to keep the matter a little more quiet, but this would not
have been easy, nor would it have mended things very materially.
The bitter fact remains that if a girl does certain things she must
do them at her peril, no matter how young and pretty she is nor to
what temptation she has succumbed.  This is the way of the world,
and as yet there has been no help found for it.

Ernest could only see what he gathered from the cook, namely, that
his favourite, Ellen, was being turned adrift with a matter of three
pounds in her pocket, to go she knew not where, and to do she knew
not what, and that she had said she should hang or drown herself,
which the boy implicitly believed she would.

With greater promptitude than he had shown yet, he reckoned up his
money and found he had two shillings and threepence at his command;
there was his knife which might sell for a shilling, and there was
the silver watch his Aunt Alethea had given him shortly before she
died.  The carriage had been gone now a full quarter of an hour, and
it must have got some distance ahead, but he would do his best to
catch it up, and there were short cuts which would perhaps give him
a chance.  He was off at once, and from the top of the hill just
past the Rectory paddock he could see the carriage, looking very
small, on a bit of road which showed perhaps a mile and a half in
front of him.

One of the most popular amusements at Roughborough was an
institution called "the hounds"--more commonly known elsewhere as
"hare and hounds," but in this case the hare was a couple of boys
who were called foxes, and boys are so particular about correctness
of nomenclature where their sports are concerned that I dare not say
they played "hare and hounds"; these were "the hounds," and that was
all.  Ernest's want of muscular strength did not tell against him
here; there was no jostling up against boys who, though neither
older nor taller than he, were yet more robustly built; if it came
to mere endurance he was as good as any one else, so when his
carpentering was stopped he had naturally taken to "the hounds" as
his favourite amusement.  His lungs thus exercised had become
developed, and as a run of six or seven miles across country was not
more than he was used to, he did not despair by the help of the
short cuts of overtaking the carriage, or at the worst of catching
Ellen at the station before the train left.  So he ran and ran and
ran till his first wind was gone and his second came, and he could
breathe more easily.  Never with "the hounds" had he run so fast and
with so few breaks as now, but with all his efforts and the help of
the short cuts he did not catch up the carriage, and would probably
not have done so had not John happened to turn his head and seen him
running and making signs for the carriage to stop a quarter of a
mile off.  He was now about five miles from home, and was nearly
done up.

He was crimson with his exertion; covered with dust, and with his
trousers and coat sleeves a trifle short for him he cut a poor
figure enough as he thrust on Ellen his watch, his knife, and the
little money he had.  The one thing he implored of her was not to do
those dreadful things which she threatened--for his sake if for no
other reason.

Ellen at first would not hear of taking anything from him, but the
coachman, who was from the north country, sided with Ernest.  "Take
it, my lass," he said kindly, "take what thou canst get whiles thou
canst get it; as for Master Ernest here--he has run well after thee;
therefore let him give thee what he is minded."

Ellen did what she was told, and the two parted with many tears, the
girl's last words being that she should never forget him, and that
they should meet again hereafter, she was sure they should, and then
she would repay him.

Then Ernest got into a field by the roadside, flung himself on the
grass, and waited under the shadow of a hedge till the carriage
should pass on its return from the station and pick him up, for he
was dead beat.  Thoughts which had already occurred to him with some
force now came more strongly before him, and he saw that he had got
himself into one mess--or rather into half-a-dozen messes--the more.

In the first place he should be late for dinner, and this was one of
the offences on which Theobald had no mercy.  Also he should have to
say where he had been, and there was a danger of being found out if
he did not speak the truth.  Not only this, but sooner or later it
must come out that he was no longer possessed of the beautiful watch
which his dear aunt had given him--and what, pray, had he done with
it, or how had he lost it?  The reader will know very well what he
ought to have done.  He should have gone straight home, and if
questioned should have said, "I have been running after the carriage
to catch our housemaid Ellen, whom I am very fond of; I have given
her my watch, my knife and all my pocket money, so that I have now
no pocket money at all and shall probably ask you for some more
sooner than I otherwise might have done, and you will also have to
buy me a new watch and a knife."  But then fancy the consternation
which such an announcement would have occasioned!  Fancy the scowl
and flashing eyes of the infuriated Theobald!  "You unprincipled
young scoundrel," he would exclaim, "do you mean to vilify your own
parents by implying that they have dealt harshly by one whose
profligacy has disgraced their house?"

Or he might take it with one of those sallies of sarcastic calm, of
which he believed himself to be a master.

"Very well, Ernest, very well:  I shall say nothing; you can please
yourself; you are not yet twenty-one, but pray act as if you were
your own master; your poor aunt doubtless gave you the watch that
you might fling it away upon the first improper character you came
across; I think I can now understand, however, why she did not leave
you her money; and, after all, your godfather may just as well have
it as the kind of people on whom you would lavish it if it were
yours."

Then his mother would burst into tears and implore him to repent and
seek the things belonging to his peace while there was yet time, by
falling on his knees to Theobald and assuring him of his unfailing
love for him as the kindest and tenderest father in the universe.
Ernest could do all this just as well as they could, and now, as he
lay on the grass, speeches, some one or other of which was as
certain to come as the sun to set, kept running in his head till
they confuted the idea of telling the truth by reducing it to an
absurdity.  Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range
of practical domestic politics.

Having settled then that he was to tell a lie, what lie should he
tell?  Should he say he had been robbed?  He had enough imagination
to know that he had not enough imagination to carry him out here.
Young as he was, his instinct told him that the best liar is he who
makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way--who husbands
it too carefully to waste it where it can be dispensed with.  The
simplest course would be to say that he had lost the watch, and was
late for dinner because he had been looking for it.  He had been out
for a long walk--he chose the line across the fields that he had
actually taken--and the weather being very hot, he had taken off his
coat and waistcoat; in carrying them over his arm his watch, his
money, and his knife had dropped out of them.  He had got nearly
home when he found out his loss, and had run back as fast as he
could, looking along the line he had followed, till at last he had
given it up; seeing the carriage coming back from the station, he
had let it pick him up and bring him home.

This covered everything, the running and all; for his face still
showed that he must have been running hard; the only question was
whether he had been seen about the Rectory by any but the servants
for a couple of hours or so before Ellen had gone, and this he was
happy to believe was not the case; for he had been out except during
his few minutes' interview with the cook.  His father had been out
in the parish; his mother had certainly not come across him, and his
brother and sister had also been out with the governess.  He knew he
could depend upon the cook and the other servants--the coachman
would see to this; on the whole, therefore, both he and the coachman
thought the story as proposed by Ernest would about meet the
requirements of the case.



CHAPTER XL



When Ernest got home and sneaked in through the back door, he heard
his father's voice in its angriest tones, inquiring whether Master
Ernest had already returned.  He felt as Jack must have felt in the
story of Jack and the Bean Stalk, when from the oven in which he was
hidden he heard the ogre ask his wife what young children she had
got for his supper.  With much courage, and, as the event proved,
with not less courage than discretion, he took the bull by the
horns, and announced himself at once as having just come in after
having met with a terrible misfortune.  Little by little he told his
story, and though Theobald stormed somewhat at his "incredible folly
and carelessness," he got off better than he expected.  Theobald and
Christina had indeed at first been inclined to connect his absence
from dinner with Ellen's dismissal, but on finding it clear, as
Theobald said--everything was always clear with Theobald--that
Ernest had not been in the house all the morning, and could
therefore have known nothing of what had happened, he was acquitted
on this account for once in a way, without a stain upon his
character.  Perhaps Theobald was in a good temper; he may have seen
from the paper that morning that his stocks had been rising; it may
have been this or twenty other things, but whatever it was, he did
not scold so much as Ernest had expected, and, seeing the boy look
exhausted and believing him to be much grieved at the loss of his
watch, Theobald actually prescribed a glass of wine after his
dinner, which, strange to say, did not choke him, but made him see
things more cheerfully than was usual with him.

That night when he said his prayers, he inserted a few paragraphs to
the effect that he might not be discovered, and that things might go
well with Ellen, but he was anxious and ill at ease.  His guilty
conscience pointed out to him a score of weak places in his story,
through any one of which detection might even yet easily enter.
Next day and for many days afterwards he fled when no man was
pursuing, and trembled each time he heard his father's voice calling
for him.  He had already so many causes of anxiety that he could
stand little more, and in spite of all his endeavours to look
cheerful, even his mother could see that something was preying upon
his mind.  Then the idea returned to her that, after all, her son
might not be innocent in the Ellen matter--and this was so
interesting that she felt bound to get as near the truth as she
could.

"Come here, my poor, pale-faced, heavy-eyed boy," she said to him
one day in her kindest manner; "come and sit down by me, and we will
have a little quiet confidential talk together, will we not?"

The boy went mechanically to the sofa.  Whenever his mother wanted
what she called a confidential talk with him she always selected the
sofa as the most suitable ground on which to open her campaign.  All
mothers do this; the sofa is to them what the dining-room is to
fathers.  In the present case the sofa was particularly well adapted
for a strategic purpose, being an old-fashioned one with a high
back, mattress, bolsters and cushions.  Once safely penned into one
of its deep corners, it was like a dentist's chair, not too easy to
get out of again.  Here she could get at him better to pull him
about, if this should seem desirable, or if she thought fit to cry
she could bury her head in the sofa cushion and abandon herself to
an agony of grief which seldom failed of its effect.  None of her
favourite manoeuvres were so easily adopted in her usual seat, the
arm-chair on the right hand side of the fire-place, and so well did
her son know from his mother's tone that this was going to be a sofa
conversation that he took his place like a lamb as soon as she began
to speak and before she could reach the sofa herself.

"My dearest boy," began his mother, taking hold of his hand and
placing it within her own, "promise me never to be afraid either of
your dear papa or of me; promise me this, my dear, as you love me,
promise it to me," and she kissed him again and again and stroked
his hair.  But with her other hand she still kept hold of his; she
had got him and she meant to keep him.

The lad hung down his head and promised.  What else could he do?

"You know there is no one, dear, dear Ernest, who loves you so much
as your papa and I do; no one who watches so carefully over your
interests or who is so anxious to enter into all your little joys
and troubles as we are; but my dearest boy, it grieves me to think
sometimes that you have not that perfect love for and confidence in
us which you ought to have.  You know, my darling, that it would be
as much our pleasure as our duty to watch over the development of
your moral and spiritual nature, but alas! you will not let us see
your moral and spiritual nature.  At times we are almost inclined to
doubt whether you have a moral and spiritual nature at all.  Of your
inner life, my dear, we know nothing beyond such scraps as we can
glean in spite of you, from little things which escape you almost
before you know that you have said them."

The boy winced at this.  It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all
over.  He knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he
could, from time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him
into unreserve.  His mother saw that he winced, and enjoyed the
scratch she had given him.  Had she felt less confident of victory
she had better have foregone the pleasure of touching as it were the
eyes at the end of the snail's horns in order to enjoy seeing the
snail draw them in again--but she knew that when she had got him
well down into the sofa, and held his hand, she had the enemy almost
absolutely at her mercy, and could do pretty much what she liked.

"Papa does not feel," she continued, "that you love him with that
fulness and unreserve which would prompt you to have no concealment
from him, and to tell him everything freely and fearlessly as your
most loving earthly friend next only to your Heavenly Father.
Perfect love, as we know, casteth out fear:  your father loves you
perfectly, my darling, but he does not feel as though you loved him
perfectly in return.  If you fear him it is because you do not love
him as he deserves, and I know it sometimes cuts him to the very
heart to think that he has earned from you a deeper and more willing
sympathy than you display towards him.  Oh, Ernest, Ernest, do not
grieve one who is so good and noble-hearted by conduct which I can
call by no other name than ingratitude."

Ernest could never stand being spoken to in this way by his mother:
for he still believed that she loved him, and that he was fond of
her and had a friend in her--up to a certain point.  But his mother
was beginning to come to the end of her tether; she had played the
domestic confidence trick upon him times without number already.
Over and over again had she wheedled from him all she wanted to
know, and afterwards got him into the most horrible scrape by
telling the whole to Theobald.  Ernest had remonstrated more than
once upon these occasions, and had pointed out to his mother how
disastrous to him his confidences had been, but Christina had always
joined issue with him and showed him in the clearest possible manner
that in each case she had been right, and that he could not
reasonably complain.  Generally it was her conscience that forbade
her to be silent, and against this there was no appeal, for we are
all bound to follow the dictates of our conscience.  Ernest used to
have to recite a hymn about conscience.  It was to the effect that
if you did not pay attention to its voice it would soon leave off
speaking.  "My mamma's conscience has not left off speaking," said
Ernest to one of his chums at Roughborough; "it's always jabbering."

When a boy has once spoken so disrespectfully as this about his
mother's conscience it is practically all over between him and her.
Ernest through sheer force of habit, of the sofa, and of the return
of the associated ideas, was still so moved by the siren's voice as
to yearn to sail towards her, and fling himself into her arms, but
it would not do; there were other associated ideas that returned
also, and the mangled bones of too many murdered confessions were
lying whitening round the skirts of his mother's dress, to allow him
by any possibility to trust her further.  So he hung his head and
looked sheepish, but kept his own counsel.

"I see, my dearest," continued his mother, "either that I am
mistaken, and that there is nothing on your mind, or that you will
not unburden yourself to me:  but oh, Ernest, tell me at least this
much; is there nothing that you repent of, nothing which makes you
unhappy in connection with that miserable girl Ellen?"

Ernest's heart failed him.  "I am a dead boy now," he said to
himself.  He had not the faintest conception what his mother was
driving at, and thought she suspected about the watch; but he held
his ground.

I do not believe he was much more of a coward than his neighbours,
only he did not know that all sensible people are cowards when they
are off their beat, or when they think they are going to be roughly
handled.  I believe, that if the truth were known, it would be found
that even the valiant St Michael himself tried hard to shirk his
famous combat with the dragon; he pretended not to see all sorts of
misconduct on the dragon's part; shut his eyes to the eating up of I
do not know how many hundreds of men, women and children whom he had
promised to protect; allowed himself to be publicly insulted a dozen
times over without resenting it; and in the end when even an angel
could stand it no longer he shilly-shallied and temporised an
unconscionable time before he would fix the day and hour for the
encounter.  As for the actual combat it was much such another wurra-
wurra as Mrs Allaby had had with the young man who had in the end
married her eldest daughter, till after a time behold, there was the
dragon lying dead, while he was himself alive and not very seriously
hurt after all.

"I do not know what you mean, mamma," exclaimed Ernest anxiously and
more or less hurriedly.  His mother construed his manner into
indignation at being suspected, and being rather frightened herself
she turned tail and scuttled off as fast as her tongue could carry
her.

"Oh!" she said, "I see by your tone that you are innocent!  Oh! oh!
how I thank my heavenly Father for this; may He for His dear Son's
sake keep you always pure.  Your father, my dear"--(here she spoke
hurriedly but gave him a searching look) "was as pure as a spotless
angel when he came to me.  Like him, always be self-denying, truly
truthful both in word and deed, never forgetful whose son and
grandson you are, nor of the name we gave you, of the sacred stream
in whose waters your sins were washed out of you through the blood
and blessing of Christ," etc.

But Ernest cut this--I will not say short--but a great deal shorter
than it would have been if Christina had had her say out, by
extricating himself from his mamma's embrace and showing a clean
pair of heels.  As he got near the purlieus of the kitchen (where he
was more at ease) he heard his father calling for his mother, and
again his guilty conscience rose against him.  "He has found all out
now," it cried, "and he is going to tell mamma--this time I am done
for."  But there was nothing in it; his father only wanted the key
of the cellaret.  Then Ernest slunk off into a coppice or spinney
behind the Rectory paddock, and consoled himself with a pipe of
tobacco.  Here in the wood with the summer sun streaming through the
trees and a book and his pipe the boy forgot his cares and had an
interval of that rest without which I verily believe his life would
have been insupportable.

Of course, Ernest was made to look for his lost property, and a
reward was offered for it, but it seemed he had wandered a good deal
off the path, thinking to find a lark's nest, more than once, and
looking for a watch and purse on Battersby piewipes was very like
looking for a needle in a bundle of hay:  besides it might have been
found and taken by some tramp, or by a magpie of which there were
many in the neighbourhood, so that after a week or ten days the
search was discontinued, and the unpleasant fact had to be faced
that Ernest must have another watch, another knife, and a small sum
of pocket money.

It was only right, however, that Ernest should pay half the cost of
the watch; this should be made easy for him, for it should be
deducted from his pocket money in half-yearly instalments extending
over two, or even it might be three years.  In Ernest's own
interests, then, as well as those of his father and mother, it would
be well that the watch should cost as little as possible, so it was
resolved to buy a second-hand one.  Nothing was to be said to
Ernest, but it was to be bought, and laid upon his plate as a
surprise just before the holidays were over.  Theobald would have to
go to the county town in a few days, and could then find some
second-hand watch which would answer sufficiently well.  In the
course of time, therefore, Theobald went, furnished with a long list
of household commissions, among which was the purchase of a watch
for Ernest.

Those, as I have said, were always happy times, when Theobald was
away for a whole day certain; the boy was beginning to feel easy in
his mind as though God had heard his prayers, and he was not going
to be found out.  Altogether the day had proved an unusually
tranquil one, but, alas! it was not to close as it had begun; the
fickle atmosphere in which he lived was never more likely to breed a
storm than after such an interval of brilliant calm, and when
Theobald returned Ernest had only to look in his face to see that a
hurricane was approaching.

Christina saw that something had gone very wrong, and was quite
frightened lest Theobald should have heard of some serious money
loss; he did not, however, at once unbosom himself, but rang the
bell and said to the servant, "Tell Master Ernest I wish to speak to
him in the dining-room."



CHAPTER XLI



Long before Ernest reached the dining-room his ill-divining soul had
told him that his sin had found him out.  What head of a family ever
sends for any of its members into the dining-room if his intentions
are honourable?

When he reached it he found it empty--his father having been called
away for a few minutes unexpectedly upon some parish business--and
he was left in the same kind of suspense as people are in after they
have been ushered into their dentist's ante-room.

Of all the rooms in the house he hated the dining-room worst.  It
was here that he had had to do his Latin and Greek lessons with his
father.  It had a smell of some particular kind of polish or varnish
which was used in polishing the furniture, and neither I nor Ernest
can even now come within range of the smell of this kind of varnish
without our hearts failing us.

Over the chimney-piece there was a veritable old master, one of the
few original pictures which Mr George Pontifex had brought from
Italy.  It was supposed to be a Salvator Rosa, and had been bought
as a great bargain.  The subject was Elijah or Elisha (whichever it
was) being fed by the ravens in the desert.  There were the ravens
in the upper right-hand corner with bread and meat in their beaks
and claws, and there was the prophet in question in the lower left-
hand corner looking longingly up towards them.  When Ernest was a
very small boy it had been a constant matter of regret to him that
the food which the ravens carried never actually reached the
prophet; he did not understand the limitation of the painter's art,
and wanted the meat and the prophet to be brought into direct
contact.  One day, with the help of some steps which had been left
in the room, he had clambered up to the picture and with a piece of
bread and butter traced a greasy line right across it from the
ravens to Elisha's mouth, after which he had felt more comfortable.

Ernest's mind was drifting back to this youthful escapade when he
heard his father's hand on the door, and in another second Theobald
entered.

"Oh, Ernest," said he, in an off-hand, rather cheery manner,
"there's a little matter which I should like you to explain to me,
as I have no doubt you very easily can."  Thump, thump, thump, went
Ernest's heart against his ribs; but his father's manner was so much
nicer than usual that he began to think it might be after all only
another false alarm.

"It had occurred to your mother and myself that we should like to
set you up with a watch again before you went back to school" ("Oh,
that's all," said Ernest to himself quite relieved), "and I have
been to-day to look out for a second-hand one which should answer
every purpose so long as you're at school."

Theobald spoke as if watches had half-a-dozen purposes besides time-
keeping, but he could hardly open his mouth without using one or
other of his tags, and "answering every purpose" was one of them.

Ernest was breaking out into the usual expressions of gratitude,
when Theobald continued, "You are interrupting me," and Ernest's
heart thumped again.

"You are interrupting me, Ernest.  I have not yet done."  Ernest was
instantly dumb.

"I passed several shops with second-hand watches for sale, but I saw
none of a description and price which pleased me, till at last I was
shown one which had, so the shopman said, been left with him
recently for sale, and which I at once recognised as the one which
had been given you by your Aunt Alethea.  Even if I had failed to
recognise it, as perhaps I might have done, I should have identified
it directly it reached my hands, inasmuch as it had 'E. P., a
present from A. P.' engraved upon the inside.  I need say no more to
show that this was the very watch which you told your mother and me
that you had dropped out of your pocket."

Up to this time Theobald's manner had been studiously calm, and his
words had been uttered slowly, but here he suddenly quickened and
flung off the mask as he added the words, "or some such cock and
bull story, which your mother and I were too truthful to disbelieve.
You can guess what must be our feelings now."

Ernest felt that this last home-thrust was just.  In his less
anxious moments he had thought his papa and mamma "green" for the
readiness with which they believed him, but he could not deny that
their credulity was a proof of their habitual truthfulness of mind.
In common justice he must own that it was very dreadful for two such
truthful people to have a son as untruthful as he knew himself to
be.

"Believing that a son of your mother and myself would be incapable
of falsehood I at once assumed that some tramp had picked the watch
up and was now trying to dispose of it."

This to the best of my belief was not accurate.  Theobald's first
assumption had been that it was Ernest who was trying to sell the
watch, and it was an inspiration of the moment to say that his
magnanimous mind had at once conceived the idea of a tramp.

"You may imagine how shocked I was when I discovered that the watch
had been brought for sale by that miserable woman Ellen"--here
Ernest's heart hardened a little, and he felt as near an approach to
an instinct to turn as one so defenceless could be expected to feel;
his father quickly perceived this and continued, "who was turned out
of this house in circumstances which I will not pollute your ears by
more particularly describing.

"I put aside the horrid conviction which was beginning to dawn upon
me, and assumed that in the interval between her dismissal and her
leaving this house, she had added theft to her other sin, and having
found your watch in your bedroom had purloined it.  It even occurred
to me that you might have missed your watch after the woman was
gone, and, suspecting who had taken it, had run after the carriage
in order to recover it; but when I told the shopman of my suspicions
he assured me that the person who left it with him had declared most
solemnly that it had been given her by her master's son, whose
property it was, and who had a perfect right to dispose of it.

"He told me further that, thinking the circumstances in which the
watch was offered for sale somewhat suspicious, he had insisted upon
the woman's telling him the whole story of how she came by it,
before he would consent to buy it of her.

"He said that at first--as women of that stamp invariably do--she
tried prevarication, but on being threatened that she should at once
be given into custody if she did not tell the whole truth, she
described the way in which you had run after the carriage, till as
she said you were black in the face, and insisted on giving her all
your pocket money, your knife and your watch.  She added that my
coachman John--whom I shall instantly discharge--was witness to the
whole transaction.  Now, Ernest, be pleased to tell me whether this
appalling story is true or false?"

It never occurred to Ernest to ask his father why he did not hit a
man his own size, or to stop him midway in the story with a
remonstrance against being kicked when he was down.  The boy was too
much shocked and shaken to be inventive; he could only drift and
stammer out that the tale was true.

"So I feared," said Theobald, "and now, Ernest, be good enough to
ring the bell."

When the bell had been answered, Theobald desired that John should
be sent for, and when John came Theobald calculated the wages due to
him and desired him at once to leave the house.

John's manner was quiet and respectful.  He took his dismissal as a
matter of course, for Theobald had hinted enough to make him
understand why he was being discharged, but when he saw Ernest
sitting pale and awe-struck on the edge of his chair against the
dining-room wall, a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and turning
to Theobald he said in a broad northern accent which I will not
attempt to reproduce:

"Look here, master, I can guess what all this is about--now before I
goes I want to have a word with you."

"Ernest," said Theobald, "leave the room."

"No, Master Ernest, you shan't," said John, planting himself against
the door.  "Now, master," he continued, "you may do as you please
about me.  I've been a good servant to you, and I don't mean to say
as you've been a bad master to me, but I do say that if you bear
hardly on Master Ernest here I have those in the village as 'll hear
on't and let me know; and if I do hear on't I'll come back and break
every bone in your skin, so there!"

John's breath came and went quickly, as though he would have been
well enough pleased to begin the bone-breaking business at once.
Theobald turned of an ashen colour--not, as he explained afterwards,
at the idle threats of a detected and angry ruffian, but at such
atrocious insolence from one of his own servants.

"I shall leave Master Ernest, John," he rejoined proudly, "to the
reproaches of his own conscience."  ("Thank God and thank John,"
thought Ernest.)  "As for yourself, I admit that you have been an
excellent servant until this unfortunate business came on, and I
shall have much pleasure in giving you a character if you want one.
Have you anything more to say?"

"No more nor what I have said," said John sullenly, "but what I've
said I means and I'll stick to--character or no character."

"Oh, you need not be afraid about your character, John," said
Theobald kindly, "and as it is getting late, there can be no
occasion for you to leave the house before to-morrow morning."

To this there was no reply from John, who retired, packed up his
things, and left the house at once.

When Christina heard what had happened she said she could condone
all except that Theobald should have been subjected to such
insolence from one of his own servants through the misconduct of his
son.  Theobald was the bravest man in the whole world, and could
easily have collared the wretch and turned him out of the room, but
how far more dignified, how far nobler had been his reply!  How it
would tell in a novel or upon the stage, for though the stage as a
whole was immoral, yet there were doubtless some plays which were
improving spectacles.  She could fancy the whole house hushed with
excitement at hearing John's menace, and hardly breathing by reason
of their interest and expectation of the coming answer.  Then the
actor--probably the great and good Mr Macready--would say, "I shall
leave Master Ernest, John, to the reproaches of his own conscience."
Oh, it was sublime!  What a roar of applause must follow!  Then she
should enter herself, and fling her arms about her husband's neck,
and call him her lion-hearted husband.  When the curtain dropped, it
would be buzzed about the house that the scene just witnessed had
been drawn from real life, and had actually occurred in the
household of the Rev. Theobald Pontifex, who had married a Miss
Allaby, etc., etc.

As regards Ernest the suspicions which had already crossed her mind
were deepened, but she thought it better to leave the matter where
it was.  At present she was in a very strong position.  Ernest's
official purity was firmly established, but at the same time he had
shown himself so susceptible that she was able to fuse two
contradictory impressions concerning him into a single idea, and
consider him as a kind of Joseph and Don Juan in one.  This was what
she had wanted all along, but her vanity being gratified by the
possession of such a son, there was an end of it; the son himself
was naught.

No doubt if John had not interfered, Ernest would have had to
expiate his offence with ache, penury and imprisonment.  As it was
the boy was "to consider himself" as undergoing these punishments,
and as suffering pangs of unavailing remorse inflicted on him by his
conscience into the bargain; but beyond the fact that Theobald kept
him more closely to his holiday task, and the continued coldness of
his parents, no ostensible punishment was meted out to him.  Ernest,
however, tells me that he looks back upon this as the time when he
began to know that he had a cordial and active dislike for both his
parents, which I suppose means that he was now beginning to be aware
that he was reaching man's estate.



CHAPTER XLII



About a week before he went back to school his father again sent for
him into the dining-room, and told him that he should restore him
his watch, but that he should deduct the sum he had paid for it--for
he had thought it better to pay a few shillings rather than dispute
the ownership of the watch, seeing that Ernest had undoubtedly given
it to Ellen--from his pocket money, in payments which should extend
over two half years.  He would therefore have to go back to
Roughborough this half year with only five shillings' pocket money.
If he wanted more he must earn more merit money.

Ernest was not so careful about money as a pattern boy should be.
He did not say to himself, "Now I have got a sovereign which must
last me fifteen weeks, therefore I may spend exactly one shilling
and fourpence in each week"--and spend exactly one and fourpence in
each week accordingly.  He ran through his money at about the same
rate as other boys did, being pretty well cleaned out a few days
after he had got back to school.  When he had no more money, he got
a little into debt, and when as far in debt as he could see his way
to repaying, he went without luxuries.  Immediately he got any money
he would pay his debts; if there was any over he would spend it; if
there was not--and there seldom was--he would begin to go on tick
again.

His finance was always based upon the supposition that he should go
back to school with 1 pounds in his pocket--of which he owed say a
matter of fifteen shillings.  There would be five shillings for
sundry school subscriptions--but when these were paid the weekly
allowance of sixpence given to each boy in hall, his merit money
(which this half he was resolved should come to a good sum) and
renewed credit, would carry him through the half.

The sudden failure of 15/- was disastrous to my hero's scheme of
finance.  His face betrayed his emotions so clearly that Theobald
said he was determined "to learn the truth at once, and THIS TIME
without days and days of falsehood" before he reached it.  The
melancholy fact was not long in coming out, namely, that the
wretched Ernest added debt to the vices of idleness, falsehood and
possibly--for it was not impossible--immorality.

How had he come to get into debt?  Did the other boys do so?  Ernest
reluctantly admitted that they did.

With what shops did they get into debt?

This was asking too much, Ernest said he didn't know!

"Oh, Ernest, Ernest," exclaimed his mother, who was in the room, "do
not so soon a second time presume upon the forbearance of the
tenderest-hearted father in the world.  Give time for one stab to
heal before you wound him with another."

This was all very fine, but what was Ernest to do?  How could he get
the school shopkeepers into trouble by owning that they let some of
the boys go on tick with them?  There was Mrs Cross, a good old
soul, who used to sell hot rolls and butter for breakfast, or eggs
and toast, or it might be the quarter of a fowl with bread sauce and
mashed potatoes for which she would charge 6d.  If she made a
farthing out of the sixpence it was as much as she did.  When the
boys would come trooping into her shop after "the hounds" how often
had not Ernest heard her say to her servant girls, "Now then, you
wanches, git some cheers."  All the boys were fond of her, and was
he, Ernest, to tell tales about her?  It was horrible.

"Now look here, Ernest," said his father with his blackest scowl, "I
am going to put a stop to this nonsense once for all.  Either take
me fully into your confidence, as a son should take a father, and
trust me to deal with this matter as a clergyman and a man of the
world--or understand distinctly that I shall take the whole story to
Dr Skinner, who, I imagine, will take much sterner measures than I
should."

"Oh, Ernest, Ernest," sobbed Christina, "be wise in time, and trust
those who have already shown you that they know but too well how to
be forbearing."

No genuine hero of romance should have hesitated for a moment.
Nothing should have cajoled or frightened him into telling tales out
of school.  Ernest thought of his ideal boys:  they, he well knew,
would have let their tongues be cut out of them before information
could have been wrung from any word of theirs.  But Ernest was not
an ideal boy, and he was not strong enough for his surroundings; I
doubt how far any boy could withstand the moral pressure which was
brought to bear upon him; at any rate he could not do so, and after
a little more writhing he yielded himself a passive prey to the
enemy.  He consoled himself with the reflection that his papa had
not played the confidence trick on him quite as often as his mamma
had, and that probably it was better he should tell his father, than
that his father should insist on Dr Skinner's making an inquiry.
His papa's conscience "jabbered" a good deal, but not as much as his
mamma's.  The little fool forgot that he had not given his father as
many chances of betraying him as he had given to Christina.

Then it all came out.  He owed this at Mrs Cross's, and this to Mrs
Jones, and this at the "Swan and Bottle" public house, to say
nothing of another shilling or sixpence or two in other quarters.
Nevertheless, Theobald and Christina were not satiated, but rather
the more they discovered the greater grew their appetite for
discovery; it was their obvious duty to find out everything, for
though they might rescue their own darling from this hotbed of
iniquity without getting to know more than they knew at present,
were there not other papas and mammas with darlings whom also they
were bound to rescue if it were yet possible?  What boys, then, owed
money to these harpies as well as Ernest?

Here, again, there was a feeble show of resistance, but the
thumbscrews were instantly applied, and Ernest, demoralised as he
already was, recanted and submitted himself to the powers that were.
He told only a little less than he knew or thought he knew.  He was
examined, re-examined, cross-examined, sent to the retirement of his
own bedroom and cross-examined again; the smoking in Mrs Jones'
kitchen all came out; which boys smoked and which did not; which
boys owed money and, roughly, how much and where; which boys swore
and used bad language.  Theobald was resolved that this time Ernest
should, as he called it, take him into his confidence without
reserve, so the school list which went with Dr Skinner's half-yearly
bills was brought out, and the most secret character of each boy was
gone through seriatim by Mr and Mrs Pontifex, so far as it was in
Ernest's power to give information concerning it, and yet Theobald
had on the preceding Sunday preached a less feeble sermon than he
commonly preached, upon the horrors of the Inquisition.  No matter
how awful was the depravity revealed to them, the pair never
flinched, but probed and probed, till they were on the point of
reaching subjects more delicate than they had yet touched upon.
Here Ernest's unconscious self took the matter up and made a
resistance to which his conscious self was unequal, by tumbling him
off his chair in a fit of fainting.

Dr Martin was sent for and pronounced the boy to be seriously
unwell; at the same time he prescribed absolute rest and absence
from nervous excitement.  So the anxious parents were unwillingly
compelled to be content with what they had got already--being
frightened into leading him a quiet life for the short remainder of
the holidays.  They were not idle, but Satan can find as much
mischief for busy hands as for idle ones, so he sent a little job in
the direction of Battersby which Theobald and Christina undertook
immediately.  It would be a pity, they reasoned, that Ernest should
leave Roughborough, now that he had been there three years; it would
be difficult to find another school for him, and to explain why he
had left Roughborough.  Besides, Dr Skinner and Theobald were
supposed to be old friends, and it would be unpleasant to offend
him; these were all valid reasons for not removing the boy.  The
proper thing to do, then, would be to warn Dr Skinner confidentially
of the state of his school, and to furnish him with a school list
annotated with the remarks extracted from Ernest, which should be
appended to the name of each boy.

Theobald was the perfection of neatness; while his son was ill
upstairs, he copied out the school list so that he could throw his
comments into a tabular form, which assumed the following shape--
only that of course I have changed the names.  One cross in each
square was to indicate occasional offence; two stood for frequent,
and three for habitual delinquency.

          Smoking     Drinking beer    Swearing      Notes
                      at the "Swan     and Obscene
                      and Bottle."     Language.
Smith        O            O              XX          Will smoke
                                                     next half
Brown       XXX           O               X
Jones        X            XX              XXX
Robinson    XX            XX              X

And thus through the whole school.

Of course, in justice to Ernest, Dr Skinner would be bound over to
secrecy before a word was said to him, but, Ernest being thus
protected, he could not be furnished with the facts too completely.



CHAPTER XLIII



So important did Theobald consider this matter that he made a
special journey to Roughborough before the half year began.  It was
a relief to have him out of the house, but though his destination
was not mentioned, Ernest guessed where he had gone.

To this day he considers his conduct at this crisis to have been one
of the most serious laches of his life--one which he can never think
of without shame and indignation.  He says he ought to have run away
from home.  But what good could he have done if he had?  He would
have been caught, brought back and examined two days later instead
of two days earlier.  A boy of barely sixteen cannot stand against
the moral pressure of a father and mother who have always oppressed
him any more than he can cope physically with a powerful full-grown
man.  True, he may allow himself to be killed rather than yield, but
this is being so morbidly heroic as to come close round again to
cowardice; for it is little else than suicide, which is universally
condemned as cowardly.

On the re-assembling of the school it became apparent that something
had gone wrong.  Dr Skinner called the boys together, and with much
pomp excommunicated Mrs Cross and Mrs Jones, by declaring their
shops to be out of bounds.  The street in which the "Swan and
Bottle" stood was also forbidden.  The vices of drinking and
smoking, therefore, were clearly aimed at, and before prayers Dr
Skinner spoke a few impressive words about the abominable sin of
using bad language.  Ernest's feelings can be imagined.

Next day at the hour when the daily punishments were read out,
though there had not yet been time for him to have offended, Ernest
Pontifex was declared to have incurred every punishment which the
school provided for evil-doers.  He was placed on the idle list for
the whole half year, and on perpetual detentions; his bounds were
curtailed; he was to attend junior callings-over; in fact he was so
hemmed in with punishments upon ever side that it was hardly
possible for him to go outside the school gates.  This unparalleled
list of punishments inflicted on the first day of the half year, and
intended to last till the ensuing Christmas holidays, was not
connected with any specified offence.  It required no great
penetration therefore, on the part of the boys to connect Ernest
with the putting Mrs Cross's and Mrs Jones's shops out of bounds.

Great indeed was the indignation about Mrs Cross who, it was known,
remembered Dr Skinner himself as a small boy only just got into
jackets, and had doubtless let him have many a sausage and mashed
potatoes upon deferred payment.  The head boys assembled in conclave
to consider what steps should be taken, but hardly had they done so
before Ernest knocked timidly at the head-room door and took the
bull by the horns by explaining the facts as far as he could bring
himself to do so.  He made a clean breast of everything except about
the school list and the remarks he had made about each boy's
character.  This infamy was more than he could own to, and he kept
his counsel concerning it.  Fortunately he was safe in doing so, for
Dr Skinner, pedant and more than pedant though he was, had still
just sense enough to turn on Theobald in the matter of the school
list.  Whether he resented being told that he did not know the
characters of his own boys, or whether he dreaded a scandal about
the school I know not, but when Theobald had handed him the list,
over which he had expended so much pains, Dr Skinner had cut him
uncommonly short, and had then and there, with more suavity than was
usual with him, committed it to the flames before Theobald's own
eyes.

Ernest got off with the head boys easier than he expected.  It was
admitted that the offence, heinous though it was, had been committed
under extenuating circumstances; the frankness with which the
culprit had confessed all, his evidently unfeigned remorse, and the
fury with which Dr Skinner was pursuing him tended to bring about a
reaction in his favour, as though he had been more sinned against
than sinning.

As the half year wore on his spirits gradually revived, and when
attacked by one of his fits of self-abasement he was in some degree
consoled by having found out that even his father and mother, whom
he had supposed so immaculate, were no better than they should be.
About the fifth of November it was a school custom to meet on a
certain common not far from Roughborough and burn somebody in
effigy, this being the compromise arrived at in the matter of
fireworks and Guy Fawkes festivities.  This year it was decided that
Pontifex's governor should be the victim, and Ernest though a good
deal exercised in mind as to what he ought to do, in the end saw no
sufficient reason for holding aloof from proceedings which, as he
justly remarked, could not do his father any harm.

It so happened that the bishop had held a confirmation at the school
on the fifth of November.  Dr Skinner had not quite liked the
selection of this day, but the bishop was pressed by many
engagements, and had been compelled to make the arrangement as it
then stood.  Ernest was among those who had to be confirmed, and was
deeply impressed with the solemn importance of the ceremony.  When
he felt the huge old bishop drawing down upon him as he knelt in
chapel he could hardly breathe, and when the apparition paused
before him and laid its hands upon his head he was frightened almost
out of his wits.  He felt that he had arrived at one of the great
turning points of his life, and that the Ernest of the future could
resemble only very faintly the Ernest of the past.

This happened at about noon, but by the one o'clock dinner-hour the
effect of the confirmation had worn off, and he saw no reason why he
should forego his annual amusement with the bonfire; so he went with
the others and was very valiant till the image was actually produced
and was about to be burnt; then he felt a little frightened.  It was
a poor thing enough, made of paper, calico and straw, but they had
christened it The Rev. Theobald Pontifex, and he had a revulsion of
feeling as he saw it being carried towards the bonfire.  Still he
held his ground, and in a few minutes when all was over felt none
the worse for having assisted at a ceremony which, after all, was
prompted by a boyish love of mischief rather than by rancour.

I should say that Ernest had written to his father, and told him of
the unprecedented way in which he was being treated; he even
ventured to suggest that Theobald should interfere for his
protection and reminded him how the story had been got out of him,
but Theobald had had enough of Dr Skinner for the present; the
burning of the school list had been a rebuff which did not encourage
him to meddle a second time in the internal economics of
Roughborough.  He therefore replied that he must either remove
Ernest from Roughborough altogether, which would for many reasons be
undesirable, or trust to the discretion of the head master as
regards the treatment he might think best for any of his pupils.
Ernest said no more; he still felt that it was so discreditable to
him to have allowed any confession to be wrung from him, that he
could not press the promised amnesty for himself.

It was during the "Mother Cross row," as it was long styled among
the boys, that a remarkable phenomenon was witnessed at
Roughborough.  I mean that of the head boys under certain conditions
doing errands for their juniors.  The head boys had no bounds and
could go to Mrs Cross's whenever they liked; they actually,
therefore, made themselves go-betweens, and would get anything from
either Mrs Cross's or Mrs Jones's for any boy, no matter how low in
the school, between the hours of a quarter to nine and nine in the
morning, and a quarter to six and six in the afternoon.  By degrees,
however, the boys grew bolder, and the shops, though not openly
declared in bounds again, were tacitly allowed to be so.



CHAPTER XLIV



I may spare the reader more details about my hero's school days.  He
rose, always in spite of himself, into the Doctor's form, and for
the last two years or so of his time was among the praepostors,
though he never rose into the upper half of them.  He did little,
and I think the Doctor rather gave him up as a boy whom he had
better leave to himself, for he rarely made him construe, and he
used to send in his exercises or not, pretty much as he liked.  His
tacit, unconscious obstinacy had in time effected more even than a
few bold sallies in the first instance would have done.  To the end
of his career his position inter pares was what it had been at the
beginning, namely, among the upper part of the less reputable class-
-whether of seniors or juniors--rather than among the lower part of
the more respectable.

Only once in the whole course of his school life did he get praise
from Dr Skinner for any exercise, and this he has treasured as the
best example of guarded approval which he has ever seen.  He had had
to write a copy of Alcaics on "The dogs of the monks of St Bernard,"
and when the exercise was returned to him he found the Doctor had
written on it:  "In this copy of Alcaics--which is still excessively
bad--I fancy that I can discern some faint symptoms of improvement."
Ernest says that if the exercise was any better than usual it must
have been by a fluke, for he is sure that he always liked dogs,
especially St Bernard dogs, far too much to take any pleasure in
writing Alcaics about them.

"As I look back upon it," he said to me but the other day, with a
hearty laugh, "I respect myself more for having never once got the
best mark for an exercise than I should do if I had got it every
time it could be got.  I am glad nothing could make me do Latin and
Greek verses; I am glad Skinner could never get any moral influence
over me; I am glad I was idle at school, and I am glad my father
overtasked me as a boy--otherwise, likely enough I should have
acquiesced in the swindle, and might have written as good a copy of
Alcaics about the dogs of the monks of St Bernard as my neighbours,
and yet I don't know, for I remember there was another boy, who sent
in a Latin copy of some sort, but for his own pleasure he wrote the
following -


The dogs of the monks of St Bernard go
To pick little children out of the snow,
And around their necks is the cordial gin
Tied with a little bit of bob-bin.


I should like to have written that, and I did try, but I couldn't.
I didn't quite like the last line, and tried to mend it, but I
couldn't."

I fancied I could see traces of bitterness against the instructors
of his youth in Ernest's manner, and said something to this effect.

"Oh, no," he replied, still laughing, "no more than St Anthony felt
towards the devils who had tempted him, when he met some of them
casually a hundred or a couple of hundred years afterwards.  Of
course he knew they were devils, but that was all right enough;
there must be devils.  St Anthony probably liked these devils better
than most others, and for old acquaintance sake showed them as much
indulgence as was compatible with decorum.

"Besides, you know," he added, "St Anthony tempted the devils quite
as much as they tempted him; for his peculiar sanctity was a greater
temptation to tempt him than they could stand.  Strictly speaking,
it was the devils who were the more to be pitied, for they were led
up by St Anthony to be tempted and fell, whereas St Anthony did not
fall.  I believe I was a disagreeable and unintelligible boy, and if
ever I meet Skinner there is no one whom I would shake hands with,
or do a good turn to more readily."

At home things went on rather better; the Ellen and Mother Cross
rows sank slowly down upon the horizon, and even at home he had
quieter times now that he had become a praepostor.  Nevertheless the
watchful eye and protecting hand were still ever over him to guard
his comings in and his goings out, and to spy out all his ways.  Is
it wonderful that the boy, though always trying to keep up
appearances as though he were cheerful and contented--and at times
actually being so--wore often an anxious, jaded look when he thought
none were looking, which told of an almost incessant conflict
within?

Doubtless Theobald saw these looks and knew how to interpret them,
but it was his profession to know how to shut his eyes to things
that were inconvenient--no clergyman could keep his benefice for a
month if he could not do this; besides he had allowed himself for so
many years to say things he ought not to have said, and not to say
the things he ought to have said, that he was little likely to see
anything that he thought it more convenient not to see unless he was
made to do so.

It was not much that was wanted.  To make no mysteries where Nature
has made none, to bring his conscience under something like
reasonable control, to give Ernest his head a little more, to ask
fewer questions, and to give him pocket money with a desire that it
should be spent upon menus plaisirs . . .

"Call that not much indeed," laughed Ernest, as I read him what I
have just written.  "Why it is the whole duty of a father, but it is
the mystery-making which is the worst evil.  If people would dare to
speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less
sorrow in the world a hundred years hence."

To return, however, to Roughborough.  On the day of his leaving,
when he was sent for into the library to be shaken hands with, he
was surprised to feel that, though assuredly glad to leave, he did
not do so with any especial grudge against the Doctor rankling in
his breast.  He had come to the end of it all, and was still alive,
nor, take it all round, more seriously amiss than other people.  Dr
Skinner received him graciously, and was even frolicsome after his
own heavy fashion.  Young people are almost always placable, and
Ernest felt as he went away that another such interview would not
only have wiped off all old scores, but have brought him round into
the ranks of the Doctor's admirers and supporters--among whom it is
only fair to say that the greater number of the more promising boys
were found.

Just before saying good-bye the Doctor actually took down a volume
from those shelves which had seemed so awful six years previously,
and gave it to him after having written his name in it, and the
words [Greek text], which I believe means "with all kind wishes from
the donor."  The book was one written in Latin by a German--
Schomann:  "De comitiis Atheniensibus"--not exactly light and
cheerful reading, but Ernest felt it was high time he got to
understand the Athenian constitution and manner of voting; he had
got them up a great many times already, but had forgotten them as
fast as he had learned them; now, however, that the Doctor had given
him this book, he would master the subject once for all.  How
strange it was!  He wanted to remember these things very badly; he
knew he did, but he could never retain them; in spite of himself
they no sooner fell upon his mind than they fell off it again, he
had such a dreadful memory; whereas, if anyone played him a piece of
music and told him where it came from, he never forgot that, though
he made no effort to retain it, and was not even conscious of trying
to remember it at all.  His mind must be badly formed and he was no
good.

Having still a short time to spare, he got the keys of St Michael's
church and went to have a farewell practice upon the organ, which he
could now play fairly well.  He walked up and down the aisle for a
while in a meditative mood, and then, settling down to the organ,
played "They loathed to drink of the river" about six times over,
after which he felt more composed and happier; then, tearing himself
away from the instrument he loved so well, he hurried to the
station.

As the train drew out he looked down from a high embankment on to
the little house his aunt had taken, and where it might be said she
had died through her desire to do him a kindness.  There were the
two well-known bow windows, out of which he had often stepped to run
across the lawn into the workshop.  He reproached himself with the
little gratitude he had shown towards this kind lady--the only one
of his relations whom he had ever felt as though he could have taken
into his confidence.  Dearly as he loved her memory, he was glad she
had not known the scrapes he had got into since she died; perhaps
she might not have forgiven them--and how awful that would have
been!  But then, if she had lived, perhaps many of his ills would
have been spared him.  As he mused thus he grew sad again.  Where,
where, he asked himself, was it all to end?  Was it to be always
sin, shame and sorrow in the future, as it had been in the past, and
the ever-watchful eye and protecting hand of his father laying
burdens on him greater than he could bear--or was he, too, some day
or another to come to feel that he was fairly well and happy?

There was a gray mist across the sun, so that the eye could bear its
light, and Ernest, while musing as above, was looking right into the
middle of the sun himself, as into the face of one whom he knew and
was fond of.  At first his face was grave, but kindly, as of a tired
man who feels that a long task is over; but in a few seconds the
more humorous side of his misfortunes presented itself to him, and
he smiled half reproachfully, half merrily, as thinking how little
all that had happened to him really mattered, and how small were his
hardships as compared with those of most people.  Still looking into
the eye of the sun and smiling dreamily, he thought how he had
helped to burn his father in effigy, and his look grew merrier, till
at last he broke out into a laugh.  Exactly at this moment the light
veil of cloud parted from the sun, and he was brought to terra firma
by the breaking forth of the sunshine.  On this he became aware that
he was being watched attentively by a fellow-traveller opposite to
him, an elderly gentleman with a large head and iron-grey hair.

"My young friend," said he, good-naturedly, "you really must not
carry on conversations with people in the sun, while you are in a
public railway carriage."

The old gentleman said not another word, but unfolded his Times and
began to read it.  As for Ernest, he blushed crimson.  The pair did
not speak during the rest of the time they were in the carriage, but
they eyed each other from time to time, so that the face of each was
impressed on the recollection of the other.



CHAPTER XLV



Some people say that their school days were the happiest of their
lives.  They may be right, but I always look with suspicion upon
those whom I hear saying this.  It is hard enough to know whether
one is happy or unhappy now, and still harder to compare the
relative happiness or unhappiness of different times of one's life;
the utmost that can be said is that we are fairly happy so long as
we are not distinctly aware of being miserable.  As I was talking
with Ernest one day not so long since about this, he said he was so
happy now that he was sure he had never been happier, and did not
wish to be so, but that Cambridge was the first place where he had
ever been consciously and continuously happy.

How can any boy fail to feel an ecstasy of pleasure on first finding
himself in rooms which he knows for the next few years are to be his
castle?  Here he will not be compelled to turn out of the most
comfortable place as soon as he has ensconced himself in it because
papa or mamma happens to come into the room, and he should give it
up to them.  The most cosy chair here is for himself, there is no
one even to share the room with him, or to interfere with his doing
as he likes in it--smoking included.  Why, if such a room looked out
both back and front on to a blank dead wall it would still be a
paradise, how much more then when the view is of some quiet grassy
court or cloister or garden, as from the windows of the greater
number of rooms at Oxford and Cambridge.

Theobald, as an old fellow and tutor of Emmanuel--at which college
he had entered Ernest--was able to obtain from the present tutor a
certain preference in the choice of rooms; Ernest's, therefore, were
very pleasant ones, looking out upon the grassy court that is
bounded by the Fellows' gardens.

Theobald accompanied him to Cambridge, and was at his best while
doing so.  He liked the jaunt, and even he was not without a certain
feeling of pride in having a full-blown son at the University.  Some
of the reflected rays of this splendour were allowed to fall upon
Ernest himself.  Theobald said he was "willing to hope"--this was
one of his tags--that his son would turn over a new leaf now that he
had left school, and for his own part he was "only too ready"--this
was another tag--to let bygones be bygones.

Ernest, not yet having his name on the books, was able to dine with
his father at the Fellows' table of one of the other colleges on the
invitation of an old friend of Theobald's; he there made
acquaintance with sundry of the good things of this life, the very
names of which were new to him, and felt as he ate them that he was
now indeed receiving a liberal education.  When at length the time
came for him to go to Emmanuel, where he was to sleep in his new
rooms, his father came with him to the gates and saw him safe into
college; a few minutes more and he found himself alone in a room for
which he had a latch-key.

From this time he dated many days which, if not quite unclouded,
were upon the whole very happy ones.  I need not however describe
them, as the life of a quiet steady-going undergraduate has been
told in a score of novels better than I can tell it.  Some of
Ernest's schoolfellows came up to Cambridge at the same time as
himself, and with these he continued on friendly terms during the
whole of his college career.  Other schoolfellows were only a year
or two his seniors; these called on him, and he thus made a
sufficiently favourable entree into college life.  A
straightforwardness of character that was stamped upon his face, a
love of humour, and a temper which was more easily appeased than
ruffled made up for some awkwardness and want of savoir faire.  He
soon became a not unpopular member of the best set of his year, and
though neither capable of becoming, nor aspiring to become, a
leader, was admitted by the leaders as among their nearer hangers-
on.

Of ambition he had at that time not one particle; greatness, or
indeed superiority of any kind, seemed so far off and
incomprehensible to him that the idea of connecting it with himself
never crossed his mind.  If he could escape the notice of all those
with whom he did not feel himself en rapport, he conceived that he
had triumphed sufficiently.  He did not care about taking a good
degree, except that it must be good enough to keep his father and
mother quiet.  He did not dream of being able to get a fellowship;
if he had, he would have tried hard to do so, for he became so fond
of Cambridge that he could not bear the thought of having to leave
it; the briefness indeed of the season during which his present
happiness was to last was almost the only thing that now seriously
troubled him.

Having less to attend to in the matter of growing, and having got
his head more free, he took to reading fairly well--not because he
liked it, but because he was told he ought to do so, and his natural
instinct, like that of all very young men who are good for anything,
was to do as those in authority told him.  The intention at
Battersby was (for Dr Skinner had said that Ernest could never get a
fellowship) that he should take a sufficiently good degree to be
able to get a tutorship or mastership in some school preparatory to
taking orders.  When he was twenty-one years old his money was to
come into his own hands, and the best thing he could do with it
would be to buy the next presentation to a living, the rector of
which was now old, and live on his mastership or tutorship till the
living fell in.  He could buy a very good living for the sum which
his grandfather's legacy now amounted to, for Theobald had never had
any serious intention of making deductions for his son's maintenance
and education, and the money had accumulated till it was now about
five thousand pounds; he had only talked about making deductions in
order to stimulate the boy to exertion as far as possible, by making
him think that this was his only chance of escaping starvation--or
perhaps from pure love of teasing.

When Ernest had a living of 600 pounds or 700 pounds a year with a
house, and not too many parishioners--why, he might add to his
income by taking pupils, or even keeping a school, and then, say at
thirty, he might marry.  It was not easy for Theobald to hit on any
much more sensible plan.  He could not get Ernest into business, for
he had no business connections--besides he did not know what
business meant; he had no interest, again, at the Bar; medicine was
a profession which subjected its students to ordeals and temptations
which these fond parents shrank from on behalf of their boy; he
would be thrown among companions and familiarised with details which
might sully him, and though he might stand, it was "only too
possible" that he would fall.  Besides, ordination was the road
which Theobald knew and understood, and indeed the only road about
which he knew anything at all, so not unnaturally it was the one he
chose for Ernest.

The foregoing had been instilled into my hero from earliest boyhood,
much as it had been instilled into Theobald himself, and with the
same result--the conviction, namely, that he was certainly to be a
clergyman, but that it was a long way off yet, and he supposed it
was all right.  As for the duty of reading hard, and taking as good
a degree as he could, this was plain enough, so he set himself to
work, as I have said, steadily, and to the surprise of everyone as
well as himself got a college scholarship, of no great value, but
still a scholarship, in his freshman's term.  It is hardly necessary
to say that Theobald stuck to the whole of this money, believing the
pocket-money he allowed Ernest to be sufficient for him, and knowing
how dangerous it was for young men to have money at command.  I do
not suppose it even occurred to him to try and remember what he had
felt when his father took a like course in regard to himself.

Ernest's position in this respect was much what it had been at
school except that things were on a larger scale.  His tutor's and
cook's bills were paid for him; his father sent him his wine; over
and above this he had 50 pounds a year with which to keep himself in
clothes and all other expenses; this was about the usual thing at
Emmanuel in Ernest's day, though many had much less than this.
Ernest did as he had done at school--he spent what he could, soon
after he received his money; he then incurred a few modest
liabilities, and then lived penuriously till next term, when he
would immediately pay his debts, and start new ones to much the same
extent as those which he had just got rid of.  When he came into his
5000 pounds and became independent of his father, 15 pounds or 20
pounds served to cover the whole of his unauthorised expenditure.

He joined the boat club, and was constant in his attendance at the
boats.  He still smoked, but never took more wine or beer than was
good for him, except perhaps on the occasion of a boating supper,
but even then he found the consequences unpleasant, and soon learned
how to keep within safe limits.  He attended chapel as often as he
was compelled to do so; he communicated two or three times a year,
because his tutor told him he ought to; in fact he set himself to
live soberly and cleanly, as I imagine all his instincts prompted
him to do, and when he fell--as who that is born of woman can help
sometimes doing?--it was not till after a sharp tussle with a
temptation that was more than his flesh and blood could stand; then
he was very penitent and would go a fairly long while without
sinning again; and this was how it had always been with him since he
had arrived at years of indiscretion.

Even to the end of his career at Cambridge he was not aware that he
had it in him to do anything, but others had begun to see that he
was not wanting in ability and sometimes told him so.  He did not
believe it; indeed he knew very well that if they thought him clever
they were being taken in, but it pleased him to have been able to
take them in, and he tried to do so still further; he was therefore
a good deal on the look-out for cants that he could catch and apply
in season, and might have done himself some mischief thus if he had
not been ready to throw over any cant as soon as he had come across
another more nearly to his fancy; his friends used to say that when
he rose he flew like a snipe, darting several times in various
directions before he settled down to a steady straight flight, but
when he had once got into this he would keep to it.



CHAPTER XLVI



When he was in his third year a magazine was founded at Cambridge,
the contributions to which were exclusively by undergraduates.
Ernest sent in an essay upon the Greek Drama, which he has declined
to let me reproduce here without his being allowed to re-edit it.  I
have therefore been unable to give it in its original form, but when
pruned of its redundancies (and this is all that has been done to
it) it runs as follows -


"I shall not attempt within the limits at my disposal to make a
resume of the rise and progress of the Greek drama, but will confine
myself to considering whether the reputation enjoyed by the three
chief Greek tragedians, AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, is one
that will be permanent, or whether they will one day be held to have
been overrated.

"Why, I ask myself, do I see much that I can easily admire in Homer,
Thucydides, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Aristophanes, Theocritus, parts
of Lucretius, Horace's satires and epistles, to say nothing of other
ancient writers, and yet find myself at once repelled by even those
works of AEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides which are most generally
admired.

"With the first-named writers I am in the hands of men who feel, if
not as I do, still as I can understand their feeling, and as I am
interested to see that they should have felt; with the second I have
so little sympathy that I cannot understand how anyone can ever have
taken any interest in them whatever.  Their highest flights to me
are dull, pompous and artificial productions, which, if they were to
appear now for the first time, would, I should think, either fall
dead or be severely handled by the critics.  I wish to know whether
it is I who am in fault in this matter, or whether part of the blame
may not rest with the tragedians themselves.

"How far I wonder did the Athenians genuinely like these poets, and
how far was the applause which was lavished upon them due to fashion
or affectation?  How far, in fact, did admiration for the orthodox
tragedians take that place among the Athenians which going to church
does among ourselves?

"This is a venturesome question considering the verdict now
generally given for over two thousand years, nor should I have
permitted myself to ask it if it had not been suggested to me by one
whose reputation stands as high, and has been sanctioned for as long
time as those of the tragedians themselves, I mean by Aristophanes.

"Numbers, weight of authority, and time, have conspired to place
Aristophanes on as high a literary pinnacle as any ancient writer,
with the exception perhaps of Homer, but he makes no secret of
heartily hating Euripides and Sophocles, and I strongly suspect only
praises AEschylus that he may run down the other two with greater
impunity.  For after all there is no such difference between
AEschylus and his successors as will render the former very good and
the latter very bad; and the thrusts at AEschylus which Aristophanes
puts into the mouth of Euripides go home too well to have been
written by an admirer.

"It may be observed that while Euripides accuses AEschylus of being
'pomp-bundle-worded,' which I suppose means bombastic and given to
rodomontade, AEschylus retorts on Euripides that he is a 'gossip
gleaner, a describer of beggars, and a rag-stitcher,' from which it
may be inferred that he was truer to the life of his own times than
AEschylus was.  It happens, however, that a faithful rendering of
contemporary life is the very quality which gives its most permanent
interest to any work of fiction, whether in literature or painting,
and it is a not unnatural consequence that while only seven plays by
AEschylus, and the same number by Sophocles, have come down to us,
we have no fewer than nineteen by Euripides.

"This, however, is a digression; the question before us is whether
Aristophanes really liked AEschylus or only pretended to do so.  It
must be remembered that the claims of AEschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides, to the foremost place amongst tragedians were held to be
as incontrovertible as those of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto
to be the greatest of Italian poets, are held among the Italians of
to-day.  If we can fancy some witty, genial writer, we will say in
Florence, finding himself bored by all the poets I have named, we
can yet believe he would be unwilling to admit that he disliked them
without exception.  He would prefer to think he could see something
at any rate in Dante, whom he could idealise more easily, inasmuch
as he was more remote; in order to carry his countrymen the farther
with him, he would endeavour to meet them more than was consistent
with his own instincts.  Without some such palliation as admiration
for one, at any rate, of the tragedians, it would be almost as
dangerous for Aristophanes to attack them as it would be for an
Englishman now to say that he did not think very much of the
Elizabethan dramatists.  Yet which of us in his heart likes any of
the Elizabethan dramatists except Shakespeare?  Are they in reality
anything else than literary Struldbrugs?

"I conclude upon the whole that Aristophanes did not like any of the
tragedians; yet no one will deny that this keen, witty, outspoken
writer was as good a judge of literary value, and as able to see any
beauties that the tragic dramas contained as nine-tenths, at any
rate, of ourselves.  He had, moreover, the advantage of thoroughly
understanding the standpoint from which the tragedians expected
their work to be judged, and what was his conclusion?  Briefly it
was little else than this, that they were a fraud or something very
like it.  For my own part I cordially agree with him.  I am free to
confess that with the exception perhaps of some of the Psalms of
David I know no writings which seem so little to deserve their
reputation.  I do not know that I should particularly mind my
sisters reading them, but I will take good care never to read them
myself."


This last bit about the Psalms was awful, and there was a great
fight with the editor as to whether or no it should be allowed to
stand.  Ernest himself was frightened at it, but he had once heard
someone say that the Psalms were many of them very poor, and on
looking at them more closely, after he had been told this, he found
that there could hardly be two opinions on the subject.  So he
caught up the remark and reproduced it as his own, concluding that
these psalms had probably never been written by David at all, but
had got in among the others by mistake.

The essay, perhaps on account of the passage about the Psalms,
created quite a sensation, and on the whole was well received.
Ernest's friends praised it more highly than it deserved, and he was
himself very proud of it, but he dared not show it at Battersby.  He
knew also that he was now at the end of his tether; this was his one
idea (I feel sure he had caught more than half of it from other
people), and now he had not another thing left to write about.  He
found himself cursed with a small reputation which seemed to him
much bigger than it was, and a consciousness that he could never
keep it up.  Before many days were over he felt his unfortunate
essay to be a white elephant to him, which he must feed by hurrying
into all sorts of frantic attempts to cap his triumph, and, as may
be imagined, these attempts were failures.

He did not understand that if he waited and listened and observed,
another idea of some kind would probably occur to him some day, and
that the development of this would in its turn suggest still further
ones.  He did not yet know that the very worst way of getting hold
of ideas is to go hunting expressly after them.  The way to get them
is to study something of which one is fond, and to note down
whatever crosses one's mind in reference to it, either during study
or relaxation, in a little note-book kept always in the waistcoat
pocket.  Ernest has come to know all about this now, but it took him
a long time to find it out, for this is not the kind of thing that
is taught at schools and universities.

Nor yet did he know that ideas, no less than the living beings in
whose minds they arise, must be begotten by parents not very unlike
themselves, the most original still differing but slightly from the
parents that have given rise to them.  Life is like a fugue,
everything must grow out of the subject and there must be nothing
new.  Nor, again, did he see how hard it is to say where one idea
ends and another begins, nor yet how closely this is paralleled in
the difficulty of saying where a life begins or ends, or an action
or indeed anything, there being an unity in spite of infinite
multitude, and an infinite multitude in spite of unity.  He thought
that ideas came into clever people's heads by a kind of spontaneous
germination, without parentage in the thoughts of others or the
course of observation; for as yet he believed in genius, of which he
well knew that he had none, if it was the fine frenzied thing he
thought it was.

Not very long before this he had come of age, and Theobald had
handed him over his money, which amounted now to 5000 pounds; it was
invested to bring in 5 pounds per cent and gave him therefore an
income of 250 pounds a year.  He did not, however, realise the fact
(he could realise nothing so foreign to his experience) that he was
independent of his father till a long time afterwards; nor did
Theobald make any difference in his manner towards him.  So strong
was the hold which habit and association held over both father and
son, that the one considered he had as good a right as ever to
dictate, and the other that he had as little right as ever to
gainsay.

During his last year at Cambridge he overworked himself through this
very blind deference to his father's wishes, for there was no reason
why he should take more than a poll degree except that his father
laid such stress upon his taking honours.  He became so ill, indeed,
that it was doubtful how far he would be able to go in for his
degree at all; but he managed to do so, and when the list came out
was found to be placed higher than either he or anyone else
expected, being among the first three or four senior optimes, and a
few weeks later, in the lower half of the second class of the
Classical Tripos.  Ill as he was when he got home, Theobald made him
go over all the examination papers with him, and in fact reproduce
as nearly as possible the replies that he had sent in.  So little
kick had he in him, and so deep was the groove into which he had
got, that while at home he spent several hours a day in continuing
his classical and mathematical studies as though he had not yet
taken his degree.



CHAPTER XLVII



Ernest returned to Cambridge for the May term of 1858, on the plea
of reading for ordination, with which he was now face to face, and
much nearer than he liked.  Up to this time, though not religiously
inclined, he had never doubted the truth of anything that had been
told him about Christianity.  He had never seen anyone who doubted,
nor read anything that raised a suspicion in his mind as to the
historical character of the miracles recorded in the Old and New
Testaments.

It must be remembered that the year 1858 was the last of a term
during which the peace of the Church of England was singularly
unbroken.  Between 1844, when "Vestiges of Creation" appeared, and
1859, when "Essays and Reviews" marked the commencement of that
storm which raged until many years afterwards, there was not a
single book published in England that caused serious commotion
within the bosom of the Church.  Perhaps Buckle's "History of
Civilisation" and Mill's "Liberty" were the most alarming, but they
neither of them reached the substratum of the reading public, and
Ernest and his friends were ignorant of their very existence.  The
Evangelical movement, with the exception to which I shall revert
presently, had become almost a matter of ancient history.
Tractarianism had subsided into a tenth day's wonder; it was at
work, but it was not noisy.  The "Vestiges" were forgotten before
Ernest went up to Cambridge; the Catholic aggression scare had lost
its terrors; Ritualism was still unknown by the general provincial
public, and the Gorham and Hampden controversies were defunct some
years since; Dissent was not spreading; the Crimean war was the one
engrossing subject, to be followed by the Indian Mutiny and the
Franco-Austrian war.  These great events turned men's minds from
speculative subjects, and there was no enemy to the faith which
could arouse even a languid interest.  At no time probably since the
beginning of the century could an ordinary observer have detected
less sign of coming disturbance than at that of which I am writing.

I need hardly say that the calm was only on the surface.  Older men,
who knew more than undergraduates were likely to do, must have seen
that the wave of scepticism which had already broken over Germany
was setting towards our own shores, nor was it long, indeed, before
it reached them.  Ernest had hardly been ordained before three works
in quick succession arrested the attention even of those who paid
least heed to theological controversy.  I mean "Essays and Reviews,"
Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," and Bishop Colenso's
"Criticisms on the Pentateuch."

This, however, is a digression; I must revert to the one phase of
spiritual activity which had any life in it during the time Ernest
was at Cambridge, that is to say, to the remains of the Evangelical
awakening of more than a generation earlier, which was connected
with the name of Simeon.

There were still a good many Simeonites, or as they were more
briefly called "Sims," in Ernest's time.  Every college contained
some of them, but their headquarters were at Caius, whither they
were attracted by Mr Clayton who was at that time senior tutor, and
among the sizars of St John's.

Behind the then chapel of this last-named college, there was a
"labyrinth" (this was the name it bore) of dingy, tumble-down rooms,
tenanted exclusively by the poorest undergraduates, who were
dependent upon sizarships and scholarships for the means of taking
their degrees.  To many, even at St John's, the existence and
whereabouts of the labyrinth in which the sizars chiefly lived was
unknown; some men in Ernest's time, who had rooms in the first
court, had never found their way through the sinuous passage which
led to it.

In the labyrinth there dwelt men of all ages, from mere lads to
grey-haired old men who had entered late in life.  They were rarely
seen except in hall or chapel or at lecture, where their manners of
feeding, praying and studying, were considered alike objectionable;
no one knew whence they came, whither they went, nor what they did,
for they never showed at cricket or the boats; they were a gloomy,
seedy-looking conferie, who had as little to glory in in clothes and
manners as in the flesh itself.

Ernest and his friends used to consider themselves marvels of
economy for getting on with so little money, but the greater number
of dwellers in the labyrinth would have considered one-half of their
expenditure to be an exceeding measure of affluence, and so
doubtless any domestic tyranny which had been experienced by Ernest
was a small thing to what the average Johnian sizar had had to put
up with.

A few would at once emerge on its being found after their first
examination that they were likely to be ornaments to the college;
these would win valuable scholarships that enabled them to live in
some degree of comfort, and would amalgamate with the more studious
of those who were in a better social position, but even these, with
few exceptions, were long in shaking off the uncouthness they
brought with them to the University, nor would their origin cease to
be easily recognisable till they had become dons and tutors.  I have
seen some of these men attain high position in the world of politics
or science, and yet still retain a look of labyrinth and Johnian
sizarship.

Unprepossessing then, in feature, gait and manners, unkempt and ill-
dressed beyond what can be easily described, these poor fellows
formed a class apart, whose thoughts and ways were not as the
thoughts and ways of Ernest and his friends, and it was among them
that Simeonism chiefly flourished.

Destined most of them for the Church (for in those days "holy
orders" were seldom heard of), the Simeonites held themselves to
have received a very loud call to the ministry, and were ready to
pinch themselves for years so as to prepare for it by the necessary
theological courses.  To most of them the fact of becoming clergymen
would be the entree into a social position from which they were at
present kept out by barriers they well knew to be impassable;
ordination, therefore, opened fields for ambition which made it the
central point in their thoughts, rather than as with Ernest,
something which he supposed would have to be done some day, but
about which, as about dying, he hoped there was no need to trouble
himself as yet.

By way of preparing themselves more completely they would have
meetings in one another's rooms for tea and prayer and other
spiritual exercises.  Placing themselves under the guidance of a few
well-known tutors they would teach in Sunday Schools, and be
instant, in season and out of season, in imparting spiritual
instruction to all whom they could persuade to listen to them.

But the soil of the more prosperous undergraduates was not suitable
for the seed they tried to sow.  The small pieties with which they
larded their discourse, if chance threw them into the company of one
whom they considered worldly, caused nothing but aversion in the
minds of those for whom they were intended.  When they distributed
tracts, dropping them by night into good men's letter boxes while
they were asleep, their tracts got burnt, or met with even worse
contumely; they were themselves also treated with the ridicule which
they reflected proudly had been the lot of true followers of Christ
in all ages.  Often at their prayer meetings was the passage of St
Paul referred to in which he bids his Corinthian converts note
concerning themselves that they were for the most part neither well-
bred nor intellectual people.  They reflected with pride that they
too had nothing to be proud of in these respects, and like St Paul,
gloried in the fact that in the flesh they had not much to glory.

Ernest had several Johnian friends, and came thus to hear about the
Simeonites and to see some of them, who were pointed out to him as
they passed through the courts.  They had a repellent attraction for
him; he disliked them, but he could not bring himself to leave them
alone.  On one occasion he had gone so far as to parody one of the
tracts they had sent round in the night, and to get a copy dropped
into each of the leading Simeonites' boxes.  The subject he had
taken was "Personal Cleanliness."  Cleanliness, he said, was next to
godliness; he wished to know on which side it was to stand, and
concluded by exhorting Simeonites to a freer use of the tub.  I
cannot commend my hero's humour in this matter; his tract was not
brilliant, but I mention the fact as showing that at this time he
was something of a Saul and took pleasure in persecuting the elect,
not, as I have said, that he had any hankering after scepticism, but
because, like the farmers in his father's village, though he would
not stand seeing the Christian religion made light of, he was not
going to see it taken seriously.  Ernest's friends thought his
dislike for Simeonites was due to his being the son of a clergyman
who, it was known, bullied him; it is more likely, however, that it
rose from an unconscious sympathy with them, which, as in St Paul's
case, in the end drew him into the ranks of those whom he had most
despised and hated.



CHAPTER XLVIII



Once, recently, when he was down at home after taking his degree,
his mother had had a short conversation with him about his becoming
a clergyman, set on thereto by Theobald, who shrank from the subject
himself.  This time it was during a turn taken in the garden, and
not on the sofa--which was reserved for supreme occasions.

"You know, my dearest boy," she said to him, "that papa" (she always
called Theobald "papa" when talking to Ernest) "is so anxious you
should not go into the Church blindly, and without fully realising
the difficulties of a clergyman's position.  He has considered all
of them himself, and has been shown how small they are, when they
are faced boldly, but he wishes you, too, to feel them as strongly
and completely as possible before committing yourself to irrevocable
vows, so that you may never, never have to regret the step you will
have taken."

This was the first time Ernest had heard that there were any
difficulties, and he not unnaturally enquired in a vague way after
their nature.

"That, my dear boy," rejoined Christina, "is a question which I am
not fitted to enter upon either by nature or education.  I might
easily unsettle your mind without being able to settle it again.
Oh, no!  Such questions are far better avoided by women, and, I
should have thought, by men, but papa wished me to speak to you upon
the subject, so that there might be no mistake hereafter, and I have
done so.  Now, therefore, you know all."

The conversation ended here, so far as this subject was concerned,
and Ernest thought he did know all.  His mother would not have told
him he knew all--not about a matter of that sort--unless he actually
did know it; well, it did not come to very much; he supposed there
were some difficulties, but his father, who at any rate was an
excellent scholar and a learned man, was probably quite right here,
and he need not trouble himself more about them.  So little
impression did the conversation make on him, that it was not till
long afterwards that, happening to remember it, he saw what a piece
of sleight of hand had been practised upon him.  Theobald and
Christina, however, were satisfied that they had done their duty by
opening their son's eyes to the difficulties of assenting to all a
clergyman must assent to.  This was enough; it was a matter for
rejoicing that, though they had been put so fully and candidly
before him, he did not find them serious.  It was not in vain that
they had prayed for so many years to be made "TRULY honest and
conscientious."

"And now, my dear," resumed Christina, after having disposed of all
the difficulties that might stand in the way of Ernest's becoming a
clergyman, "there is another matter on which I should like to have a
talk with you.  It is about your sister Charlotte.  You know how
clever she is, and what a dear, kind sister she has been and always
will be to yourself and Joey.  I wish, my dearest Ernest, that I saw
more chance of her finding a suitable husband than I do at
Battersby, and I sometimes think you might do more than you do to
help her."

Ernest began to chafe at this, for he had heard it so often, but he
said nothing.

"You know, my dear, a brother can do so much for his sister if he
lays himself out to do it.  A mother can do very little--indeed, it
is hardly a mother's place to seek out young men; it is a brother's
place to find a suitable partner for his sister; all that I can do
is to try to make Battersby as attractive as possible to any of your
friends whom you may invite.  And in that," she added, with a little
toss of her head, "I do not think I have been deficient hitherto."

Ernest said he had already at different times asked several of his
friends.

"Yes, my dear, but you must admit that they were none of them
exactly the kind of young man whom Charlotte could be expected to
take a fancy to.  Indeed, I must own to having been a little
disappointed that you should have yourself chosen any of these as
your intimate friends."

Ernest winced again.

"You never brought down Figgins when you were at Roughborough; now I
should have thought Figgins would have been just the kind of boy
whom you might have asked to come and see us."

Figgins had been gone through times out of number already.  Ernest
had hardly known him, and Figgins, being nearly three years older
than Ernest, had left long before he did.  Besides he had not been a
nice boy, and had made himself unpleasant to Ernest in many ways.

"Now," continued his mother, "there's Towneley.  I have heard you
speak of Towneley as having rowed with you in a boat at Cambridge.
I wish, my dear, you would cultivate your acquaintance with
Towneley, and ask him to pay us a visit.  The name has an
aristocratic sound, and I think I have heard you say he is an eldest
son."

Ernest flushed at the sound of Towneley's name.

What had really happened in respect of Ernest's friends was briefly
this.  His mother liked to get hold of the names of the boys and
especially of any who were at all intimate with her son; the more
she heard, the more she wanted to know; there was no gorging her to
satiety; she was like a ravenous young cuckoo being fed upon a grass
plot by a water wag-tail, she would swallow all that Ernest could
bring her, and yet be as hungry as before.  And she always went to
Ernest for her meals rather than to Joey, for Joey was either more
stupid or more impenetrable--at any rate she could pump Ernest much
the better of the two.

From time to time an actual live boy had been thrown to her, either
by being caught and brought to Battersby, or by being asked to meet
her if at any time she came to Roughborough.  She had generally made
herself agreeable, or fairly agreeable, as long as the boy was
present, but as soon as she got Ernest to herself again she changed
her note.  Into whatever form she might throw her criticisms it came
always in the end to this, that his friend was no good, that Ernest
was not much better, and that he should have brought her someone
else, for this one would not do at all.

The more intimate the boy had been or was supposed to be with Ernest
the more he was declared to be naught, till in the end he had hit
upon the plan of saying, concerning any boy whom he particularly
liked, that he was not one of his especial chums, and that indeed he
hardly knew why he had asked him; but he found he only fell on
Scylla in trying to avoid Charybdis, for though the boy was declared
to be more successful it was Ernest who was naught for not thinking
more highly of him.

When she had once got hold of a name she never forgot it.  "And how
is So-and-so?" she would exclaim, mentioning some former friend of
Ernest's with whom he had either now quarrelled, or who had long
since proved to be a mere comet and no fixed star at all.  How
Ernest wished he had never mentioned So-and-so's name, and vowed to
himself that he would never talk about his friends in future, but in
a few hours he would forget and would prattle away as imprudently as
ever; then his mother would pounce noiselessly on his remarks as a
barn-owl pounces upon a mouse, and would bring them up in a pellet
six months afterwards when they were no longer in harmony with their
surroundings.

Then there was Theobald.  If a boy or college friend had been
invited to Battersby, Theobald would lay himself out at first to be
agreeable.  He could do this well enough when he liked, and as
regards the outside world he generally did like.  His clerical
neighbours, and indeed all his neighbours, respected him yearly more
and more, and would have given Ernest sufficient cause to regret his
imprudence if he had dared to hint that he had anything, however
little, to complain of.  Theobald's mind worked in this way:  "Now,
I know Ernest has told this boy what a disagreeable person I am, and
I will just show him that I am not disagreeable at all, but a good
old fellow, a jolly old boy, in fact a regular old brick, and that
it is Ernest who is in fault all through."

So he would behave very nicely to the boy at first, and the boy
would be delighted with him, and side with him against Ernest.  Of
course if Ernest had got the boy to come to Battersby he wanted him
to enjoy his visit, and was therefore pleased that Theobald should
behave so well, but at the same time he stood so much in need of
moral support that it was painful to him to see one of his own
familiar friends go over to the enemy's camp.  For no matter how
well we may know a thing--how clearly we may see a certain patch of
colour, for example, as red, it shakes us and knocks us about to
find another see it, or be more than half inclined to see it, as
green.

Theobald had generally begun to get a little impatient before the
end of the visit, but the impression formed during the earlier part
was the one which the visitor had carried away with him.  Theobald
never discussed any of the boys with Ernest.  It was Christina who
did this.  Theobald let them come, because Christina in a quiet,
persistent way insisted on it; when they did come he behaved, as I
have said, civilly, but he did not like it, whereas Christina did
like it very much; she would have had half Roughborough and half
Cambridge to come and stay at Battersby if she could have managed
it, and if it would not have cost so much money:  she liked their
coming, so that she might make a new acquaintance, and she liked
tearing them to pieces and flinging the bits over Ernest as soon as
she had had enough of them.

The worst of it was that she had so often proved to be right.  Boys
and young men are violent in their affections, but they are seldom
very constant; it is not till they get older that they really know
the kind of friend they want; in their earlier essays young men are
simply learning to judge character.  Ernest had been no exception to
the general rule.  His swans had one after the other proved to be
more or less geese even in his own estimation, and he was beginning
almost to think that his mother was a better judge of character than
he was; but I think it may be assumed with some certainty that if
Ernest had brought her a real young swan she would have declared it
to be the ugliest and worst goose of all that she had yet seen.

At first he had not suspected that his friends were wanted with a
view to Charlotte; it was understood that Charlotte and they might
perhaps take a fancy for one another; and that would be so very
nice, would it not?  But he did not see that there was any
deliberate malice in the arrangement.  Now, however, that he had
awoke to what it all meant, he was less inclined to bring any friend
of his to Battersby.  It seemed to his silly young mind almost
dishonest to ask your friend to come and see you when all you really
meant was "Please, marry my sister."  It was like trying to obtain
money under false pretences.  If he had been fond of Charlotte it
might have been another matter, but he thought her one of the most
disagreeable young women in the whole circle of his acquaintance.

She was supposed to be very clever.  All young ladies are either
very pretty or very clever or very sweet; they may take their choice
as to which category they will go in for, but go in for one of the
three they must.  It was hopeless to try and pass Charlotte off as
either pretty or sweet.  So she became clever as the only remaining
alternative.  Ernest never knew what particular branch of study it
was in which she showed her talent, for she could neither play nor
sing nor draw, but so astute are women that his mother and Charlotte
really did persuade him into thinking that she, Charlotte, had
something more akin to true genius than any other member of the
family.  Not one, however, of all the friends whom Ernest had been
inveigled into trying to inveigle had shown the least sign of being
so far struck with Charlotte's commanding powers, as to wish to make
them his own, and this may have had something to do with the
rapidity and completeness with which Christina had dismissed them
one after another and had wanted a new one.

And now she wanted Towneley.  Ernest had seen this coming and had
tried to avoid it, for he knew how impossible it was for him to ask
Towneley, even if he had wished to do so.

Towneley belonged to one of the most exclusive sets in Cambridge,
and was perhaps the most popular man among the whole number of
undergraduates.  He was big and very handsome--as it seemed to
Ernest the handsomest man whom he ever had seen or ever could see,
for it was impossible to imagine a more lively and agreeable
countenance.  He was good at cricket and boating, very good-natured,
singularly free from conceit, not clever but very sensible, and,
lastly, his father and mother had been drowned by the overturning of
a boat when he was only two years old and had left him as their only
child and heir to one of the finest estates in the South of England.
Fortune every now and then does things handsomely by a man all
round; Towneley was one of those to whom she had taken a fancy, and
the universal verdict in this case was that she had chosen wisely.

Ernest had seen Towneley as every one else in the University
(except, of course, dons) had seen him, for he was a man of mark,
and being very susceptible he had liked Towneley even more than most
people did, but at the same time it never so much as entered his
head that he should come to know him.  He liked looking at him if he
got a chance, and was very much ashamed of himself for doing so, but
there the matter ended.

By a strange accident, however, during Ernest's last year, when the
names of the crews for the scratch fours were drawn he had found
himself coxswain of a crew, among whom was none other than his
especial hero Towneley; the three others were ordinary mortals, but
they could row fairly well, and the crew on the whole was rather a
good one.

Ernest was frightened out of his wits.  When, however, the two met,
he found Towneley no less remarkable for his entire want of anything
like "side," and for his power of setting those whom he came across
at their ease, than he was for outward accomplishments; the only
difference he found between Towneley and other people was that he
was so very much easier to get on with.  Of course Ernest worshipped
him more and more.

The scratch fours being ended the connection between the two came to
an end, but Towneley never passed Ernest thenceforward without a nod
and a few good-natured words.  In an evil moment he had mentioned
Towneley's name at Battersby, and now what was the result?  Here was
his mother plaguing him to ask Towneley to come down to Battersby
and marry Charlotte.  Why, if he had thought there was the remotest
chance of Towneley's marrying Charlotte he would have gone down on
his knees to him and told him what an odious young woman she was,
and implored him to save himself while there was yet time.

But Ernest had not prayed to be made "truly honest and
conscientious" for as many years as Christina had.  He tried to
conceal what he felt and thought as well as he could, and led the
conversation back to the difficulties which a clergyman might feel
to stand in the way of his being ordained--not because he had any
misgivings, but as a diversion.  His mother, however, thought she
had settled all that, and he got no more out of her.  Soon
afterwards he found the means of escaping, and was not slow to avail
himself of them.



CHAPTER XLIX



On his return to Cambridge in the May term of 1858, Ernest and a few
other friends who were also intended for orders came to the
conclusion that they must now take a more serious view of their
position.  They therefore attended chapel more regularly than
hitherto, and held evening meetings of a somewhat furtive character,
at which they would study the New Testament.  They even began to
commit the Epistles of St Paul to memory in the original Greek.
They got up Beveridge on the Thirty-nine Articles, and Pearson on
the Creed; in their hours of recreation they read More's "Mystery of
Godliness," which Ernest thought was charming, and Taylor's "Holy
Living and Dying," which also impressed him deeply, through what he
thought was the splendour of its language.  They handed themselves
over to the guidance of Dean Alford's notes on the Greek Testament,
which made Ernest better understand what was meant by
"difficulties," but also made him feel how shallow and impotent were
the conclusions arrived at by German neologians, with whose works,
being innocent of German, he was not otherwise acquainted.  Some of
the friends who joined him in these pursuits were Johnians, and the
meetings were often held within the walls of St John's.

I do not know how tidings of these furtive gatherings had reached
the Simeonites, but they must have come round to them in some way,
for they had not been continued many weeks before a circular was
sent to each of the young men who attended them, informing them that
the Rev. Gideon Hawke, a well-known London Evangelical preacher,
whose sermons were then much talked of, was about to visit his young
friend Badcock of St John's, and would be glad to say a few words to
any who might wish to hear them, in Badcock's rooms on a certain
evening in May.

Badcock was one of the most notorious of all the Simeonites.  Not
only was he ugly, dirty, ill-dressed, bumptious, and in every way
objectionable, but he was deformed and waddled when he walked so
that he had won a nick-name which I can only reproduce by calling it
"Here's my back, and there's my back," because the lower parts of
his back emphasised themselves demonstratively as though about to
fly off in different directions like the two extreme notes in the
chord of the augmented sixth, with every step he took.  It may be
guessed, therefore, that the receipt of the circular had for a
moment an almost paralysing effect on those to whom it was
addressed, owing to the astonishment which it occasioned them.  It
certainly was a daring surprise, but like so many deformed people,
Badcock was forward and hard to check; he was a pushing fellow to
whom the present was just the opportunity he wanted for carrying war
into the enemy's quarters.

Ernest and his friends consulted.  Moved by the feeling that as they
were now preparing to be clergymen they ought not to stand so
stiffly on social dignity as heretofore, and also perhaps by the
desire to have a good private view of a preacher who was then much
upon the lips of men, they decided to accept the invitation.  When
the appointed time came they went with some confusion and self-
abasement to the rooms of this man, on whom they had looked down
hitherto as from an immeasurable height, and with whom nothing would
have made them believe a few weeks earlier that they could ever come
to be on speaking terms.

Mr Hawke was a very different-looking person from Badcock.  He was
remarkably handsome, or rather would have been but for the thinness
of his lips, and a look of too great firmness and inflexibility.
His features were a good deal like those of Leonardo da Vinci;
moreover he was kempt, looked in vigorous health, and was of a ruddy
countenance.  He was extremely courteous in his manner, and paid a
good deal of attention to Badcock, of whom he seemed to think
highly.  Altogether our young friends were taken aback, and inclined
to think smaller beer of themselves and larger of Badcock than was
agreeable to the old Adam who was still alive within them.  A few
well-known "Sims" from St John's and other colleges were present,
but not enough to swamp the Ernest set, as for the sake of brevity,
I will call them.

After a preliminary conversation in which there was nothing to
offend, the business of the evening began by Mr Hawke's standing up
at one end of the table, and saying "Let us pray."  The Ernest set
did not like this, but they could not help themselves, so they knelt
down and repeated the Lord's Prayer and a few others after Mr Hawke,
who delivered them remarkably well.  Then, when all had sat down, Mr
Hawke addressed them, speaking without notes and taking for his text
the words, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?"  Whether owing to
Mr Hawke's manner, which was impressive, or to his well-known
reputation for ability, or whether from the fact that each one of
the Ernest set knew that he had been more or less a persecutor of
the "Sims" and yet felt instinctively that the "Sims" were after all
much more like the early Christians than he was himself--at any rate
the text, familiar though it was, went home to the consciences of
Ernest and his friends as it had never yet done.  If Mr Hawke had
stopped here he would have almost said enough; as he scanned the
faces turned towards him, and saw the impression he had made, he was
perhaps minded to bring his sermon to an end before beginning it,
but if so, he reconsidered himself and proceeded as follows.  I give
the sermon in full, for it is a typical one, and will explain a
state of mind which in another generation or two will seem to stand
sadly in need of explanation.

"My young friends," said Mr Hawke, "I am persuaded there is not one
of you here who doubts the existence of a Personal God.  If there
were, it is to him assuredly that I should first address myself.
Should I be mistaken in my belief that all here assembled accept the
existence of a God who is present amongst us though we see him not,
and whose eye is upon our most secret thoughts, let me implore the
doubter to confer with me in private before we part; I will then put
before him considerations through which God has been mercifully
pleased to reveal himself to me, so far as man can understand him,
and which I have found bring peace to the minds of others who have
doubted.

"I assume also that there is none who doubts but that this God,
after whose likeness we have been made, did in the course of time
have pity upon man's blindness, and assume our nature, taking flesh
and coming down and dwelling among us as a man indistinguishable
physically from ourselves.  He who made the sun, moon and stars, the
world and all that therein is, came down from Heaven in the person
of his Son, with the express purpose of leading a scorned life, and
dying the most cruel, shameful death which fiendish ingenuity has
invented.

"While on earth he worked many miracles.  He gave sight to the
blind, raised the dead to life, fed thousands with a few loaves and
fishes, and was seen to walk upon the waves, but at the end of his
appointed time he died, as was foredetermined, upon the cross, and
was buried by a few faithful friends.  Those, however, who had put
him to death set a jealous watch over his tomb.

"There is no one, I feel sure, in this room who doubts any part of
the foregoing, but if there is, let me again pray him to confer with
me in private, and I doubt not that by the blessing of God his
doubts will cease.

"The next day but one after our Lord was buried, the tomb being
still jealously guarded by enemies, an angel was seen descending
from Heaven with glittering raiment and a countenance that shone
like fire.  This glorious being rolled away the stone from the
grave, and our Lord himself came forth, risen from the dead.

"My young friends, this is no fanciful story like those of the
ancient deities, but a matter of plain history as certain as that
you and I are now here together.  If there is one fact better
vouched for than another in the whole range of certainties it is the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ; nor is it less well assured that a few
weeks after he had risen from the dead, our Lord was seen by many
hundreds of men and women to rise amid a host of angels into the air
upon a heavenward journey till the clouds covered him and concealed
him from the sight of men.

"It may be said that the truth of these statements has been denied,
but what, let me ask you, has become of the questioners?  Where are
they now?  Do we see them or hear of them?  Have they been able to
hold what little ground they made during the supineness of the last
century?  Is there one of your fathers or mothers or friends who
does not see through them?  Is there a single teacher or preacher in
this great University who has not examined what these men had to
say, and found it naught?  Did you ever meet one of them, or do you
find any of their books securing the respectful attention of those
competent to judge concerning them?  I think not; and I think also
you know as well as I do why it is that they have sunk back into the
abyss from which they for a time emerged:  it is because after the
most careful and patient examination by the ablest and most judicial
minds of many countries, their arguments were found so untenable
that they themselves renounced them.  They fled from the field
routed, dismayed, and suing for peace; nor have they again come to
the front in any civilised country.

"You know these things.  Why, then, do I insist upon them?  My dear
young friends, your own consciousness will have made the answer to
each one of you already; it is because, though you know so well that
these things did verily and indeed happen, you know also that you
have not realised them to yourselves as it was your duty to do, nor
heeded their momentous, awful import.

"And now let me go further.  You all know that you will one day come
to die, or if not to die--for there are not wanting signs which make
me hope that the Lord may come again, while some of us now present
are alive--yet to be changed; for the trumpet shall sound, and the
dead shall be raised incorruptible, for this corruption must put on
incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality, and the saying
shall be brought to pass that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in
victory.'

"Do you, or do you not believe that you will one day stand before
the Judgement Seat of Christ?  Do you, or do you not believe that
you will have to give an account for every idle word that you have
ever spoken?  Do you, or do you not believe that you are called to
live, not according to the will of man, but according to the will of
that Christ who came down from Heaven out of love for you, who
suffered and died for you, who calls you to him, and yearns towards
you that you may take heed even in this your day--but who, if you
heed not, will also one day judge you, and with whom there is no
variableness nor shadow of turning?

"My dear young friends, strait is the gate, and narrow is the way
which leadeth to Eternal Life, and few there be that find it.  Few,
few, few, for he who will not give up ALL for Christ's sake, has
given up nothing

"If you would live in the friendship of this world, if indeed you
are not prepared to give up everything you most fondly cherish,
should the Lord require it of you, then, I say, put the idea of
Christ deliberately on one side at once.  Spit upon him, buffet him,
crucify him anew, do anything you like so long as you secure the
friendship of this world while it is still in your power to do so;
the pleasures of this brief life may not be worth paying for by the
torments of eternity, but they are something while they last.  If,
on the other hand, you would live in the friendship of God, and be
among the number of those for whom Christ has not died in vain; if,
in a word, you value your eternal welfare, then give up the
friendship of this world; of a surety you must make your choice
between God and Mammon, for you cannot serve both.

"I put these considerations before you, if so homely a term may be
pardoned, as a plain matter of business.  There is nothing low or
unworthy in this, as some lately have pretended, for all nature
shows us that there is nothing more acceptable to God than an
enlightened view of our own self-interest; never let anyone delude
you here; it is a simple question of fact; did certain things happen
or did they not?  If they did happen, is it reasonable to suppose
that you will make yourselves and others more happy by one course of
conduct or by another?

"And now let me ask you what answer you have made to this question
hitherto?  Whose friendship have you chosen?  If, knowing what you
know, you have not yet begun to act according to the immensity of
the knowledge that is in you, then he who builds his house and lays
up his treasure on the edge of a crater of molten lava is a sane,
sensible person in comparison with yourselves.  I say this as no
figure of speech or bugbear with which to frighten you, but as an
unvarnished unexaggerated statement which will be no more disputed
by yourselves than by me."

And now Mr Hawke, who up to this time had spoken with singular
quietness, changed his manner to one of greater warmth and continued
-

"Oh! my young friends turn, turn, turn, now while it is called to-
day--now from this hour, from this instant; stay not even to gird up
your loins; look not behind you for a second, but fly into the bosom
of that Christ who is to be found of all who seek him, and from that
fearful wrath of God which lieth in wait for those who know not the
things belonging to their peace.  For the Son of Man cometh as a
thief in the night, and there is not one of us can tell but what
this day his soul may be required of him.  If there is even one here
who has heeded me,"--and he let his eye fall for an instant upon
almost all his hearers, but especially on the Ernest set--"I shall
know that it was not for nothing that I felt the call of the Lord,
and heard as I thought a voice by night that bade me come hither
quickly, for there was a chosen vessel who had need of me."

Here Mr Hawke ended rather abruptly; his earnest manner, striking
countenance and excellent delivery had produced an effect greater
than the actual words I have given can convey to the reader; the
virtue lay in the man more than in what he said; as for the last few
mysterious words about his having heard a voice by night, their
effect was magical; there was not one who did not look down to the
ground, nor who in his heart did not half believe that he was the
chosen vessel on whose especial behalf God had sent Mr Hawke to
Cambridge.  Even if this were not so, each one of them felt that he
was now for the first time in the actual presence of one who had had
a direct communication from the Almighty, and they were thus
suddenly brought a hundredfold nearer to the New Testament miracles.
They were amazed, not to say scared, and as though by tacit consent
they gathered together, thanked Mr Hawke for his sermon, said good-
night in a humble deferential manner to Badcock and the other
Simeonites, and left the room together.  They had heard nothing but
what they had been hearing all their lives; how was it, then, that
they were so dumbfoundered by it?  I suppose partly because they had
lately begun to think more seriously, and were in a fit state to be
impressed, partly from the greater directness with which each felt
himself addressed, through the sermon being delivered in a room, and
partly to the logical consistency, freedom from exaggeration, and
profound air of conviction with which Mr Hawke had spoken.  His
simplicity and obvious earnestness had impressed them even before he
had alluded to his special mission, but this clenched everything,
and the words "Lord, is it I?" were upon the hearts of each as they
walked pensively home through moonlit courts and cloisters.

I do not know what passed among the Simeonites after the Ernest set
had left them, but they would have been more than mortal if they had
not been a good deal elated with the results of the evening.  Why,
one of Ernest's friends was in the University eleven, and he had
actually been in Badcock's rooms and had slunk off on saying good-
night as meekly as any of them.  It was no small thing to have
scored a success like this.



CHAPTER L



Ernest felt now that the turning point of his life had come.  He
would give up all for Christ--even his tobacco.

So he gathered together his pipes and pouches, and locked them up in
his portmanteau under his bed where they should be out of sight, and
as much out of mind as possible.  He did not burn them, because
someone might come in who wanted to smoke, and though he might
abridge his own liberty, yet, as smoking was not a sin, there was no
reason why he should be hard on other people.

After breakfast he left his rooms to call on a man named Dawson, who
had been one of Mr Hawke's hearers on the preceding evening, and who
was reading for ordination at the forthcoming Ember Weeks, now only
four months distant.  This man had been always of a rather serious
turn of mind--a little too much so for Ernest's taste; but times had
changed, and Dawson's undoubted sincerity seemed to render him a
fitting counsellor for Ernest at the present time.  As he was going
through the first court of John's on his way to Dawson's rooms, he
met Badcock, and greeted him with some deference.  His advance was
received with one of those ecstatic gleams which shone occasionally
upon the face of Badcock, and which, if Ernest had known more, would
have reminded him of Robespierre.  As it was, he saw it and
unconsciously recognised the unrest and self-seekingness of the man,
but could not yet formulate them; he disliked Badcock more than
ever, but as he was going to profit by the spiritual benefits which
he had put in his way, he was bound to be civil to him, and civil he
therefore was.

Badcock told him that Mr Hawke had returned to town immediately his
discourse was over, but that before doing so he had enquired
particularly who Ernest and two or three others were.  I believe
each one of Ernest's friends was given to understand that he had
been more or less particularly enquired after.  Ernest's vanity--for
he was his mother's son--was tickled at this; the idea again
presented itself to him that he might be the one for whose benefit
Mr Hawke had been sent.  There was something, too, in Badcock's
manner which conveyed the idea that he could say more if he chose,
but had been enjoined to silence.

On reaching Dawson's rooms, he found his friend in raptures over the
discourse of the preceding evening.  Hardly less delighted was he
with the effect it had produced on Ernest.  He had always known, he
said, that Ernest would come round; he had been sure of it, but he
had hardly expected the conversion to be so sudden.  Ernest said no
more had he, but now that he saw his duty so clearly he would get
ordained as soon as possible, and take a curacy, even though the
doing so would make him have to go down from Cambridge earlier,
which would be a great grief to him.  Dawson applauded this
determination, and it was arranged that as Ernest was still more or
less of a weak brother, Dawson should take him, so to speak, in
spiritual tow for a while, and strengthen and confirm his faith.

An offensive and defensive alliance therefore was struck up between
this pair (who were in reality singularly ill assorted), and Ernest
set to work to master the books on which the Bishop would examine
him.  Others gradually joined them till they formed a small set or
church (for these are the same things), and the effect of Mr Hawke's
sermon instead of wearing off in a few days, as might have been
expected, became more and more marked, so much so that it was
necessary for Ernest's friends to hold him back rather than urge him
on, for he seemed likely to develop--as indeed he did for a time--
into a religious enthusiast.

In one matter only, did he openly backslide.  He had, as I said
above, locked up his pipes and tobacco, so that he might not be
tempted to use them.  All day long on the day after Mr Hawke's
sermon he let them lie in his portmanteau bravely; but this was not
very difficult, as he had for some time given up smoking till after
hall.  After hall this day he did not smoke till chapel time, and
then went to chapel in self-defence.  When he returned he determined
to look at the matter from a common sense point of view.  On this he
saw that, provided tobacco did not injure his health--and he really
could not see that it did--it stood much on the same footing as tea
or coffee.

Tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the Bible, but then it had not
yet been discovered, and had probably only escaped proscription for
this reason.  We can conceive of St Paul or even our Lord Himself as
drinking a cup of tea, but we cannot imagine either of them as
smoking a cigarette or a churchwarden.  Ernest could not deny this,
and admitted that Paul would almost certainly have condemned tobacco
in good round terms if he had known of its existence.  Was it not
then taking rather a mean advantage of the Apostle to stand on his
not having actually forbidden it?  On the other hand, it was
possible that God knew Paul would have forbidden smoking, and had
purposely arranged the discovery of tobacco for a period at which
Paul should be no longer living.  This might seem rather hard on
Paul, considering all he had done for Christianity, but it would be
made up to him in other ways.

These reflections satisfied Ernest that on the whole he had better
smoke, so he sneaked to his portmanteau and brought out his pipes
and tobacco again.  There should be moderation he felt in all
things, even in virtue; so for that night he smoked immoderately.
It was a pity, however, that he had bragged to Dawson about giving
up smoking.  The pipes had better be kept in a cupboard for a week
or two, till in other and easier respects Ernest should have proved
his steadfastness.  Then they might steal out again little by
little--and so they did.

Ernest now wrote home a letter couched in a vein different from his
ordinary ones.  His letters were usually all common form and
padding, for as I have already explained, if he wrote about anything
that really interested him, his mother always wanted to know more
and more about it--every fresh answer being as the lopping off of a
hydra's head and giving birth to half a dozen or more new questions-
-but in the end it came invariably to the same result, namely, that
he ought to have done something else, or ought not to go on doing as
he proposed.  Now, however, there was a new departure, and for the
thousandth time he concluded that he was about to take a course of
which his father and mother would approve, and in which they would
be interested, so that at last he and they might get on more
sympathetically than heretofore.  He therefore wrote a gushing
impulsive letter, which afforded much amusement to myself as I read
it, but which is too long for reproduction.  One passage ran:  "I am
now going towards Christ; the greater number of my college friends
are, I fear, going away from Him; we must pray for them that they
may find the peace that is in Christ even as I have myself found
it."  Ernest covered his face with his hands for shame as he read
this extract from the bundle of letters he had put into my hands--
they had been returned to him by his father on his mother's death,
his mother having carefully preserved them.

"Shall I cut it out?" said I, "I will if you like."

"Certainly not," he answered, "and if good-natured friends have kept
more records of my follies, pick out any plums that may amuse the
reader, and let him have his laugh over them."  But fancy what
effect a letter like this--so unled up to--must have produced at
Battersby!  Even Christina refrained from ecstasy over her son's
having discovered the power of Christ's word, while Theobald was
frightened out of his wits.  It was well his son was not going to
have any doubts or difficulties, and that he would be ordained
without making a fuss over it, but he smelt mischief in this sudden
conversion of one who had never yet shown any inclination towards
religion.  He hated people who did not know where to stop.  Ernest
was always so outre and strange; there was never any knowing what he
would do next, except that it would be something unusual and silly.
If he was to get the bit between his teeth after he had got ordained
and bought his living, he would play more pranks than ever he,
Theobald, had done.  The fact, doubtless, of his being ordained and
having bought a living would go a long way to steady him, and if he
married, his wife must see to the rest; this was his only chance
and, to do justice to his sagacity, Theobald in his heart did not
think very highly of it.

When Ernest came down to Battersby in June, he imprudently tried to
open up a more unreserved communication with his father than was his
wont.  The first of Ernest's snipe-like flights on being flushed by
Mr Hawke's sermon was in the direction of ultra-evangelicalism.
Theobald himself had been much more Low than High Church.  This was
the normal development of the country clergyman during the first
years of his clerical life, between, we will say, the years 1825 to
1850; but he was not prepared for the almost contempt with which
Ernest now regarded the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and
priestly absolution (Hoity toity, indeed, what business had he with
such questions?), nor for his desire to find some means of
reconciling Methodism and the Church.  Theobald hated the Church of
Rome, but he hated dissenters too, for he found them as a general
rule troublesome people to deal with; he always found people who did
not agree with him troublesome to deal with:  besides, they set up
for knowing as much as he did; nevertheless if he had been let alone
he would have leaned towards them rather than towards the High
Church party.  The neighbouring clergy, however, would not let him
alone.  One by one they had come under the influence, directly or
indirectly, of the Oxford movement which had begun twenty years
earlier.  It was surprising how many practices he now tolerated
which in his youth he would have considered Popish; he knew very
well therefore which way things were going in Church matters, and
saw that as usual Ernest was setting himself the other way.  The
opportunity for telling his son that he was a fool was too
favourable not to be embraced, and Theobald was not slow to embrace
it.  Ernest was annoyed and surprised, for had not his father and
mother been wanting him to be more religious all his life?  Now that
he had become so they were still not satisfied.  He said to himself
that a prophet was not without honour save in his own country, but
he had been lately--or rather until lately--getting into an odious
habit of turning proverbs upside down, and it occurred to him that a
country is sometimes not without honour save for its own prophet.
Then he laughed, and for the rest of the day felt more as he used to
feel before he had heard Mr Hawke's sermon.

He returned to Cambridge for the Long Vacation of 1858--none too
soon, for he had to go in for the Voluntary Theological Examination,
which bishops were now beginning to insist upon.  He imagined all
the time he was reading that he was storing himself with the
knowledge that would best fit him for the work he had taken in hand.
In truth, he was cramming for a pass.  In due time he did pass--
creditably, and was ordained Deacon with half-a-dozen others of his
friends in the autumn of 1858.  He was then just twenty-three years
old.



CHAPTER LI



Ernest had been ordained to a curacy in one of the central parts of
London.  He hardly knew anything of London yet, but his instincts
drew him thither.  The day after he was ordained he entered upon his
duties--feeling much as his father had done when he found himself
boxed up in the carriage with Christina on the morning of his
marriage.  Before the first three days were over, he became aware
that the light of the happiness which he had known during his four
years at Cambridge had been extinguished, and he was appalled by the
irrevocable nature of the step which he now felt that he had taken
much too hurriedly.

The most charitable excuse that I can make for the vagaries which it
will now be my duty to chronicle is that the shock of change
consequent upon his becoming suddenly religious, being ordained and
leaving Cambridge, had been too much for my hero, and had for the
time thrown him off an equilibrium which was yet little supported by
experience, and therefore as a matter of course unstable.

Everyone has a mass of bad work in him which he will have to work
off and get rid of before he can do better--and indeed, the more
lasting a man's ultimate good work is, the more sure he is to pass
through a time, and perhaps a very long one, in which there seems
very little hope for him at all.  We must all sow our spiritual wild
oats.  The fault I feel personally disposed to find with my godson
is not that he had wild oats to sow, but that they were such an
exceedingly tame and uninteresting crop.  The sense of humour and
tendency to think for himself, of which till a few months previously
he had been showing fair promise, were nipped as though by a late
frost, while his earlier habit of taking on trust everything that
was told him by those in authority, and following everything out to
the bitter end, no matter how preposterous, returned with redoubled
strength.  I suppose this was what might have been expected from
anyone placed as Ernest now was, especially when his antecedents are
remembered, but it surprised and disappointed some of his cooler-
headed Cambridge friends who had begun to think well of his ability.
To himself it seemed that religion was incompatible with half
measures, or even with compromise.  Circumstances had led to his
being ordained; for the moment he was sorry they had, but he had
done it and must go through with it.  He therefore set himself to
find out what was expected of him, and to act accordingly.

His rector was a moderate High Churchman of no very pronounced
views--an elderly man who had had too many curates not to have long
since found out that the connection between rector and curate, like
that between employer and employed in every other walk of life, was
a mere matter of business.  He had now two curates, of whom Ernest
was the junior; the senior curate was named Pryer, and when this
gentleman made advances, as he presently did, Ernest in his forlorn
state was delighted to meet them.

Pryer was about twenty-eight years old.  He had been at Eton and at
Oxford.  He was tall, and passed generally for good-looking; I only
saw him once for about five minutes, and then thought him odious
both in manners and appearance.  Perhaps it was because he caught me
up in a way I did not like.  I had quoted Shakespeare for lack of
something better to fill up a sentence--and had said that one touch
of nature made the whole world kin.  "Ah," said Pryer, in a bold,
brazen way which displeased me, "but one touch of the unnatural
makes it more kindred still," and he gave me a look as though he
thought me an old bore and did not care two straws whether I was
shocked or not.  Naturally enough, after this I did not like him.

This, however, is anticipating, for it was not till Ernest had been
three or four months in London that I happened to meet his fellow-
curate, and I must deal here rather with the effect he produced upon
my godson than upon myself.  Besides being what was generally
considered good-looking, he was faultless in his get-up, and
altogether the kind of man whom Ernest was sure to be afraid of and
yet be taken in by.  The style of his dress was very High Church,
and his acquaintances were exclusively of the extreme High Church
party, but he kept his views a good deal in the background in his
rector's presence, and that gentleman, though he looked askance on
some of Pryer's friends, had no such ground of complaint against him
as to make him sever the connection.  Pryer, too, was popular in the
pulpit, and, take him all round, it was probable that many worse
curates would be found for one better.  When Pryer called on my
hero, as soon as the two were alone together, he eyed him all over
with a quick penetrating glance and seemed not dissatisfied with the
result--for I must say here that Ernest had improved in personal
appearance under the more genial treatment he had received at
Cambridge.  Pryer, in fact, approved of him sufficiently to treat
him civilly, and Ernest was immediately won by anyone who did this.
It was not long before he discovered that the High Church party, and
even Rome itself, had more to say for themselves than he had
thought.  This was his first snipe-like change of flight.

Pryer introduced him to several of his friends.  They were all of
them young clergymen, belonging as I have said to the highest of the
High Church school, but Ernest was surprised to find how much they
resembled other people when among themselves.  This was a shock to
him; it was ere long a still greater one to find that certain
thoughts which he had warred against as fatal to his soul, and which
he had imagined he should lose once for all on ordination, were
still as troublesome to him as they had been; he also saw plainly
enough that the young gentlemen who formed the circle of Pryer's
friends were in much the same unhappy predicament as himself.

This was deplorable.  The only way out of it that Ernest could see
was that he should get married at once.  But then he did not know
any one whom he wanted to marry.  He did not know any woman, in
fact, whom he would not rather die than marry.  It had been one of
Theobald's and Christina's main objects to keep him out of the way
of women, and they had so far succeeded that women had become to him
mysterious, inscrutable objects to be tolerated when it was
impossible to avoid them, but never to be sought out or encouraged.
As for any man loving, or even being at all fond of any woman, he
supposed it was so, but he believed the greater number of those who
professed such sentiments were liars.  Now, however, it was clear
that he had hoped against hope too long, and that the only thing to
do was to go and ask the first woman who would listen to him to come
and be married to him as soon as possible.

He broached this to Pryer, and was surprised to find that this
gentleman, though attentive to such members of his flock as were
young and good-looking, was strongly in favour of the celibacy of
the clergy, as indeed were the other demure young clerics to whom
Pryer had introduced Ernest.



CHAPTER LII



"You know, my dear Pontifex," said Pryer to him, some few weeks
after Ernest had become acquainted with him, when the two were
taking a constitutional one day in Kensington Gardens, "You know, my
dear Pontifex, it is all very well to quarrel with Rome, but Rome
has reduced the treatment of the human soul to a science, while our
own Church, though so much purer in many respects, has no organised
system either of diagnosis or pathology--I mean, of course,
spiritual diagnosis and spiritual pathology.  Our Church does not
prescribe remedies upon any settled system, and, what is still
worse, even when her physicians have according to their lights
ascertained the disease and pointed out the remedy, she has no
discipline which will ensure its being actually applied.  If our
patients do not choose to do as we tell them, we cannot make them.
Perhaps really under all the circumstances this is as well, for we
are spiritually mere horse doctors as compared with the Roman
priesthood, nor can we hope to make much headway against the sin and
misery that surround us, till we return in some respects to the
practice of our forefathers and of the greater part of Christendom."

Ernest asked in what respects it was that his friend desired a
return to the practice of our forefathers.

"Why, my dear fellow, can you really be ignorant?  It is just this,
either the priest is indeed a spiritual guide, as being able to show
people how they ought to live better than they can find out for
themselves, or he is nothing at all--he has no raison d'etre.  If
the priest is not as much a healer and director of men's souls as a
physician is of their bodies, what is he?  The history of all ages
has shown--and surely you must know this as well as I do--that as
men cannot cure the bodies of their patients if they have not been
properly trained in hospitals under skilled teachers, so neither can
souls be cured of their more hidden ailments without the help of men
who are skilled in soul-craft--or in other words, of priests.  What
do one half of our formularies and rubrics mean if not this?  How in
the name of all that is reasonable can we find out the exact nature
of a spiritual malady, unless we have had experience of other
similar cases?  How can we get this without express training?  At
present we have to begin all experiments for ourselves, without
profiting by the organised experience of our predecessors, inasmuch
as that experience is never organised and co-ordinated at all.  At
the outset, therefore, each one of us must ruin many souls which
could be saved by knowledge of a few elementary principles."

Ernest was very much impressed.

"As for men curing themselves," continued Pryer, "they can no more
cure their own souls than they can cure their own bodies, or manage
their own law affairs.  In these two last cases they see the folly
of meddling with their own cases clearly enough, and go to a
professional adviser as a matter of course; surely a man's soul is
at once a more difficult and intricate matter to treat, and at the
same time it is more important to him that it should be treated
rightly than that either his body or his money should be so.  What
are we to think of the practice of a Church which encourages people
to rely on unprofessional advice in matters affecting their eternal
welfare, when they would not think of jeopardising their worldly
affairs by such insane conduct?"

Ernest could see no weak place in this.  These ideas had crossed his
own mind vaguely before now, but he had never laid hold of them or
set them in an orderly manner before himself.  Nor was he quick at
detecting false analogies and the misuse of metaphors; in fact he
was a mere child in the hands of his fellow curate.

"And what," resumed Pryer, "does all this point to?  Firstly, to the
duty of confession--the outcry against which is absurd as an outcry
would be against dissection as part of the training of medical
students.  Granted these young men must see and do a great deal we
do not ourselves like even to think of, but they should adopt some
other profession unless they are prepared for this; they may even
get inoculated with poison from a dead body and lose their lives,
but they must stand their chance.  So if we aspire to be priests in
deed as well as name, we must familiarise ourselves with the
minutest and most repulsive details of all kinds of sin, so that we
may recognise it in all its stages.  Some of us must doubtlessly
perish spiritually in such investigations.  We cannot help it; all
science must have its martyrs, and none of these will deserve better
of humanity than those who have fallen in the pursuit of spiritual
pathology."

Ernest grew more and more interested, but in the meekness of his
soul said nothing.

"I do not desire this martyrdom for myself," continued the other,
"on the contrary I will avoid it to the very utmost of my power, but
if it be God's will that I should fall while studying what I believe
most calculated to advance his glory--then, I say, not my will, oh
Lord, but thine be done."

This was too much even for Ernest.  "I heard of an Irish-woman
once," he said, with a smile, "who said she was a martyr to the
drink."

"And so she was," rejoined Pryer with warmth; and he went on to show
that this good woman was an experimentalist whose experiment, though
disastrous in its effects upon herself, was pregnant with
instruction to other people.  She was thus a true martyr or witness
to the frightful consequences of intemperance, to the saving,
doubtless, of many who but for her martyrdom would have taken to
drinking.  She was one of a forlorn hope whose failure to take a
certain position went to the proving it to be impregnable and
therefore to the abandonment of all attempt to take it.  This was
almost as great a gain to mankind as the actual taking of the
position would have been.

"Besides," he added more hurriedly, "the limits of vice and virtue
are wretchedly ill-defined.  Half the vices which the world condemns
most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use
rather than total abstinence."

Ernest asked timidly for an instance.

"No, no," said Pryer, "I will give you no instance, but I will give
you a formula that shall embrace all instances.  It is this, that no
practice is entirely vicious which has not been extinguished among
the comeliest, most vigorous, and most cultivated races of mankind
in spite of centuries of endeavour to extirpate it.  If a vice in
spite of such efforts can still hold its own among the most polished
nations, it must be founded on some immutable truth or fact in human
nature, and must have some compensatory advantage which we cannot
afford altogether to dispense with."

"But," said Ernest timidly, "is not this virtually doing away with
all distinction between right and wrong, and leaving people without
any moral guide whatever?"

"Not the people," was the answer:  "it must be our care to be guides
to these, for they are and always will be incapable of guiding
themselves sufficiently.  We should tell them what they must do, and
in an ideal state of things should be able to enforce their doing
it:  perhaps when we are better instructed the ideal state may come
about; nothing will so advance it as greater knowledge of spiritual
pathology on our own part.  For this, three things are necessary;
firstly, absolute freedom in experiment for us the clergy; secondly,
absolute knowledge of what the laity think and do, and of what
thoughts and actions result in what spiritual conditions; and
thirdly, a compacter organisation among ourselves.

"If we are to do any good we must be a closely united body, and must
be sharply divided from the laity.  Also we must be free from those
ties which a wife and children involve.  I can hardly express the
horror with which I am filled by seeing English priests living in
what I can only designate as 'open matrimony.'  It is deplorable.
The priest must be absolutely sexless--if not in practice, yet at
any rate in theory, absolutely--and that too, by a theory so
universally accepted that none shall venture to dispute it."

"But," said Ernest, "has not the Bible already told people what they
ought and ought not to do, and is it not enough for us to insist on
what can be found here, and let the rest alone?"

"If you begin with the Bible," was the rejoinder, "you are three
parts gone on the road to infidelity, and will go the other part
before you know where you are.  The Bible is not without its value
to us the clergy, but for the laity it is a stumbling-block which
cannot be taken out of their way too soon or too completely.  Of
course, I mean on the supposition that they read it, which, happily,
they seldom do.  If people read the Bible as the ordinary British
churchman or churchwoman reads it, it is harmless enough; but if
they read it with any care--which we should assume they will if we
give it them at all--it is fatal to them."

"What do you mean?" said Ernest, more and more astonished, but more
and more feeling that he was at least in the hands of a man who had
definite ideas.

"Your question shows me that you have never read your Bible.  A more
unreliable book was never put upon paper.  Take my advice and don't
read it, not till you are a few years older, and may do so safely."

"But surely you believe the Bible when it tells you of such things
as that Christ died and rose from the dead?  Surely you believe
this?" said Ernest, quite prepared to be told that Pryer believed
nothing of the kind.

"I do not believe it, I know it."

"But how--if the testimony of the Bible fails?"

"On that of the living voice of the Church, which I know to be
infallible and to be informed of Christ himself."



CHAPTER LIII



The foregoing conversation and others like it made a deep impression
upon my hero.  If next day he had taken a walk with Mr Hawke, and
heard what he had to say on the other side, he would have been just
as much struck, and as ready to fling off what Pryer had told him,
as he now was to throw aside all he had ever heard from anyone
except Pryer; but there was no Mr Hawke at hand, so Pryer had
everything his own way.

Embryo minds, like embryo bodies, pass through a number of strange
metamorphoses before they adopt their final shape.  It is no more to
be wondered at that one who is going to turn out a Roman Catholic,
should have passed through the stages of being first a Methodist,
and then a free thinker, than that a man should at some former time
have been a mere cell, and later on an invertebrate animal.  Ernest,
however, could not be expected to know this; embryos never do.
Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have
now reached the only condition which really suits them.  This, they
say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so
great a shock that nothing can survive it.  Every change is a shock;
every shock is a pro tanto death.  What we call death is only a
shock great enough to destroy our power to recognise a past and a
present as resembling one another.  It is the making us consider the
points of difference between our present and our past greater than
the points of resemblance, so that we can no longer call the former
of these two in any proper sense a continuation of the second, but
find it less trouble to think of it as something that we choose to
call new.

But, to let this pass, it was clear that spiritual pathology (I
confess that I do not know myself what spiritual pathology means--
but Pryer and Ernest doubtless did) was the great desideratum of the
age.  It seemed to Ernest that he had made this discovery himself
and been familiar with it all his life, that he had never known, in
fact, of anything else.  He wrote long letters to his college
friends expounding his views as though he had been one of the
Apostolic fathers.  As for the Old Testament writers, he had no
patience with them.  "Do oblige me," I find him writing to one
friend, "by reading the prophet Zechariah, and giving me your candid
opinion upon him.  He is poor stuff, full of Yankee bounce; it is
sickening to live in an age when such balderdash can be gravely
admired whether as poetry or prophecy."  This was because Pryer had
set him against Zechariah.  I do not know what Zechariah had done; I
should think myself that Zechariah was a very good prophet; perhaps
it was because he was a Bible writer, and not a very prominent one,
that Pryer selected him as one through whom to disparage the Bible
in comparison with the Church.

To his friend Dawson I find him saying a little later on:  "Pryer
and I continue our walks, working out each other's thoughts.  At
first he used to do all the thinking, but I think I am pretty well
abreast of him now, and rather chuckle at seeing that he is already
beginning to modify some of the views he held most strongly when I
first knew him.

"Then I think he was on the high road to Rome; now, however, he
seems to be a good deal struck with a suggestion of mine in which
you, too, perhaps may be interested.  You see we must infuse new
life into the Church somehow; we are not holding our own against
either Rome or infidelity."  (I may say in passing that I do not
believe Ernest had as yet ever seen an infidel--not to speak to.)
"I proposed, therefore, a few days back to Pryer--and he fell in
eagerly with the proposal as soon as he saw that I had the means of
carrying it out--that we should set on foot a spiritual movement
somewhat analogous to the Young England movement of twenty years
ago, the aim of which shall be at once to outbid Rome on the one
hand, and scepticism on the other.  For this purpose I see nothing
better than the foundation of an institution or college for placing
the nature and treatment of sin on a more scientific basis than it
rests at present.  We want--to borrow a useful term of Pryer's--a
College of Spiritual Pathology where young men" (I suppose Ernest
thought he was no longer young by this time) "may study the nature
and treatment of the sins of the soul as medical students study
those of the bodies of their patients.  Such a college, as you will
probably admit, will approach both Rome on the one hand, and science
on the other--Rome, as giving the priesthood more skill, and
therefore as paving the way for their obtaining greater power, and
science, by recognising that even free thought has a certain kind of
value in spiritual enquiries.  To this purpose Pryer and I have
resolved to devote ourselves henceforth heart and soul.

"Of course, my ideas are still unshaped, and all will depend upon
the men by whom the college is first worked.  I am not yet a priest,
but Pryer is, and if I were to start the College, Pryer might take
charge of it for a time and I work under him nominally as his
subor