APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/all_flesh/CHAP20_39

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                          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 Evangelicism, 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
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
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- someone 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 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 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 around 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 twopence 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 somersaults 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 "c" or "k,"
and, instead of saying "Come," he said "Tum, tum, tum."

"Ernest," said Theobald, from the armchair 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 armchair 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 in 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 manservant 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, he died; as the Lord commanded Moses.

"And the Lord spake unto Moses,

"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 not 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 someone 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 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 daresay," 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 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 lookout 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 ,narried,
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 tude,
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, selfdenying, 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 it 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
judgement, 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 childlike 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 breakdown. 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 case
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 L5000 by this work alone, and would very likely make
another L5000 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 roadside, 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'? 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 anyone, 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
someone 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 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 schoolfellows; 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 debatable 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 humbugs; 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 publichouses 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 debatable 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 L5000, which had come to
her by her mother's marriage settlements, and L15,000 left her by
her father, over both which sums she had now absolute control. These
brought her in about L900 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 L500, 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 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 freethinker 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 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 an 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 forebore
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 other
time, she resolved to go down to Roughborough on some pretext 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 lookout 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 secondhand
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.

The pretext she put forward ostensibly was that her doctor said
she 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
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
whereever 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
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 tools 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 L5000 in other legacies, and L15,000 to Ernest- which by the
time he was twenty-eight would have accumulated to, say, L30,000,
"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 L2000 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 L3000 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 L5000, 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,
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 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:

 (See illustration.)

 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 twopence but
not for twopence 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 dis. continued.
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 granffather'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 L1000 or L2000 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 recognized 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, Head-master.

                          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 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 into 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 anyone 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 a 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.