APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/all_flesh/CHAP60_79

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                          CHAPTER LX


ERNEST now went home and occupied himself till luncheon with
studying Dean Alford's notes upon the various Evangelistic records
of the Resurrection, doing as Mr. Shaw had told him, and trying to
find out, not that they were all accurate, but whether they were all
accurate or no. He did not care which result he should arrive at,
but he was resolved that he would reach one or the other. When he
had finished Dean Alford's notes he found them come to this, namely,
that no one yet had succeeded in bringing the four accounts into
tolerable harmony with each other, and that the Dean, seeing no chance
of succeeding better than his predecessors had done, recommended
that the whole story should be taken on trust- and this Ernest was not
prepared to do.

He got his luncheon, went out for a long walk, and returned to
dinner at half past six. While Mrs. Jupp was getting him his dinner -a
steak and a pint of stout -she told him that Miss Snow would be very
happy to see him in about an hour's time. This disconcerted him, for
his mind was too unsettled for him to wish to convert anyone just
then. He reflected a little, and found that, in spite of the sudden
shock to his opinions, he was being irresistibly drawn to pay the
visit as though nothing had happened. It would not look well for him
not to go, for he was known to be in the house. He ought not to be
in too great a hurry to change his opinions on such a matter as the
evidence for Christ's Resurrection all of a sudden -besides he need
not talk to Miss Snow about this subject to-day -there were other
things he might talk about. What other things? Ernest felt his heart
beat fast and fiercely, and an inward monitor warned him that he was
thinking of anything rather than of Miss Snow's soul.

What should he do? Fly, fly, fly -it was the only safety. But
would Christ have fled? Even though Christ had not died and risen from
the dead there could be no question that He was the model whose
example we were bound to follow. Christ would not have fled from
Miss Snow; he was sure of that, for He went about more especially with
prostitutes and disreputable people. Now, as then, it was the business
of the true Christian to call not the righteous but sinners to
repentance. It would be inconvenient to him to change his lodgings,
and he could not ask Mrs. Jupp to turn Miss Snow and Miss Maitland out
of the house. Where was he to draw the line? Who would be just good
enough to live in the same house with him, and who just not good
enough?

Besides, where were these poor girls to go? Was he to drive them
from house to house till they had no place to lie in? It was absurd;
his duty was clear: he would go and see Miss Snow at once, and try
if he could not induce her to change her present mode of life; if he
found temptation becoming too strong for him he would fly then- so
he went upstairs with his Bible under his arm, and a consuming fire in
his heart.

He found Miss Snow looking very pretty in a neatly, not to say
demurely, furnished room. I think she had bought an illuminated text
or two, and pinned it up over her fireplace that morning. Ernest was
very much pleased with her, and mechanically placed his Bible upon the
table. He had just opened a timid conversation and was deep in
blushes, when a hurried step came bounding up the stairs as though
of one over whom the force of gravity had little power, and a man
burst into the room saying, "I'm come before my time." It was
Towneley.

His face dropped as he caught sight of Ernest. "What, you here,
Pontifex! Well, upon my word!"

I cannot describe the hurried explanations that passed quickly
between the three -enough that in less than a minute Ernest,
blushing more scarlet than ever, slunk off, Bible and all, deeply
humiliated as he contrasted himself and Towneley. Before he had
reached the bottom of the staircase leading to his own room he heard
Towneley's hearty laugh through Miss Snow's door, and cursed the
hour that he was born.

Then it flashed upon him that if he could not see Miss Snow he could
at any rate see Miss Maitland. He knew well enough what he wanted now,
and as for the Bible, he pushed it from him to the other end of his
table. It fell over onto the floor, and he kicked it into a corner. It
was the Bible given him at his christening by his affectionate aunt,
Elizabeth Allaby. True, he knew very little of Miss Maitland, but
ignorant young fools in Ernest's state do not reflect or reason
closely. Mrs. Baxter had said that Miss Maitland and Miss Snow were
birds of a feather, and Mrs. Baxter probably knew better than that old
liar, Mrs. Jupp. Shakespeare says:

     O Opportunity, thy guilt is great,
     'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason:
     Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get:
     Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season;
     'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason;
       And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him,
       Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him.

If the guilt of opportunity is great, how much greater is the
guilt of that which is believed to be opportunity, but in reality is
no opportunity at all. If the better part of valour is discretion, how
much more is not discretion the better part of vice?

 About ten minutes after we last saw Ernest, a scared, insulted
girl, flushed and trembling, was seen hurrying from Mrs. Jupp's
house as fast as her agitated state would let her, and in another
ten minutes two policemen were seen also coming out of Mrs. Jupp's,
between whom there shambled rather than walked our unhappy friend
Ernest, with staring eyes, ghastly pale, and with despair branded upon
every line of his face.

                          CHAPTER LXI


Pryer had done well to warn Ernest against promiscuous
house-to-house visitation. He had not gone outside Mrs. Jupp's
street door, and yet what had been the result? Mr. Holt had put him in
bodily fear; Mr. and Mrs. Baxter had nearly made a Methodist of him;
Mr. Shaw had undermined his faith in the Resurrection; Miss Snow's
charms had ruined- or would have done so but for an accident- his
moral character. As for Miss Maitland, he had done his best to ruin
hers, and had damaged himself gravely and irretrievably in
consequence. The only lodger who had done him no harm was the
bellows-mender, whom he had not visited.

Other young clergymen, much greater fools in many respects than
he, would not have got into these scrapes. He seemed to have developed
an aptitude for mischief almost from the day of his having been
ordained. He could hardly preach without making some horrid faux
pas. He preached one Sunday morning when the Bishop was at his
Rector's church, and made his sermon turn upon the question what
kind of little cake it was that the widow of Zarephath had intended
making when Elijah found her gathering a few sticks. He demonstrated
that it was a seed cake. The sermon was really very amusing, and
more than once he saw a smile pass over the sea of faces underneath
him. The Bishop was very angry, and gave my hero a severe reprimand in
the vestry after service was over; the only excuse he could make was
that he was preaching ex tempore, had not thought of this particular
point till he was actually in the pulpit, and had then been carried
away by it.

Another time he preached upon the barren fig-tree, and described the
hopes of the owner as he watched the delicate blossom unfold, and give
promise of such beautiful fruit in autumn. Next day he received a
letter from a botanical member of his congregation who explained to
him that this could hardly have been, inasmuch as the fig produces its
fruit first and blossoms inside the fruit, or so nearly so that no
flower is perceptible to an ordinary observer. This last, however, was
an accident which might have happened to anyone but a scientist or
an inspired writer.

The only excuse I can make for him is that he was very young- not
yet four-and-twenty-and that in mind as in body, like most of those
who in the end come to think for themselves, he was a slow grower.
By far the greater part, moreover, of his education had been an
attempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge his eyes
out altogether.

But to return to my story. It transpired afterwards that Miss
Maitland had had no intention of giving Ernest in charge when she
ran out of Mrs. Jupp's house. She was running away because she was
frightened, but almost the first person whom she ran against had
happened to be a policeman of a serious turn of mind, who wished to
gain a reputation for activity. He stopped her, questioned her,
frightened her still more, and it was he rather than Miss Maitland who
insisted on giving my hero in charge to himself and another constable.

Towneley was still in Mrs. Jupp's house when the policemen came.
He had heard a disturbance, and going down to Ernest's room while Miss
Maitland was out of doors, had found him lying, as it were, stunned at
the foot of the moral precipice over which he had that moment
fallen. He saw the whole thing at a glance, but before he could take
action, the policemen came in and action became impossible.

He asked Ernest who were his friends in London. Ernest at first
wanted not to say, but Towneley soon gave him to understand that he
must do as he was bid, and selected myself from the few whom he had
named. "Writes for the stage, does he?" said Towneley. "Does he
write comedy?" Ernest thought Towneley meant that I ought to write
tragedy, and said he was afraid I wrote burlesque. "Oh, come, come,"
Towneley, "that will do famously. I will go and see him at once." But
on second thoughts he determined to stay with Ernest and go with him
to the police court. So he sent Mrs. Jupp for me. Mrs. Jupp hurried so
fast to fetch me, that in spite of the weather's being still cold
she was "giving out," as she expressed it, in streams. The poor old
wretch would have taken a cab, but she had no money and did not like
to ask Towneley to give her some. I saw that something very serious
had happened, but was not prepared for anything so deplorable as
what Mrs. Jupp actually told me. As for Mrs. Jupp, she said her
heart had been jumping out of its socket and back again ever since.

I got her into a cab with me, and we went off to the police station.
She talked without ceasing.

"And if the neighbours do say cruel things about me, I'm sure it
ain't no thanks to him if they're true. Mr. Pontifex never took a
bit o' notice of me no more than if I had been his sister. Oh, it's
enough to make anyone's back bone curdle. Then I thought perhaps my
Rose might get on better with him, so I set her to dust him and
clean him as though I were busy, and gave her such a beautiful clean
new pinny, but he never took no notice of her no more than he did of
me, and she didn't want no compliment neither; she wouldn't have taken
not a shilling from him, though he had offered it, but he didn't
seem to know anything at all. I can't make out what the young men
are a-coming to; I wish the horn may blow for me and the worms take me
this very night, if it's not enough to make a woman stand before God
and strike the one half on 'em silly to see the way they goes on,
and many an honest girl has to go home night after night without so
much as a fourpenny-bit and paying three and sixpence a week rent, and
not a shelf nor cupboard in the place and a dead wall in front of
the window.

"It's not Mr. Pontifex," she continued, "that's so bad; he's good at
heart. He never says nothing unkind. And then there's his dear eyes-
but when I speak about that to my Rose she calls me an old fool and
says I ought to be poleaxed. It's that Pryer as I can't abide. Oh, he!
He likes to wound a woman's feelings, he do, and to chuck anything
in her face, he do- he likes to wind a woman up and to wound her
down." (Mrs. Jupp pronounced "wound" as though it rhymed to
"sound.") "It's a gentleman's place to soothe a woman, but he, he'd
like to tear her hair out by handfuls. Why, he told me to my face that
I was a-getting old; old, indeed! there's not a woman in London
knows my age except Mrs. Davis down in the Old Kent Road, and beyond a
haricot vein in one of my legs I'm as young as ever I was. Old,
indeed! There's many a good tune played on an old fiddle. I hate his
nasty insinuendos."

Even if I had wanted to stop her, I could not have done so. She said
a great deal more than I have given above. I have left out much
because I could not remember it, but still more because it was
really impossible for me to print it.

When we got to the police station I found Towneley and Ernest
already there. The charge was one of assault, but not aggravated by
serious violence. Even so, however, it was lamentable enough, and we
both saw that our young friend would have to pay dearly for his
inexperience. We tried to bail him out for the night, but the
Inspector would not accept bail, so we were forced to leave him.

Towneley then went back to Mrs. Jupp's to see if he could find
Miss Maitland and arrange matters with her. She was not there, but
he traced her to her house of her father, who lived at Camberwell. The
father was furious and would not hear of any intercession on
Towneley's part. He was a Dissenter, and glad to make the most of
any scandal against a clergyman; Towneley, therefore, was obliged to
return unsuccessful.

Next morning, Towneley- who regarded Ernest as a drowning man, who
must be picked out of the water somehow or other if possible,
irrespective of the way in which he got into it- called on me, and
we put the matter into the hands of one of the best known attorneys of
the day. I was greatly pleased with Towneley, and thought it due to
him to tell him what I had told no one else. I mean that Ernest
would come into his aunt's money in a few years' time, and would
therefore then be rich.

Towneley was doing all he could before this, but I knew that the
knowledge I had imparted to him would make him feel as though Ernest
was more one of his own class, and had therefore a greater claim
upon his good offices. As for Ernest himself, his gratitude was
greater than could be expressed in words. I have heard him say that he
can call to mind many moments, each one of which might well pass for
the happiest of his life, but that this night stands clearly out as
the most painful that he ever passed, yet so kind and considerate
was Towneley that it was quite bearable.

But with all the best wishes in the world neither Towneley nor I
could do much to help beyond giving our moral support. Our attorney
told us that the magistrate before whom Ernest would appear was very
severe on cases of this description, and that the fact of his being
a clergyman would tell against him. "Ask for no remand," he said, "and
make no defence. We will call Mr. Pontifex's rector and you two
gentlemen as witnesses for previous good character. These will be
enough. Let us then make a profound apology and beg the magistrate
to deal with the case summarily instead of sending it for trial. If
you can get this, believe me, your young friend will be better out
of it than he has any right to expect."

                          CHAPTER LXII


THIS advice, besides being obviously sensible, would end in saving
Ernest both time and suspense of mind, so we had no hesitation in
adopting it. The case was called on about eleven o'clock, but we got
it adjourned till three, so as to give time for Ernest to set his
affairs as straight as he could, and to execute a power of attorney
enabling me to act for him as I should think fit while he was in
prison.

Then all came out about Pryer and the College of Spiritual
Pathology. Ernest had even greater difficulty in making a clean breast
of this than he had had in telling us about Miss Maitland, but he told
us all, and the upshot was that he had actually handed over to Pryer
every halfpenny that he then possessed with no other security than
Pryers I.O.U.'s for the amount. Ernest, though still declining to
believe that Pryer could be guilty of dishonourable conduct, was
becoming alive to the folly of what he had been doing; he still made
sure, however, of recovering, at any rate, the greater part of his
property as soon as Pryer should have had time to sell. Towneley and I
were of a different opinion, but we did not say what we thought.

It was dreary work waiting all the morning amid such unfamiliar
and depressing surroundings. I thought how the Psalmist had
exclaimed with quiet irony, "One day in thy courts is better than a
thousand," and I thought that I could utter a very similar sentiment
in respect of the courts in which Towneley and I were compelled to
loiter. At last, about three o'clock the case was called on, and we
went round to the part of the court which is reserved for the
general public, while Ernest was taken into the prisoner's dock. As
soon as he had collected himself sufficiently he recognised the
magistrate as the old gentleman who had spoken to him in the train
on the day he was leaving school, and saw, or thought he saw, to his
great grief, that he too was recognised.

Mr. Ottery, for this was our attorney's name, took the line he had
proposed. He called no other witnesses than the rector, Towneley and
myself, and threw himself on the mercy of the magistrate. When he
had concluded, the magistrate spoke as follows: "Ernest Pontifex,
yours is one of the most painful cases that I have ever had to deal
with. You have been singularly favoured in your parentage and
education. You have had before you the example of blameless parents,
who doubtless instilled into you from childhood the enormity of the
offence which by your own confession you have committed. You were sent
to one of the best public schools in England. It is not likely that in
the healthy atmosphere of such a school as you can have come across
contaminating influences; you were probably, I may say certainly,
impressed at school with the heinousness of any attempt to depart from
the strictest chastity until such time as you had entered into a state
of matrimony. At Cambridge you were shielded from impurity by every
obstacle which virtuous and vigilant authorities could devise, and
even had the obstacles been fewer, your parents probably took care
that your means should not admit of your throwing money away upon
abandoned characters. At night proctors patrolled the street and
dogged your steps if you tried to go into any haunt where the presence
of vice was suspected. By day the females who were admitted within the
college walls were selected mainly on the score of age and ugliness.
It is hard to see what more can be done for any young man than this.
For the last four or five months you have been a clergyman, and if a
single impure thought had still remained within your mind,
ordination should have removed it: nevertheless, not only does it
appear that your mind is as impure as though none of the influences to
which I have referred had been brought to bear upon it, but it seems
as though their only result had been this- that you have not even
the common sense to be able to distinguish between a respectable
girl and a prostitute.

"If I were to take a strict view of my duty I should commit you
for trial, but in consideration of this being your first offence, I
shall deal leniently with you and sentence you to imprisonment with
hard labour for six calendar months."

Towneley and I both thought there was a touch of irony in the
magistrate's speech, and that he could have given a lighter sentence
if he would, but that was neither here nor there. We obtained leave to
see Ernest for a few minutes before he was removed to Coldbath Fields,
where he was to serve his term, and found him so thankful to have been
summarily dealt with that he hardly seemed to care about the miserable
plight in which he was to pass the next six months. When he came
out, he said, he would take what remained of his money, go off to
America or Australia and never be heard of more.

We left him full of this resolve, I, to write to Theobald, and
also to instruct my solicitor to get Ernest's money out of Pryer's
hands, and Towneley to see the reporters and keep the case out of
the newspapers. He was successful as regards all the higher-class
papers. There was only one journal, and that of the lowest class,
which was incorruptible.

                          CHAPTER LXIII


I SAW my solicitor at once, but when I tried to write to Theobald, I
found it better to say I would run down and see him. I therefore
proposed this, asking him to meet me at the station, and hinting
that I must bring bad news about his son. I knew he would not get my
letter more than a couple of hours before I should see him, and
thought the short interval of suspense might break the shock of what I
had to say.

Never do I remember to have halted more between two opinions than on
my journey to Battersby upon this unhappy errand. When I thought of
the little sallow-faced lad whom I had remembered years before, of the
long and savage cruelty with which he had been treated in childhood-
cruelty none the less real for having been due to ignorance and
stupidity rather than to deliberate malice; of the atmosphere of lying
and self-laudatory hallucination in which he had been brought up; of
the readiness the boy had shown to love anything that would be good
enough to let him, and of how affection for his parents, unless I am
much mistaken, had only died in him because it had been killed anew,
again and again and again, each time that it had tried to spring; when
I thought of all this I felt as though, if the matter had rested
with me, I would have sentenced Theobald and Christina to mental
suffering even more severe than that which was about to fall upon
them. But on the other hand, when I thought of Theobald's own
childhood, of that dreadful old George Pontifex his father, of John
and Mrs. John, and of his two sisters, when again I thought of
Christina's long years of hope deferred that maketh the heart sick,
before she was married, of the life she must have led at Crampsford,
and of the surroundings in the midst of which she and her husband both
lived at Battersby, I felt as though the wonder was that misfortunes
so persistent had not been followed by even graver retribution.

Poor people! They had tried to keep their ignorance of the world
from themselves by calling it the pursuit of heavenly things, and then
shutting their eyes to anything that might give them trouble. A son
having been born to them they had shut his eyes also as far as was
practicable. Who could blame them? They had chapter and verse for
everything they had either done or left undone; there is no better
thumbed precedent than that for being a clergyman's wife. In what
respect had they differed from their neighbours? How did their
household differ from that of any other clergyman of the better sort
from one end of England to the other? Why then should it have been
upon them, of all people in the world, that this tower of Siloam had
fallen?

Surely it was the tower of Siloam that was naught rather than
those who stood under it; it was the system rather than the people
that was at fault. If Theobald and his wife had but known more the
world and of the things that are therein, they would have done
little harm to anyone. Selfish they would have always been, but not
more so than may very well be pardoned, and not more than other people
would be. As it was, the case was hopeless; it would be no use their
even entering into their mothers' wombs and being born again. They
must not only be born again but they must be born again each one of
them of a new father and of a new mother and of a different line of
ancestry for many generations before their minds could become supple
enough to learn anew. The only thing to do with them was to humour
them and make the best of them till they died- and be thankful when
they did so.

Theobald got my letter as I had expected, and met me at the
station nearest to Battersby. As I walked back with him towards his
own house I broke the news to him as gently as I could. I pretended
that the whole thing was in great measure a mistake, and that though
Ernest no doubt had had intentions which he ought to have resisted, he
had not meant going anything like the length which Miss Maitland
supposed. I said we had felt how much appearances were against him,
and had not dared to set up this defence before the magistrate, though
we had no doubt about its being the true one.

Theobald acted with a readier and acuter moral sense than I had
given him credit for.

"I will have nothing more to do with him," he exclaimed promptly. "I
will never see his face again; do not let him write either to me or to
his mother; we know of no such person. Tell him you have seen me,
and that from this day forward I shall put him out of my mind as
though he had never been born. I have been a good father to him, and
his mother idolised him; selfishness and ingratitude have been the
only return we have ever had from him; my hope henceforth must be in
my remaining children."

I told him how Ernest's fellow curate had got hold of his money, and
hinted that he might very likely be penniless, or nearly so, on
leaving prison. Theobald did not seem displeased at this, but added
soon afterwards: "If this proves to be the case, tell him from me that
I will give him a hundred pounds if he will tell me through you when
he will have it paid, but tell him not to write and thank me, and
say that if he attempts to open up direct communication either with
his mother or myself, he shall not have a penny of the money."

Knowing what I knew, and having determined on violating Miss
Pontifex's instructions should the occasion arise, I did not think
Ernest would be any the worse for a complete estrangement from his
family, so I acquiesced more readily in what Theobald had proposed
than that gentleman may have expected.

Thinking it better that I should not see Christina, I left
Theobald near Battersby and walked back to the station. On my way I
was pleased to reflect that Ernest's father was less of a fool than
I had taken him to be, and had the greater hopes, therefore, that
his son's blunders might be due to postnatal, rather than congenital
misfortunes. Accidents which happen to a man before he is born, in the
persons of his ancestors, will, if he remembers them at all, leave
an indelible impression on him; they will have moulded his character
that, do what he will it is hardly possible for him to escape their
consequences. If a man is to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he must do
so, not only as a little child, but as a little embryo, or rather as a
little zoosperm- and not only this, but as one that has come of
zoosperms which have entered into the Kingdom of Heaven before him for
many generations. Accidents which occur for the first time, and belong
to the period since a man's last birth, are not, as a general rule, so
permanent in their effects, though of course they may sometimes be so.
At any rate, I was not displeased at the view which Ernest's father
took of the situation.

                          CHAPTER LXIV


AFTER Ernest had been sentenced, he was taken back to the cells to
wait for the van which should take him to Coldbath Fields, where he
was to serve his term.

He was still too stunned and dazed by the suddenness with which
events had happened during the last twenty-four hours to be able to
realise his position. A great chasm had opened between his past and
future; nevertheless he breathed, his pulse beat, he could think and
speak. It seemed to him that he ought to be prostrated by the blow
that had fallen on him, but he was not prostrated; he had suffered
from many smaller laches far more acutely. It was not until he thought
of the pain his disgrace would inflict on his father and mother that
he felt how readily he would have given up all he had, rather than
have fallen into his present plight. It would break his mother's
heart. It must, he knew it would- and it was he who had done this.

He had had a headache coming on all the forenoon, but as he
thought of his father and mother, his pulse quickened, and the pain in
his head suddenly became intense. He could hardly walk to the van, and
he found its motion insupportable. On reaching the prison he was too
ill to walk without assistance across the hall to the corridor or
gallery where prisoners are marshalled on their arrival. The prison
warder, seeing at once that he was a clergyman, did not suppose he was
shamming, as he might have done in the case of an old gaol-bird; he
therefore sent for the doctor. When this gentleman arrived, Ernest was
declared to be suffering from an incipient attack of brain fever,
and was taken away to the infirmary. Here he hovered for the next
two months between life and death, never in full possession of his
reason and often delirious, but at last, contrary to the expectation
of both doctor and nurse, he began slowly to recover.

It is said that those who have been nearly drowned find the return
to consciousness much more painful than the loss of it had been, and
so it was with my hero. As he lay helpless and feeble, it seemed to
him a refinement of cruelty that he had not died once for all during
his delirium. He thought he should still most likely recover only to
sink a little later on from shame and sorrow; nevertheless from day to
day he mended, though so slowly that he could hardly realise it to
himself. One afternoon, however, about three weeks after he had
regained consciousness, the nurse who tended him, and who had been
very kind to him, made some little rallying sally which amused him; he
laughed, and as he did so she clapped her hands and told him he
would be a man again. The spark of hope was kindled, and again he
wished to live. Almost from that moment his thoughts began to turn
less to the horrors of the past, and more to the best way of meeting
the future.

His worst pain was on behalf of his father and mother, and how he
should again face them. It still seemed to him that the best thing
both for him and them would be that he should sever himself from
them completely, take whatever money he could recover from Pryer,
and go to some place in the uttermost parts of the earth, where he
should never meet anyone who had known him at school or college, and
start afresh. Or perhaps he might go to the gold fields in
California or Australia, of which such wonderful accounts were then
heard; there he might even make his fortune, and return as an old
man many years hence, unknown to everyone, and if so, he would live at
Cambridge. As he built these castles in the air, the spark of life
became a flame, and he longed for health, and for the freedom which,
now that so much of his sentence had expired, was not after all very
far distant.

Then things began to shape themselves more definitely. Whatever
happened he would be a clergyman no longer. It would have been
practically impossible for him to have found another curacy, even if
he had been so minded, but he was not so minded. He hated the life
he had been leading ever since he had begun to read for orders; he
could not argue about it, but simply he loathed it and would have no
more of it. As he dwelt on the prospect of becoming a layman again,
however disgraced, he rejoiced at what had befallen him, and found a
blessing in this very imprisonment which had at first seemed such an
unspeakable misfortune.

Perhaps the shock of so great a change in his surroundings had
accelerated changes in his opinions, just as the cocoons of silkworms,
when sent in baskets by rail, hatch before their time through the
novelty of heat and jolting. But however this may be, his belief in
the stories concerning the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus
Christ, and hence his faith in all the other Christian miracles, had
dropped off him once and for ever. The investigation he had made in
consequence of Mr. Shaw's rebuke, hurried though it was, had left a
deep impression upon him, and now he was well enough to read he made
the New Testament his chief study, going through it in the spirit
which Mr. Shaw had desired of him, that is to say as one who wished
neither to believe nor disbelieve, but cared only about finding out
whether he ought to believe or no. The more he read in this spirit the
more the balance seemed to lie in favour of unbelief, till, in the
end, all further doubt became impossible, and he saw plainly enough
that, whatever else might be true, the story that Christ had died,
come to life again, and been carried from earth through clouds into
the heavens could not now be accepted by unbiassed people. It was well
he had found it out so soon. In one way or another it was sure to meet
him sooner or later. He would probably have seen it years ago if he
had not been hoodwinked by people who were paid for hoodwinking him.
What should he have done, he asked himself, if he had not made his
present discovery till years later, when he was more deeply
committed to the life of a clergyman? Should he have had the courage
to face it, or would he not more probably have evolved some
excellent reason for continuing to think as he had thought hitherto?
Should he have had the courage to break away even from his present
curacy?

He thought not, and knew not whether to be more thankful for
having been shown his error or for having been caught up and twisted
round so that he could hardly err further, almost at the very moment
of his having discovered it. The price he had had to pay for this boon
was light as compared with the boon itself. What is too heavy a
price to pay for having duty made at once clear and easy of fulfilment
instead of very difficult? He was sorry for his father and mother, and
he was sorry for Miss Maitland, but he was no longer sorry for
himself.

It puzzled him, however, that he should not have known how much he
had hated being a clergyman till now. He knew that he did not
particularly like it, but if anyone had asked him whether he
actually hated it, he would have answered no. I suppose people
almost always want something external to themselves, to reveal to them
their own likes and dislikes. Our most assured likings have for the
most part been arrived at neither by introspection nor by any
process of conscious reasoning, but by the bounding forth of the heart
to welcome the gospel proclaimed to it by another. We hear some say
that such and such a thing is thus or thus, and in a moment the
train that has been laid within us, but whose presence we knew not,
flashes into consciousness and perception.

Only a year ago he had bounded forth to welcome Mr. Hawke's
sermon; since then he had bounded after a College of Spiritual
Pathology; now he was in full cry after rationalism pure and simple;
how could he be sure that his present state of mind would be more
lasting than his previous ones? He could not be certain, but he felt
as though he were now on firmer ground than he had ever been before,
and no matter how fleeting his present opinions might prove to be,
he could not but act according to them till he saw reason to change
them. How impossible, he reflected, it would have been for him to do
this, if he had remained surrounded by people like his father and
mother, or Pryer and Pryer's friends, and his rector. He had been
observing, reflecting, and assimilating all these months with no
more consciousness of mental growth than a schoolboy has of growth
of body, but should he have been able to admit his growth to
himself, and to act up to his increased strength if he had remained in
constant close connection with people who assured him solemnly that he
was under a hallucination? The combination against him was greater
than his unaided strength could have broken through, and he felt
doubtful how far any shock less severe than the one from which he
was suffering would have sufficed to free him.

                          CHAPTER LXV


AS he lay on his bed day after day slowly recovering, he woke up
to the fact which most men arrive at sooner or later, I mean that very
few care two straws about truth, or have any confidence that it is
righter and better to believe what is true than what is untrue, even
though belief in the untruth may seem at first sight most expedient.
Yet it is only these few who can be said to believe anything at all;
the rest are simply unbelievers in disguise. Perhaps, after all, these
last are right. They have numbers and prosperity on their side. They
have all which the rationalist appeals to as his tests of right and
wrong. Right, according to him, is what seems right to the majority of
sensible, well-to-do people; we know of no safer criterion than
this, but what does the decision thus arrived at involve? Simply this,
that a conspiracy of silence about things whose truth would be
immediately apparent to disinterested enquirers is not only
tolerable but righteous on the part of those who profess to be and
take money for being par excellence guardians and teachers of truth.

Ernest saw no logical escape from this conclusion. He saw that
belief on the part of the early Christians in the miraculous nature of
Christ's Resurrection was explicable. without any supposition of
miracle. The explanation lay under the eyes of anyone who chose to
take a moderate degree of trouble; it had been put before the world
again and again, and there had been no serious attempt to refute it.
How was it that Dean Alford, for example, who had made the New
Testament his specialty, could not or would not see what was so
obvious to Ernest himself? Could it be for any other reason than
that he did not want to see it, and if so was he not a traitor to
the cause of truth? Yes, but was he not also a respectable and
successful man, and were not the vast majority of respectable and
successful men, such for example, as all the bishops and
archbishops, doing exactly as Dean Alford did, and did not this make
their action right, no matter though it had been cannibalism or
infanticide, or even habitual untruthfulness of mind?

Monstrous, odious falsehood! Ernest's feeble pulse quickened and his
pale face flushed as this hateful view of life presented itself to him
in all its logical consistency. It was not the fact of most men
being liars that shocked him- that was all right enough; but even
the momentary doubt whether the few who were not liars ought not to
become liars too. There was no hope left if this were so; if this were
so, let him die, the sooner the better. "Lord," he exclaimed inwardly,
"I don't believe one word of it. Strengthen Thou and confirm my
disbelief." It seemed to him that he could never henceforth see a
bishop going to consecration without saying to himself: "There, but
for the grace of God, went Ernest Pontifex." It was no doing of his.
He could not boast; if he had lived in the time of Christ he might
himself have been an early Christian, or even an Apostle for aught
he knew. On the whole, he felt that he had much to be thankful for.

The conclusion, then, that it might be better to believe error
than truth, should be ordered out of court at once, no matter by how
clear a logic it had been arrived at; but what was the alternative? It
was this, that our criterion of truth -i.e., that truth is what
commends itself to the great majority of sensible and successful
people- is not infallible. The rule is sound, and covers by far the
greater number of cases, but it has its exceptions.

He asked himself, what were they? Ah! that was a difficult matter;
there were so many, and the rules which governed them were sometimes
so subtle that mistakes always had and always would be made; it was
just this that made it impossible to reduce life to an exact
science. There was a rough-and-ready, rule-of-thumb test of truth, and
a number of rules as regards exceptions which could be mastered
without much trouble, yet there was a residue of cases in which
decision was difficult- so difficult that a man had better follow
his instinct than attempt to decide them by any process of reasoning.

Instinct then is the ultimate court of appeal. And what is instinct?
It is a mode of faith in the evidence of things not actually seen. And
so my hero returned almost to the point from which he had started
originally, namely, that the just shall live by faith.

And this is what the just -that is to say reasonable people- do as
regards those daily affairs of life which most concern them. They
settle smaller matters by the exercise of their own deliberation. More
important ones, such as the cure of their own bodies and the bodies of
those whom they love, the investment of their money, the extrication
of their affairs from any serious mess- these things they generally
entrust to others of whose capacity they know little save from general
report; they act therefore on the strength of faith, not of knowledge.
So the English nation entrusts the welfare of its fleet and naval
defences to a First Lord of the Admiralty, who, not being a sailor,
can know nothing about these matters except by acts of faith. There
can be no doubt about faith and not reason being the ultima ratio.

Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the charge of
credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this. He has
no demonstrable first premise. He requires postulates and axioms which
transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing. His
superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground is faith. Nor
again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool if he
persists in differing from him. He says "which is absurd," and
declines to discuss the matter further. Faith and authority,
therefore, prove to be as necessary for him as for anyone else. "By
faith in what, then," asked Ernest of himself, "shall a just man
endeavour to live at this present time?" He answered to himself, "At
any rate not by faith in the supernatural element of the Christian
religion."

And how should he best persuade his fellow-countrymen to leave off
believing in this supernatural element? Looking at the matter from a
practical point of view, he thought the Archbishop of Canterbury
afforded the most promising key to the situation. It lay between him
and the Pope. The Pope was perhaps best in theory, but in practice the
Archbishop of Canterbury would do sufficiently well. If he could
only manage to sprinkle a pinch of salt, as it were, on the
Archbishop's tail, he might convert the whole Church of England to
free thought by a coup de main. There must be an amount of cogency
which even an Archbishop -an Archbishop whose perceptions had never
been quickened by imprisonment for assault -would not be able to
withstand. When brought face to face with the facts, as he, Ernest,
could arrange them, his Grace would have no resource but to admit
them; being an honourable man he would at once resign his
Archbishopric, and Christianity would become extinct in England within
a few months' time. This, at any rate, was how things ought to be. But
all the time Ernest had no confidence in the Archbishop's not
hopping off just as the pinch was about to fall on him, and this
seemed so unfair that his blood boiled at the thought of it. If this
was to be so, he must try if he could not fix him by the judicious use
of bird-lime or a snare, or throw the salt on his tail from an
ambuscade.

To do him justice, it was not himself that he greatly cared about.
He knew he had been humbugged, and he knew also that the greater
part of the ills which had afflicted him were due, indirectly, in
chief measure to the influence of Christian teaching; still, if the
mischief had ended with himself, he should have thought little about
it, but there was his sister, and his brother Joey, and the hundreds
and thousands of young people throughout England whose lives were
being blighted through the lies told them by people whose business
it was to know better, but who scamped their work and shirked
difficulties instead of facing them. It was this which made him
think it worth while to be angry, and to consider whether he could not
at least do something towards saving others from such years of waste
and misery as he had had to pass himself. If there was no truth in the
miraculous accounts of Christ's Death and Resurrection, the whole of
the religion founded upon the historic truth of those events tumbled
to the ground. "Why," he exclaimed, with all the arrogance of youth,
"they put a gipsy or fortune-teller into prison for getting money
out of silly people who think they have supernatural power; why should
they not put a clergyman in prison for pretending that he can
absolve sins, or turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of One
who died two thousand years ago? What," he asked himself, "could be
more pure 'hanky-panky' than that a bishop should lay his hands upon a
young man and pretend to convey to him the spiritual power to work
this miracle? It was all very well to talk about toleration;
toleration, like everything else, had its limits; besides, if it was
to include the bishop, let it include the fortune-teller too." He
would explain all this to the Archbishop of Canterbury by-and-by,
but as he could not get hold of him just now, it occurred to him
that he might experimentalise advantageously upon the viler soul of
the prison chaplain. It was only those who took the first and most
obvious step in their power who ever did great things in the end, so
one day, when Mr. Hughes -for this was the chaplain's name- was
talking with him, Ernest introduced the question of Christian
evidences, and tried to raise a discussion upon them. Mr. Hughes had
been very kind to him, but he was more than twice my hero's age, and
had long taken the measure of such objections as Ernest tried to put
before him. I do not suppose he believed in the actual objective truth
of the stories about Christ's Resurrection and Ascension any more than
Ernest did, but he knew that this was a small matter, and that the
real issue lay much deeper than this.

Mr. Hughes was a man who had been in authority for many years, and
he brushed Ernest on one side as if he had been a fly. He did it so
well that my hero never ventured to tackle him again, and confined his
conversation with him for the future to such matters as what he had
better do when he got out of prison; and here Mr. Hughes was ever
ready to listen to him with sympathy and kindness.

                          CHAPTER LXVI


ERNEST was now so far convalescent as to be able to sit up for the
greater part of the day. He had been three months in prison, and,
though not strong enough to leave the infirmary, was beyond all fear
of a relapse. He was talking one day with Mr. Hughes about his future,
and again expressed his intention of emigrating to Australia or New
Zealand with the money he should recover from Pryer. Whenever he spoke
of this he noticed that Mr. Hughes looked grave and was silent: he had
thought that perhaps the chaplain wanted him to return to his
profession, and disapproved of his evident anxiety to turn to
something else; now, however, he asked Mr. Hughes point blank why it
was that he disapproved of his idea of emigrating.

Mr. Hughes endeavoured to evade him, but Ernest was not to be put
off. There was something in the chaplain's manner which suggested that
he knew more than Ernest did, but did not like to say it. This alarmed
him so much that he begged him not to keep him in suspense; after a
little hesitation Mr. Hughes, thinking him now strong enough to
stand it, broke the news as gently as he could that the whole of
Ernest's money had disappeared.

The day after my return from Battersby I called on my solicitor, and
was told that he had written to Pryer, requiring him to refund the
monies for which he had given his I.O.U.'s. Pryer replied that he
had given orders to his broker to close his operations, which
unfortunately had resulted so far in heavy loss, and that the
balance should be paid to my solicitor on the following settling
day, then about a week distant. When the time came, we heard nothing
from Pryer, and going to his lodgings, found that he had left with his
few effects on the very day after he had heard from us, and had not
been seen since.

I had heard from Ernest the name of the broker who had been
employed, and went at once to see him. He told me Pryer had closed all
his accounts for cash on the day that Ernest had been sentenced, and
had received L2315, which was all that remained of Ernest's original
L5000. With this he had decamped, nor had we enough clue as to his
whereabouts to be able to take any steps to recover the money. There
was in fact nothing to be done but to consider the whole as lost. I
may say here that neither I nor Ernest ever heard of Pryer again,
nor have any idea what became of him.

This placed me in a difficult position. I knew, of course, that in a
few years Ernest would have many times over as much money as he had
lost, but I knew also that he did not know this, and feared that the
supposed loss of all he had in the world might be more than he could
stand when coupled with his other misfortunes.

The prison authorities had found Theobald's address from a letter in
Ernest's pocket, and had communicated with him more than once
concerning his son's illness, but Theobald had not written to me,
and I supposed my godson to be in good health. He would be just
twenty-four years old when he left prison, and if I followed out his
aunt's instructions, would have to battle with fortune for another
four years as well as he could. The question before me was whether
it was right to let him run so much risk, or whether I should not to
some extent transgress my instructions- which there was nothing to
prevent my doing if I thought Miss Pontifex would have wished it-
and let him have the same sum that he would have recovered from Pryer.

If my godson had been an older man, and more fixed in any definite
groove, this is what I should have done, but he was still very
young, and more than commonly unformed for his age. If, again, I had
known of his illness I should not have dared to lay any heavier burden
on his back than he had to bear already; but not being uneasy about
his health, I thought a few years of roughing it and of experience
concerning the importance of not playing tricks with money would do
him no harm. So I decided to keep a sharp eye upon him as soon as he
came out of prison, and to let him splash about in deep water as
best he could till I saw whether he was able to swim, or was about
to sink. In the first case I would let him go on swimming till he
was nearly eight-and-twenty, when I would prepare him gradually for
the good fortune that awaited him; in the second I would hurry up to
the rescue. So I wrote to say that Pryer had absconded, and that he
could have L100 from his father when he came out of prison. I then
waited to see what effect these tidings would have, not expecting to
receive an answer for three months, for I had been told on enquiry
that no letter could be received by a prisoner till after he had
been three months in gaol. I also wrote to Theobald and told him of
Pryer's disappearance.

As a matter of fact, when my letter arrived the governor of the gaol
read it, and in a case of such importance would have relaxed the rules
if Ernest's state had allowed it; his illness prevented this, and
the governor left it to the chaplain and the doctor to break the
news to him when they thought him strong enough to bear it, which
was now the case. In the meantime I received a formal official
document saying that my letter had been received and would be
communicated to the prisoner in due course; I believe it was simply
through a mistake on the part of a clerk that I was not informed of
Ernest's illness, but I heard nothing of it till I saw him by his
own desire a few days after the chaplain had broken to him the
substance of what I had written.

Ernest was terribly shocked when he heard of the loss of his
money, but his ignorance of the world prevented him from seeing the
full extent of the mischief. He had never been in serious want of
money yet, and did not know what it meant. In reality, money losses
are the hardest to bear of any by those who are old enough to
comprehend them.

A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe
surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly
kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his
life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they
unnerve the greater number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly
enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial
ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general
rule, is their prostration. Suicide is a common consequence of money
losses; it is rarely sought as a means of escape from bodily
suffering. If we feel that we have a competence at our backs, so
that we can die warm and quietly in our beds, with no need to worry
about expense, we live our lives out to the dregs, no matter how
excruciating our torments. Job probably felt the loss of his flocks
and herds more than that of his wife and family, for he could enjoy
his flocks and herds without his family, but not his family- not for
long- if he had lost all his money. Loss of money indeed is not only
the worst pain in itself, but it is the parent of all others. Let a
man have been brought up to a moderate competence, and have no
specialty; then let his money be suddenly taken from him, and how long
is his health likely to survive the change in all his little ways
which loss of money will entail? How long again is the esteem and
sympathy of friends likely to survive ruin? People may be very sorry
for us, but their attitude towards us hitherto has been based upon the
supposition that we were situated thus or thus in money matters;
when this breaks down there must be a restatement of the social
problem so far as we are concerned; we have been obtaining esteem
under false pretences. Granted, then, that the three most serious
losses which a man can suffer are those affecting money, health, and
reputation. Loss of money is far the worst, then comes ill-health, and
then loss of reputation; loss of reputation is a bad third, for, if
a man keeps health and money unimpaired, it will be generally found
that his loss of reputation is due to breaches of parvenu
conventions only, and not to violations of those older, better
established canons whose authority is unquestionable. In this case a
man may grow a new reputation as easily as a lobster grows a new claw,
or, if he have health and money, may thrive in great peace of mind
without any reputation at all. The only chance for a man who has
lost his money is that he shall still be young enough to stand
uprooting and transplanting without more than temporary derangement,
and this I believed my godson still to be.

By the prison rules he might receive and send a letter after he
had been in gaol three months, and might also receive one visit from a
friend. When he received my letter, he at once asked me to come and
see him, which of course I did. I found him very much changed, and
still so feeble that the exertion of coming from the infirmary to
the cell in which I was allowed to see him, and the agitation of
seeing me were too much for him. At first he quite broke down, and I
was so pained at the state in which I found him, that I was on the
point of breaking my instructions then and there. I contented
myself, however, for the time, with assuring him that I would help him
as soon as he came out of prison, and that, when he had made up his
mind what he would do, he was to come to me for what money might be
necessary, if he could not get it from his father. To make it easier
for him I told him that his aunt, on her deathbed, had desired me to
do something of this sort should an emergency arise, so that he
would only be taking what his aunt had left him.

"Then," said he, "I will not take the L100 from my father, and I
will never see him or my mother again."

I said: "Take the L100, Ernest, and as much more as you can get, and
then do not see them again if you do not like."

This Ernest would not do. If he took money from them, he could not
cut them, and he wanted to cut them. I thought my godson would get
on a great deal better if he would only have the firmness to do as
he proposed, as regards breaking completely with his father and
mother, and said so. "Then don't you like them?" said he, with a
look of surprise.

"Like them!" said I, "I think they're horrid."

"Oh, that's the kindest thing of all you have done for me," he
exclaimed. "I thought all- all middle-aged people liked my father
and mother."

He had been about to call me old, but I was only fifty-seven, and
was not going to have this, so I made a face when I saw him
hesitating, which drove him into "middle-aged."

"If you like it," said I, "I will say all your family are horrid
except yourself and your Aunt Alethea. The greater part of every
family is always odious; if there are one or two good ones in a very
large family, it is as much as can be expected."

"Thank you," he replied, gratefully, "I think I can now stand almost
anything. I will come to see you as soon as I come out of gaol.
Good-bye." For the warder had told us that the time allowed for our
interview was at an end.

                          CHAPTER LXVII


AS soon as Ernest found that he had no money to look to upon leaving
prison he saw that his dreams about emigrating and farming must come
to an end, for he knew that he was incapable of working at the
plough or with the axe for long together himself. And now it seemed he
should have no money to pay anyone else for doing so. It was this that
resolved him to part once and for all with his parents. If he had been
going abroad he could have kept up relations with them, for they would
have been too far off to interfere with him.

He knew his father and mother would object to being cut; they
would wish to appear kind and forgiving; they would also dislike
having no further power to plague him; but he knew also very well that
so long as he and they ran in harness together they would be always
pulling one way and he another. He wanted to drop the gentleman and go
down into the ranks, beginning on the lowest rung of the ladder, where
no one would know of his disgrace or mind it if he did know; his
father and mother on the other hand would wish him to clutch on to the
fag-end of gentility at a starvation salary and with no prospect of
advancement. Ernest had seen enough in Ashpit Place to know that a
tailor, if he did not drink and attended to his business, could earn
more money than a clerk or a curate, while much less expense by way of
show was required of him. The tailor also had more liberty, and a
better chance of rising. Ernest resolved at once, as he had fallen
so far, to fall still lower- promptly, gracefully, and with the idea
of rising again, rather than cling to the skirts of a respectability
which would permit him to exist on sufferance only, and make him pay
an utterly extortionate price for an article which he could do
better without.

He arrived at this result more quickly than he might otherwise
have done through remembering something he had once heard his aunt say
about "kissing the soil." This had impressed him and stuck by him
perhaps by reason of its brevity; when later on he came to know the
story of Hercules and Antaeus, lie found it one of the very few
ancient fables which had a hold over him- his chiefest debt to
classical literature. His aunt had wanted him to learn carpentering,
as a means of kissing the soil should his Hercules ever throw him.
It was too late for this now- or he thought it was- but the mode of
carrying out his aunt's idea was a detail; there were a hundred ways
of kissing the soil besides becoming a carpenter.

He had told me this during our interview, and I had encouraged him
to the utmost of my power. He showed so much more good sense than I
had given him credit for that I became comparatively easy about him,
and determined to let him play his own game, being always, however,
ready to hand in case things went too far wrong. It was not simply
because he disliked his father and mother that he wanted to have no
more to do with them; if it had been only this he would have put up
with them; but a warning voice within told him distinctly enough
that if he was clean cut away from them he might still have a chance
of success, whereas if they had anything whatever to do with him, or
even knew where he was, they would hamper him and in the end ruin him.
Absolute independence he believed to be his only chance of very life
itself.

Over and above this- if this were not enough- Ernest had a faith
in his own destiny such as most young men, I suppose, feel, but the
grounds of which were not apparent to anyone but himself. Rightly or
wrongly, in a quiet way he believed he possessed a strength which,
if he were only free to use it in his own way, might do great things
some day. He did not know when, nor where, nor how his opportunity was
to come, but he never doubted that it would come in spite of all
that had happened, and above all else he cherished the hope that he
might know how to seize it if it came, for whatever it was it would be
something that no one else could do so well as he could. People said
there were no dragons and giants for adventurous men to fight with
nowadays; it was beginning to dawn upon him that there were just as
many now as at any past time.

Monstrous as such a faith may seem in one who was qualifying himself
for a high mission by a term of imprisonment, he could no more help it
than he could help breathing; it was innate in him, and it was even
more with a view to this than for other reasons that he wished to
sever the connection between himself and his parents; for he knew that
if ever the day came in which it should appear that before him too
there was a race set in which it might be an honour to have run
among the foremost, his father and mother would be the first to let
him and hinder him in running it. They had been the first to say
that he ought to run such a race; they would also be the first to trip
him up if he took them at their word, and then afterwards upbraid
him for not having won. Achievement of any kind would be impossible
for him unless he was free from those who would be for ever dragging
him back into the conventional. The conventional had been tried
already and had been found wanting.

He had an opportunity now, if he chose to take it, of escaping
once for all from those who at once tormented him and would hold him
earthward should a chance of soaring open before him. He should
never have had it but for his imprisonment; but for this the force
of habit and routine would have been too strong for him; he should
hardly have had it if he had not lost all his money; the gap would not
have been so wide but that he might have been inclined to throw a
plank across it. He rejoiced now, therefore, over his loss of money as
well as over his imprisonment, which had made it more easy for him
to follow his truest and most lasting interests.

At times he wavered, when he thought of how his mother, who in her
way, as he thought, had loved him, would weep and think sadly over
him, or how perhaps she might even fall ill and die, and how the blame
would rest with him. At these times his resolution was near
breaking, but when he found I applauded his design, the voice
within, which bade him see his father's and mother's faces no more,
grew louder and more persistent. If he could not cut himself adrift
from those who he knew would hamper him, when so small an effort was
wanted, his dream of a destiny was idle; what was the prospect of a
hundred pounds from his father in comparison with jeopardy to this? He
still felt deeply the pain his disgrace had inflicted upon his
father and mother, but he was getting stronger, and reflected that
as he had run his chance with them for parents, so they must run
theirs with him for a son.

He had nearly settled down to this conclusion when he received a
letter from his father which made his decision final. If the prison
rules had been interpreted strictly, he would not have been allowed to
have this letter for another three months, as he had already heard
from me, but the governor took a lenient view, and considered the
letter from me to be a business communication hardly coming under
the category of a letter from friends. Theobald's letter therefore was
given to his son. It ran as follows:


"MY DEAR ERNEST, My object in writing is not to upbraid you with the
disgrace and shame you have inflicted upon your mother and myself,
to say nothing of your brother Joey, and your sister. Suffer of course
we must, but we know to whom to look in our affliction, and are filled
with anxiety rather on your behalf than our own. Your mother is
wonderful. She is pretty well in health, and desires me to send you
her love.

"Have you considered your prospects on leaving prison? I
understand from Mr. Overton that you have lost the legacy which your
grandfather left you, together with all the interest that accrued
during your minority, in the course of speculation upon the Stock
Exchange! If you have indeed been guilty of such appalling folly it is
difficult to see what you can turn your hand to, and I suppose you
will try to find a clerkship in an office. Your salary will
doubtless be low at first, but you have made your bed and must not
complain if you have to lie upon it. If you take pains to please
your employers they will not be backward in promoting you.

"When I first heard from Mr. Overton of the unspeakable calamity
which had befallen your mother and myself, I had resolved not to see
you again. I am unwilling, however, to have recourse to a measure
which would deprive you of your last connecting link with
respectable people. Your mother and I will see you as soon as you come
out of prison; not at Battersby- we do not wish you to come down
here at present- but somewhere else, probably in London. You need
not shrink from seeing us; we shall not reproach you. We will then
decide about your future.

"At present our impression is that you will find a fairer start
probably in Australia or New Zealand than here, and I am prepared to
find you L75 or even if necessary so far as L100 to pay your passage
money. Once in the colony you must be dependent upon your own
exertions.

"May Heaven prosper them and you, and restore you to us years
hence a respected member of society. -Your affectionate father,

                                           "T. PONTIFEX."


Then there was a postscript in Christina's writing.


"My darling, darling boy, pray with me daily and hourly that we
may yet again become a happy, united, God-fearing family as we were
before this horrible pain fell upon us.- Your sorrowing but ever
loving mother,

                                             "C. P."


This letter did not produce the effect on Ernest that it would
have done before his imprisonment began. His father and mother thought
they could take him up as they had left him off They forgot the
rapidity with which development follows misfortune, if the sufferer is
young and of a sound temperament. Ernest made no reply to his father's
letter, but his desire for a total break developed into something like
a passion. "There are orphanages," he exclaimed to himself, "for
children who have lost their parents- oh! why, why, why, are there
no harbours of refuge for grown men who have not yet lost them?" And
he brooded over the bliss of Melchisedek who had been born an
orphan, without father, without mother, and without descent.

                          CHAPTER LXVIII


WHEN I think over all that Ernest told me about his prison
meditations, and the conclusions he was drawn to, it occurs to me that
in reality he was wanting to do the very last thing which it would
have entered into his head to think of wanting. I mean that he was
trying to give up father and mother for Christ's sake. He would have
said he was giving them up because he thought they hindered him in the
pursuit of his truest and most lasting happiness. Granted, but what is
this if it is not Christ? What is Christ if He is not this? He who
takes the highest and most self-respecting view of his own welfare
which it is in his power to conceive, and adheres to it in spite of
conventionality, is a Christian whether he knows it and calls
himself one, or whether he does not. A rose is not the less a rose
because it does not know its own name.

What if circumstances had made his duty more easy for him than it
would be to most men? That was his luck, as much as it is other
people's luck to have other duties made easy for them by accident of
birth. Surely if people are born rich or handsome they have a right to
their good fortune. Some, I know, will say that one man has no right
to be born with a better constitution than another; others again
will say that luck is the only righteous object of human veneration.
Both, I daresay, can make out a very good case, but whichever may be
right surely Ernest had as much right to the good luck of finding a
duty made easier as he had had to the bad fortune of falling into
the scrape which had got him into prison. A man is not to be sneered
at for having a trump card in his hand; he is only to be sneered at if
he plays his trump card badly.

Indeed, I question whether it is ever much harder for anyone to give
up father and mother for Christ's sake than it was for Ernest. The
relations between the parties will have almost always been severely
strained before it comes to this. I doubt whether anyone was ever
yet required to give up those to whom he was tenderly attached for a
mere matter of conscience: he will have ceased to be tenderly attached
to them long before he is called upon to break with them; for
differences of opinion concerning any matter of vital importance
spring from differences of constitution, and these will already have
led to so much other disagreement that the "giving up," when it comes,
is like giving up an aching but very loose and hollow tooth. It is the
loss of those whom we are not required to give up for Christ's sake
which is really painful to us. Then there is a wrench in earnest.
Happily, no matter how light the task that is demanded from us, it
is enough if we do it; we reap our reward, much as though it were a
Herculean labour.

But to return, the conclusion Ernest came to was that he would be
a tailor. He talked the matter over with the chaplain,  who told him
there was no reason why he should not be able to earn his six or seven
shillings a day by the time he came out of prison, if he chose to
learn the trade during the remainder of his term- not quite three
months; the doctor said he was strong enough for this, and that it was
about the only thing he was as yet fit for; so he left the infirmary
sooner than he would otherwise have done and entered the tailor's
shop, overjoyed at the thoughts of seeing his way again, and confident
of rising some day if he could only get a firm foothold to start from.

Everyone whom he had to do with saw that he did not belong to what
are called the criminal classes, and finding him eager to learn and to
save trouble always treated him kindly and almost respectfully. He did
not find the work irksome: it was far more pleasant than making
Latin and Greek verses at Roughborough; he felt that he would rather
be here in prison than at Roughborough again- yes, or even at
Cambridge itself. The only trouble he was ever in danger of getting
into was through exchanging words or looks with the more
decent-looking of his fellow-prisoners. This was forbidden, but he
never missed a chance of breaking the rules in this respect.

Any man of his ability who was at the same time anxious to learn
would of course make rapid progress, and before he left prison the
warder said he was as good a tailor with his three months'
apprenticeship as many a man was with twelve. Ernest had never
before been so much praised by any of his teachers. Each day as he
grew stronger in health and more accustomed to his surroundings he saw
some fresh advantage in his position, an advantage which he had not
aimed at, but which had come almost in spite of himself, and he
marvelled at his own good fortune, which had ordered things so greatly
better for him than he could have ordered them for himself.

His having lived six months in Ashpit Place was a case in point.
Things were possible to him which to others like him would be
impossible. If such a man as Towneley were told he must live
henceforth in a house like those in Ashpit Place it would be more than
he could stand. Ernest could not have stood it himself if he had
gone to live there of compulsion through want of money. It was only
because he had felt himself able to run away at any minute that he had
not wanted to do so; now, however, that he had become familiar with
life in Ashpit Place he no longer minded it, and could live gladly
in lower parts of London than that so long as he could pay his way. It
was from no prudence or forethought that he had served this
apprenticeship to life among the poor. He had been trying in a
feeble way to be thorough in his work: he had not been thorough, the
whole thing had been a fiasco; but he had made a little puny effort in
the direction of being genuine, and behold, in his hour of need it had
been returned to him with a reward far richer than he had deserved. He
could not have faced becoming one of the very poor unless he had had
such a bridge to conduct him, over to them as he had found unwittingly
in Ashpit Place. True, there had been drawbacks in the particular
house he had chosen, but, he need not live in a house where there
was a Mr. Holt, and he should no longer be tied to the profession
which he so much hated; if there were neither screams nor scripture
readings he could be happy in a garret at three shillings a week, such
as Miss Maitland lived in.

As he thought further he remembered that all things work together
for good to them that love God; was it possible, he asked himself,
that he too, however imperfectly, had been trying to love Him? He
dared not answer Yes, but he would try hard that it should be so. Then
there came into his mind that noble air of Handel's: "Great God, who
yet but darkly known," and he felt it as he had never felt it
before. He had lost his faith in Christianity, but his faith in
something-he knew not what, but that there was a something as yet
but darkly known, which made right right and wrong wrong- his faith in
this grew stronger and stronger daily.

Again there crossed his mind thoughts of the power which he felt
to be in him, and of how and where it was to find its vent. The same
instinct which had led him to live among the poor because it was the
nearest thing to him which he could lay hold of with any clearness
came to his assistance here too. He thought of the Australian gold and
how those who lived among it had never seen it though it abounded
all around them: "Here is gold everywhere," he exclaimed inwardly, "to
those who look for it." Might not his opportunity be close upon him if
he looked carefully enough at his immediate surroundings? What was his
position? He had lost all. Could he not turn his having lost all
into an opportunity? Might he not, if he too sought the strength of
the Lord, find, like St. Paul, that it was perfected in weakness?

He had nothing more to lose; money, friends, character, all were
gone for a very long time if not for ever; but there was something
else also that had taken its flight along with these. I mean the
fear of that which man could do unto him. Cantabit vacuus. Who could
hurt him more than he had been hurt already? Let him but be able to
earn his bread, and he knew of nothing which he dared not venture if
it would make the world a happier place for those who were young and
lovable. Herein he found so much comfort that he almost wished he
had lost his reputation even more completely -for he saw that it was
like a man's life which may be found of them that lose it and lost
of them that would find it. He should not have had the courage to give
up all for Christ's sake, but now Christ had mercifully taken all, and
lo! it seemed as though all were found.

As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and
the denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes
do; it was a fight about names -not about things; practically the
Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the free-thinker have the
same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most
perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. Then he saw also that
it matters little what profession, whether of religion or
irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with
charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter
end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and
not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies. This was the
crowning point of the edifice; when he had got here he no longer
wished to molest even the Pope. The Archbishop of Canterbury might
have hopped about all round him and even picked crumbs out of his hand
without running risk of getting a sly sprinkle of salt. That wary
prelate himself might perhaps have been of a different opinion, but
the robins and thrushes that hop about our lawns are not more
needlessly distrustful of the hand that throws them out crumbs of
bread in winter, than the Archbishop would have been of my hero.

Perhaps he was helped to arrive at the foregoing conclusion by an
event which almost thrust inconsistency upon him. A few days after
he had left the infirmary the chaplain came to his cell and told him
that the prisoner who played the organ in chapel had just finished his
sentence and was leaving the prison; he therefore offered the post
to Ernest, who, he already knew, played the organ. Ernest was at first
in doubt whether it would be right for him to assist at religious
services more than he was actually compelled to do, but the pleasure
of playing the organ, and the privileges which the post involved, made
him see excellent reasons for not riding consistency to death. Having,
then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system,
he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and
he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward
appearance differed but little from the indifferentism from which
Mr. Hawke had aroused him.

By becoming organist he was saved from the treadmill, for which
the doctor had said he was unfit as yet, but which he would probably
have been put to in due course as soon as he was stronger. He might
have escaped the tailor's shop altogether and done only the
comparatively light work of attending to the chaplain's rooms if he
had liked, but he wanted to learn as much tailoring as he could, and
did not therefore take advantage of this offer; he was allowed,
however, two hours a day in the afternoon for practice. From that
moment his prison life ceased to be monotonous, and the remaining
two months of his sentence slipped by almost as rapidly as they
would have done if he had been free. What with music, books,
learning his trade, and conversation with the chaplain, who was just
the kindly, sensible person that Ernest wanted in order to steady
him a little, the days went by so pleasantly that when the time came
for him to leave prison, he did so, or thought he did so, not
without regret.

                          CHAPTER LXIX


IN coming to the conclusion that he would sever the connection
between himself and his family once for all Ernest had reckoned
without his family. Theobald wanted to be rid of his son, it is
true, in so far as he wished him to be no nearer at any rate than
the Antipodes; but he had no idea of entirely breaking with him. He
knew his son well enough to have a pretty shrewd idea that this was
what Ernest would wish himself, and perhaps as much for this reason as
for any other he was determined to keep up the connection, provided it
did not involve Ernest's coming to Battersby nor any recurring outlay.

When the time approached for him to leave prison, his father and
mother consulted as to what course they should adopt.

"We must never leave him to himself," said Theobald impressively;
"we can neither of us wish that."

"Oh, no! no! dearest Theobald," exclaimed Christina. "Whoever else
deserts him, and however distant he may be from us, he must still feel
that he has parents whose hearts beat with affection for him no matter
how cruelly he has pained them."

"He has been his own worst enemy," said Theobald. "He has never
loved us as we deserved, and now he will be withheld by false shame
from wishing to see us. He will avoid us if he can."

"Then we must go to him ourselves," said Christina; "whether he
likes it or not we must be at his side to support him as he enters
again upon the world."

"If we do not want him to give us the slip we must catch him as he
leaves prison."

"We will, we will; our faces shall be the first to gladden his
eyes as he comes out, and our voices the first to exhort him to return
to the paths of virtue."

"I think," said Theobald, "if he sees us in the street he will
turn round and run away from us. He is intensely selfish."

"Then we must get leave to go inside the prison, and see him
before he gets outside."

After a good deal of discussion this was the plan they decided on
adopting, and having so decided, Theobald wrote to the governor of the
gaol asking whether he could be admitted inside the gaol to receive
Ernest when his sentence had expired. He received answer in the
affirmative, and the pair left Battersby the day before Ernest was
to come out of prison.

Ernest had not reckoned on this, and was rather surprised on being
told a few minutes before nine that he was to go into the receiving
room before he left the prison, as there were visitors waiting to
see him. His heart fell, for he guessed who they were, but he
screwed up his courage and hastened to the receiving room. There, sure
enough, standing at the end of the table nearest the door were the two
people whom he regarded as the most dangerous enemies he had in all
the world- his father and mother.

He could not fly, but he knew that if he wavered he was lost.

His mother was crying, but she sprang forward to meet him and
clasped him in her arms. "Oh, my boy, my boy," she sobbed, and she
could say no more.

Ernest was as white as a sheet. His heart beat so that he could
hardly breathe. He let his mother embrace him, and then withdrawing
himself stood silently before her with the tears falling from his
eyes.

At first he could not speak. For a minute or so the silence on all
sides was complete. Then, gathering strength, he said in a low voice:

"Mother" (it was the first time he had called her anything but
("mamma"), "we must part." On this, turning to the warder, he said: "I
believe I am free to leave the prison if I wish to do so. You cannot
compel me to remain here longer. Please take me to the gates."

Theobald stepped forward. "Ernest, you must not, shall not, leave us
in this way."

"Do not speak to me," said Ernest, his eyes flashing with a fire
that was unwonted in them. Another warder then came up and took
Theobald aside, while the first conducted Ernest to the gates.

"Tell them," said Ernest, "from me that they must think of me as one
dead, for I am dead to them. Say that my greatest pain is the
thought of the disgrace I have inflicted upon them, and that above all
things else I will study to avoid paining them hereafter; but say also
that if they write to me I will return their letters unopened, and
that if they come and see me I will protect myself in whatever way I
can."

By this time he was at the prison gate, and in another moment was at
liberty. After he had got a few steps out he turned his face to the
prison wall, leant against it for support, and wept as though his
heart would break.

Giving up father and mother for Christ's sake was not such an easy
matter after all. If a man has been possessed by devils for long
enough they will rend him as they leave him, however imperatively they
may have been cast out. Ernest did not stay long where he was, for
he feared each moment that his father and mother would come out. He
pulled himself together and turned into the labyrinth of small streets
which opened out in front of him.

He had crossed his Rubicon -not perhaps very heroically or
dramatically, but then it is only in dramas that people act
dramatically. At any rate, by hook or by crook, he had scrambled over,
and was out upon the other side. Already he thought of much which he
would gladly have said, and blamed his want of presence of mind;
but, after all, it mattered very little. Inclined though he was to
make very great allowances for his father and mother, he was indignant
at their having thrust themselves upon him without warning at a moment
when the excitement of leaving prison was already as much as he was
fit for. It was a mean advantage to have taken over Miss, but he was
glad they had taken it, for it made him realise more fully than ever
that his one chance lay in separating himself completely from them.

The morning was grey, and the first signs of winter fog were
beginning to show themselves, for it was now the 30th of September.
Ernest wore the clothes in which he had entered prison, and was
therefore dressed as a clergyman. No one who looked at him would
have seen any difference between his present appearance and his
appearance six months previously; indeed, as he walked slowly
through the dingy crowded lane called Eyre Street Hill (which he
well knew, for he had clerical friends in that neighbourhood), the
months he had passed in prison seemed to drop out of his life, and
so powerfully did association carry him away that, finding himself
in his old dress and in his old surroundings, he felt dragged back
into his old self- as though his six months of prison life had been
a dream from which he was now waking to take things up as he had
left them. This was the effect of unchanged surroundings upon the
unchanged part of him. But there was a changed part, and the effect of
unchanged surroundings upon this was to make everything seem almost as
strange as though he had never had any life but his prison one, and
was now born into a new world.

All our lives long, every day and very hour, we are engaged in the
process of accommodating our changed and unchanged selves to changed
and unchanged surroundings; living, in fact, is nothing else than this
process of accommodation; when we fail in it a little we are stupid,
when we fail flagrantly we are mad, when we suspend it temporarily
we sleep, when we give up the attempt altogether we die. In quiet,
uneventful lives the changes internal and external are so small that
there is little or no strain in the process of fusion and
accommodation; in other lives there is great strain, but there is also
great fusing and accommodating power; in others great strain with
little accommodating power. A life will be successful or not according
as the power of accommodation is equal to or unequal to the strain
of fusing and adjusting internal and external changes.

The trouble is that in the end we shall be driven to admit the unity
of the universe so completely as to be compelled to deny that there is
either an external or an internal, but must see everything both as
external and internal at one and the same time, subject and object
-external and internal -being unified as much as everything else. This
will knock our whole system over, but then every system has got to
be knocked over by something.

Much the best way out of this difficulty is to go in for
separation between internal and external- subject and object- when
we find this convenient, and unity between the same when we find unity
convenient. This is illogical, but extremes are alone logical, and
they are always absurd, the mean is alone practicable and it is always
illogical. It is faith and not logic which is the supreme arbiter.
They say all roads lead to Rome, and all philosophies that I have ever
seen lead ultimately either to some gross absurdity, or else to the
conclusion already more than once insisted on in these pages, that the
just shall live by faith, that is to say that sensible people will get
through life by rule of thumb as they may interpret it most
conveniently without asking too many questions for conscience sake.
Take any fact, and reason upon it to the bitter end, and it will ere
long lead to this as the only refuge from some palpable folly.

But to return to my story. When Ernest got to the top of the
street and looked back, he saw the grimy, sullen walls of his prison
filling up the end of it. He paused for a minute or two. "There," he
said to himself, "I was hemmed in by bolts which I could see and
touch; here I am barred by others which are none the less real
-poverty and ignorance of the world. It was no part of my business
to try to break the material bolts of iron and escape from prison, but
now that I am free I must surely seek to break these others."

He had read somewhere of a prisoner who had made his escape by
cutting up his bedstead with an iron spoon. He admired and marvelled
at the man's mind, but could not even try to imitate him; in the
presence of immaterial barriers, however, he was not so easily
daunted, and felt as though, even if the bed were iron and the spoon a
wooden one, he could find some means of making the wood cut the iron
sooner or later.

He turned his back upon Eyre Street Hill and walked down Leather
Lane into Holborn. Each step he took, each face or object that he
knew, helped at once to link him on to the life he had led before
his imprisonment, and at the same time to make him feel how completely
that imprisonment had cut his life into two parts, the one of which
could bear no resemblance to the other.

He passed down Fetter Lane into Fleet Street and so to the Temple,
to which I had just returned from my summer holiday. It was about half
past nine, and I was having my breakfast, when I heard a timid knock
at the door and opened it to find Ernest.

                          CHAPTER LXX


I HAD begun to like him on the night Towneley had sent for me, and
on the following day I thought he had shaped well. I had liked him
also during our interview in prison, and wanted to see more of him, so
that I might make up my mind about him. I had lived long enough to
know that some men who do great things in the end are not very wise
when they are young; knowing that he would leave prison on the 30th, I
had expected him, and, as I had a spare bedroom, pressed him to stay
with me till he could make up his mind what he would do.

Being so much older than he was, I anticipated no trouble in getting
my own way, but he would not hear of it. The utmost he would assent to
was that he should be my guest till he could find a room for
himself, which he would set about doing at once.

He was still much agitated, but grew better as he ate a breakfast,
not of prison fare and in a comfortable room. It pleased me to see the
delight he took in all about him; the fireplace with a fire in it; the
easy chairs, the Times, my cat, the red geraniums in the window, to
say nothing of coffee, bread and butter, sausages, marmalade, etc.
Everything was pregnant with the most exquisite pleasure to him. The
plane trees were full of leaf still; he kept rising from the breakfast
table to admire them; never till now, he said, had he known what the
enjoyment of these things really was. He ate, looked, laughed and
cried by turns, with an emotion which I can neither forget nor
describe.

He told me how his father and mother had lain in wait for him, as he
was about to leave prison. I was furious, and applauded him heartily
for what he had done. He was very grateful to me for this. Other
people, he said, would tell him he ought to think of his father and
mother rather than of himself, and it was such a comfort to find
someone who saw things as he saw them himself. Even if I had
differed from him I should not have said so, but I was of his opinion,
and was almost as much obliged to him for seeing things as I saw them,
as he to me for doing the same kind office by himself. Cordially as
I disliked Theobald and Christina, I was in such a hopeless minority
in the opinion I had formed concerning them that it was pleasant to
find someone who agreed with me.

Then there came an awful moment for both of us.

A knock, as of a visitor and not a postman, was heard at my door.

"Goodness gracious," I exclaimed, "why didn't we sport the oak?
Perhaps it is your father. But surely he would hardly come at this
time of day! Go at once into my bedroom."

I went to the door, and, sure enough, there were both Theobald and
Christina. I could not refuse to let them in and was obliged to listen
to their version of the story, which agreed substantially with
Ernest's. Christina cried bitterly- Theobald stormed. After about
ten minutes, during which I assured them that I had not the faintest
conception where their son was, I dismissed them both. I saw they
looked suspiciously upon the manifest signs that someone was
breakfasting with me, and parted from me more or less defiantly, but I
got rid of them, and poor Ernest came out again, looking white,
frightened, and upset. He had heard voices, but no more, and did not
feel sure that the enemy might not be gaining over me. We sported
the oak now, and before long he began to recover.

After breakfast, we discussed the situation. I had taken away his
wardrobe and books from Mrs. Jupp's, but had left his furniture,
pictures, and piano, giving Mrs. Jupp the use of these, so that she
might let her room furnished, in lieu of charge for taking care of the
furniture. As soon as Ernest heard that his wardrobe was at hand, he
got out a suit of clothes he had had before he had been ordained,
and put it on at once, much, as I thought, to the improvement of his
personal appearance.

Then we went into the subject of his finances. He had had ten pounds
from Pryer only a day or two before he was apprehended, of which
between seven and eight were in his purse when he entered the
prison. This money was restored to him on leaving. He had always
paid cash for whatever he bought, so that there was nothing to be
deducted for debts. Besides this, he had his clothes, books, and
furniture. He could, as I have said, have had L100 from his father
if he had chosen to emigrate, but this both Ernest and I (for he
brought me round to his opinion) agreed it would be better to decline.
This was all he knew of as belonging to him.

He said he proposed at once taking an unfurnished top back attic
in as quiet a house as he could find, say at three or four shillings a
week, and looking out for work as a tailor. I did not think it much
mattered what he began with, for I felt pretty sure he would ere
long find his way to something that suited him, if he could get a
start with anything at all. The difficulty was how to get him started.
It was not enough that he should be able to cut out and make
clothes- that he should have the organs, so to speak, of a tailor;
he must be put into a tailor's shop and guided for a little while by
someone who knew how and where to help him.

The rest of the day he spent in looking for a room, which he soon
found, and in familiarising himself with liberty. In the evening I
took him to the Olympic, where Robson was then acting in a burlesque
on Macbeth, Mrs. Keeley, if I remember rightly, taking the part of
Lady Macbeth. In the scene before the murder, Macbeth had said he
could not kill Duncan when he saw his boots upon the landing. Lady
Macbeth put a stop to her husband's hesitation by whipping him up
under her arm, and carrying him off the stage, kicking and
screaming. Ernest laughed till he cried. "What rot Shakespeare is
after this," he exclaimed, involuntarily. I remembered his essay on
the Greek tragedians, and was more epris with than ever.

Next day he set about looking for employment, and I did not see
him til about five o'clock, when he came and said that he had had no
success. The same thing happened the next day and the day after
that. Wherever he went he was invariably refused and often ordered
point blank out of the shop; I could see by the expression of his
face, though he said nothing, that he was getting frightened, and
began to think I should have to come to the rescue. He said he had
made a great many enquiries and had always been told the same story.
He found that it was easy to keep on in an old line, but very hard
to strike out into a new one.

He talked to the fishmonger in Leather Lane, where he went to buy
a bloater for his tea, casually as though from curiosity and without
any interested motive. "Sell," said the master of the shop, "why,
nobody wouldn't believe what can be sold by penn'orths and
twopenn'orths if you go the right way to work. Look at whelks, for
instance. Last Saturday night me and my little Emma here, we sold L7
worth of whelks between eight and half past eleven o'clock -and almost
all in penn'orths and twopenn'orths -a few hap'orths, but not many. It
was the steam that did it. We kept aboiling of 'em hot and hot, and
whenever the steam came strong up from the cellar onto the pavement,
the people bought, but whenever the steam went down they left off
buying; so we boiled them over and over again till they was all
sold. That's just where it is; if you know your business you can sell,
if you don't you'll soon make a mess of it. Why, but for the steam,
I should not have sold 10s. worth of whelks all the night through."

This and many another yarn of kindred substance which he heard from
other people determined Ernest more than ever to stake on tailoring as
the one trade about which he knew anything at all, nevertheless,
here were three or four days gone by and employment seemed as far
off as ever.

I now did what I ought to have done before, that is to say, I called
on my own tailor whom I had dealt with for over a quarter of a century
and asked his advice. He declared Ernest's plan to be hopeless.
"If," said Mr. Larkins, for this was my tailor's name, "he had begun
at fourteen, it might have done, but no man of twenty-four could stand
being turned to work into a workshop full of tailors; he would not get
on with the men, nor the men with him; you could not expect him to
be 'hail fellow, well met' with them, and you could not expect his
fellow-workmen to like him if he was not. A man must have sunk low
through drink or natural taste for low company, before he could get on
with those who have had such a different training from his own."

Mr. Larkins said a great deal more and wound up by taking me to
see the place where his own men worked. "This is a paradise," he said,
"compared to most workshops. What gentleman could stand this air,
think you, for a fortnight?"

I was glad enough to get out of the hot, fetid atmosphere in five
minutes, and saw that there was no brick of Ernest's prison to be
loosened by going and working among tailors in a workshop.

Mr. Larkins wound up by saying that even if my protege were a much
better workman than he probably was, no master would give him
employment, for fear of creating a bother among the men.

I left feeling that I ought to have thought of all this myself,
and was more than ever perplexed as to whether I had not better let my
young friend have a few thousand pounds and send him out to the
colonies, when, on my return home at about five o'clock, I found him
waiting for me, radiant, and declaring that he had found all he
wanted.

                          CHAPTER LXXI


IT seems he had been patrolling the streets for the last three or
four nights -I suppose in search of something to do -at any rate
knowing better what he wanted to get than how to get it. Nevertheless,
what he wanted was in reality so easily to be found that it took a
highly educated scholar like himself to be unable to find it. But,
however this may be, he had been scared, and now saw lions where there
were none, and was shocked and frightened, and night after night his
courage had failed him and he had returned to his lodgings in Laystall
Street without accomplishing his errand. He had not taken me into
his confidence upon this matter, and I had not enquired what he did
with himself in the evenings. At last he had concluded that, however
painful it might be to him, he would call on Mrs. Jupp, who he thought
would be able to help him if anyone could. He had been walking moodily
from seven till about nine, and now resolved to go straight to
Ashpit Place and make a mother confessor of Mrs. Jupp without more
delay.

Of all tasks that could be performed by mortal woman there was
none which Mrs. Jupp would have liked better than the one Ernest was
thinking of imposing upon her; nor do I know that in his scared and
broken-down state he could have done much better than he now proposed.
Mrs. Jupp would have made it very easy for him to open his grief to
her; indeed, she would have coaxed it all out of him before he knew
where he was; but the fates were against Mrs. Jupp, and the meeting
between my hero and his former landlady was postponed sine die, for
his determination had hardly been formed and he had not gone more than
a hundred yards in the direction of Mrs. Jupp's house, when a woman
accosted him.

He was turning from her, as he had turned from so many others,
when she started back with a movement that aroused his curiosity. He
had hardly seen her face, but being determined to catch sight of it,
followed her as she hurried away, and passed her; then turning round
he saw that she was none other than Ellen, the housemaid who had
been dismissed by his mother eight years previously.

He ought to have assigned Ellen's unwillingness to see him to its
true cause, but a guilty conscience made him think she had heard of
his disgrace and was turning away from him in contempt. Brave as had
been his resolutions about facing the world, this was more than he was
prepared for. "What! you too shun me, Ellen?" he exclaimed.

The girl was crying bitterly and did not understand him. "Oh, Master
Ernest," she sobbed, "let me go; you are too good for the likes of
me to speak to now."

"Why, Ellen," said he, "what nonsense you talk; you haven't been
in prison, have you?"

"Oh, no, no, no, not so bad as that," she exclaimed passionately.

"Well, I have," said Ernest, with a forced laugh; "I came out
three or four days ago after six months with hard labour."

Ellen did not believe him, but she looked at him with a "Lor'!
Master Ernest," and dried her eyes at once. The ice was broken between
them, for as a matter of fact Ellen had been in prison several
times, and though she did not believe Ernest, his merely saying he had
been in prison made her feel more at ease with him. For her there were
two classes of people, those who had been in prison and those who
had not. The first she looked upon as fellow-creatures and more or
less Christians, the second, with few exceptions, she regarded with
suspicion, not wholly unmingled with contempt.

Then Ernest told her what had happened to him during the last six
months, and by-and-by she believed him.

"Master Ernest," said she, after they had talked for a quarter of an
hour or so, "there's a place over the way where they sell tripe and
onions. I know you was always very fond of tripe and onions; let's
go over and have some, and we can talk better there."

So the pair crossed the street and entered the tripe shop; Ernest
ordered supper.

"And how is your pore dear mamma, and your dear papa, Master
Ernest.?" said Ellen, who had now recovered herself and was quite at
home with my hero. "Oh, dear, dear me," she said, "I did love your pa;
he was a good gentleman, he was, and your ma too; it would do anyone
good to live with her, I'm sure."

Ernest was surprised and hardly knew what to say. He had expected to
find Ellen indignant at the way she had been treated, and inclined
to lay the blame of her having fallen to her present state at his
father's and mother's door. It was not so. Her only recollection of
Battersby was as of a place where she had had plenty to eat and drink,
not too much hard work, and where she had not been scolded. When she
heard that Ernest had quarrelled with his father and mother she
assumed as a matter of course that the fault must lie entirely with
Ernest.

"Oh, your pore, pore ma!" said Ellen. "She was always so very fond
of you, Master Ernest: you was always her favourite; I can't bear to
think of anything between you and her. To think now of the way she
used to have me into the dining-room and teach me my catechism, that
she did! Oh, Master Ernest, you really must go and make it all up with
her; indeed you must."

Ernest felt rueful, but he had resisted so valiantly already that
the devil might have saved himself the trouble of trying to get at him
through Ellen in the matter of his father and mother. He changed the
subject, and the pair warmed to one another as they had their tripe
and pots of beer. Of all people in the world Ellen was perhaps the one
to whom Ernest could have spoken most freely at this juncture. He told
her what he thought he could have told to no one else.

"You know, Ellen," he concluded, "I had learnt as a boy things
that I ought not to have learnt, and had never had a chance of that
which would have set me straight."

"Gentlefolks is always like that," said Ellen musingly.

"I believe you are right, but I am no longer a gentleman, Ellen, and
I don't see why I should be 'like that' any longer, my dear. I want
you to help me to be like something else as soon as possible."

"Lor'! Master Ernest, whatever can you be meaning?"

 The pair soon afterwards left the eating-house and walked up Fetter
Lane together.

Ellen had had hard times since she had left Battersby, but they
had left little trace upon her.

Ernest saw only the fresh-looking, smiling face, the dimpled
cheek, the clear blue eyes and lovely, sphinx-like lips which he had
remembered as a boy. At nineteen she had looked older than she was,
now she looked much younger; indeed she looked hardly older than
when Ernest had last seen her, and it would have taken a man of much
greater experience than he possessed to suspect how completely she had
fallen from her first estate. It never occurred to him that the poor
condition of her wardrobe was due to her passion for ardent spirits,
and that first and last she had served five or six times as much
time in gaol as he had. He ascribed the poverty of her attire to the
attempts to keep herself respectable, which Ellen during supper had
more than once alluded to. He had been charmed with the way in which
she had declared that a pint of beer would make her tipsy, and had
only allowed herself to be forced into drinking the whole after a good
deal of remonstrance. To him she appeared a very angel dropped from
the sky, and all the more easy to get on with for being a fallen one.

As he walked up Fetter Lane with her towards Laystall Street, he
thought of the wonderful goodness of God towards him in throwing in
his way the very person of all others whom he was most glad to see,
and whom, of all others, in spite of her living so near him, he
might have never fallen in with but for a happy accident.

When people get it into their heads that they are being specially
favoured by the Almighty, they had better as a general rule mind their
p's and q's, and when they think they see the devil's drift with
more special clearness, let them remember that he has had much more
experience than they have, and is probably meditating mischief.

Already during supper the thought that in Ellen at last he had found
a woman whom he could love well enough to wish to live with and
marry had flitted across his mind, and the more they had chatted the
more reasons kept suggesting themselves for thinking that what might
be folly in ordinary cases would not be folly in his.

He must marry someone; that was already settled. He could not
marry a lady; that was absurd. He must marry a poor woman. Yes, but
a fallen one? Was he not fallen himself? Ellen would fall no more.
He had only to look at her to be sure of this. He could not live
with her in sin, not for more than the shortest time that could elapse
before their marriage; he no longer believed in the supernatural
element of Christianity, but the Christian morality at any rate was
indisputable. Besides, they might have children, and a stigma would
rest upon them. Whom had he to consult but himself now? His father and
mother never need know, and even if they did, they should be
thankful to see him married to any woman who would make him happy as
Ellen would. As for not being able to afford marriage, how did poor
people do? Did not a good wife rather help matters than not? Where one
could live two could do so, and if Ellen was three or four years older
than he was- well, what was that?

Have you, gentle reader, ever loved at first sight? When you fell in
love at first sight, how long, let me ask, did it take you to become
ready to fling every other consideration to the winds except that of
obtaining possession of the loved one? Or rather, how long would it
have taken you if you had had no father or mother, nothing to lose
in the way of money, position, friends, professional advancement, or
what not, and if the object of your affections was as free from all
these impedimenta as you were yourself.?

If you were a young John Stuart Mill, perhaps it would have taken
you some time, but suppose your nature was Quixotic, impulsive,
altruistic, guileless; suppose you were a hungry man starving for
something to love and lean upon, for one whose burdens you might bear,
and who might help you to bear yours. Suppose you were down on your
luck, still stunned by a horrible shock, and this bright vista of a
happy future floated suddenly before you, how long under these
circumstances do you think you would reflect before you would decide
on embracing what chance had thrown in your way?

It did not take my hero long, for before he got past the ham and
beef shop near the top of Fetter Lane, he had told Ellen that she must
come home with him and live with him till they could get married,
which they would do upon the first day that the law allowed.

I think the devil must have chuckled and made tolerably sure of
his game this time.

                          CHAPTER LXXII


ERNEST told Ellen of his difficulty about finding employment. "But
what do what do you think of going into a shop for, my dear," said
Ellen. "Why not take a little shop yourself?"

Ernest asked how much this would cost. Ellen told him that he
might take a house in some small street, say near the "Elephant and
Castle," for 17s. or 18s. a week, and let off the two top floors for
10s., keeping the back parlour and shop for themselves. If he could
raise five or six pounds to buy some second-hand clothes to stock
the shop with, they could mend them and clean them, and she could look
after the women's clothes while he did the men's. Then he could mend
and make, if he could get the orders.

They could soon make a business of L2 a week in this way; she had
a friend who began like that and had now moved to a better shop, where
she made L5 or L6 a week at least- and she, Ellen, had done the
greater part of the buying and selling herself.

Here was a new light indeed. It was as though he had got his L5000
back again all of a sudden, and perhaps ever so much more later on
into the bargain. Ellen seemed more than ever to be his good genius.

She went out and got a few rashers of bacon for his and her
breakfast. She cooked them much more nicely than he had been able to
do, and laid breakfast for him and made coffee, and some nice brown
toast. Ernest had been his own cook and housemaid for the last few
days and had not given himself satisfaction. Here he suddenly found
himself with someone to wait on him again. Not only had Ellen
pointed out to him how he could earn a living when no one except
himself had known how to advise him, but here she was so pretty and
smiling, looking after even his comforts, and restoring him
practically in all respects that he much cared about to the position
which he had lost- or rather putting him in one that he already
liked much better. No wonder he was radiant when he came to explain
his plans to me.

He had some difficulty in telling all that had happened. He
hesitated, blushed, hummed, and hawed. Misgivings began to cross his
mind when he found himself obliged to tell his story to someone
else. He felt inclined to slur things over, but I wanted to get at the
facts, so I helped him over the bad places, and questioned him tin I
had got out pretty nearly the whole story as I have given it above.

I hope I did not show it, but I was very angry. I had begun to
like Ernest. I don't know why, but I never have heard that any young
man to whom I had become attached was going to get married without
hating his intended instinctively, though I had never seen her; I have
observed that most bachelors feel the same thing, though we are
generally at some pains to hide the fact. Perhaps it is because we
know we ought to have got married ourselves. Ordinarily we say we
are delighted- in the present case I did not feel obliged to do
this, though I made an effort to conceal my vexation. That a young man
of much promise who was heir also to what was now a handsome
fortune, should fling himself away upon such a person as Ellen was
quite too provoking, and the more so because of the unexpectedness
of the whole affair.

I begged him not to marry Ellen yet- not at least until he had known
her for a longer time. He would not hear of it; he had given his word,
and if he had not given it he should go and give it at once. I had
hitherto found him upon most matters singularly docile and easy to
manage, but on this point I could do nothing with him. His recent
victory over his father and mother had increased his strength, and I
was nowhere. I would have told him of his true position, but I knew
very well that this would only make him more bent on having his own
way- for with so much money why should he not please himself? I said
nothing, therefore, on this head, and yet all that I could urge went
for very little with one who believed himself to be an artisan or
nothing.

Really from his own standpoint there was nothing very outrageous
in what he was doing. He had known and been very fond of Ellen years
before. He knew her to come of respectable people, and to have borne a
good character, and to have been universally liked at Battersby. She
was then a quick, smart, hard-working girl -and a very pretty one.
When at last they met again she was on her best behaviour- in fact,
she was modesty and demureness itself. What wonder, then, that his
imagination should fail to realise the changes that eight years must
have worked? He knew too much against himself, and was too bankrupt in
love to be squeamish; if Ellen had been only what he thought her,
and if his prospects had been in reality no better than he believed
they were, I do not know that there is anything much more imprudent in
what Ernest proposed than there is in half the marriages that take
place every day.

There was nothing for it, however, but to make the best of the
inevitable, so I wished my young friend good fortune, and told him
he could have whatever money he wanted to start his shop with, if what
he had in hand was not sufficient. He thanked me, asked me to be
kind enough to let him do all my mending and repairing, and to get him
any other like orders that I could, and left me to my own reflections.

I was even more angry when he was gone than I had been while he
was with me. His frank, boyish face had beamed with a happiness that
had rarely visited it. Except at Cambridge he had hardly known what
happiness meant, and even there his life had been clouded as of a
man for whom wisdom at the greatest of its entrances was quite shut
out. I had seen enough of the world and of him to have observed
this, but it was impossible, or I thought it had been impossible,
for me to have helped him.

Whether I ought to have tried to help him or not I do not know,
but I am sure that the young of all animals often do want help upon
matters about which anyone would say a priori that there should be
no difficulty. One would think that a young seal would want no
teaching how to swim, nor yet a bird to fly, but in practice a young
seal drowns if put out of its depth before its parents have taught
it to swim; and so again, even the young hawk must be taught to fly
before it can do so.

I grant that the tendency of the times is to exaggerate the good
which teaching can do, but in trying to teach too much, in most
matters, we have neglected others in respect of which a little
sensible teaching would do no harm.

I know it is the fashion to say that young people must find out
things for themselves, and so they probably would if they had fair
play to the extent of not having obstacles put in their way. But
they seldom have fair play; as a general rule they meet with foul
play, and foul play from those who live by selling them stones made
into a great variety of shapes and sizes so as to form a tolerable
imitation of bread.

Some are lucky enough to meet with few obstacles, some are plucky
enough to override them, but in the greater number of cases, if people
are saved at all they are saved so as by fire.

While Ernest was with me Ellen was looking out for a shop on the
south side of the Thames near the "Elephant and Castle," which was
then almost a new and a very rising neighbourhood. By one o'clock
she had found several from which a selection was to be made, and
before night the pair had made their choice.

Ernest brought Ellen to me. I did not want to see her, but could not
well refuse. He had laid out a few of his shillings upon her wardrobe,
so that she was neatly dressed, and, indeed, she looked very pretty
and so good that I could hardly be surprised at Ernest's infatuation
when the other circumstances of the case were taken into
consideration. Of course we hated one another instinctively from the
first moment we set eyes on one another, but we each told Ernest
that we had been most favourably impressed.

Then I was taken to see the shop. An empty house is like a stray dog
or a body from which life has departed. Decay sets in at once in every
part of it, and what mould and wind and weather would spare, street
boys commonly destroy. Ernest's shop in its untenanted state was a
dirty, unsavoury place enough. The house was not old, but it had
been run up by a jerry-builder and its constitution had no stamina
whatever. It was only by being kept warm and quiet that it would
remain in health for many months together. Now it had been empty for
some weeks and the cats had got in by night, while the boys had broken
the windows by day. The parlour floor was covered with stones and
dirt, and in the area was a dead dog which had been killed in the
street and been thrown down into the first unprotected place that
could be found. There was a strong smell throughout the house, but
whether it was bugs, or rats, or cats, or drains, or a compound of all
four, I could not determine. The sashes did not fit, the flimsy
doors hung badly; the skirting was gone in several places, and there
were not a few holes in the floor; the locks were loose, and paper was
torn and dirty; the stairs were weak and one felt the treads give as
one went up them.

Over and above these drawbacks the house had an ill name, by
reason of the fact that the wife of the last occupant had hanged
herself in it not very many weeks previously. She had set down a
bloater before the fire for her husband's tea, and had made him a
round of toast. She then left the room as though about to return to it
shortly, but instead of doing so she went into the back kitchen and
hanged herself without a word. It was this which had kept the house
empty so long in spite of its excellent position as a corner shop. The
last tenant had left immediately after the inquest, and if the owner
had had it done up then people would have got over the tragedy that
had been enacted in it, but the combination of bad condition and bad
fame had hindered many from taking it, who, like Ellen, could see that
it had great business capabilities. Almost anything would have sold
there, but it happened also that there was no second-hand clothes shop
in close proximity, so that everything combined in its favour,
except its filthy state and its reputation.

When I saw it, I thought I would rather die than live in such an
awful place- but then I had been living in the Temple for the last
five-and-twenty years. Ernest was lodging in Laystall Street and had
just come out of prison; before this he had lived in Ashpit Place,
so that this house had no terrors for him provided he could get it
done up. The difficulty was that the landlord was hard to move in this
respect. It ended in my finding the money to do everything that was
wanted, and taking a lease of the house for five years at the same
rental as that paid by the last occupant. I then sublet it to
Ernest, of course taking care that it was put more efficiently into
repair than his landlord was at all likely to have put it.

A week later I called and found everything so completely transformed
that I should hardly have recognised the house. All the ceilings had
been whitewashed, all the rooms papered, the broken glass hacked out
and reinstated, the defective wood-work renewed, all the sashes,
cupboards and doors had been painted. The drains had been thoroughly
overhauled, everything in fact that could be done had been done, and
the rooms now looked as cheerful as they had been forbidding when I
had last seen them. The people who had done the repairs were
supposed to have cleaned the house down before leaving, but Ellen
had given it another scrub from top to bottom herself after they
were gone, and it was as clean as a new pin. I almost felt as though I
could have lived in it myself, and as for Ernest, he was in the
seventh heaven. He said it was all my doing and Ellen's.

There was already a counter in the shop and a few fittings, so
that nothing now remained but to get some stock and set them out for
sale. Ernest said he could not begin better than by selling his
clerical wardrobe and his books, for though the shop was intended
especially for the sale of second-hand clothes, yet Ellen said there
was no reason why they should not sell a few books too; so a beginning
was to be made by selling the books he had had at school and college
at about one shilling a volume, taking them all round, and I have
heard him say that he learned more that proved of practical use to him
through stocking his books on a bench in front of his shop and selling
them, than he had done from all the years of study which he had
bestowed upon their contents.

For the enquiries that were made of him, whether he had such and
such a book, taught him what he could sell and what he could not;
how much he could get for this, and how much for that. Having made
ever such a little beginning with books, he took to attending book
sales as well as clothes sales, and ere long this branch of his
business became no less important than the tailoring, and would, I
have no doubt, have been the one which he would have settled down to
exclusively, if he had been called upon to remain a tradesman; but
this is anticipating.

I made a contribution and a stipulation. Ernest wanted to sink the
gentleman completely, until such time as he could work his way up
again. If he had been left to himself he would have lived with Ellen
in the shop back parlour and kitchen, and have let out both the
upper floors according to his original programme. I did not want
him, however, to cut himself adrift from music, letters, and polite
life, and feared that unless he had some kind of den into which he
could retire he would ere long become the tradesman and nothing
else. I therefore insisted on taking the first floor front and back
myself, and furnishing them with the things which had been left at
Mrs. Jupp's. I bought these things of him for a small sum and had them
moved into his present abode.

I went to Mrs. Jupp's to arrange all this, as Ernest did not like
going to Ashpit Place. I had half expected to find the furniture
sold and Mrs. Jupp gone, but it was not so; with all her faults the
poor old woman was perfectly honest.

I told her that Pryer had taken all Ernest's money and run away with
it. She hated Pryer. "I never knew anyone," she exclaimed, "as
white-livered in the face as that Pryer; he hasn't got an upright vein
in his whole body. Why, all that time when he used to come
breakfasting with Mr. Pontifex morning after morning, it took me to
a perfect shadow the way he carried on. There was no doing anything to
please him right. First I used to get them eggs and bacon, and he
didn't like that; and then I got him a bit of fish, and he didn't like
that, or else it was too dear, and you know fish is dearer than
ever; and then I got him a bit of German, and he said it rose on
him; then I tried sausages, and he said they hit him in the eye
worse even than German; oh! how I used to wander my room and fret
about it inwardly and cry for hours, and all about them paltry
breakfasts- and it wasn't Mr. Pontifex; he'd like anything that anyone
chose to give him.

"And so the piano's to go," she continued. "What beautiful tunes Mr.
Pontifex did play upon it, to be sure; and there was one I liked
better than any I ever heard. I was in the room when he played it once
and when I said, 'Oh, Mr. Pontifex, that's the kind of woman I am,' he
said, 'No, Mrs. Jupp, it isn't, for this tune is old, but no one can
say you are old.' But, bless you, he meant nothing by it, it was
only his mucky flattery."

Like myself, she was vexed at his getting married. She didn't like
his being married, and she didn't like his not being married- but,
anyhow, it was Ellen's fault, not his, and she hoped he would be
happy. "But after all," she concluded, "it ain't you and it ain't
me, and it ain't him and it ain't her. It's what you must call the
fortunes of matterimony, for there ain't no other word for it."

In the course of the afternoon the furniture arrived at Ernest's new
abode. In the first floor we placed the piano, table, pictures,
bookshelves, a couple of armchairs, and all the little household
gods which he had brought from Cambridge. The back room was
furnished exactly as his bedroom at Ashpit Place had been- new
things being got for the bridal apartment downstairs. These two
first-floor rooms I insisted on retaining as my own, but Ernest was to
use them whenever he pleased; he was never to sublet even the bedroom,
but was to keep it for himself in case his wife should be ill at any
time, or in case he might be ill himself.

In less than a fortnight from the time of his leaving prison all
these arrangements had been completed, and Ernest felt that he had
again linked himself on to the life which he had led before his
imprisonment- with a few important differences, however, which were
greatly to his advantage. He was no longer a clergyman; he was about
to marry a woman to whom he was much attached, and he had parted
company for ever with his father and mother.

True, he had lost all his money, his reputation, and his position as
a gentleman; he had, in fact, had to burn his house down in order to
get his roast sucking pig; but if asked whether he would rather be
as he was now or as he was on the day before his arrest, he would
not have had a moment's hesitation in preferring his present to his
past. If his present could only have been purchased at the expense
of all that he had gone through, it was still worth purchasing at
the price, and he would go through it all again if necessary. The loss
of the money was the worst, but Ellen said she was sure they would get
on, and she knew all about it. As for the loss of reputation-
considering that he had Ellen and me left, it did not come to much.

I saw the house on the afternoon of the day on which all was
finished, and there remained nothing but to buy some stock and begin
selling. when was gone, after he had had his tea, he stole up to his
castle- the first floor front. He lit his pipe and sat down to the
piano. He played Handel for an hour or so, and then set himself to the
table to read and write. He took all his sermons and all the
theological works he had begun to compose during the time he had
been a clergyman and put them in the fire; as he saw them consume he
felt as though he had got rid of another incubus. Then he took up some
of the little pieces he had begun to write during the latter part of
his undergraduate life at Cambridge, and began to cut them about and
rewrite them. As he worked quietly at these till he heard the clock
strike ten and it was time to go to bed, he felt that he was now not
only happy but supremely happy.

Next day Ellen took him to Debenham's auction rooms, and they
surveyed the lots of clothes which were hung up all round the
auction room to be viewed. Ellen had had sufficient experience to know
about how much each lot ought to fetch; she overhauled lot after
lot, and valued it; in a very short time Ernest himself began to
have a pretty fair idea what each lot should go for, and before the
morning was over valued a dozen lots running at prices about which
Ellen said he would not hurt if he could get them for that.

So far from disliking this work or finding it tedious, he liked it
very much, indeed he would have liked anything which did not overtax
his physical strength, and which held out a prospect of bringing him
in money. Ellen would not let him buy anything on the occasion of this
sale; she said he had better see one sale first and watch how prices
actually went. So at twelve o'clock when the sale began, he saw the
lots sold which he and Ellen had marked, and by the time the sale
was over he knew enough to be able to bid with safety whenever he
should actually want to buy. Knowledge of this sort is very easily
acquired by anyone who is in bona fide want of it.

But Ellen did not want him to buy at auctions- not much at least
at present. Private dealing, she said, was best. If I, for example,
had any cast-off clothes, he was to buy them from my laundress, and
get a connection with other laundresses to whom he might give a trifle
more than they got at present for whatever clothes their masters might
give them, and yet make a good profit. If gentlemen sold their things,
he was to try and get them to sell to him. He flinched at nothing;
perhaps he would have flinched if he had had any idea how outre his
proceedings were, but the very ignorance of the world which had ruined
him up till now, by a happy irony began to work its own cure. If
some malignant fairy had meant to curse him in this respect, she had
overdone her malice. He did not know he was doing anything strange. He
only knew that he had no money, and must provide for himself, a
wife, and a possible family. More than this, he wanted to have some
leisure in an evening, so that he might read and write and keep up his
music. If anyone would show him how he could do better than he was
doing, he should be much obliged to them, but to himself it seemed
that he was doing sufficiently well; for at the end of the first
week the pair found they had made a clear profit of L3. In a few weeks
this had increased to L4, and by the New Year they had made a profit
of L5 in one week.

Ernest had by this time been married some two months, for he had
stuck to his original plan of marrying Ellen on the first day he could
legally do so. This date was a little delayed by the change of abode
from Laystall Street to Blackfriars, but on the first day that it
could be done it was done. He had never had more than L250 a year,
even in the times of his affluence, so that a profit of L5 a week,
if it could be maintained steadily, would place him where he had
been as far as income went, and, though he should have to feed two
mouths instead of one, yet his expenses in other ways were so much
curtailed by his changed social position, that, take it all round, his
income was practically what it had been a twelvemonth before. The next
thing to do was to increase it, and put by money.

Prosperity depends, as we all know, in great measure upon energy and
good sense, but it also depends not a little upon pure luck that is to
say, upon connections which are in such a tangle that it is more
easy to say that they do not exist than to try to trace them. A
neighbourhood may have an excellent reputation as being likely to be a
rising one, and yet may become suddenly eclipsed by another, which
no one would have thought so promising. A fewer hospital may divert
the stream of business, or a new station attract it; so little,
indeed, can be certainly known, that it is better not to try to know
more than is in everybody's mouth, and to leave the rest to chance.

Luck, which certainly had not been too kind to my hero hitherto. now
seemed to have taken him under her protection. The neighbourhood
prospered, and he with it. It seemed as though he no sooner bought a
thing and put it into his shop, than it sold with a profit of from
thirty to fifty per cent. He learned bookkeeping, and watched his
accounts carefully, following up any success immediately; he began
to buy other things besides clothes- such as books, music, odds and
ends of furniture, etc. Whether it was luck or business aptitude, or
energy, or the politeness with which he treated all his customers, I
cannot say- but to the surprise of no one more than himself, he went
ahead faster than he had anticipated, even in his wildest dreams,
and by Easter was established in a strong position as the owner of a
business which was bringing him in between four and five hundred a
year, and which he understood how to extend.

                          CHAPTER LXXIII


ELLEN and he got on capitally, all the better, perhaps, because
the disparity between them was so great, that neither did Ellen want
to be elevated, nor did Ernest want to elevate her. He was very fond
of her, and very kind to her; they had interests which they could
serve in common; they had antecedents with a good part of which each
was familiar; they had each of them excellent tempers, and this was
enough. Ellen did not seem jealous at Ernest's preferring to sit the
greater part of his time after the day's work was done in the first
floor front where I occasionally visited him. She might have come
and sat with him if she had liked, but, somehow or other, she
generally found enough to occupy her down below. She had the tact also
to encourage him to go out of an evening whenever he had a mind,
without in the least caring that he should take her too- and this
suited Ernest very well. He was, I should say, much happier in his
married life than people generally are.

At first it had been very painful to him to meet any of his old
friends, as he sometimes accidentally did, but this soon passed;
either they cut him, or he cut them; it was not nice being cut for the
first time or two, but after that, it became rather pleasant than not,
and when he began to see that he was going ahead, he cared very little
what people might say about his antecedents. The ordeal is a painful
one, but if a man's moral and intellectual constitution is naturally
sound, there is nothing which will give him so much strength of
character as having been well cut.

It was easy for him to keep his expenditure down, for his tastes
were not luxurious. He liked theatres, outings into the country on a
Sunday, and tobacco, but he did not care for much else, except writing
and music. As for the usual run of concerts, he hated them. He
worshipped Handel; he liked Offenbach, and the airs that went about
the streets, but he cared for nothing between these two extremes.
Music, therefore, cost him little. As for theatres, I got him and
Ellen as many orders as they liked, so these cost them nothing. The
Sunday outings were a small item; for a shilling or two he could get a
return ticket to some place far enough out of town to give him a
good walk and a thorough change for the day. Ellen went with him the
first few times, but she said she found it too much for her, there
were a few of her old friends whom she should sometimes like to see,
and they and he, she said, would not hit it off perhaps too well, so
it would be better for him to go alone. This seemed so sensible, and
suited Ernest so exactly that he readily fell into it, nor did he
suspect dangers which were apparent enough to me when I heard how
she had treated the matter. I kept silence, however, and for a time
all continued to go well. As I have said, one of his chief pleasures
was in writing. If a man carries with him a little sketch book and
is continually jotting down sketches, he has the artistic instinct;
a hundred things may hinder his due development, but the instinct is
there. The literary instinct may be known by a man's keeping a small
note-book in his waistcoat pocket, into which he jots down anything
that strikes him, or any good thing that he hears said, or a reference
to any passage which he thinks will come in useful to him. Ernest
had such a note-book always with him. Even when he was at Cambridge he
had begun the practice without anyone's having suggested it to him.
These notes he copied out from time to time into a book, which as they
accumulated, he was driven into indexing approximately, as he went
along. When I found out this, I knew that he had the literary
instinct, and when I saw his notes I began to hope great things of
him.

For a long time I was disappointed. He was kept back by the nature
of the subjects he chose- which were generally metaphysical. In vain I
tried to get him away from these to matters which had a greater
interest for the general public. When I begged him to try his hand
at some pretty, graceful little story which should be full of whatever
people knew and liked best, he would immediately set to work upon a
treatise to show the grounds on which all belief rested.

"You are stirring mud," said I, "or poking at a sleeping dog. You
are trying to make people resume consciousness about things, which,
with sensible men, have already passed into the unconscious stage. The
men whom you would disturb are in front of you, and not, as you fancy,
behind you; it is you who are the lagger, not they."

He could not see it. He said he was engaged on an essay upon the
famous quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus of St. Vincent de
Lerins. This was the more provoking because he showed himself able
to do better things if he had liked.

I was then at work upon my burlesque, "The Impatient Griselda,"
and was sometimes at my wits' end for a piece of business or a
situation; he gave me many suggestions, all of which were marked by
excellent good sense. Nevertheless I could not prevail with him to put
philosophy on one side, and was obliged to leave him to himself.

For a long time, as I have said, his choice of subjects continued to
be such as I could not approve. He was continually studying scientific
and metaphysical writers, in the hope of either finding or making
for himself philosopher's stone in the shape of a system which
should go on all fours under all circumstances, instead of being
liable to be upset at every touch and turn, as every system yet
promulgated has turned out to be.

He kept to the pursuit of this will-o'-the-wisp so long that I
gave up hope, and set him down as another fly that had been caught, as
it were, by a piece of paper daubed over with some sticky stuff that
had not even the merit of being sweet, but to my surprise he at last
declared that he was satisfied, and had found what he wanted.

I supposed that he had only hit upon some new "Lo, here!" when to my
relief, he told me that he had concluded that no system which should
go perfectly upon all fours was possible, inasmuch as no one could get
behind Bishop Berkeley, and therefore no absolutely incontrovertible
first premise could ever be laid. Having found this he was just as
well pleased as if he had found the most perfect system imaginable.
All he wanted, he said, was to know which way it was to be- that is to
say whether a system was possible or not, and if possible then what
the system was to be. Having found out that no system based on
absolute certainty was possible he was contented.

I had only a very vague idea who Bishop Berkeley was, but was
thankful to him for having defended us from an incontrovertible
first premise. I am afraid I said a few words implying that after a
great deal of trouble he had arrived at the conclusion which
sensible people reach without bothering their brains so much.

He said: "Yes, but I was not born sensible. A child of ordinary
powers learns to walk at a year or two old without knowing much
about it; failing ordinary powers he had better learn laboriously than
never learn at all. I am sorry I was not stronger, but to do as I
did was my only chance."

He looked so meek that I was vexed with myself for having said
what I had, more especially when I remembered his bringing-up, which
had doubtless done much to impair his power of taking a common-sense
view of things. He continued--

"I see it all now. The people like Towneley are the only ones who
know anything that is worth knowing, and like that of course I can
never be. But to make Towneleys possible there must be hewers of
wood and drawers of water- men in fact through whom conscious
knowledge must pass before it can reach those who can apply it
gracefully and instinctively as the Towneleys can. I am a hewer of
wood, but if I accept the position frankly and do not set up to be a
Towneley, it does not matter."

He still, therefore, stuck to science instead of turning to
literature proper as I hoped he would have done, but he confined
himself henceforth to enquiries on specific subjects concerning
which an increase of our knowledge- as he said- was possible. Having
in fact, after infinite vexation of spirit, arrived at a conclusion
which cut at the roots of all knowledge, he settled contentedly down
to the pursuit of knowledge, and has pursued it ever since in spite of
occasional excursions into the regions of literature proper.

But this is anticipating, and may perhaps also convey a wrong
impression, for from the outset he did occasionally turn his attention
to work which must be more properly cared literary than either
scientific or metaphysical.

                          CHAPTER LXXIV


ABOUT six months after he had set up his shop his prosperity had
reached its climax. It seemed even then as though he were likely to go
ahead no less fast than heretofore, and I doubt not that he would have
done so, if success or non-success had depended upon himself alone.
Unfortunately he was not the only person to be reckoned with.

One morning he had gone out to attend some sales, leaving his wife
perfectly well, as usual in good spirits, and looking very pretty.
When he came back he found her sitting on a chair in the back parlour,
with her hair over her face, sobbing and crying as though her heart
would break. She said she had been frightened in the morning by a
man who had pretended to be a customer, and had threatened her
unless she gave him some things, and she had had to give them to him
in order to save herself from violence; she had been in hysterics ever
since the man had gone. This was her story, but her speech was so
incoherent that it was not easy to make out what she said. Ernest knew
she was with child, and thinking this might have something to do
with the matter, would have sent for a doctor if Ellen had not
begged him not to do so.

Anyone who had had experience of drunken people would have seen at a
glance what the matter was, but my hero knew nothing about them-
nothing, that is to say, about the drunkenness of the habitual
drunkard, which shows itself very differently from that of one who
gets drunk only once in a way. The idea that his wife could drink
had never even crossed his mind, indeed she always made a fuss about
taking more than a very little beer, and never touched spirits. He did
not know much more about hysterics than he did about drunkenness,
but he had always heard that women who were about to become mothers
were liable to be easily upset and were often rather flighty, so he
was not greatly surprised, and thought he had settled the matter by
registering the discovery that being about to become a father has
its troublesome as well as its pleasant side.

The great change in Ellen's life consequent upon her meeting
Ernest and getting married had for a time actually sobered her by
shaking her out of her old ways. Drunkenness is so much a matter of
habit, and habit so much a matter of surroundings, that if you
completely change the surroundings you will sometimes get rid of the
drunkenness altogether. Ellen had intended remaining always sober
henceforward, and never having had so long a steady fit before,
believed she was now cured. So she perhaps would have been if she
had seen none of her old acquaintances. When, however, her new life
was beginning to lose its newness, and when her old acquaintances came
to see her, her present surroundings became more like her past, and on
this she herself began to get like her past too. At first she only got
a little tipsy and struggled against a relapse; but it was no use, she
soon lost the heart to fight, and now her object was not to try to
keep sober, but to get gin without her husband's finding it out.

So the hysterics continued, and she managed to make her husband
still think that they were due to her being about to become a
mother. The worse her attacks were, the more devoted he became in
his attention to her. At last he insisted that a doctor should see
her. The doctor of course took in the situation at a glance, but
said nothing to Ernest except in such a guarded way that he did not
understand the hints that were thrown out to him. He was much too
downright and matter-of-fact to be quick at taking hints of this sort.
He hoped that as soon as his wife's confinement was over she would
regain her health and had no thought save how to spare her as far as
possible till that happy time should come.

In the mornings she was generally better, as long that is to say
as Ernest remained at home; but he had to go out buying, and on his
return would generally find that she had had another attack as soon as
he had left the house. At times she would laugh and cry for half an
hour together, at others she would lie in a semi-comatose state upon
state upon the bed, and when he came back he would find that the
shop had been neglected and all the work of the household left undone.
Still he took it for granted that this was all part of the usual
course when women were going to become mothers, and when Ellen's share
of the work settled down more and more upon his own shoulders he did
it all and drudged away without a murmur. Nevertheless, he began to
feel in a vague way more as he had felt in Ashpit Place, at
Roughborough, or at Battersby, and to lose the buoyancy of spirits
which had made another man of him during the first six months of his
married life.

It was not only that he had to do so much household work, for even
the cooking, cleaning up slops, bed-making, and fire-fighting ere long
devolved upon him, but his business no longer prospered. He could
buy as hitherto, but Ellen seemed unable to sell as she had sold at
first. The fact was that she sold as well as ever, but kept back
part of the proceeds in order to buy gin, and she did this more and
more till even the unsuspecting Ernest ought to have seen that she was
not telling the truth. When she sold better- that is to say when she
did not think it safe to keep back more than a certain amount, she got
money out of him on the plea that she had a longing for this or
that, and that it would perhaps irreparably damage the baby if her
longing was denied her. All seemed right, reasonable, and unavoidable,
nevertheless Ernest saw that until the confinement was over he was
likely to have a hard time of it. All, however, would then come
right again.

                          CHAPTER LXXV


IN the month of September, 1860, a girl was born, and Ernest was
proud and happy. The birth of the child, and a rather alarming talk
which the doctor had given to Ellen sobered her for a few weeks, and
it really seemed as though his hopes were about to be fulfilled. The
expenses of his wife's confinement were heavy, and he was obliged to
trench upon his savings, but he had no doubt about soon recouping
this, now that Ellen was herself again; for a time indeed his business
did revive a little, nevertheless it seemed as though the interruption
to his prosperity had in some way broken the spell of good luck
which had attended him in the outset; he was still sanguine,
however, and worked night and day with a will, but there was no more
music, or reading, or writing now. His Sunday outings were put a
stop to, and but for the first floor being let to myself, he would
have lost his citadel there too, but he seldom used it, for Ellen
had to wait more and more upon the baby, and, as a consequence, Ernest
had to wait more and more upon Ellen.

One afternoon, about a couple of months after the baby had been
born, and just as my unhappy hero was beginning to feel more hopeful
and therefore better able to bear his burdens, he returned from a
sale, and found Ellen in the same hysterical condition that he had
found her in spring. She said she was again with child, and Ernest
still believed her.

All the troubles of the preceding six months began again then and
there, and grew worse and worse continually. Money not come in
quickly, for Ellen cheated him by keeping it back, and dealing
improperly with the goods he bought. When it did come in she got it
out of him as before on pretexts which it seemed inhuman to enquire
into. It was always the same story. By-and-by a new feature began to
show itself. Ernest had inherited his father's punctuality and
exactness as regards money; he liked to know the worst of what he
had to pay at once; he hated having expenses sprung upon him which
if not foreseen might and ought to have been so, but now bills began
to be brought to him for things ordered by Ellen without his
knowledge, or for which he had already given her the money. This was
awful, and even Ernest turned. When he remonstrated with her- not
for having bought the things, but for having said nothing to him about
the money's being owing -Ellen met him with hysteria and there was a
scene. She had now pretty well forgotten the hard times she had
known when she had been on her own resources and reproached him
downright with having married her- on that moment the scales fell from
Ernest's eyes as they had fallen when Towneley had said, "No, no, no."
He said nothing, but he woke up once for all to the fact that he had
made a mistake in marrying. A touch had again come which had
revealed him to himself.

He went upstairs to the disused citadel, flung himself into the
armchair, and covered his face with his hands.

He still did not know that his wife drank, but he could no longer
trust her, and his dream of happiness was over. He had been saved from
the Church- so as by fire, but still saved- but what could now save
him from his marriage? He had made the same mistake that he had made
in wedding himself to the Church, but with a hundred times worse
results. He had learnt nothing by experience: he was an Esau -one of
those wretches whose hearts the Lord had hardened, who, having ears,
heard not, having eyes saw not, and who should find no place for
repentance though they sought it even with tears.

Yet had he not on the whole tried to find out what the ways of God
were, and to follow them in singleness of heart? To a certain
extent, yes; but he had not been thorough; he had not given up all for
God. He knew that very well; he had done little as compared with
what he might and ought to have done, but still if he was being
punished for this, God was a hard taskmaster, and one, too, who was
continually pouncing out upon his unhappy creatures from ambuscades.
In marrying Ellen he had meant to avoid a life of sin, and to take the
course he believed to be moral and right. With his antecedents and
surroundings it was the most natural thing in the world for him to
have done, yet in what a frightful position had not his morality
landed him. Could any amount of immorality have placed him in a much
worse one? What was morality worth if it was not that which on the
whole brought a man peace at the last, and could anyone have
reasonable certainty that marriage would do this? It seemed to him
that in his attempt to be moral he had been following a devil which
had disguised itself as an angel of light. But if so, what ground
was there on which a man might rest the sole of his foot and tread
in reasonable safety?

He was still too young to reach the answer, "On common sense" -an
answer which he would have felt to be unworthy of anyone who had an
ideal standard.

However this might be, it was plain that he had now done for
himself. It had been thus with him all his life. If there had come
at any time a gleam of sunshine and hope, it was to be obscured
immediately- why, prison was happier than this! There, at any rate, he
had had no money anxieties, and these were beginning to weigh upon him
now with all their horrors. He was happier even now than he had been
at Battersby or at Roughborough, and he would not now go back, even if
he could, to his Cambridge life, but for all that the outlook was so
gloomy, in fact so hopeless, that he felt as if he could have only too
gladly gone to sleep and died in his armchair once for all.

As he was musing thus and looking upon the wreck of his hopes -for
he saw well enough that as long as he was linked to Ellen he should
never rise as he had dreamed of doing- he heard a noise below, and
presently a neighbour ran upstairs and entered his room hurriedly.

"Good gracious, Mr. Pontifex," she exclaimed, "for goodness' sake
come down quickly and help. Mrs. Pontifex is took with the horrors-
and she's orkard."

The unhappy man came down as he was bid and found his wife mad
with delirium tremens.

He knew all now. The neighbours thought he must have known that
his wife drank all along, but Ellen had been so artful, and he so
simple, that, as I have said, he had had no suspicion. "Why," said the
woman who had summoned him, "she'll drink anything she can stand up
and pay her money for." Ernest could hardly believe his ears, but when
the doctor had seen his wife and she had become more quiet, he went
over to the public house hard by and made enquiries, the result of
which rendered further doubt impossible. The publican took the
opportunity to present my hero with a bill of several pounds for
bottles of spirits supplied to his wife, and what with his wife's
confinement and the way business had fallen off, he had not the
money to pay with, for the sum exceeded the remnant of his savings.

He came to me- not for money, but to tell me his miserable story.
I had seen for some time that there was something wrong, and had
suspected pretty shrewdly what the matter was, but of course I said
nothing. Ernest and I had been growing apart for some time. I was
vexed at his having married, and he knew I was vexed, though I did
my best to hide it.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage- but
they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
The rift in friendship which invariably makes its appearance on the
marriage of either of the parties to it was fast widening, as it no
less invariably does, into the great gulf which is fixed between the
married and the unmarried, and I was beginning to leave my protege
to a fate with which I had neither right nor power to meddle. In
fact I had begun to feel him rather a burden; I did not so much mind
this when I could be of use, but I grudged it when I could be of none.
He had made his bed and he must lie upon it. Ernest had felt all
this and had seldom come near me till now, one evening late in 1860,
he called on me, and with a very woe-begone face told me his troubles.

As soon as I found that he no longer liked his wife I forgave him at
once and was as much interested in him as ever. There is nothing an
old bachelor likes better than to find a young married man who
wishes he had not got married- especially when the case is such an
extreme one that he need not pretend to hope that matters will come
all right again, or encourage his young friend to make the best of it.

I was myself in favour of a separation, and said I would make
Ellen an allowance myself- of course intending that it should come out
of Ernest's money; but he would not hear of this. He had married
Ellen, he said, and he must try to reform her. He hated it, but he
must try; and finding him as usual very obstinate I was obliged to
acquiesce, though with little confidence as to the result. I was vexed
at seeing him waste himself upon such a barren task, and again began
to feel him burdensome. I am afraid I showed this, for he again
avoided me for some time, and, indeed, for many months I hardly saw
him at all.

Ellen remained very ill for some days, and then gradually recovered.
Ernest hardly left her till she was out of danger. When she had
recovered he got the doctor to tell her that if she had such another
attack she would certainly die; this so frightened her that she took
the pledge.

Then he became more hopeful again. When she was sober she was just
what she was during the first days of her married life, and so quick
was he to forget pain, that after a few days he was as fond of her
as ever. But Ellen could not forgive him for knowing what he did.
She knew that he was on the watch to shield her from temptation, and
though he did his best to make her think that he had no further
uneasiness about her, she found the burden of her union with
respectability grow more and more heavy upon her, and looked back more
and more longingly upon the lawless freedom of the life she had led
before she met her husband.

I will dwell no longer on this part of my story. During the spring
months of 1861 she kept straight- she had had her fling of
dissipation, and this, together with the impression made upon her by
her having taken the pledge, tamed her for a while. The shop went
fairly well, and enabled Ernest to make the two ends meet. In the
spring and summer of 1861 he even put by a little money again. In
the autumn his wife was confined of a boy- a very fine one, so
everyone said. She soon recovered, and Ernest was beginning to breathe
freely and be almost sanguine when, without a word of warning, the
storm broke again. He returned one afternoon about two years after his
marriage, and found his wife lying upon the floor insensible.

From this time he became hopeless, and began to go visibly down
hill. He had been knocked about too much, and the luck had gone too
long against him. The wear and tear of the last three years had told
on him, and though not actually ill he was overworked, below par,
and unfit for any further burden.

He struggled for a while to prevent himself from finding this out,
but facts were too strong for him. Again he called on me and told me
what had happened. I was glad the crisis had come; I was sorry for
Ellen, but a complete separation from her was the only chance for
her husband. Even after this last outbreak he was unwilling to consent
to this, and talked nonsense about dying at his post, till I got tired
of him. Each time I saw him the old gloom had settled more and more
deeply upon his face, and I had about made up my mind to put an end to
the situation by a coup de main, such as bribing Ellen to run away
with somebody else, or something of that kind, when matters settled
themselves as usual in a way which I had not anticipated.

                          CHAPTER LXXVI


THE winter had been a trying one. Ernest had only paid his way by
selling his piano. With this he seemed to cut away the last link
that connected him with his earlier life, and to sink once for all
into the small shopkeeper. It seemed to him that however low he
might sink his pain could not last much longer, for he should simply
die if it did.

He hated Ellen now, and the pair lived in open want of harmony
with each other. If it had not been for his children, he would have
left her and gone to America, but he could not leave the children with
Ellen, and as for taking them with him he did not know how to do it,
nor what to do with them when he had got them to America. If he had
not lost energy he would probably in the end have taken the children
and gone off, but his nerve was shaken, so day after day went by and
nothing was done.

He had only got a few shillings in the world now, except the value
of his stock, which was very little; he could get perhaps L3 or L4
by selling his music and what few pictures and pieces of furniture
still belonged to him. He thought of trying to live by his pen, but
his writing had dropped off long ago; he no longer had an idea in
his head. Look which way he would he saw no hope; the end, if it had
not actually come, was within easy distance, and he was almost face to
face with actual want. When he saw people going about poorly clad,
or even without shoes and stockings, he wondered whether within a
few months' time he too should not have to go about in this way. The
remorseless, resistless hand of fate had caught him in its grip and
was dragging him down, down, down. Still he staggered on, going his
daily rounds, buying second-hand clothes, and spending his evenings in
cleaning and mending them.

One morning, as he was returning from a house at the West End
where he had bought some clothes from one of the servants, he was
struck by a small crowd which had gathered round a space that had been
railed off on the grass near one of the paths in the Green Park.

It was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of March, and
unusually balmy for the time of year; even Ernest's melancholy was
relieved for a while by the look of spring that pervaded earth and
sky; but it soon returned, and smiling sadly he said to himself: "It
may bring hope to others, but for me there can be no hope henceforth."

As these words were in his mind he joined the small crowd who were
gathered round the railings, and saw that they were looking at three
sheep with very small lambs only a day or two old, which had been
penned off for shelter and protection from the others that ranged
the park.

They were very pretty, and Londoners so seldom get a chance of
seeing lambs that it was no wonder everyone stopped to look at them.
Ernest observed that no one seemed fonder of them than a great
lubberly butcher boy, who leaned up against the railings with a tray
of meat upon his shoulder. He was looking at this boy and smiling at
the grotesqueness his admiration, when he became aware that he was
being watched intently by a man in coachman's livery, who had also
stopped to admire the lambs, and was leaning against the opposite side
of the enclosure. Ernest knew him in a moment as John, his father's
old coachman at Battersby, and went up to him at once.

"Why, Master Ernest," said he, with his strong northern accent, "I
was thinking of you only this very morning," and the pair shook
hands heartily. John was in an excellent place at the West End. He had
done very well, he said, ever since he had left Battersby, except
for the first year or two, and that, he said, with a screw of the
face, had well nigh broke him.

Ernest asked how this was.

"Why, you see," said "I was always main fond of that lass Ellen,
whom you remember running after, Master Ernest, and giving your
watch to. I expect you haven't forgotten that day, have you?" And here
he laughed. "I don't know as I be the father of the child she
carried away with her from Battersby, but I very easily may have been.
Anyhow, after I had left your papa's place a few days I wrote to Ellen
to an address we had agreed upon, and told her I would do what I ought
to do, and so I did, for I married her within a month afterwards. Why,
Lord love the man, whatever is the matter with him?"- for as he had
spoken the last few words of his story Ernest had turned white as a
sheet, and was leaning against the railings.

"John," said my hero, gasping for breath, "are you sure of what
you say- are you quite sure you really married her?"

"Of course I am," said John; "I married her before the registrar
at Letchbury on the 15th of August, 1851."

"Give me your arm," said Ernest, "and take me into Piccadilly, and
put me into a cab, and come with me at once, if you can spare time, to
Mr. Overton's at the Temple."

                          CHAPTER LXXVII


I DO not think Ernest himself was much more pleased at finding
that he had never been married than I was. To him, however, the
shock of pleasure was positively numbing in its intensity. As he
felt his burden removed, he reeled for the unaccustomed lightness of
his movements; his position was so shattered that his identity
seemed to have been shattered also; he was as one waking up from a
horrible nightmare to find himself safe and sound in bed, but who
can hardly even yet believe that the room is not fun of armed men
who are about to spring upon him.

"And it is I," he said, "who not an hour ago complained that I was
without hope. It is I, who for weeks have been railing at fortune, and
saying that though she smiled on others she never smiled at me. Why,
never was anyone half so fortunate as I am."

"Yes," said I, "you have been inoculated for marriage, and have
recovered."

"And yet," he said, "I was very fond of her till she took to
drinking."

"Perhaps; but is it not Tennyson who has said: ''Tis better to
have loved and lost, than never to have lost at all'?"

"You are an inveterate bachelor," was the rejoinder.

Then we had a long talk with John, to whom I gave a L5 note upon the
spot. He said Ellen had used to drink at Battersby; the cook had
taught her; he had known it, but was so fond of her, that he had
chanced it and married her to save her from the streets and in the
hope of being able to keep her straight. She had done with just as she
had done with Ernest- made him an excellent wife as long as she kept
sober, but a very bad one afterwards.

"There isn't," said John, "a sweeter-tempered, handier, prettier
girl than she was in all England, nor one as knows better what a man
likes, and how to make him happy, if you can keep her from drink;
but you can't keep her; she's that artful she'll get it under your
very eyes, without you knowing it. If she can't get any more of your
things to pawn or sell, she'll steal her neighbours'. That's how she
got into trouble first when I was with her. During the six months
she was in prison I should have felt happy if I had not known she
would come out again. And then she did come out, and before she had
been free a fortnight, she began shop-lifting and going on the loose
again- and all to get money to drink with. So seeing I could do
nothing with her and that she was just a-killing of me, I left her,
and came up to London, and went into service again, and I did not know
what had become of her till you and Mr. Ernest here told me. I hope
you'll neither of you say you've seen me."

We assured him we would keep his counsel, and then he left us,
with many protestations of affection towards Ernest, to whom he had
been always much attached.

We talked the situation over, and decided first to get the
children away, and then to come to terms with Ellen concerning their
future custody; as for herself, I proposed that we should make her
an allowance of, say, a pound a week to be paid so long as she gave no
trouble. Ernest did not see where the pound a week was to come from,
so I eased his mind by saying I would pay it myself. Before the day
was two hours older we had got the children, about whom Ellen had
always appeared to be indifferent, and had confided them to the care
of my laundress, a good motherly sort of woman, who took to them and
to whom they took at once.

Then came the odious task of getting rid of their unhappy mother.
Ernest's heart smote him at the notion of the shock the break-up would
be to her. He was always thinking that people had a claim upon him for
some inestimable service they had rendered him, or for some
irreparable mischief done to them by himself, the case however was
so clear, that Ernest's scruples did not offer serious resistance.

I did not see why he should have the pain of another interview
with his wife, so I got Mr. Ottery to manage the whole business. It
turned out that we need not have harrowed ourselves so much about
the agony of mind which Ellen would suffer on becoming an outcast
again. Ernest saw Mrs. Richards, the neighbour who had called him down
on the night when he had first discovered his wife's drunkenness,
and got from her some details of Ellen's opinions upon the matter. She
did not seem in the least conscience-stricken; she said: "Thank
goodness, at last!" And although aware that her marriage was not a
valid one, evidently regarded this as a mere detail which it would not
be worth anybody's while to go into more particularly. As regards
his breaking with her, she said it was a good job both for him and for
her.

"This life," she continued, "don't suit me. Ernest is too good for
me; he wants a woman as shall be a bit better than me, and I want a
man that shall be a bit worse than him. We should have got on all very
well if we had not lived together as married folks, but I've been used
to have a little place of my own, however small, for a many years, and
I don't want Ernest, or any other man, always hanging about it.
Besides, he is too steady: his being in prison hasn't done him a bit
of good- he's just as grave as those as have never been in prison at
all, and he never swears nor curses, come what may; it makes me
afeared of him, and therefore I drink the worse. What us poor girls
wants is not to be jumped up all of a sudden and made honest women of;
this is too much for us and throws us off our perch; what we wants
is a regular friend or two, who'll just keep us from starving, and
force us to be good for a bit together now and again. That's about
as much as we can stand. He may have the children; he can do better
for them than I can; and as for his money, he may give it or keep it
as he likes; he's never done me any harm, and I shall let him alone;
but if he means me to have it, I suppose I'd better have it."- And
have it she did.

"And I," thought Ernest to himself again when the arrangement was
concluded, "am the man who thought himself unlucky!"

I may as well say here all that need be said further about Ellen.
For the next three years she used to call regularly at Mr. Ottery's
every Monday morning for her pound. She was always neatly dressed, and
looked so quiet and pretty that no one would have suspected her
antecedents. At first she wanted sometimes to anticipate, but after
three or four ineffectual attempts- on each of which occasions she
told a most pitiful story- she gave it up and took her money regularly
without a word. Once she came with a bad black eye, "which a boy had
throwed a stone and hit her by "mistake"; but on the whole she
looked pretty much the same at the end of the three years as she had
done at the beginning. Then she explained that she was going to be
married again. Mr. Ottery saw her on this, and pointed out to her that
she would very likely be again committing bigamy by doing so. "You may
call it what you like," she replied, "but I am going off to America
with Bill the butcher's man, and we hope Mr. Pontifex won't be too
hard on us and stop the allowance." Ernest was little likely to do
this, so the pair went in peace. I believe it was Bill who had blacked
her eye, and she liked him all the better for it.

From one or two little things I have been able to gather that the
couple got on very well together, and that in Bill she has found a
partner better suited to her than either John or Ernest. On his
birthday Ernest generally receives an envelope with an American
postmark containing a bookmarker with a flaunting text upon it, or a
moral kettle-holder, or some other similar small token of recognition,
but no letter. Of the children she has taken no notice.

                          CHAPTER LXXVIII


ERNEST was now well turned twenty-six years old, and in little
more than another year and a half would come into possession of his
money. I saw no reason for letting him have it earlier than the date
fixed by Miss Pontifex herself, at the same time I did not like his
continuing the shop at Blackfriars after the present crisis. It was
not till now that I fully understood how much he had suffered, nor how
nearly his supposed wife's habits had brought him to actual want.

I had indeed noted the old, wan, worn look settling upon his face,
but was either too indolent or too hopeless of being able to sustain a
protracted and successful warfare with Ellen to extend the sympathy
and make the enquiries which I suppose I ought to have made. And yet I
hardly know what I could have done, for nothing short of his finding
out what he had found out would have detached him from his wife, and
nothing could do him much good as long as he continued to live with
her.

After all I suppose I was right; I suppose things did turn out all
the better in the end for having been left to settle themselves-at any
rate whether they did or did not, the whole thing was in too great a
muddle for me to venture to tackle it so long as Ellen was upon the
scene; now, however, that she was removed, all my interest in my
godson revived, and I turned over many times in my mind what I had
better do with him.

It was now three and a half years since he had come up to London and
begun to live, so to speak, upon his own account. Of these years,
six months had been spent as a clergyman, six months in gaol, and
for two and a half years he had been acquiring twofold experience in
the ways of business and of marriage. He had failed, I may say, in
everything that he had undertaken, even as a prisoner; yet his defeats
had been always, as it seemed to me, something so like victories, that
I was satisfied of his being worth all the pains I could bestow upon
him; my only fear was lest I should meddle with him when it might be
better for him to be let alone. On the whole I concluded that a
three and a half years' apprenticeship to a rough life was enough; the
shop had done much for him; it had kept him going after a fashion,
when he was in great need; it had thrown him upon his own resources,
and taught him to see profitable openings all around him, where a
few months before he would have seen nothing but insuperable
difficulties; it had enlarged his sympathies by making him
understand the lower classes, and not confining his view of life to
that taken by gentlemen only. When he went about the streets and saw
the books outside the secondhand book-stalls, the bric-a-brac in the
curiosity shops, and the infinite commercial activity which is
omnipresent around us, he understood it and sympathised with it as
he could never have done if he had not kept a shop himself.

He has often told me that when he used to travel on a railway that
overlooked populous suburbs, and looked down upon street after
street of dingy houses, he used to wonder what kind of people lived in
them, what they did and felt, and how far it was like what he did
and felt himself. Now, he said, he knew all about it. I am not very
familiar with the writer of the Odyssey (who, by the way, I suspect
strongly of having been a clergyman), but he assuredly hit the right
nail on the head when he epitomised his typical wise man as knowing
"the ways and farings of many men." What culture is comparable to
this? What a lie, what a sickly, debilitating debauch did not Ernest's
school and university career now seem to him, in comparison with his
life in prison and as a tailor in Blackfriars. I have heard him say he
would have gone through all he had suffered if it were only for the
deeper insight it gave him into the spirit of the Grecian and the
Surrey pantomimes. What confidence again in his own power to swim if
thrown into deep waters had not he won through his experiences
during the last three years!

But, as I have said, I thought my godson had now seen as much of the
under currents of life as was likely to be of use to him, and that
it was time he began to live in a style more suitable to his
prospects. His aunt had wished him to kiss the soil, and he had kissed
it with a vengeance; but I did not like the notion of his coming
suddenly from the position of a small shopkeeper to that of a man with
an income of between three and four thousand a year. Too sudden a jump
from bad fortune to good is just as dangerous as one from good to bad;
besides, poverty is very wearing; it is a quasi-embryonic condition,
through which a man had better pass if he is to hold his later
developments securely, but like measles or scarlet fever he had better
have it mildly and get it over early.

No man is safe from losing every penny he has in the world, unless
he has had his facer. How often do I not hear middle-aged women and
quiet family men say that they have no speculative tendency; they
never had touched, and never would touch, any but the very soundest,
best reputed investments, and as for unlimited liability, oh, dear!
dear! and they throw up their hands and eyes.

Whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recognised as
the easy prey of the first adventurer who comes across him; he will
commonly, indeed, wind up his discourse by saying that in spite of all
his natural caution, and his well knowing how foolish speculation
is, yet there are some investments which are called speculative but in
reality are not so, and he will pull out of his pocket the
prospectus of a Cornish gold mine. It is only on having actually
lost money that one realises what an awful thing the loss of it is,
and finds out how easily it is lost by those who venture out of the
middle of the most beaten path. Ernest had had his facer, as he had
had his attack of poverty, young, and sufficiently badly for a
sensible man to be little likely to forget it. I can fancy few
pieces of good fortune greater than this as happening to any man,
provided, of course, that he is not damaged irretrievably.

So strongly do I feel on this subject that if I had my way I would
have a speculation master attached to every school. The boys would
be encouraged to read the Money Market Review, the Railway News, and
all the best financial papers, and should establish a stock exchange
amongst themselves in which pence should stand as pounds. Then let
them see how this making haste to get rich moneys out in actual
practice. There might be a prize awarded by the head-master to the
most prudent dealer, and the boys who lost their money time after time
should be dismissed. Of course if any boy proved to have a genius
for speculation and made money -well and good, let him speculate by
all means.

If universities were not the worst teachers in the world I should
like to see professorships of speculation established at Oxford and
Cambridge. When I reflect, however, that the only things worth doing
which Oxford and Cambridge can do well are cooking, cricket, rowing
and games, of which there is no professorship, I fear that the
establishment of a professorial chair would end in teaching young
men neither how to speculate, nor how not to speculate, but would
simply turn them out as bad speculators.

I heard of one case in which a father actually carried my idea
into practice. He wanted his son to learn how little confidence was to
be placed in glowing prospectuses and flaming articles, and found
him five hundred pounds which he was to invest according to his
lights. The father expected he would lose the money; but it did not
turn out so in practice, for the boy took so much pains and played
so cautiously that the money kept growing and growing till the
father took it away again, increment and all- as he was pleased to
say, in self defence.

I had made my own mistakes with money about the year 1846, when
everyone else was making them. For a few years I had been so scared
and had suffered so severely, that when (owing to the good advice of
the broker who had advised my father and grandfather before me) I came
out in the end a winner and not a loser, I played no more pranks,
but kept henceforward as nearly in the middle the middle rut as I
could. I tried in fact to keep my money rather than to make more of
it. I had done with Ernest's money as with my own-that is to say I had
let it alone after investing it in Midland ordinary stock according to
Miss Pontifex's instructions. No amount of trouble would have been
likely to have increased my godson's estate one half so much as it had
increased without my taking any trouble at all.

Midland stock at the end of August, 1850, when I sold out Miss
Pontifex's debentures, stood at L32 per L100. I invested the whole
of Ernest's L15,000 at this price, and did not change the investment
till a few months before the time of which I have been writing lately-
that is to say until September, 1861. I then sold at L129 per share
and invested in London and North-Western ordinary stock, which I was
advised was more likely to rise than Midlands now were. I bought the
London and North-Western stock at L93 per L100, and my godson now in
1882 still holds it.

The original LI5,000 had increased in eleven years to over
L60,000; the accumulated interest, which, of course, I had
re-invested, had come to about L10,000 more, so that Ernest was then
worth over L70,000. At present he is worth nearly double that sum, and
all as the result of leaving well alone.

Large as his property now was, it ought to be increased still
further during the year and a half that remained of his minority, so
that on coming of age he ought to have an income of at least L3500 a
year.

I wished him to understand bookkeeping by double entry. I had myself
as a young man been compelled to master this not very difficult art;
having acquired it, I have become enamoured of it, and consider it the
most branch of any young man's education after reading and writing.
I was determined, therefore, that Ernest should master it, and
proposed that he should become my steward, bookkeeper, and the manager
of my hoardings, for I called the sum which my ledger showed to have
accumulated from L15,000 to L70,000. I told him I was going to begin
to spend the income as soon as it had mounted up to L80,000.

A few days after Ernest's discovery that he was still a bachelor,
while he was still at the very beginning of the honeymoon, as it were,
of his renewed unmarried life, I broached my scheme, desired him to
give up his shop, and offered him L300 a year for managing (so far
indeed as it required any managing) his own property. This L300 a
year, I need hardly say, I made him charge to the estate.

If anything had been wanting to complete his happiness it was
this. Here, within three or four days he found himself freed from
one of the most hideous, hopeless liaisons imaginable, and at the same
time raised from a life of almost squalor to the enjoyment of what
would to him be a handsome income.

"A pound a week," he thought, "for Ellen, and the rest for myself."

"No," said I, "we will charge Ellen's pound a week to the estate
also. You must have a clear L300 for yourself."

"I fixed upon this sum, because it was the one which Mr. Disraeli
gave Coningsby when Coningsby was at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.
Mr. Disraeli evidently thought L300 a year the smallest sum on which
Coningsby could be expected to live, and make the two ends meet;
with this, however, he thought his hero could manage to get along
for a year or two. In 1862, of which I am now writing, prices had
risen, though not so much as they have since done; on the other hand
Ernest had had less expensive antecedents than Coningsby, so on the
whole I thought L300 a year would be about the right thing for him.

                          CHAPTER LXXIX


THE question now arose what was to be done with the children. I
explained to Ernest that their expenses must be charged to the estate,
and showed him how small a hole all the various items I proposed to
charge would make in the income at my disposal. He was beginning to
make difficulties, when I quieted him by pointing out that the money
had all come to me from his aunt over his own head, and reminded him
there had been an understanding between her and me that I should do
much as I was doing, if occasion should arise.

He wanted his children to be brought up in the fresh pure air, and
among other children who were happy and contented; but being still
ignorant of the fortune that awaited him, he insisted that they should
pass their earlier years among the poor rather than the rich. I
remonstrated, but he was very decided about it; and when I reflected
that they were illegitimate, I was not sure but that what Ernest
proposed might be as well for everyone in the end. They were still
so young that it did not much matter where they were, so long as
they were with kindly, decent people, and in a healthy neighbourhood.

"I shall be just as unkind to my children," he said, "as my
grandfather was to my father, or my father to me. If they did not
succeed in making their children love them, neither shall I. I say
to myself that I should like to do so, but so did they. I can make
sure that they shall not know how much they would have hated me if
they had had much to do with me, but this is all I can do. If I must
ruin their prospects, let me do so at a reasonable time before they
are old enough to feel it."

He mused a little and added with a laugh:

"A man first quarrels with his father about three-quarters of a year
before he is born. It is then he insists on setting up a separate
establishment; when this has been once agreed to, the more complete
the separation for ever after the better for both." Then he said
more seriously: "I want to put the children where they will be well
and happy, and where they will not be betrayed into the misery of
false expectations."

In the end he remembered that on his Sunday walks he had more than
once seen a couple who lived on the waterside a few miles below
Gravesend, just where the sea was beginning, and who he thought
would do. They had a family of their own fast coming on and the
children seemed to thrive; both father and mother indeed were
comfortable, well grown folks, in whose hands young people would be
likely to have as fair a chance of coming to a good development as
in those of any whom he knew.

We went down to see this couple, and as I thought no less well of
them than Ernest did, we offered them a pound a week to take the
children and bring them up as though they were their own. They
jumped at the offer, and in another day or two we brought the children
down and left them, feeling that we had done as well as we could by
them, at any rate for the present. Then Ernest sent his small stock of
goods to Debenham's, gave up the house he had taken two and a half
years previously, and returned to civilisation.

I had expected that he would now rapidly recover, and was
disappointed to see him get as I thought decidedly worse. Indeed,
before long I thought him looking so ill that I insisted on his
going with me to consult one of the most eminent doctors in London.
This gentleman said there was no acute disease but that my young
friend was suffering from nervous prostration, the result of long
and severe mental suffering, from which there was no remedy except
time, prosperity, and rest.

He said that Ernest must have broken down later on, but that he
might have gone on for some months yet. It was the suddenness of the
relief from tension which had knocked him over now.

"Cross him," said the doctor, "at once. Crossing is the great
medical discovery of the age. Shake him out of himself by shaking
something else into him."

I had not told him that money was no object to us, and I think he
had reckoned me up as not over rich. He continued:

"Seeing is a mode of touching, touching is a mode of feeding,
feeding is a mode of assimilation, assimilation is a mode of
re-creation and reproduction, and this is crossing- shaking yourself
into something else and something else into you." He spoke laughingly,
but it was plain he was serious. He continued:

"People are always coming to me who want crossing, or change, if you
prefer it, and who I know have not money enough to let them get away
from London. This has set me thinking how I can best cross them even
if they cannot leave home, and I have made a list of cheap London
amusements which I recommend to my patients; none of them cost more
than a few shillings or take more than half a day or a day."

I explained that there was no occasion to consider money in this
case.

"I am glad it," he said, still laughing. "The homoeopathists use
aurum as a medicine, but they do not give it in large enough doses; if
you can dose your young friend with this pretty freely you will soon
bring him round. However, Mr. Pontifex is not well enough to stand
so great a change as going abroad yet; from what you tell me I
should think he had had as much change lately as is good for him. If
he were to go abroad now he would probably be taken seriously ill
within a week. We must wait till he has recovered tone a little
more. I will begin by ringing my London changes on him."

He thought a little and then said:

"I have found the Zoological Gardens of service to many of my
patients. I should prescribe for Mr. Pontifex a course of the larger
mammals. Don't let him think he is taking them medicinally, but let
him go to their house twice a week for a fortnight, and stay with
the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, and the elephants, till they begin
to bore him. I find these beasts do my patients more good than any
others. The monkeys are not a wide enough cross; they do not stimulate
sufficiently. The larger carnivora are unsympathetic. The reptiles are
worse than useless, and the marsupials are not much better. Birds
again, except parrots, are not very beneficial; he may look at them
now and again, but with the elephants and the pig tribe generally he
should mix just now as freely as possible.

"Then, you know, to prevent monotony I should send him, say, to
morning service at the Abbey before he goes. He need not stay longer
than the Te Deum. I don't know why, but Jubilates are seldom
satisfactory. Just let him look in at the Abbey, and sit quietly in
Poets' Corner till the main part of the music is over. Let him do this
two or three times, not more, before he goes to the Zoo.

"Then next day send him down to Gravesend by boat. By all means
let him go to the theatres in the evenings- and then let him come to
me again in a fortnight."

Had the doctor been less eminent in his profession I should have
doubted whether he was in earnest, but I knew him to be a man of
business who would neither waste his own time nor that of his
patients. As soon as we were out of the house we took a cab to
Regent's Park, and spent a couple of hours in sauntering around the
different houses. Perhaps it was on account of what the doctor had
told me, but I certainly became aware of a feeling I had never
experienced before. I mean that I was receiving an influx of new life,
or deriving new ways of looking at life- which is the same thing- by
the process. I found the doctor quite right in his estimate of the
larger mammals as the ones which on the whole were most beneficial,
and observed that Ernest, who had heard nothing of what the doctor had
said to me, lingered instinctively in front of them. As for the
elephants, especially the baby elephant, he seemed to be drinking in
large draughts of their lives to the re-creation and regeneration of
his own.

We dined in the gardens, and I noticed with pleasure that Ernest's
appetite was already improved. Since this time, whenever I have been a
little out of sorts myself I have at once gone up to Regent's Park,
and have invariably been benefited. I mention this here in the hope
that some one or other of my readers may find the hint a useful one.

At the end of his fortnight my hero was much better, more so even
than our friend the doctor had expected. "Now," he said, "Mr. Pontifex
may go abroad, and the sooner the better. Let him stay a couple of
months."

This was the first Ernest had heard about his going abroad, and he
talked about my not being able to spare him for so long. I soon made
this all right.

"It is now the beginning April," said I; "go down to Marseilles at
once, and take steamer to Nice. Then saunter down the Riviera to
Genoa- from Genoa go to Florence, Rome, and Naples, and come home by
way of Venice and the Italian lakes."

"And won't you come too?" said he, eagerly.

I said I did not mind if I did, so we began to make our arrangements
next morning, and completed them within a very few days.