APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/all_flesh/CHAP80_86

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                          CHAPTER LXXX


WE left by the night mail, crossing from Dover. The night was
soft, and there was a bright moon upon the sea. "Don't you love the
smell of grease about the engine of a Channel steamer? Isn't there a
lot of hope in it?" said Ernest to me, for he had been to Normandy one
summer as a boy with his father and mother, and the smell carried
him back to days before those in which he had begun to bruise
himself against the great outside world. "I always think one of the
best parts of going abroad is the first thud of the piston, and the
first gurgling of the water when the paddle begins to strike it."

It was very dreamy getting out at Calais, and trudging about with
luggage in a foreign town at an hour when we were generally both of us
in bed and fast asleep, but we settled down to sleep as soon as we got
into the railway carriage, and dozed till we had passed Amiens. Then
waking when the first signs of morning crispness were beginning to
show themselves, I saw that Ernest was already devouring every
object we passed with quick sympathetic curiousness. There was not a
peasant in a blouse driving his cart betimes along the road to market,
not a signalman's wife in her husband's hat and coat waving a green
flag, not a shepherd taking out his sheep to the dewy pastures, not
a bank of opening cowslips as we passed through the railway
cuttings, but he was drinking it all in with an enjoyment too deep for
words. The name of the engine that drew us was Mozart, and Ernest
liked this too.

We reached Paris by six, and had just time to get across the town
and take a morning express train to Marseilles, but before noon my
young friend was tired out and had resigned himself to a series of
sleeps which were seldom intermitted for more than an hour or so
together. He fought against this for a time, but in the end consoled
himself by saying it was so nice to have so much pleasure that he
could afford to throw a lot of it away. Having found a theory on which
to justify himself, he slept in peace.

At Marseilles we rested, and there the excitement of the change
proved, as I had half feared it would, too much for my godson's
still enfeebled state. For a few days he was really ill, but after
this he righted. For my own part I reckon being ill as one of the
great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not
obliged to work till one is better. I remember being once in a foreign
hotel myself and how much I enjoyed it. To lie there careless of
everything, quiet and warm, and with no weight upon the mind, to
hear the clinking of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the scullion
rinsed them and put them by; to watch the soft shadows come and go
upon the ceiling as the sun came out or went behind a cloud; to listen
to the pleasant murmuring of the fountain in the court below, and
the shaking of the bells on the horses' collars and the clink of their
hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them; not only to be a
lotus-eater but to know that it was one's duty to be a lotus-eater.
"Oh," I thought to myself, "if I could only now, having so forgotten
care, drop off to sleep for ever, would not this be a better piece
of fortune than any I can ever hope for?"

Of course it would, but we would not take it though it were
offered us. No matter what evil may befall us, we will mostly abide by
it and see it out.

I could see that Ernest felt much as I had felt myself. He said
little, but noted everything. Once only did he frighten me. He
called me to his bedside just as it was getting dusk and said in a
grave, quiet manner that he should like to speak to me.

"I have been thinking," he said, "that I may perhaps never recover
from this illness, and in case I do not I should like you to know that
there is only one thing which weighs upon me. I refer," he continued
after a slight pause, "to my conduct towards my father and mother. I
have been much too good to them. I treated them much too
considerately," on which he broke into a smile which assured me that
there was nothing seriously amiss with him.

On the walls of his bedroom were a series of French Revolution
prints representing events in the life of Lycurgus. There was
"Grandeur d'ame de Lycurgue," and "Lycurgue consulte l'oracle," and
then there was "Calciope a la Cour." Under this was written in
French and Spanish: "Modele de grace et de beaute, la jeune Calciope
non moins sage que belle avait merite l'estime et l'attachement du
vertueux Lycurgue. Vivement epris de tant de charmes, l'illustre
philosophe la conduisait dans le temple de Junon, ou ils s'unirent par
un serment sacre. Apres cette auguste ceremonie, Lycurgue s'empressa
de conduire sa jeune epouse au palais de son frere Polydecte, Roi de
Lacedemon. Seigneur, lui dit-il, la vertueuse Calciope vient de
recevoir mes voeux aux pieds de sautels, j'ose vous prier
d'approuver cette union. Le Roi temoigna d'abord quelque surprise,
mais l'estime qu'il avait pour son frere lui inspira une reponse
pleine de bienveillance. Il s'approcha aussitot de Calciope qu'il
embrassa tendrement, combla ensuite Lycurgue de prevenances et parut
tres satisfait."

He called my attention to this and then said somewhat timidly that
he would rather have married Ellen than Calciope. I saw he was
hardening and made no hesitation about proposing that in another day
or two we should proceed upon our journey.

I will not weary the reader by taking him with us over beaten
ground. We stopped at Siena, Cortona, Orvieto, Perugia, and many other
cities, and then after a fortnight passed between Rome and Naples went
to the Venetian provinces and visited all those wondrous towns that
lie between the southern slopes of the Alps and the northern ones of
the Apennines, coming back at last by the St. Gothard. I doubt whether
he had enjoyed the trip more than I did myself, but it was not till we
were on the point of returning that Ernest had recovered strength
enough to be called fairly well, and it was not for many months that
he so completely lost all sense of the wounds which the last four
years had inflicted on him as to feel as though there were a scar
and a scar only remaining.

They say that when people have lost an arm or a foot they feel pains
in it now and again for a long while after they have lost it. One pain
which he had almost forgotten came upon him on his return to
England, I mean the sting of his having been imprisoned. As long as he
was only a small shopkeeper his imprisonment mattered nothing;
nobody knew of it, and if they had known they would not have cared;
now, however, though he was returning to his old position he was
returning to it disgraced, and the pain from which he had been saved
in the first instance by surroundings so new that he had hardly
recognised his own identity in the middle of them, came on him as from
a wound inflicted yesterday.

He thought of the high resolves which he had made in prison about
using his disgrace as a vantage ground of strength rather than
trying to make people forget it. "That was all very well then," he
thought to himself, "when the grapes were beyond my reach, but now
it is different." Besides, who but a prig would set himself high aims,
or make high resolves at all?

Some of his old friends, on learning that he had got rid of his
supposed wife and was now comfortably off again, wanted to renew their
acquaintance; he was grateful to them and sometimes tried to meet
their advances half way, but it did not do, and ere long he shrank
back into himself, pretending not to know them. An infernal demon of
honesty haunted him which made him say to himself: "These men know a
great deal, but do not know all- if they did they would cut me- and
therefore I have no right to their acquaintance."

He thought that everyone except himself was sans peur et sans
reproche. Of course they must be, for if they had not been, would they
not have been bound to warn all who had anything to do with them of
their deficiencies? Well, he could not do this, and he would not
have people's acquaintance under false pretences, so he gave up even
hankering after rehabilitation and fell back upon his old tastes for
music and literature.

Of course he has long since found out how silly all this was, how
silly I mean in theory, for in practice it worked better than it ought
to have done, by keeping him free from liaisons which would have
tied his tongue and made him see success elsewhere than where he
came in time to see it. He did what he did instinctively and for no
other reason than because it was most natural to him. So far as he
thought at all, he thought wrong, but what he did was right. I said
something of this kind to him once not so very long ago, and told
him he had always aimed high. "I never aimed at all," he replied a
little indignantly, "and you may be sure I should have aimed low
enough if I had thought I had thought I had got the chance."

I suppose after all that no one whose mind was not, to put it
mildly, abnormal, ever yet aimed very high out of pure malice
aforethought. I once saw a fly alight on a cup of hot coffee on
which the milk had formed a thin skin; he perceived his extreme
danger, and I noted with what ample strides and almost supermuscan
effort he struck across the treacherous surface and made for the
edge of the cup- for the ground was not solid enough to let him
raise himself from it by his wings. As I watched him I fancied that so
supreme a moment of difficulty and danger might leave him with an
increase of moral and physical power which might even descend in
some measure to his offspring. But surely he would not have got the
increased moral power if he could have helped it, and he will not
knowingly alight upon another cup of hot coffee. The more I see, the
more sure I am that it does not matter why people do the right thing
so long only as they do it, nor why they may have done the wrong if
they have done it. The result depends upon the thing done and the
motive goes for nothing. I have read somewhere, but cannot remember
where, that in some country district there was once a great scarcity
of food, during which the poor suffered acutely; many indeed
actually died of starvation, and all were hard put to it. In one
village, however, there was a poor widow with a family of young
children, who, though she had small visible means of subsistence,
still looked well-fed and comfortable, as also did all her little
ones. "How," everyone asked, "did they manage to live?" It was plain
they had a secret, and it was equally plain that it could be no good
one; for there came a harried, hunted look over the poor woman's
face if anyone alluded to the way in which she and hers throve when
others starved; the family, moreover, were sometimes seen out at
unusual hours of the night, and evidently brought things home, which
could hardly have been honestly come by. They knew they were under
suspicion, and, being hitherto of excellent name, it made them very
unhappy, for it must be confessed that they believed what they did
to be uncanny if not absolutely wicked; nevertheless, in spite of this
they throve, and kept their strength when all their neighbours were
pinched.

At length matters came to a head and the clergyman of the parish
cross-questioned the poor woman so closely that with many tears and
a bitter sense of degradation she confessed the truth; she and her
children went into the hedges and gathered snails, which they made
into broth and ate- could she ever be forgiven? Was there any hope
of salvation for her either in this world or the next after such
unnatural conduct?

So again I have heard of an old dowager countess whose money was all
in Consols; she had had many sons, and in her anxiety to give the
younger ones a good start, wanted a larger income than Consols would
give her. She consulted her solicitor and was advised to sell her
Consols and invest in the London and North Western Railway, then at
about 85. This was to her what eating snails was to the poor widow
whose story I have told above. With shame and grief, as of one doing
an unclean thing- but her boys must have their start- she did as she
was advised. Then for a long while she could not sleep at night and
was haunted by a presage of disaster. Yet what happened? She started
her boys, and in a few years found her capital doubled into the
bargain, on which she sold out and went back again to Consols and died
in the full blessedness of fund-holding.

She thought, indeed, that she was doing a wrong and dangerous thing,
but this had absolutely nothing to do with it. Suppose she had
invested in the full confidence of a recommendation by some eminent
London banker whose advice was bad, and so had lost all her money, and
suppose she had done this with a light heart and with no conviction of
sin- would her innocence of evil purpose and the excellence of her
motive have stood her in any stead? Not they.

But to return to my story. Towneley gave my hero most trouble.
Towneley, as I have said, knew that Ernest would have money soon,
but Ernest did not of course know that he knew it. Towneley was rich
himself, and was married now; Ernest would be rich soon, had bona fide
intended to be married already, and would doubtless marry a lawful
wife later on. Such a man was worth taking pains with, and when
Towneley one day met Ernest in the street, and Ernest tried to avoid
him, Towneley would not have it, but with his usual quick good
nature read his thoughts, caught him, morally speaking, by the
scruff of his neck, and turned him laughingly inside out, telling
him he would have no such nonsense.

Towneley was just as much Ernest's idol now as he had ever been, and
Ernest, who was very easily touched, felt more gratefully and warmly
than ever towards him, but there was an unconscious something which
was stronger than Towneley, and made my hero determine to break with
him more determinedly perhaps than with any other living person; he
thanked him in a low, hurried voice and pressed his hand, while
tears came into his eyes in spite of all his efforts to repress
them. "If we meet again he said, "do not look at me, but if
hereafter you hear of me writing things you do not like, think of me
as charitably as you can," and so they parted.

"Towneley is a good fellow," said I, gravely, "and you should not
have cut him."

"Towneley," he answered, "is not only a good fellow, but he is
without exception the very best man I ever saw in my life- except," he
paid me the compliment of saying, "yourself; Towneley is my notion
of everything which I should most like to be- but there is no real
solidarity between us. I should be in perpetual fear of losing his
good opinion if I said things he did not like, and I mean to say a
great many things," he continued more merrily, "which Towneley will
not like."

A man, as I have said already, can give up father and mother for
Christ's sake tolerably easily for the most part, but it is not so
easy to give up people like Towneley.

                          CHAPTER LXXXI


SO he fell away from all old friends except myself and three or four
old intimates of my own, who were as sure to take to him as he to
them, and who like myself enjoyed getting hold of a young fresh
mind. Ernest attended to the keeping of my account books whenever
there was anything which could possibly be attended to, which there
seldom was, and spent the greater part of the rest of his time in
adding to the many notes and tentative essays which had already
accumulated in his portfolios. Anyone who was used to writing could
see at a glance that literature was his natural development, and I was
pleased at seeing him settle down to it so spontaneously. I was less
pleased, however, to observe that he would still occupy himself with
none but the most serious, I had almost said solemn, subjects, just as
he never cared about any but the most serious kind of music.

I said to him one day that the very slender reward which God had
attached to the pursuit of serious enquiry was a sufficient proof that
He disapproved of it, or at any rate that He did not set much store by
it nor wish to encourage it.

He said: "Oh, don't talk about rewards. Look at Milton, who only got
L5 for 'Paradise Lost.'

"And a great deal too much," I rejoined promptly. "I would have
given him twice as much myself not to have written it at all."

Ernest was a little shocked. "At any rate," he said laughingly, "I
don't write poetry."

This was a cut at me, for my burlesques were, of course, written
in rhyme. So I dropped the matter.

After a time he took it into his head to reopen the question of
his getting L300 a year for doing, as he said, absolutely nothing, and
said he would try to find some employment which should bring him in
enough to live upon.

I laughed at this but let him alone. He tried and tried very hard
for a long while, but I need hardly say was unsuccessful. The older
I grow, the more convinced I become of the folly and credulity of
the public; but at the same time the harder do I see it is to impose
oneself upon that folly and credulity.

He tried editor after editor with article after article. Sometimes
an editor listened to him and told him to leave his articles; he
almost invariably, however, had them returned to him in the end with a
polite note saying that they were not suited for the particular
paper to which he had sent them. And yet many of these very articles
appeared in his later works, and no one complained of them, not at
least on the score of bad literary workmanship. "I see," he said to me
one day, "that demand is very imperious, and supply must be very
suppliant."

Once, indeed, the editor of an important monthly magazine accepted
an article from him, and he thought he had now got a footing in the
literary world. The article was to appear in the next issue but one,
and he was to receive proof from the printers in about ten days or a
fortnight; but week after week passed and there was no proof; month
after month went by and there was still no room for Ernest's
article; at length after about six months the editor one morning
told him that he had filled every number of his review for the next
ten months, but that his article should definitely appear. On this
he insisted on having his MS. returned to him.

Sometimes his articles were actually published, and he found the
editor had edited them according to his own fancy, putting in jokes
which he thought were funny, or cutting out the very passage which
Ernest had considered the point of the whole thing, and then, though
the articles appeared, when it came to paying for them it was
another matter, and he never saw his money. "Editors," he said to me
one day about this time, "are like the people who bought and sold in
the book of Revelation; there is not one but has the mark of the beast
upon him."

At last after months of disappointment and many a tedious hour
wasted in dingy ante-rooms (and of all ante-rooms those of editors
appear to me to be the dreariest), he got a bona fide offer of
employment from one of the first class weekly papers through an
introduction I was able to get for him from one who had powerful
influence with the paper in question. The editor sent him a dozen long
books upon varied and difficult subjects, and told him to review
them in a single article within a week. In one book there was an
editorial note to the effect that the writer was to be condemned.
Ernest particularly admired the book he was desired to condemn, and
feeling how hopeless it was for him to do anything like justice to the
books submitted to him, returned them to the editor.

At last one paper did actually take a dozen or so of articles from
him, and gave him cash down a couple of guineas apiece for them, but
having done this it expired within a fortnight after the last of
Ernest's articles had appeared. It certainly looked very much as if
the other editors knew their business in declining to have anything to
do with my unlucky godson.

I was not sorry that he failed with periodical literature, for
writing for reviews or newspapers is bad training for one who may
aspire to write works of more permanent interest. A young writer
should have more time for reflection than he can get as a
contributor to the daily or even weekly press. Ernest himself,
however, was chagrined at finding how unmarketable he was. "Why," he
said to me, "if I was a well-bred horse, or sheep, or a pure-bred
pigeon, or lop-eared rabbit I should be more salable. If I was even
a cathedral in a colonial town people would give me something, but
as it is they do not want me"; and now that he was well and rested
he wanted to set up a shop again, but this, of course, I would not
hear of.

"What care I," said he to me one day, "about being what they call
a gentleman?" And his manner was almost fierce. "What has being a
gentleman ever done for me except make me less able to prey and more
easy to be preyed upon? It has changed the manner of my being
swindled, that is all. But for your kindness to me I should be
penniless. Thank heaven I have placed my children where I have."

I begged him to keep quiet a little longer and not talk about taking
a shop.

"Will being a gentleman," he said, "bring me money at the last,
and will anything bring me as much peace at the last as money will?
They say that those who have riches enter hardly into the kingdom of
Heaven. By Jove, they do; they are like Struldbrugs; they live and
live and live and are happy for many a long year after they would have
entered into the kingdom of Heaven if they had been poor. I want to
live long and to raise my children, if I see they would be happier for
the raising; that is what I want, and it is not what I am doing now
that will help me. Being a gentleman is a luxury which I cannot
afford, therefore I do not want it. Let me go back to my shop again,
and do things for people which they want done and will pay me for
doing for them. They know what they want and what is good for them
better than I can tell them."

It was hard to deny the soundness of this, and if he had been
dependent only on the L300 a year which he was getting from me I
should have advised him to open his shop again next morning. As it
was, I temporised and raised obstacles, and quieted him from time to
time as best I could.

Of course he read Mr. Darwin's books as fast as they came out and
adopted evolution as an article of faith. "It seems to me," he said
once, "that I am like one of those caterpillars which, if they have
been interrupted in making their hammock, must begin again from the
beginning. So long as I went back a long way down in the social
scale I got on all right, and should have made money but for Ellen;
when I try to take up the work at a higher stage I fail completely." I
do not know whether the analogy holds good or not, but I am sure
Ernest's instinct was right in telling him that after a heavy fall
he had better begin life again at a very low stage, and as I have just
said, I would have let him go back to his shop if I had not known what
I did.

As the time fixed upon by his aunt drew nearer I prepared him more
and more for what was coming, and at last, on his twenty-eighth
birthday, I was able to tell him all and to show him the letter signed
by his aunt upon her death-bed to the effect that I was to hold the
money in trust for him. His birthday happened that year (1863) to be
on a Sunday, but on the following day I transferred his shares into
his own name, and presented him with the account books which he had
been keeping for the last year and a half.

In spite of all that I had done to prepare him, it was a long
while before I could get him actually to believe that the money was
his own. He did not say much- no more did I, for I am not sure that
I did not feel as much moved at having brought my long trusteeship
to a satisfactory conclusion as Ernest did at finding himself owner of
more than L70,000. When he did speak it was to jerk out a sentence
or two of reflection at a time. "If I were rendering this moment in
music," he said, "I should allow myself free use of the augmented
sixth." A little later I remember his saying with a laugh that had
something of a family likeness to his aunt's: "It is not the
pleasure it causes me which I enjoy so, it is the pain it will cause
to all my friends except yourself and Towneley."

I said: "You cannot tell your father and mother- it would drive them
mad."

"No, no, no," said he, "it would be too cruel; it would be like
Isaac offering up Abraham and no thicket with a ram in it near at
hand. Besides, why should I? We have cut each other these four years."

                          CHAPTER LXXXII


IT almost seemed as though our casual mention of Theobald and
Christina had in some way excited them from a dormant to an active
state. During the years that had elapsed since they last appeared upon
the scene they had remained at Battersby, and had concentrated their
affection upon their other children.

It had been a bitter pill to Theobald to lose his power of
plaguing his first-born; if the truth were known I believe he had felt
this more acutely than any disgrace which might have been shed upon
him by Ernest's imprisonment. He had made one or two attempts to
reopen negotiations through me, but I never said anything about them
to Ernest, for I knew it would upset him. I wrote, however, to
Theobald that I had found his son inexorable, and recommended him
for the present, at any rate, to desist from returning to the subject.
This I thought would be at once what Ernest would like best and
Theobald least.

A few days, however, after Ernest had come into his property, I
received a letter from Theobald enclosing one for Ernest which I could
not withhold.

The letter ran thus:


"TO MY SON ERNEST,- Although you have more than once rejected my
overtures I appeal yet again to your better nature. Your mother, who
has long been ailing, is, I believe, near her end; she is unable to
keep anything on her stomach, and Dr. Martin holds out but little
hopes of her recovery. She has expressed a wish to see you, and says
she knows you will not refuse to come to her, which, considering her
condition, I am unwilling to suppose you will.

"I remit you a Post Office order for your fare, and will pay your
return journey.

"If you want clothes to come in, order what you consider suitable,
and desire that the bill be sent to me; I will pay it immediately,
to an amount not exceeding eight or nine pounds, and if you will let
me know what train you will come by, I will send the carriage to
meet you. Believe me, Your affectionate father,

                                         "T. PONTIFEX."


Of course there could be no hesitation on Ernest's part. He could
afford to smile now at his father's offering to pay for his clothes,
and his sending him a Post Office order for the exact price of a
second-class ticket, and he was of course shocked at learning the
state his mother was said to be in, and touched at her desire to see
him. He telegraphed that he would come down at once. I saw him a
little before he started, and was pleased to see how well his tailor
had done by him. Towneley himself could not have been appointed more
becomingly. His portmanteau, his railway wrapper, everything he had
about him, was in keeping. I thought he had grown much
better-looking than he had been at two- or three-and-twenty. His
year and a half of peace had effaced all the ill effects of his
previous suffering, and now that he had become actually rich there was
an air of insouciance and good humour upon his face, as of a man
with whom everything was going perfectly right, which would have
made a much plainer man good-looking. I was proud of him and delighted
with him. "I am sure," I said to myself, "that whatever else he may
do, he will never marry again."

The journey was a painful one. As he drew near to the station and
caught sight of each familiar feature, so strong was the force of
association that he felt as though his coming into his aunt's money
had been a dream, and he were again returning to his father's house as
he had returned to it from Cambridge for the vacations. Do what he
would, the old dull weight of home-sickness began to oppress him,
his heart beat fast as he thought of his approaching meeting with
his father and mother. "And I shall have," he said to himself, "to
kiss Charlotte."

Would his father meet him at the station? Would he greet him as
though nothing had happened, or would he be cold and distant? How,
again, would he take the news of his son's good fortune? As the
train drew up to the platform, Ernest's eye ran hurriedly over the few
people who were in the station. His father's well-known form was not
among them, but on the other side of the palings which divided the
station yard from the platform, he saw the pony carriage, looking,
as he thought, rather shabby, and recognised his father's coachman. In
a few minutes more he was in the carriage driving towards Battersby.
He could not help smiling as he saw the coachman give a look of
surprise at finding him so much changed in personal appearance. The
coachman was the more surprised because when Ernest had last been at
home he had been dressed as a clergyman, and now he was not only a
layman, but a layman who was got up regardless of expense. The
change was so great that it was not till Ernest actually spoke to
him that the coachman knew him.

"How are my father and mother?" he asked hurriedly, as he got into
the carriage. "The Master's well, sir," was the answer, "but the
Missis is very sadly." The horse knew that he was going home and
pulled hard at the reins. The weather was cold and raw -the very ideal
of a November day; in one part of the road the floods were out, and
near here they had to pass through a number of horsemen and dogs,
for the hounds had met that morning at a place near Battersby.
Ernest saw several people whom he knew, but they either, as is most
likely, did not recognise him, or did not know of his good luck.
When Battersby church tower drew near, and he saw the Rectory on the
top of the hill, its chimneys just showing above the leafless trees
with which it was surrounded, he threw himself back in the carriage
and covered his face with his hands.

It came to an end, as even the worst quarters of an hour do, and
in a few minutes more he was on the steps in front of his father's
house. His father, hearing the carriage arrive, came a little way down
the steps to meet him. Like the coachman he saw at a glance that
Ernest was appointed as though money were abundant with him, and
that he was looking robust and full of health and vigour.

This was not what he had bargained for. He wanted Ernest to
return, but he was to return as any respectable, well-regulated
prodigal ought to return -abject, brokenhearted, asking forgiveness
from the tenderest and most long-suffering father in the whole
world. If he should have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all,
it should be only because absolute rags and tatters had been
graciously dispensed with, whereas here he was swaggering in a grey
ulster and a blue and white necktie, and looking better than
Theobald had ever seen him in his life. It was unprincipled. Was it
for this that he had been generous enough to offer to provide Ernest
with decent clothes in which to come and visit his mother's death-bed?
Could any advantage be meaner than the one which Ernest had taken?
Well, he would not go a penny beyond the eight or nine pounds which he
had promised. It was fortunate he had given a limit. Why, he,
Theobald, had never been able to afford such a portmanteau in his
life. He was still using an old one which his father had turned over
to him when he went up to Cambridge. Besides, he had said clothes, not
a portmanteau.

Ernest saw what was passing through his father's mind, and felt that
he ought to have prepared him in some way for what he now saw; but
he had sent his telegram so immediately on receiving his father's
letter, and had followed it so promptly that it would not have been
easy to do so even if he had thought of it. He put out his hand and
said laughingly, "Oh, it's all paid for- I am afraid you do not know
that Mr. Overton has handed over to me Aunt Alethea's money."

Theobald flushed scarlet. "But why," he said, and these were the
first words that actually crossed his lips- "if the money was not
his to keep, did he not hand it over to my brother John and me?" He
stammered a good deal and looked sheepish, but he got the words out.

"Because, my dear father," said Ernest still laughing, "my aunt left
it to him in trust for me, not in trust either for you or for my Uncle
John- and it has accumulated till it is now over L70,000. But tell
me how is my mother?"

"No, Ernest," said Theobald excitedly, "the matter cannot rest here;
I must know that this is all open and above board."

This had the true Theobald ring and instantly brought the whole
train of ideas which in Ernest's mind were connected with his
father. The surroundings were the old familiar ones, but the
surrounded were changed almost beyond power of recognition. He
turned sharply on Theobald in a moment. I will not repeat the words he
used, for they came out before he had time to consider them, and
they might strike some of my readers as disrespectful; there were
not many of them, but they were effectual. Theobald said nothing,
but turned almost of an ashen colour; he never again spoke to his
son in such a way as to make it necessary for him to repeat what he
had said on this occasion. Ernest quickly recovered his temper and
again asked after his mother. Theobald was glad enough to take this
opening now, and replied at once in the tone he would have assumed
towards one he most particularly desired to conciliate, that she was
getting rapidly worse in spite of all he had been able to do for
her, and concluded by saying she had been the comfort and mainstay
of his life for more than thirty years, but that he could not wish
it prolonged.

The pair then went upstairs to Christina's room, the one in which
Ernest had been born. His father went before him and prepared her
for her son's approach. The poor woman raised herself in bed as he
came towards her and weeping as she flung her arms around him,
cried: "Oh, I knew he would come, I knew, I knew he would come."

Ernest broke down and wept as he had not done for years.

"Oh, my boy, my boy," she said as soon as she could recover her
voice. "Have you never really been near us for all these years? Ah,
you do not know how we have loved you and mourned over you, papa
just as much as I have. You know he shows his feelings less, but I can
never tell you how very, very deeply he has felt for you. Sometimes at
night I have thought I have heard footsteps in the garden, and have
got quietly out of bed lest I should wake him, and gone to the
window to look out, but there has been only dark or the greyness of
the morning, and I have gone crying back to bed again. Still I think
you have been near us though you were too proud to let us know- and
now at last I have you in my arms once more, my dearest, dearest boy."

How cruel, how infamously unfeeling Ernest thought he had been.

"Mother," he said, "forgive me- the fault was mine; I ought not to
have been so hard; I was wrong, very wrong"; the poor blubbering
fellow meant what he said, and his heart yearned to his mother as he
had never thought that it could yearn again. "But have you never," she
continued, "come although it was in the dark and we did not know it-
oh, let me think that you have not been so cruel as we have thought
you. Tell me that you came if only to comfort me and make me happier."

Ernest was ready. "I had no money to come with, mother, till just
lately."

This was an excuse Christina could understand and make allowance
for: "Oh, then you would have come, and I will take the will for the
deed- and now that I have you safe again, say that you will never,
never leave me- not till- not till- oh, my boy, have they told you I
am dying?" She wept bitterly and buried her head in her pillow.

                          CHAPTER LXXXIII


JOEY and Charlotte were in the room. Joey was now ordained, and
was curate to Theobald. He and Ernest had never been sympathetic,
and Ernest saw at a glance that there was no chance of a rapprochement
between them. He was a little startled at seeing Joey dressed as a
clergyman, and looking so like what he had looked himself a few
years earlier, for there was a good deal of family likeness between
the pair; but Joey's face was cold and was illumined with no spark
of Bohemianism; he was going to do as other clergymen did, neither
better nor worse. He greeted Ernest rather de haut en has, that is
to say he began by trying to do so, but the affair tailed off
unsatisfactorily.

His sister presented her cheek to him to be kissed. How he hated it;
he had been dreading it for the last three hours. She, too, was
distant and reproachful in her manner, as such a superior person was
sure to be. She had a grievance against him inasmuch as she was
still unmarried. She laid the blame this at Ernest's door; it was
his misconduct, she maintained in secret, which had prevented young
men from making offers to her, and she ran him up a heavy bill for
consequential damages. She and Joey had from the first developed an
instinct for hunting with the hounds, and now these two had fairly
identified themselves with the older generation- that is to say as
against Ernest. On this head there was an offensive and defensive
alliance between them, but between themselves there was subdued but
internecine warfare.

This at least was what Ernest gathered, partly from his
recollections of the parties concerned, and partly from his
observation of their little ways during the first half-hour after
his arrival, while they were all together in his mother's bedroom- for
as yet of course they did not know that he had money. He could see
that they eyed him from time to time with a surprise not unmixed
with indignation, and knew very well what they were thinking.

Christina saw the change which had come over him- how much firmer
and more vigorous both in mind and body he seemed than when she had
last seen him. She saw too how well he was dressed, and, like the
others, in spite of the return of all her affection for her
first-born, was a little alarmed about Theobald's pocket, which she
supposed would have to be mulcted for all this magnificence.
Perceiving this, Ernest relieved her mind and told her all about his
aunt's bequest, and how I had husbanded it, in the presence of his
brother and sister- who, however, pretended not to notice, or at any
rate to notice as a matter in which they could hardly be expected to
take an interest.

His mother kicked a little at first against the money's having
gone to him as she said "over his papa's head." "Why, my dear," she
said in a deprecating tone, "this is more than ever your papa has
had"; but Ernest calmed her by suggesting that if Miss Pontifex had
known how large the sum would become she would have left the greater
part of it to Theobald. This compromise was accepted by Christina
who forthwith, ill as she was, entered with ardour into the new
position, and taking it as a fresh point of departure, began
spending Ernest's money for him.

I may say in passing that Christina was right in saying that
Theobald had never had so much money as his son was now possessed
of. In the first place he had not had a fourteen years' minority
with no outgoings to prevent the accumulation of the money, and in the
second he, like myself and almost everyone else, had suffered somewhat
in the 1846 times- not enough to cripple him or even seriously to hurt
him, but enough to give him a scare and make him stick to debentures
for the rest of his life. It was the fact of his son's being the
richer man of the two, and of his being rich so young, which rankled
with Theobald even more than the fact of his having money at all. If
he had had to wait till he was sixty or sixty-five, and become
broken down from long failure in the meantime, why then perhaps he
might have been allowed to have whatever sum should suffice to keep
him out of the workhouse and pay his death-bed expenses; but that he
should come in to L70,000 at eight-and-twenty, and have no wife and
only two children- it was intolerable. Christina was too ill and in
too great a hurry to spend the money to care much about such details
as the foregoing, and she was naturally much more good-natured than
Theobald.

"This piece of good fortune"- she saw it at a glance- "quite wiped
out the disgrace of his having been imprisoned. There should be no
more nonsense about that. The whole thing was a mistake, an
unfortunate mistake, true, but the less said about it now the
better. Of course Ernest would come back and live at Battersby until
he was married, and he would pay his father handsomely for board and
lodging. In fact it would be only right that Theobald should make a
profit, nor would Ernest himself wish it to be other than a handsome
one; this was far the best and simplest arrangement; and he could take
his sister out more than Theobald or Joey cared to do, and would
also doubtless entertain very handsomely at Battersby.

"Of course he would buy Joey a living, and make large presents
yearly to his sister- was there anything else? Oh! yes- he would
become a county magnate now; a man with nearly L4,000 a year should
certainly become a county magnate. He might even go into Parliament.
He had very fair abilities, nothing indeed approaching such genius
as Dr. Skinner's nor even as Theobald's, still he was not deficient
and if he got into Parliament- so young too- there was nothing to
hinder his being Prime Minister before he died, and if so, of
course, he would become a peer. Oh! why did he not set about it all at
once, so that she might live to hear people call her son 'my lord'-
Lord Battersby she thought would do very nicely, and if she was well
enough to sit he must certainly have her portrait painted at full
length for one end of his large dining-hall. It should be exhibited at
the Royal Academy: 'Portrait of Lord Battersby's mother,' she said
to herself, and her heart fluttered with all its wonted vivacity. If
she could not sit, happily, she had been photographed not so very long
ago, and the portrait had been as successful as any photograph could
be of a face which depended so entirely upon its expression as her
own. Perhaps the painter could take the portrait sufficiently from
this. It was better after all that Ernest had given up the
Church-how far more wisely God arranges matters for us than ever we
can do for ourselves! She saw it all now-it was Joey who would
become Archbishop of Canterbury and Ernest would remain a layman and
become Prime Minister"... and so on till her daughter told her it
was time to take her medicine.

I suppose this reverie, which is a mere fragment of what actually
ran through Christina's brain, occupied about a minute and a half, but
it, or the presence of her son, seemed to revive her spirits
wonderfully. Ill, dying indeed, and suffering as she was, she
brightened up so as to laugh once or twice quite merrily during the
course of the afternoon. Next day Dr. Martin said she was so much
better that he almost began to have hopes of her recovery again.
Theobald, whenever this was touched upon as possible, would shake
his head and say: "We can't wish it prolonged," and then Charlotte
caught Ernest unawares and said: "You know, dear Ernest, that these
ups and downs of talk are terribly agitating to papa; he could stand
whatever comes, but it is quite too wearing to him to think
half-a-dozen different things backwards and forwards, up and down in
the same twenty-four hours, and it would be kinder of you not to do
it- I mean not to say anything to him even though Dr. Martin does hold
out hopes."

Charlotte had meant to imply that it was Ernest who was at the
bottom of all the inconvenience felt by Theobald, herself, Joey, and
everyone else, and she had actually got words out which should
convey this; true, she had not dared to stick to them and had turned
them off, but she had made them hers at any rate for one brief moment,
and this was better than nothing. Ernest noticed throughout his
mother's illness, that Charlotte found immediate occasion to make
herself disagreeable to him whenever either the doctor or nurse
pronounced her mother to be a little better. When she wrote to
Crampsford to desire the prayers of the congregation (she was sure her
mother would wish it, and that the Crampsford people would be
pleased at her remembrance of them), she was sending another letter on
some quite different subject at the same time, and put the two letters
into the wrong envelopes. Ernest was asked to take these letters to
the village post office, and imprudently did so; when the error came
to be discovered Christina happened to have rallied a little.
Charlotte flew at Ernest immediately, and laid all the blame of the
blunder upon his shoulders.

Except that Joey and Charlotte were more fully developed, the
house and its inmates, organic and inorganic, were little changed
since Ernest had last seen them. The furniture and the ornaments on
the chimney-piece were just as they had been ever since he could
remember anything at all. In the drawing-room, on either side of the
fireplace there hung the Carlo Dolci and the Sassoferrato as in old
times; there was the water colour of a scene on the Lago Maggiore,
copied by Charlotte from an original lent her by her drawing master,
and finished under his direction. This was the picture of which one of
the servants had said that it must be good, for Mr. Pontifex had given
ten shillings for the frame. The paper on the walls was unchanged; the
roses were still waiting for the bees; and the whole family still
prayed night and morning to be made "truly honest and conscientious."

One picture only was removed- a photograph of himself which had hung
under one of his father and between those of his brother and sister.
Ernest noticed this at prayer time, while his father was reading about
Noah's ark and how they daubed it with slime, which, as it happened,
had been Ernest's favourite text when he was a boy. Next morning,
however, the photograph had found its way back again, a little dusty
and with a bit of the gilding chipped off from one corner of the
frame, but there sure enough it was. I suppose they put it back when
they found how rich he had become.

In the dining-room the ravens were still trying to feed Elijah
over the fireplace; what a crowd of reminiscences did not this picture
bring back! Looking out of the window, there were the flower beds in
the front garden exactly as they had been, and Ernest found himself
looking hard against the blue door at the bottom of the garden to
see if there was rain falling, as he had been used to look when he was
a child doing lessons with his father.

After their early dinner, when Joey and Ernest and their father were
left alone, Theobald rose and stood in the middle of the hearthrug
under the Elijah picture, and began to whistle in his old absent
way. He had two tunes only -one was "In my Cottage near a Wood," and
the other was the Easter Hymn; he had been trying to whistle them
all his life, but had never succeeded; he whistled them as a clever
bullfinch might whistle them- he had got them, but he had not got them
right; he would be a semitone out in every third note as though
reverting to some remote musical progenitor, who had known none but
the Lydian or the Phrygian mode, or whatever would enable him to go
most wrong while still keeping the tune near enough to be
recognised. Theobald stood before the middle of the fire and
whistled his two tunes softly in his own old way till Ernest left
the room; the unchangedness of the external and changedness of the
internal he felt were likely to throw him completely off his balance.

He strolled out of doors into the sodden spinney behind the house,
and solaced himself with a pipe. Ere long he found himself at the door
of the cottage of his father's coachman, who had married an old lady's
maid of his mother's, to whom Ernest had been always much attached
as she also to him, for she had known him ever since he had been
five or six years old. Her name was Susan. He sat down in the
rocking-chair before her fire, and Susan went on ironing at the
table in front of the window, and a smell of hot flannel pervaded
the kitchen.

Susan had been retained too securely by Christina to be likely to
side with Ernest all in a moment. He knew this very well, and did
not call on her for the sake of support, moral or otherwise. He had
called because he liked her, and also because he knew that he should
gather much in a chat with her that he should not be able to arrive at
in any other way.

"Oh, Master Ernest," said Susan, "why did you not come back when
your poor papa and mamma wanted you? I'm sure your ma has said to me a
hundred times over if she has said it once that all should be
exactly as it had been before."

Ernest smiled to himself. It was no use explaining to Susan why he
smiled, so he said nothing.

"For the first day or two I thought she never would get over it; she
said it was a judgement upon her, and went on about things as she
had said and done many years ago, before your pa knew her, and I don't
know what she didn't say or wouldn't have said only I stopped her; she
seemed out of her mind like, and said that none of the neighbours
would ever speak to her again, but the next day Mrs. Bushby (her
that was Miss Cowey, you know) called, and your ma always was so
fond of her, and it seemed to do her a power o' good, for the next day
she went through all her dresses, and we settled how she should have
them altered; and then all the neighbours called for miles and miles
round, and your ma came in here, and said she had been going through
the waters of misery, and the Lord had turned them to a well.

"'Oh, yes, Susan,' said she, 'be sure it is so. Whom the Lord loveth
he chasteneth, Susan,' and here she began to cry again. 'As for
him,' she went on, 'he has made his bed, and he must lie on it; when
he comes out of prison his pa will know what is best to be done, and
Master Ernest may be thankful that he has a pa so good and so
long-suffering.'

"Then when you would not see them, that was a cruel blow to your ma.
Your pa did not say anything; you know your pa never does say very
much unless he's downright waxy for the time; but your ma took on
dreadful for a few days, and I never saw the master look so black;
but, bless you, it all went off in a few days, and I don't know that
there's been much difference in either of them since then, not till
your ma was took ill."

On the night of his arrival he had behaved well at family prayers,
as also on the following morning; his father read about David's
dying injunction to Solomon in the matter of Shimei, but he did not
mind it. In the course of the day, however, his corns had been trodden
on so many times that he was in a misbehaving humour, on this the
second night after his arrival. He knelt next Charlotte and said the
responses perfunctorily, not so perfunctorily that she should know for
certain that he was doing it maliciously, but so perfunctorily as to
make her uncertain whether he might be malicious or not, and when he
had to pray to be made truly honest and conscientious he emphasised
the "truly." I do not know whether Charlotte noticed anything, but she
knelt at some distance from him during the rest of his stay. He
assures me that this was the only spiteful thing he did during the
whole time he was at Battersby.

When he went up to his bedroom, in which, to do them justice, they
had given him a fire, he noticed what indeed he had noticed as soon as
he was shown into it on his arrival, that there was an illuminated
card framed and glazed over his bed with the words, "Be the day
weary or be the day long, at last it ringeth to evensong." He wondered
to himself how such people could leave such a card in a room in
which their visitors would have to spend the last hours of their
evening, but he let it alone. "There's not enough difference between
'weary' and 'long' to warrant an 'or,'" he said, "but I suppose it
is all right." I believe Christina had bought the card at a bazaar
in aid of the restoration of a neighbouring church, and having been
bought it had got to be used- besides, the sentiment was so touching
and the illumination was really lovely. how, no irony could be more
complete than leaving it in my hero's bedroom, though assuredly no
irony had been intended.

On the third day after Ernest's arrival Christina relapsed again.
For the last two days she had been in no pain and had slept a good
deal; her son's presence still seemed to cheer her, and she often said
how thankful she was to be surrounded on her death-bed by a family
so happy, so God-fearing, so united, but now she began to wander, and,
being more sensible of the approach of death, seemed also more alarmed
at the thoughts of the Day of Judgement.

She ventured more than once or twice to return to the subject of her
sins, and implored Theobald to make quite sure that they were forgiven
her. She hinted that she considered his professional reputation was at
stake; it would never do for his own wife to fail in securing at any
rate a pass. This was touching Theobald on a tender spot; he winced
and rejoined with an impatient toss of the head, "But, Christina, they
are forgiven you"; and then he entrenched himself in a firm but
dignified manner behind the Lord's Prayer. When he rose he left the
room, but called Ernest out to say that he could not wish it
prolonged.

Joey was no more use in quieting his mother's anxiety than
Theobald had been- indeed he was only Theobald and water; at last
Ernest, who had not liked interfering took the matter in hand, and,
sitting beside her, let her pour out her grief to him without let or
hindrance.

She said she knew she had not given up all for Christ's sake; it was
this that weighed upon her. She had given up much, and had always
tried to give up more year by year, still she knew very well that
she had not been so spiritually minded as she ought to have been. If
she had, she should probably have been favoured with some direct
vision or communication; whereas, though God had vouchsafed such
direct and visible angelic visits to one of her dear children, yet she
had had none such herself- nor even had Theobald.

She was talking rather to herself than to Ernest as she said these
words, but they made him open his ears. He wanted to know whether
the angel had appeared to Joey or to Charlotte. He asked his mother,
but she seemed surprised, as though she expected him to know all about
it; then, as if she remembered, she checked herself and said, "Ah!
yes-you know nothing of all this, and perhaps it is as well." Ernest
could not of course press the subject, so he never found out which
of his near relations it was who had had direct communication with
an immortal. The others never said anything to him about it, though
whether this was because they were ashamed, or because they feared
he would not believe the story and thus increase his own damnation, he
could not determine.

Ernest has often thought about this since. He tried to get the facts
out of Susan, who he was sure would know, but Charlotte had been
beforehand with him. "No, Master Ernest," said Susan, when he began to
question her, "your ma has sent a message to me by Miss Charlotte as I
am not to say nothing at all about it, and I never will." Of course no
further questioning was possible. It had more than once occurred to
Ernest that Charlotte did not in reality believe more than he did
himself, and this incident went far to strengthen his surmises, but he
wavered when he remembered how she had misdirected the letter asking
for the prayers of the congregation. "I suppose," he said to himself
gloomily, "she does believe in it after all."

Then Christina returned to the subject of her own want of
spiritual-mindedness, she even harped upon the old grievance of her
having eaten black puddings -true, she had given them up years ago,
but for how many years had she not persevered in eating them after she
had had misgivings about their having been forbidden! Then there was
something that weighed on her mind that had taken place before her
marriage, and she should like--

Ernest interrupted her: "My dear mother," he said, "you are ill
and your mind is unstrung; others can now judge better about you
than you can; I assure you that to me you seem to have been the most
devotedly unselfish wife and mother that ever lived. Even if you
have not literally given up all for Christ's sake, you have done so
practically as far as it was in your power, and more than this is
not required of anyone. I believe you will not only be a saint, but
a very distinguished one."

At these words Christina brightened. "You give me hope, you give
me hope," she cried, and dried her eyes. She made him assure her
over and over again that this was his solemn conviction; she did not
care about being a distinguished saint now; she would be quite content
to be among the meanest who actually got into heaven, provided she
could make sure of escaping that awful Hell. The fear of this
evidently was omnipresent with her, and in spite of all Ernest could
say he did not quite dispel it. She was rather ungrateful, I must
confess, for after more than an hour's consolation from Ernest she
prayed for him that he might have every blessing in this world,
inasmuch as she always feared that he was the only one of her children
whom she should never meet in heaven; but she was then wandering,
and was hardly aware of his presence; her mind in fact was reverting
to states in which it had been before her illness.

On Sunday Ernest went to church as a matter of course, and noted
that the ever receding tide of Evangelicalism had ebbed many a stage
lower, even during the few years of his absence. His father used to
walk to the church through the Rectory garden, and across a small
intervening field. He had been used to walk in a tall hat, his
master's gown, and wearing a pair of Geneva bands. Ernest noticed that
the bands were worn no longer, and lo! greater marvel still,
Theobald did not preach in his master's gown, but in a surplice. The
whole character of the service was changed; you could not say it was
high even now, for high-church Theobald could never under any
circumstances become, but the old easy-going slovenliness, if I may
say so, was gone for ever. The orchestral accompaniments to the
hymns had disappeared while my hero was yet a boy, but there had
been no chanting for some years after the harmonium had been
introduced. While Ernest was at Cambridge, Charlotte and Christina had
prevailed on Theobald to allow the canticles to be sung; and sung they
were to old-fashioned double chants by Lord Mornington and Dr.
Dupuis and others. Theobald did not like it, but he did it, or allowed
it to be done.

Then Christina said: "My dear, do you know, I really think"
(Christina always "really" thought) "that the people like the chanting
very much, and that it will be a means of bringing many to church
who have stayed away hitherto. I was talking about it to Mrs.
Goodhew and to old Miss Wright only yesterday, and they quite agreed
with me, but they all said that we ought to chant the 'Glory be to the
Father' at the end of each of the psalms instead of saying it."

Theobald looked black- he felt the waters of chanting rising
higher and higher upon him inch by inch; but he felt also, he knew not
why, that he had better yield than fight. So he ordered the "Glory
be to the Father" to be chanted in future, but he did not like it.

"Really, mamma dear," said Charlotte, when the battle was won,
"you should not call it the 'Glory be to the Father'- you should say
'Gloria.'

"Of course, my dear," said Christina, and she said "Gloria" for ever
after. Then she thought what a wonderfully clever girl Charlotte
was, and how she ought to marry no one lower than a bishop.
By-and-by when Theobald went away for an unusually long holiday one
summer, he could find no one but a rather high-church clergyman to
take his duty. This gentleman was a man of weight in the
neighbourhood, having considerable private means, but without
preferment. In the summer he would often help his brother clergymen,
and it was through his being willing to take the duty at Battersby for
a few Sundays that Theobald had been able to get away for so long.
On his return, however, he found that the whole psalms were being
chanted as well as the Glorias. The influential clergyman,
Christina, and Charlotte took the bull by the horns as soon as
Theobald returned, and laughed it all off; and the clergyman laughed
and bounced, and Christina laughed and coaxed, and Charlotte uttered
unexceptionable sentiments, and the thing was done now, and could
not be undone, and it was no use grieving over spilt milk; so
henceforth the psalms were to be chanted, but Theobald grisled over it
in his heart, and he did not like it.

During this same absence what had Mrs. Goodhew and old Miss Wright
taken to doing  but turning towards the east while repeating the
Belief? Theobald disliked this even worse than chanting. When he
said something about it in a timid way at dinner after service,
Charlotte said, "Really, papa dear, you must take to caring it the
'Creed' and not the 'Belief'"; and Theobald winced impatiently and
snorted meek defiance, but the spirit of her aunts Jane and Eliza
was strong in Charlotte, and the thing was too small to fight about,
and he turned it off with a laugh. "As for Charlotte," thought
Christina, "I believe she knows everything." So Mrs. Good. and Miss
Wright continued to turn to the east during the time the Creed was
said, and by-and-by others followed their example, and ere long the
few who had stood out yielded and turned eastward too; and then
Theobald made as though he had thought it all very right and proper
from the first, but like it he did not. By-and-by Charlotte tried to
make him say "Alleluia" instead of "Hallelujah," but this was going
too far, and Theobald turned, and she got frightened and ran away.

And they changed the double chants for single ones, and altered them
psalm by psalm, and in the middle of psalms, just where a cursory
reader would see no reason why they should do so, they changed from
major to minor and from minor back to major; and then they got
"Hymns Ancient and Modern," and, as I have said, they robbed him of
his beloved bands, and they made him preach in a surplice, and he must
have celebration of the Holy Communion once a month instead of only
five times in the year as heretofore, and he struggled in vain against
the unseen influence which he felt to be working in season and out
of season against all that he had been accustomed to consider most
distinctive of his party. Where it was, or what it was, he knew not,
nor exactly what it would do next, but he knew exceedingly well that
go where he would it was undermining him; that it was too persistent
for him; that Christina and Charlotte liked it a great deal better
than he did, and that it could end in nothing but Rome. Easter
decorations indeed! Christmas decorations- in reason- were proper
enough, but Easter decorations! well, it might last his time.

This was the course things had taken in the Church of England during
the last forty years. The set has been steadily in one direction. A
few men who knew what they wanted made catspaws of the Christinas
and the Charlottes, and the Christinas and the Charlottes made
catspaws of the Mrs. Goodhews and the old Miss Wrights, and the Mrs.
Goodhews and old Miss Wrights told the Mr. Goodhews and young Miss
Wrights what they should do, and when the Mr. Goodhews and the young
Miss Wrights did it the little Goodhews and the rest of the
spiritual flock did as they did, and the Theobalds went for nothing;
step by step, day by day, year by year, parish by parish, diocese by
diocese this was how it was done. And yet the Church of England
looks with no friendly eyes upon the theory of Evolution or Descent
with Modification.

My hero thought over these things, and remembered many a ruse on the
part of Christina and Charlotte, and many a detail of the struggle
which I cannot further interrupt my story to refer to, and he
remembered his father's favourite retort that it could only end in
Rome. When he was a boy he had firmly believed this, but he smiled now
as he thought of another alternative clear enough to himself, but so
horrible that it had not even occurred to Theobald- I mean the
toppling over of the whole system. At that time he welcomed the hope
that the absurdities and unrealities of the Church would end in her
downfall. Since then he has come to think very differently, not as
believing in the cow jumping over the moon more than he used to, or
more, probably, than nine-tenths of the clergy themselves- who know as
well as he does that their outward and visible symbols are out of
date- but because he knows the baffling complexity of the problem when
it comes to deciding what is actually to be done. Also, now that he
has seen them more closely, he knows better the nature of those wolves
in sheep's clothing, who are thirsting for the blood of their
victim, and exulting so clamorously over its anticipated early fall
into their clutches. The spirit behind the Church is true, though
her letter -true once -is now true no longer. The spirit behind the
High Priests of Science is as lying as its letter. The Theobalds,
who do what they do because it seems to be the correct thing, but
who in their hearts neither like it nor believe in it, are in
reality the least dangerous of all classes to the peace and
liberties of mankind. The man to fear is he who goes at things with
the cocksureness of pushing vulgarity and self-conceit. These are
not vices which can be justly laid to the charge of the English
clergy.

Many of the farmers came up to Ernest when service was over, and
shook hands with him. He found everyone knew of his having come into a
fortune. The fact was that Theobald had immediately told two or
three of the greatest gossips in the village, and the story was not
long in spreading. "It simplified matters," he had said to himself, "a
good deal." Ernest was civil to Mrs. Goodhew for her husband's sake,
but he gave Miss Wright the cut direct, for he knew that she was
only Charlotte in disguise.

A week passed slowly away. Two or three times the family took the
sacrament together round Christina's death-bed. Theobald's
impatience became more and more transparent daily, but fortunately
Christina (who even if she had been well would have been ready to shut
her eyes to it) became weaker and less coherent in mind also, so
that she hardly, if at all, perceived it. After Ernest had been in the
house about a week his mother fell into a comatose state which
lasted a couple of days, and in the end went away so peacefully that
it was like the blending of sea and sky in mid-ocean upon a soft
hazy day when none can say where the earth ends and the heavens begin.
Indeed she died to the realities of life with less pain than she had
waked from many of its illusions.

"She has been the comfort and mainstay of my life for more than
thirty years," said Theobald as soon as all was over, "but one could
not wish it prolonged," and he buried his face in his handkerchief
to conceal his want of emotion.

Ernest came back to town the day after his mother's death, and
returned to the funeral accompanied by myself. He wanted me to see his
father in order to prevent any possible misapprehension about Miss
Pontifex's intentions, and I was such an old friend of the family that
my presence at Christina's funeral would surprise no one. With all her
faults I had always rather liked Christina. She would have chopped
Ernest or anyone else into little pieces of mincemeat to gratify the
slightest wish of her husband, but she would not have chopped him up
for anyone else, and so long as he did not cross her she was very fond
of him. By nature she was of an even temper, more willing to be
pleased than ruffled, very ready to do a good-natured action, provided
it did not cost her much exertion, nor involve expense to Theobald.
Her own little purse did not matter; anyone might have as much of that
as he or she could get after she had reserved what was absolutely
necessary for her dress. I could not hear of her end as Ernest
described it to me without feeling very compassionate towards her,
indeed her own son could hardly have felt more so; I at once,
therefore, consented to go down to the funeral; perhaps I was also
influenced by a desire to see Charlotte and Joey, in whom I felt
interested on hearing what my godson had told me.

I found Theobald looking remarkably well. Everyone said he was
bearing it so beautifully. He did indeed once or twice shake his
head and say that his wife had been the comfort and mainstay of his
life for over thirty years, but there the matter ended. I stayed
over the next day, which was Sunday, and took my departure on the
following morning after having told Theobald all that his son wished
me to tell him. Theobald asked me to help him with Christina's
epitaph.

"I would say," said he, "as little as possible; eulogies of the
departed are in most cases both unnecessary and untrue. Christina's
epitaph shall contain nothing which shall be either the one or the
other. I should give her name, the dates of her birth and death, and
of course say she was my wife, and then I think I should wind up with
a simple text-her favourite one for example, none indeed could be more
appropriate, 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.'

I said I thought this would be very nice, and it was settled. So
Ernest was sent to give the order to Mr. Prosser, the stonemason in
the nearest town, who said it came from "the Beetitudes."

                          CHAPTER LXXXIV


"ON our way to town Ernest broached his plans for spending the
next year or two. I wanted him to try to get more into society
again, but he brushed this aside at once as the very last thing he had
a fancy for. For society indeed of all sorts, except of course that of
a few intimate friends, he had an unconquerable aversion. "I always
did hate those people," he said, "and they always have hated and
always will hate me. I am an Ishmael by instinct as much as by
accident of circumstances, but if I keep out of society I shall be
less vulnerable than Ishmaels generally are. The moment a man goes
into society, he becomes vulnerable all round."

I was very sorry to hear him talk in this way; for whatever strength
a man may have he should surely be able to make more of it if he act
in concert than alone. I said this.

"I don't care," he answered, "whether I make the most of my strength
or not; I don't know whether I have any strength, but if I have I
daresay it will find some way of exerting itself. I will live as I
like living, not as other people would like me to live; thanks to my
aunt and you, I can afford the luxury of a quiet, unobtrusive life
of self-indulgence," said he laughing, "and I mean to have it. You
know I like writing," he added after a pause of some minutes; "I
have been a scribbler for years. If I am to come to the fore at all it
must be by writing."

I had already long since come to that conclusion myself.

"Well," he continued, "there are a lot of things that want saying
which no one dares to say, a lot of shams which want attacking, and
yet no one attacks them. It seems to me that I can say things which
not another man in England except myself will venture to say, and
yet which are crying to be said."

I said: "But who will listen? If you say things which nobody else
would dare to say, is not this much the same as saying what everyone
except yourself knows to be better left unsaid just now?"

"Perhaps," said he, "but I don't know it; I am bursting with these
things, and it is my fate to say them."

I knew there would be no stopping him, so I gave in and asked what
question he felt a special desire to burn his fingers with in the
first instance.

"Marriage," he rejoined promptly, "and the power of disposing of his
property after a man is dead. The question of Christianity is
virtually settled, or if not settled there is no lack of those engaged
in settling it. The question of the day now is marriage and the family
system."

"That," said I drily, "is a hornets' nest indeed."

"Yes," said he no less drily, "but hornets' nests are exactly what I
happen to like. Before, however, I begin to stir up this particular
one I propose to travel for a few years, with the especial object of
finding out what nations now existing are the best, comeliest, and
most lovable, and also what nations have been so in times past. I want
to find out how these people live, and have lived, and what their
customs are.

"I have very vague notions upon the subject as yet, but the
general impression I have formed is that, putting ourselves on one
side, the most vigorous and amiable of known nations are the modern
Italians, the old Greeks and Romans, and the South Sea Islanders. I
believe that these nice peoples have not as a general rule been
purists, but I want to see those of them who can yet be seen; they are
the practical authorities on the question -What is best for man? and I
should like to see them and find out what they do. Let us settle the
fact first and fight about the moral tendencies afterwards."

"In fact," said I laughingly, "you mean to have high old times."

"Neither higher nor lower," was the answer, "than those people
whom I can find to have been the best in all ages. But let us change
the subject." He put his hand into his pocket and brought out a
letter. "My father," he said, "gave me this letter this morning with
the seal already broken." He passed it over to me, and I found it to
be the one which Christina had written before the birth of her last
child, and which I have given in an earlier  chapter.

"And you do not find this letter," said I, "affects the conclusion
which you have just told me you have come to concerning your present
plans?"

He smiled, and answered: "No. But if you do what you have
sometimes talked about and turn the adventures of my unworthy self
into a novel, mind you print this letter."

"Why so?" said I, feeling as though such a letter as this should
have been held sacred from the public gaze.

"Because my mother would have wished it published; if she had
known you were writing about me and had this letter in your
possession, she would above all things have desired that you should
publish it. Therefore publish it if you write at all."

This is why I have done so.

Within a month Ernest carried his intention into effect, and
having made all the arrangements necessary for his children's welfare,
left England before Christmas.

I heard from him now and again and learnt that he was visiting
almost all parts of the world, but only staying in those places
where he found the inhabitants unusually good-looking and agreeable.
He said he had filled an immense quantity of note-books, and I have no
doubt he had. At last in the spring of 1867 he returned, his luggage
stained with the variation of each hotel advertisement 'twixt here and
Japan. He looked very brown and strong, and so well favoured that it
almost seemed as if he must have caught some good looks from the
people among whom he had been living. He came back to his old rooms in
the Temple, and settled down as easily as if he had never been away
a day.

One of the first things we did was to go and see the children; we
took the train to Gravesend, and walked thence for a few miles along
the riverside till we came to the solitary house where the good people
lived with whom Ernest had placed them. It was a lovely April morning,
but with a fresh air blowing from off the sea; the tide was high,
and the river was alive with shipping coming up with wind and tide.
Sea-gulls wheeled around us overhead, seaweed clung everywhere to
the banks which the advancing tide had not yet covered, everything was
of the sea sea-ey, and the fine bracing air which blew over the
water made me feel more hungry than I had done for many a day; I did
not see how children could live in a better physical atmosphere than
this, and applauded the selection which had made on behalf of his
youngsters.

While we were still a quarter of a mile off we heard shouts and
children's laughter, and could see a lot of boys and girls romping
together and running after one another. We could not distinguish our
own two, but when we got near they were soon made out, for the other
children were blue-eyed, flaxen-pated little folks, whereas ours
were dark and straight-haired.

We had written to say that we were coming, but had desired that
nothing should be said to the children, so these paid no more
attention to us than they would have done to any other stranger who
happened to visit a spot so unfrequented except by sea-faring folk,
which we plainly were not. The interest, however, in us was much
quickened when it was discovered that we had got our pockets full of
oranges and sweeties, to an extent greater than it had entered into
their small imaginations to conceive as possible. At first we had
great difficulty in making them come near us. They were like a lot
of wild young colts, very inquisitive, but very coy and not to be
cajoled easily. The children were nine in all- five boys and two girls
belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Rollings, and two to Ernest. I never saw a
finer lot of children than the young Rollingses- the boys were
hardy, robust, fearless little fellows with eyes as clear as hawks;
the elder girl was exquisitely pretty, but the younger one was a
mere baby. I felt as I looked at them that if I had had children of my
own I could have wished no better home for them, nor better
companions.

Georgie and Alice, Ernest's two children, were evidently quite as
one family with the others, and called Mr. and Mrs. Rollings uncle and
aunt. They had been so young when they were first brought to the house
that they had been looked upon in the light of new babies who had been
born into the family. They knew nothing about Mr. and Mrs. Rollings
being paid so much a week to look after them. Ernest asked them all
what they wanted to be. They had only one idea; one and all, Georgie
among the rest, wanted to be bargemen. Young ducks could hardly have a
more evident hankering after the water.

"And what do you want, Alice?" said Ernest.

"Oh," she said, "I'm going to marry Jack here, and be a bargeman's
wife."

Jack was the eldest boy, now nearly twelve, a sturdy little
fellow, the image of what Mr. Rollings must have been at his age. As
we looked at him, so straight and well grown and well done all
round, I could see it was in Ernest's mind as much as in mine that she
could hardly do much better.

"Come here, Jack, my boy," said Ernest, "here's a shilling for you."
The boy blushed and could hardly be got to come in spite of our
previous blandishments; he had had pennies given him before, but
shillings never. His father caught him good-naturedly by the ear and
lugged him to us.

"He's a good boy, Jack is," said Ernest to Mr. Rollings, "I'm sure
of that."

"Yes," said Mr. Rollings, "he's a werry good boy, only that I
can't get him to learn his reading and writing. He don't like going to
school- that's the only complaint I have against him. I don't know
what's the matter with all my children, and yours, Mr. Pontifex, is as
bad, but they none of 'em likes book learning, though they learn
anything else fast enough. Why, as for Jack here, he's almost as
good a bargeman as I am." And he looked fondly and patronisingly
towards his offspring.

"I think," said Ernest to Mr. Rollings, "if he wants to marry
Alice when he gets older he had better do so, and he shall have as
many barges as he likes. In the meantime, Mr. Rollings, say in what
way money can be of use to you, and whatever you can make useful is at
your disposal."

I need hardly say that Ernest made matters easy for this good
couple; one stipulation, however, he insisted on, namely, there was to
be no more smuggling, and that the young people were to be kept out of
this; for a little bird had told Ernest that smuggling in a quiet
way was one of the resources of the Rollings family. Mr. Rollings
was not sorry to assent to this, and I believe it is now many years
since the coastguard people have suspected any of the Rollings
family as offenders against the revenue law.

"Why should I take them from where they are," said Ernest to me in
the train as we went home, "to send them to schools where they will
not be one half so happy, and where their illegitimacy will very
likely be a worry to them? Georgie wants to be a bargeman, let him
begin as one, the sooner the better; he may as well begin with this as
with anything else; then if he shows developments I can be on the
lookout to encourage them and make things easy for him; while if he
shows no desire to go ahead, what on earth is the good of trying to
shove him forward?"

Ernest, I believe, went on with a homily upon education generally,
and upon the way in which young people should go through the embryonic
stages with their money as much as with their limbs, beginning life in
a much lower social position than that in which their parents were,
and a lot more, which he has since published; but I was getting on
in years, and the walk and the bracing air had made me sleepy, so
ere we had got past Greenhithe Station on our return journey I had
sunk into a refreshing sleep.

                          CHAPTER LXXXV


ERNEST, being about two-and-thirty years old and having had his
fling for the last three or four years, now settled down in London,
and began to write steadily. Up to this time he had given abundant
promise, but had produced nothing, nor indeed did he come before the
public for another three or four years yet.

He lived as I have said very quietly, secing hardly anyone but
myself, and the three or four old friends with whom I had been
intimate for years. Ernest and we formed our little set, and outside
of this my godson was hardly known at all.

His main expense was travelling, which he indulged in at frequent
intervals, but for short times only. Do what he would he could not get
through more than about fifteen hundred a year; the rest of his income
he gave away if he happened to find a case where he thought money
would be well bestowed, or put by until some opportunity arose of
getting rid of it with advantage.

I knew he was writing, but we had had so many little differences
of opinion upon this head that by a tacit understanding the subject
was seldom referred to between us, and I did not know that he was
actually publishing till one day he brought me a book and told me that
it was his own. I opened it and found it to be a series of
semitheological, semi-social essays, purporting to have been written
by six or seven different people, and viewing the same class of
subjects from different standpoints.

People had not yet forgotten the famous "Essays and Reviews," and
Ernest had wickedly given a few touches to at least two of the
essays which suggested vaguely that they had been written by a bishop.
The essays were all of them in support of the Church of England, and
appeared both by implied internal suggestion and their prima facie
purport to be the work of some half-dozen men of experience and high
position who had determined to face the difficult questions of the day
no less boldly from within the bosom of the Church than the Church's
enemies had faced them from without her pale.

There was an essay on the external evidences of the Resurrection;
another on the marriage laws of the most eminent nations of the
world in times past and present; another was devoted to a
consideration of the many questions which must be reopened and
reconsidered on their merits if the teaching of the Church of
England were to cease to carry moral authority with it; another
dealt with the more purely social subject of middle class destitution;
another with the authenticity or rather the unauthenticity of the
fourth gospel; another was headed "Irrational Rationalism," and
there were two or three more.

They were all written vigorously and fearlessly as though by
people used to authority; all granted that the Church professed to
enjoin belief in much which no one could accept who had been
accustomed to weigh evidence; but it was contended that so much
valuable truth had got so closely mixed up with these mistakes that
the mistakes had better not be meddled with. To lay great stress on
these was like cavilling at the queen's right to reign, on the
ground that William the Conqueror was illegitimate.

One article maintained that though it would be inconvenient to
change the words of our prayer book and articles, it would not be
inconvenient to change in a quiet way the meanings which we put upon
those words. This, it was argued, was what was actually done in the
case of law; this had been the law's mode of growth and adaptation,
and had in all ages been found a righteous and convenient method of
effecting change. It was suggested that the Church should adopt it.

In another essay it was boldly denied that the Church rested upon
reason. It was proved incontestably that its ultimate foundation was
and ought to be faith, there being indeed no other ultimate foundation
than this for any of man's beliefs. If so, the writer claimed that the
Church could not be upset by reason. It was founded, like everything
else, on initial assumptions, that is to say on faith, and if it was
to be upset it was to be upset by faith, by the faith of those who
in their lives appeared more graceful, more lovable, better bred, in
fact, and better able to overcome difficulties. Any sect which
showed its superiority in these respects might carry all before it,
but none other would make much headway for long together. Christianity
was true in so far as it had fostered beauty, and it had fostered much
beauty. It was false in so far as it fostered ugliness, and it had
fostered much ugliness. It was therefore not a little true and not a
little false; on the whole one might go farther and fare worse; the
wisest course would be to live with it, and make the best and not
the worst of it. The writer urged that we become persecutors as a
matter of course as soon as we begin to feel very strongly upon any
subject; we ought not therefore to do this; we ought not to feel
very strongly even upon that institution which was dearer to the
writer than any other- the Church of England. We should be
churchmen, but somewhat lukewarm churchmen, inasmuch as those who care
very much about either religion or irreligion are seldom observed to
be very well bred or agreeable people. The Church herself should
approach as nearly to that of Laodicea as was compatible with her
continuing to be a Church at all, and each individual member should
only be hot in striving to be as lukewarm as possible.

The book rang with the courage alike of conviction and of an
entire absence of conviction; it appeared to be the work of men who
had a rule-of-thumb way of steering between iconoclasm on the one hand
and credulity on the other; who cut Gordian knots as a matter of
course when it suited their convenience; who shrank from no conclusion
in theory, nor from any want of logic in practice so long as they were
illogical of malice prepense, and for what they held to be
sufficient reason. The conclusions were conservative, quietistic,
comforting. The arguments by which they were reached were taken from
the most advanced writers of the day. All that these people
contended for was granted them, but the fruits of victory were for the
most part handed over to those already in possession.

Perhaps the passage which attracted most attention in the book was
one from the essay on the various marriage systems of the world. It
ran:

"If people require us to construct," exclaimed the writer, "we set
good breeding as the corner-stone of our edifice. We would have it
ever present consciously or unconsciously in the minds of all as the
central faith in which they should live and move and have their being,
as the touchstone of all things whereby they may be known as good or
evil according as they make for good breeding or against.

That a man should have been bred well and breed others well; that
his figure, head, hands, feet, voice, manner, and clothes should carry
conviction upon this point, so that no one can look at him without
seeing that he has come of good stock and is likely to throw good
stock himself, this is the desiderandum. And the same with a woman.
The greatest number of these well-bred men and women, and the greatest
happiness of these well-bred men and women, this is the highest
good; towards this all government, all social conventions, all art,
literature, and science should directly or indirectly tend. Holy men
and holy women are those who keep this unconsciously in view at all
times whether of work or pastime."

If Ernest had published this work in his own name I should think
it would have fallen still-born from the press, but the form he had
chosen was calculated at that time to arouse curiosity, and as I
have said he had wickedly dropped a few hints which the reviewers
did not think anyone would have been impudent enough to do if he
were not a bishop, or at any rate someone in authority. A well-known
judge was spoken of as being another of the writers, and the idea
spread ere long that six or seven of the leading bishops and judges
had laid their heads together to produce a volume, which should at
once outbid "Essays and Reviews" and counteract the influence of
that then still famous work.

Reviewers are men of like passions with ourselves, and with them
as with everyone else omne ignotum pro magnifico. The book was
really an able one and abounded with humour, just satire, and good
sense. It struck a new note, and the speculation which for some time
was rife concerning its authorship made many turn to it who would
never have looked at it otherwise. One of the most gushing weeklies
had a fit over it, and declared it to be the finest thing that had
been done since the "Provincial Letters" of Pascal. Once a month or so
that weekly always found some picture which was the finest that had
been done since the old masters, or some satire that was the finest
that had appeared since Swift or some something which was incomparably
the finest that had appeared since something else. If Ernest had put
his name to the book, and the writer had known that it was by a
nobody, he would doubtless have written in a very different strain.
Reviewers like to think that for aught they know they are patting a
duke or even a prince of the blood upon the back, and lay it on
thick till they find they have been only praising Brown, Jones, or
Robinson. Then they are disappointed, and as a general rule will pay
Brown, Jones, or Robinson out.

Ernest was not so much up to the ropes of the literary world as I
was, and I am afraid his head was a little turned when he woke up
one morning to find himself famous. He was Christina's son, and
perhaps would not have been able to do what he had done if he were not
capable of occasional undue elation. Ere long, however, he found out
all about it, and settled quietly down to write a series of books,
in which he insisted on saying things which no one else would say even
if they could, or could even if they would.

He has got himself a bad literary character. I said to him
laughingly one day that he was like the man in the last century of
whom it was said that nothing but such a character could keep down
such parts.

He laughed and said he would rather be like that than like a
modern writer or two whom he could name, whose parts were so poor that
they could be kept up by nothing but by such a character.

I remember soon after one of these books was published I happened to
meet Mrs. Jupp to whom, by the way, Ernest made a small weekly
allowance. It was at Ernest's chambers, and for some reason we were
left alone for a few minutes. I said to her: "Mr. Pontifex has written
another book, Mrs. Jupp."

"Lor' now," said she, "has he really? Dear gentleman! Is it about
love?" And the old sinner threw up a wicked sheep's eye glance at me
from under her aged eyelids. I forget what there was in my reply which
provoked it- probably nothing- but she went rattling on at full
speed to the effect that Bell had given her a ticket for the opera.
"So, of course," she said, "I went. I didn't understand one word of
it, for it was all French, but I saw their legs. Oh dear, oh dear! I'm
afraid I shan't be here much longer, and when dear Mr. Pontifex sees
me in my coffin he'll say, 'Poor old Jupp, she'll never talk broad any
more'; but bless you I'm not so old as all that, and I'm taking
lessons in dancing."

At this moment Ernest came in and the conversation was changed. Mrs.
Jupp asked if he was still going on writing more books now that this
one was done. course I am," he answered; "I'm always writing books;
here is the manuscript of my next"; and he showed her a heap of paper.

"Well now," she exclaimed, "dear, dear me, and is that manuscript?
I've often heard talk about manuscripts, but I never thought I
should live to see some myself. Well! well! So that is really
manuscript?"

There were a few geraniums in the window and they did not look well.
Ernest asked Mrs. Jupp if she understood flowers. "I understand the
language of flowers," she said, with one of her most bewitching leers,
and on this we sent her off till she should choose to honour us with
another visit, which she knows she is privileged from time to time
to do, for Ernest likes her.

                          CHAPTER LXXXVI


AND now I must bring my story to a close.

The preceding chapter was written soon after the events it
records- that is to say in the spring of 1867. By that time my story
had been written up to this point; but it has been altered here and
there from time to time occasionally. It is now the autumn of 1882,
and if I am to say more I should do so quickly, for I am eighty
years old and though well in health cannot conceal from myself that
I am no longer young. Ernest himself is forty-seven, though he
hardly looks it.

He is richer than ever, for he has never married and his London
and North-Western shares have nearly doubled themselves. Through sheer
inability to spend his income he has been obliged to hoard in
self-defence. He still lives in the Temple in the same rooms I took
for him when he gave up his shop, for no one has been able to induce
him to take a house. His house, he says, is wherever there is a good
hotel. When he is in town he likes to work and to be quiet. When out
of town he feels that he has left little behind him that can go wrong,
and he would not like to be tied to a single locality. "I know no
exception," he says, "to the rule that it is cheaper to buy milk
than to keep a cow."

As I have mentioned Mrs. Jupp, I may as well say here the little
that remains to be said about her. She is a very old woman now, but no
one now living, as she says triumphantly, can say how old, for the
woman in the Old Kent Road is dead, and presumably has carried her
secret to the grave. Old, however, though she is, she lives in the
same house, and finds it hard work to make the two ends meet, but I do
not know that she minds this very much, and it has prevented her
from getting more to drink than would be good for her. It is no use
trying to do anything for her beyond paying her allowance weekly,
and absolutely refusing to let her anticipate it. She pawns her flat
iron every Saturday for 4d., and takes it out every Monday morning for
4 1/2d. when she gets her allowance, and has done this for the last
ten years as regularly as the week comes round. As long as she does
not let the flat iron actually go we know that she can still worry out
her financial problems in her own hugger-mugger way and had better
be left to do so. If the flat iron were to go beyond redemption, we
should know that it was time to interfere. I do not know why, but
there is something about her which always reminds me of a woman who
was as unlike her as one person can be to another- I mean Ernest's
mother.

The last time I had a long gossip with her was about two years ago
when she came to me instead of to Ernest. She said she had seen a
cab drive up just as she was going to enter the staircase, and had
seen Mr. Pontifex's pa put his Beelzebub old head out of the window,
so she had come on to me, for she hadn't greased her sides for no
curtsey, not for the likes of him. She professed to be very much
down on her luck. Her lodgers did use her so dreadful going away
without paying and leaving not so much as a stick behind, but to-day
she was as pleased as a penny carrot. She had had such a lovely dinner
-a cushion of ham and green peas. She had had a good cry over it,
but then she was so silly, she was.

"And there's that Bell," she continued, though I could not detect
any appearance of connection, "it's enough to give anyone the hump
to see him now that he's taken to chapel-going, and his mother's
prepared to meet Jesus and all that to me, and now she ain't a-going
to die, and drinks half a bottle of champagne a day, and then Grigg,
him as preaches, you know, asked Bell if I really was too gay, not but
what when I was young I'd snap my fingers at any 'fly by night' in
Holborn, and if I was togged out and had my teeth I'd do it now. I
lost my poor dear Watkins, but of course that couldn't be helped,
and then I lost my dear Rose. Silly faggot to go and ride on a cart
and catch the bronchitics. I never thought when I kissed my dear
Rose in Pullen's Passage and she gave me the chop, that I should never
see her again, and her gentleman friend was fond her too, though he
was a married man. I daresay she's gone to bits by now. If she could
rise and see me with my bad finger, she would cry, and I should say,
'Never mind, ducky, I'm all right.' Oh! dear, it's coming on to
rain. I do hate a wet Saturday night- poor women with their nice white
stockings and their living to get," etc., etc.

And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner, as people would
say it ought to do. Whatever life she has led, it has agreed with
her very sufficiently. At times she gives us to understand that she is
still much solicited; at others she takes quite a different tone.
She has not allowed even Joe King so much as to put his lips to hers
this ten years. She would rather have a mutton chop any day. "But
ah! you should have seen me when I was sweet seventeen. I was the very
moral of my poor dear mother, and she was a pretty woman, though I say
it that shouldn't. She had such a splendid mouth of teeth. It was a
sin to bury her in her teeth."

I only knew of one thing at which she professes to be shocked. It is
that her son Tom and his wife Topsy are teaching the baby to swear.
"Oh! it's too dreadful awful," she exclaimed; "I don't know the
meaning of the words, but I tell him he's a drunken sot." I believe
the old woman in reality rather likes it.

"But surely, Mrs. Jupp," said I, "Tom's wife used not to be Topsy.
You used to speak of her as Pheeb."

"Ah! yes," she answered, "but Pheeb behaved bad, and it's Topsy
now."

Ernest's daughter Alice married the boy who had been her playmate
more than a year ago. Ernest gave them all they said they wanted and a
good deal more. They have already presented him with a grandson, and I
doubt not will do so with many more. Georgie though only twenty-one is
owner of a fine steamer which his father has bought for him. He
began when about thirteen going with old Rollings and Jack in the
barge from Rochester to the upper Thames with bricks; then his
father bought him and Jack barges of their own, and then he bought
them both ships, and then steamers. I do not exactly know how people
make money by having a steamer, but he does whatever is usual, and
from I can gather makes it pay extremely well. He is a good deal
like his father in the face, but without a spark- so far as I have
been able to observe- of any literary ability; he has a fair sense
of humour and abundance of common sense, but his instinct is clearly a
practical one. I am not sure that he does not put me in mind almost
more of what Theobald would have been if he had been a sailor, than of
Ernest. Ernest used to go down to Battersby and stay with his father
for a few days twice a year until Theobald's death, and the pair
continued on excellent terms, in spite of what the neighbouring clergy
call "the atrocious books which Mr. Ernest Pontifex" has written.
Perhaps the harmony, or rather absence of discord, which subsisted
between the pair was due to the fact that Theobald had never looked
into the inside of one of his son's works, and Ernest, of course,
never alluded to them in his father's presence. The pair, as I have
said, got on excellently, but it was doubtless as well that Ernest's
visits were short and not too frequent. Once Theobald wanted Ernest to
bring his children, but Ernest knew they would not like it, so this
was not done.

Sometimes Theobald came up to town on small business matters and
paid a visit to Ernest's chambers; he generally brought with him a
couple of lettuces, or a cabbage, or half-a-dozen turnips done up in a
piece of brown paper, and told Ernest that he knew fresh vegetables
were rather hard to get in London, and he had brought him some. Ernest
had often explained to him that the vegetables were of no use to
him, and that he had rather he would not bring them; but Theobald
persisted, I believe through sheer love of doing something which his
son did not like, but which was too small to take notice of.

He lived until about twelve months ago, when he was found dead in
his bed on the morning after having written the following letter to
his son:


"DEAR ERNEST,- I've nothing particular to write about, but your
letter has been lying for some days in the limbo of unanswered
letters, to wit my pocket, and it's time it was answered.

"I keep wonderfully well and am able to walk my five or six miles
with comfort, but at my age there's no knowing how long it will
last, and time flies quickly. I have been busy potting plants all
the morning, but this afternoon is wet.

"What is this horrid Government going to do with Ireland? I don't
exactly wish they'd blow up Mr. Gladstone, but if a mad bull would
chivy him there, and he would never come back any more, I should not
be sorry. Lord Hartington is not exactly the man I should like to
set in his place, but he would be immeasurably better than Gladstone.

"I miss your sister Charlotte more than I can express. She kept my
household accounts, and I could pour out to her all my little
worries, and now that Joey is married too, I don't know what I
should do if one or other them did not come sometimes and take care of
me. My only comfort is that Charlotte will make her husband happy, and
that he is as nearly worthy of her as a husband can well be.-Believe
me, Your affectionate father,

                                   "THEOBALD PONTIFEX."


I may say in passing that though Theobald speaks of Charlotte's
marriage as though it were recent, it had really taken place some
six years previously, she being then about thirty-eight years old, and
her husband about seven years younger.

There was no doubt that Theobald passed peacefully away during his
sleep. Can a man who died thus be said to have died at all? He has
presented the phenomena of death to other people, but in respect of
himself he has not only not died, but has not even thought that he was
going to die. This is not more than half dying, but then neither was
his life more than half living. He presented so many of the
phenomena of living that I suppose on the whole it would be less
trouble to think of him as having been alive than as never having been
born at all, but this is only possible because association does not
stick to the strict letter of its bond.

This, however, was not the general verdict concerning him, and the
general verdict is often the truest.

Ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of condolence and respect
for his father's memory. "He never," said Dr. Martin, the old doctor
who brought Ernest into the world, "spoke an ill word against
anyone. He was not only liked, he was beloved by all who had
anything to do with him."

"A more perfectly just and righteously dealing man," said the family
solicitor, "I have never had anything to do with- nor one more
punctual in the discharge of every business obligation."

"We shall miss him sadly," the bishop wrote to Joey in the very
warmest terms. The poor were in consternation. "The well's never
missed," said one old woman, "till it's dry," and she only said what
everyone else felt. Ernest knew that the general regret was unaffected
as for a loss which could not be easily repaired. He felt that there
were only three people in the world who joined insincerely in the
tribute of applause, and these were the very three who could least
show their want of sympathy. I mean Joey, Charlotte, and himself. He
felt bitter against himself for being of a mind with either Joey or
Charlotte upon any subject, and thankful that he must conceal his
being so as far as possible, not because of anything his father had
done to him- these grievances were too old to  be remembered now-
but because he would never allow him to feel towards him as he was
always trying to feel. As long as communication was confined to the
merest commonplace all went well, but if these were departed from ever
such a little he invariably felt that his father's instincts showed
themselves in immediate opposition to his own. When he was attacked
his father laid whatever stress was possible on everything which his
opponents said. If he met with any check his father was clearly
pleased. What the old doctor had said about Theobald's speaking ill of
no man was perfectly true as regards others than himself, but he
knew very well that no one had injured his reputation in a quiet
way, so far as he dared to do, more than his own father. This is a
very common case and a very natural one. It often happens that if
the son is right, the father is wrong, and the father is not going
to have this if he can help it.

It was very hard, however, to say what was the true root of the
mischief in the present case. It was not Ernest's having been
imprisoned. Theobald forgot all about that much sooner than nine
fathers out of ten would have done. Partly, no doubt, it was due to
incompatibility of temperament, but I believe the main ground of
complaint lay in the fact that he had been so independent and so
rich while still very young, and that thus the old gentleman had
been robbed of his power to tease and scratch in the way which he felt
he was entitled to do. The love of teasing in a small way when he felt
safe in doing so had remained part of his nature from the days when he
told his nurse that he would keep her on purpose to torment her. I
suppose it is so with all of us. At any rate I am sure that most
fathers, especially if they are clergymen, are like Theobald.

He did not in reality, I am convinced, like Joey or Charlotte one
whit better than he liked Ernest. He did not like anyone or
anything, or if he liked anyone at all it was his butler, who looked
after him when he was not well, and took great care of him and
believed him to be the best and ablest man in the whole world. Whether
this faithful and attached servant continued to think this after
Theobald's will was opened and it was found what kind of legacy had
been left him I know not. Of his children, the baby who had died at
a day old was the only one whom he held to have treated him quite
filially. As for Christina he hardly ever pretended to miss her and
never mentioned her name; but this was taken as a proof that he felt
her loss too keenly to be able ever to speak of her. It may have
been so, but I do not think it.

Theobald's effects were sold by auction, and among them the
Harmony of the Old and New Testaments which he had compiled during
many years with such exquisite neatness and a huge collection of MS.
sermons- being all in fact that he had ever written. These and the
Harmony fetched nine-pence a barrow load. I was surprised to hear that
Joey had not given the three or four shillings which would have bought
the whole lot, but Ernest tells me that Joey was far fiercer in his
dislike of his father than ever he had been himself, and wished to get
rid of that I reminded him of him.

It has already appeared that both Joey and Charlotte are Joey has
a family, but he and Ernest very rarely have any intercourse. Of
course, Ernest took nothing under his father's will; this had long
been understood, so that the other two are both well provided for.

Charlotte is as clever as ever, and sometimes asks Ernest to come
and stay with her and her husband near Dover, I suppose because she
knows that the invitation will not be agreeable to him. There is a
de haut en bas tone in all her letters; it is rather hard to lay one's
finger upon it, but Ernest never gets a letter from her without
feeling that he is being written to by one who has had direct
communication with an angel. "What an awful creature," he once said to
me, "that angel must have been if it had anything to do with making
Charlotte what she is."

"Could you like," she wrote to him not long ago, "the thoughts of
a little sea change here? The top of the cliffs will soon be bright
with heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather I
should think begun, to judge by the state of the hill at Ewell, and
heather or no heather the cliffs are always beautiful, and if you come
your room shall be cosy so that you may have a resting corner to
yourself. Nineteen and sixpence is the price of a return ticket
which covers a month. Would you decide just as you would yourself
like, only if you come we would hope to try and make it bright for
you; but you must not feel it a burden on your mind if you feel
disinclined to come in this direction."

"When I have a bad nightmare," said Ernest to me, laughing as he
showed me this letter, "I dream that I have got to stay with
Charlotte."

Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and I believe
it is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real
literary power than Ernest has. Sometimes we think that she is writing
at him as much as to say, "There now- don't you think you are the only
one of us who can write; read this! And if you want a telling bit of
descriptive writing for your next book, you can make what use of it
you like." I daresay she writes very well, but she has fallen under
the dominion of the words "hope," "think," "feel," "try," "bright,"
and "little," and can hardly write a page without introducing all
these words and some of them more than once. All this has the effect
of making her style monotonous.

Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late
years has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire. He
finds it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble
through getting into the key of sharp after beginning in the key of
and being unable to get back again.

"Getting into the key of C sharp," he said, "is like an
unprotected female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding
herself at Shepherd's Bush, without quite knowing where she wants to
go to. How is she ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction? And
Clapham Junction won't quite do either, for Clapham Junction is like
the diminished seventh- susceptible of such unharmonic change, that
you can resolve it into all the possible termini of music."

Talking of music reminds me of a little passage that took place
between Ernest and Miss Skinner, Dr. Skinner's eldest daughter, not so
very long ago. Dr. Skinner had long left Roughborough, and had
become Dean of a Cathedral in one of our Midland counties -a
position which exactly suited him. Finding himself once in the
neighbourhood Ernest called, for old acquaintance sake, and was
hospitably entertained at lunch.

Thirty years had whitened the Doctor's bushy eyebrows-his hair
they could not whiten. I believe that but for that wig he would have
been made a bishop.

His voice and manner were unchanged, and when Ernest, remarking upon
a plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the
Quirinal, he replied with all his wonted pomp: "Yes, the Quirinal-
or as I myself prefer to call it, the Quirinal." After this triumph he
inhaled a long breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung it
back again into the face of Heaven, as in his finest form during his
head-mastership. At lunch he did indeed once say, "next to
impossible to think of anything else," but he immediately corrected
himself and substituted the words, "next to impossible to entertain
irrelevant ideas," after which he seemed to feel a good deal more
comfortable. Ernest saw the familiar volumes of Dr. Skinner's works
upon the book-shelves in the Deanery dining-room, but he saw no copy
of "Rome or the Bible-Which?"

"And are you still as fond of music as ever, Mr. Pontifex?" said
Miss Skinner to Ernest during the course of lunch.

"Of some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did
like modern music."

"Isn't that rather dreadful? -Don't you think you rather"-she was
going to have added, "ought to?" but she left it unsaid, feeling
doubtless that she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning.

"I would like modern music, if I could; I have been trying all my
life to like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow."

"And pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?"

"With Sebastian Bach."

"And don't you like Beethoven?"

"No; I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now
that I never really liked him."

"Ah! how can you say so? You cannot understand him- you never
could say this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of
Beethoven is enough. This is happiness."

Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father -a
likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which
extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he
had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the Doctor
in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner
saying, as though it were an epitaph:

                            "Stay:
                     I may presently take
                  A simple chord of Beethoven
                      Or a small semiquaver
           From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."

After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so
with the Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old
gentleman was pleased and flattered beyond his wont. He rose and
bowed. "These expressions," he said, voce sua, "are very valuable to
me." "They are but a small part, sir," rejoined Ernest, "of what any
one of your old pupils must feel towards you." and the pair danced
as it were a minuet at end of the dining-room table in front of the
old bay window that looked upon the smooth shaven lawn. On this Ernest
departed; but a few days afterwards, the Doctor wrote him a letter and
told him that his critics were sklerhoi kai antitupoi, and at the same
time anekplektoi. Ernest remembered sklerhoi, and knew that the
other words were something of like nature, so it was all right. A
month or two afterwards, Dr. Skinner was gathered to his fathers.

"He was an old fool, Ernest," said I, "and you should not relent
towards him."

"I could not help it," he replied; "he was so old that it was almost
like playing with a child."

Sometimes, like all whose minds are active, Ernest overworks
himself, and then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful
encounters with Dr. Skinner or Theobald in his sleep-but beyond this
neither of these two worthies can now molest him further.

To myself he has been a son and more than a son; at times I am
half afraid- as for example when I talk to him about his books- that I
may have been to him more like a father than I ought; if I have, I
trust he has forgiven me. His books are the only bone of contention
between us. I want him to write like other people, and not to offend
so many his readers; he says he can no more change his manner of
writing than the colour of his hair and that he must write as he
does or not at all.

With the public generally he is not a favourite. He is admitted to
have talent, but it is considered generally to be of a queer,
unpractical kind, and no matter how serious he is, he is always
accused of being in jest. His first book was a success for reasons
which I have already explained, but none of his others have been
more than creditable failures. He is one of those unfortunate men,
each one of whose books is sneered at by literary critics as soon as
it comes out, but becomes "excellent reading" as soon as it has been
followed by a later work which may in its turn be condemned.

He never asked a reviewer to dinner in his life. I have told him
over and over again that this is madness, and find that this is the
only thing I can say to him which makes him angry with me.

"What can it matter to me," he says, "whether people read my books
or not? It may matter to them- but I have too much money to want more,
and if the books have any stuff in them it will work by-and-by. I do
not know nor greatly care whether they are good or not. What opinion
can any sane man form about his own work? Some people must write
stupid books just as there must be juniors ops and third class poll
men. Why should I complain of being among the mediocrities? If a man
is not absolutely below mediocrity let him be thankful- besides, the
books will have to stand by themselves some day, so the sooner they
begin the better."

I spoke to his publisher about him not long since. "Mr. Pontifex,"
he said, "is a homo unius libri, but it doesn't do to tell him so."

I could see the publisher, who ought to know, had lost all faith
in Ernest's literary position, and looked upon him as a man whose
failure was all the more hopeless for the fact of his having once made
a coup. "He is in a very solitary position, Mr. Overton," continued
the publisher. "He has formed no alliances, and has made enemies not
only of the religious world but of the literary and scientific
brotherhood as well. This will not do nowadays. If a man wishes to get
on he must belong to a set, and Mr. Pontifex belongs to no set- not
even to a club."

I replied, "Mr. Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but
with a difference-he hates not wisely but too well. He would dislike
the literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and
they him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and
if he were brought into contact with them his last state would be
worse than his first. His instinct tells him this, so he keeps clear
of them, and attacks them whenever he thinks they deserve it- in the
hope, perhaps, that a younger generation will listen to him more
willingly than the present."

"Can anything," said the publisher, "be conceived more impracticable
and imprudent?"

To all this Ernest replies with one word only- "Wait."

Such is my friend's latest development. He would not, it is true,
run much chance at present of trying to found a College of Spiritual
Pathology, but I must leave the reader to determine whether there is
not a strong family likeness between the Ernest of the College of
Spiritual Pathology and the Ernest who will insist on addressing the
next generation rather than his own. He says he trusts that there is
not, and takes the sacrament duly once a year as a sop to Nemesis lest
he should again feel strongly upon any subject. It rather fatigues
him, but "no man's opinions," he sometimes says, "can be worth holding
unless he knows how to deny them easily and gracefully upon occasion
in the cause of charity." In politics he is a Conservative so far as
his vote and interest are concerned. In all other respects he is an
advanced Radical. His father and grandfather could probably no more
understand his state of mind than they could understand Chinese, but
those who know him intimately do not know that they wish him greatly
different from what he actually is.



                            -THE END-