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The Way of All Flesh

by Samuel Butler · English · Gutenberg #2084 · 893,428 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Way of All Flesh

Author: Samuel Butler


        
Release date: February 1, 2000 [eBook #2084]
                Most recently updated: May 12, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2084

Credits: David Price


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The Way of All Flesh

by Samuel Butler


“We know that all things work together for good to them that love
God.”—ROM. viii. 28




PREFACE


Samuel Butler began to write “The Way of All Flesh” about the year
1872, and was engaged upon it intermittently until 1884. It is
therefore, to a great extent, contemporaneous with “Life and Habit,”
and may be taken as a practical illustration of the theory of heredity
embodied in that book. He did not work at it after 1884, but for
various reasons he postponed its publication. He was occupied in other
ways, and he professed himself dissatisfied with it as a whole, and
always intended to rewrite or at any rate to revise it. His death in
1902 prevented him from doing this, and on his death-bed he gave me
clearly to understand that he wished it to be published in its present
form. I found that the MS. of the fourth and fifth chapters had
disappeared, but by consulting and comparing various notes and
sketches, which remained among his papers, I have been able to supply
the missing chapters in a form which I believe does not differ
materially from that which he finally adopted. With regard to the
chronology of the events recorded, the reader will do well to bear in
mind that the main body of the novel is supposed to have been written
in the year 1867, and the last chapter added as a postscript in 1882.

R. A. STREATFEILD.




CHAPTER I


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER II


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER III


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER IV


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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER V


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

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

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

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

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

“Books proper to be given away at this Season.—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER VI


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this manner he would work himself up into such a state of virtuous
indignation that he would sometimes thrash the boys then and there upon
some pretext invented at the moment.

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER VII


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER VIII


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

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

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

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


“THEOBALD PONTIFEX.”


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

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

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


G. PONTIFEX.”

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

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

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


THEOBALD PONTIFEX.”

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

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


 G. PONTIFEX.”

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




CHAPTER IX


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why yes, my dear,” rejoined Mrs Allaby complacently, “that’s what one
rather feels.”




CHAPTER X


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XI


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


“THEOBALD PONTIFEX.”

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

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




CHAPTER XII


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

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

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

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


G. PONTIFEX.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XIII


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“CAN’T I?” screamed the unhappy creature to himself.

“No,” said the remorseless voice, “YOU CAN’T. YOU ARE A MARRIED MAN.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XIV


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

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

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

Horace preached church restoration in his ode:—

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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




CHAPTER XV


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XVI


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XVII


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

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

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

He rang the bell for the butler.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll filter it, Sir,” said Gelstrap meekly. “It’ll come quite clean.”

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

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

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




CHAPTER XVIII


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

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

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

“I shall bring my own cook, and have told him to get everything ready
for the christening dinner. Ask as many of your best neighbours as your
table will hold. By the way, I have told Lesueur _not to get a
lobster_—you had better drive over yourself and get one from Saltness
(for Battersby was only fourteen or fifteen miles from the sea coast);
they are better there, at least I think so, than anywhere else in
England.

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


“G. PONTIFEX.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XIX


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XX


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XXI


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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XXII


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

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

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

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

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

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

I do not know exactly what Christina expected, but I should imagine it
was something like this: “My children ought to be all geniuses, because
they are mine and Theobald’s, and it is naughty of them not to be; but,
of course, they cannot be so good and clever as Theobald and I were,
and if they show signs of being

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