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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 As soon as it is legally possible, Ernest and Ellen are married, and their efforts at shopkeeping are quickly rewarded with a prosperity more than sufficient to meet their immediate needs. The happy couple occasionally attend concerts and plays, and Ellen at first accompanies Ernest on Sunday hikes. Ellen is content to allow Ernest evenings to himself in the sitting room, where he plays the piano, reads, and writes. Overton recognizes his godson's literary instincts but objects to Ernest's preoccupation with scientific and metaphysical subjects. Overton is greatly relieved when Ernest finally drops these subjects after concluding that no tenable philosophical system can be based on an absolute first principle. About six months after their marriage, Ernest returns home from a buying trip to find Ellen uncontrollably sobbing. Morning after morning the same phenomenon repeats itself, and Ernest, who does not suspect Ellen of drinking, assumes this strange conduct to be caused by her being with child. Following the birth of a daughter, Ellen remains sober for a few weeks but then relapses into her daily routine of hysteria whenever Ernest leaves the shop. As Ellen is again pregnant, Ernest does not suspect the true cause of her irrational behavior even after he discovers that she has been surreptitiously taking money from the shop cash drawer. More distressed by his wife's dishonesty than by the loss of money, Ernest gradually realizes his error in insisting on taking a moral position by marrying Ellen. As money worries once again begin to plague him, he becomes more and more despondent, the nadir of his despair being reached when Ellen suddenly comes down with delirium.

