Chapter: 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.





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 pounds 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 pounds when Mr Pontifex left
"something" to Ernest.  The "something" proved to be 2500 pounds, 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 pounds over and above 5000 pounds 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 pounds 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.





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 [Greek text]--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.





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.





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.

 The birth of Ernest during the fifth year of Theobald and Christina's marriage is especially welcome news to George Pontifex, for Ernest is his first grandson. Wishing to mark the event in a special way, George personally enters his wine cellar to retrieve a bottle of water taken from the Jordan River. Unfortunately, he drops the bottle, but his servant's quick work with a sponge and filter saves enough of the precious fluid to be used at the infant's christening. The family dinner following the event goes exceedingly well, Overton observes, excepting George's extreme perturbation at being served a cock lobster instead of a hen lobster. The dinner is also notable for the presence of Theobald's sister, Alethea , and the narrator, Overton . Overton makes a brief comment on his long courtship of Alethea, who, for some unexplained reason, has never consented to marry him. Neither of them, Overton observes, will ever marry anyone else. In writing about Ernest's christening many years after the actual event, Overton wryly asks himself, "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" before we wake to find "that papa and mamma . . . have been eaten by sparrows?" The death of George Pontifex from a chronic liver condition caused by excessive eating and drinking elicits a eulogy from Overton. Admitting that the deceased had his full share of faults, Overton believes that, on the whole, George lived according to the pleasure principle which most unexceptional men should follow. If George had been a mean person, he was mean in the total sense of the word and not merely crabbed nor excessive in his virtues and vices. The observance of higher moral standards would have prevented him from obtaining the wealth he needed to live pleasurably. If he had been something of a miser, his money-gathering represents a talent which few people possess. "Judge him according to a fair average standard," Overton concludes, "and there is not much fault to be found with him." Ernest is scarcely a toddler when his parents begin the regimen which continues until Ernest is sent away to school. Theobald does not like children, and Christina wishes that they could be born as "full-grown clergymen . . . with comfortable livings." Constantly on guard against leniency, Theobald gives his eldest child daily lessons and beatings to eradicate any signs of self-will in him or in his younger brother and sister. Christina obediently tries to follow her husband's example in child rearing, but she succeeds better in entertaining idle fancies about their futures than in administrating corporal punishment. Imagining herself grown more spiritually pure from having "left off eating things strangled and blood," Christina dreams of herself as a possible Madonna and Ernest as a reincarnation of Christ.

