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

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

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

He mused a little and added with a laugh:--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Seeing is a mode of touching, touching is a mode of feeding, feeding is
a mode of assimilation, assimilation is a mode of recreation and
reproduction, and this is crossing--shaking yourself into something else
and something else into you."

He spoke laughingly, but it was plain he was serious.  He continued:--

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

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

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

He thought a little and then said:--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

He said: "Oh, don't talk about rewards.  Look at Milton, who only got 5
pounds for 'Paradise Lost.'"

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

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

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

After a time he took it into his head to reopen the question of his
getting 300 pounds a year for doing, as he said, absolutely nothing, and
said he would try to find some employment which should bring him in
enough to live upon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What care I," said he to me one day, "about being what they call a
gentleman?"  And his manner was almost fierce.

"What has being a gentleman ever done for me except make me less able to
prey and more easy to be preyed upon?  It has changed the manner of my
being swindled, that is all.  But for your kindness to me I should be
penniless.  Thank heaven I have placed my children where I have."

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

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

It was hard to deny the soundness of this, and if he had been dependent
only on the 300 pounds a year which he was getting from me I should have
advised him to open his shop again next morning.  As it was, I temporised
and raised obstacles, and quieted him from time to time as best I could.

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

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

In spite of all that I had done to prepare him, it was a long while
before I could get him actually to believe that the money was his own.  He
did not say much--no more did I, for I am not sure that I did not feel as
much moved at having brought my long trusteeship to a satisfactory
conclusion as Ernest did at finding himself owner of more than 70,000
pounds.  When he did speak it was to jerk out a sentence or two of
reflection at a time.  "If I were rendering this moment in music," he
said, "I should allow myself free use of the augmented sixth."  A little
later I remember his saying with a laugh that had something of a family
likeness to his aunt's: "It is not the pleasure it causes me which I
enjoy so, it is the pain it will cause to all my friends except yourself
and Towneley."

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

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





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

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

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

The letter ran thus:--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Because, my dear father," said Ernest still laughing, "my aunt left it
to him in trust for me, not in trust either for you or for my Uncle
John--and it has accumulated till it is now over 70,000 pounds.  But tell
me how is my mother?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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

I may say in passing that Christina was right in saying that Theobald had
never had so much money as his son was now possessed of.  In the first
place he had not had a fourteen years' minority with no outgoings to
prevent the accumulation of the money, and in the second he, like myself
and almost everyone else, had suffered somewhat in the 1846 times--not
enough to cripple him or even seriously to hurt him, but enough to give
him a scare and make him stick to debentures for the rest of his life.  It
was the fact of his son's being the richer man of the two, and of his
being rich so young, which rankled with Theobald even more than the fact
of his having money at all.  If he had had to wait till he was sixty or
sixty-five, and become broken down from long failure in the meantime, why
then perhaps he might have been allowed to have whatever sum should
suffice to keep him out of the workhouse and pay his death-bed expenses;
but that he should come in to 70,000 pounds at eight and twenty, and have
no wife and only two children--it was intolerable.  Christina was too ill
and in too great a hurry to spend the money to care much about such
details as the foregoing, and she was naturally much more good-natured
than Theobald.

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

"Of course he would buy Joey a living, and make large presents yearly to
his sister--was there anything else?  Oh! yes--he would become a county
magnate now; a man with nearly 4000 pounds a year should certainly become
a county magnate.  He might even go into Parliament.  He had very fair
abilities, nothing indeed approaching such genius as Dr Skinner's, nor
even as Theobald's, still he was not deficient and if he got into
Parliament--so young too--there was nothing to hinder his being Prime
Minister before he died, and if so, of course, he would become a peer.
Oh! why did he not set about it all at once, so that she might live to
hear people call her son 'my lord'--Lord Battersby she thought would do
very nicely, and if she was well enough to sit he must certainly have her
portrait painted at full length for one end of his large dining-hall.  It
should be exhibited at the Royal Academy: 'Portrait of Lord Battersby's
mother,' she said to herself, and her heart fluttered with all its wonted
vivacity.  If she could not sit, happily, she had been photographed not
so very long ago, and the portrait had been as successful as any
photograph could be of a face which depended so entirely upon its
expression as her own.  Perhaps the painter could take the portrait
sufficiently from this.  It was better after all that Ernest had given up
the Church--how far more wisely God arranges matters for us than ever we
can do for ourselves!  She saw it all now--it was Joey who would become
Archbishop of Canterbury and Ernest would remain a layman and become
Prime Minister" . . . and so on till her daughter told her it was time to
take her medicine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Even after being saved from a disastrous marriage and awarded employment by Overton, Ernest suffers an attack of nervous prostration from his ordeal. An eminent London physician consulted by Overton prescribes rest and change for Ernest, who begins his treatment by visiting the Zoological Gardens, where he watches pigs and elephants, and by visiting the Abbey, where he listens to Te Deums. In three weeks' time, he is sufficiently recovered to travel abroad with Overton, who directs him to Italy by way of France. Upon returning to England, Ernest is physically fit but beset with feelings of guilt for resuming life as a gentleman; he cannot forget his earlier imprisonment. Consequently, he vows to avoid old friends, even Towneley, who is the only person other than Overton to know of Ernest's approaching inheritance. Ernest fears that in carrying out his intention of writing and speaking as he sees fit, he will lose the good opinion of the one man he admires most after Overton. When he seeks employment as a writer, however, he meets with little success. An editor who gives him several books to review stipulates how they are to be judged; a journal that accepts some of his articles immediately goes out of business after their publication. Threatening to resume his occupation as a dealer in used clothing, Ernest is diverted from this backward step by Overton. One shock is followed quickly by another when Ernest reaches the age of twenty-eight and receives his inheritance, for Theobald writes of Christina's critical illness and implores Ernest to leave at once for Battersby. When he presents himself to his family in fashionable attire and reports the good fortune of his inheritance, it is Theobald's turn to be shocked. Christina, although on her deathbed, instantly imagines Ernest as destined to become Prime Minister, and Joey, her younger son, who is now Theobald's curate, the Archbishop of Canterbury; her only discomforting thought is that there will be a problem in deciding who shall be commissioned to paint the portrait of the mother of these distinguished brothers. When Christina at last dies, she is spoken of affectionately by Overton, who helps Theobald select an appropriate epitaph for her tombstone.

